1890 the fourth movement by oscar wilde impression le reveillon the sky is laced with fitful red, the circling mists and shadows flee, the dawn is rising from the sea, like a white lady from her bed. and jagged brazen arrows fall athwart the feathers of the night, and a long wave of yellow light breaks silently on tower and hall, and spreading wide across the wold wakes into flight some fluttering bird, and all the chestnut tops are stirred, and all the branches streaked with gold. at verona how steep the stairs within kings' houses are for exile-wearied feet as mine to tread, and o how salt and bitter is the bread which falls from this hound's table,better far that i had died in the red ways of war, or that the gate of florence bare my head, than to live thus, by all things comraded which seek the essence of my soul to mar. "curse god and die: what better hope than this? he hath forgotten thee in all the bliss of his gold city, and eternal day" nay peace: behind my prison's blinded bars i do possess what none can take away, my love, and all the glory of the stars. apologia is it thy will that i should wax and wane, barter my cloth of gold for hodden gray, and at thy pleasure weave that web of pain whose brightest threads are each a wasted day? is it thy willlove that i love so well that my soul's house should be a tortured spot wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell the quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not? nay, if it be thy will i shall endure, and sell ambition at the common mart, and let dull failure be my vestiture, and sorrow dig its grave within my heart. perchance it may be better soat least i have not made my heart a heart of stone, nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast, nor walked where beauty is a thing unknown. many a man hath done so; sought to fence in straitened bonds the soul that should be free, trodden the dusty road of common sense, while all the forest sang of liberty, not marking how the spotted hawk in flight passed on wide pinion through the lofty air, to where the steep untrodden mountain height caught the last tresses of the sun god's hair. or how the little flower he trod upon, the daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold, followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun content if once its leaves were aureoled. but surely it is something to have been the best beloved for a little while, to have walked hand in hand with love, and seen his purple wings flit once across thy smile. ay! though the gorged asp of passion feed on my boy's heart, yet have i burst the bars, stood face to face with beauty, known indeed the love which moves the sun and all the stars! quia multum amavi dear heart i think the young impassioned priest when first he takes from out the hidden shrine his god imprisoned in the eucharist, and eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine, feels not such awful wonder as i felt when first my smitten eyes beat full on thee, and all night long before thy feet i knelt till thou wert wearied of idolatry. ah! had'st thou liked me less and loved me more, through all those summer days of joy and rain, i had not now been sorrow's heritor, or stood a lackey in the house of pain. yet, though remorse, youth's white-faced seneschal tread on my heels with all his retinue, i am most glad i loved theethink of all the sums that go to make one speedwell blue! silentium amoris as oftentimes the too resplendent sun hurries the pallid and reluctant moon back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won a single ballad from the nightingale, so doth thy beauty make my lips to fail, and all my sweetest singing out of tune. and as at dawn across the level mead on wings impetuous some wind will come, and with its too harsh kisses break the reed which was its only instrument of song, so my too stormy passions work me wrong, and for excess of love my love is dumb. but surely unto thee mine eyes did show why i am silent, and my lute unstrung; else it were better we should part, and go, thou to some lips of sweeter melody, and i to nurse the barren memory of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung. her voice the wild bee reels from bough to bough with his furry coat and his gauzy wing. now in a lily-cup, and now setting a jacinth bell a-swing, in his wandering; sit closer love: it was here i trow i made that vow, swore that two lives should be like one as long as the sea-gull loved the sea, as long as the sunflower sought the sun it shall be, i said, for eternity 'twixt you and me! dear friend, those times are over and done, love's web is spun. look upward where the poplar trees sway and sway in the summer air, here in the valley never a breeze scatters the thistledowns, but there great winds blow fair from the mighty murmuring mystical seas, and the wave-lashed leas. look upward where the white gull screams what does it see that we do not see? is that a star? or the lamp that gleams on some outward voyaging argosy, ah! can it be we have lived our lives in land of dreams! how sad it seems. sweet, there is nothing left to say but this, that love is never lost. keen winter stabs the breasts of may whose crimson roses burst his frost, ships tempest-tossed will find a harbour in some bay, and so we may. and there is nothing left to do but to kiss once again, and part, nay, there is nothing we should rue, i have my beauty,you your art. nay, do not start, one world was not enough for two like me and you. my voice within this restless, hurried, modern world we took our heart's full pleasureyou and i, and now the white sails of our ship are furled, and spent the lading of our argosy. wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan, for very weeping is my gladness fled sorrow hath paled my lip's vermilion, and ruin draws the curtains of my bed. but all this crowded life has been to thee no more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell of viols, or the music of the sea that sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell. taedium vitae to stab my youth with desperate knife, to wear this paltry age's gaudy livery, to let each base hand filch my treasury, to mesh my soul within a woman's hair, and be mere fortune's lackeyed groom,i swear, i love it not! these things are less to me than the thin foam that frets upon the sea, less than the thistle-down of summer air which hath no seed: better to stand aloof far from these slanderous fools who mock my life knowing me not, better the lowliest roof fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in, than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin. the end . internet wiretap edition of my watch by mark twain from "sketches new and old", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain (jun 1993, #16). (written about 1870.) my watch an instructive little tale my beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. i had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. but at last, one night, i let it run down. i grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity. but by and by i cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart. next day i stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. then he said, "she is four minutes slow -regulator wants pushing up." i tried to stop him -tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. but no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up a little; and so, while i danced around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. my watch began to gain. it gained faster and faster day by day. within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. at the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. it was away into november enjoying the snow, while the october leaves were still turning. it hurried up house rent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that i could not abide it. i took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. he asked me if i had ever had it repaired. i said no, it had never needed any repairing. he looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small dice box into his eye and peered into its machinery. he said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating -come in a week. after being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. i began to be left by trains, i failed all appointments, i got to missing my dinner; my watch strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest; i gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone i was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of sight. i seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling for the mummy in the museum, and desire to swap news with him. i went to a watch maker again. he took the watch all to pieces while i waited, and then said the barrel was "swelled." he said he could reduce it in three days. after this the watch averaged well, but nothing more. for half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that i could not hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. but the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again. so at last, at the end of twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and just in time. it would show a fair and square average, and no man could say it had done more or less than its duty. but a correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch, and i took this instrument to another watchmaker. he said the kingbolt was broken. i said i was glad it was nothing more serious. to tell the plain truth, i had no idea what the kingbolt was, but i did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. he repaired the kingbolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. it would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. and every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. i padded my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. he picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hairtrigger. he fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. it did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would travel together. the oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch, and so i went again to have the thing repaired. this person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the mainspring was not straight. he also remarked that part of the works needed halfsoling. he made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch. she would reel off the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. i went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he took her to pieces. then i prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. the watch had cost two hundred dollars originally, and i seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. while i waited and looked on i presently recognized in this watchmaker an old acquaintance -a steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good engineer, either. he examined all the parts carefully, just as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner. he said: "she makes too much steam -you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the safety-valve!" i brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense. my uncle william (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch until the repairers got a chance at it. and he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and engineers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him. end. . 1878 ravenna by oscar wilde i a year ago i breathed the italian air, and yet, methinks this northern spring is fair, these fields made golden with the flower of march, the throstle singing on the fathered larch, the cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by, the little clouds that race across the sky; and fair the violet's gentle drooping head, the primrose, pale for love uncomforted, the rose that burgeons on the climbing briar, the crocus-bed, (that seems a moon of fire round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring); and all the flowers of oar english spring, fond snow-drops, and the bright-starred daffodil. up starts the lark beside the murmuring mill, and breaks the gossamer-threads of early dew; and down the river, like a flame of blue, keene as an arrow flies the water-king, while the brown linnets in the greenwood sing. a year ago!it seems a little time since last i saw that lordly southern clime, where flower and fruit to purple radiance blow, and like bright lamps the fabled apples grow. full spring it wasand by rich flowing vines, dark olive-groves and noble forest-pines, i rode at will; the moist glad air was sweet, the white road rang beneath my horse's feet, and musing on ravenna's ancient name, i watched the day till, marked with wounds of flame, the turquoise sky to burnished gold was turned. o how my heart with boyish passion burned, when far away across the sedge and mere i saw that holy city rising clear, crowned with her crown of towers!on and on i galloped, racing with the setting sun, and ere the crimson after-glow was passed, i stood within ravenna's walls at last! ii how strangely still! no sound of life or joy startles the air! no laughing shepherd-boy pipes on his reed, nor ever through the day comes the glad sound of children at their play: o sad, and sweet, and silent! surely here a man might dwell apart from troublous fear, watching the tide of seasons as they flow from amorous spring to winter's rain and snow, and have no thought of sorrow;here, indeed, are lethe's waters, and that fatal weed which makes a man forget his fatherland. ay! amid lotus-meadows dost thou stand, like proserpine, with poppy-laden head, guarding the holy ashes of the dead. for though thy brood of warrior sons hath ceased, thy noble dead are with thee!they at least are faithful to thine honour:guard them well, o childless city! for a mighty spell, to wake men's hearts to dream of things sublime, are the lone tombs where rest the great of time. iii yon lonely pillar, rising on the plain, marks where the bravest knight of france was slain, the prince of chivalry, the lord of war, gaston de foix: for some untimely star led him against thy city, and he fell, as falls some forest-lion fighting well. taken from life while life and love were new, he lies beneath god's seamless veil of blue; tall lance-like reeds wave sadly o'er his head, and oleanders bloom to deeper red, where his bright youth flowed crimson on the ground. look farther north unto that broken mound, there, prisoned now within a lordly tomb raised by a daughter's hand, in lonely gloom, huge-limbed theodoric, the gothic king, sleeps after all his weary conquering. time hath not spared his ruin,wind and rain have broken down his stronghold; and again we see that death is mighty lord of all, and king and clown to ashen dust must fall. mighty indeed their glory! yet to me barbaric king, or knight of chivalry, or the great queen herself, were poor and vain beside the grave where dante rests from pain. his gilded shrine lies open to the air; and cunning sculptor's hands have carven there the calm white brow, as calm as earliest morn, the eyes that flashed with passionate love and scorn, the lips that sang of heaven and of hell, the almond-face which giotto drew so well, the weary face of dante;to this day, here in his place of resting, far away from arno's yellow waters, rushing down through the wide bridges of that fairy town, where the tall tower of giotto seems to rise a marble lily under sapphire skies! alas! my dante! thou hast known the pain of meaner lives,the exile'sgalling chain, how steep the stairs within king's houses are, and all the petty miseries which mar man's nobler nature with the sense of wrong. yet this dull world is grateful for thy song; our nations do thee homage,even she, that cruel queen of vine-clad tuscany, who bound with crown of thorns thy living brow, hath decked thine empty tomb with laurels now, and begs in vain the ashes of her son. o mightiest exile! all thy grief is done: thy soul walks now beside thy beatrice; ravenna guards thine ashes: sleep in peace. iv how lone this palace is; how grey the walls! no minstrel now wakes echoes in these halls. the broken chain lies rusting on the door, and noisome weeds have split the marble floor: here lurks the snake, and here the lizards run by the stone lions blinking in the sun. byron dwelt here in love and revelry for two long yearsa second anthony, who of world another actium made! yet suffered not his royal soul to fade, or lyre to break, or lance to grow less keen, 'neath any wiles of an egyptian queen. for from the east there came a mighty cry, and greece stood up to fight for liberty, and called him from ravenna: never knight rode forth more nobly to wild scenes of fight! none fell more bravely on ensanguined field, borne like a spartan back upon his shield! o hellas! hellas! in thine hour of pride, thy day of might, remember him who died to wrest from off thy limbs the trammelling chain: o salamis! o lone plataean plain! o tossing waves of wild euboean sea! o wind-swept heights of lone thermopylae! he loved you wellay, not alone in word, who freely gave to thee his lyre and sword like aeschylus at well-fought marathon: and england, too, shall glory in her son, her warrior-poet, first in song and fight. no longer now, shall slander's venomed spite crawl like a snake across his perfect name, or mar the lordly scutcheon of his fame. for as the olive-garland of the race which lights with joy each eager runner's face, as the red cross which saveth men in war, as a flame-bearded beacon seen from far by mariners upon a storm-tossed sea, such was his love for greece and liberty! byron, thy crowns are ever fresh and green: red leaves of rose from sapphic mitylene shall bind thy brows; the myrtle blooms for thee, in hidden glades by lonely castaly; the laurels wait thy coming: all are thine, and round thy head one perfect wreath will twine. v the pine-tops rocked before the evening breeze with the hoarse murmur of the wintry seas, and the tall stems were streaked with amber bright; i wandered through the wood in wild delight, some startled bird, with fluttering wings and fleet, made snow of all the blossoms: at my feet, like silver crowns, the pale narcissi lay, and small birds sang on every twining spray. o waving trees, o forest liberty! within your haunts at least a man is free, and half forgets the weary world of strife: the blood flows hotter, and a sense of life wakes i' the quickening veins, while once again the woods are filled with gods we fancied slain. long time i watched, and surely hoped to see some goat-foot pan make merry minstrelsy amid the reed! some startled dryad-maid in girlish flight! or lurking in the glade, the soft brown limbs, the wanton treacherous face of woodland god! queen dian in the chase, white-limbed and terrible, with look of pride, and leash of boar-hounds leaping at her side! or hylas mirrored in the perfect stream. o idle heart! o fond hellenic dream! ere long, with melancholy rise and swell, the evening chimes, the convent's vesper-bell struck on mine ears amid the amorous flowers. alas! alas! these sweet and honied hours had 'whelmed my heart like some encroaching sea, and drowned all thoughts of black gethsemane. vi o lone ravenna! many a tale is told of thy great glories in the days of old: two thousand years have passed since thou didst see caesar ride forth in royal victory. mighty thy name when rome's lean eagles flew from britain's isles to far euphrates blue; and of the peoples thou wast noble queen, till in thy streets the goth and hun were seen. discrowned by man, deserted by the sea, thou sleepest, rocked in lonely misery! no longer now upon thy swelling tide, pine-forest like, thy myriad galleys ride! for where the brass-beaked ships were wont to float, the weary shepherd pipes his mourning note; and the white sheep are free to come and go where adria's purple waters used to flow. o fair! o sad! o queen uncomforted! in ruined loveliness thou liest dead, alone of all thy sisters; for at last italia's royal warrior hath passed rome's lordliest entrance, and hath worn his crown in the high temples of the eternal town! the palatine hath welcomed back her king, and with his name the seven mountains ring! and naples hath outlived her dream of pain, and mocks her tyrant! venice lives again, new risen from the waters! and the cry of light and truth, of love and liberty, is heard in lordly genoa, and where the marble spires of milan wound the air, rings from the alps to the sicilian shore, and dante's dream is now a dream no more. but thou, ravenna, better loved than all, thy ruined palaces are but a pall that hides thy fallen greatness! and thy name burns like a grey and flickering candle-flame, beneath the noon-day splendour of the sun of new italia! for the night is done, the night of dark oppression, and the day hath dawned in passionate splendour: far away the austrian hounds are hunted from the land, beyond those ice-crowned citadels which stand girdling the plain of royal lombardy, from the far west unto the eastern sea. i know, indeed, that sons of thine have died in lissa's waters, by the mountain-side of aspromonte, on novara's plain, nor have thy children died for thee in vain: and yet, methinks, thou hast not drunk this wine from grapes new-crushed of liberty divine, thou hast not followed that immortal star which leads the people forth to deeds of war. weary of life, thou liest in silent sleep, as one who marks the lengthening shadows creep, careless of all the hurrying hours that run, mourning some day of glory, for the sun of freedom hath not shown to thee his face, and thou hast caught no flambeau in the race. yet wake not from thy slumbers,rest thee well, amidst thy fields of amber asphodel, thy lily-sprinkled meadows,rest thee there, to mock all human greatness: who would dare to vent the paltry sorrows of his life before thy ruins, or to praise the strife of kings' ambition, and the barren pride of warrior nations! wert not thou the bride of the wild lord of adria's stormy sea! the queen of double empires! and to thee were not the nations given as thy prey! and nowthy gates lie open night and day, the grass grows green on every tower and hall, the ghastly fig hath cleft thy bastioned wall; and where thy mailed warriors stood at rest the midnight owl hath made her secret nest. o fallen! fallen! from thy high estate, o city trammelled in the toils of fate, doth nought remain of all thy glorious days, but a dull shield, a crown of withered bays! yet who beneath this night of wars and fears, from tranquil tower can watch the coming years; who can fortell what joys the day shall bring, or why before the dawn the linnets sing? thou, even thou, mayst wake, as wakes the rose to crimson splendour from its grave of snows; as the rich corn-fields rise to red and gold from these brown lands, now stiff with winter's cold as from the storm-rack comes a perfect star! o much-loved city! i have wandered far from the wave-circled islands of my home, have seen the gloomy mystery of the dome rise slowly from the drear campagna's way, clothed in the royal purple of the day i from the city of the violet crown have watched the sun by corinth's hill go down, and marked the "myriad laughter" from the hills of flower-starred arkady; yet back to thee returns my perfect love, as to its forest-nest the evening dove. o poet's city! one who scarce has seen some twenty summers cast their doublets green, for autumn's livery, would seek in vain to wake his lyre to sing a louder strain, or tell thy days of glory;poor indeed is the low murmur of the shepherd's reed, where the loud clarion's blast should shake the sky, and flame across the heavens! and to try such lofty themes were folly: yet i know that never felt my heart yet nobler glow that when felt my the silence of thy street with clamorous trampling of my horse's feet, and saw the city which now i try to sing, after long days of weary travelling. vii adieu, ravenna! but a year ago, i stood and watched the crimson sunset glow from the lone chapel on thy marshy plain: the sky was as a shield that caught the stain of blood and battle from the dying sun, and in the west the circling clouds had spun a royal robe, which some great god might wear, while into ocean-seas of purple air sank the gold galley of the lord of light. yet here the gentle stillness of the night brings back the swelling tide of memory, and wakes again my passionate love for thee: now is the spring of love, yet soon will come on meadow and tree the summer's lordly bloom: and soon the grass with brighter flowers will blow, and send up lilies for some boy to mow. then before long the summer's conqueror, rich autumn-time, the season's usurer, will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees, and see it scattered by the spend-thrift breeze; and after that the winter cold and drear. so runs the perfect cycle of the year. and so from youth to manhood do we go, and fall to weary days and locks of snow. love only knows no winter; never dies: nor cares for frowning storms or leaden skies. and mine for thee shall never pass away, though my weak lips may falter in my lay. adieu! adieu! yon silent evening star, the night's ambassador, doth gleam afar, and bid the shepherd bring his flocks to fold. perchance before our inland seas of gold are garnered by, the reapers into sheaves, perchance before i see the autumn leaves, i may behold thy city; and lay down low at thy feet the poet's laurel crown. adieu! adieu! yon silver lamp, the moon, which turns our midnight into perfect noon, doth surely light thy towers, guarding well where dante sleeps, where byron loved to dwell. the end . 1890 flowers of gold by oscar wilde impressions i les silhouettes the sea is flecked with bars of gray, the dull dead wind is out of tune, and like a withered leaf the moon is blown across the stormy bay. etched clear upon the pallid sand the black boat lies: a sailor boy clambers aboard in careless joy with laughing face and gleaming hand. and overhead the curlews cry, where through the dusky upland grass the young brown-throated reapers pass, like silhouettes against the sky. ii la fuite de la lune to outer senses there is peace, a dreamy peace on either hand, deep silence in the shadowy land, deep silence where the shadows cease. save for a cry that echoes shrill from some lone bird disconsolate; a corncrake calling to its mate; the answer from the misty hill. and suddenly the moon withdraws her sickle from the lightening skies, and to her sombre cavern flies, wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze. the grave of keats rid of the world's injustice, and his pain, he rests at last beneath god's veil of blue: taken from life when life and love were new the youngest of the martyrs here is lain, fair as sebastian, and as early slain. no cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew, but gentle violets weeping with the dew weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain. o proudest heart that broke for misery! o sweetest lips since those of mitylene! o poet-painter of our english land! thy name was writ in water-it shall stand: and tears like mine will keep thy memory green, as isabella did her basil tree. rome theocritus a villanelle o singer of persephone! in the dim meadows desolate dost thou remember sicily? still through the ivy flits the bee where amaryllis lies in state; o singer of persephone! simaetha calls on hecate and hears the wild dogs at the gate: dost thou remember sicily? still by the light and laughing sea poor polypheme bemoans his fate: o singer of persephone! and still in boyish rivalry young daphnis challenges his mate: dost thou remember sicily? slim lacon keeps a goat for thee, for thee the jocund shepherds wait, o singer of persephone! dost thou remember sicily? in the gold room a harmony her ivory hands on the ivory keys strayed in a fitful fantasy, like the silver gleam when the poplar trees rustle their pale leaves listlessly, or the drifting foam of a restless sea when the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze. her gold hair fell on the wall of gold like the delicate gossamer tangles spun on the burnished disk of the marigold, or the sun-flower turning to meet the sun when the gloom of the jealous night is done, and the spear of the lily is aureoled. and her sweet red lips on these lips of mine burned like the ruby fire set in the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine, or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate, or the heart of lotus drenched and wet with the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine. ballade de marguerite normande i am weary of lying within the chase when the knights are meeting in market-place. nay, go not thou to the red-roofed town lest the hooves of the war-horse tread thee down. but i would not go where the squires ride, i would only walk by my lady's side. alack! and alack! thou art over bold, a forester's son may not eat off gold. will she love me the less that my father is seen each martinmas day in a doublet green? perchance she is sewing at tapestrie, spindle and loom are not meet for thee. ah, if she is working the arras bright i might ravel the threads by the firelight. perchance she is hunting of the deer, flow could you follow o'er hill and mere? ah, if she is riding with the court, i might run beside her and wind the morte. perchance she is kneeling in s. denys, (on her soul may our lady have gramercy!) ah, if she is praying in lone chapelle, i might swing the censer and ring the bell. come in my son, for you look sae pale, thy father shall fill thee a stoup of ale. but who are these knights in bright array? is it a pageant the rich folks play? 'tis the king of england from over sea, who has come unto visit our fair countrie. but why does the curfew tool sae low and why do the mourners walk a-row? o 'tis hugh of amiens my sister's son who is lying stark, for his day is done. nay, nay, for i see white lilies clear, it is no strong man who lies on the bier. o 'tis old dame jeannette that kept the hall, i knew she would die at the autumn fall. dame jeannette had not that gold-brown hair, old jeannette was not a maiden fair. o 'tis none of our kith and none of our kin, (her soul may our lady assoil from sin!) but i hear the boy's voice chanting sweet, "elle est morte, la marguerite." come in my son and lie on the bed, and let the dead folk bury their dead. o mother, you know i loved her true: o mother, hath one grave room for two? the dole of the king's daughter breton seven stars in the still water, and seven in the sky; seven sins on the king's daughter, deep in her soul to lie. red roses are at her feet, (roses are red in her red-gold hair,) and o where her bosom and girdle meet red roses are hidden there. fair is the knight who lieth slain amid the rush and reed, see the lean fishes that are fain upon dead men to feed. sweet is the page that lieth there, (cloth of gold is goodly prey,) see the black ravens in the air, black, o black as the night are they. what do they there so stark and dead? (there is blood upon her hand) why are the lilies flecked with red, (there is blood on the river sand.) there are two that ride from the south and east, and two from the north and west, for the black raven a goodly feast, for the king's daughter rest. there is one man who loves her true (red, o red, is the stain of gore! he hath duggen a grave by the darksome yew, (one grave will do for four.) no moon in the still heaven, in the black water none, the sins on her soul are seven, the sin upon his is one. amor intellectualis oft have we trod the vales of castaly and heard sweet notes of sylvan music blown from antique reeds to common folk unknown and often launched our bark upon that sea which the nine muses hold in empery, and plowed free furrows through the wave and foam, nor spread reluctant sail for more safe home till we had freighted well our argosy. of which despoiled treasures these remain, sordello's passion, and the honeyed line of young endymion, lordly tamburlaine driving him pampered jades, and more than these, the seven-fold vision of the florentine, and grave-browed milton's solemn harmonics. santa decca the gods are dead: no longer do we bring to gray-eyed pallas crowns of olive-leaves! demeter's child no more hath tithe of sheaves, and in the noon the careless shepherds sing, for pan is dead, and all the wantoning by secret glade and devious haunt is o'er: young hylas seeks the water-springs no more; great pan is dead, and mary's son is king. and yetperchance in this sea-tranced isle, chewing the bitter fruit of memory, some god lies hidden in the asphodel. ah love! if such there be then it were well for us to fly his anger: nay, but see the leaves are stirring: let us watch a-while. corfu a vision two crowned kings and one that stood alone with no green weight of laurels round his head, but with sad eyes as one uncomforted, and wearied with man's never-ceasing moan for sins no bleating victim can atone, and sweet long lips with tears and kisses fed. girt was he in a garment black and red, and at his feet i marked a broken stone which sent up lilies, dove-like, to his knees, now at their sight, my heart being lit with flame i cried to beatrice, "who are these?" "aeschylos first, the second sophokles, and last (wide stream of tears!) euripides." impression de voyage the sea was sapphire colored, and the sky burned like a heated opal through the air, we hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fair for the blue lands that to the eastward lie. from the steep prow i marked with quickening eye zakynthos, every olive grove and creek, ithaca's cliff, lycaon's snowy peak, and all the flower-strewn hills of arcady. the flapping of the sail against the mast, the ripple of the water on the side, the ripple of girls' laughter at the stern, the only sounds:when 'gan the west to burn, and a red sun upon the seas to ride, i stood upon the soil of greece at last! katakolo the grave of shelley like burnt-out torches by a sick man's bed gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone; here doth the little night-owl make her throne, and the slight lizard show his jewelled head. and, where the chaliced poppies flame to red, in the still chamber of yon pyramid surely some old-world sphinx lurks darkly hid, grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead. ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb of earth great mother of eternal sleep, but sweeter far for thee a restless tomb in the blue cavern of an echoing deep, or where the tall ships founder in the gloom against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep. rome by the arno the oleander on the wall grows crimson in the dawning light, though the gray shadows of the night lie yet on florence like a pall. the dew is bright upon the hill, and bright the blossoms overhead, but ah! the grasshoppers have fled, the little attic song is still. only the leaves are gently stirred by, the soft breathing of the gale, and in the almond-scented vale the lonely nightingale is heard the day will make thee silent soon, o nightingale sing on for love! while yet upon the shadowy grove splinter the arrows of the moon. before across the silent lawn in sea-green mist the morning steals, and to love's frightened eyes reveals the long white fingers of the dawn. fast climbing up the eastern sky, to grasp and slay the shuddering night, all careless of my heart's delight, or if the nightingale should die. the end . 1890 panthea by oscar wilde panthea nay, let us walk from fire unto fire, from passionate pain to deadlier delight, i am too young to live without desire, too young art thou to waste this summer night asking those idle questions which of old man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told. for sweet, to feel is better than to know, and wisdom is a childless heritage, one pulse of passion-youth's first fiery glow, are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage: vex not thy soul with dead philosophy, have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love, and eyes to see! dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale like water bubbling from a silver jar, so soft she sings the envious moon is pale, that high in heaven she hung so far she cannot hear that love-enraptured tune, mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon late and laboring moon. white lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream, the fallen snow of petals where the breeze scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour enough for thee, dost thou desire more? alas! the gods will give naught else from their eternal store. for our high gods have sick and wearied grown of boyish limbs in water,are not these for wasted days of youth to make atone by pain or prayer or priest, and never, never, hearken they now to either good or ill, but send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will. they sit at ease, our gods they sit at ease, strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine, they sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees where asphodel and yellow lotus twine, mourning the old glad days before they knew what evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do. and far beneath the brazen floor, they see like swarming flies the crowd of little men, the bustle of small lives, then wearily back to their lotus-haunts they turn again kissing each other's mouths, and mix more deep the poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep. there all day long the golden-vestured sun, their torch-bearer, stands with his torch a-blaze, and when the gaudy web of noon is spun by its twelve maidens through the crimson haze fresh from endymion's arms comes forth the moon, and the immortal gods in toils of mortal passions swoon. there walks queen juno through some dewy mead, her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust of wind-stirred lilies, while young ganymede leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must, his curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare the frightened boy from ida through the blue ionian air. there in the green heart of some garden close queen venus with the shepherd at her side, her warm soft body like the brier rose which would be white yet blushes at its pride, laughs low for love, till jealous salmacis peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss. there never does that dreary northwind blow which leaves our english forests bleak and bare, nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow, nor doth the red-toothed lightning ever dare to wake them in the silver-fretted night when we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight. alas! they know the far lethaean spring, the violet-hidden waters well they know, where one whose feet with tired wandering are faint and broken may take heart and go, and from those dark depths cool and crystalline drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne. but we oppress our natures, god or fate is our enemy, we starve and feed on vain repentanceo we are born too late! what balm for us in bruised poppy seed who crowd into one finite pulse of time the joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime. o we are wearied of this sense of guilt, wearied of pleasures paramour despair, wearied of every temple we have built, wearied of every right, unanswered prayer, for man is weak; god sleeps: and heaven is high: one fiery-colored moment: one great love: and lo! we die. ah! but no ferry-man with laboring pole nears his black shallop to the flowerless strand, no little coin of bronze can bring the soul over death's river to the sunless land, victim and wine and vow are all in vain, the tomb is sealed; the soldiers watch; the dead rise not again. we are resolved into the supreme air, we are made one with what we touch and see, with our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair, with our young lives each spring-impassioned tree flames into green, the wildest beasts that range the moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change. with beat of systole and of diastole one grand great light throbs through earth's giant heart, and mighty waves of single being roll from nerve-less germ to man, for we are part of every rock and bird and beast and hill, one with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. from lower cells of waking life we pass to full perfection; thus the world grows old: we who are godlike now were once a mass of quivering purple flecked with bars of gold, unsentient or of joy or misery, and tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea. this hot hard flame with which our bodies burn will make some meadow blaze with daffodil, ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn to water-lilies; the brown fields men till will be more fruitful for our love to-night, nothing is lost in nature, all things live in death's despite. the boy's first kiss, the hyacinth's first bell, the man's last passion, and the last red spear that from the lily leaps, the asphodel which will not let its blossoms blow for fear of too much beauty, and the timid shame of the young bridegroom at his lover's eyes,these with the same one sacrament are consecrate, the earth not we alone hath passions hymeneal, the yellow buttercups that shake for mirth at daybreak know a pleasure not less real than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood we draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good. so when men bury us beneath the yew thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will be, and thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew, and when the white narcissus wantonly kisses the wind its playment, some faint joy will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy. and thus without life's conscious torturing pain in some sweet flower we will feel the sun, and from the linnet's throat will sing again, and as two gorgeous-mailed snakes will run over our graves, or as two tigers creep through the hot jungle where the yellow-eyed huge lions sleep and give them battle! how my heart leaps up to think of that grand living after death in beast and bird and flower, when this cup, being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath, and with the pale leaves of some autumn day the soul earth's earliest conqueror becomes earth's last great prey. o think of it! we shall inform ourselves into all sensuous life, the goat-foot faun, the centaur, or the merry bright-eyed elves that leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn upon the meadows, shall not be more near than you and i to nature's mysteries, for we shall hear the thrush's heart beat, and the daisies grow, and the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun on sunless days in winter, we shall know by whom the silver gossamer is spun, who paints the diapered fritillaries, on what wide wings from shivering pine to pine the eagle flies. ay! had we never loved at all, who knows if yonder daffodil had lured the bee into its gilded womb, or any rose had hung with crimson lamps its little tree! methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring, but for the lovers' lips that kiss, the poet's lips that sing. is the light vanished from our golden sun, or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair, that we are nature's heritors, and one with every pulse of life that beats the air? rather new suns across the sky shall pass, new splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass. and we two lovers shall not sit afar, critics of nature, but the joyous sea shall be our raiment, and the bearded star shoot arrows at our pleasure! we shall be part of the mighty universal whole, and through all aeons mix and mingle with the kosmic soul! we shall be notes in that great symphony whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres, and all the live world's throbbing heart shall be one with our heart, the stealthy creeping years have lost their terrors now, we shall not die, the universe itself shall be our immortality! the end . 1881 miscellaneous poems by oscar wilde the true knowledge thou knowest alli seek in vain what lands to till or sow with seed the land is black with briar and weed, nor cares for falling tears or rain. thou knowest alli sit and wait with blinded eyes and hands that fail, till the last lifting of the veil, and the first opening of the gate. thou knowest alli cannot see. i trust i shall not live in vain, i know that we shall meet again, in some divine eternity. a lament o well for him who lives at ease with garnered gold in wide domain, nor heeds the splashing of the rain, the crashing down of forest trees. o well for him who ne'er hath known the travail of the hungry years, a father grey with grief and tears, a mother weeping all alone. but well for him whose feet hath trod the weary road of toil and strife, yet from the sorrows of his life builds ladders to be nearer god. wasted days a fair slim boy not made for this world's pain. with hair of gold thick clustering round his ears, and longing eyes half veiled by foolish tears like bluest water seen through mists of rain: pale cheeks whereon no kiss hath left its stain, red under lip drawn for fear of love, and white throat whiter than the breast of dove. alas! alas! if all should be in vain. behind, wide fields, and reapers all a-row in heat and labour toiling wearily, to no sweet sound of laughter or of lute. the sun is shooting wide its crimson glow, still the boy dreams: nor knows that night is nigh, and in the night-time no man gathers fruit. lotus leaves i there is no peace beneath the moon, ah! in those meadows is there peace where, girdled with a silver fleece, as a bright shepherd, strays the moon? queen of the gardens of the sky, where stars like lilies, white and fair, shine through the mists of frosty air, oh, tarry, for the dawn is nigh! oh, tarry, for the envious day stretches long hands to catch thy feet. alas! but thou art overfleet, alas! i know thou wilt not stay. ii eastward the dawn has broken red, the circling mists and shadows flee; aurora rises from the sea, and leaves the crocus-flowered bed. eastward the silver arrows fall, splintering the veil of holy night: and a long wave of yellow light breaks silently on tower and hall. and speeding wide across the wold wakes into flight some fluttering bird; and all the chestnut tops are stirred, and all the branches streaked with gold. iii to outer senses there is peace, a dream-like peace on either hand, deep silence in the shadowy land, deep silence where the shadows cease, save for a cry that echoes shrill from some lone bird disconsolate; a curlew calling to its mate; the answer from the distant hill. and, herald of my love to him who, waiting for the dawn, doth lie, the orbed maiden leaves the sky, and the white firs grow more dim. iv up sprang the sun to run his race, the breeze blew fair on meadow and lea, but in the west i seemed to see the likeness of a human face. a linnet on the hawthorn spray sang of the glories of the spring, and made the flow'ring copses ring with gladness for the new-born day. a lark from out the grass i trod flew wildly, and was lost to view in the great seamless veil of blue that hangs before the face of god. the willow whispered overhead that death is but a newer life and that with idle words of strife we bring dishonour on the dead. i took a branch from off the tree, and hawthorn branches drenched with dew, i bound them with a sprig of yew, and made a garland fair to see. i laid the flowers where he lies (warm leaves and flowers on the stones): what joy i had to sit alone till evening broke on tired eyes: till all the shifting clouds had spun a robe of gold for god to wear and into seas of purple air sank the bright galley of the sun. v shall i be gladdened for the day, and let my inner heart be stirred by murmuring tree or song of bird, and sorrow at the wild winds' play? not so, such idle dreams belong to souls of lesser depth than mine; i feel that i am half divine; i that i am great and strong. i know that every forest tree by labour rises from the root i know that none shall gather fruit by sailing on the barren sea. impressions i le jardin the lily's withered chalice falls around its rod of dusty gold, and from the beeeh trees on the wold the last wood-pigeon coos and calls. the gaudy leonine sunflower hangs black and barren on its stalk, and down the windy garden walk the dead leaves scatter,hour by hour. pale privet-petals white as milk are blown into a snowy mass; the roses lie upon the grass, like little shreds of crimson silk. ii la mer a white mist drifts across the shrouds, a wild moon in this wintry sky gleams like an angry lion's eye out of a mane of tawny clouds. the muffled steersman at the wheel is but a shadow in the gloom; and in the throbbing engine room leap the long rods of polished steel. the shattered storm has left its trace upon this huge and heaving dome, for the thin threads of yellow foam float on the waves like ravelled lace. under the balcony o beautiful star with the crimson mouth! o moon with the brows of gold! rise up, rise up, from the odorous south! and light for my love her way, lest her feet should stray on the windy hill and the wold! o beautiful star with the crimson mouth! o moon with the brows of gold! o ship that shakes on the desolate sea! o ship with the wet, white sail! put in, put in, to the port to me! for my love and i would go to the land where the daffodils blow in the heart of a violet dale! o ship that shakes on the desolate sea! o ship with the wet, white sail! o rapturous bird with the low, sweet note! o bird that sits on the spray! sing on, sing on, from your soft brown throat! and my love in her little bed will listen, and lift her head from the pillow, and come my way! o rapturous bird with the low, sweet note! o bird that sits on the spray! o blossom that hangs in the tremulous air! o blossom with lips of snow! come down, come down, for my love to wear! you will die in her head in a crown, you will die in a fold of her gown, to her little light heart you will go! o blossom that hangs in the tremulous air! o blossom with lips of snow! a fragment beautiful star with the crimson lips and flagrant daffodil hair, come back, come back, in the shaking ships o'er the much-overrated sea, to the hearts that are sick for thee with a woe worse than mal de mer o beautiful stars with the crimson lips and the flagrant daffodil hair. o ship that shakes on the desolate sea, neath the flag of the wan white star, thou bringest a brighter star with thee from the land of the philistine, where niagara's reckoned fine and tupper is popular o ship that shakes on the desolate sea, neath the flag of the wan white star. le jardin des tuileries this winter air is keen and cold, and keen and cold this winter sun, but round my chair the children run like little things of dancing gold. sometimes about the painted kiosk the mimic soldiers strut and stride, sometimes the blue-eyed brigands hide in the bleak tangles of the bosk. and sometimes, while the old nurse cons her book, they steal across the square and launch their paper navies where huge triton writhes in greenish bronze. and now in mimic flight they flee, and now they rush, a boisterous band and, tiny hand on tiny hand, climb up the black and leafless tree. ah! cruel tree! if i were you, and children climbed me, for their sake though it be winter i would break into spring blossoms white and blue! sonnet sonnet on the sale by auction of keats' love letters these are the letters which endymion wrote to one he loved in secret and apart, and now the brawlers of the auction-mart bargain and bid for each tear-blotted note, aye! for each separate pulse of passion quote the merchant's price! i think they love not art who break the crystal of a poet's heart, that small and sickly eyes may glare or gloat. is it not said, that many years ago, in a far eastern town some soldiers ran with torches through the midnight, and began to wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw dice for the garments of a wretched man, not knowing the god's wonder, or his woe? the new remorse the sin was mine; i did not understand. so now is music prisoned in her cave, save where some ebbing desultory wave frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand. and in the withered hollow of this land hath summer dug herself so deep a grave, that hardly can the leaden willow crave one silver blossom from keen winter's hand. but who is this that cometh by the shore? (nay, love, look up and wonder!) who is this who cometh in dyed garments from the south? it is thy new-found lord, and he shall kiss the yet unravished roses of thy mouth, and i shall weep and worship, as before. an inscription go, little book, to him who, on a lute with horns of pearl, sang of the white feet of the golden girl: and bid him look into thy pages: it may hap that he may find that golden maidens dance through thee. the harlot's house we caught the tread of dancing feet, we loitered down the moonlit street, and stopped beneath the harlot's house. inside, above the din and fray, we heard the loud musicians play the "treues liebes," of strauss. like strange mechanical grotesques, making fantastic arabesques, the shadows raced across the blind. we watched the ghostly dancers spin, to sound of horn and violin, like black leaves wheeling in the wind. like wire-pulled automatons, slim silhouetted skeletons went sidling through the slow quadrille, then took each other by the hand, and danced a stately saraband; their laughter echoed thin and shrill. sometimes a clock-work puppet pressed a phantom lover to her breast, sometimes they seemed to try and sing. sometimes a horrible marionette came out, and smoked its cigarette upon the steps like a live thing. then turning to my love i said, "the dead are dancing with the dead, the dust is whirling with the dust." but she, she heard the violin, and left my side and entered in: love passed into the house of lust. then suddenly the tune went false, the dancers wearied of the waltz, the shadows ceased to wheel and whirl, and down the long and silent street, the dawn with silver-sandalled feet, crept like a frightened girl. the end . 1890 rosa mystica by oscar wilde helas to drift with every passion till my soul is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, is it for this that i have given away mine ancient wisdom, and austere control? methinks my life is a twice-written scroll scrawled over on some boyish holiday with idle songs for pipe and virelay which do but mar the secret of the whole. surely that was a time i might have trod the sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance struck one clear chord to reach the ears of god; is that time dead? lo! with a little rod i did but touch the honey of romance and must i lose a soul's inheritance? requiescat tread lightly, she is near under the snow, speak gently, she can hear the daisies grow. all her bright golden hair tarnished with rust, she that was young and fair fallen to dust. lily-like, white as snow, she hardly knew she was a woman, so sweetly she grew. coffin-board, heavy stone, lie on her breast, i vex my heart alone she is at rest. peace, peace, she cannot hear lyre or sonnet, all my life's buried here, heap earth upon it. avignon salve saturnia tellus i reached the alps: the soul within me burned italia, my italia, at thy name: and when from out the mountain's heart i came and saw the land for which my life had yearned, i laughed as one who some great prize had earned: and musing on the story of thy fame i watched the day, till marked with wounds of flame the turquoise sky to burnished gold was turned the pine-trees waved as waves a woman's hair, and in the orchards every twining spray was breaking into flakes of blossoming foam: but when i knew that far away at rome in evil bonds a second peter lay, i wept to see the land so very fair. turin san miniato see, i have climbed the mountain side up to this holy house of god, where once that angel-painter trod who say the heavens opened wide, and throned upon the crescent moon the virginal white queen of grace, mary! could i but see thy face death could not come at all too soon. o crowned by god with thorns and pain! mother of christ! o mystic wife! my heart is weary of this life and over-sad to sing again. o crowned by, god with love and flame! o crowned by christ the holy one! o listen ere the searching sun show to the world my sin and shame. ave maria plena gratia was this his coming! i had hoped to see a scene wondrous glory, as was told of some great god who a rain of gold broke open bars and fell on danae: or a dread vision as when semele sickening for love and unappeased desire prayed to see god's clear body, and the fire caught her white limbs and slew her utterly: with such glad dreams i sought this holy place, and now with wondering eyes and heart i stand before this supreme mystery of love: a kneeling girl with passionless pale face, an angel with a lily in his hand, and over both with outstretched wings the dove. florence italia italia! thou art fallen, though with sheen of battle-spears thy clamorous armies stride from the north alps to the sicilian tide! ay! fallen, though the nations hail thee queen because rich gold in every town is seen, an on thy sapphire lake, in tossing pride of wind-filled vans thy myriad galleys ride beneath one flag of red and white and green. o fair and strong! o strong and fair in vain! look southward where rome's desecrated town lies mourning for her god-anointed king? look heavenward! shall god allow this thing? nay! but some flame-girt raphael shall come down, and smite the spoiler with the sword of pain. venice sonnet i wandered in scoglietto's green retreat, the oranges on each o'erhanging spray burned as bright lamps of gold to shame the day some startled bird with fluttering wings and fleet made snow of all the blossoms, at my feet like silver moons the pale narcissi lay: and the curved waves that streaked the sapphire bay laughed i' the sun, and life seemed very sweet. outside the young boy-priest passed singing clear, "jesus the son of mary has been slain, o come and fill his sepulchre with flowers." ah, god! ah, god! those dear hellenic hours had drowned all memory of thy bitter pain, the cross, the crown, the soldiers, and the spear. genoa, holy week rome unvisited i the corn has turned from gray to red, since first my spirit wandered forth from the drear cities of the north, and to italia's mountains fled. and here i set my face toward home, for all my pilgrimage is done, although, methinks, yon blood-red sun marshals the way to holy rome. o blessed lady, who dost hold upon the seven hills thy reign! o mother without blot or stain, crowned with bright crowns of triple gold! o roma, roma, at thy feet i lay this barren gift of song! for, ah! the way is steep and long that leads unto thy sacred street. rome unvisited ii and yet what joy it were for me to turn my feet unto the south, and journeying toward the tiber mouth to kneel again at fiesole! and wandering through the tangled pines that break the gold of arno's stream, to see the purple mist and gleam of morning on the apennines. by many a vineyard-hidden home, orchard, and olive-garden gray, till from the drear campagna's way the seven hills bear up the dome! rome unvisited iii a pilgrim from the northern seas what joy for me to seek alone the wondrous temple, and the throne of him who holds the awful keys! when, bright with purple and with gold, come priest and holy cardinal, and borne above the heads of all the gentle shepherd of the fold. o joy to see before i die the only god-anointed king, and hear the silver trumpets ring a triumph as he passes by. or at the altar of the shrine holds high the mystic sacrifice, and shows a god to human eyes beneath the veil of bread and wine. rome unvisited iv for lo, what changes time can bring! the cycles of revolving years may free my heart from all its fears, and teach my lips a song to sing. before yon field of trembling gold is garnered into dusty sheaves, or ere the autumn's scarlet leaves flutter as birds adown the wold, i may have run the glorious race, and caught the torch while yet aflame, and called upon the holy name of him who now doth hide his face. aruna urbs sacra aeterna rome! what a scroll of history thine has been! in the first days thy sword republican ruled the whole world for many an age's span: then of thy peoples thou wert crowned queen, till in thy streets the bearded goth was seen; and now upon thy walls the breezes fan (ah, city crowned by god, discrowned by man!) the hated flag of red and white and green. when was thy glory! when in search for power thine eagles flew to greet the double sun, and all the nations trembled at thy rod? nay, but thy glory tarried for this hour, when pilgrims kneel before the holy one, the prisoned shepherd of the church of god. sonnet on hearing the dies irae sung in the sistine chapel nay, lord, not thus! white lilies in the spring, sad olive-groves, or sliver-breasted dove, teach me more clearly of thy life and love than terrors of red flame and thundering. the empurpled vines dear memories of thee bring: a bird at evening flying to its nest, tells me of one who had no place of rest: i think it is of thee the sparrows sing. come rather on some autumn afternoon, when red and brown are burnished on the leaves, and the fields echo to the gleaner's song, come when the splendid fulness of the moon looks down upon the rows of golden sheaves, and reap thy harvest: we have waited long. easter day the silver trumpets rang across the dome: the people knelt upon the ground with awe: and borne upon the necks of men i saw, like some great god, the holy lord of rome. priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam, and, king-like, swathed himself in royal red, three crowns of gold rose high upon his head: in splendor and in light the pope passed home. my heart stole back across wide wastes of years to one who wandered by a lonely sea, and sought in vain for any place of rest: "foxes have holes, and every bird its nest, i, only i, must wander wearily, and bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears." e tenebris come down, o christ, and help me! reach thy hand, for i am drowning in a stormier sea than simon on thy lake of galilee: the wine of life is spilt upon the sand, my heart is as some famine-murdered land, whence all good things have perished utterly, and well i know my soul in hell must lie if i this night before god's throne should stand. "he sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase, like baal, when his prophets howled that name from morn to noon on carmel's smitten height." nay, peace, i shall behold before the night, the feet of brass, the robe more white than flame, the wounded hands, the weary human face. vita nuova i stood by the unvintageable sea till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray, the long red fires of the dying day burned in the west; the wind piped drearily; and to the land the clamorous gulls did flee: "alas! " i cried, "my life is full of pain, and who can garner fruit or golden grain, from these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!" my nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw nathless i threw them as my final cast into the sea, and waited for the end. when lo! a sudden glory! and i saw the argent splendor of white limbs ascend, and in that joy forgot my tortured past. madonna mia a lily girl, not made for this world's pain, with brown, soft hair close braided by her ears, and longing eyes half veiled by slumbrous tears like bluest water seen through mists of rain; pale cheeks whereon no love hath left its stain, red underlip drawn in for fear of love, and white throat, whiter than the silvered dove, through whose wan marble creeps one purple vein. yet, though my lips shall praise her without cease, even to kiss her feet i am not bold, being o'ershadowed by the wings of awe. like dante, when he stood with beatrice beneath the flaming lion's breast and saw the seventh crystal, and the stair of gold. the new helen where hast thou been since round the walls of troy the sons of god fought in that great emprise? why dost thou walk our common earth again? hast thou forgotten that impassioned boy, his purple galley, and his tyrian men, and treacherous aphrodite's mocking eyes? for surely it was thou, who, like a star hung in the silver silence of the night, didst lure the old world chivalry and might into the clamorous crimson waves of war! or didst thou rule the fire-laden moon? in amorous sidon was thy temple built over the light and laughter of the sea? where, behind lattice scarlet-wrought and gilt, some brown-limbed girl did weave thee tapestry, all through the waste and wearied hours of noon; till her wan cheek with flame of passion burned, and she rose up the sea-washed lips to kiss of some glad cyprian sailor, safe returned from calpe and the cliffs of herakles! no! thou art helen, and none other one! it was for thee that young sarpedon died, and memnon's manhood was untimely spent; it was for thee gold-crested hector tried with thetis' child that evil race to run, in the last year of thy beleaguerment; ay! even now the glory of thy fame burns in those fields of trampled asphodel, where the high lords whom ilion knew so well clash ghostly shields, and call upon thy name. where hast thou been? in that enchanted land whose slumbering vales forlorn calypso knew, where never mower rose to greet the day but all unswathed the trammeling grasses grew, and the sad shepherd saw the tall corn stand till summer's red had changed to withered gray? didst thou lie there by some lethaean stream deep brooding on thine ancient memory, the crash of broken spears, the fiery gleam from shivered helm, the grecian battle-cry? nay, thou were hidden in that hollow hill with one who is forgotten utterly, that discrowned queen men call the erycine; hidden away that never might'st thou see the face of her, before whose mouldering shrine to-day at rome the silent nations kneel; who gat from joy no joyous gladdening, but only love's intolerable pain, only a sword to pierce her heart in twain, only the bitterness of child-bearing. the lotos-leaves which heal the wounds of death lie in thy hand; o, be thou kind to me, while yet i know the summer of my days; for hardly can my tremulous lips draw breath to fill the silver trumpet with thy praise, so bowed am i before thy mystery; so bowed and broken on love's terrible wheel, that i have lost all hope and heart to sing, yet care i not what ruin time may bring if in thy temple thou wilt let me kneel. alas, alas, thou wilt not tarry here, but, like that bird, the servant of the sun, who flies before the north wind and the home. so wilt thou fly our evil land and drear, back to the tower of thine old delight, and the red lips of young euphorion; nor shall i ever see thy face again, but in this poisonous garden must i stay, crowning my brows with the thorn-crown of pain, till all my loveless life shall pass away. o helen! helen! helen! yet awhile, yet for a little while, o tarry here, till the dawn cometh and the shadows flee! for in the gladsome sunlight of thy smile of heaven or hell i have no thought or fear, seeing i know no other god but thee: no other god save him, before whose feet in nets of gold the tired planets move, the incarnate spirit of spiritual love who in thy body holds his joyous seat. thou wert not born as common women are! but, girt with silver splendor of the foam, didst from the depths of sapphire seas arise! and at thy coming some immortal star, bearded with flame, blazed in the eastern skies; and waked the shepherds on thine island home. thou shalt not die! no asps of egypt creep close at thy heels to taint the delicate air; no sullen-blooming poppies stain thy hair, those scarlet heralds of eternal sleep. lily of love, pure and inviolate! tower of ivory! red rose of fire! thou hast come down our darkness to illume: for we, close-caught in the wide nets of fate, wearied with waiting for the world's desire, aimlessly wandered in the house of gloom. aimlessly sought some slumberous anodyne for wasted lives, for lingering wretchedness, till we beheld thy re-arisen shrine, and the white glory of thy loveliness. the end . internet wiretap edition of the great revolution in pitcairn by mark twain from "the writings of mark twain volume xx", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain, may 1993. let me refresh the reader's memory a little. nearly a hundred years ago the crew of the british ship bounty mutinied, set the captain and his officers adrift upon the open sea, took possession of the ship, and sailed southward. they procured wives for themselves among the natives of tahiti, then proceeded to a lonely little rock in mid-pacific, called pitcairn's island, wrecked the vessel, stripped her of everything that might be useful to a new colony, and established themselves on shore. pitcairn's is so far removed from the track of commerce that it was many years before another vessel touched there. it had always been considered an uninhabited island; so when a ship did at last drop its anchor there, in 1808, the captain was greatly surprised to find the place peopled. although the mutineers had fought among themselves, and gradually killed each other off until only two or three of the original stock remained, these tragedies had not occurred before a number of children had been born; so in 1808 the island had a population of twenty-seven persons. john adams, the chief mutineer, still survived, and was to live many years yet, as governor and patriarch of the flock. from being mutineer and homicide, he had turned christian and teacher, and his nation of twenty-seven persons was now the purest and devoutest in christendom. adams had long ago hoisted the british flag and constituted his island an appanage of the british crown. to-day the population numbers ninety persons -sixteen men, nineteen women, twenty-five boys, and thirty girls -all descendants of the mutineers, all bearing the family names of those mutineers, and all speaking english, and english only. the island stands high up out of the sea, and has precipitous walls. it is about three-quarters of a mile long, and in places is as much as half a mile wide. such arable land as it affords is held by the several families, according to a division made many years ago. there is some livestock -goats, pigs, chickens, and cats; but no dogs, and no large animals. there is one church building -used also as a capitol, a schoolhouse, and a public library. the title of the governor has been, for a generation or two, "magistrate and chief ruler, in subordination to her majesty the queen of great britain." it was his province to make the laws, as well as execute them. his office was elective; everybody over seventeen years old had a vote -no matter about the sex. the sole occupations of the people were farming and fishing; their sole recreation, religious services. there has never been a shop in the island, nor any money. the habits and dress of the people have always been primitive, and their laws simple to puerility. they have lived in a deep sabbath tranquility, far from the world and its ambitions and vexations, and neither knowing nor caring what was going on in the mighty empires that lie beyond their limitless ocean solitudes. once in three or four years a ship touched there, moved them with aged news of bloody battles, devastating epidemics, fallen thrones, and ruined dynasties, then traded them some soap and flannel for some yams and breadfruit, and sailed away, leaving them to retire into their peaceful dreams and pious dissipations once more. on the 8th of last september, admiral de horsey, commander-in-chief of the british fleet in the pacific, visited pitcairn's island, and speaks as follows in his official report to the admiralty: they have beans, carrots, turnips, cabbages, and a little maize; pineapples, fig-trees, custard-apples, and oranges; lemons, and cocoa-nuts. clothing is obtained alone from passing ships, in barter for refreshments. there are no springs on the island, but as it rains generally once a month they have plenty of water, although at times, in former years, they have suffered from drought. no alcoholic liquors, except for medicinal purposes, are used, and a drunkard is unknown... the necessary articles required by the islanders are best shown by those we furnished in barter for refreshments: namely, flannel, serge, drill, half-boots, combs, tobacco, and soap. they also stand much in need of maps and slates for their school, and tools of any kind are most acceptable. i caused them to be supplied from the public stores with a union-jack for display on the arrival of ships, and a pit-saw, of which they were greatly in need. this, i trust, will meet the approval of their lordships. if the munificent people of england were only aware of the wants of this most deserving little colony, they would not long go unsupplied... divine service is held every sunday at 10.30 a.m. and at 3 p.m., in the house built and used by john adams for that purpose until he died in 1829. it is conducted strictly in accordance with the liturgy of the church of england, by mr. simon young, their selected pastor, who is much respected. a bible class is held every wednesday, when all who conveniently can attend. there is also a general meeting for prayer on the first friday in every month. family prayers are said in every house the first thing in the morning and the last thing in the evening, and no food is partaken of without asking god's blessing before and afterwards. of these islanders' religious attributes no one can speak without deep respect. a people whose greatest pleasure and privilege is to commune in prayer with their god, and to join in hymns of praise, and who are, moreover, cheerful, diligent, and probably freer from vice than any other community, need no priest among them. now i come to a sentence in the admiral's report which he dropped carelessly from his pen, no doubt, and never gave the matter a second thought. he little imagined what a freight of tragic prophecy it bore! this is the sentence: one stranger, an american, has settled on the island - a doubtful acquisition. a doubtful acquisition, indeed! captain ormsby in the american ship hornet, touched at pitcairn's nearly four months after the admiral's visit, and from the facts which he gathered there we now know all about that american. let us put these facts together in historical form. the american's name was butterworth stavely. as soon as he had become well acquainted with all the people -and this took but a few days, of course -he began to ingratiate himself with them by all the arts he could command. he became exceedingly popular, and much looked up to; for one of the first things he did was to forsake his worldly way of life, and throw all his energies into religion. he was always reading his bible, or praying, or singing hymns, or asking blessings. in prayer, no one had such "liberty" as he, no one could pray so long or so well. at last, when he considered the time to be ripe, he began secretly to sow the seeds of discontent among the people. it was his deliberate purpose, from the beginning, to subvert the government, but of course he kept that to himself for a time. he used different arts with different individuals. he awakened dissatisfaction in one quarter by calling attention to the shortness of the sunday services; he argued that there should be three three-hour services on sunday instead of only two. many had secretly held this opinion before; they now privately banded themselves into a party to work for it. he showed certain of the women that they were not allowed sufficient voice in the prayermeetings; thus another party was formed. no weapon was beneath his notice; he even descended to the children, and awoke discontent in their breasts because -as he discovered for them -they had not enough sunday-school. this created a third party. now, as the chief of these parties, he found himself the strongest power in the community. so he proceeded to his next move -a no less important one than the impeachment of the chief magistrate, james russell nickoy; a man of character and ability, and possessed of great wealth, he being the owner of a house with a parlor to it, three acres and a half of yam land, and the only boat in pitcairn's, a whale-boat; and, most unfortunately, a pretext for this impeachment offered itself at just the right time. one of the earliest and most precious laws of the island was the law against trespass. it was held in great reverence, and was regarded as the palladium of the people's liberties. about thirty years ago an important case came before the courts under this law, in this wise: a chicken belonging to elizabeth young (aged, at that time, fifty-eight, a daughter of john mills, one of the mutineers of the bounty) trespassed upon the grounds of thursday october christian (aged twenty-nine, a grandson of fletcher christian, one of the mutineers). christian killed the chicken. according to the law, christian could keep the chicken; or, if he preferred, he could restore its remains to the owner, and receive damages in "produce" to an amount equivalent to the waste and injury wrought by the trespasser. the court records set forth that "the said christian aforesaid did deliver the aforesaid remains to the said elizabeth young, and did demand one bushel of yams in satisfaction of the damage done." but elizabeth young considered the demand exorbitant; the parties could not agree; therefore christian brought suit in the courts. he lost his case in the justice's court; at least, he was awarded only a half peck of yams, which he considered insufficient, and in the nature of a defeat. he appealed. the case lingered several years in an ascending grade of courts, and always resulted in decrees sustaining the original verdict; and finally the thing got into the supreme court, and there it stuck for twenty years. but last summer, even the supreme court managed to arrive at a decision at last. once more the original verdict was sustained. christian then said he was satisfied; but stavely was present, and whispered to him and to his lawyer, suggesting, "as a mere form," that the original law be exhibited, in order to make sure that it still existed. it seemed an odd idea, but an ingenious one. so the demand was made. a messenger was sent to the magistrate's house; he presently returned with the tidings that it had disappeared from among the state archives. the court now pronounced its late decision void, since it had been made under a law which had no actual existence. great excitement ensued immediately. the news swept abroad over the whole island that the palladium of the public liberties was lost -maybe treasonably destroyed. within thirty minutes almost the entire nation were in the courtroom -that is to say, the church. the impeachment of the chief magistrate followed, upon stavely's motion. the accused met his misfortune with the dignity which became his great office. he did not plead, or even argue; he offered the simple defense that he had not meddled with the missing law; that he had kept the state archives in the same candle-box that had been used as their depository from the beginning; and that he was innocent of the removal or destruction of the lost document. but nothing could save him; he was found guilty of misprision of treason, and degraded from his office, and all his property was confiscated. the lamest part of the whole shameful matter was the reason suggested by his enemies for his destruction of the law, to wit: that he did it to favor christian, because christian was his cousin! whereas stavely was the only individual in the entire nation who was not his cousin. the reader must remember that all these people are the descendants of half a dozen men; that the first children intermarried together and bore grandchildren to the mutineers; that these grandchildren intermarried; after them, great and greatgreat-grandchildren intermarried; so that to-day everybody is blood kin to everybody. moreover, the relationships are wonderfully, even astoundingly, mixed up and complicated. a stranger, for instance, says to an islander: "you speak of that young woman as your cousin; a while ago you called her your aunt." "well, she is my aunt, and my cousin, too. and also my step-sister, my niece, my fourth cousin, my thirty-third cousin, my forty-second cousin, my greataunt, my grandmother; my widowed sister-in-law -and next week she will be my wife." so the charge of nepotism against the chief magistrate was weak. but no matter; weak or strong, it suited stavely. stavely was immediately elected to the vacant magistracy, and, oozing reform from every pore, he went vigorously to work. in no long time religious services raged everywhere and unceasingly. by command, the second prayer of the sunday morning service, which had customarily endured some thirtyfive or forty minutes, and had pleaded for the world, first by continent and then by national and tribal detail, was extended to an hour and a half, and made to include supplications in behalf of the possible peoples in the several planets. everybody was pleased with this; everybody said, "now this is something like." by command, the usual three-hour sermons were doubled in length. the nation came in a body to testify their gratitude to the new magistrate. the old law forbidding cooking on the sabbath was extended to the prohibition of eating, also. by command, sundayschool was privileged to spread over into the week. the joy of all classes was complete. in one short month the new magistrate had become the people's idol. the time was ripe for this man's next move. he began, cautiously at first, to poison the public mind against england. he took the chief citizens aside, one by one, and conversed with them on this topic. presently he grew bolder, and spoke out. he said the nation owed it to itself, to its honor, to its great traditions, to rise in its might and throw off "this galling english yoke." but the simple islanders answered: "we had not noticed that it galled. how does it gall? england sends a ship once in three or four years to give us soap and clothing, and things which we sorely need and gratefully receive; but she never troubles us; she lets us go our own way." "she lets you go your own way! so slaves have felt and spoken in all the ages! this speech shows how fallen you are, how base, how brutalized you have become, under this grinding tyranny! what! has all manly pride forsaken you? is liberty nothing? are you content to be a mere appendage to a foreign and hateful sovereignty, when you might rise up and take your rightful place in the august family of nations, great, free, enlightened, independent, the minion of no sceptered master, but the arbiter of your own destiny, and a voice and a power in decreeing the destinies of your sister-sovereignties of the world?" speeches like this produced an effect by and by. citizens began to feel the english yoke; they did not know exactly how or whereabouts they felt it, but they were perfectly certain they did feel it. they got to grumbling a good deal, and chafing under their chains, and longing for relief and release. they presently fell to hating the english flag, that sign and symbol of their nation's degradation; they ceased to glance up at it as they passed the capitol, but averted their eyes and grated their teeth; and one morning, when it was found trampled into the mud at the foot of the staff, they left it there, and no man put his hand to it to hoist it again. a certain thing which was sure to happen sooner or later happened now. some of the chief citizens went to the magistrate by night, and said: "we can endure this hated tyranny no longer. how can we cast it off?" "by a coup d'etat." "how?" "a coup d'etat. it is like this: everything is got ready, and at the appointed moment i, as the official head of the nation, publicly and solemnly proclaim its independence, and absolve it from allegiance to any and all other powers whatsoever." "that sounds simple and easy. we can do that right away. then what will be the next thing to do?" "seize all the defenses and public properties of all kinds, establish martial law, put the army and navy on a war footing, and proclaim the empire!" this fine program dazzled these innocents. they said: "this is grand -this is splendid; but will not england resist?" "let her. this rock is a gibraltar." "true. but about the empire? do we need an empire and an emperor?" "what you need, my friends, is unification. look at germany; look at italy. they are unified. unification is the thing. it makes living dear. that constitutes progress. we must have a standing army, and a navy. taxes follow, as a matter of course. all these things summed up make grandeur. with unification and grandeur, what more can you want? very well -only the empire can confer these boons." so on the 8th day of december pitcairn's island was proclaimed a free and independent nation; and on the same day the solemn coronation of butterworth i., emperor of pitcairn's island, took place, amid great rejoicings and festivities. the entire nation, with the exception of fourteen persons, mainly little children, marched past the throne in single file, with banners and music, the procession being upwards of ninety feet long; and some said it was as much as three-quarters of a minute passing a given point. nothing like it had ever been seen in the history of the island before. public enthusiasm was measureless. now straightway imperial reforms began. orders of nobility were instituted. a minister of the navy was appointed, and the whale-boat put in commission. a minister of war was created, and ordered to proceed at once with the formation of a standing army. a first lord of the treasury was named, and commanded to get up a taxation scheme, and also open negotiations for treaties, offensive, defensive, and commercial, with foreign powers. some generals and admirals were appointed; also some chamberlains, some equerries in waiting, and some lords of the bedchamber at this point all the material was used up. the grand duke of galilee, minister of war, complained that all the sixteen grown men in the empire had been given great offices, and consequently would not consent to serve in the ranks; wherefore his standing army was at a standstill. the marquis of ararat, minister of the navy, made a similar complaint. he said he was willing to steer the whale-boat himself, but he must have somebody to man her. the emperor did the best he could in the circumstances: he took all the boys above the age of ten years away from their mothers, and pressed them into the army, thus constructing a corps of seventeen privates, officered by one lieutenant-general and two major-generals. this pleased the minister of war, but procured the enmity of all the mothers in the land; for they said their precious ones must now find bloody graves in the fields of war, and he would be answerable for it. some of the more heartbroken and unappeasable among them lay constantly in wait for the emperor and threw yams at him, unmindful of the bodyguard. on account of the extreme scarcity of material, it was found necessary to require the duke of bethany, postmaster-general, to pull stroke-oar in the navy, and thus sit in the rear of a noble of lower degree, namely, viscount canaan, lord justice of the common pleas. this turned the duke of bethany into a tolerably open malcontent and a secret conspirator -a thing which the emperor foresaw, but could not help. things went from bad to worse. the emperor raised nancy peters to the peerage on one day, and married her the next, notwithstanding, for reasons of state, the cabinet had strenuously advised him to marry emmeline, eldest daughter of the archbishop of bethlehem. this caused trouble in a powerful quarter -the church. the new empress secured the support and friendship of two-thirds of the thirty-six grown women in the nation by absorbing them into her court as maids of honor; but this made deadly enemies of the remaining twelve. the families of the maids of honor soon began to rebel, because there was nobody at home to keep house. the twelve snubbed women refused to enter the imperial kitchen as servants; so the empress had to require the countess of jericho and other great court dames to fetch water, sweep the palace, and perform other menial and equally distasteful services. this made bad blood in that department. everybody fell to complaining that the taxes levied for the support of the army, the navy, and the rest of the imperial establishment were intolerably burdensome, and were reducing the nation to beggary. the emperor's reply -"look at germany; look at italy. are you better than they? and haven't you unification?" -did not satisfy them. they said, "people can't eat unification, and we are starving. agriculture has ceased. everybody is in the army, everybody is in the navy, everybody is in the public service, standing around in a uniform, with nothing whatever to do, nothing to eat, and nobody to till the fields --" "look at germany; look at italy. it is the same there. such is unification, and there's no other way to get it -no other way to keep it after you've got it," said the poor emperor always. but the grumblers only replied, "we can't stand the taxes -we can't stand them." now right on top of this the cabinet reported a national debt amounting to upwards of forty-five dollars -half a dollar to every individual in the nation. and they proposed to fund something. they had heard that this was always done in such emergencies. they proposed duties on exports; also on imports. and they wanted to issue bonds; also paper money, redeemable in yams and cabbages in fifty years. they said the pay of the army and of the navy and of the whole governmental machine was far in arrears, and unless something was done, and done immediately, national bankruptcy must ensue, and possibly insurrection and revolution. the emperor at once resolved upon a high-handed measure, and one of a nature never before heard of in pitcairn's island. he went in state to the church on sunday morning, with the army at his back, and commanded the minister of the treasury to take up a collection. that was the feather that broke the camel's back. first one citizen, and then another, rose and refused to submit to this unheard-of outrage -and each refusal was followed by the immediate confiscation of the malcontent's property. this vigor soon stopped the refusals, and the collection proceeded amid a sullen and ominous silence. as the emperor withdrew with the troops, he said, "i will teach you who is master here." several persons shouted, "down with unification!" they were at once arrested and torn from the arms of their weeping friends by the soldiery. but in the meantime, as any prophet might have foreseen, a social democrat had been developed. as the emperor stepped into the gilded imperial wheelbarrow at the church door, the social democrat stabbed at him fifteen or sixteen times with a harpoon, but fortunately with such a peculiarly social democratic unprecision of aim as to do no damage. that very night the convulsion came. the nation rose as one man -though forty-nine of the revolutionists were of the other sex. the infantry threw down their pitchforks; the artillery cast aside their cocoanuts; the navy revolted; the emperor was seized, and bound hand and foot in his palace. he was very much depressed. he said: "i freed you from a grinding tyranny; i lifted you up out of your degradation, and made you a nation among nations; i gave you a strong, compact, centralized government; and, more than all, i gave you the blessing of blessings, -unification. i have done all this, and my reward is hatred, insult, and these bonds. take me; do with me as you will. i here resign my crown and all my dignities, and gladly do i release myself from their too heavy burden. for your sake i took them up; for your sake i lay them down. the imperial jewel is no more; now bruise and defile as ye will the useless setting." by a unanimous voice the people condemned the exemperor and the social democrat to perpetual banishment from church services, or to perpetual labor as galley-slaves in the whale-boat -whichever they might prefer. the next day the nation assembled again, and rehoisted the british flag, reinstated the british tyranny, reduced the nobility to the condition of commoners again, and then straightway turned their diligent attention to the weeding of the ruined and neglected yam patches, and the rehabilitation of the old useful industries and the old healing and solacing pieties. the exemperor restored the lost trespass law, and explained that he had stolen it -not to injure any one, but to further his political projects. therefore the nation gave the late chief magistrate his office again, and also his alienated property. upon reflection, the ex-emperor and the social democrat chose perpetual banishment from religious services in preference to perpetual labor as galley-slaves "with perpetual religious services," as they phrased it; wherefore the people believed that the poor fellows' troubles had unseated their reason, and so they judged it best to confine them for the present. which they did. such is the history of pitcairn's "doubtful acquisition." end. . 1890 charmides by oscar wilde i he was a grecian lad, who coming home with pulpy figs and wine from sicily stood at his galley's prow, and let the foam blow through his crisp brown curls unconsciously, and holding wind and wave in boy's despite peered from his dripping seat across the wet and stormy night. till with the dawn he saw a burnished spear like a thin thread of gold against the sky, and hoisted sail, and strained the creeking gear, and bade the pilot head her lustily against the nor-west gale, and all day long held on his way, and marked the rowers' time with measured song. and when the faint corinthian hills were red dropped anchor in a little sandy bay, and with fresh boughs of olive crowned his head, and brushed from cheek and throat the hoary spray, and washed his limbs with oil, and from the hold brought out his linen tunic and his sandals brazen-soled. and a rich robe stained with the fishes' juice which of some swarthy trader he had bought upon the sunny quay at syracuse, and was with tyrian broideries inwrought, and by the questioning merchants made his way up through the soft and silver woods, and when the laboring day had spun its tangled web of crimson cloud, clomb the high hill, and with swift silent feet crept to the fane unnoticed by the crowd of busy priests, and from some dark retreat watched the young swains his frolic playmates bring the firstling of their little flock, and the shy shepherd fling the crackling salt upon the flame, or hang his studded crook against the temple wall to her who keeps away the ravenous fang of the base wolf from homestead and from stall; and then the clear-voiced maidens 'gan to sing, and to the altar each man brought some goodly offering, a beechen cup brimming with milky foam, a fair cloth wrought with cunning imagery of hounds in chase, a waxen honeycomb dripping with oozy gold which scarce the bee had ceased from building, a black skin of oil meet for the wrestlers, a great boar the fierce and white-tusked spoil stolen from artemis that jealous maid to please athena, and the dappled hide of a tall stag who in some mountain glade had met the shaft; and then the herald cried, and from the pillared precinct one by one went the glad greeks well pleased that they their simple vows had done. and the old priest put out the waning fires save that one lamp whose restless ruby glowed for ever in the cell, and the shrill lyres came fainter on the wind, as down the road in joyous dance these country folk did pass, and with stout hands the warder closed the gates of polished brass. long time he lay and hardly dared to breathe, and heard the cadenced drip of spilt-out wine, and the rose-petals falling from the wreath as the night breezes wandered through the shrine, and seemed to be in some entranced swoon till through the open roof above the full and brimming moon flooded with sheeny waves the marble floor, when from his nook upleapt the venturous lad, and flinging wide the cedar-carven door beheld an awful image saffron-clad and armed for battle! the gaunt griffin glared from the huge helm, and the long lance of wreck and ruin flared like a red rod of flame, stony and steeled the gorgon's head its leaden eyeballs rolled, and writhed its snaky horrors through the shield, and gaped aghast with bloodless lips and cold in passion impotent, while with blind gaze the blinking owl between the feet hooted in shrill amaze. the lonely fisher as he trimmed his lamp far out at sea off sunium, or cast the net for tunnies, heard a brazen tramp of horses smite the waves, and a wild blast divide the folded curtains of the night, and knelt upon the little poop, and prayed in holy fright. and guilty lovers in their venery forgat a little while their stolen sweets, deeming they heard dread dian's bitter cry; and the grim watchmen on their lofty seats ran to their shields in haste precipitate, or strained black-bearded throats across the dusky parapet. for round the temple rolled the clang of arms, and the twelve gods leapt up in marble fear, and the air quaked with dissonant alarums till huge poseidon shook his mighty spear, and on the frieze the prancing horses neighed, and the low tread of hurrying feet rang from the cavalcade. ready for death with parted lips he stood, and well content at such a price to see that calm wide brow, that terrible maidenhood. the marvel of that pitiless chastity, ah! well content indeed, for never wight since troy's young shepherd prince had seen so wonderful a sight. ready for death he stood, but lo! the air grew silent, and the horses ceased to neigh, and off his brow he tossed the clustering hair, and from his limbs he threw the cloak away, for whom would not such love make desperate, and nigher came, and touched her throat, and with hands violate undid the cuirass, and the crocus gown, and bared the breasts of polished ivory, till from the waist the peplos falling down left visible the secret mystery which no lover will athena show, the grand cool flanks, the crescent thighs, the bossy hills of snow. those who have never known a lover's sin let them not read my ditty, it will be to their dull ears so musicless and thin that they will have no joy of it, but ye to whose wan cheeks now creeps the lingering smile, ye who have learned who eros is,o listen yet a-while. a little space he let his greedy eyes rest on the burnished image, till mere sight half swooned for surfeit of such luxuries, and then his lips in hungering delight fed on her lips, and round the towered neck he flung his arms, nor cared at all his passion's will to check. never i ween did lover hold such tryst, for all night long he murmured honeyed word, and saw her sweet unravished limbs, and kissed her pale and argent body undisturbed, and paddled with the polished throat, and pressed his hot and beating heart upon her chill and icy breast. it was as if numidian javelins pierced through and through his wild and whirling brain, and his nerves thrilled like throbbing violins in exquisite pulsation, and the pain was such sweet anguish that he never drew his lips from hers till overhead the lark of warning flew. they who have never seen the daylight peer into a darkened room, and drawn the curtain, and with dull eyes and wearied from some dear and worshipped body risen, they for certain will never know of what i try to sing, how long the last kiss was, how fond and late his lingering. the moon was girdled with a crystal rim, the sign which shipmen say is ominous of wrath in heaven, the wan stars were dim and the low lightening cast was tremulous with the faint fluttering wings of flying dawn, ere from the silent sombre shrine this lover had withdrawn. down the steep rock with hurried feet and fast clomb the brave lad, and reached the cave of pan, and heard the goat-foot snoring as he passed, and leapt upon a grassy knoll and ran like a young fawn unto an olive wood which in a shady valley by the well-built city stood. and sought a little stream, which well he knew, for oftentimes with boyish careless shout the green and crested grebe he would pursue, or snare in woven net the silver trout, and down amid the startled reeds he lay panting in breathless sweet affright, and waited for the day. on the green bank he lay, and let one hand dip in the cool dark eddies listlessly, and soon the breath of morning came and fanned his hot flushed cheeks, or lifted wantonly the tangled curls from off his forehead, while he on the running water gazed with strange and secret smile. and soon the shepherd in rough woollen cloak with his long crook undid the wattled cotes, and from the stack a thin blue wreath of smoke curled through the air across the ripening oats, and on the hill the yellow house-dog bayed as through the crisp and rustling fern the heavy cattle strayed. and when the light-foot mower went a-field across the meadows laced with threaded dew, and the sheep bleated on the misty weald, and from its nest the wakening corn-crake flew, some woodmen saw him lying by the stream and marvelled much that any lad so beautiful could seem, nor deemed him born of mortals, and one said, "it is young hylas, that false runaway who with a naiad now would make his bed forgetting herakles," but others, "nay, it is narcissus, his own paramour, those are the fond and crimson lips no woman can allure." and when they nearer cane a third one cried, "it is young dionysos who has hid his spear and fawnskin by the river side weary of hunting with the bassarid, and wise indeed were we away to fly, they live not long who on the gods immortal come to spy." so turned they back, and feared to look behind, and told the timid swain how they had seen amid the reeds some woodland god reclined, and no man dared to cross the open green, and on that day no olive-tree was slain, nor rushes cut, but all deserted was the fair domain. save when the neat-herd's lad, his empty pail well slung upon his back, with leap and bound raced on the other side, and stopped to hail hoping that he some comrade new had found, and gat no answer, and then half afraid passed on his simple way, or down the still and silent glade. a little girl ran laughing from the farm not thinking of love's secret mysteries, and when she saw the white and gleaming arm and all his manlihood, with longing eyes whose passion mocked her sweet virginity watched him a-while, and then stole back sadly and wearily. far off he heard the city's hum and noise, and now and then the shriller laughter where the passionate purity of brown-limbed boys wrestled or raced in the clear healthful air, and now and then a little tinkling bell as the shorn wether led the sheep down to the mossy well. through the gray willows danced the fretful gnat, the grasshopper chirped idly from the tree, in sleek and oily coat the water-rat breasting the little ripples manfully made for the wild-duck's nest, from bough to bough hopped the shy finch, and the huge tortoise crept across the slough. on the faint wind floated the silky seeds, as the bright scythe swept through the waving grass, the ousel-cock splashed circles in the reeds and flecked with silver whorls the forest's glass, which scarce had caught again its imagery ere from its bed the dusky tench leapt at the dragon-fly. but little care had he for anything though up and down the beech the squirrel played, and from the copse the linnet 'gan to sing to her brown mate her sweetest serenade, ah! little care indeed, for he had seen the breasts of pallas and the naked wonder of the queen. but when the herdsman called his straggling goats with whistling pipe across the rocky road, and the shard-beetle with its trumpet-notes boomed through the darkening woods, and seemed to bode of coming storm, and the belated crane passed homeward like a shadow, and the dull big drops of rain fell on the pattering fig-leaves, up he rose, and from the gloomy forest went his way past sombre homestead and wet orchard-close, and came at last unto a little quay, and called his mates a-board, and took his seat on the high poop, and pushed from land, and loosed the dripping sheet, and steered across the bay, and when nine suns passed down the long and laddered way of gold, and nine pale moons had breathed their orisons to the chaste stars their confessors, or told their dearest secret to the downy moth that will not fly at noonday, through the foam and surging froth came a great owl with yellow sulphurous eyes and lit upon the ship, whose timbers creaked as though the lading of three argosies were in the hold, and flopped its wings, and shrieked, and darkness straightway stole across the deep, sheathed was orion's sword, dread mars himself fled down the steep, and the moon hid behind a tawny mask of drifting cloud, and from the ocean's marge rose the red plume, the huge and horned casque, the seven cubit spear, the brazen targe! and clad in bright and burnished panoply athena strode across the stretch of sick and shivering sea! to the dull sailors' sight her loosened locks seemed like the jagged storm-rack, and her feet only the spume that floats on hidden rocks, and marking how the rising waters beat against the rolling ship, the pilot cried to the young helmsman at the stern to luff to windward side. but he, the over-bold adulterer, a dear profaner of great mysteries, an ardent amorous idolater, when he beheld those grand relentless eyes laughed loud for joy, and crying out "i come" leapt from the lofty poop into the chill and churning foam. then fell from the high heaven one bright star, one dancer left the circling galaxy, and back to athens on her clattering car in all the pride of venged divinity pale pallas swept with shrill and steely clank, and a few gurgling bubbles rose where her boy lover sank. and the mast shuddered as the gaunt owl flew, with mocking hoots after the wrathful queen, and the old pilot bade the trembling crew hoist the big sail, and told how he had seen close to the stern a dim and giant form, and like a dripping swallow the stout ship dashed through the storm. and no man dared to speak of charmides deeming that he some evil thing had wrought, and when they reached the strait symplegades they beached their galley on the shore, and sought the toll-gate of the city hastily, and in the market showed their brown and pictured pottery. ii but some good triton-god had ruth, and bare the boy's drowned body back to grecian land, and mermaids combed his dank and dripping hair and smoothed his brow, and loosed his clinching hand, some brought sweet spices from far araby, and others made the halcyon sing her softest lullaby. and when he neared his old athenian home, a mighty billow rose up suddenly upon whose oily back the clotted foam lay diapered in some strange fantasy, and clasping him unto its glassy breast, swept landward, like a white-maned steed upon a venturous quest! now where colonos leans unto the sea there lies a long and level stretch of lawn, the rabbit knows it, and the mountain bee for it deserts hymettus, and the faun is not afraid, for never through the day comes a cry ruder than the shout of shepherd lads at play. but often from the thorny labyrinth and tangled branches of the circling wood the stealthy hunter sees young hyacinth hurling the polished disk, and draws his hood over his guilty gaze, and creeps away, nor dares to wind his horn, orelse at the first break of day the dryads come and throw the leathern ball along the reedy shore, and circumvent some goat-eared pan to be their seneschal for fear of bold poseidon's ravishment, and loose their girdles, with shy timorous eyes, lest from the surf his azure arms and purple beard should rise. on this side and on that a rocky cave, hung with yellow-bell'd laburnum, stands, smooth is the beach, save where some ebbing wave leaves its faint outline etched upon the sands, as though it feared to be too soon forgot by the green rush, its playfellow,and yet, it is a spot so small, that the inconstant butterfly could steal the hoarded honey from each flower ere it was noon, and still not satisfy its over-greedy love,within an hour a sailor boy, were he but rude enow to land and pluck a garland for his galley's painted prow, would almost leave the little meadow bare, for it knows nothing of great pageantry, only a few narcissi here and there stand separate in sweet austerity, dotting the unmown grass with silver stars, and here aid there a daffodil waves tiny scimetars. hither the billow brought him, and was glad of such dear servitude, and where the land was virgin of all waters laid the lad upon the golden margent of the strand, and like a lingering lover oft returned to kiss those pallid limbs which once with intense fire burned, ere the wet seas had quenched that holocaust, that self-fed flame, that passionate lustihead, ere grisly death with chill and nipping frost had withered up those lilies white and red which, while the boy would through the forest range, answered each other in a sweet antiphonal counter-change. and when at dawn the wood-nymphs, hand-in-hand, threaded the bosky dell, their satyr spied the boy's pale body stretched upon the sand, and feared poseidon's treachery, and cried, and like bright sunbeams flitting through a glade, each startled dryad sought some safe and leafy ambuscade. save one white girl, who deemed it would not be so dread a thing to feel a sea-god's arms crushing her breasts in amorous tyranny, and longed to listen to those subtle charms insidious lovers weave when they would win some fenced fortress, and stole back again, nor thought it sin to yield her treasure unto one so fair, and lay beside him, thirsty with love's drouth, called him soft names, played with his tangled hair, and with hot lips made havoc of his mouth afraid he might not wake, and then afraid lest he might wake too soon, fled back, and then, fond renegade, returned to fresh assault, and all day long sat at his side, and laughed at her new toy, and held his hand, and sang her sweetest song, then frowned to see how froward was the boy who would not with her maidenhood entwine, nor knew that three days since his eyes had looked on proserpine, nor knew what sacrilege his lips had done, but said, "he will awake, i know him well, he will awake at evening when the sun hangs his red shield on corinth's citadel, this sleep is but a cruel treachery to make me love him more, and in some cavern of the sea "deeper than ever falls the fisher's line already a huge triton blows his horn, and weaves a garland from the crystalline and drifting ocean-tendrils to adorn the emerald pillars of our bridal bed, for sphered in foaming silver, and with coral-crowned head. "we two will sit upon a throne of pearl, and a blue wave will be our canopy, and at our feet the water-snakes will curl in all their amethystine panoply of diamonded man, and we will mark the mullets swimming by the mast of some storm-foundered bark, "vermilion-finned with eyes of bossy gold like flakes of crimson light, and the great deep his glassy-portaled chamber will unfold, and we will see the painted dolphins sleep cradled by murmuring halcyons on the rocks where proteus in quaint suit of green pastures his monstrous flocks. "and tremulous opal hued anemones will wave their purple fringes where we tread upon the mirrored floor, and argosies of fishes flecked with tawny scales will thread the drifting cordage of the shattered wreck, and honey-colored amber beads our twining limbs will deck." but when that baffled lord of war the sun with gaudy pennon flying passed away into his brazen house, and one by one the little yellow stars began to stray across the field of heaven, ah! then indeed she feared his lips upon her lips would never care to feed, and cried, "awake, already the pale moon washes the trees with silver, and the wave creeps gray and chilly up this sandy dune, the croaking frogs are out, and from the cave the night-jar shrieks, the fluttering bats repass, and the brown stoat with hollow flanks creeps through the dusky grass. "nay, though thou art a god, be not so coy, for in yon stream there is a little reed that often whispers how a lovely boy lay with her once upon a grassy mead, who when his cruel pleasure he had done spread wings of rustling gold and soared aloft into the sun. "be not so coy, the laurel trembles still with great apollo's kisses, and the fir whose clustering sisters fringe the sea-ward hill hath many a tale of that bold ravisher whom men call boreas, and i have seen the mocking eyes of hermes through the poplar's silvery sheen. "even the jealous naiads call me fair, and every morn a young and ruddy swain wooes me with apples and with locks of hair, and seeks to soothe my virginal disdain by all the gifts the gentle wood-nymphs love; but yesterday he brought to me an iris-plumaged dove "with little crimson feet, which with its store of seven spotted eggs the cruel lad had stolen from the lofty sycamore at daybreak when her amorous comrade had flown off in search of berried juniper which most they love; the fretful wasp, that earliest vintager "of the blue grapes, hath not persistency so constant as this simple shepherd-boy for my poor lips, his joyous purity and laughing sunny eyes might well decoy a dryad from her oath to artemis; for very beautiful is he, his mouth was made to kiss. "his argent forehead, like a rising moon over the dusky hills of meeting brows, is crescent shaped, the hot and tyrian noon leads from the myrtle-grove no goodlier spouse for cytheraea, the first silky down fringes his blushing cheeks, and his young limbs are strong and brown: "and he is rich, and fat and fleecy herds of bleating sheep upon his meadows lie, and many an earthen bowl of yellow curds is in his homestead for the thievish fly to swim and drown in, the pink clover mead keeps its sweet store for him, and he can pipe on oaten reed. "and yet i love him not, it was for thee i kept my love, i knew that thou would'st come to rid me of this pallid chastity; thou fairest flower of the flowerless foam of all the wide aegean, brightest star of ocean's azure heavens where the mirrored planets are! "i knew that thou would'st come, for when at first the dry wood burgeoned, and the sap of spring swelled in my green and tender bark or burst to myriad multitudinous blossoming which mocked the midnight with its mimic moons that did not dread the dawn, and first the thrushes' rapturous tunes "startled the squirrel from its granary, and cuckoo flowers fringed the narrow lane, through my young leaves a sensuous ecstasy crept like new wine, and every mossy vein throbbed with the fitful pulse of amorous blood, and the wild winds of passion shook my slim stem's maidenhood. "the trooping fawns at evening came and laid their cool black noses on my lowest boughs and on my topmost branch the blackbird made a little nest of grasses for his spouse, and now and then a twittering wren would light on a thin twig which hardly bare the weight of such delight. "i was the attic shepherd's trysting place, beneath my shadow amaryllis lay, and round my trunk would laughing daphnis chase the timorous girl, till tired out with play she felt his hot breath stir her tangled hair, and turned, and looked, and fled no more from such delightful snare. "then come away unto my ambuscade where clustering woodbine weaves a canopy for amorous pleasaunce, and the rustling shade of paphian myrtles seems to sanctify the dearest rites of love, there in the cool and green recesses of its furthest depth there is a pool, "the ouzel's haunt, the wild bee's pasturage; for round its rim great creamy lilies float through their flat leaves in verdant anchorage, each cup a white-sailed golden-laden boat steered by a dragon-fly,be not afraid to leave this wan and wave-kissed shore, surely the place were made "for lovers such as we, the cyprian queen, one arm around her boyish paramour, strays often there at eve, and i have seen the moon strip off her misty vestiture for young endymion's eyes, be not afraid, the panther feet of dian never tread that secret glade. "nay, if thou wil'st, back to the beating brine, back to the boisterous billow let us go, and all day beneath the hyaline huge vault of neptune's watery portico, and watch the purple monsters of the deep sport in ungainly play, and from his lair keen xiphias leap. "for if my mistress find me lying here she will not ruth or gentle pity show, but lay her boar-spear down, and with austere relentless fingers string the cornel bow, and draw the feathered notch against her breast, and loose the arched cord, ay, even now upon the quest "i hear her hurrying feet,awake, awake, thou laggard in love's battle! once at least let me drink deep of passion's wine, and slake my parched being with the nectarous feast which even gods affect! o come love come, still we have time to reach the cavern of thine azure home." scarce had she spoken when the shuddering trees shook, and the leaves divided, and the air grew conscious of a god, and the gray seas crawled backward, and a long and dismal blare blew from some tasseled horn, a sleuth-hound bayed and like a flame a barbed reed flew whizzing down the glade. and where the little flowers of her breast just brake in to their milky blossoming, this murderous paramour, this unbidden guest, pierced and struck deep in horrid chambering, and plowed a bloody furrow with its dart, and dug a long red road, and cleft with winged death her heart. sobbing her life out with a bitter cry on the boy's body fell the dryad maid, sobbing for incomplete virginity, and raptures unenjoyed, and pleasures dead, and all the pain of things unsatisfied, and the bright drops of crimson youth crept down her throbbing side. ah! pitiful it was to hear her moan, and very pitiful to see her die ere she had yielded up her sweets, or known the joy of passion, that dread mystery which not to know is not to live at all, and yet to know is to be held in death's most deadly thrall. but as it hapt the queen of cythere, who with adonis all night long had lain within some shepherd's hut in arcady, on team of silver doves and gilded wane was journeying paphos-ward, high up afar from mortal ken between the mountains and the morning star, and when low down she spied the hapless pair, and heard the oread's faint despairing cry, whose cadence seemed to play upon the air as though it were a viol, hastily she bade her pigeons fold each straining plume, and dropt to earth, and reached the strand, and saw their dolorous doom. for as a gardener turning back his head to catch the last notes of the linnet, mows with careless scythe too near some flower bed, and cuts the thorny pillar of the rose, and with the flower's loosened loveliness strews the brown mold, or as some shepherd lad in wantonness driving his little flock along the mead treads down two daffodils which side by side have lured the lady-bird with yellow brede and made the gaudy moth forget its pride, treads down their brimming golden chalices under light feet which were not made for such rude ravages, or as a schoolboy tired of his book flings himself down upon the reedy grass and plucks two water-lilies from the brook, and for a time forgets the hour glass, then wearies of their sweets, and goes his way, and lets the hot sun kill them, even so these lovers lay, and venus cried, "it is dread artemis whose bitter hand hath wrought this cruelty, or else that mightier mayde whose care it is to guard her strong and stainless majesty upon the hill athenian,alas! that they who loved so well unloved into death's house should pass." so with soft hands she laid the boy and girl in the great golden waggon tenderly, her white throat whiter than a moony pearl just threaded with a blue vein's tapestry had not yet ceased to throb, and still her breast swayed like a wind-stirred lily in ambiguous unrest. and then each pigeon spread its milky van, the bright car soared into the dawning sky and like a cloud the aerial caravan passed over the aegean silently, till the faint air was troubled with the song from the wan mouths that call on bleeding thammuz all night long. but when the doves had reached their wonted goal where the wide stair of orbed marble dips its snows into the sea, her fluttering soul just shook the trembling petals of her lips and passed into the void, and venus knew that one fair maid the less would walk amid her retinue, and bade her servants carve a cedar chest with all the wonder of this history, within whose scented womb their limbs should rest where olive-trees make tender the blue sky on the low hills of paphos, and the fawn pipes in the noonday, and the nightingale sings on till dawn. nor failed they to obey her hest, and ere the morning bee had stung the daffodil with tiny fretful spear, or from its lair the waking stag had leapt across the rill and roused the ousel, or the lizard crept athwart the sunny rock, beneath the grass their bodies slept. and when day brake, within that silver shrine fed by the flames of cressets tremulous, queen venus knelt and prayed to proserpine that she whose beauty made death amorous should beg a guerdon from her pallid lord, and let desire pass across dread charon's icy ford. iii in melancholy moonless acheron, far from the goodly earth and joyous day, where no spring ever buds, nor ripening sun weighs down the apple trees, nor flowery may checkers with chestnut blooms the grassy floor, where thrushes never sing, and piping linnets mate no more, there by a dim and dark lethaean well, young charmides was lying wearily he plucked the blossoms from the asphodel, and with its little rifled treasury strewed the dull waters of the dusky stream, and watched the white stars founder, and the land was like a dream. when as he gazed into the watery glass and through his brown hair's curly tangles scanned his own wan face, a shadow seemed to pass across the mirror, and a little hand stole into his, and warm lips timidly brushed his pale cheeks, and breathed their secret forth into a sigh. then turned he around his weary eyes and saw, and ever nigher still their faces came, and nigher ever did their young mouths draw until they seemed one perfect rose of flame, and longing arms around her neck he cast, and felt her throbbing bosom, and his breath came hot and fast, and all his hoarded sweets were hers to kiss, and all her maidenhood was his to slay, and limb to limb in long and rapturous bliss their passion waxed and waned,o why essay to pipe again of love too venturous reed! enough, enough that eros laughed upon that flowerless mead, too venturous poesy o why essay to pipe again of passion! fold thy wings o'er daring icarus and bid thy lay sleep hidden in the lyre's silent strings, till thou hast found the old castilian rill, or from the lesbian waters plucked drowned sappho's golden quill! enough, enough that he whose life had been a fiery pulse of sin, a splendid shame, could in the loveless land of hades glean one scorching harvest from those fields of flame where passion walks with naked unshod feet and is not wounded,ah! enough that once their lips could meet in that wild throb when all existences seem narrowed to one single ecstasy which dies through its own sweetness and the stress of too much pleasure, ere persephone had made them serve her by the ebon throne of the pale god who in the fields of enna loosed her zone. the end . internet wiretap edition of niagara by mark twain from "sketches new and old", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain (may 1993). (written about 1871.) niagara niagara falls is a most enjoyable place of resort. the hotels are excellent, and the prices not at all exorbitant. the opportunities for fishing are not surpassed in the country; in fact, they are not even equaled elsewhere. because, in other localities, certain places in the streams are much better than others; but at niagara one place is just as good as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere, and so there is no use in your walking five miles to fish, when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful nearer home. the advantages of this state of things have never heretofore been properly placed before the public. the weather is cool in summer, and the walks and drives are all pleasant and none of them fatiguing. when you start out to "do" the falls you first drive down about a mile, and pay a small sum for the privilege of looking down from a precipice into the narrowest part of the niagara river. a railway "cut" through a hill would be as comely if it had the angry river tumbling and foaming through its bottom. you can descend a staircase here a hundred and fifty feet down, and stand at the edge of the water. after you have done it, you will wonder why you did it; but you will then be too late. the guide will explain to you, in his bloodcurdling way, how he saw the little steamer, maid of the mist, descend the fearful rapids-how first one paddle-box was out of sight behind the raging billows and then the other, and at what point it was that her smokestack toppled overboard, and where her planking began to break and part asunder-and how she did finally live through the trip, after accomplishing the incredible feat of traveling seventeen miles in six minutes, or six miles in seventeen minutes, i have really forgotten which. but it was very extraordinary, anyhow. it is worth the price of admission to hear the guide tell the story nine times in succession to different parties, and never miss a word or alter a sentence or a gesture. then you drive over to suspension bridge, and divide your misery between the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, and the chances of having the railway train overhead smashing down on to you. either possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but, mixed together, they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness. on the canada side you drive along the chasm between long ranks of photographers standing guard behind their cameras, ready to make an ostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance, and your solemn crate with a hide on it, which you are expected to regard in the light of a horse, and a diminished and unimportant background of sublime niagara; and a great many people have the incredible effrontery or the native depravity to aid and abet this sort of crime. any day, in the hands of these photographers, you may see stately pictures of papa and mamma, johnny and bub and sis, or a couple of country cousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who was monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this hackful of small reptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world's unnoted myriads, and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages after they shall have gathered themselves to their blood relations, the other worms, and been mingled with the unremembering dust. there is no actual harm in making niagara a background whereon to display one's marvelous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a sort of superhuman self-complacency to enable one to do it. when you have examined the stupendous horseshoe fall till you are satisfied you cannot improve on it, you return to america by the new suspension bridge, and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the cave of the winds. here i followed instructions, and divested myself of all my clothing, and put on a waterproof jacket and overalls. this costume is picturesque, but not beautiful. a guide, similarly dressed, led the way down a flight of winding stairs, which wound and wound, and still kept on winding long after the thing ceased to be a novelty, and then terminated long before it had begun to be a pleasure. we were then well down under the precipice, but still considerably above the level of the river. we now began to creep along flimsy bridges of a single plank, our persons shielded from destruction by a crazy wooden railing, to which i clung with both hands-not because i was afraid, but because i wanted to. presently the descent became steeper, and the bridge flimsier, and sprays from the american fall began to rain down on us in fast increasing sheets that soon became blinding, and after that our progress was mostly in the nature of groping. now a furious wind began to rush out from behind the waterfall, which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge, and scatter us on the rocks and among the torrents below. i remarked that i wanted to go home; but it was too late. we were almost under the monstrous wall of water thundering down from above, and speech was in vain in the midst of such a pitiless crash of sound. in another moment the guide disappeared behind the deluge, and, bewildered by the thunder, driven helplessly by the wind, and smitten by the arrowy tempest of rain, i followed. all was darkness. such a mad storming, roaring, and bellowing of warring wind and water never crazed my ears before. i bent my head, and seemed to receive the atlantic on my back. the world seemed going to destruction. i could not see anything, the flood poured down so savagely. i raised my head, with open mouth, and the most of the american cataract went down my throat. if i had sprung a leak now i had been lost. and at this moment i discovered that the bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and precipitous rocks. i never was so scared before and survived it. but we got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand in front of the laced and frothy and seething world of descending water, and look at it. when i saw how much of it there was, and how fearfully in earnest it was, i was sorry i had gone behind it. the noble red man has always been a friend and darling of mine. i love to read about him in tales and legends and romances. i love to read of his inspired sagacity, and his love of the wild free life of mountain and forest, and his general nobility of character, and his stately metaphorical manner of speech, and his chivalrous love for the dusky maiden, and the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. especially the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. when i found the shops at niagara falls full of dainty indian beadwork, and stunning moccasins, and equally stunning toy figures representing human beings who carried their weapons in holes bored through their arms and bodies, and had feet shaped like a pie, i was filled with emotion. i knew that now, at last, i was going to come face to face with the noble red man. a lady clerk in a shop told me, indeed, that all her grand array of curiosities were made by the indians, and that they were plenty about the falls, and that they were friendly, and it would not be dangerous to speak to them. and sure enough, as i approached the bridge leading over to luna island, i came upon a noble son of the forest sitting under a tree, diligently at work on a bead reticule. he wore a slouch hat and brogans, and had a short black pipe in his mouth. thus does the baneful contact with our effeminate civilization dilute the picturesque pomp which is so natural to the indian when far removed from us in his native haunts. i addressed the relic as follows: "is the wawhoo-wang-wang of the whack-awhack happy? does the great speckled thunder sigh for the warpath, or is his heart contented with dreaming of the dusky maiden, the pride of the forest? does the mighty sachem yearn to drink the blood of his enemies, or is he satisfied to make bead reticules for the pappooses of the paleface? speak, sublime relic of bygone grandeur-venerable ruin, speak!' the relic said: "an' is it mesilf, dennis hooligan, that ye'd be takin' for a dirty injin, ye drawlin', lanternjawed, spider-legged divil! by the piper that played before moses, i'll ate ye!" i went away from there. by and by, in the neighborhood of the terrapin tower, i came upon a gentle daughter of the aborigines in fringed and beaded buckskin moccasins and leggins, seated on a bench with her pretty wares about her. she had just carved out a wooden chief that had a strong family resemblance to a clothespin, and was now boring a hole through his abdomen to put his bow through. i hesitated a moment, and then addressed her: "is the heart of the forest maiden heavy? is the laughing tadpole lonely? does she mourn over the extinguished council-fires of her race, and the vanished glory of her ancestors? or does her sad spirit wander afar toward the hunting-grounds whither her brave gobbler-of-the-lightnings is gone? why is my daughter silent? has she aught against the paleface stranger?" the maiden said: "faix, an' is it biddy malone ye dare to be callin' names? lave this, or i'll shy your lean carcass over the cataract, ye sniveling blaggard!" i adjourned from there also. "confound these indians!" i said. "they told me they were tame; but, if appearances go for anything, i should say they were all on the warpath." i made one more attempt to fraternize with them, and only one. i came upon a camp of them gathered in the shade of a great tree, making wampum and moccasins, and addressed them in the language of friendship: "noble red men, braves, grand sachems, war chiefs, squaws, and high muck-a-mucks, the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you! you, beneficent polecat-you, devourer of mountains-you, roaring thundergust-you, bully boy with a glass eye-the paleface from beyond the great waters greets you all! war and pestilence have thinned your ranks and destroyed your once proud nation. poker and seven-up, and a vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have depleted your purses. appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of others has gotten you into trouble. misrepresenting facts, in your simple innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper. trading for fortyrod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the purlieus of new york. for shame! remember your ancestors! recall their mighty deeds! remember uncas!-and red jacket!-and hole in the day!-and whoopdedoodledo! emulate their achievements! unfurl yourselves under my banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes--" "down wid him!" "scoop the blaggard!" "burn him!" "hang him!" "dhround him!" it was the quickest operation that ever was. i simply saw a sudden flash in the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead-baskets, and moccasins-a single flash, and they all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of them in the same place. in the next instant the entire tribe was upon me. they tore half the clothes off me; they broke my arms and legs; they gave me a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee like a saucer; and, to crown their disgraceful proceedings and add insult to injury, they threw me over the niagara falls, and i got wet. about ninety or a hundred feet from the top, the remains of my vest caught on a projecting rock, and i was almost drowned before i could get loose. i finally fell, and brought up in a world of white foam at the foot of the fall, whose celled and bubbly masses towered up several inches above my head. of course i got into the eddy. i sailed round and round in it forty-four times -chasing a chip and gaining on it -each round trip a half mile -reaching for the same bush on the bank forty-four times, and just exactly missing it by a hair's-breadth every time. at last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipe in his mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept the other on the match, while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind. presently a puff of wind blew it out. the next time i swept around he said: "got a match?" "yes; in my other vest. help me out, please." "not for joe." when i came round again, i said: "excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drowning man, but will you explain this singular conduct of yours?" "with pleasure. i am the coroner. don't hurry on my account. i can wait for you. but i wish i had a match." i said: "take my place, and i'll go and get you one. he declined. this lack of confidence on his part created a coldness between us, and from that time forward i avoided him. it was my idea, in case anything happened to me, to so time the occurrence as to throw my custom into the hands of the opposition coroner over on the american side. at last a policeman came along, and arrested me for disturbing the peace by yelling at people on shore for help. the judge fined me, but i had the advantage of him. my money was with my pantaloons and my pantaloons were with the indians. thus i escaped. i am now lying in a very critical condition. at least i am lying anyway-critical or not critical. i am hurt all over, but i cannot tell the full extent yet, because the doctor is not done taking inventory. he will make out my manifest this evening. however, thus far he thinks only sixteen of my wounds are fatal. i don't mind the others. upon regaining my right mind, i said: "it is an awful savage tribe of indians that do the bead work and moccasins for niagara falls, doctor. where are they from?" "limerick, my son." end. . [pg/etext94/child10.txt] a child's garden of verses by robert louis stevenson june, 1994 [etext #136] "this etext was prepared to celebrate the birthday of my wife, kristine sadler porter, who loves literature almost as much as i love her. tony porter" released on may 27th, as requested. this text is in the public domain. a child's garden of verses by robert louis stevenson to alison cunningham from her boy for the long nights you lay awake and watched for my unworthy sake: for your most comfortable hand that led me through the uneven land: for all the story-books you read: for all the pains you comforted: for all you pitied, all you bore, in sad and happy days of yore:-my second mother, my first wife, the angel of my infant life-from the sick child, now well and old, take, nurse, the little book you hold! and grant it, heaven, that all who read may find as dear a nurse at need, and every child who lists my rhyme, in the bright, fireside, nursery clime, may hear it in as kind a voice as made my childish days rejoice! r. l. s. contents to alison cunningham i bed in summer ii a thought iii at the sea-side iv young night-thought v whole duty of children vi rain vii pirate story viii foreign lands ix windy nights x travel xi singing xii looking forward xiii a good play xiv where go the boats? xv auntie's skirts xvi the land of counterpane xvii the land of nod xviii my shadow xix system xx a good boy xxi escape at bedtime xxii marching song xxiii the cow xxiv the happy thought xxv the wind xxvi keepsake mill xxvii good and bad children xxviii foreign children xxix the sun travels xxx the lamplighter xxxi my bed is a boat xxxii the moon xxxiii the swing xxxiv time to rise xxxv looking-glass river xxxvi fairy bread xxxvii from a railway carriage xxxviii winter-time xxxix the hayloft xl farewell to the farm xli north-west passage 1. good-night 2. shadow march 3. in port the child alone i the unseen playmate ii my ship and i iii my kingdom iv picture-books in winter v my treasures vi block city vii the land of story-books viii armies in the fire ix the little land garden days i night and day ii nest eggs iii the flowers iv summer sun v the dumb soldier vi autumn fires vii the gardener viii historical associations envoys i to willie and henrietta ii to my mother iii to auntie iv to minnie v to my name-child vi to any reader a child's garden of verses i bed in summer in winter i get up at night and dress by yellow candle-light. in summer quite the other way, i have to go to bed by day. i have to go to bed and see the birds still hopping on the tree, or hear the grown-up people's feet still going past me in the street. and does it not seem hard to you, when all the sky is clear and blue, and i should like so much to play, to have to go to bed by day? ii a thought it is very nice to think the world is full of meat and drink, with little children saying grace in every christian kind of place. iii at the sea-side when i was down beside the sea a wooden spade they gave to me to dig the sandy shore. my holes were empty like a cup. in every hole the sea came up, till it could come no more. iv young night-thought all night long and every night, when my mama puts out the light, i see the people marching by, as plain as day before my eye. armies and emperor and kings, all carrying different kinds of things, and marching in so grand a way, you never saw the like by day. so fine a show was never seen at the great circus on the green; for every kind of beast and man is marching in that caravan. as first they move a little slow, but still the faster on they go, and still beside me close i keep until we reach the town of sleep. v whole duty of children a child should always say what's true and speak when he is spoken to, and behave mannerly at table; at least as far as he is able. vi rain the rain is falling all around, it falls on field and tree, it rains on the umbrellas here, and on the ships at sea. vii pirate story three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing, three of us abroad in the basket on the lea. winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring, and waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea. where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat, wary of the weather and steering by a star? shall it be to africa, a-steering of the boat, to providence, or babylon or off to malabar? hi! but here's a squadron a-rowing on the sea- cattle on the meadow a-charging with a roar! quick, and we'll escape them, they're as mad as they can be, the wicket is the harbour and the garden is the shore. viii foreign lands up into the cherry tree who should climb but little me? i held the trunk with both my hands and looked abroad in foreign lands. i saw the next door garden lie, adorned with flowers, before my eye, and many pleasant places more that i had never seen before. i saw the dimpling river pass and be the sky's blue looking-glass; the dusty roads go up and down with people tramping in to town. if i could find a higher tree farther and farther i should see, to where the grown-up river slips into the sea among the ships, to where the road on either hand lead onward into fairy land, where all the children dine at five, and all the playthings come alive. ix windy nights whenever the moon and stars are set, whenever the wind is high, all night long in the dark and wet, a man goes riding by. late in the night when the fires are out, why does he gallop and gallop about? whenever the trees are crying aloud, and ships are tossed at sea, by, on the highway, low and loud, by at the gallop goes he. by at the gallop he goes, and then by he comes back at the gallop again. x travel i should like to rise and go where the golden apples grow;-where below another sky parrot islands anchored lie, and, watched by cockatoos and goats, lonely crusoes building boats;-where in sunshine reaching out eastern cities, miles about, are with mosque and minaret among sandy gardens set, and the rich goods from near and far hang for sale in the bazaar;-where the great wall round china goes, and on one side the desert blows, and with the voice and bell and drum, cities on the other hum;-where are forests hot as fire, wide as england, tall as a spire, full of apes and cocoa-nuts and the negro hunters' huts;-where the knotty crocodile lies and blinks in the nile, and the red flamingo flies hunting fish before his eyes;-where in jungles near and far, man-devouring tigers are, lying close and giving ear lest the hunt be drawing near, or a comer-by be seen swinging in the palanquin;-where among the desert sands some deserted city stands, all its children, sweep and prince, grown to manhood ages since, not a foot in street or house, not a stir of child or mouse, and when kindly falls the night, in all the town no spark of light. there i'll come when i'm a man with a camel caravan; light a fire in the gloom of some dusty dining-room; see the pictures on the walls, heroes fights and festivals; and in a corner find the toys of the old egyptian boys. xi singing of speckled eggs the birdie sings and nests among the trees; the sailor sings of ropes and things in ships upon the seas. the children sing in far japan, the children sing in spain; the organ with the organ man is singing in the rain. xii looking forward when i am grown to man's estate i shall be very proud and great, and tell the other girls and boys not to meddle with my toys. xiii a good play we built a ship upon the stairs all made of the back-bedroom chairs, and filled it full of soft pillows to go a-sailing on the billows. we took a saw and several nails, and water in the nursery pails; and tom said, "let us also take an apple and a slice of cake;"-which was enough for tom and me to go a-sailing on, till tea. we sailed along for days and days, and had the very best of plays; but tom fell out and hurt his knee, so there was no one left but me. xiv where go the boats? dark brown is the river, golden is the sand. it flows along for ever, with trees on either hand. green leaves a-floating, castles of the foam, boats of mine a-boating- where will all come home? on goes the river and out past the mill, away down the valley, away down the hill. away down the river, a hundred miles or more, other little children shall bring my boats ashore. xv auntie's skirts whenever auntie moves around, her dresses make a curious sound, they trail behind her up the floor, and trundle after through the door. xvi the land of counterpane when i was sick and lay a-bed, i had two pillows at my head, and all my toys beside me lay, to keep me happy all the day. and sometimes for an hour or so i watched my leaden soldiers go, with different uniforms and drills, among the bed-clothes, through the hills; and sometimes sent my ships in fleets all up and down among the sheets; or brought my trees and houses out, and planted cities all about. i was the giant great and still that sits upon the pillow-hill, and sees before him, dale and plain, the pleasant land of counterpane. xvii the land of nod from breakfast on through all the day at home among my friends i stay, but every night i go abroad afar into the land of nod. all by myself i have to go, with none to tell me what to do-all alone beside the streams and up the mountain-sides of dreams. the strangest things are these for me, both things to eat and things to see, and many frightening sights abroad till morning in the land of nod. try as i like to find the way, i never can get back by day, nor can remember plain and clear the curious music that i hear. xviii my shadow i have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, and what can be the use of him is more than i can see. he is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; and i see him jump before me, when i jump into my bed. the funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow-not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; for he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, and he sometimes goes so little that there's none of him at all. he hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play, and can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. he stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see; i'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me! one morning, very early, before the sun was up, i rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; but my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed. xix system every night my prayers i say, and get my dinner every day; and every day that i've been good, i get an orange after food. the child that is not clean and neat, with lots of toys and things to eat, he is a naughty child, i'm sure-or else his dear papa is poor. xx a good boy i woke before the morning, i was happy all the day, i never said an ugly word, but smiled and stuck to play. and now at last the sun is going down behind the wood, and i am very happy, for i know that i've been good. my bed is waiting cool and fresh, with linen smooth and fair, and i must be off to sleepsin-by, and not forget my prayer. i know that, till to-morrow i shall see the sun arise, no ugly dream shall fright my mind, no ugly sight my eyes. but slumber hold me tightly till i waken in the dawn, and hear the thrushes singing in the lilacs round the lawn. xxi escape at bedtime the lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out through the blinds and the windows and bars; and high overhead and all moving about, there were thousands of millions of stars. there ne'er were such thousands of leaves on a tree, nor of people in church or the park, as the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me, and that glittered and winked in the dark. the dog, and the plough, and the hunter, and all, and the star of the sailor, and mars, these shown in the sky, and the pail by the wall would be half full of water and stars. they saw me at last, and they chased me with cries, and they soon had me packed into bed; but the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes, and the stars going round in my head. xxii marching song bring the comb and play upon it! marching, here we come! willie cocks his highland bonnet, johnnie beats the drum. mary jane commands the party, peter leads the rear; feet in time, alert and hearty, each a grenadier! all in the most martial manner marching double-quick; while the napkin, like a banner, waves upon the stick! here's enough of fame and pillage, great commander jane! now that we've been round the village, let's go home again. xxiii the cow the friendly cow all red and white, i love with all my heart: she gives me cream with all her might, to eat with apple-tart. she wanders lowing here and there, and yet she cannot stray, all in the pleasant open air, the pleasant light of day; and blown by all the winds that pass and wet with all the showers, she walks among the meadow grass and eats the meadow flowers. xxiv happy thought the world is so full of a number of things, i'm sure we should all be as happy as kings. xxv the wind i saw you toss the kites on high and blow the birds about the sky; and all around i heard you pass, like ladies' skirts across the grass- o wind, a-blowing all day long, o wind, that sings so loud a song! i saw the different things you did, but always you yourself you hid. i felt you push, i heard you call, i could not see yourself at all- o wind, a-blowing all day long, o wind, that sings so loud a song! o you that are so strong and cold, o blower, are you young or old? are you a beast of field and tree, or just a stronger child than me? o wind, a-blowing all day long, o wind, that sings so loud a song! xxvi keepsake mill over the borders, a sin without pardon, breaking the branches and crawling below, out through the breach in the wall of the garden, down by the banks of the river we go. here is a mill with the humming of thunder, here is the weir with the wonder of foam, here is the sluice with the race running under- marvellous places, though handy to home! sounds of the village grow stiller and stiller, stiller the note of the birds on the hill; dusty and dim are the eyes of the miller, deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill. years may go by, and the wheel in the river wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day, wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever long after all of the boys are away. home for the indies and home from the ocean, heroes and soldiers we all will come home; still we shall find the old mill wheel in motion, turning and churning that river to foam. you with the bean that i gave when we quarrelled, i with your marble of saturday last, honoured and old and all gaily apparelled, here we shall meet and remember the past. xxvii good and bad children children, you are very little, and your bones are very brittle; if you would grow great and stately, you must try to walk sedately. you must still be bright and quiet, and content with simple diet; and remain, through all bewild'ring, innocent and honest children. happy hearts and happy faces, happy play in grassy places-that was how in ancient ages, children grew to kings and sages. but the unkind and the unruly, and the sort who eat unduly, they must never hope for glory-theirs is quite a different story! cruel children, crying babies, all grow up as geese and gabies, hated, as their age increases, by their nephews and their nieces. xxviii foreign children little indian, sioux, or crow, little frosty eskimo, little turk or japanee, oh! don't you wish that you were me? you have seen the scarlet trees and the lions over seas; you have eaten ostrich eggs, and turned the turtle off their legs. such a life is very fine, but it's not so nice as mine: you must often as you trod, have wearied not to be abroad. you have curious things to eat, i am fed on proper meat; you must dwell upon the foam, but i am safe and live at home. little indian, sioux or crow, little frosty eskimo, little turk or japanee, oh! don't you wish that you were me? xxix the sun travels the sun is not a-bed, when i at night upon my pillow lie; still round the earth his way he takes, and morning after morning makes. while here at home, in shining day, we round the sunny garden play, each little indian sleepy-head is being kissed and put to bed. and when at eve i rise form tea, day dawns beyond the atlantic sea; and all the children in the west are getting up and being dressed. xxx the lamplighter my tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky. it's time to take the window to see leerie going by; for every night at teatime and before you take your seat, with lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street. now tom would be a driver and maria go to sea, and my papa's a banker and as rich as he can be; but i, when i am stronger and can choose what i'm to do, o leerie, i'll go round at night and light the lamps with you! for we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door, and leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more; and oh! before you hurry by with ladder and with light; o leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night! xxxi my bed is a boat my bed is like a little boat; nurse helps me in when i embark; she girds me in my sailor's coat and starts me in the dark. at night i go on board and say good-night to all my friends on shore; i shut my eyes and sail away and see and hear no more. and sometimes things to bed i take, as prudent sailors have to do; perhaps a slice of wedding-cake, perhaps a toy or two. all night across the dark we steer; but when the day returns at last, safe in my room beside the pier, i find my vessel fast. xxxii the moon the moon has a face like the clock in the hall; she shines on thieves on the garden wall, on streets and fields and harbour quays, and birdies asleep in the forks of the trees. the squalling cat and the squeaking mouse, the howling dog by the door of the house, the bat that lies in bed at noon, all love to be out by the light of the moon. but all of the things that belong to the day cuddle to sleep to be out of her way; and flowers and children close their eyes till up in the morning the sun shall arise. xxxiii the swing how do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue? oh, i do think it the pleasantest thing ever a child can do! up in the air and over the wall, till i can see so wide, river and trees and cattle and all over the countryside-till i look down on the garden green, down on the roof so brown-up in the air i go flying again, up in the air and down! xxxiv time to rise a birdie with a yellow bill hopped upon my window sill, cocked his shining eye and said: "ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head!" xxxv looking-glass river smooth it glides upon its travel, here a wimple, there a gleam- o the clean gravel! o the smooth stream! sailing blossoms, silver fishes, pave pools as clear as air- how a child wishes to live down there! we can see our colored faces floating on the shaken pool down in cool places, dim and very cool; till a wind or water wrinkle, dipping marten, plumping trout, spreads in a twinkle and blots all out. see the rings pursue each other; all below grows black as night, just as if mother had blown out the light! patience, children, just a minute- see the spreading circles die; the stream and all in it will clear by-and-by. xxxvi fairy bread come up here, o dusty feet! here is fairy bread to eat. here in my retiring room, children, you may dine on the golden smell of broom and the shade of pine; and when you have eaten well, fairy stories hear and tell. xxxvii from a railway carriage faster than fairies, faster than witches, bridges and houses, hedges and ditches; and charging along like troops in a battle all through the meadows the horses and cattle: all of the sights of the hill and the plain fly as thick as driving rain; and ever again, in the wink of an eye, painted stations whistle by. here is a child who clambers and scrambles, all by himself and gathering brambles; here is a tramp who stands and gazes; and here is the green for stringing the daisies! here is a cart runaway in the road lumping along with man and load; and here is a mill, and there is a river: each a glimpse and gone forever! xxxviii winter-time late lies the wintry sun a-bed, a frosty, fiery sleepy-head; blinks but an hour or two; and then, a blood-red orange, sets again. before the stars have left the skies, at morning in the dark i rise; and shivering in my nakedness, by the cold candle, bathe and dress. close by the jolly fire i sit to warm my frozen bones a bit; or with a reindeer-sled, explore the colder countries round the door. when to go out, my nurse doth wrap me in my comforter and cap; the cold wind burns my face, and blows its frosty pepper up my nose. black are my steps on silver sod; thick blows my frosty breath abroad; and tree and house, and hill and lake, are frosted like a wedding cake. xxxix the hayloft through all the pleasant meadow-side the grass grew shoulder-high, till the shining scythes went far and wide and cut it down to dry. those green and sweetly smelling crops they led the waggons home; and they piled them here in mountain tops for mountaineers to roam. here is mount clear, mount rusty-nail, mount eagle and mount high;-the mice that in these mountains dwell, no happier are than i! oh, what a joy to clamber there, oh, what a place for play, with the sweet, the dim, the dusty air, the happy hills of hay! xl farewell to the farm the coach is at the door at last; the eager children, mounting fast and kissing hands, in chorus sing: good-bye, good-bye, to everything! to house and garden, field and lawn, the meadow-gates we swang upon, to pump and stable, tree and swing, good-bye, good-bye, to everything! and fare you well for evermore, o ladder at the hayloft door, o hayloft where the cobwebs cling, good-bye, good-bye, to everything! crack goes the whip, and off we go; the trees and houses smaller grow; last, round the woody turn we sing: good-bye, good-bye, to everything! xli north-west passage 1. good-night then the bright lamp is carried in, the sunless hours again begin; o'er all without, in field and lane, the haunted night returns again. now we behold the embers flee about the firelit hearth; and see our faces painted as we pass, like pictures, on the window glass. must we to bed indeed? well then, let us arise and go like men, and face with an undaunted tread the long black passage up to bed. farewell, o brother, sister, sire! o pleasant party round the fire! the songs you sing, the tales you tell, till far to-morrow, fare you well! 2. shadow march all around the house is the jet-black night; it stares through the window-pane; it crawls in the corners, hiding from the light, and it moves with the moving flame. now my little heart goes a beating like a drum, with the breath of the bogies in my hair; and all around the candle and the crooked shadows come, and go marching along up the stair. the shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the lamp, the shadow of the child that goes to bed-all the wicked shadows coming tramp, tramp, tramp, with the black night overhead. 3. in port last, to the chamber where i lie my fearful footsteps patter nigh, and come out from the cold and gloom into my warm and cheerful room. there, safe arrived, we turn about to keep the coming shadows out, and close the happy door at last on all the perils that we past. then, when mamma goes by to bed, she shall come in with tip-toe tread, and see me lying warm and fast and in the land of nod at last. the child alone i the unseen playmate when children are playing alone on the green, in comes the playmate that never was seen. when children are happy and lonely and good, the friend of the children comes out of the wood. nobody heard him, and nobody saw, his is a picture you never could draw, but he's sure to be present, abroad or at home, when children are happy and playing alone. he lies in the laurels, he runs on the grass, he sings when you tinkle the musical glass; whene'er you are happy and cannot tell why, the friend of the children is sure to be by! he loves to be little, he hates to be big, 't is he that inhabits the caves that you dig; 't is he when you play with your soldiers of tin that sides with the frenchmen and never can win. 't is he, when at night you go off to your bed, bids you go to sleep and not trouble your head; for wherever they're lying, in cupboard or shelf, 't is he will take care of your playthings himself! ii my ship and i o it's i that am the captain of a tidy little ship, of a ship that goes a sailing on the pond; and my ship it keeps a-turning all around and all about; but when i'm a little older, i shall find the secret out how to send my vessel sailing on beyond. for i mean to grow a little as the dolly at the helm, and the dolly i intend to come alive; and with him beside to help me, it's a-sailing i shall go, it's a-sailing on the water, when the jolly breezes blow and the vessel goes a dive-dive-dive. o it's then you'll see me sailing through the rushes and the reeds, and you'll hear the water singing at the prow; for beside the dolly sailor, i'm to voyage and explore, to land upon the island where no dolly was before, and to fire the penny cannon in the bow. iii my kingdom down by a shining water well i found a very little dell, no higher than my head. the heather and the gorse about in summer bloom were coming out, some yellow and some red. i called the little pool a sea; the little hills were big to me; for i am very small. i made a boat, i made a town, i searched the caverns up and down, and named them one and all. and all about was mine, i said, the little sparrows overhead, the little minnows too. this was the world and i was king; for me the bees came by to sing, for me the swallows flew. i played there were no deeper seas, nor any wider plains than these, nor other kings than me. at last i heard my mother call out from the house at evenfall, to call me home to tea. and i must rise and leave my dell, and leave my dimpled water well, and leave my heather blooms. alas! and as my home i neared, how very big my nurse appeared. how great and cool the rooms! iv picture-books in winter summer fading, winter comes-frosty mornings, tingling thumbs, window robins, winter rooks, and the picture story-books. water now is turned to stone nurse and i can walk upon; still we find the flowing brooks in the picture story-books. all the pretty things put by, wait upon the children's eye, sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks, in the picture story-books. we may see how all things are seas and cities, near and far, and the flying fairies' looks, in the picture story-books. how am i to sing your praise, happy chimney-corner days, sitting safe in nursery nooks, reading picture story-books? v my treasures these nuts, that i keep in the back of the nest, where all my tin soldiers are lying at rest, were gathered in autumn by nursie and me in a wood with a well by the side of the sea. this whistle we made (and how clearly it sounds!) by the side of a field at the end of the grounds. of a branch of a plane, with a knife of my own, it was nursie who made it, and nursie alone! the stone, with the white and the yellow and grey, we discovered i cannot tell how far away; and i carried it back although weary and cold, for though father denies it, i'm sure it is gold. but of all my treasures the last is the king, for there's very few children possess such a thing; and that is a chisel, both handle and blade, which a man who was really a carpenter made. vi block city what are you able to build with your blocks? castles and palaces, temples and docks. rain may keep raining, and others go roam, but i can be happy and building at home. let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea, there i'll establish a city for me: a kirk and a mill and a palace beside, and a harbour as well where my vessels may ride. great is the palace with pillar and wall, a sort of a tower on the top of it all, and steps coming down in an orderly way to where my toy vessels lie safe in the bay. this one is sailing and that one is moored: hark to the song of the sailors aboard! and see, on the steps of my palace, the kings coming and going with presents and things! yet as i saw it, i see it again, the kirk and the palace, the ships and the men, and as long as i live and where'er i may be, i'll always remember my town by the sea. vii the land of story-books at evening when the lamp is lit, around the fire my parents sit; they sit at home and talk and sing, and do not play at anything. now, with my little gun, i crawl all in the dark along the wall, and follow round the forest track away behind the sofa back. there, in the night, where none can spy, all in my hunter's camp i lie, and play at books that i have read till it is time to go to bed. these are the hills, these are the woods, these are my starry solitudes; and there the river by whose brink the roaring lions come to drink. i see the others far away as if in firelit camp they lay, and i, like to an indian scout, around their party prowled about. so when my nurse comes in for me, home i return across the sea, and go to bed with backward looks at my dear land of story-books. viii armies in the fire the lamps now glitter down the street; faintly sound the falling feet; and the blue even slowly falls about the garden trees and walls. now in the falling of the gloom the red fire paints the empty room: and warmly on the roof it looks, and flickers on the back of books. armies march by tower and spire of cities blazing, in the fire;-till as i gaze with staring eyes, the armies fall, the lustre dies. then once again the glow returns; again the phantom city burns; and down the red-hot valley, lo! the phantom armies marching go! blinking embers, tell me true where are those armies marching to, and what the burning city is that crumbles in your furnaces! ix the little land when at home alone i sit and am very tired of it, i have just to shut my eyes to go sailing through the skies-to go sailing far away to the pleasant land of play; to the fairy land afar where the little people are; where the clover-tops are trees, and the rain-pools are the seas, and the leaves, like little ships, sail about on tiny trips; and above the daisy tree through the grasses, high o'erhead the bumble bee hums and passes. in that forest to and fro i can wander, i can go; see the spider and the fly, and the ants go marching by, carrying parcels with their feet down the green and grassy street. i can in the sorrel sit where the ladybird alit. i can climb the jointed grass and on high see the greater swallows pass in the sky, and the round sun rolling by heeding no such things as i. through that forest i can pass till, as in a looking-glass, humming fly and daisy tree and my tiny self i see, painted very clear and neat on the rain-pool at my feet. should a leaflet come to land drifting near to where i stand, straight i'll board that tiny boat round the rain-pool sea to float. little thoughtful creatures sit on the grassy coasts of it; little things with lovely eyes see me sailing with surprise. some are clad in armour green-(these have sure to battle been!)-some are pied with ev'ry hue, black and crimson, gold and blue; some have wings and swift are gone;-but they all look kindly on. when my eyes i once again open, and see all things plain: high bare walls, great bare floor; great big knobs on drawer and door; great big people perched on chairs, stitching tucks and mending tears, each a hill that i could climb, and talking nonsense all the time- o dear me, that i could be a sailor on a the rain-pool sea, a climber in the clover tree, and just come back a sleepy-head, late at night to go to bed. garden days i night and day when the golden day is done, through the closing portal, child and garden, flower and sun, vanish all things mortal. as the blinding shadows fall as the rays diminish, under evening's cloak they all roll away and vanish. garden darkened, daisy shut, child in bed, they slumber-glow-worm in the hallway rut, mice among the lumber. in the darkness houses shine, parents move the candles; till on all the night divine turns the bedroom handles. till at last the day begins in the east a-breaking, in the hedges and the whins sleeping birds a-waking. in the darkness shapes of things, houses, trees and hedges, clearer grow; and sparrow's wings beat on window ledges. these shall wake the yawning maid; she the door shall open-finding dew on garden glade and the morning broken. there my garden grows again green and rosy painted, as at eve behind the pane from my eyes it fainted. just as it was shut away, toy-like, in the even, here i see it glow with day under glowing heaven. every path and every plot, every blush of roses, every blue forget-me-not where the dew reposes, "up!" they cry, "the day is come on the smiling valleys: we have beat the morning drum; playmate, join your allies!" ii nest eggs birds all the summer day flutter and quarrel here in the arbour-like tent of the laurel. here in the fork the brown nest is seated; for little blue eggs the mother keeps heated. while we stand watching her staring like gabies, safe in each egg are the bird's little babies. soon the frail eggs they shall chip, and upspringing make all the april woods merry with singing. younger than we are, o children, and frailer, soon in the blue air they'll be, singer and sailor. we, so much older, taller and stronger, we shall look down on the birdies no longer. they shall go flying with musical speeches high overhead in the tops of the beeches. in spite of our wisdom and sensible talking, we on our feet must go plodding and walking. iii the flowers all the names i know from nurse: gardener's garters, shepherd's purse, bachelor's buttons, lady's smock, and the lady hollyhock. fairy places, fairy things, fairy woods where the wild bee wings, tiny trees for tiny dames-these must all be fairy names! tiny woods below whose boughs shady fairies weave a house; tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme, where the braver fairies climb! fair are grown-up people's trees, but the fairest woods are these; where, if i were not so tall, i should live for good and all. iv summer sun great is the sun, and wide he goes through empty heaven with repose; and in the blue and glowing days more thick than rain he showers his rays. though closer still the blinds we pull to keep the shady parlour cool, yet he will find a chink or two to slip his golden fingers through. the dusty attic spider-clad he, through the keyhole, maketh glad; and through the broken edge of tiles into the laddered hay-loft smiles. meantime his golden face around he bares to all the garden ground, and sheds a warm and glittering look among the ivy's inmost nook. above the hills, along the blue, round the bright air with footing true, to please the child, to paint the rose, the gardener of the world, he goes. v the dumb soldier when the grass was closely mown, walking on the lawn alone, in the turf a hole i found, and hid a soldier underground. spring and daisies came apace; grasses hid my hiding place; grasses run like a green sea o'er the lawn up to my knee. under grass alone he lies, looking up with leaden eyes, scarlet coat and pointed gun, to the stars and to the sun. when the grass is ripe like grain, when the scythe is stoned again, when the lawn is shaven clear, the my hole shall reappear. i shall find him, never fear, i shall find my grenadier; but for all that's gone and come, i shall find my soldier dumb. he has lived, a little thing, in the grassy woods of spring; done, if he could tell me true, just as i should like to do. he has seen the starry hours and the springing of the flowers; and the fairy things that pass in the forests of the grass. in the silence he has heard talking bee and ladybird, and the butterfly has flown o'er him as he lay alone. not a word will he disclose, not a word of all he knows. i must lay him on the shelf, and make up the tale myself. vi autumn fires in the other gardens and all up the vale, from the autumn bonfires see the smoke trail! pleasant summer over and all the summer flowers, the red fire blazes, the grey smoke towers. sing a song of seasons! something bright in all! flowers in the summer, fires in the fall! vii the gardener the gardener does not love to talk. he makes me keep the gravel walk; and when he puts his tools away, he locks the door and takes the key. away behind the currant row, where no one else but cook may go, far in the plots, i see him dig, old and serious, brown and big. he digs the flowers, green, red, and blue, nor wishes to be spoken to. he digs the flowers and cuts the hay, and never seems to want to play. silly gardener! summer goes, and winter comes with pinching toes, when in the garden bare and brown you must lay your barrow down. well now, and while the summer stays, to profit by these garden days o how much wiser you would be to play at indian wars with me! viii historical associations dear uncle jim. this garden ground that now you smoke your pipe around, has seen immortal actions done and valiant battles lost and won. here we had best on tip-toe tread, while i for safety march ahead, for this is that enchanted ground where all who loiter slumber sound. here is the sea, here is the sand, here is the simple shepherd's land, here are the fairy hollyhocks, and there are ali baba's rocks. but yonder, see! apart and high, frozen siberia lies; where i, with robert bruce william tell, was bound by an enchanter's spell. envoys i to willie and henrietta if two may read aright these rhymes of old delight and house and garden play, you too, my cousins, and you only, may. you in a garden green with me were king and queen, were hunter, soldier, tar, and all the thousand things that children are. now in the elders' seat we rest with quiet feet, and from the window-bay we watch the children, our successors, play. "time was," the golden head irrevocably said; but time which one can bind, while flowing fast away, leaves love behind. ii to my mother you too, my mother, read my rhymes for love of unforgotten times, and you may chance to hear once more the little feet along the floor. iii to auntie "chief of our aunts"--not only i, but all your dozen of nurselings cry-"what did the other children do? and what were childhood, wanting you?" iv to minnie the red room with the giant bed where none but elders laid their head; the little room where you and i did for awhile together lie and, simple, suitor, i your hand in decent marriage did demand; the great day nursery, best of all, with pictures pasted on the wall and leaves upon the blind-a pleasant room wherein to wake and hear the leafy garden shake and rustle in the wind-and pleasant there to lie in bed and see the pictures overhead-the wars about sebastopol, the grinning guns along the wall, the daring escalade, the plunging ships, the bleating sheep, the happy children ankle-deep and laughing as they wade: all these are vanished clean away, and the old manse is changed to-day; it wears an altered face and shields a stranger race. the river, on from mill to mill, flows past our childhood's garden still; but ah! we children never more shall watch it from the water-door! below the yew--it still is there-our phantom voices haunt the air as we were still at play, and i can hear them call and say: "how far is it to babylon?" ah, far enough, my dear, far, far enough from here-smiling and kind, you grace a shelf too high for me to reach myself. reach down a hand, my dear, and take these rhymes for old acquaintance' sake! yet you have farther gone! "can i get there by candlelight?" so goes the old refrain. i do not know--perchance you might-but only, children, hear it right, ah, never to return again! the eternal dawn, beyond a doubt, shall break on hill and plain, and put all stars and candles out ere we be young again. to you in distant india, these i send across the seas, nor count it far across. for which of us forget the indian cabinets, the bones of antelope, the wings of albatross, the pied and painted birds and beans, the junks and bangles, beads and screens, the gods and sacred bells, and the load-humming, twisted shells! the level of the parlour floor was honest, homely, scottish shore; but when we climbed upon a chair, behold the gorgeous east was there! be this a fable; and behold me in the parlour as of old, and minnie just above me set in the quaint indian cabinet! v to my name-child 1 some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed, little louis sanchez, will be given you to read. then you shall discover, that your name was printed down by the english printers, long before, in london town. in the great and busy city where the east and west are met, all the little letters did the english printer set; while you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play, foreign people thought of you in places far away. ay, and when you slept, a baby, over all the english lands other little children took the volume in their hands; other children questioned, in their homes across the seas: who was little louis, won't you tell us, mother, please? 2 now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play, seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of monterey, watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze, tiny sandpipers, and the huge pacific seas. and remember in your playing, as the sea-fog rolls to you, long ere you could read it, how i told you what to do; and that while you thought of no one, nearly half the world away some one thought of louis on the beach of monterey! vi to any reader as from the house your mother sees you playing round the garden trees, so you may see, if you will look through the windows of this book, another child, far, far away, and in another garden, play. but do not think you can at all, by knocking on the window, call that child to hear you. he intent is all on his play-business bent. he does not hear, he will not look, nor yet be lured out of this book. for, long ago, the truth to say, he has grown up and gone away, and it is but a child of air that lingers in the garden there. [end.] . 1849 civil disobedience by henry david thoreau i heartily accept the motto, "that government is best which governs least"; and i should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also i believe"that government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. the objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. the standing army is only an arm of the standing government. the government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. witness the present mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure. this american governmentwhat is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? it has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. it is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. but it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. it is excellent, we must all allow. yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. it does not keep the country free. it does not settle the west. it does not educate. the character inherent in the american people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. for government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. trade and commerce, if they were not made of india-rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads. but, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, i ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. after all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. but a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislation? why has every man a conscience, then? i think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. it is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. the only obligation which i have a right to assume is to do at any time what i think right. it is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. a common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. they have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. now, what are they? men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? visit the navy-yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an american government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black artsa mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments, though it may be, "not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, as his corse to the rampart we hurried; not a soldier discharged his farewell shot o'er the grave where our hero we buried." the mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. they are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. in most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. they have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. othersas most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holdersserve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as god. a very fewas heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and menserve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. a wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay," and "stop a hole to keep the wind away," but leave that office to his dust at least: "i am too high-born to be propertied, to be a secondary at control, or useful serving-man and instrument to any sovereign state throughout the world." he who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist. how does it become a man to behave toward this american government today? i answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. i cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also. all men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. but almost all say that such is not the case now. but such was the case, they think, in the revolution of '75. if one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that i should not make an ado about it, for i can do without them. all machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. at any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. but when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, i say, let us not have such a machine any longer. in other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, i think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. what makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army. paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his chapter on the "duty of submission to civil government," resolves all civil obligation into expediency; and he proceeds to say that "so long as the interest of the whole society requires it, that is, so long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed without public inconveniency, it is the will of god... that the established government be obeyedand no longer. this principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of redressing it on the other." of this, he says, every man shall judge for himself. but paley appears never to have contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what it may. if i have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, i must restore it to him though i drown myself. this, according to paley, would be inconvenient. but he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it. this people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people. in their practice, nations agree with paley; but does any one think that massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present crisis? "a drab of state, a cloth-o'-silver slut, to have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt." practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the south, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to mexico, cost what it may. i quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, cooperate with, and do the bidding of those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless. we are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many. it is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump. there are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of washington and franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. what is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? they hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. they will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. at most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and god-speed, to the right, as it goes by them. there are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man. but it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it. all voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. the character of the voters is not staked. i cast my vote, perchance, as i think right; but i am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. i am willing to leave it to the majority. its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. it is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. a wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. there is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. when the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. they will then be the only slaves. only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote. i hear of a convention to be held at baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but i think, what is it to any independent, intelligent, and respectable man what decision they may come to? shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? can we not count upon some independent votes? are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? but no: i find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. he forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. his vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. o for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. how many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? hardly one. does not america offer any inducement for men to settle here? the american has dwindled into an odd fellow-one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose first and chief concern, on coming into the world, is to see that the almshouses are in good repair; and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb, to collect a fund for the support of the widows and orphans that may be; who, in short, ventures to live only by the aid of the mutual insurance company, which has promised to bury him decently. it is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. if i devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, i must first see, at least, that i do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. i must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. see what gross inconsistency is tolerated. i have heard some of my townsmen say, "i should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to mexico;see if i would go"; and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. the soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it differed one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. thus, under the name of order and civil government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. after the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made. the broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. the slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur. those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. some are petitioning the state to dissolve the union, to disregard the requisitions of the president. why do they not dissolve it themselvesthe union between themselves and the stateand refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? do not they stand in the same relation to the state that the state does to the union? and have not the same reasons prevented the state from resisting the union which have prevented them from resisting the state? how can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? if you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again. action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. it not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine. unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. they think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. but it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. it makes it worse. why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? why does it not cherish its wise minority? why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? why does it always crucify christ, and excommunicate copernicus and luther, and pronounce washington and franklin rebels? one would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was the only offence never contemplated by government; else, why has it not assigned its definite, its suitable and proportionate, penalty? if a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the state, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that i know, and determined only by the discretion of those who placed him there; but if he should steal ninety times nine shillings from the state, he is soon permitted to go at large again. if the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smoothcertainly the machine will wear out. if the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, i say, break the law. let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. what i have to do is to see, at any rate, that i do not lend myself to the wrong which i condemn. as for adopting the ways which the state has provided for remedying the evil, i know not of such ways. they take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. i have other affairs to attend to. i came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. a man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. it is not my business to be petitioning the governor or the legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and if they should not bear my petition, what should i do then? but in this case the state has provided no way: its very constitution is the evil. this may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. so is an change for the better, like birth and death, which convulse the body. i do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. i think that it is enough if they have god on their side, without waiting for that other one. moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already. i meet this american government, or its representative, the state government, directly, and face to face, once a yearno morein the person of its tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as i am necessarily meets it; and it then says distinctly, recognize me; and the simplest, the most effectual, and, in the present posture of affairs, the indispensablest mode of treating with it on this head, of expressing your little satisfaction with and love for it, is to deny it then. my civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man i have to deal withfor it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that i quarreland he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. how shall he ever know well what he is and does as an officer of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he shall treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborliness without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action. i know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom i could nameif ten honest men onlyay, if one honest man, in this state of massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in america. for it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. but we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission, reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man. if my esteemed neighbor, the state's ambassador, who will devote his days to the settlement of the question of human rights in the council chamber, instead of being threatened with the prisons of carolina, were to sit down the prisoner of massachusetts, that state which is so anxious to foist the sin of slavery upon her sisterthough at present she can discover only an act of inhospitality to be the ground of a quarrel with herthe legislature would not wholly waive the subject the following winter. under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. the proper place today, the only place which massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the state by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. it is there that the fugitive slave, and the mexican prisoner on parole, and the indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them; on that separate, but more free and honorable, ground, where the state places those who are not with her, but against herthe only house in a slave state in which a free man can abide with honor. if any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the state, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. a minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. if the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the state will not hesitate which to choose. if a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood. this is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. if the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "but what shall i do?" my answer is, "if you really wish to do anything, resign your office." when the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. but even suppose blood should flow. is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. i see this blood flowing now. i have contemplated the imprisonment of the offender, rather than the seizure of his goodsthough both will serve the same purposebecause they who assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt state, commonly have not spent much time in accumulating property. to such the state renders comparatively small service, and a slight tax is wont to appear exorbitant, particularly if they are obliged to earn it by special labor with their hands. if there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the state itself would hesitate to demand it of him. but the rich mannot to make any invidious comparisonis always sold to the institution which makes him rich. absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it. it puts to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. the opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the "means" are increased. the best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor. christ answered the herodians according to their condition. "show me the tribute-money," said he;and one took a penny out of his pocket;if you use money which has the image of caesar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the state, and gladly enjoy the advantages of caesar's government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it. "render therefore to caesar that which is caesar's, and to god those things which are god's"leaving them no wiser than before as to which was which; for they did not wish to know. when i converse with the freest of my neighbors, i perceive that, whatever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the question, and their regard for the public tranquillity, the long and the short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and they dread the consequences to their property and families of disobedience to it. for my own part, i should not like to think that i ever rely on the protection of the state. but, if i deny the authority of the state when it presents its tax-bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. this is hard. this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects. it will not be worth the while to accumulate property; that would be sure to go again. you must hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat that soon. you must live within yourself, and depend upon yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs. a man may grow rich in turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the turkish government. confucius said: "if a state is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of shame; if a state is not governed by the principles of reason, riches and honors are the subjects of shame." no: until i want the protection of massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until i am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, i can afford to refuse allegiance to massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. it costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the state than it would to obey. i should feel as if i were worth less in that case. some years ago, the state met me in behalf of the church, and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman whose preaching my father attended, but never i myself. "pay," it said, "or be locked up in the jail." i declined to pay. but, unfortunately, another man saw fit to pay it. i did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster; for i was not the state's schoolmaster, but i supported myself by voluntary subscription. i did not see why the lyceum should not present its tax-bill, and have the state to back its demand, as well as the church. however, at the request of the selectmen, i condescended to make some such statement as this in writing:"know all men by these presents, that i, henry thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which i have not joined." this i gave to the town clerk; and he has it. the state, having thus learned that i did not wish to be regarded as a member of that church, has never made a like demand on me since; though it said that it must adhere to its original presumption that time. if i had known how to name them, i should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which i never signed on to; but i did not know where to find a complete list. i have paid no poll-tax for six years. i was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as i stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, i could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if i were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. i wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. i saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as i was. i did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. i felt as if i alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. they plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. in every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. i could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. as they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. i saw that the state was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and i lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it. thus the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. it is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. i was not born to be forced. i will breathe after my own fashion. let us see who is the strongest. what force has a multitude? they only can force me who obey a higher law than i. they force me to become like themselves. i do not hear of men being forced to have this way or that by masses of men. what sort of life were that to live? when i meet a government which says to me, "your money or your life," why should i be in haste to give it my money? it may be in a great strait, and not know what to do: i cannot help that. it must help itself; do as i do. it is not worth the while to snivel about it. i am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. i am not the son of the engineer. i perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. if a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man. the night in prison was novel and interesting enough. the prisoners in their shirt-sleeves were enjoying a chat and the evening air in the doorway, when i entered. but the jailer said, "come, boys, it is time to lock up"; and so they dispersed, and i heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow apartments. my room-mate was introduced to me by the jailer as "a first-rate fellow and a clever man." when the door was locked, he showed me where to hang my hat, and how he managed matters there. the rooms were whitewashed once a month; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably the neatest apartment in the town. he naturally wanted to know where i came from, and what brought me there; and, when i had told him, i asked him in my turn how he came there, presuming him to be an honest man, of course; and, as the world goes, i believe he was. "why," said he, "they accuse me of burning a barn; but i never did it." as near as i could discover, he had probably gone to bed in a barn when drunk, and smoked his pipe there; and so a barn was burnt. he had the reputation of being a clever man, had been there some three months waiting for his trial to come on, and would have to wait as much longer; but he was quite domesticated and contented, since he got his board for nothing, and thought that he was well treated. he occupied one window, and i the other; and i saw that if one stayed there long, his principal business would be to look out the window. i had soon read all the tracts that were left there, and examined where former prisoners had broken out, and where a grate had been sawed off, and heard the history of the various occupants of that room; for i found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. i was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them. i pumped my fellow-prisoner as dry as i could, for fear i should never see him again; but at length he showed me which was my bed, and left me to blow out the lamp. it was like travelling into a far country, such as i had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night. it seemed to me that i never had heard the town clock strike before, nor the evening sounds of the village; for we slept with the windows open, which were inside the grating. it was to see my native village in the light of the middle ages, and our concord was turned into a rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me. they were the voices of old burghers that i heard in the streets. i was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village inna wholly new and rare experience to me. it was a closer view of my native town. i was fairly inside of it. i never had seen its institutions before. this is one of its peculiar institutions; for it is a shire town. i began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about. in the morning, our breakfasts were put through the hole in the door, in small oblong-square tin pans, made to fit, and holding a pint of chocolate, with brown bread, and an iron spoon. when they called for the vessels again, i was green enough to return what bread i had left; but my comrade seized it, and said that i should lay that up for lunch or dinner. soon after he was let out to work at haying in a neighboring field, whither he went every day, and would not be back till noon; so he bade me good-day, saying that he doubted if he should see me again. when i came out of prisonfor some one interfered, and paid that taxi did not perceive that great changes had taken place on the common, such as he observed who went in a youth and emerged a tottering and gray-headed man; and yet a change had to my eyes come over the scenethe town, and state, and countrygreater than any that mere time could effect. i saw yet more distinctly the state in which i lived. i saw to what extent the people among whom i lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the chinamen and malays are; that in their sacrifices to humanity they ran no risks, not even to their property; that after all they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls. this may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for i believe that many of them are not aware that they have such an institution as the jail in their village. it was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the grating of a jail window, "how do ye do?" my neighbors did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if i had returned from a long journey. i was put into jail as i was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. when i was let out the next morning, i proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hourfor the horse was soon tackledwas in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the state was nowhere to be seen. this is the whole history of "my prisons." i have never declined paying the highway tax, because i am as desirous of being a good neighbor as i am of being a bad subject; and as for supporting schools, i am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen now. it is for no particular item in the tax-bill that i refuse to pay it. i simply wish to refuse allegiance to the state, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. i do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if i could, till it buys a man or a musket to shoot one withthe dollar is innocentbut i am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. in fact, i quietly declare war with the state, after my fashion, though i will still make what use and get what advantage of her i can, as is usual in such cases. if others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a sympathy with the state, they do but what they have already done in their own case, or rather they abet injustice to a greater extent than the state requires. if they pay the tax from a mistaken interest in the individual taxed, to save his property, or prevent his going to jail, it is because they have not considered wisely how far they let their private feelings interfere with the public good. this, then, is my position at present. but one cannot be too much on his guard in such a case, lest his action be biased by obstinacy or an undue regard for the opinions of men. let him see that he does only what belongs to himself and to the hour. i think sometimes, why, this people mean well, they are only ignorant; they would do better if they knew how: why give your neighbors this pain to treat you as they are not inclined to? but i think again, this is no reason why i should do as they do, or permit others to suffer much greater pain of a different kind. again, i sometimes say to myself, when many millions of men, without heat, without ill will, without personal feeling of any kind, demand of you a few shillings only, without the possibility, such is their constitution, of retracting or altering their present demand, and without the possibility, on your side, of appeal to any other millions, why expose yourself to this overwhelming brute force? you do not resist cold and hunger, the winds and the waves, thus obstinately; you quietly submit to a thousand similar necessities. you do not put your head into the fire. but just in proportion as i regard this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a human force, and consider that i have relations to those millions as to so many millions of men, and not of mere brute or inanimate things, i see that appeal is possible, first and instantaneously, from them to the maker of them, and, secondly, from them to themselves. but if i put my head deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to fire or to the maker of fire, and i have only myself to blame. if i could convince myself that i have any right to be satisfied with men as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in some respects, to my requisitions and expectations of what they and i ought to be, then, like a good mussulman and fatalist, i should endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are, and say it is the will of god. and, above all, there is this difference between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that i can resist this with some effect; but i cannot expect, like orpheus, to change the nature of the rocks and trees and beasts. i do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. i do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. i seek rather, i may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. i am but too ready to conform to them. indeed, i have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, i find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and state governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for conformity. "we must affect our country as our parents, and if at any time we alienate our love or industry from doing it honor, we must respect effects and teach the soul matter of conscience and religion, and not desire of rule or benefit." i believe that the state will soon be able to take all my work of this sort out of my hands, and then i shall be no better a patriot than my fellow-countrymen. seen from a lower point of view, the constitution, with all its faults, is very good; the law and the courts are very respectable; even this state and this american government are, in many respects, very admirable, and rare things, to be thankful for, such as a great many have described them; but seen from a point of view a little higher, they are what i have described them; seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of at all? however, the government does not concern me much, and i shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. it is not many moments that i live under a government, even in this world. if a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free, that which is not never for a long time appearing to be to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him. i know that most men think differently from myself; but those whose lives are by profession devoted to the study of these or kindred subjects content me as little as any. statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. they speak of moving society, but have no resting-place without it. they may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. they are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency. webster never goes behind government, and so cannot speak with authority about it. his words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing government; but for thinkers, and those who legislate for all time, he never once glances at the subject. i know of those whose serene and wise speculations on this theme would soon reveal the limits of his mind's range and hospitality. yet, compared with the cheap professions of most reformers, and the still cheaper wisdom and eloquence of politicians in general, his are almost the only sensible and valuable words, and we thank heaven for him. comparatively, he is always strong, original, and, above all, practical. still, his quality is not wisdom, but prudence. the lawyer's truth is not truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency. truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing. he well deserves to be called, as he has been called, the defender of the constitution. there are really no blows to be given by him but defensive ones. he is not a leader, but a follower. his leaders are the men of '87"i have never made an effort," he says, "and never propose to make an effort; i have never countenanced an effort, and never mean to countenance an effort, to disturb the arrangement as originally made, by which the various states came into the union." still thinking of the sanction which the constitution gives to slavery, he says, "because it was a part of the original compactlet it stand." notwithstanding his special acuteness and ability, he is unable to take a fact out of its merely political relations, and behold it as it lies absolutely to be disposed of by the intellectwhat, for instance, it behooves a man to do here in america today with regard to slaverybut ventures, or is driven, to make some such desperate answer as the following, while professing to speak absolutely, and as a private manfrom which what new and singular code of social duties might be inferred? "the manner," says he, "in which the governments of those states where slavery exists are to regulate it is for their own consideration, under their responsibility to their constituents, to the general laws of propriety, humanity, and justice, and to god. associations formed elsewhere, springing from a feeling of humanity, or any other cause, have nothing whatever to do with it. they have never received any encouragement from me, and they never will." they who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the bible and the constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head. no man with a genius for legislation has appeared in america. they are rare in the history of the world. there are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. we love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation. they have no genius or talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce and manufactures and agriculture. if we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, america would not long retain her rank among the nations. for eighteen hundred years, though perchance i have no right to say it, the new testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation? the authority of government, even such as i am willing to submit tofor i will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than i, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so wellis still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. it can have no pure right over my person and property but what i concede to it. the progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. even the chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? there will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. i please myself with imagining a state at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. a state which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious state, which also i have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen. the end . 1853 a plea for captain john brown by henry david thoreau i trust that you will pardon me for being here. i do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but i feel forced myself. little as i know of captain brown, i would fain do my part to correct the tone and the statements of the newspapers, and of my countrymen generally, respecting his character and actions. it costs us nothing to be just. we can at least express our sympathy with, and admiration of, him and his companions, and that is what i now propose to do. first, as to his history. i will endeavor to omit, as much as possible, what you have already read. i need not describe his person to you, for probably most of you have seen and will not soon forget him. i am told that his grandfather, john brown, was an officer in the revolution; that he himself was born in connecticut about the beginning of this century, but early went with his father to ohio. i heard him say that his father was a contractor who furnished beef to the army there, in the war of 1812; that he accompanied him to the camp, and assisted him in that employment, seeing a good deal of military lifemore, perhaps, than if he had been a soldier; for he was often present at the councils of the officers. especially, he learned by experience how armies are supplied and maintained in the fielda work which, he observed, requires at least as much experience and skill as to lead them in battle. he said that few persons had any conception of the cost, even the pecuniary cost, of firing a single bullet in war. he saw enough, at any rate, to disgust him with a military life; indeed, to excite in him a great abhorrence of it; so much so, that though he was tempted by the offer of some petty office in the army, when he was about eighteen, he not only declined that, but he also refused to train when warned, and was fined for it. he then resolved that he would never have anything to do with any war, unless it were a war for liberty. when the troubles in kansas began, he sent several of his sons thither to strengthen the party of the free state men, fitting them out with such weapons as he had; telling them that if the troubles should increase, and there should be need of him, he would follow, to assist them with his hand and counsel. this, as you all know, he soon after did; and it was through his agency, far more than any other's, that kansas was made free. for a part of his life he was a surveyor, and at one time he was engaged in wool-growing, and he went to europe as an agent about that business. there, as everywhere, he had his eyes about him, and made many original observations. he said, for instance, that he saw why the soil of england was so rich, and that of germany (i think it was) so poor, and he thought of writing to some of the crowned heads about it. it was because in england the peasantry live on the soil which they cultivate, but in germany they are gathered into villages at night. it is a pity that he did not make a book of his observations. i should say that he was an old-fashioned man in his respect for the constitution, and his faith in the permanence of this union. slavery he deemed to be wholly opposed to these, and he was its determined foe. he was by descent and birth a new england farmer, a man of great common sense, deliberate and practical as that class is, and tenfold more so. he was like the best of those who stood at concord bridge once, on lexington common, and on bunker hill, only he was firmer and higher-principled than any that i have chanced to hear of as there. it was no abolition lecturer that converted him. ethan allen and stark, with whom he may in some respects be compared, were rangers in a lower and less important field. they could bravely face their country's foes, but he had the courage to face his country herself when she was in the wrong. a western writer says, to account for his escape from so many perils, that he was concealed under a "rural exterior"; as if, in that prairie land, a hero should, by good rights, wear a citizen's dress only. he did not go to the college called harvard, good old alma mater as she is. he was not fed on the pap that is there furnished. as he phrased it, "i know no more of grammar than one of your calves." but he went to the great university of the west, where he sedulously pursued the study of liberty, for which he had early betrayed a fondness, and having taken many degrees, he finally commenced the public practice of humanity in kansas, as you all know. such were his humanities, and not any study of grammar. he would have left a greek accent slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man. he was one of that class of whom we hear a great deal, but, for the most part, see nothing at allthe puritans. it would be in vain to kill him. he died lately in the time of cromwell, but he reappeared here. why should he not? some of the puritan stock are said to have come over and settled in new england. they were a class that did something else than celebrate their forefathers' day, and eat parched corn in remembrance of that time. they were neither democrats nor republicans, but men of simple habits, straightforward, prayerful; not thinking much of rulers who did not fear god, not making many compromises, nor seeking after available candidates. "in his camp," as one has recently written, and as i have myself heard him state, "he permitted no profanity; no man of loose morals was suffered to remain there, unless, indeed, as a prisoner of war. 'i would rather,' said he, 'have the small-pox, yellow fever, and cholera, all together in my camp, than a man without principle.... it is a mistake, sir, that our people make, when they think that bullies are the best fighters, or that they are the fit men to oppose these southerners. give me men of good principlesgod-fearing menmen who respect themselves, and with a dozen of them i will oppose any hundred such men as these buford ruffians.'" he said that if one offered himself to be a soldier under him, who was forward to tell what he could or would do if he could only get sight of the enemy, he had but little confidence in him. he was never able to find more than a score or so of recruits whom he would accept, and only about a dozen, among them his sons, in whom he had perfect faith. when he was here, some years ago, he showed to a few a little manuscript bookhis "orderly book" i think he called itcontaining the names of his company in kansas, and the rules by which they bound themselves; and he stated that several of them had already sealed the contract with their blood. when some one remarked that, with the addition of a chaplain, it would have been a perfect cromwellian troop, he observed that he would have been glad to add a chaplain to the list, if he could have found one who could fill that office worthily. it is easy enough to find one for the united states army. i believe that he had prayers in his camp morning and evening, nevertheless. he was a man of spartan habits, and at sixty was scrupulous about his diet at your table, excusing himself by saying that he must eat sparingly and fare hard, as became a soldier, or one who was fitting himself for difficult enterprises, a life of exposure. a man of rare common sense and directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principlesthat was what distinguished him. not yielding to a whim or transient impulse, but carrying out the purpose of a life. i noticed that he did not overstate anything, but spoke within bounds. i remember, particularly, how, in his speech here, he referred to what his family had suffered in kansas, without ever giving the least vent to his pent-up fire. it was a volcano with an ordinary chimney-flue. also referring to the deeds of certain border ruffians, he said, rapidly paring away his speech, like an experienced soldier, keeping a reserve of force and meaning, "they had a perfect right to be hung." he was not in the least a rhetorician, was not talking to buncombe or his constituents anywhere, had no need to invent anything but to tell the simple truth, and communicate his own resolution; therefore he appeared incomparably strong, and eloquence in congress and elsewhere seemed to me at a discount. it was like the speeches of cromwell compared with those of an ordinary king. as for his tact and prudence, i will merely say, that at a time when scarcely a man from the free states was able to reach kansas by any direct route, at least without having his arms taken from him, he, carrying what imperfect guns and other weapons he could collect, openly and slowly drove an ox-cart through missouri, apparently in the capacity of a surveyor, with his surveying compass exposed in it, and so passed unsuspected, and had ample opportunity to learn the designs of the enemy. for some time after his arrival he still followed the same profession. when, for instance, he saw a knot of the ruffians on the prairie, discussing, of course, the single topic which then occupied their minds, he would, perhaps, take his compass and one of his sons, and proceed to run an imaginary line right through the very spot on which that conclave had assembled, and when he came up to them, he would naturally pause and have some talk with them, learning their news, and, at last, all their plans perfectly; and having thus completed his real survey he would resume his imaginary one, and run on his line till he was out of sight. when i expressed surprise that he could live in kansas at all, with a price set upon his head, and so large a number, including the authorities, exasperated against him, he accounted for it by saying, "it is perfectly well understood that i will not be taken." much of the time for some years he has had to skulk in swamps, suffering from poverty, and from sickness which was the consequence of exposure, befriended only by indians and a few whites. but though it might be known that he was lurking in a particular swamp, his foes commonly did not care to go in after him. he could even come out into a town where there were more border ruffians than free state men, and transact some business, without delaying long, and yet not be molested; for, said he, "no little handful of men were willing to undertake it, and a large body could not be got together in season." as for his recent failure, we do not know the facts about it. it was evidently far from being a wild and desperate attempt. his enemy mr. vallandigham is compelled to say that "it was among the best planned and executed conspiracies that ever failed." not to mention his other successes, was it a failure, or did it show a want of good management, to deliver from bondage a dozen human beings, and walk off with them by broad daylight, for weeks if not months, at a leisurely pace, through one state after another, for half the length of the north, conspicuous to all parties, with a price set upon his head, going into a court-room on his way and telling what he had done, thus convincing missouri that it was not profitable to try to hold slaves in his neighborhood?and this, not because the government menials were lenient, but because they were afraid of him. yet he did not attribute his success, foolishly, to "his star," or to any magic. he said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a causea kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. when the time came, few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defence of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in this world. but to make haste to his last act, and its effects. the newspapers seem to ignore, or perhaps are really ignorant, of the fact that there are at least as many as two or three individuals to a town throughout the north who think much as the present speaker does about him and his enterprise. i do not hesitate to say that they are an important and growing party. we aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in. perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. why do they still dodge the truth? they are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they did not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the united states would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. they at most only criticise the tacties. though we wear no crape, the thought of that man's position and probable fate is spoiling many a man's day here at the north for other thinking. if any one who has seen him here can pursue successfully any other train of thought, i do not know what he is made of. if there is any such who gets his usual allowance of sleep, i will warrant him to fatten easily under any circumstances which do not touch his body or purse. i put a piece of paper and a pencil under my pillow, and when i could not sleep i wrote in the dark. on the whole, my respect for my fellow-men, except as one may outweigh a million, is not being increased these days. i have noticed the cold-blooded way in which newspaper writers and men generally speak of this event, as if an ordinary malefactor, though one of unusual "pluck"as the governor of virginia is reported to have said, using the language of the cockpit, "the gamest man be ever saw"had been caught, and were about to be hung. he was not dreaming of his foes when the governor thought he looked so brave. it turns what sweetness i have to gall, to hear, or hear of, the remarks of some of my neighbors. when we heard at first that he was dead, one of my townsmen observed that "he died as the fool dieth"; which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living. others, craven-hearted, said disparagingly, that "he threw his life away," because he resisted the government. which way have they thrown their lives, pray?such as would praise a man for attacking singly an ordinary band of thieves or murderers. i hear another ask, yankee-like, "what will he gain by it?" as if he expected to fill his pockets by this enterprise. such a one has no idea of gain but in this worldly sense. if it does not lead to a 'surprise' party, if he does not get a new pair of boots, or a vote of thanks, it must be a failure. "but he won't gain anything by it." well, no, i don't suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year round; but then he stands a chance to save a considerable part of his soul-and such a soul!when you do not. no doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to. such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that, in the moral world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable, and does not depend on our watering and cultivating; that when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up. this is a seed of such force and vitality, that it does not ask our leave to germinate. the momentary charge at balaklava, in obedience to a blundering command, proving what a perfect machine the soldier is, has, properly enough, been celebrated by a poet laureate; but the steady, and for the most part successful, charge of this man, for some years, against the legions of slavery, in obedience to an infinitely higher command, is as much more memorable than that as an intelligent and conscientious man is superior to a machine. do you think that that will go unsung? "served him right""a dangerous man""he is undoubtedly insane." so they proceed to live their sane, and wise, and altogether admirable lives, reading their plutarch a little, but chiefly pausing at that feat of putnam, who was let down into a wolf's den; and in this wise they nourish themselves for brave and patriotic deeds some time or other. the tract society could afford to print that story of putnam. you might open the district schools with the reading of it, for there is nothing about slavery or the church in it; unless it occurs to the reader that some pastors are wolves in sheep's clothing. "the american board of commissioners for foreign missions," even, might dare to protest against that wolf. i have heard of boards, and of american boards, but it chances that i never heard of this particular lumber till lately. and yet i hear of northern men, and women, and children, by families, buying a "life-membership" in such societies as these. a life-membership in the grave! you can get buried cheaper than that. our foes are in our midst and all about us. there is hardly a house but is divided against itself, for our foe is the all but universal woodenness of both head and heart, the want of vitality in man, which is the effect of our vice; and hence are begotten fear, superstition, bigotry, persecution, and slavery of all kinds. we are mere figure-heads upon a bulk, with livers in the place of hearts. the curse is the worship of idols, which at length changes the worshipper into a stone image himself; and the new englander is just as much an idolater as the hindoo. this man was an exception, for he did not set up even a political graven image between him and his god. a church that can never have done with excommunicating christ while it exists! away with your broad and flat churches, and your narrow and tall churches! take a step forward, and invent a new style of out-houses. invent a salt that will save you, and defend our nostrils. the modern christian is a man who has consented to say all the prayers in the liturgy, provided you will let him go straight to bed and sleep quietly afterward. all his prayers begin with "now i lay me down to sleep," and he is forever looking forward to the time when he shall go to his "long rest." he has consented to perform certain old-established charities, too, after a fashion, but he does not wish to hear of any new-fangled ones; he doesn't wish to have any supplementary articles added to the contract, to fit it to the present time. he shows the whites of his eyes on the sabbath, and the blacks all the rest of the week. the evil is not merely a stagnation of blood, but a stagnation of spirit. many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves. we dream of foreign countries, of other times and races of men, placing them at a distance in history or space; but let some significant event like the present occur in our midst, and we discover, often, this distance and this strangeness between us and our nearest neighbors. they are our austrias, and chinas, and south sea islands. our crowded society becomes well spaced all at once, clean and handsome to the eyea city of magnificent distances. we discover why it was that we never got beyond compliments and surfaces with them before; we become aware of as many versts between us and them as there are between a wandering tartar and a chinese town. the thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the market-place. impassable seas suddenly find their level between us, or dumb steppes stretch themselves out there. it is the difference of constitution, of intelligence, and faith, and not streams and mountains, that make the true and impassable boundaries between individuals and between states. none but the like-minded can come plenipotentiary to our court. i read all the newspapers i could get within a week after this event, and i do not remember in them a single expression of sympathy for these men. i have since seen one noble statement, in a boston paper, not editorial. some voluminous sheets decided not to print the full report of brown's words to the exclusion of other matter. it was as if a publisher should reject the manuscript of the new testament, and print wilson's last speech. the same journal which contained this pregnant news was chiefly filled, in parallel columns, with the reports of the political conventions that were being held. but the descent to them was too steep. they should have been spared this contrastbeen printed in an extra, at least. to turn from the voices and deeds of earnest men to the cackling of politicial conventions! office-seekers and speech-makers, who do not so much as lay an honest egg, but wear their breasts bare upon an egg of chalk! their great game is the game of straws, or rather that universal aboriginal game of the platter, at which the indians cried hub, bub! exclude the reports of religious and political conventions, and publish the words of a living man. but i object not so much to what they have omitted as to what they have inserted. even the liberator called it "a misguided, wild, and apparently insane-effort." as for the herd of newspapers and magazines, i do not chance to know an editor in the country who will deliberately print anything which he knows will ultimately and permanently reduce the number of his subscribers. they do not believe that it would be expedient. how then can they print truth? if we do not say pleasant things, they argue, nobody will attend to us. and so they do like some travelling auctioneers, who sing an obscene song, in order to draw a crowd around them. republican editors, obliged to get their sentences ready for the morning edition, and accustomed to look at everything by the twilight of politics, express no admiration, nor true sorrow even, but call these men "deluded fanatics""mistaken men""insane," or "crazed." it suggests what a sane set of editors we are blessed with, not "mistaken men"; who know very well on which side their bread is buttered, at least. a man does a brave and humane deed, and at once, on all sides, we hear people and parties declaring, "i didn't do it, nor countenance him to do it, in any conceivable way. it can't be fairly inferred from my past career." i, for one, am not interested to hear you define your position. i don't know that i ever was or ever shall be. i think it is mere egotism, or impertinent at this time. ye needn't take so much pains to wash your skirts of him. no intelligent man will ever be convinced that he was any creature of yours. he went and came, as he himself informs us, "under the auspices of john brown and nobody else." the republican party does not perceive how many his failure will make to vote more correctly than they would have them. they have counted the votes of pennsylvania & co., but they have not correctly counted captain brown's vote. he has taken the wind out of their sailsthe little wind they hadand they may as well lie to and repair. what though he did not belong to your clique! though you may not approve of his method or his principles, recognize his magnanimity. would you not like to claim kindredship with him in that, though in no other thing he is like, or likely, to you? do you think that you would lose your reputation so? what you lost at the spile, you would gain at the bung. if they do not mean all this, then they do not speak the truth, and say what they mean. they are simply at their old tricks still. "it was always conceded to him," says one who calls him crazy, "that he was a conscientious man, very modest in his demeanor, apparently inoffensive, until the subject of slavery was introduced, when he would exhibit a feeling of indignation unparalleled." the slave-ship is on her way, crowded with its dying victims; new cargoes are being added in mid-ocean; a small crew of slaveholders, countenanced by a large body of passengers, is smothering four millions under the hatches, and yet the politician asserts that the only proper way by which deliverance is to be obtained is by "the quiet diffusion of the sentiments of humanity," without any "outbreak." as if the sentiments of humanity were ever found unaccompanied by its deeds, and you could disperse them, all finished to order, the pure article, as easily as water with a watering-pot, and so lay the dust. what is that that i hear cast overboard? the bodies of the dead that have found deliverance. that is the way we are "diffusing" humanity, and its sentiments with it. prominent and influential editors, accustomed to deal with politicians, men of an infinitely lower grade, say, in their ignorance, that he acted "on the principle of revenge." they do not know the man. they must enlarge themselves to conceive of him. i have no doubt that the time will come when they will begin to see him as he was. they have got to conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle, and not a politician or an indian; of a man who did not wait till he was personally interfered with or thwarted in some harmless business before he gave his life to the cause of the oppressed. if walker may be considered the representative of the south, i wish i could say that brown was the representative of the north. he was a superior man. he did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. he did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. for once we are lifted out of the trivialness and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood. no man in america has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. in that sense he was the most american of us all. he needed no babbling lawyer, making false issues, to defend him. he was more than a match for all the judges that american voters, or office-holders of whatever grade, can create. he could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist. when a man stands up serenely against the condemnation and vengeance of mankind, rising above them literally by a whole bodyeven though he were of late the vilest murderer, who has settled that matter with himselfthe spectacle is a sublime onedidn't ye know it, ye liberators, ye tribunes, ye republicans?and we become criminal in comparison. do yourselves the honor to recognize him. he needs none of your respect. as for the democratic journals, they are not human enough to affect me at all. i do not feel indignation at anything they may say. i am aware that i anticipate a littlethat he was still, at the last accounts, alive in the hands of his foes; but that being the case, i have all along found myself thinking and speaking of him as physically dead. i do not believe in erecting statues to those who still live in our hearts, whose bones have not yet crumbled in the earth around us, but i would rather see the statue of captain brown in the massachusetts state-house yard than that of any other man whom i know. i rejoice that i live in this age, that i am his contemporary. what a contrast, when we turn to that political party which is so anxiously shuffling him and his plot out of its way, and looking around for some available slaveholder, perhaps, to be its candidate, at least for one who will execute the fugitive slave law, and all those other unjust laws which he took up arms to annul! insane! a father and six sons, and one son-in-law, and several more men besidesas many at least as twelve disciplesall struck with insanity at once; while the same tyrant holds with a firmer gripe than ever his four millions of slaves, and a thousand sane editors, his abettors, are saving their country and their bacon! just as insane were his efforts in kansas. ask the tyrant who is his most dangerous foe, the sane man or the insane? do the thousands who know him best, who have rejoiced at his deeds in kansas, and have afforded him material aid there, think him insane? such a use of this word is a mere trope with most who persist in using it, and i have no doubt that many of the rest have already in silence retracted their words. read his admirable answers to mason and others. how they are dwarfed and defeated by the contrast! on the one side, half-brutish, half-timid questioning; on the other, truth, clear as lightning, crashing into their obscene temples. they are made to stand with pilate, and gessler, and the inquisition. how ineffectual their speech and action! and what a void their silence! they are but helpless tools in this great work. it was no human power that gathered them about this preacher. what have massachusetts and the north sent a few sane representatives to congress for, of late years?to declare with effect what kind of sentiments? all their speeches put together and boiled downand probably they themselves will confess itdo not match for manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual remarks of crazy john brown on the floor of the harper's ferry engine-housethat man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not to represent you there. no, he was not our representative in any sense. he was too fair a specimen of a man to represent the like of us. who, then, were his constituents? if you read his words understandingly you will find out. in his case there is no idle eloquence, no made, nor maiden speech, no compliments to the oppressor. truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. he could afford to lose his sharp's rifles, while he retained his faculty of speecha sharp's rifle of infinitely surer and longer range. and the new york herald reports the conversation verbatim! it does not know of what undying words it is made the vehicle. i have no respect for the penetration of any man who can read the report of that conversation and still call the principal in it insane. it has the ring of a saner sanity than an ordinary discipline and habits of life, than an ordinary organization, secure. take any sentence of it"any questions that i can honorably answer, i will; not otherwise. so far as i am myself concerned, i have told everything truthfully. i value my word, sir." the few who talk about his vindictive spirit, while they really admire his heroism, have no test by which to detect a noble man, no amalgam to combine with his pure gold. they mix their own dross with it. it is a relief to turn from these slanders to the testimony of his more truthful, but frightened jailers and hangmen. governor wise speaks far more justly and appreciatingly of him than any northern editor, or politician, or public personage, that i chance to have heard from. i know that you can afford to hear him again on this subject. he says: "they are themselves mistaken who take him to be a madman.... he is cool, collected, and indomitable, and it is but just to him to say that he was humane to his prisoners.... and he inspired me with great trust in his integrity as a man of truth. he is a fanatic, vain and garrulous" (i leave that part to mr. wise), "but firm, truthful, and intelligent. his men, too, who survive, are like him.... colonel washington says that he was the coolest and firmest man he ever saw in defying danger and death. with one son dead by his side, and another shot through, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand, and held his rifle with the other, and commanded his men with the utmost composure, encouraging them to be firm, and to sell their lives as dear as they could. of the three white prisoners, brown, stevens, and coppoc, it was hard to say which was most firm." almost the first northern men whom the slaveholder has learned to respect! the testimony of mr. vallandigham, though less valuable, is of the same purport, that "it is vain to underrate either the man or his conspiracy.... he is the farthest possible removed from the ordinary ruffian, fanatic, or madman." "all is quiet at harper's ferry," say the journals. what is the character of that calm which follows when the law and the slaveholder prevail? i regard this event as a touchstone designed to bring out, with glaring distinctness, the character of this government. we needed to be thus assisted to see it by the light of history. it needed to see itself. when a government puts forth its strength on the side of injustice, as ours to maintain slavery and kill the liberators of the slave, it reveals itself a merely brute force, or worse, a demoniacal force. it is the head of the plug-uglies. it is more manifest than ever that tyranny rules. i see this government to be effectually allied with france and austria in oppressing mankind. there sits a tyrant holding fettered four millions of slaves; here comes their heroic liberator. this most hypocritical and diabolical government looks up from its seat on the gasping four millions, and inquires with an assumption of innocence: "what do you assault me for? am i not an honest man? cease agitation on this subject, or i will make a slave of you, too, or else hang you." we talk about a representative government; but what a monster of a government is that where the noblest faculties of the mind, and the whole heart, are not represented! a semihuman tiger or ox, stalking over the earth, with its heart taken out and the top of its brain shot away. heroes have fought well on their stumps when their legs were shot off, but i never heard of any good done by such a government as that. the only government that i recognizeand it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its armyis that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice. what shall we think of a government to which all the truly brave and just men in the land are enemies, standing between it and those whom it oppresses? a government that pretends to be christian and crucifies a million christs every day! treason! where does such treason take its rise? i cannot help thinking of you as you deserve, ye governments. can you dry up the fountains of thought? high treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man. when you have caught and hung all these human rebels, you have accomplished nothing but your own guilt, for you have not struck at the fountain-head. you presume to contend with a foe against whom west point cadets and rifled cannon point not. can all the art of the cannon-founder tempt matter to turn against its maker? is the form in which the founder thinks he casts it more essential than the constitution of it and of himself? the united states have a coffle of four millions of slaves. they are determined to keep them in this condition; and massachusetts is one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape. such are not all the inhabitants of massachusetts, but such are they who rule and are obeyed here. it was massachusetts, as well as virginia, that put down this insurrection at harper's ferry. she sent the marines there, and she will have to pay the penalty of her sin. suppose that there is a society in this state that out of its own purse and magnanimity saves all the fugitive slaves that run to us, and protects our colored fellow-citizens, and leaves the other work to the government, so called. is not that government fast losing its occupation, and becoming contemptible to mankind? if private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services. of course, that is but the shadow of a government whose existence necessitates a vigilant committee. what should we think of the oriental cadi even, behind whom worked in secret a vigilant committee? but such is the character of our northern states generally; each has its vigilant committee. and, to a certain extent, these crazy governments recognize and accept this relation. they say, virtually, "we'll be glad to work for you on these terms, only don't make a noise about it." and thus the government, its salary being insured, withdraws into the back shop, taking the constitution with it, and bestows most of its labor on repairing that. when i hear it at work sometimes, as i go by, it reminds me, at best, of those farmers who in winter contrive to turn a penny by following the coopering business. and what kind of spirit is their barrel made to hold? they speculate in stocks, and bore holes in mountains, but they are not competent to lay out even a decent highway. the only free road, the underground railroad, is owned and managed by the vigilant committee. they have tunnelled under the whole breadth of the land. such a government is losing its power and respectability as surely as water runs out of a leaky vessel, and is held by one that can contain it. i hear many condemn these men because they were so few. when were the good and the brave ever in a majority? would you have had him wait till that time came?till you and i came over to him? the very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. his company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, culled out of many thousands, if not millions; apparently a man of principle, of rare courage, and devoted humanity; ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the benefit of his fellow-man. it may be doubted if there were as many more their equals in these respects in all the countryi speak of his followers onlyfor their leader, no doubt, scoured the land far and wide, seeking to swell his troop. these alone were ready to step between the oppressor and the oppressed. surely they were the very best men you could select to be hung. that was the greatest compliment which this country could pay them. they were ripe for her gallows. she has tried a long time, she has hung a good many, but never found the right one before. when i think of him, and his six sons, and his son-in-law, not to enumerate the others, enlisted for this fight, proceeding coolly, reverently, humanely to work, for months if not years, sleeping and waking upon it, summering and wintering the thought, without expecting any reward but a good conscience, while almost all america stood ranked on the other sidei say again that it affects me as a sublime spectacle. if he had had any journal advocating "his cause," any organ, as the phrase is, monotonously and wearisomely playing the same old tune, and then passing round the hat, it would have been fatal to his efficiency. if he had acted in any way so as to be let alone by the government, he might have been suspected. it was the fact that the tyrant must give place to him, or he to the tyrant, that distinguished him from all the reformers of the day that i know. it was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. i agree with him. they who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others. such will be more shocked by his life than by his death. i shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. i speak for the slave when i say that i prefer the philanthropy of captain brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me. at any rate, i do not think it is quite sane for one to spend his whole life in talking or writing about this matter, unless he is continuously inspired, and i have not done so. a man may have other affairs to attend to. i do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but i can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. we preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. look at the policeman's billy and handcuffs! look at the jail! look at the gallows! look at the chaplain of the regiment! we are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. so we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. i know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of sharp's rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. i think that for once the sharp's rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause. the tools were in the hands of one who could use them. the same indignation that is said to have cleared the temple once will clear it again. the question is not about the weapon, but the spirit in which you use it. no man has appeared in america, as yet, who loved his fellow-man so well, and treated him so tenderly. he lived for him. he took up his life and he laid it down for him. what sort of violence is that which is encouraged, not by soldiers, but by peaceable citizens, not so much by laymen as by ministers of the gospel, not so much by the fighting sects as by the quakers, and not so much by quaker men as by quaker women? this event advertises me that there is such a fact as deaththe possibility of a man's dying. it seems as if no man had ever died in america before; for in order to die you must first have lived. i don't believe in the hearses, and palls, and funerals that they have had. there was no death in the case, because there had been no life; they merely rotted or sloughed off, pretty much as they had rotted or sloughed along. no temple's veil was rent, only a hole dug somewhere. let the dead bury their dead. the best of them fairly ran down like a clock. franklinwashingtonthey were let off without dying; they were merely missing one day. i hear a good many pretend that they are going to die; or that they have died, for aught that i know. nonsense! i'll defy them to do it. they haven't got life enough in them. they'll deliquesce like fungi, and keep a hundred eulogists mopping the spot where they left off. only half a dozen or so have died since the world began. do you think that you are going to die, sir? no! there's no hope of you. you haven't got your lesson yet. you've got to stay after school. we make a needless ado about capital punishmenttaking lives, when there is no life to take. memento mori! we don't understand that sublime sentence which some worthy got sculptured on his gravestone once. we've interpreted it in a grovelling and snivelling sense; we've wholly forgotten how to die. but be sure you do die nevertheless. do your work, and finish it. if you know how to begin, you will know when to end. these men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live. if this man's acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words that do. it is the best news that america has ever heard. it has already quickened the feeble pulse of the north, and infused more and more generous blood into her veins and heart than any number of years of what is called commercial and political prosperity could. how many a man who was lately contemplating suicide has now something to live for! one writer says that brown's peculiar monomania made him to be "dreaded by the missourians as a supernatural being." sure enough, a hero in the midst of us cowards is always so dreaded. he is just that thing. he shows himself superior to nature. he has a spark of divinity in him. "unless above himself he can erect himself, how poor a thing is man!" newspaper editors argue also that it is a proof of his insanity that he thought he was appointed to do this work which he didthat he did not suspect himself for a moment! they talk as if it were impossible that a man could be "divinely appointed" in these days to do any work whatever; as if vows and religion were out of date as connected with any man's daily work; as if the agent to abolish slavery could only be somebody appointed by the president, or by some political party. they talk as if a man's death were a failure, and his continued life, be it of whatever character, were a success. when i reflect to what a cause this man devoted himself, and how religiously, and then reflect to what cause his judges and all who condemn him so angrily and fluently devote themselves, i see that they are as far apart as the heavens and earth are asunder. the amount of it is, our "leading men" are a harmless kind of folk, and they know well enough that they were not divinely appointed, but elected by the votes of their party. who is it whose safety requires that captain brown be hung? is it indispensable to any northern man? is there no resource but to cast this man also to the minotaur? if you do not wish it, say so distinctly. while these things are being done, beauty stands veiled and music is a screeching lie. think of himof his rare qualities!such a man as it takes ages to make, and ages to understand; no mock hero, nor the representative of any party. a man such as the sun may not rise upon again in this benighted land. to whose making went the costliest material, the finest adamant; sent to be the redeemer of those in captivity; and the only use to which you can put him is to hang him at the end of a rope! you who pretend to care for christ crucified, consider what you are about to do to him who offered himself to be the saviour of four millions of men. any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. the murderer always knows that he is justly punished; but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution. is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are not good? is there any necessity for a man's being a tool to perform a deed of which his better nature disapproves? is it the intention of law-makers that good men shall be hung ever? are judges to interpret the law according to the letter, and not the spirit? what right have you to enter into a compact with yourself that you will do thus or so, against the light within you? is it for you to make up your mindto form any resolution whateverand not accept the convictions that are forced upon you, and which ever pass your understanding? i do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not. let lawyers decide trivial cases. business men may arrange that among themselves. if they were the interpreters of the everlasting laws which rightfully bind man, that would be another thing. a counterfeiting law-factory, standing half in a slave land and half in a free! what kind of laws for free men can you expect from that? i am here to plead his cause with you. i plead not for his life, but for his characterhis immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. some eighteen hundred years ago christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, captain brown was hung. these are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. he is not old brown any longer; he is an angel of light. i see now that it was necessary that the bravest and humanest man in all the country should be hung. perhaps he saw it himself. i almost fear that i may yet hear of his deliverance, doubting if a prolonged life, if any life, can do as much good as his death. "misguided!" "garrulous!" "insane!" "vindictive!" so ye write in your easy-chairs, and thus he wounded responds from the floor of the armory, clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of nature is: "no man sent me here; it was my own prompting and that of my maker. i acknowledge no master in human form." and in what a sweet and noble strain he proceeds, addressing his captors, who stand over him: "i think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong against god and humanity, and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you, so far as to free those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage." and, referring to his movement: "it is, in my opinion, the greatest service a man can render to god." "i pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them; that is why i am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit. it is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are as good as you, and as precious in the sight of god." you don't know your testament when you see it. "i want you to understand that i respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of colored people, oppressed by the slave power, just as much as i do those of the most wealthy and powerful." "i wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all you people at the south, prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question, that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. the sooner you are prepared the better. you may dispose of me very easily. i am nearly disposed of now; but this question is still to be settledthis negro question, i mean; the end of that is not yet." i foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the landing of the pilgrims and the declaration of independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. we shall then be at liberty to weep for captain brown. then, and not till then, we will take our revenge. the end . 1854 slavery in massachusetts by henry david thoreau i lately attended a meeting of the citizens of concord, expecting, as one among many, to speak on the subject of slavery in massachusetts; but i was surprised and disappointed to find that what had called my townsmen together was the destiny of nebraska, and not of massachusetts, and that what i had to say would be entirely out of order. i had thought that the house was on fire, and not the prairie; but though several of the citizens of massachusetts are now in prison for attempting to rescue a slave from her own clutches, not one of the speakers at that meeting expressed regret for it, not one even referred to it. it was only the disposition of some wild lands a thousand miles off which appeared to concern them. the inhabitants of concord are not prepared to stand by one of their own bridges, but talk only of taking up a position on the highlands beyond the yellowstone river. our buttricks and davises and hosmers are retreating thither, and i fear that they will leave no lexington common between them and the enemy. there is not one slave in nebraska; there are perhaps a million slaves in massachusetts. they who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts. their measures are half measures and makeshifts merely. they put off the day of settlement indefinitely, and meanwhile the debt accumulates. though the fugitive slave law had not been the subject of discussion on that occasion, it was at length faintly resolved by my townsmen, at an adjourned meeting, as i learn, that the compromise compact of 1820 having been repudiated by one of the parties, "therefore,... the fugitive slave law of 1850 must be repealed." but this is not the reason why an iniquitous law should be repealed. the fact which the politician faces is merely that there is less honor among thieves than was supposed, and not the fact that they are thieves. as i had no opportunity to express my thoughts at that meeting, will you allow me to do so here? again it happens that the boston court-house is full of armed men, holding prisoner and trying a man, to find out if he is not really a slave. does any one think that justice or god awaits mr. loring's decision? for him to sit there deciding still, when this question is already decided from eternity to eternity, and the unlettered slave himself and the multitude around have long since heard and assented to the decision, is simply to make himself ridiculous. we may be tempted to ask from whom he received his commission, and who he is that received it; what novel statutes he obeys, and what precedents are to him of authority. such an arbiter's very existence is an impertinence. we do not ask him to make up his mind, but to make up his pack. i listen to hear the voice of a governor, commander-in-chief of the forces of massachusetts. i hear only the creaking of crickets and the hum of insects which now fill the summer air. the governor's exploit is to review the troops on muster days. i have seen him on horseback, with his hat off, listening to a chaplain's prayer. it chances that that is all i have ever seen of a governor. i think that i could manage to get along without one. if he is not of the least use to prevent my being kidnapped, pray of what important use is he likely to be to me? when freedom is most endangered, he dwells in the deepest obscurity. a distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. i would recommend to him the profession of a governor. three years ago, also, when the sims tragedy was acted, i said to myself, there is such an officer, if not such a man, as the governor of massachusettswhat has he been about the last fortnight? has he had as much as he could do to keep on the fence during this moral earthquake? it seemed to me that no keener satire could have been aimed at, no more cutting insult have been offered to that man, than just what happenedthe absence of all inquiry after him in that crisis. the worst and the most i chance to know of him is that he did not improve that opportunity to make himself known, and worthily known. he could at least have resigned himself into fame. it appeared to be forgotten that there was such a man or such an office. yet no doubt he was endeavoring to fill the gubernatorial chair all the while. he was no governor of mine. he did not govern me. but at last, in the present case, the governor was heard from. after he and the united states government had perfectly succeeded in robbing a poor innocent black man of his liberty for life, and, as far as they could, of his creator's likeness in his breast, he made a speech to his accomplices, at a congratulatory supper! i have read a recent law of this state, making it penal for any officer of the "commonwealth" to "detain or aid in the... detention," anywhere within its limits, "of any person, for the reason that he is claimed as a fugitive slave." also, it was a matter of notoriety that a writ of replevin to take the fugitive out of the custody of the united states marshal could not be served for want of sufficient force to aid the officer. i had thought that the governor was, in some sense, the executive officer of the state; that it was his business, as a governor, to see that the laws of the state were executed; while, as a man, he took care that he did not, by so doing, break the laws of humanity; but when there is any special important use for him, he is useless, or worse than useless, and permits the laws of the state to go unexecuted. perhaps i do not know what are the duties of a governor; but if to be a governor requires to subject one's self to so much ignominy without remedy, if it is to put a restraint upon my manhood, i shall take care never to be governor of massachusetts. i have not read far in the statutes of this commonwealth. it is not profitable reading. they do not always say what is true; and they do not always mean what they say. what i am concerned to know is, that that man's influence and authority were on the side of the slaveholder, and not of the slaveof the guilty, and not of the innocentof injustice, and not of justice. i never saw him of whom i speak; indeed, i did not know that he was governor until this event occurred. i heard of him and anthony burns at the same time, and thus, undoubtedly, most will hear of him. so far am i from being governed by him. i do not mean that it was anything to his discredit that i had not heard of him, only that i heard what i did. the worst i shall say of him is, that he proved no better than the majority of his constituents would be likely to prove. in my opinion, be was not equal to the occasion. the whole military force of the state is at the service of a mr. suttle, a slaveholder from virginia, to enable him to catch a man whom he calls his property; but not a soldier is offered to save a citizen of massachusetts from being kidnapped! is this what all these soldiers, all this training, have been for these seventy-nine years past? have they been trained merely to rob mexico and carry back fugitive slaves to their masters? these very nights i heard the sound of a drum in our streets. there were men training still; and for what? i could with an effort pardon the cockerels of concord for crowing still, for they, perchance, had not been beaten that morning; but i could not excuse this rub-a-dub of the "trainers." the slave was carried back by exactly such as these; i.e., by the soldier, of whom the best you can say in this connection is that he is a fool made conspicuous by a painted coat. three years ago, also, just a week after the authorities of boston assembled to carry back a perfectly innocent man, and one whom they knew to be innocent, into slavery, the inhabitants of concord caused the bells to be rung and the cannons to be fired, to celebrate their libertyand the courage and love of liberty of their ancestors who fought at the bridge. as if those three millions had fought for the right to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery three million others. nowadays, men wear a fool's-cap, and call it a liberty-cap. i do not know but there are some who, if they were tied to a whipping-post, and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring the bells and fire the cannons to celebrate their liberty. so some of my townsmen took the liberty to ring and fire. that was the extent of their freedom; and when the sound of the bells died away, their liberty died away also; when the powder was all expended, their liberty went off with the smoke. the joke could be no broader if the inmates of the prisons were to subscribe for all the powder to be used in such salutes, and hire the jailers to do the firing and ringing for them, while they enjoyed it through the grating. this is what i thought about my neighbors. every humane and intelligent inhabitant of concord, when he or she heard those bells and those cannons, thought not with pride of the events of the 19th of april, 1775, but with shame of the events of the 12th of april, 1851. but now we have half buried that old shame under a new one. massachusetts sat waiting mr. loring's decision, as if it could in any way affect her own criminality. her crime, the most conspicuous and fatal crime of all, was permitting him to be the umpire in such a case. it was really the trial of massachusetts. every moment that she hesitated to set this man free, every moment that she now hesitates to atone for her crime, she is convicted. the commissioner on her case is god; not edward g. god, but simply god. i wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. a government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world. much has been said about american slavery, but i think that we do not even yet realize what slavery is. if i were seriously to propose to congress to make mankind into sausages, i have no doubt that most of the members would smile at my proposition, and if any believed me to be in earnest, they would think that i proposed something much worse than congress had ever done. but if any of them will tell me that to make a man into a sausage would be much worsewould be any worsethan to make him into a slavethan it was to enact the fugitive slave lawi will accuse him of foolishness, of intellectual incapacity, of making a distinction without a difference. the one is just as sensible a proposition as the other. i hear a good deal said about trampling this law under foot. why, one need not go out of his way to do that. this law rises not to the level of the head or the reason; its natural habitat is in the dirt. it was born and bred, and has its life, only in the dust and mire, on a level with the feet; and he who walks with freedom, and does not with hindoo mercy avoid treading on every venomous reptile, will inevitably tread on it, and so trample it under footand webster, its maker, with it, like the dirtbug and its ball. recent events will be valuable as a criticism on the administration of justice in our midst, or, rather, as showing what are the true resources of justice in any community. it has come to this, that the friends of liberty, the friends of the slave, have shuddered when they have understood that his fate was left to the legal tribunals of the country to be decided. free men have no faith that justice will be awarded in such a case. the judge may decide this way or that; it is a kind of accident, at best. it is evident that he is not a competent authority in so important a case. it is no time, then, to be judging according to his precedents, but to establish a precedent for the future. i would much rather trust to the sentiment of the people. in their vote you would get something of some value, at least, however small; but in the other case, only the trammeled judgment of an individual, of no significance, be it which way it might. it is to some extent fatal to the courts, when the people are compelled to go behind them. i do not wish to believe that the courts were made for fair weather, and for very civil cases merely; but think of leaving it to any court in the land to decide whether more than three millions of people, in this case a sixth part of a nation, have a right to be freemen or not! but it has been left to the courts of justice, so calledto the supreme court of the landand, as you all know, recognizing no authority but the constitution, it has decided that the three millions are and shall continue to be slaves. such judges as these are merely the inspectors of a pick-lock and murderer's tools, to tell him whether they are in working order or not, and there they think that their responsibility ends. there was a prior case on the docket, which they, as judges appointed by god, had no right to skip; which having been justly settled, they would have been saved from this humiliation. it was the case of the murderer himself. the law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. they are the lovers of law and order who observe the law when the government breaks it. among human beings, the judge whose words seal the fate of a man furthest into eternity is not he who merely pronounces the verdict of the law, but he, whoever he may be, who, from a love of truth, and unprejudiced by any custom or enactment of men, utters a true opinion or sentence concerning him. he it is that sentences him. whoever can discern truth has received his commission from a higher source than the chiefest justice in the world who can discern only law. he finds himself constituted judge of the judge. strange that it should be necessary to state such simple truths! i am more and more convinced that, with reference to any public question, it is more important to know what the country thinks of it than what the city thinks. the city does not think much. on any moral question, i would rather have the opinion of boxboro' than of boston and new york put together. when the former speaks, i feel as if somebody had spoken, as if humanity was yet, and a reasonable being had asserted its rightsas if some unprejudiced men among the country's hills had at length turned their attention to the subject, and by a few sensible words redeemed the reputation of the race. when, in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town-meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing the land, that, i think, is the true congress, and the most respectable one that is ever assembled in the united states. it is evident that there are, in this commonwealth at least, two parties, becoming more and more distinctthe party of the city, and the party of the country. i know that the country is mean enough, but i am glad to believe that there is a slight difference in her favor. but as yet she has few, if any organs, through which to express herself. the editorials which she reads, like the news, come from the seaboard. let us, the inhabitants of the country, cultivate self-respect. let us not send to the city for aught more essential than our broadcloths and groceries; or, if we read the opinions of the city, let us entertain opinions of our own. among measures to be adopted, i would suggest to make as earnest and vigorous an assault on the press as has already been made, and with effect, on the church. the church has much improved within a few years; but the press is, almost without exception, corrupt. i believe that in this country the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than the church did in its worst period. we are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. we do not care for the bible, but we do care for the newspaper. at any meeting of politicianslike that at concord the other evening, for instancehow impertinent it would be to quote from the bible! how pertinent to quote from a newspaper or from the constitution! the newspaper is a bible which we read every morning and every afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. it is a bible which every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table and counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are continually dispersing. it is, in short, the only book which america has printed and which america reads. so wide is its influence. the editor is a preacher whom you voluntarily support. your tax is commonly one cent daily, and it costs nothing for pew hire. but how many of these preachers preach the truth? i repeat the testimony of many an intelligent foreigner, as well as my own convictions, when i say, that probably no country was ever rubled by so mean a class of tyrants as, with a few noble exceptions, are the editors of the periodical press in this country. and as they live and rule only by their servility, and appealing to the worse, and not the better, nature of man, the people who read them are in the condition of the dog that returns to his vomit. the liberator and the commonwealth were the only papers in boston, as far as i know, which made themselves heard in condemnation of the cowardice and meanness of the authorities of that city, as exhibited in '51. the other journals, almost without exception, by their manner of referring to and speaking of the fugitive slave law, and the carrying back of the slave sims, insulted the common sense of the country, at least. and, for the most part, they did this, one would say, because they thought so to secure the approbation of their patrons, not being aware that a sounder sentiment prevailed to any extent in the heart of the commonwealth. i am told that some of them have improved of late; but they are still eminently time-serving. such is the character they have won. but, thank fortune, this preacher can be even more easily reached by the weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest. the free men of new england have only to refrain from purchasing and reading these sheets, have only to withhold their cents, to kill a score of them at once. one whom i respect told me that he purchased mitchell's citizen in the cars, and then throw it out the window. but would not his contempt have been more fatally expressed if he had not bought it? are they americans? are they new englanders? are they inhabitants of lexington and concord and framingham, who read and support the boston post, mail, journal, advertiser, courier, and times? are these the flags of our union? i am not a newspaper reader, and may omit to name the worst. could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime? i do not know whether the boston herald is still in existence, but i remember to have seen it about the streets when sims was carried off. did it not act its part well-serve its master faithfully! how could it have gone lower on its belly? how can a man stoop lower than he is low? do more than put his extremities in the place of the head he has? than make his head his lower extremity? when i have taken up this paper with my cuffs turned up, i have heard the gurgling of the sewer through every column. i have felt that i was handling a paper picked out of the public gutters, a leaf from the gospel of the gambling-house, the groggery, and the brothel, harmonizing with the gospel of the merchants' exchange. the majority of the men of the north, and of the south and east and west, are not men of principle. if they vote, they do not send men to congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty, whilei might here insert all that slavery implies and isit is the mismanagement of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them. do what you will, o government, with my wife and children, my mother and brother, my father and sister, i will obey your commands to the letter. it will indeed grieve me if you hurt them, if you deliver them to overseers to be hunted by bounds or to be whipped to death; but, nevertheless, i will peaceably pursue my chosen calling on this fair earth, until perchance, one day, when i have put on mourning for them dead, i shall have persuaded you to relent. such is the attitude, such are the words of massachusetts. rather than do thus, i need not say what match i would touch, what system endeavor to blow up; but as i love my life, i would side with the light, and let the dark earth roll from under me, calling my mother and my brother to follow. i would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and americans only at a late and convenient hour. no matter how valuable law may be to protect your property, even to keep soul and body together, if it do not keep you and humanity together. i am sorry to say that i doubt if there is a judge in massachusetts who is prepared to resign his office, and get his living innocently, whenever it is required of him to pass sentence under a law which is merely contrary to the law of god. i am compelled to see that they put themselves, or rather are by character, in this respect, exactly on a level with the marine who discharges his musket in any direction he is ordered to. they are just as much tools, and as little men. certainly, they are not the more to be respected, because their master enslaves their understandings and consciences, instead of their bodies. the judges and lawyerssimply as such, i meanand all men of expediency, try this case by a very low and incompetent standard. they consider, not whether the fugitive slave law is right, but whether it is what they call constitutional. is virtue constitutional, or vice? is equity constitutional, or iniquity? in important moral and vital questions, like this, it is just as impertinent to ask whether a law is constitutional or not, as to ask whether it is profitable or not. they persist in being the servants of the worst of men, and not the servants of humanity. the question is, not whether you or your grandfather, seventy years ago, did not enter into an agreement to serve the devil, and that service is not accordingly now due; but whether you will not now, for once and at last, serve godin spite of your own past recreancy, or that of your ancestorby obeying that eternal and only just constitution, which he, and not any jefferson or adams, has written in your being. the amount of it is, if the majority vote the devil to be god, the minority will live and behave accordinglyand obey the successful candidate, trusting that, some time or other, by some speaker's casting-vote, perhaps, they may reinstate god. this is the highest principle i can get out or invent for my neighbors. these men act as if they believed that they could safely slide down a hill a little wayor a good wayand would surely come to a place, by and by, where they could begin to slide up again. this is expediency, or choosing that course which offers the slightest obstacles to the feet, that is, a downhill one. but there is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of "expediency." there is no such thing as sliding up hill. in morals the only sliders are backsliders. thus we steadily worship mammon, both school and state and church, and on the seventh day curse god with a tintamar from one end of the union to the other. will mankind never learn that policy is not moralitythat it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidatewho is invariably the deviland what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? what is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probitywho recognize a higher law than the constitution, or the decision of the majority. the fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the pollsthe worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning. what should concern massachusetts is not the nebraska bill, nor the fugitive slave bill, but her own slaveholding and servility. let the state dissolve her union with the slaveholder. she may wriggle and hesitate, and ask leave to read the constitution once more; but she can find no respectable law or precedent which sanctions the continuance of such a union for an instant. let each inhabitant of the state dissolve his union with her, as long as she delays to do her duty. the events of the past month teach me to distrust fame. i see that she does not finely discriminate, but coarsely hurrahs. she considers not the simple heroism of an action, but only as it is connected with its apparent consequences. she praises till she is hoarse the easy exploit of the boston tea party, but will be comparatively silent about the braver and more disinterestedly heroic attack on the boston court-house, simply because it was unsuccessful! covered with disgrace, the state has sat down coolly to try for their lives and liberties the men who attempted to do its duty for it. and this is called justice! they who have shown that they can behave particularly well may perchance be put under bonds for their good behavior. they whom truth requires at present to plead guilty are, of all the inhabitants of the state, preeminently innocent. while the governor, and the mayor, and countless officers of the commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned. only they are guiltless who commit the crime of contempt of such a court. it behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters. my sympathies in this case are wholly with the accused, and wholly against their accusers and judges. justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant. the judge still sits grinding at his organ, but it yields no music, and we hear only the sound of the handle. he believes that all the music resides in the handle, and the crowd toss him their coppers the same as before. do you suppose that that massachusetts which is now doing these thingswhich hesitates to crown these men, some of whose lawyers, and even judges, perchance, may be driven to take refuge in some poor quibble, that they may not wholly outrage their instinctive sense of justicedo you suppose that she is anything but base and servile? that she is the champion of liberty? show me a free state, and a court truly of justice, and i will fight for them, if need be; but show me massachusetts, and i refuse her my allegiance, and express contempt for her courts. the effect of a good government is to make life more valuableof a bad one, to make it less valuable. we can afford that railroad and all merely material stock should lose some of its value, for that only compels us to live more simply and economically; but suppose that the value of life itself should be diminished! how can we make a less demand on man and nature, how live more economically in respect to virtue and all noble qualities, than we do? i have lived for the last monthand i think that every man in massachusetts capable of the sentiment of patriotism must have had a similar experiencewith the sense of having suffered a vast and indefinite loss. i did not know at first what ailed me. at last it occurred to me that what i had lost was a country. i had never respected the government near to which i lived, but i had foolishly thought that i might manage to live here, minding my private affairs, and forget it. for my part, my old and worthiest pursuits have lost i cannot say how much of their attraction, and i feel that my investment in life here is worth many per cent less since massachusetts last deliberately sent back an innocent man, anthony burns, to slavery. i dwelt before, perhaps, in the illusion that my life passed somewhere only between heaven and hell, but now i cannot persuade myself that i do not dwell wholly within hell. the site of that political organization called massachusetts is to me morally covered with volcanic scoriae and cinders, such as milton describes in the infernal regions. if there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, i feel curious to see it. life itself being worth less, all things with it, which minister to it, are worth less. suppose you have a small library, with pictures to adorn the wallsa garden laid out aroundand contemplate scientific and literary pursuits and discover all at once that your villa, with all its contents is located in hell, and that the justice of the peace has a cloven foot and a forked taildo not these things suddenly lose their value in your eyes? i feel that, to some extent, the state has fatally interfered with my lawful business. it has not only interrupted me in my passage through court street on errands of trade, but it has interrupted me and every man on his onward and upward path, on which he had trusted soon to leave court street far behind. what right had it to remind me of court street? i have found that hollow which even i had relied on for solid. i am surprised to see men going about their business as if nothing had happened. i say to myself, "unfortunates! they have not heard the news." i am surprised that the man whom i just met on horseback should be so earnest to overtake his newly bought cows running awaysince all property is insecure, and if they do not run away again, they may be taken away from him when he gets them. fool! does he not know that his seed-corn is worth less this yearthat all beneficent harvests fail as you approach the empire of hell? no prudent man will build a stone house under these circumstances, or engage in any peaceful enterprise which it requires a long time to accomplish. art is as long as ever, but life is more interrupted and less available for a man's proper pursuits. it is not an era of repose. we have used up all our inherited freedom. if we would save our lives, we must fight for them. i walk toward one of our ponds; but what signifies the beauty of nature when men are base? we walk to lakes to see our serenity reflected in them; when we are not serene, we go not to them. who can be serene in a country where both the rulers and the ruled are without principle? the remembrance of my country spoils my walk. my thoughts are murder to the state, and involuntarily go plotting against her. but it chanced the other day that i scented a white water-lily, and a season i had waited for had arrived. it is the emblem of purity. it bursts up so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent, as if to show us what purity and sweetness reside in, and can be extracted from, the slime and muck of earth. i think i have plucked the first one that has opened for a mile. what confirmation of our hopes is in the fragrance of this flower! i shall not so soon despair of the world for it, notwithstanding slavery, and the cowardice and want of principle of northern men. it suggests what kind of laws have prevailed longest and widest, and still prevail, and that the time may come when man's deeds will smell as sweet. such is the odor which the plant emits. if nature can compound this fragrance still annually, i shall believe her still young and full of vigor, her integrity and genius unimpaired, and that there is virtue even in man, too, who is fitted to perceive and love it. it reminds me that nature has been partner to no missouri compromise. i scent no compromise in the fragrance of the water-lily. it is not a nymphaea douglasii. in it, the sweet, and pure, and innocent are wholly sundered from the obscene and baleful. i do not scent in this the time-serving irresolution of a massachusetts governor, nor of a boston mayor. so behave that the odor of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that when we behold or scent a flower, we may not be reminded how inconsistent your deeds are with it; for all odor is but one form of advertisement of a moral quality, and if fair actions had not been performed, the lily would not smell sweet. the foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal. slavery and servility have produced no sweet-scented flower annually, to charm the senses of men, for they have no real life: they are merely a decaying and a death, offensive to all healthy nostrils. we do not complain that they live, but that they do not get buried. let the living bury them: even they are good for manure. the end . venus and adonis 'vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus apollo pocula castalia plena ministret aqua.' to the right honorable henry wriothesly, earl of southampton, and baron of tichfield. right honorable, i know not how i shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden only, if your honour seem but pleased, i account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till i have honoured you with some graver labour. but if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, i shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. i leave it to your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart's content; which i wish may always answer your own wish and the world's hopeful expectation. your honour's in all duty, william shakespeare. even as the sun with purple-colour'd face had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn, rose-cheek'd adonis hied him to the chase; hunting he loved, but love he laugh'd to scorn; sick-thoughted venus makes amain unto him, and like a bold-faced suitor 'gins to woo him. 'thrice-fairer than myself,' thus she began, 'the field's chief flower, sweet above compare, stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man, more white and red than doves or roses are; nature that made thee, with herself at strife, saith that the world hath ending with thy life. 'vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed, and rein his proud head to the saddle-bow; if thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed a thousand honey secrets shalt thou know: here come and sit, where never serpent hisses, and being set, i'll smother thee with kisses; 'and yet not cloy thy lips with loathed satiety, but rather famish them amid their plenty, making them red and pale with fresh variety, ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty: a summer's day will seem an hour but short, being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.' with this she seizeth on his sweating palm, the precedent of pith and livelihood, and trembling in her passion, calls it balm, earth's sovereign salve to do a goddess good: being so enraged, desire doth lend her force courageously to pluck him from his horse. over one arm the lusty courser's rein, under her other was the tender boy, who blush'd and pouted in a dull disdain, with leaden appetite, unapt to toy; she red and hot as coals of glowing fire, he red for shame, but frosty in desire. the studded bridle on a ragged bough nimbly she fastens:--o, how quick is love!-the steed is stalled up, and even now to tie the rider she begins to prove: backward she push'd him, as she would be thrust, and govern'd him in strength, though not in lust. so soon was she along as he was down, each leaning on their elbows and their hips: now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown, and 'gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips; and kissing speaks, with lustful language broken, 'if thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.' he burns with bashful shame: she with her tears doth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks; then with her windy sighs and golden hairs to fan and blow them dry again she seeks: he saith she is immodest, blames her 'miss; what follows more she murders with a kiss. even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast, tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone, shaking her wings, devouring all in haste, till either gorge be stuff'd or prey be gone; even so she kissed his brow, his cheek, his chin, and where she ends she doth anew begin. forced to content, but never to obey, panting he lies and breatheth in her face; she feedeth on the steam as on a prey, and calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace; wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers, so they were dew'd with such distilling showers. look, how a bird lies tangled in a net, so fasten'd in her arms adonis lies; pure shame and awed resistance made him fret, which bred more beauty in his angry eyes: rain added to a river that is rank perforce will force it overflow the bank. still she entreats, and prettily entreats, for to a pretty ear she tunes her tale; still is he sullen, still he lours and frets, 'twixt crimson shame and anger ashy-pale: being red, she loves him best; and being white, her best is better'd with a more delight. look how he can, she cannot choose but love; and by her fair immortal hand she swears, from his soft bosom never to remove, till he take truce with her contending tears, which long have rain'd, making her cheeks all wet; and one sweet kiss shall pay this countless debt. upon this promise did he raise his chin, like a dive-dapper peering through a wave, who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in; so offers he to give what she did crave; but when her lips were ready for his pay, he winks, and turns his lips another way. never did passenger in summer's heat more thirst for drink than she for this good turn. her help she sees, but help she cannot get; she bathes in water, yet her fire must burn: 'o, pity,' 'gan she cry, 'flint-hearted boy! 'tis but a kiss i beg; why art thou coy? 'i have been woo'd, as i entreat thee now, even by the stern and direful god of war, whose sinewy neck in battle ne'er did bow, who conquers where he comes in every jar; yet hath he been my captive and my slave, and begg'd for that which thou unask'd shalt have. 'over my altars hath he hung his lance, his batter'd shield, his uncontrolled crest, and for my sake hath learn'd to sport and dance, to toy, to wanton, dally, smile and jest, scorning his churlish drum and ensign red, making my arms his field, his tent my bed. 'thus he that overruled i oversway'd, leading him prisoner in a red-rose chain: strong-tempered steel his stronger strength obey'd, yet was he servile to my coy disdain. o, be not proud, nor brag not of thy might, for mastering her that foil'd the god of fight! 'touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine,-though mine be not so fair, yet are they red-the kiss shall be thine own as well as mine. what seest thou in the ground? hold up thy head: look in mine eye-balls, there thy beauty lies; then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes? 'art thou ashamed to kiss? then wink again, and i will wink; so shall the day seem night; love keeps his revels where they are but twain; be bold to play, our sport is not in sight: these blue-vein'd violets whereon we lean never can blab, nor know not what we mean. 'the tender spring upon thy tempting lip shows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted: make use of time, let not advantage slip; beauty within itself should not be wasted: fair flowers that are not gather'd in their prime rot and consume themselves in little time. 'were i hard-favour'd, foul, or wrinkled-old, ill-nurtured, crooked, churlish, harsh in voice, o'erworn, despised, rheumatic and cold, thick-sighted, barren, lean and lacking juice, then mightst thou pause, for then i were not for thee but having no defects, why dost abhor me? 'thou canst not see one wrinkle in my brow; mine eyes are gray and bright and quick in turning: my beauty as the spring doth yearly grow, my flesh is soft and plump, my marrow burning; my smooth moist hand, were it with thy hand felt, would in thy palm dissolve, or seem to melt. 'bid me discourse, i will enchant thine ear, or, like a fairy, trip upon the green, or, like a nymph, with long dishevell'd hair, dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen: love is a spirit all compact of fire, not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire. 'witness this primrose bank whereon i lie; these forceless flowers like sturdy trees support me; two strengthless doves will draw me through the sky, from morn till night, even where i list to sport me: is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be that thou shouldst think it heavy unto thee? 'is thine own heart to thine own face affected? can thy right hand seize love upon thy left? then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected, steal thine own freedom and complain on theft. narcissus so himself himself forsook, and died to kiss his shadow in the brook. 'torches are made to light, jewels to wear, dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use, herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear: things growing to themselves are growth's abuse: seeds spring from seeds and beauty breedeth beauty; thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty. 'upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed, unless the earth with thy increase be fed? by law of nature thou art bound to breed, that thine may live when thou thyself art dead; and so, in spite of death, thou dost survive, in that thy likeness still is left alive.' by this the love-sick queen began to sweat, for where they lay the shadow had forsook them, and titan, tired in the mid-day heat, with burning eye did hotly overlook them; wishing adonis had his team to guide, so he were like him and by venus' side. and now adonis, with a lazy spright, and with a heavy, dark, disliking eye, his louring brows o'erwhelming his fair sight, like misty vapours when they blot the sky, souring his cheeks cries 'fie, no more of love! the sun doth burn my face: i must remove.' 'ay me,' quoth venus, 'young, and so unkind? what bare excuses makest thou to be gone! i'll sigh celestial breath, whose gentle wind shall cool the heat of this descending sun: i'll make a shadow for thee of my hairs; if they burn too, i'll quench them with my tears. 'the sun that shines from heaven shines but warm, and, lo, i lie between that sun and thee: the heat i have from thence doth little harm, thine eye darts forth the fire that burneth me; and were i not immortal, life were done between this heavenly and earthly sun. 'art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel, nay, more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth? art thou a woman's son, and canst not feel what 'tis to love? how want of love tormenteth? o, had thy mother borne so hard a mind, she had not brought forth thee, but died unkind. 'what am i, that thou shouldst contemn me this? or what great danger dwells upon my suit? what were thy lips the worse for one poor kiss? speak, fair; but speak fair words, or else be mute: give me one kiss, i'll give it thee again, and one for interest, if thou wilt have twain. 'fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone, well-painted idol, image dun and dead, statue contenting but the eye alone, thing like a man, but of no woman bred! thou art no man, though of a man's complexion, for men will kiss even by their own direction.' this said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue, and swelling passion doth provoke a pause; red cheeks and fiery eyes blaze forth he wrong; being judge in love, she cannot right her cause: and now she weeps, and now she fain would speak, and now her sobs do her intendments break. sometimes she shakes her head and then his hand, now gazeth she on him, now on the ground; sometimes her arms infold him like a band: she would, he will not in her arms be bound; and when from thence he struggles to be gone, she locks her lily fingers one in one. 'fondling,' she saith, 'since i have hemm'd thee here within the circuit of this ivory pale, i'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer; feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale: graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry, stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie. within this limit is relief enough, sweet bottom-grass and high delightful plain, round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough, to shelter thee from tempest and from rain then be my deer, since i am such a park; no dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.' at this adonis smiles as in disdain, that in each cheek appears a pretty dimple: love made those hollows, if himself were slain, he might be buried in a tomb so simple; foreknowing well, if there he came to lie, why, there love lived and there he could not die. these lovely caves, these round enchanting pits, open'd their mouths to swallow venus' liking. being mad before, how doth she now for wits? struck dead at first, what needs a second striking? poor queen of love, in thine own law forlorn, to love a cheek that smiles at thee in scorn! now which way shall she turn? what shall she say? her words are done, her woes are more increasing; the time is spent, her object will away, and from her twining arms doth urge releasing. 'pity,' she cries, 'some favour, some remorse!' away he springs and hasteth to his horse. but, lo, from forth a copse that neighbors by, a breeding jennet, lusty, young and proud, adonis' trampling courser doth espy, and forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud: the strong-neck'd steed, being tied unto a tree, breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he. imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds, and now his woven girths he breaks asunder; the bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds, whose hollow womb resounds like heaven's thunder; the iron bit he crusheth 'tween his teeth, controlling what he was controlled with. his ears up-prick'd; his braided hanging mane upon his compass'd crest now stand on end; his nostrils drink the air, and forth again, as from a furnace, vapours doth he send: his eye, which scornfully glisters like fire, shows his hot courage and his high desire. sometime he trots, as if he told the steps, with gentle majesty and modest pride; anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps, as who should say 'lo, thus my strength is tried, and this i do to captivate the eye of the fair breeder that is standing by.' what recketh he his rider's angry stir, his flattering 'holla,' or his 'stand, i say'? what cares he now for curb or pricking spur? for rich caparisons or trapping gay? he sees his love, and nothing else he sees, for nothing else with his proud sight agrees. look, when a painter would surpass the life, in limning out a well-proportion'd steed, his art with nature's workmanship at strife, as if the dead the living should exceed; so did this horse excel a common one in shape, in courage, colour, pace and bone. round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide, high crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong, thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide: look, what a horse should have he did not lack, save a proud rider on so proud a back. sometime he scuds far off and there he stares; anon he starts at stirring of a feather; to bid the wind a base he now prepares, and whether he run or fly they know not whether; for through his mane and tail the high wind sings, fanning the hairs, who wave like feather'd wings. he looks upon his love and neighs unto her; she answers him as if she knew his mind: being proud, as females are, to see him woo her, she puts on outward strangeness, seems unkind, spurns at his love and scorns the heat he feels, beating his kind embracements with her heels. then, like a melancholy malcontent, he veils his tail that, like a falling plume, cool shadow to his melting buttock lent: he stamps and bites the poor flies in his fume. his love, perceiving how he is enraged, grew kinder, and his fury was assuaged. his testy master goeth about to take him; when, lo, the unback'd breeder, full of fear, jealous of catching, swiftly doth forsake him, with her the horse, and left adonis there: as they were mad, unto the wood they hie them, out-stripping crows that strive to over-fly them. all swoln with chafing, down adonis sits, banning his boisterous and unruly beast: and now the happy season once more fits, that love-sick love by pleading may be blest; for lovers say, the heart hath treble wrong when it is barr'd the aidance of the tongue. an oven that is stopp'd, or river stay'd, burneth more hotly, swelleth with more rage: so of concealed sorrow may be said; free vent of words love's fire doth assuage; but when the heart's attorney once is mute, the client breaks, as desperate in his suit. he sees her coming, and begins to glow, even as a dying coal revives with wind, and with his bonnet hides his angry brow; looks on the dull earth with disturbed mind, taking no notice that she is so nigh, for all askance he holds her in his eye. o, what a sight it was, wistly to view how she came stealing to the wayward boy! to note the fighting conflict of her hue, how white and red each other did destroy! but now her cheek was pale, and by and by it flash'd forth fire, as lightning from the sky. now was she just before him as he sat, and like a lowly lover down she kneels; with one fair hand she heaveth up his hat, her other tender hand his fair cheek feels: his tenderer cheek receives her soft hand's print, as apt as new-fall'n snow takes any dint. o, what a war of looks was then between them! her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing; his eyes saw her eyes as they had not seen them; her eyes woo'd still, his eyes disdain'd the wooing: and all this dumb play had his acts made plain with tears, which, chorus-like, her eyes did rain. full gently now she takes him by the hand, a lily prison'd in a gaol of snow, or ivory in an alabaster band; so white a friend engirts so white a foe: this beauteous combat, wilful and unwilling, show'd like two silver doves that sit a-billing. once more the engine of her thoughts began: 'o fairest mover on this mortal round, would thou wert as i am, and i a man, my heart all whole as thine, thy heart my wound; for one sweet look thy help i would assure thee, though nothing but my body's bane would cure thee! 'give me my hand,' saith he, 'why dost thou feel it?' 'give me my heart,' saith she, 'and thou shalt have it: o, give it me, lest thy hard heart do steel it, and being steel'd, soft sighs can never grave it: then love's deep groans i never shall regard, because adonis' heart hath made mine hard.' 'for shame,' he cries, 'let go, and let me go; my day's delight is past, my horse is gone, and 'tis your fault i am bereft him so: i pray you hence, and leave me here alone; for all my mind, my thought, my busy care, is how to get my palfrey from the mare.' thus she replies: 'thy palfrey, as he should, welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire: affection is a coal that must be cool'd; else, suffer'd, it will set the heart on fire: the sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none; therefore no marvel though thy horse be gone. 'how like a jade he stood, tied to the tree, servilely master'd with a leathern rein! but when he saw his love, his youth's fair fee, he held such petty bondage in disdain; throwing the base thong from his bending crest, enfranchising his mouth, his back, his breast. 'who sees his true-love in her naked bed, teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white, but, when his glutton eye so full hath fed, his other agents aim at like delight? who is so faint, that dare not be so bold to touch the fire, the weather being cold? 'let me excuse thy courser, gentle boy; and learn of him, i heartily beseech thee, to take advantage on presented joy; though i were dumb, yet his proceedings teach thee; o, learn to love; the lesson is but plain, and once made perfect, never lost again.' i know not love,' quoth he, 'nor will not know it, unless it be a boar, and then i chase it; 'tis much to borrow, and i will not owe it; my love to love is love but to disgrace it; for i have heard it is a life in death, that laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath. 'who wears a garment shapeless and unfinish'd? who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth? if springing things be any jot diminish'd, they wither in their prime, prove nothing worth: the colt that's back'd and burden'd being young loseth his pride and never waxeth strong. 'you hurt my hand with wringing; let us part, and leave this idle theme, this bootless chat: remove your siege from my unyielding heart; to love's alarms it will not ope the gate: dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flattery; for where a heart is hard they make no battery.' 'what! canst thou talk?' quoth she, 'hast thou a tongue? o, would thou hadst not, or i had no hearing! thy mermaid's voice hath done me double wrong; i had my load before, now press'd with bearing: melodious discord, heavenly tune harshsounding, ear's deep-sweet music, and heart's deep-sore wounding. 'had i no eyes but ears, my ears would love that inward beauty and invisible; or were i deaf, thy outward parts would move each part in me that were but sensible: though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see, yet should i be in love by touching thee. 'say, that the sense of feeling were bereft me, and that i could not see, nor hear, nor touch, and nothing but the very smell were left me, yet would my love to thee be still as much; for from the stillitory of thy face excelling comes breath perfumed that breedeth love by smelling. 'but, o, what banquet wert thou to the taste, being nurse and feeder of the other four! would they not wish the feast might ever last, and bid suspicion double-lock the door, lest jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest, should, by his stealing in, disturb the feast?' once more the ruby-colour'd portal open'd, which to his speech did honey passage yield; like a red morn, that ever yet betoken'd wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field, sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds, gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds. this ill presage advisedly she marketh: even as the wind is hush'd before it raineth, or as the wolf doth grin before he barketh, or as the berry breaks before it staineth, or like the deadly bullet of a gun, his meaning struck her ere his words begun. and at his look she flatly falleth down, for looks kill love and love by looks reviveth; a smile recures the wounding of a frown; but blessed bankrupt, that by love so thriveth! the silly boy, believing she is dead, claps her pale cheek, till clapping makes it red; and all amazed brake off his late intent, for sharply he did think to reprehend her, which cunning love did wittily prevent: fair fall the wit that can so well defend her! for on the grass she lies as she were slain, till his breath breatheth life in her again. he wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks, he bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard, he chafes her lips; a thousand ways he seeks to mend the hurt that his unkindness marr'd: he kisses her; and she, by her good will, will never rise, so he will kiss her still. the night of sorrow now is turn'd to day: her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth, like the fair sun, when in his fresh array he cheers the morn and all the earth relieveth; and as the bright sun glorifies the sky, so is her face illumined with her eye; whose beams upon his hairless face are fix'd, as if from thence they borrow'd all their shine. were never four such lamps together mix'd, had not his clouded with his brow's repine; but hers, which through the crystal tears gave light, shone like the moon in water seen by night. 'o, where am i?' quoth she, 'in earth or heaven, or in the ocean drench'd, or in the fire? what hour is this? or morn or weary even? do i delight to die, or life desire? but now i lived, and life was death's annoy; but now i died, and death was lively joy. 'o, thou didst kill me: kill me once again: thy eyes' shrewd tutor, that hard heart of thine, hath taught them scornful tricks and such disdain that they have murder'd this poor heart of mine; and these mine eyes, true leaders to their queen, but for thy piteous lips no more had seen. 'long may they kiss each other, for this cure! o, never let their crimson liveries wear! and as they last, their verdure still endure, to drive infection from the dangerous year! that the star-gazers, having writ on death, may say, the plague is banish'd by thy breath. 'pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted, what bargains may i make, still to be sealing? to sell myself i can be well contented, so thou wilt buy and pay and use good dealing; which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips set thy seal-manual on my wax-red lips. 'a thousand kisses buys my heart from me; and pay them at thy leisure, one by one. what is ten hundred touches unto thee? are they not quickly told and quickly gone? say, for non-payment that the debt should double, is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble? 'fair queen,' quoth he, 'if any love you owe me, measure my strangeness with my unripe years: before i know myself, seek not to know me; no fisher but the ungrown fry forbears: the mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast, or being early pluck'd is sour to taste. 'look, the world's comforter, with weary gait, his day's hot task hath ended in the west; the owl, night's herald, shrieks, ''tis very late;' the sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest, and coal-black clouds that shadow heaven's light do summon us to part and bid good night. 'now let me say 'good night,' and so say you; if you will say so, you shall have a kiss.' 'good night,' quoth she, and, ere he says 'adieu,' the honey fee of parting tender'd is: her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace; incorporate then they seem; face grows to face. till, breathless, he disjoin'd, and backward drew the heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth, whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew, whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drouth: he with her plenty press'd, she faint with dearth their lips together glued, fall to the earth. now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey, and glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth; her lips are conquerors, his lips obey, paying what ransom the insulter willeth; whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high, that she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry: and having felt the sweetness of the spoil, with blindfold fury she begins to forage; her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil, and careless lust stirs up a desperate courage, planting oblivion, beating reason back, forgetting shame's pure blush and honour's wrack. hot, faint, and weary, with her hard embracing, like a wild bird being tamed with too much handling, or as the fleet-foot roe that's tired with chasing, or like the froward infant still'd with dandling, he now obeys, and now no more resisteth, while she takes all she can, not all she listeth. what wax so frozen but dissolves with tempering, and yields at last to every light impression? things out of hope are compass'd oft with venturing, chiefly in love, whose leave exceeds commission: affection faints not like a pale-faced coward, but then woos best when most his choice is froward. when he did frown, o, had she then gave over, such nectar from his lips she had not suck'd. foul words and frowns must not repel a lover; what though the rose have prickles, yet 'tis pluck'd: were beauty under twenty locks kept fast, yet love breaks through and picks them all at last. for pity now she can no more detain him; the poor fool prays her that he may depart: she is resolved no longer to restrain him; bids him farewell, and look well to her heart, the which, by cupid's bow she doth protest, he carries thence incaged in his breast. 'sweet boy,' she says, 'this night i'll waste in sorrow, for my sick heart commands mine eyes to watch. tell me, love's master, shall we meet to-morrow? say, shall we? shall we? wilt thou make the match?' he tells her, no; to-morrow he intends to hunt the boar with certain of his friends. 'the boar!' quoth she; whereat a sudden pale, like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose, usurps her cheek; she trembles at his tale, and on his neck her yoking arms she throws: she sinketh down, still hanging by his neck, he on her belly falls, she on her back. now is she in the very lists of love, her champion mounted for the hot encounter: all is imaginary she doth prove, he will not manage her, although he mount her; that worse than tantalus' is her annoy, to clip elysium and to lack her joy. even as poor birds, deceived with painted grapes, do surfeit by the eye and pine the maw, even so she languisheth in her mishaps, as those poor birds that helpless berries saw. the warm effects which she in him finds missing she seeks to kindle with continual kissing. but all in vain; good queen, it will not be: she hath assay'd as much as may be proved; her pleading hath deserved a greater fee; she's love, she loves, and yet she is not loved. 'fie, fie,' he says, 'you crush me; let me go; you have no reason to withhold me so.' 'thou hadst been gone,' quoth she, 'sweet boy, ere this, but that thou told'st me thou wouldst hunt the boar. o, be advised! thou know'st not what it is with javelin's point a churlish swine to gore, whose tushes never sheathed he whetteth still, like to a mortal butcher bent to kill. 'on his bow-back he hath a battle set of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes; his eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret; his snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes; being moved, he strikes whate'er is in his way, and whom he strikes his cruel tushes slay. 'his brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm'd, are better proof than thy spear's point can enter; his short thick neck cannot be easily harm'd; being ireful, on the lion he will venture: the thorny brambles and embracing bushes, as fearful of him, part, through whom he rushes. 'alas, he nought esteems that face of thine, to which love's eyes pay tributary gazes; nor thy soft hands, sweet lips and crystal eyne, whose full perfection all the world amazes; but having thee at vantage,--wondrous dread!-would root these beauties as he roots the mead. 'o, let him keep his loathsome cabin still; beauty hath nought to do with such foul fiends: come not within his danger by thy will; they that thrive well take counsel of their friends. when thou didst name the boar, not to dissemble, i fear'd thy fortune, and my joints did tremble. 'didst thou not mark my face? was it not white? saw'st thou not signs of fear lurk in mine eye? grew i not faint? and fell i not downright? within my bosom, whereon thou dost lie, my boding heart pants, beats, and takes no rest, but, like an earthquake, shakes thee on my breast. 'for where love reigns, disturbing jealousy doth call himself affection's sentinel; gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny, and in a peaceful hour doth cry 'kill, kill!' distempering gentle love in his desire, as air and water do abate the fire. 'this sour informer, this bate-breeding spy, this canker that eats up love's tender spring, this carry-tale, dissentious jealousy, that sometime true news, sometime false doth bring, knocks at my heat and whispers in mine ear that if i love thee, i thy death should fear: 'and more than so, presenteth to mine eye the picture of an angry-chafing boar, under whose sharp fangs on his back doth lie an image like thyself, all stain'd with gore; whose blood upon the fresh flowers being shed doth make them droop with grief and hang the head. 'what should i do, seeing thee so indeed, that tremble at the imagination? the thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed, and fear doth teach it divination: i prophesy thy death, my living sorrow, if thou encounter with the boar to-morrow. 'but if thou needs wilt hunt, be ruled by me; uncouple at the timorous flying hare, or at the fox which lives by subtlety, or at the roe which no encounter dare: pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs, and on thy well-breath'd horse keep with thy hounds. 'and when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles how he outruns the wind and with what care he cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles: the many musets through the which he goes are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes. 'sometime he runs among a flock of sheep, to make the cunning hounds mistake their smell, and sometime where earth-delving conies keep, to stop the loud pursuers in their yell, and sometime sorteth with a herd of deer: danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear: 'for there his smell with others being mingled, the hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt, ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled with much ado the cold fault cleanly out; then do they spend their mouths: echo replies, as if another chase were in the skies. 'by this, poor wat, far off upon a hill, stands on his hinder legs with listening ear, to harken if his foes pursue him still: anon their loud alarums he doth hear; and now his grief may be compared well to one sore sick that hears the passing-bell. 'then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch turn, and return, indenting with the way; each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch, each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay: for misery is trodden on by many, and being low never relieved by any. 'lie quietly, and hear a little more; nay, do not struggle, for thou shalt not rise: to make thee hate the hunting of the boar, unlike myself thou hear'st me moralize, applying this to that, and so to so; for love can comment upon every woe. 'where did i leave?' 'no matter where,' quoth he, 'leave me, and then the story aptly ends: the night is spent.' 'why, what of that?' quoth she. 'i am,' quoth he, 'expected of my friends; and now 'tis dark, and going i shall fall.' 'in night,' quoth she, 'desire sees best of all 'but if thou fall, o, then imagine this, the earth, in love with thee, thy footing trips, and all is but to rob thee of a kiss. rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips make modest dian cloudy and forlorn, lest she should steal a kiss and die forsworn. 'now of this dark night i perceive the reason: cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine, till forging nature be condemn'd of treason, for stealing moulds from heaven that were divine; wherein she framed thee in high heaven's despite, to shame the sun by day and her by night. 'and therefore hath she bribed the destinies to cross the curious workmanship of nature, to mingle beauty with infirmities, and pure perfection with impure defeature, making it subject to the tyranny of mad mischances and much misery; 'as burning fevers, agues pale and faint, life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wood, the marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint disorder breeds by heating of the blood: surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damn'd despair, swear nature's death for framing thee so fair. 'and not the least of all these maladies but in one minute's fight brings beauty under: both favour, savour, hue and qualities, whereat the impartial gazer late did wonder, are on the sudden wasted, thaw'd and done, as mountain-snow melts with the midday sun. 'therefore, despite of fruitless chastity, love-lacking vestals and self-loving nuns, that on the earth would breed a scarcity and barren dearth of daughters and of sons, be prodigal: the lamp that burns by night dries up his oil to lend the world his light. 'what is thy body but a swallowing grave, seeming to bury that posterity which by the rights of time thou needs must have, if thou destroy them not in dark obscurity? if so, the world will hold thee in disdain, sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain. 'so in thyself thyself art made away; a mischief worse than civil home-bred strife, or theirs whose desperate hands themselves do slay, or butcher-sire that reaves his son of life. foul-cankering rust the hidden treasure frets, but gold that's put to use more gold begets.' 'nay, then,' quoth adon, 'you will fall again into your idle over-handled theme: the kiss i gave you is bestow'd in vain, and all in vain you strive against the stream; for, by this black-faced night, desire's foul nurse, your treatise makes me like you worse and worse. 'if love have lent you twenty thousand tongues, and every tongue more moving than your own, bewitching like the wanton mermaid's songs, yet from mine ear the tempting tune is blown for know, my heart stands armed in mine ear, and will not let a false sound enter there; 'lest the deceiving harmony should run into the quiet closure of my breast; and then my little heart were quite undone, in his bedchamber to be barr'd of rest. no, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan, but soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone. 'what have you urged that i cannot reprove? the path is smooth that leadeth on to danger: i hate not love, but your device in love, that lends embracements unto every stranger. you do it for increase: o strange excuse, when reason is the bawd to lust's abuse! 'call it not love, for love to heaven is fled, since sweating lust on earth usurp'd his name; under whose simple semblance he hath fed upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame; which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves, as caterpillars do the tender leaves. 'love comforteth like sunshine after rain, but lust's effect is tempest after sun; love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain, lust's winter comes ere summer half be done; love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies; love is all truth, lust full of forged lies. 'more i could tell, but more i dare not say; the text is old, the orator too green. therefore, in sadness, now i will away; my face is full of shame, my heart of teen: mine ears, that to your wanton talk attended, do burn themselves for having so offended.' with this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace, of those fair arms which bound him to her breast, and homeward through the dark laund runs apace; leaves love upon her back deeply distress'd. look, how a bright star shooteth from the sky, so glides he in the night from venus' eye. which after him she darts, as one on shore gazing upon a late-embarked friend, till the wild waves will have him seen no more, whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend: so did the merciless and pitchy night fold in the object that did feed her sight. whereat amazed, as one that unaware hath dropp'd a precious jewel in the flood, or stonish'd as night-wanderers often are, their light blown out in some mistrustful wood, even so confounded in the dark she lay, having lost the fair discovery of her way. and now she beats her heart, whereat it groans, that all the neighbour caves, as seeming troubled, make verbal repetition of her moans; passion on passion deeply is redoubled: 'ay me!' she cries, and twenty times 'woe, woe!' and twenty echoes twenty times cry so. she marking them begins a wailing note and sings extemporally a woeful ditty; how love makes young men thrall and old men dote; how love is wise in folly, foolish-witty: her heavy anthem still concludes in woe, and still the choir of echoes answer so. her song was tedious and outwore the night, for lovers' hours are long, though seeming short: if pleased themselves, others, they think, delight in such-like circumstance, with suchlike sport: their copious stories oftentimes begun end without audience and are never done. for who hath she to spend the night withal but idle sounds resembling parasites, like shrill-tongued tapsters answering every call, soothing the humour of fantastic wits? she says ''tis so:' they answer all ''tis so;' and would say after her, if she said 'no.' lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest, from his moist cabinet mounts up on high, and wakes the morning, from whose silver breast the sun ariseth in his majesty; who doth the world so gloriously behold that cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold. venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow: 'o thou clear god, and patron of all light, from whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow the beauteous influence that makes him bright, there lives a son that suck'd an earthly mother, may lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other.' this said, she hasteth to a myrtle grove, musing the morning is so much o'erworn, and yet she hears no tidings of her love: she hearkens for his hounds and for his horn: anon she hears them chant it lustily, and all in haste she coasteth to the cry. and as she runs, the bushes in the way some catch her by the neck, some kiss her face, some twine about her thigh to make her stay: she wildly breaketh from their strict embrace, like a milch doe, whose swelling dugs do ache, hasting to feed her fawn hid in some brake. by this, she hears the hounds are at a bay; whereat she starts, like one that spies an adder wreathed up in fatal folds just in his way, the fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder; even so the timorous yelping of the hounds appals her senses and her spirit confounds. for now she knows it is no gentle chase, but the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud, because the cry remaineth in one place, where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud: finding their enemy to be so curst, they all strain courtesy who shall cope him first. this dismal cry rings sadly in her ear, through which it enters to surprise her heart; who, overcome by doubt and bloodless fear, with cold-pale weakness numbs each feeling part: like soldiers, when their captain once doth yield, they basely fly and dare not stay the field. thus stands she in a trembling ecstasy; till, cheering up her senses all dismay'd, she tells them 'tis a causeless fantasy, and childish error, that they are afraid; bids them leave quaking, bids them fear no more:-and with that word she spied the hunted boar, whose frothy mouth, bepainted all with red, like milk and blood being mingled both together, a second fear through all her sinews spread, which madly hurries her she knows not whither: this way runs, and now she will no further, but back retires to rate the boar for murther. a thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways; she treads the path that she untreads again; her more than haste is mated with delays, like the proceedings of a drunken brain, full of respects, yet nought at all respecting; in hand with all things, nought at all effecting. here kennell'd in a brake she finds a hound, and asks the weary caitiff for his master, and there another licking of his wound, 'gainst venom'd sores the only sovereign plaster; and here she meets another sadly scowling, to whom she speaks, and he replies with howling. when he hath ceased his ill-resounding noise, another flap-mouth'd mourner, black and grim, against the welkin volleys out his voice; another and another answer him, clapping their proud tails to the ground below, shaking their scratch'd ears, bleeding as they go. look, how the world's poor people are amazed at apparitions, signs and prodigies, whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed, infusing them with dreadful prophecies; so she at these sad signs draws up her breath and sighing it again, exclaims on death. 'hard-favour'd tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, hateful divorce of love,'--thus chides she death,-'grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm, what dost thou mean to stifle beauty and to steal his breath, who when he lived, his breath and beauty set gloss on the rose, smell to the violet? 'if he be dead,--o no, it cannot be, seeing his beauty, thou shouldst strike at it:-o yes, it may; thou hast no eyes to see, but hatefully at random dost thou hit. thy mark is feeble age, but thy false dart mistakes that aim and cleaves an infant's heart. 'hadst thou but bid beware, then he had spoke, and, hearing him, thy power had lost his power. the destinies will curse thee for this stroke; they bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck'st a flower: love's golden arrow at him should have fled, and not death's ebon dart, to strike dead. 'dost thou drink tears, that thou provokest such weeping? what may a heavy groan advantage thee? why hast thou cast into eternal sleeping those eyes that taught all other eyes to see? now nature cares not for thy mortal vigour, since her best work is ruin'd with thy rigour.' here overcome, as one full of despair, she vail'd her eyelids, who, like sluices, stopt the crystal tide that from her two cheeks fair in the sweet channel of her bosom dropt; but through the flood-gates breaks the silver rain, and with his strong course opens them again. o, how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow! her eyes seen in the tears, tears in her eye; both crystals, where they view'd each other's sorrow, sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry; but like a stormy day, now wind, now rain, sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again. variable passions throng her constant woe, as striving who should best become her grief; all entertain'd, each passion labours so, that every present sorrow seemeth chief, but none is best: then join they all together, like many clouds consulting for foul weather. by this, far off she hears some huntsman hollo; a nurse's song ne'er pleased her babe so well: the dire imagination she did follow this sound of hope doth labour to expel; for now reviving joy bids her rejoice, and flatters her it is adonis' voice. whereat her tears began to turn their tide, being prison'd in her eye like pearls in glass; yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside, which her cheek melts, as scorning it should pass, to wash the foul face of the sluttish ground, who is but drunken when she seemeth drown'd. o hard-believing love, how strange it seems not to believe, and yet too credulous! thy weal and woe are both of them extremes; despair and hope makes thee ridiculous: the one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely, in likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly. now she unweaves the web that she hath wrought; adonis lives, and death is not to blame; it was not she that call'd him, all-to naught: now she adds honours to his hateful name; she clepes him king of graves and grave for kings, imperious supreme of all mortal things. 'no, no,' quoth she, 'sweet death, i did but jest; yet pardon me i felt a kind of fear when as i met the boar, that bloody beast, which knows no pity, but is still severe; then, gentle shadow,--truth i must confess,-i rail'd on thee, fearing my love's decease. ''tis not my fault: the boar provoked my tongue; be wreak'd on him, invisible commander; 'tis he, foul creature, that hath done thee wrong; i did but act, he's author of thy slander: grief hath two tongues, and never woman yet could rule them both without ten women's wit.' thus hoping that adonis is alive, her rash suspect she doth extenuate; and that his beauty may the better thrive, with death she humbly doth insinuate; tells him of trophies, statues, tombs, and stories his victories, his triumphs and his glories. 'o jove,' quoth she, 'how much a fool was i to be of such a weak and silly mind to wail his death who lives and must not die till mutual overthrow of mortal kind! for he being dead, with him is beauty slain, and, beauty dead, black chaos comes again. 'fie, fie, fond love, thou art so full of fear as one with treasure laden, hemm'd thieves; trifles, unwitnessed with eye or ear, thy coward heart with false bethinking grieves.' even at this word she hears a merry horn, whereat she leaps that was but late forlorn. as falcon to the lure, away she flies; the grass stoops not, she treads on it so light; and in her haste unfortunately spies the foul boar's conquest on her fair delight; which seen, her eyes, as murder'd with the view, like stars ashamed of day, themselves withdrew; or, as the snail, whose tender horns being hit, shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain, and there, all smother'd up, in shade doth sit, long after fearing to creep forth again; so, at his bloody view, her eyes are fled into the deep dark cabins of her head: where they resign their office and their light to the disposing of her troubled brain; who bids them still consort with ugly night, and never wound the heart with looks again; who like a king perplexed in his throne, by their suggestion gives a deadly groan, whereat each tributary subject quakes; as when the wind, imprison'd in the ground, struggling for passage, earth's foundation shakes, which with cold terror doth men's minds confound. this mutiny each part doth so surprise that from their dark beds once more leap her eyes; and, being open'd, threw unwilling light upon the wide wound that the boar had trench'd in his soft flank; whose wonted lily white with purple tears, that his wound wept, was drench'd: no flower was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf, or weed, but stole his blood and seem'd with him to bleed. this solemn sympathy poor venus noteth; over one shoulder doth she hang her head; dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth; she thinks he could not die, he is not dead: her voice is stopt, her joints forget to bow; her eyes are mad that they have wept til now. upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly, that her sight dazzling makes the wound seem three; and then she reprehends her mangling eye, that makes more gashes where no breach should be: his face seems twain, each several limb is doubled; for oft the eye mistakes, the brain being troubled. 'my tongue cannot express my grief for one, and yet,' quoth she, 'behold two adons dead! my sighs are blown away, my salt tears gone, mine eyes are turn'd to fire, my heart to lead: heavy heart's lead, melt at mine eyes' red fire! so shall i die by drops of hot desire. 'alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost! what face remains alive that's worth the viewing? whose tongue is music now? what canst thou boast of things long since, or any thing ensuing? the flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim; but true-sweet beauty lived and died with him. 'bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear! nor sun nor wind will ever strive to kiss you: having no fair to lose, you need not fear; the sun doth scorn you and the wind doth hiss you: but when adonis lived, sun and sharp air lurk'd like two thieves, to rob him of his fair: 'and therefore would he put his bonnet on, under whose brim the gaudy sun would peep; the wind would blow it off and, being gone, play with his locks: then would adonis weep; and straight, in pity of his tender years, they both would strive who first should dry his tears. 'to see his face the lion walk'd along behind some hedge, because he would not fear him; to recreate himself when he hath sung, the tiger would be tame and gently hear him; if he had spoke, the wolf would leave his prey and never fright the silly lamb that day. 'when he beheld his shadow in the brook, the fishes spread on it their golden gills; when he was by, the birds such pleasure took, that some would sing, some other in their bills would bring him mulberries and ripe-red cherries; he fed them with his sight, they him with berries. 'but this foul, grim, and urchin-snouted boar, whose downward eye still looketh for a grave, ne'er saw the beauteous livery that he wore; witness the entertainment that he gave: if he did see his face, why then i know he thought to kiss him, and hath kill'd him so. ''tis true, 'tis true; thus was adonis slain: he ran upon the boar with his sharp spear, who did not whet his teeth at him again, but by a kiss thought to persuade him there; and nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine sheathed unaware the tusk in his soft groin. 'had i been tooth'd like him, i must confess, with kissing him i should have kill'd him first; but he is dead, and never did he bless my youth with his; the more am i accurst.' with this, she falleth in the place she stood, and stains her face with his congealed blood. she looks upon his lips, and they are pale; she takes him by the hand, and that is cold; she whispers in his ears a heavy tale, as if they heard the woeful words she told; she lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes, where, lo, two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lies; two glasses, where herself herself beheld a thousand times, and now no more reflect; their virtue lost, wherein they late excell'd, and every beauty robb'd of his effect: 'wonder of time,' quoth she, 'this is my spite, that, thou being dead, the day should yet be light. 'since thou art dead, lo, here i prophesy: sorrow on love hereafter shall attend: it shall be waited on with jealousy, find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end, ne'er settled equally, but high or low, that all love's pleasure shall not match his woe. 'it shall be fickle, false and full of fraud, bud and be blasted in a breathing-while; the bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd with sweets that shall the truest sight beguile: the strongest body shall it make most weak, strike the wise dumb and teach the fool to speak. 'it shall be sparing and too full of riot, teaching decrepit age to tread the measures; the staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet, pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures; it shall be raging-mad and silly-mild, make the young old, the old become a child. 'it shall suspect where is no cause of fear; it shall not fear where it should most mistrust; it shall be merciful and too severe, and most deceiving when it seems most just; perverse it shall be where it shows most toward, put fear to valour, courage to the coward. 'it shall be cause of war and dire events, and set dissension 'twixt the son and sire; subject and servile to all discontents, as dry combustious matter is to fire: sith in his prime death doth my love destroy, they that love best their loves shall not enjoy.' by this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd was melted like a vapour from her sight, and in his blood that on the ground lay spill'd, a purple flower sprung up, chequer'd with white, resembling well his pale cheeks and the blood which in round drops upon their whiteness stood. she bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell, comparing it to her adonis' breath, and says, within her bosom it shall dwell, since he himself is reft from her by death: she crops the stalk, and in the breach appears green dropping sap, which she compares to tears. 'poor flower,' quoth she, 'this was thy fathers guise-sweet issue of a more sweet-smelling sire-for every little grief to wet his eyes: to grow unto himself was his desire, and so 'tis thine; but know, it is as good to wither in my breast as in his blood. 'here was thy father's bed, here in my breast; thou art the next of blood, and 'tis thy right: lo, in this hollow cradle take thy rest, my throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night: there shall not be one minute in an hour wherein i will not kiss my sweet love's flower.' thus weary of the world, away she hies, and yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aid their mistress mounted through the empty skies in her light chariot quickly is convey'd; holding their course to paphos, where their queen means to immure herself and not be seen. 1890 wind flowers by oscar wilde impression du matin the thames nocturne of blue and gold changed to a harmony in gray: a barge with ochre-colored hay dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold the yellow fog came creeping down the bridges, till the houses' walls seemed changed to shadows, and st. paul's loomed like a bubble o'er the town. then suddenly arose the clang of waking life; the streets were stirred with country waggons: and a bird flew to the glistening roofs and sang. but one pale woman all alone, the daylight kissing her wan hair, loitered beneath the gas lamp's flare, with lips of flame and heart of stone. magdalen walks the little white clouds are racing over the sky, and the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of march the daffodil breaks underfoot, and the tasselled larch sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by. a delicate odor is borne on the wings of the morning breeze, the odor of leaves, and of grass, and of newly upturned earth, the birds are singing for joy of the spring's glad birth, hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees, and all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of spring, and the rosebud breaks into pink on the climbing brier, and the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring. and the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green and the gloom of the wych-elm's hollow is lit with the iris sheen of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove. see! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there, breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew, and flashing a-down the river, a flame of blue! the kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air. athanasia to that gaunt house of art which lacks for naught of all the great things men have saved from time, the withered body of a girl was brought dead ere the world's glad youth had touched its prime, and seen by lonely arabs lying hid in the dim wound of some black pyramid. but when they had unloosed the linen band which swathed the egyptian's body,lo! was found closed in the wasted hollow of her hand a little seed, which sown in english ground did wondrous snow of starry blossoms bear, and spread rich odors through our springtide air. with such strange arts this flower did allure that all forgotten was the asphodel, and the brown bee, the lily's paramour, forsook the cup where he was wont to dwell, for not a thing of earth it seemed to be, but stolen from some heavenly arcady. in vain the sad narcissus, wan and white at its own beauty, hung across the stream, the purple dragon-fly had no delight with its gold-dust to make his wings a-gleam, ah! no delight the jasmine-bloom to kiss, or brush the rain-pearls from the eucharis. for love of it the passionate nightingale forgot the hills of thrace, the cruel king, and the pale dove no longer cared to sail through the wet woods at time of blossoming, but round this flower of egypt sought to float, with silvered wing and amethystine throat. while the hot sun blazed in his tower of blue a cooling wind crept from the land of snows, and the warm south with tender tears of dew drenched its white leaves when hesperos uprose amid those sea-green meadows of the sky on which the scarlet bars of sunset lie. but when o'er wastes of lily-haunted field the tired birds had stayed their amorous tune, and broad and glittering like an argent shield high in the sapphire heavens hung the moon, did no strange dream or evil memory make each tremulous petal of its blossoms shake? ah no! to this bright flower a thousand years seemed but the lingering of a summer's day, it never knew the tide of cankering fears which turn a boy's gold hair to withered gray, the dread desire of death it never knew, or how all folk that they were born must rue. for we to death with pipe and dancing go, nor would we pass the ivory gate again, as some sad river wearied of its flow through the dull plains, the haunts of common men, leaps lover-like into the terrible sea! and counts it gain to die so gloriously. we mar our lordly strength in barren strife with the world's legions led by clamorous care, it never feels decay but gathers life from the pure sunlight and the supreme air, we live beneath time's wasting sovereignty, it is the child of all eternity. serenade for music the western wind is blowing fair across the dark aegean sea, and at the secret marble stair my tyrian galley waits for thee. come down! the purple sail is spread, the watchman sleeps within the town. o leave thy lily-flowered bed, o lady mine come down, come down! she will not come, i know her well, of lover's vows she hath no care, and little good a man can tell of one so cruel and so fair. true love is but a woman's toy, they never know the lover's pain, and i who loved as loves a boy. must love in vain, must love in vain. o noble pilot tell me true is that the sheen of golden hair? or is it but the tangled dew that binds the passion-flowers there? good sailor come and tell me now is that my lady's lily hand? or is it but the gleaming prow, or is it but the silver sand? no! no! 'tis not the tangled dew, 'tis not the silver-fretted sand, it is my own dear lady true with golden hair and lily hand! o noble pilot steer for troy, good sailor ply the laboring oar, this is the queen of life and joy whom we must bear from grecian shore! the waning sky grows faint and blue, it wants an hour still of day, aboard! aboard! my gallant crew, o lady mine away! away! o noble pilot steer for troy, good sailor ply the laboring oar, o loved as only loves a boy! o loved for ever evermore! endymion for music the apple trees are hung with gold, and birds are loud in arcady, the sheep lie bleating in the fold, the wild goat runs across the wold, but yesterday his love he told, i know he will come back to me. o rising moon! o lady moon! be you my lover's sentinel, you cannot choose but know him well, for he is shod with purple shoon, you cannot choose but know my love, for he a shepherd's crook doth bear, and he is soft as any dove, and brown and curly is his hair. the turtle now has ceased to call upon her crimson-footed groom, the gray wolf prowls about the stall, the lily's singing seneschal sleeps in the lily-bell, and all the violet hills are lost in gloom. o risen moon! o holy moon! stand on the top of helice, and if my own true love you see, ah! if you see the purple shoon, the hazel crook, the lad's brown hair, the goat-skin wrapped about his arm, tell him that i am waiting where the rushlight glimmers in the farm. the falling dew is cold and chill, and no bird sings in arcady, the little fauns have left the hill, even the tired daffodil has closed its gilded doors, and still my lover comes not back to me. false moon! false moon! o waning moon! where is my own true lover gone, where are the lips vermilion, the shepherd's crook, the purple shoon? why spread that silver pavilion, why wear that veil of drifting mist? ah! thou hast young endymion, thou hast the lips that should be kissed! la bella donna del mia mente my limbs are wasted with a flame, my feet are sore with travelling, for calling on my lady's name my lips have now forgot to sing. o linnet in the wild-rose brake strain for my love thy melody, o lark sing louder for love's sake my gentle lady passeth by. she is too fair for any man to see or hold his heart's delight, fairer than queen or courtezan or moon-lit water in the night. her hair is bound with myrtle leaves, (green leaves upon her golden hair!) green grasses through the yellow sheaves of autumn corn are not more fair. her little lips, more made to kiss than to cry bitterly for pain, are tremulous as brook-water is, or roses after evening rain. her neck is like white melilote flushing for pleasure of the sun, the throbbing of the linnet's throat is not so sweet to look upon. as a pomegranate, cut in twain, white-seeded, is her crimson mouth, her cheeks are as the fading stain where the peach reddens to the south. o twining hands! o delicate white body made for love and pain! o house of love! o desolate pale flower beaten by the rain! chanson a ring of gold and a milk-white dove are goodly gifts for thee, and a hempen rope for your own love to hang upon a tree. for you a house of ivory (roses are white in the rose-bower)! a narrow bed for me to lie (white, o white is the hemlock flower)! myrtle and jessamine for you (o the red rose is fair to see)! for me the cypress and the rue (fairest of all is rosemary)! for you three lovers of your hand (green grass where a man lies dead)! for me three paces on the sand (plant lilies at my head)! the end . 1863 life without principle by henry david thoreau at a lyceum, not long since, i felt that the lecturer had chosen a theme too foreign to himself, and so failed to interest me as much as he might have done. he described things not in or near to his heart, but toward his extremities and superficies. there was, in this sense, no truly central or centralizing thought in the lecture. i would have had him deal with his privatest experience, as the poet does. the greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what i thought, and attended to my answer. i am surprised, as well as delighted, when this happens, it is such a rare use he would make of me, as if he were acquainted with the tool. commonly, if men want anything of me, it is only to know how many acres i make of their landsince i am a surveyoror, at most, what trivial news i have burdened myself with. they never will go to law for my meat; they prefer the shell. a man once came a considerable distance to ask me to lecture on slavery; but on conversing with him, i found that he and his clique expected seven eighths of the lecture to be theirs, and only one eighth mine; so i declined. i take it for granted, when i am invited to lecture anywherefor i have had a little experience in that businessthat there is a desire to hear what i think on some subject, though i may be the greatest fool in the countryand not that i should say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will assent to; and i resolve, accordingly, that i will give them a strong dose of myself. they have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and i am determined that they shall have me, though i bore them beyond all precedent. so now i would say something similar to you, my readers. since you are my readers, and i have not been much of a traveller, i will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as i can. as the time is short, i will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism. let us consider the way in which we spend our lives. this world is a place of business. what an infinite bustle! i am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. it interrupts my dreams. there is no sabbath. it would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. it is nothing but work, work, work. i cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. an irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that i was calculating my wages. if a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or seared out of his wits by the indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for business! i think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business. there is a coarse and boisterous money-making fellow in the outskirts of our town, who is going to build a bank-wall under the hill along the edge of his meadow. the powers have put this into his head to keep him out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend three weeks digging there with him. the result will be that he will perhaps get some more money to board, and leave for his heirs to spend foolishly. if i do this, most will commend me as an industrious and hard-working man; but if i choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler. nevertheless, as i do not need the police of meaningless labor to regulate me, and do not see anything absolutely praiseworthy in this fellow's undertaking any more than in many an enterprise of our own or foreign governments, however amusing it may be to him or them, i prefer to finish my education at a different school. if a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. as if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down! most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. but many are no more worthily employed now. for instance: just after sunrise, one summer morning, i noticed one of my neighbors walking beside his team, which was slowly drawing a heavy hewn stone swung under the axle, surrounded by an atmosphere of industryhis day's work begunhis brow commenced to sweata reproach to all sluggards and idlerspausing abreast the shoulders of his oxen, and half turning round with a flourish of his merciful whip, while they gained their length on him. and i thought, such is the labor which the american congress exists to protecthonest, manly toilhonest as the day is longthat makes his bread taste sweet, and keeps society sweetwhich all men respect and have consecrated; one of the sacred band, doing the needful but irksome drudgery. indeed, i felt a slight reproach, because i observed this from a window, and was not abroad and stirring about a similar business. the day went by, and at evening i passed the yard of another neighbor, who keeps many servants, and spends much money foolishly, while he adds nothing to the common stock, and there i saw the stone of the morning lying beside a whimsical structure intended to adorn this lord timothy dexter's premises, and the dignity forthwith departed from the teamster's labor, in my eyes. in my opinion, the sun was made to light worthier toil than this. i may add that his employer has since run off, in debt to a good part of the town, and, after passing through chancery, has settled somewhere else, there to become once more a patron of the arts. the ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. to have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. if the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. if you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. you are paid for being something less than a man. the state does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. he must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. as for my own business, even that kind of surveying which i could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. they would prefer that i should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. when i observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct. i once invented a rule for measuring cord-wood, and tried to introduce it in boston; but the measurer there told me that the sellers did not wish to have their wood measured correctlythat he was already too accurate for them, and therefore they commonly got their wood measured in charlestown before crossing the bridge. the aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it. it is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them off from their present pursuit. i see advertisements for active young men, as if activity were the whole of a young man's capital. yet i have been surprised when one has with confidence proposed to me, a grown man, to embark in some enterprise of his, as if i had absolutely nothing to do, my life having been a complete failure hitherto. what a doubtful compliment this to pay me! as if he had met me half-way across the ocean beating up against the wind, but bound nowhere, and proposed to me to go along with him! if i did, what do you think the underwriters would say? no, no! i am not without employment at this stage of the voyage. to tell the truth, i saw an advertisement for able-bodied seamen, when i was a boy, sauntering in my native port, and as soon as i came of age i embarked. the community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. you may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. an efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. the inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. one would suppose that they were rarely disappointed. perhaps i am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. i feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that i am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and i am not often reminded that they are a necessity. so far i am successful. but i foresee that if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. if i should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, i am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. i trust that i shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. i wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. there is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. all great enterprises are self-supporting. the poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. you must get your living by loving. but as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied. merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be born, but to be still-born, rather. to be supported by the charity of friends, or a government pensionprovided you continue to breatheby whatever fine synonyms you describe these relations, is to go into the almshouse. on sundays the poor debtor goes to church to take an account of stock, and finds, of course, that his outgoes have been greater than his income. in the catholic church, especially, they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think to start again. thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up. as for the comparative demand which men make on life, it is an important difference between two, that the one is satisfied with a level success, that his marks can all be hit by point-blank shots, but the other, however low and unsuccessful his life may be, constantly elevates his aim, though at a very slight angle to the horizon. i should much rather be the last manthough, as the orientals say, "greatness doth not approach him who is forever looking down; and all those who are looking high are growing poor." it is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living; how to make getting a living not merely holiest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then living is not. one would think, from looking at literature, that this question had never disturbed a solitary individual's musings. is it that men are too much disgusted with their experience to speak of it? the lesson of value which money teaches, which the author of the universe has taken so much pains to teach us, we are inclined to skip altogether. as for the means of living, it is wonderful how indifferent men of all classes are about it, even reformers, so calledwhether they inherit, or earn, or steal it. i think that society has done nothing for us in this respect, or at least has undone what she has done. cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off. the title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. how can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other men?if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle? does wisdom work in a tread-mill? or does she teach how to succeed by her example? is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life? is she merely the miller who grinds the finest logic? it is pertinent to ask if plato got his living in a better way or more successfully than his contemporariesor did he succumb to the difficulties of life like other men? did he seem to prevail over some of them merely by indifference, or by assuming grand airs? or find it easier to live, because his aunt remembered him in her will? the ways in which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real business of lifechiefly because they do not know, but partly because they do not mean, any better. the rush to california, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. that so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! and that is called enterprise! i know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living. the philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not worth the dust of a puffball. the hog that gets his living by rooting, stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company. if i could command the wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, i would not pay such a price for it. even mahomet knew that god did not make this world in jest. it makes god to be a moneyed gentleman who scatters a handful of pennies in order to see mankind scramble for them. the world's raffle! a subsistence in the domains of nature a thing to be raffled for! what a comment, what a satire, on our institutions! the conclusion will be, that mankind will hang itself upon a tree. and have all the precepts in all the bibles taught men only this? and is the last and most admirable invention of the human race only an improved muck-rake? is this the ground on which orientals and occidentals meet? did god direct us so to get our living, digging where we never plantedand he would, perchance, reward us with lumps of gold? god gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the same in god's coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like the former. it is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting that the world has seen. i did not know that mankind was suffering for want of old. i have seen a little of it. i know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. a grain of gold gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom. the gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler as his fellow in the saloons of san francisco. what difference does it make whether you shake dirt or shake dice? if you win, society is the loser. the gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations there may be. it is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold. so does the devil work hard. the way of transgressors may be hard in many respects. the humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same same thing with the wages of honest toil. but, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious. after reading howitt's account of the australian gold-diggings one evening, i had in my mind's eye, all night, the numerous valleys, with their streams, all cut up with foul pits, from ten to one hundred feet deep, and half a dozen feet across, as close as they can be dug, and partly filled with waterthe locality to which men furiously rush to probe for their fortunesuncertain where they shall break groundnot knowing but the gold is under their camp itselfsometimes digging one hundred and sixty feet before they strike the vein, or then missing it by a footturned into demons, and regardless of each others' rights, in their thirst for richeswhole valleys, for thirty miles, suddenly honeycombed by the pits of the miners, so that even hundreds are drowned in themstanding in water, and covered with mud and clay, they work night and day, dying of exposure and disease. having read this, and partly forgotten it, i was thinking, accidentally, of my own unsatisfactory life, doing as others do; and with that vision of the diggings still before me, i asked myself why i might not be washing some gold daily, though it were only the finest particleswhy i might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine. there is a ballarat, a bendigo for youwhat though it were a sulky-gully? at any rate, i might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which i could walk with love and reverence. wherever a man separates from the multitude, and goes his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinary travellers may see only a gap in the paling. his solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way of the two. men rush to california and australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. they go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful. is not our native soil auriferous? does not a stream from the golden mountains flow through our native valley? and has not this for more than geologic ages been bringing down the shining particles and forming the nuggets for us? yet, strange to tell, if a digger steal away, prospecting for this true gold, into the unexplored solitudes around us, there is no danger that any will dog his steps, and endeavor to supplant him. he may claim and undermine the whole valley even, both the cultivated and the uncultivated portions, his whole life long in peace, for no one will ever dispute his claim. they will not mind his cradles or his toms. he is not confined to a claim twelve feet square, as at ballarat, but may mine anywhere, and wash the whole wide world in his tom. howitt says of the man who found the great nugget which weighed twenty-eight pounds, at the bendigo diggings in australia: "he soon began to drink; got a horse, and rode all about, generally at full gallop, and, when he met people, called out to inquire if they knew who he was, and then kindly informed them that he was 'the bloody wretch that had found the nugget.' at last he rode full speed against a tree, and nearly knocked his brains out." i think, however, there was no danger of that, for he had already knocked his brains out against the nugget. howitt adds, "he is a hopelessly ruined man." but he is a type of the class. they are all fast men. hear some of the names of the places where they dig: "jackass flat""sheep's-head gully""murderer's bar," etc. is there no satire in these names? let them carry their ill-gotten wealth where they will, i am thinking it will still be "jackass flat," if not "murderer's bar," where they live. the last resource of our energy has been the robbing of graveyards on the isthmus of darien, an enterprise which appears to be but in its infancy; for, according to late accounts, an act has passed its second reading in the legislature of new granada, regulating this kind of mining; and a correspondent of the "tribune" writes: "in the dry season, when the weather will permit of the country being properly prospected, no doubt other rich guacas [that is, graveyards] will be found." to emigrants he says: "do not come before december; take the isthmus route in preference to the boca del toro one; bring no useless baggage, and do not cumber yourself with a tent; but a good pair of blankets will be necessary; a pick, shovel, and axe of good material will be almost all that is required": advice which might have been taken from the "burker's guide." and he concludes with this line in italics and small capitals: "if you are doing well at home, stay there," which may fairly be interpreted to mean, "if you are getting a good living by robbing graveyards at home, stay there." but why go to california for a text? she is the child of new england, bred at her own school and church. it is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. the prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men. most reverend seniors, the illuminati of the age, tell me, with a gracious, reminiscent smile, betwixt an aspiration and a shudder, not to be too tender about these thingsto lump all that, that is, make a lump of gold of it. the highest advice i have heard on these subjects was grovelling. the burden of it wasit is not worth your while to undertake to reform the world in this particular. do not ask how your bread is buttered; it will make you sick, if you doand the like. a man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread. if within the sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil's angels. as we grow old, we live more coarsely, we relax a little in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey our finest instincts. but we should be fastidious to the extreme of sanity, disregarding the gibes of those who are more unfortunate than ourselves. in our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. the spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. you have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it. why must we daub the heavens as well as the earth? it was an unfortunate discovery that dr. kane was a mason, and that sir john franklin was another. but it was a more cruel suggestion that possibly that was the reason why the former went in search of the latter. there is not a popular magazine in this country that would dare to print a child's thought on important subjects without comment. it must be submitted to the d.d.'s. i would it were the chickadee-dees. you come from attending the funeral of mankind to attend to a natural phenomenon. a little thought is sexton to all the world. i hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which they appear to hold stockthat is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things. they will continually thrust their own low roof, with its narrow skylight, between you and the sky, when it is the unobstructed heavens you would view. get out of the way with your cobwebs; wash your windows, i say! in some lyceums they tell me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. but how do i know what their religion is, and when i am near to or far from it? i have walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast of what religion i have experienced, and the audience never suspected what i was about. the lecture was as harmless as moonshine to them. whereas, if i had read to them the biography of the greatest scamps in history, they might have thought that i had written the lives of the deacons of their church. ordinarily, the inquiry is, where did you come from? or, where are you going? that was a more pertinent question which i overheard one of my auditors put to another one"what does he lecture for?" it made me quake in my shoes. to speak impartially, the best men that i know are not serene, a world in themselves. for the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. we select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. our sills are rotten. what stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and subtilest truth? i often accuse my finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity; for, while there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. the fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each other. that excitement about kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!only another kind of politics or dancing. men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. no man stood on truth. they were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing; as the hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent, and had nothing to put under the serpent. for all fruit of that stir we have the kossuth hat. just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary conversation. surface meets surface. when our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. we rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. in proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office. you may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while. i do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. i have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that i have not dwelt in my native region. the sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. you cannot serve two masters. it requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day. we may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. i did not know why my news should be so trivialconsidering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. the news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. it is the stalest repetition. you are often tempted to ask why such stress is laid on a particular experience which you have hadthat, after twenty-five years, you should meet hobbins, registrar of deeds, again on the sidewalk. have you not budged an inch, then? such is the daily news. its facts appear to float in the atmosphere, insignificant as the sporules of fungi, and impinge on some neglected thallus, or surface of our minds, which affords a basis for them, and hence a parasitic growth. we should wash ourselves clean of such news. of what consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion? in health we have not the least curiosity about such events. we do not live for idle amusement. i would not run round a corner to see the world blow up. all summer, and far into the autumn, perchance, you unconsciously went by the newspapers and the news, and now you find it was because the morning and the evening were full of news to you. your walks were full of incidents. you attended, not to the affairs of europe, but to your own affairs in massachusetts fields. if you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events that make the news transpirethinner than the paper on which it is printedthen these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them. really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever. nations! what are nations? tartars, and huns, and chinamen! like insects, they swarm. the historian strives in vain to make them memorable. it is for want of a man that there are so many men. it is individuals that populate the world. any man thinking may say with the spirit of lodin "i look down from my height on nations, and they become ashes before me; calm is my dwelling in the clouds; pleasant are the great fields of my rest." pray, let us live without being drawn by dogs, esquimaux-fashion, tearing over hill and dale, and biting each other's ears. not without a slight shudder at the danger, i often perceive how near i had come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affairthe news of the street; and i am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbishto permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? or shall it be a quarter of heaven itselfan hypaethral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? i find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that i hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. it is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect. think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very bar-room of the mind's inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied usthe very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts' shrine! would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide? when i have been compelled to sit spectator and auditor in a court-room for some hours, and have seen my neighbors, who were not compelled, stealing in from time to time, and tiptoeing about with washed hands and faces, it has appeared to my mind's eye, that, when they took off their hats, their ears suddenly expanded into vast hoppers for sound, between which even their narrow heads were crowded. like the vanes of windmills, they caught the broad but shallow stream of sound, which, after a few titillating gyrations in their coggy brains, passed out the other side. i wondered if, when they got home, they were as careful to wash their ears as before their hands and faces. it has seemed to me, at such a time, that the auditors and the witnesses, the jury and the counsel, the judge and the criminal at the barif i may presume him guilty before he is convictedwere all equally criminal, and a thunderbolt might be expected to descend and consume them all together. by all kinds of traps and signboards, threatening the extreme penalty of the divine law, exclude such trespassers from the only ground which can be sacred to you. it is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! if i am to be a thoroughfare, i prefer that it be of the mountain brooks, the parnassian streams, and not the town sewers. there is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. there is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. the same ear is fitted to receive both communications. only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. i believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. our very intellect shall be macadamized, as it wereits foundation broken into fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over; and if you would know what will make the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce blocks, and asphaltum, you have only to look into some of our minds which have been subjected to this treatment so long. if we have thus desecrated ourselvesas who has not?the remedy will be by wariness and devotion to reconsecrate ourselves, and make once more a fane of the mind. we should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. read not the times. read the eternities. conventionalities are at length as had as impurities. even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of pompeii, evince how much it has been used. how many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know themhad better let their peddling-carts be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over that bride of glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity! have we no culture, no refinementbut skill only to live coarsely and serve the devil?to acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and make a false show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and living kernel to us? shall our institutions be like those chestnut burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the fingers? america is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. even if we grant that the american has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. now that the republicthe respublicahas been settled, it is time to look after the res-privatathe private stateto see, as the roman senate charged its consuls, "ne quid res-privata detrimenti caperet," that the private state receive no detriment. do we call this the land of the free? what is it to be free from king george and continue the slaves of king prejudice? what is it to be born free and not to live free? what is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? we are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. it is our children's children who may perchance be really free. we tax ourselves unjustly. there is a part of us which is not represented. it is taxation without representation. we quarter troops, we quarter fools and cattle of all sorts upon ourselves. we quarter our gross bodies on our poor souls, till the former eat up all the latter's substance. with respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitanmere jonathans. we are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end. so is the english parliament provincial. mere country bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to settle, the irish question, for instancethe english question why did i not say? their natures are subdued to what they work in. their "good breeding" respects only secondary objects. the finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence. they appear but as the fashions of past daysmere courtliness, knee-buckles and small-clothes, out of date. it is the vice, but not the excellence of manners, that they are continually being deserted by the character; they are cast-off-clothes or shells, claiming the respect which belonged to the living creature. you are presented with the shells instead of the meat, and it is no excuse generally, that, in the case of some fishes, the shells are of more worth than the meat. the man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when i wished to see himself. it was not in this sense that the poet decker called christ "the first true gentleman that ever breathed." i repeat that in this sense the most splendid court in christendom is provincial, having authority to consult about transalpine interests only, and not the affairs of rome. a praetor or proconsul would suffice to settle the questions which absorb the attention of the english parliament and the american congress. government and legislation! these i thought were respectable professions. we have heard of heaven-born numas, lycurguses, and solons, in the history of the world, whose names at least may stand for ideal legislators; but think of legislating to regulate the breeding of slaves, or the exportation of tobacco! what have divine legislators to do with the exportation or the importation of tobacco? what humane ones with the breeding of slaves? suppose you were to submit the question to any son of godand has he no children in the nineteenth century? is it a family which is extinct?in what condition would you get it again? what shall a state like virginia say for itself at the last day, in which these have been the principal, the staple productions? what ground is there for patriotism in such a state? i derive my facts from statistical tables which the states themselves have published. a commerce that whitens every sea in quest of nuts and raisins, and makes slaves of its sailors for this purpose! i saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper berries, and bitter almonds were strewn along the shore. it seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the dangers of the sea between leghorn and new york for the sake of a cargo of juniper berries and bitter almonds. america sending to the old world for her bitters! is not the sea-brine, is not shipwreck, bitter enough to make the cup of life go down here? yet such, to a great extent, is our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and activitythe activity of flies about a molasseshogshead. very well, observes one, if men were oysters. and very well, answer i, if men were mosquitoes. lieutenant herndon, whom our government sent to explore the amazon, and, it is said, to extend the area of slavery, observed that there was wanting there "an industrious and active population, who know what the comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the great resources of the country." but what are the "artificial wants" to be encouraged? not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and slaves of, i believe, his native virginia, nor the ice and granite and other material wealth of our native new england; nor are "the great resources of a country" that fertility or barrenness of soil which produces these. the chief want, in every state that i have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants. this alone draws out "the great resources" of nature, and at last taxes her beyond her resources; for man naturally dies out of her. when we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but menthose rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers. in short, as a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. but the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down. what is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that practically i have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. the newspapers, i perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as i love literature and to some extent the truth also, i never read those columns at any rate. i do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much. i have not got to answer for having read a single president's message. a strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! i cannot take up a newspaper but i find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for itmore importunate than an italian beggar; and if i have a mind to look at its certificate, made, perchance, by some benevolent merchant's clerk, or the skipper that brought it over, for it cannot speak a word of english itself, i shall probably read of the eruption of some vesuvius, or the overflowing of some po, true or forged, which brought it into this condition. i do not hesitate, in such a case, to suggest work, or the almshouse; or why not keep its castle in silence, as i do commonly? the poor president, what with preserving his popularity and doing his duty, is completely bewildered. the newspapers are the ruling power. any other government is reduced to a few marines at fort independence. if a man neglects to read the daily times, government will go down on its knees to him, for this is the only treason in these days. those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. they are infrahuman, a kind of vegetation. i sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called. it is as if a thinker submitted himself to be rasped by the great gizzard of creation. politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halvessometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other. not only individuals, but states, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence. thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering, of that which we should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours. why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our had dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever-glorious morning? i do not make an exorbitant demand, surely. the end . charge of the light brigade alfred tennyson (1809 1892) half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of death rode the six hundred. "forward, the light brigade! charge for the guns!" he said: into the valley of death rode the six hundred. "forward, the light brigade!" was there a man dismayed? not tho' the soldiers knew someone had blundered: theirs was not to make reply, theirs was not to reason why, theirs was but to do and die: into the valley of death rode the six hundred. cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front of them volleyed and thunder'd; storm'd at with shot and shell, boldly they rode and well, into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell, rode the six hundred. flashed all their sabres bare, flashed as they turned in air, sab'ring the gunners there, charging and army, while all the world wondered: plunging in the battery smoke, right through the line they broke; cossack and russian reeled from the sabre-stroke shattered and sundered. then they rode back, but not- not the six hundred. cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front of them volleyed and thundered; stormed at with shot and shell, while horse and hero fell, they that fought so well, came thro' the jaws of death, back from the mouth of hell, all that was left of them, left of the six hundred. when can their glory fade? oh, the wild charge they made! all the world wondered. honor the charge they made! honor the light brigade, noble six hundred! . a midsummer night's dream dramatis personae theseus duke of athens. egeus father to hermia. lysander | | in love with hermia. demetrius | philostrate master of the revels to theseus. quince a carpenter. snug a joiner. bottom a weaver. flute a bellows-mender. snout a tinker. starveling a tailor. hippolyta queen of the amazons, betrothed to theseus. hermia daughter to egeus, in love with lysander. helena in love with demetrius. oberon king of the fairies. titania queen of the fairies. puck or robin goodfellow. peaseblossom | | cobweb | | fairies. moth | | mustardseed | other fairies attending their king and queen. attendants on theseus and hippolyta. scene athens, and a wood near it. a midsummer night's dream act i scene i athens. the palace of theseus. [enter theseus, hippolyta, philostrate, and attendants] theseus now, fair hippolyta, our nuptial hour draws on apace; four happy days bring in another moon: but, o, methinks, how slow this old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, like to a step-dame or a dowager long withering out a young man revenue. hippolyta four days will quickly steep themselves in night; four nights will quickly dream away the time; and then the moon, like to a silver bow new-bent in heaven, shall behold the night of our solemnities. theseus go, philostrate, stir up the athenian youth to merriments; awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth; turn melancholy forth to funerals; the pale companion is not for our pomp. [exit philostrate] hippolyta, i woo'd thee with my sword, and won thy love, doing thee injuries; but i will wed thee in another key, with pomp, with triumph and with revelling. [enter egeus, hermia, lysander, and demetrius] egeus happy be theseus, our renowned duke! theseus thanks, good egeus: what's the news with thee? egeus full of vexation come i, with complaint against my child, my daughter hermia. stand forth, demetrius. my noble lord, this man hath my consent to marry her. stand forth, lysander: and my gracious duke, this man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child; thou, thou, lysander, thou hast given her rhymes, and interchanged love-tokens with my child: thou hast by moonlight at her window sung, with feigning voice verses of feigning love, and stolen the impression of her fantasy with bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits, knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers of strong prevailment in unharden'd youth: with cunning hast thou filch'd my daughter's heart, turn'd her obedience, which is due to me, to stubborn harshness: and, my gracious duke, be it so she; will not here before your grace consent to marry with demetrius, i beg the ancient privilege of athens, as she is mine, i may dispose of her: which shall be either to this gentleman or to her death, according to our law immediately provided in that case. theseus what say you, hermia? be advised fair maid: to you your father should be as a god; one that composed your beauties, yea, and one to whom you are but as a form in wax by him imprinted and within his power to leave the figure or disfigure it. demetrius is a worthy gentleman. hermia so is lysander. theseus in himself he is; but in this kind, wanting your father's voice, the other must be held the worthier. hermia i would my father look'd but with my eyes. theseus rather your eyes must with his judgment look. hermia i do entreat your grace to pardon me. i know not by what power i am made bold, nor how it may concern my modesty, in such a presence here to plead my thoughts; but i beseech your grace that i may know the worst that may befall me in this case, if i refuse to wed demetrius. theseus either to die the death or to abjure for ever the society of men. therefore, fair hermia, question your desires; know of your youth, examine well your blood, whether, if you yield not to your father's choice, you can endure the livery of a nun, for aye to be in shady cloister mew'd, to live a barren sister all your life, chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon. thrice-blessed they that master so their blood, to undergo such maiden pilgrimage; but earthlier happy is the rose distill'd, than that which withering on the virgin thorn grows, lives and dies in single blessedness. hermia so will i grow, so live, so die, my lord, ere i will my virgin patent up unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke my soul consents not to give sovereignty. theseus take time to pause; and, by the nest new moon- the sealing-day betwixt my love and me, for everlasting bond of fellowship- upon that day either prepare to die for disobedience to your father's will, or else to wed demetrius, as he would; or on diana's altar to protest for aye austerity and single life. demetrius relent, sweet hermia: and, lysander, yield thy crazed title to my certain right. lysander you have her father's love, demetrius; let me have hermia's: do you marry him. egeus scornful lysander! true, he hath my love, and what is mine my love shall render him. and she is mine, and all my right of her i do estate unto demetrius. lysander i am, my lord, as well derived as he, as well possess'd; my love is more than his; my fortunes every way as fairly rank'd, if not with vantage, as demetrius'; and, which is more than all these boasts can be, i am beloved of beauteous hermia: why should not i then prosecute my right? demetrius, i'll avouch it to his head, made love to nedar's daughter, helena, and won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes, devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry, upon this spotted and inconstant man. theseus i must confess that i have heard so much, and with demetrius thought to have spoke thereof; but, being over-full of self-affairs, my mind did lose it. but, demetrius, come; and come, egeus; you shall go with me, i have some private schooling for you both. for you, fair hermia, look you arm yourself to fit your fancies to your father's will; or else the law of athens yields you up- which by no means we may extenuate- to death, or to a vow of single life. come, my hippolyta: what cheer, my love? demetrius and egeus, go along: i must employ you in some business against our nuptial and confer with you of something nearly that concerns yourselves. egeus with duty and desire we follow you. [exeunt all but lysander and hermia] lysander how now, my love! why is your cheek so pale? how chance the roses there do fade so fast? hermia belike for want of rain, which i could well beteem them from the tempest of my eyes. lysander ay me! for aught that i could ever read, could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth; but, either it was different in blood,- hermia o cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low. lysander or else misgraffed in respect of years,- hermia o spite! too old to be engaged to young. lysander or else it stood upon the choice of friends,- hermia o hell! to choose love by another's eyes. lysander or, if there were a sympathy in choice, war, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, making it momentany as a sound, swift as a shadow, short as any dream; brief as the lightning in the collied night, that, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, and ere a man hath power to say 'behold!' the jaws of darkness do devour it up: so quick bright things come to confusion. hermia if then true lovers have been ever cross'd, it stands as an edict in destiny: then let us teach our trial patience, because it is a customary cross, as due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs, wishes and tears, poor fancy's followers. lysander a good persuasion: therefore, hear me, hermia. i have a widow aunt, a dowager of great revenue, and she hath no child: from athens is her house remote seven leagues; and she respects me as her only son. there, gentle hermia, may i marry thee; and to that place the sharp athenian law cannot pursue us. if thou lovest me then, steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night; and in the wood, a league without the town, where i did meet thee once with helena, to do observance to a morn of may, there will i stay for thee. hermia my good lysander! i swear to thee, by cupid's strongest bow, by his best arrow with the golden head, by the simplicity of venus' doves, by that which knitteth souls and prospers loves, and by that fire which burn'd the carthage queen, when the false troyan under sail was seen, by all the vows that ever men have broke, in number more than ever women spoke, in that same place thou hast appointed me, to-morrow truly will i meet with thee. lysander keep promise, love. look, here comes helena. [enter helena] hermia god speed fair helena! whither away? helena call you me fair? that fair again unsay. demetrius loves your fair: o happy fair! your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's sweet air more tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, when wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. sickness is catching: o, were favour so, yours would i catch, fair hermia, ere i go; my ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye, my tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody. were the world mine, demetrius being bated, the rest i'd give to be to you translated. o, teach me how you look, and with what art you sway the motion of demetrius' heart. hermia i frown upon him, yet he loves me still. helena o that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill! hermia i give him curses, yet he gives me love. helena o that my prayers could such affection move! hermia the more i hate, the more he follows me. helena the more i love, the more he hateth me. hermia his folly, helena, is no fault of mine. helena none, but your beauty: would that fault were mine! hermia take comfort: he no more shall see my face; lysander and myself will fly this place. before the time i did lysander see, seem'd athens as a paradise to me: o, then, what graces in my love do dwell, that he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell! lysander helen, to you our minds we will unfold: to-morrow night, when phoebe doth behold her silver visage in the watery glass, decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass, a time that lovers' flights doth still conceal, through athens' gates have we devised to steal. hermia and in the wood, where often you and i upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie, emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet, there my lysander and myself shall meet; and thence from athens turn away our eyes, to seek new friends and stranger companies. farewell, sweet playfellow: pray thou for us; and good luck grant thee thy demetrius! keep word, lysander: we must starve our sight from lovers' food till morrow deep midnight. lysander i will, my hermia. [exit hermia] helena, adieu: as you on him, demetrius dote on you! [exit] helena how happy some o'er other some can be! through athens i am thought as fair as she. but what of that? demetrius thinks not so; he will not know what all but he do know: and as he errs, doting on hermia's eyes, so i, admiring of his qualities: things base and vile, folding no quantity, love can transpose to form and dignity: love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is wing'd cupid painted blind: nor hath love's mind of any judgement taste; wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: and therefore is love said to be a child, because in choice he is so oft beguiled. as waggish boys in game themselves forswear, so the boy love is perjured every where: for ere demetrius look'd on hermia's eyne, he hail'd down oaths that he was only mine; and when this hail some heat from hermia felt, so he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt. i will go tell him of fair hermia's flight: then to the wood will he to-morrow night pursue her; and for this intelligence if i have thanks, it is a dear expense: but herein mean i to enrich my pain, to have his sight thither and back again. [exit] a midsummer night's dream act i scene ii athens. quince's house. [enter quince, snug, bottom, flute, snout, and starveling] quince is all our company here? bottom you were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip. quince here is the scroll of every man's name, which is thought fit, through all athens, to play in our interlude before the duke and the duchess, on his wedding-day at night. bottom first, good peter quince, say what the play treats on, then read the names of the actors, and so grow to a point. quince marry, our play is, the most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of pyramus and thisby. bottom a very good piece of work, i assure you, and a merry. now, good peter quince, call forth your actors by the scroll. masters, spread yourselves. quince answer as i call you. nick bottom, the weaver. bottom ready. name what part i am for, and proceed. quince you, nick bottom, are set down for pyramus. bottom what is pyramus? a lover, or a tyrant? quince a lover, that kills himself most gallant for love. bottom that will ask some tears in the true performing of it: if i do it, let the audience look to their eyes; i will move storms, i will condole in some measure. to the rest: yet my chief humour is for a tyrant: i could play ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split. the raging rocks and shivering shocks shall break the locks of prison gates; and phibbus' car shall shine from far and make and mar the foolish fates. this was lofty! now name the rest of the players. this is ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein; a lover is more condoling. quince francis flute, the bellows-mender. flute here, peter quince. quince flute, you must take thisby on you. flute what is thisby? a wandering knight? quince it is the lady that pyramus must love. flute nay, faith, let me not play a woman; i have a beard coming. quince that's all one: you shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small as you will. bottom an i may hide my face, let me play thisby too, i'll speak in a monstrous little voice. 'thisne, thisne;' 'ah, pyramus, lover dear! thy thisby dear, and lady dear!' quince no, no; you must play pyramus: and, flute, you thisby. bottom well, proceed. quince robin starveling, the tailor. starveling here, peter quince. quince robin starveling, you must play thisby's mother. tom snout, the tinker. snout here, peter quince. quince you, pyramus' father: myself, thisby's father: snug, the joiner; you, the lion's part: and, i hope, here is a play fitted. snug have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for i am slow of study. quince you may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring. bottom let me play the lion too: i will roar, that i will do any man's heart good to hear me; i will roar, that i will make the duke say 'let him roar again, let him roar again.' quince an you should do it too terribly, you would fright the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all. all that would hang us, every mother's son. bottom i grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us: but i will aggravate my voice so that i will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; i will roar you an 'twere any nightingale. quince you can play no part but pyramus; for pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely gentleman-like man: therefore you must needs play pyramus. bottom well, i will undertake it. what beard were i best to play it in? quince why, what you will. bottom i will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your french-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow. quince some of your french crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-faced. but, masters, here are your parts: and i am to entreat you, request you and desire you, to con them by to-morrow night; and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse, for if we meet in the city, we shall be dogged with company, and our devices known. in the meantime i will draw a bill of properties, such as our play wants. i pray you, fail me not. bottom we will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. take pains; be perfect: adieu. quince at the duke's oak we meet. bottom enough; hold or cut bow-strings. [exeunt] a midsummer night's dream act ii scene i a wood near athens. [enter, from opposite sides, a fairy, and puck] puck how now, spirit! whither wander you? fairy over hill, over dale, thorough bush, thorough brier, over park, over pale, thorough flood, thorough fire, i do wander everywhere, swifter than the moon's sphere; and i serve the fairy queen, to dew her orbs upon the green. the cowslips tall her pensioners be: in their gold coats spots you see; those be rubies, fairy favours, in those freckles live their savours: i must go seek some dewdrops here and hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. farewell, thou lob of spirits; i'll be gone: our queen and all our elves come here anon. puck the king doth keep his revels here to-night: take heed the queen come not within his sight; for oberon is passing fell and wrath, because that she as her attendant hath a lovely boy, stolen from an indian king; she never had so sweet a changeling; and jealous oberon would have the child knight of his train, to trace the forests wild; but she perforce withholds the loved boy, crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy: and now they never meet in grove or green, by fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, but, they do square, that all their elves for fear creep into acorn-cups and hide them there. fairy either i mistake your shape and making quite, or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite call'd robin goodfellow: are not you he that frights the maidens of the villagery; skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern and bootless make the breathless housewife churn; and sometime make the drink to bear no barm; mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? those that hobgoblin call you and sweet puck, you do their work, and they shall have good luck: are not you he? puck thou speak'st aright; i am that merry wanderer of the night. i jest to oberon and make him smile when i a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, neighing in likeness of a filly foal: and sometime lurk i in a gossip's bowl, in very likeness of a roasted crab, and when she drinks, against her lips i bob and on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale. the wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; then slip i from her bum, down topples she, and 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough; and then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh, and waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear a merrier hour was never wasted there. but, room, fairy! here comes oberon. fairy and here my mistress. would that he were gone! [enter, from one side, oberon, with his train; from the other, titania, with hers] oberon ill met by moonlight, proud titania. titania what, jealous oberon! fairies, skip hence: i have forsworn his bed and company. oberon tarry, rash wanton: am not i thy lord? titania then i must be thy lady: but i know when thou hast stolen away from fairy land, and in the shape of corin sat all day, playing on pipes of corn and versing love to amorous phillida. why art thou here, come from the farthest steppe of india? but that, forsooth, the bouncing amazon, your buskin'd mistress and your warrior love, to theseus must be wedded, and you come to give their bed joy and prosperity. oberon how canst thou thus for shame, titania, glance at my credit with hippolyta, knowing i know thy love to theseus? didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night from perigenia, whom he ravished? and make him with fair aegle break his faith, with ariadne and antiopa? titania these are the forgeries of jealousy: and never, since the middle summer's spring, met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, by paved fountain or by rushy brook, or in the beached margent of the sea, to dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, but with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport. therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, as in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea contagious fogs; which falling in the land have every pelting river made so proud that they have overborne their continents: the ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain, the ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard; the fold stands empty in the drowned field, and crows are fatted with the murrion flock; the nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud, and the quaint mazes in the wanton green for lack of tread are undistinguishable: the human mortals want their winter here; no night is now with hymn or carol blest: therefore the moon, the governess of floods, pale in her anger, washes all the air, that rheumatic diseases do abound: and thorough this distemperature we see the seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, and on old hiems' thin and icy crown an odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer, the childing autumn, angry winter, change their wonted liveries, and the mazed world, by their increase, now knows not which is which: and this same progeny of evils comes from our debate, from our dissension; we are their parents and original. oberon do you amend it then; it lies in you: why should titania cross her oberon? i do but beg a little changeling boy, to be my henchman. titania set your heart at rest: the fairy land buys not the child of me. his mother was a votaress of my order: and, in the spiced indian air, by night, full often hath she gossip'd by my side, and sat with me on neptune's yellow sands, marking the embarked traders on the flood, when we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive and grow big-bellied with the wanton wind; which she, with pretty and with swimming gait following,--her womb then rich with my young squire,- would imitate, and sail upon the land, to fetch me trifles, and return again, as from a voyage, rich with merchandise. but she, being mortal, of that boy did die; and for her sake do i rear up her boy, and for her sake i will not part with him. oberon how long within this wood intend you stay? titania perchance till after theseus' wedding-day. if you will patiently dance in our round and see our moonlight revels, go with us; if not, shun me, and i will spare your haunts. oberon give me that boy, and i will go with thee. titania not for thy fairy kingdom. fairies, away! we shall chide downright, if i longer stay. [exit titania with her train] oberon well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove till i torment thee for this injury. my gentle puck, come hither. thou rememberest since once i sat upon a promontory, and heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath that the rude sea grew civil at her song and certain stars shot madly from their spheres, to hear the sea-maid's music. puck i remember. oberon that very time i saw, but thou couldst not, flying between the cold moon and the earth, cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took at a fair vestal throned by the west, and loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, as it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; but i might see young cupid's fiery shaft quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, and the imperial votaress passed on, in maiden meditation, fancy-free. yet mark'd i where the bolt of cupid fell: it fell upon a little western flower, before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, and maidens call it love-in-idleness. fetch me that flower; the herb i shew'd thee once: the juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid will make or man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees. fetch me this herb; and be thou here again ere the leviathan can swim a league. puck i'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes. [exit] oberon having once this juice, i'll watch titania when she is asleep, and drop the liquor of it in her eyes. the next thing then she waking looks upon, be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, on meddling monkey, or on busy ape, she shall pursue it with the soul of love: and ere i take this charm from off her sight, as i can take it with another herb, i'll make her render up her page to me. but who comes here? i am invisible; and i will overhear their conference. [enter demetrius, helena, following him] demetrius i love thee not, therefore pursue me not. where is lysander and fair hermia? the one i'll slay, the other slayeth me. thou told'st me they were stolen unto this wood; and here am i, and wode within this wood, because i cannot meet my hermia. hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more. helena you draw me, you hard-hearted adamant; but yet you draw not iron, for my heart is true as steel: leave you your power to draw, and i shall have no power to follow you. demetrius do i entice you? do i speak you fair? or, rather, do i not in plainest truth tell you, i do not, nor i cannot love you? helena and even for that do i love you the more. i am your spaniel; and, demetrius, the more you beat me, i will fawn on you: use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, neglect me, lose me; only give me leave, unworthy as i am, to follow you. what worser place can i beg in your love,- and yet a place of high respect with me,- than to be used as you use your dog? demetrius tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit; for i am sick when i do look on thee. helena and i am sick when i look not on you. demetrius you do impeach your modesty too much, to leave the city and commit yourself into the hands of one that loves you not; to trust the opportunity of night and the ill counsel of a desert place with the rich worth of your virginity. helena your virtue is my privilege: for that it is not night when i do see your face, therefore i think i am not in the night; nor doth this wood lack worlds of company, for you in my respect are all the world: then how can it be said i am alone, when all the world is here to look on me? demetrius i'll run from thee and hide me in the brakes, and leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts. helena the wildest hath not such a heart as you. run when you will, the story shall be changed: apollo flies, and daphne holds the chase; the dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind makes speed to catch the tiger; bootless speed, when cowardice pursues and valour flies. demetrius i will not stay thy questions; let me go: or, if thou follow me, do not believe but i shall do thee mischief in the wood. helena ay, in the temple, in the town, the field, you do me mischief. fie, demetrius! your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex: we cannot fight for love, as men may do; we should be wood and were not made to woo. [exit demetrius] i'll follow thee and make a heaven of hell, to die upon the hand i love so well. [exit] oberon fare thee well, nymph: ere he do leave this grove, thou shalt fly him and he shall seek thy love. [re-enter puck] hast thou the flower there? welcome, wanderer. puck ay, there it is. oberon i pray thee, give it me. i know a bank where the wild thyme blows, where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, with sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: there sleeps titania sometime of the night, lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight; and there the snake throws her enamell'd skin, weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in: and with the juice of this i'll streak her eyes, and make her full of hateful fantasies. take thou some of it, and seek through this grove: a sweet athenian lady is in love with a disdainful youth: anoint his eyes; but do it when the next thing he espies may be the lady: thou shalt know the man by the athenian garments he hath on. effect it with some care, that he may prove more fond on her than she upon her love: and look thou meet me ere the first cock crow. puck fear not, my lord, your servant shall do so. [exeunt] a midsummer night's dream act ii scene ii another part of the wood. [enter titania, with her train] titania come, now a roundel and a fairy song; then, for the third part of a minute, hence; some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats, and some keep back the clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders at our quaint spirits. sing me now asleep; then to your offices and let me rest. [the fairies sing] you spotted snakes with double tongue, thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; newts and blind-worms, do no wrong, come not near our fairy queen. philomel, with melody sing in our sweet lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby: never harm, nor spell nor charm, come our lovely lady nigh; so, good night, with lullaby. weaving spiders, come not here; hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence! beetles black, approach not near; worm nor snail, do no offence. philomel, with melody, &c. fairy hence, away! now all is well: one aloof stand sentinel. [exeunt fairies. titania sleeps] [enter oberon and squeezes the flower on titania's eyelids] oberon what thou seest when thou dost wake, do it for thy true-love take, love and languish for his sake: be it ounce, or cat, or bear, pard, or boar with bristled hair, in thy eye that shall appear when thou wakest, it is thy dear: wake when some vile thing is near. [exit] [enter lysander and hermia] lysander fair love, you faint with wandering in the wood; and to speak troth, i have forgot our way: we'll rest us, hermia, if you think it good, and tarry for the comfort of the day. hermia be it so, lysander: find you out a bed; for i upon this bank will rest my head. lysander one turf shall serve as pillow for us both; one heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth. hermia nay, good lysander; for my sake, my dear, lie further off yet, do not lie so near. lysander o, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence! love takes the meaning in love's conference. i mean, that my heart unto yours is knit so that but one heart we can make of it; two bosoms interchained with an oath; so then two bosoms and a single troth. then by your side no bed-room me deny; for lying so, hermia, i do not lie. hermia lysander riddles very prettily: now much beshrew my manners and my pride, if hermia meant to say lysander lied. but, gentle friend, for love and courtesy lie further off; in human modesty, such separation as may well be said becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid, so far be distant; and, good night, sweet friend: thy love ne'er alter till thy sweet life end! lysander amen, amen, to that fair prayer, say i; and then end life when i end loyalty! here is my bed: sleep give thee all his rest! hermia with half that wish the wisher's eyes be press'd! [they sleep] [enter puck] puck through the forest have i gone. but athenian found i none, on whose eyes i might approve this flower's force in stirring love. night and silence.--who is here? weeds of athens he doth wear: this is he, my master said, despised the athenian maid; and here the maiden, sleeping sound, on the dank and dirty ground. pretty soul! she durst not lie near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy. churl, upon thy eyes i throw all the power this charm doth owe. when thou wakest, let love forbid sleep his seat on thy eyelid: so awake when i am gone; for i must now to oberon. [exit] [enter demetrius and helena, running] helena stay, though thou kill me, sweet demetrius. demetrius i charge thee, hence, and do not haunt me thus. helena o, wilt thou darkling leave me? do not so. demetrius stay, on thy peril: i alone will go. [exit] helena o, i am out of breath in this fond chase! the more my prayer, the lesser is my grace. happy is hermia, wheresoe'er she lies; for she hath blessed and attractive eyes. how came her eyes so bright? not with salt tears: if so, my eyes are oftener wash'd than hers. no, no, i am as ugly as a bear; for beasts that meet me run away for fear: therefore no marvel though demetrius do, as a monster fly my presence thus. what wicked and dissembling glass of mine made me compare with hermia's sphery eyne? but who is here? lysander! on the ground! dead? or asleep? i see no blood, no wound. lysander if you live, good sir, awake. lysander [awaking] and run through fire i will for thy sweet sake. transparent helena! nature shows art, that through thy bosom makes me see thy heart. where is demetrius? o, how fit a word is that vile name to perish on my sword! helena do not say so, lysander; say not so what though he love your hermia? lord, what though? yet hermia still loves you: then be content. lysander content with hermia! no; i do repent the tedious minutes i with her have spent. not hermia but helena i love: who will not change a raven for a dove? the will of man is by his reason sway'd; and reason says you are the worthier maid. things growing are not ripe until their season so i, being young, till now ripe not to reason; and touching now the point of human skill, reason becomes the marshal to my will and leads me to your eyes, where i o'erlook love's stories written in love's richest book. helena wherefore was i to this keen mockery born? when at your hands did i deserve this scorn? is't not enough, is't not enough, young man, that i did never, no, nor never can, deserve a sweet look from demetrius' eye, but you must flout my insufficiency? good troth, you do me wrong, good sooth, you do, in such disdainful manner me to woo. but fare you well: perforce i must confess i thought you lord of more true gentleness. o, that a lady, of one man refused. should of another therefore be abused! [exit] lysander she sees not hermia. hermia, sleep thou there: and never mayst thou come lysander near! for as a surfeit of the sweetest things the deepest loathing to the stomach brings, or as tie heresies that men do leave are hated most of those they did deceive, so thou, my surfeit and my heresy, of all be hated, but the most of me! and, all my powers, address your love and might to honour helen and to be her knight! [exit] hermia [awaking] help me, lysander, help me! do thy best to pluck this crawling serpent from my breast! ay me, for pity! what a dream was here! lysander, look how i do quake with fear: methought a serpent eat my heart away, and you sat smiling at his cruel pray. lysander! what, removed? lysander! lord! what, out of hearing? gone? no sound, no word? alack, where are you speak, an if you hear; speak, of all loves! i swoon almost with fear. no? then i well perceive you all not nigh either death or you i'll find immediately. [exit] a midsummer night's dream act iii scene i the wood. titania lying asleep. [enter quince, snug, bottom, flute, snout, and starveling] bottom are we all met? quince pat, pat; and here's a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal. this green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn-brake our tiring-house; and we will do it in action as we will do it before the duke. bottom peter quince,- quince what sayest thou, bully bottom? bottom there are things in this comedy of pyramus and thisby that will never please. first, pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies cannot abide. how answer you that? snout by'r lakin, a parlous fear. starveling i believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done. bottom not a whit: i have a device to make all well. write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that pyramus is not killed indeed; and, for the more better assurance, tell them that i, pyramus, am not pyramus, but bottom the weaver: this will put them out of fear. quince well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be written in eight and six. bottom no, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight. snout will not the ladies be afeard of the lion? starveling i fear it, i promise you. bottom masters, you ought to consider with yourselves: to bring in--god shield us!--a lion among ladies, is a most dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living; and we ought to look to 't. snout therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion. bottom nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the lion's neck: and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect,--'ladies,'--or 'fair-ladies--i would wish you,'--or 'i would request you,'--or 'i would entreat you,--not to fear, not to tremble: my life for yours. if you think i come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life: no i am no such thing; i am a man as other men are;' and there indeed let him name his name, and tell them plainly he is snug the joiner. quince well it shall be so. but there is two hard things; that is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber; for, you know, pyramus and thisby meet by moonlight. snout doth the moon shine that night we play our play? bottom a calendar, a calendar! look in the almanac; find out moonshine, find out moonshine. quince yes, it doth shine that night. bottom why, then may you leave a casement of the great chamber window, where we play, open, and the moon may shine in at the casement. quince ay; or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and a lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure, or to present, the person of moonshine. then, there is another thing: we must have a wall in the great chamber; for pyramus and thisby says the story, did talk through the chink of a wall. snout you can never bring in a wall. what say you, bottom? bottom some man or other must present wall: and let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast about him, to signify wall; and let him hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall pyramus and thisby whisper. quince if that may be, then all is well. come, sit down, every mother's son, and rehearse your parts. pyramus, you begin: when you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake: and so every one according to his cue. [enter puck behind] puck what hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here, so near the cradle of the fairy queen? what, a play toward! i'll be an auditor; an actor too, perhaps, if i see cause. quince speak, pyramus. thisby, stand forth. bottom thisby, the flowers of odious savours sweet,- quince odours, odours. bottom --odours savours sweet: so hath thy breath, my dearest thisby dear. but hark, a voice! stay thou but here awhile, and by and by i will to thee appear. [exit] puck a stranger pyramus than e'er played here. [exit] flute must i speak now? quince ay, marry, must you; for you must understand he goes but to see a noise that he heard, and is to come again. flute most radiant pyramus, most lily-white of hue, of colour like the red rose on triumphant brier, most brisky juvenal and eke most lovely jew, as true as truest horse that yet would never tire, i'll meet thee, pyramus, at ninny's tomb. quince 'ninus' tomb,' man: why, you must not speak that yet; that you answer to pyramus: you speak all your part at once, cues and all pyramus enter: your cue is past; it is, 'never tire.' flute o,--as true as truest horse, that yet would never tire. [re-enter puck, and bottom with an ass's head] bottom if i were fair, thisby, i were only thine. quince o monstrous! o strange! we are haunted. pray, masters! fly, masters! help! [exeunt quince, snug, flute, snout, and starveling] puck i'll follow you, i'll lead you about a round, through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier: sometime a horse i'll be, sometime a hound, a hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire; and neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. [exit] bottom why do they run away? this is a knavery of them to make me afeard. [re-enter snout] snout o bottom, thou art changed! what do i see on thee? bottom what do you see? you see an asshead of your own, do you? [exit snout] [re-enter quince] quince bless thee, bottom! bless thee! thou art translated. [exit] bottom i see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could. but i will not stir from this place, do what they can: i will walk up and down here, and i will sing, that they shall hear i am not afraid. [sings] the ousel cock so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill, the throstle with his note so true, the wren with little quill,- titania [awaking] what angel wakes me from my flowery bed? bottom [sings] the finch, the sparrow and the lark, the plain-song cuckoo gray, whose note full many a man doth mark, and dares not answer nay;- for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? who would give a bird the lie, though he cry 'cuckoo' never so? titania i pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again: mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note; so is mine eye enthralled to thy shape; and thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me on the first view to say, to swear, i love thee. bottom methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that: and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days; the more the pity that some honest neighbours will not make them friends. nay, i can gleek upon occasion. titania thou art as wise as thou art beautiful. bottom not so, neither: but if i had wit enough to get out of this wood, i have enough to serve mine own turn. titania out of this wood do not desire to go: thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no. i am a spirit of no common rate; the summer still doth tend upon my state; and i do love thee: therefore, go with me; i'll give thee fairies to attend on thee, and they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, and sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep; and i will purge thy mortal grossness so that thou shalt like an airy spirit go. peaseblossom! cobweb! moth! and mustardseed! [enter peaseblossom, cobweb, moth, and mustardseed] peaseblossom ready. cobweb and i. moth and i. mustardseed and i. all where shall we go? titania be kind and courteous to this gentleman; hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes; feed him with apricocks and dewberries, with purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; the honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, and for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs and light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes, to have my love to bed and to arise; and pluck the wings from painted butterflies to fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes: nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies. peaseblossom hail, mortal! cobweb hail! moth hail! mustardseed hail! bottom i cry your worship's mercy, heartily: i beseech your worship's name. cobweb cobweb. bottom i shall desire you of more acquaintance, good master cobweb: if i cut my finger, i shall make bold with you. your name, honest gentleman? peaseblossom peaseblossom. bottom i pray you, commend me to mistress squash, your mother, and to master peascod, your father. good master peaseblossom, i shall desire you of more acquaintance too. your name, i beseech you, sir? mustardseed mustardseed. bottom good master mustardseed, i know your patience well: that same cowardly, giant-like ox-beef hath devoured many a gentleman of your house: i promise you your kindred had made my eyes water ere now. i desire your more acquaintance, good master mustardseed. titania come, wait upon him; lead him to my bower. the moon methinks looks with a watery eye; and when she weeps, weeps every little flower, lamenting some enforced chastity. tie up my love's tongue bring him silently. [exeunt] a midsummer night's dream act iii scene ii another part of the wood. [enter oberon] oberon i wonder if titania be awaked; then, what it was that next came in her eye, which she must dote on in extremity. [enter puck] here comes my messenger. how now, mad spirit! what night-rule now about this haunted grove? puck my mistress with a monster is in love. near to her close and consecrated bower, while she was in her dull and sleeping hour, a crew of patches, rude mechanicals, that work for bread upon athenian stalls, were met together to rehearse a play intended for great theseus' nuptial-day. the shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort, who pyramus presented, in their sport forsook his scene and enter'd in a brake when i did him at this advantage take, an ass's nole i fixed on his head: anon his thisbe must be answered, and forth my mimic comes. when they him spy, as wild geese that the creeping fowler eye, or russet-pated choughs, many in sort, rising and cawing at the gun's report, sever themselves and madly sweep the sky, so, at his sight, away his fellows fly; and, at our stamp, here o'er and o'er one falls; he murder cries and help from athens calls. their sense thus weak, lost with their fears thus strong, made senseless things begin to do them wrong; for briers and thorns at their apparel snatch; some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all things catch. i led them on in this distracted fear, and left sweet pyramus translated there: when in that moment, so it came to pass, titania waked and straightway loved an ass. oberon this falls out better than i could devise. but hast thou yet latch'd the athenian's eyes with the love-juice, as i did bid thee do? puck i took him sleeping,--that is finish'd too,- and the athenian woman by his side: that, when he waked, of force she must be eyed. [enter hermia and demetrius] oberon stand close: this is the same athenian. puck this is the woman, but not this the man. demetrius o, why rebuke you him that loves you so? lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe. hermia now i but chide; but i should use thee worse, for thou, i fear, hast given me cause to curse, if thou hast slain lysander in his sleep, being o'er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep, and kill me too. the sun was not so true unto the day as he to me: would he have stolen away from sleeping hermia? i'll believe as soon this whole earth may be bored and that the moon may through the centre creep and so displease her brother's noontide with antipodes. it cannot be but thou hast murder'd him; so should a murderer look, so dead, so grim. demetrius so should the murder'd look, and so should i, pierced through the heart with your stern cruelty: yet you, the murderer, look as bright, as clear, as yonder venus in her glimmering sphere. hermia what's this to my lysander? where is he? ah, good demetrius, wilt thou give him me? demetrius i had rather give his carcass to my hounds. hermia out, dog! out, cur! thou drivest me past the bounds of maiden's patience. hast thou slain him, then? henceforth be never number'd among men! o, once tell true, tell true, even for my sake! durst thou have look'd upon him being awake, and hast thou kill'd him sleeping? o brave touch! could not a worm, an adder, do so much? an adder did it; for with doubler tongue than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung. demetrius you spend your passion on a misprised mood: i am not guilty of lysander's blood; nor is he dead, for aught that i can tell. hermia i pray thee, tell me then that he is well. demetrius an if i could, what should i get therefore? hermia a privilege never to see me more. and from thy hated presence part i so: see me no more, whether he be dead or no. [exit] demetrius there is no following her in this fierce vein: here therefore for a while i will remain. so sorrow's heaviness doth heavier grow for debt that bankrupt sleep doth sorrow owe: which now in some slight measure it will pay, if for his tender here i make some stay. [lies down and sleeps] oberon what hast thou done? thou hast mistaken quite and laid the love-juice on some true-love's sight: of thy misprision must perforce ensue some true love turn'd and not a false turn'd true. puck then fate o'er-rules, that, one man holding troth, a million fail, confounding oath on oath. oberon about the wood go swifter than the wind, and helena of athens look thou find: all fancy-sick she is and pale of cheer, with sighs of love, that costs the fresh blood dear: by some illusion see thou bring her here: i'll charm his eyes against she do appear. puck i go, i go; look how i go, swifter than arrow from the tartar's bow. [exit] oberon flower of this purple dye, hit with cupid's archery, sink in apple of his eye. when his love he doth espy, let her shine as gloriously as the venus of the sky. when thou wakest, if she be by, beg of her for remedy. [re-enter puck] puck captain of our fairy band, helena is here at hand; and the youth, mistook by me, pleading for a lover's fee. shall we their fond pageant see? lord, what fools these mortals be! oberon stand aside: the noise they make will cause demetrius to awake. puck then will two at once woo one; that must needs be sport alone; and those things do best please me that befal preposterously. [enter lysander and helena] lysander why should you think that i should woo in scorn? scorn and derision never come in tears: look, when i vow, i weep; and vows so born, in their nativity all truth appears. how can these things in me seem scorn to you, bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true? helena you do advance your cunning more and more. when truth kills truth, o devilish-holy fray! these vows are hermia's: will you give her o'er? weigh oath with oath, and you will nothing weigh: your vows to her and me, put in two scales, will even weigh, and both as light as tales. lysander i had no judgment when to her i swore. helena nor none, in my mind, now you give her o'er. lysander demetrius loves her, and he loves not you. demetrius [awaking] o helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! to what, my love, shall i compare thine eyne? crystal is muddy. o, how ripe in show thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow! that pure congealed white, high taurus snow, fann'd with the eastern wind, turns to a crow when thou hold'st up thy hand: o, let me kiss this princess of pure white, this seal of bliss! helena o spite! o hell! i see you all are bent to set against me for your merriment: if you we re civil and knew courtesy, you would not do me thus much injury. can you not hate me, as i know you do, but you must join in souls to mock me too? if you were men, as men you are in show, you would not use a gentle lady so; to vow, and swear, and superpraise my parts, when i am sure you hate me with your hearts. you both are rivals, and love hermia; and now both rivals, to mock helena: a trim exploit, a manly enterprise, to conjure tears up in a poor maid's eyes with your derision! none of noble sort would so offend a virgin, and extort a poor soul's patience, all to make you sport. lysander you are unkind, demetrius; be not so; for you love hermia; this you know i know: and here, with all good will, with all my heart, in hermia's love i yield you up my part; and yours of helena to me bequeath, whom i do love and will do till my death. helena never did mockers waste more idle breath. demetrius lysander, keep thy hermia; i will none: if e'er i loved her, all that love is gone. my heart to her but as guest-wise sojourn'd, and now to helen is it home return'd, there to remain. lysander helen, it is not so. demetrius disparage not the faith thou dost not know, lest, to thy peril, thou aby it dear. look, where thy love comes; yonder is thy dear. [re-enter hermia] hermia dark night, that from the eye his function takes, the ear more quick of apprehension makes; wherein it doth impair the seeing sense, it pays the hearing double recompense. thou art not by mine eye, lysander, found; mine ear, i thank it, brought me to thy sound but why unkindly didst thou leave me so? lysander why should he stay, whom love doth press to go? hermia what love could press lysander from my side? lysander lysander's love, that would not let him bide, fair helena, who more engilds the night than all you fiery oes and eyes of light. why seek'st thou me? could not this make thee know, the hate i bear thee made me leave thee so? hermia you speak not as you think: it cannot be. helena lo, she is one of this confederacy! now i perceive they have conjoin'd all three to fashion this false sport, in spite of me. injurious hermia! most ungrateful maid! have you conspired, have you with these contrived to bait me with this foul derision? is all the counsel that we two have shared, the sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent, when we have chid the hasty-footed time for parting us,--o, is it all forgot? all school-days' friendship, childhood innocence? we, hermia, like two artificial gods, have with our needles created both one flower, both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, both warbling of one song, both in one key, as if our hands, our sides, voices and minds, had been incorporate. so we grow together, like to a double cherry, seeming parted, but yet an union in partition; two lovely berries moulded on one stem; so, with two seeming bodies, but one heart; two of the first, like coats in heraldry, due but to one and crowned with one crest. and will you rent our ancient love asunder, to join with men in scorning your poor friend? it is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly: our sex, as well as i, may chide you for it, though i alone do feel the injury. hermia i am amazed at your passionate words. i scorn you not: it seems that you scorn me. helena have you not set lysander, as in scorn, to follow me and praise my eyes and face? and made your other love, demetrius, who even but now did spurn me with his foot, to call me goddess, nymph, divine and rare, precious, celestial? wherefore speaks he this to her he hates? and wherefore doth lysander deny your love, so rich within his soul, and tender me, forsooth, affection, but by your setting on, by your consent? what thought i be not so in grace as you, so hung upon with love, so fortunate, but miserable most, to love unloved? this you should pity rather than despise. hernia i understand not what you mean by this. helena ay, do, persever, counterfeit sad looks, make mouths upon me when i turn my back; wink each at other; hold the sweet jest up: this sport, well carried, shall be chronicled. if you have any pity, grace, or manners, you would not make me such an argument. but fare ye well: 'tis partly my own fault; which death or absence soon shall remedy. lysander stay, gentle helena; hear my excuse: my love, my life my soul, fair helena! helena o excellent! hermia sweet, do not scorn her so. demetrius if she cannot entreat, i can compel. lysander thou canst compel no more than she entreat: thy threats have no more strength than her weak prayers. helen, i love thee; by my life, i do: i swear by that which i will lose for thee, to prove him false that says i love thee not. demetrius i say i love thee more than he can do. lysander if thou say so, withdraw, and prove it too. demetrius quick, come! hermia lysander, whereto tends all this? lysander away, you ethiope! demetrius no, no; he'll [ ] seem to break loose; take on as you would follow, but yet come not: you are a tame man, go! lysander hang off, thou cat, thou burr! vile thing, let loose, or i will shake thee from me like a serpent! hermia why are you grown so rude? what change is this? sweet love,- lysander thy love! out, tawny tartar, out! out, loathed medicine! hated potion, hence! hermia do you not jest? helena yes, sooth; and so do you. lysander demetrius, i will keep my word with thee. demetrius i would i had your bond, for i perceive a weak bond holds you: i'll not trust your word. lysander what, should i hurt her, strike her, kill her dead? although i hate her, i'll not harm her so. hermia what, can you do me greater harm than hate? hate me! wherefore? o me! what news, my love! am not i hermia? are not you lysander? i am as fair now as i was erewhile. since night you loved me; yet since night you left me: why, then you left me--o, the gods forbid!- in earnest, shall i say? lysander ay, by my life; and never did desire to see thee more. therefore be out of hope, of question, of doubt; be certain, nothing truer; 'tis no jest that i do hate thee and love helena. hermia o me! you juggler! you canker-blossom! you thief of love! what, have you come by night and stolen my love's heart from him? helena fine, i'faith! have you no modesty, no maiden shame, no touch of bashfulness? what, will you tear impatient answers from my gentle tongue? fie, fie! you counterfeit, you puppet, you! hermia puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game. now i perceive that she hath made compare between our statures; she hath urged her height; and with her personage, her tall personage, her height, forsooth, she hath prevail'd with him. and are you grown so high in his esteem; because i am so dwarfish and so low? how low am i, thou painted maypole? speak; how low am i? i am not yet so low but that my nails can reach unto thine eyes. helena i pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen, let her not hurt me: i was never curst; i have no gift at all in shrewishness; i am a right maid for my cowardice: let her not strike me. you perhaps may think, because she is something lower than myself, that i can match her. hermia lower! hark, again. helena good hermia, do not be so bitter with me. i evermore did love you, hermia, did ever keep your counsels, never wrong'd you; save that, in love unto demetrius, i told him of your stealth unto this wood. he follow'd you; for love i follow'd him; but he hath chid me hence and threaten'd me to strike me, spurn me, nay, to kill me too: and now, so you will let me quiet go, to athens will i bear my folly back and follow you no further: let me go: you see how simple and how fond i am. hermia why, get you gone: who is't that hinders you? helena a foolish heart, that i leave here behind. hermia what, with lysander? helena with demetrius. lysander be not afraid; she shall not harm thee, helena. demetrius no, sir, she shall not, though you take her part. helena o, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd! she was a vixen when she went to school; and though she be but little, she is fierce. hermia 'little' again! nothing but 'low' and 'little'! why will you suffer her to flout me thus? let me come to her. lysander get you gone, you dwarf; you minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; you bead, you acorn. demetrius you are too officious in her behalf that scorns your services. let her alone: speak not of helena; take not her part; for, if thou dost intend never so little show of love to her, thou shalt aby it. lysander now she holds me not; now follow, if thou darest, to try whose right, of thine or mine, is most in helena. demetrius follow! nay, i'll go with thee, cheek by jole. [exeunt lysander and demetrius] hermia you, mistress, all this coil is 'long of you: nay, go not back. helena i will not trust you, i, nor longer stay in your curst company. your hands than mine are quicker for a fray, my legs are longer though, to run away. [exit] hermia i am amazed, and know not what to say. [exit] oberon this is thy negligence: still thou mistakest, or else committ'st thy knaveries wilfully. puck believe me, king of shadows, i mistook. did not you tell me i should know the man by the athenian garment be had on? and so far blameless proves my enterprise, that i have 'nointed an athenian's eyes; and so far am i glad it so did sort as this their jangling i esteem a sport. oberon thou see'st these lovers seek a place to fight: hie therefore, robin, overcast the night; the starry welkin cover thou anon with drooping fog as black as acheron, and lead these testy rivals so astray as one come not within another's way. like to lysander sometime frame thy tongue, then stir demetrius up with bitter wrong; and sometime rail thou like demetrius; and from each other look thou lead them thus, till o'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep with leaden legs and batty wings doth creep: then crush this herb into lysander's eye; whose liquor hath this virtuous property, to take from thence all error with his might, and make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight. when they next wake, all this derision shall seem a dream and fruitless vision, and back to athens shall the lovers wend, with league whose date till death shall never end. whiles i in this affair do thee employ, i'll to my queen and beg her indian boy; and then i will her charmed eye release from monster's view, and all things shall be peace. puck my fairy lord, this must be done with haste, for night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, and yonder shines aurora's harbinger; at whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there, troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all, that in crossways and floods have burial, already to their wormy beds are gone; for fear lest day should look their shames upon, they willfully themselves exile from light and must for aye consort with black-brow'd night. oberon but we are spirits of another sort: i with the morning's love have oft made sport, and, like a forester, the groves may tread, even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red, opening on neptune with fair blessed beams, turns into yellow gold his salt green streams. but, notwithstanding, haste; make no delay: we may effect this business yet ere day. [exit] puck up and down, up and down, i will lead them up and down: i am fear'd in field and town: goblin, lead them up and down. here comes one. [re-enter lysander] lysander where art thou, proud demetrius? speak thou now. puck here, villain; drawn and ready. where art thou? lysander i will be with thee straight. puck follow me, then, to plainer ground. [exit lysander, as following the voice] [re-enter demetrius] demetrius lysander! speak again: thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled? speak! in some bush? where dost thou hide thy head? puck thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars, telling the bushes that thou look'st for wars, and wilt not come? come, recreant; come, thou child; i'll whip thee with a rod: he is defiled that draws a sword on thee. demetrius yea, art thou there? puck follow my voice: we'll try no manhood here. [exeunt] [re-enter lysander] lysander he goes before me and still dares me on: when i come where he calls, then he is gone. the villain is much lighter-heel'd than i: i follow'd fast, but faster he did fly; that fallen am i in dark uneven way, and here will rest me. [lies down] come, thou gentle day! for if but once thou show me thy grey light, i'll find demetrius and revenge this spite. [sleeps] [re-enter puck and demetrius] puck ho, ho, ho! coward, why comest thou not? demetrius abide me, if thou darest; for well i wot thou runn'st before me, shifting every place, and darest not stand, nor look me in the face. where art thou now? puck come hither: i am here. demetrius nay, then, thou mock'st me. thou shalt buy this dear, if ever i thy face by daylight see: now, go thy way. faintness constraineth me to measure out my length on this cold bed. by day's approach look to be visited. [lies down and sleeps] [re-enter helena] helena o weary night, o long and tedious night, abate thy hour! shine comforts from the east, that i may back to athens by daylight, from these that my poor company detest: and sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye, steal me awhile from mine own company. [lies down and sleeps] puck yet but three? come one more; two of both kinds make up four. here she comes, curst and sad: cupid is a knavish lad, thus to make poor females mad. [re-enter hermia] hermia never so weary, never so in woe, bedabbled with the dew and torn with briers, i can no further crawl, no further go; my legs can keep no pace with my desires. here will i rest me till the break of day. heavens shield lysander, if they mean a fray! [lies down and sleeps] puck on the ground sleep sound: i'll apply to your eye, gentle lover, remedy. [squeezing the juice on lysander's eyes] when thou wakest, thou takest true delight in the sight of thy former lady's eye: and the country proverb known, that every man should take his own, in your waking shall be shown: jack shall have jill; nought shall go ill; the man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well. [exit] a midsummer night's dream act iv scene i the same. lysander, demetrius, helena, and hermia lying asleep. [enter titania and bottom; peaseblossom, cobweb, moth, mustardseed, and other fairies attending; oberon behind unseen] titania come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed, while i thy amiable cheeks do coy, and stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head, and kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy. bottom where's peaseblossom? peaseblossom ready. bottom scratch my head peaseblossom. where's mounsieur cobweb? cobweb ready. bottom mounsieur cobweb, good mounsieur, get you your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag. do not fret yourself too much in the action, mounsieur; and, good mounsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not; i would be loath to have you overflown with a honey-bag, signior. where's mounsieur mustardseed? mustardseed ready. bottom give me your neaf, mounsieur mustardseed. pray you, leave your courtesy, good mounsieur. mustardseed what's your will? bottom nothing, good mounsieur, but to help cavalery cobweb to scratch. i must to the barber's, monsieur; for methinks i am marvellous hairy about the face; and i am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me, i must scratch. titania what, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love? bottom i have a reasonable good ear in music. let's have the tongs and the bones. titania or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat. bottom truly, a peck of provender: i could munch your good dry oats. methinks i have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow. titania i have a venturous fairy that shall seek the squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts. bottom i had rather have a handful or two of dried peas. but, i pray you, let none of your people stir me: i have an exposition of sleep come upon me. titania sleep thou, and i will wind thee in my arms. fairies, begone, and be all ways away. [exeunt fairies] so doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle gently entwist; the female ivy so enrings the barky fingers of the elm. o, how i love thee! how i dote on thee! [they sleep] [enter puck] oberon [advancing] welcome, good robin. see'st thou this sweet sight? her dotage now i do begin to pity: for, meeting her of late behind the wood, seeking sweet favours from this hateful fool, i did upbraid her and fall out with her; for she his hairy temples then had rounded with a coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers; and that same dew, which sometime on the buds was wont to swell like round and orient pearls, stood now within the pretty flowerets' eyes like tears that did their own disgrace bewail. when i had at my pleasure taunted her and she in mild terms begg'd my patience, i then did ask of her her changeling child; which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent to bear him to my bower in fairy land. and now i have the boy, i will undo this hateful imperfection of her eyes: and, gentle puck, take this transformed scalp from off the head of this athenian swain; that, he awaking when the other do, may all to athens back again repair and think no more of this night's accidents but as the fierce vexation of a dream. but first i will release the fairy queen. be as thou wast wont to be; see as thou wast wont to see: dian's bud o'er cupid's flower hath such force and blessed power. now, my titania; wake you, my sweet queen. titania my oberon! what visions have i seen! methought i was enamour'd of an ass. oberon there lies your love. titania how came these things to pass? o, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now! oberon silence awhile. robin, take off this head. titania, music call; and strike more dead than common sleep of all these five the sense. titania music, ho! music, such as charmeth sleep! [music, still] puck now, when thou wakest, with thine own fool's eyes peep. oberon sound, music! come, my queen, take hands with me, and rock the ground whereon these sleepers be. now thou and i are new in amity, and will to-morrow midnight solemnly dance in duke theseus' house triumphantly, and bless it to all fair prosperity: there shall the pairs of faithful lovers be wedded, with theseus, all in jollity. puck fairy king, attend, and mark: i do hear the morning lark. oberon then, my queen, in silence sad, trip we after the night's shade: we the globe can compass soon, swifter than the wandering moon. titania come, my lord, and in our flight tell me how it came this night that i sleeping here was found with these mortals on the ground. [exeunt] [horns winded within] [enter theseus, hippolyta, egeus, and train] theseus go, one of you, find out the forester; for now our observation is perform'd; and since we have the vaward of the day, my love shall hear the music of my hounds. uncouple in the western valley; let them go: dispatch, i say, and find the forester. [exit an attendant] we will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top, and mark the musical confusion of hounds and echo in conjunction. hippolyta i was with hercules and cadmus once, when in a wood of crete they bay'd the bear with hounds of sparta: never did i hear such gallant chiding: for, besides the groves, the skies, the fountains, every region near seem'd all one mutual cry: i never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder. theseus my hounds are bred out of the spartan kind, so flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung with ears that sweep away the morning dew; crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like thessalian bulls; slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, each under each. a cry more tuneable was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn, in crete, in sparta, nor in thessaly: judge when you hear. but, soft! what nymphs are these? egeus my lord, this is my daughter here asleep; and this, lysander; this demetrius is; this helena, old nedar's helena: i wonder of their being here together. theseus no doubt they rose up early to observe the rite of may, and hearing our intent, came here in grace our solemnity. but speak, egeus; is not this the day that hermia should give answer of her choice? egeus it is, my lord. theseus go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns. [horns and shout within. lysander, demetrius, helena, and hermia wake and start up] good morrow, friends. saint valentine is past: begin these wood-birds but to couple now? lysander pardon, my lord. theseus i pray you all, stand up. i know you two are rival enemies: how comes this gentle concord in the world, that hatred is so far from jealousy, to sleep by hate, and fear no enmity? lysander my lord, i shall reply amazedly, half sleep, half waking: but as yet, i swear, i cannot truly say how i came here; but, as i think,--for truly would i speak, and now do i bethink me, so it is,- i came with hermia hither: our intent was to be gone from athens, where we might, without the peril of the athenian law. egeus enough, enough, my lord; you have enough: i beg the law, the law, upon his head. they would have stolen away; they would, demetrius, thereby to have defeated you and me, you of your wife and me of my consent, of my consent that she should be your wife. demetrius my lord, fair helen told me of their stealth, of this their purpose hither to this wood; and i in fury hither follow'd them, fair helena in fancy following me. but, my good lord, i wot not by what power,- but by some power it is,--my love to hermia, melted as the snow, seems to me now as the remembrance of an idle gaud which in my childhood i did dote upon; and all the faith, the virtue of my heart, the object and the pleasure of mine eye, is only helena. to her, my lord, was i betroth'd ere i saw hermia: but, like in sickness, did i loathe this food; but, as in health, come to my natural taste, now i do wish it, love it, long for it, and will for evermore be true to it. theseus fair lovers, you are fortunately met: of this discourse we more will hear anon. egeus, i will overbear your will; for in the temple by and by with us these couples shall eternally be knit: and, for the morning now is something worn, our purposed hunting shall be set aside. away with us to athens; three and three, we'll hold a feast in great solemnity. come, hippolyta. [exeunt theseus, hippolyta, egeus, and train] demetrius these things seem small and undistinguishable, hermia methinks i see these things with parted eye, when every thing seems double. helena so methinks: and i have found demetrius like a jewel, mine own, and not mine own. demetrius are you sure that we are awake? it seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream. do not you think the duke was here, and bid us follow him? hermia yea; and my father. helena and hippolyta. lysander and he did bid us follow to the temple. demetrius why, then, we are awake: let's follow him and by the way let us recount our dreams. [exeunt] bottom [awaking] when my cue comes, call me, and i will answer: my next is, 'most fair pyramus.' heigh-ho! peter quince! flute, the bellows-mender! snout, the tinker! starveling! god's my life, stolen hence, and left me asleep! i have had a most rare vision. i have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. methought i was--there is no man can tell what. methought i was,--and methought i had,--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought i had. the eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. i will get peter quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called bottom's dream, because it hath no bottom; and i will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the duke: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, i shall sing it at her death. [exit] a midsummer night's dream act iv scene ii athens. quince's house. [enter quince, flute, snout, and starveling] quince have you sent to bottom's house? is he come home yet? starveling he cannot be heard of. out of doubt he is transported. flute if he come not, then the play is marred: it goes not forward, doth it? quince it is not possible: you have not a man in all athens able to discharge pyramus but he. flute no, he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft man in athens. quince yea and the best person too; and he is a very paramour for a sweet voice. flute you must say 'paragon:' a paramour is, god bless us, a thing of naught. [enter snug] snug masters, the duke is coming from the temple, and there is two or three lords and ladies more married: if our sport had gone forward, we had all been made men. flute o sweet bully bottom! thus hath he lost sixpence a day during his life; he could not have 'scaped sixpence a day: an the duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing pyramus, i'll be hanged; he would have deserved it: sixpence a day in pyramus, or nothing. [enter bottom] bottom where are these lads? where are these hearts? quince bottom! o most courageous day! o most happy hour! bottom masters, i am to discourse wonders: but ask me not what; for if i tell you, i am no true athenian. i will tell you every thing, right as it fell out. quince let us hear, sweet bottom. bottom not a word of me. all that i will tell you is, that the duke hath dined. get your apparel together, good strings to your beards, new ribbons to your pumps; meet presently at the palace; every man look o'er his part; for the short and the long is, our play is preferred. in any case, let thisby have clean linen; and let not him that plays the lion pair his nails, for they shall hang out for the lion's claws. and, most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath; and i do not doubt but to hear them say, it is a sweet comedy. no more words: away! go, away! [exeunt] a midsummer night's dream act v scene i athens. the palace of theseus. [enter theseus, hippolyta, philostrate, lords and attendants] hippolyta 'tis strange my theseus, that these lovers speak of. theseus more strange than true: i never may believe these antique fables, nor these fairy toys. lovers and madmen have such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends. the lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact: one sees more devils than vast hell can hold, that is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, sees helen's beauty in a brow of egypt: the poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. such tricks hath strong imagination, that if it would but apprehend some joy, it comprehends some bringer of that joy; or in the night, imagining some fear, how easy is a bush supposed a bear! hippolyta but all the story of the night told over, and all their minds transfigured so together, more witnesseth than fancy's images and grows to something of great constancy; but, howsoever, strange and admirable. theseus here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth. [enter lysander, demetrius, hermia, and helena] joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love accompany your hearts! lysander more than to us wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed! theseus come now; what masques, what dances shall we have, to wear away this long age of three hours between our after-supper and bed-time? where is our usual manager of mirth? what revels are in hand? is there no play, to ease the anguish of a torturing hour? call philostrate. philostrate here, mighty theseus. theseus say, what abridgement have you for this evening? what masque? what music? how shall we beguile the lazy time, if not with some delight? philostrate there is a brief how many sports are ripe: make choice of which your highness will see first. [giving a paper] theseus [reads] 'the battle with the centaurs, to be sung by an athenian eunuch to the harp.' we'll none of that: that have i told my love, in glory of my kinsman hercules. [reads] 'the riot of the tipsy bacchanals, tearing the thracian singer in their rage.' that is an old device; and it was play'd when i from thebes came last a conqueror. [reads] 'the thrice three muses mourning for the death of learning, late deceased in beggary.' that is some satire, keen and critical, not sorting with a nuptial ceremony. [reads] 'a tedious brief scene of young pyramus and his love thisbe; very tragical mirth.' merry and tragical! tedious and brief! that is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow. how shall we find the concord of this discord? philostrate a play there is, my lord, some ten words long, which is as brief as i have known a play; but by ten words, my lord, it is too long, which makes it tedious; for in all the play there is not one word apt, one player fitted: and tragical, my noble lord, it is; for pyramus therein doth kill himself. which, when i saw rehearsed, i must confess, made mine eyes water; but more merry tears the passion of loud laughter never shed. theseus what are they that do play it? philostrate hard-handed men that work in athens here, which never labour'd in their minds till now, and now have toil'd their unbreathed memories with this same play, against your nuptial. theseus and we will hear it. philostrate no, my noble lord; it is not for you: i have heard it over, and it is nothing, nothing in the world; unless you can find sport in their intents, extremely stretch'd and conn'd with cruel pain, to do you service. theseus i will hear that play; for never anything can be amiss, when simpleness and duty tender it. go, bring them in: and take your places, ladies. [exit philostrate] hippolyta i love not to see wretchedness o'er charged and duty in his service perishing. theseus why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing. hippolyta he says they can do nothing in this kind. theseus the kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing. our sport shall be to take what they mistake: and what poor duty cannot do, noble respect takes it in might, not merit. where i have come, great clerks have purposed to greet me with premeditated welcomes; where i have seen them shiver and look pale, make periods in the midst of sentences, throttle their practised accent in their fears and in conclusion dumbly have broke off, not paying me a welcome. trust me, sweet, out of this silence yet i pick'd a welcome; and in the modesty of fearful duty i read as much as from the rattling tongue of saucy and audacious eloquence. love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity in least speak most, to my capacity. [re-enter philostrate] philostrate so please your grace, the prologue is address'd. theseus let him approach. [flourish of trumpets] [enter quince for the prologue] prologue if we offend, it is with our good will. that you should think, we come not to offend, but with good will. to show our simple skill, that is the true beginning of our end. consider then we come but in despite. we do not come as minding to contest you, our true intent is. all for your delight we are not here. that you should here repent you, the actors are at hand and by their show you shall know all that you are like to know. theseus this fellow doth not stand upon points. lysander he hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he knows not the stop. a good moral, my lord: it is not enough to speak, but to speak true. hippolyta indeed he hath played on his prologue like a child on a recorder; a sound, but not in government. theseus his speech, was like a tangled chain; nothing impaired, but all disordered. who is next? [enter pyramus and thisbe, wall, moonshine, and lion] prologue gentles, perchance you wonder at this show; but wonder on, till truth make all things plain. this man is pyramus, if you would know; this beauteous lady thisby is certain. this man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present wall, that vile wall which did these lovers sunder; and through wall's chink, poor souls, they are content to whisper. at the which let no man wonder. this man, with lanthorn, dog, and bush of thorn, presenteth moonshine; for, if you will know, by moonshine did these lovers think no scorn to meet at ninus' tomb, there, there to woo. this grisly beast, which lion hight by name, the trusty thisby, coming first by night, did scare away, or rather did affright; and, as she fled, her mantle she did fall, which lion vile with bloody mouth did stain. anon comes pyramus, sweet youth and tall, and finds his trusty thisby's mantle slain: whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade, he bravely broach'd is boiling bloody breast; and thisby, tarrying in mulberry shade, his dagger drew, and died. for all the rest, let lion, moonshine, wall, and lovers twain at large discourse, while here they do remain. [exeunt prologue, thisbe, lion, and moonshine] theseus i wonder if the lion be to speak. demetrius no wonder, my lord: one lion may, when many asses do. wall in this same interlude it doth befall that i, one snout by name, present a wall; and such a wall, as i would have you think, that had in it a crannied hole or chink, through which the lovers, pyramus and thisby, did whisper often very secretly. this loam, this rough-cast and this stone doth show that i am that same wall; the truth is so: and this the cranny is, right and sinister, through which the fearful lovers are to whisper. theseus would you desire lime and hair to speak better? demetrius it is the wittiest partition that ever i heard discourse, my lord. [enter pyramus] theseus pyramus draws near the wall: silence! pyramus o grim-look'd night! o night with hue so black! o night, which ever art when day is not! o night, o night! alack, alack, alack, i fear my thisby's promise is forgot! and thou, o wall, o sweet, o lovely wall, that stand'st between her father's ground and mine! thou wall, o wall, o sweet and lovely wall, show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne! [wall holds up his fingers] thanks, courteous wall: jove shield thee well for this! but what see i? no thisby do i see. o wicked wall, through whom i see no bliss! cursed be thy stones for thus deceiving me! theseus the wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again. pyramus no, in truth, sir, he should not. 'deceiving me' is thisby's cue: she is to enter now, and i am to spy her through the wall. you shall see, it will fall pat as i told you. yonder she comes. [enter thisbe] thisbe o wall, full often hast thou heard my moans, for parting my fair pyramus and me! my cherry lips have often kiss'd thy stones, thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee. pyramus i see a voice: now will i to the chink, to spy an i can hear my thisby's face. thisby! thisbe my love thou art, my love i think. pyramus think what thou wilt, i am thy lover's grace; and, like limander, am i trusty still. thisbe and i like helen, till the fates me kill. pyramus not shafalus to procrus was so true. thisbe as shafalus to procrus, i to you. pyramus o kiss me through the hole of this vile wall! thisbe i kiss the wall's hole, not your lips at all. pyramus wilt thou at ninny's tomb meet me straightway? thisbe 'tide life, 'tide death, i come without delay. [exeunt pyramus and thisbe] wall thus have i, wall, my part discharged so; and, being done, thus wall away doth go. [exit] theseus now is the mural down between the two neighbours. demetrius no remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to hear without warning. hippolyta this is the silliest stuff that ever i heard. theseus the best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them. hippolyta it must be your imagination then, and not theirs. theseus if we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass for excellent men. here come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion. [enter lion and moonshine] lion you, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear the smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor, may now perchance both quake and tremble here, when lion rough in wildest rage doth roar. then know that i, one snug the joiner, am a lion-fell, nor else no lion's dam; for, if i should as lion come in strife into this place, 'twere pity on my life. theseus a very gentle beast, of a good conscience. demetrius the very best at a beast, my lord, that e'er i saw. lysander this lion is a very fox for his valour. theseus true; and a goose for his discretion. demetrius not so, my lord; for his valour cannot carry his discretion; and the fox carries the goose. theseus his discretion, i am sure, cannot carry his valour; for the goose carries not the fox. it is well: leave it to his discretion, and let us listen to the moon. moonshine this lanthorn doth the horned moon present;- demetrius he should have worn the horns on his head. theseus he is no crescent, and his horns are invisible within the circumference. moonshine this lanthorn doth the horned moon present; myself the man i' the moon do seem to be. theseus this is the greatest error of all the rest: the man should be put into the lanthorn. how is it else the man i' the moon? demetrius he dares not come there for the candle; for, you see, it is already in snuff. hippolyta i am aweary of this moon: would he would change! theseus it appears, by his small light of discretion, that he is in the wane; but yet, in courtesy, in all reason, we must stay the time. lysander proceed, moon. moonshine all that i have to say, is, to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; i, the man in the moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog. demetrius why, all these should be in the lanthorn; for all these are in the moon. but, silence! here comes thisbe. [enter thisbe] thisbe this is old ninny's tomb. where is my love? lion [roaring] oh- [thisbe runs off] demetrius well roared, lion. theseus well run, thisbe. hippolyta well shone, moon. truly, the moon shines with a good grace. [the lion shakes thisbe's mantle, and exit] theseus well moused, lion. lysander and so the lion vanished. demetrius and then came pyramus. [enter pyramus] pyramus sweet moon, i thank thee for thy sunny beams; i thank thee, moon, for shining now so bright; for, by thy gracious, golden, glittering gleams, i trust to take of truest thisby sight. but stay, o spite! but mark, poor knight, what dreadful dole is here! eyes, do you see? how can it be? o dainty duck! o dear! thy mantle good, what, stain'd with blood! approach, ye furies fell! o fates, come, come, cut thread and thrum; quail, crush, conclude, and quell! theseus this passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad. hippolyta beshrew my heart, but i pity the man. pyramus o wherefore, nature, didst thou lions frame? since lion vile hath here deflower'd my dear: which is--no, no--which was the fairest dame that lived, that loved, that liked, that look'd with cheer. come, tears, confound; out, sword, and wound the pap of pyramus; ay, that left pap, where heart doth hop: [stabs himself] thus die i, thus, thus, thus. now am i dead, now am i fled; my soul is in the sky: tongue, lose thy light; moon take thy flight: [exit moonshine] now die, die, die, die, die. [dies] demetrius no die, but an ace, for him; for he is but one. lysander less than an ace, man; for he is dead; he is nothing. theseus with the help of a surgeon he might yet recover, and prove an ass. hippolyta how chance moonshine is gone before thisbe comes back and finds her lover? theseus she will find him by starlight. here she comes; and her passion ends the play. [re-enter thisbe] hippolyta methinks she should not use a long one for such a pyramus: i hope she will be brief. demetrius a mote will turn the balance, which pyramus, which thisbe, is the better; he for a man, god warrant us; she for a woman, god bless us. lysander she hath spied him already with those sweet eyes. demetrius and thus she means, videlicet:- thisbe asleep, my love? what, dead, my dove? o pyramus, arise! speak, speak. quite dumb? dead, dead? a tomb must cover thy sweet eyes. these my lips, this cherry nose, these yellow cowslip cheeks, are gone, are gone: lovers, make moan: his eyes were green as leeks. o sisters three, come, come to me, with hands as pale as milk; lay them in gore, since you have shore with shears his thread of silk. tongue, not a word: come, trusty sword; come, blade, my breast imbrue: [stabs herself] and, farewell, friends; thus thisby ends: adieu, adieu, adieu. [dies] theseus moonshine and lion are left to bury the dead. demetrius ay, and wall too. bottom [starting up] no assure you; the wall is down that parted their fathers. will it please you to see the epilogue, or to hear a bergomask dance between two of our company? theseus no epilogue, i pray you; for your play needs no excuse. never excuse; for when the players are all dead, there needs none to be blamed. marry, if he that writ it had played pyramus and hanged himself in thisbe's garter, it would have been a fine tragedy: and so it is, truly; and very notably discharged. but come, your bergomask: let your epilogue alone. [a dance] the iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve: lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time. i fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn as much as we this night have overwatch'd. this palpable-gross play hath well beguiled the heavy gait of night. sweet friends, to bed. a fortnight hold we this solemnity, in nightly revels and new jollity. [exeunt] [enter puck] puck now the hungry lion roars, and the wolf behowls the moon; whilst the heavy ploughman snores, all with weary task fordone. now the wasted brands do glow, whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, puts the wretch that lies in woe in remembrance of a shroud. now it is the time of night that the graves all gaping wide, every one lets forth his sprite, in the church-way paths to glide: and we fairies, that do run by the triple hecate's team, from the presence of the sun, following darkness like a dream, now are frolic: not a mouse shall disturb this hallow'd house: i am sent with broom before, to sweep the dust behind the door. [enter oberon and titania with their train] oberon through the house give gathering light, by the dead and drowsy fire: every elf and fairy sprite hop as light as bird from brier; and this ditty, after me, sing, and dance it trippingly. titania first, rehearse your song by rote to each word a warbling note: hand in hand, with fairy grace, will we sing, and bless this place. [song and dance] oberon now, until the break of day, through this house each fairy stray. to the best bride-bed will we, which by us shall blessed be; and the issue there create ever shall be fortunate. so shall all the couples three ever true in loving be; and the blots of nature's hand shall not in their issue stand; never mole, hare lip, nor scar, nor mark prodigious, such as are despised in nativity, shall upon their children be. with this field-dew consecrate, every fairy take his gait; and each several chamber bless, through this palace, with sweet peace; and the owner of it blest ever shall in safety rest. trip away; make no stay; meet me all by break of day. [exeunt oberon, titania, and train] puck if we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended, that you have but slumber'd here while these visions did appear. and this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream, gentles, do not reprehend: if you pardon, we will mend: and, as i am an honest puck, if we have unearned luck now to 'scape the serpent's tongue, we will make amends ere long; else the puck a liar call; so, good night unto you all. give me your hands, if we be friends, and robin shall restore amends. internet wiretap edition of extracts from adam's diary by mark twain from "the writings of mark twain volume xx", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain, may 1993. monday. -this new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. it is always hanging around and following me about. i don't like this; i am not used to company. i wish it would stay with the other animals.... cloudy to-day, wind in the east; think we shall have rain. we? where did i get that word? -i remember now -the new creature uses it. tuesday. -been examining the great waterfall. it is the finest thing on the estate, i think. the new creature calls it niagara falls -why, i am sure i do not know. says it looks like niagara falls. that is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility. i get no chance to name anything myself. the new creature names everything that comes along, before i can get in a protest. and always that same pretext is offered -it looks like the thing. there is the dodo, for instance. says the moment one looks at it one sees at a glance that it "looks like a dodo." it will have to keep that name, no doubt. it wearies me to fret about it, and it does no good, anyway. dodo! it looks no more like a dodo than i do. wednesday. -built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to myself in peace. the new creature intruded. when i tried to put it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it away with the back of its paws, and made a noise such as some of the other animals make when they are in distress. i wish it would not talk; it is always talking. that sounds like a cheap fling at the poor creature, a slur; but i do not mean it so. i have never heard the human voice before, and any new and strange sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. and this new sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my ear, first on one side and then on the other, and i am used only to sounds that are more or less distant from me. friday. -the naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything i can do. i had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty -garden of eden. privately, i continue to call it that, but not any longer publicly. the new creature says it is all woods and rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. says it looks like a park, and does not look like anything but a park. consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named -niagara falls park. this is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me. and already there is a sign up: keep off the grass my life is not as happy as it was. saturday. -the new creature eats too much fruit. we are going to run short, most likely. "we" again -that is its word; mine, too, now, from hearing it so much. good deal of fog this morning. i do not go out in the fog myself. the new creature does. it goes out in all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet. and talks. it used to be so pleasant and quiet here. sunday. -pulled through. this day is getting to be more and more trying. it was selected and set apart last november as a day of rest. i had already six of them per week before. this morning found the new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree. monday. -the new creature says its name is eve. that is all right, i have no objections. says it is to call it by, when i want it to come. i said it was superfluous, then. the word evidently raised me in its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word and will bear repetition. it says it is not an it, it is a she. this is probably doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were nothing to me if she would but go by herself and not talk. tuesday. -she has littered the whole estate with execrable names and offensive signs: this way to the whirlpool. this way to goat island. cave of the winds this way. she says this park would make a tidy summer resort if there was any custom for it. summer resort -another invention of hers -just words, without any meaning. what is a summer resort? but it is best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining. friday. -she has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the falls. what harm does it do? says it makes her shudder. i wonder why; i have always done it -always liked the plunge, and the excitement and the coolness. i supposed it was what the falls were for. they have no other use that i can see, and they must have been made for something she says they were only made for scenery -like the rhinoceros and the mastodon. i went over the falls in a barrel -not satisfactory to her. went over in a tub -still not satisfactory. swam the whirlpool and the rapids in a fig-leaf suit. it got much damaged. hence, tedious complaints about my extravagance. i am too much hampered here. what i need is change of scene. saturday. -i escaped last tuesday night, and traveled two days, and built me another shelter in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks as well as i could, but she hunted me cut by means of a beast which she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with. i was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again when occasion offers. she engages herself in many foolish things; among others, to study out why the animals called lions and tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each other. this is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each other, and that would introduce what, as i understand it, is called "death"; and death, as i have been told, has not yet entered the park. which is a pity, on some accounts. sunday. -pulled through. monday. -i believe i see what the week is for: it is to give time to rest up from the weariness of sunday. it seems a good idea.... she has been climbing that tree again. clodded her out of it. she said nobody was looking. seems to consider that a sufficient justification for chancing any dangerous thing. told her that. the word justification moved her admiration -and envy, too, i thought. it is a good word. tuesday. -she told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body. this is at least doubtful, if not more than that. i have not missed any rib. ....she is in much trouble about the buzzard; says grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it; thinks it was intended to live on decayed flesh. the buzzard must get along the best it can with what it is provided. we cannot overturn the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard. saturday. -she fell in the pond yesterday when she was looking at herself in it, which she is always doing. she nearly strangled, and said it was most uncomfortable. this made her sorry for the creatures which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues to fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come when they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence to her, she is such a numskull, anyway; so she got a lot of them out and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep warm, but i have noticed them now and then all day and i don't see that they are any happier there than they were before, only quieter. when night comes i shall throw them outdoors. i will not sleep with them again, for i find them clammy and unpleasant to lie among when a person hasn't anything on. sunday. -pulled through. tuesday. -she has taken up with a snake now. the other animals are glad, for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them; and i am glad because the snake talks, and this enables me to get a rest. friday. -she says the snake advises her to try the fruit of that tree, and says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. i told her there would be another result, too -it would introduce death into the world, that was a mistake -it had been better to keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea -she could save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent lions and tigers. i advised her to keep away from the tree. she said she wouldn't. i foresee trouble. will emigrate. wednesday. -i have had a variegated time. i escaped last night, and rode a horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear out of the park and hide in some other country before the trouble should begin; but it was not to be. about an hour after sun-up, as i was riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to their wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises, and in one moment the plain was a frantic commotion and every beast was destroying its neighbor. i knew what it meant -eve had eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world. ....the tigers ate my horse, paying no attention when i ordered them to desist, and they would have eaten me if i had stayed -which i didn't, but went away in much haste.... i found this place, outside the park, and was fairly comfortable for a few t days, but she has found me out. found me out, and has named the place tonawanda -says it looks like that. in fact i was not sorry she came, for there are but meagre pickings here, and she brought some of those apples. i was obliged to eat them, i was so hungry. it was against my principles, but i find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed.... she came curtained in boughs and bunches of leaves, and when i asked her what she meant by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she tittered and blushed. i had never seen a person titter and blush before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic. she said i would soon know how it was myself. this was correct. hungry as i was, i laid down the apple half-eaten -certainly the best one i ever saw, considering the lateness of the season -and arrayed myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her with some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not make such a spectacle of herself. she did it, and after this we crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected some skins, and i made her patch together a couple of suits proper for public occasions. they are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish, and that is the main point about clothes.... i find she is a good deal of a companion. i see i should be lonesome and depressed without her, now that i have lost my property. another thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter. she will be useful. i will superintend . ten days later. -she accuses me of being the cause of our disaster! she says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the serpent assured her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. i said i was innocent, then, for i had not eaten any chestnuts. she said the serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative term meaning an aged and mouldy joke. i turned pale at that, for i have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could have been of that sort. though i had honestly supposed that they were new when i made them. she asked me if i had made one just at the time of the catastrophe. i was obliged to admit that i had made one to myself, though not aloud. it was this. i was thinking about the falls, and i said to myself, "how wonderful it is to see that vast body of water tumble down there!" then in an instant a bright thought flashed into my head, and i let it fly, saying, "it would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble up there!" -and i was just about to kill myself with laughing at it when all nature broke loose in war and death and i had to flee for my life. "there," she said, with triumph, "that is just it; the serpent mentioned that very jest, and called it the first chestnut, and said it was coeval with the creation." alas, i am indeed to blame. would that i were not witty; oh, that i had never had that radiant thought! next year. -we have named it cain. she caught it while i was up country trapping on the north shore of the erie; caught it in the timber a couple of miles from our dug-out -or it might have been four, she isn't certain which. it resembles us in some ways, and may be a relation. that is what she thinks, but this is an error, in my judgment. the difference in size warrants the conclusion that it is a different and new kind of animal -a fish, perhaps, though when i put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the experiment to deter mine the matter. i still think it is a fish, but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have it to try. i do not understand this. the coming of the creature seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable about experiments. she thinks more of it than she does of any of the other animals, but is not able to explain why. her mind is disordered -everything shows it. sometimes she carries the fish in her arms half the night when it complains and wants to get to the water. at such times the water comes out of the places in her face that she looks out of, and she pats the fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her mouth to soothe it, and betrays sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways. i have never seen her do like this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly. she used to carry the young tigers around so, and play with them, before we lost our property, but it was only play; she never took on about them like this when their dinner disagreed with them. sunday. -she doesn't work, sundays, but lies around all tired out, and likes to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool noises to amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh. i have not seen a fish before that could laugh. this makes me doubt.... i have come to like sunday myself. superintending all the week tires a body so. there ought to be more sundays. in the old days they were tough, but now they come handy. wednesday. -it isnõt a fish. i cannot quite make out what it is. it makes curious devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo" when it is. it is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop; it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; i feel sure it is not a fish, though i cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not. it merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up. i have not seen any other animal do that before. i said i believed it was an enigma; but she only admired the word without understanding it. in my judgment it is either an enigma or some kind of a bug. if it dies, i will take it apart and see what its arrangements are. i never had a thing perplex me so. three months later. -the perplexity augments instead of diminishing. i sleep but little. it has ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs now. yet it differs from the other fourlegged animals, in that its front legs are unusually short, consequently this causes the main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air, and this is not attractive. it is built much as we are, but its method of traveling shows that it is not of our breed. the short front legs and long hind ones indicate that it is of the kangaroo family, but it is a marked variation of the species, since the true kangaroo hops, whereas this one never does. still it is a curious and interesting variety, and has not been catalogued before. as i discovered it, i have felt justified in securing the credit of the discovery by attaching my name to it, and hence have called it kangaroorum adamiensis.... it must have been a young one when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since. it must be five times as big, now, as it was then, and when discontented it is able to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the noise it made at first. coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary effect. for this reason i discontinued the system. she reconciles it by persuasion, and by giving it things which she had previously told it she wouldn't give it. as already observed, i was not at home when it first came, and she told me she found it in the woods. it seems odd that it should be the only one, yet it must be so, for i have worn myself out these many weeks trying to find another one to add to my collection, and for this one to play with; for surely then it would be quieter and we could tame it more easily. but i find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all, no tracks. it has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself; therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track? i have set a dozen traps, but they do no good. i catch all small animals except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out of curiosity, i think, to see what the milk is there for. they never drink it. three months later. -the kangaroo still continues to grow, which is very strange and perplexing. i never knew one to be so long getting its growth. it has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly like our hair except that it is much finer and softer, and instead of being black is red. i am like to lose my mind over the capricious and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak. if i could catch another one -but that is hopeless; it is a new variety, and the only sample; this is plain. but i caught a true kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome, would rather have that for company than have no kin at all, or any animal it could feel a nearness to or get sympathy from in its forlorn condition here among strangers who do not know its ways or habits, or what to do to make it feel that it is among friends; but it was a mistake -it went into such fits at the sight of the kangaroo that i was convinced it had never seen one before. i pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is nothing i can do to make it happy. if i could tame it -but that is out of the question; the more i try the worse i seem to make it. it grieves me to the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow and passion. i wanted to let it go, but she wouldn't hear of it. that seemed cruel and not like her; and yet she may be right. it might be lonelier than ever; for since i cannot find another one, how could it? five months later. -it is not a kangaroo. no, for it supports itself by holding to her finger, and thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and then falls down. it is probably some kind of a bear; and yet it has no tail -as yet -and no fur, except on its head. it still keeps on growing -that is a curious circumstance, for bears get their growth earlier than this. bears are dangerous -since our catastrophe -and i shall not be satisfied to have this one prowling about the place much longer without a muzzle on. i have offered to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go, but it did no good -she is determined to run us into all sorts of foolish risks, i think. she was not like this before she lost her mind. a fortnight later. -i examined its mouth. there is no danger yet: it has only one tooth. it has no tail yet. it makes more noise now than it ever did before -and mainly at night. i have moved out. but i shall go over, mornings, to breakfast, and see if it has more teeth. if it gets a mouthful of teeth it will be time for it to go, tail or no tail, for a bear does not need a tail in order to be dangerous. four months later. -i have been off hunting and fishing a month, up in the region that she calls buffalo; i don't know why, unless it is because there are not any buffaloes there. meantime the bear has learned to paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, and says "poppa" and "momma." it is certainly a new species. this resemblance to words may be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose or meaning; but even in that ease it is still extraordinary, and is a thing which no other bear can do. this imitation of speech, taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear. the further study of it will be exceedingly interesting. meantime i will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the north and make an exhaustive search. there must certainly be another one somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company of its own species. i will go straightway; but i will muzzle this one first. three months later. -it has been a weary, weary hunt, yet i have had no success. in the meantime, without stirring from the home estate, she has caught another one! i never saw such luck. i might have hunted these woods a hundred years; i never would have run across that thing. next day. -i have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it is perfectly plain that they are the same breed. i was going to stuff one of them for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it for some reason or other; so i have relinquished the idea, though i think it is a mistake. it would be an irreparable loss to science if they should get away. the old one is tamer than it was and can laugh and talk like the parrot, having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty in a highly developed degree. i shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot; and yet i ought not to be astonished, for it has already been everything else it could think of since those first days when it was a fish. the new one is as ugly now as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. she calls it abel. ten years later. -they are boys; we found it out long ago. it was their coming in that small, immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it. there are some girls now. abel is a good boy, but if cain had stayed a bear it would have improved him. after all these years, i see that i was mistaken about eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the garden with her than inside it without her. at first i thought she talked too much; but now i should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. blessed be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit! end. . much ado about nothing dramatis personae don pedro prince of arragon. don john his bastard brother. claudio a young lord of florence. benedick a young lord of padua. leonato governor of messina. antonio his brother. balthasar attendant on don pedro. conrade | | followers of don john. borachio | friar francis: dogberry a constable. verges a headborough. a sexton. a boy. hero daughter to leonato. beatrice niece to leonato. margaret | | gentlewomen attending on hero. ursula | messengers, watch, attendants, &c. (lord:) (messenger:) (watchman:) (first watchman:) (second watchman:) scene messina. much ado about nothing act i scene i before leonato's house. [enter leonato, hero, and beatrice, with a messenger] leonato i learn in this letter that don peter of arragon comes this night to messina. messenger he is very near by this: he was not three leagues off when i left him. leonato how many gentlemen have you lost in this action? messenger but few of any sort, and none of name. leonato a victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers. i find here that don peter hath bestowed much honour on a young florentine called claudio. messenger much deserved on his part and equally remembered by don pedro: he hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion: he hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how. leonato he hath an uncle here in messina will be very much glad of it. messenger i have already delivered him letters, and there appears much joy in him; even so much that joy could not show itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness. leonato did he break out into tears? messenger in great measure. leonato a kind overflow of kindness: there are no faces truer than those that are so washed. how much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping! beatrice i pray you, is signior mountanto returned from the wars or no? messenger i know none of that name, lady: there was none such in the army of any sort. leonato what is he that you ask for, niece? hero my cousin means signior benedick of padua. messenger o, he's returned; and as pleasant as ever he was. beatrice he set up his bills here in messina and challenged cupid at the flight; and my uncle's fool, reading the challenge, subscribed for cupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt. i pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars? but how many hath he killed? for indeed i promised to eat all of his killing. leonato faith, niece, you tax signior benedick too much; but he'll be meet with you, i doubt it not. messenger he hath done good service, lady, in these wars. beatrice you had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it: he is a very valiant trencherman; he hath an excellent stomach. messenger and a good soldier too, lady. beatrice and a good soldier to a lady: but what is he to a lord? messenger a lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuffed with all honourable virtues. beatrice it is so, indeed; he is no less than a stuffed man: but for the stuffing,--well, we are all mortal. leonato you must not, sir, mistake my niece. there is a kind of merry war betwixt signior benedick and her: they never meet but there's a skirmish of wit between them. beatrice alas! he gets nothing by that. in our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one: so that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse; for it is all the wealth that he hath left, to be known a reasonable creature. who is his companion now? he hath every month a new sworn brother. messenger is't possible? beatrice very easily possible: he wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block. messenger i see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books. beatrice no; an he were, i would burn my study. but, i pray you, who is his companion? is there no young squarer now that will make a voyage with him to the devil? messenger he is most in the company of the right noble claudio. beatrice o lord, he will hang upon him like a disease: he is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. god help the noble claudio! if he have caught the benedick, it will cost him a thousand pound ere a' be cured. messenger i will hold friends with you, lady. beatrice do, good friend. leonato you will never run mad, niece. beatrice no, not till a hot january. messenger don pedro is approached. [enter don pedro, don john, claudio, benedick, and balthasar] don pedro good signior leonato, you are come to meet your trouble: the fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it. leonato never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your grace: for trouble being gone, comfort should remain; but when you depart from me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave. don pedro you embrace your charge too willingly. i think this is your daughter. leonato her mother hath many times told me so. benedick were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her? leonato signior benedick, no; for then were you a child. don pedro you have it full, benedick: we may guess by this what you are, being a man. truly, the lady fathers herself. be happy, lady; for you are like an honourable father. benedick if signior leonato be her father, she would not have his head on her shoulders for all messina, as like him as she is. beatrice i wonder that you will still be talking, signior benedick: nobody marks you. benedick what, my dear lady disdain! are you yet living? beatrice is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as signior benedick? courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in her presence. benedick then is courtesy a turncoat. but it is certain i am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and i would i could find in my heart that i had not a hard heart; for, truly, i love none. beatrice a dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. i thank god and my cold blood, i am of your humour for that: i had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. benedick god keep your ladyship still in that mind! so some gentleman or other shall 'scape a predestinate scratched face. beatrice scratching could not make it worse, an 'twere such a face as yours were. benedick well, you are a rare parrot-teacher. beatrice a bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours. benedick i would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer. but keep your way, i' god's name; i have done. beatrice you always end with a jade's trick: i know you of old. don pedro that is the sum of all, leonato. signior claudio and signior benedick, my dear friend leonato hath invited you all. i tell him we shall stay here at the least a month; and he heartily prays some occasion may detain us longer. i dare swear he is no hypocrite, but prays from his heart. leonato if you swear, my lord, you shall not be forsworn. [to don john] let me bid you welcome, my lord: being reconciled to the prince your brother, i owe you all duty. don john i thank you: i am not of many words, but i thank you. leonato please it your grace lead on? don pedro your hand, leonato; we will go together. [exeunt all except benedick and claudio] claudio benedick, didst thou note the daughter of signior leonato? benedick i noted her not; but i looked on her. claudio is she not a modest young lady? benedick do you question me, as an honest man should do, for my simple true judgment; or would you have me speak after my custom, as being a professed tyrant to their sex? claudio no; i pray thee speak in sober judgment. benedick why, i' faith, methinks she's too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise and too little for a great praise: only this commendation i can afford her, that were she other than she is, she were unhandsome; and being no other but as she is, i do not like her. claudio thou thinkest i am in sport: i pray thee tell me truly how thou likest her. benedick would you buy her, that you inquire after her? claudio can the world buy such a jewel? benedick yea, and a case to put it into. but speak you this with a sad brow? or do you play the flouting jack, to tell us cupid is a good hare-finder and vulcan a rare carpenter? come, in what key shall a man take you, to go in the song? claudio in mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever i looked on. benedick i can see yet without spectacles and i see no such matter: there's her cousin, an she were not possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty as the first of may doth the last of december. but i hope you have no intent to turn husband, have you? claudio i would scarce trust myself, though i had sworn the contrary, if hero would be my wife. benedick is't come to this? in faith, hath not the world one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion? shall i never see a bachelor of three-score again? go to, i' faith; an thou wilt needs thrust thy neck into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away sundays. look don pedro is returned to seek you. [re-enter don pedro] don pedro what secret hath held you here, that you followed not to leonato's? benedick i would your grace would constrain me to tell. don pedro i charge thee on thy allegiance. benedick you hear, count claudio: i can be secret as a dumb man; i would have you think so; but, on my allegiance, mark you this, on my allegiance. he is in love. with who? now that is your grace's part. mark how short his answer is;--with hero, leonato's short daughter. claudio if this were so, so were it uttered. benedick like the old tale, my lord: 'it is not so, nor 'twas not so, but, indeed, god forbid it should be so.' claudio if my passion change not shortly, god forbid it should be otherwise. don pedro amen, if you love her; for the lady is very well worthy. claudio you speak this to fetch me in, my lord. don pedro by my troth, i speak my thought. claudio and, in faith, my lord, i spoke mine. benedick and, by my two faiths and troths, my lord, i spoke mine. claudio that i love her, i feel. don pedro that she is worthy, i know. benedick that i neither feel how she should be loved nor know how she should be worthy, is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me: i will die in it at the stake. don pedro thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite of beauty. claudio and never could maintain his part but in the force of his will. benedick that a woman conceived me, i thank her; that she brought me up, i likewise give her most humble thanks: but that i will have a recheat winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me. because i will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, i will do myself the right to trust none; and the fine is, for the which i may go the finer, i will live a bachelor. don pedro i shall see thee, ere i die, look pale with love. benedick with anger, with sickness, or with hunger, my lord, not with love: prove that ever i lose more blood with love than i will get again with drinking, pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker's pen and hang me up at the door of a brothel-house for the sign of blind cupid. don pedro well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith, thou wilt prove a notable argument. benedick if i do, hang me in a bottle like a cat and shoot at me; and he that hits me, let him be clapped on the shoulder, and called adam. don pedro well, as time shall try: 'in time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.' benedick the savage bull may; but if ever the sensible benedick bear it, pluck off the bull's horns and set them in my forehead: and let me be vilely painted, and in such great letters as they write 'here is good horse to hire,' let them signify under my sign 'here you may see benedick the married man.' claudio if this should ever happen, thou wouldst be horn-mad. don pedro nay, if cupid have not spent all his quiver in venice, thou wilt quake for this shortly. benedick i look for an earthquake too, then. don pedro well, you temporize with the hours. in the meantime, good signior benedick, repair to leonato's: commend me to him and tell him i will not fail him at supper; for indeed he hath made great preparation. benedick i have almost matter enough in me for such an embassage; and so i commit you- claudio to the tuition of god: from my house, if i had it,- don pedro the sixth of july: your loving friend, benedick. benedick nay, mock not, mock not. the body of your discourse is sometime guarded with fragments, and the guards are but slightly basted on neither: ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience: and so i leave you. [exit] claudio my liege, your highness now may do me good. don pedro my love is thine to teach: teach it but how, and thou shalt see how apt it is to learn any hard lesson that may do thee good. claudio hath leonato any son, my lord? don pedro no child but hero; she's his only heir. dost thou affect her, claudio? claudio o, my lord, when you went onward on this ended action, i look'd upon her with a soldier's eye, that liked, but had a rougher task in hand than to drive liking to the name of love: but now i am return'd and that war-thoughts have left their places vacant, in their rooms come thronging soft and delicate desires, all prompting me how fair young hero is, saying, i liked her ere i went to wars. don pedro thou wilt be like a lover presently and tire the hearer with a book of words. if thou dost love fair hero, cherish it, and i will break with her and with her father, and thou shalt have her. was't not to this end that thou began'st to twist so fine a story? claudio how sweetly you do minister to love, that know love's grief by his complexion! but lest my liking might too sudden seem, i would have salved it with a longer treatise. don pedro what need the bridge much broader than the flood? the fairest grant is the necessity. look, what will serve is fit: 'tis once, thou lovest, and i will fit thee with the remedy. i know we shall have revelling to-night: i will assume thy part in some disguise and tell fair hero i am claudio, and in her bosom i'll unclasp my heart and take her hearing prisoner with the force and strong encounter of my amorous tale: then after to her father will i break; and the conclusion is, she shall be thine. in practise let us put it presently. [exeunt] much ado about nothing act i scene ii a room in leonato's house. [enter leonato and antonio, meeting] leonato how now, brother! where is my cousin, your son? hath he provided this music? antonio he is very busy about it. but, brother, i can tell you strange news that you yet dreamt not of. leonato are they good? antonio as the event stamps them: but they have a good cover; they show well outward. the prince and count claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley in mine orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine: the prince discovered to claudio that he loved my niece your daughter and meant to acknowledge it this night in a dance: and if he found her accordant, he meant to take the present time by the top and instantly break with you of it. leonato hath the fellow any wit that told you this? antonio a good sharp fellow: i will send for him; and question him yourself. leonato no, no; we will hold it as a dream till it appear itself: but i will acquaint my daughter withal, that she may be the better prepared for an answer, if peradventure this be true. go you and tell her of it. [enter attendants] cousins, you know what you have to do. o, i cry you mercy, friend; go you with me, and i will use your skill. good cousin, have a care this busy time. [exeunt] much ado about nothing act i scene iii the same. [enter don john and conrade] conrade what the good-year, my lord! why are you thus out of measure sad? don john there is no measure in the occasion that breeds; therefore the sadness is without limit. conrade you should hear reason. don john and when i have heard it, what blessing brings it? conrade if not a present remedy, at least a patient sufferance. don john i wonder that thou, being, as thou sayest thou art, born under saturn, goest about to apply a moral medicine to a mortifying mischief. i cannot hide what i am: i must be sad when i have cause and smile at no man's jests, eat when i have stomach and wait for no man's leisure, sleep when i am drowsy and tend on no man's business, laugh when i am merry and claw no man in his humour. conrade yea, but you must not make the full show of this till you may do it without controlment. you have of late stood out against your brother, and he hath ta'en you newly into his grace; where it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest. don john i had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace, and it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any: in this, though i cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but i am a plain-dealing villain. i am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore i have decreed not to sing in my cage. if i had my mouth, i would bite; if i had my liberty, i would do my liking: in the meantime let me be that i am and seek not to alter me. conrade can you make no use of your discontent? don john i make all use of it, for i use it only. who comes here? [enter borachio] what news, borachio? borachio i came yonder from a great supper: the prince your brother is royally entertained by leonato: and i can give you intelligence of an intended marriage. don john will it serve for any model to build mischief on? what is he for a fool that betroths himself to unquietness? borachio marry, it is your brother's right hand. don john who? the most exquisite claudio? borachio even he. don john a proper squire! and who, and who? which way looks he? borachio marry, on hero, the daughter and heir of leonato. don john a very forward march-chick! how came you to this? borachio being entertained for a perfumer, as i was smoking a musty room, comes me the prince and claudio, hand in hand in sad conference: i whipt me behind the arras; and there heard it agreed upon that the prince should woo hero for himself, and having obtained her, give her to count claudio. don john come, come, let us thither: this may prove food to my displeasure. that young start-up hath all the glory of my overthrow: if i can cross him any way, i bless myself every way. you are both sure, and will assist me? conrade to the death, my lord. don john let us to the great supper: their cheer is the greater that i am subdued. would the cook were of my mind! shall we go prove what's to be done? borachio we'll wait upon your lordship. [exeunt] much ado about nothing act ii scene i a hall in leonato's house. [enter leonato, antonio, hero, beatrice, and others] leonato was not count john here at supper? antonio i saw him not. beatrice how tartly that gentleman looks! i never can see him but i am heart-burned an hour after. hero he is of a very melancholy disposition. beatrice he were an excellent man that were made just in the midway between him and benedick: the one is too like an image and says nothing, and the other too like my lady's eldest son, evermore tattling. leonato then half signior benedick's tongue in count john's mouth, and half count john's melancholy in signior benedick's face,- beatrice with a good leg and a good foot, uncle, and money enough in his purse, such a man would win any woman in the world, if a' could get her good-will. leonato by my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband, if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue. antonio in faith, she's too curst. beatrice too curst is more than curst: i shall lessen god's sending that way; for it is said, 'god sends a curst cow short horns;' but to a cow too curst he sends none. leonato so, by being too curst, god will send you no horns. beatrice just, if he send me no husband; for the which blessing i am at him upon my knees every morning and evening. lord, i could not endure a husband with a beard on his face: i had rather lie in the woollen. leonato you may light on a husband that hath no beard. beatrice what should i do with him? dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting-gentlewoman? he that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man: and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, i am not for him: therefore, i will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward, and lead his apes into hell. leonato well, then, go you into hell? beatrice no, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'get you to heaven, beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver i up my apes, and away to saint peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long. antonio [to hero] well, niece, i trust you will be ruled by your father. beatrice yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'father, as it please you.' but yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'father, as it please me.' leonato well, niece, i hope to see you one day fitted with a husband. beatrice not till god make men of some other metal than earth. would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? no, uncle, i'll none: adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, i hold it a sin to match in my kindred. leonato daughter, remember what i told you: if the prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer. beatrice the fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed in good time: if the prince be too important, tell him there is measure in every thing and so dance out the answer. for, hear me, hero: wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave. leonato cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly. beatrice i have a good eye, uncle; i can see a church by daylight. leonato the revellers are entering, brother: make good room. [all put on their masks] [enter don pedro, claudio, benedick, balthasar, don john, borachio, margaret, ursula and others, masked] don pedro lady, will you walk about with your friend? hero so you walk softly and look sweetly and say nothing, i am yours for the walk; and especially when i walk away. don pedro with me in your company? hero i may say so, when i please. don pedro and when please you to say so? hero when i like your favour; for god defend the lute should be like the case! don pedro my visor is philemon's roof; within the house is jove. hero why, then, your visor should be thatched. don pedro speak low, if you speak love. [drawing her aside] balthasar well, i would you did like me. margaret so would not i, for your own sake; for i have many ill-qualities. balthasar which is one? margaret i say my prayers aloud. balthasar i love you the better: the hearers may cry, amen. margaret god match me with a good dancer! balthasar amen. margaret and god keep him out of my sight when the dance is done! answer, clerk. balthasar no more words: the clerk is answered. ursula i know you well enough; you are signior antonio. antonio at a word, i am not. ursula i know you by the waggling of your head. antonio to tell you true, i counterfeit him. ursula you could never do him so ill-well, unless you were the very man. here's his dry hand up and down: you are he, you are he. antonio at a word, i am not. ursula come, come, do you think i do not know you by your excellent wit? can virtue hide itself? go to, mum, you are he: graces will appear, and there's an end. beatrice will you not tell me who told you so? benedick no, you shall pardon me. beatrice nor will you not tell me who you are? benedick not now. beatrice that i was disdainful, and that i had my good wit out of the 'hundred merry tales:'--well this was signior benedick that said so. benedick what's he? beatrice i am sure you know him well enough. benedick not i, believe me. beatrice did he never make you laugh? benedick i pray you, what is he? beatrice why, he is the prince's jester: a very dull fool; only his gift is in devising impossible slanders: none but libertines delight in him; and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villany; for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him. i am sure he is in the fleet: i would he had boarded me. benedick when i know the gentleman, i'll tell him what you say. beatrice do, do: he'll but break a comparison or two on me; which, peradventure not marked or not laughed at, strikes him into melancholy; and then there's a partridge wing saved, for the fool will eat no supper that night. [music] we must follow the leaders. benedick in every good thing. beatrice nay, if they lead to any ill, i will leave them at the next turning. [dance. then exeunt all except don john, borachio, and claudio] don john sure my brother is amorous on hero and hath withdrawn her father to break with him about it. the ladies follow her and but one visor remains. borachio and that is claudio: i know him by his bearing. don john are not you signior benedick? claudio you know me well; i am he. don john signior, you are very near my brother in his love: he is enamoured on hero; i pray you, dissuade him from her: she is no equal for his birth: you may do the part of an honest man in it. claudio how know you he loves her? don john i heard him swear his affection. borachio so did i too; and he swore he would marry her to-night. don john come, let us to the banquet. [exeunt don john and borachio] claudio thus answer i in the name of benedick, but hear these ill news with the ears of claudio. 'tis certain so; the prince wooes for himself. friendship is constant in all other things save in the office and affairs of love: therefore, all hearts in love use their own tongues; let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent; for beauty is a witch against whose charms faith melteth into blood. this is an accident of hourly proof, which i mistrusted not. farewell, therefore, hero! [re-enter benedick] benedick count claudio? claudio yea, the same. benedick come, will you go with me? claudio whither? benedick even to the next willow, about your own business, county. what fashion will you wear the garland of? about your neck, like an usurer's chain? or under your arm, like a lieutenant's scarf? you must wear it one way, for the prince hath got your hero. claudio i wish him joy of her. benedick why, that's spoken like an honest drovier: so they sell bullocks. but did you think the prince would have served you thus? claudio i pray you, leave me. benedick ho! now you strike like the blind man: 'twas the boy that stole your meat, and you'll beat the post. claudio if it will not be, i'll leave you. [exit] benedick alas, poor hurt fowl! now will he creep into sedges. but that my lady beatrice should know me, and not know me! the prince's fool! ha? it may be i go under that title because i am merry. yea, but so i am apt to do myself wrong; i am not so reputed: it is the base, though bitter, disposition of beatrice that puts the world into her person and so gives me out. well, i'll be revenged as i may. [re-enter don pedro] don pedro now, signior, where's the count? did you see him? benedick troth, my lord, i have played the part of lady fame. i found him here as melancholy as a lodge in a warren: i told him, and i think i told him true, that your grace had got the good will of this young lady; and i offered him my company to a willow-tree, either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped. don pedro to be whipped! what's his fault? benedick the flat transgression of a schoolboy, who, being overjoyed with finding a birds' nest, shows it his companion, and he steals it. don pedro wilt thou make a trust a transgression? the transgression is in the stealer. benedick yet it had not been amiss the rod had been made, and the garland too; for the garland he might have worn himself, and the rod he might have bestowed on you, who, as i take it, have stolen his birds' nest. don pedro i will but teach them to sing, and restore them to the owner. benedick if their singing answer your saying, by my faith, you say honestly. don pedro the lady beatrice hath a quarrel to you: the gentleman that danced with her told her she is much wronged by you. benedick o, she misused me past the endurance of a block! an oak but with one green leaf on it would have answered her; my very visor began to assume life and scold with her. she told me, not thinking i had been myself, that i was the prince's jester, that i was duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest with such impossible conveyance upon me that i stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. she speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her; she would infect to the north star. i would not marry her, though she were endowed with all that adam bad left him before he transgressed: she would have made hercules have turned spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make the fire too. come, talk not of her: you shall find her the infernal ate in good apparel. i would to god some scholar would conjure her; for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose, because they would go thither; so, indeed, all disquiet, horror and perturbation follows her. don pedro look, here she comes. [enter claudio, beatrice, hero, and leonato] benedick will your grace command me any service to the world's end? i will go on the slightest errand now to the antipodes that you can devise to send me on; i will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the furthest inch of asia, bring you the length of prester john's foot, fetch you a hair off the great cham's beard, do you any embassage to the pigmies, rather than hold three words' conference with this harpy. you have no employment for me? don pedro none, but to desire your good company. benedick o god, sir, here's a dish i love not: i cannot endure my lady tongue. [exit] don pedro come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of signior benedick. beatrice indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and i gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your grace may well say i have lost it. don pedro you have put him down, lady, you have put him down. beatrice so i would not he should do me, my lord, lest i should prove the mother of fools. i have brought count claudio, whom you sent me to seek. don pedro why, how now, count! wherefore are you sad? claudio not sad, my lord. don pedro how then? sick? claudio neither, my lord. beatrice the count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but civil count, civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion. don pedro i' faith, lady, i think your blazon to be true; though, i'll be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is false. here, claudio, i have wooed in thy name, and fair hero is won: i have broke with her father, and his good will obtained: name the day of marriage, and god give thee joy! leonato count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes: his grace hath made the match, and an grace say amen to it. beatrice speak, count, 'tis your cue. claudio silence is the perfectest herald of joy: i were but little happy, if i could say how much. lady, as you are mine, i am yours: i give away myself for you and dote upon the exchange. beatrice speak, cousin; or, if you cannot, stop his mouth with a kiss, and let not him speak neither. don pedro in faith, lady, you have a merry heart. beatrice yea, my lord; i thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care. my cousin tells him in his ear that he is in her heart. claudio and so she doth, cousin. beatrice good lord, for alliance! thus goes every one to the world but i, and i am sunburnt; i may sit in a corner and cry heigh-ho for a husband! don pedro lady beatrice, i will get you one. beatrice i would rather have one of your father's getting. hath your grace ne'er a brother like you? your father got excellent husbands, if a maid could come by them. don pedro will you have me, lady? beatrice no, my lord, unless i might have another for working-days: your grace is too costly to wear every day. but, i beseech your grace, pardon me: i was born to speak all mirth and no matter. don pedro your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in a merry hour. beatrice no, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was i born. cousins, god give you joy! leonato niece, will you look to those things i told you of? beatrice i cry you mercy, uncle. by your grace's pardon. [exit] don pedro by my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady. leonato there's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps, and not ever sad then; for i have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamed of unhappiness and waked herself with laughing. don pedro she cannot endure to hear tell of a husband. leonato o, by no means: she mocks all her wooers out of suit. don pedro she were an excellent wife for benedict. leonato o lord, my lord, if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad. don pedro county claudio, when mean you to go to church? claudio to-morrow, my lord: time goes on crutches till love have all his rites. leonato not till monday, my dear son, which is hence a just seven-night; and a time too brief, too, to have all things answer my mind. don pedro come, you shake the head at so long a breathing: but, i warrant thee, claudio, the time shall not go dully by us. i will in the interim undertake one of hercules' labours; which is, to bring signior benedick and the lady beatrice into a mountain of affection the one with the other. i would fain have it a match, and i doubt not but to fashion it, if you three will but minister such assistance as i shall give you direction. leonato my lord, i am for you, though it cost me ten nights' watchings. claudio and i, my lord. don pedro and you too, gentle hero? hero i will do any modest office, my lord, to help my cousin to a good husband. don pedro and benedick is not the unhopefullest husband that i know. thus far can i praise him; he is of a noble strain, of approved valour and confirmed honesty. i will teach you how to humour your cousin, that she shall fall in love with benedick; and i, with your two helps, will so practise on benedick that, in despite of his quick wit and his queasy stomach, he shall fall in love with beatrice. if we can do this, cupid is no longer an archer: his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods. go in with me, and i will tell you my drift. [exeunt] much ado about nothing act ii scene ii the same. [enter don john and borachio] don john it is so; the count claudio shall marry the daughter of leonato. borachio yea, my lord; but i can cross it. don john any bar, any cross, any impediment will be medicinable to me: i am sick in displeasure to him, and whatsoever comes athwart his affection ranges evenly with mine. how canst thou cross this marriage? borachio not honestly, my lord; but so covertly that no dishonesty shall appear in me. don john show me briefly how. borachio i think i told your lordship a year since, how much i am in the favour of margaret, the waiting gentlewoman to hero. don john i remember. borachio i can, at any unseasonable instant of the night, appoint her to look out at her lady's chamber window. don john what life is in that, to be the death of this marriage? borachio the poison of that lies in you to temper. go you to the prince your brother; spare not to tell him that he hath wronged his honour in marrying the renowned claudio--whose estimation do you mightily hold up--to a contaminated stale, such a one as hero. don john what proof shall i make of that? borachio proof enough to misuse the prince, to vex claudio, to undo hero and kill leonato. look you for any other issue? don john only to despite them, i will endeavour any thing. borachio go, then; find me a meet hour to draw don pedro and the count claudio alone: tell them that you know that hero loves me; intend a kind of zeal both to the prince and claudio, as,--in love of your brother's honour, who hath made this match, and his friend's reputation, who is thus like to be cozened with the semblance of a maid,--that you have discovered thus. they will scarcely believe this without trial: offer them instances; which shall bear no less likelihood than to see me at her chamber-window, hear me call margaret hero, hear margaret term me claudio; and bring them to see this the very night before the intended wedding,--for in the meantime i will so fashion the matter that hero shall be absent,--and there shall appear such seeming truth of hero's disloyalty that jealousy shall be called assurance and all the preparation overthrown. don john grow this to what adverse issue it can, i will put it in practise. be cunning in the working this, and thy fee is a thousand ducats. borachio be you constant in the accusation, and my cunning shall not shame me. don john i will presently go learn their day of marriage. [exeunt] much ado about nothing act ii scene iii leonato's orchard. [enter benedick] benedick boy! [enter boy] boy signior? benedick in my chamber-window lies a book: bring it hither to me in the orchard. boy i am here already, sir. benedick i know that; but i would have thee hence, and here again. [exit boy] i do much wonder that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviors to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own scorn by failing in love: and such a man is claudio. i have known when there was no music with him but the drum and the fife; and now had he rather hear the tabour and the pipe: i have known when he would have walked ten mile a-foot to see a good armour; and now will he lie ten nights awake, carving the fashion of a new doublet. he was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier; and now is he turned orthography; his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes. may i be so converted and see with these eyes? i cannot tell; i think not: i will not be sworn, but love may transform me to an oyster; but i'll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool. one woman is fair, yet i am well; another is wise, yet i am well; another virtuous, yet i am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace. rich she shall be, that's certain; wise, or i'll none; virtuous, or i'll never cheapen her; fair, or i'll never look on her; mild, or come not near me; noble, or not i for an angel; of good discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what colour it please god. ha! the prince and monsieur love! i will hide me in the arbour. [withdraws] [enter don pedro, claudio, and leonato] don pedro come, shall we hear this music? claudio yea, my good lord. how still the evening is, as hush'd on purpose to grace harmony! don pedro see you where benedick hath hid himself? claudio o, very well, my lord: the music ended, we'll fit the kid-fox with a pennyworth. [enter balthasar with music] don pedro come, balthasar, we'll hear that song again. balthasar o, good my lord, tax not so bad a voice to slander music any more than once. don pedro it is the witness still of excellency to put a strange face on his own perfection. i pray thee, sing, and let me woo no more. balthasar because you talk of wooing, i will sing; since many a wooer doth commence his suit to her he thinks not worthy, yet he wooes, yet will he swear he loves. don pedro now, pray thee, come; or, if thou wilt hold longer argument, do it in notes. balthasar note this before my notes; there's not a note of mine that's worth the noting. don pedro why, these are very crotchets that he speaks; note, notes, forsooth, and nothing. [air] benedick now, divine air! now is his soul ravished! is it not strange that sheeps' guts should hale souls out of men's bodies? well, a horn for my money, when all's done. [the song] balthasar sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, men were deceivers ever, one foot in sea and one on shore, to one thing constant never: then sigh not so, but let them go, and be you blithe and bonny, converting all your sounds of woe into hey nonny, nonny. sing no more ditties, sing no moe, of dumps so dull and heavy; the fraud of men was ever so, since summer first was leafy: then sigh not so, &c. don pedro by my troth, a good song. balthasar and an ill singer, my lord. don pedro ha, no, no, faith; thou singest well enough for a shift. benedick an he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him: and i pray god his bad voice bode no mischief. i had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it. don pedro yea, marry, dost thou hear, balthasar? i pray thee, get us some excellent music; for to-morrow night we would have it at the lady hero's chamber-window. balthasar the best i can, my lord. don pedro do so: farewell. [exit balthasar] come hither, leonato. what was it you told me of to-day, that your niece beatrice was in love with signior benedick? claudio o, ay: stalk on. stalk on; the fowl sits. i did never think that lady would have loved any man. leonato no, nor i neither; but most wonderful that she should so dote on signior benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviors seemed ever to abhor. benedick is't possible? sits the wind in that corner? leonato by my troth, my lord, i cannot tell what to think of it but that she loves him with an enraged affection: it is past the infinite of thought. don pedro may be she doth but counterfeit. claudio faith, like enough. leonato o god, counterfeit! there was never counterfeit of passion came so near the life of passion as she discovers it. don pedro why, what effects of passion shows she? claudio bait the hook well; this fish will bite. leonato what effects, my lord? she will sit you, you heard my daughter tell you how. claudio she did, indeed. don pedro how, how, pray you? you amaze me: i would have i thought her spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection. leonato i would have sworn it had, my lord; especially against benedick. benedick i should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence. claudio he hath ta'en the infection: hold it up. don pedro hath she made her affection known to benedick? leonato no; and swears she never will: that's her torment. claudio 'tis true, indeed; so your daughter says: 'shall i,' says she, 'that have so oft encountered him with scorn, write to him that i love him?' leonato this says she now when she is beginning to write to him; for she'll be up twenty times a night, and there will she sit in her smock till she have writ a sheet of paper: my daughter tells us all. claudio now you talk of a sheet of paper, i remember a pretty jest your daughter told us of. leonato o, when she had writ it and was reading it over, she found benedick and beatrice between the sheet? claudio that. leonato o, she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence; railed at herself, that she should be so immodest to write to one that she knew would flout her; 'i measure him,' says she, 'by my own spirit; for i should flout him, if he writ to me; yea, though i love him, i should.' claudio then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses; 'o sweet benedick! god give me patience!' leonato she doth indeed; my daughter says so: and the ecstasy hath so much overborne her that my daughter is sometime afeared she will do a desperate outrage to herself: it is very true. don pedro it were good that benedick knew of it by some other, if she will not discover it. claudio to what end? he would make but a sport of it and torment the poor lady worse. don pedro an he should, it were an alms to hang him. she's an excellent sweet lady; and, out of all suspicion, she is virtuous. claudio and she is exceeding wise. don pedro in every thing but in loving benedick. leonato o, my lord, wisdom and blood combating in so tender a body, we have ten proofs to one that blood hath the victory. i am sorry for her, as i have just cause, being her uncle and her guardian. don pedro i would she had bestowed this dotage on me: i would have daffed all other respects and made her half myself. i pray you, tell benedick of it, and hear what a' will say. leonato were it good, think you? claudio hero thinks surely she will die; for she says she will die, if he love her not, and she will die, ere she make her love known, and she will die, if he woo her, rather than she will bate one breath of her accustomed crossness. don pedro she doth well: if she should make tender of her love, 'tis very possible he'll scorn it; for the man, as you know all, hath a contemptible spirit. claudio he is a very proper man. don pedro he hath indeed a good outward happiness. claudio before god! and, in my mind, very wise. don pedro he doth indeed show some sparks that are like wit. claudio and i take him to be valiant. don pedro as hector, i assure you: and in the managing of quarrels you may say he is wise; for either he avoids them with great discretion, or undertakes them with a most christian-like fear. leonato if he do fear god, a' must necessarily keep peace: if he break the peace, he ought to enter into a quarrel with fear and trembling. don pedro and so will he do; for the man doth fear god, howsoever it seems not in him by some large jests he will make. well i am sorry for your niece. shall we go seek benedick, and tell him of her love? claudio never tell him, my lord: let her wear it out with good counsel. leonato nay, that's impossible: she may wear her heart out first. don pedro well, we will hear further of it by your daughter: let it cool the while. i love benedick well; and i could wish he would modestly examine himself, to see how much he is unworthy so good a lady. leonato my lord, will you walk? dinner is ready. claudio if he do not dote on her upon this, i will never trust my expectation. don pedro let there be the same net spread for her; and that must your daughter and her gentlewomen carry. the sport will be, when they hold one an opinion of another's dotage, and no such matter: that's the scene that i would see, which will be merely a dumb-show. let us send her to call him in to dinner. [exeunt don pedro, claudio, and leonato] benedick [coming forward] this can be no trick: the conference was sadly borne. they have the truth of this from hero. they seem to pity the lady: it seems her affections have their full bent. love me! why, it must be requited. i hear how i am censured: they say i will bear myself proudly, if i perceive the love come from her; they say too that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. i did never think to marry: i must not seem proud: happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending. they say the lady is fair; 'tis a truth, i can bear them witness; and virtuous; 'tis so, i cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me; by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for i will be horribly in love with her. i may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because i have railed so long against marriage: but doth not the appetite alter? a man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? no, the world must be peopled. when i said i would die a bachelor, i did not think i should live till i were married. here comes beatrice. by this day! she's a fair lady: i do spy some marks of love in her. [enter beatrice] beatrice against my will i am sent to bid you come in to dinner. benedick fair beatrice, i thank you for your pains. beatrice i took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, i would not have come. benedick you take pleasure then in the message? beatrice yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point and choke a daw withal. you have no stomach, signior: fare you well. [exit] benedick ha! 'against my will i am sent to bid you come in to dinner;' there's a double meaning in that 'i took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me.' that's as much as to say, any pains that i take for you is as easy as thanks. if i do not take pity of her, i am a villain; if i do not love her, i am a jew. i will go get her picture. [exit] much ado about nothing act iii scene i leonato's garden. [enter hero, margaret, and ursula] hero good margaret, run thee to the parlor; there shalt thou find my cousin beatrice proposing with the prince and claudio: whisper her ear and tell her, i and ursula walk in the orchard and our whole discourse is all of her; say that thou overheard'st us; and bid her steal into the pleached bower, where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun, forbid the sun to enter, like favourites, made proud by princes, that advance their pride against that power that bred it: there will she hide her, to listen our purpose. this is thy office; bear thee well in it and leave us alone. margaret i'll make her come, i warrant you, presently. [exit] hero now, ursula, when beatrice doth come, as we do trace this alley up and down, our talk must only be of benedick. when i do name him, let it be thy part to praise him more than ever man did merit: my talk to thee must be how benedick is sick in love with beatrice. of this matter is little cupid's crafty arrow made, that only wounds by hearsay. [enter beatrice, behind] now begin; for look where beatrice, like a lapwing, runs close by the ground, to hear our conference. ursula the pleasant'st angling is to see the fish cut with her golden oars the silver stream, and greedily devour the treacherous bait: so angle we for beatrice; who even now is couched in the woodbine coverture. fear you not my part of the dialogue. hero then go we near her, that her ear lose nothing of the false sweet bait that we lay for it. [approaching the bower] no, truly, ursula, she is too disdainful; i know her spirits are as coy and wild as haggerds of the rock. ursula but are you sure that benedick loves beatrice so entirely? hero so says the prince and my new-trothed lord. ursula and did they bid you tell her of it, madam? hero they did entreat me to acquaint her of it; but i persuaded them, if they loved benedick, to wish him wrestle with affection, and never to let beatrice know of it. ursula why did you so? doth not the gentleman deserve as full as fortunate a bed as ever beatrice shall couch upon? hero o god of love! i know he doth deserve as much as may be yielded to a man: but nature never framed a woman's heart of prouder stuff than that of beatrice; disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, misprising what they look on, and her wit values itself so highly that to her all matter else seems weak: she cannot love, nor take no shape nor project of affection, she is so self-endeared. ursula sure, i think so; and therefore certainly it were not good she knew his love, lest she make sport at it. hero why, you speak truth. i never yet saw man, how wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured, but she would spell him backward: if fair-faced, she would swear the gentleman should be her sister; if black, why, nature, drawing of an antique, made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed; if low, an agate very vilely cut; if speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; if silent, why, a block moved with none. so turns she every man the wrong side out and never gives to truth and virtue that which simpleness and merit purchaseth. ursula sure, sure, such carping is not commendable. hero no, not to be so odd and from all fashions as beatrice is, cannot be commendable: but who dare tell her so? if i should speak, she would mock me into air; o, she would laugh me out of myself, press me to death with wit. therefore let benedick, like cover'd fire, consume away in sighs, waste inwardly: it were a better death than die with mocks, which is as bad as die with tickling. ursula yet tell her of it: hear what she will say. hero no; rather i will go to benedick and counsel him to fight against his passion. and, truly, i'll devise some honest slanders to stain my cousin with: one doth not know how much an ill word may empoison liking. ursula o, do not do your cousin such a wrong. she cannot be so much without true judgment- having so swift and excellent a wit as she is prized to have--as to refuse so rare a gentleman as signior benedick. hero he is the only man of italy. always excepted my dear claudio. ursula i pray you, be not angry with me, madam, speaking my fancy: signior benedick, for shape, for bearing, argument and valour, goes foremost in report through italy. hero indeed, he hath an excellent good name. ursula his excellence did earn it, ere he had it. when are you married, madam? hero why, every day, to-morrow. come, go in: i'll show thee some attires, and have thy counsel which is the best to furnish me to-morrow. ursula she's limed, i warrant you: we have caught her, madam. hero if it proves so, then loving goes by haps: some cupid kills with arrows, some with traps. [exeunt hero and ursula] beatrice [coming forward] what fire is in mine ears? can this be true? stand i condemn'd for pride and scorn so much? contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu! no glory lives behind the back of such. and, benedick, love on; i will requite thee, taming my wild heart to thy loving hand: if thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee to bind our loves up in a holy band; for others say thou dost deserve, and i believe it better than reportingly. [exit] much ado about nothing act iii scene ii a room in leonato's house [enter don pedro, claudio, benedick, and leonato] don pedro i do but stay till your marriage be consummate, and then go i toward arragon. claudio i'll bring you thither, my lord, if you'll vouchsafe me. don pedro nay, that would be as great a soil in the new gloss of your marriage as to show a child his new coat and forbid him to wear it. i will only be bold with benedick for his company; for, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth: he hath twice or thrice cut cupid's bow-string and the little hangman dare not shoot at him; he hath a heart as sound as a bell and his tongue is the clapper, for what his heart thinks his tongue speaks. benedick gallants, i am not as i have been. leonato so say i methinks you are sadder. claudio i hope he be in love. don pedro hang him, truant! there's no true drop of blood in him, to be truly touched with love: if he be sad, he wants money. benedick i have the toothache. don pedro draw it. benedick hang it! claudio you must hang it first, and draw it afterwards. don pedro what! sigh for the toothache? leonato where is but a humour or a worm. benedick well, every one can master a grief but he that has it. claudio yet say i, he is in love. don pedro there is no appearance of fancy in him, unless it be a fancy that he hath to strange disguises; as, to be a dutchman today, a frenchman to-morrow, or in the shape of two countries at once, as, a german from the waist downward, all slops, and a spaniard from the hip upward, no doublet. unless he have a fancy to this foolery, as it appears he hath, he is no fool for fancy, as you would have it appear he is. claudio if he be not in love with some woman, there is no believing old signs: a' brushes his hat o' mornings; what should that bode? don pedro hath any man seen him at the barber's? claudio no, but the barber's man hath been seen with him, and the old ornament of his cheek hath already stuffed tennis-balls. leonato indeed, he looks younger than he did, by the loss of a beard. don pedro nay, a' rubs himself with civet: can you smell him out by that? claudio that's as much as to say, the sweet youth's in love. don pedro the greatest note of it is his melancholy. claudio and when was he wont to wash his face? don pedro yea, or to paint himself? for the which, i hear what they say of him. claudio nay, but his jesting spirit; which is now crept into a lute-string and now governed by stops. don pedro indeed, that tells a heavy tale for him: conclude, conclude he is in love. claudio nay, but i know who loves him. don pedro that would i know too: i warrant, one that knows him not. claudio yes, and his ill conditions; and, in despite of all, dies for him. don pedro she shall be buried with her face upwards. benedick yet is this no charm for the toothache. old signior, walk aside with me: i have studied eight or nine wise words to speak to you, which these hobby-horses must not hear. [exeunt benedick and leonato] don pedro for my life, to break with him about beatrice. claudio 'tis even so. hero and margaret have by this played their parts with beatrice; and then the two bears will not bite one another when they meet. [enter don john] don john my lord and brother, god save you! don pedro good den, brother. don john if your leisure served, i would speak with you. don pedro in private? don john if it please you: yet count claudio may hear; for what i would speak of concerns him. don pedro what's the matter? don john [to claudio] means your lordship to be married to-morrow? don pedro you know he does. don john i know not that, when he knows what i know. claudio if there be any impediment, i pray you discover it. don john you may think i love you not: let that appear hereafter, and aim better at me by that i now will manifest. for my brother, i think he holds you well, and in dearness of heart hath holp to effect your ensuing marriage;--surely suit ill spent and labour ill bestowed. don pedro why, what's the matter? don john i came hither to tell you; and, circumstances shortened, for she has been too long a talking of, the lady is disloyal. claudio who, hero? don pedro even she; leonato's hero, your hero, every man's hero: claudio disloyal? don john the word is too good to paint out her wickedness; i could say she were worse: think you of a worse title, and i will fit her to it. wonder not till further warrant: go but with me to-night, you shall see her chamber-window entered, even the night before her wedding-day: if you love her then, to-morrow wed her; but it would better fit your honour to change your mind. claudio may this be so? don pedro i will not think it. don john if you dare not trust that you see, confess not that you know: if you will follow me, i will show you enough; and when you have seen more and heard more, proceed accordingly. claudio if i see any thing to-night why i should not marry her to-morrow in the congregation, where i should wed, there will i shame her. don pedro and, as i wooed for thee to obtain her, i will join with thee to disgrace her. don john i will disparage her no farther till you are my witnesses: bear it coldly but till midnight, and let the issue show itself. don pedro o day untowardly turned! claudio o mischief strangely thwarting! don john o plague right well prevented! so will you say when you have seen the sequel. [exeunt] much ado about nothing act iii scene iii a street. [enter dogberry and verges with the watch] dogberry are you good men and true? verges yea, or else it were pity but they should suffer salvation, body and soul. dogberry nay, that were a punishment too good for them, if they should have any allegiance in them, being chosen for the prince's watch. verges well, give them their charge, neighbour dogberry. dogberry first, who think you the most desertless man to be constable? first watchman hugh otecake, sir, or george seacole; for they can write and read. dogberry come hither, neighbour seacole. god hath blessed you with a good name: to be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature. second watchman both which, master constable,- dogberry you have: i knew it would be your answer. well, for your favour, sir, why, give god thanks, and make no boast of it; and for your writing and reading, let that appear when there is no need of such vanity. you are thought here to be the most senseless and fit man for the constable of the watch; therefore bear you the lantern. this is your charge: you shall comprehend all vagrom men; you are to bid any man stand, in the prince's name. second watchman how if a' will not stand? dogberry why, then, take no note of him, but let him go; and presently call the rest of the watch together and thank god you are rid of a knave. verges if he will not stand when he is bidden, he is none of the prince's subjects. dogberry true, and they are to meddle with none but the prince's subjects. you shall also make no noise in the streets; for, for the watch to babble and to talk is most tolerable and not to be endured. watchman we will rather sleep than talk: we know what belongs to a watch. dogberry why, you speak like an ancient and most quiet watchman; for i cannot see how sleeping should offend: only, have a care that your bills be not stolen. well, you are to call at all the ale-houses, and bid those that are drunk get them to bed. watchman how if they will not? dogberry why, then, let them alone till they are sober: if they make you not then the better answer, you may say they are not the men you took them for. watchman well, sir. dogberry if you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by virtue of your office, to be no true man; and, for such kind of men, the less you meddle or make with them, why the more is for your honesty. watchman if we know him to be a thief, shall we not lay hands on him? dogberry truly, by your office, you may; but i think they that touch pitch will be defiled: the most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company. verges you have been always called a merciful man, partner. dogberry truly, i would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him. verges if you hear a child cry in the night, you must call to the nurse and bid her still it. watchman how if the nurse be asleep and will not hear us? dogberry why, then, depart in peace, and let the child wake her with crying; for the ewe that will not hear her lamb when it baes will never answer a calf when he bleats. verges 'tis very true. dogberry this is the end of the charge:--you, constable, are to present the prince's own person: if you meet the prince in the night, you may stay him. verges nay, by'r our lady, that i think a' cannot. dogberry five shillings to one on't, with any man that knows the statutes, he may stay him: marry, not without the prince be willing; for, indeed, the watch ought to offend no man; and it is an offence to stay a man against his will. verges by'r lady, i think it be so. dogberry ha, ha, ha! well, masters, good night: an there be any matter of weight chances, call up me: keep your fellows' counsels and your own; and good night. come, neighbour. watchman well, masters, we hear our charge: let us go sit here upon the church-bench till two, and then all to bed. dogberry one word more, honest neighbours. i pray you watch about signior leonato's door; for the wedding being there to-morrow, there is a great coil to-night. adieu: be vigitant, i beseech you. [exeunt dogberry and verges] [enter borachio and conrade] borachio what conrade! watchman [aside] peace! stir not. borachio conrade, i say! conrade here, man; i am at thy elbow. borachio mass, and my elbow itched; i thought there would a scab follow. conrade i will owe thee an answer for that: and now forward with thy tale. borachio stand thee close, then, under this pent-house, for it drizzles rain; and i will, like a true drunkard, utter all to thee. watchman [aside] some treason, masters: yet stand close. borachio therefore know i have earned of don john a thousand ducats. conrade is it possible that any villany should be so dear? borachio thou shouldst rather ask if it were possible any villany should be so rich; for when rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what price they will. conrade i wonder at it. borachio that shows thou art unconfirmed. thou knowest that the fashion of a doublet, or a hat, or a cloak, is nothing to a man. conrade yes, it is apparel. borachio i mean, the fashion. conrade yes, the fashion is the fashion. borachio tush! i may as well say the fool's the fool. but seest thou not what a deformed thief this fashion is? watchman [aside] i know that deformed; a' has been a vile thief this seven year; a' goes up and down like a gentleman: i remember his name. borachio didst thou not hear somebody? conrade no; 'twas the vane on the house. borachio seest thou not, i say, what a deformed thief this fashion is? how giddily a' turns about all the hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty? sometimes fashioning them like pharaoh's soldiers in the reeky painting, sometime like god bel's priests in the old church-window, sometime like the shaven hercules in the smirched worm-eaten tapestry, where his codpiece seems as massy as his club? conrade all this i see; and i see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man. but art not thou thyself giddy with the fashion too, that thou hast shifted out of thy tale into telling me of the fashion? borachio not so, neither: but know that i have to-night wooed margaret, the lady hero's gentlewoman, by the name of hero: she leans me out at her mistress' chamber-window, bids me a thousand times good night,--i tell this tale vilely:--i should first tell thee how the prince, claudio and my master, planted and placed and possessed by my master don john, saw afar off in the orchard this amiable encounter. conrade and thought they margaret was hero? borachio two of them did, the prince and claudio; but the devil my master knew she was margaret; and partly by his oaths, which first possessed them, partly by the dark night, which did deceive them, but chiefly by my villany, which did confirm any slander that don john had made, away went claudio enraged; swore he would meet her, as he was appointed, next morning at the temple, and there, before the whole congregation, shame her with what he saw o'er night and send her home again without a husband. first watchman we charge you, in the prince's name, stand! second watchman call up the right master constable. we have here recovered the most dangerous piece of lechery that ever was known in the commonwealth. first watchman and one deformed is one of them: i know him; a' wears a lock. conrade masters, masters,- second watchman you'll be made bring deformed forth, i warrant you. conrade masters,- first watchman never speak: we charge you let us obey you to go with us. borachio we are like to prove a goodly commodity, being taken up of these men's bills. conrade a commodity in question, i warrant you. come, we'll obey you. [exeunt] much ado about nothing act iii scene iv hero's apartment. [enter hero, margaret, and ursula] hero good ursula, wake my cousin beatrice, and desire her to rise. ursula i will, lady. hero and bid her come hither. ursula well. [exit] margaret troth, i think your other rabato were better. hero no, pray thee, good meg, i'll wear this. margaret by my troth, 's not so good; and i warrant your cousin will say so. hero my cousin's a fool, and thou art another: i'll wear none but this. margaret i like the new tire within excellently, if the hair were a thought browner; and your gown's a most rare fashion, i' faith. i saw the duchess of milan's gown that they praise so. hero o, that exceeds, they say. margaret by my troth, 's but a night-gown in respect of yours: cloth o' gold, and cuts, and laced with silver, set with pearls, down sleeves, side sleeves, and skirts, round underborne with a bluish tinsel: but for a fine, quaint, graceful and excellent fashion, yours is worth ten on 't. hero god give me joy to wear it! for my heart is exceeding heavy. margaret 'twill be heavier soon by the weight of a man. hero fie upon thee! art not ashamed? margaret of what, lady? of speaking honourably? is not marriage honourable in a beggar? is not your lord honourable without marriage? i think you would have me say, 'saving your reverence, a husband:' and bad thinking do not wrest true speaking, i'll offend nobody: is there any harm in 'the heavier for a husband'? none, i think, and it be the right husband and the right wife; otherwise 'tis light, and not heavy: ask my lady beatrice else; here she comes. [enter beatrice] hero good morrow, coz. beatrice good morrow, sweet hero. hero why how now? do you speak in the sick tune? beatrice i am out of all other tune, methinks. margaret clap's into 'light o' love;' that goes without a burden: do you sing it, and i'll dance it. beatrice ye light o' love, with your heels! then, if your husband have stables enough, you'll see he shall lack no barns. margaret o illegitimate construction! i scorn that with my heels. beatrice 'tis almost five o'clock, cousin; tis time you were ready. by my troth, i am exceeding ill: heigh-ho! margaret for a hawk, a horse, or a husband? beatrice for the letter that begins them all, h. margaret well, and you be not turned turk, there's no more sailing by the star. beatrice what means the fool, trow? margaret nothing i; but god send every one their heart's desire! hero these gloves the count sent me; they are an excellent perfume. beatrice i am stuffed, cousin; i cannot smell. margaret a maid, and stuffed! there's goodly catching of cold. beatrice o, god help me! god help me! how long have you professed apprehension? margaret even since you left it. doth not my wit become me rarely? beatrice it is not seen enough, you should wear it in your cap. by my troth, i am sick. margaret get you some of this distilled carduus benedictus, and lay it to your heart: it is the only thing for a qualm. hero there thou prickest her with a thistle. beatrice benedictus! why benedictus? you have some moral in this benedictus. margaret moral! no, by my troth, i have no moral meaning; i meant, plain holy-thistle. you may think perchance that i think you are in love: nay, by'r lady, i am not such a fool to think what i list, nor i list not to think what i can, nor indeed i cannot think, if i would think my heart out of thinking, that you are in love or that you will be in love or that you can be in love. yet benedick was such another, and now is he become a man: he swore he would never marry, and yet now, in despite of his heart, he eats his meat without grudging: and how you may be converted i know not, but methinks you look with your eyes as other women do. beatrice what pace is this that thy tongue keeps? margaret not a false gallop. [re-enter ursula] ursula madam, withdraw: the prince, the count, signior benedick, don john, and all the gallants of the town, are come to fetch you to church. hero help to dress me, good coz, good meg, good ursula. [exeunt] much ado about nothing act iii scene v another room in leonato's house. [enter leonato, with dogberry and verges] leonato what would you with me, honest neighbour? dogberry marry, sir, i would have some confidence with you that decerns you nearly. leonato brief, i pray you; for you see it is a busy time with me. dogberry marry, this it is, sir. verges yes, in truth it is, sir. leonato what is it, my good friends? dogberry goodman verges, sir, speaks a little off the matter: an old man, sir, and his wits are not so blunt as, god help, i would desire they were; but, in faith, honest as the skin between his brows. verges yes, i thank god i am as honest as any man living that is an old man and no honester than i. dogberry comparisons are odorous: palabras, neighbour verges. leonato neighbours, you are tedious. dogberry it pleases your worship to say so, but we are the poor duke's officers; but truly, for mine own part, if i were as tedious as a king, i could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worship. leonato all thy tediousness on me, ah? dogberry yea, an 'twere a thousand pound more than 'tis; for i hear as good exclamation on your worship as of any man in the city; and though i be but a poor man, i am glad to hear it. verges and so am i. leonato i would fain know what you have to say. verges marry, sir, our watch to-night, excepting your worship's presence, ha' ta'en a couple of as arrant knaves as any in messina. dogberry a good old man, sir; he will be talking: as they say, when the age is in, the wit is out: god help us! it is a world to see. well said, i' faith, neighbour verges: well, god's a good man; an two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind. an honest soul, i' faith, sir; by my troth he is, as ever broke bread; but god is to be worshipped; all men are not alike; alas, good neighbour! leonato indeed, neighbour, he comes too short of you. dogberry gifts that god gives. leonato i must leave you. dogberry one word, sir: our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two aspicious persons, and we would have them this morning examined before your worship. leonato take their examination yourself and bring it me: i am now in great haste, as it may appear unto you. dogberry it shall be suffigance. leonato drink some wine ere you go: fare you well. [enter a messenger] messenger my lord, they stay for you to give your daughter to her husband. leonato i'll wait upon them: i am ready. [exeunt leonato and messenger] dogberry go, good partner, go, get you to francis seacole; bid him bring his pen and inkhorn to the gaol: we are now to examination these men. verges and we must do it wisely. dogberry we will spare for no wit, i warrant you; here's that shall drive some of them to a non-come: only get the learned writer to set down our excommunication and meet me at the gaol. [exeunt] much ado about nothing act iv scene i a church. [enter don pedro, don john, leonato, friar francis, claudio, benedick, hero, beatrice, and attendants] leonato come, friar francis, be brief; only to the plain form of marriage, and you shall recount their particular duties afterwards. friar francis you come hither, my lord, to marry this lady. claudio no. leonato to be married to her: friar, you come to marry her. friar francis lady, you come hither to be married to this count. hero i do. friar francis if either of you know any inward impediment why you should not be conjoined, charge you, on your souls, to utter it. claudio know you any, hero? hero none, my lord. friar francis know you any, count? leonato i dare make his answer, none. claudio o, what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do! benedick how now! interjections? why, then, some be of laughing, as, ah, ha, he! claudio stand thee by, friar. father, by your leave: will you with free and unconstrained soul give me this maid, your daughter? leonato as freely, son, as god did give her me. claudio and what have i to give you back, whose worth may counterpoise this rich and precious gift? don pedro nothing, unless you render her again. claudio sweet prince, you learn me noble thankfulness. there, leonato, take her back again: give not this rotten orange to your friend; she's but the sign and semblance of her honour. behold how like a maid she blushes here! o, what authority and show of truth can cunning sin cover itself withal! comes not that blood as modest evidence to witness simple virtue? would you not swear, all you that see her, that she were a maid, by these exterior shows? but she is none: she knows the heat of a luxurious bed; her blush is guiltiness, not modesty. leonato what do you mean, my lord? claudio not to be married, not to knit my soul to an approved wanton. leonato dear my lord, if you, in your own proof, have vanquish'd the resistance of her youth, and made defeat of her virginity,- claudio i know what you would say: if i have known her, you will say she did embrace me as a husband, and so extenuate the 'forehand sin: no, leonato, i never tempted her with word too large; but, as a brother to his sister, show'd bashful sincerity and comely love. hero and seem'd i ever otherwise to you? claudio out on thee! seeming! i will write against it: you seem to me as dian in her orb, as chaste as is the bud ere it be blown; but you are more intemperate in your blood than venus, or those pamper'd animals that rage in savage sensuality. hero is my lord well, that he doth speak so wide? leonato sweet prince, why speak not you? don pedro what should i speak? i stand dishonour'd, that have gone about to link my dear friend to a common stale. leonato are these things spoken, or do i but dream? don john sir, they are spoken, and these things are true. benedick this looks not like a nuptial. hero true! o god! claudio leonato, stand i here? is this the prince? is this the prince's brother? is this face hero's? are our eyes our own? leonato all this is so: but what of this, my lord? claudio let me but move one question to your daughter; and, by that fatherly and kindly power that you have in her, bid her answer truly. leonato i charge thee do so, as thou art my child. hero o, god defend me! how am i beset! what kind of catechising call you this? claudio to make you answer truly to your name. hero is it not hero? who can blot that name with any just reproach? claudio marry, that can hero; hero itself can blot out hero's virtue. what man was he talk'd with you yesternight out at your window betwixt twelve and one? now, if you are a maid, answer to this. hero i talk'd with no man at that hour, my lord. don pedro why, then are you no maiden. leonato, i am sorry you must hear: upon mine honour, myself, my brother and this grieved count did see her, hear her, at that hour last night talk with a ruffian at her chamber-window who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain, confess'd the vile encounters they have had a thousand times in secret. don john fie, fie! they are not to be named, my lord, not to be spoke of; there is not chastity enough in language without offence to utter them. thus, pretty lady, i am sorry for thy much misgovernment. claudio o hero, what a hero hadst thou been, if half thy outward graces had been placed about thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart! but fare thee well, most foul, most fair! farewell, thou pure impiety and impious purity! for thee i'll lock up all the gates of love, and on my eyelids shall conjecture hang, to turn all beauty into thoughts of harm, and never shall it more be gracious. leonato hath no man's dagger here a point for me? [hero swoons] beatrice why, how now, cousin! wherefore sink you down? don john come, let us go. these things, come thus to light, smother her spirits up. [exeunt don pedro, don john, and claudio] benedick how doth the lady? beatrice dead, i think. help, uncle! hero! why, hero! uncle! signior benedick! friar! leonato o fate! take not away thy heavy hand. death is the fairest cover for her shame that may be wish'd for. beatrice how now, cousin hero! friar francis have comfort, lady. leonato dost thou look up? friar francis yea, wherefore should she not? leonato wherefore! why, doth not every earthly thing cry shame upon her? could she here deny the story that is printed in her blood? do not live, hero; do not ope thine eyes: for, did i think thou wouldst not quickly die, thought i thy spirits were stronger than thy shames, myself would, on the rearward of reproaches, strike at thy life. grieved i, i had but one? chid i for that at frugal nature's frame? o, one too much by thee! why had i one? why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes? why had i not with charitable hand took up a beggar's issue at my gates, who smirch'd thus and mired with infamy, i might have said 'no part of it is mine; this shame derives itself from unknown loins'? but mine and mine i loved and mine i praised and mine that i was proud on, mine so much that i myself was to myself not mine, valuing of her,--why, she, o, she is fallen into a pit of ink, that the wide sea hath drops too few to wash her clean again and salt too little which may season give to her foul-tainted flesh! benedick sir, sir, be patient. for my part, i am so attired in wonder, i know not what to say. beatrice o, on my soul, my cousin is belied! benedick lady, were you her bedfellow last night? beatrice no, truly not; although, until last night, i have this twelvemonth been her bedfellow. leonato confirm'd, confirm'd! o, that is stronger made which was before barr'd up with ribs of iron! would the two princes lie, and claudio lie, who loved her so, that, speaking of her foulness, wash'd it with tears? hence from her! let her die. friar francis hear me a little; for i have only been silent so long and given way unto this course of fortune [ ] by noting of the lady i have mark'd a thousand blushing apparitions to start into her face, a thousand innocent shames in angel whiteness beat away those blushes; and in her eye there hath appear'd a fire, to burn the errors that these princes hold against her maiden truth. call me a fool; trust not my reading nor my observations, which with experimental seal doth warrant the tenor of my book; trust not my age, my reverence, calling, nor divinity, if this sweet lady lie not guiltless here under some biting error. leonato friar, it cannot be. thou seest that all the grace that she hath left is that she will not add to her damnation a sin of perjury; she not denies it: why seek'st thou then to cover with excuse that which appears in proper nakedness? friar francis lady, what man is he you are accused of? hero they know that do accuse me; i know none: if i know more of any man alive than that which maiden modesty doth warrant, let all my sins lack mercy! o my father, prove you that any man with me conversed at hours unmeet, or that i yesternight maintain'd the change of words with any creature, refuse me, hate me, torture me to death! friar francis there is some strange misprision in the princes. benedick two of them have the very bent of honour; and if their wisdoms be misled in this, the practise of it lives in john the bastard, whose spirits toil in frame of villanies. leonato i know not. if they speak but truth of her, these hands shall tear her; if they wrong her honour, the proudest of them shall well hear of it. time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine, nor age so eat up my invention, nor fortune made such havoc of my means, nor my bad life reft me so much of friends, but they shall find, awaked in such a kind, both strength of limb and policy of mind, ability in means and choice of friends, to quit me of them throughly. friar francis pause awhile, and let my counsel sway you in this case. your daughter here the princes left for dead: let her awhile be secretly kept in, and publish it that she is dead indeed; maintain a mourning ostentation and on your family's old monument hang mournful epitaphs and do all rites that appertain unto a burial. leonato what shall become of this? what will this do? friar francis marry, this well carried shall on her behalf change slander to remorse; that is some good: but not for that dream i on this strange course, but on this travail look for greater birth. she dying, as it must so be maintain'd, upon the instant that she was accused, shall be lamented, pitied and excused of every hearer: for it so falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it, but being lack'd and lost, why, then we rack the value, then we find the virtue that possession would not show us whiles it was ours. so will it fare with claudio: when he shall hear she died upon his words, the idea of her life shall sweetly creep into his study of imagination, and every lovely organ of her life shall come apparell'd in more precious habit, more moving-delicate and full of life, into the eye and prospect of his soul, than when she lived indeed; then shall he mourn, if ever love had interest in his liver, and wish he had not so accused her, no, though he thought his accusation true. let this be so, and doubt not but success will fashion the event in better shape than i can lay it down in likelihood. but if all aim but this be levell'd false, the supposition of the lady's death will quench the wonder of her infamy: and if it sort not well, you may conceal her, as best befits her wounded reputation, in some reclusive and religious life, out of all eyes, tongues, minds and injuries. benedick signior leonato, let the friar advise you: and though you know my inwardness and love is very much unto the prince and claudio, yet, by mine honour, i will deal in this as secretly and justly as your soul should with your body. leonato being that i flow in grief, the smallest twine may lead me. friar francis 'tis well consented: presently away; for to strange sores strangely they strain the cure. come, lady, die to live: this wedding-day perhaps is but prolong'd: have patience and endure. [exeunt all but benedick and beatrice] benedick lady beatrice, have you wept all this while? beatrice yea, and i will weep a while longer. benedick i will not desire that. beatrice you have no reason; i do it freely. benedick surely i do believe your fair cousin is wronged. beatrice ah, how much might the man deserve of me that would right her! benedick is there any way to show such friendship? beatrice a very even way, but no such friend. benedick may a man do it? beatrice it is a man's office, but not yours. benedick i do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange? beatrice as strange as the thing i know not. it were as possible for me to say i loved nothing so well as you: but believe me not; and yet i lie not; i confess nothing, nor i deny nothing. i am sorry for my cousin. benedick by my sword, beatrice, thou lovest me. beatrice do not swear, and eat it. benedick i will swear by it that you love me; and i will make him eat it that says i love not you. beatrice will you not eat your word? benedick with no sauce that can be devised to it. i protest i love thee. beatrice why, then, god forgive me! benedick what offence, sweet beatrice? beatrice you have stayed me in a happy hour: i was about to protest i loved you. benedick and do it with all thy heart. beatrice i love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest. benedick come, bid me do any thing for thee. beatrice kill claudio. benedick ha! not for the wide world. beatrice you kill me to deny it. farewell. benedick tarry, sweet beatrice. beatrice i am gone, though i am here: there is no love in you: nay, i pray you, let me go. benedick beatrice,- beatrice in faith, i will go. benedick we'll be friends first. beatrice you dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine enemy. benedick is claudio thine enemy? beatrice is he not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? o that i were a man! what, bear her in hand until they come to take hands; and then, with public accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour, --o god, that i were a man! i would eat his heart in the market-place. benedick hear me, beatrice,- beatrice talk with a man out at a window! a proper saying! benedick nay, but, beatrice,- beatrice sweet hero! she is wronged, she is slandered, she is undone. benedick beat- beatrice princes and counties! surely, a princely testimony, a goodly count, count comfect; a sweet gallant, surely! o that i were a man for his sake! or that i had any friend would be a man for my sake! but manhood is melted into courtesies, valour into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too: he is now as valiant as hercules that only tells a lie and swears it. i cannot be a man with wishing, therefore i will die a woman with grieving. benedick tarry, good beatrice. by this hand, i love thee. beatrice use it for my love some other way than swearing by it. benedick think you in your soul the count claudio hath wronged hero? beatrice yea, as sure as i have a thought or a soul. benedick enough, i am engaged; i will challenge him. i will kiss your hand, and so i leave you. by this hand, claudio shall render me a dear account. as you hear of me, so think of me. go, comfort your cousin: i must say she is dead: and so, farewell. [exeunt] much ado about nothing act iv scene ii a prison. [enter dogberry, verges, and sexton, in gowns; and the watch, with conrade and borachio] dogberry is our whole dissembly appeared? verges o, a stool and a cushion for the sexton. sexton which be the malefactors? dogberry marry, that am i and my partner. verges nay, that's certain; we have the exhibition to examine. sexton but which are the offenders that are to be examined? let them come before master constable. dogberry yea, marry, let them come before me. what is your name, friend? borachio borachio. dogberry pray, write down, borachio. yours, sirrah? conrade i am a gentleman, sir, and my name is conrade. dogberry write down, master gentleman conrade. masters, do you serve god? conrade | | yea, sir, we hope. borachio | dogberry write down, that they hope they serve god: and write god first; for god defend but god should go before such villains! masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves; and it will go near to be thought so shortly. how answer you for yourselves? conrade marry, sir, we say we are none. dogberry a marvellous witty fellow, i assure you: but i will go about with him. come you hither, sirrah; a word in your ear: sir, i say to you, it is thought you are false knaves. borachio sir, i say to you we are none. dogberry well, stand aside. 'fore god, they are both in a tale. have you writ down, that they are none? sexton master constable, you go not the way to examine: you must call forth the watch that are their accusers. dogberry yea, marry, that's the eftest way. let the watch come forth. masters, i charge you, in the prince's name, accuse these men. first watchman this man said, sir, that don john, the prince's brother, was a villain. dogberry write down prince john a villain. why, this is flat perjury, to call a prince's brother villain. borachio master constable,- dogberry pray thee, fellow, peace: i do not like thy look, i promise thee. sexton what heard you him say else? second watchman marry, that he had received a thousand ducats of don john for accusing the lady hero wrongfully. dogberry flat burglary as ever was committed. verges yea, by mass, that it is. sexton what else, fellow? first watchman and that count claudio did mean, upon his words, to disgrace hero before the whole assembly. and not marry her. dogberry o villain! thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this. sexton what else? watchman this is all. sexton and this is more, masters, than you can deny. prince john is this morning secretly stolen away; hero was in this manner accused, in this very manner refused, and upon the grief of this suddenly died. master constable, let these men be bound, and brought to leonato's: i will go before and show him their examination. [exit] dogberry come, let them be opinioned. verges let them be in the hands- conrade off, coxcomb! dogberry god's my life, where's the sexton? let him write down the prince's officer coxcomb. come, bind them. thou naughty varlet! conrade away! you are an ass, you are an ass. dogberry dost thou not suspect my place? dost thou not suspect my years? o that he were here to write me down an ass! but, masters, remember that i am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that i am an ass. no, thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be proved upon thee by good witness. i am a wise fellow, and, which is more, an officer, and, which is more, a householder, and, which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in messina, and one that knows the law, go to; and a rich fellow enough, go to; and a fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns and every thing handsome about him. bring him away. o that i had been writ down an ass! [exeunt] much ado about nothing act v scene i before leonato's house. [enter leonato and antonio] antonio if you go on thus, you will kill yourself: and 'tis not wisdom thus to second grief against yourself. leonato i pray thee, cease thy counsel, which falls into mine ears as profitless as water in a sieve: give not me counsel; nor let no comforter delight mine ear but such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine. bring me a father that so loved his child, whose joy of her is overwhelm'd like mine, and bid him speak of patience; measure his woe the length and breadth of mine and let it answer every strain for strain, as thus for thus and such a grief for such, in every lineament, branch, shape, and form: if such a one will smile and stroke his beard, bid sorrow wag, cry 'hem!' when he should groan, patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk with candle-wasters; bring him yet to me, and i of him will gather patience. but there is no such man: for, brother, men can counsel and speak comfort to that grief which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it, their counsel turns to passion, which before would give preceptial medicine to rage, fetter strong madness in a silken thread, charm ache with air and agony with words: no, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience to those that wring under the load of sorrow, but no man's virtue nor sufficiency to be so moral when he shall endure the like himself. therefore give me no counsel: my griefs cry louder than advertisement. antonio therein do men from children nothing differ. leonato i pray thee, peace. i will be flesh and blood; for there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently, however they have writ the style of gods and made a push at chance and sufferance. antonio yet bend not all the harm upon yourself; make those that do offend you suffer too. leonato there thou speak'st reason: nay, i will do so. my soul doth tell me hero is belied; and that shall claudio know; so shall the prince and all of them that thus dishonour her. antonio here comes the prince and claudio hastily. [enter don pedro and claudio] don pedro good den, good den. claudio good day to both of you. leonato hear you. my lords,- don pedro we have some haste, leonato. leonato some haste, my lord! well, fare you well, my lord: are you so hasty now? well, all is one. don pedro nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man. antonio if he could right himself with quarreling, some of us would lie low. claudio who wrongs him? leonato marry, thou dost wrong me; thou dissembler, thou:- nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword; i fear thee not. claudio marry, beshrew my hand, if it should give your age such cause of fear: in faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword. leonato tush, tush, man; never fleer and jest at me: i speak not like a dotard nor a fool, as under privilege of age to brag what i have done being young, or what would do were i not old. know, claudio, to thy head, thou hast so wrong'd mine innocent child and me that i am forced to lay my reverence by and, with grey hairs and bruise of many days, do challenge thee to trial of a man. i say thou hast belied mine innocent child; thy slander hath gone through and through her heart, and she lies buried with her ancestors; o, in a tomb where never scandal slept, save this of hers, framed by thy villany! claudio my villany? leonato thine, claudio; thine, i say. don pedro you say not right, old man. leonato my lord, my lord, i'll prove it on his body, if he dare, despite his nice fence and his active practise, his may of youth and bloom of lustihood. claudio away! i will not have to do with you. leonato canst thou so daff me? thou hast kill'd my child: if thou kill'st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man. antonio he shall kill two of us, and men indeed: but that's no matter; let him kill one first; win me and wear me; let him answer me. come, follow me, boy; come, sir boy, come, follow me: sir boy, i'll whip you from your foining fence; nay, as i am a gentleman, i will. leonato brother,- antonio content yourself. god knows i loved my niece; and she is dead, slander'd to death by villains, that dare as well answer a man indeed as i dare take a serpent by the tongue: boys, apes, braggarts, jacks, milksops! leonato brother antony,- antonio hold you content. what, man! i know them, yea, and what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple,- scrambling, out-facing, fashion-monging boys, that lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander, go anticly, show outward hideousness, and speak off half a dozen dangerous words, how they might hurt their enemies, if they durst; and this is all. leonato but, brother antony,- antonio come, 'tis no matter: do not you meddle; let me deal in this. don pedro gentlemen both, we will not wake your patience. my heart is sorry for your daughter's death: but, on my honour, she was charged with nothing but what was true and very full of proof. leonato my lord, my lord,- don pedro i will not hear you. leonato no? come, brother; away! i will be heard. antonio and shall, or some of us will smart for it. [exeunt leonato and antonio] don pedro see, see; here comes the man we went to seek. [enter benedick] claudio now, signior, what news? benedick good day, my lord. don pedro welcome, signior: you are almost come to part almost a fray. claudio we had like to have had our two noses snapped off with two old men without teeth. don pedro leonato and his brother. what thinkest thou? had we fought, i doubt we should have been too young for them. benedick in a false quarrel there is no true valour. i came to seek you both. claudio we have been up and down to seek thee; for we are high-proof melancholy and would fain have it beaten away. wilt thou use thy wit? benedick it is in my scabbard: shall i draw it? don pedro dost thou wear thy wit by thy side? claudio never any did so, though very many have been beside their wit. i will bid thee draw, as we do the minstrels; draw, to pleasure us. don pedro as i am an honest man, he looks pale. art thou sick, or angry? claudio what, courage, man! what though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care. benedick sir, i shall meet your wit in the career, and you charge it against me. i pray you choose another subject. claudio nay, then, give him another staff: this last was broke cross. don pedro by this light, he changes more and more: i think he be angry indeed. claudio if he be, he knows how to turn his girdle. benedick shall i speak a word in your ear? claudio god bless me from a challenge! benedick [aside to claudio] you are a villain; i jest not: i will make it good how you dare, with what you dare, and when you dare. do me right, or i will protest your cowardice. you have killed a sweet lady, and her death shall fall heavy on you. let me hear from you. claudio well, i will meet you, so i may have good cheer. don pedro what, a feast, a feast? claudio i' faith, i thank him; he hath bid me to a calf's head and a capon; the which if i do not carve most curiously, say my knife's naught. shall i not find a woodcock too? benedick sir, your wit ambles well; it goes easily. don pedro i'll tell thee how beatrice praised thy wit the other day. i said, thou hadst a fine wit: 'true,' said she, 'a fine little one.' 'no,' said i, 'a great wit:' 'right,' says she, 'a great gross one.' 'nay,' said i, 'a good wit:' 'just,' said she, 'it hurts nobody.' 'nay,' said i, 'the gentleman is wise:' 'certain,' said she, 'a wise gentleman.' 'nay,' said i, 'he hath the tongues:' 'that i believe,' said she, 'for he swore a thing to me on monday night, which he forswore on tuesday morning; there's a double tongue; there's two tongues.' thus did she, an hour together, transshape thy particular virtues: yet at last she concluded with a sigh, thou wast the properest man in italy. claudio for the which she wept heartily and said she cared not. don pedro yea, that she did: but yet, for all that, an if she did not hate him deadly, she would love him dearly: the old man's daughter told us all. claudio all, all; and, moreover, god saw him when he was hid in the garden. don pedro but when shall we set the savage bull's horns on the sensible benedick's head? claudio yea, and text underneath, 'here dwells benedick the married man'? benedick fare you well, boy: you know my mind. i will leave you now to your gossip-like humour: you break jests as braggarts do their blades, which god be thanked, hurt not. my lord, for your many courtesies i thank you: i must discontinue your company: your brother the bastard is fled from messina: you have among you killed a sweet and innocent lady. for my lord lackbeard there, he and i shall meet: and, till then, peace be with him. [exit] don pedro he is in earnest. claudio in most profound earnest; and, i'll warrant you, for the love of beatrice. don pedro and hath challenged thee. claudio most sincerely. don pedro what a pretty thing man is when he goes in his doublet and hose and leaves off his wit! claudio he is then a giant to an ape; but then is an ape a doctor to such a man. don pedro but, soft you, let me be: pluck up, my heart, and be sad. did he not say, my brother was fled? [enter dogberry, verges, and the watch, with conrade and borachio] dogberry come you, sir: if justice cannot tame you, she shall ne'er weigh more reasons in her balance: nay, an you be a cursing hypocrite once, you must be looked to. don pedro how now? two of my brother's men bound! borachio one! claudio hearken after their offence, my lord. don pedro officers, what offence have these men done? dogberry marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves. don pedro first, i ask thee what they have done; thirdly, i ask thee what's their offence; sixth and lastly, why they are committed; and, to conclude, what you lay to their charge. claudio rightly reasoned, and in his own division: and, by my troth, there's one meaning well suited. don pedro who have you offended, masters, that you are thus bound to your answer? this learned constable is too cunning to be understood: what's your offence? borachio sweet prince, let me go no farther to mine answer: do you hear me, and let this count kill me. i have deceived even your very eyes: what your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light: who in the night overheard me confessing to this man how don john your brother incensed me to slander the lady hero, how you were brought into the orchard and saw me court margaret in hero's garments, how you disgraced her, when you should marry her: my villany they have upon record; which i had rather seal with my death than repeat over to my shame. the lady is dead upon mine and my master's false accusation; and, briefly, i desire nothing but the reward of a villain. don pedro runs not this speech like iron through your blood? claudio i have drunk poison whiles he utter'd it. don pedro but did my brother set thee on to this? borachio yea, and paid me richly for the practise of it. don pedro he is composed and framed of treachery: and fled he is upon this villany. claudio sweet hero! now thy image doth appear in the rare semblance that i loved it first. dogberry come, bring away the plaintiffs: by this time our sexton hath reformed signior leonato of the matter: and, masters, do not forget to specify, when time and place shall serve, that i am an ass. verges here, here comes master signior leonato, and the sexton too. [re-enter leonato and antonio, with the sexton] leonato which is the villain? let me see his eyes, that, when i note another man like him, i may avoid him: which of these is he? borachio if you would know your wronger, look on me. leonato art thou the slave that with thy breath hast kill'd mine innocent child? borachio yea, even i alone. leonato no, not so, villain; thou beliest thyself: here stand a pair of honourable men; a third is fled, that had a hand in it. i thank you, princes, for my daughter's death: record it with your high and worthy deeds: 'twas bravely done, if you bethink you of it. claudio i know not how to pray your patience; yet i must speak. choose your revenge yourself; impose me to what penance your invention can lay upon my sin: yet sinn'd i not but in mistaking. don pedro by my soul, nor i: and yet, to satisfy this good old man, i would bend under any heavy weight that he'll enjoin me to. leonato i cannot bid you bid my daughter live; that were impossible: but, i pray you both, possess the people in messina here how innocent she died; and if your love can labour ought in sad invention, hang her an epitaph upon her tomb and sing it to her bones, sing it to-night: to-morrow morning come you to my house, and since you could not be my son-in-law, be yet my nephew: my brother hath a daughter, almost the copy of my child that's dead, and she alone is heir to both of us: give her the right you should have given her cousin, and so dies my revenge. claudio o noble sir, your over-kindness doth wring tears from me! i do embrace your offer; and dispose for henceforth of poor claudio. leonato to-morrow then i will expect your coming; to-night i take my leave. this naughty man shall face to face be brought to margaret, who i believe was pack'd in all this wrong, hired to it by your brother. borachio no, by my soul, she was not, nor knew not what she did when she spoke to me, but always hath been just and virtuous in any thing that i do know by her. dogberry moreover, sir, which indeed is not under white and black, this plaintiff here, the offender, did call me ass: i beseech you, let it be remembered in his punishment. and also, the watch heard them talk of one deformed: they say be wears a key in his ear and a lock hanging by it, and borrows money in god's name, the which he hath used so long and never paid that now men grow hard-hearted and will lend nothing for god's sake: pray you, examine him upon that point. leonato i thank thee for thy care and honest pains. dogberry your worship speaks like a most thankful and reverend youth; and i praise god for you. leonato there's for thy pains. dogberry god save the foundation! leonato go, i discharge thee of thy prisoner, and i thank thee. dogberry i leave an arrant knave with your worship; which i beseech your worship to correct yourself, for the example of others. god keep your worship! i wish your worship well; god restore you to health! i humbly give you leave to depart; and if a merry meeting may be wished, god prohibit it! come, neighbour. [exeunt dogberry and verges] leonato until to-morrow morning, lords, farewell. antonio farewell, my lords: we look for you to-morrow. don pedro we will not fail. claudio to-night i'll mourn with hero. leonato [to the watch] bring you these fellows on. we'll talk with margaret, how her acquaintance grew with this lewd fellow. [exeunt, severally] much ado about nothing act v scene ii leonato's garden. [enter benedick and margaret, meeting] benedick pray thee, sweet mistress margaret, deserve well at my hands by helping me to the speech of beatrice. margaret will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty? benedick in so high a style, margaret, that no man living shall come over it; for, in most comely truth, thou deservest it. margaret to have no man come over me! why, shall i always keep below stairs? benedick thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth; it catches. margaret and yours as blunt as the fencer's foils, which hit, but hurt not. benedick a most manly wit, margaret; it will not hurt a woman: and so, i pray thee, call beatrice: i give thee the bucklers. margaret give us the swords; we have bucklers of our own. benedick if you use them, margaret, you must put in the pikes with a vice; and they are dangerous weapons for maids. margaret well, i will call beatrice to you, who i think hath legs. benedick and therefore will come. [exit margaret] [sings] the god of love, that sits above, and knows me, and knows me, how pitiful i deserve,- i mean in singing; but in loving, leander the good swimmer, troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mangers, whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse, why, they were never so truly turned over and over as my poor self in love. marry, i cannot show it in rhyme; i have tried: i can find out no rhyme to 'lady' but 'baby,' an innocent rhyme; for 'scorn,' 'horn,' a hard rhyme; for, 'school,' 'fool,' a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings: no, i was not born under a rhyming planet, nor i cannot woo in festival terms. [enter beatrice] sweet beatrice, wouldst thou come when i called thee? beatrice yea, signior, and depart when you bid me. benedick o, stay but till then! beatrice 'then' is spoken; fare you well now: and yet, ere i go, let me go with that i came; which is, with knowing what hath passed between you and claudio. benedick only foul words; and thereupon i will kiss thee. beatrice foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore i will depart unkissed. benedick thou hast frighted the word out of his right sense, so forcible is thy wit. but i must tell thee plainly, claudio undergoes my challenge; and either i must shortly hear from him, or i will subscribe him a coward. and, i pray thee now, tell me for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me? beatrice for them all together; which maintained so politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them. but for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me? benedick suffer love! a good epithet! i do suffer love indeed, for i love thee against my will. beatrice in spite of your heart, i think; alas, poor heart! if you spite it for my sake, i will spite it for yours; for i will never love that which my friend hates. benedick thou and i are too wise to woo peaceably. beatrice it appears not in this confession: there's not one wise man among twenty that will praise himself. benedick an old, an old instance, beatrice, that lived in the lime of good neighbours. if a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings and the widow weeps. beatrice and how long is that, think you? benedick question: why, an hour in clamour and a quarter in rheum: therefore is it most expedient for the wise, if don worm, his conscience, find no impediment to the contrary, to be the trumpet of his own virtues, as i am to myself. so much for praising myself, who, i myself will bear witness, is praiseworthy: and now tell me, how doth your cousin? beatrice very ill. benedick and how do you? beatrice very ill too. benedick serve god, love me and mend. there will i leave you too, for here comes one in haste. [enter ursula] ursula madam, you must come to your uncle. yonder's old coil at home: it is proved my lady hero hath been falsely accused, the prince and claudio mightily abused; and don john is the author of all, who is fed and gone. will you come presently? beatrice will you go hear this news, signior? benedick i will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes; and moreover i will go with thee to thy uncle's. [exeunt] much ado about nothing act v scene iii a church. [enter don pedro, claudio, and three or four with tapers] claudio is this the monument of leonato? lord it is, my lord. claudio [reading out of a scroll] done to death by slanderous tongues was the hero that here lies: death, in guerdon of her wrongs, gives her fame which never dies. so the life that died with shame lives in death with glorious fame. hang thou there upon the tomb, praising her when i am dumb. now, music, sound, and sing your solemn hymn. song. pardon, goddess of the night, those that slew thy virgin knight; for the which, with songs of woe, round about her tomb they go. midnight, assist our moan; help us to sigh and groan, heavily, heavily: graves, yawn and yield your dead, till death be uttered, heavily, heavily. claudio now, unto thy bones good night! yearly will i do this rite. don pedro good morrow, masters; put your torches out: the wolves have prey'd; and look, the gentle day, before the wheels of phoebus, round about dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey. thanks to you all, and leave us: fare you well. claudio good morrow, masters: each his several way. don pedro come, let us hence, and put on other weeds; and then to leonato's we will go. claudio and hymen now with luckier issue speed's than this for whom we render'd up this woe. [exeunt] much ado about nothing act v scene iv a room in leonato's house. [enter leonato, antonio, benedick, beatrice, margaret, ursula, friar francis, and hero] friar francis did i not tell you she was innocent? leonato so are the prince and claudio, who accused her upon the error that you heard debated: but margaret was in some fault for this, although against her will, as it appears in the true course of all the question. antonio well, i am glad that all things sort so well. benedick and so am i, being else by faith enforced to call young claudio to a reckoning for it. leonato well, daughter, and you gentle-women all, withdraw into a chamber by yourselves, and when i send for you, come hither mask'd. [exeunt ladies] the prince and claudio promised by this hour to visit me. you know your office, brother: you must be father to your brother's daughter and give her to young claudio. antonio which i will do with confirm'd countenance. benedick friar, i must entreat your pains, i think. friar francis to do what, signior? benedick to bind me, or undo me; one of them. signior leonato, truth it is, good signior, your niece regards me with an eye of favour. leonato that eye my daughter lent her: 'tis most true. benedick and i do with an eye of love requite her. leonato the sight whereof i think you had from me, from claudio and the prince: but what's your will? benedick your answer, sir, is enigmatical: but, for my will, my will is your good will may stand with ours, this day to be conjoin'd in the state of honourable marriage: in which, good friar, i shall desire your help. leonato my heart is with your liking. friar francis and my help. here comes the prince and claudio. [enter don pedro and claudio, and two or three others] don pedro good morrow to this fair assembly. leonato good morrow, prince; good morrow, claudio: we here attend you. are you yet determined to-day to marry with my brother's daughter? claudio i'll hold my mind, were she an ethiope. leonato call her forth, brother; here's the friar ready. [exit antonio] don pedro good morrow, benedick. why, what's the matter, that you have such a february face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness? claudio i think he thinks upon the savage bull. tush, fear not, man; we'll tip thy horns with gold and all europa shall rejoice at thee, as once europa did at lusty jove, when he would play the noble beast in love. benedick bull jove, sir, had an amiable low; and some such strange bull leap'd your father's cow, and got a calf in that same noble feat much like to you, for you have just his bleat. claudio for this i owe you: here comes other reckonings. [re-enter antonio, with the ladies masked] which is the lady i must seize upon? antonio this same is she, and i do give you her. claudio why, then she's mine. sweet, let me see your face. leonato no, that you shall not, till you take her hand before this friar and swear to marry her. claudio give me your hand: before this holy friar, i am your husband, if you like of me. hero and when i lived, i was your other wife: [unmasking] and when you loved, you were my other husband. claudio another hero! hero nothing certainer: one hero died defiled, but i do live, and surely as i live, i am a maid. don pedro the former hero! hero that is dead! leonato she died, my lord, but whiles her slander lived. friar francis all this amazement can i qualify: when after that the holy rites are ended, i'll tell you largely of fair hero's death: meantime let wonder seem familiar, and to the chapel let us presently. benedick soft and fair, friar. which is beatrice? beatrice [unmasking] i answer to that name. what is your will? benedick do not you love me? beatrice why, no; no more than reason. benedick why, then your uncle and the prince and claudio have been deceived; they swore you did. beatrice do not you love me? benedick troth, no; no more than reason. beatrice why, then my cousin margaret and ursula are much deceived; for they did swear you did. benedick they swore that you were almost sick for me. beatrice they swore that you were well-nigh dead for me. benedick 'tis no such matter. then you do not love me? beatrice no, truly, but in friendly recompense. leonato come, cousin, i am sure you love the gentleman. claudio and i'll be sworn upon't that he loves her; for here's a paper written in his hand, a halting sonnet of his own pure brain, fashion'd to beatrice. hero and here's another writ in my cousin's hand, stolen from her pocket, containing her affection unto benedick. benedick a miracle! here's our own hands against our hearts. come, i will have thee; but, by this light, i take thee for pity. beatrice i would not deny you; but, by this good day, i yield upon great persuasion; and partly to save your life, for i was told you were in a consumption. benedick peace! i will stop your mouth. [kissing her] don pedro how dost thou, benedick, the married man? benedick i'll tell thee what, prince; a college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humour. dost thou think i care for a satire or an epigram? no: if a man will be beaten with brains, a' shall wear nothing handsome about him. in brief, since i do purpose to marry, i will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what i have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion. for thy part, claudio, i did think to have beaten thee, but in that thou art like to be my kinsman, live unbruised and love my cousin. claudio i had well hoped thou wouldst have denied beatrice, that i might have cudgelled thee out of thy single life, to make thee a double-dealer; which, out of question, thou wilt be, if my cousin do not look exceedingly narrowly to thee. benedick come, come, we are friends: let's have a dance ere we are married, that we may lighten our own hearts and our wives' heels. leonato we'll have dancing afterward. benedick first, of my word; therefore play, music. prince, thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife: there is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn. [enter a messenger] messenger my lord, your brother john is ta'en in flight, and brought with armed men back to messina. benedick think not on him till to-morrow: i'll devise thee brave punishments for him. strike up, pipers. [dance] [exeunt] *******the project gutenberg etext of the art of writing******** #22 in our series by robert louis stevenson copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. the art of writing by robert louis stevenson april, 1996 [etext #492] *******the project gutenberg etext of the art of writing******* *****this file should be named artow10.txt or artow10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, artow11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, artow10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* the art of writing by robert louis stevenson scanned and proofed by david price ccx074@coventry.ac.uk the art of writing contents i. on some technical elements of style in literature ii. the morality of the profession of letters iii. books which have influenced me iv. a note on realism v. my first book: 'treasure island' vi. the genesis of 'the master of ballantrae' vii. preface to 'the master of ballantrae' chapter i on some technical elements of style in literature (1) there is nothing more disenchanting to man than to be shown the springs and mechanism of any art. all our arts and occupations lie wholly on the surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness, and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the coarseness of the strings and pulleys. in a similar way, psychology itself, when pushed to any nicety, discovers an abhorrent baldness, but rather from the fault of our analysis than from any poverty native to the mind. and perhaps in aesthetics the reason is the same: those disclosures which seem fatal to the dignity of art seem so perhaps only in the proportion of our ignorance; and those conscious and unconscious artifices which it seems unworthy of the serious artist to employ were yet, if we had the power to trace them to their springs, indications of a delicacy of the sense finer than we conceive, and hints of ancient harmonies in nature. this ignorance at least is largely irremediable. we shall never learn the affinities of beauty, for they lie too deep in nature and too far back in the mysterious history of man. the amateur, in consequence, will always grudgingly receive details of method, which can be stated but never can wholly be explained; nay, on the principle laid down in hudibras, that 'still the less they understand, the more they admire the sleight-of-hand,' many are conscious at each new disclosure of a diminution in the ardour of their pleasure. i must therefore warn that well-known character, the general reader, that i am here embarked upon a most distasteful business: taking down the picture from the wall and looking on the back; and, like the inquiring child, pulling the musical cart to pieces. 1. choice of words. the art of literature stands apart from among its sisters, because the material in which the literary artist works is the dialect of life; hence, on the one hand, a strange freshness and immediacy of address to the public mind, which is ready prepared to understand it; but hence, on the other, a singular limitation. the sister arts enjoy the use of a plastic and ductile material, like the modeller's clay; literature alone is condemned to work in mosaic with finite and quite rigid words. you have seen these blocks, dear to the nursery: this one a pillar, that a pediment, a third a window or a vase. it is with blocks of just such arbitrary size and figure that the literary architect is condemned to design the palace of his art. nor is this all; for since these blocks, or words, are the acknowledged currency of our daily affairs, there are here possible none of those suppressions by which other arts obtain relief, continuity, and vigour: no hieroglyphic touch, no smoothed impasto, no inscrutable shadow, as in painting; no blank wall, as in architecture; but every word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph must move in a logical progression, and convey a definite conventional import. now the first merit which attracts in the pages of a good writer, or the talk of a brilliant conversationalist, is the apt choice and contrast of the words employed. it is, indeed, a strange art to take these blocks, rudely conceived for the purpose of the market or the bar, and by tact of application touch them to the finest meanings and distinctions, restore to them their primal energy, wittily shift them to another issue, or make of them a drum to rouse the passions. but though this form of merit is without doubt the most sensible and seizing, it is far from being equally present in all writers. the effect of words in shakespeare, their singular justice, significance, and poetic charm, is different, indeed, from the effect of words in addison or fielding. or, to take an example nearer home, the words in carlyle seem electrified into an energy of lineament, like the faces of men furiously moved; whilst the words in macaulay, apt enough to convey his meaning, harmonious enough in sound, yet glide from the memory like undistinguished elements in a general effect. but the first class of writers have no monopoly of literary merit. there is a sense in which addison is superior to carlyle; a sense in which cicero is better than tacitus, in which voltaire excels montaigne: it certainly lies not in the choice of words; it lies not in the interest or value of the matter; it lies not in force of intellect, of poetry, or of humour. the three first are but infants to the three second; and yet each, in a particular point of literary art, excels his superior in the whole. what is that point? 2. the web. literature, although it stands apart by reason of the great destiny and general use of its medium in the affairs of men, is yet an art like other arts. of these we may distinguish two great classes: those arts, like sculpture, painting, acting, which are representative, or, as used to be said very clumsily, imitative; and those, like architecture, music, and the dance, which are selfsufficient, and merely presentative. each class, in right of this distinction, obeys principles apart; yet both may claim a common ground of existence, and it may be said with sufficient justice that the motive and end of any art whatever is to make a pattern; a pattern, it may be, of colours, of sounds, of changing attitudes, geometrical figures, or imitative lines; but still a pattern. that is the plane on which these sisters meet; it is by this that they are arts; and if it be well they should at times forget their childish origin, addressing their intelligence to virile tasks, and performing unconsciously that necessary function of their life, to make a pattern, it is still imperative that the pattern shall be made. music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their pattern of sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and pauses. communication may be made in broken words, the business of life be carried on with substantives alone; but that is not what we call literature; and the true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself. in every properly constructed sentence there should be observed this knot or hitch; so that (however delicately) we are led to foresee, to expect, and then to welcome the successive phrases. the pleasure may be heightened by an element of surprise, as, very grossly, in the common figure of the antithesis, or, with much greater subtlety, where an antithesis is first suggested and then deftly evaded. each phrase, besides, is to be comely in itself; and between the implication and the evolution of the sentence there should be a satisfying equipoise of sound; for nothing more often disappoints the ear than a sentence solemnly and sonorously prepared, and hastily and weakly finished. nor should the balance be too striking and exact, for the one rule is to be infinitely various; to interest, to disappoint, to surprise, and yet still to gratify; to be ever changing, as it were, the stitch, and yet still to give the effect of an ingenious neatness. the conjurer juggles with two oranges, and our pleasure in beholding him springs from this, that neither is for an instant overlooked or sacrificed. so with the writer. his pattern, which is to please the supersensual ear, is yet addressed, throughout and first of all, to the demands of logic. whatever be the obscurities, whatever the intricacies of the argument, the neatness of the fabric must not suffer, or the artist has been proved unequal to his design. and, on the other hand, no form of words must be selected, no knot must be tied among the phrases, unless knot and word be precisely what is wanted to forward and illuminate the argument; for to fail in this is to swindle in the game. the genius of prose rejects the cheville no less emphatically than the laws of verse; and the cheville, i should perhaps explain to some of my readers, is any meaningless or very watered phrase employed to strike a balance in the sound. pattern and argument live in each other; and it is by the brevity, clearness, charm, or emphasis of the second, that we judge the strength and fitness of the first. style is synthetic; and the artist, seeking, so to speak, a peg to plait about, takes up at once two or more elements or two or more views of the subject in hand; combines, implicates, and contrasts them; and while, in one sense, he was merely seeking an occasion for the necessary knot, he will be found, in the other, to have greatly enriched the meaning, or to have transacted the work of two sentences in the space of one. in the change from the successive shallow statements of the old chronicler to the dense and luminous flow of highly synthetic narrative, there is implied a vast amount of both philosophy and wit. the philosophy we clearly see, recognising in the synthetic writer a far more deep and stimulating view of life, and a far keener sense of the generation and affinity of events. the wit we might imagine to be lost; but it is not so, for it is just that wit, these perpetual nice contrivances, these difficulties overcome, this double purpose attained, these two oranges kept simultaneously dancing in the air, that, consciously or not, afford the reader his delight. nay, and this wit, so little recognised, is the necessary organ of that philosophy which we so much admire. that style is therefore the most perfect, not, as fools say, which is the most natural, for the most natural is the disjointed babble of the chronicler; but which attains the highest degree of elegant and pregnant implication unobtrusively; or if obtrusively, then with the greatest gain to sense and vigour. even the derangement of the phrases from their (so-called) natural order is luminous for the mind; and it is by the means of such designed reversal that the elements of a judgment may be most pertinently marshalled, or the stages of a complicated action most perspicuously bound into one. the web, then, or the pattern: a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature. books indeed continue to be read, for the interest of the fact or fable, in which this quality is poorly represented, but still it will be there. and, on the other hand, how many do we continue to peruse and reperuse with pleasure whose only merit is the elegance of texture? i am tempted to mention cicero; and since mr. anthony trollope is dead, i will. it is a poor diet for the mind, a very colourless and toothless 'criticism of life'; but we enjoy the pleasure of a most intricate and dexterous pattern, every stitch a model at once of elegance and of good sense; and the two oranges, even if one of them be rotten, kept dancing with inimitable grace. up to this moment i have had my eye mainly upon prose; for though in verse also the implication of the logical texture is a crowning beauty, yet in verse it may be dispensed with. you would think that here was a death-blow to all i have been saying; and far from that, it is but a new illustration of the principle involved. for if the versifier is not bound to weave a pattern of his own, it is because another pattern has been formally imposed upon him by the laws of verse. for that is the essence of a prosody. verse may be rhythmical; it may be merely alliterative; it may, like the french, depend wholly on the (quasi) regular recurrence of the rhyme; or, like the hebrew, it may consist in the strangely fanciful device of repeating the same idea. it does not matter on what principle the law is based, so it be a law. it may be pure convention; it may have no inherent beauty; all that we have a right to ask of any prosody is, that it shall lay down a pattern for the writer, and that what it lays down shall be neither too easy nor too hard. hence it comes that it is much easier for men of equal facility to write fairly pleasing verse than reasonably interesting prose; for in prose the pattern itself has to be invented, and the difficulties first created before they can be solved. hence, again, there follows the peculiar greatness of the true versifier: such as shakespeare, milton, and victor hugo, whom i place beside them as versifier merely, not as poet. these not only knit and knot the logical texture of the style with all the dexterity and strength of prose; they not only fill up the pattern of the verse with infinite variety and sober wit; but they give us, besides, a rare and special pleasure, by the art, comparable to that of counterpoint, with which they follow at the same time, and now contrast, and now combine, the double pattern of the texture and the verse. here the sounding line concludes; a little further on, the well-knit sentence; and yet a little further, and both will reach their solution on the same ringing syllable. the best that can be offered by the best writer of prose is to show us the development of the idea and the stylistic pattern proceed hand in hand, sometimes by an obvious and triumphant effort, sometimes with a great air of ease and nature. the writer of verse, by virtue of conquering another difficulty, delights us with a new series of triumphs. he follows three purposes where his rival followed only two; and the change is of precisely the same nature as that from melody to harmony. or if you prefer to return to the juggler, behold him now, to the vastly increased enthusiasm of the spectators, juggling with three oranges instead of two. thus it is: added difficulty, added beauty; and the pattern, with every fresh element, becoming more interesting in itself. yet it must not be thought that verse is simply an addition; something is lost as well as something gained; and there remains plainly traceable, in comparing the best prose with the best verse, a certain broad distinction of method in the web. tight as the versifier may draw the knot of logic, yet for the ear he still leaves the tissue of the sentence floating somewhat loose. in prose, the sentence turns upon a pivot, nicely balanced, and fits into itself with an obtrusive neatness like a puzzle. the ear remarks and is singly gratified by this return and balance; while in verse it is all diverted to the measure. to find comparable passages is hard; for either the versifier is hugely the superior of the rival, or, if he be not, and still persist in his more delicate enterprise, he fails to be as widely his inferior. but let us select them from the pages of the same writer, one who was ambidexter; let us take, for instance, rumour's prologue to the second part of henry iv., a fine flourish of eloquence in shakespeare's second manner, and set it side by side with falstaff's praise of sherris, act iv. scene iii.; or let us compare the beautiful prose spoken throughout by rosalind and orlando; compare, for example, the first speech of all, orlando's speech to adam, with what passage it shall please you to select the seven ages from the same play, or even such a stave of nobility as othello's farewell to war; and still you will be able to perceive, if you have an ear for that class of music, a certain superior degree of organisation in the prose; a compacter fitting of the parts; a balance in the swing and the return as of a throbbing pendulum. we must not, in things temporal, take from those who have little, the little that they have; the merits of prose are inferior, but they are not the same; it is a little kingdom, but an independent. 3. rhythm of the phrase. some way back, i used a word which still awaits an application. each phrase, i said, was to be comely; but what is a comely phrase? in all ideal and material points, literature, being a representative art, must look for analogies to painting and the like; but in what is technical and executive, being a temporal art, it must seek for them in music. each phrase of each sentence, like an air or a recitative in music, should be so artfully compounded out of long and short, out of accented and unaccented, as to gratify the sensual ear. and of this the ear is the sole judge. it is impossible to lay down laws. even in our accentual and rhythmic language no analysis can find the secret of the beauty of a verse; how much less, then, of those phrases, such as prose is built of, which obey no law but to be lawless and yet to please? the little that we know of verse (and for my part i owe it all to my friend professor fleeming jenkin) is, however, particularly interesting in the present connection. we have been accustomed to describe the heroic line as five iambic feet, and to be filled with pain and confusion whenever, as by the conscientious schoolboy, we have heard our own description put in practice. 'all night | the dread | less an | gel un | pursued,' (2) goes the schoolboy; but though we close our ears, we cling to our definition, in spite of its proved and naked insufficiency. mr. jenkin was not so easily pleased, and readily discovered that the heroic line consists of four groups, or, if you prefer the phrase, contains four pauses: 'all night | the dreadless | angel | unpursued.' four groups, each practically uttered as one word: the first, in this case, an iamb; the second, an amphibrachys; the third, a trochee; and the fourth, an amphimacer; and yet our schoolboy, with no other liberty but that of inflicting pain, had triumphantly scanned it as five iambs. perceive, now, this fresh richness of intricacy in the web; this fourth orange, hitherto unremarked, but still kept flying with the others. what had seemed to be one thing it now appears is two; and, like some puzzle in arithmetic, the verse is made at the same time to read in fives and to read in fours. but again, four is not necessary. we do not, indeed, find verses in six groups, because there is not room for six in the ten syllables; and we do not find verses of two, because one of the main distinctions of verse from prose resides in the comparative shortness of the group; but it is even common to find verses of three. five is the one forbidden number; because five is the number of the feet; and if five were chosen, the two patterns would coincide, and that opposition which is the life of verse would instantly be lost. we have here a clue to the effect of polysyllables, above all in latin, where they are so common and make so brave an architecture in the verse; for the polysyllable is a group of nature's making. if but some roman would return from hades (martial, for choice), and tell me by what conduct of the voice these thundering verses should be uttered 'aut lacedoe-monium tarentum,' for a case in point i feel as if i should enter at last into the full enjoyment of the best of human verses. but, again, the five feet are all iambic, or supposed to be; by the mere count of syllables the four groups cannot be all iambic; as a question of elegance, i doubt if any one of them requires to be so; and i am certain that for choice no two of them should scan the same. the singular beauty of the verse analysed above is due, so far as analysis can carry us, part, indeed, to the clever repetition of l, d, and n, but part to this variety of scansion in the groups. the groups which, like the bar in music, break up the verse for utterance, fall uniambically; and in declaiming a so-called iambic verse, it may so happen that we never utter one iambic foot. and yet to this neglect of the original beat there is a limit. 'athens, the eye of greece, mother of arts,' (3) is, with all its eccentricities, a good heroic line; for though it scarcely can be said to indicate the beat of the iamb, it certainly suggests no other measure to the ear. but begin 'mother athens, eye of greece,' or merely 'mother athens,' and the game is up, for the trochaic beat has been suggested. the eccentric scansion of the groups is an adornment; but as soon as the original beat has been forgotten, they cease implicitly to be eccentric. variety is what is sought; but if we destroy the original mould, one of the terms of this variety is lost, and we fall back on sameness. thus, both as to the arithmetical measure of the verse, and the degree of regularity in scansion, we see the laws of prosody to have one common purpose: to keep alive the opposition of two schemes simultaneously followed; to keep them notably apart, though still coincident; and to balance them with such judicial nicety before the reader, that neither shall be unperceived and neither signally prevail. the rule of rhythm in prose is not so intricate. here, too, we write in groups, or phrases, as i prefer to call them, for the prose phrase is greatly longer and is much more nonchalantly uttered than the group in verse; so that not only is there a greater interval of continuous sound between the pauses, but, for that very reason, word is linked more readily to word by a more summary enunciation. still, the phrase is the strict analogue of the group, and successive phrases, like successive groups, must differ openly in length and rhythm. the rule of scansion in verse is to suggest no measure but the one in hand; in prose, to suggest no measure at all. prose must be rhythmical, and it may be as much so as you will; but it must not be metrical. it may be anything, but it must not be verse. a single heroic line may very well pass and not disturb the somewhat larger stride of the prose style; but one following another will produce an instant impression of poverty, flatness, and disenchantment. the same lines delivered with the measured utterance of verse would perhaps seem rich in variety. by the more summary enunciation proper to prose, as to a more distant vision, these niceties of difference are lost. a whole verse is uttered as one phrase; and the ear is soon wearied by a succession of groups identical in length. the prose writer, in fact, since he is allowed to be so much less harmonious, is condemned to a perpetually fresh variety of movement on a larger scale, and must never disappoint the ear by the trot of an accepted metre. and this obligation is the third orange with which he has to juggle, the third quality which the prose writer must work into his pattern of words. it may be thought perhaps that this is a quality of ease rather than a fresh difficulty; but such is the inherently rhythmical strain of the english language, that the bad writer and must i take for example that admired friend of my boyhood, captain reid? the inexperienced writer, as dickens in his earlier attempts to be impressive, and the jaded writer, as any one may see for himself, all tend to fall at once into the production of bad blank verse. and here it may be pertinently asked, why bad? and i suppose it might be enough to answer that no man ever made good verse by accident, and that no verse can ever sound otherwise than trivial when uttered with the delivery of prose. but we can go beyond such answers. the weak side of verse is the regularity of the beat, which in itself is decidedly less impressive than the movement of the nobler prose; and it is just into this weak side, and this alone, that our careless writer falls. a peculiar density and mass, consequent on the nearness of the pauses, is one of the chief good qualities of verse; but this our accidental versifier, still following after the swift gait and large gestures of prose, does not so much as aspire to imitate. lastly, since he remains unconscious that he is making verse at all, it can never occur to him to extract those effects of counterpoint and opposition which i have referred to as the final grace and justification of verse, and, i may add, of blank verse in particular. 4. contents of the phrase. here is a great deal of talk about rhythm and naturally; for in our canorous language rhythm is always at the door. but it must not be forgotten that in some languages this element is almost, if not quite, extinct, and that in our own it is probably decaying. the even speech of many educated americans sounds the note of danger. i should see it go with something as bitter as despair, but i should not be desperate. as in verse no element, not even rhythm, is necessary, so, in prose also, other sorts of beauty will arise and take the place and play the part of those that we outlive. the beauty of the expected beat in verse, the beauty in prose of its larger and more lawless melody, patent as they are to english hearing, are already silent in the ears of our next neighbours; for in france the oratorical accent and the pattern of the web have almost or altogether succeeded to their places; and the french prose writer would be astounded at the labours of his brother across the channel, and how a good quarter of his toil, above all invita minerva, is to avoid writing verse. so wonderfully far apart have races wandered in spirit, and so hard it is to understand the literature next door! yet french prose is distinctly better than english; and french verse, above all while hugo lives, it will not do to place upon one side. what is more to our purpose, a phrase or a verse in french is easily distinguishable as comely or uncomely. there is then another element of comeliness hitherto overlooked in this analysis: the contents of the phrase. each phrase in literature is built of sounds, as each phrase in music consists of notes. one sound suggests, echoes, demands, and harmonises with another; and the art of rightly using these concordances is the final art in literature. it used to be a piece of good advice to all young writers to avoid alliteration; and the advice was sound, in so far as it prevented daubing. none the less for that, was it abominable nonsense, and the mere raving of those blindest of the blind who will not see. the beauty of the contents of a phrase, or of a sentence, depends implicitly upon alliteration and upon assonance. the vowel demands to be repeated; the consonant demands to be repeated; and both cry aloud to be perpetually varied. you may follow the adventures of a letter through any passage that has particularly pleased you; find it, perhaps, denied a while, to tantalise the ear; find it fired again at you in a whole broadside; or find it pass into congenerous sounds, one liquid or labial melting away into another. and you will find another and much stranger circumstance. literature is written by and for two senses: a sort of internal ear, quick to perceive 'unheard melodies'; and the eye, which directs the pen and deciphers the printed phrase. well, even as there are rhymes for the eye, so you will find that there are assonances and alliterations; that where an author is running the open a, deceived by the eye and our strange english spelling, he will often show a tenderness for the flat a; and that where he is running a particular consonant, he will not improbably rejoice to write it down even when it is mute or bears a different value. here, then, we have a fresh pattern a pattern, to speak grossly, of letters which makes the fourth preoccupation of the prose writer, and the fifth of the versifier. at times it is very delicate and hard to perceive, and then perhaps most excellent and winning (i say perhaps); but at times again the elements of this literal melody stand more boldly forward and usurp the ear. it becomes, therefore, somewhat a matter of conscience to select examples; and as i cannot very well ask the reader to help me, i shall do the next best by giving him the reason or the history of each selection. the two first, one in prose, one in verse, i chose without previous analysis, simply as engaging passages that had long re-echoed in my ear. 'i cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.' (4) down to 'virtue,' the current s and r are both announced and repeated unobtrusively, and by way of a grace-note that almost inseparable group pvf is given entire. (5) the next phrase is a period of repose, almost ugly in itself, both s and r still audible, and b given as the last fulfilment of pvf. in the next four phrases, from 'that never' down to 'run for,' the mask is thrown off, and, but for a slight repetition of the f and v, the whole matter turns, almost too obtrusively, on s and r; first s coming to the front, and then r. in the concluding phrase all these favourite letters, and even the flat a, a timid preference for which is just perceptible, are discarded at a blow and in a bundle; and to make the break more obvious, every word ends with a dental, and all but one with t, for which we have been cautiously prepared since the beginning. the singular dignity of the first clause, and this hammer-stroke of the last, go far to make the charm of this exquisite sentence. but it is fair to own that s and r are used a little coarsely. 'in xanady did kubla khan (kandl) a stately pleasure dome decree, (kdlsr) where alph the sacred river ran, (kandlsr) through caverns measureless to man, (kanlsr) down to a sunless sea.' (6) (ndls) here i have put the analysis of the main group alongside the lines; and the more it is looked at, the more interesting it will seem. but there are further niceties. in lines two and four, the current s is most delicately varied with z. in line three, the current flat a is twice varied with the open a, already suggested in line two, and both times ('where' and 'sacred') in conjunction with the current r. in the same line f and v (a harmony in themselves, even when shorn of their comrade p) are admirably contrasted. and in line four there is a marked subsidiary m, which again was announced in line two. i stop from weariness, for more might yet be said. my next example was recently quoted from shakespeare as an example of the poet's colour sense. now, i do not think literature has anything to do with colour, or poets anyway the better of such a sense; and i instantly attacked this passage, since 'purple' was the word that had so pleased the writer of the article, to see if there might not be some literary reason for its use. it will be seen that i succeeded amply; and i am bound to say i think the passage exceptional in shakespeare exceptional, indeed, in literature; but it was not i who chose it. 'the barge she sat in, like a burnished throne burnt on the water: the poop was beaten gold, purple the sails and so pur* fumed that * per the winds were love-sick with them.' (7) it may be asked why i have put the f of 'perfumed' in capitals; and i reply, because this change from p to f is the completion of that from b to p, already so adroitly carried out. indeed, the whole passage is a monument of curious ingenuity; and it seems scarce worth while to indicate the subsidiary s, l, and w. in the same article, a second passage from shakespeare was quoted, once again as an example of his colour sense: 'a mole cinque-spotted like the crimson drops i' the bottom of a cowslip.' (8) it is very curious, very artificial, and not worth while to analyse at length: i leave it to the reader. but before i turn my back on shakespeare, i should like to quote a passage, for my own pleasure, and for a very model of every technical art: but in the wind and tempest of her frown, w. p. v. (9) f. (st) (ow) distinction with a loud and powerful fan, w.p. f. (st) (ow) l. puffing at all, winnows the light away; w. p. f. l. and what hath mass and matter by itself w. f. l. m. a. lies rich in virtue and unmingled.' (10) v. l. m. from these delicate and choice writers i turned with some curiosity to a player of the big drum macaulay. i had in hand the two-volume edition, and i opened at the beginning of the second volume. here was what i read: 'the violence of revolutions is generally proportioned to the degree of the maladministration which has produced them. it is therefore not strange that the government of scotland, having been during many years greatly more corrupt than the government of england, should have fallen with a far heavier ruin. the movement against the last king of the house of stuart was in england conservative, in scotland destructive. the english complained not of the law, but of the violation of the law.' this was plain-sailing enough; it was our old friend pvf, floated by the liquids in a body; but as i read on, and turned the page, and still found pvf with his attendant liquids, i confess my mind misgave me utterly. this could be no trick of macaulay's; it must be the nature of the english tongue. in a kind of despair, i turned half-way through the volume; and coming upon his lordship dealing with general cannon, and fresh from claverhouse and killiecrankie, here, with elucidative spelling, was my reward: 'meanwhile the disorders of kannon's kamp went on inkreasing. he kalled a kouncil of war to konsider what kourse it would be advisable to take. but as soon as the kouncil had met, a preliminary kuestion was raised. the army was almost eksklusively a highland army. the recent vkktory had been won eksklusively by highland warriors. great chiefs who had brought siks or seven hundred fighting men into the field did not think it fair that they should be outvoted by gentlemen from ireland, and from the low kountries, who bore indeed king james's kommission, and were kalled kolonels and kaptains, but who were kolonels without regiments and kaptains without kompanies.' a moment of fv in all this world of k's! it was not the english language, then, that was an instrument of one string, but macaulay that was an incomparable dauber. it was probably from this barbaric love of repeating the same sound, rather than from any design of clearness, that he acquired his irritating habit of repeating words; i say the one rather than the other, because such a trick of the ear is deeper-seated and more original in man than any logical consideration. few writers, indeed, are probably conscious of the length to which they push this melody of letters. one, writing very diligently, and only concerned about the meaning of his words and the rhythm of his phrases, was struck into amazement by the eager triumph with which he cancelled one expression to substitute another. neither changed the sense; both being mono-syllables, neither could affect the scansion; and it was only by looking back on what he had already written that the mystery was solved: the second word contained an open a, and for nearly half a page he had been riding that vowel to the death. in practice, i should add, the ear is not always so exacting; and ordinary writers, in ordinary moments, content themselves with avoiding what is harsh, and here and there, upon a rare occasion, buttressing a phrase, or linking two together, with a patch of assonance or a momentary jingle of alliteration. to understand how constant is this preoccupation of good writers, even where its results are least obtrusive, it is only necessary to turn to the bad. there, indeed, you will find cacophony supreme, the rattle of incongruous consonants only relieved by the jaw-breaking hiatus, and whole phrases not to be articulated by the powers of man. conclusion. we may now briefly enumerate the elements of style. we have, peculiar to the prose writer, the task of keeping his phrases large, rhythmical, and pleasing to the ear, without ever allowing them to fall into the strictly metrical: peculiar to the versifier, the task of combining and contrasting his double, treble, and quadruple pattern, feet and groups, logic and metre harmonious in diversity: common to both, the task of artfully combining the prime elements of language into phrases that shall be musical in the mouth; the task of weaving their argument into a texture of committed phrases and of rounded periods but this particularly binding in the case of prose: and, again common to both, the task of choosing apt, explicit, and communicative words. we begin to see now what an intricate affair is any perfect passage; how many faculties, whether of taste or pure reason, must be held upon the stretch to make it; and why, when it is made, it should afford us so complete a pleasure. from the arrangement of according letters, which is altogether arabesque and sensual, up to the architecture of the elegant and pregnant sentence, which is a vigorous act of the pure intellect, there is scarce a faculty in man but has been exercised. we need not wonder, then, if perfect sentences are rare, and perfect pages rarer. chapter ii the morality of the profession of letters (11) the profession of letters has been lately debated in the public prints; and it has been debated, to put the matter mildly, from a point of view that was calculated to surprise high-minded men, and bring a general contempt on books and reading. some time ago, in particular, a lively, pleasant, popular writer (12) devoted an essay, lively and pleasant like himself, to a very encouraging view of the profession. we may be glad that his experience is so cheering, and we may hope that all others, who deserve it, shall be as handsomely rewarded; but i do not think we need be at all glad to have this question, so important to the public and ourselves, debated solely on the ground of money. the salary in any business under heaven is not the only, nor indeed the first, question. that you should continue to exist is a matter for your own consideration; but that your business should be first honest, and second useful, are points in which honour and morality are concerned. if the writer to whom i refer succeeds in persuading a number of young persons to adopt this way of life with an eye set singly on the livelihood, we must expect them in their works to follow profit only, and we must expect in consequence, if he will pardon me the epithets, a slovenly, base, untrue, and empty literature. of that writer himself i am not speaking: he is diligent, clean, and pleasing; we all owe him periods of entertainment, and he has achieved an amiable popularity which he has adequately deserved. but the truth is, he does not, or did not when he first embraced it, regard his profession from this purely mercenary side. he went into it, i shall venture to say, if not with any noble design, at least in the ardour of a first love; and he enjoyed its practice long before he paused to calculate the wage. the other day an author was complimented on a piece of work, good in itself and exceptionally good for him, and replied, in terms unworthy of a commercial traveller that as the book was not briskly selling he did not give a copper farthing for its merit. it must not be supposed that the person to whom this answer was addressed received it as a profession of faith; he knew, on the other hand, that it was only a whiff of irritation; just as we know, when a respectable writer talks of literature as a way of life, like shoemaking, but not so useful, that he is only debating one aspect of a question, and is still clearly conscious of a dozen others more important in themselves and more central to the matter in hand. but while those who treat literature in this penny-wise and virtue-foolish spirit are themselves truly in possession of a better light, it does not follow that the treatment is decent or improving, whether for themselves or others. to treat all subjects in the highest, the most honourable, and the pluckiest spirit, consistent with the fact, is the first duty of a writer. if he be well paid, as i am glad to hear he is, this duty becomes the more urgent, the neglect of it the more disgraceful. and perhaps there is no subject on which a man should speak so gravely as that industry, whatever it may be, which is the occupation or delight of his life; which is his tool to earn or serve with; and which, if it be unworthy, stamps himself as a mere incubus of dumb and greedy bowels on the shoulders of labouring humanity. on that subject alone even to force the note might lean to virtue's side. it is to be hoped that a numerous and enterprising generation of writers will follow and surpass the present one; but it would be better if the stream were stayed, and the roll of our old, honest english books were closed, than that esurient bookmakers should continue and debase a brave tradition, and lower, in their own eyes, a famous race. better that our serene temples were deserted than filled with trafficking and juggling priests. there are two just reasons for the choice of any way of life: the first is inbred taste in the chooser; the second some high utility in the industry selected. literature, like any other art, is singularly interesting to the artist; and, in a degree peculiar to itself among the arts, it is useful to mankind. these are the sufficient justifications for any young man or woman who adopts it as the business of his life. i shall not say much about the wages. a writer can live by his writing. if not so luxuriously as by other trades, then less luxuriously. the nature of the work he does all day will more affect his happiness than the quality of his dinner at night. whatever be your calling, and however much it brings you in the year, you could still, you know, get more by cheating. we all suffer ourselves to be too much concerned about a little poverty; but such considerations should not move us in the choice of that which is to be the business and justification of so great a portion of our lives; and like the missionary, the patriot, or the philosopher, we should all choose that poor and brave career in which we can do the most and best for mankind. now nature, faithfully followed, proves herself a careful mother. a lad, for some liking to the jingle of words, betakes himself to letters for his life; by-and-by, when he learns more gravity, he finds that he has chosen better than he knew; that if he earns little, he is earning it amply; that if he receives a small wage, he is in a position to do considerable services; that it is in his power, in some small measure, to protect the oppressed and to defend the truth. so kindly is the world arranged, such great profit may arise from a small degree of human reliance on oneself, and such, in particular, is the happy star of this trade of writing, that it should combine pleasure and profit to both parties, and be at once agreeable, like fiddling, and useful, like good preaching. this is to speak of literature at its highest; and with the four great elders who are still spared to our respect and admiration, with carlyle, ruskin, browning, and tennyson before us, it would be cowardly to consider it at first in any lesser aspect. but while we cannot follow these athletes, while we may none of us, perhaps, be very vigorous, very original, or very wise, i still contend that, in the humblest sort of literary work, we have it in our power either to do great harm or great good. we may seek merely to please; we may seek, having no higher gift, merely to gratify the idle nine days' curiosity of our contemporaries; or we may essay, however feebly, to instruct. in each of these we shall have to deal with that remarkable art of words which, because it is the dialect of life, comes home so easily and powerfully to the minds of men; and since that is so, we contribute, in each of these branches, to build up the sum of sentiments and appreciations which goes by the name of public opinion or public feeling. the total of a nation's reading, in these days of daily papers, greatly modifies the total of the nation's speech; and the speech and reading, taken together, form the efficient educational medium of youth. a good man or woman may keep a youth some little while in clearer air; but the contemporary atmosphere is all-powerful in the end on the average of mediocre characters. the copious corinthian baseness of the american reporter or the parisian chroniquear, both so lightly readable, must exercise an incalculable influence for ill; they touch upon all subjects, and on all with the same ungenerous hand; they begin the consideration of all, in young and unprepared minds, in an unworthy spirit; on all, they supply some pungency for dull people to quote. the mere body of this ugly matter overwhelms the rare utterances of good men; the sneering, the selfish, and the cowardly are scattered in broad sheets on every table, while the antidote, in small volumes, lies unread upon the shelf. i have spoken of the american and the french, not because they are so much baser, but so much more readable, than the english; their evil is done more effectively, in america for the masses, in french for the few that care to read; but with us as with them, the duties of literature are daily neglected, truth daily perverted and suppressed, and grave subjects daily degraded in the treatment. the journalist is not reckoned an important officer; yet judge of the good he might do, the harm he does; judge of it by one instance only: that when we find two journals on the reverse sides of politics each, on the same day, openly garbling a piece of news for the interest of its own party, we smile at the discovery (no discovery now!) as over a good joke and pardonable stratagem. lying so open is scarce lying, it is true; but one of the things that we profess to teach our young is a respect for truth; and i cannot think this piece of education will be crowned with any great success, so long as some of us practise and the rest openly approve of public falsehood. there are two duties incumbent upon any man who enters on the business of writing: truth to the fact and a good spirit in the treatment. in every department of literature, though so low as hardly to deserve the name, truth to the fact is of importance to the education and comfort of mankind, and so hard to preserve, that the faithful trying to do so will lend some dignity to the man who tries it. our judgments are based upon two things: first, upon the original preferences of our soul; but, second, upon the mass of testimony to the nature of god, man, and the universe which reaches us, in divers manners, from without. for the most part these divers manners are reducible to one, all that we learn of past times and much that we learn of our own reaching us through the medium of books or papers, and even he who cannot read learning from the same source at second-hand and by the report of him who can. thus the sum of the contemporary knowledge or ignorance of good and evil is, in large measure, the handiwork of those who write. those who write have to see that each man's knowledge is, as near as they can make it, answerable to the facts of life; that he shall not suppose himself an angel or a monster; nor take this world for a hell; nor be suffered to imagine that all rights are concentred in his own caste or country, or all veracities in his own parochial creed. each man should learn what is within him, that he may strive to mend; he must be taught what is without him, that he may be kind to others. it can never be wrong to tell him the truth; for, in his disputable state, weaving as he goes his theory of life, steering himself, cheering or reproving others, all facts are of the first importance to his conduct; and even if a fact shall discourage or corrupt him, it is still best that he should know it; for it is in this world as it is, and not in a world made easy by educational suppressions, that he must win his way to shame or glory. in one word, it must always be foul to tell what is false; and it can never be safe to suppress what is true. the very fact that you omit may be the fact which somebody was wanting, for one man's meat is another man's poison, and i have known a person who was cheered by the perusal of candide. every fact is a part of that great puzzle we must set together; and none that comes directly in a writer's path but has some nice relations, unperceivable by him, to the totality and bearing of the subject under hand. yet there are certain classes of fact eternally more necessary than others, and it is with these that literature must first bestir itself. they are not hard to distinguish, nature once more easily leading us; for the necessary, because the efficacious, facts are those which are most interesting to the natural mind of man. those which are coloured, picturesque, human, and rooted in morality, and those, on the other hand, which are clear, indisputable, and a part of science, are alone vital in importance, seizing by their interest, or useful to communicate. so far as the writer merely narrates, he should principally tell of these. he should tell of the kind and wholesome and beautiful elements of our life; he should tell unsparingly of the evil and sorrow of the present, to move us with instances: he should tell of wise and good people in the past, to excite us by example; and of these he should tell soberly and truthfully, not glossing faults, that we may neither grow discouraged with ourselves nor exacting to our neighbours. so the body of contemporary literature, ephemeral and feeble in itself, touches in the minds of men the springs of thought and kindness, and supports them (for those who will go at all are easily supported) on their way to what is true and right. and if, in any degree, it does so now, how much more might it do so if the writers chose! there is not a life in all the records of the past but, properly studied, might lend a hint and a help to some contemporary. there is not a juncture in to-day's affairs but some useful word may yet be said of it. even the reporter has an office, and, with clear eyes and honest language, may unveil injustices and point the way to progress. and for a last word: in all narration there is only one way to be clever, and that is to be exact. to be vivid is a secondary quality which must presuppose the first; for vividly to convey a wrong impression is only to make failure conspicuous. but a fact may be viewed on many sides; it may be chronicled with rage, tears, laughter, indifference, or admiration, and by each of these the story will be transformed to something else. the newspapers that told of the return of our representatives from berlin, even if they had not differed as to the facts, would have sufficiently differed by their spirits; so that the one description would have been a second ovation, and the other a prolonged insult. the subject makes but a trifling part of any piece of literature, and the view of the writer is itself a fact more important because less disputable than the others. now this spirit in which a subject is regarded, important in all kinds of literary work, becomes all-important in works of fiction, meditation, or rhapsody; for there it not only colours but itself chooses the facts; not only modifies but shapes the work. and hence, over the far larger proportion of the field of literature, the health or disease of the writer's mind or momentary humour forms not only the leading feature of his work, but is, at bottom, the only thing he can communicate to others. in all works of art, widely speaking, it is first of all the author's attitude that is narrated, though in the attitude there be implied a whole experience and a theory of life. an author who has begged the question and reposes in some narrow faith cannot, if he would, express the whole or even many of the sides of this various existence; for, his own life being maim, some of them are not admitted in his theory, and were only dimly and unwillingly recognised in his experience. hence the smallness, the triteness, and the inhumanity in works of merely sectarian religion; and hence we find equal although unsimilar limitation in works inspired by the spirit of the flesh or the despicable taste for high society. so that the first duty of any man who is to write is intellectual. designedly or not, he has so far set himself up for a leader of the minds of men; and he must see that his own mind is kept supple, charitable, and bright. everything but prejudice should find a voice through him; he should see the good in all things; where he has even a fear that he does not wholly understand, there he should be wholly silent; and he should recognise from the first that he has only one tool in his workshop, and that tool is sympathy. (13) the second duty, far harder to define, is moral. there are a thousand different humours in the mind, and about each of them, when it is uppermost, some literature tends to be deposited. is this to be allowed? not certainly in every case, and yet perhaps in more than rigourists would fancy. it were to be desired that all literary work, and chiefly works of art, issued from sound, human, healthy, and potent impulses, whether grave or laughing, humorous, romantic, or religious. yet it cannot be denied that some valuable books are partially insane; some, mostly religious, partially inhuman; and very many tainted with morbidity and impotence. we do not loathe a masterpiece although we gird against its blemishes. we are not, above all, to look for faults, but merits. there is no book perfect, even in design; but there are many that will delight, improve, or encourage the reader. on the one hand, the hebrew psalms are the only religious poetry on earth; yet they contain sallies that savour rankly of the man of blood. on the other hand, alfred de musset had a poisoned and a contorted nature; i am only quoting that generous and frivolous giant, old dumas, when i accuse him of a bad heart; yet, when the impulse under which he wrote was purely creative, he could give us works like carmosine or fantasio, in which the last note of the romantic comedy seems to have been found again to touch and please us. when flaubert wrote madame bovary, i believe he thought chiefly of a somewhat morbid realism; and behold! the book turned in his hands into a masterpiece of appalling morality. but the truth is, when books are conceived under a great stress, with a soul of ninefold power, nine times heated and electrified by effort, the conditions of our being are seized with such an ample grasp, that, even should the main design be trivial or base, some truth and beauty cannot fail to be expressed. out of the strong comes forth sweetness; but an ill thing poorly done is an ill thing top and bottom. and so this can be no encouragement to knock-kneed, feeble-wristed scribes, who must take their business conscientiously or be ashamed to practise it. man is imperfect; yet, in his literature, he must express himself and his own views and preferences; for to do anything else is to do a far more perilous thing than to risk being immoral: it is to be sure of being untrue. to ape a sentiment, even a good one, is to travesty a sentiment; that will not be helpful. to conceal a sentiment, if you are sure you hold it, is to take a liberty with truth. there is probably no point of view possible to a sane man but contains some truth and, in the true connection, might be profitable to the race. i am not afraid of the truth, if any one could tell it me, but i am afraid of parts of it impertinently uttered. there is a time to dance and a time to mourn; to be harsh as well as to be sentimental; to be ascetic as well as to glorify the appetites; and if a man were to combine all these extremes into his work, each in its place and proportion, that work would be the world's masterpiece of morality as well as of art. partiality is immorality; for any book is wrong that gives a misleading picture of the world and life. the trouble is that the weakling must be partial; the work of one proving dank and depressing; of another, cheap and vulgar; of a third, epileptically sensual; of a fourth, sourly ascetic. in literature as in conduct, you can never hope to do exactly right. all you can do is to make as sure as possible; and for that there is but one rule. nothing should be done in a hurry that can be done slowly. it is no use to write a book and put it by for nine or even ninety years; for in the writing you will have partly convinced yourself; the delay must precede any beginning; and if you meditate a work of art, you should first long roll the subject under the tongue to make sure you like the flavour, before you brew a volume that shall taste of it from end to end; or if you propose to enter on the field of controversy, you should first have thought upon the question under all conditions, in health as well as in sickness, in sorrow as well as in joy. it is this nearness of examination necessary for any true and kind writing, that makes the practice of the art a prolonged and noble education for the writer. there is plenty to do, plenty to say, or to say over again, in the meantime. any literary work which conveys faithful facts or pleasing impressions is a service to the public. it is even a service to be thankfully proud of having rendered. the slightest novels are a blessing to those in distress, not chloroform itself a greater. our fine old sea-captain's life was justified when carlyle soothed his mind with the king's own or newton forster. to please is to serve; and so far from its being difficult to instruct while you amuse, it is difficult to do the one thoroughly without the other. some part of the writer or his life will crop out in even a vapid book; and to read a novel that was conceived with any force is to multiply experience and to exercise the sympathies. every article, every piece of verse, every essay, every entre-filet, is destined to pass, however swiftly, through the minds of some portion of the public, and to colour, however transiently, their thoughts. when any subject falls to be discussed, some scribbler on a paper has the invaluable opportunity of beginning its discussion in a dignified and human spirit; and if there were enough who did so in our public press, neither the public nor the parliament would find it in their minds to drop to meaner thoughts. the writer has the chance to stumble, by the way, on something pleasing, something interesting, something encouraging, were it only to a single reader. he will be unfortunate, indeed, if he suit no one. he has the chance, besides, to stumble on something that a dull person shall be able to comprehend; and for a dull person to have read anything and, for that once, comprehended it, makes a marking epoch in his education. here, then, is work worth doing and worth trying to do well. and so, if i were minded to welcome any great accession to our trade, it should not be from any reason of a higher wage, but because it was a trade which was useful in a very great and in a very high degree; which every honest tradesman could make more serviceable to mankind in his single strength; which was difficult to do well and possible to do better every year; which called for scrupulous thought on the part of all who practised it, and hence became a perpetual education to their nobler natures; and which, pay it as you please, in the large majority of the best cases will still be underpaid. for surely, at this time of day in the nineteenth century, there is nothing that an honest man should fear more timorously than getting and spending more than he deserves. chapter iii books which have influenced me (14) the editor (15) has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for his correspondents, the question put appearing at first so innocent, truly cutting so deep. it is not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance and review that the writer awakes to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of autobiography, or, perhaps worse, upon a chapter in the life of that little, beautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost and mourned, the man we ought to have been, the man we hoped to be. but when word has been passed (even to an editor), it should, if possible, be kept; and if sometimes i am wise and say too little, and sometimes weak and say too much, the blame must lie at the door of the person who entrapped me. the most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. they do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. they repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out. to be so, they must be reasonably true to the human comedy; and any work that is so serves the turn of instruction. but the course of our education is answered best by those poems and romances where we breathe a magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet generous and pious characters. shakespeare has served me best. few living friends have had upon me an influence so strong for good as hamlet or rosalind. the last character, already well beloved in the reading, i had the good fortune to see, i must think, in an impressionable hour, played by mrs. scott siddons. nothing has ever more moved, more delighted, more refreshed me; nor has the influence quite passed away. kent's brief speech over the dying lear had a great effect upon my mind, and was the burthen of my reflections for long, so profoundly, so touchingly generous did it appear in sense, so overpowering in expression. perhaps my dearest and best friend outside of shakespeare is d'artagnan the elderly d'artagnan of the vicomte de bragelonne. i know not a more human soul, nor, in his way, a finer; i shall be very sorry for the man who is so much of a pedant in morals that he cannot learn from the captain of musketeers. lastly, i must name the pilgrim's progress, a book that breathes of every beautiful and valuable emotion. but of works of art little can be said; their influence is profound and silent, like the influence of nature; they mould by contact; we drink them up like water, and are bettered, yet know not how. it is in books more specifically didactic that we can follow out the effect, and distinguish and weigh and compare. a book which has been very influential upon me fell early into my hands, and so may stand first, though i think its influence was only sensible later on, and perhaps still keeps growing, for it is a book not easily outlived: the essais of montaigne. that temperate and genial picture of life is a great gift to place in the hands of persons of to-day; they will find in these smiling pages a magazine of heroism and wisdom, all of an antique strain; they will have their 'linen decencies' and excited orthodoxies fluttered, and will (if they have any gift of reading) perceive that these have not been fluttered without some excuse and ground of reason; and (again if they have any gift of reading) they will end by seeing that this old gentleman was in a dozen ways a finer fellow, and held in a dozen ways a nobler view of life, than they or their contemporaries. the next book, in order of time, to influence me, was the new testament, and in particular the gospel according to st. matthew. i believe it would startle and move any one if they could make a certain effort of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not droningly and dully like a portion of the bible. any one would then be able to see in it those truths which we are all courteously supposed to know and all modestly refrain from applying. but upon this subject it is perhaps better to be silent. i come next to whitman's leaves of grass, a book of singular service, a book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion, and, having thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong foundation of all the original and manly virtues. but it is, once more, only a book for those who have the gift of reading. i will be very frank i believe it is so with all good books except, perhaps, fiction. the average man lives, and must live, so wholly in convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed. either he cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer round that little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences which is the contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets what is old, and becomes truly blasphemous and indecent himself. new truth is only useful to supplement the old; rough truth is only wanted to expand, not to destroy, our civil and often elegant conventions. he who cannot judge had better stick to fiction and the daily papers. there he will get little harm, and, in the first at least, some good. close upon the back of my discovery of whitman, i came under the influence of herbert spencer. no more persuasive rabbi exists, and few better. how much of his vast structure will bear the touch of time, how much is clay and how much brass, it were too curious to inquire. but his words, if dry, are always manly and honest; there dwells in his pages a spirit of highly abstract joy, plucked naked like an algebraic symbol but still joyful; and the reader will find there a caput mortuum of piety, with little indeed of its loveliness, but with most of its essentials; and these two qualities make him a wholesome, as his intellectual vigour makes him a bracing, writer. i should be much of a hound if i lost my gratitude to herbert spencer. goethe's life, by lewes, had a great importance for me when it first fell into my hands a strange instance of the partiality of man's good and man's evil. i know no one whom i less admire than goethe; he seems a very epitome of the sins of genius, breaking open the doors of private life, and wantonly wounding friends, in that crowning offence of werther, and in his own character a mere pen-and-ink napoleon, conscious of the rights and duties of superior talents as a spanish inquisitor was conscious of the rights and duties of his office. and yet in his fine devotion to his art, in his honest and serviceable friendship for schiller, what lessons are contained! biography, usually so false to its office, does here for once perform for us some of the work of fiction, reminding us, that is, of the truly mingled tissue of man's nature, and how huge faults and shining virtues cohabit and persevere in the same character. history serves us well to this effect, but in the originals, not in the pages of the popular epitomiser, who is bound, by the very nature of his task, to make us feel the difference of epochs instead of the essential identity of man, and even in the originals only to those who can recognise their own human virtues and defects in strange forms, often inverted and under strange names, often interchanged. martial is a poet of no good repute, and it gives a man new thoughts to read his works dispassionately, and find in this unseemly jester's serious passages the image of a kind, wise, and self-respecting gentleman. it is customary, i suppose, in reading martial, to leave out these pleasant verses; i never heard of them, at least, until i found them for myself; and this partiality is one among a thousand things that help to build up our distorted and hysterical conception of the great roman empire. this brings us by a natural transition to a very noble book the meditations of marcus aurelius. the dispassionate gravity, the noble forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of others, that are there expressed and were practised on so great a scale in the life of its writer, make this book a book quite by itself. no one can read it and not be moved. yet it scarcely or rarely appeals to the feelings those very mobile, those not very trusty parts of man. its address lies further back: its lesson comes more deeply home; when you have read, you carry away with you a memory of the man himself; it is as though you had touched a loyal hand, looked into brave eyes, and made a noble friend; there is another bond on you thenceforward, binding you to life and to the love of virtue. wordsworth should perhaps come next. every one has been influenced by wordsworth, and it is hard to tell precisely how. a certain innocence, a rugged austerity of joy, a sight of the stars, 'the silence that is in the lonely hills,' something of the cold thrill of dawn, cling to his work and give it a particular address to what is best in us. i do not know that you learn a lesson; you need not mill did not agree with any one of his beliefs; and yet the spell is cast. such are the best teachers; a dogma learned is only a new error the old one was perhaps as good; but a spirit communicated is a perpetual possession. these best teachers climb beyond teaching to the plane of art; it is themselves, and what is best in themselves, that they communicate. i should never forgive myself if i forgot the egoist. it is art, if you like, but it belongs purely to didactic art, and from all the novels i have read (and i have read thousands) stands in a place by itself. here is a nathan for the modern david; here is a book to send the blood into men's faces. satire, the angry picture of human faults, is not great art; we can all be angry with our neighbour; what we want is to be shown, not his defects, of which we are too conscious, but his merits, to which we are too blind. and the egoist is a satire; so much must be allowed; but it is a satire of a singular quality, which tells you nothing of that obvious mote, which is engaged from first to last with that invisible beam. it is yourself that is hunted down; these are your own faults that are dragged into the day and numbered, with lingering relish, with cruel cunning and precision. a young friend of mr. meredith's (as i have the story) came to him in an agony. 'this is too bad of you,' he cried. 'willoughby is me!' 'no, my dear fellow,' said the author; 'he is all of us.' i have read the egoist five or six times myself, and i mean to read it again; for i am like the young friend of the anecdote i think willoughby an unmanly but a very serviceable exposure of myself. i suppose, when i am done, i shall find that i have forgotten much that was most influential, as i see already i have forgotten thoreau, and hazlitt, whose paper 'on the spirit of obligations' was a turning-point in my life, and penn, whose little book of aphorisms had a brief but strong effect on me, and mitford's tales of old japan, wherein i learned for the first time the proper attitude of any rational man to his country's laws a secret found, and kept, in the asiatic islands. that i should commemorate all is more than i can hope or the editor could ask. it will be more to the point, after having said so much upon improving books, to say a word or two about the improvable reader. the gift of reading, as i have called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. it consists, first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment a free grace, i find i must call it by which a man rises to understand that he is not punctually right, nor those from whom he differs absolutely wrong. he may hold dogmas; he may hold them passionately; and he may know that others hold them but coldly, or hold them differently, or hold them not at all. well, if he has the gift of reading, these others will be full of meat for him. they will see the other side of propositions and the other side of virtues. he need not change his dogma for that, but he may change his reading of that dogma, and he must supplement and correct his deductions from it. a human truth, which is always very much a lie, hides as much of life as it displays. it is men who hold another truth, or, as it seems to us, perhaps, a dangerous lie, who can extend our restricted field of knowledge, and rouse our drowsy consciences. something that seems quite new, or that seems insolently false or very dangerous, is the test of a reader. if he tries to see what it means, what truth excuses it, he has the gift, and let him read. if he is merely hurt, or offended, or exclaims upon his author's folly, he had better take to the daily papers; he will never be a reader. and here, with the aptest illustrative force, after i have laid down my part-truth, i must step in with its opposite. for, after all, we are vessels of a very limited content. not all men can read all books; it is only in a chosen few that any man will find his appointed food; and the fittest lessons are the most palatable, and make themselves welcome to the mind. a writer learns this early, and it is his chief support; he goes on unafraid, laying down the law; and he is sure at heart that most of what he says is demonstrably false, and much of a mingled strain, and some hurtful, and very little good for service; but he is sure besides that when his words fall into the hands of any genuine reader, they will be weighed and winnowed, and only that which suits will be assimilated; and when they fall into the hands of one who cannot intelligently read, they come there quite silent and inarticulate, falling upon deaf ears, and his secret is kept as if he had not written. chapter iv a note on realism (16) style is the invariable mark of any master; and for the student who does not aspire so high as to be numbered with the giants, it is still the one quality in which he may improve himself at will. passion, wisdom, creative force, the power of mystery or colour, are allotted in the hour of birth, and can be neither learned nor simulated. but the just and dexterous use of what qualities we have, the proportion of one part to another and to the whole, the elision of the useless, the accentuation of the important, and the preservation of a uniform character from end to end these, which taken together constitute technical perfection, are to some degree within the reach of industry and intellectual courage. what to put in and what to leave out; whether some particular fact be organically necessary or purely ornamental; whether, if it be purely ornamental, it may not weaken or obscure the general design; and finally, whether, if we decide to use it, we should do so grossly and notably, or in some conventional disguise: are questions of plastic style continually rearising. and the sphinx that patrols the highways of executive art has no more unanswerable riddle to propound. in literature (from which i must draw my instances) the great change of the past century has been effected by the admission of detail. it was inaugurated by the romantic scott; and at length, by the semi-romantic balzac and his more or less wholly unromantic followers, bound like a duty on the novelist. for some time it signified and expressed a more ample contemplation of the conditions of man's life; but it has recently (at least in france) fallen into a merely technical and decorative stage, which it is, perhaps, still too harsh to call survival. with a movement of alarm, the wiser or more timid begin to fall a little back from these extremities; they begin to aspire after a more naked, narrative articulation; after the succinct, the dignified, and the poetic; and as a means to this, after a general lightening of this baggage of detail. after scott we beheld the starveling story once, in the hands of voltaire, as abstract as a parable begin to be pampered upon facts. the introduction of these details developed a particular ability of hand; and that ability, childishly indulged, has led to the works that now amaze us on a railway journey. a man of the unquestionable force of m. zola spends himself on technical successes. to afford a popular flavour and attract the mob, he adds a steady current of what i may be allowed to call the rancid. that is exciting to the moralist; but what more particularly interests the artist is this tendency of the extreme of detail, when followed as a principle, to degenerate into mere feux-de-joie of literary tricking. the other day even m. daudet was to be heard babbling of audible colours and visible sounds. this odd suicide of one branch of the realists may serve to remind us of the fact which underlies a very dusty conflict of the critics. all representative art, which can be said to live, is both realistic and ideal; and the realism about which we quarrel is a matter purely of externals. it is no especial cultus of nature and veracity, but a mere whim of veering fashion, that has made us turn our back upon the larger, more various, and more romantic art of yore. a photographic exactitude in dialogue is now the exclusive fashion; but even in the ablest hands it tells us no more i think it even tells us less than moliere, wielding his artificial medium, has told to us and to all time of alceste or orgon, dorine or chrysale. the historical novel is forgotten. yet truth to the conditions of man's nature and the conditions of man's life, the truth of literary art, is free of the ages. it may be told us in a carpet comedy, in a novel of adventure, or a fairy tale. the scene may be pitched in london, on the sea-coast of bohemia, or away on the mountains of beulah. and by an odd and luminous accident, if there is any page of literature calculated to awake the envy of m. zola, it must be that troilus and cressida which shakespeare, in a spasm of unmanly anger with the world, grafted on the heroic story of the siege of troy. this question of realism, let it then be clearly understood, regards not in the least degree the fundamental truth, but only the technical method, of a work of art. be as ideal or as abstract as you please, you will be none the less veracious; but if you be weak, you run the risk of being tedious and inexpressive; and if you be very strong and honest, you may chance upon a masterpiece. a work of art is first cloudily conceived in the mind; during the period of gestation it stands more clearly forward from these swaddling mists, puts on expressive lineaments, and becomes at length that most faultless, but also, alas! that incommunicable product of the human mind, a perfected design. on the approach to execution all is changed. the artist must now step down, don his working clothes, and become the artisan. he now resolutely commits his airy conception, his delicate ariel, to the touch of matter; he must decide, almost in a breath, the scale, the style, the spirit, and the particularity of execution of his whole design. the engendering idea of some works is stylistic; a technical preoccupation stands them instead of some robuster principle of life. and with these the execution is but play; for the stylistic problem is resolved beforehand, and all large originality of treatment wilfully foregone. such are the verses, intricately designed, which we have learnt to admire, with a certain smiling admiration, at the hands of mr. lang and mr. dobson; such, too, are those canvases where dexterity or even breadth of plastic style takes the place of pictorial nobility of design. so, it may be remarked, it was easier to begin to write esmond than vanity fair, since, in the first, the style was dictated by the nature of the plan; and thackeray, a man probably of some indolence of mind, enjoyed and got good profit of this economy of effort. but the case is exceptional. usually in all works of art that have been conceived from within outwards, and generously nourished from the author's mind, the moment in which he begins to execute is one of extreme perplexity and strain. artists of indifferent energy and an imperfect devotion to their own ideal make this ungrateful effort once for all; and, having formed a style, adhere to it through life. but those of a higher order cannot rest content with a process which, as they continue to employ it, must infallibly degenerate towards the academic and the cut-and-dried. every fresh work in which they embark is the signal for a fresh engagement of the whole forces of their mind; and the changing views which accompany the growth of their experience are marked by still more sweeping alterations in the manner of their art. so that criticism loves to dwell upon and distinguish the varying periods of a raphael, a shakespeare, or a beethoven. it is, then, first of all, at this initial and decisive moment when execution is begun, and thenceforth only in a less degree, that the ideal and the real do indeed, like good and evil angels, contend for the direction of the work. marble, paint, and language, the pen, the needle, and the brush, all have their grossnesses, their ineffable impotences, their hours, if i may so express myself, of insubordination. it is the work and it is a great part of the delight of any artist to contend with these unruly tools, and now by brute energy, now by witty expedient, to drive and coax them to effect his will. given these means, so laughably inadequate, and given the interest, the intensity, and the multiplicity of the actual sensation whose effect he is to render with their aid, the artist has one main and necessary resource which he must, in every case and upon any theory, employ. he must, that is, suppress much and omit more. he must omit what is tedious or irrelevant, and suppress what is tedious and necessary. but such facts as, in regard to the main design, subserve a variety of purposes, he will perforce and eagerly retain. and it is the mark of the very highest order of creative art to be woven exclusively of such. there, any fact that is registered is contrived a double or a treble debt to pay, and is at once an ornament in its place, and a pillar in the main design. nothing would find room in such a picture that did not serve, at once, to complete the composition, to accentuate the scheme of colour, to distinguish the planes of distance, and to strike the note of the selected sentiment; nothing would be allowed in such a story that did not, at the same time, expedite the progress of the fable, build up the characters, and strike home the moral or the philosophical design. but this is unattainable. as a rule, so far from building the fabric of our works exclusively with these, we are thrown into a rapture if we think we can muster a dozen or a score of them, to be the plums of our confection. and hence, in order that the canvas may be filled or the story proceed from point to point, other details must be admitted. they must be admitted, alas! upon a doubtful title; many without marriage robes. thus any work of art, as it proceeds towards completion, too often i had almost written always loses in force and poignancy of main design. our little air is swamped and dwarfed among hardly relevant orchestration; our little passionate story drowns in a deep sea of descriptive eloquence or slipshod talk. but again, we are rather more tempted to admit those particulars which we know we can describe; and hence those most of all which, having been described very often, have grown to be conventionally treated in the practice of our art. these we choose, as the mason chooses the acanthus to adorn his capital, because they come naturally to the accustomed hand. the old stock incidents and accessories, tricks of work-manship and schemes of composition (all being admirably good, or they would long have been forgotten) haunt and tempt our fancy, offer us ready-made but not perfectly appropriate solutions for any problem that arises, and wean us from the study of nature and the uncompromising practice of art. to struggle, to face nature, to find fresh solutions, and give expression to facts which have not yet been adequately or not yet elegantly expressed, is to run a little upon the danger of extreme self-love. difficulty sets a high price upon achievement; and the artist may easily fall into the error of the french naturalists, and consider any fact as welcome to admission if it be the ground of brilliant handiwork; or, again, into the error of the modern landscapepainter, who is apt to think that difficulty overcome and science well displayed can take the place of what is, after all, the one excuse and breath of art charm. a little further, and he will regard charm in the light of an unworthy sacrifice to prettiness, and the omission of a tedious passage as an infidelity to art. we have now the matter of this difference before us. the idealist, his eye singly fixed upon the greater outlines, loves rather to fill up the interval with detail of the conventional order, briefly touched, soberly suppressed in tone, courting neglect. but the realist, with a fine intemperance, will not suffer the presence of anything so dead as a convention; he shall have all fiery, all hotpressed from nature, all charactered and notable, seizing the eye. the style that befits either of these extremes, once chosen, brings with it its necessary disabilities and dangers. the immediate danger of the realist is to sacrifice the beauty and significance of the whole to local dexterity, or, in the insane pursuit of completion, to immolate his readers under facts; but he comes in the last resort, and as his energy declines, to discard all design, abjure all choice, and, with scientific thoroughness, steadily to communicate matter which is not worth learning. the danger of the idealist is, of course, to become merely null and lose all grip of fact, particularity, or passion. we talk of bad and good. everything, indeed, is good which is conceived with honesty and executed with communicative ardour. but though on neither side is dogmatism fitting, and though in every case the artist must decide for himself, and decide afresh and yet afresh for each succeeding work and new creation; yet one thing may be generally said, that we of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, breathing as we do the intellectual atmosphere of our age, are more apt to err upon the side of realism than to sin in quest of the ideal. upon that theory it may be well to watch and correct our own decisions, always holding back the hand from the least appearance of irrelevant dexterity, and resolutely fixed to begin no work that is not philosophical, passionate, dignified, happily mirthful, or, at the last and least, romantic in design. chapter v my first book: 'treasure island' (17) it was far indeed from being my first book, for i am not a novelist alone. but i am well aware that my paymaster, the great public, regards what else i have written with indifference, if not aversion; if it call upon me at all, it calls on me in the familiar and indelible character; and when i am asked to talk of my first book, no question in the world but what is meant is my first novel. sooner or later, somehow, anyhow, i was bound to write a novel. it seems vain to ask why. men are born with various manias: from my earliest childhood, it was mine to make a plaything of imaginary series of events; and as soon as i was able to write, i became a good friend to the paper-makers. reams upon reams must have gone to the making of 'rathillet,' 'the pentland rising,' (18) 'the king's pardon' (otherwise 'park whitehead'), 'edward daven,' 'a country dance,' and 'a vendetta in the west'; and it is consolatory to remember that these reams are now all ashes, and have been received again into the soil. i have named but a few of my ill-fated efforts, only such indeed as came to a fair bulk ere they were desisted from; and even so they cover a long vista of years. 'rathillet' was attempted before fifteen, 'the vendetta' at twenty-nine, and the succession of defeats lasted unbroken till i was thirty-one. by that time, i had written little books and little essays and short stories; and had got patted on the back and paid for them though not enough to live upon. i had quite a reputation, i was the successful man; i passed my days in toil, the futility of which would sometimes make my cheek to burn that i should spend a man's energy upon this business, and yet could not earn a livelihood: and still there shone ahead of me an unattained ideal: although i had attempted the thing with vigour not less than ten or twelve times, i had not yet written a novel. all all my pretty ones had gone for a little, and then stopped inexorably like a schoolboy's watch. i might be compared to a cricketer of many years' standing who should never have made a run. anybody can write a short story a bad one, i mean who has industry and paper and time enough; but not every one may hope to write even a bad novel. it is the length that kills. the accepted novelist may take his novel up and put it down, spend days upon it in vain, and write not any more than he makes haste to blot. not so the beginner. human nature has certain rights; instinct the instinct of self-preservation forbids that any man (cheered and supported by the consciousness of no previous victory) should endure the miseries of unsuccessful literary toil beyond a period to be measured in weeks. there must be something for hope to feed upon. the beginner must have a slant of wind, a lucky vein must be running, he must be in one of those hours when the words come and the phrases balance of themselves even to begin. and having begun, what a dread looking forward is that until the book shall be accomplished! for so long a time, the slant is to continue unchanged, the vein to keep running, for so long a time you must keep at command the same quality of style: for so long a time your puppets are to be always vital, always consistent, always vigorous! i remember i used to look, in those days, upon every three-volume novel with a sort of veneration, as a feat not possibly of literature but at least of physical and moral endurance and the courage of ajax. in the fated year i came to live with my father and mother at kinnaird, above pitlochry. then i walked on the red moors and by the side of the golden burn; the rude, pure air of our mountains inspirited, if it did not inspire us, and my wife and i projected a joint volume of logic stories, for which she wrote 'the shadow on the bed,' and i turned out 'thrawn janet,' and a first draft of 'the merry men.' i love my native air, but it does not love me; and the end of this delightful period was a cold, a fly-blister, and a migration by strathairdle and glenshee to the castleton of braemar. there it blew a good deal and rained in a proportion; my native air was more unkind than man's ingratitude, and i must consent to pass a good deal of my time between four walls in a house lugubriously known as the late miss mcgregor's cottage. and now admire the finger of predestination. there was a schoolboy in the late miss mcgregor's cottage, home from the holidays, and much in want of 'something craggy to break his mind upon.' he had no thought of literature; it was the art of raphael that received his fleeting suffrages; and with the aid of pen and ink and a shilling box of water colours, he had soon turned one of the rooms into a picture gallery. my more immediate duty towards the gallery was to be showman; but i would sometimes unbend a little, join the artist (so to speak) at the easel, and pass the afternoon with him in a generous emulation, making coloured drawings. on one of these occasions, i made the map of an island; it was elaborately and (i thought) beautifully coloured; the shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained harbours that pleased me like sonnets; and with the unconsciousness of the predestined, i ticketed my performance 'treasure island.' i am told there are people who do not care for maps, and find it hard to believe. the names, the shapes of the woodlands, the courses of the roads and rivers, the prehistoric footsteps of man still distinctly traceable up hill and down dale, the mills and the ruins, the ponds and the ferries, perhaps the standing stone or the druidic circle on the heath; here is an inexhaustible fund of interest for any man with eyes to see or twopence-worth of imagination to understand with! no child but must remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal forest and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies. somewhat in this way, as i paused upon my map of 'treasure island,' the future character of the book began to appear there visibly among imaginary woods; and their brown faces and bright weapons peeped out upon me from unexpected quarters, as they passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on these few square inches of a flat projection. the next thing i knew i had some papers before me and was writing out a list of chapters. how often have i done so, and the thing gone no further! but there seemed elements of success about this enterprise. it was to be a story for boys; no need of psychology or fine writing; and i had a boy at hand to be a touchstone. women were excluded. i was unable to handle a brig (which the hispaniola should have been), but i thought i could make shift to sail her as a schooner without public shame. and then i had an idea for john silver from which i promised myself funds of entertainment; to take an admired friend of mine (whom the reader very likely knows and admires as much as i do), to deprive him of all his finer qualities and higher graces of temperament, to leave him with nothing but his strength, his courage, his quickness, and his magnificent geniality, and to try to express these in terms of the culture of a raw tarpaulin. such psychical surgery is, i think, a common way of 'making character'; perhaps it is, indeed, the only way. we can put in the quaint figure that spoke a hundred words with us yesterday by the wayside; but do we know him? our friend, with his infinite variety and flexibility, we know but can we put him in? upon the first, we must engraft secondary and imaginary qualities, possibly all wrong; from the second, knife in hand, we must cut away and deduct the needless arborescence of his nature, but the trunk and the few branches that remain we may at least be fairly sure of. on a chill september morning, by the cheek of a brisk fire, and the rain drumming on the window, i began the sea cook, for that was the original title. i have begun (and finished) a number of other books, but i cannot remember to have sat down to one of them with more complacency. it is not to be wondered at, for stolen waters are proverbially sweet. i am now upon a painful chapter. no doubt the parrot once belonged to robinson crusoe. no doubt the skeleton is conveyed from poe. i think little of these, they are trifles and details; and no man can hope to have a monopoly of skeletons or make a corner in talking birds. the stockade, i am told, is from masterman ready. it may be, i care not a jot. these useful writers had fulfilled the poet's saying: departing, they had left behind them footprints on the sands of time, footprints which perhaps another and i was the other! it is my debt to washington irving that exercises my conscience, and justly so, for i believe plagiarism was rarely carried farther. i chanced to pick up the tales of a traveller some years ago with a view to an anthology of prose narrative, and the book flew up and struck me: billy bones, his chest, the company in the parlour, the whole inner spirit, and a good deal of the material detail of my first chapters all were there, all were the property of washington irving. but i had no guess of it then as i sat writing by the fireside, in what seemed the spring-tides of a somewhat pedestrian inspiration; nor yet day by day, after lunch, as i read aloud my morning's work to the family. it seemed to me original as sin; it seemed to belong to me like my right eye. i had counted on one boy, i found i had two in my audience. my father caught fire at once with all the romance and childishness of his original nature. his own stories, that every night of his life he put himself to sleep with, dealt perpetually with ships, roadside inns, robbers, old sailors, and commercial travellers before the era of steam. he never finished one of these romances; the lucky man did not require to! but in treasure island he recognised something kindred to his own imagination; it was his kind of picturesque; and he not only heard with delight the daily chapter, but set himself acting to collaborate. when the time came for billy bones's chest to be ransacked, he must have passed the better part of a day preparing, on the back of a legal envelope, an inventory of its contents, which i exactly followed; and the name of 'flint's old ship' the walrus was given at his particular request. and now who should come dropping in, ex machina, but dr. japp, like the disguised prince who is to bring down the curtain upon peace and happiness in the last act; for he carried in his pocket, not a horn or a talisman, but a publisher had, in fact, been charged by my old friend, mr. henderson, to unearth new writers for young folks. even the ruthlessness of a united family recoiled before the extreme measure of inflicting on our guest the mutilated members of the sea cook; at the same time, we would by no means stop our readings; and accordingly the tale was begun again at the beginning, and solemnly redelivered for the benefit of dr. japp. from that moment on, i have thought highly of his critical faculty; for when he left us, he carried away the manuscript in his portmanteau. here, then, was everything to keep me up, sympathy, help, and now a positive engagement. i had chosen besides a very easy style. compare it with the almost contemporary 'merry men', one reader may prefer the one style, one the other 'tis an affair of character, perhaps of mood; but no expert can fail to see that the one is much more difficult, and the other much easier to maintain. it seems as though a full-grown experienced man of letters might engage to turn out treasure island at so many pages a day, and keep his pipe alight. but alas! this was not my case. fifteen days i stuck to it, and turned out fifteen chapters; and then, in the early paragraphs of the sixteenth, ignominiously lost hold. my mouth was empty; there was not one word of treasure island in my bosom; and here were the proofs of the beginning already waiting me at the 'hand and spear'! then i corrected them, living for the most part alone, walking on the heath at weybridge in dewy autumn mornings, a good deal pleased with what i had done, and more appalled than i can depict to you in words at what remained for me to do. i was thirty-one; i was the head of a family; i had lost my health; i had never yet paid my way, never yet made 200 pounds a year; my father had quite recently bought back and cancelled a book that was judged a failure: was this to be another and last fiasco? i was indeed very close on despair; but i shut my mouth hard, and during the journey to davos, where i was to pass the winter, had the resolution to think of other things and bury myself in the novels of m. de boisgobey. arrived at my destination, down i sat one morning to the unfinished tale; and behold! it flowed from me like small talk; and in a second tide of delighted industry, and again at a rate of a chapter a day, i finished treasure island. it had to be transcribed almost exactly; my wife was ill; the schoolboy remained alone of the faithful; and john addington symonds (to whom i timidly mentioned what i was engaged on) looked on me askance. he was at that time very eager i should write on the characters of theophrastus: so far out may be the judgments of the wisest men. but symonds (to be sure) was scarce the confidant to go to for sympathy on a boy's story. he was large-minded; 'a full man,' if there was one; but the very name of my enterprise would suggest to him only capitulations of sincerity and solecisms of style. well! he was not far wrong. treasure island it was mr. henderson who deleted the first title, the sea cook appeared duly in the story paper, where it figured in the ignoble midst, without woodcuts, and attracted not the least attention. i did not care. i liked the tale myself, for much the same reason as my father liked the beginning: it was my kind of picturesque. i was not a little proud of john silver, also; and to this day rather admire that smooth and formidable adventurer. what was infinitely more exhilarating, i had passed a landmark; i had finished a tale, and written 'the end' upon my manuscript, as i had not done since 'the pentland rising,' when i was a boy of sixteen not yet at college. in truth it was so by a set of lucky accidents; had not dr. japp come on his visit, had not the tale flowed from me with singular case, it must have been laid aside like its predecessors, and found a circuitous and unlamented way to the fire. purists may suggest it would have been better so. i am not of that mind. the tale seems to have given much pleasure, and it brought (or, was the means of bringing) fire and food and wine to a deserving family in which i took an interest. i need scarcely say i mean my own. but the adventures of treasure island are not yet quite at an end. i had written it up to the map. the map was the chief part of my plot. for instance, i had called an islet 'skeleton island,' not knowing what i meant, seeking only for the immediate picturesque, and it was to justify this name that i broke into the gallery of mr. poe and stole flint's pointer. and in the same way, it was because i had made two harbours that the hispaniola was sent on her wanderings with israel hands. the time came when it was decided to republish, and i sent in my manuscript, and the map along with it, to messrs. cassell. the proofs came, they were corrected, but i heard nothing of the map. i wrote and asked; was told it had never been received, and sat aghast. it is one thing to draw a map at random, set a scale in one corner of it at a venture, and write up a story to the measurements. it is quite another to have to examine a whole book, make an inventory of all the allusions contained in it, and with a pair of compasses, painfully design a map to suit the data. i did it; and the map was drawn again in my father's office, with embellishments of blowing whales and sailing ships, and my father himself brought into service a knack he had of various writing, and elaborately forged the signature of captain flint, and the sailing directions of billy bones. but somehow it was never treasure island to me. i have said the map was the most of the plot. i might almost say it was the whole. a few reminiscences of poe, defoe, and washington irving, a copy of johnson's buccaneers, the name of the dead man's chest from kingsley's at last, some recollections of canoeing on the high seas, and the map itself, with its infinite, eloquent suggestion, made up the whole of my materials. it is, perhaps, not often that a map figures so largely in a tale, yet it is always important. the author must know his countryside, whether real or imaginary, like his hand; the distances, the points of the compass, the place of the sun's rising, the behaviour of the moon, should all be beyond cavil. and how troublesome the moon is! i have come to grief over the moon in prince otto, and so soon as that was pointed out to me, adopted a precaution which i recommend to other men i never write now without an almanack. with an almanack, and the map of the country, and the plan of every house, either actually plotted on paper or already and immediately apprehended in the mind, a man may hope to avoid some of the grossest possible blunders. with the map before him, he will scarce allow the sun to set in the east, as it does in the antiquary. with the almanack at hand, he will scarce allow two horsemen, journeying on the most urgent affair, to employ six days, from three of the monday morning till late in the saturday night, upon a journey of, say, ninety or a hundred miles, and before the week is out, and still on the same nags, to cover fifty in one day, as may be read at length in the inimitable novel of rob roy. and it is certainly well, though far from necessary, to avoid such 'croppers.' but it is my contention my superstition, if you like that who is faithful to his map, and consults it, and draws from it his inspiration, daily and hourly, gains positive support, and not mere negative immunity from accident. the tale has a root there; it grows in that soil; it has a spine of its own behind the words. better if the country be real, and he has walked every foot of it and knows every milestone. but even with imaginary places, he will do well in the beginning to provide a map; as he studies it, relations will appear that he had not thought upon; he will discover obvious, though unsuspected, short-cuts and footprints for his messengers; and even when a map is not all the plot, as it was in treasure island, it will be found to be a mine of suggestion. chapter vi the genesis of 'the master of ballantrae' i was walking one night in the verandah of a small house in which i lived, outside the hamlet of saranac. it was winter; the night was very dark; the air extraordinary clear and cold, and sweet with the purity of forests. from a good way below, the river was to be heard contending with ice and boulders: a few lights appeared, scattered unevenly among the darkness, but so far away as not to lessen the sense of isolation. for the making of a story here were fine conditions. i was besides moved with the spirit of emulation, for i had just finished my third or fourth perusal of the phantom ship. 'come,' said i to my engine, 'let us make a tale, a story of many years and countries, of the sea and the land, savagery and civilisation; a story that shall have the same large features, and may be treated in the same summary elliptic method as the book you have been reading and admiring.' i was here brought up with a reflection exceedingly just in itself, but which, as the sequel shows, i failed to profit by. i saw that marryat, not less than homer, milton, and virgil, profited by the choice of a familiar and legendary subject; so that he prepared his readers on the very title-page; and this set me cudgelling my brains, if by any chance i could hit upon some similar belief to be the centre-piece of my own meditated fiction. in the course of this vain search there cropped up in my memory a singular case of a buried and resuscitated fakir, which i had been often told by an uncle of mine, then lately dead, inspector-general john balfour. on such a fine frosty night, with no wind and the thermometer below zero, the brain works with much vivacity; and the next moment i had seen the circumstance transplanted from india and the tropics to the adirondack wilderness and the stringent cold of the canadian border. here then, almost before i had begun my story, i had two countries, two of the ends of the earth involved: and thus though the notion of the resuscitated man failed entirely on the score of general acceptation, or even (as i have since found) acceptability, it fitted at once with my design of a tale of many lands; and this decided me to consider further of its possibilities. the man who should thus be buried was the first question: a good man, whose return to life would be hailed by the reader and the other characters with gladness? this trenched upon the christian picture, and was dismissed. if the idea, then, was to be of any use at all for me, i had to create a kind of evil genius to his friends and family, take him through many disappearances, and make this final restoration from the pit of death, in the icy american wilderness, the last and the grimmest of the series. i need not tell my brothers of the craft that i was now in the most interesting moment of an author's life; the hours that followed that night upon the balcony, and the following nights and days, whether walking abroad or lying wakeful in my bed, were hours of unadulterated joy. my mother, who was then living with me alone, perhaps had less enjoyment; for, in the absence of my wife, who is my usual helper in these times of parturition, i must spur her up at all seasons to hear me relate and try to clarify my unformed fancies. and while i was groping for the fable and the character required, behold i found them lying ready and nine years old in my memory. pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot, nine years old. was there ever a more complete justification of the rule of horace? here, thinking of quite other things, i had stumbled on the solution, or perhaps i should rather say (in stagewright phrase) the curtain or final tableau of a story conceived long before on the moors between pitlochry and strathardle, conceived in highland rain, in the blend of the smell of heather and bogplants, and with a mind full of the athole correspondence and the memories of the dumlicide justice. so long ago, so far away it was, that i had first evoked the faces and the mutual tragic situation of the men of durrisdeer. my story was now world-wide enough: scotland, india, and america being all obligatory scenes. but of these india was strange to me except in books; i had never known any living indian save a parsee, a member of my club in london, equally civilised, and (to all seeing) equally accidental with myself. it was plain, thus far, that i should have to get into india and out of it again upon a foot of fairy lightness; and i believe this first suggested to me the idea of the chevalier burke for a narrator. it was at first intended that he should be scottish, and i was then filled with fears that he might prove only the degraded shadow of my own alan breck. presently, however, it began to occur to me it would be like my master to curry favour with the prince's irishmen; and that an irish refugee would have a particular reason to find himself in india with his countryman, the unfortunate lally. irish, therefore, i decided he should be, and then, all of a sudden, i was aware of a tall shadow across my path, the shadow of barry lyndon. no man (in lord foppington's phrase) of a nice morality could go very deep with my master: in the original idea of this story conceived in scotland, this companion had been besides intended to be worse than the bad elder son with whom (as it was then meant) he was to visit scotland; if i took an irishman, and a very bad irishman, in the midst of the eighteenth century, how was i to evade barry lyndon? the wretch besieged me, offering his services; he gave me excellent references; he proved that he was highly fitted for the work i had to do; he, or my own evil heart, suggested it was easy to disguise his ancient livery wit a little lace and a few frogs and buttons, so that thackeray himself should hardly recognise him. and then of a sudden there came to me memories of a young irishman, with whom i was once intimate, and had spent long nights walking and talking with, upon a very desolate coast in a bleak autumn: i recalled him as a youth of an extraordinary moral simplicity almost vacancy; plastic to any influence, the creature of his admirations: and putting such a youth in fancy into the career of a soldier of fortune, it occurred to me that he would serve my turn as well as mr. lyndon, and in place of entering into competition with the master, would afford a slight though a distinct relief. i know not if i have done him well, though his moral dissertations always highly entertained me: but i own i have been surprised to find that he reminded some critics of barry lyndon after all. . . . chapter vii preface to 'the master of ballantrae' (19) although an old, consistent exile, the editor of the following pages revisits now and again the city of which he exults to be a native; and there are few things more strange, more painful, or more salutary, than such revisitations. outside, in foreign spots, he comes by surprise and awakens more attention than he had expected; in his own city, the relation is reversed, and he stands amazed to be so little recollected. elsewhere he is refreshed to see attractive faces, to remark possible friends; there he scouts the long streets, with a pang at heart, for the faces and friends that are no more. elsewhere he is delighted with the presence of what is new, there tormented by the absence of what is old. elsewhere he is content to be his present self; there he is smitten with an equal regret for what he once was and for what he once hoped to be. he was feeling all this dimly, as he drove from the station, on his last visit; he was feeling it still as he alighted at the door of his friend mr. johnstone thomson, w.s., with whom he was to stay. a hearty welcome, a face not altogether changed, a few words that sounded of old days, a laugh provoked and shared, a glimpse in passing of the snowy cloth and bright decanters and the piranesis on the dining-room wall, brought him to his bed-room with a somewhat lightened cheer, and when he and mr. thomson sat down a few minutes later, cheek by jowl, and pledged the past in a preliminary bumper, he was already almost consoled, he had already almost forgiven himself his two unpardonable errors, that he should ever have left his native city, or ever returned to it. 'i have something quite in your way,' said mr. thomson. 'i wished to do honour to your arrival; because, my dear fellow, it is my own youth that comes back along with you; in a very tattered and withered state, to be sure, but well! all that's left of it.' 'a great deal better than nothing,' said the editor. 'but what is this which is quite in my way?' 'i was coming to that,' said mr. thomson: 'fate has put it in my power to honour your arrival with something really original by way of dessert. a mystery.' 'a mystery?' i repeated. 'yes,' said his friend, 'a mystery. it may prove to be nothing, and it may prove to be a great deal. but in the meanwhile it is truly mysterious, no eye having looked on it for near a hundred years; it is highly genteel, for it treats of a titled family; and it ought to be melodramatic, for (according to the superscription) it is concerned with death.' 'i think i rarely heard a more obscure or a more promising annunciation,' the other remarked. 'but what is it?' 'you remember my predecessor's, old peter m'brair's business?' 'i remember him acutely; he could not look at me without a pang of reprobation, and he could not feel the pang without betraying it. he was to me a man of a great historical interest, but the interest was not returned.' 'ah well, we go beyond him,' said mr. thomson. 'i daresay old peter knew as little about this as i do. you see, i succeeded to a prodigious accumulation of old law-papers and old tin boxes, some of them of peter's hoarding, some of his father's, john, first of the dynasty, a great man in his day. among other collections were all the papers of the durrisdeers.' 'the durrisdeers!' cried i. 'my dear fellow, these may be of the greatest interest. one of them was out in the '45; one had some strange passages with the devil you will find a note of it in law's memorials, i think; and there was an unexplained tragedy, i know not what, much later, about a hundred years ago ' 'more than a hundred years ago,' said mr. thomson. 'in 1783.' 'how do you know that? i mean some death.' 'yes, the lamentable deaths of my lord durrisdeer and his brother, the master of ballantrae (attainted in the troubles),' said mr. thomson with something the tone of a man quoting. 'is that it?' 'to say truth,' said i, 'i have only seen some dim reference to the things in memoirs; and heard some traditions dimmer still, through my uncle (whom i think you knew). my uncle lived when he was a boy in the neighbourhood of st. bride's; he has often told me of the avenue closed up and grown over with grass, the great gates never opened, the last lord and his old maid sister who lived in the back parts of the house, a quiet, plain, poor, hum-drum couple it would seem but pathetic too, as the last of that stirring and brave house and, to the country folk, faintly terrible from some deformed traditions.' 'yes,' said mr. thomson. henry graeme durie, the last lord, died in 1820; his sister, the honourable miss katherine durie, in '27; so much i know; and by what i have been going over the last few days, they were what you say, decent, quiet people and not rich. to say truth, it was a letter of my lord's that put me on the search for the packet we are going to open this evening. some papers could not be found; and he wrote to jack m'brair suggesting they might be among those sealed up by a mr. mackellar. m'brair answered, that the papers in question were all in mackellar's own hand, all (as the writer understood) of a purely narrative character; and besides, said he, "i am bound not to open them before the year 1889." you may fancy if these words struck me: i instituted a hunt through all the m'brair repositories; and at last hit upon that packet which (if you have had enough wine) i propose to show you at once.' in the smoking-room, to which my host now led me, was a packet, fastened with many seals and enclosed in a single sheet of strong paper thus endorsed:papers relating to the lives and lamentable deaths of the late lord durisdeer, and his elder brother james, commonly called master of ballantrae, attainted in the troubles: entrusted into the hands of john m'brair in the lawnmarket of edinburgh, w.s.; this 20th day of september anno domini 1789; by him to be kept secret until the revolution of one hundred years complete, or until the 20th day of september 1889: the same compiled and written by me, ephraim mackellar, for near forty years land steward on the estates of his lordship. as mr. thomson is a married man, i will not say what hour had struck when we laid down the last of the following pages; but i will give a few words of what ensued. 'here,' said mr. thomson, 'is a novel ready to your hand: all you have to do is to work up the scenery, develop the characters, and improve the style.' 'my dear fellow,' said i, 'they are just the three things that i would rather die than set my hand to. it shall be published as it stands.' 'but it's so bald,' objected mr. thomson. 'i believe there is nothing so noble as baldness,' replied i, 'and i am sure there is nothing so interesting. i would have all literature bald, and all authors (if you like) but one.' 'well, well,' said mr. thomson, 'we shall see.' footnotes: (1) first published in the contemporary review, april 1885 (2) milton. (3) milton. (4) milton. (5) as pvf will continue to haunt us through our english examples, take, by way of comparison, this latin verse, of which it forms a chief adornment, and do not hold me answerable for the all too roman freedom of the sense: 'hanc volo, quae facilis, quae palliolata vagatur.' (6) coleridge. (7) antony and cleopatra. (8) cymbeline. (9) the v is in 'of.' (10) troilus and cressida. (11) first published in the fortnightly review, april 1881. (12) mr. james payn. (13) a footnote, at least, is due to the admirable example set before all young writers in the width of literary sympathy displayed by mr. swinburne. he runs forth to welcome merit, whether in dickens or trollope, whether in villon, milton, or pope. this is, in criticism, the attitude we should all seek to preserve; not only in that, but in every branch of literary work. (14) first published in the british weekly, may 13, 1887. (15) of the british weekly. (16) first published in the magazine of art in 1883. (17) first published in the idler, august 1894. (18) ne pas confondre. not the slim green pamphlet with the imprint of andrew elliot, for which (as i see with amazement from the book-lists) the gentlemen of england are willing to pay fancy prices; but its predecessor, a bulky historical romance without a spark of merit, and now deleted from the world. (19) 1889. the end of the project gutenberg etext the art of writing the winter's tale dramatis personae leontes king of sicilia. mamillius young prince of sicilia. camillo | | antigonus | | four lords of sicilia. cleomenes | | dion | polixenes king of bohemia. florizel prince of bohemia. archidamus a lord of bohemia. old shepherd reputed father of perdita. (shepherd:) clown his son. autolycus a rogue. a mariner. (mariner:) a gaoler. (gaoler:) hermione queen to leontes. perdita daughter to leontes and hermione. paulina wife to antigonus. emilia a lady attending on hermione, mopsa | | shepherdesses. dorcas | other lords and gentlemen, ladies, officers, and servants, shepherds, and shepherdesses. (first lord:) (gentleman:) (first gentleman:) (second gentleman:) (third gentleman:) (first lady:) (second lady:) (officer:) (servant:) (first servant:) (second servant:) time as chorus. scene sicilia, and bohemia. the winter's tale act i scene i antechamber in leontes' palace. [enter camillo and archidamus] archidamus if you shall chance, camillo, to visit bohemia, on the like occasion whereon my services are now on foot, you shall see, as i have said, great difference betwixt our bohemia and your sicilia. camillo i think, this coming summer, the king of sicilia means to pay bohemia the visitation which he justly owes him. archidamus wherein our entertainment shall shame us we will be justified in our loves; for indeed- camillo beseech you,- archidamus verily, i speak it in the freedom of my knowledge: we cannot with such magnificence--in so rare--i know not what to say. we will give you sleepy drinks, that your senses, unintelligent of our insufficience, may, though they cannot praise us, as little accuse us. camillo you pay a great deal too dear for what's given freely. archidamus believe me, i speak as my understanding instructs me and as mine honesty puts it to utterance. camillo sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to bohemia. they were trained together in their childhoods; and there rooted betwixt them then such an affection, which cannot choose but branch now. since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made separation of their society, their encounters, though not personal, have been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies; that they have seemed to be together, though absent, shook hands, as over a vast, and embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed winds. the heavens continue their loves! archidamus i think there is not in the world either malice or matter to alter it. you have an unspeakable comfort of your young prince mamillius: it is a gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came into my note. camillo i very well agree with you in the hopes of him: it is a gallant child; one that indeed physics the subject, makes old hearts fresh: they that went on crutches ere he was born desire yet their life to see him a man. archidamus would they else be content to die? camillo yes; if there were no other excuse why they should desire to live. archidamus if the king had no son, they would desire to live on crutches till he had one. [exeunt] the winter's tale act i scene ii a room of state in the same. [enter leontes, hermione, mamillius, polixenes, camillo, and attendants] polixenes nine changes of the watery star hath been the shepherd's note since we have left our throne without a burthen: time as long again would be find up, my brother, with our thanks; and yet we should, for perpetuity, go hence in debt: and therefore, like a cipher, yet standing in rich place, i multiply with one 'we thank you' many thousands moe that go before it. leontes stay your thanks a while; and pay them when you part. polixenes sir, that's to-morrow. i am question'd by my fears, of what may chance or breed upon our absence; that may blow no sneaping winds at home, to make us say 'this is put forth too truly:' besides, i have stay'd to tire your royalty. leontes we are tougher, brother, than you can put us to't. polixenes no longer stay. leontes one seven-night longer. polixenes very sooth, to-morrow. leontes we'll part the time between's then; and in that i'll no gainsaying. polixenes press me not, beseech you, so. there is no tongue that moves, none, none i' the world, so soon as yours could win me: so it should now, were there necessity in your request, although 'twere needful i denied it. my affairs do even drag me homeward: which to hinder were in your love a whip to me; my stay to you a charge and trouble: to save both, farewell, our brother. leontes tongue-tied, our queen? speak you. hermione i had thought, sir, to have held my peace until you have drawn oaths from him not to stay. you, sir, charge him too coldly. tell him, you are sure all in bohemia's well; this satisfaction the by-gone day proclaim'd: say this to him, he's beat from his best ward. leontes well said, hermione. hermione to tell, he longs to see his son, were strong: but let him say so then, and let him go; but let him swear so, and he shall not stay, we'll thwack him hence with distaffs. yet of your royal presence i'll adventure the borrow of a week. when at bohemia you take my lord, i'll give him my commission to let him there a month behind the gest prefix'd for's parting: yet, good deed, leontes, i love thee not a jar o' the clock behind what lady-she her lord. you'll stay? polixenes no, madam. hermione nay, but you will? polixenes i may not, verily. hermione verily! you put me off with limber vows; but i, though you would seek to unsphere the stars with oaths, should yet say 'sir, no going.' verily, you shall not go: a lady's 'verily' 's as potent as a lord's. will you go yet? force me to keep you as a prisoner, not like a guest; so you shall pay your fees when you depart, and save your thanks. how say you? my prisoner? or my guest? by your dread 'verily,' one of them you shall be. polixenes your guest, then, madam: to be your prisoner should import offending; which is for me less easy to commit than you to punish. hermione not your gaoler, then, but your kind hostess. come, i'll question you of my lord's tricks and yours when you were boys: you were pretty lordings then? polixenes we were, fair queen, two lads that thought there was no more behind but such a day to-morrow as to-day, and to be boy eternal. hermione was not my lord the verier wag o' the two? polixenes we were as twinn'd lambs that did frisk i' the sun, and bleat the one at the other: what we changed was innocence for innocence; we knew not the doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream'd that any did. had we pursued that life, and our weak spirits ne'er been higher rear'd with stronger blood, we should have answer'd heaven boldly 'not guilty;' the imposition clear'd hereditary ours. hermione by this we gather you have tripp'd since. polixenes o my most sacred lady! temptations have since then been born to's; for in those unfledged days was my wife a girl; your precious self had then not cross'd the eyes of my young play-fellow. hermione grace to boot! of this make no conclusion, lest you say your queen and i are devils: yet go on; the offences we have made you do we'll answer, if you first sinn'd with us and that with us you did continue fault and that you slipp'd not with any but with us. leontes is he won yet? hermione he'll stay my lord. leontes at my request he would not. hermione, my dearest, thou never spokest to better purpose. hermione never? leontes never, but once. hermione what! have i twice said well? when was't before? i prithee tell me; cram's with praise, and make's as fat as tame things: one good deed dying tongueless slaughters a thousand waiting upon that. our praises are our wages: you may ride's with one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere with spur we beat an acre. but to the goal: my last good deed was to entreat his stay: what was my first? it has an elder sister, or i mistake you: o, would her name were grace! but once before i spoke to the purpose: when? nay, let me have't; i long. leontes why, that was when three crabbed months had sour'd themselves to death, ere i could make thee open thy white hand and clap thyself my love: then didst thou utter 'i am yours for ever.' hermione 'tis grace indeed. why, lo you now, i have spoke to the purpose twice: the one for ever earn'd a royal husband; the other for some while a friend. leontes [aside] too hot, too hot! to mingle friendship far is mingling bloods. i have tremor cordis on me: my heart dances; but not for joy; not joy. this entertainment may a free face put on, derive a liberty from heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom, and well become the agent; 't may, i grant; but to be paddling palms and pinching fingers, as now they are, and making practised smiles, as in a looking-glass, and then to sigh, as 'twere the mort o' the deer; o, that is entertainment my bosom likes not, nor my brows! mamillius, art thou my boy? mamillius ay, my good lord. leontes i' fecks! why, that's my bawcock. what, hast smutch'd thy nose? they say it is a copy out of mine. come, captain, we must be neat; not neat, but cleanly, captain: and yet the steer, the heifer and the calf are all call'd neat.--still virginalling upon his palm!--how now, you wanton calf! art thou my calf? mamillius yes, if you will, my lord. leontes thou want'st a rough pash and the shoots that i have, to be full like me: yet they say we are almost as like as eggs; women say so, that will say anything but were they false as o'er-dyed blacks, as wind, as waters, false as dice are to be wish'd by one that fixes no bourn 'twixt his and mine, yet were it true to say this boy were like me. come, sir page, look on me with your welkin eye: sweet villain! most dear'st! my collop! can thy dam?--may't be?- affection! thy intention stabs the centre: thou dost make possible things not so held, communicatest with dreams;--how can this be?- with what's unreal thou coactive art, and fellow'st nothing: then 'tis very credent thou mayst co-join with something; and thou dost, and that beyond commission, and i find it, and that to the infection of my brains and hardening of my brows. polixenes what means sicilia? hermione he something seems unsettled. polixenes how, my lord! what cheer? how is't with you, best brother? hermione you look as if you held a brow of much distraction are you moved, my lord? leontes no, in good earnest. how sometimes nature will betray its folly, its tenderness, and make itself a pastime to harder bosoms! looking on the lines of my boy's face, methoughts i did recoil twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreech'd, in my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled, lest it should bite its master, and so prove, as ornaments oft do, too dangerous: how like, methought, i then was to this kernel, this squash, this gentleman. mine honest friend, will you take eggs for money? mamillius no, my lord, i'll fight. leontes you will! why, happy man be's dole! my brother, are you so fond of your young prince as we do seem to be of ours? polixenes if at home, sir, he's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter, now my sworn friend and then mine enemy, my parasite, my soldier, statesman, all: he makes a july's day short as december, and with his varying childness cures in me thoughts that would thick my blood. leontes so stands this squire officed with me: we two will walk, my lord, and leave you to your graver steps. hermione, how thou lovest us, show in our brother's welcome; let what is dear in sicily be cheap: next to thyself and my young rover, he's apparent to my heart. hermione if you would seek us, we are yours i' the garden: shall's attend you there? leontes to your own bents dispose you: you'll be found, be you beneath the sky. [aside] i am angling now, though you perceive me not how i give line. go to, go to! how she holds up the neb, the bill to him! and arms her with the boldness of a wife to her allowing husband! [exeunt polixenes, hermione, and attendants] gone already! inch-thick, knee-deep, o'er head and ears a fork'd one! go, play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and i play too, but so disgraced a part, whose issue will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour will be my knell. go, play, boy, play. there have been, or i am much deceived, cuckolds ere now; and many a man there is, even at this present, now while i speak this, holds his wife by the arm, that little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence and his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by sir smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't whiles other men have gates and those gates open'd, as mine, against their will. should all despair that have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind would hang themselves. physic for't there is none; it is a bawdy planet, that will strike where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it, from east, west, north and south: be it concluded, no barricado for a belly; know't; it will let in and out the enemy with bag and baggage: many thousand on's have the disease, and feel't not. how now, boy! mamillius i am like you, they say. leontes why that's some comfort. what, camillo there? camillo ay, my good lord. leontes go play, mamillius; thou'rt an honest man. [exit mamillius] camillo, this great sir will yet stay longer. camillo you had much ado to make his anchor hold: when you cast out, it still came home. leontes didst note it? camillo he would not stay at your petitions: made his business more material. leontes didst perceive it? [aside] they're here with me already, whispering, rounding 'sicilia is a so-forth:' 'tis far gone, when i shall gust it last. how came't, camillo, that he did stay? camillo at the good queen's entreaty. leontes at the queen's be't: 'good' should be pertinent but, so it is, it is not. was this taken by any understanding pate but thine? for thy conceit is soaking, will draw in more than the common blocks: not noted, is't, but of the finer natures? by some severals of head-piece extraordinary? lower messes perchance are to this business purblind? say. camillo business, my lord! i think most understand bohemia stays here longer. leontes ha! camillo stays here longer. leontes ay, but why? camillo to satisfy your highness and the entreaties of our most gracious mistress. leontes satisfy! the entreaties of your mistress! satisfy! let that suffice. i have trusted thee, camillo, with all the nearest things to my heart, as well my chamber-councils, wherein, priest-like, thou hast cleansed my bosom, i from thee departed thy penitent reform'd: but we have been deceived in thy integrity, deceived in that which seems so. camillo be it forbid, my lord! leontes to bide upon't, thou art not honest, or, if thou inclinest that way, thou art a coward, which hoxes honesty behind, restraining from course required; or else thou must be counted a servant grafted in my serious trust and therein negligent; or else a fool that seest a game play'd home, the rich stake drawn, and takest it all for jest. camillo my gracious lord, i may be negligent, foolish and fearful; in every one of these no man is free, but that his negligence, his folly, fear, among the infinite doings of the world, sometime puts forth. in your affairs, my lord, if ever i were wilful-negligent, it was my folly; if industriously i play'd the fool, it was my negligence, not weighing well the end; if ever fearful to do a thing, where i the issue doubted, where of the execution did cry out against the non-performance, 'twas a fear which oft infects the wisest: these, my lord, are such allow'd infirmities that honesty is never free of. but, beseech your grace, be plainer with me; let me know my trespass by its own visage: if i then deny it, 'tis none of mine. leontes ha' not you seen, camillo,- but that's past doubt, you have, or your eye-glass is thicker than a cuckold's horn,--or heard,- for to a vision so apparent rumour cannot be mute,--or thought,--for cogitation resides not in that man that does not think,- my wife is slippery? if thou wilt confess, or else be impudently negative, to have nor eyes nor ears nor thought, then say my wife's a hobby-horse, deserves a name as rank as any flax-wench that puts to before her troth-plight: say't and justify't. camillo i would not be a stander-by to hear my sovereign mistress clouded so, without my present vengeance taken: 'shrew my heart, you never spoke what did become you less than this; which to reiterate were sin as deep as that, though true. leontes is whispering nothing? is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses? kissing with inside lip? stopping the career of laughing with a sigh?--a note infallible of breaking honesty--horsing foot on foot? skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift? hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only, that would unseen be wicked? is this nothing? why, then the world and all that's in't is nothing; the covering sky is nothing; bohemia nothing; my wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings, if this be nothing. camillo good my lord, be cured of this diseased opinion, and betimes; for 'tis most dangerous. leontes say it be, 'tis true. camillo no, no, my lord. leontes it is; you lie, you lie: i say thou liest, camillo, and i hate thee, pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave, or else a hovering temporizer, that canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil, inclining to them both: were my wife's liver infected as her life, she would not live the running of one glass. camillo who does infect her? leontes why, he that wears her like a medal, hanging about his neck, bohemia: who, if i had servants true about me, that bare eyes to see alike mine honour as their profits, their own particular thrifts, they would do that which should undo more doing: ay, and thou, his cupbearer,--whom i from meaner form have benched and reared to worship, who mayst see plainly as heaven sees earth and earth sees heaven, how i am galled,--mightst bespice a cup, to give mine enemy a lasting wink; which draught to me were cordial. camillo sir, my lord, i could do this, and that with no rash potion, but with a lingering dram that should not work maliciously like poison: but i cannot believe this crack to be in my dread mistress, so sovereignly being honourable. i have loved thee,- leontes make that thy question, and go rot! dost think i am so muddy, so unsettled, to appoint myself in this vexation, sully the purity and whiteness of my sheets, which to preserve is sleep, which being spotted is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps, give scandal to the blood o' the prince my son, who i do think is mine and love as mine, without ripe moving to't? would i do this? could man so blench? camillo i must believe you, sir: i do; and will fetch off bohemia for't; provided that, when he's removed, your highness will take again your queen as yours at first, even for your son's sake; and thereby for sealing the injury of tongues in courts and kingdoms known and allied to yours. leontes thou dost advise me even so as i mine own course have set down: i'll give no blemish to her honour, none. camillo my lord, go then; and with a countenance as clear as friendship wears at feasts, keep with bohemia and with your queen. i am his cupbearer: if from me he have wholesome beverage, account me not your servant. leontes this is all: do't and thou hast the one half of my heart; do't not, thou split'st thine own. camillo i'll do't, my lord. leontes i will seem friendly, as thou hast advised me. [exit] camillo o miserable lady! but, for me, what case stand i in? i must be the poisoner of good polixenes; and my ground to do't is the obedience to a master, one who in rebellion with himself will have all that are his so too. to do this deed, promotion follows. if i could find example of thousands that had struck anointed kings and flourish'd after, i'ld not do't; but since nor brass nor stone nor parchment bears not one, let villany itself forswear't. i must forsake the court: to do't, or no, is certain to me a break-neck. happy star, reign now! here comes bohemia. [re-enter polixenes] polixenes this is strange: methinks my favour here begins to warp. not speak? good day, camillo. camillo hail, most royal sir! polixenes what is the news i' the court? camillo none rare, my lord. polixenes the king hath on him such a countenance as he had lost some province and a region loved as he loves himself: even now i met him with customary compliment; when he, wafting his eyes to the contrary and falling a lip of much contempt, speeds from me and so leaves me to consider what is breeding that changeth thus his manners. camillo i dare not know, my lord. polixenes how! dare not! do not. do you know, and dare not? be intelligent to me: 'tis thereabouts; for, to yourself, what you do know, you must. and cannot say, you dare not. good camillo, your changed complexions are to me a mirror which shows me mine changed too; for i must be a party in this alteration, finding myself thus alter'd with 't. camillo there is a sickness which puts some of us in distemper, but i cannot name the disease; and it is caught of you that yet are well. polixenes how! caught of me! make me not sighted like the basilisk: i have look'd on thousands, who have sped the better by my regard, but kill'd none so. camillo,- as you are certainly a gentleman, thereto clerk-like experienced, which no less adorns our gentry than our parents' noble names, in whose success we are gentle,--i beseech you, if you know aught which does behove my knowledge thereof to be inform'd, imprison't not in ignorant concealment. camillo i may not answer. polixenes a sickness caught of me, and yet i well! i must be answer'd. dost thou hear, camillo, i conjure thee, by all the parts of man which honour does acknowledge, whereof the least is not this suit of mine, that thou declare what incidency thou dost guess of harm is creeping toward me; how far off, how near; which way to be prevented, if to be; if not, how best to bear it. camillo sir, i will tell you; since i am charged in honour and by him that i think honourable: therefore mark my counsel, which must be even as swiftly follow'd as i mean to utter it, or both yourself and me cry lost, and so good night! polixenes on, good camillo. camillo i am appointed him to murder you. polixenes by whom, camillo? camillo by the king. polixenes for what? camillo he thinks, nay, with all confidence he swears, as he had seen't or been an instrument to vice you to't, that you have touch'd his queen forbiddenly. polixenes o, then my best blood turn to an infected jelly and my name be yoked with his that did betray the best! turn then my freshest reputation to a savour that may strike the dullest nostril where i arrive, and my approach be shunn'd, nay, hated too, worse than the great'st infection that e'er was heard or read! camillo swear his thought over by each particular star in heaven and by all their influences, you may as well forbid the sea for to obey the moon as or by oath remove or counsel shake the fabric of his folly, whose foundation is piled upon his faith and will continue the standing of his body. polixenes how should this grow? camillo i know not: but i am sure 'tis safer to avoid what's grown than question how 'tis born. if therefore you dare trust my honesty, that lies enclosed in this trunk which you shall bear along impawn'd, away to-night! your followers i will whisper to the business, and will by twos and threes at several posterns clear them o' the city. for myself, i'll put my fortunes to your service, which are here by this discovery lost. be not uncertain; for, by the honour of my parents, i have utter'd truth: which if you seek to prove, i dare not stand by; nor shall you be safer than one condemn'd by the king's own mouth, thereon his execution sworn. polixenes i do believe thee: i saw his heart in 's face. give me thy hand: be pilot to me and thy places shall still neighbour mine. my ships are ready and my people did expect my hence departure two days ago. this jealousy is for a precious creature: as she's rare, must it be great, and as his person's mighty, must it be violent, and as he does conceive he is dishonour'd by a man which ever profess'd to him, why, his revenges must in that be made more bitter. fear o'ershades me: good expedition be my friend, and comfort the gracious queen, part of his theme, but nothing of his ill-ta'en suspicion! come, camillo; i will respect thee as a father if thou bear'st my life off hence: let us avoid. camillo it is in mine authority to command the keys of all the posterns: please your highness to take the urgent hour. come, sir, away. [exeunt] the winter's tale act ii scene i a room in leontes' palace. [enter hermione, mamillius, and ladies] hermione take the boy to you: he so troubles me, 'tis past enduring. first lady come, my gracious lord, shall i be your playfellow? mamillius no, i'll none of you. first lady why, my sweet lord? mamillius you'll kiss me hard and speak to me as if i were a baby still. i love you better. second lady and why so, my lord? mamillius not for because your brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say, become some women best, so that there be not too much hair there, but in a semicircle or a half-moon made with a pen. second lady who taught you this? mamillius i learnt it out of women's faces. pray now what colour are your eyebrows? first lady blue, my lord. mamillius nay, that's a mock: i have seen a lady's nose that has been blue, but not her eyebrows. first lady hark ye; the queen your mother rounds apace: we shall present our services to a fine new prince one of these days; and then you'ld wanton with us, if we would have you. second lady she is spread of late into a goodly bulk: good time encounter her! hermione what wisdom stirs amongst you? come, sir, now i am for you again: pray you, sit by us, and tell 's a tale. mamillius merry or sad shall't be? hermione as merry as you will. mamillius a sad tale's best for winter: i have one of sprites and goblins. hermione let's have that, good sir. come on, sit down: come on, and do your best to fright me with your sprites; you're powerful at it. mamillius there was a man- hermione nay, come, sit down; then on. mamillius dwelt by a churchyard: i will tell it softly; yond crickets shall not hear it. hermione come on, then, and give't me in mine ear. [enter leontes, with antigonus, lords and others] leontes was he met there? his train? camillo with him? first lord behind the tuft of pines i met them; never saw i men scour so on their way: i eyed them even to their ships. leontes how blest am i in my just censure, in my true opinion! alack, for lesser knowledge! how accursed in being so blest! there may be in the cup a spider steep'd, and one may drink, depart, and yet partake no venom, for his knowledge is not infected: but if one present the abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known how he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides, with violent hefts. i have drunk, and seen the spider. camillo was his help in this, his pander: there is a plot against my life, my crown; all's true that is mistrusted: that false villain whom i employ'd was pre-employ'd by him: he has discover'd my design, and i remain a pinch'd thing; yea, a very trick for them to play at will. how came the posterns so easily open? first lord by his great authority; which often hath no less prevail'd than so on your command. leontes i know't too well. give me the boy: i am glad you did not nurse him: though he does bear some signs of me, yet you have too much blood in him. hermione what is this? sport? leontes bear the boy hence; he shall not come about her; away with him! and let her sport herself with that she's big with; for 'tis polixenes has made thee swell thus. hermione but i'ld say he had not, and i'll be sworn you would believe my saying, howe'er you lean to the nayward. leontes you, my lords, look on her, mark her well; be but about to say 'she is a goodly lady,' and the justice of your bearts will thereto add 'tis pity she's not honest, honourable:' praise her but for this her without-door form, which on my faith deserves high speech, and straight the shrug, the hum or ha, these petty brands that calumny doth use--o, i am out- that mercy does, for calumny will sear virtue itself: these shrugs, these hums and ha's, when you have said 'she's goodly,' come between ere you can say 'she's honest:' but be 't known, from him that has most cause to grieve it should be, she's an adulteress. hermione should a villain say so, the most replenish'd villain in the world, he were as much more villain: you, my lord, do but mistake. leontes you have mistook, my lady, polixenes for leontes: o thou thing! which i'll not call a creature of thy place, lest barbarism, making me the precedent, should a like language use to all degrees and mannerly distinguishment leave out betwixt the prince and beggar: i have said she's an adulteress; i have said with whom: more, she's a traitor and camillo is a federary with her, and one that knows what she should shame to know herself but with her most vile principal, that she's a bed-swerver, even as bad as those that vulgars give bold'st titles, ay, and privy to this their late escape. hermione no, by my life. privy to none of this. how will this grieve you, when you shall come to clearer knowledge, that you thus have publish'd me! gentle my lord, you scarce can right me throughly then to say you did mistake. leontes no; if i mistake in those foundations which i build upon, the centre is not big enough to bear a school-boy's top. away with her! to prison! he who shall speak for her is afar off guilty but that he speaks. hermione there's some ill planet reigns: i must be patient till the heavens look with an aspect more favourable. good my lords, i am not prone to weeping, as our sex commonly are; the want of which vain dew perchance shall dry your pities: but i have that honourable grief lodged here which burns worse than tears drown: beseech you all, my lords, with thoughts so qualified as your charities shall best instruct you, measure me; and so the king's will be perform'd! leontes shall i be heard? hermione who is't that goes with me? beseech your highness, my women may be with me; for you see my plight requires it. do not weep, good fools; there is no cause: when you shall know your mistress has deserved prison, then abound in tears as i come out: this action i now go on is for my better grace. adieu, my lord: i never wish'd to see you sorry; now i trust i shall. my women, come; you have leave. leontes go, do our bidding; hence! [exit hermione, guarded; with ladies] first lord beseech your highness, call the queen again. antigonus be certain what you do, sir, lest your justice prove violence; in the which three great ones suffer, yourself, your queen, your son. first lord for her, my lord, i dare my life lay down and will do't, sir, please you to accept it, that the queen is spotless i' the eyes of heaven and to you; i mean, in this which you accuse her. antigonus if it prove she's otherwise, i'll keep my stables where i lodge my wife; i'll go in couples with her; than when i feel and see her no farther trust her; for every inch of woman in the world, ay, every dram of woman's flesh is false, if she be. leontes hold your peaces. first lord good my lord,- antigonus it is for you we speak, not for ourselves: you are abused and by some putter-on that will be damn'd for't; would i knew the villain, i would land-damn him. be she honour-flaw'd, i have three daughters; the eldest is eleven the second and the third, nine, and some five; if this prove true, they'll pay for't: by mine honour, i'll geld 'em all; fourteen they shall not see, to bring false generations: they are co-heirs; and i had rather glib myself than they should not produce fair issue. leontes cease; no more. you smell this business with a sense as cold as is a dead man's nose: but i do see't and feel't as you feel doing thus; and see withal the instruments that feel. antigonus if it be so, we need no grave to bury honesty: there's not a grain of it the face to sweeten of the whole dungy earth. leontes what! lack i credit? first lord i had rather you did lack than i, my lord, upon this ground; and more it would content me to have her honour true than your suspicion, be blamed for't how you might. leontes why, what need we commune with you of this, but rather follow our forceful instigation? our prerogative calls not your counsels, but our natural goodness imparts this; which if you, or stupefied or seeming so in skill, cannot or will not relish a truth like us, inform yourselves we need no more of your advice: the matter, the loss, the gain, the ordering on't, is all properly ours. antigonus and i wish, my liege, you had only in your silent judgment tried it, without more overture. leontes how could that be? either thou art most ignorant by age, or thou wert born a fool. camillo's flight, added to their familiarity, which was as gross as ever touch'd conjecture, that lack'd sight only, nought for approbation but only seeing, all other circumstances made up to the deed, doth push on this proceeding: yet, for a greater confirmation, for in an act of this importance 'twere most piteous to be wild, i have dispatch'd in post to sacred delphos, to apollo's temple, cleomenes and dion, whom you know of stuff'd sufficiency: now from the oracle they will bring all; whose spiritual counsel had, shall stop or spur me. have i done well? first lord well done, my lord. leontes though i am satisfied and need no more than what i know, yet shall the oracle give rest to the minds of others, such as he whose ignorant credulity will not come up to the truth. so have we thought it good from our free person she should be confined, lest that the treachery of the two fled hence be left her to perform. come, follow us; we are to speak in public; for this business will raise us all. antigonus [aside] to laughter, as i take it, if the good truth were known. [exeunt] the winter's tale act ii scene ii a prison. [enter paulina, a gentleman, and attendants] paulina the keeper of the prison, call to him; let him have knowledge who i am. [exit gentleman] good lady, no court in europe is too good for thee; what dost thou then in prison? [re-enter gentleman, with the gaoler] now, good sir, you know me, do you not? gaoler for a worthy lady and one whom much i honour. paulina pray you then, conduct me to the queen. gaoler i may not, madam: to the contrary i have express commandment. paulina here's ado, to lock up honesty and honour from the access of gentle visitors! is't lawful, pray you, to see her women? any of them? emilia? gaoler so please you, madam, to put apart these your attendants, i shall bring emilia forth. paulina i pray now, call her. withdraw yourselves. [exeunt gentleman and attendants] gaoler and, madam, i must be present at your conference. paulina well, be't so, prithee. [exit gaoler] here's such ado to make no stain a stain as passes colouring. [re-enter gaoler, with emilia] dear gentlewoman, how fares our gracious lady? emilia as well as one so great and so forlorn may hold together: on her frights and griefs, which never tender lady hath born greater, she is something before her time deliver'd. paulina a boy? emilia a daughter, and a goodly babe, lusty and like to live: the queen receives much comfort in't; says 'my poor prisoner, i am innocent as you.' paulina i dare be sworn these dangerous unsafe lunes i' the king, beshrew them! he must be told on't, and he shall: the office becomes a woman best; i'll take't upon me: if i prove honey-mouth'd let my tongue blister and never to my red-look'd anger be the trumpet any more. pray you, emilia, commend my best obedience to the queen: if she dares trust me with her little babe, i'll show't the king and undertake to be her advocate to the loud'st. we do not know how he may soften at the sight o' the child: the silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails. emilia most worthy madam, your honour and your goodness is so evident that your free undertaking cannot miss a thriving issue: there is no lady living so meet for this great errand. please your ladyship to visit the next room, i'll presently acquaint the queen of your most noble offer; who but to-day hammer'd of this design, but durst not tempt a minister of honour, lest she should be denied. paulina tell her, emilia. i'll use that tongue i have: if wit flow from't as boldness from my bosom, let 't not be doubted i shall do good. emilia now be you blest for it! i'll to the queen: please you, come something nearer. gaoler madam, if't please the queen to send the babe, i know not what i shall incur to pass it, having no warrant. paulina you need not fear it, sir: this child was prisoner to the womb and is by law and process of great nature thence freed and enfranchised, not a party to the anger of the king nor guilty of, if any be, the trespass of the queen. gaoler i do believe it. paulina do not you fear: upon mine honour, i will stand betwixt you and danger. [exeunt] the winter's tale act ii scene iii a room in leontes' palace. [enter leontes, antigonus, lords, and servants] leontes nor night nor day no rest: it is but weakness to bear the matter thus; mere weakness. if the cause were not in being,--part o' the cause, she the adulteress; for the harlot king is quite beyond mine arm, out of the blank and level of my brain, plot-proof; but she i can hook to me: say that she were gone, given to the fire, a moiety of my rest might come to me again. who's there? first servant my lord? leontes how does the boy? first servant he took good rest to-night; 'tis hoped his sickness is discharged. leontes to see his nobleness! conceiving the dishonour of his mother, he straight declined, droop'd, took it deeply, fasten'd and fix'd the shame on't in himself, threw off his spirit, his appetite, his sleep, and downright languish'd. leave me solely: go, see how he fares. [exit servant] fie, fie! no thought of him: the thought of my revenges that way recoil upon me: in himself too mighty, and in his parties, his alliance; let him be until a time may serve: for present vengeance, take it on her. camillo and polixenes laugh at me, make their pastime at my sorrow: they should not laugh if i could reach them, nor shall she within my power. [enter paulina, with a child] first lord you must not enter. paulina nay, rather, good my lords, be second to me: fear you his tyrannous passion more, alas, than the queen's life? a gracious innocent soul, more free than he is jealous. antigonus that's enough. second servant madam, he hath not slept tonight; commanded none should come at him. paulina not so hot, good sir: i come to bring him sleep. 'tis such as you, that creep like shadows by him and do sigh at each his needless heavings, such as you nourish the cause of his awaking: i do come with words as medicinal as true, honest as either, to purge him of that humour that presses him from sleep. leontes what noise there, ho? paulina no noise, my lord; but needful conference about some gossips for your highness. leontes how! away with that audacious lady! antigonus, i charged thee that she should not come about me: i knew she would. antigonus i told her so, my lord, on your displeasure's peril and on mine, she should not visit you. leontes what, canst not rule her? paulina from all dishonesty he can: in this, unless he take the course that you have done, commit me for committing honour, trust it, he shall not rule me. antigonus la you now, you hear: when she will take the rein i let her run; but she'll not stumble. paulina good my liege, i come; and, i beseech you, hear me, who profess myself your loyal servant, your physician, your most obedient counsellor, yet that dare less appear so in comforting your evils, than such as most seem yours: i say, i come from your good queen. leontes good queen! paulina good queen, my lord, good queen; i say good queen; and would by combat make her good, so were i a man, the worst about you. leontes force her hence. paulina let him that makes but trifles of his eyes first hand me: on mine own accord i'll off; but first i'll do my errand. the good queen, for she is good, hath brought you forth a daughter; here 'tis; commends it to your blessing. [laying down the child] leontes out! a mankind witch! hence with her, out o' door: a most intelligencing bawd! paulina not so: i am as ignorant in that as you in so entitling me, and no less honest than you are mad; which is enough, i'll warrant, as this world goes, to pass for honest. leontes traitors! will you not push her out? give her the bastard. thou dotard! thou art woman-tired, unroosted by thy dame partlet here. take up the bastard; take't up, i say; give't to thy crone. paulina for ever unvenerable be thy hands, if thou takest up the princess by that forced baseness which he has put upon't! leontes he dreads his wife. paulina so i would you did; then 'twere past all doubt you'ld call your children yours. leontes a nest of traitors! antigonus i am none, by this good light. paulina nor i, nor any but one that's here, and that's himself, for he the sacred honour of himself, his queen's, his hopeful son's, his babe's, betrays to slander, whose sting is sharper than the sword's; and will not- for, as the case now stands, it is a curse he cannot be compell'd to't--once remove the root of his opinion, which is rotten as ever oak or stone was sound. leontes a callat of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband and now baits me! this brat is none of mine; it is the issue of polixenes: hence with it, and together with the dam commit them to the fire! paulina it is yours; and, might we lay the old proverb to your charge, so like you, 'tis the worse. behold, my lords, although the print be little, the whole matter and copy of the father, eye, nose, lip, the trick of's frown, his forehead, nay, the valley, the pretty dimples of his chin and cheek, his smiles, the very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger: and thou, good goddess nature, which hast made it so like to him that got it, if thou hast the ordering of the mind too, 'mongst all colours no yellow in't, lest she suspect, as he does, her children not her husband's! leontes a gross hag and, lozel, thou art worthy to be hang'd, that wilt not stay her tongue. antigonus hang all the husbands that cannot do that feat, you'll leave yourself hardly one subject. leontes once more, take her hence. paulina a most unworthy and unnatural lord can do no more. leontes i'll ha' thee burnt. paulina i care not: it is an heretic that makes the fire, not she which burns in't. i'll not call you tyrant; but this most cruel usage of your queen, not able to produce more accusation than your own weak-hinged fancy, something savours of tyranny and will ignoble make you, yea, scandalous to the world. leontes on your allegiance, out of the chamber with her! were i a tyrant, where were her life? she durst not call me so, if she did know me one. away with her! paulina i pray you, do not push me; i'll be gone. look to your babe, my lord; 'tis yours: jove send her a better guiding spirit! what needs these hands? you, that are thus so tender o'er his follies, will never do him good, not one of you. so, so: farewell; we are gone. [exit] leontes thou, traitor, hast set on thy wife to this. my child? away with't! even thou, that hast a heart so tender o'er it, take it hence and see it instantly consumed with fire; even thou and none but thou. take it up straight: within this hour bring me word 'tis done, and by good testimony, or i'll seize thy life, with what thou else call'st thine. if thou refuse and wilt encounter with my wrath, say so; the bastard brains with these my proper hands shall i dash out. go, take it to the fire; for thou set'st on thy wife. antigonus i did not, sir: these lords, my noble fellows, if they please, can clear me in't. lords we can: my royal liege, he is not guilty of her coming hither. leontes you're liars all. first lord beseech your highness, give us better credit: we have always truly served you, and beseech you so to esteem of us, and on our knees we beg, as recompense of our dear services past and to come, that you do change this purpose, which being so horrible, so bloody, must lead on to some foul issue: we all kneel. leontes i am a feather for each wind that blows: shall i live on to see this bastard kneel and call me father? better burn it now than curse it then. but be it; let it live. it shall not neither. you, sir, come you hither; you that have been so tenderly officious with lady margery, your midwife there, to save this bastard's life,--for 'tis a bastard, so sure as this beard's grey, --what will you adventure to save this brat's life? antigonus any thing, my lord, that my ability may undergo and nobleness impose: at least thus much: i'll pawn the little blood which i have left to save the innocent: any thing possible. leontes it shall be possible. swear by this sword thou wilt perform my bidding. antigonus i will, my lord. leontes mark and perform it, see'st thou! for the fail of any point in't shall not only be death to thyself but to thy lewd-tongued wife, whom for this time we pardon. we enjoin thee, as thou art liege-man to us, that thou carry this female bastard hence and that thou bear it to some remote and desert place quite out of our dominions, and that there thou leave it, without more mercy, to its own protection and favour of the climate. as by strange fortune it came to us, i do in justice charge thee, on thy soul's peril and thy body's torture, that thou commend it strangely to some place where chance may nurse or end it. take it up. antigonus i swear to do this, though a present death had been more merciful. come on, poor babe: some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens to be thy nurses! wolves and bears, they say casting their savageness aside have done like offices of pity. sir, be prosperous in more than this deed does require! and blessing against this cruelty fight on thy side, poor thing, condemn'd to loss! [exit with the child] leontes no, i'll not rear another's issue. [enter a servant] servant please your highness, posts from those you sent to the oracle are come an hour since: cleomenes and dion, being well arrived from delphos, are both landed, hasting to the court. first lord so please you, sir, their speed hath been beyond account. leontes twenty-three days they have been absent: 'tis good speed; foretells the great apollo suddenly will have the truth of this appear. prepare you, lords; summon a session, that we may arraign our most disloyal lady, for, as she hath been publicly accused, so shall she have a just and open trial. while she lives my heart will be a burthen to me. leave me, and think upon my bidding. [exeunt] the winter's tale act iii scene i a sea-port in sicilia. [enter cleomenes and dion] cleomenes the climate's delicate, the air most sweet, fertile the isle, the temple much surpassing the common praise it bears. dion i shall report, for most it caught me, the celestial habits, methinks i so should term them, and the reverence of the grave wearers. o, the sacrifice! how ceremonious, solemn and unearthly it was i' the offering! cleomenes but of all, the burst and the ear-deafening voice o' the oracle, kin to jove's thunder, so surprised my sense. that i was nothing. dion if the event o' the journey prove as successful to the queen,--o be't so!- as it hath been to us rare, pleasant, speedy, the time is worth the use on't. cleomenes great apollo turn all to the best! these proclamations, so forcing faults upon hermione, i little like. dion the violent carriage of it will clear or end the business: when the oracle, thus by apollo's great divine seal'd up, shall the contents discover, something rare even then will rush to knowledge. go: fresh horses! and gracious be the issue! [exeunt] the winter's tale act iii scene ii a court of justice. [enter leontes, lords, and officers] leontes this sessions, to our great grief we pronounce, even pushes 'gainst our heart: the party tried the daughter of a king, our wife, and one of us too much beloved. let us be clear'd of being tyrannous, since we so openly proceed in justice, which shall have due course, even to the guilt or the purgation. produce the prisoner. officer it is his highness' pleasure that the queen appear in person here in court. silence! [enter hermione guarded; paulina and ladies attending] leontes read the indictment. officer [reads] hermione, queen to the worthy leontes, king of sicilia, thou art here accused and arraigned of high treason, in committing adultery with polixenes, king of bohemia, and conspiring with camillo to take away the life of our sovereign lord the king, thy royal husband: the pretence whereof being by circumstances partly laid open, thou, hermione, contrary to the faith and allegiance of a true subject, didst counsel and aid them, for their better safety, to fly away by night. hermione since what i am to say must be but that which contradicts my accusation and the testimony on my part no other but what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me to say 'not guilty:' mine integrity being counted falsehood, shall, as i express it, be so received. but thus: if powers divine behold our human actions, as they do, i doubt not then but innocence shall make false accusation blush and tyranny tremble at patience. you, my lord, best know, who least will seem to do so, my past life hath been as continent, as chaste, as true, as i am now unhappy; which is more than history can pattern, though devised and play'd to take spectators. for behold me a fellow of the royal bed, which owe a moiety of the throne a great king's daughter, the mother to a hopeful prince, here standing to prate and talk for life and honour 'fore who please to come and hear. for life, i prize it as i weigh grief, which i would spare: for honour, 'tis a derivative from me to mine, and only that i stand for. i appeal to your own conscience, sir, before polixenes came to your court, how i was in your grace, how merited to be so; since he came, with what encounter so uncurrent i have strain'd to appear thus: if one jot beyond the bound of honour, or in act or will that way inclining, harden'd be the hearts of all that hear me, and my near'st of kin cry fie upon my grave! leontes i ne'er heard yet that any of these bolder vices wanted less impudence to gainsay what they did than to perform it first. hermione that's true enough; through 'tis a saying, sir, not due to me. leontes you will not own it. hermione more than mistress of which comes to me in name of fault, i must not at all acknowledge. for polixenes, with whom i am accused, i do confess i loved him as in honour he required, with such a kind of love as might become a lady like me, with a love even such, so and no other, as yourself commanded: which not to have done i think had been in me both disobedience and ingratitude to you and toward your friend, whose love had spoke, even since it could speak, from an infant, freely that it was yours. now, for conspiracy, i know not how it tastes; though it be dish'd for me to try how: all i know of it is that camillo was an honest man; and why he left your court, the gods themselves, wotting no more than i, are ignorant. leontes you knew of his departure, as you know what you have underta'en to do in's absence. hermione sir, you speak a language that i understand not: my life stands in the level of your dreams, which i'll lay down. leontes your actions are my dreams; you had a bastard by polixenes, and i but dream'd it. as you were past all shame,- those of your fact are so--so past all truth: which to deny concerns more than avails; for as thy brat hath been cast out, like to itself, no father owning it,--which is, indeed, more criminal in thee than it,--so thou shalt feel our justice, in whose easiest passage look for no less than death. hermione sir, spare your threats: the bug which you would fright me with i seek. to me can life be no commodity: the crown and comfort of my life, your favour, i do give lost; for i do feel it gone, but know not how it went. my second joy and first-fruits of my body, from his presence i am barr'd, like one infectious. my third comfort starr'd most unluckily, is from my breast, the innocent milk in its most innocent mouth, haled out to murder: myself on every post proclaimed a strumpet: with immodest hatred the child-bed privilege denied, which 'longs to women of all fashion; lastly, hurried here to this place, i' the open air, before i have got strength of limit. now, my liege, tell me what blessings i have here alive, that i should fear to die? therefore proceed. but yet hear this: mistake me not; no life, i prize it not a straw, but for mine honour, which i would free, if i shall be condemn'd upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else but what your jealousies awake, i tell you 'tis rigor and not law. your honours all, i do refer me to the oracle: apollo be my judge! first lord this your request is altogether just: therefore bring forth, and in apollos name, his oracle. [exeunt certain officers] hermione the emperor of russia was my father: o that he were alive, and here beholding his daughter's trial! that he did but see the flatness of my misery, yet with eyes of pity, not revenge! [re-enter officers, with cleomenes and dion] officer you here shall swear upon this sword of justice, that you, cleomenes and dion, have been both at delphos, and from thence have brought the seal'd-up oracle, by the hand deliver'd of great apollo's priest; and that, since then, you have not dared to break the holy seal nor read the secrets in't. cleomenes | | all this we swear. dion | leontes break up the seals and read. officer [reads] hermione is chaste; polixenes blameless; camillo a true subject; leontes a jealous tyrant; his innocent babe truly begotten; and the king shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found. lords now blessed be the great apollo! hermione praised! leontes hast thou read truth? officer ay, my lord; even so as it is here set down. leontes there is no truth at all i' the oracle: the sessions shall proceed: this is mere falsehood. [enter servant] servant my lord the king, the king! leontes what is the business? servant o sir, i shall be hated to report it! the prince your son, with mere conceit and fear of the queen's speed, is gone. leontes how! gone! servant is dead. leontes apollo's angry; and the heavens themselves do strike at my injustice. [hermione swoons] how now there! paulina this news is mortal to the queen: look down and see what death is doing. leontes take her hence: her heart is but o'ercharged; she will recover: i have too much believed mine own suspicion: beseech you, tenderly apply to her some remedies for life. [exeunt paulina and ladies, with hermione] apollo, pardon my great profaneness 'gainst thine oracle! i'll reconcile me to polixenes, new woo my queen, recall the good camillo, whom i proclaim a man of truth, of mercy; for, being transported by my jealousies to bloody thoughts and to revenge, i chose camillo for the minister to poison my friend polixenes: which had been done, but that the good mind of camillo tardied my swift command, though i with death and with reward did threaten and encourage him, not doing 't and being done: he, most humane and fill'd with honour, to my kingly guest unclasp'd my practise, quit his fortunes here, which you knew great, and to the hazard of all encertainties himself commended, no richer than his honour: how he glisters thorough my rust! and how his pity does my deeds make the blacker! [re-enter paulina] paulina woe the while! o, cut my lace, lest my heart, cracking it, break too. first lord what fit is this, good lady? paulina what studied torments, tyrant, hast for me? what wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling? in leads or oils? what old or newer torture must i receive, whose every word deserves to taste of thy most worst? thy tyranny together working with thy jealousies, fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle for girls of nine, o, think what they have done and then run mad indeed, stark mad! for all thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. that thou betray'dst polixenes,'twas nothing; that did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant and damnable ingrateful: nor was't much, thou wouldst have poison'd good camillo's honour, to have him kill a king: poor trespasses, more monstrous standing by: whereof i reckon the casting forth to crows thy baby-daughter to be or none or little; though a devil would have shed water out of fire ere done't: nor is't directly laid to thee, the death of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts, thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart that could conceive a gross and foolish sire blemish'd his gracious dam: this is not, no, laid to thy answer: but the last,--o lords, when i have said, cry 'woe!' the queen, the queen, the sweet'st, dear'st creature's dead, and vengeance for't not dropp'd down yet. first lord the higher powers forbid! paulina i say she's dead; i'll swear't. if word nor oath prevail not, go and see: if you can bring tincture or lustre in her lip, her eye, heat outwardly or breath within, i'll serve you as i would do the gods. but, o thou tyrant! do not repent these things, for they are heavier than all thy woes can stir; therefore betake thee to nothing but despair. a thousand knees ten thousand years together, naked, fasting, upon a barren mountain and still winter in storm perpetual, could not move the gods to look that way thou wert. leontes go on, go on thou canst not speak too much; i have deserved all tongues to talk their bitterest. first lord say no more: howe'er the business goes, you have made fault i' the boldness of your speech. paulina i am sorry for't: all faults i make, when i shall come to know them, i do repent. alas! i have show'd too much the rashness of a woman: he is touch'd to the noble heart. what's gone and what's past help should be past grief: do not receive affliction at my petition; i beseech you, rather let me be punish'd, that have minded you of what you should forget. now, good my liege sir, royal sir, forgive a foolish woman: the love i bore your queen--lo, fool again!- i'll speak of her no more, nor of your children; i'll not remember you of my own lord, who is lost too: take your patience to you, and i'll say nothing. leontes thou didst speak but well when most the truth; which i receive much better than to be pitied of thee. prithee, bring me to the dead bodies of my queen and son: one grave shall be for both: upon them shall the causes of their death appear, unto our shame perpetual. once a day i'll visit the chapel where they lie, and tears shed there shall be my recreation: so long as nature will bear up with this exercise, so long i daily vow to use it. come and lead me unto these sorrows. [exeunt] the winter's tale act iii scene iii bohemia. a desert country near the sea. [enter antigonus with a child, and a mariner] antigonus thou art perfect then, our ship hath touch'd upon the deserts of bohemia? mariner ay, my lord: and fear we have landed in ill time: the skies look grimly and threaten present blusters. in my conscience, the heavens with that we have in hand are angry and frown upon 's. antigonus their sacred wills be done! go, get aboard; look to thy bark: i'll not be long before i call upon thee. mariner make your best haste, and go not too far i' the land: 'tis like to be loud weather; besides, this place is famous for the creatures of prey that keep upon't. antigonus go thou away: i'll follow instantly. mariner i am glad at heart to be so rid o' the business. [exit] antigonus come, poor babe: i have heard, but not believed, the spirits o' the dead may walk again: if such thing be, thy mother appear'd to me last night, for ne'er was dream so like a waking. to me comes a creature, sometimes her head on one side, some another; i never saw a vessel of like sorrow, so fill'd and so becoming: in pure white robes, like very sanctity, she did approach my cabin where i lay; thrice bow'd before me, and gasping to begin some speech, her eyes became two spouts: the fury spent, anon did this break-from her: 'good antigonus, since fate, against thy better disposition, hath made thy person for the thrower-out of my poor babe, according to thine oath, places remote enough are in bohemia, there weep and leave it crying; and, for the babe is counted lost for ever, perdita, i prithee, call't. for this ungentle business put on thee by my lord, thou ne'er shalt see thy wife paulina more.' and so, with shrieks she melted into air. affrighted much, i did in time collect myself and thought this was so and no slumber. dreams are toys: yet for this once, yea, superstitiously, i will be squared by this. i do believe hermione hath suffer'd death, and that apollo would, this being indeed the issue of king polixenes, it should here be laid, either for life or death, upon the earth of its right father. blossom, speed thee well! there lie, and there thy character: there these; which may, if fortune please, both breed thee, pretty, and still rest thine. the storm begins; poor wretch, that for thy mother's fault art thus exposed to loss and what may follow! weep i cannot, but my heart bleeds; and most accursed am i to be by oath enjoin'd to this. farewell! the day frowns more and more: thou'rt like to have a lullaby too rough: i never saw the heavens so dim by day. a savage clamour! well may i get aboard! this is the chase: i am gone for ever. [exit, pursued by a bear] [enter a shepherd] shepherd i would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting--hark you now! would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather? they have scared away two of my best sheep, which i fear the wolf will sooner find than the master: if any where i have them, 'tis by the seaside, browsing of ivy. good luck, an't be thy will what have we here! mercy on 's, a barne a very pretty barne! a boy or a child, i wonder? a pretty one; a very pretty one: sure, some 'scape: though i am not bookish, yet i can read waiting-gentlewoman in the 'scape. this has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-door-work: they were warmer that got this than the poor thing is here. i'll take it up for pity: yet i'll tarry till my son come; he hallooed but even now. whoa, ho, hoa! [enter clown] clown hilloa, loa! shepherd what, art so near? if thou'lt see a thing to talk on when thou art dead and rotten, come hither. what ailest thou, man? clown i have seen two such sights, by sea and by land! but i am not to say it is a sea, for it is now the sky: betwixt the firmament and it you cannot thrust a bodkin's point. shepherd why, boy, how is it? clown i would you did but see how it chafes, how it rages, how it takes up the shore! but that's not the point. o, the most piteous cry of the poor souls! sometimes to see 'em, and not to see 'em; now the ship boring the moon with her main-mast, and anon swallowed with yest and froth, as you'ld thrust a cork into a hogshead. and then for the land-service, to see how the bear tore out his shoulder-bone; how he cried to me for help and said his name was antigonus, a nobleman. but to make an end of the ship, to see how the sea flap-dragoned it: but, first, how the poor souls roared, and the sea mocked them; and how the poor gentleman roared and the bear mocked him, both roaring louder than the sea or weather. shepherd name of mercy, when was this, boy? clown now, now: i have not winked since i saw these sights: the men are not yet cold under water, nor the bear half dined on the gentleman: he's at it now. shepherd would i had been by, to have helped the old man! clown i would you had been by the ship side, to have helped her: there your charity would have lacked footing. shepherd heavy matters! heavy matters! but look thee here, boy. now bless thyself: thou mettest with things dying, i with things newborn. here's a sight for thee; look thee, a bearing-cloth for a squire's child! look thee here; take up, take up, boy; open't. so, let's see: it was told me i should be rich by the fairies. this is some changeling: open't. what's within, boy? clown you're a made old man: if the sins of your youth are forgiven you, you're well to live. gold! all gold! shepherd this is fairy gold, boy, and 'twill prove so: up with't, keep it close: home, home, the next way. we are lucky, boy; and to be so still requires nothing but secrecy. let my sheep go: come, good boy, the next way home. clown go you the next way with your findings. i'll go see if the bear be gone from the gentleman and how much he hath eaten: they are never curst but when they are hungry: if there be any of him left, i'll bury it. shepherd that's a good deed. if thou mayest discern by that which is left of him what he is, fetch me to the sight of him. clown marry, will i; and you shall help to put him i' the ground. shepherd 'tis a lucky day, boy, and we'll do good deeds on't. [exeunt] the winter's tale act iv scene i: [enter time, the chorus] time i, that please some, try all, both joy and terror of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error, now take upon me, in the name of time, to use my wings. impute it not a crime to me or my swift passage, that i slide o'er sixteen years and leave the growth untried of that wide gap, since it is in my power to o'erthrow law and in one self-born hour to plant and o'erwhelm custom. let me pass the same i am, ere ancient'st order was or what is now received: i witness to the times that brought them in; so shall i do to the freshest things now reigning and make stale the glistering of this present, as my tale now seems to it. your patience this allowing, i turn my glass and give my scene such growing as you had slept between: leontes leaving, the effects of his fond jealousies so grieving that he shuts up himself, imagine me, gentle spectators, that i now may be in fair bohemia, and remember well, i mentioned a son o' the king's, which florizel i now name to you; and with speed so pace to speak of perdita, now grown in grace equal with wondering: what of her ensues i list not prophecy; but let time's news be known when 'tis brought forth. a shepherd's daughter, and what to her adheres, which follows after, is the argument of time. of this allow, if ever you have spent time worse ere now; if never, yet that time himself doth say he wishes earnestly you never may. [exit] the winter's tale act iv scene ii bohemia. the palace of polixenes. [enter polixenes and camillo] polixenes i pray thee, good camillo, be no more importunate: 'tis a sickness denying thee any thing; a death to grant this. camillo it is fifteen years since i saw my country: though i have for the most part been aired abroad, i desire to lay my bones there. besides, the penitent king, my master, hath sent for me; to whose feeling sorrows i might be some allay, or i o'erween to think so, which is another spur to my departure. polixenes as thou lovest me, camillo, wipe not out the rest of thy services by leaving me now: the need i have of thee thine own goodness hath made; better not to have had thee than thus to want thee: thou, having made me businesses which none without thee can sufficiently manage, must either stay to execute them thyself or take away with thee the very services thou hast done; which if i have not enough considered, as too much i cannot, to be more thankful to thee shall be my study, and my profit therein the heaping friendships. of that fatal country, sicilia, prithee speak no more; whose very naming punishes me with the remembrance of that penitent, as thou callest him, and reconciled king, my brother; whose loss of his most precious queen and children are even now to be afresh lamented. say to me, when sawest thou the prince florizel, my son? kings are no less unhappy, their issue not being gracious, than they are in losing them when they have approved their virtues. camillo sir, it is three days since i saw the prince. what his happier affairs may be, are to me unknown: but i have missingly noted, he is of late much retired from court and is less frequent to his princely exercises than formerly he hath appeared. polixenes i have considered so much, camillo, and with some care; so far that i have eyes under my service which look upon his removedness; from whom i have this intelligence, that he is seldom from the house of a most homely shepherd; a man, they say, that from very nothing, and beyond the imagination of his neighbours, is grown into an unspeakable estate. camillo i have heard, sir, of such a man, who hath a daughter of most rare note: the report of her is extended more than can be thought to begin from such a cottage. polixenes that's likewise part of my intelligence; but, i fear, the angle that plucks our son thither. thou shalt accompany us to the place; where we will, not appearing what we are, have some question with the shepherd; from whose simplicity i think it not uneasy to get the cause of my son's resort thither. prithee, be my present partner in this business, and lay aside the thoughts of sicilia. camillo i willingly obey your command. polixenes my best camillo! we must disguise ourselves. [exeunt] the winter's tale act iv scene iii a road near the shepherd's cottage. [enter autolycus, singing] autolycus when daffodils begin to peer, with heigh! the doxy over the dale, why, then comes in the sweet o' the year; for the red blood reigns in the winter's pale. the white sheet bleaching on the hedge, with heigh! the sweet birds, o, how they sing! doth set my pugging tooth on edge; for a quart of ale is a dish for a king. the lark, that tirra-lyra chants, with heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay, are summer songs for me and my aunts, while we lie tumbling in the hay. i have served prince florizel and in my time wore three-pile; but now i am out of service: but shall i go mourn for that, my dear? the pale moon shines by night: and when i wander here and there, i then do most go right. if tinkers may have leave to live, and bear the sow-skin budget, then my account i well may, give, and in the stocks avouch it. my traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen. my father named me autolycus; who being, as i am, littered under mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. with die and drab i purchased this caparison, and my revenue is the silly cheat. gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway: beating and hanging are terrors to me: for the life to come, i sleep out the thought of it. a prize! a prize! [enter clown] clown let me see: every 'leven wether tods; every tod yields pound and odd shilling; fifteen hundred shorn. what comes the wool to? autolycus [aside] if the springe hold, the cock's mine. clown i cannot do't without counters. let me see; what am i to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? three pound of sugar, five pound of currants, rice,--what will this sister of mine do with rice? but my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. she hath made me four and twenty nose-gays for the shearers, three-man-song-men all, and very good ones; but they are most of them means and bases; but one puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to horn-pipes. i must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates?--none, that's out of my note; nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that i may beg; four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun. autolycus o that ever i was born! [grovelling on the ground] clown i' the name of me- autolycus o, help me, help me! pluck but off these rags; and then, death, death! clown alack, poor soul! thou hast need of more rags to lay on thee, rather than have these off. autolycus o sir, the loathsomeness of them offends me more than the stripes i have received, which are mighty ones and millions. clown alas, poor man! a million of beating may come to a great matter. autolycus i am robbed, sir, and beaten; my money and apparel ta'en from me, and these detestable things put upon me. clown what, by a horseman, or a footman? autolycus a footman, sweet sir, a footman. clown indeed, he should be a footman by the garments he has left with thee: if this be a horseman's coat, it hath seen very hot service. lend me thy hand, i'll help thee: come, lend me thy hand. autolycus o, good sir, tenderly, o! clown alas, poor soul! autolycus o, good sir, softly, good sir! i fear, sir, my shoulder-blade is out. clown how now! canst stand? autolycus [picking his pocket] softly, dear sir; good sir, softly. you ha' done me a charitable office. clown dost lack any money? i have a little money for thee. autolycus no, good sweet sir; no, i beseech you, sir: i have a kinsman not past three quarters of a mile hence, unto whom i was going; i shall there have money, or any thing i want: offer me no money, i pray you; that kills my heart. clown what manner of fellow was he that robbed you? autolycus a fellow, sir, that i have known to go about with troll-my-dames; i knew him once a servant of the prince: i cannot tell, good sir, for which of his virtues it was, but he was certainly whipped out of the court. clown his vices, you would say; there's no virtue whipped out of the court: they cherish it to make it stay there; and yet it will no more but abide. autolycus vices, i would say, sir. i know this man well: he hath been since an ape-bearer; then a process-server, a bailiff; then he compassed a motion of the prodigal son, and married a tinker's wife within a mile where my land and living lies; and, having flown over many knavish professions, he settled only in rogue: some call him autolycus. clown out upon him! prig, for my life, prig: he haunts wakes, fairs and bear-baitings. autolycus very true, sir; he, sir, he; that's the rogue that put me into this apparel. clown not a more cowardly rogue in all bohemia: if you had but looked big and spit at him, he'ld have run. autolycus i must confess to you, sir, i am no fighter: i am false of heart that way; and that he knew, i warrant him. clown how do you now? autolycus sweet sir, much better than i was; i can stand and walk: i will even take my leave of you, and pace softly towards my kinsman's. clown shall i bring thee on the way? autolycus no, good-faced sir; no, sweet sir. clown then fare thee well: i must go buy spices for our sheep-shearing. autolycus prosper you, sweet sir! [exit clown] your purse is not hot enough to purchase your spice. i'll be with you at your sheep-shearing too: if i make not this cheat bring out another and the shearers prove sheep, let me be unrolled and my name put in the book of virtue! [sings] jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, and merrily hent the stile-a: a merry heart goes all the day, your sad tires in a mile-a. [exit] the winter's tale act iv scene iv the shepherd's cottage. [enter florizel and perdita] florizel these your unusual weeds to each part of you do give a life: no shepherdess, but flora peering in april's front. this your sheep-shearing is as a meeting of the petty gods, and you the queen on't. perdita sir, my gracious lord, to chide at your extremes it not becomes me: o, pardon, that i name them! your high self, the gracious mark o' the land, you have obscured with a swain's wearing, and me, poor lowly maid, most goddess-like prank'd up: but that our feasts in every mess have folly and the feeders digest it with a custom, i should blush to see you so attired, sworn, i think, to show myself a glass. florizel i bless the time when my good falcon made her flight across thy father's ground. perdita now jove afford you cause! to me the difference forges dread; your greatness hath not been used to fear. even now i tremble to think your father, by some accident, should pass this way as you did: o, the fates! how would he look, to see his work so noble vilely bound up? what would he say? or how should i, in these my borrow'd flaunts, behold the sternness of his presence? florizel apprehend nothing but jollity. the gods themselves, humbling their deities to love, have taken the shapes of beasts upon them: jupiter became a bull, and bellow'd; the green neptune a ram, and bleated; and the fire-robed god, golden apollo, a poor humble swain, as i seem now. their transformations were never for a piece of beauty rarer, nor in a way so chaste, since my desires run not before mine honour, nor my lusts burn hotter than my faith. perdita o, but, sir, your resolution cannot hold, when 'tis opposed, as it must be, by the power of the king: one of these two must be necessities, which then will speak, that you must change this purpose, or i my life. florizel thou dearest perdita, with these forced thoughts, i prithee, darken not the mirth o' the feast. or i'll be thine, my fair, or not my father's. for i cannot be mine own, nor any thing to any, if i be not thine. to this i am most constant, though destiny say no. be merry, gentle; strangle such thoughts as these with any thing that you behold the while. your guests are coming: lift up your countenance, as it were the day of celebration of that nuptial which we two have sworn shall come. perdita o lady fortune, stand you auspicious! florizel see, your guests approach: address yourself to entertain them sprightly, and let's be red with mirth. [enter shepherd, clown, mopsa, dorcas, and others, with polixenes and camillo disguised] shepherd fie, daughter! when my old wife lived, upon this day she was both pantler, butler, cook, both dame and servant; welcomed all, served all; would sing her song and dance her turn; now here, at upper end o' the table, now i' the middle; on his shoulder, and his; her face o' fire with labour and the thing she took to quench it, she would to each one sip. you are retired, as if you were a feasted one and not the hostess of the meeting: pray you, bid these unknown friends to's welcome; for it is a way to make us better friends, more known. come, quench your blushes and present yourself that which you are, mistress o' the feast: come on, and bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing, as your good flock shall prosper. perdita [to polixenes] sir, welcome: it is my father's will i should take on me the hostess-ship o' the day. [to camillo] you're welcome, sir. give me those flowers there, dorcas. reverend sirs, for you there's rosemary and rue; these keep seeming and savour all the winter long: grace and remembrance be to you both, and welcome to our shearing! polixenes shepherdess, a fair one are you--well you fit our ages with flowers of winter. perdita sir, the year growing ancient, not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the season are our carnations and streak'd gillyvors, which some call nature's bastards: of that kind our rustic garden's barren; and i care not to get slips of them. polixenes wherefore, gentle maiden, do you neglect them? perdita for i have heard it said there is an art which in their piedness shares with great creating nature. polixenes say there be; yet nature is made better by no mean but nature makes that mean: so, over that art which you say adds to nature, is an art that nature makes. you see, sweet maid, we marry a gentler scion to the wildest stock, and make conceive a bark of baser kind by bud of nobler race: this is an art which does mend nature, change it rather, but the art itself is nature. perdita so it is. polixenes then make your garden rich in gillyvors, and do not call them bastards. perdita i'll not put the dibble in earth to set one slip of them; no more than were i painted i would wish this youth should say 'twere well and only therefore desire to breed by me. here's flowers for you; hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram; the marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun and with him rises weeping: these are flowers of middle summer, and i think they are given to men of middle age. you're very welcome. camillo i should leave grazing, were i of your flock, and only live by gazing. perdita out, alas! you'd be so lean, that blasts of january would blow you through and through. now, my fair'st friend, i would i had some flowers o' the spring that might become your time of day; and yours, and yours, that wear upon your virgin branches yet your maidenheads growing: o proserpina, for the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall from dis's waggon! daffodils, that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of march with beauty; violets dim, but sweeter than the lids of juno's eyes or cytherea's breath; pale primroses that die unmarried, ere they can behold bight phoebus in his strength--a malady most incident to maids; bold oxlips and the crown imperial; lilies of all kinds, the flower-de-luce being one! o, these i lack, to make you garlands of, and my sweet friend, to strew him o'er and o'er! florizel what, like a corse? perdita no, like a bank for love to lie and play on; not like a corse; or if, not to be buried, but quick and in mine arms. come, take your flowers: methinks i play as i have seen them do in whitsun pastorals: sure this robe of mine does change my disposition. florizel what you do still betters what is done. when you speak, sweet. i'ld have you do it ever: when you sing, i'ld have you buy and sell so, so give alms, pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs, to sing them too: when you do dance, i wish you a wave o' the sea, that you might ever do nothing but that; move still, still so, and own no other function: each your doing, so singular in each particular, crowns what you are doing in the present deed, that all your acts are queens. perdita o doricles, your praises are too large: but that your youth, and the true blood which peepeth fairly through't, do plainly give you out an unstain'd shepherd, with wisdom i might fear, my doricles, you woo'd me the false way. florizel i think you have as little skill to fear as i have purpose to put you to't. but come; our dance, i pray: your hand, my perdita: so turtles pair, that never mean to part. perdita i'll swear for 'em. polixenes this is the prettiest low-born lass that ever ran on the green-sward: nothing she does or seems but smacks of something greater than herself, too noble for this place. camillo he tells her something that makes her blood look out: good sooth, she is the queen of curds and cream. clown come on, strike up! dorcas mopsa must be your mistress: marry, garlic, to mend her kissing with! mopsa now, in good time! clown not a word, a word; we stand upon our manners. come, strike up! [music. here a dance of shepherds and shepherdesses] polixenes pray, good shepherd, what fair swain is this which dances with your daughter? shepherd they call him doricles; and boasts himself to have a worthy feeding: but i have it upon his own report and i believe it; he looks like sooth. he says he loves my daughter: i think so too; for never gazed the moon upon the water as he'll stand and read as 'twere my daughter's eyes: and, to be plain. i think there is not half a kiss to choose who loves another best. polixenes she dances featly. shepherd so she does any thing; though i report it, that should be silent: if young doricles do light upon her, she shall bring him that which he not dreams of. [enter servant] servant o master, if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you would never dance again after a tabour and pipe; no, the bagpipe could not move you: he sings several tunes faster than you'll tell money; he utters them as he had eaten ballads and all men's ears grew to his tunes. clown he could never come better; he shall come in. i love a ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably. servant he hath songs for man or woman, of all sizes; no milliner can so fit his customers with gloves: he has the prettiest love-songs for maids; so without bawdry, which is strange; with such delicate burthens of dildos and fadings, 'jump her and thump her;' and where some stretch-mouthed rascal would, as it were, mean mischief and break a foul gap into the matter, he makes the maid to answer 'whoop, do me no harm, good man;' puts him off, slights him, with 'whoop, do me no harm, good man.' polixenes this is a brave fellow. clown believe me, thou talkest of an admirable conceited fellow. has he any unbraided wares? servant he hath ribbons of an the colours i' the rainbow; points more than all the lawyers in bohemia can learnedly handle, though they come to him by the gross: inkles, caddisses, cambrics, lawns: why, he sings 'em over as they were gods or goddesses; you would think a smock were a she-angel, he so chants to the sleeve-hand and the work about the square on't. clown prithee bring him in; and let him approach singing. perdita forewarn him that he use no scurrilous words in 's tunes. [exit servant] clown you have of these pedlars, that have more in them than you'ld think, sister. perdita ay, good brother, or go about to think. [enter autolycus, singing] autolycus lawn as white as driven snow; cyprus black as e'er was crow; gloves as sweet as damask roses; masks for faces and for noses; bugle bracelet, necklace amber, perfume for a lady's chamber; golden quoifs and stomachers, for my lads to give their dears: pins and poking-sticks of steel, what maids lack from head to heel: come buy of me, come; come buy, come buy; buy lads, or else your lasses cry: come buy. clown if i were not in love with mopsa, thou shouldst take no money of me; but being enthralled as i am, it will also be the bondage of certain ribbons and gloves. mopsa i was promised them against the feast; but they come not too late now. dorcas he hath promised you more than that, or there be liars. mopsa he hath paid you all he promised you; may be, he has paid you more, which will shame you to give him again. clown is there no manners left among maids? will they wear their plackets where they should bear their faces? is there not milking-time, when you are going to bed, or kiln-hole, to whistle off these secrets, but you must be tittle-tattling before all our guests? 'tis well they are whispering: clamour your tongues, and not a word more. mopsa i have done. come, you promised me a tawdry-lace and a pair of sweet gloves. clown have i not told thee how i was cozened by the way and lost all my money? autolycus and indeed, sir, there are cozeners abroad; therefore it behoves men to be wary. clown fear not thou, man, thou shalt lose nothing here. autolycus i hope so, sir; for i have about me many parcels of charge. clown what hast here? ballads? mopsa pray now, buy some: i love a ballad in print o' life, for then we are sure they are true. autolycus here's one to a very doleful tune, how a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burthen and how she longed to eat adders' heads and toads carbonadoed. mopsa is it true, think you? autolycus very true, and but a month old. dorcas bless me from marrying a usurer! autolycus here's the midwife's name to't, one mistress tale-porter, and five or six honest wives that were present. why should i carry lies abroad? mopsa pray you now, buy it. clown come on, lay it by: and let's first see moe ballads; we'll buy the other things anon. autolycus here's another ballad of a fish, that appeared upon the coast on wednesday the four-score of april, forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids: it was thought she was a woman and was turned into a cold fish for she would not exchange flesh with one that loved her: the ballad is very pitiful and as true. dorcas is it true too, think you? autolycus five justices' hands at it, and witnesses more than my pack will hold. clown lay it by too: another. autolycus this is a merry ballad, but a very pretty one. mopsa let's have some merry ones. autolycus why, this is a passing merry one and goes to the tune of 'two maids wooing a man:' there's scarce a maid westward but she sings it; 'tis in request, i can tell you. mopsa we can both sing it: if thou'lt bear a part, thou shalt hear; 'tis in three parts. dorcas we had the tune on't a month ago. autolycus i can bear my part; you must know 'tis my occupation; have at it with you. [song] autolycus get you hence, for i must go where it fits not you to know. dorcas whither? mopsa o, whither? dorcas whither? mopsa it becomes thy oath full well, thou to me thy secrets tell. dorcas me too, let me go thither. mopsa or thou goest to the orange or mill. dorcas if to either, thou dost ill. autolycus neither. dorcas what, neither? autolycus neither. dorcas thou hast sworn my love to be. mopsa thou hast sworn it more to me: then whither goest? say, whither? clown we'll have this song out anon by ourselves: my father and the gentlemen are in sad talk, and we'll not trouble them. come, bring away thy pack after me. wenches, i'll buy for you both. pedlar, let's have the first choice. follow me, girls. [exit with dorcas and mopsa] autolycus and you shall pay well for 'em. [follows singing] will you buy any tape, or lace for your cape, my dainty duck, my dear-a? any silk, any thread, any toys for your head, of the new'st and finest, finest wear-a? come to the pedlar; money's a medler. that doth utter all men's ware-a. [exit] [re-enter servant] servant master, there is three carters, three shepherds, three neat-herds, three swine-herds, that have made themselves all men of hair, they call themselves saltiers, and they have a dance which the wenches say is a gallimaufry of gambols, because they are not in't; but they themselves are o' the mind, if it be not too rough for some that know little but bowling, it will please plentifully. shepherd away! we'll none on 't: here has been too much homely foolery already. i know, sir, we weary you. polixenes you weary those that refresh us: pray, let's see these four threes of herdsmen. servant one three of them, by their own report, sir, hath danced before the king; and not the worst of the three but jumps twelve foot and a half by the squier. shepherd leave your prating: since these good men are pleased, let them come in; but quickly now. servant why, they stay at door, sir. [exit] [here a dance of twelve satyrs] polixenes o, father, you'll know more of that hereafter. [to camillo] is it not too far gone? 'tis time to part them. he's simple and tells much. [to florizel] how now, fair shepherd! your heart is full of something that does take your mind from feasting. sooth, when i was young and handed love as you do, i was wont to load my she with knacks: i would have ransack'd the pedlar's silken treasury and have pour'd it to her acceptance; you have let him go and nothing marted with him. if your lass interpretation should abuse and call this your lack of love or bounty, you were straited for a reply, at least if you make a care of happy holding her. florizel old sir, i know she prizes not such trifles as these are: the gifts she looks from me are pack'd and lock'd up in my heart; which i have given already, but not deliver'd. o, hear me breathe my life before this ancient sir, who, it should seem, hath sometime loved! i take thy hand, this hand, as soft as dove's down and as white as it, or ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow that's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er. polixenes what follows this? how prettily the young swain seems to wash the hand was fair before! i have put you out: but to your protestation; let me hear what you profess. florizel do, and be witness to 't. polixenes and this my neighbour too? florizel and he, and more than he, and men, the earth, the heavens, and all: that, were i crown'd the most imperial monarch, thereof most worthy, were i the fairest youth that ever made eye swerve, had force and knowledge more than was ever man's, i would not prize them without her love; for her employ them all; commend them and condemn them to her service or to their own perdition. polixenes fairly offer'd. camillo this shows a sound affection. shepherd but, my daughter, say you the like to him? perdita i cannot speak so well, nothing so well; no, nor mean better: by the pattern of mine own thoughts i cut out the purity of his. shepherd take hands, a bargain! and, friends unknown, you shall bear witness to 't: i give my daughter to him, and will make her portion equal his. florizel o, that must be i' the virtue of your daughter: one being dead, i shall have more than you can dream of yet; enough then for your wonder. but, come on, contract us 'fore these witnesses. shepherd come, your hand; and, daughter, yours. polixenes soft, swain, awhile, beseech you; have you a father? florizel i have: but what of him? polixenes knows he of this? florizel he neither does nor shall. polixenes methinks a father is at the nuptial of his son a guest that best becomes the table. pray you once more, is not your father grown incapable of reasonable affairs? is he not stupid with age and altering rheums? can he speak? hear? know man from man? dispute his own estate? lies he not bed-rid? and again does nothing but what he did being childish? florizel no, good sir; he has his health and ampler strength indeed than most have of his age. polixenes by my white beard, you offer him, if this be so, a wrong something unfilial: reason my son should choose himself a wife, but as good reason the father, all whose joy is nothing else but fair posterity, should hold some counsel in such a business. florizel i yield all this; but for some other reasons, my grave sir, which 'tis not fit you know, i not acquaint my father of this business. polixenes let him know't. florizel he shall not. polixenes prithee, let him. florizel no, he must not. shepherd let him, my son: he shall not need to grieve at knowing of thy choice. florizel come, come, he must not. mark our contract. polixenes mark your divorce, young sir, [discovering himself] whom son i dare not call; thou art too base to be acknowledged: thou a sceptre's heir, that thus affect'st a sheep-hook! thou old traitor, i am sorry that by hanging thee i can but shorten thy life one week. and thou, fresh piece of excellent witchcraft, who of force must know the royal fool thou copest with,- shepherd o, my heart! polixenes i'll have thy beauty scratch'd with briers, and made more homely than thy state. for thee, fond boy, if i may ever know thou dost but sigh that thou no more shalt see this knack, as never i mean thou shalt, we'll bar thee from succession; not hold thee of our blood, no, not our kin, far than deucalion off: mark thou my words: follow us to the court. thou churl, for this time, though full of our displeasure, yet we free thee from the dead blow of it. and you, enchantment.- worthy enough a herdsman: yea, him too, that makes himself, but for our honour therein, unworthy thee,--if ever henceforth thou these rural latches to his entrance open, or hoop his body more with thy embraces, i will devise a death as cruel for thee as thou art tender to't. [exit] perdita even here undone! i was not much afeard; for once or twice i was about to speak and tell him plainly, the selfsame sun that shines upon his court hides not his visage from our cottage but looks on alike. will't please you, sir, be gone? i told you what would come of this: beseech you, of your own state take care: this dream of mine,- being now awake, i'll queen it no inch farther, but milk my ewes and weep. camillo why, how now, father! speak ere thou diest. shepherd i cannot speak, nor think nor dare to know that which i know. o sir! you have undone a man of fourscore three, that thought to fill his grave in quiet, yea, to die upon the bed my father died, to lie close by his honest bones: but now some hangman must put on my shroud and lay me where no priest shovels in dust. o cursed wretch, that knew'st this was the prince, and wouldst adventure to mingle faith with him! undone! undone! if i might die within this hour, i have lived to die when i desire. [exit] florizel why look you so upon me? i am but sorry, not afeard; delay'd, but nothing alter'd: what i was, i am; more straining on for plucking back, not following my leash unwillingly. camillo gracious my lord, you know your father's temper: at this time he will allow no speech, which i do guess you do not purpose to him; and as hardly will he endure your sight as yet, i fear: then, till the fury of his highness settle, come not before him. florizel i not purpose it. i think, camillo? camillo even he, my lord. perdita how often have i told you 'twould be thus! how often said, my dignity would last but till 'twere known! florizel it cannot fail but by the violation of my faith; and then let nature crush the sides o' the earth together and mar the seeds within! lift up thy looks: from my succession wipe me, father; i am heir to my affection. camillo be advised. florizel i am, and by my fancy: if my reason will thereto be obedient, i have reason; if not, my senses, better pleased with madness, do bid it welcome. camillo this is desperate, sir. florizel so call it: but it does fulfil my vow; i needs must think it honesty. camillo, not for bohemia, nor the pomp that may be thereat glean'd, for all the sun sees or the close earth wombs or the profound sea hides in unknown fathoms, will i break my oath to this my fair beloved: therefore, i pray you, as you have ever been my father's honour'd friend, when he shall miss me,--as, in faith, i mean not to see him any more,--cast your good counsels upon his passion; let myself and fortune tug for the time to come. this you may know and so deliver, i am put to sea with her whom here i cannot hold on shore; and most opportune to our need i have a vessel rides fast by, but not prepared for this design. what course i mean to hold shall nothing benefit your knowledge, nor concern me the reporting. camillo o my lord! i would your spirit were easier for advice, or stronger for your need. florizel hark, perdita [drawing her aside] i'll hear you by and by. camillo he's irremoveable, resolved for flight. now were i happy, if his going i could frame to serve my turn, save him from danger, do him love and honour, purchase the sight again of dear sicilia and that unhappy king, my master, whom i so much thirst to see. florizel now, good camillo; i am so fraught with curious business that i leave out ceremony. camillo sir, i think you have heard of my poor services, i' the love that i have borne your father? florizel very nobly have you deserved: it is my father's music to speak your deeds, not little of his care to have them recompensed as thought on. camillo well, my lord, if you may please to think i love the king and through him what is nearest to him, which is your gracious self, embrace but my direction: if your more ponderous and settled project may suffer alteration, on mine honour, i'll point you where you shall have such receiving as shall become your highness; where you may enjoy your mistress, from the whom, i see, there's no disjunction to be made, but by- as heavens forefend!--your ruin; marry her, and, with my best endeavours in your absence, your discontenting father strive to qualify and bring him up to liking. florizel how, camillo, may this, almost a miracle, be done? that i may call thee something more than man and after that trust to thee. camillo have you thought on a place whereto you'll go? florizel not any yet: but as the unthought-on accident is guilty to what we wildly do, so we profess ourselves to be the slaves of chance and flies of every wind that blows. camillo then list to me: this follows, if you will not change your purpose but undergo this flight, make for sicilia, and there present yourself and your fair princess, for so i see she must be, 'fore leontes: she shall be habited as it becomes the partner of your bed. methinks i see leontes opening his free arms and weeping his welcomes forth; asks thee the son forgiveness, as 'twere i' the father's person; kisses the hands of your fresh princess; o'er and o'er divides him 'twixt his unkindness and his kindness; the one he chides to hell and bids the other grow faster than thought or time. florizel worthy camillo, what colour for my visitation shall i hold up before him? camillo sent by the king your father to greet him and to give him comforts. sir, the manner of your bearing towards him, with what you as from your father shall deliver, things known betwixt us three, i'll write you down: the which shall point you forth at every sitting what you must say; that he shall not perceive but that you have your father's bosom there and speak his very heart. florizel i am bound to you: there is some sap in this. camillo a cause more promising than a wild dedication of yourselves to unpath'd waters, undream'd shores, most certain to miseries enough; no hope to help you, but as you shake off one to take another; nothing so certain as your anchors, who do their best office, if they can but stay you where you'll be loath to be: besides you know prosperity's the very bond of love, whose fresh complexion and whose heart together affliction alters. perdita one of these is true: i think affliction may subdue the cheek, but not take in the mind. camillo yea, say you so? there shall not at your father's house these seven years be born another such. florizel my good camillo, she is as forward of her breeding as she is i' the rear our birth. camillo i cannot say 'tis pity she lacks instructions, for she seems a mistress to most that teach. perdita your pardon, sir; for this i'll blush you thanks. florizel my prettiest perdita! but o, the thorns we stand upon! camillo, preserver of my father, now of me, the medicine of our house, how shall we do? we are not furnish'd like bohemia's son, nor shall appear in sicilia. camillo my lord, fear none of this: i think you know my fortunes do all lie there: it shall be so my care to have you royally appointed as if the scene you play were mine. for instance, sir, that you may know you shall not want, one word. [they talk aside] [re-enter autolycus] autolycus ha, ha! what a fool honesty is! and trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman! i have sold all my trumpery; not a counterfeit stone, not a ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book, ballad, knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet, horn-ring, to keep my pack from fasting: they throng who should buy first, as if my trinkets had been hallowed and brought a benediction to the buyer: by which means i saw whose purse was best in picture; and what i saw, to my good use i remembered. my clown, who wants but something to be a reasonable man, grew so in love with the wenches' song, that he would not stir his pettitoes till he had both tune and words; which so drew the rest of the herd to me that all their other senses stuck in ears: you might have pinched a placket, it was senseless; 'twas nothing to geld a codpiece of a purse; i could have filed keys off that hung in chains: no hearing, no feeling, but my sir's song, and admiring the nothing of it. so that in this time of lethargy i picked and cut most of their festival purses; and had not the old man come in with a whoo-bub against his daughter and the king's son and scared my choughs from the chaff, i had not left a purse alive in the whole army. [camillo, florizel, and perdita come forward] camillo nay, but my letters, by this means being there so soon as you arrive, shall clear that doubt. florizel and those that you'll procure from king leontes- camillo shall satisfy your father. perdita happy be you! all that you speak shows fair. camillo who have we here? [seeing autolycus] we'll make an instrument of this, omit nothing may give us aid. autolycus if they have overheard me now, why, hanging. camillo how now, good fellow! why shakest thou so? fear not, man; here's no harm intended to thee. autolycus i am a poor fellow, sir. camillo why, be so still; here's nobody will steal that from thee: yet for the outside of thy poverty we must make an exchange; therefore discase thee instantly, --thou must think there's a necessity in't,--and change garments with this gentleman: though the pennyworth on his side be the worst, yet hold thee, there's some boot. autolycus i am a poor fellow, sir. [aside] i know ye well enough. camillo nay, prithee, dispatch: the gentleman is half flayed already. autolycus are you in earnest, sir? [aside] i smell the trick on't. florizel dispatch, i prithee. autolycus indeed, i have had earnest: but i cannot with conscience take it. camillo unbuckle, unbuckle. [florizel and autolycus exchange garments] fortunate mistress,--let my prophecy come home to ye!--you must retire yourself into some covert: take your sweetheart's hat and pluck it o'er your brows, muffle your face, dismantle you, and, as you can, disliken the truth of your own seeming; that you may- for i do fear eyes over--to shipboard get undescried. perdita i see the play so lies that i must bear a part. camillo no remedy. have you done there? florizel should i now meet my father, he would not call me son. camillo nay, you shall have no hat. [giving it to perdita] come, lady, come. farewell, my friend. autolycus adieu, sir. florizel o perdita, what have we twain forgot! pray you, a word. camillo [aside] what i do next, shall be to tell the king of this escape and whither they are bound; wherein my hope is i shall so prevail to force him after: in whose company i shall review sicilia, for whose sight i have a woman's longing. florizel fortune speed us! thus we set on, camillo, to the sea-side. camillo the swifter speed the better. [exeunt florizel, perdita, and camillo] autolycus i understand the business, i hear it: to have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a cut-purse; a good nose is requisite also, to smell out work for the other senses. i see this is the time that the unjust man doth thrive. what an exchange had this been without boot! what a boot is here with this exchange! sure the gods do this year connive at us, and we may do any thing extempore. the prince himself is about a piece of iniquity, stealing away from his father with his clog at his heels: if i thought it were a piece of honesty to acquaint the king withal, i would not do't: i hold it the more knavery to conceal it; and therein am i constant to my profession. [re-enter clown and shepherd] aside, aside; here is more matter for a hot brain: every lane's end, every shop, church, session, hanging, yields a careful man work. clown see, see; what a man you are now! there is no other way but to tell the king she's a changeling and none of your flesh and blood. shepherd nay, but hear me. clown nay, but hear me. shepherd go to, then. clown she being none of your flesh and blood, your flesh and blood has not offended the king; and so your flesh and blood is not to be punished by him. show those things you found about her, those secret things, all but what she has with her: this being done, let the law go whistle: i warrant you. shepherd i will tell the king all, every word, yea, and his son's pranks too; who, i may say, is no honest man, neither to his father nor to me, to go about to make me the king's brother-in-law. clown indeed, brother-in-law was the farthest off you could have been to him and then your blood had been the dearer by i know how much an ounce. autolycus [aside] very wisely, puppies! shepherd well, let us to the king: there is that in this fardel will make him scratch his beard. autolycus [aside] i know not what impediment this complaint may be to the flight of my master. clown pray heartily he be at palace. autolycus [aside] though i am not naturally honest, i am so sometimes by chance: let me pocket up my pedlar's excrement. [takes off his false beard] how now, rustics! whither are you bound? shepherd to the palace, an it like your worship. autolycus your affairs there, what, with whom, the condition of that fardel, the place of your dwelling, your names, your ages, of what having, breeding, and any thing that is fitting to be known, discover. clown we are but plain fellows, sir. autolycus a lie; you are rough and hairy. let me have no lying: it becomes none but tradesmen, and they often give us soldiers the lie: but we pay them for it with stamped coin, not stabbing steel; therefore they do not give us the lie. clown your worship had like to have given us one, if you had not taken yourself with the manner. shepherd are you a courtier, an't like you, sir? autolycus whether it like me or no, i am a courtier. seest thou not the air of the court in these enfoldings? hath not my gait in it the measure of the court? receives not thy nose court-odor from me? reflect i not on thy baseness court-contempt? thinkest thou, for that i insinuate, or toaze from thee thy business, i am therefore no courtier? i am courtier cap-a-pe; and one that will either push on or pluck back thy business there: whereupon i command thee to open thy affair. shepherd my business, sir, is to the king. autolycus what advocate hast thou to him? shepherd i know not, an't like you. clown advocate's the court-word for a pheasant: say you have none. shepherd none, sir; i have no pheasant, cock nor hen. autolycus how blessed are we that are not simple men! yet nature might have made me as these are, therefore i will not disdain. clown this cannot be but a great courtier. shepherd his garments are rich, but he wears them not handsomely. clown he seems to be the more noble in being fantastical: a great man, i'll warrant; i know by the picking on's teeth. autolycus the fardel there? what's i' the fardel? wherefore that box? shepherd sir, there lies such secrets in this fardel and box, which none must know but the king; and which he shall know within this hour, if i may come to the speech of him. autolycus age, thou hast lost thy labour. shepherd why, sir? autolycus the king is not at the palace; he is gone aboard a new ship to purge melancholy and air himself: for, if thou beest capable of things serious, thou must know the king is full of grief. shepard so 'tis said, sir; about his son, that should have married a shepherd's daughter. autolycus if that shepherd be not in hand-fast, let him fly: the curses he shall have, the tortures he shall feel, will break the back of man, the heart of monster. clown think you so, sir? autolycus not he alone shall suffer what wit can make heavy and vengeance bitter; but those that are germane to him, though removed fifty times, shall all come under the hangman: which though it be great pity, yet it is necessary. an old sheep-whistling rogue a ram-tender, to offer to have his daughter come into grace! some say he shall be stoned; but that death is too soft for him, say i draw our throne into a sheep-cote! all deaths are too few, the sharpest too easy. clown has the old man e'er a son, sir, do you hear. an't like you, sir? autolycus he has a son, who shall be flayed alive; then 'nointed over with honey, set on the head of a wasp's nest; then stand till he be three quarters and a dram dead; then recovered again with aqua-vitae or some other hot infusion; then, raw as he is, and in the hottest day prognostication proclaims, shall be be set against a brick-wall, the sun looking with a southward eye upon him, where he is to behold him with flies blown to death. but what talk we of these traitorly rascals, whose miseries are to be smiled at, their offences being so capital? tell me, for you seem to be honest plain men, what you have to the king: being something gently considered, i'll bring you where he is aboard, tender your persons to his presence, whisper him in your behalfs; and if it be in man besides the king to effect your suits, here is man shall do it. clown he seems to be of great authority: close with him, give him gold; and though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with gold: show the inside of your purse to the outside of his hand, and no more ado. remember 'stoned,' and 'flayed alive.' shepherd an't please you, sir, to undertake the business for us, here is that gold i have: i'll make it as much more and leave this young man in pawn till i bring it you. autolycus after i have done what i promised? shepherd ay, sir. autolycus well, give me the moiety. are you a party in this business? clown in some sort, sir: but though my case be a pitiful one, i hope i shall not be flayed out of it. autolycus o, that's the case of the shepherd's son: hang him, he'll be made an example. clown comfort, good comfort! we must to the king and show our strange sights: he must know 'tis none of your daughter nor my sister; we are gone else. sir, i will give you as much as this old man does when the business is performed, and remain, as he says, your pawn till it be brought you. autolycus i will trust you. walk before toward the sea-side; go on the right hand: i will but look upon the hedge and follow you. clown we are blest in this man, as i may say, even blest. shepherd let's before as he bids us: he was provided to do us good. [exeunt shepherd and clown] autolycus if i had a mind to be honest, i see fortune would not suffer me: she drops booties in my mouth. i am courted now with a double occasion, gold and a means to do the prince my master good; which who knows how that may turn back to my advancement? i will bring these two moles, these blind ones, aboard him: if he think it fit to shore them again and that the complaint they have to the king concerns him nothing, let him call me rogue for being so far officious; for i am proof against that title and what shame else belongs to't. to him will i present them: there may be matter in it. [exit] the winter's tale act v scene i a room in leontes' palace. [enter leontes, cleomenes, dion, paulina, and servants] cleomenes sir, you have done enough, and have perform'd a saint-like sorrow: no fault could you make, which you have not redeem'd; indeed, paid down more penitence than done trespass: at the last, do as the heavens have done, forget your evil; with them forgive yourself. leontes whilst i remember her and her virtues, i cannot forget my blemishes in them, and so still think of the wrong i did myself; which was so much, that heirless it hath made my kingdom and destroy'd the sweet'st companion that e'er man bred his hopes out of. paulina true, too true, my lord: if, one by one, you wedded all the world, or from the all that are took something good, to make a perfect woman, she you kill'd would be unparallel'd. leontes i think so. kill'd! she i kill'd! i did so: but thou strikest me sorely, to say i did; it is as bitter upon thy tongue as in my thought: now, good now, say so but seldom. cleomenes not at all, good lady: you might have spoken a thousand things that would have done the time more benefit and graced your kindness better. paulina you are one of those would have him wed again. dion if you would not so, you pity not the state, nor the remembrance of his most sovereign name; consider little what dangers, by his highness' fail of issue, may drop upon his kingdom and devour incertain lookers on. what were more holy than to rejoice the former queen is well? what holier than, for royalty's repair, for present comfort and for future good, to bless the bed of majesty again with a sweet fellow to't? paulina there is none worthy, respecting her that's gone. besides, the gods will have fulfill'd their secret purposes; for has not the divine apollo said, is't not the tenor of his oracle, that king leontes shall not have an heir till his lost child be found? which that it shall, is all as monstrous to our human reason as my antigonus to break his grave and come again to me; who, on my life, did perish with the infant. 'tis your counsel my lord should to the heavens be contrary, oppose against their wills. [to leontes] care not for issue; the crown will find an heir: great alexander left his to the worthiest; so his successor was like to be the best. leontes good paulina, who hast the memory of hermione, i know, in honour, o, that ever i had squared me to thy counsel! then, even now, i might have look'd upon my queen's full eyes, have taken treasure from her lips- paulina and left them more rich for what they yielded. leontes thou speak'st truth. no more such wives; therefore, no wife: one worse, and better used, would make her sainted spirit again possess her corpse, and on this stage, where we're offenders now, appear soul-vex'd, and begin, 'why to me?' paulina had she such power, she had just cause. leontes she had; and would incense me to murder her i married. paulina i should so. were i the ghost that walk'd, i'ld bid you mark her eye, and tell me for what dull part in't you chose her; then i'ld shriek, that even your ears should rift to hear me; and the words that follow'd should be 'remember mine.' leontes stars, stars, and all eyes else dead coals! fear thou no wife; i'll have no wife, paulina. paulina will you swear never to marry but by my free leave? leontes never, paulina; so be blest my spirit! paulina then, good my lords, bear witness to his oath. cleomenes you tempt him over-much. paulina unless another, as like hermione as is her picture, affront his eye. cleomenes good madam,- paulina i have done. yet, if my lord will marry,--if you will, sir, no remedy, but you will,--give me the office to choose you a queen: she shall not be so young as was your former; but she shall be such as, walk'd your first queen's ghost, it should take joy to see her in your arms. leontes my true paulina, we shall not marry till thou bid'st us. paulina that shall be when your first queen's again in breath; never till then. [enter a gentleman] gentleman one that gives out himself prince florizel, son of polixenes, with his princess, she the fairest i have yet beheld, desires access to your high presence. leontes what with him? he comes not like to his father's greatness: his approach, so out of circumstance and sudden, tells us 'tis not a visitation framed, but forced by need and accident. what train? gentleman but few, and those but mean. leontes his princess, say you, with him? gentleman ay, the most peerless piece of earth, i think, that e'er the sun shone bright on. paulina o hermione, as every present time doth boast itself above a better gone, so must thy grave give way to what's seen now! sir, you yourself have said and writ so, but your writing now is colder than that theme, 'she had not been, nor was not to be equall'd;'--thus your verse flow'd with her beauty once: 'tis shrewdly ebb'd, to say you have seen a better. gentleman pardon, madam: the one i have almost forgot,--your pardon,- the other, when she has obtain'd your eye, will have your tongue too. this is a creature, would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal of all professors else, make proselytes of who she but bid follow. paulina how! not women? gentleman women will love her, that she is a woman more worth than any man; men, that she is the rarest of all women. leontes go, cleomenes; yourself, assisted with your honour'd friends, bring them to our embracement. still, 'tis strange [exeunt cleomenes and others] he thus should steal upon us. paulina had our prince, jewel of children, seen this hour, he had pair'd well with this lord: there was not full a month between their births. leontes prithee, no more; cease; thou know'st he dies to me again when talk'd of: sure, when i shall see this gentleman, thy speeches will bring me to consider that which may unfurnish me of reason. they are come. [re-enter cleomenes and others, with florizel and perdita] your mother was most true to wedlock, prince; for she did print your royal father off, conceiving you: were i but twenty-one, your father's image is so hit in you, his very air, that i should call you brother, as i did him, and speak of something wildly by us perform'd before. most dearly welcome! and your fair princess,--goddess!--o, alas! i lost a couple, that 'twixt heaven and earth might thus have stood begetting wonder as you, gracious couple, do: and then i lost- all mine own folly--the society, amity too, of your brave father, whom, though bearing misery, i desire my life once more to look on him. florizel by his command have i here touch'd sicilia and from him give you all greetings that a king, at friend, can send his brother: and, but infirmity which waits upon worn times hath something seized his wish'd ability, he had himself the lands and waters 'twixt your throne and his measured to look upon you; whom he loves- he bade me say so--more than all the sceptres and those that bear them living. leontes o my brother, good gentleman! the wrongs i have done thee stir afresh within me, and these thy offices, so rarely kind, are as interpreters of my behind-hand slackness. welcome hither, as is the spring to the earth. and hath he too exposed this paragon to the fearful usage, at least ungentle, of the dreadful neptune, to greet a man not worth her pains, much less the adventure of her person? florizel good my lord, she came from libya. leontes where the warlike smalus, that noble honour'd lord, is fear'd and loved? florizel most royal sir, from thence; from him, whose daughter his tears proclaim'd his, parting with her: thence, a prosperous south-wind friendly, we have cross'd, to execute the charge my father gave me for visiting your highness: my best train i have from your sicilian shores dismiss'd; who for bohemia bend, to signify not only my success in libya, sir, but my arrival and my wife's in safety here where we are. leontes the blessed gods purge all infection from our air whilst you do climate here! you have a holy father, a graceful gentleman; against whose person, so sacred as it is, i have done sin: for which the heavens, taking angry note, have left me issueless; and your father's blest, as he from heaven merits it, with you worthy his goodness. what might i have been, might i a son and daughter now have look'd on, such goodly things as you! [enter a lord] lord most noble sir, that which i shall report will bear no credit, were not the proof so nigh. please you, great sir, bohemia greets you from himself by me; desires you to attach his son, who has- his dignity and duty both cast off- fled from his father, from his hopes, and with a shepherd's daughter. leontes where's bohemia? speak. lord here in your city; i now came from him: i speak amazedly; and it becomes my marvel and my message. to your court whiles he was hastening, in the chase, it seems, of this fair couple, meets he on the way the father of this seeming lady and her brother, having both their country quitted with this young prince. florizel camillo has betray'd me; whose honour and whose honesty till now endured all weathers. lord lay't so to his charge: he's with the king your father. leontes who? camillo? lord camillo, sir; i spake with him; who now has these poor men in question. never saw i wretches so quake: they kneel, they kiss the earth; forswear themselves as often as they speak: bohemia stops his ears, and threatens them with divers deaths in death. perdita o my poor father! the heaven sets spies upon us, will not have our contract celebrated. leontes you are married? florizel we are not, sir, nor are we like to be; the stars, i see, will kiss the valleys first: the odds for high and low's alike. leontes my lord, is this the daughter of a king? florizel she is, when once she is my wife. leontes that 'once' i see by your good father's speed will come on very slowly. i am sorry, most sorry, you have broken from his liking where you were tied in duty, and as sorry your choice is not so rich in worth as beauty, that you might well enjoy her. florizel dear, look up: though fortune, visible an enemy, should chase us with my father, power no jot hath she to change our loves. beseech you, sir, remember since you owed no more to time than i do now: with thought of such affections, step forth mine advocate; at your request my father will grant precious things as trifles. leontes would he do so, i'ld beg your precious mistress, which he counts but a trifle. paulina sir, my liege, your eye hath too much youth in't: not a month 'fore your queen died, she was more worth such gazes than what you look on now. leontes i thought of her, even in these looks i made. [to florizel] but your petition is yet unanswer'd. i will to your father: your honour not o'erthrown by your desires, i am friend to them and you: upon which errand i now go toward him; therefore follow me and mark what way i make: come, good my lord. [exeunt] the winter's tale act v scene ii before leontes' palace. [enter autolycus and a gentleman] autolycus beseech you, sir, were you present at this relation? first gentleman i was by at the opening of the fardel, heard the old shepherd deliver the manner how he found it: whereupon, after a little amazedness, we were all commanded out of the chamber; only this methought i heard the shepherd say, he found the child. autolycus i would most gladly know the issue of it. first gentleman i make a broken delivery of the business; but the changes i perceived in the king and camillo were very notes of admiration: they seemed almost, with staring on one another, to tear the cases of their eyes; there was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture; they looked as they had heard of a world ransomed, or one destroyed: a notable passion of wonder appeared in them; but the wisest beholder, that knew no more but seeing, could not say if the importance were joy or sorrow; but in the extremity of the one, it must needs be. [enter another gentleman] here comes a gentleman that haply knows more. the news, rogero? second gentleman nothing but bonfires: the oracle is fulfilled; the king's daughter is found: such a deal of wonder is broken out within this hour that ballad-makers cannot be able to express it. [enter a third gentleman] here comes the lady paulina's steward: he can deliver you more. how goes it now, sir? this news which is called true is so like an old tale, that the verity of it is in strong suspicion: has the king found his heir? third gentleman most true, if ever truth were pregnant by circumstance: that which you hear you'll swear you see, there is such unity in the proofs. the mantle of queen hermione's, her jewel about the neck of it, the letters of antigonus found with it which they know to be his character, the majesty of the creature in resemblance of the mother, the affection of nobleness which nature shows above her breeding, and many other evidences proclaim her with all certainty to be the king's daughter. did you see the meeting of the two kings? second gentleman no. third gentleman then have you lost a sight, which was to be seen, cannot be spoken of. there might you have beheld one joy crown another, so and in such manner that it seemed sorrow wept to take leave of them, for their joy waded in tears. there was casting up of eyes, holding up of hands, with countenances of such distraction that they were to be known by garment, not by favour. our king, being ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found daughter, as if that joy were now become a loss, cries 'o, thy mother, thy mother!' then asks bohemia forgiveness; then embraces his son-in-law; then again worries he his daughter with clipping her; now he thanks the old shepherd, which stands by like a weather-bitten conduit of many kings' reigns. i never heard of such another encounter, which lames report to follow it and undoes description to do it. second gentleman what, pray you, became of antigonus, that carried hence the child? third gentleman like an old tale still, which will have matter to rehearse, though credit be asleep and not an ear open. he was torn to pieces with a bear: this avouches the shepherd's son; who has not only his innocence, which seems much, to justify him, but a handkerchief and rings of his that paulina knows. first gentleman what became of his bark and his followers? third gentleman wrecked the same instant of their master's death and in the view of the shepherd: so that all the instruments which aided to expose the child were even then lost when it was found. but o, the noble combat that 'twixt joy and sorrow was fought in paulina! she had one eye declined for the loss of her husband, another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled: she lifted the princess from the earth, and so locks her in embracing, as if she would pin her to her heart that she might no more be in danger of losing. first gentleman the dignity of this act was worth the audience of kings and princes; for by such was it acted. third gentleman one of the prettiest touches of all and that which angled for mine eyes, caught the water though not the fish, was when, at the relation of the queen's death, with the manner how she came to't bravely confessed and lamented by the king, how attentiveness wounded his daughter; till, from one sign of dolour to another, she did, with an 'alas,' i would fain say, bleed tears, for i am sure my heart wept blood. who was most marble there changed colour; some swooned, all sorrowed: if all the world could have seen 't, the woe had been universal. first gentleman are they returned to the court? third gentleman no: the princess hearing of her mother's statue, which is in the keeping of paulina,--a piece many years in doing and now newly performed by that rare italian master, julio romano, who, had he himself eternity and could put breath into his work, would beguile nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her ape: he so near to hermione hath done hermione that they say one would speak to her and stand in hope of answer: thither with all greediness of affection are they gone, and there they intend to sup. second gentleman i thought she had some great matter there in hand; for she hath privately twice or thrice a day, ever since the death of hermione, visited that removed house. shall we thither and with our company piece the rejoicing? first gentleman who would be thence that has the benefit of access? every wink of an eye some new grace will be born: our absence makes us unthrifty to our knowledge. let's along. [exeunt gentlemen] autolycus now, had i not the dash of my former life in me, would preferment drop on my head. i brought the old man and his son aboard the prince: told him i heard them talk of a fardel and i know not what: but he at that time, overfond of the shepherd's daughter, so he then took her to be, who began to be much sea-sick, and himself little better, extremity of weather continuing, this mystery remained undiscovered. but 'tis all one to me; for had i been the finder out of this secret, it would not have relished among my other discredits. [enter shepherd and clown] here come those i have done good to against my will, and already appearing in the blossoms of their fortune. shepherd come, boy; i am past moe children, but thy sons and daughters will be all gentlemen born. clown you are well met, sir. you denied to fight with me this other day, because i was no gentleman born. see you these clothes? say you see them not and think me still no gentleman born: you were best say these robes are not gentlemen born: give me the lie, do, and try whether i am not now a gentleman born. autolycus i know you are now, sir, a gentleman born. clown ay, and have been so any time these four hours. shepherd and so have i, boy. clown so you have: but i was a gentleman born before my father; for the king's son took me by the hand, and called me brother; and then the two kings called my father brother; and then the prince my brother and the princess my sister called my father father; and so we wept, and there was the first gentleman-like tears that ever we shed. shepherd we may live, son, to shed many more. clown ay; or else 'twere hard luck, being in so preposterous estate as we are. autolycus i humbly beseech you, sir, to pardon me all the faults i have committed to your worship and to give me your good report to the prince my master. shepherd prithee, son, do; for we must be gentle, now we are gentlemen. clown thou wilt amend thy life? autolycus ay, an it like your good worship. clown give me thy hand: i will swear to the prince thou art as honest a true fellow as any is in bohemia. shepherd you may say it, but not swear it. clown not swear it, now i am a gentleman? let boors and franklins say it, i'll swear it. shepherd how if it be false, son? clown if it be ne'er so false, a true gentleman may swear it in the behalf of his friend: and i'll swear to the prince thou art a tall fellow of thy hands and that thou wilt not be drunk; but i know thou art no tall fellow of thy hands and that thou wilt be drunk: but i'll swear it, and i would thou wouldst be a tall fellow of thy hands. autolycus i will prove so, sir, to my power. clown ay, by any means prove a tall fellow: if i do not wonder how thou darest venture to be drunk, not being a tall fellow, trust me not. hark! the kings and the princes, our kindred, are going to see the queen's picture. come, follow us: we'll be thy good masters. [exeunt] the winter's tale act v scene iii a chapel in paulina's house. [enter leontes, polixenes, florizel, perdita, camillo, paulina, lords, and attendants] leontes o grave and good paulina, the great comfort that i have had of thee! paulina what, sovereign sir, i did not well i meant well. all my services you have paid home: but that you have vouchsafed, with your crown'd brother and these your contracted heirs of your kingdoms, my poor house to visit, it is a surplus of your grace, which never my life may last to answer. leontes o paulina, we honour you with trouble: but we came to see the statue of our queen: your gallery have we pass'd through, not without much content in many singularities; but we saw not that which my daughter came to look upon, the statue of her mother. paulina as she lived peerless, so her dead likeness, i do well believe, excels whatever yet you look'd upon or hand of man hath done; therefore i keep it lonely, apart. but here it is: prepare to see the life as lively mock'd as ever still sleep mock'd death: behold, and say 'tis well. [paulina draws a curtain, and discovers hermione standing like a statue] i like your silence, it the more shows off your wonder: but yet speak; first, you, my liege, comes it not something near? leontes her natural posture! chide me, dear stone, that i may say indeed thou art hermione; or rather, thou art she in thy not chiding, for she was as tender as infancy and grace. but yet, paulina, hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing so aged as this seems. polixenes o, not by much. paulina so much the more our carver's excellence; which lets go by some sixteen years and makes her as she lived now. leontes as now she might have done, so much to my good comfort, as it is now piercing to my soul. o, thus she stood, even with such life of majesty, warm life, as now it coldly stands, when first i woo'd her! i am ashamed: does not the stone rebuke me for being more stone than it? o royal piece, there's magic in thy majesty, which has my evils conjured to remembrance and from thy admiring daughter took the spirits, standing like stone with thee. perdita and give me leave, and do not say 'tis superstition, that i kneel and then implore her blessing. lady, dear queen, that ended when i but began, give me that hand of yours to kiss. paulina o, patience! the statue is but newly fix'd, the colour's not dry. camillo my lord, your sorrow was too sore laid on, which sixteen winters cannot blow away, so many summers dry; scarce any joy did ever so long live; no sorrow but kill'd itself much sooner. polixenes dear my brother, let him that was the cause of this have power to take off so much grief from you as he will piece up in himself. paulina indeed, my lord, if i had thought the sight of my poor image would thus have wrought you,--for the stone is mine- i'ld not have show'd it. leontes do not draw the curtain. paulina no longer shall you gaze on't, lest your fancy may think anon it moves. leontes let be, let be. would i were dead, but that, methinks, already- what was he that did make it? see, my lord, would you not deem it breathed? and that those veins did verily bear blood? polixenes masterly done: the very life seems warm upon her lip. leontes the fixture of her eye has motion in't, as we are mock'd with art. paulina i'll draw the curtain: my lord's almost so far transported that he'll think anon it lives. leontes o sweet paulina, make me to think so twenty years together! no settled senses of the world can match the pleasure of that madness. let 't alone. paulina i am sorry, sir, i have thus far stirr'd you: but i could afflict you farther. leontes do, paulina; for this affliction has a taste as sweet as any cordial comfort. still, methinks, there is an air comes from her: what fine chisel could ever yet cut breath? let no man mock me, for i will kiss her. paulina good my lord, forbear: the ruddiness upon her lip is wet; you'll mar it if you kiss it, stain your own with oily painting. shall i draw the curtain? leontes no, not these twenty years. perdita so long could i stand by, a looker on. paulina either forbear, quit presently the chapel, or resolve you for more amazement. if you can behold it, i'll make the statue move indeed, descend and take you by the hand; but then you'll think- which i protest against--i am assisted by wicked powers. leontes what you can make her do, i am content to look on: what to speak, i am content to hear; for 'tis as easy to make her speak as move. paulina it is required you do awake your faith. then all stand still; on: those that think it is unlawful business i am about, let them depart. leontes proceed: no foot shall stir. paulina music, awake her; strike! [music] 'tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach; strike all that look upon with marvel. come, i'll fill your grave up: stir, nay, come away, bequeath to death your numbness, for from him dear life redeems you. you perceive she stirs: [hermione comes down] start not; her actions shall be holy as you hear my spell is lawful: do not shun her until you see her die again; for then you kill her double. nay, present your hand: when she was young you woo'd her; now in age is she become the suitor? leontes o, she's warm! if this be magic, let it be an art lawful as eating. polixenes she embraces him. camillo she hangs about his neck: if she pertain to life let her speak too. polixenes ay, and make't manifest where she has lived, or how stolen from the dead. paulina that she is living, were it but told you, should be hooted at like an old tale: but it appears she lives, though yet she speak not. mark a little while. please you to interpose, fair madam: kneel and pray your mother's blessing. turn, good lady; our perdita is found. hermione you gods, look down and from your sacred vials pour your graces upon my daughter's head! tell me, mine own. where hast thou been preserved? where lived? how found thy father's court? for thou shalt hear that i, knowing by paulina that the oracle gave hope thou wast in being, have preserved myself to see the issue. paulina there's time enough for that; lest they desire upon this push to trouble your joys with like relation. go together, you precious winners all; your exultation partake to every one. i, an old turtle, will wing me to some wither'd bough and there my mate, that's never to be found again, lament till i am lost. leontes o, peace, paulina! thou shouldst a husband take by my consent, as i by thine a wife: this is a match, and made between's by vows. thou hast found mine; but how, is to be question'd; for i saw her, as i thought, dead, and have in vain said many a prayer upon her grave. i'll not seek far- for him, i partly know his mind--to find thee an honourable husband. come, camillo, and take her by the hand, whose worth and honesty is richly noted and here justified by us, a pair of kings. let's from this place. what! look upon my brother: both your pardons, that e'er i put between your holy looks my ill suspicion. this is your son-in-law, and son unto the king, who, heavens directing, is troth-plight to your daughter. good paulina, lead us from hence, where we may leisurely each one demand an answer to his part perform'd in this wide gap of time since first we were dissever'd: hastily lead away. [exeunt] internet wiretap edition of tom sawyer, detective by mark twain from "the writings of mark twain, volume xx" copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain, may 1993. electronic edition by <dell@wiretap.spies.com> tom sawyer, detective chapter i. an invitation for tom and huck [footnote: strange as the incidents of this story are, they are not inventions, but facts -even to the public confession of the accused. i take them from an old-time swedish criminal trial, change the actors, and transfer the scenes to america. i have added some details, but only a couple of them are important ones. -m. t.] well, it was the next spring after me and tom sawyer set our old nigger jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on tom's uncle silas's farm in arkansaw. the frost was working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. it just makes a boy homesick to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. yes, and it sets him to sighing and saddening around, and there's something the matter with him, he don't know what. but anyway, he gets out by himself and mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up on the hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks away off on the big mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the points where the timber looks smoky and dim it's so far off and still, and everything's so solemn it seems like everybody you've loved is dead and gone, and you 'most wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it all. don't you know what that is? it's spring fever. that is what the name of it is. and when you've got it, you want -oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! it seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away from the same old tedious things you're so used to seeing and so tired of, and set something new. that is the idea; you want to go and be a wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. and if you can't do that, you'll put up with considerable less; you'll go anywhere you can go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too. well, me and tom sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but it warn't any use to think about tom trying to get away, because, as he said, his aunt polly wouldn't let him quit school and go traipsing off somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. we was setting on the front steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt polly with a letter in her hand and says: "tom, i reckon you've got to pack up and go down to arkansaw -your aunt sally wants you." i 'most jumped out of my skin for joy. i reckoned tom would fly at his aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a rock, and never said a word. it made me fit to cry to see him act so foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. why, we might lose it if he didn't speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. but he set there and studied and studied till i was that distressed i didn't know what to do; then he says, very ca'm, and i could a shot him for it: "well," he says, "i'm right down sorry, aunt polly, but i reckon i got to be excused -for the present." his aunt polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence of it that she couldn't say a word for as much as a half a minute, and this gave me a chance to nudge tom and whisper: "ain't you got any sense? sp'iling such a noble chance as this and throwing it away?" but he warn't disturbed. he mumbled back: "huck finn, do you want me to let her see how bad i want to go? why, she'd begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and dangers and objections, and first you know she'd take it all back. you lemme alone; i reckon i know how to work her." now i never would 'a' thought of that. but he was right. tom sawyer was always right -the levelest head i ever see, and always at himself and ready for anything you might spring on him. by this time his aunt polly was all straight again, and she let fly. she says: "you'll be excused! you will! well, i never heard the like of it in all my days! the idea of you talking like that to me! now take yourself off and pack your traps; and if i hear another word out of you about what you'll be excused from and what you won't, i lay i'll excuse you -with a hickory!" she hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let on to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. up in his room he hugged me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going traveling. and he says: "before we get away she'll wish she hadn't let me go, but she won't know any way to get around it now. after what she's said, her pride won't let her take it back." tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and mary would finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down and sweet and gentle again; for tom said it took her ten minutes to unruffle in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was all up, and this was one of the times when they was all up. then we went down, being in a sweat to know what the letter said. she was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. we set down, and she says: "they're in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and huck'll be a kind of diversion for them -'comfort,' they say. much of that they'll get out of you and huck finn, i reckon. there's a neighbor named brace dunlap that's been wanting to marry their benny for three months, and at last they told him point blank and once for all, he couldn't; so he has soured on them, and they're worried about it. i reckon he's somebody they think they better be on the good side of, for they've tried to please him by hiring his noaccount brother to help on the farm when they can't hardly afford it, and don't want him around anyhow. who are the dunlaps?" "they live about a mile from uncle silas's place, aunt polly -all the farmers live about a mile apart down there -and brace dunlap is a long sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers. he's a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. i judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking, and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldn't get benny. why, benny's only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and lovely asñ well, you've seen her. poor old uncle silas -why, it's pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way -so hard pushed and poor, and yet hiring that useless jubiter dunlap to please his ornery brother." "what a name -jubiter! where'd he get it?" "it's only just a nickname. i reckon they've forgot his real name long before this. he's twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the first time he ever went in swimming. the school teacher seen a round brown mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little bits of moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it minded him of jubiter and his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so they got to calling him jubiter, and he's jubiter yet. he's tall, and lazy, and sly, and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured, and wears long brown hair and no beard, and hasn't got a cent, and brace boards him for nothing, and gives him his old clothes to wear, and despises him. jubiter is a twin." "what's t'other twin like?" "just exactly like jubiter -so they say; used to was, anyway, but he hain't been seen for seven years. he got to robbing when he was nineteen or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away -up north here, somers. they used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and then, but that was years ago. he's dead, now. at least that's what they say. they don't hear about him any more." "what was his name?" "jake." there wasn't anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady was thinking. at last she says: "the thing that is mostly worrying your aunt sally is the tempers that that man jubiter gets your uncle into." tom was astonished, and so was i. tom says: "tempers? uncle silas? land, you must be joking! i didn't know he had any temper." "works him up into perfect rages, your aunt sally says; says he acts as if he would really hit the man, sometimes." "aunt polly, it beats anything i ever heard of. why, he's just as gentle as mush." "well, she's worried, anyway. says your uncle silas is like a changed man, on account of all this quarreling. and the neighbors talk about it, and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he's a preacher and hain't got any business to quarrel. your aunt sally says he hates to go into the pulpit he's so ashamed; and the people have begun to cool toward him, and he ain't as popular now as he used to was." "well, ain't it strange? why, aunt polly, he was always so good and kind and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable -why, he was just an angel! what can be the matter of him, do you reckon?" chapter ii. jake dunlap we had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler from away north which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse rivers away down louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the upper mississippi and all the way down the lower mississippi to that farm in arkansaw without having to change steamboats at st. louis; not so very much short of a thousand miles at one pull. a pretty lonesome boat; there warn't but few passengers, and all old folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. we was four days getting out of the "upper river," because we got aground so much. but it warn't dull -couldn't be for boys that was traveling, of course. from the very start me and tom allowed that there was somebody sick in the stateroom next to ourn, because the meals was always toted in there by the waiters. by and by we asked about it -tom did and the waiter said it was a man, but he didn't look sick. "well, but ain't he sick?" "i don't know; maybe he is, but 'pears to me he's just letting on." "what makes you think that?" "because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off some time or other -don't you reckon he would? well, this one don't. at least he don't ever pull off his boots, anyway." "the mischief he don't! not even when he goes to bed?" "no." it was always nuts for tom sawyer -a mystery was. if you'd lay out a mystery and a pie before me and him, you wouldn't have to say take your choice; it was a thing that would regulate itself. because in my nature i have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he has always run to mystery. people are made different. and it is the best way. tom says to the waiter: "what's the man's name?" "phillips." "where'd he come aboard?" "i think he got aboard at elexandria, up on the iowa line." "what do you reckon he's a-playing?" "i hain't any notion -i never thought of it." i says to myself, here's another one that runs to pie. "anything peculiar about him? -the way he acts or talks?" "no -nothing, except he seems so scary, and keeps his doors locked night and day both, and when you knock he won't let you in till he opens the door a crack and sees who it is." "by jimminy, it's int'resting! i'd like to get a look at him. say -the next time you're going in there, don't you reckon you could spread the door and --" "no, indeedy! he's always behind it. he would block that game." tom studied over it, and then he says: "looky here. you lend me your apern and let me take him his breakfast in the morning. i'll give you a quarter." the boy was plenty willing enough, if the head steward wouldn't mind. tom says that's all right, he reckoned he could fix it with the head steward; and he done it. he fixed it so as we could both go in with aperns on and toting vittles. he didn't sleep much, he was in such a sweat to get in there and find out the mystery about phillips; and moreover he done a lot of guessing about it all night, which warn't no use, for if you are going to find out the facts of a thing, what's the sense in guessing out what ain't the facts and wasting ammunition? i didn't lose no sleep. i wouldn't give a dern to know what's the matter of phillips, i says to myself. well, in the morning we put on the aperns and got a couple of trays of truck, and tom he knocked on the door. the man opened it a crack, and then he let us in and shut it quick. by jackson, when we got a sight of him, we 'most dropped the trays! and tom says: "why, jubiter dunlap, where'd you come from?" well, the man was astonished, of course; and first off he looked like he didn't know whether to be scared, or glad, or both, or which, but finally he settled down to being glad; and then his color come back, though at first his face had turned pretty white. so we got to talking together while he et his breakfast. and he says: "but i aint jubiter dunlap. i'd just as soon tell you who i am, though, if you'll swear to keep mum, for i ain't no phillips, either." tom says: "we'll keep mum, but there ain't any need to tell who you are if you ain't jubiter dunlap." "why?" "because if you ain't him you're t'other twin, jake. you're the spit'n image of jubiter." "well, i'm jake. but looky here, how do you come to know us dunlaps?" tom told about the adventures we'd had down there at his uncle silas's last summer, and when he see that there warn't anything about his folks -or him either, for that matter -that we didn't know, he opened out and talked perfectly free and candid. he never made any bones about his own case; said he'd been a hard lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned he'd be a hard lot plumb to the end. he said of course it was a dangerous life, and -he give a kind of gasp, and set his head like a person that's listening. we didn't say anything, and so it was very still for a second or so, and there warn't no sounds but the screaking of the woodwork and the chugchugging of the machinery down below. then we got him comfortable again, telling him about his people, and how brace's wife had been dead three years, and brace wanted to marry benny and she shook him, and jubiter was working for uncle silas, and him and uncle silas quarreling all the time -and then he let go and laughed. "land!" he says, "it's like old times to hear all this tittle-tattle, and does me good. it's been seven years and more since i heard any. how do they talk about me these days?" "who?" "the farmers -and the family." "why, they don't talk about you at all -at least only just a mention, once in a long time." "the nation!" he says, surprised; "why is that?" "because they think you are dead long ago." "no! are you speaking true? -honor bright, now." he jumped up, excited. "honor bright. there ain't anybody thinks you are alive." "then i'm saved, i'm saved, sure! i'll go home. they'll hide me and save my life. you keep mum. swear you'll keep mum -swear you'll never, never tell on me. oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted day and night, and dasn't show his face! i've never done you any harm; i'll never do you any, as god is in the heavens; swear you'll be good to me and help me save my life." we'd a swore it if he'd been a dog; and so we done it. well, he couldn't love us enough for it or be grateful enough, poor cuss; it was all he could do to keep from hugging us. we talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag and begun to open it, and told us to turn our backs. we done it, and when he told us to turn again he was perfectly different to what he was before. he had on blue goggles and the naturalest-looking long brown whiskers and mustashes you ever see. his own mother wouldn't 'a' knowed him. he asked us if he looked like his brother jubiter, now. "no," tom said; "there ain't anything left that's like him except the long hair." "all right, i'll get that cropped close to my head before i get there; then him and brace will keep my secret, and i'll live with them as being a stranger, and the neighbors won't ever guess me out. what do you think?" tom he studied awhile, then he says: "well, of course me and huck are going to keep mum there, but if you don't keep mum yourself there's going to be a little bit of a risk -it ain't much, maybe, but it's a little. i mean, if you talk, won't people notice that your voice is just like jubiter's; and mightn't it make them think of the twin they reckoned was dead, but maybe after all was hid all this time under another name?" "by george," he says, "you're a sharp one! you're perfectly right. i've got to play deef and dumb when there's a neighbor around. if i'd a struck for home and forgot that little detail -however, i wasn't striking for home. i was breaking for any place where i could get away from these fellows that are after me; then i was going to put on this disguise and get some different clothes, and --" he jumped for the outside door and laid his ear against it and listened, pale and kind of panting. presently he whispers: "sounded like cocking a gun! lord, what a life to lead!" then he sunk down in a chair all limp and sick like, and wiped the sweat off of his face. chapter iii. a diamond robbery from that time out, we was with him 'most all the time, and one or t'other of us slept in his upper berth. he said he had been so lonesome, and it was such a comfort to him to have company, and somebody to talk to in his troubles. we was in a sweat to find out what his secret was, but tom said the best way was not to seem anxious, then likely he would drop into it himself in one of his talks, but if we got to asking questions he would get suspicious and shet up his shell. it turned out just so. it warn't no trouble to see that he wanted to talk about it, but always along at first he would scare away from it when he got on the very edge of it, and go to talking about something else. the way it come about was this: he got to asking us, kind of indifferent like, about the passengers down on deck. we told him about them. but he warn't satisfied; we warn't particular enough. he told us to describe them better. tom done it. at last, when tom was describing one of the roughest and raggedest ones, he gave a shiver and a gasp and says: "oh, lordy, that's one of them! they're aboard sure -i just knowed it. i sort of hoped i had got away, but i never believed it. go on." presently when tom was describing another mangy, rough deck passenger, he give that shiver again and says: "that's him! -that's the other one. if it would only come a good black stormy night and i could get ashore. you see, they've got spies on me. they've got a right to come up and buy drinks at the bar yonder forrard, and they take that chance to bribe somebody to keep watch on me -porter or boots or somebody. if i was to slip ashore without anybody seeing me, they would know it inside of an hour." so then he got to wandering along, and pretty soon, sure enough, he was telling! he was poking along through his ups and downs, and when he come to that place he went right along. he says: "it was a confidence game. we played it on a juleryshop in st. louis. what we was after was a couple of noble big di'monds as big as hazel-nuts, which everybody was running to see. we was dressed up fine, and we played it on them in broad daylight. we ordered the di'monds sent to the hotel for us to see if we wanted to buy, and when we was examining them we had paste counterfeits all ready, and them was the things that went back to the shop when we said the water wasn't quite fine enough for twelve thousand dollars." "twelveñthousandñdollars!" tom says. "was they really worth all that money, do you reckon?" "every cent of it." "and you fellows got away with them?" "as easy as nothing. i don't reckon the julery people know they've been robbed yet. but it wouldn't be good sense to stay around st. louis, of course, so we considered where we'd go. one was for going one way, one another, so we throwed up, heads or tails, and the upper mississippi won. we done up the di'monds in a paper and put our names on it and put it in the keep of the hotel clerk, and told him not to ever let either of us have it again without the others was on hand to see it done; then we went down town, each by his own self -because i reckon maybe we all had the same notion. i don't know for certain, but i reckon maybe we had." "what notion?" tom says. "to rob the others." "what -one take everything, after all of you had helped to get it?" "cert'nly." it disgusted tom sawyer, and he said it was the orneriest, low-downest thing he ever heard of. but jake dunlap said it warn't unusual in the profession. said when a person was in that line of business he'd got to look out for his own intrust, there warn't nobody else going to do it for him. and then he went on. he says: "you see, the trouble was, you couldn't divide up two di'monds amongst three. if there'd been three -but never mind about that, there warn't three. i loafed along the back streets studying and studying. and i says to myself, i'll hog them di'monds the first chance i get, and i'll have a disguise all ready, and i'll give the boys the slip, and when i'm safe away i'll put it on, and then let them find me if they can. so i got the false whiskers and the goggles and this countrified suit of clothes, and fetched them along back in a handbag; and when i was passing a shop where they sell all sorts of things, i got a glimpse of one of my pals through the window. it was bud dixon. i was glad, you bet. i says to myself, i'll see what he buys. so i kept shady, and watched. now what do you reckon it was he bought?" "whiskers?" said i. "no." "goggles?" "no." "oh, keep still, huck finn, can't you, you're only just hendering all you can. what was it he bought, jake?" "you'd never guess in the world. it was only just a screwdriver -just a wee little bit of a screwdriver." "well, i declare! what did he want with that?" "that's what i thought. it was curious. it clean stumped me. i says to myself, what can he want with that thing? well, when he come out i stood back out of sight, and then tracked him to a second-hand slopshop and see him buy a red flannel shirt and some old ragged clothes -just the ones he's got on now, as you've described. then i went down to the wharf and hid my things aboard the up-river boat that we had picked out, and then started back and had another streak of luck. i seen our other pal lay in his stock of old rusty second-handers. we got the di'monds and went aboard the boat. "but now we was up a stump, for we couldn't go to bed. we had to set up and watch one another. pity, that was; pity to put that kind of a strain on us, because there was bad blood between us from a couple of weeks back, and we was only friends in the way of business. bad anyway, seeing there was only two di'monds betwixt three men. first we had supper, and then tramped up and down the deck together smoking till most midnight; then we went and set down in my stateroom and locked the doors and looked in the piece of paper to see if the di'monds was all right, then laid it on the lower berth right in full sight; and there we set, and set, and by-and-by it got to be dreadful hard to keep awake. at last bud dixon he dropped off. as soon as he was snoring a good regular gait that was likely to last, and had his chin on his breast and looked permanent, hal clayton nodded towards the di'monds and then towards the outside door, and i understood. i reached and got the paper, and then we stood up and waited perfectly still; bud never stirred; i turned the key of the outside door very soft and slow, then turned the knob the same way, and we went tiptoeing out onto the guard, and shut the door very soft and gentle. "there warn't nobody stirring anywhere, and the boat was slipping along, swift and steady, through the big water in the smoky moonlight. we never said a word, but went straight up onto the hurricane-deck and plumb back aft, and set down on the end of the skylight. both of us knowed what that meant, without having to explain to one another. bud dixon would wake up and miss the swag, and would come straight for us, for he ain't afeard of anything or anybody, that man ain't. he would come, and we would heave him overboard, or get killed trying. it made me shiver, because i ain't as brave as some people, but if i showed the white feather -well, i knowed better than do that. i kind of hoped the boat would land somers, and we could skip ashore and not have to run the risk of this row, i was so scared of bud dixon, but she was an upper-river tub and there warn't no real chance of that. "well, the time strung along and along, and that fellow never come! why, it strung along till dawn begun to break, and still he never come. 'thunder,' i says, 'what do you make out of this? -ain't it suspicious?' 'land!' hal says, 'do you reckon he's playing us? -open the paper!' i done it, and by gracious there warn't anything in it but a couple of little pieces of loaf-sugar! that's the reason he could set there and snooze all night so comfortable. smart? well, i reckon! he had had them two papers all fixed and ready, and he had put one of them in place of t'other right under our noses. "we felt pretty cheap. but the thing to do, straight off, was to make a plan; and we done it. we would do up the paper again, just as it was, and slip in, very elaborate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again, and let on we didn't know about any trick, and hadn't any idea he was a-laughing at us behind them bogus snores of his'n; and we would stick by him, and the first night we was ashore we would get him drunk and search him, and get the di'monds; and do for him, too, if it warn't too risky. if we got the swag, we'd got to do for him, or he would hunt us down and do for us, sure. but i didn't have no real hope. i knowed we could get him drunk -he was always ready for that -but what's the good of it? you might search him a year and never find -"well, right there i catched my breath and broke off my thought! for an idea went ripping through my head that tore my brains to rags -and land, but i felt gay and good! you see, i had had my boots off, to unswell my feet, and just then i took up one of them to put it on, and i catched a glimpse of the heelbottom, and it just took my breath away. you remember about that puzzlesome little screwdriver?" "you bet i do," says tom, all excited. "well, when i catched that glimpse of that boot heel, the idea that went smashing through my head was, i know where he's hid the di'monds! you look at this boot heel, now. see, it's bottomed with a steel plate, and the plate is fastened on with little screws. now there wasn't a screw about that feller anywhere but in his boot heels; so, if he needed a screwdriver, i reckoned i knowed why." "huck, ain't it bully!" says tom. "well, i got my boots on, and we went down and slipped in and laid the paper of sugar on the berth, and sat down soft and sheepish and went to listening to bud dixon snore. hal clayton dropped off pretty soon, but i didn't; i wasn't ever so wide awake in my life. i was spying out from under the shade of my hat brim, searching the floor for leather. it took me a long time, and i begun to think maybe my guess was wrong, but at last i struck it. it laid over by the bulkhead, and was nearly the color of the carpet. it was a little round plug about as thick as the end of your little finger, and i says to myself there's a di'mond in the nest you've come from. before long i spied out the plug's mate . "think of the smartness and coolness of that blatherskite! he put up that scheme on us and reasoned out what we would do, and we went ahead and done it perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd'nheads. he set there and took his own time to unscrew his heelplates and cut out his plugs and stick in the di'monds and screw on his plates again . he allowed we would steal the bogus swag and wait all night for him to come up and get drownded, and by george it's just what we done! i think it was powerful smart." "you bet your life it was!" says tom, just full of admiration. chapter iv. the three sleepers well, all day we went through the humbug of watching one another, and it was pretty sickly business for two of us and hard to act out, i can tell you. about night we landed at one of them little missouri towns high up toward iowa, and had supper at the tavern, and got a room upstairs with a cot and a double bed in it, but i dumped my bag under a deal table in the dark hall while we was moving along it to bed, single file, me last, and the landlord in the lead with a tallow candle. we had up a lot of whisky, and went to playing high-low-jack for dimes, and as soon as the whisky begun to take hold of bud we stopped drinking, but we didn't let him stop. we loaded him till he fell out of his chair and laid there snoring. "we was ready for business now. i said we better pull our boots off, and his'n too, and not make any noise, then we could pull him and haul him around and ransack him without any trouble. so we done it. i set my boots and bud's side by side, where they'd be handy. then we stripped him and searched his seams and his pockets and his socks and the inside of his boots, and everything, and searched his bundle. never found any di'monds. we found the screwdriver, and hal says, 'what do you reckon he wanted with that?' i said i didn't know; but when he wasn't looking i hooked it. at last hal he looked beat and discouraged, and said we'd got to give it up. that was what i was waiting for. i says: "'there's one place we hain't searched.' "'what place is that?' he says. "'his stomach.' "'by gracious, i never thought of that! now we're on the homestretch, to a dead moral certainty. how'll we manage?' "'well,' i says, 'just stay by him till i turn out and hunt up a drug store, and i reckon i'll fetch something that'll make them di'monds tired of the company they're keeping.' "he said that's the ticket, and with him looking straight at me i slid myself into bud's boots instead of my own, and he never noticed. they was just a shade large for me, but that was considerable better than being too small. i got my bag as i went a-groping through the hall, and in about a minute i was out the back way and stretching up the river road at a five-mile gait. "and not feeling so very bad, neither -walking on di'monds don't have no such effect. when i had gone fifteen minutes i says to myself, there's more'n a mile behind me, and everything quiet. another five minutes and i says there's considerable more land behind me now, and there's a man back there that's begun to wonder what's the trouble. another five and i says to myself he's getting real uneasy -he's walking the floor now. another five, and i says to myself, there's two mile and a half behind me, and he's awful uneasy -beginning to cuss, i reckon. pretty soon i says to myself, forty minutes gone -he knows there's something up! fifty minutes -the truth's a-busting on him now! he is reckoning i found the di'monds whilst we was searching, and shoved them in my pocket and never let on -yes, and he's starting out to hunt for me. he'll hunt for new tracks in the dust, and they'll as likely send him down the river as up. "just then i see a man coming down on a mule, and before i thought i jumped into the bush. it was stupid! when he got abreast he stopped and waited a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. but i didn't feel gay any more. i says to myself i've botched my chances by that; i surely have, if he meets up with hal clayton. "well, about three in the morning i fetched elexandria and see this stern-wheeler laying there, and was very glad, because i felt perfectly safe, now, you know. it was just daybreak. i went aboard and got this stateroom and put on these clothes and went up in the pilothouse -to watch, though i didn't reckon there was any need of it. i set there and played with my di'monds and waited and waited for the boat to start, but she didn't. you see, they was mending her machinery, but i didn't know anything about it, not being very much used to steamboats. "well, to cut the tale short, we never left there till plumb noon; and long before that i was hid in this stateroom; for before breakfast i see a man coming, away off, that had a gait like hal clayton's, and it made me just sick. i says to myself, if he finds out i'm aboard this boat, he's got me like a rat in a trap. all he's got to do is to have me watched, and wait -wait till i slip ashore, thinking he is a thousand miles away, then slip after me and dog me to a good place and make me give up the di'monds, and then he'll -oh, i know what he'll do! ain't it awful -awful! and now to think the other one's aboard, too! oh, ain't it hard luck, boys -ain't it hard! but you'll help save me, won't you? -oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted to death, and save me -i'll worship the very ground you walk on!" we turned in and soothed him down and told him we would plan for him and help him, and he needn't be so afeard; and so by and by he got to feeling kind of comfortable again, and unscrewed his heelplates and held up his di'monds this way and that, admiring them and loving them; and when the light struck into them they was beautiful, sure; why, they seemed to kind of bust, and snap fire out all around. but all the same i judged he was a fool. if i had been him i would a handed the di'monds to them pals and got them to go ashore and leave me alone. but he was made different. he said it was a whole fortune and he couldn't bear the idea. twice we stopped to fix the machinery and laid a good while, once in the night; but it wasn't dark enough, and he was afeard to skip. but the third time we had to fix it there was a better chance. we laid up at a country woodyard about forty mile above uncle silas's place a little after one at night, and it was thickening up and going to storm. so jake he laid for a chance to slide. we begun to take in wood. pretty soon the rain come a-drenching down, and the wind blowed hard. of course every boat-hand fixed a gunny sack and put it on like a bonnet, the way they do when they are toting wood, and we got one for jake, and he slipped down aft with his hand-bag and come tramping forrard just like the rest, and walked ashore with them, and when we see him pass out of the light of the torch-basket and get swallowed up in the dark, we got our breath again and just felt grateful and splendid. but it wasn't for long. somebody told, i reckon; for in about eight or ten minutes them two pals come tearing forrard as tight as they could jump and darted ashore and was gone. we waited plumb till dawn for them to come back, and kept hoping they would, but they never did. we was awful sorry and low-spirited. all the hope we had was that jake had got such a start that they couldn't get on his track, and he would get to his brother's and hide there and be safe. he was going to take the river road, and told us to find out if brace and jubiter was to home and no strangers there, and then slip out about sundown and tell him. said he would wait for us in a little bunch of sycamores right back of tom's uncle silas's tobacker field on the river road, a lonesome place. we set and talked a long time about his chances, and tom said he was all right if the pals struck up the river instead of down, but it wasn't likely, because maybe they knowed where he was from; more likely they would go right, and dog him all day, him not suspecting, and kill him when it come dark, and take the boots. so we was pretty sorrowful. chapter v. a tragedy in the: woods we didn't get done tinkering the machinery till away late in the afternoon, and so it was so close to sundown when we got home that we never stopped on our road, but made a break for the sycamores as tight as we could go, to tell jake what the delay was, and have him wait till we could go to brace's and find out how things was there. it was getting pretty dim by the time we turned the corner of the woods, sweating and panting with that long run, and see the sycamores thirty yards ahead of us; and just then we see a couple of men run into the bunch and heard two or three terrible screams for help. "poor jake is killed, sure," we says. we was scared through and through, and broke for the tobacker field and hid there, trembling so our clothes would hardly stay on; and just as we skipped in there, a couple of men went tearing by, and into the bunch they went, and in a second out jumps four men and took out up the road as tight as they could go, two chasing two. we laid down, kind of weak and sick, and listened for more sounds, but didn't hear none for a good while but just our hearts. we was thinking of that awful thing laying yonder in the sycamores, and it seemed like being that close to a ghost, and it give me the cold shudders. the moon come a-swelling up out of the ground, now, powerful big and round and bright, behind a comb of trees, like a face looking through prison bars, and the black shadders and white places begun to creep around, and it was miserable quiet and still and night-breezy and graveyardy and scary. all of a sudden tom whispers: "look! -what's that?" "don't!" i says. "don't take a person by surprise that way. i'm 'most ready to die, anyway, without you doing that." "look, i tell you. it's something coming out of the sycamores." "don't, tom!" "it's terrible tall!" "oh, lordy-lordy! let's --" "keep still -it's a-coming this way." he was so excited he could hardly get breath enough to whisper. i had to look. i couldn't help it. so now we was both on our knees with our chins on a fence rail and gazing -yes, and gasping too. it was coming down the road -coming in the shadder of the trees, and you couldn't see it good; not till it was pretty close to us; then it stepped into a bright splotch of moonlight and we sunk right down in our tracks -it was jake dunlap's ghost! that was what we said to ourselves. we couldn't stir for a minute or two; then it was gone we talked about it in low voices. tom says: "they're mostly dim and smoky, or like they're made out of fog, but this one wasn't." "no," i says; "i seen the goggles and the whiskers perfectly plain." "yes, and the very colors in them loud countrified sunday clothes -plaid breeches, green and black --" "cotton velvet westcot, fire-red and yaller squares --" "leather straps to the bottoms of the breeches legs and one of them hanging unbottoned --" "yes, and that hat --" "what a hat for a ghost to wear!" you see it was the first season anybody wore that kind -a black sitff-brim stove-pipe, very high, and not smooth, with a round top -just like a sugar-loaf. "did you notice if its hair was the same, huck?" "no -seems to me i did, then again it seems to me i didn't." "i didn't either; but it had its bag along, i noticed that." "so did i. how can there be a ghost-bag, tom?" "sho! i wouldn't be as ignorant as that if i was you, huck finn. whatever a ghost has, turns to ghoststuff. they've got to have their things, like anybody else. you see, yourself, that its clothes was turned to ghost-stuff. well, then, what's to hender its bag from turning, too? of course it done it." that was reasonable. i couldn't find no fault with it. bill withers and his brother jack come along by, talking, and jack says: "what do you reckon he was toting?" "i dunno; but it was pretty heavy." "yes, all he could lug. nigger stealing corn from old parson silas, i judged." "so did i. and so i allowed i wouldn't let on to see him." "that's me, too." then they both laughed, and went on out of hearing. it showed how unpopular old uncle silas had got to be now. they wouldn't 'a' let a nigger steal anybody else's corn and never done anything to him. we heard some more voices mumbling along towards us and getting louder, and sometimes a cackle of a laugh. it was lem beebe and jim lane. jim lane says: "who? -jubiter dunlap?" "yes." "oh, i don't know. i reckon so. i seen him spading up some ground along about an hour ago, just before sundown -him and the parson. said he guessed he wouldn't go to-night, but we could have his dog if we wanted him." "too tired, i reckon." "yes -works so hard!" "oh, you bet!" they cackled at that, and went on by. tom said we better jump out and tag along after them, because they was going our way and it wouldn't be comfortable to run across the ghost all by ourselves. so we done it, and got home all right. that night was the second of september -a saturday. i sha'n't ever forget it. you'll see why, pretty soon . chapter vi. plans to secure the diamonds we tramped along behind jim and lem till we come to the back stile where old jim's cabin was that he was captivated in, the time we set him free, and here come the dogs piling around us to say howdy, and there was the lights of the house, too; so we warn't afeard any more, and was going to climb over, but tom says: "hold on; set down here a minute. by george!" "what's the matter?" says i. "matter enough!" he says. "wasn't you expecting we would be the first to tell the family who it is that's been killed yonder in the sycamores, and all about them rapscallions that done it, and about the di'monds they've smouched off of the corpse, and paint it up fine, and have the glory of being the ones that knows a lot more about it than anybody else?" "why, of course. it wouldn't be you, tom sawyer, if you was to let such a chance go by. i reckon it ain't going to suffer none for lack of paint," i says, "when you start in to scollop the facts." "well, now," he says, perfectly ca'm, "what would you say if i was to tell you i ain't going to start in at all?" i was astonished to hear him talk so. i says: "i'd say it's a lie. you ain't in earnest, tom sawyer?" "you'll soon see. was the ghost barefooted?" "no, it wasn't. what of it?" "you wait -i'll show you what. did it have its boots on?" "yes. i seen them plain." "swear it?" "yes, i swear it." "so do i. now do you know what that means?" "no. what does it mean?" "means that them thieves didn't get the di'monds." "jimminy! what makes you think that?" "i don't only think it, i know it. didn't the breeches and goggles and whiskers and hand-bag and every blessed thing turn to ghost-stuff? everything it had on turned, didn't it? it shows that the reason its boots turned too was because it still had them on after it started to go ha'nting around, and if that ain't proof that them blatherskites didn't get the boots, i'd like to know what you'd call proof." think of that now. i never see such a head as that boy had. why, i had eyes and i could see things, but they never meant nothing to me. but tom sawyer was different. when tom sawyer seen a thing it just got up on its hind legs and talked to him -told him everything it knowed. i never see such a head. "tom sawyer," i says, "i'll say it again as i've said it a many a time before: i ain't fitten to black your boots. but that's all right -that's neither here nor there. god almighty made us all, and some he gives eyes that's blind, and some he gives eyes that can see, and i reckon it ain't none of our lookout what he done it for; it's all right, or he'd 'a' fixed it some other way. go on -i see plenty plain enough, now, that them thieves didn't get way with the di'monds. why didn't they, do you reckon?" "because they got chased away by them other two men before they could pull the boots off of the corpse." "that's so! i see it now. but looky here, tom, why ain't we to go and tell about it?" "oh, shucks, huck finn, can't you see? look at it. what's a-going to happen? there's going to be an inquest in the morning. them two men will tell how they heard the yells and rushed there just in time to not save the stranger. then the jury'll twaddle and twaddle and twaddle, and finally they'll fetch in a verdict that he got shot or stuck or busted over the head with something, and come to his death by the inspiration of god. and after they've buried him they'll auction off his things for to pay the expenses, and then's our chance." "how, tom?" "buy the boots for two dollars!" well, it 'most took my breath. "my land! why, tom, we'll get the di'monds!" "you bet. some day there'll be a big reward offered for them -a thousand dollars, sure. that's our money! now we'll trot in and see the folks. and mind you we don't know anything about any murder, or any di'monds, or any thieves -don't you forget that." i had to sigh a little over the way he had got it fixed. i'd 'a' sold them di'monds -yes, sir -for twelve thousand dollars; but i didn't say anything. it wouldn't done any good. i says: "but what are we going to tell your aunt sally has made us so long getting down here from the village, tom?" "oh, i'll leave that to you," he says. "i reckon you can explain it somehow." he was always just that strict and delicate. he never would tell a lie himself. we struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, and t'other thing that was so familiar, and we so glad to see it again, and when we got to the roofed big passageway betwixt the double log house and the kitchen part, there was everything hanging on the wall just as it used to was, even to uncle silas's old faded green baize working-gown with the hood to it, and raggedy white patch between the shoulders that always looked like somebody had hit him with a snowball; and then we lifted the latch and walked in. aunt sally she was just a-ripping and a-tearing around, and the children was huddled in one corner, and the old man he was huddled in the other and praying for help in time of need. she jumped for us with joy and tears running down her face and give us a whacking box on the ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and boxed us again, and just couldn't seem to get enough of it, she was so glad to see us; and she says: "where have you been a-loafing to, you good-fornothing trash! i've been that worried about you i didn't know what to do. your traps has been here ever so long, and i've had supper cooked fresh about four times so as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my patience is just plumb wore out, and i declare i -i -why i could skin you alive! you must be starving, poor things! -set down, set down, everybody; don't lose no more time." it was good to be there again behind all that noble corn-pone and spareribs, and everything that you could ever want in this world. old uncle silas he peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as many layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in the slack of it i was trying to study up what to say about what kept us so long. when our plates was all loadened and we'd got a-going, she asked me, and i says: "well, you see, -er -mizzes --" "huck finn! since when am i mizzes to you? have i ever been stingy of cuffs or kisses for you since the day you stood in this room and i took you for tom sawyer and blessed god for sending you to me, though you told me four thousand lies and i believed every one of them like a simpleton? call me aunt sally -like you always done." so i done it. and i says: "well, me and tom allowed we would come along afoot and take a smell of the woods, and we run across lem beebe and jim lane, and they asked us to go with them blackberrying to-night, and said they could borrow jubiter dunlap's dog, because he had told them just that minute --" "where did they see him?" says the old man; and when i looked up to see how he come to take an intrust in a little thing like that, his eyes was just burning into me, he was that eager. it surprised me so it kind of throwed me off, but i pulled myself together again and says: "it was when he was spading up some ground along with you, towards sundown or along there." he only said, "um," in a kind of a disappointed way, and didn't take no more intrust. so i went on. i says: "well, then, as i was a-saying --" "that'll do, you needn't go no furder." it was aunt sally. she was boring right into me with her eyes, and very indignant. "huck finn," she says, "how'd them men come to talk about going a-blackberrying in september -in this region?" i see i had slipped up, and i couldn't say a word. she waited, still a-gazing at me, then she says: "and how'd they come to strike that idiot idea of going a-blackberrying in the night?" "well, m'm, they -er -they told us they had a lantern, and --" "oh, shet up -do! looky here; what was they going to do with a dog? -hunt blackberries with it?" "i think, m'm, they --" "now, tom sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fixing your mouth to contribit to this mess of rubbage? speak out -and i warn you before you begin, that i don't believe a word of it. you and huck's been up to something you no business to -i know it perfectly well; i know you, both of you. now you explain that dog, and them blackberries, and the lantern, and the rest of that rot -and mind you talk as straight as a string -do you hear?" tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very dignified: "it is a pity if huck is to be talked to that way, just for making a little bit of a mistake that anybody could make." "what mistake has he made?" "why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course he meant strawberries." "tom sawyer, i lay if you aggravate me a little more, i'll --" "aunt sally, without knowing it -and of course without intending it -you are in the wrong. if you'd 'a' studied natural history the way you ought, you would know that all over the world except just here in arkansaw they always hunt strawberries with a dog -and a lantern --" but she busted in on him there and just piled into him and snowed him under. she was so mad she couldn't get the words out fast enough, and she gushed them out in one everlasting freshet. that was what tom sawyer was after. he allowed to work her up and get her started and then leave her alone and let her burn herself out. then she would be so aggravated with that subject that she wouldn't say another word about it, nor let anybody else. well, it happened just so. when she was tuckered out and had to hold up, he says, quite ca'm: "and yet, all the same, aunt sally --" "shet up!" she says, "i don't want to hear another word out of you." so we was perfectly safe, then, and didn't have no more trouble about that delay. tom done it elegant. chapter vii. a night's vigil benny she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then; but pretty soon she got to asking about mary, and sid, and tom's aunt polly, and then aunt sally's clouds cleared off and she got in a good humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self, and so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. but the old man he didn't take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and restless, and done a considerable amount of sighing; and it was kind of heart-breaking to see him so sad and troubled and worried. by and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and knocked on the door and put his head in with his old straw hat in his hand bowing and scraping, and said his marse brace was out at the stile and wanted his brother, and was getting tired waiting supper for him, and would marse silas please tell him where he was? i never see uncle silas speak up so sharp and fractious before. he says: "am i his brother's keeper?" and then he kind of wilted together, and looked like he wished he hadn't spoken so, and then he says, very gentle: "but you needn't say that, billy; i was took sudden and irritable, and i ain't very well these days, and not hardly responsible. tell him he ain't here." and when the nigger was gone he got up and walked the floor, backwards and forwards, mumbling and muttering to himself and plowing his hands through his hair. it was real pitiful to see him. aunt sally she whispered to us and told us not to take notice of him, it embarrassed him. she said he was always thinking and thinking, since these troubles come on, and she allowed he didn't more'n about half know what he was about when the thinking spells was on him; and she said he walked in his sleep considerable more now than he used to, and sometimes wandered around over the house and even outdoors in his sleep, and if we catched him at it we must let him alone and not disturb him. she said she reckoned it didn't do him no harm, and may be it done him good. she said benny was the only one that was much help to him these days. said benny appeared to know just when to try to soothe him and when to leave him alone. so he kept on tramping up and down the floor and muttering, till by and by he begun to look pretty tired; then benny she went and snuggled up to his side and put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and walked with him; and he smiled down on her, and reached down and kissed her; and so, little by little the trouble went out of his face and she persuaded him off to his room. they had very petting ways together, and it was uncommon pretty to see. aunt sally she was busy getting the children ready for bed; so by and by it got dull and tedious, and me and tom took a turn in the moonlight, and fetched up in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a good deal of talk. and tom said he'd bet the quarreling was all jubiter's fault, and he was going to be on hand the first time he got a chance, and see; and if it was so, he was going to do his level best to get uncle silas to turn him off. and so we talked and smoked and stuffed watermelons much as two hours, and then it was pretty late, and when we got back the house was quiet and dark, and everybody gone to bed. tom he always seen everything, and now he see that the old green baize work-gown was gone, and said it wasn't gone when he went out; so he allowed it was curious, and then we went up to bed. we could hear benny stirring around in her room, which was next to ourn, and judged she was worried a good deal about her father and couldn't sleep. we found we couldn't, neither. so we set up a long time, and smoked and talked in a low voice, and felt pretty dull and down-hearted. we talked the murder and the ghost over and over again, and got so creepy and crawly we couldn't get sleepy nohow and noway. by and by, when it was away late in the night and all the sounds was late sounds and solemn, tom nudged me and whispers to me to look, and i done it, and there we see a man poking around in the yard like he didn't know just what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim and we couldn't see him good. then he started for the stile, and as he went over it the moon came out strong, and he had a long-handled shovel over his shoulder, and we see the white patch on the old workgown. so tom says: "he's a-walking in his sleep. i wish we was allowed to follow him and see where he's going to. there, he's turned down by the tobacker-field. out of sight now. it's a dreadful pity he can't rest no better." we waited a long time, but he didn't come back any more, or if he did he come around the other way; so at last we was tuckered out and went to sleep and had nightmares, a million of them. but before dawn we was awake again, because meantime a storm had come up and been raging, and the thunder and lightning was awful, and the wind was a-thrashing the trees around, and the rain was driving down in slanting sheets, and the gullies was running rivers. tom says: "looky here, huck, i'll tell you one thing that's mighty curious. up to the time we went out last night the family hadn't heard about jake dunlap being murdered. now the men that chased hal clayton and bud dixon away would spread the thing around in a half an hour, and every neighbor that heard it would shin out and fly around from one farm to t'other and try to be the first to tell the news. land, they don't have such a big thing as that to tell twice in thirty year! huck, it's mighty strange; i don't understand it." so then he was in a fidget for the rain to let up, so we could turn out and run across some of the people and see if they would say anything about it to us. and he said if they did we must be horribly surprised and shocked. we was out and gone the minute the rain stopped. it was just broad day then. we loafed along up the road, and now and then met a person and stopped and said howdy, and told them when we come, and how we left the folks at home, and how long we was going to stay, and all that, but none of them said a word about that thing; which was just astonishing, and no mistake. tom said he believed if we went to the sycamores we would find that body laying there solitary and alone, and not a soul around. said he believed the men chased the thieves so far into the woods that the thieves prob'ly seen a good chance and turned on them at last, and maybe they all killed each other, and so there wasn't anybody left to tell. first we knowed, gabbling along that away, we was right at the sycamores. the cold chills trickled down my back and i wouldn't budge another step, for all tom's persuading. but he couldn't hold in; he'd got to see if the boots was safe on that body yet. so he crope in -and the next minute out he come again with his eyes bulging he was so excited, and says: "huck, it's gone!" i was astonished! i says: "tom, you don't mean it." "it's gone, sure. there ain't a sign of it. the ground is trampled some, but if there was any blood it's all washed away by the storm, for it's all puddles and slush in there." at last i give in, and went and took a look myself; and it was just as tom said -there wasn't a sign of a corpse. "dern it," i says, "the di'monds is gone. don't you reckon the thieves slunk back and lugged him off, tom?" "looks like it. it just does. now where'd they hide him, do you reckon?" "i don't know," i says, disgusted, "and what's more i don't care. they've got the boots, and that's all i cared about. he'll lay around these woods a long time before i hunt him up." tom didn't feel no more intrust in him neither, only curiosity to know what come of him; but he said we'd lay low and keep dark and it wouldn't be long till the dogs or somebody rousted him out. we went back home to breakfast ever so bothered and put out and disappointed and swindled. i warn't ever so down on a corpse before. chapter viii. talking with the ghost it warn't very cheerful at breakfast. aunt sally she looked old and tired and let the children snarl and fuss at one another and didn't seem to notice it was going on, which wasn't her usual style; me and tom had a plenty to think about without talking; benny she looked like she hadn't had much sleep, and whenever she'd lift her head a little and steal a look towards her father you could see there was tears in her eyes; and as for the old man, his things stayed on his plate and got cold without him knowing they was there, i reckon, for he was thinking and thinking all the time, and never said a word and never et a bite. by and by when it was stillest, that nigger's head was poked in at the door again, and he said his marse brace was getting powerful uneasy about marse jubiter, which hadn't come home yet, and would marse silas please -he was looking at uncle silas, and he stopped there, like the rest of his words was froze; for uncle silas he rose up shaky and steadied himself leaning his fingers on the table, and he was panting, and his eyes was set on the nigger, and he kept swallowing, and put his other hand up to his throat a couple of times, and at last he got his words started, and says: "does he -does he -think -what does he think! tell him -tell him --" then he sunk down in his chair limp and weak, and says, so as you could hardly hear him: "go away -go away!" the nigger looked scared and cleared out, and we all felt -well, i don't know how we felt, but it was awful, with the old man panting there, and his eyes set and looking like a person that was dying. none of us could budge; but benny she slid around soft, with her tears running down, and stood by his side, and nestled his old gray head up against her and begun to stroke it and pet it with her hands, and nodded to us to go away, and we done it, going out very quiet, like the dead was there. me and tom struck out for the woods mighty solemn, and saying how different it was now to what it was last summer when we was here and everything was so peaceful and happy and everybody thought so much of uncle silas, and he was so cheerful and simplehearted and pudd'n-headed and good -and now look at him. if he hadn't lost his mind he wasn't muck short of it. that was what we allowed. it was a most lovely day now, and bright and sun. shiny; and the further and further we went over the hills towards the prairie the lovelier and lovelier the trees and flowers got to be and the more it seemed strange and somehow wrong that there had to be trouble in such a world as this. and then all of a sudden i catched my breath and grabbed tom's arm, and all my livers and lungs and things fell down into my legs. "there it is!" i says. we jumped back behind a bush shivering, and tom says: "'sh! -don't make a noise." it was setting on a log right in the edge of a little prairie, thinking. i tried to get tom to come away, but he wouldn't, and i dasn't budge by myself. he said we mightn't ever get another chance to see one, and he was going to look his fill at this one if he died for it. so i looked too, though it give me the fantods to do it. tom he had to talk, but he talked low. he says: "poor jakey, it's got all its things on, just as he said he would. now you see what we wasn't certain about -its hair. it's not long now the way it was: it's got it cropped close to its head, the way he said he would. huck, i never see anything look any more naturaler than what it does." "nor i neither," i says; "i'd recognize it anywheres." "so would i. it looks perfectly solid and genuwyne, just the way it done before it died." so we kept a-gazing. pretty soon tom says: "huck, there's something mighty curious about this one, don't you know? it oughtn't to be going around in the daytime." "that's so, tom -i never heard the like of it before." "no, sir, they don't ever come out only at night -and then not till after twelve. there's something wrong about this one, now you mark my words. i don't believe it's got any right to be around in the daytime. but don't it look natural! jake was going to play deef and dumb here, so the neighbors wouldn't know his voice. do you reckon it would do that if we was to holler at it?" "lordy, tom, don't talk so! if you was to holler at it i'd die in my tracks." "don't you worry, i ain't going to holler at it. look, huck, it's a-scratching its head -don't you see?" "well, what of it?" "why, this. what's the sense of it scratching its head? there ain't anything there to itch; its head is made out of fog or something like that, and can't itch. a fog can't itch; any fool knows that." "well, then, if it don't itch and can't itch, what in the nation is it scratching it for? ain't it just habit, don't you reckon?" "no, sir, i don't. i ain't a bit satisfied about the way this one acts. i've a blame good notion it's a bogus one -i have, as sure as i'm a-sitting here. because, if it -huck!" "well, what's the matter now?" "you can't see the bushes through it!" "why, tom, it's so, sure! it's as solid as a cow. i sort of begin to think --" "huck, it's biting off a chaw of tobacker! by george, they don't chaw -they hain't got anything to chaw with. huck!" "i'm a-listening." "it ain't a ghost at all. it's jake dunlap his own self!" "oh your granny!" i says. "huck finn, did we find any corpse in the sycamores?" "no." "or any sign of one?" "no." "mighty good reason. hadn't ever been any corpse there." "why, tom, you know we heard --" "yes, we didê-heard a howl or two. does that prove anybody was killed? course it don't. and we seen four men run, then this one come walking out and we took it for a ghost. no more ghost than you are. it was jake dunlap his own self, and it's jake dunlap now. he's been and got his hair cropped, the way he said he would, and he's playing himself for a stranger, just the same as he said he would. ghost? hum! -he's as sound as a nut." then i see it all, and how we had took too much for granted. i was powerful glad he didn't get killed, and so was tom, and we wondered which he would like the best -for us to never let on to know him, or how? tom reckoned the best way would be to go and ask him. so he started; but i kept a little behind, because i didn't know but it might be a ghost, after all. when tom got to where he was, he says: "me and huck's mighty glad to see you again, and you needn't be afeared we'll tell. and if you think it'll be safer for you if we don't let on to know you when we run across you, say the word and you'll see you can depend on us, and would ruther cut our hands off than get you into the least little bit of danger." first off he looked surprised to see us, and not very glad, either; but as tom went on he looked pleasanter, and when he was done he smiled, and nodded his head several times, and made signs with his hands, and says: "goo-goo -goo-goo," the way deef and dummies does. just then we see some of steve nickerson's people coming that lived t'other side of the prairie, so tom says: "you do it elegant; i never see anybody do it better. you're right; play it on us, too; play it on us same as the others; it'll keep you in practice and prevent you making blunders. we'll keep away from you and let on we don't know you, but any time we can be any help, you just let us know." then we loafed along past the nickersons, and of course they asked if that was the new stranger yonder, and where'd he come from, and what was his name, and which communion was he, babtis' or methodis', and which politics, whig or democrat, and how long is he staying, and all them other questions that humans always asks when a stranger comes, and animals does, too. but tom said he warn't able to make anything out of deef and dumb signs, and the same with googooing. then we watched them go and bullyrag jake; because we was pretty uneasy for him. tom said it would take him days to get so he wouldn't forget he was a deef and dummy sometimes, and speak out before he thought. when we had watched long enough to see that jake was getting along all right and working his signs very good, we loafed along again, allowing to strike the schoolhouse about recess time, which was a three-mile tramp. i was so disappointed not to hear jake tell about the row in the sycamores, and how near he come to getting killed, that i couldn't seem to get over it, and tom he felt the same, but said if we was in jake's fix we would want to go careful and keep still and not take any chances. the boys and girls was all glad to see us again, and we had a real good time all through recess. coming to school the henderson boys had come across the new deef and dummy and told the rest; so all the scholars was chuck full of him and couldn't talk about anything else, and was in a sweat to get a sight of him because they hadn't ever seen a deef and dummy in their lives, and it made a powerful excitement. tom said it was tough to have to keep mum now; said we would be heroes if we could come out and tell all we knowed; but after all, it was still more heroic to keep mum, there warn't two boys in a million could do it. that was tom sawyer's idea about it, and reckoned there warn't anybody could better it. chapter ix. finding of jubiter dunlap in the next two or three days dummy he got to be powerful popular. he went associating around with the neighbors, and they made much of him, and was proud to have such a rattling curiosity among them. they had him to breakfast, they had him to dinner, they had him to supper; they kept him loaded up with hog and hominy, and warn't ever tired staring at him and wondering over him, and wishing they knowed more about him, he was so uncommon and romantic. his signs warn't no good; people couldn't understand them and he prob'ly couldn't himself, but he done a sight of goo-gooing, and so everybody was satisfied, and admired to hear him go it. he toted a piece of slate around, and a pencil; and people wrote questions on it and he wrote answers; but there warn't anybody could read his writing but brace dunlap. brace said he couldn't read it very good, but he could manage to dig out the meaning most of the time. he said dummy said he belonged away off somers and used to be well off, but got busted by swindlers which he had trusted, and was poor now, and hadn't any way to make a living. everybody praised brace dunlap for being so good to that stranger. he let him have a little log-cabin all to himself, and had his niggers take care of it, and fetch him all the vittles he wanted. dummy was at our house some, because old uncle silas was so afflicted himself, these days, that anybody else that was afflicted was a comfort to him. me and tom didn't let on that we had knowed him before, and he didn't let on that he had knowed us before. the family talked their troubles out before him the same as if he wasn't there, but we reckoned it wasn't any harm for him to hear what they said. generly he didn't seem to notice, but sometimes he did. well, two or three days went along, and everybody got to getting uneasy about jubiter dunlap. everybody was asking everybody if they had any idea what had become of him. no, they hadn't, they said: and they shook their heads and said there was something powerful strange about it. another and another day went by; then there was a report got around that praps he was murdered. you bet it made a big stir! everybody's tongue was clacking away after that. saturday two or three gangs turned out and hunted the woods to see if they could run across his remainders. me and tom helped, and it was noble good times and exciting. tom he was so brimful of it he couldn't eat nor rest. he said if we could find that corpse we would be celebrated, and more talked about than if we got drownded. the others got tired and give it up; but not tom sawyer -that warn't his style. saturday night he didn't sleep any, hardly, trying to think up a plan; and towards daylight in the morning he struck it. he snaked me out of bed and was all excited, and says: "quick, huck, snatch on your clothes -i've got it! bloodhound!" in two minutes we was tearing up the river road in the dark towards the village. old jeff hooker had a bloodhound, and tom was going to borrow him. i says: "the trail's too old, tom -and besides, it's rained, you know." "it don't make any difference, huck. if the body's hid in the woods anywhere around the hound will find it. if he's been murdered and buried, they wouldn't bury him deep, it ain't likely, and if the dog goes over the spot he'll scent him, sure. huck, we're going to be celebrated, sure as you're born!" he was just a-blazing; and whenever he got afire he was most likely to get afire all over. that was the way this time. in two minutes he had got it all ciphered out, and wasn't only just going to find the corpse -no, he was going to get on the track of that murderer and hunt him down, too; and not only that, but he was going to stick to him till -"well," i says, "you better find the corpse first; i reckon that's a-plenty for to-day. for all we know, there ain't any corpse and nobody hain't been murdered. that cuss could 'a' gone off somers and not been killed at all." that graveled him, and he says: "huck finn, i never see such a person as you to want to spoil everything. as long as you can't see anything hopeful in a thing, you won't let anybody else. what good can it do you to throw cold water on that corpse and get up that selfish theory that there ain't been any murder? none in the world. i don't see how you can act so. i wouldn't treat you like that, and you know it. here we've got a noble good opportunity to make a ruputation, and --" "oh, go ahead," i says. "i'm sorry, and i take it all back. i didn't mean nothing. fix it any way you want it. he ain't any consequence to me. if he's killed, i'm as glad of it as you are; and if he --" "i never said anything about being glad; i only --" "well, then, i'm as sorry as you are. any way you druther have it, that is the way i druther have it. he --" "there ain't any druthers about it, huck finn; nobody said anything about druthers. and as for --" he forgot he was talking, and went tramping along, studying. he begun to get excited again, and pretty soon he says: "huck, it'll be the bulliest thing that ever happened if we find the body after everybody else has quit looking, and then go ahead and hunt up the murderer. it won't only be an honor to us, but it'll be an honor to uncle silas because it was us that done it. it'll set him up again, you see if it don't." but old jeff hooker he throwed cold water on the whole business when we got to his blacksmith shop and told him what we come for. "you can take the dog," he says, "but you ain't a-going to find any corpse, because there ain't any corpse to find. everybody's quit looking, and they're right. soon as they come to think, they knowed there warn't no corpse. and i'll tell you for why. what does a person kill another person for, tom sawyer? -answer me that." "why, he -er --" "answer up! you ain't no fool. what does he kill him for?" "well, sometimes it's for revenge, and --" "wait. one thing at a time. revenge, says you; and right you are. now who ever had anything agin that poor trifling no-account? who do you reckon would want to kill him? -that rabbit!" tom was stuck. i reckon he hadn't thought of a person having to have a reason for killing a person before, and now he sees it warn't likely anybody would have that much of a grudge against a lamb like jubiter dunlap. the blacksmith says, by and by: "the revenge idea won't work, you see. well, then, what's next? robbery? b'gosh, that must 'a' been it, tom! yes, sirree, i reckon we've struck it this time. some feller wanted his gallus-buckles, and so he --" but it was so funny he busted out laughing, and just went on laughing and laughing and laughing till he was 'most dead, and tom looked so put out and cheap that i knowed he was ashamed he had come, and he wished he hadn't. but old hooker never let up on him. he raked up everything a person ever could want to kill another person about, and any fool could see they didn't any of them fit this case, and he just made no end of fun of the whole business and of the people that had been hunting the body; and he said: "if they'd had any sense they'd 'a' knowed the lazy cuss slid out because he wanted a loafing spell after all this work. he'll come pottering back in a couple of weeks, and then how'll you fellers feel? but, laws bless you, take the dog, and go and hunt his remainders. do, tom." then he busted out, and had another of them fortyrod laughs of hisn. tom couldn't back down after all this, so he said, "all right, unchain him;" and the blacksmith done it, and we started home and left that old man laughing yet. it was a lovely dog. there ain't any dog that's got a lovelier disposition than a bloodhound, and this one knowed us and liked us. he capered and raced around ever so friendly, and powerful glad to be free and have a holiday; but tom was so cut up he couldn't take any intrust in him, and said he wished he'd stopped and thought a minute before he ever started on such a fool errand. he said old jeff hooker would tell everybody, and we'd never hear the last of it. so we loafed along home down the back lanes, feeling pretty glum and not talking. when we was passing the far corner of our tobacker field we heard the dog set up a long howl in there, and we went to the place and he was scratching the ground with all his might, and every now and then canting up his head sideways and fetching another howl. it was a long square, the shape of a grave; the rain had made it sink down and show the shape. the minute we come and stood there we looked at one another and never said a word. when the dog had dug down only a few inches he grabbed something and pulled it up, and it was an arm and a sleeve. tom kind of gasped out, and says: "come away, huck -it's found." i just felt awful. we struck for the road and fetched the first men that come along. they got a spade at the crib and dug out the body, and you never see such an excitement. you couldn't make anything out of the face, but you didn't need to. everybody said: "poor jubiter; it's his clothes, to the last rag!" some rushed off to spread the news and tell the justice of the peace and have an inquest, and me and tom lit out for the house. tom was all afire and 'most out of breath when we come tearing in where uncle silas and aunt sally and benny was. tom sung out: "me and huck's found jubiter dunlap's corpse all by ourselves with a bloodhound, after everybody else had quit hunting and given it up; and if it hadn't a been for us it never would 'a' been found; and he was murdered too -they done it with a club or something like that; and i'm going to start in and find the murderer, next, and i bet i'll do it!" aunt sally and benny sprung up pale and astonished, but uncle silas fell right forward out of his chair on to the floor and groans out: "oh, my god, you've found him now!" chapter x. the arrest of uncle silas them awful words froze us solid. we couldn't move hand or foot for as much as half a minute. then we kind of come to, and lifted the old man up and got him into his chair, and benny petted him and kissed him and tried to comfort him, and poor old aunt sally she done the same; but, poor things, they was so broke up and scared and knocked out of their right minds that they didn't hardly know what they was about. with tom it was awful; it 'most petrified him to think maybe he had got his uncle into a thousand times more trouble than ever, and maybe it wouldn't ever happened if he hadn't been so ambitious to get celebrated, and let the corpse alone the way the others done. but pretty soon he sort of come to himself again and says: "uncle silas, don't you say another word like that. it's dangerous, and there ain't a shadder of truth in it." aunt sally and benny was thankful to hear him say that, and they said the same; but the old man he wagged his head sorrowful and hopeless, and the tears run down his face, and he says; "no -i done it; poor jubiter, i done it!" it was dreadful to hear him say it. then he went on and told about it, and said it happened the day me and tom come -along about sundown. he said jubiter pestered him and aggravated him till he was so mad he just sort of lost his mind and grabbed up a stick and hit him over the head with all his might, and jubiter dropped in his tracks. then he was scared and sorry, and got down on his knees and lifted his head up, and begged him to speak and say he wasn't dead; and before long he come to, and when he see who it was holding his head, he jumped like he was 'most scared to death, and cleared the fence and tore into the woods, and was gone. so he hoped he wasn't hurt bad. "but laws," he says, "it was only just fear that gave him that last little spurt of strength, and of course it soon played out and he laid down in the bush, and there wasn't anybody to help him, and he died." then the old man cried and grieved, and said he was a murderer and the mark of cain was on him, and he had disgraced his family and was going to be found out and hung. but tom said: "no, you ain't going to be found out. you didn't kill him. one lick wouldn't kill him. somebody else done it." "oh, yes," he says, "i done it -nobody else. who else had anything against him? who else could have anything against him?" he looked up kind of like he hoped some of us could mention somebody that could have a grudge against that harmless no-account, but of course it warn't no use -he had us; we couldn't say a word. he noticed that, and he saddened down again, and i never see a face so miserable and so pitiful to see. tom had a sudden idea, and says: "but hold on! -somebody buried him. now who --" he shut off sudden. i knowed the reason. it give me the cold shudders when he said them words, because right away i remembered about us seeing uncle silas prowling around with a long-handled shovel away in the night that night. and i knowed benny seen him, too, because she was talking about it one day. the minute tom shut off he changed the subject and went to begging uncle silas to keep mum, and the rest of us done the same, and said he must, and said it wasn't his business to tell on himself, and if he kept mum nobody would ever know; but if it was found out and any harm come to him it would break the family's hearts and kill them, and yet never do anybody any good. so at last he promised. we was all of us more comfortable, then, and went to work to cheer up the old man. we told him all he'd got to do was to keep still, and it wouldn't be long till the whole thing would blow over and be forgot. we all said there wouldn't anybody ever suspect uncle silas, nor ever dream of such a thing, he being so good and kind, and having such a good character; and tom says, cordial and hearty, he says: "why, just look at it a minute; just consider. here is uncle silas, all these years a preacher -at his own expense; all these years doing good with all his might and every way he can think of -at his own expense, all the time; always been loved by everybody, and respected; always been peaceable and minding his own business, the very last man in this whole deestrict to touch a person, and everybody knows it. suspect him? why, it ain't any more possible than --" "by authority of the state of arkansaw, i arrest you for the murder of jubiter dunlap!" shouts the sheriff at the door. it was awful. aunt sally and benny flung themselves at uncle silas, screaming and crying, and hugged him and hung to him, and aunt sally said go away, she wouldn't ever give him up, they shouldn't have him, and the niggers they come crowding and crying to the door and -well, i couldn't stand it; it was enough to break a person's heart; so i got out. they took him up to the little one-horse jail in the village, and we all went along to tell him good-bye; and tom was feeling elegant, and says to me, "we'll have a most noble good time and heaps of danger some dark night getting him out of there, huck, and it'll be talked about everywheres and we will be celebrated;" but the old man busted that scheme up the minute he whispered to him about it. he said no, it was his duty to stand whatever the law done to him, and he would stick to the jail plumb through to the end, even if there warn't no door to it. it disappointed tom and graveled him a good deal, but he had to put up with it. but he felt responsible and bound to get his uncle silas free; and he told aunt sally, the last thing, not to worry, because he was going to turn in and work night and day and beat this game and fetch uncle silas out innocent; and she was very loving to him and thanked him and said she knowed he would do his very best. and she told us to help benny take care of the house and the children, and then we had a good-bye cry all around and went back to the farm, and left her there to live with the jailer's wife a month till the trial in october. chapter xi. tom sawyer discovers the murderers well, that was a hard month on us all. poor benny, she kept up the best she could, and me and tom tried to keep things cheerful there at the house, but it kind of went for nothing, as you may say. it was the same up at the jail. we went up every day to see the old people, but it was awful dreary, because the old man warn't sleeping much, and was walking in his sleep considerable and so he got to looking fagged and miserable, and his mind got shaky, and we all got afraid his troubles would break him down and kill him. and whenever we tried to persuade him to feel cheerfuler, he only shook his head and said if we only knowed what it was to carry around a murderer's load in your heart we wouldn't talk that way. tom and all of us kept telling him it wasn't murder, but just accidental killing! but it never made any difference -it was murder, and he wouldn't have it any other way. he actu'ly begun to come out plain and square towards trial time and acknowledge that he tried to kill the man. why, that was awful, you know. it made things seem fifty times as dreadful, and there warn't no more comfort for aunt sally and benny. but he promised he wouldn't say a word about his murder when others was around, and we was glad of that. tom sawyer racked the head off of himself all that month trying to plan some way out for uncle silas, and many's the night he kept me up 'most all night with this kind of tiresome work, but he couldn't seem to get on the right track no way. as for me, i reckoned a body might as well give it up, it all looked so blue and i was so downhearted; but he wouldn't. he stuck to the business right along, and went on planning and thinking and ransacking his head. so at last the trial come on, towards the middle of october, and we was all in the court. the place was jammed, of course. poor old uncle silas, he looked more like a dead person than a live one, his eyes was so hollow and he looked so thin and so mournful. benny she set on one side of him and aunt sally on the other, and they had veils on, and was full of trouble. but tom he set by our lawyer, and had his finger in everywheres, of course. the lawyer let him, and the judge let him. he 'most took the business out of the lawyer's hands sometimes; which was well enough, because that was only a mud-turtle of a back-settlement lawyer and didn't know enough to come in when it rains, as the saying is. they swore in the jury, and then the lawyer for the prostitution got up and begun. he made a terrible speech against the old man, that made him moan and groan, and made benny and aunt sally cry. the way he told about the murder kind of knocked us all stupid it was so different from the old man's tale. he said he was going to prove that uncle silas was seen to kill jubiter dunlap by two good witnesses, and done it deliberate, and said he was going to kill him the very minute he hit him with the club; and they seen him hide jubiter in the bushes, and they seen that jubiter was stone-dead. and said uncle silas come later and lugged jubiter down into the tobacker field, and two men seen him do it. and said uncle silas turned out, away in the night, and buried jubiter, and a man seen him at it. i says to myself, poor old uncle silas has been lying about it because he reckoned nobody seen him and he couldn't bear to break aunt sally's heart and benny's; and right he was: as for me, i would 'a' lied the same way, and so would anybody that had any feeling, to save them such misery and sorrow which they warn't no ways responsible for. well, it made our lawyer look pretty sick; and it knocked tom silly, too, for a little spell, but then he braced up and let on that he warn't worried -but i knowed he was, all the same. and the people -my, but it made a stir amongst them! and when that lawyer was done telling the jury what he was going to prove, he set down and begun to work his witnesses. first, he called a lot of them to show that there was bad blood betwixt uncle silas and the diseased; and they told how they had heard uncle silas threaten the diseased, at one time and another, and how it got worse and worse and everybody was talking about it, and how diseased got afraid of his life, and told two or three of them he was certain uncle silas would up and kill him some time or another. tom and our lawyer asked them some questions; but it warn't no use, they stuck to what they said. next, they called up lem beebe, and he took the stand. it come into my mind, then, how lem and jim lane had come along talking, that time, about borrowing a dog or something from jubiter dunlap; and that brought up the blackberries and the lantern; and that brought up bill and jack withers, and how they passed by, talking about a nigger stealing uncle silas's corn; and that fetched up our old ghost that come along about the same time and scared us so -and here he was too, and a privileged character, on accounts of his being deef and dumb and a stranger, and they had fixed him a chair inside the railing, where he could cross his legs and be comfortable, whilst the other people was all in a jam so they couldn't hardly breathe. so it all come back to me just the way it was that day; and it made me mournful to think how pleasant it was up to then, and how miserable ever since. lem beebe, sworn, said -"i was a-coming along, that day, second of september, and jim lane was with me, and it was towards sundown, and we heard loud talk, like quarrelling, and we was very close, only the hazel bushes between (that's along the fence); and we heard a voice say, 'i've told you more'n once i'd kill you,' and knowed it was this prisoner's voice; and then we see a club come up above the bushes and down out of sight again. and heard a smashing thump and then a groan or two: and then we crope soft to where we could see, and there laid jupiter dunlap dead, and this prisoner standing over him with the club; and the next he hauled the dead man into a clump of bushes and hid him, and then we stooped low, to be cut of sight, and got away." well, it was awful. it kind of froze everybody's blood to hear it, and the house was 'most as still whilst he was telling it as if there warn't nobody in it. and when he was done, you could hear them gasp and sigh, all over the house, and look at one another the same as to say, "ain't it perfectly terrible -ain't it awful!" now happened a thing that astonished me. all the time the first witnesses was proving the bad blood and the threats and all that, tom sawyer was alive and laying for them; and the minute they was through, he went for them, and done his level best to catch them in lies and spile their testimony. but now, how different. when lem first begun to talk, and never said anything about speaking to jubiter or trying to borrow a dog off of him, he was all alive and laying for lem, and you could see he was getting ready to cross-question him to death pretty soon, and then i judged him and me would go on the stand by and by and tell what we heard him and jim lane say. but the next time i looked at tom i got the cold shivers. why, he was in the brownest study you ever see -miles and miles away. he warn't hearing a word lem beebe was saying; and when he got through he was still in that brown-study, just the same. our lawyer joggled him, and then he looked up startled, and says, "take the witness if you want him. lemme alone -i want to think." well, that beat me. i couldn't understand it. and benny and her mother -oh, they looked sick, they was so troubled. they shoved their veils to one side and tried to get his eye, but it warn't any use, and i couldn't get his eye either. so the mud-turtle he tackled the witness, but it didn't amount to nothing; and he made a mess of it. then they called up jim lane, and he told the very same story over again, exact. tom never listened to this one at all, but set there thinking and thinking, miles and miles away. so the mud-turtle went in alone again and come out just as flat as he done before. the lawyer for the prostitution looked very comfortable, but the judge looked disgusted. you see, tom was just the same as a regular lawyer, nearly, because it was arkansaw law for a prisoner to choose anybody he wanted to help his lawyer, and tom had had uncle silas shove him into the case, and now he was botching it and you could see the judge didn't like it much. all that the mud-turtle got out of lem and jim was this: he asked them: "why didn't you go and tell what you saw?" "we was afraid we would get mixed up in it ourselves. and we was just starting down the river a-hunting for all the week besides; but as soon as we come back we found out they'd been searching for the body, so then we went and told brace dunlap all about it." "when was that?" "saturday night, september 9th." the judge he spoke up and says: "mr. sheriff, arrest these two witnesses on suspicions of being accessionary after the fact to the murder." the lawyer for the prostitution jumps up all excited, and says: "your honor! i protest against this extraordi --" "set down!" says the judge, pulling his bowie and laying it on his pulpit. "i beg you to respect the court." so he done it. then he called bill withers. bill withers, sworn, said: "i was coming along about sundown, saturday, september 2d, by the prisoner's field, and my brother jack was with me and we seen a man toting off something heavy on his back and allowed it was a nigger stealing corn; we couldn't see distinct; next we made out that it was one man carrying another; and the way it hung, so kind of limp, we judged it was somebody that was drunk; and by the man's walk we said it was parson silas, and we judged he had found sam cooper drunk in the road, which he was always trying to reform him, and was toting him out of danger." it made the people shiver to think of poor old uncle silas toting off the diseased down to the place in his tobacker field where the dog dug up the body, but there warn't much sympathy around amongst the faces, and i heard one cuss say "'tis the coldest blooded work i ever struck, lugging a murdered man around like that, and going to bury him like a animal, and him a preacher at that." tom he went on thinking, and never took no notice; so our lawyer took the witness and done the best he could, and it was plenty poor enough. then jack withers he come on the stand and told the same tale, just like bill done. and after him comes brace dunlap, and he was looking very mournful, and most crying; and there was a rustle and a stir all around, and everybody got ready to listen, and lost of the women folks said, "poor cretur, poor cretur," and you could see a many of them wiping their eyes. brace dunlap, sworn, said: "i was in considerable trouble a long time about my poor brother, but i reckoned things warn't near so bad as he made out, and i couldn't make myself believe anybody would have the heart to hurt a poor harmless cretur like that" -[by jings, i was sure i seen tom give a kind of a faint little start, and then look disappointed again] -"and you know i couldn't think a preacher would hurt him -it warn't natural to think such an onlikely thing -so i never paid much attention, and now i sha'n't ever, ever forgive myself; for if i had a done different, my poor brother would be with me this day, and not laying yonder murdered, and him so harmless." he kind of broke down there and choked up, and waited to get his voice; and people all around said the most pitiful things, and women cried; and it was very still in there, and solemn, and old uncle silas, poor thing, he give a groan right out so everybody heard him. then brace he went on, "saturday, september 2d, he didn't come home to supper. by-and-by i got a little uneasy, and one of my niggers went over to this prisoner's place, but come back and said he warn't there. so i got uneasier and uneasier, and couldn't rest. i went to bed, but i couldn't sleep; and turned out, away late in the night, and went wandering over to this prisoner's place and all around about there a good while, hoping i would run across my poor brother, and never knowing he was out of his troubles and gone to a better shore --" so he broke down and choked up again, and most all the women was crying now. pretty soon he got another start and says: "but it warn't no use; so at last i went home and tried to get some sleep, but couldn't. well, in a day or two everybody was uneasy, and they got to talking about this prisoner's threats, and took to the idea, which i didn't take no stock in, that my brother was murdered so they hunted around and tried to find his body, but couldn't and give it up. and so i reckoned he was gone off somers to have a little peace, and would come back to us when his troubles was kind of healed. but late saturday night, the 9th, lem beebe and jim lane come to my house and told me all -told me the whole awful 'sassination, and my heart was broke. and then i remembered something that hadn't took no hold of me at the time, because reports said this prisoner had took to walking in his sleep and doing all kind of things of no consequence, not knowing what he was about. i will tell you what that thing was that come back into my memory. away late that awful saturday night when i was wandering around about this prisoner's place, grieving and troubled, i was down by the corner of the tobacker field and i heard a sound like digging in a gritty soil; and i crope nearer and peeped through the vines that hung on the rail fence and seen this prisoner shoveling -shoveling with a long-handled shovel -heaving earth into a big hole that was most filled up; his back was to me, but it was bright moonlight and i knowed him by his old green baize work-gown with a splattery white patch in the middle of the back like somebody had hit him with a snowball. he was burying the man he'd murdered!" and he slumped down in his chair crying and sobbing, and 'most everybody in the house busted out wailing, and crying, and saying, "oh, it's awful -awful -horrible! and there was a most tremendous excitement, and you couldn't hear yourself think; and right in the midst of it up jumps old uncle silas, white as a sheet, and sings out: "it's true, every word -i murdered him in cold blood!" by jackson, it petrified them! people rose up wild all over the house, straining and staring for a better look at him, and the judge was hammering with his mallet and the sheriff yelling "order -order in the court -order!" and all the while the old man stood there a-quaking and his eyes a-burning, and not looking at his wife and daughter, which was clinging to him and begging him to keep still, but pawing them off with his hands and saying he would clear his black soul from crime, he would heave off this load that was more than he could bear, and he wouldn't bear it another hour! and then he raged right along with his awful tale, everybody a-staring and gasping, judge, jury, lawyers, and everybody, and benny and aunt sally crying their hearts out. and by george, tom sawyer never looked at him once! never once -just set there gazing with all his eyes at something else, i couldn't tell what. and so the old man raged right along, pouring his words out like a stream of fire: "i killed him! i am guilty! but i never had the notion in my life to hurt him or harm him, spite of all them lies about my threatening him, till the very minute i raised the club -then my heart went cold! -then the pity all went out of it, and i struck to kill! in that one moment all my wrongs come into my mind; all the insults that that man and the scoundrel his brother, there, had put upon me, and how they laid in together to ruin me with the people, and take away my good name, and drive me to some deed that would destroy me and my family that hadn't ever done them no harm, so help me god! and they done it in a mean revenge -for why? because my innocent pure girl here at my side wouldn't marry that rich, insolent, ignorant coward, brace dunlap, who's been sniveling here over a brother he never cared a brass farthing for -"[i see tom give a jump and look glad this time, to a dead certainty]" -and in that moment i've told you about, i forgot my god and remembered only my heart's bitterness, god forgive me, and i struck to kill. in one second i was miserably sorry -oh, filled with remorse; but i thought of my poor family, and i must hide what i'd done for their sakes; and i did hide that corpse in the bushes; and presently i carried it to the tobacker field; and in the deep night i went with my shovel and buried it where --" up jumps tom and shouts: "now, i've got it!" and waves his hand, oh, ever so fine and starchy, towards the old man, and says: "set down! a murder was done, but you never had no hand in it!" well, sir, you could a heard a pin drop. and the old man he sunk down kind of bewildered in his seat and aunt sally and benny didn't know it, because they was so astonished and staring at tom with their mouths open and not knowing what they was about. and the whole house the same. i never seen people look so helpless and tangled up, and i hain't ever seen eyes bug out and gaze without a blink the way theirn did. tom says, perfectly ca'm: "your honor, may i speak?" "for god's sake, yes -go on!" says the judge, so astonished and mixed up he didn't know what he was about hardly. then tom he stood there and waited a second or two -that was for to work up an "effect," as he calls it -then he started in just as ca'm as ever, and says: "for about two weeks now there's been a little bill sticking on the front of this courthouse offering two thousand dollars reward for a couple of big di'monds -stole at st. louis. them di'monds is worth twelve thousand dollars. but never mind about that till i get to it. now about this murder. i will tell you all about it -how it happened -who done it -every detail." you could see everybody nestle now, and begin to listen for all they was worth. "this man here, brace dunlap, that's been sniveling so about his dead brother that you know he never cared a straw for, wanted to marry that young girl there, and she wouldn't have him. so he told uncle silas he would make him sorry. uncle silas knowed how powerful he was, and how little chance he had against such a man, and he was scared and worried, and done everything he could think of to smooth him over and get him to be good to him: he even took his noaccount brother jubiter on the farm and give him wages and stinted his own family to pay them; and jubiter done everything his brother could contrive to insult uncle silas, and fret and worry him, and try to drive uncle silas into doing him a hurt, so as to injure uncle silas with the people. and it done it. everybody turned against him and said the meanest kind of things about him, and it graduly broke his heart -yes, and he was so worried and distressed that often he warn't hardly in his right mind. "well, on that saturday that we've had so much trouble about, two of these witnesses here, lem beebe and jim lane, come along by where uncle silas and jubiter dunlap was at work -and that much of what they've said is true, the rest is lies. they didn't hear uncle silas say he would kill jubiter; they didn't hear no blow struck; they didn't see no dead man, and they didn't see uncle silas hide anything in the bushes. look at them now -how they set there, wishing they hadn't been so handy with their tongues; anyway, they'll wish it before i get done. "that same saturday evening bill and jack withers did see one man lugging off another one. that much of what they said is true, and the rest is lies. first off they thought it was a nigger stealing uncle silas's corn -you notice it makes them look silly, now, to find out somebody overheard them say that. that's because they found out by and by who it was that was doing the lugging, and they know best why they swore here that they took it for uncle silas by the gait -which it wasn't, and they knowed it when they swore to that lie. "a man out in the moonlight did see a murdered person put under ground in the tobacker field -but it wasn't uncle silas that done the burying. he was in his bed at that very time. "now, then, before i go on, i want to ask you if you've ever noticed this: that people, when they're thinking deep, or when they're worried, are most always doing something with their hands, and they don't know it, and don't notice what it is their hands are doing. some stroke their chins; some stroke their noses; some stroke up under their chin with their hand; some twirl a chain, some fumble a button, then there's some that draws a figure or a letter with their finger on their cheek, or under their chin or on their under lip. that's my way. when i'm restless, or worried, or thinking hard, i draw capital v's on my cheek or on my under lip or under my chin, and never anything but capital v's -and half the time i don't notice it and don't know i'm doing it." that was odd. that is just what i do; only i make an o. and i could see people nodding to one another, same as they do when they mean "that's so." "now, then, i'll go on. that same saturday -no, it was the night before -there was a steamboat laying at flagler's landing, forty miles above here, and it was raining and storming like the nation. and there was a thief aboard, and he had them two big di'monds that's advertised out here on this courthouse door; and he slipped ashore with his hand-bag and struck out into the dark and the storm, and he was a-hoping he could get to this town all right and be safe. but he had two pals aboard the boat, hiding, and he knowed they was going to kill him the first chance they got and take the di'monds; because all three stole them, and then this fellow he got hold of them and skipped. "well, he hadn't been gone more'n ten minutes before his pals found it out, and they jumped ashore and lit out after him. prob'ly they burnt matches and found his tracks. anyway, they dogged along after him all day saturday and kept out of his sight; and towards sundown he come to the bunch of sycamores down by uncle silas's field, and he went in there to get a disguise out of his hand-bag and put it on before he showed himself here in the town -and mind you he done that just a little after the time that uncle silas was hitting jubiter dunlap over the head with a club -for he did hit him. "but the minute the pals see that thief slide into the bunch of sycamores, they jumped out of the bushes and slid in after him. "they fell on him and clubbed him to death. "yes, for all he screamed and howled so, they never had no mercy on him, but clubbed him to death. and two men that was running along the road heard him yelling that way, and they made a rush into the syca i more bunch -which was where they was bound for, anyway -and when the pals saw them they lit out and the two new men after them a-chasing them as tight as they could go. but only a minute or two -then these two new men slipped back very quiet into the sycamores. "then what did they do? i will tell you what they done. they found where the thief had got his disguise out of his carpet-sack to put on; so one of them strips and puts on that disguise." tom waited a little here, for some more "effect" -then he says, very deliberate: "the man that put on that dead man's disguise was -jubiter dunlap!" "great scott!" everybody shouted, all over the house, and old uncle silas he looked perfectly astonished. "yes, it was jubiter dunlap. not dead, you see. then they pulled off the dead man's boots and put jubiter dunlap's old ragged shoes on the corpse and put the corpse's boots on jubiter dunlap. then jubiter dunlap stayed where he was, and the other man lugged the dead body off in the twilight; and after midnight he went to uncle silas's house, and took his old green work-robe off of the peg where it always hangs in the passage betwixt the house and the kitchen and put it on, and stole the long-handled shovel and went off down into the tobacker field and buried the murdered man." he stopped, and stood half a minute. then -"and who do you reckon the murdered man was? it was -jake dunlap, the long-lost burglar!" "great scott!" "and the man that buried him was -brace dunlap, his brother!" "great scott!" "and who do you reckon is this mowing idiot here that's letting on all these weeks to be a deef and dumb stranger? it's -jubiter dunlap!" my land, they all busted out in a howl, and you never see the like of that excitement since the day you was born. and tom he made a jump for jubiter and snaked off his goggles and his false whiskers, and there was the murdered man, sure enough, just as alive as anybody! and aunt sally and benny they went to hugging and crying and kissing and smothering old uncle silas to that degree he was more muddled and confused and mushed up in his mind than he ever was before, and that is saying considerable. and next, people begun to yell: "tom sawyer! tom sawyer! shut up everybody, and let him go on! go on, tom sawyer!" which made him feel uncommon bully, for it was nuts for tom sawyer to be a public character thataway, and a hero, as he calls it. so when it was all quiet, he says: "there ain't much left, only this. when that man there, bruce dunlap, had most worried the life and sense out of uncle silas till at last he plumb lost his mind and hit this other blatherskite, his brother, with a club, i reckon he seen his chance. jubiter broke for the woods to hide, and i reckon the game was for him to slide out, in the night, and leave the country. then brace would make everybody believe uncle silas killed him and hid his body somers; and that would ruin uncle silas and drive him out of the country -hang him, maybe; i dunno. but when they found their dead brother in the sycamores without knowing him, because he was so battered up, they see they had a better thing; disguise both and bury jake and dig him up presently all dressed up in jubiter's clothes, and hire jim lane and bill withers and the others to swear to some handy lies -which they done. and there they set, now, and i told them they would be looking sick before i got done, and that is the way they're looking now. "well, me and huck finn here, we come down on the boat with the thieves, and the dead one told us all about the di'monds, and said the others would murder him if they got the chance; and we was going to help him all we could. we was bound for the sycamores when we heard them killing him in there; but we was in there in the early morning after the storm and allowed nobody hadn't been killed, after all. and when we see jubiter dunlap here spreading around in the very same disguise jake told us he was going to wear, we thought it was jake his own self -and he was goo-gooing deef and dumb, and that was according to agreement. "well, me and huck went on hunting for the corpse after the others quit, and we found it. and was proud, too; but uncle silas he knocked us crazy by telling us he killed the man. so we was mighty sorry we found the body, and was bound to save uncle silas's neck if we could; and it was going to be tough work, too, because he wouldn't let us break him out of prison the way we done with our old nigger jim. "i done everything i could the whole month to think up some way to save uncle silas, but i couldn't strike a thing. so when we come into court to-day i come empty, and couldn't see no chance anywheres. but by and by i had a glimpse of something that set me thinking -just a little wee glimpse -only that, and not enough to make sure; but it set me thinking hard -and watching, when i was only letting on to think; and by and by, sure enough, when uncle silas was piling out that stuff about him killing jubiter dunlap, i catched that glimpse again, and this time i jumped up and shut down the proceedings, because i knowed jubiter dunlap was a-setting here before me. i knowed him by a thing which i seen him do -and i remembered it. i'd seen him do it when i was here a year ago." he stopped then, and studied a minute -laying for an "effect" -i knowed it perfectly well. then he turned off like he was going to leave the platform, and says, kind of lazy and indifferent: "well, i believe that is all." why, you never heard such a howl! -and it come from the whole house: "what was it you seen him do? stay where you are, you little devil! you think you are going to work a body up till his mouth's a-watering and stop there? what was it he done?" that was it, you see -he just done it to get an "effect "; you couldn't 'a' pulled him off of that platform with a yoke of oxen. "oh, it wasn't anything much," he says. "i seen him looking a little excited when he found uncle silas was actuly fixing to hang himself for a murder that warn't ever done; and he got more and more nervous and worried, i a-watching him sharp but not seeming to look at him -and all of a sudden his hands begun to work and fidget, and pretty soon his left crept up and his finger drawed a cross on his cheek, and then i had him!" well, then they ripped and howled and stomped and clapped their hands till tom sawyer was that proud and happy he didn't know what to do with himself. and then the judge he looked down over his pulpit and says: "my boy, did you see all the various details of this strange conspiracy and tragedy that you've been describing?" "no, your honor, i didn't see any of them." "didn't see any of them! why, you've told the whole history straight through, just the same as if you'd seen it with your eyes. how did you manage that?" tom says, kind of easy and comfortable: "oh, just noticing the evidence and piecing this and that together, your honor; just an ordinary little bit of detective work; anybody could 'a' done it." "nothing of the kind! not two in a million could 'a' done it. you are a very remarkable boy." then they let go and give tom another smashing round, and he -well, he wouldn't 'a' sold out for a silver mine. then the judge says: "but are you certain you've got this curious history straight?" "perfectly, your honor. here is brace dunlap -let him deny his share of it if he wants to take the chance; i'll engage to make him wish he hadn't said anything...... well, you see he's pretty quiet. and his brother's pretty quiet, and them four witnesses that lied so and got paid for it, they're pretty quiet. and as for uncle silas, it ain't any use for him to put in his oar, i wouldn't believe him under oath!" well, sir, that fairly made them shout; and even the judge he let go and laughed. tom he was just feeling like a rainbow. when they was done laughing he looks up at the judge and says: "your honor, there's a thief in this house." "a thief?" "yes, sir. and he's got them twelve-thousanddollar di'monds on him." by gracious, but it made a stir! everybody went shouting: "which is him? which is him? p'int him out!" and the judge says: "point him out, my lad. sheriff, you will arrest him. which one is it?" tom says: "this late dead man here -jubiter dunlap." then there was another thundering let-go of astonishment and excitement; but jubiter, which was astonished enough before, was just fairly putrified with astonishment this time. and he spoke up, about half crying, and says: "now that's a lie. your honor, it ain't fair; i'm plenty bad enough without that. i done the other things -brace he put me up to it, and persuaded me, and promised he'd make me rich, some day, and i done it, and i'm sorry i done it, and i wisht i hadn't; but i hain't stole no di'monds, and i hain't got no di'monds; i wisht i may never stir if it ain't so. the sheriff can search me and see." tom says: "your honor, it wasn't right to call him a thief, and i'll let up on that a little. he did steal the di'monds, but he didn't know it. he stole them from his brother jake when he was laying dead, after jake had stole them from the other thieves; but jubiter didn't know he was stealing them; and he's been swelling around here with them a month; yes, sir, twelve thousand dollars' worth of di'monds on him -all that riches, and going around here every day just like a poor man. yes, your honor, he's got them on him now." the judge spoke up and says: "search him, sheriff." well, sir, the sheriff he ransacked him high and low, and everywhere: searched his hat, socks, seams, boots, everything -and tom he stood there quiet, laying for another of them effects of hisn. finally the sheriff he give it up, and everybody looked disappointed, and jubiter says: "there, now! what'd i tell you?" and the judge says: "it appears you were mistaken this time, my boy." then tom took an attitude and let on to be studying with all his might, and scratching his head. then all of a sudden he glanced up chipper, and says: "oh, now i've got it ! i'd forgot." which was a lie, and i knowed it. then he says: "will somebody be good enough to lend me a little small screwdriver? there was one in your brother's hand-bag that you smouched, jubiter. but i reckon you didn't fetch it with you." "no, i didn't. i didn't want it, and i give it away." "that's because you didn't know what it was for." jubiter had his boots on again, by now, and when the thing tom wanted was passed over the people's heads till it got to him, he says to jubiter: "put up your foot on this chair." and he kneeled down and begun to unscrew the heel-plate, everybody watching; and when he got that big di'mond out of that boot-heel and held it up and let it flash and blaze and squirt sunlight everwhichaway, it just took everybody's breath; and jubiter he looked so sick and sorry you never see the like of it. and when tom held up the other di'mond he looked sorrier than ever. land! he was thinking how he would 'a' skipped out and been rich and independent in a foreign land if he'd only had the luck to guess what the screwdriver was in the carpet-bag for. well, it was a most exciting time, take it all around, and tom got cords of glory. the judge took the di'monds, and stood up in his pulpit, and cleared his throat, and shoved his spectacles back on his head, and says: "i'll keep them and notify the owners; and when they send for them it will be a real pleasure to me to hand you the two thousand dollars, for you've earned the money -yes, and you've earned the deepest and most sincerest thanks of this community besides, for lifting a wronged and innocent family out of ruin and shame, and saving a good and honorable man from a felon's death, and for exposing to infamy and the punishment of the law a cruel and odious scoundrel and his miserable creatures!" well, sir, if there'd been a brass band to bust out some music, then, it would 'a' been just the perfectest thing i ever see, and tom sawyer he said the same. then the sheriff he nabbed brace dunlap and his crowd, and by and by next month the judge had them up for trial and jailed the whole lot. and everybody crowded back to uncle silas's little old church, and was ever so loving and kind to him and the family and couldn't do enough for them; and uncle silas he preached them the blamedest jumbledest idiotic sermons you ever struck, and would tangle you up so you couldn't find your way home in daylight; but the people never let on but what they thought it was the clearest and brightest and elegantest sermons that ever was; and they would set there and cry, for love and pity; but, by george, they give me the jim-jams and the fantods and caked up what brains i had, and turned them solid; but by and by they loved the old man's intellects back into him again, and he was as sound in his skull as ever he was, which ain't no flattery, i reckon. and so the whole family was as happy as birds, and nobody could be gratefuler and lovinger than what they was to tom sawyer; and the same to me, though i hadn't done nothing. and when the two thousand dollars come, tom give half of it to me, and never told anybody so, which didn't surprise me, because i knowed him. end of "tom sawyer, detective". . king john dramatis personae king john: prince henry son to the king. arthur duke of bretagne, nephew to the king. the earl of pembroke (pembroke:) the earl of essex (essex:) the earl of salisbury (salisbury:) the lord bigot (bigot:) hubert de burgh (hubert:) robert faulconbridge son to sir robert faulconbridge. (robert:) philip the bastard his half-brother. (bastard:) james gurney servant to lady faulconbridge. (gurney:) peter of pomfret a prophet. (peter:) philip king of france. (king philip:) lewis the dauphin. lymoges duke of austria. (austria:) cardinal pandulph the pope's legate. melun a french lord. chatillon ambassador from france to king john. queen elinor mother to king john. constance mother to arthur. blanch of spain niece to king john. (blanch:) lady faulconbridge: lords, citizens of angiers, sheriff, heralds, officers, soldiers, messengers, and other attendants. (first citizen:) (french herald:) (english herald:) (first executioner:) (messenger:) scene partly in england, and partly in france. king john act i scene i king john's palace. [enter king john, queen elinor, pembroke, essex, salisbury, and others, with chatillon] king john now, say, chatillon, what would france with us? chatillon thus, after greeting, speaks the king of france in my behavior to the majesty, the borrow'd majesty, of england here. queen elinor a strange beginning: 'borrow'd majesty!' king john silence, good mother; hear the embassy. chatillon philip of france, in right and true behalf of thy deceased brother geffrey's son, arthur plantagenet, lays most lawful claim to this fair island and the territories, to ireland, poictiers, anjou, touraine, maine, desiring thee to lay aside the sword which sways usurpingly these several titles, and put these same into young arthur's hand, thy nephew and right royal sovereign. king john what follows if we disallow of this? chatillon the proud control of fierce and bloody war, to enforce these rights so forcibly withheld. king john here have we war for war and blood for blood, controlment for controlment: so answer france. chatillon then take my king's defiance from my mouth, the farthest limit of my embassy. king john bear mine to him, and so depart in peace: be thou as lightning in the eyes of france; for ere thou canst report i will be there, the thunder of my cannon shall be heard: so hence! be thou the trumpet of our wrath and sullen presage of your own decay. an honourable conduct let him have: pembroke, look to 't. farewell, chatillon. [exeunt chatillon and pembroke] queen elinor what now, my son! have i not ever said how that ambitious constance would not cease till she had kindled france and all the world, upon the right and party of her son? this might have been prevented and made whole with very easy arguments of love, which now the manage of two kingdoms must with fearful bloody issue arbitrate. king john our strong possession and our right for us. queen elinor your strong possession much more than your right, or else it must go wrong with you and me: so much my conscience whispers in your ear, which none but heaven and you and i shall hear. [enter a sheriff] essex my liege, here is the strangest controversy come from country to be judged by you, that e'er i heard: shall i produce the men? king john let them approach. our abbeys and our priories shall pay this expedition's charge. [enter robert and the bastard] what men are you? bastard your faithful subject i, a gentleman born in northamptonshire and eldest son, as i suppose, to robert faulconbridge, a soldier, by the honour-giving hand of coeur-de-lion knighted in the field. king john what art thou? robert the son and heir to that same faulconbridge. king john is that the elder, and art thou the heir? you came not of one mother then, it seems. bastard most certain of one mother, mighty king; that is well known; and, as i think, one father: but for the certain knowledge of that truth i put you o'er to heaven and to my mother: of that i doubt, as all men's children may. queen elinor out on thee, rude man! thou dost shame thy mother and wound her honour with this diffidence. bastard i, madam? no, i have no reason for it; that is my brother's plea and none of mine; the which if he can prove, a' pops me out at least from fair five hundred pound a year: heaven guard my mother's honour and my land! king john a good blunt fellow. why, being younger born, doth he lay claim to thine inheritance? bastard i know not why, except to get the land. but once he slander'd me with bastardy: but whether i be as true begot or no, that still i lay upon my mother's head, but that i am as well begot, my liege,- fair fall the bones that took the pains for me!- compare our faces and be judge yourself. if old sir robert did beget us both and were our father and this son like him, o old sir robert, father, on my knee i give heaven thanks i was not like to thee! king john why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here! queen elinor he hath a trick of coeur-de-lion's face; the accent of his tongue affecteth him. do you not read some tokens of my son in the large composition of this man? king john mine eye hath well examined his parts and finds them perfect richard. sirrah, speak, what doth move you to claim your brother's land? bastard because he hath a half-face, like my father. with half that face would he have all my land: a half-faced groat five hundred pound a year! robert my gracious liege, when that my father lived, your brother did employ my father much,- bastard well, sir, by this you cannot get my land: your tale must be how he employ'd my mother. robert and once dispatch'd him in an embassy to germany, there with the emperor to treat of high affairs touching that time. the advantage of his absence took the king and in the mean time sojourn'd at my father's; where how he did prevail i shame to speak, but truth is truth: large lengths of seas and shores between my father and my mother lay, as i have heard my father speak himself, when this same lusty gentleman was got. upon his death-bed he by will bequeath'd his lands to me, and took it on his death that this my mother's son was none of his; and if he were, he came into the world full fourteen weeks before the course of time. then, good my liege, let me have what is mine, my father's land, as was my father's will. king john sirrah, your brother is legitimate; your father's wife did after wedlock bear him, and if she did play false, the fault was hers; which fault lies on the hazards of all husbands that marry wives. tell me, how if my brother, who, as you say, took pains to get this son, had of your father claim'd this son for his? in sooth, good friend, your father might have kept this calf bred from his cow from all the world; in sooth he might; then, if he were my brother's, my brother might not claim him; nor your father, being none of his, refuse him: this concludes; my mother's son did get your father's heir; your father's heir must have your father's land. robert shall then my father's will be of no force to dispossess that child which is not his? bastard of no more force to dispossess me, sir, than was his will to get me, as i think. queen elinor whether hadst thou rather be a faulconbridge and like thy brother, to enjoy thy land, or the reputed son of coeur-de-lion, lord of thy presence and no land beside? bastard madam, an if my brother had my shape, and i had his, sir robert's his, like him; and if my legs were two such riding-rods, my arms such eel-skins stuff'd, my face so thin that in mine ear i durst not stick a rose lest men should say 'look, where three-farthings goes!' and, to his shape, were heir to all this land, would i might never stir from off this place, i would give it every foot to have this face; i would not be sir nob in any case. queen elinor i like thee well: wilt thou forsake thy fortune, bequeath thy land to him and follow me? i am a soldier and now bound to france. bastard brother, take you my land, i'll take my chance. your face hath got five hundred pound a year, yet sell your face for five pence and 'tis dear. madam, i'll follow you unto the death. queen elinor nay, i would have you go before me thither. bastard our country manners give our betters way. king john what is thy name? bastard philip, my liege, so is my name begun, philip, good old sir robert's wife's eldest son. king john from henceforth bear his name whose form thou bear'st: kneel thou down philip, but rise more great, arise sir richard and plantagenet. bastard brother by the mother's side, give me your hand: my father gave me honour, yours gave land. now blessed by the hour, by night or day, when i was got, sir robert was away! queen elinor the very spirit of plantagenet! i am thy grandam, richard; call me so. bastard madam, by chance but not by truth; what though? something about, a little from the right, in at the window, or else o'er the hatch: who dares not stir by day must walk by night, and have is have, however men do catch: near or far off, well won is still well shot, and i am i, howe'er i was begot. king john go, faulconbridge: now hast thou thy desire; a landless knight makes thee a landed squire. come, madam, and come, richard, we must speed for france, for france, for it is more than need. bastard brother, adieu: good fortune come to thee! for thou wast got i' the way of honesty. [exeunt all but bastard] a foot of honour better than i was; but many a many foot of land the worse. well, now can i make any joan a lady. 'good den, sir richard!'--'god-a-mercy, fellow!'- and if his name be george, i'll call him peter; for new-made honour doth forget men's names; 'tis too respective and too sociable for your conversion. now your traveller, he and his toothpick at my worship's mess, and when my knightly stomach is sufficed, why then i suck my teeth and catechise my picked man of countries: 'my dear sir,' thus, leaning on mine elbow, i begin, 'i shall beseech you'--that is question now; and then comes answer like an absey book: 'o sir,' says answer, 'at your best command; at your employment; at your service, sir;' 'no, sir,' says question, 'i, sweet sir, at yours:' and so, ere answer knows what question would, saving in dialogue of compliment, and talking of the alps and apennines, the pyrenean and the river po, it draws toward supper in conclusion so. but this is worshipful society and fits the mounting spirit like myself, for he is but a bastard to the time that doth not smack of observation; and so am i, whether i smack or no; and not alone in habit and device, exterior form, outward accoutrement, but from the inward motion to deliver sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth: which, though i will not practise to deceive, yet, to avoid deceit, i mean to learn; for it shall strew the footsteps of my rising. but who comes in such haste in riding-robes? what woman-post is this? hath she no husband that will take pains to blow a horn before her? [enter lady faulconbridge and gurney] o me! it is my mother. how now, good lady! what brings you here to court so hastily? lady faulconbridge where is that slave, thy brother? where is he, that holds in chase mine honour up and down? bastard my brother robert? old sir robert's son? colbrand the giant, that same mighty man? is it sir robert's son that you seek so? lady faulconbridge sir robert's son! ay, thou unreverend boy, sir robert's son: why scorn'st thou at sir robert? he is sir robert's son, and so art thou. bastard james gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile? gurney good leave, good philip. bastard philip! sparrow: james, there's toys abroad: anon i'll tell thee more. [exit gurney] madam, i was not old sir robert's son: sir robert might have eat his part in me upon good-friday and ne'er broke his fast: sir robert could do well: marry, to confess, could he get me? sir robert could not do it: we know his handiwork: therefore, good mother, to whom am i beholding for these limbs? sir robert never holp to make this leg. lady faulconbridge hast thou conspired with thy brother too, that for thine own gain shouldst defend mine honour? what means this scorn, thou most untoward knave? bastard knight, knight, good mother, basilisco-like. what! i am dubb'd! i have it on my shoulder. but, mother, i am not sir robert's son; i have disclaim'd sir robert and my land; legitimation, name and all is gone: then, good my mother, let me know my father; some proper man, i hope: who was it, mother? lady faulconbridge hast thou denied thyself a faulconbridge? bastard as faithfully as i deny the devil. lady faulconbridge king richard coeur-de-lion was thy father: by long and vehement suit i was seduced to make room for him in my husband's bed: heaven lay not my transgression to my charge! thou art the issue of my dear offence, which was so strongly urged past my defence. bastard now, by this light, were i to get again, madam, i would not wish a better father. some sins do bear their privilege on earth, and so doth yours; your fault was not your folly: needs must you lay your heart at his dispose, subjected tribute to commanding love, against whose fury and unmatched force the aweless lion could not wage the fight, nor keep his princely heart from richard's hand. he that perforce robs lions of their hearts may easily win a woman's. ay, my mother, with all my heart i thank thee for my father! who lives and dares but say thou didst not well when i was got, i'll send his soul to hell. come, lady, i will show thee to my kin; and they shall say, when richard me begot, if thou hadst said him nay, it had been sin: who says it was, he lies; i say 'twas not. [exeunt] king john act ii scene i france. before angiers. [enter austria and forces, drums, etc. on one side: on the other king philip and his power; lewis, arthur, constance and attendants] lewis before angiers well met, brave austria. arthur, that great forerunner of thy blood, richard, that robb'd the lion of his heart and fought the holy wars in palestine, by this brave duke came early to his grave: and for amends to his posterity, at our importance hither is he come, to spread his colours, boy, in thy behalf, and to rebuke the usurpation of thy unnatural uncle, english john: embrace him, love him, give him welcome hither. arthur god shall forgive you coeur-de-lion's death the rather that you give his offspring life, shadowing their right under your wings of war: i give you welcome with a powerless hand, but with a heart full of unstained love: welcome before the gates of angiers, duke. lewis a noble boy! who would not do thee right? austria upon thy cheek lay i this zealous kiss, as seal to this indenture of my love, that to my home i will no more return, till angiers and the right thou hast in france, together with that pale, that white-faced shore, whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides and coops from other lands her islanders, even till that england, hedged in with the main, that water-walled bulwark, still secure and confident from foreign purposes, even till that utmost corner of the west salute thee for her king: till then, fair boy, will i not think of home, but follow arms. constance o, take his mother's thanks, a widow's thanks, till your strong hand shall help to give him strength to make a more requital to your love! austria the peace of heaven is theirs that lift their swords in such a just and charitable war. king philip well then, to work: our cannon shall be bent against the brows of this resisting town. call for our chiefest men of discipline, to cull the plots of best advantages: we'll lay before this town our royal bones, wade to the market-place in frenchmen's blood, but we will make it subject to this boy. constance stay for an answer to your embassy, lest unadvised you stain your swords with blood: my lord chatillon may from england bring, that right in peace which here we urge in war, and then we shall repent each drop of blood that hot rash haste so indirectly shed. [enter chatillon] king philip a wonder, lady! lo, upon thy wish, our messenger chatillon is arrived! what england says, say briefly, gentle lord; we coldly pause for thee; chatillon, speak. chatillon then turn your forces from this paltry siege and stir them up against a mightier task. england, impatient of your just demands, hath put himself in arms: the adverse winds, whose leisure i have stay'd, have given him time to land his legions all as soon as i; his marches are expedient to this town, his forces strong, his soldiers confident. with him along is come the mother-queen, an ate, stirring him to blood and strife; with her her niece, the lady blanch of spain; with them a bastard of the king's deceased, and all the unsettled humours of the land, rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries, with ladies' faces and fierce dragons' spleens, have sold their fortunes at their native homes, bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs, to make hazard of new fortunes here: in brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits than now the english bottoms have waft o'er did nearer float upon the swelling tide, to do offence and scath in christendom. [drum beats] the interruption of their churlish drums cuts off more circumstance: they are at hand, to parley or to fight; therefore prepare. king philip how much unlook'd for is this expedition! austria by how much unexpected, by so much we must awake endavour for defence; for courage mounteth with occasion: let them be welcome then: we are prepared. [enter king john, queen elinor, blanch, the bastard, lords, and forces] king john peace be to france, if france in peace permit our just and lineal entrance to our own; if not, bleed france, and peace ascend to heaven, whiles we, god's wrathful agent, do correct their proud contempt that beats his peace to heaven. king philip peace be to england, if that war return from france to england, there to live in peace. england we love; and for that england's sake with burden of our armour here we sweat. this toil of ours should be a work of thine; but thou from loving england art so far, that thou hast under-wrought his lawful king cut off the sequence of posterity, out-faced infant state and done a rape upon the maiden virtue of the crown. look here upon thy brother geffrey's face; these eyes, these brows, were moulded out of his: this little abstract doth contain that large which died in geffrey, and the hand of time shall draw this brief into as huge a volume. that geffrey was thy elder brother born, and this his son; england was geffrey's right and this is geffrey's: in the name of god how comes it then that thou art call'd a king, when living blood doth in these temples beat, which owe the crown that thou o'ermasterest? king john from whom hast thou this great commission, france, to draw my answer from thy articles? king philip from that supernal judge, that stirs good thoughts in any breast of strong authority, to look into the blots and stains of right: that judge hath made me guardian to this boy: under whose warrant i impeach thy wrong and by whose help i mean to chastise it. king john alack, thou dost usurp authority. king philip excuse; it is to beat usurping down. queen elinor who is it thou dost call usurper, france? constance let me make answer; thy usurping son. queen elinor out, insolent! thy bastard shall be king, that thou mayst be a queen, and cheque the world! constance my bed was ever to thy son as true as thine was to thy husband; and this boy liker in feature to his father geffrey than thou and john in manners; being as like as rain to water, or devil to his dam. my boy a bastard! by my soul, i think his father never was so true begot: it cannot be, an if thou wert his mother. queen elinor there's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father. constance there's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee. austria peace! bastard hear the crier. austria what the devil art thou? bastard one that will play the devil, sir, with you, an a' may catch your hide and you alone: you are the hare of whom the proverb goes, whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard; i'll smoke your skin-coat, an i catch you right; sirrah, look to't; i' faith, i will, i' faith. blanch o, well did he become that lion's robe that did disrobe the lion of that robe! bastard it lies as sightly on the back of him as great alcides' shows upon an ass: but, ass, i'll take that burthen from your back, or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack. austria what craker is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath? king philip lewis, determine what we shall do straight. lewis women and fools, break off your conference. king john, this is the very sum of all; england and ireland, anjou, touraine, maine, in right of arthur do i claim of thee: wilt thou resign them and lay down thy arms? king john my life as soon: i do defy thee, france. arthur of bretagne, yield thee to my hand; and out of my dear love i'll give thee more than e'er the coward hand of france can win: submit thee, boy. queen elinor come to thy grandam, child. constance do, child, go to it grandam, child: give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig: there's a good grandam. arthur good my mother, peace! i would that i were low laid in my grave: i am not worth this coil that's made for me. queen elinor his mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps. constance now shame upon you, whether she does or no! his grandam's wrongs, and not his mother's shames, draws those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes, which heaven shall take in nature of a fee; ay, with these crystal beads heaven shall be bribed to do him justice and revenge on you. queen elinor thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth! constance thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth! call not me slanderer; thou and thine usurp the dominations, royalties and rights of this oppressed boy: this is thy eld'st son's son, infortunate in nothing but in thee: thy sins are visited in this poor child; the canon of the law is laid on him, being but the second generation removed from thy sin-conceiving womb. king john bedlam, have done. constance i have but this to say, that he is not only plagued for her sin, but god hath made her sin and her the plague on this removed issue, plague for her and with her plague; her sin his injury, her injury the beadle to her sin, all punish'd in the person of this child, and all for her; a plague upon her! queen elinor thou unadvised scold, i can produce a will that bars the title of thy son. constance ay, who doubts that? a will! a wicked will: a woman's will; a canker'd grandam's will! king philip peace, lady! pause, or be more temperate: it ill beseems this presence to cry aim to these ill-tuned repetitions. some trumpet summon hither to the walls these men of angiers: let us hear them speak whose title they admit, arthur's or john's. [trumpet sounds. enter certain citizens upon the walls] first citizen who is it that hath warn'd us to the walls? king philip 'tis france, for england. king john england, for itself. you men of angiers, and my loving subjects- king philip you loving men of angiers, arthur's subjects, our trumpet call'd you to this gentle parle- king john for our advantage; therefore hear us first. these flags of france, that are advanced here before the eye and prospect of your town, have hither march'd to your endamagement: the cannons have their bowels full of wrath, and ready mounted are they to spit forth their iron indignation 'gainst your walls: all preparation for a bloody siege all merciless proceeding by these french confronts your city's eyes, your winking gates; and but for our approach those sleeping stones, that as a waist doth girdle you about, by the compulsion of their ordinance by this time from their fixed beds of lime had been dishabited, and wide havoc made for bloody power to rush upon your peace. but on the sight of us your lawful king, who painfully with much expedient march have brought a countercheque before your gates, to save unscratch'd your city's threatened cheeks, behold, the french amazed vouchsafe a parle; and now, instead of bullets wrapp'd in fire, to make a shaking fever in your walls, they shoot but calm words folded up in smoke, to make a faithless error in your ears: which trust accordingly, kind citizens, and let us in, your king, whose labour'd spirits, forwearied in this action of swift speed, crave harbourage within your city walls. king philip when i have said, make answer to us both. lo, in this right hand, whose protection is most divinely vow'd upon the right of him it holds, stands young plantagenet, son to the elder brother of this man, and king o'er him and all that he enjoys: for this down-trodden equity, we tread in warlike march these greens before your town, being no further enemy to you than the constraint of hospitable zeal in the relief of this oppressed child religiously provokes. be pleased then to pay that duty which you truly owe to that owes it, namely this young prince: and then our arms, like to a muzzled bear, save in aspect, hath all offence seal'd up; our cannons' malice vainly shall be spent against the invulnerable clouds of heaven; and with a blessed and unvex'd retire, with unhack'd swords and helmets all unbruised, we will bear home that lusty blood again which here we came to spout against your town, and leave your children, wives and you in peace. but if you fondly pass our proffer'd offer, 'tis not the roundure of your old-faced walls can hide you from our messengers of war, though all these english and their discipline were harbour'd in their rude circumference. then tell us, shall your city call us lord, in that behalf which we have challenged it? or shall we give the signal to our rage and stalk in blood to our possession? first citizen in brief, we are the king of england's subjects: for him, and in his right, we hold this town. king john acknowledge then the king, and let me in. first citizen that can we not; but he that proves the king, to him will we prove loyal: till that time have we ramm'd up our gates against the world. king john doth not the crown of england prove the king? and if not that, i bring you witnesses, twice fifteen thousand hearts of england's breed,- bastard bastards, and else. king john to verify our title with their lives. king philip as many and as well-born bloods as those,- bastard some bastards too. king philip stand in his face to contradict his claim. first citizen till you compound whose right is worthiest, we for the worthiest hold the right from both. king john then god forgive the sin of all those souls that to their everlasting residence, before the dew of evening fall, shall fleet, in dreadful trial of our kingdom's king! king philip amen, amen! mount, chevaliers! to arms! bastard saint george, that swinged the dragon, and e'er since sits on his horseback at mine hostess' door, teach us some fence! [to austria] sirrah, were i at home, at your den, sirrah, with your lioness i would set an ox-head to your lion's hide, and make a monster of you. austria peace! no more. bastard o tremble, for you hear the lion roar. king john up higher to the plain; where we'll set forth in best appointment all our regiments. bastard speed then, to take advantage of the field. king philip it shall be so; and at the other hill command the rest to stand. god and our right! [exeunt] [here after excursions, enter the herald of france, with trumpets, to the gates] french herald you men of angiers, open wide your gates, and let young arthur, duke of bretagne, in, who by the hand of france this day hath made much work for tears in many an english mother, whose sons lie scattered on the bleeding ground; many a widow's husband grovelling lies, coldly embracing the discolour'd earth; and victory, with little loss, doth play upon the dancing banners of the french, who are at hand, triumphantly display'd, to enter conquerors and to proclaim arthur of bretagne england's king and yours. [enter english herald, with trumpet] english herald rejoice, you men of angiers, ring your bells: king john, your king and england's doth approach, commander of this hot malicious day: their armours, that march'd hence so silver-bright, hither return all gilt with frenchmen's blood; there stuck no plume in any english crest that is removed by a staff of france; our colours do return in those same hands that did display them when we first march'd forth; and, like a troop of jolly huntsmen, come our lusty english, all with purpled hands, dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes: open your gates and gives the victors way. first citizen heralds, from off our towers we might behold, from first to last, the onset and retire of both your armies; whose equality by our best eyes cannot be censured: blood hath bought blood and blows have answered blows; strength match'd with strength, and power confronted power: both are alike; and both alike we like. one must prove greatest: while they weigh so even, we hold our town for neither, yet for both. [re-enter king john and king philip, with their powers, severally] king john france, hast thou yet more blood to cast away? say, shall the current of our right run on? whose passage, vex'd with thy impediment, shall leave his native channel and o'erswell with course disturb'd even thy confining shores, unless thou let his silver water keep a peaceful progress to the ocean. king philip england, thou hast not saved one drop of blood, in this hot trial, more than we of france; rather, lost more. and by this hand i swear, that sways the earth this climate overlooks, before we will lay down our just-borne arms, we'll put thee down, 'gainst whom these arms we bear, or add a royal number to the dead, gracing the scroll that tells of this war's loss with slaughter coupled to the name of kings. bastard ha, majesty! how high thy glory towers, when the rich blood of kings is set on fire! o, now doth death line his dead chaps with steel; the swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs; and now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men, in undetermined differences of kings. why stand these royal fronts amazed thus? cry, 'havoc!' kings; back to the stained field, you equal potents, fiery kindled spirits! then let confusion of one part confirm the other's peace: till then, blows, blood and death! king john whose party do the townsmen yet admit? king philip speak, citizens, for england; who's your king? first citizen the king of england; when we know the king. king philip know him in us, that here hold up his right. king john in us, that are our own great deputy and bear possession of our person here, lord of our presence, angiers, and of you. first citizen a greater power then we denies all this; and till it be undoubted, we do lock our former scruple in our strong-barr'd gates; king'd of our fears, until our fears, resolved, be by some certain king purged and deposed. bastard by heaven, these scroyles of angiers flout you, kings, and stand securely on their battlements, as in a theatre, whence they gape and point at your industrious scenes and acts of death. your royal presences be ruled by me: do like the mutines of jerusalem, be friends awhile and both conjointly bend your sharpest deeds of malice on this town: by east and west let france and england mount their battering cannon charged to the mouths, till their soul-fearing clamours have brawl'd down the flinty ribs of this contemptuous city: i'ld play incessantly upon these jades, even till unfenced desolation leave them as naked as the vulgar air. that done, dissever your united strengths, and part your mingled colours once again; turn face to face and bloody point to point; then, in a moment, fortune shall cull forth out of one side her happy minion, to whom in favour she shall give the day, and kiss him with a glorious victory. how like you this wild counsel, mighty states? smacks it not something of the policy? king john now, by the sky that hangs above our heads, i like it well. france, shall we knit our powers and lay this angiers even to the ground; then after fight who shall be king of it? bastard an if thou hast the mettle of a king, being wronged as we are by this peevish town, turn thou the mouth of thy artillery, as we will ours, against these saucy walls; and when that we have dash'd them to the ground, why then defy each other and pell-mell make work upon ourselves, for heaven or hell. king philip let it be so. say, where will you assault? king john we from the west will send destruction into this city's bosom. austria i from the north. king philip our thunder from the south shall rain their drift of bullets on this town. bastard o prudent discipline! from north to south: austria and france shoot in each other's mouth: i'll stir them to it. come, away, away! first citizen hear us, great kings: vouchsafe awhile to stay, and i shall show you peace and fair-faced league; win you this city without stroke or wound; rescue those breathing lives to die in beds, that here come sacrifices for the field: persever not, but hear me, mighty kings. king john speak on with favour; we are bent to hear. first citizen that daughter there of spain, the lady blanch, is niece to england: look upon the years of lewis the dauphin and that lovely maid: if lusty love should go in quest of beauty, where should he find it fairer than in blanch? if zealous love should go in search of virtue, where should he find it purer than in blanch? if love ambitious sought a match of birth, whose veins bound richer blood than lady blanch? such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth, is the young dauphin every way complete: if not complete of, say he is not she; and she again wants nothing, to name want, if want it be not that she is not he: he is the half part of a blessed man, left to be finished by such as she; and she a fair divided excellence, whose fulness of perfection lies in him. o, two such silver currents, when they join, do glorify the banks that bound them in; and two such shores to two such streams made one, two such controlling bounds shall you be, kings, to these two princes, if you marry them. this union shall do more than battery can to our fast-closed gates; for at this match, with swifter spleen than powder can enforce, the mouth of passage shall we fling wide ope, and give you entrance: but without this match, the sea enraged is not half so deaf, lions more confident, mountains and rocks more free from motion, no, not death himself in moral fury half so peremptory, as we to keep this city. bastard here's a stay that shakes the rotten carcass of old death out of his rags! here's a large mouth, indeed, that spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas, talks as familiarly of roaring lions as maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs! what cannoneer begot this lusty blood? he speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce; he gives the bastinado with his tongue: our ears are cudgell'd; not a word of his but buffets better than a fist of france: zounds! i was never so bethump'd with words since i first call'd my brother's father dad. queen elinor son, list to this conjunction, make this match; give with our niece a dowry large enough: for by this knot thou shalt so surely tie thy now unsured assurance to the crown, that yon green boy shall have no sun to ripe the bloom that promiseth a mighty fruit. i see a yielding in the looks of france; mark, how they whisper: urge them while their souls are capable of this ambition, lest zeal, now melted by the windy breath of soft petitions, pity and remorse, cool and congeal again to what it was. first citizen why answer not the double majesties this friendly treaty of our threaten'd town? king philip speak england first, that hath been forward first to speak unto this city: what say you? king john if that the dauphin there, thy princely son, can in this book of beauty read 'i love,' her dowry shall weigh equal with a queen: for anjou and fair touraine, maine, poictiers, and all that we upon this side the sea, except this city now by us besieged, find liable to our crown and dignity, shall gild her bridal bed and make her rich in titles, honours and promotions, as she in beauty, education, blood, holds hand with any princess of the world. king philip what say'st thou, boy? look in the lady's face. lewis i do, my lord; and in her eye i find a wonder, or a wondrous miracle, the shadow of myself form'd in her eye: which being but the shadow of your son, becomes a sun and makes your son a shadow: i do protest i never loved myself till now infixed i beheld myself drawn in the flattering table of her eye. [whispers with blanch] bastard drawn in the flattering table of her eye! hang'd in the frowning wrinkle of her brow! and quarter'd in her heart! he doth espy himself love's traitor: this is pity now, that hang'd and drawn and quartered, there should be in such a love so vile a lout as he. blanch my uncle's will in this respect is mine: if he see aught in you that makes him like, that any thing he sees, which moves his liking, i can with ease translate it to my will; or if you will, to speak more properly, i will enforce it easily to my love. further i will not flatter you, my lord, that all i see in you is worthy love, than this; that nothing do i see in you, though churlish thoughts themselves should be your judge, that i can find should merit any hate. king john what say these young ones? what say you my niece? blanch that she is bound in honour still to do what you in wisdom still vouchsafe to say. king john speak then, prince dauphin; can you love this lady? lewis nay, ask me if i can refrain from love; for i do love her most unfeignedly. king john then do i give volquessen, touraine, maine, poictiers and anjou, these five provinces, with her to thee; and this addition more, full thirty thousand marks of english coin. philip of france, if thou be pleased withal, command thy son and daughter to join hands. king philip it likes us well; young princes, close your hands. austria and your lips too; for i am well assured that i did so when i was first assured. king philip now, citizens of angiers, ope your gates, let in that amity which you have made; for at saint mary's chapel presently the rites of marriage shall be solemnized. is not the lady constance in this troop? i know she is not, for this match made up her presence would have interrupted much: where is she and her son? tell me, who knows. lewis she is sad and passionate at your highness' tent. king philip and, by my faith, this league that we have made will give her sadness very little cure. brother of england, how may we content this widow lady? in her right we came; which we, god knows, have turn'd another way, to our own vantage. king john we will heal up all; for we'll create young arthur duke of bretagne and earl of richmond; and this rich fair town we make him lord of. call the lady constance; some speedy messenger bid her repair to our solemnity: i trust we shall, if not fill up the measure of her will, yet in some measure satisfy her so that we shall stop her exclamation. go we, as well as haste will suffer us, to this unlook'd for, unprepared pomp. [exeunt all but the bastard] bastard mad world! mad kings! mad composition! john, to stop arthur's title in the whole, hath willingly departed with a part, and france, whose armour conscience buckled on, whom zeal and charity brought to the field as god's own soldier, rounded in the ear with that same purpose-changer, that sly devil, that broker, that still breaks the pate of faith, that daily break-vow, he that wins of all, of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids, who, having no external thing to lose but the word 'maid,' cheats the poor maid of that, that smooth-faced gentleman, tickling commodity, commodity, the bias of the world, the world, who of itself is peised well, made to run even upon even ground, till this advantage, this vile-drawing bias, this sway of motion, this commodity, makes it take head from all indifferency, from all direction, purpose, course, intent: and this same bias, this commodity, this bawd, this broker, this all-changing word, clapp'd on the outward eye of fickle france, hath drawn him from his own determined aid, from a resolved and honourable war, to a most base and vile-concluded peace. and why rail i on this commodity? but for because he hath not woo'd me yet: not that i have the power to clutch my hand, when his fair angels would salute my palm; but for my hand, as unattempted yet, like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich. well, whiles i am a beggar, i will rail and say there is no sin but to be rich; and being rich, my virtue then shall be to say there is no vice but beggary. since kings break faith upon commodity, gain, be my lord, for i will worship thee. [exit] king john act iii scene i the french king's pavilion. [enter constance, arthur, and salisbury] constance gone to be married! gone to swear a peace! false blood to false blood join'd! gone to be friends! shall lewis have blanch, and blanch those provinces? it is not so; thou hast misspoke, misheard: be well advised, tell o'er thy tale again: it cannot be; thou dost but say 'tis so: i trust i may not trust thee; for thy word is but the vain breath of a common man: believe me, i do not believe thee, man; i have a king's oath to the contrary. thou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me, for i am sick and capable of fears, oppress'd with wrongs and therefore full of fears, a widow, husbandless, subject to fears, a woman, naturally born to fears; and though thou now confess thou didst but jest, with my vex'd spirits i cannot take a truce, but they will quake and tremble all this day. what dost thou mean by shaking of thy head? why dost thou look so sadly on my son? what means that hand upon that breast of thine? why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum, like a proud river peering o'er his bounds? be these sad signs confirmers of thy words? then speak again; not all thy former tale, but this one word, whether thy tale be true. salisbury as true as i believe you think them false that give you cause to prove my saying true. constance o, if thou teach me to believe this sorrow, teach thou this sorrow how to make me die, and let belief and life encounter so as doth the fury of two desperate men which in the very meeting fall and die. lewis marry blanch! o boy, then where art thou? france friend with england, what becomes of me? fellow, be gone: i cannot brook thy sight: this news hath made thee a most ugly man. salisbury what other harm have i, good lady, done, but spoke the harm that is by others done? constance which harm within itself so heinous is as it makes harmful all that speak of it. arthur i do beseech you, madam, be content. constance if thou, that bid'st me be content, wert grim, ugly and slanderous to thy mother's womb, full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains, lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious, patch'd with foul moles and eye-offending marks, i would not care, i then would be content, for then i should not love thee, no, nor thou become thy great birth nor deserve a crown. but thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy, nature and fortune join'd to make thee great: of nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast, and with the half-blown rose. but fortune, o, she is corrupted, changed and won from thee; she adulterates hourly with thine uncle john, and with her golden hand hath pluck'd on france to tread down fair respect of sovereignty, and made his majesty the bawd to theirs. france is a bawd to fortune and king john, that strumpet fortune, that usurping john! tell me, thou fellow, is not france forsworn? envenom him with words, or get thee gone and leave those woes alone which i alone am bound to under-bear. salisbury pardon me, madam, i may not go without you to the kings. constance thou mayst, thou shalt; i will not go with thee: i will instruct my sorrows to be proud; for grief is proud and makes his owner stoop. to me and to the state of my great grief let kings assemble; for my grief's so great that no supporter but the huge firm earth can hold it up: here i and sorrows sit; here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it. [seats herself on the ground] [enter king john, king phillip, lewis, blanch, queen elinor, the bastard, austria, and attendants] king philip 'tis true, fair daughter; and this blessed day ever in france shall be kept festival: to solemnize this day the glorious sun stays in his course and plays the alchemist, turning with splendor of his precious eye the meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold: the yearly course that brings this day about shall never see it but a holiday. constance a wicked day, and not a holy day! [rising] what hath this day deserved? what hath it done, that it in golden letters should be set among the high tides in the calendar? nay, rather turn this day out of the week, this day of shame, oppression, perjury. or, if it must stand still, let wives with child pray that their burthens may not fall this day, lest that their hopes prodigiously be cross'd: but on this day let seamen fear no wreck; no bargains break that are not this day made: this day, all things begun come to ill end, yea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change! king philip by heaven, lady, you shall have no cause to curse the fair proceedings of this day: have i not pawn'd to you my majesty? constance you have beguiled me with a counterfeit resembling majesty, which, being touch'd and tried, proves valueless: you are forsworn, forsworn; you came in arms to spill mine enemies' blood, but now in arms you strengthen it with yours: the grappling vigour and rough frown of war is cold in amity and painted peace, and our oppression hath made up this league. arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjured kings! a widow cries; be husband to me, heavens! let not the hours of this ungodly day wear out the day in peace; but, ere sunset, set armed discord 'twixt these perjured kings! hear me, o, hear me! austria lady constance, peace! constance war! war! no peace! peace is to me a war o lymoges! o austria! thou dost shame that bloody spoil: thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward! thou little valiant, great in villany! thou ever strong upon the stronger side! thou fortune's champion that dost never fight but when her humorous ladyship is by to teach thee safety! thou art perjured too, and soothest up greatness. what a fool art thou, a ramping fool, to brag and stamp and swear upon my party! thou cold-blooded slave, hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side, been sworn my soldier, bidding me depend upon thy stars, thy fortune and thy strength, and dost thou now fall over to my fores? thou wear a lion's hide! doff it for shame, and hang a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs. austria o, that a man should speak those words to me! bastard and hang a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs. austria thou darest not say so, villain, for thy life. bastard and hang a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs. king john we like not this; thou dost forget thyself. [enter cardinal pandulph] king philip here comes the holy legate of the pope. cardinal pandulph hail, you anointed deputies of heaven! to thee, king john, my holy errand is. i pandulph, of fair milan cardinal, and from pope innocent the legate here, do in his name religiously demand why thou against the church, our holy mother, so wilfully dost spurn; and force perforce keep stephen langton, chosen archbishop of canterbury, from that holy see? this, in our foresaid holy father's name, pope innocent, i do demand of thee. king john what earthy name to interrogatories can task the free breath of a sacred king? thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name so slight, unworthy and ridiculous, to charge me to an answer, as the pope. tell him this tale; and from the mouth of england add thus much more, that no italian priest shall tithe or toll in our dominions; but as we, under heaven, are supreme head, so under him that great supremacy, where we do reign, we will alone uphold, without the assistance of a mortal hand: so tell the pope, all reverence set apart to him and his usurp'd authority. king philip brother of england, you blaspheme in this. king john though you and all the kings of christendom are led so grossly by this meddling priest, dreading the curse that money may buy out; and by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust, purchase corrupted pardon of a man, who in that sale sells pardon from himself, though you and all the rest so grossly led this juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish, yet i alone, alone do me oppose against the pope and count his friends my foes. cardinal pandulph then, by the lawful power that i have, thou shalt stand cursed and excommunicate. and blessed shall he be that doth revolt from his allegiance to an heretic; and meritorious shall that hand be call'd, canonized and worshipped as a saint, that takes away by any secret course thy hateful life. constance o, lawful let it be that i have room with rome to curse awhile! good father cardinal, cry thou amen to my keen curses; for without my wrong there is no tongue hath power to curse him right. cardinal pandulph there's law and warrant, lady, for my curse. constance and for mine too: when law can do no right, let it be lawful that law bar no wrong: law cannot give my child his kingdom here, for he that holds his kingdom holds the law; therefore, since law itself is perfect wrong, how can the law forbid my tongue to curse? cardinal pandulph philip of france, on peril of a curse, let go the hand of that arch-heretic; and raise the power of france upon his head, unless he do submit himself to rome. queen elinor look'st thou pale, france? do not let go thy hand. constance look to that, devil; lest that france repent, and by disjoining hands, hell lose a soul. austria king philip, listen to the cardinal. bastard and hang a calf's-skin on his recreant limbs. austria well, ruffian, i must pocket up these wrongs, because- bastard your breeches best may carry them. king john philip, what say'st thou to the cardinal? constance what should he say, but as the cardinal? lewis bethink you, father; for the difference is purchase of a heavy curse from rome, or the light loss of england for a friend: forego the easier. blanch that's the curse of rome. constance o lewis, stand fast! the devil tempts thee here in likeness of a new untrimmed bride. blanch the lady constance speaks not from her faith, but from her need. constance o, if thou grant my need, which only lives but by the death of faith, that need must needs infer this principle, that faith would live again by death of need. o then, tread down my need, and faith mounts up; keep my need up, and faith is trodden down! king john the king is moved, and answers not to this. constance o, be removed from him, and answer well! austria do so, king philip; hang no more in doubt. bastard hang nothing but a calf's-skin, most sweet lout. king philip i am perplex'd, and know not what to say. cardinal pandulph what canst thou say but will perplex thee more, if thou stand excommunicate and cursed? king philip good reverend father, make my person yours, and tell me how you would bestow yourself. this royal hand and mine are newly knit, and the conjunction of our inward souls married in league, coupled and linked together with all religious strength of sacred vows; the latest breath that gave the sound of words was deep-sworn faith, peace, amity, true love between our kingdoms and our royal selves, and even before this truce, but new before, no longer than we well could wash our hands to clap this royal bargain up of peace, heaven knows, they were besmear'd and over-stain'd with slaughter's pencil, where revenge did paint the fearful difference of incensed kings: and shall these hands, so lately purged of blood, so newly join'd in love, so strong in both, unyoke this seizure and this kind regreet? play fast and loose with faith? so jest with heaven, make such unconstant children of ourselves, as now again to snatch our palm from palm, unswear faith sworn, and on the marriage-bed of smiling peace to march a bloody host, and make a riot on the gentle brow of true sincerity? o, holy sir, my reverend father, let it not be so! out of your grace, devise, ordain, impose some gentle order; and then we shall be blest to do your pleasure and continue friends. cardinal pandulph all form is formless, order orderless, save what is opposite to england's love. therefore to arms! be champion of our church, or let the church, our mother, breathe her curse, a mother's curse, on her revolting son. france, thou mayst hold a serpent by the tongue, a chafed lion by the mortal paw, a fasting tiger safer by the tooth, than keep in peace that hand which thou dost hold. king philip i may disjoin my hand, but not my faith. cardinal pandulph so makest thou faith an enemy to faith; and like a civil war set'st oath to oath, thy tongue against thy tongue. o, let thy vow first made to heaven, first be to heaven perform'd, that is, to be the champion of our church! what since thou sworest is sworn against thyself and may not be performed by thyself, for that which thou hast sworn to do amiss is not amiss when it is truly done, and being not done, where doing tends to ill, the truth is then most done not doing it: the better act of purposes mistook is to mistake again; though indirect, yet indirection thereby grows direct, and falsehood falsehood cures, as fire cools fire within the scorched veins of one new-burn'd. it is religion that doth make vows kept; but thou hast sworn against religion, by what thou swear'st against the thing thou swear'st, and makest an oath the surety for thy truth against an oath: the truth thou art unsure to swear, swears only not to be forsworn; else what a mockery should it be to swear! but thou dost swear only to be forsworn; and most forsworn, to keep what thou dost swear. therefore thy later vows against thy first is in thyself rebellion to thyself; and better conquest never canst thou make than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts against these giddy loose suggestions: upon which better part our prayers come in, if thou vouchsafe them. but if not, then know the peril of our curses light on thee so heavy as thou shalt not shake them off, but in despair die under their black weight. austria rebellion, flat rebellion! bastard will't not be? will not a calfs-skin stop that mouth of thine? lewis father, to arms! blanch upon thy wedding-day? against the blood that thou hast married? what, shall our feast be kept with slaughter'd men? shall braying trumpets and loud churlish drums, clamours of hell, be measures to our pomp? o husband, hear me! ay, alack, how new is husband in my mouth! even for that name, which till this time my tongue did ne'er pronounce, upon my knee i beg, go not to arms against mine uncle. constance o, upon my knee, made hard with kneeling, i do pray to thee, thou virtuous dauphin, alter not the doom forethought by heaven! blanch now shall i see thy love: what motive may be stronger with thee than the name of wife? constance that which upholdeth him that thee upholds, his honour: o, thine honour, lewis, thine honour! lewis i muse your majesty doth seem so cold, when such profound respects do pull you on. cardinal pandulph i will denounce a curse upon his head. king philip thou shalt not need. england, i will fall from thee. constance o fair return of banish'd majesty! queen elinor o foul revolt of french inconstancy! king john france, thou shalt rue this hour within this hour. bastard old time the clock-setter, that bald sexton time, is it as he will? well then, france shall rue. blanch the sun's o'ercast with blood: fair day, adieu! which is the side that i must go withal? i am with both: each army hath a hand; and in their rage, i having hold of both, they swirl asunder and dismember me. husband, i cannot pray that thou mayst win; uncle, i needs must pray that thou mayst lose; father, i may not wish the fortune thine; grandam, i will not wish thy fortunes thrive: whoever wins, on that side shall i lose assured loss before the match be play'd. lewis lady, with me, with me thy fortune lies. blanch there where my fortune lives, there my life dies. king john cousin, go draw our puissance together. [exit bastard] france, i am burn'd up with inflaming wrath; a rage whose heat hath this condition, that nothing can allay, nothing but blood, the blood, and dearest-valued blood, of france. king philip thy rage sham burn thee up, and thou shalt turn to ashes, ere our blood shall quench that fire: look to thyself, thou art in jeopardy. king john no more than he that threats. to arms let's hie! [exeunt] king john act iii scene ii the same. plains near angiers. [alarums, excursions. enter the bastard, with austria's head] bastard now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot; some airy devil hovers in the sky and pours down mischief. austria's head lie there, while philip breathes. [enter king john, arthur, and hubert] king john hubert, keep this boy. philip, make up: my mother is assailed in our tent, and ta'en, i fear. bastard my lord, i rescued her; her highness is in safety, fear you not: but on, my liege; for very little pains will bring this labour to an happy end. [exeunt] king john act iii scene iii the same. [alarums, excursions, retreat. enter king john, queen elinor, arthur, the bastard, hubert, and lords] king john [to queen elinor] so shall it be; your grace shall stay behind so strongly guarded. [to arthur] cousin, look not sad: thy grandam loves thee; and thy uncle will as dear be to thee as thy father was. arthur o, this will make my mother die with grief! king john [to the bastard] cousin, away for england! haste before: and, ere our coming, see thou shake the bags of hoarding abbots; imprisoned angels set at liberty: the fat ribs of peace must by the hungry now be fed upon: use our commission in his utmost force. bastard bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back, when gold and silver becks me to come on. i leave your highness. grandam, i will pray, if ever i remember to be holy, for your fair safety; so, i kiss your hand. elinor farewell, gentle cousin. king john coz, farewell. [exit the bastard] queen elinor come hither, little kinsman; hark, a word. king john come hither, hubert. o my gentle hubert, we owe thee much! within this wall of flesh there is a soul counts thee her creditor and with advantage means to pay thy love: and my good friend, thy voluntary oath lives in this bosom, dearly cherished. give me thy hand. i had a thing to say, but i will fit it with some better time. by heaven, hubert, i am almost ashamed to say what good respect i have of thee. hubert i am much bounden to your majesty. king john good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet, but thou shalt have; and creep time ne'er so slow, yet it shall come from me to do thee good. i had a thing to say, but let it go: the sun is in the heaven, and the proud day, attended with the pleasures of the world, is all too wanton and too full of gawds to give me audience: if the midnight bell did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth, sound on into the drowsy race of night; if this same were a churchyard where we stand, and thou possessed with a thousand wrongs, or if that surly spirit, melancholy, had baked thy blood and made it heavy-thick, which else runs tickling up and down the veins, making that idiot, laughter, keep men's eyes and strain their cheeks to idle merriment, a passion hateful to my purposes, or if that thou couldst see me without eyes, hear me without thine ears, and make reply without a tongue, using conceit alone, without eyes, ears and harmful sound of words; then, in despite of brooded watchful day, i would into thy bosom pour my thoughts: but, ah, i will not! yet i love thee well; and, by my troth, i think thou lovest me well. hubert so well, that what you bid me undertake, though that my death were adjunct to my act, by heaven, i would do it. king john do not i know thou wouldst? good hubert, hubert, hubert, throw thine eye on yon young boy: i'll tell thee what, my friend, he is a very serpent in my way; and whereso'er this foot of mine doth tread, he lies before me: dost thou understand me? thou art his keeper. hubert and i'll keep him so, that he shall not offend your majesty. king john death. hubert my lord? king john a grave. hubert he shall not live. king john enough. i could be merry now. hubert, i love thee; well, i'll not say what i intend for thee: remember. madam, fare you well: i'll send those powers o'er to your majesty. elinor my blessing go with thee! king john for england, cousin, go: hubert shall be your man, attend on you with all true duty. on toward calais, ho! [exeunt] king john act iii scene iv the same. king philip's tent. [enter king philip, lewis, cardinal pandulph, and attendants] king philip so, by a roaring tempest on the flood, a whole armado of convicted sail is scatter'd and disjoin'd from fellowship. cardinal pandulph courage and comfort! all shall yet go well. king philip what can go well, when we have run so ill? are we not beaten? is not angiers lost? arthur ta'en prisoner? divers dear friends slain? and bloody england into england gone, o'erbearing interruption, spite of france? lewis what he hath won, that hath he fortified: so hot a speed with such advice disposed, such temperate order in so fierce a cause, doth want example: who hath read or heard of any kindred action like to this? king philip well could i bear that england had this praise, so we could find some pattern of our shame. [enter constance] look, who comes here! a grave unto a soul; holding the eternal spirit against her will, in the vile prison of afflicted breath. i prithee, lady, go away with me. constance lo, now i now see the issue of your peace. king philip patience, good lady! comfort, gentle constance! constance no, i defy all counsel, all redress, but that which ends all counsel, true redress, death, death; o amiable lovely death! thou odouriferous stench! sound rottenness! arise forth from the couch of lasting night, thou hate and terror to prosperity, and i will kiss thy detestable bones and put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows and ring these fingers with thy household worms and stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust and be a carrion monster like thyself: come, grin on me, and i will think thou smilest and buss thee as thy wife. misery's love, o, come to me! king philip o fair affliction, peace! constance no, no, i will not, having breath to cry: o, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth! then with a passion would i shake the world; and rouse from sleep that fell anatomy which cannot hear a lady's feeble voice, which scorns a modern invocation. cardinal pandulph lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow. constance thou art not holy to belie me so; i am not mad: this hair i tear is mine; my name is constance; i was geffrey's wife; young arthur is my son, and he is lost: i am not mad: i would to heaven i were! for then, 'tis like i should forget myself: o, if i could, what grief should i forget! preach some philosophy to make me mad, and thou shalt be canonized, cardinal; for being not mad but sensible of grief, my reasonable part produces reason how i may be deliver'd of these woes, and teaches me to kill or hang myself: if i were mad, i should forget my son, or madly think a babe of clouts were he: i am not mad; too well, too well i feel the different plague of each calamity. king philip bind up those tresses. o, what love i note in the fair multitude of those her hairs! where but by chance a silver drop hath fallen, even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends do glue themselves in sociable grief, like true, inseparable, faithful loves, sticking together in calamity. constance to england, if you will. king philip bind up your hairs. constance yes, that i will; and wherefore will i do it? i tore them from their bonds and cried aloud 'o that these hands could so redeem my son, as they have given these hairs their liberty!' but now i envy at their liberty, and will again commit them to their bonds, because my poor child is a prisoner. and, father cardinal, i have heard you say that we shall see and know our friends in heaven: if that be true, i shall see my boy again; for since the birth of cain, the first male child, to him that did but yesterday suspire, there was not such a gracious creature born. but now will canker-sorrow eat my bud and chase the native beauty from his cheek and he will look as hollow as a ghost, as dim and meagre as an ague's fit, and so he'll die; and, rising so again, when i shall meet him in the court of heaven i shall not know him: therefore never, never must i behold my pretty arthur more. cardinal pandulph you hold too heinous a respect of grief. constance he talks to me that never had a son. king philip you are as fond of grief as of your child. constance grief fills the room up of my absent child, lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, remembers me of all his gracious parts, stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; then, have i reason to be fond of grief? fare you well: had you such a loss as i, i could give better comfort than you do. i will not keep this form upon my head, when there is such disorder in my wit. o lord! my boy, my arthur, my fair son! my life, my joy, my food, my all the world! my widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure! [exit] king philip i fear some outrage, and i'll follow her. [exit] lewis there's nothing in this world can make me joy: life is as tedious as a twice-told tale vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man; and bitter shame hath spoil'd the sweet world's taste that it yields nought but shame and bitterness. cardinal pandulph before the curing of a strong disease, even in the instant of repair and health, the fit is strongest; evils that take leave, on their departure most of all show evil: what have you lost by losing of this day? lewis all days of glory, joy and happiness. cardinal pandulph if you had won it, certainly you had. no, no; when fortune means to men most good, she looks upon them with a threatening eye. 'tis strange to think how much king john hath lost in this which he accounts so clearly won: are not you grieved that arthur is his prisoner? lewis as heartily as he is glad he hath him. cardinal pandulph your mind is all as youthful as your blood. now hear me speak with a prophetic spirit; for even the breath of what i mean to speak shall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub, out of the path which shall directly lead thy foot to england's throne; and therefore mark. john hath seized arthur; and it cannot be that, whiles warm life plays in that infant's veins, the misplaced john should entertain an hour, one minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest. a sceptre snatch'd with an unruly hand must be as boisterously maintain'd as gain'd; and he that stands upon a slippery place makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up: that john may stand, then arthur needs must fall; so be it, for it cannot be but so. lewis but what shall i gain by young arthur's fall? cardinal pandulph you, in the right of lady blanch your wife, may then make all the claim that arthur did. lewis and lose it, life and all, as arthur did. cardinal pandulph how green you are and fresh in this old world! john lays you plots; the times conspire with you; for he that steeps his safety in true blood shall find but bloody safety and untrue. this act so evilly born shall cool the hearts of all his people and freeze up their zeal, that none so small advantage shall step forth to cheque his reign, but they will cherish it; no natural exhalation in the sky, no scope of nature, no distemper'd day, no common wind, no customed event, but they will pluck away his natural cause and call them meteors, prodigies and signs, abortives, presages and tongues of heaven, plainly denouncing vengeance upon john. lewis may be he will not touch young arthur's life, but hold himself safe in his prisonment. cardinal pandulph o, sir, when he shall hear of your approach, if that young arthur be not gone already, even at that news he dies; and then the hearts of all his people shall revolt from him and kiss the lips of unacquainted change and pick strong matter of revolt and wrath out of the bloody fingers' ends of john. methinks i see this hurly all on foot: and, o, what better matter breeds for you than i have named! the bastard faulconbridge is now in england, ransacking the church, offending charity: if but a dozen french were there in arms, they would be as a call to train ten thousand english to their side, or as a little snow, tumbled about, anon becomes a mountain. o noble dauphin, go with me to the king: 'tis wonderful what may be wrought out of their discontent, now that their souls are topful of offence. for england go: i will whet on the king. lewis strong reasons make strong actions: let us go: if you say ay, the king will not say no. [exeunt] king john act iv scene i a room in a castle. [enter hubert and executioners] hubert heat me these irons hot; and look thou stand within the arras: when i strike my foot upon the bosom of the ground, rush forth, and bind the boy which you shall find with me fast to the chair: be heedful: hence, and watch. first executioner i hope your warrant will bear out the deed. hubert uncleanly scruples! fear not you: look to't. [exeunt executioners] young lad, come forth; i have to say with you. [enter arthur] arthur good morrow, hubert. hubert good morrow, little prince. arthur as little prince, having so great a title to be more prince, as may be. you are sad. hubert indeed, i have been merrier. arthur mercy on me! methinks no body should be sad but i: yet, i remember, when i was in france, young gentlemen would be as sad as night, only for wantonness. by my christendom, so i were out of prison and kept sheep, i should be as merry as the day is long; and so i would be here, but that i doubt my uncle practises more harm to me: he is afraid of me and i of him: is it my fault that i was geffrey's son? no, indeed, is't not; and i would to heaven i were your son, so you would love me, hubert. hubert [aside] if i talk to him, with his innocent prate he will awake my mercy which lies dead: therefore i will be sudden and dispatch. arthur are you sick, hubert? you look pale to-day: in sooth, i would you were a little sick, that i might sit all night and watch with you: i warrant i love you more than you do me. hubert [aside] his words do take possession of my bosom. read here, young arthur. [showing a paper] [aside] how now, foolish rheum! turning dispiteous torture out of door! i must be brief, lest resolution drop out at mine eyes in tender womanish tears. can you not read it? is it not fair writ? arthur too fairly, hubert, for so foul effect: must you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes? hubert young boy, i must. arthur and will you? hubert and i will. arthur have you the heart? when your head did but ache, i knit my handercher about your brows, the best i had, a princess wrought it me, and i did never ask it you again; and with my hand at midnight held your head, and like the watchful minutes to the hour, still and anon cheer'd up the heavy time, saying, 'what lack you?' and 'where lies your grief?' or 'what good love may i perform for you?' many a poor man's son would have lien still and ne'er have spoke a loving word to you; but you at your sick service had a prince. nay, you may think my love was crafty love and call it cunning: do, an if you will: if heaven be pleased that you must use me ill, why then you must. will you put out mine eyes? these eyes that never did nor never shall so much as frown on you. hubert i have sworn to do it; and with hot irons must i burn them out. arthur ah, none but in this iron age would do it! the iron of itself, though heat red-hot, approaching near these eyes, would drink my tears and quench his fiery indignation even in the matter of mine innocence; nay, after that, consume away in rust but for containing fire to harm mine eye. are you more stubborn-hard than hammer'd iron? an if an angel should have come to me and told me hubert should put out mine eyes, i would not have believed him,--no tongue but hubert's. hubert come forth. [stamps] [re-enter executioners, with a cord, irons, &c] do as i bid you do. arthur o, save me, hubert, save me! my eyes are out even with the fierce looks of these bloody men. hubert give me the iron, i say, and bind him here. arthur alas, what need you be so boisterous-rough? i will not struggle, i will stand stone-still. for heaven sake, hubert, let me not be bound! nay, hear me, hubert, drive these men away, and i will sit as quiet as a lamb; i will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word, nor look upon the iron angerly: thrust but these men away, and i'll forgive you, whatever torment you do put me to. hubert go, stand within; let me alone with him. first executioner i am best pleased to be from such a deed. [exeunt executioners] arthur alas, i then have chid away my friend! he hath a stern look, but a gentle heart: let him come back, that his compassion may give life to yours. hubert come, boy, prepare yourself. arthur is there no remedy? hubert none, but to lose your eyes. arthur o heaven, that there were but a mote in yours, a grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair, any annoyance in that precious sense! then feeling what small things are boisterous there, your vile intent must needs seem horrible. hubert is this your promise? go to, hold your tongue. arthur hubert, the utterance of a brace of tongues must needs want pleading for a pair of eyes: let me not hold my tongue, let me not, hubert; or, hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue, so i may keep mine eyes: o, spare mine eyes. though to no use but still to look on you! lo, by my truth, the instrument is cold and would not harm me. hubert i can heat it, boy. arthur no, in good sooth: the fire is dead with grief, being create for comfort, to be used in undeserved extremes: see else yourself; there is no malice in this burning coal; the breath of heaven has blown his spirit out and strew'd repentent ashes on his head. hubert but with my breath i can revive it, boy. arthur an if you do, you will but make it blush and glow with shame of your proceedings, hubert: nay, it perchance will sparkle in your eyes; and like a dog that is compell'd to fight, snatch at his master that doth tarre him on. all things that you should use to do me wrong deny their office: only you do lack that mercy which fierce fire and iron extends, creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses. hubert well, see to live; i will not touch thine eye for all the treasure that thine uncle owes: yet am i sworn and i did purpose, boy, with this same very iron to burn them out. arthur o, now you look like hubert! all this while you were disguised. hubert peace; no more. adieu. your uncle must not know but you are dead; i'll fill these dogged spies with false reports: and, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure, that hubert, for the wealth of all the world, will not offend thee. arthur o heaven! i thank you, hubert. hubert silence; no more: go closely in with me: much danger do i undergo for thee. [exeunt] king john act iv scene ii king john's palace. [enter king john, pembroke, salisbury, and other lords] king john here once again we sit, once again crown'd, and looked upon, i hope, with cheerful eyes. pembroke this 'once again,' but that your highness pleased, was once superfluous: you were crown'd before, and that high royalty was ne'er pluck'd off, the faiths of men ne'er stained with revolt; fresh expectation troubled not the land with any long'd-for change or better state. salisbury therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp, to guard a title that was rich before, to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet, to smooth the ice, or add another hue unto the rainbow, or with taper-light to seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, is wasteful and ridiculous excess. pembroke but that your royal pleasure must be done, this act is as an ancient tale new told, and in the last repeating troublesome, being urged at a time unseasonable. salisbury in this the antique and well noted face of plain old form is much disfigured; and, like a shifted wind unto a sail, it makes the course of thoughts to fetch about, startles and frights consideration, makes sound opinion sick and truth suspected, for putting on so new a fashion'd robe. pembroke when workmen strive to do better than well, they do confound their skill in covetousness; and oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse, as patches set upon a little breach discredit more in hiding of the fault than did the fault before it was so patch'd. salisbury to this effect, before you were new crown'd, we breathed our counsel: but it pleased your highness to overbear it, and we are all well pleased, since all and every part of what we would doth make a stand at what your highness will. king john some reasons of this double coronation i have possess'd you with and think them strong; and more, more strong, then lesser is my fear, i shall indue you with: meantime but ask what you would have reform'd that is not well, and well shall you perceive how willingly i will both hear and grant you your requests. pembroke then i, as one that am the tongue of these, to sound the purpose of all their hearts, both for myself and them, but, chief of all, your safety, for the which myself and them bend their best studies, heartily request the enfranchisement of arthur; whose restraint doth move the murmuring lips of discontent to break into this dangerous argument,- if what in rest you have in right you hold, why then your fears, which, as they say, attend the steps of wrong, should move you to mew up your tender kinsman and to choke his days with barbarous ignorance and deny his youth the rich advantage of good exercise? that the time's enemies may not have this to grace occasions, let it be our suit that you have bid us ask his liberty; which for our goods we do no further ask than whereupon our weal, on you depending, counts it your weal he have his liberty. [enter hubert] king john let it be so: i do commit his youth to your direction. hubert, what news with you? [taking him apart] pembroke this is the man should do the bloody deed; he show'd his warrant to a friend of mine: the image of a wicked heinous fault lives in his eye; that close aspect of his does show the mood of a much troubled breast; and i do fearfully believe 'tis done, what we so fear'd he had a charge to do. salisbury the colour of the king doth come and go between his purpose and his conscience, like heralds 'twixt two dreadful battles set: his passion is so ripe, it needs must break. pembroke and when it breaks, i fear will issue thence the foul corruption of a sweet child's death. king john we cannot hold mortality's strong hand: good lords, although my will to give is living, the suit which you demand is gone and dead: he tells us arthur is deceased to-night. salisbury indeed we fear'd his sickness was past cure. pembroke indeed we heard how near his death he was before the child himself felt he was sick: this must be answer'd either here or hence. king john why do you bend such solemn brows on me? think you i bear the shears of destiny? have i commandment on the pulse of life? salisbury it is apparent foul play; and 'tis shame that greatness should so grossly offer it: so thrive it in your game! and so, farewell. pembroke stay yet, lord salisbury; i'll go with thee, and find the inheritance of this poor child, his little kingdom of a forced grave. that blood which owed the breadth of all this isle, three foot of it doth hold: bad world the while! this must not be thus borne: this will break out to all our sorrows, and ere long i doubt. [exeunt lords] king john they burn in indignation. i repent: there is no sure foundation set on blood, no certain life achieved by others' death. [enter a messenger] a fearful eye thou hast: where is that blood that i have seen inhabit in those cheeks? so foul a sky clears not without a storm: pour down thy weather: how goes all in france? messenger from france to england. never such a power for any foreign preparation was levied in the body of a land. the copy of your speed is learn'd by them; for when you should be told they do prepare, the tidings come that they are all arrived. king john o, where hath our intelligence been drunk? where hath it slept? where is my mother's care, that such an army could be drawn in france, and she not hear of it? messenger my liege, her ear is stopp'd with dust; the first of april died your noble mother: and, as i hear, my lord, the lady constance in a frenzy died three days before: but this from rumour's tongue i idly heard; if true or false i know not. king john withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion! o, make a league with me, till i have pleased my discontented peers! what! mother dead! how wildly then walks my estate in france! under whose conduct came those powers of france that thou for truth givest out are landed here? messenger under the dauphin. king john thou hast made me giddy with these ill tidings. [enter the bastard and peter of pomfret] now, what says the world to your proceedings? do not seek to stuff my head with more ill news, for it is full. bastard but if you be afeard to hear the worst, then let the worst unheard fall on your bead. king john bear with me cousin, for i was amazed under the tide: but now i breathe again aloft the flood, and can give audience to any tongue, speak it of what it will. bastard how i have sped among the clergymen, the sums i have collected shall express. but as i travell'd hither through the land, i find the people strangely fantasied; possess'd with rumours, full of idle dreams, not knowing what they fear, but full of fear: and here a prophet, that i brought with me from forth the streets of pomfret, whom i found with many hundreds treading on his heels; to whom he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes, that, ere the next ascension-day at noon, your highness should deliver up your crown. king john thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst thou so? peter foreknowing that the truth will fall out so. king john hubert, away with him; imprison him; and on that day at noon whereon he says i shall yield up my crown, let him be hang'd. deliver him to safety; and return, for i must use thee. [exeunt hubert with peter] o my gentle cousin, hear'st thou the news abroad, who are arrived? bastard the french, my lord; men's mouths are full of it: besides, i met lord bigot and lord salisbury, with eyes as red as new-enkindled fire, and others more, going to seek the grave of arthur, who they say is kill'd to-night on your suggestion. king john gentle kinsman, go, and thrust thyself into their companies: i have a way to win their loves again; bring them before me. bastard i will seek them out. king john nay, but make haste; the better foot before. o, let me have no subject enemies, when adverse foreigners affright my towns with dreadful pomp of stout invasion! be mercury, set feathers to thy heels, and fly like thought from them to me again. bastard the spirit of the time shall teach me speed. [exit] king john spoke like a sprightful noble gentleman. go after him; for he perhaps shall need some messenger betwixt me and the peers; and be thou he. messenger with all my heart, my liege. [exit] king john my mother dead! [re-enter hubert] hubert my lord, they say five moons were seen to-night; four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about the other four in wondrous motion. king john five moons! hubert old men and beldams in the streets do prophesy upon it dangerously: young arthur's death is common in their mouths: and when they talk of him, they shake their heads and whisper one another in the ear; and he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist, whilst he that hears makes fearful action, with wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes. i saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, the whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, with open mouth swallowing a tailor's news; who, with his shears and measure in his hand, standing on slippers, which his nimble haste had falsely thrust upon contrary feet, told of a many thousand warlike french that were embattailed and rank'd in kent: another lean unwash'd artificer cuts off his tale and talks of arthur's death. king john why seek'st thou to possess me with these fears? why urgest thou so oft young arthur's death? thy hand hath murder'd him: i had a mighty cause to wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill him. hubert no had, my lord! why, did you not provoke me? king john it is the curse of kings to be attended by slaves that take their humours for a warrant to break within the bloody house of life, and on the winking of authority to understand a law, to know the meaning of dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns more upon humour than advised respect. hubert here is your hand and seal for what i did. king john o, when the last account 'twixt heaven and earth is to be made, then shall this hand and seal witness against us to damnation! how oft the sight of means to do ill deeds make deeds ill done! hadst not thou been by, a fellow by the hand of nature mark'd, quoted and sign'd to do a deed of shame, this murder had not come into my mind: but taking note of thy abhorr'd aspect, finding thee fit for bloody villany, apt, liable to be employ'd in danger, i faintly broke with thee of arthur's death; and thou, to be endeared to a king, made it no conscience to destroy a prince. hubert my lord- king john hadst thou but shook thy head or made a pause when i spake darkly what i purposed, or turn'd an eye of doubt upon my face, as bid me tell my tale in express words, deep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off, and those thy fears might have wrought fears in me: but thou didst understand me by my signs and didst in signs again parley with sin; yea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent, and consequently thy rude hand to act the deed, which both our tongues held vile to name. out of my sight, and never see me more! my nobles leave me; and my state is braved, even at my gates, with ranks of foreign powers: nay, in the body of this fleshly land, this kingdom, this confine of blood and breath, hostility and civil tumult reigns between my conscience and my cousin's death. hubert arm you against your other enemies, i'll make a peace between your soul and you. young arthur is alive: this hand of mine is yet a maiden and an innocent hand, not painted with the crimson spots of blood. within this bosom never enter'd yet the dreadful motion of a murderous thought; and you have slander'd nature in my form, which, howsoever rude exteriorly, is yet the cover of a fairer mind than to be butcher of an innocent child. king john doth arthur live? o, haste thee to the peers, throw this report on their incensed rage, and make them tame to their obedience! forgive the comment that my passion made upon thy feature; for my rage was blind, and foul imaginary eyes of blood presented thee more hideous than thou art. o, answer not, but to my closet bring the angry lords with all expedient haste. i conjure thee but slowly; run more fast. [exeunt] king john act iv scene iii before the castle. [enter arthur, on the walls] arthur the wall is high, and yet will i leap down: good ground, be pitiful and hurt me not! there's few or none do know me: if they did, this ship-boy's semblance hath disguised me quite. i am afraid; and yet i'll venture it. if i get down, and do not break my limbs, i'll find a thousand shifts to get away: as good to die and go, as die and stay. [leaps down] o me! my uncle's spirit is in these stones: heaven take my soul, and england keep my bones! [dies] [enter pembroke, salisbury, and bigot] salisbury lords, i will meet him at saint edmundsbury: it is our safety, and we must embrace this gentle offer of the perilous time. pembroke who brought that letter from the cardinal? salisbury the count melun, a noble lord of france, whose private with me of the dauphin's love is much more general than these lines import. bigot to-morrow morning let us meet him then. salisbury or rather then set forward; for 'twill be two long days' journey, lords, or ere we meet. [enter the bastard] bastard once more to-day well met, distemper'd lords! the king by me requests your presence straight. salisbury the king hath dispossess'd himself of us: we will not line his thin bestained cloak with our pure honours, nor attend the foot that leaves the print of blood where'er it walks. return and tell him so: we know the worst. bastard whate'er you think, good words, i think, were best. salisbury our griefs, and not our manners, reason now. bastard but there is little reason in your grief; therefore 'twere reason you had manners now. pembroke sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege. bastard 'tis true, to hurt his master, no man else. salisbury this is the prison. what is he lies here? [seeing arthur] pembroke o death, made proud with pure and princely beauty! the earth had not a hole to hide this deed. salisbury murder, as hating what himself hath done, doth lay it open to urge on revenge. bigot or, when he doom'd this beauty to a grave, found it too precious-princely for a grave. salisbury sir richard, what think you? have you beheld, or have you read or heard? or could you think? or do you almost think, although you see, that you do see? could thought, without this object, form such another? this is the very top, the height, the crest, or crest unto the crest, of murder's arms: this is the bloodiest shame, the wildest savagery, the vilest stroke, that ever wall-eyed wrath or staring rage presented to the tears of soft remorse. pembroke all murders past do stand excused in this: and this, so sole and so unmatchable, shall give a holiness, a purity, to the yet unbegotten sin of times; and prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest, exampled by this heinous spectacle. bastard it is a damned and a bloody work; the graceless action of a heavy hand, if that it be the work of any hand. salisbury if that it be the work of any hand! we had a kind of light what would ensue: it is the shameful work of hubert's hand; the practise and the purpose of the king: from whose obedience i forbid my soul, kneeling before this ruin of sweet life, and breathing to his breathless excellence the incense of a vow, a holy vow, never to taste the pleasures of the world, never to be infected with delight, nor conversant with ease and idleness, till i have set a glory to this hand, by giving it the worship of revenge. pembroke | | our souls religiously confirm thy words. bigot | [enter hubert] hubert lords, i am hot with haste in seeking you: arthur doth live; the king hath sent for you. salisbury o, he is old and blushes not at death. avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone! hubert i am no villain. salisbury must i rob the law? [drawing his sword] bastard your sword is bright, sir; put it up again. salisbury not till i sheathe it in a murderer's skin. hubert stand back, lord salisbury, stand back, i say; by heaven, i think my sword's as sharp as yours: i would not have you, lord, forget yourself, nor tempt the danger of my true defence; lest i, by marking of your rage, forget your worth, your greatness and nobility. bigot out, dunghill! darest thou brave a nobleman? hubert not for my life: but yet i dare defend my innocent life against an emperor. salisbury thou art a murderer. hubert do not prove me so; yet i am none: whose tongue soe'er speaks false, not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies. pembroke cut him to pieces. bastard keep the peace, i say. salisbury stand by, or i shall gall you, faulconbridge. bastard thou wert better gall the devil, salisbury: if thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot, or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame, i'll strike thee dead. put up thy sword betime; or i'll so maul you and your toasting-iron, that you shall think the devil is come from hell. bigot what wilt thou do, renowned faulconbridge? second a villain and a murderer? hubert lord bigot, i am none. bigot who kill'd this prince? hubert 'tis not an hour since i left him well: i honour'd him, i loved him, and will weep my date of life out for his sweet life's loss. salisbury trust not those cunning waters of his eyes, for villany is not without such rheum; and he, long traded in it, makes it seem like rivers of remorse and innocency. away with me, all you whose souls abhor the uncleanly savours of a slaughter-house; for i am stifled with this smell of sin. bigot away toward bury, to the dauphin there! pembroke there tell the king he may inquire us out. [exeunt lords] bastard here's a good world! knew you of this fair work? beyond the infinite and boundless reach of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death, art thou damn'd, hubert. hubert do but hear me, sir. bastard ha! i'll tell thee what; thou'rt damn'd as black--nay, nothing is so black; thou art more deep damn'd than prince lucifer: there is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell as thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child. hubert upon my soul- bastard if thou didst but consent to this most cruel act, do but despair; and if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread that ever spider twisted from her womb will serve to strangle thee, a rush will be a beam to hang thee on; or wouldst thou drown thyself, put but a little water in a spoon, and it shall be as all the ocean, enough to stifle such a villain up. i do suspect thee very grievously. hubert if i in act, consent, or sin of thought, be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath which was embounded in this beauteous clay, let hell want pains enough to torture me. i left him well. bastard go, bear him in thine arms. i am amazed, methinks, and lose my way among the thorns and dangers of this world. how easy dost thou take all england up! from forth this morsel of dead royalty, the life, the right and truth of all this realm is fled to heaven; and england now is left to tug and scamble and to part by the teeth the unowed interest of proud-swelling state. now for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty doth dogged war bristle his angry crest and snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace: now powers from home and discontents at home meet in one line; and vast confusion waits, as doth a raven on a sick-fall'n beast, the imminent decay of wrested pomp. now happy he whose cloak and cincture can hold out this tempest. bear away that child and follow me with speed: i'll to the king: a thousand businesses are brief in hand, and heaven itself doth frown upon the land. [exeunt] king john act v scene i king john's palace. [enter king john, cardinal pandulph, and attendants] king john thus have i yielded up into your hand the circle of my glory. [giving the crown] cardinal pandulph take again from this my hand, as holding of the pope your sovereign greatness and authority. king john now keep your holy word: go meet the french, and from his holiness use all your power to stop their marches 'fore we are inflamed. our discontented counties do revolt; our people quarrel with obedience, swearing allegiance and the love of soul to stranger blood, to foreign royalty. this inundation of mistemper'd humour rests by you only to be qualified: then pause not; for the present time's so sick, that present medicine must be minister'd, or overthrow incurable ensues. cardinal pandulph it was my breath that blew this tempest up, upon your stubborn usage of the pope; but since you are a gentle convertite, my tongue shall hush again this storm of war and make fair weather in your blustering land. on this ascension-day, remember well, upon your oath of service to the pope, go i to make the french lay down their arms. [exit] king john is this ascension-day? did not the prophet say that before ascension-day at noon my crown i should give off? even so i have: i did suppose it should be on constraint: but, heaven be thank'd, it is but voluntary. [enter the bastard] bastard all kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out but dover castle: london hath received, like a kind host, the dauphin and his powers: your nobles will not hear you, but are gone to offer service to your enemy, and wild amazement hurries up and down the little number of your doubtful friends. king john would not my lords return to me again, after they heard young arthur was alive? bastard they found him dead and cast into the streets, an empty casket, where the jewel of life by some damn'd hand was robb'd and ta'en away. king john that villain hubert told me he did live. bastard so, on my soul, he did, for aught he knew. but wherefore do you droop? why look you sad? be great in act, as you have been in thought; let not the world see fear and sad distrust govern the motion of a kingly eye: be stirring as the time; be fire with fire; threaten the threatener and outface the brow of bragging horror: so shall inferior eyes, that borrow their behaviors from the great, grow great by your example and put on the dauntless spirit of resolution. away, and glister like the god of war, when he intendeth to become the field: show boldness and aspiring confidence. what, shall they seek the lion in his den, and fright him there? and make him tremble there? o, let it not be said: forage, and run to meet displeasure farther from the doors, and grapple with him ere he comes so nigh. king john the legate of the pope hath been with me, and i have made a happy peace with him; and he hath promised to dismiss the powers led by the dauphin. bastard o inglorious league! shall we, upon the footing of our land, send fair-play orders and make compromise, insinuation, parley and base truce to arms invasive? shall a beardless boy, a cocker'd silken wanton, brave our fields, and flesh his spirit in a warlike soil, mocking the air with colours idly spread, and find no cheque? let us, my liege, to arms: perchance the cardinal cannot make your peace; or if he do, let it at least be said they saw we had a purpose of defence. king john have thou the ordering of this present time. bastard away, then, with good courage! yet, i know, our party may well meet a prouder foe. [exeunt] king john act v scene ii lewis's camp at st. edmundsbury. [enter, in arms, lewis, salisbury, melun, pembroke, bigot, and soldiers] lewis my lord melun, let this be copied out, and keep it safe for our remembrance: return the precedent to these lords again; that, having our fair order written down, both they and we, perusing o'er these notes, may know wherefore we took the sacrament and keep our faiths firm and inviolable. salisbury upon our sides it never shall be broken. and, noble dauphin, albeit we swear a voluntary zeal and an unurged faith to your proceedings; yet believe me, prince, i am not glad that such a sore of time should seek a plaster by contemn'd revolt, and heal the inveterate canker of one wound by making many. o, it grieves my soul, that i must draw this metal from my side to be a widow-maker! o, and there where honourable rescue and defence cries out upon the name of salisbury! but such is the infection of the time, that, for the health and physic of our right, we cannot deal but with the very hand of stern injustice and confused wrong. and is't not pity, o my grieved friends, that we, the sons and children of this isle, were born to see so sad an hour as this; wherein we step after a stranger march upon her gentle bosom, and fill up her enemies' ranks,--i must withdraw and weep upon the spot of this enforced cause,- to grace the gentry of a land remote, and follow unacquainted colours here? what, here? o nation, that thou couldst remove! that neptune's arms, who clippeth thee about, would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself, and grapple thee unto a pagan shore; where these two christian armies might combine the blood of malice in a vein of league, and not to spend it so unneighbourly! lewis a noble temper dost thou show in this; and great affections wrestling in thy bosom doth make an earthquake of nobility. o, what a noble combat hast thou fought between compulsion and a brave respect! let me wipe off this honourable dew, that silverly doth progress on thy cheeks: my heart hath melted at a lady's tears, being an ordinary inundation; but this effusion of such manly drops, this shower, blown up by tempest of the soul, startles mine eyes, and makes me more amazed than had i seen the vaulty top of heaven figured quite o'er with burning meteors. lift up thy brow, renowned salisbury, and with a great heart heave away the storm: commend these waters to those baby eyes that never saw the giant world enraged; nor met with fortune other than at feasts, full of warm blood, of mirth, of gossiping. come, come; for thou shalt thrust thy hand as deep into the purse of rich prosperity as lewis himself: so, nobles, shall you all, that knit your sinews to the strength of mine. and even there, methinks, an angel spake: [enter cardinal pandulph] look, where the holy legate comes apace, to give us warrant from the hand of heaven and on our actions set the name of right with holy breath. cardinal pandulph hail, noble prince of france! the next is this, king john hath reconciled himself to rome; his spirit is come in, that so stood out against the holy church, the great metropolis and see of rome: therefore thy threatening colours now wind up; and tame the savage spirit of wild war, that like a lion foster'd up at hand, it may lie gently at the foot of peace, and be no further harmful than in show. lewis your grace shall pardon me, i will not back: i am too high-born to be propertied, to be a secondary at control, or useful serving-man and instrument, to any sovereign state throughout the world. your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars between this chastised kingdom and myself, and brought in matter that should feed this fire; and now 'tis far too huge to be blown out with that same weak wind which enkindled it. you taught me how to know the face of right, acquainted me with interest to this land, yea, thrust this enterprise into my heart; and come ye now to tell me john hath made his peace with rome? what is that peace to me? i, by the honour of my marriage-bed, after young arthur, claim this land for mine; and, now it is half-conquer'd, must i back because that john hath made his peace with rome? am i rome's slave? what penny hath rome borne, what men provided, what munition sent, to underprop this action? is't not i that undergo this charge? who else but i, and such as to my claim are liable, sweat in this business and maintain this war? have i not heard these islanders shout out 'vive le roi!' as i have bank'd their towns? have i not here the best cards for the game, to win this easy match play'd for a crown? and shall i now give o'er the yielded set? no, no, on my soul, it never shall be said. cardinal pandulph you look but on the outside of this work. lewis outside or inside, i will not return till my attempt so much be glorified as to my ample hope was promised before i drew this gallant head of war, and cull'd these fiery spirits from the world, to outlook conquest and to win renown even in the jaws of danger and of death. [trumpet sounds] what lusty trumpet thus doth summon us? [enter the bastard, attended] bastard according to the fair play of the world, let me have audience; i am sent to speak: my holy lord of milan, from the king i come, to learn how you have dealt for him; and, as you answer, i do know the scope and warrant limited unto my tongue. cardinal pandulph the dauphin is too wilful-opposite, and will not temporize with my entreaties; he flatly says he'll not lay down his arms. bastard by all the blood that ever fury breathed, the youth says well. now hear our english king; for thus his royalty doth speak in me. he is prepared, and reason too he should: this apish and unmannerly approach, this harness'd masque and unadvised revel, this unhair'd sauciness and boyish troops, the king doth smile at; and is well prepared to whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms, from out the circle of his territories. that hand which had the strength, even at your door, to cudgel you and make you take the hatch, to dive like buckets in concealed wells, to crouch in litter of your stable planks, to lie like pawns lock'd up in chests and trunks, to hug with swine, to seek sweet safety out in vaults and prisons, and to thrill and shake even at the crying of your nation's crow, thinking his voice an armed englishman; shall that victorious hand be feebled here, that in your chambers gave you chastisement? no: know the gallant monarch is in arms and like an eagle o'er his aery towers, to souse annoyance that comes near his nest. and you degenerate, you ingrate revolts, you bloody neroes, ripping up the womb of your dear mother england, blush for shame; for your own ladies and pale-visaged maids like amazons come tripping after drums, their thimbles into armed gauntlets change, their needles to lances, and their gentle hearts to fierce and bloody inclination. lewis there end thy brave, and turn thy face in peace; we grant thou canst outscold us: fare thee well; we hold our time too precious to be spent with such a brabbler. cardinal pandulph give me leave to speak. bastard no, i will speak. lewis we will attend to neither. strike up the drums; and let the tongue of war plead for our interest and our being here. bastard indeed your drums, being beaten, will cry out; and so shall you, being beaten: do but start an echo with the clamour of thy drum, and even at hand a drum is ready braced that shall reverberate all as loud as thine; sound but another, and another shall as loud as thine rattle the welkin's ear and mock the deep-mouth'd thunder: for at hand, not trusting to this halting legate here, whom he hath used rather for sport than need is warlike john; and in his forehead sits a bare-ribb'd death, whose office is this day to feast upon whole thousands of the french. lewis strike up our drums, to find this danger out. bastard and thou shalt find it, dauphin, do not doubt. [exeunt] king john act v scene iii the field of battle. [alarums. enter king john and hubert] king john how goes the day with us? o, tell me, hubert. hubert badly, i fear. how fares your majesty? king john this fever, that hath troubled me so long, lies heavy on me; o, my heart is sick! [enter a messenger] messenger my lord, your valiant kinsman, faulconbridge, desires your majesty to leave the field and send him word by me which way you go. king john tell him, toward swinstead, to the abbey there. messenger be of good comfort; for the great supply that was expected by the dauphin here, are wreck'd three nights ago on goodwin sands. this news was brought to richard but even now: the french fight coldly, and retire themselves. king john ay me! this tyrant fever burns me up, and will not let me welcome this good news. set on toward swinstead: to my litter straight; weakness possesseth me, and i am faint. [exeunt] king john act v scene iv another part of the field. [enter salisbury, pembroke, and bigot] salisbury i did not think the king so stored with friends. pembroke up once again; put spirit in the french: if they miscarry, we miscarry too. salisbury that misbegotten devil, faulconbridge, in spite of spite, alone upholds the day. pembroke they say king john sore sick hath left the field. [enter melun, wounded] melun lead me to the revolts of england here. salisbury when we were happy we had other names. pembroke it is the count melun. salisbury wounded to death. melun fly, noble english, you are bought and sold; unthread the rude eye of rebellion and welcome home again discarded faith. seek out king john and fall before his feet; for if the french be lords of this loud day, he means to recompense the pains you take by cutting off your heads: thus hath he sworn and i with him, and many moe with me, upon the altar at saint edmundsbury; even on that altar where we swore to you dear amity and everlasting love. salisbury may this be possible? may this be true? melun have i not hideous death within my view, retaining but a quantity of life, which bleeds away, even as a form of wax resolveth from his figure 'gainst the fire? what in the world should make me now deceive, since i must lose the use of all deceit? why should i then be false, since it is true that i must die here and live hence by truth? i say again, if lewis do win the day, he is forsworn, if e'er those eyes of yours behold another day break in the east: but even this night, whose black contagious breath already smokes about the burning crest of the old, feeble and day-wearied sun, even this ill night, your breathing shall expire, paying the fine of rated treachery even with a treacherous fine of all your lives, if lewis by your assistance win the day. commend me to one hubert with your king: the love of him, and this respect besides, for that my grandsire was an englishman, awakes my conscience to confess all this. in lieu whereof, i pray you, bear me hence from forth the noise and rumour of the field, where i may think the remnant of my thoughts in peace, and part this body and my soul with contemplation and devout desires. salisbury we do believe thee: and beshrew my soul but i do love the favour and the form of this most fair occasion, by the which we will untread the steps of damned flight, and like a bated and retired flood, leaving our rankness and irregular course, stoop low within those bounds we have o'erlook'd and cabby run on in obedience even to our ocean, to our great king john. my arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence; for i do see the cruel pangs of death right in thine eye. away, my friends! new flight; and happy newness, that intends old right. [exeunt, leading off melun] king john act v scene v the french camp. [enter lewis and his train] lewis the sun of heaven methought was loath to set, but stay'd and made the western welkin blush, when english measure backward their own ground in faint retire. o, bravely came we off, when with a volley of our needless shot, after such bloody toil, we bid good night; and wound our tattering colours clearly up, last in the field, and almost lords of it! [enter a messenger] messenger where is my prince, the dauphin? lewis here: what news? messenger the count melun is slain; the english lords by his persuasion are again fall'n off, and your supply, which you have wish'd so long, are cast away and sunk on goodwin sands. lewis ah, foul shrewd news! beshrew thy very heart! i did not think to be so sad to-night as this hath made me. who was he that said king john did fly an hour or two before the stumbling night did part our weary powers? messenger whoever spoke it, it is true, my lord. lewis well; keep good quarter and good care to-night: the day shall not be up so soon as i, to try the fair adventure of to-morrow. [exeunt] king john act v scene vi an open place in the neighbourhood of swinstead abbey. [enter the bastard and hubert, severally] hubert who's there? speak, ho! speak quickly, or i shoot. bastard a friend. what art thou? hubert of the part of england. bastard whither dost thou go? hubert what's that to thee? why may not i demand of thine affairs, as well as thou of mine? bastard hubert, i think? hubert thou hast a perfect thought: i will upon all hazards well believe thou art my friend, that know'st my tongue so well. who art thou? bastard who thou wilt: and if thou please, thou mayst befriend me so much as to think i come one way of the plantagenets. hubert unkind remembrance! thou and eyeless night have done me shame: brave soldier, pardon me, that any accent breaking from thy tongue should 'scape the true acquaintance of mine ear. bastard come, come; sans compliment, what news abroad? hubert why, here walk i in the black brow of night, to find you out. bastard brief, then; and what's the news? hubert o, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night, black, fearful, comfortless and horrible. bastard show me the very wound of this ill news: i am no woman, i'll not swoon at it. hubert the king, i fear, is poison'd by a monk: i left him almost speechless; and broke out to acquaint you with this evil, that you might the better arm you to the sudden time, than if you had at leisure known of this. bastard how did he take it? who did taste to him? hubert a monk, i tell you; a resolved villain, whose bowels suddenly burst out: the king yet speaks and peradventure may recover. bastard who didst thou leave to tend his majesty? hubert why, know you not? the lords are all come back, and brought prince henry in their company; at whose request the king hath pardon'd them, and they are all about his majesty. bastard withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven, and tempt us not to bear above our power! i'll tell tree, hubert, half my power this night, passing these flats, are taken by the tide; these lincoln washes have devoured them; myself, well mounted, hardly have escaped. away before: conduct me to the king; i doubt he will be dead or ere i come. [exeunt] king john act v scene vii the orchard in swinstead abbey. [enter prince henry, salisbury, and bigot] prince henry it is too late: the life of all his blood is touch'd corruptibly, and his pure brain, which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-house, doth by the idle comments that it makes foretell the ending of mortality. [enter pembroke] pembroke his highness yet doth speak, and holds belief that, being brought into the open air, it would allay the burning quality of that fell poison which assaileth him. prince henry let him be brought into the orchard here. doth he still rage? [exit bigot] pembroke he is more patient than when you left him; even now he sung. prince henry o vanity of sickness! fierce extremes in their continuance will not feel themselves. death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, leaves them invisible, and his siege is now against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds with many legions of strange fantasies, which, in their throng and press to that last hold, confound themselves. 'tis strange that death should sing. i am the cygnet to this pale faint swan, who chants a doleful hymn to his own death, and from the organ-pipe of frailty sings his soul and body to their lasting rest. salisbury be of good comfort, prince; for you are born to set a form upon that indigest which he hath left so shapeless and so rude. [enter attendants, and bigot, carrying king john in a chair] king john ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow-room; it would not out at windows nor at doors. there is so hot a summer in my bosom, that all my bowels crumble up to dust: i am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen upon a parchment, and against this fire do i shrink up. prince henry how fares your majesty? king john poison'd,--ill fare--dead, forsook, cast off: and none of you will bid the winter come to thrust his icy fingers in my maw, nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course through my burn'd bosom, nor entreat the north to make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips and comfort me with cold. i do not ask you much, i beg cold comfort; and you are so strait and so ingrateful, you deny me that. prince henry o that there were some virtue in my tears, that might relieve you! king john the salt in them is hot. within me is a hell; and there the poison is as a fiend confined to tyrannize on unreprievable condemned blood. [enter the bastard] bastard o, i am scalded with my violent motion, and spleen of speed to see your majesty! king john o cousin, thou art come to set mine eye: the tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd, and all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail are turned to one thread, one little hair: my heart hath one poor string to stay it by, which holds but till thy news be uttered; and then all this thou seest is but a clod and module of confounded royalty. bastard the dauphin is preparing hitherward, where heaven he knows how we shall answer him; for in a night the best part of my power, as i upon advantage did remove, were in the washes all unwarily devoured by the unexpected flood. [king john dies] salisbury you breathe these dead news in as dead an ear. my liege! my lord! but now a king, now thus. prince henry even so must i run on, and even so stop. what surety of the world, what hope, what stay, when this was now a king, and now is clay? bastard art thou gone so? i do but stay behind to do the office for thee of revenge, and then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven, as it on earth hath been thy servant still. now, now, you stars that move in your right spheres, where be your powers? show now your mended faiths, and instantly return with me again, to push destruction and perpetual shame out of the weak door of our fainting land. straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought; the dauphin rages at our very heels. salisbury it seems you know not, then, so much as we: the cardinal pandulph is within at rest, who half an hour since came from the dauphin, and brings from him such offers of our peace as we with honour and respect may take, with purpose presently to leave this war. bastard he will the rather do it when he sees ourselves well sinewed to our defence. salisbury nay, it is in a manner done already; for many carriages he hath dispatch'd to the sea-side, and put his cause and quarrel to the disposing of the cardinal: with whom yourself, myself and other lords, if you think meet, this afternoon will post to consummate this business happily. bastard let it be so: and you, my noble prince, with other princes that may best be spared, shall wait upon your father's funeral. prince henry at worcester must his body be interr'd; for so he will'd it. bastard thither shall it then: and happily may your sweet self put on the lineal state and glory of the land! to whom with all submission, on my knee i do bequeath my faithful services and true subjection everlastingly. salisbury and the like tender of our love we make, to rest without a spot for evermore. prince henry i have a kind soul that would give you thanks and knows not how to do it but with tears. bastard o, let us pay the time but needful woe, since it hath been beforehand with our griefs. this england never did, nor never shall, lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, but when it first did help to wound itself. now these her princes are come home again, come the three corners of the world in arms, and we shall shock them. nought shall make us rue, if england to itself do rest but true. [exeunt] the internet wiretap electronic edition of flatland a public domain text instantiated by aloysius@west.darkside.com in november 1990 the internet wiretap, of cupertino, california gopher@wiretap.spies.com f l a t l a n d a romance of many dimensions with illustrations by the author, a square (edwin a. abbott) "fie, fie how franticly i square my talk!" [fifth edition, revised] * * * to the inhabitance of space in general and h.c. in particular this work is dedicated by a humble native of flatland in the hope that even as he was initiated into the mysteries of three dimensions having been previously conversant with only two so the citizens of that celestial region may aspire yet higher and higher to the secrets of four five or even six dimensions thereby contributing to the enlargment of the imagination and the possible development of that most and excellent gift of modesty among the superior races of solid humanity * * * preface to the second and revised edition, 1884. by the editor if my poor flatland friend retained the vigour of mind which he enjoyed when he began to compose these memoirs, i should not now need to represent him in this preface, in which he desires, fully, to return his thanks to his readers and critics in spaceland, whose appreciation has, with unexpected celerity, required a second edition of this work; secondly, to apologize for certain errors and misprints (for which, however, he is not entirely responsible); and, thirdly, to explain on or two misconceptions. but he is not the square he once was. years of inprisonment, and the still heavier burden of general incredulity and mockery, have combined with the thoughts and notions, and much also of the terminology, which he acquired during his short stay in spaceland. he has, therefore, requested me to reply in his behalf to two special objections, one of an intellectual, the other of a moral nature. the first objection is, that a flatlander, seeing a line, sees something that must be _thick_ to the eye as well as _long_ to the eye (otherwise it would not be visible, if it had not some thickness); and consequently he ought (it is argued) to acknowledge that his countrymen are not only long and broad, but also (though doubtless to a very slight degree) _thick_ or _high._ this objection is plausible, and, to spacelanders, almost irresistible, so that, i confess, when i first heard it, i knew not what to reply. but my poor old friend's answer appears to me completely to meet it. "i admit," said he -when i mentioned to him this objection -"i admit the truth of your critic's facts, but i deny his conclusions. it is true that we have really in flatland a third unrecognized dimension called 'height,' just as it also is true that you have really in spaceland a fourth unrecognized dimension, called by no name at present, but which i will call 'extra-height.' but we can no more take cognizance of our 'height' than you can of your 'extra-height.' even i -who have been in spaceland, and have had the privilege of understanding for twenty-four hours the meaning of 'height' -even i cannot now comprehend it, nor realize it by the sense of sight or by any process of reason; i can but apprehend it by faith. "the reason is obvious. dimension implied direction, implies measurement, implies the more and the less. now, all our lines are _equally_ and _infinitesimally_ thick (or high, whichever you like); consequently, there is nothing in them to lead our minds to the conception of that dimension. no 'delicate micrometer' -as has been suggested by one too hasty spaceland critic -would in the least avail us; for we should not know _what to measure, nor in what direction._ when we see a line, we see something that is long and _bright; brightness,_ as well as length, is necessary to the existence of a line; if the brightness vanishes, the line is extinguished. hence, all my flatland friends -when i talk to them about the unrecognized dimension which is somehow visible in a line -say, 'ah, you mean _brightness_': and when i reply, 'no, i mean a real dimension,' they at once retort, 'then measure it, or tell us in what direction it extends'; and this silences me, for i can do neither. only yesterday, when the chief circle (in other words our high priest) came to inspect the state prison and paid me his seventh annual visit, and when for the seventh time he put me the question, 'was i any better?' i tried to prove to him that he was 'high,' as well as long and broad, although he did not know it. but what was his reply? 'you say i am "high"; measure my "high-ness" and i will believe you.' what could i do? how could i meet his challenge? i was crushed; and he left the room triumphant. "does this still seem strange to you? then put yourself in a similar position. suppose a person of the fourth dimension, condescending to visit you, were to say, 'whenever you open your eyes, you see a plane (which is of two dimensions) and you _infer_ a solid (which is of three); but in reality you also see (though you do not recognize) a fourth dimension, which is not colour nor brightness nor anything of the kind, but a true dimension, although i cannot point out to you its direction, nor can you posssibly measure it.' what would you say to such a visitor? would not you have him locked up? well, that is my fate: and it is as natural for us flatlanders to lock up a square for preaching the third dimension, as it is for you spacelanders to lock up a cube for preaching the fourth. alas, how strong a family likeness runs through blind and persecuting humanity in all dimensions! points, lines, squares, cubes, extra-cubes -we are all liable to the same errors, all alike the slavers of our respective dimensional prejudices, as one of our spaceland poets has said - 'one touch of nature makes all worlds akin.'" (footnote 1) on this point the defence of the square seems to me to be impregnable. i wish i could say that his answer to the second (or moral) objection was equally clear and cogent. it has been objected that he is a woman-hater; and as this objection has been vehemently urged by those whom nature's decree has constituted the somewhat larger half of the spaceland race, i should like to remove it, so far as i can honestly do so. but the square is so unaccustomed to the use of the moral terminology of spaceland that i should be doing him an injustice if i were literally to transcribe his defence against this charge. acting, therefore, as his interpreter and summarizer, i gather that in the course of an imprisonment of seven years he has himself modified his own personal views, both as regards women and as regards the isosceles or lower classes. personally, he now inclines to the opinion of the sphere (see page 86) that the straight lines are in many important respects superior to the circles. but, writing as a historian, he has identified himself (perhaps too closely) with the views generally adopted by flatland, and (as he has been informed) even by spaceland, historians; in whose pages (until very recent times) the destinies of women and of the masses of mankind have seldom been deemed worthy of mention and never of careful consideration. in a still more obscure passage he now desires to disavow the circular or aristocratic tendencies with which some critics have naturally credited him. while doing justice to the intellectual power with which a few circles have for many generations maintained their supremacy over immense multitudes of their countrymen, he believes that the facts of flatland, speaking for themselves without comment on his part, declare that revolutions cannot always be suppressed by slaughter, and that nature, in sentencing the circles to infecundity, has condemned them to ultimate failure -"and herein," he says, "i see a fulfilment of the great law of all worlds, that while the wisdom of man thinks it is working one thing, the wisdom of nature constrains it to work another, and quite a different and far better thing." for the rest, he begs his readers not to suppose that every minute detail in the daily life of flatland must needs correspond to some other detail in spaceland; and yet he hopes that, taken as a whole, his work may prove suggestive as well as amusing, to those spacelanders of moderate and modestminds who -speaking of that which is of the highest importance, but lies beyond experience -decline to say on the one hand, "this can never be," and on the other hand, "it must needs be precisely thus, and we know all about it." ---------footnote 1. the author desires me to add, that the misconceptions of some of his critics on this matter has induced him to insert (on pp. 74 and 92) in his dialogue with the sphere, certain remarks which have a bearing on the point in question and which he had previously omitted as being tedious and unnecessary. * * * flatland part 1 this world section 1. -of the nature of flatland i call our world flatland, not because we cal it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in space. imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight lines, triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows -only hard with luminous edges -and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. alas, a few years ago, i should have said "my universe": but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things. in such a country, you will perceive at once that it is impossible that there should be anything of what you call a "solid" kind; but i dare say you will suppose that we could at least distinguish by sight the triangles, squares, and other figures, moving about as i have described them. on the contrary, we could see nothing of the kind, not at least so as to distinguish one figure from another. nothing was visible, nor could be visible, to us, except straight lines; and the necessity of this i will speedily demonstrate. place a penny on the middle of one of your tables in space; and leaning over it, look down upon it. it will appear a circle. but now, drawling back to the edge of the table, gradually lower your eye (thus bringing yourself more and more into the condition of the inhabitants of flatland), and you will find the penny becoming more and more oval to your view, and at last when you have placed your eye exactly on the edge of the table (so that you are, as it were, actually a flatlander) the penny will then have ceased to appear oval at all, and will have become, so far as you can see, a straight line. the same thing would happen if you were to treat in the same way a triangle, or a square, or any other figure cut out from pasteboard. as soon as you look at it with your eye on the edge of the table, you will find that it ceases to appear to you as a figure, and that it becomes in appearance a straight line. take for example an equilateral triangle -who represents with us a tradesman of the respectable class. figure 1 represents the tradesman as you would see him while you were bending over him from above; figures 2 and 3 represent the tradesman, as you would see him if your eye were close to the level, or all but on the level of the table; and if your eye were quite on the level of the table (and that is how we see him in flatland) you would see nothing but a straight line. when i was in spaceland i heard that your sailors have very similar experiences while they traverse your seas and discern some distant island or coast lying on the horizon. the far-off land may have bays, forelands, angles in and out to any number and extent; yet at a distance you see none of these (unless indeed your sun shines bright upon them revealing the projections and retirements by means of light and shade), nothing but a grey unbroken line upon the water. well, that is just what we see when one of our triangular or other acquaintances comes towards us in flatland. as there is neither sun with us, nor any light of such a kind as to make shadows, we have none of the helps to the sight that you have in spaceland. if our friend comes closer to us we see his line becomes larger; if he leaves us it becomes smaller; but still he looks like a straight line; be he a triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, circle, what you will -a straight line he looks and nothing else. you may perhaps ask how under these disadvantages circumstances we are able to distinguish our friends from one another: but the answer to this very natural question will be more fitly and easily given when i come to describe the inhabitants of flatland. for the present let me defer this subject, and say a word or two about the climate and houses in our country. * * * section 2. -of the climate and houses in flatland as with you, so also with us, there are four points of the compass north, south, east, and west. there being no sun nor other heavenly bodies, it is impossible for us to determine the north in the usual way; but we have a method of our own. by a law of nature with us, there is a constant attraction to the south; and, although in temperate climates this is very slight -so that even a woman in reasonable health can journey several furlongs northward without much difficulty -yet the hampering effort of the southward attraction is quite sufficient to serve as a compass in most parts of our earth. moreover, the rain (which falls at stated intervals) coming always from the north, is an additional assistiance; and in the towns we have the guidance of the houses, which of course have their side-walls running for the most part north and south, so that the roofs may keep off the rain from the north. in the country, where there are no houses, the trunks of the trees serve as some sort of guide. altogether, we have not so much difficulty as might be expected in determining our bearings. yet in our more temperate regions, in which the southward attraction is hardly felt, walking sometimes in a perfectly desolate plain where there have been no houses nor trees to guide me, i have been occasionally compelled to remain stationary for hours together, waiting till the rain came before continuing my journey. on the weak and aged, and especially on delicate females, the force of attraction tells much more heavily than on the robust of the male sex, so that it is a point of breeding, if you meet a lady ont he street, always to give her the north side of the way -by no means an easy thing to do always at short notice when you are in rude health and in a climate where it is difficult to tell your north from your south. windows there are none in our houses: for the light comes to us alike in our homes and out of them, by day and by night, equally at all times and in all places, whence we know not. it was in old days, with our learned men, an interesting and oft-investigate question, "what is the origin of light?" and the solution of it has been repeatedly attempted, with no other result than to crowd our lunatic asylums with the would-be solvers. hence, after fruitless attempts to suppress such investigations indirectly by making them liable to a heavy tax, the legislature, in comparatively recent times, absolutely prohibited them. i -alas, i alone in flatland -know now only too well the true solution of this mysterious problem; but my knowledge cannot be made intelligible to a single one of my countrymen; and i am mocked at -i, the sole possessor of the truths of space and of the theory fo the introduction of light from the world of three dimensions -as if i were the maddest of the mad! but a truce to these painful digressions: let me return to our homes. the most common form for the construction of a house is five-sided or pentagonal, as in the annexed figure. the two northern sides ro, of, constitute the roof, and for the most part have no doors; on the east is a small door for the women; on the west a much larger one for the men; the south side or floor is usually doorless. square and triangular houses are not allowed, and for this reason. the angles of a square (and still more those of an equilateral triangle,) being much more pointed than those of a pentagon, and the lines of inanimate objects (such as houses) being dimmer than the lines of men and women, it follows that there is no little danger lest the points of a square of triangular house residence might do serious injury to an inconsiderate or perhaps absentminded traveller suddenly running against them: and therefore, as early as the eleventh century of our era, triangular houses were universally forbidden by law, the only exceptions being fortifications, powder-magazines, barracks, and other state buildings, which is not desirable that the general public should approach without circumspection. at this period, square houses were still everywhere permitted, though discouraged by a special tax. but, about three centuries afterwards, the law decided that in all towns containing a population above ten thousand, the angle of a pentagon was the smallest houseangle that could be allowed consistently with the public safety. the good sense of the community has seconded the efforts of the legislature; and now, even in the country, the pentagonal construction has superseded every other. it is only now and then in some very remote and backward agricultural district that an antiquarian may still discover a square house. * * * section 3. -concerning the inhabitants of flatland the greatest length or breadth of a full grown inhabitant of flatland may be estimated at about eleven of your inches. twelve inches may be regarded as a maximum. our women are straight lines. our soldiers and lowest class of workmen are triangles with two equal sides, each about eleven inches long, and a base or third side so short (often not exceeding half an inch) that they form at their vertices a very sharp and formidable angle. indeed when their bases are of the most degraded type (not more than the eighth part of an inch in size), they can hardly be distinguished from straight lines or women; so extremely pointed are their vertices. with us, as with you, these triangles are distinguished from others by being called isosceles; and by this name i shall refer to them in the following pages. our middle class consists of equilateral or equal-sided triangles. our professional men and gentlemen are squares (to which class i myself belong) and five-sided figures or pentagons. next above these come the nobility, of whom there are several degrees, beginning at six-sided figures, or hexagons, and from thence rising in the number of their sides till they receive the honourable title of polygonal, or many-sided. finally when the number of the sides becomes so numerous, and the sides themselve so small, that the figure cannot be distinguished from a circle, he is included in the circular or priestly order; and this is the highest class of all. it is a law of nature with us that a male child shall have one more side than his father, so that each generation shall rise (as a rule) one step in the scale of development and nobility. thus the son of a square is a pentagon; the son of a pentagon, a hexagon; and so on. but this rule applies not always to the tradesman, and still less often to the soldiers, and to the workmen; who indeed can hardly be said to deserve the name of human figures, since they have not all their sides equal. with them therefore the law of nature does not hold; and the son of an isosceles (i.e. a triangle with two sides equal) remains isosceles still. nevertheless, all hope is not such out, even from the isosceles, that his posterity may ultimately rise above his degraded condition. for, after a long series of military successes, or diligent and skillful labours, it is generally found that the more intelligent among the artisan and soldier classes manifest a slight increase of their third side or base, and a shrinkage of the two other sides. intermarriages (arranged by the priests) between the sons and daughters of these more intellectual members of the lower classes generally result in an offspring approximating still more to the type of the equal-sided triangle. rarely -in proportion to the vast numbers of isosceles births - is a genuine and certifiable equal-sided triangle produced from isosceles parents (footnote 1). such a birth requires, as its antecedents, not only a series of carefully arranged intermarriages, but also a long-continued exercise of frugality and self-control on the part of the would-be ancestors of the coming equilateral, and a patient, systematic, and continuous development of the isosceles intellect through many generations. the birth of a true equilateral triangle from isosceles parents is the subject of rejoicing in our country for many furlongs round. after a strict examination conducted by the sanitary and social board, the infant, if certified as regular, is with solemn ceremonial admitted into the class of equilaterals. he is then immediately taken from his proud yet sorrowing parents and adopted by some childless equilateral, who is bound by oath never to permit the child henceforth to enter his former home or so much as to look upon his relations again, for fear lest the freshly developed organism may, by force of unconscious imitation, fall back again into his hereditary level. the occasional emergence of an equilateral from the ranks of his serf-born ancestors is welcomed, not only by the poor serfs themselves, as a gleam of light and hope shed upon the monotonous squalor of their existence, but also by the aristocracy at large; for all the higher classes are well aware that these rare phenomena, while they do little or nothing to vulgarize their own privileges, serve as amost useful barrier against revolution from below. had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisdom of the circles. but a wise ordinance of nature has decreed that, in proportion as the working-classes increase in intelligence, knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion their acute angle (which makes them physically terrible) shall increase also and approximate to their comparatively harmless angle of the equilateral triangle. thus, in the most brutal and formidable off the soldier class -creatures almost on a level with women in their lack of intelligence -it is found that, as they wax in the mental ability necessary to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage, so do they wane in the power of penetration itself. how admirable is the law of compensation! and how perfect a proof of the natural fitness and, i may almost say, the divine origin of the aristocratic constitution of the states of flatland! by a juidicious use of this law of nature, the polygons and circles are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind. art also comes to the aid of law and order. it is generall found possible - by a little artificial compression or expansion on the part of the state physicians -to make some of the more intelligent leaders of a rebellion perfectly regular, and to admit them at once into the privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below the standard, allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled, are induced to enter the state hospitals, where they are kept in honourable confinement for life; one or two alone of the most obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led to execution. then the wretched rabble of the isosceles, planless and leaderless, are ether transfixed without resistance by the small body of their brethren whom the chief circle keeps in pay for emergencies of this kind; or else more often, by means of jealousies and suspicious skillfully fomented among them by the circular party, they are stirred to mutual warfare, and perish by one another's angles. no less than one hundred and twenty rebellions are recorded in our annals, besides minor outbreaks numbered at two hundred and thirtyfive; and they have all ended thus. ---------footnote 1. "what need of a certificate?" a spaceland critic may ask: "is not the procreation of a square son a certificate from nature herself, proving the equal-sidedness of the father?" i reply that no lady of any position will mary an uncertified triangle. square offspring has somethimes resulted from a slightly irregular triangle; but in almost every such case the irregularity of the first generation is visited on the third; which either fails to attain the pentagonal rank, or relapses to the triangular. * * * section 4. -concerning the women if our highly pointed triangles of the soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our women. for, if a soldier is a wedge, a woman is a needle; being, so to speak, _all_ point, at least at the two extremities. add to this the power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a female, in flatland, is a creature by no means to be trifled with. but here, perhaps, some of my younger readers may ask _how_ a woman in flatland can make herself invisible. this ought, i think, to be apparent without any explanation. however, a few words will make it clear to the most unreflecting. place a needle on the table. then, with your eye on the level of the table, look at it side-ways, and you see the whole length of it; but look at it end-ways, and you see nothing but a point, it has become practically invisible. just so is it with one of our women. when her side is turned towards us, we see her as a straight line; when the end containing her eye or mouth -for with us these two organs are identical -is the part that meets our eye, then we see nothing but a highly lustrous point; but when the back is presented to our view, then -being only sub-lustrous, and, indeed, almost as dim as an inanimate object -her hinder extremity serves her as a kind of invisible cap. the dangers to which we are exposed from our women must now be manifest to the meanest capacity of spaceland. if even the angle of a respectable triangle in the middle class is not without its dangers; if to run against a working man involves a gash; if collision with an officer of the military class necessitates a serious wound; if a mere touch from the vertex of a private soldier brings with it danger of death; -what can it be to run against a woman, except absolute and immediate destruction? and when a woman is invisible, or visible only as a dim sub-lustrous point, how difficult must it be, even for the most cautious, always to avoid collision! many are the enactments made at different times in the different states of flatland, in order to minimize this peril; and in the southern and less temperate climates, where the force of gravitation is greater, and human beings more liable to casual and involuntary motions, the laws concerning women are naturally much more stringent. but a general view of the code may be obtained from the following summary: - 1. every house shall have one entrance on the eastern side, for the use of females only; by which all females shall enter "in a becoming and respectful manner" (footnote 1) and not by the men's or western door. 2. no female shall walk in any public place without continually keeping up her peace-cry, under penalty of death. 3. any female, duly certified to be suffering from st. vitus's dance, fits, chronic cold accompanied by violent sneezing, or any disease necessitating involuntary motions, shall be instantly destroyed. in some of the states there is an additional law forbidding females, under penalty of death, from walking or standing in any public place without moving their backs constantly from right to left so as to indicate their presence to those behind them; other oblige a woman, when travelling, to be followed by one of her sons, or servants, or by her husband; others confine women altogether in their houses except during the religious festivals. but it has bbeen found by the wisest of our circles or statesmen that the multiplication of restrictions on females tends not only to the debilitation and diminution of the race, but also to the increase of domestic murders to such an extent that a state loses more than it gains by a too prohibitive code. for whenever the temper of the women is thus exasperated by confinement at home or hampering regulations abroad, they are apt to vent their spleen upon their husbands and children; and in the less temperate climates the whole male population of a village has been sometimes destroyed in one or two hours of a simultaneous female outbreak. hence the three laws, mentioned above, suffice for the better regulated states, and may be accepted as a rough exemplification of our female code. after all, our principal safeguard is found, not in legislature, but in the interests of the women themselves. for, although they can inflict instantaneous death by a retrograde movement, yet unless they can at once disengage their stinging extremity from the struggling body of their vectim, their own frail bodies are liable to be shattered. the power of fashion is also on our side. i pointed out that in some less civilized states no female is suffered to stand in any public place without swaying her back from right to left. this practice has been universal among ladies of any pretensions to breeding in all well-governed states, as far back as the memory of figures can reach. it is considered a disgrace to any state that legislation should have to enforce what ought to be, and is in every respectable female, a natural instinct. the rhythmical and, if i may so say, well-modulated undulation of the back in our ladies of circular rank is envied and imitated by the wife of a common equilateral, who can achieve nothing beyond a mere monotonous swing, like the ticking of a pendulum; and the regular tick of the equilateral is no less advmired and copied by the wife of the progressive and aspiring isosceles, in the females of whose famil no "back-motion" of any kind has become as yet a necessity of life. hence, in every family of position and consideration, "back motion" is as prevalent as time itself; and the husbands and sons in these households enjoy immunity at least from invisible attacks. not that it must be for a moment supposed that our women are destitute of affection. but unfortunately the passion of the moment predominates, in the frail sex, over every other consideration. this is, of course, a necessity arising from their unfortunate conformation. for as they have no pretensions to an angle, being inferior in this respect to the very lowest of the isosceles, they are consequently wholly devoid of brainpower, and have neither reflection, judgment nor forethought, and hardly any memory. hence, in their fits of fury, they remember no claims and recognize no distinctions. i have actually known a case where a woman has exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments swept away, has asked what has become of her husband and children. obviously then a woman is not to be irritated as long as she is in a position where she can turn round. when you have them in their apartments -which are constructed with a view to denying them that power -you can say and do what you like; for they are then wholly impotent for mischief, and will not remember a few minutes hence the incident for which they may be at this moment threatening you with death, nor the promises which you may have found it necessary to make in order to pacify their fury. on the whole we got on pretty smoothly in our domestic relations, except in the lower strata of the military classes. there the want of tact and discretion on the part of the husbands produces at times indescribable disasters. relying too much on the offensive weapons of their acute angles instead of the defensive organs of good sense and seasonable simulations, these reckless creatures too often neglect the prescribed construction of the women's apartments, or irritate their wives by ill-advised expressions out of doors, which they refuse immediately to retract. moreover a blunt and stolid regard for literal truth indisposes them to make those lavish promises by which the more judicious circle can in a moment pacify his consort. the result is massacre; not, however, without its advantages, as it eliminates the more brutal and troublesome of the isosceles; and by many of our circles the destructiveness of the thinner sex is regarded as one among many providential arrangements for suppressing redundant population, and nipping revolution in the bud. yet even in our best regulated and most approximately circular families i cannot say that the ideal of family life is so high as with you in spaceland. there is peace, in so far as the absence of slaughter may be called by that name, but there is necessarily little harmony of tastes or pursuits; and the cautious wisdom of the fcircles has ensured safety at the cost of domestic comfort. in every circular or polygonal household it has been a habit from time immemorial -and now has become a kind of instinct among the women of our higher classes -that the mothers and daughters should constantly keep their eyes and mouths towards their husband and his male friends; and for a lady in a family of distinction to turn her back upon her husband would be regarded as a kind of portent, involving loss of _status._ but, as i shall soon shew, this custom, though it has the advantage of safety, is not without disadvantages. in the house of the working man or respectable tradesman -where the wife is allowed to turn her back upon her husband, while pursuing her household avocations -there are at least intervals of quiet, when the wife is neither seen nor heard, except for the humming sound of the continuous peace-cry; but in the homes of the upper classes there is too often no peace. there the voluble mouth and bright penetrating eye are ever directed toward the master of the household; and light itself is not more persistent than the stream of feminine discourse. the tact and skill which suffice to avert a woman's sting are unequal to the task of stopping a woman's mouth; and as the wife has absolutely nothing to say, and absolutely no constraint of wit, sense, or conscience to prevent her from saying it, not a few cynics have been found to aver that they prefer the danger of the deathdealing but inaudible sting to the safe sonorousness of a woman's other end. to my readers in spaceland the condition of our women may seen truly deplorable, and so indeed it is. a male of the lowest type of the isosceles may look forward to some improvement of his angle, and to the ultimate elevation of the whole of his degraded caste; but no woman can entertain such opes for her sex. "once a woman, always a woman" is a decree of nature; and the very laws of evolution seem suspended in her disfavour. yet at least we can admire the wise prearrangement which has ordained that, as they have no hopes, so they shall have no memory to recall, and no forethought to anticipate, the miseries and humiliations which are at once a necessity of their existence and the basis of the constitution of flatland. * * * section 5. -of our methods of recognizing one another you, who are blessed with shade as well as light, you, who are gifted with two eyes, endowed with a knowledge of perspective, and charmed with the enjoyment of various colours, you, who can actually _see_ an angle, and contemplate the complete circumference of a circle in the happy region of the three dimensions -how shall i make it clear to you the extreme difficulty which we in flatland experience in recognizing one another's configuration? recall what i told you above. all beings in flatland, animate and inanimate, no matter what their form, present _to our view_ the same, or nearly the same, appearance, viz. that of a straight line. how then can one be distinguished from another, where all appear the same? the answer is threefold. the first means of recognition is the sense of hearing; which with us is far more highly developed than with you, and which enables us not only to distinguish by the voice of our personal friends, but even to discriminate between different clases, at least so far as concerns the three lowest orders, the equilateral, the square, and the pentagon -for the isosceles i take no account. but as we ascend the social scale, the process of discriminating and being discriminated by hearing increases in difficulty, partly because voices are assimilated, partly because the faculty of voicediscrimination is a plebeian virtue not much developed among the aristocracy. and wherever there is any danger of imposture we cannot trust to this method. amongst our lowest orders, the vocal organs are developed to a degree more than correspondent with those of hearing, so that an isosceles can easily feign the voice of a polygon, and, with some training, that of a circle himself. a second method is therefore more commonly resorted to. _feeling_ is, among our women and lower classes -about our upper classes i shalls peak presently -the principal test of recognition, at all events between strangers, and when the question is, not as to the individual, but as to the class. what therefore "introduction" is among the higher classes in spaceland, that the process of "feeling" is with us. "permit me to ask you to feel and be felt by my friend mr. so-and-so" -is still, among the more old-fashioned of our country gentlemen in districts remote from towns, the customary formula for a flatland introduction. but in the towns, and among men of business, the words "be felt by" are omitted and the sentence is abbreviated to, "let me ask you to feel mr. so-and-so"; although it is assumed, of course, that the "feeling" is to be reciprocal. among our still more modern and dashing young gentlemen -who are extremely averse to superfluous effort and supremely indifferent to the purity of their native language -the formula is still further curtailed by the use of "to feel" in a technical sense, meaning, "to recommend-forthe-purposes-of-feeling-and-being-felt"; and at this moment the "slang" of polite or fast society in the upper classes sanctions such a barbarism as "mr. smith, permit me to feel mr. jones." let not my reader however suppose that "feeling" is with us the tedious process that it would be with you, or that we find it necessary to feel right round all the sides of every individual before we determine the class to which he belongs. long practice and training, begun in the schooles and continued in the experience of daily life, enable us to discriminate at once by the sense of touch, between the angles of an equal-sided triangle, square, and pentagon; and i need not say that the brainless vertex of an acute-angled isosceles is obvious to the dullest touch. it is therefore not necessary, as a rule, to do more than feel a single angle of an individual; and this, once ascertained, tells us the class of the person whom we are addressing, unless indeed he belongs to the higher sections of the nobility. there the difficulty is much greater. even a master of arts in our university of wentbridge has been known to confuse a ten-sided with a twelve-sided polygon; and there is hardly a doctor of science in or out of that famous university who could pretend to decide promptly and unhestitatingly between a twenty-sided and a twenty-four sided member of the aristocracy. those of my readers who recall the extracts i gave above from the legislative code concerning women, will readily perceive that the process of introduction by contact requires some care and discretion. otherwise the angles might inflict on the unwary feeling irreparable injury. it is essential for the safety of the feeler that the felt should stand perfectly still. a start, a fidgety shifting of the position, yes, even a violent sneeze, has been known before now to prove fatal to the incautious, and to nip in the bud many a promising friendship. especially is this true among the lower classes of the triangles. with them, the eye is situated so far from their vertex that they can scarcely take cognizance of what goes on at that extremity of their frame. they are, moreover, of a rough coarse nature, not sensitive to the delicate touch of the highly organized polygon. what wonder then if an involuntary toss of the head has ere now deprived the state of a valuable life! i have heard that my excellent grandfather -one of the least irregular of his unhappy isosceles class, who indeed obtained, shortly before his decease, four out of seven botes from the sanitary and social board for passing him into the class of the equal-sided - often deplored, with a tear in his venerable eye, a miscarriage of this kind, which had occured to his great-great-great-grandfather, a respectable working man with an angle or brain of 59 degrees 30 minutes. according to his account, my unfortunately ancestor, being afflicted with rheumatism, and in the act of being felt by a polygon, by one sudden start accidentally transfixed the great man through the diagonal and thereby, partly in consequence of his long imprisonment and degradation, and partly because of the moral shock which pervaded the whole of my ancestor's relations, threw back our family a degree and a half in their ascent towards better things. the result was that in the next generation the family brain was registered at only 58 degrees, and not till the lapse of five generations was the lost ground recovered, the full 60 degrees attained, and the ascent from the isosceles finally achieved. and all this series of calamaties from one little accident in the process of feeling. as this point i think i hear some of my better educated readers exclaim, "how could you in flatland know anything about angles and degrees, or minutes? we _see_ an angle, because we, in the region of space, can see two straight lines inclined to one another; but you, who can see nothing but on straight line at a time, or at all events onlly a number of bits of straight lines all in one straight line, - how can you ever discern an angle, and much less register angles of different sizes?" i answer that though we cannot _seeangles, we can _infer_ them, and this with great precision. our sense of touch, stimulated by necessity, and developed by long training, enables us to distinguish angles far more accurately than your sense of sight, when unaided by a rule or measure of angles. nor must i omit to explain that we have great natural helps. it is with us a law of nature that the brain of the isosceles class shall begin at half a degree, or thirty minutes, and shall increase (if it increases at all) by half a degree in every generation until the goal of 60 degrees is reached, when the condition of serfdom is quitted, and the freeman enters the class of regulars. consequently, nature herself supplies us with an ascending scale or alphabet of angles for half a degree up to 60 degrees, specimen of which are placed in every elementary school throughout the land. owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity of the criminal and vagabond classes, there is always a vast superfluity of individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair abundance of specimens up to 10 degrees. these are absolutely destitute of civil rights; and a great number of them, not having even intelligence enough for the purposes of warfare, are devoted by the states to the service of education. fettered immovably so as to remove all possibility of danger, they are placed in the classrooms of our infant schools, and there they are utilized by the board of education for the pupose of imparting to the offspring of the middle classes the tact and intelligence which these wretched creatures themselves are utterly devoid. in some states the specimens are occasionally fed and suffered to exist for several years; butin the more temperate and better regulated regions, it is found in the long run more advantageous for the educational interests of the young, to dispense with food, and to renew the specimens every month -which is about the average duration of the foodless existence of the criminal class. in the cheaper schools, what is gained by the longer existence of the specimen is lost, partly in the expenditure for food, and partly in the diminished accuracy of the angles, which are impaired after a few weeks of constant "feeling." nor must we forget to add, in enumerating the advantages of the more expensive system, that it tends, though slightly yet perceptibly, to the diminution of the redundant isosceles population -an object which every statesman in flatland constantly keeps in view. on the whole therefore -although i am not ignorant that, in many popularly elected school boards, there is a reaction in favour of "the cheap system" as it is called -i am myself disposed to think that this is one of the many cases in which expense is the truest economy. but i must not allow questions of school board politics to divert me from my subject. enough has been said, i trust, to shew that recognition by feeling is not so tedious or indecisive a process as might have been supposed; and it is obviously more trustworthy than recognition by hearing. still there remains, as has been pointed out above, the objection that this method is not without danger. for this reason many in the middle and lower classes, and all without exception in the polygonal and circular orders, prefer a third method, the description of which shall be reserved for the next section. * * * section 6. -of recognition by sight i am about to appear very inconsistent. in the previous sections i have said that all figures in flatland present the appearance of a straight line; and it was added or implied, that it is consequently impossible to distinguish by the visual organ between individuals of different classes: yet now i am about to explain to my spaceland critics how we are able to recognize one another by the sense of sight. if however the reader will take the trouble to refer to the passage in which recognition by feeling is stated to be universal, he will find this qualification -"among the lower classes." it is only among the higher classes and in our more temperate climates that sight recognition is practised. that this power exists in any regions and for any classes is the result of fog; which prevails during the greater part of the year in all parts save the torrid zones. that which is with you in spaceland an unmixed evil, blotting out the landscape, depressing the spirits, and enfeebling the health, is by us recognized as a blessing scarcely inferior to air itself, and as the nurse of arts and parent os sciences. but let me explain my meaning, without further eulogies on this beneficent element. if fog were non-existent, all lines would appear equally and indistinguishably clear; and this is actually the case in those unhappy countries in which the atmosphere is perfectly dry and transparent. but wherever there is a rich supply of fog, objects that are at a distance, say of three feet, are appreciably dimmer than those at the distance of two feet eleven inches; and the result is that by careful and constant experimental observation of comparative dimness and constant experimental observation of comparative dimness and clearness, we are enabled to infer with great exactness the configuration of the object observed. an instace will do more than a volume of generalities to make my meaning clear. suppose i see two individuals approaching whose rank i wish to ascertain. they are, we will suppose, a merchant and a physician, or in other words, an equilaterial triangle and a pentagon; how am i to distinuish them? it will be obvious, to every child in spaceland who has touched the threshold of geometrical studies, that, if i can bring my eye so that its glance may bisect an angle (a) of the approaching stranger, my view will lie as it were evenly between the two sides that are next to me (viz. ca and ab), so that i shall contemplate the two impartially, and both will appear of the same size. now inthe case of (1) the merchant, what shall i see? i shall see a straight line dae, in which the middle point (a) will be very bright because it is nearest to me; but on either side the line will shade away _rapidly to dimness,_ because the sides ac and ab _recede rapidly into the fog_ and what appear to me as the merchant's extremities, viz. d and e, will be _very dim indeed._ on the other hand in the case of (2) the physician, though i shall here also see a line (d'a'e') with a bright centre (a'), yet it will shade away _less rapidly_ to dimness, because the sides (a'c', a'b') _recede less rapidly into the fog:_ and what appear to me the physician's extremities, viz. d' and e', will not be _not so dim_ as the extremities of the merchant. the reader will probably understand from these two instances how after a very long training supplemented by constant experience -it is possible for the well-educated classes among us to discriminate with fair accuracy between the middle and lowest orders, by the sense of sight. if my spaceland patrons have grasped this general conception, so far as to conceive the possibility of it and not to reject my account as altogether incredible -i shall have attained all i can reasonably expect. were i to attempt further details i should only perplex. yet for the sake of the young and inexperienced, who may perchance infer -from the two simple instances i have given above, of the manner in which i should recognize my father and my sons -that recognition by sight is an easy affair, it may be needful to point out that in actual life most of the problems of sight recognition are far more subtle and complex. if for example, when my father, the triangle, approaches me, he happens to present his side to me instead of his angle, then, until i have asked him to rotate, or until i have edged my eye around him, i am for the moment doubtful whether he may not be a straight line, or, in other words, a woman. again, when i am in the company of one of my two hexagonal grandsons, contemplating one of his sides (ab) full front, it will be evident from the accompanying diagram that i shall see one whole line (ab) in comparative brightness (shading off hardly at all at the ends) and two smaller lines (ca and bd) dim throughout and shading away into greater dimness towards the extremities c and d. but i must not give way to the temptating of enlarging on these topics. the meanest mathematician in spaceland will readily believe me when i assert that the problems of life, which present themselves to the well-educated -when they are themselves in motion, rotating, advancing or retreating, and at the same time attempting to discriminate by the sense of sight between a number of polygons of high rank moving in different directions, as for example in a ballroom or conversazione -must be of a nature to task the angularity of the most intellectual, and amply justify the rich endowments of the learned professors of geometry, both static and kinetic, in the illustrious university of wentbridge, where the science and art of sight recognition are regularly taught to large classes of the _elite_ of the states. it is only a few of the scions of our noblest and wealthies houses, who are able to give the time and money necessary for the thorough prosecution of this noble and valuable art. even to me, a mathematician of no mean standing, and the granddfather of two most hopeful and perfectly regular hexagons, to find myself in the midst of a crowd of rotating polygons of the higher classes, is occasionally very perplexing. and of course to a common tradesman, or serf, such a sight is almost as unintelligible as it would be to you, my reader, were you suddenly transported to my country. in such a crowd you could see on all sides of you nothing but a line, apparently straight, but of which the parts would vary irregularly and perpetually in brightness or dimness. even if you had completed your third year in the pentagonal and hexagonal classes in the university, and were perfect in the theory of the subject, you would still find there was need of many years of experience, before you could move in a fashionable crowd without jostling against your betters, whom it is against etiquette to ask to "feel," and who, by their superior culture and breeding, know all about your movements, while you know very little or nothing about theirs. in a word, to comport oneself with perfect propriety in polygonal society, one ought to be a polygon oneself. such at least is the painful teaching of my experience. it is astonishing how much the art -or i may almost call it instinct -of sight recognition is developed by the habitual practice of it and by the avoidance of the custom of "feeling." just as, with you, the deaf and dumb, if once allowed to gesticulate and to use the hand-alphabet, will never acquire the more difficult but far more valuable art of lip-speech and lip-reading, so it is with us as regards "seeing" and "feeling." none who in early life resort to "feeling" will ever learn "seeing" in perfection. for this reason, among our higher classes, "feeling" is discouraged or absolutely forbidden. from the cradle their children, instead of going to the public elementary schools (where the art of feeling is taught,) are sent to higher seminaries of an exclusive character; and at our illustrius university, to "feel" is regarded as a most serious fault, involving rustication for the first offence, and expulsion for the second. but among the lower classes the art of sight recognition is regarded as an unattainable luxury. a common tradesman cannot afford to let his sun spend a third of his life in abstract studies. the children of the poor are therefore allowed to "feel" from their earliest years, and they gain thereby a precocity and an early vivacity which contrast at first most favourably with the inert, undeveloped, and listless behaviour of the half-instructed youths of the polygonal class; but when the latter have at last completed their university course, and are prepared to put their theory into practice, the change that comes over them may almost be described as a new birth, and in every art, science, and social pursuit they rapidly overtake and distance their triangular competitors. only a few of the polygonal class fail to pass the final test or leaving examination at the university. the condition of the unsuccessful minority is truly pitiable. rejected from the higher class,, they are also despised by the lower. they have neither the matured and systematically trained powers of the polygonal bachelors and masters of arts, nor yet the native precocity and mercurial versatility of the youthful tradesman. the professions, the public services, are closed against them, and though in most states they are not actually debarred from marriage, yet they have the greatest difficulty in forming suitable alliances, as experience shews that the offspring of such unfortunate and ill-endowed parents is generally itself unfortunate, if not positively irregular. it is from these specimens of the refuse of our nobility that the great tumults and seditions of past ages have generally derived their leaders; and so great is the mischief thence arising that an increasing minotiry of our more progressive statesmen are of opinion that true mercy would dictate their entire suppression, by enacting that all who fail to pass the final examination of the university should be either imprisoned for life, or extinguished by a painless death. but i find myself digressing into the subect of irregularities, a matter of such vital interest that it demans a separate section. * * * section 7. -concerning irregular figures throughout the previous pages i have been assuming -what perhaps should have been laid down at the beginning as a distinct and fundamental proposition -that every human being in flatland is a regular figure, that is to say of regular construction. by this i mean that a woman must not only be a line, but a straight line; that an artisan or soldier must have two of his sides equal; that tradesmen must have three sides equal; lawyers (of which class i am a humble member), four sides equal, and, generally, that in every polygon, all the sides must be equal. the sizes of the sides would of course depend upon the age of the individual. a female at birth would be about an inch long, while a tall adult woman might extend to a foot. as to the males of every class, it may be roughly said that the length of an adult's size, when added together, is two feet or a little more. but the size of our sides is not under consideration. i am speaking of the _equality_ of sides, and it does not need much reflection to see that the whole of the social life in flatland rests upon the fundamental fact that nature wills all figures to have their sides equal. if our sides were unequal our angles might be unequal. instead of its being sufficient to feel, or estimate by sight, a single angle in order to determine the form of an individual, it would be necessary to ascertain each angle by the experiment of feeling. but life would be too short for such a tedious groping. the whole science and art of sight recognition would at once perish; feeling, so far as it is an art, would not long survive; intercourse would become perilous or impossible; there would be an end to all confidence, all forethought; no one would be safe in making the most simple social arrangements; in a word, civilization might relapse into barbarism. am i going too fast to carry my readers with me to these obvious conclusions? surely a moment's reflection, and a single instance from common life, must convince every one that our social system is based upon regularity, or equality of angles. you meet, for example, two or three tradesmen in the street, whom your recognize at once to be tradesman by a glance at their angles and rapidly bedimmed sides, and you ask them to step into your house to lunch. this you do at present with perfect confidence, because everyone knows to an inch or two the area occupied by an adult triangle: but imagine that your tradesman drags behind his regular and respectable vertex, a parallelogram of twelve or thirteen inches in diagonal: -what are you to do with such a monster sticking fast in your house door? but i am insulting the intelligence of my readers by accumulating details which must be patent to everyone who enjoys the advantages of a residence in spaceland. obviously the measurements of a single angle would no longer be sufficient under such portentous circumstances; one's whole life would be taken up in feeling or surveying the perimeter of one's acquaintances. already the difficulties of avoiding a collision in a crowd are enough to tax the sagacity of even a well-educated square; but if no one could calculate the regularity of a signle figure in the company, all would be chaos and confusion, and the slightest panic would cause serious injuries, or -if there happened to be any women or soldiers present -perhaps considerable loss of life. expediency therefore concurs with nature in stamping the seal of its approval upon regularity of conformation: nor has the law been backward in seconding their efforts. "irregularity of figure" means with us the same as, or more than, a combination of moral obliquity and criminality with you, and is treated accordingly. there are not wanting, it is true, some promulgators of paradoxes who maintain that there is no necessary connection between geometrical and moral irregularity. "the irregular," they say, "is from his birth scouted by his own parents, derided by his brothers and sisters, neglected by the domestics, scorned and suspected by society, and excluded from all posts of responsibility, trust, and useful activity. his every movement is jealously watched by the police till he comes of age and presents himself for inspection; then he is either destroyed, if he is found to exceed the fixed margin of deviation, at an uninteresting occupation for a miserable stipend; obliged to live and board at the office, and to take even his vacation under close supervision; what wonder that human nature, even in the best and purest, is embittered and perverted by such surroundings!" all this very plausible reasoning does not convince me, as it has not convinced the wisest of our statesmen, that our ancestors erred in laying it down as an axiom of policy that the toleration of irregularity is incompatible with the safety of the state. doubtless, the life of an irregular is hard; but the interests of the greater number require that it shall be hard. if a man with a triangular frnt and a polygonal back were allowed to exist and to propagate a still more irregular posterity, what would become of the arts of life? are the houses and doors and churches in flatland to be altered in order to accommodate such monsters? are our ticket-collectors to be required to measure every man's perimeter before they allow him to enter a theatre, or to take his place in a lecture room? is an irregular to be exempted from the militia? and if not, how is he to be prevented from carrying desolation into the ranks of his comrades? again, what irresistible temptations to fraudulent impostures must needs beset such a creature! how easy for him to enter a shop with his polygonal front foremost, and to order goods to any extent from a confiding tradesman! let the advocates of a falsely called philanthropy plead as they may for the abrogation of the irregular penal laws, i for my part have never known an irregular who was not also what nature evidently intended him to be -a hypocrite, a misanthropist, and, up to the limits of his power, a perpetrator of all manner of mischief. not that i should be disposed to recommend (at present) the extreme measures adopted by some states, where an infant whose angle deviates by half a degree from the correct angularity is summarily destroyed at birth. some of our highest and ablest men, men of real genius, have during their earliest days laboured under deviations as great as, or even greater than forty-five minutes: and the loss of their precious lives would have been an irreparable injury to the state. the art of healing also has achieved some of its most glorious triumphs in the compressions, extensions, trepannings, colligations, and other surgical or diaetetic operations by which irregularity has been partly or wholly cured. advocating therefore a _via media,_ i would lay down no fixed or absolute line of demarcation; but at the period when the frame is just beginning to set, and when the medical board has reported that recovery is improbably, i would suggest that the irregular offspring be painlessly and mercifully consumed. * * * section 8. -of the ancient practice of painting if my readers have followed me with any attention up to this point, they will not be surprised to hear that life is somewhat dull in flatland. i do not, of course, mean that there are not battles, conspiracies, tumults, factions, and all those other phenomena which are supposed to make history interesting; nor would i deny that the strange mixture of the problems of life and the problems of mathematics, continually inducing conjecture and giving an opportunity of immediate verification, imparts to our existence a zest which you in spaceland can hardly comprehend. i speak now from the aesthetic and artistic point of view when i say that life with us is dull; aesthetically and artistically, very dull indeed. how can it be otherwise, when all one's prospect, all one's landscapes, historical pieces, portraits, flowers, still life, are nothing but a single line, with no varieties except degrees of brightness and obscurity? it was not always thus. colour, if tradition speaks the truth, once for the space of half a dozen centuries or more, threw a transient splendour over the lives of our ancestors in the remotest ages. some private individual -a pentagon whose name is variously reported -having casually discovered the constituents of the simpler colours and a rudimentary method of painting, is said to have begun by decorating first his house, then his slaves, then his father, his sons, and grandsons, lastly himself. the convenience as well as the beauty of the results commended themselves to all. wherever chromatistes, -for by that name the most trustworthy authorities concur in calling him, -turned his variegated frame, there he at once excited attention, and attracted respect. no one now needed to "feel" him; no one mistook his front for his back; all his movements were readily ascertained by his neighbours without the slightest strain on their powers of calculation; no one jostled him, or failed to make way for him; his voice was saved the labour of that exhausting utterance by which we colourless squares and pentagons are often forced to proclaim our individuality when we move amid a crowd of ignorant isosceles. the fashion spread like wildfire. before a week was over, every square and triangle in the district had copied the example of chromatistes, and only a few of the more conservative pentagons still held out. a month or two found even the dodecagons infected with the innovation. a year had not elapsed before the habit had spread to all but the very highest of the nobility. needless to say, the custom soon made its way from the district of chromatistes to surrounding regions; and within two generations no one in all flatland was colourless except the women and the priests. here nature herself appeared to erect a barrier, and to plead against extending the innovations to these two classes. manysidedness was almost essential as a pretext for the innovators. "distinction of sides is intended by nature to imply distinction of colours" -such was the sophism which in those days flew from mouth to mouth, converting whole towns at a time to a new culture. but manifestly to our priests and women this adage did not apply. the latter had only one side, and therefore -plurally and pedanticallly speaking -_no sides._ the former -if at least they would assert their claim to be readily and truly circles, and not mere high-class polygons, with an infinitely large number of infinitesimally small sides -were in the habit of boasting (what women confessed and deplored) that they also had no sides, being blessed with a perimeter of only one line, or, in other words, a circumference. hence it came to pass that these two classes could see no force in the so-called axiom about "distinction of sides implying distinction of colour;" and when all others had succumbed to the fascinations of corporal decoration, the priests and the women alone still remained pure from the pollution of paint. immoral, licentious, anarchical, unscientific -call them by what named you will -yet, from an aesthetic point of view, those ancient days of the colour revolt were the glorious childhood of art in flatland -a childhood, alas, that never ripened into manhood, nor even reached the blossom of youth. to live then in itself a delight, because living implied seeing. even at a small party, the company was a pleasure to behold; the richly varied hues of the assembly in a church or theatre are said to have more than once proved too distracting from our greatest teachers and actors; but most ravishing of all is said to have been the unspeakable magnificence of a military review. the sight of a line of battle of twenty thousand isosceles suddenly facing about, and exchanging the sombre black of their bases for the orange of the two sides including their acute angle; the militia of the equilateral triangles tricoloured in red, white, and blue; the mauve, ultra-marine, gamboge, and burnt umber of the square artillerymen rapidly rotating near their vermillion guns; the dashing and flashing of the five-coloured and six-coloured pentagons and hexagons careering across the field in their offices of surgeons, geometricians and aides-de-camp -all these may well have been sufficient to render credible the famous story how an illustrious circle, overcome by the artistic beauty of the forces under his command, threw aside his marshal's baton and his royal crown, exclaiming that he henceforth exchanged them for the artist's pencil. how great and glorious the sensuous development of these days must have been is in part indicated by the very language and vocabulary of the period. the commonest utterances of the commonest citizens in the time of the colour revolt seem to have been suffused with a richer tinge of word or thought; and to that era we are even now indebted for our finest poetry and for whatever rhythm still remains in the more scientific utterance of those modern days. * * * section 9. -of the universal colour bill but meanwhile the intellectual arts were fast decaying. the art of sight recognition, being no longer needed, was no longer practised; and the studies of geometry, statics, kinetics, and other kindred subjects, came soon to be considered superfluous, and feel into disrespect and neglect even at our university. the inferior art of feeling speedly experienced the same fate at our elementary schools. then the isosceles classes, asserting that the specimens were no longer used nor needed, and refusing to pay the customary tribute from the criminal classes to the service of education, waxed daily more numerous and more insolent on the strength of their immunity from the old burden which had formerly exercised the twofold wholesome effect of at once taming their brutal nature and thinning their excessive numbers. year by year the soldiers and artisans began more vehemently to assert -and with increasing truth -that there was no great difference between them and the very highest class of polygons, now that they were raised to an equality with the latter, and enabled to grapple with all the difficulties and solve all the problems of life, whether statical or kinetical, by the simple process of colour recognition. not content with the natural neglect into which sight recognition was falling, they began boldly to demand the legal prohibition of all "monopolizing and aristocratic arts" and the consequent abolition of all endowments for the studies of sight recognition, mathematics, and feeling. soon, they began to insist that inasmuch as colour, which was a second nature, had destroyed the need of aristocratic distinctions, the law should follow in the same path, and that henceforth all individuals and all classes should be recognized as absolutely equal and entitled to equal rights. finding the higher orders wavering and undecided, the leaders of the revolution advanced still further in their requirements, and at last demanded that all classes alike, the priests and the women not excepted, should do homage to colour by submitting to be painted. when it was objected that priests and women had no sides, they retorted that nature and expediency concurred in dictating that the front half of every human being (that is to say, the half containing his eye and mouth) should be distinguishable from his hinder half. they therefore brought before a general and extraordinary assembly of all the states of flatland a bill proposing that in every woman the half containing the eye and mouth should be coloured red, and the other half green. the priests were to be painted in the same way, red being applied to that semicircle in which the eye and mouth formed the mmiddle point; while the other or hinder semicircle was to be coloured green. there was no little cunning in this proposal, which indeed emanated not from any isosceles -for no being so degraded would have angularity enough to appreciate, much less to devise, such a model of state-craft -but from an irregular circle who, instead of being destroyed in his childhood, was reserved by a foolish indulgence to bring desolation on his country and destruction on myriads of followers. on the one hand the proposition was calculated to bring the women in all classes over to the side of the chromatic innovation. for by assigning to the women the same two colours as were assigned to the priests, the revolutionists thereby ensured that, in certain positions, every woman would appear as a priest, and be treated with corresponding respect and deference -a prospect that could not fail to attract the female sex in a mass. but by some of my readers the possibility of the identical appearance of priests and women, under a new legislation, may not be recognized; if so, a word or two will make it obvious. imagine a woman duly decorated, according to the new code; with the front half (i.e., the half containing the eye and mouth) red, and with the hinder half green. look at her from one side. obviously you will see a straight line, _half red, half green._ now imagine a priest, whose mouth is at m, and whose front semicircle (amb) is consequently coloured red, while his hinder semicircle is green; so that the diameter ab divides the green from the red. if you contemplate the great man so as to have your eye in the same straight line as his dividing diameter (ab), what you will see will be a straight line (cbd), of which _one half_ (cb) _will be red, and the other_ (bd) _green._ the whole line (cd) will be rather shorter perhaps than that of a full-sized woman, and will shade off more rapidly towards its extremities; but the identity of the colours would give you an immediate impression of identity in class, making you neglectful of other details. bear in mind the decay of sight recognition which threatened society at the time of the colour revolt; add too the certainty that woman would speedily learn to shade off their extremities so as to imitate the circles; it must then be surely obvious to you, my dear reader, that the colour bill placed us under a great danger of confounding a priest with a young woman. how attractive this prospect must have been to the frail sex may readily be imagined. they anticipated with delight the confusion that would ensue. at home they might hear political and ecclesiastical secrets intended not for them but for their husbands and brothers, and might even issue some commands in the name of a priestly circle; out of doors the striking combination of red and green without adddition of any other colours, would be sure to lead the common people into endless mistakes, and the woman would gain whatever the circles lost, in the deference of the passers by. as for the scandal that would befall the circular class if the frivolous and unseemly conduct of the women were imputed to them, and as to the consequent subversion of the constitution, the female sex could not be expected to give a thought to these considerations. even in the households of the circles, the women were all in favour of the univsersal colour bill. the second object aimed at by the bill was the gradual demoralization of the circles themselves. in the general intellectual decay they still preserved their pristine clearness and strength of understanding. from their earliest childhood, familiarized in their circular households with the total absence of colour, the nobles alone preserved the sacred art of sight recognition, with all the advantages that result from that admirable training of the intellect. hence, up to the date of the introduction of the universal colour bill, the circles had not only held their own, but even increased their lead of the other classes by abstinence from the popular fashion. now therefore the artful irregular whom i described above as the real author of this diabolical bill, determined at one blow to lower the status of the hierarchy by forcing them to submit to the pollution of colour, and at the same time to destroy their domestic opportunities of training in the art of sight recognition, so as to enfeeble their intellects by depriving them of their pure and colourless homes. once subjected to the chromatic taint, every parental and every childish circle would demoralize each other. only in discerning between the father and the mother would the circular infant find problems for the exercise of his understanding -problems too often likely to be corrupted by maternal impostures with the result of shaking the child's faith in all logical conclusions. thus by degrees the intellectual lustre of the priestly order would wane, and the road would then lie open for a total destruction of all aristocratic legislature and for the subversion of our privileged classes. * * * section 10. -of the suppression of the chromatic sedition the agitation for the universal colour bill continued for three years; and up to the last moment of that period it seemed as though anarchy were destined to triumph. a whole army of polygons, who turned out to fight as private soldiers, was utterly annihilated by a superior force of isosceles triangles -the squares and pentagons meanwhile remaining neutral. worsez than all, some of the ablest circles fell a prey to conjugal fury. infuriated by political animosity, the wives in many a noble household wearied their lords with prayers to give up their opposition to the colour billl; and some, finding their entreaties fruitless, fell on and slaughtered their innocent children and husband, perishing themselves in the act of carnage. it is recorded that during that triennial agitation no less than twenty-three circles perished in domestic discord. great indeed was the peril. it seemed as though the priests had no choice between submission and extermination; when suddenly the course of events was completely changed by one of those picturesque incidents which statesmen ought never to neglect, often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate, because of the absurdly disproportionate power with which they appearl to the sympathies of the populace. it happened that an isosceles of a low type, with a brain little if at all above four degrees -accidentally dabbling in the colours of some tradesman whose shop he had plundered -painted himself, or caused himself to be painted (for the story varies) with the twelve colours of a dodecagon. going into the market place he accosted in a feigned voice a maiden, the orphan daughter of a noble polygon, whose affection in former days he had sought in vain; and by a series of deceptions -aided, on the one side, by a string of lucky accidents too long to relate, and, on the other, by an almost inconceivable fatuity and neglect of ordinary precautions on the part of the relations of the bride -he succeeded in consummating the marriage. the unhappy girl committed suicide on discovering the fraud to which she had been subjected. when the news of this catastrophe spread from state to state the minds of the women were violently agitated. sympathy with the miserable victim and anticipations of similar deceptions for themselves, their sisters, and their daughters, made them now regard the colour bill in an entirely new aspect. not a few openly avowed themselves converted to antagonism; the rest needed only a slight stimulus to make a similar avowal. seizing this favourable apportunity, the circles hastily convened an extraordinary assembly of the states; and besides the usual guard of convicts, they secured the attendance of a large number of reactionary women. amidst an unprecedented concourse, the chief circle of those days -by name pantocyclus -arose to find himself hissed and hooted by a hundred and twenty thousand isosceles. but he secured silence by declaring that henceforth the circles would enter on a policy of concession; yielding to the wishes of the majority, they would accept the colour bill. the uproar being at once converted to applause, he invited chromatistes, the leader of the sedition, into the centre of the hall, to receive in the name of his followers the submission of the hierarchy. then followed a speech, a masterpiece of rhetoric, which occupied nearly a day in the delivery, and to which no summary can do justice. with a grave appearance of impartiality he declared that as they were now finally committing themselves to reform or innovation, it was desirable that they should take one last view of the perimeter of the whole subject, its defects as well as its advantages. gradually introduction the mention of the dangers to the tradesmen, the professional classes and the gentlemen, he silenced the rising murmurs of the isosceles by reminding them that, in spite of all these defects, he was willing to accept the bill if it was approved by the majority. but it was manifest that all, except the isosceles, were moved by his words and were either neutral or averse to the bill. turning now to the workmen he asserted that their interests must not be neglected, and that, if they intended to accept the colour bill, they ought at least to do so with full view of the consequences. many of them, he said, were on the point of being admitted to the class of the regular triangles; others anticipated for their children a distinction they could not hope for themselves. that honourable ambition would not have to be sacrificed. with the universal adoption of colour, all distinctions would cease; regularity would be confused with irregularity; development would give place to retrogression; the workman would in a few generations be degraded to the level of the militar, or even the convict class; political power would be in the hands of the greatest number, that is to say the criminal classes, who were already more numerous than the workmen, and would soon out-number all the other classes put together when the usual compensative laws of nature were violated. a subdued murmur of assent ran through the ranks of the artisans, and chromatistes, in alarm, attempted to step forward and address them. but he found himself encompassed with guards and forced to remain silent while the chief circle in a few impassioned words made a final appeal to the women, exclaiming that, if the colour bill passed, no marriage would henceforth be safe, no woman's honour secure; fraud, deception, hypocrisy would pervade every household; domestic bliss would share the fate of the constitution and pass to speedy perdition. "sooner than this," he cried, "come death." at these words, which were the preconcerted signal for action, the isosceles convicts fell on and transfixed the wretched chromatistes; the regular classes, opening their ranks, made way for a band of women who, under direction of the circles, moved back foremost, inivisibly and unerringly upon the unconscious soldiers; the artisans, imitating the example of their betters, also opened their ranks. meantime bands of convicts occupied every entrance with an impenetrable phalanx. the battle, or rather carnage, was of short duration. under the skillful generalship of the circles almost every woman's charge was fatal and very many extracted their sting uninjured, ready for a second slaughter. but no second blow was needed; the rabble of the isosceles did the rest of the business for themselves. surprised, leader-less, attacked in front by invisible foes, and finding egress cut off by the convicts behind them, they at once -after their manner -lost all presence of mind, and raised the cry of "treachery." this sealed their fate. every isosceles now saw and felt a foe in every other. in half an hour not one of that vast multitude was living; and the fragments of seven score thousand of the criminal class slain by one another's angles attested the triumph of order. the circles delayed not to push their victory to the uttermost. the working men they spared but decimated. the militia of the equilaterals was at once called out, and every triangle suspected of irregularity on reasonable grounds, was destroyed by court martial, without the formality of exact measurement by the social board. the homes of the military and artisan classes were inspected in a course of visitation extending through upwards of a year; and during that period every town, village, and hamlet was systematically purged of that excess of the lower orders which had been brought about by the neglect to pay the tribute of criminals to the schools and university, and by the violation of other natural laws of the constitution of flatland. thus the balance of classes was again restored. needless to say that henceforth the use of colour was abolished, and its possession prohibited. even the utterance of any word denoting colour, except by the circles or by qualified scientific teachers, was punished by a severe penalty. only at our university in some of the very highest and most esoteric classes -which i myself have never been privileged to attend -it is understood that the sparing use of colour is still sanctioned for the purpose of illustrating some of the deeper problems of mathematics. but of this i can only speak from hearsay. elsewhere in flatland, colour is no non-existent. the art of making it is known to only one living person, the chief circle for the time being; and by him it is handed down on his death-bed to none but his successor. one manufactory alone produces it; and, lest the secret should be betrayed, the workmen are annually consumed, and fresh ones introduced. so great is the terror with which even now our aristocracy looks back to the far-distant days of the agitation for the universal colour bill. * * * section 11. -concerning our priests it is high time that i should pass from these brief and discursive notes about things in flatland to the central event of this book, my initiation into the mysteries of space. _that_ is my subject; all that has gone before is merely preface. for this reason i must omit many matters of which the explanation would not, i flatter myself, be without interest for my readers: as for example, our method of propelling and stopping ourselves, although destitute of feet; the means by which we give fixity to structuers of wood, stone, or brick, although of course we have no hands, nor can we lay foundations as you can, nor avail ourselves of the lateral pressure of the earth; the manner in which the rain originates in the intervals between our various zones, so that the northern regions do not intercept the moisture falling on the southern; the nature of our hills and mines, our trees and vegetables, our seasons and harvests; our alphabet and method of writing, adapted to our linear tablets; these and a hundred other details of our physical existence i must pass over, nor do i mention them now except to indicate to my readers that their omission proceeds not from forgetfulness on the part of the author, but from his regard for the time of the reader. yet before i proceed to my legitimate subject some few final remarks will no doubt be expected by my readers upon these pillars and mainstays of the constitution of flatland, the controllers of our conduct and shapers of our destiny, the objects of universal homage and almost of adoration: need i say that i mean our circles or priests? when i call them priests, let me not be understood as meaning no more than the term denotes with you. with us, our priests are administrators of all business, art, and science; directors of trade, commerce, generalship, architecture, engineering, education, statesmanship, legislature, morality, theology; doing nothing themselves, they are the causes of everything worth doing, that is done by others. although popularly everyone called a circle is deemed a circle, yet among the better educated classes it is known that no circle is really a circle, but only a polygon with a very large number of very small sides. as the number of the sides increases, a polygon approximates to a circle; and, when the number is very great indeed, say for example three or four hundred, it is extremely difficult for the most delicate touch to feel any polygonal angles. let me say rather it _would_ be difficult: for, as i hav shown above, recognition by feeling is unknown among the highest society, and to _feel_ a circle would be considered a most audacious insult. this habit of abstention from feeling in the best society enables a circle the more easily to sustain the veil of mystery in which, from his earliest years, he is wont to enwrap the exact nature of his perimeter or circumference. three feet being the average perimeter it follows that, in a polygon of three hundred sides each side will be no more than the hundredth part of a foot in length, or little more than the tenth part of an inch; and in a polygon of six or seven hundred sides the sides are little larger than the diameter of a spaceland pin-head. it is always assumed, by courtesy, that the chief circle for the time being has ten thousand sides. the ascent of the posterity of the circles in the social scale is not restricted, as it is among the lower regular classes, by the law of nature which limits the increase of sides to one in each generation. if it were so, the number of sides in the circle would be a mere question of pedigree and arithmetic, and the four hundrd and ninety-seventh descendant of an equilateral triangle would necessarily be a polygon with five hundred sides. but this is not the case. nature's law prescribes two antagonstic decrees affecting circular propogation; first, that as the race climbs higher in the scale of development, so development shall proceed at an accelerated pace; second, that in the same proportion, the race shall become less fertile. consequently in the home of a polygon of four or five hundred sides it is rare to find a son; more than one is never seen. on the other hand the son of a five-hundred-sided polygon has been known to possess five hundred and fifty, or even six hundred sides. art also steps in to help the process of higher evolution. our physicians have discovered that the small and tender sides of an infant polygon of the higher class can be fractured, and his whole frame re-set, with such exactness that a polygon of two or three hundred sides sometimes -by no means always, for the process is attended with serious risk -but sometimes overleaps two or three hundred generations, and as it were double at a stroke, the number of his progenitors and the nobility of his descent. many a promising child is sacrificed in this way. scarcely one out of ten survives. yet so strong is the parental ambition among those polygons who are, as it were, on the fringe of the circular class, that it is very rare to find the nobleman of that position in society, who has neglected to place his first-born in the circular neo-therapeutic gymnasium before he has attained the age of a month. one year determins success or failure. at the end of that time the child has, in all probability, added one more to the tombstones that crowd the neo-therapeutic cemetery; but on rare occasional a glad procession bares back the little one to his exultant parents, no longer a polygon, but a circle, at least by courtesy: and a single instance of so blessed a result induces multitudes of polygonal parents to submit to simialr domestic sacrifice, which have a dissimilar issue. * * * section 12. -of the doctrine of our priests as to the doctrine of the circles it may briefly be summed up in a single maxim, "attend to your configuration." whether political, ecclesiastical, or moral, all their teaching has for its object the improvement of individual and collective configuration -with special reference of course to the configuration of the circles, to which all other objects are subordinated. it is the merit of the circles that they have effectually suppressed those ancient heresies which led men to waste energy and sympathy in the vain belief that conduct depends upon will, effort, training, encouragement, praise, or anything else but configuration. it was pantocyclus -the illustrious circle mentioned above, as the queller of the colour revolt -who first convinced mankind that configuration makes the man; that if, for example, you are born an isosceles with two uneven sides, you will assuredly go wrong unless you have them made even -for which purpose you must go to the isosceles hospital; similiarly, if you are a triangle, or square, or even a polygon, born with any irregularity, you must be taken to one of the regular hospitals to have your disease cured; otherwise you will end your days in the state prison or by the angle of the state executioner. all faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if not congenital) by some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take exercise, or by taking too much of it; or even by a sudden change of temperature, resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible part of the frame. therefore, concluded that illustrious philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit subject, in any sober estimation, for eithe praise or blame. for why should you praise, for example, the integrity of a square who faithfully defends the interests of his client, when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precision of his right angles? or again, why blame a lying, thievish isosceles, when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality of his sides? theoretically, this doctrine is unquestionable; but it has practical drawbacks. in dealing with an isosceles, if a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot help being a nuisance to his neighbours, you, the magistrate, cannot help sentencing him to be consumed -and tehre's an end of the matter. but in little domestic difficulties, when the penalty of consumption, or death, is out of the question, this theory of configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly; and i must confess that occasionally when one of my own hexagonal grandsons pleads as an excuse for his disobedience that a sudden change of temperature has been too much for his perimeter, and that i ought to lay the blame not on him but on his configuration, which can only be strengthened by abundance of the choicest sweetmeats, i neither see my way logically to reject, nor practically to accept, his conclusions. for my own part, i find it best to assume that a good sound scolding or castigation has some latent and strengthening influence on my grandson's configuration; though i own that i have no grounds for thinking so. at all events i am not alone in my way of extricating myself from this dilemma; for i find that many of the highest circles, sitting as judges in law courts, use praise and blame towards regular and irregular figures; and in their homes i know by experience that, when scolding their children, they speak about "right" and "wrong" as vehemently and passionately as if they believe that these names represented real existence, and that a human figure is really capable of choosing between them. constantly carrying out their policy of making configuration the leading idea in every mind, the circles reverse the nature of that commandment which in spaceland regulates the relations between parents and children. with you, children are taught to honour their parents; with us -next to the circles, who are the chief object of universal homage -a man is taught to honour his grandson, if he has one; or, if not, his son. by "honour," however, is by no means mean "indulgence," but a reverent regard for their highest interests: and the circles teach that the duty of fathers is to subordinate their own interests to those of posterity, thereby advancing the welfare of the whole state as well as that of their own immediate descendants. the weak point in the system of the circles -if a humble square may venture to speak of anything circular as containing any element of weakness -appears to me to be found in their relations with women. as it is of the utmost importance for society that irregular births should be discouraged, it follows that no woman who has any irregularities in her ancestry is a fit partner for one who desires that his posterity should rise by regular degrees in the social scale. now the irregularity of a male is a matter of measurement; but as all women are straight, and therefore visibly regular so to speak, one has to device some other means of ascertaining what i may call their invisible irregularity, that is to say their potential irregularities as regards possible offspring. this is effected by carefully-kept pedigrees, which arepreserved and supervised by the state; and without a certified pedigree no woman is allowed to marry. now it might have been supposed the a circle -proud of his ancestry and regardful for a posterity which might possibly issue hereafter in a chief circle -would be more careful than any other to choose a wife who had no blot on her escutcheon. but it is not so. the care in choosing a regular wife appears to diminish as one rises in the social scale. nothing would induce an aspiring isosceles, who has hopes of generating an equilateral son, to take a wife who reckoned a single irregularity among her ancestors; a square or pentagon, who is confident that his family is steadily on the rise, does not inqure above the five-hundredth generation; a hexagon or dodecagon is even more careless of the wife's pedigree; but a circle has been known deliberately to take a wife who has had an irregular great-grandfather, and all because of some slight superiority of lustre, or because of the charms of a low voice -which, with us, even more than with you, is thought "an excellent thing in a woman." such ill-judged marriages are, as might be expected, barren, if they do not result in positive irregularity or in diminution of sides; but none of these evils have hitherto provied sufficiently deterrent. the loss of a few sides in a highly-developed polygon ios not easily noticed, and is sometimes compensated by a successful operation in the neo-therapeutic gymnasium, as i have described above; and the circles are too much disposed to acquiesce in infecundity as a law of the superior development. yet, if this evil be not arrested, the gradual diminution of the circular class may soon become more rapid, and the time may not be far distant when, the race being no longer able to produce a chief circle, the constitution of flatland must fall. one other word of warning suggest itself to me, though i cannot so easily mention a remedy; and this also refers to our relations with women. about three hundred years ago, it was decreed by the chief circle that, since women are deficient in reason but abundant in emotion, they ought no longer to be treated as rational, nor receive any mental education. the consequence was that they were no longer taught to read, nor even to master arithmetic enough to enable them to count the angles of their husband or children; and hence they sensibly declined during each generation in intellectual power. and this system of female non-education or quietism still prevails. my fear is that, with the best intentions, this policy has been carried so far as to react injuriously on the male sex. for the consequence is that, as things now are, we males have to lead a kind of bi-lingual, and i may almost say bimental, existence. with women, we speak of "love," "duty," "right," "wrong," "pity," "hope," and other irrational and emotional conceptions, which have no existence, and the fiction of which has no object except to control feminine exuberances; but among ourselves, and in our books, we have an entirely different vocabulary and i may also say, idion. "love" them becomes "the anticipation of benefits"; "duty" becomes "necessity" or "fitness"; and other words are correspondingly transmuted. moreover, among women, we use language implying the utmost deference for their sex; and they fully believe that the chief circle himself is not more devoutly adored by us than they are: but behind their backs they are both regarded and spoken of -by all but the very young -as being little better than "mindless organisms." our theology also in the women's chambers is entirely different from our theology elsewhere. now my humble fear is that this double training, in language as well as in thought, imposes somewhat too heavy a burden upon the young, especially when, at the age of three years old, they are taken from the maternal care and taught to unlearn the old language - except for the purpose of repeating it in the presence of the mothers and nurses -and to learn the vocabulary and idiom of science. already methinks i discern a weakness in the grasp of mathematical truth at the present time as compred with the more robust intellect of our ancestors three hundred years ago. i say nothing of the possible danger if a woman should ever surrpetitously learn to read and convey to her sex the result of her perusal of a single popular volumne; nor of the possibility that the indiscretion or disobedience of some infant male might reveal to a mother the secrets of the logical dialect. on the simple ground of the enfeebling of the male intellect, i rest this humble appeal to the highest authorities to reconsides the regulations of female education. * * * part ii other worlds "o brave new worlds, that have such people in them!" section 13. -how i had a vision of lineland it was the last day but one of the 1999th year of our era, and the first day of the long vacation. having amused myself till a late hour with my favourite recreation of gemoetry, i had retired to rest with an unsolved problem in my mind. in the night i had a dream. i saw before me a vast multitude of small straight lines (which i naturally assumed to be women) interspersed with other beings still smaller and of the nature of lustrous points -all moving to and fro in one and the same straight line, and, as nearly as i could judge, with the same velocity. a noise of confused, multitudinous chirping or twittering issued from them at intervals as long as they were moving; but sometimes they ceased from motion, and then all was silence. approaching one of the largest of what i thought to be women, i accosted her, but received no answer. a second and third appeal on my part were equally ineffectual. losing patience at what appeared to me intolerable rudeness, i brought my mouth to a position full in front of her mouth so as to intercept her motion, and loudly repeated my question, "woman, what signifies this concourse, and this strange and confused chirping, and this monotonous motion to and fro in one and the same straight line?" "i am no woman," replied the small line: "i am the monarch of the world. but thou, whence intrudest thou into my realm of lineland?" receiving this abrupt reply, i begged pardon if i had in any way startled or molested his royal highness; and describing myself as a stranger i besought the king to give me some account of his dominions. but i had the greatest possible difficulty in obtaining any information on points that really interested me; for the monarch could not refrain from constantly assuming that whatever was familiar to him must also be known to me and that i was simulating ignorance in jest. however, by preserving questions i elicited the following facts: it seemed that this poor ignorant monarch -as he called himself -was persuaded that the straight line which he called his kingdom, and in which he passed his existence, constituted the whole of the world, and indeed the whole of space. not being able either to move or to see, save in his straight line, he had no conception of anything out of it. though he had heard my voice when i first addressed him, the sounds had come to him in a manner so contrary to his experience that he had made no answer, "seeing no man," as he expressed it, "and hearing a voice as it were from my own intestines." until the moment when i placed my mouth in his world, he had neither seen me, nor heard anything except confused sounds beating against, what i called his side, but what he called his _inside_ or _stomach_; nor had he even now the least conception of the region from which i had come. outside his world, or line, all was a blank to him; nay, not even a blank, for a blank implies space; say, rather, all was non-existent. his subjects -of whom the small lines were men and the points women -were all alike confined in motion and eyesight to that single straight line, which was their world. it need scarcely be added that the whole of their horizon was limited to a point; nor could any one ever see anything but a point. man, woman, child, thing -each as a point to the eye of a linelander. only by the sound of the voice could sex or age be distinguished. moreover, as each individual occupied the whole of the narrow path, so to speak, which constituted his universe, and no one could m ove to the right or left to make way for passers by, it followed that no linlander could ever pass another. once neighbours, always neighbours. neighbourhood with them was like marriage with us. neighbours remained neighbours till death did them part. such a life, with all vision limited to a point, and all motion to a straight line, seemed to me inexpressibly dreary; and i was surprised to note that vivacity and cheerfulness of the king. wondering whether it was possible, amid circumstances so unfavourable to domestic relations, to enjoy the pleasures of conjugal union, i hestitated for some time to question his royal highness on so delicate a subject; but at last i plunged into it by abruptly inquiring as to the health of his family. "my wives and children," he replied, "are well and happy." staggered at this answer -for in the immediate proximity of the manarch (as i had noted in my dream befor i entered lineland) there were none but men -i ventured to reply, "pardon me, but i cannot imagine how your royal highness can at any time either se or approach their majesties, when there at least half a dozen intervening individuals, whom you can neither see through, nor pass by? is it possible that in lineland proximity is not necessary for marriage and for the generation of children?" "how can you ask so absurd a question?" replied the monarch. "if it were indeed as you suggest, the universe would soon be depopulated. no, no; neighbourhood is needless for the union of hearts; and the birth of children is too important a matter to have been allowed to depend upon such an accident as proximity. you cannot be ignorant of this. yet since you are pleased to affect ignorance, i will instruct you as if you were the veriest baby in lineland. know, then, that marriages are consummated by means of the faculty of sound and the sense of hearing. "you are of course aware that every man has two mouths or voices as well as two eyes -a bass at one and a tenor at the other of his extremities. i should not mention this, but that i have been unable to distinguish your tenor in the course of our conversation." i replied that i had but one voice, and that i had not been aware that his royal highness had two. "that confirms by impression," said the king, "that you are not a man, but a feminine monstrosity with a bass voice, and an utterly uneducated ear. but to continue. "nature having herself ordained that every man should wed two wives --" "why two?" asked i. "you carry your affected simplicity too far," he cried. "how can there be a completely harmonious union without the combination of the four in one, viz. the bass and tenor of the man and the soprano and contralto of the two women?" "but supposing," said i, "that a man should prefer one wife or three?" "it is impossible," he said; "it is as inconceivable as that two and one should make five, or that the human eye should see a straight line." i would have interrupted him; but he proceeded as follows: "once in the middle of each week a law of nature compels uus to move to and fro with a rhythmic motion of more than usual violence, which continues for the time you would take to count a hundred and one. in the midst of this choral dance, at the fifty-first pulsation, the inhabitants of the universe pause in full career, and each individual sends forth his richest, fullest, sweetest strain. it is in this decisive moment that all our marriages are made. so exquisite is the adaptation of bass and treble, of tenor to contralto, that oftentimes the loved ones, though twenty thousand leagues away, recognize at once the responsive note of their destined lover; and, penetrating the paltry obstacles of distance, love unites the three. the marriage in that instance consummated results in a threefold male and female offspring which takes its place in lineland." "what! always threefold?" said i. "must one wife then always have twins?" "bass-voice monstrosity! yes," replied the king. "how else could the balance of the sexes be maintained, if two girls were not born for every boy? would you ignore the very alphabet of nature?" he ceased, speechless for fury; and some time elapsed before i could induce him to resume his narrative. "you will not, of course, suppose that every bachelor among us finds his mates at the first wooing in this universal marriage chorus. on the congtrary, the process is by most of us many times repeated. few are the hearts whose happy lot is at once to recognize in each other's voice the partner intended for them by providence, and to fly into a reciprocal and perfectly harmonious embrace. with most of us the courtship is of long duration. the wooer's voices may perhaps accord with one of the future wives, but not with both; or not, at first, with either; or the soprano and contralto may not quite harmonize. in such cases nature has provided that every weekly chorus shall bring the three lovers into closer harmony. each trial of voice, each fresh discovery of discord, almost imperceptibly induces the less perfect to modify his or her vocal utterance so as to approximate to the more perfect. and after many trials and many approximations, the result is at last achieved. there comes a day at last when, while the wonted marriage chorus goes forth from universal lineland, the three far-off lovers suddenly find themselves in exact harmony, and, befor they are aware, the wedded triplet is rapt vocally into a duplicate embrace; and nature rejoices over one more marriage and over three more births." * * * section 14. -how i vainly tried to explain the nature of flatland thinking that it was time to bring down the monarch from his raptures to the level of common sense, i determined to endeavour to open up to him some glimpses of the truth, that is to say of the nature of things in flatland. so i began thus: "how does your royal highness distinguish the shapes and positions of his subjects? i for my part noticed by the sense of sight, before i entered your kingdom, that some of your people are lines and others points; and that some of the lines are larger --" "you speak of an impossibility," interrupted the king; "you must have seen a vision; for to detect the difference between a line and a point by the sense of sight is, as every one knows, in the nature of things, impossible; but it can be detected by the snese of hearing, and by the same means my shape can be exactly ascertained. behold me -i am a line, the longest in lineland, over six inches of space --" "of length," i ventured to suggest. "fool," said he, "space is length. interrupt me again, and i have done." i apologized; but he continued scornfully, "since you are impervious to argument, you shall hear with your ears how by means of my two voices i reveal my shape to my wives, who are at this moment six thousand miles seventy yards two feet eight inches away, the one to the north, the other to the south. listen, i call to them." he chirruped, and then complacently continued: "my wives at this moment receiving the sound of one of my voice, closely followed by the other, and perceiving that the latter reaches them after an interval in which sound can traverse 6.457 inches, infer that one of my mouths is 6.457 inches further from them than the other, and accordingly know my shape to be 6.457 inches. but you will of course understand that my wives do not make this calculation every time they hear my two voices. they made it, once for all, before we were married. but they _could_ make it at any time. and in the same way i can estimate the shape of any of my male subjects by the sense of sound." "but how," said i, "if a man feigns a woman's voice with one of his two voices, or so disguises his southern voice that it cannot be recognized as the echo of the northern? may not such deceptions cause great inconvenience? and have you no means of checking frauds of this kind by commanding your neighbouring subjects to feel one another?" this of course was a very stupid question, for feeling could not have answered the purpose; but i asked with the view of irritating the monarch, and i succeeded perfectly. "what!" cried he in horror, "explain your meaning." "feel, touch, come into contact," i replied.. "if you mean by _feeling,_" said the king, "approaching so close as to leave no space between two individuals, know, stranger, that this offence is punishable in my dominions by death. and the reason is obvious. the frail form of a woman, being liable to be shattered by such an approximation, must be preserved by the state; but since women cannot be distinguished by the sense of sight from men, the law ordains universally that neither man nor woman shall be approached so closely as to destroy the interval between the approximator and the approximated. "and indeed what possible purpose would be served by this illegal and unnatural excess of approximation which you call _touching,_ when all the ends of so brutal and course a process are attained at once more easily and more exactly by the sense of hearing? as to your suggested danger of deception, it is non-existent: for the voice, being the essence of one's being, cannot be thus changed at will. but come, suppose that i had the power of passing through solid things, so that i could penetrate my subjects, one after another, even to the number of a billion, verifying the size and distance of each by the sense of _feeling:_ how much time and energy would be wasted in this clumsy and inaccurate method! whereas now, in one moment of audition, i take as it were the census and statistics, local, corporeal, mental and spiritual, of every living being in lineland. hark, only hark!" so saying he paused and listened, as if in an ecstasy, to a sound which seemed to me no better than a tiny chirping from an innumerable multitude of lilliputian grasshoppers. "truly," replied i, "your sense of hearing serves you in good stead, and fills up many of your deficiencies. but permit me to point out that your life in lineland must be deplorably dull. to see nothing but a point! not even to be able to contemplate a straight line! nay, not even to know what a straight line is! to see, yet to be cut off from those linear prospects which are vouchsafed to us in flatland! better surely to have no sense of sight at all than to see so little! i grant you i have not your discriminative faculty of hearing; for the concert of all lineland which gives you such intense pleasure, is to me no better than a multitudinous twittering or chirping. but at least i can discern, by sight, a line from a point. and let me prove it. just before i came into your kingdom, i saw you dancing from left to right, and then from right to left, with seven men and a woman in your immediate proximity on the left, and eight men and two women on your right. is not this correct?" "it is correct," said the king, "so far as the numbers and sexes are cocnerned, though i know now what you mean by 'right' and 'left.' but i deny that you saw these things. for how could you see the line, that is to say the inside, of any man? but you must have heard these things, and then dreamed that you saw them. and let me ask what you mean by those words 'left' and 'right.' i suppose it is your way of saying northward and southward." "not so," replied i; "besides your motion of northward and southward, there is another motion which i call from right to left." king. exhibit to me, if you please, this motion from left to right. i. nay, that i cannot do, unless you could setp out of your line altogether. king. out of my line? do you mean out of the world? out of space? i. well, yes. out of _your_ world. out of _your_ space. for your space is not the true space. true space is a plane; but your space is only a line. king. if you cannot indicate this motion from left to right by yourself moving in it, then i beg you to describe it to me in words. i. if you cannot tell your right side from your left, i fear that no words of mine can make my meaning clearer to you. but surely you cannot be ignorant of so simple a distinction. king. i do not in the least understand you. i. alas! how shall i make it clear? when you move straight on, does it not sometimes occur to you that you _could_ move in some other way, turning your eye round so as to look in the direction towards which your side is now fronting? in other words, instead of always moving in the direction of one of your extremities, do you never feel a desire to move in the direction, so to speak, of your side? king. never. and what do you mean? how can a man's inside "front" in any direction? or how can a man move in the direction of his inside? i. well then, since words cannot explain the matter, i will try deeds, and will move gradually out of lineland in the direction which i desire to indicate to you. at the word i began to move my body out of lineland. as long as any part of me remained in his dominion and in his view, the king kept exclaiming, "i see you, i see you still; you are not moving." but when i had at last moved myself out of his line, he cried in his shrillest voice, "she is vanished; she is dead." "i am not dead," replied i; "i am simply out of lineland, that is to say, out of the straight line which you call space, and in the true space, where i can see things as they are. and at this moment i can see your line, or side -or inside as you are pleased to call it; and i can see also the men and women on the north and south of you, whom i will now enumerate, describing their order, their size, and the interval between each." when i had done this at great length, i cried triumphantly, "does that at last convince you?" and, with that, i once more entered lineland, taking up the same position as before. but the monarch replied, "if you were a man of sense -though, as you appear to have only one voice i have little doubt you are not a man but a woman -but, if you had a particle of sense, you would listen to reason. you ask me to believe that there is another line besides that which my senses indicate, and another motion besides that of which i am daily conscious. i, in return, ask you to describe in words or indicate by motion that other line of which you speak. instead of moving, you merely exercise some magic art of vanishing and returning to sight; and instead of any lucid description of your new world, you simply tell me the numbers and sizes of some forty of my retinue, facts known to any child in my capital. can anything be more irrational or audacious? acknowledge your folly or depart from my dominions." furious at his perversity, and especially indignant that he professed to be ignorant of my sex, i retorted in no measured terms, "besotted being! you think yourself the perfection of existence, while you are in reality the most imperfect and imbecile. you profess to see, whereas you see nothing but a point! you plume yourself on inferring the existence of a straight line; but i _can see_ straight lines, and infer the existence of angles, triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, and even circles. why waste more words? suffice it that i am the completion of your incomplete self. you are a line, but i am a line of lines called in my country a square: and even i, infinitely superior though i am to you, am of little account among the great nobles of flatland, whence i have come to visit you, in the hope of enightening your ignorance." hearing these words the king advanced towards me with a menacing cry as if to pierce me through the diagonal; and in that same movement there arose from myriads of his subjects a multitudinous war-cry, increasing in vehemence till at last methought it rivalled the roar of an army of a hundred thousand isosceles, and the artillery of a thousand pentagons. spell-bound and motionless, i could neither speak nor move to avert the impending destruction; and still the noise grew louder, and the king came closer, when i awoke to find the breakfastbell recalling me to the realities of flatland. * * * section 15. -concerning a stranger from spaceland from dreams i proceed to facts. it was the last day of our 1999th year of our era. the patterning of the rain had long ago announced nightfall; and i was sitting (footnote 3) in the company of my wife, musing on the events of the past and the prospects of the coming year, the coming century, the comming millennium. my four sons and two orphan grandchildren had retired to their several apartments; and my wife alone remained with me to see the old millennium out and the new one in. i was rapt in thought, pondering in my mind some words that had casually issued from the mouth of my youngest grandson, a most promising young hexagon of unusual brilliancy and perfect angularity. his uncles and i had been giving him his usual practical lesson in sight recognition, turning ourselves upon our centres, now rapidly, now more slowly, and questioning him as to our positions; and his answers had been so satisfactory that i had been induced to reward him by giving him a few hints on arithmetic, as applied to geometry. taking nine squares, each an inch every way, i had put them together so as to make one large square, with a side of three inches, and i had hence proved to my little grandson that -though it was impossible for us to _see_ the inside of the square -yet we might ascertain the number of square inches in a square by simply squaring the number of inches in the side: "and thus," said i, "we know that three-to-the-second, or nine, represents the number of square inches in a square whose side is three inches long." the little hexagon meditated on this a while and then said to me; "but you have been teaching me to raise numbers to the third power: i suppose three-to-the-third must mean something in geometry; what does it mean?" "nothing at all," replied i, "not at least in geometry; for geometry has only two dimensions." and then i began to shew the boy how a point by moving through a length of three inches makes a line of three inches, which may be represented by three; and how a line of three inches, moving parallel to itself through a length of three inches, makes a square of three inches every way, which may be represented by three-to-the-second. upon this, my grandson, again returning to his former suggestion, took me up rather suddenly and exclaimed, "well, then, if a point by moving three inches, makes a line of three inches represented by three; and if a straight line of three inches, moving parallel to itself, makes a square of three inches every way, represented by three-to-the-second; it must be that a square of three inches every way, moving somehow parallel to itself (but i don't see how) must make something else (but i don't see what) of three inches every way -and this must be represented by three-to-the-third." "go to bed," said i, a little ruffled by this interruption: "if you would talk less nonsense, you would remember more sense." so my grandson had disappeared in disgrace; and there i sat by my wife's side, endeavouring to form a retrospect of the year 1999 and of the possibilities of the year 2000; but not quite able to shake of the thoughts suggested by the prattle of my bright little hexagon. only a few sands now remained in the half-hour glass. rousing myself from my reverie i turned the glass northward for the last time in the old millennium; and in the act, i exclaimed aloud, "the boy is a fool." straightway i became conscious of a presence in the room, and a chilling breath thrilled through my very being. "he is no such thing," cried my wife, "and you are breaking the commandments in thus dishonouring your own grandson." but i took no notice of her. looking around in every direction i could see nothing; yet still i _felt_ a presence, and shivered as the cold whisper came again. i started up. "what is the matter?" said my wife, "there is no draught; what are you looking for? there is nothing." there was nothing; and i resumed my seat, again exclaiming, "the boy is a fool, i say; threeto-the-third can have no meaning in geometry." at once there came a distinctly audible reply, "the boy is not a fool; and three-to-thethird has an obvious geometrical meaning." my wife as well as myself heard the words, although she did not understand their meaning, and both of us sprang forward in the direction of the sound. what was our horror when we saw before us a figure! at the first glance it appeared to be a woman, seen sideways; but a moment's observation shewed me that the extremities passed into dimness too rapidly to represent one of the female sex; and i should have thought it a circle, only that it seemed to change its size in a manner impossible for a circle or for any regular figure of which i had had experience. but my wife had not my experience, nor the coolness necessary to note these characteristics. with the usual hastiness and unreasoning jealousy of her sex, she flew at once to the conclusion that a woman had entered the house through some small apeture. "how comes this person here?" she exclaimed, "you promised me, my dear, that there should be no ventilators in our new house." "nor are they any," said i; "but what makes you think that the stranger is a woman? i see by my power of sight recoginition --" "oh, i have no patience with your sight recognition," replied she, "'feeling is believing' and 'a straight line to the touch is worth a circle to the sight'" -two proverbs, very common with the frailer sex in flatland. "well," said i, for i was afraid of irritating her, "if it must be so, demand an introduction." assuming her most gracious manner, my wife advanced towards the stranger, "permit me, madam to feel and be felt by --" then, suddenly recoiling, "oh! it is not a woman, and there are no angles either, not a trace of one. can it be that i have so misbehaved to a perfect circle?" "i am indeed, in a certain sense a circle," replied the voice, "and a more perfect circle than any in flatland; but to speak more accurately, i am many circles in one." then he added more mildly, "i have a message, dear madam, to your husband, which i must not deliver in your presence; and, if you would suffer us to retire for a few minutes --" but my wife would not listen to the propsal that our august visitor should so incommode himself, and assuring the circle that the hour of her own retirement had long passed, with many reiterated apologies for her recent indiscretion, she at last retreated to her apartment. i glanced at the half-hour glass. the last sands had fallen. the third millennium had begun. ---------footnote 3. when i say "sitting," of course i do not mean any change of attitude such as you in spaceland signify by that word; for as we have no feet, we can no more "sit" nor "stand" (in your sense of the word) than one of your soles or flounders. nevertheless, we perfectly well recognize the different mental states of volition implied by "lying," "sitting," and "standing," which are to some extent indicated to a beholder by a slight increase of lustre corresponding to the increase of volition. but on this, and a thousand other kindred subjects, time forbids me to dwell. * * * section 16. -how the stranger vainly endeavoured to reveal to me in words the mysteries of spaceland as soon as the sound of the peace-cry of my departing wife had died away, i began to approach the stranger with the intention of taking a nearer view and of bidding him be seated: but his appearance struck me dumb and motionless with astonishment. without the slightest symptoms of angularity hee nevertheless varied every instant with graduations of size and brightness scarcely possible for any figure within the scope of my experience. the thought flashed across me that i might have before me a burglar or cut-throat, some monstrous irregular isosceles, who, by feigning the voice of a circle, had obtained admission somehow into the house, and was now preparing to stab me with his acute angle. in a sitting-room, the absence of fog (and the season happened to be remarkably dry), made it difficult for me to trust to sight recognition, especially at the short distance at which i was standing. desperate with fear, i rushed forward with an unceremonious, "you must permit me, sir --" and felt him. my wife was right. there was not the trace of an angle, not the slightest roughness or inequality: never in my life had i met with a more perfect circle. he remained motionless while i walked around him, beginning from his eye and returning to it again. circular he was throughout, a perfectly satisfactory circle; there could not be a doube of it. then followed a dialogue, which i will endeavour to set down as near as i can recollect it, omitting only some of my profuse apologies -for i was covered with shame and humiliation that i, a square, should have been guilty of the impertinence of feeling a circle. it was commenced by the stranger with some impatience at the lengthiness of my introductory process. stranger. have you felt me enough by this time? are you not introduced to me yet? i. most illustrious sir, excuse my awkwardness, which arises not from ignorance of the usages of polite society, but from a little surprise and nervousness, consequent on this somewhat unexpected visit. and i beseech you to reveal my indiscretion to no one, and especially not to my wife. but before your lordship enters into further communications, would he deign to satisfy the curiosity of one who would gladly know whence his visitor came? stranger. from space, from space, sir: whence else? i. pardon me, my lord, but is not your lordship already in space, your lordship and his humble servant, even at this moment? stranger. pooh! what do you know of space? define space. i. space, my lord, is height and breadth indefinitely prolonged. stranger. exactly: you see you do not even know what space is. you think it is of two dimensions only; but i have come to announce to you a third -height, breadth, and length. i. your lordship is pleased to be merry. we also speak of length and height, or breadth and thickness, thus denoting two dimensions by four names. stranger. but i mean not only three names, but three dimensions. i. would your lordship indicate or explain to me in what direction is the third dimension, unknown to me? stranger. i came from it. it is up above and down below. i. my lord means seemingly that it is northward and southward. stranger. i mean nothing of the kind. i mean a direction in which you cannot look, because you have no eye in your side. i. pardon me, my lord, a moment's inspection will convince your lordship that i have a perfectly luminary at the juncture of my two sides. stranger: yes: but in order to see into space you ought to have an eye, not on your perimeter, but on your side, that is, on what you would probably call your inside; but we in spaceland should call it your side. i. an eye in my inside! an eye in my stomach! your lordship jests. stranger. i am in no jesting humour. i tell you that i come from space, or, since you will not understand what space means, from the land of three dimensions whence i but lately looked down upon your plane which you call space forsooth. from that position of advantage i discerned all that you speak of as _solid_ (by which you mean "enclosed on four sides"), your houses, your churches, your very chests and safes, yes even your insides and stomachs, all lying open and exposed to my view. i. such assertions are easily made, my lord. stranger. but not easily proved, you mean. but i mean to prove mine. when i descended here, i saw your four sons, the pentagons, each in his apartment, and your two grandsons the hexagons; i saw your youngest hexagon remain a while with you and then retire to his room, leaving you and your wife alone. i saw your isosceles servants, three in number, in the kitchen at supper, and the little page in the scullery. then i came here, and how do you think i came? i. through the roof, i suppose. strange. not so. your roof, as you know very well, has been recently repaired, and has no aperture by which even a woman could penetrate. i tell you i come from space. are you not convinced by what i have told you of your children and household? i. your lordship must be aware that such facts touching the belongings of his humble servant might be easily ascertained by any one of the neighbourhood possessing your lordship's ample means of information. stranger. (_to himself._) what must i do? stay; one more argument suggests itself to me. when you see a straight line -your wife, for example -how many dimensions do you attribute to her? i. your lordship would treat me as if i were one of the vulgar who, being ignorant of mathematics, suppose that a woman is really a straight line, and only of one dimension. no, no, my lord; we squares are better advised, and are as well aware of your lordship that a woman, though popularly called a straight line, is, really and scientifically, a very thin parallelogram, possessing two dimensions, like the rest of us, viz., length and breadth (or thickness). stranger. but the very fact that a line is visible implies that it possesses yet another dimension. i. my lord, i have just acknowledge that a woman is broad as well as long. we see her length, we infer her breadth; which, though very slight, is capable of measurement. stranger. you do not understand me. i mean that when you see a woman, you ought -besides inferring her breadth -to see her length, and to _see_ what we call her _height_; although the last dimension is infinitesimal in your country. if a line were mere length without "height," it would cease to occupy space and would become invisible. surely you must recognize this? i. i must indeed confess that i do not in the least understand your lordship. when we in flatland see a line, we see length and _brightness._ if the brightness disappears, the line is extinguished, and, as you say, ceases to occupy space. but am i to suppose that your lordship gives the brightness the title of a dimension, and that what we call "bright" you call "high"? stranger. no, indeed. by "height" i mean a dimension like your length: only, with you, "height" is not so easily perceptible, being extremely small. i. my lord, your assertion is easily put to the test. you say i have a third dimension, which you call "height." now, dimension implies direction and measurement. do but measure my "height," or merely indivate to me the direction in which my "height" extends, and i will become your convert. otherwise, your lordship's own understand must hold me excused. stranger. (_to himself._) i can do neither. how shall i convince him? surely a plain statement of facts followed by ocular demonstration ought to suffice. -now, sir; listen to me. you are living on a plane. what you style flatland is the vast level surface of what i may call a fluid, or in, the top of which you and your countrymen move about, without rising above or falling below it. i am not a plane figure, but a solid. you call me a circle; but in reality i am not a circle, but an infinite number of circles, of size varying from a point to a circle of thirteen inches in diameter, one placed on the top of the other. when i cut through your plane as i am now doing, i make in your plane a section which you, very rightly, call a circle. for even a sphere -which is my proper name in my own country -if he manifest himself at all to an inhabitant of flatland -must needs manfest himself as a circle. do you not remember -for i, who see all things, discerned last night the phantasmal vision of lineland written upon your brain -do you not remember, i say, how when you entered the realm of lineland, you were compelled to manifest yourself to the king, not as a square, but as a line, because that linear realm had not dimensions enough to represent the whole of you, but only a slice or section of you? in precisely the same way, your country of two dimensions is not spacious enough to represent me, a being of three, but can only exhibit a slice or section of me, which is what you call a circle. the diminished brightness of your eye indicates incredulity. but now prepare to receive proof positive of the truth of my assertions. you cannot indeed see more than one of my sections, or circles, at a time; for you have no power to raise your eye out of the plane of flatland; but you can at least see that, as i rise in space, so my sections become smaller. see now, i will rise; and the effect upon your eye will be that my circle will become smaller and smaller till it dwindles to a point and finally vanishes. there was no "rising" that i could see; but he diminished and finally vanished. i winked once or twice to make sure that i was not dreaming. but it was no dream. for from the depths of nowhere came forth a hollow voice -close to my heart it seemed -"am i quite gone? are you convinced now? well, now i will gradually return to flatland and you shall see my section become larger and larger." every reader in spaceland will easily understand that my mysterious guest was speaking the language of truth and even of simplicity. but to me, proficient though i was in flatland mathematics, it was by no means a simple matter. the rough diagram given above will make it clear to any spaceland child that the sphere, ascending in the three positions indicated there, must needs have manifested himself to me, or to any flatlander, as a circle, at first of full size, then small, and at last very small indeed, approaching to a point. but to me, although i saw the facts before me, the causes were as dark as ever. all that i could comprehend was, that the circle had made himself smaller and vanished, and that he had now reappeared and was rapidly making himself larger. when he regained his original size, he heaved a deep sigh; for he perceived by my silence that i had altogether failed to comprehend him. and indeed i was now inclining to the belief that he must be no circle at all, but some extremely clever juggler; or else that the old wives' tales were true, and that after all there were such people as enchanters and magicians. after a long pause he muttered to himself, "one resource alone remains, if i am not to resort to action. i must try the method of analogy." then follwed a still longer silence, after which he continued our dialogue. sphere. tell me, mr. mathematician; if a point moves northward, and leaves a luminous wake, what name would you give to the wake? i. a straight line. sphere. and a straight line has how many extremities? i. two. sphere. now conceive the northward straight line momving parallel to itself, east and west, so that every point in it leaves behind it the wake of a straight line. what name will you give to the figure thereby formed? we will suppose that it moves through a distance equal to the original straight line. --what name, i say? i. a square. sphere. and how many sides has a square? how many angles? i. four sides and four angles. sphere. now stretch your imagination a little, and conceive a square in flatland, moving parallel to itself upward. i. what? northward? sphere. no, not northward; upward; out of flatland altogether. if it moved northward, the southern points in the square would have to move through the positions previously occupied by the northern points. but that is not my meaning. i mean that every point in you -for you are a square and will serve the purpose of my illustration -every point in you, that is to say in what you call your inside, is to pass upwards through space in such a way that no point shall pass through the position previously occupied by any other point; but each point shall describe a straight line of its own. this is all in accordance with analogy; surely it must be clear to you. restraining my impatience -for i was now under a strong temptation to rush blindly at my visitor and to precipitate him into space, or out of flatland, anywhere, so that i could get rid of him - i replied: - "and what may be the nature of the figure which i am to shape out by this motion which you are pleased to denote by the word 'upward'? i presume it is describable in the language of flatland." sphere. oh, certainly. it is all plain and simple, and in strict accordance with analogy -only, by the way, you must not speak of the result as being a figure, but as a solid. but i will describe it to you. or rather not i, but analogy. we began with a single point, which of course -being itself a poine -has only _one_ terminal point. one point produces a line with _two_ terminal points. one line produces a square with _four_ terminal points. now you can give yourself the answer to your own question: 1, 2, 4, are evidently in geometrical progression. what is the next number? i. eight. sphere. exactly. the one square produces a _something-which-youdo-not-as-yet-know-a-name-for-but-which-we-call-a-cube_ with _eight_ terminal points. now are you convinced? i. and has this creature sides, as well as angles or what you call "terminal points"? sphere. of course; and all according to analogy. but, by the way, not what _you_ call sides, but what _we_ call sides. you would call them _solids._ i. and how many solids or sides will appertain to this being whom i am to generate by the motion of my inside in an "upward" direction, and whom you call a cube? sphere. how can you ask? and you a mathematician! the side of anything is always, if i may so say, one dimension behind the thing. consequently, as there is no dimension behind a point, a point has 0 sides; a line, if i may so say, has 2 sides (for the points of a line may be called by courtesy, its sides); a square has 4 sides; 0, 2, 4; what progression do you call that? i. arithmetical. sphere. and what is the next number? i. six. sphere. exactly. then you see you have answered your own question. the cube which you will generate will be bounded by six sides, that is to say, six of your insides. you see it all now, eh? "monster," i shrieked, "be thou juggler, enchanter, dream, or devil, no more will i endure thy mockeries. either thou or i must perish." and saying these words i precipitated myself upon him. * * * section 17. -how the sphere, having in vain tried words, resorted to deeds it was in vain. i brought my hardest right angle into violent collision with the stranger, pressing on him with a force sufficient to have destroyed anyt ordinary circle: but i could feel him slowly and unarrestably slipping from my contact; not edging to the right nor to the left, but moving somehow out of the world, and vanishing into nothing. soon there was a blank. but still i heard the intruder's voice. sphere. why will you refuse to listen to reason? i had hoped to find in you -as being a man of sense and an accomplished mathematician -a fit apostle for the gospel of the three dimensions, which i am allowed to preach once only in a thousand years: but now i know not how to convince you. stay, i have it. deeds, and not words, shall proclaim the truth. listen, my friend. i have told you i can see from my position in space the inside of all things that you consider closed. for example, i see in yonder cupboard near which you are standing, several of what you call boxes (but like everything else in flatland, they have no tops or bottom) full of money; i see also two tablets of accounts. i am about to descend into that cupboard and to bring you one of those tablets. i saw you lock the cupboard half an hour ago, and i know you have the key in your possession. but i descend from space; the doors, you see, remain unmoved. now i am in the cupboard and am taking the tablet. now i have it. now i ascent with it. i rushed to the closet and dashed the door open. one of the tablets was gone. with a mocking laugh, the stranger appeared in the other corner of the room, and at the same time the tablet appeared upon the floor. i took it up. there could be no doubt -it was the missing tablet. i groaned with horror, doubting whether i was not out of my sense; but the stranger continued: "surely you must now see that my explanation, and no other, suits the phenomena. what you call solid things are really superficial; what you call space is really nothing but a great plane. i am in space, and look down upon the insides of the things of which you only see the outsides. you could leave the plane yourself, if you could but summon up the necessary volition. a slight upward or downward motion would enable you to see all that i can see. "the higher i mount, and the further i go from your plane, the more i can see, though of course i see it on a smaller scale. for example, i am ascending; now i can see your neighbour the hexagon and his family in their several apartments; now i see the inside of the theatre, ten doors off, from which the audience is only just departing; and on the other side a circle in his study, sitting at his books. now i shall come back to you. and, as a crowning proof, what do you say to my giving you a touch, just the least touch, in your stomach? it will not seriously injure you, and the slight pain you may suffer cannot be compared with the mental benefit you will receive." before i could utter a word of remonstrance, i felt a shooting pain in my inside, and a demoniacal laugh seemed to issue from within me. a moment afterwards the sharp agony had ceased, leaving nothing but a dull ache behind, and the stranger began to reappear, saying, as he gradually increased in size, "there, i have not hurt you much, have i? if you are not convinced now, i don't know what will convince you. what say you?" my resolution was taken. it seemed intolerable that i should endure existence subject to the arbitrary visitations of a magician who could thus play tricks with one's very stomach. if only i could in any way manage to pin him against the wall till help came! once more i dashed my hardest angle against him, at the same time alarming the whole household by my cries for aid. i believe, at the moment of my onset, the stranger had sunk below our plane, and really found difficulty in rising. in any case he remained motionless, while i, hearing, as i thought, the sound of some help approaching, pressed against him with redoubled vigor, and continued to shout for assistance. a convulsive shudder ran through the sphere. "this must not be," i thought i heard him say: "either he must listen to reason, or i must have recourse to the last resource of civilization." then, addressing me in a louder tone, he hurriedly exclaimed, "listen: no stranger must witness what you have witnessed. send your wife back at once, before she enters the apartment. the gospel of three dimensions must not be thus frustrated. not thus must the fruits of one thousand years of waiting be thrown away. i hear her coming. back! back! away from me, or you must go with me -wither you know not -into the land of three dimensions!" "fool! madman! irregular!" i exclaimed; "never will i release thee; thou shalt pay the penalty of thine impostures." "ha! is it come to this?" thundered the stranger: "then meet your fate: out of your plane you go. once, twice, thrice! 'tis done!" * * * section 18. -how i came to spaceland, and what i saw there an unspeakable horror seized me. there was a darkness; then a dizzy, sickening sensation of sight that was not like seeing; i saw a line that was no line; space that was not space: i was myself, and not myself. when i could find voice, i shrieked loud in agony, "either this is madness or it is hell." "it is neither, calmly replied the voice of the sphere, "it is knowledge; it is three dimensions: open your eye once again and try to look steadily." i looked, and, behold, a new world! there stood before me, visibly incorporate, all that i had before inferred, conjectured, dreamed, of perfect circular beauty. what seemed the centre of the stranger's form lay open to my view: yet i could see no heart, lungs, nor arteries, only a beautiful harmonious something -for which i had no words; but you, my readers in spaceland, would call it the surface of the sphere. prostrating myself mentally before my guide, i cried, "how it is,, o divine ideal of consummate loveliness and wisdom that i see thy inside, and yet cannot discern thy heart, thy lungs, thy arteries, thy liver?" "what you think you see, you see not," he replied; "it is not giving to you, nor to any other being, to behold my internal parts. i am of a different order of beings from those in flatland. where i a circle, you could discern my intestines, but i am a being, composed as i told you before, of many circles, the many in the one, called in this country a sphere. and, just as the outside of a cube is a square, so the outside of a sphere represents the appearance of a circle." bewildered though i was by my teacher's enigmatic utterance, i no longer chafed against it, but worshipped him in silent adoration. he continued, with more mildness in his voice. "distress not yourself if you cannot at first understand the deeper mysteries of spaceland. by degrees they will dawn upon you. let us begin by casting back a glance at the region whence you came. return with me a while to the plains of flatland and i will shew you that which you have often reasoned and thought about, but never seen with the sense of sight - a visible angle." "impossible!" i cried; but, the sphere leading the way, i followed as if in a dream, till once more his voice arrested me: "look yonder, and behold your own pentagonal house, and all its inmates." i looked below, and saw with my physical eye all that domestic individuality which i had hitherto merely inferred with the understanding. and how poor and shadowy was the inferred conjecture in comparison with the reality which i now behold! my four sons calmly asleep in the north-western rooms, my two orphan grandsons to the south; the servants, the butler, my daughter,, all in their several apartments. only my affection wife, alarmed by my continued absence, had quitter her room and was roving up and down in the hall, anxiously awaiting my return. also the page, aroused by my cries, had left his room, and under pretext of ascertaining whether i had fallen somewhere in a faint, was prying into the cabinet in my study. all this i could now _see,_ not merely infer; and as we came nearer and nearer, i could discern even the contents of my cabinet, and the two chests of gold, and the tablets of which the sphere had made mention. touched by my wife's distress, i would have sprung downward to reassure her, but i found myself incapable of motion. "trouble not yourself about your wife," said my guide: "she will not be long left in anxiety; meantime, let us take a survey of flatland." once more i felt myself rising through space. it was even as the sphere had said. the further we receded from the object we beheld, the larger became the field of vision. my native city, with the interior of every house and every creature therein, lay open to my view in miniature. we mounted higher, and lo, the secrets of the earth, the depths of the mines and inmost caverns of the hills, were bared before me. awestruck at the sight of the mysteries of the earth, thus unveiled before my unworthy eye, i said to my companion, "behold, i am become as a god. for the wise men in our country say that to see all things, or as they express it, _omnividence,_ is the attribute of god alone." there was something of scorn in the voice of my teacher as he made answer: "it is so indeed? then the very pick-pockets and cutthroats of my country are to be worshipped by your wise men as being gods: for there is not one of them that does not see as much as you see now. but trust me, your wise men are wrong." i. then is omnividence the attribute of others besides gods? sphere. i do not know. but, if a pick-pocket or a cut-throat of our country can see everything that is in your country, surely that is no reason why the pick-pocket or cut-throat should be accepted by you as a god. this omnividence, as you call it -it is not a common word in spaceland -does it make you more just, more merciful, less selfish, more loving? not in the least. then how does it make you more divine? i. "more merciful, more loving!" but these are the qualities of women! and we know that a circle is a higher being than a straight line, in so far as knowledge and wisdom are more to be esteemed than mere affection. sphere. it is not for me to classify human faculties according to merit. yet many of the best and wisest in spaceland think more of the affections than of the understand, more of your despised straight lines than of your belauded circles. but enough of this. look yonder. do you know that building? i looked, and afar off i saw an immense polygonal structure, in which i recognized the general assembly hall of the states of flatland, surrounded by dense lines of pentagonal buildings at right angles to each other, which i knew to be streets; and i perceived that i was approaching the great metropolis. "here we descend," said my guide. it was now morning, the first hour of the first day of the two thousandth year of our era. acting, as was their wont, in strict accordance with precedent, the highest circles of the realm were meeting in solemn conclave, as they had met on the first hour of the first day of the year 1000, and also on the first hour of the first day of the year 0. the minutes of the previous meetings were now read by one whom i at once recognized as my brother, a perfectly symmetrical square, and the chief clerk of the high council. it was found recorded on each occasion that: "whereas the states had been troubled by divers illintentioned persons pretending to have received revelations from another world, and professing to produce demonstrations whereby they had instigated to frenzy both themselves and others, it had been for this cause unanimously resolved by the grand council that on the first day of each millenary, special injunctions be sent to the prefects in the several districts of flatland, to make strict search for such misguided persons, and without formality of mathematical exanimation, to destroy all such as were isosceles of anyt degree, to scourge and imprison any regular triangle, to cause any square or pentagon to be sent to the district asylum, and to arrest any one of higher rank, sending him straightway to the capital to be examined and judged by the council." "you hear your fate," said the sphere to me, while the council was passing for the third time the formal resolution. "death or imprisonment awaits the apostle of the gospel of three dimensions." "not so," replied i, "the matter is now so clear to me, the nature of real space so palpable, that methinks i could make a child understand it. permit me but to descend at this moment and enlighten them." "not yet," said my guide, "the time will come for that. meantime i must perform my mission. stay thou there in thy place." saying these words, he leaped with great dexterity into the sea (if i may so call it) of flatland, right in the midst of the ring of counsellors. "i come," said he, "to proclaim that there is a land of three dimensions." i could see many of the younger counsellors start back in manifest horror, as the sphere's circular section widened before them. but on a sign from the presiding circle -who shewed not the slightest alarm or surprise -six isosceles of a low type from six different quarters rushed upon the sphere. "we have him," they cried; "no; yes; we have him still! he's going! he's gone!" "my lords," said the president to the junior circles of the council, "there is not the slightest need for surprise; the secret archives, to which i alone have access, tell me that a similar occurrence happened on the last two millennial commencements. you will, of course, say nothing of these trifles outside the cabinet." raising his voice, he now summoned the guards. "arrest the policemen; gag them. you know your duty." after he had consigned to their fate the wretched policemen -ill-fated and unwilling witnesses of a state-secret which they were not to be permitted to reveal -he again addressed the counsellors. "my lords, the business of the council being concluded, i have only to wish you a happy new year." before departing, he expressed, at some length, to the clerk, my excellent but most unfortunate brother, his sincere regret that, in accordance with recedent and for the sake of secrecy, he must condemn him to perpetual imprisonment, but added his satisfaction that, unless some mention were made by him of that day's incident, his life would be spared. * * * section 19. -how, though the sphere shewed me other mysteries of spaceland, i still desire more; and what came of it when i saw my poor brother led away to imprisonment, i attempted to leap down into the council chamber, desiring to intercede on his behalf, or at least bid him farewell. but i found that i had no motion of my own. i absolutely depended on the volition of my guide, who said in gloomy tones, "heed not thy brother; haply thou shalt have ample time hereafter to condole with him. follow me." once more we ascended into space. "hitherto," said the sphere, "i have shewn you naught save plane figures and their interiors. now i must introduce you to solids, and reveal to you the plan upon which they are constructed. behlod this multitude of moveable square cards. see, i put on on another, not, as you supposed, northward of the other, but _on_ the other. now a second, now a third. see, i am building up a solid by a multitude of squares parallel to one another. now the solid is complete, being as high as it is long and broad, and we call it a cube." "pardon me, my lord," replied i; "but to my eye the appearance is as of an irregular figure whose inside is laid open to view; in other words, methinks i see no solid, but a plane such as we infer in flatland; only of an irregularity which betokens some monstrous criminal, so that the very sight of it is painful to my eyes." "true," said the sphere; "it appears to you a plane, because you are not accustomed to light and shade and perspective; just as in flatland a hexagon would appear a straight line to one who has not the art of sight recognition. but in reality it is a solid, as you shall learn by the sense of feeling." he then introduced me to the cube, and i found that this marvellous being was indeed no plane, but a solid; and that he was endowed with six plane sides and eight terminal points called solid angles; and i remembered the saying of the sphere that just such a creature as this would be formed by the square moving, in space, parallel to himself: and i rejoiced to think that so insignificant a creature as i could in some sense be called the progenitor of so illustrious an offspring. but still i could not fully understand the meaning of what my teacher had told me concerning "light" and "shade" and "perspective"; and i did not hesitate to put my difficulties before him. were i to give the sphere's explanation of these matters, succinct and clear though it was, it would be tedious to an inhabitant of space, who knows these things already. suffice it, that by his lucid statements, and by changing the position of objects and lights, and by allowing me to feel the several objects and even his own sacred person, he atlast made all things clear to me, so that i could now readily distinguish between a circle and a sphere, a plane figure and a solid. this was the climax, the paradise, of my strange eventful history. henceforth i have to relate the story of my miserable fall: -most miserable, yet surely most undeserved! for why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused, only to be disappointed and punished? my volition shrinks from the painful task of recalling my humiliation; yet, like a second prometheus, i will endure this and worse, if by any means i may arouse in the interiors of plane and solid humanity a spirit of rebellion against the conceit which would limit our dimensions to two or three or any number short of infinity. away then with all personal considerations! let me continue to the end, as i began, without further digressions or anticipations, pursuing the plain path of dispassionate history. the exact facts, the exact words, -and they are burnt in upon my brain, -shall be set down without alteration of an iota; and let my readers judge between me and destiny. the sphere would willingly have continued his lessons by indoctrinating me in the conformation of all regular solids, cylinders, cones, pyramids, pentahedrons, hexahedrons, dodecahedrons, and spheres: but i ventured to interrupt him. not that i was wearied of knowledge. on the contrary, i thirsted for yet deeper and fuller draughts than he was offering to me. "pardon me," said i, "o thou whom i must no longer address as the perfection of all beauty; but let me beg thee to vouchsafe thy servant a slight of thine interior." sphere. my what? i. thine interior: thy stomach, thy intestines. sphere. whence this ill-timed impertinent request? and what mean you by saying that i am no longer the perfection of all beauty? i. my lord, your own wisdom has taught me to aspire to one even more great, more beautiful, and more closely approximate to perfection than yourself. as you yourself, superior to all flatland forms, combine many circles in one, so doubtless there is one above you who combines many spheres in one supreme existence, surpassing even the solids of spaceland. and even as we, who are now in space, look down on flatland and see the insides of all things, so of a certainty there is yet above us some higher, purer region, whither thou dost surely purpose to lead me -o thou whom i shall always call, everywhere and in all dimensions, my priest, philosopher, and friend -some yet more spacious space, some more dimensionable dimensionality, from the vantage-ground of which we shall look down together upon the revealed insides of solid things, and where thine own intestines, and those of thy kindred spheres, will lie exposed to the view of the poor wandering exile from flatland, to whom so much has already been vouchsafed. sphere. pooh! stuff! enough of this trifling! the time is short, and much remains to be done before you are fit to proclaim the gospel of three dimensions to your blind benighted countrymen in flatland. i. nay, gracious teacher, deny me not what i know it is in thy power to reform. grant me but one glimpse of thine interior, and i am satisfied for ever, remaining henceforth thy docile pupil, thy unemacipable slave, ready to receive all thy teachings and to feed upon the words that fall from thy lips. sphere. well, then, to content and silence you, let me say at once, i would shew you what you wish if i could; but i cannot. would you have me turn my stomach inside out to oblige you? i. but my lord has shewn me the intestines of all my countrymen in the land of two dimensions by taking me with him into the land of three. what therefore more easy than now to take his servant on a second journey into the blessed region of the fourth dimension, where i shall look down with him once more upon this land of three dimensions, and see the inside of every three-dimensioned house, the secrets of the solid earth, the treasures of the mines of spaceland, and the intestines of every solid living creature, even the noble and adorable spheres. sphere. but where is this land of four dimensions? i. i know not: but doubtless my teacher knows. sphere. not i. there is no such land. the very idea of it is utterly inconceivable. i. not inconceivable, my lord, to me, and therefore still less inconceivable to my master. nay, i despair not that, even here, in this region of three dimensions, your lordship's art may make the fourth dimension visible to me; just as in the land of two dimensions my teacher's skill would fain have opened the eyes of his blind servant to the invisible presence of a third dimension, though i saw it not. let me recall the past. was i not taught below that when i saw a line and inferred a plane, i in reality saw a third unrecognized dimension, not the same as brightness, called "height"? and does it not now follow that, in this region, when i see a plane and infer a solid, i really see a fourth unrecognized dimension, not the same as colour, but existent, though infinitesimal and incapable of measurement? and besides this, there is the argument from analogy of figures. sphere. analogy! nonsense: what analogy? i. your lordship tempts his servant to see whether he remembers the revelations imparted to him. trifle not with me, my lord; i crave, i thirst, for more knowledge. doubtless we cannot _see_ that other higher spaceland now, becauswe we have no eye in our stomachs. but, just as there _was_ the realm of flatland, though that poor puny lineland monarch could neither turn to left nor right to discern it, and just as there _was_ close at hand, and touching my frame, the land of three dimensions, though i, blind senseless wretch, had no power to touch it, no eye in my interior to discern it, so of a surety there is a fourth dimension, which my lord perceivesa with the inner eye of thought. and that it must exist my lord himself has taught me. or can he have forgotten what he himself imparted to his servant? in one dimension, did not a moving point produce a line with _two_ terinal points? in two dimensions, did not a moving line produce a square with _four_ terminal points? in three dimensions, did not a moving square produce -did not this eye of mine behold it -that blessed being, a cube, with _eight_ terminal points? and in four dimensions shall not a moving cube -alas, for analogy, and alas for the progress of truth, if it be not so -shall not, i say, the motion of a divine cube result in a still more divine organization with _sixteen_ terminal points? behold the infallible confirmation of the series, 2, 4, 8, 16: is not this a geometrical progression? is not this -if i might quote my lord's own words -"strictly according to analogy"? again, was i not taught by my lord that as in a line there are _two_ bounding points, and in a square there are _four_ bounding lines, so in a cube there must be _six_ bounding squares? behold once more the confirming series, 2, 4, 6: is not this an arithemtical progression? and consequently does it not of necessity follow that the more divine offspring of the divine cube in the land of four dimensions, must have 8 bounding cubes: and is not this also, as my lord has taught me to believe, "strictly according to analogy"? o, my lord, my lord, behold, i cast myself in faith upon conjecture, not knowing the facts; and i appeal to your lordship to confirm or deny my logical anticipations. if i am wrong, i yield, and will no longer demand a fourth dimension; but, if i am right, my lord will listen to reason. i ask therefore, is it, or is it not, the fact, that ere now your countrymen also have witnessed the descent of beings of a higher order than their own, entering closed rooms, even as your lordship entered mine, without the opening of doors or windows, and appearing and vanishing at will? on the reply to this question i am reaedy to stake everything. deny it, and i am henceforth silent. only vouchsafe an answer. sphere (_after a pause_). it is reported so. but men are divided in opinion as to the facts. and even granting the facts, they explain them in different ways. and in any case, however great may be the number of different explanations, no one has adopted or suggested the theory of a fourth dimension. therefore, pray have done with this trifling, and let us return to business. i. i was certain of it. i was certain that my anticipations would be fulfilled. and now have patience with me and answer me yet one more question, best of teachers! those who have thus appeared - no one knows whence -and have returned -no one knows whither - have they also contracted their sections and vanished somehow into that more spacious space, whither i now entreat you to conduct me? sphere (_moodily_). they have vanished, certainly -if they ever appeared. but most people say that these visions arose from the thought -you will not understand me -from the brain; from the perturbed angularity of the seer. i. say they so? oh, believe them not. or if it indeed be so, that this other space is really thoughtland, then take me to that blessed region where i in thought shall see the insides of all solid things. there, before my ravished eye, a cube moving in some altogether new direction, but strictly according to analogy, so as to make every particle of his interior pass through a new kind of space, with a wake of its own -shall create a still more perfect perfection than himself, with sixteen terminal extra-solid angles, and eight solid cubes for his perimeter. and once there, shall we stay our upward course? in that blessed region of four dimensions, shall we linger at the threshold of the fifth, and not enter therein? ah, no! let us rather resolve that our ambition shall soar with our corporal ascent. then, yielding to our intellectual onset, the gates of the six dimension shall fly open; after that a seventh, and then an eighth - how long i should have continued i know not. in vain did the sphere, in his voice of thunder, reiterate his command of silence, and threaten me with the direst penalties if i persisted. nothing could stem the flood of my ecstatic aspirations. perhaps i was to blame; but indeed i was intoxicated with the recent draughts of truth to which he himself had introduced me. however, the end was not long in coming. my words were cut short by a crash outside, and a simultaneous crash inside me, which impelled me through space with a velocity that precluded speech. down! down! down! i was rapidly descending; and i knew that return to flatland was my doom. one glimpse, one last and never-to-be-forgotten glimpse i had of that dull level wilderness -which was now to become my universe again - spread out before my eye. then a darkness. then a final, allconsummating thunder-peal; and, when i came to myself, i was once more a common creeping square, in my study at home, listening to the peacecry of my approaching wife. * * * section 20. -how the sphere encouraged me in a vision. although i had less than a minute for reflection, i felt, by a kind of instinct, that i must conceal my experiences from my wife. not that i apprehended, at the moment, any danger from her divulging my secret, but i knew that to any woman in flatland the narrative of my adventures must needs be unintelligible. so i endeavoured to reassure her by some story, invented for the occasion, gthat i had accidentally fallen through the trap-door of the cellar, and had there lain stunned. the southward attraction in our country is so slight that even to a woman my tale necessarily appeared extraordinary and well-nigh incredible; but my wife, whose good sense far exceeds that of the average of her sex, and who perceived that i was unusually excited, did not argue with me on the subject, but insisted that i was will and required repose. i was glad of an excuse for retiring to my chamber to think quietly over what had happened. when i was at last by myself, a drowsy sensation fell on me; but before my eyes closed i endeavoured to reproduce the third dimension, and especially the process by which a cube is constructed through the motion of a square. it was not so clear as i could have wished; but i remembered that it must be "upward, and yet not northward," and i determined steadfastly to retain these words as the clue which, if firmly grasped, could not fail to guide me to the solution. so mechanically repeating, like a charm, the words, "upwaqrd, yet not northward," i fell into a sound refreshing sleep. during my slumber i had a dream. i thought i was once more by the side of the sphere, whose lustrous hue betokened that he had exchanged his wrath against me for perfectly placability. we were moving together towards a bright but infinitesimally small ppoint, to which my master directed my attention. as we approached, methought there issued from it a slight humming noise as from one of your spaceland bluebottles, only less resonant by far, so slight indeed that even in the perfect stillness of the vacuum through which we soard, the sound reached not our ears till we checked our flight at a distant from it of something under twenty human diagonals. "look yonder," said my guide, "in flatland thou hast lived; of lineland thou hast received a vision; thou hast soarred with me to the heights of spaceland; now,, in order to complete the range of thy experience, i conduct thee downward to the lowest depth of existence, even to the realm of pointland, the abyss of no dimensions. "behold yon miserable creature. that point is a being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional gulf. he is himself his own world, his own universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not length, nor breadth, nor height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number two; nor has he a thought of plurality; for he is himself his one and all, being really nothing. yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn his lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. now listen." he ceased; and there arose from the little buzzing creature a tiny, low, monotonous, but distinct tinkling, as from one of your spaceland phonographs, from which i caught these words, "infinite beatitude of existence! it is; and there is nothing else beside it." "what," said i, "does the puny creature mean by 'it'?" "he means himself," said the sphere: "have you not noticed before now, that babies and babyish peoplle who cannot distinguish themselves from the world, speak of themselves in the third person? but hush!" "it fills all space," continued the little soliloquizing creature, "and what it fills, it is. what it thinks, that it utters; and what it utters, that it hears; and it itself is thinker, utterer, hearer, thought, word, audition; it is the one, and yet the all in all. ah, the happiness, ah, the happiness of being!" "can you not startle the little thing out of its complacency?" said i. "tell it what it really is, as you told me; reveal to it the narrow limitations of pointland, and lead it up to something higher." "that is no easy task," said my master; "try you." hereon, raising by voice to the uttermost, i addressed the point as follows: "silence, silence, contemptible creature. you call yourself the all in all, but you are the nothing: your so-called universe is a mere speck in a line, and a line is a mere shadow as compared with --" "hush, hush, you have said enough," interrupted the sphere, "now listen, and mark the effect of your harangue on the king of pointland." the lustre of the monarch, who beamed more brightly than ever upon hearing my words, shewed clearly that he retained his complacency; and i had hardly ceased when he took up his strain again. "ah, the joy, ah, the joy of thought1 what can it not achieve by thinking! its own thought coming to itself, suggestive of ts disparagement, thereby to enhance its happiness! sweet rebellion stirred up to result in triumph! ah, the divine creative power of the all in one! ah, the joy, the joy of being!" "you see," said my teacher, "how little your words have done. so far as the monarch understand them at all, he accepts them as his own -for he cannot conceive of any other except himself -and plumes himself upon the variety of 'its thought' as an instance of creative power. let us leave this god of pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or i can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction." after this, as we floated gently back to flatland, i could hear the mild voice of my companion pointing the moral of my vision, and stimulating me to aspire, and to teach others to aspire. he had been angered at first -he confessed -by my ambition to soar to dimensions above the third; but, since then, he had received fresh insight, and he was not too proud to acknowledge his error to a pupil. then he proceeded to initiate me into mysteries yethigher than those i had witnessed, shewing me how to construct extra-solids by the motion of solids, and double extra-solids by the motion of extra-solids, and all "strictly according to analogy," all by methods so simple, so easy, as to be patent even to the female sex. * * * section 21. -how i tried to teach the theory of three dimensions to my grandson, and with what success i awoke rejoicing, and began to reflect on the glorious career before me. i would go forth, methought, at once, and evangelize the whole of flatland. even to women and soldiers should the gospel of three dimensions be proclaimed. i would begin with my wife. just as i had decided on the plan of my operations, i heard the sound of many voices in the street commanding silence. then followed a louder voice. it was a herald's proclamation. listening attentively, i recognized the words of the resolution of the council, enjoining the arrest, imprisonment, or execution of any one who should pervert the minds of people by delusions, and by professing to have received revelations from another world. i reflected. this danger was not to be trifled with. it would be better to avoid it by omitting all mention of my revelation, and by proceeding on the path of demonstration -which after all, seemed so simple and so conclusive that nothing would be lost by discarding the former means. "upward, not northward" -was the clue to the whole proof. it had seemed to me fairly clear before i fell asleep; and when i first awoke, fresh from my dream, it had appeared as patent as arithmetic; but somehow it did not seem to me quite so obvious now. though my wife entered the room opportunely at just that moment, i decided, after we had exchanged a few words of commonplace conversation, not to begin with her. my pentagonal sons were men of character and standing, and physicians of no mean reputation, but not great in mathematics, and, in that respect, unfit for my purpose. but it occurred to me that a young and docile hexagon, with a mathematical turn, would be a most suitable pupil. why therefore not make my first experiment with my little precocious grandson, whose casual remarks on the meaning of three-to-the-third had met with the approval of the sphere? discussing the matter with him, a mere boy, i should be in perfect safety; for he would know nothing of the proclamation of the council; whereas i could not feel sure that my sons -so greatly did their patriotism and reverence for the circles predominate over mere blind affection -might not feel compelled to hand me over to the prefect, if they found me seriously maintaining the seditious heresy of the third dimension. but the first thing to be done was to satisfy in some way the curiosity of my wife, who naturally wished to know something of the reasons for which the circle had desired that mysterious interview, and of the means by which he had entered the house. without entering into the details of the elaborate account i gave her, -an account, i fear, not quite so consistent with truth as my readers in spaceland might desire, -i must be content with saying that i succeeded at last in persuading her to return quitely to her household duties without eliciting from me any reference to the world of three dimensions. this done, i immediately sent for my grandson; for, to confess the truth, i felt that all that i had seen and heard was in some strange way slipping away from me, like the image of a halfgrasped, tantalizing dream, and i longed to essay my skill in making a first disciple. when my grandson entered the room i carefully secured the door. then, sitting down by his side and taking our mathematical tablets, - or, as you would call them, lines -i told him we would resume the lesson of yesterday. i taught him once more how a point by motion in one dimension produces a line, and how a straight line in two dimensions produces a square. after this, forcing a laugh, i said, "and now, you scamp, you wanted to make believe that a square may in the same way by motion 'upward, not northward' produce another figure, a sort of extra square in three dimensions. say that againn, you young rascal." at this moment we heard once more the herald's "o yes! o yes!" outside in the street proclaiming the resolution of the council. young though he was, my grandson -who was unusually intelligent for his age, and bred up in perfect reverence for the authority of the circles -took in the situation with an acuteness for which i was quite unprepared. he remained silent till the last words of the proclamation had died away, and then, bursting into tears, "dear grandpapa," he said, "that was only my fun, and of course i meant nothing at all by it; and we did not know anything then about the new law; and i don't think i said anything about the third dimension; and i am sure i did not say one word about 'upward, not northward,' for that would be such nonsense, you know. how could a thing move upward, and not northward? upward and not northward! even if i were a baby, i could not be so absurd as that. how silly it is! ha! ha! ha!" "not at all silly," said i, losing my temper; "here for example, i take this square," and, at the word, i grasped a moveable square, which was lying at hand -"and i move it, you see, not northward but -yes, i move it upward -that is to say, northward but i move it somewhere -not exactly like this, but somehow --" here i brought my sentence to an inane conclusion, shaking the square about in a purposeless manner, much to the amusement of my grandson, who burst out laughing louder than ever, and declared that i was not teaching him, but joking with him; and so saying he unlocked the door and ran out of the room. thus ended my first attempt to convert a pupil to the gospel of three dimensions. * * * section 22. -how i then tried to diffuse the theory of three dimensions by other means, and of the result my failure with my grandson did not encourage me to communicate my secret to others of my household; yet neither was i led by it to despair of success. only i saw that i must not wholly rely on the catch-phrase, "upward, not northward," but must rather endeavour to seek a demonstration by setting before the public a clear view of the whole subject; and for this purpose it seemed necessary to resort to writing. so i devoted several months in privacy to the composition of a treatise on the mysteries of three dimensions. only, with the view of evading the law, if possible, i spoke not of a physical dimension, but of a thoughtland whence, in theory, a figure could look down upon flatland and see simultaneously the insides of all things, and where it was possible that there might be supposed to exist a figure environed, as it were, with six squares, and containing eight terminal points. but in writing this book i found myself sadly hampered by the impossibility of drawing such diagrams as were necessary for my purpose: for of course, in our country of flatland, there are no tablets but lines, and no diagrams but lines, all in one straight line and only distinguishable by difference of size and brightness; so that, when i had finished my treatise (which i entitled, "through flatland to thoughtland") i could not feel certain that many would understand my meaning. meanwhile my wife was under a cloud. all pleasures palled upon me; all sights tantalized and tempted me to outspoke treason, because i could not compare what i saw in two dimensions with what it really was if seen in three, and could hardly refrain from making my comparisons aloud. i neglected my clients and my own business to give myself to the contemplation of the mysteries which i had once beheld, yet which i could impart to no one, and found daily more difficult to reproduce even before my own mental vision. one day, about eleven months after my return from spaceland, i tried to see a cube with my eye closed, but failed; and though i succeeded afterwards, i was not then quite certain (nor have i been ever aftewards) that i had exactly realized the original. this made me more melancholy than before, and determined me to take some step; yet what, i knew not. i felt that i would have been willing to sacrifice my life for the cause, if thereby i could have produced conviction. but if i could not convince my grandson, how could i convince the highest and most developed circles in the land? and yet at times my spirit was too strong for me, and i gave vent to dangerous utterances. already i was considered heterodox if not treasonable, and i was keenly alive to the danger of my position; nevertheless i could not at times refrain from bursting out into suspicious or half-seditious utterances, even among the highest polygonal or circular society. when, for example, the question arose about the treatment of those lunatics who said that they had received the power of seeing the insides of things, i would quote the saying of an ancient circle, who declared that prophets and inspired people are always considered by the majority to be mad; and i could not help occasionally dropping such expressions as "the eye that discerns the interiors of things," and "the all-seeing land"; once or twice i even let fall the forbidden terms "the third and fourth dimensions." at last, to complete a series of minor indiscretions, at a meeting of our local speculative society held at the palace of the prefect himself, some extremely silly person having read an elaborate paper exhibiting the precise reasons why providence has limited the number of dimensions to two, and why the attribute of omnividence is assigned to the supreme alone -i so far forgot myself as to give an exact account of the whole of my voyage with the sphere into space, and to the assembly hall in our metropolis, and then to space again, and of my return home, and of everything that i had seen and heard in fact or vision. at first, indeed, i pretended that i was describing the imaginary experiences of a ficitious person; but my enthusiasm soon forced me to throw off all disguise, and finally, in a fervent peroration, i exhorted all my hearers to divest themselves of prejudice and to become believers in the third dimesnsion. need i say that i was at onc arrested and taken before the council? next morning, standing in the very place where but a very few months ago the sphere had stood in my company, i was allowed to begin and to continue my narration unquestioned and uninterrupted. but from the first i foresaw my fate; for the president, noting that a guard of the better sort of policemen was in attendance, of angularity little, if at all, under 55 degrees, ordered them to be relieved before i began my defence, by an inferior class of 2 or 3 degrees. i knew only too well what that meant. i was to be executed or imprisoned, and my story was to be kept secret from the world by the simultaneous destruction of the officials who had heard it; and, this beig the case, the presdient desired to substitute the cheaper for the more expensive victims. after i had concluded my defence, the president, perhaps perceiving that some of the junior circles had been moved by evident earnestness, asked me two questions: - 1. whether i could indicate the direction which i meant when i used the words "upward, not northward"? 2. whether i could by any diagrams or descriptions (other than the enumeration of imaginary sides and angles) indicate the figure i was pleased to call a cube? i declared that i could say nothing more, and that i must commit myself to the truth, whose cause would surely prevail in the end. the president replied that he quite concurred in my sentiment, and that i could not do better. i must be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; but if the truth intended that i should emerge from prison and evangelize the world, the truth might be trusted to bring that result to pass. meanwhile i should be subjected to no discomfort that was not necessary to preclude escape, and, unless i forfeited the privilege by misconduct, i should be occasionally permitted to see my brother who had preceded me to my prison. seven years have elapsed and i am still a prisoner, and -if i except the occasional visits of my brother -debarred from all companionship save that of my jailers. my brother is one of the best of squares, just sensible, cheerful, and not without fraternal affection; yet i confess that my weekly interviews, at least in one respect, cause me the bitterest pain. he was present when the sphere manifested himself in the council chamber; he saw the sphere's changing sections; he heard the explanation of the phenomena then give to the circles. since that time, scarcely a week has passed during seven whole years, without his hearing from me a repitition of the part i played in that manifestation, together with ample descriptions of all the phenomena in spaceland, and the arguments for the existence of solid things derivable from analogy. yet -i take shame to be forced to confess it -my brother has not yet grasped the nature of three dimensions, and frankly avows his disbelief in the existence of a sphere. hence i am absolutely destitute of converts, and, for aught that i can see, the millennial revelation has been made to me for nothing. prometheus up in spaceland was bound for bringing down fire for mortals, but i -poor flatland prometheus -lie here in prison for bringing down nothing to my countrymen. yet i existin the hope that these memoirs, in some manner, i know not how, may find their way to the minds of humanity in some dimension, and may stir up a race of rebels who shall refuse to be confined to limited dimensionality. that is the hope of my brighter moments. alas, it is not always so. heavily weights on me at times the burdensome reflection that i cannot honestly say i am confident as to the exact shape of the onceseen, oft-regretted cube; and in my nightly visions the mysterious precept, "upward, not northward," haunts me like a soul-devouring sphinx. it is part of the martyrdom which i endure for the cause of truth that there are seasons of mental weakness, when cubes and spheres flit away into the background of scarce-possible existences; when the land of three dimensions seems almost as visionary as the land of one or none; nay, when even this hard wall that bars me from my freedom, these very tablets on which i am writing, and all the substantial realities of flatland itself, appear no better than the offspring of a diseased imagination, or the baseless fabric of a dream. the end of flatland * * * . hamlet dramatis personae claudius king of denmark. (king claudius:) hamlet son to the late, and nephew to the present king. polonius lord chamberlain. (lord polonius:) horatio friend to hamlet. laertes son to polonius. lucianus nephew to the king. voltimand | | cornelius | | rosencrantz | courtiers. | guildenstern | | osric | a gentleman, (gentlemen:) a priest. (first priest:) marcellus | | officers. bernardo | francisco a soldier. reynaldo servant to polonius. players. (first player:) (player king:) (player queen:) two clowns, grave-diggers. (first clown:) (second clown:) fortinbras prince of norway. (prince fortinbras:) a captain. english ambassadors. (first ambassador:) gertrude queen of denmark, and mother to hamlet. (queen gertrude:) ophelia daughter to polonius. lords, ladies, officers, soldiers, sailors, messengers, and other attendants. (lord:) (first sailor:) (messenger:) ghost of hamlet's father. (ghost:) scene denmark. hamlet act i scene i elsinore. a platform before the castle. [francisco at his post. enter to him bernardo] bernardo who's there? francisco nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself. bernardo long live the king! francisco bernardo? bernardo he. francisco you come most carefully upon your hour. bernardo 'tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, francisco. francisco for this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold, and i am sick at heart. bernardo have you had quiet guard? francisco not a mouse stirring. bernardo well, good night. if you do meet horatio and marcellus, the rivals of my watch, bid them make haste. francisco i think i hear them. stand, ho! who's there? [enter horatio and marcellus] horatio friends to this ground. marcellus and liegemen to the dane. francisco give you good night. marcellus o, farewell, honest soldier: who hath relieved you? francisco bernardo has my place. give you good night. [exit] marcellus holla! bernardo! bernardo say, what, is horatio there? horatio a piece of him. bernardo welcome, horatio: welcome, good marcellus. marcellus what, has this thing appear'd again to-night? bernardo i have seen nothing. marcellus horatio says 'tis but our fantasy, and will not let belief take hold of him touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us: therefore i have entreated him along with us to watch the minutes of this night; that if again this apparition come, he may approve our eyes and speak to it. horatio tush, tush, 'twill not appear. bernardo sit down awhile; and let us once again assail your ears, that are so fortified against our story what we have two nights seen. horatio well, sit we down, and let us hear bernardo speak of this. bernardo last night of all, when yond same star that's westward from the pole had made his course to illume that part of heaven where now it burns, marcellus and myself, the bell then beating one,- [enter ghost] marcellus peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again! bernardo in the same figure, like the king that's dead. marcellus thou art a scholar; speak to it, horatio. bernardo looks it not like the king? mark it, horatio. horatio most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder. bernardo it would be spoke to. marcellus question it, horatio. horatio what art thou that usurp'st this time of night, together with that fair and warlike form in which the majesty of buried denmark did sometimes march? by heaven i charge thee, speak! marcellus it is offended. bernardo see, it stalks away! horatio stay! speak, speak! i charge thee, speak! [exit ghost] marcellus 'tis gone, and will not answer. bernardo how now, horatio! you tremble and look pale: is not this something more than fantasy? what think you on't? horatio before my god, i might not this believe without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes. marcellus is it not like the king? horatio as thou art to thyself: such was the very armour he had on when he the ambitious norway combated; so frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle, he smote the sledded polacks on the ice. 'tis strange. marcellus thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, with martial stalk hath he gone by our watch. horatio in what particular thought to work i know not; but in the gross and scope of my opinion, this bodes some strange eruption to our state. marcellus good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows, why this same strict and most observant watch so nightly toils the subject of the land, and why such daily cast of brazen cannon, and foreign mart for implements of war; why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task does not divide the sunday from the week; what might be toward, that this sweaty haste doth make the night joint-labourer with the day: who is't that can inform me? horatio that can i; at least, the whisper goes so. our last king, whose image even but now appear'd to us, was, as you know, by fortinbras of norway, thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride, dared to the combat; in which our valiant hamlet- for so this side of our known world esteem'd him- did slay this fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact, well ratified by law and heraldry, did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands which he stood seized of, to the conqueror: against the which, a moiety competent was gaged by our king; which had return'd to the inheritance of fortinbras, had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant, and carriage of the article design'd, his fell to hamlet. now, sir, young fortinbras, of unimproved mettle hot and full, hath in the skirts of norway here and there shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes, for food and diet, to some enterprise that hath a stomach in't; which is no other- as it doth well appear unto our state- but to recover of us, by strong hand and terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands so by his father lost: and this, i take it, is the main motive of our preparations, the source of this our watch and the chief head of this post-haste and romage in the land. bernardo i think it be no other but e'en so: well may it sort that this portentous figure comes armed through our watch; so like the king that was and is the question of these wars. horatio a mote it is to trouble the mind's eye. in the most high and palmy state of rome, a little ere the mightiest julius fell, the graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the roman streets: as stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, disasters in the sun; and the moist star upon whose influence neptune's empire stands was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse: and even the like precurse of fierce events, as harbingers preceding still the fates and prologue to the omen coming on, have heaven and earth together demonstrated unto our climatures and countrymen.- but soft, behold! lo, where it comes again! [re-enter ghost] i'll cross it, though it blast me. stay, illusion! if thou hast any sound, or use of voice, speak to me: if there be any good thing to be done, that may to thee do ease and grace to me, speak to me: [cock crows] if thou art privy to thy country's fate, which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, o, speak! or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life extorted treasure in the womb of earth, for which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, speak of it: stay, and speak! stop it, marcellus. marcellus shall i strike at it with my partisan? horatio do, if it will not stand. bernardo 'tis here! horatio 'tis here! marcellus 'tis gone! [exit ghost] we do it wrong, being so majestical, to offer it the show of violence; for it is, as the air, invulnerable, and our vain blows malicious mockery. bernardo it was about to speak, when the cock crew. horatio and then it started like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons. i have heard, the cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat awake the god of day; and, at his warning, whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, the extravagant and erring spirit hies to his confine: and of the truth herein this present object made probation. marcellus it faded on the crowing of the cock. some say that ever 'gainst that season comes wherein our saviour's birth is celebrated, the bird of dawning singeth all night long: and then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad; the nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, no fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, so hallow'd and so gracious is the time. horatio so have i heard and do in part believe it. but, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill: break we our watch up; and by my advice, let us impart what we have seen to-night unto young hamlet; for, upon my life, this spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, as needful in our loves, fitting our duty? marcellus let's do't, i pray; and i this morning know where we shall find him most conveniently. [exeunt] hamlet act i scene ii a room of state in the castle. [enter king claudius, queen gertrude, hamlet, polonius, laertes, voltimand, cornelius, lords, and attendants] king claudius though yet of hamlet our dear brother's death the memory be green, and that it us befitted to bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom to be contracted in one brow of woe, yet so far hath discretion fought with nature that we with wisest sorrow think on him, together with remembrance of ourselves. therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, the imperial jointress to this warlike state, have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,- with an auspicious and a dropping eye, with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, in equal scale weighing delight and dole,- taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd your better wisdoms, which have freely gone with this affair along. for all, our thanks. now follows, that you know, young fortinbras, holding a weak supposal of our worth, or thinking by our late dear brother's death our state to be disjoint and out of frame, colleagued with the dream of his advantage, he hath not fail'd to pester us with message, importing the surrender of those lands lost by his father, with all bonds of law, to our most valiant brother. so much for him. now for ourself and for this time of meeting: thus much the business is: we have here writ to norway, uncle of young fortinbras,- who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears of this his nephew's purpose,--to suppress his further gait herein; in that the levies, the lists and full proportions, are all made out of his subject: and we here dispatch you, good cornelius, and you, voltimand, for bearers of this greeting to old norway; giving to you no further personal power to business with the king, more than the scope of these delated articles allow. farewell, and let your haste commend your duty. cornelius | | in that and all things will we show our duty. voltimand | king claudius we doubt it nothing: heartily farewell. [exeunt voltimand and cornelius] and now, laertes, what's the news with you? you told us of some suit; what is't, laertes? you cannot speak of reason to the dane, and loose your voice: what wouldst thou beg, laertes, that shall not be my offer, not thy asking? the head is not more native to the heart, the hand more instrumental to the mouth, than is the throne of denmark to thy father. what wouldst thou have, laertes? laertes my dread lord, your leave and favour to return to france; from whence though willingly i came to denmark, to show my duty in your coronation, yet now, i must confess, that duty done, my thoughts and wishes bend again toward france and bow them to your gracious leave and pardon. king claudius have you your father's leave? what says polonius? lord polonius he hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave by laboursome petition, and at last upon his will i seal'd my hard consent: i do beseech you, give him leave to go. king claudius take thy fair hour, laertes; time be thine, and thy best graces spend it at thy will! but now, my cousin hamlet, and my son,- hamlet [aside] a little more than kin, and less than kind. king claudius how is it that the clouds still hang on you? hamlet not so, my lord; i am too much i' the sun. queen gertrude good hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, and let thine eye look like a friend on denmark. do not for ever with thy vailed lids seek for thy noble father in the dust: thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity. hamlet ay, madam, it is common. queen gertrude if it be, why seems it so particular with thee? hamlet seems, madam! nay it is; i know not 'seems.' 'tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, nor customary suits of solemn black, nor windy suspiration of forced breath, no, nor the fruitful river in the eye, nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, that can denote me truly: these indeed seem, for they are actions that a man might play: but i have that within which passeth show; these but the trappings and the suits of woe. king claudius 'tis sweet and commendable in your nature, hamlet, to give these mourning duties to your father: but, you must know, your father lost a father; that father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound in filial obligation for some term to do obsequious sorrow: but to persever in obstinate condolement is a course of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief; it shows a will most incorrect to heaven, a heart unfortified, a mind impatient, an understanding simple and unschool'd: for what we know must be and is as common as any the most vulgar thing to sense, why should we in our peevish opposition take it to heart? fie! 'tis a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, a fault to nature, to reason most absurd: whose common theme is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, from the first corse till he that died to-day, 'this must be so.' we pray you, throw to earth this unprevailing woe, and think of us as of a father: for let the world take note, you are the most immediate to our throne; and with no less nobility of love than that which dearest father bears his son, do i impart toward you. for your intent in going back to school in wittenberg, it is most retrograde to our desire: and we beseech you, bend you to remain here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye, our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son. queen gertrude let not thy mother lose her prayers, hamlet: i pray thee, stay with us; go not to wittenberg. hamlet i shall in all my best obey you, madam. king claudius why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply: be as ourself in denmark. madam, come; this gentle and unforced accord of hamlet sits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof, no jocund health that denmark drinks to-day, but the great cannon to the clouds shall tell, and the king's rouse the heavens all bruit again, re-speaking earthly thunder. come away. [exeunt all but hamlet] hamlet o, that this too too solid flesh would melt thaw and resolve itself into a dew! or that the everlasting had not fix'd his canon 'gainst self-slaughter! o god! god! how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, seem to me all the uses of this world! fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely. that it should come to this! but two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: so excellent a king; that was, to this, hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother that he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly. heaven and earth! must i remember? why, she would hang on him, as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on: and yet, within a month- let me not think on't--frailty, thy name is woman!- a little month, or ere those shoes were old with which she follow'd my poor father's body, like niobe, all tears:--why she, even she- o, god! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle, my father's brother, but no more like my father than i to hercules: within a month: ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flushing in her galled eyes, she married. o, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets! it is not nor it cannot come to good: but break, my heart; for i must hold my tongue. [enter horatio, marcellus, and bernardo] horatio hail to your lordship! hamlet i am glad to see you well: horatio,--or i do forget myself. horatio the same, my lord, and your poor servant ever. hamlet sir, my good friend; i'll change that name with you: and what make you from wittenberg, horatio? marcellus? marcellus my good lord- hamlet i am very glad to see you. good even, sir. but what, in faith, make you from wittenberg? horatio a truant disposition, good my lord. hamlet i would not hear your enemy say so, nor shall you do mine ear that violence, to make it truster of your own report against yourself: i know you are no truant. but what is your affair in elsinore? we'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart. horatio my lord, i came to see your father's funeral. hamlet i pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student; i think it was to see my mother's wedding. horatio indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon. hamlet thrift, thrift, horatio! the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. would i had met my dearest foe in heaven or ever i had seen that day, horatio! my father!--methinks i see my father. horatio where, my lord? hamlet in my mind's eye, horatio. horatio i saw him once; he was a goodly king. hamlet he was a man, take him for all in all, i shall not look upon his like again. horatio my lord, i think i saw him yesternight. hamlet saw? who? horatio my lord, the king your father. hamlet the king my father! horatio season your admiration for awhile with an attent ear, till i may deliver, upon the witness of these gentlemen, this marvel to you. hamlet for god's love, let me hear. horatio two nights together had these gentlemen, marcellus and bernardo, on their watch, in the dead vast and middle of the night, been thus encounter'd. a figure like your father, armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe, appears before them, and with solemn march goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd by their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes, within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distilled almost to jelly with the act of fear, stand dumb and speak not to him. this to me in dreadful secrecy impart they did; and i with them the third night kept the watch; where, as they had deliver'd, both in time, form of the thing, each word made true and good, the apparition comes: i knew your father; these hands are not more like. hamlet but where was this? marcellus my lord, upon the platform where we watch'd. hamlet did you not speak to it? horatio my lord, i did; but answer made it none: yet once methought it lifted up its head and did address itself to motion, like as it would speak; but even then the morning cock crew loud, and at the sound it shrunk in haste away, and vanish'd from our sight. hamlet 'tis very strange. horatio as i do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true; and we did think it writ down in our duty to let you know of it. hamlet indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me. hold you the watch to-night? marcellus | | we do, my lord. bernardo | hamlet arm'd, say you? marcellus | | arm'd, my lord. bernardo | hamlet from top to toe? marcellus | | my lord, from head to foot. bernardo | hamlet then saw you not his face? horatio o, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up. hamlet what, look'd he frowningly? horatio a countenance more in sorrow than in anger. hamlet pale or red? horatio nay, very pale. hamlet and fix'd his eyes upon you? horatio most constantly. hamlet i would i had been there. horatio it would have much amazed you. hamlet very like, very like. stay'd it long? horatio while one with moderate haste might tell a hundred. marcellus | | longer, longer. bernardo | horatio not when i saw't. hamlet his beard was grizzled--no? horatio it was, as i have seen it in his life, a sable silver'd. hamlet i will watch to-night; perchance 'twill walk again. horatio i warrant it will. hamlet if it assume my noble father's person, i'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape and bid me hold my peace. i pray you all, if you have hitherto conceal'd this sight, let it be tenable in your silence still; and whatsoever else shall hap to-night, give it an understanding, but no tongue: i will requite your loves. so, fare you well: upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, i'll visit you. all our duty to your honour. hamlet your loves, as mine to you: farewell. [exeunt all but hamlet] my father's spirit in arms! all is not well; i doubt some foul play: would the night were come! till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes. [exit] hamlet act i scene iii a room in polonius' house. [enter laertes and ophelia] laertes my necessaries are embark'd: farewell: and, sister, as the winds give benefit and convoy is assistant, do not sleep, but let me hear from you. ophelia do you doubt that? laertes for hamlet and the trifling of his favour, hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, a violet in the youth of primy nature, forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, the perfume and suppliance of a minute; no more. ophelia no more but so? laertes think it no more; for nature, crescent, does not grow alone in thews and bulk, but, as this temple waxes, the inward service of the mind and soul grows wide withal. perhaps he loves you now, and now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch the virtue of his will: but you must fear, his greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own; for he himself is subject to his birth: he may not, as unvalued persons do, carve for himself; for on his choice depends the safety and health of this whole state; and therefore must his choice be circumscribed unto the voice and yielding of that body whereof he is the head. then if he says he loves you, it fits your wisdom so far to believe it as he in his particular act and place may give his saying deed; which is no further than the main voice of denmark goes withal. then weigh what loss your honour may sustain, if with too credent ear you list his songs, or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open to his unmaster'd importunity. fear it, ophelia, fear it, my dear sister, and keep you in the rear of your affection, out of the shot and danger of desire. the chariest maid is prodigal enough, if she unmask her beauty to the moon: virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes: the canker galls the infants of the spring, too oft before their buttons be disclosed, and in the morn and liquid dew of youth contagious blastments are most imminent. be wary then; best safety lies in fear: youth to itself rebels, though none else near. ophelia i shall the effect of this good lesson keep, as watchman to my heart. but, good my brother, do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, and recks not his own rede. laertes o, fear me not. i stay too long: but here my father comes. [enter polonius] a double blessing is a double grace, occasion smiles upon a second leave. lord polonius yet here, laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame! the wind sits in the shoulder of your sail, and you are stay'd for. there; my blessing with thee! and these few precepts in thy memory see thou character. give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act. be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; but do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the man, and they in france of the best rank and station are of a most select and generous chief in that. neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. this above all: to thine ownself be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. farewell: my blessing season this in thee! laertes most humbly do i take my leave, my lord. lord polonius the time invites you; go; your servants tend. laertes farewell, ophelia; and remember well what i have said to you. ophelia 'tis in my memory lock'd, and you yourself shall keep the key of it. laertes farewell. [exit] lord polonius what is't, ophelia, be hath said to you? ophelia so please you, something touching the lord hamlet. lord polonius marry, well bethought: 'tis told me, he hath very oft of late given private time to you; and you yourself have of your audience been most free and bounteous: if it be so, as so 'tis put on me, and that in way of caution, i must tell you, you do not understand yourself so clearly as it behoves my daughter and your honour. what is between you? give me up the truth. ophelia he hath, my lord, of late made many tenders of his affection to me. lord polonius affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl, unsifted in such perilous circumstance. do you believe his tenders, as you call them? ophelia i do not know, my lord, what i should think. lord polonius marry, i'll teach you: think yourself a baby; that you have ta'en these tenders for true pay, which are not sterling. tender yourself more dearly; or--not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, running it thus--you'll tender me a fool. ophelia my lord, he hath importuned me with love in honourable fashion. lord polonius ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to. ophelia and hath given countenance to his speech, my lord, with almost all the holy vows of heaven. lord polonius ay, springes to catch woodcocks. i do know, when the blood burns, how prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter, giving more light than heat, extinct in both, even in their promise, as it is a-making, you must not take for fire. from this time be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence; set your entreatments at a higher rate than a command to parley. for lord hamlet, believe so much in him, that he is young and with a larger tether may he walk than may be given you: in few, ophelia, do not believe his vows; for they are brokers, not of that dye which their investments show, but mere implorators of unholy suits, breathing like sanctified and pious bawds, the better to beguile. this is for all: i would not, in plain terms, from this time forth, have you so slander any moment leisure, as to give words or talk with the lord hamlet. look to't, i charge you: come your ways. ophelia i shall obey, my lord. [exeunt] hamlet act i scene iv the platform. [enter hamlet, horatio, and marcellus] hamlet the air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. horatio it is a nipping and an eager air. hamlet what hour now? horatio i think it lacks of twelve. hamlet no, it is struck. horatio indeed? i heard it not: then it draws near the season wherein the spirit held his wont to walk. [a flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, within] what does this mean, my lord? hamlet the king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse, keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels; and, as he drains his draughts of rhenish down, the kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out the triumph of his pledge. horatio is it a custom? hamlet ay, marry, is't: but to my mind, though i am native here and to the manner born, it is a custom more honour'd in the breach than the observance. this heavy-headed revel east and west makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations: they clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase soil our addition; and indeed it takes from our achievements, though perform'd at height, the pith and marrow of our attribute. so, oft it chances in particular men, that for some vicious mole of nature in them, as, in their birth--wherein they are not guilty, since nature cannot choose his origin- by the o'ergrowth of some complexion, oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason, or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens the form of plausive manners, that these men, carrying, i say, the stamp of one defect, being nature's livery, or fortune's star,- their virtues else--be they as pure as grace, as infinite as man may undergo- shall in the general censure take corruption from that particular fault: the dram of eale doth all the noble substance of a doubt to his own scandal. horatio look, my lord, it comes! [enter ghost] hamlet angels and ministers of grace defend us! be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, be thy intents wicked or charitable, thou comest in such a questionable shape that i will speak to thee: i'll call thee hamlet, king, father, royal dane: o, answer me! let me not burst in ignorance; but tell why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd, hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws, to cast thee up again. what may this mean, that thou, dead corse, again in complete steel revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, making night hideous; and we fools of nature so horridly to shake our disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do? [ghost beckons hamlet] horatio it beckons you to go away with it, as if it some impartment did desire to you alone. marcellus look, with what courteous action it waves you to a more removed ground: but do not go with it. horatio no, by no means. hamlet it will not speak; then i will follow it. horatio do not, my lord. hamlet why, what should be the fear? i do not set my life in a pin's fee; and for my soul, what can it do to that, being a thing immortal as itself? it waves me forth again: i'll follow it. horatio what if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, or to the dreadful summit of the cliff that beetles o'er his base into the sea, and there assume some other horrible form, which might deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness? think of it: the very place puts toys of desperation, without more motive, into every brain that looks so many fathoms to the sea and hears it roar beneath. hamlet it waves me still. go on; i'll follow thee. marcellus you shall not go, my lord. hamlet hold off your hands. horatio be ruled; you shall not go. hamlet my fate cries out, and makes each petty artery in this body as hardy as the nemean lion's nerve. still am i call'd. unhand me, gentlemen. by heaven, i'll make a ghost of him that lets me! i say, away! go on; i'll follow thee. [exeunt ghost and hamlet] horatio he waxes desperate with imagination. marcellus let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him. horatio have after. to what issue will this come? marcellus something is rotten in the state of denmark. horatio heaven will direct it. marcellus nay, let's follow him. [exeunt] hamlet act i scene v another part of the platform. [enter ghost and hamlet] hamlet where wilt thou lead me? speak; i'll go no further. ghost mark me. hamlet i will. ghost my hour is almost come, when i to sulphurous and tormenting flames must render up myself. hamlet alas, poor ghost! ghost pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing to what i shall unfold. hamlet speak; i am bound to hear. ghost so art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear. hamlet what? ghost i am thy father's spirit, doom'd for a certain term to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in fires, till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away. but that i am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison-house, i could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine: but this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood. list, list, o, list! if thou didst ever thy dear father love- hamlet o god! ghost revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. hamlet murder! ghost murder most foul, as in the best it is; but this most foul, strange and unnatural. hamlet haste me to know't, that i, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge. ghost i find thee apt; and duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed that roots itself in ease on lethe wharf, wouldst thou not stir in this. now, hamlet, hear: 'tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, a serpent stung me; so the whole ear of denmark is by a forged process of my death rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth, the serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown. hamlet o my prophetic soul! my uncle! ghost ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, with witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,- o wicked wit and gifts, that have the power so to seduce!--won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen: o hamlet, what a falling-off was there! from me, whose love was of that dignity that it went hand in hand even with the vow i made to her in marriage, and to decline upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor to those of mine! but virtue, as it never will be moved, though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven, so lust, though to a radiant angel link'd, will sate itself in a celestial bed, and prey on garbage. but, soft! methinks i scent the morning air; brief let me be. sleeping within my orchard, my custom always of the afternoon, upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, with juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, and in the porches of my ears did pour the leperous distilment; whose effect holds such an enmity with blood of man that swift as quicksilver it courses through the natural gates and alleys of the body, and with a sudden vigour doth posset and curd, like eager droppings into milk, the thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine; and a most instant tetter bark'd about, most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, all my smooth body. thus was i, sleeping, by a brother's hand of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd: cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd, no reckoning made, but sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head: o, horrible! o, horrible! most horrible! if thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; let not the royal bed of denmark be a couch for luxury and damned incest. but, howsoever thou pursuest this act, taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, to prick and sting her. fare thee well at once! the glow-worm shows the matin to be near, and 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire: adieu, adieu! hamlet, remember me. [exit] hamlet o all you host of heaven! o earth! what else? and shall i couple hell? o, fie! hold, hold, my heart; and you, my sinews, grow not instant old, but bear me stiffly up. remember thee! ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe. remember thee! yea, from the table of my memory i'll wipe away all trivial fond records, all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, that youth and observation copied there; and thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven! o most pernicious woman! o villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! my tables,--meet it is i set it down, that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; at least i'm sure it may be so in denmark: [writing] so, uncle, there you are. now to my word; it is 'adieu, adieu! remember me.' i have sworn 't. marcellus | | [within] my lord, my lord,- horatio | marcellus [within] lord hamlet,- horatio [within] heaven secure him! hamlet so be it! horatio [within] hillo, ho, ho, my lord! hamlet hillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come. [enter horatio and marcellus] marcellus how is't, my noble lord? horatio what news, my lord? hamlet o, wonderful! horatio good my lord, tell it. hamlet no; you'll reveal it. horatio not i, my lord, by heaven. marcellus nor i, my lord. hamlet how say you, then; would heart of man once think it? but you'll be secret? horatio | | ay, by heaven, my lord. marcellus | hamlet there's ne'er a villain dwelling in all denmark but he's an arrant knave. horatio there needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave to tell us this. hamlet why, right; you are i' the right; and so, without more circumstance at all, i hold it fit that we shake hands and part: you, as your business and desire shall point you; for every man has business and desire, such as it is; and for mine own poor part, look you, i'll go pray. horatio these are but wild and whirling words, my lord. hamlet i'm sorry they offend you, heartily; yes, 'faith heartily. horatio there's no offence, my lord. hamlet yes, by saint patrick, but there is, horatio, and much offence too. touching this vision here, it is an honest ghost, that let me tell you: for your desire to know what is between us, o'ermaster 't as you may. and now, good friends, as you are friends, scholars and soldiers, give me one poor request. horatio what is't, my lord? we will. hamlet never make known what you have seen to-night. horatio | | my lord, we will not. marcellus | hamlet nay, but swear't. horatio in faith, my lord, not i. marcellus nor i, my lord, in faith. hamlet upon my sword. marcellus we have sworn, my lord, already. hamlet indeed, upon my sword, indeed. ghost [beneath] swear. hamlet ah, ha, boy! say'st thou so? art thou there, truepenny? come on--you hear this fellow in the cellarage- consent to swear. horatio propose the oath, my lord. hamlet never to speak of this that you have seen, swear by my sword. ghost [beneath] swear. hamlet hic et ubique? then we'll shift our ground. come hither, gentlemen, and lay your hands again upon my sword: never to speak of this that you have heard, swear by my sword. ghost [beneath] swear. hamlet well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast? a worthy pioner! once more remove, good friends. horatio o day and night, but this is wondrous strange! hamlet and therefore as a stranger give it welcome. there are more things in heaven and earth, horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. but come; here, as before, never, so help you mercy, how strange or odd soe'er i bear myself, as i perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on, that you, at such times seeing me, never shall, with arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake, or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, as 'well, well, we know,' or 'we could, an if we would,' or 'if we list to speak,' or 'there be, an if they might,' or such ambiguous giving out, to note that you know aught of me: this not to do, so grace and mercy at your most need help you, swear. ghost [beneath] swear. hamlet rest, rest, perturbed spirit! [they swear] so, gentlemen, with all my love i do commend me to you: and what so poor a man as hamlet is may do, to express his love and friending to you, god willing, shall not lack. let us go in together; and still your fingers on your lips, i pray. the time is out of joint: o cursed spite, that ever i was born to set it right! nay, come, let's go together. [exeunt] hamlet act ii scene i a room in polonius' house. [enter polonius and reynaldo] lord polonius give him this money and these notes, reynaldo. reynaldo i will, my lord. lord polonius you shall do marvellous wisely, good reynaldo, before you visit him, to make inquire of his behavior. reynaldo my lord, i did intend it. lord polonius marry, well said; very well said. look you, sir, inquire me first what danskers are in paris; and how, and who, what means, and where they keep, what company, at what expense; and finding by this encompassment and drift of question that they do know my son, come you more nearer than your particular demands will touch it: take you, as 'twere, some distant knowledge of him; as thus, 'i know his father and his friends, and in part him: ' do you mark this, reynaldo? reynaldo ay, very well, my lord. lord polonius 'and in part him; but' you may say 'not well: but, if't be he i mean, he's very wild; addicted so and so:' and there put on him what forgeries you please; marry, none so rank as may dishonour him; take heed of that; but, sir, such wanton, wild and usual slips as are companions noted and most known to youth and liberty. reynaldo as gaming, my lord. lord polonius ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling, drabbing: you may go so far. reynaldo my lord, that would dishonour him. lord polonius 'faith, no; as you may season it in the charge you must not put another scandal on him, that he is open to incontinency; that's not my meaning: but breathe his faults so quaintly that they may seem the taints of liberty, the flash and outbreak of a fiery mind, a savageness in unreclaimed blood, of general assault. reynaldo but, my good lord,- lord polonius wherefore should you do this? reynaldo ay, my lord, i would know that. lord polonius marry, sir, here's my drift; and i believe, it is a fetch of wit: you laying these slight sullies on my son, as 'twere a thing a little soil'd i' the working, mark you, your party in converse, him you would sound, having ever seen in the prenominate crimes the youth you breathe of guilty, be assured he closes with you in this consequence; 'good sir,' or so, or 'friend,' or 'gentleman,' according to the phrase or the addition of man and country. reynaldo very good, my lord. lord polonius and then, sir, does he this--he does--what was i about to say? by the mass, i was about to say something: where did i leave? reynaldo at 'closes in the consequence,' at 'friend or so,' and 'gentleman.' lord polonius at 'closes in the consequence,' ay, marry; he closes thus: 'i know the gentleman; i saw him yesterday, or t' other day, or then, or then; with such, or such; and, as you say, there was a' gaming; there o'ertook in's rouse; there falling out at tennis:' or perchance, 'i saw him enter such a house of sale,' videlicet, a brothel, or so forth. see you now; your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth: and thus do we of wisdom and of reach, with windlasses and with assays of bias, by indirections find directions out: so by my former lecture and advice, shall you my son. you have me, have you not? reynaldo my lord, i have. lord polonius god be wi' you; fare you well. reynaldo good my lord! lord polonius observe his inclination in yourself. reynaldo i shall, my lord. lord polonius and let him ply his music. reynaldo well, my lord. lord polonius farewell! [exit reynaldo] [enter ophelia] how now, ophelia! what's the matter? ophelia o, my lord, my lord, i have been so affrighted! lord polonius with what, i' the name of god? ophelia my lord, as i was sewing in my closet, lord hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced; no hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd, ungarter'd, and down-gyved to his ancle; pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other; and with a look so piteous in purport as if he had been loosed out of hell to speak of horrors,--he comes before me. lord polonius mad for thy love? ophelia my lord, i do not know; but truly, i do fear it. lord polonius what said he? ophelia he took me by the wrist and held me hard; then goes he to the length of all his arm; and, with his other hand thus o'er his brow, he falls to such perusal of my face as he would draw it. long stay'd he so; at last, a little shaking of mine arm and thrice his head thus waving up and down, he raised a sigh so piteous and profound as it did seem to shatter all his bulk and end his being: that done, he lets me go: and, with his head over his shoulder turn'd, he seem'd to find his way without his eyes; for out o' doors he went without their helps, and, to the last, bended their light on me. lord polonius come, go with me: i will go seek the king. this is the very ecstasy of love, whose violent property fordoes itself and leads the will to desperate undertakings as oft as any passion under heaven that does afflict our natures. i am sorry. what, have you given him any hard words of late? ophelia no, my good lord, but, as you did command, i did repel his fetters and denied his access to me. lord polonius that hath made him mad. i am sorry that with better heed and judgment i had not quoted him: i fear'd he did but trifle, and meant to wreck thee; but, beshrew my jealousy! by heaven, it is as proper to our age to cast beyond ourselves in our opinions as it is common for the younger sort to lack discretion. come, go we to the king: this must be known; which, being kept close, might move more grief to hide than hate to utter love. [exeunt] hamlet act ii scene ii a room in the castle. [enter king claudius, queen gertrude, rosencrantz, guildenstern, and attendants] king claudius welcome, dear rosencrantz and guildenstern! moreover that we much did long to see you, the need we have to use you did provoke our hasty sending. something have you heard of hamlet's transformation; so call it, sith nor the exterior nor the inward man resembles that it was. what it should be, more than his father's death, that thus hath put him so much from the understanding of himself, i cannot dream of: i entreat you both, that, being of so young days brought up with him, and sith so neighbour'd to his youth and havior, that you vouchsafe your rest here in our court some little time: so by your companies to draw him on to pleasures, and to gather, so much as from occasion you may glean, whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus, that, open'd, lies within our remedy. queen gertrude good gentlemen, he hath much talk'd of you; and sure i am two men there are not living to whom he more adheres. if it will please you to show us so much gentry and good will as to expend your time with us awhile, for the supply and profit of our hope, your visitation shall receive such thanks as fits a king's remembrance. rosencrantz both your majesties might, by the sovereign power you have of us, put your dread pleasures more into command than to entreaty. guildenstern but we both obey, and here give up ourselves, in the full bent to lay our service freely at your feet, to be commanded. king claudius thanks, rosencrantz and gentle guildenstern. queen gertrude thanks, guildenstern and gentle rosencrantz: and i beseech you instantly to visit my too much changed son. go, some of you, and bring these gentlemen where hamlet is. guildenstern heavens make our presence and our practises pleasant and helpful to him! queen gertrude ay, amen! [exeunt rosencrantz, guildenstern, and some attendants] [enter polonius] lord polonius the ambassadors from norway, my good lord, are joyfully return'd. king claudius thou still hast been the father of good news. lord polonius have i, my lord? i assure my good liege, i hold my duty, as i hold my soul, both to my god and to my gracious king: and i do think, or else this brain of mine hunts not the trail of policy so sure as it hath used to do, that i have found the very cause of hamlet's lunacy. king claudius o, speak of that; that do i long to hear. lord polonius give first admittance to the ambassadors; my news shall be the fruit to that great feast. king claudius thyself do grace to them, and bring them in. [exit polonius] he tells me, my dear gertrude, he hath found the head and source of all your son's distemper. queen gertrude i doubt it is no other but the main; his father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage. king claudius well, we shall sift him. [re-enter polonius, with voltimand and cornelius] welcome, my good friends! say, voltimand, what from our brother norway? voltimand most fair return of greetings and desires. upon our first, he sent out to suppress his nephew's levies; which to him appear'd to be a preparation 'gainst the polack; but, better look'd into, he truly found it was against your highness: whereat grieved, that so his sickness, age and impotence was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests on fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys; receives rebuke from norway, and in fine makes vow before his uncle never more to give the assay of arms against your majesty. whereon old norway, overcome with joy, gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee, and his commission to employ those soldiers, so levied as before, against the polack: with an entreaty, herein further shown, [giving a paper] that it might please you to give quiet pass through your dominions for this enterprise, on such regards of safety and allowance as therein are set down. king claudius it likes us well; and at our more consider'd time well read, answer, and think upon this business. meantime we thank you for your well-took labour: go to your rest; at night we'll feast together: most welcome home! [exeunt voltimand and cornelius] lord polonius this business is well ended. my liege, and madam, to expostulate what majesty should be, what duty is, why day is day, night night, and time is time, were nothing but to waste night, day and time. therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, i will be brief: your noble son is mad: mad call i it; for, to define true madness, what is't but to be nothing else but mad? but let that go. queen gertrude more matter, with less art. lord polonius madam, i swear i use no art at all. that he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity; and pity 'tis 'tis true: a foolish figure; but farewell it, for i will use no art. mad let us grant him, then: and now remains that we find out the cause of this effect, or rather say, the cause of this defect, for this effect defective comes by cause: thus it remains, and the remainder thus. perpend. i have a daughter--have while she is mine- who, in her duty and obedience, mark, hath given me this: now gather, and surmise. [reads] 'to the celestial and my soul's idol, the most beautified ophelia,'- that's an ill phrase, a vile phrase; 'beautified' is a vile phrase: but you shall hear. thus: [reads] 'in her excellent white bosom, these, &c.' queen gertrude came this from hamlet to her? lord polonius good madam, stay awhile; i will be faithful. [reads] 'doubt thou the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt i love. 'o dear ophelia, i am ill at these numbers; i have not art to reckon my groans: but that i love thee best, o most best, believe it. adieu. 'thine evermore most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him, hamlet.' this, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me, and more above, hath his solicitings, as they fell out by time, by means and place, all given to mine ear. king claudius but how hath she received his love? lord polonius what do you think of me? king claudius as of a man faithful and honourable. lord polonius i would fain prove so. but what might you think, when i had seen this hot love on the wing- as i perceived it, i must tell you that, before my daughter told me--what might you, or my dear majesty your queen here, think, if i had play'd the desk or table-book, or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb, or look'd upon this love with idle sight; what might you think? no, i went round to work, and my young mistress thus i did bespeak: 'lord hamlet is a prince, out of thy star; this must not be:' and then i precepts gave her, that she should lock herself from his resort, admit no messengers, receive no tokens. which done, she took the fruits of my advice; and he, repulsed--a short tale to make- fell into a sadness, then into a fast, thence to a watch, thence into a weakness, thence to a lightness, and, by this declension, into the madness wherein now he raves, and all we mourn for. king claudius do you think 'tis this? queen gertrude it may be, very likely. lord polonius hath there been such a time--i'd fain know that- that i have positively said 'tis so,' when it proved otherwise? king claudius not that i know. lord polonius [pointing to his head and shoulder] take this from this, if this be otherwise: if circumstances lead me, i will find where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed within the centre. king claudius how may we try it further? lord polonius you know, sometimes he walks four hours together here in the lobby. queen gertrude so he does indeed. lord polonius at such a time i'll loose my daughter to him: be you and i behind an arras then; mark the encounter: if he love her not and be not from his reason fall'n thereon, let me be no assistant for a state, but keep a farm and carters. king claudius we will try it. queen gertrude but, look, where sadly the poor wretch comes reading. lord polonius away, i do beseech you, both away: i'll board him presently. [exeunt king claudius, queen gertrude, and attendants] [enter hamlet, reading] o, give me leave: how does my good lord hamlet? hamlet well, god-a-mercy. lord polonius do you know me, my lord? hamlet excellent well; you are a fishmonger. lord polonius not i, my lord. hamlet then i would you were so honest a man. lord polonius honest, my lord! hamlet ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. lord polonius that's very true, my lord. hamlet for if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion,--have you a daughter? lord polonius i have, my lord. hamlet let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive. friend, look to 't. lord polonius [aside] how say you by that? still harping on my daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said i was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth i suffered much extremity for love; very near this. i'll speak to him again. what do you read, my lord? hamlet words, words, words. lord polonius what is the matter, my lord? hamlet between who? lord polonius i mean, the matter that you read, my lord. hamlet slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though i most powerfully and potently believe, yet i hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, should be old as i am, if like a crab you could go backward. lord polonius [aside] though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. will you walk out of the air, my lord? hamlet into my grave. lord polonius indeed, that is out o' the air. [aside] how pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. i will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter.--my honourable lord, i will most humbly take my leave of you. hamlet you cannot, sir, take from me any thing that i will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life. lord polonius fare you well, my lord. hamlet these tedious old fools! [enter rosencrantz and guildenstern] lord polonius you go to seek the lord hamlet; there he is. rosencrantz [to polonius] god save you, sir! [exit polonius] guildenstern my honoured lord! rosencrantz my most dear lord! hamlet my excellent good friends! how dost thou, guildenstern? ah, rosencrantz! good lads, how do ye both? rosencrantz as the indifferent children of the earth. guildenstern happy, in that we are not over-happy; on fortune's cap we are not the very button. hamlet nor the soles of her shoe? rosencrantz neither, my lord. hamlet then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours? guildenstern 'faith, her privates we. hamlet in the secret parts of fortune? o, most true; she is a strumpet. what's the news? rosencrantz none, my lord, but that the world's grown honest. hamlet then is doomsday near: but your news is not true. let me question more in particular: what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither? guildenstern prison, my lord! hamlet denmark's a prison. rosencrantz then is the world one. hamlet a goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, denmark being one o' the worst. rosencrantz we think not so, my lord. hamlet why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison. rosencrantz why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your mind. hamlet o god, i could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that i have bad dreams. guildenstern which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. hamlet a dream itself is but a shadow. rosencrantz truly, and i hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow. hamlet then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows. shall we to the court? for, by my fay, i cannot reason. rosencrantz | | we'll wait upon you. guildenstern | hamlet no such matter: i will not sort you with the rest of my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest man, i am most dreadfully attended. but, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at elsinore? rosencrantz to visit you, my lord; no other occasion. hamlet beggar that i am, i am even poor in thanks; but i thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. were you not sent for? is it your own inclining? is it a free visitation? come, deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak. guildenstern what should we say, my lord? hamlet why, any thing, but to the purpose. you were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to colour: i know the good king and queen have sent for you. rosencrantz to what end, my lord? hamlet that you must teach me. but let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for, or no? rosencrantz [aside to guildenstern] what say you? hamlet [aside] nay, then, i have an eye of you.--if you love me, hold not off. guildenstern my lord, we were sent for. hamlet i will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather. i have of late--but wherefore i know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. what a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so. rosencrantz my lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts. hamlet why did you laugh then, when i said 'man delights not me'? rosencrantz to think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you: we coted them on the way; and hither are they coming, to offer you service. hamlet he that plays the king shall be welcome; his majesty shall have tribute of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and target; the lover shall not sigh gratis; the humourous man shall end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickled o' the sere; and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for't. what players are they? rosencrantz even those you were wont to take delight in, the tragedians of the city. hamlet how chances it they travel? their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways. rosencrantz i think their inhibition comes by the means of the late innovation. hamlet do they hold the same estimation they did when i was in the city? are they so followed? rosencrantz no, indeed, are they not. hamlet how comes it? do they grow rusty? rosencrantz nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: but there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for't: these are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages--so they call them--that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare scarce come thither. hamlet what, are they children? who maintains 'em? how are they escoted? will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing? will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players--as it is most like, if their means are no better--their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession? rosencrantz 'faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy: there was, for a while, no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question. hamlet is't possible? guildenstern o, there has been much throwing about of brains. hamlet do the boys carry it away? rosencrantz ay, that they do, my lord; hercules and his load too. hamlet it is not very strange; for mine uncle is king of denmark, and those that would make mows at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, an hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in little. 'sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out. [flourish of trumpets within] guildenstern there are the players. hamlet gentlemen, you are welcome to elsinore. your hands, come then: the appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony: let me comply with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players, which, i tell you, must show fairly outward, should more appear like entertainment than yours. you are welcome: but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived. guildenstern in what, my dear lord? hamlet i am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly i know a hawk from a handsaw. [enter polonius] lord polonius well be with you, gentlemen! hamlet hark you, guildenstern; and you too: at each ear a hearer: that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts. rosencrantz happily he's the second time come to them; for they say an old man is twice a child. hamlet i will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players; mark it. you say right, sir: o' monday morning; 'twas so indeed. lord polonius my lord, i have news to tell you. hamlet my lord, i have news to tell you. when roscius was an actor in rome,- lord polonius the actors are come hither, my lord. hamlet buz, buz! lord polonius upon mine honour,- hamlet then came each actor on his ass,- lord polonius the best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited: seneca cannot be too heavy, nor plautus too light. for the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men. hamlet o jephthah, judge of israel, what a treasure hadst thou! lord polonius what a treasure had he, my lord? hamlet why, 'one fair daughter and no more, the which he loved passing well.' lord polonius [aside] still on my daughter. hamlet am i not i' the right, old jephthah? lord polonius if you call me jephthah, my lord, i have a daughter that i love passing well. hamlet nay, that follows not. lord polonius what follows, then, my lord? hamlet why, 'as by lot, god wot,' and then, you know, 'it came to pass, as most like it was,'- the first row of the pious chanson will show you more; for look, where my abridgement comes. [enter four or five players] you are welcome, masters; welcome, all. i am glad to see thee well. welcome, good friends. o, my old friend! thy face is valenced since i saw thee last: comest thou to beard me in denmark? what, my young lady and mistress! by'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when i saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. pray god, your voice, like apiece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring. masters, you are all welcome. we'll e'en to't like french falconers, fly at any thing we see: we'll have a speech straight: come, give us a taste of your quality; come, a passionate speech. first player what speech, my lord? hamlet i heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above once; for the play, i remember, pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general: but it was--as i received it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine--an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. i remember, one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of affectation; but called it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. one speech in it i chiefly loved: 'twas aeneas' tale to dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of priam's slaughter: if it live in your memory, begin at this line: let me see, let me see- 'the rugged pyrrhus, like the hyrcanian beast,'- it is not so:--it begins with pyrrhus:- 'the rugged pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, black as his purpose, did the night resemble when he lay couched in the ominous horse, hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd with heraldry more dismal; head to foot now is he total gules; horridly trick'd with blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, baked and impasted with the parching streets, that lend a tyrannous and damned light to their lord's murder: roasted in wrath and fire, and thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore, with eyes like carbuncles, the hellish pyrrhus old grandsire priam seeks.' so, proceed you. lord polonius 'fore god, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion. first player 'anon he finds him striking too short at greeks; his antique sword, rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls, repugnant to command: unequal match'd, pyrrhus at priam drives; in rage strikes wide; but with the whiff and wind of his fell sword the unnerved father falls. then senseless ilium, seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash takes prisoner pyrrhus' ear: for, lo! his sword, which was declining on the milky head of reverend priam, seem'd i' the air to stick: so, as a painted tyrant, pyrrhus stood, and like a neutral to his will and matter, did nothing. but, as we often see, against some storm, a silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, the bold winds speechless and the orb below as hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder doth rend the region, so, after pyrrhus' pause, aroused vengeance sets him new a-work; and never did the cyclops' hammers fall on mars's armour forged for proof eterne with less remorse than pyrrhus' bleeding sword now falls on priam. out, out, thou strumpet, fortune! all you gods, in general synod 'take away her power; break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, and bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, as low as to the fiends!' lord polonius this is too long. hamlet it shall to the barber's, with your beard. prithee, say on: he's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps: say on: come to hecuba. first player 'but who, o, who had seen the mobled queen--' hamlet 'the mobled queen?' lord polonius that's good; 'mobled queen' is good. first player 'run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames with bisson rheum; a clout upon that head where late the diadem stood, and for a robe, about her lank and all o'er-teemed loins, a blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up; who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd, 'gainst fortune's state would treason have pronounced: but if the gods themselves did see her then when she saw pyrrhus make malicious sport in mincing with his sword her husband's limbs, the instant burst of clamour that she made, unless things mortal move them not at all, would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, and passion in the gods.' lord polonius look, whether he has not turned his colour and has tears in's eyes. pray you, no more. hamlet 'tis well: i'll have thee speak out the rest soon. good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live. lord polonius my lord, i will use them according to their desert. hamlet god's bodykins, man, much better: use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. take them in. lord polonius come, sirs. hamlet follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow. [exit polonius with all the players but the first] dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of gonzago? first player ay, my lord. hamlet we'll ha't to-morrow night. you could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which i would set down and insert in't, could you not? first player ay, my lord. hamlet very well. follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [exit first player] my good friends, i'll leave you till night: you are welcome to elsinore. rosencrantz good my lord! hamlet ay, so, god be wi' ye; [exeunt rosencrantz and guildenstern] now i am alone. o, what a rogue and peasant slave am i! is it not monstrous that this player here, but in a fiction, in a dream of passion, could force his soul so to his own conceit that from her working all his visage wann'd, tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, a broken voice, and his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! for hecuba! what's hecuba to him, or he to hecuba, that he should weep for her? what would he do, had he the motive and the cue for passion that i have? he would drown the stage with tears and cleave the general ear with horrid speech, make mad the guilty and appal the free, confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed the very faculties of eyes and ears. yet i, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, like john-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, and can say nothing; no, not for a king, upon whose property and most dear life a damn'd defeat was made. am i a coward? who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face? tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat, as deep as to the lungs? who does me this? ha! 'swounds, i should take it: for it cannot be but i am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall to make oppression bitter, or ere this i should have fatted all the region kites with this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain! remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! o, vengeance! why, what an ass am i! this is most brave, that i, the son of a dear father murder'd, prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, and fall a-cursing, like a very drab, a scullion! fie upon't! foh! about, my brain! i have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play have by the very cunning of the scene been struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaim'd their malefactions; for murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ. i'll have these players play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle: i'll observe his looks; i'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench, i know my course. the spirit that i have seen may be the devil: and the devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps out of my weakness and my melancholy, as he is very potent with such spirits, abuses me to damn me: i'll have grounds more relative than this: the play 's the thing wherein i'll catch the conscience of the king. [exit] hamlet act iii scene i a room in the castle. [enter king claudius, queen gertrude, polonius, ophelia, rosencrantz, and guildenstern] king claudius and can you, by no drift of circumstance, get from him why he puts on this confusion, grating so harshly all his days of quiet with turbulent and dangerous lunacy? rosencrantz he does confess he feels himself distracted; but from what cause he will by no means speak. guildenstern nor do we find him forward to be sounded, but, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof, when we would bring him on to some confession of his true state. queen gertrude did he receive you well? rosencrantz most like a gentleman. guildenstern but with much forcing of his disposition. rosencrantz niggard of question; but, of our demands, most free in his reply. queen gertrude did you assay him? to any pastime? rosencrantz madam, it so fell out, that certain players we o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him; and there did seem in him a kind of joy to hear of it: they are about the court, and, as i think, they have already order this night to play before him. lord polonius 'tis most true: and he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties to hear and see the matter. king claudius with all my heart; and it doth much content me to hear him so inclined. good gentlemen, give him a further edge, and drive his purpose on to these delights. rosencrantz we shall, my lord. [exeunt rosencrantz and guildenstern] king claudius sweet gertrude, leave us too; for we have closely sent for hamlet hither, that he, as 'twere by accident, may here affront ophelia: her father and myself, lawful espials, will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen, we may of their encounter frankly judge, and gather by him, as he is behaved, if 't be the affliction of his love or no that thus he suffers for. queen gertrude i shall obey you. and for your part, ophelia, i do wish that your good beauties be the happy cause of hamlet's wildness: so shall i hope your virtues will bring him to his wonted way again, to both your honours. ophelia madam, i wish it may. [exit queen gertrude] lord polonius ophelia, walk you here. gracious, so please you, we will bestow ourselves. [to ophelia] read on this book; that show of such an exercise may colour your loneliness. we are oft to blame in this,- 'tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself. king claudius [aside] o, 'tis too true! how smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! the harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art, is not more ugly to the thing that helps it than is my deed to my most painted word: o heavy burthen! lord polonius i hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord. [exeunt king claudius and polonius] [enter hamlet] hamlet to be, or not to be: that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? to die: to sleep; no more; and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd. to die, to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause: there's the respect that makes calamity of so long life; for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of? thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.--soft you now! the fair ophelia! nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remember'd. ophelia good my lord, how does your honour for this many a day? hamlet i humbly thank you; well, well, well. ophelia my lord, i have remembrances of yours, that i have longed long to re-deliver; i pray you, now receive them. hamlet no, not i; i never gave you aught. ophelia my honour'd lord, you know right well you did; and, with them, words of so sweet breath composed as made the things more rich: their perfume lost, take these again; for to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. there, my lord. hamlet ha, ha! are you honest? ophelia my lord? hamlet are you fair? ophelia what means your lordship? hamlet that if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty. ophelia could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty? hamlet ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. i did love you once. ophelia indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. hamlet you should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: i loved you not. ophelia i was the more deceived. hamlet get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? i am myself indifferent honest; but yet i could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: i am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than i have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. what should such fellows as i do crawling between earth and heaven? we are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. go thy ways to a nunnery. where's your father? ophelia at home, my lord. hamlet let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. farewell. ophelia o, help him, you sweet heavens! hamlet if thou dost marry, i'll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. to a nunnery, go, and quickly too. farewell. ophelia o heavenly powers, restore him! hamlet i have heard of your paintings too, well enough; god has given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name god's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. go to, i'll no more on't; it hath made me mad. i say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. to a nunnery, go. [exit] ophelia o, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! the courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword; the expectancy and rose of the fair state, the glass of fashion and the mould of form, the observed of all observers, quite, quite down! and i, of ladies most deject and wretched, that suck'd the honey of his music vows, now see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh; that unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth blasted with ecstasy: o, woe is me, to have seen what i have seen, see what i see! [re-enter king claudius and polonius] king claudius love! his affections do not that way tend; nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, was not like madness. there's something in his soul, o'er which his melancholy sits on brood; and i do doubt the hatch and the disclose will be some danger: which for to prevent, i have in quick determination thus set it down: he shall with speed to england, for the demand of our neglected tribute haply the seas and countries different with variable objects shall expel this something-settled matter in his heart, whereon his brains still beating puts him thus from fashion of himself. what think you on't? lord polonius it shall do well: but yet do i believe the origin and commencement of his grief sprung from neglected love. how now, ophelia! you need not tell us what lord hamlet said; we heard it all. my lord, do as you please; but, if you hold it fit, after the play let his queen mother all alone entreat him to show his grief: let her be round with him; and i'll be placed, so please you, in the ear of all their conference. if she find him not, to england send him, or confine him where your wisdom best shall think. king claudius it shall be so: madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go. [exeunt] hamlet act iii scene ii a hall in the castle. [enter hamlet and players] hamlet speak the speech, i pray you, as i pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, i had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as i may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. o, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: i would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing termagant; it out-herods herod: pray you, avoid it. first player i warrant your honour. hamlet be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. o, there be players that i have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of christians nor the gait of christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that i have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. first player i hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir. hamlet o, reform it altogether. and let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. go, make you ready. [exeunt players] [enter polonius, rosencrantz, and guildenstern] how now, my lord! i will the king hear this piece of work? lord polonius and the queen too, and that presently. hamlet bid the players make haste. [exit polonius] will you two help to hasten them? rosencrantz | | we will, my lord. guildenstern | [exeunt rosencrantz and guildenstern] hamlet what ho! horatio! [enter horatio] horatio here, sweet lord, at your service. hamlet horatio, thou art e'en as just a man as e'er my conversation coped withal. horatio o, my dear lord,- hamlet nay, do not think i flatter; for what advancement may i hope from thee that no revenue hast but thy good spirits, to feed and clothe thee? why should the poor be flatter'd? no, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, and crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning. dost thou hear? since my dear soul was mistress of her choice and could of men distinguish, her election hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been as one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing, a man that fortune's buffets and rewards hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, that they are not a pipe for fortune's finger to sound what stop she please. give me that man that is not passion's slave, and i will wear him in my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, as i do thee.--something too much of this.- there is a play to-night before the king; one scene of it comes near the circumstance which i have told thee of my father's death: i prithee, when thou seest that act afoot, even with the very comment of thy soul observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt do not itself unkennel in one speech, it is a damned ghost that we have seen, and my imaginations are as foul as vulcan's stithy. give him heedful note; for i mine eyes will rivet to his face, and after we will both our judgments join in censure of his seeming. horatio well, my lord: if he steal aught the whilst this play is playing, and 'scape detecting, i will pay the theft. hamlet they are coming to the play; i must be idle: get you a place. [danish march. a flourish. enter king claudius, queen gertrude, polonius, ophelia, rosencrantz, guildenstern, and others] king claudius how fares our cousin hamlet? hamlet excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish: i eat the air, promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so. king claudius i have nothing with this answer, hamlet; these words are not mine. hamlet no, nor mine now. [to polonius] my lord, you played once i' the university, you say? lord polonius that did i, my lord; and was accounted a good actor. hamlet what did you enact? lord polonius i did enact julius caesar: i was killed i' the capitol; brutus killed me. hamlet it was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. be the players ready? rosencrantz ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience. queen gertrude come hither, my dear hamlet, sit by me. hamlet no, good mother, here's metal more attractive. lord polonius [to king claudius] o, ho! do you mark that? hamlet lady, shall i lie in your lap? [lying down at ophelia's feet] ophelia no, my lord. hamlet i mean, my head upon your lap? ophelia ay, my lord. hamlet do you think i meant country matters? ophelia i think nothing, my lord. hamlet that's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs. ophelia what is, my lord? hamlet nothing. ophelia you are merry, my lord. hamlet who, i? ophelia ay, my lord. hamlet o god, your only jig-maker. what should a man do but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours. ophelia nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord. hamlet so long? nay then, let the devil wear black, for i'll have a suit of sables. o heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year: but, by'r lady, he must build churches, then; or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is 'for, o, for, o, the hobby-horse is forgot.' [hautboys play. the dumb-show enters] [enter a king and a queen very lovingly; the queen embracing him, and he her. she kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. he takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the king's ears, and exit. the queen returns; finds the king dead, and makes passionate action. the poisoner, with some two or three mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. the dead body is carried away. the poisoner wooes the queen with gifts: she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love] [exeunt] ophelia what means this, my lord? hamlet marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief. ophelia belike this show imports the argument of the play. [enter prologue] hamlet we shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel; they'll tell all. ophelia will he tell us what this show meant? hamlet ay, or any show that you'll show him: be not you ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means. ophelia you are naught, you are naught: i'll mark the play. prologue for us, and for our tragedy, here stooping to your clemency, we beg your hearing patiently. [exit] hamlet is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring? ophelia 'tis brief, my lord. hamlet as woman's love. [enter two players, king and queen] player king full thirty times hath phoebus' cart gone round neptune's salt wash and tellus' orbed ground, and thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen about the world have times twelve thirties been, since love our hearts and hymen did our hands unite commutual in most sacred bands. player queen so many journeys may the sun and moon make us again count o'er ere love be done! but, woe is me, you are so sick of late, so far from cheer and from your former state, that i distrust you. yet, though i distrust, discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must: for women's fear and love holds quantity; in neither aught, or in extremity. now, what my love is, proof hath made you know; and as my love is sized, my fear is so: where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; where little fears grow great, great love grows there. player king 'faith, i must leave thee, love, and shortly too; my operant powers their functions leave to do: and thou shalt live in this fair world behind, honour'd, beloved; and haply one as kind for husband shalt thou- player queen o, confound the rest! such love must needs be treason in my breast: in second husband let me be accurst! none wed the second but who kill'd the first. hamlet [aside] wormwood, wormwood. player queen the instances that second marriage move are base respects of thrift, but none of love: a second time i kill my husband dead, when second husband kisses me in bed. player king i do believe you think what now you speak; but what we do determine oft we break. purpose is but the slave to memory, of violent birth, but poor validity; which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree; but fall, unshaken, when they mellow be. most necessary 'tis that we forget to pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt: what to ourselves in passion we propose, the passion ending, doth the purpose lose. the violence of either grief or joy their own enactures with themselves destroy: where joy most revels, grief doth most lament; grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident. this world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange that even our loves should with our fortunes change; for 'tis a question left us yet to prove, whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love. the great man down, you mark his favourite flies; the poor advanced makes friends of enemies. and hitherto doth love on fortune tend; for who not needs shall never lack a friend, and who in want a hollow friend doth try, directly seasons him his enemy. but, orderly to end where i begun, our wills and fates do so contrary run that our devices still are overthrown; our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own: so think thou wilt no second husband wed; but die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead. player queen nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light! sport and repose lock from me day and night! to desperation turn my trust and hope! an anchor's cheer in prison be my scope! each opposite that blanks the face of joy meet what i would have well and it destroy! both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, if, once a widow, ever i be wife! hamlet if she should break it now! player king 'tis deeply sworn. sweet, leave me here awhile; my spirits grow dull, and fain i would beguile the tedious day with sleep. [sleeps] player queen sleep rock thy brain, and never come mischance between us twain! [exit] hamlet madam, how like you this play? queen gertrude the lady protests too much, methinks. hamlet o, but she'll keep her word. king claudius have you heard the argument? is there no offence in 't? hamlet no, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i' the world. king claudius what do you call the play? hamlet the mouse-trap. marry, how? tropically. this play is the image of a murder done in vienna: gonzago is the duke's name; his wife, baptista: you shall see anon; 'tis a knavish piece of work: but what o' that? your majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not: let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung. [enter lucianus] this is one lucianus, nephew to the king. ophelia you are as good as a chorus, my lord. hamlet i could interpret between you and your love, if i could see the puppets dallying. ophelia you are keen, my lord, you are keen. hamlet it would cost you a groaning to take off my edge. ophelia still better, and worse. hamlet so you must take your husbands. begin, murderer; pox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. come: 'the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.' lucianus thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing; confederate season, else no creature seeing; thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, with hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, thy natural magic and dire property, on wholesome life usurp immediately. [pours the poison into the sleeper's ears] hamlet he poisons him i' the garden for's estate. his name's gonzago: the story is extant, and writ in choice italian: you shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of gonzago's wife. ophelia the king rises. hamlet what, frighted with false fire! queen gertrude how fares my lord? lord polonius give o'er the play. king claudius give me some light: away! all lights, lights, lights! [exeunt all but hamlet and horatio] hamlet why, let the stricken deer go weep, the hart ungalled play; for some must watch, while some must sleep: so runs the world away. would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers-if the rest of my fortunes turn turk with me--with two provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir? horatio half a share. hamlet a whole one, i. for thou dost know, o damon dear, this realm dismantled was of jove himself; and now reigns here a very, very--pajock. horatio you might have rhymed. hamlet o good horatio, i'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound. didst perceive? horatio very well, my lord. hamlet upon the talk of the poisoning? horatio i did very well note him. hamlet ah, ha! come, some music! come, the recorders! for if the king like not the comedy, why then, belike, he likes it not, perdy. come, some music! [re-enter rosencrantz and guildenstern] guildenstern good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you. hamlet sir, a whole history. guildenstern the king, sir,- hamlet ay, sir, what of him? guildenstern is in his retirement marvellous distempered. hamlet with drink, sir? guildenstern no, my lord, rather with choler. hamlet your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to his doctor; for, for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far more choler. guildenstern good my lord, put your discourse into some frame and start not so wildly from my affair. hamlet i am tame, sir: pronounce. guildenstern the queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you. hamlet you are welcome. guildenstern nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. if it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, i will do your mother's commandment: if not, your pardon and my return shall be the end of my business. hamlet sir, i cannot. guildenstern what, my lord? hamlet make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased: but, sir, such answer as i can make, you shall command; or, rather, as you say, my mother: therefore no more, but to the matter: my mother, you say,- rosencrantz then thus she says; your behavior hath struck her into amazement and admiration. hamlet o wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother! but is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration? impart. rosencrantz she desires to speak with you in her closet, ere you go to bed. hamlet we shall obey, were she ten times our mother. have you any further trade with us? rosencrantz my lord, you once did love me. hamlet so i do still, by these pickers and stealers. rosencrantz good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? you do, surely, bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to your friend. hamlet sir, i lack advancement. rosencrantz how can that be, when you have the voice of the king himself for your succession in denmark? hamlet ay, but sir, 'while the grass grows,'--the proverb is something musty. [re-enter players with recorders] o, the recorders! let me see one. to withdraw with you:--why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil? guildenstern o, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly. hamlet i do not well understand that. will you play upon this pipe? guildenstern my lord, i cannot. hamlet i pray you. guildenstern believe me, i cannot. hamlet i do beseech you. guildenstern i know no touch of it, my lord. hamlet 'tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your lingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. look you, these are the stops. guildenstern but these cannot i command to any utterance of harmony; i have not the skill. hamlet why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! you would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass: and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'sblood, do you think i am easier to be played on than a pipe? call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me. [enter polonius] god bless you, sir! lord polonius my lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently. hamlet do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? lord polonius by the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. hamlet methinks it is like a weasel. lord polonius it is backed like a weasel. hamlet or like a whale? lord polonius very like a whale. hamlet then i will come to my mother by and by. they fool me to the top of my bent. i will come by and by. lord polonius i will say so. hamlet by and by is easily said. [exit polonius] leave me, friends. [exeunt all but hamlet] tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world: now could i drink hot blood, and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on. soft! now to my mother. o heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever the soul of nero enter this firm bosom: let me be cruel, not unnatural: i will speak daggers to her, but use none; my tongue and soul in this be hypocrites; how in my words soever she be shent, to give them seals never, my soul, consent! [exit] hamlet act iii scene iii a room in the castle. [enter king claudius, rosencrantz, and guildenstern] king claudius i like him not, nor stands it safe with us to let his madness range. therefore prepare you; i your commission will forthwith dispatch, and he to england shall along with you: the terms of our estate may not endure hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow out of his lunacies. guildenstern we will ourselves provide: most holy and religious fear it is to keep those many many bodies safe that live and feed upon your majesty. rosencrantz the single and peculiar life is bound, with all the strength and armour of the mind, to keep itself from noyance; but much more that spirit upon whose weal depend and rest the lives of many. the cease of majesty dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw what's near it with it: it is a massy wheel, fix'd on the summit of the highest mount, to whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things are mortised and adjoin'd; which, when it falls, each small annexment, petty consequence, attends the boisterous ruin. never alone did the king sigh, but with a general groan. king claudius arm you, i pray you, to this speedy voyage; for we will fetters put upon this fear, which now goes too free-footed. rosencrantz | | we will haste us. guildenstern | [exeunt rosencrantz and guildenstern] [enter polonius] lord polonius my lord, he's going to his mother's closet: behind the arras i'll convey myself, to hear the process; and warrant she'll tax him home: and, as you said, and wisely was it said, 'tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear the speech, of vantage. fare you well, my liege: i'll call upon you ere you go to bed, and tell you what i know. king claudius thanks, dear my lord. [exit polonius] o, my offence is rank it smells to heaven; it hath the primal eldest curse upon't, a brother's murder. pray can i not, though inclination be as sharp as will: my stronger guilt defeats my strong intent; and, like a man to double business bound, i stand in pause where i shall first begin, and both neglect. what if this cursed hand were thicker than itself with brother's blood, is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow? whereto serves mercy but to confront the visage of offence? and what's in prayer but this two-fold force, to be forestalled ere we come to fall, or pardon'd being down? then i'll look up; my fault is past. but, o, what form of prayer can serve my turn? 'forgive me my foul murder'? that cannot be; since i am still possess'd of those effects for which i did the murder, my crown, mine own ambition and my queen. may one be pardon'd and retain the offence? in the corrupted currents of this world offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, and oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself buys out the law: but 'tis not so above; there is no shuffling, there the action lies in his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd, even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, to give in evidence. what then? what rests? try what repentance can: what can it not? yet what can it when one can not repent? o wretched state! o bosom black as death! o limed soul, that, struggling to be free, art more engaged! help, angels! make assay! bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the newborn babe! all may be well. [retires and kneels] [enter hamlet] hamlet now might i do it pat, now he is praying; and now i'll do't. and so he goes to heaven; and so am i revenged. that would be scann'd: a villain kills my father; and for that, i, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven. o, this is hire and salary, not revenge. he took my father grossly, full of bread; with all his crimes broad blown, as flush as may; and how his audit stands who knows save heaven? but in our circumstance and course of thought, 'tis heavy with him: and am i then revenged, to take him in the purging of his soul, when he is fit and season'd for his passage? no! up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent: when he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed; at gaming, swearing, or about some act that has no relish of salvation in't; then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, and that his soul may be as damn'd and black as hell, whereto it goes. my mother stays: this physic but prolongs thy sickly days. [exit] king claudius [rising] my words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words without thoughts never to heaven go. [exit] hamlet act iii scene iv the queen's closet. [enter queen margaret and polonius] lord polonius he will come straight. look you lay home to him: tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, and that your grace hath screen'd and stood between much heat and him. i'll sconce me even here. pray you, be round with him. hamlet [within] mother, mother, mother! queen gertrude i'll warrant you, fear me not: withdraw, i hear him coming. [polonius hides behind the arras] [enter hamlet] hamlet now, mother, what's the matter? queen gertrude hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. hamlet mother, you have my father much offended. queen gertrude come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. hamlet go, go, you question with a wicked tongue. queen gertrude why, how now, hamlet! hamlet what's the matter now? queen gertrude have you forgot me? hamlet no, by the rood, not so: you are the queen, your husband's brother's wife; and--would it were not so!--you are my mother. queen gertrude nay, then, i'll set those to you that can speak. hamlet come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge; you go not till i set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you. queen gertrude what wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me? help, help, ho! lord polonius [behind] what, ho! help, help, help! hamlet [drawing] how now! a rat? dead, for a ducat, dead! [makes a pass through the arras] lord polonius [behind] o, i am slain! [falls and dies] queen gertrude o me, what hast thou done? hamlet nay, i know not: is it the king? queen gertrude o, what a rash and bloody deed is this! hamlet a bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother, as kill a king, and marry with his brother. queen gertrude as kill a king! hamlet ay, lady, 'twas my word. [lifts up the array and discovers polonius] thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! i took thee for thy better: take thy fortune; thou find'st to be too busy is some danger. leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down, and let me wring your heart; for so i shall, if it be made of penetrable stuff, if damned custom have not brass'd it so that it is proof and bulwark against sense. queen gertrude what have i done, that thou darest wag thy tongue in noise so rude against me? hamlet such an act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty, calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose from the fair forehead of an innocent love and sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows as false as dicers' oaths: o, such a deed as from the body of contraction plucks the very soul, and sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow: yea, this solidity and compound mass, with tristful visage, as against the doom, is thought-sick at the act. queen gertrude ay me, what act, that roars so loud, and thunders in the index? hamlet look here, upon this picture, and on this, the counterfeit presentment of two brothers. see, what a grace was seated on this brow; hyperion's curls; the front of jove himself; an eye like mars, to threaten and command; a station like the herald mercury new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; a combination and a form indeed, where every god did seem to set his seal, to give the world assurance of a man: this was your husband. look you now, what follows: here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear, blasting his wholesome brother. have you eyes? could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, and batten on this moor? ha! have you eyes? you cannot call it love; for at your age the hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, and waits upon the judgment: and what judgment would step from this to this? sense, sure, you have, else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense is apoplex'd; for madness would not err, nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd but it reserved some quantity of choice, to serve in such a difference. what devil was't that thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind? eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, or but a sickly part of one true sense could not so mope. o shame! where is thy blush? rebellious hell, if thou canst mutine in a matron's bones, to flaming youth let virtue be as wax, and melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame when the compulsive ardour gives the charge, since frost itself as actively doth burn and reason panders will. queen gertrude o hamlet, speak no more: thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul; and there i see such black and grained spots as will not leave their tinct. hamlet nay, but to live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty,- queen gertrude o, speak to me no more; these words, like daggers, enter in mine ears; no more, sweet hamlet! hamlet a murderer and a villain; a slave that is not twentieth part the tithe of your precedent lord; a vice of kings; a cutpurse of the empire and the rule, that from a shelf the precious diadem stole, and put it in his pocket! queen gertrude no more! hamlet a king of shreds and patches,- [enter ghost] save me, and hover o'er me with your wings, you heavenly guards! what would your gracious figure? queen gertrude alas, he's mad! hamlet do you not come your tardy son to chide, that, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by the important acting of your dread command? o, say! ghost do not forget: this visitation is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. but, look, amazement on thy mother sits: o, step between her and her fighting soul: conceit in weakest bodies strongest works: speak to her, hamlet. hamlet how is it with you, lady? queen gertrude alas, how is't with you, that you do bend your eye on vacancy and with the incorporal air do hold discourse? forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep; and, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, your bedded hair, like life in excrements, starts up, and stands on end. o gentle son, upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience. whereon do you look? hamlet on him, on him! look you, how pale he glares! his form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, would make them capable. do not look upon me; lest with this piteous action you convert my stern effects: then what i have to do will want true colour; tears perchance for blood. queen gertrude to whom do you speak this? hamlet do you see nothing there? queen gertrude nothing at all; yet all that is i see. hamlet nor did you nothing hear? queen gertrude no, nothing but ourselves. hamlet why, look you there! look, how it steals away! my father, in his habit as he lived! look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal! [exit ghost] queen gertrude this the very coinage of your brain: this bodiless creation ecstasy is very cunning in. hamlet ecstasy! my pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, and makes as healthful music: it is not madness that i have utter'd: bring me to the test, and i the matter will re-word; which madness would gambol from. mother, for love of grace, lay not that mattering unction to your soul, that not your trespass, but my madness speaks: it will but skin and film the ulcerous place, whilst rank corruption, mining all within, infects unseen. confess yourself to heaven; repent what's past; avoid what is to come; and do not spread the compost on the weeds, to make them ranker. forgive me this my virtue; for in the fatness of these pursy times virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good. queen gertrude o hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain. hamlet o, throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer with the other half. good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed; assume a virtue, if you have it not. that monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, of habits devil, is angel yet in this, that to the use of actions fair and good he likewise gives a frock or livery, that aptly is put on. refrain to-night, and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence: the next more easy; for use almost can change the stamp of nature, and either [ ] the devil, or throw him out with wondrous potency. once more, good night: and when you are desirous to be bless'd, i'll blessing beg of you. for this same lord, [pointing to polonius] i do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, to punish me with this and this with me, that i must be their scourge and minister. i will bestow him, and will answer well the death i gave him. so, again, good night. i must be cruel, only to be kind: thus bad begins and worse remains behind. one word more, good lady. queen gertrude what shall i do? hamlet not this, by no means, that i bid you do: let the bloat king tempt you again to bed; pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse; and let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers, make you to ravel all this matter out, that i essentially am not in madness, but mad in craft. 'twere good you let him know; for who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise, would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib, such dear concernings hide? who would do so? no, in despite of sense and secrecy, unpeg the basket on the house's top. let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape, to try conclusions, in the basket creep, and break your own neck down. queen gertrude be thou assured, if words be made of breath, and breath of life, i have no life to breathe what thou hast said to me. hamlet i must to england; you know that? queen gertrude alack, i had forgot: 'tis so concluded on. hamlet there's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows, whom i will trust as i will adders fang'd, they bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, and marshal me to knavery. let it work; for 'tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard but i will delve one yard below their mines, and blow them at the moon: o, 'tis most sweet, when in one line two crafts directly meet. this man shall set me packing: i'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. mother, good night. indeed this counsellor is now most still, most secret and most grave, who was in life a foolish prating knave. come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. good night, mother. [exeunt severally; hamlet dragging in polonius] hamlet act iv scene i a room in the castle. [enter king claudius, queen gertrude, rosencrantz, and guildenstern] king claudius there's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves: you must translate: 'tis fit we understand them. where is your son? queen gertrude bestow this place on us a little while. [exeunt rosencrantz and guildenstern] ah, my good lord, what have i seen to-night! king claudius what, gertrude? how does hamlet? queen gertrude mad as the sea and wind, when both contend which is the mightier: in his lawless fit, behind the arras hearing something stir, whips out his rapier, cries, 'a rat, a rat!' and, in this brainish apprehension, kills the unseen good old man. king claudius o heavy deed! it had been so with us, had we been there: his liberty is full of threats to all; to you yourself, to us, to every one. alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd? it will be laid to us, whose providence should have kept short, restrain'd and out of haunt, this mad young man: but so much was our love, we would not understand what was most fit; but, like the owner of a foul disease, to keep it from divulging, let it feed even on the pith of life. where is he gone? queen gertrude to draw apart the body he hath kill'd: o'er whom his very madness, like some ore among a mineral of metals base, shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done. king claudius o gertrude, come away! the sun no sooner shall the mountains touch, but we will ship him hence: and this vile deed we must, with all our majesty and skill, both countenance and excuse. ho, guildenstern! [re-enter rosencrantz and guildenstern] friends both, go join you with some further aid: hamlet in madness hath polonius slain, and from his mother's closet hath he dragg'd him: go seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body into the chapel. i pray you, haste in this. [exeunt rosencrantz and guildenstern] come, gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends; and let them know, both what we mean to do, and what's untimely done [ ] whose whisper o'er the world's diameter, as level as the cannon to his blank, transports his poison'd shot, may miss our name, and hit the woundless air. o, come away! my soul is full of discord and dismay. [exeunt] hamlet act iv scene ii another room in the castle. [enter hamlet] hamlet safely stowed. rosencrantz: | | [within] hamlet! lord hamlet! guildenstern: | hamlet what noise? who calls on hamlet? o, here they come. [enter rosencrantz and guildenstern] rosencrantz what have you done, my lord, with the dead body? hamlet compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin. rosencrantz tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence and bear it to the chapel. hamlet do not believe it. rosencrantz believe what? hamlet that i can keep your counsel and not mine own. besides, to be demanded of a sponge! what replication should be made by the son of a king? rosencrantz take you me for a sponge, my lord? hamlet ay, sir, that soaks up the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities. but such officers do the king best service in the end: he keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed: when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again. rosencrantz i understand you not, my lord. hamlet i am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear. rosencrantz my lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king. hamlet the body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. the king is a thing- guildenstern a thing, my lord! hamlet of nothing: bring me to him. hide fox, and all after. [exeunt] hamlet act iv scene iii another room in the castle. [enter king claudius, attended] king claudius i have sent to seek him, and to find the body. how dangerous is it that this man goes loose! yet must not we put the strong law on him: he's loved of the distracted multitude, who like not in their judgment, but their eyes; and where tis so, the offender's scourge is weigh'd, but never the offence. to bear all smooth and even, this sudden sending him away must seem deliberate pause: diseases desperate grown by desperate appliance are relieved, or not at all. [enter rosencrantz] how now! what hath befall'n? rosencrantz where the dead body is bestow'd, my lord, we cannot get from him. king claudius but where is he? rosencrantz without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure. king claudius bring him before us. rosencrantz ho, guildenstern! bring in my lord. [enter hamlet and guildenstern] king claudius now, hamlet, where's polonius? hamlet at supper. king claudius at supper! where? hamlet not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end. king claudius alas, alas! hamlet a man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and cat of the fish that hath fed of that worm. king claudius what dost you mean by this? hamlet nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar. king claudius where is polonius? hamlet in heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself. but indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby. king claudius go seek him there. [to some attendants] hamlet he will stay till ye come. [exeunt attendants] king claudius hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,- which we do tender, as we dearly grieve for that which thou hast done,--must send thee hence with fiery quickness: therefore prepare thyself; the bark is ready, and the wind at help, the associates tend, and every thing is bent for england. hamlet for england! king claudius ay, hamlet. hamlet good. king claudius so is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. hamlet i see a cherub that sees them. but, come; for england! farewell, dear mother. king claudius thy loving father, hamlet. hamlet my mother: father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. come, for england! [exit] king claudius follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard; delay it not; i'll have him hence to-night: away! for every thing is seal'd and done that else leans on the affair: pray you, make haste. [exeunt rosencrantz and guildenstern] and, england, if my love thou hold'st at aught- as my great power thereof may give thee sense, since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red after the danish sword, and thy free awe pays homage to us--thou mayst not coldly set our sovereign process; which imports at full, by letters congruing to that effect, the present death of hamlet. do it, england; for like the hectic in my blood he rages, and thou must cure me: till i know 'tis done, howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun. [exit] hamlet act iv scene iv a plain in denmark. [enter fortinbras, a captain, and soldiers, marching] prince fortinbras go, captain, from me greet the danish king; tell him that, by his licence, fortinbras craves the conveyance of a promised march over his kingdom. you know the rendezvous. if that his majesty would aught with us, we shall express our duty in his eye; and let him know so. captain i will do't, my lord. prince fortinbras go softly on. [exeunt fortinbras and soldiers] [enter hamlet, rosencrantz, guildenstern, and others] hamlet good sir, whose powers are these? captain they are of norway, sir. hamlet how purposed, sir, i pray you? captain against some part of poland. hamlet who commands them, sir? captain the nephews to old norway, fortinbras. hamlet goes it against the main of poland, sir, or for some frontier? captain truly to speak, and with no addition, we go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name. to pay five ducats, five, i would not farm it; nor will it yield to norway or the pole a ranker rate, should it be sold in fee. hamlet why, then the polack never will defend it. captain yes, it is already garrison'd. hamlet two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats will not debate the question of this straw: this is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, that inward breaks, and shows no cause without why the man dies. i humbly thank you, sir. captain god be wi' you, sir. [exit] rosencrantz wilt please you go, my lord? hamlet i'll be with you straight go a little before. [exeunt all except hamlet] how all occasions do inform against me, and spur my dull revenge! what is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused. now, whether it be bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on the event, a thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward, i do not know why yet i live to say 'this thing's to do;' sith i have cause and will and strength and means to do't. examples gross as earth exhort me: witness this army of such mass and charge led by a delicate and tender prince, whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd makes mouths at the invisible event, exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an egg-shell. rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument, but greatly to find quarrel in a straw when honour's at the stake. how stand i then, that have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, excitements of my reason and my blood, and let all sleep? while, to my shame, i see the imminent death of twenty thousand men, that, for a fantasy and trick of fame, go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, which is not tomb enough and continent to hide the slain? o, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! [exit] hamlet act iv scene v elsinore. a room in the castle. [enter queen gertrude, horatio, and a gentleman] queen gertrude i will not speak with her. gentleman she is importunate, indeed distract: her mood will needs be pitied. queen gertrude what would she have? gentleman she speaks much of her father; says she hears there's tricks i' the world; and hems, and beats her heart; spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt, that carry but half sense: her speech is nothing, yet the unshaped use of it doth move the hearers to collection; they aim at it, and botch the words up fit to their own thoughts; which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them, indeed would make one think there might be thought, though nothing sure, yet much unhappily. horatio 'twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds. queen gertrude let her come in. [exit horatio] to my sick soul, as sin's true nature is, each toy seems prologue to some great amiss: so full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt. [re-enter horatio, with ophelia] ophelia where is the beauteous majesty of denmark? queen gertrude how now, ophelia! ophelia [sings] how should i your true love know from another one? by his cockle hat and staff, and his sandal shoon. queen gertrude alas, sweet lady, what imports this song? ophelia say you? nay, pray you, mark. [sings] he is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone; at his head a grass-green turf, at his heels a stone. queen gertrude nay, but, ophelia,- ophelia pray you, mark. [sings] white his shroud as the mountain snow,- [enter king claudius] queen gertrude alas, look here, my lord. ophelia [sings] larded with sweet flowers which bewept to the grave did go with true-love showers. king claudius how do you, pretty lady? ophelia well, god 'ild you! they say the owl was a baker's daughter. lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. god be at your table! king claudius conceit upon her father. ophelia pray you, let's have no words of this; but when they ask you what it means, say you this: [sings] to-morrow is saint valentine's day, all in the morning betime, and i a maid at your window, to be your valentine. then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes, and dupp'd the chamber-door; let in the maid, that out a maid never departed more. king claudius pretty ophelia! ophelia indeed, la, without an oath, i'll make an end on't: [sings] by gis and by saint charity, alack, and fie for shame! young men will do't, if they come to't; by cock, they are to blame. quoth she, before you tumbled me, you promised me to wed. so would i ha' done, by yonder sun, an thou hadst not come to my bed. king claudius how long hath she been thus? ophelia i hope all will be well. we must be patient: but i cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him i' the cold ground. my brother shall know of it: and so i thank you for your good counsel. come, my coach! good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night. [exit] king claudius follow her close; give her good watch, i pray you. [exit horatio] o, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs all from her father's death. o gertrude, gertrude, when sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions. first, her father slain: next, your son gone; and he most violent author of his own just remove: the people muddied, thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers, for good polonius' death; and we have done but greenly, in hugger-mugger to inter him: poor ophelia divided from herself and her fair judgment, without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts: last, and as much containing as all these, her brother is in secret come from france; feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds, and wants not buzzers to infect his ear with pestilent speeches of his father's death; wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd, will nothing stick our person to arraign in ear and ear. o my dear gertrude, this, like to a murdering-piece, in many places gives me superfluous death. [a noise within] queen gertrude alack, what noise is this? king claudius where are my switzers? let them guard the door. [enter another gentleman] what is the matter? gentleman save yourself, my lord: the ocean, overpeering of his list, eats not the flats with more impetuous haste than young laertes, in a riotous head, o'erbears your officers. the rabble call him lord; and, as the world were now but to begin, antiquity forgot, custom not known, the ratifiers and props of every word, they cry 'choose we: laertes shall be king:' caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds: 'laertes shall be king, laertes king!' queen gertrude how cheerfully on the false trail they cry! o, this is counter, you false danish dogs! king claudius the doors are broke. [noise within] [enter laertes, armed; danes following] laertes where is this king? sirs, stand you all without. danes no, let's come in. laertes i pray you, give me leave. danes we will, we will. [they retire without the door] laertes i thank you: keep the door. o thou vile king, give me my father! queen gertrude calmly, good laertes. laertes that drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard, cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow of my true mother. king claudius what is the cause, laertes, that thy rebellion looks so giant-like? let him go, gertrude; do not fear our person: there's such divinity doth hedge a king, that treason can but peep to what it would, acts little of his will. tell me, laertes, why thou art thus incensed. let him go, gertrude. speak, man. laertes where is my father? king claudius dead. queen gertrude but not by him. king claudius let him demand his fill. laertes how came he dead? i'll not be juggled with: to hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil! conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit! i dare damnation. to this point i stand, that both the worlds i give to negligence, let come what comes; only i'll be revenged most thoroughly for my father. king claudius who shall stay you? laertes my will, not all the world: and for my means, i'll husband them so well, they shall go far with little. king claudius good laertes, if you desire to know the certainty of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge, that, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe, winner and loser? laertes none but his enemies. king claudius will you know them then? laertes to his good friends thus wide i'll ope my arms; and like the kind life-rendering pelican, repast them with my blood. king claudius why, now you speak like a good child and a true gentleman. that i am guiltless of your father's death, and am most sensible in grief for it, it shall as level to your judgment pierce as day does to your eye. danes [within] let her come in. laertes how now! what noise is that? [re-enter ophelia] o heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt, burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye! by heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight, till our scale turn the beam. o rose of may! dear maid, kind sister, sweet ophelia! o heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits should be as moral as an old man's life? nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine, it sends some precious instance of itself after the thing it loves. ophelia [sings] they bore him barefaced on the bier; hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny; and in his grave rain'd many a tear:- fare you well, my dove! laertes hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, it could not move thus. ophelia [sings] you must sing a-down a-down, an you call him a-down-a. o, how the wheel becomes it! it is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter. laertes this nothing's more than matter. ophelia there's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts. laertes a document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted. ophelia there's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue for you; and here's some for me: we may call it herb-grace o' sundays: o you must wear your rue with a difference. there's a daisy: i would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died: they say he made a good end,- [sings] for bonny sweet robin is all my joy. laertes thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, she turns to favour and to prettiness. ophelia [sings] and will he not come again? and will he not come again? no, no, he is dead: go to thy death-bed: he never will come again. his beard was as white as snow, all flaxen was his poll: he is gone, he is gone, and we cast away moan: god ha' mercy on his soul! and of all christian souls, i pray god. god be wi' ye. [exit] laertes do you see this, o god? king claudius laertes, i must commune with your grief, or you deny me right. go but apart, make choice of whom your wisest friends you will. and they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me: if by direct or by collateral hand they find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give, our crown, our life, and all that we can ours, to you in satisfaction; but if not, be you content to lend your patience to us, and we shall jointly labour with your soul to give it due content. laertes let this be so; his means of death, his obscure funeral- no trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones, no noble rite nor formal ostentation- cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth, that i must call't in question. king claudius so you shall; and where the offence is let the great axe fall. i pray you, go with me. [exeunt] hamlet act iv scene vi another room in the castle. [enter horatio and a servant] horatio what are they that would speak with me? servant sailors, sir: they say they have letters for you. horatio let them come in. [exit servant] i do not know from what part of the world i should be greeted, if not from lord hamlet. [enter sailors] first sailor god bless you, sir. horatio let him bless thee too. first sailor he shall, sir, an't please him. there's a letter for you, sir; it comes from the ambassador that was bound for england; if your name be horatio, as i am let to know it is. horatio [reads] 'horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked this, give these fellows some means to the king: they have letters for him. ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase. finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and in the grapple i boarded them: on the instant they got clear of our ship; so i alone became their prisoner. they have dealt with me like thieves of mercy: but they knew what they did; i am to do a good turn for them. let the king have the letters i have sent; and repair thou to me with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death. i have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. these good fellows will bring thee where i am. rosencrantz and guildenstern hold their course for england: of them i have much to tell thee. farewell. 'he that thou knowest thine, hamlet.' come, i will make you way for these your letters; and do't the speedier, that you may direct me to him from whom you brought them. [exeunt] hamlet act iv scene vii another room in the castle. [enter king claudius and laertes] king claudius now must your conscience my acquaintance seal, and you must put me in your heart for friend, sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear, that he which hath your noble father slain pursued my life. laertes it well appears: but tell me why you proceeded not against these feats, so crimeful and so capital in nature, as by your safety, wisdom, all things else, you mainly were stirr'd up. king claudius o, for two special reasons; which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew'd, but yet to me they are strong. the queen his mother lives almost by his looks; and for myself- my virtue or my plague, be it either which- she's so conjunctive to my life and soul, that, as the star moves not but in his sphere, i could not but by her. the other motive, why to a public count i might not go, is the great love the general gender bear him; who, dipping all his faults in their affection, would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone, convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows, too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind, would have reverted to my bow again, and not where i had aim'd them. laertes and so have i a noble father lost; a sister driven into desperate terms, whose worth, if praises may go back again, stood challenger on mount of all the age for her perfections: but my revenge will come. king claudius break not your sleeps for that: you must not think that we are made of stuff so flat and dull that we can let our beard be shook with danger and think it pastime. you shortly shall hear more: i loved your father, and we love ourself; and that, i hope, will teach you to imagine- [enter a messenger] how now! what news? messenger letters, my lord, from hamlet: this to your majesty; this to the queen. king claudius from hamlet! who brought them? messenger sailors, my lord, they say; i saw them not: they were given me by claudio; he received them of him that brought them. king claudius laertes, you shall hear them. leave us. [exit messenger] [reads] 'high and mighty, you shall know i am set naked on your kingdom. to-morrow shall i beg leave to see your kingly eyes: when i shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of my sudden and more strange return. 'hamlet.' what should this mean? are all the rest come back? or is it some abuse, and no such thing? laertes know you the hand? king claudius 'tis hamlets character. 'naked! and in a postscript here, he says 'alone.' can you advise me? laertes i'm lost in it, my lord. but let him come; it warms the very sickness in my heart, that i shall live and tell him to his teeth, 'thus didest thou.' king claudius if it be so, laertes- as how should it be so? how otherwise?- will you be ruled by me? laertes ay, my lord; so you will not o'errule me to a peace. king claudius to thine own peace. if he be now return'd, as checking at his voyage, and that he means no more to undertake it, i will work him to an exploit, now ripe in my device, under the which he shall not choose but fall: and for his death no wind of blame shall breathe, but even his mother shall uncharge the practise and call it accident. laertes my lord, i will be ruled; the rather, if you could devise it so that i might be the organ. king claudius it falls right. you have been talk'd of since your travel much, and that in hamlet's hearing, for a quality wherein, they say, you shine: your sum of parts did not together pluck such envy from him as did that one, and that, in my regard, of the unworthiest siege. laertes what part is that, my lord? king claudius a very riband in the cap of youth, yet needful too; for youth no less becomes the light and careless livery that it wears than settled age his sables and his weeds, importing health and graveness. two months since, here was a gentleman of normandy:- i've seen myself, and served against, the french, and they can well on horseback: but this gallant had witchcraft in't; he grew unto his seat; and to such wondrous doing brought his horse, as he had been incorpsed and demi-natured with the brave beast: so far he topp'd my thought, that i, in forgery of shapes and tricks, come short of what he did. laertes a norman was't? king claudius a norman. laertes upon my life, lamond. king claudius the very same. laertes i know him well: he is the brooch indeed and gem of all the nation. king claudius he made confession of you, and gave you such a masterly report for art and exercise in your defence and for your rapier most especially, that he cried out, 'twould be a sight indeed, if one could match you: the scrimers of their nation, he swore, had had neither motion, guard, nor eye, if you opposed them. sir, this report of his did hamlet so envenom with his envy that he could nothing do but wish and beg your sudden coming o'er, to play with him. now, out of this,- laertes what out of this, my lord? king claudius laertes, was your father dear to you? or are you like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart? laertes why ask you this? king claudius not that i think you did not love your father; but that i know love is begun by time; and that i see, in passages of proof, time qualifies the spark and fire of it. there lives within the very flame of love a kind of wick or snuff that will abate it; and nothing is at a like goodness still; for goodness, growing to a plurisy, dies in his own too much: that we would do we should do when we would; for this 'would' changes and hath abatements and delays as many as there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; and then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh, that hurts by easing. but, to the quick o' the ulcer:- hamlet comes back: what would you undertake, to show yourself your father's son in deed more than in words? laertes to cut his throat i' the church. king claudius no place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; revenge should have no bounds. but, good laertes, will you do this, keep close within your chamber. hamlet return'd shall know you are come home: we'll put on those shall praise your excellence and set a double varnish on the fame the frenchman gave you, bring you in fine together and wager on your heads: he, being remiss, most generous and free from all contriving, will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease, or with a little shuffling, you may choose a sword unbated, and in a pass of practise requite him for your father. laertes i will do't: and, for that purpose, i'll anoint my sword. i bought an unction of a mountebank, so mortal that, but dip a knife in it, where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, collected from all simples that have virtue under the moon, can save the thing from death that is but scratch'd withal: i'll touch my point with this contagion, that, if i gall him slightly, it may be death. king claudius let's further think of this; weigh what convenience both of time and means may fit us to our shape: if this should fail, and that our drift look through our bad performance, 'twere better not assay'd: therefore this project should have a back or second, that might hold, if this should blast in proof. soft! let me see: we'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings: i ha't. when in your motion you are hot and dry- as make your bouts more violent to that end- and that he calls for drink, i'll have prepared him a chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping, if he by chance escape your venom'd stuck, our purpose may hold there. [enter queen gertrude] how now, sweet queen! queen gertrude one woe doth tread upon another's heel, so fast they follow; your sister's drown'd, laertes. laertes drown'd! o, where? queen gertrude there is a willow grows aslant a brook, that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; there with fantastic garlands did she come of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples that liberal shepherds give a grosser name, but our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them: there, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; when down her weedy trophies and herself fell in the weeping brook. her clothes spread wide; and, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up: which time she chanted snatches of old tunes; as one incapable of her own distress, or like a creature native and indued unto that element: but long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink, pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death. laertes alas, then, she is drown'd? queen gertrude drown'd, drown'd. laertes too much of water hast thou, poor ophelia, and therefore i forbid my tears: but yet it is our trick; nature her custom holds, let shame say what it will: when these are gone, the woman will be out. adieu, my lord: i have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze, but that this folly douts it. [exit] king claudius let's follow, gertrude: how much i had to do to calm his rage! now fear i this will give it start again; therefore let's follow. [exeunt] hamlet act v scene i a churchyard. [enter two clowns, with spades, &c] first clown is she to be buried in christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation? second clown i tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it christian burial. first clown how can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence? second clown why, 'tis found so. first clown it must be 'se offendendo;' it cannot be else. for here lies the point: if i drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an act hath three branches: it is, to act, to do, to perform: argal, she drowned herself wittingly. second clown nay, but hear you, goodman delver,- first clown give me leave. here lies the water; good: here stands the man; good; if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,--mark you that; but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life. second clown but is this law? first clown ay, marry, is't; crowner's quest law. second clown will you ha' the truth on't? if this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o' christian burial. first clown why, there thou say'st: and the more pity that great folk should have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves, more than their even christian. come, my spade. there is no ancient gentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers: they hold up adam's profession. second clown was he a gentleman? first clown he was the first that ever bore arms. second clown why, he had none. first clown what, art a heathen? how dost thou understand the scripture? the scripture says 'adam digged:' could he dig without arms? i'll put another question to thee: if thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself- second clown go to. first clown what is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter? second clown the gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants. first clown i like thy wit well, in good faith: the gallows does well; but how does it well? it does well to those that do in: now thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the church: argal, the gallows may do well to thee. to't again, come. second clown 'who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?' first clown ay, tell me that, and unyoke. second clown marry, now i can tell. first clown to't. second clown mass, i cannot tell. [enter hamlet and horatio, at a distance] first clown cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating; and, when you are asked this question next, say 'a grave-maker: 'the houses that he makes last till doomsday. go, get thee to yaughan: fetch me a stoup of liquor. [exit second clown] [he digs and sings] in youth, when i did love, did love, methought it was very sweet, to contract, o, the time, for, ah, my behove, o, methought, there was nothing meet. hamlet has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making? horatio custom hath made it in him a property of easiness. hamlet 'tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense. first clown [sings] but age, with his stealing steps, hath claw'd me in his clutch, and hath shipped me intil the land, as if i had never been such. [throws up a skull] hamlet that skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder! it might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'er-reaches; one that would circumvent god, might it not? horatio it might, my lord. hamlet or of a courtier; which could say 'good morrow, sweet lord! how dost thou, good lord?' this might be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not? horatio ay, my lord. hamlet why, e'en so: and now my lady worm's; chapless, and knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade: here's fine revolution, an we had the trick to see't. did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with 'em? mine ache to think on't. first clown: [sings] a pick-axe, and a spade, a spade, for and a shrouding sheet: o, a pit of clay for to be made for such a guest is meet. [throws up another skull] hamlet there's another: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? hum! this fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? the very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha? horatio not a jot more, my lord. hamlet is not parchment made of sheepskins? horatio ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too. hamlet they are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. i will speak to this fellow. whose grave's this, sirrah? first clown mine, sir. [sings] o, a pit of clay for to be made for such a guest is meet. hamlet i think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in't. first clown you lie out on't, sir, and therefore it is not yours: for my part, i do not lie in't, and yet it is mine. hamlet 'thou dost lie in't, to be in't and say it is thine: 'tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest. first clown 'tis a quick lie, sir; 'twill away gain, from me to you. hamlet what man dost thou dig it for? first clown for no man, sir. hamlet what woman, then? first clown for none, neither. hamlet who is to be buried in't? first clown one that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she's dead. hamlet how absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. by the lord, horatio, these three years i have taken a note of it; the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he gaffs his kibe. how long hast thou been a grave-maker? first clown of all the days i' the year, i came to't that day that our last king hamlet overcame fortinbras. hamlet how long is that since? first clown cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it was the very day that young hamlet was born; he that is mad, and sent into england. hamlet ay, marry, why was he sent into england? first clown why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or, if he do not, it's no great matter there. hamlet why? first clown 'twill, a not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he. hamlet how came he mad? first clown very strangely, they say. hamlet how strangely? first clown faith, e'en with losing his wits. hamlet upon what ground? first clown why, here in denmark: i have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years. hamlet how long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot? first clown i' faith, if he be not rotten before he die--as we have many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce hold the laying in--he will last you some eight year or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year. hamlet why he more than another? first clown why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade, that he will keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. here's a skull now; this skull has lain in the earth three and twenty years. hamlet whose was it? first clown a whoreson mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was? hamlet nay, i know not. first clown a pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a' poured a flagon of rhenish on my head once. this same skull, sir, was yorick's skull, the king's jester. hamlet this? first clown e'en that. hamlet let me see. [takes the skull] alas, poor yorick! i knew him, horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. here hung those lips that i have kissed i know not how oft. where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that. prithee, horatio, tell me one thing. horatio what's that, my lord? hamlet dost thou think alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth? horatio e'en so. hamlet and smelt so? pah! [puts down the skull] horatio e'en so, my lord. hamlet to what base uses we may return, horatio! why may not imagination trace the noble dust of alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole? horatio 'twere to consider too curiously, to consider so. hamlet no, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus: alexander died, alexander was buried, alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? imperious caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away: o, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw! but soft! but soft! aside: here comes the king. [enter priest, &c. in procession; the corpse of ophelia, laertes and mourners following; king claudius, queen gertrude, their trains, &c] the queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow? and with such maimed rites? this doth betoken the corse they follow did with desperate hand fordo its own life: 'twas of some estate. couch we awhile, and mark. [retiring with horatio] laertes what ceremony else? hamlet that is laertes, a very noble youth: mark. laertes what ceremony else? first priest her obsequies have been as far enlarged as we have warrantise: her death was doubtful; and, but that great command o'ersways the order, she should in ground unsanctified have lodged till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers, shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her; yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants, her maiden strewments and the bringing home of bell and burial. laertes must there no more be done? first priest no more be done: we should profane the service of the dead to sing a requiem and such rest to her as to peace-parted souls. laertes lay her i' the earth: and from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring! i tell thee, churlish priest, a ministering angel shall my sister be, when thou liest howling. hamlet what, the fair ophelia! queen gertrude sweets to the sweet: farewell! [scattering flowers] i hoped thou shouldst have been my hamlet's wife; i thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, and not have strew'd thy grave. laertes o, treble woe fall ten times treble on that cursed head, whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense deprived thee of! hold off the earth awhile, till i have caught her once more in mine arms: [leaps into the grave] now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, till of this flat a mountain you have made, to o'ertop old pelion, or the skyish head of blue olympus. hamlet [advancing] what is he whose grief bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand like wonder-wounded hearers? this is i, hamlet the dane. [leaps into the grave] laertes the devil take thy soul! [grappling with him] hamlet thou pray'st not well. i prithee, take thy fingers from my throat; for, though i am not splenitive and rash, yet have i something in me dangerous, which let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand. king claudius pluck them asunder. queen gertrude hamlet, hamlet! all gentlemen,- horatio good my lord, be quiet. [the attendants part them, and they come out of the grave] hamlet why i will fight with him upon this theme until my eyelids will no longer wag. queen gertrude o my son, what theme? hamlet i loved ophelia: forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum. what wilt thou do for her? king claudius o, he is mad, laertes. queen gertrude for love of god, forbear him. hamlet 'swounds, show me what thou'lt do: woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself? woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile? i'll do't. dost thou come here to whine? to outface me with leaping in her grave? be buried quick with her, and so will i: and, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw millions of acres on us, till our ground, singeing his pate against the burning zone, make ossa like a wart! nay, an thou'lt mouth, i'll rant as well as thou. queen gertrude this is mere madness: and thus awhile the fit will work on him; anon, as patient as the female dove, when that her golden couplets are disclosed, his silence will sit drooping. hamlet hear you, sir; what is the reason that you use me thus? i loved you ever: but it is no matter; let hercules himself do what he may, the cat will mew and dog will have his day. [exit] king claudius i pray you, good horatio, wait upon him. [exit horatio] [to laertes] strengthen your patience in our last night's speech; we'll put the matter to the present push. good gertrude, set some watch over your son. this grave shall have a living monument: an hour of quiet shortly shall we see; till then, in patience our proceeding be. [exeunt] hamlet act v scene ii a hall in the castle. [enter hamlet and horatio] hamlet so much for this, sir: now shall you see the other; you do remember all the circumstance? horatio remember it, my lord? hamlet sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, that would not let me sleep: methought i lay worse than the mutines in the bilboes. rashly, and praised be rashness for it, let us know, our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, when our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,- horatio that is most certain. hamlet up from my cabin, my sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark groped i to find out them; had my desire. finger'd their packet, and in fine withdrew to mine own room again; making so bold, my fears forgetting manners, to unseal their grand commission; where i found, horatio,- o royal knavery!--an exact command, larded with many several sorts of reasons importing denmark's health and england's too, with, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life, that, on the supervise, no leisure bated, no, not to stay the grinding of the axe, my head should be struck off. horatio is't possible? hamlet here's the commission: read it at more leisure. but wilt thou hear me how i did proceed? horatio i beseech you. hamlet being thus be-netted round with villanies,- ere i could make a prologue to my brains, they had begun the play--i sat me down, devised a new commission, wrote it fair: i once did hold it, as our statists do, a baseness to write fair and labour'd much how to forget that learning, but, sir, now it did me yeoman's service: wilt thou know the effect of what i wrote? horatio ay, good my lord. hamlet an earnest conjuration from the king, as england was his faithful tributary, as love between them like the palm might flourish, as peace should stiff her wheaten garland wear and stand a comma 'tween their amities, and many such-like 'as'es of great charge, that, on the view and knowing of these contents, without debatement further, more or less, he should the bearers put to sudden death, not shriving-time allow'd. horatio how was this seal'd? hamlet why, even in that was heaven ordinant. i had my father's signet in my purse, which was the model of that danish seal; folded the writ up in form of the other, subscribed it, gave't the impression, placed it safely, the changeling never known. now, the next day was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent thou know'st already. horatio so guildenstern and rosencrantz go to't. hamlet why, man, they did make love to this employment; they are not near my conscience; their defeat does by their own insinuation grow: 'tis dangerous when the baser nature comes between the pass and fell incensed points of mighty opposites. horatio why, what a king is this! hamlet does it not, think'st thee, stand me now upon- he that hath kill'd my king and whored my mother, popp'd in between the election and my hopes, thrown out his angle for my proper life, and with such cozenage--is't not perfect conscience, to quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd, to let this canker of our nature come in further evil? horatio it must be shortly known to him from england what is the issue of the business there. hamlet it will be short: the interim is mine; and a man's life's no more than to say 'one.' but i am very sorry, good horatio, that to laertes i forgot myself; for, by the image of my cause, i see the portraiture of his: i'll court his favours. but, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me into a towering passion. horatio peace! who comes here? [enter osric] osric your lordship is right welcome back to denmark. hamlet i humbly thank you, sir. dost know this water-fly? horatio no, my good lord. hamlet thy state is the more gracious; for 'tis a vice to know him. he hath much land, and fertile: let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's mess: 'tis a chough; but, as i say, spacious in the possession of dirt. osric sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, i should impart a thing to you from his majesty. hamlet i will receive it, sir, with all diligence of spirit. put your bonnet to his right use; 'tis for the head. osric i thank your lordship, it is very hot. hamlet no, believe me, 'tis very cold; the wind is northerly. osric it is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed. hamlet but yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion. osric exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry,--as 'twere,--i cannot tell how. but, my lord, his majesty bade me signify to you that he has laid a great wager on your head: sir, this is the matter,- hamlet i beseech you, remember- [hamlet moves him to put on his hat] osric nay, good my lord; for mine ease, in good faith. sir, here is newly come to court laertes; believe me, an absolute gentleman, full of most excellent differences, of very soft society and great showing: indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card or calendar of gentry, for you shall find in him the continent of what part a gentleman would see. hamlet sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though, i know, to divide him inventorially would dizzy the arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw neither, in respect of his quick sail. but, in the verity of extolment, i take him to be a soul of great article; and his infusion of such dearth and rareness, as, to make true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror; and who else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more. osric your lordship speaks most infallibly of him. hamlet the concernancy, sir? why do we wrap the gentleman in our more rawer breath? osric sir? horatio is't not possible to understand in another tongue? you will do't, sir, really. hamlet what imports the nomination of this gentleman? osric of laertes? horatio his purse is empty already; all's golden words are spent. hamlet of him, sir. osric i know you are not ignorant- hamlet i would you did, sir; yet, in faith, if you did, it would not much approve me. well, sir? osric you are not ignorant of what excellence laertes is- hamlet i dare not confess that, lest i should compare with him in excellence; but, to know a man well, were to know himself. osric i mean, sir, for his weapon; but in the imputation laid on him by them, in his meed he's unfellowed. hamlet what's his weapon? osric rapier and dagger. hamlet that's two of his weapons: but, well. osric the king, sir, hath wagered with him six barbary horses: against the which he has imponed, as i take it, six french rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdle, hangers, and so: three of the carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of very liberal conceit. hamlet what call you the carriages? horatio i knew you must be edified by the margent ere you had done. osric the carriages, sir, are the hangers. hamlet the phrase would be more german to the matter, if we could carry cannon by our sides: i would it might be hangers till then. but, on: six barbary horses against six french swords, their assigns, and three liberal-conceited carriages; that's the french bet against the danish. why is this 'imponed,' as you call it? osric the king, sir, hath laid, that in a dozen passes between yourself and him, he shall not exceed you three hits: he hath laid on twelve for nine; and it would come to immediate trial, if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer. hamlet how if i answer 'no'? osric i mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in trial. hamlet sir, i will walk here in the hall: if it please his majesty, 'tis the breathing time of day with me; let the foils be brought, the gentleman willing, and the king hold his purpose, i will win for him an i can; if not, i will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits. osric shall i re-deliver you e'en so? hamlet to this effect, sir; after what flourish your nature will. osric i commend my duty to your lordship. hamlet yours, yours. [exit osric] he does well to commend it himself; there are no tongues else for's turn. horatio this lapwing runs away with the shell on his head. hamlet he did comply with his dug, before he sucked it. thus has he--and many more of the same bevy that i know the dressy age dotes on--only got the tune of the time and outward habit of encounter; a kind of yesty collection, which carries them through and through the most fond and winnowed opinions; and do but blow them to their trial, the bubbles are out. [enter a lord] lord my lord, his majesty commended him to you by young osric, who brings back to him that you attend him in the hall: he sends to know if your pleasure hold to play with laertes, or that you will take longer time. hamlet i am constant to my purpose; they follow the king's pleasure: if his fitness speaks, mine is ready; now or whensoever, provided i be so able as now. lord the king and queen and all are coming down. hamlet in happy time. lord the queen desires you to use some gentle entertainment to laertes before you fall to play. hamlet she well instructs me. [exit lord] horatio you will lose this wager, my lord. hamlet i do not think so: since he went into france, i have been in continual practise: i shall win at the odds. but thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart: but it is no matter. horatio nay, good my lord,- hamlet it is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving, as would perhaps trouble a woman. horatio if your mind dislike any thing, obey it: i will forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit. hamlet not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. if it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? [enter king claudius, queen gertrude, laertes, lords, osric, and attendants with foils, &c] king claudius come, hamlet, come, and take this hand from me. [king claudius puts laertes' hand into hamlet's] hamlet give me your pardon, sir: i've done you wrong; but pardon't, as you are a gentleman. this presence knows, and you must needs have heard, how i am punish'd with sore distraction. what i have done, that might your nature, honour and exception roughly awake, i here proclaim was madness. was't hamlet wrong'd laertes? never hamlet: if hamlet from himself be ta'en away, and when he's not himself does wrong laertes, then hamlet does it not, hamlet denies it. who does it, then? his madness: if't be so, hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd; his madness is poor hamlet's enemy. sir, in this audience, let my disclaiming from a purposed evil free me so far in your most generous thoughts, that i have shot mine arrow o'er the house, and hurt my brother. laertes i am satisfied in nature, whose motive, in this case, should stir me most to my revenge: but in my terms of honour i stand aloof; and will no reconcilement, till by some elder masters, of known honour, i have a voice and precedent of peace, to keep my name ungored. but till that time, i do receive your offer'd love like love, and will not wrong it. hamlet i embrace it freely; and will this brother's wager frankly play. give us the foils. come on. laertes come, one for me. hamlet i'll be your foil, laertes: in mine ignorance your skill shall, like a star i' the darkest night, stick fiery off indeed. laertes you mock me, sir. hamlet no, by this hand. king claudius give them the foils, young osric. cousin hamlet, you know the wager? hamlet very well, my lord your grace hath laid the odds o' the weaker side. king claudius i do not fear it; i have seen you both: but since he is better'd, we have therefore odds. laertes this is too heavy, let me see another. hamlet this likes me well. these foils have all a length? [they prepare to play] osric ay, my good lord. king claudius set me the stoops of wine upon that table. if hamlet give the first or second hit, or quit in answer of the third exchange, let all the battlements their ordnance fire: the king shall drink to hamlet's better breath; and in the cup an union shall he throw, richer than that which four successive kings in denmark's crown have worn. give me the cups; and let the kettle to the trumpet speak, the trumpet to the cannoneer without, the cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth, 'now the king dunks to hamlet.' come, begin: and you, the judges, bear a wary eye. hamlet come on, sir. laertes come, my lord. [they play] hamlet one. laertes no. hamlet judgment. osric a hit, a very palpable hit. laertes well; again. king claudius stay; give me drink. hamlet, this pearl is thine; here's to thy health. [trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within] give him the cup. hamlet i'll play this bout first; set it by awhile. come. [they play] another hit; what say you? laertes a touch, a touch, i do confess. king claudius our son shall win. queen gertrude he's fat, and scant of breath. here, hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows; the queen carouses to thy fortune, hamlet. hamlet good madam! king claudius gertrude, do not drink. queen gertrude i will, my lord; i pray you, pardon me. king claudius [aside] it is the poison'd cup: it is too late. hamlet i dare not drink yet, madam; by and by. queen gertrude come, let me wipe thy face. laertes my lord, i'll hit him now. king claudius i do not think't. laertes [aside] and yet 'tis almost 'gainst my conscience. hamlet come, for the third, laertes: you but dally; i pray you, pass with your best violence; i am afeard you make a wanton of me. laertes say you so? come on. [they play] osric nothing, neither way. laertes have at you now! [laertes wounds hamlet; then in scuffling, they change rapiers, and hamlet wounds laertes] king claudius part them; they are incensed. hamlet nay, come, again. [queen gertrude falls] osric look to the queen there, ho! horatio they bleed on both sides. how is it, my lord? osric how is't, laertes? laertes why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, osric; i am justly kill'd with mine own treachery. hamlet how does the queen? king claudius she swounds to see them bleed. queen gertrude no, no, the drink, the drink,--o my dear hamlet,- the drink, the drink! i am poison'd. [dies] hamlet o villany! ho! let the door be lock'd: treachery! seek it out. laertes it is here, hamlet: hamlet, thou art slain; no medicine in the world can do thee good; in thee there is not half an hour of life; the treacherous instrument is in thy hand, unbated and envenom'd: the foul practise hath turn'd itself on me lo, here i lie, never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd: i can no more: the king, the king's to blame. hamlet the point!--envenom'd too! then, venom, to thy work. [stabs king claudius] all treason! treason! king claudius o, yet defend me, friends; i am but hurt. hamlet here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned dane, drink off this potion. is thy union here? follow my mother. [king claudius dies] laertes he is justly served; it is a poison temper'd by himself. exchange forgiveness with me, noble hamlet: mine and my father's death come not upon thee, nor thine on me. [dies] hamlet heaven make thee free of it! i follow thee. i am dead, horatio. wretched queen, adieu! you that look pale and tremble at this chance, that are but mutes or audience to this act, had i but time--as this fell sergeant, death, is strict in his arrest--o, i could tell you- but let it be. horatio, i am dead; thou livest; report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied. horatio never believe it: i am more an antique roman than a dane: here's yet some liquor left. hamlet as thou'rt a man, give me the cup: let go; by heaven, i'll have't. o good horatio, what a wounded name, things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! if thou didst ever hold me in thy heart absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story. [march afar off, and shot within] what warlike noise is this? osric young fortinbras, with conquest come from poland, to the ambassadors of england gives this warlike volley. hamlet o, i die, horatio; the potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit: i cannot live to hear the news from england; but i do prophesy the election lights on fortinbras: he has my dying voice; so tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, which have solicited. the rest is silence. [dies] horatio now cracks a noble heart. good night sweet prince: and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! why does the drum come hither? [march within] [enter fortinbras, the english ambassadors, and others] prince fortinbras where is this sight? horatio what is it ye would see? if aught of woe or wonder, cease your search. prince fortinbras this quarry cries on havoc. o proud death, what feast is toward in thine eternal cell, that thou so many princes at a shot so bloodily hast struck? first ambassador the sight is dismal; and our affairs from england come too late: the ears are senseless that should give us hearing, to tell him his commandment is fulfill'd, that rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead: where should we have our thanks? horatio not from his mouth, had it the ability of life to thank you: he never gave commandment for their death. but since, so jump upon this bloody question, you from the polack wars, and you from england, are here arrived give order that these bodies high on a stage be placed to the view; and let me speak to the yet unknowing world how these things came about: so shall you hear of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, and, in this upshot, purposes mistook fall'n on the inventors' reads: all this can i truly deliver. prince fortinbras let us haste to hear it, and call the noblest to the audience. for me, with sorrow i embrace my fortune: i have some rights of memory in this kingdom, which now to claim my vantage doth invite me. horatio of that i shall have also cause to speak, and from his mouth whose voice will draw on more; but let this same be presently perform'd, even while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance on plots and errors, happen. prince fortinbras let four captains bear hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage; for he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royally: and, for his passage, the soldiers' music and the rites of war speak loudly for him. take up the bodies: such a sight as this becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. go, bid the soldiers shoot. [a dead march. exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after which a peal of ordnance is shot off] the taming of the shrew dramatis personae a lord. | | christopher sly a tinker. (sly:) | persons in | the induction. hostess, page, players, | huntsmen, and servants. | (hostess:) (page:) (a player:) (first huntsman:) (second huntsman:) (messenger:) (first servant:) (second servant:) (third servant:) baptista a rich gentleman of padua. vincentio an old gentleman of pisa. lucentio son to vincentio, in love with bianca. petruchio a gentleman of verona, a suitor to katharina. gremio | | suitors to bianca. hortensio | tranio | | servants to lucentio. biondello | grumio | | curtis | | nathaniel | | nicholas | servants to petruchio. | joseph | | philip | | peter | a pedant. katharina the shrew, | | daughters to baptista. bianca | widow. tailor, haberdasher, and servants attending on baptista and petruchio. (tailor:) (haberdasher:) (first servant:) scene padua, and petruchio's country house. the taming of the shrew induction scene i before an alehouse on a heath. [enter hostess and sly] sly i'll pheeze you, in faith. hostess a pair of stocks, you rogue! sly ye are a baggage: the slys are no rogues; look in the chronicles; we came in with richard conqueror. therefore paucas pallabris; let the world slide: sessa! hostess you will not pay for the glasses you have burst? sly no, not a denier. go by, jeronimy: go to thy cold bed, and warm thee. hostess i know my remedy; i must go fetch the third--borough. [exit] sly third, or fourth, or fifth borough, i'll answer him by law: i'll not budge an inch, boy: let him come, and kindly. [falls asleep] [horns winded. enter a lord from hunting, with his train] lord huntsman, i charge thee, tender well my hounds: brach merriman, the poor cur is emboss'd; and couple clowder with the deep--mouth'd brach. saw'st thou not, boy, how silver made it good at the hedge-corner, in the coldest fault? i would not lose the dog for twenty pound. first huntsman why, belman is as good as he, my lord; he cried upon it at the merest loss and twice to-day pick'd out the dullest scent: trust me, i take him for the better dog. lord thou art a fool: if echo were as fleet, i would esteem him worth a dozen such. but sup them well and look unto them all: to-morrow i intend to hunt again. first huntsman i will, my lord. lord what's here? one dead, or drunk? see, doth he breathe? second huntsman he breathes, my lord. were he not warm'd with ale, this were a bed but cold to sleep so soundly. lord o monstrous beast! how like a swine he lies! grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image! sirs, i will practise on this drunken man. what think you, if he were convey'd to bed, wrapp'd in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers, a most delicious banquet by his bed, and brave attendants near him when he wakes, would not the beggar then forget himself? first huntsman believe me, lord, i think he cannot choose. second huntsman it would seem strange unto him when he waked. lord even as a flattering dream or worthless fancy. then take him up and manage well the jest: carry him gently to my fairest chamber and hang it round with all my wanton pictures: balm his foul head in warm distilled waters and burn sweet wood to make the lodging sweet: procure me music ready when he wakes, to make a dulcet and a heavenly sound; and if he chance to speak, be ready straight and with a low submissive reverence say 'what is it your honour will command?' let one attend him with a silver basin full of rose-water and bestrew'd with flowers, another bear the ewer, the third a diaper, and say 'will't please your lordship cool your hands?' some one be ready with a costly suit and ask him what apparel he will wear; another tell him of his hounds and horse, and that his lady mourns at his disease: persuade him that he hath been lunatic; and when he says he is, say that he dreams, for he is nothing but a mighty lord. this do and do it kindly, gentle sirs: it will be pastime passing excellent, if it be husbanded with modesty. first huntsman my lord, i warrant you we will play our part, as he shall think by our true diligence he is no less than what we say he is. lord take him up gently and to bed with him; and each one to his office when he wakes. [some bear out sly. a trumpet sounds] sirrah, go see what trumpet 'tis that sounds: [exit servingman] belike, some noble gentleman that means, travelling some journey, to repose him here. [re-enter servingman] how now! who is it? servant an't please your honour, players that offer service to your lordship. lord bid them come near. [enter players] now, fellows, you are welcome. players we thank your honour. lord do you intend to stay with me tonight? a player so please your lordship to accept our duty. lord with all my heart. this fellow i remember, since once he play'd a farmer's eldest son: 'twas where you woo'd the gentlewoman so well: i have forgot your name; but, sure, that part was aptly fitted and naturally perform'd. a player i think 'twas soto that your honour means. lord 'tis very true: thou didst it excellent. well, you are come to me in a happy time; the rather for i have some sport in hand wherein your cunning can assist me much. there is a lord will hear you play to-night: but i am doubtful of your modesties; lest over-eyeing of his odd behavior,- for yet his honour never heard a play- you break into some merry passion and so offend him; for i tell you, sirs, if you should smile he grows impatient. a player fear not, my lord: we can contain ourselves, were he the veriest antic in the world. lord go, sirrah, take them to the buttery, and give them friendly welcome every one: let them want nothing that my house affords. [exit one with the players] sirrah, go you to barthol'mew my page, and see him dress'd in all suits like a lady: that done, conduct him to the drunkard's chamber; and call him 'madam,' do him obeisance. tell him from me, as he will win my love, he bear himself with honourable action, such as he hath observed in noble ladies unto their lords, by them accomplished: such duty to the drunkard let him do with soft low tongue and lowly courtesy, and say 'what is't your honour will command, wherein your lady and your humble wife may show her duty and make known her love?' and then with kind embracements, tempting kisses, and with declining head into his bosom, bid him shed tears, as being overjoy'd to see her noble lord restored to health, who for this seven years hath esteem'd him no better than a poor and loathsome beggar: and if the boy have not a woman's gift to rain a shower of commanded tears, an onion will do well for such a shift, which in a napkin being close convey'd shall in despite enforce a watery eye. see this dispatch'd with all the haste thou canst: anon i'll give thee more instructions. [exit a servingman] i know the boy will well usurp the grace, voice, gait and action of a gentlewoman: i long to hear him call the drunkard husband, and how my men will stay themselves from laughter when they do homage to this simple peasant. i'll in to counsel them; haply my presence may well abate the over-merry spleen which otherwise would grow into extremes. [exeunt] the taming of the shrew induction scene ii a bedchamber in the lord's house. [enter aloft sly, with attendants; some with apparel, others with basin and ewer and appurtenances; and lord] sly for god's sake, a pot of small ale. first servant will't please your lordship drink a cup of sack? second servant will't please your honour taste of these conserves? third servant what raiment will your honour wear to-day? sly i am christophero sly; call not me 'honour' nor 'lordship:' i ne'er drank sack in my life; and if you give me any conserves, give me conserves of beef: ne'er ask me what raiment i'll wear; for i have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet; nay, sometimes more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the over-leather. lord heaven cease this idle humour in your honour! o, that a mighty man of such descent, of such possessions and so high esteem, should be infused with so foul a spirit! sly what, would you make me mad? am not i christopher sly, old sly's son of burtonheath, by birth a pedlar, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? ask marian hacket, the fat ale-wife of wincot, if she know me not: if she say i am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in christendom. what! i am not bestraught: here's- third servant o, this it is that makes your lady mourn! second servant o, this is it that makes your servants droop! lord hence comes it that your kindred shuns your house, as beaten hence by your strange lunacy. o noble lord, bethink thee of thy birth, call home thy ancient thoughts from banishment and banish hence these abject lowly dreams. look how thy servants do attend on thee, each in his office ready at thy beck. wilt thou have music? hark! apollo plays, [music] and twenty caged nightingales do sing: or wilt thou sleep? we'll have thee to a couch softer and sweeter than the lustful bed on purpose trimm'd up for semiramis. say thou wilt walk; we will bestrew the ground: or wilt thou ride? thy horses shall be trapp'd, their harness studded all with gold and pearl. dost thou love hawking? thou hast hawks will soar above the morning lark or wilt thou hunt? thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them and fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth. first servant say thou wilt course; thy greyhounds are as swift as breathed stags, ay, fleeter than the roe. second servant dost thou love pictures? we will fetch thee straight adonis painted by a running brook, and cytherea all in sedges hid, which seem to move and wanton with her breath, even as the waving sedges play with wind. lord we'll show thee io as she was a maid, and how she was beguiled and surprised, as lively painted as the deed was done. third servant or daphne roaming through a thorny wood, scratching her legs that one shall swear she bleeds, and at that sight shall sad apollo weep, so workmanly the blood and tears are drawn. lord thou art a lord, and nothing but a lord: thou hast a lady far more beautiful than any woman in this waning age. first servant and till the tears that she hath shed for thee like envious floods o'er-run her lovely face, she was the fairest creature in the world; and yet she is inferior to none. sly am i a lord? and have i such a lady? or do i dream? or have i dream'd till now? i do not sleep: i see, i hear, i speak; i smell sweet savours and i feel soft things: upon my life, i am a lord indeed and not a tinker nor christophero sly. well, bring our lady hither to our sight; and once again, a pot o' the smallest ale. second servant will't please your mightiness to wash your hands? o, how we joy to see your wit restored! o, that once more you knew but what you are! these fifteen years you have been in a dream; or when you waked, so waked as if you slept. sly these fifteen years! by my fay, a goodly nap. but did i never speak of all that time? first servant o, yes, my lord, but very idle words: for though you lay here in this goodly chamber, yet would you say ye were beaten out of door; and rail upon the hostess of the house; and say you would present her at the leet, because she brought stone jugs and no seal'd quarts: sometimes you would call out for cicely hacket. sly ay, the woman's maid of the house. third servant why, sir, you know no house nor no such maid, nor no such men as you have reckon'd up, as stephen sly and did john naps of greece and peter turph and henry pimpernell and twenty more such names and men as these which never were nor no man ever saw. sly now lord be thanked for my good amends! all amen. sly i thank thee: thou shalt not lose by it. [enter the page as a lady, with attendants] page how fares my noble lord? sly marry, i fare well for here is cheer enough. where is my wife? page here, noble lord: what is thy will with her? sly are you my wife and will not call me husband? my men should call me 'lord:' i am your goodman. page my husband and my lord, my lord and husband; i am your wife in all obedience. sly i know it well. what must i call her? lord madam. sly al'ce madam, or joan madam? lord 'madam,' and nothing else: so lords call ladies. sly madam wife, they say that i have dream'd and slept above some fifteen year or more. page ay, and the time seems thirty unto me, being all this time abandon'd from your bed. sly 'tis much. servants, leave me and her alone. madam, undress you and come now to bed. page thrice noble lord, let me entreat of you to pardon me yet for a night or two, or, if not so, until the sun be set: for your physicians have expressly charged, in peril to incur your former malady, that i should yet absent me from your bed: i hope this reason stands for my excuse. sly ay, it stands so that i may hardly tarry so long. but i would be loath to fall into my dreams again: i will therefore tarry in despite of the flesh and the blood. [enter a messenger] messenger your honour's players, heating your amendment, are come to play a pleasant comedy; for so your doctors hold it very meet, seeing too much sadness hath congeal'd your blood, and melancholy is the nurse of frenzy: therefore they thought it good you hear a play and frame your mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life. sly marry, i will, let them play it. is not a comondy a christmas gambold or a tumbling-trick? page no, my good lord; it is more pleasing stuff. sly what, household stuff? page it is a kind of history. sly well, well see't. come, madam wife, sit by my side and let the world slip: we shall ne'er be younger. [flourish] the taming of the shrew act i scene i padua. a public place. [enter lucentio and his man tranio] lucentio tranio, since for the great desire i had to see fair padua, nursery of arts, i am arrived for fruitful lombardy, the pleasant garden of great italy; and by my father's love and leave am arm'd with his good will and thy good company, my trusty servant, well approved in all, here let us breathe and haply institute a course of learning and ingenious studies. pisa renown'd for grave citizens gave me my being and my father first, a merchant of great traffic through the world, vincetino come of bentivolii. vincetino's son brought up in florence it shall become to serve all hopes conceived, to deck his fortune with his virtuous deeds: and therefore, tranio, for the time i study, virtue and that part of philosophy will i apply that treats of happiness by virtue specially to be achieved. tell me thy mind; for i have pisa left and am to padua come, as he that leaves a shallow plash to plunge him in the deep and with satiety seeks to quench his thirst. tranio mi perdonato, gentle master mine, i am in all affected as yourself; glad that you thus continue your resolve to suck the sweets of sweet philosophy. only, good master, while we do admire this virtue and this moral discipline, let's be no stoics nor no stocks, i pray; or so devote to aristotle's cheques as ovid be an outcast quite abjured: balk logic with acquaintance that you have and practise rhetoric in your common talk; music and poesy use to quicken you; the mathematics and the metaphysics, fall to them as you find your stomach serves you; no profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en: in brief, sir, study what you most affect. lucentio gramercies, tranio, well dost thou advise. if, biondello, thou wert come ashore, we could at once put us in readiness, and take a lodging fit to entertain such friends as time in padua shall beget. but stay a while: what company is this? tranio master, some show to welcome us to town. [enter baptista, katharina, bianca, gremio, and hortensio. lucentio and tranio stand by] baptista gentlemen, importune me no farther, for how i firmly am resolved you know; that is, not bestow my youngest daughter before i have a husband for the elder: if either of you both love katharina, because i know you well and love you well, leave shall you have to court her at your pleasure. gremio [aside] to cart her rather: she's too rough for me. there, there, hortensio, will you any wife? katharina i pray you, sir, is it your will to make a stale of me amongst these mates? hortensio mates, maid! how mean you that? no mates for you, unless you were of gentler, milder mould. katharina i'faith, sir, you shall never need to fear: i wis it is not half way to her heart; but if it were, doubt not her care should be to comb your noddle with a three-legg'd stool and paint your face and use you like a fool. hortensia from all such devils, good lord deliver us! gremio and me too, good lord! tranio hush, master! here's some good pastime toward: that wench is stark mad or wonderful froward. lucentio but in the other's silence do i see maid's mild behavior and sobriety. peace, tranio! tranio well said, master; mum! and gaze your fill. baptista gentlemen, that i may soon make good what i have said, bianca, get you in: and let it not displease thee, good bianca, for i will love thee ne'er the less, my girl. katharina a pretty peat! it is best put finger in the eye, an she knew why. bianca sister, content you in my discontent. sir, to your pleasure humbly i subscribe: my books and instruments shall be my company, on them to took and practise by myself. lucentio hark, tranio! thou may'st hear minerva speak. hortensio signior baptista, will you be so strange? sorry am i that our good will effects bianca's grief. gremio why will you mew her up, signior baptista, for this fiend of hell, and make her bear the penance of her tongue? baptista gentlemen, content ye; i am resolved: go in, bianca: [exit bianca] and for i know she taketh most delight in music, instruments and poetry, schoolmasters will i keep within my house, fit to instruct her youth. if you, hortensio, or signior gremio, you, know any such, prefer them hither; for to cunning men i will be very kind, and liberal to mine own children in good bringing up: and so farewell. katharina, you may stay; for i have more to commune with bianca. [exit] katharina why, and i trust i may go too, may i not? what, shall i be appointed hours; as though, belike, i knew not what to take and what to leave, ha? [exit] gremio you may go to the devil's dam: your gifts are so good, here's none will hold you. their love is not so great, hortensio, but we may blow our nails together, and fast it fairly out: our cakes dough on both sides. farewell: yet for the love i bear my sweet bianca, if i can by any means light on a fit man to teach her that wherein she delights, i will wish him to her father. hortensio so will i, signior gremio: but a word, i pray. though the nature of our quarrel yet never brooked parle, know now, upon advice, it toucheth us both, that we may yet again have access to our fair mistress and be happy rivals in bianco's love, to labour and effect one thing specially. gremio what's that, i pray? hortensio marry, sir, to get a husband for her sister. gremio a husband! a devil. hortensio i say, a husband. gremio i say, a devil. thinkest thou, hortensio, though her father be very rich, any man is so very a fool to be married to hell? hortensio tush, gremio, though it pass your patience and mine to endure her loud alarums, why, man, there be good fellows in the world, an a man could light on them, would take her with all faults, and money enough. gremio i cannot tell; but i had as lief take her dowry with this condition, to be whipped at the high cross every morning. hortensio faith, as you say, there's small choice in rotten apples. but come; since this bar in law makes us friends, it shall be so far forth friendly maintained all by helping baptista's eldest daughter to a husband we set his youngest free for a husband, and then have to't a fresh. sweet bianca! happy man be his dole! he that runs fastest gets the ring. how say you, signior gremio? gremio i am agreed; and would i had given him the best horse in padua to begin his wooing that would thoroughly woo her, wed her and bed her and rid the house of her! come on. [exeunt gremio and hortensio] tranio i pray, sir, tell me, is it possible that love should of a sudden take such hold? lucentio o tranio, till i found it to be true, i never thought it possible or likely; but see, while idly i stood looking on, i found the effect of love in idleness: and now in plainness do confess to thee, that art to me as secret and as dear as anna to the queen of carthage was, tranio, i burn, i pine, i perish, tranio, if i achieve not this young modest girl. counsel me, tranio, for i know thou canst; assist me, tranio, for i know thou wilt. tranio master, it is no time to chide you now; affection is not rated from the heart: if love have touch'd you, nought remains but so, 'redime te captum quam queas minimo.' lucentio gramercies, lad, go forward; this contents: the rest will comfort, for thy counsel's sound. tranio master, you look'd so longly on the maid, perhaps you mark'd not what's the pith of all. lucentio o yes, i saw sweet beauty in her face, such as the daughter of agenor had, that made great jove to humble him to her hand. when with his knees he kiss'd the cretan strand. tranio saw you no more? mark'd you not how her sister began to scold and raise up such a storm that mortal ears might hardly endure the din? lucentio tranio, i saw her coral lips to move and with her breath she did perfume the air: sacred and sweet was all i saw in her. tranio nay, then, 'tis time to stir him from his trance. i pray, awake, sir: if you love the maid, bend thoughts and wits to achieve her. thus it stands: her eldest sister is so curst and shrewd that till the father rid his hands of her, master, your love must live a maid at home; and therefore has he closely mew'd her up, because she will not be annoy'd with suitors. lucentio ah, tranio, what a cruel father's he! but art thou not advised, he took some care to get her cunning schoolmasters to instruct her? tranio ay, marry, am i, sir; and now 'tis plotted. lucentio i have it, tranio. tranio master, for my hand, both our inventions meet and jump in one. lucentio tell me thine first. tranio you will be schoolmaster and undertake the teaching of the maid: that's your device. lucentio it is: may it be done? tranio not possible; for who shall bear your part, and be in padua here vincentio's son, keep house and ply his book, welcome his friends, visit his countrymen and banquet them? lucentio basta; content thee, for i have it full. we have not yet been seen in any house, nor can we lie distinguish'd by our faces for man or master; then it follows thus; thou shalt be master, tranio, in my stead, keep house and port and servants as i should: i will some other be, some florentine, some neapolitan, or meaner man of pisa. 'tis hatch'd and shall be so: tranio, at once uncase thee; take my colour'd hat and cloak: when biondello comes, he waits on thee; but i will charm him first to keep his tongue. tranio so had you need. in brief, sir, sith it your pleasure is, and i am tied to be obedient; for so your father charged me at our parting, 'be serviceable to my son,' quoth he, although i think 'twas in another sense; i am content to be lucentio, because so well i love lucentio. lucentio tranio, be so, because lucentio loves: and let me be a slave, to achieve that maid whose sudden sight hath thrall'd my wounded eye. here comes the rogue. [enter biondello] sirrah, where have you been? biondello where have i been! nay, how now! where are you? master, has my fellow tranio stolen your clothes? or you stolen his? or both? pray, what's the news? lucentio sirrah, come hither: 'tis no time to jest, and therefore frame your manners to the time. your fellow tranio here, to save my life, puts my apparel and my countenance on, and i for my escape have put on his; for in a quarrel since i came ashore i kill'd a man and fear i was descried: wait you on him, i charge you, as becomes, while i make way from hence to save my life: you understand me? biondello i, sir! ne'er a whit. lucentio and not a jot of tranio in your mouth: tranio is changed into lucentio. biondello the better for him: would i were so too! tranio so could i, faith, boy, to have the next wish after, that lucentio indeed had baptista's youngest daughter. but, sirrah, not for my sake, but your master's, i advise you use your manners discreetly in all kind of companies: when i am alone, why, then i am tranio; but in all places else your master lucentio. lucentio tranio, let's go: one thing more rests, that thyself execute, to make one among these wooers: if thou ask me why, sufficeth, my reasons are both good and weighty. [exeunt] [the presenters above speak] first servant my lord, you nod; you do not mind the play. sly yes, by saint anne, do i. a good matter, surely: comes there any more of it? page my lord, 'tis but begun. sly 'tis a very excellent piece of work, madam lady: would 'twere done! [they sit and mark] the taming of the shrew act i scene ii padua. before hortensio's house. [enter petruchio and his man grumio] petruchio verona, for a while i take my leave, to see my friends in padua, but of all my best beloved and approved friend, hortensio; and i trow this is his house. here, sirrah grumio; knock, i say. grumio knock, sir! whom should i knock? is there man has rebused your worship? petruchio villain, i say, knock me here soundly. grumio knock you here, sir! why, sir, what am i, sir, that i should knock you here, sir? petruchio villain, i say, knock me at this gate and rap me well, or i'll knock your knave's pate. grumio my master is grown quarrelsome. i should knock you first, and then i know after who comes by the worst. petruchio will it not be? faith, sirrah, an you'll not knock, i'll ring it; i'll try how you can sol, fa, and sing it. [he wrings him by the ears] grumio help, masters, help! my master is mad. petruchio now, knock when i bid you, sirrah villain! [enter hortensio] hortensio how now! what's the matter? my old friend grumio! and my good friend petruchio! how do you all at verona? petruchio signior hortensio, come you to part the fray? 'con tutto il cuore, ben trovato,' may i say. hortensio 'alla nostra casa ben venuto, molto honorato signor mio petruchio.' rise, grumio, rise: we will compound this quarrel. grumio nay, 'tis no matter, sir, what he 'leges in latin. if this be not a lawful case for me to leave his service, look you, sir, he bid me knock him and rap him soundly, sir: well, was it fit for a servant to use his master so, being perhaps, for aught i see, two and thirty, a pip out? whom would to god i had well knock'd at first, then had not grumio come by the worst. petruchio a senseless villain! good hortensio, i bade the rascal knock upon your gate and could not get him for my heart to do it. grumio knock at the gate! o heavens! spake you not these words plain, 'sirrah, knock me here, rap me here, knock me well, and knock me soundly'? and come you now with, 'knocking at the gate'? petruchio sirrah, be gone, or talk not, i advise you. hortensio petruchio, patience; i am grumio's pledge: why, this's a heavy chance 'twixt him and you, your ancient, trusty, pleasant servant grumio. and tell me now, sweet friend, what happy gale blows you to padua here from old verona? petruchio such wind as scatters young men through the world, to seek their fortunes farther than at home where small experience grows. but in a few, signior hortensio, thus it stands with me: antonio, my father, is deceased; and i have thrust myself into this maze, haply to wive and thrive as best i may: crowns in my purse i have and goods at home, and so am come abroad to see the world. hortensio petruchio, shall i then come roundly to thee and wish thee to a shrewd ill-favour'd wife? thou'ldst thank me but a little for my counsel: and yet i'll promise thee she shall be rich and very rich: but thou'rt too much my friend, and i'll not wish thee to her. petruchio signior hortensio, 'twixt such friends as we few words suffice; and therefore, if thou know one rich enough to be petruchio's wife, as wealth is burden of my wooing dance, be she as foul as was florentius' love, as old as sibyl and as curst and shrewd as socrates' xanthippe, or a worse, she moves me not, or not removes, at least, affection's edge in me, were she as rough as are the swelling adriatic seas: i come to wive it wealthily in padua; if wealthily, then happily in padua. grumio nay, look you, sir, he tells you flatly what his mind is: why give him gold enough and marry him to a puppet or an aglet-baby; or an old trot with ne'er a tooth in her head, though she have as many diseases as two and fifty horses: why, nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal. hortensio petruchio, since we are stepp'd thus far in, i will continue that i broach'd in jest. i can, petruchio, help thee to a wife with wealth enough and young and beauteous, brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman: her only fault, and that is faults enough, is that she is intolerable curst and shrewd and froward, so beyond all measure that, were my state far worser than it is, i would not wed her for a mine of gold. petruchio hortensio, peace! thou know'st not gold's effect: tell me her father's name and 'tis enough; for i will board her, though she chide as loud as thunder when the clouds in autumn crack. hortensio her father is baptista minola, an affable and courteous gentleman: her name is katharina minola, renown'd in padua for her scolding tongue. petruchio i know her father, though i know not her; and he knew my deceased father well. i will not sleep, hortensio, till i see her; and therefore let me be thus bold with you to give you over at this first encounter, unless you will accompany me thither. grumio i pray you, sir, let him go while the humour lasts. o' my word, an she knew him as well as i do, she would think scolding would do little good upon him: she may perhaps call him half a score knaves or so: why, that's nothing; an he begin once, he'll rail in his rope-tricks. i'll tell you what sir, an she stand him but a little, he will throw a figure in her face and so disfigure her with it that she shall have no more eyes to see withal than a cat. you know him not, sir. hortensio tarry, petruchio, i must go with thee, for in baptista's keep my treasure is: he hath the jewel of my life in hold, his youngest daughter, beautiful binaca, and her withholds from me and other more, suitors to her and rivals in my love, supposing it a thing impossible, for those defects i have before rehearsed, that ever katharina will be woo'd; therefore this order hath baptista ta'en, that none shall have access unto bianca till katharina the curst have got a husband. grumio katharina the curst! a title for a maid of all titles the worst. hortensio now shall my friend petruchio do me grace, and offer me disguised in sober robes to old baptista as a schoolmaster well seen in music, to instruct bianca; that so i may, by this device, at least have leave and leisure to make love to her and unsuspected court her by herself. grumio here's no knavery! see, to beguile the old folks, how the young folks lay their heads together! [enter gremio, and lucentio disguised] master, master, look about you: who goes there, ha? hortensio peace, grumio! it is the rival of my love. petruchio, stand by a while. grumio a proper stripling and an amorous! gremio o, very well; i have perused the note. hark you, sir: i'll have them very fairly bound: all books of love, see that at any hand; and see you read no other lectures to her: you understand me: over and beside signior baptista's liberality, i'll mend it with a largess. take your paper too, and let me have them very well perfumed for she is sweeter than perfume itself to whom they go to. what will you read to her? lucentio whate'er i read to her, i'll plead for you as for my patron, stand you so assured, as firmly as yourself were still in place: yea, and perhaps with more successful words than you, unless you were a scholar, sir. gremio o this learning, what a thing it is! grumio o this woodcock, what an ass it is! petruchio peace, sirrah! hortensio grumio, mum! god save you, signior gremio. gremio and you are well met, signior hortensio. trow you whither i am going? to baptista minola. i promised to inquire carefully about a schoolmaster for the fair bianca: and by good fortune i have lighted well on this young man, for learning and behavior fit for her turn, well read in poetry and other books, good ones, i warrant ye. hortensio 'tis well; and i have met a gentleman hath promised me to help me to another, a fine musician to instruct our mistress; so shall i no whit be behind in duty to fair bianca, so beloved of me. gremio beloved of me; and that my deeds shall prove. grumio and that his bags shall prove. hortensio gremio, 'tis now no time to vent our love: listen to me, and if you speak me fair, i'll tell you news indifferent good for either. here is a gentleman whom by chance i met, upon agreement from us to his liking, will undertake to woo curst katharina, yea, and to marry her, if her dowry please. gremio so said, so done, is well. hortensio, have you told him all her faults? petruchio i know she is an irksome brawling scold: if that be all, masters, i hear no harm. gremio no, say'st me so, friend? what countryman? petruchio born in verona, old antonio's son: my father dead, my fortune lives for me; and i do hope good days and long to see. gremio o sir, such a life, with such a wife, were strange! but if you have a stomach, to't i' god's name: you shall have me assisting you in all. but will you woo this wild-cat? petruchio will i live? grumio will he woo her? ay, or i'll hang her. petruchio why came i hither but to that intent? think you a little din can daunt mine ears? have i not in my time heard lions roar? have i not heard the sea puff'd up with winds rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? have i not heard great ordnance in the field, and heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? have i not in a pitched battle heard loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets' clang? and do you tell me of a woman's tongue, that gives not half so great a blow to hear as will a chestnut in a farmer's fire? tush, tush! fear boys with bugs. grumio for he fears none. gremio hortensio, hark: this gentleman is happily arrived, my mind presumes, for his own good and ours. hortensio i promised we would be contributors and bear his charging of wooing, whatsoe'er. gremio and so we will, provided that he win her. grumio i would i were as sure of a good dinner. [enter tranio brave, and biondello] tranio gentlemen, god save you. if i may be bold, tell me, i beseech you, which is the readiest way to the house of signior baptista minola? biondello he that has the two fair daughters: is't he you mean? tranio even he, biondello. gremio hark you, sir; you mean not her to- tranio perhaps, him and her, sir: what have you to do? petruchio not her that chides, sir, at any hand, i pray. tranio i love no chiders, sir. biondello, let's away. lucentio well begun, tranio. hortensio sir, a word ere you go; are you a suitor to the maid you talk of, yea or no? tranio and if i be, sir, is it any offence? gremio no; if without more words you will get you hence. tranio why, sir, i pray, are not the streets as free for me as for you? gremio but so is not she. tranio for what reason, i beseech you? gremio for this reason, if you'll know, that she's the choice love of signior gremio. hortensio that she's the chosen of signior hortensio. tranio softly, my masters! if you be gentlemen, do me this right; hear me with patience. baptista is a noble gentleman, to whom my father is not all unknown; and were his daughter fairer than she is, she may more suitors have and me for one. fair leda's daughter had a thousand wooers; then well one more may fair bianca have: and so she shall; lucentio shall make one, though paris came in hope to speed alone. gremio what! this gentleman will out-talk us all. lucentio sir, give him head: i know he'll prove a jade. petruchio hortensio, to what end are all these words? hortensio sir, let me be so bold as ask you, did you yet ever see baptista's daughter? tranio no, sir; but hear i do that he hath two, the one as famous for a scolding tongue as is the other for beauteous modesty. petruchio sir, sir, the first's for me; let her go by. gremio yea, leave that labour to great hercules; and let it be more than alcides' twelve. petruchio sir, understand you this of me in sooth: the youngest daughter whom you hearken for her father keeps from all access of suitors, and will not promise her to any man until the elder sister first be wed: the younger then is free and not before. tranio if it be so, sir, that you are the man must stead us all and me amongst the rest, and if you break the ice and do this feat, achieve the elder, set the younger free for our access, whose hap shall be to have her will not so graceless be to be ingrate. hortensio sir, you say well and well you do conceive; and since you do profess to be a suitor, you must, as we do, gratify this gentleman, to whom we all rest generally beholding. tranio sir, i shall not be slack: in sign whereof, please ye we may contrive this afternoon, and quaff carouses to our mistress' health, and do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends. grumio | | o excellent motion! fellows, let's be gone. biondello | hortensio the motion's good indeed and be it so, petruchio, i shall be your ben venuto. [exeunt] the taming of the shrew act ii scene i padua. a room in baptista's house. [enter katharina and bianca] bianca good sister, wrong me not, nor wrong yourself, to make a bondmaid and a slave of me; that i disdain: but for these other gawds, unbind my hands, i'll pull them off myself, yea, all my raiment, to my petticoat; or what you will command me will i do, so well i know my duty to my elders. katharina of all thy suitors, here i charge thee, tell whom thou lovest best: see thou dissemble not. bianca believe me, sister, of all the men alive i never yet beheld that special face which i could fancy more than any other. katharina minion, thou liest. is't not hortensio? bianca if you affect him, sister, here i swear i'll plead for you myself, but you shall have him. katharina o then, belike, you fancy riches more: you will have gremio to keep you fair. bianca is it for him you do envy me so? nay then you jest, and now i well perceive you have but jested with me all this while: i prithee, sister kate, untie my hands. katharina if that be jest, then all the rest was so. [strikes her] [enter baptista] baptista why, how now, dame! whence grows this insolence? bianca, stand aside. poor girl! she weeps. go ply thy needle; meddle not with her. for shame, thou helding of a devilish spirit, why dost thou wrong her that did ne'er wrong thee? when did she cross thee with a bitter word? katharina her silence flouts me, and i'll be revenged. [flies after bianca] baptista what, in my sight? bianca, get thee in. [exit bianca] katharina what, will you not suffer me? nay, now i see she is your treasure, she must have a husband; i must dance bare-foot on her wedding day and for your love to her lead apes in hell. talk not to me: i will go sit and weep till i can find occasion of revenge. [exit] baptista was ever gentleman thus grieved as i? but who comes here? [enter gremio, lucentio in the habit of a mean man; petruchio, with hortensio as a musician; and tranio, with biondello bearing a lute and books] gremio good morrow, neighbour baptista. baptista good morrow, neighbour gremio. god save you, gentlemen! petruchio and you, good sir! pray, have you not a daughter call'd katharina, fair and virtuous? baptista i have a daughter, sir, called katharina. gremio you are too blunt: go to it orderly. petruchio you wrong me, signior gremio: give me leave. i am a gentleman of verona, sir, that, hearing of her beauty and her wit, her affability and bashful modesty, her wondrous qualities and mild behavior, am bold to show myself a forward guest within your house, to make mine eye the witness of that report which i so oft have heard. and, for an entrance to my entertainment, i do present you with a man of mine, [presenting hortensio] cunning in music and the mathematics, to instruct her fully in those sciences, whereof i know she is not ignorant: accept of him, or else you do me wrong: his name is licio, born in mantua. baptista you're welcome, sir; and he, for your good sake. but for my daughter katharina, this i know, she is not for your turn, the more my grief. petruchio i see you do not mean to part with her, or else you like not of my company. baptista mistake me not; i speak but as i find. whence are you, sir? what may i call your name? petruchio petruchio is my name; antonio's son, a man well known throughout all italy. baptista i know him well: you are welcome for his sake. gremio saving your tale, petruchio, i pray, let us, that are poor petitioners, speak too: baccare! you are marvellous forward. petruchio o, pardon me, signior gremio; i would fain be doing. gremio i doubt it not, sir; but you will curse your wooing. neighbour, this is a gift very grateful, i am sure of it. to express the like kindness, myself, that have been more kindly beholding to you than any, freely give unto you this young scholar, [presenting lucentio] that hath been long studying at rheims; as cunning in greek, latin, and other languages, as the other in music and mathematics: his name is cambio; pray, accept his service. baptista a thousand thanks, signior gremio. welcome, good cambio. [to tranio] but, gentle sir, methinks you walk like a stranger: may i be so bold to know the cause of your coming? tranio pardon me, sir, the boldness is mine own, that, being a stranger in this city here, do make myself a suitor to your daughter, unto bianca, fair and virtuous. nor is your firm resolve unknown to me, in the preferment of the eldest sister. this liberty is all that i request, that, upon knowledge of my parentage, i may have welcome 'mongst the rest that woo and free access and favour as the rest: and, toward the education of your daughters, i here bestow a simple instrument, and this small packet of greek and latin books: if you accept them, then their worth is great. baptista lucentio is your name; of whence, i pray? tranio of pisa, sir; son to vincentio. baptista a mighty man of pisa; by report i know him well: you are very welcome, sir, take you the lute, and you the set of books; you shall go see your pupils presently. holla, within! [enter a servant] sirrah, lead these gentlemen to my daughters; and tell them both, these are their tutors: bid them use them well. [exit servant, with lucentio and hortensio, biondello following] we will go walk a little in the orchard, and then to dinner. you are passing welcome, and so i pray you all to think yourselves. petruchio signior baptista, my business asketh haste, and every day i cannot come to woo. you knew my father well, and in him me, left solely heir to all his lands and goods, which i have better'd rather than decreased: then tell me, if i get your daughter's love, what dowry shall i have with her to wife? baptista after my death the one half of my lands, and in possession twenty thousand crowns. petruchio and, for that dowry, i'll assure her of her widowhood, be it that she survive me, in all my lands and leases whatsoever: let specialties be therefore drawn between us, that covenants may be kept on either hand. baptista ay, when the special thing is well obtain'd, that is, her love; for that is all in all. petruchio why, that is nothing: for i tell you, father, i am as peremptory as she proud-minded; and where two raging fires meet together they do consume the thing that feeds their fury: though little fire grows great with little wind, yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all: so i to her and so she yields to me; for i am rough and woo not like a babe. baptista well mayst thou woo, and happy be thy speed! but be thou arm'd for some unhappy words. petruchio ay, to the proof; as mountains are for winds, that shake not, though they blow perpetually. [re-enter hortensio, with his head broke] baptista how now, my friend! why dost thou look so pale? hortensio for fear, i promise you, if i look pale. baptista what, will my daughter prove a good musician? hortensio i think she'll sooner prove a soldier iron may hold with her, but never lutes. baptista why, then thou canst not break her to the lute? hortensio why, no; for she hath broke the lute to me. i did but tell her she mistook her frets, and bow'd her hand to teach her fingering; when, with a most impatient devilish spirit, 'frets, call you these?' quoth she; 'i'll fume with them:' and, with that word, she struck me on the head, and through the instrument my pate made way; and there i stood amazed for a while, as on a pillory, looking through the lute; while she did call me rascal fiddler and twangling jack; with twenty such vile terms, as had she studied to misuse me so. petruchio now, by the world, it is a lusty wench; i love her ten times more than e'er i did: o, how i long to have some chat with her! baptista well, go with me and be not so discomfited: proceed in practise with my younger daughter; she's apt to learn and thankful for good turns. signior petruchio, will you go with us, or shall i send my daughter kate to you? petruchio i pray you do. [exeunt all but petruchio] i will attend her here, and woo her with some spirit when she comes. say that she rail; why then i'll tell her plain she sings as sweetly as a nightingale: say that she frown, i'll say she looks as clear as morning roses newly wash'd with dew: say she be mute and will not speak a word; then i'll commend her volubility, and say she uttereth piercing eloquence: if she do bid me pack, i'll give her thanks, as though she bid me stay by her a week: if she deny to wed, i'll crave the day when i shall ask the banns and when be married. but here she comes; and now, petruchio, speak. [enter katharina] good morrow, kate; for that's your name, i hear. katharina well have you heard, but something hard of hearing: they call me katharina that do talk of me. petruchio you lie, in faith; for you are call'd plain kate, and bonny kate and sometimes kate the curst; but kate, the prettiest kate in christendom kate of kate hall, my super-dainty kate, for dainties are all kates, and therefore, kate, take this of me, kate of my consolation; hearing thy mildness praised in every town, thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded, yet not so deeply as to thee belongs, myself am moved to woo thee for my wife. katharina moved! in good time: let him that moved you hither remove you hence: i knew you at the first you were a moveable. petruchio why, what's a moveable? katharina a join'd-stool. petruchio thou hast hit it: come, sit on me. katharina asses are made to bear, and so are you. petruchio women are made to bear, and so are you. katharina no such jade as you, if me you mean. petruchio alas! good kate, i will not burden thee; for, knowing thee to be but young and light- katharina too light for such a swain as you to catch; and yet as heavy as my weight should be. petruchio should be! should--buzz! katharina well ta'en, and like a buzzard. petruchio o slow-wing'd turtle! shall a buzzard take thee? katharina ay, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard. petruchio come, come, you wasp; i' faith, you are too angry. katharina if i be waspish, best beware my sting. petruchio my remedy is then, to pluck it out. katharina ay, if the fool could find it where it lies, petruchio who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? in his tail. katharina in his tongue. petruchio whose tongue? katharina yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell. petruchio what, with my tongue in your tail? nay, come again, good kate; i am a gentleman. katharina that i'll try. [she strikes him] petruchio i swear i'll cuff you, if you strike again. katharina so may you lose your arms: if you strike me, you are no gentleman; and if no gentleman, why then no arms. petruchio a herald, kate? o, put me in thy books! katharina what is your crest? a coxcomb? petruchio a combless cock, so kate will be my hen. katharina no cock of mine; you crow too like a craven. petruchio nay, come, kate, come; you must not look so sour. katharina it is my fashion, when i see a crab. petruchio why, here's no crab; and therefore look not sour. katharina there is, there is. petruchio then show it me. katharina had i a glass, i would. petruchio what, you mean my face? katharina well aim'd of such a young one. petruchio now, by saint george, i am too young for you. katharina yet you are wither'd. petruchio 'tis with cares. katharina i care not. petruchio nay, hear you, kate: in sooth you scape not so. katharina i chafe you, if i tarry: let me go. petruchio no, not a whit: i find you passing gentle. 'twas told me you were rough and coy and sullen, and now i find report a very liar; for thou are pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous, but slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers: thou canst not frown, thou canst not look askance, nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will, nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk, but thou with mildness entertain'st thy wooers, with gentle conference, soft and affable. why does the world report that kate doth limp? o slanderous world! kate like the hazel-twig is straight and slender and as brown in hue as hazel nuts and sweeter than the kernels. o, let me see thee walk: thou dost not halt. katharina go, fool, and whom thou keep'st command. petruchio did ever dian so become a grove as kate this chamber with her princely gait? o, be thou dian, and let her be kate; and then let kate be chaste and dian sportful! katharina where did you study all this goodly speech? petruchio it is extempore, from my mother-wit. katharina a witty mother! witless else her son. petruchio am i not wise? katharina yes; keep you warm. petruchio marry, so i mean, sweet katharina, in thy bed: and therefore, setting all this chat aside, thus in plain terms: your father hath consented that you shall be my wife; your dowry 'greed on; and, will you, nill you, i will marry you. now, kate, i am a husband for your turn; for, by this light, whereby i see thy beauty, thy beauty, that doth make me like thee well, thou must be married to no man but me; for i am he am born to tame you kate, and bring you from a wild kate to a kate conformable as other household kates. here comes your father: never make denial; i must and will have katharina to my wife. [re-enter baptista, gremio, and tranio] baptista now, signior petruchio, how speed you with my daughter? petruchio how but well, sir? how but well? it were impossible i should speed amiss. baptista why, how now, daughter katharina! in your dumps? katharina call you me daughter? now, i promise you you have show'd a tender fatherly regard, to wish me wed to one half lunatic; a mad-cup ruffian and a swearing jack, that thinks with oaths to face the matter out. petruchio father, 'tis thus: yourself and all the world, that talk'd of her, have talk'd amiss of her: if she be curst, it is for policy, for she's not froward, but modest as the dove; she is not hot, but temperate as the morn; for patience she will prove a second grissel, and roman lucrece for her chastity: and to conclude, we have 'greed so well together, that upon sunday is the wedding-day. katharina i'll see thee hang'd on sunday first. gremio hark, petruchio; she says she'll see thee hang'd first. tranio is this your speeding? nay, then, good night our part! petruchio be patient, gentlemen; i choose her for myself: if she and i be pleased, what's that to you? 'tis bargain'd 'twixt us twain, being alone, that she shall still be curst in company. i tell you, 'tis incredible to believe how much she loves me: o, the kindest kate! she hung about my neck; and kiss on kiss she vied so fast, protesting oath on oath, that in a twink she won me to her love. o, you are novices! 'tis a world to see, how tame, when men and women are alone, a meacock wretch can make the curstest shrew. give me thy hand, kate: i will unto venice, to buy apparel 'gainst the wedding-day. provide the feast, father, and bid the guests; i will be sure my katharina shall be fine. baptista i know not what to say: but give me your hands; god send you joy, petruchio! 'tis a match. gremio | | amen, say we: we will be witnesses. tranio | petruchio father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu; i will to venice; sunday comes apace: we will have rings and things and fine array; and kiss me, kate, we will be married o'sunday. [exeunt petruchio and katharina severally] gremio was ever match clapp'd up so suddenly? baptista faith, gentlemen, now i play a merchant's part, and venture madly on a desperate mart. tranio 'twas a commodity lay fretting by you: 'twill bring you gain, or perish on the seas. baptista the gain i seek is, quiet in the match. gremio no doubt but he hath got a quiet catch. but now, baptists, to your younger daughter: now is the day we long have looked for: i am your neighbour, and was suitor first. tranio and i am one that love bianca more than words can witness, or your thoughts can guess. gremio youngling, thou canst not love so dear as i. tranio graybeard, thy love doth freeze. gremio but thine doth fry. skipper, stand back: 'tis age that nourisheth. tranio but youth in ladies' eyes that flourisheth. baptista content you, gentlemen: i will compound this strife: 'tis deeds must win the prize; and he of both that can assure my daughter greatest dower shall have my bianca's love. say, signior gremio, what can you assure her? gremio first, as you know, my house within the city is richly furnished with plate and gold; basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands; my hangings all of tyrian tapestry; in ivory coffers i have stuff'd my crowns; in cypress chests my arras counterpoints, costly apparel, tents, and canopies, fine linen, turkey cushions boss'd with pearl, valance of venice gold in needlework, pewter and brass and all things that belong to house or housekeeping: then, at my farm i have a hundred milch-kine to the pail, sixscore fat oxen standing in my stalls, and all things answerable to this portion. myself am struck in years, i must confess; and if i die to-morrow, this is hers, if whilst i live she will be only mine. tranio that 'only' came well in. sir, list to me: i am my father's heir and only son: if i may have your daughter to my wife, i'll leave her houses three or four as good, within rich pisa walls, as any one old signior gremio has in padua; besides two thousand ducats by the year of fruitful land, all which shall be her jointure. what, have i pinch'd you, signior gremio? gremio two thousand ducats by the year of land! my land amounts not to so much in all: that she shall have; besides an argosy that now is lying in marseilles' road. what, have i choked you with an argosy? tranio gremio, 'tis known my father hath no less than three great argosies; besides two galliases, and twelve tight galleys: these i will assure her, and twice as much, whate'er thou offer'st next. gremio nay, i have offer'd all, i have no more; and she can have no more than all i have: if you like me, she shall have me and mine. tranio why, then the maid is mine from all the world, by your firm promise: gremio is out-vied. baptista i must confess your offer is the best; and, let your father make her the assurance, she is your own; else, you must pardon me, if you should die before him, where's her dower? tranio that's but a cavil: he is old, i young. gremio and may not young men die, as well as old? baptista well, gentlemen, i am thus resolved: on sunday next you know my daughter katharina is to be married: now, on the sunday following, shall bianca be bride to you, if you this assurance; if not, signior gremio: and so, i take my leave, and thank you both. gremio adieu, good neighbour. [exit baptista] now i fear thee not: sirrah young gamester, your father were a fool to give thee all, and in his waning age set foot under thy table: tut, a toy! an old italian fox is not so kind, my boy. [exit] tranio a vengeance on your crafty wither'd hide! yet i have faced it with a card of ten. 'tis in my head to do my master good: i see no reason but supposed lucentio must get a father, call'd 'supposed vincentio;' and that's a wonder: fathers commonly do get their children; but in this case of wooing, a child shall get a sire, if i fail not of my cunning. [exit] the taming of the shrew act iii scene i padua. baptista's house. [enter lucentio, hortensio, and bianca] lucentio fiddler, forbear; you grow too forward, sir: have you so soon forgot the entertainment her sister katharina welcomed you withal? hortensio but, wrangling pedant, this is the patroness of heavenly harmony: then give me leave to have prerogative; and when in music we have spent an hour, your lecture shall have leisure for as much. lucentio preposterous ass, that never read so far to know the cause why music was ordain'd! was it not to refresh the mind of man after his studies or his usual pain? then give me leave to read philosophy, and while i pause, serve in your harmony. hortensio sirrah, i will not bear these braves of thine. bianca why, gentlemen, you do me double wrong, to strive for that which resteth in my choice: i am no breeching scholar in the schools; i'll not be tied to hours nor 'pointed times, but learn my lessons as i please myself. and, to cut off all strife, here sit we down: take you your instrument, play you the whiles; his lecture will be done ere you have tuned. hortensio you'll leave his lecture when i am in tune? lucentio that will be never: tune your instrument. bianca where left we last? lucentio here, madam: 'hic ibat simois; hic est sigeia tellus; hic steterat priami regia celsa senis.' bianca construe them. lucentio 'hic ibat,' as i told you before, 'simois,' i am lucentio, 'hic est,' son unto vincentio of pisa, 'sigeia tellus,' disguised thus to get your love; 'hic steterat,' and that lucentio that comes a-wooing, 'priami,' is my man tranio, 'regia,' bearing my port, 'celsa senis,' that we might beguile the old pantaloon. hortensio madam, my instrument's in tune. bianca let's hear. o fie! the treble jars. lucentio spit in the hole, man, and tune again. bianca now let me see if i can construe it: 'hic ibat simois,' i know you not, 'hic est sigeia tellus,' i trust you not; 'hic steterat priami,' take heed he hear us not, 'regia,' presume not, 'celsa senis,' despair not. hortensio madam, 'tis now in tune. lucentio all but the base. hortensio the base is right; 'tis the base knave that jars. [aside] how fiery and forward our pedant is! now, for my life, the knave doth court my love: pedascule, i'll watch you better yet. bianca in time i may believe, yet i mistrust. lucentio mistrust it not: for, sure, aeacides was ajax, call'd so from his grandfather. bianca i must believe my master; else, i promise you, i should be arguing still upon that doubt: but let it rest. now, licio, to you: good masters, take it not unkindly, pray, that i have been thus pleasant with you both. hortensio you may go walk, and give me leave a while: my lessons make no music in three parts. lucentio are you so formal, sir? well, i must wait, [aside] and watch withal; for, but i be deceived, our fine musician groweth amorous. hortensio madam, before you touch the instrument, to learn the order of my fingering, i must begin with rudiments of art; to teach you gamut in a briefer sort, more pleasant, pithy and effectual, than hath been taught by any of my trade: and there it is in writing, fairly drawn. bianca why, i am past my gamut long ago. hortensio yet read the gamut of hortensio. bianca [reads] ''gamut' i am, the ground of all accord, 'a re,' to plead hortensio's passion; 'b mi,' bianca, take him for thy lord, 'c fa ut,' that loves with all affection: 'd sol re,' one clef, two notes have i: 'e la mi,' show pity, or i die.' call you this gamut? tut, i like it not: old fashions please me best; i am not so nice, to change true rules for old inventions. [enter a servant] servant mistress, your father prays you leave your books and help to dress your sister's chamber up: you know to-morrow is the wedding-day. bianca farewell, sweet masters both; i must be gone. [exeunt bianca and servant] lucentio faith, mistress, then i have no cause to stay. [exit] hortensio but i have cause to pry into this pedant: methinks he looks as though he were in love: yet if thy thoughts, bianca, be so humble to cast thy wandering eyes on every stale, seize thee that list: if once i find thee ranging, hortensio will be quit with thee by changing. [exit] the taming of the shrew act iii scene ii padua. before baptista's house. [enter baptista, gremio, tranio, katharina, bianca, lucentio, and others, attendants] baptista [to tranio] signior lucentio, this is the 'pointed day. that katharina and petruchio should be married, and yet we hear not of our son-in-law. what will be said? what mockery will it be, to want the bridegroom when the priest attends to speak the ceremonial rites of marriage! what says lucentio to this shame of ours? katharina no shame but mine: i must, forsooth, be forced to give my hand opposed against my heart unto a mad-brain rudesby full of spleen; who woo'd in haste and means to wed at leisure. i told you, i, he was a frantic fool, hiding his bitter jests in blunt behavior: and, to be noted for a merry man, he'll woo a thousand, 'point the day of marriage, make feasts, invite friends, and proclaim the banns; yet never means to wed where he hath woo'd. now must the world point at poor katharina, and say, 'lo, there is mad petruchio's wife, if it would please him come and marry her!' tranio patience, good katharina, and baptista too. upon my life, petruchio means but well, whatever fortune stays him from his word: though he be blunt, i know him passing wise; though he be merry, yet withal he's honest. katharina would katharina had never seen him though! [exit weeping, followed by bianca and others] baptista go, girl; i cannot blame thee now to weep; for such an injury would vex a very saint, much more a shrew of thy impatient humour. [enter biondello] biondello master, master! news, old news, and such news as you never heard of! baptista is it new and old too? how may that be? biondello why, is it not news, to hear of petruchio's coming? baptista is he come? biondello why, no, sir. baptista what then? biondello he is coming. baptista when will he be here? biondello when he stands where i am and sees you there. tranio but say, what to thine old news? biondello why, petruchio is coming in a new hat and an old jerkin, a pair of old breeches thrice turned, a pair of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another laced, an old rusty sword ta'en out of the town-armory, with a broken hilt, and chapeless; with two broken points: his horse hipped with an old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred; besides, possessed with the glanders and like to mose in the chine; troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of wingdalls, sped with spavins, rayed with yellows, past cure of the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed in the back and shoulder-shotten; near-legged before and with, a half-chequed bit and a head-stall of sheeps leather which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst and now repaired with knots; one girth six time pieced and a woman's crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her name fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced with packthread. baptista who comes with him? biondello o, sir, his lackey, for all the world caparisoned like the horse; with a linen stock on one leg and a kersey boot-hose on the other, gartered with a red and blue list; an old hat and 'the humour of forty fancies' pricked in't for a feather: a monster, a very monster in apparel, and not like a christian footboy or a gentleman's lackey. tranio 'tis some odd humour pricks him to this fashion; yet oftentimes he goes but mean-apparell'd. baptista i am glad he's come, howsoe'er he comes. biondello why, sir, he comes not. baptista didst thou not say he comes? biondello who? that petruchio came? baptista ay, that petruchio came. biondello no, sir, i say his horse comes, with him on his back. baptista why, that's all one. biondello nay, by saint jamy, i hold you a penny, a horse and a man is more than one, and yet not many. [enter petruchio and grumio] petruchio come, where be these gallants? who's at home? baptista you are welcome, sir. petruchio and yet i come not well. baptista and yet you halt not. tranio not so well apparell'd as i wish you were. petruchio were it better, i should rush in thus. but where is kate? where is my lovely bride? how does my father? gentles, methinks you frown: and wherefore gaze this goodly company, as if they saw some wondrous monument, some comet or unusual prodigy? baptista why, sir, you know this is your wedding-day: first were we sad, fearing you would not come; now sadder, that you come so unprovided. fie, doff this habit, shame to your estate, an eye-sore to our solemn festival! tranio and tells us, what occasion of import hath all so long detain'd you from your wife, and sent you hither so unlike yourself? petruchio tedious it were to tell, and harsh to hear: sufficeth i am come to keep my word, though in some part enforced to digress; which, at more leisure, i will so excuse as you shall well be satisfied withal. but where is kate? i stay too long from her: the morning wears, 'tis time we were at church. tranio see not your bride in these unreverent robes: go to my chamber; put on clothes of mine. petruchio not i, believe me: thus i'll visit her. baptista but thus, i trust, you will not marry her. petruchio good sooth, even thus; therefore ha' done with words: to me she's married, not unto my clothes: could i repair what she will wear in me, as i can change these poor accoutrements, 'twere well for kate and better for myself. but what a fool am i to chat with you, when i should bid good morrow to my bride, and seal the title with a lovely kiss! [exeunt petruchio and grumio] tranio he hath some meaning in his mad attire: we will persuade him, be it possible, to put on better ere he go to church. baptista i'll after him, and see the event of this. [exeunt baptista, gremio, and attendants] tranio but to her love concerneth us to add her father's liking: which to bring to pass, as i before unparted to your worship, i am to get a man,--whate'er he be, it skills not much. we'll fit him to our turn,- and he shall be vincentio of pisa; and make assurance here in padua of greater sums than i have promised. so shall you quietly enjoy your hope, and marry sweet bianca with consent. lucentio were it not that my fellow-school-master doth watch bianca's steps so narrowly, 'twere good, methinks, to steal our marriage; which once perform'd, let all the world say no, i'll keep mine own, despite of all the world. tranio that by degrees we mean to look into, and watch our vantage in this business: we'll over-reach the greybeard, gremio, the narrow-prying father, minola, the quaint musician, amorous licio; all for my master's sake, lucentio. [re-enter gremio] signior gremio, came you from the church? gremio as willingly as e'er i came from school. tranio and is the bride and bridegroom coming home? gremio a bridegroom say you? 'tis a groom indeed, a grumbling groom, and that the girl shall find. tranio curster than she? why, 'tis impossible. gremio why he's a devil, a devil, a very fiend. tranio why, she's a devil, a devil, the devil's dam. gremio tut, she's a lamb, a dove, a fool to him! i'll tell you, sir lucentio: when the priest should ask, if katharina should be his wife, 'ay, by gogs-wouns,' quoth he; and swore so loud, that, all-amazed, the priest let fall the book; and, as he stoop'd again to take it up, the mad-brain'd bridegroom took him such a cuff that down fell priest and book and book and priest: 'now take them up,' quoth he, 'if any list.' tranio what said the wench when he rose again? gremio trembled and shook; for why, he stamp'd and swore, as if the vicar meant to cozen him. but after many ceremonies done, he calls for wine: 'a health!' quoth he, as if he had been aboard, carousing to his mates after a storm; quaff'd off the muscadel and threw the sops all in the sexton's face; having no other reason but that his beard grew thin and hungerly and seem'd to ask him sops as he was drinking. this done, he took the bride about the neck and kiss'd her lips with such a clamorous smack that at the parting all the church did echo: and i seeing this came thence for very shame; and after me, i know, the rout is coming. such a mad marriage never was before: hark, hark! i hear the minstrels play. [music] [re-enter petruchio, katharina, bianca, baptista, hortensio, grumio, and train] petruchio gentlemen and friends, i thank you for your pains: i know you think to dine with me to-day, and have prepared great store of wedding cheer; but so it is, my haste doth call me hence, and therefore here i mean to take my leave. baptista is't possible you will away to-night? petruchio i must away to-day, before night come: make it no wonder; if you knew my business, you would entreat me rather go than stay. and, honest company, i thank you all, that have beheld me give away myself to this most patient, sweet and virtuous wife: dine with my father, drink a health to me; for i must hence; and farewell to you all. tranio let us entreat you stay till after dinner. petruchio it may not be. gremio let me entreat you. petruchio it cannot be. katharina let me entreat you. petruchio i am content. katharina are you content to stay? petruchio i am content you shall entreat me stay; but yet not stay, entreat me how you can. katharina now, if you love me, stay. petruchio grumio, my horse. grumio ay, sir, they be ready: the oats have eaten the horses. katharina nay, then, do what thou canst, i will not go to-day; no, nor to-morrow, not till i please myself. the door is open, sir; there lies your way; you may be jogging whiles your boots are green; for me, i'll not be gone till i please myself: 'tis like you'll prove a jolly surly groom, that take it on you at the first so roundly. petruchio o kate, content thee; prithee, be not angry. katharina i will be angry: what hast thou to do? father, be quiet; he shall stay my leisure. gremio ay, marry, sir, now it begins to work. katarina gentlemen, forward to the bridal dinner: i see a woman may be made a fool, if she had not a spirit to resist. petruchio they shall go forward, kate, at thy command. obey the bride, you that attend on her; go to the feast, revel and domineer, carouse full measure to her maidenhead, be mad and merry, or go hang yourselves: but for my bonny kate, she must with me. nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret; i will be master of what is mine own: she is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, my household stuff, my field, my barn, my horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing; and here she stands, touch her whoever dare; i'll bring mine action on the proudest he that stops my way in padua. grumio, draw forth thy weapon, we are beset with thieves; rescue thy mistress, if thou be a man. fear not, sweet wench, they shall not touch thee, kate: i'll buckler thee against a million. [exeunt petruchio, katharina, and grumio] baptista nay, let them go, a couple of quiet ones. gremio went they not quickly, i should die with laughing. tranio of all mad matches never was the like. lucentio mistress, what's your opinion of your sister? bianca that, being mad herself, she's madly mated. gremio i warrant him, petruchio is kated. baptista neighbours and friends, though bride and bridegroom wants for to supply the places at the table, you know there wants no junkets at the feast. lucentio, you shall supply the bridegroom's place: and let bianca take her sister's room. tranio shall sweet bianca practise how to bride it? baptista she shall, lucentio. come, gentlemen, let's go. [exeunt] the taming of the shrew act iv scene i petruchio's country house. [enter grumio] grumio fie, fie on all tired jades, on all mad masters, and all foul ways! was ever man so beaten? was ever man so rayed? was ever man so weary? i am sent before to make a fire, and they are coming after to warm them. now, were not i a little pot and soon hot, my very lips might freeze to my teeth, my tongue to the roof of my mouth, my heart in my belly, ere i should come by a fire to thaw me: but i, with blowing the fire, shall warm myself; for, considering the weather, a taller man than i will take cold. holla, ho! curtis. [enter curtis] curtis who is that calls so coldly? grumio a piece of ice: if thou doubt it, thou mayst slide from my shoulder to my heel with no greater a run but my head and my neck. a fire good curtis. curtis is my master and his wife coming, grumio? grumio o, ay, curtis, ay: and therefore fire, fire; cast on no water. curtis is she so hot a shrew as she's reported? grumio she was, good curtis, before this frost: but, thou knowest, winter tames man, woman and beast; for it hath tamed my old master and my new mistress and myself, fellow curtis. curtis away, you three-inch fool! i am no beast. grumio am i but three inches? why, thy horn is a foot; and so long am i at the least. but wilt thou make a fire, or shall i complain on thee to our mistress, whose hand, she being now at hand, thou shalt soon feel, to thy cold comfort, for being slow in thy hot office? curtis i prithee, good grumio, tell me, how goes the world? grumio a cold world, curtis, in every office but thine; and therefore fire: do thy duty, and have thy duty; for my master and mistress are almost frozen to death. curtis there's fire ready; and therefore, good grumio, the news. grumio why, 'jack, boy! ho! boy!' and as much news as will thaw. curtis come, you are so full of cony-catching! grumio why, therefore fire; for i have caught extreme cold. where's the cook? is supper ready, the house trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept; the serving-men in their new fustian, their white stockings, and every officer his wedding-garment on? be the jacks fair within, the jills fair without, the carpets laid, and every thing in order? curtis all ready; and therefore, i pray thee, news. grumio first, know, my horse is tired; my master and mistress fallen out. curtis how? grumio out of their saddles into the dirt; and thereby hangs a tale. curtis let's ha't, good grumio. grumio lend thine ear. curtis here. grumio there. [strikes him] curtis this is to feel a tale, not to hear a tale. grumio and therefore 'tis called a sensible tale: and this cuff was but to knock at your ear, and beseech listening. now i begin: imprimis, we came down a foul hill, my master riding behind my mistress,- curtis both of one horse? grumio what's that to thee? curtis why, a horse. grumio tell thou the tale: but hadst thou not crossed me, thou shouldst have heard how her horse fell and she under her horse; thou shouldst have heard in how miry a place, how she was bemoiled, how he left her with the horse upon her, how he beat me because her horse stumbled, how she waded through the dirt to pluck him off me, how he swore, how she prayed, that never prayed before, how i cried, how the horses ran away, how her bridle was burst, how i lost my crupper, with many things of worthy memory, which now shall die in oblivion and thou return unexperienced to thy grave. curtis by this reckoning he is more shrew than she. grumio ay; and that thou and the proudest of you all shall find when he comes home. but what talk i of this? call forth nathaniel, joseph, nicholas, philip, walter, sugarsop and the rest: let their heads be sleekly combed their blue coats brushed and their garters of an indifferent knit: let them curtsy with their left legs and not presume to touch a hair of my master's horse-tail till they kiss their hands. are they all ready? curtis they are. grumio call them forth. curtis do you hear, ho? you must meet my master to countenance my mistress. grumio why, she hath a face of her own. curtis who knows not that? grumio thou, it seems, that calls for company to countenance her. curtis i call them forth to credit her. grumio why, she comes to borrow nothing of them. [enter four or five serving-men] nathaniel welcome home, grumio! philip how now, grumio! joseph what, grumio! nicholas fellow grumio! nathaniel how now, old lad? grumio welcome, you;--how now, you;-what, you;--fellow, you;--and thus much for greeting. now, my spruce companions, is all ready, and all things neat? nathaniel all things is ready. how near is our master? grumio e'en at hand, alighted by this; and therefore be not--cock's passion, silence! i hear my master. [enter petruchio and katharina] petruchio where be these knaves? what, no man at door to hold my stirrup nor to take my horse! where is nathaniel, gregory, philip? all serving-men here, here, sir; here, sir. petruchio here, sir! here, sir! here, sir! here, sir! you logger-headed and unpolish'd grooms! what, no attendance? no regard? no duty? where is the foolish knave i sent before? grumio here, sir; as foolish as i was before. petruchio you peasant swain! you whoreson malt-horse drudge! did i not bid thee meet me in the park, and bring along these rascal knaves with thee? grumio nathaniel's coat, sir, was not fully made, and gabriel's pumps were all unpink'd i' the heel; there was no link to colour peter's hat, and walter's dagger was not come from sheathing: there were none fine but adam, ralph, and gregory; the rest were ragged, old, and beggarly; yet, as they are, here are they come to meet you. petruchio go, rascals, go, and fetch my supper in. [exeunt servants] [singing] where is the life that late i led- where are those--sit down, kate, and welcome.- sound, sound, sound, sound! [re-enter servants with supper] why, when, i say? nay, good sweet kate, be merry. off with my boots, you rogues! you villains, when? [sings] it was the friar of orders grey, as he forth walked on his way:- out, you rogue! you pluck my foot awry: take that, and mend the plucking off the other. [strikes him] be merry, kate. some water, here; what, ho! where's my spaniel troilus? sirrah, get you hence, and bid my cousin ferdinand come hither: one, kate, that you must kiss, and be acquainted with. where are my slippers? shall i have some water? [enter one with water] come, kate, and wash, and welcome heartily. you whoreson villain! will you let it fall? [strikes him] katharina patience, i pray you; 'twas a fault unwilling. petruchio a whoreson beetle-headed, flap-ear'd knave! come, kate, sit down; i know you have a stomach. will you give thanks, sweet kate; or else shall i? what's this? mutton? first servant ay. petruchio who brought it? peter i. petruchio 'tis burnt; and so is all the meat. what dogs are these! where is the rascal cook? how durst you, villains, bring it from the dresser, and serve it thus to me that love it not? theretake it to you, trenchers, cups, and all; [throws the meat, &c. about the stage] you heedless joltheads and unmanner'd slaves! what, do you grumble? i'll be with you straight. katharina i pray you, husband, be not so disquiet: the meat was well, if you were so contented. petruchio i tell thee, kate, 'twas burnt and dried away; and i expressly am forbid to touch it, for it engenders choler, planteth anger; and better 'twere that both of us did fast, since, of ourselves, ourselves are choleric, than feed it with such over-roasted flesh. be patient; to-morrow 't shall be mended, and, for this night, we'll fast for company: come, i will bring thee to thy bridal chamber. [exeunt] [re-enter servants severally] nathaniel peter, didst ever see the like? peter he kills her in her own humour. [re-enter curtis] grumio where is he? curtis in her chamber, making a sermon of continency to her; and rails, and swears, and rates, that she, poor soul, knows not which way to stand, to look, to speak, and sits as one new-risen from a dream. away, away! for he is coming hither. [exeunt] [re-enter petruchio] petruchio thus have i politicly begun my reign, and 'tis my hope to end successfully. my falcon now is sharp and passing empty; and till she stoop she must not be full-gorged, for then she never looks upon her lure. another way i have to man my haggard, to make her come and know her keeper's call, that is, to watch her, as we watch these kites that bate and beat and will not be obedient. she eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat; last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not; as with the meat, some undeserved fault i'll find about the making of the bed; and here i'll fling the pillow, there the bolster, this way the coverlet, another way the sheets: ay, and amid this hurly i intend that all is done in reverend care of her; and in conclusion she shall watch all night: and if she chance to nod i'll rail and brawl and with the clamour keep her still awake. this is a way to kill a wife with kindness; and thus i'll curb her mad and headstrong humour. he that knows better how to tame a shrew, now let him speak: 'tis charity to show. [exit] the taming of the shrew act iv scene ii padua. before baptista's house. [enter tranio and hortensio] tranio is't possible, friend licio, that mistress bianca doth fancy any other but lucentio? i tell you, sir, she bears me fair in hand. hortensio sir, to satisfy you in what i have said, stand by and mark the manner of his teaching. [enter bianca and lucentio] lucentio now, mistress, profit you in what you read? bianca what, master, read you? first resolve me that. lucentio i read that i profess, the art to love. bianca and may you prove, sir, master of your art! lucentio while you, sweet dear, prove mistress of my heart! hortensio quick proceeders, marry! now, tell me, i pray, you that durst swear at your mistress bianca loved none in the world so well as lucentio. tranio o despiteful love! unconstant womankind! i tell thee, licio, this is wonderful. hortensio mistake no more: i am not licio, nor a musician, as i seem to be; but one that scorn to live in this disguise, for such a one as leaves a gentleman, and makes a god of such a cullion: know, sir, that i am call'd hortensio. tranio signior hortensio, i have often heard of your entire affection to bianca; and since mine eyes are witness of her lightness, i will with you, if you be so contented, forswear bianca and her love for ever. hortensio see, how they kiss and court! signior lucentio, here is my hand, and here i firmly vow never to woo her no more, but do forswear her, as one unworthy all the former favours that i have fondly flatter'd her withal. tranio and here i take the unfeigned oath, never to marry with her though she would entreat: fie on her! see, how beastly she doth court him! hortensio would all the world but he had quite forsworn! for me, that i may surely keep mine oath, i will be married to a wealthy widow, ere three days pass, which hath as long loved me as i have loved this proud disdainful haggard. and so farewell, signior lucentio. kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love: and so i take my leave, in resolution as i swore before. [exit] tranio mistress bianca, bless you with such grace as 'longeth to a lover's blessed case! nay, i have ta'en you napping, gentle love, and have forsworn you with hortensio. bianca tranio, you jest: but have you both forsworn me? tranio mistress, we have. lucentio then we are rid of licio. tranio i' faith, he'll have a lusty widow now, that shall be wood and wedded in a day. bianca god give him joy! tranio ay, and he'll tame her. bianca he says so, tranio. tranio faith, he is gone unto the taming-school. bianca the taming-school! what, is there such a place? tranio ay, mistress, and petruchio is the master; that teacheth tricks eleven and twenty long, to tame a shrew and charm her chattering tongue. [enter biondello] biondello o master, master, i have watch'd so long that i am dog-weary: but at last i spied an ancient angel coming down the hill, will serve the turn. tranio what is he, biondello? biondello master, a mercatante, or a pedant, i know not what; but format in apparel, in gait and countenance surely like a father. lucentio and what of him, tranio? tranio if he be credulous and trust my tale, i'll make him glad to seem vincentio, and give assurance to baptista minola, as if he were the right vincentio take in your love, and then let me alone. [exeunt lucentio and bianca] [enter a pedant] pedant god save you, sir! tranio and you, sir! you are welcome. travel you far on, or are you at the farthest? pedant sir, at the farthest for a week or two: but then up farther, and as for as rome; and so to tripoli, if god lend me life. tranio what countryman, i pray? pedant of mantua. tranio of mantua, sir? marry, god forbid! and come to padua, careless of your life? pedant my life, sir! how, i pray? for that goes hard. tranio 'tis death for any one in mantua to come to padua. know you not the cause? your ships are stay'd at venice, and the duke, for private quarrel 'twixt your duke and him, hath publish'd and proclaim'd it openly: 'tis, marvel, but that you are but newly come, you might have heard it else proclaim'd about. pedant alas! sir, it is worse for me than so; for i have bills for money by exchange from florence and must here deliver them. tranio well, sir, to do you courtesy, this will i do, and this i will advise you: first, tell me, have you ever been at pisa? pedant ay, sir, in pisa have i often been, pisa renowned for grave citizens. tranio among them know you one vincentio? pedant i know him not, but i have heard of him; a merchant of incomparable wealth. tranio he is my father, sir; and, sooth to say, in countenance somewhat doth resemble you. biondello [aside] as much as an apple doth an oyster, and all one. tranio to save your life in this extremity, this favour will i do you for his sake; and think it not the worst of an your fortunes that you are like to sir vincentio. his name and credit shall you undertake, and in my house you shall be friendly lodged: look that you take upon you as you should; you understand me, sir: so shall you stay till you have done your business in the city: if this be courtesy, sir, accept of it. pedant o sir, i do; and will repute you ever the patron of my life and liberty. tranio then go with me to make the matter good. this, by the way, i let you understand; my father is here look'd for every day, to pass assurance of a dower in marriage 'twixt me and one baptista's daughter here: in all these circumstances i'll instruct you: go with me to clothe you as becomes you. [exeunt] the taming of the shrew act iv scene iii a room in petruchio's house. [enter katharina and grumio] grumio no, no, forsooth; i dare not for my life. katharina the more my wrong, the more his spite appears: what, did he marry me to famish me? beggars, that come unto my father's door, upon entreaty have a present aims; if not, elsewhere they meet with charity: but i, who never knew how to entreat, nor never needed that i should entreat, am starved for meat, giddy for lack of sleep, with oath kept waking and with brawling fed: and that which spites me more than all these wants, he does it under name of perfect love; as who should say, if i should sleep or eat, 'twere deadly sickness or else present death. i prithee go and get me some repast; i care not what, so it be wholesome food. grumio what say you to a neat's foot? katharina 'tis passing good: i prithee let me have it. grumio i fear it is too choleric a meat. how say you to a fat tripe finely broil'd? katharina i like it well: good grumio, fetch it me. grumio i cannot tell; i fear 'tis choleric. what say you to a piece of beef and mustard? katharina a dish that i do love to feed upon. grumio ay, but the mustard is too hot a little. katharina why then, the beef, and let the mustard rest. grumio nay then, i will not: you shall have the mustard, or else you get no beef of grumio. katharina then both, or one, or any thing thou wilt. grumio why then, the mustard without the beef. katharina go, get thee gone, thou false deluding slave, [beats him] that feed'st me with the very name of meat: sorrow on thee and all the pack of you, that triumph thus upon my misery! go, get thee gone, i say. [enter petruchio and hortensio with meat] petruchio how fares my kate? what, sweeting, all amort? hortensio mistress, what cheer? katharina faith, as cold as can be. petruchio pluck up thy spirits; look cheerfully upon me. here love; thou see'st how diligent i am to dress thy meat myself and bring it thee: i am sure, sweet kate, this kindness merits thanks. what, not a word? nay, then thou lovest it not; and all my pains is sorted to no proof. here, take away this dish. katharina i pray you, let it stand. petruchio the poorest service is repaid with thanks; and so shall mine, before you touch the meat. katharina i thank you, sir. hortensio signior petruchio, fie! you are to blame. come, mistress kate, i'll bear you company. petruchio [aside] eat it up all, hortensio, if thou lovest me. much good do it unto thy gentle heart! kate, eat apace: and now, my honey love, will we return unto thy father's house and revel it as bravely as the best, with silken coats and caps and golden rings, with ruffs and cuffs and fardingales and things; with scarfs and fans and double change of bravery, with amber bracelets, beads and all this knavery. what, hast thou dined? the tailor stays thy leisure, to deck thy body with his ruffling treasure. [enter tailor] come, tailor, let us see these ornaments; lay forth the gown. [enter haberdasher] what news with you, sir? haberdasher here is the cap your worship did bespeak. petruchio why, this was moulded on a porringer; a velvet dish: fie, fie! 'tis lewd and filthy: why, 'tis a cockle or a walnut-shell, a knack, a toy, a trick, a baby's cap: away with it! come, let me have a bigger. katharina i'll have no bigger: this doth fit the time, and gentlewomen wear such caps as these petruchio when you are gentle, you shall have one too, and not till then. hortensio [aside] that will not be in haste. katharina why, sir, i trust i may have leave to speak; and speak i will; i am no child, no babe: your betters have endured me say my mind, and if you cannot, best you stop your ears. my tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break, and rather than it shall, i will be free even to the uttermost, as i please, in words. petruchio why, thou say'st true; it is a paltry cap, a custard-coffin, a bauble, a silken pie: i love thee well, in that thou likest it not. katharina love me or love me not, i like the cap; and it i will have, or i will have none. [exit haberdasher] petruchio thy gown? why, ay: come, tailor, let us see't. o mercy, god! what masquing stuff is here? what's this? a sleeve? 'tis like a demi-cannon: what, up and down, carved like an apple-tart? here's snip and nip and cut and slish and slash, like to a censer in a barber's shop: why, what, i' devil's name, tailor, call'st thou this? hortensio [aside] i see she's like to have neither cap nor gown. tailor you bid me make it orderly and well, according to the fashion and the time. petruchio marry, and did; but if you be remember'd, i did not bid you mar it to the time. go, hop me over every kennel home, for you shall hop without my custom, sir: i'll none of it: hence! make your best of it. katharina i never saw a better-fashion'd gown, more quaint, more pleasing, nor more commendable: belike you mean to make a puppet of me. petruchio why, true; he means to make a puppet of thee. tailor she says your worship means to make a puppet of her. petruchio o monstrous arrogance! thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble, thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail! thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou! braved in mine own house with a skein of thread? away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant; or i shall so be-mete thee with thy yard as thou shalt think on prating whilst thou livest! i tell thee, i, that thou hast marr'd her gown. tailor your worship is deceived; the gown is made just as my master had direction: grumio gave order how it should be done. grumio i gave him no order; i gave him the stuff. tailor but how did you desire it should be made? grumio marry, sir, with needle and thread. tailor but did you not request to have it cut? grumio thou hast faced many things. tailor i have. grumio face not me: thou hast braved many men; brave not me; i will neither be faced nor braved. i say unto thee, i bid thy master cut out the gown; but i did not bid him cut it to pieces: ergo, thou liest. tailor why, here is the note of the fashion to testify petruchio read it. grumio the note lies in's throat, if he say i said so. tailor [reads] 'imprimis, a loose-bodied gown:' grumio master, if ever i said loose-bodied gown, sew me in the skirts of it, and beat me to death with a bottom of brown thread: i said a gown. petruchio proceed. tailor [reads] 'with a small compassed cape:' grumio i confess the cape. tailor [reads] 'with a trunk sleeve:' grumio i confess two sleeves. tailor [reads] 'the sleeves curiously cut.' petruchio ay, there's the villany. grumio error i' the bill, sir; error i' the bill. i commanded the sleeves should be cut out and sewed up again; and that i'll prove upon thee, though thy little finger be armed in a thimble. tailor this is true that i say: an i had thee in place where, thou shouldst know it. grumio i am for thee straight: take thou the bill, give me thy mete-yard, and spare not me. hortensio god-a-mercy, grumio! then he shall have no odds. petruchio well, sir, in brief, the gown is not for me. grumio you are i' the right, sir: 'tis for my mistress. petruchio go, take it up unto thy master's use. grumio villain, not for thy life: take up my mistress' gown for thy master's use! petruchio why, sir, what's your conceit in that? grumio o, sir, the conceit is deeper than you think for: take up my mistress' gown to his master's use! o, fie, fie, fie! petruchio [aside] hortensio, say thou wilt see the tailor paid. go take it hence; be gone, and say no more. hortensio tailor, i'll pay thee for thy gown tomorrow: take no unkindness of his hasty words: away! i say; commend me to thy master. [exit tailor] petruchio well, come, my kate; we will unto your father's even in these honest mean habiliments: our purses shall be proud, our garments poor; for 'tis the mind that makes the body rich; and as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, so honour peereth in the meanest habit. what is the jay more precious than the lark, because his fathers are more beautiful? or is the adder better than the eel, because his painted skin contents the eye? o, no, good kate; neither art thou the worse for this poor furniture and mean array. if thou account'st it shame. lay it on me; and therefore frolic: we will hence forthwith, to feast and sport us at thy father's house. go, call my men, and let us straight to him; and bring our horses unto long-lane end; there will we mount, and thither walk on foot let's see; i think 'tis now some seven o'clock, and well we may come there by dinner-time. katharina i dare assure you, sir, 'tis almost two; and 'twill be supper-time ere you come there. petruchio it shall be seven ere i go to horse: look, what i speak, or do, or think to do, you are still crossing it. sirs, let't alone: i will not go to-day; and ere i do, it shall be what o'clock i say it is. hortensio [aside] why, so this gallant will command the sun. [exeunt] the taming of the shrew act iv scene iv padua. before baptista's house. [enter tranio, and the pedant dressed like vincentio] tranio sir, this is the house: please it you that i call? pedant ay, what else? and but i be deceived signior baptista may remember me, near twenty years ago, in genoa, where we were lodgers at the pegasus. tranio 'tis well; and hold your own, in any case, with such austerity as 'longeth to a father. pedant i warrant you. [enter biondello] but, sir, here comes your boy; 'twere good he were school'd. tranio fear you not him. sirrah biondello, now do your duty throughly, i advise you: imagine 'twere the right vincentio. biondello tut, fear not me. tranio but hast thou done thy errand to baptista? biondello i told him that your father was at venice, and that you look'd for him this day in padua. tranio thou'rt a tall fellow: hold thee that to drink. here comes baptista: set your countenance, sir. [enter baptista and lucentio] signior baptista, you are happily met. [to the pedant] sir, this is the gentleman i told you of: i pray you stand good father to me now, give me bianca for my patrimony. pedant soft son! sir, by your leave: having come to padua to gather in some debts, my son lucentio made me acquainted with a weighty cause of love between your daughter and himself: and, for the good report i hear of you and for the love he beareth to your daughter and she to him, to stay him not too long, i am content, in a good father's care, to have him match'd; and if you please to like no worse than i, upon some agreement me shall you find ready and willing with one consent to have her so bestow'd; for curious i cannot be with you, signior baptista, of whom i hear so well. baptista sir, pardon me in what i have to say: your plainness and your shortness please me well. right true it is, your son lucentio here doth love my daughter and she loveth him, or both dissemble deeply their affections: and therefore, if you say no more than this, that like a father you will deal with him and pass my daughter a sufficient dower, the match is made, and all is done: your son shall have my daughter with consent. tranio i thank you, sir. where then do you know best we be affied and such assurance ta'en as shall with either part's agreement stand? baptista not in my house, lucentio; for, you know, pitchers have ears, and i have many servants: besides, old gremio is hearkening still; and happily we might be interrupted. tranio then at my lodging, an it like you: there doth my father lie; and there, this night, we'll pass the business privately and well. send for your daughter by your servant here: my boy shall fetch the scrivener presently. the worst is this, that, at so slender warning, you are like to have a thin and slender pittance. baptista it likes me well. biondello, hie you home, and bid bianca make her ready straight; and, if you will, tell what hath happened, lucentio's father is arrived in padua, and how she's like to be lucentio's wife. biondello i pray the gods she may with all my heart! tranio dally not with the gods, but get thee gone. [exit biondello] signior baptista, shall i lead the way? welcome! one mess is like to be your cheer: come, sir; we will better it in pisa. baptista i follow you. [exeunt tranio, pedant, and baptista] [re-enter biondello] biondello cambio! lucentio what sayest thou, biondello? biondello you saw my master wink and laugh upon you? lucentio biondello, what of that? biondello faith, nothing; but has left me here behind, to expound the meaning or moral of his signs and tokens. lucentio i pray thee, moralize them. biondello then thus. baptista is safe, talking with the deceiving father of a deceitful son. lucentio and what of him? biondello his daughter is to be brought by you to the supper. lucentio and then? biondello the old priest of saint luke's church is at your command at all hours. lucentio and what of all this? biondello i cannot tell; expect they are busied about a counterfeit assurance: take you assurance of her, 'cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum:' to the church; take the priest, clerk, and some sufficient honest witnesses: if this be not that you look for, i have no more to say, but bid bianca farewell for ever and a day. lucentio hearest thou, biondello? biondello i cannot tarry: i knew a wench married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit; and so may you, sir: and so, adieu, sir. my master hath appointed me to go to saint luke's, to bid the priest be ready to come against you come with your appendix. [exit] lucentio i may, and will, if she be so contented: she will be pleased; then wherefore should i doubt? hap what hap may, i'll roundly go about her: it shall go hard if cambio go without her. [exit] the taming of the shrew act iv scene v a public road. [enter petruchio, katharina, hortensio, and servants] petruchio come on, i' god's name; once more toward our father's. good lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon! katharina the moon! the sun: it is not moonlight now. petruchio i say it is the moon that shines so bright. katharina i know it is the sun that shines so bright. petruchio now, by my mother's son, and that's myself, it shall be moon, or star, or what i list, or ere i journey to your father's house. go on, and fetch our horses back again. evermore cross'd and cross'd; nothing but cross'd! hortensio say as he says, or we shall never go. katharina forward, i pray, since we have come so far, and be it moon, or sun, or what you please: an if you please to call it a rush-candle, henceforth i vow it shall be so for me. petruchio i say it is the moon. katharina i know it is the moon. petruchio nay, then you lie: it is the blessed sun. katharina then, god be bless'd, it is the blessed sun: but sun it is not, when you say it is not; and the moon changes even as your mind. what you will have it named, even that it is; and so it shall be so for katharina. hortensio petruchio, go thy ways; the field is won. petruchio well, forward, forward! thus the bowl should run, and not unluckily against the bias. but, soft! company is coming here. [enter vincentio] [to vincentio] good morrow, gentle mistress: where away? tell me, sweet kate, and tell me truly too, hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman? such war of white and red within her cheeks! what stars do spangle heaven with such beauty, as those two eyes become that heavenly face? fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee. sweet kate, embrace her for her beauty's sake. hortensio a' will make the man mad, to make a woman of him. katharina young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet, whither away, or where is thy abode? happy the parents of so fair a child; happier the man, whom favourable stars allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow! petruchio why, how now, kate! i hope thou art not mad: this is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither'd, and not a maiden, as thou say'st he is. katharina pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes, that have been so bedazzled with the sun that everything i look on seemeth green: now i perceive thou art a reverend father; pardon, i pray thee, for my mad mistaking. petruchio do, good old grandsire; and withal make known which way thou travellest: if along with us, we shall be joyful of thy company. vincentio fair sir, and you my merry mistress, that with your strange encounter much amazed me, my name is call'd vincentio; my dwelling pisa; and bound i am to padua; there to visit a son of mine, which long i have not seen. petruchio what is his name? vincentio lucentio, gentle sir. petruchio happily we met; the happier for thy son. and now by law, as well as reverend age, i may entitle thee my loving father: the sister to my wife, this gentlewoman, thy son by this hath married. wonder not, nor be grieved: she is of good esteem, her dowery wealthy, and of worthy birth; beside, so qualified as may beseem the spouse of any noble gentleman. let me embrace with old vincentio, and wander we to see thy honest son, who will of thy arrival be full joyous. vincentio but is it true? or else is it your pleasure, like pleasant travellers, to break a jest upon the company you overtake? hortensio i do assure thee, father, so it is. petruchio come, go along, and see the truth hereof; for our first merriment hath made thee jealous. [exeunt all but hortensio] hortensio well, petruchio, this has put me in heart. have to my widow! and if she be froward, then hast thou taught hortensio to be untoward. [exit] the taming of the shrew act v scene i padua. before lucentio's house. [gremio discovered. enter behind biondello, lucentio, and bianca] biondello softly and swiftly, sir; for the priest is ready. lucentio i fly, biondello: but they may chance to need thee at home; therefore leave us. biondello nay, faith, i'll see the church o' your back; and then come back to my master's as soon as i can. [exeunt lucentio, bianca, and biondello] gremio i marvel cambio comes not all this while. [enter petruchio, katharina, vincentio, grumio, with attendants] petruchio sir, here's the door, this is lucentio's house: my father's bears more toward the market-place; thither must i, and here i leave you, sir. vincentio you shall not choose but drink before you go: i think i shall command your welcome here, and, by all likelihood, some cheer is toward. [knocks] gremio they're busy within; you were best knock louder. [pedant looks out of the window] pedant what's he that knocks as he would beat down the gate? vincentio is signior lucentio within, sir? pedant he's within, sir, but not to be spoken withal. vincentio what if a man bring him a hundred pound or two, to make merry withal? pedant keep your hundred pounds to yourself: he shall need none, so long as i live. petruchio nay, i told you your son was well beloved in padua. do you hear, sir? to leave frivolous circumstances, i pray you, tell signior lucentio that his father is come from pisa, and is here at the door to speak with him. pedant thou liest: his father is come from padua and here looking out at the window. vincentio art thou his father? pedant ay, sir; so his mother says, if i may believe her. petruchio [to vincentio] why, how now, gentleman! why, this is flat knavery, to take upon you another man's name. pedant lay hands on the villain: i believe a' means to cozen somebody in this city under my countenance. [re-enter biondello] biondello i have seen them in the church together: god send 'em good shipping! but who is here? mine old master vincentio! now we are undone and brought to nothing. vincentio [seeing biondello] come hither, crack-hemp. biondello hope i may choose, sir. vincentio come hither, you rogue. what, have you forgot me? biondello forgot you! no, sir: i could not forget you, for i never saw you before in all my life. vincentio what, you notorious villain, didst thou never see thy master's father, vincentio? biondello what, my old worshipful old master? yes, marry, sir: see where he looks out of the window. vincentio is't so, indeed. [beats biondello] biondello help, help, help! here's a madman will murder me. [exit] pedant help, son! help, signior baptista! [exit from above] petruchio prithee, kate, let's stand aside and see the end of this controversy. [they retire] [re-enter pedant below; tranio, baptista, and servants] tranio sir, what are you that offer to beat my servant? vincentio what am i, sir! nay, what are you, sir? o immortal gods! o fine villain! a silken doublet! a velvet hose! a scarlet cloak! and a copatain hat! o, i am undone! i am undone! while i play the good husband at home, my son and my servant spend all at the university. tranio how now! what's the matter? baptista what, is the man lunatic? tranio sir, you seem a sober ancient gentleman by your habit, but your words show you a madman. why, sir, what 'cerns it you if i wear pearl and gold? i thank my good father, i am able to maintain it. vincentio thy father! o villain! he is a sailmaker in bergamo. baptista you mistake, sir, you mistake, sir. pray, what do you think is his name? vincentio his name! as if i knew not his name: i have brought him up ever since he was three years old, and his name is tranio. pedant away, away, mad ass! his name is lucentio and he is mine only son, and heir to the lands of me, signior vincentio. vincentio lucentio! o, he hath murdered his master! lay hold on him, i charge you, in the duke's name. o, my son, my son! tell me, thou villain, where is my son lucentio? tranio call forth an officer. [enter one with an officer] carry this mad knave to the gaol. father baptista, i charge you see that he be forthcoming. vincentio carry me to the gaol! gremio stay, officer: he shall not go to prison. baptista talk not, signior gremio: i say he shall go to prison. gremio take heed, signior baptista, lest you be cony-catched in this business: i dare swear this is the right vincentio. pedant swear, if thou darest. gremio nay, i dare not swear it. tranio then thou wert best say that i am not lucentio. gremio yes, i know thee to be signior lucentio. baptista away with the dotard! to the gaol with him! vincentio thus strangers may be hailed and abused: o monstrous villain! [re-enter biondello, with lucentio and bianca] biondello o! we are spoiled and--yonder he is: deny him, forswear him, or else we are all undone. lucentio [kneeling] pardon, sweet father. vincentio lives my sweet son? [exeunt biondello, tranio, and pedant, as fast as may be] bianca pardon, dear father. baptista how hast thou offended? where is lucentio? lucentio here's lucentio, right son to the right vincentio; that have by marriage made thy daughter mine, while counterfeit supposes bleared thine eyne. gremio here's packing, with a witness to deceive us all! vincentio where is that damned villain tranio, that faced and braved me in this matter so? baptista why, tell me, is not this my cambio? bianca cambio is changed into lucentio. lucentio love wrought these miracles. bianca's love made me exchange my state with tranio, while he did bear my countenance in the town; and happily i have arrived at the last unto the wished haven of my bliss. what tranio did, myself enforced him to; then pardon him, sweet father, for my sake. vincentio i'll slit the villain's nose, that would have sent me to the gaol. baptista but do you hear, sir? have you married my daughter without asking my good will? vincentio fear not, baptista; we will content you, go to: but i will in, to be revenged for this villany. [exit] baptista and i, to sound the depth of this knavery. [exit] lucentio look not pale, bianca; thy father will not frown. [exeunt lucentio and bianca] gremio my cake is dough; but i'll in among the rest, out of hope of all, but my share of the feast. [exit] katharina husband, let's follow, to see the end of this ado. petruchio first kiss me, kate, and we will. katharina what, in the midst of the street? petruchio what, art thou ashamed of me? katharina no, sir, god forbid; but ashamed to kiss. petruchio why, then let's home again. come, sirrah, let's away. katharina nay, i will give thee a kiss: now pray thee, love, stay. petruchio is not this well? come, my sweet kate: better once than never, for never too late. [exeunt] the taming of the shrew act v scene ii padua. lucentio's house. [enter baptista, vincentio, gremio, the pedant, lucentio, bianca, petruchio, katharina, hortensio, and widow, tranio, biondello, and grumio the serving-men with tranio bringing in a banquet] lucentio at last, though long, our jarring notes agree: and time it is, when raging war is done, to smile at scapes and perils overblown. my fair bianca, bid my father welcome, while i with self-same kindness welcome thine. brother petruchio, sister katharina, and thou, hortensio, with thy loving widow, feast with the best, and welcome to my house: my banquet is to close our stomachs up, after our great good cheer. pray you, sit down; for now we sit to chat as well as eat. petruchio nothing but sit and sit, and eat and eat! baptista padua affords this kindness, son petruchio. petruchio padua affords nothing but what is kind. hortensio for both our sakes, i would that word were true. petruchio now, for my life, hortensio fears his widow. widow then never trust me, if i be afeard. petruchio you are very sensible, and yet you miss my sense: i mean, hortensio is afeard of you. widow he that is giddy thinks the world turns round. petruchio roundly replied. katharina mistress, how mean you that? widow thus i conceive by him. petruchio conceives by me! how likes hortensio that? hortensio my widow says, thus she conceives her tale. petruchio very well mended. kiss him for that, good widow. katharina 'he that is giddy thinks the world turns round:' i pray you, tell me what you meant by that. widow your husband, being troubled with a shrew, measures my husband's sorrow by his woe: and now you know my meaning, katharina a very mean meaning. widow right, i mean you. katharina and i am mean indeed, respecting you. petruchio to her, kate! hortensio to her, widow! petruchio a hundred marks, my kate does put her down. hortensio that's my office. petruchio spoke like an officer; ha' to thee, lad! [drinks to hortensio] baptista how likes gremio these quick-witted folks? gremio believe me, sir, they butt together well. bianca head, and butt! an hasty-witted body would say your head and butt were head and horn. vincentio ay, mistress bride, hath that awaken'd you? bianca ay, but not frighted me; therefore i'll sleep again. petruchio nay, that you shall not: since you have begun, have at you for a bitter jest or two! bianca am i your bird? i mean to shift my bush; and then pursue me as you draw your bow. you are welcome all. [exeunt bianca, katharina, and widow] petruchio she hath prevented me. here, signior tranio. this bird you aim'd at, though you hit her not; therefore a health to all that shot and miss'd. tranio o, sir, lucentio slipp'd me like his greyhound, which runs himself and catches for his master. petruchio a good swift simile, but something currish. tranio 'tis well, sir, that you hunted for yourself: 'tis thought your deer does hold you at a bay. baptista o ho, petruchio! tranio hits you now. lucentio i thank thee for that gird, good tranio. hortensio confess, confess, hath he not hit you here? petruchio a' has a little gall'd me, i confess; and, as the jest did glance away from me, 'tis ten to one it maim'd you two outright. baptista now, in good sadness, son petruchio, i think thou hast the veriest shrew of all. petruchio well, i say no: and therefore for assurance let's each one send unto his wife; and he whose wife is most obedient to come at first when he doth send for her, shall win the wager which we will propose. hortensio content. what is the wager? lucentio twenty crowns. petruchio twenty crowns! i'll venture so much of my hawk or hound, but twenty times so much upon my wife. lucentio a hundred then. hortensio content. petruchio a match! 'tis done. hortensio who shall begin? lucentio that will i. go, biondello, bid your mistress come to me. biondello i go. [exit] baptista son, i'll be your half, bianca comes. lucentio i'll have no halves; i'll bear it all myself. [re-enter biondello] how now! what news? biondello sir, my mistress sends you word that she is busy and she cannot come. petruchio how! she is busy and she cannot come! is that an answer? gremio ay, and a kind one too: pray god, sir, your wife send you not a worse. petruchio i hope better. hortensio sirrah biondello, go and entreat my wife to come to me forthwith. [exit biondello] petruchio o, ho! entreat her! nay, then she must needs come. hortensio i am afraid, sir, do what you can, yours will not be entreated. [re-enter biondello] now, where's my wife? biondello she says you have some goodly jest in hand: she will not come: she bids you come to her. petruchio worse and worse; she will not come! o vile, intolerable, not to be endured! sirrah grumio, go to your mistress; say, i command her to come to me. [exit grumio] hortensio i know her answer. petruchio what? hortensio she will not. petruchio the fouler fortune mine, and there an end. baptista now, by my holidame, here comes katharina! [re-enter katarina] katharina what is your will, sir, that you send for me? petruchio where is your sister, and hortensio's wife? katharina they sit conferring by the parlor fire. petruchio go fetch them hither: if they deny to come. swinge me them soundly forth unto their husbands: away, i say, and bring them hither straight. [exit katharina] lucentio here is a wonder, if you talk of a wonder. hortensio and so it is: i wonder what it bodes. petruchio marry, peace it bodes, and love and quiet life, and awful rule and right supremacy; and, to be short, what not, that's sweet and happy? baptista now, fair befal thee, good petruchio! the wager thou hast won; and i will add unto their losses twenty thousand crowns; another dowry to another daughter, for she is changed, as she had never been. petruchio nay, i will win my wager better yet and show more sign of her obedience, her new-built virtue and obedience. see where she comes and brings your froward wives as prisoners to her womanly persuasion. [re-enter katharina, with bianca and widow] katharina, that cap of yours becomes you not: off with that bauble, throw it under-foot. widow lord, let me never have a cause to sigh, till i be brought to such a silly pass! bianca fie! what a foolish duty call you this? lucentio i would your duty were as foolish too: the wisdom of your duty, fair bianca, hath cost me an hundred crowns since supper-time. bianca the more fool you, for laying on my duty. petruchio katharina, i charge thee, tell these headstrong women what duty they do owe their lords and husbands. widow come, come, you're mocking: we will have no telling. petruchio come on, i say; and first begin with her. widow she shall not. petruchio i say she shall: and first begin with her. katharina fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow, and dart not scornful glances from those eyes, to wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor: it blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads, confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds, and in no sense is meet or amiable. a woman moved is like a fountain troubled, muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty; and while it is so, none so dry or thirsty will deign to sip or touch one drop of it. thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, and for thy maintenance commits his body to painful labour both by sea and land, to watch the night in storms, the day in cold, whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe; and craves no other tribute at thy hands but love, fair looks and true obedience; too little payment for so great a debt. such duty as the subject owes the prince even such a woman oweth to her husband; and when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, and not obedient to his honest will, what is she but a foul contending rebel and graceless traitor to her loving lord? i am ashamed that women are so simple to offer war where they should kneel for peace; or seek for rule, supremacy and sway, when they are bound to serve, love and obey. why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth, unapt to toil and trouble in the world, but that our soft conditions and our hearts should well agree with our external parts? come, come, you froward and unable worms! my mind hath been as big as one of yours, my heart as great, my reason haply more, to bandy word for word and frown for frown; but now i see our lances are but straws, our strength as weak, our weakness past compare, that seeming to be most which we indeed least are. then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot, and place your hands below your husband's foot: in token of which duty, if he please, my hand is ready; may it do him ease. petruchio why, there's a wench! come on, and kiss me, kate. lucentio well, go thy ways, old lad; for thou shalt ha't. vincentio 'tis a good hearing when children are toward. lucentio but a harsh hearing when women are froward. petruchio come, kate, we'll to bed. we three are married, but you two are sped. [to lucentio] 'twas i won the wager, though you hit the white; and, being a winner, god give you good night! [exeunt petruchio and katharina] hortensio now, go thy ways; thou hast tamed a curst shrew. lucentio 'tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tamed so. [exeunt] 1890 the garden of eros by oscar wilde it is full summer now, the heart of june, not yet the sun-burnt reapers are a-stir upon the upland meadow where too soon rich autumn time, the season's usurer, will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees, and see his treasure scattered by the wild and spendthrift breeze. too soon indeed! yet here the daffodil, that love-child of the spring, has lingered on to vex the rose with jealousy, and still the harebell spreads her azure pavilion, and like a strayed and wandering reveller abandoned of its brothers, whom long since june's messenger the missel-thrush has frighted from the glade, one pale narcissus loiters fearfully close to a shadowy nook, where half afraid of their own loveliness some violets lie that will not look the gold sun in the face for fear of too much splendour,ah! methinks it is a place which should be trodden by persephone when wearied of the flowerless fields of dis! or danced on by the lads of arcady! the hidden secret of eternal bliss known to the grecian here a man might find, ah! you and i may find it now if love and sleep be kind. there are the flowers which mourning herakles strewed on the tomb of hylas, columbine, its white doves all a-flutter where the breeze kissed them too harshly, the small celandine, that yellow-kirtled chorister of eve, and lilac lady's-smock,but let them bloom alone and leave yon spired holly-hock red-crocketed to sway its silent chimes, else must the bee, its little bell-ringer, go seek instead some other pleasaunce; the anemone that weeps at daybreak, like a silly girl before her love, and hardly lets the butterflies unfurl their painted wings beside it,bid it pine in pale virginity; the winter snow will suit it better than those lips of thine whose fires would but scorch it, rather go and pluck that amorous flower which blooms alone, fed by the pander wind with dust of kisses not its own. the trumpet-mouths of red convolvulus so dear to maidens, creamery meadow-sweet whiter than juno's throat and odorous as all arabia, hyacinths the feet of huntress dian would be loath to mar for any dappled fawn,pluck these, and those fond flowers which are fairer than what queen venus trod upon beneath the pines of ida, eucharis, that morning star which does not dread the sun, and budding marjoram which but to kiss would sweeten cytheraea's lips and make adonis jealous,these for thy head,and for thy girdle take yon curving spray of purple clematis whose gorgeous dye outflames the tyrian king, and fox-gloves with their nodding chalices, but that one narciss which the startled spring let from her kirtle fall when first she heard in her own woods the wild tempestuous song of summer's bird, ah! leave it for a subtle memory of those sweet tremulous days of rain and sun, when april laughed between her tears to see the early primrose with shy footsteps run from the gnarled oak-tree roots till all the wold, spite of its brown and trampled leaves, grew bright with shimmering gold. nay, pluck it too, it is not half so sweet as thou thyself, my soul's idolatry! and when thou art a-wearied at thy feet shall oxlips weave their brightest tapestry, for thee the woodbine shall forget its pride and veil its tangled whorls, and thou shalt walk on daisies pied. and i will cut a reed by yonder spring and make the wood-gods jealous, and old pan wonder what young intruder dares to sing in these still haunts, where never foot of man should tread at evening, lest he chance to spy the marble limbs of artemis and all her company. and i will tell you why the jacinth wears such dread embroidery of dolorous moan, and why the hapless nightingale forbears to sing her song at noon, but weeps alone when the fleet swallow sleeps, and rich men feast, and why the laurel trembles when she sees the lightening east. and i will sing how sad proserpina unto a grave and gloomy lord was wed, and lure the silver-breasted helena back from the lotus meadows of the dead, so shalt thou see that awful loveliness for which two mighty hosts met fearfully in war's abyss! and then i'll pipe to thee that grecian tale how cynthia loves the lad endymion, and hidden in a gray and misty veil hies to the cliffs of latmos, once the sun leaps from his ocean bed, in fruitless chase of those pale flying feet which fade away in his embrace. and if my flute can breathe sweet melody, we may behold her face who long ago dwelt among men by the aegean sea, and whose sad house with pillaged portico and friezeless wall and columns toppled down looms o'er the ruins of that fair and violet-cinctured town. spirit of beauty! tarry still a-while, they are not dead, thine ancient votaries, some few there are to whom thy radiant smile is better than a thousand victories, though all the nobly slain of waterloo rise up in wrath against them! tarry still, there are a few, who for thy sake would give their manlihood and consecrate their being, i at least have done so, made thy lips my daily food, and in thy temples found a goodlier feast than this starved age can give me, spite of all its new-found creeds so skeptical and so dogmatical. here not cephissos, not ilissos flows, the woods of white colonos are not here, on our bleak hills the olive never blows, no simple priest conducts his lowing steer up the steep marble way, nor through the town do laughing maidens bear to thee the crocus-flowered gown. yet tarry! for the boy who loved thee best, whose very name should be a memory to make thee linger, sleeps in silent rest beneath the roman walls, and melody still mourns her sweetest lyre, none can play the lute of adonais, with his lips song passed away. nay, when keats died the muses still had left one silver voice to sing his threnody, but ah! too soon of it we were bereft when on that riven night and stormy sea panthea claimed her singer as her own, and slew the mouth that praised her; since which time we walk alone, save for that fiery heart, that morning star of re-arisen england, whose clear eye saw from our tottering throne and waste of war the grand greek limbs of young democracy rise mightily like hesperus and bring the great republic! him at least thy love hath taught to sing, and he hath been thee at thessaly, and seen white atalanta fleet of foot in passionless and fierce virginity hunting the tusked boar, his honeyed lute hath pierced the cavern of the hollow hill, and venus laughs to the one knee will bow before her still. and he hath kissed the one of proserpine, and sung the galilaean's requiem, that wounded forehead dashed with blood and wine he hath discrowned, the ancient gods in him have found their last, most ardent worshipper, and the sign grows gray and dim before its conqueror spirit of beauty! tarry with us still, it is not quenched the torch of poesy, the star that shook above the eastern hill holds unassailed its argent armory from all the gathering gloom and fretful fight o tarry with us still! for through the long and common night, morris, our sweet and simple chaucer's child, dear heritor of spenser's tuneful reed, with soft and sylvan pipe has oft beguiled the weary soul of man in troublous need, and from the far and flowerless fields of ice has brought fair flowers meet to make an earthly paradise. we know them all, gudrun the strong man's bride, aslaug and olafson we know them all, how giant grettir fought and sigurd died, and what enchantment held the king in thrall when lonely brynhild wrestled with the powers that war against all passion, ah! how oft through summer hours, long listless summer hours when the noon being enamored of a damask rose forgets to journey westward, till the moon the pale usurper of its tribute grows from a thin sickle to a silver shield and chides its loitering carhow oft, in some cool grassy field far from the cricket-ground and noisy eight at bagley, where the rustling bluebells come almost before the blackbird finds a mate and overstay the swallow, and the hum of many murmuring bees flits through the leaves, have i lain poring on the dreamy tales his fancy weaves, and through their unreal woes and mimic pain wept for myself, and so was purified, and in their simple mirth grew glad again; for as i sailed upon that pictured tide the strength and splendour of the storm was mine without the storm's red ruin, for the singer is divine. the little laugh of water falling down is not so musical, the clammy gold close hoarded in the tiny waxen town has less of sweetness in it, and the old half-withered reeds that waved in arcady touched by his lips break forth again to fresher harmony. spirit of beauty tarry yet a-while! although the cheating merchants of the mart with iron roads profane our lovely isle, and break on whirring wheels the limbs of art, ay! though the crowded factories beget the blind-worm ignorance that slays the soul, o tarry yet! for one at least there is,he bears his name from dante and the seraph gabriel, whose double laurels burn with deathless flame to light thine altar; he too loves thee well who saw old merlin lured in vivien's snare, and the white feet of angels coming down the golden stair, loves thee so well, that all the world for him a gorgeous-colored vestiture must wear, and sorrow take a purple diadem, or else be no more sorrow, and despair gild its own thorns, and pain, like adon, be even in anguish beautiful;such is the empery which painters hold, and such the heritage this gentle, solemn spirit doth possess, being a better mirror of his age in all his pity, love, and weariness, than those who can but copy common things, and leave the soul unpainted with its mighty questionings. but they are few, and all romance has flown, and men can prophesy about the sun, and lecture on his arrowshow, alone, through a waste void the soulless atoms run, how from each tree its weeping nymph has fled, and that no more 'mid english reeds a naiad shows her head. methinks these new actaeons boast too soon that they have spied on beauty; what if we have analysed the rainbow, robbed the moon of her most ancient, chastest mystery, shall i, the last endymion, lose all hope because rude eyes peer at my mistress through a telescope! what profit if this scientific age burst through our gates with all its retinue of modern miracles! can it assuage one lover's breaking heart? what can it do to make one life more beautiful, one day more god-like in its period? but now the age of clay returns in horrid cycle, and the earth hath borne again a noisy progeny of ignorant titans, whose ungodly birth hurls them against the august hierarchy which sat upon olympus, to the dust they have appealed, and to that barren arbiter they must repair for judgment, let them, if they can, from natural warfare and insensate chance, create the new ideal rule for man! methinks that was not my inheritance; for i was nurtured otherwise, my soul passes from higher heights of life to a more supreme goal. lo! while we spake the earth did turn away her visage from the god, and hecate's boat rose silver-laden, till the jealous day blew all its torches out: i did not note the waning hours, to young endymions time's palsied fingers count in vain his rosary of suns! mark how the yellow iris wearily leans back its throat, as though it would be kissed by its false chamberer, the dragon-fly, who, like a blue vein on a girl's white wrist, sleeps on that snowy primrose of the night, which 'gins to flush with crimson shame, and die beneath the light. come let us go, against the pallid shield of the wan sky the almond blossoms gleam, the corn-crake nested in the unmown field answers its mate, across the misty stream on fitful wing the startled curlews fly, and in his sedgy bed the lark, for joy that day is nigh, scatters the pearled dew from off the grass, in tremulous ecstasy to greet the sun, who soon in gilded panoply will pass forth from yon orange-curtained pavilion hung in the burning east, see, the red rim o'ertops the expectant hills! it is the god! for love of him already the shrill lark is out of sight, flooding with waves of song this silent dell, ah! there is something more in that bird's flight than could be tested in a crucible! but the air freshens, let us go,why soon the woodmen will be here; how we have lived this night of june! the end . julius caesar dramatis personae julius caesar (caesar:) octavius caesar (octavius:) | | marcus antonius (antony:) | triumvirs after death of julius caesar. | m. aemilius | lepidus (lepidus:) | cicero | | publius | senators. | popilius lena (popilius:) | marcus brutus (brutus:) | | cassius | | casca | | trebonius | | conspirators against julius caesar. ligarius | | decius brutus | | metellus cimber | | cinna | flavius | | tribunes. marullus | artemidorus of cnidos a teacher of rhetoric. (artemidorus:) a soothsayer (soothsayer:) cinna a poet. (cinna the poet:) another poet (poet:) lucilius | | titinius | | messala | friends to brutus and cassius. | young cato (cato:) | | volumnius | varro | | clitus | | claudius | | servants to brutus. strato | | lucius | | dardanius | pindarus servant to cassius. calpurnia wife to caesar. portia wife to brutus. senators, citizens, guards, attendants, &c. (first citizen:) (second citizen:) (third citizen:) (fourth citizen:) (first commoner:) (second commoner:) (servant:) (first soldier:) (second soldier:) (third soldier:) (messenger:) scene rome: the neighbourhood of sardis: the neighbourhood of philippi. julius caesar act i scene i rome. a street. [enter flavius, marullus, and certain commoners] flavius hence! home, you idle creatures get you home: is this a holiday? what! know you not, being mechanical, you ought not walk upon a labouring day without the sign of your profession? speak, what trade art thou? first commoner why, sir, a carpenter. marullus where is thy leather apron and thy rule? what dost thou with thy best apparel on? you, sir, what trade are you? second commoner truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, i am but, as you would say, a cobbler. marullus but what trade art thou? answer me directly. second commoner a trade, sir, that, i hope, i may use with a safe conscience; which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles. marullus what trade, thou knave? thou naughty knave, what trade? second commoner nay, i beseech you, sir, be not out with me: yet, if you be out, sir, i can mend you. marullus what meanest thou by that? mend me, thou saucy fellow! second commoner why, sir, cobble you. flavius thou art a cobbler, art thou? second commoner truly, sir, all that i live by is with the awl: i meddle with no tradesman's matters, nor women's matters, but with awl. i am, indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in great danger, i recover them. as proper men as ever trod upon neat's leather have gone upon my handiwork. flavius but wherefore art not in thy shop today? why dost thou lead these men about the streets? second commoner truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself into more work. but, indeed, sir, we make holiday, to see caesar and to rejoice in his triumph. marullus wherefore rejoice? what conquest brings he home? what tributaries follow him to rome, to grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels? you blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! o you hard hearts, you cruel men of rome, knew you not pompey? many a time and oft have you climb'd up to walls and battlements, to towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, your infants in your arms, and there have sat the livelong day, with patient expectation, to see great pompey pass the streets of rome: and when you saw his chariot but appear, have you not made an universal shout, that tiber trembled underneath her banks, to hear the replication of your sounds made in her concave shores? and do you now put on your best attire? and do you now cull out a holiday? and do you now strew flowers in his way that comes in triumph over pompey's blood? be gone! run to your houses, fall upon your knees, pray to the gods to intermit the plague that needs must light on this ingratitude. flavius go, go, good countrymen, and, for this fault, assemble all the poor men of your sort; draw them to tiber banks, and weep your tears into the channel, till the lowest stream do kiss the most exalted shores of all. [exeunt all the commoners] see whether their basest metal be not moved; they vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness. go you down that way towards the capitol; this way will i disrobe the images, if you do find them deck'd with ceremonies. marullus may we do so? you know it is the feast of lupercal. flavius it is no matter; let no images be hung with caesar's trophies. i'll about, and drive away the vulgar from the streets: so do you too, where you perceive them thick. these growing feathers pluck'd from caesar's wing will make him fly an ordinary pitch, who else would soar above the view of men and keep us all in servile fearfulness. [exeunt] julius caesar act i scene ii a public place. [flourish. enter caesar; antony, for the course; calpurnia, portia, decius brutus, cicero, brutus, cassius, and casca; a great crowd following, among them a soothsayer] caesar calpurnia! casca peace, ho! caesar speaks. caesar calpurnia! calpurnia here, my lord. caesar stand you directly in antonius' way, when he doth run his course. antonius! antony caesar, my lord? caesar forget not, in your speed, antonius, to touch calpurnia; for our elders say, the barren, touched in this holy chase, shake off their sterile curse. antony i shall remember: when caesar says 'do this,' it is perform'd. caesar set on; and leave no ceremony out. [flourish] soothsayer caesar! caesar ha! who calls? casca bid every noise be still: peace yet again! caesar who is it in the press that calls on me? i hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, cry 'caesar!' speak; caesar is turn'd to hear. soothsayer beware the ides of march. caesar what man is that? brutus a soothsayer bids you beware the ides of march. caesar set him before me; let me see his face. cassius fellow, come from the throng; look upon caesar. caesar what say'st thou to me now? speak once again. soothsayer beware the ides of march. caesar he is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass. [sennet. exeunt all except brutus and cassius] cassius will you go see the order of the course? brutus not i. cassius i pray you, do. brutus i am not gamesome: i do lack some part of that quick spirit that is in antony. let me not hinder, cassius, your desires; i'll leave you. cassius brutus, i do observe you now of late: i have not from your eyes that gentleness and show of love as i was wont to have: you bear too stubborn and too strange a hand over your friend that loves you. brutus cassius, be not deceived: if i have veil'd my look, i turn the trouble of my countenance merely upon myself. vexed i am of late with passions of some difference, conceptions only proper to myself, which give some soil perhaps to my behaviors; but let not therefore my good friends be grieved- among which number, cassius, be you one- nor construe any further my neglect, than that poor brutus, with himself at war, forgets the shows of love to other men. cassius then, brutus, i have much mistook your passion; by means whereof this breast of mine hath buried thoughts of great value, worthy cogitations. tell me, good brutus, can you see your face? brutus no, cassius; for the eye sees not itself, but by reflection, by some other things. cassius 'tis just: and it is very much lamented, brutus, that you have no such mirrors as will turn your hidden worthiness into your eye, that you might see your shadow. i have heard, where many of the best respect in rome, except immortal caesar, speaking of brutus and groaning underneath this age's yoke, have wish'd that noble brutus had his eyes. brutus into what dangers would you lead me, cassius, that you would have me seek into myself for that which is not in me? cassius therefore, good brutus, be prepared to hear: and since you know you cannot see yourself so well as by reflection, i, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself that of yourself which you yet know not of. and be not jealous on me, gentle brutus: were i a common laugher, or did use to stale with ordinary oaths my love to every new protester; if you know that i do fawn on men and hug them hard and after scandal them, or if you know that i profess myself in banqueting to all the rout, then hold me dangerous. [flourish, and shout] brutus what means this shouting? i do fear, the people choose caesar for their king. cassius ay, do you fear it? then must i think you would not have it so. brutus i would not, cassius; yet i love him well. but wherefore do you hold me here so long? what is it that you would impart to me? if it be aught toward the general good, set honour in one eye and death i' the other, and i will look on both indifferently, for let the gods so speed me as i love the name of honour more than i fear death. cassius i know that virtue to be in you, brutus, as well as i do know your outward favour. well, honour is the subject of my story. i cannot tell what you and other men think of this life; but, for my single self, i had as lief not be as live to be in awe of such a thing as i myself. i was born free as caesar; so were you: we both have fed as well, and we can both endure the winter's cold as well as he: for once, upon a raw and gusty day, the troubled tiber chafing with her shores, caesar said to me 'darest thou, cassius, now leap in with me into this angry flood, and swim to yonder point?' upon the word, accoutred as i was, i plunged in and bade him follow; so indeed he did. the torrent roar'd, and we did buffet it with lusty sinews, throwing it aside and stemming it with hearts of controversy; but ere we could arrive the point proposed, caesar cried 'help me, cassius, or i sink!' i, as aeneas, our great ancestor, did from the flames of troy upon his shoulder the old anchises bear, so from the waves of tiber did i the tired caesar. and this man is now become a god, and cassius is a wretched creature and must bend his body, if caesar carelessly but nod on him. he had a fever when he was in spain, and when the fit was on him, i did mark how he did shake: 'tis true, this god did shake; his coward lips did from their colour fly, and that same eye whose bend doth awe the world did lose his lustre: i did hear him groan: ay, and that tongue of his that bade the romans mark him and write his speeches in their books, alas, it cried 'give me some drink, titinius,' as a sick girl. ye gods, it doth amaze me a man of such a feeble temper should so get the start of the majestic world and bear the palm alone. [shout. flourish] brutus another general shout! i do believe that these applauses are for some new honours that are heap'd on caesar. cassius why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves. men at some time are masters of their fates: the fault, dear brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. brutus and caesar: what should be in that 'caesar'? why should that name be sounded more than yours? write them together, yours is as fair a name; sound them, it doth become the mouth as well; weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em, brutus will start a spirit as soon as caesar. now, in the names of all the gods at once, upon what meat doth this our caesar feed, that he is grown so great? age, thou art shamed! rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods! when went there by an age, since the great flood, but it was famed with more than with one man? when could they say till now, that talk'd of rome, that her wide walls encompass'd but one man? now is it rome indeed and room enough, when there is in it but one only man. o, you and i have heard our fathers say, there was a brutus once that would have brook'd the eternal devil to keep his state in rome as easily as a king. brutus that you do love me, i am nothing jealous; what you would work me to, i have some aim: how i have thought of this and of these times, i shall recount hereafter; for this present, i would not, so with love i might entreat you, be any further moved. what you have said i will consider; what you have to say i will with patience hear, and find a time both meet to hear and answer such high things. till then, my noble friend, chew upon this: brutus had rather be a villager than to repute himself a son of rome under these hard conditions as this time is like to lay upon us. cassius i am glad that my weak words have struck but thus much show of fire from brutus. brutus the games are done and caesar is returning. cassius as they pass by, pluck casca by the sleeve; and he will, after his sour fashion, tell you what hath proceeded worthy note to-day. [re-enter caesar and his train] brutus i will do so. but, look you, cassius, the angry spot doth glow on caesar's brow, and all the rest look like a chidden train: calpurnia's cheek is pale; and cicero looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes as we have seen him in the capitol, being cross'd in conference by some senators. cassius casca will tell us what the matter is. caesar antonius! antony caesar? caesar let me have men about me that are fat; sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights: yond cassius has a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much: such men are dangerous. antony fear him not, caesar; he's not dangerous; he is a noble roman and well given. caesar would he were fatter! but i fear him not: yet if my name were liable to fear, i do not know the man i should avoid so soon as that spare cassius. he reads much; he is a great observer and he looks quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays, as thou dost, antony; he hears no music; seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort as if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit that could be moved to smile at any thing. such men as he be never at heart's ease whiles they behold a greater than themselves, and therefore are they very dangerous. i rather tell thee what is to be fear'd than what i fear; for always i am caesar. come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf, and tell me truly what thou think'st of him. [sennet. exeunt caesar and all his train, but casca] casca you pull'd me by the cloak; would you speak with me? brutus ay, casca; tell us what hath chanced to-day, that caesar looks so sad. casca why, you were with him, were you not? brutus i should not then ask casca what had chanced. casca why, there was a crown offered him: and being offered him, he put it by with the back of his hand, thus; and then the people fell a-shouting. brutus what was the second noise for? casca why, for that too. cassius they shouted thrice: what was the last cry for? casca why, for that too. brutus was the crown offered him thrice? casca ay, marry, was't, and he put it by thrice, every time gentler than other, and at every putting-by mine honest neighbours shouted. cassius who offered him the crown? casca why, antony. brutus tell us the manner of it, gentle casca. casca i can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it: it was mere foolery; i did not mark it. i saw mark antony offer him a crown;--yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas one of these coronets;--and, as i told you, he put it by once: but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. and then he offered it the third time; he put it the third time by: and still as he refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked caesar; for he swounded and fell down at it: and for mine own part, i durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air. cassius but, soft, i pray you: what, did caesar swound? casca he fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth, and was speechless. brutus 'tis very like: he hath the failing sickness. cassius no, caesar hath it not; but you and i, and honest casca, we have the falling sickness. casca i know not what you mean by that; but, i am sure, caesar fell down. if the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the players in the theatre, i am no true man. brutus what said he when he came unto himself? casca marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the common herd was glad he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet and offered them his throat to cut. an i had been a man of any occupation, if i would not have taken him at a word, i would i might go to hell among the rogues. and so he fell. when he came to himself again, he said, if he had done or said any thing amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity. three or four wenches, where i stood, cried 'alas, good soul!' and forgave him with all their hearts: but there's no heed to be taken of them; if caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less. brutus and after that, he came, thus sad, away? casca ay. cassius did cicero say any thing? casca ay, he spoke greek. cassius to what effect? casca nay, an i tell you that, ill ne'er look you i' the face again: but those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was greek to me. i could tell you more news too: marullus and flavius, for pulling scarfs off caesar's images, are put to silence. fare you well. there was more foolery yet, if i could remember it. cassius will you sup with me to-night, casca? casca no, i am promised forth. cassius will you dine with me to-morrow? casca ay, if i be alive and your mind hold and your dinner worth the eating. cassius good: i will expect you. casca do so. farewell, both. [exit] brutus what a blunt fellow is this grown to be! he was quick mettle when he went to school. cassius so is he now in execution of any bold or noble enterprise, however he puts on this tardy form. this rudeness is a sauce to his good wit, which gives men stomach to digest his words with better appetite. brutus and so it is. for this time i will leave you: to-morrow, if you please to speak with me, i will come home to you; or, if you will, come home to me, and i will wait for you. cassius i will do so: till then, think of the world. [exit brutus] well, brutus, thou art noble; yet, i see, thy honourable metal may be wrought from that it is disposed: therefore it is meet that noble minds keep ever with their likes; for who so firm that cannot be seduced? caesar doth bear me hard; but he loves brutus: if i were brutus now and he were cassius, he should not humour me. i will this night, in several hands, in at his windows throw, as if they came from several citizens, writings all tending to the great opinion that rome holds of his name; wherein obscurely caesar's ambition shall be glanced at: and after this let caesar seat him sure; for we will shake him, or worse days endure. [exit] julius caesar act i scene iii the same. a street. [thunder and lightning. enter from opposite sides, casca, with his sword drawn, and cicero] cicero good even, casca: brought you caesar home? why are you breathless? and why stare you so? casca are not you moved, when all the sway of earth shakes like a thing unfirm? o cicero, i have seen tempests, when the scolding winds have rived the knotty oaks, and i have seen the ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam, to be exalted with the threatening clouds: but never till to-night, never till now, did i go through a tempest dropping fire. either there is a civil strife in heaven, or else the world, too saucy with the gods, incenses them to send destruction. cicero why, saw you any thing more wonderful? casca a common slave--you know him well by sight- held up his left hand, which did flame and burn like twenty torches join'd, and yet his hand, not sensible of fire, remain'd unscorch'd. besides--i ha' not since put up my sword- against the capitol i met a lion, who glared upon me, and went surly by, without annoying me: and there were drawn upon a heap a hundred ghastly women, transformed with their fear; who swore they saw men all in fire walk up and down the streets. and yesterday the bird of night did sit even at noon-day upon the market-place, hooting and shrieking. when these prodigies do so conjointly meet, let not men say 'these are their reasons; they are natural;' for, i believe, they are portentous things unto the climate that they point upon. cicero indeed, it is a strange-disposed time: but men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves. come caesar to the capitol to-morrow? casca he doth; for he did bid antonius send word to you he would be there to-morrow. cicero good night then, casca: this disturbed sky is not to walk in. casca farewell, cicero. [exit cicero] [enter cassius] cassius who's there? casca a roman. cassius casca, by your voice. casca your ear is good. cassius, what night is this! cassius a very pleasing night to honest men. casca who ever knew the heavens menace so? cassius those that have known the earth so full of faults. for my part, i have walk'd about the streets, submitting me unto the perilous night, and, thus unbraced, casca, as you see, have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone; and when the cross blue lightning seem'd to open the breast of heaven, i did present myself even in the aim and very flash of it. casca but wherefore did you so much tempt the heavens? it is the part of men to fear and tremble, when the most mighty gods by tokens send such dreadful heralds to astonish us. cassius you are dull, casca, and those sparks of life that should be in a roman you do want, or else you use not. you look pale and gaze and put on fear and cast yourself in wonder, to see the strange impatience of the heavens: but if you would consider the true cause why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts, why birds and beasts from quality and kind, why old men fool and children calculate, why all these things change from their ordinance their natures and preformed faculties to monstrous quality,--why, you shall find that heaven hath infused them with these spirits, to make them instruments of fear and warning unto some monstrous state. now could i, casca, name to thee a man most like this dreadful night, that thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars as doth the lion in the capitol, a man no mightier than thyself or me in personal action, yet prodigious grown and fearful, as these strange eruptions are. casca 'tis caesar that you mean; is it not, cassius? cassius let it be who it is: for romans now have thews and limbs like to their ancestors; but, woe the while! our fathers' minds are dead, and we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits; our yoke and sufferance show us womanish. casca indeed, they say the senators tomorrow mean to establish caesar as a king; and he shall wear his crown by sea and land, in every place, save here in italy. cassius i know where i will wear this dagger then; cassius from bondage will deliver cassius: therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong; therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat: nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, can be retentive to the strength of spirit; but life, being weary of these worldly bars, never lacks power to dismiss itself. if i know this, know all the world besides, that part of tyranny that i do bear i can shake off at pleasure. [thunder still] casca so can i: so every bondman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity. cassius and why should caesar be a tyrant then? poor man! i know he would not be a wolf, but that he sees the romans are but sheep: he were no lion, were not romans hinds. those that with haste will make a mighty fire begin it with weak straws: what trash is rome, what rubbish and what offal, when it serves for the base matter to illuminate so vile a thing as caesar! but, o grief, where hast thou led me? i perhaps speak this before a willing bondman; then i know my answer must be made. but i am arm'd, and dangers are to me indifferent. casca you speak to casca, and to such a man that is no fleering tell-tale. hold, my hand: be factious for redress of all these griefs, and i will set this foot of mine as far as who goes farthest. cassius there's a bargain made. now know you, casca, i have moved already some certain of the noblest-minded romans to undergo with me an enterprise of honourable-dangerous consequence; and i do know, by this, they stay for me in pompey's porch: for now, this fearful night, there is no stir or walking in the streets; and the complexion of the element in favour's like the work we have in hand, most bloody, fiery, and most terrible. casca stand close awhile, for here comes one in haste. cassius 'tis cinna; i do know him by his gait; he is a friend. [enter cinna] cinna, where haste you so? cinna to find out you. who's that? metellus cimber? cassius no, it is casca; one incorporate to our attempts. am i not stay'd for, cinna? cinna i am glad on 't. what a fearful night is this! there's two or three of us have seen strange sights. cassius am i not stay'd for? tell me. cinna yes, you are. o cassius, if you could but win the noble brutus to our party- cassius be you content: good cinna, take this paper, and look you lay it in the praetor's chair, where brutus may but find it; and throw this in at his window; set this up with wax upon old brutus' statue: all this done, repair to pompey's porch, where you shall find us. is decius brutus and trebonius there? cinna all but metellus cimber; and he's gone to seek you at your house. well, i will hie, and so bestow these papers as you bade me. cassius that done, repair to pompey's theatre. [exit cinna] come, casca, you and i will yet ere day see brutus at his house: three parts of him is ours already, and the man entire upon the next encounter yields him ours. casca o, he sits high in all the people's hearts: and that which would appear offence in us, his countenance, like richest alchemy, will change to virtue and to worthiness. cassius him and his worth and our great need of him you have right well conceited. let us go, for it is after midnight; and ere day we will awake him and be sure of him. [exeunt] julius caesar act ii scene i rome. brutus's orchard. [enter brutus] brutus what, lucius, ho! i cannot, by the progress of the stars, give guess how near to day. lucius, i say! i would it were my fault to sleep so soundly. when, lucius, when? awake, i say! what, lucius! [enter lucius] lucius call'd you, my lord? brutus get me a taper in my study, lucius: when it is lighted, come and call me here. lucius i will, my lord. [exit] brutus it must be by his death: and for my part, i know no personal cause to spurn at him, but for the general. he would be crown'd: how that might change his nature, there's the question. it is the bright day that brings forth the adder; and that craves wary walking. crown him?--that;- and then, i grant, we put a sting in him, that at his will he may do danger with. the abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins remorse from power: and, to speak truth of caesar, i have not known when his affections sway'd more than his reason. but 'tis a common proof, that lowliness is young ambition's ladder, whereto the climber-upward turns his face; but when he once attains the upmost round. he then unto the ladder turns his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend. so caesar may. then, lest he may, prevent. and, since the quarrel will bear no colour for the thing he is, fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented, would run to these and these extremities: and therefore think him as a serpent's egg which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous, and kill him in the shell. [re-enter lucius] lucius the taper burneth in your closet, sir. searching the window for a flint, i found this paper, thus seal'd up; and, i am sure, it did not lie there when i went to bed. [gives him the letter] brutus get you to bed again; it is not day. is not to-morrow, boy, the ides of march? lucius i know not, sir. brutus look in the calendar, and bring me word. lucius i will, sir. [exit] brutus the exhalations whizzing in the air give so much light that i may read by them. [opens the letter and reads] 'brutus, thou sleep'st: awake, and see thyself. shall rome, &c. speak, strike, redress! brutus, thou sleep'st: awake!' such instigations have been often dropp'd where i have took them up. 'shall rome, &c.' thus must i piece it out: shall rome stand under one man's awe? what, rome? my ancestors did from the streets of rome the tarquin drive, when he was call'd a king. 'speak, strike, redress!' am i entreated to speak and strike? o rome, i make thee promise: if the redress will follow, thou receivest thy full petition at the hand of brutus! [re-enter lucius] lucius sir, march is wasted fourteen days. [knocking within] brutus 'tis good. go to the gate; somebody knocks. [exit lucius] since cassius first did whet me against caesar, i have not slept. between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: the genius and the mortal instruments are then in council; and the state of man, like to a little kingdom, suffers then the nature of an insurrection. [re-enter lucius] lucius sir, 'tis your brother cassius at the door, who doth desire to see you. brutus is he alone? lucius no, sir, there are moe with him. brutus do you know them? lucius no, sir; their hats are pluck'd about their ears, and half their faces buried in their cloaks, that by no means i may discover them by any mark of favour. brutus let 'em enter. [exit lucius] they are the faction. o conspiracy, shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, when evils are most free? o, then by day where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough to mask thy monstrous visage? seek none, conspiracy; hide it in smiles and affability: for if thou path, thy native semblance on, not erebus itself were dim enough to hide thee from prevention. [enter the conspirators, cassius, casca, decius brutus, cinna, metellus cimber, and trebonius] cassius i think we are too bold upon your rest: good morrow, brutus; do we trouble you? brutus i have been up this hour, awake all night. know i these men that come along with you? cassius yes, every man of them, and no man here but honours you; and every one doth wish you had but that opinion of yourself which every noble roman bears of you. this is trebonius. brutus he is welcome hither. cassius this, decius brutus. brutus he is welcome too. cassius this, casca; this, cinna; and this, metellus cimber. brutus they are all welcome. what watchful cares do interpose themselves betwixt your eyes and night? cassius shall i entreat a word? [brutus and cassius whisper] decius brutus here lies the east: doth not the day break here? casca no. cinna o, pardon, sir, it doth; and yon gray lines that fret the clouds are messengers of day. casca you shall confess that you are both deceived. here, as i point my sword, the sun arises, which is a great way growing on the south, weighing the youthful season of the year. some two months hence up higher toward the north he first presents his fire; and the high east stands, as the capitol, directly here. brutus give me your hands all over, one by one. cassius and let us swear our resolution. brutus no, not an oath: if not the face of men, the sufferance of our souls, the time's abuse,- if these be motives weak, break off betimes, and every man hence to his idle bed; so let high-sighted tyranny range on, till each man drop by lottery. but if these, as i am sure they do, bear fire enough to kindle cowards and to steel with valour the melting spirits of women, then, countrymen, what need we any spur but our own cause, to prick us to redress? what other bond than secret romans, that have spoke the word, and will not palter? and what other oath than honesty to honesty engaged, that this shall be, or we will fall for it? swear priests and cowards and men cautelous, old feeble carrions and such suffering souls that welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain the even virtue of our enterprise, nor the insuppressive mettle of our spirits, to think that or our cause or our performance did need an oath; when every drop of blood that every roman bears, and nobly bears, is guilty of a several bastardy, if he do break the smallest particle of any promise that hath pass'd from him. cassius but what of cicero? shall we sound him? i think he will stand very strong with us. casca let us not leave him out. cinna no, by no means. metellus cimber o, let us have him, for his silver hairs will purchase us a good opinion and buy men's voices to commend our deeds: it shall be said, his judgment ruled our hands; our youths and wildness shall no whit appear, but all be buried in his gravity. brutus o, name him not: let us not break with him; for he will never follow any thing that other men begin. cassius then leave him out. casca indeed he is not fit. decius brutus shall no man else be touch'd but only caesar? cassius decius, well urged: i think it is not meet, mark antony, so well beloved of caesar, should outlive caesar: we shall find of him a shrewd contriver; and, you know, his means, if he improve them, may well stretch so far as to annoy us all: which to prevent, let antony and caesar fall together. brutus our course will seem too bloody, caius cassius, to cut the head off and then hack the limbs, like wrath in death and envy afterwards; for antony is but a limb of caesar: let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, caius. we all stand up against the spirit of caesar; and in the spirit of men there is no blood: o, that we then could come by caesar's spirit, and not dismember caesar! but, alas, caesar must bleed for it! and, gentle friends, let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully; let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods, not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds: and let our hearts, as subtle masters do, stir up their servants to an act of rage, and after seem to chide 'em. this shall make our purpose necessary and not envious: which so appearing to the common eyes, we shall be call'd purgers, not murderers. and for mark antony, think not of him; for he can do no more than caesar's arm when caesar's head is off. cassius yet i fear him; for in the ingrafted love he bears to caesar- brutus alas, good cassius, do not think of him: if he love caesar, all that he can do is to himself, take thought and die for caesar: and that were much he should; for he is given to sports, to wildness and much company. trebonius there is no fear in him; let him not die; for he will live, and laugh at this hereafter. [clock strikes] brutus peace! count the clock. cassius the clock hath stricken three. trebonius 'tis time to part. cassius but it is doubtful yet, whether caesar will come forth to-day, or no; for he is superstitious grown of late, quite from the main opinion he held once of fantasy, of dreams and ceremonies: it may be, these apparent prodigies, the unaccustom'd terror of this night, and the persuasion of his augurers, may hold him from the capitol to-day. decius brutus never fear that: if he be so resolved, i can o'ersway him; for he loves to hear that unicorns may be betray'd with trees, and bears with glasses, elephants with holes, lions with toils and men with flatterers; but when i tell him he hates flatterers, he says he does, being then most flattered. let me work; for i can give his humour the true bent, and i will bring him to the capitol. cassius nay, we will all of us be there to fetch him. brutus by the eighth hour: is that the uttermost? cinna be that the uttermost, and fail not then. metellus cimber caius ligarius doth bear caesar hard, who rated him for speaking well of pompey: i wonder none of you have thought of him. brutus now, good metellus, go along by him: he loves me well, and i have given him reasons; send him but hither, and i'll fashion him. cassius the morning comes upon 's: we'll leave you, brutus. and, friends, disperse yourselves; but all remember what you have said, and show yourselves true romans. brutus good gentlemen, look fresh and merrily; let not our looks put on our purposes, but bear it as our roman actors do, with untired spirits and formal constancy: and so good morrow to you every one. [exeunt all but brutus] boy! lucius! fast asleep? it is no matter; enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber: thou hast no figures nor no fantasies, which busy care draws in the brains of men; therefore thou sleep'st so sound. [enter portia] portia brutus, my lord! brutus portia, what mean you? wherefore rise you now? it is not for your health thus to commit your weak condition to the raw cold morning. portia nor for yours neither. you've ungently, brutus, stole from my bed: and yesternight, at supper, you suddenly arose, and walk'd about, musing and sighing, with your arms across, and when i ask'd you what the matter was, you stared upon me with ungentle looks; i urged you further; then you scratch'd your head, and too impatiently stamp'd with your foot; yet i insisted, yet you answer'd not, but, with an angry wafture of your hand, gave sign for me to leave you: so i did; fearing to strengthen that impatience which seem'd too much enkindled, and withal hoping it was but an effect of humour, which sometime hath his hour with every man. it will not let you eat, nor talk, nor sleep, and could it work so much upon your shape as it hath much prevail'd on your condition, i should not know you, brutus. dear my lord, make me acquainted with your cause of grief. brutus i am not well in health, and that is all. portia brutus is wise, and, were he not in health, he would embrace the means to come by it. brutus why, so i do. good portia, go to bed. portia is brutus sick? and is it physical to walk unbraced and suck up the humours of the dank morning? what, is brutus sick, and will he steal out of his wholesome bed, to dare the vile contagion of the night and tempt the rheumy and unpurged air to add unto his sickness? no, my brutus; you have some sick offence within your mind, which, by the right and virtue of my place, i ought to know of: and, upon my knees, i charm you, by my once-commended beauty, by all your vows of love and that great vow which did incorporate and make us one, that you unfold to me, yourself, your half, why you are heavy, and what men to-night have had to resort to you: for here have been some six or seven, who did hide their faces even from darkness. brutus kneel not, gentle portia. portia i should not need, if you were gentle brutus. within the bond of marriage, tell me, brutus, is it excepted i should know no secrets that appertain to you? am i yourself but, as it were, in sort or limitation, to keep with you at meals, comfort your bed, and talk to you sometimes? dwell i but in the suburbs of your good pleasure? if it be no more, portia is brutus' harlot, not his wife. brutus you are my true and honourable wife, as dear to me as are the ruddy drops that visit my sad heart portia if this were true, then should i know this secret. i grant i am a woman; but withal a woman that lord brutus took to wife: i grant i am a woman; but withal a woman well-reputed, cato's daughter. think you i am no stronger than my sex, being so father'd and so husbanded? tell me your counsels, i will not disclose 'em: i have made strong proof of my constancy, giving myself a voluntary wound here, in the thigh: can i bear that with patience. and not my husband's secrets? brutus o ye gods, render me worthy of this noble wife! [knocking within] hark, hark! one knocks: portia, go in awhile; and by and by thy bosom shall partake the secrets of my heart. all my engagements i will construe to thee, all the charactery of my sad brows: leave me with haste. [exit portia] lucius, who's that knocks? [re-enter lucius with ligarius] lucius he is a sick man that would speak with you. brutus caius ligarius, that metellus spake of. boy, stand aside. caius ligarius! how? ligarius vouchsafe good morrow from a feeble tongue. brutus o, what a time have you chose out, brave caius, to wear a kerchief! would you were not sick! ligarius i am not sick, if brutus have in hand any exploit worthy the name of honour. brutus such an exploit have i in hand, ligarius, had you a healthful ear to hear of it. ligarius by all the gods that romans bow before, i here discard my sickness! soul of rome! brave son, derived from honourable loins! thou, like an exorcist, hast conjured up my mortified spirit. now bid me run, and i will strive with things impossible; yea, get the better of them. what's to do? brutus a piece of work that will make sick men whole. ligarius but are not some whole that we must make sick? brutus that must we also. what it is, my caius, i shall unfold to thee, as we are going to whom it must be done. ligarius set on your foot, and with a heart new-fired i follow you, to do i know not what: but it sufficeth that brutus leads me on. brutus follow me, then. [exeunt] julius caesar act ii scene ii caesar's house. [thunder and lightning. enter caesar, in his night-gown] caesar nor heaven nor earth have been at peace to-night: thrice hath calpurnia in her sleep cried out, 'help, ho! they murder caesar!' who's within? [enter a servant] servant my lord? caesar go bid the priests do present sacrifice and bring me their opinions of success. servant i will, my lord. [exit] [enter calpurnia] calpurnia what mean you, caesar? think you to walk forth? you shall not stir out of your house to-day. caesar caesar shall forth: the things that threaten'd me ne'er look'd but on my back; when they shall see the face of caesar, they are vanished. calpurnia caesar, i never stood on ceremonies, yet now they fright me. there is one within, besides the things that we have heard and seen, recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch. a lioness hath whelped in the streets; and graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead; fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds, in ranks and squadrons and right form of war, which drizzled blood upon the capitol; the noise of battle hurtled in the air, horses did neigh, and dying men did groan, and ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets. o caesar! these things are beyond all use, and i do fear them. caesar what can be avoided whose end is purposed by the mighty gods? yet caesar shall go forth; for these predictions are to the world in general as to caesar. calpurnia when beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. caesar cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once. of all the wonders that i yet have heard. it seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. [re-enter servant] what say the augurers? servant they would not have you to stir forth to-day. plucking the entrails of an offering forth, they could not find a heart within the beast. caesar the gods do this in shame of cowardice: caesar should be a beast without a heart, if he should stay at home to-day for fear. no, caesar shall not: danger knows full well that caesar is more dangerous than he: we are two lions litter'd in one day, and i the elder and more terrible: and caesar shall go forth. calpurnia alas, my lord, your wisdom is consumed in confidence. do not go forth to-day: call it my fear that keeps you in the house, and not your own. we'll send mark antony to the senate-house: and he shall say you are not well to-day: let me, upon my knee, prevail in this. caesar mark antony shall say i am not well, and, for thy humour, i will stay at home. [enter decius brutus] here's decius brutus, he shall tell them so. decius brutus caesar, all hail! good morrow, worthy caesar: i come to fetch you to the senate-house. caesar and you are come in very happy time, to bear my greeting to the senators and tell them that i will not come to-day: cannot, is false, and that i dare not, falser: i will not come to-day: tell them so, decius. calpurnia say he is sick. caesar shall caesar send a lie? have i in conquest stretch'd mine arm so far, to be afraid to tell graybeards the truth? decius, go tell them caesar will not come. decius brutus most mighty caesar, let me know some cause, lest i be laugh'd at when i tell them so. caesar the cause is in my will: i will not come; that is enough to satisfy the senate. but for your private satisfaction, because i love you, i will let you know: calpurnia here, my wife, stays me at home: she dreamt to-night she saw my statua, which, like a fountain with an hundred spouts, did run pure blood: and many lusty romans came smiling, and did bathe their hands in it: and these does she apply for warnings, and portents, and evils imminent; and on her knee hath begg'd that i will stay at home to-day. decius brutus this dream is all amiss interpreted; it was a vision fair and fortunate: your statue spouting blood in many pipes, in which so many smiling romans bathed, signifies that from you great rome shall suck reviving blood, and that great men shall press for tinctures, stains, relics and cognizance. this by calpurnia's dream is signified. caesar and this way have you well expounded it. decius brutus i have, when you have heard what i can say: and know it now: the senate have concluded to give this day a crown to mighty caesar. if you shall send them word you will not come, their minds may change. besides, it were a mock apt to be render'd, for some one to say 'break up the senate till another time, when caesar's wife shall meet with better dreams.' if caesar hide himself, shall they not whisper 'lo, caesar is afraid'? pardon me, caesar; for my dear dear love to our proceeding bids me tell you this; and reason to my love is liable. caesar how foolish do your fears seem now, calpurnia! i am ashamed i did yield to them. give me my robe, for i will go. [enter publius, brutus, ligarius, metellus, casca, trebonius, and cinna] and look where publius is come to fetch me. publius good morrow, caesar. caesar welcome, publius. what, brutus, are you stirr'd so early too? good morrow, casca. caius ligarius, caesar was ne'er so much your enemy as that same ague which hath made you lean. what is 't o'clock? brutus caesar, 'tis strucken eight. caesar i thank you for your pains and courtesy. [enter antony] see! antony, that revels long o' nights, is notwithstanding up. good morrow, antony. antony so to most noble caesar. caesar bid them prepare within: i am to blame to be thus waited for. now, cinna: now, metellus: what, trebonius! i have an hour's talk in store for you; remember that you call on me to-day: be near me, that i may remember you. trebonius caesar, i will: [aside] and so near will i be, that your best friends shall wish i had been further. caesar good friends, go in, and taste some wine with me; and we, like friends, will straightway go together. brutus [aside] that every like is not the same, o caesar, the heart of brutus yearns to think upon! [exeunt] julius caesar act ii scene iii a street near the capitol. [enter artemidorus, reading a paper] artemidorus 'caesar, beware of brutus; take heed of cassius; come not near casca; have an eye to cinna, trust not trebonius: mark well metellus cimber: decius brutus loves thee not: thou hast wronged caius ligarius. there is but one mind in all these men, and it is bent against caesar. if thou beest not immortal, look about you: security gives way to conspiracy. the mighty gods defend thee! thy lover, 'artemidorus.' here will i stand till caesar pass along, and as a suitor will i give him this. my heart laments that virtue cannot live out of the teeth of emulation. if thou read this, o caesar, thou mayst live; if not, the fates with traitors do contrive. [exit] julius caesar act ii scene iv another part of the same street, before the house of brutus. [enter portia and lucius] portia i prithee, boy, run to the senate-house; stay not to answer me, but get thee gone: why dost thou stay? lucius to know my errand, madam. portia i would have had thee there, and here again, ere i can tell thee what thou shouldst do there. o constancy, be strong upon my side, set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue! i have a man's mind, but a woman's might. how hard it is for women to keep counsel! art thou here yet? lucius madam, what should i do? run to the capitol, and nothing else? and so return to you, and nothing else? portia yes, bring me word, boy, if thy lord look well, for he went sickly forth: and take good note what caesar doth, what suitors press to him. hark, boy! what noise is that? lucius i hear none, madam. portia prithee, listen well; i heard a bustling rumour, like a fray, and the wind brings it from the capitol. lucius sooth, madam, i hear nothing. [enter the soothsayer] portia come hither, fellow: which way hast thou been? soothsayer at mine own house, good lady. portia what is't o'clock? soothsayer about the ninth hour, lady. portia is caesar yet gone to the capitol? soothsayer madam, not yet: i go to take my stand, to see him pass on to the capitol. portia thou hast some suit to caesar, hast thou not? soothsayer that i have, lady: if it will please caesar to be so good to caesar as to hear me, i shall beseech him to befriend himself. portia why, know'st thou any harm's intended towards him? soothsayer none that i know will be, much that i fear may chance. good morrow to you. here the street is narrow: the throng that follows caesar at the heels, of senators, of praetors, common suitors, will crowd a feeble man almost to death: i'll get me to a place more void, and there speak to great caesar as he comes along. [exit] portia i must go in. ay me, how weak a thing the heart of woman is! o brutus, the heavens speed thee in thine enterprise! sure, the boy heard me: brutus hath a suit that caesar will not grant. o, i grow faint. run, lucius, and commend me to my lord; say i am merry: come to me again, and bring me word what he doth say to thee. [exeunt severally] julius caesar act iii scene i rome. before the capitol; the senate sitting above. [a crowd of people; among them artemidorus and the soothsayer. flourish. enter caesar, brutus, cassius, casca, decius brutus, metellus cimber, trebonius, cinna, antony, lepidus, popilius, publius, and others] caesar [to the soothsayer] the ides of march are come. soothsayer ay, caesar; but not gone. artemidorus hail, caesar! read this schedule. decius brutus trebonius doth desire you to o'erread, at your best leisure, this his humble suit. artemidorus o caesar, read mine first; for mine's a suit that touches caesar nearer: read it, great caesar. caesar what touches us ourself shall be last served. artemidorus delay not, caesar; read it instantly. caesar what, is the fellow mad? publius sirrah, give place. cassius what, urge you your petitions in the street? come to the capitol. [caesar goes up to the senate-house, the rest following] popilius i wish your enterprise to-day may thrive. cassius what enterprise, popilius? popilius fare you well. [advances to caesar] brutus what said popilius lena? cassius he wish'd to-day our enterprise might thrive. i fear our purpose is discovered. brutus look, how he makes to caesar; mark him. cassius casca, be sudden, for we fear prevention. brutus, what shall be done? if this be known, cassius or caesar never shall turn back, for i will slay myself. brutus cassius, be constant: popilius lena speaks not of our purposes; for, look, he smiles, and caesar doth not change. cassius trebonius knows his time; for, look you, brutus. he draws mark antony out of the way. [exeunt antony and trebonius] decius brutus where is metellus cimber? let him go, and presently prefer his suit to caesar. brutus he is address'd: press near and second him. cinna casca, you are the first that rears your hand. caesar are we all ready? what is now amiss that caesar and his senate must redress? metellus cimber most high, most mighty, and most puissant caesar, metellus cimber throws before thy seat an humble heart,- [kneeling] caesar i must prevent thee, cimber. these couchings and these lowly courtesies might fire the blood of ordinary men, and turn pre-ordinance and first decree into the law of children. be not fond, to think that caesar bears such rebel blood that will be thaw'd from the true quality with that which melteth fools; i mean, sweet words, low-crooked court'sies and base spaniel-fawning. thy brother by decree is banished: if thou dost bend and pray and fawn for him, i spurn thee like a cur out of my way. know, caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause will he be satisfied. metellus cimber is there no voice more worthy than my own to sound more sweetly in great caesar's ear for the repealing of my banish'd brother? brutus i kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, caesar; desiring thee that publius cimber may have an immediate freedom of repeal. caesar what, brutus! cassius pardon, caesar; caesar, pardon: as low as to thy foot doth cassius fall, to beg enfranchisement for publius cimber. cassius i could be well moved, if i were as you: if i could pray to move, prayers would move me: but i am constant as the northern star, of whose true-fix'd and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament. the skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks, they are all fire and every one doth shine, but there's but one in all doth hold his place: so in the world; 'tis furnish'd well with men, and men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive; yet in the number i do know but one that unassailable holds on his rank, unshaked of motion: and that i am he, let me a little show it, even in this; that i was constant cimber should be banish'd, and constant do remain to keep him so. cinna o caesar,- caesar hence! wilt thou lift up olympus? decius brutus great caesar,- caesar doth not brutus bootless kneel? casca speak, hands for me! [casca first, then the other conspirators and brutus stab caesar] caesar et tu, brute! then fall, caesar. [dies] cinna liberty! freedom! tyranny is dead! run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets. cassius some to the common pulpits, and cry out 'liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!' brutus people and senators, be not affrighted; fly not; stand stiff: ambition's debt is paid. casca go to the pulpit, brutus. decius brutus and cassius too. brutus where's publius? cinna here, quite confounded with this mutiny. metellus cimber stand fast together, lest some friend of caesar's should chance- brutus talk not of standing. publius, good cheer; there is no harm intended to your person, nor to no roman else: so tell them, publius. cassius and leave us, publius; lest that the people, rushing on us, should do your age some mischief. brutus do so: and let no man abide this deed, but we the doers. [re-enter trebonius] cassius where is antony? trebonius fled to his house amazed: men, wives and children stare, cry out and run as it were doomsday. brutus fates, we will know your pleasures: that we shall die, we know; 'tis but the time and drawing days out, that men stand upon. cassius why, he that cuts off twenty years of life cuts off so many years of fearing death. brutus grant that, and then is death a benefit: so are we caesar's friends, that have abridged his time of fearing death. stoop, romans, stoop, and let us bathe our hands in caesar's blood up to the elbows, and besmear our swords: then walk we forth, even to the market-place, and, waving our red weapons o'er our heads, let's all cry 'peace, freedom and liberty!' cassius stoop, then, and wash. how many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over in states unborn and accents yet unknown! brutus how many times shall caesar bleed in sport, that now on pompey's basis lies along no worthier than the dust! cassius so oft as that shall be, so often shall the knot of us be call'd the men that gave their country liberty. decius brutus what, shall we forth? cassius ay, every man away: brutus shall lead; and we will grace his heels with the most boldest and best hearts of rome. [enter a servant] brutus soft! who comes here? a friend of antony's. servant thus, brutus, did my master bid me kneel: thus did mark antony bid me fall down; and, being prostrate, thus he bade me say: brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest; caesar was mighty, bold, royal, and loving: say i love brutus, and i honour him; say i fear'd caesar, honour'd him and loved him. if brutus will vouchsafe that antony may safely come to him, and be resolved how caesar hath deserved to lie in death, mark antony shall not love caesar dead so well as brutus living; but will follow the fortunes and affairs of noble brutus thorough the hazards of this untrod state with all true faith. so says my master antony. brutus thy master is a wise and valiant roman; i never thought him worse. tell him, so please him come unto this place, he shall be satisfied; and, by my honour, depart untouch'd. servant i'll fetch him presently. [exit] brutus i know that we shall have him well to friend. cassius i wish we may: but yet have i a mind that fears him much; and my misgiving still falls shrewdly to the purpose. brutus but here comes antony. [re-enter antony] welcome, mark antony. antony o mighty caesar! dost thou lie so low? are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure? fare thee well. i know not, gentlemen, what you intend, who else must be let blood, who else is rank: if i myself, there is no hour so fit as caesar's death hour, nor no instrument of half that worth as those your swords, made rich with the most noble blood of all this world. i do beseech ye, if you bear me hard, now, whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke, fulfil your pleasure. live a thousand years, i shall not find myself so apt to die: no place will please me so, no mean of death, as here by caesar, and by you cut off, the choice and master spirits of this age. brutus o antony, beg not your death of us. though now we must appear bloody and cruel, as, by our hands and this our present act, you see we do, yet see you but our hands and this the bleeding business they have done: our hearts you see not; they are pitiful; and pity to the general wrong of rome- as fire drives out fire, so pity pity- hath done this deed on caesar. for your part, to you our swords have leaden points, mark antony: our arms, in strength of malice, and our hearts of brothers' temper, do receive you in with all kind love, good thoughts, and reverence. cassius your voice shall be as strong as any man's in the disposing of new dignities. brutus only be patient till we have appeased the multitude, beside themselves with fear, and then we will deliver you the cause, why i, that did love caesar when i struck him, have thus proceeded. antony i doubt not of your wisdom. let each man render me his bloody hand: first, marcus brutus, will i shake with you; next, caius cassius, do i take your hand; now, decius brutus, yours: now yours, metellus; yours, cinna; and, my valiant casca, yours; though last, not last in love, yours, good trebonius. gentlemen all,--alas, what shall i say? my credit now stands on such slippery ground, that one of two bad ways you must conceit me, either a coward or a flatterer. that i did love thee, caesar, o, 'tis true: if then thy spirit look upon us now, shall it not grieve thee dearer than thy death, to see thy thy anthony making his peace, shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes, most noble! in the presence of thy corse? had i as many eyes as thou hast wounds, weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood, it would become me better than to close in terms of friendship with thine enemies. pardon me, julius! here wast thou bay'd, brave hart; here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand, sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lethe. o world, thou wast the forest to this hart; and this, indeed, o world, the heart of thee. how like a deer, strucken by many princes, dost thou here lie! cassius mark antony,- antony pardon me, caius cassius: the enemies of caesar shall say this; then, in a friend, it is cold modesty. cassius i blame you not for praising caesar so; but what compact mean you to have with us? will you be prick'd in number of our friends; or shall we on, and not depend on you? antony therefore i took your hands, but was, indeed, sway'd from the point, by looking down on caesar. friends am i with you all and love you all, upon this hope, that you shall give me reasons why and wherein caesar was dangerous. brutus or else were this a savage spectacle: our reasons are so full of good regard that were you, antony, the son of caesar, you should be satisfied. antony that's all i seek: and am moreover suitor that i may produce his body to the market-place; and in the pulpit, as becomes a friend, speak in the order of his funeral. brutus you shall, mark antony. cassius brutus, a word with you. [aside to brutus] you know not what you do: do not consent that antony speak in his funeral: know you how much the people may be moved by that which he will utter? brutus by your pardon; i will myself into the pulpit first, and show the reason of our caesar's death: what antony shall speak, i will protest he speaks by leave and by permission, and that we are contented caesar shall have all true rites and lawful ceremonies. it shall advantage more than do us wrong. cassius i know not what may fall; i like it not. brutus mark antony, here, take you caesar's body. you shall not in your funeral speech blame us, but speak all good you can devise of caesar, and say you do't by our permission; else shall you not have any hand at all about his funeral: and you shall speak in the same pulpit whereto i am going, after my speech is ended. antony be it so. i do desire no more. brutus prepare the body then, and follow us. [exeunt all but antony] antony o, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, that i am meek and gentle with these butchers! thou art the ruins of the noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times. woe to the hand that shed this costly blood! over thy wounds now do i prophesy,- which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips, to beg the voice and utterance of my tongue- a curse shall light upon the limbs of men; domestic fury and fierce civil strife shall cumber all the parts of italy; blood and destruction shall be so in use and dreadful objects so familiar that mothers shall but smile when they behold their infants quarter'd with the hands of war; all pity choked with custom of fell deeds: and caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge, with ate by his side come hot from hell, shall in these confines with a monarch's voice cry 'havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war; that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial. [enter a servant] you serve octavius caesar, do you not? servant i do, mark antony. antony caesar did write for him to come to rome. servant he did receive his letters, and is coming; and bid me say to you by word of mouth- o caesar!- [seeing the body] antony thy heart is big, get thee apart and weep. passion, i see, is catching; for mine eyes, seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine, began to water. is thy master coming? servant he lies to-night within seven leagues of rome. antony post back with speed, and tell him what hath chanced: here is a mourning rome, a dangerous rome, no rome of safety for octavius yet; hie hence, and tell him so. yet, stay awhile; thou shalt not back till i have borne this corse into the market-place: there shall i try in my oration, how the people take the cruel issue of these bloody men; according to the which, thou shalt discourse to young octavius of the state of things. lend me your hand. [exeunt with caesar's body] julius caesar act iii scene ii the forum. [enter brutus and cassius, and a throng of citizens] citizens we will be satisfied; let us be satisfied. brutus then follow me, and give me audience, friends. cassius, go you into the other street, and part the numbers. those that will hear me speak, let 'em stay here; those that will follow cassius, go with him; and public reasons shall be rendered of caesar's death. first citizen i will hear brutus speak. second citizen i will hear cassius; and compare their reasons, when severally we hear them rendered. [exit cassius, with some of the citizens. brutus goes into the pulpit] third citizen the noble brutus is ascended: silence! brutus be patient till the last. romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear: believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe: censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. if there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of caesar's, to him i say, that brutus' love to caesar was no less than his. if then that friend demand why brutus rose against caesar, this is my answer: --not that i loved caesar less, but that i loved rome more. had you rather caesar were living and die all slaves, than that caesar were dead, to live all free men? as caesar loved me, i weep for him; as he was fortunate, i rejoice at it; as he was valiant, i honour him: but, as he was ambitious, i slew him. there is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honour for his valour; and death for his ambition. who is here so base that would be a bondman? if any, speak; for him have i offended. who is here so rude that would not be a roman? if any, speak; for him have i offended. who is here so vile that will not love his country? if any, speak; for him have i offended. i pause for a reply. all none, brutus, none. brutus then none have i offended. i have done no more to caesar than you shall do to brutus. the question of his death is enrolled in the capitol; his glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy, nor his offences enforced, for which he suffered death. [enter antony and others, with caesar's body] here comes his body, mourned by mark antony: who, though he had no hand in his death, shall receive the benefit of his dying, a place in the commonwealth; as which of you shall not? with this i depart,--that, as i slew my best lover for the good of rome, i have the same dagger for myself, when it shall please my country to need my death. all live, brutus! live, live! first citizen bring him with triumph home unto his house. second citizen give him a statue with his ancestors. third citizen let him be caesar. fourth citizen caesar's better parts shall be crown'd in brutus. first citizen we'll bring him to his house with shouts and clamours. brutus my countrymen,- second citizen peace, silence! brutus speaks. first citizen peace, ho! brutus good countrymen, let me depart alone, and, for my sake, stay here with antony: do grace to caesar's corpse, and grace his speech tending to caesar's glories; which mark antony, by our permission, is allow'd to make. i do entreat you, not a man depart, save i alone, till antony have spoke. [exit] first citizen stay, ho! and let us hear mark antony. third citizen let him go up into the public chair; we'll hear him. noble antony, go up. antony for brutus' sake, i am beholding to you. [goes into the pulpit] fourth citizen what does he say of brutus? third citizen he says, for brutus' sake, he finds himself beholding to us all. fourth citizen 'twere best he speak no harm of brutus here. first citizen this caesar was a tyrant. third citizen nay, that's certain: we are blest that rome is rid of him. second citizen peace! let us hear what antony can say. antony you gentle romans,- citizens peace, ho! let us hear him. antony friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; i come to bury caesar, not to praise him. the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones; so let it be with caesar. the noble brutus hath told you caesar was ambitious: if it were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously hath caesar answer'd it. here, under leave of brutus and the rest- for brutus is an honourable man; so are they all, all honourable men- come i to speak in caesar's funeral. he was my friend, faithful and just to me: but brutus says he was ambitious; and brutus is an honourable man. he hath brought many captives home to rome whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: did this in caesar seem ambitious? when that the poor have cried, caesar hath wept: ambition should be made of sterner stuff: yet brutus says he was ambitious; and brutus is an honourable man. you all did see that on the lupercal i thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? yet brutus says he was ambitious; and, sure, he is an honourable man. i speak not to disprove what brutus spoke, but here i am to speak what i do know. you all did love him once, not without cause: what cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? o judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason. bear with me; my heart is in the coffin there with caesar, and i must pause till it come back to me. first citizen methinks there is much reason in his sayings. second citizen if thou consider rightly of the matter, caesar has had great wrong. third citizen has he, masters? i fear there will a worse come in his place. fourth citizen mark'd ye his words? he would not take the crown; therefore 'tis certain he was not ambitious. first citizen if it be found so, some will dear abide it. second citizen poor soul! his eyes are red as fire with weeping. third citizen there's not a nobler man in rome than antony. fourth citizen now mark him, he begins again to speak. antony but yesterday the word of caesar might have stood against the world; now lies he there. and none so poor to do him reverence. o masters, if i were disposed to stir your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, i should do brutus wrong, and cassius wrong, who, you all know, are honourable men: i will not do them wrong; i rather choose to wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, than i will wrong such honourable men. but here's a parchment with the seal of caesar; i found it in his closet, 'tis his will: let but the commons hear this testament- which, pardon me, i do not mean to read- and they would go and kiss dead caesar's wounds and dip their napkins in his sacred blood, yea, beg a hair of him for memory, and, dying, mention it within their wills, bequeathing it as a rich legacy unto their issue. fourth citizen we'll hear the will: read it, mark antony. all the will, the will! we will hear caesar's will. antony have patience, gentle friends, i must not read it; it is not meet you know how caesar loved you. you are not wood, you are not stones, but men; and, being men, bearing the will of caesar, it will inflame you, it will make you mad: 'tis good you know not that you are his heirs; for, if you should, o, what would come of it! fourth citizen read the will; we'll hear it, antony; you shall read us the will, caesar's will. antony will you be patient? will you stay awhile? i have o'ershot myself to tell you of it: i fear i wrong the honourable men whose daggers have stabb'd caesar; i do fear it. fourth citizen they were traitors: honourable men! all the will! the testament! second citizen they were villains, murderers: the will! read the will. antony you will compel me, then, to read the will? then make a ring about the corpse of caesar, and let me show you him that made the will. shall i descend? and will you give me leave? several citizens come down. second citizen descend. third citizen you shall have leave. [antony comes down] fourth citizen a ring; stand round. first citizen stand from the hearse, stand from the body. second citizen room for antony, most noble antony. antony nay, press not so upon me; stand far off. several citizens stand back; room; bear back. antony if you have tears, prepare to shed them now. you all do know this mantle: i remember the first time ever caesar put it on; 'twas on a summer's evening, in his tent, that day he overcame the nervii: look, in this place ran cassius' dagger through: see what a rent the envious casca made: through this the well-beloved brutus stabb'd; and as he pluck'd his cursed steel away, mark how the blood of caesar follow'd it, as rushing out of doors, to be resolved if brutus so unkindly knock'd, or no; for brutus, as you know, was caesar's angel: judge, o you gods, how dearly caesar loved him! this was the most unkindest cut of all; for when the noble caesar saw him stab, ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, quite vanquish'd him: then burst his mighty heart; and, in his mantle muffling up his face, even at the base of pompey's statua, which all the while ran blood, great caesar fell. o, what a fall was there, my countrymen! then i, and you, and all of us fell down, whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us. o, now you weep; and, i perceive, you feel the dint of pity: these are gracious drops. kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold our caesar's vesture wounded? look you here, here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors. first citizen o piteous spectacle! second citizen o noble caesar! third citizen o woful day! fourth citizen o traitors, villains! first citizen o most bloody sight! second citizen we will be revenged. all revenge! about! seek! burn! fire! kill! slay! let not a traitor live! antony stay, countrymen. first citizen peace there! hear the noble antony. second citizen we'll hear him, we'll follow him, we'll die with him. antony good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up to such a sudden flood of mutiny. they that have done this deed are honourable: what private griefs they have, alas, i know not, that made them do it: they are wise and honourable, and will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. i come not, friends, to steal away your hearts: i am no orator, as brutus is; but, as you know me all, a plain blunt man, that love my friend; and that they know full well that gave me public leave to speak of him: for i have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, to stir men's blood: i only speak right on; i tell you that which you yourselves do know; show you sweet caesar's wounds, poor poor dumb mouths, and bid them speak for me: but were i brutus, and brutus antony, there were an antony would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue in every wound of caesar that should move the stones of rome to rise and mutiny. all we'll mutiny. first citizen we'll burn the house of brutus. third citizen away, then! come, seek the conspirators. antony yet hear me, countrymen; yet hear me speak. all peace, ho! hear antony. most noble antony! antony why, friends, you go to do you know not what: wherein hath caesar thus deserved your loves? alas, you know not: i must tell you then: you have forgot the will i told you of. all most true. the will! let's stay and hear the will. antony here is the will, and under caesar's seal. to every roman citizen he gives, to every several man, seventy-five drachmas. second citizen most noble caesar! we'll revenge his death. third citizen o royal caesar! antony hear me with patience. all peace, ho! antony moreover, he hath left you all his walks, his private arbours and new-planted orchards, on this side tiber; he hath left them you, and to your heirs for ever, common pleasures, to walk abroad, and recreate yourselves. here was a caesar! when comes such another? first citizen never, never. come, away, away! we'll burn his body in the holy place, and with the brands fire the traitors' houses. take up the body. second citizen go fetch fire. third citizen pluck down benches. fourth citizen pluck down forms, windows, any thing. [exeunt citizens with the body] antony now let it work. mischief, thou art afoot, take thou what course thou wilt! [enter a servant] how now, fellow! servant sir, octavius is already come to rome. antony where is he? servant he and lepidus are at caesar's house. antony and thither will i straight to visit him: he comes upon a wish. fortune is merry, and in this mood will give us any thing. servant i heard him say, brutus and cassius are rid like madmen through the gates of rome. antony belike they had some notice of the people, how i had moved them. bring me to octavius. [exeunt] julius caesar act iii scene iii a street. [enter cinna the poet] cinna the poet i dreamt to-night that i did feast with caesar, and things unlucky charge my fantasy: i have no will to wander forth of doors, yet something leads me forth. [enter citizens] first citizen what is your name? second citizen whither are you going? third citizen where do you dwell? fourth citizen are you a married man or a bachelor? second citizen answer every man directly. first citizen ay, and briefly. fourth citizen ay, and wisely. third citizen ay, and truly, you were best. cinna the poet what is my name? whither am i going? where do i dwell? am i a married man or a bachelor? then, to answer every man directly and briefly, wisely and truly: wisely i say, i am a bachelor. second citizen that's as much as to say, they are fools that marry: you'll bear me a bang for that, i fear. proceed; directly. cinna the poet directly, i am going to caesar's funeral. first citizen as a friend or an enemy? cinna the poet as a friend. second citizen that matter is answered directly. fourth citizen for your dwelling,--briefly. cinna the poet briefly, i dwell by the capitol. third citizen your name, sir, truly. cinna the poet truly, my name is cinna. first citizen tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator. cinna the poet i am cinna the poet, i am cinna the poet. fourth citizen tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses. cinna the poet i am not cinna the conspirator. fourth citizen it is no matter, his name's cinna; pluck but his name out of his heart, and turn him going. third citizen tear him, tear him! come, brands ho! fire-brands: to brutus', to cassius'; burn all: some to decius' house, and some to casca's; some to ligarius': away, go! [exeunt] julius caesar act iv scene i a house in rome. [antony, octavius, and lepidus, seated at a table] antony these many, then, shall die; their names are prick'd. octavius your brother too must die; consent you, lepidus? lepidus i do consent- octavius prick him down, antony. lepidus upon condition publius shall not live, who is your sister's son, mark antony. antony he shall not live; look, with a spot i damn him. but, lepidus, go you to caesar's house; fetch the will hither, and we shall determine how to cut off some charge in legacies. lepidus what, shall i find you here? octavius or here, or at the capitol. [exit lepidus] antony this is a slight unmeritable man, meet to be sent on errands: is it fit, the three-fold world divided, he should stand one of the three to share it? octavius so you thought him; and took his voice who should be prick'd to die, in our black sentence and proscription. antony octavius, i have seen more days than you: and though we lay these honours on this man, to ease ourselves of divers slanderous loads, he shall but bear them as the ass bears gold, to groan and sweat under the business, either led or driven, as we point the way; and having brought our treasure where we will, then take we down his load, and turn him off, like to the empty ass, to shake his ears, and graze in commons. octavius you may do your will; but he's a tried and valiant soldier. antony so is my horse, octavius; and for that i do appoint him store of provender: it is a creature that i teach to fight, to wind, to stop, to run directly on, his corporal motion govern'd by my spirit. and, in some taste, is lepidus but so; he must be taught and train'd and bid go forth; a barren-spirited fellow; one that feeds on abjects, orts and imitations, which, out of use and staled by other men, begin his fashion: do not talk of him, but as a property. and now, octavius, listen great things:--brutus and cassius are levying powers: we must straight make head: therefore let our alliance be combined, our best friends made, our means stretch'd and let us presently go sit in council, how covert matters may be best disclosed, and open perils surest answered. octavius let us do so: for we are at the stake, and bay'd about with many enemies; and some that smile have in their hearts, i fear, millions of mischiefs. [exeunt] julius caesar act iv scene ii camp near sardis. before brutus's tent. [drum. enter brutus, lucilius, lucius, and soldiers; titinius and pindarus meeting them] brutus stand, ho! lucilius give the word, ho! and stand. brutus what now, lucilius! is cassius near? lucilius he is at hand; and pindarus is come to do you salutation from his master. brutus he greets me well. your master, pindarus, in his own change, or by ill officers, hath given me some worthy cause to wish things done, undone: but, if he be at hand, i shall be satisfied. pindarus i do not doubt but that my noble master will appear such as he is, full of regard and honour. brutus he is not doubted. a word, lucilius; how he received you, let me be resolved. lucilius with courtesy and with respect enough; but not with such familiar instances, nor with such free and friendly conference, as he hath used of old. brutus thou hast described a hot friend cooling: ever note, lucilius, when love begins to sicken and decay, it useth an enforced ceremony. there are no tricks in plain and simple faith; but hollow men, like horses hot at hand, make gallant show and promise of their mettle; but when they should endure the bloody spur, they fall their crests, and, like deceitful jades, sink in the trial. comes his army on? lucilius they mean this night in sardis to be quarter'd; the greater part, the horse in general, are come with cassius. brutus hark! he is arrived. [low march within] march gently on to meet him. [enter cassius and his powers] cassius stand, ho! brutus stand, ho! speak the word along. first soldier stand! second soldier stand! third soldier stand! cassius most noble brother, you have done me wrong. brutus judge me, you gods! wrong i mine enemies? and, if not so, how should i wrong a brother? cassius brutus, this sober form of yours hides wrongs; and when you do them- brutus cassius, be content. speak your griefs softly: i do know you well. before the eyes of both our armies here, which should perceive nothing but love from us, let us not wrangle: bid them move away; then in my tent, cassius, enlarge your griefs, and i will give you audience. cassius pindarus, bid our commanders lead their charges off a little from this ground. brutus lucilius, do you the like; and let no man come to our tent till we have done our conference. let lucius and titinius guard our door. [exeunt] julius caesar act iv scene iii brutus's tent. [enter brutus and cassius] cassius that you have wrong'd me doth appear in this: you have condemn'd and noted lucius pella for taking bribes here of the sardians; wherein my letters, praying on his side, because i knew the man, were slighted off. brutus you wronged yourself to write in such a case. cassius in such a time as this it is not meet that every nice offence should bear his comment. brutus let me tell you, cassius, you yourself are much condemn'd to have an itching palm; to sell and mart your offices for gold to undeservers. cassius i an itching palm! you know that you are brutus that speak this, or, by the gods, this speech were else your last. brutus the name of cassius honours this corruption, and chastisement doth therefore hide his head. cassius chastisement! brutus remember march, the ides of march remember: did not great julius bleed for justice' sake? what villain touch'd his body, that did stab, and not for justice? what, shall one of us that struck the foremost man of all this world but for supporting robbers, shall we now contaminate our fingers with base bribes, and sell the mighty space of our large honours for so much trash as may be grasped thus? i had rather be a dog, and bay the moon, than such a roman. cassius brutus, bay not me; i'll not endure it: you forget yourself, to hedge me in; i am a soldier, i, older in practise, abler than yourself to make conditions. brutus go to; you are not, cassius. cassius i am. brutus i say you are not. cassius urge me no more, i shall forget myself; have mind upon your health, tempt me no further. brutus away, slight man! cassius is't possible? brutus hear me, for i will speak. must i give way and room to your rash choler? shall i be frighted when a madman stares? cassius o ye gods, ye gods! must i endure all this? brutus all this! ay, more: fret till your proud heart break; go show your slaves how choleric you are, and make your bondmen tremble. must i budge? must i observe you? must i stand and crouch under your testy humour? by the gods you shall digest the venom of your spleen, though it do split you; for, from this day forth, i'll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter, when you are waspish. cassius is it come to this? brutus you say you are a better soldier: let it appear so; make your vaunting true, and it shall please me well: for mine own part, i shall be glad to learn of noble men. cassius you wrong me every way; you wrong me, brutus; i said, an elder soldier, not a better: did i say 'better'? brutus if you did, i care not. cassius when caesar lived, he durst not thus have moved me. brutus peace, peace! you durst not so have tempted him. cassius i durst not! brutus no. cassius what, durst not tempt him! brutus for your life you durst not! cassius do not presume too much upon my love; i may do that i shall be sorry for. brutus you have done that you should be sorry for. there is no terror, cassius, in your threats, for i am arm'd so strong in honesty that they pass by me as the idle wind, which i respect not. i did send to you for certain sums of gold, which you denied me: for i can raise no money by vile means: by heaven, i had rather coin my heart, and drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring from the hard hands of peasants their vile trash by any indirection: i did send to you for gold to pay my legions, which you denied me: was that done like cassius? should i have answer'd caius cassius so? when marcus brutus grows so covetous, to lock such rascal counters from his friends, be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts; dash him to pieces! cassius i denied you not. brutus you did. cassius i did not: he was but a fool that brought my answer back. brutus hath rived my heart: a friend should bear his friend's infirmities, but brutus makes mine greater than they are. brutus i do not, till you practise them on me. cassius you love me not. brutus i do not like your faults. cassius a friendly eye could never see such faults. brutus a flatterer's would not, though they do appear as huge as high olympus. cassius come, antony, and young octavius, come, revenge yourselves alone on cassius, for cassius is aweary of the world; hated by one he loves; braved by his brother; cheque'd like a bondman; all his faults observed, set in a note-book, learn'd, and conn'd by rote, to cast into my teeth. o, i could weep my spirit from mine eyes! there is my dagger, and here my naked breast; within, a heart dearer than plutus' mine, richer than gold: if that thou be'st a roman, take it forth; i, that denied thee gold, will give my heart: strike, as thou didst at caesar; for, i know, when thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better than ever thou lovedst cassius. brutus sheathe your dagger: be angry when you will, it shall have scope; do what you will, dishonour shall be humour. o cassius, you are yoked with a lamb that carries anger as the flint bears fire; who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark, and straight is cold again. cassius hath cassius lived to be but mirth and laughter to his brutus, when grief, and blood ill-temper'd, vexeth him? brutus when i spoke that, i was ill-temper'd too. cassius do you confess so much? give me your hand. brutus and my heart too. cassius o brutus! brutus what's the matter? cassius have not you love enough to bear with me, when that rash humour which my mother gave me makes me forgetful? brutus yes, cassius; and, from henceforth, when you are over-earnest with your brutus, he'll think your mother chides, and leave you so. poet [within] let me go in to see the generals; there is some grudge between 'em, 'tis not meet they be alone. lucilius [within] you shall not come to them. poet [within] nothing but death shall stay me. [enter poet, followed by lucilius, titinius, and lucius] cassius how now! what's the matter? poet for shame, you generals! what do you mean? love, and be friends, as two such men should be; for i have seen more years, i'm sure, than ye. cassius ha, ha! how vilely doth this cynic rhyme! brutus get you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow, hence! cassius bear with him, brutus; 'tis his fashion. brutus i'll know his humour, when he knows his time: what should the wars do with these jigging fools? companion, hence! cassius away, away, be gone. [exit poet] brutus lucilius and titinius, bid the commanders prepare to lodge their companies to-night. cassius and come yourselves, and bring messala with you immediately to us. [exeunt lucilius and titinius] brutus lucius, a bowl of wine! [exit lucius] cassius i did not think you could have been so angry. brutus o cassius, i am sick of many griefs. cassius of your philosophy you make no use, if you give place to accidental evils. brutus no man bears sorrow better. portia is dead. cassius ha! portia! brutus she is dead. cassius how 'scaped i killing when i cross'd you so? o insupportable and touching loss! upon what sickness? brutus impatient of my absence, and grief that young octavius with mark antony have made themselves so strong:--for with her death that tidings came;--with this she fell distract, and, her attendants absent, swallow'd fire. cassius and died so? brutus even so. cassius o ye immortal gods! [re-enter lucius, with wine and taper] brutus speak no more of her. give me a bowl of wine. in this i bury all unkindness, cassius. cassius my heart is thirsty for that noble pledge. fill, lucius, till the wine o'erswell the cup; i cannot drink too much of brutus' love. brutus come in, titinius! [exit lucius] [re-enter titinius, with messala] welcome, good messala. now sit we close about this taper here, and call in question our necessities. cassius portia, art thou gone? brutus no more, i pray you. messala, i have here received letters, that young octavius and mark antony come down upon us with a mighty power, bending their expedition toward philippi. messala myself have letters of the selfsame tenor. brutus with what addition? messala that by proscription and bills of outlawry, octavius, antony, and lepidus, have put to death an hundred senators. brutus therein our letters do not well agree; mine speak of seventy senators that died by their proscriptions, cicero being one. cassius cicero one! messala cicero is dead, and by that order of proscription. had you your letters from your wife, my lord? brutus no, messala. messala nor nothing in your letters writ of her? brutus nothing, messala. messala that, methinks, is strange. brutus why ask you? hear you aught of her in yours? messala no, my lord. brutus now, as you are a roman, tell me true. messala then like a roman bear the truth i tell: for certain she is dead, and by strange manner. brutus why, farewell, portia. we must die, messala: with meditating that she must die once, i have the patience to endure it now. messala even so great men great losses should endure. cassius i have as much of this in art as you, but yet my nature could not bear it so. brutus well, to our work alive. what do you think of marching to philippi presently? cassius i do not think it good. brutus your reason? cassius this it is: 'tis better that the enemy seek us: so shall he waste his means, weary his soldiers, doing himself offence; whilst we, lying still, are full of rest, defense, and nimbleness. brutus good reasons must, of force, give place to better. the people 'twixt philippi and this ground do stand but in a forced affection; for they have grudged us contribution: the enemy, marching along by them, by them shall make a fuller number up, come on refresh'd, new-added, and encouraged; from which advantage shall we cut him off, if at philippi we do face him there, these people at our back. cassius hear me, good brother. brutus under your pardon. you must note beside, that we have tried the utmost of our friends, our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe: the enemy increaseth every day; we, at the height, are ready to decline. there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. on such a full sea are we now afloat; and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures. cassius then, with your will, go on; we'll along ourselves, and meet them at philippi. brutus the deep of night is crept upon our talk, and nature must obey necessity; which we will niggard with a little rest. there is no more to say? cassius no more. good night: early to-morrow will we rise, and hence. brutus lucius! [enter lucius] my gown. [exit lucius] farewell, good messala: good night, titinius. noble, noble cassius, good night, and good repose. cassius o my dear brother! this was an ill beginning of the night: never come such division 'tween our souls! let it not, brutus. brutus every thing is well. cassius good night, my lord. brutus good night, good brother. titinius | | good night, lord brutus. messala | brutus farewell, every one. [exeunt all but brutus] [re-enter lucius, with the gown] give me the gown. where is thy instrument? lucius here in the tent. brutus what, thou speak'st drowsily? poor knave, i blame thee not; thou art o'er-watch'd. call claudius and some other of my men: i'll have them sleep on cushions in my tent. lucius varro and claudius! [enter varro and claudius] varro calls my lord? brutus i pray you, sirs, lie in my tent and sleep; it may be i shall raise you by and by on business to my brother cassius. varro so please you, we will stand and watch your pleasure. brutus i will not have it so: lie down, good sirs; it may be i shall otherwise bethink me. look, lucius, here's the book i sought for so; i put it in the pocket of my gown. [varro and claudius lie down] lucius i was sure your lordship did not give it me. brutus bear with me, good boy, i am much forgetful. canst thou hold up thy heavy eyes awhile, and touch thy instrument a strain or two? lucius ay, my lord, an't please you. brutus it does, my boy: i trouble thee too much, but thou art willing. lucius it is my duty, sir. brutus i should not urge thy duty past thy might; i know young bloods look for a time of rest. lucius i have slept, my lord, already. brutus it was well done; and thou shalt sleep again; i will not hold thee long: if i do live, i will be good to thee. [music, and a song] this is a sleepy tune. o murderous slumber, lay'st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy, that plays thee music? gentle knave, good night; i will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee: if thou dost nod, thou break'st thy instrument; i'll take it from thee; and, good boy, good night. let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turn'd down where i left reading? here it is, i think. [enter the ghost of caesar] how ill this taper burns! ha! who comes here? i think it is the weakness of mine eyes that shapes this monstrous apparition. it comes upon me. art thou any thing? art thou some god, some angel, or some devil, that makest my blood cold and my hair to stare? speak to me what thou art. ghost thy evil spirit, brutus. brutus why comest thou? ghost to tell thee thou shalt see me at philippi. brutus well; then i shall see thee again? ghost ay, at philippi. brutus why, i will see thee at philippi, then. [exit ghost] now i have taken heart thou vanishest: ill spirit, i would hold more talk with thee. boy, lucius! varro! claudius! sirs, awake! claudius! lucius the strings, my lord, are false. brutus he thinks he still is at his instrument. lucius, awake! lucius my lord? brutus didst thou dream, lucius, that thou so criedst out? lucius my lord, i do not know that i did cry. brutus yes, that thou didst: didst thou see any thing? lucius nothing, my lord. brutus sleep again, lucius. sirrah claudius! [to varro] fellow thou, awake! varro my lord? claudius my lord? brutus why did you so cry out, sirs, in your sleep? varro | | did we, my lord? claudius | brutus ay: saw you any thing? varro no, my lord, i saw nothing. claudius nor i, my lord. brutus go and commend me to my brother cassius; bid him set on his powers betimes before, and we will follow. varro | | it shall be done, my lord. claudius | [exeunt] julius caesar act v scene i the plains of philippi. [enter octavius, antony, and their army] octavius now, antony, our hopes are answered: you said the enemy would not come down, but keep the hills and upper regions; it proves not so: their battles are at hand; they mean to warn us at philippi here, answering before we do demand of them. antony tut, i am in their bosoms, and i know wherefore they do it: they could be content to visit other places; and come down with fearful bravery, thinking by this face to fasten in our thoughts that they have courage; but 'tis not so. [enter a messenger] messenger prepare you, generals: the enemy comes on in gallant show; their bloody sign of battle is hung out, and something to be done immediately. antony octavius, lead your battle softly on, upon the left hand of the even field. octavius upon the right hand i; keep thou the left. antony why do you cross me in this exigent? octavius i do not cross you; but i will do so. [march] [drum. enter brutus, cassius, and their army; lucilius, titinius, messala, and others] brutus they stand, and would have parley. cassius stand fast, titinius: we must out and talk. octavius mark antony, shall we give sign of battle? antony no, caesar, we will answer on their charge. make forth; the generals would have some words. octavius stir not until the signal. brutus words before blows: is it so, countrymen? octavius not that we love words better, as you do. brutus good words are better than bad strokes, octavius. antony in your bad strokes, brutus, you give good words: witness the hole you made in caesar's heart, crying 'long live! hail, caesar!' cassius antony, the posture of your blows are yet unknown; but for your words, they rob the hybla bees, and leave them honeyless. antony not stingless too. brutus o, yes, and soundless too; for you have stol'n their buzzing, antony, and very wisely threat before you sting. antony villains, you did not so, when your vile daggers hack'd one another in the sides of caesar: you show'd your teeth like apes, and fawn'd like hounds, and bow'd like bondmen, kissing caesar's feet; whilst damned casca, like a cur, behind struck caesar on the neck. o you flatterers! cassius flatterers! now, brutus, thank yourself: this tongue had not offended so to-day, if cassius might have ruled. octavius come, come, the cause: if arguing make us sweat, the proof of it will turn to redder drops. look; i draw a sword against conspirators; when think you that the sword goes up again? never, till caesar's three and thirty wounds be well avenged; or till another caesar have added slaughter to the sword of traitors. brutus caesar, thou canst not die by traitors' hands, unless thou bring'st them with thee. octavius so i hope; i was not born to die on brutus' sword. brutus o, if thou wert the noblest of thy strain, young man, thou couldst not die more honourable. cassius a peevish schoolboy, worthless of such honour, join'd with a masker and a reveller! antony old cassius still! octavius come, antony, away! defiance, traitors, hurl we in your teeth: if you dare fight to-day, come to the field; if not, when you have stomachs. [exeunt octavius, antony, and their army] cassius why, now, blow wind, swell billow and swim bark! the storm is up, and all is on the hazard. brutus ho, lucilius! hark, a word with you. lucilius [standing forth] my lord? [brutus and lucilius converse apart] cassius messala! messala [standing forth] what says my general? cassius messala, this is my birth-day; as this very day was cassius born. give me thy hand, messala: be thou my witness that against my will, as pompey was, am i compell'd to set upon one battle all our liberties. you know that i held epicurus strong and his opinion: now i change my mind, and partly credit things that do presage. coming from sardis, on our former ensign two mighty eagles fell, and there they perch'd, gorging and feeding from our soldiers' hands; who to philippi here consorted us: this morning are they fled away and gone; and in their steads do ravens, crows and kites, fly o'er our heads and downward look on us, as we were sickly prey: their shadows seem a canopy most fatal, under which our army lies, ready to give up the ghost. messala believe not so. cassius i but believe it partly; for i am fresh of spirit and resolved to meet all perils very constantly. brutus even so, lucilius. cassius now, most noble brutus, the gods to-day stand friendly, that we may, lovers in peace, lead on our days to age! but since the affairs of men rest still incertain, let's reason with the worst that may befall. if we do lose this battle, then is this the very last time we shall speak together: what are you then determined to do? brutus even by the rule of that philosophy by which i did blame cato for the death which he did give himself, i know not how, but i do find it cowardly and vile, for fear of what might fall, so to prevent the time of life: arming myself with patience to stay the providence of some high powers that govern us below. cassius then, if we lose this battle, you are contented to be led in triumph thorough the streets of rome? brutus no, cassius, no: think not, thou noble roman, that ever brutus will go bound to rome; he bears too great a mind. but this same day must end that work the ides of march begun; and whether we shall meet again i know not. therefore our everlasting farewell take: for ever, and for ever, farewell, cassius! if we do meet again, why, we shall smile; if not, why then, this parting was well made. cassius for ever, and for ever, farewell, brutus! if we do meet again, we'll smile indeed; if not, 'tis true this parting was well made. brutus why, then, lead on. o, that a man might know the end of this day's business ere it come! but it sufficeth that the day will end, and then the end is known. come, ho! away! [exeunt] julius caesar act v scene ii the same. the field of battle. [alarum. enter brutus and messala] brutus ride, ride, messala, ride, and give these bills unto the legions on the other side. [loud alarum] let them set on at once; for i perceive but cold demeanor in octavius' wing, and sudden push gives them the overthrow. ride, ride, messala: let them all come down. [exeunt] julius caesar act v scene iii another part of the field. [alarums. enter cassius and titinius] cassius o, look, titinius, look, the villains fly! myself have to mine own turn'd enemy: this ensign here of mine was turning back; i slew the coward, and did take it from him. titinius o cassius, brutus gave the word too early; who, having some advantage on octavius, took it too eagerly: his soldiers fell to spoil, whilst we by antony are all enclosed. [enter pindarus] pindarus fly further off, my lord, fly further off; mark antony is in your tents, my lord fly, therefore, noble cassius, fly far off. cassius this hill is far enough. look, look, titinius; are those my tents where i perceive the fire? titinius they are, my lord. cassius titinius, if thou lovest me, mount thou my horse, and hide thy spurs in him, till he have brought thee up to yonder troops, and here again; that i may rest assured whether yond troops are friend or enemy. titinius i will be here again, even with a thought. [exit] cassius go, pindarus, get higher on that hill; my sight was ever thick; regard titinius, and tell me what thou notest about the field. [pindarus ascends the hill] this day i breathed first: time is come round, and where i did begin, there shall i end; my life is run his compass. sirrah, what news? pindarus [above] o my lord! cassius what news? pindarus [above] titinius is enclosed round about with horsemen, that make to him on the spur; yet he spurs on. now they are almost on him. now, titinius! now some light. o, he lights too. he's ta'en. [shout] and, hark! they shout for joy. cassius come down, behold no more. o, coward that i am, to live so long, to see my best friend ta'en before my face! [pindarus descends] come hither, sirrah: in parthia did i take thee prisoner; and then i swore thee, saving of thy life, that whatsoever i did bid thee do, thou shouldst attempt it. come now, keep thine oath; now be a freeman: and with this good sword, that ran through caesar's bowels, search this bosom. stand not to answer: here, take thou the hilts; and, when my face is cover'd, as 'tis now, guide thou the sword. [pindarus stabs him] caesar, thou art revenged, even with the sword that kill'd thee. [dies] pindarus so, i am free; yet would not so have been, durst i have done my will. o cassius, far from this country pindarus shall run, where never roman shall take note of him. [exit] [re-enter titinius with messala] messala it is but change, titinius; for octavius is overthrown by noble brutus' power, as cassius' legions are by antony. titinius these tidings will well comfort cassius. messala where did you leave him? titinius all disconsolate, with pindarus his bondman, on this hill. messala is not that he that lies upon the ground? titinius he lies not like the living. o my heart! messala is not that he? titinius no, this was he, messala, but cassius is no more. o setting sun, as in thy red rays thou dost sink to-night, so in his red blood cassius' day is set; the sun of rome is set! our day is gone; clouds, dews, and dangers come; our deeds are done! mistrust of my success hath done this deed. messala mistrust of good success hath done this deed. o hateful error, melancholy's child, why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men the things that are not? o error, soon conceived, thou never comest unto a happy birth, but kill'st the mother that engender'd thee! titinius what, pindarus! where art thou, pindarus? messala seek him, titinius, whilst i go to meet the noble brutus, thrusting this report into his ears; i may say, thrusting it; for piercing steel and darts envenomed shall be as welcome to the ears of brutus as tidings of this sight. titinius hie you, messala, and i will seek for pindarus the while. [exit messala] why didst thou send me forth, brave cassius? did i not meet thy friends? and did not they put on my brows this wreath of victory, and bid me give it thee? didst thou not hear their shouts? alas, thou hast misconstrued every thing! but, hold thee, take this garland on thy brow; thy brutus bid me give it thee, and i will do his bidding. brutus, come apace, and see how i regarded caius cassius. by your leave, gods:--this is a roman's part come, cassius' sword, and find titinius' heart. [kills himself] [alarum. re-enter messala, with brutus, cato, strato, volumnius, and lucilius] brutus where, where, messala, doth his body lie? messala lo, yonder, and titinius mourning it. brutus titinius' face is upward. cato he is slain. brutus o julius caesar, thou art mighty yet! thy spirit walks abroad and turns our swords in our own proper entrails. [low alarums] cato brave titinius! look, whether he have not crown'd dead cassius! brutus are yet two romans living such as these? the last of all the romans, fare thee well! it is impossible that ever rome should breed thy fellow. friends, i owe more tears to this dead man than you shall see me pay. i shall find time, cassius, i shall find time. come, therefore, and to thasos send his body: his funerals shall not be in our camp, lest it discomfort us. lucilius, come; and come, young cato; let us to the field. labeo and flavius, set our battles on: 'tis three o'clock; and, romans, yet ere night we shall try fortune in a second fight. [exeunt] julius caesar act v scene iv another part of the field. [alarum. enter fighting, soldiers of both armies; then brutus, cato, lucilius, and others] brutus yet, countrymen, o, yet hold up your heads! cato what bastard doth not? who will go with me? i will proclaim my name about the field: i am the son of marcus cato, ho! a foe to tyrants, and my country's friend; i am the son of marcus cato, ho! brutus and i am brutus, marcus brutus, i; brutus, my country's friend; know me for brutus! [exit] lucilius o young and noble cato, art thou down? why, now thou diest as bravely as titinius; and mayst be honour'd, being cato's son. first soldier yield, or thou diest. lucilius only i yield to die: there is so much that thou wilt kill me straight; [offering money] kill brutus, and be honour'd in his death. first soldier we must not. a noble prisoner! second soldier room, ho! tell antony, brutus is ta'en. first soldier i'll tell the news. here comes the general. [enter antony] brutus is ta'en, brutus is ta'en, my lord. antony where is he? lucilius safe, antony; brutus is safe enough: i dare assure thee that no enemy shall ever take alive the noble brutus: the gods defend him from so great a shame! when you do find him, or alive or dead, he will be found like brutus, like himself. antony this is not brutus, friend; but, i assure you, a prize no less in worth: keep this man safe; give him all kindness: i had rather have such men my friends than enemies. go on, and see whether brutus be alive or dead; and bring us word unto octavius' tent how every thing is chanced. [exeunt] julius caesar act v scene v another part of the field. [enter brutus, dardanius, clitus, strato, and volumnius] brutus come, poor remains of friends, rest on this rock. clitus statilius show'd the torch-light, but, my lord, he came not back: he is or ta'en or slain. brutus sit thee down, clitus: slaying is the word; it is a deed in fashion. hark thee, clitus. [whispers] clitus what, i, my lord? no, not for all the world. brutus peace then! no words. clitus i'll rather kill myself. brutus hark thee, dardanius. [whispers] dardanius shall i do such a deed? clitus o dardanius! dardanius o clitus! clitus what ill request did brutus make to thee? dardanius to kill him, clitus. look, he meditates. clitus now is that noble vessel full of grief, that it runs over even at his eyes. brutus come hither, good volumnius; list a word. volumnius what says my lord? brutus why, this, volumnius: the ghost of caesar hath appear'd to me two several times by night; at sardis once, and, this last night, here in philippi fields: i know my hour is come. volumnius not so, my lord. brutus nay, i am sure it is, volumnius. thou seest the world, volumnius, how it goes; our enemies have beat us to the pit: [low alarums] it is more worthy to leap in ourselves, than tarry till they push us. good volumnius, thou know'st that we two went to school together: even for that our love of old, i prithee, hold thou my sword-hilts, whilst i run on it. volumnius that's not an office for a friend, my lord. [alarum still] clitus fly, fly, my lord; there is no tarrying here. brutus farewell to you; and you; and you, volumnius. strato, thou hast been all this while asleep; farewell to thee too, strato. countrymen, my heart doth joy that yet in all my life i found no man but he was true to me. i shall have glory by this losing day more than octavius and mark antony by this vile conquest shall attain unto. so fare you well at once; for brutus' tongue hath almost ended his life's history: night hangs upon mine eyes; my bones would rest, that have but labour'd to attain this hour. [alarum. cry within, 'fly, fly, fly!'] clitus fly, my lord, fly. brutus hence! i will follow. [exeunt clitus, dardanius, and volumnius] i prithee, strato, stay thou by thy lord: thou art a fellow of a good respect; thy life hath had some smatch of honour in it: hold then my sword, and turn away thy face, while i do run upon it. wilt thou, strato? strato give me your hand first. fare you well, my lord. brutus farewell, good strato. [runs on his sword] caesar, now be still: i kill'd not thee with half so good a will. [dies] [alarum. retreat. enter octavius, antony, messala, lucilius, and the army] octavius what man is that? messala my master's man. strato, where is thy master? strato free from the bondage you are in, messala: the conquerors can but make a fire of him; for brutus only overcame himself, and no man else hath honour by his death. lucilius so brutus should be found. i thank thee, brutus, that thou hast proved lucilius' saying true. octavius all that served brutus, i will entertain them. fellow, wilt thou bestow thy time with me? strato ay, if messala will prefer me to you. octavius do so, good messala. messala how died my master, strato? strato i held the sword, and he did run on it. messala octavius, then take him to follow thee, that did the latest service to my master. antony this was the noblest roman of them all: all the conspirators save only he did that they did in envy of great caesar; he only, in a general honest thought and common good to all, made one of them. his life was gentle, and the elements so mix'd in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world 'this was a man!' octavius according to his virtue let us use him, with all respect and rites of burial. within my tent his bones to-night shall lie, most like a soldier, order'd honourably. so call the field to rest; and let's away, to part the glories of this happy day. [exeunt] dracula's guest 1914 by bram stoker note: dracula's guest was excised from the original dracula mss by his publisher because of the length of the orig inal book mss. it was published as a short story in 1914, two years after stoker's death. enjoy! new wave publishers 2103 n. liberty street portland or 97217-4971 (503) 286-5577 when we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. just as we were about to depart, herr delbruck (the maitre d'hotel of the quatre saisons, where i was staying) came down bareheaded to the carriage and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still holding his hand on the handle of the carriage door, "remember you are back by nightfall. the sky looks bright but there is a shiver in the north wind that says there may be a sudden storm. but i am sure you will not be late." here he smiled and added,"for you know what night it is." johann answered with an emphatic, "ja, mein herr," and, touching his hat, drove off quickly. when we had cleared the town, i said, after signalling to him to stop: "tell me, johann, what is tonight?" he crossed himself, as he answered laconically: "walpurgis nacht." then he took out his watch, a great, old-fashioned german silver thing as big as a turnip and looked at it, with his eyebrows gathered together and a little impatient shrug of his shoulders. i realized that this was his way of respect fully protesting against the unnecessary delay and sank back in the carriage, merely motioning him to proceed. he started off rapidly, as if to make up for lost time. every now and then the horses seemed to throw up their heads and sniff the air suspiciously. on such occasions i often looked round in alarm. the road was pretty bleak, for we were traversing a sort of high windswept plateau. as we drove,i saw a road that looked but little used and which seemed to dip through a lit tle winding valley. it looked so inviting that, even at the risk of offending him, i called johann to stop--and when he had pulled up, i told him i would like to drive down that road. he made all sorts of excuses and frequently crossed him self as he spoke. this somewhat piqued my curiosity, so i ask ed him various questions. he answered fencingly and repeatedly looked at his watch in protest. finally i said, "well, johann, i want to go down this road. i shall not ask you to come unless you like; but tell me why you do not like to go, that is all i ask." for answer he seem ed to throw himself off the box, so quickly did he reach the ground. then he stretched out his hands appealingly to me and implored me not to go. there was just enough of english mixed with the german for me to understand the drift of his talk. he seemed always just about to tell me something--the very idea of which evidently frightened him; but each time he pulled him self up saying, "walpurgis nacht!" i tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man when i did not know his language. the advantage certainly rested with him, for although he began to speak in english, of a very crude and broken kind, he always got ex cited and broke into his native tongue--and every time he did so, he looked at his watch. then the horses became restless and sniffed the air. at this he grew very pale, and, looking around in a frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward, took them by the bridles,and led them on some twenty feet. i foll owed and asked why he had done this. for an answer he crossed himself, pointed to the spot we had left, and drew his carr iage in the direction of the other road, indicating a cross, and said, first in german, then in english, "buried him--him what killed themselves." i remembered the old custom of burying suicides at cross roads: "ah! i see, a suicide. how interesting!" but for the life of me i could not make out why the horses were frighten ed. whilst we were talking, we heard a sort of sound between a yelp and a bark.it was far away; but the horses got very rest less, and it took johann all his time to quiet them. he was pale and said, "it sounds like a wolf--but yet there are no wolves here now." "no?" i said, questioning him. "isn't it long since the wolves were so near the city?" "long, long," he answered, "in the spring and summer; but with the snow the wolves have been here not so long." whilst he was petting the horses and trying to quiet them, dark clouds drifted rapidly across the sky. the sunshine pass ed away, and a breath of cold wind seemed to drift over us.it was only a breath, however, and more of a warning than a fact, for the sun came out brightly again. johann looked under his lifted hand at the horizon and said, "the storm of snow, he comes before long time." then he looked at his watch again, and, straightway holding his reins firmly--for the horses were still pawing the ground restless ly and shaking their heads--he climbed to his box as though the time had come for proceeding on our journey. i felt a little obstinate and did not at once get into the carriage. "tell me," i said, "about this place where the road leads," and i pointed down. again he crossed himself and mumbled a prayer before he an swered, "it is unholy." "what is unholy?" i enquired. "the village." "then there is a village?" "no, no. no one lives there hundreds of years." my curiosity was piqued, "but you said there was a village." "there was." "where is it now?" whereupon he burst out into a long story in german and eng lish, so mixed up that i could not quite understand exactly what he said. roughly i gathered that long ago, hundreds of years, men had died there and been buried in their graves; but sounds were heard under the clay, and when the graves were opened,men and women were found rosy with life and their mouths red with blood. and so, in haste to save their lives (aye, and their souls!--and here he crossed himself)those who were left fled away to other places, where the living lived and the dead were dead and not--not something. he was evident ly afraid to speak the last words. as he proceeded with his narration, he grew more and more excited. it seemed as if his imagination had got hold of him, and he ended in a perfect paroxysm of fear--white-faced, perspiring, trembling, and looking round him as if expecting that some dreadful presence would manifest itself there in the bright sunshine on the open plain. finally, in an agony of desperation, he cried, "walpurgis nacht!" and pointed to the carriage for me to get in. all my english blood rose at this,and standing back i said, "you are afraid, johann--you are afraid. go home, i shall re turn alone, the walk will do me good." the carriage door was open. i took from the seat my oak walking stick--which i al ways carry on my holiday excursions--and closed the door, pointing back to munich, and said, "go home,johann--walpurgis nacht doesn't concern englishmen." the horses were now more restive than ever, and johann was trying to hold them in, while excitedly imploring me not to do anything so foolish. i pitied the poor fellow, he was so deeply in earnest; but all the same i could not help laughing. his english was quite gone now. in his anxiety he had forgot ten that his only means of making me understand was to talk my language, so he jabbered away in his native german. it be gan to be a little tedious. after giving the direction, "home!" i turned to go down the cross road into the valley. with a despairing gesture,johann turned his horses towards munich. i leaned on my stick and looked after him. he went slowly along the road for a while, then there came over the crest of the hill a man tall and thin. i could see so much in the distance. when he drew near the horses,they began to jump and kick about, then to scream with terror. johann could not hold them in; they bolted down the road, running away madly. i watched them out of sight, then looked for the stranger; but i found that he, too, was gone. with a light heart i turned down the side road through the deepening valley to which johann had objected. there was not the slightest reason,that i could see, for his objection; and i daresay i tramped for a couple of hours without thinking of time or distance and certainly without seeing a person or a house. so far as the place was concerned, it was desolation itself. but i did not notice this particularly till, on turn ing a bend in the road,i came upon a scattered fringe of wood; then i recognized that i had been impressed unconsciously by the desolation of the region through which i had passed. i sat down to rest myself and began to look around. it struck me that it was considerably colder than it had been at the commencement of my walk--a sort of sighing sound seemed to be around me with, now and then, high overhead, a sort of muffled roar. looking upwards i noticed that great thick clouds were drafting rapidly across the sky from north to south at a great height.there were signs of a coming storm in some lofty stratum of the air. i was a little chilly, and, thinking that it was the sitting still after the exercise of walking, i resumed my journey. the ground i passed over was now much more picturesque. there were no striking objects that the eye might single out, but in all there was a charm of beauty.i took little heed of time, and it was only when the deepening twilight forced it self upon me that i began to think of how i should find my way home. the air was cold, and the drifting of clouds high overhead was more marked. they were accompanied by a sort of far away rushing sound, through which seemed to come at inter vals that mysterious cry which the driver had said came from a wolf. for a while i hesitated. i had said i would see the deserted village, so on i went and presently came on a wide stretch of open country, shut in by hills all around. their sides were covered with trees which spread down to the plain, dotting in clumps the gentler slopes and hollows which showed here and there.i followed with my eye the winding of the road and saw that it curved close to one of the densest of these clumps and was lost behind it. as i looked there came a cold shiver in the air, and the snow began to fall. i thought of the miles and miles of bleak country i had passed, and then hurried on to seek shelter of the wood in front. darker and darker grew the sky, and faster and heavier fell the snow, till the earth before and around me was a glistening white carpet the further edge of which was lost in misty vagueness. the road was here but crude, and when on the level its boundaries were not so marked as when it passed through the cuttings; and in a little while i found that i must have strayed from it, for i missed underfoot the hard surface, and my feet sank deeper in the grass and moss. then the wind grew stronger and blew with ever increasing force, till i was fain to run before it. the air became icy cold, and in spite of my exercise i began to suffer. the snow was now falling so thickly and whirling around me in such rap id eddies that i could hardly keep my eyes open. every now and then the heavens were torn asunder by vivid lightning, and in the flashes i could see ahead of me a great mass of trees, chiefly yew and cypress all heavily coated with snow. i was soon amongst the shelter of the trees, and there in comparative silence i could hear the rush of the wind high overhead. presently the blackness of the storm had become mer ged in the darkness of the night. by-and-by the storm seemed to be passing away,it now only came in fierce puffs or blasts. at such moments the weird sound of the wolf appeared to be echoed by many similar sounds around me. now and again, through the black mass of drifting cloud, came a straggling ray of moonlight which lit up the expanse and showed me that i was at the edge of a dense mass of cyp ress and yew trees. as the snow had ceased to fall, i walked out from the shelter and began to investigate more closely. it appeared to me that, amongst so many old foundations as i had passed, there might be still standing a house in which, though in ruins,i could find some sort of shelter for a while. as i skirted the edge of the copse, i found that a low wall encircled it, and following this i presently found an opening. here the cypresses formed an alley leading up to a square mass of some kind of building. just as i caught sight of this, however, the drifting clouds obscured the moon, and i passed up the path in darkness. the wind must have grown colder, for i felt myself shiver as i walked; but there was hope of shel ter, and i groped my way blindly on. i stopped, for there was a sudden stillness. the storm had passed; and, perhaps in sympathy with nature's silence, my heart seemed to cease to beat. but this was only momentarily; for suddenly the moonlight broke through the clouds showing me that i was in a graveyard and that the square object before me was a great massive tomb of marble, as white as the snow that lay on and all around it. with the moonlight there came a fierce sigh of the storm which appeared to resume its course with a long, low howl, as of many dogs or wolves.i was awed and shocked, and i felt the cold perceptibly grow upon me till it seemed to grip me by the heart. then while the flood of moonlight still fell on the marble tomb, the storm gave further evidence of renewing, as though it were return ing on its track. impelled by some sort of fascination, i app roached the sepulchre to see what it was and why such a thing stood alone in such a place.i walked around it and read, over the doric door, in german- countess dolingen of gratz in styria sought and found death 1801 on the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble--for the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone--was a great iron spike or stake. on going to the back i saw, graven in great russian letters: "the dead travel fast." there was something so weird and uncanny about the whole thing that it gave me a turn and made me feel quite faint. i began to wish, for the first time, that i had taken johann's advice. here a thought struck me, which came under almost mys sterious circumstances and with a terrible shock. this was wal purgis night! walpurgis night was when, according to the belief of mill ions of people, the devil was abroad--when the graves were op ened and the dead came forth and walked. when all evil things of earth and air and water held revel. this very place the driver had specially shunned. this was the depopulated vill age of centuries ago.this was where the suicide lay; and this was the place where i was alone--unmanned, shivering with cold in a shroud of snow with a wild storm gathering again up on me! it took all my philosophy, all the religion i had been taught,all my courage,not to collapse in a paroxysm of fright. and now a perfect tornado burst upon me. the ground shook as though thousands of horses thundered across it; and this time the storm bore on its icy wings, not snow, but great hailstones which drove with such violence that they might have come from the thongs of balearic slingers--hailstones that beat down leaf and branch and made the shelter of the cypresses of no more avail than though their stems were stand ing corn. at the first i had rushed to the nearest tree;but i was soon fain to leave it and seek the only spot that seemed to afford refuge, the deep doric doorway of the marble tomb. there, crouching against the massive bronze door, i gained a certain amount of protection from the beating of the hail stones, for now they only drove against me as they ricochett ed from the ground and the side of the marble. as i leaned against the door, it moved slightly and opened inwards. the shelter of even a tomb was welcome in that piti less tempest and i was about to enter it when there came a flash of forked lightning that lit up the whole expanse of the heavens. in the instant, as i am a living man, i saw, as my my eyes turned into the darkness of the tomb, a beautiful woman with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier. as the thunder broke overhead, i was grasped as by the hand of a giant and hurled out into the storm. the whole thing was so sudden that, before i could realize the shock, moral as well as physical, i found the hailstones beating me down. at the same time i had a strange, dominating feeling that i was not alone. i looked towards the tomb. just then there came another blinding flash which seemed to strike the iron stake that surmounted the tomb and to pour through to the earth, blasting and crumbling the marble, as in a burst of flame. the dead woman rose for a moment of agony while she was lapped in the flame, and her bitter scream of pain was drowned in the thundercrash. the last thing i heard was this mingling of dreadful sound,as again i was seized in the giant grasp and dragged away, while the hailstones beat on me and the air around seemed reverberant with the howling of wolves. the last sight that i remembered was a vague, white, moving mass,as if all the graves around me had sent out the phantoms of their sheeted dead, and that they were closing in on me through the white cloudiness of the driving hail. gradually there came a sort of vague beginning of cons ciousness, then a sense of weariness that was dreadful. for a time i remembered nothing, but slowly my senses returned. my feet seemed positively racked with pain, yet i could not move them. they seemed to be numbed. there was an icy feeling at the back of my neck and all down my spine, and my ears, like my feet, were dead yet in torment; but there was in my breast a sense of warmth which was by comparison delicious.it was as a nightmare--a physical nightmare, if one may use such an expression; for some heavy weight on my chest made it diff icult for me to breathe. this period of semilethargy seemed to remain a long time, and as it faded away i must have slept or swooned. then came a sort of loathing, like the first stage of seasickness, and a wild desire to be free of something--i knew not what.a vast stillness enveloped me, as though all the world were asleep or dead--only broken by the low panting as of some animal close to me. i felt a warm rasping at my throat, then came a consciousness of the awful truth which chilled me to the heart and sent the blood surging up through my brain. some great an imal was lying on me and now licking my throat. i feared to stir, for some instinct of prudence bade me lie still; but the brute seemed to realize that there was now some change in me, for it raised its head. through my eyelashes i saw above me the two great flaming eyes of a gigantic wolf. its sharp white teeth gleamed in the gaping red mouth, and i could feel its hot breath fierce and acrid upon me. for another spell of time i remembered no more. then i be came conscious of a low growl, followed by a yelp, renewed again and again. then seemingly very far away, i heard a "hol loa! holloa!" as of many voices calling in unison. cautiously i raised my head and looked in the direction whence the sound came, but the cemetery blocked my view. the wolf still contin ued to yelp in a strange way, and a red glare began to move round the grove of cypresses, as though following the sound. as the voices drew closer, the wolf yelped faster and louder. i feared to make either sound or motion. nearer came the red glow over the white pall which stretched into the darkness a round me. then all at once from beyond the trees there came at a trot a troop of horsemen bearing torches. the wolf rose from my breast and made for the cemetery. i saw one of the horsemen (soldiers by their caps and their long military cloaks) raise his carbine and take aim. a companion knocked up his arm,and i heard the ball whiz over my head. he had ev idently taken my body for that of the wolf. another sighted the animal as it slunk away, and a shot followed. then, at a gallop, the troop rode forward--some towards me, others foll owing the wolf as it disappeared amongst the snow-clad cypress es. as they drew nearer i tried to move but was powerless, al though i could see and hear all that went on around me. two or three of the soldiers jumped from their horses and knelt beside me. one of them raised my head and placed his hand ov er my heart. "good news, comrades!" he cried. "his heart still beats!" then some brandy was poured down my throat; it put vigor into me, and i was able to open my eyes fully and look around. lights and shadows were moving among the trees, and i heard men call to one another. they drew together, uttering fright ened exclamations; and the lights flashed as the others came pouring out of the cemetery pell-mell, like men possessed. when the further ones came close to us, those who were around me asked them eagerly, "well, have you found him?" the reply rang out hurriedly, "no! no! come away quick- quick! this is no place to stay, and on this of all nights!" "what was it?" was the question, asked in all manner of keys.the answer came variously and all indefinitely as though the men were moved by some common impulse to speak yet were restrained by some common fear from giving their thoughts. "it--it--indeed!" gibbered one, whose wits had plainly giv en out for the moment. "a wolf--and yet not a wolf!" another put in shudderingly. "no use trying for him without the sacred bullet," a third remarked in a more ordinary manner. "serve us right for coming out on this night!truly we have earned our thousand marks!" were the ejaculations of a fourth. "there was blood on the broken marble," another said after a pause, "the lightning never brought that there. and for him -is he safe? look at his throat! see comrades, the wolf has been lying on him and keeping his blood warm." the officer looked at my throat and replied, "he is all right, the skin is not pierced. what does it all mean? we should never have found him but for the yelping of the wolf." "what became of it?" asked the man who was holding up my head and who seemed the least panic-stricken of the party, for his hands were steady and without tremor. on his sleeve was the chevron of a petty officer. "it went home," answered the man, whose long face was pall id and who actually shook with terror as he glanced around him fearfully. "there are graves enough there in which it may lie. come, comrades--come quickly! let us leave this cursed spot." the officer raised me to a sitting posture, as he uttered a word of command; then several men placed me upon a horse.he sprang to the saddle behind me, took me in his arms, gave the word to advance; and, turning our faces away from the cypress es, we rode away in swift military order. as yet my tongue refused its office, and i was perforce silent. i must have fallen asleep; for the next thing i remem bered was finding myself standing up, supported by a soldier on each side of me. it was almost broad daylight, and to the north a red streak of sunlight was reflected like a path of blood over the waste of snow. the officer was telling the men to say nothing of what they had seen, except that they found an english stranger, guarded by a large dog. "dog! that was no dog," cut in the man who had exhibited such fear. "i think i know a wolf when i see one." the young officer answered calmly, "i said a dog." "dog!" reiterated the other ironically.it was evident that his courage was rising with the sun; and, pointing to me, he said, "look at his throat. is that the work of a dog, master?" instinctively i raised my hand to my throat, and as i touch ed it i cried out in pain. the men crowded round to look, some stooping down from their saddles;and again there came the calm voice of the young officer, "a dog, as i said. if aught else were said we should only be laughed at." i was then mounted behind a trooper, and we rode on into the suburbs of munich. here we came across a stray carriage into which i was lifted , and it was driven off to the quatre saisons--the young officer accompanying me, whilst a trooper followed with his horse, and the others rode off to their barracks. when we arrived, herr delbruck rushed so quickly down the steps to meet me, that it was apparent he had been watching within. taking me by both hands he solicitously led me in.the officer saluted me and was turning to withdraw, when i recog nized his purpose and insisted that he should come to my rooms. over a glass of wine i warmly thanked him and his brave comrades for saving me. he replied simply that he was more than glad, and that herr delbruck had at the first taken steps to make all the searching party pleased; at which ambiguous utterance the maitre d'hotel smiled, while the officer plead duty and withdrew. "but herr delbruck," i enquired, "how and why was it that the soldiers searched for me?" he shrugged his shoulders, as if in depreciation of his own deed, as he replied, "i was so fortunate as to obtain leave from the commander of the regiment in which i serve, to ask for volunteers." "but how did you know i was lost?" i asked. "the driver came hither with the remains of his carriage, which had been upset when the horses ran away." "but surely you would not send a search party of soldiers merely on this account?" "oh, no!" he answered, "but even before the coachman arriv ed, i had this telegram from the boyar whose guest you are," and he took from his pocket a telegram which he handed to me, and i read: bistritz. be careful of my guest--his safety is most precious to me. should aught happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing to find him and ensure his safety. he is english and therefore adventurous. there are often dangers from snow and wolves and night. lose not a moment if you sus pect harm to him. i answer your zeal with my fortune. --dracula. as i held the telegram in my hand,the room seemed to whirl around me,and if the attentive maitre d'hotel had not caught me,i think i should have fallen. there was something so str ange in all this, something so weird and impossible to imag ine, that there grew on me a sense of my being in some way the sport of opposite forces--the mere vague idea of which seemed in a way to paralyze me. i was certainly under some form of mysterious protection. from a distant country had come, in the very nick of time, a message that took me out of the danger of the snow sleep and the jaws of the wolf. *** end of file . 1759 candide by voltaire chapter 1 how candide was brought up in a magnificent castle and how he was driven thence in the country of westphalia, in the castle of the most noble baron of thunder-ten-tronckh, lived a youth whom nature had endowed with a most sweet disposition. his face was the true index of his mind. he had a solid judgment joined to the most unaffected simplicity; and hence, i presume, he had his name of candide. the old servants of the house suspected him to have been the son of the baron's sister, by a very good sort of a gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady refused to marry, because he could produce no more than threescore and eleven quarterings in his arms; the rest of the genealogical tree belonging to the family having been lost through the injuries of time. the baron was one of the most powerful lords in westphalia, for his castle had not only a gate, but even windows, and his great hall was hung with tapestry. he used to hunt with his mastiffs and spaniels instead of greyhounds; his groom served him for huntsman; and the parson of the parish officiated as his grand almoner. he was called "my lord" by all his people, and he never told a story but everyone laughed at it. my lady baroness, who weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, consequently was a person of no small consideration; and then she did the honors of the house with a dignity that commanded universal respect. her daughter was about seventeen years of age, fresh-colored, comely, plump, and desirable. the baron's son seemed to be a youth in every respect worthy of the father he sprung from. pangloss, the preceptor, was the oracle of the family, and little candide listened to his instructions with all the simplicity natural to his age and disposition. master pangloss taught the metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology. he could prove to admiration that there is no effect without a cause; and, that in this best of all possible worlds, the baron's castle was the most magnificent of all castles, and my lady the best of all possible baronesses. "it is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. the legs are visibly designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings. stones were made to be hewn and to construct castles, therefore my lord has a magnificent castle; for the greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. swine were intended to be eaten, therefore we eat pork all the year round: and they, who assert that everything is right, do not express themselves correctly; they should say that everything is best." candide listened attentively and believed implicitly, for he thought miss cunegund excessively handsome, though he never had the courage to tell her so. he concluded that next to the happiness of being baron of thunder-ten-tronckh, the next was that of being miss cunegund, the next that of seeing her every day, and the last that of hearing the doctrine of master pangloss, the greatest philosopher of the whole province, and consequently of the whole world. one day when miss cunegund went to take a walk in a little neighboring wood which was called a park, she saw, through the bushes, the sage doctor pangloss giving a lecture in experimental philosophy to her mother's chambermaid, a little brown wench, very pretty, and very tractable. as miss cunegund had a great disposition for the sciences, she observed with the utmost attention the experiments which were repeated before her eyes; she perfectly well understood the force of the doctor's reasoning upon causes and effects. she retired greatly flurried, quite pensive and filled with the desire of knowledge, imagining that she might be a sufficing reason for young candide, and he for her. on her way back she happened to meet the young man; she blushed, he blushed also; she wished him a good morning in a flattering tone, he returned the salute, without knowing what he said. the next day, as they were rising from dinner, cunegund and candide slipped behind the screen. the miss dropped her handkerchief, the young man picked it up. she innocently took hold of his hand, and he as innocently kissed hers with a warmth, a sensibility, a grace-all very particular; their lips met; their eyes sparkled; their knees trembled; their hands strayed. the baron chanced to come by; he beheld the cause and effect, and, without hesitation, saluted candide with some notable kicks on the breech and drove him out of doors. the lovely miss cunegund fainted away, and, as soon as she came to herself, the baroness boxed her ears. thus a general consternation was spread over this most magnificent and most agreeable of all possible castles. chapter 2 what befell candide among the bulgarians candide, thus driven out of this terrestrial paradise, rambled a long time without knowing where he went; sometimes he raised his eyes, all bedewed with tears, towards heaven, and sometimes he cast a melancholy look towards the magnificent castle, where dwelt the fairest of young baronesses. he laid himself down to sleep in a furrow, heartbroken, and supperless. the snow fell in great flakes, and, in the morning when he awoke, he was almost frozen to death; however, he made shift to crawl to the next town, which was called wald-berghoff-trarbkdikdorff, without a penny in his pocket, and half dead with hunger and fatigue. he took up his stand at the door of an inn. he had not been long there before two men dressed in blue fixed their eyes steadfastly upon him. "faith, comrade," said one of them to the other, "yonder is a well made young fellow and of the right size." upon which they made up to candide and with the greatest civility and politeness invited him to dine with them. "gentlemen," replied candide, with a most engaging modesty, you do me much honor, but upon my word i have no money." "money, sir!" said one of the blues to him, "young persons of your appearance and merit never pay anything; why, are not you five feet five inches high?" "yes, gentlemen, that is really my size," replied he, with a low bow. "come then, sir, sit down along with us; we will not only pay your reckoning, but will never suffer such a clever young fellow as you to want money. men were born to assist one another." "you are perfectly right, gentlemen," said candide, "this is precisely the doctrine of master pangloss; and i am convinced that everything is for the best." his generous companions next entreated him to accept of a few crowns, which he readily complied with, at the same time offering them his note for the payment, which they refused, and sat down to table. "have you not a great affection for-" "o yes! i have a great affection for the lovely miss cunegund." "maybe so," replied one of the blues, "but that is not the question! we ask you whether you have not a great affection for the king of the bulgarians?" "for the king of the bulgarians?" said candide. "oh, lord! not at all, why i never saw him in my life." "is it possible? oh, he is a most charming king! come, we must drink his health." "with all my heart, gentlemen," said candide, and off he tossed his glass. "bravo!" cried the blues; "you are now the support, the defender, the hero of the bulgarians; your fortune is made; you are in the high road to glory." so saying, they handcuffed him, and carried him away to the regiment. there he was made to wheel about to the right, to the left, to draw his rammer, to return his rammer, to present, to fire, to march, and they gave him thirty blows with a cane; the next day he performed his exercise a little better, and they gave him but twenty; the day following he came off with ten, and was looked upon as a young fellow of surprising genius by all his comrades. candide was struck with amazement, and could not for the soul of him conceive how he came to be a hero. one fine spring morning, he took it into his head to take a walk, and he marched straight forward, conceiving it to be a privilege of the human species, as well as of the brute creation, to make use of their legs how and when they pleased. he had not gone above two leagues when he was overtaken by four other heroes, six feet high, who bound him neck and heels, and carried him to a dungeon. a courtmartial sat upon him, and he was asked which he liked better, to run the gauntlet six and thirty times through the whole regiment, or to have his brains blown out with a dozen musket-balls? in vain did he remonstrate to them that the human will is free, and that he chose neither; they obliged him to make a choice, and he determined, in virtue of that divine gift called free will, to run the gauntlet six and thirty times. he had gone through his discipline twice, and the regiment being composed of 2,000 men, they composed for him exactly 4,000 strokes, which laid bare all his muscles and nerves from the nape of his neck to his stern. as they were preparing to make him set out the third time our young hero, unable to support it any longer, begged as a favor that they would be so obliging as to shoot him through the head; the favor being granted, a bandage was tied over his eyes, and he was made to kneel down. at that very instant, his bulgarian majesty happening to pass by made a stop, and inquired into the delinquent's crime, and being a prince of great penetration, he found, from what he heard of candide, that he was a young metaphysician, entirely ignorant of the world; and therefore, out of his great clemency, he condescended to pardon him, for which his name will be celebrated in every journal, and in every age. a skillful surgeon made a cure of the flagellated candide in three weeks by means of emollient unguents prescribed by dioscorides. his sores were now skimmed over and he was able to march, when the king of the bulgarians gave battle to the king of the abares. chapter 3 how candide escaped from the bulgarians and what befell him afterward never was anything so gallant, so well accoutred, so brilliant, and so finely disposed as the two armies. the trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, and cannon made such harmony as never was heard in hell itself. the entertainment began by a discharge of cannon, which, in the twinkling of an eye, laid flat about 6,000 men on each side. the musket bullets swept away, out of the best of all possible worlds, nine or ten thousand scoundrels that infested its surface. the bayonet was next the sufficient reason of the deaths of several thousands. the whole might amount to thirty thousand souls. candide trembled like a philosopher, and concealed himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery. at length, while the two kings were causing te deums to be sung in their camps, candide took a resolution to go and reason somewhere else upon causes and effects. after passing over heaps of dead or dying men, the first place he came to was a neighboring village, in the abarian territories, which had been burned to the ground by the bulgarians, agreeably to the laws of war. here lay a number of old men covered with wounds, who beheld their wives dying with their throats cut, and hugging their children to their breasts, all stained with blood. there several young virgins, whose bodies had been ripped open, after they had satisfied the natural necessities of the bulgarian heroes, breathed their last; while others, half-burned in the flames, begged to be dispatched out of the world. the ground about them was covered with the brains, arms, and legs of dead men. candide made all the haste he could to another village, which belonged to the bulgarians, and there he found the heroic abares had enacted the same tragedy. thence continuing to walk over palpitating limbs, or through ruined buildings, at length he arrived beyond the theater of war, with a little provision in his budget, and miss cunegund's image in his heart. when he arrived in holland his provision failed him; but having heard that the inhabitants of that country were all rich and christians, he made himself sure of being treated by them in the same manner as the baron's castle, before he had been driven thence through the power of miss cunegund's bright eyes. he asked charity of several grave-looking people, who one and all answered him, that if he continued to follow this trade they would have him sent to the house of correction, where he should be taught to get his bread. he next addressed himself to a person who had just come from haranguing a numerous assembly for a whole hour on the subject of charity. the orator, squinting at him under his broadbrimmed hat, asked him sternly, what brought him thither and whether he was for the good old cause? "sir," said candide, in a submissive manner, "i conceive there can be no effect without a cause; everything is necessarily concatenated and arranged for the best. it was necessary that i should be banished from the presence of miss cunegund; that i should afterwards run the gauntlet; and it is necessary i should beg my bread, till i am able to get it. all this could not have been otherwise." "hark ye, friend," said the orator, "do you hold the pope to be antichrist?" "truly, i never heard anything about it," said candide, "but whether he is or not, i am in want of something to eat." "thou deservest not to eat or to drink," replied the orator, "wretch, monster, that thou art! hence! avoid my sight, nor ever come near me again while thou livest." the orator's wife happened to put her head out of the window at that instant, when, seeing a man who doubted whether the pope was antichrist, she discharged upon his head a utensil full of water. good heavens, to what excess does religious zeal transport womankind! a man who had never been christened, an honest anabaptist named james, was witness to the cruel and ignominious treatment showed to one of his brethren, to a rational, two-footed, unfledged being. moved with pity he carried him to his own house, caused him to be cleaned, gave him meat and drink, and made him a present of two florins, at the same time proposing to instruct him in his own trade of weaving persian silks, which are fabricated in holland. candide, penetrated with so much goodness, threw himself at his feet, crying, "now i am convinced that my master pangloss told me truth when he said that everything was for the best in this world; for i am infinitely more affected with your extraordinary generosity than with the inhumanity of that gentleman in the black cloak and his wife." chapter 4 how candide found his old master pangloss again and what happened to him the next day, as candide was walking out, he met a beggar all covered with scabs, his eyes sunk in his head, the end of his nose eaten off, his mouth drawn on one side, his teeth as black as a cloak, snuffling and coughing most violently, and every time he attempted to spit out dropped a tooth. candide, divided between compassion and horror, but giving way to the former, bestowed on this shocking figure the two florins which the honest anabaptist, james, had just before given to him. the specter looked at him very earnestly, shed tears and threw his arms about his neck. candide started back aghast. "alas!" said the one wretch to the other, "don't you know dear pangloss?" "what do i hear? is it you, my dear master! you i behold in this piteous plight? what dreadful misfortune has befallen you? what has made you leave the most magnificent and delightful of all castles? what has become of miss cunegund, the mirror of young ladies, and nature's masterpiece?" "oh, lord!" cried pangloss, "i am so weak i cannot stand," upon which candide instantly led him to the anabaptist's stable, and procured him something to eat. as soon as pangloss had a little refreshed himself, candide began to repeat his inquiries concerning miss cunegund. "she is dead," replied the other. "dead!" cried candide, and immediately fainted away; his friend restored him by the help of a little bad vinegar, which he found by chance in the stable. candide opened his eyes, and again repeated: "dead! is miss cunegund dead? ah, where is the best of worlds now? but of what illness did she die? was it of grief on seeing her father kick me out of his magnificent castle?" "no," replied pangloss, "her body was ripped open by the bulgarian soldiers, after they had subjected her to as much cruelty as a damsel could survive; they knocked the baron, her father, on the head for attempting to defend her; my lady, her mother, was cut in pieces; my poor pupil was served just in the same manner as his sister; and as for the castle, they have not left one stone upon another; they have destroyed all the ducks, and sheep, the barns, and the trees; but we have had our revenge, for the abares have done the very same thing in a neighboring barony, which belonged to a bulgarian lord." at hearing this, candide fainted away a second time, but, not withstanding, having come to himself again, he said all that it became him to say; he inquired into the cause and effect, as well as into the sufficing reason that had reduced pangloss to so miserable a condition. "alas," replied the preceptor, "it was love; love, the comfort of the human species; love, the preserver of the universe; the soul of all sensible beings; love! tender love!" "alas," cried candide, "i have had some knowledge of love myself, this sovereign of hearts, this soul of souls; yet it never cost me more than a kiss and twenty kicks on the backside. but how could this beautiful cause produce in you so hideous an effect?" pangloss made answer in these terms: "o my dear candide, you must remember pacquette, that pretty wench, who waited on our noble baroness; in her arms i tasted the pleasures of paradise, which produced these hell torments with which you see me devoured. she was infected with an ailment, and perhaps has since died of it; she received this present of a learned franciscan, who derived it from the fountainhead; he was indebted for it to an old countess, who had it of a captain of horse, who had it of a marchioness, who had it of a page, the page had it of a jesuit, who, during his novitiate, had it in a direct line from one of the fellow adventurers of christopher columbus; for my part i shall give it to nobody, i am a dying man." "o sage pangloss," cried candide, "what a strange genealogy is this! is not the devil the root of it?" "not at all," replied the great man, "it was a thing unavoidable, a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if columbus had not caught in an island in america this disease, which contaminates the source of generation, and frequently impedes propagation itself, and is evidently opposed to the great end of nature, we should have had neither chocolate nor cochineal. it is also to be observed, that, even to the present time, in this continent of ours, this malady, like our religious controversies, is peculiar to ourselves. the turks, the indians, the persians, the chinese, the siamese, and the japanese are entirely unacquainted with it; but there is a sufficing reason for them to know it in a few centuries. in the meantime, it is making prodigious havoc among us, especially in those armies composed of well disciplined hirelings, who determine the fate of nations; for we may safely affirm, that, when an army of thirty thousand men engages another equal in size, there are about twenty thousand infected with syphilis on each side." "very surprising, indeed," said candide, "but you must get cured." "lord help me, how can i?" said pangloss. "my dear friend, i have not a penny in the world; and you know one cannot be bled or have an enema without money." this last speech had its effect on candide; he flew to the charitable anabaptist, james; he flung himself at his feet, and gave him so striking a picture of the miserable condition of his friend that the good man without any further hesitation agreed to take dr. pangloss into his house, and to pay for his cure. the cure was effected with only the loss of one eye and an ear. as be wrote a good hand, and understood accounts tolerably well, the anabaptist made him his bookkeeper. at the expiration of two months, being obliged by some mercantile affairs to go to lisbon he took the two philosophers with him in the same ship; pangloss, during the course of the voyage, explained to him how everything was so constituted that it could not be better. james did not quite agree with him on this point. "men," said he "must, in some things, have deviated from their original innocence; for they were not born wolves, and yet they worry one another like those beasts of prey. god never gave them twenty-four pounders nor bayonets, and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another. to this account i might add not only bankruptcies, but the law which seizes on the effects of bankrupts, only to cheat the creditors." "all this was indispensably necessary," replied the one-eyed doctor, "for private misfortunes are public benefits; so that the more private misfortunes there are, the greater is the general good." while he was arguing in this manner, the sky was overcast, the winds blew from the four quarters of the compass, and the ship was assailed by a most terrible tempest, within sight of the port of lisbon. chapter 5 a tempest, a shipwreck, an earthquake, and what else befell dr. pangloss, candide, and james, the anabaptist one half of the passengers, weakened and half-dead with the inconceivable anxiety and sickness which the rolling of a vessel at sea occasions through the whole human frame, were lost to all sense of the danger that surrounded them. the others made loud outcries, or betook themselves to their prayers; the sails were blown into shreds, and the masts were brought by the board. the vessel was a total wreck. everyone was busily employed, but nobody could be either heard or obeyed. the anabaptist, being upon deck, lent a helping hand as well as the rest, when a brutish sailor gave him a blow and laid him speechless; but, not withstanding, with the violence of the blow the tar himself tumbled headforemost overboard, and fell upon a piece of the broken mast, which he immediately grasped. honest james, forgetting the injury he had so lately received from him, flew to his assistance, and, with great difficulty, hauled him in again, but, not withstanding, in the attempt, was, by a sudden jerk of the ship, thrown overboard himself, in sight of the very fellow whom he had risked his life to save and who took not the least notice of him in this distress. candide, who beheld all that passed and saw his benefactor one moment rising above water, and the next swallowed up by the merciless waves, was preparing to jump after him, but was prevented by the philosopher pangloss, who demonstrated to him that the roadstead of lisbon had been made on purpose for the anabaptist to be drowned there. while he was proving his argument a priori, the ship foundered, and the whole crew perished, except pangloss, candide, and the sailor who had been the means of drowning the good anabaptist. the villain swam ashore; but pangloss and candide reached the land upon a plank. as soon as they had recovered from their surprise and fatigue they walked towards lisbon; with what little money they had left they thought to save themselves from starving after having escaped drowning. scarcely had they ceased to lament the loss of their benefactor and set foot in the city, when they perceived that the earth trembled under their feet, and the sea, swelling and foaming in the harbor, was dashing in pieces the vessels that were riding at anchor. large sheets of flames and cinders covered the streets and public places; the houses tottered, and were tumbled topsy-turvy even to their foundations, which were themselves destroyed, and thirty thousand inhabitants of both sexes, young and old, were buried beneath the ruins. the sailor, whistling and swearing, cried, "damn it, there's something to be got here." "what can be the sufficing reason of this phenomenon?" said pangloss. "it is certainly the day of judgment," said candide. the sailor, defying death in the pursuit of plunder, rushed into the midst of the ruin, where he found some money, with which he got drunk, and, after he had slept himself sober he purchased the favors of the first good-natured wench that came in his way, amidst the ruins of demolished houses and the groans of half-buried and expiring persons. pangloss pulled him by the sleeve. "friend," said he, "this is not right, you trespass against the universal reason, and have mistaken your time." "death and zounds!" answered the other, "i am a sailor and was born at batavia, and have trampled four times upon the crucifix in as many voyages to japan; you have come to a good hand with your universal reason." in the meantime, candide, who had been wounded by some pieces of stone that fell from the houses, lay stretched in the street, almost covered with rubbish. "for god's sake," said he to pangloss, "get me a little wine and oil! i am dying." "this concussion of the earth is no new thing," said pangloss, "the city of lima in south america experienced the same last year; the same cause, the same effects; there is certainly a train of sulphur all the way underground from lima to lisbon." "nothing is more probable," said candide; "but for the love of god a little oil and wine." "probable!" replied the philosopher, "i maintain that the thing is demonstrable." candide fainted away, and pangloss fetched him some water from a neighboring spring. the next day, in searching among the ruins, they found some eatables with which they repaired their exhausted strength. after this they assisted the inhabitants in relieving the distressed and wounded. some, whom they had humanely assisted, gave them as good a dinner as could be expected under such terrible circumstances. the repast, indeed, was mournful, and the company moistened their bread with their tears; but pangloss endeavored to comfort them under this affliction by affirming that things could not be otherwise that they were. "for," said he, "all this is for the very best end, for if there is a volcano at lisbon it could be in no other spot; and it is impossible but things should be as they are, for everything is for the best." by the side of the preceptor sat a little man dressed in black, who was one of the familiars of the inquisition. this person, taking him up with great complaisance, said, "possibly, my good sir, you do not believe in original sin; for, if everything is best, there could have been no such thing as the fall or punishment of man." your excellency will pardon me," answered pangloss, still more politely; "for the fall of man and the curse consequent thereupon necessarily entered into the system of the best of worlds." "that is as much as to say, sir," rejoined the familiar, "you do not believe in free will." "your excellency will be so good as to excuse me," said pangloss, "free will is consistent with absolute necessity; for it was necessary we should be free, for in that the will-" pangloss was in the midst of his proposition, when the familiar beckoned to his attendant to help him to a glass of port wine. chapter 6 how the portuguese made a superb auto-de-fe to prevent any future earthquakes, and how candide underwent public flagellation after the earthquake, which had destroyed three-fourths of the city of lisbon, the sages of that country could think of no means more effectual to preserve the kingdom from utter ruin than to entertain the people with an auto-da-fe, it having been decided by the university of coimbra, that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible preventive of earthquakes. in consequence thereof they had seized on a biscayan for marrying his godmother, and on two portuguese for taking out the bacon of a larded pullet they were eating; after dinner they came and secured dr. pangloss, and his pupil candide, the one for speaking his mind, and the other for seeming to approve what he had said. they were conducted to separate apartments, extremely cool, where they were never incommoded with the sun. eight days afterwards they were each dressed in a sanbenito, and their heads were adorned with paper mitres. the mitre and sanbenito worn by candide were painted with flames reversed and with devils that had neither tails nor claws; but dr. pangloss's devils had both tails and claws, and his flames were upright. in these habits they marched in procession, and heard a very pathetic sermon, which was followed by an anthem, accompanied by bagpipes. candide was flogged to some tune, while the anthem was being sung; the biscayan and the two men who would not eat bacon were burned, and pangloss was hanged, which is not a common custom at these solemnities. the same day there was another earthquake, which made most dreadful havoc. candide, amazed, terrified, confounded, astonished, all bloody, and trembling from head to foot, said to himself, "if this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others? if i had only been whipped, i could have put up with it, as i did among the bulgarians; but, not withstanding, oh my dear pangloss! my beloved master! thou greatest of philosophers! that ever i should live to see thee hanged, without knowing for what! o my dear anabaptist, thou best of men, that it should be thy fate to be drowned in the very harbor! o miss cunegund, you mirror of young ladies! that it should be your fate to have your body ripped open!" he was making the best of his way from the place where he had been preached to, whipped, absolved and blessed, when he was accosted by an old woman, who said to him, "take courage, child, and follow me." chapter 7 how the old woman took care of candide, and how he found the object of his love candide followed the old woman, though without taking courage, to a decayed house, where she gave him a pot of pomatum to anoint his sores, showed him a very neat bed, with a suit of clothes hanging by it; and set victuals and drink before him. "there," said she, "eat, drink, and sleep, and may our lady of atocha, and the great st. anthony of padua, and the illustrious st. james of compostella, take you under their protection. i shall be back tomorrow." candide, struck with amazement at what he had seen, at what he had suffered, and still more with the charity of the old woman, would have shown his acknowledgment by kissing her hand. "it is not my hand you ought to kiss," said the old woman. "i shall be back tomorrow. anoint your back, eat, and take your rest." candide, notwithstanding so many disasters, ate and slept. the next morning, the old woman brought him his breakfast; examined his back, and rubbed it herself with another ointment. she returned at the proper time, and brought him his dinner; and at night, she visited him again with his supper. the next day she observed the same ceremonies. "who are you?" said candide to her. "who has inspired you with so much goodness? what return can i make you for this charitable assistance?" the good old beldame kept a profound silence. in the evening she returned, but without his supper. "come along with me," said she, "but do not speak a word." she took him by the arm, and walked with him about a quarter of a mile into the country, till they came to a lonely house surrounded with moats and gardens. the old conductress knocked at a little door, which was immediately opened, and she showed him up a pair of back stairs, into a small, but richly furnished apartment. there she made him sit down on a brocaded sofa, shut the door upon him, and left him. candide thought himself in a trance; he looked upon his whole life, hitherto, as a frightful dream, and the present moment as a very agreeable one. the old woman soon returned, supporting, with great difficulty, a young lady, who appeared scarce able to stand. she was of a majestic mien and stature, her dress was rich, and glittering with diamonds, and her face was covered with a veil. "take off that veil," said the old woman to candide. the young man approached, and, with a trembling hand, took off her veil. what a happy moment! what surprise! he thought he beheld miss cunegund; he did behold her -it was she herself. his strength failed him, he could not utter a word, he fell at her feet. cunegund fainted upon the sofa. the old woman bedewed them with spirits; they recovered-they began to speak. at first they could express themselves only in broken accents; their questions and answers were alternately interrupted with sighs, tears, and exclamations. the old woman desired them to make less noise, and after this prudent admonition left them together. "good heavens!" cried candide, "is it you? is it miss cunegund i behold, and alive? do i find you again in portugal? then you have not been ravished? they did not rip open your body, as the philosopher pangloss informed me?" "indeed but they did," replied miss cunegund; "but these two accidents do not always prove mortal." "but were your father and mother killed?" "alas!" answered she, "it is but too true!" and she wept. "and your brother?" "and my brother also." "and how came you into portugal? and how did you know of my being here? and by what strange adventure did you contrive to have me brought into this house? and how-" "i will tell you all," replied the lady, "but first you must acquaint me with all that has befallen you since the innocent kiss you gave me, and the rude kicking you received in consequence of it." candide, with the greatest submission, prepared to obey the commands of his fair mistress; and though he was still filled with amazement, though his voice was low and tremulous, though his back pained him, yet he gave her a most ingenuous account of everything that had befallen him, since the moment of their separation. cunegund, with her eyes uplifted to heaven, shed tears when he related the death of the good anabaptist, james, and of pangloss; after which she thus related her adventures to candide, who lost not one syllable she uttered, and seemed to devour her with his eyes all the time she was speaking. chapter 8 cunegund's story i was in bed, and fast asleep, when it pleased heaven to send the bulgarians to our delightful castle of thunder-ten-tronckh, where they murdered my father and brother, and cut my mother in pieces. a tall bulgarian soldier, six feet high, perceiving that i had fainted away at this sight, attempted to ravish me; the operation brought me to my senses. i cried, i struggled, i bit, i scratched, i would have torn the tall bulgarian's eyes out, not knowing that what had happened at my father's castle was a customary thing. the brutal soldier, enraged at my resistance, gave me a wound in my left leg with his hanger, the mark of which i still carry." "methinks i long to see it," said candide, with all imaginable simplicity. "you shall," said cunegund, "but let me proceed." "pray do," replied candide. she continued. "a bulgarian captain came in, and saw me weltering in my blood, and the soldier still as busy as if no one had been present. the officer, enraged at the fellow's want of respect to him, killed him with one stroke of his sabre as he lay upon me. this captain took care of me, had me cured, and carried me as a prisoner of war to his quarters. i washed what little linen he possessed, and cooked his victuals: he was very fond of me, that was certain; neither can i deny that he was well made, and had a soft, white skin, but he was very stupid, and knew nothing of philosophy: it might plainly be perceived that he had not been educated under dr. pangloss. in three months, having gambled away all his money, and having grown tired of me, he sold me to a jew, named don issachar, who traded in holland and portugal, and was passionately fond of women. this jew showed me great kindness, in hopes of gaining my favors; but he never could prevail on me to yield. a modest woman may be once ravished; but her virtue is greatly strengthened thereby. in order to make sure of me, he brought me to this country house you now see. i had hitherto believed that nothing could equal the beauty of the castle of thunder-ten-tronckh; but i found i was mistaken. "the grand inquisitor saw me one day at mass, ogled me all the time of service, and when it was over, sent to let me know he wanted to speak with me about some private business. i was conducted to his palace, where i told him all my story; he represented to me how much it was beneath a person of my birth to belong to a circumcised israelite. he caused a proposal to be made to don issachar, that he should resign me to his lordship. don issachar, being the court banker and a man of credit, was not easy to be prevailed upon. his lordship threatened him with an auto-da-fe; in short, my jew was frightened into a compromise, and it was agreed between them, that the house and myself should belong to both in common; that the jew should have monday, wednesday, and the sabbath to himself; and the inquisitor the other four days of the week. this agreement has subsisted almost six months; but not without several contests, whether the space from saturday night to sunday morning belonged to the old or the new law. for my part, i have hitherto withstood them both, and truly i believe this is the very reason why they are both so fond of me. "at length to turn aside the scourge of earthquakes, and to intimidate don issachar, my lord inquisitor was pleased to celebrate an auto-da-fe. he did me the honor to invite me to the ceremony. i had a very good seat; and refreshments of all kinds were offered the ladies between mass and the execution. i was dreadfully shocked at the burning of the two jews, and the honest biscayan who married his godmother; but how great was my surprise, my consternation, and concern, when i beheld a figure so like pangloss, dressed in a sanbenito and mitre! i rubbed my eyes, i looked at him attentively. i saw him hanged, and i fainted away: scarce had i recovered my senses, when i saw you stripped of clothing; this was the height of horror, grief, and despair. i must confess to you for a truth, that your skin is whiter and more blooming than that of the bulgarian captain. this spectacle worked me up to a pitch of distraction. i screamed out, and would have said, 'hold, barbarians!' but my voice failed me; and indeed my cries would have signified nothing. after you had been severely whipped, i said to myself, 'how is it possible that the lovely candide and the sage pangloss should be at lisbon, the one to receive a hundred lashes, and the other to be hanged by order of my lord inquisitor, of whom i am so great a favorite? pangloss deceived me most cruelly, in saying that everything is for the best.' "thus agitated and perplexed, now distracted and lost, now half dead with grief, i revolved in my mind the murder of my father, mother, and brother, committed before my eyes; the insolence of the rascally bulgarian soldier; the wound he gave me in the groin; my servitude; my being a cook-wench to my bulgarian captain; my subjection to the hateful jew, and my cruel inquisitor; the hanging of doctor pangloss; the miserere sung while you were being whipped; and particularly the kiss i gave you behind the screen, the last day i ever beheld you. i returned thanks to god for having brought you to the place where i was, after so many trials. i charged the old woman who attends me to bring you hither as soon as was convenient. she has punctually executed my orders, and i now enjoy the inexpressible satisfaction of seeing you, hearing you, and speaking to you. but you must certainly be half-dead with hunger; i myself have a great inclination to eat, and so let us sit down to supper." upon this the two lovers immediately placed themselves at table, and, after having supped, they returned to seat themselves again on the magnificent sofa already mentioned, where they were in amorous dalliance, when senor don issachar, one of the masters of the house, entered unexpectedly; it was the sabbath day, and he came to enjoy his privilege, and sigh forth his passion at the feet of the fair cunegund. chapter 9 what happened to cunegund, candide, the grand inquisitor, and the jew this same issachar was the most choleric little hebrew that had ever been in israel since the captivity of babylon. "what," said he, "thou galilean slut? the inquisitor was not enough for thee, but this rascal must come in for a share with me?" in uttering these words, he drew out a long poniard, which he always carried about him, and never dreaming that his adversary had any arms, he attacked him most furiously; but our honest westphalian had received from the old woman a handsome sword with the suit of clothes. candide drew his rapier, and though he was very gentle and sweet-tempered, he laid the israelite dead on the floor at the fair cunegund's feet. "holy virgin!" cried she, "what will become of us? a man killed in my apartment! if the peace-officers come, we are undone." "had not pangloss been hanged," replied candide, "he would have given us most excellent advice, in this emergency; for he was a profound philosopher. but, since he is not here, let us consult the old woman." she was very sensible, and was beginning to give her advice, when another door opened on a sudden. it was now one o'clock in the morning, and of course the beginning of sunday, which, by agreement, fell to the lot of my lord inquisitor. entering he discovered the flagellated candide with his drawn sword in his hand, a dead body stretched on the floor, cunegund frightened out of her wits, and the old woman giving advice. at that very moment, a sudden thought came into candide's head. "if this holy man," thought he, "should call assistance, i shall most undoubtedly be consigned to the flames, and miss cunegund may perhaps meet with no better treatment: besides, he was the cause of my being so cruelly whipped; he is my rival; and as i have now begun to dip my hands in blood, i will kill away, for there is no time to hesitate." this whole train of reasoning was clear and instantaneous; so that, without giving time to the inquisitor to recover from his surprise, he ran him through the body, and laid him by the side of the jew. "here's another fine piece of work!" cried cunegund. "now there can be no mercy for us, we are excommunicated; our last hour is come. but how could you, who are of so mild a temper, despatch a jew and an inquisitor in two minutes' time?" "beautiful maiden," answered candide, "when a man is in love, is jealous, and has been flogged by the inquisition, he becomes lost to all reflection." the old woman then put in her word: "there are three andalusian horses in the stable, with as many bridles and saddles; let the brave candide get them ready. madam has a parcel of moidores and jewels, let us mount immediately, though i have lost one buttock; let us set out for cadiz; it is the finest weather in the world, and there is great pleasure in traveling in the cool of the night." candide, without any further hesitation, saddled the three horses; and miss cunegund, the old woman, and he, set out, and traveled thirty miles without once halting. while they were making the best of their way, the holy brotherhood entered the house. my lord, the inquisitor, was interred in a magnificent manner, and master issachar's body was thrown upon a dunghill. candide, cunegund, and the old woman, had by this time reached the little town of avacena, in the midst of the mountains of sierra morena, and were engaged in the following conversation in an inn, where they had taken up their quarters. chapter 10 in what distress candide, cunegund, and the old woman arrive at cadiz, and of their embarkation who could it be that has robbed me of my moidores and jewels?" exclaimed miss cunegund, all bathed in tears. "how shall we live? what shall we do? where shall i find inquisitors and jews who can give me more?" "alas!" said the old woman, "i have a shrewd suspicion of a reverend franciscan father, who lay last night in the same inn with us at badajoz. god forbid i should condemn any one wrongfully, but he came into our room twice, and he set off in the morning long before us." "alas!" said candide, "pangloss has often demonstrated to me that the goods of this world are common to all men, and that everyone has an equal right to the enjoyment of them; but, not withstanding, according to these principles, the franciscan ought to have left us enough to carry us to the end of our journey. have you nothing at all left, my dear miss cunegund?" "not a maravedi," replied she. "what is to be done then?" said candide. "sell one of the horses," replied the old woman. "i will get up behind miss cunegund, though i have only one buttock to ride on, and we shall reach cadiz." in the same inn there was a benedictine friar, who bought the horse very cheap. candide, cunegund, and the old woman, after passing through lucina, chellas, and letrixa, arrived at length at cadiz. a fleet was then getting ready, and troops were assembling in order to induce the reverend fathers, jesuits of paraguay, who were accused of having excited one of the indian tribes in the neighborhood of the town of the holy sacrament, to revolt against the kings of spain and portugal. candide, having been in the bulgarian service, performed the military exercise of that nation before the general of this little army with so intrepid an air, and with such agility and expedition, that he received the command of a company of foot. being now made a captain, he embarked with miss cunegund, the old woman, two valets, and the two andalusian horses, which had belonged to the grand inquisitor of portugal. during their voyage they amused themselves with many profound reasonings on poor pangloss's philosophy. "we are now going into another world, and surely it must be there that everything is for the best; for i must confess that we have had some little reason to complain of what passes in ours, both as to the physical and moral part. though i have a sincere love for you," said miss cunegund, "yet i still shudder at the reflection of what i have seen and experienced." "all will be well," replied candide, "the sea of this new world is already better than our european seas: it is smoother, and the winds blow more regularly." "god grant it," said cunegund, "but i have met with such terrible treatment in this world that i have almost lost all hopes of a better one." "what murmuring and complaining is here indeed!" cried the old woman. "if you had suffered half what i have, there might be some reason for it." miss cunegund could scarce refrain from laughing at the good old woman, and thought it droll enough to pretend to a greater share of misfortunes than her own. "alas! my good dame," said she, "unless you had been ravished by two bulgarians, had received two deep wounds in your belly, had seen two of your own castles demolished, had lost two fathers, and two mothers, and seen both of them barbarously murdered before your eyes, and to sum up all, had two lovers whipped at an auto-da-fe, i cannot see how you could be more unfortunate than i. add to this, though born a baroness, and bearing seventy-two quarterings, i have been reduced to the station of a cook-wench." "miss," replied the old woman, "you do not know my family as yet; but if i were to show you my posteriors, you would not talk in this manner, but suspend your judgment." this speech raised a high curiosity in candide and cunegund; and the old woman continued as follows. chapter 11 the history of the old woman i have not always been blear-eyed. my nose did not always touch my chin; nor was i always a servant. you must know that i am the daughter of pope urban x, and of the princess of palestrina. to the age of fourteen i was brought up in a castle, compared with which all the castles of the german barons would not have been fit for stabling, and one of my robes would have bought half the province of westphalia. i grew up, and improved in beauty, wit, and every graceful accomplishment; and in the midst of pleasures, homage, and the highest expectations. i already began to inspire the men with love. my breast began to take its right form, and such a breast! white, firm, and formed like that of the venus de' medici; my eyebrows were as black as jet, and as for my eyes, they darted flames and eclipsed the luster of the stars, as i was told by the poets of our part of the world. my maids, when they dressed and undressed me, used to fall into an ecstasy in viewing me before and behind; and all the men longed to be in their places. "i was contracted in marriage to a sovereign prince of massa carrara. such a prince! as handsome as myself, sweet-tempered, agreeable, witty, and in love with me over head and ears. i loved him, too, as our sex generally do for the first time, with rapture, transport, and idolatry. the nuptials were prepared with surprising pomp and magnificence; the ceremony was attended with feasts, carousals, and burlesques: all italy composed sonnets in my praise, though not one of them was tolerable. "i was on the point of reaching the summit of bliss, when an old marchioness, who had been mistress to the prince, my husband, invited him to drink chocolate. in less than two hours after he returned from the visit, he died of most terrible convulsions. "but this is a mere trifle. my mother, distracted to the highest degree, and yet less afflicted than i, determined to absent herself for some time from so fatal a place. as she had a very fine estate in the neighborhood of gaeta, we embarked on board a galley, which was gilded like the high altar of st. peter's, at rome. in our passage we were boarded by a sallee rover. our men defended themselves like true pope's soldiers; they flung themselves upon their knees, laid down their arms, and begged the corsair to give them absolution in articulo mortis. "the moors presently stripped us as bare as ever we were born. my mother, my maids of honor, and myself, were served all in the same manner. it is amazing how quick these gentry are at undressing people. but what surprised me most was, that they made a rude sort of surgical examination of parts of the body which are sacred to the functions of nature. i thought it a very strange kind of ceremony; for thus we are generally apt to judge of things when we have not seen the world. i afterwards learned that it was to discover if we had any diamonds concealed. this practice had been established since time immemorial among those civilized nations that scour the seas. i was informed that the religious knights of malta never fail to make this search whenever any moors of either sex fall into their hands. it is a part of the law of nations, from which they never deviate. "i need not tell you how great a hardship it was for a young princess and her mother to be made slaves and carried to morocco. you may easily imagine what we must have suffered on board a corsair. my mother was still extremely handsome, our maids of honor, and even our common waiting-women, had more charms than were to be found in all africa. "as to myself, i was enchanting; i was beauty itself, and then i had my virginity. but, alas! i did not retain it long; this precious flower, which had been reserved for the lovely prince of massa carrara, was cropped by the captain of the moorish vessel, who was a hideous negro, and thought he did me infinite honor. indeed, both the princess of palestrina and myself must have had very strong constitutions to undergo all the hardships and violences we suffered before our arrival at morocco. but i will not detain you any longer with such common things; they are hardly worth mentioning. "upon our arrival at morocco we found that kingdom deluged with blood. fifty sons of the emperor muley ishmael were each at the head of a party. this produced fifty civil wars of blacks against blacks, of tawnies against tawnies, and of mulattoes against mulattoes. in short, the whole empire was one continued scene of carnage. "no sooner were we landed than a party of blacks, of a contrary faction to that of my captain, came to rob him of his booty. next to the money and jewels, we were the most valuable things he had. i witnessed on this occasion such a battle as you never beheld in your cold european climates. the northern nations have not that fermentation in their blood, nor that raging lust for women that is so common in africa. the natives of europe seem to have their veins filled with milk only; but fire and vitriol circulate in those of the inhabitants of mount atlas and the neighboring provinces. they fought with the fury of the lions, tigers, and serpents of their country, to decide who should have us. a moor seized my mother by the right arm, while my captain's lieutenant held her by the left; another moor laid hold of her by the right leg, and one of our corsairs held her by the other. in this manner almost all of our women were dragged by four soldiers. "my captain kept me concealed behind him, and with his drawn scimitar cut down everyone who opposed him; at length i saw all our italian women and my mother mangled and torn in pieces by the monsters who contended for them. the captives, my companions, the moors who took us, the soldiers, the sailors, the blacks, the whites, the mulattoes, and lastly, my captain himself, were all slain, and i remained alone expiring upon a heap of dead bodies. similar barbarous scenes were transacted every day over the whole country, which is of three hundred leagues in extent, and yet they never missed the five stated times of prayer enjoined by their prophet mahomet. "i disengaged myself with great difficulty from such a heap of corpses, and made a shift to crawl to a large orange tree that stood on the bank of a neighboring rivulet, where i fell down exhausted with fatigue, and overwhelmed with horror, despair, and hunger. my senses being overpowered, i fell asleep, or rather seemed to be in a trance. thus i lay in a state of weakness and insensibility between life and death, when i felt myself pressed by something that moved up and down upon my body. this brought me to myself. i opened my eyes, and saw a pretty fair-faced man, who sighed and muttered these words between his teeth, 'o che sciagura d'essere senza coglioni!"' chapter 12 the adventures of the old woman continued astonished and delighted to hear my native language, and no less surprised at the young man's words, i told him that there were far greater misfortunes in the world than what he complained of. and to convince him of it, i gave him a short history of the horrible disasters that had befallen me; and as soon as i had finished, fell into a swoon again. "he carried me in his arms to a neighboring cottage, where he had me put to bed, procured me something to eat, waited on me with the greatest attention, comforted me, caressed me, told me that he had never seen anything so perfectly beautiful as myself, and that he had never so much regretted the loss of what no one could restore to him. "'i was born at naples,' said he, 'where they make eunuchs of thousands of children every year; some die of the operation; some acquire voices far beyond the most tuneful of your ladies; and others are sent to govern states and empires. i underwent this operation very successfully, and was one of the singers in the princess of palestrina's chapel.' "'how,' cried i, 'in my mother's chapel!' "'the princess of palestrina, your mother!' cried he, bursting into a flood of tears. 'is it possible you should be the beautiful young princess whom i had the care of bringing up till she was six years old, and who at that tender age promised to be as fair as i now behold you?' "'i am the same,' i replied. 'my mother lies about a hundred yards from here cut in pieces and buried under a heap of dead bodies.' "i then related to him all that had befallen me, and he in return acquainted me with all his adventures, and how he had been sent to the court of the king of morocco by a christian prince to conclude a treaty with that monarch; in consequence of which he was to be furnished with military stores, and ships to destroy the commerce of other christian governments. "'i have executed my commission,' said the eunuch; 'i am going to take ship at ceuta, and i'll take you along with me to italy. ma che sciagura d'essere senza coglioni!' "i thanked him with tears of joy, but, not withstanding, instead of taking me with him to italy, he carried me to algiers, and sold me to the dey of that province. i had not been long a slave when the plague, which had made the tour of africa, asia, and europe, broke out at algiers with redoubled fury. you have seen an earthquake; but tell me, miss, have you ever had the plague?" "never," answered the young baroness. "if you had ever had it," continued the old woman, "you would own an earthquake was a trifle to it. it is very common in africa; i was seized with it. figure to yourself the distressed condition of the daughter of a pope, only fifteen years old, and who in less than three months had felt the miseries of poverty and slavery; had been debauched almost every day; had beheld her mother cut into four quarters; had experienced the scourges of famine and war; and was now dying of the plague at algiers. i did not, however, die of it; but my eunuch, and the dey, and almost the whole seraglio of algiers, were swept off. "as soon as the first fury of this dreadful pestilence was over, a sale was made of the dey's slaves. i was purchased by a merchant who carried me to tunis. this man sold me to another merchant, who sold me again to another at tripoli; from tripoli i was sold to alexandria, from alexandria to smyrna, and from smyrna to constantinople. after many changes, i at length became the property of an aga of the janissaries, who, soon after i came into his possession, was ordered away to the defense of azoff, then besieged by the russians. "the aga, being very fond of women, took his whole seraglio with him, and lodged us in a small fort, with two black eunuchs and twenty soldiers for our guard. our army made a great slaughter among the russians; but they soon returned us the compliment. azoff was taken by storm, and the enemy spared neither age, sex, nor condition, but put all to the sword, and laid the city in ashes. our little fort alone held out; they resolved to reduce us by famine. the twenty janissaries, who were left to defend it, had bound themselves by an oath never to surrender the place. being reduced to the extremity of famine, they found themselves obliged to kill our two eunuchs, and eat them rather than violate their oath. but this horrible repast soon failing them, they next determined to devour the women. "we had a very pious and humane man, who gave them a most excellent sermon on this occasion, exhorting them not to kill us all at once. 'cut off only one of the buttocks of each of those ladies,' said he, 'and you will fare extremely well; if you are under the necessity of having recourse to the same expedient again, you will find the like supply a few days hence. heaven will approve of so charitable an action, and work your deliverance.' "by the force of this eloquence he easily persuaded them, and all of us underwent the operation. the man applied the same balsam as they do to children after circumcision. we were all ready to give up the ghost. "the janissaries had scarcely time to finish the repast with which we had supplied them, when the russians attacked the place by means of flat-bottomed boats, and not a single janissary escaped. the russians paid no regard to the condition we were in; but there are french surgeons in all parts of the world, and one of them took us under his care, and cured us. i shall never forget, while i live, that as soon as my wounds were perfectly healed he made me certain proposals. in general, he desired us all to be of a good cheer, assuring us that the like had happened in many sieges; and that it was perfectly agreeable to the laws of war. "as soon as my companions were in a condition to walk, they were sent to moscow. as for me, i fell to the lot of a boyard, who put me to work in his garden, and gave me twenty lashes a day. but this nobleman having about two years afterwards been broken alive upon the wheel, with about thirty others, for some court intrigues, i took advantage of the event, and made my escape. i traveled over a great part of russia. i was a long time an innkeeper's servant at riga, then at rostock, wismar, leipsic, cassel, utrecht, leyden, the hague, and rotterdam. i have grown old in misery and disgrace, living with only one buttock, and having in perpetual remembrance that i am a pope's daughter. i have been a hundred times upon the point of killing myself, but still i was fond of life. this ridiculous weakness is, perhaps, one of the dangerous principles implanted in our nature. for what can be more absurd than to persist in carrying a burden of which we wish to be eased? to detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? in a word, to caress the serpent that devours us, and hug him close to our bosoms till he has gnawed into our hearts? "in the different countries which it has been my fate to traverse, and at the many inns where i have been a servant, i have observed a prodigious number of people who held their existence in abhorrence, and yet i never knew more than twelve who voluntarily put an end to their misery; namely, three negroes, four englishmen, as many genevese, and a german professor named robek. my last place was with the jew, don issachar, who placed me near your person, my fair lady; to whose fortunes i have attached myself, and have been more concerned with your adventures than with my own. i should never have even mentioned the latter to you, had you not a little piqued me on the head of sufferings; and if it were not customary to tell stories on board a ship in order to pass away the time. "in short, my dear miss, i have a great deal of knowledge and experience in the world, therefore take my advice: divert yourself, and prevail upon each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all that has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most wretched of mortals, i give you leave to throw me headfirst into the sea." chapter 13 how candide was obliged to leave the fair cunegund and the old woman the fair cunegund, being thus made acquainted with the history of the old woman's life and adventures, paid her all the respect and civility due to a person of her rank and merit. she very readily acceded to her proposal of engaging the passengers to relate their adventures in their turns, and was at length, as well as candide, compelled to acknowledge that the old woman was in the right. "it is a thousand pities," said candide, "that the sage pangloss should have been hanged contrary to the custom of an auto-da-fe, for he would have given us a most admirable lecture on the moral and physical evil which overspreads the earth and sea; and i think i should have courage enough to presume to offer (with all due respect) some few objections." while everyone was reciting his adventures, the ship continued on her way, and at length arrived at buenos ayres, where cunegund, captain candide, and the old woman, landed and went to wait upon the governor, don fernando d'ibaraa y figueora y mascarenes y lampourdos y souza. this nobleman carried himself with a haughtiness suitable to a person who bore so many names. he spoke with the most noble disdain to everyone, carried his nose so high, strained his voice to such a pitch, assumed so imperious an air, and stalked with so much loftiness and pride, that everyone who had the honor of conversing with him was violently tempted to bastinade his excellency. he was immoderately fond of women, and miss cunegund appeared in his eyes a paragon of beauty. the first thing he did was to ask her if she was not the captain's wife. the air with which he made this demand alarmed candide, who did not dare to say he was married to her, because indeed he was not; neither did he venture to say she was his sister, because she was not; and though a lie of this nature proved of great service to one of the ancients, and might possibly be useful to some of the moderns, yet the purity of his heart would not permit him to violate the truth. "miss cunegund," replied he, "is to do me the honor to marry me, and we humbly beseech your excellency to condescend to grace the ceremony with your presence." don fernando d'ibaraa y figueora y mascarenes y lampourdos y souza, twirling his mustachio, and putting on a sarcastic smile, ordered captain candide to go and review his company. the gentle candide obeyed, and the governor was left with miss cunegund. he made her a strong declaration of love, protesting that he was ready to give her his hand in the face of the church, or otherwise, as should appear most agreeable to a young lady of her prodigious beauty. cunegund desired leave to retire a quarter of an hour to consult the old woman, and determine how she should proceed. the old woman gave her the following counsel: "miss, you have seventy-two quarterings in your arms, it is true, but you have not a penny to bless yourself with. it is your own fault if you do not become the wife of one of the greatest noblemen in south america, with an exceeding fine mustachio. what business have you to pride yourself upon an unshaken constancy? you have been outraged by a bulgarian soldier; a jew and an inquisitor have both tasted of your favors. people take advantage of misfortunes. i must confess, were i in your place, i should, without the least scruple, give my hand to the governor, and thereby make the fortune of the brave captain candide." while the old woman was thus haranguing, with all the prudence that old age and experience furnish, a small bark entered the harbor, in which was an alcayde and his alguazils. matters had fallen out as follows. the old woman rightly guessed that the franciscan with the long sleeves, was the person who had taken miss cunegund's money and jewels, while they and candide were at badajoz, in their flight from lisbon. this same friar attempted to sell some of the diamonds to a jeweler, who presently knew them to have belonged to the grand inquisitor, and stopped them. the franciscan, before he was hanged, acknowledged that he had stolen them and described the persons, and the road they had taken. the flight of cunegund and candide was already the towntalk. they sent in pursuit of them to cadiz; and the vessel which had been sent to make the greater dispatch, had now reached the port of buenos ayres. a report was spread that an alcayde was going to land, and that he was in pursuit of the murderers of my lord, the inquisitor. the sage old woman immediately saw what was to be done. "you cannot run away," said she to cunegund, "but you have nothing to fear; it was not you who killed my lord inquisitor: besides, as the governor is in love with you, he will not suffer you to be ill-treated; therefore stand your ground." then hurrying away to candide, she said, "be gone hence this instant, or you will be burned alive." candide found there was no time to be lost; but how could he part from cunegund, and whither must he fly for shelter? chapter 14 the reception candide and cacambo met with among the jesuits in paraguay candide had brought with him from cadiz such a footman as one often meets with on the coasts of spain and in the colonies. he was the fourth part of a spaniard, of a mongrel breed, and born in tucuman. he had successively gone through the profession of a singing boy, sexton, sailor, monk, peddler, soldier, and lackey. his name was cacambo; he had a great affection for his master, because his master was a very good man. he immediately saddled the two andalusian horses. "come, my good master, let us follow the old woman's advice, and make all the haste we can from this place without staying to look behind us." candide burst into a flood of tears, "o my dear cunegund, must i then be compelled to quit you just as the governor was going to honor us with his presence at our wedding! cunegund, so long lost and found again, what will now become of you?" "lord!" said cacambo, 'she must do as well as she can; women are never at a loss. god takes care of them, and so let us make the best of our way." "but whither wilt thou carry me? where can we go? what can we do without cunegund?" cried the disconsolate candide. "by st. james of compostella," said cacambo, "you were going to fight against the jesuits of paraguay; now let us go and fight for them; i know the road perfectly well; i'll conduct you to their kingdom; they will be delighted with a captain that understands the bulgarian drill; you will certainly make a prodigious fortune. if we cannot succeed in this world we may in another. it is a great pleasure to see new objects and perform new exploits." "then you have been in paraguay?" asked candide. "ay, marry, i have," replied cacambo. "i was a scout in the college of the assumption, and am as well acquainted with the new government of the los padres as i am with the streets of cadiz. oh, it is an admirable government, that is most certain! the kingdom is at present upwards of three hundred leagues in diameter, and divided into thirty provinces; the fathers there are masters of everything, and the people have no money at all; this you must allow is the masterpiece of justice and reason. for my part, i see nothing so divine as the good fathers, who wage war in this part of the world against the troops of spain and portugal, at the same time that they hear the confessions of those very princes in europe; who kill spaniards in america and send them to heaven at madrid. this pleases me exceedingly, but let us push forward; you are going to see the happiest and most fortunate of all mortals. how charmed will those fathers be to hear that a captain who understands the bulgarian military drill is coming to them." as soon as they reached the first barrier, cacambo called to the advance guard, and told them that a captain wanted to speak to my lord, the general. notice was given to the main guard, and immediately a paraguayan officer ran to throw himself at the feet of the commandant to impart this news to him. candide and cacambo were immediately disarmed, and their two andalusian horses were seized. the two strangers were conducted between two files of musketeers, the commandant was at the further end with a three-cornered cap on his head, his gown tucked up, a sword by his side, and a half-pike in his hand; he made a sign, and instantly four and twenty soldiers drew up round the newcomers. a sergeant told them that they must wait, the commandant could not speak to them; and that the reverend father provincial did not suffer any spaniard to open his mouth but in his presence, or to stay above three hours in the province. "and where is the reverend father provincial?" said cacambo. "he has just come from mass and is at the parade," replied the sergeant, "and in about three hours' time you may possibly have the honor to kiss his spurs." "but," said cacambo, "the captain, who, as well as myself, is perishing of hunger, is no spaniard, but a german; therefore, pray, might we not be permitted to break our fast till we can be introduced to his reverence?" the sergeant immediately went and acquainted the commandant with what he heard. "god be praised," said the reverend commandant, "since he is a german i will hear what he has to say; let him be brought to my arbor." immediately they conducted candide to a beautiful pavilion adomed with a colonnade of green marble, spotted with yellow, and with an intertexture of vines, which served as a kind of cage for parrots, humming birds, guinea hens, and all other curious kinds of birds. an excellent breakfast was provided in vessels of gold; and while the paraguayans were eating coarse indian corn out of wooden dishes in the open air, and exposed to the burning heat of the sun, the reverend father commandant retired to his cool arbor. he was a very handsome young man, round-faced, fair, and fresh-colored, his eyebrows were finely arched, he had a piercing eye, the tips of his ears were red, his lips vermilion, and he had a bold and commanding air; but such a boldness as neither resembled that of a spaniard nor of a jesuit. he ordered candide and cacambo to have their arms restored to them, together with their two andalusian horses. cacambo gave the poor beasts some oats to eat close by the arbor, keeping a strict eye upon them all the while for fear of surprise. candide having kissed the hem of the commandant's robe, they sat down to table. "it seems you are a german," said the jesuit to him in that language. "yes, reverend father," answered candide. as they pronounced these words they looked at each other with great amazement and with an emotion that neither could conceal. "from what part of germany do you come?" said the jesuit. "from the dirty province of westphalia," answered candide. "i was born in the castle of thunder-ten-tronckh." "oh heavens! is it possible?" said the commandant. "what a miracle!" cried candide. "can it be you?" said the commandant. on this they both drew a few steps backwards, then running into each other's arms, embraced, and wept profusely. "is it you then, reverend father? you are the brother of the fair miss cunegund? you that was slain by the bulgarians! you the baron's son! you a jesuit in paraguay! i must confess this is a strange world we live in. o pangloss! what joy would this have given you if you had not been hanged." the commandant dismissed the negro slaves, and the paraguayans who presented them with liquor in crystal goblets. he returned thanks to god and st. ignatius a thousand times; he clasped candide in his arms, and both their faces were bathed in tears. "you will be more surprised, more affected, more transported," said candide, "when i tell you that miss cunegund, your sister, whose belly was supposed to have been ripped open, is in perfect health." "in your neighborhood, with the governor of buenos ayres; and i myself was going to fight against you." every word they uttered during this long conversation was productive of some new matter of astonishment. their souls fluttered on their tongues, listened in their ears, and sparkled in their eyes. like true germans, they continued a long while at table, waiting for the reverend father; and the commandant spoke to his dear candide as follows. chapter 15 how candide killed the brother of his dear cunegund never while i live shall i lose the remembrance of that horrible day on which i saw my father and mother barbarously butchered before my eyes, and my sister ravished. when the bulgarians retired we searched in vain for my dear sister. she was nowhere to be found; but the bodies of my father, mother, and myself, with two servant maids and three little boys, all of whom had been murdered by the remorseless enemy, were thrown into a cart to be buried in a chapel belonging to the jesuits, within two leagues of our family seat. a jesuit sprinkled us with some holy water, which was confounded salty, and a few drops of it went into my eyes; the father perceived that my eyelids stirred a little; he put his hand upon my breast and felt my heartbeat; upon which he gave me proper assistance, and at the end of three weeks i was perfectly recovered. you know, my dear candide, i was very handsome; i became still more so, and the reverend father croust, superior of that house, took a great fancy to me; he gave me the habit of the order, and some years afterwards i was sent to rome. our general stood in need of new recruits of young german jesuits. the sovereigns of paraguay admit of as few spanish jesuits as possible; they prefer those of other nations, as being more obedient to command. the reverend father general looked upon me as a proper person to work in that vineyard. i set out in company with a polander and a tyrolese. upon my arrival i was honored with a subdeaconship and a lieutenancy. now i am colonel and priest. we shall give a warm reception to the king of spain's troops; i can assure you they will be well excommunicated and beaten. providence has sent you hither to assist us. but is it true that my dear sister cunegund is in the neighborhood with the governor of buenos ayres?" candide swore that nothing could be more true; and the tears began again to trickle down their cheeks. the baron knew no end of embracing candide, be called him his brother, his deliverer. "perhaps," said he, "my dear candide, we shall be fortunate enough to enter the town, sword in hand, and recover my sister cunegund." "ah! that would crown my wishes," replied candide; "for i intended to marry her; and i hope i shall still be able to effect it." "insolent fellow!" cried the baron. "you! you have the impudence to marry my sister, who bears seventy-two quarterings! really, i think you have an insufferable degree of assurance to dare so much as to mention such an audacious design to me." candide, thunderstruck at the oddness of this speech, answered: "reverend father, all the quarterings in the world are of no signification. i have delivered your sister from a jew and an inquisitor; she is under many obligations to me, and she is resolved to give me her hand. my master, pangloss, always told me that mankind are by nature equal. therefore, you may depend upon it that i will marry your sister." "we shall see to that, villain!" said the jesuit, baron of thunder-ten-tronckh, and struck him across the face with the flat side of his sword. candide in an instant drew his rapier and plunged it up to the hilt in the jesuit's body; but in pulling it out reeking hot, he burst into tears. "good god!" cried he, "i have killed my old master, my friend, my brother-in-law. i am the best man in the world, and yet i have already killed three men, and of these three, two were priests." cacambo, who was standing sentry near the door of the arbor, instantly ran up. "nothing remains," said his master, "but to sell our lives as dearly as possible; they will undoubtedly look into the arbor; we must die sword in hand." cacambo, who had seen many of this kind of adventures, was not discouraged. he stripped the baron of his jesuit's habit and put it upon candide, then gave him the dead man's three-cornered cap and made him mount on horseback. all this was done as quick as thought. "gallop, master," cried cacambo; "everybody will take you for a jesuit going to give orders; and we shall have passed the frontiers before they will be able to overtake us." he flew as he spoke these words, crying out aloud in spanish, "make way; make way for the reverend father colonel." chapter 16 what happened to our two travelers with two girls, two monkeys, and the savages, called oreillons candide and his valet had already passed the frontiers before it was known that the german jesuit was dead. the wary cacambo had taken care to fill his wallet with bread, chocolate, some ham, some fruit, and a few bottles of wine. they penetrated with their andalusian horses into a strange country, where they could discover no beaten path. at length a beautiful meadow, intersected with purling rills, opened to their view. cacambo proposed to his master to take some nourishment, and he set him an example. "how can you desire me to feast upon ham, when i have killed the baron's son and am doomed never more to see the beautiful cunegund? what will it avail me to prolong a wretched life that must be spent far from her in remorse and despair? and then what will the journal of trevoux say?" was candide's reply. while he was making these reflections he still continued eating. the sun was now on the point of setting when the ears of our two wanderers were assailed with cries which seemed to be uttered by a female voice. they could not tell whether these were cries of grief or of joy; however, they instantly started up, full of that inquietude and apprehension which a strange place naturally inspires. the cries proceeded from two young women who were tripping disrobed along the mead, while two monkeys followed close at their heels biting at their limbs. candide was touched with compassion; he had learned to shoot while he was among the bulgarians, and he could hit a filbert in a hedge without touching a leaf. accordingly he took up his double-barrelled spanish gun, pulled the trigger, and laid the two monkeys lifeless on the ground. "god be praised, my dear cacambo, i have rescued two poor girls from a most perilous situation; if i have committed a sin in killing an inquisitor and a jesuit, i have made ample amends by saving the lives of these two distressed damsels. who knows but they may be young ladies of a good family, and that the assistance i have been so happy to give them may procure us great advantage in this country?" he was about to continue when he felt himself struck speechless at seeing the two girls embracing the dead bodies of the monkeys in the tenderest manner, bathing their wounds with their tears, and rending the air with the most doleful lamentations. "really," said he to cacambo, "i should not have expected to see such a prodigious share of good nature." "master," replied the knowing valet, "you have made a precious piece of work of it; do you know that you have killed the lovers of these two ladies?" "their lovers! cacambo, you are jesting! it cannot be! i can never believe it." "dear sir," replied cacambo, "you are surprised at everything. why should you think it so strange that there should be a country where monkeys insinuate themselves into the good graces of the ladies? they are the fourth part of a man as i am the fourth part of a spaniard." "alas!" replied candide, "i remember to have heard my master pangloss say that such accidents as these frequently came to pass in former times, and that these commixtures are productive of centaurs, fauns, and satyrs; and that many of the ancients had seen such monsters; but i looked upon the whole as fabulous." "now you are convinced," said cacambo, "that it is very true, and you see what use is made of those creatures by persons who have not had a proper education; all i am afraid of is that these same ladies may play us some ugly trick." these judicious reflections operated so far on candide as to make him quit the meadow and strike into a thicket. there he and cacambo supped, and after heartily cursing the grand inquisitor, the governor of buenos ayres, and the baron, they fell asleep on the ground. when they awoke they were surprised to find that they could not move; the reason was that the oreillons who inhabit that country, and to whom the ladies had given information of these two strangers, had bound them with cords made of the bark of trees. they saw themselves surrounded by fifty naked oreillons armed with bows and arrows, clubs, and hatchets of flint; some were making a fire under a large cauldron; and others were preparing spits, crying out one and all, "a jesuit! a jesuit! we shall be revenged; we shall have excellent cheer; let us eat this jesuit; let us eat him up." "i told you, master," cried cacambo, mournfully, "that these two wenches would play us some scurvy trick." candide, seeing the cauldron and the spits, cried out, "i suppose they are going either to boil or roast us. ah! what would pangloss say if he were to see how pure nature is formed? everything is right; it may be so; but i must confess it is something hard to be bereft of dear miss cunegund, and to be spitted like a rabbit by these barbarous oreillons." cacambo, who never lost his presence of mind in distress, said to the disconsolate candide, "do not despair; i understand a little of the jargon of these people; i will speak to them." "ay, pray do," said candide, "and be sure you make them sensible of the horrid barbarity of boiling and roasting human creatures, and how little of christianity there is in such practices." "gentlemen," said cacambo, "you think perhaps you are going to feast upon a jesuit; if so, it is mighty well; nothing can be more agreeable to justice than thus to treat your enemies. indeed the law of nature teaches us to kill our neighbor, and accordingly we find this practiced all over the world; and if we do not indulge ourselves in eating human flesh, it is because we have much better fare; but for your parts, who have not such resources as we, it is certainly much better judged to feast upon your enemies than to throw their bodies to the fowls of the air; and thus lose all the fruits of your victory. "but surely, gentlemen, you would not choose to eat your friends. you imagine you are going to roast a jesuit, whereas my master is your friend, your defender, and you are going to spit the very man who has been destroying your enemies; as to myself, i am your countryman; this gentleman is my master, and so far from being a jesuit, give me leave to tell you he has very lately killed one of that order, whose spoils he now wears, and which have probably occasioned your mistake. to convince you of the truth of what i say, take the habit he has on and carry it to the first barrier of the jesuits' kingdom, and inquire whether my master did not kill one of their officers. there will be little or no time lost by this, and you may still reserve our bodies in your power to feast on if you should find what we have told you to be false. but, on the contrary, if you find it to be true, i am persuaded you are too well acquainted with the principles of the laws of society, humanity, and justice, not to use us courteously, and suffer us to depart unhurt." this speech appeared very reasonable to the oreillons; they deputed two of their people with all expedition to inquire into the truth of this affair, who acquitted themselves of their commission like men of sense, and soon returned with good tidings for our distressed adventurers. upon this they were loosed, and those who were so lately going to roast and boil them now showed them all sorts of civilities, offered them girls, gave them refreshments, and reconducted them to the confines of their country, crying before them all the way, in token of joy, "he is no jesuit! he is no jesuit!" candide could not help admiring the cause of his deliverance. "what men! what manners!" cried he. "if i had not fortunately run my sword up to the hilt in the body of miss cunegund's brother, i should have certainly been eaten alive. but, after all, pure nature is an excellent thing; since these people, instead of eating me, showed me a thousand civilities as soon as they knew was not a jesuit." chapter 17 candide and his valet arrive in the country of el dorado-what they saw there when to the frontiers of the oreillons, said cacambo to candide, "you see, this hemisphere is not better than the other; now take my advice and let us return to europe by the shortest way possible." "but how can we get back?" said candide; "and whither shall we go? to my own country? the bulgarians and the abares are laying that waste with fire and sword. or shall we go to portugal? there i shall be burned; and if we abide here we are every moment in danger of being spitted. but how can i bring myself to quit that part of the world where my dear miss cunegund has her residence?" "let us return towards cayenne," said cacambo. "there we shall meet with some frenchmen, for you know those gentry ramble all over the world. perhaps they will assist us, and god will look with pity on our distress." it was not so easy to get to cayenne. they knew pretty nearly whereabouts it lay; but the mountains, rivers, precipices, robbers, savages, were dreadful obstacles in the way. their horses died with fatigue and their provisions were at an end. they subsisted a whole month on wild fruit, till at length they came to a little river bordered with cocoa trees; the sight of which at once revived their drooping spirits and furnished nourishment for their enfeebled bodies. cacambo, who was always giving as good advice as the old woman herself, said to candide, "you see there is no holding out any longer; we have traveled enough on foot. i spy an empty canoe near the river side; let us fill it with cocoanuts, get into it, and go down with the stream; a river always leads to some inhabited place. if we do not meet with agreeable things, we shall at least meet with something new." "agreed," replied candide; "let us recommend ourselves to providence." they rowed a few leagues down the river, the banks of which were in some places covered with flowers; in others barren; in some parts smooth and level, and in others steep and rugged. the stream widened as they went further on, till at length it passed under one of the frightful rocks, whose summits seemed to reach the clouds. here our two travelers had the courage to commit themselves to the stream, which, contracting in this part, hurried them along with a dreadful noise and rapidity. at the end of four and twenty hours they saw daylight again; but their canoe was dashed to pieces against the rocks. they were obliged to creep along, from rock to rock, for the space of a league, till at length a spacious plain presented itself to their sight. this place was bounded by a chain of inaccessible mountains. the country appeared cultivated equally for pleasure and to produce the necessaries of life. the useful and agreeable were here equally blended. the roads were covered, or rather adorned, with carriages formed of glittering materials, in which were men and women of a surprising beauty, drawn with great rapidity by red sheep of a very large size; which far surpassed the finest coursers of andalusian tetuan, or mecquinez. "here is a country, however," said candide, "preferable to westphalia." he and cacambo landed near the first village they saw, at the entrance of which they perceived some children covered with tattered garments of the richest brocade, playing at quoits. our two inhabitants of the other hemisphere amused themselves greatly with what they saw. the quoits were large, round pieces, yellow, red, and green, which cast a most glorious luster. our travelers picked some of them up, and they proved to be gold, emeralds, rubies, and diamonds; the least of which would have been the greatest ornament to the superb throne of the great mogul. "without doubt," said cacambo, "those children must be the king's sons that are playing at quoits." as he was uttering these words the schoolmaster of the village appeared, who came to call the children to school. "there," said candide, "is the preceptor of the royal family." the little ragamuffins immediately quitted their diversion, leaving the quoits on the ground with all their other playthings. candide gathered them up, ran to the schoolmaster, and, with a most respectful bow, presented them to him, giving him to understand by signs that their royal highnesses had forgot their gold and precious stones. the schoolmaster, with a smile, flung them upon the ground, then examining candide from head to foot with an air of admiration, he turned his back and went on his way. our travelers took care, however, to gather up the gold, the rubies, and the emeralds. "where are we?" cried candide. "the king's children in this country must have an excellent education, since they are taught to show such a contempt for gold and precious stones." cacambo was as much surprised as his master. they then drew near the first house in the village, which was built after the manner of a european palace. there was a crowd of people about the door, and a still greater number in the house. the sound of the most delightful instruments of music was heard, and the most agreeable smell came from the kitchen. cacambo went up to the door and heard those within talking in the peruvian language, which was his mother tongue; for everyone knows that cacambo was born in a village of tucuman, where no other language is spoken. "i will be your interpreter here," said he to candide. "let us go in; this is an eating house." immediately two waiters and two servant-girls, dressed in cloth of gold, and their hair braided with ribbons of tissue, accosted the strangers and invited them to sit down to the ordinary. their dinner consisted of four dishes of different soups, each garnished with two young paroquets, a large dish of bouille that weighed two hundred weight, two roasted monkeys of a delicious flavor, three hundred hummingbirds in one dish, and six hundred flybirds in another; some excellent ragouts, delicate tarts, and the whole served up in dishes of rock-crystal. several sorts of liquors, extracted from the sugarcane, were handed about by the servants who attended. most of the company were chapmen and wagoners, all extremely polite; they asked cacambo a few questions with the utmost discretion and circumspection; and replied to his in a most obliging and satisfactory manner. as soon as dinner was over, both candide and cacambo thought they should pay very handsomely for their entertainment by laying down two of those large gold pieces which they had picked off the ground; but the landlord and landlady burst into a fit of laughing and held their sides for some time. when the fit was over, the landlord said, "gentlemen, i plainly perceive you are strangers, and such we are not accustomed to charge; pardon us, therefore, for laughing when you offered us the common pebbles of our highways for payment of your reckoning. to be sure, you have none of the coin of this kingdom; but there is no necessity of having any money at all to dine in this house. all the inns, which are established for the convenience of those who carry on the trade of this nation, are maintained by the government. you have found but very indifferent entertainment here, because this is only a poor village; but in almost every other of these public houses you will meet with a reception worthy of persons of your merit." cacambo explained the whole of this speech of the landlord to candide, who listened to it with the same astonishment with which his friend communicated it. "what sort of a country is this," said the one to the other, "that is unknown to all the world; and in which nature has everywhere so different an appearance to what she has in ours? possibly this is that part of the globe where everywhere is right, for there must certainly be some such place. and, for all that master pangloss could say, i often perceived that things went very ill in westphalia." chapter 18 what they saw in the country of el dorado cacambo vented all his curiosity upon his landlord by a thousand different questions; the honest man answered him thus, "i am very ignorant, sir, but i am contented with my ignorance; however, we have in this neighborhood an old man retired from court, who is the most learned and communicative person in the whole kingdom." he then conducted cacambo to the old man; candide acted now only a second character, and attended his valet. they entered a very plain house, for the door was nothing but silver, and the ceiling was only of beaten gold, but wrought in such elegant taste as to vie with the richest. the antechamber, indeed, was only incrusted with rubies and emeralds; but the order in which everything was disposed made amends for this great simplicity. the old man received the strangers on his sofa, which was stuffed with hummingbirds' feathers; and ordered his servants to present them with liquors in golden goblets, after which he satisfied their curiosity in the following terms. "i am now one hundred and seventy-two years old, and i learned of my late father, who was equerry to the king, the amazing revolutions of peru, to which he had been an eyewitness. this kingdom is the ancient patrimony of the incas, who very imprudently quitted it to conquer another part of the world, and were at length conquered and destroyed themselves by the spaniards. "those princes of their family who remained in their native country acted more wisely. they ordained, with the consent of their whole nation, that none of the inhabitants of our little kingdom should ever quit it; and to this wise ordinance we owe the preservation of our innocence and happiness. the spaniards had some confused notion of this country, to which they gave the name of el dorado; and sir walter raleigh, an englishman, actually came very near it about three hundred years ago; but the inaccessible rocks and precipices with which our country is surrounded on all sides, has hitherto secured us from the rapacious fury of the people of europe, who have an unaccountable fondness for the pebbles and dirt of our land, for the sake of which they would murder us all to the very last man." the conversation lasted some time and turned chiefly on the form of government, their manners, their women, their public diversions, and the arts. at length, candide, who had always had a taste for metaphysics, asked whether the people of that country had any religion. the old man reddened a little at this question. "can you doubt it?" said he; "do you take us for wretches lost to all sense of gratitude?" cacambo asked in a respectful manner what was the established religion of el dorado. the old man blushed again and said, "can there be two religions, then? ours, i apprehend, is the religion of the whole world; we worship god from morning till night." "do you worship but one god?" said cacambo, who still acted as the interpreter of candide's doubts. "certainly," said the old man; "there are not two, nor three, nor four gods. i must confess the people of your world ask very extraordinary questions." however, candide could not refrain from making many more inquiries of the old man; he wanted to know in what manner they prayed to god in el dorado. "we do not pray to him at all," said the reverend sage; "we have nothing to ask of him, he has given us all we want, and we give him thanks incessantly." candide had a curiosity to see some of their priests, and desired cacambo to ask the old man where they were. at which he smiling said, "my friends, we are all of us priests; the king and all the heads of families sing solemn hymns of thanksgiving every morning, accompanied by five or six thousand musicians." "what!" said cacambo, "have you no monks among you to dispute, to govern, to intrigue, and to burn people who are not of the same opinion with themselves?" "do you take us for fools?" said the old man. "here we are all of one opinion, and know not what you mean by your monks." during the whole of this discourse candide was in raptures, and he said to himself, "what a prodigious difference is there between this place and westphalia; and this house and the baron's castle. ah, master pangloss! had you ever seen el dorado, you would no longer have maintained that the castle of thunder-ten-tronckh was the finest of all possible edifices; there is nothing like seeing the world, that's certain." this long conversation being ended, the old man ordered six sheep to be harnessed and put to the coach, and sent twelve of his servants to escort the travelers to court. "excuse me," said he, "for not waiting on you in person, my age deprives me of that honor. the king will receive you in such a manner that you will have no reason to complain; and doubtless you will make a proper allowance for the customs of the country if they should not happen altogether to please you." candide and cacambo got into the coach, the six sheep flew, and, in less than a quarter of an hour, they arrived at the king's palace, which was situated at the further end of the capital. at the entrance was a portal two hundred and twenty feet high and one hundred wide; but it is impossible for words to express the materials of which it was built. the reader, however, will readily conceive that they must have a prodigious superiority over the pebbles and sand, which we call gold and precious stones. twenty beautiful young virgins in waiting received candide and cacambo on their alighting from the coach, conducted them to the bath and clad them in robes woven of the down of hummingbirds; after which they were introduced by the great officers of the crown of both sexes to the king's apartment, between two files of musicians, each file consisting of a thousand, agreeable to the custom of the country. when they drew near to the presence-chamber, cacambo asked one of the officers in what manner they were to pay their obeisance to his majesty; whether it was the custom to fall upon their knees, or to prostrate themselves upon the ground; whether they were to put their hands upon their heads, or behind their backs; whether they were to lick the dust off the floor; in short, what was the ceremony usual on such occasions. "the custom," said the great officer, "is to embrace the king and kiss him on each cheek." candide and cacambo accordingly threw their arms round his majesty's neck, who received them in the most gracious manner imaginable, and very politely asked them to sup with him. while supper was preparing, orders were given to show them the city, where they saw public structures that reared their lofty heads to the clouds; the marketplaces decorated with a thousand columns; fountains of spring water, besides others of rose water, and of liquors drawn from the sugarcane, incessantly flowing in the great squares, which were paved with a kind of precious stones that emitted an odor like that of cloves and cinnamon. candide asked to see the high court of justice, the parliament; but was answered that they had none in that country, being utter strangers to lawsuits. he then inquired if they had any prisons; they replied none. but what gave him at once the greatest surprise and pleasure was the palace of sciences, where he saw a gallery two thousand feet long, filled with the various apparatus in mathematics and natural philosophy. after having spent the whole afternoon in seeing only about the thousandth part of the city, they were brought back to the king's palace. candide sat down at the table with his majesty, his valet cacambo, and several ladies of the court. never was entertainment more elegant, nor could any one possibly show more wit than his majesty displayed while they were at supper. cacambo explained all the king's bons mots to candide, and, although they were translated, they still appeared to be bons mots. of all the things that surprised candide, this was not the least. they spent a whole month in this hospitable place, during which time candide was continually saying to cacambo, "i own, my friend, once more, that the castle where i was born is a mere nothing in comparison to the place where we now are; but still miss cunegund is not here, and you yourself have doubtless some fair one in europe for whom you sigh. if we remain here we shall only be as others are; whereas if we return to our own world with only a dozen of el dorado sheep, loaded with the pebbles of this country, we shall be richer than all the kings in europe; we shall no longer need to stand in awe of the inquisitors; and we may easily recover miss cunegund." this speech was perfectly agreeable to cacambo. a fondness for roving, for making a figure in their own country, and for boasting of what they had seen in their travels, was so powerful in our two wanderers that they resolved to be no longer happy; and demanded permission of the king to quit the country. "you are about to do a rash and silly action," said the king. "i am sensible my kingdom is an inconsiderable spot; but when people are tolerably at their ease in any place, i should think it would be to their interest to remain there. most assuredly, i have no right to detain you, or any strangers, against your wills; this is an act of tyranny to which our manners and our laws are equally repugnant. all men are by nature free; you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but you will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers. it is impossible to ascend that rapid river which runs under high and vaulted rocks, and by which you were conveyed hither by a kind of miracle. the mountains by which my kingdom are hemmed in on all sides, are ten thousand feet high, and perfectly perpendicular; they are above ten leagues across, and the descent from them is one continued precipice. "however, since you are determined to leave us, i will immediately give orders to the superintendent of my carriages to cause one to be made that will convey you very safely. when they have conducted you to the back of the mountains, nobody can attend you farther; for my subjects have made a vow never to quit the kingdom, and they are too prudent to break it. ask me whatever else you please." "all we shall ask of your majesty," said cacambo, "is only a few sheep laden with provisions, pebbles, and the clay of your country." the king smiled at the request and said, "i cannot imagine what pleasure you europeans find in our yellow clay; but take away as much of it as you will, and much good may it do you." he immediately gave orders to his engineers to make a machine to hoist these two extraordinary men out of the kingdom. three thousand good machinists went to work and finished it in about fifteen days, and it did not cost more than twenty millions sterling of that country's money. candide and cacambo were placed on this machine, and they took with them two large red sheep, bridled and saddled, to ride upon, when they got on the other side of the mountains; twenty others to serve as sumpters for carrying provisions; thirty laden with presents of whatever was most curious in the country, and fifty with gold, diamonds, and other precious stones. the king, at parting with our two adventurers, embraced them with the greatest cordiality. it was a curious sight to behold the manner of their setting off, and the ingenious method by which they and their sheep were hoisted to the top of the mountains. the machinists and engineers took leave of them as soon as they had conveyed them to a place of safety, and candide was wholly occupied with the thoughts of presenting his sheep to miss cunegund. "now," cried he, "thanks to heaven, we have more than sufficient to pay the governor of buenos ayres for miss cunegund, if she is redeemable. let us make the best of our way to cayenne, where we will take shipping and then we may at leisure think of what kingdom we shall purchase with our riches." chapter 19 what happened to them at surinam, and how candide became acquainted with martin our travelers' first day's journey was very pleasant; they were elated with the prospect of possessing more riches than were to be found in europe, asia, and africa together. candide, in amorous transports, cut the name of miss cunegund on almost every tree he came to. the second day two of their sheep sunk in a morass, and were swallowed up with their jading; two more died of fatigue; some few days afterwards seven or eight perished with hunger in a desert, and others, at different times, tumbled down precipices, or were otherwise lost, so that, after traveling about a hundred days they had only two sheep left of the hundred and two they brought with them from el dorado. said candide to cacambo, "you see, my dear friend, how perishable the riches of this world are; there is nothing solid but virtue." "very true," said cacambo, "but we have still two sheep remaining, with more treasure than ever the king of spain will be possessed of; and i espy a town at a distance, which i take to be surinam, a town belonging to the dutch. we are now at the end of our troubles, and at the beginning of happiness." as they drew near the town they saw a negro stretched on the ground with only one half of his habit, which was a kind of linen frock; for the poor man had lost his left leg and his right hand. "good god," said candide in dutch, "what dost thou here, friend, in this deplorable condition?" "i am waiting for my master, mynheer vanderdendur, the famous trader," answered the negro. "was it mynheer vanderdendur that used you in this cruel manner?" "yes, sir," said the negro; "it is the custom here. they give a linen garment twice a year, and that is all our covering. when we labor in the sugar works, and the mill happens to snatch hold of a finger, they instantly chop off our hand; and when we attempt to run away, they cut off a leg. both these cases have happened to me, and it is at this expense that you eat sugar in europe; and yet when my mother sold me for ten patacoons on the coast of guinea, she said to me, 'my dear child, bless our fetishes; adore them forever; they will make thee live happy; thou hast the honor to be a slave to our lords the whites, by which thou wilt make the fortune of us thy parents.' "alas! i know not whether i have made their fortunes; but they have not made mine; dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less wretched than i. the dutch fetishes who converted me tell me every sunday that the blacks and whites are all children of one father, whom they call adam. as for me, i do not understand anything of genealogies; but if what these preachers say is true, we are all second cousins; and you must allow that it is impossible to be worse treated by our relations than we are." "o pangloss!" cried out candide, "such horrid doings never entered thy imagination. here is an end of the matter. i find myself, after all, obliged to renounce thy optimism." "optimism," said cacambo, "what is that?" "alas!" replied candide, "it is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst." and so saying he turned his eyes towards the poor negro, and shed a flood of tears; and in this weeping mood he entered the town of surinam. immediately upon their arrival our travelers inquired if there was any vessel in the harbor which they might send to buenos ayres. the person they addressed themselves to happened to be the master of a spanish bark, who offered to agree with them on moderate terms, and appointed them a meeting at a public house. thither candide and his faithful cacambo went to wait for him, taking with them their two sheep. candide, who was all frankness and sincerity, made an ingenuous recital of his adventures to the spaniard, declaring to him at the same time his resolution of carrying off miss cunegund from the governor of buenos ayres. "oh, ho!" said the shipmaster, "if that is the case, get whom you please to carry you to buenos ayres; for my part, i wash my hands of the affair. it would prove a hanging matter to us all. the fair cunegund is the governor's favorite mistress." these words were like a clap of thunder to candide; he wept bitterly for a long time, and, taking cacambo aside, he said to him, "i'll tell you, my dear friend, what you must do. we have each of us in our pockets to the value of five or six millions in diamonds; you are cleverer at these matters than i; you must go to buenos ayres and bring off miss cunegund. if the governor makes any difficulty give him a million; if he holds out, give him two; as you have not killed an inquisitor, they will have no suspicion of you. i'll fit out another ship and go to venice, where i will wait for you. venice is a free country, where we shall have nothing to fear from bulgarians, abares, jews or inquisitors." cacambo greatly applauded this wise resolution. he was inconsolable at the thoughts of parting with so good a master, who treated him more like an intimate friend than a servant; but the pleasure of being able to do him a service soon got the better of his sorrow. they embraced each other with a flood of tears. candide charged him not to forget the old woman. cacambo set out the same day. this cacambo was a very honest fellow. candide continued some days longer at surinam, waiting for any captain to carry him and his two remaining sheep to italy. he hired domestics, and purchased many things necessary for a long voyage; at length mynheer vanderdendur, skipper of a large dutch vessel, came and offered his service. "what will you have," said candide, "to carry me, my servants, my baggage, and these two sheep you see here, directly to venice?" the skipper asked ten thousand piastres, and candide agreed to his demand without hestitation. "ho, ho!" said the cunning vanderdendur to himself, "this stranger must be very rich; he agrees to give me ten thousand piastres without hesitation." returning a little while after, he told candide that upon second consideration he could not undertake the voyage for less than twenty thousand. "very well; you shall have them," said candide. "zounds!" said the skipper to himself, "this man agrees to pay twenty thousand piastres with as much ease as ten." accordingly he went back again, and told him roundly that he would not carry him to venice for less than thirty thousand piastres. "then you shall have thirty thousand," said candide. "odso!" said the dutchman once more to himself, "thirty thousand piastres seem a trifle to this man. those sheep must certainly be laden with an immense treasure. i'll e'en stop here and ask no more; but make him pay down the thirty thousand piastres, and then we may see what is to be done farther." candide sold two small diamonds, the least of which was worth more than all the skipper asked. he paid him beforehand, the two sheep were put on board, and candide followed in a small boat to join the vessel in the road. the skipper took advantage of his opportunity, hoisted sail, and put out to sea with a favorable wind. candide, confounded and amazed, soon lost sight of the ship. "alas!" said he, "this is a trick like those in our old world!" he returned back to the shore overwhelmed with grief; and, indeed, he had lost what would have made the fortune of twenty monarchs. straightway upon his landing he applied to the dutch magistrate; being transported with passion he thundered at the door, which being opened, he went in, told his case, and talked a little louder than was necessary. the magistrate began with fining him ten thousand piastres for his petulance, and then listened very patiently to what he had to say, promised to examine into the affair on the skipper's return, and ordered him to pay ten thousand piastres more for the fees of the court. this treatment put candide out of all patience; it is true, he had suffered misfortunes a thousand times more grievous, but the cool insolence of the judge, and the villainy of the skipper raised his choler and threw him into a deep melancholy. the villainy of mankind presented itself to his mind in all its deformity, and his soul was a prey to the most gloomy ideas. after some time, hearing that the captain of a french ship was ready to set sail for bordeaux, as he had no more sheep loaded with diamonds to put on board, he hired the cabin at the usual price; and made it known in the town that he would pay the passage and board of any honest man who would give him his company during the voyage; besides making him a present of ten thousand piastres, on condition that such person was the most dissatisfied with his condition, and the most unfortunate in the whole province. upon this there appeared such a crowd of candidates that a large fleet could not have contained them. candide, willing to choose from among those who appeared most likely to answer his intention, selected twenty, who seemed to him the most sociable, and who all pretended to merit the preference. he invited them to his inn, and promised to treat them with a supper, on condition that every man should bind himself by an oath to relate his own history; declaring at the same time, that he would make choice of that person who should appear to him the most deserving of compassion, and the most justly dissatisfied with his condition in life; and that he would make a present to the rest. this extraordinary assembly continued sitting till four in the morning. candide, while he was listening to their adventures, called to mind what the old woman had said to him in their voyage to buenos ayres, and the wager she had laid that there was not a person on board the ship but had met with great misfortunes. every story he heard put him in mind of pangloss. "my old master," said he, "would be confoundedly put to it to demonstrate his favorite system. would he were here! certainly if everything is for the best, it is in el dorado, and not in the other parts of the world." at length he determined in favor of a poor scholar, who had labored ten years for the booksellers at amsterdam: being of opinion that no employment could be more detestable. this scholar, who was in fact a very honest man, had been robbed by his wife, beaten by his son, and forsaken by his daughter, who had run away with a portuguese. he had been likewise deprived of a small employment on which he subsisted, and he was persecuted by the clergy of surinam, who took him for a socinian. it must be acknowledged that the other competitors were, at least, as wretched as he; but candide was in hopes that the company of a man of letters would relieve the tediousness of the voyage. all the other candidates complained that candide had done them great injustice, but he stopped their mouths by a present of a hundred piastres to each. chapter 20 what befell candide and martin on their passage the old philosopher, whose name was martin, took shipping with candide for bordeaux. both had seen and suffered a great deal, and had the ship been going from surinam to japan round the cape of good hope, they could have found sufficient entertainment for each other during the whole voyage, in discoursing upon moral and natural evil. candide, however, had one advantage over martin: he lived in the pleasing hopes of seeing miss cunegund once more; whereas, the poor philosopher had nothing to hope for. besides, candide had money and jewels, and, not withstanding he had lost a hundred red sheep laden with the greatest treasure outside of el dorado, and though he still smarted from the reflection of the dutch skipper's knavery, yet when he considered what he had still left, and repeated the name of cunegund, especially after meal times, he inclined to pangloss's doctrine. "and pray," said he to martin, "what is your opinion of the whole of this system? what notion have you of moral and natural evil?" "sir," replied martin, "our priest accused me of being a socinian; but the real truth is, i am a manichaean." "nay, now you are jesting," said candide; "there are no manichaeans existing at present in the world." "and yet i am one," said martin; "but i cannot help it. i cannot for the soul of me think otherwise." "surely the devil must be in you," said candide. "he concerns himself so much," replied martin, "in the affairs of this world that it is very probable he may be in me as well as everywhere else; but i must confess, when i cast my eye on this globe, or rather globule, i cannot help thinking that god has abandoned it to some malignant being. i always except el dorado. i scarce ever knew a city that did not wish the destruction of its neighboring city; nor a family that did not desire to exterminate some other family. the poor in all parts of the world bear an inveterate hatred to the rich, even while they creep and cringe to them; and the rich treat the poor like sheep, whose wool and flesh they barter for money; a million of regimented assassins traverse europe from one end to the other, to get their bread by regular depredation and murder, because it is the most gentlemanlike profession. even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts flourish, the inhabitants are devoured with envy, care, and inquietudes, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town besieged. private chagrins are still more dreadful than public calamities. in a word," concluded the philosopher, "i have seen and suffered so much that i am a manichaean." "and yet there is some good in the world," replied candide. "maybe so," said martin, "but it has escaped my knowledge." while they were deeply engaged in this dispute they heard the report of cannon, which redoubled every moment. each took out his glass, and they spied two ships warmly engaged at the distance of about three miles. the wind brought them both so near the french ship that those on board her had the pleasure of seeing the fight with great ease. after several smart broadsides the one gave the other a shot between wind and water which sunk her outright. then could candide and martin plainly perceive a hundred men on the deck of the vessel which was sinking, who, with hands uplifted to heaven, sent forth piercing cries, and were in a moment swallowed up by the waves. "well," said martin, "you now see in what manner mankind treat one another." "it is certain," said candide, "that there is something diabolical in this affair." as he was speaking thus he spied something of a shining red hue, which swam close to the vessel. the boat was hoisted out to see what it might be, when it proved to be one of his sheep. candide felt more joy at the recovery of this one animal than he did grief when he lost the other hundred, though laden with the large diamonds of el dorado. the french captain quickly perceived that the victorious ship belonged to the crown of spain; that the other was a dutch pirate, and the very same captain who had robbed candide. the immense riches which this villain had amassed, were buried with him in the deep, and only this one sheep saved out of the whole. "you see," said candide to martin, "that vice is sometimes punished. this villain, the dutch skipper, has met with the fate he deserved." "very true," said martin, "but why should the passengers be doomed also to destruction? god has punished the knave, and the devil has drowned the rest." the french and spanish ships continued their cruise, and candide and martin their conversation. they disputed fourteen days successively, at the end of which they were just as far advanced as the first moment they began. however, they had the satisfaction of disputing, of communicating their ideas, and of mutually comforting each other. candide embraced his sheep with transport. "since i have found thee again," said he, "i may possibly find my cunegund once more." chapter 21 candide and martin, while thus reasoning with each other, draw near to the coast of france at length they descried the coast of france, when candide said to martin, "pray monsieur martin, were you ever in france?" "yes, sir," said martin, "i have been in several provinces of that kingdom. in some, one half of the people are fools and madmen; in some, they are too artful; in others, again, they are, in general, either very good-natured or very brutal; while in others, they affect to be witty, and in all, their ruling passion is love, the next is slander, and the last is to talk nonsense." "but, pray, monsieur martin, were you ever in paris?" "yes, sir, i have been in that city, and it is a place that contains the several species just described; it is a chaos, a confused multitude, where everyone seeks for pleasure without being able to find it; at least, as far as i have observed during my short stay in that city. at my arrival i was robbed of all i had in the world by pickpockets and sharpers, at the fair of saint-germain. i was taken up myself for a robber, and confined in prison a whole week; after which i hired myself as corrector to a press in order to get a little money towards defraying my expenses back to holland on foot. i knew the whole tribe of scribblers, malcontents, and fanatics. it is said the people of that city are very polite; i believe they may be." "for my part, i have no curiosity to see france," said candide. "you may easily conceive, my friend, that after spending a month in el dorado, i can desire to behold nothing upon earth but miss cunegund. i am going to wait for her at venice. i intend to pass through france, on my way to italy. will you not bear me company?" "with all my heart," said martin. "they say venice is agreeable to none but noble venetians, but that, nevertheless, strangers are well received there when they have plenty of money; now i have none, but you have, therefore i will attend you wherever you please." "now we are upon this subject," said candide, "do you think that the earth was originally sea, as we read in that great book which belongs to the captain of the ship?" "i believe nothing of it," replied martin, "any more than i do of the many other chimeras which have been related to us for some time past." "but then, to what end," said candide, "was the world formed?" "to make us mad," said martin. "are you not surprised," continued candide, "at the love which the two girls in the country of the oreillons had for those two monkeys? -you know i have told you the story." "surprised?" replied martin, "not in the least. i see nothing strange in this passion. i have seen so many extraordinary things that there is nothing extraordinary to me now." "do you think," said candide, "that mankind always massacred one another as they do now? were they always guilty of lies, fraud, treachery, ingratitude, inconstancy, envy, ambition, and cruelty? were they always thieves, fools, cowards, gluttons, drunkards, misers, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, and hypocrites?" "do you believe," said martin, "that hawks have always been accustomed to eat pigeons when they came in their way?" "doubtless," said candide. "well then," replied martin, "if hawks have always had the same nature, why should you pretend that mankind change theirs?" "oh," said candide, "there is a great deal of difference; for free will-" and reasoning thus they arrived at bordeaux. chapter 22 what happened to candide and martin in france candide stayed no longer at bordeaux than was necessary to dispose of a few of the pebbles he had brought from el dorado, and to provide himself with a post-chaise for two persons, for he could no longer stir a step without his philosopher martin. the only thing that give him concern was being obliged to leave his sheep behind him, which he intrusted to the care of the academy of sciences at bordeaux, who proposed, as a prize subject for the year, to prove why the wool of this sheep was red; and the prize was adjudged to a northern sage, who demonstrated by a plus b, minus c, divided by z, that the sheep must necessarily be red, and die of the mange. in the meantime, all travelers whom candide met with in the inns, or on the road, told him to a man, that they were going to paris. this general eagerness gave him likewise a great desire to see this capital; and it was not much out of his way to venice. he entered the city by the suburbs of saint-marceau, and thought himself in one of the vilest hamlets in all westphalia. candide had not been long at his inn, before he was seized with a slight disorder, owing to the fatigue he had undergone. as he wore a diamond of an enormous size on his finger and had among the rest of his equipage a strong box that seemed very weighty, he soon found himself between two physicians, whom he had not sent for, a number of intimate friends whom he had never seen, and who would not quit his bedside, and two women devotees, who were very careful in providing him hot broths. "i remember," said martin to him, "that the first time i came to paris i was likewise taken ill. i was very poor, and accordingly i had neither friends, nurses, nor physicians, and yet i did very well." however, by dint of purging and bleeding, candide's disorder became very serious. the priest of the parish came with all imaginable politeness to desire a note of him, payable to the bearer in the other world. candide refused to comply with his request; but the two devotees assured him that it was a new fashion. candide replied, that he was not one that followed the fashion. martin was for throwing the priest out of the window. the clerk swore candide should not have christian burial. martin swore in his turn that he would bury the clerk alive if he continued to plague them any longer. the dispute grew warm; martin took him by the shoulders and turned him out of the room, which gave great scandal, and occasioned a proces-verbal. candide recovered, and till he was in a condition to go abroad had a great deal of good company to pass the evenings with him in his chamber. they played deep. candide was surprised to find he could never turn a trick; and martin was not at all surprised at the matter. among those who did him the honors of the place was a little spruce abbe of perigord, one of those insinuating, busy, fawning, impudent, necessary fellows, that lay wait for strangers on their arrival, tell them all the scandal of the town, and offer to minister to their pleasures at various prices. this man conducted candide and martin to the playhouse; they were acting a new tragedy. candide found himself placed near a cluster of wits: this, however, did not prevent him from shedding tears at some parts of the piece which were most affecting, and best acted. one of these talkers said to him between acts, "you are greatly to blame to shed tears; that actress plays horribly, and the man that plays with her still worse, and the piece itself is still more execrable than the representation. the author does not understand a word of arabic, and yet he has laid his scene in arabia, and what is more, he is a fellow who does not believe in innate ideas. tomorrow i will bring you a score of pamphlets that have been written against him." "pray, sir," said candide to the abbe, "how many theatrical pieces have you in france?" "five or six thousand," replied the abbe. "indeed! that is a great number," said candide, "but how many good ones may there be?" "about fifteen or sixteen." "oh! that is a great number," said martin. candide was greatly taken with an actress, who performed the part of queen elizabeth in a dull kind of tragedy that is played sometimes. "that actress," said he to martin, "pleases me greatly; she has some sort of resemblance to miss cunegund. i should be very glad to pay my respects to her." the abbe of perigord offered his service to introduce him to her at her own house. candide, who was brought up in germany, desired to know what might be the ceremonial used on those occasions, and how a queen of england was treated in france. "there is a necessary distinction to be observed in these matters," said the abbe. "in a country town we take them to a tavern; here in paris, they are treated with great respect during their lifetime, provided they are handsome, and when they die we throw their bodies upon a dunghill." "how?" said candide, "throw a queen's body upon a dunghill!" "the gentleman is quite right," said martin, "he tells you nothing but the truth. i happened to be at paris when miss monimia made her exit, as one may say, out of this world into another. she was refused what they call here the rites of sepulture; that is to say, she was denied the privilege of rotting in a churchyard by the side of all the beggars in the parish. they buried her at the corner of burgundy street, which must certainly have shocked her extremely, as she had very exalted notions of things." "this is acting very impolitely," said candide. "lord!" said martin, "what can be said to it? it is the way of these people. figure to yourself all the contradictions, all the inconsistencies possible, and you may meet with them in the government, the courts of justice, the churches, and the public spectacles of this odd nation." "is it true," said candide, "that the people of paris are always laughing?" "yes," replied the abbe, "but it is with anger in their hearts; they express all their complaints by loud bursts of laughter, and commit the most detestable crimes with a smile on their faces." "who was that great overgrown beast," said candide, "who spoke so ill to me of the piece with which i was so much affected, and of the players who gave me so much pleasure?" "a very good-for-nothing sort of a man i assure you," answered the abbe, "one who gets his livelihood by abusing every new book and play that is written or performed; he dislikes much to see anyone meet with success, like eunuchs, who detest everyone that possesses those powers they are deprived of; he is one of those vipers in literature who nourish themselves with their own venom; a pamphlet-monger." "a pamphlet-manger!" said candide, "what is that?" "why, a pamphlet-manger," replied the abbe, "is a writer of pamphlets-a fool." candide, martin, and the abbe of perigord argued thus on the staircase, while they stood to see the people go out of the playhouse. "though i am very anxious to see miss cunegund again," said candide, "yet i have a great inclination to sup with miss clairon, for i am really much taken with her." the abbe was not a person to show his face at this lady's house, which was frequented by none but the best company. "she is engaged this evening," said he, "but i will do myself the honor to introduce you to a lady of quality of my acquaintance, at whose house you will see as much of the manners of paris as if you had lived here for forty years." candide, who was naturally curious, suffered himself to be conducted to this lady's house, which was in the suburbs of saint-honore. the company was engaged at basser; twelve melancholy punters held each in his hand a small pack of cards, the corners of which were doubled down, and were so many registers of their ill fortune. a profound silence reigned throughout the assembly, a pallid dread had taken possession of the countenances of the punters, and restless inquietude stretched every muscle of the face of him who kept the bank; and the lady of the house, who was seated next to him, observed with lynx's eyes every play made, and noted those who tallied, and made them undouble their cards with a severe exactness, though mixed with a politeness, which she thought necessary not to frighten away her customers. this lady assumed the title of marchioness of parolignac. her daughter, a girl of about fifteen years of age, was one of the punters, and took care to give her mamma a hint, by signs, when any one of the players attempted to repair the rigor of their ill fortune by a little innocent deception. the company were thus occupied when candide, martin, and the abbe made their entrance; not a creature rose to salute them, or indeed took the least notice of them, being wholly intent upon the business at hand. "ah!" said candide, "my lady baroness of thunder-ten-tronckh would have behaved more civilly." however, the abbe whispered in the ear of the marchioness, who half raising herself from her seat, honored candide with a gracious smile, and gave martin a nod of her head, with an air of inexpressible dignity. she then ordered a seat for candide, and desired him to make one of their party at play; he did so, and in a few deals lost near a thousand pieces; after which they supped very elegantly, and everyone was surprised at seeing candide lose so much money without appearing to be the least disturbed at it. the servants in waiting said to each other, "this is certainly some english lord." the supper was like most others of its kind in paris. at first everyone was silent; then followed a few confused murmurs, and afterwards several insipid jokes passed and repassed, with false reports, false reasonings, a little politics, and a great deal of scandal. the conversation then turned upon the new productions in literature. "pray," said the abbe, "good folks, have you seen the romance written by a certain gauchat, doctor of divinity?" "yes," answered one of the company, "but i had not patience to go through it. the town is pestered with a swarm of impertinent productions, but this of dr. gauchat's outdoes them all. in short, i was so cursedly tired of reading this vile stuff that i even resolved to come here, and make a party at basset." "but what say you to the archdeacon t-'s miscellaneous collection," said the abbe. "oh my god!" cried the marchioness of parolignac, "never mention the tedious creature! only think what pains he is at to tell one things that all the world knows; and how he labors an argument that is hardly worth the slightest consideration! how absurdly he makes use of other people's wit! how miserably he mangles what he has pilfered from them! the man makes me quite sick! a few pages of the good archdeacon are enough in conscience to satisfy anyone." there was at the table a person of learning and taste, who supported what the marchioness had advanced. they next began to talk of tragedies. the lady desired to know how it came about that there were several tragedies, which still continued to be played, though they would not bear reading? the man of taste explained very clearly how a piece may be in some manner interesting without having a grain of merit. he showed, in a few words, that it is not sufficient to throw together a few incidents that are to be met with in every romance, and that to dazzle the spectator the thoughts should be new, without being farfetched; frequently sublime, but always natural; the author should have a thorough knowledge of the human heart and make it speak properly; he should be a complete poet, without showing an affectation of it in any of the characters of his piece; he should be a perfect master of his language, speak it with all its purity, and with the utmost harmony, and yet so as not to make the sense a slave to the rhyme. "whoever," added he, "neglects any one of these rules, though he may write two or three tragedies with tolerable success, will never be reckoned in the number of good authors. there are very few good tragedies; some are idylls, in very well-written and harmonious dialogue; and others a chain of political reasonings that set one asleep, or else pompous and high-flown amplification, that disgust rather than please. others again are the ravings of a madman, in an uncouth style, unmeaning flights, or long apostrophes to the deities, for want of knowing how to address mankind; in a word a collection of false maxims and dull commonplace." candide listened to this discourse with great attention, and conceived a high opinion of the person who delivered it; and as the marchioness had taken care to place him near her side, he took the liberty to whisper her softly in the ear and ask who this person was that spoke so well. "he is a man of letters," replied her ladyship, "who never plays, and whom the abbe brings with him to my house sometimes to spend an evening. he is a great judge of writing, especially in tragedy; he has composed one himself, which was damned, and has written a book that was never seen out of his bookseller's shop, excepting only one copy, which he sent me with a dedication, to which he had prefixed my name." "oh the great man," cried candide, "he is a second pangloss." then turning towards him, "sir," said he, "you are doubtless of opinion that everything is for the best in the physical and moral world, and that nothing could be otherwise than it is?" "i, sir!" replied the man of letters, "i think no such thing, i assure you; i find that all in this world is set the wrong end uppermost. no one knows what is his rank, his office, nor what he does, nor what he should do. with the exception of our evenings, which we generally pass tolerably merrily, the rest of our time is spent in idle disputes and quarrels, jansenists against molinists, the parliament against the church, and one armed body of men against another; courtier against courtier, husband against wife, and relations against relations. in short, this world is nothing but one continued scene of civil war." "yes," said candide, "and i have seen worse than all that; and yet a learned man, who had the misfortune to be hanged, taught me that everything was marvelously well, and that these evils you are speaking of were only so many shades in a beautiful picture." "your hempen sage," said martin, "laughed at you; these shades, as you call them, are most horrible blemishes." "the men make these blemishes," rejoined candide, "and they cannot do otherwise." "then it is not their fault," added martin. the greatest part of the gamesters, who did not understand a syllable of this discourse, amused themselves with drinking, while martin reasoned with the learned gentleman and candide entertained the lady of the house with a part of his adventures. after supper the marchioness conducted candide into her dressingroom, and made him sit down under a canopy. "well," said she, "are you still so violently fond of miss cunegund of thunder-ten-tronckh?" "yes, madam," replied candide. the marchioness said to him with a tender smile, "you answer me like a young man born in westphalia; a frenchman would have said, 'it is true, madam, i had a great passion for miss cunegund; but since i have seen you, i fear i can no longer love her as i did.'" "alas! madam," replied candide, "i will make you what answer you please." "you fell in love with her, i find, in stooping to pick up her handkerchief which she had dropped; you shall pick up my garter." "with all my heart, madam," said candide, and he picked it up. "but you must tie it on again," said the lady. candide tied it on again. "look ye, young man," said the marchioness, "you are a stranger; i make some of my lovers here in paris languish for me a whole fortnight; but i surrender to you at first sight, because i am willing to do the honors of my country to a young westphalian." the fair one having cast her eye on two very large diamonds that were upon the young stranger's finger, praised them in so earnest a manner that they were in an instant transferred from his finger to hers. as candide was going home with the abbe he felt some qualms of conscience for having been guilty of infidelity to miss cunegund. the abbe took part with him in his uneasiness; he had but an inconsiderable share in the thousand pieces candide had lost at play, and the two diamonds which had been in a manner extorted from him; and therefore very prudently designed to make the most he could of his new acquaintance, which chance had thrown in his way. he talked much of miss cunegund, and candide assured him that he would heartily ask pardon of that fair one for his infidelity to her, when he saw her at venice. the abbe redoubled his civilities and seemed to interest himself warmly in everything that candide said, did, or seemed inclined to do. "and so, sir, you have an engagement at venice?" "yes, monsieur l'abbe," answered candide, "i must absolutely wait upon miss cunegund," and then the pleasure he took in talking about the object he loved, led him insensibly to relate, according to custom, part of his adventures with that illustrious westphalian beauty. "i fancy," said the abbe, "miss cunegund has a great deal of wit, and that her letters must be very entertaining." "i never received any from her," said candide; "for you are to consider that, being expelled from the castle upon her account, i could not write to her, especially as soon after my departure i heard she was dead; but thank god i found afterwards she was living. i left her again after this, and now i have sent a messenger to her near two thousand leagues from here, and wait here for his return with an answer from her." the artful abbe let not a word of all this escape him, though he seemed to be musing upon something else. he soon took his leave of the two adventurers, after having embraced them with the greatest cordiality. the next morning, almost as soon as his eyes were open, candide received the following billet: "my dearest loveri have been ill in this city these eight days. i have heard of your arrival, and should fly to your arms were i able to stir. i was informed of your being on the way hither at bordeaux, where i left the faithful cacambo, and the old woman, who will soon follow me. the governor of buenos ayres has taken everything from me but your heart, which i still retain. come to me immediately on the receipt of this. your presence will either give me new life, or kill me with the pleasure." at the receipt of this charming, this unexpected letter, candide felt the utmost transports of joy; though, on the other hand, the indisposition of his beloved miss cunegund overwhelmed him with grief. distracted between these two passions he took his gold and his diamonds, and procured a person to conduct him and martin to the house where miss cunegund lodged. upon entering the room he felt his limbs tremble, his heart flutter, his tongue falter; he attempted to undraw the curtain, and called for a light to the bedside. "lord sir," cried a maidservant, who was waiting in the room, "take care what you do, miss cannot bear the least light," and so saying she pulled the curtain close again. "cunegund! my dear cried candide, bathed in tears, "how do you do? if you cannot bear the light, speak to me at least." "alas! she cannot speak," said the maid. the sick lady then put a plump hand out of the bed and candide first bathed it with tears, then filled it with diamonds, leaving a purse of gold upon the easy chair. in the midst of his transports came an officer into the room, followed by the abbe, and a file of musketeers. "there," said he, "are the two suspected foreigners." at the same time he ordered them to be seized and carried to prison. "travelers are not treated in this manner in the country of el dorado," said candide. "i am more of a manichaean now than ever," said martin. "but pray, good sir, where are you going to carry us?" said candide. "to a dungeon, my dear sir," replied the officer. when martin had a little recovered himself, so as to form a cool judgment of what had passed, he plainly perceived that the person who had acted the part of miss cunegund was a cheat; that the abbe of perigord was a sharper who had imposed upon the honest simplicity of candide, and that the officer was a knave, whom they might easily get rid of. candide following the advice of his friend martin, and burning with impatience to see the real miss cunegund, rather than be obliged to appear at a court of justice, proposed to the officer to make him a present of three small diamonds, each of them worth three thousand pistoles. "ah, sir," said the understrapper of justice, "had you commited ever so much villainy, this would render you the honestest man living, in my eyes. three diamonds worth three thousand pistoles! why, my dear sir, so far from carrying you to jail, i would lose my life to serve you. there are orders for stopping all strangers; but leave it to me, i have a brother at dieppe, in normandy. i myself will conduct you thither, and if you have a diamond left to give him he will take as much care of you as i myself should." "but why," said candide, "do they stop all strangers?" the abbe of perigord made answer that it was because a poor devil of the country of atrebata heard somebody tell foolish stories, and this induced him to commit a parricide; not such a one as that in the month of may, 1610, but such as that in the month of december in the year 1594, and such as many that have been perpetrated in other months and years, by other poor devils who had heard foolish stories. the officer then explained to them what the abbe meant. "horrid monsters," exclaimed candide, "is it possible that such scenes should pass among a people who are perpetually singing and dancing? is there no flying this abominable country immediately, this execrable kingdom where monkeys provoke tigers? i have seen bears in my country, but men i have beheld nowhere but in el dorado. in the name of god, sir," said he to the officer, "do me the kindness to conduct me to venice, where i am to wait for miss cunegund." "really, sir," replied the officer, "i cannot possibly wait on you farther than lower normandy." so saying, he ordered candide's irons to be struck off, acknowledged himself mistaken, and sent his followers about their business, after which he conducted candide and martin to dieppe, and left them to the care of his brother. there happened just then to be a small dutch ship in the harbor. the norman, whom the other three diamonds had converted into the most obliging, serviceable being that ever breathed, took care to see candide and his attendants safe on board this vessel, that was just ready to sail for portsmouth in england. this was not the nearest way to venice, indeed, but candide thought himself escaped out of hell, and did not, in the least, doubt but he should quickly find an opportunity of resuming his voyage to venice. chapter 23 candide and martin touch upon the english coast-what they see there ah pangloss! pangloss! ah martin! ah my dear miss cunegund! what sort of a world is this?" thus exclaimed candide as soon as he got on board the dutch ship. "why something very foolish, and very abominable," said martin. "you are acquainted with england," said candide; "are they as great fools in that country as in france?" "yes, but in a different manner," answered martin. "you know that these two nations are at war about a few acres of barren land in the neighborhood of canada, and that they have expended much greater sums in the contest than all canada is worth. to say exactly whether there are a greater number fit to be inhabitants of a madhouse in the one country than the other, exceeds the limits of my imperfect capacity; i know in general that the people we are going to visit are of a very dark and gloomy disposition." as they were chatting thus together they arrived at portsmouth. the shore on each side the harbor was lined with a multitude of people, whose eyes were steadfastly fixed on a lusty man who was kneeling down on the deck of one of the men-of-war, with something tied before his eyes. opposite to this personage stood four soldiers, each of whom shot three bullets into his skull, with all the composure imaginable; and when it was done, the whole company went away perfectly well satisfied. "what the devil is all this for?" said candide, "and what demon, or foe of mankind, lords it thus tyrannically over the world?" he then asked who was that lusty man who had been sent out of the world with so much ceremony. when he received for answer, that it was an admiral. "and pray why do you put your admiral to death?" "because he did not put a sufficient number of his fellow creatures to death. you must know, he had an engagement with a french admiral, and it has been proved against him that he was not near enough to his antagonist." "but," replied candide, "the french admiral must have been as far from him." "there is no doubt of that; but in this country it is found requisite, now and then, to put an admiral to death, in order to encourage the others to fight." candide was so shocked at what he saw and heard, that he would not set foot on shore, but made a bargain with the dutch skipper (were he even to rob him like the captain of surinam) to carry him directly to venice. the skipper was ready in two days. they sailed along the coast of france, and passed within sight of lisbon, at which candide trembled. from thence they proceeded to the straits, entered the mediterranean, and at length arrived at venice. "god be praised," said candide, embracing martin, "this is the place where i am to behold my beloved cunegund once again. i can confide in cacambo, like another self. all is well, all is very well, all is well as possible." chapter 24 of pacquette and friar giroflee upon their arrival at venice candide went in search of cacambo at every inn and coffee-house, and among all the ladies of pleasure, but could hear nothing of him. he sent every day to inquire what ships were in, still no news of cacambo. "it is strange," said he to martin, "very strange that i should have time to sail from surinam to bordeaux; to travel thence to paris, to dieppe, to portsmouth; to sail along the coast of portugal and spain, and up the mediterranean to spend some months at venice; and that my lovely cunegund should not have arrived. instead of her, i only met with a parisian impostor, and a rascally abbe of perigord. cunegund is actually dead, and i have nothing to do but follow her. alas! how much better would it have been for me to have remained in the paradise of el dorado than to have returned to this cursed europe! you are in the right, my dear martin; you are certainly in the right; all is misery and deceit." he fell into a deep melancholy, and neither went to the opera then in vogue, nor partook of any of the diversions of the carnival; nay, he even slighted the fair sex. martin said to him, "upon my word, i think you are very simple to imagine that a rascally valet, with five or six millions in his pocket, would go in search of your mistress to the further of the world, and bring her to venice to meet you. if he finds her he will take her for himself; if he does not, he will take another. let me advise you to forget your valet cacambo, and your mistress cunegund." martin's speech was not the most consolatory to the dejected candide. his melancholy increased, and martin never ceased trying to prove to him that there is very little virtue or happiness in this world; except, perhaps, in el dorado, where hardly anybody can gain admittance. while they were disputing on this important subject, and still expecting miss cunegund, candide perceived a young theatin friar in the piazza san marco, with a girl under his arm. the theatin looked fresh-colored, plump, and vigorous; his eyes sparkled; his air and gait were bold and lofty. the girl was pretty, and was singing a song; and every now and then gave her theatin an amorous ogle and wantonly pinched his ruddy cheeks. "you will at least allow," said candide to martin, "that these two are happy. hitherto i have met with none but unfortunate people in the whole habitable globe, except in el dorado; but as to this couple, i would venture to lay a wager they are happy." "done!" said martin, "they are not what you imagine." "well, we have only to ask them to dine with us," said candide, "and you will see whether i am mistaken or not." thereupon he accosted them, and with great politeness invited them to his inn to eat some macaroni, with lombard partridges and caviar, and to drink a bottle of montepulciano, lacryma christi, cyprus, and samos wine. the girl blushed; the theatin accepted the invitation and she followed him, eyeing candide every now and then with a mixture of surprise and confusion, while the tears stole down her cheeks. no sooner did she enter his apartment than she cried out, "how, monsieur candide, have you quite forgot your pacquette? do you not know her again?" candide had not regarded her with any degree of attention before, being wholly occupied with the thoughts of his dear cunegund. "ah! is it you, child? was it you that reduced dr. pangloss to that fine condition i saw him in?" "alas! sir," answered pacquette, "it was i, indeed. i find you are acquainted with everything; and i have been informed of all the misfortunes that happened to the whole family of my lady baroness and the fair cunegund. but i can safely swear to you that my lot was no less deplorable; i was innocence itself when you saw me last. a franciscan, who was my confessor, easily seduced me; the consequences proved terrible. i was obliged to leave the castle some time after the baron kicked you out by the backside from there; and if a famous surgeon had not taken compassion on me, i had been a dead woman. gratitude obliged me to live with him some time as his mistress; his wife, who was a very devil for jealousy, beat me unmercifully every day. oh! she was a perfect fury. the doctor himself was the most ugly of all mortals, and i the most wretched creature existing, to be continually beaten for a man whom i did not love. you are sensible, sir, how dangerous it was for an ill-natured woman to be married to a physician. incensed at the behavior of his wife, he one day gave her so affectionate a remedy for a slight cold she had caught that she died in less than two hours in most dreadful convulsions. her relations prosecuted the husband, who was obliged to fly, and i was sent to prison. my innocence would not have saved me, if i had not been tolerably handsome. the judge gave me my liberty on condition he should succeed the doctor. however, i was soon supplanted by a rival, turned off without a farthing, and obliged to continue the abominable trade which you men think so pleasing, but which to us unhappy creatures is the most dreadful of all sufferings. at length i came to follow the business at venice. ah! sir, did you but know what it is to be obliged to receive every visitor; old tradesmen, counselors, monks, watermen, and abbes; to be exposed to all their insolence and abuse; to be often necessitated to borrow a petticoat, only that it may be taken up by some disagreeable wretch; to be robbed by one gallant of what we get from another; to be subject to the extortions of civil magistrates; and to have forever before one's eyes the prospect of old age, a hospital, or a dunghill, you would conclude that i am one of the most unhappy wretches breathing." thus did pacquette unbosom herself to honest candide in his closet, in the presence of martin, who took occasion to say to him, "you see i have half won the wager already." friar giroflee was all this time in the parlor refreshing himself with a glass or two of wine till dinner was ready. "but," said candide to pacquette, "you looked so gay and contented, when i met you, you sang and caressed the theatin with so much fondness, that i absolutely thought you as happy as you say you are now miserable." "ah! dear sir," said pacquette, "this is one of the miseries of the trade; yesterday i was stripped and beaten by an officer; yet today i must appear good humored and gay to please a friar." candide was convinced and acknowledged that martin was in the right. they sat down to table with pacquette and the theatin; the entertainment was agreeable, and towards the end they began to converse together with some freedom. "father," said candide to the friar, "you seem to me to enjoy a state of happiness that even kings might envy; joy and health are painted in your countenance. you have a pretty wench to divert you; and you seem to be perfectly well contented with your condition as a theatin." "faith, sir," said friar giroflee, "i wish with all my soul the theatins were every one of them at the bottom of the sea. i have been tempted a thousand times to set fire to the monastery and go and turn turk. my parents obliged me, at the age of fifteen, to put on this detestable habit only to increase the fortune of an elder brother of mine, whom god confound! jealousy, discord, and fury, reside in our monastery. it is true i have preached often paltry sermons, by which i have got a little money, part of which the prior robs me of, and the remainder helps to pay my girls; but, not withstanding, at night, when i go hence to my monastery, i am ready to dash my brains against the walls of the dormitory; and this is the case with all the rest of our fraternity." martin, turning towards candide, with his usual indifference, said, "well, what think you now? have i won the wager entirely?" candide gave two thousand piastres to pacquette, and a thousand to friar giroflee, saying, "i will answer that this will make them happy." "i am not of your opinion," said martin, "perhaps this money will only make them wretched." "be that as it may," said candide, "one thing comforts me; i see that one often meets with those whom one never expected to see again; so that, perhaps, as i have found my red sheep and pacquette, i may be lucky enough to find miss cunegund also." "i wish," said martin, "she one day may make you happy; but i doubt it much." "you lack faith," said candide. "it is because," said martin, "i have seen the world." "observe those gondoliers," said candide, "are they not perpetually singing?" "you do not see them," answered martin, "at home with their wives and brats. the doge has his chagrin, gondoliers theirs. nevertheless, in the main, i look upon the gondolier's life as preferable to that of the doge; but the difference is so trifling that it is not worth the trouble of examining into." "i have heard great talk," said candide, "of the senator pococurante, who lives in that fine house at the brenta, where, they say, he entertains foreigners in the most polite manner." "they pretend this man is a perfect stranger to uneasiness. i should be glad to see so extraordinary a being," said martin. candide thereupon sent a messenger to seignor pococurante, desiring permission to wait on him the next day. chapter 25 candide and martin pay a visit to seignor pococurante, a noble venetian candide and his friend martin went in a gondola on the brenta, and arrived at the palace of the noble pococurante. the gardens were laid out in elegant taste, and adorned with fine marble statues; his palace was built after the most approved rules of architecture. the master of the house, who was a man of affairs, and very rich, received our two travelers with great politeness, but without much ceremony, which somewhat disconcerted candide, but was not at all displeasing to martin. as soon as they were seated, two very pretty girls, neatly dressed, brought in chocolate, which was extremely well prepared. candide could not help praising their beauty and graceful carriage. "the creatures are all right," said the senator; "i amuse myself with them sometimes, for i am heartily tired of the women of the town, their coquetry, their jealousy, their quarrels, their humors, their meannesses, their pride, and their folly; i am weary of making sonnets, or of paying for sonnets to be made on them; but after all, these two girls begin to grow very indifferent to me." after having refreshed himself, candide walked into a large gallery, where he was struck with the sight of a fine collection of paintings. "pray," said candide, "by what master are the two first of these?" "they are by raphael," answered the senator. "i gave a great deal of money for them seven years ago, purely out of curiosity, as they were said to be the finest pieces in italy; but i cannot say they please me: the coloring is dark and heavy; the figures do not swell nor come out enough; and the drapery is bad. in short, notwithstanding the encomiums lavished upon them, they are not, in my opinion, a true representation of nature. i approve of no paintings save those wherein i think i behold nature itself; and there are few, if any, of that kind to be met with. i have what is called a fine collection, but i take no manner of delight in it." while dinner was being prepared pococurante ordered a concert. candide praised the music to the skies. "this noise," said the noble venetian, "may amuse one for a little time, but if it were to last above half an hour, it would grow tiresome to everybody, though perhaps no one would care to own it. music has become the art of executing what is difficult; now, whatever is difficult cannot be long pleasing. "i believe i might take more pleasure in an opera, if they had not made such a monster of that species of dramatic entertainment as perfectly shocks me; and i am amazed how people can bear to see wretched tragedies set to music; where the scenes are contrived for no other purpose than to lug in, as it were by the ears, three or four ridiculous songs, to give a favorite actress an opportunity of exhibiting her pipe. let who will die away in raptures at the trills of a eunuch quavering the majestic part of caesar or cato, and strutting in a foolish manner upon the stage, but for my part i have long ago renounced these paltry entertainments, which constitute the glory of modern italy, and are so dearly purchased by crowned heads." candide opposed these sentiments; but he did it in a discreet manner; as for martin, he was entirely of the old senator's opinion. dinner being served they sat down to table, and, after a hearty repast, returned to the library. candide, observing homer richly bound, commended the noble venetian's taste. "this," said he, "is a book that was once the delight of the great pangloss, the best philosopher in germany." "homer is no favorite of mine," answered pococurante, coolly, "i was made to believe once that i took a pleasure in reading him; but his continual repetitions of battles have all such a resemblance with each other; his gods that are forever in haste and bustle, without ever doing anything; his helen, who is the cause of the war, and yet hardly acts in the whole performance; his troy, that holds out so long, without being taken: in short, all these things together make the poem very insipid to me. i have asked some learned men, whether they are not in reality as much tired as myself with reading this poet: those who spoke ingenuously, assured me that he had made them fall asleep, and yet that they could not well avoid giving him a place in their libraries; but that it was merely as they would do an antique, or those rusty medals which are kept only for curiosity, and are of no manner of use in commerce." "but your excellency does not surely form the same opinion of virgil?" said candide. "why, i grant," replied pococurante, "that the second, third, fourth, and sixth books of his aeneid, are excellent; but as for his pious aeneas, his strong cloanthus, his friendly achates, his boy ascanius, his silly king latinus, his ill-bred amata, his insipid lavinia, and some other characters much in the same strain, i think there cannot in nature be anything more flat and disagreeable. i must confess i prefer tasso far beyond him; nay, even that sleepy taleteller ariosto." "may i take the liberty to ask if you do not experience great pleasure from reading horace?" said candide. "there are maxims in this writer," replied pococurante, "whence a man of the world may reap some benefit; and the short measure of the verse makes them more easily to be retained in the memory. but i see nothing extraordinary in his journey to brundusium, and his account of his had dinner; nor in his dirty, low quarrel between one rupillius, whose words, as he expresses it, were full of poisonous filth; and another, whose language was dipped in vinegar. his indelicate verses against old women and witches have frequently given me great offense: nor can i discover the great merit of his telling his friend maecenas, that if he will but rank him in the class of lyric poets, his lofty head shall touch the stars. ignorant readers are apt to judge a writer by his reputation. for my part, i read only to please myself. i like nothing but what makes for my purpose." candide, who had been brought up with a notion of never making use of his own judgment, was astonished at what he heard; but martin found there was a good deal of reason in the senator's remarks. "oh! here is a tully," said candide; "this great man i fancy you are never tired of reading?" "indeed i never read him at all," replied pococurante. "what is it to me whether he pleads for rabirius or cluentius? i try causes enough myself. i had once some liking for his philosophical works; but when i found he doubted everything, i thought i knew as much as himself, and had no need of a guide to learn ignorance." "ha!" cried martin, "here are fourscore volumes of the memoirs of the academy of sciences; perhaps there may be something curious and valuable in this collection." "yes," answered pococurante, "so there might if any one of these compilers of this rubbish had only invented the art of pin-making; but all these volumes are filled with mere chimerical systems, without one single article conductive to real utility." "i see a prodigious number of plays," said candide, "in italian, spanish, and french." "yes," replied the venetian, "there are i think three thousand, and not three dozen of them good for anything. as to those huge volumes of divinity, and those enormous collections of sermons, they are not all together worth one single page in seneca; and i fancy you will readily believe that neither myself, nor anyone else, ever looks into them." martin, perceiving some shelves filled with english books, said to the senator, "i fancy that a republican must be highly delighted with those books, which are most of them written with a noble spirit of freedom." "it is noble to write as we think," said pococurante; "it is the privilege of humanity. throughout italy we write only what we do not think; and the present inhabitants of the country of the caesars and antonines dare not acquire a single idea without the permission of a dominican father. i should be enamored of the spirit of the english nation, did it not utterly frustrate the good effects it would produce by passion and the spirit of party." candide, seeing a milton, asked the senator if he did not think that author a great man. "who?" said pococurante sharply; "that barbarian who writes a tedious commentary in ten books of rumbling verse, on the first chapter of genesis? that slovenly imitator of the greeks, who disfigures the creation, by making the messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven's armory to plan the world; whereas moses represented the diety as producing the whole universe by his fiat? can i think you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled tasso's hell and the devil; who transforms lucifer sometimes into a toad, and at others into a pygmy; who makes him say the same thing over again a hundred times; who metamorphoses him into a school-divine; and who, by an absurdly serious imitation of ariosto's comic invention of firearms, represents the devils and angels cannonading each other in heaven? neither i nor any other italian can possibly take pleasure in such melancholy reveries; but the marriage of sin and death, and snakes issuing from the womb of the former, are enough to make any person sick that is not lost to all sense of delicacy. this obscene, whimsical, and disagreeable poem met with the neglect it deserved at its first publication; and i only treat the author now as he was treated in his own country by his contemporaries." candide was sensibly grieved at this speech, as he had a great respect for homer, and was fond of milton. "alas!" said he softly to martin, "i am afraid this man holds our german poets in great contempt." "there would be no such great harm in that," said martin. "o what a surprising man!" said candide, still to himself; "what a prodigious genius is this pococurante! nothing can please him." after finishing their survey of the library, they went down into the garden, when candide commended the several beauties that offered themselves to his view. "i know nothing upon earth laid out in such had taste," said pococurante; "everything about it is childish and trifling; but i shall have another laid out tomorrow upon a nobler plan." as soon as our two travelers had taken leave of his excellency, candide said to martin, "well, i hope you will own that this man is the happiest of all mortals, for he is above everything he possesses." "but do not you see," answered martin, "that he likewise dislikes everything he possesses? it was an observation of plato, long since, that those are not the best stomachs that reject, without distinction, all sorts of aliments." "true," said candide, "but still there must certainly be a pleasure in criticising everything, and in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties." "that is," replied martin, "there is a pleasure in having no pleasure." "well, well," said candide, "i find that i shall be the only happy man at last, when i am blessed with the sight of my dear cunegund." "it is good to hope," said martin. in the meanwhile, days and weeks passed away, and no news of cacambo. candide was so overwhelmed with grief, that he did not reflect on the behavior of pacquette and friar giroflee, who never stayed to return him thanks for the presents he had so generously made them. chapter 26 candide and martin sup with six sharpers-who they were one evening as candide, with his attendant martin, was going to sit down to supper with some foreigners who lodged in the same inn where they had taken up their quarters, a man with a face the color of soot came behind him, and taking him by the arm, said, "hold yourself in readiness to go along with us; be sure you do not fail." upon this, turning about to see from whom these words came, he beheld cacambo. nothing but the sight of miss cunegund could have given him greater joy and surprise. he was almost beside himself, and embraced this dear friend. "cunegund!" said he, "cunegund is come with you doubtless! where, where is she? carry me to her this instant, that i may die with joy in her presence." "cunegund is not here," answered cacambo; "she is in constantinople." "good heavens! in constantinople! but no matter if she were in china, i would fly thither. quick, quick, dear cacambo, let us be gone." "soft and fair," said cacambo, "stay till you have supped. i cannot at present stay to say anything more to you; i am a slave, and my master waits for me; i must go and attend him at table: but mum! say not a word, only get your supper, and hold yourself in readiness." candide, divided between joy and grief, charmed to have thus met with his faithful agent again, and surprised to hear he was a slave, his heart palpitating, his senses confused, but full of the hopes of recovering his dear cunegund, sat down to table with martin, who beheld all these scenes with great unconcern, and with six strangers, who had come to spend the carnival at venice. cacambo waited at table upon one of those strangers. when supper was nearly over, he drew near to his master, and whispered in his ear: "sire, your majesty may go when you please; the ship is ready"; and so saying he left the room. the guests, surprised at what they had heard, looked at each other without speaking a word; when another servant drawing near to his master, in like manner said, "sire, your majesty's post-chaise is at padua, and the bark is ready." the master made him a sign, and he instantly withdrew. the company all stared at each other again, and the general astonishment was increased. a third servant then approached another of the strangers, and said, "sire, if your majesty will be advised by me, you will not make any longer stay in this place; i will go and get everything ready"; and instantly disappeared. candide and martin then took it for granted that this was some of the diversions of the carnival, and that these were characters in masquerade. then a fourth domestic said to the fourth stranger, "your majesty may set off when you please"; saying which, he went away like the rest. a fifth valet said the same to a fifth master. but the sixth domestic spoke in a different style to the person on whom he waited, and who sat near to candide. "troth, sir," said he, "they will trust your majesty no longer, nor myself neither; and we may both of us chance to be sent to jail this very night; and therefore i shall take care of myself, and so adieu." the servants being all gone, the six strangers, with candide and martin, remained in a profound silence. at length candide broke it by saying: "gentlemen, this is a very singular joke upon my word; how came you all to be kings? for my part i own frankly, that neither my friend martin here, nor myself, have any claim to royalty." cacambo's master then began, with great gravity, to deliver himself thus in italian: "i am not joking in the least, my name is achmet iii. i was grand sultan for many years; i dethroned my brother, my nephew dethroned me, my viziers lost their heads, and i am condemned to end my days in the old seraglio. my nephew, the grand sultan mahomet, gives me permission to travel sometimes for my health, and i am come to spend the carnival at venice." a young man who sat by achmet, spoke next, and said: "my name is ivan. i was once emperor of all the russians, but was dethroned in my cradle. my parents were confined, and i was brought up in a prison, yet i am sometimes allowed to travel, though always with persons to keep a guard over me, and i come to spend the carnival at venice." the third said: "i am charles edward, king of england; my father has renounced his right to the throne in my favor. i have fought in defense of my rights, and near a thousand of my friends have had their hearts taken out of their bodies alive and thrown in their faces. i have myself been confined in a prison. i am going to rome to visit the king, my father, who was dethroned as well as myself; and my grandfather and i have come to spend the carnival at venice." the fourth spoke thus: "i am the king of poland; the fortune of war has stripped me of my hereditary dominions. my father experienced the same vicissitudes of fate. i resign myself to the will of providence, in the same manner as sultan achmet, the emperor ivan, and king charles edward, whom god long preserve; and i have come to spend the carnival at venice." the fifth said: "i am king of poland also. i have twice lost my kingdom; but providence has given me other dominions, where i have done more good than all the sarmatian kings put together were ever able to do on the banks of the vistula; i resign myself likewise to providence; and have come to spend the carnival at venice." it now came to the sixth monarch's turn to speak. "gentlemen," said he, "i am not so great a prince as the rest of you, it is true, but i am, however, a crowned head. i am theodore, elected king of corsica. i have had the title of majesty, and am now hardly treated with common civility. i have coined money, and am not now worth a single ducat. i have had two secretaries, and am now without a valet. i was once seated on a throne, and since that have lain upon a truss of straw, in a common jail in london, and i very much fear i shall meet with the same fate here in venice, where i came, like your majesties, to divert myself at the carnival." the other five kings listened to this speech with great attention; it excited their compassion; each of them made the unhappy theodore a present of twenty sequins, and candide gave him a diamond, worth just a hundred times that sum. "who can this private person be," said the five kings to one another, "who is able to give, and has actually given, a hundred times as much as any of us?" just as they rose from table, in came four serene highnesses, who had also been stripped of their territories by the fortune of war, and had come to spend the remainder of the carnival at venice. candide took no manner of notice of them; for his thoughts were wholly employed on his voyage to constantinople, where he intended to go in search of his lovely miss cunegund. chapter 27 candide's voyage to constantinople the trusty cacambo had already engaged the captain of the turkish ship that was to carry sultan achmet back to constantinople to take candide and martin on board. accordingly they both embarked, after paying their obeisance to his miserable highness. as they were going on board, candide said to martin: "you see we supped in company with six dethroned kings, and to one of them i gave charity. perhaps there may be a great many other princes still more unfortunate. for my part i have lost only a hundred sheep, and am now going to fly to the arms of my charming miss cunegund. my dear martin, i must insist on it, that pangloss was in the right. all is for the best." "i wish it may be," said martin. "but this was an odd adventure we met with at venice. i do not think there ever was an instance before of six dethroned monarchs supping together at a public inn." "this is not more extraordinary," said martin, "than most of what has happened to us. it is a very common thing for kings to be dethroned; and as for our having the honor to sup with six of them, it is a mere accident, not deserving our attention." as soon as candide set his foot on board the vessel, he flew to his old friend and valet cacambo and, throwing his arms about his neck, embraced him with transports of joy. "well," said he, "what news of miss cunegund? does she still continue the paragon of beauty? does she love me still? how does she do? you have, doubtless, purchased a superb palace for her at constantinople." "my dear master," replied cacambo, "miss cunegund washes dishes on the banks of the propontis, in the house of a prince who has very few to wash. she is at present a slave in the family of an ancient sovereign named ragotsky, whom the grand turk allows three crowns a day to maintain him in his exile; but the most melancholy circumstance of all is, that she is turned horribly ugly." "ugly or handsome," said candide, "i am a man of honor and, as such, am obliged to love her still. but how could she possibly have been reduced to so abject a condition, when i sent five or six millions to her by you?" "lord bless me," said cacambo, "was not i obliged to give two millions to seignor don fernando d'ibaraa y figueora y mascarenes y lampourdos y souza, the governor of buenos ayres, for liberty to take miss cunegund away with me? and then did not a brave fellow of a pirate gallantly strip us of all the rest? and then did not this same pirate carry us with him to cape matapan, to milo, to nicaria, to samos, to petra, to the dardanelles, to marmora, to scutari? miss cunegund and the old woman are now servants to the prince i have told you of; and i myself am slave to the dethroned sultan." "what a chain of shocking accidents!" exclaimed candide. "but after all, i have still some diamonds left, with which i can easily procure miss cunegund's liberty. it is a pity though she is grown so ugly." then turning to martin, "what think you, friend," said he, "whose condition is most to be pitied, the emperor achmet's, the emperor ivan's, king charles edward's, or mine?" "faith, i cannot resolve your question," said martin, "unless i had been in the breasts of you all." "ah!" cried candide, "was pangloss here now, he would have known, and satisfied me at once." "i know not," said martin, "in what balance your pangloss could have weighed the misfortunes of mankind, and have set a just estimation on their sufferings. all that i pretend to know of the matter is that there are millions of men on the earth, whose conditions are a hundred times more pitiable than those of king charles edward, the emperor ivan, or sultan achmet." "why, that may be," answered candide. in a few days they reached the bosphorus; and the first thing candide did was to pay a high ransom for cacambo; then, without losing time, he and his companions went on board a galley, in order to search for his cunegund on the banks of the propontis, notwithstanding she was grown so ugly. there were two slaves among the crew of the galley, who rowed very ill, and to whose bare backs the master of the vessel frequently applied a lash. candide, from natural sympathy, looked at these two slaves more attentively than at any of the rest, and drew near them with an eye of pity. their features, though greatly disfigured, appeared to him to bear a strong resemblance with those of pangloss and the unhappy baron jesuit, miss cunegund's brother. this idea affected him with grief and compassion: he examined them more attentively than before. "in troth," said he, turning to martin, "if i had not seen my master pangloss fairly hanged, and had not myself been unlucky enough to run the baron through the body, i should absolutely think those two rowers were the men." no sooner had candide uttered the names of the baron and pangloss, than the two slaves gave a great cry, ceased rowing, and let fall their oars out of their hands. the master of the vessel, seeing this, ran up to them, and redoubled the discipline of the lash. "hold, hold," cried candide, "i will give you what money you shall ask for these two persons." "good heavens! it is candide," said one of the men. "candide!" cried the other. "do i dream," said candide, "or am i awake? am i actually on board this galley? is this my lord the baron, whom i killed? and that my master pangloss, whom i saw hanged before my face?" "it is i! it is i!" cried they both together. "what! is this your great philosopher?" said martin. "my dear sir," said candide to the master of the galley, "how much do you ask for the ransom of the baron of thunder-ten-tronckh, who is one of the first barons of the empire, and of monsieur pangloss, the most profound metaphysician in germany?" "why, then, christian cur," replied the turkish captain, "since these two dogs of christian slaves are barons and metaphysicians, who no doubt are of high rank in their own country, thou shalt give me fifty thousand sequins." "you shall have them, sir; carry me back as quick as thought to constantinople, and you shall receive the money immediately-no! carry me first to miss cunegund." the captain, upon candide's first proposal, had already tacked about, and he made the crew ply their oars so effectually, that the vessel flew through the water, quicker than a bird cleaves the air. candide bestowed a thousand embraces on the baron and pangloss. "and so then, my dear baron, i did not kill you? and you, my dear pangloss, are come to life again after your hanging? but how came you slaves on board a turkish galley?" "and is it true that my dear sister is in this country?" said the baron. "yes," said cacambo. "and do i once again behold my dear candide?" said pangloss. candide presented martin and cacambo to them; they embraced each other, and all spoke together. the galley flew like lightning, and soon they were got back to port. candide instantly sent for a jew, to whom he sold for fifty thousand sequins a diamond richly worth one hundred thousand, though the fellow swore to him all the time by father abraham that he gave him the most he could possibly afford. he no sooner got the money into his hands, than he paid it down for the ransom of the baron and pangloss. the latter flung himself at the feet of his deliverer, and bathed him with his tears; the former thanked him with a gracious nod, and promised to return him the money the first opportunity. "but is it possible," said he, "that my sister should be in turkey?" "nothing is more possible," answered cacambo, "for she scours the dishes in the house of a transylvanian prince." candide sent directly for two jews, and sold more diamonds to them; and then he set out with his companions in another galley, to deliver miss cunegund from slavery. chapter 28 what befell candide, cunegund, pangloss, martin, etc. pardon," said candide to the baron; "once more let me entreat your pardon, reverend father, for running you through the body." "say no more about it," replied the baron. "i was a little too hasty i must own; but as you seem to be desirous to know by what accident i came to be a slave on board the galley where you saw me, i will inform you. after i had been cured of the wound you gave me, by the college apothecary, i was attacked and carried off by a party of spanish troops, who clapped me in prison in buenos ayres, at the very time my sister was setting out from there. i asked leave to return to rome, to the general of my order, who appointed me chaplain to the french ambassador at constantinople. i had not been a week in my new office, when i happened to meet one evening a young icoglan, extremely handsome and well-made. the weather was very hot; the young man had an inclination to bathe. i took the opportunity to bathe likewise. i did not know it was a crime for a christian to be found naked in company with a young turk. a cadi ordered me to receive a hundred blows on the soles of my feet, and sent me to the galleys. i do not believe that there was ever an act of more flagrant injustice. but i would fain know how my sister came to be a scullion to a transylvanian prince, who has taken refuge among the turks?" "but how happens it that i behold you again, my dear pangloss?" said candide. "it is true," answered pangloss, "you saw me hanged, though i ought properly to have been burned; but you may remember, that it rained extremely hard when they were going to roast me. the storm was so violent that they found it impossible to light the fire; so they hanged me because they could do no better. a surgeon purchased my body, carried it home, and prepared to dissect me. he began by making a crucial incision from my navel to the clavicle. it is impossible for anyone to have been more lamely hanged than i had been. the executioner was a subdeacon, and knew how to burn people very well, but as for hanging, he was a novice at it, being quite out of practice; the cord being wet, and not slipping properly, the noose did not join. in short, i still continued to breathe; the crucial incision made me scream to such a degree, that my surgeon fell flat upon his back; and imagining it was the devil he was dissecting, ran away, and in his fright tumbled down stairs. his wife hearing the noise, flew from the next room, and seeing me stretched upon the table with my crucial incision, was still more terrified than her husband, and fell upon him. when they had a little recovered themselves, i heard her say to her husband, 'my dear, how could you think of dissecting a heretic? don't you know that the devil is always in them? i'll run directly to a priest to come and drive the evil spirit out.' i trembled from head to foot at hearing her talk in this manner, and exerted what little strength i had left to cry out, 'have mercy on me!' at length the portuguese barber took courage, sewed up my wound, and his wife nursed me; and i was upon my legs in a fortnight's time. the barber got me a place to be lackey to a knight of malta, who was going to venice; but finding my master had no money to pay me my wages, i entered into the service of a venetian merchant and went with him to constantinople. "one day i happened to enter a mosque, where i saw no one but an old man and a very pretty young female devotee, who was telling her beads; her neck was quite bare, and in her bosom she had a beautiful nosegay of tulips, roses, anemones, ranunculuses, hyacinths, and auriculas; she let fall her nosegay. i ran immediately to take it up, and presented it to her with a most respectful bow. i was so long in delivering it that the man began to be angry; and, perceiving i was a christian, he cried out for help; they carried me before the cadi, who ordered me to receive one hundred bastinadoes, and sent me to the galleys. i was chained in the very galley and to the very same bench with the baron. on board this galley there were four young men belonging to marseilles, five neapolitan priests, and two monks of corfu, who told us that the like adventures happened every day. the baron pretended that he had been worse used than myself; and i insisted that there was far less harm in taking up a nosegay, and putting it into a woman's bosom, than to be found stark naked with a young icoglan. we were continually whipped, and received twenty lashes a day with a heavy thong, when the concatenation of sublunary events brought you on board our galley to ransom us from slavery." "well, my dear pangloss," said candide to him, "when you were hanged, dissected, whipped, and tugging at the oar, did you continue to think that everything in this world happens for the best?" "i have always abided by my first opinion," answered pangloss; "for, after all, i am a philosopher, and it would not become me to retract my sentiments; especially as leibnitz could not be in the wrong: and that preestablished harmony is the finest thing in the world, as well as a plenum and the materia subtilis." chapter 29 in what manner candide found miss cunegund and the old woman again while candide, the baron, pangloss, martin, and cacambo, were relating their several adventures, and reasoning on the contingent or noncontingent events of this world; on causes and effects; on moral and physical evil; on free will and necessity; and on the consolation that may be felt by a person when a slave and chained to an oar in a turkish galley, they arrived at the house of the transylvanian prince on the shores of the propontis. the first objects they beheld there, were miss cunegund and the old woman, who were hanging some tablecloths on a line to dry. the baron turned pale at the sight. even the tender candide, that affectionate lover, upon seeing his fair cunegund all sunburned, with bleary eyes, a withered neck, wrinkled face and arms, all covered with a red scurf, started back with horror; but, not withstanding, recovering himself, he advanced towards her out of good manners. she embraced candide and her brother; they embraced the old woman, and candide ransomed them both. there was a small farm in the neighborhood which the old woman proposed to candide to make shift with till the company should meet with a more favorable destiny. cunegund, not knowing that she was grown ugly, as no one had informed her of it, reminded candide of his promise in so peremptory a manner, that the simple lad did not dare to refuse her; he then acquainted the baron that he was going to marry his sister. "i will never suffer," said the baron, "my sister to be guilty of an action so derogatory to her birth and family; nor will i bear this insolence on your part. no, i never will be reproached that my nephews are not qualified for the first ecclesiastical dignities in germany; nor shall a sister of mine ever be the wife of any person below the rank of baron of the empire." cunegund flung herself at her brother's feet, and bedewed them with her tears; but he still continued inflexible. "thou foolish fellow, said candide, "have i not delivered thee from the galleys, paid thy ransom, and thy sister's, too, who was a scullion, and is very ugly, and yet condescend to marry her? and shalt thou pretend to oppose the match! if i were to listen only to the dictates of my anger, i should kill thee again." "thou mayest kill me again," said the baron; "but thou shalt not marry my sister while i am living." chapter 30 conclusion candide had, in truth, no great inclination to marry miss cunegund; but the extreme impertinence of the baron determined him to conclude the match; and cunegund pressed him so warmly, that he could not recant. he consulted pangloss, martin, and the faithful cacambo. pangloss composed a fine memorial, by which he proved that the baron had no right over his sister; and that she might, according to all the laws of the empire, marry candide with the left hand. martin concluded to throw the baron into the sea; cacambo decided that he must be delivered to the turkish captain and sent to the galleys; after which he should be conveyed by the first ship to the father general at rome. this advice was found to be good; the old woman approved of it, and not a syllable was said to his sister; the business was executed for a little money; and they had the pleasure of tricking a jesuit, and punishing the pride of a german baron. it was altogether natural to imagine, that after undergoing so many disasters, candide, married to his mistress and living with the philosopher pangloss, the philosopher martin, the prudent cacambo, and the old woman, having besides brought home so many diamonds from the country of the ancient incas, would lead the most agreeable life in the world. but he had been so robbed by the jews, that he had nothing left but his little farm; his wife, every day growing more and more ugly, became headstrong and insupportable; the old woman was infirm, and more ill-natured yet than cunegund. cacambo, who worked in the garden, and carried the produce of it to sell in constantinople, was above his labor, and cursed his fate. pangloss despaired of making a figure in any of the german universities. and as to martin, he was firmly persuaded that a person is equally ill-situated everywhere. he took things with patience. candide, martin, and pangloss disputed sometimes about metaphysics and morality. boats were often seen passing under the windows of the farm laden with effendis, bashaws, and cadis, that were going into banishment to lemnos, mytilene and erzerum. and other cadis, bashaws, and effendis were seen coming back to succeed the place of the exiles, and were driven out in their turns. they saw several heads curiously stuck upon poles, and carried as presents to the sublime porte. such sights gave occasion to frequent dissertations; and when no disputes were in progress, the irksomeness was so excessive that the old woman ventured one day to tell them: "i would be glad to know which is worst, to be ravished a hundred times by negro pirates, to have one buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the bulgarians, to be whipped and hanged at an auto-da-fe, to be dissected, to be chained to an oar in a galley; and, in short, to experience all the miseries through which every one of us hath passed, or to remain here doing nothing?" "this," said candide, "is a grand question." this discourse gave birth to new reflections, and martin especially concluded that man was born to live in the convulsions of disquiet, or in the lethargy of idleness. though candide did not absolutely agree to this, yet he did not determine anything on that head. pangloss avowed that he had undergone dreadful sufferings; but having once maintained that everything went on as well as possible, he still maintained it, and at the same time believed nothing of it. there was one thing which more than ever confirmed martin in his detestable principles, made candide hesitate, and embarrassed pangloss, which was the arrival of pacquette and brother giroflee one day at their farm. this couple had been in the utmost distress; they had very speedily made away with their three thousand piastres; they had parted, been reconciled; quarreled again, been thrown into prison; had made their escape, and at last brother giroflee had turned turk. pacquette still continued to follow her trade; but she got little or nothing by it. "i foresaw very well," said martin to candide "that your presents would soon be squandered, and only make them more miserable. you and cacambo have spent millions of piastres, and yet you are not more happy than brother giroflee and pacquette." "ah!" said pangloss to pacquette, "it is heaven that has brought you here among us, my poor child! do you know that you have cost me the tip of my nose, one eye, and one ear? what a handsome shape is here! and what is this world!" this new adventure engaged them more deeply than ever in philosophical disputations. in the neighborhood lived a famous dervish who passed for the best philosopher in turkey; they went to consult him: pangloss, who was their spokesman, addressed him thus: "master, we come to entreat you to tell us why so strange an animal as man has been formed?" "why do you trouble your head about it?" said the dervish; "is it any business of yours?" "but, reverend father," said candide, "there is a horrible deal of evil on the earth." "what signifies it," said the dervish, "whether there is evil or good? when his highness sends a ship to egypt does he trouble his head whether the rats in the vessel are at their ease or not?" "what must then be done?" said pangloss. "be silent," answered the dervish. "i flattered myself," replied pangloss, "to have reasoned a little with you on the causes and effects, on the best of possible worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul, and a pre-established harmony." at these words the dervish shut the door in their faces. during this conversation, news was spread abroad that two viziers of the bench and the mufti had just been strangled at constantinople, and several of their friends impaled. this catastrophe made a great noise for some hours. pangloss, candide, and martin, as they were returning to the little farm, met with a good-looking old man, who was taking the air at his door, under an alcove formed of the boughs of orange trees. pangloss, who was as inquisitive as he was disputative, asked him what was the name of the mufti who was lately strangled. "i cannot tell," answered the good old man; "i never knew the name of any mufti, or vizier breathing. i am entirely ignorant of the event you speak of; i presume that in general such as are concerned in public affairs sometimes come to a miserable end; and that they deserve it: but i never inquire what is doing at constantinople; i am contented with sending thither the produce of my garden, which i cultivate with my own hands." after saying these words, he invited the strangers to come into his house. his two daughters and two sons presented them with divers sorts of sherbet of their own making; besides caymac, heightened with the peels of candied citrons, oranges, lemons, pineapples, pistachio nuts, and mocha coffee unadulterated with the bad coffee of batavia or the american islands. after which the two daughters of this good mussulman perfumed the beards of candide, pangloss, and martin. "you must certainly have a vast estate," said candide to the turk. "i have no more than twenty acres of ground," he replied, "the whole of which i cultivate myself with the help of my children; and our labor keeps off from us three great evils-idleness, vice, and want." candide, as he was returning home, made profound reflections on the turk's discourse. "this good old man," said he to pangloss and martin, "appears to me to have chosen for himself a lot much preferable to that of the six kings with whom we had the honor to sup." "human grandeur," said pangloss, "is very dangerous, if we believe the testimonies of almost all philosophers; for we find eglon, king of moab, was assassinated by aod; absalom was hanged by the hair of his head, and run through with three darts; king nadab, son of jeroboam, was slain by baaza; king ela by zimri; okosias by jehu; athaliah by jehoiada; the kings jehooiakim, jeconiah, and zedekiah, were led into captivity: i need not tell you what was the fate of croesus, astyages, darius, dionysius of syracuse, pyrrhus, perseus, hannibal, jugurtha, ariovistus, caesar, pompey, nero, otho, vitellius, domitian, richard ii of england, edward ii, henry vi, richard ill, mary stuart, charles i, the three henrys of france, and the emperor henry iv." "neither need you tell me," said candide, "that we must take care of our garden." "you are in the right," said pangloss; "for when man was put into the garden of eden, it was with an intent to dress it; and this proves that man was not born to be idle." "work then without disputing," said martin; "it is the only way to render life supportable." the little society, one and all, entered into this laudable design and set themselves to exert their different talents. the little piece of ground yielded them a plentiful crop. cunegund indeed was very ugly, but she became an excellent hand at pastrywork: pacquette embroidered; the old woman had the care of the linen. there was none, down to brother giroflee, but did some service; he was a very good carpenter, and became an honest man. pangloss used now and then to say to candide: "there is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short, had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of miss cunegund; had you not been put into the inquisition; had you not traveled over america on foot; had you not run the baron through the body; and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of el dorado, you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts." "excellently observed," answered candide; "but let us cultivate our garden." -the end. the two gentlemen of verona dramatis personae duke of milan father to silvia. (duke:) valentine | | the two gentlemen. proteus | antonio father to proteus. thurio a foolish rival to valentine. eglamour agent for silvia in her escape. host where julia lodges. (host:) outlaws with valentine. (first outlaw:) (second outlaw:) (third outlaw:) speed a clownish servant to valentine. launce the like to proteus. panthino servant to antonio. julia beloved of proteus. silvia beloved of valentine. lucetta waiting-woman to julia. servants, musicians. scene verona; milan; the frontiers of mantua. the two gentlemen of verona act i scene i verona. an open place. [enter valentine and proteus] valentine cease to persuade, my loving proteus: home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. were't not affection chains thy tender days to the sweet glances of thy honour'd love, i rather would entreat thy company to see the wonders of the world abroad, than, living dully sluggardized at home, wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness. but since thou lovest, love still and thrive therein, even as i would when i to love begin. proteus wilt thou be gone? sweet valentine, adieu! think on thy proteus, when thou haply seest some rare note-worthy object in thy travel: wish me partaker in thy happiness when thou dost meet good hap; and in thy danger, if ever danger do environ thee, commend thy grievance to my holy prayers, for i will be thy beadsman, valentine. valentine and on a love-book pray for my success? proteus upon some book i love i'll pray for thee. valentine that's on some shallow story of deep love: how young leander cross'd the hellespont. proteus that's a deep story of a deeper love: for he was more than over shoes in love. valentine 'tis true; for you are over boots in love, and yet you never swum the hellespont. proteus over the boots? nay, give me not the boots. valentine no, i will not, for it boots thee not. proteus what? valentine to be in love, where scorn is bought with groans; coy looks with heart-sore sighs; one fading moment's mirth with twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights: if haply won, perhaps a hapless gain; if lost, why then a grievous labour won; however, but a folly bought with wit, or else a wit by folly vanquished. proteus so, by your circumstance, you call me fool. valentine so, by your circumstance, i fear you'll prove. proteus 'tis love you cavil at: i am not love. valentine love is your master, for he masters you: and he that is so yoked by a fool, methinks, should not be chronicled for wise. proteus yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud the eating canker dwells, so eating love inhabits in the finest wits of all. valentine and writers say, as the most forward bud is eaten by the canker ere it blow, even so by love the young and tender wit is turn'd to folly, blasting in the bud, losing his verdure even in the prime and all the fair effects of future hopes. but wherefore waste i time to counsel thee, that art a votary to fond desire? once more adieu! my father at the road expects my coming, there to see me shipp'd. proteus and thither will i bring thee, valentine. valentine sweet proteus, no; now let us take our leave. to milan let me hear from thee by letters of thy success in love, and what news else betideth here in absence of thy friend; and likewise will visit thee with mine. proteus all happiness bechance to thee in milan! valentine as much to you at home! and so, farewell. [exit] proteus he after honour hunts, i after love: he leaves his friends to dignify them more, i leave myself, my friends and all, for love. thou, julia, thou hast metamorphosed me, made me neglect my studies, lose my time, war with good counsel, set the world at nought; made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought. [enter speed] speed sir proteus, save you! saw you my master? proteus but now he parted hence, to embark for milan. speed twenty to one then he is shipp'd already, and i have play'd the sheep in losing him. proteus indeed, a sheep doth very often stray, an if the shepherd be a while away. speed you conclude that my master is a shepherd, then, and i a sheep? proteus i do. speed why then, my horns are his horns, whether i wake or sleep. proteus a silly answer and fitting well a sheep. speed this proves me still a sheep. proteus true; and thy master a shepherd. speed nay, that i can deny by a circumstance. proteus it shall go hard but i'll prove it by another. speed the shepherd seeks the sheep, and not the sheep the shepherd; but i seek my master, and my master seeks not me: therefore i am no sheep. proteus the sheep for fodder follow the shepherd; the shepherd for food follows not the sheep: thou for wages followest thy master; thy master for wages follows not thee: therefore thou art a sheep. speed such another proof will make me cry 'baa.' proteus but, dost thou hear? gavest thou my letter to julia? speed ay sir: i, a lost mutton, gave your letter to her, a laced mutton, and she, a laced mutton, gave me, a lost mutton, nothing for my labour. proteus here's too small a pasture for such store of muttons. speed if the ground be overcharged, you were best stick her. proteus nay: in that you are astray, 'twere best pound you. speed nay, sir, less than a pound shall serve me for carrying your letter. proteus you mistake; i mean the pound,--a pinfold. speed from a pound to a pin? fold it over and over, 'tis threefold too little for carrying a letter to your lover. proteus but what said she? speed [first nodding] ay. proteus nod--ay--why, that's noddy. speed you mistook, sir; i say, she did nod: and you ask me if she did nod; and i say, 'ay.' proteus and that set together is noddy. speed now you have taken the pains to set it together, take it for your pains. proteus no, no; you shall have it for bearing the letter. speed well, i perceive i must be fain to bear with you. proteus why sir, how do you bear with me? speed marry, sir, the letter, very orderly; having nothing but the word 'noddy' for my pains. proteus beshrew me, but you have a quick wit. speed and yet it cannot overtake your slow purse. proteus come come, open the matter in brief: what said she? speed open your purse, that the money and the matter may be both at once delivered. proteus well, sir, here is for your pains. what said she? speed truly, sir, i think you'll hardly win her. proteus why, couldst thou perceive so much from her? speed sir, i could perceive nothing at all from her; no, not so much as a ducat for delivering your letter: and being so hard to me that brought your mind, i fear she'll prove as hard to you in telling your mind. give her no token but stones; for she's as hard as steel. proteus what said she? nothing? speed no, not so much as 'take this for thy pains.' to testify your bounty, i thank you, you have testerned me; in requital whereof, henceforth carry your letters yourself: and so, sir, i'll commend you to my master. proteus go, go, be gone, to save your ship from wreck, which cannot perish having thee aboard, being destined to a drier death on shore. [exit speed] i must go send some better messenger: i fear my julia would not deign my lines, receiving them from such a worthless post. [exit] the two gentlemen of verona act i scene ii the same. garden of julia's house. [enter julla and lucetta] julia but say, lucetta, now we are alone, wouldst thou then counsel me to fall in love? lucetta ay, madam, so you stumble not unheedfully. julia of all the fair resort of gentlemen that every day with parle encounter me, in thy opinion which is worthiest love? lucetta please you repeat their names, i'll show my mind according to my shallow simple skill. julia what think'st thou of the fair sir eglamour? lucetta as of a knight well-spoken, neat and fine; but, were i you, he never should be mine. julia what think'st thou of the rich mercatio? lucetta well of his wealth; but of himself, so so. julia what think'st thou of the gentle proteus? lucetta lord, lord! to see what folly reigns in us! julia how now! what means this passion at his name? lucetta pardon, dear madam: 'tis a passing shame that i, unworthy body as i am, should censure thus on lovely gentlemen. julia why not on proteus, as of all the rest? lucetta then thus: of many good i think him best. julia your reason? lucetta i have no other, but a woman's reason; i think him so because i think him so. julia and wouldst thou have me cast my love on him? lucetta ay, if you thought your love not cast away. julia why he, of all the rest, hath never moved me. lucetta yet he, of all the rest, i think, best loves ye. julia his little speaking shows his love but small. lucetta fire that's closest kept burns most of all. julia they do not love that do not show their love. lucetta o, they love least that let men know their love. julia i would i knew his mind. lucetta peruse this paper, madam. julia 'to julia.' say, from whom? lucetta that the contents will show. julia say, say, who gave it thee? lucetta valentine's page; and sent, i think, from proteus. he would have given it you; but i, being in the way, did in your name receive it: pardon the fault i pray. julia now, by my modesty, a goodly broker! dare you presume to harbour wanton lines? to whisper and conspire against my youth? now, trust me, 'tis an office of great worth and you an officer fit for the place. or else return no more into my sight. lucetta to plead for love deserves more fee than hate. julia will ye be gone? lucetta that you may ruminate. [exit] julia and yet i would i had o'erlooked the letter: it were a shame to call her back again and pray her to a fault for which i chid her. what a fool is she, that knows i am a maid, and would not force the letter to my view! since maids, in modesty, say 'no' to that which they would have the profferer construe 'ay.' fie, fie, how wayward is this foolish love that, like a testy babe, will scratch the nurse and presently all humbled kiss the rod! how churlishly i chid lucetta hence, when willingly i would have had her here! how angerly i taught my brow to frown, when inward joy enforced my heart to smile! my penance is to call lucetta back and ask remission for my folly past. what ho! lucetta! [re-enter lucetta] lucetta what would your ladyship? julia is't near dinner-time? lucetta i would it were, that you might kill your stomach on your meat and not upon your maid. julia what is't that you took up so gingerly? lucetta nothing. julia why didst thou stoop, then? lucetta to take a paper up that i let fall. julia and is that paper nothing? lucetta nothing concerning me. julia then let it lie for those that it concerns. lucetta madam, it will not lie where it concerns unless it have a false interpeter. julia some love of yours hath writ to you in rhyme. lucetta that i might sing it, madam, to a tune. give me a note: your ladyship can set. julia as little by such toys as may be possible. best sing it to the tune of 'light o' love.' lucetta it is too heavy for so light a tune. julia heavy! belike it hath some burden then? lucetta ay, and melodious were it, would you sing it. julia and why not you? lucetta i cannot reach so high. julia let's see your song. how now, minion! lucetta keep tune there still, so you will sing it out: and yet methinks i do not like this tune. julia you do not? lucetta no, madam; it is too sharp. julia you, minion, are too saucy. lucetta nay, now you are too flat and mar the concord with too harsh a descant: there wanteth but a mean to fill your song. julia the mean is drown'd with your unruly bass. lucetta indeed, i bid the base for proteus. julia this babble shall not henceforth trouble me. here is a coil with protestation! [tears the letter] go get you gone, and let the papers lie: you would be fingering them, to anger me. lucetta she makes it strange; but she would be best pleased to be so anger'd with another letter. [exit] julia nay, would i were so anger'd with the same! o hateful hands, to tear such loving words! injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey and kill the bees that yield it with your stings! i'll kiss each several paper for amends. look, here is writ 'kind julia.' unkind julia! as in revenge of thy ingratitude, i throw thy name against the bruising stones, trampling contemptuously on thy disdain. and here is writ 'love-wounded proteus.' poor wounded name! my bosom as a bed shall lodge thee till thy wound be thoroughly heal'd; and thus i search it with a sovereign kiss. but twice or thrice was 'proteus' written down. be calm, good wind, blow not a word away till i have found each letter in the letter, except mine own name: that some whirlwind bear unto a ragged fearful-hanging rock and throw it thence into the raging sea! lo, here in one line is his name twice writ, 'poor forlorn proteus, passionate proteus, to the sweet julia:' that i'll tear away. and yet i will not, sith so prettily he couples it to his complaining names. thus will i fold them one on another: now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will. [re-enter lucetta] lucetta madam, dinner is ready, and your father stays. julia well, let us go. lucetta what, shall these papers lie like tell-tales here? julia if you respect them, best to take them up. lucetta nay, i was taken up for laying them down: yet here they shall not lie, for catching cold. julia i see you have a month's mind to them. lucetta ay, madam, you may say what sights you see; i see things too, although you judge i wink. julia come, come; will't please you go? [exeunt] the two gentlemen of verona act i scene iii the same. antonio's house. [enter antonio and panthino] antonio tell me, panthino, what sad talk was that wherewith my brother held you in the cloister? panthino 'twas of his nephew proteus, your son. antonio why, what of him? panthino he wonder'd that your lordship would suffer him to spend his youth at home, while other men, of slender reputation, put forth their sons to seek preferment out: some to the wars, to try their fortune there; some to discover islands far away; some to the studious universities. for any or for all these exercises, he said that proteus your son was meet, and did request me to importune you to let him spend his time no more at home, which would be great impeachment to his age, in having known no travel in his youth. antonio nor need'st thou much importune me to that whereon this month i have been hammering. i have consider'd well his loss of time and how he cannot be a perfect man, not being tried and tutor'd in the world: experience is by industry achieved and perfected by the swift course of time. then tell me, whither were i best to send him? panthino i think your lordship is not ignorant how his companion, youthful valentine, attends the emperor in his royal court. antonio i know it well. panthino 'twere good, i think, your lordship sent him thither: there shall he practise tilts and tournaments, hear sweet discourse, converse with noblemen. and be in eye of every exercise worthy his youth and nobleness of birth. antonio i like thy counsel; well hast thou advised: and that thou mayst perceive how well i like it, the execution of it shall make known. even with the speediest expedition i will dispatch him to the emperor's court. panthino to-morrow, may it please you, don alphonso, with other gentlemen of good esteem, are journeying to salute the emperor and to commend their service to his will. antonio good company; with them shall proteus go: and, in good time! now will we break with him. [enter proteus] proteus sweet love! sweet lines! sweet life! here is her hand, the agent of her heart; here is her oath for love, her honour's pawn. o, that our fathers would applaud our loves, to seal our happiness with their consents! o heavenly julia! antonio how now! what letter are you reading there? proteus may't please your lordship, 'tis a word or two of commendations sent from valentine, deliver'd by a friend that came from him. antonio lend me the letter; let me see what news. proteus there is no news, my lord, but that he writes how happily he lives, how well beloved and daily graced by the emperor; wishing me with him, partner of his fortune. antonio and how stand you affected to his wish? proteus as one relying on your lordship's will and not depending on his friendly wish. antonio my will is something sorted with his wish. muse not that i thus suddenly proceed; for what i will, i will, and there an end. i am resolved that thou shalt spend some time with valentinus in the emperor's court: what maintenance he from his friends receives, like exhibition thou shalt have from me. to-morrow be in readiness to go: excuse it not, for i am peremptory. proteus my lord, i cannot be so soon provided: please you, deliberate a day or two. antonio look, what thou want'st shall be sent after thee: no more of stay! to-morrow thou must go. come on, panthino: you shall be employ'd to hasten on his expedition. [exeunt antonio and panthino] proteus thus have i shunn'd the fire for fear of burning, and drench'd me in the sea, where i am drown'd. i fear'd to show my father julia's letter, lest he should take exceptions to my love; and with the vantage of mine own excuse hath he excepted most against my love. o, how this spring of love resembleth the uncertain glory of an april day, which now shows all the beauty of the sun, and by and by a cloud takes all away! [re-enter panthino] panthino sir proteus, your father calls for you: he is in haste; therefore, i pray you to go. proteus why, this it is: my heart accords thereto, and yet a thousand times it answers 'no.' [exeunt] the two gentlemen of verona act ii scene i milan. the duke's palace. [enter valentine and speed] speed sir, your glove. valentine not mine; my gloves are on. speed why, then, this may be yours, for this is but one. valentine ha! let me see: ay, give it me, it's mine: sweet ornament that decks a thing divine! ah, silvia, silvia! speed madam silvia! madam silvia! valentine how now, sirrah? speed she is not within hearing, sir. valentine why, sir, who bade you call her? speed your worship, sir; or else i mistook. valentine well, you'll still be too forward. speed and yet i was last chidden for being too slow. valentine go to, sir: tell me, do you know madam silvia? speed she that your worship loves? valentine why, how know you that i am in love? speed marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned, like sir proteus, to wreathe your arms, like a malecontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his a b c; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at hallowmas. you were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money: and now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, that, when i look on you, i can hardly think you my master. valentine are all these things perceived in me? speed they are all perceived without ye. valentine without me? they cannot. speed without you? nay, that's certain, for, without you were so simple, none else would: but you are so without these follies, that these follies are within you and shine through you like the water in an urinal, that not an eye that sees you but is a physician to comment on your malady. valentine but tell me, dost thou know my lady silvia? speed she that you gaze on so as she sits at supper? valentine hast thou observed that? even she, i mean. speed why, sir, i know her not. valentine dost thou know her by my gazing on her, and yet knowest her not? speed is she not hard-favoured, sir? valentine not so fair, boy, as well-favoured. speed sir, i know that well enough. valentine what dost thou know? speed that she is not so fair as, of you, well-favoured. valentine i mean that her beauty is exquisite, but her favour infinite. speed that's because the one is painted and the other out of all count. valentine how painted? and how out of count? speed marry, sir, so painted, to make her fair, that no man counts of her beauty. valentine how esteemest thou me? i account of her beauty. speed you never saw her since she was deformed. valentine how long hath she been deformed? speed ever since you loved her. valentine i have loved her ever since i saw her; and still i see her beautiful. speed if you love her, you cannot see her. valentine why? speed because love is blind. o, that you had mine eyes; or your own eyes had the lights they were wont to have when you chid at sir proteus for going ungartered! valentine what should i see then? speed your own present folly and her passing deformity: for he, being in love, could not see to garter his hose, and you, being in love, cannot see to put on your hose. valentine belike, boy, then, you are in love; for last morning you could not see to wipe my shoes. speed true, sir; i was in love with my bed: i thank you, you swinged me for my love, which makes me the bolder to chide you for yours. valentine in conclusion, i stand affected to her. speed i would you were set, so your affection would cease. valentine last night she enjoined me to write some lines to one she loves. speed and have you? valentine i have. speed are they not lamely writ? valentine no, boy, but as well as i can do them. peace! here she comes. speed [aside] o excellent motion! o exceeding puppet! now will he interpret to her. [enter silvia] valentine madam and mistress, a thousand good-morrows. speed [aside] o, give ye good even! here's a million of manners. silvia sir valentine and servant, to you two thousand. speed [aside] he should give her interest and she gives it him. valentine as you enjoin'd me, i have writ your letter unto the secret nameless friend of yours; which i was much unwilling to proceed in but for my duty to your ladyship. silvia i thank you gentle servant: 'tis very clerkly done. valentine now trust me, madam, it came hardly off; for being ignorant to whom it goes i writ at random, very doubtfully. silvia perchance you think too much of so much pains? valentine no, madam; so it stead you, i will write please you command, a thousand times as much; and yet- silvia a pretty period! well, i guess the sequel; and yet i will not name it; and yet i care not; and yet take this again; and yet i thank you, meaning henceforth to trouble you no more. speed [aside] and yet you will; and yet another 'yet.' valentine what means your ladyship? do you not like it? silvia yes, yes; the lines are very quaintly writ; but since unwillingly, take them again. nay, take them. valentine madam, they are for you. silvia ay, ay: you writ them, sir, at my request; but i will none of them; they are for you; i would have had them writ more movingly. valentine please you, i'll write your ladyship another. silvia and when it's writ, for my sake read it over, and if it please you, so; if not, why, so. valentine if it please me, madam, what then? silvia why, if it please you, take it for your labour: and so, good morrow, servant. [exit] speed o jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, as a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple! my master sues to her, and she hath taught her suitor, he being her pupil, to become her tutor. o excellent device! was there ever heard a better, that my master, being scribe, to himself should write the letter? valentine how now, sir? what are you reasoning with yourself? speed nay, i was rhyming: 'tis you that have the reason. valentine to do what? speed to be a spokesman for madam silvia. valentine to whom? speed to yourself: why, she wooes you by a figure. valentine what figure? speed by a letter, i should say. valentine why, she hath not writ to me? speed what need she, when she hath made you write to yourself? why, do you not perceive the jest? valentine no, believe me. speed no believing you, indeed, sir. but did you perceive her earnest? valentine she gave me none, except an angry word. speed why, she hath given you a letter. valentine that's the letter i writ to her friend. speed and that letter hath she delivered, and there an end. valentine i would it were no worse. speed i'll warrant you, 'tis as well: for often have you writ to her, and she, in modesty, or else for want of idle time, could not again reply; or fearing else some messenger that might her mind discover, herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her lover. all this i speak in print, for in print i found it. why muse you, sir? 'tis dinner-time. valentine i have dined. speed ay, but hearken, sir; though the chameleon love can feed on the air, i am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain have meat. o, be not like your mistress; be moved, be moved. [exeunt] the two gentlemen of verona act ii scene ii verona. julia's house. [enter proteus and julia] proteus have patience, gentle julia. julia i must, where is no remedy. proteus when possibly i can, i will return. julia if you turn not, you will return the sooner. keep this remembrance for thy julia's sake. [giving a ring] proteus why then, we'll make exchange; here, take you this. julia and seal the bargain with a holy kiss. proteus here is my hand for my true constancy; and when that hour o'erslips me in the day wherein i sigh not, julia, for thy sake, the next ensuing hour some foul mischance torment me for my love's forgetfulness! my father stays my coming; answer not; the tide is now: nay, not thy tide of tears; that tide will stay me longer than i should. julia, farewell! [exit julia] what, gone without a word? ay, so true love should do: it cannot speak; for truth hath better deeds than words to grace it. [enter panthino] panthino sir proteus, you are stay'd for. proteus go; i come, i come. alas! this parting strikes poor lovers dumb. [exeunt] the two gentlemen of verona act ii scene iii the same. a street. [enter launce, leading a dog] launce nay, 'twill be this hour ere i have done weeping; all the kind of the launces have this very fault. i have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with sir proteus to the imperial's court. i think crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives: my mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear: he is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog: a jew would have wept to have seen our parting; why, my grandam, having no eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my parting. nay, i'll show you the manner of it. this shoe is my father: no, this left shoe is my father: no, no, this left shoe is my mother: nay, that cannot be so neither: yes, it is so, it is so, it hath the worser sole. this shoe, with the hole in it, is my mother, and this my father; a vengeance on't! there 'tis: now, sit, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand: this hat is nan, our maid: i am the dog: no, the dog is himself, and i am the dog--oh! the dog is me, and i am myself; ay, so, so. now come i to my father; father, your blessing: now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping: now should i kiss my father; well, he weeps on. now come i to my mother: o, that she could speak now like a wood woman! well, i kiss her; why, there 'tis; here's my mother's breath up and down. now come i to my sister; mark the moan she makes. now the dog all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a word; but see how i lay the dust with my tears. [enter panthino] panthino launce, away, away, aboard! thy master is shipped and thou art to post after with oars. what's the matter? why weepest thou, man? away, ass! you'll lose the tide, if you tarry any longer. launce it is no matter if the tied were lost; for it is the unkindest tied that ever any man tied. panthino what's the unkindest tide? launce why, he that's tied here, crab, my dog. panthino tut, man, i mean thou'lt lose the flood, and, in losing the flood, lose thy voyage, and, in losing thy voyage, lose thy master, and, in losing thy master, lose thy service, and, in losing thy service,--why dost thou stop my mouth? launce for fear thou shouldst lose thy tongue. panthino where should i lose my tongue? launce in thy tale. panthino in thy tail! launce lose the tide, and the voyage, and the master, and the service, and the tied! why, man, if the river were dry, i am able to fill it with my tears; if the wind were down, i could drive the boat with my sighs. panthino come, come away, man; i was sent to call thee. launce sir, call me what thou darest. panthino wilt thou go? launce well, i will go. [exeunt] the two gentlemen of verona act ii scene iv milan. the duke's palace. [enter silvia, valentine, thurio, and speed] silvia servant! valentine mistress? speed master, sir thurio frowns on you. valentine ay, boy, it's for love. speed not of you. valentine of my mistress, then. speed 'twere good you knocked him. [exit] silvia servant, you are sad. valentine indeed, madam, i seem so. thurio seem you that you are not? valentine haply i do. thurio so do counterfeits. valentine so do you. thurio what seem i that i am not? valentine wise. thurio what instance of the contrary? valentine your folly. thurio and how quote you my folly? valentine i quote it in your jerkin. thurio my jerkin is a doublet. valentine well, then, i'll double your folly. thurio how? silvia what, angry, sir thurio! do you change colour? valentine give him leave, madam; he is a kind of chameleon. thurio that hath more mind to feed on your blood than live in your air. valentine you have said, sir. thurio ay, sir, and done too, for this time. valentine i know it well, sir; you always end ere you begin. silvia a fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot off. valentine 'tis indeed, madam; we thank the giver. silvia who is that, servant? valentine yourself, sweet lady; for you gave the fire. sir thurio borrows his wit from your ladyship's looks, and spends what he borrows kindly in your company. thurio sir, if you spend word for word with me, i shall make your wit bankrupt. valentine i know it well, sir; you have an exchequer of words, and, i think, no other treasure to give your followers, for it appears by their bare liveries, that they live by your bare words. silvia no more, gentlemen, no more:--here comes my father. [enter duke] duke now, daughter silvia, you are hard beset. sir valentine, your father's in good health: what say you to a letter from your friends of much good news? valentine my lord, i will be thankful. to any happy messenger from thence. duke know ye don antonio, your countryman? valentine ay, my good lord, i know the gentleman to be of worth and worthy estimation and not without desert so well reputed. duke hath he not a son? valentine ay, my good lord; a son that well deserves the honour and regard of such a father. duke you know him well? valentine i know him as myself; for from our infancy we have conversed and spent our hours together: and though myself have been an idle truant, omitting the sweet benefit of time to clothe mine age with angel-like perfection, yet hath sir proteus, for that's his name, made use and fair advantage of his days; his years but young, but his experience old; his head unmellow'd, but his judgment ripe; and, in a word, for far behind his worth comes all the praises that i now bestow, he is complete in feature and in mind with all good grace to grace a gentleman. duke beshrew me, sir, but if he make this good, he is as worthy for an empress' love as meet to be an emperor's counsellor. well, sir, this gentleman is come to me, with commendation from great potentates; and here he means to spend his time awhile: i think 'tis no unwelcome news to you. valentine should i have wish'd a thing, it had been he. duke welcome him then according to his worth. silvia, i speak to you, and you, sir thurio; for valentine, i need not cite him to it: i will send him hither to you presently. [exit] valentine this is the gentleman i told your ladyship had come along with me, but that his mistress did hold his eyes lock'd in her crystal looks. silvia belike that now she hath enfranchised them upon some other pawn for fealty. valentine nay, sure, i think she holds them prisoners still. silvia nay, then he should be blind; and, being blind how could he see his way to seek out you? valentine why, lady, love hath twenty pair of eyes. thurio they say that love hath not an eye at all. valentine to see such lovers, thurio, as yourself: upon a homely object love can wink. silvia have done, have done; here comes the gentleman. [exit thurio] [enter proteus] valentine welcome, dear proteus! mistress, i beseech you, confirm his welcome with some special favour. silvia his worth is warrant for his welcome hither, if this be he you oft have wish'd to hear from. valentine mistress, it is: sweet lady, entertain him to be my fellow-servant to your ladyship. silvia too low a mistress for so high a servant. proteus not so, sweet lady: but too mean a servant to have a look of such a worthy mistress. valentine leave off discourse of disability: sweet lady, entertain him for your servant. proteus my duty will i boast of; nothing else. silvia and duty never yet did want his meed: servant, you are welcome to a worthless mistress. proteus i'll die on him that says so but yourself. silvia that you are welcome? proteus that you are worthless. [re-enter thurio] thurio madam, my lord your father would speak with you. silvia i wait upon his pleasure. come, sir thurio, go with me. once more, new servant, welcome: i'll leave you to confer of home affairs; when you have done, we look to hear from you. proteus we'll both attend upon your ladyship. [exeunt silvia and thurio] valentine now, tell me, how do all from whence you came? proteus your friends are well and have them much commended. valentine and how do yours? proteus i left them all in health. valentine how does your lady? and how thrives your love? proteus my tales of love were wont to weary you; i know you joy not in a love discourse. valentine ay, proteus, but that life is alter'd now: i have done penance for contemning love, whose high imperious thoughts have punish'd me with bitter fasts, with penitential groans, with nightly tears and daily heart-sore sighs; for in revenge of my contempt of love, love hath chased sleep from my enthralled eyes and made them watchers of mine own heart's sorrow. o gentle proteus, love's a mighty lord, and hath so humbled me, as, i confess, there is no woe to his correction, nor to his service no such joy on earth. now no discourse, except it be of love; now can i break my fast, dine, sup and sleep, upon the very naked name of love. proteus enough; i read your fortune in your eye. was this the idol that you worship so? valentine even she; and is she not a heavenly saint? proteus no; but she is an earthly paragon. valentine call her divine. proteus i will not flatter her. valentine o, flatter me; for love delights in praises. proteus when i was sick, you gave me bitter pills, and i must minister the like to you. valentine then speak the truth by her; if not divine, yet let her be a principality, sovereign to all the creatures on the earth. proteus except my mistress. valentine sweet, except not any; except thou wilt except against my love. proteus have i not reason to prefer mine own? valentine and i will help thee to prefer her too: she shall be dignified with this high honour- to bear my lady's train, lest the base earth should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss and, of so great a favour growing proud, disdain to root the summer-swelling flower and make rough winter everlastingly. proteus why, valentine, what braggardism is this? valentine pardon me, proteus: all i can is nothing to her whose worth makes other worthies nothing; she is alone. proteus then let her alone. valentine not for the world: why, man, she is mine own, and i as rich in having such a jewel as twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl, the water nectar and the rocks pure gold. forgive me that i do not dream on thee, because thou see'st me dote upon my love. my foolish rival, that her father likes only for his possessions are so huge, is gone with her along, and i must after, for love, thou know'st, is full of jealousy. proteus but she loves you? valentine ay, and we are betroth'd: nay, more, our, marriage-hour, with all the cunning manner of our flight, determined of; how i must climb her window, the ladder made of cords, and all the means plotted and 'greed on for my happiness. good proteus, go with me to my chamber, in these affairs to aid me with thy counsel. proteus go on before; i shall inquire you forth: i must unto the road, to disembark some necessaries that i needs must use, and then i'll presently attend you. valentine will you make haste? proteus i will. [exit valentine] even as one heat another heat expels, or as one nail by strength drives out another, so the remembrance of my former love is by a newer object quite forgotten. is it mine, or valentine's praise, her true perfection, or my false transgression, that makes me reasonless to reason thus? she is fair; and so is julia that i love- that i did love, for now my love is thaw'd; which, like a waxen image, 'gainst a fire, bears no impression of the thing it was. methinks my zeal to valentine is cold, and that i love him not as i was wont. o, but i love his lady too too much, and that's the reason i love him so little. how shall i dote on her with more advice, that thus without advice begin to love her! 'tis but her picture i have yet beheld, and that hath dazzled my reason's light; but when i look on her perfections, there is no reason but i shall be blind. if i can cheque my erring love, i will; if not, to compass her i'll use my skill. [exit] the two gentlemen of verona act ii scene v the same. a street. [enter speed and launce severally] speed launce! by mine honesty, welcome to milan! launce forswear not thyself, sweet youth, for i am not welcome. i reckon this always, that a man is never undone till he be hanged, nor never welcome to a place till some certain shot be paid and the hostess say 'welcome!' speed come on, you madcap, i'll to the alehouse with you presently; where, for one shot of five pence, thou shalt have five thousand welcomes. but, sirrah, how did thy master part with madam julia? launce marry, after they closed in earnest, they parted very fairly in jest. speed but shall she marry him? launce no. speed how then? shall he marry her? launce no, neither. speed what, are they broken? launce no, they are both as whole as a fish. speed why, then, how stands the matter with them? launce marry, thus: when it stands well with him, it stands well with her. speed what an ass art thou! i understand thee not. launce what a block art thou, that thou canst not! my staff understands me. speed what thou sayest? launce ay, and what i do too: look thee, i'll but lean, and my staff understands me. speed it stands under thee, indeed. launce why, stand-under and under-stand is all one. speed but tell me true, will't be a match? launce ask my dog: if he say ay, it will! if he say no, it will; if he shake his tail and say nothing, it will. speed the conclusion is then that it will. launce thou shalt never get such a secret from me but by a parable. speed 'tis well that i get it so. but, launce, how sayest thou, that my master is become a notable lover? launce i never knew him otherwise. speed than how? launce a notable lubber, as thou reportest him to be. speed why, thou whoreson ass, thou mistakest me. launce why, fool, i meant not thee; i meant thy master. speed i tell thee, my master is become a hot lover. launce why, i tell thee, i care not though he burn himself in love. if thou wilt, go with me to the alehouse; if not, thou art an hebrew, a jew, and not worth the name of a christian. speed why? launce because thou hast not so much charity in thee as to go to the ale with a christian. wilt thou go? speed at thy service. [exeunt] the two gentlemen of verona act ii scene vi the same. the duke's palace. [enter proteus] proteus to leave my julia, shall i be forsworn; to love fair silvia, shall i be forsworn; to wrong my friend, i shall be much forsworn; and even that power which gave me first my oath provokes me to this threefold perjury; love bade me swear and love bids me forswear. o sweet-suggesting love, if thou hast sinned, teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it! at first i did adore a twinkling star, but now i worship a celestial sun. unheedful vows may heedfully be broken, and he wants wit that wants resolved will to learn his wit to exchange the bad for better. fie, fie, unreverend tongue! to call her bad, whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferr'd with twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths. i cannot leave to love, and yet i do; but there i leave to love where i should love. julia i lose and valentine i lose: if i keep them, i needs must lose myself; if i lose them, thus find i by their loss for valentine myself, for julia silvia. i to myself am dearer than a friend, for love is still most precious in itself; and silvia--witness heaven, that made her fair!- shows julia but a swarthy ethiope. i will forget that julia is alive, remembering that my love to her is dead; and valentine i'll hold an enemy, aiming at silvia as a sweeter friend. i cannot now prove constant to myself, without some treachery used to valentine. this night he meaneth with a corded ladder to climb celestial silvia's chamber-window, myself in counsel, his competitor. now presently i'll give her father notice of their disguising and pretended flight; who, all enraged, will banish valentine; for thurio, he intends, shall wed his daughter; but, valentine being gone, i'll quickly cross by some sly trick blunt thurio's dull proceeding. love, lend me wings to make my purpose swift, as thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift! [exit] the two gentlemen of verona act ii scene vii verona. julia's house. [enter julia and lucetta] julia counsel, lucetta; gentle girl, assist me; and even in kind love i do conjure thee, who art the table wherein all my thoughts are visibly character'd and engraved, to lesson me and tell me some good mean how, with my honour, i may undertake a journey to my loving proteus. lucetta alas, the way is wearisome and long! julia a true-devoted pilgrim is not weary to measure kingdoms with his feeble steps; much less shall she that hath love's wings to fly, and when the flight is made to one so dear, of such divine perfection, as sir proteus. lucetta better forbear till proteus make return. julia o, know'st thou not his looks are my soul's food? pity the dearth that i have pined in, by longing for that food so long a time. didst thou but know the inly touch of love, thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow as seek to quench the fire of love with words. lucetta i do not seek to quench your love's hot fire, but qualify the fire's extreme rage, lest it should burn above the bounds of reason. julia the more thou damm'st it up, the more it burns. the current that with gentle murmur glides, thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage; but when his fair course is not hindered, he makes sweet music with the enamell'ed stones, giving a gentle kiss to every sedge he overtaketh in his pilgrimage, and so by many winding nooks he strays with willing sport to the wild ocean. then let me go and hinder not my course i'll be as patient as a gentle stream and make a pastime of each weary step, till the last step have brought me to my love; and there i'll rest, as after much turmoil a blessed soul doth in elysium. lucetta but in what habit will you go along? julia not like a woman; for i would prevent the loose encounters of lascivious men: gentle lucetta, fit me with such weeds as may beseem some well-reputed page. lucetta why, then, your ladyship must cut your hair. julia no, girl, i'll knit it up in silken strings with twenty odd-conceited true-love knots. to be fantastic may become a youth of greater time than i shall show to be. lucetta what fashion, madam shall i make your breeches? julia that fits as well as 'tell me, good my lord, what compass will you wear your farthingale?' why even what fashion thou best likest, lucetta. lucetta you must needs have them with a codpiece, madam. julia out, out, lucetta! that would be ill-favour'd. lucetta a round hose, madam, now's not worth a pin, unless you have a codpiece to stick pins on. julia lucetta, as thou lovest me, let me have what thou thinkest meet and is most mannerly. but tell me, wench, how will the world repute me for undertaking so unstaid a journey? i fear me, it will make me scandalized. lucetta if you think so, then stay at home and go not. julia nay, that i will not. lucetta then never dream on infamy, but go. if proteus like your journey when you come, no matter who's displeased when you are gone: i fear me, he will scarce be pleased withal. julia that is the least, lucetta, of my fear: a thousand oaths, an ocean of his tears and instances of infinite of love warrant me welcome to my proteus. lucetta all these are servants to deceitful men. julia base men, that use them to so base effect! but truer stars did govern proteus' birth his words are bonds, his oaths are oracles, his love sincere, his thoughts immaculate, his tears pure messengers sent from his heart, his heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth. lucetta pray heaven he prove so, when you come to him! julia now, as thou lovest me, do him not that wrong to bear a hard opinion of his truth: only deserve my love by loving him; and presently go with me to my chamber, to take a note of what i stand in need of, to furnish me upon my longing journey. all that is mine i leave at thy dispose, my goods, my lands, my reputation; only, in lieu thereof, dispatch me hence. come, answer not, but to it presently! i am impatient of my tarriance. [exeunt] the two gentlemen of verona act iii scene i milan. the duke's palace. [enter duke, thurio, and proteus] duke sir thurio, give us leave, i pray, awhile; we have some secrets to confer about. [exit thurio] now, tell me, proteus, what's your will with me? proteus my gracious lord, that which i would discover the law of friendship bids me to conceal; but when i call to mind your gracious favours done to me, undeserving as i am, my duty pricks me on to utter that which else no worldly good should draw from me. know, worthy prince, sir valentine, my friend, this night intends to steal away your daughter: myself am one made privy to the plot. i know you have determined to bestow her on thurio, whom your gentle daughter hates; and should she thus be stol'n away from you, it would be much vexation to your age. thus, for my duty's sake, i rather chose to cross my friend in his intended drift than, by concealing it, heap on your head a pack of sorrows which would press you down, being unprevented, to your timeless grave. duke proteus, i thank thee for thine honest care; which to requite, command me while i live. this love of theirs myself have often seen, haply when they have judged me fast asleep, and oftentimes have purposed to forbid sir valentine her company and my court: but fearing lest my jealous aim might err and so unworthily disgrace the man, a rashness that i ever yet have shunn'd, i gave him gentle looks, thereby to find that which thyself hast now disclosed to me. and, that thou mayst perceive my fear of this, knowing that tender youth is soon suggested, i nightly lodge her in an upper tower, the key whereof myself have ever kept; and thence she cannot be convey'd away. proteus know, noble lord, they have devised a mean how he her chamber-window will ascend and with a corded ladder fetch her down; for which the youthful lover now is gone and this way comes he with it presently; where, if it please you, you may intercept him. but, good my lord, do it so cunningly that my discovery be not aimed at; for love of you, not hate unto my friend, hath made me publisher of this pretence. duke upon mine honour, he shall never know that i had any light from thee of this. proteus adieu, my lord; sir valentine is coming. [exit] [enter valentine] duke sir valentine, whither away so fast? valentine please it your grace, there is a messenger that stays to bear my letters to my friends, and i am going to deliver them. duke be they of much import? valentine the tenor of them doth but signify my health and happy being at your court. duke nay then, no matter; stay with me awhile; i am to break with thee of some affairs that touch me near, wherein thou must be secret. 'tis not unknown to thee that i have sought to match my friend sir thurio to my daughter. valentine i know it well, my lord; and, sure, the match were rich and honourable; besides, the gentleman is full of virtue, bounty, worth and qualities beseeming such a wife as your fair daughter: cannot your grace win her to fancy him? duke no, trust me; she is peevish, sullen, froward, proud, disobedient, stubborn, lacking duty, neither regarding that she is my child nor fearing me as if i were her father; and, may i say to thee, this pride of hers, upon advice, hath drawn my love from her; and, where i thought the remnant of mine age should have been cherish'd by her child-like duty, i now am full resolved to take a wife and turn her out to who will take her in: then let her beauty be her wedding-dower; for me and my possessions she esteems not. valentine what would your grace have me to do in this? duke there is a lady in verona here whom i affect; but she is nice and coy and nought esteems my aged eloquence: now therefore would i have thee to my tutor- for long agone i have forgot to court; besides, the fashion of the time is changed- how and which way i may bestow myself to be regarded in her sun-bright eye. valentine win her with gifts, if she respect not words: dumb jewels often in their silent kind more than quick words do move a woman's mind. duke but she did scorn a present that i sent her. valentine a woman sometimes scorns what best contents her. send her another; never give her o'er; for scorn at first makes after-love the more. if she do frown, 'tis not in hate of you, but rather to beget more love in you: if she do chide, 'tis not to have you gone; for why, the fools are mad, if left alone. take no repulse, whatever she doth say; for 'get you gone,' she doth not mean 'away!' flatter and praise, commend, extol their graces; though ne'er so black, say they have angels' faces. that man that hath a tongue, i say, is no man, if with his tongue he cannot win a woman. duke but she i mean is promised by her friends unto a youthful gentleman of worth, and kept severely from resort of men, that no man hath access by day to her. valentine why, then, i would resort to her by night. duke ay, but the doors be lock'd and keys kept safe, that no man hath recourse to her by night. valentine what lets but one may enter at her window? duke her chamber is aloft, far from the ground, and built so shelving that one cannot climb it without apparent hazard of his life. valentine why then, a ladder quaintly made of cords, to cast up, with a pair of anchoring hooks, would serve to scale another hero's tower, so bold leander would adventure it. duke now, as thou art a gentleman of blood, advise me where i may have such a ladder. valentine when would you use it? pray, sir, tell me that. duke this very night; for love is like a child, that longs for every thing that he can come by. valentine by seven o'clock i'll get you such a ladder. duke but, hark thee; i will go to her alone: how shall i best convey the ladder thither? valentine it will be light, my lord, that you may bear it under a cloak that is of any length. duke a cloak as long as thine will serve the turn? valentine ay, my good lord. duke then let me see thy cloak: i'll get me one of such another length. valentine why, any cloak will serve the turn, my lord. duke how shall i fashion me to wear a cloak? i pray thee, let me feel thy cloak upon me. what letter is this same? what's here? 'to silvia'! and here an engine fit for my proceeding. i'll be so bold to break the seal for once. [reads] 'my thoughts do harbour with my silvia nightly, and slaves they are to me that send them flying: o, could their master come and go as lightly, himself would lodge where senseless they are lying! my herald thoughts in thy pure bosom rest them: while i, their king, that hither them importune, do curse the grace that with such grace hath bless'd them, because myself do want my servants' fortune: i curse myself, for they are sent by me, that they should harbour where their lord would be.' what's here? 'silvia, this night i will enfranchise thee.' 'tis so; and here's the ladder for the purpose. why, phaeton,--for thou art merops' son,- wilt thou aspire to guide the heavenly car and with thy daring folly burn the world? wilt thou reach stars, because they shine on thee? go, base intruder! overweening slave! bestow thy fawning smiles on equal mates, and think my patience, more than thy desert, is privilege for thy departure hence: thank me for this more than for all the favours which all too much i have bestow'd on thee. but if thou linger in my territories longer than swiftest expedition will give thee time to leave our royal court, by heaven! my wrath shall far exceed the love i ever bore my daughter or thyself. be gone! i will not hear thy vain excuse; but, as thou lovest thy life, make speed from hence. [exit] valentine and why not death rather than living torment? to die is to be banish'd from myself; and silvia is myself: banish'd from her is self from self: a deadly banishment! what light is light, if silvia be not seen? what joy is joy, if silvia be not by? unless it be to think that she is by and feed upon the shadow of perfection except i be by silvia in the night, there is no music in the nightingale; unless i look on silvia in the day, there is no day for me to look upon; she is my essence, and i leave to be, if i be not by her fair influence foster'd, illumined, cherish'd, kept alive. i fly not death, to fly his deadly doom: tarry i here, i but attend on death: but, fly i hence, i fly away from life. [enter proteus and launce] proteus run, boy, run, run, and seek him out. launce soho, soho! proteus what seest thou? launce him we go to find: there's not a hair on's head but 'tis a valentine. proteus valentine? valentine no. proteus who then? his spirit? valentine neither. proteus what then? valentine nothing. launce can nothing speak? master, shall i strike? proteus who wouldst thou strike? launce nothing. proteus villain, forbear. launce why, sir, i'll strike nothing: i pray you,- proteus sirrah, i say, forbear. friend valentine, a word. valentine my ears are stopt and cannot hear good news, so much of bad already hath possess'd them. proteus then in dumb silence will i bury mine, for they are harsh, untuneable and bad. valentine is silvia dead? proteus no, valentine. valentine no valentine, indeed, for sacred silvia. hath she forsworn me? proteus no, valentine. valentine no valentine, if silvia have forsworn me. what is your news? launce sir, there is a proclamation that you are vanished. proteus that thou art banished--o, that's the news!- from hence, from silvia and from me thy friend. valentine o, i have fed upon this woe already, and now excess of it will make me surfeit. doth silvia know that i am banished? proteus ay, ay; and she hath offer'd to the doom- which, unreversed, stands in effectual force- a sea of melting pearl, which some call tears: those at her father's churlish feet she tender'd; with them, upon her knees, her humble self; wringing her hands, whose whiteness so became them as if but now they waxed pale for woe: but neither bended knees, pure hands held up, sad sighs, deep groans, nor silver-shedding tears, could penetrate her uncompassionate sire; but valentine, if he be ta'en, must die. besides, her intercession chafed him so, when she for thy repeal was suppliant, that to close prison he commanded her, with many bitter threats of biding there. valentine no more; unless the next word that thou speak'st have some malignant power upon my life: if so, i pray thee, breathe it in mine ear, as ending anthem of my endless dolour. proteus cease to lament for that thou canst not help, and study help for that which thou lament'st. time is the nurse and breeder of all good. here if thou stay, thou canst not see thy love; besides, thy staying will abridge thy life. hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that and manage it against despairing thoughts. thy letters may be here, though thou art hence; which, being writ to me, shall be deliver'd even in the milk-white bosom of thy love. the time now serves not to expostulate: come, i'll convey thee through the city-gate; and, ere i part with thee, confer at large of all that may concern thy love-affairs. as thou lovest silvia, though not for thyself, regard thy danger, and along with me! valentine i pray thee, launce, an if thou seest my boy, bid him make haste and meet me at the north-gate. proteus go, sirrah, find him out. come, valentine. valentine o my dear silvia! hapless valentine! [exeunt valentine and proteus] launce i am but a fool, look you; and yet i have the wit to think my master is a kind of a knave: but that's all one, if he be but one knave. he lives not now that knows me to be in love; yet i am in love; but a team of horse shall not pluck that from me; nor who 'tis i love; and yet 'tis a woman; but what woman, i will not tell myself; and yet 'tis a milkmaid; yet 'tis not a maid, for she hath had gossips; yet 'tis a maid, for she is her master's maid, and serves for wages. she hath more qualities than a water-spaniel; which is much in a bare christian. [pulling out a paper] here is the cate-log of her condition. 'imprimis: she can fetch and carry.' why, a horse can do no more: nay, a horse cannot fetch, but only carry; therefore is she better than a jade. 'item: she can milk;' look you, a sweet virtue in a maid with clean hands. [enter speed] speed how now, signior launce! what news with your mastership? launce with my master's ship? why, it is at sea. speed well, your old vice still; mistake the word. what news, then, in your paper? launce the blackest news that ever thou heardest. speed why, man, how black? launce why, as black as ink. speed let me read them. launce fie on thee, jolt-head! thou canst not read. speed thou liest; i can. launce i will try thee. tell me this: who begot thee? speed marry, the son of my grandfather. launce o illiterate loiterer! it was the son of thy grandmother: this proves that thou canst not read. speed come, fool, come; try me in thy paper. launce there; and st. nicholas be thy speed! speed [reads] 'imprimis: she can milk.' launce ay, that she can. speed 'item: she brews good ale.' launce and thereof comes the proverb: 'blessing of your heart, you brew good ale.' speed 'item: she can sew.' launce that's as much as to say, can she so? speed 'item: she can knit.' launce what need a man care for a stock with a wench, when she can knit him a stock? speed 'item: she can wash and scour.' launce a special virtue: for then she need not be washed and scoured. speed 'item: she can spin.' launce then may i set the world on wheels, when she can spin for her living. speed 'item: she hath many nameless virtues.' launce that's as much as to say, bastard virtues; that, indeed, know not their fathers and therefore have no names. speed 'here follow her vices.' launce close at the heels of her virtues. speed 'item: she is not to be kissed fasting in respect of her breath.' launce well, that fault may be mended with a breakfast. read on. speed 'item: she hath a sweet mouth.' launce that makes amends for her sour breath. speed 'item: she doth talk in her sleep.' launce it's no matter for that, so she sleep not in her talk. speed 'item: she is slow in words.' launce o villain, that set this down among her vices! to be slow in words is a woman's only virtue: i pray thee, out with't, and place it for her chief virtue. speed 'item: she is proud.' launce out with that too; it was eve's legacy, and cannot be ta'en from her. speed 'item: she hath no teeth.' launce i care not for that neither, because i love crusts. speed 'item: she is curst.' launce well, the best is, she hath no teeth to bite. speed 'item: she will often praise her liquor.' launce if her liquor be good, she shall: if she will not, i will; for good things should be praised. speed 'item: she is too liberal.' launce of her tongue she cannot, for that's writ down she is slow of; of her purse she shall not, for that i'll keep shut: now, of another thing she may, and that cannot i help. well, proceed. speed 'item: she hath more hair than wit, and more faults than hairs, and more wealth than faults.' launce stop there; i'll have her: she was mine, and not mine, twice or thrice in that last article. rehearse that once more. speed 'item: she hath more hair than wit,'- launce more hair than wit? it may be; i'll prove it. the cover of the salt hides the salt, and therefore it is more than the salt; the hair that covers the wit is more than the wit, for the greater hides the less. what's next? speed 'and more faults than hairs,'- launce that's monstrous: o, that that were out! speed 'and more wealth than faults.' launce why, that word makes the faults gracious. well, i'll have her; and if it be a match, as nothing is impossible,- speed what then? launce why, then will i tell thee--that thy master stays for thee at the north-gate. speed for me? launce for thee! ay, who art thou? he hath stayed for a better man than thee. speed and must i go to him? launce thou must run to him, for thou hast stayed so long that going will scarce serve the turn. speed why didst not tell me sooner? pox of your love letters! [exit] launce now will he be swinged for reading my letter; an unmannerly slave, that will thrust himself into secrets! i'll after, to rejoice in the boy's correction. [exit] the two gentlemen of verona act iii scene ii the same. the duke's palace. [enter duke and thurio] duke sir thurio, fear not but that she will love you, now valentine is banish'd from her sight. thurio since his exile she hath despised me most, forsworn my company and rail'd at me, that i am desperate of obtaining her. duke this weak impress of love is as a figure trenched in ice, which with an hour's heat dissolves to water and doth lose his form. a little time will melt her frozen thoughts and worthless valentine shall be forgot. [enter proteus] how now, sir proteus! is your countryman according to our proclamation gone? proteus gone, my good lord. duke my daughter takes his going grievously. proteus a little time, my lord, will kill that grief. duke so i believe; but thurio thinks not so. proteus, the good conceit i hold of thee- for thou hast shown some sign of good desert- makes me the better to confer with thee. proteus longer than i prove loyal to your grace let me not live to look upon your grace. duke thou know'st how willingly i would effect the match between sir thurio and my daughter. proteus i do, my lord. duke and also, i think, thou art not ignorant how she opposes her against my will proteus she did, my lord, when valentine was here. duke ay, and perversely she persevers so. what might we do to make the girl forget the love of valentine and love sir thurio? proteus the best way is to slander valentine with falsehood, cowardice and poor descent, three things that women highly hold in hate. duke ay, but she'll think that it is spoke in hate. proteus ay, if his enemy deliver it: therefore it must with circumstance be spoken by one whom she esteemeth as his friend. duke then you must undertake to slander him. proteus and that, my lord, i shall be loath to do: 'tis an ill office for a gentleman, especially against his very friend. duke where your good word cannot advantage him, your slander never can endamage him; therefore the office is indifferent, being entreated to it by your friend. proteus you have prevail'd, my lord; if i can do it by ought that i can speak in his dispraise, she shall not long continue love to him. but say this weed her love from valentine, it follows not that she will love sir thurio. thurio therefore, as you unwind her love from him, lest it should ravel and be good to none, you must provide to bottom it on me; which must be done by praising me as much as you in worth dispraise sir valentine. duke and, proteus, we dare trust you in this kind, because we know, on valentine's report, you are already love's firm votary and cannot soon revolt and change your mind. upon this warrant shall you have access where you with silvia may confer at large; for she is lumpish, heavy, melancholy, and, for your friend's sake, will be glad of you; where you may temper her by your persuasion to hate young valentine and love my friend. proteus as much as i can do, i will effect: but you, sir thurio, are not sharp enough; you must lay lime to tangle her desires by wailful sonnets, whose composed rhymes should be full-fraught with serviceable vows. duke ay, much is the force of heaven-bred poesy. proteus say that upon the altar of her beauty you sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart: write till your ink be dry, and with your tears moist it again, and frame some feeling line that may discover such integrity: for orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews, whose golden touch could soften steel and stones, make tigers tame and huge leviathans forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands. after your dire-lamenting elegies, visit by night your lady's chamber-window with some sweet concert; to their instruments tune a deploring dump: the night's dead silence will well become such sweet-complaining grievance. this, or else nothing, will inherit her. duke this discipline shows thou hast been in love. thurio and thy advice this night i'll put in practise. therefore, sweet proteus, my direction-giver, let us into the city presently to sort some gentlemen well skill'd in music. i have a sonnet that will serve the turn to give the onset to thy good advice. duke about it, gentlemen! proteus we'll wait upon your grace till after supper, and afterward determine our proceedings. duke even now about it! i will pardon you. [exeunt] the two gentlemen of verona act iv scene i the frontiers of mantua. a forest. [enter certain outlaws] first outlaw fellows, stand fast; i see a passenger. second outlaw if there be ten, shrink not, but down with 'em. [enter valentine and speed] third outlaw stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye: if not: we'll make you sit and rifle you. speed sir, we are undone; these are the villains that all the travellers do fear so much. valentine my friends,- first outlaw that's not so, sir: we are your enemies. second outlaw peace! we'll hear him. third outlaw ay, by my beard, will we, for he's a proper man. valentine then know that i have little wealth to lose: a man i am cross'd with adversity; my riches are these poor habiliments, of which if you should here disfurnish me, you take the sum and substance that i have. second outlaw whither travel you? valentine to verona. first outlaw whence came you? valentine from milan. third outlaw have you long sojourned there? valentine some sixteen months, and longer might have stay'd, if crooked fortune had not thwarted me. first outlaw what, were you banish'd thence? valentine i was. second outlaw for what offence? valentine for that which now torments me to rehearse: i kill'd a man, whose death i much repent; but yet i slew him manfully in fight, without false vantage or base treachery. first outlaw why, ne'er repent it, if it were done so. but were you banish'd for so small a fault? valentine i was, and held me glad of such a doom. second outlaw have you the tongues? valentine my youthful travel therein made me happy, or else i often had been miserable. third outlaw by the bare scalp of robin hood's fat friar, this fellow were a king for our wild faction! first outlaw we'll have him. sirs, a word. speed master, be one of them; it's an honourable kind of thievery. valentine peace, villain! second outlaw tell us this: have you any thing to take to? valentine nothing but my fortune. third outlaw know, then, that some of us are gentlemen, such as the fury of ungovern'd youth thrust from the company of awful men: myself was from verona banished for practising to steal away a lady, an heir, and near allied unto the duke. second outlaw and i from mantua, for a gentleman, who, in my mood, i stabb'd unto the heart. first outlaw and i for such like petty crimes as these, but to the purpose--for we cite our faults, that they may hold excus'd our lawless lives; and partly, seeing you are beautified with goodly shape and by your own report a linguist and a man of such perfection as we do in our quality much want- second outlaw indeed, because you are a banish'd man, therefore, above the rest, we parley to you: are you content to be our general? to make a virtue of necessity and live, as we do, in this wilderness? third outlaw what say'st thou? wilt thou be of our consort? say ay, and be the captain of us all: we'll do thee homage and be ruled by thee, love thee as our commander and our king. first outlaw but if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest. second outlaw thou shalt not live to brag what we have offer'd. valentine i take your offer and will live with you, provided that you do no outrages on silly women or poor passengers. third outlaw no, we detest such vile base practises. come, go with us, we'll bring thee to our crews, and show thee all the treasure we have got, which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose. [exeunt] the two gentlemen of verona act iv scene ii milan. outside the duke's palace, under silvia's chamber. [enter proteus] proteus already have i been false to valentine and now i must be as unjust to thurio. under the colour of commending him, i have access my own love to prefer: but silvia is too fair, too true, too holy, to be corrupted with my worthless gifts. when i protest true loyalty to her, she twits me with my falsehood to my friend; when to her beauty i commend my vows, she bids me think how i have been forsworn in breaking faith with julia whom i loved: and notwithstanding all her sudden quips, the least whereof would quell a lover's hope, yet, spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love, the more it grows and fawneth on her still. but here comes thurio: now must we to her window, and give some evening music to her ear. [enter thurio and musicians] thurio how now, sir proteus, are you crept before us? proteus ay, gentle thurio: for you know that love will creep in service where it cannot go. thurio ay, but i hope, sir, that you love not here. proteus sir, but i do; or else i would be hence. thurio who? silvia? proteus ay, silvia; for your sake. thurio i thank you for your own. now, gentlemen, let's tune, and to it lustily awhile. [enter, at a distance, host, and julia in boy's clothes] host now, my young guest, methinks you're allycholly: i pray you, why is it? julia marry, mine host, because i cannot be merry. host come, we'll have you merry: i'll bring you where you shall hear music and see the gentleman that you asked for. julia but shall i hear him speak? host ay, that you shall. julia that will be music. [music plays] host hark, hark! julia is he among these? host ay: but, peace! let's hear 'em. song. who is silvia? what is she, that all our swains commend her? holy, fair and wise is she; the heaven such grace did lend her, that she might admired be. is she kind as she is fair? for beauty lives with kindness. love doth to her eyes repair, to help him of his blindness, and, being help'd, inhabits there. then to silvia let us sing, that silvia is excelling; she excels each mortal thing upon the dull earth dwelling: to her let us garlands bring. host how now! are you sadder than you were before? how do you, man? the music likes you not. julia you mistake; the musician likes me not. host why, my pretty youth? julia he plays false, father. host how? out of tune on the strings? julia not so; but yet so false that he grieves my very heart-strings. host you have a quick ear. julia ay, i would i were deaf; it makes me have a slow heart. host i perceive you delight not in music. julia not a whit, when it jars so. host hark, what fine change is in the music! julia ay, that change is the spite. host you would have them always play but one thing? julia i would always have one play but one thing. but, host, doth this sir proteus that we talk on often resort unto this gentlewoman? host i tell you what launce, his man, told me: he loved her out of all nick. julia where is launce? host gone to seek his dog; which tomorrow, by his master's command, he must carry for a present to his lady. julia peace! stand aside: the company parts. proteus sir thurio, fear not you: i will so plead that you shall say my cunning drift excels. thurio where meet we? proteus at saint gregory's well. thurio farewell. [exeunt thurio and musicians] [enter silvia above] proteus madam, good even to your ladyship. silvia i thank you for your music, gentlemen. who is that that spake? proteus one, lady, if you knew his pure heart's truth, you would quickly learn to know him by his voice. silvia sir proteus, as i take it. proteus sir proteus, gentle lady, and your servant. silvia what's your will? proteus that i may compass yours. silvia you have your wish; my will is even this: that presently you hie you home to bed. thou subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man! think'st thou i am so shallow, so conceitless, to be seduced by thy flattery, that hast deceived so many with thy vows? return, return, and make thy love amends. for me, by this pale queen of night i swear, i am so far from granting thy request that i despise thee for thy wrongful suit, and by and by intend to chide myself even for this time i spend in talking to thee. proteus i grant, sweet love, that i did love a lady; but she is dead. julia [aside] 'twere false, if i should speak it; for i am sure she is not buried. silvia say that she be; yet valentine thy friend survives; to whom, thyself art witness, i am betroth'd: and art thou not ashamed to wrong him with thy importunacy? proteus i likewise hear that valentine is dead. silvia and so suppose am i; for in his grave assure thyself my love is buried. proteus sweet lady, let me rake it from the earth. silvia go to thy lady's grave and call hers thence, or, at the least, in hers sepulchre thine. julia [aside] he heard not that. proteus madam, if your heart be so obdurate, vouchsafe me yet your picture for my love, the picture that is hanging in your chamber; to that i'll speak, to that i'll sigh and weep: for since the substance of your perfect self is else devoted, i am but a shadow; and to your shadow will i make true love. julia [aside] if 'twere a substance, you would, sure, deceive it, and make it but a shadow, as i am. silvia i am very loath to be your idol, sir; but since your falsehood shall become you well to worship shadows and adore false shapes, send to me in the morning and i'll send it: and so, good rest. proteus as wretches have o'ernight that wait for execution in the morn. [exeunt proteus and silvia severally] julia host, will you go? host by my halidom, i was fast asleep. julia pray you, where lies sir proteus? host marry, at my house. trust me, i think 'tis almost day. julia not so; but it hath been the longest night that e'er i watch'd and the most heaviest. [exeunt] the two gentlemen of verona act iv scene iii the same. [enter eglamour] eglamour this is the hour that madam silvia entreated me to call and know her mind: there's some great matter she'ld employ me in. madam, madam! [enter silvia above] silvia who calls? eglamour your servant and your friend; one that attends your ladyship's command. silvia sir eglamour, a thousand times good morrow. eglamour as many, worthy lady, to yourself: according to your ladyship's impose, i am thus early come to know what service it is your pleasure to command me in. silvia o eglamour, thou art a gentleman- think not i flatter, for i swear i do not- valiant, wise, remorseful, well accomplish'd: thou art not ignorant what dear good will i bear unto the banish'd valentine, nor how my father would enforce me marry vain thurio, whom my very soul abhors. thyself hast loved; and i have heard thee say no grief did ever come so near thy heart as when thy lady and thy true love died, upon whose grave thou vow'dst pure chastity. sir eglamour, i would to valentine, to mantua, where i hear he makes abode; and, for the ways are dangerous to pass, i do desire thy worthy company, upon whose faith and honour i repose. urge not my father's anger, eglamour, but think upon my grief, a lady's grief, and on the justice of my flying hence, to keep me from a most unholy match, which heaven and fortune still rewards with plagues. i do desire thee, even from a heart as full of sorrows as the sea of sands, to bear me company and go with me: if not, to hide what i have said to thee, that i may venture to depart alone. eglamour madam, i pity much your grievances; which since i know they virtuously are placed, i give consent to go along with you, recking as little what betideth me as much i wish all good befortune you. when will you go? silvia this evening coming. eglamour where shall i meet you? silvia at friar patrick's cell, where i intend holy confession. eglamour i will not fail your ladyship. good morrow, gentle lady. silvia good morrow, kind sir eglamour. [exeunt severally] the two gentlemen of verona act iv scene iv the same. [enter launce, with his his dog] launce when a man's servant shall play the cur with him, look you, it goes hard: one that i brought up of a puppy; one that i saved from drowning, when three or four of his blind brothers and sisters went to it. i have taught him, even as one would say precisely, 'thus i would teach a dog.' i was sent to deliver him as a present to mistress silvia from my master; and i came no sooner into the dining-chamber but he steps me to her trencher and steals her capon's leg: o, 'tis a foul thing when a cur cannot keep himself in all companies! i would have, as one should say, one that takes upon him to be a dog indeed, to be, as it were, a dog at all things. if i had not had more wit than he, to take a fault upon me that he did, i think verily he had been hanged for't; sure as i live, he had suffered for't; you shall judge. he thrusts me himself into the company of three or four gentlemanlike dogs under the duke's table: he had not been there--bless the mark!--a pissing while, but all the chamber smelt him. 'out with the dog!' says one: 'what cur is that?' says another: 'whip him out' says the third: 'hang him up' says the duke. i, having been acquainted with the smell before, knew it was crab, and goes me to the fellow that whips the dogs: 'friend,' quoth i, 'you mean to whip the dog?' 'ay, marry, do i,' quoth he. 'you do him the more wrong,' quoth i; ''twas i did the thing you wot of.' he makes me no more ado, but whips me out of the chamber. how many masters would do this for his servant? nay, i'll be sworn, i have sat in the stocks for puddings he hath stolen, otherwise he had been executed; i have stood on the pillory for geese he hath killed, otherwise he had suffered for't. thou thinkest not of this now. nay, i remember the trick you served me when i took my leave of madam silvia: did not i bid thee still mark me and do as i do? when didst thou see me heave up my leg and make water against a gentlewoman's farthingale? didst thou ever see me do such a trick? [enter proteus and julia] proteus sebastian is thy name? i like thee well and will employ thee in some service presently. julia in what you please: i'll do what i can. proteus i hope thou wilt. [to launce] how now, you whoreson peasant! where have you been these two days loitering? launce marry, sir, i carried mistress silvia the dog you bade me. proteus and what says she to my little jewel? launce marry, she says your dog was a cur, and tells you currish thanks is good enough for such a present. proteus but she received my dog? launce no, indeed, did she not: here have i brought him back again. proteus what, didst thou offer her this from me? launce ay, sir: the other squirrel was stolen from me by the hangman boys in the market-place: and then i offered her mine own, who is a dog as big as ten of yours, and therefore the gift the greater. proteus go get thee hence, and find my dog again, or ne'er return again into my sight. away, i say! stay'st thou to vex me here? [exit launce] a slave, that still an end turns me to shame! sebastian, i have entertained thee, partly that i have need of such a youth that can with some discretion do my business, for 'tis no trusting to yond foolish lout, but chiefly for thy face and thy behavior, which, if my augury deceive me not, witness good bringing up, fortune and truth: therefore know thou, for this i entertain thee. go presently and take this ring with thee, deliver it to madam silvia: she loved me well deliver'd it to me. julia it seems you loved not her, to leave her token. she is dead, belike? proteus not so; i think she lives. julia alas! proteus why dost thou cry 'alas'? julia i cannot choose but pity her. proteus wherefore shouldst thou pity her? julia because methinks that she loved you as well as you do love your lady silvia: she dreams of him that has forgot her love; you dote on her that cares not for your love. 'tis pity love should be so contrary; and thinking of it makes me cry 'alas!' proteus well, give her that ring and therewithal this letter. that's her chamber. tell my lady i claim the promise for her heavenly picture. your message done, hie home unto my chamber, where thou shalt find me, sad and solitary. [exit] julia how many women would do such a message? alas, poor proteus! thou hast entertain'd a fox to be the shepherd of thy lambs. alas, poor fool! why do i pity him that with his very heart despiseth me? because he loves her, he despiseth me; because i love him i must pity him. this ring i gave him when he parted from me, to bind him to remember my good will; and now am i, unhappy messenger, to plead for that which i would not obtain, to carry that which i would have refused, to praise his faith which i would have dispraised. i am my master's true-confirmed love; but cannot be true servant to my master, unless i prove false traitor to myself. yet will i woo for him, but yet so coldly as, heaven it knows, i would not have him speed. [enter silvia, attended] gentlewoman, good day! i pray you, be my mean to bring me where to speak with madam silvia. silvia what would you with her, if that i be she? julia if you be she, i do entreat your patience to hear me speak the message i am sent on. silvia from whom? julia from my master, sir proteus, madam. silvia o, he sends you for a picture. julia ay, madam. silvia ursula, bring my picture here. go give your master this: tell him from me, one julia, that his changing thoughts forget, would better fit his chamber than this shadow. julia madam, please you peruse this letter.- pardon me, madam; i have unadvised deliver'd you a paper that i should not: this is the letter to your ladyship. silvia i pray thee, let me look on that again. julia it may not be; good madam, pardon me. silvia there, hold! i will not look upon your master's lines: i know they are stuff'd with protestations and full of new-found oaths; which he will break as easily as i do tear his paper. julia madam, he sends your ladyship this ring. silvia the more shame for him that he sends it me; for i have heard him say a thousand times his julia gave it him at his departure. though his false finger have profaned the ring, mine shall not do his julia so much wrong. julia she thanks you. silvia what say'st thou? julia i thank you, madam, that you tender her. poor gentlewoman! my master wrongs her much. silvia dost thou know her? julia almost as well as i do know myself: to think upon her woes i do protest that i have wept a hundred several times. silvia belike she thinks that proteus hath forsook her. julia i think she doth; and that's her cause of sorrow. silvia is she not passing fair? julia she hath been fairer, madam, than she is: when she did think my master loved her well, she, in my judgment, was as fair as you: but since she did neglect her looking-glass and threw her sun-expelling mask away, the air hath starved the roses in her cheeks and pinch'd the lily-tincture of her face, that now she is become as black as i. silvia how tall was she? julia about my stature; for at pentecost, when all our pageants of delight were play'd, our youth got me to play the woman's part, and i was trimm'd in madam julia's gown, which served me as fit, by all men's judgments, as if the garment had been made for me: therefore i know she is about my height. and at that time i made her weep agood, for i did play a lamentable part: madam, 'twas ariadne passioning for theseus' perjury and unjust flight; which i so lively acted with my tears that my poor mistress, moved therewithal, wept bitterly; and would i might be dead if i in thought felt not her very sorrow! silvia she is beholding to thee, gentle youth. alas, poor lady, desolate and left! i weep myself to think upon thy words. here, youth, there is my purse; i give thee this for thy sweet mistress' sake, because thou lovest her. farewell. [exit silvia, with attendants] julia and she shall thank you for't, if e'er you know her. a virtuous gentlewoman, mild and beautiful i hope my master's suit will be but cold, since she respects my mistress' love so much. alas, how love can trifle with itself! here is her picture: let me see; i think, if i had such a tire, this face of mine were full as lovely as is this of hers: and yet the painter flatter'd her a little, unless i flatter with myself too much. her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow: if that be all the difference in his love, i'll get me such a colour'd periwig. her eyes are grey as glass, and so are mine: ay, but her forehead's low, and mine's as high. what should it be that he respects in her but i can make respective in myself, if this fond love were not a blinded god? come, shadow, come and take this shadow up, for 'tis thy rival. o thou senseless form, thou shalt be worshipp'd, kiss'd, loved and adored! and, were there sense in his idolatry, my substance should be statue in thy stead. i'll use thee kindly for thy mistress' sake, that used me so; or else, by jove i vow, i should have scratch'd out your unseeing eyes to make my master out of love with thee! [exit] the two gentlemen of verona act v scene i milan. an abbey. [enter eglamour] eglamour the sun begins to gild the western sky; and now it is about the very hour that silvia, at friar patrick's cell, should meet me. she will not fail, for lovers break not hours, unless it be to come before their time; so much they spur their expedition. see where she comes. [enter silvia] lady, a happy evening! silvia amen, amen! go on, good eglamour, out at the postern by the abbey-wall: i fear i am attended by some spies. eglamour fear not: the forest is not three leagues off; if we recover that, we are sure enough. [exeunt] the two gentlemen of verona act v scene ii the same. the duke's palace. [enter thurio, proteus, and julia] thurio sir proteus, what says silvia to my suit? proteus o, sir, i find her milder than she was; and yet she takes exceptions at your person. thurio what, that my leg is too long? proteus no; that it is too little. thurio i'll wear a boot, to make it somewhat rounder. julia [aside] but love will not be spurr'd to what it loathes. thurio what says she to my face? proteus she says it is a fair one. thurio nay then, the wanton lies; my face is black. proteus but pearls are fair; and the old saying is, black men are pearls in beauteous ladies' eyes. julia [aside] 'tis true; such pearls as put out ladies' eyes; for i had rather wink than look on them. thurio how likes she my discourse? proteus ill, when you talk of war. thurio but well, when i discourse of love and peace? julia [aside] but better, indeed, when you hold your peace. thurio what says she to my valour? proteus o, sir, she makes no doubt of that. julia [aside] she needs not, when she knows it cowardice. thurio what says she to my birth? proteus that you are well derived. julia [aside] true; from a gentleman to a fool. thurio considers she my possessions? proteus o, ay; and pities them. thurio wherefore? julia [aside] that such an ass should owe them. proteus that they are out by lease. julia here comes the duke. [enter duke] duke how now, sir proteus! how now, thurio! which of you saw sir eglamour of late? thurio not i. proteus nor i. duke saw you my daughter? proteus neither. duke why then, she's fled unto that peasant valentine; and eglamour is in her company. 'tis true; for friar laurence met them both, as he in penance wander'd through the forest; him he knew well, and guess'd that it was she, but, being mask'd, he was not sure of it; besides, she did intend confession at patrick's cell this even; and there she was not; these likelihoods confirm her flight from hence. therefore, i pray you, stand not to discourse, but mount you presently and meet with me upon the rising of the mountain-foot that leads towards mantua, whither they are fled: dispatch, sweet gentlemen, and follow me. [exit] thurio why, this it is to be a peevish girl, that flies her fortune when it follows her. i'll after, more to be revenged on eglamour than for the love of reckless silvia. [exit] proteus and i will follow, more for silvia's love than hate of eglamour that goes with her. [exit] julia and i will follow, more to cross that love than hate for silvia that is gone for love. [exit] the two gentlemen of verona act v scene iii the frontiers of mantua. the forest. [enter outlaws with silvia] first outlaw come, come, be patient; we must bring you to our captain. silvia a thousand more mischances than this one have learn'd me how to brook this patiently. second outlaw come, bring her away. first outlaw where is the gentleman that was with her? third outlaw being nimble-footed, he hath outrun us, but moyses and valerius follow him. go thou with her to the west end of the wood; there is our captain: we'll follow him that's fled; the thicket is beset; he cannot 'scape. first outlaw come, i must bring you to our captain's cave: fear not; he bears an honourable mind, and will not use a woman lawlessly. silvia o valentine, this i endure for thee! [exeunt] the two gentlemen of verona act v scene iv another part of the forest. [enter valentine] valentine how use doth breed a habit in a man! this shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, i better brook than flourishing peopled towns: here can i sit alone, unseen of any, and to the nightingale's complaining notes tune my distresses and record my woes. o thou that dost inhabit in my breast, leave not the mansion so long tenantless, lest, growing ruinous, the building fall and leave no memory of what it was! repair me with thy presence, silvia; thou gentle nymph, cherish thy forlorn swain! what halloing and what stir is this to-day? these are my mates, that make their wills their law, have some unhappy passenger in chase. they love me well; yet i have much to do to keep them from uncivil outrages. withdraw thee, valentine: who's this comes here? [enter proteus, silvia, and julia] proteus madam, this service i have done for you, though you respect not aught your servant doth, to hazard life and rescue you from him that would have forced your honour and your love; vouchsafe me, for my meed, but one fair look; a smaller boon than this i cannot beg and less than this, i am sure, you cannot give. valentine [aside] how like a dream is this i see and hear! love, lend me patience to forbear awhile. silvia o miserable, unhappy that i am! proteus unhappy were you, madam, ere i came; but by my coming i have made you happy. silvia by thy approach thou makest me most unhappy. julia [aside] and me, when he approacheth to your presence. silvia had i been seized by a hungry lion, i would have been a breakfast to the beast, rather than have false proteus rescue me. o, heaven be judge how i love valentine, whose life's as tender to me as my soul! and full as much, for more there cannot be, i do detest false perjured proteus. therefore be gone; solicit me no more. proteus what dangerous action, stood it next to death, would i not undergo for one calm look! o, 'tis the curse in love, and still approved, when women cannot love where they're beloved! silvia when proteus cannot love where he's beloved. read over julia's heart, thy first best love, for whose dear sake thou didst then rend thy faith into a thousand oaths; and all those oaths descended into perjury, to love me. thou hast no faith left now, unless thou'dst two; and that's far worse than none; better have none than plural faith which is too much by one: thou counterfeit to thy true friend! proteus in love who respects friend? silvia all men but proteus. proteus nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words can no way change you to a milder form, i'll woo you like a soldier, at arms' end, and love you 'gainst the nature of love,--force ye. silvia o heaven! proteus i'll force thee yield to my desire. valentine ruffian, let go that rude uncivil touch, thou friend of an ill fashion! proteus valentine! valentine thou common friend, that's without faith or love, for such is a friend now; treacherous man! thou hast beguiled my hopes; nought but mine eye could have persuaded me: now i dare not say i have one friend alive; thou wouldst disprove me. who should be trusted, when one's own right hand is perjured to the bosom? proteus, i am sorry i must never trust thee more, but count the world a stranger for thy sake. the private wound is deepest: o time most accurst, 'mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst! proteus my shame and guilt confounds me. forgive me, valentine: if hearty sorrow be a sufficient ransom for offence, i tender 't here; i do as truly suffer as e'er i did commit. valentine then i am paid; and once again i do receive thee honest. who by repentance is not satisfied is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleased. by penitence the eternal's wrath's appeased: and, that my love may appear plain and free, all that was mine in silvia i give thee. julia o me unhappy! [swoons] proteus look to the boy. valentine why, boy! why, wag! how now! what's the matter? look up; speak. julia o good sir, my master charged me to deliver a ring to madam silvia, which, out of my neglect, was never done. proteus where is that ring, boy? julia here 'tis; this is it. proteus how! let me see: why, this is the ring i gave to julia. julia o, cry you mercy, sir, i have mistook: this is the ring you sent to silvia. proteus but how camest thou by this ring? at my depart i gave this unto julia. julia and julia herself did give it me; and julia herself hath brought it hither. proteus how! julia! julia behold her that gave aim to all thy oaths, and entertain'd 'em deeply in her heart. how oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root! o proteus, let this habit make thee blush! be thou ashamed that i have took upon me such an immodest raiment, if shame live in a disguise of love: it is the lesser blot, modesty finds, women to change their shapes than men their minds. proteus than men their minds! 'tis true. o heaven! were man but constant, he were perfect. that one error fills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins: inconstancy falls off ere it begins. what is in silvia's face, but i may spy more fresh in julia's with a constant eye? valentine come, come, a hand from either: let me be blest to make this happy close; 'twere pity two such friends should be long foes. proteus bear witness, heaven, i have my wish for ever. julia and i mine. [enter outlaws, with duke and thurio] outlaws a prize, a prize, a prize! valentine forbear, forbear, i say! it is my lord the duke. your grace is welcome to a man disgraced, banished valentine. duke sir valentine! thurio yonder is silvia; and silvia's mine. valentine thurio, give back, or else embrace thy death; come not within the measure of my wrath; do not name silvia thine; if once again, verona shall not hold thee. here she stands; take but possession of her with a touch: i dare thee but to breathe upon my love. thurio sir valentine, i care not for her, i; i hold him but a fool that will endanger his body for a girl that loves him not: i claim her not, and therefore she is thine. duke the more degenerate and base art thou, to make such means for her as thou hast done and leave her on such slight conditions. now, by the honour of my ancestry, i do applaud thy spirit, valentine, and think thee worthy of an empress' love: know then, i here forget all former griefs, cancel all grudge, repeal thee home again, plead a new state in thy unrivall'd merit, to which i thus subscribe: sir valentine, thou art a gentleman and well derived; take thou thy silvia, for thou hast deserved her. valentine i thank your grace; the gift hath made me happy. i now beseech you, for your daughter's sake, to grant one boom that i shall ask of you. duke i grant it, for thine own, whate'er it be. valentine these banish'd men that i have kept withal are men endued with worthy qualities: forgive them what they have committed here and let them be recall'd from their exile: they are reformed, civil, full of good and fit for great employment, worthy lord. duke thou hast prevail'd; i pardon them and thee: dispose of them as thou know'st their deserts. come, let us go: we will include all jars with triumphs, mirth and rare solemnity. valentine and, as we walk along, i dare be bold with our discourse to make your grace to smile. what think you of this page, my lord? duke i think the boy hath grace in him; he blushes. valentine i warrant you, my lord, more grace than boy. duke what mean you by that saying? valentine please you, i'll tell you as we pass along, that you will wonder what hath fortuned. come, proteus; 'tis your penance but to hear the story of your loves discovered: that done, our day of marriage shall be yours; one feast, one house, one mutual happiness. [exeunt] [pg/etext94/maria10.txt] maria, or the wrongs of woman, by mary wollstonecraft may, 1994 [etext #134] this etext was originally made by judith boss, omaha, nebraska. the equipment: an ibm-compatible 486/33, hewlett-packard scanjet iic flatbed scanner, and, donated by calera: m/series profesional software m/series accelerator card calera recognition systems 475 potrero sunnyvale, ca 94086 1-408-720-8300 email to calera's mike lynch: mikel@calera.com this text is in the public domain. ================================================================ in editing the electronic text i have put footnotes at the bottom of the paragraph to which they refer. this sometimes means that i have moved the text of the footnote to maintain proximity to the text to which it refers. spellings as in the original are retained; only obvious typographical errors have been corrected. ================================================================ maria or the wrongs of woman by mary wollstonecraft (1759-1797) after the edition of 1798 contents preface by william s. godwin author's preface maria ================================================================ maria or the wrongs of woman preface the public are here presented with the last literary attempt of an author, whose fame has been uncommonly extensive, and whose talents have probably been most admired, by the persons by whom talents are estimated with the greatest accuracy and discrimination. there are few, to whom her writings could in any case have given pleasure, that would have wished that this fragment should have been suppressed, because it is a fragment. there is a sentiment, very dear to minds of taste and imagination, that finds a melancholy delight in contemplating these unfinished productions of genius, these sketches of what, if they had been filled up in a manner adequate to the writer's conception, would perhaps have given a new impulse to the manners of a world. the purpose and structure of the following work, had long formed a favourite subject of meditation with its author, and she judged them capable of producing an important effect. the composition had been in progress for a period of twelve months. she was anxious to do justice to her conception, and recommenced and revised the manuscript several different times. so much of it as is here given to the public, she was far from considering as finished, and, in a letter to a friend directly written on this subject, she says, "i am perfectly aware that some of the incidents ought to be transposed, and heightened by more harmonious shading; and i wished in some degree to avail myself of criticism, before i began to adjust my events into a story, the outline of which i had sketched in my mind."* the only friends to whom the author communicated her manuscript, were mr. dyson, the translator of the sorcerer, and the present editor; and it was impossible for the most inexperienced author to display a stronger desire of profiting by the censures and sentiments that might be suggested.** * a more copious extract of this letter is subjoined to the author's preface. ** the part communicated consisted of the first fourteen chapters. in revising these sheets for the press, it was necessary for the editor, in some places, to connect the more finished parts with the pages of an older copy, and a line or two in addition sometimes appeared requisite for that purpose. wherever such a liberty has been taken, the additional phrases will be found inclosed in brackets; it being the editor's most earnest desire to intrude nothing of himself into the work, but to give to the public the words, as well as ideas, of the real author. what follows in the ensuing pages, is not a preface regularly drawn out by the author, but merely hints for a preface, which, though never filled up in the manner the writer intended, appeared to be worth preserving. w. godwin. author's preface the wrongs of woman, like the wrongs of the oppressed part of mankind, may be deemed necessary by their oppressors: but surely there are a few, who will dare to advance before the improvement of the age, and grant that my sketches are not the abortion of a distempered fancy, or the strong delineations of a wounded heart. in writing this novel, i have rather endeavoured to pourtray passions than manners. in many instances i could have made the incidents more dramatic, would i have sacrificed my main object, the desire of exhibiting the misery and oppression, peculiar to women, that arise out of the partial laws and customs of society. in the invention of the story, this view restrained my fancy; and the history ought rather to be considered, as of woman, than of an individual. the sentiments i have embodied. in many works of this species, the hero is allowed to be mortal, and to become wise and virtuous as well as happy, by a train of events and circumstances. the heroines, on the contrary, are to be born immaculate, and to act like goddesses of wisdom, just come forth highly finished minervas from the head of jove. [the following is an extract of a letter from the author to a friend, to whom she communicated her manuscript.] for my part, i cannot suppose any situation more distressing, than for a woman of sensibility, with an improving mind, to be bound to such a man as i have described for life; obliged to renounce all the humanizing affections, and to avoid cultivating her taste, lest her perception of grace and refinement of sentiment, should sharpen to agony the pangs of disappointment. love, in which the imagination mingles its bewitching colouring, must be fostered by delicacy. i should despise, or rather call her an ordinary woman, who could endure such a husband as i have sketched. these appear to me (matrimonial despotism of heart and conduct) to be the peculiar wrongs of woman, because they degrade the mind. what are termed great misfortunes, may more forcibly impress the mind of common readers; they have more of what may justly be termed stage-effect; but it is the delineation of finer sensations, which, in my opinion, constitutes the merit of our best novels. this is what i have in view; and to show the wrongs of different classes of women, equally oppressive, though, from the difference of education, necessarily various. chapter 1 abodes of horror have frequently been described, and castles, filled with spectres and chimeras, conjured up by the magic spell of genius to harrow the soul, and absorb the wondering mind. but, formed of such stuff as dreams are made of, what were they to the mansion of despair, in one corner of which maria sat, endeavouring to recall her scattered thoughts! surprise, astonishment, that bordered on distraction, seemed to have suspended her faculties, till, waking by degrees to a keen sense of anguish, a whirlwind of rage and indignation roused her torpid pulse. one recollection with frightful velocity following another, threatened to fire her brain, and make her a fit companion for the terrific inhabitants, whose groans and shrieks were no unsubstantial sounds of whistling winds, or startled birds, modulated by a romantic fancy, which amuse while they affright; but such tones of misery as carry a dreadful certainty directly to the heart. what effect must they then have produced on one, true to the touch of sympathy, and tortured by maternal apprehension! her infant's image was continually floating on maria's sight, and the first smile of intelligence remembered, as none but a mother, an unhappy mother, can conceive. she heard her half speaking half cooing, and felt the little twinkling fingers on her burning bosom--a bosom bursting with the nutriment for which this cherished child might now be pining in vain. from a stranger she could indeed receive the maternal aliment, maria was grieved at the thought-but who would watch her with a mother's tenderness, a mother's self-denial? the retreating shadows of former sorrows rushed back in a gloomy train, and seemed to be pictured on the walls of her prison, magnified by the state of mind in which they were viewed--still she mourned for her child, lamented she was a daughter, and anticipated the aggravated ills of life that her sex rendered almost inevitable, even while dreading she was no more. to think that she was blotted out of existence was agony, when the imagination had been long employed to expand her faculties; yet to suppose her turned adrift on an unknown sea, was scarcely less afflicting. after being two days the prey of impetuous, varying emotions, maria began to reflect more calmly on her present situation, for she had actually been rendered incapable of sober reflection, by the discovery of the act of atrocity of which she was the victim. she could not have imagined, that, in all the fermentation of civilized depravity, a similar plot could have entered a human mind. she had been stunned by an unexpected blow; yet life, however joyless, was not to be indolently resigned, or misery endured without exertion, and proudly termed patience. she had hitherto meditated only to point the dart of anguish, and suppressed the heart heavings of indignant nature merely by the force of contempt. now she endeavoured to brace her mind to fortitude, and to ask herself what was to be her employment in her dreary cell? was it not to effect her escape, to fly to the succour of her child, and to baffle the selfish schemes of her tyrant--her husband? these thoughts roused her sleeping spirit, and the self-possession returned, that seemed to have abandoned her in the infernal solitude into which she had been precipitated. the first emotions of overwhelming impatience began to subside, and resentment gave place to tenderness, and more tranquil meditation; though anger once more stopt the calm current of reflection when she attempted to move her manacled arms. but this was an outrage that could only excite momentary feelings of scorn, which evaporated in a faint smile; for maria was far from thinking a personal insult the most difficult to endure with magnanimous indifference. she approached the small grated window of her chamber, and for a considerable time only regarded the blue expanse; though it commanded a view of a desolate garden, and of part of a huge pile of buildings, that, after having been suffered, for half a century, to fall to decay, had undergone some clumsy repairs, merely to render it habitable. the ivy had been torn off the turrets, and the stones not wanted to patch up the breaches of time, and exclude the warring elements, left in heaps in the disordered court. maria contemplated this scene she knew not how long; or rather gazed on the walls, and pondered on her situation. to the master of this most horrid of prisons, she had, soon after her entrance, raved of injustice, in accents that would have justified his treatment, had not a malignant smile, when she appealed to his judgment, with a dreadful conviction stifled her remonstrating complaints. by force, or openly, what could be done? but surely some expedient might occur to an active mind, without any other employment, and possessed of sufficient resolution to put the risk of life into the balance with the chance of freedom. a woman entered in the midst of these reflections, with a firm, deliberate step, strongly marked features, and large black eyes, which she fixed steadily on maria's, as if she designed to intimidate her, saying at the same time "you had better sit down and eat your dinner, than look at the clouds." "i have no appetite," replied maria, who had previously determined to speak mildly; "why then should i eat?" "but, in spite of that, you must and shall eat something. i have had many ladies under my care, who have resolved to starve themselves; but, soon or late, they gave up their intent, as they recovered their senses." "do you really think me mad?" asked maria, meeting the searching glance of her eye. "not just now. but what does that prove?--only that you must be the more carefully watched, for appearing at times so reasonable. you have not touched a morsel since you entered the house."--maria sighed intelligibly.--"could any thing but madness produce such a disgust for food?" "yes, grief; you would not ask the question if you knew what it was." the attendant shook her head; and a ghastly smile of desperate fortitude served as a forcible reply, and made maria pause, before she added--"yet i will take some refreshment: i mean not to die.--no; i will preserve my senses; and convince even you, sooner than you are aware of, that my intellects have never been disturbed, though the exertion of them may have been suspended by some infernal drug." doubt gathered still thicker on the brow of her guard, as she attempted to convict her of mistake. "have patience!" exclaimed maria, with a solemnity that inspired awe. "my god! how have i been schooled into the practice!" a suffocation of voice betrayed the agonizing emotions she was labouring to keep down; and conquering a qualm of disgust, she calmly endeavoured to eat enough to prove her docility, perpetually turning to the suspicious female, whose observation she courted, while she was making the bed and adjusting the room. "come to me often," said maria, with a tone of persuasion, in consequence of a vague plan that she had hastily adopted, when, after surveying this woman's form and features, she felt convinced that she had an understanding above the common standard, "and believe me mad, till you are obliged to acknowledge the contrary." the woman was no fool, that is, she was superior to her class; nor had misery quite petrified the life's-blood of humanity, to which reflections on our own misfortunes only give a more orderly course. the manner, rather than the expostulations, of maria made a slight suspicion dart into her mind with corresponding sympathy, which various other avocations, and the habit of banishing compunction, prevented her, for the present, from examining more minutely. but when she was told that no person, excepting the physician appointed by her family, was to be permitted to see the lady at the end of the gallery, she opened her keen eyes still wider, and uttered a--"hem!" before she enquired--"why?" she was briefly told, in reply, that the malady was hereditary, and the fits not occurring but at very long and irregular intervals, she must be carefully watched; for the length of these lucid periods only rendered her more mischievous, when any vexation or caprice brought on the paroxysm of phrensy. had her master trusted her, it is probable that neither pity nor curiosity would have made her swerve from the straight line of her interest; for she had suffered too much in her intercourse with mankind, not to determine to look for support, rather to humouring their passions, than courting their approbation by the integrity of her conduct. a deadly blight had met her at the very threshold of existence; and the wretchedness of her mother seemed a heavy weight fastened on her innocent neck, to drag her down to perdition. she could not heroically determine to succour an unfortunate; but, offended at the bare supposition that she could be deceived with the same ease as a common servant, she no longer curbed her curiosity; and, though she never seriously fathomed her own intentions, she would sit, every moment she could steal from observation, listening to the tale, which maria was eager to relate with all the persuasive eloquence of grief. it is so cheering to see a human face, even if little of the divinity of virtue beam in it, that maria anxiously expected the return of the attendant, as of a gleam of light to break the gloom of idleness. indulged sorrow, she perceived, must blunt or sharpen the faculties to the two opposite extremes; producing stupidity, the moping melancholy of indolence; or the restless activity of a disturbed imagination. she sunk into one state, after being fatigued by the other: till the want of occupation became even more painful than the actual pressure or apprehension of sorrow; and the confinement that froze her into a nook of existence, with an unvaried prospect before her, the most insupportable of evils. the lamp of life seemed to be spending itself to chase the vapours of a dungeon which no art could dissipate.--and to what purpose did she rally all her energy?--was not the world a vast prison, and women born slaves? though she failed immediately to rouse a lively sense of injustice in the mind of her guard, because it had been sophisticated into misanthropy, she touched her heart. jemima (she had only a claim to a christian name, which had not procured her any christian privileges) could patiently hear of maria's confinement on false pretences; she had felt the crushing hand of power, hardened by the exercise of injustice, and ceased to wonder at the perversions of the understanding, which systematize oppression; but, when told that her child, only four months old, had been torn from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from feminine emotions, and jemima determined to alleviate all in her power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy. a sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason, and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the master-sense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and ignoble pleasures of life? the preserving her situation was, indeed, an important object to jemima, who had been hunted from hole to hole, as if she had been a beast of prey, or infected with a moral plague. the wages she received, the greater part of which she hoarded, as her only chance for independence, were much more considerable than she could reckon on obtaining any where else, were it possible that she, an outcast from society, could be permitted to earn a subsistence in a reputable family. hearing maria perpetually complain of listlessness, and the not being able to beguile grief by resuming her customary pursuits, she was easily prevailed on, by compassion, and that involuntary respect for abilities, which those who possess them can never eradicate, to bring her some books and implements for writing. maria's conversation had amused and interested her, and the natural consequence was a desire, scarcely observed by herself, of obtaining the esteem of a person she admired. the remembrance of better days was rendered more lively; and the sentiments then acquired appearing less romantic than they had for a long period, a spark of hope roused her mind to new activity. how grateful was her attention to maria! oppressed by a dead weight of existence, or preyed on by the gnawing worm of discontent, with what eagerness did she endeavour to shorten the long days, which left no traces behind! she seemed to be sailing on the vast ocean of life, without seeing any land-mark to indicate the progress of time; to find employment was then to find variety, the animating principle of nature. chapter 2 earnestly as maria endeavoured to soothe, by reading, the anguish of her wounded mind, her thoughts would often wander from the subject she was led to discuss, and tears of maternal tenderness obscured the reasoning page. she descanted on "the ills which flesh is heir to," with bitterness, when the recollection of her babe was revived by a tale of fictitious woe, that bore any resemblance to her own; and her imagination was continually employed, to conjure up and embody the various phantoms of misery, which folly and vice had let loose on the world. the loss of her babe was the tender string; against other cruel remembrances she laboured to steel her bosom; and even a ray of hope, in the midst of her gloomy reveries, would sometimes gleam on the dark horizon of futurity, while persuading herself that she ought to cease to hope, since happiness was no where to be found.--but of her child, debilitated by the grief with which its mother had been assailed before it saw the light, she could not think without an impatient struggle. "i, alone, by my active tenderness, could have saved," she would exclaim, "from an early blight, this sweet blossom; and, cherishing it, i should have had something still to love." in proportion as other expectations were torn from her, this tender one had been fondly clung to, and knit into her heart. the books she had obtained, were soon devoured, by one who had no other resource to escape from sorrow, and the feverish dreams of ideal wretchedness or felicity, which equally weaken the intoxicated sensibility. writing was then the only alternative, and she wrote some rhapsodies descriptive of the state of her mind; but the events of her past life pressing on her, she resolved circumstantially to relate them, with the sentiments that experience, and more matured reason, would naturally suggest. they might perhaps instruct her daughter, and shield her from the misery, the tyranny, her mother knew not how to avoid. this thought gave life to her diction, her soul flowed into it, and she soon found the task of recollecting almost obliterated impressions very interesting. she lived again in the revived emotions of youth, and forgot her present in the retrospect of sorrows that had assumed an unalterable character. though this employment lightened the weight of time, yet, never losing sight of her main object, maria did not allow any opportunity to slip of winning on the affections of jemima; for she discovered in her a strength of mind, that excited her esteem, clouded as it was by the misanthropy of despair. an insulated being, from the misfortune of her birth, she despised and preyed on the society by which she had been oppressed, and loved not her fellow-creatures, because she had never been beloved. no mother had ever fondled her, no father or brother had protected her from outrage; and the man who had plunged her into infamy, and deserted her when she stood in greatest need of support, deigned not to smooth with kindness the road to ruin. thus degraded, was she let loose on the world; and virtue, never nurtured by affection, assumed the stern aspect of selfish independence. this general view of her life, maria gathered from her exclamations and dry remarks. jemima indeed displayed a strange mixture of interest and suspicion; for she would listen to her with earnestness, and then suddenly interrupt the conversation, as if afraid of resigning, by giving way to her sympathy, her dear-bought knowledge of the world. maria alluded to the possibility of an escape, and mentioned a compensation, or reward; but the style in which she was repulsed made her cautious, and determine not to renew the subject, till she knew more of the character she had to work on. jemima's countenance, and dark hints, seemed to say, "you are an extraordinary woman; but let me consider, this may only be one of your lucid intervals." nay, the very energy of maria's character, made her suspect that the extraordinary animation she perceived might be the effect of madness. "should her husband then substantiate his charge, and get possession of her estate, from whence would come the promised annuity, or more desired protection? besides, might not a woman, anxious to escape, conceal some of the circumstances which made against her? was truth to be expected from one who had been entrapped, kidnapped, in the most fraudulent manner?" in this train jemima continued to argue, the moment after compassion and respect seemed to make her swerve; and she still resolved not to be wrought on to do more than soften the rigour of confinement, till she could advance on surer ground. maria was not permitted to walk in the garden; but sometimes, from her window, she turned her eyes from the gloomy walls, in which she pined life away, on the poor wretches who strayed along the walks, and contemplated the most terrific of ruins--that of a human soul. what is the view of the fallen column, the mouldering arch, of the most exquisite workmanship, when compared with this living memento of the fragility, the instability, of reason, and the wild luxuriancy of noxious passions? enthusiasm turned adrift, like some rich stream overflowing its banks, rushes forward with destructive velocity, inspiring a sublime concentration of thought. thus thought maria--these are the ravages over which humanity must ever mournfully ponder, with a degree of anguish not excited by crumbling marble, or cankering brass, unfaithful to the trust of monumental fame. it is not over the decaying productions of the mind, embodied with the happiest art, we grieve most bitterly. the view of what has been done by man, produces a melancholy, yet aggrandizing, sense of what remains to be achieved by human intellect; but a mental convulsion, which, like the devastation of an earthquake, throws all the elements of thought and imagination into confusion, makes contemplation giddy, and we fearfully ask on what ground we ourselves stand. melancholy and imbecility marked the features of the wretches allowed to breathe at large; for the frantic, those who in a strong imagination had lost a sense of woe, were closely confined. the playful tricks and mischievous devices of their disturbed fancy, that suddenly broke out, could not be guarded against, when they were permitted to enjoy any portion of freedom; for, so active was their imagination, that every new object which accidentally struck their senses, awoke to phrenzy their restless passions; as maria learned from the burden of their incessant ravings. sometimes, with a strict injunction of silence, jemima would allow maria, at the close of evening, to stray along the narrow avenues that separated the dungeon-like apartments, leaning on her arm. what a change of scene! maria wished to pass the threshold of her prison, yet, when by chance she met the eye of rage glaring on her, yet unfaithful to its office, she shrunk back with more horror and affright, than if she had stumbled over a mangled corpse. her busy fancy pictured the misery of a fond heart, watching over a friend thus estranged, absent, though present--over a poor wretch lost to reason and the social joys of existence; and losing all consciousness of misery in its excess. what a task, to watch the light of reason quivering in the eye, or with agonizing expectation to catch the beam of recollection; tantalized by hope, only to feel despair more keenly, at finding a much loved face or voice, suddenly remembered, or pathetically implored, only to be immediately forgotten, or viewed with indifference or abhorrence! the heart-rending sigh of melancholy sunk into her soul; and when she retired to rest, the petrified figures she had encountered, the only human forms she was doomed to observe, haunting her dreams with tales of mysterious wrongs, made her wish to sleep to dream no more. day after day rolled away, and tedious as the present moment appeared, they passed in such an unvaried tenor, maria was surprised to find that she had already been six weeks buried alive, and yet had such faint hopes of effecting her enlargement. she was, earnestly as she had sought for employment, now angry with herself for having been amused by writing her narrative; and grieved to think that she had for an instant thought of any thing, but contriving to escape. jemima had evidently pleasure in her society: still, though she often left her with a glow of kindness, she returned with the same chilling air; and, when her heart appeared for a moment to open, some suggestion of reason forcibly closed it, before she could give utterance to the confidence maria's conversation inspired. discouraged by these changes, maria relapsed into despondency, when she was cheered by the alacrity with which jemima brought her a fresh parcel of books; assuring her, that she had taken some pains to obtain them from one of the keepers, who attended a gentleman confined in the opposite corner of the gallery. maria took up the books with emotion. "they come," said she, "perhaps, from a wretch condemned, like me, to reason on the nature of madness, by having wrecked minds continually under his eye; and almost to wish himself--as i do--mad, to escape from the contemplation of it." her heart throbbed with sympathetic alarm; and she turned over the leaves with awe, as if they had become sacred from passing through the hands of an unfortunate being, oppressed by a similar fate. dryden's fables, milton's paradise lost, with several modern productions, composed the collection. it was a mine of treasure. some marginal notes, in dryden's fables, caught her attention: they were written with force and taste; and, in one of the modern pamphlets, there was a fragment left, containing various observations on the present state of society and government, with a comparative view of the politics of europe and america. these remarks were written with a degree of generous warmth, when alluding to the enslaved state of the labouring majority, perfectly in unison with maria's mode of thinking. she read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy, began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these shadowy outlines.--"was he mad?" she reperused the marginal notes, and they seemed the production of an animated, but not of a disturbed imagination. confined to this speculation, every time she re-read them, some fresh refinement of sentiment, or accuteness of thought impressed her, which she was astonished at herself for not having before observed. what a creative power has an affectionate heart! there are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it awakens sentiment or grace. maria had often thought, when disciplining her wayward heart, "that to charm, was to be virtuous." "they who make me wish to appear the most amiable and good in their eyes, must possess in a degree," she would exclaim, "the graces and virtues they call into action." she took up a book on the powers of the human mind; but, her attention strayed from cold arguments on the nature of what she felt, while she was feeling, and she snapt the chain of the theory to read dryden's guiscard and sigismunda. maria, in the course of the ensuing day, returned some of the books, with the hope of getting others--and more marginal notes. thus shut out from human intercourse, and compelled to view nothing but the prison of vexed spirits, to meet a wretch in the same situation, was more surely to find a friend, than to imagine a countryman one, in a strange land, where the human voice conveys no information to the eager ear. "did you ever see the unfortunate being to whom these books belong?" asked maria, when jemima brought her slipper. "yes. he sometimes walks out, between five and six, before the family is stirring, in the morning, with two keepers; but even then his hands are confined." "what! is he so unruly?" enquired maria, with an accent of disappointment. "no, not that i perceive," replied jemima; "but he has an untamed look, a vehemence of eye, that excites apprehension. were his hands free, he looks as if he could soon manage both his guards: yet he appears tranquil." "if he be so strong, he must be young," observed maria. "three or four and thirty, i suppose; but there is no judging of a person in his situation." "are you sure that he is mad?" interrupted maria with eagerness. jemima quitted the room, without replying. "no, no, he certainly is not!" exclaimed maria, answering herself; "the man who could write those observations was not disordered in his intellects." she sat musing, gazing at the moon, and watching its motion as it seemed to glide under the clouds. then, preparing for bed, she thought, "of what use could i be to him, or he to me, if it be true that he is unjustly confined?--could he aid me to escape, who is himself more closely watched?--still i should like to see him." she went to bed, dreamed of her child, yet woke exactly at half after five o'clock, and starting up, only wrapped a gown around her, and ran to the window. the morning was chill, it was the latter end of september; yet she did not retire to warm herself and think in bed, till the sound of the servants, moving about the house, convinced her that the unknown would not walk in the garden that morning. she was ashamed at feeling disappointed; and began to reflect, as an excuse to herself, on the little objects which attract attention when there is nothing to divert the mind; and how difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who have no active duties or pursuits. at breakfast, jemima enquired whether she understood french? for, unless she did, the stranger's stock of books was exhausted. maria replied in the affirmative; but forbore to ask any more questions respecting the person to whom they belonged. and jemima gave her a new subject for contemplation, by describing the person of a lovely maniac, just brought into an adjoining chamber. she was singing the pathetic ballad of old rob* with the most heart-melting falls and pauses. jemima had half-opened the door, when she distinguished her voice, and maria stood close to it, scarcely daring to respire, lest a modulation should escape her, so exquisitely sweet, so passionately wild. she began with sympathy to pourtray to herself another victim, when the lovely warbler flew, as it were, from the spray, and a torrent of unconnected exclamations and questions burst from her, interrupted by fits of laughter, so horrid, that maria shut the door, and, turning her eyes up to heaven, exclaimed--"gracious god!" * a blank space about ten characters in length occurs here in the original edition [publisher's note]. several minutes elapsed before maria could enquire respecting the rumour of the house (for this poor wretch was obviously not confined without a cause); and then jemima could only tell her, that it was said, "she had been married, against her inclination, to a rich old man, extremely jealous (no wonder, for she was a charming creature); and that, in consequence of his treatment, or something which hung on her mind, she had, during her first lying-in, lost her senses." what a subject of meditation--even to the very confines of madness. "woman, fragile flower! why were you suffered to adorn a world exposed to the inroad of such stormy elements?" thought maria, while the poor maniac's strain was still breathing on her ear, and sinking into her very soul. towards the evening, jemima brought her rousseau's heloise; and she sat reading with eyes and heart, till the return of her guard to extinguish the light. one instance of her kindness was, the permitting maria to have one, till her own hour of retiring to rest. she had read this work long since; but now it seemed to open a new world to her--the only one worth inhabiting. sleep was not to be wooed; yet, far from being fatigued by the restless rotation of thought, she rose and opened her window, just as the thin watery clouds of twilight made the long silent shadows visible. the air swept across her face with a voluptuous freshness that thrilled to her heart, awakening indefinable emotions; and the sound of a waving branch, or the twittering of a startled bird, alone broke the stillness of reposing nature. absorbed by the sublime sensibility which renders the consciousness of existence felicity, maria was happy, till an autumnal scent, wafted by the breeze of morn from the fallen leaves of the adjacent wood, made her recollect that the season had changed since her confinement; yet life afforded no variety to solace an afflicted heart. she returned dispirited to her couch, and thought of her child till the broad glare of day again invited her to the window. she looked not for the unknown, still how great was her vexation at perceiving the back of a man, certainly he, with his two attendants, as he turned into a side-path which led to the house! a confused recollection of having seen somebody who resembled him, immediately occurred, to puzzle and torment her with endless conjectures. five minutes sooner, and she should have seen his face, and been out of suspense--was ever any thing so unlucky! his steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize. feeling the disappointment more severely than she was willing to believe, she flew to rousseau, as her only refuge from the idea of him, who might prove a friend, could she but find a way to interest him in her fate; still the personification of saint preux, or of an ideal lover far superior, was after this imperfect model, of which merely a glance had been caught, even to the minutiae of the coat and hat of the stranger. but if she lent st. preux, or the demi-god of her fancy, his form, she richly repaid him by the donation of all st. preux's sentiments and feelings, culled to gratify her own, to which he seemed to have an undoubted right, when she read on the margin of an impassioned letter, written in the well-known hand--"rousseau alone, the true prometheus of sentiment, possessed the fire of genius necessary to pourtray the passion, the truth of which goes so directly to the heart." maria was again true to the hour, yet had finished rousseau, and begun to transcribe some selected passages; unable to quit either the author or the window, before she had a glimpse of the countenance she daily longed to see; and, when seen, it conveyed no distinct idea to her mind where she had seen it before. he must have been a transient acquaintance; but to discover an acquaintance was fortunate, could she contrive to attract his attention, and excite his sympathy. every glance afforded colouring for the picture she was delineating on her heart; and once, when the window was half open, the sound of his voice reached her. conviction flashed on her; she had certainly, in a moment of distress, heard the same accents. they were manly, and characteristic of a noble mind; nay, even sweet--or sweet they seemed to her attentive ear. she started back, trembling, alarmed at the emotion a strange coincidence of circumstances inspired, and wondering why she thought so much of a stranger, obliged as she had been by his timely interference; [for she recollected, by degrees all the circumstances of their former meeting.] she found however that she could think of nothing else; or, if she thought of her daughter, it was to wish that she had a father whom her mother could respect and love. chapter 3 when perusing the first parcel of books, maria had, with her pencil, written in one of them a few exclamations, expressive of compassion and sympathy, which she scarcely remembered, till turning over the leaves of one of the volumes, lately brought to her, a slip of paper dropped out, which jemima hastily snatched up. "let me see it," demanded maria impatiently, "you surely are not afraid of trusting me with the effusions of a madman?" "i must consider," replied jemima; and withdrew, with the paper in her hand. in a life of such seclusion, the passions gain undue force; maria therefore felt a great degree of resentment and vexation, which she had not time to subdue, before jemima, returning, delivered the paper. "whoever you are, who partake of my fate, accept my sincere commiseration--i would have said protection; but the privilege of man is denied me. "my own situation forces a dreadful suspicion on my mind--i may not always languish in vain for freedom- say are you--i cannot ask the question; yet i will remember you when my remembrance can be of any use. i will enquire, why you are so mysteriously detained- and i will have an answer. "henry darnford." by the most pressing intreaties, maria prevailed on jemima to permit her to write a reply to this note. another and another succeeded, in which explanations were not allowed relative to their present situation; but maria, with sufficient explicitness, alluded to a former obligation; and they insensibly entered on an interchange of sentiments on the most important subjects. to write these letters was the business of the day, and to receive them the moment of sunshine. by some means, darnford having discovered maria's window, when she next appeared at it, he made her, behind his keepers, a profound bow of respect and recognition. two or three weeks glided away in this kind of intercourse, during which period jemima, to whom maria had given the necessary information respecting her family, had evidently gained some intelligence, which increased her desire of pleasing her charge, though she could not yet determine to liberate her. maria took advantage of this favourable charge, without too minutely enquiring into the cause; and such was her eagerness to hold human converse, and to see her former protector, still a stranger to her, that she incessantly requested her guard to gratify her more than curiosity. writing to darnford, she was led from the sad objects before her, and frequently rendered insensible to the horrid noises around her, which previously had continually employed her feverish fancy. thinking it selfish to dwell on her own sufferings, when in the midst of wretches, who had not only lost all that endears life, but their very selves, her imagination was occupied with melancholy earnestness to trace the mazes of misery, through which so many wretches must have passed to this gloomy receptacle of disjointed souls, to the grand source of human corruption. often at midnight was she waked by the dismal shrieks of demoniac rage, or of excruciating despair, uttered in such wild tones of indescribable anguish as proved the total absence of reason, and roused phantoms of horror in her mind, far more terrific than all that dreaming superstition ever drew. besides, there was frequently something so inconceivably picturesque in the varying gestures of unrestrained passion, so irresistibly comic in their sallies, or so heart-piercingly pathetic in the little airs they would sing, frequently bursting out after an awful silence, as to fascinate the attention, and amuse the fancy, while torturing the soul. it was the uproar of the passions which she was compelled to observe; and to mark the lucid beam of reason, like a light trembling in a socket, or like the flash which divides the threatening clouds of angry heaven only to display the horrors which darkness shrouded. jemima would labour to beguile the tedious evenings, by describing the persons and manners of the unfortunate beings, whose figures or voices awoke sympathetic sorrow in maria's bosom; and the stories she told were the more interesting, for perpetually leaving room to conjecture something extraordinary. still maria, accustomed to generalize her observations, was led to conclude from all she heard, that it was a vulgar error to suppose that people of abilities were the most apt to lose the command of reason. on the contrary, from most of the instances she could investigate, she thought it resulted, that the passions only appeared strong and disproportioned, because the judgment was weak and unexercised; and that they gained strength by the decay of reason, as the shadows lengthen during the sun's decline. maria impatiently wished to see her fellow-sufferer; but darnford was still more earnest to obtain an interview. accustomed to submit to every impulse of passion, and never taught, like women, to restrain the most natural, and acquire, instead of the bewitching frankness of nature, a factitious propriety of behaviour, every desire became a torrent that bore down all opposition. his travelling trunk, which contained the books lent to maria, had been sent to him, and with a part of its contents he bribed his principal keeper; who, after receiving the most solemn promise that he would return to his apartment without attempting to explore any part of the house, conducted him, in the dusk of the evening, to maria's room. jemima had apprized her charge of the visit, and she expected with trembling impatience, inspired by a vague hope that he might again prove her deliverer, to see a man who had before rescued her from oppression. he entered with an animation of countenance, formed to captivate an enthusiast; and, hastily turned his eyes from her to the apartment, which he surveyed with apparent emotions of compassionate indignation. sympathy illuminated his eye, and, taking her hand, he respectfully bowed on it, exclaiming--"this is extraordinary!--again to meet you, and in such circumstances!" still, impressive as was the coincidence of events which brought them once more together, their full hearts did not overflow.--* * the copy which had received the author's last corrections breaks off in this place, and the pages which follow, to the end of chap. iv, are printed from a copy in a less finished state. [godwin's note] [and though, after this first visit, they were permitted frequently to repeat their interviews, they were for some time employed in] a reserved conversation, to which all the world might have listened; excepting, when discussing some literary subject, flashes of sentiment, inforced by each relaxing feature, seemed to remind them that their minds were already acquainted. [by degrees, darnford entered into the particulars of his story.] in a few words, he informed her that he had been a thoughtless, extravagant young man; yet, as he described his faults, they appeared to be the generous luxuriancy of a noble mind. nothing like meanness tarnished the lustre of his youth, nor had the worm of selfishness lurked in the unfolding bud, even while he had been the dupe of others. yet he tardily acquired the experience necessary to guard him against future imposition. "i shall weary you," continued he, "by my egotism; and did not powerful emotions draw me to you,"--his eyes glistened as he spoke, and a trembling seemed to run through his manly frame,-"i would not waste these precious moments in talking of myself. "my father and mother were people of fashion; married by their parents. he was fond of the turf, she of the card-table. i, and two or three other children since dead, were kept at home till we became intolerable. my father and mother had a visible dislike to each other, continually displayed; the servants were of the depraved kind usually found in the houses of people of fortune. my brothers and parents all dying, i was left to the care of guardians; and sent to eton. i never knew the sweets of domestic affection, but i felt the want of indulgence and frivolous respect at school. i will not disgust you with a recital of the vices of my youth, which can scarcely be comprehended by female delicacy. i was taught to love by a creature i am ashamed to mention; and the other women with whom i afterwards became intimate, were of a class of which you can have no knowledge. i formed my acquaintance with them at the theaters; and, when vivacity danced in their eyes, i was not easily disgusted by the vulgarity which flowed from their lips. having spent, a few years after i was of age, [the whole of] a considerable patrimony, excepting a few hundreds, i had no resource but to purchase a commission in a new-raised regiment, destined to subjugate america. the regret i felt to renounce a life of pleasure, was counter-balanced by the curiosity i had to see america, or rather to travel; [nor had any of those circumstances occurred to my youth, which might have been calculated] to bind my country to my heart. i shall not trouble you with the details of a military life. my blood was still kept in motion; till, towards the close of the contest, i was wounded and taken prisoner. "confined to my bed, or chair, by a lingering cure, my only refuge from the preying activity of my mind, was books, which i read with great avidity, profiting by the conversation of my host, a man of sound understanding. my political sentiments now underwent a total change; and, dazzled by the hospitality of the americans, i determined to take up my abode with freedom. i, therefore, with my usual impetuosity, sold my commission, and travelled into the interior parts of the country, to lay out my money to advantage. added to this, i did not much like the puritanical manners of the large towns. inequality of condition was there most disgustingly galling. the only pleasure wealth afforded, was to make an ostentatious display of it; for the cultivation of the fine arts, or literature, had not introduced into the first circles that polish of manners which renders the rich so essentially superior to the poor in europe. added to this, an influx of vices had been let in by the revolution, and the most rigid principles of religion shaken to the centre, before the understanding could be gradually emancipated from the prejudices which led their ancestors undauntedly to seek an inhospitable clime and unbroken soil. the resolution, that led them, in pursuit of independence, to embark on rivers like seas, to search for unknown shores, and to sleep under the hovering mists of endless forests, whose baleful damps agued their limbs, was now turned into commercial speculations, till the national character exhibited a phenomenon in the history of the human mind--a head enthusiastically enterprising, with cold selfishness of heart. and woman, lovely woman!--they charm everywhere--still there is a degree of prudery, and a want of taste and ease in the manners of the american women, that renders them, in spite of their roses and lilies, far inferior to our european charmers. in the country, they have often a bewitching simplicity of character; but, in the cities, they have all the airs and ignorance of the ladies who give the tone to the circles of the large trading towns in england. they are fond of their ornaments, merely because they are good, and not because they embellish their persons; and are more gratified to inspire the women with jealousy of these exterior advantages, than the men with love. all the frivolity which often (excuse me, madam) renders the society of modest women so stupid in england, here seemed to throw still more leaden fetters on their charms. not being an adept in gallantry, i found that i could only keep myself awake in their company by making downright love to them. "but, not to intrude on your patience, i retired to the track of land which i had purchased in the country, and my time passed pleasantly enough while i cut down the trees, built my house, and planted my different crops. but winter and idleness came, and i longed for more elegant society, to hear what was passing in the world, and to do something better than vegetate with the animals that made a very considerable part of my household. consequently, i determined to travel. motion was a substitute for variety of objects; and, passing over immense tracks of country, i exhausted my exuberant spirits, without obtaining much experience. i every where saw industry the fore-runner and not the consequence, of luxury; but this country, everything being on an ample scale, did not afford those picturesque views, which a certain degree of cultivation is necessary gradually to produce. the eye wandered without an object to fix upon over immeasureable plains, and lakes that seemed replenished by the ocean, whilst eternal forests of small clustering trees, obstructed the circulation of air, and embarrassed the path, without gratifying the eye of taste. no cottage smiling in the waste, no travellers hailed us, to give life to silent nature; or, if perchance we saw the print of a footstep in our path, it was a dreadful warning to turn aside; and the head ached as if assailed by the scalping knife. the indians who hovered on the skirts of the european settlements had only learned of their neighbours to plunder, and they stole their guns from them to do it with more safety. "from the woods and back settlements, i returned to the towns, and learned to eat and drink most valiantly; but without entering into commerce (and i detested commerce) i found i could not live there; and, growing heartily weary of the land of liberty and vulgar aristocracy, seated on her bags of dollars, i resolved once more to visit europe. i wrote to a distant relation in england, with whom i had been educated, mentioning the vessel in which i intended to sail. arriving in london, my senses were intoxicated. i ran from street to street, from theater to theater, and the women of the town (again i must beg pardon for my habitual frankness) appeared to me like angels. "a week was spent in this thoughtless manner, when, returning very late to the hotel in which i had lodged ever since my arrival, i was knocked down in a private street, and hurried, in a state of insensibility, into a coach, which brought me hither, and i only recovered my senses to be treated like one who had lost them. my keepers are deaf to my remonstrances and enquiries, yet assure me that my confinement shall not last long. still i cannot guess, though i weary myself with conjectures, why i am confined, or in what part of england this house is situated. i imagine sometimes that i hear the sea roar, and wished myself again on the atlantic, till i had a glimpse of you."* a few moments were only allowed to maria to comment on this narrative, when darnford left her to her own thoughts, to the "never ending, still beginning," task of weighing his words, recollecting his tones of voice, and feeling them reverberate on her heart. * the introduction of darnford as the deliverer of maria in a former instance, appears to have been an after-thought of the author. this has occasioned the omission of any allusion to that circumstance in the preceding narration. editor. [godwin's note] chapter 4 pity, and the forlorn seriousness of adversity, have both been considered as dispositions favourable to love, while satirical writers have attributed the propensity to the relaxing effect of idleness; what chance then had maria of escaping, when pity, sorrow, and solitude all conspired to soften her mind, and nourish romantic wishes, and, from a natural progress, romantic expectations? maria was six-and-twenty. but, such was the native soundness of her constitution, that time had only given to her countenance the character of her mind. revolving thought, and exercised affections had banished some of the playful graces of innocence, producing insensibly that irregularity of features which the struggles of the understanding to trace or govern the strong emotions of the heart, are wont to imprint on the yielding mass. grief and care had mellowed, without obscuring, the bright tints of youth, and the thoughtfulness which resided on her brow did not take from the feminine softness of her features; nay, such was the sensibility which often mantled over it, that she frequently appeared, like a large proportion of her sex, only born to feel; and the activity of her well-proportioned, and even almost voluptuous figure, inspired the idea of strength of mind, rather than of body. there was a simplicity sometimes indeed in her manner, which bordered on infantine ingenuousness, that led people of common discernment to underrate her talents, and smile at the flights of her imagination. but those who could not comprehend the delicacy of her sentiments, were attached by her unfailing sympathy, so that she was very generally beloved by characters of very different descriptions; still, she was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination to adhere to common rules. there are mistakes of conduct which at five-and-twenty prove the strength of the mind, that, ten or fifteen years after, would demonstrate its weakness, its incapacity to acquire a sane judgment. the youths who are satisfied with the ordinary pleasures of life, and do not sigh after ideal phantoms of love and friendship, will never arrive at great maturity of understanding; but if these reveries are cherished, as is too frequently the case with women, when experience ought to have taught them in what human happiness consists, they become as useless as they are wretched. besides, their pains and pleasures are so dependent on outward circumstances, on the objects of their affections, that they seldom act from the impulse of a nerved mind, able to choose its own pursuit. having had to struggle incessantly with the vices of mankind, maria's imagination found repose in pourtraying the possible virtues the world might contain. pygmalion formed an ivory maid, and longed for an informing soul. she, on the contrary, combined all the qualities of a hero's mind, and fate presented a statue in which she might enshrine them. we mean not to trace the progress of this passion, or recount how often darnford and maria were obliged to part in the midst of an interesting conversation. jemima ever watched on the tip-toe of fear, and frequently separated them on a false alarm, when they would have given worlds to remain a little longer together. a magic lamp now seemed to be suspended in maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round the gloomy walls, late so blank. rushing from the depth of despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.--she was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous. to darnford she had not shown a decided affection; the fear of outrunning his, a sure proof of love, made her often assume a coldness and indifference foreign from her character; and, even when giving way to the playful emotions of a heart just loosened from the frozen bond of grief, there was a delicacy in her manner of expressing her sensibility, which made him doubt whether it was the effect of love. one evening, when jemima left them, to listen to the sound of a distant footstep, which seemed cautiously to approach, he seized maria's hand--it was not withdrawn. they conversed with earnestness of their situation; and, during the conversation, he once or twice gently drew her towards him. he felt the fragrance of her breath, and longed, yet feared, to touch the lips from which it issued; spirits of purity seemed to guard them, while all the enchanting graces of love sported on her cheeks, and languished in her eyes. jemima entering, he reflected on his diffidence with poignant regret, and, she once more taking alarm, he ventured, as maria stood near his chair, to approach her lips with a declaration of love. she drew back with solemnity, he hung down his head abashed; but lifting his eyes timidly, they met her's; she had determined, during that instant, and suffered their rays to mingle. he took, with more ardour, reassured, a half-consenting, half-reluctant kiss, reluctant only from modesty; and there was a sacredness in her dignified manner of reclining her glowing face on his shoulder, that powerfully impressed him. desire was lost in more ineffable emotions, and to protect her from insult and sorrow--to make her happy, seemed not only the first wish of his heart, but the most noble duty of his life. such angelic confidence demanded the fidelity of honour; but could he, feeling her in every pulsation, could he ever change, could he be a villain? the emotion with which she, for a moment, allowed herself to be pressed to his bosom, the tear of rapturous sympathy, mingled with a soft melancholy sentiment of recollected disappointment, said--more of truth and faithfulness, than the tongue could have given utterance to in hours! they were silent--yet discoursed, how eloquently? till, after a moment's reflection, maria drew her chair by the side of his, and, with a composed sweetness of voice, and supernatural benignity of countenance, said, "i must open my whole heart to you; you must be told who i am, why i am here, and why, telling you i am a wife, i blush not to"--the blush spoke the rest. jemima was again at her elbow, and the restraint of her presence did not prevent an animated conversation, in which love, sly urchin, was ever at bo-peep. so much of heaven did they enjoy, that paradise bloomed around them; or they, by a powerful spell, had been transported into armida's garden. love, the grand enchanter, "lapt them in elysium," and every sense was harmonized to joy and social extacy. so animated, indeed, were their accents of tenderness, in discussing what, in other circumstances, would have been commonplace subjects, that jemima felt, with surprise, a tear of pleasure trickling down her rugged cheeks. she wiped it away, half ashamed; and when maria kindly enquired the cause, with all the eager solicitude of a happy being wishing to impart to all nature its overflowing felicity, jemima owned that it was the first tear that social enjoyment had ever drawn from her. she seemed indeed to breathe more freely; the cloud of suspicion cleared away from her brow; she felt herself, for once in her life, treated like a fellow-creature. imagination! who can paint thy power; or reflect the evanescent tints of hope fostered by thee? a despondent gloom had long obscured maria's horizon--now the sun broke forth, the rainbow appeared, and every prospect was fair. horror still reigned in the darkened cells, suspicion lurked in the passages, and whispered along the walls. the yells of men possessed, sometimes, made them pause, and wonder that they felt so happy, in a tomb of living death. they even chid themselves for such apparent insensibility; still the world contained not three happier beings. and jemima, after again patrolling the passage, was so softened by the air of confidence which breathed around her, that she voluntarily began an account of herself. chapter 5 "my father," said jemima, "seduced my mother, a pretty girl, with whom he lived fellow-servant; and she no sooner perceived the natural, the dreaded consequence, than the terrible conviction flashed on her--that she was ruined. honesty, and a regard for her reputation, had been the only principles inculcated by her mother; and they had been so forcibly impressed, that she feared shame, more than the poverty to which it would lead. her incessant importunities to prevail upon my father to screen her from reproach by marrying her, as he had promised in the fervour of seduction, estranged him from her so completely, that her very person became distasteful to him; and he began to hate, as well as despise me, before i was born. "my mother, grieved to the soul by his neglect, and unkind treatment, actually resolved to famish herself; and injured her health by the attempt; though she had not sufficient resolution to adhere to her project, or renounce it entirely. death came not at her call; yet sorrow, and the methods she adopted to conceal her condition, still doing the work of a house-maid, had such an effect on her constitution, that she died in the wretched garret, where her virtuous mistress had forced her to take refuge in the very pangs of labour, though my father, after a slight reproof, was allowed to remain in his place--allowed by the mother of six children, who, scarcely permitting a footstep to be heard, during her month's indulgence, felt no sympathy for the poor wretch, denied every comfort required by her situation. "the day my mother, died, the ninth after my birth, i was consigned to the care of the cheapest nurse my father could find; who suckled her own child at the same time, and lodged as many more as she could get, in two cellar-like apartments. "poverty, and the habit of seeing children die off her hands, had so hardened her heart, that the office of a mother did not awaken the tenderness of a woman; nor were the feminine caresses which seem a part of the rearing of a child, ever bestowed on me. the chicken has a wing to shelter under; but i had no bosom to nestle in, no kindred warmth to foster me. left in dirt, to cry with cold and hunger till i was weary, and sleep without ever being prepared by exercise, or lulled by kindness to rest; could i be expected to become any thing but a weak and rickety babe? still, in spite of neglect, i continued to exist, to learn to curse existence, [her countenance grew ferocious as she spoke,] and the treatment that rendered me miserable, seemed to sharpen my wits. confined then in a damp hovel, to rock the cradle of the succeeding tribe, i looked like a little old woman, or a hag shrivelling into nothing. the furrows of reflection and care contracted the youthful cheek, and gave a sort of supernatural wildness to the ever watchful eye. during this period, my father had married another fellow-servant, who loved him less, and knew better how to manage his passion, than my mother. she likewise proving with child, they agreed to keep a shop: my step-mother, if, being an illegitimate offspring, i may venture thus to characterize her, having obtained a sum of a rich relation, for that purpose. "soon after her lying-in, she prevailed on my father to take me home, to save the expense of maintaining me, and of hiring a girl to assist her in the care of the child. i was young, it was true, but appeared a knowing little thing, and might be made handy. accordingly i was brought to her house; but not to a home--for a home i never knew. of this child, a daughter, she was extravagantly fond; and it was a part of my employment, to assist to spoil her, by humouring all her whims, and bearing all her caprices. feeling her own consequence, before she could speak, she had learned the art of tormenting me, and if i ever dared to resist, i received blows, laid on with no compunctious hand, or was sent to bed dinnerless, as well as supperless. i said that it was a part of my daily labour to attend this child, with the servility of a slave; still it was but a part. i was sent out in all seasons, and from place to place, to carry burdens far above my strength, without being allowed to draw near the fire, or ever being cheered by encouragement or kindness. no wonder then, treated like a creature of another species, that i began to envy, and at length to hate, the darling of the house. yet, i perfectly remember, that it was the caresses, and kind expressions of my step-mother, which first excited my jealous discontent. once, i cannot forget it, when she was calling in vain her wayward child to kiss her, i ran to her, saying, 'i will kiss you, ma'am!' and how did my heart, which was in my mouth, sink, what was my debasement of soul, when pushed away with--'i do not want you, pert thing!' another day, when a new gown had excited the highest good humour, and she uttered the appropriate dear, addressed unexpectedly to me, i thought i could never do enough to please her; i was all alacrity, and rose proportionably in my own estimation. "as her daughter grew up, she was pampered with cakes and fruit, while i was, literally speaking, fed with the refuse of the table, with her leavings. a liquorish tooth is, i believe, common to children, and i used to steal any thing sweet, that i could catch up with a chance of concealment. when detected, she was not content to chastize me herself at the moment, but, on my father's return in the evening (he was a shopman), the principal discourse was to recount my faults, and attribute them to the wicked disposition which i had brought into the world with me, inherited from my mother. he did not fail to leave the marks of his resentment on my body, and then solaced himself by playing with my sister.--i could have murdered her at those moments. to save myself from these unmerciful corrections, i resorted to falshood, and the untruths which i sturdily maintained, were brought in judgment against me, to support my tyrant's inhuman charge of my natural propensity to vice. seeing me treated with contempt, and always being fed and dressed better, my sister conceived a contemptuous opinion of me, that proved an obstacle to all affection; and my father, hearing continually of my faults, began to consider me as a curse entailed on him for his sins: he was therefore easily prevailed on to bind me apprentice to one of my step-mother's friends, who kept a slop-shop in wapping. i was represented (as it was said) in my true colours; but she, 'warranted,' snapping her fingers, 'that she should break my spirit or heart.' "my mother replied, with a whine, 'that if any body could make me better, it was such a clever woman as herself; though, for her own part, she had tried in vain; but good-nature was her fault.' "i shudder with horror, when i recollect the treatment i had now to endure. not only under the lash of my task-mistress, but the drudge of the maid, apprentices and children, i never had a taste of human kindness to soften the rigour of perpetual labour. i had been introduced as an object of abhorrence into the family; as a creature of whom my step-mother, though she had been kind enough to let me live in the house with her own child, could make nothing. i was described as a wretch, whose nose must be kept to the grinding stone--and it was held there with an iron grasp. it seemed indeed the privilege of their superior nature to kick me about, like the dog or cat. if i were attentive, i was called fawning, if refractory, an obstinate mule, and like a mule i received their censure on my loaded back. often has my mistress, for some instance of forgetfulness, thrown me from one side of the kitchen to the other, knocked my head against the wall, spit in my face, with various refinements on barbarity that i forbear to enumerate, though they were all acted over again by the servant, with additional insults, to which the appellation of bastard, was commonly added, with taunts or sneers. but i will not attempt to give you an adequate idea of my situation, lest you, who probably have never been drenched with the dregs of human misery, should think i exaggerate. "i stole now, from absolute necessity,--bread; yet whatever else was taken, which i had it not in my power to take, was ascribed to me. i was the filching cat, the ravenous dog, the dumb brute, who must bear all; for if i endeavoured to exculpate myself, i was silenced, without any enquiries being made, with 'hold your tongue, you never tell truth.' even the very air i breathed was tainted with scorn; for i was sent to the neighbouring shops with glutton, liar, or thief, written on my forehead. this was, at first, the most bitter punishment; but sullen pride, or a kind of stupid desperation, made me, at length, almost regardless of the contempt, which had wrung from me so many solitary tears at the only moments when i was allowed to rest. "thus was i the mark of cruelty till my sixteenth year; and then i have only to point out a change of misery; for a period i never knew. allow me first to make one observation. now i look back, i cannot help attributing the greater part of my misery, to the misfortune of having been thrown into the world without the grand support of life--a mother's affection. i had no one to love me; or to make me respected, to enable me to acquire respect. i was an egg dropped on the sand; a pauper by nature, hunted from family to family, who belonged to nobody--and nobody cared for me. i was despised from my birth, and denied the chance of obtaining a footing for myself in society. yes; i had not even the chance of being considered as a fellow-creature--yet all the people with whom i lived, brutalized as they were by the low cunning of trade, and the despicable shifts of poverty, were not without bowels, though they never yearned for me. i was, in fact, born a slave, and chained by infamy to slavery during the whole of existence, without having any companions to alleviate it by sympathy, or teach me how to rise above it by their example. but, to resume the thread of my tale- "at sixteen, i suddenly grew tall, and something like comeliness appeared on a sunday, when i had time to wash my face, and put on clean clothes. my master had once or twice caught hold of me in the passage; but i instinctively avoided his disgusting caresses. one day however, when the family were at a methodist meeting, he contrived to be alone in the house with me, and by blows--yes; blows and menaces, compelled me to submit to his ferocious desire; and, to avoid my mistress's fury, i was obliged in future to comply, and skulk to my loft at his command, in spite of increasing loathing. "the anguish which was now pent up in my bosom, seemed to open a new world to me: i began to extend my thoughts beyond myself, and grieve for human misery, till i discovered, with horror--ah! what horror!--that i was with child. i know not why i felt a mixed sensation of despair and tenderness, excepting that, ever called a bastard, a bastard appeared to me an object of the greatest compassion in creation. "i communicated this dreadful circumstance to my master, who was almost equally alarmed at the intelligence; for he feared his wife, and public censure at the meeting. after some weeks of deliberation had elapsed, i in continual fear that my altered shape would be noticed, my master gave me a medicine in a phial, which he desired me to take, telling me, without any circumlocution, for what purpose it was designed. i burst into tears, i thought it was killing myself--yet was such a self as i worth preserving? he cursed me for a fool, and left me to my own reflections. i could not resolve to take this infernal potion; but i wrapped it up in an old gown, and hid it in a corner of my box. "nobody yet suspected me, because they had been accustomed to view me as a creature of another species. but the threatening storm at last broke over my devoted head--never shall i forget it! one sunday evening when i was left, as usual, to take care of the house, my master came home intoxicated, and i became the prey of his brutal appetite. his extreme intoxication made him forget his customary caution, and my mistress entered and found us in a situation that could not have been more hateful to her than me. her husband was 'pot-valiant,' he feared her not at the moment, nor had he then much reason, for she instantly turned the whole force of her anger another way. she tore off my cap, scratched, kicked, and buffetted me, till she had exhausted her strength, declaring, as she rested her arm, 'that i had wheedled her husband from her.--but, could any thing better be expected from a wretch, whom she had taken into her house out of pure charity?' what a torrent of abuse rushed out? till, almost breathless, she concluded with saying, 'that i was born a strumpet; it ran in my blood, and nothing good could come to those who harboured me.' "my situation was, of course, discovered, and she declared that i should not stay another night under the same roof with an honest family. i was therefore pushed out of doors, and my trumpery thrown after me, when it had been contemptuously examined in the passage, lest i should have stolen any thing. "behold me then in the street, utterly destitute! whither could i creep for shelter? to my father's roof i had no claim, when not pursued by shame--now i shrunk back as from death, from my mother's cruel reproaches, my father's execrations. i could not endure to hear him curse the day i was born, though life had been a curse to me. of death i thought, but with a confused emotion of terror, as i stood leaning my head on a post, and starting at every footstep, lest it should be my mistress coming to tear my heart out. one of the boys of the shop passing by, heard my tale, and immediately repaired to his master, to give him a description of my situation; and he touched the right key--the scandal it would give rise to, if i were left to repeat my tale to every enquirer. this plea came home to his reason, who had been sobered by his wife's rage, the fury of which fell on him when i was out of her reach, and he sent the boy to me with half-a-guinea, desiring him to conduct me to a house, where beggars, and other wretches, the refuse of society, nightly lodged. this night was spent in a state of stupefaction, or desperation. i detested mankind, and abhorred myself. "in the morning i ventured out, to throw myself in my master's way, at his usual hour of going abroad. i approached him, he 'damned me for a b----, declared i had disturbed the peace of the family, and that he had sworn to his wife, never to take any more notice of me.' he left me; but, instantly returning, he told me that he should speak to his friend, a parish-officer, to get a nurse for the brat i laid to him; and advised me, if i wished to keep out of the house of correction, not to make free with his name. "i hurried back to my hole, and, rage giving place to despair, sought for the potion that was to procure abortion, and swallowed it, with a wish that it might destroy me, at the same time that it stopped the sensations of new-born life, which i felt with indescribable emotion. my head turned round, my heart grew sick, and in the horrors of approaching dissolution, mental anguish was swallowed up. the effect of the medicine was violent, and i was confined to my bed several days; but, youth and a strong constitution prevailing, i once more crawled out, to ask myself the cruel question, 'whither i should go?' i had but two shillings left in my pocket, the rest had been expended, by a poor woman who slept in the same room, to pay for my lodging, and purchase the necessaries of which she partook. "with this wretch i went into the neighbouring streets to beg, and my disconsolate appearance drew a few pence from the idle, enabling me still to command a bed; till, recovering from my illness, and taught to put on my rags to the best advantage, i was accosted from different motives, and yielded to the desire of the brutes i met, with the same detestation that i had felt for my still more brutal master. i have since read in novels of the blandishments of seduction, but i had not even the pleasure of being enticed into vice. "i shall not," interrupted jemima, "lead your imagination into all the scenes of wretchedness and depravity, which i was condemned to view; or mark the different stages of my debasing misery. fate dragged me through the very kennels of society: i was still a slave, a bastard, a common property. become familiar with vice, for i wish to conceal nothing from you, i picked the pockets of the drunkards who abused me; and proved by my conduct, that i deserved the epithets, with which they loaded me at moments when distrust ought to cease. "detesting my nightly occupation, though valuing, if i may so use the word, my independence, which only consisted in choosing the street in which i should wander, or the roof, when i had money, in which i should hide my head, i was some time before i could prevail on myself to accept of a place in a house of ill fame, to which a girl, with whom i had accidentally conversed in the street, had recommended me. i had been hunted almost into a fever, by the watchmen of the quarter of the town i frequented; one, whom i had unwittingly offended, giving the word to the whole pack. you can scarcely conceive the tyranny exercised by these wretches: considering themselves as the instruments of the very laws they violate, the pretext which steels their conscience, hardens their heart. not content with receiving from us, outlaws of society (let other women talk of favours) a brutal gratification gratuitously as a privilege of office, they extort a tithe of prostitution, and harrass with threats the poor creatures whose occupation affords not the means to silence the growl of avarice. to escape from this persecution, i once more entered into servitude. "a life of comparative regularity restored my health; and-do not start--my manners were improved, in a situation where vice sought to render itself alluring, and taste was cultivated to fashion the person, if not to refine the mind. besides, the common civility of speech, contrasted with the gross vulgarity to which i had been accustomed, was something like the polish of civilization. i was not shut out from all intercourse of humanity. still i was galled by the yoke of service, and my mistress often flying into violent fits of passion, made me dread a sudden dismission, which i understood was always the case. i was therefore prevailed on, though i felt a horror of men, to accept the offer of a gentleman, rather in the decline of years, to keep his house, pleasantly situated in a little village near hampstead. "he was a man of great talents, and of brilliant wit; but, a worn-out votary of voluptuousness, his desires became fastidious in proportion as they grew weak, and the native tenderness of his heart was undermined by a vitiated imagination. a thoughtless carreer of libertinism and social enjoyment, had injured his health to such a degree, that, whatever pleasure his conversation afforded me (and my esteem was ensured by proofs of the generous humanity of his disposition), the being his mistress was purchasing it at a very dear rate. with such a keen perception of the delicacies of sentiment, with an imagination invigorated by the exercise of genius, how could he sink into the grossness of sensuality! "but, to pass over a subject which i recollect with pain, i must remark to you, as an answer to your often-repeated question, 'why my sentiments and language were superior to my station?' that i now began to read, to beguile the tediousness of solitude, and to gratify an inquisitive, active mind. i had often, in my childhood, followed a ballad-singer, to hear the sequel of a dismal story, though sure of being severely punished for delaying to return with whatever i was sent to purchase. i could just spell and put a sentence together, and i listened to the various arguments, though often mingled with obscenity, which occurred at the table where i was allowed to preside: for a literary friend or two frequently came home with my master, to dine and pass the night. having lost the privileged respect of my sex, my presence, instead of restraining, perhaps gave the reins to their tongues; still i had the advantage of hearing discussions, from which, in the common course of life, women are excluded. "you may easily imagine, that it was only by degrees that i could comprehend some of the subjects they investigated, or acquire from their reasoning what might be termed a moral sense. but my fondness of reading increasing, and my master occasionally shutting himself up in this retreat, for weeks together, to write, i had many opportunities of improvement. at first, considering money (i was right!" exclaimed jemima, altering her tone of voice) "as the only means, after my loss of reputation, of obtaining respect, or even the toleration of humanity, i had not the least scruple to secrete a part of the sums intrusted to me, and to screen myself from detection by a system of falshood. but, acquiring new principles, i began to have the ambition of returning to the respectable part of society, and was weak enough to suppose it possible. the attention of my unassuming instructor, who, without being ignorant of his own powers, possessed great simplicity of manners, strengthened the illusion. having sometimes caught up hints for thought, from my untutored remarks, he often led me to discuss the subjects he was treating, and would read to me his productions, previous to their publication, wishing to profit by the criticism of unsophisticated feeling. the aim of his writings was to touch the simple springs of the heart; for he despised the would-be oracles, the self-elected philosophers, who fright away fancy, while sifting each grain of thought to prove that slowness of comprehension is wisdom. "i should have distinguished this as a moment of sunshine, a happy period in my life, had not the repugnance the disgusting libertinism of my protector inspired, daily become more painful.--and, indeed, i soon did recollect it as such with agony, when his sudden death (for he had recourse to the most exhilarating cordials to keep up the convivial tone of his spirits) again threw me into the desert of human society. had he had any time for reflection, i am certain he would have left the little property in his power to me: but, attacked by the fatal apoplexy in town, his heir, a man of rigid morals, brought his wife with him to take possession of the house and effects, before i was even informed of his death,-'to prevent,' as she took care indirectly to tell me, 'such a creature as she supposed me to be, from purloining any of them, had i been apprized of the event in time.' "the grief i felt at the sudden shock the information gave me, which at first had nothing selfish in it, was treated with contempt, and i was ordered to pack up my clothes; and a few trinkets and books, given me by the generous deceased, were contested, while they piously hoped, with a reprobating shake of the head, 'that god would have mercy on his sinful soul!' with some difficulty, i obtained my arrears of wages; but asking--such is the spirit-grinding consequence of poverty and infamy--for a character for honesty and economy, which god knows i merited, i was told by this--why must i call her woman?--'that it would go against her conscience to recommend a kept mistress.' tears started in my eyes, burning tears; for there are situations in which a wretch is humbled by the contempt they are conscious they do not deserve. "i returned to the metropolis; but the solitude of a poor lodging was inconceivably dreary, after the society i had enjoyed. to be cut off from human converse, now i had been taught to relish it, was to wander a ghost among the living. besides, i foresaw, to aggravate the severity of my fate, that my little pittance would soon melt away. i endeavoured to obtain needlework; but, not having been taught early, and my hands being rendered clumsy by hard work, i did not sufficiently excel to be employed by the ready-made linen shops, when so many women, better qualified, were suing for it. the want of a character prevented my getting a place; for, irksome as servitude would have been to me, i should have made another trial, had it been feasible. not that i disliked employment, but the inequality of condition to which i must have submitted. i had acquired a taste for literature, during the five years i had lived with a literary man, occasionally conversing with men of the first abilities of the age; and now to descend to the lowest vulgarity, was a degree of wretchedness not to be imagined unfelt. i had not, it is true, tasted the charms of affection, but i had been familiar with the graces of humanity. "one of the gentlemen, whom i had frequently dined in company with, while i was treated like a companion, met me in the street, and enquired after my health. i seized the occasion, and began to describe my situation; but he was in haste to join, at dinner, a select party of choice spirits; therefore, without waiting to hear me, he impatiently put a guinea into my hand, saying, 'it was a pity such a sensible woman should be in distress--he wished me well from his soul.' "to another i wrote, stating my case, and requesting advice. he was an advocate for unequivocal sincerity; and had often, in my presence, descanted on the evils which arise in society from the despotism of rank and riches. "in reply, i received a long essay on the energy of the human mind, with continual allusions to his own force of character. he added, 'that the woman who could write such a letter as i had sent him, could never be in want of resources, were she to look into herself, and exert her powers; misery was the consequence of indolence, and, as to my being shut out from society, it was the lot of man to submit to certain privations.' "how often have i heard," said jemima, interrupting her narrative, "in conversation, and read in books, that every person willing to work may find employment? it is the vague assertion, i believe, of insensible indolence, when it relates to men; but, with respect to women, i am sure of its fallacy, unless they will submit to the most menial bodily labour; and even to be employed at hard labour is out of the reach of many, whose reputation misfortune or folly has tainted. "how writers, professing to be friends to freedom, and the improvement of morals, can assert that poverty is no evil, i cannot imagine." "no more can i," interrupted maria, "yet they even expatiate on the peculiar happiness of indigence, though in what it can consist, excepting in brutal rest, when a man can barely earn a subsistence, i cannot imagine. the mind is necessarily imprisoned in its own little tenement; and, fully occupied by keeping it in repair, has not time to rove abroad for improvement. the book of knowledge is closely clasped, against those who must fulfil their daily task of severe manual labour or die; and curiosity, rarely excited by thought or information, seldom moves on the stagnate lake of ignorance." "as far as i have been able to observe," replied jemima, "prejudices, caught up by chance, are obstinately maintained by the poor, to the exclusion of improvement; they have not time to reason or reflect to any extent, or minds sufficiently exercised to adopt the principles of action, which form perhaps the only basis of contentment in every station."* * the copy which appears to have received the author's last corrections, ends at this place. [godwin's note] "and independence," said darnford, "they are necessarily strangers to, even the independence of despising their persecutors. if the poor are happy, or can be happy, _things_ _are_ _very_ _well_ _as_ _they_ _are_. and i cannot conceive on what principle those writers contend for a change of system, who support this opinion. the authors on the other side of the question are much more consistent, who grant the fact; yet, insisting that it is the lot of the majority to be oppressed in this life, kindly turn them over to another, to rectify the false weights and measures of this, as the only way to justify the dispensations of providence. i have not," continued darnford, "an opinion more firmly fixed by observation in my mind, than that, though riches may fail to produce proportionate happiness, poverty most commonly excludes it, by shutting up all the avenues to improvement." "and as for the affections," added maria, with a sigh, "how gross, and even tormenting do they become, unless regulated by an improving mind! the culture of the heart ever, i believe, keeps pace with that of the mind. but pray go on," addressing jemima, "though your narrative gives rise to the most painful reflections on the present state of society." "not to trouble you," continued she, "with a detailed description of all the painful feelings of unavailing exertion, i have only to tell you, that at last i got recommended to wash in a few families, who did me the favour to admit me into their houses, without the most strict enquiry, to wash from one in the morning till eight at night, for eighteen or twenty-pence a day. on the happiness to be enjoyed over a washing-tub i need not comment; yet you will allow me to observe, that this was a wretchedness of situation peculiar to my sex. a man with half my industry, and, i may say, abilities, could have procured a decent livelihood, and discharged some of the duties which knit mankind together; whilst i, who had acquired a taste for the rational, nay, in honest pride let me assert it, the virtuous enjoyments of life, was cast aside as the filth of society. condemned to labour, like a machine, only to earn bread, and scarcely that, i became melancholy and desperate. "i have now to mention a circumstance which fills me with remorse, and fear it will entirely deprive me of your esteem. a tradesman became attached to me, and visited me frequently,--and i at last obtained such a power over him, that he offered to take me home to his house.--consider, dear madam, i was famishing: wonder not that i became a wolf!.--the only reason for not taking me home immediately, was the having a girl in the house, with child by him-and this girl--i advised him--yes, i did! would i could forget it!-to turn out of doors: and one night he determined to follow my advice. poor wretch! she fell upon her knees, reminded him that he had promised to marry her, that her parents were honest!-what did it avail?--she was turned out. "she approached her father's door, in the skirts of london, --listened at the shutters,--but could not knock. a watchman had observed her go and return several times--poor wretch!--[the remorse jemima spoke of, seemed to be stinging her to the soul, as she proceeded.] "she left it, and, approaching a tub where horses were watered, she sat down in it, and, with desperate resolution, remained in that attitude--till resolution was no longer necessary! "i happened that morning to be going out to wash, anticipating the moment when i should escape from such hard labour. i passed by, just as some men, going to work, drew out the stiff, cold corpse--let me not recal the horrid moment!--i recognized her pale visage; i listened to the tale told by the spectators, and my heart did not burst. i thought of my own state, and wondered how i could be such a monster!--i worked hard; and, returning home, i was attacked by a fever. i suffered both in body and mind. i determined not to live with the wretch. but he did not try me; he left the neighbourhood. i once more returned to the wash-tub. "still this state, miserable as it was, admitted of aggravation. lifting one day a heavy load, a tub fell against my shin, and gave me great pain. i did not pay much attention to the hurt, till it became a serious wound; being obliged to work as usual, or starve. but, finding myself at length unable to stand for any time, i thought of getting into an hospital. hospitals, it should seem (for they are comfortless abodes for the sick) were expressly endowed for the reception of the friendless; yet i, who had on that plea a right to assistance, wanted the recommendation of the rich and respectable, and was several weeks languishing for admittance; fees were demanded on entering; and, what was still more unreasonable, security for burying me, that expence not coming into the letter of the charity. a guinea was the stipulated sum--i could as soon have raised a million; and i was afraid to apply to the parish for an order, lest they should have passed me, i knew not whither. the poor woman at whose house i lodged, compassionating my state, got me into the hospital; and the family where i received the hurt, sent me five shillings, three and six-pence of which i gave at my admittance--i know not for what. "my leg grew quickly better; but i was dismissed before my cure was completed, because i could not afford to have my linen washed to appear decently, as the virago of a nurse said, when the gentlemen (the surgeons) came. i cannot give you an adequate idea of the wretchedness of an hospital; every thing is left to the care of people intent on gain. the attendants seem to have lost all feeling of compassion in the bustling discharge of their offices; death is so familiar to them, that they are not anxious to ward it off. every thing appeared to be conducted for the accommodation of the medical men and their pupils, who came to make experiments on the poor, for the benefit of the rich. one of the physicians, i must not forget to mention, gave me half-a-crown, and ordered me some wine, when i was at the lowest ebb. i thought of making my case known to the lady-like matron; but her forbidding countenance prevented me. she condescended to look on the patients, and make general enquiries, two or three times a week; but the nurses knew the hour when the visit of ceremony would commence, and every thing was as it should be. "after my dismission, i was more at a loss than ever for a subsistence, and, not to weary you with a repetition of the same unavailing attempts, unable to stand at the washing-tub, i began to consider the rich and poor as natural enemies, and became a thief from principle. i could not now cease to reason, but i hated mankind. i despised myself, yet i justified my conduct. i was taken, tried, and condemned to six months' imprisonment in a house of correction. my soul recoils with horror from the remembrance of the insults i had to endure, till, branded with shame, i was turned loose in the street, pennyless. i wandered from street to street, till, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, i sunk down senseless at a door, where i had vainly demanded a morsel of bread. i was sent by the inhabitant to the work-house, to which he had surlily bid me go, saying, he 'paid enough in conscience to the poor,' when, with parched tongue, i implored his charity. if those well-meaning people who exclaim against beggars, were acquainted with the treatment the poor receive in many of these wretched asylums, they would not stifle so easily involuntary sympathy, by saying that they have all parishes to go to, or wonder that the poor dread to enter the gloomy walls. what are the common run of workhouses, but prisons, in which many respectable old people, worn out by immoderate labour, sink into the grave in sorrow, to which they are carried like dogs!" alarmed by some indistinct noise, jemima rose hastily to listen, and maria, turning to darnford, said, "i have indeed been shocked beyond expression when i have met a pauper's funeral. a coffin carried on the shoulders of three or four ill-looking wretches, whom the imagination might easily convert into a band of assassins, hastening to conceal the corpse, and quarrelling about the prey on their way. i know it is of little consequence how we are consigned to the earth; but i am led by this brutal insensibility, to what even the animal creation appears forcibly to feel, to advert to the wretched, deserted manner in which they died." "true," rejoined darnford, "and, till the rich will give more than a part of their wealth, till they will give time and attention to the wants of the distressed, never let them boast of charity. let them open their hearts, and not their purses, and employ their minds in the service, if they are really actuated by humanity; or charitable institutions will always be the prey of the lowest order of knaves." jemima returning, seemed in haste to finish her tale. "the overseer farmed the poor of different parishes, and out of the bowels of poverty was wrung the money with which he purchased this dwelling, as a private receptacle for madness. he had been a keeper at a house of the same description, and conceived that he could make money much more readily in his old occupation. he is a shrewd--shall i say it?--villain. he observed something resolute in my manner, and offered to take me with him, and instruct me how to treat the disturbed minds he meant to intrust to my care. the offer of forty pounds a year, and to quit a workhouse, was not to be despised, though the condition of shutting my eyes and hardening my heart was annexed to it. "i agreed to accompany him; and four years have i been attendant on many wretches, and"--she lowered her voice,--"the witness of many enormities. in solitude my mind seemed to recover its force, and many of the sentiments which i imbibed in the only tolerable period of my life, returned with their full force. still what should induce me to be the champion for suffering humanity?--who ever risked any thing for me?--who ever acknowledged me to be a fellow-creature?"- maria took her hand, and jemima, more overcome by kindness than she had ever been by cruelty, hastened out of the room to conceal her emotions. darnford soon after heard his summons, and, taking leave of him, maria promised to gratify his curiosity, with respect to herself, the first opportunity. chapter 6 active as love was in the heart of maria, the story she had just heard made her thoughts take a wider range. the opening buds of hope closed, as if they had put forth too early, and the the happiest day of her life was overcast by the most melancholy reflections. thinking of jemima's peculiar fate and her own, she was led to consider the oppressed state of women, and to lament that she had given birth to a daughter. sleep fled from her eyelids, while she dwelt on the wretchedness of unprotected infancy, till sympathy with jemima changed to agony, when it seemed probable that her own babe might even now be in the very state she so forcibly described. maria thought, and thought again. jemima's humanity had rather been benumbed than killed, by the keen frost she had to brave at her entrance into life; an appeal then to her feelings, on this tender point, surely would not be fruitless; and maria began to anticipate the delight it would afford her to gain intelligence of her child. this project was now the only subject of reflection; and she watched impatiently for the dawn of day, with that determinate purpose which generally insures success. at the usual hour, jemima brought her breakfast, and a tender note from darnford. she ran her eye hastily over it, and her heart calmly hoarded up the rapture a fresh assurance of affection, affection such as she wished to inspire, gave her, without diverting her mind a moment from its design. while jemima waited to take away the breakfast, maria alluded to the reflections, that had haunted her during the night to the exclusion of sleep. she spoke with energy of jemima's unmerited sufferings, and of the fate of a number of deserted females, placed within the sweep of a whirlwind, from which it was next to impossible to escape. perceiving the effect her conversation produced on the countenance of her guard, she grasped the arm of jemima with that irresistible warmth which defies repulse, exclaiming--"with your heart, and such dreadful experience, can you lend your aid to deprive my babe of a mother's tenderness, a mother's care? in the name of god, assist me to snatch her from destruction! let me but give her an education--let me but prepare her body and mind to encounter the ills which await her sex, and i will teach her to consider you as her second mother, and herself as the prop of your age. yes, jemima, look at me-observe me closely, and read my very soul; you merit a better fate;" she held out her hand with a firm gesture of assurance; "and i will procure it for you, as a testimony of my esteem, as well as of my gratitude." jemima had not power to resist this persuasive torrent; and, owning that the house in which she was confined, was situated on the banks of the thames, only a few miles from london, and not on the sea-coast, as darnford had supposed, she promised to invent some excuse for her absence, and go herself to trace the situation, and enquire concerning the health, of this abandoned daughter. her manner implied an intention to do something more, but she seemed unwilling to impart her design; and maria, glad to have obtained the main point, thought it best to leave her to the workings of her own mind; convinced that she had the power of interesting her still more in favour of herself and child, by a simple recital of facts. in the evening, jemima informed the impatient mother, that on the morrow she should hasten to town before the family hour of rising, and received all the information necessary, as a clue to her search. the "good night!" maria uttered was peculiarly solemn and affectionate. glad expectation sparkled in her eye; and, for the first time since her detention, she pronounced the name of her child with pleasureable fondness; and, with all the garrulity of a nurse, described her first smile when she recognized her mother. recollecting herself, a still kinder "adieu!" with a "god bless you!"--that seemed to include a maternal benediction, dismissed jemima. the dreary solitude of the ensuing day, lengthened by impatiently dwelling on the same idea, was intolerably wearisome. she listened for the sound of a particular clock, which some directions of the wind allowed her to hear distinctly. she marked the shadow gaining on the wall; and, twilight thickening into darkness, her breath seemed oppressed while she anxiously counted nine.--the last sound was a stroke of despair on her heart; for she expected every moment, without seeing jemima, to have her light extinguished by the savage female who supplied her place. she was even obliged to prepare for bed, restless as she was, not to disoblige her new attendant. she had been cautioned not to speak too freely to her; but the caution was needless, her countenance would still more emphatically have made her shrink back. such was the ferocity of manner, conspicuous in every word and gesture of this hag, that maria was afraid to enquire, why jemima, who had faithfully promised to see her before her door was shut for the night, came not?-and, when the key turned in the lock, to consign her to a night of suspence, she felt a degree of anguish which the circumstances scarcely justified. continually on the watch, the shutting of a door, or the sound of a foot-step, made her start and tremble with apprehension, something like what she felt, when, at her entrance, dragged along the gallery, she began to doubt whether she were not surrounded by demons? fatigued by an endless rotation of thought and wild alarms, she looked like a spectre, when jemima entered in the morning; especially as her eyes darted out of her head, to read in jemima's countenance, almost as pallid, the intelligence she dared not trust her tongue to demand. jemima put down the tea-things, and appeared very busy in arranging the table. maria took up a cup with trembling hand, then forcibly recovering her fortitude, and restraining the convulsive movement which agitated the muscles of her mouth, she said, "spare yourself the pain of preparing me for your information, i adjure you!--my child is dead!" jemima solemnly answered, "yes;" with a look expressive of compassion and angry emotions. "leave me," added maria, making a fresh effort to govern her feelings, and hiding her face in her handkerchief, to conceal her anguish--"it is enough--i know that my babe is no more--i will hear the particulars when i am"--calmer, she could not utter; and jemima, without importuning her by idle attempts to console her, left the room. plunged in the deepest melancholy, she would not admit darnford's visits; and such is the force of early associations even on strong minds, that, for a while, she indulged the superstitious notion that she was justly punished by the death of her child, for having for an instant ceased to regret her loss. two or three letters from darnford, full of soothing, manly tenderness, only added poignancy to these accusing emotions; yet the passionate style in which he expressed, what he termed the first and fondest wish of his heart, "that his affection might make her some amends for the cruelty and injustice she had endured," inspired a sentiment of gratitude to heaven; and her eyes filled with delicious tears, when, at the conclusion of his letter, wishing to supply the place of her unworthy relations, whose want of principle he execrated, he assured her, calling her his dearest girl, "that it should henceforth be the business of his life to make her happy." he begged, in a note sent the following morning, to be permitted to see her, when his presence would be no intrusion on her grief, and so earnestly intreated to be allowed, according to promise, to beguile the tedious moments of absence, by dwelling on the events of her past life, that she sent him the memoirs which had been written for her daughter, promising jemima the perusal as soon as he returned them. chapter 7 "addressing these memoirs to you, my child, uncertain whether i shall ever have an opportunity of instructing you, many observations will probably flow from my heart, which only a mother--a mother schooled in misery, could make. "the tenderness of a father who knew the world, might be great; but could it equal that of a mother--of a mother, labouring under a portion of the misery, which the constitution of society seems to have entailed on all her kind? it is, my child, my dearest daughter, only such a mother, who will dare to break through all restraint to provide for your happiness--who will voluntarily brave censure herself, to ward off sorrow from your bosom. from my narrative, my dear girl, you may gather the instruction, the counsel, which is meant rather to exercise than influence your mind.--death may snatch me from you, before you can weigh my advice, or enter into my reasoning: i would then, with fond anxiety, lead you very early in life to form your grand principle of action, to save you from the vain regret of having, through irresolution, let the spring-tide of existence pass away, unimproved, unenjoyed.-gain experience--ah! gain it--while experience is worth having, and acquire sufficient fortitude to pursue your own happiness; it includes your utility, by a direct path. what is wisdom too often, but the owl of the goddess, who sits moping in a desolated heart; around me she shrieks, but i would invite all the gay warblers of spring to nestle in your blooming bosom.--had i not wasted years in deliberating, after i ceased to doubt, how i ought to have acted--i might now be useful and happy.--for my sake, warned by my example, always appear what you are, and you will not pass through existence without enjoying its genuine blessings, love and respect. "born in one of the most romantic parts of england, an enthusiastic fondness for the varying charms of nature is the first sentiment i recollect; or rather it was the first consciousness of pleasure that employed and formed my imagination. "my father had been a captain of a man of war; but, disgusted with the service, on account of the preferment of men whose chief merit was their family connections or borough interest, he retired into the country; and, not knowing what to do with himself--married. in his family, to regain his lost consequence, he determined to keep up the same passive obedience, as in the vessels in which he had commanded. his orders were not to be disputed; and the whole house was expected to fly, at the word of command, as if to man the shrouds, or mount aloft in an elemental strife, big with life or death. he was to be instantaneously obeyed, especially by my mother, whom he very benevolently married for love; but took care to remind her of the obligation, when she dared, in the slightest instance, to question his absolute authority. my eldest brother, it is true, as he grew up, was treated with more respect by my father; and became in due form the deputy-tyrant of the house. the representative of my father, a being privileged by nature--a boy, and the darling of my mother, he did not fail to act like an heir apparent. such indeed was my mother's extravagant partiality, that, in comparison with her affection for him, she might be said not to love the rest of her children. yet none of the children seemed to have so little affection for her. extreme indulgence had rendered him so selfish, that he only thought of himself; and from tormenting insects and animals, he became the despot of his brothers, and still more of his sisters. "it is perhaps difficult to give you an idea of the petty cares which obscured the morning of my life; continual restraint in the most trivial matters; unconditional submission to orders, which, as a mere child, i soon discovered to be unreasonable, because inconsistent and contradictory. thus are we destined to experience a mixture of bitterness, with the recollection of our most innocent enjoyments. "the circumstances which, during my childhood, occurred to fashion my mind, were various; yet, as it would probably afford me more pleasure to revive the fading remembrance of newborn delight, than you, my child, could feel in the perusal, i will not entice you to stray with me into the verdant meadow, to search for the flowers that youthful hopes scatter in every path; though, as i write, i almost scent the fresh green of spring--of that spring which never returns! "i had two sisters, and one brother, younger than myself, my brother robert was two years older, and might truly be termed the idol of his parents, and the torment of the rest of the family. such indeed is the force of prejudice, that what was called spirit and wit in him, was cruelly repressed as forwardness in me. "my mother had an indolence of character, which prevented her from paying much attention to our education. but the healthy breeze of a neighbouring heath, on which we bounded at pleasure, volatilized the humours that improper food might have generated. and to enjoy open air and freedom, was paradise, after the unnatural restraint of our fireside, where we were often obliged to sit three or four hours together, without daring to utter a word, when my father was out of humour, from want of employment, or of a variety of boisterous amusement. i had however one advantage, an instructor, the brother of my father, who, intended for the church, had of course received a liberal education. but, becoming attached to a young lady of great beauty and large fortune, and acquiring in the world some opinions not consonant with the profession for which he was designed, he accepted, with the most sanguine expectations of success, the offer of a nobleman to accompany him to india, as his confidential secretary. "a correspondence was regularly kept up with the object of his affection; and the intricacies of business, peculiarly wearisome to a man of a romantic turn of mind, contributed, with a forced absence, to increase his attachment. every other passion was lost in this master-one, and only served to swell the torrent. her relations, such were his waking dreams, who had despised him, would court in their turn his alliance, and all the blandishments of taste would grace the triumph of love.--while he basked in the warm sunshine of love, friendship also promised to shed its dewy freshness; for a friend, whom he loved next to his mistress, was the confident, who forwarded the letters from one to the other, to elude the observation of prying relations. a friend false in similar circumstances, is, my dearest girl, an old tale; yet, let not this example, or the frigid caution of coldblooded moralists, make you endeavour to stifle hopes, which are the buds that naturally unfold themselves during the spring of life! whilst your own heart is sincere, always expect to meet one glowing with the same sentiments; for to fly from pleasure, is not to avoid pain! "my uncle realized, by good luck, rather than management, a handsome fortune; and returning on the wings of love, lost in the most enchanting reveries, to england, to share it with his mistress and his friend, he found them--united. "there were some circumstances, not necessary for me to recite, which aggravated the guilt of the friend beyond measure, and the deception, that had been carried on to the last moment, was so base, it produced the most violent effect on my uncle's health and spirits. his native country, the world! lately a garden of blooming sweets, blasted by treachery, seemed changed into a parched desert, the abode of hissing serpents. disappointment rankled in his heart; and, brooding over his wrongs, he was attacked by a raging fever, followed by a derangement of mind, which only gave place to habitual melancholy, as he recovered more strength of body. "declaring an intention never to marry, his relations were ever clustering about him, paying the grossest adulation to a man, who, disgusted with mankind, received them with scorn, or bitter sarcasms. something in my countenance pleased him, when i began to prattle. since his return, he appeared dead to affection; but i soon, by showing him innocent fondness, became a favourite; and endeavouring to enlarge and strengthen my mind, i grew dear to him in proportion as i imbibed his sentiments. he had a forcible manner of speaking, rendered more so by a certain impressive wildness of look and gesture, calculated to engage the attention of a young and ardent mind. it is not then surprising that i quickly adopted his opinions in preference, and reverenced him as one of a superior order of beings. he inculcated, with great warmth, self-respect, and a lofty consciousness of acting right, independent of the censure or applause of the world; nay, he almost taught me to brave, and even despise its censure, when convinced of the rectitude of my own intentions. "endeavouring to prove to me that nothing which deserved the name of love or friendship, existed in the world, he drew such animated pictures of his own feelings, rendered permanent by disappointment, as imprinted the sentiments strongly on my heart, and animated my imagination. these remarks are necessary to elucidate some peculiarities in my character, which by the world are indefinitely termed romantic. "my uncle's increasing affection led him to visit me often. still, unable to rest in any place, he did not remain long in the country to soften domestic tyranny; but he brought me books, for which i had a passion, and they conspired with his conversation, to make me form an ideal picture of life. i shall pass over the tyranny of my father, much as i suffered from it; but it is necessary to notice, that it undermined my mother's health; and that her temper, continually irritated by domestic bickering, became intolerably peevish. "my eldest brother was articled to a neighbouring attorney, the shrewdest, and, i may add, the most unprincipled man in that part of the country. as my brother generally came home every saturday, to astonish my mother by exhibiting his attainments, he gradually assumed a right of directing the whole family, not excepting my father. he seemed to take a peculiar pleasure in tormenting and humbling me; and if i ever ventured to complain of this treatment to either my father or mother, i was rudely rebuffed for presuming to judge of the conduct of my eldest brother. "about this period a merchant's family came to settle in our neighbourhood. a mansion-house in the village, lately purchased, had been preparing the whole spring, and the sight of the costly furniture, sent from london, had excited my mother's envy, and roused my father's pride. my sensations were very different, and all of a pleasurable kind. i longed to see new characters, to break the tedious monotony of my life; and to find a friend, such as fancy had pourtrayed. i cannot then describe the emotion i felt, the sunday they made their appearance at church. my eyes were rivetted on the pillar round which i expected first to catch a glimpse of them, and darted forth to meet a servant who hastily preceded a group of ladies, whose white robes and waving plumes, seemed to stream along the gloomy aisle, diffusing the light, by which i contemplated their figures. "we visited them in form; and i quickly selected the eldest daughter for my friend. the second son, george, paid me particular attention, and finding his attainments and manners superior to those of the young men of the village, i began to imagine him superior to the rest of mankind. had my home been more comfortable, or my previous acquaintance more numerous, i should not probably have been so eager to open my heart to new affections. "mr. venables, the merchant, had acquired a large fortune by unremitting attention to business; but his health declining rapidly, he was obliged to retire, before his son, george, had acquired sufficient experience, to enable him to conduct their affairs on the same prudential plan, his father had invariably pursued. indeed, he had laboured to throw off his authority, having despised his narrow plans and cautious speculation. the eldest son could not be prevailed on to enter the firm; and, to oblige his wife, and have peace in the house, mr. venables had purchased a commission for him in the guards. "i am now alluding to circumstances which came to my knowledge long after; but it is necessary, my dearest child, that you should know the character of your father, to prevent your despising your mother; the only parent inclined to discharge a parent's duty. in london, george had acquired habits of libertinism, which he carefully concealed from his father and his commercial connections. the mask he wore, was so complete a covering of his real visage, that the praise his father lavished on his conduct, and, poor mistaken man! on his principles, contrasted with his brother's, rendered the notice he took of me peculiarly flattering. without any fixed design, as i am now convinced, he continued to single me out at the dance, press my hand at parting, and utter expressions of unmeaning passion, to which i gave a meaning naturally suggested by the romantic turn of my thoughts. his stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture became more vivid--whither did not my imagination lead me? in short, i fancied myself in love--in love with the disinterestedness, fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which i had invested the hero i dubbed. a circumstance which soon after occurred, rendered all these virtues palpable. [the incident is perhaps worth relating on other accounts, and therefore i shall describe it distinctly.] "i had a great affection for my nurse, old mary, for whom i used often to work, to spare her eyes. mary had a younger sister, married to a sailor, while she was suckling me; for my mother only suckled my eldest brother, which might be the cause of her extraordinary partiality. peggy, mary's sister, lived with her, till her husband, becoming a mate in a west-indian trader, got a little before-hand in the world. he wrote to his wife from the first port in the channel, after his most successful voyage, to request her to come to london to meet him; he even wished her to determine on living there for the future, to save him the trouble of coming to her the moment he came on shore; and to turn a penny by keeping a green-stall. it was too much to set out on a journey the moment he had finished a voyage, and fifty miles by land, was worse than a thousand leagues by sea. "she packed up her alls, and came to london--but did not meet honest daniel. a common misfortune prevented her, and the poor are bound to suffer for the good of their country--he was pressed in the river--and never came on shore. "peggy was miserable in london, not knowing, as she said, 'the face of any living soul.' besides, her imagination had been employed, anticipating a month or six weeks' happiness with her husband. daniel was to have gone with her to sadler's wells, and westminster abbey, and to many sights, which he knew she never heard of in the country. peggy too was thrifty, and how could she manage to put his plan in execution alone? he had acquaintance; but she did not know the very name of their places of abode. his letters were made up of--how do you does, and god bless yous,--information was reserved for the hour of meeting. "she too had her portion of information, near at heart. molly and jacky were grown such little darlings, she was almost angry that daddy did not see their tricks. she had not half the pleasure she should have had from their prattle, could she have recounted to him each night the pretty speeches of the day. some stories, however, were stored up--and jacky could say papa with such a sweet voice, it must delight his heart. yet when she came, and found no daniel to greet her, when jacky called papa, she wept, bidding 'god bless his innocent soul, that did not know what sorrow was.'-but more sorrow was in store for peggy, innocent as she was.-daniel was killed in the first engagement, and then the papa was agony, sounding to the heart. "she had lived sparingly on his wages, while there was any hope of his return; but, that gone, she returned with a breaking heart to the country, to a little market town, nearly three miles from our village. she did not like to go to service, to be snubbed about, after being her own mistress. to put her children out to nurse was impossible: how far would her wages go? and to send them to her husband's parish, a distant one, was to lose her husband twice over. "i had heard all from mary, and made my uncle furnish a little cottage for her, to enable her to sell--so sacred was poor daniel's advice, now he was dead and gone a little fruit, toys and cakes. the minding of the shop did not require her whole time, nor even the keeping her children clean, and she loved to see them clean; so she took in washing, and altogether made a shift to earn bread for her children, still weeping for daniel, when jacky's arch looks made her think of his father.--it was pleasant to work for her children.--'yes; from morning till night, could she have had a kiss from their father, god rest his soul! yes; had it pleased providence to have let him come back without a leg or an arm, it would have been the same thing to her--for she did not love him because he maintained them--no; she had hands of her own.' "the country people were honest, and peggy left her linen out to dry very late. a recruiting party, as she supposed, passing through, made free with a large wash; for it was all swept away, including her own and her children's little stock. "this was a dreadful blow; two dozen of shirts, stocks and handkerchiefs. she gave the money which she had laid by for half a year's rent, and promised to pay two shillings a week till all was cleared; so she did not lose her employment. this two shillings a week, and the buying a few necessaries for the children, drove her so hard, that she had not a penny to pay her rent with, when a twelvemonth's became due. "she was now with mary, and had just told her tale, which mary instantly repeated--it was intended for my ear. many houses in this town, producing a borough-interest, were included in the estate purchased by mr. venables, and the attorney with whom my brother lived, was appointed his agent, to collect and raise the rents. "he demanded peggy's, and, in spite of her intreaties, her poor goods had been seized and sold. so that she had not, and what was worse her children, 'for she had known sorrow enough,' a bed to lie on. she knew that i was good-natured--right charitable, yet not liking to ask for more than needs must, she scorned to petition while people could any how be made to wait. but now, should she be turned out of doors, she must expect nothing less than to lose all her customers, and then she must beg or starve-and what would become of her children?--'had daniel not been pressed-but god knows best--all this could not have happened.' "i had two mattrasses on my bed; what did i want with two, when such a worthy creature must lie on the ground? my mother would be angry, but i could conceal it till my uncle came down; and then i would tell him all the whole truth, and if he absolved me, heaven would. "i begged the house-maid to come up stairs with me (servants always feel for the distresses of poverty, and so would the rich if they knew what it was). she assisted me to tie up the mattrass; i discovering, at the same time, that one blanket would serve me till winter, could i persuade my sister, who slept with me, to keep my secret. she entering in the midst of the package, i gave her some new feathers, to silence her. we got the mattrass down the back stairs, unperceived, and i helped to carry it, taking with me all the money i had, and what i could borrow from my sister. "when i got to the cottage, peggy declared that she would not take what i had brought secretly; but, when, with all the eager eloquence inspired by a decided purpose, i grasped her hand with weeping eyes, assuring her that my uncle would screen me from blame, when he was once more in the country, describing, at the same time, what she would suffer in parting with her children, after keeping them so long from being thrown on the parish, she reluctantly consented. "my project of usefulness ended not here; i determined to speak to the attorney; he frequently paid me compliments. his character did not intimidate me; but, imagining that peggy must be mistaken, and that no man could turn a deaf ear to such a tale of complicated distress, i determined to walk to the town with mary the next morning, and request him to wait for the rent, and keep my secret, till my uncle's return. "my repose was sweet; and, waking with the first dawn of day, i bounded to mary's cottage. what charms do not a light heart spread over nature! every bird that twittered in a bush, every flower that enlivened the hedge, seemed placed there to awaken me to rapture--yes; to rapture. the present moment was full fraught with happiness; and on futurity i bestowed not a thought, excepting to anticipate my success with the attorney. "this man of the world, with rosy face and simpering features, received me politely, nay kindly; listened with complacency to my remonstrances, though he scarcely heeded mary's tears. i did not then suspect, that my eloquence was in my complexion, the blush of seventeen, or that, in a world where humanity to women is the characteristic of advancing civilization, the beauty of a young girl was so much more interesting than the distress of an old one. pressing my hand, he promised to let peggy remain in the house as long as i wished.--i more than returned the pressure--i was so grateful and so happy. emboldened by my innocent warmth, he then kissed me--and i did not draw back--i took it for a kiss of charity. "gay as a lark, i went to dine at mr. venables'. i had previously obtained five shillings from my father, towards re-clothing the poor children of my care, and prevailed on my mother to take one of the girls into the house, whom i determined to teach to work and read. "after dinner, when the younger part of the circle retired to the music room, i recounted with energy my tale; that is, i mentioned peggy's distress, without hinting at the steps i had taken to relieve her. miss venables gave me half-a-crown; the heir five shillings; but george sat unmoved. i was cruelly distressed by the disappointment--i scarcely could remain on my chair; and, could i have got out of the room unperceived, i should have flown home, as if to run away from myself. after several vain attempts to rise, i leaned my head against the marble chimney-piece, and gazing on the evergreens that filled the fire-place, moralized on the vanity of human expectations; regardless of the company. i was roused by a gentle tap on my shoulder from behind charlotte's chair. i turned my head, and george slid a guinea into my hand, putting his finger to his mouth, to enjoin me silence. "what a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but feelings! i trembled with emotion--now, indeed, i was in love. such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! i felt in my pocket every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. my fancy had found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous impulse. the bitter experience was yet to come, that has taught me how very distinct are the principles of virtue, from the casual feelings from which they germinate. chapter 8 "i have perhaps dwelt too long on a circumstance, which is only of importance as it marks the progress of a deception that has been so fatal to my peace; and introduces to your notice a poor girl, whom, intending to serve, i led to ruin. still it is probable that i was not entirely the victim of mistake; and that your father, gradually fashioned by the world, did not quickly become what i hesitate to call him--out of respect to my daughter. "but, to hasten to the more busy scenes of my life. mr. venables and my mother died the same summer; and, wholly engrossed by my attention to her, i thought of little else. the neglect of her darling, my brother robert, had a violent effect on her weakened mind; for, though boys may be reckoned the pillars of the house without doors, girls are often the only comfort within. they but too frequently waste their health and spirits attending a dying parent, who leaves them in comparative poverty. after closing, with filial piety, a father's eyes, they are chased from the paternal roof, to make room for the first-born, the son, who is to carry the empty family-name down to posterity; though, occupied with his own pleasures, he scarcely thought of discharging, in the decline of his parent's life, the debt contracted in his childhood. my mother's conduct led me to make these reflections. great as was the fatigue i endured, and the affection my unceasing solicitude evinced, of which my mother seemed perfectly sensible, still, when my brother, whom i could hardly persuade to remain a quarter of an hour in her chamber, was with her alone, a short time before her death, she gave him a little hoard, which she had been some years accumulating. "during my mother's illness, i was obliged to manage my father's temper, who, from the lingering nature of her malady, began to imagine that it was merely fancy. at this period, an artful kind of upper servant attracted my father's attention, and the neighbours made many remarks on the finery, not honestly got, exhibited at evening service. but i was too much occupied with my mother to observe any change in her dress or behaviour, or to listen to the whisper of scandal. "i shall not dwell on the death-bed scene, lively as is the remembrance, or on the emotion produced by the last grasp of my mother's cold hand; when blessing me, she added, 'a little patience, and all will be over!' ah! my child, how often have those words rung mournfully in my ears--and i have exclaimed--'a little more patience, and i too shall be at rest!' "my father was violently affected by her death, recollected instances of his unkindness, and wept like a child. "my mother had solemnly recommended my sisters to my care, and bid me be a mother to them. they, indeed, became more dear to me as they became more forlorn; for, during my mother's illness, i discovered the ruined state of my father's circumstances, and that he had only been able to keep up appearances, by the sums which he borrowed of my uncle. "my father's grief, and consequent tenderness to his children, quickly abated, the house grew still more gloomy or riotous; and my refuge from care was again at mr. venables'; the young 'squire having taken his father's place, and allowing, for the present, his sister to preside at his table. george, though dissatisfied with his portion of the fortune, which had till lately been all in trade, visited the family as usual. he was now full of speculations in trade, and his brow became clouded by care. he seemed to relax in his attention to me, when the presence of my uncle gave a new turn to his behaviour. i was too unsuspecting, too disinterested, to trace these changes to their source. my home every day became more and more disagreeable to me; my liberty was unnecessarily abridged, and my books, on the pretext that they made me idle, taken from me. my father's mistress was with child, and he, doating on her, allowed or overlooked her vulgar manner of tyrannizing over us. i was indignant, especially when i saw her endeavouring to attract, shall i say seduce? my younger brother. by allowing women but one way of rising in the world, the fostering the libertinism of men, society makes monsters of them, and then their ignoble vices are brought forward as a proof of inferiority of intellect. the wearisomeness of my situation can scarcely be described. though my life had not passed in the most even tenour with my mother, it was paradise to that i was destined to endure with my father's mistress, jealous of her illegitimate authority. my father's former occasional tenderness, in spite of his violence of temper, had been soothing to me; but now he only met me with reproofs or portentous frowns. the house-keeper, as she was now termed, was the vulgar despot of the family; and assuming the new character of a fine lady, she could never forgive the contempt which was sometimes visible in my countenance, when she uttered with pomposity her bad english, or affected to be well bred. to my uncle i ventured to open my heart; and he, with his wonted benevolence, began to consider in what manner he could extricate me out of my present irksome situation. in spite of his own disappointment, or, most probably, actuated by the feelings that had been petrified, not cooled, in all their sanguine fervour, like a boiling torrent of lava suddenly dash ing into the sea, he thought a marriage of mutual inclination (would envious stars permit it) the only chance for happiness in this disastrous world. george venables had the reputation of being attentive to business, and my father's example gave great weight to this circumstance; for habits of order in business would, he conceived, extend to the regulation of the affections in domestic life. george seldom spoke in my uncle's company, except to utter a short, judicious question, or to make a pertinent remark, with all due deference to his superior judgment; so that my uncle seldom left his company without observing, that the young man had more in him than people supposed. in this opinion he was not singular; yet, believe me, and i am not swayed by resentment, these speeches so justly poized, this silent deference, when the animal spirits of other young people were throwing off youthful ebullitions, were not the effect of thought or humility, but sheer barrenness of mind, and want of imagination. a colt of mettle will curvet and shew his paces. yes; my dear girl, these prudent young men want all the fire necessary to ferment their faculties, and are characterized as wise, only because they are not foolish. it is true, that george was by no means so great a favourite of mine as during the first year of our acquaintance; still, as he often coincided in opinion with me, and echoed my sentiments; and having myself no other attachment, i heard with pleasure my uncle's proposal; but thought more of obtaining my freedom, than of my lover. but, when george, seemingly anxious for my happiness, pressed me to quit my present painful situation, my heart swelled with gratitude--i knew not that my uncle had promised him five thousand pounds. had this truly generous man mentioned his intention to me, i should have insisted on a thousand pounds being settled on each of my sisters; george would have contested; i should have seen his selfish soul; and--gracious god! have been spared the misery of discovering, when too late, that i was united to a heartless, unprincipled wretch. all my schemes of usefulness would not then have been blasted. the tenderness of my heart would not have heated my imagination with visions of the ineffable delight of happy love; nor would the sweet duty of a mother have been so cruelly interrupted. but i must not suffer the fortitude i have so hardly acquired, to be undermined by unavailing regret. let me hasten forward to describe the turbid stream in which i had to wade--but let me exultingly declare that it is passed--my soul holds fellowship with him no more. he cut the gordian knot, which my principles, mistaken ones, respected; he dissolved the tie, the fetters rather, that ate into my very vitals--and i should rejoice, conscious that my mind is freed, though confined in hell itself, the only place that even fancy can imagine more dreadful than my present abode. these varying emotions will not allow me to proceed. i heave sigh after sigh; yet my heart is still oppressed. for what am i reserved? why was i not born a man, or why was i born at all? chapter 9 "i resume my pen to fly from thought. i was married; and we hastened to london. i had purposed taking one of my sisters with me; for a strong motive for marrying, was the desire of having a home at which i could receive them, now their own grew so uncomfortable, as not to deserve the cheering appellation. an objection was made to her accompanying me, that appeared plausible; and i reluctantly acquiesced. i was however willingly allowed to take with me molly, poor peggy's daughter. london and preferment, are ideas commonly associated in the country; and, as blooming as may, she bade adieu to peggy with weeping eyes. i did not even feel hurt at the refusal in relation to my sister, till hearing what my uncle had done for me, i had the simplicity to request, speaking with warmth of their situation, that he would give them a thousand pounds a-piece, which seemed to me but justice. he asked me, giving me a kiss, 'if i had lost my senses?' i started back, as if i had found a wasp in a rose-bush. i expostulated. he sneered: and the demon of discord entered our paradise, to poison with his pestiferous breath every opening joy. "i had sometimes observed defects in my husband's understanding; but, led astray by a prevailing opinion, that goodness of disposition is of the first importance in the relative situations of life, in proportion as i perceived the narrowness of his understanding, fancy enlarged the boundary of his heart. fatal error! how quickly is the so much vaunted milkiness of nature turned into gall, by an intercourse with the world, if more generous juices do not sustain the vital source of virtue! "one trait in my character was extreme credulity; but, when my eyes were once opened, i saw but too clearly all i had before overlooked. my husband was sunk in my esteem; still there are youthful emotions, which, for a while, fill up the chasm of love and friendship. besides, it required some time to enable me to see his whole character in a just light, or rather to allow it to become fixed. while circumstances were ripening my faculties, and cultivating my taste, commerce and gross relaxations were shutting his against any possibility of improvement, till, by stifling every spark of virtue in himself, he began to imagine that it no where existed. "do not let me lead you astray, my child, i do not mean to assert, that any human being is entirely incapable of feeling the generous emotions, which are the foundation of every true principle of virtue; but they are frequently, i fear, so feeble, that, like the inflammable quality which more or less lurks in all bodies, they often lie for ever dormant; the circumstances never occurring, necessary to call them into action. "i discovered however by chance, that, in consequence of some losses in trade, the natural effect of his gambling desire to start suddenly into riches, the five thousand pounds given me by my uncle, had been paid very opportunely. this discovery, strange as you may think the assertion, gave me pleasure; my husband's embarrassments endeared him to me. i was glad to find an excuse for his conduct to my sisters, and my mind became calmer. "my uncle introduced me to some literary society; and the theatres were a never-failing source of amusement to me. my delighted eye followed mrs. siddons, when, with dignified delicacy, she played califta; and i involuntarily repeated after her, in the same tone, and with a long-drawn sigh, 'hearts like our's were pair'd--not match'd.' "these were, at first, spontaneous emotions, though, becoming acquainted with men of wit and polished manners, i could not sometimes help regretting my early marriage; and that, in my haste to escape from a temporary dependence, and expand my newly fledged wings, in an unknown sky, i had been caught in a trap, and caged for life. still the novelty of london, and the attentive fondness of my husband, for he had some personal regard for me, made several months glide away. yet, not forgetting the situation of my sisters, who were still very young, i prevailed on my uncle to settle a thousand pounds on each; and to place them in a school near town, where i could frequently visit, as well as have them at home with me. "i now tried to improve my husband's taste, but we had few subjects in common; indeed he soon appeared to have little relish for my society, unless he was hinting to me the use he could make of my uncle's wealth. when we had company, i was disgusted by an ostentatious display of riches, and i have often quitted the room, to avoid listening to exaggerated tales of money obtained by lucky hits. "with all my attention and affectionate interest, i perceived that i could not become the friend or confident of my husband. every thing i learned relative to his affairs i gathered up by accident; and i vainly endeavoured to establish, at our fire-side, that social converse, which often renders people of different characters dear to each other. returning from the theatre, or any amusing party, i frequently began to relate what i had seen and highly relished; but with sullen taciturnity he soon silenced me. i seemed therefore gradually to lose, in his society, the soul, the energies of which had just been in action. to such a degree, in fact, did his cold, reserved manner affect me, that, after spending some days with him alone, i have imagined myself the most stupid creature in the world, till the abilities of some casual visitor convinced me that i had some dormant animation, and sentiments above the dust in which i had been groveling. the very countenance of my husband changed; his complexion became sallow, and all the charms of youth were vanishing with its vivacity. "i give you one view of the subject; but these experiments and alterations took up the space of five years; during which period, i had most reluctantly extorted several sums from my uncle, to save my husband, to use his own words, from destruction. at first it was to prevent bills being noted, to the injury of his credit; then to bail him; and afterwards to prevent an execution from entering the house. i began at last to conclude, that he would have made more exertions of his own to extricate himself, had he not relied on mine, cruel as was the task he imposed on me; and i firmly determined that i would make use of no more pretexts. "from the moment i pronounced this determination, indifference on his part was changed into rudeness, or something worse. "he now seldom dined at home, and continually returned at a late hour, drunk, to bed. i retired to another apartment; i was glad, i own, to escape from his; for personal intimacy without affection, seemed, to me the most degrading, as well as the most painful state in which a woman of any taste, not to speak of the peculiar delicacy of fostered sensibility, could be placed. but my husband's fondness for women was of the grossest kind, and imagination was so wholly out of the question, as to render his indulgences of this sort entirely promiscuous, and of the most brutal nature. my health suffered, before my heart was entirely estranged by the loathsome information; could i then have returned to his sullied arms, but as a victim to the prejudices of mankind, who have made women the property of their husbands? i discovered even, by his conversation, when intoxicated that his favourites were wantons of the lowest class, who could by their vulgar, indecent mirth, which he called nature, rouse his sluggish spirits. meretricious ornaments and manners were necessary to attract his attention. he seldom looked twice at a modest woman, and sat silent in their company; and the charms of youth and beauty had not the slightest effect on his senses, unless the possessors were initiated in vice. his intimacy with profligate women, and his habits of thinking, gave him a contempt for female endowments; and he would repeat, when wine had loosed his tongue, most of the common-place sarcasms levelled at them, by men who do not allow them to have minds, because mind would be an impediment to gross enjoyment. men who are inferior to their fellow men, are always most anxious to establish their superiority over women. but where are these reflections leading me? "women who have lost their husband's affection, are justly reproved for neglecting their persons, and not taking the same pains to keep, as to gain a heart; but who thinks of giving the same advice to men, though women are continually stigmatized for being attached to fops; and from the nature of their education, are more susceptible of disgust? yet why a woman should be expected to endure a sloven, with more patience than a man, and magnanimously to govern herself, i cannot conceive; unless it be supposed arrogant in her to look for respect as well as a maintenance. it is not easy to be pleased, because, after promising to love, in different circumstances, we are told that it is our duty. i cannot, i am sure (though, when attending the sick, i never felt disgust) forget my own sensations, when rising with health and spirit, and after scenting the sweet morning, i have met my husband at the breakfast table. the active attention i had been giving to domestic regulations, which were generally settled before he rose, or a walk, gave a glow to my countenance, that contrasted with his squallid appearance. the squeamishness of stomach alone, produced by the last night's intemperance, which he took no pains to conceal, destroyed my appetite. i think i now see him lolling in an arm-chair, in a dirty powdering gown, soiled linen, ungartered stockings, and tangled hair, yawning and stretching himself. the newspaper was immediately called for, if not brought in on the tea-board, from which he would scarcely lift his eyes while i poured out the tea, excepting to ask for some brandy to put into it, or to declare that he could not eat. in answer to any question, in his best humour, it was a drawling 'what do you say, child?' but if i demanded money for the house expences, which i put off till the last moment, his customary reply, often prefaced with an oath, was, 'do you think me, madam, made of money?'--the butcher, the baker, must wait; and, what was worse, i was often obliged to witness his surly dismission of tradesmen, who were in want of their money, and whom i sometimes paid with the presents my uncle gave me for my own use. at this juncture my father's mistress, by terrifying his conscience, prevailed on him to marry her; he was already become a methodist; and my brother, who now practised for himself, had discovered a flaw in the settlement made on my mother's children, which set it aside, and he allowed my father, whose distress made him submit to any thing, a tithe of his own, or rather our fortune. my sisters had left school, but were unable to endure home, which my father's wife rendered as disagreeable as possible, to get rid of girls whom she regarded as spies on her conduct. they were accomplished, yet you can (may you never be reduced to the same destitute state!) scarcely conceive the trouble i had to place them in the situation of governesses, the only one in which even a well-educated woman, with more than ordinary talents, can struggle for a subsistence; and even this is a dependence next to menial. is it then surprising, that so many forlorn women, with human passions and feelings, take refuge in infamy? alone in large mansions, i say alone, because they had no companions with whom they could converse on equal terms, or from whom they could expect the endearments of affection, they grew melancholy, and the sound of joy made them sad; and the youngest, having a more delicate frame, fell into a decline. it was with great difficulty that i, who now almost supported the house by loans from my uncle, could prevail on the _master_ of it, to allow her a room to die in. i watched her sick bed for some months, and then closed her eyes, gentle spirit! for ever. she was pretty, with very engaging manners; yet had never an opportunity to marry, excepting to a very old man. she had abilities sufficient to have shone in any profession, had there been any professions for women, though she shrunk at the name of milliner or mantua-maker as degrading to a gentlewoman. i would not term this feeling false pride to any one but you, my child, whom i fondly hope to see (yes; i will indulge the hope for a moment!) possessed of that energy of character which gives dignity to any station; and with that clear, firm spirit that will enable you to choose a situation for yourself, or submit to be classed in the lowest, if it be the only one in which you can be the mistress of your own actions. "soon after the death of my sister, an incident occurred, to prove to me that the heart of a libertine is dead to natural affection; and to convince me, that the being who has appeared all tenderness, to gratify a selfish passion, is as regardless of the innocent fruit of it, as of the object, when the fit is over. i had casually observed an old, meanlooking woman, who called on my husband every two or three months to receive some money. one day entering the passage of his little counting-house, as she was going out, i heard her say, 'the child is very weak; she cannot live long, she will soon die out of your way, so you need not grudge her a little physic.' "'so much the better,' he replied,' and pray mind your own business, good woman.' "i was struck by his unfeeling, inhuman tone of voice, and drew back, determined when the woman came again, to try to speak to her, not out of curiosity, i had heard enough, but with the hope of being useful to a poor, outcast girl. "a month or two elapsed before i saw this woman again; and then she had a child in her hand that tottered along, scarcely able to sustain her own weight. they were going away, to return at the hour mr. venables was expected; he was now from home. i desired the woman to walk into the parlour. she hesitated, yet obeyed. i assured her that i should not mention to my husband (the word seemed to weigh on my respiration), that i had seen her, or his child. the woman stared at me with astonishment; and i turned my eyes on the squalid object [that accompanied her.] she could hardly support herself, her complexion was sallow, and her eyes inflamed, with an indescribable look of cunning, mixed with the wrinkles produced by the peevishness of pain. "poor child!' i exclaimed. 'ah! you may well say poor child,' replied the woman. 'i brought her here to see whether he would have the heart to look at her, and not get some advice. i do not know what they deserve who nursed her. why, her legs bent under her like a bow when she came to me, and she has never been well since; but, if they were no better paid than i am, it is not to be wondered at, sure enough.' "on further enquiry i was informed, that this miserable spectacle was the daughter of a servant, a country girl, who caught mr. venables' eye, and whom he seduced. on his marriage he sent her away, her situation being too visible. after her delivery, she was thrown on the town; and died in an hospital within the year. the babe was sent to a parish-nurse, and afterwards to this woman, who did not seem much better; but what was to be expected from such a close bargain? she was only paid three shillings a week for board and washing. "the woman begged me to give her some old clothes for the child, assuring me, that she was almost afraid to ask master for money to buy even a pair of shoes. "i grew sick at heart. and, fearing mr. venables might enter, and oblige me to express my abhorrence, i hastily enquired where she lived, promised to pay her two shillings a week more, and to call on her in a day or two; putting a trifle into her hand as a proof of my good intention. "if the state of this child affected me, what were my feelings at a discovery i made respecting peggy--?* * the manuscript is imperfect here. an episode seems to have been intended, which was never committed to paper. editor. [godwin's note] chapter 1o "my father's situation was now so distressing, that i prevailed on my uncle to accompany me to visit him; and to lend me his assistance, to prevent the whole property of the family from becoming the prey of my brother's rapacity; for, to extricate himself out of present difficulties, my father was totally regardless of futurity. i took down with me some presents for my step-mother; it did not require an effort for me to treat her with civility, or to forget the past. "this was the first time i had visited my native village, since my marriage. but with what different emotions did i return from the busy world, with a heavy weight of experience benumbing my imagination, to scenes, that whispered recollections of joy and hope most eloquently to my heart! the first scent of the wild flowers from the heath, thrilled through my veins, awakening every sense to pleasure. the icy hand of despair seemed to be removed from my bosom; and--forgetting my husband--the nurtured visions of a romantic mind, bursting on me with all their original wildness and gay exuberance, were again hailed as sweet realities. i forgot, with equal facility, that i ever felt sorrow, or knew care in the country; while a transient rainbow stole athwart the cloudy sky of despondency. the picturesque form of several favourite trees, and the porches of rude cottages, with their smiling hedges, were recognized with the gladsome playfulness of childish vivacity. i could have kissed the chickens that pecked on the common; and longed to pat the cows, and frolic with the dogs that sported on it. i gazed with delight on the windmill, and thought it lucky that it should be in motion, at the moment i passed by; and entering the dear green lane, which led directly to the village, the sound of the well-known rookery gave that sentimental tinge to the varying sensations of my active soul, which only served to heighten the lustre of the luxuriant scenery. but, spying, as i advanced, the spire, peeping over the withered tops of the aged elms that composed the rookery, my thoughts flew immediately to the churchyard, and tears of affection, such was the effect of my imagination, bedewed my mother's grave! sorrow gave place to devotional feelings. i wandered through the church in fancy, as i used sometimes to do on a saturday evening. i recollected with what fervour i addressed the god of my youth: and once more with rapturous love looked above my sorrows to the father of nature. i pause--feeling forcibly all the emotions i am describing; and (reminded, as i register my sorrows, of the sublime calm i have felt, when in some tremendous solitude, my soul rested on itself, and seemed to fill the universe) i insensibly breathe soft, hushing every wayward emotion, as if fearing to sully with a sigh, a contentment so extatic. "having settled my father's affairs, and, by my exertions in his favour, made my brother my sworn foe, i returned to london. my husband's conduct was now changed; i had during my absence, received several affectionate, penitential letters from him; and he seemed on my arrival, to wish by his behaviour to prove his sincerity. i could not then conceive why he acted thus; and, when the suspicion darted into my head, that it might arise from observing my increasing influence with my uncle, i almost despised myself for imagining that such a degree of debasing selfishness could exist. "he became, unaccountable as was the change, tender and attentive; and, attacking my weak side, made a confession of his follies, and lamented the embarrassments in which i, who merited a far different fate, might be involved. he besought me to aid him with my counsel, praised my understanding, and appealed to the tenderness of my heart. "this conduct only inspired me with compassion. i wished to be his friend; but love had spread his rosy pinions and fled far, far away; and had not (like some exquisite perfumes, the fine spirit of which is continually mingling with the air) left a fragrance behind, to mark where he had shook his wings. my husband's renewed caresses then became hateful to me; his brutality was tolerable, compared to his distasteful fondness. still, compassion, and the fear of insulting his supposed feelings, by a want of sympathy, made me dissemble, and do violence to my delicacy. what a task! "those who support a system of what i term false refinement, and will not allow great part of love in the female, as well as male breast, to spring in some respects involuntarily, may not admit that charms are as necessary to feed the passion, as virtues to convert the mellowing spirit into friendship. to such observers i have nothing to say, any more than to the moralists, who insist that women ought to, and can love their husbands, because it is their duty. to you, my child, i may add, with a heart tremblingly alive to your future conduct, some observations, dictated by my present feelings, on calmly reviewing this period of my life. when novelists or moralists praise as a virtue, a woman's coldness of constitution, and want of passion; and make her yield to the ardour of her lover out of sheer compassion, or to promote a frigid plan of future comfort, i am disgusted. they may be good women, in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase, and do no harm; but they appear to me not to have those 'finely fashioned nerves,' which render the senses exquisite. they may possess tenderness; but they want that fire of the imagination, which produces _active_ sensibility, and _positive_ _virtue_. how does the woman deserve to be characterized, who marries one man, with a heart and imagination devoted to another? is she not an object of pity or contempt, when thus sacrilegiously violating the purity of her own feelings? nay, it is as indelicate, when she is indifferent, unless she be constitutionally insensible; then indeed it is a mere affair of barter; and i have nothing to do with the secrets of trade. yes; eagerly as i wish you to possess true rectitude of mind, and purity of affection, i must insist that a heartless conduct is the contrary of virtuous. truth is the only basis of virtue; and we cannot, without depraving our minds, endeavour to please a lover or husband, but in proportion as he pleases us. men, more effectually to enslave us, may inculcate this partial morality, and lose sight of virtue in subdividing it into the duties of particular stations; but let us not blush for nature without a cause! "after these remarks, i am ashamed to own, that i was pregnant. the greatest sacrifice of my principles in my whole life, was the allowing my husband again to be familiar with my person, though to this cruel act of self-denial, when i wished the earth to open and swallow me, you owe your birth; and i the unutterable pleasure of being a mother. there was something of delicacy in my husband's bridal attentions; but now his tainted breath, pimpled face, and blood-shot eyes, were not more repugnant to my senses, than his gross manners, and loveless familiarity to my taste. "a man would only be expected to maintain; yes, barely grant a subsistence, to a woman rendered odious by habitual intoxication; but who would expect him, or think it possible to love her? and unless 'youth, and genial years were flown,' it would be thought equally unreasonable to insist, [under penalty of] forfeiting almost every thing reckoned valuable in life, that he should not love another: whilst woman, weak in reason, impotent in will, is required to moralize, sentimentalize herself to stone, and pine her life away, labouring to reform her embruted mate. he may even spend in dissipation, and intemperance, the very intemperance which renders him so hateful, her property, and by stinting her expences, not permit her to beguile in society, a wearisome, joyless life; for over their mutual fortune she has no power, it must all pass through his hand. and if she be a mother, and in the present state of women, it is a great misfortune to be prevented from discharging the duties, and cultivating the affections of one, what has she not to endure?--but i have suffered the tenderness of one to lead me into reflections that i did not think of making, to interrupt my narrative--yet the full heart will overflow. "mr. venables' embarrassments did not now endear him to me; still, anxious to befriend him, i endeavoured to prevail on him to retrench his expences; but he had always some plausible excuse to give, to justify his not following my advice. humanity, compassion, and the interest produced by a habit of living together, made me try to relieve, and sympathize with him; but, when i recollected that i was bound to live with such a being for ever--my heart died within me; my desire of improvement became languid, and baleful, corroding melancholy took possession of my soul. marriage had bastilled me for life. i discovered in myself a capacity for the enjoyment of the various pleasures existence affords; yet, fettered by the partial laws of society, this fair globe was to me an universal blank. "when i exhorted my husband to economy, i referred to himself. i was obliged to practise the most rigid, or contract debts, which i had too much reason to fear would never be paid. i despised this paltry privilege of a wife, which can only be of use to the vicious or inconsiderate, and determined not to increase the torrent that was bearing him down. i was then ignorant of the extent of his fraudulent speculations, whom i was bound to honour and obey. "a woman neglected by her husband, or whose manners form a striking contrast with his, will always have men on the watch to soothe and flatter her. besides, the forlorn state of a neglected woman, not destitute of personal charms, is particularly interesting, and rouses that species of pity, which is so near akin, it easily slides into love. a man of feeling thinks not of seducing, he is himself seduced by all the noblest emotions of his soul. he figures to himself all the sacrifices a woman of sensibility must make, and every situation in which his imagination places her, touches his heart, and fires his passions. longing to take to his bosom the shorn lamb, and bid the drooping buds of hope revive, benevolence changes into passion: and should he then discover that he is beloved, honour binds him fast, though foreseeing that he may afterwards be obliged to pay severe damages to the man, who never appeared to value his wife's society, till he found that there was a chance of his being indemnified for the loss of it. "such are the partial laws enacted by men; for, only to lay a stress on the dependent state of a woman in the grand question of the comforts arising from the possession of property, she is [even in this article] much more injured by the loss of the husband's affection, than he by that of his wife; yet where is she, condemned to the solitude of a deserted home, to look for a compensation from the woman, who seduces him from her? she cannot drive an unfaithful husband from his house, nor separate, or tear, his children from him, however culpable he may be; and he, still the master of his own fate, enjoys the smiles of a world, that would brand her with infamy, did she, seeking consolation, venture to retaliate. "these remarks are not dictated by experience; but merely by the compassion i feel for many amiable women, the _outlaws_ of the world. for myself, never encouraging any of the advances that were made to me, my lovers dropped off like the untimely shoots of spring. i did not even coquet with them; because i found, on examining myself, i could not coquet with a man without loving him a little; and i perceived that i should not be able to stop at the line of what are termed _innocent_ _freedoms_, did i suffer any. my reserve was then the consequence of delicacy. freedom of conduct has emancipated many women's minds; but my conduct has most rigidly been governed by my principles, till the improvement of my understanding has enabled me to discern the fallacy of prejudices at war with nature and reason. "shortly after the change i have mentioned in my husband's conduct, my uncle was compelled by his declining health, to seek the succour of a milder climate, and embark for lisbon. he left his will in the hands of a friend, an eminent solicitor; he had previously questioned me relative to my situation and state of mind, and declared very freely, that he could place no reliance on the stability of my husband's professions. he had been deceived in the unfolding of his character; he now thought it fixed in a train of actions that would inevitably lead to ruin and disgrace. "the evening before his departure, which we spent alone together, he folded me to his heart, uttering the endearing appellation of 'child.'--my more than father! why was i not permitted to perform the last duties of one, and smooth the pillow of death? he seemed by his manner to be convinced that he should never see me more; yet requested me, most earnestly, to come to him, should i be obliged to leave my husband. he had before expressed his sorrow at hearing of my pregnancy, having determined to prevail on me to accompany him, till i informed him of that circumstance. he expressed himself unfeignedly sorry that any new tie should bind me to a man whom he thought so incapable of estimating my value; such was the kind language of affection. "i must repeat his own words; they made an indelible impression on my mind: "'the marriage state is certainly that in which women, generally speaking, can be most useful; but i am far from thinking that a woman, once married, ought to consider the engagement as indissoluble (especially if there be no children to reward her for sacrificing her feelings) in case her husband merits neither her love, nor esteem. esteem will often supply the place of love; and prevent a woman from being wretched, though it may not make her happy. the magnitude of a sacrifice ought always to bear some proportion to the utility in view; and for a woman to live with a man, for whom she can cherish neither affection nor esteem, or even be of any use to him, excepting in the light of a house-keeper, is an abjectness of condition, the enduring of which no concurrence of circumstances can ever make a duty in the sight of god or just men. if indeed she submits to it merely to be maintained in idleness, she has no right to complain bitterly of her fate; or to act, as a person of independent character might, as if she had a title to disregard general rules. "but the misfortune is, that many women only submit in appearance, and forfeit their own respect to secure their reputation in the world. the situation of a woman separated from her husband, is undoubtedly very different from that of a man who has left his wife. he, with lordly dignity, has shaken of a clog; and the allowing her food and raiment, is thought sufficient to secure his reputation from taint. and, should she have been inconsiderate, he will be celebrated for his generosity and forbearance. such is the respect paid to the master-key of property! a woman, on the contrary, resigning what is termed her natural protector (though he never was so, but in name) is despised and shunned, for asserting the independence of mind distinctive of a rational being, and spurning at slavery.' "during the remainder of the evening, my uncle's tenderness led him frequently to revert to the subject, and utter, with increasing warmth, sentiments to the same purport. at length it was necessary to say 'farewell!'--and we parted--gracious god! to meet no more. chapter 11 "a gentleman of large fortune and of polished manners, had lately visited very frequently at our house, and treated me, if possible, with more respect than mr. venables paid him; my pregnancy was not yet visible, his society was a great relief to me, as i had for some time past, to avoid expence, confined myself very much at home. i ever disdained unnecessary, perhaps even prudent concealments; and my husband, with great ease, discovered the amount of my uncle's parting present. a copy of a writ was the stale pretext to extort it from me; and i had soon reason to believe that it was fabricated for the purpose. i acknowledge my folly in thus suffering myself to be continually imposed on. i had adhered to my resolution not to apply to my uncle, on the part of my husband, any more; yet, when i had received a sum sufficient to supply my own wants, and to enable me to pursue a plan i had in view, to settle my younger brother in a respectable employment, i allowed myself to be duped by mr. venables' shallow pretences, and hypocritical professions. "thus did he pillage me and my family, thus frustrate all my plans of usefulness. yet this was the man i was bound to respect and esteem: as if respect and esteem depended on an arbitrary will of our own! but a wife being as much a man's property as his horse, or his ass, she has nothing she can call her own. he may use any means to get at what the law considers as his, the moment his wife is in possession of it, even to the forcing of a lock, as mr. venables did, to search for notes in my writing-desk--and all this is done with a show of equity, because, forsooth, he is responsible for her maintenance. "the tender mother cannot _lawfully_ snatch from the gripe of the gambling spendthrift, or beastly drunkard, unmindful of his offspring, the fortune which falls to her by chance; or (so flagrant is the injustice) what she earns by her own exertions. no; he can rob her with impunity, even to waste publicly on a courtezan; and the laws of her country--if women have a country--afford her no protection or redress from the oppressor, unless she have the plea of bodily fear; yet how many ways are there of goading the soul almost to madness, equally unmanly, though not so mean? when such laws were framed, should not impartial lawgivers have first decreed, in the style of a great assembly, who recognized the existence of an _etre_ _supreme_, to fix the national belief, that the husband should always be wiser and more virtuous than his wife, in order to entitle him, with a show of justice, to keep this idiot, or perpetual minor, for ever in bondage. but i must have done-on this subject, my indignation continually runs away with me. "the company of the gentleman i have already mentioned, who had a general acquaintance with literature and subjects of taste, was grateful to me; my countenance brightened up as he approached, and i unaffectedly expressed the pleasure i felt. the amusement his conversation afforded me, made it easy to comply with my husband's request, to endeavour to render our house agreeable to him. "his attentions became more pointed; but, as i was not of the number of women, whose virtue, as it is termed, immediately takes alarm, i endeavoured, rather by raillery than serious expostulation, to give a different turn to his conversation. he assumed a new mode of attack, and i was, for a while, the dupe of his pretended friendship. "i had, merely in the style of _badinage_, boasted of my conquest, and repeated his lover-like compliments to my husband. but he begged me, for god's sake, not to affront his friend, or i should destroy all his projects, and be his ruin. had i had more affection for my husband, i should have expressed my contempt of this time-serving politeness: now i imagined that i only felt pity; yet it would have puzzled a casuist to point out in what the exact difference consisted. "this friend began now, in confidence, to discover to me the real state of my husband's affairs. 'necessity,' said mr. s----; why should i reveal his name? for he affected to palliate the conduct he could not excuse, 'had led him to take such steps, by accommodation bills, buying goods on credit, to sell them for ready money, and similar transactions, that his character in the commercial world was gone. he was considered,' he added, lowering his voice, 'on 'change as a swindler.' "i felt at that moment the first maternal pang. aware of the evils my sex have to struggle with, i still wished, for my own consolation, to be the mother of a daughter; and i could not bear to think, that the _sins_ of her father's entailed disgrace, should be added to the ills to which woman is heir. "so completely was i deceived by these shows of friendship (nay, i believe, according to his interpretation, mr. s---really was my friend) that i began to consult him respecting the best mode of retrieving my husband's character: it is the good name of a woman only that sets to rise no more. i knew not that he had been drawn into a whirlpool, out of which he had not the energy to attempt to escape. he seemed indeed destitute of the power of employing his faculties in any regular pursuit. his principles of action were so loose, and his mind so uncultivated, that every thing like order appeared to him in the shape of restraint; and, like men in the savage state, he required the strong stimulus of hope or fear, produced by wild speculations, in which the interests of others went for nothing, to keep his spirits awake. he one time professed patriotism, but he knew not what it was to feel honest indignation; and pretended to be an advocate for liberty, when, with as little affection for the human race as for individuals, he thought of nothing but his own gratification. he was just such a citizen, as a father. the sums he adroitly obtained by a violation of the laws of his country, as well as those of humanity, he would allow a mistress to squander; though she was, with the same _sang_ _froid_, consigned, as were his children, to poverty, when another proved more attractive. "on various pretences, his friend continued to visit me; and, observing my want of money, he tried to induce me to accept of pecuniary aid; but this offer i absolutely rejected, though it was made with such delicacy, i could not be displeased. "one day he came, as i thought accidentally, to dinner. my husband was very much engaged in business, and quitted the room soon after the cloth was removed. we conversed as usual, till confidential advice led again to love. i was extremely mortified. i had a sincere regard for him, and hoped that he had an equal friendship for me. i therefore began mildly to expostulate with him. this gentleness he mistook for coy encouragement; and he would not be diverted from the subject. perceiving his mistake, i seriously asked him how, using such language to me, he could profess to be my husband's friend? a significant sneer excited my curiosity, and he, supposing this to be my only scruple, took a letter deliberately out of his pocket, saying, 'your husband's honour is not inflexible. how could you, with your discernment, think it so? why, he left the room this very day on purpose to give me an opportunity to explain myself; _he_ thought me too timid--too tardy. "i snatched the letter with indescribable emotion. the purport of it was to invite him to dinner, and to ridicule his chivalrous respect for me. he assured him, 'that every woman had her price, and, with gross indecency, hinted, that he should be glad to have the duty of a husband taken off his hands. these he termed _liberal_ _sentiments_. he advised him not to shock my romantic notions, but to attack my credulous generosity, and weak pity; and concluded with requesting him to lend him five hundred pounds for a month or six weeks.' i read this letter twice over; and the firm purpose it inspired, calmed the rising tumult of my soul. i rose deliberately, requested mr. s---to wait a moment, and instantly going into the counting-house, desired mr. venables to return with me to the dining-parlour. "he laid down his pen, and entered with me, without observing any change in my countenance. i shut the door, and, giving him the letter, simply asked, 'whether he wrote it, or was it a forgery?' "nothing could equal his confusion. his friend's eye met his, and he muttered something about a joke--but i interrupted him-'it is sufficient--we part for ever.' "i continued, with solemnity, 'i have borne with your tyranny and infidelities. i disdain to utter what i have borne with. i thought you unprincipled, but not so decidedly vicious. i formed a tie, in the sight of heaven--i have held it sacred; even when men, more conformable to my taste, have made me feel--i despise all subterfuge!--that i was not dead to love. neglected by you, i have resolutely stifled the enticing emotions, and respected the plighted faith you outraged. and you dare now to insult me, by selling me to prostitution!--yes--equally lost to delicacy and principle--you dared sacrilegiously to barter the honour of the mother of your child.' "then, turning to mr. s----, i added, 'i call on you, sir, to witness,' and i lifted my hands and eyes to heaven, 'that, as solemnly as i took his name, i now abjure it,' i pulled off my ring, and put it on the table; 'and that i mean immediately to quit his house, never to enter it more. i will provide for myself and child. i leave him as free as i am determined to be myself-he shall be answerable for no debts of mine.' "astonishment closed their lips, till mr. venables, gently pushing his friend, with a forced smile, out of the room, nature for a moment prevailed, and, appearing like himself, he turned round, burning with rage, to me: but there was no terror in the frown, excepting when contrasted with the malignant smile which preceded it. he bade me 'leave the house at my peril; told me he despised my threats; i had no resource; i could not swear the peace against him!--i was not afraid of my life!-he had never struck me!' "he threw the letter in the fire, which i had incautiously left in his hands; and, quitting the room, locked the door on me. "when left alone, i was a moment or two before i could recollect myself--one scene had succeeded another with such rapidity, i almost doubted whether i was reflecting on a real event. 'was it possible? was i, indeed, free?'--yes; free i termed myself, when i decidedly perceived the conduct i ought to adopt. how had i panted for liberty--liberty, that i would have purchased at any price, but that of my own esteem! i rose, and shook myself; opened the window, and methought the air never smelled so sweet. the face of heaven grew fairer as i viewed it, and the clouds seemed to flit away obedient to my wishes, to give my soul room to expand. i was all soul, and (wild as it may appear) felt as if i could have dissolved in the soft balmy gale that kissed my cheek, or have glided below the horizon on the glowing, descending beams. a seraphic satisfaction animated, without agitating my spirits; and my imagination collected, in visions sublimely terrible, or soothingly beautiful, an immense variety of the endless images, which nature affords, and fancy combines, of the grand and fair. the lustre of these bright picturesque sketches faded with the setting sun; but i was still alive to the calm delight they had diffused through my heart. "there may be advocates for matrimonial obedience, who, making a distinction between the duty of a wife and of a human being, may blame my conduct.--to them i write not--my feelings are not for them to analyze; and may you, my child, never be able to ascertain, by heart-rending experience, what your mother felt before the present emancipation of her mind! "i began to write a letter to my father, after closing one to my uncle; not to ask advice, but to signify my determination; when i was interrupted by the entrance of mr. venables. his manner was changed. his views on my uncle's fortune made him averse to my quitting his house, or he would, i am convinced, have been glad to have shaken off even the slight restraint my presence imposed on him; the restraint of showing me some respect. so far from having an affection for me, he really hated me, because he was convinced that i must despise him. "he told me, that 'as i now had had time to cool and reflect, he did not doubt but that my prudence, and nice sense of propriety, would lead me to overlook what was passed.' "'reflection,' i replied, 'had only confirmed my purpose, and no power on earth could divert me from it.' "endeavouring to assume a soothing voice and look, when he would willingly have tortured me, to force me to feel his power, his countenance had an infernal expression, when he desired me, 'not to expose myself to the servants, by obliging him to confine me in my apartment; if then i would give my promise not to quit the house precipitately, i should be free--and--.' i declared, interrupting him, 'that i would promise nothing. i had no measures to keep with him--i was resolved, and would not condescend to subterfuge.' "he muttered, 'that i should soon repent of these preposterous airs;' and, ordering tea to be carried into my little study, which had a communication with my bed-chamber, he once more locked the door upon me, and left me to my own meditations. i had passively followed him up stairs, not wishing to fatigue myself with unavailing exertion. "nothing calms the mind like a fixed purpose. i felt as if i had heaved a thousand weight from my heart; the atmosphere seemed lightened; and, if i execrated the institutions of society, which thus enable men to tyrannize over women, it was almost a disinterested sentiment. i disregarded present inconveniences, when my mind had done struggling with itself,--when reason and inclination had shaken hands and were at peace. i had no longer the cruel task before me, in endless perspective, aye, during the tedious for ever of life, of labouring to overcome my repugnance--of labouring to extinguish the hopes, the maybes of a lively imagination. death i had hailed as my only chance for deliverance; but, while existence had still so many charms, and life promised happiness, i shrunk from the icy arms of an unknown tyrant, though far more inviting than those of the man, to whom i supposed myself bound without any other alternative; and was content to linger a little longer, waiting for i knew not what, rather than leave 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day,' and all the unenjoyed affection of my nature. "my present situation gave a new turn to my reflection; and i wondered (now the film seemed to be withdrawn, that obscured the piercing sight of reason) how i could, previously to the deciding outrage, have considered myself as everlastingly united to vice and folly! 'had an evil genius cast a spell at my birth; or a demon stalked out of chaos, to perplex my understanding, and enchain my will, with delusive prejudices?' "i pursued this train of thinking; it led me out of myself, to expatiate on the misery peculiar to my sex. 'are not,' i thought, 'the despots for ever stigmatized, who, in the wantonness of power, commanded even the most atrocious criminals to be chained to dead bodies? though surely those laws are much more inhuman, which forge adamantine fetters to bind minds together, that never can mingle in social communion! what indeed can equal the wretchedness of that state, in which there is no alternative, but to extinguish the affections, or encounter infamy?' chapter 12 "towards midnight mr. venables entered my chamber; and, with calm audacity preparing to go to bed, he bade me make haste, 'for that was the best place for husbands and wives to end their differences. he had been drinking plentifully to aid his courage. "i did not at first deign to reply. but perceiving that he affected to take my silence for consent, i told him that, 'if he would not go to another bed, or allow me, i should sit up in my study all night.' he attempted to pull me into the chamber, half joking. but i resisted; and, as he had determined not to give me any reason for saying that he used violence, after a few more efforts, he retired, cursing my obstinacy, to bed. "i sat musing some time longer; then, throwing my cloak around me, prepared for sleep on a sopha. and, so fortunate seemed my deliverance, so sacred the pleasure of being thus wrapped up in myself, that i slept profoundly, and woke with a mind composed to encounter the struggles of the day. mr. venables did not wake till some hours after; and then he came to me half-dressed, yawning and stretching, with haggard eyes, as if he scarcely recollected what had passed the preceding evening. he fixed his eyes on me for a moment, then, calling me a fool, asked 'how long i intended to continue this pretty farce? for his part, he was devilish sick of it; but this was the plague of marrying women who pretended to know something.' "i made no other reply to this harangue, than to say, 'that he ought to be glad to get rid of a woman so unfit to be his companion--and that any change in my conduct would be mean dissimulation; for maturer reflection only gave the sacred seal of reason to my first resolution.' "he looked as if he could have stamped with impatience, at being obliged to stifle his rage; but, conquering his anger (for weak people, whose passions seem the most ungovernable, restrain them with the greatest ease, when they have a sufficient motive), he exclaimed, 'very pretty, upon my soul! very pretty, theatrical flourishes! pray, fair roxana, stoop from your altitudes, and remember that you are acting a part in real life.' "he uttered this speech with a self-satisfied air, and went down stairs to dress. "in about an hour he came to me again; and in the same tone said, 'that he came as my gentleman-usher to hand me down to breakfast. "'of the black rod?' asked i. "this question, and the tone in which i asked it, a little disconcerted him. to say the truth, i now felt no resentment; my firm resolution to free myself from my ignoble thraldom, had absorbed the various emotions which, during six years, had racked my soul. the duty pointed out by my principles seemed clear; and not one tender feeling intruded to make me swerve: the dislike which my husband had inspired was strong; but it only led me to wish to avoid, to wish to let him drop out of my memory; there was no misery, no torture that i would not deliberately have chosen, rather than renew my lease of servitude. "during the breakfast, he attempted to reason with me on the folly of romantic sentiments; for this was the indiscriminate epithet he gave to every mode of conduct or thinking superior to his own. he asserted, 'that all the world were governed by their own interest; those who pretended to be actuated by different motives, were only deeper knaves, or fools crazed by books, who took for gospel all the rodomantade nonsense written by men who knew nothing of the world. for his part, he thanked god, he was no hypocrite; and, if he stretched a point sometimes, it was always with an intention of paying every man his own.' "he then artfully insinuated, 'that he daily expected a vessel to arrive, a successful speculation, that would make him easy for the present, and that he had several other schemes actually depending, that could not fail. he had no doubt of becoming rich in a few years, though he had been thrown back by some unlucky adventures at the setting out.' "i mildly replied, 'that i wished he might not involve himself still deeper.' "he had no notion that i was governed by a decision of judgment, not to be compared with a mere spurt of resentment. he knew not what it was to feel indignation against vice, and often boasted of his placable temper, and readiness to forgive injuries. true; for he only considered the being deceived, as an effort of skill he had not guarded against; and then, with a cant of candour, would observe, 'that he did not know how he might himself have been tempted to act in the same circumstances.' and, as his heart never opened to friendship, it never was wounded by disappointment. every new acquaintance he protested, it is true, was 'the cleverest fellow in the world; and he really thought so; till the novelty of his conversation or manners ceased to have any effect on his sluggish spirits. his respect for rank or fortune was more permanent, though he chanced to have no design of availing himself of the influence of either to promote his own views. "after a prefatory conversation,--my blood (i thought it had been cooler) flushed over my whole countenance as he spoke--he alluded to my situation. he desired me to reflect--'and act like a prudent woman, as the best proof of my superior understanding; for he must own i had sense, did i know how to use it. i was not,' he laid a stress on his words, 'without my passions; and a husband was a convenient cloke.--he was liberal in his way of thinking; and why might not we, like many other married people, who were above vulgar prejudices, tacitly consent to let each other follow their own inclination?--he meant nothing more, in the letter i made the ground of complaint; and the pleasure which i seemed to take in mr. s.'s company, led him to conclude, that he was not disagreeable to me.' "a clerk brought in the letters of the day, and i, as i often did, while he was discussing subjects of business, went to the _piano_ _forte_, and began to play a favourite air to restore myself, as it were, to nature, and drive the sophisticated sentiments i had just been obliged to listen to, out of my soul. "they had excited sensations similar to those i have felt, in viewing the squalid inhabitants of some of the lanes and back streets of the metropolis, mortified at being compelled to consider them as my fellow-creatures, as if an ape had claimed kindred with me. or, as when surrounded by a mephitical fog, i have wished to have a volley of cannon fired, to clear the incumbered atmosphere, and give me room to breathe and move. "my spirits were all in arms, and i played a kind of extemporary prelude. the cadence was probably wild and impassioned, while, lost in thought, i made the sounds a kind of echo to my train of thinking. "pausing for a moment, i met mr. venables' eyes. he was observing me with an air of conceited satisfaction, as much as to say--'my last insinuation has done the business--she begins to know her own interest.' then gathering up his letters, he said, 'that he hoped he should hear no more romantic stuff, well enough in a miss just come from boarding school;' and went, as was his custom, to the counting-house. i still continued playing; and, turning to a sprightly lesson, i executed it with uncommon vivacity. i heard footsteps approach the door, and was soon convinced that mr. venables was listening; the consciousness only gave more animation to my fingers. he went down into the kitchen, and the cook, probably by his desire, came to me, to know what i would please to order for dinner. mr. venables came into the parlour again, with apparent carelessness. i perceived that the cunning man was overreaching himself; and i gave my directions as usual, and left the room. "while i was making some alteration in my dress, mr. venables peeped in, and, begging my pardon for interrupting me, disappeared. i took up some work (i could not read), and two or three messages were sent to me, probably for no other purpose, but to enable mr. venables to ascertain what i was about. "i listened whenever i heard the street-door open; at last i imagined i could distinguish mr. venables' step, going out. i laid aside my work; my heart palpitated; still i was afraid hastily to enquire; and i waited a long half hour, before i ventured to ask the boy whether his master was in the counting-house? "being answered in the negative, i bade him call me a coach, and collecting a few necessaries hastily together, with a little parcel of letters and papers which i had collected the preceding evening, i hurried into it, desiring the coachman to drive to a distant part of the town. "i almost feared that the coach would break down before i got out of the street; and, when i turned the corner, i seemed to breathe a freer air. i was ready to imagine that i was rising above the thick atmosphere of earth; or i felt, as wearied souls might be supposed to feel on entering another state of existence. "i stopped at one or two stands of coaches to elude pursuit, and then drove round the skirts of the town to seek for an obscure lodging, where i wished to remain concealed, till i could avail myself of my uncle's protection. i had resolved to assume my own name immediately, and openly to avow my determination, without any formal vindication, the moment i had found a home, in which i could rest free from the daily alarm of expecting to see mr. venables enter. "i looked at several lodgings; but finding that i could not, without a reference to some acquaintance, who might inform my tyrant, get admittance into a decent apartment--men have not all this trouble--i thought of a woman whom i had assisted to furnish a little haberdasher's shop, and who i knew had a first floor to let. "i went to her, and though i could not persuade her, that the quarrel between me and mr. venables would never be made up, still she agreed to conceal me for the present; yet assuring me at the same time, shaking her head, that, when a woman was once married, she must bear every thing. her pale face, on which appeared a thousand haggard lines and delving wrinkles, produced by what is emphatically termed fretting, inforced her remark; and i had afterwards an opportunity of observing the treatment she had to endure, which grizzled her into patience. she toiled from morning till night; yet her husband would rob the till, and take away the money reserved for paying bills; and, returning home drunk, he would beat her if she chanced to offend him, though she had a child at the breast. "these scenes awoke me at night; and, in the morning, i heard her, as usual, talk to her dear johnny--he, forsooth, was her master; no slave in the west indies had one more despotic; but fortunately she was of the true russian breed of wives. "my mind, during the few past days, seemed, as it were, disengaged from my body; but, now the struggle was over, i felt very forcibly the effect which perturbation of spirits produces on a woman in my situation. "the apprehension of a miscarriage, obliged me to confine myself to my apartment near a fortnight; but i wrote to my uncle's friend for money, promising 'to call on him, and explain my situation, when i was well enough to go out; mean time i earnestly intreated him, not to mention my place of abode to any one, lest my husband--such the law considered him--should disturb the mind he could not conquer. i mentioned my intention of setting out for lisbon, to claim my uncle's protection, the moment my health would permit.' "the tranquillity however, which i was recovering, was soon interrupted. my landlady came up to me one day, with eyes swollen with weeping, unable to utter what she was commanded to say. she declared, 'that she was never so miserable in her life; that she must appear an ungrateful monster; and that she would readily go down on her knees to me, to intreat me to forgive her, as she had done to her husband to spare her the cruel task.' sobs prevented her from proceeding, or answering my impatient enquiries, to know what she meant. "when she became a little more composed, she took a newspaper out of her pocket, declaring, 'that her heart smote her, but what could she do?--she must obey her husband.' i snatched the paper from her. an advertisement quickly met my eye, purporting, that 'maria venables had, without any assignable cause, absconded from her husband; and any person harbouring her, was menaced with the utmost severity of the law.' "perfectly acquainted with mr. venables' meanness of soul, this step did not excite my surprise, and scarcely my contempt. resentment in my breast, never survived love. i bade the poor woman, in a kind tone, wipe her eyes, and request her husband to come up, and speak to me himself. "my manner awed him. he respected a lady, though not a woman; and began to mutter out an apology. "'mr. venables was a rich gentleman; he wished to oblige me, but he had suffered enough by the law already, to tremble at the thought; besides, for certain, we should come together again, and then even i should not thank him for being accessary to keeping us asunder.--a husband and wife were, god knows, just as one,--and all would come round at last.' he uttered a drawling 'hem!' and then with an arch look, added--'master might have had his little frolics--but--lord bless your heart!--men would be men while the world stands.' "to argue with this privileged first-born of reason, i perceived, would be vain. i therefore only requested him to let me remain another day at his house, while i sought for a lodging; and not to inform mr. venables that i had ever been sheltered there. "he consented, because he had not the courage to refuse a person for whom he had an habitual respect; but i heard the pent-up choler burst forth in curses, when he met his wife, who was waiting impatiently at the foot of the stairs, to know what effect my expostulations would have on him. "without wasting any time in the fruitless indulgence of vexation, i once more set out in search of an abode in which i could hide myself for a few weeks. "agreeing to pay an exorbitant price, i hired an apartment, without any reference being required relative to my character: indeed, a glance at my shape seemed to say, that my motive for concealment was sufficiently obvious. thus was i obliged to shroud my head in infamy. "to avoid all danger of detection--i use the appropriate word, my child, for i was hunted out like a felon--i determined to take possession of my new lodgings that very evening. "i did not inform my landlady where i was going. i knew that she had a sincere affection for me, and would willingly have run any risk to show her gratitude; yet i was fully convinced, that a few kind words from johnny would have found the woman in her, and her dear benefactress, as she termed me in an agony of tears, would have been sacrificed, to recompense her tyrant for condescending to treat her like an equal. he could be kind-hearted, as she expressed it, when he pleased. and this thawed sternness, contrasted with his habitual brutality, was the more acceptable, and could not be purchased at too dear a rate. "the sight of the advertisement made me desirous of taking refuge with my uncle, let what would be the consequence; and i repaired in a hackney coach (afraid of meeting some person who might chance to know me, had i walked) to the chambers of my uncle's friend. "he received me with great politeness (my uncle had already prepossessed him in my favour), and listened, with interest, to my explanation of the motives which had induced me to fly from home, and skulk in obscurity, with all the timidity of fear that ought only to be the companion of guilt. he lamented, with rather more gallantry than, in my situation, i thought delicate, that such a woman should be thrown away on a man insensible to the charms of beauty or grace. he seemed at a loss what to advise me to do, to evade my husband's search, without hastening to my uncle, whom, he hesitating said, i might not find alive. he uttered this intelligence with visible regret; requested me, at least, to wait for the arrival of the next packet; offered me what money i wanted, and promised to visit me. "he kept his word; still no letter arrived to put an end to my painful state of suspense. i procured some books and music, to beguile the tedious solitary days. 'come, ever smiling liberty, 'and with thee bring thy jocund train:' i sung--and sung till, saddened by the strain of joy, i bitterly lamented the fate that deprived me of all social pleasure. comparative liberty indeed i had possessed myself of; but the jocund train lagged far behind! chapter 13 "by watching my only visitor, my uncle's friend, or by some other means, mr. venables discovered my residence, and came to enquire for me. the maid-servant assured him there was no such person in the house. a bustle ensued--i caught the alarm--listened--distinguished his voice, and immediately locked the door. they suddenly grew still; and i waited near a quarter of an hour, before i heard him open the parlour door, and mount the stairs with the mistress of the house, who obsequiously declared that she knew nothing of me. "finding my door locked, she requested me to open it, and prepare to go home with my husband, poor gentleman! to whom i had already occasioned sufficient vexation.' i made no reply. mr. venables then, in an assumed tone of softness, intreated me, 'to consider what he suffered, and my own reputation, and get the better of childish resentment.' he ran on in the same strain, pretending to address me, but evidently adapting his discourse to the capacity of the landlady; who, at every pause, uttered an exclamation of pity; or 'yes, to be sure--very true, sir.' "sick of the farce, and perceiving that i could not avoid the hated interview, i opened the door, and he entered. advancing with easy assurance to take my hand, i shrunk from his touch, with an involuntary start, as i should have done from a noisome reptile, with more disgust than terror. his conductress was retiring, to give us, as she said, an opportunity to accommodate matters. but i bade her come in, or i would go out; and curiosity impelled her to obey me. "mr. venables began to expostulate; and this woman, proud of his confidence, to second him. but i calmly silenced her, in the midst of a vulgar harangue, and turning to him, asked, 'why he vainly tormented me? declaring that no power on earth should force me back to his house.' "after a long altercation, the particulars of which, it would be to no purpose to repeat, he left the room. some time was spent in loud conversation in the parlour below, and i discovered that he had brought his friend, an attorney, with him.* * in the original edition the paragraph following is preceded by three lines of asterisks [publisher's note]. the tumult on the landing place, brought out a gentleman, who had recently taken apartments in the house; he enquired why i was thus assailed?* the voluble attorney instantly repeated the trite tale. the stranger turned to me, observing, with the most soothing politeness and manly interest, that 'my countenance told a very different story.' he added, 'that i should not be insulted, or forced out of the house, by any body.' * the introduction of darnford as the deliverer of maria, in an early stage of the history, is already stated (chap. iii.) to have been an after-thought of the author. this has probably caused the imperfectness of the manuscript in the above passage; though, at the same time, it must be acknowledged to be somewhat uncertain, whether darnford is the stranger intended in this place. it appears from chap. xvii, that an interference of a more decisive nature was designed to be attributed to him. editor. [godwin's note] "'not by her husband?' asked the attorney. "'no, sir, not by her husband.' mr. venables advanced towards him-but there was a decision in his attitude, that so well seconded that of his voice, * they left the house: at the same time protesting, that any one that should dare to protect me, should be prosecuted with the utmost rigour. * two and a half lines of asterisks appear here in the original [publisher's note]. "they were scarcely out of the house, when my landlady came up to me again, and begged my pardon, in a very different tone. for, though mr. venables had bid her, at her peril, harbour me, he had not attended, i found, to her broad hints, to discharge the lodging. i instantly promised to pay her, and make her a present to compensate for my abrupt departure, if she would procure me another lodging, at a sufficient distance; and she, in return, repeating mr. venables' plausible tale, i raised her indignation, and excited her sympathy, by telling her briefly the truth. "she expressed her commiseration with such honest warmth, that i felt soothed; for i have none of that fastidious sensitiveness, which a vulgar accent or gesture can alarm to the disregard of real kindness. i was ever glad to perceive in others the humane feelings i delighted to exercise; and the recollection of some ridiculous characteristic circumstances, which have occurred in a moment of emotion, has convulsed me with laughter, though at the instant i should have thought it sacrilegious to have smiled. your improvement, my dearest girl, being ever present to me while i write, i note these feelings, because women, more accustomed to observe manners than actions, are too much alive to ridicule. so much so, that their boasted sensibility is often stifled by false delicacy. true sensibility, the sensibility which is the auxiliary of virtue, and the soul of genius, is in society so occupied with the feelings of others, as scarcely to regard its own sensations. with what reverence have i looked up at my uncle, the dear parent of my mind! when i have seen the sense of his own sufferings, of mind and body, absorbed in a desire to comfort those, whose misfortunes were comparatively trivial. he would have been ashamed of being as indulgent to himself, as he was to others. 'genuine fortitude,' he would assert, 'consisted in governing our own emotions, and making allowance for the weaknesses in our friends, that we would not tolerate in ourselves.' but where is my fond regret leading me! "'women must be submissive,' said my landlady. 'indeed what could most women do? who had they to maintain them, but their husbands? every woman, and especially a lady, could not go through rough and smooth, as she had done, to earn a little bread.' "she was in a talking mood, and proceeded to inform me how she had been used in the world. 'she knew what it was to have a bad husband, or she did not know who should.' i perceived that she would be very much mortified, were i not to attend to her tale, and i did not attempt to interrupt her, though i wished her, as soon as possible, to go out in search of a new abode for me, where i could once more hide my head. "she began by telling me, 'that she had saved a little money in service; and was over-persuaded (we must all be in love once in our lives) to marry a likely man, a footman in the family, not worth a groat. my plan,' she continued, 'was to take a house, and let out lodgings; and all went on well, till my husband got acquainted with an impudent slut, who chose to live on other people's means--and then all went to rack and ruin. he ran in debt to buy her fine clothes, such clothes as i never thought of wearing myself, and--would you believe it?--he signed an execution on my very goods, bought with the money i worked so hard to get; and they came and took my bed from under me, before i heard a word of the matter. aye, madam, these are misfortunes that you gentlefolks know nothing of,--but sorrow is sorrow, let it come which way it will. "'i sought for a service again--very hard, after having a house of my own!--but he used to follow me, and kick up such a riot when he was drunk, that i could not keep a place; nay, he even stole my clothes, and pawned them; and when i went to the pawnbroker's, and offered to take my oath that they were not bought with a farthing of his money, they said, 'it was all as one, my husband had a right to whatever i had.' "'at last he listed for a soldier, and i took a house, making an agreement to pay for the furniture by degrees; and i almost starved myself, till i once more got before-hand in the world. "'after an absence of six years (god forgive me! i thought he was dead) my husband returned; found me out, and came with such a penitent face, i forgave him, and clothed him from head to foot. but he had not been a week in the house, before some of his creditors arrested him; and, he selling my goods, i found myself once more reduced to beggary; for i was not as well able to work, go to bed late, and rise early, as when i quitted service; and then i thought it hard enough. he was soon tired of me, when there was nothing more to be had, and left me again. "i will not tell you how i was buffeted about, till, hearing for certain that he had died in an hospital abroad, i once more returned to my old occupation; but have not yet been able to get my head above water: so, madam, you must not be angry if i am afraid to run any risk, when i know so well, that women have always the worst of it, when law is to decide.' "after uttering a few more complaints, i prevailed on my landlady to go out in quest of a lodging; and, to be more secure, i condescended to the mean shift of changing my name. "but why should i dwell on similar incidents!--i was hunted, like an infected beast, from three different apartments, and should not have been allowed to rest in any, had not mr. venables, informed of my uncle's dangerous state of health, been inspired with the fear of hurrying me out of the world as i advanced in my pregnancy, by thus tormenting and obliging me to take sudden journeys to avoid him; and then his speculations on my uncle's fortune must prove abortive. "one day, when he had pursued me to an inn, i fainted, hurrying from him; and, falling down, the sight of my blood alarmed him, and obtained a respite for me. it is strange that he should have retained any hope, after observing my unwavering determination; but, from the mildness of my behaviour, when i found all my endeavours to change his disposition unavailing, he formed an erroneous opinion of my character, imagining that, were we once more together, i should part with the money he could not legally force from me, with the same facility as formerly. my forbearance and occasional sympathy he had mistaken for weakness of character; and, because he perceived that i disliked resistance, he thought my indulgence and compassion mere selfishness, and never discovered that the fear of being unjust, or of unnecessarily wounding the feelings of another, was much more painful to me, than any thing i could have to endure myself. perhaps it was pride which made me imagine, that i could bear what i dreaded to inflict; and that it was often easier to suffer, than to see the sufferings of others. "i forgot to mention that, during this persecution, i received a letter from my uncle, informing me, 'that he only found relief from continual change of air; and that he intended to return when the spring was a little more advanced (it was now the middle of february), and then we would plan a journey to italy, leaving the fogs and cares of england far behind.' he approved of my conduct, promised to adopt my child, and seemed to have no doubt of obliging mr. venables to hear reason. he wrote to his friend, by the same post, desiring him to call on mr. venables in his name; and, in consequence of the remonstrances he dictated, i was permitted to lie-in tranquilly. "the two or three weeks previous, i had been allowed to rest in peace; but, so accustomed was i to pursuit and alarm, that i seldom closed my eyes without being haunted by mr. venables' image, who seemed to assume terrific or hateful forms to torment me, wherever i turned.--sometimes a wild cat, a roaring bull, or hideous assassin, whom i vainly attempted to fly; at others he was a demon, hurrying me to the brink of a precipice, plunging me into dark waves, or horrid gulfs; and i woke, in violent fits of trembling anxiety, to assure myself that it was all a dream, and to endeavour to lure my waking thoughts to wander to the delightful italian vales, i hoped soon to visit; or to picture some august ruins, where i reclined in fancy on a mouldering column, and escaped, in the contemplation of the heart-enlarging virtues of antiquity, from the turmoil of cares that had depressed all the daring purposes of my soul. but i was not long allowed to calm my mind by the exercise of my imagination; for the third day after your birth, my child, i was surprised by a visit from my elder brother; who came in the most abrupt manner, to inform me of the death of my uncle. he had left the greater part of his fortune to my child, appointing me its guardian; in short, every step was taken to enable me to be mistress of his fortune, without putting any part of it in mr. venables' power. my brother came to vent his rage on me, for having, as he expressed himself, 'deprived him, my uncle's eldest nephew, of his inheritance;' though my uncle's property, the fruit of his own exertion, being all in the funds, or on landed securities, there was not a shadow of justice in the charge. "as i sincerely loved my uncle, this intelligence brought on a fever, which i struggled to conquer with all the energy of my mind; for, in my desolate state, i had it very much at heart to suckle you, my poor babe. you seemed my only tie to life, a cherub, to whom i wished to be a father, as well as a mother; and the double duty appeared to me to produce a proportionate increase of affection. but the pleasure i felt, while sustaining you, snatched from the wreck of hope, was cruelly damped by melancholy reflections on my widowed state--widowed by the death of my uncle. of mr. venables i thought not, even when i thought of the felicity of loving your father, and how a mother's pleasure might be exalted, and her care softened by a husband's tenderness.--'ought to be!' i exclaimed; and i endeavoured to drive away the tenderness that suffocated me; but my spirits were weak, and the unbidden tears would flow. 'why was i,' i would ask thee, but thou didst not heed me,--'cut off from the participation of the sweetest pleasure of life?' i imagined with what extacy, after the pains of child-bed, i should have presented my little stranger, whom i had so long wished to view, to a respectable father, and with what maternal fondness i should have pressed them both to my heart!--now i kissed her with less delight, though with the most endearing compassion, poor helpless one! when i perceived a slight resemblance of him, to whom she owed her existence; or, if any gesture reminded me of him, even in his best days, my heart heaved, and i pressed the innocent to my bosom, as if to purify it--yes, i blushed to think that its purity had been sullied, by allowing such a man to be its father. "after my recovery, i began to think of taking a house in the country, or of making an excursion on the continent, to avoid mr. venables; and to open my heart to new pleasures and affection. the spring was melting into summer, and you, my little companion, began to smile--that smile made hope bud out afresh, assuring me the world was not a desert. your gestures were ever present to my fancy; and i dwelt on the joy i should feel when you would begin to walk and lisp. watching your wakening mind, and shielding from every rude blast my tender blossom, i recovered my spirits--i dreamed not of the frost--'the killing frost,' to which you were destined to be exposed.--but i lose all patience--and execrate the injustice of the world--folly! ignorance!--i should rather call it; but, shut up from a free circulation of thought, and always pondering on the same griefs, i writhe under the torturing apprehensions, which ought to excite only honest indignation, or active compassion; and would, could i view them as the natural consequence of things. but, born a woman--and born to suffer, in endeavouring to repress my own emotions, i feel more acutely the various ills my sex are fated to bear--i feel that the evils they are subject to endure, degrade them so far below their oppressors, as almost to justify their tyranny; leading at the same time superficial reasoners to term that weakness the cause, which is only the consequence of short-sighted despotism. chapter 14 "as my mind grew calmer, the visions of italy again returned with their former glow of colouring; and i resolved on quitting the kingdom for a time, in search of the cheerfulness, that naturally results from a change of scene, unless we carry the barbed arrow with us, and only see what we feel. "during the period necessary to prepare for a long absence, i sent a supply to pay my father's debts, and settled my brothers in eligible situations; but my attention was not wholly engrossed by my family, though i do not think it necessary to enumerate the common exertions of humanity. the manner in which my uncle's property was settled, prevented me from making the addition to the fortune of my surviving sister, that i could have wished; but i had prevailed on him to bequeath her two thousand pounds, and she determined to marry a lover, to whom she had been some time attached. had it not been for this engagement, i should have invited her to accompany me in my tour; and i might have escaped the pit, so artfully dug in my path, when i was the least aware of danger. "i had thought of remaining in england, till i weaned my child; but this state of freedom was too peaceful to last, and i had soon reason to wish to hasten my departure. a friend of mr. venables, the same attorney who had accompanied him in several excursions to hunt me from my hiding places, waited on me to propose a reconciliation. on my refusal, he indirectly advised me to make over to my husband--for husband he would term him--the greater part of the property i had at command, menacing me with continual persecution unless i complied, and that, as a last resort, he would claim the child. i did not, though intimidated by the last insinuation, scruple to declare, that i would not allow him to squander the money left to me for far different purposes, but offered him five hundred pounds, if he would sign a bond not to torment me any more. my maternal anxiety made me thus appear to waver from my first determination, and probably suggested to him, or his diabolical agent, the infernal plot, which has succeeded but too well. "the bond was executed; still i was impatient to leave england. mischief hung in the air when we breathed the same; i wanted seas to divide us, and waters to roll between, till he had forgotten that i had the means of helping him through a new scheme. disturbed by the late occurrences, i instantly prepared for my departure. my only delay was waiting for a maid-servant, who spoke french fluently, and had been warmly recommended to me. a valet i was advised to hire, when i fixed on my place of residence for any time. "my god, with what a light heart did i set out for dover!-it was not my country, but my cares, that i was leaving behind. my heart seemed to bound with the wheels, or rather appeared the centre on which they twirled. i clasped you to my bosom, exclaiming 'and you will be safe--quite safe--when--we are once on board the packet.--would we were there!' i smiled at my idle fears, as the natural effect of continual alarm; and i scarcely owned to myself that i dreaded mr. venables's cunning, or was conscious of the horrid delight he would feel, at forming stratagem after stratagem to circumvent me. i was already in the snare--i never reached the packet--i never saw thee more.--i grow breathless. i have scarcely patience to write down the details. the maid--the plausible woman i had hired--put, doubtless, some stupefying potion in what i ate or drank, the morning i left town. all i know is, that she must have quitted the chaise, shameless wretch! and taken (from my breast) my babe with her. how could a creature in a female form see me caress thee, and steal thee from my arms! i must stop, stop to repress a mother's anguish; lest, in bitterness of soul, i imprecate the wrath of heaven on this tiger, who tore my only comfort from me. "how long i slept i know not; certainly many hours, for i woke at the close of day, in a strange confusion of thought. i was probably roused to recollection by some one thundering at a huge, unwieldy gate. attempting to ask where i was, my voice died away, and i tried to raise it in vain, as i have done in a dream. i looked for my babe with affright; feared that it had fallen out of my lap, while i had so strangely forgotten her; and, such was the vague intoxication, i can give it no other name, in which i was plunged, i could not recollect when or where i last saw you; but i sighed, as if my heart wanted room to clear my head. "the gates opened heavily, and the sullen sound of many locks and bolts drawn back, grated on my very soul, before i was appalled by the creeking of the dismal hinges, as they closed after me. the gloomy pile was before me, half in ruins; some of the aged trees of the avenue were cut down, and left to rot where they fell; and as we approached some mouldering steps, a monstrous dog darted forwards to the length of his chain, and barked and growled infernally. "the door was opened slowly, and a murderous visage peeped out, with a lantern. 'hush!' he uttered, in a threatning tone, and the affrighted animal stole back to his kennel. the door of the chaise flew back, the stranger put down the lantern, and clasped his dreadful arms around me. it was certainly the effect of the soporific draught, for, instead of exerting my strength, i sunk without motion, though not without sense, on his shoulder, my limbs refusing to obey my will. i was carried up the steps into a close-shut hall. a candle flaring in the socket, scarcely dispersed the darkness, though it displayed to me the ferocious countenance of the wretch who held me. "he mounted a wide staircase. large figures painted on the walls seemed to start on me, and glaring eyes to meet me at every turn. entering a long gallery, a dismal shriek made me spring out of my conductor's arms, with i know not what mysterious emotion of terror; but i fell on the floor, unable to sustain myself. "a strange-looking female started out of one of the recesses, and observed me with more curiosity than interest; till, sternly bid retire, she flitted back like a shadow. other faces, strongly marked, or distorted, peeped through the half-opened doors, and i heard some incoherent sounds. i had no distinct idea where i could be--i looked on all sides, and almost doubted whether i was alive or dead. "thrown on a bed, i immediately sunk into insensibility again; and next day, gradually recovering the use of reason, i began, starting affrighted from the conviction, to discover where i was confined--i insisted on seeing the master of the mansion--i saw him--and perceived that i was buried alive.- "such, my child, are the events of thy mother's life to this dreadful moment--should she ever escape from the fangs of her enemies, she will add the secrets of her prison-house--and--" some lines were here crossed out, and the memoirs broke off abruptly with the names of jemima and darnford. appendix advertisement* the performance, with a fragment of which the reader has now been presented, was designed to consist of three parts. the preceding sheets were considered as constituting one of those parts. those persons who in the perusal of the chapters, already written and in some degree finished by the author, have felt their hearts awakened, and their curiosity excited as to the sequel of the story, will, of course, gladly accept even of the broken paragraphs and half-finished sentences, which have been found committed to paper, as materials for the remainder. the fastidious and cold-hearted critic may perhaps feel himself repelled by the incoherent form in which they are presented. but an inquisitive temper willingly accepts the most imperfect and mutilated information, where better is not to be had: and readers, who in any degree resemble the author in her quick apprehension of sentiment, and of the pleasures and pains of imagination, will, i believe, find gratification, in contemplating sketches, which were designed in a short time to have received the finishing touches of her genius; but which must now for ever remain a mark to record the triumphs of mortality, over schemes of usefulness, and projects of public interest. * presumed to have been written by godwin [publisher's note]. chapter 15 darnford returned the memoirs to maria, with a most affectionate letter, in which he reasoned on "the absurdity of the laws respecting matrimony, which, till divorces could be more easily obtained, was," he declared, "the most insufferable bondage. ties of this nature could not bind minds governed by superior principles; and such beings were privileged to act above the dictates of laws they had no voice in framing, if they had sufficient strength of mind to endure the natural consequence. in her case, to talk of duty, was a farce, excepting what was due to herself. delicacy, as well as reason, forbade her ever to think of returning to her husband: was she then to restrain her charming sensibility through mere prejudice? these arguments were not absolutely impartial, for he disdained to conceal, that, when he appealed to her reason, he felt that he had some interest in her heart.--the conviction was not more transporting, than sacred--a thousand times a day, he asked himself how he had merited such happiness?--and as often he determined to purify the heart she deigned to inhabit--he intreated to be again admitted to her presence. he was; and the tear which glistened in his eye, when he respectfully pressed her to his bosom, rendered him peculiarly dear to the unfortunate mother. grief had stilled the transports of love, only to render their mutual tenderness more touching. in former interviews, darnford had contrived, by a hundred little pretexts, to sit near her, to take her hand, or to meet her eyes-now it was all soothing affection, and esteem seemed to have rivalled love. he adverted to her narrative, and spoke with warmth of the oppression she had endured.--his eyes, glowing with a lambent flame, told her how much he wished to restore her to liberty and love; but he kissed her hand, as if it had been that of a saint; and spoke of the loss of her child, as if it had been his own.-what could have been more flattering to maria?--every instance of self-denial was registered in her heart, and she loved him, for loving her too well to give way to the transports of passion. they met again and again; and darnford declared, while passion suffused his cheeks, that he never before knew what it was to love.- one morning jemima informed maria, that her master intended to wait on her, and speak to her without witnesses. he came, and brought a letter with him, pretending that he was ignorant of its contents, though he insisted on having it returned to him. it was from the attorney already mentioned, who informed her of the death of her child, and hinted, "that she could not now have a legitimate heir, and that, would she make over the half of her fortune during life, she should be conveyed to dover, and permitted to pursue her plan of travelling." maria answered with warmth, "that she had no terms to make with the murderer of her babe, nor would she purchase liberty at the price of her own respect." she began to expostulate with her jailor; but he sternly bade her "be silent--he had not gone so far, not to go further." darnford came in the evening. jemima was obliged to be absent, and she, as usual, locked the door on them, to prevent interruption or discovery.--the lovers were, at first, embarrassed; but fell insensibly into confidential discourse. darnford represented, "that they might soon be parted," and wished her "to put it out of the power of fate to separate them." as her husband she now received him, and he solemnly pledged himself as her protector--and eternal friend.- there was one peculiarity in maria's mind: she was more anxious not to deceive, than to guard against deception; and had rather trust without sufficient reason, than be for ever the prey of doubt. besides, what are we, when the mind has, from reflection, a certain kind of elevation, which exalts the contemplation above the little concerns of prudence! we see what we wish, and make a world of our own--and, though reality may sometimes open a door to misery, yet the moments of happiness procured by the imagination, may, without a paradox, be reckoned among the solid comforts of life. maria now, imagining that she had found a being of celestial mould--was happy,--nor was she deceived.--he was then plastic in her impassioned hand--and reflected all the sentiments which animated and warmed her.* * two and a half lines of dashes follow here in the original [publisher's note]. chapter 16 one morning confusion seemed to reign in the house, and jemima came in terror, to inform maria, "that her master had left it, with a determination, she was assured (and too many circumstances corroborated the opinion, to leave a doubt of its truth) of never returning. i am prepared then," said jemima, "to accompany you in your flight." maria started up, her eyes darting towards the door, as if afraid that some one should fasten it on her for ever. jemima continued, "i have perhaps no right now to expect the performance of your promise; but on you it depends to reconcile me with the human race." "but darnford!"--exclaimed maria, mournfully--sitting down again, and crossing her arms--"i have no child to go to, and liberty has lost its sweets." "i am much mistaken, if darnford is not the cause of my master's flight--his keepers assure me, that they have promised to confine him two days longer, and then he will be free--you cannot see him; but they will give a letter to him the moment he is free.--in that inform him where he may find you in london; fix on some hotel. give me your clothes; i will send them out of the house with mine, and we will slip out at the garden-gate. write your letter while i make these arrangements, but lose no time!" in an agitation of spirit, not to be calmed, maria began to write to darnford. she called him by the sacred name of "husband," and bade him "hasten to her, to share her fortune, or she would return to him."--an hotel in the adelphi was the place of rendezvous. the letter was sealed and given in charge; and with light footsteps, yet terrified at the sound of them, she descended, scarcely breathing, and with an indistinct fear that she should never get out at the garden gate. jemima went first. a being, with a visage that would have suited one possessed by a devil, crossed the path, and seized maria by the arm. maria had no fear but of being detained--"who are you? what are you?" for the form was scarcely human. "if you are made of flesh and blood," his ghastly eyes glared on her, "do not stop me!" "woman," interrupted a sepulchral voice, "what have i to do with thee?"--still he grasped her hand, muttering a curse. "no, no; you have nothing to do with me," she exclaimed, "this is a moment of life and death!"- with supernatural force she broke from him, and, throwing her arms round jemima, cried, "save me!" the being, from whose grasp she had loosed herself, took up a stone as they opened the door, and with a kind of hellish sport threw it after them. they were out of his reach. when maria arrived in town, she drove to the hotel already fixed on. but she could not sit still--her child was ever before her; and all that had passed during her confinement, appeared to be a dream. she went to the house in the suburbs, where, as she now discovered, her babe had been sent. the moment she entered, her heart grew sick; but she wondered not that it had proved its grave. she made the necessary enquiries, and the church-yard was pointed out, in which it rested under a turf. a little frock which the nurse's child wore (maria had made it herself) caught her eye. the nurse was glad to sell it for half-a-guinea, and maria hastened away with the relic, and, reentering the hackney-coach which waited for her, gazed on it, till she reached her hotel. she then waited on the attorney who had made her uncle's will, and explained to him her situation. he readily advanced her some of the money which still remained in his hands, and promised to take the whole of the case into consideration. maria only wished to be permitted to remain in quiet--she found that several bills, apparently with her signature, had been presented to her agent, nor was she for a moment at a loss to guess by whom they had been forged; yet, equally averse to threaten or intreat, she requested her friend [the solicitor] to call on mr. venables. he was not to be found at home; but at length his agent, the attorney, offered a conditional promise to maria, to leave her in peace, as long as she behaved with propriety, if she would give up the notes. maria inconsiderately consented--darnford was arrived, and she wished to be only alive to love; she wished to forget the anguish she felt whenever she thought of her child. they took a ready furnished lodging together, for she was above disguise; jemima insisting on being considered as her house-keeper, and to receive the customary stipend. on no other terms would she remain with her friend. darnford was indefatigable in tracing the mysterious circumstances of his confinement. the cause was simply, that a relation, a very distant one, to whom he was heir, had died intestate, leaving a considerable fortune. on the news of darnford's arrival [in england, a person, intrusted with the management of the property, and who had the writings in his possession, determining, by one bold stroke, to strip darnford of the succession,] had planned his confinement; and [as soon as he had taken the measures he judged most conducive to his object, this ruffian, together with his instrument,] the keeper of the private mad-house, left the kingdom. darnford, who still pursued his enquiries, at last discovered that they had fixed their place of refuge at paris. maria and he determined therefore, with the faithful jemima, to visit that metropolis, and accordingly were preparing for the journey, when they were informed that mr. venables had commenced an action against darnford for seduction and adultery. the indignation maria felt cannot be explained; she repented of the forbearance she had exercised in giving up the notes. darnford could not put off his journey, without risking the loss of his property: maria therefore furnished him with money for his expedition; and determined to remain in london till the termination of this affair. she visited some ladies with whom she had formerly been intimate, but was refused admittance; and at the opera, or ranelagh, they could not recollect her. among these ladies there were some, not her most intimate acquaintance, who were generally supposed to avail themselves of the cloke of marriage, to conceal a mode of conduct, that would for ever have damned their fame, had they been innocent, seduced girls. these particularly stood aloof.--had she remained with her husband, practicing insincerity, and neglecting her child to manage an intrigue, she would still have been visited and respected. if, instead of openly living with her lover, she could have condescended to call into play a thousand arts, which, degrading her own mind, might have allowed the people who were not deceived, to pretend to be so, she would have been caressed and treated like an honourable woman. "and brutus* is an honourable man!" said mark-antony with equal sincerity. * the name in the manuscript is by mistake written caesar. editor. [godwin's note] with darnford she did not taste uninterrupted felicity; there was a volatility in his manner which often distressed her; but love gladdened the scene; besides, he was the most tender, sympathizing creature in the world. a fondness for the sex often gives an appearance of humanity to the behaviour of men, who have small pretensions to the reality; and they seem to love others, when they are only pursuing their own gratification. darnford appeared ever willing to avail himself of her taste and acquirements, while she endeavoured to profit by his decision of character, and to eradicate some of the romantic notions, which had taken root in her mind, while in adversity she had brooded over visions of unattainable bliss. the real affections of life, when they are allowed to burst forth, are buds pregnant with joy and all the sweet emotions of the soul; yet they branch out with wild ease, unlike the artificial forms of felicity, sketched by an imagination painful alive. the substantial happiness, which enlarges and civilizes the mind, may be compared to the pleasure experienced in roving through nature at large, inhaling the sweet gale natural to the clime; while the reveries of a feverish imagination continually sport themselves in gardens full of aromatic shrubs, which cloy while they delight, and weaken the sense of pleasure they gratify. the heaven of fancy, below or beyond the stars, in this life, or in those ever-smiling regions surrounded by the unmarked ocean of futurity, have an insipid uniformity which palls. poets have imagined scenes of bliss; but, sencing out sorrow, all the extatic emotions of the soul, and even its grandeur, seem to be equally excluded. we dose over the unruffled lake, and long to scale the rocks which fence the happy valley of contentment, though serpents hiss in the pathless desert, and danger lurks in the unexplored wiles. maria found herself more indulgent as she was happier, and discovered virtues, in characters she had before disregarded, while chasing the phantoms of elegance and excellence, which sported in the meteors that exhale in the marshes of misfortune. the heart is often shut by romance against social pleasure; and, fostering a sickly sensibility, grows callous to the soft touches of humanity. to part with darnford was indeed cruel.--it was to feel most painfully alone; but she rejoiced to think, that she should spare him the care and perplexity of the suit, and meet him again, all his own. marriage, as at present constituted, she considered as leading to immorality--yet, as the odium of society impedes usefulness, she wished to avow her affection to darnford, by becoming his wife according to established rules; not to be confounded with women who act from very different motives, though her conduct would be just the same without the ceremony as with it, and her expectations from him not less firm. the being summoned to defend herself from a charge which she was determined to plead guilty to, was still galling, as it roused bitter reflections on the situation of women in society. chapter 17 such was her state of mind when the dogs of law were let loose on her. maria took the task of conducting darnford's defence upon herself. she instructed his counsel to plead guilty to the charge of adultery; but to deny that of seduction. the counsel for the plaintiff opened the cause, by observing, "that his client had ever been an indulgent husband, and had borne with several defects of temper, while he had nothing criminal to lay to the charge of his wife. but that she left his house without assigning any cause. he could not assert that she was then acquainted with the defendant; yet, when he was once endeavouring to bring her back to her home, this man put the peace-officers to flight, and took her he knew not whither. after the birth of her child, her conduct was so strange, and a melancholy malady having afflicted one of the family, which delicacy forbade the dwelling on, it was necessary to confine her. by some means the defendant enabled her to make her escape, and they had lived together, in despite of all sense of order and decorum. the adultery was allowed, it was not necessary to bring any witnesses to prove it; but the seduction, though highly probable from the circumstances which he had the honour to state, could not be so clearly proved.--it was of the most atrocious kind, as decency was set at defiance, and respect for reputation, which shows internal compunction, utterly disregarded." a strong sense of injustice had silenced every motion, which a mixture of true and false delicacy might otherwise have excited in maria's bosom. she only felt in earnest to insist on the privilege of her nature. the sarcasms of society, and the condemnations of a mistaken world, were nothing to her, compared with acting contrary to those feelings which were the foundation of her principles. [she therefore eagerly put herself forward, instead of desiring to be absent, on this memorable occasion.] convinced that the subterfuges of the law were disgraceful, she wrote a paper, which she expressly desired might be read in court: "married when scarcely able to distinguish the nature of the engagement, i yet submitted to the rigid laws which enslave women, and obeyed the man whom i could no longer love. whether the duties of the state are reciprocal, i mean not to discuss; but i can prove repeated infidelities which i overlooked or pardoned. witnesses are not wanting to establish these facts. i at present maintain the child of a maid servant, sworn to him, and born after our marriage. i am ready to allow, that education and circumstances lead men to think and act with less delicacy, than the preservation of order in society demands from women; but surely i may without assumption declare, that, though i could excuse the birth, i could not the desertion of this unfortunate babe:--and, while i despised the man, it was not easy to venerate the husband. with proper restrictions however, i revere the institution which fraternizes the world. i exclaim against the laws which throw the whole weight of the yoke on the weaker shoulders, and force women, when they claim protectorship as mothers, to sign a contract, which renders them dependent on the caprice of the tyrant, whom choice or necessity has appointed to reign over them. various are the cases, in which a woman ought to separate herself from her husband; and mine, i may be allowed emphatically to insist, comes under the description of the most aggravated. "i will not enlarge on those provocations which only the individual can estimate; but will bring forward such charges only, the truth of which is an insult upon humanity. in order to promote certain destructive speculations, mr. venables prevailed on me to borrow certain sums of a wealthy relation; and, when i refused further compliance, he thought of bartering my person; and not only allowed opportunities to, but urged, a friend from whom he borrowed money, to seduce me. on the discovery of this act of atrocity, i determined to leave him, and in the most decided manner, for ever. i consider all obligations as made void by his conduct; and hold, that schisms which proceed from want of principles, can never be healed. "he received a fortune with me to the amount of five thousand pounds. on the death of my uncle, convinced that i could provide for my child, i destroyed the settlement of that fortune. i required none of my property to be returned to me, nor shall enumerate the sums extorted from me during six years that we lived together. "after leaving, what the law considers as my home, i was hunted like a criminal from place to place, though i contracted no debts, and demanded no maintenance--yet, as the laws sanction such proceeding, and make women the property of their husbands, i forbear to animadvert. after the birth of my daughter, and the death of my uncle, who left a very considerable property to myself and child, i was exposed to new persecution; and, because i had, before arriving at what is termed years of discretion, pledged my faith, i was treated by the world, as bound for ever to a man whose vices were notorious. yet what are the vices generally known, to the various miseries that a woman may be subject to, which, though deeply felt, eating into the soul, elude description, and may be glossed over! a false morality is even established, which makes all the virtue of women consist in chastity, submission, and the forgiveness of injuries. "i pardon my oppressor--bitterly as i lament the loss of my child, torn from me in the most violent manner. but nature revolts, and my soul sickens at the bare supposition, that it could ever be a duty to pretend affection, when a separation is necessary to prevent my feeling hourly aversion. "to force me to give my fortune, i was imprisoned--yes; in a private mad-house.--there, in the heart of misery, i met the man charged with seducing me. we became attached--i deemed, and ever shall deem, myself free. the death of my babe dissolved the only tie which subsisted between me and my, what is termed, lawful husband. "to this person, thus encountered, i voluntarily gave myself, never considering myself as any more bound to transgress the laws of moral purity, because the will of my husband might be pleaded in my excuse, than to transgress those laws to which [the policy of artificial society has] annexed [positive] punishments.--while no command of a husband can prevent a woman from suffering for certain crimes, she must be allowed to consult her conscience, and regulate her conduct, in some degree, by her own sense of right. the respect i owe to myself, demanded my strict adherence to my determination of never viewing mr. venables in the light of a husband, nor could it forbid me from encouraging another. if i am unfortunately united to an unprincipled man, am i for ever to be shut out from fulfilling the duties of a wife and mother?--i wish my country to approve of my conduct; but, if laws exist, made by the strong to oppress the weak, i appeal to my own sense of justice, and declare that i will not live with the individual, who has violated every moral obligation which binds man to man. "i protest equally against any charge being brought to criminate the man, whom i consider as my husband. i was six-and-twenty when i left mr. venables' roof; if ever i am to be supposed to arrive at an age to direct my own actions, i must by that time have arrived at it.--i acted with deliberation.--mr. darnford found me a forlorn and oppressed woman, and promised the protection women in the present state of society want.--but the man who now claims me--was he deprived of my society by this conduct? the question is an insult to common sense, considering where mr. darnford met me.--mr. venables' door was indeed open to me--nay, threats and intreaties were used to induce me to return; but why? was affection or honour the motive?--i cannot, it is true, dive into the recesses of the human heart--yet i presume to assert, [borne out as i am by a variety of circumstances,] that he was merely influenced by the most rapacious avarice. "i claim then a divorce, and the liberty of enjoying, free from molestation, the fortune left to me by a relation, who was well aware of the character of the man with whom i had to contend.--i appeal to the justice and humanity of the jury--a body of men, whose private judgment must be allowed to modify laws, that must be unjust, because definite rules can never apply to indefinite circumstances--and i deprecate punishment upon the man of my choice, freeing him, as i solemnly do, from the charge of seduction.] "i did not put myself into a situation to justify a charge of adultery, till i had, from conviction, shaken off the fetters which bound me to mr. venables.--while i lived with him, i defy the voice of calumny to sully what is termed the fair fame of woman.-neglected by my husband, i never encouraged a lover; and preserved with scrupulous care, what is termed my honour, at the expence of my peace, till he, who should have been its guardian, laid traps to ensnare me. from that moment i believed myself, in the sight of heaven, free--and no power on earth shall force me to renounce my resolution." the judge, in summing up the evidence, alluded to "the fallacy of letting women plead their feelings, as an excuse for the violation of the marriage-vow. for his part, he had always determined to oppose all innovation, and the newfangled notions which incroached on the good old rules of conduct. we did not want french principles in public or private life--and, if women were allowed to plead their feelings, as an excuse or palliation of infidelity, it was opening a flood-gate for immorality. what virtuous woman thought of her feelings?--it was her duty to love and obey the man chosen by her parents and relations, who were qualified by their experience to judge better for her, than she could for herself. as to the charges brought against the husband, they were vague, supported by no witnesses, excepting that of imprisonment in a private madhouse. the proofs of an insanity in the family, might render that however a prudent measure; and indeed the conduct of the lady did not appear that of a person of sane mind. still such a mode of proceeding could not be justified, and might perhaps entitle the lady [in another court] to a sentence of separation from bed and board, during the joint lives of the parties; but he hoped that no englishman would legalize adultery, by enabling the adulteress to enrich her seducer. too many restrictions could not be thrown in the way of divorces, if we wished to maintain the sanctity of marriage; and, though they might bear a little hard on a few, very few individuals, it was evidently for the good of the whole." conclusion by the editor * * i.e., godwin [publisher's note]. very few hints exist respecting the plan of the remainder of the work. i find only two detached sentences, and some scattered heads for the continuation of the story. i transcribe the whole. i. "darnford's letters were affectionate; but circumstances occasioned delays, and the miscarriage of some letters rendered the reception of wished-for answers doubtful: his return was necessary to calm maria's mind." ii. "as darnford had informed her that his business was settled, his delaying to return seemed extraordinary; but love to excess, excludes fear or suspicion." the scattered heads for the continuation of the story, are as follow. * * to understand these minutes, it is necessary the reader should consider each of them as setting out from the same point in the story, viz. the point to which it is brought down in the preceding chapter. [godwin's note] i. "trial for adultery--maria defends herself--a separation from bed and board is the consequence--her fortune is thrown into chancery--darnford obtains a part of his property--maria goes into the country." ii. "a prosecution for adultery commenced--trial--darnford sets out for france--letters--once more pregnant--he returns--mysterious behaviour--visit--expectation--discovery--interview--consequence. iii. "sued by her husband--damages awarded to him--separation from bed and board--darnford goes abroad--maria into the country--provides for her father--is shunned--returns to london--expects to see her lover--the rack of expectation--finds herself again with child-delighted--a discovery--a visit--a miscarriage--conclusion." iv. "divorced by her husband--her lover unfaithful--pregnancy-miscarriage--suicide." [the following passage appears in some respects to deviate from the preceding hints. it is superscribed] "the end. "she swallowed the laudanum; her soul was calm--the tempest had subsided--and nothing remained but an eager longing to forget herself--to fly from the anguish she endured to escape from thought--from this hell of disappointment. "still her eyes closed not--one remembrance with frightful velocity followed another--all the incidents of her life were in arms, embodied to assail her, and prevent her sinking into the sleep of death.--her murdered child again appeared to her, mourning for the babe of which she was the tomb.--'and could it have a nobler?--surely it is better to die with me, than to enter on life without a mother's care!--i cannot live!--but could i have deserted my child the moment it was born?--thrown it on the troubled wave of life, without a hand to support it?'--she looked up: 'what have i not suffered!--may i find a father where i am going!--her head turned; a stupor ensued; a faintness--'have a little patience,' said maria, holding her swimming head (she thought of her mother), 'this cannot last long; and what is a little bodily pain to the pangs i have endured?' "a new vision swam before her. jemima seemed to enter-leading a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the bed. the voice of jemima sounding as at a distance, called her--she tried to listen, to speak, to look! "'behold your child!' exclaimed jemima. maria started off the bed, and fainted.--violent vomiting followed. "when she was restored to life, jemima addressed her with great solemnity: '---- led me to suspect, that your husband and brother had deceived you, and secreted the child. i would not torment you with doubtful hopes, and i left you (at a fatal moment) to search for the child!--i snatched her from misery--and (now she is alive again) would you leave her alone in the world, to endure what i have endured?' "maria gazed wildly at her, her whole frame was convulsed with emotion; when the child, whom jemima had been tutoring all the journey, uttered the word 'mamma!' she caught her to her bosom, and burst into a passion of tears--then, resting the child gently on the bed, as if afraid of killing it,--she put her hand to her eyes, to conceal as it were the agonizing struggle of her soul. she remained silent for five minutes, crossing her arms over her bosom, and reclining her head,--then exclaimed: 'the conflict is over!--i will live for my child!'" a few readers perhaps, in looking over these hints, will wonder how it could have been practicable, without tediousness, or remitting in any degree the interest of the story, to have filled, from these slight sketches, a number of pages, more considerable than those which have been already presented. but, in reality, these hints, simple as they are, are pregnant with passion and distress. it is the refuge of barren authors only, to crowd their fictions with so great a number of events, as to suffer no one of them to sink into the reader's mind. it is the province of true genius to develop events, to discover their capabilities, to ascertain the different passions and sentiments with which they are fraught, and to diversify them with incidents, that give reality to the picture, and take a hold upon the mind of a reader of taste, from which they can never be loosened. it was particularly the design of the author, in the present instance, to make her story subordinate to a great moral purpose, that "of exhibiting the misery and oppression, peculiar to women, that arise out of the partial laws and customs of society.--this view restrained her fancy."* it was necessary for her, to place in a striking point of view, evils that are too frequently overlooked, and to drag into light those details of oppression, of which the grosser and more insensible part of mankind make little account. * see author's preface. [godwin's note] the end. [end.] . project gutenberg etext of joe the hotel boy, by horatio alger jr. #5 in our series by horatio alger jr. copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. joe the hotel boy by horatio alger jr. may, 1996 [etext #529] project gutenberg etext of joe the hotel boy, by horatio alger jr. *****this file should be named jothb10.txt or jothb10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, jothb11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, jothb10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* scanned by charles keller with omnipage professional ocr software donated by caere corporation, 1-800-535-7226. contact mike lough <mikel@caere.com> joe the hotel boy or winning out by pluck by horatio alger, jr. joe the hotel boy. contents. i. out in a storm ii. a mysterious conversation iii. a home in ruins iv. the search for the blue box v. a new suit of clothes vi. an accident on the lake vii. blows and kind deeds viii. the timid mr. gussing ix. an unfortunate outing x. david ball from montana xi. a fruitless chase xii. the particulars of a swindle xiii. off for the city xiv. a scene on the train xv. what happened to josiah bean xvi. a matter of six hundred dollars xvii. joe's new position xviii. joe shows his muscle xix. one kind of a duel xx. attacked in the dark xxi. days at the hotel xxii. about some mining shares xxiii. the fire at the hotel xxiv. the blue box at last xxv. joe visits chicago xxvi. how a satchel disappeared xxvii. joe makes a discovery xxviii. from out of a tree xxix. the fate of two evildoers xxx. conclusion preface. a number of years ago the author of this story set out to depict life among the boys of a great city, and especially among those who had to make their own way in the world. among those already described are the ways of newsboys, match boys, peddlers, street musicians, and many others. in the present tale are related the adventures of a country lad who, after living for some time with a strange hermit, goes forth into the world and finds work, first in a summer hotel and then in a large hotel in the city. joe finds his road no easy one to travel, and he has to face not a few hardships, but in the end all turns out well. it may be added here that many of the happenings told of in this story, odd as they may seem, are taken from life. truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and life itself is full of romance from start to finish. if there is a moral to be drawn from this story, it is a twofold one, namely, that honesty is always the best policy, and that if one wishes to succeed in life he must stick at his work steadily and watch every opportunity for advancement. joe the hotel boy. chapter i. out in a storm. "what do you think of this storm, joe?" "i think it is going to be a heavy one, ned. i wish we were back home," replied joe bodley, as he looked at the heavy clouds which overhung lake tandy. "do you think we'll catch much rain before we get back?" and ned, who was the son of a rich man and well dressed, looked at the new suit of clothes that he wore. "i'm afraid we shall, ned. those black clouds back of mount sam mean something." "if this new suit gets soaked it will be ruined," grumbled ned, and gave a sigh. "i am sorry for the suit, ned; but i didn't think it was going to rain when we started." "oh, i am not blaming you, joe. it looked clear enough this morning. can't we get to some sort of shelter before the rain reaches us?" "we can try." "which is the nearest shelter?" joe bodley mused for a moment. "the nearest that i know of is over at yonder point, ned. it's an old hunting lodge that used to belong to the cameron family. it has been deserted for several years." "then let us row for that place, and be quick about it," said ned talmadge. "i am not going to get wet if i can help it." as he spoke he took up a pair of oars lying in the big rowboat he and joe bodley occupied. joe was already rowing and the rich boy joined in, and the craft was headed for the spot joe had pointed out. the lake was one located in the central part of the state of pennsylvania. it was perhaps a mile wide and more than that long, and surrounded by mountains and long ranges of hills. at the lower end of the lake was a small settlement of scant importance and at the upper end, where there was a stream of no mean size, was the town of riverside. at riverside were situated several summer hotels and boarding houses, and also the elegant mansion in which ned talmadge resided, with his parents and his four sisters. joe bodley was as poor as ned talmadge was rich, yet the two lads were quite friendly. joe knew a good deal about hunting and fishing, and also knew all about handling boats. they frequently went out together, and ned insisted upon paying the poorer boy for all extra services. joe's home was located on the side of the mountain which was just now wrapped in such dark and ominous looking clouds. he lived with hiram bodley, an old man who was a hermit. the home consisted of a cabin of two rooms, scantily furnished. hiram bodley had been a hunter and guide, but of late years rheumatism had kept him from doing work and joe was largely the support of the pair,--taking out pleasure parties for pay whenever he could, and fishing and hunting in the between times, and using or selling what was gained thereby. there was a good deal of a mystery surrounding joe's parentage. it was claimed that he was a nephew of hiram bodley, and that, after the death of his mother and sisters, his father had drifted out to california and then to australia. what the real truth concerning him was we shall learn later. joe was a boy of twelve, but constant life in the open air had made him tall and strong and he looked to be several years older. he had dark eyes and hair, and was much tanned by the sun. the rowboat had been out a good distance on the lake and a minute before the shore was gained the large drops of rain began to fall. "we are going to get wet after all!" cried ned, chagrined. "pull for all you are worth and we'll soon be under the trees," answered joe. they bent to the oars, and a dozen more strokes sent the rowboat under a clump of pines growing close to the edge of the lake. just as the boat struck the bank and ned leaped out there came a great downpour which made the surface of lake tandy fairly sizzle. "run to the lodge, ned; i'll look after the boat!" shouted joe. "but you'll get wet." "never mind; run, i tell you!" thus admonished, ned ran for the old hunting lodge, which was situated about two hundred feet away. joe remained behind long enough to secure the rowboat and the oars and then he followed his friend. just as one porch of the old lodge was reached there came a flash of lightning, followed by a clap of thunder that made ned jump. then followed more thunder and lightning, and the rain came down steadily. "ugh! i must say i don't like this at all," remarked ned, as he crouched in a corner of the shelter. "i hope the lightning doesn't strike this place." "we can be thankful that we were not caught out in the middle of the lake, ned." "i agree on that, joe,--but it doesn't help matters much. oh, dear me!" and ned shrank down, as another blinding flash of lightning lit up the scene. it was not a comfortable situation and joe did not like it any more than did his friend. but the hermit's boy was accustomed to being out in the elements, and therefore was not so impressed by what was taking place. "the rain will fill the boat," said ned, presently. "never mind, we can easily bail her out or turn her over." "when do you think this storm will stop?" "in an hour or two, most likely. such storms never last very long. what time is it, ned?" "half-past two," answered ned, after consulting the handsome watch he carried. "then, if it clears in two hours, we'll have plenty of time to get home before dark." "i don't care to stay here two hours," grumbled ned. "it's not a very inviting place." "it's better than being out under the trees," answered joe, cheerfully. the hermit's boy was always ready to look on the brighter side of things. "oh, of course." "and we have a fine string of fish, don't forget that, ned. we were lucky to get so many before the storm came up." "do you want the fish, or are you going to let me take them?" "i'd like to have one fish. you may take the others." "not unless you let me pay for them, joe." "oh, you needn't mind about paying me." "but i insist," came from ned. "i won't touch them otherwise." "all right, you can pay me for what i caught." "no, i want to pay for all of them. your time is worth something, and i know you have to support your--the old hermit now." "all right, ned, have your own way. yes, i admit, i need all the money i get." "is the old hermit very sick?" "not so sick, but his rheumatism keeps him from going out hunting or fishing, so all that work falls to me." "it's a good deal on your shoulders, joe." "i make the best of it, for there is nothing else to do." "by the way, joe, you once spoke to me about--well, about yourself," went on ned, after some hesitation. "did you ever learn anything more? you need not tell me if you don't care to." at these words joe's face clouded for an instant. "no, i haven't learned a thing more, ned." "then you don't really know if you are the hermit's nephew or not?" "oh, i think i am, but i don't know whatever became of my father." "does the hermit think he is alive?" "he doesn't know, and he hasn't any means of finding out." "well, if i were you, i'd find out, some way or other." "i'm going to find out--some day," replied joe. "but, to tell the truth, i don't know how to go at it. uncle hiram doesn't like to talk about it. he thinks my father did wrong to go away. i imagine they had a quarrel over it." "has he ever heard from your father since?" "not a word." "did he write?" "he didn't know where to write to." "humph! it is certainly a mystery, joe." "you are right, ned; and as i said before, i am going to solve it some time, even if it takes years of work to do it," replied the hermit's boy. chapter ii. a mysterious conversation. the old hunting lodge where the two boys had sought shelter was a rambling affair, consisting of a square building built of logs, and half a dozen wings, running to the rear and to one side. there were also two piazzas, and a shed, where wood had been kept for winter use. "in another year or two this old lodge will fall down," remarked ned, as he gazed around him. "it must have been a nice place in its day," returned joe. "what a pity to let it run down in this fashion." "the rain is coming around on this side now, joe; let us shift to the other." the hermit's boy was willing, and watching their chance, between the downpours, they ran around to another portion of the old lodge. "it certainly is a little better here," observed joe, as he dashed the water from his cap. a minute later the rumbling of the thunder ceased for the time being, and they heard a murmur of voices coming from one of the rooms of the lodge. "why, somebody must be here!" ejaculated ned. "who can it be?" "two men, by their voices," answered the hermit's boy. "wait till i take a look at them?" "why not go in?" questioned the rich youth, carelessly. "they may not be persons that we would care to meet, ned. you know there are some undesirable characters about the lake." "that's true." not far off was a narrow window, the panes of glass of which had long since been broken out. moving toward this, joe peered into the apartment beyond. close to an old fireplace, in which a few sticks of half-green timber were burning, sat two men. both were well dressed, and joe rightfully surmised that they were from the city. each wore a hunting outfit and had a gun, but neither had any game. "we came on a wild-goose chase," grumbled one, as he stirred the fire. "got nothing but a soaking for our pains." "never mind, malone," returned the other, who was evidently the better educated of the two. "as we had to make ourselves scarce in the city this was as good a place to come to as any." "don't you think they'll look for us here?" "why should they? we were sharp enough not to leave any trail behind--at least, i was." "reckon i was just as sharp, caven." "you had to be--otherwise you would have been nabbed." gaff caven chuckled to himself. "we outwitted them nicely, i must say. we deserve credit." "i've spent more than half of what i got out of the deal," went on pat malone, for such was the full name of one of the speakers. "i've spent more than that. but never mind, my boy, fortune will favor us again in the near future." a crash of thunder drowned out the conversation following, and joe hurried back to where he had left ned. "well, have you found out who they are?" demanded the rich youth, impatiently. "no, ned, but i am sure of one thing." "what is that?" "they are two bad men." "what makes you think that?" "they said something about having to get out of the city, and one spoke about being nabbed. evidently they went away to avoid arrest." at this announcement ned talmadge whistled softly to himself. "phew! what shall we do about it?" he asked, with a look of concern on his usually passive face. joe shrugged his shoulders. "i don't know what to do." "let us listen to what they have to say. maybe we'll strike some clew to what they have been doing." "would that be fair--to play the eaves-dropper?" "certainly--if they are evildoers. anybody who has done wrong ought to be locked up for it," went on ned boldly. with caution the two boys made their way to the narrow window, and ned looked in as joe had done. the backs of the two men were still towards the opening, so the lads were not discovered. "what is this new game?" they heard the man called malone ask, after a peal of thunder had rolled away among the mountains. "it's the old game of a sick miner with some valuable stocks to sell," answered gaff caven. "have you got the stocks?" "to be sure--one thousand shares of the blue bell mine, of montana, said to be worth exactly fifty thousand dollars." "phew! you're flying high, gaff!" laughed pat malone. "and why not, so long as i sell the stocks?" "what did they cost you?" "well, they didn't cost me fifty thousand dollars," and gaff caven closed one eye suggestively. "you bet they didn't! more than likely they didn't cost you fifty dollars." "what, such elegantly engraved stocks as those?" "pooh! i can buy a bushel-basket full of worthless stocks for a dollar," came from pat malone. "but that isn't here nor there. i go into the deal if you give me my fair share of the earnings." "i'll give you one-third, pat, and that's a fair share, i think." "why not make it half?" "because i'll do the most of the work. it's no easy matter to find a victim." and gaff caven laughed broadly. he had a goodappearing face, but his eyes were small and not to be trusted. "all right, i'll go in for a third then. but how soon is the excitement to begin?" "oh, in a week or so. i've got the advertisements in the papers already." "not in new york?" "no, it's philadelphia this time. perhaps i'll land one of our quaker friends." "don't be so sure. the quakers may be slow but they generally know what they are doing." more thunder interrupted the conversation at this point, and when it was resumed the two men talked in such low tones that only an occasional word could be caught by the two boys. "they surely must be rascals," remarked ned, in a whisper. "i'm half of a mind to have them locked up." "that's easier said than done," answered joe. "besides, we haven't any positive proofs against them." the wind was now rising, and it soon blew so furiously that the two boys were forced to seek the shelter of the woodshed, since they did not deem it wise to enter the lodge so long as the two men were inside. they waited in the shed for fully half an hour, when, as suddenly as it had begun, the storm let up and the sun began to peep forth from between the scattering clouds. "now we can go home if we wish," said joe. "but for my part, i'd like to stay and see what those men do, and where they go to." "yes, let us stay by all means," answered the rich youth. they waited a few minutes longer and then ned suggested that they look into the window of the lodge once more. the hermit's boy was willing, and they approached the larger building with caution. much to their astonishment the two strangers had disappeared. "hullo! what do you make of that?" cried ned, in amazement. "perhaps they are in one of the other rooms," suggested joe. at the risk of being caught, they entered the lodge and looked into one room after another. every apartment was vacant, and they now saw that the fire in the fireplace had been stamped out. "they must have left while we were in the woodshed," said ned. "maybe they are out on the lake," answered the hermit's boy, and he ran down to the water's edge, followed by his companion. but though they looked in every direction, not a craft of any kind was to be seen. "joe, they didn't take to the water, consequently they must have left by one of the mountain paths." "that is true, and if they did they'll have no nice time in getting through. all the bushes are sopping wet, and the mud is very slippery in places." they walked to the rear of the lodge and soon found the footprints of the two strangers. they led through the bushes and were lost at a small brook that ran into the lake. "there is no use of our trying to follow this any further," said joe. "you'll get your clothing covered with water and mud." "i don't intend to follow," answered ned. "just the same, i should like to know more about those fellows." "i wish i had seen their faces." "yes, it's a pity we didn't get a better look at them. but i'd know their voices." by the time they gave up the hunt the sun was shining brightly. both walked to where the boat had been left, and joe turned the craft over so that the water might run out. then he mopped off the seats as best he could. ned wanted to go directly home, and he and joe rowed the craft in the direction of riverside. as they passed along the lake shore the hermit's boy noted that several trees had been struck by lightning. "i'm glad the lightning didn't strike the lodge while we were there," said he. "it was certainly a severe storm while it lasted, joe. by the way, shall i say anything about those two men?" "perhaps it won't do any harm to tell your father, ned." "very well, i'll do it." soon riverside was reached, and having paid for the fish and the outing, ned talmadge walked in the direction of his residence. joe shoved off from the tiny dock and struck out for his home. he did not dream of the calamity that awaited him there. chapter iii. a home in ruins. as joe rowed toward his home on the mountain side, a good mile from riverside, he could not help but think of the two mysterious men and of what they had said. "they were certainly rascals," he mused. "and from their talk they must have come from new york and are now going to try some game in philadelphia." the hermit's boy was tired out by the day's outing, yet he pulled a fairly quick stroke and it was not long before he reached the dock at which he and hiram bodley were in the habit of leaving their boat. he cleaned the craft out, hid the oars in the usual place, and then, with his fishing lines in one hand and a good sized fish in the other, started up the trail leading to the place that he called home. "what a place to come to, alongside of the one ned lives in," he said to himself. "i suppose the talmadges think this is a regular hovel. i wish we could afford something better,--or at least live in town. it's lonesome here with nobody but old uncle hiram around." as joe neared the cabin something seemed to come over him and, for some reason he could not understand, he felt very much depressed in spirits. he quickened his pace, until a turn of the trail brought the homestead into view. a cry of alarm broke from his lips and with good reason. the little shelter had stood close to a large hemlock tree. the lightning had struck the tree, causing it to topple ever. in falling, it had landed fairly and squarely upon the cabin, smashing it completely. one corner of the cabin was in ashes, but the heavy rain had probably extinguished the conflagration. "uncle hiram!" cried the boy, as soon as he recovered from his amazement. "uncle hiram, where are you?" there was no answer to this call and for the moment joe's heart seemed to stop beating. was the old hermit under that pile of ruins? if so it was more than likely he was dead. dropping his fish and his lines, the youth sprang to the front of the cabin. the door had fallen to the ground and before him was a mass of wreckage with a small hollow near the bottom. he dropped on his knees and peered inside. "uncle hiram!" he called again. there was no answer, and he listened with bated breath. then he fancied he heard a groan, coming from the rear of what was left of the cabin. he ran around to that point and pulled aside some boards and a broken window sash. "uncle hiram, are you here?" "joe!" came in a low voice, full of pain. the man tried to say more but could not. hauling aside some more boards, joe now beheld the hermit, lying flat on his back, with a heavy beam resting on his chest. he was also suffering from a cut on the forehead and from a broken ankle. "this is too bad, uncle hiram!" he said, in a trembling voice. "i'll get you out just as soon as i can." "be--be careful, joe--i--i--my ribs must be broken," gasped the hermit. "i'll be careful," answered the boy, and began to pull aside one board after another. then he tugged away at the beam but could not budge it. "raise it up joe--it--is--crushing the life ou--out of me," said the hermit faintly. "i'll pry it up," answered the boy, and ran off to get a block of wood. then he procured a stout pole and with this raised the heavy beam several inches. "can you crawl out, uncle hiram?" there was no answer, and joe saw that the man had fainted from exhaustion. fixing the pole so it could not slip, he caught hold of the hermit and dragged him to a place of safety. joe had never had to care for a hurt person before and he scarcely knew how to proceed. he laid the hermit on the grass and washed his face with water. soon hiram bodley opened his eyes once more. "my chest!" he groaned. "all of my ribs must be broken! and my ankle is broken, too!" and he groaned again. "i had better get a doctor, uncle hiram." "a doctor can't help me." "perhaps he can." "i haven't any faith in doctors. a doctor operated on my mother and killed her." "but doctor gardner is a nice man. he will do all he can for you, i am sure," urged joe. "well, dr. gardner is a good fellow i admit. if you--can--can get him--i'll--i'll --" the sufferer tried to go on but could not. "i think i can get him. but i hate to leave you alone." and joe stared around helplessly. he wished he had ned with him. "never mind--give me a drink--then go," answered hiram bodley. he had often taken doctor gardner out to hunt with him and liked the physician not a little. inside of five minutes joe was on the way to the doctor's residence, which was on the outskirts of riverside. he had left the hermit as comfortable as possible, on a mattress and covered with a cloth to keep off the night air,-for it was now growing late and the sun had set behind the mountains. tired though he was the boy pulled with might and main, and so reached the dock of the physician's home in a short space of time. running up the walk of the neatly-kept garden, he mounted the piazza and rang the bell several times. "what's the matter?" asked doctor gardner, who came himself to answer the summons. "our cabin is in ruins, because of the storm, and mr. bodley is badly hurt," answered joe, and related some of the particulars. "this is certainly too bad, my boy," said the physician. "i'll come at once and do what i can for him." he ran for a case of instruments and also for some medicines, and then followed joe back to the boat. "you act as if you were tired," said the doctor, after he had watched joe at the oars for several minutes. "i am tired, sir--i've been rowing a good deal to-day. but i guess i can make it." "let me row," said the physician, and took the oars. he was a fine oarsman, and the trip was made in half the time it would have taken joe to cover the distance. at the dock there was a lantern, used by joe and the hermit when they went fishing at night. this was lit, and the two hurried up the trail to the wreck of the cabin. hiram bodley was resting where joe had left him. he was breathing with difficulty and did not at first recognize the doctor. "take it off!" he murmured. "take it off! it is--is crushing th--the life out of--of me!" "mr. bodley--hiram, don't you know me?" asked doctor gardner, kindly. "oh! so it's you? i guess you can't do much, doctor, can you? i--i'm done for!" and a spasm of pain crossed the sufferer's face. "while there is life there is hope," answered the physician, noncommittally. he recognized at once that hiram bodley's condition was critical. "he'll get over it, won't he?" questioned joe, quickly. the doctor did not answer, but turned to do what he could for the hurt man. he felt of his chest and listened to his breathing, and then administered some medicine. "his ankle is hurt, too," said joe. "never mind the ankle just now, joe," was the soft answer. there was something in the tone that alarmed the boy and he caught the physician by the arm. "doctor, tell me the truth!" he cried. "is he is he going to die?" "i am afraid so, my lad. his ribs are crushed and one of them has stuck into his right lung." at these words the tears sprang into the boy's eyes and it was all he could do to keep from crying outright. even though the old hermit had been rough in his ways, joe thought a good deal of the man. "cannot you do something, doctor," he pleaded. "not here. we might do something in a hospital, but he would not survive the journey. he is growing weaker every moment. be brave, my lad. it is a terrible trial, i know, but you must remember that all things are for the best." joe knelt beside the sufferer and took hold of his hand. hiram bodley looked at him and then at the doctor. "i--i can't live--i know it," he said hoarsely. "joe, stay by me till i die, won't you?" "yes!" faltered the boy. "oh, this is awful!" "i'm sorry to leave you so soon, joe--i--i thought i'd be--be able to do something for you some day." "you have done something for me, uncle hiram." "all i've got goes to you, joe. doctor, do you hear that?" "i do." "it--it ain't much, but it's something. the blue box--i put it in the blue box--" here the sufferer began to cough. "the blue box?" came from joe questioningly. "yes, joe, all in the blue box--the papers and the money--and the blue box is--is--" again the sufferer began to cough. "i--i want water!" he gasped. the water was brought and he took a gulp. then he tried to speak again, but the effort was in vain. the doctor and joe raised him up. "uncle hiram! speak to me!" cried the boy. but hiram bodley was past speaking. he had passed to the great beyond. chapter iv. the search for the blue box. three days after his tragic death hiram bodley was buried. although he was fairly well known in the lake region only a handful of people came to his funeral. joe was the chief mourner, and it can honestly be said that he was much downcast when he followed the hermit to his last resting place. after the funeral several asked joe what he intended to do. he could not answer the question. "have you found that blue box?" questioned doctor gardner. "no, sir, i have not thought of it." "probably it contains money and papers of value, joe." "i am going to look for it to-day," said the boy. "i--i couldn't look for it while-while--" "i understand. well, i trust you locate the box and that it contains all you hope for," added the physician. as luck would have it, ned talmadge's family had just gone away on a trip to the west, so mr. talmadge could offer the boy no assistance. but ned was on hand and did what he could. "you don't know what you'll do next, do you, joe?" asked ned, as he and joe returned to the wreck of the cabin. "no." "well, if you haven't any money i'll do what i can for you." "thank you, ned; you are very kind." "it must be hard to be thrown out on the world in this fashion," went on the rich boy, sympathetically. "it is hard. after all, i thought a good deal of uncle hiram. he was strange in his ways, but he had a good heart." "wasn't he shot in the head once by accident in the woods?" "yes." "maybe that made him queer at times." "perhaps so." "i've got six dollars and a half of my spending money saved up. you may have that if you wish," continued ned, generously. "i'd rather not take it, ned." "why not?" "if i can, i want to be independent. besides, i think there is money around somewhere," and joe mentioned the missing blue box. "you must hunt for that blue box by all means!" cried the rich boy. "i'll help you." after the death of hiram bodley, joe and two of the lake guides had managed to repair one room of the broken-down cabin, and from this the funeral had taken place. the room contained a bed, a table, two benches and a few dishes and cooking utensils the floor was bare and the window was broken out. it was truly a most uninviting home. "of course you are not going to stay here, now you are alone?" said ned, after a look around. "i don't know where else to go, ned." "why not move into town!" "perhaps i will. but i want to find that blue box before i decide on anything." without delay the two boys set to work among the ruins, looking into every hole and corner they could think of and locate. they pulled away heavy boards and logs, and joe even got a spade and dug up the ground at certain points. "it doesn't seem to be here," said ned, after an hour had passed. "it must be here," cried joe. "perhaps it was buried under a tree." "that may be true. anyway, i am certain it is somewhere around this cabin." after that the hunt was continued for another hour, and they visited several spots in that locality where joe thought the blue box might have been placed. but it was all to no purpose, the box failed to come to light. at last the two boys sat down on a bench in front of the cabin. both were tired out, ned especially so. joe was much downcast and his friend did what he could to cheer him up. "the box is bound to come to light some day," said ned. "that is, unless some of those men carried it off." "what men, ned?" "the fellows who helped to mend the cabin just before the funeral." "oh, i don't think they would steal the box. bart andrews and jack thompson are as honest as the day is long." "well, it's mighty queer you can't find some trace of the blue box." the boys talked the matter over for some time, and then ned announced that he must go home. "you can go with me if you wish," he said. "it will be better than staying here all alone." but joe declined the offer. "i'll stay here, and begin the hunt again the first thing in the morning," he said. "well, if you want anything, come and see me, joe; won't you?" "i will, ned." ned had come over in his own boat and now joe walked down to the lake with him. his friend gone, the hermit's boy returned to the delapidated cabin. he was hungry but he had no heart to eat. he munched some bread and cheese which a neighbor had brought over. he felt utterly alone in the great worlds and when he thought of this a strange feeling came over him. it was a bitter night for the poor boy, but when morning came his mind was made up. he would make his own way in the world, asking aid from no one, not even ned. "and if i can't find the blue box i'll get along without it," he told himself. as soon as it was light he procured breakfast and then started on another hunt for the missing box. the entire day was spent in the search, but without results. towards night, joe went down to the lake. here he caught a couple of small fish, which he fried for his supper. all told, joe had exactly a dollar and a half of his own and nine dollars which he had found in the hermit's pocketbook. "ten dollars and a half," he mused, as he counted the amount over. "not very much to go out into the world with. if i want to do anything in town i'll have to buy some clothes." from this it will be surmised that joe was thinking of giving up his roving life around the lake and mountains, and this was true. hunting and fishing appealed to him only in an uncertain way, and he longed to go forth into the busy world and make something of himself. he had two suits of clothing, but both were very much worn, and so were his shoes and his cap. hiram bodley had left some old clothing, but they were too big for the boy. "i guess i'll get jasok the peddler to come up here and make me an offer for what is here," he told himself. jasok was a hebrew peddler who drove around through the lake region, selling tinware and doing all sorts of trading. it was time for him to visit that neighborhood and joe went to the nearest house on the main road and asked about the man. "he will most likely be along to-morrow, joe," said the neighbor. "if he comes, mr. smith, will you send him over to my place? tell him i want an offer for the things." "going to sell out, joe?" "yes, sir." "what are you going to do after that?" "try for some job in town." "that's a good idea. hunting and fishing isn't what it used to be. what do you want for the things?" "all i can get," and a brief smile hovered on joe's face. "i wouldn't sell out too cheap. jasok is a great fellow to drive a bargain." "if he won't give me a fair price, i'll load the things on the rowboat and sell them in town." "that's an idea. do you want to sell hiram's double-barrel shot gun?" "yes, sir." "i'll give you ten dollars for it." "i was going to ask twelve, mr. smith. it's a pretty good gun." "so it is, although it is a little bit old-fashioned. well, bring it over and i'll allow you twelve dollars," answered the neighbor, who was willing to assist joe all he could. joe went back for the gun without delay, and received his money. then he returned to the cabin and brought out all the goods he wished to sell. by the middle of the next day the hebrew peddler appeared. at first he declared that all of the things joe had to sell were not worth two dollars. "very well, if you think that, we won't talk about it," said joe, briefly. "da vos all vorn out," said jasok. "de clothes vos rags, and de furniture an' dishes was kracked." "if you don't want them, i'll take them to town and sell them. i am sure moskowsky will buy them." now it happened that moskowsky was a rival peddler who also boasted of the ownership of a second-hand store. to think that the goods might go to this man nettled jasok exceedingly. "vell, i likes you, cho," he said. "i vos your friend, an' i gif you dree dollars for dem dings." "you can have them for ten dollars," answered the boy. a long talk followed, and in the end the hebrew peddler agreed to pay seven dollars and a half, providing joe would help to carry the goods to the main road, where the wagon had been left. the money was paid over, and by nightfall all of the goods were on the wagon, and joe was left at the cabin with nothing but the suit on his back. but he had thirty dollars in his pocket, which he counted over with great satisfaction. "i ought to be able to get something to do before that is gone," he told himself. "if i don't, it will be my own fault." chapter v. a new suit of clothes. on the following day it rained early in the morning, so joe had to wait until noon before he left the old cabin. he took with him all that remained of his possessions, including the precious pocketbook with the thirty dollars. when he thought of the blue box he sighed. "perhaps it will never come to light," he told himself. "well, if it does not i'll have to make the best of it." two o'clock found him on the streets of riverside, which was a town of fair size. during the summer months many visitors were in the place and the hotels and boarding houses were crowded. there was one very fine clothing store in riverside, but joe did not deem it best, with his limited capital, to go there for a suit. instead he sought out a modest establishment on one of the side streets. just ahead of him was an irish couple who had evidently not been in this country many years. the man entered the store awkwardly, as if he did not feel at home. not so his wife, who walked a little in advance of her husband. "have you got any men's coats?" said she to the clerk who came forward to wait on the pair. "if i can get one cheap for me husband here i'll buy one." "oh, yes, madam," was the ready reply. "we have the best stock in town, by all odds. you can't fail to be suited." so saying, he led the way to a counter piled high with the articles called for, and hauled them over. "there," said he, pulling out one of a decidedly ugly pattern. "there is one of first quality cloth. it was made for a gentleman of this town, but did not exactly fit him, and so we'll sell it cheap." "and what is the price?" "three dollars." "three dollars!" exclaimed the irish lady, lifting up her hands in extreme astonishment. "three dollars! you'll be afther thinkin' we're made of money, sure! i'll give you a dollar and a half." "no, ma'am, we don't trade in that way. we don't very often take half what we ask for an article." "mike," said she, "pull off yer coat an' thry it on. three dollars, and it looks as if it was all cotton." "not a thread of cotton in that," was the clerk's reply. "not wan, but a good many, i'm thinkin'," retorted the irish lady, as she helped her husband draw on the coat. it fitted tolerably well and mike seemed mightily pleased with his transformation. "come," said the wife. "what will ye take?" "as it's you, i'll take off twenty-five cents," replied the clerk. "and sell it to me for two dollars?" inquired his customer, who had good cause for her inaccurate arithmetic. "for two dollars and seventy-five cents." "two dollars and seventy-five cents! it's taking the bread out of the childer's mouths you'd have us, paying such a price as that! i'll give you two twenty-five, an' i'll be coming again some time." "we couldn't take so low as two twentyfive, ma'am. you may have it for two dollars and a half." after another ineffectual attempt to get it for two dollars and a quarter, the irish woman finally offered two dollars and forty-five cents, and this offer was accepted. she pulled out a paper of change and counted out two dollars and forty cents, when she declared that she had not another cent. but the clerk understood her game and coolly proceeded to put the coat back on the pile. then the woman very opportunely found another five-cent piece stored away in the corner of her pocket. "it's robbin' me, ye are," said she as she paid it over. "oh, no, ma'am, you are getting a great bargain," answered the clerk. joe had witnessed the bargaining with a good deal of quiet amusement. as soon as the irish couple had gone the clerk came toward the boy. "well, young man, what can i do for you?" he asked, pleasantly. "i want a suit of clothing. not an expensive suit, but one guaranteed to be all wool." "a light or a dark suit?" "a dark gray." "i can fit you out in a fine suit of this order," and the clerk pointed to several lying in a heap nearby. "i don't want that sort. i want something on the order of those in the window marked nine dollars and a half." "oh, all right." several suits were brought forth, and one was found that fitted joe exceedingly well. "you guarantee this to be all wool?" asked the boy. "every thread of it." "then i'll take it" "very well; the price is twelve dollars." "isn't it like that in the window?" "on that order, but a trifle better." "it seems to me to be about the same suit. i'll give you nine dollars and a half." "i can't take it. i'll give it to you for eleven and a half. that is our best figure." "then i'll go elsewhere for a suit," answered joe, and started to leave the clothing establishment. "hold on, don't be so fast!" cried the clerk, catching him by the arm. "i'll make it eleven and a quarter." "not a cent more than the advertised price, nine and a half," replied joe, firmly. "oh, but this isn't the same suit." "it's just like it, to my eye. but you needn't sell it for that if you don't want it. mason & harris are offering some bargains, i believe." "you can get a better bargain here than anywhere in this town, or in philadelphia either," answered the clerk, who did not intend to let his prospective customer get away. "we'll make it an even eleven dollars and say no more about it." instead of answering joe started once more for the door. "hold on!" "i haven't got time." "make it ten and a half. at that price we are losing exactly half a dollar on that suit." "not a cent over what i offered." "we can't sell suits at such a loss. it would ruin us." "then don't do it. i think mason & harris have some good suits very cheap. and they are quite up-to-date, too," added joe. "our suits are the best in town, young man. take this one for an even ten dollar bill." "i will if you'll throw in one of those half dollar caps," answered our hero. "well, have your own way, but it's a sacrifice," grumbled the clerk. he wanted to wrap up the suit, but, afraid he might substitute something else, joe insisted upon donning the suit then and there and likewise the new cap. then he had the old articles of wearing apparel done up into a bundle and paid over the ten dollars. "you're pretty smart after a bargain," said the clerk. "i've got to be--when i strike such fellows as you," was the reply. "you got a better bargain than that irish woman did." "i did--if the suit is all wool. but if it's cotton, i'm stuck," returned our hero, and with his bundle under his arm he walked from the store. he had left his rowboat in charge of an old boatman named ike fairfield, and now he walked down to the boathouse. "just in time, joe," said the old boatman. "want to earn a dollar?" "to be sure i do," answered our hero. "a party of ladies want a long row around the lake. you can have the job." "all right, ike." "i charged them a dollar and a quarter. i'll keep the quarter for my commission." "that is fair." "one of the ladies said she wanted somebody that looked pretty decent. i think you'll fill the bill with that new suit." "i didn't expect to wear the suit out on the lake, but in this case i'll keep it on," answered joe. "i find it pays to keep well dressed, when you take out the summer boarders," answered the old boatman. "and it pays to keep the boats in good shape, too." "where am i to get the party?" "over to the dock of mallison's hotel. one of the ladies is mallison's niece." "why don't they take a hotel boat?" "all engaged, two days ago. it's a busy season. but i've got to be going. you had better go over to the dock at once. they want to go out at three o'clock sharp." "very well, i'll be on hand," answered our hero. chapter vi. an accident on the lake. joe certainly presented a neat appearance when he rowed over to the hotel dock. before going he purchased a new collar and a dark blue tie, and these, with his new suit and new cap, set him off very well. the boat had been cleaned in the morning, and when the ladies appeared they inspected the craft with satisfaction. "what a nice clean boat," said mabel mallison, the niece of the proprietor of the hotel. "and a nice clean boatman, too," whispered one of her friends. "i couldn't bear that man we had day before yesterday, with his dirty hands and the tobacco juice around his mouth." the ladies to go out were four in number, and two sat in the bow and two in the stern. it made quite a heavy load, but as they were not out for speed our hero did not mind it. "we wish to go up to fern rock," said mabel mallison. "they tell me there are some beautiful ferns to be gathered there." "there are," answered joe. "i saw them last week." "and i wish to get some nice birch bark if i can," said another of the ladies. "i can get you plenty of it." joe rowed along in his best style, and while doing so the ladies of the party asked him numerous questions concerning the lake and vicinity. when fern rock was reached, all went ashore, and our hero pointed out the ferns he had seen, and dug up such as the others wished to take along. an hour was spent over the ferns, and in getting some birch bark, and then they started on the return for the hotel. "i'd like to row," cried one of the ladies, a rather plump personage. "oh, jennie, i don't think you can!" cried another. "of course i can," answered jennie, and sprang up from her seat to take the oars. "be careful!" came in a warning from joe, as the boat began to rock. "oh, i'm not afraid!" said the plump young lady, and leaned forward to catch hold of one oar. just then her foot slipped and she fell on the gunwale, causing the boat to tip more than ever. as she did this, mabel mallison, who was leaning over the side, gazing down into the clear waters of the lake, gave a shriek. "oh, save me!" came from her, and then she went over, with a loud splash. joe was startled, and the ladies left in the boat set up a wail of terror. "she will be drowned!" "oh, save her! save her, somebody!" "it is my fault!" shrieked the plump young lady. "i tipped the boat over!" joe said nothing, but looked over the side of the boat. he saw the body of mabel mallison not far away. but it was at the lake bottom and did not offer to rise. "it's queer she doesn't come up," he thought. then he gave a second look and saw that the dress of the unfortunate one was caught in some sharp rocks. without hesitation he dived overboard, straight for the bottom. it was no easy matter to unfasten the garment, which was caught in a crack between two heavy stones. but at the second tug it came free, and a moment later both our hero and mabel mallison came to the surface. "oh!" cried two of the ladies in the row-boat. "is she drowned?" "i trust not," answered joe. "sit still, please, or the boat will surely go over." as best he could joe hoisted mabel into the craft and then clambered in himself. as he did so the unfortunate girl gave a gasp and opened her eyes. "oh!" she murmured. "you are safe now, mabel!" said one of her companions. "and to think it was my fault!" murmured the plump young lady. "i shall never forgive myself as long as i live!" mabel mallison had swallowed some water, but otherwise she was unhurt. but her pretty blue dress was about ruined, and joe's new suit did not look near as well as it had when he had donned it. "let us row for the hotel," said one of the young ladies. "are you all right?" she asked of joe. "yes, ma'am, barring the wetting." "it was brave of you to go down after mabel." "indeed it was!" cried that young lady. "if it hadn't been for you i might have been drowned." and she gave a deep shudder. "i saw she was caught and that's why i went over after her," answered our hero simply. "it wasn't so much to do." all dripping as he was, joe caught up the oars of the boat and sent the craft in the direction of the hotel at a good speed. that she might not take cold, a shawl was thrown over mabel's wet shoulders. the arrival of the party at the hotel caused a mild sensation. mabel hurried to her room to put on dry clothing, and joe was directed to go around to the kitchen. but when the proprietor of the place had heard what joe had done for his niece he sent the lad to a private apartment and provided him with dry clothing belonging to another who was of our hero's size. "that was a fine thing to do, young man," said the hotel proprietor, when joe appeared, dressed in the dry garments, and his own clothing had been sent to the laundry to be dried and pressed. "i'm glad i was there to do it, mr. mallison." "let me see, aren't you hiram bodley's boy?" "i lived with mr. bodley, yes." "that is what i mean. it was a terrible accident that killed him. are you still living at the tumbled-down cabin?" "no, sir. i've just sold off the things, and i am going to settle in town." "where?" "i haven't decided that yet. i was going to hunt up a place when ike fairfield gave me the job of rowing out the young ladies." "i see. you own the boat, eh?" "yes, sir." "you ought to be able to make a fair living, taking out summer boarders." "i suppose so, but that won't give me anything to do this winter." "well, perhaps something else will turn up by that time." andrew mallison drew out a fat wallet. "i want to reward you for saving mabel." he drew out two ten-dollar bills and held them towards our hero. but joe shook his head and drew back. "thank you very much, mr. mallison, but i don't want any reward." "but you have earned it fairly, my lad." "i won't touch it. if you want to help me you can throw some odd rowing jobs from the hotel in my way." "then you won't really touch the money?" "no, sir." "how would you like to work for the hotel regularly?" "i'd like it first-rate if it paid." "i can guarantee you regular work so long as the summer season lasts." "and what would it pay?" "at least a dollar a day, and your board." "then i'll accept and with thanks for your kindness." "when can you come?" "i'm here already." "that means that you can stay from now on?" "yes, sir." "i don't suppose you want the job of hauling somebody from the lake every day," said andrew mallison, with a smile. "not unless i was dressed for it, mr. mallison. still, it has been the means of getting me a good position." "i shall feel safe in sending out parties with you for i know you will do your best to keep them from harm." "i'll certainly do that, i can promise you." "to-morrow you can take out two old ladies who wish to be rowed around the whole lake and shown every point of interest. of course you know all the points." "yes, sir, i know every foot of ground around the lake, and i know the mountains, too." "then there will be no difficulty in keeping you busy. i am glad to take you on. i am short one man--or will be by to-night. i am going to let sam cullum go, for he drinks too much." "well, you won't have any trouble with me on that score." "don't you drink?" "not a drop, sir." "i am glad to hear it, and it is to your credit," concluded the hotel proprietor. chapter vii. blows and kind deeds. several days passed and joe went out half a dozen times on the lake with parties from the hotel. all whom he served were pleased with him and treated him so nicely that, for the time being, his past troubles were forgotten. at the beginning of the week ned talmadge came to see him. "i am going away to join the folks out west," said ned. "i hope you will have a good time," answered our hero. "oh, i'm sure to have that, joe. by the way, you are nicely settled here, it would seem." "yes, and i am thankful for it." "mr. mallison is a fine man to work for, so i have been told. you had better stick to him." "i shall--as long as the work holds out." "maybe he will give you something else to do, after the boating season is over." a few more words passed, and then ned took his departure. it was to be a long time before the two friends would meet again. so far joe had had no trouble with anybody around the hotel, but that evening, when he was cleaning out his boat, a man approached him and caught him rudely by the shoulder. "so you're the feller that's took my job from me, eh?" snarled the newcomer. our hero looked up and recognized sam cullum, the boatman who had been discharged for drinking. even now the boatman was more than half under the influence of intoxicants. "i haven't taken anybody's job from him," answered joe. "i say yer did!" growled cullum. "it ain't fair, nuther!" to this our hero did not reply, but went on cleaning out his boat. "fer two pins i'd lick yer!" went on the tipsy boatman, lurching forward. "see here, sam cullum, i want you to keep your distance," said joe, sharply. "mr. mallison discharged you for drinking. i had nothing to do with it." "i don't drink; leastwise, i don't drink no more'n i need." "yes, you do. it would be the best thing in the world for you if you'd leave liquor alone entirely." "humph! don't you preach to me, you little imp!" "then leave me alone." "you stole the job from me an' i'm going to lick you for it." "if you touch me you'll get hurt," said joe, his eyes flashing. "leave me alone and i'll leave you alone." "bah!" snarled the other, and struck out awkwardly. he wanted to hit joe on the nose, but the boy dodged with ease, and sam cullum fell sprawling over the rowboat. "hi! what did ye trip me up for?" spluttered the half-intoxicated man, as he rose slowly. "don't you do that ag'in, do yer hear?" "then don't try to strike me again." there was a moment of silence and then sam cullum gathered himself for another blow. by this time a small crowd of boys and hotel helpers began to collect. "sam cullum's going to fight joe bodley!" "sam'll most kill joe!" with all his strength the man rushed at joe. but the boy dodged again and put out his foot and the man went headlong. "now will you let me alone?" asked our hero, coolly. "no, i won't!" roared sam cullum. "somebody give me a club! i'll show him!" arising once more, he caught up an oar and launched a heavy blow at joe's head. for a third time our hero dodged, but the oar struck him on the arm, and the blow hurt not a little. joe was now angry and believed it was time to defend himself. he edged towards the end of the dock and sam cullum followed. then, of a sudden the boy ducked under the man's arm, turned, and gave him a quick shove that sent him with a splash into the lake. "hurrah! score one for joe!" "that will cool sam cullum's temper." "yes, and perhaps it will sober him a little," came from a man standing by, who had witnessed the quarrel from the beginning. "he brought this on himself; the boy had nothing to do with it." sam cullum floundered around in the water like a whale cast up in the shallows. the lake at that point was not over four feet deep, but he did not know enough to stand upright. "save me!" he bellowed. "save me! i don't want to drown!" "swallow a little water, it will do you good!" said a bystander, with a laugh. "walk out and you'll be all right," added another. at last sam cullum found his feet and walked around the side of the dock to the shore. a crowd followed him and kept him from going at joe again. "i'll fix him another time," growled the intoxicated one, and shuffled off, with some small boys jeering him. "you treated him as he deserved," said one of the other boatmen to joe. "i suppose he'll try to square up another time," answered our hero. "well, i wouldn't take water for him, joe." "i don't intend to. if he attacks me i'll do the best i can to defend myself." "he has made a nuisance of himself for a long time. it's a wonder to me that mr. mallison put up with it so long." "he was short of help, that's why. it isn't so easy to get new help in the height of the summer season." "that is true." joe expected to have more trouble with sam cullum the next day but it did not come. then it leaked out that cullum had gotten into a row with his wife and some of her relatives that night and was under arrest. when the boatman was brought up for trial the judge sentenced him to six months' imprisonment. "and it serves him right," said the man who brought the news to joe. "it must be hard on his wife." "well, it is, joe." "have they any children?" "four--a boy of seven and three little girls." "are they well off?" "what, with such a father? no, they are very poor. she used to go out washing, but now she has to stay at home to take care of the baby. sam was a brute to strike her. i don't wonder the relatives took a hand." "perhaps the relatives can help her." "they can't do much, for they are all as poor as she is, and one of them is just getting over an operation at the hospital." "where do the cullums live?" "down on railroad alley, not far from the water tower. it's a mite of a cottage." joe said no more, but what he had been told him set him to thinking, and that evening, after his work was over, he took a walk through the town and in the direction of railroad alley. not far from the water station he found the cullum homestead, a mite of a cottage, as the man had said, with a tumbled-down chimney and several broken-out windows. he looked in at one of the windows and by the light of a smoking kerosene lamp beheld a woman in a rocking-chair, rocking a baby to sleep. three other youngsters were standing around, knowing not what to do. on a table were some dishes, all bare of food. "mamma, i want more bread," one of the little ones was saying. "you can have more in the morning, johnny," answered the mother. "no, i want it now," whimpered the youngster. "i'm hungry." "i'm hungry, too," put in another little one. "i can't give you any more to-night, for i haven't it," said the mother, with a deep sigh. "now, be still, or you'll wake the baby." "why don't dad come home?" asked the boy of seven. "he can't come home, bobby--he--had to go away," faltered the mother. "now all be still, and you shall have more bread in the morning." the children began to cry, and unable to stand the sight any longer joe withdrew. up the alley was a grocery store and he almost ran to this. "give me some bread," he said, "and some cake, and a pound of cheese, and some smoked beef, and a pound of good tea, and some sugar. be quick, please." the goods were weighed out and wrapped up, and with his arms full he ran back to the cottage and kicked on the door. "who is there?" asked mrs. cullum, in alarm. "here are some groceries for you!" cried joe. "all paid for!" "oh, look!" screamed the boy of seven. "bread, and cheese!" "and sugar!" came from one of the little girls. "and tea! mamma, just what you like!" said another. "where did this come from?" asked mrs. cullum. "a friend," answered joe. "it's all paid for." "i am very thankful." "now we can have some bread, can't we?" queried the boy. "yes, and a bit of smoked beef and cheese, too," said the mother, and placing the sleeping baby on a bed, she proceeded to deal out the good things to her children. chapter viii. the timid mr. gussing. it was not until the children had been satisfied and put to bed that joe had a chance to talk to mrs. cullum. she was greatly astonished when she learned who he was. "i didn't expect this kindness," said she. "i understand that my husband treated you shamefully." "it was the liquor made him do it ma'am," answered our hero. "i think he'd be all right if he'd leave drink alone." "yes, i am sure of it!" she gave a long sigh. "he was very kind and true when we were first married. but then he got to using liquor and--and--this is the result." "perhaps he will turn over a new leaf when he comes out of jail." "i hope he does. if he doesn't, i don't know what i am going to do." "have you anything to do?" "i used to wash for two families in town but they have regular hired help now." "perhaps you can get more work, if you advertise. if you'll allow me, i'll put an advertisement in the riverside news for you." "thank you. i don't see what makes you so kind." "well, i have been down in the world myself, mrs. cullum, so i know how to feel for others." "did you say you used to live with bodley, the hermit?" "yes." "my folks used to know him. he was rather a strange man after he got shot by accident." "yes, but he was kind." "are you his son?" "no. he said i was his nephew. but i never found out much about that." "oh, yes, i remember something about that. he had a brother who lost his wife and several children. are you that man's son?" "i believe i am." "and you have never heard from your father?" "not a word." "that is hard on you." "i am going to look for my father some day." "if so, i hope you will find him." "so do i." joe arose. "i must be going." he paused. "mrs. cullum, will you let me help you?" he added, earnestly. "why, you have helped me a good deal already. not one in a thousand would do what you have done--after the way my husband treated you." "i thought that you might be short of money." "i must confess i am." "i am not rich but, if you can use it, i can let you have five dollars." "i'll accept it as a loan. i don't want you to give me the money," answered the poor woman. she thought of the things she absolutely needed, now that her husband was gone. the money was handed over, and a few minutes later joe took his departure. somehow his heart felt very light because of his generosity. he had certainly played the part of a friend in need. but he did not stop there. early in the morning he sought out andrew mallison and told the hotel proprietor of mrs. cullum's condition. "i was thinking that you might be able to give her work in the hotel laundry," he continued. the hotel man called up the housekeeper and from her learned that another woman could be used to iron. "you can let her come and we'll give her a trial," said he. it did not take joe long to communicate with the poor woman, and she was overjoyed to see work in sight, without waiting for an advertisement in the newspaper. "i'll go at once," said she. "i'll get a neighbor's girl to mind the children." and she was as good as her word. as it happened, she proved to be a good laundress, and mr. mallison gave her steady employment until her husband came from jail. then, much to his wife's satisfaction, sam cullum turned over a new leaf and became quite sober and industrious. joe was now becoming well acquainted around the hotel and took an interest in many of the boarders. among the number was a young man named felix gussing. he was a nice individual in his way, but had certain peculiarities. one was that he was exceedingly afraid of horses and at every possible opportunity he gave them as wide a berth as possible. "don't like them at all, don't you know," he said, to joe, during a boat ride. "can't understand them at all." "oh, i think a good horse is very nice," answered our hero. "but they are so--so balkish--so full of kicking," insisted felix gussing. "well, i admit some of them are," answered joe. there were two young ladies stopping at the hotel and the young man had become quite well acquainted with both of them. one he thought was very beautiful and was half tempted to propose to her. on the day after the boat ride with joe, felix gussing took the ladies to have some ice cream, and during the conversation all spoke of a certain landmark of interest located about three miles from riverside. "i have seen it and it is--aw--very interesting," drawled felix. "then we must see it, belle," said one of the young ladies, to her companion. "oh, i'm not going to walk that far," answered belle, with a bewitching look at the young man. "you might drive over," suggested felix, without stopping to think twice. "oh, yes, i love driving!" cried one of the girls. "and so do i!" answered the other. "i will find out what can be done about a conveyance," answered felix. being a good deal of a dude, and dressing very fastidiously, he did not much relish visiting the livery stable attached to the hotel. but, early on the following morning, he walked down to the place, and ordered a horse and carriage, to be ready at ten o'clock. now it must be known that felix did not intend to drive the carriage. he thought the young ladies would drive for themselves, since both had said that they loved driving. unfortunate man! he knew not the snare he had laid for himself! punctual to the minute the carriage drove up to the door. felix was on hand, standing on the steps, with politeness in his air, though with trembling in his heart because so near the horses. he assisted the ladies in. then he handed the reins to miss belle. "do you wish me to hold the horses while you get in?" she asked sweetly. "till i get in!" ejaculated felix, taken aback. "certainly! you don't think we are going to drive ourselves, do you? of course you are going with us." poor felix! he was "in for it" now, decidedly. it required a good deal of moral courage, a quality in which he was deficient, to resist a lady's demand. his knees trembled with fear as he scrambled in. joe, who was standing not far away, looked on with a quiet smile on his face. he realized what was passing in the dude's mind. "he'd give ten dollars to get out of it," our hero told himself. the boy who had brought the turnout around looked at felix gussing earnestly. "take care of that horse, mister," said he, warningly. "he's young and a little bit wild." "wild?" gasped the dude. "i--i don't want to drive a wild horse." "oh, he'll be all right if you keep an eye on him," went on the stable boy. "young and a little bit wild!" thought felix to himself. "oh, dear, what in the world shall i do? i never drove a horse before. if i get back with less than a broken neck i'll be lucky! i'd give a thousand to be out of this pickle." "hadn't we better start, mr. gussing?" asked one of the young ladies, after a pause. "oh, yes--certainly!" he stammered. "but --er--you can drive if you wish." "thank you, but i would prefer that you drive." "won't you drive?" he asked of the other young lady. "oh, no, not to-day. but i'll use the whip if you say so," she answered. "not for the world!" cried the unhappy felix. "he is a bit wild already and there is no telling what he'd do if he felt the whip." at last the carriage drove off. joe gazed after it thoughtfully. "unless i miss my guess, there is going to be trouble before that drive is over," he thought. and there was trouble, as we shall soon learn. chapter ix. an unfortunate outing. fortunately for the unhappy felix the horse walked away from the hotel in an orderly fashion, and soon they gained the highway leading to the resort the party wished to visit. had the dude left the horse alone all might have gone well. but he deemed it necessary to pull on first one line and then the other, which kept the carriage in a meandering course. "i don't think, mr. gussing, that you can be much used to driving," said one of the young ladies, presently. "that's a fact," answered the dude. "why don't you keep to the right of the road?" "well,--er--the fact is, this horse is a very difficult one to drive. i don't believe i ever drove one which was more so." as this was the first horse mr. gussing had ever driven, this assertion was true in every particular. "oh, i can't travel so slow!" cried one of the young ladies, and seized the whip, and before felix could stop her, used it on the steed. the effect was magical. the horse started up like a racer, and tore through the street as if trying to win a race for a thousand dollars. the dude clung to the reins in the wildest terror. to his frenzied imagination it seemed that his final hour was approaching. "whoa!" he screamed, jerking on the lines. "stop, you crazy beast! stop, before we all get killed!" but the horse only went the faster. and now, to increase his alarm, he saw a buggy approaching from the opposite direction. it contained one of the town lawyers, silas simms by name. "we shall run into that buggy!" screamed the fair belle. "oh, mr. gussing, be careful!" a moment later the two turnouts came together with a crash, and one wheel was torn from the buggy and the town lawyer pitched out headlong to the ground. then on went the carriage with the dude and the two young ladies, at a faster pace than ever. "let me jump out!" screamed one of the ladies. "no, not yet! you'll be killed, grace," answered belle. "then stop the carriage!" alas, the poor felix was already doing his best to stop the horse. but his jerkings on the reins only added to the horse's wildness. not far along the road was a good sized brook, spanned by a neat wooden bridge. as the carriage neared the bridge, felix pulled on the wrong rein once again. the horse turned from the road proper, and descended full speed into the stream itself. "oh, now we'll be drowned!" shrieked grace. but she was mistaken. the stream was easily fordable, so there was no danger on that score. but the rate at which they were impelled through the water naturally created no inconsiderable splashing, so that on emerging on the other side the dude, as well as the young ladies, were well drenched. to the great joy of felix the contact with the water cooled the ardor of the steed, so that he resumed the journey at a far more moderate rate of speed. "wasn't it just glorious!" cried belle, who, after the danger seemed past, grew enthusiastic. "what a noble animal!" "glorious?" echoed the dude. "i don't care much about such glory. as for the noble animal--i--er--i wish he was hung! that's the best he deserves." the dude spoke bitterly, for the spell of terror was still on him. had he consulted his own wishes he would have leaped from the carriage and left the ladies to their fate. but the thought of the bewitching belle made him keep his seat, and he resolved that if he must die he would do it like a martyr. the horse went on, and at last they neared the end of the short journey. but here a new obstacle presented itself. there was a big fence and a gate, and the gate was tight shut. as they could not enter the grounds without opening the gate, the dude got down out of the carriage. he did not hand the reins to either of the ladies but laid them over the dashboard. the instant the gate was swung open the steed darted forward, and brought up with a jerk against a post that happened to be in the way. here he reared and plunged, causing the young ladies to scream "murder" at the top of their voices. "oh, my! oh, dear me!" bawled felix, and took refuge behind a neighboring hedge. "the horse has gone crazy! he'll bite somebody next!" the cries reached some men who were not far off, and they came running to the assistance of the party. one caught the steed by the bridle and soon had him quieted down. "i'll never drive that horse again!" said the dude. "not for a million dollars!" "how are we to get home?" queried belle. "i'll drive you," said one of the men. "i know this horse. he used to belong to bill perkins. i know how to handle him." "then do so," answered felix, "and i'll pay you two dollars." the man was as good as his word, and to felix's astonishment he made the horse go back to the hotel without the slightest mishap. then the horse was put in the stable, the dude paid the bill, and the party separated. "i shall never drive again, never!" declared the dude to himself, and it may be added that he kept his word. "i hope you had a nice drive," said joe, when he met felix that evening. "it was beastly, don't you know," was the answer. "that horse was a terribly vicious creature." "he looked to be gentle enough when he started off." "i think he is a crazy horse." "by the way, mr. gussing, mr. silas simms was looking for you." "you mean that lawyer who drives the spotted white horse?" "yes." felix gave a groan. "he says he wants damages." "it wasn't my fault that the horse ran into him." "well, he is very angry about it, anyway," said our hero. early the next morning felix gussing received a communication from the lawyer. it was in the following terms:-"mr. gussing. sir:--in consequence of your reckless driving yesterday, i was thrown from my carriage, receiving a contusion on my shoulder and other injuries. my carriage was also nearly ruined. if you choose to make a race-course of the public highways you must abide the consequences. the damage i have sustained i cannot estimate at less than one hundred and fifty dollars. indemnify me for that and i will go no further. otherwise, i shall be compelled to resort to legal action. "silas simms, atty. felix read the letter several times and his knees shook visibly. he did not want to pay over such an amount, yet it struck him with terror when he thought he might possibly be arrested for fast driving. he went to see mr. silas simms. "i am very sorry," he began. "have you come to pay?" demanded the attorney, curtly. "well--er--the fact is--don't you think you are asking rather a stiff price, mr. simms?" "not at all! not at all, sir! i ought to have placed the damages at three hundred!" "i'll give you fifty dollars and call it square." "no, sir, a hundred and fifty! not a penny less, not one penny! look at my nose, sir-all scratched! and my ear! not a penny less than one hundred and fifty dollars!" and the lawyer pounded on his desk with his fist. "all right then, i'll pay you, but you must give me a receipt in full," answered the dude. he had to wait until the bank opened, that he might cash a check, and then he paid over the amount demanded. the lawyer drew up a legal paper discharging him from all further obligations. felix read it with care and stowed it in his pocket. "and now let me give you some advice, mr. gussing," said the lawyer, after the transaction was concluded. "don't drive such a wild horse again." "depend upon it, i never shall," answered the dude. "it costs too much!" he added, with a faint smile. "are you well acquainted with horses?" "no." "then you had better leave them alone altogether." "i have already made up my mind to do so." chapter x. david ball from montana. finding that joe could be depended upon, mr. mallison put him in charge of all of the boats at the hotel, so that our hero had almost as much work ashore as on the lake. during the week following, the events just narrated, many visitors left the hotel and others came in. among those to go were felix gussing and the two young ladies. the dude bid our hero a cordial good-bye, for he now knew joe quite well. "good-bye, mr. gussing," said joe. "i hope we meet again." "perhaps we shall, although i generally go to a different place each summer." "well, i don't expect to stay in riverside all my life." "i see. if you make a move, i hope you do well," returned felix. on the day after the dude left, a man came to the hotel who, somehow, looked familiar to our hero. he came dressed in a light overcoat and a slouch hat, and carried a valise and a suit case. "i've seen him before, but where?" joe asked himself not once but several times. the man registered as david ball, and put down his address as butte, montana. he said he was a mining expert, but added that he was sick and the doctors had ordered him to come east for a rest. "'ve heard of riverside being a nice place," said he, "so i came on right after striking pittsburg." "we shall do all we can to make your stay a pleasant one," said the hotel proprietor, politely. "all i want is a nice sunny room, where i can get fresh air and take it easy," said the man. he was willing to pay a good price, and so obtained one of the best rooms in the house, one overlooking the river and the lake. he ate one meal in the dining room, but after that he had his meals sent to his apartment. "is he sick?" asked joe, after watching the man one day. "he certainly doesn't seem to be well," answered andrew mallison. "it runs in my mind that i have seen him before, but i can't place him," went on our hero. "you must be mistaken, joe. i questioned him and he says this is his first trip to the east, although he has frequently visited st. louis and chicago." on the following day the man called for a physician and doctor gardner was sent for. "i've got pains here," said the man from the west, and pointed to his chest. "do you think i am getting consumption?" the riverside physician made a careful examination and then said the man had probably strained himself. "reckon i did," was the ready answer. "i was in the mine and a big rock came down on me. i had to hold it up for ten minutes before anybody came to my aid. i thought i was a dead one sure." "i will give you some medicine and a liniment," said the doctor. "perhaps you'll feel better after a good rest." and then he left. that afternoon joe had to go up into the hotel for something and passed the room of the new boarder. he saw the man standing by the window, gazing out on the water. "i'm dead certain i've seen him before," mused our hero. "it is queer i can't think where." doctor gardner wanted to be taken across the lake and joe himself did the job. as he was rowing he asked about the man who had signed the hotel register as david ball from montana." "is he very sick, doctor?" "no, i can't say that he is," was the physician's answer. "he looks to be as healthy as you or i." "it's queer he keeps to his room." "perhaps something happened out at his mine to unsettle his nerves. he told me of some sort of an accident." "is he a miner?" "he is a mine owner, so mr. mallison told me, but he never heard of the man before." the stranger received several letters the next day and then a telegram. shortly after that he took to his bed. "i am feeling worse," said he to the bell boy who answered his ring. "i want you to send for that doctor again. ask him to call about noon." "yes, sir," answered the boy, and doctor gardner was sent for without delay. he came and made another examination and left some medicine. "i'll take the medicine regularly," said the stranger, who was in bed. but when the doctor had left he quietly poured half of the contents of the bottle into the wash bowl, where it speedily drained from sight! "don't catch me drinking such rot," he muttered to himself. "i'd rather have some good liquor any day," and he took a long pull from a black bottle he had in his valise. about noon a carriage drove up to the hotel and two men alighted. one led the way into the hotel and asked to see the register. "i'd like to see mr. david ball," said he to the clerk. "mr. ball is sick." "so i have heard and that is why i wish to see him." "i'll send up your card." "i don't happen to have a card. tell him mr. anderson is here, from philadelphia, with a friend of his." the message was sent to the sick man's room, and word came down that he would see the visitors in a few minutes. "he says he is pretty sick and he can't talk business very long," said the bell boy. "we won't bother him very much," answered the man who had given his name as anderson. joe happened to be close by during this conversation and he looked the man called anderson over with care. "i've seen that man, too!" he declared to himself. "but where? i declare he is as much of a mystery as the sick one!" our hero's curiosity was now aroused to the highest pitch, and when the two men walked up to david ball's room he followed to the very doorway. "come in," came from the room, and a deep groan followed. on the bed lay the man from montana, wrapped in several blankets and with a look of anguish on his features. "feeling pretty bad, eh?" said anderson, as he stalked in. "i am downright sorry for you." "i'm afraid i am going to die," groaned the man in bed. "the doctor says i am in bad shape. he wants me to take a trip to europe, or somewhere else." "this is mr. maurice vane," went on anderson. "we won't trouble you any more than is necessary, mr. ball." "i am sorry to disturb you," said maurice vane. he was a kindly looking gentleman. "perhaps we had better defer this business until some other time." "oh, no, one time is as bad as another," came with another groan from the bed. "besides, i admit i need money badly. if it wasn't for that--". the man in bed began to cough. "say, shut the door," he went on, to the first man who had come in. the door was closed, and for the time being joe heard no more of the conversation. it must be admitted that our hero was perplexed, and with good reason. he felt certain that the man in bed was shamming, that he was hardly sick at all. if so, what was his game? "something is surely wrong somewhere," he reasoned. "i wish i could get to the bottom of it." the room next to the one occupied by david ball was empty and he slipped into this. the room contained a closet, and on the other side was another closet, opening into the room the men were in. the partition between was of boards, and as the other door stood wide open, joe, by placing his head to the boards, could hear fairly well. "you have the stock?" he heard maurice vane ask. "yes, in my valise. hand me the bag and i'll show you," answered the man in bed. "oh, how weak i feel!" he sighed. there was a silence and then the rustling of papers. "and what is your bottom price for these?" went on maurice vane. "thirty thousand dollars." "i told mr. vane you might possibly take twenty-five thousand," came from the man called anderson. "they ought to be worth face value--fifty thousand dollars," said the man in bed. a talk in a lower tone followed, and then more rustling of papers. "i will call to-morrow with the cash," said maurice vane, as he prepared to leave. "in the meantime, you promise to keep these shares for me?" "i'll keep them until noon. i've got another offer," said the man in bed. "we'll be back," put in the man called anderson. "so don't you sell to anybody else." then the two visitors left and went downstairs. five minutes later they were driving away in the direction of the railroad station. "this certainly beats anything i ever met before," said joe, to himself as he watched them go. "i'll wager all i am worth that i've met that anderson before, and that he is a bad man. i do wish i could get at the bottom of what is going on." in the evening he had occasion to go upstairs in the hotel once more. to his surprise he saw mr. david ball sitting in a rocking-chair, calmly smoking a cigar and reading a paper. "he isn't as sick as he was this morning," he mused. "in fact, i don't think he is sick at all." he wished to be on hand the following morning, when the strangers came back, but an errand took him up the lake. he had to stop at several places, and did not start on the return until four in the afternoon. on his way back joe went ashore close to where the old lodge was located, and something, he could not tell what, made him run over and take a look at the spot that had proved a shelter for ned and himself during the heavy storm. how many things had occurred since that fatal day! as our hero looked into one of the rooms he remembered the strange men he had seen there --the fellows who had talked about mining stocks. then, of a sudden, a revelation came to him, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. "i've got it! i've got it!" he cried. "mr. david ball is that fellow who called himself malone, and anderson is the man named caven! they are both imposters!" chapter xi. a fruitless chase. the more joe thought over the matter the more he became convinced that he was right. he remembered a good deal of the talk he had overheard during the storm, although such talk had, for the time being, been driven from his mind by the tragic death of old hiram bodley. "if they are working some game what can this maurice vane have to do with it?" he asked himself. he thought it best to get back to the hotel at once, and tell mr. mallison of his suspicions. but, as luck would have it, scarcely had he started to row his boat again when an oarlock broke, and so it took him the best part of an hour to make the trip. "where is mr. mallison?" he asked of the clerk of the hotel. "out in the stable, i believe," was the answer. without waiting, our hero ran down to the stable and found the hotel proprietor inspecting some hay that had just been unloaded. "i'd like to speak to you a moment, mr. mallison," he said. "it's important," and he motioned for the man to follow him. "what is it, joe?" "it's about those men who called to see that sick man, and about the sick man, too." "he has gone--all of them have gone." "what!" ejaculated our hero. "the sick man, too?" "exactly. but he didn't go with the others. while they were here he was in bed, but right after they left he arose, dressed himself, and drove away." "where did he go to?" "i don't know." "do you know what became of the other two men?" "i do not. but what's up? is there anything wrong?" questioned the hotel proprietor, with a look of concern on his face. "i am afraid there is," answered joe, and told his tale from beginning to end. "that's an odd sort of a yarn, joe. it's queer you didn't recognize the men before. "it is queer, sir, but i can't help that. it flashed over me just as i looked into the window of the old lodge." "you haven't made any mistake?" "no, sir." "humph!" andrew mallison mused for a moment. "i don't really see what i can do in the matter. we can't prove that those men are wrongdoers, can we?" "not unless they tried some game on this mr. maurice vane." "they may have sold him some worthless mining shares. that sort of a trick is rather old." "i think we ought to make a search for this david ball, or malone, or whatever his name is." "i'm willing to do that." after questioning half a dozen people they learned that the pretended sick man had driven off in the direction of a village called hopedale. "what made him go there, do you think?" questioned joe. "i don't know, excepting that he thought of getting a train on the other line." a horse and buggy were procured, and in this mr. mallison and our hero drove over to hopedale. they were still on the outskirts of the village when they heard a locomotive whistle. "there's the afternoon train now!" cried joe. "perhaps it's the one he wants to catch." the horse was touched up and the buggy drove up to the railroad platform at breakneck speed. but the train was gone and all they could see of it was the last car as it swung around one of the mountain bends. "too late, mr. mallison!" sang out the station master. "if i had known ye was comin' i might have held her up a bit." "i didn't want the train, jackson. who got on board?" "two ladies, a man and a boy--dick fadder." "did you know the man?" "no." "what did he have with him?" "a dress suit case." "was he dressed in a dark blue suit and wear a slouch hat?" asked joe. "yes, and had a light overcoat with him." "that was our man." "anything wrong with him?" asked the station master. "perhaps," answered the hotel proprietor. "anyway, we wanted to see him. did he buy a ticket?" "yes, to snagtown." "what can he want in snagtown?" asked joe. "oh, that might have been a blind, joe. he could easily go through to philadelphia or some other place, if he wanted to." at first they thought of telegraphing ahead to stop the man, but soon gave that plan up. they had no evidence, and did not wish to make trouble unless they knew exactly what they were doing. "i hope it turns out all right," observed andrew mallison, when they were driving back to riverside. "if there was a swindle it would give my hotel a black eye." "that's one reason why i wanted that man held," answered joe. the next day and that following passed quietly, and our hero began to think that he had made a mistake and misjudged the men. he was kept very busy and so almost forgot the incident. among the new boarders was a fussy old man named chaster, who was speedily nicknamed by the bell boys chestnuts. he was a particular individual, and made everybody as uncomfortable as he possibly could. one day wilberforce chaster--to use his full name,--asked joe to take him out on the lake for a day's fishing. our hero readily complied, and was in hot water from the time they went out until they returned. nothing suited the old man, and as he caught hardly any fish he was exceedingly put out when he came back to the hotel. "your boatman is of no account," he said to andrew mallison. "i have spent a miserable day," and he stamped off to his room in high anger. "it was not my fault, mr. mallison," said joe, with burning cheeks. "i did my level best by him." "that man has been making trouble for us ever since he come," answered the hotel proprietor. "i am going to ask him to go elsewhere when his week is up." the insults that joe had received that day from wilberforce chaster rankled in his mind, and he determined to square accounts with the boarder if he possibly could. towards evening he met a bell boy named harry ross who had also had trouble with chaster, and the two talked the matter over. "we ought to get square," said harry ross. "i wish i could souse him with a pitcher of ice water." "i've got a plan," said joe. stopping at the hotel was a traveling doctor, who came to riverside twice a year, for a stay of two weeks each time. he sold some patent medicines, and had in his room several skulls and also a skeleton strung on wires. "that doctor is away," said our hero. "i wonder if we can't smuggle the skulls and the skeleton into mr. chaster's room?" "just the cheese!" cried the bell boy, enthusiastically. "and let us rub the bones with some of those matches that glow in the dark!" the plan was talked over, and watching their chance the two transferred the skeleton and the skulls to the apartment occupied by wilberforce chaster. then they rubbed phosphorus on the bones, and hung them upon long strings, running over a doorway into the next room. that evening wilberforce chaster remained in the hotel parlor until ten o 'clock. then he marched off to his room in his usual ill humor. the gas was lit and he went to bed without delay. as soon as the light went out and they heard the man retire, joe and the bell boy began to groan in an ominous manner. as they did so, they worked the strings to which the skulls and the skeleton were attached, causing them to dance up and down in the center of the old man's room. hearing the groans, wilberforce chaster sat up in bed and listened. then he peered around in the darkness. "ha! what is that?" he gasped, as he caught sight of the skulls. "am i dreaming--or is that--oh!" he started and began to shake from head to foot, for directly in front of him was the skeleton, moving up and down in a jerky fashion and glowing with a dull fire. his hair seemed to stand on end. he dove under the coverings of the bed. "the room is haunted!" he moaned. "was ever such a thing seen before! this is wretched! whatever shall i do?" the groans continued, and presently he gave another look from under the bed clothes. the skeleton appeared to be coming nearer. he gave a loud yell of anguish. "go away! go away! oh, i am haunted by a ghost! this is awful! i cannot stand it!" he fairly tumbled out of bed and caught up his clothing in a heap. then, wrapped in some comfortables, he burst out of the room and ran down the hallway like a person possessed of the evil spirits. "come be quick, or we'll get caught!" whispered joe, and ran into the room, followed by the bell boy. in a trice they pulled loose the strings that held the skulls and the skeleton, and restored the things to the doctor's room from which they had been taken. then they went below by a back stairs. the whole hotel was in an alarm, and soon mr. mallison came upon the scene. "what is the meaning of this?" he demanded, severely, of wilberforce chaster. "the meaning is, sir, that your hotel is haunted," was the answer, which startled all who heard it. chapter xii. the particulars of a swindle. "this hotel haunted?" gasped the proprietor. "sir, you are mistaken. such a thing is impossible." "it is true," insisted mr. wilberforce chaster. "i shall not stay here another night." "what makes you think it is haunted?" "there is a ghost in my room." "oh!" shrieked a maid who had come on the scene. "a ghost! i shall not stay either!" "what kind of a ghost?" demanded andrew mallison. "a--er--a skeleton--and some skulls! i saw them with my own eyes," went on the victim. "come and see them for yourself." "this is nonsense," said the hotel proprietor. "i will go and convince you that you are mistaken." he led the way and half a dozen followed, including wilberforce chaster, who kept well to the rear. just as the party reached the door of the apartment joe and the bell boy came up. without hesitation andrew mallison threw open the door of the room and looked inside. of course he saw nothing out of the ordinary. "where is your ghost?" he demanded. "i see nothing of it." "don't--don't you see--er--a skeleton?" demanded the man who had been victimized. "i do not." trembling in every limb wilberforce chaster came forward and peered into the room. "well?" demanded the hotel proprietor, after a pause. "i--i certainly saw them." "then where are they now?" "i--i don't know." by this time others were crowding into the apartment. all gazed around, and into the clothes closet, but found nothing unusual. "you must be the victim of some hallucination, sir," said the hotel proprietor, severely. he hated to have anything occur which might give his establishment a bad reputation. "no, sir, i saw the things with my own eyes." the matter was talked over for several minutes longer and then the hired help was ordered away. "i shall not stay in this room," insisted wilberforce chaster. "you need not remain in the hotel," answered andrew mallison, quickly. "you can leave at once. you have alarmed the whole establishment needlessly." some warm words followed, and the upshot of the matter was that the fussy old boarder had to pack his things and seek another hotel that very night. "i am glad to get rid of him," said the hotel proprietor, after wilberforce chaster had departed. "he was making trouble all the time." "we fixed him, didn't we?" said the bell boy to joe. "i hope it teaches him a lesson to be more considerate in the future," answered our hero. several days passed and joe had quite a few parties to take out on the lake. the season was now drawing to a close, and our hero began to wonder what he had best do when boating was over. "i wonder if i couldn't strike something pretty good in philadelphia?" he asked himself. the idea of going to one of the big cities appealed to him strongly. one afternoon, on coming in from a trip across the lake, joe found andrew mallison in conversation with mr. maurice vane, who had arrived at the hotel scarcely an hour before. the city man was evidently both excited and disappointed. "here is the boy now," said the hotel proprietor, and called joe up. "well, young man, i guess you have hit the truth," were maurice vane's first words. "about those other fellows?" asked our hero, quickly. "that's it." "did they swindle you?" "they did." "by selling you some worthless mining stocks?" "yes. if you will, i'd like you to tell me all you can about those two men." "i will," answered joe, and told of the strange meeting at the old lodge and of what had followed. maurice vane drew a long breath and shook his head sadly. "i was certainly a green one, to be taken in so slyly," said he. "how did they happen to hear of you?" questioned joe, curiously. "i answered an advertisement in the daily paper," said maurice vane. "then this man, caven, or whatever his right name may be, came to me and said he had a certain plan for making a good deal of money. all i had to do was to invest a certain amount and inside of a few days i could clear fifteen or twenty thousand dollars." "that was surely a nice proposition," said joe, with a smile. "i agreed to go into the scheme if it was all plain sailing and then this caven gave me some of the details. he said there was a demand for a certain kind of mining shares. he knew an old miner who was sick and who was willing to sell the shares he possessed for a reasonable sum of money. the plan was to buy the shares and then sell them to another party--a broker--at a big advance in price." "that was simple enough," put in andrew mallison. "caven took me to see a man who called himself a broker. he had an elegant office and looked prosperous. he told us he would be glad to buy certain mining shares at a certain figure if he could get them in the near future. he said a client was red-hot after the shares. i questioned him closely and he appeared to be a truthful man. he said some folks wanted to buy out the mine and consolidate it with another mine close by." "and then you came here and bought the stock of malone?" queried joe. "yes. caven made me promise to give him half the profits and i agreed. i came here, and as you know, malone, or ball, or whatever his name is, pretended to be very sick and in need of money. he set his price, and i came back with the cash and took the mining stock. i was to meet caven, alias anderson, the next day and go to the broker with him, but caven did not appear. then i grew suspicious and went to see the broker alone. the man was gone and the office locked up. after that i asked some other brokers about the stock, and they told me it was not worth five cents on the dollar." "isn't there any such mine at all?" asked joe. "oh, yes, there is such a mine, but it was abandoned two years ago, after ten thousand dollars had been sunk in it. they said it paid so little that it was not worth considering." "that is certainly too bad for you," said joe. "and you can't find any trace of caven or malone?" "no, both of the rascals have disappeared completely. i tried to trace caven and his broker friend in philadelphia but it was of no use. more than likely they have gone to some place thousands of miles away." "yes, and probably this ball, or malone, has joined them," put in andrew mallison. "mr. vane, i am exceedingly sorry for you." "i am sorry for myself, but i deserve my loss, for being such a fool," went on the victim. "have you notified the police?" asked joe. "oh, yes, and i have hired a private detective to do what he can, too. but i am afraid my money is gone for good." "you might go and reopen the mine, mr. vane." "thank you, but i have lost enough already, without throwing good money after bad, as the saying is." "it may be that that detective will find the swindlers, sooner or later." "such a thing is, of course, possible, but i am not over sanguine." "i am afraid your money is gone for good," broke in andrew mallison. "i wish i could help you, but i don't see how i can." the matter was talked over for a good hour, and all three visited the room malone had occupied, which had been vacant ever since. but a hunt around revealed nothing of value, and they returned to the office. "i can do nothing more for you, mr. vane," said andrew mallison. "i wish i could do something," said joe. something about maurice vane was very attractive to him. "if you ever hear of these rascals let me know," continued the hotel proprietor. "i will do so," was the reply. with that the conversation on the subject closed. maurice vane remained at the hotel overnight and left by the early train on the following morning. chapter xiii. off for the city. "joe, our season ends next saturday." "i know it, mr. mallison." "we are going to close the house on tuesday. it won't pay to keep open after our summer boarders leave." "i know that, too." "have you any idea what you intend to do?" went on the hotel proprietor. he was standing down by the dock watching joe clean out one of the boats. "i'm thinking of going to philadelphia." "on a visit?" "no, sir, to try my luck." "oh, i see. it's a big city, my lad." "i know it, but, somehow, i feel i might do better there than in such a town as this,--and i am getting tired of hanging around the lake." "there is more money in philadelphia than there is here, that is certain, joe. but you can't always get hold of it. the big cities are crowded with people trying to obtain situations." "i'm sure i can find something to do, mr. mallison. and, by the way, when i leave, will you give me a written recommendation?" "certainly. you have done well since you came here. but you had better think twice before going to philadelphia." "i've thought it over more than twice. i don't expect the earth, but i feel that i can get something to do before my money runs out." "how much money have you saved up?" "i've got fifty-six dollars, and i'm going to sell my boat for four dollars." "well, sixty dollars isn't such a bad capital. i have known men to start out with a good deal less. when i left home i had but twenty dollars and an extra suit of clothes." "did you come from a country place?" "no, i came from new york. times were hard and i couldn't get a single thing to do. i went to paterson, new jersey, and got work in a silk mill. from there i went to camden, and then to philadelphia. from philadelphia i came here and have been here ever since." "you have been prosperous." "fairly so, although i don't make as much money as some of the hotel men in the big cities. but then they take larger risks. a few years ago a hotel friend of mine opened a big hotel in atlantic city. he hoped to make a small fortune, but he was not located in the right part of the town and at the end of the season he found himself just fifteen thousand dollars out of pocket. now he has sold out and is running a country hotel fifty miles west of here. he doesn't hope to make so much, but his business is much safer." "i'm afraid it will be a long time before i get money enough to run a hotel," laughed our hero. "would you like to run one?" "i don't know. i'd like to educate myself first." "don't you study some now? i have seen you with some arithmetics and histories." "yes, sir, i study a little every day. you see, i never had much schooling, and i don't want to grow up ignorant, if i can help it." "that is the proper spirit, lad," answered andrew mallison, warmly. "learn all you possibly can. it will always be the means of doing you good." the conversation took place on thursday and two days later the season at the summer hotel came to an end and the last of the boarders took their departure. monday was spent in putting things in order, and by tuesday afternoon work around the place came to an end, and all the help was paid off. in the meantime joe had sold his boat. with all of his money in his pocket he called at the talmadge house to see if ned had returned from the trip to the west. "just got back yesterday," said ned, who came to greet him. "had a glorious trip. i wish you had been along. i like traveling better than staying at home all the time." "i am going to do a bit of traveling myself, ned." "where are you going?" "to philadelphia--to try my luck in that city." "going to leave mr. mallison?" "yes,--the season is at an end." "oh, i see. so you are going to the quaker city, as pa calls it. i wish you luck. you'll have to write to me, joe, and let me know how you are getting along." "i will,--and you must write to me." "of course." on the following day joe rowed along the lake to where his old home dock had been located and made a trip to what was left of the cabin. he spent another hour in hunting for the blue box, but without success. "i suppose i'll never find that box," he sighed. "i may as well give up thinking about it." from andrew mallison our hero had obtained his letter of recommendation and also a good pocket map of philadelphia. the hotel man had also made him a present of a neat suit case, in which he packed his few belongings. ned talmadge came to see him off at the depot. the day was cool and clear, and joe felt in excellent spirits. soon the train came along and our hero got aboard, along with a dozen or fifteen others. he waved a hand to ned and his friend shouted out a good-bye. then the train moved on, and the town was soon left in the distance. the car that joe had entered was not more than quarter filled and he easily found a seat for himself by a window. he placed his suit case at his feet and then gave himself up to looking at the scenery as it rushed past. joe had never spent much of his time on the railroad, so the long ride had much of novelty in it. the scenery was grand, as they wound in and out among the hills and mountains, or crossed brooks and rivers and well-kept farms. numerous stops were made, and long before philadelphia was gained the train became crowded. "nice day for riding," said a man who sat down beside our hero. he looked to be what he was, a prosperous farmer. "it is," answered joe. "goin' to philadelphy, i reckon," went on the farmer. "yes, sir." "that's where i'm going, too. got a little business to attend to." "i am going there to try my luck," said joe, he felt he could talk to the old man with confidence. "goin' to look fer a job, eh?" "yes, sir." "wot kin ye do, if i might ask?" "oh, i'm willing to do most anything. i've been taking care of rowboats and working around a summer hotel, at lake tandy." "well, ye won't git many boats to look at down to philadelphy!" and the old farmer chuckled. "i suppose not. maybe i'll strike a job at one of the hotels." "perhaps. they tell me some hotels down there is monsterous--ten an' twelve stories high. ye don't catch me goin' to no sech place. in case o' fire, it's all up with ye, if you're on the twelfth story." "are you going to philadelphia to stay, mr.----" "bean is my name--josiah bean. i'm from haydown center, i am. got a farm there o' a hundred acres." "oh, is that so!" "wot's your handle, young man?" "my name is joe bodley. i came from riverside." "proud to know you." and josiah bean shook hands. "no, i ain't going to stay in philadelphy. i'm a-going on business fer my wife. a relative left her some property an' i'm a-goin' to collect on it." "that's a pleasant trip to be on," was our hero's comment. "i'll feel better when i have the six hundred dollars in my fist. i'm afraid it ain't goin' to be no easy matter to git it." "what's the trouble!" "i ain't known in philadelphy an' they tell me a feller has got to be identified or somethin' like thet--somebody has got to speak for ye wot knows ye." "i see. perhaps you'll meet some friend." "thet's wot i'm hopin' fer." the train rolled on and presently joe got out his map and began to study it, so that he might know something of the great city when he arrived there. "guess i'll git a drink o' water," said josiah bean, and walked to the end of the car to do so. immediately a slick looking man who had been seated behind the farmer arose and followed him. chapter xiv. a scene on the train. the slick-looking individual had listened attentively to all that passed between our hero and the farmer. he waited until the latter had procured his drink of water and then rushed up with a smile on his face. "i declare!" he exclaimed. "how do you do?" and he extended his hand. "how do you do?" repeated the farmer, shaking hands slowly. he felt much perplexed, for he could not remember having met the other man before. "how are matters up on the farm?" went on the stranger. "thank you, very good." "i--er--i don't think you remember me, mr. bean," went on the slick-looking individual. "well, somehow i think i know your face," answered the old farmer, lamely. he did not wish to appear wanting in politeness. "you ought to remember me. i spent some time in haydown center year before last, selling machines." "oh, you had them patent reapers, is that it?" "you've struck it." "i remember you now. you're a nephew of judge davis." "exactly." "o' course! o' course! but i can't remember your name nohow." "it's davis, too--henry davis." "oh, yes. i'm glad to meet you, mr. davis." "i saw you in the seat with that boy," went on the man we shall call henry davis. "i thought i knew you from the start, but i wasn't dead sure. going to philadelphia with us?" "yes, sir." "good enough. mr. bean, won't you smoke with me? i was just going into the smoker." "thanks, but i--er--i don't smoke much." "just one mild cigar. that won't hurt you, i'm sure. i love to meet old friends," continued henry davis. in the end the old farmer was pursuaded to walk into the smoking car and here the slick-looking individual found a corner seat where they would be undisturbed. "i expect to spend a week or more in philadelphia, mr. bean," said the stranger; "if i can be of service to you during that time, command me." "well, perhaps ye can be of service to me. do ye know many folks in the city?" "oh, yes, a great many. some are business friends and some are folks in high society." "i don't care for no high society. but i've got to collect six hundred dollars an' i want somebody to identify me." "oh, i can do that easily, mr. bean." "kin ye?" the farmer grew interested at once. "if ye kin i'll be much obliged to ye." "where must you be identified?" "down to the office of barwell & cameron, on broad street. do ye know 'em?" "i know of them, and i can find somebody who does know them, so there will not be the least trouble." "it's a load off my mind," said josiah bean, with a sigh. "ye see, the money is comin' to my wife. she writ to 'em that i was comin' to collect an' they writ back it would be all right, only i would have to be identified. jest as if everybody in haydown center don't know i'm josiah bean an' a piller in the union church down there, an' a cousin to jedge bean o' lassindale." "well, they have to be mighty particular when they pay out any money in the city. there are so many sharpers around." "i ain't no sharper." "to be sure you are not, and neither am i. but i once had trouble getting money." "is thet so?" "yes. but after i proved who i was the folks were pretty well ashamed of themselves," went on henry davis, smoothly. so the talk ran on and at the end of half an hour the old farmer and the slick-looking individual were on exceedingly friendly terms. henry davis asked much about the old man and gathered in a good stock of information. when philadelphia was gained it was dark, and coming out of the big railroad station joe at first knew not which way to turn. the noise and the crowd of people confused him. "have a cab? carriage?" bawled the hackmen. "paper!" yelled a newsboy. "all the evenin' papers!" "smash yer baggage!" called out a luggage boy, not near as tall as our hero. looking ahead, joe saw josiah bean and the slick-looking individual moving down the street and without realizing it, our hero began to follow the pair. "he must be some friend," said our hero to himself. he wondered where they were going and his curiosity getting the better of him he continued to follow them for half a dozen blocks. at last they came to a halt in front of a building displaying the sign: johnson's quaker hotel moderate terms for all. "this hotel is all right and the prices are right, too," joe heard the slick-looking man tell the old farmer. "then thet suits me," answered josiah bean. "i'll go in an' git a room fer the night." "i think i might as well do the same," said henry davis. "i don't care to go away over to my boarding house at fairmount park." the pair walked into the hotel, and joe saw them register and pass down the corridor in the company of a bell boy. then our hero entered the place. "can i get a room here for the night?" he asked of the clerk behind the desk. "certainly." "what is the charge?" "seventy-five cents." "that suits me." the register was shoved forward and joe wrote down his name. then he was shown to a small room on the third floor. the building was but four stories high. joe was tired and soon went to bed. in the next room he heard a murmur of voices and made out that the old farmer and his friend were talking earnestly. "they must be very friendly," was his comment, and thinking the matter over he fell asleep. bright and early in the morning our hero arose, dressed himself, and went below. he had breakfast in the restaurant attached to the hotel and was just finishing up when the old farmer and the slick-looking individual came in. "hullo!" cried josiah bean. "what are you doin' here?" "i got a room overnight," answered our hero. "we're stopping here, too. this is my friend, mr. henry davis." "good morning," said the slick-looking man. he did not seem to fancy meeting joe. they sat down close at hand and, while eating, the farmer asked joe half a dozen questions. he spoke about his own business until henry davis nudged him in the side. "i wouldn't tell that boy too much," he said in a low tone. "oh, he's all right," answered the old farmer. joe heard the slick-looking individual's words and they made his face burn. he looked at the man narrowly and made up his mind he was not a fellow to be desired for an acquaintance. having finished, our hero paid his bill and left the restaurant. he scarcely knew which way to turn, but resolved to look over the newspapers first and see if any positions were offered. while in the reading room he saw josiah bean and his acquaintance leave the hotel and walk in the direction of broad street. a little later joe took from the paper he was reading the addresses of several people who wanted help, and then he, too, left the hotel. the first place he called at was a florist's establishment, but the pay was so small he declined the position. "i could not live on three dollars per week," he said. "that is all we care to pay," answered the proprietor, coldly. "it is more than other establishments pay." "then i pity those who work at the other places," returned joe, and walked out. chapter xv. what happened to josiah bean. in the meantime josiah bean and the slick-looking individual turned into broad street and made their way to a certain establishment known as the eagle's club. here henry davis called another man aside. "say, foxy, do you know anybody down to barwell & cameron's?" he asked, in a low tone, so that the old farmer could not hear. "yes--a clerk named chase." "then come down and introduce me." "what's the game?" "never mind--there's a tenner in it for you if it works." "then i'm on, bill." "hush--my name is henry davis." "all right, hank," returned foxy, carelessly. he came forward and was introduced to the old farmer in the following fashion: "mr. richard barlow--of barlow & small, manufacturers." all three made their way to the establishment of barwell & cameron, and then henry davis was introduced under that name to a clerk. as soon as foxy had departed the slick-looking individual turned to the clerk and called the old farmer forward. "this is my esteemed friend, mr. josiah bean, of haydown center. he has business with mr. cameron, i believe." "i'm here to collect six hundred dollars," said josiah bean. "mr. cameron writ me some letters about it." "very well, sir. sit down, gentlemen, and i'll tell mr. cameron." the two were kept waiting for a few minutes and were then ushered into a private office. through chase, the clerk, henry davis was introduced and then josiah bean. all the papers proved to be correct, and after the old farmer had signed his name he was given a check. "see here, i want the cash," he demanded. "very well," said mr. cameron. "indorse the check and i'll have the money drawn for you across the street." the farmer wrote down his name once more, and a few minutes later received his six hundred dollars in twelve brand-new fifty-dollar bills. "gosh! them will be nice fer mirandy to look at," was his comment, as he surveyed the bills. "be careful that you don't lose them, mr. bean," cautioned henry davis, as the two left the establishment. "reckon the best thing i can do is to git back to hum this afternoon," remarked josiah bean, when he was on the street. "oh, now you are in town you'll have to look around a bit," said the slick-looking individual. "you can take a train back tomorrow just as well. let me show you a few of the sights." this tickled the old farmer and he agreed to remain over until the next noon. then henry davis dragged the old man around to various points of interest and grew more familiar than ever. while they were at the top of one of the big office buildings henry davis pretended to drop his pocketbook. "how careless of me!" he cried. "got much in it?" queried josiah bean. "three thousand dollars." "do tell! it's a powerful sight o' money to carry so careless like." "it is. maybe you had better carry it for me, mr. bean." "not me! i ain't goin' to be responsible fer nobody's money but my own--an' mirandy's." "better see if your own money is safe." josiah bean got out his wallet and counted the bills. "safe enough." "are you sure? i thought there was only five hundred and fifty." "no, six hundred." "i'll bet you ten dollars on it." "what! can't i count straight," gasped the old farmer, much disturbed. "six hundred i tell you," he added, after he had gone over the amount once more. "if there is i'll give you the ten dollars," answered the slick one. "let me count the bills." "all right, there ye be, mr. davis." henry davis took the wallet and pretended to count the bills. "hullo, what's that?" he cried, whirling around. "what's wot?" demanded josiah bean, also looking around. "i thought i heard somebody cry fire." "don't say thet! say, let's git out o' here--i don't want to look at the sights." "all right--here's your money. i guess it's six hundred after all," answered the slicklooking individual, passing over the wallet. they hurried to the elevator and got into quite a crowd of people. "wait for me here," said henry davis, as they walked past the side corridor. "i want to step in yonder office and send a message to a friend." he ran off, leaving the old farmer by himself. josiah bean looked around him nervously. "i guess that wasn't no cry o' fire after all," he mused. "well, if there's a fire i kin git out from here quick enough." the office building was a large one, running from one street to the next. on the street in the rear was a bookstore, the proprietor of which had advertised for a clerk. joe had applied for the position and was waiting for the proprietor to address him when, on chancing to look up, he saw henry davis rush past as if in a tremendous hurry. "hullo, that's the fellow who was with the old farmer," he told himself. "what can i do for you, young man?" asked the proprietor of the bookshop, approaching at that instant. "i believe you wish a clerk," answered our hero. "have you had experience in this line?" "no, sir." "then you won't do. i must have someone who is experienced." "i am willing to learn." "it won't do. i want an experienced clerk or none at all," was the sharp answer. leaving the bookstore, joe stood out on the sidewalk for a moment and then walked around the corner. a moment later he caught sight of josiah bean, gazing up and down the thoroughfare and acting like one demented. "what's the matter?" he asked. "matter?" bawled the old farmer. i've been took in! robbed! swindled! oh, wot will mirandy say!" "who robbed you?" "thet mr. davis i reckon! he counted the money last, an' now it's gone!" "i saw mr. davis a minute ago." "where?" "around the corner, walking as fast as he could." "he's got my money! oh, i must catch him!" "i'll help you," answered joe, with vigor. "i thought he looked like a slick one," he added. he led the way and josiah bean came behind. the old farmer looked as if he was ready to drop with fright. the thought of losing his wife's money was truly horrifying. "mirandy won't never forgive me!" he groaned. "oh, say, boy, we've got to catch that rascal!" "if we can," added our hero. he had noted the direction taken by the swindler, and now ran across the street and into a side thoroughfare leading to where a new building was being put up. here, from a workman, he learned that the sharper had boarded a street car going south. he hailed the next car and both he and the old farmer got aboard. "this ain't much use," said josiah bean, with quivering lips. "we dunno how far he took himself to." "let us trust to luck to meet him," said joe. they rode for a distance of a dozen blocks and then the car came to a halt, for there was a blockade ahead. "we may as well get off," said our hero. "he may be in one of the forward cars." they alighted and walked on, past half a dozen cars. then our hero gave a cry of triumph . "there he is!" he said, and pointed to the swindler, who stood on a car platform, gazing anxiously ahead. chapter xvi. a matter of six hundred dollars. "say, you, give me my money!" such were josiah bean's words, as he rushed up to henry davis and grabbed the swindler by the shoulder. the slick-looking individual was thoroughly startled, for he had not dreamed that the countryman would get on his track so soon. he turned and looked at the man and also at joe, and his face fell. "wha--what are you talking about?" he stammered. "you know well enough what i am talking about," answered josiah bean, wrathfully. "i want my money, every cent o' it,--an' you are a-goin' to jail!" "sir, you are making a sad mistake," said the swindler, slowly. "i know nothing of you or your money." "yes, you do." "make him get off the car," put in joe. "boy, what have you to do with this?" asked the swindler, turning bitterly to our hero. "not much perhaps," answered joe. "but i'd like to see justice done." "i want that money," went on the countryman, doggedly. "come off the car." he caught the swindler tighter than ever and made him walk to the sidewalk. by this time a crowd of people began to collect. "what's the trouble here?" asked one gentleman. "he's robbed me, that's what's the matter," answered the countryman. "he has got six hundred dollars o' mine!" "six hundred dollars!" cried several and began to take a deeper interest. "gentleman this man must be crazy. i never saw him before," came loudly from the swindler. "that is not true!" cried joe. "he was with the man who lost the money. i saw them together yesterday." "i am a respectable merchant from pittsburg," went on the swindler. "it is outrageous to be accused in this fashion." "somebody had better call a policeman," said joe. "i'll do dat," answered a newsboy, and ran off to execute the errand. as the crowd began to collect the swindler saw that he was going to have difficulty in clearing himself or getting away. he looked around, and seeing an opening made a dash for it. he might have gotten away had it not been for joe. but our hero was watching him with the eyes of a hawk, and quick as a flash he caught the rascal by the coat sleeve. "no, you don't!" he exclaimed. "come back here!" "let go!" cried the man and hit joe in the ear. but the blow did not stop joe from detaining him and in a second more josiah bean caught hold also. "ain't goin' to git away nohow!" exclaimed the countryman, and took hold of the swindler's throat. "le--let go!" came back in a gasp. "don't--don't strangle me!" when a policeman arrived the swindler was thoroughly cowed and he turned reproachfully to josiah bean. "this isn't fair," he said. it was all a joke. i haven't got your money." "yes, you have." "he is right, mr. bean," put in joe. "the money, i think, is in your side pocket." the countryman searched the pocket quickly and brought out a flat pocketbook. "hullo! this ain't mine!" he ejaculated. he opened the pocketbook and inside were the twelve fifty-dollar bills. "my money sure enough! how in the world did it git there?" "this man just slipped the pocketbook into your pocket," answered joe. "i did not!" put in the swindler, hotly. "you did." "dat's right!" piped up the newsboy who had brought the policeman. "i see him do de trick jest a minit ago!" "this is a plot against me!" fumed the swindler. "dat feller is a bad egg!" went on the newsboy. "his name is bill butts. he's a slick one, he is. hits de country jays strong, he does!" at the mention of the name, bill butts, the policeman became more interested than ever. "you'll come to the station house with me," he said, sternly. "we can straighten out the matter there." "all right," answered bill butts, for such was his real name. in a few minutes more the party, including joe, was off in the direction of the police station. "better keep a good eye on your money, mr. bean," said our hero, as they walked along. "i've got it tucked away safe in an inside pocket," answered the old countryman. the station house was several squares away, and while walking beside the policeman the eyes of bill butts were wide open, looking for some means of escape. he had "done time" twice and he did not wish to be sent up again if it could possibly be avoided. his opportunity came in an unexpected manner. in a show window on a corner a man was exhibiting some new athletic appliances and a crowd had collected to witness the exhibition. the policeman had to force his way through. "hi, quit shovin' me!" growled a burly fellow in the crowd, not knowing he was addressing a guardian of the law. "make way here!" ordered the policeman, sternly, and then the fellow fell back. it gave bill butts the chance he wanted and as quick as a flash he dove into the crowd and out of sight. "he is running away!" cried joe. "catch him!" put in josiah bean. both went after the swindler and so did the policeman. but the crowd was too dense for them, and inside of five minutes bill butts had made good his escape. "what did ye want to let him slip ye fer?" growled the old countryman, angrily. "don't talk to me," growled the policeman. "he ought to be reported for this," put in our hero. "say another word and i'll run you both in," said the bluecoat. "come away," whispered josiah bean. "anyway, it ain't so bad. i've got my money." "i'm willing to go," answered joe. "but, just the same, that policeman is a pudding head," he added, loudly. "i'll pudding head you!" cried the bluecoat, but made no attempt to molest joe, whose general style he did not fancy. side by side josiah bean and our hero walked away, until the crowd was left behind and they were practically alone. "i'm goin' to count thet money again," said the old countryman, and did so, to make certain that it was all there. "we were lucky to spot the rascal, mr. bean." "i didn't spot him--it was you. i'm much obliged to ye." "oh, that's all right." "seems to me you are entitled to a reward, joe," went on the old farmer. "i don't want any reward." "but you're a-goin' to take it. how would five dollars strike you?" "not at all, sir. i don't want a cent." "then, maybe, ye won't even come an' take dinner with me," continued the old man, in disappointed tones. "yes, i'll do that, for this chase has made me tremendously hungry." "if ye ever come down my way, joe, ye must stop an' call on me." "i will, mr. bean." "nuthin' on my farm will be too good for ye, joe. i'm goin' to tell my wife mirandy o' this happenin' an' she'll thank you jest as i've done." a good restaurant was found not far away and there the two procured a fine meal and took their time eating it. "have ye found work yet?" asked the old man. "not yet. i was looking for a job when i met you." "well, i hope ye strike wot ye want, lad. but it's hard to git a place in the city, some times." "i shall try my level best." "wish i could git a job fer ye. but i don't know nubuddy." "i am going to try the hotels next. i have a strong letter of recommendation from a hotel man." "if ye don't git no work in philadelphy come out on my farm. i'll board ye all winter fer nuthin'," went on josiah bean, generously. "thank you, mr. bean; you are very kind." "i mean it. we don't live very high-falutin', but we have plenty o' plain, good victuals." "i'll remember what you say," answered our hero. an hour later he saw the countryman on a train bound for home, and then he started once more to look for a situation. chapter xvii. joe's new position. all of that afternoon joe looked for a position among the various hotels of the quaker city. but at each place he visited he received the same answer, that there was no help needed just then. "this is discouraging," he told himself, as he retired that night. "perhaps i'll have to go to the country or back to riverside after all." yet he was up bright and early the next day and just as eager as ever to obtain a situation. he had heard of a new hotel called the grandon house and visited it directly after breakfast. as he entered the corridor he heard his name called and turning around saw andrew mallison. "how do you do, mr. mallison," said our hero, shaking hands. "i didn't expect to meet you here." "i've got a little special business in philadelphia," said the hotel man. "i came in last night and i am going back this afternoon. how are you making out?" "it's all out so far," and joe smiled faintly at his own joke. "no situation, eh?" "that's it." "why don't you strike the people here. it's a new place and the proprietor may need help." "that is what i came for." "i'll put in a good word for you, joe. come on." andrew mallison led the way to the office and called up a stout, pleasant looking man. "mr. drew, this is a young friend of mine, joe bodley. he worked for me this summer,--around the boats and also in the hotel. now that the season is at an end he is trying to find something to do in the city. if you have an opening i can recommend him." mr. arthur drew surveyed joe critically. the new hotel was to be run in first-class style and he wanted his help to be of the best. he rather liked joe's appearance and he took note of the fact that our hero's hands were scrupulously clean and that his shoes were blacked. "i've got almost all the help i need, but i might take him on," he said, slowly. "one of my present boys does not suit me at all. he is too impudent." "well, joe is never impudent and he is very reliable," answered andrew mallison. "i'll give you a trial." "thank you, sir." "the wages will depend upon whether you board here or outside." "how much will you give me if i stay at the hotel?" "four dollars a week." "and what if i board outside?" "nine dollars a week." "can you give the boy a pretty fair room?" asked andrew mallison. "i know yo'll like him after he has been here a while." "he can have a room with another boy. that lad yonder," and the proprietor of the grandon house pointed with his hand. joe looked and saw that the other lad was gentlemanly looking and rather pleasant. "it will suit me to stay here, i think," he said. "anyway, i am willing to try it." "when can you come to work?" "right away--or at least, as soon as i can get my suit case from where i have been stopping." "then come in after dinner and i'll tell you what to do and turn you over to my head man. randolph, come here!" at the call a bell boy came up. "this is another boy who is to work here," said arthur drew. he will room with you." "thank you, mr. drew, i'll be glad to get rid of jack sagger," said frank randolph. "what's your name?" he went on to our hero. "joe bodley." "mine is frank randolph. i guess we'll get along all right." "i hope so, frank," said joe, and shook hands. there was a little more talk and then joe left, to get his dress suit case and a few other things which belonged to him. by one o'clock he was back to the grandon house, and just in time to see andrew mallison going away. "i am much obliged, mr. mallison, for what you have done," said our hero, warmly. "you're welcome, joe," answered the hotel man. "i take an interest in you and i trust you do well here." "i shall do my best." after andrew mallison had gone joe was shown around the hotel and instructed in his various duties. occasionally he was to do bell-boy duty, but usually he was to be an all-around helper for the office. "i think you'll like it here," said frank randolph. "it's the best hotel i've ever worked in. mr. drew is a perfect gentleman." "i am glad to hear it, frank," answered our hero. the room assigned to the two boys was a small one on the top floor of the hotel. but it was clean, contained two nice cots, and joe felt it would suit him very well. frank had hung up a few pictures and had a shelf full of books and this made the apartment look quite home-like. "i'm going to buy some books myself, this winter," said joe. "and when i get time i am going to do some studying." "i'm studying myself, joe. i never had much schooling," returned frank. "are you alone in the world?" "no, my father is living. but he is rather sickly and lives with an uncle of mine, over in camden. he can't work very much, and that is why i have to support myself. are you alone?" "yes. i think my father is living but i can't locate him." the next day and for several days following joe pitched into work in earnest. many things were strange to him, but he determined to master them as speedily as possible, and this pleased arthur drew. "that boy is all right," he said to his cashier. "i am glad that andrew mallison brought him to me." "jack sagger was awfully angry at being discharged," said the cashier. "it was his own fault. i cannot afford to have a boy around who is impudent." what the cashier said about the discharged lad was true. jack sagger was "mad clear through," and he attributed his discharge solely to joe. "i'll fix dat pill," he said to one of his chums. "he ain't going to do me out of my job an' not suffer fer it." "what are you going to do, jack?" asked the companion. "i'll mash him, dat's wot i'll do," answered jack sagger. he was a big, rawboned lad, several inches taller than joe. his face was freckled, and his lips discolored by cigarette smoking. he was a thoroughly tough boy and it was a wonder that he had ever been allowed to work in the hotel at all. he had a fairly good home, but only went there to sleep and to get his meals. "joe, i hear that jack sagger is going to make it warm for you," said frank, one monday afternoon. "i suppose he is angry because i got his position, is that it?" "yes." "what is he going to do?" "i don't know exactly, but he'll hurt you if he can." "if he attacks me i'll do what i can to take care of myself," answered our hero. that afternoon he was sent out by mr. drew on an errand that took him to a neighborhood occupied largely by wholesale provision houses. as joe left the hotel jack sagger saw him. "dere's dat country jay now," said sagger. "now's your time to git square on him, jack," said nick sammel, his crony. "right you are, nick. come on." "going to follow him?" "yes, till i git him where i want him." "going to mash him?" "sure. when i git through wid him his own mother won't know him," went on jack sagger, boastfully. "maybe he'll git the cops after you, jack." "i'll watch out fer dat, nick, an' you must watch out too," answered jack sagger. "are you sure you kin best him? he looks putty strong." "huh! can't i fight? didn't i best sam nolan, and jerry dibble?" "that's right, jack." "just let me git one chanct at him an' he'll run away, you see if he don't. but he shan't git away until i give him a black eye an' knock out a couple of his front teeth fer him," concluded the boaster. chapter xviii. joe shows his muscle. all unconscious that he was being followed, our hero went on his errand to a wholesale provision house that supplied the grandon hotel with meats and poultry. he felt in good spirits and so whistled lightly as he walked. arriving at the place of business he transacted his errand as speedily as possible and then started to return to the hotel. he was just passing the entrance to a factory yard when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and wheeling around found himself confronted by jack sagger, nick sammel, and half a dozen others, who had gathered to see their leader "polish off" the country boy. "what do you want?" demanded joe, sharply. "you know well enough wot i want, country!" exclaimed jack sagger. "i do not." "you took my job away from me, an' i'm goin' to pay you fer doing it." "mr. drew had a perfect right to discharge you, jack sagger. he said you were impudent and he didn't want you around any more." "you can't preach to me, country! do you know wot i'm goin' ter do?" "no." "i'm going to make you promise to leave dat job. will yer promise?" "no." "den you have got to fight," and jack sagger began to pull up his rather dirty coat sleeves. "supposing i don't want to fight?" went on our hero, as calmly as he could. "yer got ter do it, country--or else make dat promise." "i'll make no promise to you." "den take dat!" as jack sagger uttered the last words he launched a blow at joe's nose. but our hero ducked and the blow went wide of its mark. "give it to him, jack!" "show him what you can do!" "keep off," came from joe. "if you don't, you'll get hurt!" "hear dat now! jack, pitch in, quick, before anybody comes!" thus urged jack sagger struck out once more, landing on joe's chest. then our hero drew back and sent in a blow with all his force. it took the other boy squarely on the chin and sent him staggering against a friend. if ever there was a surprised boy that boy was jack sagger. he had expected that to "polish off" joe would be easy and he had not anticipated such a defense as had been made. he righted himself and gazed stupidly at our hero. "wot did yer hit me fer?" he gasped. "you keep off or i'll hit you again," answered joe. there was a pause and sagger sprang forward, trying to catch joe around the arms. but our hero was too quick for him and ducked once more. then he hit the bully in the ear and gave him another blow in the left eye. "ouch!" roared jack sagger. "don't! oh, my eye!" "have you had enough?" demanded joe, who was commencing to warm up. "pitch in, fellers!" came from jack sagger. "throw him down!" "ain't you going to do it alone?" queried nick sammel, in wonder, not unmingled with a suspicion that joe would not be as easy to handle as anticipated. "i--i've got a--a heartburn," came lamely from sagger. "it come on me all at onct. if it wasn't fer that i'd do him up all alone." "you're a fraud, and you haven't any heart-burn!" cried joe. "you're afraid, that's all. if you want to fight, stand up, and we'll have it out." "don't you call me afraid," said sagger, but his voice had lost much of its bullying tone. "you're a big coward, jack sagger. after this i want you to leave me alone." "ain't you fellers going to pitch in?" demanded sagger, turning to his cohorts. "the first boy to hit me will get paid back with interest," said joe, sharply. "i don't like to fight but i can do it if i have to." one or two had edged forward but when they saw his determined air they slunk back. "go on and fight him, jack," said one. "this is your mix-up, not ours." "you said you was going to do him up brown," put in another. "ain't i got the heartburn?" blustered the bully. "i can't do nuthin' when i git that. wait till i'm well; then i'll show him." "if you ever touch me again, jack sagger, i'll give you the worst thrashing you ever had," said joe, loudly. "remember, i am not the least bit afraid of you. the best thing you can do is to keep your distance." "humph!" "i don't want to quarrel with anybody, but i am always ready to stick up for my rights, just you remember that." so speaking joe backed out of the crowd, that opened to let him pass. several of the boys wanted to detain him, but not one had the courage to do so. as soon as he was clear of his tormentors, he hurried back to the hotel. "how did you make out?" asked mr. drew. "it's all right, sir, and they'll send the things to-night, sure," answered joe. he hestitated for a moment. "i had a little excitement on the way." "how was that?" "jack sagger and some other boys followed me up and wanted to polish me off." "you don't look as if they had done much polishing." and the hotel man smiled. "no, jack sagger got the worst of it. i guess he'll leave me alone in the future." "you mustn't fight around the hotel, joe." "this was on the way to jackson & bell's, sir. i was bound to defend myself." "to be sure. sagger came to me yesterday and wanted to be taken back, but i told him no--that i wouldn't have such an impudent fellow around." as the winter season came on the hotel began to fill up and joe was kept busy from early in the morning until late at night, and so was frank randolph. the two boys were firm friends, and on sunday went to sunday school together and also to church, when their hotel duties permitted of it. in the corridor of the hotel joe, one day, met the timid felix gussing, the young man who had once had so much trouble in driving a horse. "how do you do, mr. gussing," said our hero politely. "why if it isn't joe!" cried the young man, and smiled. "what are you doing here?" "i work at this hotel now." "is it possible! didn't you like it at riverside?" "yes, but the place is shut up for the winter." "ah, i see." "are you stopping here, sir?" "yes, i came in an hour ago. i have business in philadelphia." "maybe you're buying horses," said joe, slyly. "no! no! no more horses for me," ejaculated the dude. "i--er--this is of more importance." no more was said just then, but later our hero met felix gussing again, and on the day following had an errand that took him to the young man's room. "joe, you are quite a wise boy, perhaps i can confide in you," said felix gussing, after some talk on other subjects. "i'll be glad to be of service to you, mr. gussing." "i have a delicate problem to solve. sometimes a young man can give better advice than an older person," went on the dude. "don't flatter me, mr. gussing." "i am in love," went on the young man, flatly. "yes, sir." "i am quite sure the young lady loves me." "then i suppose you are going to get married." "there is an obstacle in the way." "oh!" "perhaps i had better tell you the whole story--if you'll listen to me," went on the dude. "certainly i'll listen," said joe. "i've got a little time off." and then felix gussing told his tale of woe, as will be found in the next chapter. chapter xix. one kind of a duel. "her name is clara, and she is the daughter of major thomas botts sampson, of the regular army," began felix gussing. "then her father is a military man." "exactly, and that is the trouble," and the dude gave a groan. "it is this way: when i went to see major sampson he greeted me very cordially, until i disclosed the object of my visit. " 'sir,' said he 'this is a matter which requires consideration. have you gained my daughter's consent?' " 'i have,' i answered. " 'so far so good,' said he. 'but there is one thing more. have you served in the army?' " 'no,' said i. " 'or fought a duel?' " 'no.' "then he told me to remember that he had served in the army and that his daughter was the daughter of an army man, one who had gone through many battles. after that he said he was resolved that his daughter should marry only somebody who had proved himself a man of courage." "what did you do then?" asked joe, becoming interested. "what could i do? i am--er--no army man--no fighter. evidently the major wants a fighter for a son-in-law," and felix gussing groaned once more. "you'll have to become a fighter," said joe. "no! no! i am a er--a man of peace!" cried the dude, in alarm. "mr. gussing, i think i can arrange matters for you," said joe, struck by a certain idea. "what can you mean, joe?" "i mean that i can prove to major sampson that you are a brave man." "do that, joe, and i shall be your friend for life!" gasped the dude. "will you wait until to-morrow, mr. gussing?" "certainly, but do not keep me in suspense too long." "this may cost you a little money." "i don't care if it costs a hundred dollars." "then i am sure i can fix it up for you," answered joe. there was stopping at the hotel a man named montgomery. he had at different times been an auctioneer, a book-agent, a schoolmaster, and a traveling salesman. he was just now selling curiosities and joe felt that he would be only too glad to do felix gussing a good turn if he were paid for it. our hero had a talk with this man, and the upshot of the matter was that montgomery and the dude were introduced on the following morning. "i think i can help you, mr. gussing," said the curiosity man, who, it may be mentioned here, was a tall and important-looking personage. "i was once in the army." "what can you do?" questioned the dude, hopefully. "will it be worth fifty dollars to you if i aid you in winning the consent of major sampson to wed his daughter?" "decidedly." "this is also joe's plan, so you will have to pay him, too." "i don't want any money," put in our hero. "joe shall have ten dollars--if your plan wins out. but how is all this to be accomplished?" continued felix gussing. "we will take the earliest possible opportunity to visit major sampson," said ulmer montgomery. "well?" "when we are all together, we'll get into some sort of an argument. you shall call me a fool and i'll slap you in the face. then you shall challenge me to a duel." "a duel! why, sir, i--er--i never could shoot you, and i don't want to be shot myself." "my dear mr. gussing, you don't understand me. don't you comprehend, the pistols shall be loaded with powder only." "ah, that's the idea!" exclaimed the dude, much relieved. "yes. you see it will only be a sham duel so far as we are concerned, but will, in the most harmless fashion possible, prove you to be a man of honor and courage. major sampson's scruples will vanish, and you will have the pleasure of gaining his daughter's hand in marriage. "i agree, mr. montgomery--the plan is a famous one. is it yours or is it joe's?" "joe's--but it will fall to me to help carry it out," said the jack-of-all-trades, who did not lose sight of the fifty dollars that had been promised to him. on the following day felix gussing and mr. montgomery took themselves to major sampson's residence, where the stranger was introduced as a curiosity hunter from chicago. "he wishes to look at your collection of swords," said the dude. "i shall be delighted to show them," said the major, who was a person of great self-importance. "ah, this is a fine sword from the holy land," said mr. montgomery, handling one of the blades. "i don't know where it came from," said the major. "it was presented to me by a friend from boston." "that is a russian sword," said the dude. "i know it by its handle." "that sword is from the holy land," insisted mr. montgomery. "anybody is a fool to talk that way," cried felix gussing. "ha! do you call me a fool, sir!" stormed montgomery. "gentlemen!" put in the major. "i think----" "i am not a fool, sir, and i want you to know it!" bellowed ulmer montgomery. "it's an outrage to call me such. take that, sir!" and he slapped felix gussing lightly on the cheek. "gentlemen, this must cease!" cried the major, coming between them. "in my house, too! disgraceful!" "he has got to apologize to me!" roared the dude, acting his part to perfection. "never!" shouted montgomery. "if you will not, i demand satisfaction. i --i will fight you in a duel." "a duel!" "yes, a duel. pistols, at ten paces," went on felix gussing. "well! well!" came from the major in amazement. "can i do less?" demanded the would-be son-in-law. "my honor is at stake." "then stand by your honor by all means," cried the military man, who, at times, was as hot-blooded as anybody. during the talk the major's daughter had come upon the scene. "oh, felix, what does this mean?" she demanded. "i am going to fight this--this fellow a duel, pistols at ten paces," answered felix, firmly. "felix!" she gasped. "you will not, you cannot fight. for my sake, do not." "clara," answered the dude, smiling affectionately upon her. "for your sake i would forego any personal gratification, but i must not suffer a stain upon the honor." "well said!" exclaimed the major. "felix is behaving well. i couldn't have done better myself. i admire his courage and i give him free permission to wed you after the--the--" "but father, if he should be killed?" faltered the fair clara. "never fear, clara; all will go well," interposed felix. more words followed, but the dude pretended to be stubborn and so did ulmer montgomery. both went off to arrange about the duel, and the major insisted upon it that he must be on hand to see the affair come off. matters were hurried along with all speed, and it was arranged that the duel should take place on the following morning at ten o'clock, in a country spot just outside of the city. joe was invited to go along, and carried the pistols, and two others were let into the secret, including a doctor, who went fully prepared to attend to any wounds that might be inflicted. it did not take long to load the pistols, with powder only. great care was taken so that major sampson should not suspect the truth. "major," said felix, in a trembling voice. "if i--if anything serious happens to me tell clara that--that i died like a man." "noble boy! i will! i will!" answered the military man. "when i give the word, gentlemen, you will both fire!" said one of the seconds. "very well," answered both of the duelists. "ready? one--two--three--fire!" both pistols were simultaneously discharged. when the smoke cleared away it was ascertained that both parties were unharmed. "gentlemen, are you satisfied?" asked the seconds. "i am," answered ulmer montgomery, quickly. "then i shall be," put in felix gussing. "and now that this affair is at an end, mr. montgomery will you shake hands?" he added. "with pleasure, mr. gussing!" was the reply. "i must say in all frankness i am sorry we quarrelled in the first place. perhaps i was wrong about the sword." "and perhaps i was wrong." "both of you were wrong," put in the major. "i hunted up the letter that came with the blade. it is an old spanish weapon. let us all call the affair off, and mr. montgomery shall come to clara's wedding to mr. gussing." "with all my heart," cried montgomery, and there the little plot came to a finish. chapter xx. attacked in the dark. "joe, the plot worked to perfection!" said felix gussing, on the day following. "i have to thank you, and here are twenty dollars for your trouble." "i don't want a cent, mr. gussing," answered our hero. "i did it only out of friendliness to you. i hope you have no further trouble in your courtship." "oh, that was all settled last night. clara and i are to be married next week. we are going to send out the cards to-day. you see," went on the young man in a lower tone. "i don't want to give the major a chance to change his mind, or to suspect that that duel was not just what it ought to have been." "does he suspect anything as yet?" "not a thing." "then you are wise to have the wedding as quickly as possible." "when we are married i am going to let clara into the secret. i know she'll enjoy it as much as anybody." "well, you had better warn her to keep mum before her father. he looks as if he could get pretty angry if he wanted to." "as you won't take any money for this, joe, wouldn't you like to come to the wedding?" "i'm afraid it will be too high-toned for me, mr. gussing." "no, it is to be a plain, homelike affair-clara wants it that way. the major has some country cousins who will be there, and they are very plain folks." "then i'll come--if miss sampson wishes it." so it was arranged that joe should attend the wedding, and as he was in need of a new sunday suit he purchased it at once, so that he could use it at the wedding. "you're in luck, joe," remarked frank, when he heard the news. "and that suit looks very well on you." in some manner it leaked out among the boys that joe was going to the wedding, and two days before the affair came off jack sagger learned of it. he immediately consulted with some of his cronies, and it was unanimously resolved to watch for joe after the wedding was over and chastise him severely for the manner in which he had treated "the gang." "we'll fix him," said sagger, suggestively. at the proper time joe took a car to the sampson home and was there introduced to a dozen or more people. the wedding proved an enjoyable affair and the elegant supper that was served was one long to be remembered. it was nearly eleven o'clock when joe started for the hotel again. he had thought to take a car, but afterwards concluded to walk. "a walk will do me good--after such a hearty supper," he told himself. "if i ride home i won't be able to sleep." at the corner the sagger crowd was waiting for him. one gave a low whistle, and all slunk out of sight until joe had passed. several blocks had been covered when our hero came to a spot where several new buildings were in the course of construction. it was rather dark and the street lights cast long and uncertain shadows along the walk. joe had just started to cross a wooden bridge over an excavation when he heard a rush behind him. before he could turn he was given a violent shove. "push him into de cellar hole!" came, in jack sagger's voice. "stop!" cried joe, and it must be admitted that he was greatly alarmed. but no attention was paid to his words, and over the side of the bridge he went, to fall a distance of a dozen feet and land in a pile of dirt, with one lower limb in a puddle of dirty water. "down he goes!" he heard, in the voice of nick sammel. "wonder how he likes it?" "you're a mean, low crowd!" cried joe, as he stood up. he was covered with dirt and the cold water felt anything but agreeable on such a frosty night as it chanced to be. "don't you dare to crawl out of dat!" said sagger. "if yer do we'll pitch yer in ag'in, won't we, fellers?" "sure we will!" was the cry. "de next time we'll dump him in on his head!" growing somewhat accustomed to the semi-darkness, joe counted seven of his tormentors, all standing on the edge of the cellar hole into which he had so unceremoniously been thrown. several of the youths had heavy sticks. "i suppose i'll have to retreat," he reasoned "i can't fight seven of them." he turned to the rear of the cellar hole and felt his way along into the deepest shadows. presently he reached a partly finished building and crawled up some planks leading to one of the floors. "he is running away!" he heard jack sagger cry. "come on after him!" said another of the crowd. "let's take his new coat and vest away from him!" added a third. the entire party dropped down into the hole and ran to the rear, in a hunt after our hero. in the meantime joe was feeling his way along a scaffolding where some masons had been at work. as it happened the entire party under jack sagger walked toward the unfinished building and came to a halt directly under the scaffolding. joe saw them and crouched back out of sight. "where is de country jay?" he heard one of the crowd ask. "he's back here somewhere," answered jack sagger. "we must find him an' thump him good." "you'll not thump me if i can help it," said our hero to himself. joe put out his hand and felt a cask near by. it was half filled with dirty water, being used for the purposes of making mortar. a tub of water was beside the cask. "tit for tat!" he thought, and as quickly as it could be done he overturned the cask and the tub followed. joe's aim was perfect, and down came the shower of dirty water, directly on the heads of the boys below. every one was saturated and each set up a yell of dismay. "oh, say, i'm soaked!" "he trun water all over me!" "ugh! but dat's a regular ice bath, dat is!" "that's what you get for throwing me into the hole!" cried joe. "after this you had better leave me alone." "i've got some mortar in me eye!" screamed jack sagger, dancing around in pain. "oh, me eye is burned out!" "i'm wet to de skin!" said nick sammel, with a shiver. "oh, say, but it's dead cold, ain't it?" waiting to hear no more, joe ran along the scaffolding and then leaped through a window of the unfinished building. a street light now guided him and he came out through the back of the structure and into an alleyway. from this he made his way to the street. "i'll have to hurry," he reasoned. "if they catch me now they will want to half kill me!" "don't let him git away!" he heard sagger roar. "catch him! catch him!" "hold on there, you young rascals!" came a voice out of the darkness. "what are you doing around these buildings?" a watchman had come on the scene, with a lantern in one hand and a heavy club in the other. "we ain't doin' nuthin," said one of the boys. "maybe you're the gang that stole that lumber a couple of nights ago," went on the watchman, coming closer. "ain't touched yer lumber," growled jack sagger. "we're after anudder feller wot hid in here," said sammel. "that's a likely story. i believe you are nothing but a crowd of young thieves," grumbled the watchman. "every night somebody is trying to steal lumber or bricks, or something. i've a good mind to make an example of you and have you all locked up." "we ain't touched a thing!" cried a small boy, and began to back away in alarm. at once several followed him. "here's a barrel of water knocked over and everything in a mess. you've been skylarking, too. i'm going to have you locked up!" the watchman made a dash after the boys and the crowd scattered in all directions. sagger received a crack on the shoulder that lamed him for a week, and sammel tripped and went down, taking the skin off of the end of his nose. "oh, me nose!" he moaned. "it's busted entirely!" "run!" cried sagger. "if you don't you'll be nabbed sure!" and then the crowd ran with all their speed, scrambling out of the hole as best they could. they did not stop until they were half a dozen blocks away and on their way home. "we made a fizzle of it dat trip," said sagger, dolefully. "it's all your fault," growled one of the boys. "i ain't goin' out wid you again. you promise big things but you never do 'em." "oh, jack 's a gas-bag, dat's wot he is," was the comment of another, and he walked off by himself. presently one after another of the boys followed suit, leaving jack sagger to sneak home, a sadder if not a wiser lad. chapter xxi. days at the hotel. "perhaps those fellows have learned a lesson they won't forget in a hurry," remarked frank to joe, after he learned the particulars of the attack in the dark. "i hope they don't molest me further," answered our hero. "if they'll only let me alone i'll let them alone." "that sagger is certainly on the downward path," said frank. "if he doesn't look out he'll land in jail." what frank said was true, and less than a week later they heard through another hotel boy that jack sagger had been arrested for stealing some lead pipe out of a vacant residence. the pipe had been sold to a junkman for thirty cents and the boy had spent the proceeds on a ticket for a cheap theater and some cigarettes. he was sent to the house of correction, and that was the last joe heard of him. with the coming of winter the hotel filled up and joe was kept busy from morning to night, so that he had little time for studying. he performed his duties faithfully and the hotel proprietor was much pleased in consequence. "joe is all right," he said to his cashier, "i can trust him with anything." "that's so, and he is very gentlemanly, too," replied the cashier. ulmer montgomery was still at the hotel. he was now selling antiquaries, and our hero often watched the fellow with interest. he suspected that montgomery was a good deal of a humbug, but could not prove it. at length montgomery told joe that he was going to the far west to try his fortunes. the man seemed to like our hero, and the night before he left the hotel he called joe into his room. "i want to make you a present of some books i own," said ulmer montgomery. "perhaps you'll like to read them. they are historical works." "thank you, mr. montgomery, you are very kind." "i used to be a book agent, but i gave that up as it didn't pay me as well as some other things." "and you had these books left over?" "yes. the firm i worked for wouldn't take them back so i had to keep them." "and now you are selling curiosities." at this ulmer montgomery smiled blandly. "not exactly, joe--i only sell curiosities, or antiquities, when i am hard up. on other occasions i do like other folks, work for a living." "i don't quite understand." "i dropped into selling curiosities when i was in the south and hard up for cash. i wanted money the worst way, and i--well, i set to work to raise it. maybe you'd like to hear my story." "i would." "mind you, i don't pose as a model of goodness and i shouldn't advise you to follow in my footsteps. but i wanted money and wanted in badly. so i put on my thinking cap, and i soon learned of a very zealous antiquary living about five miles from where i was stopping. he was wealthy and a bachelor, and spent no inconsiderable portion of his income on curiosities." "and you went to him?" said joe, becoming interested. "i at once determined to take advantage of this gentleman's antiquarian zeal. i will own that i had some qualms of conscience--about imposing upon the old gentleman, but i didn't know of any other way to procure the money i absolutely needed. "having made all of my preparations, i set off for mr. leland's house. to disguise myself i put on a pair of big goggles and an old-fashioned collar and tie. " 'i understand, mr. leland, that you are in the habit of collecting curiosities,' i said. " 'quite right, sir,' said he. 'i have got together some few,' and he gazed with an air of pride at the nondescript medley which surrounded him. " 'i have in my possession,' i proceeded, 'two or three of great value, which i had hoped to retain, but, well, i need money, and so i must part with them, much as i wish to call them mine. but i wish to see that they get into the proper hands, and i have been told that you are a great antiquarian, understanding the true value of such things, and so--' " 'pray, show them to me at once!' cried the old man, eagerly. " 'i have traveled a good deal, and been a pilgrim in many climes,' i went on. 'i have wandered along the banks of the euphrates and dipped my feet in the currents of the nile. i have gazed upon ruined cities--' " 'yes! yes! show me what you have!' he cried, eagerly. " 'here is a curiosity of the highest order', i said, opening a paper and showing a bit of salt about the size of a walnut. 'this is a portion of the statue of salt into which lot's wife was turned.' " 'is it possible?' cried the antiquary, taking the salt and gazing at it in deep veneration. 'are you quite certain of this?' " 'i am,' i answered. 'it is a portion of the wrist. i broke it off myself. the hand was already gone.' " "and did he buy it?" questioned joe, in astonishment. "he did, and gave me fifty dollars in cash for it." "but that wasn't fair, mr. montgomery." the seller of bogus curiosities shrugged his shoulders. "perhaps not. but i was hard up and had to do something." "did you sell him anything else?" "i did--a walking stick, which i had procured in connecticut. it was covered with strange carvings and he mistook them for hieroglyphics, and gave me ten dollars for the thing." "i don't see how you could have the nerve to do such things, mr. montgomery." "well, a man can do lots of things when he is driven to do them. i admit the deals were rather barefaced, but, as i said before, i had to do something. some day, when i am rich, i'll return the money to the old fellow," added the impostor. he left the hotel that morning, and it may be said here that joe did not meet him again for several years. christmas came and went at the hotel, and our hero received several presents from his friends, including a pair of gloves from ned talmadge and a five-dollar gold piece from felix gussing. some of the regular boarders at the hotel also remembered him. "and how do you like married life?" asked joe, of felix gussing. "we are getting along very nicely," said the dude. "have you told your wife about the duel yet?" "no,--and i don't think i shall," added felix gussing. "you see she--er--she thinks me a very brave man and--" "and you don't want her to change her opinion," finished joe, with a smile! "why should i, joe." "oh, i don't know as there is any reason, excepting that they usually say men and their wives should have no secrets from each other." "mr. montgomery is gone, i see," said the dude, changing the subject. "yes, sir." "then you are the only one who knows of this secret. you won't tell, will you?" "no, sir." "we are having troubles enough as it is," went on the dude. "both my wife and i find housekeeping rather troublesome. it is hard to obtain proper servants, and she does not care to do the work herself." "why don't you go to boarding?" "perhaps we will, later on." with the new year came a heavy fall of snow and soon sleighs big and little were in demand. then came a slight fall of rain which made the sidewalks a glare of ice. "got to be careful," announced frank to joe. "if you don't you'll go down on your back." "i intend to be careful," answered our hero. "i have no wish to break any bones." that afternoon joe was sent on an errand to a place of business half a mile away. on returning he chanced to stop at a street corner, to watch a number of children who had made a long slide for themselves. as he stood watching, a man came along bundled up in a great coat and wearing a slouch hat and blue glasses. the man was walking rapidly, as if in a hurry. "that fellow looks familiar to me," thought joe. "wonder who he can be?" he watched the stranger cross the street. then the fellow happened to step on the icy slide and in a twinkling he went down on his back, his hat flying in one direction and a bundle he carried in another. "hurrah! down goes the gent!" sang out a newsboy standing near. "come here an' i'll pick yer up!" said another street urchin. "you rascals, you fixed this on purpose so i should fall!" cried the man, starting to get up. "can i help you?" questioned joe, coming up, and then he gave a start, as he recognized the fellow. it was pat malone, alias david ball, from montana! chapter xxii. about some mining shares. "how do you do, mr. ball?" said our hero, coolly. "eh, what's that?" questioned malone, in amazement. then he recognized joe, and his face fell. "i have often wondered what became of you," went on our hero. "let me help you up." "i--that is--who are you, boy?" demanded malone, getting to his feet and picking up his hat and his bundle. "you ought to remember me. i am joe bodley. i used to work for mr. mallison, at riverside." "don't know the man or the place," said pat malone, coolly. "you have made a mistake." "then perhaps i had better call you malone." "not at all. my name is fry--john fry." "how often do you change your name, mr. fry." "don't get impudent!" "i am not impudent,--i am only asking a plain question." "i never change my name." at that moment joe saw a policeman on the opposite side of the street and beckoned for the officer to come over. "hi! what's the meaning of this!" ejaculated pat malone. "officer, i want this man locked up," said joe, and caught the rascal by the arm, that he might not run away. "what's the charge?" asked the bluecoat. "he is wanted for swindling." "boy, are you really crazy?" "no, i am not." "who are you?" asked the policeman, eyeing joe sharply. "my name is joe bodley. i work at the grandon house. i will make a charge against this man, and i'll bring the man who was swindled, too." "that's fair talk," said the policeman. "i guess you'll both have to go to the station with me." "i'm willing," said joe, promptly. "i--i cannot go--i have a sick wife--i must get a doctor," stammered pat malone. "let me go. the boy is mistaken." "you'll have to go with me." "but my sick wife?" "you can send for your friends and they can take care of her." "i have no friends--we are strangers in philadelphia. i don't want to go." pat malone tried to move on, but the policeman and joe detained him, and in the end he was marched off to the police station. here joe told what he knew and malone's record was looked up in the rogues' gallery. "you've got the right man, that's sure," said the desk sergeant to our hero. "now where can you find this mr. maurice vane?" "i have his address at the hotel," answered our hero. "if i can go i'll get it and send mr. vane a telegram." "bring the address here and we'll communicate with mr. vane." our hero agreed, and inside of half an hour a message was sent to maurice vane, notifying him of the fact that pat malone had been caught. mr. vane had gone to new york on business, but came back to philadelphia the next day. when he saw that he was caught pat malone broke down utterly and made a full confession, telling in detail how the plot against maurice vane had been carried out. "it was not my plan," said he. "gaff caven got the mining shares and he arranged the whole thing." "where did you get the shares--steal them?" demanded maurice vane, sharply. "no, we didn't steal them. we bought them from an old miner for fifty dollars. the miner is dead now." "can you prove this?" "yes." "then do so." "why?" "i don't care to answer that question. but if you can prove to me that you and caven came by those shares honestly i won't prosecute you, malone." "i will prove it!" was the quick answer, and that very afternoon pat malone proved beyond a doubt that the shares had belonged to himself and gaff caven when they sold them to maurice vane. "that is all i want of you," said maurice vane. "i shan't appear against you, malone." "then those shares must be valuable after all?" queried the swindler. "perhaps they are. i am having them looked up. i am glad of this opportunity of proving that they are now my absolute property." "if caven and i sold you good stocks we ought to be kicked full of holes," grumbled malone. "that was your lookout, not mine," returned maurice vane. "mind, i don't say the shares are valuable. but they may be, and if so i shall be satisfied with my bargain." "humph! where do i come in?" "you don't come in at all--and you don't deserve to." "if i didn't swindle you, you can't have me held for swindling." "i don't intend to have you held. you can go for all i care." maurice vane explained the situation to the police authorities and that evening pat malone was allowed to go. he threatened to have somebody sued for false imprisonment but the police laughed at him. "better not try it on, malone," said one officer. "remember, your picture is in our rogues' gallery," and then the rascal was glad enough to sneak away. the next day he took a train to baltimore, where, after an hour's hunt, he found gaff caven. "we made a fine mess of things," he said, bitterly. "a fine mess!" "what are you talking about, pat?" asked caven. "do you remember the mining stocks we sold to maurice vane?" "certainly i do." "well, he has got 'em yet." "all right, he can keep them. we have his money too," and gaff caven chuckled. "i'd rather have the shares." "eh?" "i said i'd rather have the shares, gaff. we put our foot into it when we sold 'em." "do you mean to say the shares are valuable?" demanded gaff caven. "that's the size of it." "who told you this?" "nobody told me, but i can put two and two together as quick as anybody." "well, explain." "i was in philadelphia when i ran into that hotel boy, joe bodley." "what of that?" "he had me arrested. then they sent for mr. maurice vane, and vane made me prove that the shares were really ours when we sold them to him. i thought i'd go clear if i could prove that, so i went and did it. then vane said he wouldn't prosecute me, for the shares might be valuable after all." "but the mine is abandoned." "maybe it is and maybe it isn't. i guess mr. maurice vane knows what he is doing, and we were fools to sell out to him." "if that mine is valuable i'm going to have it!" cried gaff caven. "he can have his money back!" and the rascal who had overreached himself began to pace the floor. "maybe he won't take his money back." "then i'll claim the mine anyway, pat--and you must help me." "what can you do?" "go out to montana, just as soon as the weather is fit, and relocate the mine. if it's any good we can find some fellows to help us hold it somehow. i'm not going to let this slip into maurice vane's hands without a struggle." "talk is cheap, but it takes money to pay for railroad tickets," went on malone. "i've got the dust, pat." "enough to fight vane off if he should come west?" "i think so. i met a rich fellow last week and i got a loan of four thousand dollars." "without security?" and malone winked suggestively. "exactly. oh, he was a rich find," answered gaff caven, and gave a short laugh. "i'm willing to go anywhere. i'm tired of things here. it's getting too warm for comfort." "then let us start west next week--after i can finish up a little business here." "i am willing." and so the two rascals arranged to do maurice vane out of what had become his lawful property. chapter xxiii. the fire at the hotel. on the day following the scene at the police station maurice vane stopped at the grandon house to interview our hero. "i must thank you for the interest you have taken in this matter, joe," said he. "it is not every lad who would put himself out to such an extent." "i wanted to see justice done, mr. vane," answered our hero, modestly. "things have taken a sudden change since i saw you last summer," went on maurice vane. "perhaps it will be as well if i tell my whole story." "i'd like first rate to hear it." "after i got those shares of stock i felt that i had been swindled, and i was very anxious to get hold of the rascals. but as time went on and i could not locate them i resolved to look into the deal a little more minutely and see if there was any chance of getting my money, or a portion of it, back." "i should have done the same." "i wrote to a friend out west and he put me in communication with a mining expert who set to work to find out all about the mine. the expert sent me word, late in the fall, that the mine was, in his opinion, located on a vein of gold well worth working." "what did you do then?" "i wanted to go west at once and look into the matter personally, but an aunt died and i had to settle up her estate and see to the care of her two children, and that held me back. then winter came on, and i knew i'd have to let matters rest until spring." "are you going out there in the spring?" "yes,--as early as possible, too." "i hope you find the mine a valuable one, mr. vane." "i place great reliance on what the mining expert said, for he is known as a man who makes no mistakes." "then, if the mine proves of value, you'll have gotten a cheap piece of property after all." "yes, indeed." "won't those swindlers be mad when they hear of this!" "most likely, my lad; but they have nobody to blame but themselves. i bought their shares in good faith, while they sold them in bad faith." "is your title perfectly clear now?" "absolutely so." "then i hope the mine proves to be worth millions." "thank you, my boy." "i'd like to own a mine like that myself." "would you? well, perhaps you will some day." "it's not likely. a hotel boy doesn't earn enough to buy a mine," and our hero laughed. "if i find the mine worth working and open up for business, how would you like to go out there and work for me?" "i'd like it very much, mr. vane." "very well, i'll bear that in mind," answered the possessor of the mining shares. "why don't you buy up the rest of the mining shares first?" "i am going to do so--if i can locate them." "perhaps the owners will sell cheap." "i shall explain the situation and make a fair offer. i do not believe in any underhand work," was the ready answer. "then you are not like some men i have met," said joe, and told about ulmer montgomery and his so-called antiquities. "that man will never amount to anything, joe--mark my words. he will always be a hanger-on as we call them, in the business world." "i believe you, sir." "honesty pays in the long run. a rogue may make something at the start but sooner or later he will find himself exposed." maurice vane remained at the hotel for a week and then left to go to chicago on business. from that point he was going to montana as soon as the weather permitted. after that several weeks slipped by without anything unusual happening. during those days joe fell in again with felix gussing. "we are going to move to riverside," said the dude, if such he may still be called, although he was a good business man. "i have rented a house there--the old martin place--and if you ever come to the town you must visit us." "thank you, i will," answered our hero. "my wife thinks a great deal of you and you must stop at the house during your stay at riverside," went on felix gussing. a change came for joe much quicker than was anticipated. one night, late in the winter, he was just preparing to retire, when he smelt smoke. he ran out of his room and to an air shaft and saw the smoke coming up thickly. "the hotel must be on fire!" he thought. "if it is, i'll have to notify the management!" he jumped rather than ran down the several stairways to the hotel office. here he told the proprietor and the cashier. an examination was made and the fire was located in the laundry. "go and awaken all the guests," said mr. drew, and joe ran off to do as bidden. other boys did the same, and before long the guests were hurrying through the hallways and down the elevators and stairs. by this time the smoke was coming thickly, and presently a sheet of flame burst through at the rear of the hotel. the fire alarm had been given and several engines and a hook-and-ladder company dashed on the scene. "are your guests all out?" demanded a police officer. "i believe so," answered mr. drew. "i'm going to take a look around," said joe, and darted upstairs once more. he visited room after room, only to find them empty. from the rear of the hotel came the crackling of flames and down in the street the fire engines were pounding away, sending their streams of water into the structure. on the third floor of the building our hero came across an old lady who was rather queer in her mind. the lady was also lame and walked with great difficulty. "oh, joseph! what is the trouble?" she cried. "the hotel is on fire, mrs. dalley. come, let me help you out." "on fire! oh, i must save my canary!" and the old lady started back for her room. "you haven't got time, mrs. dalley. come with me." "i cannot let my dear dick perish!" answered the old lady, firmly. joe looked along the hall and saw that the flames were moving swiftly toward the room the old lady had occupied. to enter the apartment would be highly dangerous. "you simply can't go after the bird, madam," he said. "come with me!" "my bird! my bird!" screamed mrs. dalley, and tried to run, or rather hobble, towards her room, despite the smoke that was now rolling over her head. "you must come with me!" exclaimed joe, and drew her back. she tried to struggle and then, without warning, fainted in his arms. the burden was a heavy one, but our hero did not shirk the task before him. he half dragged and half carried the unconscious lady to the nearest staircase and almost fell to the bottom. the smoke on the second floor was so thick he could scarcely see. but he kept on and went down another flight and reached the office. he could hardly breathe and the tears were running down both cheeks. "hullo there, boy!" came the call of a fireman, as he appeared through the smoke. "better get out of here!" "help me with this lady," answered joe. "a lady! oh, all right!" and in a moment more the fireman had mrs. dalley over his shoulder and was carrying her out. joe came close behind. the lady was taken to a nearby drug store where she speedily revived. by the prompt efforts of the fire department only a small portion of the hotel was burnt. but the whole building was water-soaked, and all of the boarders had to move out, and then the place was closed up. "out of a place once again," thought our hero, rather dismally. "what's to do next?" this was not an easy question to answer. he looked around for another opening but, finding none, resolved to pay a visit to riverside. "i can call on the gussings, and on ned," he thought. "i know all of them will be glad to see me. and maybe mr. mallison will be wanting to make some arrangements for next summer. i suppose he'll run the boats as usual." "going to leave philadelphia, eh?" said frank. "do you intend to come back, joe?" "i don't know yet, frank." "well, i wish you luck." "i wish you the same." "if you go to work for mallison this summer, maybe you can get me a job too." "i'll remember that," answered our hero. his preparations were soon made, and then he boarded a train for riverside. he did not dream of the surprises in store for him. chapter xxiv. the blue box at last. after calling on the gussings and being invited to remain there for several days, joe took himself to ned talmadge's residence. ned was very glad to see him and had to give all the particulars of another trip he had made to the west. "i had a splendid time," said ned. "i wish you had been along." "then you like the west, ned?" "indeed i do,--better than the east." "perhaps i'll go west some day," went on our hero, and told his friend of what maurice vane had said. "i saw some mines while i was out there," continued ned. "i went to the very bottom of one mine. i can tell you i felt a bit shivery, being so far underground." "i suppose the miners get used to it." "it would be a joke on those swindlers if that mine should prove of value," went on ned, after a pause. "i hope, for mr. vane's sake, it does prove valuable." "now your hotel is burnt out, what are you going to do?" "i haven't made up my mind, ned. perhaps i'll come back here, to work for mr. mallison." "then we'll be together again next summer. that will suit me." the boys had a good time together and then joe said he would like to pay a visit to his old home on the mountain side. ned readily consented to go along. "but i don't imagine you'll find much of the old cabin left," he added. there was still a little ice in the lake, but they rowed to the spot without great difficulty and made their way to the tumble-down cabin. it was not an inviting sight and it made joe feel sober to view the locality . "joe, you never heard anything of that blue box, did you?" asked ned, after several minutes of silence. "no." "it ought to be somewhere in this vicinity." "it's gone, and that is all there is to it," said our hero, and gave a long sigh. the boys tramped around the vicinity for a good half hour, and then sat down on a hollow log to eat a lunch they had brought along. "let us build a fire beside the old log," said ned. "it will help to keep us warm." joe was willing and the two boys soon had some leaves and twigs gathered, and placed some good-sized branches on top to make the blaze last. then they began to eat and to warm themselves at the same time. "this log would make a good hiding-place for some wild animal," remarked ned. "can anything be inside?" "it's not likely, ned. the smoke would drive out any living creature." "i'm going to get a stick and poke into the log." both boys procured sticks and began to poke at the log. presently they felt something move and a half-dazed snake came into view. "there's your animal, ned!" exclaimed joe. "oh, a snake! keep him away!" roared ned, badly frightened. "he can't hurt you--he is too stiff from the cold," answered our hero, and quickly dispatched the snake with a stone. "do you suppose there are any more in the tree?" asked the rich boy, still keeping at a distance. "more than likely. i'll poke around with my stick and see." "be careful!" "i am not afraid." joe's stick had something of a crotch on the end of it and with this he began to rake among the dead leaves that had blown into the hollow log. he brought out a great quantity but no more snakes showed themselves. "i reckon he was the only one after all, ned." "the log is burning!" said ned, an instant later. "see, the smoke is coming out of the hollow." "my stick is caught," said joe, pulling hard on something. "i guess--well, i declare!" he gave a jerk, and from the hollow came a square object, covered with smoking dirt and leaves. "what is it?" "unless i am mistaken, it is a tin box." "oh, joe, the blue box?" joe did not answer for he was brushing the smoking leaves and dirt from the object. as he cleaned it off he caught sight of some blue paint. on one end the box was badly charred from the fire. "it's the blue box, sure enough," said joe. "and we came close to burning it up!" groaned ned. "oh, joe, i am so sorry!" "it's not your fault, ned, i was as much to blame as anybody. but who would look for the box out here?" "perhaps some wild animal carried it off." "that may be." joe had the box cleaned off by this time. it was still hot at one end and smoking. he tried to pull it open, but found it locked. "the contents will burn up before i can open it!" cried joe. he did not know what to do, and in desperation began to pry at the box with his stick and his jackknife. then the box broke open, scattering some half-burnt papers in all directions. the boys picked the papers up and also a small bag of buckskin. when joe opened the bag he found it contained exactly a hundred dollars in gold. "that's a nice find," said ned. "anyway, you are a hundred dollars richer than you were." joe began to peruse the half-burnt documents but could make little or nothing out of them. he saw his own name and also that of a certain william a. bodley, and an estate in iowa was mentioned. "what do you find, joe?" "i can't tell you, ned. the papers are too badly burnt." "let me look at them." our hero was willing, and the two boys spent an hour in trying to decipher the documents. "it is certainly a puzzle," said the rich boy. "why not let my father look over them?" joe was willing, and after wrapping up the documents with care, and pocketing the hundred dollars in gold, joe led the way back to the boat. the wreck of the blue box was left behind, for it was rusty and worthless. that evening mr. talmadge, ned and joe spent two hours in going over the documents and trying to supply the parts which had been rotted or burnt away. they were only successful in part. "i do not wish to say much about this, joe," said ned's father. "but it would seem from these papers that you are the son of one william a. bodley, who at one time owned a farm in iowa, in the township of millville. did you ever hear hiram bodley speak of this?" "never." "we might write to the authorities at millville and see what they have to say." "i wish you'd do it. they may pay more attention to you than to a boy." "i'll write at once." "father, hadn't joe better stay here until we get a reply?" put in ned. "he may do so and welcome," answered mr. talmadge. the letter was dispatched the next day and our hero waited anxiously for the reply. it came five days later and was as follows: "your letter of inquiry received. there was a william a. bodley in this township twelve years ago. he sold his farm to a man named augustus greggs and then disappeared. before he sold out he lost his wife and several children by sickness. nobody here seems to know what became of him. "joseph korn." "that is short and to the point," said mr. talmadge, "but it is not satisfying. it does not state if this william a. bodley had any relatives so far as known." "i guess the authorities did not want to bother about the matter," said joe. "why don't you visit millville, joe?" questioned ned. "i was thinking i could do that. it wouldn't cost a fortune, and i've got that hundred dollars in gold to fall back on, besides my regular savings." "you might learn something to your advantage," came from mr. talmadge. "i think it would be money well spent." "father, can't i go with joe?" asked ned. "no, ned, you must attend to your school duties." "then, joe, you must send me full particulars by mail," said the rich boy. "of course i'll do that, ned," replied our hero. it was arranged that joe should leave riverside on monday and ned went to the depot to see him off. "i wish you the best of luck, joe!" called out ned, as the train left the station. "i don't know of a fellow who deserves better luck than you do!" chapter xxv. joe visits chicago. joe found millville a sleepy town of three or four hundred inhabitants. there was one main street containing two blocks of stores, a blacksmith shop, a creamery and two churches. when he stepped off the train our hero was eyed sharply by the loungers about the platform. "anything i can' do for you?" asked one of the men, the driver of the local stage. "will you tell me where mr. joseph korn lives?" "joe lives up in the brown house yonder. but he ain't home now. he's doing a job of carpentering." "can you tell me where?" "up to the widow fallow's place. take you there for ten cents." "very well," and our hero jumped into the rickety turnout which went by the name of the millville stage. the drive was not a long one and soon they came to a halt in front of a residence where a man wearing a carpenter's apron was mending a broken-down porch. "there's joe," said the stage driver, laconically. the man looked up in wonder when joe approached him. he dropped his hammer and stood with his arms on his hips. "this is mr. joseph korn, i believe?" "that's me, young man." "i am joe bodley. you wrote to mr. talmadge, of riverside, a few days ago. i came on to find out what i could about a mr. william a. bodley who used to live here." "oh, yes! well, young man, i can't tell you much more 'n i did in that letter. bodley sold out, house, goods and everything, and left for parts unknown." "did he have any relatives around here?" "not when he left. he had a wife and three children--a girl and two boys--but they died." "did you ever hear of any relatives coming to see him--a man named hiram bodley?" "not me--but augustus greggs--who bought his farm--might know about it." "i'll take you to the greggs' farm for ten cents," put in the stage driver. again a bargain was struck, and a drive of ten minutes brought them to the farm, located on the outskirts of millville. they found the farm owner at work by his wood pile, sawing wood. he was a pleasant appearing individual. "come into the house," he said putting down his saw. "i'm glad to see you," and when our hero had entered the little farmhouse he was introduced to mrs. greggs and two grown-up sons, all of whom made him feel thoroughly at home. "to tell the truth," said mr. greggs, "i did not know william bodley very well. i came here looking for a farm and heard this was for sale, and struck a bargain with him." "was he alone at that time?" questioned joe. "he was, and his trouble seemed to have made him a bit queer--not but what he knew what he was doing." "did you learn anything about his family?" "he had lost his wife and two children by disease. what had happened to the other child was something of a mystery. i rather supposed it had died while away from home, but i was not sure." "have you any idea at all what became of william bodley?" "not exactly. once i met a man in pittsburg who had met a man of that name in idaho, among the mines. both of us wondered if that william a. bodley was the same that i had bought my farm from." "did he say what part of idaho?" "he did, but i have forgotten now. do you think he was a relative of yours?" "i don't know what to think. it may be that he was my father. "your father?" "yes," and joe told his story and mentioned the documents found in the blue tin box. "it does look as if he might be your father," said augustus greggs. "maybe you're the child that was away from home at the time his other children and his wife died." "do you think anybody else in this village would know anything more about this william bodley?" "no, i don't. but it won't do any harm to ask around. that stage driver knows all the old inhabitants. perhaps some of them can tell you something worth while." upon urgent invitation, joe took dinner at the greggs' farm and then set out to visit a number of folks who had lived in millville and vicinity for many years. all remembered william a. bodley and his family, but not one could tell what had become of the man after he had sold out and gone away. "maybe you had better advertise for him," suggested one man. "it will cost a good deal to advertise all over the united states," replied joe; "and for all i know he may be dead or out of the country." joe remained in millville two days and then took the train back to the east. ned was the first to greet him on his return to riverside. "what luck?" he asked, anxiously. "none whatever," was the sober answer. "oh, joe, that's too bad!" "i am afraid i am stumped, ned." they walked to the talmadge mansion, and that evening talked the matter over with ned's father. "i will arrange to have an advertisement inserted in a leading paper of each of our big cities," said mr. talmadge. "that will cost something, but not a fortune." "you must let me pay for it," said our hero. "no, joe, you can put this down to ned's credit--you two are such good chums," and mr. talmadge smiled quietly. the advertisements were sent out the following day, through an advertising agent, and all waited for over two weeks for some reply, but none came. "it's no use," said joe, and it must be admitted that he was much downcast. in the meantime he had seen andrew mallison and the hotel man said he would willingly hire him for the summer as soon as the season opened, and also give frank randolph a situation. "you had better be my guest until that time," said ned to our hero, when he heard of this. "thank you, ned, but i don't wish to remain idle so long." the very next mail after this talk brought news for our hero. a letter came from maurice vane, asking him if he wished to go to montana. "i am now certain that that mine is valuable," wrote the gentleman. "i am going to start west next monday. if you wish to go with me i will pay your fare and allow you a salary of ten dollars per week to start on. i think later on, i will have a good opening for you." "that settles it, i am going west!" cried joe, as he showed the letter to his chum. "well, i don't blame you," was the reply. "i know just how nice it is out there. you'll be sure to get along." before going to bed joe wired his acceptance of the offer, and in the morning received a telegram from maurice vane, asking him to go to chicago, to the palmer house. "that settles it, i'm off," said our hero, and bought a ticket for the great city by the lakes without delay. then he said good-bye to the talmadges and the gussings, and boarded the train at sundown. joe was now getting used to traveling and no longer felt green and out of place. he had engaged a berth, and took his ease until it was time to go to bed. arriving at chicago he made his way without delay to the palmer house. he found the hotel crowded and had some difficulty in getting a room. mr. maurice vane had not yet arrived. "i guess i'll leave a note for him," thought our hero, and sauntered into the reading-room to pen the communication. while joe was writing, two men came into the room and sat down behind a pillar that was close at hand. they were in earnest conversation and he could not help but catch what was said. "you say he is coming west?" said one of the pair. "yes,--he started yesterday." "and he has found out that the mine is really valuable?" "i think so. anyway he is quite excited about it. he sent a telegram to that boy, too." "the hotel boy you mean?" "yes." so the talk ran on and joe at length got up to take a look at the two men. they were gaff caven and pat malone. at once our hero drew out of sight again. "how can you get the best of vane, gaff?" asked malone, after a pause. "there is but one way, malone." "and that is?" "can i trust you?" "haven't you trusted me before?" "we must--" caven paused. "we won't talk about it in this public place. come to my room and i'll lay my plan before you." then the two arose and left the reading-room as rapidly as they had entered it. chapter xxvi. how a satchel disappeared. "they certainly mean mischief," joe told himself, after the two men had vanished. he saw them enter an elevator, but did not know at what floor they alighted. looking over the hotel register he was unable to find the names of either caven or malone, or even ball. evidently the rascals were traveling under other names now. "they'll bear watching," he concluded. "i must put mr. vane on guard as soon as he comes in." he gave up the idea of leaving a note and took his station in the corridor of the hotel. after waiting about two hours he saw a well-known form approaching, dress-suit case in hand. "mr. vane!" "oh, joe, so you're here already! i'm glad i won't have to wait for you." "i'm afraid you won't be able to get a room, mr. vane. but you can have mine." "i telegraphed ahead for a room, joe." "do you know that your enemies are here?" went on our hero. "my enemies?" "gaff caven and pat malone. but they are traveling under other names." "have they seen you?" "i think not, sir." mr. vane soon had his room assigned to him and he and our hero passed up in the elevator. as soon as they were in the apartment by themselves, joe related what he had seen and heard. "they are certainly on my trail," mused maurice vane. "and they must have kept pretty close or they wouldn't know that i had asked you to accompany me." "they have some plot, mr. vane." "have you any idea what it is?" "no, sir, excepting that they are going to try to do you out of your interest in that mine." maurice vane and joe talked the matter over for an hour, but without satisfaction. then they went to the dining room for something to eat. "we start for montana in the morning," said the gentleman. "i think the quicker i get on the ground the better it will be for me." although maurice vane and joe did not know it, both were shadowed by caven and malone. the two rascals had disguised themselves by donning false beards and putting on spectacles. "they leave in the morning," said caven. "malone, we must get tickets for the same train, and, if possible, the same sleeping car." "it's dangerous work," grumbled pat malone. "if you want to back out, say so, and i'll go it alone." "i don't want to back out. but we must be careful." "i'll be careful, don't fear," answered the leader of the evil pair. at the ticket office of the hotel, maurice vane procured the necessary tickets and sleeper accommodations to the town of golden pass, idaho. he did not notice that he was watched. a moment later gaff caven stepped up to the desk. "i want a couple of tickets to golden pass, too," he said, carelessly. "yes, sir." "let me see, what sleeper did that other gentleman take?" "number 2, sir--berths 7 and 8." "then give me 9 and 10 or 5 and 6," went on caven. "9 and 10--here you are, sir," said the clerk, and made out the berth checks. without delay caven hurried away, followed by malone. "we'll be in the sleeping compartment right next to that used by vane and the boy," chuckled gaff caven. "pat, it ought to be dead easy." "have you the chloroform?" "yes, twice as much as we'll need." "when can we leave the train?" "at three o'clock, at a town called snapwood. we can get another train two hours later,--on the northern route." all unconscious of being watched so closely, maurice vane and joe rode to the depot and boarded the train when it came along. joe had been looking for caven and malone, but without success. "i cannot see those men anywhere," he said. "they are probably in hiding," said his employer. the train was only half full and for the time being caven and malone kept themselves either in the smoking compartment or in the dining car. it was dark when they took their seats, and soon the porter came through to make up the berths for the night. "i must confess i am rather sleepy," said maurice vane. "so am i," returned our hero. "i am sure i can sleep like a top, no matter how much the car shakes." "then both of us may as well go to bed at once." so it was arranged, and they had the porter put up their berths a few minutes later. maurice vane took the lower resting place while our hero climbed to the top. although very tired it was some time before joe could get to sleep. he heard maurice vane breathing heavily and knew that his employer must be fast in the land of dreams. when joe awoke it was with a peculiar, dizzy feeling in his head. his eyes pained him not a little and for several minutes he could not remember where he was. then came a faint recollection of having tried to arise during the night but of being held down. "i must have been dreaming," he thought. "but it was exactly as if somebody was keeping me down and holding something over my mouth and nose." he stretched himself and then pushed aside the berth curtain and gazed out into the aisle of the car. the porter was already at work, turning some of the berths into seats once more. joe saw that it was daylight and consulted the nickel watch he carried. "eight o'clock!" he exclaimed. "i've overslept myself sure! mr. vane must be up long ago." he slipped into his clothing and then knocked on the lower berth. he heard a deep sigh. "mr. vane!" "eh? oh, joe, is that you? what time is it?" "eight o'clock." "what!" maurice vane started up. "i've certainly slept fast enough this trip. are you getting hungry waiting for me?" "i just woke up myself." "oh!" maurice vane stretched himself. "my, how dizzy i am." "i am dizzy too, sir. it must be from the motion of the car." "probably, although i rarely feel so, and i ride a great deal. i feel rather sick at my stomach, too," went on the gentleman, as he began to dress. joe had just started to go to the lavatory to wash up when he heard his employer utter an exclamation. "joe!" "yes, sir!" "did you see anything of my satchel?" "you took it into the berth with you." "i don't see it." "it must be somewhere around. i saw it when you went to bed." "yes, i put it under my pillow." both made a hasty search, but the satchel could not be found. the dress-suit case stood under the seat and joe's was beside it. "this is strange. can i have been robbed?" "was there much in that satchel, mr. vane?" "yes, those mining shares and some other articles of value." "then we must find the satchel by all means." "i'll question the porter about this." the colored man was called and questioned, but he denied having seen the bag. by this time quite a few passengers became interested. "has anybody left this car?" asked maurice vane. "the gen'men that occupied numbers 9 and 10, sah," said the porter. "when did they get off?" " 'bout three o'clock, sah--when de train stopped at snapwood." "i haven't any tickets for snapwood," said the conductor, who had appeared on the scene. "then they must have had tickets for some other point," said joe. "that looks black for them." the porter was asked to describe the two men and did so, to the best of his ability. then another search was made, and in a corner, under a seat, a bottle was found, half filled with chloroform. "it's as plain as day to me," said maurice vane. "joe, i was chloroformed." "perhaps i was, too. that's what gave us the dizzy feeling." "and those two men--" "must have been caven and malone in disguise," finished our hero. chapter xxvii. joe makes a discovery. "who are caven and malone?" asked the conductor of the train, while a number of passengers gathered around, to hear what maurice vane and our hero might have to say. "they are two rascals who are trying to do me out of my share of a mine," explained maurice vane. "i had my mining shares in that satchel." "if you wish i'll telegraph back to snapwood for you," went on the train official. "how many miles is that?" "a little over two hundred." "what is the next stop of this train?" "leadington." "when will we get there?" "in ten minutes." a telegram was prepared and sent back to snapwood as soon as leadington was reached. the train was held for five minutes and it was learned that nobody had been seen at the station there at three in the morning, as the night operator and station master were away, there being no passengers to get on the train bound west. maurice vane was much disturbed and did not know what to do. "to go back and look for them at snapwood may be a mere waste of time," said he. "on the other hand, i don't feel much like going on while the shares are out of my possession." "if you wish it, mr. vane, i'll go back," said joe. "you can go ahead, and if anything turns up i will telegraph to you." this pleased the gentleman, and he said joe could go back on the very next train. the conductor was again consulted, and our hero left the train bound west a quarter of an hour later. "here is some money," said maurice vane on parting. "you'll need it." and he handed over two hundred dollars. "oh, mr. vane! will i need as much as this?" "perhaps. if you see those rascals you may have a long chase to capture them. do not hesitate to spend the money if it appears necessary to do so." long before noon our hero was on the way east on a train scheduled to stop at snapwood. he went without his dress-suit case and carried his money in four different pockets. the train was almost empty and the riding proved decidedly lonely. in a seat he found an omaha paper, but he was in no humor for reading. when noon came he took his time eating his dinner, so that the afternoon's ride might not appear so lasting. about half-past two o'clock the train came to an unexpected halt. looking out of the window joe saw that they were in something of a cut, close to the edge of a woods. the delay continued, and presently one passenger after another alighted, to learn the meaning of the hold-up. joe did likewise, and walked through the cut toward the locomotive. the mystery was easily explained. on one side of the cut the bank had toppled over the tracks, carrying with it two trees of good size. a number of train hands were already at work, sawing the trees into pieces, so that they might be shifted clear of the tracks. joe watched the men laboring for a few minutes and then walked up the bank, to get a look at the surroundings. then he heard a whistle and saw a train approaching from the opposite direction. it came to a halt a few hundred feet away. as the delay continued our hero walked along the bank of the cut and up to the newly-arrived train. the latter was crowded with passengers, some of whom also got out. "did that train stop at snapwood?" he asked of one of the passengers. "it did," was the answer. "did you see anybody get on?" "no, but somebody might have gotten on. i wasn't looking." "thank you." "looking for a friend?" "no," said joe, and moved on. without delay our hero ran to the front end of the newly-arrived train and got aboard. as he walked through he gave every grown passenger a close look. at the end of the third car he came upon two suspicious-looking individuals, who were gazing at a bit of paper in the hands of one. joe came closer and saw that the paper was a mining share. "caven and malone, as sure as fate!" he murmured to himself. "what had i best do next?" while joe was trying to make up his mind, caven chanced to glance up and his eyes fell upon our hero. he gave a cry of dismay and thrust the mining share out of sight. "what's the matter?" asked malone in a low tone. "look there, pat! that boy!" "no!" "but it is!" "how did he get on this train?" "i don't know. but it's unpleasant enough for us." "do you suppose vane is around?" asked malone, nervously. "he may be." the two men stared around the car. only some women and children were present, the men having gone out to learn the cause of the delay. "perhaps we had better get out," went on malone. "all right" they arose, and, satchel in hand, started to leave the train. "stop!" cried joe, and caught caven by the arm. "let go of me, boy!" ejaculated the rascal, and tried to pull himself loose. "i won't let go, gaff caven." "if you don't, it will be the worse for you! i am not to be trifled with!" "you must give up that satchel." "bah!" "if you don't, i'm going to have you arrested." "who is going to arrest me here?" sneered the man who had robbed maurice vane. "don't you know we are miles away from any town?" "i don't care. give up the satchel, or i'll call the train hands." "i'll give up nothing, boy! stand out of my way!" gaff caven gave joe a violent shove which sent our hero up against a seat. then he turned and ran from the car, with pat malone ahead of him. "stop them!" cried joe, as soon as he could recover. "stop the thieves!" others took up the cry, but before anything could be done caven and malone were out of the car and on to the tracks. both stared around in perplexity for a second. "come on, we can't afford to waste time here!" cried caven, and ran for the bank of the cut, up which he scrambled hastily, with his confederate at his side. joe saw them make the move and was not slow to follow. near at hand was a tall, western young man, with bronzed features and a general outdoor manner. "say!" cried our hero. "will you help me to catch those two men? they are thieves and i want them arrested. if you'll help me catch them i'll pay you well for your trouble." "i'll go you, stranger!" answered the western young man, readily. "you are certain of your game?" "yes. that satchel has their plunder in it. they robbed a friend of mine." "this suits me then, friend. we'll round 'em up in short order." by this time caven and malone had gained the woods. looking back they saw joe coming behind, accompanied by the westerner. "he's after us, and he has got somebody to help him," ejaculated malone. "well, i reckon we can run as fast as they can," answered gaff caven. "come ahead!" he led the way along a trail that ran through the woods and came out on a winding country road. beyond was another patch of timber. "this way, pat," said he. "we'll have to take to the woods again. they are too close for comfort." "can't we climb a tree, or hide in a hollow?" questioned the confederate. "we'll see," said caven. they pushed on harder than ever, and passed in among some tall trees. then they came to a tree that was bent over. "up you go," cried caven, and gave his confederate a boost into the tree. then he hauled himself up. "now climb to the top," he went on, and malone did as requested. caven followed suit, and both hid themselves among the thick branches. "they won't find us here," said malone, after ten minutes had passed. "don't make a noise," whispered caven. after that they remained silent. from a great distance came a shouting, and the whistling of locomotives. the trees were being hauled from the car tracks. a little later they heard more whistling and then the two trains passed on their way. "the trains have gone," whispered malone. "do you think the boy got aboard one of them?" "no, i don't," answered his companion. "he is too determined a lad to give up so easily. he must be still looking for us." chapter xxviii. from out of a tree. caven was right, joe and his newly-made friend were still in the woods, doing their best to locate the two rascals. they had found the trail but lost it in the patch of tall timber, and were gazing around when they heard the trains leaving the cut. "there goes our outfit, friend," said the westerner. "and there won't be another train along for several hours." "it's too bad, but it can't be helped," answered our hero. "but i'll pay you for all time lost, mr.--" "plain bill badger is my handle, stranger." "my name is joe bodley." "what about these two varmin you are after?" "they were trying to rob a friend of mine of some mining shares," answered joe, and gave a few details. "well, i vow!" cried bill badger "that mine is close to one my dad owns. they say it ain't of much account though." "mr. vane thinks it is valuable. he has had a mining expert go into the matter with great care." "then that's a different thing. were you bound for the mine?" "yes, and so was mr. vane. we were on the train together when he was robbed." "i see. i was going out to my dad's mine." "then perhaps we can journey together--after we get through here," said joe. "i'm willing. i like your looks. shake." and the pair shook hands. although a westerner, bill badger knew no more about following a trail than did our hero, consequently they proceeded on their hunt with difficulty. "reckon we've missed 'em," said bill badger, a while later. "don't see hide nor hair of 'em anywhere." "it's too bad if they got away," answered joe. "perhaps--what was that?" the cracking of a tree limb had reached their ears, followed by a cry of alarm. a limb upon which pat malone was standing had broken, causing the fellow to slip to another branch below. "hush! don't make so much noise!" said caven, in alarm. "gosh! i thought i was going to tumble, out of the tree to the ground," gasped malone, when he could catch his breath. "they are coming--i can see them," whispered gaff caven. "be as quiet as a mouse." in a moment more joe and bill badger stood directly under the tree. "i think the noise came from near here," said joe. "i agree," answered the westerner. at that moment our hero looked up and saw a man's arm circling a tree limb far over his head. "they are up there!" he shouted. "sure?" "yes, i just saw one of them." "then we've got 'em treed," came with a broad grin from bill badger. "what's the next turn of the game?" "we have got to make them both prisoners." "all right. have you got a shooting iron?" "no, but i can get a club." "then do it, and i'll use this, if it's necessary," and the young westerner pulled a pistol from his hip pocket. "i wish we had some ropes, with which to tie them," continued joe. "here's a good big handkerchief." "that's an idea. my handkerchief is also good and strong." "you do the pow-wowing and i'll do the shooting, if it's necessary," said bill badger. joe looked up into the tree again but could see nobody. "caven!" he called out. "i know you are up there and i want you to come down." to this remark and request there was no reply. "if you don't come down we may begin to fire at you," went on our hero. "oh, say, do you think he'll shoot?" whispered malone, in sudden alarm. "no; shut up!" returned caven. "are you coming down or not?" went on joe. still there was no reply. "i'll give 'em a shot to warn 'em" said bill badger, and fired into the air at random. "don't shoot me!" roared pat malone. "please don't! i'll come down!" "well, you come down first. caven, you stay up there for the present." after this there was a pause, and presently pat malone came down out of the tree looking sheepish enough. "up with your hands!" cried bill badger, and confronted by the firearms the hands of the rascal went up in a hurry. then joe took his handkerchief and stepped up behind malone. the hands were lowered and crossed and our hero tied them firmly together at the wrists. "now back up to that tree yonder," said our hero. "and don't you dare to move." "i'll do just as you say," whined malone. "only don't shoot me." he was a coward at heart. "now, caven, you come down!" shouted joe. "i don't think i care to," answered that rascal, coolly. "if you don't come down i'll come up after you with my pistol," broke in bill badger. "maybe i can do a little shooting myself," went on gaff caven. "i'll risk that." more words followed, but in the end caven thought it best to descend and did so. yet his face still wore a look of defiance. he was compelled to turn around, and his hands were also tied behind him. "now i want those mining shares, caven," said joe. "i haven't got them." "where is the satchel?" "i threw it away when you started after me." "down at the railroad tracks?" "yes." "don't you believe that," broke in bill badger. "at least, not unless he emptied the satchel first." "show me the way you came," said joe. "make him point out the satchel, or make him suffer," went on bill badger. "i've got an idea!" cried our hero, suddenly. "perhaps he left the satchel in the tree." "that's so. well, if you want to climb up and look around, i'll watch the pair of 'em." "don't let them get away." "if they try it, they'll go to the hospital or the graveyard," replied the western young man, significantly. "the satchel ain't in the tree," growled caven, but his tone lacked positiveness. "i'll soon know for certain," said our hero. he climbed the tree with ease, having been used to such doings when living with the old hermit. as he went from branch to branch he kept his eyes open, and presently saw a bit of leather sticking out of a crotch. he worked his way over and soon had the satchel in his possession. "how are you making out?" called up bill badger. "i've got it!" shouted our hero, joyfully. "got the papers?" "yes,--everything," said joe, after a hasty examination. "hang the luck!" muttered gaff caven, much chagrined. our hero was soon on the ground once more. here he examined the contents of the satchel with care. everything was there, and, locking the bag, he slung the strap over his shoulder. "now, what's the next move?" queried bill badger. "we ought to have these men locked up. how far is it to the nearest town?" "ten or twelve miles, i reckon. i don't know much about the roads." "why can't you let us go?" asked malone. "you've got what you want." "if i let you go you'll be trying to make more trouble for mr. vane and myself." "don't talk to them," growled caven. "if you want to lock us up, do so!" he was in an ugly humor and ready for a fight. "we'll march 'em along," said bill badger, and so it was agreed. chapter xxix. the fate of two evildoers. "are you going to let them arrest us?" whispered pat malone, as the whole party moved through the woods towards a wagon road which ran nearly parallel to the railroad tracks. "not if i can help it," caven whispered back. "we must watch our chances." half a mile was covered and they came out on the road. it was growing dark and there were signs of a storm in the air. "it's going to rain," said joe, and he was right. "see here, i don't want to get wet to the skin," growled caven. "i'll catch my death of cold." "there is a barn just ahead," said bill badger. "let us get inside." joe was willing, and soon all were in the barn. it was now raining at a heavy rate and they were glad to be under shelter. "with a barn there ought to be a house," remarked our hero. "but i don't see any." it grew still darker, and the rain came down in perfect sheets. the roof of the barn leaked, and they had to move from one spot to another, to keep out of the drippings. while this was going on gaff caven was working at the handkerchief that bound his wrists and soon had it loose. pat malone also liberated himself. caven winked suggestively at his confederate. "watch me," he whispered. "when i give the signal we'll knock 'em both down and run for it." "but the pistol--" began malone. "i'll take care of that." in moving around the old barn caven spotted a club and moved close to it. suddenly he snatched the weapon up and hit bill badger on the arm with it. the pistol flew into a corner and went off, sending a bullet into a board. "run!" yelled caven, and leaped for the open doorway. malone came beside him, and both ran off through the rain as fast as their legs could carry them. joe was startled and made after the pair. but at a groan from bill badger he paused. "are you badly hurt?" he asked. "he gave me a stiff crack on the arm," growled the young westerner. joe ran for the corner and caught up the pistol. then he leaped for the open doorway. "stop, both of you!" he called out. "stop, or i'll fire!" "don't you dare!" shrieked pat malone, and ran faster than ever, behind the nearest of the trees. joe aimed the weapon, but before he could pull the trigger both of the bad men were out of sight. "go after them, if you want to," said bill badger. "i'll go too." "you are not badly hurt?" queried our hero, sympathetically. "no, but if i catch that fellow i'll give it to him good," grumbled the young westerner. both now left the barn and made after caven and malone. once they caught sight of the rascals, moving in the direction of the railroad tracks. "they are going to catch a train if they can!" cried our hero. "i hear one coming." "it's a freight most likely," was bill badger's answer. he was right, and soon the long line of freight cars hove into sight around a bend and on an upgrade. far in the distance they beheld caven and malone scooting for the train with all speed. "they are going to make it," sighed joe. "too bad!" they continued to run, but before they could get anywhere near the tracks they saw caven leap for the train and get between two of the cars. then malone got aboard also, and the freight train passed out of sight through the cut. "that ends the chase," said joe, halting. "they were slick to get away." "if we only knew where they would get off we could send word ahead," suggested his companion. "well, we don't know, and after this they will probably keep their eyes wide open and keep out of sight as much as possible. anyway, i don't think they'll bother mr. vane any more." "it's not likely. i'm a witness to what they were up to," answered the young westerner. both joe and bill badger were soaked from the rain and resolved to strike out for the nearest farmhouse or village. they kept along the railroad tracks, and presently came to a shanty where there was a track-walker. "how far to the nearest village?" asked our hero. "half a mile." "thank you." "how is it you are out here in the rain?" went on the track-walker. "we got off our train and it went off without us." "oh, i see. too bad." again our hero and his companion hurried on, and soon came in sight of a small village. they inquired their way to a tavern, and there dried their clothing and procured a good, hot meal, which made both feel much better. "i am going to send a telegram to mr. vane," said joe, and did so without further delay. he was careful of the satchel and did not leave it out of his sight. they found they could get a train for the west that evening at seven o'clock and at the proper time hurried to the depot. "i'm glad i met you," said joe, to his newly-made friend. "now, what do you think i owe you for what you did?" "as we didn't land the fellows in jail you don't owe me anything," said bill badger, promptly. "oh, yes, i do." "well then, you can pay the extra expense, and let that fill the bill." "i'll certainly do that," said joe, promptly. as they rode along bill badger told something of himself and of the mine his father owned, and then joe told something of his own story. "did you say your name is joe bodley?" asked the young westerner, with deep interest. "yes." "and you are looking for a man by the name of william a. bodley?" "i am." "it seems to me i know a man by that name, although the miners all call him bill bodley." "where is this bill bodley?" "out in montana somewhere. he worked for my father once, about three years ago. he was rather a strange man, about fifty years old. he had white hair and a white beard, and acted as if he had great trouble on his mind." "you do not know where he is now?" "no, but perhaps my father knows." "then i'm going to see your father as soon as i can," said joe, decidedly. "mind you, i don't say that this bill bodley is the man you are after, joe. i don't want to raise any false hopes." "did you ever hear where the man came from?" "i think he told somebody that he once owned a farm in kansas or iowa." "this william a. bodley once owned a farm at millville, iowa." "is that so! then he may be the same man after all. to tell the truth, he looked a little bit like you." "was he a good man?" asked joe, eagerly. "yes, indeed. but some of the men poked fun at him because he was so silent and strange at times. i liked him and so did father. he left us to go prospecting in the mountains." thus the talk ran on for half an hour, when the train came to a sudden halt. "are we at a station?" asked bill badger. "i don't know," said joe. both looked out of the window but could see nothing except hills and forests. "we are in the foothills," said the young westerner. "something must be wrong on the tracks." "more fallen trees perhaps." "or a landslide. they have them sometimes, when it rains as hard as it did to-day." they left the car with some others and soon learned that there had been a freight collision ahead and that half a dozen freight cars had been smashed to splinters. "do you think it can be the freight that caven and malone boarded?" came from our hero, on hearing this news. "it might be," answered bill badger. "let us take a look. our train won't move for hours now." they walked to the scene of the wreck. one of the cars had been burnt up but the conflagration was now under control and a wrecking crew was already at work clearing the tracks so that they might be used. "anybody hurt?" asked joe of a train hand. "yes, two men killed. they were riding between the cars." "tramps?" "they didn't look like tramps. but they hadn't any right to ride on the freight." "where are they?" "over in the shanty yonder." with a queer sensation in his heart joe walked to the little building, accompanied by bill badger. a curious crowd was around and they had to force their way to the front. one look was enough. gaff caven and pat malone lay there, cold in death. they had paid the penalty of their crimes on earth and gone to the final judgment. chapter xxx. conclusion. "let us go away!" whispered joe, and moved out of the gathering without delay. "it was sure rough on 'em," was bill badger's comment. "oh, it was awful!" cried our hero. "i--i didn't expect this, did you?" "nobody did. it must have come sudden like on to 'em." "it makes me sick at heart to think of it. i--i hope it wasn't our fault." "not at all. if they hadn't broke away they'd be alive this minute. they'll never bother you or your friend again, joe." our hero felt weak at the knees and was glad enough to go back to the train, where he sank into his seat. he scarcely said another word until the wreck was cleared away and they were once more on their journey. "i reckon you are glad you got the satchel before this happened," remarked bill badger, when they were preparing to retire. "yes. but i--i wish they had gotten away. it's awful to think they are dead--and with such bad doings to their credit." joe did not sleep very well and he was up early in the morning and out on the rear platform, drinking in the fresh air. he felt as if he had passed through some fearful nightmare. "how do you like this climate?" asked bill badger, as he came out. "ain't it just glorious?" "it certainly is," said joe, and he remembered what ned had told him. "i don't wonder some folks like it better than the east." "oh, the east can't compare to it," answered bill badger. "why i was once down to new york and boston, and the crowd and confusion and smoke and smells made me sick for a week! give me the pure mountain air every time!" the day proved a pleasant one and when he did not remember the tragedy that had occurred our hero enjoyed the ride and the wild scenery. at last golden pass was reached, late at night, and they got off in a crowd of people. "joe!" "mr. vane!" was the answering cry, and soon the two were shaking hands. "let me introduce a new friend, mr. bill badger." "glad to know you." "mr. badger helped me get back your satchel," went on our hero. "then i am deeply indebted to him." "in that case, just drop the mister from my name," drawled the young westerner. "joe tells me you have a mine up here. my father has one, too--the mary jennie, next to the royal flush." "oh, yes, i know the mine, and i have met your father," said maurice vane. they walked to a hotel, and there joe and his young western friend told their stories, to which maurice vane listened with keen interest. the gentleman was shocked to learn of the sudden death of caven and malone. "it was certainly a sad ending for them," said he. "but, as badger says, they had nobody but themselves to blame for it." maurice vane was extremely glad to get back his mining shares and thanked bill badger warmly for what he had done. "don't you mention it," said the young westerner. "i'm going to hunt up dad now. when you get time, call and see us." "i'm coming up soon, to find out about that bill bodley," said joe. as late as it was joe listened to what maurice vane had to tell. "now that caven and malone are gone i do not anticipate further trouble at the mine," said the gentleman. "i am in practical possession of all the shares, and shall have a clear title to the whole property inside of a few weeks." when joe told him what bill badger had had to say about a certain man called bill bodley he was much interested. "yes, you must find out about this man at once," said he. "i will help you, as soon as certain matters are settled." the next morning proved a busy one and joe got no time to call upon bill badger's father. he visited the mine and looked over it with interest. during the middle of the afternoon he went back to town on an errand for mr. vane. he was passing a cabin on the outskirts when he heard loud words and a struggle. "let me go, you ruffian!" cried a weak voice. "leave that money alone!" "you shut up, old man!" was the answer. "the money is all right." "you are trying to rob me!" then there was another struggle, and suddenly a door burst open and a man leaped into the roadway. at sight of him joe came to a halt. the fellow was bill butts, the man who had tried to swindle josiah bean. "stop him!" came from the cabin. "he has my gold!" "stop!" cried joe, and ran up to butts. the next moment man and boy tripped and fell, but, luckily, our hero was on top. "let me go!" growled the man. "so we meet again, butts!" cried joe. the man stared in amazement and then began to struggle. seeing this, joe doubled up his fists and gave him a blow in the nose and in the right eye, which caused him to roar with pain. "that's right!" came from the doorway of the cabin. "give it to him! make him give me my gold!" "give up the gold," ordered joe. "there it is!" growled bill butts, and threw a buckskin bag towards the cabin. the man from within caught it up and stowed it away in his pocket. "shall i call a policeman?" asked joe. "i don't know," said the man from the cabin. he wore a troubled face and had white hair and a white beard. "it may be--wha-where did you come from?" he gasped. "where did i come from?" asked joe. "yes! yes! answer me quickly! you are --you must be a ghost! i saw you in my dreams last week!" "i don't understand you," said joe, and arose slowly to his feet, at which bill butts did likewise and began to retreat. "i never met you before." "no? it's queer." the man brushed his hand over his forehead. "yes, i must be dreaming. but i am glad i got my gold back." "so am i, but the rascal has run away." "never mind, let him go." "what makes you think you've seen me before?" questioned joe, and his breath came thick and fast. "i--er--i don't know. you mustn't mind me--i have queer spells at times. you see, i had a whole lot of trouble once, and when i get to thinking about it--" the man did not finish. "may i ask your name?" asked joe, and his voice trembled in spite of his efforts at self-control. "sure you can. it's bill bodley." "william a. bodley?" "yes. but how do you happen to know my full name?" "did you once own a farm in millville, iowa?" "i had a farm in iowa, yes. it was millville center in those days." joe drew closer and looked at the man with care and emotion. "did you ever have a brother named hiram bodley?" "i did--but he has been dead for years." "no, hiram bodley died only a short time ago," answered joe. "i used to live with him. my name is joe bodley. he told me i was his nephew." "you his nephew! hiram bodley's nephew! we didn't have any brothers or sisters, and he was a bachelor!" "i know he was a bachelor. but i don't know--" joe paused. "he told me joe died, at least i got a letter from somebody to that effect. but i was near crazy just then, and i can't remember exactly how it was. i lost my wife and two children and then i guess i about lost my mind for a spell. i sold out, and the next thing i knew i was roving around the mountains and in rags. then i took to mining, and now i've got a mine of my own, up yonder in the mountains. come in and talk this over." joe entered the cabin and sat down, and william bodley plied him with questions, all of which he answered to the best of his ability. "there was a blue tin box i had," said he, presently, "that contained some documents that were mine." "a blue tin box!" ejaculated joe. "hiram bodley had it and it got lost. i found it a long time afterwards and some parts of the documents were destroyed. i have the rest in my suit case at the hotel." "can i see those papers?" "certainly." "perhaps you are my son, joe?" "perhaps i am, sir." they went to the hotel, and the documents were produced. then william bodley brought out some letters he possessed. man and boy went over everything with care. "you must be my son!" cried william bodley. "thank heaven you are found!" and they shook hands warmly. he told joe to move over to the cabin, and our hero did so. it was a neat and clean place and soon joe felt at home. then he heard his father's tale in detail--an odd and wonderful story--of great trials and hardship. "there will always be something of a mystery about this," said william bodley. "but, no matter, so long as i have you with me." "uncle hiram was a queer stick," answered joe. "i suppose if he was alive he could explain many things." and in this joe was correct. let us add a few words more and then draw our tale to a close. when joe told maurice vane how he had found a father the gentlemen was much astonished. so were the badgers, but all were glad matters had ended so well. it was found that william bodley's mine was a valuable one. the ore in it was about equal to the ore in the mine owned by maurice vane, and this was likewise equal to that in the mine run by mr. badger. after some conversation on the subject it was agreed by all the interested parties to form a new company, embracing all the mines. of the shares of this new concern, one-third went to maurice vane, one-third to the badgers, and one-third to william bodley and joe. the necessary machinery was duly installed, and to-day the new company is making money fast. on the day after his trouble with mr. bodley, bill butts disappeared from town. but a week later he was arrested in denver and sent to jail for two years for swindling a ranchman. during the following summer joe received a visit from his old friend ned, and the two boys had a delightful time together. in the meantime joe spent half of his time at the mine and half over his books, for he was determined to get a good education. for a long time william bodley had been in feeble health, but with the coming of joe on the scene he began to mend rapidly, and was soon as hale and hearty as anybody. he was an expert miner, and was made general superintendent for the new company. to-day joe has a good education and is rich, but come what may, it is not likely that he will forget those days when he was known as "joe the hotel boy." end of project gutenberg etext of joe the hotel boy, by horatio alger jr. **the project gutenberg etext of songs of travel by stevenson** #21 in our series by robert louis stevenson copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. songs of travel and other verses by robert louis stevenson april, 1996 [etext #487] **the project gutenberg etext of songs of travel by stevenson** *****this file should be named strvl10.txt or strvl10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, strvl11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, strvl10a.txt. songs of travel and other verses by robert louis stevenson. scanned and proofed by david price, ccx074@ccj.coventry.ac.uk we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $4 million dollars per hour this year as we release some eight text files per month: thus upping our productivity from $2 million. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* songs of travel and other verses contents i. the vagabond give to me the life i love ii. youth and love: i. once only by the garden gate iii. youth and love: ii. to the heart of youth the world is a highwayside iv. in dreams, unhappy, i behold you stand v. she rested by the broken brook vi. the infinite shining heavens vii. plain as the glistering planets shine viii. to you, let snows and roses ix. let beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams x. i know not how it is with you xi. i will make you brooches and toys for your delight xii. we have loved of yore berried brake and reedy island xiii. matter triumphans son of my woman's body, you go, to the drum and fife xiv. bright is the ring of words xv. in the highlands, in the country places xvi. home no more home to me, wither must i wander? xvii. winter in rigorous hours, when down the iron lane xviii. the stormy evening closes now in vain xix. to dr. hake in the beloved hour that ushers day xx. to i knew thee strong and quiet like the hills xxi. the morning drum-call on my eager ear xxii. i have trod the upward and downward slope xxiii. he hears with gladdened heart the thunder xxiv. farewell, fair day and fading light! xxv. if this were faith god, if this were enough xxvi. my wife trusty, dusky, vivid, true xxvii. to the muse resign the rhapsody, the dream xxviii. to an island princess since long ago, a child at home xxix. to kalakaua the sliver ship, my king that was her name xxx. to princess kaiulani forth form her land to mine she goes xxxi. to mother maryanne to see the infinite pity of this place xxxii. in memoriam e. h. i knew a silver head was bright beyond compare xxxiii. to my wife long must elapse ere you behold again xxxiv. to my old familiars do you remember can we e'er forget? xxxv. the tropics vanish, and meseems that i xxxvi. to s. c. i heard the pulse of the besieging sea xxxvii. the house of tembinoka let us, who part like brothers, part like bards xxxviii. the woodman in all the grove, not stream nor bird xxxix. tropic rain as the single pang of the blow, when the metal is mingled well xl. an end of travel let now your soul in this substantial world xli. we uncommiserate pass into the night xlii. sing me a song of a lad that is gone xliii. to s. r. crockett blows the wind to-day, and the sun and rain are flying xliv. evensong the embers of the day are red i the vagabond (to an air of schubert) give to me the life i love, let the lave go by me, give the jolly heaven above and the byway nigh me. bed in the bush with stars to see, bread i dip in the river there's the life for a man like me, there's the life for ever. let the blow fall soon or late, let what will be o'er me; give the face of earth around and the road before me. wealth i seek not, hope nor love, nor a friend to know me; all i seek, the heaven above and the road below me. or let autumn fall on me where afield i linger, silencing the bird on tree, biting the blue finger. white as meal the frosty field warm the fireside haven not to autumn will i yield, not to winter even! let the blow fall soon or late, let what will be o'er me; give the face of earth around, and the road before me. wealth i ask not, hope nor love, nor a friend to know me; all i ask, the heaven above and the road below me. ii youth and love i once only by the garden gate our lips we joined and parted. i must fulfil an empty fate and travel the uncharted. hail and farewell! i must arise, leave here the fatted cattle, and paint on foreign lands and skies my odyssey of battle. the untented kosmos my abode, i pass, a wilful stranger: my mistress still the open road and the bright eyes of danger. come ill or well, the cross, the crown, the rainbow or the thunder, i fling my soul and body down for god to plough them under. iii youth and love ii to the heart of youth the world is a highwayside. passing for ever, he fares; and on either hand, deep in the gardens golden pavilions hide, nestle in orchard bloom, and far on the level land call him with lighted lamp in the eventide. thick as the stars at night when the moon is down, pleasures assail him. he to his nobler fate fares; and but waves a hand as he passes on, cries but a wayside word to her at the garden gate, sings but a boyish stave and his face is gone. iv in dreams, unhappy, i behold you stand as heretofore: the unremembered tokens in your hand avail no more. no more the morning glow, no more the grace, enshrines, endears. cold beats the light of time upon your face and shows your tears. he came and went. perchance you wept a while and then forgot. ah me! but he that left you with a smile forgets you not. v she rested by the broken brook, she drank of weary well, she moved beyond my lingering look, ah, whither none can tell! she came, she went. in other lands, perchance in fairer skies, her hands shall cling with other hands, her eyes to other eyes. she vanished. in the sounding town, will she remember too? will she recall the eyes of brown as i recall the blue? vi the infinite shining heavens rose and i saw in the night uncountable angel stars showering sorrow and light. i saw them distant as heaven, dumb and shining and dead, and the idle stars of the night were dearer to me than bread. night after night in my sorrow the stars stood over the sea, till lo! i looked in the dusk and a star had come down to me. vii plain as the glistering planets shine when winds have cleaned the skies, her love appeared, appealed for mine, and wantoned in her eyes. clear as the shining tapers burned on cytherea's shrine, those brimming, lustrous beauties turned, and called and conquered mine. the beacon-lamp that hero lit no fairer shone on sea, no plainlier summoned will and wit, than hers encouraged me. i thrilled to feel her influence near, i struck my flag at sight. her starry silence smote my ear like sudden drums at night. i ran as, at the cannon's roar, the troops the ramparts man as in the holy house of yore the willing eli ran. here, lady, lo! that servant stands you picked from passing men, and should you need nor heart nor hands he bows and goes again. viii to you, let snow and roses and golden locks belong. these are the world's enslavers, let these delight the throng. for her of duskier lustre whose favour still i wear, the snow be in her kirtle, the rose be in her hair! the hue of highland rivers careering, full and cool, from sable on to golden, from rapid on to pool the hue of heather-honey, the hue of honey-bees, shall tinge her golden shoulder, shall gild her tawny knees. ix let beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams, beauty awake from rest! let beauty awake for beauty's sake in the hour when the birds awake in the brake and the stars are bright in the west! let beauty awake in the eve from the slumber of day, awake in the crimson eve! in the day's dusk end when the shades ascend, let her wake to the kiss of a tender friend to render again and receive! x i know not how it is with you i love the first and last, the whole field of the present view, the whole flow of the past. one tittle of the things that are, nor you should change nor i one pebble in our path one star in all our heaven of sky. our lives, and every day and hour, one symphony appear: one road, one garden every flower and every bramble dear. xi i will make you brooches and toys for your delight of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. i will make a palace fit for you and me of green days in forests and blue days at sea. i will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, where white flows the river and bright blows the broom, and you shall wash your linen and keep your body white in rainfall at morning and dewfall at night. and this shall be for music when no one else is near, the fine song for singing, the rare song to hear! that only i remember, that only you admire, of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire. xii we have loved of yore (to an air of diabelli) berried brake and reedy island, heaven below, and only heaven above, through the sky's inverted azure softly swam the boat that bore our love. bright were your eyes as the day; bright ran the stream, bright hung the sky above. days of april, airs of eden, how the glory died through golden hours, and the shining moon arising, how the boat drew homeward filled with flowers! bright were your eyes in the night: we have lived, my love o, we have loved, my love. frost has bound our flowing river, snow has whitened all our island brake, and beside the winter fagot joan and darby doze and dream and wake. still, in the river of dreams swims the boat of love hark! chimes the falling oar! and again in winter evens when on firelight dreaming fancy feeds, in those ears of aged lovers love's own river warbles in the reeds. love still the past, o my love! we have lived of yore, o, we have loved of yore. xiii mater triumphans son of my woman's body, you go, to the drum and fife, to taste the colour of love and the other side of life from out of the dainty the rude, the strong from out of the frail, eternally through the ages from the female comes the male. the ten fingers and toes, and the shell-like nail on each, the eyes blind as gems and the tongue attempting speech; impotent hands in my bosom, and yet they shall wield the sword! drugged with slumber and milk, you wait the day of the lord. infant bridegroom, uncrowned king, unanointed priest, soldier, lover, explorer, i see you nuzzle the breast. you that grope in my bosom shall load the ladies with rings, you, that came forth through the doors, shall burst the doors of kings. xiv bright is the ring of words when the right man rings them, fair the fall of songs when the singer sings them. still they are carolled and said on wings they are carried after the singer is dead and the maker buried. low as the singer lies in the field of heather, songs of his fashion bring the swains together. and when the west is red with the sunset embers, the lover lingers and sings and the maid remembers. xv in the highlands, in the country places, where the old plain men have rosy faces, and the young fair maidens quiet eyes; where essential silence cheers and blesses, and for ever in the hill-recesses her more lovely music broods and dies. o to mount again where erst i haunted; where the old red hills are bird-enchanted, and the low green meadows bright with sward; and when even dies, the million-tinted, and the night has come, and planets glinted, lo, the valley hollow lamp-bestarred! o to dream, o to awake and wander there, and with delight to take and render, through the trance of silence, quiet breath; lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses, only the mightier movement sounds and passes; only winds and rivers, life and death. xvi (to the tune of wandering willie) home no more home to me, whither must i wander? hunger my driver, i go where i must. cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather; thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust. loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree. the true word of welcome was spoken in the door dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight, kind folks of old, you come again no more. home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces, home was home then, my dear, happy for the child. fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland; song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild. now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland, lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold. lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed, the kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old. spring shall come, come again, calling up the moorfowl, spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers; red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley, soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours; fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood fair shine the day on the house with open door; birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney but i go for ever and come again no more. xvii winter in rigorous hours, when down the iron lane the redbreast looks in vain for hips and haws, lo, shining flowers upon my window-pane the silver pencil of the winter draws. when all the snowy hill and the bare woods are still; when snipes are silent in the frozen bogs, and all the garden garth is whelmed in mire, lo, by the hearth, the laughter of the logs more fair than roses, lo, the flowers of fire! saranac lake. xviii the stormy evening closes now in vain, loud wails the wind and beats the driving rain, while here in sheltered house with fire-ypainted walls, i hear the wind abroad, i hark the calling squalls 'blow, blow,' i cry, 'you burst your cheeks in vain! blow, blow,' i cry, 'my love is home again!' yon ship you chase perchance but yesternight bore still the precious freight of my delight, that here in sheltered house with fire-ypainted walls, now hears the wind abroad, now harks the calling squalls. 'blow, blow,' i cry, 'in vain you rouse the sea, my rescued sailor shares the fire with me!' xix to dr. hake (on receiving a copy of verses) in the beloved hour that ushers day, in the pure dew, under the breaking grey, one bird, ere yet the woodland quires awake, with brief reveille summons all the brake: chirp, chirp, it goes; nor waits an answer long; and that small signal fills the grove with song. thus on my pipe i breathed a strain or two; it scarce was music, but 'twas all i knew. it was not music, for i lacked the art, yet what but frozen music filled my heart? chirp, chirp, i went, nor hoped a nobler strain; but heaven decreed i should not pipe in vain, for, lo! not far from there, in secret dale, all silent, sat an ancient nightingale. my sparrow notes he heard; thereat awoke; and with a tide of song his silence broke. xx to i knew thee strong and quiet like the hills; i knew thee apt to pity, brave to endure, in peace or war a roman full equipt; and just i knew thee, like the fabled kings who by the loud sea-shore gave judgment forth, from dawn to eve, bearded and few of words. what, what, was i to honour thee? a child; a youth in ardour but a child in strength, who after virtue's golden chariot-wheels runs ever panting, nor attains the goal. so thought i, and was sorrowful at heart. since then my steps have visited that flood along whose shore the numerous footfalls cease, the voices and the tears of life expire. thither the prints go down, the hero's way trod large upon the sand, the trembling maid's: nimrod that wound his trumpet in the wood, and the poor, dreaming child, hunter of flowers, that here his hunting closes with the great: so one and all go down, nor aught returns. for thee, for us, the sacred river waits, for me, the unworthy, thee, the perfect friend; there blame desists, there his unfaltering dogs he from the chase recalls, and homeward rides; yet praise and love pass over and go in. so when, beside that margin, i discard my more than mortal weakness, and with thee through that still land unfearing i advance: if then at all we keep the touch of joy thou shalt rejoice to find me altered i, o felix, to behold thee still unchanged. xxi the morning drum-call on my eager ear thrills unforgotten yet; the morning dew lies yet undried along my field of noon. but now i pause at whiles in what i do, and count the bell, and tremble lest i hear (my work untrimmed) the sunset gun too soon. xxii i have trod the upward and the downward slope; i have endured and done in days before; i have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope; and i have lived and loved, and closed the door. xxiii he hears with gladdened heart the thunder peal, and loves the falling dew; he knows the earth above and under sits and is content to view. he sits beside the dying ember, god for hope and man for friend, content to see, glad to remember, expectant of the certain end. xxiv farewell, fair day and fading light! the clay-born here, with westward sight, marks the huge sun now downward soar. farewell. we twain shall meet no more. farewell. i watch with bursting sigh my late contemned occasion die. i linger useless in my tent: farewell, fair day, so foully spent! farewell, fair day. if any god at all consider this poor clod, he who the fair occasion sent prepared and placed the impediment. let him diviner vengeance take give me to sleep, give me to wake girded and shod, and bid me play the hero in the coming day! xxv if this were faith god, if this were enough, that i see things bare to the buff and up to the buttocks in mire; that i ask nor hope nor hire, nut in the husk, nor dawn beyond the dusk, nor life beyond death: god, if this were faith? having felt thy wind in my face spit sorrow and disgrace, having seen thine evil doom in golgotha and khartoum, and the brutes, the work of thine hands, fill with injustice lands and stain with blood the sea: if still in my veins the glee of the black night and the sun and the lost battle, run: if, an adept, the iniquitous lists i still accept with joy, and joy to endure and be withstood, and still to battle and perish for a dream of good: god, if that were enough? if to feel, in the ink of the slough, and the sink of the mire, veins of glory and fire run through and transpierce and transpire, and a secret purpose of glory in every part, and the answering glory of battle fill my heart; to thrill with the joy of girded men to go on for ever and fail and go on again, and be mauled to the earth and arise, and contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with the eyes: with the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night that somehow the right is the right and the smooth shall bloom from the rough: lord, if that were enough? xxvi my wife trusty, dusky, vivid, true, with eyes of gold and bramble-dew, steel-true and blade-straight, the great artificer made my mate. honour, anger, valour, fire; a love that life could never tire, death quench or evil stir, the mighty master gave to her. teacher, tender, comrade, wife, a fellow-farer true through life, heart-whole and soul-free the august father gave to me. xxvii to the muse resign the rhapsody, the dream, to men of larger reach; be ours the quest of a plain theme, the piety of speech. as monkish scribes from morning break toiled till the close of light, nor thought a day too long to make one line or letter bright: we also with an ardent mind, time, wealth, and fame forgot, our glory in our patience find and skim, and skim the pot: till last, when round the house we hear the evensong of birds, one corner of blue heaven appear in our clear well of words. leave, leave it then, muse of my heart! sans finish and sans frame, leave unadorned by needless art the picture as it came. xxviii to an island princess since long ago, a child at home, i read and longed to rise and roam, where'er i went, whate'er i willed, one promised land my fancy filled. hence the long roads my home i made; tossed much in ships; have often laid below the uncurtained sky my head, rain-deluged and wind-buffeted: and many a thousand hills i crossed and corners turned love's labour lost, till, lady, to your isle of sun i came, not hoping; and, like one snatched out of blindness, rubbed my eyes, and hailed my promised land with cries. yes, lady, here i was at last; here found i all i had forecast: the long roll of the sapphire sea that keeps the land's virginity; the stalwart giants of the wood laden with toys and flowers and food; the precious forest pouring out to compass the whole town about; the town itself with streets of lawn, loved of the moon, blessed by the dawn, where the brown children all the day keep up a ceaseless noise of play, play in the sun, play in the rain, nor ever quarrel or complain; and late at night, in the woods of fruit, hark! do you hear the passing flute? i threw one look to either hand, and knew i was in fairyland. and yet one point of being so i lacked. for, lady (as you know), whoever by his might of hand, won entrance into fairyland, found always with admiring eyes a fairy princess kind and wise. it was not long i waited; soon upon my threshold, in broad noon, gracious and helpful, wise and good, the fairy princess moe stood. tantira, tahiti, nov. 5, 1888. xxix to kalakaua (with a present of a pearl) the silver ship, my king that was her name in the bright islands whence your fathers came the silver ship, at rest from winds and tides, below your palace in your harbour rides: and the seafarers, sitting safe on shore, like eager merchants count their treasures o'er. one gift they find, one strange and lovely thing, now doubly precious since it pleased a king. the right, my liege, is ancient as the lyre for bards to give to kings what kings admire. 'tis mine to offer for apollo's sake; and since the gift is fitting, yours to take. to golden hands the golden pearl i bring: the ocean jewel to the island king. honolulu, feb. 3, 1889. xxx to princess kaiulani [written in april to kaiulani in the april of her age; and at waikiki, within easy walk of kaiulani's banyan! when she comes to my land and her father's, and the rain beats upon the window (as i fear it will), let her look at this page; it will be like a weed gathered and pressed at home; and she will remember her own islands, and the shadow of the mighty tree; and she will hear the peacocks screaming in the dusk and the wind blowing in the palms; and she will think of her father sitting there alone. r. l. s.] forth from her land to mine she goes, the island maid, the island rose, light of heart and bright of face: the daughter of a double race. her islands here, in southern sun, shall mourn their kaiulani gone, and i, in her dear banyan shade, look vainly for my little maid. but our scots islands far away shall glitter with unwonted day, and cast for once their tempests by to smile in kaiulani's eye. honolulu. xxxi to mother maryanne to see the infinite pity of this place, the mangled limb, the devastated face, the innocent sufferer smiling at the rod a fool were tempted to deny his god. he sees, he shrinks. but if he gaze again, lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain! he marks the sisters on the mournful shores; and even a fool is silent and adores. guest house, kalawao, molokai. xxxii in memoriam e. h. i knew a silver head was bright beyond compare, i knew a queen of toil with a crown of silver hair. garland of valour and sorrow, of beauty and renown, life, that honours the brave, crowned her himself with the crown. the beauties of youth are frail, but this was a jewel of age. life, that delights in the brave, gave it himself for a gage. fair was the crown to behold, and beauty its poorest part at once the scar of the wound and the order pinned on the heart. the beauties of man are frail, and the silver lies in the dust, and the queen that we call to mind sleeps with the brave and the just; sleeps with the weary at length; but, honoured and ever fair, shines in the eye of the mind the crown of the silver hair. honolulu. xxxiii to my wife (a fragment) long must elapse ere you behold again green forest frame the entry of the lane the wild lane with the bramble and the brier, the year-old cart-tracks perfect in the mire, the wayside smoke, perchance, the dwarfish huts, and ramblers' donkey drinking from the ruts: long ere you trace how deviously it leads, back from man's chimneys and the bleating meads to the woodland shadow, to the sylvan hush, when but the brooklet chuckles in the brush back from the sun and bustle of the vale to where the great voice of the nightingale fills all the forest like a single room, and all the banks smell of the golden broom; so wander on until the eve descends. and back returning to your firelit friends, you see the rosy sun, despoiled of light, hung, caught in thickets, like a schoolboy's kite. here from the sea the unfruitful sun shall rise, bathe the bare deck and blind the unshielded eyes; the allotted hours aloft shall wheel in vain and in the unpregnant ocean plunge again. assault of squalls that mock the watchful guard, and pluck the bursting canvas from the yard, and senseless clamour of the calm, at night must mar your slumbers. by the plunging light, in beetle-haunted, most unwomanly bower of the wild-swerving cabin, hour by hour . . . schooner 'equator.' xxxiv to my old familiars do you remember can we e'er forget? how, in the coiled-perplexities of youth, in our wild climate, in our scowling town, we gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed and feared? the belching winter wind, the missile rain, the rare and welcome silence of the snows, the laggard morn, the haggard day, the night, the grimy spell of the nocturnal town, do you remember? ah, could one forget! as when the fevered sick that all night long listed the wind intone, and hear at last the ever-welcome voice of chanticleer sing in the bitter hour before the dawn, with sudden ardour, these desire the day: so sang in the gloom of youth the bird of hope; so we, exulting, hearkened and desired. for lo! as in the palace porch of life we huddled with chimeras, from within how sweet to hear! the music swelled and fell, and through the breach of the revolving doors what dreams of splendour blinded us and fled! i have since then contended and rejoiced; amid the glories of the house of life profoundly entered, and the shrine beheld: yet when the lamp from my expiring eyes shall dwindle and recede, the voice of love fall insignificant on my closing ears, what sound shall come but the old cry of the wind in our inclement city? what return but the image of the emptiness of youth, filled with the sound of footsteps and that voice of discontent and rapture and despair? so, as in darkness, from the magic lamp, the momentary pictures gleam and fade and perish, and the night resurges these shall i remember, and then all forget. apemama. xxxv the tropics vanish, and meseems that i, from halkerside, from topmost allermuir, or steep caerketton, dreaming gaze again. far set in fields and woods, the town i see spring gallant from the shallows of her smoke, cragged, spired, and turreted, her virgin fort beflagged. about, on seaward-drooping hills, new folds of city glitter. last, the forth wheels ample waters set with sacred isles, and populous fife smokes with a score of towns. there, on the sunny frontage of a hill, hard by the house of kings, repose the dead, my dead, the ready and the strong of word. their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive; the sea bombards their founded towers; the night thrills pierced with their strong lamps. the artificers, one after one, here in this grated cell, where the rain erases, and the rust consumes, fell upon lasting silence. continents and continental oceans intervene; a sea uncharted, on a lampless isle, environs and confines their wandering child in vain. the voice of generations dead summons me, sitting distant, to arise, my numerous footsteps nimbly to retrace, and, all mutation over, stretch me down in that denoted city of the dead. apemama. xxxvi to s. c. i heard the pulse of the besieging sea throb far away all night. i heard the wind fly crying and convulse tumultuous palms. i rose and strolled. the isle was all bright sand, and flailing fans and shadows of the palm; the heaven all moon and wind and the blind vault; the keenest planet slain, for venus slept. the king, my neighbour, with his host of wives, slept in the precinct of the palisade; where single, in the wind, under the moon, among the slumbering cabins, blazed a fire, sole street-lamp and the only sentinel. to other lands and nights my fancy turned to london first, and chiefly to your house, the many-pillared and the well-beloved. there yearning fancy lighted; there again in the upper room i lay, and heard far off the unsleeping city murmur like a shell; the muffled tramp of the museum guard once more went by me; i beheld again lamps vainly brighten the dispeopled street; again i longed for the returning morn, the awaking traffic, the bestirring birds, the consentaneous trill of tiny song that weaves round monumental cornices a passing charm of beauty. most of all, for your light foot i wearied, and your knock that was the glad reveille of my day. lo, now, when to your task in the great house at morning through the portico you pass, one moment glance, where by the pillared wall far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke, sit now unworshipped, the rude monument of faiths forgot and races undivined: sit now disconsolate, remembering well the priest, the victim, and the songful crowd, the blaze of the blue noon, and that huge voice, incessant, of the breakers on the shore. as far as these from their ancestral shrine, so far, so foreign, your divided friends wander, estranged in body, not in mind. apemama. xxxvii the house of tembinoka [at my departure from the island of apemama, for which you will look in vain in most atlases, the king and i agreed, since we both set up to be in the poetical way, that we should celebrate our separation in verse. whether or not his majesty has been true to his bargain, the laggard posts of the pacific may perhaps inform me in six months, perhaps not before a year. the following lines represent my part of the contract, and it is hoped, by their pictures of strange manners, they may entertain a civilised audience. nothing throughout has been invented or exaggerated; the lady herein referred to as the author's muse has confined herself to stringing into rhyme facts or legends that i saw or heard during two months' residence upon the island. r. l. s.] envoi let us, who part like brothers, part like bards; and you in your tongue and measure, i in mine, our now division duly solemnise. unlike the strains, and yet the theme is one: the strains unlike, and how unlike their fate! you to the blinding palace-yard shall call the prefect of the singers, and to him, listening devout, your valedictory verse deliver; he, his attribute fulfilled, to the island chorus hand your measures on, wed now with harmony: so them, at last, night after night, in the open hall of dance, shall thirty matted men, to the clapped hand, intone and bray and bark. unfortunate! paper and print alone shall honour mine. the song let now the king his ear arouse and toss the bosky ringlets from his brows, the while, our bond to implement, my muse relates and praises his descent. i bride of the shark, her valour first i sing who on the lone seas quickened of a king. she, from the shore and puny homes of men, beyond the climber's sea-discerning ken, swam, led by omens; and devoid of fear, beheld her monstrous paramour draw near. she gazed; all round her to the heavenly pale, the simple sea was void of isle or sail sole overhead the unsparing sun was reared when the deep bubbled and the brute appeared. but she, secure in the decrees of fate, made strong her bosom and received the mate, and, men declare, from that marine embrace conceived the virtues of a stronger race. ii her stern descendant next i praise, survivor of a thousand frays: in the hall of tongues who ruled the throng; led and was trusted by the strong; and when spears were in the wood, like a tower of vantage stood: whom, not till seventy years had sped, unscarred of breast, erect of head, still light of step, still bright of look, the hunter, death, had overtook. iii his sons, the brothers twain, i sing, of whom the elder reigned a king. no childeric he, yet much declined from his rude sire's imperious mind, until his day came when he died, he lived, he reigned, he versified. but chiefly him i celebrate that was the pillar of the state, ruled, wise of word and bold of mien, the peaceful and the warlike scene; and played alike the leader's part in lawful and unlawful art. his soldiers with emboldened ears heard him laugh among the spears. he could deduce from age to age the web of island parentage; best lay the rhyme, best lead the dance, for any festal circumstance: and fitly fashion oar and boat, a palace or an armour coat. none more availed than he to raise the strong, suffumigating blaze, or knot the wizard leaf: none more, upon the untrodden windward shore of the isle, beside the beating main, to cure the sickly and constrain, with muttered words and waving rods, the gibbering and the whistling gods. but he, though thus with hand and head he ruled, commanded, charmed, and led, and thus in virtue and in might towered to contemporary sight still in fraternal faith and love, remained below to reach above, gave and obeyed the apt command, pilot and vassal of the land. iv my tembinok' from men like these inherited his palaces, his right to rule, his powers of mind, his cocoa-islands sea-enshrined. stern bearer of the sword and whip, a master passed in mastership, he learned, without the spur of need, to write, to cipher, and to read; from all that touch on his prone shore augments his treasury of lore, eager in age as erst in youth to catch an art, to learn a truth, to paint on the internal page a clearer picture of the age. his age, you say? but ah, not so! in his lone isle of long ago, a royal lady of shalott, sea-sundered, he beholds it not; he only hears it far away. the stress of equatorial day he suffers; he records the while the vapid annals of the isle; slaves bring him praise of his renown, or cackle of the palm-tree town; the rarer ship and the rare boat he marks; and only hears remote, where thrones and fortunes rise and reel, the thunder of the turning wheel. v for the unexpected tears he shed at my departing, may his lion head not whiten, his revolving years no fresh occasion minister of tears; at book or cards, at work or sport, him may the breeze across the palace court for ever fan; and swelling near for ever the loud song divert his ear. schooner 'equator,' at sea. xxxviii the woodman in all the grove, nor stream nor bird nor aught beside my blows was heard, and the woods wore their noonday dress the glory of their silentness. from the island summit to the seas, trees mounted, and trees drooped, and trees groped upward in the gaps. the green inarboured talus and ravine by fathoms. by the multitude the rugged columns of the wood and bunches of the branches stood; thick as a mob, deep as a sea, and silent as eternity. with lowered axe, with backward head, late from this scene my labourer fled, and with a ravelled tale to tell, returned. some denizen of hell, dead man or disinvested god, had close behind him peered and trod, and triumphed when he turned to flee. how different fell the lines with me! whose eye explored the dim arcade impatient of the uncoming shade shy elf, or dryad pale and cold, or mystic lingerer from of old: vainly. the fair and stately things, impassive as departed kings, all still in the wood's stillness stood, and dumb. the rooted multitude nodded and brooded, bloomed and dreamed, unmeaning, undivined. it seemed no other art, no hope, they knew, than clutch the earth and seek the blue. 'mid vegetable king and priest and stripling, i (the only beast) was at the beast's work, killing; hewed the stubborn roots across, bestrewed the glebe with the dislustred leaves, and bade the saplings fall in sheaves; bursting across the tangled math a ruin that i called a path, a golgotha that, later on, when rains had watered, and suns shone, and seeds enriched the place, should bear and be called garden. here and there, i spied and plucked by the green hair a foe more resolute to live, the toothed and killing sensitive. he, semi-conscious, fled the attack; he shrank and tucked his branches back; and straining by his anchor-strand, captured and scratched the rooting hand. i saw him crouch, i felt him bite; and straight my eyes were touched with sight. i saw the wood for what it was: the lost and the victorious cause, the deadly battle pitched in line, saw silent weapons cross and shine: silent defeat, silent assault, a battle and a burial vault. thick round me in the teeming mud brier and fern strove to the blood: the hooked liana in his gin noosed his reluctant neighbours in: there the green murderer throve and spread, upon his smothering victims fed, and wantoned on his climbing coil. contending roots fought for the soil like frightened demons: with despair competing branches pushed for air. green conquerors from overhead bestrode the bodies of their dead: the caesars of the sylvan field, unused to fail, foredoomed to yield: for in the groins of branches, lo! the cancers of the orchid grow. silent as in the listed ring two chartered wrestlers strain and cling; dumb as by yellow hooghly's side the suffocating captives died; so hushed the woodland warfare goes unceasing; and the silent foes grapple and smother, strain and clasp without a cry, without a gasp. here also sound thy fans, o god, here too thy banners move abroad: forest and city, sea and shore, and the whole earth, thy threshing-floor! the drums of war, the drums of peace, roll through our cities without cease, and all the iron halls of life ring with the unremitting strife. the common lot we scarce perceive. crowds perish, we nor mark nor grieve: the bugle calls we mourn a few! what corporal's guard at waterloo? what scanty hundreds more or less in the man-devouring wilderness? what handful bled on delhi ridge? see, rather, london, on thy bridge the pale battalions trample by, resolved to slay, resigned to die. count, rather, all the maimed and dead in the unbrotherly war of bread. see, rather, under sultrier skies what vegetable londons rise, and teem, and suffer without sound: or in your tranquil garden ground, contented, in the falling gloom, saunter and see the roses bloom. that these might live, what thousands died! all day the cruel hoe was plied; the ambulance barrow rolled all day; your wife, the tender, kind, and gay, donned her long gauntlets, caught the spud, and bathed in vegetable blood; and the long massacre now at end, see! where the lazy coils ascend, see, where the bonfire sputters red at even, for the innocent dead. why prate of peace? when, warriors all, we clank in harness into hall, and ever bare upon the board lies the necessary sword. in the green field or quiet street, besieged we sleep, beleaguered eat; labour by day and wake o' nights, in war with rival appetites. the rose on roses feeds; the lark on larks. the sedentary clerk all morning with a diligent pen murders the babes of other men; and like the beasts of wood and park, protects his whelps, defends his den. unshamed the narrow aim i hold; i feed my sheep, patrol my fold; breathe war on wolves and rival flocks, a pious outlaw on the rocks of god and morning; and when time shall bow, or rivals break me, climb where no undubbed civilian dares, in my war harness, the loud stairs of honour; and my conqueror hail me a warrior fallen in war. vailima. xxxix tropic rain as the single pang of the blow, when the metal is mingled well, rings and lives and resounds in all the bounds of the bell, so the thunder above spoke with a single tongue, so in the heart of the mountain the sound of it rumbled and clung. sudden the thunder was drowned quenched was the levin light and the angel-spirit of rain laughed out loud in the night. loud as the maddened river raves in the cloven glen, angel of rain! you laughed and leaped on the roofs of men; and the sleepers sprang in their beds, and joyed and feared as you fell. you struck, and my cabin quailed; the roof of it roared like a bell. you spoke, and at once the mountain shouted and shook with brooks. you ceased, and the day returned, rosy, with virgin looks. and methought that beauty and terror are only one, not two; and the world has room for love, and death, and thunder, and dew; and all the sinews of hell slumber in summer air; and the face of god is a rock, but the face of the rock is fair. beneficent streams of tears flow at the finger of pain; and out of the cloud that smites, beneficent rivers of rain. vailima. xl an end of travel let now your soul in this substantial world some anchor strike. be here the body moored; this spectacle immutably from now the picture in your eye; and when time strikes, and the green scene goes on the instant blind the ultimate helpers, where your horse to-day conveyed you dreaming, bear your body dead. vailima xli we uncommiserate pass into the night from the loud banquet, and departing leave a tremor in men's memories, faint and sweet and frail as music. features of our face, the tones of the voice, the touch of the loved hand, perish and vanish, one by one, from earth: meanwhile, in the hall of song, the multitude applauds the new performer. one, perchance, one ultimate survivor lingers on, and smiles, and to his ancient heart recalls the long forgotten. ere the morrow die, he too, returning, through the curtain comes, and the new age forgets us and goes on. xlii sing me a song of a lad that is gone, say, could that lad be i? merry of soul he sailed on a day over the sea to skye. mull was astern, rum on the port, eigg on the starboard bow; glory of youth glowed in his soul: where is that glory now? sing me a song of a lad that is gone, say, could that lad be i? merry of soul he sailed on a day over the sea to skye. give me again all that was there, give me the sun that shone! give me the eyes, give me the soul, give me the lad that's gone! sing me a song of a lad that is gone, say, could that lad be i? merry of soul he sailed on a day over the sea to skye. billow and breeze, islands and seas, mountains of rain and sun, all that was good, all that was fair, all that was me is gone. xliii to s. r. crockett (on receiving a dedication) blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying, blows the wind on the moors to-day and now, where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, my heart remembers how! grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places, standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor, hills of sheep, and the howes of the silent vanished races, and winds, austere and pure: be it granted me to behold you again in dying, hills of home! and to hear again the call; hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying, and hear no more at all. vailima. xliv evensong the embers of the day are red beyond the murky hill. the kitchen smokes: the bed in the darkling house is spread: the great sky darkens overhead, and the great woods are shrill. so far have i been led, lord, by thy will: so far i have followed, lord, and wondered still. the breeze from the enbalmed land blows sudden toward the shore, and claps my cottage door. i hear the signal, lord i understand. the night at thy command comes. i will eat and sleep and will not question more. vailima. end of the project gutenberg etext songs of travel and other verses 1890 flower or love by oscar wilde sweet, i blame you not, for mine the fault was, had i not been made of common clay i had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day. from the wildness of my wasted passion i had struck a better, clearer song, lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled with some hydra-headed wrong. had my lips been smitten into music by the kisses that but made them bleed, you had walked with bice and the angels on that verdant and enamelled mead. i had trod the road which dante treading saw the suns of seven circles shine, ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening, as they opened to the florentine. and the mighty nations would have crowned me, who am crownless now and without name, and some orient dawn had found me kneeling on the threshold of the house of fame i had sat within that marble circle where the oldest bard is as the young, and the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the lyre's strings are ever strung. keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out the poppy-seeded wine, with ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead, clasped the hand of noble love in mine. and at springtime, when the apple-blossoms brush the burnished bosom of the dove, two young lovers lying in an orchard would have read the story of our love. would have read the legend of my passion, known the bitter secret of my heart, kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as we two are fated now to part. for the crimson flower of our life is eaten by the canker-worm of truth, and no hand can gather up the fallen withered petals of the rose of youth. yet i am not sorry that i loved youah! what else had i a boy to do, for the hungry teeth of time devour, and the silent-footed years pursue. rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and when once the storm of youth is past, without lyre, without lute or chorus, death a silent pilot comes at last. and within the grave there is no pleasure, for the blind-worm battens on the root, and desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of passion bears no fruit. ah! what else had i to do but love you, god's own mother was less dear to me, and less dear the cytheraean rising like an argent lily from the sea. i have made my choice, have lived my poems, and, though youth is gone in wasted days, i have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than the poet's crown of bays. the end . the invisible man by h.g. wells ********** chapter 1 the strange man's arrival the stranger came early in february one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from bramblehurst railway station and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. he was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried. he staggered into the coach and horses, more dead than alive as it seemed, and flung his portmanteau down. "a fire," he cried, "in the name of human charity! a room and a fire!" he stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed mrs. hall into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. and with that much introduction, that and a ready acquiescence to terms and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the inn. mrs. hall lit the fire and left him there while she went to prepare him a meal with her own hands. a guest to stop at iping in the winter-time was an unheard-of piece of luck, let alone a guest who was no "haggler," and she was resolved to show herself worthy of her good fortune. as soon as the bacon was well under way, and millie, her lymphatic aid, had been brisked up a bit by a few deftly chosen expressions of contempt, she carried the cloth, plates, and glasses into the parlour and began to lay them with the utmost clat. although the fire was burning up briskly, she was surprised to see that her visitor still wore his hat and coat, standing with his back to her and staring out of the window at the falling snow in the yard. his gloved hands were clasped behind him, and he seemed to be lost in thought. she noticed that the melted snow that still sprinkled his shoulders dripped upon her carpet. "can i take your hat and coat, sir," she said, "and give them a good dry in the kitchen?" "no," he said without turning. she was not sure she had heard him, and was about to repeat her question. he turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. "i prefer to keep them on," he said with emphasis, and she noticed that he wore big blue spectacles with side-lights and had a bushy side-whisker over his coat-collar that completely hid his face. "very well, sir," she said. "as you like. in a bit the room will be warmer." he made no answer and had turned his face away from her again; and mrs. hall, feeling that her conversational advances were illtimed, laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked out of the room. when she returned he was still standing there like a man of stone, his back hunched, his collar turned up, his dripping hat-brim turned down, hiding his face and ears completely. she put down the eggs and bacon with considerable emphasis, and called rather than said to him, "your lunch is served, sir." "thank you," he said at the same time, and did not stir until she was closing the door. then he swung round and approached the table. as she went behind the bar to the kitchen she heard a sound repeated at regular intervals. chirk, chirk, chirk, it went, the sound of a spoon being rapidly whisked round a basin. "that girl!" she said. "there! i clean forgot it. it's her being so long!" and while she herself finished mixing the mustard, she gave millie a few verbal stabs for her excessive slowness. she had cooked the ham and eggs, laid the table, and done everything, while millie (help indeed!) had only succeeded in delaying the mustard. and him a new guest and wanting to stay! then she filled the mustard pot, and, putting it with a certain stateliness upon a gold and black tea-tray, carried it into the parlour. she rapped and entered promptly. as she did so her visitor moved quickly, so that she got but a glimpse of a white object disappearing behind the table. it would seem he was picking something from the floor. she rapped down the mustard pot on the table, and then she noticed the overcoat and hat had been taken off and put over a chair in front of the fire. a pair of wet boots threatened rust to her steel fender. she went to these things resolutely. "i suppose i may have them to dry now," she said in a voice that brooked no denial. "leave the hat," said her visitor in a muffled voice, and turning she saw he had raised his head and was sitting looking at her. for a moment she stood gaping at him, too surprised to speak. he held a white cloth--it was a serviette he had brought with him--over the lower part of his face, so that his mouth and jaws were completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled voice. but it was not that which startled mrs. hall. it was the fact that all his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of his face exposed excepting only his pink, peaked nose. it was bright pink, and shiny just as it had been at first. he wore a dark-brown velvet jacket with a high black linen lined collar turned up about his neck. the thick black hair, escaping as it could below and between the cross bandages, projected in curious tails and horns, giving him the strangest appearance conceivable. this muffled and bandaged head was so unlike what she had anticipated, that for a moment she was rigid. he did not remove the serviette, but remained holding it, as she saw now, with a brown gloved hand, and regarding her with his inscrutable blue glasses. "leave the hat," he said, speaking very distinctly through the white cloth. her nerves began to recover from the shock they had received. she placed the hat on the chair again by the fire. "i didn't know, sir," she began, "that--" and she stopped embarrassed. "thank you," he said drily, glancing from her to the door and then at her again. "i'll have them nicely dried, sir, at once," she said, and carried his clothes out of the room. she glanced at his white-swathed head and blue goggles again as she was going out of the door; but his napkin was still in front of his face. she shivered a little as she closed the door behind her, and her face was eloquent of her surprise and perplexity. "i never," she whispered. "there!" she went quite softly to the kitchen, and was too preoccupied to ask millie what she was messing about with now, when she got there. the visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. he glanced inquiringly at the window before he removed his serviette and resumed his meal. he took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the window, took another mouthful, then rose and, taking the serviette in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind down to the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. this left the room in twilight. this done, he returned with an easier air to the table and his meal. "the poor soul's had an accident or an op'ration or something," said mrs. hall. "what a turn them bandages did give me, to be sure!" she put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse, and extended the traveller's coat upon this. "and they goggles! why, he looked more like a divin' helmet than a human man!" she hung his muffler on a corner of the horse. "and holding that handkerchief over his mouth all the time. talkin' through it!...perhaps his mouth was hurt too--maybe." she turned round, as one who suddenly remembers. "bless my soul alive!" she said, going off at a tangent; "ain't you done them taters yet, millie?" when mrs. hall went to clear away the stranger's lunch, her idea that his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in the accident she supposed him to have suffered, was confirmed, for he was smoking a pipe, and all the time that she was in the room he never loosened the silk muffler he had wrapped round the lower part of his face to put the mouthpiece to his lips. yet it was not forgetfulness, for she saw he glanced at it as it smouldered out. he sat in the corner with his back to the window-blind and spoke now, having eaten and drunk and being comfortably warmed through, with less aggressive brevity than before. the reflection of the fire lent a kind of red animation to his big spectacles they had lacked hitherto. "i have some luggage," he said, "at bramblehurst station," and he asked her how he could have it sent. he bowed his bandaged head quite politely in acknowledgment of her explanation. "to-morrow!" he said. "there is no speedier delivery?" and seemed quite disappointed when she answered "no." was she quite sure? no man with a trap who would go over? mrs. hall, nothing loath, answered his questions and developed a conversation. "it's a steep road by the down, sir," she said in answer to the question about a trap; and then, snatching at an opening said, "it was there a carriage was upsettled, a year ago and more. a gentleman killed, besides his coachman. accidents, sir, happen in a moment, don't they?" but the visitor was not to be drawn so easily. "they do," he said through his muffler, eyeing her quietly through his impenetrable glasses. "but they take long enough to get well, sir, don't they? ... there was my sister's son, tom, jest cut his arm with a scythe, tumbled on it in the 'ayfield, and, bless me! he was three months tied up, sir. you'd hardly believe it. it's regular given me a dread of a scythe, sir." "i can quite understand that," said the visitor. "he was afraid, one time, that he'd have to have an op'ration --he was that bad, sir." the visitor laughed abruptly, a bark of a laugh that he seemed to bite and kill in his mouth. "was he?" he said. "he was, sir. and no laughing matter to them as had the doing for him, as i had--my sister being took up with her little ones so much. there was bandages to do, sir, and bandages to undo. so that if i may make so bold as to say it, sir--" "will you get me some matches?" said the visitor, quite abruptly. "my pipe is out." mrs. hall was pulled up suddenly. it was certainly rude of him, after telling him all she had done. she gasped at him for a moment, and remembered the two sovereigns. she went for the matches. "thanks," he said concisely, as she put them down, and turned his shoulder upon her and stared out of the window again. it was altogether too discouraging. evidently he was sensitive on the topic of operations and bandages. she did not "make so bold as to say," however, after all. but his snubbing way had irritated her, and millie had a hot time of it that afternoon. the visitor remained in the parlour until four o'clock, without giving the ghost of an excuse for an intrusion. for the most part he was quite still during that time; it would seem he sat in the growing darkness smoking in the firelight, perhaps dozing. once or twice a curious listener might have heard him at the coals, and for the space of five minutes he was audible pacing the room. he seemed to be talking to himself. then the armchair creaked as he sat down again. ********** chapter 2 mr. teddy henfrey's first impressions at four o'clock, when it was fairly dark and mrs. hall was screwing up her courage to go in and ask her visitor if he would take some tea, teddy henfrey, the clock-jobber, came into the bar. "my sakes! mrs. hall," said he, "but this is terrible weather for thin boots!" the snow outside was falling faster. mrs. hall agreed with him, and then noticed he had his bag and hit upon a brilliant idea. "now you're here, mr. teddy," said she, "i'd be glad if you'd give th' old clock in the parlour a bit of a look. 'tis going, and it strikes well and hearty; but the hour-hand won't do nuthin' but point at six." and leading the way, she went across to the parlour door and rapped and entered. her visitor, she saw as she opened the door, was seated in the armchair before the fire, dozing it would seem, with his bandaged head drooping on one side. the only light in the room was the red glow from the fire--which lit his eyes like adverse railway signals, but left his downcast face in darkness--and the scanty vestiges of the day that came in through the open door. everything was ruddy, shadowy, and indistinct to her, the more so since she had just been lighting the bar lamp, and her eyes were dazzled. but for a second it seemed to her that the man she looked at had an enormous mouth wide open,--a vast and incredible mouth that swallowed the whole of the lower portion of his face. it was the sensation of a moment: the whitebound head, the monstrous goggle eyes, and this huge yawn below it. then he stirred, started up in his chair, put up his hand. she opened the door wide, so that the room was lighter, and she saw him more clearly, with the muffler held to his face just as she had seen him hold the serviette before. the shadows, she fancied, had tricked her. "would you mind, sir, this man a-coming to look at the clock, sir?" she said, recovering from her momentary shock. "look at the clock?" he said, staring round in a drowsy manner and speaking over his hand, and then getting more fully awake, "certainly." mrs. hall went away to get a lamp, and he rose and stretched himself. then came the light, and mr. teddy henfrey, entering, was confronted by this bandaged person. he was, he says, "taken aback." "good-afternoon," said the stranger, regarding him, as mr. henfrey says with a vivid sense of the dark spectacles, "like a lobster." "i hope," said mr. henfrey, "that it's no intrusion." "none whatever," said the stranger. "though i understand," he said, turning to mrs. hall, "that this room is really to be mine for my own private use." "i thought, sir," said mrs. hall, "you'd prefer the clock--" she was going to say "mended." "certainly," said the stranger, "certainly--but, as a rule, i like to be alone and undisturbed. "but i'm really glad to have the clock seen to," he said, seeing a certain hesitation in mr. henfrey's manner. "very glad." mr. henfrey had intended to apologise and withdraw, but this anticipation reassured him. the stranger stood round with his back to the fireplace and put his hands behind his back. "and presently," he said, "when the clock-mending is over, i think i should like to have some tea. but not until the clock-mending is over." mrs. hall was about to leave the room,--she made no conversational advances this time, because she did not want to be snubbed in front of mr. henfrey,--when her visitor asked her if she had made any arrangements about his boxes at bramblehurst. she told him she had mentioned the matter to the postman, and that the carrier could bring them over on the morrow. "you are certain that is the earliest?" he said. she was certain, with a marked coldness. "i should explain," he added, "what i was really too cold and fatigued to do before, that i am an experimental investigator." "indeed, sir," said mrs. hall, much impressed. "and my baggage contains apparatus and appliances." "very useful things indeed they are, sir," said mrs. hall. "and i'm naturally anxious to get on with my inquiries." "of course, sir." "my reason for coming to iping," he proceeded, with a certain deliberation of manner, "was--a desire for solitude. i do not wish to be disturbed in my work. in addition to my work, an accident--" "i thought as much," said mrs. hall to herself. "--necessitates a certain retirement. my eyes--are sometimes so weak and painful that i have to shut myself up in the dark for hours together. lock myself up. sometimes--now and then. not at present, certainly. at such times the slightest disturbance, the entry of a stranger into the room, is a source of excruciating annoyance to me--it is well these things should be understood." "certainly, sir," said mrs. hall. "and if i might make so bold as to ask--" "that, i think, is all," said the stranger, with that quietly irresistible air of finality he could assume at will. mrs. hall reserved her question and sympathy for a better occasion. after mrs. hall had left the room, he remained standing in front of the fire, glaring, so mr. henfrey puts it, at the clockmending. mr. henfrey not only took off the hands of the clock, and the face, but extracted the works; and he tried to work in as slow and quiet and unassuming a manner as possible. he worked with the lamp close to him, and the green shade threw a brilliant light upon his hands, and upon the frame and wheels, and left the rest of the room shadowy. when he looked up, coloured patches swam in his eyes. being constitutionally of a curious nature, he had removed the works--a quite unnecessary proceeding--with the idea of delaying his departure and perhaps falling into conversation with the stranger. but the stranger stood there, perfectly silent and still. so still, it got on henfrey's nerves. he felt alone in the room and looked up, and there, grey and dim, was the bandaged head and huge blue lenses staring fixedly, with a mist of green spots drifting in front of them. it was so uncanny-looking to henfrey that for a minute they remained staring blankly at one another. then henfrey looked down again. very uncomfortable position! one would like to say something. should he remark that the weather was very cold for the time of year? he looked up as if to take aim with that introductory shot. "the weather--" he began. "why don't you finish and go?" said the rigid figure, evidently in a state of painfully suppressed rage. "all you've got to do is to fix the hour-hand on its axle. you're simply humbugging--" "certainly, sir--one minute more, sir. i overlooked--" and mr. henfrey finished and went. but he went off feeling excessively annoyed. "damn it!" said mr. henfrey to himself, trudging down the village through the thawing snow; "a man must do a clock at times, sure-lie." and again: "can't a man look at you?--ugly!" and yet again: "seemingly not. if the police was wanting you you couldn't be more wropped and bandaged." at gleeson's corner he saw hall, who had recently married the stranger's hostess at the coach and horses, and who now drove the iping conveyance, when occasional people required it, to sidderbridge junction, coming towards him on his return from that place. hall had evidently been "stopping a bit" at sidderbridge, to judge by his driving. "'ow do, teddy?" he said, passing. "you got a rum un up home!" said teddy. hall very sociably pulled up. "what's that?" he asked. "rum-looking customer stopping at the coach and horses," said teddy. "my sakes!" and he proceeded to give hall a vivid description of his grotesque guest. "looks a bit like a disguise, don't it? i'd like to see a man's face if i had him stopping in my place," said henfrey. "but women are that trustful,--where strangers are concerned. he's took your rooms and he ain't even given a name, hall." "you don't say so!" said hall, who was a man of sluggish apprehension. "yes," said teddy. "by the week. whatever he is, you can't get rid of him under the week. and he's got a lot of luggage coming to-morrow, so he says. let's hope it won't be stones in boxes, hall." he told hall how his aunt at hastings had been swindled by a stranger with empty portmanteaux. altogether he left hall vaguely suspicious. "get up, old girl," said hall. "i s'pose i must see 'bout this." teddy trudged on his way with his mind considerably relieved. instead of "seeing 'bout it," however, hall on his return was severely rated by his wife on the length of time he had spent in sidderbridge, and his mild inquiries were answered snappishly and in a manner not to the point. but the seed of suspicion teddy had sown germinated in the mind of mr. hall in spite of these discouragements. "you wim' don't know everything," said mr. hall, resolved to ascertain more about the personality of his guest at the earliest possible opportunity. and after the stranger had gone to bed, which he did about half-past nine, mr. hall went aggressively into the parlour and looked very hard at his wife's furniture, just to show that the stranger wasn't master there, and scrutinised closely and a little contemptuously a sheet of mathematical computation the stranger had left. when retiring for the night he instructed mrs. hall to look very closely at the stranger's luggage when it came next day. "you mind your own business, hall," said mrs. hall, "and i'll mind mine." she was all the more inclined to snap at hall because the stranger was undoubtedly an unusually strange sort of stranger, and she was by no means assured about him in her own mind. in the middle of the night she woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips, that came trailing after her at the end of interminable necks, and with vast black eyes. but being a sensible woman, she subdued her terrors and turned over and went to sleep again. ********** chapter 3 the thousand and one bottles thus it was that on the ninth day of february, at the beginning of the thaw, this singular person fell out of infinity into iping village. next day his luggage arrived through the slush. and very remarkable luggage it was. there was a couple of trunks indeed, such as a rational man might need, but in addition there were a box of books,--big, fat books, of which some were just in an incomprehensible handwriting,--and a dozen or more crates, boxes, and cases, containing objects packed in straw, as it seemed to hall, tugging with a casual curiosity at the straw--glass bottles. the stranger, muffled in hat, coat, gloves, and wrapper, came out impatiently to meet fearenside's cart, while hall was having a word or so of gossip preparatory to helping bring them in. out he came, not noticing fearenside's dog, who was sniffing in a dilettante spirit at hall's legs. "come along with those boxes," he said. "i've been waiting long enough." and he came down the steps towards the tail of the cart as if to lay hands on the smaller crate. no sooner had fearenside's dog caught sight of him, however, than it began to bristle and growl savagely, and when he rushed down the steps it gave an undecided hop, and then sprang straight at his hand. "whup!" cried hall, jumping back, for he was no hero with dogs, and fearenside howled, "lie down!" and snatched his whip. they saw the dog's teeth had slipped the hand, heard a kick, saw the dog execute a flanking jump and get home on the stranger's leg, and heard the rip of his trousering. then the finer end of fearenside's whip reached his property, and the dog, yelping with dismay, retreated under the wheels of the waggon. it was all the business of a half-minute. no one spoke, every one shouted. the stranger glanced swiftly at his torn glove and at his leg, made as if he would stoop to the latter, then turned and rushed up the steps into the inn. they heard him go headlong across the passage and up the uncarpeted stairs to his bedroom. "you brute, you!" said fearenside, climbing off the waggon with his whip in his hand, while the dog watched him through the wheel. "come here!" said fearenside--"you'd better." hall had stood gaping. "he wuz bit," said hall. "i'd better go and see to en," and he trotted after the stranger. he met mrs. hall in the passage. "carrier's darg," he said, "bit en." he went straight upstairs, and the stranger's door being ajar, he pushed it open and was entering without any ceremony, being of a naturally sympathetic turn of mind. the blind was down and the room dim. he caught a glimpse of a most singular thing, what seemed a handless arm waving towards him, and a face of three huge indeterminate spots on white, very like the face of a pale pansy. then he was struck violently in the chest, hurled back, and the door slammed in his face and locked, all so rapidly that he had no time to observe. a waving of indecipherable shapes, a blow, and a concussion. there he stood on the dark little landing, wondering what it might be that he had seen. after a couple of minutes he rejoined the little group that had formed outside the coach and horses. there was fearenside telling about it all over again for the second time; there was mrs. hall saying his dog didn't have no business to bite her guests; there was huxter, the general dealer from over the road, interrogative; and sandy wadgers from the forge, judicial; besides women and children,-all of them saying fatuities: "wouldn't let en bite me, i knows"; "'tasn't right have such dargs"; "whad 'e bite'n for then?" and so forth. mr. hall, staring at them from the steps and listening, found it incredible that he had seen anything very remarkable happen upstairs. besides, his vocabulary was altogether too limited to express his impressions. "he don't want no help, he says," he said in answer to his wife's enquiry. "we'd better be a-takin' of his luggage in." "he ought to have it cauterised at once," said mr. huxter; "especially if it's at all inflamed." "i'd shoot en, that's what i'd do," said a lady in the group. suddenly the dog began growling again. "come along," cried an angry voice in the doorway, and there stood the muffled stranger with his collar turned up, and his hat-brim bent down. "the sooner you get those things in the better i'll be pleased." it is stated by an anonymous bystander that his trousers and gloves had been changed. "was you hurt, sir?" said fearenside. "i'm rare sorry the darg--" "not a bit," said the stranger. "never broke the skin. hurry up with those things." he then swore to himself, so mr. hall asserts. directly the first crate was carried into the parlour, in accordance with his directions, the stranger flung himself upon it with extraordinary eagerness, and began to unpack it, scattering the straw with an utter disregard of mrs. hall's carpet. and from it he began to produce bottles--little fat bottles containing powders, small and slender bottles containing coloured and white fluids, fluted blue bottles labelled poison, bottles with round bodies and slender necks, large green-glass bottles, large white-glass bottles, bottles with glass stoppers and frosted labels, bottles with fine corks, bottles with bungs, bottles with wooden caps, wine bottles, salad-oil bottles--putting them in rows on the chiffonier, on the mantel, on the table under the window, round the floor, on the book-shelf-everywhere. the chemist's shop in bramblehurst could not boast half so many. quite a sight it was. crate after crate yielded bottles, until all six were empty and the table high with straw; the only things that came out of these crates besides the bottles were a number of test-tubes and a carefully packed balance. and directly the crates were unpacked, the stranger went to the window and set to work, not troubling in the least about the litter of straw, the fire which had gone out, the box of books outside, nor for the trunks and other luggage that had gone upstairs. when mrs. hall took his dinner in to him, he was already so absorbed in his work, pouring little drops out of the bottles into test-tubes, that he did not hear her until she had swept away the bulk of the straw and put the tray on the table, with some little emphasis perhaps, seeing the state that the floor was in. then he half turned his head and immediately turned it away again. but she saw he had removed his glasses; they were beside him on the table, and it seemed to her that his eye sockets were extraordinarily hollow. he put on his spectacles again, and then turned and faced her. she was about to complain of the straw on the floor when he anticipated her. "i wish you wouldn't come in without knocking," he said in the tone of abnormal exasperation that seemed so characteristic of him. "i knocked, but seemingly--" "perhaps you did. but in my investigations--my really very urgent and necessary investigations--the slightest disturbance, the jar of a door--i must ask you--" "certainly, sir. you can turn the lock if you're like that, you know--any time." "a very good idea," said the stranger. "this stror, sir, if i might make so bold as to remark--" "don't. if the straw makes trouble put it down in the bill." and he mumbled at her--words suspiciously like curses. he was so odd, standing there, so aggressive and explosive, bottle in one hand and test-tube in the other, that mrs. hall was quite alarmed. but she was a resolute woman. "in which case, i should like to know, sir, what you consider--" "a shilling. put down a shilling. surely a shilling's enough?" "so be it," said mrs. hall, taking up the tablecloth and beginning to spread it over the table. "if you're satisfied, of course--" he turned and sat down, with his coat-collar towards her. all the afternoon he worked with the door locked and, as mrs. hall testifies, for the most part in silence. but once there was a concussion and a sound of bottles ringing together as though the table had been hit, and the smash of a bottle flung violently down, and then a rapid pacing athwart the room. fearing "something was the matter," she went to the door and listened, not caring to knock. "i can't go on," he was raving. "i can't go on. three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand! the huge multitude! cheated! all my life it may take me! patience! patience indeed! fool and liar!" there was a noise of hobnails on the bricks in the bar, and mrs. hall very reluctantly had to leave the rest of his soliloquy. when she returned the room was silent again, save for the faint crepitation of his chair and the occasional clink of a bottle. it was all over. the stranger had resumed work. when she took in his tea she saw broken glass in the corner of the room under the concave mirror, and a golden stain that had been carelessly wiped. she called attention to it. "put it down in the bill," snapped her visitor. "for god's sake don't worry me. if there's damage done, put it down in the bill"; and he went on ticking a list in the exercise book before him. "i'll tell you something," said fearenside mysteriously. it was late in the afternoon, and they were in the little beer-shop of iping hanger. "well?" said teddy henfrey. "this chap you're speaking of, what my dog bit. well--he's black. leastways, his legs are. i seed through the tear of his glove. you'd have expected a sort of pinky to show, wouldn't you? well--there wasn't none. just blackness. i tell you, he's as black as my hat." "my sakes!" said henfrey. "it's a rummy case altogether. why, his nose is as pink as paint!" "that's true," said fearenside. "i knows that. and i tell 'ee what i'm thinking. that marn's a piebald, teddy. black here and white there--in patches. and he's ashamed of it. he's a kind of half-breed, and the colour's come off patchy instead of mixing. i've heard of such things before. and it's the common way with horses, as anyone can see." ********** chapter 4 mr. cuss interviews the stranger i have told the circumstances of the stranger's arrival in iping with a certain fulness of detail, in order that the curious impression he created may be understood by the reader. but excepting two odd incidents, the circumstances of his stay until the extraordinary day of the club festival may be passed over very cursorily. there were a number of skirmishes with mrs. hall on matters of domestic discipline, but in every case until late in april, when the first signs of penury began, he over-rode her by the easy expedient of an extra payment. hall did not like him, and whenever he dared he talked of the advisability of getting rid of him; but he showed his dislike chiefly by concealing it ostentatiously, and avoiding his visitor as much as possible. "wait till the summer," said mrs. hall, sagely, "when the artisks are beginning to come. then we'll see. he may be a bit overbearing, but bills settled punctual is bills settled punctual, whatever you like to say." the stranger did not go to church, and indeed made no difference between sunday and the irreligious days, even in costume. he worked, as mrs. hall thought, very fitfully. some days he would come down early and be continuously busy. on others he would rise late, pace his room, fretting audibly for hours together, smoke, sleep in the armchair by the fire. communication with the world beyond the village he had none. his temper continued very uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a man suffering under almost unendurable provocation, and once or twice things were snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence. he seemed under a chronic irritation of the greatest intensity. his habit of talking to himself in a low voice grew steadily upon him, but though mrs. hall listened conscientiously she could make neither head nor tail of what she heard. he rarely went abroad by daylight, but at twilight he would go out muffled up enormously, whether the weather were cold or not, and he chose the loneliest paths and those most overshadowed by trees and banks. his goggling spectacles and ghastly bandaged face under the penthouse of his hat, came with a disagreeable suddenness out of the darkness upon one or two home-going labourers; and teddy henfrey, tumbling out of the scarlet coat one night at half-past nine, was scared shamefully by the stranger's skull-like head (he was walking hat in hand) lit by the sudden light of the opened door. such children as saw him at nightfall dreamt of bogies, and it seemed doubtful whether he disliked boys more than they disliked him, or the reverse--but there was certainly a vivid enough dislike on either side. it was inevitable that a person of so remarkable an appearance and bearing should form a frequent topic in such a village as iping. opinion was greatly divided about his occupation. mrs. hall was sensitive on the point. when questioned, she explained very carefully that he was an "experimental investigator," going gingerly over the syllables as one who dreads pitfalls. when asked what an experimental investigator was, she would say with a touch of superiority that most educated people knew that, and would then explain that he "discovered things." her visitor had had an accident, she said, which temporarily discoloured his face and hands; and being of a sensitive disposition, he was averse to any public notice of the fact. out of her hearing there was a view largely entertained that he was a criminal trying to escape from justice by wrapping himself up so as to conceal himself altogether from the eye of the police. this idea sprang from the brain of mr. teddy henfrey. no crime of any magnitude dating from the middle or end of february was known to have occurred. elaborated in the imagination of mr. gould, the probationary assistant in the national school, this theory took the form that the stranger was an anarchist in disguise, preparing explosives, and he resolved to undertake such detective operations as his time permitted. these consisted for the most part in looking very hard at the stranger whenever they met, or in asking people who had never seen the stranger leading questions about him. but he detected nothing. another school of opinion followed mr. fearenside, and either accepted the piebald view or some modification of it; as, for instance, silas durgan, who was heard to assert that "if he choses to show enself at fairs he'd make his fortune in no time," and being a bit of a theologian, compared the stranger to the man with the one talent. yet another view explained the entire matter by regarding the stranger as a harmless lunatic. that had the advantage of accounting for everything straight away. between these main groups there were waverers and compromisers. sussex folk have few superstitions, and it was only after the events of early april that the thought of the supernatural was first whispered in the village. even then it was only credited among the women folks. but whatever they thought of him, people in iping on the whole agreed in disliking him. his irritability, though it might have been comprehensible to an urban brain-worker, was an amazing thing to these quiet sussex villagers. the frantic gesticulations they surprised now and then, the headlong pace after nightfall that swept him upon them round quiet corners, the inhuman bludgeoning of all the tentative advances of curiosity, the taste for twilight that led to the closing of doors, the pulling down of blinds, the extinction of candles and lamps--who could agree with such goings on? they drew aside as he passed down the village, and when he had gone by, young humorists would up with coat-collars and down with hat-brims, and go pacing nervously after him in imitation of his occult bearing. there was a song popular at that time called the "bogey man"; miss statchell sang it at the schoolroom concert (in aid of the church lamps), and thereafter whenever one or two of the villagers were gathered together and the stranger appeared, a bar or so of this tune, more or less sharp or flat, was whistled in the midst of them. also belated little children would call "bogey man!" after him, and make off tremulously elated. cuss, the general practitioner, was devoured by curiosity. the bandages excited his professional interest, the report of the thousand and one bottles aroused his jealous regard. all through april and may he coveted an opportunity of talking to the stranger; and at last, towards whitsuntide, he could stand it no longer, and hit upon the subscription-list for a village nurse as an excuse. he was surprised to find that mr. hall did not know his guest's name. "he give a name," said mrs. hall--an assertion which was quite unfounded-"but i didn't rightly hear it." she thought it seemed so silly not to know the man's name. cuss rapped at the parlour door and entered. there was a fairly audible imprecation from within. "pardon my intrusion," said cuss, and then the door closed and cut mrs. hall off from the rest of the conversation. she could hear the murmur of voices for the next ten minutes, then a cry of surprise, a stirring of feet, a chair flung aside, a bark of laughter, quick steps to the door, and cuss appeared, his face white, his eyes staring over his shoulder. he left the door open behind him, and without looking at her strode across the hall and went down the steps, and she heard his feet hurrying along the road. he carried his hat in his hand. she stood behind the door, looking at the open door of the parlour. then she heard the stranger laughing quietly, and then his footsteps came across the room. she could not see his face where she stood. the parlour door slammed, and the place was silent again. cuss went straight up the village to bunting the vicar. "am i mad?" cuss began abruptly, as he entered the shabby little study. "do i look like an insane person?" "what's happened?" said the vicar, putting the ammonite on the loose sheets of his forthcoming sermon. "that chap at the inn--" "well?" "give me something to drink," said cuss, and he sat down. when his nerves had been steadied by a glass of cheap sherry-the only drink the good vicar had available--he told him of the interview he had just had. "went in," he gasped, "and began to demand a subscription for that nurse fund. he'd stuck his hands in his pockets as i came in, and he sat down lumpily in his chair. sniffed. i told him i'd heard he took an interest in scientific things. he said yes. sniffed again. kept on sniffing all the time; evidently recently caught an infernal cold. no wonder, wrapped up like that! i developed the nurse idea, and all the while kept my eyes open. bottles--chemicals--everywhere. balance, test-tubes in stands, and a smell of--evening primrose. would he subscribe? said he'd consider it. asked him, point-blank, was he researching. said he was. a long research? got quite cross. 'a damnable long research,' said he, blowing the cork out, so to speak. 'oh,' said i. and out came the grievance. the man was just on the boil, and my question boiled him over. he had been given a prescription, most valuable prescription-what for he wouldn't say. was it medical? 'damn you! what are you fishing after?' i apologised. dignified sniff and cough. he resumed. he'd read it. five ingredients. put it down; turned his head. draught of air from window lifted the paper. swish, rustle. he was working in a room with an open fireplace, he said. saw a flicker, and there was the prescription burning and lifting chimneyward. rushed towards it just as it whisked up chimney. so! just at that point, to illustrate his story, out came his arm." "well?" "no hand--just an empty sleeve. lord! i thought, that's a deformity! got a cork arm, i suppose, and has taken it off. then, i thought, there's something odd in that. what the devil keeps that sleeve up and open, if there's nothing in it? there was nothing in it, i tell you. nothing down it, right down to the joint. i could see right down it to the elbow, and there was a glimmer of light shining through a tear of the cloth. 'good god!' i said. then he stopped. stared at me with those black goggles of his, and then at his sleeve." "well?" "that's all. he never said a word; just glared, and put his sleeve back in his pocket quickly. 'i was saying,' said he, 'that there was the prescription burning, wasn't i?' interrogative cough. 'how the devil,' said i, 'can you move an empty sleeve like that?' 'empty sleeve?' 'yes,' said i, 'an empty sleeve.' "'it's an empty sleeve, is it? you saw it was an empty sleeve?' he stood up right away. i stood up too. he came towards me in three very slow steps, and stood quite close. sniffed venomously. i didn't flinch, though i'm hanged if that bandaged knob of his, and those blinkers, aren't enough to unnerve any one, coming quietly up to you. "'you said it was an empty sleeve?' he said. 'certainly,' i said. at staring and saying nothing a barefaced man, unspectacled, starts scratch. then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket again, and raised his arm towards me as though he would show it to me again. he did it very, very slowly. i looked at it. seemed an age. 'well?' said i, clearing my throat, 'there's nothing in it.' had to say something. i was beginning to feel frightened. i could see right down it. he extended it straight towards me, slowly, slowly --just like that--until the cuff was six inches from my face. queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that! and then--" "well?" "something--exactly like a finger and thumb it felt--nipped my nose." bunting began to laugh. "there wasn't anything there!" said cuss, his voice running up into a shriek at the "there." "it's all very well for you to laugh, but i tell you i was so startled, i hit his cuff hard, and turned round, and cut out of the room--i left him--" cuss stopped. there was no mistaking the sincerity of his panic. he turned round in a helpless way and took a second glass of the excellent vicar's very inferior sherry. "when i hit his cuff," said cuss, "i tell you, it felt exactly like hitting an arm. and there wasn't an arm! there wasn't the ghost of an arm!" mr. bunting thought it over. he looked suspiciously at cuss. "it's a most remarkable story," he said. he looked very wise and grave indeed. "it's really," said mr. bunting with judicial emphasis, "a most remarkable story." ********** chapter 5 the burglary at the vicarage the facts of the burlgary at the vicarage came to us chiefly through the medium of the vicar and his wife. it occurred in the small hours of whit-monday--the day devoted in iping to the club festivities. mrs. bunting, it seems, woke up suddenly in the stillness that comes before the dawn, with the strong impression that the door of their bedroom had opened and closed. she did not arouse her husband at first, but sat up in bed listening. she then distinctly heard the pad, pad, pad of bare feet coming out of the adjoining dressing-room and walking along the passage towards the staircase. as soon as she felt assured of this, she aroused the rev. mr. bunting as quietly as possible. he did not strike a light, but putting on his spectacles, her dressing-gown, and his bath slippers, he went out on the landing to listen. he heard quite distinctly a fumbling going on at his study desk downstairs, and then a violent sneeze. at that he returned to his bedroom, armed himself with the most obvious weapon, the poker, and descended the staircase as noiselessly as possible. mrs. bunting came out on the landing. the hour was about four, and the ultimate darkness of the night was past. there was a faint shimmer of light in the hall, but the study doorway yawned impenetrably black. everything was still except the faint creaking of the stairs under mr. bunting's tread, and the slight movements in the study. then something snapped, the drawer was opened, and there was a rustle of papers. then came an imprecation, and a match was struck and the study was flooded with yellow light. mr. bunting was now in the hall, and through the crack of the door he could see the desk and the open drawer and a candle burning on the desk. but the robber he could not see. he stood there in the hall undecided what to do, and mrs. bunting, her face white and intent, crept slowly downstairs after him. one thing kept up mr. bunting's courage: the persuasion that this burglar was a resident in the village. they heard the chink of money, and realised that the robber had found the housekeeping reserve of gold--two pounds ten in halfsovereigns altogether. at that sound mr. bunting was nerved to abrupt action. gripping the poker firmly, he rushed into the room, closely followed by mrs. bunting. "surrender!" cried mr. bunting, fiercely, and then stopped amazed. apparently the room was perfectly empty. yet their conviction that they had, that very moment, heard somebody moving in the room had amounted to a certainty. for half a minute, perhaps, they stood gaping, then mrs. bunting went across the room and looked behind the screen, while mr. bunting, by a kindred impulse, peered under the desk. then mrs. bunting turned back the window-curtains, and mr. bunting looked up the chimney and probed it with the poker. then mrs. bunting scrutinised the waste-paper basket and mr. bunting opened the lid of the coal-scuttle. then they came to a stop and stood with eyes interrogating each other. "i could have sworn--" said mr. bunting. "the candle!" said mr. bunting. "who lit the candle?" "the drawer!" said mrs. bunting. "and the money's gone!" she went hastily to the doorway. "of all the extraordinary occurrences--" there was a violent sneeze in the passage. they rushed out, and as they did so the kitchen door slammed. "bring the candle," said mr. bunting, and led the way. they both heard a sound of bolts being hastily shot back. as he opened the kitchen door he saw through the scullery that the back door was just opening, and the faint light of early dawn displayed the dark masses of the garden beyond. he is certain that nothing went out of the door. it opened, stood open for a moment, and then closed with a slam. as it did so, the candle mrs. bunting was carrying from the study flickered and flared. it was a minute or more before they entered the kitchen. the place was empty. they refastened the back door, examined the kitchen, pantry, and scullery thoroughly, and at last went down into the cellar. there was not a soul to be found in the house, search as they would. daylight found the vicar and his wife, a quaintly-costumed little couple, still marvelling about on their own ground floor by the unnecessary light of a guttering candle. ********** chapter 6 the furniture that went mad now it happened that in the early hours of whit-monday, before millie was hunted out for the day, mr. hall and mrs. hall both rose and went noiselessly down into the cellar. their business there was of a private nature, and had something to do with the specific gravity of their beer. they had hardly entered the cellar when mrs. hall found she had forgotten to bring down a bottle of sarsaparilla from their joint-room. as she was the expert and principal operator in this affair, hall very properly went upstairs for it. on the landing he was surprised to see that the stranger's door was ajar. he went on into his own room and found the bottle as he had been directed. but returning with the bottle, he noticed that the bolts of the front door had been shot back, that the door was in fact simply on the latch. and with a flash of inspiration he connected this with the stranger's room upstairs and the suggestions of mr. teddy henfrey. he distinctly remembered holding the candle while mrs. hall shot those bolts overnight. at the sight he stopped, gaping, then with the bottle still in his hand went upstairs again. he rapped at the stranger's door. there was no answer. he rapped again; then pushed the door wide open and entered. it was as he expected. the bed, the room also, was empty. and what was stranger, even to his heavy intelligence, on the bedroom chair and along the rail of the bed were scattered the garments, the only garments so far as he knew, and the bandages of their guest. his big slouch hat even was cocked jauntily over the bed-post. as hall stood there he heard his wife's voice coming out of the depth of the cellar, with that rapid telescoping of the syllables and interrogative cocking up of the final words to a high note, by which the west sussex villager is wont to indicate a brisk impatience. "gearge! you gart what a wand?" at that he turned and hurried down to her. "janny," he said, over the rail of the cellar steps, "'tas the truth what henfrey sez. 'e's not in uz room, 'e ent. and the front door's unbolted." at first mrs. hall did not understand, and as soon as she did she resolved to see the empty room for herself. hall, still holding the bottle, went first. "if 'e ent there," he said, "his close are. and what's 'e doin' without his close, then? 'tas a most curious basness." as they came up the cellar steps, they both, it was afterwards ascertained, fancied they heard the front door open and shut, but seeing it closed and nothing there, neither said a word to the other about it at the time. mrs. hall passed her husband in the passage and ran on first upstairs. some one sneezed on the staircase. hall, following six steps behind, thought that he heard her sneeze. she, going on first, was under the impression that hall was sneezing. she flung open the door and stood regarding the room. "of all the curious!" she said. she heard a sniff close behind her head as it seemed, and, turning, was surprised to see hall a dozen feet off on the top-most stair. but in another moment he was beside her. she bent forward and put her hand on the pillow and then under the clothes. "cold," she said. "he's been up this hour or more." as she did so, a most extraordinary thing happened--the bedclothes gathered themselves together, leapt up suddenly into a sort of peak, and then jumped headlong over the bottom rail. it was exactly as if a hand had clutched them in the centre and flung them aside. immediately after, the stranger's hat hopped off the bed-post, describing a whirling flight in the air through the better part of a circle, and then dashed straight at mrs. hall's face. then as swiftly came the sponge from the washstand; and then the chair, flinging the stranger's coat and trousers carelessly aside, and laughing dryly in a voice singularly like the stranger's, turned itself up with its four legs at mrs. hall, seemed to take aim at her for a moment, and charged at her. she screamed and turned, and then the chair legs came gently but firmly against her back and impelled her and hall out of the room. the door slammed violently and was locked. the chair and bed seemed to be executing a dance of triumph for a moment, and then abruptly everything was still. mrs. hall was left almost in a fainting condition in mr. hall's arms on the landing. it was with the greatest difficulty that mr. hall and millie, who had been roused by her scream of alarm, succeeded in getting her downstairs, and applying the restoratives customary in these cases. "'tas sperrits," said mrs. hall. "i know 'tas sperrits. i've read in papers of en. tables and chairs leaping and dancing--!" "take a drop more, janny," said hall. "'twill steady ye." "lock him out," said mrs. hall. "don't let him come in again. i half guessed--i might ha' known. with them goggling eyes and bandaged head, and never going to church of a sunday. and all they bottles--more'n it's right for any one to have. he's put the sperrits into the furniture. my good old furniture! 'twas in that very chair my poor dear mother used to sit when i was a little girl. to think it should rise up against me now!" "just a drop more, janny," said hall. "your nerves is all upset." they sent millie across the street through the golden five o'clock sunshine to rouse up mr. sandy wadgers, the blacksmith. mr. hall's compliments and the furniture upstairs was behaving most extraordinary. would mr. wadgers come round? he was a knowing man, was mr. wadgers, and very resourceful. he took quite a grave view of the case. "arm darmed ef thet ent witchcraft," was the view of mr. sandy wadgers. "you warnt horseshoes for such gentry as he." he came round greatly concerned. they wanted him to lead the way upstairs to the room, but he didn't seem to be in any hurry. he preferred to talk in the passage. over the way huxter's apprentice came out and began taking down the shutters of the tobacco window. he was called over to join the discussion. mr. huxter naturally followed in the course of a few minutes. the anglo-saxon genius for parliamentary government asserted itself; there was a great deal of talk and no decisive action. "let's have the facts first," insisted mr. sandy wadgers. "let's be sure we'd be acting perfectly right in bustin' that there door open. a door onbust is always open to bustin', but ye can't onbust a door once you've busted en." and suddenly and most wonderfully the door of the room upstairs opened of its own accord, and as they looked up in amazement, they saw descending the stairs the muffled figure of the stranger staring more blackly and blankly than ever with those unreasonably large blue glass eyes of his. he came down stiffly and slowly, staring all the time; he walked across the passage staring, then stopped. "look there!" he said, and their eyes followed the direction of his gloved finger and saw a bottle of sarsaparilla hard by the cellar door. then he entered the parlour, and suddenly, swiftly, viciously slammed the door in their faces. not a word was spoken until the last echoes of the slam had died away. they stared at one another. "well, if that don't lick everything!" said mr. wadgers, and left the alternative unsaid. "i'd go in and ask'n 'bout it," said wadgers, to mr. hall. "i'd d'mand an explanation." it took some time to bring the landlady's husband up to that pitch. at last he rapped, opened the door, and got as far as, "excuse me--" "go to the devil!" said the stranger in a tremendous voice, and "shut that door after you." so that brief interview terminated. ********** chapter 7 the unveiling of the stranger the stranger went into the little parlour of the coach and horses about half-past five in the morning, and there he remained until near midday, the blinds down, the door shut, and none, after hall's repulse, venturing near him. all that time he must have fasted. thrice he rang his bell, the third time furiously and continuously, but no one answered him. "him and his 'go to the devil' indeed!" said mrs. hall. presently came an imperfect rumour of the burglary at the vicarage, and two and two were put together. hall, assisted by wadgers, went off to find mr. shuckleforth, the magistrate, and take his advice. no one ventured upstairs. how the stranger occupied himself is unknown. now and then he would stride violently up and down, and twice came an outburst of curses, a tearing of paper, and a violent smashing of bottles. the little group of scared but curious people increased. mrs. huxter came over; some gay young fellows resplendent in black readymade jackets and piqu paper ties, for it was whit-monday, joined the group with confused interrogations. young archie harker distinguished himself by going up the yard and trying to peep under the window-blinds. he could see nothing, but gave reason for supposing that he did, and others of the iping youth presently joined him. it was the finest of all possible whit-mondays, and down the village street stood a row of nearly a dozen booths and a shooting gallery, and on the grass by the forge were three yellow and chocolate waggons and some picturesque strangers of both sexes putting up a cocoanut shy. the gentlemen wore blue jerseys, the ladies white aprons and quite fashionable hats with heavy plumes. wodger of the purple fawn and mr. jaggers the cobbler, who also sold second-hand ordinary bicycles, were stretching a string of union-jacks and royal ensigns (which had originally celebrated the jubilee) across the road... and inside, in the artificial darkness of the parlour, into which only one thin jet of sunlight penetrated, the stranger, hungry we must suppose, and fearful, hidden in his uncomfortable hot wrappings, pored through his dark glasses upon his paper or chinked his dirty little bottles, and occasionally swore savagely at the boys, audible if invisible, outside the windows. in the corner by the fireplace lay the fragments of half a dozen smashed bottles, and a pungent tang of chlorine tainted the air. so much we know from what was heard at the time and from what was subsequently seen in the room. about noon he suddenly opened his parlour door and stood glaring fixedly at the three or four people in the bar. "mrs. hall," he said. somebody went sheepishly and called for mrs. hall. mrs. hall appeared after an interval, a little short of breath, but all the fiercer for that. hall was still out. she had deliberated over the scene, and she came holding a little tray with an unsettled bill upon it. "is it your bill you're wanting, sir?" she said. "why wasn't my breakfast laid? why haven't you prepared my meals and answered my bell? do you think i live without eating?" "why isn't my bill paid?" said mrs. hall. "that's what i want to know." "i told you three days ago i was awaiting a remittance--" "i told you two days ago i wasn't going to await no remittances. you can't grumble if your breakfast waits a bit, if my bill's been waiting these five days, can you?" the stranger swore briefly but vividly. "nar, nar!" from the bar. "and i'd thank you kindly, sir, if you'd keep your swearing to yourself, sir," said mrs. hall. the stranger stood looking more like an angry diving-helmet than ever. it was universally felt in the bar that mrs. hall had the better of him. his next words showed as much. "look here, my good woman--" he began. "don't good woman me," said mrs. hall. "i've told you my remittance hasn't come--" "remittance indeed!" said mrs. hall. "still, i daresay in my pocket--" "you told me two days ago that you hadn't anything but a sovereign's worth of silver upon you--" "well, i've found some more--" "'ul-lo!" from the bar. "i wonder where you found it!" said mrs. hall. that seemed to annoy the stranger very much. he stamped his foot. "what do you mean?" he said. "that i wonder where you found it," said mrs. hall. "and before i take any bills or get any breakfasts, or do any such things whatsoever, you got to tell me one or two things i don't understand, and what nobody don't understand, and what everybody is very anxious to understand. i want know what you been doing t' my chair upstairs, and i want know how 'tis your room was empty, and how you got in again. them as stops in this house comes in by the doors--that's the rule of the house, and that you didn't do, and what i want know is how you did come in. and i want know--" suddenly the stranger raised his gloved hands clenched, stamped his foot, and said, "stop!" with such extraordinary violence that he silenced her instantly. "you don't understand," he said, "who i am or what i am. i'll show you. by heaven! i'll show you." then he put his open palm over his face and withdrew it. the centre of his face became a black cavity. "here," he said. he stepped forward and handed mrs. hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back. the nose--it was the stranger's nose! pink and shining--rolled on the floor. then he removed his spectacles, and every one in the bar gasped. he took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. for a moment they resisted him. a flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. "oh, my gard!" said some one. then off they came. it was worse than anything. mrs. hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the house. every one began to move. they were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! the bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. every one tumbled on every one else down the steps. for the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then--nothingness, no visible thing at all! people down the village heard shouts and shrieks, and looking up the street saw the coach and horses violently firing out its humanity. they saw mrs. hall fall down and mr. teddy henfrey jump to avoid tumbling over her, and then they heard the frightful screams of millie, who, emerging suddenly from the kitchen at the noise of the tumult, had come upon the headless stranger from behind. forthwith every one all down the street, the sweet-stuff seller, cocoanut shy proprietor and his assistant, the swing man, little boys and girls, rustic dandies, smart wenches, smocked elders and aproned gipsies, began running towards the inn; and in a miraculously short space of time a crowd of perhaps forty people, and rapidly increasing, swayed and hooted and inquired and exclaimed and suggested, in front of mrs. hall's establishment. every one seemed eager to talk at once, and the result was babel. a small group supported mrs. hall, who was picked up in a state of collapse. there was a conference, and the incredible evidence of a vociferous eyewitness. "o'bogey!" "what's he been doin', then?" "ain't hurt the girl, 'as 'e?" "run at en with a knife, i believe." "no 'ed, i tell ye. i don't mean no manner of speaking, i mean marn 'without a' ed!" "narnsense! 'tas some conjuring trick." "fetched off 'is wrappin's, 'e did--" in its struggles to see in through the open door, the crowd formed itself into a straggling wedge, with the more adventurous apex nearest the inn. "he stood for a moment, i heerd the gal scream, and he turned. i saw her skirts whisk, and he went after her. didn't take ten seconds. back he comes with a knife in uz hand and a loaf; stood just as if he was staring. not a moment ago. went in that there door. i tell 'e, 'e ain't gart no 'ed 't all. you just missed en--" there was a disturbance behind, and the speaker stopped to step aside for a little procession that was marching very resolutely towards the house--first mr. hall, very red and determined, then mr. bobby jaffers, the village constable, and then the wary mr. wadgers. they had come now armed with a warrant. people shouted conflicting information of the recent circumstances. "'ed or no 'ed," said jaffers, "i got to 'rest en, and 'rest en i will." mr. hall marched up the steps, marched straight to the door of the parlour and flung it open. "constable," he said, "do your duty." jaffers marched in, hall next, wadgers last. they saw in the dim light the headless figure facing them, with a gnawed crust of bread in one gloved hand and a chunk of cheese in the other. "that's him!" said hall. "what the devil's this?" came in a tone of angry expostulation from above the collar of the figure. "you're a damned rum customer, mister," said mr. jaffers. "but 'ed or no 'ed, the warrant says 'body,' and duty's duty--" "keep off!" said the figure, starting back. abruptly he whipped down the bread and cheese, and mr. hall just grasped the knife on the table in time to save it. off came the stranger's left glove and was slapped in jaffers' face. in another moment jaffers, cutting short some statement concerning a warrant, had gripped him by the handless wrist and caught his invisible throat. he got a sounding kick on the shin that made him shout, but he kept his grip. hall sent the knife sliding along the table to wadgers, who acted as goal-keeper for the offensive, so to speak, and then stepped forward as jaffers and the stranger swayed and staggered towards him, clutching and hitting in. a chair stood in the way, and went aside with a crash as they came down together. "get the feet," said jaffers between his teeth. mr. hall, endeavoring to act on instructions, receiving a sounding kick in the ribs that disposed of him for a moment, and mr. wadgers, seeing the decapitated stranger had rolled over and got the upper side of jaffers, retreated towards the door, knife in hand, and so collided with mr. huxter and the siddermorton carter coming to the rescue of law and order. at the same moment down came three or four bottles from the chiffonier and shot a web of pungency into the air of the room. "i'll surrender," cried the stranger, though he had jaffers down, and in another moment he stood up panting, a strange figure, headless and handless--for he had pulled off his right glove now as well as his left. "it's no good," he said, as if sobbing for breath. it was the strangest thing in the world to hear that voice coming as if out of empty space, but the sussex peasants are perhaps the most matter-of-fact people under the sun. jaffers got up also and produced a pair of handcuffs. then he started. "i say!" said jaffers, brought up short by a dim realisation of the incongruity of the whole business. "darm it! can't use 'em as i can see." the stranger ran his arm down his waistcoat, and as if by a miracle the buttons to which his empty sleeve pointed became undone. then he said something about his shin, and stooped down. he seemed to be fumbling with his shoes and socks. "why!" said huxter, suddenly, "that's not a man at all. it's just empty clothes. look! you can see down his collar and the linings of his clothes. i could put my arm--" he extended his hand; it seemed to meet something in mid-air, and he drew it back with a sharp exclamation. "i wish you'd keep your fingers out of my eye," said the aerial voice, in a tone of savage expostulation. "the fact is, i'm all here: head, hands, legs, and all the rest of it, but it happens i'm invisible. it's a confounded nuisance, but i am. that's no reason why i should be poked to pieces by every stupid bumpkin in iping, is it?" the suit of clothes, now all unbuttoned and hanging loosely upon its unseen supports, stood up, arms akimbo. several other of the men folks had now entered the room, so that it was closely crowded. "invisible, eigh?" said huxter, ignoring the stranger's abuse. "who ever heard the likes of that?" "it's strange, perhaps, but it's not a crime. why am i assaulted by a policeman in this fashion?" "ah! that's a different matter," said jaffers. "no doubt you are a bit difficult to see in this light, but i got a warrant, and it's all correct. what i'm after ain't no invisibility--it's burglary. there's a house been broken into and money took." "well?" "and circumstances certainly point--" "stuff and nonsense!" said the invisible man. "i hope so, sir; but i've got my instructions." "well," said the stranger, "i'll come. i'll come. but no handcuffs." "it's the regular thing," said jaffers. "no handcuffs," stipulated the stranger. "pardon me," said jaffers. abruptly the figure sat down, and before any one could realise what was being done, the slippers, socks, and trousers had been kicked off under the table. then he sprang up again and flung off his coat. "here, stop that," said jaffers, suddenly realising what was happening. he gripped the waist-coat; it struggled, and the shirt slipped out of it and left it limp and empty in his hand. "hold him!" said jaffers loudly. "once he gets they things off--!" "hold him!" cried every one, and there was a rush at the fluttering white shirt which was now all that was visible of the stranger. the shirt-sleeve planted a shrewd blow in hall's face that stopped his open-armed advance, and sent him backward into old toothsome the sexton, and in another moment the garment was lifted up and became convulsed and vacantly flapping about the arms, even as a shirt that is being thrust over a man's head. jaffers clutched at it, and only helped to pull it off; he was struck in the mouth out of the air, and incontinently drew his truncheon and smote teddy henfrey savagely upon the crown of his head. "look out!" said everybody, fencing at random and hitting at nothing. "hold him! shut the door! don't let him loose! i got something! here he is!" a perfect babel of noises they made. everybody, it seemed, was being hit all at once, and sandy wadgers, knowing as ever and his wits sharpened by a frightful blow in the nose, reopened the door and led the rout. the others, following incontinently, were jammed for a moment in the corner by the doorway. the hitting continued. phipps, the unitarian, had a front tooth broken, and henfrey was injured in the cartilage of his ear. jaffers was struck under the jaw, and, turning, caught at something that intervened between him and huxter in the mle, and prevented their coming together. he felt a muscular chest, and in another moment the whole mass of struggling, excited men shot out into the crowded hall. "i got him!" shouted jaffers, choking and reeling through them all, and wrestling with purple face and swelling veins against his unseen enemy. men staggered right and left as the extraordinary conflict swayed swiftly towards the house door, and went spinning down the half-dozen steps of the inn. jaffers cried in a strangled voice-holding tight, nevertheless, and making play with his knee--spun round, and fell heavily undermost with his head on the gravel. only then did his fingers relax. there were excited cries of "hold him!" "invisible!" and so forth, and a young fellow, a stranger in the place whose name did not come to light, rushed in at once, caught something, missed his hold, and fell over the constable's prostrate body. halfway across the road, a woman screamed as something pushed by her; a dog, kicked apparently, yelped and ran howling into huxter's yard, and with that the transit of the invisible man was accomplished. for a space people stood amazed and gesticulating, and then came panic, and scattered them abroad through the village as a gust scatters dead leaves. but jaffers lay quite still, face upward and knees bent. ********** chapter 8 in transit the eighth chapter is exceedingly brief, and relates that gibbins, the amateur naturalist of the district, while lying out on the spacious open downs without a soul within a couple of miles of him, as he thought, and almost dozing, heard close to him the sound as of a man coughing, sneezing, and then swearing savagely to himself; and looking, beheld nothing. yet the voice was indisputable. it continued to swear with that breadth and variety that distinguishes the swearing of a cultivated man. it grew to a climax, diminished again, and died away in the distance, going as it seemed to him in the direction of adderdean. it lifted to a spasmodic sneeze and ended. gibbins had heard nothing of the morning's occurrences, but the phenomenon was so striking and disturbing that his philosophical tranquillity vanished; he got up hastily, and hurried down the steepness of the hill towards the village, as fast as he could go. ********** chapter 9 mr. thomas marvel you must picture mr. thomas marvel as a person of copious, flexible visage, a nose of cylindrical protrusion, a liquorish, ample, fluctuating mouth, and a beard of bristling eccentricity. his figure inclined to embonpoint; his short limbs accentuated this inclination. he wore a furry silk hat, and the frequent substitution of twine and shoe-laces for buttons, apparent at critical points of his costume, marked a man essentially bachelor. mr. thomas marvel was sitting with his feet in a ditch by the roadside over the down toward adderdean, about a mile and a half out of iping. his feet, save for socks of irregular openwork, were bare, his big toes were broad, and pricked like the ears of a watchful dog. in a leisurely manner--he did everything in a leisurely manner--he was contemplating trying on a pair of boots. they were the soundest boots he had come across for a long time, but too large for him; whereas the ones he had were, in dry weather, a very comfortable fit, but too thin-soled for damp. mr. thomas marvel hated roomy boots, but then he hated damp. he had never properly thought out which he hated most, and it was a pleasant day, and there was nothing better to do. so he put the four boots in a graceful group on the turf and looked at them. and seeing them there among the grass and springing agrimony, it suddenly occurred to him that both pairs were exceedingly ugly to see. he was not at all startled by a voice behind him. "they're boots, anyhow," said the voice. "they are--charity boots," said mr. thomas marvel, with his head on one side regarding them distastefully; "and which is the ugliest pair in the whole blessed universe, i'm darned if i know!" "h'm," said the voice. "i've worn worse--in fact, i've worn none. but none so owdacious ugly--if you'll allow the expression. i've been cadging boots--in particular--for days. because i was sick of them. they're sound enough, of course. but a gentleman on tramp sees such a thundering lot of his boots. and if you'll believe me, i've raised nothing in the whole blessed county, try as i would, but them. look at 'em! and a good county for boots, too, in a general way. but it's just my promiscuous luck. i've got my boots in this county ten years or more. and then they treat you like this." "it's a beast of a county," said the voice. "and pigs for people." "ain't it?" said mr. thomas marvel. "lord! but them boots! it beats it." he turned his head over his shoulder to the right, to look at the boots of his interlocutor with a view to comparisons, and lo! where the boots of his interlocutor should have been were neither legs nor boots. he turned his head over his shoulder to the left, and there also were neither legs nor boots. he was irradiated by the dawn of a great amazement. "where are yar?" said mr. thomas marvel over his shoulder and coming round on all fours. he saw a stretch of empty downs with the wind swaying and remote green-pointed furze bushes. "am i drunk?" said mr. marvel. "have i had visions? was i talking to myself? what the--" "don't be alarmed," said a voice. "none of your ventriloquising me," said mr. thomas marvel, rising sharply to his feet. "where are yer? alarmed, indeed!" "don't be alarmed," repeated the voice. "you'll be alarmed in a minute, you silly fool," said mr. thomas marvel. "where are yer? lemme get my mark on yer-"are you buried?" said mr. thomas marvel, after an interval. there was no answer. mr. thomas marvel stood bootless and amazed, his jacket nearly thrown off. "peewit," said a peewit, very remote. "peewit, indeed!" said mr. thomas marvel. "this ain't no time for foolery." the down was desolate, east and west, north and south; the road with its shallow ditches and white bordering stakes, ran smooth and empty north and south, and, save for that peewit, the blue sky was empty too. "so help me," said mr. thomas marvel, shuffling his coat on to his shoulders again. "it's the drink! i might ha' known." "it's not the drink," said the voice. "you keep your nerves steady." "ow!" said mr. marvel, and his face grew white amidst its patches. "it's the drink," his lips repeated noiselessly. he remained staring about him, rotating slowly backwards. "i could have swore i heard a voice," he whispered. "of course you did." "it's there again," said mr. marvel, closing his eyes and clasping his hand on his brow with a tragic gesture. he was suddenly taken by the collar and shaken violently and left more dazed than ever. "don't be a fool," said the voice. "i'm--off--my--blooming--chump," said mr. marvel. "it's no good. it's fretting about them blarsted boots. i'm off my blessed blooming chump. or it's spirits." "neither one thing nor the other," said the voice. "listen!" "chump," said mr. marvel. "one minute," said the voice penetratingly,--tremulous with self-control. "well?" said mr. thomas marvel, with a strange feeling of having been dug in the chest by a finger. "you think i'm just imagination? just imagination?" "what else can you be?" said mr. thomas marvel, rubbing the back of his neck. "very well," said the voice, in a tone of relief. "then i'm going to throw flints at you till you think differently." "but where are yer?" the voice made no answer. whiz came a flint, apparently out of the air, and missed mr. marvel's shoulder by a hair's breadth. mr. marvel, turning, saw a flint jerk up into the air, trace a complicated path, hang for a moment, and then fling at his feet with almost invisible rapidity. he was too amazed to dodge. whiz it came, and ricocheted from a bare toe into the ditch. mr. thomas marvel jumped a foot and howled aloud. then he started to run, tripped over an unseen obstacle, and came head over heels into a sitting position. "now," said the voice, as a third stone curved upward and hung in the air above the tramp. "am i imagination?" mr. marvel by way of reply struggled to his feet, and was immediately rolled over again. he lay quiet for a moment. "if you struggle any more," said the voice, "i shall throw the flint at your head." "it's a fair do," said mr. thomas marvel, sitting up, taking his wounded toe in hand and fixing his eye on the third missle. "i don't understand it. stones flinging themselves. stones talking. put yourself down. rot away. i'm done." the third flint fell. "it's very simple," said the voice. "i'm an invisible man." "tell us something i don't know," said mr. marvel, gasping with pain. "where you've hid--how you do it--i don't know, i'm beat." "that's all," said the voice. "i'm invisible. that's what i want you to understand." "any one could see that. there is no need for you to be so confounded impatient, mister. now then. give us a notion. how are you hid?" "i'm invisible. that's the great point. and what i want you to understand is this--" "but whereabouts?" interrupted mr. marvel. "here! six yards in front of you." "oh, come! i ain't blind. you'll be telling me next you're just thin air. i'm not one of your ignorant tramps--" "yes, i am--thin air. you're looking through me." "what! ain't there any stuff to you? vox et--what is it?-jabber. is it that? "i am just a human being--solid, needing food and drink, needing covering too--but i'm invisible. you see? invisible. simple idea. invisible." "what, real like?" "yes, real." "let's have a hand of you," said marvel, "if you are real. it won't be so darn out-of-the-way like, then--lord!" he said, "how you made me jump!--gripping me like that!" he felt the hand that had closed round his wrist with his disengaged fingers, and his touch went timorously up the arm, patted a muscular chest, and explored a bearded face. marvel's face was astonishment. "i'm dashed!" he said. "if this don't beat cock-fighting! most remarkable!--and there i can see a rabbit clean through you, 'arf a mile away! not a bit of you visible--except--" he scrutinised the apparently empty space keenly. "you 'aven't been eatin' bread and cheese?" he asked, holding the invisible arm. "you're quite right, and it's not quite assimilated into the system." "ah!" said mr. marvel. "sort of ghostly, though." "of course, all this isn't so wonderful as you think." "it's quite wonderful enough for my modest wants," said mr. thomas marvel. "howjer manage it? how the dooce is it done?" "it's too long a story. and besides--" "i tell you, the whole business fair beats me," said mr. marvel. "what i want to say at present is this: i need help. i have come to that--i came upon you suddenly. i was wandering, mad with rage, naked, impotent. i could have murdered. and i saw you--" "lord!" said mr. marvel. "i came up behind you--hesitated--went on--" mr. marvel's expression was eloquent. "--then stopped. 'here,' i said, 'is an outcast like myself. this is the man for me.' so i turned back and came to you--you. and--" "lord!" said mr. marvel. "but i'm all in a dizzy. may i ask--how is it? and what you may be requiring in the way of help?-invisible!" "i want you to help me get clothes--and shelter--and then, with other things. i've left them long enough. if you won't--well! but you will--must." "look here," said mr. marvel. "i'm too flabbergasted. don't knock me about any more. and leave me go. i must get steady a bit. and you've pretty near broken my toe. it's all so unreasonable. empty downs, empty sky. nothing visible for miles except the bosom of nature. and then comes a voice. a voice out of heaven! and stones! and a fist--lord!" "pull yourself together," said the voice, "for you have to do the job i've chosen for you." mr. marvel blew out his cheeks, and his eyes were round. "i've chosen you," said the voice. "you are the only man, except some of those fools down there, who knows there is such a thing as an invisible man. you have to be my helper. help me--and i will do great things for you. an invisible man is a man of power." he stopped for a moment to sneeze violently. "but if you betray me," he said, "if you fail to do as i direct you--" he paused and tapped mr. marvel's shoulder smartly. mr. marvel gave a yelp of terror at the touch. "i don't want to betray you," said mr. marvel, edging away from the direction of the fingers. "don't you go a-thinking that, whatever you do. all i want to do is to help you--just tell me what i got to do. (lord!) whatever you want done, that i'm most willing to do." ********** chapter 10 mr. marvel's visit to iping after the first gusty panic had spent itself iping became argumentative. scepticism suddenly reared its head--rather nervous scepticism, not at all assured of its back, but scepticism nevertheless. it is so much easier not to believe in an invisible man; and those who had actually seen him dissolve into air, or felt the strength of his arm, could be counted on the fingers of two hands. and of these witnesses mr. wadgers was presently missing, having retired impregnably behind the bolts and bars of his own house, and jaffers was lying stunned in the parlour of the coach and horses. great and strange ideas transcending experience often have less effect upon men and women than smaller, more tangible considerations. iping was gay with bunting, and everybody was in gala dress. whit-monday had been looked forward to for a month or more. by the afternoon even those who believed in the unseen were beginning to resume their little amusements in a tentative fashion, on the supposition that he had quite gone away, and with the sceptics he was already a jest. but people, sceptics and believers alike, were remarkably sociable all that day. haysman's meadow was gay with a tent, in which mrs. bunting and other ladies were preparing tea, while, without, the sunday-school children ran races and played games under the noisy guidance of the curate and the misses cuss and sackbut. no doubt there was a slight uneasiness in the air, but people for the most part had the sense to conceal whatever imaginative qualms they experienced. on the village green an inclined string, down which, clinging the while to a pulleyswung handle, one could be hurled violently against a sack at the other end, came in for considerable favour among the adolescent. there were swings and cocoanut shies and promenading, and the steam organ attached to the swings filled the air with a pungent flavour of oil and with equally pungent music. members of the club, who had attended church in the morning, were splendid in badges of pink and green, and some of the gayer-minded had also adorned their bowler hats with brilliant-coloured favours of ribbon. old fletcher, whose conceptions of holiday-making were severe, was visible through the jasmine about his window or through the open door (whichever way you chose to look), poised delicately on a plank supported on two chairs, and whitewashing the ceiling of his front room. about four o'clock a stranger entered the village from the direction of the downs. he was a short, stout person in an extraorindarily shabby top hat, and he appeared to be very much out of breath. his cheeks were alternately limp and tightly puffed. his mottled face was apprenhensive, and he moved with a sort of reluctant alacrity. he turned the corner by the church, and directed his way to the coach and horses. among others old fletcher remembers seeing him, and indeed the old gentleman was so struck by his peculiar agitation that he inadvertently allowed a quantity of whitewash to run down the brush into the sleeve of his coat while regarding him. this stranger, to the perceptions of the proprietor of the cocoanut shy, appeared to be talking to himself, and mr. huxter remarked the same thing. he stopped at the foot of the coach and horses steps, and, according to mr. huxter, appeared to undergo a severe internal struggle before he could induce himself to enter the house. finally he marched up the steps, and was seen by mr. huxter to turn to the left and open the door of the parlour. mr. huxter heard voices from within the room and from the bar apprising the man of his error. "that room's private!" said hall, and the stranger shut the door clumsily and went into the bar. in the course of a few minutes he reappeared, wiping his lips with the back of his hand with an air of quiet satisfaction that somehow impressed mr. huxter as assumed. he stood looking about him for some moments, and then mr. huxter saw him walk in an oddly furtive manner towards the gates of the yard, upon which the parlour window opened. the stranger, after some hesitation, leant against one of the gate-posts, produced a short clay pipe, and prepared to fill it. his fingers trembled while doing so. he lit it clumsily, and folding his arms began to smoke in a languid attitude, an attitude which his occasional quick glances up the yard altogether belied. all this mr. huxter saw over the canisters of the tobacco window, and the singularity of the man's behaviour prompted him to maintain his observation. presently the stranger stood up abruptly and put his pipe in his pocket. then he vanished into the yard. forthwith mr. huxter, conceiving he was witness of some petty larceny, leapt round his counter and ran out into the road to intercept the thief. as he did so, mr. marvel reappeared, his hat askew, a big bundle in a blue table-cloth in one hand, and three books tied together--as it proved afterwards with the vicar's braces--in the other. directly he saw huxter he gave a sort of gasp, and turning sharply to the left, began to run. "stop thief!" cried huxter, and set off after him. mr. huxter's sensations were vivid but brief. he saw the man just before him and spurting briskly for the church corner and the hill road. he saw the village flags and festivities beyond, and a face or so turned towards him. he bawled, "stop!" again. he had hardly gone ten strides before his shin was caught in some mysterious fashion, and he was no longer running, but flying with inconceivable rapidity through the air. he saw the ground suddenly close to his face. the world seemed to splash into a million whirling specks of light, and subsequent proceedings interested him no more. ********** chapter 11 in the coach and horses now in order clearly to understand what had happened in the inn, it is necessary to go back to the moment when mr. marvel first came into view of mr. huxter's window. at that precise moment mr. cuss and mr. bunting were in the parlour. they were seriously investigating the strange occurrences of the morning, and were, with mr. hall's permission, making a thorough examination of the invisible man's belongings. jaffers had partially recovered from his fall and had gone home in the charge of his sympathetic friends. the stranger's scattered garments had been removed by mrs. hall and the room tidied up. and on the table under the window where the stranger had been wont to work, cuss had hit almost at once on three big books in manuscript labelled "diary." "diary!" said cuss, putting the three books on the table. "now, at any rate, we shall learn something." the vicar stood with his hands on the table. "diary," repeated cuss, sitting down, putting two volumes to support the third, and opening it. "h'm--no name on the fly-leaf. bother!--cypher. and figures." the vicar came round to look over his shoulder. cuss turned the pages over with a face suddenly disappointed. "i'm--dear me! it's all cypher, bunting." "there are no diagrams?" asked mr. bunting. "no illustrations throwing light--" "see for yourself," said mr. cuss. "some of it's mathematical and some of it's russian or some such language (to judge by the letters), and some of it's greek. now the greek i thought you--" "of course," said mr. bunting, taking out and wiping his spectacles and feeling suddenly very uncomfortable,--for he had no greek left in his mind worth talking about; "yes--the greek, of course, may furnish a clue." "i'll find you a place." "i'd rather glance through the volumes first," said mr. bunting, still wiping. "a general impression first, cuss, and then, you know, we can go looking for clues." he coughed, put on his glasses, arranged them fastidiously, coughed again, and wished something would happen to avert the seemingly inevitable exposure. then he took the volume cuss handed him in a leisurely manner. and then something did happen. the door opened suddenly. both gentlemen started violently, looked around, and were relieved to see a sporadically rosy face beneath a furry silk hat. "tap?" asked the face, and stood staring. "no," said both gentlemen at once. "over the other side, my man," said mr. bunting. and "please shut that door," said mr. cuss irritably. "all right," said the intruder, as it seemed, in a low voice curiously different from the huskiness of its first enquiry. "right you are," said the intruder in the former voice. "stand clear!" and he vanished and closed the door. "a sailor, i should judge," said mr. bunting. "amusing fellows they are. stand clear! indeed. a nautical term referring to his getting back out of the room, i suppose." "i daresay so," said cuss. "my nerves are all loose to-day. it quite made me jump--the door opening like that." mr. bunting smiled as if he had not jumped. "and now," he said with a sigh, "these books." "one minute," said cuss, and went and locked the door. "now i think we are safe from interruption." some one sniffed as he did so. "one thing is indisputable," said bunting, drawing up a chair next to that of cuss. "there certainly have been very strange things happen in iping during the last few days--very strange. i cannot of course believe in this absurd invisibility story--" "it's incredible," said cuss, "--incredible. but the fact remains that i saw--i certainly saw right down his sleeve--" "but did you--are you sure? suppose a mirror, for instance,-hallucinations are so easily produced. i don't know if you have ever seen a really good conjuror--" "i won't argue again," said cuss. "we've thrashed that out, bunting. and just now there's these books--ah! here's some of what i take to be greek! greek letters certainly." he pointed to the middle of the page. mr. bunting flushed slightly and brought his face nearer, apparently finding some difficulty with his glasses. suddenly he became aware of a strange feeling at the nape of his neck. he tried to raise his head, and encountered an immovable resistance. the feeling was a curious pressure, the grip of a heavy, firm hand, and it bore his chin irresistibly to the table. "don't move, little men," whispered a voice, "or i'll brain you both!" he looked into the face of cuss, close to his own, and each saw a horrified reflection of his own sickly astonishment. "i'm sorry to handle you roughly," said the voice, "but it's unavoidable. "since when did you learn to pry into an investigator's private memoranda?" said the voice; and two chins struck the table simultaneously and two sets of teeth rattled. "since when did you learn to invade the private rooms of a man in misfortune?" and the concussion was repeated. "where have they put my clothes? "listen," said the voice. "the windows are fastened and i've taken the key out of the door. i am a fairly strong man, and i have the poker handy--besides being invisible. there's not the slightest doubt that i could kill you both and get away quite easily if i wanted to--do you understand? very well. if i let you go will you promise not to try any nonsense and do what i tell you?" the vicar and the doctor looked at one another, and the doctor pulled a face. "yes," said mr. bunting, and the doctor repeated it. then the pressure on the necks relaxed, and the doctor and the vicar sat up, both very red in the face and wriggling their heads. "please keep sitting where you are," said the invisible man. "here's the poker, you see. "when i came into this room," continued the invisible man, after presenting the poker to the tip of the nose of each of his visitors, "i did not expect to find it occupied, and i expected to find, in addition to my books of memoranda, an outfit of clothing. where is it? no,--don't rise. i can see it's gone. now, just at present, though the days are quite warm enough for an invisible man to run about stark, the evenings are chilly. i want clothing--and other accommodation; and i must also have those three books." ********** chapter 12 the invisible man loses his temper it is unavoidable that at this point the narrative should break off again, for a certain very painful reason that will presently be apparent. while these things were going on in the parlour, and while mr. huxter was watching mr. marvel smoking his pipe against the gate, not a dozen yards away were mr. hall and teddy henfrey discussing in a state of cloudy puzzlement the one iping topic. suddenly there came a violent thud against the door of the parlour, a sharp cry, and then--silence. "hul--lo!" said teddy henfrey. "hul--lo!" from the tap. mr. hall took things in slowly but surely. "that ain't right," he said, and came round from behind the bar towards the parlour door. he and teddy approached the door together, with intent faces. their eyes considered. "summat wrong," said hall, and henfrey nodded agreement. whiffs of an unpleasant chemical odour met them, and there was a muffled sound of conversation, very rapid and subdued. "you all raight thur?" asked hall, rapping. the muttered conversation ceased abruptly, for a moment silence, then the conversation was resumed in hissing whispers, then a sharp cry of "no! no, you don't!" there came a sudden motion and the oversetting of a chair, a brief struggle. silence again. "what the dooce?" exclaimed henfrey, sotto voce. "you--all--raight--thur?" asked mr. hall sharply, again. the vicar's voice answered with a curious jerking intonation: "quite ri--ight. please don't--interrupt." "odd!" said mr. henfrey. "odd!" said mr. hall. "says, 'don't interrupt,'" said henfrey. "i heerd'n," said hall. "and a sniff," said henfrey. they remained listening. the conversation was rapid and subdued. "i can't," said mr. bunting, his voice rising; "i tell you, sir, i will not." "what was that?" asked henfrey. "says he wi' nart," said hall. "warn't speakin' to us, wuz he?" "disgraceful!" said mr. bunting, within. "'disgraceful,'" said mr. henfrey. "i heard it--distinct. "who's that speaking now?" asked henfrey. "mr. cuss, i s'pose," said hall. "can you hear--anything?" silence. the sounds within indistinct and perplexing. "sounds like throwing the table-cloth about," said hall. mrs. hall appeared behind the bar. hall made gestures of silence and invitation. this roused mrs. hall's wifely opposition. "what yer listenin' there for, hall?" she asked. "ain't you nothin' better to do--busy day like this?" hall tried to convey everything by grimaces and dumb show, but mrs. hall was obdurate. she raised her voice. so hall and henfrey, rather crestfallen, tip-toed back to the bar, gesticulating to explain to her. at first she refused to see anything in what they had heard at all. then she insisted on hall keeping silence, while henfrey told her his story. she was inclined to think the whole business nonsense --perhaps they were just moving the furniture about. "i heerd'n say 'disgraceful'; that i did," said hall. "i heerd that, mis' hall," said henfrey. "like as not--" began mrs. hall. "hsh!" said mr. teddy henfrey. "didn't i hear the window?" "what window?" asked mrs. hall. "parlour window," said henfrey. every one stood listening intently. mrs. hall's eyes, directed straight before her, saw without seeing the brilliant oblong of the inn door, the road white and vivid, and huxter's shop-front blistering in the june sun. abruptly huxter's door opened and huxter appeared, eyes staring with excitement, arms gesticulating. "yap!" cried huxter. "stop thief!" and he ran obliquely across the oblong towards the yard gates, and vanished. simultaneously came a tumult from the parlour, and a sound of windows being closed. hall, henfrey, and the human contents of the tap rushed out at once pell-mell into the street. they saw some one whisk round the corner towards the down road, and mr. huxter executing a complicated leap in the air that ended on his face and shoulder. down the street people were standing astonished or running towards them. mr. huxter was stunned. henfrey stopped to discover this, but hall and the two labourers from the tap rushed at once to the corner, shouting incoherent things, and saw mr. marvel vanishing by the corner of the church wall. they appear to have jumped to the impossible conclusion that this was the invisible man suddenly become visible, and set off at once along the lane in pursuit. but hall had hardly run a dozen yards before he gave a loud shout of astonishment and went flying headlong sideways, clutching one of the labourers and bringing him to the ground. he had been charged just as one charges a man at football. the second labourer came round in a circle, stared, and conceiving that hall had tumbled over of his own accord, turned to resume the pursuit, only to be tripped by the ankle just as huxter had been. then, as the first labourer struggled to his feet, he was kicked sideways by a blow that might have felled an ox. as he went down, the rush from the direction of the village green came round the corner. the first to appear was the proprietor of the cocoanut shy, a burly man in a blue jersey. he was astonished to see the lane empty save for three men sprawling absurdly on the ground. and then something happened to his rear-most foot, and he went headlong and rolled sideways just in time to graze the feet of his brother and partner, following headlong. the two were then kicked, knelt on, fallen over, and cursed by quite a number of overhasty people. now when hall and henfrey and the labourers ran out of the house, mrs. hall, who had been disciplined by years of experience, remained in the bar next the till. and suddenly the parlour door was opened, and mr. cuss appeared, and without glancing at her rushed at once down the steps towards the corner. "hold him!" he cried. "don't let him drop that parcel! you can see him so long as he holds the parcel." he knew nothing of the existence of marvel. for the invisible man had handed over the books and bundle in the yard. the face of mr. cuss was angry and resolute, but his costume was defective, a sort of limp white kilt that could only have passed muster in greece. "hold him!" he bawled. "he's got my trousers! and every stitch of the vicar's clothes! "'tend to him in a minute!" he cried to henfrey as he passed the prostrate huxter, and coming round the corner to join the tumult, was promptly knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl. somebody in full flight trod heavily on his finger. he yelled, struggled to regain his feet, was knocked against and thrown on all fours again, and became aware that he was involved not in a capture, but a rout. every one was running back to the village. he rose again and was hit severely behind the ear. he staggered and set off back to the coach and horses forthwith, leaping over the deserted huxter, who was now sitting up, on his way. behind him as he was halfway up the inn steps he heard a sudden yell of rage, rising sharply out of the confusion of cries, and a sounding smack in some one's face. he recognised the voice as that of the invisible man, and the note was that of a man suddenly infuriated by a painful blow. in another moment mr. cuss was back in the parlour. "he's coming back, bunting!" he said, rushing in. "save yourself! he's gone mad!" mr. bunting was standing in the window engaged in an attempt to clothe himself in the hearth-rug and a west surrey gazette. "who's coming?" he said, so startled that his costume narrowly escaped disintegration. "invisible man," said cuss, and rushed to the window. "we'd better clear out from here! he's fighting mad! mad!" in another moment he was out in the yard. "good heavens!" said mr. bunting, hesitating between two horrible alternatives. he heard a frightful struggle in the passage of the inn, and his decision was made. he clambered out of the window, adjusted his costume hastily, and fled up the village as fast as his fat little legs would carry him. from the moment when the invisible man screamed with rage and mr. bunting made his memorable flight up the village, it became impossible to give a consecutive account of affairs in iping. possibly the invisible man's original intention was simply to cover marvel's retreat with the clothes and books. but his temper, at no time very good, seems to have gone completely at some chance blow, and forthwith he set to smiting and overthrowing, for the mere satisfaction of hurting. you must figure the street full of running figures, of doors slamming and fights for hiding-places. you must figure the tumult suddenly striking on the unstable equilibrium of old fletcher's planks and two chairs,--with cataclysmal results. you must figure an appalled couple caught dismally in a swing. and then the whole tumultuous rush has passed and the iping streets with its gauds and flags is deserted save for the still raging unseen, and littered with cocoanuts, overthrown canvas screens, and the scattered stock in trade of a sweetstuff stall. everywhere there is a sound of closing shutters and shoving bolts, and the only visible humanity is an occasional flitting eye under a raised eyebrow in the corner of a window pane. the invisible man amused himself for a little while by breaking all the windows in the coach and horses, and then he thrust a street lamp through the parlour window of mrs. gribble. he it must have been who cut the telegraph wire to adderdean just beyond higgins' cottage on the adderdean road. and after that, as his peculiar qualities allowed, he passed out of human perceptions altogether, and he was neither heard, seen, nor felt in iping any more. he vanished absolutely. but it was the best part of two hours before any human being ventured out again into the desolation of iping street. ********** chapter 13 mr. marvel discusses his resignation when the dusk was gathering and iping was just beginning to peep timorously forth again upon the shattered wreckage of its bank holiday, a short, thick-set man in a shabby silk hat was marching painfully through the twilight behind the beechwoods on the road to bramblehurst. he carried three books bound together by some sort of ornamental elastic ligature, and a bundle wrapped in a blue tablecloth. his rubicund face expressed consternation and fatigue; he appeared to be in a spasmodic sort of hurry. he was accompanied by a voice other than his own, and ever and again he winced under the touch of unseen hands. "if you give me the slip again," said the voice; "if you attempt to give me the slip again--" "lord!" said mr. marvel. "that shoulder's a mass of bruises as it is." "--on my honour," said the voice, "i will kill you." "i didn't try to give you the slip," said marvel, in a voice that was not far remote from tears. "i swear i didn't. i didn't know the blessed turning, that was all! how the devil was i to know the blessed turning? as it is, i've been knocked about--" "you'll get knocked about a great deal more if you don't mind," said the voice, and mr. marvel abruptly became silent. he blew out his cheeks, and his eyes were eloquent of despair. "it's bad enough to let these floundering yokels explode my little secret, without your cutting off with my books. it's lucky for some of them they cut and ran when they did! here am i--no one knew i was invisible! and now what am i to do?" "what am i to do?" asked marvel, sotto voce. "it's all about. it will be in the papers! everybody will be looking for me; everyone on their guard--" the voice broke off into vivid curses and ceased. the despair of mr. marvel's face deepened, and his pace slacked. "go on!" said the voice. mr. marvel's face assumed a greyish tint between the ruddier patches. "don't drop those books, stupid," said the voice, sharply-overtaking him. "the fact is," said the voice, "i shall have to make use of you. you're a poor tool, but i must." "i'm a miserable tool," said marvel. "you are," said the voice. "i'm the worst possible tool you could have," said marvel. "i'm not strong," he said after a discouraging silence. "i'm not over strong," he repeated. "no?" "and my heart's weak. that little business--i pulled it through, of course--but bless you! i could have dropped." "well?" "i haven't the nerve and strength for the sort of thing you want." "i'll stimulate you." "i wish you wouldn't. i wouldn't like to mess up your plans, you know. but i might,--out of sheer funk and misery." "you'd better not," said the voice, with quiet emphasis. "i wish i was dead," said marvel. "it ain't justice," he said; "you must admit--it seems to me i've a perfect right--" "get on!" said the voice. mr. marvel mended his pace, and for a time they went in silence again. "it's devilish hard," said mr. marvel. this was quite ineffectual. he tried another tack. "what do i make by it?" he began again in a tone of unendurable wrong. "oh! shut up!" said the voice, with sudden amazing vigour. "i'll see to you all right. you do what you're told. you'll do it all right. you're a fool and all that, but you'll do--" "i tell you, sir, i'm not the man for it. respectfully--but it is so--" "if you don't shut up i shall twist your wrist again," said the invisible man. "i want to think." presently two oblongs of yellow light appeared through the trees, and the square tower of a church loomed through the gloaming. "i shall keep my hand on your shoulder," said the voice, "all through the village. go straight through and try no foolery. it will be the worse for you if you do." "i know that," sighed mr. marvel, "i know all that." the unhappy-looking figure in the obsolete silk hat passed up the street of the little village with his burdens, and vanished into the gathering darkness beyond the lights of the windows. ********** chapter 14 at port stowe ten o'clock the next morning found mr. marvel, unshaven, dirty, and travel-stained, sitting with the books beside him and his hands deep in his pockets, looking very weary, nervous, and uncomfortable, and inflating his cheeks at frequent intervals, on the bench outside a little inn on the outskirts of port stowe. beside him were the books, but now they were tied with string. the bundle had been abandoned in the pinewoods beyond bramblehurst, in accordance with a change in the plans of the invisible man. mr. marvel sat on the bench, and although no one took the slightest notice of him, his agitation remained at fever heat. his hands would go ever and again to his various pockets with a curious nervous fumbling. when he had been sitting for the best part of an hour, however, an elderly mariner, carrying a newspaper, came out of the inn and sat down beside him. "pleasant day," said the mariner. mr. marvel glanced about him with something very like terror. "very," he said. "just seasonable weather for the time of year," said the mariner, taking no denial. "quite," said mr. marvel. the mariner produced a toothpick, and (saving his regard) was engrossed thereby for some minutes. his eyes meanwhile were at liberty to examine mr. marvel's dusty figure and the books beside him. as he had approached mr. marvel he had heard a sound like the dropping of coins into a pocket. he was struck by the contrast of mr. marvel's appearance with this suggestion of opulence. thence his mind wandered back again to a topic that had taken a curiously firm hold of his imagination. "books?" he said suddenly, noisily finishing with the toothpick. mr. marvel started and looked at them. "oh, yes," he said. "yes, they're books." "there's some extra-ordinary things in books," said the mariner. "i believe you," said mr. marvel. "and some extra-ordinary things out of 'em," said the mariner. "true likewise," said mr. marvel. he eyed his interlocutor, and then glanced about him. "there's some extra-ordinary things in newspapers, for example," said the mariner. "there are." "in this newspaper," said the mariner. "ah!" said mr. marvel. "there's a story," said the mariner, fixing mr. marvel with an eye that was firm and deliberate; "there's a story about an invisible man, for instance." mr. marvel pulled his mouth askew and scratched his cheek and felt his ears glowing. "what will they be writing next?" he asked faintly. "ostria, or america?" "neither," said the mariner. "here!" "lord!" said mr. marvel, starting. "when i say here," said the mariner, to mr. marvel's intense relief, "i don't of course mean here in this place, i mean hereabouts." "an invisible man!" said mr. marvel. "and what's he been up to?" "everything," said the mariner, controlling marvel with his eye, and then amplifying: "every blessed thing." "i ain't seen a paper these four days," said marvel. "iping's the place he started at," said the mariner. "in-deed!" said mr. marvel. "he started there. and where he came from, nobody don't seem to know. here it is: pe culiar story from iping. and it says in this paper that the evidence is extra-ordinary strong--extra-ordinary." "lord!" said mr. marvel. "but then, it's a extra-ordinary story. there is a clergyman and a medical gent witnesses,--saw 'im all right and proper--or leastways, didn't see 'im. he was staying, it says, at the coach an' horses, and no one don't seem to have been aware of his misfortune, it says, aware of his misfortune, until in an alteration in the inn, it says, his bandages on his head was torn off. it was then ob-served that his head was invisible. attempts were at once made to secure him, but casting off his garments, it says, he succeeded in escaping, but not until after a desperate struggle, in which he had inflicted serious injuries, it says, on our worthy and able constable, mr. j.a. jaffers. pretty straight story, eigh? names and everything." "lord!" said mr. marvel, looking nervously about him, trying to count the money in his pockets by his unaided sense of touch, and full of a strange and novel idea. "it sounds most astonishing." "don't it? extra-ordinary, i call it. never heard tell of invisible men before, i haven't, but nowadays one hears such a lot of extra-ordinary things--that--" "that all he did?" asked marvel, trying to seem at his ease. "it's enough, ain't it?" said the mariner. "didn't go back by any chance?" asked marvel. "just escaped and that's all, eh?" "all!" said the mariner. "why!--ain't it enough?" "quite enough," said marvel. "i should think it was enough," said the mariner. "i should think it was enough." "he didn't have any pals--it don't say he had any pals, does it?" asked mr. marvel, anxious. "ain't one of a sort enough for you?" asked the mariner. "no, thank heaven, as one might say, he didn't." he nodded his head slowly. "it makes me regular uncomfortable, the bare thought of that chap running about the country! he is at present at large, and from certain evidence it is supposed that he has--taken--took, i suppose they mean--the road to port stowe. you see we're right in it! none of your american wonders, this time. and just think of the things he might do! where'd you be, if he took a drop over and above, and had a fancy to go for you? suppose he wants to rob--who can prevent him? he can trespass, he can burgle, he could walk through a cordon of policemen as easy as me or you could give the slip to a blind man! easier! for these here blind chaps hear uncommon sharp, i'm told. and wherever there was liquor he fancied--" "he's got a tremenjous advantage, certainly," said marvel. "and--well." "you're right," said the mariner. "he has." all this time mr. marvel had been glancing about him intently, listening for faint footfalls, trying to detect imperceptible movements. he seemed on the point of some great resolution. he coughed behind his hand. he looked about him again, listened, bent towards to the mariner, and lowered his voice: "the fact of it is--i happen--to know just a thing or two about this invisible man. from private sources." "oh!" said the mariner, interested. "you?" "yes," said mr. marvel. "me." "indeed!" said the mariner. "and may i ask--" "you'll be astonished," said mr. marvel behind his hand. "it's tremenjous." "indeed!" said the mariner. "the fact is," began mr. marvel eagerly in a confidential undertone. suddenly his expression changed marvellously. "ow!" he said. he rose stiffly in his seat. his face was eloquent of physical suffering. "wow!" he said. "what's up?" said the mariner, concerned. "toothache," said mr. marvel, and put his hand to his ear. he caught hold of his books. "i must be getting on, i think," he said. he edged in a curious way along the seat away from his interlocutor. "but you was just agoing to tell me about this here invisible man!" protested the mariner. mr. marvel seemed to consult with himself. "hoax," said a voice. "it's a hoax," said mr. marvel. "but it's in the paper," said the mariner. "hoax all the same," said marvel. "i know the chap that started the lie. there ain't no invisible man whatsoever--blimey." "but how 'bout this paper? d'you mean to say--?" "not a word of it," said marvel, stoutly. the mariner stared, paper in hand. mr. marvel jerkily faced about. "wait a bit," said the mariner, rising and speaking slowly. "d'you mean to say--?" "i do," said mr. marvel. "then why did you let me go on and tell you all this blarsted stuff, then? what d'yer mean by letting a man make a fool of himself like that for? eigh?" mr. marvel blew out his cheeks. the mariner was suddenly very red indeed; he clenched his hands. "i been talking here this ten minutes," he said; "and you, you little pot-bellied, leathery-faced son of an old boot, couldn't have the elementary manners--" "don't you come bandying words with me," said mr. marvel. "bandying words! i'm a jolly good mind--" "come up," said a voice, and mr. marvel was suddenly whirled about and started marching off in a curious spasmodic manner. "you'd better move on," said the mariner. "who's moving on?" said mr. marvel. he was receding obliquely with a curious hurrying gait, with occasional violent jerks forward. some way along the road he began a muttered monologue, protests and recriminations. "silly devil!" said the mariner, legs wide apart, elbows akimbo, watching the receding figure. "i'll show you, you silly ass,--hoaxing me! it's here--on the paper!" mr. marvel retorted incoherently and, receding, was hidden by a bend in the road, but the mariner still stood magnificent in the midst of the way, until the approach of a butcher's cart dislodged him. then he turned himself towards port stowe. "full of extraordinary asses," he said softly to himself. "just to take me down a bit--that was his silly game--it's on the paper!" and there was another extraordinary thing he was presently to hear, that had happened quite close to him. and that was a vision of a "fist full of money" (no less) travelling without visible agency, along by the wall at the corner of st. michael's lane. a brother mariner had seen this wonderful sight that very morning. he had snatched at the money forthwith and had been knocked headlong, and when he had got to his feet the butterfly money had vanished. our mariner was in the mood to believe anything, he declared, but that was a bit too stiff. afterwards, however, he began to think things over. the story of the flying money was true. and all about that neighbourhood, even from the august london and country banking company, from the tills of shops and inns--doors standing that sunny weather entirely open--money had been quietly and dexterously making off that day in handfuls and rouleaux, floating quietly along by walls and shady places, dodging quickly from the approaching eyes of men. and it had, though no man had traced it, invariably ended its mysterious flight in the pocket of that agitated gentleman in the obsolete silk hat, sitting outside the little inn on the outskirts of port stowe. ********** chapter 15 the man who was running in the early evening time doctor kemp was sitting in his study in the belvedere on the hill overlooking burdock. it was a pleasant little room, with three windows, north, west, and south, and bookshelves crowded with books and scientific publications, and a broad writing-table, and, under the north window, a microscope, glass slips, minute instruments, some cultures, and scattered bottles of reagents. doctor kemp's solar lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still bright with the sunset light, and his blinds were up because there was no offence of peering outsiders to require them pulled down. doctor kemp was a tall and slender young man, with flaxen hair and a moustache almost white, and the work he was upon would earn him, he hoped, the fellowship of the royal society, so highly did he think of it. and his eye presently wandering from his work caught the sunset blazing at the back of the hill that is over against his own. for a minute perhaps he sat, pen in mouth, admiring the rich golden colour above the crest, and then his attention was attracted by the little figure of a man, inky black, running over the hill-brow towards him. he was a shortish little man, and he wore a high hat, and he was running so fast that his legs verily twinkled. "another of those fools," said doctor kemp. "like that ass who ran into me this morning round a corner, with his ''visible man a-coming, sir!' i can't imagine what possesses people. one might think we were in the thirteenth century." he got up, went to the window, and stared at the dusky hillside and the dark little figure tearing down it. "he seems in a confounded hurry," said doctor kemp, "but he doesn't seem to be getting on. if his pockets were full of lead, he couldn't run heavier. "spurted, sir," said doctor kemp. in another moment the higher of the villas that had clambered up the hill from burdock had occulted the running figure. he was visible again for a moment, and again, and then again, three times between the three detached houses that came next, and then the terrace hid him. "asses!" said doctor kemp, swinging round on his heel and walking back to his writing-table. but those who saw the fugitive nearer, and perceived the abject terror on his perspiring face, being themselves in the open roadway, did not share in the doctor's contempt. by the man pounded, and as he ran he chinked like a well-filled purse that is tossed to and fro. he looked neither to the right nor the left, but his dilated eyes stared straight downhill to where the lamps were being lit, and the people were crowded in the street. and his ill-shaped mouth fell apart, and a glairy foam lay on his lips, and his breath came hoarse and noisy. all he passed stopped and began staring up the road and down, and interrogating one another with an inkling of discomfort for the reason of his haste. and then presently, far up the hill, a dog playing in the road yelped and ran under a gate, and as they still wondered something--a wind--a pad, pad, pad,--a sound like a panting breathing,--rushed by. people screamed. people sprang off the pavement. it passed in shouts, it passed by instinct down the hill. they were shouting in the street before marvel was halfway there. they were bolting into houses and slamming the doors behind them, with the news. he heard it and made one last desperate spurt. fear came striding by, rushed ahead of him, and in a moment had seized the town. "the invisible man is coming! the invisible man." ********** chapter 16 in the jolly cricketers the jolly cricketers is just at the bottom of the hill, where the tram-lines begin. the barman leant his fat red arms on the counter and talked of horses with an anaemic cabman, while a blackbearded man in grey snapped up biscuit and cheese, drank burton, and conversed in american with a policeman off duty. "what's the shouting about?" said the anaemic cabman going off at a tangent, trying to see up the hill over the dirty yellow blind in the low window of the inn. somebody ran by outside. "fire, perhaps," said the barman. footsteps approached, running heavily, the door was pushed open violently, and marvel, weeping and dishevelled, his hat gone, the neck of his coat torn open, rushed in, made a convulsive turn, and attempted to shut the door. it was held half open by a strap. "coming!" he bawled, his voice shrieking with terror. "he's coming. the 'visible man! after me! for gawd's sake! elp! elp! elp!" "shut the doors," said the policeman. "who's coming? what's the row?" he went to the door, released the strap, and it slammed. the american closed the other door. "lemme go inside," said marvel, staggering and weeping, but still clutching the books. "lemme go inside. lock me in--somewhere. i tell you he's after me. i give him the slip. he said he'd kill me and he will." "you're safe," said the man with the black beard. "the door's shut. what's it all about?" "lemme go inside," said marvel, and shrieked aloud as a blow suddenly made the fastened door shiver and was followed by a hurried rapping and a shouting outside. "hullo," cried the policeman, "who's there?" mr. marvel began to make frantic dives at panels that looked like doors. "he'll kill me--he's got a knife or something. for gawd's sake!" "here you are," said the barman. "come in here." and he held up the flap of the bar. mr. marvel rushed behind the bar as the summons outside was repeated. "don't open the door," he screamed. "please don't open the door. where shall i hide?" "this, this invisible man, then?" asked the man with the black beard, with one hand behind him. "i guess it's about time we saw him." the window of the inn was suddenly smashed in, and there was a screaming and running to and fro in the street. the policeman had been standing on the settee staring out, craning to see who was at the door. he got down with raised eyebrows. "it's that," he said. the barman stood in front of the bar-parlour door which was now locked on mr. marvel, stared at the smashed window and came round to the two other men. everything was suddenly quiet. "i wish i had my truncheon," said the policeman, going irresolutely to the door. "once we open, in he comes. there's no stopping him." "don't you be in too much hurry about that door," said the anaemic cabman, anxiously. "draw the bolts," said the man with the black beard, "and if he comes--" he showed a revolver in his hand. "that won't do," said the policeman; "that's murder." "i know what country i'm in," said the man with the beard. "i'm going to let off at his legs. draw the bolts." "not with that thing going off behind me," said the barman, craning over the blind. "very well," said the man with the black beard, and stooping down, revolver ready, drew them himself. barman, cabman, and policeman faced about. "come in," said the bearded man in an undertone, standing back and facing the unbolted doors with his pistol behind him. no one came in, the door remained closed. five minutes afterwards when a second cabman pushed his head in cautiously, they were still waiting, and an anxious face peered out of the bar-parlour and supplied information. "are all the doors of the house shut?" asked marvel. "he's going round--prowling round. he's as artful as the devil." "good lord!" said the burly barman. "there's the back! just watch them doors! i say!--" he looked about him helplessly. the bar-parlour door slammed and they heard the key turn. "there's the yard door and the private door. the yard door--" he rushed out of the bar. in a minute he reappeared with a carving-knife in his hand. "the yard door was open!" he said, and his fat underlip dropped. "he may be in the house now!" said the first cabman. "he's not in the kitchen," said the barman. "there's two women there, and i've stabbed every inch of it with this little beef slicer. and they don't think he's come in. they haven't noticed--" "have you fastened it?" asked the first cabman. "i'm out of frocks," said the barman. the man with the beard replaced his revolver. and even as he did so the flap of the bar was shut down and the bolt clicked, and then with a tremendous thud the catch of the door snapped and the barparlour door burst open. they heard marvel squeal like a caught leveret, and forthwith they were clambering over the bar to his rescue. the bearded man's revolver cracked and the looking-glass at the back of the parlour was starred brightly and came smashing and tinkling down. as the barman entered the room he saw marvel, curiously crumpled up and struggling against the door that led to the yard and kitchen. the door flew open while the barman hesitated, and marvel was dragged into the kitchen. there was a scream and a clatter of pans. marvel, head down, and lugging back obstinately, was forced to the kitchen door, and the bolts were drawn. then the policeman, who had been trying to pass the barman, rushed in, followed by one of the cabmen, gripped the wrist of the invisible hand that collared marvel, was hit in the face and went reeling back. the door opened, and marvel made a frantic effort to obtain a lodgment behind it. then the cabman clutched something. "i got him," said the cabman. the barman's red hands came clawing at the unseen. "here he is!" said the barman. mr. marvel, released, suddenly dropped to the ground and made an attempt to crawl behind the legs of the fighting men. the struggle blundered round the edge of the door. the voice of the invisible man was heard for the first time, yelling out sharply, as the policeman trod on his foot. then he cried out passionately and his fists flew round like flails. the cabman suddenly whooped and doubled up, kicked under the diaphragm. the door into the bar-parlour from the kitchen slammed and covered mr. marvel's retreat. the men in the kitchen found themselves clutching at and struggling with empty air. "where's he gone?" cried the man with the beard. "out?" "this way," said the policeman, stepping into the yard and stopping. a piece of tile whizzed by his head and smashed among the crockery on the kitchen table. "i'll show him," shouted the man with the black beard, and suddenly a steel barrel shone over the policeman's shoulder, and five bullets had followed one another into the twilight whence the missle had come. as he fired, the man with the beard moved his hand in a horizontal curve, so that his shots radiated out into the narrow yard like spokes from a wheel. a silence followed. "five cartridges," said the man with the black beard. "that's the best of all. four aces and the joker. get a lantern, some one, and come and feel about for his body." ********** chapter 17 doctor kemp's visitor doctor kemp had continued writing in his study until the shots aroused him. crack, crack, crack, they came one after the other. "hello!" said doctor kemp, putting his pen into his mouth again and listening. "who's letting off revolvers in burdock? what are the asses at now?" he went to the south window, threw it up, and leaning out stared down on the network of windows, beaded gas-lamps and shops with black interstices of roof and yard that made up the town at night. "looks like a crowd down the hill," he said, "by the cricketers," and remained watching. thence his eyes wandered over the town to far away where the ships' lights shone, and the pier glowed, a little illuminated pavilion like a gem of yellow light. the moon in its first quarter hung over the western hill, and the stars were clear and almost tropically bright. after five minutes, during which his mind had travelled into a remote speculation of social conditions of the future, and lost itself at last over the time dimension, doctor kemp roused himself with a sigh, pulled down the window again, and returned to his writing-desk. it must have been about an hour after this that the front-door bell rang. he had been writing slackly and with intervals of abstraction, since the shots. he sat listening. he heard the servant answer the door, and waited for her feet on the staircase, but she did not come. "wonder what that was," said doctor kemp. he tried to resume his work, failed, got up, went downstairs from his study to the landing, rang, and called over the balustrade to the housemaid as she appeared in the hall below. "was that a letter?" he asked. "only a runaway ring, sir," she answered. "i'm restless to-night," he said to himself. he went back to his study, and this time attacked his work resolutely. in a little while he was hard at work again, and the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the clock and the subdued shrillness of his quill, hurrying in the very centre of the circle of light his lamp-shade threw on his table. it was two o'clock before doctor kemp had finished his work for the night. he rose, yawned, and went downstairs to bed. he had already removed his coat and vest, when he noticed that he was thirsty. he took a candle and went down to the dining-room in search of a siphon and whisky. doctor kemp's scientific pursuits had made him a very observant man, and as he recrossed the hall, he noticed a dark spot on the linoleum near the mat at the foot of the stairs. he went on upstairs, and then it suddenly occurred to him to ask himself what the spot on the linoleum might be. apparently some subconscious element was at work. at any rate, he turned with his burden, went back to the hall, put down the siphon and whisky, and bending down, touched the spot. without any great surprise he found it had the stickiness and colour of drying blood. he took up his burden again, and returned upstairs, looking about him and trying to account for the blood-spot. on the landing he saw something and stopped astonished. the door-handle of his own room was blood-stained. he looked at his own hand. it was quite clean, and then he remembered that the door of his room had been open when he came down from his study, and that consequently he had not touched the handle at all. he went straight into his room, his face quite calm--perhaps a trifle more resolute that usual. his glance, wandering inquisitively, fell on the bed. on the counterpane was a mess of blood, and the sheet had been torn. he had not noticed this before because he had walked straight to the dressing-table. on the further side the bedclothes were depressed as if some one had been recently sitting there. then he had an odd impression that he had heard a loud voice say, "good heavens!--kemp!" but doctor kemp was no believer in voices. he stood staring at the tumbled sheets. was that really a voice? he looked about again, but noticed nothing further than the disordered and blood-stained bed. then he distinctly heard a movement across the room, near the wash-hand stand. all men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings. the feeling that is called "eerie" came upon him. he closed the door of the room, came forward to the dressing-table, and put down his burdens. suddenly, with a start, he perceived a coiled and blood-stained bandage of linen rag hanging in mid-air, between him and the wash-hand stand. he stared at this in amazement. it was an empty bandage, a bandage properly tied but quite empty. he would have advanced to grasp it, but a touch arrested him, and a voice speaking quite close to him. "kemp!" said the voice. "eigh?" said kemp, with his mouth open. "keep your nerve," said the voice. "i'm an invisible man." kemp made no answer for a space, simply stared at the bandage. "invisible man," he said. "i'm an invisible man," repeated the voice. the story he had been active to ridicule only that morning rushed through kemp's brain. he does not appear to have been either very much frightened or very greatly surprised at the moment. realisation came later. "i thought it was all a lie," he said. the thought uppermost in his mind was the reiterated arguments of the morning. "have you a bandage on?" he asked. "yes," said the invisible man. "oh!" said kemp, and then roused himself. "i say!" he said. "but this is nonsense. it's some trick." he stepped forward suddenly, and his hand, extended towards the bandage, met invisible fingers. he recoiled at the touch and his colour changed. "keep steady, kemp, for god's sake! i want help badly. stop!" the hand gripped his arm. he struck at it. "kemp!" cried the voice. "kemp! keep steady!" and the grip tightened. a frantic desire to free himself took possession of kemp. the hand of the bandaged arm gripped his shoulder, and he was suddenly tripped and flung backwards upon the bed. he opened his mouth to shout, and the corner of the sheet was thrust between his teeth. the invisible man had him down grimly, but his arms were free and he struck and tried to kick savagely. "listen to reason, will you?" said the invisible man, sticking to him in spite of a pounding in the ribs. "by heaven! you'll madden me in a minute! "lie still, you fool!" bawled the invisible man in kemp's ear. kemp struggled for another moment and then lay still. "if you shout i'll smash your face," said the invisible man, relieving his mouth. "i'm an invisible man. it's no foolishness, and no magic. i really am an invisible man. and i want your help. i don't want to hurt you, but if you behave like a frantic rustic, i must. don't you remember me, kemp?--griffin, of university college?" "let me get up," said kemp. "i'll stop where i am. and let me sit quiet for a minute." he sat up and felt his neck. "i am griffin, of university college, and i have made myself invisible. i am just an ordinary man--a man you have known--made invisible." "griffin?" said kemp. "griffin," answered the voice--"a younger student, almost an albino, six feet high, and broad, with a pink and white face and red eyes--who won the medal for chemistry." "i am confused," said kemp. "my brain is rioting. what has this to do with griffin?" "i am griffin." kempt thought. "it's horrible," he said. "but what devilry must happen to make a man invisible?" "it's no devilry. it's a process, sane and intelligible enough--" "it's horrible!" said kemp. "how on earth--?" "it's horrible enough. but i'm wounded an in pain, and tired --great god! kemp, you are a man. take it steady. give me some food and drink, and let me sit down here." kemp stared at the bandage as it moved across the room, then saw a basket chair dragged across the floor and come to rest near the bed. it creaked, and the seat was depressed the quarter of an inch or so. he rubbed his eyes and felt his neck again. "this beats ghosts," he said, and laughed stupidly. "that's better. thank heaven, you're getting sensible!" "or silly," said kemp, and knuckled his eyes. "give me some whisky. i'm near dead." "it didn't feel so. where are you? if i get up shall i run into you? there! all right. whisky? here. where shall i give it you?" the chair creaked and kemp felt the glass drawn away from him. he let go by an effort; his instinct was all against it. it came to rest poised twenty inches above the front edge of the seat of the chair. he stared at it in infinite perplexity. "this is--this must be--hypnotism. you must have suggested you are invisible." "nonsense," said the voice. "it's frantic." "listen to me." "i demonstrated conclusively this morning," began kemp, "that invisibility--" "never mind what you've demonstrated!--i'm starving," said the voice, "and the night is--chilly to a man without clothes." "food!" said kemp. the tumbler of whisky tilted itself. "yes," said the invisible man, rapping it down. "have you got a dressing gown?" kemp made some exclamation in an undertone. he walked to a wardrobe and produced a robe of dingy scarlet. "this do?" he asked. it was taken from him. it hung limp for a moment in mid-air, fluttered weirdly, stood full and decorous buttoning itself, and sat down in his chair. "drawers, socks, slippers would be a comfort," said the unseen, curtly. "and food." "anything. but this is the insanest thing i ever was in, in my life!" he turned out his drawers for the articles, and then went downstairs to ransack his larder. he came back with some cold cutlets and bread, pulled up a light table, and placed them before his guest. "never mind knives," said his visitor, and a cutlet hung in mid-air, with a sound of gnawing. "invisible!" said kemp, and sat down on a bedroom chair. "i always like to get something about me before i eat," said the invisible man, with a full mouth, eating greedily. "queer fancy!" "i suppose that wrist is all right," said kemp. "trust me," said the invisible man. "of all the strange and wonderful--" "exactly. but it's odd i should blunder into your house to get my bandaging. my first stroke of luck. anyhow i meant to sleep in this house to-night. you must stand that! it's a filthy nuisance, my blood showing, isn't it? quite a clot over there. gets visible as it coagulates, i see. i've been in the house three hours." "but how's it done?" began kemp, in a tone of exasperation. "confound it! the whole business--it's unreasonable from beginning to end." "quite reasonable," said the invisible man. "perfectly reasonable." he reached over and secured the whisky bottle. kemp stared at the devouring dressing-gown. a ray of candle-light penetrating a torn patch in the right shoulder, made a triangle of light under the left ribs. "what were the shots?" he asked. "how did the shooting begin?" "there was a fool of a man--a sort of confederate of mine-curse him!--who tried to steal my money. has done so." "is he invisible too?" "no." "well?" "can't i have some more to eat before i tell you all that? i'm hungry--in pain. and you want me to tell stories!" kemp got up. "you didn't do any shooting?" he asked. "not me," said his visitor. "some fool i'd never seen fired at random. a lot of them got scared. they all got scared at me. curse them!--i say--i want more to eat than this, kemp." "i'll see what there is more to eat downstairs," said kemp. "not much, i'm afraid." after he had done eating, and he made a heavy meal, the invisible man demanded a cigar. he bit the end savagely before kemp could find a knife, and cursed when the outer leaf loosened. it was strange to see him smoking; his mouth and throat, pharynx and nares, became visible as a sort of whirling smoke cast. "this blessed gift of smoking!" he said, and puffed vigorously. "i'm lucky to have fallen upon you, kemp. you must help me. fancy tumbling on you just now! i'm in a devilish scrape. i've been mad, i think. the things i have been through! but we will do things yet. let me tell you--" he helped himself to more whisky and soda. kemp got up, looked about him, and fetched himself a glass from his spare room. "it's wild--but i suppose i may drink." "you haven't changed much, kemp, these dozen years. you fair men don't. cool and methodical--after the first collapse. i must tell you. we will work together!" "but how was it all done?" said kemp, "and how did you get like this?" "for god's sake, let me smoke in peace for a little while! and then i will begin to tell you." but the story was not told that night. the invisible man's wrist was growing painful, he was feverish, exhausted, and his mind came round to brood upon his chase down the hill and the struggle about the inn. he spoke in fragments of marvel, he smoked faster, his voice grew angry. kemp tried to gather what he could. "he was afraid of me, i could see he was afraid of me," said the invisible man many times over. "he meant to give me the slip--he was always casting about! what a fool i was! "the cur! "i should have killed him--" "where did you get the money?" asked kemp, abruptly. the invisible man was silent for a space. "i can't tell you to-night," he said. he groaned suddenly and leant forward, supporting his invisible head on invisible hands. "kemp," he said, "i've had no sleep for near three days--except a couple of dozes of an hour or so. i must sleep soon." "well, have my room--have this room." "but how can i sleep? if i sleep--he will get away. ugh! what does it matter?" "what's the shot-wound?" asked kemp, abruptly. "nothing--scratch and blood. oh, god! how i want sleep!" "why not?" the invisible man appeared to be regarding kemp. "because i've a particular objection to being caught by my fellow-men," he said slowly. kemp started. "fool that i am!" said the invisible man, striking the table smartly. "i've put the idea into your head." ********** chapter 18 the invisible man sleeps exhausted and wounded as the invisible man was, he refused to accept kemp's word that his freedom should be respected. he examined the two windows of the bedroom, drew up the blinds, and opened the sashes to confirm kemp's statement that a retreat by them would be possible. outside the night was very quiet and still, and the new moon was setting over the down. then he examined the keys of the bedroom and the two dressing-room doors, to satisfy himself that these also could be made an assurance of freedom. finally he expressed himself satisfied. he stood on the hearth-rug and kemp heard the sound of a yawn. "i'm sorry," said the invisible man, "if i cannot tell you all that i have done to-night. but i am worn out. it's grotesque, no doubt. it's horrible! but believe me, kemp, it is quite a possible thing. i have made a discovery. i meant to keep it to myself. i can't. i must have a partner. and you--we can do such things--but to-morrow. now, kemp, i feel as though i must sleep or perish." kemp stood in the middle of the room staring at the headless garment. "i suppose i must leave you," he said. "it's--incredible. three things happening like this, overturning all my preconceptions, would make me insane. but it's real! is there anything more that i can get you?" "only bid me good-night," said griffin. "good-night," said kemp, and shook an invisible hand. he walked sideways to the door. suddenly the dressing-gown walked quickly towards him. "understand me!" said the dressing-gown. "no attempts to hamper me, or capture me! or--" kemp's face changed a little. "i thought i gave you my word," he said. kemp closed the door softly behind him, and the key was turned upon him forthwith. then, as he stood with an expression of passive amazement on his face, the rapid feet came to the door of the dressing-room and that too was locked. kemp slapped his brow with his hand. "am i dreaming? has the world gone mad--or have i?" he laughed, and put his hand to the locked door. "barred out of my own bedroom, by a flagrant absurdity!" he said. he walked to the head of the staircase, turned, and stared at the locked doors. "it's fact," he said. he put his fingers to his slightly bruised neck. "undeniable fact! "but--" he shook his head hopelessly, turned, and went downstairs. he lit the dining-room lamp, got out a cigar, and began pacing the room, ejaculating. now and then he would argue with himself. "invisible!" he said. "is there such a thing as an invisible animal? in the sea, yes. thousands! millions! all the larvae, all the little nauplii and tornarias, all the microscopic things, the jelly-fish. in the sea there are more things invisible than visible! i never thought of that before. and in the ponds too! all those little pond-life things-specks of colourless translucent jelly! but in air? no! "it can't be. "but after all--why not? "if a man was made of glass he would still be visible." his meditation became profound. the bulk of three cigars had passed into the invisible or diffused as a white ash over the carpet before he spoke again. then it was merely an exclamation. he turned aside, walked out of the room, and went into his little consultingroom and lit the gas there. it was a little room, because dr. kemp did not live by practice, and in it were the day's newspapers. the morning's paper lay carelessly opened and thrown aside. he caught it up, turned it over, and read the account of a "strange story from iping" that the mariner at port stowe had spelt over so painfully to mr. marvel. kemp read it swiftly. "wrapped up!" said kemp. "disguised! hiding it! 'no one seems to have been aware of his misfortune.' what the devil is his game?" he dropped the paper, and his eye went seeking. "ah!" he said, and caught up the st. james' gazette, lying folded up as it arrived. "now we shall get at the truth," said dr. kemp. he rent the paper open; a couple of columns confronted him. "an entire village in sussex goes mad" was the heading. "good heavens!" said kemp, reading eagerly an incredulous account of the events in iping the previous afternoon, that have already been described. over the leaf the report in the morning paper had been reprinted. he re-read it. "ran through the streets striking right and left. jaffers insensible. mr. huxter in great pain--still unable to describe what he saw. painful humiliation--vicar. women ill with terror! windows smashed. this extraordinary story probably a fabrication. too good not to print--cum grano!" he dropped the paper and stared blankly in front of him. "probably a fabrication!" he caught up the paper again, and re-read the whole business. "but where does the tramp come in? why the deuce was he chasing a tramp?" he sat down abruptly on the surgical couch. "he's not only invisible," he said, "but he's mad! homicidal!" when dawn came to mingle its pallor with the lamp-light and cigar smoke of the dining-room, kemp was still pacing up and down, trying to grasp the incredible. he was altogether too excited to sleep. his servants, descending sleepily, discovered him, and were inclined to think that overstudy had worked this ill on him. he gave them extraordinary but quite explicit instructions to lay breakfast for two in the belvedere study--and then to confine themselves to the basement and groundfloor. then he continued to pace the dining-room until the morning's paper came. that had much to say and little to tell, beyond the confirmation of the evening before and a very baldly written account of another remarkable tale from port burdock. this gave kemp the essence of the happenings at the jolly cricketers, and the name of marvel. "he has made me keep with him twenty-four hours," marvel testified. certain minor facts were added to the iping story, notably the cutting of the village telegraph-wire. but there was nothing to throw light on the connection between the invisible man and the tramp; for mr. marvel had supplied no information about the three books, or the money with which he was lined. the incredulous tone had vanished and a shoal of reporters and inquirers were already at work elaborating the matter. kemp read every scrap of the report and sent his housemaid out to get every one of the morning papers she could. these also he devoured. "he is invisible!" he said. "and it reads like rage growing to mania! the things he may do! the things he may do! and he's upstairs free as the air. what on earth ought i to do? "for instance, would it be a breach of faith if--? no." he went to a little untidy desk in the corner, and began a note. he tore this up half written, and wrote another. he read it over and considered it. then he took an envelope and addressed it to "colonel adye, port burdock." the invisible man awoke even as kemp was doing this. he awoke in an evil temper, and kemp, alert for every sound, heard his pattering feet rush suddenly across the bedroom overhead. then a chair was flung over and the wash-hand stand tumbler smashed. kemp hurried upstairs and rapped eagerly. ********** chapter 19 certain first principles "what's the matter?" asked kemp, when the invisible man admitted him. "nothing," was the answer. "but, confound it! the smash?" "fit of temper," said the invisible man. "forgot this arm; and it's sore." "you're rather liable to that sort of thing." "i am." kemp walked across the room and picked up the fragments of broken glass. "all the facts are out about you," said kemp, standing up with the glass in his hand; "all that happened in iping, and down the hill. the world has become aware of its invisible citizen. but no one knows you are here." the invisible man swore. "the secret's out. i gather it was a secret. i don't know what your plans are, but of course i'm anxious to help you." the invisible man sat down on the bed. "there's breakfast upstairs," said kemp, speaking as easily as possible, and he was delighted to find his strange guest rose willingly. kemp led the way up the narrow staircase to the belvedere. "before we can do anything else," said kemp, "i must understand a little more about this invisibility of yours." he had sat down, after one nervous glance out of the window, with the air of a man who has talking to do. his doubts of the sanity of the entire business flashed and vanished again as he looked across to where griffin sat at the breakfast-table,--a headless, handless dressinggown, wiping unseen lips on a miraculously held serviette. "it's simple enough--and credible enough," said griffin, putting the serviette aside and leaning the invisible head on an invisible hand. "no doubt, to you, but--" kemp laughed. "well, yes; to me it seemed wonderful at first, no doubt. but now, great god!--but we will do great things yet! i came on the stuff first at chesilstowe." "chesilstowe?" "i went there after i left london. you know i dropped medicine and took up physics? no?--well, i did. light--fascinated me." "ah!" "optical density! the whole subject is a network of riddles --a network with solutions glimmering elusively through. and being but two-and-twenty and full of enthusiasm, i said, 'i will devote my life to this. this is worth while.' you know what fools we are at two-and-twenty?" "fools then or fools now," said kemp. "as though knowing could be any satisfaction to a man! "but i went to work--like a nigger. and i had hardly worked and thought about the matter six months before light came through one of the meshes suddenly--blindingly! i found a general principle of pigments and refraction,--a formula, a geometrical expression involving four dimensions. fools, common men, even common mathematicians, do not know anything of what some general expression may mean to the student of molecular physics. in the books--the books that tramp has hidden--there are marvels, miracles! but this was not a method, it was an idea that might lead to a method by which it would be possible, without changing any other property of matter,--except, in some instances, colours,--to lower the refractive index of a substance, solid or liquid, to that of air--so far as all practical purposes are concerned." "phew!" said kemp. "that's odd! but still i don't see quite --i can understand that thereby you could spoil a valuable stone, but personal invisibility is a far cry." "precisely," said griffin. "but consider: visibility depends on the action of the visible bodies on light. either a body absorbs light, or it reflects or refracts it, or does all these things. if it neither reflects nor refracts nor absorbs light, it cannot of itself be visible. you see an opaque red box, for instance, because the colour absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest, all the red part of the light, to you. if it did not absorb any particular part of the light, but reflected it all, then it would be a shining white box. silver! a diamond box would neither absorb much of the light nor reflect much from the general surface, but just here and there where the surfaces were favourable the light would be reflected and refracted, so that you would get a brilliant appearance of flashing reflections and translucencies,--a sort of skeleton of light. a glass box would not be so brilliant, not so clearly visible, as a diamond box, because there would be less refraction and reflection. see that? from certain points of view you would see quite clearly through it. some kinds of glass would be more visible than others, a box of flint glass would be brighter than a box of ordinary window glass. a box of very thin common glass would be hard to see in a bad light, because it would absorb hardly any light and refract and reflect very little. and if you put a sheet of common white glass in water, still more if you put it in some denser liquid than water, it would vanish almost altogether, because light passing from water to glass is only slightly refracted or reflected or indeed affected in any way. it is almost as invisible as a jet of coal gas or hydrogen is in air. and for precisely the same reason!" "yes," said kemp, "that is pretty plain sailing." "and here is another fact you will know to be true. if a sheet of glass is smashed, kemp, and beaten into a powder, it becomes much more visible while it is in the air; it becomes at last an opaque white powder. this is because the powdering multiplies the surfaces of the glass at which refraction and reflection occur. in the sheet of glass there are only two surfaces; in the powder the light is reflected or refracted by each grain it passes through, and very little gets right through the powder. but if the white powdered glass is put into water, it forthwith vanishes. the powdered glass and water have much the same refractive index; that is, the light undergoes very little refraction or reflection in passing from one to the other. "you make the glass invisible by putting it into a liquid of nearly the same refractive index; a transparent thing becomes invisible if it is put in any medium of almost the same refractive index. and if you will consider only a second, you will see also that the powder of glass might be made to vanish in air, if its refractive index could be made the same as that of air; for then there would be no refraction or reflection as the light passed from glass to air." "yes, yes," said kemp. "but a man's not powdered glass!" "no," said griffin. "he's more transparent!" "nonsense!" "that from a doctor! how one forgets! have you already forgotten your physics, in ten years? just think of all the things that are transparent and seem not to be so. paper, for instance, is made up of transparent fibres, and it is white and opaque only for the same reason that a powder of glass is white and opaque. oil white paper, fill up the interstices between the particles with oil so that there is no longer refraction or reflection except at the surfaces, and it becomes as transparent as glass. and not only paper, but cotton fibre, linen fibre, wool fibre, woody fibre, and bone, kemp, flesh, hair, nails and nerves, kemp, in fact the whole fabric of a man except the red of his blood and the black pigment of hair, are all made up of transparent, colourless tissue. so little suffices to make us visible one to the other. for the most part the fibres of a living creature are no more opaque than water." "great heavens!" cried kemp. "of course, of course! i was thinking only last night of the sea larvae and all jelly-fish!" "now you have me! and all that i knew and had in mind a year after i left london--six years ago. but i kept it to myself. i had to do my work under frightful disadvantages. oliver, my professor, was a scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas,--he was always prying! and you know the knavish system of the scientific world. i simply would not publish, and let him share my credit. i went on working. i got nearer and nearer making my formula into an experiment, a reality. i told no living soul, because i meant to flash my work upon the world with crushing effect,--to become famous at a blow. i took up the question of pigments to fill up certain gaps. and suddenly, not by design but by accident, i made a discovery in physiology." "yes?" "you know the red colouring matter of blood; it can be made white--colourless--and remain with all the functions it has now!" kemp gave a cry of incredulous amazement. the invisible man rose and began pacing the little study. "you may well exclaim. i remember that night. it was late at night, --in the daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students,-and i worked then sometimes till dawn. it came suddenly, splendid and complete into my mind. i was alone; the laboratory was still, with the tall lights burning brightly and silently. in all my great moments i have been alone. 'one could make an animal--a tissue-transparent! one could make it invisible! all except the pigments. i could be invisible!' i said, suddenly realising what it meant to be an albino with such knowledge. it was overwhelming. i left the filtering i was doing, and went and stared out of the great window at the stars. 'i could be invisible!' i repeated. "to do such a thing would be to transcend magic. and i beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man,--the mystery, the power, the freedom. drawbacks i saw none. you have only to think! and i, a shabby, poverty-struck, hemmed-in demonstrator, teaching fools in a provincial college, might suddenly become--this. i ask you, kemp, if you--any one, i tell you, would have flung himself upon that research. and i worked three years, and every mountain of difficulty i toiled over showed another from its summit. the infinite details! and the exasperation,--a professor, a provincial professor, always prying. 'when are you going to publish this work of yours?' was his everlasting question. and the students, the cramped means! three years i had of it-"and after three years of secrecy and exasperation, i found that to complete it was impossible,--impossible." "how?" asked kemp. "money," said the invisible man, and went again to stare out of the window. he turned round abruptly. "i robbed the old man--robbed my father. "the money was not his, and he shot himself." ********** chapter 20 at the house in great portland street for a moment kemp sat in silence, staring at the back of the headless figure at the window. then he started, struck by a thought, rose, took the invisible man's arm, and turned him away from the outlook. "you are tired," he said, "and while i sit, you walk about. have my chair." he placed himself between griffin and the nearest window. for a space griffin sat silent, and then he resumed abruptly: "i had left the chesilstowe cottage already," he said, "when that happened. it was last december. i had taken a room in london, a large unfurnished room in a big ill-managed lodging-house in a slum near great portland street. the room was soon full of the appliances i had bought with his money; the work was going on steadily, successfully, drawing near an end. i was like a man emerging from a thicket, and suddenly coming on some unmeaning tragedy. i went to bury him. my mind was still on this research, and i did not lift a finger to save his character. i remember the funeral, the cheap hearse, the scant ceremony, the windy frost-bitten hillside, and the old college friend of his who read the service over him,--a shabby, black, bent old man with a snivelling cold. "i remember walking back to the empty home, through the place that had once been a village and was now patched and tinkered by the jerry builders into the ugly likeness of a town. every way the roads ran out at last into the desecrated fields and ended in rubble heaps and rank wet weeds. i remember myself as a gaunt black figure, going along the slippery, shiny pavement, and the strange sense of detachment i felt from the squalid respectability, the sordid commercialism of the place. "i did not feel a bit sorry for my father. he seemed to me to be the victim of his own foolish sentimentality. the current cant required my attendance at his funeral, but it was really not my affair. "but going along the high street, my old life came back to me for a space, for i met the girl i had known ten years since. our eyes met. "something moved me to turn back and talk to her. she was a very ordinary person. "it was all like a dream, that visit to the old places. i did not feel then that i was lonely, that i had come out from the world into a desolate place. i appreciated my loss of sympathy, but i put it down to the general inanity of things. re-entering my room seemed like the recovery of reality. there were the things i knew and loved. there stood the apparatus, the experiments arranged and waiting. and now there was scarcely a difficulty left, beyond the planning of details. "i will tell you, kemp, sooner or later, all the complicated processes. we need not go into that now. for the most part, saving certain gaps i chose to remember, they are written in cypher in those books that tramp has hidden. we must hunt him down. we must get those books again. but the essential phase was to place the transparent object whose refractive index was to be lowered between two radiating centres of a sort of ethereal vibration, of which i will tell you more fully later. no, not these rntgen vibrations--i don't know that these others of mine have been described. yet they are obvious enough. i needed two little dynamos, and these i worked with a cheap gas engine. my first experiment was with a bit of white wool fabric. i was the strangest thing in the world to see it in the flicker of the flashes soft and white, and then to watch it fade like a wreath of smoke and vanish. "i could scarcely believe i had done it. i put my hand into the emptiness, and there was the thing as solid as ever. i felt it awkwardly, and threw it on the floor. i had a little trouble finding it again. "and then came a curious experience. i heard a miaow behind me, and turning, saw a lean white cat, very dirty, on the cistern cover outside the window. a thought came into my head. 'everything ready for you,' i said, and went to the window, opened it, and called softly. she came in, purring,--the poor beast was starving,--and i gave her some milk. all my food was in a cupboard in the corner of the room. after that she went smelling round the room,--evidently with the idea of making herself at home. the invisible rag upset her a bit; you should have seen her spit at it! but i made her comfortable on the pillow of my truckle-bed. and i gave her butter to get her to wash." "and you processed her?" "i processed her. but giving drugs to a cat is no joke, kemp! and the process failed." "failed!" "in two particulars. these were the claws and the pigment stuff--what is it?--at the back of the eye in a cat. you know?" "tapetum." "yes, the tapetum. it didn't go. after i'd given the stuff to bleach the blood and done certain other things to her, i gave the beast opium, and put her and the pillow she was sleeping on, on the apparatus. and after all the rest had faded and vanished, there remained two little ghosts of her eyes." "odd!" "i can't explain it. she was bandaged and clamped, of course, --so i had her safe; but she woke while she was still misty, and miaowed dismally, and some one came knocking. it was an old woman from downstairs, who suspected me of vivisecting,--a drink-sodden old creature, with only a white cat to care for in all the world. i whipped out some chloroform, and applied it, and answered the door. 'did i hear a cat?' she asked. 'my cat?' 'not here,' said i, very politely. she was a little doubtful and tried to peer past me into the room; strange enough to her no doubt,--bare walls, uncurtained windows, truckle-bed, with the gas engine vibrating, and the seethe of the radiant points, and that faint ghastly stinging of chloroform in the air. she had to be satisfied at last and went away again." "how long did it take?" asked kemp. "three or four hours--the cat. the bones and sinews and the fat were the last to go, and the tips of the coloured hairs. and, as i say, the back part of the eye, tough iridescent stuff it is, wouldn't go at all. "it was night outside long before the business was over, and nothing was to be seen but the dim eyes and the claws. i stopped the gas engine, felt for and stroked the beast, which was still insensible, and then, being tired, left it sleeping on the invisible pillow and went to bed. i found it hard to sleep. i lay awake thinking weak aimless stuff, going over the experiment over and over again, or dreaming feverishly of things growing misty and vanishing about me, until everything, the ground i stood on, vanished, and so i came to that sickly falling nightmare one gets. about two, the cat began miaowing about the room. i tried to hush it by talking to it, and then i decided to turn it out. i remember the shock i had when striking a light--there were just the round eyes shining green--and nothing round them. i would have given it milk, but i hadn't any. it wouldn't be quiet, it just sat down and miaowed at the door. i tried to catch it, with an idea of putting it out of the window, but it wouldn't be caught, it vanished. then it began miaowing in different parts of the room. at last i opened the window and made a bustle. i suppose it went out at last. i never saw any more of it. "then--heaven knows why--i fell thinking of my father's funeral again, and the dismal windy hillside, until the day had come. i found sleeping was hopeless, and, locking my door after me, wandered out into the morning streets." "you don't mean to say there's an invisible cat at large!" said kemp. "if it hasn't been killed," said the invisible man. "why not?" "why not?" said kemp. "i didn't mean to interrupt." "it's very probably been killed," said the invisible man. "it was alive four days after, i know, and down a grating in great titchfield street; because i saw a crowd round the place, trying to see whence the miaowing came." he was silent for the best part of a minute. then he resumed abruptly: "i remember that morning before the change very vividly. i must have gone up great portland street. i remember the barracks in albany street, and the horse soldiers coming out, and at last i found myself sitting in the sunshine and feeling very ill and strange, on the summit of primrose hill. it was a sunny day in january,--one of those sunny, frosty days that came before the snow this year. my weary brain tried to formulate the position, to plot out a plan of action. "i was surprised to find, now that my prize was within my grasp, how inconclusive its attainment seemed. as a matter of fact i was worked out; the intense stress of nearly four years' continuous work left me incapable of any strength of feeling. i was apathetic, and i tried in vain to recover the enthusiasm of my first inquiries, the passion of discovery that had enabled me to compass even the downfall of my father's grey hairs. nothing seemd to matter. i saw pretty clearly this was a transient mood, due to overwork and want of sleep, and that either by drugs or rest it would be possible to recover my energies. "all i could think clearly was that the thing had to be carried through; the fixed idea still ruled me. and soon, for the money i had was almost exhausted. i looked about me at the hillside, with children playing and girls watching them, and tried to think of all the fantastic advantages an invisible man would have in the world. after a time i crawled home, took some food and a strong dose of strychnine, and went to sleep in my clothes on my unmade bed. strychnine is a grand tonic, kemp, to take the flabbiness out of a man." "it's the devil," said kemp. "it's the palaeolithic in a bottle." "i awoke vastly invigorated and rather irritable. you know?" "i know the stuff." "and there was some one rapping at the door. it was my landlord with threats and inquiries, an old polish jew in a long grey coat and greasy slippers. i had been tormenting a cat in the night he was sure,--the old woman's tongue had been busy. he insisted on knowing all about it. the laws of this country against vivisection were very severe,--he might be liable. i denied the cat. then the vibration of the little gas engine could be felt all over the house, he said. that was true, certainly. he edged round me into the room, peering about over his german-silver spectacles, and a sudden dread came into my mind that he might carry away something of my secret. i tried to keep between him and the concentrating apparatus i had arranged, and that only made him more curious. what was i doing? why was i always alone and secretive? was it legal? was it dangerous? i paid nothing but the usual rent. his had always been a most respectable house--in a disreputable neighbourhood. suddenly my temper gave way. i told him to get out. he began to protest, to jabber of his right of entry. in a moment i had him by the collar; something ripped, and he went spinning out into his own passage. i slammed and locked the door and sat down quivering. "he made a fuss outside, which i disregarded, and after a time he went away. "but this brought matters to a crisis. i did not know what he would do, nor even what he had power to do. to move to fresh apartments would have meant delay; altogether i had barely twenty pounds left in the world,--for the most part in the bank,--and i could not afford that. vanish! it was irresistible. then there would be an inquiry, the sacking of my room-"at the thought of the possibility of my work being exposed or interrupted at its very climax, i became angry and active. i hurried out with my three books of notes, my cheque-book,--the tramp has them now,--and directed them from the nearest post office to a house of call for letters and parcels in great portland street. i tried to go out noiselessly. coming in, i found my landlord going quietly upstairs; he had heard the door close, i suppose. you would have laughed to see him jump aside on the landing as i came tearing after him. he glared at me as i went by him, and i made the house quiver with the slamming of my door. i heard him come shuffling up to my floor, hesitate, and go down. i set to work upon my preparations forthwith. "it was all done that evening and night. while i was still sitting under the sickly, drowsy influence of the drugs that decolourise blood, there came a repeated knocking at the door. it ceased, footsteps went away and returned, and the knocking was resumed. there was an attempt to push something under the door--a blue paper. then in a fit of irritation i rose and went and flung the door wide open. 'now then?' said i. "it was my landlord, with a notice of ejectment or something. he held it out to me, saw something odd about my hands, i expect, and lifted his eyes to my face. "for a moment he gaped. then he gave a sort of inarticulate cry, dropped candle and writ together, and went blundering down the dark passage to the stairs. i shut the door, locked it, and went to the looking-glass. then i understood his terror. my face was white --like white stone. "but it was all horrible. i had not expected the suffering. a night of racking anguish, sickness and fainting. i set my teeth, though my skin was presently afire; all my body afire; but i lay there like grim death. i understood now how it was the cat had howled until i chloroformed it. lucky it was i lived alone and untended in my room. there were times when i sobbed and groaned and talked. but i stuck to it. i became insensible and woke languid in the darkness. "the pain had passed. i thought i was killing myself and i did not care. i shall never forget that dawn, and the strange horror of seeing that my hands had become as clouded glass, and watching them grow clearer and thinner as the day went by, until at last i could see the sickly disorder of my room through them, though i closed my transparent eyelids. my limbs became glassy, the bones and arteries faded, vanished, and the little white nerves went last. i ground my teeth and stayed there to the end. at last only the dead tips of the finger-nails remained, pallid and white, and the brown stain of some acid upon my fingers. "i struggled up. at first i was as incapable as a swathed infant,--stepping with limbs i could not see. i was weak and very hungry. i went and stared at nothing in my shaving-glass, at nothing save where an attenuated pigment still remained behind the retina of my eyes, fainter than mist. i had to hang on to the table and press my forehead to the glass. "it was only by a frantic effort of will that i dragged myself back to the apparatus and completed the process. "i slept during the forenoon, pulling the sheet over my eyes to shut out the light, and about midday i was awakened again by a knocking. my strength had returned. i sat up and listened and heard a whispering. i sprang to my feet and as noiselessly as possible began to detach the connections of my apparatus, and to distribute it about the room, so as to destroy the suggestions of its arrangement. presently the knocking was renewed and voices called, first my landlord's, and then two others. to gain time i answered them. the invisible rag and pillow came to hand and i opened the window and pitched them out on to the cistern cover. as the window opened, a heavy crash came at the door. some one had charged it with the idea of smashing the lock. but the stout bolts i had screwed up some days before stopped him. that startled me, made me angry. i began to tremble and do things hurriedly. "i tossed together some loose paper, straw, packing paper and so forth, in the middle of the room, and turned on the gas. heavy blows began to rain upon the door. i could not find the matches. i beat my hands on the wall with rage. i turned down the gas again, stepped out of the window on the cistern cover, very softly lowered the sash, and sat down, secure and invisible, but quivering with anger, to watch events. they split a panel, i saw, and in another moment they had broken away the staples of the bolts and stood in the open doorway. it was the landlord and his two step-sons, sturdy young men of three or four and twenty. behind them fluttered the old hag of a woman from downstairs. "you may imagine their astonishment on finding the room empty. one of the younger men rushed to the window at once, flung it up and stared out. his staring eyes and thick-lipped bearded face came a foot from my face. i was half minded to hit his silly countenance, but i arrested my doubled fist. he stared right through me. so did the others as they joined him. the old man went and peered under the bed, and then they all made a rush for the cupboard. they had to argue about it at length in yiddish and cockney english. they concluded i had not answered them, that their imagination had deceived them. a feeling of extraordinary elation took the place of my anger as i sat outside the window and watched these four people--for the old lady came in, glancing suspiciously about her like a cat, trying to understand the riddle of my behaviour. "the old man, so far as i could understand his patois, agreed with the old lady that i was a vivisectionist. the sons protested in garbled english that i was an electrician, and appealed to the dynamos and radiators. they were all nervous against my arrival, although i found subsequently that they had bolted the front door. the old lady peered into the cupboard and under the bed, and one of the young men pushed up the register and stared up the chimney. one of my fellow lodgers, a costermonger who shared the opposite room with a butcher, appeared on the landing, and he was called in and told incoherent things. "it occurred to me that the radiators, if they fell into the hands of some acute well-educated person, would give me away too much, and watching my opportunity, i came into the room and tilted one of the little dynamos off its fellow on which it was standing, and smashed both apparatus. then, while they were trying to explain the smash, i dodged out of the room and went softly downstairs. "i went into one of the sitting-rooms and waited until they came down, still speculating and argumentative, all a little disappointed at finding no 'horrors,' and all a little puzzled how they stood with regard to me. then i slipped up again with a box of matches, fired my heap of paper and rubbish, put the chairs and bedding thereby, led the gas to the affair, by means of an indiarubber tube, and waving a farewell to the room left it for the last time." "you fired the house!" exclaimed kemp. "fired the house. it was the only way to cover my trail--and no doubt it was insured. i slipped the bolts of the front door quietly and went out into the street. i was invisible, and i was only just beginning to realise the extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. my head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and wonderful things i had now impunity to do." ********** chapter 21 in oxford street "in going downstairs the first time i found an unexpected difficulty because i could not see my feet; indeed i stumbled twice, and there was an unaccustomed clumsiness in gripping the bolt. by not looking down, however, i managed to walk on the level passably well. "my mood, i say, was one of exaltation. i felt as a seeing man might do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the blind. i experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men on the back, fling people's hats astray, and generally revel in my extraordinary advantage. "but hardly had i emerged upon great portland street, however (my lodgings was close to the big draper's shop there), when i heard a clashing concussion and was hit violently behind, and turning saw a man carrying a basket of soda-water siphons, and looking in amazement at his burden. although the blow had really hurt me, i found something so irresistible in his astonishment that i laughed aloud. 'the devil's in the basket,' i said, and suddenly twisted it out of his hand. he let go incontinently, and i swung the whole weight into the air. "but a fool of a cabman, standing outside a public house, made a sudden rush for this, and his extending fingers took me with excruciating violence under the ear. i let the whole down with a smash on the cabman, and then, with shouts and the clatter of feet about me, people coming out of shops, vehicles pulling up, i realised what i had done for myself, and cursing my folly, backed against a shop window and prepared to dodge out of the confusion. in a moment i should be wedged into a crowd and inevitably discovered. i pushed by the butcher boy, who luckily did not turn to see the nothingness that shoved him aside, and dodged behind the cabman's four-wheeler. i do not know how they settled the business. i hurried straight across the road, which was happily clear, and hardly heeding which way i went, in the fright of detection the incident had given, plunged into the afternoon throng of oxford street. "i tried to get into the stream of people, but they were too thick for me, and in a moment my heels were being trodden upon. i took to the gutter, the roughness of which i found painful to my feet, and forthwith the shaft of a crawling hansom dug me forcibly under the shoulder blade, reminding me that i was already bruised severely. i staggered out of the way of the cab, avoided a perambulator by a convulsive movement, and found myself behind the hansom. a happy thought saved me, and as this drove slowly along i followed in its immediate wake, trembling and astonished at the turn of my adventure. and not only trembling, but shivering. it was a bright day in january and i was stark naked and the thin slime of mud that covered the road was freezing. foolish as it seems to me now, i had not reckoned that, transparent or not, i was still amenable to the weather and all its consequences. "then suddenly a bright idea came into my head. i ran round and got into the cab. and so, shivering, scared, and sniffing with the first intimations of a cold, and with the bruises in the small of my back growing upon my attention. i drove slowly along oxford street and past tottenham court road. my mood was as different from that in which i had sallied forth ten minutes ago as it is possible to imagine. this invisibility indeed! the one thought that possessed me was--how was i to get out of the scrape i was in. "we crawled past mudie's, and there a tall woman with five or six yellow-labelled books hailed my cab, and i sprang out just in time to escape her, shaving a railway van narrowly in my flight. i made off up the roadway to bloomsbury square, intending to strike north past the museum and so get into the quiet district. i was not cruelly chilled, and the strangeness of my situation so unnerved me that i whimpered as i ran. at the northward corner of the square a little white dog ran out of the pharmaceutical society's offices, and incontinently made for me, nose down. "i had never realised it before, but the nose is to the mind of a dog what the eye is to the mind of a seeing man. dogs perceive the scent of a man moving as men perceive his vision. this brute began barking and leaping, showing, as it seemed to me, only too plainly that he was aware of me. i crossed great russell street, glancing over my shoulder as i did so, and went some way along montague street before i realised what i was running towards. "then i became aware of a blare of music, and looking along the street saw a number of people advancing out of russell square, red shirts, and the banner of the salvation army to the fore. such a crowd, chanting in the roadway and scoffing on the pavement, i could not hope to penetrate, and dreading to go back and farther from home again, and deciding on the spur of the moment, i ran up the white steps of a house facing the museum railings, and stood there until the crowd should have passed. happily the dog stopped at the noise of the band too, hesitated, and turned tail, running back to bloomsbury square again. "on came the band, bawling with unconscious irony some hymn about 'when shall we see his face?' and it seemed an interminable time to me before the tide of the crowd washed along the pavement by me. thud, thud, thud, came the drum with a vibrating resonance, and for the moment i did not notice two urchins stopping at the railings by me. 'see 'em,' said one. 'see what?' said the other. 'why--them footmarks--bare. like what you makes in mud.' "i looked down and saw the youngsters had stopped and were gaping at the muddy footmarks i had left behind me up the newly whitened steps. the passing people elbowed and jostled them, but their confounded intelligence was arrested. 'thud, thud, thud, when, thud, shall we see, thud, his face, thud, thud.' 'there's a barefoot man gone up them steps, or i don't know nothing,' said one. 'and he ain't never come down again. and his foot was a-bleeding.' "the thick of the crowd had already passed. 'looky there, ted,' quoth the younger of the detectives, with the sharpness of surprise in his voice, and pointed straight to my feet. i looked down and saw at once the dim suggestion of their outline sketched in splashes of mud. for a moment i was paralysed. "'why, that's rum,' said the elder. 'dashed rum! it's just like the ghost of a foot, ain't it?' he hesitated and advanced with outstretched hand. a man pulled up short to see what he was catching, and then a girl. in another moment he would have touched me. then i saw what to do. i made a step, the boy started back with an exclamation, and with a rapid movement i swung myself over into the portico of the next house. but the smaller boy was sharp-eyed enough to follow the movement and before i was well down the steps and upon the pavement, he had recovered from his momentary astonishment and was shouting out that the feet had gone over the wall. "they rushed round and saw my new footmarks flash into being on the lower step and upon the pavement. 'what's up?' asked some one. 'feet! look! feet running!' everybody in the road, except my three pursuers, was pouring along after the salvation army, and this not only impeded me but them. there was an eddy of surprise and interrogation. at the cost of bowling over one young fellow i got through, and in another moment i was rushing headlong round the circuit of russell square, with six or seven astonished people following my footmarks. there was no time for explanation, or else the whole host would have been after me. "twice i doubled round corners, thrice i crossed the road and came back on my tracks, and then, as my feet grew hot and dry, the damp impressions began to fade. at last i had a breathing space and rubbed my feet clean with my hands, and so got away altogether. the last i saw of the chase was a little group of a dozen people perhaps, studying with infinite perplexity a slowly drying footprint that had resulted from a puddle in travistock square--a footprint as isolated and incomprehensible to them as crusoe's solitary discovery. "this running warmed me to a certain extent, and i went on with a better courage through the maze of less frequented roads that runs hereabouts. my back had now become very stiff and sore, my tonsils were painful from the cabman's fingers, and the skin of my neck had been scratched by his nails; my feet hurt exceedingly and i was lame from a little cut on one foot. i saw in time a blind man approaching me, and fled limping, for i feared his subtle intuitions. once or twice accidental collisions occurred and i left people amazed, with unaccountable curses ringing in their ears. then came something silent and quiet against my face, and across the square fell a thin veil of slowly falling flakes of snow. i had caught a cold, and do as i would i could not avoid an occasional sneeze. and every dog that came in sight, with its pointing nose and curious sniffing, was a terror to me. "then came men and boys running, first one and then others, and shouting as they ran. it was a fire. they ran in the direction of my lodging, and looking back down a street i saw a mass of black smoke streaming up above the roofs and telephone wires. it was my lodging burning; my clothes, my apparatus, all my resources indeed, except my cheque-book and the three volumes of memoranda that awaited me in great portland street, were there. burning! i had burnt my boats--if ever a man did! the place was blazing." the invisible man paused and thought. kemp glanced nervously out of the window. "yes?" he said. "go on." ********** chapter 22 in the emporium "so last january, with the beginning of a snowstorm in the air about me--and if it settled on me it would betray me!--weary, cold, painful, inexpressibly wretched, and still but half convinced of my invisible quality, i began this new life to which i am committed. i had no refuge, no appliances, no human being in the world in whom i could confide. to have told my secret would have given me away--made a mere show and rarity of me. nevertheless, i was half minded to accost some passer-by and throw myself upon his mercy. but i knew too clearly the terror and brutal cruelty my advances would evoke. i made no plans in the street. my sole object was to get shelter from the snow, to get myself covered and warm; then i might hope to plan. but even to me, an invisible man, the rows of london houses stood latched, barred, and bolted impregnably. "only one thing could i see clearly before me, the cold exposure and misery of the snowstorm and the night. "and then i had a brilliant idea. i turned down one of the roads leading from gower street to tottenham court road, and found myself outside omniums, the big establishment where everything is to be bought--you know the place--meat, grocery, linen, furniture, clothing, oil paintings even--a huge meandering collection of shops rather than a shop. i had thought i should find the doors open, but they were closed, and as i stood in the wide entrance a carriage stopped outside, and a man in uniform--you know the kind of personage with 'omnium' on his cap--flung open the door. i contrived to enter, and walking down the shop--it was a department where they were selling ribbons and gloves and stockings and that kind of thing--came to a more spacious region devoted to picnic baskets and wicker furniture. "i did not feel safe there, however; people were going to and fro, and i prowled restlessly about until i came upon a huge section in an upper floor containing scores and hundreds of bedsteads, and beyond these i found a resting-place at last among a huge pile of folded flock mattresses. the place was already lit up and aggreeably warm, and i decided to remain where i was, keeping a cautious eye on the two or three sets of shopmen and customers who were meandering through the place until closing time came. then i should be able, i thought, to rob the place for food and clothing, and disguised, prowl through it and examine its resources, perhaps sleep on some of the bedding. that seemed an acceptable plan. my idea was to procure clothing to make myself a muffled but acceptable figure, to get money, and then to recover my books and parcels where they awaited me, take a lodging somewhere and elaborate plans for the complete realisation of the advantages my invisibility gave me (as i still imagined) over my fellow-men. "closing time arrived quickly enough; it could not have been more than an hour after i took up my position on the mattresses before i noticed the blinds of the windows being drawn, and customers being marched doorward. and then a number of brisk young men began with remarkable alacrity to tidy up the goods that remained disturbed. i left my lair as the crowds diminished, and prowled cautiously out into the less desolate parts of the shop. i was really surprised to observe how rapidly the young men and women whipped away the goods displayed for sale during the day. all the boxes of goods, the hanging fabrics, the festoons of lace, the boxes of sweets in the grocery section, the displays of this and that, were being whipped down, folded up, slapped into tidy receptacles, and everything that could not be taken down and put away had sheets of some coarse stuff like sacking flung over it. finally all the chairs were turned up on to the counters, leaving the floor clear. directly each of these young people had done, he or she made promptly for the door with such an expression of animation as i have rarely observed in a shop assistant before. then came a lot of youngsters scattering sawdust and carrying pails and brooms. i had to dodge to get out of the way, and as it was, my ankle got stung with the sawdust. for some time, wandering through the swathed and darkened departments, i could hear the brooms at work. and at last a good hour or more after the shop had been closed, came a noise of locking doors. silence came upon the place, and i found myself wandering through the vast and intricate shops, galleries and showrooms of the place, alone. it was very still; in one place i remember passing near one of the tottenham court road entrances and listening to the tapping of bootheels of the passers-by. "my first visit was to the place where i had seen stockings and gloves for sale. it was dark, and i had the devil of a hunt after matches, which i found at last in the drawer of the little cash desk. then i had to get a candle. i had to tear down wrappings and ransack a number of boxes and drawers, but at last i managed to turn out what i sought; the box label called them lambswool pants, and lambswool vests. then socks, a thick comforter, and then i went to the clothing place and got trousers, a lounge jacket, an overcoat and a slouch hat --a clerical sort of hat with the brim turned down. i began to feel a human being again, and my next thought was food. "upstairs was a refreshment department, and there i got cold meat. there was coffee still in the urn, and i lit the gas and warmed it up again, and altogether i did not do badly. afterwards, prowling through the place in search of blankets--i had to put up at last with a heap of down quilts--i came upon a grocery section with a lot of chocolate and candied fruits, more than was good for me indeed--and some white burgundy. and near that was a toy department, and i had a brilliant idea. i found some artificial noses--dummy noses, you know, and i thought of dark spectacles. but omniums had no optical department. my nose had been a difficulty indeed--i had thought of paint. but the discovery set my mind running on wigs and masks and the like. finally i went to sleep on a heap of down quilts, very warm and comfortable. "my last thoughts before sleeping were the most agreeable i had had since the change. i was in a state of physical serenity, and that was reflected in my mind. i thought that i should be able to slip out unobserved in the morning with my clothes upon me, muffling my face with a white wrapper i had taken, purchase, with the money i had taken, spectacles and so forth, and so complete my disguise. i lapsed into disorderly dreams of all the fantastic things that had happened during the last few days. i saw the ugly little jew of a landlord vociferating in his rooms; i saw his two sons marvelling, and the wrinkled old woman's gnarled face as she asked for her cat. i experienced again the strange sensation of seeing the cloth disappear, and so i came round to the windy hillside and the sniffing old clergyman mumbling 'dust to dust, earth to earth,' and my father's open grave. "'you also,' said a voice, and suddenly i was being forced towards the grave. i struggled, shouted, appealed to the mourners, but they continued stonily following the service; the old clergyman, too, never faltered droning and sniffing through the ritual. i realised i was invisible and inaudible, that overwhelming forces had their grip on me. i struggled in vain, i was forced over the brink, the coffin rang hollow as i fell upon it, and the gravel came flying after me in spadefuls. nobody heeded me, nobody was aware of me. i made convulsive struggles and awoke. "the pale london dawn had come, the place was full of a chilly grey light that filtered round the edges of the window blinds. i sat up, and for a time i could not think where this ample apartment, with its counters, its piles of rolled stuff, its heaps of quilts and cushions, its iron pillars, might be. then, as recollection came back to me, i heard voices in conversation. "then far down the place, in the brighter light of some department which had already raised its blinds, i saw two men approaching. i scrambled to my feet, looking about me for some way of escape, and even as i did so the sound of my movement made them aware of me. i suppose they saw merely a figure moving quietly and quickly away. 'who's that?' cried one, and 'stop there,' shouted the other. i dashed round a corner and came full tilt--a faceless figure, mind you!--on a lanky lad of fifteen. he yelled and i bowled him over, rushed past him, turned another corner, and by a happy inspiration threw myself flat behind a counter. in another moment feet went running past and i heard voices shouting, 'all hands to the doors!' asking what was 'up,' and giving one another advice how to catch me. "lying on the ground, i felt scared out of my wits. but--odd as it may seem--it did not occur to me at the moment to take off my clothes as i should have done. i had made up my mind, i suppose, to get away in them, and that ruled me. and then down the vista of the counters came a bawling of 'here he is!' "i sprang to my feet, whipped a chair off the counter, and sent it whirling at the fool who had shouted, turned, came into another round a corner, sent him spinning, and rushed up the stairs. he kept his footing, gave a view hallo! and came up the staircase hot after me. up the staircase were piled a multitude of those brightcoloured pot things--what are they?" "art pots," suggested kemp. "that's it! art pots. well, i turned at the top step and swung round, plucked one out of a pile and smashed it on his silly head as he came at me. the whole pile of pots went headlong, and i heard shouting and footsteps running from all parts. i made a mad rush for the refreshment place, and there was a man in white like a man cook, who took up the chase. i made one last desperate turn and found myself among lamps and ironmongery. i went behind the counter of this, and waited for my cook, and as he bolted in at the head of the chase, i doubled him up with a lamp. down he went, and i crouched behind the counter and began whipping off my clothes as fast as i could. coat, jacket, trousers, shoes were all right, but a lambswool vest fits a man like a skin. i heard more men coming, my cook was lying quiet on the other side of the counter, stunned or scared speechless, and i had to make another dash for it, like a rabbit hunted out of a wood-pile. "'this way, policeman!' i heard some one shouting. i found myself in my bedstead store-room again, and at the end a wilderness of wardrobes. i rushed among them, went flat, got rid of my vest after infinite wriggling, and stood a free man again, panting and scared, as the policeman and three of the shopmen came round the corner. they made a rush for the vest and pants, and collared the trousers. 'he's dropping his plunder,' said one of the young men. 'he must be somewhere here.' "but they did not find me all the same. "i stood watching them hunt for me for a time, and cursing my ill-luck in losing the clothes. then i went into the refreshmentroom, drank a little milk i found there, and sat down by the fire to consider my position. "in a little while two assistants came and began to talk over the business very excitedly and like the fools they were. i heard a magnified account of my depredations, and other speculations as to my whereabouts. then i fell to scheming again. the insurmountable difficulty of the place, especially now it was alarmed, was to get any plunder out of it. i went down into the warehouse to see if there was any chance of packing and addressing a parcel, but i could not understand the system of checking. about eleven o'clock, the snow having thawed as it fell, and the day being finer and a little warmer than the previous one, i decided that the emporium was hopeless, and went out again, exasperated at my want of success, with only the vaguest plans of action in my mind." ********** chapter 23 in drury lane "but you begin to realise now," said the invisible man, "the full disadvantage of my condition. i had no shelter, no covering. to get clothing was to forego all my advantage, to make of myself a strange and terrible thing. i was fasting; for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely visible again." "i never thought of that," said kemp. "nor had i. and the snow had warned me of other dangers. i could not go abroad in snow--it would settle on me and expose me. rain, too, would make me a watery outline, a glistening surface of a man--a bubble. and fog--i should be like a fainter bubble in a fog, a surface, a greasy glimmer of humanity. moreover, as i went abroad--in the london air--i gathered dirt about my ankles, floating smuts and dust upon my skin. i did not know how long it would be before i should become visible from that cause also. but i saw clearly it could not be for long. "not in london at any rate. "i went into the slums towards great portland street, and found myself at the end of the street in which i had lodged. i did not go that way, because of the crowd halfway down it opposite to the still smoking ruins of the house i had fired. my most immediate problem was to get clothing. what to do with my face puzzled me. then i saw in one of those little miscellaneous shops--news, sweets, toys, stationery, belated christmas tomfoolery, and so forth--an array of masks and noses. i realised that problem was solved. in a flash i saw my course. i turned about, no longer aimless, and went-circuitously in order to avoid the busy ways, towards the back streets north of the strand; for i remembered, though not very distinctly where, that some theatrical costumiers had shops in that district. "the day was cold, with a nipping wind down the northward running streets. i walked fast to avoid being overtaken. every crossing was a danger, every passenger a thing to watch alertly. one man as i was about to pass him at the top of bedford street, turned upon me abruptly and came into me, sending me into the road and almost under the wheel of a passing hansom. the verdict of the cab-rank was that he had had some sort of stroke. i was so unnerved by this encounter that i went into covent garden market and sat down for some time in a quiet corner by a stall of violets, panting and trembling. i found i had caught a fresh cold, and had to turn out after a time lest my sneezes should attract attention. "at last i reached the object of my quest, a dirty fly-blown little shop in a byway near drury lane, with a window full of tinsel robes, sham jewels, wigs, slippers, dominoes and theatrical photographs. the shop was old-fashioned and low and dark, and the house rose above it for four storeys, dark and dismal. i peered through the window and, seeing no one within, entered. the opening of the door set a clanking bell ringing. i left it open, and walked round a bare costume stand, into a corner behind a cheval glass. for a minute or so no one came. then i heard heavy feet striding across a room, and a man appeared down the shop. "my plans were now perfectly definite. i proposed to make my way into the house, secrete myself upstairs, watch my opportunity, and when everything was quiet, rummage out a wig, mask, spectacles, and costume, and go into the world, perhaps a grotesque but still a credible figure. and incidentally of course i could rob the house of any available money. "the man who had entered the shop was a short, slight, hunched, beetle-browed man, with long arms and very short bandy legs. apparently i had interrupted a meal. he stared about the shop with an expression of expectation. this gave way to surprise, and then anger, as he saw the shop empty. 'damn the boys!' he said. he went to stare up and down the street. he came in again in a minute, kicked the door to with his foot spitefully, and went muttering back to the house door. "i came forward to follow him, and at the noise of my movement he stopped dead. i did so too, startled by his quickness of ear. he slammed the house door in my face. "i stood hesitating. suddenly i heard his quick footsteps returning, and the door reopened. he stood looking about the shop like one who was still not satisfied. then, murmuring to himself, he examined the back of the counter and peered behind some fixtures. then he stood doubtful. he had left the house door open and i slipped into the inner room. "it was a queer little room, poorly furnished and with a number of big masks in the corner. on the table was his belated breakfast, and it was a confoundedly exasperating thing for me, kemp, to have to sniff his coffee and stand watching while he came in and resumed his meal. and his table manners were irritating. three doors opened into the little room, one going upstairs and one down, but they were all shut. i could not get out of the room while he was there, i could scarcely move because of his alertness, and there was draught down my back. twice i strangled a sneeze just in time. "the spectacular quality of my sensations was curious and novel, but for all that i was heartily tired and angry long before he had done his eating. but at last he made an end and putting his beggarly crockery on the black tin tray upon which he had had his teapot, and gathering all the crumbs up on the mustard-stained cloth, he took the whole lot of things after him. his burden prevented his shutting the door behind him--as he would have done; i never saw such a man for shutting doors--and i followed him into a very dirty underground kitchen and scullery. i had the pleasure of seeing him begin to wash up, and then, finding no good in keeping down there, and the brick floor being cold to my feet, i returned upstairs and sat in his chair by the fire. it was burning low, and scarcely thinking, i put on a little coal. the noise of this brought him up at once, and he stood aglare. he peered about the room and was within an ace of touching me. even after that examination, he scarcely seemed satisfied. he stopped in the doorway and took a final inspection before he went down. "i waited in the little parlour for an age, and at last he came up and opened the upstairs door. i just managed to get by him. "on the staircase he stopped suddenly, so that i very nearly blundered into him. he stood looking back right into my face and listening. 'i could have sworn,' he said. his long hairy hand pulled at his lower lip. his eye went up and down the staircase. then he grunted and went on up again. "his hand was on the handle of a door, and then he stopped again with the same puzzled anger on his face. he was becoming aware of the faint sounds of my movements about him. the man must have had diabolically acute hearing. he suddenly flashed into rage. 'if there's any one in this house,' he cried with an oath, and left the threat unfinished. he put his hand in his pocket, failed to find what he wanted, and rushing past me went blundering noisily and pugnaciously downstairs. but i did not follow him. i sat on the head of the staircase until his return. "presently he came up again, still muttering. he opened the door of the room, and before i could enter, slammed it in my face. "i resolved to explore the house, and spent some time in doing so as noiselessly as possible. the house was very old and tumbledown, damp so that the paper in the attics was peeling from the walls, and rat-infested. some of the door handles were stiff and i was afraid to turn them. several rooms i did inspect were unfurnished, and others were littered with theatrical lumber, bought second-hand, i judged, from its appearance. in one room next to his i found a lot of old clothes. i began routing among these, and in my eagerness forgot again the evident sharpness of his ears. i heard a stealthy footstep and, looking up just in time, saw him peering in at the tumbled heap and holding an old-fashioned revolver in his hand. i stood perfectly still while he stared about open-mouthed and suspicious. 'it must have been her,' he said slowly. 'damn her!' "he shut the door quietly, and immediately i heard the key turn in the lock. then his footsteps retreated. i realised abruptly that i was locked in. for a minute a did not know what to do. i walked from door to window and back, and stood perplexed. a gust of anger came upon me. but i decided to inspect the clothes before i did anything further, and my first attempt brought down a pile from an upper shelf. this brought him back, more sinister than ever. that time he actually touched me, jumped back with amazement and stood astonished in the middle of the room. "presently he calmed a little. 'rats,' he said in an undertone, fingers on lip. he was evidently a little scared. i edged quietly out of the room, but a plank creaked. then the infernal little brute started going all over the house, revolver in hand and locking door after door and pocketing the keys. when i realised what he was up to i had a fit of rage--i could hardly control myself sufficiently to watch my opportunity. by this time i knew he was alone in the house, and so i made no more ado, but knocked him on the head." "knocked him on the head!" exclaimed kemp. "yes--stunned him--as he was going downstairs. hit him from behind with a stool that stood on the landing. he went downstairs like a bag of old boots." "but--! i say! the common conventions of humanity--" "are all very well for common people. but the point was, kemp, that i had to get out of that house in a disguise without his seeing me. i couldn't think of any other way of doing it. and then i gagged him with a louis quatorze vest and tied him up in a sheet." "tied him up in a sheet!" "made a sort of bag of it. it was rather a good idea to keep the idiot scared and quiet, and a devilish hard thing to get out of-head away from the string. my dear kemp, it's no good your sitting and glaring as though i was a murderer. it had to be done. he had his revolver. if once he saw me he would be able to describe me--" "but still," said kemp, "in england--to-day. and the man was in his own house, and you were--well, robbing." "robbing! confound it! you'll call me a thief next! surely, kemp, you're not fool enough to dance on the old strings. can't you see my position?" "and his too," said kemp. the invisible man stood up sharply. "what do you mean to say?" kemp's face grew a trifle hard. he was about to speak and checked himself. "i suppose, after all," he said with a sudden change of manner, "the thing had to be done. you were in a fix. but still--" "of course i was in a fix--an infernal fix. and he made me wild too--hunting me about the house, fooling about with his revolver, locking and unlocking doors. he was simply exasperating. you don't blame me, do you? you don't blame me?" "i never blame any one," said kemp. "it's quite out of fashion. what did you do next?" "i was hungry. downstairs i found a loaf and some rank cheese --more than sufficient to satisfy my hunger. i took some brandy and water, and then went up past my impromptu bag--he was lying quite still--to the room containing the old clothes. this looked out upon the street, two lace curtains brown with dirt guarding the window. i went and peered out through their interstices. outside the day was bright--by contrast with the brown shadows of the dismal house in which i found myself, dazzlingly bright. a brisk traffic was going by, fruit carts, a hansom, a four-wheeler with a pile of boxes, a fishmonger's cart. i turned with spots of colour swimming before my eyes to the shadowy fixtures behind me. my excitement was giving place to a clear apprehension of my position again. the room was full of a faint scent of benzoline, used, i suppose, in cleaning the garments. "i began a systematic search of the place. i should judge the hunchback had been alone in the house for some time. he was a curious person. everything that could possibly be of service to me i collected in the clothes storeroom, and then i made a deliberate selection. i found a handbag i thought a suitable possession, and some powder, rouge, and sticking-plaster. "i had thought of painting and powdering my face and all that there was to show of me, in order to render myself visible, but the disadvantage of this lay in the fact that i should require turpentine and other appliances and a considerable amount of time before i could vanish again. finally i chose a mask of the better type, slightly grotesque but not more so than many human beings, dark glasses, greyish whiskers, and a wig. i could find no underclothing, but that i could buy subsequently, and for the time i swathed myself in calico dominoes and some white cashmere scarfs. i could find no socks, but the hunchback's boots were rather a loose fit and sufficed. in a desk in the shop were three sovereigns and about thirty shillings' worth of silver, and in a locked cupboard i burst in the inner room were eight pounds in gold. i could go forth into the world again, equipped. "then came a curious hesitation. was my appearance really-credible? i tried myself with a little bedroom looking-glass, inspecting myself from every point of view to discover any forgotten chink, but it all seemed sound. i was grotesque to the theatrical pitch, a stage miser, but i was certainly not a physical impossibility. gathering confidence, i took my looking-glass down into the shop, pulled down the shop blinds, and surveyed myself from every point of view with the help of the cheval glass in the corner. "i spent some minutes screwing up my courage and then unlocked the shop door and marched out into the street, leaving the little man to get out of his sheet again when he liked. in five minutes a dozen turnings intervened between me and the costumier's shop. no one appeared to notice me very pointedly. my last difficulty seemed overcome." he stopped again. "and you troubled no more about the hunchback?" said kemp. "no," said the invisible man. "nor have i heard what became of him. i suppose he untied himself or kicked himself out. the knots were pretty tight." he became silent, and went to the window and stared out. "what happened when you went out into the strand?" "oh!--disillusionment again. i thought my troubles were over. practically i thought i had impunity to do whatever i chose, everything--save to give away my secret. so i thought. whatever i did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. i had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. no person could hold me. i could take my money where i found it. i decided to treat myself to a sumptuous feast, and then put up at a good hotel, and accumulate a new outfit of property. i felt amazingly confident--it's not particularly pleasant recalling that i was an ass. i went into a place and was already ordering a lunch, when it occurred to me that i could not eat unless i exposed my invisible face. i finished ordering the lunch, told the man i should be back in ten minutes, and went out exasperated. i don't know if you have ever been disappointed in your appetite." "not quite so badly," said kemp, "but i can imagine it." "i could have smashed the silly devils. at last, faint with the desire for tasteful food, i went into another place and demanded a private room. 'i am disfigured,' i said. 'badly.' they looked at me curiously, but of course it was not their affair--and so at last i got my lunch. it was not particularly well served, but it sufficed; and when i had had it, i sat over a cigar, trying to plan my line of action. and outside a snowstorm was beginning. "the more i thought it over, kemp, the more i realised what a helpless absurdity an invisible man was--in a cold and dirty climate and a crowded civilised city. before i made this mad experiment i had dreamt of a thousand advantages. that afternoon it seemed all disappointment. i went over the heads of the things a man reckons desirable. no doubt invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them when they are got. ambition--what is the good of pride of place when you cannot appear there? what is the good of the love of woman when her name must needs be delilah? i have no taste for politics, for the blackguardisms of fame, for philanthropy, for sport. what was i to do? and for this i had become a wrapped-up mystery, a swathed and bandaged caricature of a man!" he paused, and his attitude suggested a roving glance at the window. "but how did you get to iping?" said kemp, anxious to keep his guest busy talking. "i went there to work. i had one hope. it was a half idea! i have it still. it is a full blown idea now. a way of getting back! of restoring what i have done. when i choose. when i have done all i mean to do invisibly. and that is what i chiefly want to talk to you about now." "you went straight to iping?" "yes. i had simply to get my three volumes of memoranda and my cheque-book, my luggage and underclothing, order a quantity of chemicals to work out this idea of mine--i will show you the calculations as soon as i get my books--and then i started. jove! i remember the snowstorm now, and the accursed bother it was to keep the snow from damping my pasteboard nose." "at the end," said kemp, "the day before yesterday, when they found you out, you rather--to judge by the papers--" "i did. rather. did i kill that fool of a constable?" "no," said kemp. "he's expected to recover." "that's his luck, then. i clean lost my temper, the fools! why couldn't they leave me alone? and that grocer lout?" "there are no deaths expected," said kemp. "i don't know about that tramp of mine," said the invisible man, with an unpleasant laugh. "by heaven, kemp, you don't know what rage is! to have worked for years, to have planned and plotted, and then to get some fumbling purblind idiot messing across your course! every conceivable sort of silly creature that has ever been created has been sent to cross me. "if i have much more of it, i shall go wild--i shall start mowing 'em. "as it is, they've made things a thousand times more difficult." "no doubt it's exasperating," said kemp, dryly. ********** chapter 24 the plan that failed "but now," said kemp, with a side glance out of the window, "what are we to do?" he moved nearer his guest as he spoke in such a manner as to prevent the possibility of a glimpse of the three men who were advancing up the hill road--with an intolerable slowness, as it seemed to kemp. "what were you planning to do when you were heading for port burdock? had you any plan?" "i was going to clear out of the country. but i have altered that plan rather since seeing you. i thought it would be wise, now the weather is hot and invisibility possible, to make for the south. especially as my secret was known, and every one would be on the lookout for a masked and muffled man. you have a line of steamers from here to france. my idea was to get aboard one and run the risks of the passage. thence i could go by train into spain, or else get to algiers. it would not be difficult. there a man might always be invisible--and yet live. and do things. i was using that tramp as a money box and luggage carrier, until i decided how to get my books and things sent over to meet me." "that's clear." "and then the filthy brute must needs try and rob me! he has hidden my books, kemp. hidden my books! if i can lay my hands on him!" "best plan to get the books out of him first." "but where is he? do you know?" "he's in the town police station, locked up, by his own request, in the strongest cell in the place." "cur!" said the invisible man. "but that hangs up your plans a little." "we must get those books; those books are vital." "certainly," said kemp, a little nervously, wondering if he heard footsteps outside. "certainly we must get those books. but that won't be difficult, if he doesn't know they're for you." "no," said the invisible man, and thought. kemp tried to think of something to keep the talk going, but the invisible man resumed of his own accord. "blundering into your house, kemp," he said, "changes all my plans. for you are a man that can understand. in spite of all that has happened, in spite of this publicity, of the loss of my books, of what i have suffered, there still remain great possibilities, huge possibilities-"you have told no one i am here?" he asked abruptly. kemp hesitated. "that was implied," he said. "no one?" insisted griffin. "not a soul." "ah! now--" the invisible man stood up, and sticking his arms akimbo began to pace the study. "i made a mistake, kemp, a huge mistake, in carrying this thing through alone. i have wasted strength, time, opportunities. alone--it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! to rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end. "what i want, kemp, is a goal-keeper, a helper, and a hidingplace, an arrangement whereby i can sleep and eat and rest in peace, and unsuspected. i must have a confederate. with a confederate, with food and rest--a thousand things are possible. "hitherto i have gone on vague lines. we have to consider all that invisibility means, all that it does not mean. it means little advantage for eavesdropping and so forth--one makes sounds. it's of little help, a little help perhaps--in housebreaking and so forth. once you've caught me you could easily imprison me. but on the other hand i am hard to catch. this invisibility, in fact, is only good in two cases: it's useful in getting away, it's useful in approaching. it's particularly useful, therefore, in killing. i can walk round a man, whatever weapon he has, choose my point, strike as i like. dodge as i like. escape as i like." kemp's hand went to his moustache. was that a movement downstairs? "and it is killing we must do, kemp." "it is killing we must do," repeated kemp. "i'm listening to your plan, griffin, but i'm not agreeing, mind. why killing?" "not wanton killing but a judicious slaying. the point is they know there is an invisible man--as well as we know there is an invisible man. and that invisible man, kemp, must now establish a reign of terror. yes--no doubt it's startling. but i mean it. a reign of terror. he must take some town like your burdock and terrify and dominate it. he must issue his orders. he can do that in a thousand ways--scraps of paper thrust under doors would suffice. and all who disobey his orders he must kill, and kill all who would defend the disobedient." "humph!" said kemp, no longer listening to griffin but to the sound of his front door opening and closing. "it seems to me, griffin," he said, to cover his wandering attention, "that your confederate would be in a difficult position." "no one would know he was a confederate," said the invisible man, eagerly. and then suddenly, "hush! what's that downstairs?" "nothing," said kemp, and suddenly began to speak loud and fast. "i don't agree to this, griffin," he said. "understand me, i don't agree to this. why dream of playing a game against the race? how can you hope to gain happiness? don't be a lone wolf. publish your results; take the world--take the nation at least--into your confidence. think what you might do with a million helpers--" the invisible man interrupted kemp. "there are footsteps coming upstairs," he said in a low voice. "nonsense," said kemp. "let me see," said the invisible man, and advanced, arm extended, to the door. kemp hesitated for a second and then moved to intercept him. the invisible man started and stood still. "traitor!" cried the voice, and suddenly the dressing-gown opened, and sitting down the unseen began to disrobe. kemp made three swift steps to the door, and forthwith the invisible man--his legs had vanished--sprang to his feet with a shout. kemp flung the door open. as it opened, there came a sound of hurrying feet downstairs and voices. with a quick movement kemp thrust the invisible man back, sprang aside, and slammed the door. the key was outside and ready. in another moment griffin would have been alone in the belvedere study, a prisoner. save for one little thing. the key had been slipped in hastily that morning. as kemp slammed the door it fell noisily upon the carpet. kemp's face became white. he tried to grip the door handle with both hands. for a moment he stood lugging. then the door gave six inches. but he got it closed again. the second time it was jerked a foot wide, and the dressing-gown came wedging itself into the opening. his throat was gripped by invisible fingers, and he left his hold on the handle to defend himself. he was forced back, tripped and pitched heavily into the corner of the landing. the empty dressinggown was flung on the top of him. halfway up the staircase was colonel adye, the recipient of kemp's letter, the chief of the burdock police. he was staring aghast at the sudden appearance of kemp, followed by the extraordinary sight of clothing tossing empty in the air. he saw kemp felled, and struggling to his feet. he saw him rush forward, and go down again, felled like an ox. then suddenly he was struck violently. by nothing! a vast weight, it seemed, leapt upon him, and he was hurled headlong down the staircase, with a grip at his throat and a knee in his groin. an invisible foot trod on his back, a ghostly patter passed downstairs, he heard the two police officers in the hall shout and run, and the front door of the house slammed violently. he rolled over and sat up staring. he saw, staggering down the staircase, kemp, dusty and dishevelled, one side of his face white from a blow, his lip bleeding, holding a pink dressing-gown and some underclothing in his arms. "my god!" cried kemp, "the game's up! he's gone!" ********** chapter 25 the hunting of the invisible man for a space kemp was too inarticulate to make adye understand the swift things that had just happened. the two men stood on the landing, kemp speaking swiftly, the grotesque swathings of griffin still on his arm. but presently adye began to grasp something of the situation. "he's mad," said kemp; "inhuman. he is pure selfishness. he thinks of nothing but his own advantage, his own safety. i have listened to such a story this morning of brutal self-seeking! he has wounded men. he will kill them unless we can prevent him. he will create a panic. nothing can stop him. he is going out now--furious!" "he must be caught," said adye. "that is certain." "but how?" cried kemp, and suddenly became full of ideas. "you must begin at once. you must set every available man to work. you must prevent his leaving this district. once he gets away he may go through the countryside as he wills, killing and maiming. he dreams of a reign of terror! a reign of terror, i tell you. you must set a watch on trains and roads and shipping. the garrison must help. you must wire for help. the only thing that may keep him here is the thought of recovering some books of notes he counts of value. i will tell you of that! there is a man in your police station--marvel." "i know," said adye, "i know. those books--yes." "and you must prevent him from eating or sleeping; day and night the country must be astir for him. food must be locked up and secured, all food, so that he will have to break his way to it. the houses everywhere must be barred against him. heaven send us cold nights and rain! the whole countryside must begin hunting and keep hunting. i tell you, adye, he is a danger, a disaster; unless he is pinned and secured, it is frightful to think of the things that may happen." "what else can we do?" said adye. "i must go down at once and begin organising. but why not come? yes--you come too! come, and we must hold a sort of council of war,--get hopps to help--and the railway managers. by jove! it's urgent. come along--tell me as we go. what else is there we can do? put that stuff down." in another moment adye was leading the way downstairs. they found the front door open and the policemen standing outside staring at empty air. "he's got away, sir," said one. "we must go to the central station at once," said adye. "one of you go on down and get a cab to come up and meet us--quickly. and now, kemp, what else?" "dogs," said kemp. "get dogs. they don't see him, but they wind him. get dogs." "good," said adye. "it's not generally known, but the prison officials over at halstead know a man with bloodhounds. dogs. what else?" "bear in mind," said kemp, "his food shows. after eating, his food shows until it is assimilated. so that he has to hide after eating. you must keep on beating--every thicket, every quiet corner. and put all weapons, all implements that might be weapons, away. he can't carry such things for long. and what he can snatch up and strike men with must be hidden away." "good again," said adye. "we shall have him yet!" "and on the roads," said kemp, and hesitated. "yes?" said adye. "powdered glass," said kemp. "it's cruel, i know. but think of what he may do!" adye drew the air in between his teeth sharply. "it's unsportsmanlike. i don't know. but i'll have powdered glass got ready. if he goes too far--" "the man's become inhuman, i tell you," said kemp. "i am as sure he will establish a reign of terror--so soon as he has got over the emotions of this escape--as i am sure i am talking to you. our only chance is to be ahead. he has cut himself off from his kind. his blood be upon his own head." ********** chapter 26 the wicksteed murder the invisible man seems to have rushed out of kemp's house in a state of blind fury. a little child playing near kemp's gateway was violently caught up and thrown aside, so that its ankle was broken, and thereafter for some hours the invisible man passed out of human perceptions. no one knows where he went nor what he did. but one can imagine him hurrying through the hot june forenoon, up the hill and on to the open downland behind port burdock, raging and despairing at his intolerable fate, and sheltering at last, heated and weary, amid the thickets of hintondean, to piece together again his shattered schemes against his species. that seems the most probable refuge for him, for there it was he re-asserted himself in a grimly tragical manner about two in the afternoon. one wonders what his state of mind may have been during that time, and what plans he devised. no doubt he was almost ecstatically exasperated by kemp's treachery, and though we may be able to understand the motives that led to that deceit, we may still imagine and even sympathise a little with the fury the attempted surprise must have occasioned. perhaps something of the stunned astonishment of his oxford street experiences may have returned to him, for evidently he had counted on kemp's co-operation in his brutal dream of a terrorised world. at any rate he vanished from human ken about midday, and no living witness can tell what he did until about half-past two. it was a fortunate thing, perhaps, for humanity, but for him it was a fatal inaction. during that time a growing multitude of men scattered over the countryside were busy. in the morning he had still been simply a legend, a terror; in the afternoon, by virtue chiefly of kemp's drily worded proclamation, he was presented as a tangible antagonist, to be wounded, captured, or overcome, and the countryside began organising itself with inconceivable rapidity. by two o'clock even he might still have removed himself out of the district by getting aboard a train, but after two that became impossible. every passenger train along the lines on a great parallelogram between southampton, manchester, brighton, and horsham, travelled with locked doors, and the goods traffic was almost entirely suspended. and in a great circle of twenty miles round port burdock, men armed with guns and bludgeons were presently setting out in groups of three and four, with dogs, to beat the roads and fields. mounted policemen rode along the country lanes, stopping at every cottage and warning the people to lock up their houses, and keep indoors unless they were armed, and all the elementary schools had broken up by three o'clock, and the children, scared and keeping together in groups, were hurrying home. kemp's proclamation--signed indeed by adye--was posted over almost the whole district by four or five o'clock in the afternoon. it gave briefly but clearly all the conditions of the struggle, the necessity of keeping the invisible man from food and sleep, the necessity for incessant watchfulness and for a prompt attention to any evidence of his movements. and so swift and decided was the action of the authorities, so prompt and universal was the belief in this strange being, that before nightfall an area of several hundred square miles was in a stringent state of siege. and before nightfall, too, a thrill of horror went through the whole watching nervous countryside. going from whispering mouth to mouth, swift and certain over the length and breadth of the county, passed the story of the murder of mr. wicksteed. if our supposition that the invisible man's refuge was the hintondean thickets, then we must suppose that in the early afternoon he sallied out again bent upon some project that involved the use of a weapon. we cannot know what the project was, but the evidence that he had the iron rod in hand before he met wicksteed is to me at least overwhelming. we can know nothing of the details of the encounter. it occurred on the edge of a gravel pit, not two hundred yards from lord burdock's lodge gate. everything points to a desperate struggle,--the trampled ground, the numerous wounds mr. wicksteed received, his splintered walking-stick; but why the attack was made--save in a murderous frenzy--it is impossible to imagine. indeed the theory of madness is almost unavoidable. mr. wicksteed was a man of forty-five or forty-six, steward to lord burdock, of inoffensive habits and appearance, the very last person in the world to provoke such a terrible antagonist. against him it would seem the invisible man used an iron rod dragged from a broken piece of fence. he stopped this quiet man, going quietly home to his midday meal, attacked him, beat down his feeble defences, broke his arm, felled him, and smashed his head to a jelly. he must have dragged this rod out of the fencing before he met his victim; he must have been carrying it ready in his hand. only two details beyond what has already been stated seem to bear on the matter. one is the circumstance that the gravel pit was not in mr. wicksteed's direct path home, but nearly a couple of hundred yards out of his way. the other is the assertion of a little girl to the effect that, going to her afternoon school, she saw the murdered man "trotting" in a peculiar manner across a field towards the gravel pit. her pantomime of his action suggests a man pursuing something on the ground before him and striking at it ever and again with his walking-stick. she was the last person to see him alive. he passed out of her sight to his death, the struggle being hidden from her only by a clump of beech trees and a slight depression in the ground. now this, to the present writer's mind at least, lifts the murder out of the realm of the absolutely wanton. we may imagine that griffin had taken the rod as a weapon indeed, but without any deliberate intention of using it in murder. wicksteed may then have come by and noticed this rod inexplicably moving through the air. without any thought of the invisible man--for port burdock is ten miles away--he may have pursued it. it is quite conceivable that he may not even have heard of the invisible man. one can then imagine the invisible man making off--quietly in order to avoid discovering his presence in the neighbourhood, and wicksteed, excited and curious, pursuing this unaccountably locomotive object--finally striking at it. no doubt the invisible man could easily have distanced his middle-aged pursuer under ordinary circumstances, but the position in which wicksteed's body was found suggests that he had the ill luck to drive his quarry into a corner between a drift of stinging nettles and the gravel pit. to those who appreciate the extraordinary irascibility of the invisible man, the rest of the encounter will be easy to imagine. but this is pure hypothesis. the only undeniable facts--for stories of children are often unreliable--are the discovery of wicksteed's body, done to death, and of the blood-stained iron rod flung among the nettles. the abandonment of the rod by griffin, suggests that in the emotional excitement of the affair, the purpose for which he took it--if he had a purpose--was abandoned. he was certainly an intensely egotistical and unfeeling man, but the sight of his victim, his first victim, bloody and pitiful at his feet, may have released some long pent fountain of remorse to flood for a time whatever scheme of action he had contrived. after the murder of mr. wicksteed, he would seem to have struck across the country towards the downland. there is a story of a voice heard about sunset by a couple of men in a field near fern bottom. it was wailing and laughing, sobbing and groaning, and ever and again it shouted. it must have been queer hearing. it drove up across the middle of a clover field and died away towards the hills. that afternoon the invisible man must have learnt something of the rapid use kemp had made of his confidences. he must have found houses locked and secured; he may have loitered about railway stations and prowled about inns, and no doubt he read the proclamations and realised something of the nature of the campaign against him. and as the evening advanced, the fields became dotted here and there with groups of three or four men, and noisy with the yelping of dogs. these men-hunters had particular instructions as to the way they should support one another in the case of an encounter. he avoided them all. we may understand something of his exasperation, and it could have been none the less because he himself had supplied the information that was being used so remorselessly against him. for that day at least he lost heart; for nearly twenty-four hours, save when he turned on wicksteed, he was a hunted man. in the night, he must have eaten and slept; for in the morning he was himself again, active, powerful, angry, and malignant, prepared for his last great struggle against the world. ********** chapter 27 the siege of kemp's house kemp read a strange missive, written in pencil on a greasy sheet of paper. "you have been amazingly energetic and clever," this letter ran, "though what you stand to gain by it i cannot imagine. you are against me. for a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to rob me of a night's rest. but i have had food in spite of you, i have slept in spite of you, and the game is only beginning. the game is only beginning. there is nothing for it, but to start the terror. this announces the first day of the terror. port burdock is no longer under the queen tell your colonel of police, and the rest of them; it is under me--the terror! this is day one of year one of the new epoch --the epoch of the invisible man. i am invisible man the first. to begin with the rule will be easy. the first day there will be one execution for the sake of example--a man named kemp. death starts for him to-day. he may lock himself away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armour if he likes; death, the unseen death, is coming. let him take precautions; it will impress my people. death starts from the pillar-box by midday. the letter will fall in as the postman comes along, then off! the game begins. death starts. help him not, my people, lest death fall upon you also. to-day kemp is to die." kemp read this letter twice. "it's no hoax," he said. "that's his voice! and he means it." he turned the folded sheet over and saw on the addressed side of it the postmark hintondean, and the prosaic detail, "2d. to pay." he got up, leaving his lunch unfinished--the letter had come by the one o'clock post--and went into his study. he rang for his housekeeper, and told her to go round the house at once, examine all the fastenings of the windows, and close all the shutters. he closed the shutters of his study himself. from a locked drawer in his bedroom he took a little revolver, examined it carefully, and put it into the pocket of his lounge jacket. he wrote a number of brief notes, one to colonel adye, gave them to his servant to take, with explicit instructions as to her way of leaving the house. "there is no danger," he said, and added a mental reservation, "to you." he remained meditative for a space after doing this, and then returned to his cooling lunch. he ate with gaps of thought. finally he struck the table sharply. "we will have him!" he said; "and i am the bait. he will come too far." he went up to the belvedere, carefully shutting every door after him. "it's a game," he said, "an odd game--but the chances are all for me, mr. griffin, in spite of your invisibility. griffin contra mundum--with a vengeance!" he stood at the window staring at the hot hillside. "he must get food every day--and i don't envy him. did he really sleep last night? out in the open somewhere--secure from collisions. i wish we could get some good cold wet weather instead of the heat. "he may be watching me now." he went close to the window. something rapped smartly against the brickwork over the frame, and made him start violently. "i'm getting nervous," said kemp. but it was five minutes before he went to the window again. "it must have been a sparrow," he said. presently he heard the front-door bell ringing, and hurried downstairs. he unbolted and unlocked the door, examined the chain, put it up, and opened cautiously without showing himself. a familiar voice hailed him. it was adye. "your servant's been assaulted, kemp," he said round the door. "what!" exclaimed kemp. "had that note of yours taken away from her. he's close about here. let me in." kemp released the chain, and adye entered through as narrow an opening as possible. he stood in the hall, looking with infinite relief at kemp refastening the door. "note was snatched out of her hand. scared her horribly. she's down at the station. hysterics. he's close here. what was it about?" kemp swore. "what a fool i was," said kemp. "i might have known. it's not an hour's walk from hintondean. already!" "what's up?" said adye. "look here!" said kemp, and led the way into his study. he handed adye the invisible man's letter. adye read it and whistled softly. "and you--?" said adye. "proposed a trap--like a fool," said kemp, "and sent my proposal out by a maid servant. to him." adye followed kemp's profanity. "he'll clear out," said adye. "not he," said kemp. a resounding smash of glass came from upstairs. adye had a silvery glimpse of a little revolver half out of kemp's pocket. "it's a window, upstairs!" said kemp, and led the way up. there came a second smash while they were still on the staircase. when they reached the study they found two of the three windows smashed, half the room littered with splintered glass, and one big flint lying on the writing table. the two men stopped in the doorway, contemplating the wreckage. kemp swore again, and as he did so the third window went with a snap like a pistol, hung starred for a moment, and collapsed in jagged, shivering triangles into the room. "what's this for?" said adye. "it's a beginning," said kemp. "there's no way of climbing up here?" "not for a cat," said kemp. "no shutters?" "not here. all the downstairs rooms--hullo!" smash, and then whack of boards hit hard came from downstairs. "confound him! said kemp. "that must be--yes--it's one of the bedrooms. he's going to do all the house. but he's a fool. the shutters are up, and the glass will fall outside. he'll cut his feet." another window proclaimed its destruction. the two men stood on the landing perplexed. "i have it! said adye. "let me have a stick or something, and i'll go down to the station and get the bloodhounds put on. that ought to settle him! they're hard by--not ten minutes--" another window went the way of its fellows. "you haven't a revolver?" asked adye. kemp's hand went to his pocket. then he hesitated. "i haven't one--at least to spare." "i'll bring it back," said adye, "you'll be safe here." kemp handed him the weapon. "now for the door," said adye. as they stood hesitating in the hall, they heard one of the first-floor bedroom windows crack and clash. kemp went to the door and began to slip the bolts as silently as possible. his face was a little paler than usual. "you must step straight out," said kemp. in another moment adye was on the doorstep and the bolts were dropping back into the staples. he hesitated for a moment, feeling more comfortable with his back against the door. then he marched, upright and square, down the steps. he crossed the lawn and approached the gate. a little breeze seemed to ripple over the grass. something moved near him. "stop a bit," said a voice, and adye stopped dead and his hand tightened on the revolver. "well?" said adye, white and grim, and every nerve tense. "oblige me by going back to the house," said the voice, as tense and grim as adye's. "sorry," said adye a little hoarsely, and moistened his lips with his tongue. the voice was on his left front, he thought. suppose he were to take his luck with a shot? "what are you going for?" said the voice, and there was a quick movement of the two, and a flash of sunlight from the open lip of adye's pocket. adye desisted and thought. "where i go," he said slowly, "is my own business." the words were still on his lips, when an arm came round his neck, his back felt a knee, and he was sprawling backward. he drew clumsily and fired absurdly, and in another moment he was struck in the mouth and the revolver wrested from his grip. he made a vain clutch at a slippery limb, tried to struggle up and fell back. "damn!" said adye. the voice laughed. "i'd kill you now if it wasn't the waste of a bullet," it said. he saw the revolver in mid-air, six feet off, covering him. "well?" said adye, sitting up. "get up," said the voice. adye stood up. "attention" said the voice, and then fiercely, "don't try any games. remember i can see your face if you can't see mine. you've got to go back to the house." "he won't let me in," said adye. "that's a pity," said the invisible man. "i've got no quarrel with you." adye moistened his lips again. he glanced away from the barrel of the revolver and saw the sea far off very blue and dark under the midday sun, the smooth green down, the white cliff of the head, and the multitudinous town, and suddenly he knew that life was very sweet. his eyes came back to this little metal thing hanging between heaven and earth, six yards away. "what am i to do?" he said sullenly. "what am i to do?" asked the invisible man. "you will get help. the only thing is for you to go back." "i will try. if he lets me in will you promise not to rush the door?" "i've got no quarrel with you," said the voice. kemp had hurried upstairs after letting adye out, and now crouching among the broken glass and peering cautiously over the edge of the study window-sill, he saw adye stand parleying with the unseen. "why doesn't he fire?" whispered kemp to himself. then the revolver moved a little and the glint of the sunlight flashed in kemp's eyes. he shaded his eyes and tried to see the source of the blinding beam. "surely!" he said. "adye has given up the revolver." "promise not to rush the door," adye was saying. "don't push a winning game too far. give a man a chance." "you go back to the house. i tell you flatly i will not promise anything." adye's decision seemed suddenly made. he turned towards the house, walking slowly with his hands behind him. kemp watched him-puzzled. the revolver vanished, flashed again into sight, vanished again, and became evident on a closer scrutiny as a little dark object following adye. then things happened very quickly. adye leapt backwards, swung round, clutched at this little object, missed it, threw up his hands and fell forward on his face, leaving a little puff of blue in the air. kemp did not hear the sound of the shot. adye writhed, raised himself on one arm, fell forward, and lay still. for a space kemp remained staring at the quiet carelessness of adye's attitude. the afternoon was very hot and still, nothing seemed stirring in all the world save a couple of yellow butterflies chasing each other through the shrubbery between the house and the road gate. adye lay on the lawn near the gate. the blinds of all the villas down the hill-road were drawn, but in one little green summer-house was a white figure, apparently an old man asleep. kemp scrutinised the surroundings of the house for a glimpse of the revolver, but it had vanished. his eyes came back to adye. the game was opening well. then came a ringing and knocking at the front door, that grew at last tumultuous, but pursuant to kemp's instructions the servants had locked themselves into their rooms. this was followed by a silence. kemp sat listening and then began peering cautiously out of the three windows, one after another. he went to the staircase head and stood listening uneasily. he armed himself with his bedroom poker, and went to examine the interior fastenings of the ground-floor windows again. everything was safe and quiet. he returned to the belvedere. adye lay motionless over the edge of the gravel just as he had fallen. coming along the road by the villas were the housemaid and two policemen. everything was deadly still. the three people seemed very slow in approaching. he wondered what his antagonist was doing. he started. there was a smash from below. he hesitated and went downstairs again. suddenly the house resounded with heavy blows and the splintering of wood. he heard a smash and the destructive clang of the iron fastenings of the shutters. he turned the key and opened the kitchen door. as he did so, the shutters, split and splintering, came flying inward. he stood aghast. the window frame, save for one cross bar, was still intact, but only little teeth of glass remained in the frame. the shutters had been driven in with an axe, and now the axe was descending in sweeping blows upon the window frame and the iron bars defending it. then suddenly it leapt aside and vanished. he saw the revolver lying on the path outside, and then the little weapon sprang into the air. he dodged back. the revolver cracked just too late, and a splinter from the edge of the closing door flashed over his head. he slammed and locked the door, and as he stood outside he heard griffin shouting and laughing. then the blows of the axe, with their splitting and smashing accompaniments, were resumed. kemp stood in the passage trying to think. in a moment the invisible man would be in the kitchen. this door would not keep him a moment, and then-a ringing came at the front door again. it would be the policemen. he ran into the hall, put up the chain, and drew the bolts. he made the girl speak before he dropped the chain, and the three people blundered into the house in a heap, and kemp slammed the door again. "the invisible man!" said kemp. "he has a revolver, with two shots--left. he's killed adye. shot him anyhow. didn't you see him on the lawn? he's lying there." "who?" said one of the policemen. "adye," said kemp. "we came round the back way," said the girl. "what's that smashing?" asked one of the policemen. "he's in the kitchen--or will be. he has found an axe--" suddenly the house was full of the invisible man's resounding blows on the kitchen door. the girl stared towards the kitchen, shuddered, and retreated into the dining-room. kemp tried to explain in broken sentences. they heard the kitchen door give. "this way," cried kemp, starting into activity, and bundled the policemen into the dining-room doorway. "poker," said kemp, and rushed to the fender. he handed a poker to each policeman. he suddenly flung himself backward. "whup!" said one policeman, ducked, and caught the axe on his poker. the pistol snapped its penultimate shot and ripped a valuable sidney cooper. the second policeman brought his poker down on the little weapon, as one might knock down a wasp, and sent it rattling to the floor. at the first clash the girl screamed, stood screaming for a moment by the fireplace, and then ran to open the shutters--possibly with an idea of escaping by the shattered window. the axe receded into the passage, and fell to a position about two feet from the ground. they could hear the invisible man breathing. "stand away, you two," he said. "i want that man kemp." "we want you," said the first policeman, making a quick step forward and wiping with his poker at the voice. the invisible man must have started back. he blundered into the umbrella stand. then, as the policeman staggered with the swing of the blow he had aimed, the invisible man countered with the axe, the helmet crumpled like paper, and the blow sent the man spinning to the floor at the head of the kitchen stairs. but the second policeman, aiming behind the axe with his poker, hit something soft that snapped. there was a sharp exclamation of pain and the axe fell to the ground. the policeman wiped again at vacancy and hit nothing; he put his foot on the axe, and struck again. then he stood, poker clubbed, listening intent for the slightest movement. he heard the dining-room window open, and a quick rush of feet within. his companion rolled over and sat up with the blood running down between his eye and ear. "where is he?" asked the man on the floor. "don't know. i've hit him. he's standing somewhere in the hall. unless he's slipped past you. doctor kemp--sir." pause. "doctor kemp," cried the policeman again. the second policeman struggled to his feet. he stood up. suddenly the faint pad of bare feet on the kitchen stairs could be heard. "yap!" cried the first policeman and incontinently flung his poker. it smashed a little gas bracket. he made as if he would pursue the invisible man downstairs. then he thought better of it and stepped into the dining-room. "doctor kemp," he began, and stopped short-"doctor kemp's in here," he said, as his companion looked over his shoulder. the dining-room window was wide open, and neither housemaid nor kemp was to be seen. the second policeman's opinion of kemp was terse and vivid. ********** chapter 28 the hunter hunted mr. heelas, mr. kemp's nearest neighbour among the villa holders, was asleep in his summer house when the siege of kemp's house began. mr. heelas was one of the sturdy minority who refused to believe "in all this nonsense" about an invisible man. his wife, however, as he was to be reminded subsequently, did. he insisted upon walking about his garden just as if nothing was the matter, and he went to sleep in the afternoon in accordance with the custom of years. he slept through the smashing of the windows, and then woke up suddenly with a curious persuasion of something wrong. he looked across at kemp's house, rubbed his eyes and looked again. then he put his feet to the ground, and sat listening. he said he was damned, and still the strange thing was visible. the house looked as though it had been deserted for weeks--after a violent riot. every window was broken, and every window, save those of the belvedere study, was blinded by the internal shutters. "i could have sworn it was all right"--he looked at his watch --"twenty minutes ago." he became aware of a measured concussion and the clash of glass, far away in the distance. and then, as he sat open-mouthed, came a still more wonderful thing. the shutters of the drawing-room window were flung open violently, and the housemaid in her outdoor hat and garments, appeared struggling in a frantic manner to throw up the sash. suddenly a man appeared beside her, helping her--dr. kemp! in another moment the window was open, and the housemaid was struggling out; she pitched forward and vanished among the shrubs. mr. heelas stood up, exclaiming vaguely and vehemently at all these wonderful things. he saw kemp stand on the sill, spring from the window, and reappear almost instantaneously running along a path in the shrubbery and stooping as he ran, like a man who evades observation. he vanished behind a laburnum, and appeared again clambering a fence that abutted on the open down. in a second he had tumbled over and was running at a tremendous pace down the slope towards mr. heelas. "lord!" cried mr. heelas, struck with an idea; "it's that invisible man brute! it's right, after all!" with mr. heelas to think things like that was to act, and his cook watching him from the top window was amazed to see him come pelting towards the house at a good nine miles an hour. "thought he wasn't afraid," said the cook. "mary, just come here!" there was a slamming of doors, a ringing of bells, and the voice of mr. heelas bellowing like a bull. "shut the doors, shut the windows, shut everything! the invisible man is coming!" instantly the house was full of screams and directions, and scurrying feet. he ran to shut the french windows himself that opened on the veranda; as he did so kemp's head and shoulders and knee appeared over the edge of the garden fence. in another moment kemp had ploughed through the asparagus, and was running across the tennis lawn to the house. "you can't come in," said mr. heelas, shutting the bolts. "i'm very sorry if he's after you, but you can't come in!" kemp appeared with a face of terror close to the glass, rapping and then shaking frantically at the french window. then, seeing his efforts were useless, he ran along the veranda, vaulted the end, and went to hammer at the side door. then he ran round by the side gate to the front of the house, and so into the hill-road. and mr. heelas staring from his window--a face of horror--had scarcely witnessed kemp vanish, ere the asparagus was being trampled this way and that by feet unseen. at that mr. heelas fled precipitately upstairs, and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview. but as he passed the staircase window, he heard the side gate slam. emerging into the hill-road, kemp naturally took the downward direction, and so it was he came to run in his own person the very race he had watched with such a critical eye from the belvedere study only four days ago. he ran it well for a man out of training; and though his face was white and wet, his wits were cool to the last. he ran with wide strides, and wherever a patch of rough ground intervened, wherever there came a patch of raw flints, or a bit of broken glass shone dazzling, he crossed it and left the bare invisible feet that followed to take what line they would. for the first time in his life kemp discovered that the hillroad was indescribably vast and desolate, and that the beginnings of the town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. never had there been a slower or more painful method of progression than running. all the gaunt villas, sleeping in the afternoon sun, looked locked and barred; no doubt they were locked and barred--by his own orders. but at any rate they might have kept a lookout for an eventuality like this! the town was rising up now, the sea had dropped out of sight behind it, and people down below were stirring. a tram was just arriving at the hill foot. beyond that was the police station. was that footsteps he heard behind him? spurt. the people below were staring at him, one or two were running, and his breath was beginning to saw in his throat. the tram was quite near now, and the jolly cricketers was noisily barring its doors. beyond the tram were posts and heaps of gravel--the drainage works. he had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram and slamming the doors, and then he resolved to go to the police station. in another moment he had passed the door of the jolly cricketers, and was in the blistering fag end of the street, with human beings about him. the tram driver and his helper--arrested by the sight of his furious haste --stood staring with the tram horses unhitched. further on the astonished features of navvies appeared above the mounds of gravel. his pace broke a little, and then he heard the swift pad of his pursuer, and leapt forward again. "the invisible man!" he cried to the navvies, with a vague indicative gesture, and by an inspiration leapt the excavation and placed a burly group between him and the chase. then abandoning the idea of the police station he turned into a little side street, rushed by a greengrocer's cart, hesitated for the tenth of a second at the door of a sweetstuff shop, and then made for the mouth of an alley that ran back into the main hill street again. two or three little children were playing here, and shrieked and scattered running at his apparition, and forthwith doors and windows opened and excited mothers revealed their hearts. out he shot into hill street again, three hundred yards from the tramline end, and immediately he became aware of a tumultuous vociferation and running people. he glanced up the street towards the hill. hardly a dozen yards off ran a huge navvy, cursing in fragments and slashing viciously with a spade, and hard behind him came the tram conductor with his fists clenched. up the street others followed these two, striking and shouting. down towards the town, men and women were running, and he noticed clearly one man coming out of a shop-door with a stick in his hand. "spread out! spread out!" cried some one. kemp suddenly grasped the altered condition of the chase. he stopped and looked round, panting. "he's close here!" he cried. "form a line across--" "aha!" shouted a voice. he was hit hard under the ear, and went reeling, trying to face round towards his unseen antagonist. he just managed to keep his feet, and he struck a vain counter in the air. then he was hit again under the jaw, and sprawled headlong on the ground. in another moment a knee compressed his diaphragm, and a couple of eager hands gripped his throat, but the grip of one was weaker than the other; he grasped the wrists, heard a cry of pain from his assailant, and then the spade of the navvy came whirling through the air above him, and struck something with a dull thud. he felt a drop of moisture on his face. the grip at his throat suddenly relaxed, and with a convulsive effort kemp loosed himself, grasped a limp shoulder, and rolled uppermost. he gripped the unseen elbows near the ground. "i've got him!" screamed kemp. "help! help! hold! he's down! hold his feet!" in another second there was a simultaneous rush upon the struggle, and a stranger coming into the road suddenly might have thought an exceptionally savage game of rugby football was in progress. and there was no shouting after kemp's cry--only a sound of blows and feet and a heavy breathing. then came a mighty effort, and the invisible man threw off a couple of his antagonists and rose to his knees. kemp clung to him in front like a hound to a stag, and a dozen hands gripped, clutched, and tore at the unseen. the tram conductor suddenly got the neck and shoulders and lugged him back. down went the heap of struggling men again and rolled over. there was, i am afraid, some savage kicking. then suddenly a wild scream of "mercy! mercy!" that died down swiftly to a sound like choking. "get back, you fools!" cried the muffled voice of kemp, and there was a vigorous shoving back of stalwart forms. "he's hurt, i tell you. stand back!" there was a brief struggle to clear a space, and then the circle of eager eyes saw the doctor kneeling, as it seemed, fifteen inches in the air, and holding invisible arms to the ground. behind him a constable gripped invisible ankles. "don't you leave go of en," cried the big navvy, holding a bloodstained spade; "he's shamming." "he's not shamming," said the doctor, cautiously raising his knee; "and i'll hold him." his face was bruised and already going red; he spoke thickly because of a bleeding lip. he released one hand and seemed to be feeling at the face. "the mouth's all wet," he said. and then, "good god!" he stood up abruptly and then knelt down on the ground by the side of the thing unseen. there was a pushing and shuffling, a sound of heavy feet as fresh people turned up to increase the pressure of the crowd. people now were coming out of the houses. the doors of the jolly cricketers were suddenly wide open. very little was said. kempt felt about, his hand seeming to pass through empty air. "he's not breathing," he said, and then, "i can't feel his heart. his side--ugh!" suddenly an old woman, peering under the arm of the big navvy, screamed sharply. "looky there!" she said, and thrust out a wrinkled finger. and looking where she pointed, every one saw, faint and transparent as though it was made of glass, so that veins and arteries and bones and nerves could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a hand limp and prone. it grew clouded and opaque even as they stared. "hullo!" cried the constable. "here's his feet a-showing!" and so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet and creeping along his limbs to the vital centres of his body, that strange change continued. it was like the slow spreading of a poison. first came the little white nerves, a hazy grey sketch of a limb, then the glassy bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first a faint fogginess and then growing rapidly dense and opaque. presently they could see his crushed chest and his shoulders, and the dim outline of his drawn and battered features. when at last the crowd made way for kemp to stand erect, there lay, naked and pitiful on the ground, the bruised and broken body of a young man about thirty. his hair and beard were white--not grey with age but white with the whiteness of albinism, and his eyes were like garnets. his hands were clenched, his eyes wide open, and his expression was one of anger and dismay. "cover his face!" said a man. "for gawd's sake, cover that face!" and three little children, pushing forward through the crowd, were suddenly twisted round and sent packing off again. some one brought a sheet from the jolly cricketers; and having covered him, they carried him into that house. ************ the epilogue so ends the story of the strange and evil experiment of the invisible man. and if you would learn more of him you must go to a little inn near port stowe and talk to the landlord. the sign of the inn is an empty board save for a hat and boots, and the name is the title of this story. the landlord is a short and corpulent little man with a nose of cylindrical protrusion, wiry hair, and a sporadic rosiness of visage. drink generously, and he will tell you generously of all the things that happened to him after that time, and of how the lawyers tried to do him out of the treasure found upon him. "when they found they couldn't prove who's money was which, i'm blessed," he says, "if they didn't try to make me out a blooming treasure trove! do i look like a treasure trove? and then a gentleman gave me a guinea a night to tell the story at the empire music 'all--just tell 'em in my own words--barring one." and if you want to cut off the flow of his reminiscences abruptly, you can always do so by asking if there weren't three manuscript books in the story. he admits there were and proceeds to explain, with asseverations that everybody thinks he has 'em! but bless you! he hasn't. "the invisible man it was took 'em off to hide 'em when i cut and ran for port stowe. it's that mr. kemp put people on with the idea of my having 'em." and then he subsides into a pensive state, watches you furtively, bustles nervously with glasses, and presently leaves the bar. he is a bachelor man--his tastes were ever bachelor, and there are no women folk in the house. outwardly he buttons--it is expected of him--but in his more vital privacies, in the matter of braces for example, he still turns to string. he conducts his house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum. his movements are slow, and he is a great thinker. but he has a reputation for wisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the village, and his knowledge of the roads of the south of england would beat cobbett. and on sunday mornings, every sunday morning all the year round, while he is closed to the outer world, and every night after ten, he goes into his bar parlour bearing a glass of gin faintly tinged with water; and having placed this down, he locks the door and examines the blinds, and even looks under the table. and then, being satisfied of his solitude, he unlocks the cupboard and a box in the cupboard and a drawer in that box, and produces three volumes bound in brown leather, and places them solemnly in the middle of the table. the covers are weather-worn and tinged with an algal green--for once they sojourned in a ditch and some of the pages have been washed blank by dirty water. the landlord sits down in an armchair, fills a long clay pipe slowly, gloating over the books the while. then he pulls one towards him and opens it, and begins to study it--turning over the leaves backwards and forwards. his brows are knit and his lips move painfully. "hex, little two up in the air, cross and a fiddle-de-dee. lord! what a one he was for intellect!" presently he relaxes and leans back, and blinks through his smoke across the room at things invisible to other eyes. "full of secrets," he says. "wonderful secrets!" "once i get the haul of them--lord! "i wouldn't do what he did; i'd just--well!" he pulls at his pipe. so he lapses into a dream, the undying wonderful dream of his life. and though kemp has fished unceasingly, and adye has questioned closely, no human being save the landlord knows those books are there, with the subtle secret of invisibility and a dozen other strange secrets written therein. and none other will know of them until he dies. **the end** . struggling upward by horatio alger jr. digitized by cardinalis etext press [c.e.k.] posted to wiretap in august 1993, as strugup.txt. italics are represented as _italics_. this text is in the public domain. ---from the book "ragged dick and struggling upward", published by penguin books, 1985. ragged dick was first published in the united states by a.k. loring, 1868. the introduction written by carl bode is not included in this etext, and is (c)1985 by viking penguin, inc., all rights reserved. the text itself is not copyright, and this etext is public domain. struggling upward chapter i the waterbury watch one saturday afternoon in january a lively and animated group of boys were gathered on the western side of a large pond in the village of groveton. prominent among them was a tall, pleasant-looking young man of twenty-two, the teacher of the center grammar school, frederic hooper, a.b., a recent graduate of yale college. evidently there was something of importance on foot. what it was may be learned from the words of the teacher. "now, boys," he said, holding in his hand a waterbury watch, of neat pattern, "i offer this watch as a prize to the boy who will skate across the pond and back in the least time. you will all start together, at a given signal, and make your way to the mark which i have placed at the western end of the lake, skate around it, and return to this point. do you fully understand?" "yes, sir!" exclaimed the boys, unanimously. before proceeding, it may be well to refer more particularly to some of the boys who were to engage in the contest. first, in his own estimation, came randolph duncan, son of prince duncan, president of the groveton bank, and a prominent town official. prince duncan was supposed to be a rich man, and lived in a style quite beyond that of his neighbors. randolph was his only son, a boy of sixteen, and felt that in social position and blue blood he was without a peer in the village. he was a tall, athletic boy, and disposed to act the part of boss among the groveton boys. next came a boy similar in age and physical strength, but in other respects very different from the young aristocrat. this was luke larkin, the son of a carpenter's widow, living on narrow means, and so compelled to exercise the strictest economy. luke worked where he could, helping the farmers in hay-time, and ready to do odd jobs for any one in the village who desired his services. he filled the position of janitor at the school which he attended, sweeping out twice a week and making the fires. he had a pleasant expression, and a bright, resolute look, a warm heart, and a clear intellect, and was probably, in spite of his poverty, the most popular boy in groveton. in this respect he was the opposite of randolph duncan, whose assumption of superiority and desire to "boss" the other boys prevented him from having any real friends. he had two or three companions, who flattered him and submitted to his caprices because they thought it looked well to be on good terms with the young aristocrat. these two boys were looked upon as the chief contestants for the prize offered by their teacher. opinions differed as to which would win. "i think luke will get the watch," said fred acken, a younger boy. "i don't know about that," said tom harper. "randolph skates just as well, and he has a pair of club skates. his father sent to new york for them last week. they're beauties, i tell you. randolph says they cost ten dollars." "of course that gives him the advantage," said percy hall. "look at luke's old-fashioned wooden skates! they would be dear at fifty cents!" "it's a pity luke hasn't a better pair," said harry wright. "i don't think the contest is a fair one. luke ought to have an allowance of twenty rods, to make up for the difference in skates." "he wouldn't accept it," said linton tomkins, the son of a manufacturer in groveton, who was an intimate friend of luke, and preferred to associate with him, though randolph had made advances toward intimacy, linton being the only boy in the village whom he regarded as his social equal. "i offered him my club skates, but he said he would take the chances with his own." linton was the only boy who had a pair of skates equal to randolph's. he, too, was a contestant, but, being three years younger than luke and randolph, had no expectation of rivaling them. randolph had his friends near him, administering the adulation he so much enjoyed. "i have no doubt you'll get the watch, randolph," said sam noble. "you're a better skater any day than luke larkin." "of course you are!" chimed in tom harper. "the young janitor doesn't think so," said randolph, his lips curling. "oh, he's conceited enough to think he can beat you, i make no doubt," said sam. "on those old skates, too! they look as if adam might have used them when he was a boy!" this sally of tom's created a laugh. "his skates are old ones, to be sure," said randolph, who was quick-sighted enough to understand that any remark of this kind might dim the luster of his expected victory. "his skates are old enough, but they are just as good for skating as mine." "they won't win him the watch, though," said sam. "i don't care for the watch myself," said randolph, loftily. "i've got a silver one now, and am to have a gold one when i'm eighteen. but i want to show that i am the best skater. besides, father has promised me ten dollars if i win." "i wish i had ten dollars," said sam, enviously. he was the son of the storekeeper, and his father allowed him only ten cents a week pocket-money, so that ten dollars in his eyes was a colossal fortune. "i have no doubt you would, sam," said tom, joyously; "but you couldn't be trusted with so much money. you'd go down to new york and try to buy out a. t. stewart." "are you ready, boys?" asked mr. hooper. most of the boys responded promptly in the affirmative; but luke, who had been tightening his straps, said quickly: "i am not ready, mr. hooper. my strap has broken!" "indeed, luke, i am sorry to hear it," said the teacher, approaching and examining the fracture. "as matters stand, you can't skate." randolph's eyes brightened. confident as he professed to feel, he knew that his chances of success would be greatly increased by luke's withdrawal from the list. "the prize is yours now," whispered tom. "it was before," answered randolph, conceitedly. poor luke looked disappointed. he knew that he had at least an even chance of winning, and he wanted the watch. several of his friends of his own age had watches, either silver or waterbury, and this seemed, in his circumstances, the only chance of securing one. now he was apparently barred out. "it's a pity you shouldn't skate, luke," said mr. hooper, in a tone of sympathy. "you are one of the best skaters, and had an excellent chance of winning the prize. is there any boy willing to lend luke his skates?" "i will," said frank acken. "my dear boy," said the teacher, "you forget that your feet are several sizes smaller than luke's." "i didn't think of that," replied frank, who was only twelve years old. "you may use my skates, luke," said linton tomkins. "i think they will fit you." linton was only thirteen, but he was unusually large for his age. "you are very kind, linton," said luke, "but that will keep you out of the race." "i stand no chance of winning," said linton, "and i will do my skating afterward." "i don't think that fair," said randolph, with a frown. "each boy ought to use his own skates." "there is nothing unfair about it," said the teacher, "except that luke is placed at disadvantage in using a pair of skates he is unaccustomed to." randolph did not dare gainsay the teacher, but he looked sullen. "mr. hooper is always favoring that beggar!" he said in a low voice, to tom harper. "of course he is!" chimed in the toady. "you are very kind, linny," said luke, regarding his friend affectionately. "i won't soon forget it." "oh, it's all right, luke," said linton. "now go in and win!" chapter ii tom harper's accident tom harper and sam noble were not wholly disinterested in their championship of randolph. they were very ordinary skaters, and stood no chance of winning the match themselves. they wished randolph to win, for each hoped, as he had a silver watch himself already, he might give the waterbury to his faithful friend and follower. nothing in randolph's character granted such a hope, for he was by no means generous or openhanded, but each thought that he might open his heart on this occasion. indeed, tom ventured to hint as much. "i suppose, randolph," he said, "if you win the watch you will give it to me?" "why should i?" asked randolph, surveying tom with a cold glance. "you've got a nice silver watch yourself, you know." "i might like to have two watches." "you'll have the ten dollars your father promised you." "what if i have? what claim have you on me?" tom drew near and whispered something in randolph's ear. "i'll see about it," said randolph, nodding. "are you ready?" asked the teacher, once more. "aye, aye!" responded the boys. "one--two--three--go!" the boys darted off like arrows from a bow. luke made a late start, but before they were half across the pond he was even with randolph, and both were leading. randolph looked sidewise, and shut his mouth tight as he saw his hated rival on equal terms with him and threatening to pass him. it would be humiliating in the extreme, he thought, to be beaten by such a boy. but beaten he seemed likely to be, for luke was soon a rod in advance and slowly gaining. slowly, for randolph was really a fine skater and had no rival except luke. but luke was his superior, as seemed likely to be proved. though only these two stood any chance of final success, all the boys kept up the contest. a branch of a tree had been placed at the western end of the pond, and this was the mark around which the boys were to skate. luke made the circuit first, randolph being about half a dozen rods behind. after him came the rest of the boys in procession, with one exception. this exception was tom harper, who apparently gave up the contest when half-way across, and began skating about, here and there, apparently waiting for his companions to return. "tom harper has given up his chance," said linton to the teacher. "so it seems," replied mr. hooper, "but he probably had no expectation of succeeding." "i should think he would have kept on with the rest. i would have done so, though my chance would have been no better than his." indeed, it seemed strange that tom should have given up so quickly. it soon appeared that it was not caprice, but that he had an object in view, and that a very discreditable one. he waited till the boys were on their way back. by this time luke was some eight rods in advance of his leading competitor. then tom began to be on the alert. as luke came swinging on to victory he suddenly placed himself in his way. luke's speed was so great that he could not check himself. he came into collision with tom, and in an instant both were prostrate. tom, however, got the worst of it. he was thrown violently backward, falling on the back of his head, and lay stunned and motionless on the ice. luke fell over him, but was scarcely hurt at all. he was up agiin in an instant, and might still have kept the lead, but instead he got down on his knees beside tom and asked anxiously: "are you much hurt, tom?" tom didn't immediately answer, but lay breathing heavily, with his eyes still closed. meanwhile, randolph, with a smile of triumph, swept on to his now assured victory. most of the boys, however, stopped and gathered round luke and tom. this accident had been watched with interest and surprise from the starting-point. "tom must be a good deal hurt," said linton. "what could possibly have made him get in luke's way?" "i don't know," said the teacher, slowly; "it looks strange." "it almost seemed as if he got in the way on purpose," linton continued. "he is a friend of randolph duncan, is he not?" asked the teacher, abruptly. "they are together about all the time." "ha!" commented the teacher, as if struck by an idea. he didn't, however, give expression to the thought in his mind. a minute more, and randolph swept into the presence of the teacher. "i believe i have won?" he said, with a smile of gratification on his countenance. "you have come in first," said the teacher coldly. "luke was considerably ahead when he ran into tom," suggested linton. "that's not my lookout," said randolph, shrugging his shoulders. "the point is that i have come in first." "tom harper is a friend of yours, is he not?" asked the teacher. "oh, yes!" answered randolph, indifferently. "he seems to be a good deal hurt. it was very strange that he got in luke's way." "so it was," said randolph, without betraying much interest. "will you lend me your skates, randolph?" asked linton. "i should like to go out and see if i can help tom in any way." if any other boy than linton had made the request, randolph would have declined, but he wished, if possible, to add linton to his list of friends, and graciously consented. before linton could reach the spot, tom had been assisted to his feet, and, with a dazed expression, assisted on either side by luke and edmund blake, was on his way back to the starting-point. "what made you get in my way, tom?" asked luke, puzzled. "i don't know," answered tom, sullenly. "are you much hurt?" "i think my skull must be fractured," moaned tom. "oh, not so bad as that," said luke, cheerfully. "i've fallen on my head myself, but i got over it." "you didn't fall as hard as i did," groaned tom. "no, i presume not; but heads are hard, and i guess you'll be all right in a few days." tom had certainly been severely hurt. there was a swelling on the back of his head almost as large as a hen's egg. "you've lost the watch, luke," said frank acken. "randolph has got in first." "yes, i supposed he would," answered luke, quietly. "and there is linton tomkins coming to meet us on randolph's skates." "randolph is sitting down on a log taking it easy. what is your loss, luke, is his gain." "yes." "i think he might have come back to inquire after you, tom, as you are a friend of his." tom looked resentfully at randolph, and marked his complacent look, and it occurred to him also that the friend he had risked so much to serve was very ungrateful. but he hoped now, at any rate, to get the watch, and thought it prudent to say nothing. the boys had now reached the shore. "hope you're not much hurt, tom?" said randolph, in a tone of mild interest. "i don't know but my skull is fractured," responded tom, bitterly. "oh, i guess not. it's the fortune of war. well, i got in first." randolph waited for congratulations, but none came. all the boys looked serious, and more than one suspected that there had been foul play. they waited for the teacher to speak. chapter iii randolph gets the watch "it is true," said the teacher, slowly. "randolph has won the race." randolph's face lighted up with exultation. "but it is also evident," continued mr. hooper, "that he would not have succeeded but for the unfortunate collision between luke larkin and tom harper." here some of luke's friends brightened up. "i don't know about that," said randolph. "at any rate, i came in first." "i watched the race closely," said the teacher, "and i have no doubt on the subject. luke had so great a lead that he would surely have won the race." "but he didn't," persisted randolph, doggedly "he did not, as we all know. it is also clear that had he not stopped to ascertain the extent of tom's injuries he still might have won." "that's so!" said half a dozen boys. "therefore i cannot accept the result as indicating the superiority of the successful contestant." "i think i am entitled to the prize," said randolph. "i concede that; but, under the circumstances, i suggest to you that it would be graceful and proper to waive your claim and try the race over again." the boys applauded, with one or two exceptions. "i won't consent to that, mr. hooper," said randolph, frowning. "i've won the prize fairly and i want it." "i am quite willing randolph should have it, sir," said luke. "i think i should have won it if i had not stopped with tom, but that doesn't affect the matter one way or the other. randolph came in first, as he says, and i think he is entitled to the watch." "then," said mr. hooper, gravely, "there is nothing more to be said. randolph, come forward and receive the prize." randolph obeyed with alacrity, and received the waterbury watch from the hands of mr. hooper. the boys stood in silence and offered no congratulations. "now, let me say," said the teacher, "that i cannot understand why there was any collision at all. tom harper, why did you get in luke's way?" "because i was a fool, sir," answered tom, smarting from his injuries, and the evident indifference of randolph, in whose cause he had incurred them. "that doesn't answer my question. why did you act like a fool, as you expressed it?" "i thought i could get out of the way in time," stammered tom, who did not dare to tell the truth. "you had no other reason?" asked the teacher, searchingly. "no, sir. what other reason could i have?" said tom, but his manner betrayed confusion. "indeed, i don't know," returned the teacher, quietly. "your action, however, spoiled luke's chances and insured the success of randolph." "and got me a broken head," muttered tom, placing his hand upon the swelling at the back of his head. "yes, you got the worst of it. i advise you to go home and apply cold water or any other remedy your mother may suggest." randolph had already turned away, meaning to return home. tom joined him. randolph would gladly have dispensed with his company, but had no decent excuse, as tom's home lay in the same direction as his. "well, randolph, you've won the watch," said tom, when they were out of hearing of the other boys. "yes," answered randolph, indifferently. "i don't care so much for that as for the ten dollars my father is going to give me." "that's what i thought. you've got another watch, you know--more valuable." "well, what of it?" said randolph, suspiciously. "i think you might give me the waterbury. i haven't got any." "why should i give it to you?" answered randolph, coldly. "because but for me you wouldn't have won it, nor the ten dollars, neither." "how do you make that out?" "the teacher said so himself." "i don't agree to it." "you can't deny it. luke was seven or eight rods ahead when i got in his way." "then it was lucky for me." "it isn't lucky for me. my head hurts awfully." "i'm very sorry, of course." "that won't do me any good. come, randolph, give me the watch, like a good fellow." "well, you've got cheek, i must say. i want the watch myself." "and is that all the satisfaction i am to get for my broken head?" exclaimed tom, indignantly. randolph was a thoroughly mean boy, who, if he had had a dozen watches, would have wished to keep them all for himself. "i've a great mind to tell luke and the teacher of the arrangement between us." "there wasn't any arrangement," said randolph, sharply. "however, as i'm really sorry for you, i am willing to give you a quarter. there, now, don't let me hear any more about the matter." he drew a silver quarter from his vest pocket and tendered it to tom. tom harper was not a sensitive boy, but his face flushed with indignation and shame, and he made no offer to take the money. "keep your quarter, randolph duncan," he said scornfully. "i think you're the meanest specimen of a boy that i ever came across. any boy is a fool to be your friend. i don't care to keep company with you any longer." "this to me!" exclaimed randolph, angrily. "this is the pay i get for condescending to let you go with me." "you needn't condescend any longer," said tom, curtly, and he crossed to the other side of the street. randolph looked after him rather uneasily. after all, he was sorry to lose his humble follower. "he'll be coming round in a day or two to ask me to take him back," he reflected. "i would be willing to give him ten cents more, but as for giving him the watch, he must think me a fool to part with that." chapter iv luke's night adventure "i am sorry you have lost the watch, luke," said the teacher, after randolph's departure. "you will have to be satisfied with deserving it." "i am reconciled to the disappointment, sir," answered luke. "i can get along for the present without a watch." nevertheless, luke did feel disappointed. he had fully expected to have the watch to carry home and display to his mother. as it was, he was in no hurry to go home, but remained for two hours skating with the other boys. he used his friend linton's skates, linton having an engagement which prevented his remaining. it was five o'clock when luke entered the little cottage which he called home. his mother, a pleasant woman of middle age, was spreading the cloth for supper. she looked up as he entered. "well, luke?" she said inquiringly. "i haven't brought home the watch, mother," he said. "randolph duncan won it by accident. i will tell you about it." after he had done so, mrs. larkin asked thoughtfully. "isn't it a little singular that tom should have got in your way?" "yes; i thought so at the time." "do you think there was any arrangement between him and randolph?" "as you ask me, mother, i am obliged to say that i do." "it was a very mean trick!" said mrs. larkin, resentfully. "yes, it was; but poor tom was well punished for it. why, he's got a bunch on the back of his head almost as large as a hen's egg." "i don't pity him," said mrs. larkin. "i pity him, mother, for i don't believe randolph will repay him for the service done him. if randolph had met with the same accident i am not prepared to say that i should have pitied him much." "you might have been seriously injured yourself, luke." "i might, but i wasn't, so i won't take that into consideration. however, mother, watch or no watch, i've got a good appetite. i shall be ready when supper is." luke sat down to the table ten minutes afterward and proved his words good, much to his mother's satisfaction. while he is eating we will say a word about the cottage. it was small, containing only four rooms, furnished in the plainest fashion. the rooms, however, were exceedingly neat, and presented an appearance of comfort. yet the united income of mrs. larkin and luke was very small. luke received a dollar a week for taking care of the schoolhouse, but this income only lasted forty weeks in the year. then he did odd jobs for the neighbors, and picked up perhaps as much more. mrs. larkin had some skill as a dressmaker, but groveton was a small village, and there was another in the same line, so that her income from this source probably did not average more than three dollars a week. this was absolutely all that they had to live on, though there was no rent to pay; and the reader will not be surprised to learn that luke had no money to spend for watches. "are you tired, luke?" asked his mother, after supper. "no, mother. can i do anything for you?" "i have finished a dress for miss almira clark. i suppose she will want to wear it to church tomorrow. but she lives so far away, i don't like to ask you to carry it to her." "oh, i don't mind. it won't do me any harm." "you will get tired." "if i do, i shall sleep the better for it." "you are a good son, luke." "i ought to be. haven't i got a good mother?" so it was arranged. about seven o'clock, after his chores were done--for there was some wood to saw and split--luke set out, with the bundle under his arm, for the house of miss clark, a mile and a half away. it was a commonplace errand, that on which luke had started, but it was destined to be a very important day in his life. it was to be a turning-point, and to mark the beginning of a new chapter of experiences. was it to be for good or ill? that we are not prepared to reveal. it will be necessary for the reader to follow his career, step by step, and decide for himself. of course, luke had no thought of this when he set out. to him it had been a marked day on account of the skating match, but this had turned out a disappointment. he accomplished his errand, which occupied a considerable time, and then set out on his return. it was half-past eight, but the moon had risen and diffused a mild radiance over the landscape. luke thought he would shorten his homeward way by taking a path through the woods. it was not over a quarter of a mile, but would shorten the distance by as much more. the trees were not close together, so that it was light enough to see. luke had nearly reached the edge of the wood, when he overtook a tall man, a stranger in the neighborhood, who carried in his hand a tin box. turning, he eyed luke sharply. "boy, what's your name?" he asked. "luke larkin," our hero answered, in surprise. "where do you live?" "in the village yonder." "will you do me a favor?" "what is it, sir?" "take this tin box and carry it to your home. keep it under lock and key till i call for it." "yes, sir, i can do that. but how shall i know you again?" "take a good look at me, that you may remember me." "i think i shall know you again, but hadn't you better give me a name?" "well, perhaps so," answered the other, after a moment's thought. "you may call me roland reed. will you remember?" "yes, sir." "i am obliged to leave this neighhorhood at once, and can't conveniently carry the box," explained the stranger. "here's something for your trouble." luke was about to say that he required no money, when it occurred to him that he had no right to refuse, since money was so scarce at home. he took the tin box and thrust the bank-bill into his vest pocket. he wondered how much it was, but it was too dark to distinguish. "good night!" said luke, as the stranger turned away. "good night!" answered his new acquaintance, abruptly. if luke could have foreseen the immediate consequences of this apparently simple act, and the position in which it would soon place him, he would certainly have refused to take charge of the box. and yet in so doing it might have happened that he had made a mistake. the consequences of even our simple acts are oftentimes far-reaching and beyond the power of human wisdom to foreknow. luke thought little of this as, with the box under his arm, he trudged homeward. chapter v luke receives an invitation "what have you there, luke?" asked mrs. larkin, as luke entered the little sitting-room with the tin box under his arm. "i met a man on my way home, who asked me to keep it for him." "do you know the man?" asked his mother, in surprise. "no," answered luke. "it seems very singular. what did he say?" "he said that he was obliged to leave the neighborhood at once, and could not conveniently carry the box." "do you think it contains anything of value?" "yes, mother. it is like the boxes rich men have to hold their stocks and bonds. i was at the bank one day, and saw a gentleman bring in one to deposit in the safe." "i can't understand that at all, luke. you say you did not know this man?" "i never met him before." "and, of course, he does not know you?" "no, for he asked my name." "yet he put what may be valuable property in your possession." "i think," said luke, shrewdly, "he had no one else to trust it to. besides, a country boy wouldn't be very likely to make use of stocks and bonds." "no, that is true. i suppose the tin box is locked?" "yes, mother. the owner--he says his name is roland reed--wishes it put under lock and key." "i can lock it up in my trunk, luke." "i think that will be a good idea." "i hope he will pay you for your trouble when he takes away the tin box." "he has already. i forgot to mention it," and luke drew from his vest pocket, the bank-note he had thrust in as soon as received. "why, it's a ten-dollar bill!" he exclaimed. "i wonder whether he knew he was giving me as much?" "i presume so, luke," said his mother, brightening up. "you are in luck!" "take it, mother. you will find a use for it." "but, luke, this money is yours." "no, it is yours, for you are going to take care of the box." it was, indeed, quite a windfall, and both mother and son retired to rest in a cheerful frame of mind, in spite of luke's failure in the race. "i have been thinking, luke," said his mother, at the breakfast-table, "that i should like to have you buy a waterbury watch out of this money. it will only cost three dollars and a half, and that is only one-third." "thank you, mother, but i can get along without the watch. i cared for it chiefly because it was to be a prize given to the best skater. all the boys know that i would have won but for the accident, and that satisfies me." "i should like you to have a watch, luke." "there is another objection, mother. i don't want any one to know about the box or the money. if it were known that we had so much property in the house, some attempt might be made to rob us." "that is true, luke. but i hope it won't be long before you have a watch of your own." when luke was walking, after breakfast, he met randolph duncan, with a chain attached to the prize watch ostentatiously displayed on the outside of his vest. he smiled complacently, and rather triumphantly, when he met luke. but luke looked neither depressed nor angry. "i hope your watch keeps good time, randolph," he said. "yes; it hasn't varied a minute so far. i think it will keep as good time as my silver watch." "you are fortunate to have two watches." "my father has promised me a gold watch when i am eighteen," said randolph, pompously. "i don't know if i shall have any watch at all when i am eighteen." "oh, well, you are a poor boy. it doesn't matter to you." "i don't know about that, randolph. time is likely to be of as much importance to a poor boy as to a rich boy." "oh, ah! yes, of course, but a poor boy isn't expected to wear a watch." here the conversation ended. luke walked on with an amused smile on his face. "i wonder how it would seem to be as complacent and selfsatisfied as randolph?" he thought. "on the whole, i would rather be as i am." "good morning, luke!" it was a girl's voice that addressed him. looking up, he met the pleasant glance of florence grant, considered by many the prettiest girl in groveton. her mother was a widow in easy circumstances, who had removed from chicago three years before, and occupied a handsome cottage nearly opposite mr. duncan's residence. she was a general favorite, not only for her good looks, but on account of her pleasant manner and sweet disposition. "good morning, florence," said luke, with an answering smile. "what a pity you lost the race yesterday!" "randolph doesn't think so." "no; he is a very selfish boy, i am afraid." "did you see the race?" asked luke. "no, but i heard all about it. if it hadn't been for tom harper you would have won, wouldn't you?" "i think so." "all the boys say so. what could have induced tom to get in the way?" "i don't know. it was very foolish, however. he got badly hurt." "tom is a friend of randolph," said florence significantly. "yes," answered luke; "but i don't think randolph would stoop to such a trick as that." "you wouldn't, luke, but randolph is a different boy. besides, i hear he was trying for something else." "i know; his father offered him ten dollars besides." "i don't see why it is that some fare so much better than others," remarked florence, thoughtfully. "the watch and the money would have done you more good." "so they would, florence, but i don't complain. i may be better off some day than i am now." "i hope you will, luke," said florence, cordially. "i am very much obliged to you for your good wishes," said luke, warmly. "that reminds me, luke, next week, thursday, is my birthday, and i am to have a little party in the evening. will you come?" luke's face flushed with pleasure. though he knew florence very well from their being schoolfellows, he had never visited the house. he properly regarded the invitation as a compliment, and as a mark of friendship from one whose good opinion he highly valued. "thank you, florence," he said. "you are very kind, and i shall have great pleasure in being present. shall you have many?" "about twenty. your friend randolph will be there." "i think there will be room for both of us," said luke, with a smile. the young lady bade him good morning and went on her way. two days later luke met randolph at the dry-goods store in the village. "what are you buying?" asked randolph, condescendingly. "only a spool of thread for my mother." "i am buying a new necktie to wear to florence grant's birthday party," said randolph, pompously. "i think i shall have to do the same," said luke, enjoying the surprise he saw expressed on randolph's face. "are you going?" demanded randolph, abruptly. "yes." "have you been invited?" "that is a strange question," answered luke, indignantly. "do you think i would go without an invitation?" "really, it will be quite a mixed affair," said randolph, shrugging his shoulders. "if you think so, why do you go?" "i don't want to disappoint florence." luke smiled. he was privately of the opinion that the disappointment wouldn't be intense. chapter vi preparing for the party the evening of the party arrived. it was quite a social event at groveton, and the young people looked forward to it with pleasant anticipation. randolph went so far as to order a new suit for the occasion. he was very much afraid it would not be ready in time, but he was not to be disappointed. at five o'clock on thursday afternoon it was delivered, and randolph, when arrayed in it, surveyed himself with great satisfaction. he had purchased a handsome new necktie, and he reflected with pleasure that no boy present--not even linton--would be so handsomely dressed as himself. he had a high idea of his personal consequence, but he was also of the opinion that "fine feathers make fine birds," and his suit was of fine cloth and stylish make. "i wonder what the janitor will wear?" he said to himself, with a curl of the lip. "a pair of overalls, perhaps. they would be very appropriate, certainly." this was just the question which was occupying luke's mind. he did not value clothes as randolph did, but he liked to look neat. truth to tell, he was not very well off as to wardrobe. he had his every-day suit, which he wore to school, and a better suit, which he had worn for over a year. it was of mixed cloth, neat in appearance, though showing signs of wear; but there was one trouble. during the past year luke had grown considerably, and his coat-sleeves were nearly two inches too short, and the legs of his trousers deficient quite as much. nevertheless, he dressed himself, and he, too, surveyed himself, not before a pier-glass, but before the small mirror in the kitchen. "don't my clothes look bad, mother?" he asked anxiously. "they are neat and clean, luke," said his mother, hesitatingly. "yes, i know; but they are too small." "you have been growing fast in the last year, luke," said his mother, looking a little disturbed. "i suppose you are not sorry for that?" "no," answered luke, with a smile, "but i wish my coat and trousers had grown, too." "i wish, my dear boy, i could afford to buy you a new suit." "oh, never mind, mother," said luke, recovering his cheerfulness. "they will do for a little while yet. florence didn't invite me for my clothes." "no; she is a sensible girl. she values you for other reasons." "i hope so, mother. still, when i consider how handsomely randolph will be dressed, i can't help thinking that there is considerable difference in our luck." "would you be willing to exchange with him, luke?" "there is one thing i wouldn't like to exchange." "and what is that?" "i wouldn't exchange my mother for his," said luke, kissing the widow affectionately. "his mother is a cold, proud, disagreeable woman, while i have the best mother in the world." "don't talk foolishly, luke," said mrs. larkin; but her face brightened, and there was a warm feeling in her heart, for it was very pleasant to her to hear luke speak of her in this way. "i won't think any more about it, mother," said luke. "i've got a new necktie, at any rate, and i will make that do." just then there was a knock at the door, and linton entered. "i thought i would come round and go to the party with you, luke," he said. linton was handsomely dressed, though he had not bought a suit expressly, like randolph. he didn't appear to notice luke's scant suit. even if he had, he would have been too much of a gentleman to refer to it. "i think we shall have a good time," he said. "we always do at mrs. grant's. florence is a nice girl, and they know how to make it pleasant. i suppose we shall have dancing." "i don't know how to dance," said luke, regretfully. "i should like to have taken lessons last winter when professor bent had a class, but i couldn't afford it." "you have seen dancing?" "oh, yes." "it doesn't take much knowledge to dance a quadrille, particularly if you get on a side set. come, we have an hour before it is time to go. suppose i give you a lesson?" "do you think i could learn enough in that time to venture?" "yes, i do. if you make an occasional mistake it won't matter. so, if your mother will give us the use of the sitting-room, i will commence instructions." luke had looked at some dancers in the dining-room at the hotel, and was not wholly a novice, therefore. linton was an excellent dancer, and was clear in his directions. it may also be said that luke was a ready learner. so it happened at the end of the hour that the pupil had been initiated not only in the ordinary changes of the quadrille, but also in one contra dance, the virginia reel, which was a great favorite among the young people of groveton. "now, i think you'll do, luke," said linton, when the lesson was concluded. "you are very quick to learn." "you think i won't be awkward, linton?" "no, if you keep cool and don't get flustered." "i am generally pretty cool. but i shall be rather surprised to see myself on the floor," laughed luke. "no doubt others will be, but you'll have a great deal more fun." "so i shall. i don't like leaning against the wall while others are having a good time." "if you could dance as well as you can skate you would have no trouble, luke." "no; that is where randolph has the advantage of me." "he is a very great dancer, though he can't come up to you in skating. however, dancing isn't everything. dance as well as he may, he doesn't stand as high in the good graces of florence grant as he would like to do." "i always noticed that he seemed partial to florence." "yes, but it isn't returned. how about yourself, luke?" luke, being a modest boy, blushed. "i certainly think florence a very nice girl," he said. "i was sure of that," said linton, smiling. "but i don't want to stand in your way, linton," continued luke, with a smile. "no danger, luke. florence is a year older than i am. now, you are nearly two years older than she, and are better matched. so you needn't consider me in the matter." of course, this was all a joke. it was true, however, that of all the girls in groveton, luke was more attracted by florence grant than by any other, and they had always been excellent friends. it was well known that randolph also was partial to the young lady, but he certainly had never received much encouragement. finally the boys got out, and were very soon at the door of mrs. grant's handsome cottage. it was large upon the ground, with a broad veranda, in the southern style. in fact, mrs. grant was southern by birth, and, erecting the house herself, had it built after the fashion of her southern birthplace. most of the young visitors had arrived when luke and linton put in an appearance. they had been detained longer than they were aware by the dancing-lesson. randolph and sam noble were sitting side by side at one end of the room, facing the entrance. "look," said randolph, with a satirical smile, to his companion, "there comes the young janitor in his dress suit. just look at his coat-sleeves and the legs of his trousers. they are at least two inches too short. any other boy would be ashamed to come to a party in such ridiculous clothes." sam looked and tittered. luke's face flushed, for, though he did not hear the words, he guessed their tenor. but he was made to forget them when florence came forward and greeted linton and himself with unaffected cordiality. chapter vii florence grant's party luke's uncomfortable consciousness of his deficiencies in dress soon passed off. he noticed the sneer on randolph's face and heard sam's laugh, but he cared very little for the opinion of either of them. no other in the company appeared to observe his poor dress, and he was cordially greeted by them all, with the two exceptions already named. "the janitor ought to know better than to intrude into the society of his superiors," said randolph to sam. "he seems to enjoy himself," said sam. this was half an hour after the party had commenced, when all were engaged in one of the plays popular at a country party. "i am going to have a party myself in a short time," continued randolph, "but i shall be more select than florence in my invitations. i shall not invite any working boys." "right you are, randolph," said the subservient sam. "i hope you won't forget me." "oh, no; i shall invite you. of course, you don't move exactly in my circle, but, at any rate, you dress decently." if sam noble had had proper pride he would have resented the insolent assumption of superiority in this speech, but he was content to play second fiddle to randolph duncan. his family, like himself, were ambitious to be on good terms with the leading families in the village, and did not mind an occasional snub. "shall you invite tom harper?" he asked. he felt a little jealous of tom, who had vied with him in flattering attentions to randolph. "no, i don't think so. tom isn't here, is he?" "he received an invitation, but ever since his accident he has been troubled with severe headaches, and i suppose that keeps him away." "he isn't up to my standard," said randolph, consequentially. "he comes of a low family." "you and he have been together a good deal." "oh, i have found him of some service, but i have paid for it." yet this was the boy who, at his own personal risk, had obtained for randolph the prize at the skating-match. privately, sam thought randolph ungrateful, but he was, nevertheless, pleased at having distanced tom in the favor of the young aristocrat. after an hour, spent in various amusements, one of the company took her place at the piano, and dancing began. "now is your time, luke," said linton. "secure a partner. it is only a quadrille." "i feel a little nervous," said luke. "perhaps i had better wait till the second dance." "oh, nonsense! don't be afraid." meanwhile, randolph, with a great flourish, had invited florence to dance. "thank you," she answered, taking his arm. randolph took his place with her as head couple. linton and annie comray faced them. to randolph's amazement, luke and fanny pratt took their places as one of the side couples. randolph, who was aware that luke had never taken lessons, remarked this with equal surprise and disgust. his lip curled as he remarked to his partner: "really, i didn't know that luke larkin danced." "nor i," answered florence. "i am sorry he is in our set." "why?" asked florence, regarding him attentively. "he will probably put us out by his clownish performance." "wouldn't it be well to wait and see whether he does or not?" responded florence, quietly. randolph shrugged his shoulders. "i pity his partner, at any rate," he said. "i can't join in any such conversation about one of my guests," said florence, with dignity. here the first directions were given, and the quadrille commenced. luke felt a little nervous, it must be confessed, and for that reason he watched with unusual care the movements of the head couples. he was quick to learn, and ordinarily cool and self-possessed. besides, he knew that no one was likely to criticize him except randolph. he saw the latter regarding him with a mocking smile, and this stimulated him to unusual carefulness. the result was that he went through his part with quite as much ease and correctness as any except the most practiced dancers. florence said nothing, but she turned with a significant smile to randolph. the latter looked disappointed and mortified. his mean disposition would have been gratified by luke's failure, but this was a gratification he was not to enjoy. the dance was at length concluded, and luke, as he led his partner to a seat, felt that he had scored a success. "may i have the pleasure of dancing with you next time, florence?" asked randolph. "thank you, but i should not think it right to slight my other guests," said the young lady. just then luke came up and preferred the same request. he would not have done so if he had not acquitted himself well in the first quadrille. florence accepted with a smile. "i was not aware that dancing was one of your accomplishments, luke," she said. "nor i, till this evening," answered luke. "there stands my teacher," and he pointed to linton. "you do credit to your teacher," said florence. "i should not have known you were such a novice." luke was pleased with this compliment, and very glad that he had been spared the mortification of breaking down before the eyes of his ill-wisher, randolph duncan. it is hardly necessary to say that he did equally well in the second quadrille, though he and florence were head couple. the next dance was the virginia reel. here florence had linton for a partner, and luke secured as his own partner a very good dancer. from prudence, however, he took his place at some distance from the head, and by dint of careful watching he acquitted himself as well as in the quadrilles. "really, luke, you are doing wonderfully well," said linton, when the dance was over. "i can hardly believe that you have taken but one lesson, and that from so poor a teacher as i am." "i couldn't have had a better teacher, lin," said luke. "i owe my success to you." "didn't you say luke couldn't dance?" asked sam noble of randolph, later in the evening. "he can't," answered randolph, irritably. "he gets along very well, i am sure. he dances as well as i do." "that isn't saying much," answered randolph, with a sneer. he could not help sneering even at his friends, and this was one reason why no one was really attached to him. sam walked away offended. the party broke up at half-past ten. it was an early hour, but late enough considering the youth of the participants. luke accompanied home one of the girls who had no brother present, and then turned toward his own home. he had nearly reached it, when a tall figure, moving from the roadside, put a hand on his shoulder. "you are luke larkin?" said the stranger, in questioning tone. "yes, sir." "is the tin box safe?" "yes, sir." "that is all--for the present," and the stranger walked quickly away. "who can he be," thought luke, in wonder, "and why should he have trusted a complete stranger--and a boy?" evidently there was some mystery about the matter. had the stranger come honestly by the box, or was luke aiding and abetting a thief? he could not tell. chaptfer viii miss sprague discovers a secret about this time it became known to one person in the village that the larkins had in their possession a tin box, contents unknown. this is the way it happened: among the best-known village residents was miss melinda sprague, a maiden lady, who took a profound interest in the affairs of her neighbors. she seldom went beyond the limits of groveton, which was her world. she had learned the business of dressmaking, and often did work at home for her customers. she was of a curious and prying disposition, and nothing delighted her more than to acquire the knowledge of a secret. one day--a few days after florence grant's party--mrs. larkin was in her own chamber. she had the trunk open, having occasion to take something from it, when, with a light step, miss sprague entered the room. the widow, who was on her knees before the trunk, turning, recognized the intruder, not without displeasure. "i hope you'll excuse my coming in so unceremoniously, mrs. larkin," said melinda, effusively. "i knocked, but you didn't hear it, being upstairs, and i took the liberty, being as we were so well acquainted, to come upstairs in search of you." "yes, certainly," answered mrs. larkin, but her tone was constrained. she quickly shut the lid of the trunk. there was only one thing among its contents which she was anxious to hide, but that miss melinda's sharp eyes had already discovered. unfortunately, the tin box was at one side, in plain sight. "what on earth does mrs. larkin do with a tin box?" she asked herself, with eager curiosity. "can she have property that people don't know of? i always thought she was left poor." melinda asked no questions. the sudden closing of the trunk showed her that the widow would not be inclined to answer any questions. "i won't let her think i saw anything," she said to herself. "perhaps she'll get anxious and refer to it." "we will go downstairs, melinda," said mrs. larkin. "it will be more comfortable." "if you have anything to do up here, i beg you won't mind me," said the spinster. "no, i have nothing that won't wait." so the two went down into the sitting-room. "and how is luke?" asked miss sprague, in a tone of friendly interest. "very well, thank you." "luke was always a great favorite of mine," continued the spinster. "such a manly boy as he is!" "he is a great help to me," said mrs. larkin. "no doubt he is. he takes care of the schoolhouse, doesn't he?" "yes." "how much pay does he get?" "a dollar a week." "i hope he will be able to keep the position." "what do you mean, melinda?" asked the widow, not without anxiety. "you know doctor snodgrass has resigned on the school committee, and squire duncan has been elected in his place." "well?" "mrs. flanagan went to him yesterday to ask to have her son tim appointed janitor in place of luke, and i heard that she received considerable encouragement from the squire." "do they find any fault with luke?" asked mrs. larkin, jealously. "no, not as i've heard; but mrs. flanagan said luke had had it for a year, and now some one else ought to have the chance." "are you quite sure of this, melinda?" miss sprague, though over forty, was generally called by her first name, not as a tribute to her youth, but to the fact of her being still unmarried. "yes, i am; i had it from mrs. flanagan herself." "i don't think tim would do as well as luke. he has never been able to keep a place yet." "just so; but, of course, his mother thinks him a polygon." probably miss sprague meant a paragon--she was not very careful in her speech, but mrs. larkin did not smile at her mistake. she was too much troubled at the news she had just heard. a dollar a week may seem a ridiculous trifle to some of my readers, but, where the entire income of the family was so small, it was a matter of some consequence. "i don't think luke has heard anything of this," said the widow. "he has not mentioned it to me." "perhaps there won't be any change, after all," said melinda. "i am sure tim flanagan wouldn't do near as well as luke." miss melinda was not entirely sincere. she had said to mrs. flanagan that she quite agreed with her that luke had been janitor long enough, and hoped tim would get the place. she was in the habit of siding with the person she chanced to be talking with at the moment, and this was pretty well understood. luke, however, had heard of this threatened removal. for this, it may be said, randolph was partly responsible. just after mrs. flanagan's call upon the squire to solicit his official influence, prince duncan mentioned the matter to his son. "how long has luke larkin been janitor at the schoolhouse?" he asked. "about a year. why do you ask?" "does he attend to the duties pretty well?" "i suppose so. he's just fit to make fires and sweep the floor," answered randolph, his lip curling. "mrs. flanagan has been here to ask me to appoint her son tim in luke's place." "you'd better do it, pa," said randolph, quickly. "why? you say luke is well fitted for the position." "oh, anybody could do as well, but luke puts on airs. he feels too big for his position." "i suppose mrs. larkin needs the money." "so does mrs. flanagan," said randolph. "what sort of a boy is tim? i have heard that he is lazy." "oh, i guess he'll do. of course, i am not well acquainted with a boy like him," said the young aristocrat. "but i'm quite disgusted with luke. he was at florence grant's party the other evening, and was cheeky enough to ask her to dance with him." "did she do so?" "yes; i suppose it was out of pity. he ought to have known better than to attend a party with such a suit. his coat and pantaloons were both too small for him, but he flourished around as if he were fashionably dressed." squire duncan made no reply to his son's comments, but he felt disposed, for reasons of his own, to appoint tim flanagan. he was hoping to be nominated for representative at the next election, and thought the appointment might influence the irish vote in his favor. "shall you appoint tim, pa?" asked randolph. "i think it probable. it seems only right to give him a chance. rotation in office is a principle of which i approve." "that's good!" thought randolph, with a smile of gratification. "it isn't a very important place, but luke will be sorry to lose it. the first time i see him i will give him a hint of it." randolph met luke about an hour later in the village street. he did not often stop to speak with our hero, but this time he had an object in doing so. chapter ix luke loses his position "luke larkin!" luke turned, on hearing his name called, and was rather surprised to see randolph hastening toward him. "how are you, randolph?" he said politely. "where are you going?" asked randolph, not heeding the inquiry. "to the schoolhouse, to sweep out." "how long have you been janitor?" asked randolph, abruptly. "about a year," luke answered, in surprise. "that's a good while." luke was puzzled. why should randolph feel such an interest, all at once, in his humble office? "i suppose you know that my father is now on the school committee?" randolph continued. "yes; i heard so." "he thinks of appointing tim flanagan janitor in your place." luke's face showed his surprise and concern. the loss of his modest income would, as he knew, be severely felt by his mother and himself. the worst of it was, there seemed no chance in groveton of making it up in any other way. "did your father tell you this?" he asked, after a pause. "yes; he just told me," answered randolph, complacently. "why does he think of removing me? are there any complaints of the way i perform my duties?" "really, my good fellow," said randolph, languidly, "i can't enlighten you on that point. you've held the office a good while, you know." "you are very kind to tell me--this bad news," said luke, pointedly. "oh, don't mention it. good morning. were you fatigued after your violent exercise at florence grant's party?" "no. were you?" "i didn't take any," said randolph, haughtily. "i danced-i didn't jump round." "thank you for the compliment. is there anything more you wish to say to me?" "no." "then good morning." when luke was left alone he felt serious. how was he going to make up the dollar a week of which he was to be deprived? the more he considered the matter the further he was from thinking anything. he was not quite sure whether the news was reliable, or merely invented by randolph to tease and annoy him. upon this point, however, he was soon made certain. the next day, as he was attending to his duties in the schoolhouse, tim flanagan entered. "here's a note for you, luke," he said. luke opened the note and found it brief but significant. it ran thus: "luke larkin: i have appointed the bearer, timothy flanagan, janitor in your place. you will give him the key of the schoolhouse, and he will at once assume your duties. "prince duncan." "well, tim," said luke, calmly, "it appears that you are going to take my place." "yes, luke, but i don't care much about it. my mother went to the squire and got me the job. the pay's a dollar a week, isn't it?" "yes." "that isn't enough." "it isn't very much, but there are not many ways of earning money here in groveton." "what do you have to do?" "make the fire every morning and sweep out twice a week. then there's dusting, splitting up kindlings, and so on." "i don't think i'll like it. i ain't good at makin' fires." "squire duncan writes you are to begin at once." "shure, i'm afraid i won't succeed." "i'll tell you what, tim. i'll help you along till you've got used to the duties. after a while they'll get easy for you." "will you now? you're a good feller, luke. i thought you would be mad at losin' the job." "i am not mad, but i am sorry. i needed the money, but no doubt you do, also. i have no grudge against you." luke had just started in his work. he explained to tim how to do it, and remained with him till it was done. "i'll come again to-morrow, tim," he said. "i will get you well started, for i want to make it easy for you." tim was by no means a model boy, but he was warm-hearted, and he was touched by luke's generous treatment. "i say, luke," he exclaimed, "i don't want to take your job. say the word, and i'll tell mother and the squire i don't want it." "no, tim, it's your duty to help your mother. take it and do your best." on his way home luke chanced to meet the squire, walking in his usual dignified manner toward the bank, of which he was president. "squire duncan," he said, walking up to him in a manly way, "i would like to speak a word to you." "say on, young man." "tim flanagan handed me a note from you this morning ordering me to turn over my duties as janitor to him." "very well?" "i have done so, but i wish to ask you if i have been removed on account of any complaints that my work was not well done?" "i have heard no complaints," answered the squire. "i appointed timothy in your place because i approved of rotation in office. it won't do any good for you to make a fuss about it." "i don't intend to make a fuss, squire duncan," said luke, proudly. "i merely wished to know if there were any charges against me." "there are none." "then i am satisfied. good morning, sir." "stay, young man. is timothy at the schoolhouse?" "yes, sir. i gave him some instruction about the work, and promised to go over to-morrow to help him." "very well." squire duncan was rather relieved to find that luke did not propose to make any fuss. his motive, as has already been stated, was a political one. he wished to ingratiate himself with irish voters and obtain an election as representative; not that he cared so much for this office, except as a stepping-stone to something higher. luke turned his steps homeward. he dreaded communicating the news to his mother, for he knew that it would depress her, as it had him. however, it must be known sooner or later, and he must not shrink from telling her. "mother," he said, as he entered the room where she was sewing, "i have lost my job as janitor." "i expected you would, luke," said his mother, soberly. "who told you?" asked luke, in surprise. "melinda sprague was here yesterday and told me tim flanagan was to have it." "miss sprague seems to know everything that is going on." "yes, she usually hears everything. have you lost the place already?" "tim brought me a note this morning from squire duncan informing me that i was removed and he was put in my place." "it is going to be a serious loss to us, luke," said mrs. larkin, gravely. "yes, mother, but i am sure something will turn up in its place." luke spoke confidently, but it was a confidence he by no means felt. "it is a sad thing to be so poor as we are," said mrs. larkin, with a sigh. "it is very inconvenient, mother, but we ought to be glad that we have perfect health. i am young and strong, and i am sure i can find some other way of earning a dollar a week." "at any rate, we will hope so, luke." luke went to bed early that night. the next morning, as they were sitting at breakfast, melinda sprague rushed into the house and sank into a chair, out of breath. "have you heard the news?" "no. what is it?" "the bank has been robbed! a box of united states bonds has been taken, amounting to thirty or forty thousand dollars!" luke and his mother listened in amazement. chapter x mellnda makes mlschlef "where did you hear this, melinda?" asked mrs. larkin. "i called on mrs. duncan just now--i was doing some work for her--and she told me. isn't it awful?" "was the bank broken open last night, miss sprague?" asked luke. "i don't know when it was entered." "i don't understand it at all," said luke, looking puzzled. "all i know is that, on examining the safe, the box of bonds was missing." "then it might have been taken some time since?" "yes, it might." the same thought came to luke and his mother at once. was the mysterious stranger the thief, and had he robbed the bank and transferred the tin box to luke? it might be so, but, as this happened more than a fortnight since, it would have been strange in that case that the box had not been missed sooner at the bank. luke longed to have miss sprague go, that he might confer with his mother on this subject. he had been told to keep the possession of the box secret, and therefore he didn't wish to reveal the fact that he had it unless it should prove to be necessary. "were any traces of the robber discovered?" he added. "not that i heard of; but i pity the thief, whoever he is," remarked melinda. "when he's found out he will go to jail, without any doubt." "i can't understand, for my part, how an outside party could open the safe," said mrs. larkin. "it seems very mysterious." "there's many things we can't understand," said melinda, shaking her head sagely. "all crimes are mysterious." "i hope they'll find out who took the bonds," said the widow. "did they belong to the bank?" "no, they belonged to a gentleman in cavendish, who kept them in the bank, thinking they would be safer than in his own house. little did he know what iniquity there was even in quiet country places like groveton." "surely, melinda, you don't think any one in groveton robbed the bank?" said mrs. larkin. "there's no knowing!" said miss sprague, solemnly. "there's those that we know well, or think we do, but we cannot read their hearts and their secret ways." "have you any suspicions, miss sprague?" asked luke, considerably amused at the portentous solemnity of the visitor. "i may and i may not, luke," answered melinda, with the air of one who knew a great deal more than she chose to tell; "but it isn't proper for me to speak at present." just then miss sprague saw some one passing who, she thought, had not heard of the robbery, and, hastily excusing herself, she left the house. "what do you think, luke?" asked his mother, after the spinster had gone. "do you think the box we have was taken from the bank?" "no, i don't, mother. i did think it possible at first, but it seems very foolish for the thief, if he was one, to leave the box in the same village, in the charge of a boy. it would have been more natural and sensible for him to open it, take out the bonds, and throw it away or leave it in the woods." "there is something in that," said mrs. larkin, thoughtfully. "there is certainly a mystery about our box, but i can't think it was stolen from the bank." meanwhile, miss sprague had formed an important resolve. the more she thought of it, the more she believed the missing box was the one of which she had caught a glimpse of in mrs. larkin's trunk. true, luke and the widow had not betrayed that confusion and embarrassment which might have been anticipated when the theft was announced, but she had noticed the look exchanged between them, and she was sure it meant something. above all, her curiosity was aroused to learn how it happened that a woman as poor as the widow larkin should have a tin box in her trunk, the contents of which might be presumed to be valuable. "i don't like to get luke and his mother into trouble," melinda said to herself, "but i think it my duty to tell all i know. at any rate, they will have to tell how the box came into their possession, and what it contains. i'll go to the bank and speak to squire duncan." prince duncan had called an extra meeting of the directors to consider the loss which had been discovered, and they were now seated in the bank parlor. there were three of them present, all of whom resided in groveton--mr. manning, the hotelkeeper; mr. bailey, a storekeeper, and mr. beane, the groveton lawyer. miss sprague entered the bank and went up to the little window presided over by the paying-teller. "is squire duncan in the bank?" she asked. "yes, miss sprague." "i would like to speak with him." "that is impossible. he is presiding at a directors' meeting." "still, i would like to see him," persisted melinda. "you will have to wait," said the paying-teller, coldly. he had no particular respect or regard for miss sprague, being quite familiar with her general reputation as a gossip and busybody. "i think he would like to see me," said melinda, nodding her head with mysterious significance. "there has been a robbery at the bank, hasn't there?" "do you know anything about it, miss sprague?" demanded the teller, in surprise. "maybe i do, and maybe i don't; but i've got a secret to tell to squire duncan." "i don't believe it amounts to anything," thought the teller. "well, i will speak to squire duncan," he said aloud. he went to the door of the directors' room, and after a brief conference with prince duncan he returned with the message, "you may go in, miss sprague." she nodded triumphantly, and with an air of conscious importance walked to the bank parlor. prince duncan and his associates were sitting round a mahogany table. melinda made a formal curtsy and stood facing them. "i understand, miss sprague, that you have something to communicate to us in reference to the loss the bank has just sustained," said the squire, clearing his throat. "i thought it my duty to come and tell you all i knew, squire duncan and gentlemen," said melinda. "quite right, miss sprague. now, what can you tell us?" "the article lost was a tin box, was it not?" "yes." "about so long?" continued miss sprague, indicating a length of about fifteen inches. "yes." "what was there in it?" "government bonds." "i know where there is such a box," said miss sprague, slowly. "where? please be expeditious, miss sprague." "a few days since i was calling on mrs. larkin--luke's mother--just happened in, as i may say, and, not finding her downstairs, went up into her chamber. i don't think she heard me, for when i entered the chamber and spoke to her she seemed quite flustered. she was on her knees before an open trunk, and in that trunk i saw the tin box." the directors looked at each other in surprise, and squire duncan looked undeniably puzzled. "i knew the box was one such as is used to hold valuable papers and bonds," proceeded melinda, "and, as i had always looked on the widow as very poor, i didn't know what to make of it." "did you question mrs. larkin about the tin box?" asked mr. beane. "no; she shut the trunk at once, and i concluded she didn't want me to see it." "then you did not say anything about it?" "no; but i went in just now to tell her about the bank being robbed." "how did it seem to affect her?" asked mr. bailey. "she and luke--luke was there, too--looked at each other in dismay. it was evident that they were thinking of the box in the trunk." melinda continued her story, and the directors were somewhat impressed. "i propose," said mr. manning, "that we get out a searchwarrant and search mrs. larkin's cottage. that box may be the one missing from the bank." chapter xi luke is arrested just after twelve o'clock, when luke was at home eating dinner, a knock was heard at the front door. "i'll go, mother," said luke, and he rose from the table, and, going into the entry, opened the outer door. his surprise may be imagined when he confronted squire duncan and the gentlemen already mentioned as directors of the groveton bank. "did you wish to see mother?" he asked. "yes; we have come on important business," said squire duncan, pompously. "walk in, if you please." luke led the way into the little sitting-room, followed by the visitors. the dinner-table was spread in the kitchen adjoining. the room looked very much filled up with the unwonted company, all being large men. "mother," called luke, "here are some gentlemen who wish to see you." the widow entered the room, and looked with surprise from one to another. all waited for squire duncan, as the proper person, from his official position, to introduce the subject of their visit "mrs. larkin," said the squire, pompously, "it has possibly come to your ears that the groveton bank, of which you are aware that i am the president, has been robbed of a box of bonds?" "yes, sir. i was so informed by miss melinda sprague this morning." "i am also informed that you have in your custody a tin box similar to the one that has been taken." he expected to see mrs. larkin show signs of confusion, but she answered calmly: "i have a box in my custody, but whether it resembles the one lost i can't say." "ha! you admit that you hold such a box?" said the squire, looking significantly at his companions. "certainly. why should i not?" "are you willing to show it to us?" "yes, we are willing to show it," said luke, taking it upon himself to answer, "but i have no idea that it will do you any good." "that is for us to decide, young man," said squire duncan. "do you suppose it is the box missing from the bank, sir?" "it may be." "when did you miss the box?" "only this morning, but it may have been taken a month ago." "this box has been in our possession for a fortnight." "such is your statement, luke." "it is the truth," said luke, flushing with indignation. "my boy," said mr. beane, "don't be angry. i, for one, have no suspicion that you have done anything wrong, but it is our duty to inquire into this matter." "who told you that we had such a box, mr. beane?" "miss melinda sprague was the informant." "i thought so, mother," said luke. "she is a prying old maid, and it is just like her." "miss sprague only did her duty," said the squire. "but we are losing time. we require you to produce the box." "i will get it, gentlemen," said the widow, calmly. while she was upstairs, mr. manning inquired: "where did you get the box, luke?" "if you identify it as the box taken from the bank," answered luke, "i will tell you. otherwise i should prefer to say nothing, for it is a secret of another person." "matters look very suspicious, in my opinion, gentlemen," said squire duncan, turning to his associates. "not necessarily," said mr. beane, who seemed inclined to favor our hero. "luke may have a good reason for holding his tongue." here mrs. larkin presented herself with the missing box. instantly it became an object of attention. "it looks like the missing box," said the squire. "of course, i can offer no opinion," said mr. beane, "not having seen the one lost. such boxes, however, have a general resemblance to each other." "have you the key that opens it?" asked the squire. "no, sir." "squire duncan," asked mr. beane, "have you the key unlocking the missing box?" "no, sir," answered squire duncan, after a slight pause. "then i don't think we can decide as to the identity of the two boxes." the trustees looked at each other in a state of indecision. no one knew what ought to be done. "what course do you think we ought to take, squire duncan?" asked mr. bailey. "i think," said the bank president, straightening up, "that there is sufficient evidence to justify the arrest of this boy luke." "i have done nothing wrong, sir," said luke, indignantly. "i am no more of a thief than you are." "do you mean to insult me, you young jackanapes?" demanded mr. duncan, with an angry flush on his face. "i intend to insult no one, but i claim that i have done nothing wrong." "that is what all criminals say," sneered the squire. luke was about to make an angry reply, but mr. beane, waving his hand as a signal for our hero to be quiet, remarked calmly: "i think, duncan, in justice to luke, we ought to hear his story as to how the box came into his possession." "that is my opinion," said mr. bailey. "i don't believe luke is a bad boy." prince duncan felt obliged to listen to that suggestion, mr. bailey and mr. beane being men of consideration in the village. "young man," he said, "we are ready to hear your story. from whom did you receive this box?" "from a man named roland reed," answered luke. the four visitors looked at each other in surprise. "and who is roland reed?" asked the president of the bank. "it seems very much like a fictitious name." "it may be, for aught i know," said luke, "but it is the name given me by the person who gave me the box to keep for him." "state the circumstances," said mr. beane. "about two weeks since i was returning from the house of miss almira clark, where i had gone on an errand for my mother. to shorten my journey, i took my way through the woods. i had nearly passed through to the other side, when a tall man, dark complexioned, whom i had never seen before stepped up to me. he asked me my name, and, upon my telling him, asked if i would do him a favor. this was to take charge of a tin box, which he carried under his arm." "the one before us?" asked mr. manning. "yes, sir." "did he give any reason for making this request?" "he said he was about to leave the neighborhood, and wished it taken care of. he asked me to put it under lock and key." "did he state why he selected you for this trust?" asked mr. beane. "no, sir; he paid me for my trouble, however. he gave me a bank-note, which, when i reached home, i found to be a ten-dollar bill." "and you haven't seen him since?" "once only." "when was that?" "on the evening of florence grant's party. on my way home the same man came up to me and asked if the box was safe. i answered, `yes.' he said, `that is all--for the present,' and disappeared. i have not seen him since." "that is a very pretty romance," said prince duncan, with a sneer. "i can confirm it," said mrs. larkin, calmly. "i saw luke bring in the box, and at his request i took charge of it. the story he told at that time is the same that he tells now." "very possibly," said the bank president. "it was all cut and dried." "you seem very much prejudiced against luke," said mrs. larkin, indignantly. "by no means, mrs. larkin. i judge him and his story from the standpoint of common sense. gentlemen, i presume this story makes the same impression on you as on me?" mr. beane shook his head. "it may be true; it is not impossible," he said. "you believe, then, there is such a man as roland reed?" "there may be a man who calls himself such." "if there is such a man, he is a thief." "it may be so, but that does not necessarily implicate luke." "he would be a receiver of stolen property." "not knowing it to be such." "at all events, i feel amply justified in causing the arrest of luke larkin on his own statement." "surely you don't mean this?" exclaimed mrs. larkin, in dismay. "don't be alarmed, mother," said luke, calmly. "i am innocent of wrong, and no harm will befall me." chapter xii luke as a prisoner prince duncan, who was a magistrate, directed the arrest of luke on a charge of robbing the groveton bank. the constable who was called upon to make the arrest performed the duty unwillingly. "i don't believe a word of it, luke," he said. "it's perfect nonsense to say you have robbed the bank. i'd as soon believe myself guilty." luke was not taken to the lock-up, but was put in the personal custody of constable perkins, who undertook to be responsible for his appearance at the trial. "you mustn't run away, or you'll get me into trouble, luke," said the good-natured constable. "it's the last thing i'd be willing to do, mr. perkins," said luke, promptly. "then everybody would decide that i was guilty. i am innocent, and want a chance to prove it." what was to be done with the tin box, was the next question. "i will take it over to my house," said squire duncan. "i object," said mr. beane. "do you doubt my integrity?" demanded the bank president, angrily. "no; but it is obviously improper that any one of us should take charge of the box before it has been opened and its contents examined. we are not even certain that it is the one missing from the bank." as mr. beane was a lawyer, prince duncan, though unwillingly, was obliged to yield. the box, therefore, was taken to the bank and locked up in the safe till wanted. it is hardly necessary to say that the events at the cottage of mrs. larkin, and luke's arrest, made a great sensation in the village. the charge that luke had robbed the bank was received not only with surprise, but with incredulity. the boy was so well and so favorably known in groveton that few could be found to credit the charge. there were exceptions, however. melinda sprague enjoyed the sudden celebrity she had achieved as the original discoverer of the thief who had plundered the bank. she was inclined to believe that luke was guilty, because it enhanced her own importance. "most people call luke a good boy," she said, "but there was always something about him that made me suspicious. "there was something in his expression--i can't tell you what--that set me to thinkin' all wasn't right. appearances are deceitful, as our old minister used to say." "they certainly are, if luke is a bad boy and a thief," retorted the other, indignantly. "you might be in better business, melinda, than trying to take away the character of a boy like luke." "i only did my duty," answered melinda, with an air of superior virtue. "i had no right to keep secret what i knew about the robbery." "you always claimed to be a friend of the larkins. only last week you took tea there." "that's true. i am a friend now, but i can't consent to cover up inquiry. do you know whether the bank has offered any reward for the detection of the thief?" "no," said the other, shortly, with a look of contempt at the eager spinster. "even if it did, and poor luke were found guilty, it would be blood-money that no decent person would accept." "really, mrs. clark, you have singular ideas," said the discomfited melinda. "i ain't after no money. i only mean to do my duty, but if the bank should recognize the value of my services, it would be only right and proper." there was another who heard with great satisfaction of luke's arrest. this was randolph duncan. as it happened, he was late in learning that his rival had got into trouble, not having seen his father since breakfast. "this is great news about luke," said his friend sam noble, meeting him on the street. "what news? i have heard nothing," said randolph, eagerly. "he has been arrested." "you don't say so!" exclaimed randolph. "what has he done?" "robbed the bank of a tin box full of bonds. it was worth an awful lot of money." "well, well!" ejaculated randolph. "i always thought he was a boy of no principle." "the tin box was found in his mother's trunk." "what did luke say? did he own up?" "no; he brazened it out. he said the box was given him to take care of by some mysterious stranger." "that's too thin. how was it traced to luke?" "it seems old maid sprague"--it was lucky for melinda's peace of mind that she did not hear this contemptuous reference to her--"went to the widow larkin's house one day and saw the tin box in her trunk." "she didn't leave the trunk open, did she?" "no; but she had it open, looking into it, when old melinda crept upstairs softly and caught her at it." "i suppose luke will have to go to state's prison," said randolph, with a gratified smile. "i hope it won't be quite so bad as that," said sam, who was not equal in malice to his aristocratic friend. "i haven't any pity for him," said randolph, decidedly. "if he chooses to steal, he must expect to be punished." just then mr. hooper, the grammer-school teacher, came up. "mr. hooper," said randolph, eagerly, "have you heard about luke?" "i have heard that he has been removed from his janitorship, and i'm sorry for it." "if he goes to jail he wouldn't be able to be janitor," said randolph. "goes to jail! what do you mean?" demanded the teacher, sharply. hereupon randolph told the story, aided and assisted by sam noble, to whom he referred as his authority. "this is too ridiculous!" said mr. hooper, contemptuously. "luke is no thief, and if he had the tin box he has given the right explanation of how he came by it." "i know he is a favorite of yours, mr. hooper, but that won't save him from going to jail," said randolph, tartly. "if he is a favorite of mine," said the teacher, with dignity, "it is for a very good reason. i have always found him to be a high-minded, honorable boy, and i still believe him to be so, in spite of the grave accusation that has been brought against him." there was something in the teacher's manner that deterred randolph from continuing his malicious attack upon luke. mr. hooper lost no time in inquiring into the facts of the case, and then in seeking out luke, whom he found in the constable's house. "luke," he said, extending his hand, "i have heard that you were in trouble, and i have come to see what i can do for you." "you are very kind, mr. hooper," said luke, gratefully. "i hope you don't believe me guilty." "i would as soon believe myself guilty of the charge, luke." "that's just what i said, mr. hooper," said constable perkins. "just as if there wasn't more than one tin box in the world." "you never told any one that you had a tin box in your custody, i suppose, luke?" "no, sir; the man who asked me to take care of it especially cautioned me to say nothing about it." "what was his name?" "roland reed." "do you know where to find him? it would be of service to you if you could obtain his evidence. it would clear you at once." "i wish i could, sir, but i have no idea where to look for him." "that is unfortunate," said the teacher, knitting his brows in perplexity. "when are you to be brought to trial?" "to-morrow, i hear." "well, luke, keep up a good heart and hope for the best." "i mean to, sir." chapter xiii in the court-room it was decided that luke should remain until his trial in the personal custody of constable perkins. except for the name of it, his imprisonment was not very irksome, for the perkins family treated him as an honored guest, and mrs. perkins prepared a nicer supper than usual. when mr. perkins went out he said to his wife, with a quizzical smile: "i leave luke in your charge. don't let him run away." "i'll look out for that," said mrs. perkins, smiling. "perhaps i had better leave you a pistol, my dear?" "i am afraid i should not know how to use it." "you might tie my hands," suggested luke. "that wouldn't prevent your walking away." "then my feet." "it won't be necessary, husband," said mrs. perkins. "i've got the poker and tongs ready." but, though treated in this jesting manner, luke could not help feeling a little anxious. for aught he knew, the tin box taken from his mother's trunk might be the same which had been stolen from the bank. in that case roland reed was not likely to appear again, and his story would be disbelieved. it was a strange one, he could not help admitting to himself. yet he could not believe that the mysterious stranger was a burglar. if he were, it seemed very improbable that he would have left his booty within half a mile of the bank, in the very village where the theft had been committed. it was all very queer, and he could not see into the mystery. "i should like to do something," thought luke. "it's dull work sitting here with folded hands." "isn't there something i can do, mrs. perkins?" he said. "i am not used to sitting about the house idle." "well, you might make me some pies," said mrs. perkins. "you'd never eat them if i did. i can boil eggs and fry potatoes. isn't there some wood to saw and split?" "plenty out in the shed." "i understand that, at any rate. have you any objection to my setting to work?" "no, if you won't run away." "send out charlie to watch me." charlie was a youngster about four years of age, and very fond of luke, who was a favorite with most young children. "yes, that will do. charlie, go into the shed and see luke saw wood." "yes, mama." "don't let him run away." "no, i won't," said charlie, gravely. luke felt happier when he was fairly at work. it took his mind off his troubles, as work generally does, and he spent a couple of hours in the shed. then mrs. perkins came to the door and called him. "luke," she said, "a young lady has called to see the prisoner." "a young lady! who is it?" "florence grant." luke's face brightened up with pleasure; he put on his coat and went into the house. "oh, luke, what a shame!" exclaimed florence, hastening to him with extended hand. "i only just heard of it." "then you're not afraid to shake hands with a bank burglar?" said luke. "no, indeed! what nonsense it is! who do you think told me of your arrest?" "randolph duncan." "you have guessed it." "what did he say? did he seem to be shocked at my iniquity?" "i think he seemed glad of it. of course, he believes you guilty." "i supposed he would, or pretend to, at any rate. i think his father is interested to make me out guilty. i hope you don't think there is any chance of it?" "of course not, luke. i know you too well. i'd sooner suspect randolph. he wanted to know what i thought of you now." "and what did you answer?" "that i thought the same as i always had--that you were one of the best boys in the village. `i admire your taste,' said randolph, with a sneer. then i gave him a piece of my mind." "i should like to have heard you, florence." "i don't know; you have no idea what a virago i am when i am mad. now sit down and tell me all about it." luke obeyed, and the conversation was a long one, and seemed interesting to both. in the midst of it linton tomkins came in. "have you come to see the prisoner, also, linton?" asked florence. "yes, florence. what a desperate-looking ruffian he is! i don't dare to come too near. how did you break into the bank, luke?" first luke smiled, then he became grave. "after all, it is no joke to me, linny," he said. "think of the disgrace of being arrested on such a charge." "the disgrace is in being a burglar, not in being arrested for one, luke. of course, it's absurd. father wants me to say that if you are bound over for trial he will go bail for you to any amount." "your father is very kind, linny. i may need to avail myself of his kindness." the next day came, and at ten o'clock, luke, accompanied by constable perkins, entered the room in which squire duncan sat as trial justice. a considerable number of persons were gathered, for it was a trial in which the whole village was interested. among them was mrs. larkin, who wore an anxious, perturbed look. "oh, luke," she said sorrowfully, "how terrible it is to have you here!" "don't be troubled, mother," said luke. "we both know that i am innocent, and i rely on god to stand by me." "luke," said mr. beane, "though i am a bank trustee, i am your friend and believe you innocent. i will act as your lawyer." "thank you, mr. beane. i shall be very glad to accept your services." the preliminary proceedings were of a formal character. then miss melinda sprague was summoned to testify. she professed to be very unwilling to say anything likely to injure her good friends, luke and his mother, but managed to tell, quite dramatically, how she first caught a glimpse of the tin box. "did mrs. larkin know that you saw it?" asked the squire. "she didn't know for certain," answered melinda, "but she was evidently afraid i would, for she shut the trunk in a hurry, and seemed very much confused. i thought of this directly when i heard of the bank robbery, and i went over to tell luke and his mother." "how did they receive your communication?" "they seemed very much frightened." "and you inferred that they had not come honestly by the tin box?" "it grieves me to say that i did," said melinda, putting her handkerchief to her eyes to brush away an imaginary tear. finally melinda sat down, and witnesses were called to testify to luke's good character. there were more who wished to be sworn than there was time to hear. mr. beane called only mr. hooper, mr. tomkins and luke's sunday-school teacher. then he called luke to testify in his own defense. luke told a straightforward story--the same that he had told before--replying readily and easily to any questions that were asked him. "i submit, squire duncan," said mr. beane, "that my client's statement is plain and frank and explains everything. i hold that it exonerates him from all suspicion of complicity with the robbery." "i differ with you," said squire duncan, acidly. "it is a wild, improbable tale, that does not even do credit to the prisoner's invention. in my opinion, this mysterious stranger has no existence. is there any one besides himself who has seen this roland reed?" at this moment there was a little confusion at the door. a tall, dark-complexioned stranger pushed his way into the court-room. he advanced quickly to the front. "i heard my name called," he said. "there is no occasion to doubt my existence. i am roland reed!" chapter xiv an important witness the effect of roland reed's sudden appearance in the court-room, close upon the doubt expressed as to his existence, was electric. every head was turned, and every one present looked with eager curiosity at the mysterious stranger. they saw a darkcomplexioned, slender, but wiry man, above the middle height, with a pair of keen black eyes scanning, not without sarcastic amusement, the faces turned toward him. luke recognized him at once. "thank god!" he ejaculated, with a feeling of intense relief. "now my innocence will be made known." squire duncan was quite taken aback. his face betrayed his surprise and disappointment. "i don't know you," he said, after a pause. "perhaps not, mr. duncan," answered the stranger, in a significant tone, "but i know you." "were you the man who gave this tin box to the defendant?" "wouldn't it be well, since this is a court, to swear me as a witness?" asked roland reed, quietly. "of course, of course," said the squire, rather annoyed to be reminded of his duty by this stranger. this being done, mr. beane questioned the witness in the interest of his client. "do you know anything about the tin box found in the possession of luke larkin?" he asked. "yes, sir." "did you commit it to his charge for safe-keeping?" "i did." "were you previously acquainted with luke?" "i was not." "was it not rather a singular proceeding to commit what is presumably of considerable value to an unknown boy?" "it would generally be considered so, but i do many strange things. i had seen the boy by daylight, though he had never seen me, and i was sure i could trust him." "why, if you desired a place of safe-keeping for your box, did you not select the bank vaults?" roland reed laughed, and glanced at the presiding justice. "it might have been stolen," he said. "does the box contain documents of value?" "the contents are valuable to me, at any rate." "mr. beane," said squire duncan, irritably, "i think you are treating the witness too indulgently. i believe this box to be the one taken from the bank." "you heard the remark of the justice," said the lawyer. "is this the box taken from the bank?" "it is not," answered the witness, contemptuously, "and no one knows this better than mr. duncan." the justice flushed angrily. "you are impertinent, witness," he said. "it is all very well to claim this box as yours, but i shall require you to prove ownership." "i am ready to do so," said roland reed, quietly. "is that the box on the table?" "it is." "has it been opened?" "no; the key has disappeared from the bank." "the key is in the hands of the owner, where it properly belongs. with the permission of the court, i will open the box." "i object," said squire duncan, quickly. "permit me to say that your refusal is extraordinary," said mr. beane, pointedly. "you ask the witness to prove property, and then decline to allow him to do so." squire duncan, who saw that he had been betrayed into a piece of folly, said sullenly: "i don't agree with you, mr. beane, but i withdraw my objection. the witness may come forward and open the box, if he can." roland reed bowed slightly, advanced to the table, took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and inserting one of the smallest in the lock easily opened the box. those who were near enough, including the justice, craned their necks forward to look into the box. the box contained papers, certificates of stock, apparently, and a couple of bank-books. "the box missing from the vault contained government bonds, as i understand, squire duncan?" said the lawyer. "yes," answered the justice, reluctantly. "are there any government bonds in the box, mr. reed." "you can see for yourself, sir." the manner of the witness toward the lawyer was courteous, though in the tone in which he addressed the court there had been a scarcely veiled contempt. "i submit, then, that my young client has been guilty of no wrong. he accepted the custody of the box from the rightful owner, and this he had a clear right to do." "how do you know that the witness is the rightful owner of the box?" demanded the justice, in a cross tone. "he may have stolen it from some other quarter." "there is not a shadow of evidence of this," said the lawyer, in a tone of rebuke. "i am not sure but that he ought to be held." "you will hold me at your peril, mr. duncan," said the witness, in clear, resolute tones. "i have a clear comprehension of my rights, and i do not propose to have them infringed." squire duncan bit his lips. he had only a smattering of law, but he knew that the witness was right, and that he had been betrayed by temper into making a discreditable exhibition of himself. "i demand that you treat me with proper respect," he said angrily. "i am ready to do that," answered the witness, in a tone whose meaning more than one understood. it was not an apology calculated to soothe the ruffled pride of the justice. "i call for the discharge of my young client, squire duncan," said the lawyer. "the case against him, as i hardly need say, has utterly failed." "he is discharged," said the justice, unwillingly. instantly luke's friends surrounded him and began to shower congratulations upon him. among them was roland reed. "my young friend," he said, "i am sincerely sorry that by any act of mine i have brought anxiety and trouble upon you. but i can't understand how the fact that you had the box in your possession became known." this was explained to him. "i have a proposal to make to you and your mother," said roland reed, "and with your permission i will accompany you home." "we shall be glad to have you, sir," said mrs. larkin, cordially. as they were making their way out of the court-room, melinda sprague, the cause of luke's trouble, hurried to meet them. she saw by this time that she had made a great mistake, and that her course was likely to make her generally unpopular. she hoped to make it up with the larkins. "i am so glad you are acquitted, luke," she began effusively. "i hope, mrs. larkin, you won't take offense at what i did. i did what i thought to be my duty, though with a bleeding heart. no one is more rejoiced at dear luke's vindication." "miss sprague," said she, "if you think you did your duty, let the consciousness of that sustain you. i do not care to receive any visits from you hereafter." "how cruel and unfeeling you are, mrs. larkin," said the spinster, putting her handkerchief to her eyes. mrs. larkin did not reply. miss sprague found herself so coldly treated in the village that she shortly left groveton on a prolonged visit to some relatives in a neighboring town. it is to be feared that the consciousness of having done her duty did not wholly console her. what she regretted most, however, was the loss of the reward which she had hoped to receive from the bank. chapter xv the larkins are ln luck luke and his mother, accompanied by roland reed, took their way from the court-room to the widow's modest cottage. "you may take the tin box, luke," said the stranger, "if you are not afraid to keep in your charge what has given you so much trouble." "all's well that ends well!" said luke. "yes; i don't think it will occasion you any further anxiety." roland reed walked in advance with mrs. larkin, leaving luke to follow. "what sort of a man is this mr. duncan?" he asked abruptly. "squire duncan?" "yes, if that is his title." "he is, upon the whole, our foremost citizen," answered the widow, after a slight hesitation. "is he popular?" "i can hardly say that." "he is president of the bank, is he not?" "yes." "how long has he lived in groveton?" "nearly twenty years." "was he born in this neighborhood?" "i think he came from the west." "does he say from what part of the western country?" "he says very little about his past life." roland reed smiled significantly. "perhaps he has his reasons," he said meditatively. "is he thought to be rich?" he asked, after a pause. "yes, but how rich no one knows. he is taxed for his house and grounds, but he may have a good deal of property besides. it is generally thought he has." "he does not appear to be friendly toward your son." "no," answered mrs. larkin, with a trace of indignation, "though i am sure he has no cause to dislike him. he seemed convinced that luke had come by your tin box dishonestly." "it seemed to me that he was prejudiced against luke. how do you account for it?" "perhaps his son, randolph, has influenced him." "so he has a son--how old?" "almost luke's age. he thinks luke beneath him, though why he should do so, except that luke is poor, i can't understand. not long since there was a skating match for a prize of a waterbury watch, offered by the grammar-school teacher, which luke would have won had not randolph arranged with another boy to get in his way and leave the victory to him." "so randolph won the watch?" "yes." "i suppose he had a watch of his own already." "yes, a silver one, while luke had none. this makes it meaner in him." "i don't mind it now, mother," said luke, who had overheard the last part of the conversation. "he is welcome to his watches --i can wait." "has squire duncan shown his hostility to luke in any other way?" inquired the stranger. "yes; luke has for over a year been janitor at the school-house. it didn't bring much--only a dollar a week--but it was considerable to us. lately squire duncan was appointed on the school committee to fill a vacancy, and his first act was to remove luke from his position." "not in favor of his son, i conclude." luke laughed. "randolph would be shocked at the mere supposition," he said. "he is a young man who wears kid gloves, and the duties of a school janitor he would look upon as degrading." "i really think, luke, you have been badly treated," said roland reed, with a friendly smile. "i have thought so, too, sir, but i suppose i have no better claim to the office than any other boy." "you needed the income, however." "yes, sir." by this time they were at the door of the cottage. "won't you come in, sir?" asked mrs. larkin, cordially. "thank you. i will not only do so, but as i don't care to stay at the hotel, i will even crave leave to pass the night under your roof." "if you don't mind our poor accommodations, you will be very welcome." "i am not likely to complain, mrs. larkin. i have not been nursed in the lap of luxury. for two years i was a california miner, and camped out. for that long period i did not know what it was to sleep in a bed. i used to stretch myself in a blanket, and lie down on the ground." "you won't have to do that here, mr. reed," said luke, smiling. "but it must have been great fun." "how can you say so, luke?" expostulated his mother. "it must have been very uncomfortable, and dangerous to the health." "i wouldn't mind it a bit, mother," said luke, stoutly. roland reed smiled. {"i am not surprised that you and your mother regard the matter from different points of view," he said. "it is only natural. women are not adapted to roughing it. boys like nothing better, and so with young men. but there comes a time--when a man passes forty--when he sets a higher value on the comforts of life. i don't mind confessing that i wouldn't care to repeat my old mining experiences." "i hope you were repaid for your trouble and privations, sir." "yes, i was handsomely repaid. i may soon be as rich as your local magnate, prince duncan, but i have had to work harder for it, probably." "so you know the squire's name?" said mrs. larkin, in some surprise. "i must have heard it somewhere," remarked roland reed. "have i got it right?" "yes; it's a peculiar name." when they reached the cottage mrs. larkin set about getting supper. in honor of her guest she sent out for some steak, and baked some biscuit, so that the table presented an inviting appearance when the three sat down to it. after supper was over, roland reed said: "i told you that i wished to speak to you on business, mrs. larkin. it is briefly this: are you willing to receive a boarder?" "i am afraid, sir, that you would hardly be satisfied with our humble accommodations." "oh, i am not speaking of myself, but of a child. i am a widower, mrs. larkin, and have a little daughter eight years of age. she is now boarding in new york, but i do not like the people with whom i have placed her. she is rather delicate, also, and i think a country town would suit her better than the city air. i should like to have her under just such nice motherly care as i am sure you would give her." "i shall be very glad to receive her," said mrs. larkin, with a flush of pleasure. "and for the terms?" "i would rather you would name them, sir." "then i will say ten dollars a week." "ten dollars!" exclaimed the widow, in amazement. "it won't be worth half that." "i don't pay for board merely, but for care and attendance as well. she may be sick, and that would increase your trouble." "she would in that case receive as much care as if she were my own daughter; but i don't ask such an exorbitant rate of board." "it isn't exorbitant if i choose to pay it, mrs. larkin," said mr. reed, smiling. "i am entirely able to pay that price, and prefer to do so." "it will make me feel quite rich, sir," said the widow, gratefully. "i shall find it useful, especially as luke has lost his situation." "luke may find another position." "when do you wish your daughter to come?" asked mrs. larkin. "luke will accompany me to the city to-morrow, and bring her back with him. by the way, i will pay you four weeks in advance." he drew four ten-dollar bills from his pocket and put them into the widow's hand. "i am almost afraid this is a dream," said mrs. larkin. "you have made me very happy." "you mustn't become purse-proud, mother," said luke, "because you have become suddenly rich." "can you be ready to take the first train to new york with me in the morning, luke?" asked roland reed. "yes, sir; it starts at half-past seven." "your breakfast will be ready on time," said the widow, "and luke will call you." chapter xvi luke's visit to new york the morning train to new york carried among its passengers luke and his new friend. the distance was thirty-five miles, and the time occupied was a trifle over an hour. the two sat together, and luke had an opportunity of observing his companion more closely. he was a man of middle age, dark complexion, with keen black eyes, and the expression of one who understood the world and was well fitted to make his way in it. he had already given the larkins to understand that he had been successful in accumulating money. as for luke, he felt happy and contented. the tide of fortune seemed to have turned in his favor, or rather in favor of his family. the handsome weekly sum which would be received for the board of mr. reed's little daughter would be sufficient of itself to defray the modest expenses of their household. if he, too, could obtain work, they would actually feel rich. "luke," said his companion, "does your mother own the cottage where you live?" "yes, sir." "free of incumbrance?" "not quite. there is a mortgage of three hundred dollars held by squire duncan. it was held by deacon tibbetts, but about three months since squire duncan bought it." "what could be his object in buying it?" "i don't know, sir. perhaps the deacon owed him money." "i am surprised, then, that he deprived you of your position as janitor, since it would naturally make it more difficult for you to meet the interest." "that is true, sir. i wondered at it myself." "your house is a small one, but the location is fine. it would make a building lot suitable for a gentleman's summer residence." "yes, sir; there was a gentleman in the village last summer who called upon mother and tried to induce her to sell." "did he offer her a fair price?" "no, sir; he said he should have to take down the cottage, and he only offered eight hundred dollars. mother would have sold for a thousand." "tell her not to accept even that offer, but to hold on to the property. some day she can obtain considerably more." "she won't sell unless she is obliged to," replied luke. "a few days since i thought we might have to do it. now, with the generous sum which you allow for your little girl's board there will be no necessity." "has squire duncan broached the subject to your mother?" "he mentioned it one day, but he wanted her to sell for seven hundred dollars." "he is evidently sharp at a bargain." "yes, sir; he is not considered liberal." there was one thing that troubled luke in spite of the pleasure he anticipated from his visit to new york. he knew very well that his clothes were shabby, and he shrank from the idea of appearing on broadway in a patched suit too small for him. but he had never breathed a word of complaint to his mother, knowing that she could not afford to buy him another suit, and he did not wish to add to her troubles. it might have happened that occasionally he fixed a troubled look on his clothes, but if roland reed noticed it he did not make any comment. but when they reached new york, and found themselves on broadway, his companion paused in front of a large clothing store with large plate-glass windows, and said, quietly: "come in, luke. i think you need some new clothes." luke's face flushed with pleasure, but he said, "i have no money, mr. reed." "i have," said roland reed, significantly. "you are very kind, sir," said luke, gratefully. "it costs little to be kind when you have more money than you know what to do with," said reed. "i don't mean that i am a vanderbilt or an astor, but my income is much greater than i need to spend on myself." a suit was readily found which fitted luke as well as if it had been made for him. it was of gray mixed cloth, made in fashionable style. "you may as well keep it on, luke." then to the shopman: "have you a nice suit of black cloth, and of the same size?" "yes, sir," answered the salesman, readily. "he may as well have two while we are about it. as to the old suit, it is too small, and we will leave it here to be given away to some smaller boy." luke was quite overwhelmed by his new friend's munificence. "i don't think mother will know me," he said, as he surveyed himself in a long mirror. "then i will introduce you or give you a letter of introduction. have you a watch, luke?" "no, sir; you know i did not get the prize at the skating match." "true; then i must remedy the deficiency." they took the roadway stage down below the astor house-it was before the days of jacob sharp's horse railway--and got out at benedict's. there mr. reed made choice of a neat silver watch, manufactured at waltham, and bought a plated chain to go with it. "put that in your vest pocket," he said. "it may console you for the loss of the waterbury." "how can i ever repay you for your kindness, mr. reed?" said luke, overjoyed. "i have taken a fancy to you, luke," said his companion. "i hope to do more for you soon. now we will go uptown, and i will put my little girl under your charge." luke had dreaded making a call at a nice city house in his old suit. now he looked forward to it with pleasure, especially after his new friend completed his benefactions by buying him a new pair of shoes and a hat. "luke," asked his companion, as they were on their way uptown in a sixth avenue car, "do you know who owned the box of bonds taken from the groveton bank?" "i have heard that it was a mr. armstrong, now traveling in europe." "how did he come to leave the box in a village bank?" "he is some acquaintance of squire duncan, and spent some weeks last summer at the village hotel." "then probably he left the box there at the suggestion of duncan, the president." "i don't know, sir, but i think it very likely." "humph! this is getting interesting. the contents of the box were government bonds, i have heard." "i heard squire duncan say so." "were they coupon or registered?" "what difference would that make, sir?" "the first could be sold without trouble by the thief, while the last could not be disposed of without a formal transfer from the owner." "then it would not pay to steal them?" "just so. luke, do you know, a strange idea has come into my head." "what is it, sir?" "i think prince duncan knows more about how those bonds were spirited away than is suspected." luke was greatly surprised. "you don't think he took them himself, do you?" he asked. "that remains to be seen. it is a curious affair altogether. i may have occasion to speak of it another time. are you a good writer?" "fair, i believe, sir." "i have recently come into possession of a business in a city in ohio, which i carry on through a paid agent. among other things, i have bought out the old accounts. i shall need to have a large number of bills made out, covering a series of years, which i shall then put into the hands of a collector and realize so far as i can. this work, with a little instruction, i think you can do." "i shall be very glad to do it, sir." "you will be paid fairly for the labor." "i don't need any pay, mr. reed. you have already paid me handsomely." "you refer to the clothing and the watch? those are gifts. i will pay you thirty cents an hour for the time employed, leaving you to keep the account. the books of the firm i have at the house where my daughter is boarding. you will take them back to groveton with you." "this is a fortunate day for me," said luke. "it will pay me much better than the janitorship." "do your duty, luke, and your good fortune will continue. but here is our street." they left the car at the corner of fourteenth street and sixth avenue, and turning westward, paused in front of a four-story house of good appearance. chapter xvii randolph is mystified in an hour, luke, with the little girl under his charge, was on his way to the depot, accompanied by mr. reed, who paid for their tickets, and bade them good-bye, promising to communicate with luke. rosa reed was a bright little girl of about eight years of age. she made no opposition to going with luke, but put her hand confidently in his, and expressed much pleasure at the prospect of living in the country. she had been under the care of two maiden ladies, the misses graham, who had no love for children, and had merely accepted the charge on account of the liberal terms paid them by the father. they seemed displeased at the withdrawal of rosa, and clearly signified this by their cold, stiff reception of mr. reed and luke. "the old girls don't like to part with rosa," he said, with a smile, as they emerged into the street. "are you sorry to leave them, rosa?" he inquired. "no; they ain't a bit pleasant," answered the little girl, decidedly. "were they strict with you?" asked luke. "yes; they were always saying, `little girls should be seen and not heard!' they didn't want me to make a bit of noise, and wouldn't let me have any little girls in to play with me. are there any little girls at your home?" "no, but there are some living near by, and they will come to see you." "that will be nice," said rosa, with satisfaction. directions were left to have the little girl's trunk go to groveton by express, and, therefore, luke was encumbered only by a small satchel belonging to his new charge. of the details of the journey it is unnecessary to speak. the two young travelers arrived at groveton, and, as it chanced, reached luke's cottage without attracting much observation. the door was opened by the widow, whose kind manner at once won the favor of the child. "i like you much better than miss graham," she said, with childish frankness. "i am glad of that, my child," said mrs. larkin. "i will try to make this a pleasant home for you." "i like luke, too," said rosa. "really, rosa, you make me blush," said luke. "i am not used to hearing young ladies say they like me." "i think he is a good boy," said rosa, reflectively. "isn't he, mrs. larkin?" "i think so, my dear," said the widow, smiling. "then i suppose i shall have to behave like one," said luke. "do you think i have improved in appearance, mother?" "i noticed your new suit at once, luke." "i have another in this bundle, mother; and that isn't all. do you see this watch? i sha'n't mourn the loss of the waterbury any longer." "mr. reed is certainly proving a kind friend, luke. we have much reason to be grateful." "he has also provided me with employment for a time, mother." and then luke told his mother about the copying he had engaged to do. it is hardy necessary to say that the heart of the widow was unfeignedly thankful for the favorable change in their fortunes, and she did not omit to give thanks to providence for raising up so kind and serviceable a friend. about the middle of the afternoon luke made his appearance in the village street. though i hope my readers will not suspect him of being a dude, he certainly did enjoy the consciousness of being well dressed. he hoped he should meet randolph, anticipating the surprise and disappointment of the latter at the evidence of his prosperity. when luke was arrested, randolph rejoiced as only a mean and spiteful boy would be capable of doing at the humiliation and anticipated disgrace of a boy whom he disliked. he had indulged in more than one expression of triumph, and sought every opportunity of discussing the subject, to the disgust of all fair-minded persons. even sam noble protested, though a toady of randolph. "look here, randolph," he said, "i don't like luke overmuch, and i know he doesn't like me, but i don't believe he's a thief, and i am sorry he is in trouble." "then you are no friend of mine," said randolph, looking black. "oh, i say, randolph, you know better than that. haven't i always stood up for you, and done whatever you wanted me to?" "if you were my friend you wouldn't stand up for luke." "i am not a friend of his, and i am a friend of yours, but i don't want him to go to prison." "i do, if he deserves it." "i don't believe he does deserve it." "that is what i complain of in you." "the fact is, randolph, you expect too much. if you want to break friendship, all right." randolph was amazed at this unexpected independence on the part of one whom he regarded as his bond slave; but, being hardly prepared to part with him, especially as his other follower, tom harper, had partially thrown off his allegiance, thought it prudent to be satisfied with sam's expressions of loyalty, even if they did not go as far as he wished. randolph missed luke at school on the day after the trial. of course, he had no idea that our hero was out of school, and hastily concluded that on account of his trial he was ashamed to show himself. "i don't wonder he doesn't want to show himself," he remarked to tom harper. "why not? he has been acquitted." "never mind. he has been under arrest, and may yet be guilty in spite of his acquittal. have you seen him to-day?" "no." "probably he is hiding at home. well, it shows some sort of shame." on his way home from school randolph was destined to be surprised. not far from his own house he met luke, arrayed in his new suit, with a chain that looked like gold crossing his waistcoat. instead of looking confused and ashamed, luke looked uncommonly bright and cheerful. randolph was amazed. what could it all mean? he had intended not to notice luke, but to pass him with a scornful smile, but his curiosity got the better of him. "why were you not at school to-day?" he asked, abruptly. luke smiled. "i didn't think you would miss me, randolph." "i didn't, but wondered at your absence." "i was detained by business. i expect to have the pleasure of seeing you there to-morrow." "humph! you seem to have invested in a new suit." "yes; my old suit was getting decidedly shabby, as you kindly remarked at florence grant's party." "where did you get them?" "in new york." "in new york!" repeated randolph, in surprise. "when did you go there?" "this morning. it was that which detained me from school." "i see you've got a new watch-chain, too." randolph emphasized the word "chain" satirically, being under the impression that no watch was attached. "yes; you may like to see my new watch." and luke, with pardonable triumph, produced his new watch, which was a stemwinder, whereas randolph's was only a key-winder. randolph condescended to take the watch in his hands and examine it. "where was this bought?" he asked. "at benedict's." "you seem to have plenty of money," he said, with unpleasant significance. "i should like more." "only you are rather imprudent in making such extensive purchases so soon after your trial." "what do you mean?" demanded luke quickly. "what should i mean? it is evident that you robbed the bank, after all. i shall tell my father, and you may find your trouble is not over." "look here, randolph duncan!" said luke sternly, "i look upon that as an insult, and i don't mean to be insulted. i am no more a thief than you are, and that you know." "do you mean to charge me with being a thief?" fumed randolph. "no; i only say you are as much a thief as i am. if you repeat your insult, i shall be obliged to knock you down." "you impudent loafer!" screamed randolph. "you'll be sorry for this. i'll have you arrested over again." "i have no doubt you would if you had the power. i sha'n't lie awake nights thinking of it. if you have nothing more to say i will leave you." randolph did not reply, probably because he was at a loss what to say, but went home angry and mystified. where could luke have got his watch and new suit? he asked himself this many times, but no possible explanation suggested itself. scarcely had luke parted with randolph when he met his friend linton, who surveyed luke's improved appearance with pleasure and surprise. "i say, luke, are you setting up for a dude?" "i thought a little of it," answered luke, with a smile--and then he explained the cause of his good fortune. "i have only one regret," he added, "randolph seems to be grieved over it. he liked me better in my old suit. besides, i have a new watch, and it turns out to be better than his." here he displayed his new silver watch. linton felt a generous pleasure in luke's luck, and it may truly be said rejoiced more at it than he would at any piece of good fortune to himself. "by the way, luke," he said, "i am going to give a party next thursday evening, and i give you the very first invitation. it is my birthday, you know." "i accept with pleasure, sir. i look upon you as my warmest friend, and as long as i retain your friendship i shall not care for randolph's malice." chapter xviii mr. duncan's secret about two weeks later, prince duncan sat at his desk with a troubled look. open before him were letters. one was postmarked london, and ran as follows: "my dear sir: i have decided to shorten my visit, and shall leave liverpool next saturday en route for new york. you will see, therefore, that i shall arrive nearly as soon as the letter i am now writing. i have decided to withdraw the box of securities i deposited in your bank, and shall place it in a safe-deposit vault in new york. you may expect to see me shortly. "yours in haste, "john armstrong." drops of perspiration gathered on the brow of prince duncan as he read this letter. what would mr. armstrong say when he learned that the box had mysteriously disappeared? that he would be thoroughly indignant, and make it very unpleasant for the president of groveton bank, was certain. he would ask, among other things, why mr. duncan had not informed him of the loss by cable, and no satisfactory explanation could be given. he would ask, furthermore, why detectives had not been employed to ferret out the mystery, and here again no satisfactory explanation could be given. prince duncan knew very well that he had a reason, but it was not one that could be disclosed. he next read the second letter, and his trouble was not diminished. it was from a wall street broker, informing him that the erie shares bought for him on a margin had gone down two points, and it would be necessary for him to deposit additional margin, or be sold out. "why did i ever invest in erie?" thought duncan ruefully. "i was confidently assured that it would go up--that it must go up--and here it is falling, and heaven knows how much lower it will go." at this point the door opened, and randolph entered. he had a special favor to ask. he had already given his father several hints that he would like a gold watch, being quite dissatisfied with his silver watch now that luke larkin possessed one superior to his. he had chosen a very unfavorable moment for his request, as he soon found out. "father," he said, "i have a favor to ask." "what is it?" asked prince duncan, with a frown. "i wish you would buy me a gold watch." "oh, you do!" sneered his father. "i was under the impression that you had two watches already." "so i have, but one is a waterbury, and the other a cheap silver one." "well, they keep time, don't they?" "yes." "then what more do you want?" "luke larkin has a silver watch better than mine--a stem-winder." "suppose he has?" "i don't want a working boy like him to outshine me." "where did he get his watch?" "i don't know; he won't tell. will you buy me a gold one, father? then i can look down upon him again." "no, i can't. money is very scarce with me just now." "then i don't want to wear a watch at all," said randolph pettishly. "suit yourself," said his father coldly. "now you may leave the room. i am busy." randolph left the room. he would have slammed the door behind him, but he knew his father's temper, and he did not dare to do so. "what am i to do?" prince duncan asked himself anxiously. "i must send money to the brokers, or they will sell me out, and i shall meet with a heavy loss." after a little thought he wrote a letter enclosing a check, but dated it two days ahead. "they will think it a mistake," he thought, "and it will give me time to turn around. now for money to meet the check when it arrives." prince duncan went up-stairs, and, locking the door of his chamber, opened a large trunk in one corner of the room. from under a pile of clothing he took out a tin box, and with hands that trembled with excitement he extracted therefrom a dozen government bonds. one was for ten thousand dollars, one for five, and the remainder were for one thousand dollars each. "if they were only sold, and the money deposited in the bank to my credit," he thought. "i am almost sorry i started in this thing. the risk is very great, but--but i must have money." at this moment some one tried the door. prince duncan turned pale, and the bonds nearly fell from his hands. "who's there?" he asked. "it is i, papa," answered randolph. "then you may go down-stairs again," answered his father angrily. "i don't want to be disturbed." "won't you open the door a minute? i just want to ask a question." "no, i won't. clear out!" exclaimed the bank president angrily. "what a frightful temper father has!" thought the discomfited randolph. there was nothing for it but to go down-stairs, and he did so in a very discontented frame of mind. "it seems to me that something is going contrary," said duncan to himself. "it is clear that it won't do to keep these bonds lhere any longer. i must take them to new york to-morrow-and raise money on them." on second thought, to-morrow he decided only to take the five-thousand-dollar bond, and five of the one thousand, fearing that too large a sale at one time might excite suspicion. carefully selecting the bonds referred to, he put them away in a capacious pocket, and, locking the trunk, went down-stairs again. "there is still time to take the eleven-o'clock train," he said, consulting his watch. "i must do it." seeking his wife, he informed her that he would take the next train for new york. "isn't this rather sudden?" she asked, in surprise. "a little, perhaps, but i have a small matter of business to attend to. besides, i think the trip will do me good. i am not feeling quite as well as usual." "i believe i will go, too," said mrs. duncan unexpectedly. "i want to make some purchases at stewart's." this suggestion was very far from agreeable to her husband. "really--i am"--he said, "i must disappoint you. my time will be wholly taken up by matters of business, and i can't go with you." "you don't need to. i can take care of myself, and we can meet at the depot at four o'clock." "besides, i can't supply you with any money for shopping." "i have enough. i might have liked a little more, but i can make it do." "perhaps it will look better if we go in company," thought prince duncan." she needn't be in my way, for we can part at the station." "very well, jane," he said quietly. "if you won't expect me to dance attendance upon you, i withdraw my objections." the eleven-o'clock train for new york had among its pasengers mr. and mrs. duncan. there was another passenger whom neither of them noticed-a small, insignificant-looking man--who occasionally directed a quick glance at the portly bank president. chapter xix effectlng a loan prince duncan was unusually taciturn during the railroad journey--so much so that his wife noticed it, and inquired the reason. "business, my, dear," answered the bank president. "i am rather perplexed by a matter of business." "business connected with the bank, mr. duncan?" asked his wife. "no, private business." "have you heard anything yet of the stolen bonds?" "not yet." "have you any suspicion?" "none that i am at liberty to mention," answered duncan, looking mysterious. "i suppose you no longer suspect that boy luke?" "i don't know. the man who owns to having given him the tin box for safe-keeping is, in my opinion, a suspicious character. i shouldn't be at all surprised if he were a jailbird." the small man already referred to, who occupied a seat just across the aisle, here smiled slightly, but whether at the president's remark, is not clear. "what did he call himself?" "roland reed--no doubt an alias." "it seems to me you ought to follow him up, and see if you can't convict him of the theft." "you may be sure, jane, that the president and directors of the groveton bank will do their duty in this matter," said mr. duncan rather grandiloquently. "by the way, i have received this morning a letter from mr. armstrong, the owner of the stolen bonds, saying that he will be at home in a few days." "does he know of the loss?" "not yet." "how will he take it?" "really, jane, you are very inquisitive this morning. i presume he will be very much annoyed." the car had become quite warm, and mr. duncan, who had hitherto kept on his overcoat, rose to take it off. unfortunately for him he quite forgot the bonds he had in the inside pocket, and in his careless handling of the coat the package fell upon the floor of the car, one slipping out of the envelope a bond for one thousand dollars. prince duncan turned pale, and stooped to pick up the package. but the small man opposite was too quick for him. he raised the package from the floor, and handing it to the bank president with a polite bow, said, with a smile: "you wouldn't like to lose this, sir." "no," answered duncan gruffly, angry with the other for anticipating him, "it was awkward of me." mrs. duncan also saw the bond, and inquired with natural curiosity. "do they belong to the bank, mr. duncan?" "no; they are my own." "i am glad of that. what are you going to do with them?" "hush! it is dangerous to speak of them here. some one might hear, and i might be followed. i am very much annoyed that they have been seen at all." this closed mrs. duncan's mouth, but she resolved to make further inquiries when they were by themselves. prince duncan looked askance at his opposite neighbor. he was a man who had come to groveton recently, and had opened a billiard saloon and bar not far from the bank. he was not regarded as a very desirable citizen, and had already excited the anxiety of parents by luring into the saloon some of the boys and young men of the village. among them, though squire duncan did not know it, was his own son randolph, who had already developed quite a fondness for playing pool, and even occasionally patronized the bar. this, had he known it, would have explained randolph's increased applications for money. whether tony denton--his full name was anthony denton--had any special object in visiting new york, i am unable to state. at all events it appeared that his business lay in the same direction as that of prince duncan, for on the arrival of the train at the new york depot, he followed the bank president at a safe distance, and was clearly bent upon keeping him in view. mr. duncan walked slowly, and appeared to be plunged in anxious thought. his difficulties were by no means over. he had the bonds to dispose of, and he feared the large amount might occasion suspicion. they were coupon bonds, and bore no name or other evidence of ownership. yet the mere fact of having such a large amount might occasion awkward inquiries. "here's yer mornin' papers!" called a negro newsboy, thrusting his bundle in front of the country banker. "give me a _herald_," said mr. duncan. opening the paper, his eye ran hastily over the columns. it lighted up as he saw a particular advertisement. "the very thing," he said to himself. this was the advertisement: "loan office--we are prepared to loan sums to suit, on first-class security, at a fair rate of interest. call or address sharp & ketchum, no. -wall street. third floor." "i will go there," prince duncan suddenly decided. "i will borrow what i can on these bonds, and being merely held on collateral, they will be kept out of the market. at the end of six months, say, i will redeem them, or order them sold, and collect the balance, minus the interest." having arrived at this conclusion, he quickened his pace, his expression became more cheerful, and he turned his steps toward wall street. "what did the old fellow see in the paper?" thought tony. denton, who, still undiscovered, followed mr. duncan closely. "it is something that pleased him, evidently." he beckoned the same newsboy, bought a _herald_ also, and turning to that part of the paper on which the banker's eyes had been resting, discovered sharp & ketchum's advertisement. "that's it, i'll bet a hat," he decided. "he is going to raise money on the bonds. i'll follow him." when duncan turned into wall street, tony denton felt that he had guessed correctly. he was convinced when the bank president paused before the number indicated in the advertisement. "it won't do for me to follow him in," he said to himself, "nor will it be necessary--i can remember the place and turn it to my own account by and by." prince duncan went up-stairs, and paused before a door on which was inscribed: sharp & ketchum bankers loans negotiated he opened the door, and found the room furnished in the style of a private banking-office. "is mr. sharp or mr. ketchum in?" he inquired of a sharpfaced young clerk, the son, as it turned out, of the senior partner. "yes, sir, mr. sharp is in." "is he at leisure? i wish to see him on business." "go in there, sir," said the clerk, pointing to a small private room in the corner of the office. following the directions, mr. duncan found himself in the presence of a man of about fifty, with a hatchet face, much puckered with wrinkles, and a very foxy expression. "i am mr. sharp," he said, in answer to an inquiry. prince duncan unfolded his business. he wished to borrow eight or nine thousand dollars on ten thousand dollars' worth of united states government bonds. "why don't you sell at once?" asked sharp keenly. "because i wish, for special reasons, to redeem these identical bonds, say six months hence." "they are your own?" asked mr. sharp. "they are a part of my wife's estate, of which i have control. i do not, however, wish her to know that i have raised money on them," answered duncan, with a smooth falsehood. "of course, that makes a difference. however, i will loan you seven thousand dollars, and you will give me your note for seven thousand five hundred, at the usual interest, with permission to sell the bonds at the end of six months if the note remains unpaid then, i to hand you the balance." prince duncan protested against these terms as exorbitant, but was finally obliged to accede to them. on the whole, he was fairly satisfied. the check would relieve him from all his embarrassments and give him a large surplus. "so far so good!" said tony denton, as he saw mr. duncan emerge into the street. "if i am not greatly mistaken this will prove a lucky morning for me." chapter xx luke talks with a capitalist luke worked steadily on the task given him by his new patron. during the first week he averaged three hours a day, with an additional two hours on saturday, making, in all, twenty hours, making, at thirty cents per hour, six dollars. this luke considered fair pay, considering that he was attending school and maintaining good rank in his classes. "why don't we see more of you, luke?" asked his friend linton one day. "you seem to stay in the house all the time." "because i am at work, linny. last week i made six dollars." "how?" asked linton, surprised. "by copying and making out bills for mr. reed." "that is better than being janitor at a dollar a week." "yes, but i have to work a good deal harder." "i am afraid you are working too hard." "i shouldn't like to keep it up, but it is only for a short time. if i gave up school i should find it easy enough, but i don't want to do that." "no, i hope you won't; i should miss you, and so would all the boys." "including randolph duncan?" "i don't know about that. by the way, i hear that randolph is spending a good deal of his time at tony denton's billiard saloon." "i am sorry to hear it. it hasn't a very good reputation." one day luke happened to be at the depot at the time of the arrival of the train from new york. a small, elderly man stepped upon the platform whom luke immediately recognized as john armstrong, the owner of the missing box of bonds. he was surprised to see him, having supposed that he was still in europe. mr. armstrong, as already stated, had boarded for several weeks during the preceding summer at groveton. he looked at luke with a half-glance of recognition. "haven't i seen you before?" he said. "what is your name?" "my name is luke larkin. i saw you several times last summer." "then you know me?" "yes, sir, you are mr. armstrong. but i thought you were in europe." "so i was till recently. i came home sooner than i expected." luke was not surprised. he supposed that intelligence of the robbery had hastened mr. armstrong's return. "i suppose it was the news of your box that hurried you home," luke ventured to say. "no, i hadn't heard of it till my arrival in new york can you tell me anything about the matter? has the box been found?" "not that i have heard, sir." "was, or is, anybody suspected?" "i was suspected," answered luke, smiling, "but i don't think any one suspects me now." "you!" exclaimed the capitalist, in evident astonishment. "what could induce any one to suspect a boy like you of robbing a bank?" "there was some ground for it," said luke candidly. "a tin box, of the same appearance as the one lost, was seen in our house. i was arrested on suspicion, and tried." "you don't say so! how did you prove your innocence?" "the gentleman who gave me the box in charge appeared and testified in my favor. but for that i am afraid i should have fared badly." "that is curious. who was the gentleman?" luke gave a rapid history of the circumstances already known to the reader. "i am glad to hear this, being principally interested in the matter. however, i never should have suspected you. i claim to be something of a judge of character and physiognomy, and your appearance is in your favor. your mother is a widow, i believe?" "yes, sir." "and you are the janitor of the schoolhouse?" mr. armstrong was a close observer, and though having large interests of his own, made himself familiar with the affairs of those whom others in his position would wholly have ignored. "i was janitor," luke replied, "but when mr. duncan became a member of the school committee he removed me." "for what reason?" asked mr. armstrong quickly. "i don't think he ever liked me, and his son randolph and i have never been good friends." "you mean mr. duncan, the president of the bank?" "yes, sir?" "why are not you and his son friends?" "i don't know, sir. he has always been in the habit of sneering at me as a poor boy--a working boy--and unworthy to associate with him." "you don't look like a poor boy. you are better dressed than i was at your age. besides, you have a watch, i judge from the chain." "yes, sir; but all that is only lately. i have found a good friend who has been very kind to me." "who is he?" "roland reed, the owner of the tin box i referred to." "roland reed! i never heard the name. where is he from?" "from the west, i believe, though at present he is staying in new york." "how much were you paid as janitor?" "a dollar a week." "that is very little. is the amount important to you?" "no, sir, not now." and then luke gave particulars of the good fortune of the family in having secured a profitable boarder, and, furthermore, in obtaining for himself profitable employment. "this mr. reed seems to be a kind-hearted and liberal man. i am glad for your sake. i sympathize with poor boys. can you guess the reason?" "were you a poor boy yourself, sir?" "i was, and a very poor boy. when i was a boy of thirteen and fourteen i ran around in overalls and bare-footed. but i don't think it did me any harm," the old man added, musingly. "it kept me from squandering money on foolish pleasures, for i had none to spend; it made me industrious and self-reliant, and when i obtained employment it made me anxious to please my employer." "i hope it will have the same effect on me, sir." "i hope so, and i think so. what sort of a boy is this son of mr. duncan?" "if his father were not a rich man, i think he would be more agreeable. as it is, he seems to have a high idea of his own importance." "so his father has the reputation of being a rich man, eh?" "yes, sir. we have always considered him so." "without knowing much about it?" "yes, sir; we judged from his style of living, and from his being president of a bank." "that amounts to nothing. his salary as president is only moderate." "i am sorry you should have met with such a loss, mr. armstrong." "so am i, but it won't cripple me. still, a man doesn't like to lose twenty-five thousand dollars and over." "was there as much as that in the box, sir?" asked luke, in surprise. "yes, i don't know why i need make any secret of it. there were twenty-five thousand dollars in government bonds, and these, at present rates, are worth in the neighborhood of thirty thousand dollars." "that seems to me a great deal of money," said luke. "it is, but i can spare it without any diminution of comfort. i don't feel, however, like pocketing the loss without making a strong effort to recover the money. i didn't expect to meet immediately upon arrival the only person hitherto suspected of accomplishing the robbery." he smiled as he spoke, and luke saw that, so far as mr. armstrong was concerned, he had no occasion to feel himself under suspicion. "are you intending to remain long in groveton, mr. armstrong?" he asked. "i can't say. i have to see mr. duncan about the tin box, and concoct some schemes looking to the discovery of the person or persons concerned in its theft. have there been any suspicious persons in the village during the last few weeks?" "not that i know of, sir." "what is the character of the men employed in the bank, the cashier and teller?" "they seem to be very steady young men, sir. i don't think they have been suspected." "the most dangerous enemies are those who are inside, for they have exceptional opportunities for wrongdoing. moreover, they have the best chance to cover up their tracks." "i don't think there is anything to charge against mr. roper and mr. barclay. they are both young married men, and live in a quiet way." "never speculate in wall street, eh? one of the soberest, steadiest bank cashiers i ever knew, who lived plainly and frugally, and was considered by all to be a model man, wrecked the man he was connected with--a small country banker--and is now serving a term in state's prison. the cause was wall street speculation. this is more dangerous even than extravagant habits of living." a part of this conversation took place on the platform of the railroad-station, and a part while they were walking in the direction of the hotel. they had now reached the village inn, and, bidding our hero good morning, mr. armstrong entered, and registered his name. ten minutes later he set out for the house of prince duncan. chapter xxi the dreaded interview mr. duncan had been dreading the inevitable interview with mr. armstrong. he knew him to be a sharp man of business, clear-sighted and keen, and he felt that this part of the conference would be an awkward and embarrassing one. he had tried to nerve himself for the interview, and thought he had succeeded, but when the servant brought mr. armstrong's card he felt a sinking at his heart, and it was in a tone that betrayed nervousness that he said: "bring the gentleman in." "my dear sir," he said, extending his hand and vigorously shaking the hand of his new arrival, "this is an unexpected pleasure." "unexpected? didn't you get my letter from london?" said mr. armstrong, suffering his hand to be shaken, but not returning the arm pressure. "certainly----" "in which i mentioned my approaching departure?" "yes, certainly; but i didn't know on what day to expect you. pray sit down. it seems pleasant to see you home safe and well." "humph!" returned armstrong, in a tone by no means as cordial. "have you found my box of bonds?" "not yet, but----" "permit me to ask you why you allowed me to remain ignorant of so important a matter? i was indebted to the public prints, to which my attention was directed by an acquaintance, for a piece of news which should have been communicated to me at once." "my dear sir, i intended to write you as soon as i heard of your arrival. i did not know till this moment that you were in america." "you might have inferred it from the intimation in my last letter. why did you not cable me the news?" "because," replied duncan awkwardly, "i did not wish to spoil your pleasure, and thought from day to day that the box would turn up." "you were very sparing of my feelings," said armstrong, dryly--"too much so. i am not a child or an old woman, and it was your imperative duty, in a matter so nearly affecting my interests, to apprise me at once." "i may have erred in judgment," said duncan meekly, "but i beg you to believe that i acted as i supposed for the best." "leaving that out of consideration at present, let me know what steps you have taken to find out how the box was spirited away, or who was concerned in the robbery." "i think that you will admit that i acted promptly," said the bank president complacently, "when i say that within twentyfour hours i arrested a party on suspicion of being implicated in the robbery, and tried him myself." "who was the party?" asked the capitalist, not betraying the knowledge he had already assessed on the subject. "a boy in the village named luke larkin." "humph! what led you to think a boy had broken into the bank? that does not strike me as very sharp on your part." "i had positive evidence that the boy in question had a tin box concealed in his house--in his mother's trunk. his poverty made it impossible that the box could be his, and i accordingly had him arrested." "well, what was the result of the trial?" "i was obliged to let him go, though by no means satisfied of his innocence." "why?" "a man--a stranger--a very suspicious-looking person, presented himself, and swore that the box was his, and that he had committed it to the charge of this boy." "well, that seems tolerably satisfactory, doesn't it?--that is, if he furnished evidence confirming his statement. did he open the box in court?" "yes." "and the bonds were not there?" "the bonds were not there only some papers, and what appeared to be certificates of stock." "yet you say you are still suspicious of this man and boy." "yes." "explain your grounds." "i thought," replied the president, rather meekly, "he might have taken the bonds from the box and put in other papers." "that was not very probable. moreover, he would hardly be likely to leave the box in the village in the charge of a boy." "the boy might have been his confederate." "what is the boy's reputation in the village? has he ever been detected in any act of dishonesty?" "not that i know of, but there is one suspicious circumstance to which i would like to call your attention." "well?" "since this happened luke has come out in new clothes, and wears a silver watch. the family is very poor, and he could not have had money to buy them unless he obtained some outside aid." "what, then, do you infer?" "that he has been handsomely paid for his complicity in the robbery." "what explanation does he personally give of this unusual expenditure?" "he admits that they were paid for by this suspicious stranger." "has the stranger--what is his name, by the way?" "roland reed, he calls himself, but this, probably, is not his real name." "well, has this reed made his appearance in the village since?" "if so, he has come during the night, and has not been seen by any of us." "i can't say i share your suspicion against mr. reed. your theory that he took out the bonds and substituted other papers is farfetched and improbable. as to the boy, i consider him honest and reliable." "do you know luke larkin?" asked mr. duncan quickly. "last summer i observed him somewhat, and never saw anything wrong in him." "appearances are deceitful," said the bank president sententiously. "so i have heard," returned mr. armstrong dryly. "but let us go on. what other steps have you taken to discover the lost box?" "i have had the bank vaults thoroughly searched," answered duncan, trying to make the best of a weak situation. "of course. it is hardly to be supposed that it has been mislaid. even if it had been it would have turned up before this. did you discover any traces of the bank being forcibly entered?" "no; but the burglar may have covered his tracks." "there would have been something to show an entrance. what is the character of the cashier and teller." "i know nothing to their disadvantage." "then neither have fallen under suspicion?" "not as yet," answered the president pointedly. "it is evident," thought john armstrong, "that mr. duncan is interested in diverting suspicion from some quarter. he is willing that these men should incur suspicion, though it is clear he has none in his own mind." "well, what else have you done? have you employed detectives?" asked armstrong, impatiently. "i was about to do so," answered mr. duncan, in some embarrassment, "when i heard that you were coming home, and i thought i would defer that matter for your consideration." "giving time in the meanwhile for the thief or thieves to dispose of their booty? this is very strange conduct, mr. duncan." "i acted for the best," said prince duncan. "you have singular ideas of what is best, then," observed mr. armstrong coldly. "it may be too late to remedy your singular neglect, but i will now take the matter out of your hands, and see what i can do." "will you employ detectives?" asked duncan, with evident uneasiness. armstrong eyed him sharply, and with growing suspicion. "i can't say what i will do." "have you the numbers of the missing bonds?" asked duncan anxiously. "i am not sure. i am afraid i have not." was it imagination, or did the bank president look relieved at this statement? john armstrong made a mental note of this. after eliciting the particulars of the disappearance of the bonds, john armstrong rose to go. he intended to return to the city, but he made up his mind to see luke first. he wanted to inquire the address of roland reed. chapter xxii luke secures a new friend luke was engaged in copying when mr. armstrong called. though he felt surprised to see his visitor, luke did not exhibit it in his manner, but welcomed him politely, and invited him into the sitting-room. "i have called to inquire the address of your friend, mr. roland reed," said mr. armstrong. then, seeing a little uneasiness in luke's face, he added quickly. "don't think i have the slightest suspicion of him as regards the loss of the bonds. i wish only to consult him, being myself at a loss what steps to take. he may be able to help me." of course, luke cheerfully complied with his request. "has anything been heard yet at the bank?" he asked. "nothing whatever. in fact, it does not appear to me that any very serious efforts have been made to trace the robber or robbers. i am left to undertake the task myself." "if there is anything i can do to help you, mr. armstrong, i shall be very glad to do so," said luke. "i will bear that in mind, and may call upon you. as yet, my plans are not arranged. perhaps mr. reed, whom i take to be an experienced man of the world, may be able to offer a suggestion. you seem to be at work," he added, with a look at the table at which luke had been sitting. "yes, sir, i am making out some bills for mr. reed." "is the work likely to occupy you long?" "no, sir; i shall probably finish the work this week." "and then your time will be at your disposal?" "yes, sir." "pardon me the question, but i take it your means are limited?" "yes, sir; till recently they have been very limited--now, thanks to mr. reed, who pays a liberal salary for his little girl's board, we are very comfortable, and can get along very well, even if i do not immediately find work." "i am glad to hear that. if i should hear of any employment likely to please you i will send you word." "thank you, sir." "would you object to leave home?" "no, sir; there is little or no prospect in groveton, and though my mother would miss me, she now has company, and i should feel easier about leaving her." "if you can spare the time, won't you walk with me to the depot?" "with great pleasure, sir," and luke went into the adjoining room to fetch his hat, at the same time apprising his mother that he was going out. on the way to the depot mr. armstrong managed to draw out luke with a view to getting better acquainted with him, and forming an idea of his traits of character. luke was quite aware of this, but talked frankly and easily, having nothing to conceal. "a thoroughly good boy, and a smart boy, too!" said armstrong to himself. "i must see if i can't give him a chance to rise. he seems absolutely reliable." on the way to the depot they met randolph duncan, who eyed them curiously. he recognized mr. armstrong as the owner of the stolen bonds--and was a good deal surprised to see him in such friendly conversation with luke. knowing mr. armstrong to be a rich man, he determined to claim acquaintance. "how do you do, mr. armstrong?" he said, advancing with an ingratiating smile. "this is randolph duncan," said luke--whom, by the way, randolph had not thought it necessary to notice. "i believe i have met the young gentleman before," said mr. armstrong politely, but not cordially. "yes, sir, i have seen you at our house," continued randolph-"my father is president of the groveton bank. he will be very glad to see you. won't you come home with me?" "i have already called upon your father," said mr. armstrong. "i am very sorry your bonds were stolen, mr. armstrong." "not more than i am, i assure you," returned mr. armstrong, with a quizzical smile. "could i speak with you a moment in private, sir?" asked randolph, with a significant glance at luke. "certainly; luke, will you cross the road a minute? now, young man!" "probably you don't know that the boy you are walking with was suspected of taking the box from the bank." "i have heard so; but he was acquitted of the charge, wasn't he?" "my father still believes that he had something to do with it, and so do i," added randolph, with an emphatic nod of his head. "isn't he a friend of yours?" asked mr. armstrong quietly. "no, indeed; we go to the same school, though father thinks of sending me to an academy out of town soon, but there is no friendship between us. he is only a working boy." "humph! that is very much against him," observed mr. armstrong, but it was hard to tell from his tone whether he spoke in earnest or ironically. "oh, well, he has to work, for the family is very poor. he's come out in new clothes and a silver watch since the robbery. he says the strange man from whom he received a tin box just like yours gave them to him." "and you think he didn't get them in that way?" "yes, i think they were leagued together. i feel sure that man robbed the bank." "dear me, it does look suspicious!" remarked armstrong. "if luke was guiding you to the train, i will take his place, sir." "thank you, but perhaps i had better keep him with me, and cross-examine him a little. i suppose i can depend upon your keeping your eyes upon him, and letting me know of any suspicious conduct on his part?" "yes, sir, i will do it with pleasure," randolph announced promptly. he felt sure that he had excited mr. armstrong's suspicions, and defeated any plans luke might have cherished of getting in with the capitalist. "have you anything more to communicate?" asked mr. armstrong, politely. "no, sir; i thought it best to put you on your guard." "i quite appreciate your motives, master randolph. i shall keep my eyes open henceforth, and hope in time to discover the real perpetrator of the robbery. now, luke." "i have dished you, young fellow!" thought randolph, with a triumphant glance at the unconscious luke. he walked away in high self-satisfaction. "luke," said mr. armstrong, as they resumed their walk, "randolph seems a very warm friend of yours." "i never thought so," said luke, with an answering smile. "i am glad if he has changed." "what arrangements do you think i have made with him?" "i don't know, sir." "i have asked him to keep his eye on you, and, if he sees anything suspicious, to let me know." luke would have been disturbed by this remark, had not the smile on mr. armstrong's face belied his words. "does he think you are in earnest, sir?" "oh, yes, he has no doubt of it. he warned me of your character, and said he was quite sure that you and your friend mr. reed were implicated in the bank robbery. i told him i would cross-examine you, and see what i could find out. randolph told me that you were only a working boy, which i pronounced to be very much against you." luke laughed outright. "i think you are fond of a practical joke, mr. armstrong," he said. "you have fooled randolph very neatly." "i had an object in it," said mr. armstrong quietly. "i may have occasion to employ you in the matter, and if so, it will be well that no arrangement is suspected between us. randolph will undoubtedly inform his father of what happened this morning." "as i said before, sir, i am ready to do anything that lies in my power." luke could not help feeling curious as to the character of the service he would be called upon to perform. he found it difficult to hazard a conjecture, but one thing at least seemed clear, and this was that mr. armstrong was disposed to be his friend, and as he was a rich man his friendship was likely to amount to some thing. they had now reached the depot, and in ten minutes the train was due. "don't wait if you wish to get to work, luke," said mr. armstrong kindly. "my work can wait; it is nearly finished," said luke. the ten minutes passed rapidly, and with a cordial good-bye, the capitalist entered the train, leaving luke to return to his modest home in good spirits. "i have two influential friends, now," he said to himself-"mr. reed and mr. armstrong. on the whole, luke larkin, you are in luck, your prospects look decidedly bright, even if you have lost the janitorship." chapter xxiii randolph and his creditor though randolph was pleased at having, as he thought, put a spoke in luke's wheel, and filled mr. armstrong's mind with suspicion, he was not altogether happy. he had a little private trouble of his own. he had now for some time been a frequenter of tony denton's billiard saloon, patronizing both the table and the bar. he had fallen in with a few young men of no social standing, who flattered him, and, therefore, stood in his good graces. with them he played billiards and drank. after a time he found that he was exceeding his allowance, but in the most obliging way tony denton had offered him credit. "of course, mr. duncan"--randolph felt flattered at being addressed in this way--"of course, mr. duncan, your credit is good with me. if you haven't the ready money, and i know most young gentlemen are liable to be short, i will just keep an account, and you can settle at your convenience." this seemed very obliging, but i am disposed to think that a boy's worst enemy is the one who makes it easy for him to run into debt. randolph was not wholly without caution, for he said: "but suppose, tony, i am not able to pay when you want the money?" "oh, don't trouble yourself about that, mr. duncan," said tony cordially. "of course, i know the standing of your family, and i am perfectly safe. some time you will be a rich man." "yes, i suppose i shall," said randolph, in a consequential tone. "and it is worth something to me to have my saloon patronized by a young gentleman of your social standing." evidently, tony denton understood randolph's weak point, and played on it skillfully. he assumed an air of extra consequence, as he remarked condescendingly: "you are very obliging, tony, and i shall not forget it." tony denton laughed in his sleeve at the boy's vanity, but his manner was very respectful, and randolph looked upon him as an humble friend and admirer. "he is a sensible man, tony; he understands what is due to my position," he said to himself. after denton's visit to new york with prince duncan, and the knowledge which he then acquired about the president of the groveton bank, he decided that the time had come to cut short randolph's credit with him. the day of reckoning always comes in such cases, as i hope my young friends will fully understand. debt is much more easily contracted than liquidated, and this randolph found to his cost. one morning he was about to start on a game of billiards, when tony denton called him aside. "i would like to speak a word to you, mr. duncan," he said smoothly. "all right, tony," said randolph, in a patronizing tone. "what can i do for you?" "my rent comes due to-morrow, mr. duncan, and i should be glad if you would pay me a part of your account. it has been running some time----" randolph's jaw fell, and he looked blank. "how much do i owe you?" he asked. tony referred to a long ledgerlike account-book, turned to a certain page, and running his fingers down a long series of items, answered, "twenty-seven dollars and sixty cents." "it can't be so much!" ejaculated randolph, in dismay. "surely you have made a mistake!" "you can look for yourself," said tony suavely. "just reckon it up; i may have made a little mistake in the sum total." randolph looked over the items, but he was nervous, and the page swam before his eyes. he was quite incapable of performing the addition, simple as it was, in his then frame of mind. "i dare say you have added it up all right," he said, after an abortive attempt to reckon it up, "but i can hardly believe that i owe you so much." "`many a little makes a mickle,' as we scotch say," answered tony cheerfully. "however, twenty-seven dollars is a mere trifle to a young man like you. come, if you'll pay me to-night, i'll knock off the sixty cents." "it's quite impossible for me to do it," said randolph, ill at ease. "pay me something on account--say ten dollars." "i haven't got but a dollar and a quarter in my pocket." "oh, well, you know where to go for more money," said tony, with a wink. "the old gentleman's got plenty." "i am not so sure about that--i mean that he is willing to pay out. of course, he's got plenty of money invested," added randolph, who liked to have it thought that his father was a great financial magnate. "well, he can spare some for his son, i am sure." "can't you let it go for a little while longer, tony?" asked randolph, awkwardly. "really, mr. duncan, i couldn't. i am a poor man, as you know, and have my bills to pay." "i take it as very disobliging, tony; i sha'n't care to patronize your place any longer," said randolph, trying a new tack. tony denton shrugged his shoulders. "i only care for patrons who are willing to pay their bills," he answered significantly. "it doesn't pay me to keep my place open free." "of course not; but i hope you are not afraid of me?" "certainly not. i am sure you will act honorably and pay your bills. if i thought you wouldn't, i would go and see your father about it." "no, you mustn't do that," said randolph, alarmed. "he doesn't know i come here." "and he won't know from me, if you pay what you owe." matters were becoming decidedly unpleasant for randolph. the perspiration gathered on his brow. he didn't know what to do. that his father would not give him money for any such purpose, he very well knew, and he dreaded his finding out where he spent so many of his evenings. "oh, don't trouble yourself about a trifle," said tony smoothly. "just go up to your father, frankly, and tell him you want the money." "he wouldn't give me twenty-seven dollars," said randolph gloomily. "then ask for ten, and i'll wait for the balance till next week." "can't you put it all off till next week?" "no; i really couldn't, mr. duncan. what does it matter to you this week, or next?" randolph wished to put off as long as possible the inevitable moment, though he knew it would do him no good in the end. but tony denton was inflexible--and he finally said: "well, i'll make the attempt, but i know i shall fail." "that's all right; i knew you would look at it in the right light. now, go ahead and play your game." "no, i don't want to increase my debt." "oh, i won't charge you for what you play this evening. tony denton can be liberal as well as the next man. only i have to collect money to pay my bills." randolph didn't know that all this had been prearranged by the obliging saloon-keeper, and that, in now pressing him, he had his own object in view. the next morning, randolph took an opportunity to see his father alone. "father," he said, "will you do me a favor?" "what is it, randolph?" "let me have ten dollars." his father frowned. "what do you want with ten dollars?" he asked. "i don't like to go round without money in my pocket. it doesn't look well for the son of a rich man." "who told you i was a rich man?" said his father testily. "why, you are, aren't you? everybody in the village says so." "i may, or may not, be rich, but i don't care to encourage my son in extravagant habits. you say you have no money. don't you have your regular allowance?" "it is only two dollars a week." "only two dollars a week!" repeated the father angrily. "let me tell you, young man, that when i was of your age i didn't have twenty-five cents a week." "that was long ago. people lived differently from what they do now." "how did they?" "they didn't live in any style." "they didn't spend money foolishly, as they do now. i don't see for my part what you can do with even two dollars a week." "oh, it melts away, one way or another. i am your only son, and people expect me to spend money. it is expected of one in my position." "so you can. i consider two dollars a week very liberal." "you'd understand better if you were a young fellow like me how hard it is to get along on that." "i don't want to understand," returned his father stoutly. "one thing i understand, and that is, that the boys of the present day are foolishly extravagant. think of luke larkin! do you think he spends two dollars even in a month?" "i hope you don't mean to compare me with a working boy like luke?" randolph said scornfully. "i am not sure but luke would suit me better than you in some respects." "you are speaking of luke," said randolph, with a lucky thought. "well, even he, working boy as he is, has a better watch than i, who am the son of the president of the groveton bank." "do you want the ten dollars to buy a better watch?" asked prince duncan. "yes," answered randolph, ready to seize on any pretext for the sake of getting the money. "then wait till i go to new york again, and i will look at some watches. i won't make any promise, but i may buy you one. i don't care about luke outshining you." this by no means answered randolph's purpose. "won't you let me go up to the city myself, father?" he asked. "no, i prefer to rely upon my own judgment in a purchase of that kind." it had occurred to randolph that he would go to the city, and pretend on his return that he had bought a watch but had his pocket picked. of course, his father would give him more than ten dollars for the purpose, and he could privately pay it over to tony denton. but this scheme did not work, and he made up his mind at last that he would have to tell tony he must wait. he did so. tony denton, who fully expected this, and, for reasons of his own, did not regret it, said very little to randolph, but decided to go round and see prince duncan himself. it would give him a chance to introduce the other and more important matter. it was about this time that linton's birthday-party took place. randolph knew, of course, that he would meet luke, but he no longer had the satisfaction of deriding his shabby dress. our hero wore his best suit, and showed as much ease and selfpossession as randolph himself. "what airs that boy luke puts on!" ejaculated randolph, in disgust. "i believe he thinks he is my equal." in this randolph was correct. luke certainly did consider himself the social equal of the haughty randolph, and the consciousness of being well dressed made him feel at greater ease than at florence grant's party. he had taken additional lessons in dancing from his friend linton, and, being quick to learn, showed no awkwardness on the floor. linton's parents, by their kind cordiality, contributed largely to the pleasure of their son's guests, who at the end of the evening unanimously voted the party a success. chapter xxiv a commlssion for luke upon his return to the city, john armstrong lost no time in sending for roland reed. the latter, though rather surprised at the summons, answered it promptly. when he entered the office of the old merchant he found him sitting at his desk. "mr. armstrong?" he said inquiringly. "that's my name. you, i take it, are roland reed." "yes." "no doubt you wonder why i sent for you," said mr. armstrong. "is it about the robbery of the groveton bank?" "you have guessed it. you know, i suppose, that i am the owner of the missing box of bonds?" "so i was told. have you obtained any clue?" "i have not had time. i have only just returned from europe. i have done nothing except visit groveton." "what led you to send for me? pardon my curiosity, but i can't help asking." "an interview with a protege of yours, luke larkin." "you know that luke was arrested on suspicion of being connected with the robbery, though there are those who pay me the complinment of thinking that i may have had something to do with it." "i think you had as much to do with it as luke larkin," said armstrong, deliberately. "i had--just as much," said reed, with a smile. "luke is a good boy, mr. armstrong." "i quite agree with you. if i had a son i should like him to resemble luke." "give me your hand on that, mr. armstrong," said roland reed, impulsively. "excuse my impetuosity, but i've taken a fancy to that boy." "there, then, we are agreed. now, mr. reed, i will tell you why i have taken the liberty of sending for you. from what luke said, i judged that you were a sharp, shrewd man of the world, and might help me in this matter, which i confess puzzles me. you know the particulars, and therefore, without preamble, i am going to ask you whether you have any theory as regards this robbery. the box hasn't walked off without help. now, who took it from the bank?" "if i should tell you my suspicion you might laugh at me." "i will promise not to do that." "then i believe that prince duncan, president of the groveton bank, could tell you, if he chose, what has become of the box." "extraordinary!" ejaculated john armstrong. "i supposed you would be surprised--probably indignant, if you are a friend of duncan--but, nevertheless, i adhere to my statement." "you mistake the meaning of my exclamation. i spoke of it as extraordinary, because the same suspicion has entered my mind, though, i admit, without a special reason." "i have a reason." "may i inquire what it is?" "i knew prince duncan when he was a young man, though he does not know me now. in fact, i may as well admit that i was then known by another name. he wronged me deeply at that time, being guilty of a crime which he successfully laid upon my shoulders. no one in groveton--no one of his recent associates--knows the real nature of the man as well as i do." "you prefer not to go into particulars?" not at present." "at all events you can give me your advice. to suspect amounts to little. we must bring home the crime to him. it is here that i need your advice." "i understand that the box contained government bonds." "yes." "what were the denominations?" "one ten thousand dollar bond, one five, and ten of one thousand each." "it seems to me they ought to be traced. i suppose, of course, they were coupon, not registered." "you are right. had they been registered, i should have been at no trouble, nor would the thief have reaped any advantage." "if coupon, they are, of course, numbered. won't that serve as a clue, supposing an attempt is made to dispose of them?" "you touch the weak point of my position. they are numbered, and i had a list of the numbers, but that list has disappeared. it is either lost or mislaid. of course, i can't identify them." "that is awkward. wouldn't the banker of whom you bought them be able to give you the numbers?" "yes, but i don't know where they were bought. i had at the time in my employ a clerk and book-keeper, a steady-going and methodical man of fifty-odd, who made the purchase, and no doubt has a list of the numbers of the bonds." "then where is your difficulty?" asked roland reed, in surprise. "go to the clerk and put the question. what can be simpler?" "but i don't know where he is." "don't know where he is?" echoed reed, in genuine surprise. "no; james harding--this is his name--left my employ a year since, having, through a life of economy, secured a competence, and went out west to join a widowed sister who had for many years made her residence there. now, the west is a large place, and i don't know where this sister lives, or where james harding is to be found." "yet he must be found. you must send a messenger to look for him." "but whom shall i send? in a matter of this delicacy i don't want to employ a professional detective. those men sometimes betray secrets committed to their keeping, and work up a false clue rather than have it supposed they are not earning their money. if, now, some gentleman in whom i had confidence--someone like yourself--would undertake the commission, i should esteem myself fortunate." "thank you for the compliment, mr. armstrong, more especially as you are putting confidence in a stranger, but i have important work to do that would not permit me to leave new york at present. but i know of someone whom i would employ, if the business were mine." "well?" "luke larkin." "but he is only a boy. he can't be over sixteen." "he is a sharp boy, however, and would follow instructions." john armstrong thought rapidly. he was a man who decided quickly. "i will take your advice," he said. "as i don't want to have it supposed that he is in my employ, will you oblige me by writing to him and preparing him for a journey? let it be supposed that he is occupied with a commission for you." "i will attend to the matter at once." the next morning luke received the following letter: "my dear luke: i have some work for you which will occupy some time and require a journey. you will be well paid. bring a supply of underclothing, and assure your mother that she need feel under no apprehensions about you. unless i am greatly mistaken, you will be able to take care of yourself. "your friend, "roland reed." luke read the letter with excitement and pleasure. he was to go on a journey, and to a boy of his age a journey of any sort is delightful. he had no idea of the extent of the trip in store for him, but thought he might possibly be sent to boston, or philadelphia, and either trip he felt would yield him much pleasure. he quieted the natural apprehensions of his mother, and, satchel in hand, waited upon his patron in the course of a day. by him he was taken over to the office of mr. armstrong, from whom he received instructions and a supply of money. chapter xxv mr. j. madison coleman luke didn't shrink from the long trip before him. he enjoyed the prospect of it, having always longed to travel and see distant places. he felt flattered by mr. armstrong's confidence in him, and stoutly resolved to deserve it. he would have been glad if he could have had the company of his friend linton, but he knew that this was impossible. he must travel alone. "you have a difficult and perplexing task, luke," said the capitalist. "you may not succeed." "i will do my best, mr. armstrong." "that is all i have a right to expect. if you succeed, you will do me a great service, of which i shall show proper appreciation." he gave luke some instructions, and it was arranged that our hero should write twice a week, and, if occasion required, oftener, so that his employer might be kept apprised of his movements. luke was not to stop short of chicago. there his search was to begin; and there, if possible, he was to obtain information that might guide his subsequent steps. it is a long ride to chicago, as luke found. he spent a part of the time in reading, and a part in looking out of the window at the scenery, but still, at times, he felt lonely. "i wish linton tomkins were with me," he reflected. "what a jolly time we would have!" but linton didn't even know what had become of his friend. luke's absence was an occasion for wonder at groveton, and many questions were asked of his mother. "he was sent for by mr. reed," answered the widow. "he is at work for him." "mr. reed is in new york, isn't he?" "yes." it was concluded, therefore, that luke was in new york, and one or two persons proposed to call upon him there, but his mother professed ignorance of his exact residence. she knew that he was traveling, but even she was kept in the dark as to where he was, nor did she know that mr. armstrong, and not mr. reed, was his employer. some half dozen hours before reaching chicago, a young man of twenty-five, or thereabouts, sauntered along the aisle, and sat down in the vacant seat beside luke. "nice day," he said, affably. "very nice," responded luke. "i suppose you are bound to chicago?" "yes, i expect to stay there awhile." "going farther?" "i can't tell yet." "going to school out there?" "no." "perhaps you are traveling for some business firm, though you look pretty young for that." "no, i'm not a drummer, if that's what you mean. still, i have a commisison from a new york business man." "a commission--of what kind?" drawled the newcomer. "it is of a confidential character," said luke. "ha! close-mouthed," thought the young man. "well, i'll get it out of him after awhile." he didn't press the question, not wishing to arouse suspicion or mistrust. "just so," he replied. "you are right to keep it to yourself, though you wouldn't mind trusting me if you knew me better. is this your first visit to chicago?" "yes, sir." "suppose we exchange cards. this is mine." he handed luke a card, bearing this name. j. madison coleman at the bottom of the card he wrote in pencil, "representing h. b. claflin & co." "of course you've heard of our firm," he said. "certainly." "i don't have the firm name printed on my card, for claflin won't allow it. you will notice that i am called for old president madison. he was an old friend of my grandfather. in fact, grandfather held a prominent office under his administration--collector of the port of new york." "i have no card with me," responded luke. "but my name is luke larkin." "good name. do you live in new york?" "no; a few miles in the country." "and whom do you represent?" "myself for the most part," answered luke, with a smile. "good! no one has a better right to. i see there's something in you, luke." "you've found it out pretty quick," thought luke. "and i hope we will get better acquainted. if you're not permanently employed by this party, whose name you don't give, i will get you into the employ of claflin & co., if you would like it." "thank you," answered luke, who thought it quite possible that he might like to obtain a position with so eminent a firm. "how long have you been with them?" "ten years--ever since i was of your age," promptly answered mr. coleman. "is promotion rapid?" luke asked, with interest. "well, that depends on a man's capacity. i have been pushed right along. i went there as a boy, on four dollars a week; now i'm a traveling salesman--drummer as it is called--and i make about four thousand a year." "that's a fine salary," said luke, feeling that his new acquaintance must be possessed of extra ability to occupy so desirable a position. "yes, but i expect next year to get five thousand--claflin knows i am worth it, and as he is a liberal man, i guess he will give it sooner than let me go." "i suppose many do not get on so well, mr. coleman." "i should say so! now, there is a young fellow went there the same time that i did--his name is frank bolton. we were schoolfellows together, and just the same age, that is, nearly-he was born in april, and i in may. well, we began at the same time on the same salary. now i get sixty dollars a week and he only twelve--and he is glad to get that, too." "i suppose he hasn't much business capacity." "that's where you've struck it, luke. he knows about enough to be clerk in a country store--and i suppose he'll fetch up there some day. you know what that means--selling sugar, and tea, and dried apples to old ladies, and occasionally measuring off a yard of calico, or selling a spool of cotton. if i couldn't do better than that i'd hire out as a farm laborer." luke smiled at the enumeration of the duties of a country salesman. it was clear that mr. coleman, though he looked city-bred, must at some time in the past have lived in the country. "perhaps that is the way i should turn out," he said. "i might not rise any higher than your friend mr. bolton." "oh, yes, you would. you're smart enough, i'll guarantee. you might not get on so fast as i have, for it isn't every young man of twenty-six that can command four thousand dollars a year, but you would rise to a handsome income, i am sure." "i should be satisfied with two thousand a year at your age." "i would be willing to guarantee you that," asserted mr. coleman, confidently. "by the way, where do you propose to put up in chicago?" "i have not decided yet." "you'd better go with me to the ottawa house." "is it a good house?" "they'll feed you well there, and only charge two dollars a day" "is it centrally located?" "it isn't as central as the palmer, or sherman, or tremont, but it is convenient to everything." i ought to say here that i have chosen to give a fictitious name to the hotel designated by mr. coleman. "come, what do you say?" "i have no objection," answered luke, after a slight pause for reflection. indeed, it was rather pleasant to him to think that he would have a companion on his first visit to chicago who was well acquainted with the city, and could serve as his guide. though he should not feel justified in imparting to mr. coleman his special business, he meant to see something of the city, and would find his new friend a pleasant companion. "that's good," said coleman, well pleased. "i shall be glad to have your company. i expected to meet a friend on the train, but something must have delayed him, and so i should have been left alone." "i suppose a part of your time will be given to business?" suggested luke. "yes, but i take things easy; when i work, i work. i can accomplish as much in a couple of hours as many would do in a whole day. you see, i understand my customers. when soft sawder is wanted, i am soft sawder. when i am dealing with a plain, businesslike man, i talk in a plain, businesslike way. i study my man, and generally i succeed in striking him for an order, even if times are hard and he is already well stocked." "he certainly knows how to talk," thought luke. in fact, he was rather disposed to accept mr. coleman at his own valuation, though that was a very high one. "do you smoke?" "not at all." "not even a cigarette?" "not even a cigarette." "i was intending to ask you to go with me into the smokingcar for a short time. i smoke a good deal; it is my only vice. you know we must all have some vices." luke didn't see the necessity, but he assented, because it seemed to be expected. "i won't be gone long. you'd better come along, too, and smoke a cigarette. it is time you began to smoke. most boys begin much earlier." luke shook his head. "i don't care to learn," he said. "oh, you're a good boy--one of the sunday-school kind," said coleman, with a slight sneer. "you'll get over that after a while. you'll be here when i come back?" luke promised that he would, and for the next half hour he was left alone. as his friend mr. coleman left the car, he followed him with his glance, and surveyed him more attentively than he had hitherto done. the commercial traveler was attired in a suit of fashionable plaid, wore a showy necktie, from the center of which blazed a diamond scarfpin. a showy chain crossed his vest, and to it was appended a large and showy watch, which looked valuable, though appearances are sometimes deceitful. "he must spend a good deal of money," thought luke. "i wonder that he should be willing to go to a two-dollar-a-day hotel." luke, for his own part, was quite willing to go to the ottawa house. he had never fared luxuriously, and he had no doubt that even at the ottawa house he should live better than at home. it was nearer an hour than half an hour before coleman came back. "i stayed away longer than i intended," he said. "i smoked three cigars, instead of one, seeing you wasn't with me to keep me company. i found some social fellows, and we had a chat." mr. coleman absented himself once or twice more. finally, the train ran into the depot, and the conductor called out, "chicago!" "come along, luke!" said coleman. the two left the car in company. coleman hailed a cab--gave the order, ottawa house--and in less than five minutes they were rattling over the pavements toward their hotel. chapter xxvi the ottawa house there was one little circumstance that led luke to think favorably of his new companion. as the hackman closed the door of the carriage, luke asked: "how much is the fare?" "fifty cents apiece, gentlemen," answered cabby. luke was about to put his hand into his pocket for the money, when coleman touching him on the arm, said: "never mind, luke, i have the money," and before our hero could expostulate he had thrust a dollar into the cab-driver's hand. "all right, thanks," said the driver, and slammed to the door. "you must let me repay you my part of the fare, mr. coleman," said luke, again feeling for his pocketbook. "oh, it's a mere trifle!" said coleman. "i'll let you pay next time, but don't be so ceremonious with a friend." "but i would rather pay for myself," objected luke. "oh, say no more about it, i beg. claflin provides liberally for my expenses. it's all right." "but i don't want claflin to pay for me." "then i assure you i'll get it out of you before we part. will that content you?" luke let the matter drop, but he didn't altogether like to find himself under obligations to a stranger, notwithstanding his assurance, which he took for a joke. he would have been surprised and startled if he had known how thoroughly coleman meant what he said about getting even. the fifty cents he had with such apparent generosity paid out for luke he meant to get back a hundred-fold. his object was to gain luke's entire confidence, and remove any suspicion he might possibly entertain. in this respect he was successful. luke had read about designing strangers, but he certainly could not suspect a man who insisted on paying his hack fare. "i hope you will not be disappointed in the ottawa house," observed mr. coleman, as they rattled through the paved streets. "it isn't a stylish hotel." "i am not used to stylish living," said luke, frankly. "i have always been used to living in a very plain way." "when i first went on the road i used to stop at the tip-top houses, such as the palmer at chicago, the russell house in detroit, etc., but it's useless extravagance. claflin allows me a generous sum for hotels, and if i go to a cheap one, i put the difference into my own pocket." "is that expected?" asked luke, doubtfully. "it's allowed, at any rate. no one can complain if i choose to live a little plainer. when it pays in the way of business to stop at a big hotel, i do so. of course, your boss pays your expenses?" "yes." "then you'd better do as i do--put the difference in your own pocket." "i shouldn't like to do that." "why not? it is evident you are a new traveler, or you would know that it is a regular thing." luke did not answer, but he adhered to his own view. he meant to keep a careful account of his disbursements and report to mr. armstrong, without the addition of a single penny. he had no doubt that he should be paid liberally for his time, and he didn't care to make anything by extra means. the ottawa house was nearly a mile and a half distant. it was on one of the lower streets, near the lake. it was a plain building with accommodations for perhaps a hundred and fifty guests. this would be large for a country town or small city, but it indicated a hotel of the third class in chicago. i may as well say here, however, that it was a perfectly respectable and honestly conducted hotel, notwithstanding it was selected by mr. coleman, who could not with truth be complimented so highly. i will also add that mr. coleman's selection of the ottawa, in place of a more pretentious hotel, arose from the fear that in the latter he might meet someone who knew him, and who would warn luke of his undesirable reputation. jumping out of the hack, j. madison coleman led the way into the hotel, and, taking pen in hand, recorded his name in large, flourishing letters--as from new york. then he handed the pen to luke, who registered himself also from new york. "give us a room together," he said to the clerk. luke did not altogether like this arrangement, but hardly felt like objecting. he did not wish to hurt the feelings of j. madison coleman, yet he considered that, having known him only six hours, it was somewhat imprudent to allow such intimacy. but he who hesitates is lost, and before luke had made up his mind whether to object or not, he was already part way upstairs--there was no elevator--following the bellboy, who carried his luggage. the room, which was on the fourth floor, was of good size, and contained two beds. so far so good. after the ride he wished to wash and put on clean clothes. mr. coleman did not think this necessary, and saying to luke that he would find him downstairs, he left our hero alone. "i wish i had a room alone," thought luke. "i should like it much better, but i don't want to offend coleman. i've got eighty dollars in my pocketbook, and though, of course, he is all right, i don't want to take any risks." on the door he read the regulations of the hotel. one item attracted his attention. it was this: "the proprietors wish distinctly to state that they will not be responsible for money or valuables unless left with the clerk to be deposited in the safe." luke had not been accustomed to stopping at hotels, and did not know that this was the usual custom. it struck him, however, as an excellent arrangement, and he resolved to avail himself of it. when he went downstairs he didn't see mr. coleman. "your friend has gone out," said the clerk. "he wished me to say that he would be back in half an hour." "all right," answered luke. "can i leave my pocketbook with you?" "certainly." the clerk wrapped it up in a piece of brown paper and put it away in the safe at the rear of the office, marking it with luke's name and the number of his room. "there, that's safe!" thought luke, with a feeling of relief. he had reserved about three dollars, as he might have occasion to spend a little money in the course of the evening. if he were robbed of this small amount it would not much matter. a newsboy came in with an evening paper. luke bought a copy and sat down on a bench in the office, near a window. he was reading busily, when someone tapped him on the shoulder. looking up, he saw that it was his roommate, j. madison coleman. "i've just been taking a little walk," he said, "and now i am ready for dinner. if you are, too, let us go into the dining-room." luke was glad to accept this proposal, his long journey having given him a good appetite. chapter xxvii coleman acts susplciously after dinner, coleman suggested a game of billiards, but as this was a game with which luke was not familiar, he declined the invitation, but went into the billiard-room and watched a game between his new acquaintance and a stranger. coleman proved to be a very good player, and won the game. after the first game coleman called for drinks, and invited luke to join them. "thank you," answered luke, "but i never drink." "oh, i forgot; you're a good boy," said coleman. "well, i'm no puritan. whisky straight for me." luke was not in the least troubled by the sneer conveyed in coleman's words. he was not altogether entitled to credit for refusing to drink, having not the slightest taste for strong drink of any kind. about half-past seven coleman put up his cue, saying: "that'll do for me. now, luke, suppose we take a walk." luke was quite ready, not having seen anything of chicago as yet. they strolled out, and walked for an hour. coleman, to do him justice, proved an excellent guide, and pointed out whatever they passed which was likely to interest his young companion. but at last he seemed to be tired. "it's only half-past eight," he said, referring to his watch. "i'll drop into some theater. it is the best way to finish up the evening." "then i'll go back to the hotel," said luke. "i feel tired, and mean to go to bed early." "you'd better spend an hour or two in the theater with me." "no, i believe not. i prefer a good night's rest." "do you mind my leaving you?" "not at all." "can you find your way back to the hotel alone?" "if you'll direct me, i think i can find it." the direction was given, and coleman was turning off, when, as if it had just occurred to him, he said: "by the way, can you lend me a five? i've nothing less than a fifty-dollar bill with me, and i don't want to break that." luke congratulated himself now that he had left the greater part of his money at the hotel. "i can let you have a dollar," he said. coleman shrugged his shoulders, but answered: "all right; let me have the one." luke did so, and felt now that he had more than repaid the fifty cents his companion had paid for hack fare. though coleman had professed to have nothing less than fifty, luke knew that he had changed a five-dollar bill at the hotel in paying for the drinks, and must have over four dollars with him in small bills and change. "why, then," thought he, "did coleman want to borrow five dollars of me?" if luke had known more of the world he would have understood that it was only one of the tricks to which men like coleman resort to obtain a loan, or rather a gift, from an unsuspecting acquaintance. "i suppose i shall not see my money back," thought luke. "well, it will be the last that he will get out of me." he was already becoming tired of his companion, and doubted whether he would not find the acquaintance an expensive one. he was sorry that they were to share the same room. however, it was for one night only, and to-morrow he was quite resolved to part company. shortly after nine o'clock luke went to bed, and being fatigued with his long journey, was soon asleep. he was still sleeping at twelve o'clock, when coleman came home. coleman came up to his bed and watched him attentively. "the kid's asleep," he soliloquized. "he's one of the good sunday-school boys. i can imagine how shocked he would be if he knew that, instead of being a traveler for h. b. claflin, i have been living by my wits for the last half-dozen years. he seems to be half asleep. i think i can venture to explore a little." he took luke's trousers from the chair on which he had laid them, and thrust his fingers into the pockets, but brought forth only a penknife and a few pennies. "he keeps his money somewhere else, it seems," said coleman. next he turned to the vest, and from the inside vest pocket drew out luke's modest pocketbook. "oh, here we have it," thought coleman, with a smile. "cunning boy; he thought nobody would think of looking in his vest pocket. well, let us see how much he has got." he opened the pocketbook, and frowned with disappointment when he discovered only a two-dollar bill. "what does it mean? surely he hasn't come to chicago with only this paltry sum!" exclaimed coleman. "he must be more cunning than i thought." he looked in the coat pockets, the shoes, and even the socks of his young companion, but found nothing, except the silver watch, which luke had left in one of his vest pockets. "confound the boy! he's foiled me this time!" muttered coleman. "shall i take the watch? no; it might expose me, and i could not raise much on it at the pawnbroker's. he must have left his money with the clerk downstairs. he wouldn't think of it himself, but probably he was advised to do so before he left home. i'll get up early, and see if i can't get in ahead of my young friend." coleman did not venture to take the two-dollar bill, as that would have induced suspicion on the part of luke, and would have interfered with his intention of securing the much larger sum of money, which, as he concluded rightly, was in the safe in the office. he undressed and got into bed, but not without observation. as he was bending over luke's cothes, examining them, our hero's eyes suddenly opened, and he saw what was going on. it flashed upon him at once what kind of a companion he had fallen in with, but he had the wisdom and self-control to close his eyes again immediately. he reflected that there was not much that coleman could take, and if he took the watch he resolved to charge him openly with it. to make a disturbance there and then might be dangerous, as coleman, who was much stronger than he, might ill-treat and abuse him, without his being able to offer any effectual resistance. chapter xxviii coleman's little plan though coleman went to bed late, he awoke early. he had the power of awaking at almost any hour that he might fix. he was still quite fatigued, but having an object in view, overcame his tendency to lie longer, and swiftly dressing himself, went downstairs, luke was still sleeping, and did not awaken while his companion was dressing. coleman went downstairs and strolled up to the clerk's desk, "you're up early," said that official. "yes, it's a great nuisance, but i have a little business to attend to with a man who leaves chicago by an early train. i tried to find him last night, but he had probably gone to some theater. that is what has forced me to get up so early this morning." "i am always up early," said the clerk. "then you are used to it, and don't mind it. it is different with me." coleman bought a cigar, and while he was lighting it, remarked, as if incidentally: "by the way, did my young friend leave my money with you last evening?" "he left a package of money with me, but he didn't mention it was yours." "forgot to, i suppose. i told him to leave it here, as i was going out to the theater, and was afraid i might have my pocket picked. smart fellows, those pickpockets. i claim to be rather smart myself, but there are some of them smart enough to get ahead of me. "i was relieved of my pocketbook containing over two hundred dollars in money once. by jove! i was mad enough to knock the fellow's head off, if i had caught him." "it is rather provoking." "i think i'll trouble you to hand me the money the boy left with you, as i have to use some this morning." mr. coleman spoke in an easy, off-hand way, that might have taken in some persons, but hotel clerks are made smart by their positions. "i am sorry, mr. coleman," said the clerk, "but i can only give it back to the boy." "i commend your caution, my friend," said coleman, "but i can assure you that it's all right. i sent it back by luke when i was going to the theater, and i meant, of course, to have him give my name with it. however, he is not used to business, and so forgot it." "when did you hand it to him?" asked the clerk, with newborn suspicion. "about eight o'clock. no doubt he handed it in as soon as he came back to the hotel." "how much was there?" this question posed mr. coleman, as he had no idea how much money luke had with him. "i can't say exactly," he answered. "i didn't count it. there might have been seventy-five dollars, though perhaps the sum fell a little short of that." "i can't give you the money, mr. coleman," said the clerk, briefly. "i have no evidence that it is yours." "really, that's ludicrous," said coleman, with a forced laugh. "you don't mean to doubt me, i hope," and madison coleman drew himself up haughtily. "that has nothing to do with it. the rule of this office is to return money only to the person who deposited it with us. if we adopted any other rule, we should get into no end of trouble." "but, my friend," said coleman, frowning, "you are putting me to great inconvenience. i must meet my friend in twenty minutes and pay him a part of this money." "i have nothing to do with that," said the clerk. "you absolutely refuse, then?" "i do," answered the clerk, firmly. "however, you can easily overcome the difficulty by bringing the boy down here to authorize me to hand you the money." "it seems to me that you have plenty of red tape here," said coleman, shrugging his shoulders. "however, i must do as you require." coleman had a bright thought, which he proceeded to carry into execution. he left the office and went upstairs. he was absent long enough to visit the chamber which he and luke had occupied together. then he reported to the office again. "the boy is not dressed," he said, cheerfully. "however, he has given me an order for the money, which, of course, will do as well." he handed a paper, the loose leaf of a memorandum book, on which were written in pencil these words: "give my guardian, mr. coleman, the money i left on deposit at the office. luke larkin." "that makes it all right, doesn't it?" asked coleman, jauntily. "now, if you'll be kind enough to hand me my money at once, i'll be off." "it won't do, mr. coleman," said the clerk. "how am i to know that the boy wrote this?" "don't you see his signature?" the clerk turned to the hotel register, where luke had enrolled his name. "the handwriting is not the same," he said, coldly. "oh, confound it!" exclaimed coleman, testily. "can't you understand that writing with a pencil makes a difference?" "i understand," said the clerk, "that you are trying to get money that does not belong to you. the money was deposited a couple of hours sooner than the time you claim to have handed it to the boy--just after you and the boy arrived." "you're right," said coleman, unabashed. "i made a mistake." "you cannot have the money." "you have no right to keep it from me," said coleman, wrathfully. "bring the boy to the office and it shall be delivered to him; then, if he chooses to give it to you, i have nothing to say." "but i tell you he is not dressed." "he seems to be," said the clerk, quietly, with a glance at the door, through which luke was just entering. coleman's countenance changed. he was now puzzled for a moment. then a bold plan suggested itself. he would charge luke with having stolen the money from him. chapter xxix mr. coleman is foiled in his attempt luke looked from coleman to the clerk in some surprise. he saw from their looks that they were discussing some matter which concerned him. "you left some money in my charge yesterday, mr. larkin," said the clerk. "yes." "your friend here claims it. am i to give it to him?" luke's eyes lighted up indignantly. "what does this mean, mr. coleman?" he demanded, sternly. "it means," answered coleman, throwing off the mask, "that the money is mine, and that you have no right to it." if luke had not witnessed coleman's search of his pockets during the night, he would have been very much astonished at this brazen statement. as it was, he had already come to the conclusion that his railroad acquaintance was a sharper. "i will trouble you to prove your claim to it," said luke, not at all disturbed by coleman's impudent assertion. "i gave it to you yesterday to place in the safe. i did not expect you would put it in in your own name," continued coleman, with brazen hardihood. "when did you hand it to me?" asked luke, calmly. "when we first went up into the room." this change in his original charge coleman made in consequence of learning the time of the deposit. "this is an utter falsehood!" exclaimed luke, indignantly. "take care, young fellow!" blustered coleman. "your reputation for honesty isn't of the best. i don't like to expose you, but a boy who has served a three months' term in the penitentiary had better be careful how he acts." luke's breath was quite taken away by this unexpected attack. the clerk began to eye him with suspicion, so confident was coleman's tone. "mr. lawrence," said luke, for he had learned the clerk's name, "will you allow me a word in private?" "i object to this," said coleman, in a blustering tone. "whatever you have to say you can say before me." "yes," answered the clerk, who did not like coleman's bullying tone, "i will hear what you have to say." he led the way into an adjoining room, and assumed an air of attention. "this man is a stranger to me," luke commenced. "i saw him yesterday afternoon for the first time in my life." "but he says he is your guardian." "he is no more my guardian than you are. indeed, i would much sooner select you." "how did you get acquainted?" "he introduced himself to me as a traveler for h. b. claflin, of new york. i did not doubt his statement at the time, but now i do, especially after what happened in the night." "what was that?" asked the clerk, pricking up his ears. luke went on to describe coleman's search of his pockets. "did you say anything?" "no. i wished to see what he was after. as i had left nearly all my money with you, i was not afraid of being robbed." "i presume your story is correct. in fact, i detected him in a misstatement as to the time of giving you the money. but i don't want to get into trouble." "ask him how much money i deposited with you," suggested luke. "he has no idea, and will have to guess." "i have asked him the question once, but will do so again." the clerk returned to the office with luke. coleman eyed them uneasily, as if he suspected them of having been engaged in a conspiracy against him. "well," he said, "are you going to give me my money?" "state the amount," said the clerk, in a businesslike manner. "i have already told you that i can't state exactly. i handed the money to luke without counting it." "you must have some idea, at any rate," said the clerk. "of course i have. there was somewhere around seventy-five dollars." this he said with a confidence which he did not feel, for it was, of course, a mere guess. "you are quite out in your estimate, mr. coleman. it is evident to me that you have made a false claim. you will oblige me by settling your bill and leaving the hotel." "do you think i will submit to such treatment?" demanded coleman, furiously. "i think you'll have to," returned the clerk, quietly. "you can go in to breakfast, if you like, but you must afterward leave the hotel. john," this to a bellboy, "go up to number forty-seven and bring down this gentleman's luggage." "you and the boy are in a conspiracy against me!" exclaimed coleman, angrily. "i have a great mind to have you both arrested!" "i advise you not to attempt it. you may get into trouble." coleman apparently did think better of it. half an hour later he left the hotel, and luke found himself alone. he decided that he must be more circumspect hereafter. chapter xxx a dlscovery luke was in chicago, but what to do next he did not know. he might have advertised in one or more of the chicago papers for james harding, formerly in the employ of john armstrong, of new york, but if this should come to the knowledge of the party who had appropriated the bonds, it might be a revelation of the weakness of the case against them. again, he might apply to a private detective, but if he did so, the case would pass out of his hands. luke had this piece of information to start upon. he had been informed that harding left mr. armstrong's employment june 17, 1879, and, as was supposed, at once proceeded west. if he could get hold of a file of some chicago daily paper for the week succeeding, he might look over the last arrivals, and ascertain at what hotel harding had stopped. this would be something. "where can i examine a file of some chicago daily paper for 1879, mr. lawrence?" he asked of the clerk. "right here," answered the clerk. "mr. goth, the landlord, has a file of the _times_ for the last ten years." "would he let me examine the volume for 1879?" asked luke, eagerly. "certainly. i am busy just now, but this afternoon i will have the papers brought down to the reading-room." he was as good as his word, and at three o'clock in the afternoon luke sat down before a formidable pile of papers, and began his task of examination. he began with the paper bearing date june 19, and examined that and the succeeding papers with great care. at length his search was rewarded. in the paper for june 23 luke discovered the name of james harding, and, what was a little singular, he was registered at the ottawa house. luke felt quite exultant at this discovery. it might not lead to anything, to be sure, but still it was an encouragement, and seemed to augur well for his ultimate success. he went with his discovery to his friend the clerk. "were you here in june, 1879, mr. lawrence?" he asked. "yes. i came here in april of that year." "of course, you could hardly be expected to remember a casual guest?" "i am afraid not. what is his name?" "james harding." "james harding! yes, i do remember him, and for a very good reason. he took a very severe cold on the way from new york, and he lay here in the hotel sick for two weeks. he was an elderly man, about fifty-five, i should suppose." "that answers to the description given me. do you know where he went to from here?" "there you have me. i can't give you any information on that point." luke began to think that his discovery would lead to nothing. "stay, though," said the clerk, after a moment's thought. "i remember picking up a small diary in mr. harding's room after he left us. i didn't think it of sufficient value to forward to him, nor indeed did i know exactly where to send." "can you show me the diary?" asked luke, hopefully. "yes. i have it upstairs in my chamber. wait five minutes and i will get it for you." a little later a small, black-covered diary was put in luke's hand. he opened it eagerly, and began to examine the items jotted down. it appeared partly to note down daily expenses, but on alternate pages there were occasional memorandums. about the fifteenth of may appeared this sentence: "i have reason to think that my sister, mrs. ellen ransom, is now living in franklin, minnesota. she is probably in poor circumstances, her husband having died in poverty a year since. we two are all that is left of a once large family, and now that i am shortly to retire from business with a modest competence, i feel it will be alike my duty and my pleasure to join her, and do what i can to make her comfortable. she has a boy who must now be about twelve years old." "come," said luke, triumphantly, "i am making progress decidedly. my first step will be to go to franklin, minnesota, and look up mr. harding and his sister. after all, i ought to be grateful to mr. coleman, notwithstanding his attempt to rob me. but for him i should never have come to the ottawa house, and thus i should have lost an important clue." luke sat down immediately and wrote to mr. armstrong, detailing the discovery he had made--a letter which pleased his employer, and led him to conclude that he had made a good choice in selecting luke for this confidential mission. the next day luke left chicago and journeyed by the most direct route to franklin, minnesota. he ascertained that it was forty miles distant from st. paul, a few miles off the railroad. the last part of the journey was performed in a stage, and was somewhat wearisome. he breathed a sigh of relief when the stage stopped before the door of a two-story inn with a swinging sign, bearing the name franklin house. luke entered his name on the register and secured a room. he decided to postpone questions till he had enjoyed a good supper and felt refreshed. then he went out to the desk and opened a conversation with the landlord, or rather submitted first to answering a series of questions propounded by that gentleman. "you're rather young to be travelin' alone, my young friend," said the innkeeper. "yes, sir." "where might you be from?" "from new york." "then you're a long way from home. travelin' for your health?" "no," answered luke, with a smile. "i have no trouble with my health." "you do look pretty rugged, that's a fact. goin' to settle down in our state?" "i think not." "i reckon you're not travelin' on business? you're too young for a drummer." "the fact is, i am in search of a family that i have been told lives, or used to live, in franklin." "what's the name?" "the lady is a mrs. ransom. i wish to see her brother-in-law, mr. james harding." "sho! you'll have to go farther to find them." "don't they live here now?" asked luke, disappointed. "no; they moved away six months ago." "do you know where they went?" asked luke, eagerly. "not exactly. you see, there was a great stir about gold being plenty in the black hills, and mr. harding, though he seemed to be pretty well fixed, thought he wouldn't mind pickin' up a little. he induced his sister to go with him--that is, her boy wanted to go, and so she, not wantin' to be left alone, concluded to go, too." "so they went to the black hills. do you think it would be hard to find them?" "no; james harding is a man that's likely to be known wherever he is. just go to where the miners are thickest, and i allow you'll find him." luke made inquiries, and ascertaining the best way of reaching the black hills, started the next day. "if i don't find james harding, it's because i can't," he said to himself resolutely. chapter xxxi tony denton's call leaving luke on his way to the black hills, we will go back to groveton, to see how matters are moving on there. tony denton had now the excuse he sought for calling upon prince duncan. ostensibly, his errand related to the debt which randolph had incurred at his saloon, but really he had something more important to speak of. it may be remarked that squire duncan, who had a high idea of his own personal importance, looked upon denton as a low and insignificant person, and never noticed him when they met casually in the street. it is difficult to play the part of an aristocrat in a country village, but that is the role which prince duncan assumed. had he been a prince in reality, as he was by name, he could not have borne himself more loftily when he came face to face with those whom he considered his inferiors. when, in answer to the bell, the servant at squire duncan's found tony denton standing on the doorstep, she looked at him in surprise. "is the squire at home?" asked the saloon keeper. "i believe so," said the girl, doubtfully. "i would like to see him. say mr. denton wishes to see him on important business." the message was delivered. "mr. denton!" repeated the squire, in surprise. "is it tony denton?" "yes, sir." "what can he wish to see me about?" "he says it's business of importance, sir." "well, bring him in." prince duncan assumed his most important attitude and bearing when his visitor entered his presence. "mr.--ahem!--denton, i believe?" he said, as if he found difficulty in recognizing tony. "the same." "i am--ahem!--surprised to hear that you have any business with me." "yet so it is, squire duncan," said tony, not perceptibly overawed by the squire's grand manner. "elucidate it!" said prince duncan, stiffly. "you may not be aware, squire duncan, that your son randolph has for some time frequented my billiard saloon and has run up a sum of twenty-seven dollars." "i was certainly not aware of it. had i been, i should have forbidden his going there. it is no proper place for my son to frequent." "well, i don't know about that. it's respectable enough, i guess. at any rate, he seemed to like it, and at his request, for he was not always provided with money, i trusted him till his bill comes to twenty-seven dollars----" "you surely don't expect me to pay it!" said the squire, coldly. "he is a minor, as you very well know, and when you trusted him you knew you couldn't legally collect your claim." "well, squire, i thought i'd take my chances," said tony, carelessly. "i didn't think you'd be willing to have him owing bills around the village. you're a gentleman, and i was sure you'd settle the debt." "then, sir, you made a very great mistake. such bills as that i do not feel called upon to pay. was it all incurred for billiards?" "no; a part of it was for drinks." "worse and worse! how can you have the face to come here, mr. denton, and tell me that?" "i don't think it needs any face, squire. it's an honest debt." "you deliberately entrapped my son, and lured him into your saloon, where he met low companions, and squandered his money and time in drinking and low amusements." "come, squire, you're a little too fast. billiards ain't low. did you ever see schaefer and vignaux play?" "no, sir; i take no interest in the game. in coming here you have simply wasted your time. you will get no money from me." "then you won't pay your son's debt?" asked tony denton. "no." instead of rising to go, tony denton kept his seat. he regarded squire duncan attentively. "i am sorry, sir," said prince duncan, impatiently. "i shall have to cut short this interview." "i will detain you only five minutes, sir. have you ascertained who robbed the bank?" "i have no time for gossip. no, sir." "i suppose you would welcome any information on the subject?" duncan looked at his visitor now with sharp attention. "do you know anything about it?" he asked. "well, perhaps i do." "were you implicated in it?" was the next question. tony denton smiled a peculiar smile. "no, i wasn't," he answered. "if i had been, i don't think i should have called upon you about the matter. but--i think i know who robbed the bank." "who, then?" demanded the squire, with an uneasy look. tony denton rose from his chair, advanced to the door, which was a little ajar, and closed it. then he resumed. "one night late--it was after midnight--i was taking a walk, having just closed my saloon, when it happened that my steps led by the bank. it was dark--not a soul probably in the village was awake save myself, when i saw the door of the bank open and a muffled figure came out with a tin box under his arm. i came closer, yet unobserved, and peered at the person. i recognized him." "you recognized him?" repeated the squire, mechanically, his face pale and drawn. "yes; do you want to know who it was?" prince duncan stared at him, but did not utter a word. "it was you, the president of the bank!" continued denton. "nonsense, man!" said duncan, trying to regain his self-control. "it is not nonsense. i can swear to it." "i mean that it is nonsense about the robbery. i visited the bank to withdraw a box of my own." "of course you can make that statement before the court?" said tony denton, coolly. "but--but--you won't think of mentioning this circumstance?" muttered the squire. "will you pay randolph's bill?" "yes--yes; i'll draw a check at once." "so far, so good; but it isn't far enough. i want more." "you want more?" ejaculated the squire. "yes; i want a thousand-dollar government bond. it's cheap enough for such a secret." "but i haven't any bonds." "you can find me one," said tony, emphatically, "or i'll tell what i know to the directors. you see, i know more than that." "what do you know?" asked duncan, terrified. "i know that you disposed of a part of the bonds on wall street, to sharp & ketchum. i stood outside when you were up in their office." great beads of perspiration gathered upon the banker's brow. this blow was wholly unexpected, and he was wholly unprepared for it. he made a feeble resistance, but in the end, when tony denton left the house he had a thousand-dollar bond carefully stowed away in an inside pocket, and squire duncan was in such a state of mental collapse that he left his supper untasted. randolph was very much surprised when he learned that his father had paid his bill at the billiard saloon, and still more surprised that the squire made very little fuss about it. chapter xxxii on the way to the black hills just before luke started for the black hills, he received the following letter from his faithful friend linton. it was sent to new york to the care of mr. reed, and forwarded, it not being considered prudent to have it known at groveton where he was. "dear luke," the letter commenced, "it seems a long time since i have seen you, and i can truly say that i miss you more than i would any other boy in groveton. i wonder where you are--your mother does not seem to know. she only knows you are traveling for mr. reed. "there is not much news. groveton, you know, is a quiet place. i see randolph every day. he seems very curious to know where you are. i think he is disturbed because you have found employment elsewhere. he professes to think that you are selling newspapers in new york, or tending a peanut stand, adding kindly that it is all you are fit for. i have heard a rumor that he was often to be seen playing billiards at tony denton's, but i don't know whether it is true. i sometimes think it would do him good to become a poor boy and have to work for a living. "we are going to orchard beach next summer, as usual, and in the fall mamma may take me to europe to stay a year to learn the french language. won't that be fine? i wish you could go with me, but i am afraid you can't sell papers or peanuts enough --which is it?--to pay expenses. how long are you going to be away? i shall be glad to see you back, and so will florence grant, and all your other friends, of whom you have many in groveton. write soon to your affectionate friend, "linton." this letter quite cheered up luke, who, in his first absence from home, naturally felt a little lonely at times. "linny is a true friend," he said. "he is just as well off as randolph, but never puts on airs. he is as popular as randolph is unpopular. i wish i could go to europe with him." upon the earlier portions of luke's journey to the black hills we need not dwell. the last hundred or hundred and fifty miles had to be traversed in a stage, and this form of traveling luke found wearisome, yet not without interest. there was a spice of danger, too, which added excitement, if not pleasure, to the trip. the black hills stage had on more than one occasion been stopped by highwaymen and the passengers robbed. the thought that this might happen proved a source of nervous alarm to some, of excitement to others. luke's fellow passengers included a large, portly man, a merchant from some western city; a clergyman with a white necktie, who was sent out by some missionary society to start a church at the black hills; two or three laboring men, of farmerlike appearance, who were probably intending to work in the mines; one or two others, who could not be classified, and a genuine dude, as far as appearance went, a slender-waisted, soft-voiced young man, dressed in the latest style, who spoke with a slight lisp. he hailed from the city of new york, and called himself mortimer plantagenet sprague. as next to himself, luke was the youngest passenger aboard the stage, and sat beside him, the two became quite intimate. in spite of his affected manners and somewhat feminine deportment, luke got the idea that mr. sprague was not wholly destitute of manly traits, if occasion should call for their display. one day, as they were making three miles an hour over a poor road, the conversation fell upon stage robbers. "what would you do, colonel braddon," one passenger asked of the western merchant, "if the stage were stopped by a gang of ruffians?" "shoot 'em down like dogs, sir," was the prompt reply. "if passengers were not so cowardly, stages would seldom be robbed." all the passengers regarded the valiant colonel with admiring respect, and congratulated themselves that they had with them so doughty a champion in case of need. "for my part," said the missionary, "i am a man of peace, and i must perforce submit to these men of violence, if they took from me the modest allowance furnished by the society for traveling expenses." "no doubt, sir," said colonel braddon. "you are a minister, and men of your profession are not expected to fight. as for my friend mr. sprague," and he directed the attention of the company derisively to the new york dude, "he would, no doubt, engage the robbers single-handed." "i don't know," drawled mortimer sprague. "i am afraid i couldn't tackle more than two, don't you know." there was a roar of laughter, which did not seem to disturb mr. sprague. he did not seem to be at all aware that his companions were laughing at him. "perhaps, with the help of my friend, mr. larkin," he added, "i might be a match for three." there was another burst of laughter, in which luke could not help joining. "i am afraid i could not help you much, mr. sprague," he said. "i think, mr. sprague," said colonel braddon, "that you and i will have to do the fighting if any attack is made. if our friend the minister had one of his sermons with him, perhaps that would scare away the highwaymen." "it would not be the first time they have had an effect on godless men," answered the missionary, mildly, and there was another laugh, this time at the colonel's expense. "what takes you to the black hills, my young friend?" asked colonel braddon, addressing luke. other passengers awaited luke's reply with interest. it was unusual to find a boy of sixteen traveling alone in that region. "i hope to make some money," answered luke, smiling. "i suppose that is what we are all after." he didn't think it wise to explain his errand fully. "are you going to dig for gold, mr. larkin?" asked mortimer sprague. "it's awfully dirty, don't you know, and must be dreadfully hard on the back." "probably i am more used to hard work than you, mr. sprague," answered luke. "i never worked in my life," admitted the dude. "i really don't know a shovel from a hoe." "then, if i may be permitted to ask," said colonel braddon, "what leads you to the black hills, mr. sprague?" "i thought i'd better see something of the country, you know. besides, i had a bet with another feller about whether the hills were weally black, or not. i bet him a dozen bottles of champagne that they were not black, after all." this statement was received with a round of laughter, which seemed to surprise mr. sprague, who gazed with mild wonder at his companions, saying: "weally, i can't see what you fellers are laughing at. i thought i'd better come myself, because the other feller might be color-blind, don't you know." here mr. sprague rubbed his hands and looked about him to see if his joke was appreciated. "it seems to me that the expense of your journey will foot up considerably more than a dozen bottles of champagne," said one of the passengers. "weally, i didn't think of that. you've got a great head, old fellow. after all, a feller's got to be somewhere, and, by jove!---what's that?" this ejaculation was produced by the sudden sinking of the two left wheels in the mire in such a manner that the ponderous colonel braddon was thrown into mr. sprague's lap "you see, i had to go somewhere," said braddon, humorously. "weally, i hope we sha'n't get mixed," gasped sprague. "if it's all the same to you, i'd rather sit in your lap." "just a little incident of travel, my dear sir," said braddon, laughing, as he resumed his proper seat. "i should call it rather a large incident," said mr. sprague, recovering his breath. "i suppose," said braddon, who seemed rather disposed to chaff his slender traveling companion, "if you like the black hills; you may buy one of them." "i may," answered mr. sprague, letting his glance rest calmly on his big companion. "suppose we buy one together." colonel braddon laughed, but felt that his joke had not been successful. the conversation languished after awhile. it was such hard work riding in a lumbering coach, over the most detestable roads, that the passengers found it hard to be sociable. but a surprise was in store. the coach made a sudden stop. two horsemen appeared at the window, and a stern voice said: "we'll trouble you to get out, gentlemen. we'll take charge of what money and valuables you have about you." chapter xxxiii two unexpected champions it may well be imagined that there was a commotion among the passengers when this stern summons was heard. the highwaymen were but two in number, but each was armed with a revolver, ready for instant use. one by one the passengers descended from the stage, and stood trembling and panic-stricken in the presence of the masked robbers. there seems to be something in a mask which inspires added terror, though it makes the wearers neither stronger nor more effective. luke certainly felt startled and uncomfortable, for he felt that he must surrender the money he had with him, and this would be inconvenient, though the loss would not be his, but his employer's. but, singularly enough, the passenger who seemed most nervous and terrified was the stalwart colonel braddon, who had boasted most noisily of what he would do in case the stage were attacked. he nervously felt in his pockets for his money, his face pale and ashen, and said, imploringly: "spare my life, gentlemen; i will give you all i have." "all right, old man," said one of the stage robbers, as he took the proffered pocketbook. haven't you any more money?" "no; on my honor, gentlemen. it will leave me penniless." "hand over your watch." with a groan, colonel braddon handed over a gold stem-winder, of waltham make. "couldn't you leave me the watch, gentlemen?" he said, imploringly. "it was a present to me last christmas." "can't spare it. make your friends give you another." next came the turn of mortimer sprague, the young dude. "hand over your spondulics, young feller," said the second gentleman of the road. "weally, i'm afraid i can't, without a good deal of twouble." "oh, curse the trouble; do as i bid, or i'll break your silly head." "you see, gentlemen, i keep my money in my boots, don't you know." "take off your boots, then, and be quick about it." "i can't; that is, without help. they're awfully tight, don't you know." "which boot is your money in?" asked the road agent, impatiently. "the right boot." "hold it up, then, and i'll help you." the road agent stooped over, not suspecting any danger, and in doing so laid down his revolver. in a flash mortimer sprague electrified not only his assailants, but all the stage passengers, by producing a couple of revolvers, which he pointed at the two road agents, and in a stern voice, wholly unlike the affected tones in which he had hitherto spoken, said: "get out of here, you ruffians, or i'll fire!" the startled road agent tried to pick up his revolver, but sprague instantly put his foot on it, and repeated the command. the other road agent, who was occupied with the minister, turned to assist his comrade, when he, too, received a check from an unexpected source. the minister, who was an old man, had a stout staff, which he used to guide him in his steps. he raised it and brought it down with emphasis on the arm which held the revolver, exclaiming. "the sword of the lord and of gideon! i smite thee, thou bold, bad man, not in anger, but as an instrument of retribution." "well done, reverend doctor!" exclaimed mortimer sprague. "between us we will lay the rascals out!" luke, who was close at hand, secured the fallen revolver be fore the road agent's arm had got over tingling with the paralyzing blow dealt by the minister, who, in spite of his advanced age, possessed a muscular arm. "now git, you two!" exclaimed mortimer sprague. "git, if you want to escape with whole bones!" never, perhaps, did two road agents look more foolish than these who had suffered such a sudden and humiliating discomfiture from those among the passengers whom they had feared least. the young dude and the old missionary had done battle for the entire stage-load of passengers, and vanquished the masked robbers, before whom the rest trembled. "stop!" said colonel braddon, with a sudden thought. "one of the rascals has got my pocketbook!" "which one?" asked mortimer. the colonel pointed him out. instantly the dude fired, and a bullet whistled within a few inches of the road agent's head. "drop that pocketbook!" he exclaimed, "or i'll send another messenger for it; that was only a warning!" with an execration the thoroughly terrified robber threw down the pocketbook, and the relieved owner hastened forward to pick it up. "i thought i'd fetch him, don't you know," said the dude, relapsing into his soft drawl. by this time both the road agents were at a safe distance, and the rescued passengers breathed more freely. "really, mr. sprague," said colonel braddon, pompously, "you are entitled to a great deal of credit for your gallant behavior; you did what i proposed to do. of course, i had to submit to losing my pocketbook, but i was just preparing to draw my revolver when you got the start of me." "if i'd only known it, colonel," drawled mr. sprague, "i'd have left the job for you. weally, it would have saved me a good deal of trouble. but i think the reverend doctor here is entitled to the thanks of the company. i never knew exactly what the sword of the lord and of gideon was before, but i see it means a good, stout stick." "i was speaking figuratively, my young friend," said the missionary "i am not sure but i have acted unprofessionally, but when i saw those men of violence despoiling us, i felt the natural man rise within me, and i smote him hip and thigh." "i thought you hit him on the arm, doctor," said mr. sprague. "again i spoke figuratively, my young friend. i cannot say i regret yielding to the impulse that moved me. i feel that i have helped to foil the plans of the wicked." "doctor," said one of the miners, "you've true grit. when you preach at the black hills, count me and my friends among the listeners. we're all willing to help along your new church, for you're one of the right sort." "my friends, i will gladly accept your kind proposal, but i trust it will not be solely because i have used this arm of flesh in your defense. mr. sprague and i have but acted as humble instruments in the hands of a higher power." "well, gentlemen," said colonel braddon, "i think we may as well get into the stage again and resume our journey." "what shall i do with this revolver?" asked luke, indicating the one he had picked up. "keep it," said the colonel. "you'll make better use of it than the rascal who lost it." "i've got an extra one here," said mortimer sprague, raising the one on which he had put his foot. "i don't need it myself, so i will offer it to the reverend doctor." the missionary shook his head. "i should not know how to use it," he said, "nor indeed am i sure that i should feel justified in doing so." "may i have it, sir?" asked one of the miners. "certainly, if you want it," said mr. sprague. "i couldn't afford to buy one; but i see that i shall need one out here." in five minutes the stage was again on its way, and no further adventures were met with. about the middle of the next day the party arrived at deadwood. chapter xxxiv fenton's gulch deadwood, at the time of luke's arrival, looked more like a mining camp than a town. the first settlers had neither the time nor the money to build elaborate dwellings. anything, however rough, that would provide a shelter, was deemed sufficient. luxury was not dreamed of, and even ordinary comforts were only partially supplied. luke put up at a rude hotel, and the next morning began to make inquiries for mr. harding. he ascertained that the person of whom he was in search had arrived not many weeks previous, accompanied by his sister. the latter, however, soon concluded that deadwood was no suitable residence for ladies, and had returned to her former home, or some place near by. mr. harding remained, with a view of trying his luck at the mines. the next point to be ascertained was to what mines he had directed his steps. this information was hard to obtain. finally, a man who had just returned to deadwood, hearing luke making inquiries of the hotel clerk, said: "i say, young chap, is the man you are after an old party over fifty, with gray hair and a long nose?" "i think that is the right description," said luke, eagerly. "can you tell me anything about him?" "the party i mean, he may be harding, or may be somebody else, is lying sick at fenton's gulch, about a day's journey from here--say twenty miles." "sick? what is the matter with him?" "he took a bad cold, and being an old man, couldn't stand it as well as if he were twenty years younger. i left him in an old cabin lying on a blanket, looking about as miserable as you would want to see. are you a friend of his?" "i am not acquainted with him," answered luke, "but i am sent out by a friend of his in the east. i am quite anxious to find him. can you give me directions?" "i can do better. i can guide you there. i only came to deadwood for some supplies, and i go back to-morrow morning." "if you will let me accompany you i will be very much obliged." "you can come with me and welcome. i shall be glad of your company. are you alone?" "yes." "seems to me you're rather a young chap to come out here alone." "i suppose i am," returned luke, smiling, "but there was no one else to come with me. if i find mr. harding, i shall be all right." "i can promise you that. it ain't likely he has got up from his sick-bed and left the mines. i reckon you'll find him flat on his back, as i left him." luke learned that his mining friend was known as jack baxter. he seemed a sociable and agreeable man, though rather rough in his outward appearance and manners. the next morning they started in company, and were compelled to travel all day. toward sunset they reached the place known as fenton's gulch. it was a wild and dreary-looking place, but had a good reputation for its yield of gold dust. "that's where you'll find the man you're after," said baxter, pointing to a dilapidated cabin, somewhat to the left of the mines. luke went up to the cabin, the door of which was open, and looked in. on a pallet in the corner lay a tall man, pale and emaciated. he heard the slight noise at the door, and without turning his head, said: "come in, friend, whoever you are." upon this, luke advanced into the cabin. "is this mr. james harding?" he asked. the sick man turned his head, and his glance rested with surprise upon the boy of sixteen who addressed him. "have i seen you before?" he asked. "no, sir. i have only just arrived at the gulch. you are mr. harding?" "yes, that is my name; but how did you know it?" "i am here in search of you, mr. harding." "how is that?" asked the sick man, quickly. "is my sister sick?" "not that i know of. i come from mr. armstrong, in new york." "you come from mr. armstrong?" repeated the sick man, in evident surprise. "have you any message for me from him?" "yes, but that can wait. i am sorry to find you sick. i hope that it is nothing serious." "it would not be serious if i were in a settlement where i could obtain a good doctor and proper medicines. everything is serious here. i have no care or attention, and no medicines." "do you feel able to get away from here? it would be better for you to be at deadwood than here." "if i had anyone to go with me, i might venture to start for deadwood." "i am at your service, mr. harding." the sick man looked at luke with a puzzled expression. "you are very kind," he said, after a pause. "what is your name?" "luke larkin." "and you know mr. armstrong?" "yes. i am his messenger." "but how came he to send a boy so far? it is not like him." luke laughed. "no doubt you think him unwise," he said. "the fact was, he took me for lack of a better. besides, the mission was a confidential one, and he thought he could trust me, young as i am." "you say you have a message for me?" queried harding. "yes!" "what is it?" "first, can i do something for your comfort? can't i get you some breakfast?" "the message first." "i will give it at once. do you remember purchasing some government bonds for mr. armstrong a short time before you left his employment?" "yes. what of them?" "have you preserved the numbers of the bonds?" luke inquired, anxiously. "why do you ask?" "because mr. armstrong has lost his list, and they have been stolen. till he learns the numbers, he will stand no chance of identifying or recovering them." "i am sure i have the numbers. feel in the pocket of my coat yonder, and you will find a wallet. take it out and bring it to me." luke obeyed directions. the sick man opened the wallet and began to examine the contents. finally he drew out a paper, which he unfolded. "here is the list. i was sure i had them." luke's eyes lighted up with exultation. it was clear that he had succeeded in his mission. he felt that he had justified the confidence which mr. armstrong had reposed in him, and that the outlay would prove not to have been wasted. "may i copy them?" he asked. "certainly, since you are the agent of mr. armstrong--or you may have the original paper." "i will copy them, so that if that paper is lost, i may still have the numbers. and now, what can i do for you?" the resources of fenton's gulch were limited, but luke succeeded in getting together materials for a breakfast for the sick man. the latter brightened up when he had eaten a sparing meal. it cheered him, also, to find that there was someone to whom he could look for friendly services. to make my story short, on the second day he felt able to start with luke for deadwood, which he reached without any serious effect, except a considerable degree of fatigue. arrived at deadwood, where there were postal facilities, luke lost no time in writing a letter to mr. armstrong, enclosing a list of the stolen bonds. he gave a brief account of the circumstances under which he had found mr. harding, and promised to return as soon as he could get the sick man back to his farm in minnesota. when this letter was received, roland reed was in the merchant's office. "look at that, mr. reed," said armstrong, triumphantly. "that boy is as smart as lightning. some people might have thought me a fool for trusting so young a boy, but the result has justified me. now my course is clear. with the help of these numbers i shall soon be able to trace the theft and convict the guilty party." chapter xxxv back in groveton meanwhile, some things occurred in groveton which require to be chronicled. since the visit of tony denton, and the knowledge that his secret was known, prince duncan had changed in manner and appearance. there was an anxious look upon his face, and a haggard look, which led some of his friends to think that his health was affected. indeed, this was true, for any mental disturbance is likely to affect the body. by way of diverting attention from the cause of this altered appearance, mr. duncan began to complain of overwork, and to hint that he might have to travel for his health. it occurred to him privately that circumstances might arise which would make it necessary for him to go to canada for a lengthened period. with his secret in the possession of such a man as tony denton, he could not feel safe. besides, he suspected the keeper of the billiard-room would not feel satisfied with the thousanddollar bond he had extorted from him, but would, after awhile, call for more. in this he was right. scarcely a week had elapsed since his first visit, when the servant announced one morning that a man wished to see him. "do you know who it is, mary?" asked the squire. "yes, sir. it's tony denton." prince duncan's face contracted, and his heart sank within him. he would gladly have refused to see his visitor, but knowing the hold that tony had upon him, he did not dare offend him. "you may tell him to come in," he said, with a troubled look. "what can the master have to do with a man like that?" thought mary, wondering. "i wouldn't let him into the house if i was a squire." tony denton entered the room with an assumption of ease which was very disagreeable to mr. duncan. "i thought i'd call to see you, squire," he said. "take a seat, mr. denton," said the squire coldly. tony did not seem at all put out by the coldness of his reception. "i s'pose you remember what passed at our last meeting, mr. duncan," he said, in a jaunty way. "well, sir," responded prince duncan, in a forbidding tone. "we came to a little friendly arrangement, if you remember," continued denton. "well, sir, there is no need to refer to the matter now." "pardon me, squire, but i am obliged to keep to it." "why?" "because i've been unlucky??" "i suppose, mr. denton," said the squire haughtily, "you are capable of managing your own business. if you don't manage it well, and meet with losses, i certainly am not responsible, and i cannot understand why you bring the matter to me." "you see, squire," said tony, with a grin, "i look upon you as a friend, and so it is natural that i should come to you for advice." "i wish i dared kick the fellow out of the house," thought prince duncan. "he is a low scamp, and i don't like the reputation of having such visitors." under ordinary circumstances, and but for the secret which tony possessed, he would not have been suffered to remain in the squire's study five minutes, but conscience makes cowards of us all, and mr. duncan felt that he was no longer his own master. "i'll tell you about the bad luck, squire," tony resumed. "you know the bond you gave me the last time i called?" mr. duncan winced, and he did not reply. "i see you remember it. well, i thought i might have the luck to double it, so i went up to new york, and went to see one of them wall street brokers. i asked his advice, and he told me i'd better buy two hundred shares of some kind of stock, leaving the bond with him as margin. he said i was pretty sure to make a good deal of money, and i thought so myself. but the stock went down, and yesterday i got a letter from him, saying that the margin was all exhausted, and i must give him another, or he would sell out the stock." "mr. denton, you have been a fool!" exclaimed mr. duncan irritably. "you might have known that would be the result of your insane folly. you've lost your thousand dollars, and what have you got to show for it?" "you may be right, squire, but i don't want to let the matter end so. i want you to give me another bond." "you do, eh?" said duncan indignantly. "so you want to throw away another thousand dollars, do you?" "if i make good the margin, the stock'll go up likely, and i won't lose anything." "you can do as you please, of course, but you will have to go elsewhere for your money." "will i?" asked tony coolly. "there is no one else who would let me have the money." "i won't let you have another cent, you may rely upon that!" exclaimed prince duncan furiously. "i guess you'll think better of that, squire," said tony, fixing his keen black eyes on the bank president. "why should i?" retorted duncan, but his heart sank within him, for he understood very well what the answer would be. "because you know what the consequences of refusal would be," denton answered coolly. "i don't understand you," stammered the squire, but it was evident from his startled look that he did. "i thought you would," returned tony denton quietly. "you know very well that my evidence would convict you, as the person who robbed the bank." "hush!" ejaculated prince duncan, in nervous alarm. tony denton smiled with a consciousness of power. "i have no wish to expose you," he said, "if you will stand my friend." in that moment prince duncan bitterly regretted the false step he had taken. to be in the power of such a man was, indeed, a terrible form of retribution. "explain your meaning," he said reluctantly. "i want another government bond for a thousand dollars." "but when i gave you the first, you promised to preserve silence, and trouble me no more." "i have been unfortunate, as i already explained to you." "i don't see how that alters matters. you took the risk voluntarily. why should i suffer because you were imprudent and lost your money?" "i can't argue with you, squire," said tony, with an insolent smile. "you are too smart for me. all i have to say is, that i must have another bond." "suppose i should give it to you--what assurance have i that you will not make another demand?" "i will give you the promise in writing, if you like." "knowing that i could not make use of any such paper with out betraying myself." "well, there is that objection, certainly, but i can't do anything better." "what do you propose to do with the bond?" "deposit it with my broker, as i have already told you." "i advise you not to do so. make up your mind to lose the first, and keep the second in your own hands." "i will consider your advice, squire." but it was very clear that tony denton would not follow it. all at once prince duncan brightened up. he had a happy thought. should it be discovered that the bonds used by tony denton belonged to the contents of the stolen box, might he not succeed in throwing the whole blame on the billiard-saloon keeper, and have him arrested as the thief? the possession and use of the bonds would be very damaging, and tony's reputation was not such as to protect him. here seemed to be a rift in the clouds--and it was with comparative cheerfulness that mr. duncan placed the second bond in the hands of the visitor. "of course," he said, "it will be for your interest not to let any one know from whom you obtained this." "all right. i understand. well, good morning, squire; i'm glad things are satisfactory." "good morning, mr. denton." when tony had left the room, prince duncan threw himself back in his chair and reflected. his thoughts were busy with the man who had just left him, and he tried to arrange some method of throwing the guilt upon denton. yet, perhaps, even that would not be necessary. so far as mr. duncan knew, there was no record in mr. armstrong's possession of the numbers of the bonds, and in that case they would not be identified. "if i only knew positively that the numbers would not turn up, i should feel perfectly secure, and could realize on the bonds at any time," he thought. "i will wait awhile, and i may see my way clear." chapter xxxvi a letter from luke "there's a letter for you, linton," said henry wagner, as he met linton tomkins near the hotel. "i just saw your name on the list." in the groveton post-office, as in many country offices, it was the custom to post a list of those for whom letters had been received. "it must be from luke," thought linton, joyfully, and he bent his steps immediately toward the office. no one in the village, outside of luke's family, missed him more than linton. though luke was two years and a half older, they had always been intimate friends. linton's family occupied a higher social position, but there was nothing snobbish about linton, as there was about randolph, and it made no difference to him that luke lived in a small and humble cottage, and, till recently, had been obliged to wear old and shabby clothes. in this democratic spirit, linton was encouraged by his parents, who, while appreciating the refinement which is apt to be connected with liberal means, were too sensible to undervalue sterling merit and good character. linton was right. his letter was from luke. it read thus: "dear linny: i was very glad to receive your letter. it made me homesick for a short time. at any rate, it made me wish that i could be back for an hour in dear old groveton. i cannot tell you where i am, for that is a secret of my employer. i am a long way from home; i can tell you that much. when i get home, i shall be able to tell you all. you will be glad to know that i have succeeded in the mission on which i was sent, and have revived a telegram of thanks from my employer. "it will not be long now before i am back in groveton. i wonder if my dear friend randolph will be glad to see me? you can remember me to him when you see him. it will gratify him to know that i am well and doing well, and that my prospects for the future are excellent. "give my regards to your father and mother, who have always been kind to me. i shall come and see you the first thing after i return. if you only knew how hard i find it to refrain from telling you all, where i am and what adventures i have met with, how i came near being robbed twice, and many other things, you would appreciate my self-denial. but you shall know all very soon. i have had a good time--the best time in my life. let mother read this letter, and believe me, dear lin, "your affectionate friend, "luke larkin." linton's curiosity was naturally excited by the references in luke's letter. "where can luke be?" he asked. "i wish he were at liberty to tell." linton never dreamed, however, that his friend was two thousand miles away, in the wild west. it would have seemed to him utterly improbable. he was folding up the letter as he was walking homeward, when he met randolph duncan. "what's that, linton?" he asked. "a love-letter?" "not much; i haven't got so far along. it is a letter from luke larkin." "oh!" sneered randolph. "i congratulate you on your correspondent. is he in new york?" "the letter is postmarked in new york, but he is traveling." "traveling? where is he traveling?" "he doesn't say. this letter is forwarded by mr. reed." "the man who robbed the bank?" "what makes you say that? what proof have you that he robbed the bank?" "i can't prove it, but my father thinks he is the robber. there was something very supicious about that tin box which he handed to luke." "it was opened in court, and proved to contain private papers." "oh, that's easily seen through. he took out the bonds, and put in the papers. i suppose he has experience in that sort of thing." "does your father think that?" "yes, he does. what does luke say?" "wait a minute, and i will read you a paragraph," said linton, with a mischievous smile. thereupon he read the paragraph in which randolph was mentioned. "what does he mean by calling me his dear friend?" exclaimed randolph indignantly. "i never was his dear friend, and never want to be." "i believe you, randolph. shall i tell you what he means?" "yes." "he means it for a joke. he knows you don't like him, and he isn't breaking his heart over it." "it's pretty cheeky in him! just tell him when you write that he needn't call me his dear friend again." "you might hurt his feelings," said linton, gravely. "that for his feelings!" said randolph, with a snap of his fingers. "you say he's traveling. shall i tell you what i think he is doing?" "if you like." "i think he is traveling with a blacking-box in his hand. it's just the business for him." "i don't think you are right. he wouldn't make enough in that way to pay traveling expenses. he says he has twice come near being robbed." randolph laughed derisively. "a thief wouldn't make much robbing him," he said. "if he got twenty-five cents he'd be lucky." "you forget that he has a nice silver watch?" randolph frowned. this with him was a sore reflection. much as he was disposed to look down upon luke, he was aware that luke's watch was better than his, and, though he had importuned his father more than once to buy him a gold watch, he saw no immediate prospect of his wish being granted. "oh, well, i've talked enough of luke larkin," he said, snappishly. "he isn't worth so many words. i am very much surprised that a gentleman's son like you, linton, should demean himself by keeping company with such a boy." "there is no boy in the village whom i would rather associate with," said linton, with sturdy friendship. "i don't admire your taste, then," said randolph. "i don't believe your father and mother like you to keep such company." "there you are mistaken," said linton, with spirit. "they have an excellent opinion of luke, and if he should ever need a friend, i am sure my father would be willing to help him." "well, i must be going," said randolph, by no means pleased with this advocacy of luke. "come round and see me soon. you never come to our house." linton answered politely, but did not mean to become intimate with randolph, who was by no means to his taste. he knew that it was only his social position that won him the invitation, and that if his father should suddenly lose his property, randolph's cordiality would be sensibly diminished. such friendship, he felt, was not to be valued. "what are you thinking about? you seem in a brown study," said a pleasant voice. looking up, linton recognized his teacher, mr. hooper. "i was thinking of luke larkin," answered linton. "by the by, where is luke? i have not seen him for some time." "he is traveling for mr. reed, i believe." "the man who committed the tin box to his care?" "yes, sir." "do you know where he is?" "no, sir. i have just received a letter from him, but he says he is not at liberty to mention where he is." "will he be home soon?" "yes, i think so." "i shall be glad to see him. he is one of the most promising of my pupils." linton's expressive face showed the pleasure he felt at this commendation of his friend. he felt more gratified than if mr. hooper had directly praised him. "luke can stand randolph's depreciation," he reflected, "with such a friend as mr. hooper." linton was destined to meet plenty of acquaintances. scarcely had he parted from mr. hooper, when tony denton met him. the keeper of the billiard-room was always on the alert to ingratiate himself with the young people of the village, looking upon them as possible patrons of his rooms. he would have been glad to draw in linton, on account of his father's prominent position in the village. "good day, my young friend," he said, with suavity. "good day, mr. denton," responded linton, who thought it due to himself to be polite, though he did not fancy mr. denton. "i should be very glad to have you look in at my billiardroom, mr. linton," continued tony. "thank you sir, but i don't think my father would like to have me visit a billiard-saloon--at any rate, till i am older." "oh, i'll see that you come to no harm. if you don't want to play, you can look on." "at any rate, i am obliged to you for your polite invitation." "oh, i like to have the nice boys of the village around me. your friend randolph duncan often visits me." "so i have heard," replied linton. "well, i won't keep you, but remember my invitation." "i am not very likely to accept," thought linton. "i have heard that randolph visits the billiard-room too often for his good." chapter xxxvii an incident on the cars as soon as possible, luke started on his return to new york. he had enjoyed his journey, but now he felt a longing to see home and friends once more. his journey to chicago was uneventful. he stayed there a few hours, and then started on his way home. on his trip from chicago to detroit he fell in with an old acquaintance unexpectedly. when about thirty miles from detroit, having as a seatmate a very large man, who compressed him within uncomfortable limits, he took his satchel, and passing into the car next forward, took a seat a few feet from the door. he had scarcely seated himself when, looking around, he discovered, in the second seat beyond, his old chicago acquaintance, mr. j. madison coleman. he was as smooth and affable as ever, and was chatting pleasantly with a rough, farmerlike-looking man, who seemed very much taken with his attractive companion. "i wonder what mischief coleman is up to now?" thought luke. he was so near that he was able to hear the conversation that passed between them. "yes, my friend," said mr. coleman, "i am well acquainted with detroit. business has called me there very often, and it will give me great pleasure to be of service to you in any way." "what business are you in?" inquired the other. "i am traveling for h. b. claflin & co., of new york. of course you have heard of them. they are the largest wholesale dry-goods firm in the united states." "you don't say so!" returned the farmer respectfully. "do you get pretty good pay?" "i am not at liberty to tell just what pay i get," said mr. coleman, "but i am willing to admit that it is over four thousand dollars." "you don't say so!" ejaculated the farmer. "my! i think myself pretty lucky when i make a thousand dollars a year." "oh, well, my dear sir, your expenses are very light compared to mine. i spend about ten dollars a day on an average." "jehu!" ejaculated the farmer. "well, that is a pile. do all the men that travel for your firm get as much salary as you?" "oh, no; i am one of the principal salesmen, and am paid extra. i am always successful, if i do say it myself, and the firm know it, and pay me accordingly. they know that several other firms are after me, and would get me away if they didn't pay me my price." "i suppose you know all about investments, being a business man?" "yes, i know a great deal about them," answered mr. coleman, his eyes sparkling with pleasure at this evidence that his companion had money. "if you have any money to invest, i shall be very glad to advise you." "well, you see, i've just had a note for two hundred and fifty dollars paid in by a neighbor who's been owin' it for two years, and i thought i'd go up to detroit and put it in the savings-bank." "my good friend, the savings-bank pays but a small rate of interest. i think i know a business man of detroit who will take your money and pay you ten per cent." "ten per cent.!" exclaimed the farmer joyfully. "my! i didn't think i could get over four or six." "so you can't, in a general way," answered coleman. "but business men, who are turning over their money once a month, can afford to pay a good deal more." "but is your friend safe?" he inquired, anxiously. "safe as the bank of england," answered coleman. "i've lent him a thousand dollars at a time, myself, and always got principal and interest regularly. i generally have a few thousand invested," he added, in a matter-of-course manner. "i'd be glad to get ten per cent.," said the farmer. "that would be twenty-five dollars a year on my money." "exactly. i dare say you didn't get over six per cent. on the note." "i got seven, but i had to wait for the interest sometimes." "you'll never have to wait for interest if you lend to my friend. i am only afraid he won't be willing to take so small a sum. still, i'll speak a good word for you, and he will make an exception in your favor." "thank you, sir," said the farmer gratefully. "i guess i'll let him have it." "you couldn't do better. he's a high-minded, responsible man. i would offer to take the money myself, but i really have no use for it. i have at present two thousand dollars in bank waiting for investment." "you don't say so!" said the farmer, eying coleman with the respect due to so large a capitalist. "yes, i've got it in the savings-bank for the time being. if my friend can make use of it, i shall let him have it. he's just as safe as a savings-bank." the farmer's confidence in mr. coleman was evidently fully established. the young man talked so smoothly and confidently that he would have imposed upon one who had seen far more of the world than farmer jones. "i'm in luck to fall in with you, mr.----" "coleman," said the drummer, with suavity. "j. madison coleman. my grandfather was a cousin of president james madison, and that accounts for my receiving that name." the farmer's respect was further increased. it was quite an event to fall in with so near a relative of an illustrious ex-president, and he was flattered to find that a young man of such lineage was disposed to treat him with such friendly familiarity. "are you going to stay long in detroit?" asked the farmer. "two or three days. i shall be extremely busy, but i shall find time to attend to your business. in fact, i feel an interest in you, my friend, and shall be glad to do you a service." "you are very kind, and i'm obleeged to you," said the farmer gratefully. "now, if you will excuse me for a few minutes, i will go into the smoking-car and have a smoke." when he had left the car, luke immediately left his seat, and went forward to where the farmer was sitting. "excuse me," he said, "but i saw you talking to a young man just now." "yes," answered the farmer complacently, "he's a relative of president madison." "i want to warn you against him. i know him to be a swindler." "what!" exclaimed the farmer, eying luke suspiciously. "who be you? you're nothing but a boy." "that is true, but i am traveling on business. this mr. coleman tried to rob me about a fortnight since, and nearly succeeded. i heard him talking to you about money." "yes, he was going to help me invest some money i have with me. he said he could get me ten per cent." "take my advice, and put it in a savings-bank. then it will be safe. no man who offers to pay ten per cent. for money can be relied upon." "perhaps you want to rob me yourself?" said the farmer suspiciously. "do i look like it?" asked luke, smiling. "isn't my advice good, to put the money in a savings-bank? but i will tell you how i fell in with mr. coleman, and how he tried to swindle me, and then you can judge for yourself." this luke did briefly and his tone and manner carried conviction. the farmer became extremely indignant at the intended fraud, and promised to have nothing to do with coleman. "i will take my old seat, then," said luke. "i don't want coleman to know who warned you." presently, coleman came back and was about to resume his seat beside the farmer. "you see i have come back," he said. "you needn't have troubled yourself," said the farmer, with a lowering frown. "you nearly took me in with your smooth words, but i've got my money yet, and i mean to keep it. your friend can't have it." "what does all this mean, my friend?" asked coleman, in real amazement. "is it possible you distrust me? why, i was going to put myself to inconvenience to do you a service." "then you needn't. i know you. you wanted to swindle me out of my two hundred and fifty dollars." "sir, you insult me!" exclaimed coleman, with lofty indignation. "what do i--a rich man--want of your paltry two hundred and fifty dollars?" "i don't believe you are a rich man. didn't i tell you, i have been warned against you?" "who dared to talk against me?" asked coleman indignantly. then, casting his eyes about, he noticed luke for the first time. now it was all clear to him. striding up to luke's seat, he said threateningly, "have you been talking against me, you young jackanapes?" "yes, mr. coleman, i have," answered luke steadily. "i thought it my duty to inform this man of your character. i have advised him to put his money into a savings-bank." "curse you for an impertinent meddler!" said coleman wrathfully. "i'll get even with you for this!" "you can do as you please," said luke calmly. coleman went up to the farmer and said, abruptly, "you've been imposed upon by an unprincipled boy. he's been telling you lies about me." "he has given me good advice," said the farmer sturdily, "and i shall follow it." "you are making a fool of yourself!" "that is better than to be made fool of, and lose my money." coleman saw that the game was lost, and left the car. he would gladly have assaulted luke, but knew that it would only get him into trouble. chapter xxxviii. luke's return mr. armstrong was sitting in his office one morning when the door opened, and luke entered, his face flushed with health, and his cheeks browned by exposure. "you see i've got back, mr. armstrong," he said, advancing with a smile. "welcome home, luke!" exclaimed the merchant heartily, grasping our hero's hand cordially. "i hope you are satisfied with me," said luke. "satisfied! i ought to be. you have done yourself the greatest credit. it is seldom a boy of your age exhibits such good judgment and discretion." "thank you, sir," said luke gratefully. "i was obliged to spend a good deal of money," he added, "and i have arrived in new york with only three dollars and seventy-five cents in my pocket." "i have no fault to find with your expenses," said mr. armstrong promptly. "nor would i have complained if you had spent twice as much. the main thing was to succeed, and you have succeeded." "i am glad to hear you speak so," said luke, relieved. "to me it seemed a great deal of money. you gave me two hundred dollars, and i have less than five dollars left. here it is!" and luke drew the sum from his pocket, and tendered it to the merchant. "i can't take it," said mr. armstrong. "you don't owe me any money. it is i who am owing you. take this on account," and he drew a roll of bills from his pocketbook and handed it to luke. "here are a hundred dollars on account," he continued. "this is too much, mr. armstrong," said luke, quite overwhelmed with the magnitude of the gift. "let me be the judge of that," said mr. armstrong kindly. "there is only one thing, luke, that i should have liked to have you do." "what is that, sir?" "i should like to have had you bring me a list of the numbers certified to by mr. harding." luke's answer was to draw from the inside pocket of his vest a paper signed by the old bookkeeper, containing a list of the numbers, regularly subscribed and certified to. "is that what you wished, sir?" he asked. "you are a wonderful boy," said the merchant admiringly. "was this your idea, or mr. harding's?" "i believe i suggested it to him," said luke modestly. "that makes all clear sailing," said mr. armstrong. "here are fifty dollars more. you deserve it for your thoughtfulness." "you have given me enough already," said luke, drawing back. "my dear boy, it is evident that you still have something to learn in the way of business. when a rich old fellow offers you money, which he can well afford, you had better take it." "that removes all my objections," said luke. "but i am afraid you will spoil me with your liberality, mr. armstrong." "i will take the risk of it. but here is another of your friends." the door had just opened, and roland reed entered. there was another cordial greeting, and luke felt that it was pleasant, indeed, to have two such good friends. "when are you going to groveton, luke?" asked mr. reed. "i shall go this afternoon, if there is nothing more you wish me to do. i am anxious to see my mother." "that is quite right, luke. your mother is your best friend, and deserves all the attention you can give her. i shall probably go to groveton myself to-morrow." after luke had left the office, mr. reed remained to consult with the merchant as to what was the best thing to do. both were satisfied that prince duncan, the president of the bank, was the real thief who had robbed the bank. there were two courses open--a criminal prosecution, or a private arrangement which should include the return of the stolen property. the latter course was determined upon, but should it prove ineffective, severer measures were to be resorted to. chapter xxxix how luke was received luke's return to groveton was received with delight by his mother and his true friend linton. naturally randolph displayed the same feelings toward him as ever. it so chanced that he met luke only an hour after his arrival. he would have passed him by unnoticed but for the curiosity he felt to know where he had been, and what he was intending to do. "humph! so you're back again!" he remarked. "yes," answered luke, with a smile. "i hope you haven't missed me much, randolph." "oh, i've managed to live through it," returned randolph, with what he thought to be cutting sarcasm. "i am glad of that." "where were you?" asked randolph, abruptly. "i was in new york a part of the time," said luke. "where were you the rest of the time?" "i was traveling." "that sounds large. perhaps you were traveling with a hand-organ." "perhaps i was." "well, what are you going to do now?" "thank you for your kind interest in me, randolph. i will tell you as soon as i know." "oh, you needn't think i feel interest in you." "then i won't." "you are impertinent," said randolph, scowling. it dawned upon him that luke was chaffing him. "i don't mean to be. if i have been, i apologize. if you know of any situation which will pay me a fair sum, i wish you would mention me." "i'll see about it," said randolph, in an important tone. he was pleased at luke's change of tone. "i don't think you can get back as janitor, for my father doesn't like you." "couldn't you intercede for me, randolph?" "why, the fact is, you put on so many airs, for a poor boy, that i shouldn't feel justified in recommending you. it is your own fault." "well, perhaps it is," said luke. "i am glad you acknowledge it. i don't know but my father will give you a chance to work round our house, make fires, and run errands." "what would he pay?" asked luke, in a businesslike tone. "he might pay a dollar and a half a week." "i'm afraid i couldn't support myself on that." "oh, well, that's your lookout. it's better than loafing round doing nothing." "you're right there, randolph." "i'll just mention it to father, then." "no, thank you. i shouldn't wonder if mr. reed might find something for me to do." "oh, the man that robbed the bank?" said randolph, turning up his nose. "it may soon be discovered that some one else robbed the bank." "i don't believe it." here the two boys parted. "luke," said linton, the same day, "have you decided what you are going to do?" "not yet; but i have friends who, i think, will look out for me." "because my father says he will find you a place if you fail to get one elsewhere." "tell your father that i think he is very kind. there is no one to whom i would more willingly be indebted for a favor. if i should find myself unemployed, i will come to him." "all right! i am going to drive over to coleraine"--the next town--"this afternoon. will you go with me?" "i should like nothing better." "what a difference there is between randolph and linton!" thought luke. chapter xl the bank robber is found tony denton lost no time in going up to the city with the second bond he had extracted from the fears of prince duncan. he went directly to the office of his brokers, gay & sears, and announced that he was prepared to deposit additional margin. the bond was received, and taken to the partners in the back office. some four minutes elapsed, and the clerk reappeared. "mr. denton, will you step into the back office?" he said. "certainly," answered tony cheerfully. he found the two brokers within. "this is mr. denton?" said the senior partner. "yes, sir." "you offer this bond as additional margin on the shares we hold in your name?" "yes, of course." "mr. denton," said mr. gay searchingly, "where did you get this bond?" "where did i get it?" repeated denton nervously. "why, i bought it." "how long since?" "about a year." the two partners exchanged glances. "where do you live, mr. denton?" "in groveton." "ahem! mr. sears, will you be kind enough to draw out the necessary papers?" tony denton felt relieved. the trouble seemed to be over. mr. gay at the same time stepped into the main office and gave a direction to one of the clerks. mr. sears drew out a large sheet of foolscap, and began, in very deliberate fashion, to write. he kept on writing for some minutes. tony denton wondered why so much writing should be necessary in a transaction of this kind. five minutes later a young man looked into the office, and said, addressing mr. gay. "all right!" upon that mr. sears suspended writing. "mr. denton," said mr. gay, "are you aware that this bond which you have brought us was stolen from the groveton bank?" "i--don't--believe--it," gasped denton, turning pale. "the numbers of the stolen bonds have been sent to all the bankers and brokers in the city. this is one, and the one you brought us not long since is another. do you persist in saying that you bought this bond a year ago?" "no, no!" exclaimed denton, terrified. "did you rob the bank?" "no, i didn't!" ejaculated the terrified man, wiping the perspiration from his brow. "where, then, did you get the bonds?" "i got them both from prince duncan, president of the bank." both partners looked surprised. one of them went to the door of the office, and called in mr. armstrong, who, as well as a policeman, had been sent for. tony denton's statement was repeated to him. "i am not surprised," he said. "i expected it." tony denton now made a clean breast of the whole affair, and his words were taken down. "are you willing to go to groveton with me, and repeat this in presence of mr. duncan?" asked mr. armstrong. "yes." "will you not have him arrested?" asked mr. gay. "no, he has every reason to keep faith with me." it was rather late in the day when mr. armstrong, accompanied by tony denton, made their appearance at the house of prince duncan. when the banker's eyes rested on the strangely assorted pair, his heart sank within him. he had a suspicion of what it meant. "we have called on you, mr. duncan, on a matter of importance," said mr. armstrong. "very well," answered duncan faintly. "it is useless to mince matters. i have evidence outside of this man's to show that it was you who robbed the bank of which you are president, and appropriated to your own use the bonds which it contained." "this is a strange charge to bring against a man in my position. where is your proof?" demanded duncan, attempting to bluster. "i have mr. denton's evidence that he obtained two thousanddollar bonds of you." "very well, suppose i did sell him two such bonds?" "they were among the bonds stolen." "it is not true. they were bonds i have had for five years." "your denial is useless. the numbers betray you." "you did not have the numbers of the bonds." "so you think, but i have obtained them from an old bookkeeper of mine, now at the west. i sent a special messenger out to obtain the list from him. would you like to know who the messenger was?" "who was it?" "luke larkin." "that boy!" exclaimed duncan bitterly. "yes, that boy supplied me with the necessary proof. and now, i have a word to say; i can send you to prison, but for the sake of your family i would prefer to spare you. but the bonds must be given up." "i haven't them all in my possession." "then you must pay me the market price of those you have used. the last one given to this man is safe." "it will reduce me to poverty," said prince duncan in great agitation. "nevertheless, it must be done!" said mr. armstrong sternly. "moreover, you must resign your position as president of the bank, and on that condition you will be allowed to go free, and i will not expose you." of course, squire duncan was compelled to accept these terms. he saved a small sum out of the wreck of his fortune, and with his family removed to the west, where they were obliged to adopt a very different style of living. randolph is now an office boy at a salary of four dollars a week, and is no longer able to swagger and boast as he has done hitherto. mr. tomkins, linton's father, was elected president of the groveton bank in place of mr. duncan, much to the satisfaction of luke. roland reed, much to the suprise of luke, revealed himself as a cousin of mr. larkin, who for twenty-five years had been lost sight of. he had changed his name, on account of some trouble into which he had been betrayed by prince duncan, and thus had not been recognized. "you need be under no anxiety about luke and his prospects," he said to mrs. larkin. "i shall make over to him ten thousand dollars at once, constituting myself his guardian, and will see that he is well started in business. my friend mr. armstrong proposes to take him into his office, if you do not object, at a liberal salary." "i shall miss him very much," said mrs. larkin, "though i am thankful that he is to be so well provided for." "he can come home every saturday night, and stay until monday morning," said mr. reed, who, by the way, chose to retain his name in place of his old one. "will that satisfy you?" "it ought to, surely, and i am grateful to providence for all the blessings which it has showered upon me and mine." there was another change. mr. reed built a neat and commodious house in the pleasantest part of the village and there mrs. larkin removed with his little daughter, of whom she still had the charge. no one rejoiced more sincerely at luke's good fortune than linton, who throughout had been a true and faithful friend. he is at present visiting europe with his mother, and has written an earnest letter, asking luke to join him. but luke feels that he cannot leave a good business position, and must postpone the pleasure of traveling till he is older. mr. j. madison coleman, the enterprising drummer, has got into trouble, and is at present an inmate of the state penitentiary at joliet, illinois. it is fortunate for the traveling public, so many of whom he has swindled, that he is for a time placed where he can do no more mischief. so closes an eventful passage in the life of luke larkin. he has struggled upward from a boyhood of privation and self-denial into a youth and manhood of prosperity and honor. there has been some luck about it, i admit, but after all he is indebted for most of his good fortune to his own good qualities. the end project gutenberg's etext on the improvement of the understanding (treatise on the emendation of the intellect), by baruch spinoza copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. on the improvement of the understanding (treatise on the emendation of the intellect) by baruch spinoza [benedict de spinoza] translated by r. h. m. elwes august, 1997 [etext #1016] project gutenberg's etext on the improvement of the understanding *****this file should be named 1spne10.txt or 1spne10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, 1spne11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, 1spne10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association/carnegie-mellon university" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / carnegie-mellon university". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* on the improvement of the understanding (treatise on the emendation of the intellect) by baruch spinoza [benedict de spinoza] translated by r. h. m. elwes table of contents: 1 on the improvement of the understanding 3 of the ordinary objects of men's desires 12 of the true and final good 17 certain rules of life 19 of the four modes of perception 25 of the best mode of perception 33 of the instruments of the intellect, or true ideas 43 answers to objections first part of method: 50 distinction of true ideas from fictitious ideas 64 and from false ideas 77 of doubt 81 of memory and forgetfulness 86 mental hindrances from words and from the popular confusion of ready imagination with distinct understanding. second part of method: 91 its object, the acquisition of clear and distinct ideas 94 its means, good definitions conditions of definition 107 how to define understanding ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[notice to the reader.] (this notice to the reader was written by the editors of the opera postuma in 1677. taken from curley, note 3, at end) *this treatise on the emendation of the intellect etc., which we give you here, kind reader, in its unfinished [that is, defective] state, was written by the author many years ago now. he always intended to finish it. but hindered by other occupations, and finally snatched away by death, he was unable to bring it to the desired conclusion. but since it contains many excellent and useful things, which we have no doubt will be of great benefit to anyone sincerely seeking the truth, we did not wish to deprive you of them. and so that you would be aware of, and find less difficult to excuse, the many things that are still obscure, rough, and unpolished, we wished to warn you of them. farewell.* [1] (1) after experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, i finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. [2] (1) i say "i finally resolved," for at first sight it seemed unwise willingly to lose hold on what was sure for the sake of something then uncertain. (2) i could see the benefits which are acquired through fame and riches, and that i should be obliged to abandon the quest of such objects, if i seriously devoted myself to the search for something different and new. (3) i perceived that if true happiness chanced to be placed in the former i should necessarily miss it; while if, on the other hand, it were not so placed, and i gave them my whole attention, i should equally fail. [3] (1) i therefore debated whether it would not be possible to arrive at the new principle, or at any rate at a certainty concerning its existence, without changing the conduct and usual plan of my life; with this end in view i made many efforts, in vain. (2) for the ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads riches, fame, and the pleasures of sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good. [4] (1) by sensual pleasure the mind is enthralled to the extent of quiescence, as if the supreme good were actually attained, so that it is quite incapable of thinking of any other object; when such pleasure has been gratified it is followed by extreme melancholy, whereby the mind, though not enthralled, is disturbed and dulled. (2) the pursuit of honors and riches is likewise very absorbing, especially if such objects be sought simply for their own sake, [a] inasmuch as they are then supposed to constitute the highest good. [5] (1) in the case of fame the mind is still more absorbed, for fame is conceived as always good for its own sake, and as the ultimate end to which all actions are directed. (2) further, the attainment of riches and fame is not followed as in the case of sensual pleasures by repentance, but, the more we acquire, the greater is our delight, and, consequently, the more are we incited to increase both the one and the other; on the other hand, if our hopes happen to be frustrated we are plunged into the deepest sadness. (3) fame has the further drawback that it compels its votaries to order their lives according to the opinions of their fellow-men, shunning what they usually shun, and seeking what they usually seek. [6] (1) when i saw that all these ordinary objects of desire would be obstacles in the way of a search for something different and new nay, that they were so opposed thereto, that either they or it would have to be abandoned, i was forced to inquire which would prove the most useful to me: for, as i say, i seemed to be willingly losing hold on a sure good for the sake of something uncertain. (6:2) however, after i had reflected on the matter, i came in the first place to the conclusion that by abandoning the ordinary objects of pursuit, and betaking myself to a new quest, i should be leaving a good, uncertain by reason of its own nature, as may be gathered from what has been said, for the sake of a good not uncertain in its nature (for i sought for a fixed good), but only in the possibility of its attainment. [7] (1) further reflection convinced me that if i could really get to the root of the matter i should be leaving certain evils for a certain good. (2) i thus perceived that i was in a state of great peril, and i compelled myself to seek with all my strength for a remedy, however uncertain it might be; as a sick man struggling with a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely be upon him unless a remedy be found, is compelled to seek a remedy with all his strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies therein. (7:3) all the objects pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act as hindrances, causing the death not seldom of those who possess them, [b] and always of those who are possessed by them. [8] (1) there are many examples of men who have suffered persecution even to death for the sake of their riches, and of men who in pursuit of wealth have exposed themselves to so many dangers, that they have paid away their life as a penalty for their folly. (2) examples are no less numerous of men, who have endured the utmost wretchedness for the sake of gaining or preserving their reputation. (3) lastly, are innumerable cases of men, who have hastened their death through over-indulgence in sensual pleasure. [9] (1) all these evils seem to have arisen from the fact, that happiness or unhappiness is made wholly dependent on the quality of the object which we love. (2) when a thing is not loved, no quarrels will arise concerning it no sadness be felt if it hatred, in short no disturbances of the mind. (3) all these arise from the love of what is perishable, such as the objects already mentioned. [10] (1) but love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness, wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with all our strength. (2) yet it was not at random that i used the words, "if i could go to the root of the matter," for, though what i have urged was perfectly clear to my mind, i could not forthwith lay aside all love of riches, sensual enjoyment, and fame. [11] (1) one thing was evident, namely, that while my mind was employed with these thoughts it turned away from its former objects of desire, and seriously considered the search for a new principle; this state of things was a great comfort to me, for i perceived that the evils were not such as to resist all remedies. (11:2) although these intervals were at first rare, and of very short duration, yet afterwards, as the true good became more and more discernible to me, they became more frequent and more lasting; especially after i had recognized that the acquisition of wealth, sensual pleasure, or fame, is only a hindrance, so long as they are sought as ends not as means; if they be sought as means, they will be under restraint, and, far from being hindrances, will further not a little the end for which they are sought, as i will show in due time. [12] (1) i will here only briefly state what i mean by true good, and also what is the nature of the highest good. (2) in order that this may be rightly understood, we must bear in mind that the terms good and evil are only applied relatively, so that the same thing may be called both good and bad according to the relations in view, in the same way as it may be called perfect or imperfect. (3) nothing regarded in its own nature can be called perfect or imperfect; especially when we are aware that all things which come to pass, come to pass according to the eternal order and fixed laws of nature. [13] (1) however, human weakness cannot attain to this order in its own thoughts, but meanwhile man conceives a human character much more stable than his own, and sees that there is no reason why he should not himself acquire such a character. (2) thus he is led to seek for means which will bring him to this pitch of perfection, and calls everything which will serve as such means a true good. (13:3) the chief good is that he should arrive, together with other individuals if possible, at the possession of the aforesaid character. (4) what that character is we shall show in due time, namely, that it is the knowledge of the union existing being the mind and the whole of nature. [c] [14] (1) this, then, is the end for which i strive, to attain to such a character myself, and to endeavor that many should attain to it with me. (2) in other words, it is part of my happiness to lend a helping hand, that many others may understand even as i do, so that their understanding and desire may entirely agree with my own. (3) in order to bring this about, it is necessary to understand as much of nature as will enable us to attain to the aforesaid character, and also to form a social order such as is most conducive to the attainment of this character by the greatest number with the least difficulty and danger. [15] (1) we must seek the assistance of moral philosophy [d] and the theory of education; further, as health is no insignificant means for attaining our end, we must also include the whole science of medicine, and, as many difficult things are by contrivance rendered easy, and we can in this way gain much time and convenience, the science of mechanics must in no way be despised. [16] (1) but before all things, a means must be devised for improving the understanding and purifying it, as far as may be at the outset, so that it may apprehend things without error, and in the best possible way. (2) thus it is apparent to everyone that i wish to direct all science to one end [e] and aim, so that we may attain to the supreme human perfection which we have named; and, therefore, whatsoever in the sciences does not serve to promote our object will have to be rejected as useless. (3) to sum up the matter in a word, all our actions and thoughts must be directed to this one end. [17] (1) yet, as it is necessary that while we are endeavoring to attain our purpose, and bring the understanding into the right path we should carry on our life, we are compelled first of all to lay down certain rules of life as provisionally good, to wit the following:i. (2) to speak in a manner intelligible to the multitude, and to comply with every general custom that does not hinder the attainment of our purpose. (3) for we can gain from the multitude no small advantages, provided that we strive to accommodate ourselves to its understanding as far as possible: moreover, we shall in this way gain a friendly audience for the reception of the truth. ii. (17:4) to indulge ourselves with pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for preserving health. iii. (5) lastly, to endeavor to obtain only sufficient money or other commodities to enable us to preserve our life and health, and to follow such general customs as are consistent with our purpose. [18] (1) having laid down these preliminary rules, i will betake myself to the first and most important task, namely, the amendment of the understanding, and the rendering it capable of understanding things in the manner necessary for attaining our end. (2) in order to bring this about, the natural order demands that i should here recapitulate all the modes of perception, which i have hitherto employed for affirming or denying anything with certainty, so that i may choose the best, and at the same time begin to know my own powers and the nature which i wish to perfect. [19] (1) reflection shows that all modes of perception or knowledge may be reduced to four:i. (2) perception arising from hearsay or from some sign which everyone may name as he please. ii. (3) perception arising from mere experience that is, form experience not yet classified by the intellect, and only so called because the given event has happened to take place, and we have no contradictory fact to set against it, so that it therefore remains unassailed in our minds. iii. (19:4) perception arising when the essence of one thing is inferred from another thing, but not adequately; this comes when [f] from some effect we gather its cause, or when it is inferred from some general proposition that some property is always present. iv. (5) lastly, there is the perception arising when a thing is perceived solely through its essence, or through the knowledge of its proximate cause. [20] (1) all these kinds of perception i will illustrate by examples. (2) by hearsay i know the day of my birth, my parentage, and other matters about which i have never felt any doubt. (3) by mere experience i know that i shall die, for this i can affirm from having seen that others like myself have died, though all did not live for the same period, or die by the same disease. (4) i know by mere experience that oil has the property of feeding fire, and water of extinguishing it. (5) in the same way i know that a dog is a barking animal, man a rational animal, and in fact nearly all the practical knowledge of life. [21] (1) we deduce one thing from another as follows: when we clearly perceive that we feel a certain body and no other, we thence clearly infer that the mind is united [g] to the body, and that their union is the cause of the given sensation; but we cannot thence absolutely understand [h] the nature of the sensation and the union. (2) or, after i have become acquainted with the nature of vision, and know that it has the property of making one and the same thing appear smaller when far off than when near, i can infer that the sun is larger than it appears, and can draw other conclusions of the same kind. [22] (1) lastly, a thing may be perceived solely through its essence; when, from the fact of knowing something, i know what it is to know that thing, or when, from knowing the essence of the mind, i know that it is united to the body. (2) by the same kind of knowledge we know that two and three make five, or that two lines each parallel to a third, are parallel to one another, &c. (3) the things which i have been able to know by this kind of knowledge are as yet very few. [23] (1) in order that the whole matter may be put in a clearer light, i will make use of a single illustration as follows. (2) three numbers are given it is required to find a fourth, which shall be to the third as the second is to the first. (23:3) tradesmen will at once tell us that they know what is required to find the fourth number, for they have not yet forgotten the rule which was given to them arbitrarily without proof by their masters; others construct a universal axiom from their experience with simple numbers, where the fourth number is self-evident, as in the case of 2, 4, 3, 6; here it is evident that if the second number be multiplied by the third, and the product divided by the first, the quotient is 6; when they see that by this process the number is produced which they knew beforehand to be the proportional, they infer that the process always holds good for finding a fourth number proportional. [24] (1) mathematicians, however, know by the proof of the nineteenth proposition of the seventh book of euclid, what numbers are proportionals, namely, from the nature and property of proportion it follows that the product of the first and fourth will be equal to the product of the second and third: still they do not see the adequate proportionality of the given numbers, or, if they do see it, they see it not by virtue of euclid's proposition, but intuitively, without going through any process. [25] (1) in order that from these modes of perception the best may be selected, it is well that we should briefly enumerate the means necessary for attaining our end. i. (2) to have an exact knowledge of our nature which we desire to perfect, and to know as much as is needful of nature in general. ii. to collect in this way the differences, the agreements, and the oppositions of things. iii. to learn thus exactly how far they can or cannot be modified. iv. to compare this result with the nature and power of man. (4) we shall thus discern the highest degree of perfection to which man is capable of attaining. [26] (1) we shall then be in a position to see which mode of perception we ought to choose. (2) as to the first mode, it is evident that from hearsay our knowledge must always be uncertain, and, moreover, can give us no insight into the essence of a thing, as is manifest in our illustration; now one can only arrive at knowledge of a thing through knowledge of its essence, as will hereafter appear. (3) we may, therefore clearly conclude that the certainty arising from hearsay cannot be scientific in its character. (4) for simple hearsay cannot affect anyone whose understanding does not, so to speak, meet it half way. [27] (1) the second mode of perception [i] cannot be said to give us the idea of the proportion of which we are in search. (2) moreover its results are very uncertain and indefinite, for we shall never discover anything in natural phenomena by its means, except accidental properties, which are never clearly understood, unless the essence of the things in question be known first. (3) wherefore this mode also must be rejected. [28] (1) of the third mode of perception we may say in a manner that it gives us the idea of the thing sought, and that it us to draw conclusions without risk of error; yet it is not by itself sufficient to put us in possession of the perfection we aim at. [29] (1) the fourth mode alone apprehends the adequate essence of a thing without danger of error. (2) this mode, therefore, must be the one which we chiefly employ. (3) how, then, should we avail ourselves of it so as to gain the fourth kind of knowledge with the least delay concerning things previously unknown? (4) i will proceed to explain. [30] (1) now that we know what kind of knowledge is necessary for us, we must indicate the way and the method whereby we may gain the said knowledge concerning the things needful to be known. (2) in order to accomplish this, we must first take care not to commit ourselves to a search, going back to infinity that is, in order to discover the best method of finding truth, there is no need of another method to discover such method; nor of a third method for discovering the second, and so on to infinity. (3) by such proceedings, we should never arrive at the knowledge of the truth, or, indeed, at any knowledge at all. (30:4) the matter stands on the same footing as the making of material tools, which might be argued about in a similar way. (5) for, in order to work iron, a hammer is needed, and the hammer cannot be forthcoming unless it has been made; but, in order to make it, there was need of another hammer and other tools, and so on to infinity. (6) we might thus vainly endeavor to prove that men have no power of working iron. [31] (1) but as men at first made use of the instruments supplied by nature to accomplish very easy pieces of workmanship, laboriously and imperfectly, and then, when these were finished, wrought other things more difficult with less labour and greater perfection; and so gradually mounted from the simplest operations to the making of tools, and from the making of tools to the making of more complex tools, and fresh feats of workmanship, till they arrived at making, complicated mechanisms which they now possess. (31:2) so, in like manner, the intellect, by its native strength, [k], makes for itself intellectual instruments, whereby it acquires strength for performing other intellectual operations, [l], and from these operations again fresh instruments, or the power of pushing its investigations further, and thus gradually proceeds till it reaches the summit of wisdom. [32] (1) that this is the path pursued by the understanding may be readily seen, when we understand the nature of the method for finding out the truth, and of the natural instruments so necessary complex instruments, and for the progress of investigation. i thus proceed with my demonstration. [33] (1) a true idea, [m], (for we possess a true idea) is something different from its correlate (ideatum); thus a circle is different from the idea of a circle. (2) the idea of a circle is not something having a circumference and a center, as a circle has; nor is the idea of a body that body itself. (3) now, as it is something different from its correlate, it is capable of being understood through itself; in other words, the idea, in so far as its actual essence (essentia formalis) is concerned, may be the subject of another subjective essence (essentia objectiva). [33note1] (4) and, again, this second subjective essence will, regarded in itself, be something real, capable of being understood; and so on, indefinitely. [34] (1) for instance, the man peter is something real; the true idea of peter is the reality of peter represented subjectively, and is in itself something real, and quite distinct from the actual peter. (2) now, as this true idea of peter is in itself something real, and has its own individual existence, it will also be capable of being understood that is, of being the subject of another idea, which will contain by representation (objective) all that the idea of peter contains actually (formaliter). (3) and, again, this idea of the idea of peter has its own individuality, which may become the subject of yet another idea; and so on, indefinitely. (4) this everyone may make trial of for himself, by reflecting that he knows what peter is, and also knows that he knows, and further knows that he knows that he knows, &c. (34:5) hence it is plain that, in order to understand the actual peter, it is not necessary first to understand the idea of peter, and still less the idea of the idea of peter. (6) this is the same as saying that, in order to know, there is no need to know that we know, much less to know that we know that we know. (7) this is no more necessary than to know the nature of a circle before knowing the nature of a triangle. [n]. (8) but, with these ideas, the contrary is the case: for, in order to know that i know, i must first know. [35] (1) hence it is clear that certainty is nothing else than the subjective essence of a thing: in other words, the mode in which we perceive an actual reality is certainty. (2) further, it is also evident that, for the certitude of truth, no further sign is necessary beyond the possession of a true idea: for, as i have shown, it is not necessary to know that we know that we know. (3) hence, again, it is clear that no one can know the nature of the highest certainty, unless he possesses an adequate idea, or the subjective essence of a thing: certainty is identical with such subjective essence. [36] (1) thus, as the truth needs no sign it being to possess the subjective essence of things, or, in other words, the ideas of them, in order that all doubts may be removed it follows that the true method does not consist in seeking for the signs of truth after the acquisition of the idea, but that the true method teaches us the order in which we should seek for truth itself, [o] or the subjective essences of things, or ideas, for all these expressions are synonymous. [37] (1) again, method must necessarily be concerned with reasoning or understanding i mean, method is not identical with reasoning in the search for causes, still less is it the comprehension of the causes of things: it is the discernment of a true idea, by distinguishing it from other perceptions, and by investigating its nature, in order that we may so train our mind that it may, by a given standard, comprehend whatsoever is intelligible, by laying down certain rules as aids, and by avoiding useless mental exertion. [38] (1) whence we may gather that method is nothing else than reflective knowledge, or the idea of an idea; and that as there can be no idea of an idea unless an idea exists previously, there can be no method without a pre-existent idea. (2) therefore, that will be a good method which shows us how the mind should be directed, according to the standard of the given true idea. (38:3) again, seeing that the ratio existing between two ideas the same as the ratio between the actual realities corresponding to those ideas, it follows that the reflective knowledge which has for its object the most perfect being is more excellent than reflective knowledge concerning other objects in other words, that method will be most perfect which affords the standard of the given idea of the most perfect being whereby we may direct our mind. [39] (1) we thus easily understand how, in proportion as it acquires new ideas, the mind simultaneously acquires fresh instruments for pursuing its inquiries further. (2) for we may gather from what has been said, that a true idea must necessarily first of all exist in us as a natural instrument; and that when this idea is apprehended by the mind, it enables us to understand the difference existing between itself and all other perceptions. (3) in this, one part of the method consists. (39:4) now it is clear that the mind apprehends itself better in proportion as it understands a greater number of natural objects; it follows, therefore, that this portion of the method will be more perfect in proportion as the mind attains to the comprehension of a greater number of objects, and that it will be absolutely perfect when the mind gains a knowledge of the absolutely perfect being, or becomes conscious thereof. [40] (1) again, the more things the mind knows, the better does it understand its own strength and the order of nature; by increased self-knowledge, it can direct itself more easily, and lay down rules for its own guidance; and, by increased knowledge of nature, it can more easily avoid what is useless. (2) and this is the sum total of method, as we have already stated. [41] (1) we may add that the idea in the world of thought is in the same case as its correlate in the world of reality. (2) if, therefore, there be anything in nature which is without connection with any other thing, and if we assign to it a subjective essence, which would in every way correspond to the objective reality, the subjective essence would have no connection, [p] with any other ideas in other words, we could not draw any conclusions with regard to it. (41:3) on the other hand, those things which are connected with others as all things that exist in nature will be understood by the mind, and their subjective essences will maintain the same mutual relations as their objective realities that is to say, we shall infer from these ideas other ideas, which will in turn be connected with others, and thus our instruments for proceeding with our investigation will increase. (4) this is what we were endeavoring to prove. [42] (1) further, from what has just been said namely, that an idea must, in all respects, correspond to its correlate in the world of reality, it is evident that, in order to reproduce in every respect the faithful image of nature, our mind must deduce all its ideas from the idea which represents the origin and source of the whole of nature, so that it may itself become the source of other ideas. [43] (1) it may, perhaps, provoke astonishment that, after having said that the good method is that which teaches us to direct our mind according to the standard of the given true idea, we should prove our point by reasoning, which would seem to indicate that it is not self-evident. (2) we may, therefore, be questioned as to the validity of our reasoning. (3) if our reasoning be sound, we must take as a starting-point a true idea. (4) now, to be certain that our starting-point is really a true idea, we need proof. (5) this first course of reasoning must be supported by a second, the second by a third, and so on to infinity. [44] (1) to this i make answer that, if by some happy chance anyone had adopted this method in his investigations of nature that is, if he had acquired new ideas in the proper order, according to the standard of the original true idea, he would never have doubted [q] of the truth of his knowledge, inasmuch as truth, as we have shown, makes itself manifest, and all things would flow, as it were, spontaneously towards him. (44:2) but as this never, or rarely, happens, i have been forced so to arrange my proceedings, that we may acquire by reflection and forethought what we cannot acquire by chance, and that it may at the same time appear that, for proving the truth, and for valid reasoning, we need no other means than the truth and valid reasoning themselves: for by valid reasoning i have established valid reasoning, and, in like measure, i seek still to establish it. [45] (1) moreover, this is the order of thinking adopted by men in their inward meditations. (2) the reasons for its rare employment in investigations of nature are to be found in current misconceptions, whereof we shall examine the causes hereafter in our philosophy. (3) moreover, it demands, as we shall show, a keen and accurate discernment. (4) lastly, it is hindered by the conditions of human life, which are, as we have already pointed out, extremely changeable. (5) there are also other obstacles, which we will not here inquire into. [46] (1) if anyone asks why i have not at the starting-point set forth all the truths of nature in their due order, inasmuch as truth is self-evident, i reply by warning him not to reject as false any paradoxes he may find here, but to take the trouble to reflect on the chain of reasoning by which they are supported; he will then be no longer in doubt that we have attained to the truth. (2) this is why i have as above. [47] (1) if there yet remains some sceptic, who doubts of our primary truth, and of all deductions we make, taking such truth as our standard, he must either be arguing in bad faith, or we must confess that there are men in complete mental blindness either innate or due to misconceptions that is, to some external influence. (2) such persons are not conscious of themselves. (3) if they affirm or doubt anything, they know not that they affirm or doubt: they say that they know nothing, and they say that they are ignorant of the very fact of their knowing nothing. (4) even this they do not affirm absolutely, they are afraid of confessing that they exist, so long as they know nothing; in fact, they ought to remain dumb, for fear of haply supposing which should smack of truth. [48] (1) lastly, with such persons, one should not speak of sciences: for, in what relates to life and conduct, they are compelled by necessity to suppose that they exist, and seek their own advantage, and often affirm and deny, even with an oath. (2) if they deny, grant, or gainsay, they know not that they deny, grant, or gainsay, so that they ought to be regarded as automata, utterly devoid of intelligence. [49] (1) let us now return to our proposition. (2) up to the present, we have, first, defined the end to which we desire to direct all our thoughts; secondly, we have determined the mode of perception best adapted to aid us in attaining our perfection; thirdly, we have discovered the way which our mind should take, in order to make a good beginning namely, that it should use every true idea as a standard in pursuing its inquiries according to fixed rules. (49:3) now, in order that it may thus proceed, our method must furnish us, first, with a means of distinguishing a true idea from all other perceptions, and enabling the mind to avoid the latter; secondly, with rules for perceiving unknown things according to the standard of the true idea; thirdly, with an order which enables us to avoid useless labor. (49:4) when we became acquainted with this method, we saw that, fourthly, it would be perfect when we had attained to the idea of the absolutely perfect being. (5) this is an observation which should be made at the outset, in order that we may arrive at the knowledge of such a being more quickly. [50] (1) let us then make a beginning with the first part of the method, which is, as we have said, to distinguish and separate the true idea from other perceptions, and to keep the mind from confusing with true ideas those which are false, fictitious, and doubtful. (2) i intend to dwell on this point at length, partly to keep a distinction so necessary before the reader's mind, and also because there are some who doubt of true ideas, through not having attended to the distinction between a true perception and all others. (3) such persons are like men who, while they are awake, doubt not that they are awake, but afterwards in a dream, as often happens, thinking that they are surely awake, and then finding that they were in error, become doubtful even of being awake. (4) this state of mind arises through neglect of the distinction between sleeping and waking. [51] (1) meanwhile, i give warning that i shall not here give essence of every perception, and explain it through its proximate cause. (2) such work lies in the province of philosophy. (3) i shall confine myself to what concerns method that is, to the character of fictitious, false and doubtful perceptions, and the means of freeing ourselves therefrom. (4) let us then first inquire into the nature of a fictitious idea. [52] (1) every perception has for its object either a thing considered as existing, or solely the essence of a thing. (2) now "fiction" is chiefly occupied with things considered as existing. (3) i will, therefore, consider these first i mean cases where only the existence of an object is feigned, and the thing thus feigned is understood, or assumed to be understood. (4) for instance, i feign that peter, whom i know to have gone home, is gone to see me, [r] or something of that kind. (5) with what is such an idea concerned? (6) it is concerned with things possible, and not with things necessary or impossible. [53] (1) i call a thing impossible when its existence would imply a contradiction; necessary, when its non-existence would imply a contradiction; possible, when neither its existence nor its non-existence imply a contradiction, but when the necessity or impossibility of its nature depends on causes unknown to us, while we feign that it exists. (2) if the necessity or impossibility of its existence depending on external causes were known to us, we could not form any fictitious hypotheses about it; [54] (1) whence it follows that if there be a god, or omniscient being, such an one cannot form fictitious hypotheses. (2) for, as regards ourselves, when i know that i exist, [s] i cannot hypothesize that i exist or do not exist, any more than i can hypothesize an elephant that can go through the eye of a needle; nor when i know the nature of god, can i hypothesize that he or does not exist. [t] (54:3) the same thing must be said of the chimaera, whereof the nature implies a contradiction. (4) from these considerations, it is plain, as i have already stated, that fiction cannot be concerned with eternal truths. [u] [55] (1) but before proceeding further, i must remark, in passing, that the difference between the essence of one thing and the essence of another thing is the same as that which exists between the reality or existence of one thing and the reality or existence of another; therefore, if we wished to conceive the existence, for example, of adam, simply by means of existence in general, it would be the same as if, in order to conceive his existence, we went back to the nature of being, so as to define adam as a being. (2) thus, the more existence is conceived generally, the more is it conceived confusedly and the more easily can it be ascribed to a given object. (55:3) contrariwise, the more it is conceived particularly, the more is it understood clearly, and the less liable is it to be ascribed, through negligence of nature's order, to anything save its proper object. (4) this is worthy of remark. [56] (1) we now proceed to consider those cases which are commonly called fictions, though we clearly understood that the thing is not as we imagine it. (2) for instance, i know that the earth is round, but nothing prevents my telling people that it is a hemisphere, and that it is like a half apple carved in relief on a dish; or, that the sun moves round the earth, and so on. (56:3) however, examination will show us that there is nothing here inconsistent with what has been said, provided we first admit that we may have made mistakes, and be now conscious of them; and, further, that we can hypothesize, or at least suppose, that others are under the same mistake as ourselves, or can, like us, fall under it. (4) we can, i repeat, thus hypothesize so long as we see no impossibility. (56:5) thus, when i tell anyone that the earth is not round, &c., i merely recall the error which i perhaps made myself, or which i might have fallen into, and afterwards i hypothesize that the person to whom i tell it, is still, or may still fall under the same mistake. (6) this i say, i can feign so long as i do not perceive any impossibility or necessity; if i truly understood either one or the other i should not be able to feign, and i should be reduced to saying that i had made the attempt. [57] (1) it remains for us to consider hypotheses made in problems, which sometimes involve impossibilities. (2) for instance, when we say let us assume that this burning candle is not burning, or, let us assume that it burns in some imaginary space, or where there are no physical objects. (3) such assumptions are freely made, though the last is clearly seen to be impossible. (4) but, though this be so, there is no fiction in the case. (57:5) for, in the first case, i have merely recalled to memory, [x] another candle not burning, or conceived the candle before me as without a flame, and then i understand as applying to the latter, leaving its flame out of the question, all that i think of the former. (6) in the second case, i have merely to abstract my thoughts from the objects surrounding the candle, for the mind to devote itself to the contemplation of the candle singly looked at in itself only; i can then draw the conclusion that the candle contains in itself no causes for its own destruction, so that if there were no physical objects the candle, and even the flame, would remain unchangeable, and so on. (7) thus there is here no fiction, but, [y] true and bare assertions. [58] (1) let us now pass on to the fictions concerned with essences only, or with some reality or existence simultaneously. (2) of these we must specially observe that in proportion as the mind's understanding is smaller, and its experience multiplex, so will its power of coining fictions be larger, whereas as its understanding increases, its capacity for entertaining fictitious ideas becomes less. (58:3) for instance, in the same way as we are unable, while we are thinking, to feign that we are thinking or not thinking, so, also, when we know the nature of body we cannot imagine an infinite fly; or, when we know the nature of the soul, [z] we cannot imagine it as square, though anything may be expressed verbally. (4) but, as we said above, the less men know of nature the more easily can they coin fictitious ideas, such as trees speaking, men instantly changed into stones, or into fountains, ghosts appearing in mirrors, something issuing from nothing, even gods changed into beasts and men and infinite other absurdities of the same kind. [59] (1) some persons think, perhaps, that fiction is limited by fiction, and not by understanding; in other words, after i have formed some fictitious idea, and have affirmed of my own free will that it exists under a certain form in nature, i am thereby precluded from thinking of it under any other form. (2) for instance, when i have feigned (to repeat their argument) that the nature of body is of a certain kind, and have of my own free will desired to convince myself that it actually exists under this form, i am no longer able to hypothesize that a fly, for example, is infinite; so, when i have hypothesized the essence of the soul, i am not able to think of it as square, &c. [60] (1) but these arguments demand further inquiry. (2) first, their upholders must either grant or deny that we can understand anything. if they grant it, then necessarily the same must be said of understanding, as is said of fiction. (3) if they deny it, let us, who know that we do know something, see what they mean. (4) they assert that the soul can be conscious of, and perceive in a variety of ways, not itself nor things which exist, but only things which are neither in itself nor anywhere else, in other words, that the soul can, by its unaided power, create sensations or ideas unconnected with things. (5) in fact, they regard the soul as a sort of god. (60:6) further, they assert that we or our soul have such freedom that we can constrain ourselves, or our soul, or even our soul's freedom. (7) for, after it has formed a fictitious idea, and has given its assent thereto, it cannot think or feign it in any other manner, but is constrained by the first fictitious idea to keep all its other thoughts in harmony therewith. (8) our opponents are thus driven to admit, in support of their fiction, the absurdities which i have just enumerated; and which are not worthy of rational refutation. [61] (1) while leaving such persons in their error, we will take care to derive from our argument with them a truth serviceable for our purpose, namely, [61a] that the mind, in paying attention to a thing hypothetical or false, so as to meditate upon it and understand it, and derive the proper conclusions in due order therefrom, will readily discover its falsity; and if the thing hypothetical be in its nature true, and the mind pays attention to it, so as to understand it, and deduce the truths which are derivable from it, the mind will proceed with an uninterrupted series of apt conclusions; in the same way as it would at once discover (as we showed just now) the absurdity of a false hypothesis, and of the conclusions drawn from it. [62] (1) we need, therefore, be in no fear of forming hypotheses, so long as we have a clear and distinct perception of what is involved. (2) for, if we were to assert, haply, that men are suddenly turned into beasts, the statement would be extremely general, so general that there would be no conception, that is, no idea or connection of subject and predicate, in our mind. (3) if there were such a conception we should at the same time be aware of the means and the causes whereby the event took place. (4) moreover, we pay no attention to the nature of the subject and the predicate. [63] (1) now, if the first idea be not fictitious, and if all the other ideas be deduced therefrom, our hurry to form fictitious ideas will gradually subside. (2) further, as a fictitious idea cannot be clear and distinct, but is necessarily confused, and as all confusion arises from the fact that the mind has only partial knowledge of a thing either simple or complex, and does not distinguish between the known and the unknown, and, again, that it directs its attention promiscuously to all parts of an object at once without making distinctions, it follows, first, that if the idea be of something very simple, it must necessarily be clear and distinct. (3) for a very simple object cannot be known in part, it must either be known altogether or not at all. [64] (1) secondly, it follows that if a complex object be divided by thought into a number of simple component parts, and if each be regarded separately, all confusion will disappear. (2) thirdly, it follows that fiction cannot be simple, but is made up of the blending of several confused ideas of diverse objects or actions existent in nature, or rather is composed of attention directed to all such ideas at once, [64b] and unaccompanied by any mental assent. (64:3) now a fiction that was simple would be clear and distinct, and therefore true, also a fiction composed only of distinct ideas would be clear and distinct, and therefore true. (4) for instance, when we know the nature of the circle and the square, it is impossible for us to blend together these two figures, and to hypothesize a square circle, any more than a square soul, or things of that kind. [65] (1) let us shortly come to our conclusion, and again repeat that we need have no fear of confusing with true ideas that which is only a fiction. (2) as for the first sort of fiction of which we have already spoken, when a thing is clearly conceived, we saw that if the existence of a that thing is in itself an eternal trut fiction can have no part in it; but if the existence of the conceived be not an eternal truth, we have only to be careful such existence be compared to the thing's essence, and to consider the order of nature. (64:3) as for the second sort of fiction, which we stated to be the result of simultaneously directing the attention, without the assent of the intellect, to different confused ideas representing different things and actions existing in nature, we have seen that an absolutely simple thing cannot be feigned, but must be understood, and that a complex thing is in the same case if we regard separately the simple parts whereof it is composed; we shall not even be able to hypothesize any untrue action concerning such objects, for we shall be obliged to consider at the same time the causes and manner of such action. [66] (1) these matters being thus understood, let us pass on to consider the false idea, observing the objects with which it is concerned, and the means of guarding ourselves from falling into false perceptions. (2) neither of these tasks will present much difficulty, after our inquiry concerning fictitious ideas. (3) the false idea only differs from the fictitious idea in the fact of implying a mental assent that is, as we have already remarked, while the representations are occurring, there are no causes present to us, wherefrom, as in fiction, we can conclude that such representations do not arise from external objects: in fact, it is much the same as dreaming with our eyes open, or while awake. (67:4) thus, a false idea is concerned with, or (to speak more correctly) is attributable to, the existence of a thing whereof the essence is known, or the essence itself, in the same way as a fictitious idea. [67] (1) if attributable to the existence of the thing, it is corrected in the same way as a fictitious idea under similar circumstances. (2) if attributable to the essence, it is likewise corrected in the same way as a fictitious idea. (67:3) for if the nature of the thing known implies necessary existence, we cannot possible be in error with regard to its existence; but if the nature of the thing be not an eternal truth, like its essence, but contrariwise the necessity or impossibility of its existence depends on external causes, then we must follow the same course as we adopted in the of fiction, for it is corrected in the same manner. [68] (1) as for false ideas concerned with essences, or even with actions, such perceptions are necessarily always confused, being compounded of different confused perceptions of things existing in nature, as, for instance, when men are persuaded that deities are present in woods, in statues, in brute beasts, and the like; that there are bodies which, by their composition alone, give rise to intellect; that corpses reason, walk about, and speak; that god is deceived, and so on. (68:2) but ideas which are clear and distinct can never be false: for ideas of things clearly and distinctly conceived are either very simple themselves, or are compounded from very simple ideas, that is, are deduced therefrom. (3) the impossibility of a very simple idea being false is evident to everyone who understands the nature of truth or understanding and of falsehood. [69] (1) as regards that which constitutes the reality of truth, it is certain that a true idea is distinguished from a false one, not so much by its extrinsic object as by its intrinsic nature. (2) if an architect conceives a building properly constructed, though such a building may never have existed, and amy never exist, nevertheless the idea is true; and the idea remains the same, whether it be put into execution or not. (69:3) on the other hand, if anyone asserts, for instance, that peter exists, without knowing whether peter really exists or not, the assertion, as far as its asserter is concerned, is false, or not true, even though peter actually does exist. (4) the assertion that peter exists is true only with regard to him who knows for certain that peter does exist. [70] (1) whence it follows that there is in ideas something real, whereby the true are distinguished from the false. (2) this reality must be inquired into, if we are to find the best standard of truth (we have said that we ought to determine our thoughts by the given standard of a true idea, and that method is reflective knowledge), and to know the properties of our understanding. (70:3) neither must we say that the difference between true and false arises from the fact, that true knowledge consists in knowing things through their primary causes, wherein it is totally different from false knowledge, as i have just explained it: for thought is said to be true, if it involves subjectively the essence of any principle which has no cause, and is known through itself and in itself. [71] (1) wherefore the reality (forma) of true thought must exist in the thought itself, without reference to other thoughts; it does not acknowledge the object as its cause, but must depend on the actual power and nature of the understanding. (2) for, if we suppose that the understanding has perceived some new entity which has never existed, as some conceive the understanding of god before he created thing (a perception which certainly could not arise any object), and has legitimately deduced other thoughts from said perception, all such thoughts would be true, without being determined by any external object; they would depend solely on the power and nature of the understanding. (71:3) thus, that which constitutes the reality of a true thought must be sought in the thought itself, and deduced from the nature of the understanding. [72] (1) in order to pursue our investigation, let us confront ourselves with some true idea, whose object we know for certain to be dependent on our power of thinking, and to have nothing corresponding to it in nature. (2) with an idea of this kind before us, we shall, as appears from what has just been said, be more easily able to carry on the research we have in view. (72:3) for instance, in order to form the conception of a sphere, i invent a cause at my pleasure namely, a semicircle revolving round its center, and thus producing a sphere. (4) this is indisputably a true idea; and, although we know that no sphere in nature has ever actually been so formed, the perception remains true, and is the easiest manner of conceiving a sphere. (72:5) we must observe that this perception asserts the rotation of a semicircle which assertion would be false, if it were not associated with the conception of a sphere, or of a cause determining a motion of the kind, or absolutely, if the assertion were isolated. (6) the mind would then only tend to the affirmation of the sole motion of a semicircle, which is not contained in the conception of a semicircle, and does not arise from the conception of any cause capable of producing such motion. (72:7) thus falsity consists only in this, that something is affirmed of a thing, which is not contained in the conception we have formed of that thing, as motion or rest of a semicircle. (8) whence it follows that simple ideas cannot be other than true e.g., the simple idea of a semicircle, of motion, of rest, of quantity, &c. (72:9) whatsoever affirmation such ideas contain is equal to the concept formed, and does not extend further. (10) wherefore we form as many simple ideas as we please, without any fear of error. [73] (1) it only remains for us to inquire by what power our mind can form true ideas, and how far such power extends. (2) it is certain that such power cannot extend itself infinitely. (3) for when we affirm somewhat of a thing, which is not contained in the concept we have formed of that thing, such an affirmation shows a defect of our perception, or that we have formed fragmentary or mutilated ideas. (4) thus we have seen that the notion of a semicircle is false when it is isolated in the mind, but true when it is associated with the concept of a sphere, or of some cause determining such a motion. (73:5) but if it be the nature of a thinking being, as seems, prima facie, to be the case, to form true or adequate thoughts, it is plain that inadequate ideas arise in us only because we are parts of a thinking being, whose thoughts some in their entirety, others in fragments only constitute our mind. [74] (1) but there is another point to be considered, which was not worth raising in the case of fiction, but which give rise to complete deception namely, that certain things presented to the imagination also exist in the understanding in other words, are conceived clearly and distinctly. (2) hence, so long as we do not separate that which is distinct from that which is confused, certainty, or the true idea, becomes mixed with indistinct ideas. (3) for instance, certain stoics heard, perhaps, the term "soul," and also that the soul is immortal, yet imagined it only confusedly; they imaged, also, and understood that very subtle bodies penetrate all others, and are penetrated by none. (74:4) by combining these ideas, and being at the same time certain of the truth of the axiom, they forthwith became convinced that the mind consists of very subtle bodies; that these very subtle bodies cannot be divided &c. [75] (1) but we are freed from mistakes of this kind, so long as we endeavor to examine all our perceptions by the standard of the given true idea. (2) we must take care, as has been said, to separate such perceptions from all those which arise from hearsay or unclassified experience. (3) moreover, such mistakes arise from things being conceived too much in the abstract; for it is sufficiently self-evident that what i conceive as in its true object i cannot apply to anything else. (75:4) lastly, they arise from a want of understanding of the primary elements of nature as a whole; whence we proceed without due order, and confound nature with abstract rules, which, although they be true enough in their sphere, yet, when misapplied, confound themselves, and pervert the order of nature. (5) however, if we proceed with as little abstraction as possible, and begin from primary elements that is, from the source and origin of nature, as far back as we can reach, we need not fear any deceptions of this kind. [76] (1) as far as the knowledge of the origin of nature is concerned, there is no danger of our confounding it with abstractions. (2) for when a thing is conceived in the abstract, as are all universal notions, the said universal notions are always more extensive in the mind than the number of individuals forming their contents really existing in nature. (3) again, there are many things in nature, the difference between which is so slight as to be hardly perceptible to the understanding; so that it may readily happen that such things are confounded together, if they be conceived abstractedly. (4) but since the first principle of nature cannot (as we shall see hereafter) be conceived abstractedly or universally, and cannot extend further in the understanding than it does in reality, and has no likeness to mutable things, no confusion need be feared in respect to the idea of it, provided (as before shown) that we possess a standard of truth. (5) this is, in fact, a being single and infinite [76z] ; in other words, it is the sum total of being, beyond which there is no being found. [76a] [77] (1) thus far we have treated of the false idea. we have now to investigate the doubtful idea that is, to inquire what can cause us to doubt, and how doubt may be removed. (2) i speak of real doubt existing in the mind, not of such doubt as we see exemplified when a man says that he doubts, though his mind does not really hesitate. (77:3) the cure of the latter does not fall within the province of method, it belongs rather to inquiries concerning obstinacy and its cure. [78] (1) real doubt is never produced in the mind by the thing doubted of. (2) in other words, if there were only one idea in the mind, whether that idea were true or false, there would be no doubt or certainty present, only a certain sensation. (3) for an idea is in itself nothing else than a certain sensation. (4) but doubt will arise through another idea, not clear and distinct enough for us to be able to draw any certain conclusions with regard to the matter under consideration; that is, the idea which causes us to doubt is not clear and distinct. (5) to take an example. (78:6) supposing that a man has never reflected, taught by experience or by any other means, that our senses sometimes deceive us, he will never doubt whether the sun be greater or less than it appears. (7) thus rustics are generally astonished when they hear that the sun is much larger than the earth. (8) but from reflection on the deceitfulness of the senses [78a] doubt arises, and if, after doubting, we acquire a true knowledge of the senses, and how things at a distance are represented through their instrumentality, doubt is again removed. [79] (1) hence we cannot cast doubt on true ideas by the supposition that there is a deceitful deity, who leads us astray even in what is most certain. (2) we can only hold such an hypothesis so long as we have no clear and distinct idea in other words, until we reflect the knowledge which we have of the first principle of all things, and find that which teaches us that god is not a deceiver, and until we know this with the same certainty as we know from reflecting on the are equal to two right angles. (3) but if we have a knowledge of god equal to that which we have of a triangle, all doubt is removed. (79:4) in the same way as we can arrive at the said knowledge of a triangle, though not absolutely sure that there is not some arch-deceiver leading us astray, so can we come to a like knowledge of god under the like condition, and when we have attained to it, it is sufficient, as i said before, to remove every doubt which we can possess concerning clear and distinct ideas. [80] (1) thus, if a man proceeded with our investigations in due order, inquiring first into those things which should first be inquired into, never passing over a link in the chain of association, and with knowledge how to define his questions before seeking to answer them, he will never have any ideas save such as are very certain, or, in other words, clear and distinct; for doubt is only a suspension of the spirit concerning some affirmation or negation which it would pronounce upon unhesitatingly if it were not in ignorance of something, without which the knowledge of the matter in hand must needs be imperfect. (2) we may, therefore, conclude that doubt always proceeds from want of due order in investigation. [81] (1) these are the points i promised to discuss in the first part of my treatise on method. (2) however, in order not to omit anything which can conduce to the knowledge of the understanding and its faculties, i will add a few words on the subject of memory and forgetfulness. (81:3) the point most worthy of attention is, that memory is strengthened both with and without the aid of the understanding. (4) for the more intelligible a thing is, the more easily is it remembered, and the less intelligible it is, the more easily do we forget it. (5) for instance, a number of unconnected words is much more difficult to remember than the same number in the form of a narration. [82] (1) the memory is also strengthened without the aid of the understanding by means of the power wherewith the imagination or the sense called common, is affected by some particular physical object. (2) i say particular, for the imagination is only affected by particular objects. (3) if we read, for instance, a single romantic comedy, we shall remember it very well, so long as we do not read many others of the same kind, for it will reign alone in the memory (4) if, however, we read several others of the same kind, we shall think of them altogether, and easily confuse one with another. (82:5) i say also, physical. (6) for the imagination is only affected by physical objects. (7) as, then, the memory is strengthened both with and without the aid of the understanding, we may conclude that it is different from the understanding, and that in the latter considered in itself there is neither memory nor forgetfulness. [83] (1) what, then, is memory? (2) it is nothing else than the actual sensation of impressions on the brain, accompanied with the thought of a definite duration, [83d] of the sensation. (3) this is also shown by reminiscence. (4) for then we think of the sensation, but without the notion of continuous duration; thus the idea of that sensation is not the actual duration of the sensation or actual memory. (83:5) whether ideas are or are not subject to corruption will be seen in philosophy. (6) if this seems too absurd to anyone, it will be sufficient for our purpose, if he reflect on the fact that a thing is more easily remembered in proportion to its singularity, as appears from the example of the comedy just cited. (83:7) further, a thing is remembered more easily in proportion to its intelligibility; therefore we cannot help remember that which is extremely singular and sufficiently intelligible. [84] (1) thus, then, we have distinguished between a true idea and other perceptions, and shown that ideas fictitious, false, and the rest, originate in the imagination that is, in certain sensations fortuitous (so to speak) and disconnected, arising not from the power of the mind, but from external causes, according as the body, sleeping or waking, receives various motions. (2) but one may take any view one likes of the imagination so long as one acknowledges that it is different from the understanding, and that the soul is passive with regard to it. (3) the view taken is immaterial, if we know that the imagination is something indefinite, with regard to which the soul is passive, and that we can by some means or other free ourselves therefrom with the help of the understanding. (4) let no one then be astonished that before proving the existence of body, and other necessary things, i speak of imagination of body, and of its composition. (5) the view taken is, i repeat, immaterial, so long as we know that imagination is something indefinite, &c. [85] (1) as regards as a true idea, we have shown that it is simple or compounded of simple ideas; that it shows how and why something is or has been made; and that its subjective effects in the soul correspond to the actual reality of its object. (2) this conclusion is identical with the saying of the ancients, that true proceeds from cause to effect; though the ancients, so far as i know, never formed the conception put forward here that the soul acts according to fixed laws, and is as it were an immaterial automaton. [86] (1) hence, as far as is possible at the outset, we have acquired a knowledge of our understanding, and such a standard of a true idea that we need no longer fear confounding truth with falsehood and fiction. (2) neither shall we wonder why we understand some things which in nowise fall within the scope of the imagination, while other things are in the imagination but wholly opposed to the understanding, or others, again, which agree therewith. (3) we now know that the operations, whereby the effects of imagination are produced, take place under other laws quite different from the laws of the understanding, and that the mind is entirely passive with regard to them. [87] (1) whence we may also see how easily men may fall into grave errors through not distinguishing accurately between the imagination and the understanding; such as believing that extension must be localized, that it must be finite, that its parts are really distinct one from the other, that it is the primary and single foundation of all things, that it occupies more space at one time than at another and other similar doctrines, all entirely opposed to truth, as we shall duly show. [88] (1) again, since words are a part of the imagination that is, since we form many conceptions in accordance with confused arrangements of words in the memory, dependent on particular bodily conditions, there is no doubt that words may, equally with the imagination, be the cause of many and great errors, unless we strictly on our guard. [89] (1) moreover, words are formed according to popular fancy and intelligence, and are, therefore, signs of things as existing in the imagination, not as existing in the understanding. (2) this is evident from the fact that to all such things as exist only in the understanding, not in the imagination, negative names are often given, such as incorporeal, infinite, &c. (3) so, also, many conceptions really affirmative are expressed negatively, and vice versa, such as uncreate, independent, infinite, immortal, &c., inasmuch as their contraries are much more easily imagined, and, therefore, occurred first to men, and usurped positive names. (89:4) many things we affirm and deny, because the nature of words allows us to do so, though the nature of things does not. (5) while we remain unaware of this fact, we may easily mistake falsehood for truth. [90] (1) let us also beware of another great cause of confusion, which prevents the understanding from reflecting on itself. (2) sometimes, while making no distinction between the imagination and the intellect, we think that what we more readily imagine is clearer to us; and also we think that what we imagine we understand. (3) thus, we put first that which should be last: the true order of progression is reversed, and no legitimate conclusion is drawn. [91] [91e] (1) now, in order at length to pass on to the second part of this method, i shall first set forth the object aimed at, and next the means for its attainment. (2) the object aimed at is the acquisition of clear and distinct ideas, such as are produced by the pure intellect, and not by chance physical motions. (3) in order that all ideas may be reduced to unity, we shall endeavor so to associate and arrange them that our mind may, as far as possible, reflect subjectively the reality of nature, both as a whole and as parts. [92] (1) as for the first point, it is necessary (as we have said) for our purpose that everything should be conceived, either solely through its essence, or through its proximate cause. (2) if the thing be self-existent, or, as is commonly said, the cause of itself, it must be understood through its essence only; if it be not self-existent, but requires a cause for its existence, it must be understood through its proximate cause. (3) for, in reality, the knowledge, [92f] of an effect is nothing else than the acquisition of more perfect knowledge of its cause. [93] (1) therefore, we may never, while we are concerned with inquiries into actual things, draw any conclusion from abstractions; we shall be extremely careful not to confound that which is only in the understanding with that which is in the thing itself. (2) the best basis for drawing a conclusion will be either some particular affirmative essence, or a true and legitimate definition. (93:3) for the understanding cannot descend from universal axioms by themselves to particular things, since axioms are of infinite extent, and do not determine the understanding to contemplate one particular thing more than another. [94] (1) thus the true method of discovery is to form thoughts from some given definition. (2) this process will be the more fruitful and easy in proportion as the thing given be better defined. (3) wherefore, the cardinal point of all this second part of method consists in the knowledge of the conditions of good definition, and the means of finding them. (4) i will first treat of the conditions of definition. [95] (1) a definition, if it is to be called perfect, must explain the inmost essence of a thing, and must take care not to substitute for this any of its properties. (2) in order to illustrate my meaning, without taking an example which would seem to show a desire to expose other people's errors, i will choose the case of something abstract, the definition of which is of little moment. (95:3) such is a circle. (4) if a circle be defined as a figure, such that all straight lines drawn from the center to the circumference are equal, every one can see that such a definition does not in the least explain the essence of a circle, but solely one of its properties. (5) though, as i have said, this is of no importance in the case of figures and other abstractions, it is of great importance in the case of physical beings and realities: for the properties of things are not understood so long as their essences are unknown. (6) if the latter be passed over, there is necessarily a perversion of the succession of ideas which should reflect the succession of nature, and we go far astray from our object. [96] in order to be free from this fault, the following rules should be observed in definition:i. (1) if the thing in question be created, the definition must (as we have said) comprehend the proximate cause. (2) for instance, a circle should, according to this rule, be defined as follows: the figure described by any line whereof one end is fixed and the other free. (3) this definition clearly comprehends the proximate cause. ii. (4) a conception or definition of a thing should be such that all the properties of that thing, in so far as it is considered by itself, and not in conjunction with other things, can be deduced from it, as may be seen in the definition given of a circle: for from that it clearly follows that all straight lines drawn from the center to the circumference are equal. (5) that this is a necessary characteristic of a definition is so clear to anyone, who reflects on the matter, that there is no need to spend time in proving it, or in showing that, owing to this second condition, every definition should be affirmative. (6) i speak of intellectual affirmation, giving little thought to verbal affirmations which, owing to the poverty of language, must sometimes, perhaps, be expressed negatively, though the idea contained is affirmative. [97] the rules for the definition of an uncreated thing are as follows:-i. the exclusion of all idea of cause that is, the thing must not need explanation by anything outside itself. ii. when the definition of the thing has been given, there must be no room for doubt as to whether the thing exists or not. iii. it must contain, as far as the mind is concerned, no substantives which could be put into an adjectival form; in other words, the object defined must not be explained through abstractions. iv. lastly, though this is not absolutely necessary, it should be possible to deduce from the definition all the properties of the thing defined. all these rules become obvious to anyone giving strict attention to the matter. [98] (1) i have also stated that the best basis for drawing a conclusion is a particular affirmative essence. (2) the more specialized the idea is, the more it is distinct, and therefore clear. (3) wherefore a knowledge of particular things should be sought for as diligently as possible. [99] (1) as regards the order of our perceptions, and the manner in which they should be arranged and united, it is necessary that, as soon as is possible and rational, we should inquire whether there be any being (and, if so, what being), that is the cause of all things, so that its essence, represented in thought, may be the cause of all our ideas, and then our mind will to the utmost possible extent reflect nature. (2) for it will possess, subjectively, nature's essence, order, and union. (3) thus we can see that it is before all things necessary for us to deduce all our ideas from physical things that is, from real entities, proceeding, as far as may be, according to the series of causes, from one real entity to another real entity, never passing to universals and abstractions, either for the purpose of deducing some real entity from them, or deducing them from some real entity. (4) either of these processes interrupts the true progress of the understanding. [100] (1) but it must be observed that, by the series of causes and real entities, i do not here mean the series of particular and mutable things, but only the series of fixed and eternal things. (2) it would be impossible for human infirmity to follow up the series of particular mutable things, both on account their multitude, surpassing all calculation, and on account of the infinitely diverse circumstances surrounding one and the same thing, any one of which may be the cause of its existence or non-existence. (3) indeed, their existence has no connection with their essence, or (as we have said already) is not an eternal truth. [101] (1) neither is there any need that we should understand their series, for the essences of particular mutable things are not to be gathered from their series or order of existence, which would furnish us with nothing beyond their extrinsic denominations, their relations, or, at most, their circumstances, all of which are very different from their inmost essence. (101:2) this inmost essence must be sought solely from fixed and eternal things, and from the laws, inscribed (so to speak) in those things as in their true codes, according to which all particular things take place and are arranged; nay, these mutable particular things depend so intimately and essentially (so to phrase it) upon the fixed things, that they cannot either be conceived without them. [102] (1) but, though this be so, there seems to be no small difficulty in arriving at the knowledge of these particular things, for to conceive them all at once would far surpass the powers of the human understanding. (2) the arrangement whereby one thing is understood, before another, as we have stated, should not be sought from their series of existence, nor from eternal things. (3) for the latter are all by nature simultaneous. (4) other aids are therefore needed besides those employed for understanding eternal things and their laws. (5) however, this is not the place to recount such aids, nor is there any need to do so, until we have acquired a sufficient knowledge of eternal things and their infallible laws, and until the nature of our senses has become plain to us. [103] (1) before betaking ourselves to seek knowledge of particular things, it will be seasonable to speak of such aids, as all tend to teach us the mode of employing our senses, and to make certain experiments under fixed rules and arrangements which may suffice to determine the object of our inquiry, so that we may therefrom infer what laws of eternal things it has been produced under, and may gain an insight into its inmost nature, as i will duly show. (2) here, to return to my purpose, i will only endeavor to set forth what seems necessary for enabling us to attain to knowledge of eternal things, and to define them under the conditions laid down above. [104] (1) with this end, we must bear in mind what has already been stated, namely, that when the mind devotes itself to any thought, so as to examine it, and to deduce therefrom in due order all the legitimate conclusions possible, any falsehood which may lurk in the thought will be detected; but if the thought be true, the mind will readily proceed without interruption to deduce truths from it. (104:2) this, i say, is necessary for our purpose, for our thoughts may be brought to a close by the absence of a foundation. [105] (1) if, therefore, we wish to investigate the first thing of all, it will be necessary to supply some foundation which may direct our thoughts thither. (2) further, since method is reflective knowledge, the foundation which must direct our thoughts can be nothing else than the knowledge of that which constitutes the reality of truth, and the knowledge of the understanding, its properties, and powers. (3) when this has been acquired we shall possess a foundation wherefrom we can deduce our thoughts, and a path whereby the intellect, according to its capacity, may attain the knowledge of eternal things, allowance being made for the extent of the intellectual powers. [106] (1) if, as i stated in the first part, it belongs to the nature of thought to form true ideas, we must here inquire what is meant by the faculties and power of the understanding. (2) the chief part of our method is to understand as well as possible the powers of the intellect, and its nature; we are, therefore, compelled (by the considerations advanced in the second part of the method) necessarily to draw these conclusions from the definition itself of thought and understanding. [107] (1) but, so far as we have not got any rules for finding definitions, and, as we cannot set forth such rules without a previous knowledge of nature, that is without a definition of the understanding and its power, it follows either that the definition of the understanding must be clear in itself, or that we can understand nothing. (2) nevertheless this definition is not absolutely clear in itself; however, since its properties, like all things that we possess through the understanding, cannot be known clearly and distinctly, unless its nature be known previously, understanding makes itself manifest, if we pay attention to its properties, which we know clearly and distinctly. (3) let us, then, enumerate here the properties of the understanding, let us examine them, and begin by discussing the instruments for research which we find innate in us. see [31] [108] (1) the properties of the understanding which i have chiefly remarked, and which i clearly understand, are the following:i. (2) it involves certainty in other words, it knows that a thing exists in reality as it is reflected subjectively. ii. (108:3) that it perceives certain things, or forms some ideas absolutely, some ideas from others. (4) thus it forms the idea of quantity absolutely, without reference to any other thoughts; but ideas of motion it only forms after taking into consideration the idea of quantity. iii. (108:5) those ideas which the understanding forms absolutely express infinity; determinate ideas are derived from other ideas. (6) thus in the idea of quantity, perceived by means of a cause, the quantity is determined, as when a body is perceived to be formed by the motion of a plane, a plane by the motion of a line, or, again, a line by the motion of a point. (7) all these are perceptions which do not serve towards understanding quantity, but only towards determining it. (108:8) this is proved by the fact that we conceive them as formed as it were by motion, yet this motion is not perceived unless the quantity be perceived also; we can even prolong the motion to form an infinite line, which we certainly could not do unless we had an idea of infinite quantity. iv. (9) the understanding forms positive ideas before forming negative ideas. v. (108:10) it perceives things not so much under the condition of duration as under a certain form of eternity, and in an infinite number; or rather in perceiving things it does not consider either their number or duration, whereas, in imagining them, it perceives them in a determinate number, duration, and quantity. vi. (108:11) the ideas which we form as clear and distinct, seem to follow from the sole necessity of our nature, that they appear to depend absolutely on our sole power; with confused ideas the contrary is the case. (12) they are often formed against our will. vii. (108:13) the mind can determine in many ways the ideas of things, which the understanding forms from other ideas: thus, for instance, in order to define the plane of an ellipse, it supposes a point adhering to a cord to be moved around two centers, or, again, it conceives an infinity of points, always in the same fixed relation to a given straight line, angle of the vertex of the cone, or in an infinity of other ways. viii. (108:14) the more ideas express perfection of any object, the more perfect are they themselves; for we do not admire the architect who has planned a chapel so much as the architect who has planned a splendid temple. [109] (1) i do not stop to consider the rest of what is referred to thought, such as love, joy, &c. (2) they are nothing to our present purpose, and cannot even be conceived unless the understanding be perceived previously. (3) when perception is removed, all these go with it. [110] (1) false and fictitious ideas have nothing positive about them (as we have abundantly shown), which causes them to be called false or fictitious; they are only considered as such through the defectiveness of knowledge. (2) therefore, false and fictitious ideas as such can teach us nothing concerning the essence of thought; this must be sought from the positive properties just enumerated; in other words, we must lay down some common basis from which these properties necessarily follow, so that when this is given, the properties are necessarily given also, and when it is removed, they too vanish with it. the rest of the treatise is wanting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------spinoza's endnotes: marks as per curley, see note 5 above. [a] (1) this might be explained more at large and more clearly: i mean by distinguishing riches according as they are pursued for their own sake, in or furtherance of fame, or sensual pleasure, or the advancement of science and art. (2) but this subject is reserved to its own place, for it is not here proper to investigate the matter more accurately. [b] these considerations should be set forth more precisely. [c] these matters are explained more at length elsewhere. [d] n.b. i do no more here than enumerate the sciences necessary for our purpose; i lay no stress on their order. [e] there is for the sciences but one end, to which they should all be directed. [f] (1) in this case we do not understand anything of the cause from the consideration of it in the effect. (2) this is sufficiently evident from the fact that the cause is only spoken of in very general terms, such as there exists then something; there exists then some power, &c.; or from the that we only express it in a negative manner it is not or that, &c. (3) in the second case something is ascribed to the cause because of the effect, as we shall show in an example, but only a property, never an essence. [g] (1) from this example may be clearly seen what i have just drawn attention to. (2) for through this union we understand nothing beyond the sensation, the effect, to wit, from which we inferred the cause of which we understand nothing. [h] (1) a conclusion of this sort, though it be certain, is yet not to be relied on without great caution; for unless we are exceedingly careful we shall forthwith fall into error. (2) when things are conceived thus abstractedly, and not through their true essence, they are apt to be confused by the imagination. (3) for that which is in itself one, men imagine to be multiplex. (4) to those things which are conceived abstractedly, apart, and confusedly, terms are applied which are apt to become wrested from their strict meaning, and bestowed on things more familiar; whence it results that these latter are imagined in the same way as the former to which the terms were originally given. [i] i shall here treat a little more in detail of experience, and shall examine the method adopted by the empirics, and by recent philosophers. [k] by native strength, i mean that not bestowed on us by external causes, as i shall afterwards explain in my philosophy. [l] here i term them operations: i shall explain their nature in my philosophy. [m] i shall take care not only to demonstrate what i have just advanced, but also that we have hitherto proceeded rightly, and other things needful to be known. [33note1] (1) in modern language, "the idea may become the subject of another presentation." (2) objectivus generally corresponds to the modern "subjective," formalis to the modern "objective." [trans.note 1] [n] (1) observe that we are not here inquiring how the first subjective essence is innate in us. (2) this belongs to an investigation into nature, where all these matters are amply explained, and it is shown that without ideas neither affirmation, nor negation, nor volition are possible. [o] the nature of mental search is explained in my philosophy. [p] to be connected with other things is to be produced by them, or to produce them. [q] in the same way as we have here no doubt of the truth of our knowledge. [r] see below the note on hypotheses, whereof we have a clear understanding; the fiction consists in saying that such hypotheses exist in heavenly bodies. [s] (1) as a thing, when once it is understood, manifests itself, we have need only of an example without further proof. (2) in the same way the contrary has only to be presented to our minds to be recognized as false, as will forthwith appear when we come to discuss fiction concerning essences. [t] observe, that although many assert that they doubt whether god exists, they have nought but his name in their minds, or else some fiction which they call god: this fiction is not in harmony with god's real nature, as we will duly show. [u] (1) i shall presently show that no fiction can concern eternal truths. by an eternal truth, i mean that which being positive could never become negative. (2) thus it is a primary and eternal truth that god exists, but it is not an eternal truth that adam thinks. (3) that the chimaera does not exist is an eternal truth, that adam does not think is not so. [x] (1) afterwards, when we come to speak of fiction that is concerned with essences, it will be evident that fiction never creates or furnishes the mind with anything new; only such things as are already in the brain or imagination are recalled to the memory, when the attention is directed to them confusedly and all at once. (2) for instance, we have remembrance of spoken words and of a tree; when the mind directs itself to them confusedly, it forms the notion of a tree speaking. (3) the same may be said of existence, especially when it is conceived quite generally as an entity; it is then readily applied to all things together in the memory. (4) this is specially worthy of remark. [y] we must understand as much in the case of hypotheses put forward to explain certain movements accompanying celestial phenomena; but from these, when applied to the celestial motions, we any draw conclusions as to the nature of the heavens, whereas this last may be quite different, especially as many other causes are conceivable which would account for such motions. [z] (1) it often happens that a man recalls to mind this word soul, and forms at the same time some corporeal image: as the two representations are simultaneous, he easily thinks that he imagines and feigns a corporeal soul: thus confusing the name with the thing itself. (2) i here beg that my readers will not be in a hurry to refute this proposition; they will, i hope, have no mind to do so, if they pay close attention to the examples given and to what follows. [61a] (1) though i seem to deduce this from experience, some may deny its cogency because i have given no formal proof. (2) i therefore append the following for those who may desire it. (3) as there can be nothing in nature contrary to nature's laws, since all things come to pass by fixed laws, so that each thing must irrefragably produce its own proper effect, it follows that the soul, as soon as it possesses the true conception of a thing, proceeds to reproduce in thought that thing's effects. (4) see below, where i speak of the false idea. [64b] (1) observe that fiction regarded in itself, only differs from dreams in that in the latter we do not perceive the external causes which we perceive through the senses while awake. (2) it has hence been inferred that representations occurring in sleep have no connection with objects external to us. (3) we shall presently see that error is the dreaming of a waking man: if it reaches a certain pitch it becomes delirium. [76z] these are not attributes of god displaying his essence, as i will show in my philosophy. [76a] (1) this has been shown already. (2) for if such a being did not exist it would never be produced; therefore the mind would be able to understand more than nature could furnish; and this has been shown above to be false. [78a] (1) that is, it is known that the senses sometimes deceive us. (2) but it is only known confusedly, for it is not known how they deceive us. [83d] (1) if the duration be indefinite, the recollection is imperfect; this everyone seems to have learnt from nature. (2) for we often ask, to strengthen our belief in something we hear of, when and where it happened; though ideas themselves have their own duration in the mind, yet, as we are wont to determine duration by the aid of some measure of motion which, again, takes place by aid of imagination, we preserve no memory connected with pure intellect. [91e] the chief rule of this part is, as appears from the first part, to review all the ideas coming to us through pure intellect, so as to distinguish them from such as we imagine: the distinction will be shown through the properties of each, namely, of the imagination and of the understanding. [92f] observe that it is thereby manifest that we cannot understand anything of nature without at the same time increasing our knowledge of the first cause, or god. end of "on the improvement of the understanding." notes by volunteer. 1. used, in part, with kind permission from: http://www.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/spinoza/tie/ 2. the text is that of the translation of the tractatus de intellectus emendatione by r. h. m. elwes, as printed by dover publications (ny):1955), isbn 0-486-20250-x. this text is "an unabridged and unaltered republication of the bohn library edition originally published by george bell and sons in 1883." 3. paragraph numbers, shown thus [1], are from edwin curley's translation in his "the collected works of spinoza", volume 1, 1985, princeton university press; isbn 0-691-07222-1. 4. sentence numbers, shown thus (1), have been added by volunteer. 5. spinoza's endnotes are shown thus [a]. the letter is taken from curley, see note 3. 6. search strings are enclosed in square brackets; include brackets. 7. html versions of "on the improvement of the understanding" are published in the books on-line web pages; ttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/books.html and they include: http://www.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/spinoza/tie/ http://www.erols.com/jyselman/teielwes.htm end of project gutenberg's etext on the improvement of the understanding (treatise on the emendation of the intellect), by baruch spinoza cast upon the breakers, by horatio alger, jr. digitized by cardinalis press, c.e.k. posted to wiretap in july 1993, as breakers.txt. based on a 1974 edition, of which only the forward is copyright. originally appeared in the argosy, may 27 to aug 19 of 1893, under the pseudonym arthur lee putnam. italics are represented as _italics_. this text is in the public domain. cast upon the breakers by horatio alger, jr. forward by ralph d. gardner 1974 doubleday & company, inc. garden city, new york isbn: 0-385-08386-6 library of congress catalog card number 73-9003 forward copyright 1974 by doubleday & company, inc. all rights reserved printed in the united states of america first edition chapter i. a faithless guardian. "well, good by, rodney! i leave school tomorrow. i am going to learn a trade." "i am sorry to part with you, david. couldn't you stay another term?" "no: my uncle says i must be earning my living, and i have a chance to learn the carpenter's trade." "where are you going?" "to duffield, some twenty miles away. i wish i were in your shoes. you have no money cares, and can go on quietly and complete your education." "i don't know how i am situated, david. i only know that my guardian pays my expenses at this boarding school." "yes, you are a star boarder, and have the nicest room in the institution. i am only a poor day scholar. still i feel thankful that i have been allowed to remain as long as i have. who is your guardian?" "a mr. benjamin fielding, of new york." "is he a business man?" "i believe so." "do you know how much you will inherit when you come of age?" asked david, after a short pause. "i haven't an idea." "it seems to me your guardian ought to have told you." "i scarcely know my guardian. five years ago i spent a week at his home. i don't remember much about it except that he lives in a handsome house, and has plenty of servants. since then, as you know, i have passed most of my time here, except that in the summer i was allowed to board at the catkills or any country place i might select," "yes, and i remember one year you took me with you and paid all my expenses. i shall never forget your kindness, and how much i enjoyed that summer." rodney ropes smiled, and his smile made his usually grave face look very attractive. "my dear david," he said, "it was all selfishness on my part. i knew i should enjoy myself much better with a companion." "you may call that selfishness, rodney, but it is a kind of selfishness that makes me your devoted friend. how long do you think you shall remain at school?" "i don't know. my guardian has never told me his plans for me. i wish he would." "i shall miss you, rodney, but we will correspond, won't we?" "surely. you know i shall always feel interested in you and your welfare." david was a plain boy of humble parentage, and would probably be a hard working mechanic. in fact he looking for nothing better.{sic} but rodney ropes looked to be of genteel blood, and had the air of one who had been brought up a gentleman. but different as they were in social position the two boys had always been devoted friends. the boarding school of which rodney was, as his friend expressed himself, a star pupil, was situated about fifty miles from the city of new york. it was under the charge of dr. sampson, a tall, thin man of fair scholarship, keenly alive to his own interest, who showed partiality for his richer pupils, and whenever he had occasion to censure bore most heavily upon boys like david hull, who was poor. rodney occupied alone the finest room in the school. there was a great contrast between his comfortable quarters and the extremely plain dormitories occupied by less favored pupils. in the case of some boys the favoritism of the teacher would have led them to put on airs, and made them unpopular with their school fellows. but rodney had too noble a nature to be influenced by such considerations. he enjoyed his comfortable room, but treated his school fellows with a frank cordiality that made him a general favorite. after david left his room rodney sat down to prepare a lesson in cicero, when he was interrupted by the entrance through the half open door of a younger boy. "rodney," he said, "the doctor would like to see you in his office." "very well, brauner, i will go down at once." he put aside his book and went down to the office of dr. sampson on the first floor. the doctor was sitting at his desk. he turned slightly as rodney entered. "take a seat, ropes," he said curtly. his tone was so different from his usual cordiality that rodney was somewhat surprised. "am i in disgrace?" he asked himself. "dr. sampson doesn't seem as friendly as usual." after a brief interval dr. sampson wheeled round in his office chair. "i have a letter for you from your guardian, ropes," he said. "here it is. do me the favor to read it here." with some wonder rodney took the letter and read as follows: dear rodney--i have bad news to communicate. as you know, i was left by your father in charge of you and your fortune. i have never told you the amount, but i will say now that it was about fifty thousand dollars. until two years since i kept it intact but then began a series of reverses in which my own fortune was swallowed up. in the hope of relieving myself i regret to say that i was tempted to use your money. that went also, and now of the whole sum there remains but enough to pay the balance of your school bills, leaving you penniless. how much i regret this i cannot tell you. i shall leave new york at once. i do not care at present to say where i shall go, but i shall try to make good the loss, and eventually restore to you your lost fortune. i may be successful or i may not. i shall do my best and i hope in time to have better news to communicate. one thing i am glad to say. i have a casket containing your mother's jewels. these are intact. i shall send you the casket by express, knowing that you will wish to keep them out of regard for your mother's memory. in case you are reduced to the necessity of pawning or selling them, i am sure that your mother, could she be consulted, would advise you to do so. this would be better than to have you suffer from want. there is nothing further for me to write except to repeat my regret, and renew my promise to make up your lost fortune if i shall ever to able to do so. your guardian, benjamin fielding. rodney read this like one dazed. in an instant he was reduced from the position of a favorite of fortune to a needy boy, with his living to make. he could not help recalling what had passed between his friend david and himself earlier in the day. now he was as poor as david--poorer, in fact for david had a chance to learn a trade that would yield him a living, while he was utterly without resources, except in having an unusually good education. "well," said dr. sampson, "have you read your letter?" "yes, sir." "your guardian wrote to me also. this is his letter," and he placed the brief epistle in rodney's hands. dr. sampson--i have written my ward, rodney ropes, an important letter which he will show you. the news which it contains will make it necessary for him to leave school. i inclose a check for one hundred and twenty five dollars. keep whatever is due you, and give him the balance. benjamin fielding. "i have read the letter, but i don't know what it means," said dr. sampson. "can you throw any light upon it?" "here is my letter, doctor. you can read it for yourself." dr. sampson's face changed as he read rodney's letter. it changed and hardened, and his expression became quite different from that to which rodney had been accustomed. "this is a bad business, ropes," said the doctor in a hard tone. he had always said rodney before. "yes, sir." "that was a handsome fortune which your father left you." "yes, sir. i never knew before how much it amounted to." "you only learn when you have lost it. mr. fielding has treated you shamefully." "yes, sir, i suppose he has, but he says he will try to make it up to me in the future." "pish! that is all humbug. even if he is favored by fortune you will never get back a cent." "i think i shall, sir." "you are young. you do not know the iniquities of business men. i do." "i prefer to hope for the best." "just as you please." "have you anything more to say to me?" "only that i will figure up your account and see how much money is to come to you out of the check your guardian has sent. you can stay here till monday; then you will find it best to make new arrangements." "very well, sir." rodney left the room, realizing that dr. sampson's feelings had been changed by his pupil's reverse of fortune. it was the way of the world, but it was not a pleasant way, and rodney felt depressed. chapter ii. the casket of jewels. it was not till the latter part of the afternoon that the casket arrived. rodney was occupied with a recitation, and it was only in the evening that he got an opportunity to open it. there was a pearl necklace, very handsome, a pair of bracelets, two gold chains, some minor articles of jewelry and a gold ring. a locket attracted rodney's notice, and he opened it. it contained the pictures of his father and mother. his father he could barely remember, his mother died before he was old enough to have her image impressed upon his memory. he examined the locket and his heart was saddened. he felt how different his life would have been had his parents lived. he had never before realized the sorrow of being alone in the world. misfortune had come upon him, and so far as he knew he had not a friend. even dr. sampson, who had been paid so much money on his account, and who had always professed so great friendship for him, had turned cold. as he was standing with the locket in his hand there was a knock at the door. "come in!" he called out. the door opened and a stout, coarse looking boy, dressed in an expensive manner, entered. "good evening, john," said rodney, but not cordially. next to himself, john bundy, who was the son of a wealthy saloon keeper in the city of new york, had been a favorite with dr. sampson. if there was anything dr. sampson bowed down to and respected it was wealth, and mr. bundy, senior, was reputed to be worth a considerable fortune. in rodney's mood john bundy was about the last person whom he wanted to see. "ha!" said john, espying the open casket, "where did you get all that jewelry?" "it contains my mother's jewels," said rodney gravely. "you never showed it to me before." "i never had it before. it came to me by express this afternoon." "it must be worth a good pile of money," said john, his eyes gleaming with cupidity. "i suppose it is." "have you any idea what it is worth?" "i have no thought about it." "what are you going to do with it? it won't be of use to you, especially the diamond earrings," he added, with a coarse laugh. "no," answered rodney shortly. "my eyes, wouldn't my mother like to own all this jewelry. she's fond of ornament, but pa won't buy them for her." rodney did not answer. "i say, ropes, i mustn't forget my errand. will you do me a favor?" "what is it?" "lend me five dollars till the first of next month. my allowance comes due then. now i haven't but a quarter left." "what makes you apply to me, bundy?" "because you always have money. i don't suppose you are worth as much as my father, but you have more money for yourself than i have." "i have had, perhaps, but i haven't now." "why, what's up? what has happened?" "i have lost my fortune." john whistled. this was his way of expressing amazement. "why, what have you been doing? how could you lose your fortune?" "my guardian has lost it for me. that amount to the same thing." "when did you hear that?" "this morning." "is that true? are you really a poor boy?" "yes." john bundy was astonished, but on the whole he was not saddened. in the estimation of the school rodney had always ranked higher than he, and been looked upon as the star pupil in point of wealth. now that he was dethroned john himself would take his place. this would be gratifying, though just at present, and till the beginning of the next month, he would be distressed for ready money. "well, that's a stunner!" he said. "how do you feel about it? shall you stay in school?" "no; i can't afford it. i must get to work." "isn't there anything left--not a cent?" "there may be a few dollars." "and then," said bundy with a sudden thought, "there is this casket of jewelry. you can sell it for a good deal of money." "i don't mean to sell it." "then you're a fool; that's all i've got to say." "i don't suppose you will understand my feeling in the matter, but these articles belonged to my mother. they are all i have to remind me of her. i do not mean to sell them unless it is absolutely necessary." "i would sell them quicker'n a wink," said bundy. "what's the good of keeping them?" "we won't discuss the matter," said rodney coldly. "do you mind my telling the other boys about your losing your money?" "no; it will be known tomorrow at any rate; there is no advantage in concealing it." a heavy step was heard outside. it stopped before the door. "i must be getting," said bundy, "or i'll get into trouble." it was against the rule at the school for boys to make calls upon each other in the evening unless permission were given. john bundy opened the door suddenly, and to his dismay found himself facing the rigid figure of dr. sampson, the principal. "how do you happen to be here, bundy?" asked the doctor sternly. "please, sir, i was sympathizing with ropes on his losing his money," said bundy with ready wit. "very well! i will excuse you this time." "i'm awful sorry for you, ropes," said bundy effusively. "thank you," responded rodney. "you can go now," said the principal. "i have a little business with master ropes." "all right, sir. good night." "good night." "won't you sit down, dr. sampson?" said rodney politely, and he took the casket from the chair. "yes, i wish to have five minutes' conversation with you. so these are the jewels, are they?" "yes, sir." "they seem to be quite valuable," went on the doctor, lifting the pearl necklace and poising it in his fingers. "it will be well for you to have them appraised by a jeweler." "it would, sir, if i wished to sell them, but i mean to keep them as they are." "i would hardly advise it. you will need the money. probably you do not know how near penniless you are." "no, sir; i don't know." "your guardian, as you are aware, sent me a check for one hundred and twenty five dollars. i have figured up how much of this sum is due to me, and i find it to be one hundred and thirteen dollars and thirty seven cents." "yes, sir," said rodney indifferently. "this leaves for you only eleven dollars and sixty three cents. you follow me, do you not?" "yes, sir." "have you any money saved up from your allowance?" "a few dollars only, sir." "ahem! that is a pity. you will need all you can raise. but of course you did not anticipate what has occurred?" "no, sir." "i will throw off the thirty seven cents," said the principal magnanimously, "and give you back twelve dollars." "i would rather pay you the whole amount of your bill," said rodney. "ahem! well perhaps that would be more business-like. so you don't wish to part with any of the jewelry, ropes?" "no, sir." "i thought, perhaps, by way of helping you, i would take the earrings, and perhaps the necklace, off your hands and present them to mrs. sampson." rodney shuddered with aversion at the idea of these precious articles, which had once belonged to his mother, being transferred to the stout and coarse featured consort of the principal. "i think i would rather keep them," he replied. "oh well, just as you please," said dr. sampson with a shade of disappointment for he had no idea of paying more than half what the articles were worth. "if the time comes when you wish to dispose of them let me know." rodney nodded, but did not answer in words. "of course, ropes," went on the doctor in a perfunctory way, "i am very sorry for you. i shall miss you, and, if i could afford it, i would tell you to stay without charge. but i am a poor man." "yes," said rodney hastily, "i understand. i thank you for your words but would not under any circumstances accept such a favor at your hands." "i am afraid you are proud, ropes. pride is--ahem--a wrong feeling." "perhaps so, dr. sampson, but i wish to earn my own living without being indebted to any one." "perhaps you are right, ropes. i dare say i should feel so myself. when do you propose leaving us?" "some time tomorrow, sir." "i shall feel sad to have you go. you have been here so long that you seem to me like a son. but we must submit to the dispensations of providence--" and dr. sampson blew a vigorous blast upon his red silk handkerchief. "i will give you the balance due in the morning." "very well, sir." rodney was glad to be left alone. he had no faith in dr. sampson's sympathy. the doctor had the reputation of being worth from thirty to forty thousand dollars, and his assumption of being a poor man rodney knew to be a sham. he went to bed early, for tomorrow was to be the beginning of a new life for him. chapter iii. a strange disappearance. when it was generally known in the school that rodney was to leave because he had lost his property much sympathy was felt and expressed for him. though he had received more than ordinary attention from the principal on account of his pecuniary position and expectations, this had not impaired his popularity. he never put on any airs and was on as cordial relations with the poorest student as with the richest. "i'm awfully sorry you're going, rodney," said more than one. "is it really true that you have lost your property?" "yes, it is true." "do you feel bad about it?" "i feel sorry, but not discouraged." "i say, rodney," said ernest rayner, in a low voice, calling rodney aside, "are you very short of money?" "i haven't much left, ernest." "because i received five dollars last week as a birthday present. i haven't spent any of it. you can have it as well as not." rodney was much moved. "my dear ernest," he said, putting his arm caressingly around the neck of the smaller boy, "you are a true friend. i won't forget your generous offer, though i don't need to accept it." "but are you sure you have money enough?" asked ernest. "yes, i have enough for the present. by the time i need more i shall have earned it." there was one boy, already introduced, john bundy, who did not share in the general feeling of sympathy for rodney. this was john bundy. he felt that rodney's departure would leave him the star pupil and give him the chief social position in school. as to scholarship he was not ambitious to stand high in that. "i say, ropes," he said complacently, "i'm to have your room after you're gone." "i congratulate you," returned rodney. "it is an excellent room." "yes, i s'pose it'll make you feel bad. where are you going?" "i hope you will enjoy it as much as i have done." "oh yes, i guess there's no doubt of that. i'm going to get pa to send me some nice pictures to hang on the wall. when you come back here on a visit you'll see how nice it looks." "i think it will be a good while before i come here on a visit." "yes. i s'pose it'll make you feel bad. where are you going?" "to the city of new york." "you'll have to live in a small hall bedroom there." "why will i?" "because you are poor, and it costs a good deal of money to live in new york. it'll be a great come down." "it will indeed, but if i can earn enough to support me in plain style i won't complain. i suppose you'll call and see me when you come to new york?" "perhaps so, if you don't live in a tenement house. pa objects to my going to tenement houses. there's no knowing what disease there may be in them." "it is well to be prudent" said rodney, smiling. it did not trouble him much to think he was not likely to receive a call from his quondan schoolmate. "here is the balance of your money, ropes," said dr. sampson, drawing a small roll of bills from his pocket, later in the day. "i am quite willing to give you the odd thirty seven cents." "thank you, doctor, but i shan't need it." "you are poorly provided. now i would pay you a good sum for some of your mother's jewelry, as i told you last evening." "thank you," said rodney hastily, "but i don't care to sell at present." "let me know when you are ready to dispose of the necklace." here the depot carriage appeared in the street outside and rodney with his gripsack in one hand and the precious casket in the other, climbed to a seat beside the driver. his trunk he left behind, promising to send for it when he had found a new boarding place. there was a chorus of good byes. rodney waved his handkerchief in general farewell, and the carriage started for the depot. "be you goin' for good?" asked joel, the driver, who knew rodney well and felt friendly to him. "yes, joel." "it's kind of sudden, isn't it?" "yes." "what makes you go?" "bad news, joel." "be any of your folks dead?" "it is not death. i haven't any `folks.' i'm alone in the world. it's because i've lost my property and am too poor to remain in school." "that's too bad," said the driver in a tone of sympathy. "where are you goin'?" "to the city." "are you goin' to work?" "yes, i shall have to." "if you was a little older you might get a chance to drive a street car, but i s'pose you're too young." "yes, i don't think they would take me." "i've thought sometimes i should like such a chance myself," said joel. "i've got tired of the country. i should like to live in the city where there's theaters, and shows, and such like. do you know what the drivers on street cars get?" "no, i never heard." "i wish you'd find out and let me know. you can send the letter to joel phipps, groveton. then find out if it's easy to get such a chance." "i will. i shall be glad to oblige you." "you always was obligin', rodney. i've asked jack bundy to do it--you know his folks live in the city--but he never would. he's a mighty disagreeable boy. he never liked you." "didn't he?" "no, i surmise he was jealous of you. he used to say you put on so many airs it made him sick." "i don't think any of the other boys would say that." "no, but they could say it of him. do you think his father is rich?" "i have always heard that he was." "i hope he's better about paying his debt than jack. i lent him twenty five cents a year ago and i never could get it back." the distance from the school to the station was a mile. joel fetched the carriage round with a sweep and then jumped off, opened the door, and then helped the passengers to disembark, if that word is allowable. "how soon does the train start, joel?" asked rodney. "in about five minutes." "then i had better purchase my ticket without delay." "don't forget to ask about horse car drivers!" "no, i won't. i should like to have you come to new york. i know no one there, and i should feel glad to see a familiar face." the train came up in time, and rodney was one of half a dozen passengers who entered the cars. he obtained a place next to a stout man dressed in a pepper and salt suit. "is this seat engaged?" asked rodney. "yes--to you," and his fellow passenger laughed. rodney laughed too, for he saw that the remark was meant to be jocose. he put his gripsack on the floor at his feet, but held the casket in his lap. he did not like to run any risk with that. "are you a drummer?" asked the stout man, with a glance at the casket. "no, sir." "i thought you might be, and that _that_ might contain your samples." "no, sir. that is private property." he had thought of telling what it contained, but checked himself. he knew nothing of his companion, and was not sure how far it might be safe to trust a stranger. "i used to be a drummer myself--in the jewelry line--" continued his companion, "and i carried a box just like that." "ah, indeed! then you are not in that business now?" "no, i got tired of it. i deal in quite a different article now." "indeed?" "suburban lot." "you don't happen to have any of them with you?" the stout man roared with laughter, giving rodney the impression that he had said a very witty thing. "that's a good one," he remarked, "the best i've heard for a long time. no, i haven't any of the lots with me, but i've got a circular. just cast your eye over that," and he drew a large and showy prospectus from his pocket. "if you should be looking for a good investment," he continued, "you can't do any better than buy a lot at morton park. it is only eighteen miles from the city and is rapidly building up. you can buy lot on easy installments, and i will myself pick one out for you that is almost sure to double in value in a year or two." "thank you," said rodney, "but i shall have to invest my money, if i get any, in a different way." "as what for instance?" "in board and lodging." "good. that is even more necessary than real estate." "how long have you been in the business, sir?" "about six months." "and how does it pay?" "very well, if you know how to talk." "i should think you might do well, then." "thank you. i appreciate the compliment. what business are you going into, that is, if you are going to the city?" "i am going to the city, but i have no idea yet what i shall do." "perhaps you may like to become an agent for our lots. i shall be ready to employ you as sub agent if you feel disposed." "thank you, sir. if you will give me your card, i may call upon you." the short man drew from his card case a business card. it bore the name adin woods. royal building. nassau st. morton park lots. "come to see me at any time," he said, "and we will talk the matter over." here the train boy came along and rodney bought a copy of _puck_, while the agent resumed the perusal of a copy of a magazine. for an hour the cars ran smoothly. then there was a sudden shock causing all the passengers to start to their feet. "we're off the track!" shouted an excitable person in front of rodney. the instinct of self preservation is perhaps stronger than any other. rodney and his seat mate both jumped to their feet and hurried to the door of the car, not knowing what was in store for them. but fortunately the train had not been going rapidly. it was approaching a station and was "slowing up." so, though it had really run off the track, there was not likely to be any injury to the passengers. "we are safe," said adin woods. "the only harm done is the delay. i hope that won't be long. suppose we go back to our seat." they returned to the seat which they had jointly occupied. then rodney made an alarming discovery. "my casket!" he exclaimed. "where is it?" "what did you do with it?" "left it on the seat." "it may have fallen to the floor." rodney searched for it in feverish excitement, but his search was vain. _the casket had disappeared!_ chapter iv. in pursuit of a thief. "were the contents of the casket valuable?" asked the land agent. "yes; it contained my mother's jewels, all the more valuable because she is dead," replied rodney. "were they of much intrinsic worth?" "they must be worth several hundred dollars at least." "then they must be found," said adin woods energetically. "they have evidently been taken by some passenger during the five minutes we were away from our seat." "were you inquiring about the casket?" asked a lady sitting opposite. "yes, madam. can you give any information about it?" "just after you left your seat the man that sat behind you rose and reaching over for it went to the rear end of the car and got out," "i wish you had stopped him, madam." "he was so cool about it that i thought he might be a friend of the young gentleman." "i didn't know him. he must have been a thief." "what was his appearance, madam?" asked the lot agent. "he was a thin, dark complexioned man, with side whiskers coming half way down his cheeks." "and you say he got out of the rear end of the car?" "yes, sir." "he won't get on the train again," said the agent turning to rodney. "he thinks the casket valuable enough to pay him for the interruption of his journey." "what shall i do then?" asked rodney, feeling helpless and at a loss which way to turn. "follow him," said the agent briefly. "he will probably stop over in the village a day and resume his joumey tomorrow." "even if i found him i am afraid i shouldn't know how to deal with him." "then i'll tell you what i'll do. i'll stop over with you and help you make it hot for him. i've had a spite against thieves ever since i had a valuable overcoat stolen in one of my journeys." "i shall feel very much obliged to you, mr. woods, but won't it interfere with your business?" "not materially. if we succeed in overhauling the rascal i shall feel sufficiently repaid for the small interruption. but come on, we can't afford to linger here while he is carrying off the plunder." "i don't know how i can repay you, mr. woods," said rodney gratefully. "you can buy a lot of me when you get rich enough." "i will certainly do so, though i am afraid it will be a long time first." "you don't know what good fortune may be in store for you. did you notice, madam, in which direction the thief went?" "yes, i was looking out of the window. he went over the road to the left." "that leads to the village. you will see, mr. ropes, that i was right about his plans." "don't call me mr. ropes. call me rodney." "i will. it don't seem natural to dub a boy mr. now, rodney, follow me." the two passengers set out on the road that led to the village. they could see the latter easily, for it was not more than a mile away. "he will be surprised to think we have `struck his trail' so quick," said the agent. "where shall we go first?" "to the hotel if there is one." "the village seems small." "yes, there are only a few hundred inhabitant probably. it is not a place where a traveler would be likely to interrupt his journey unless he had a special object in doing so, like our dishonest friend. however, i think we shall be able to balk his little game." ten minutes' walk brought them to the village. looking about they saw a small hotel just across the way from a neat white chapel. "follow me," said the agent. they went into the public room in which there was a small office. the book of arrivals was open, and adin woods went forward and examined it. silently he pointed to a name evidently just written, for the ink was scarcely dry. this was the name: louis wheeler, philadelphia. "this may or may not be his real name," said mr. woods in a low voice. "do you wish to register, gentlemen?" asked the clerk. "we will take dinner, and if we decide to stay will register later. by the way, i recognize this name, but it may not be the man i suppose." "yes, the gentleman just registered." "would you mind describing him?" "he was a tall, dark man as near as i can remember." "and he carried a small casket in his hand?" "yes, and a gripsack." "oh yes," said the agent his face lighting up with satisfaction. "it is the man i mean--where is he now?" "in his room." "did he say how long he intended to stay?" "no, sir. he said nothing about his plans." "did he seem specially careful about the casket?" "yes, sir. he carried that in his hands, but let the servant carry up the gripsack." "my friend," said the agent in an impressive tone, "i am going to surprise you." the country clerk looked all curiosity. "is it about mr. wheeler?" he asked. "yes, the man is a thief. he stole the casket, which contains valuable jewelry, from my young friend here. we are here to demand a return of the property or to arrest him. is there a policeman within call?" "i can summon a constable." "do so, but don't breathe a word of what i have told you." the clerk called a boy in from the street and gave him instructions in a low voice. he went at once on his errand, and in ten minutes a stout broad shouldered man made his appearance. "this gentleman sent for you, mr. barlow," said the clerk. "what can i do for you?" asked the constable. "help me to recover stolen property." "that i will do with pleasure if you will tell me what you want me to do." adin woods held a brief conference with the constable, then he led the way up stairs, followed immediately by rodney, while the constable kept a little behind. "his room is no. 9," said the bell boy. the agent paused before the door of no. 9, and knocked. "come in!" said a voice. the agent opened the door, and entered, accompanied by rodney. a glance showed that the occupant answered the description given by the lady in the car. louis wheeler changed color, for he recognized both the agent and rodney. "what is your business?" he asked in a tone which he tried to make indifferent. "that" answered woods, pointing to the jewel casket on the bureau. it looked to him as if wheeler, if that was his name, had been trying to open it. "i don't understand." "then i will try to make things clear to you. you have, doubtless by accident" he emphasized the last word, "taken from the car a casket belonging to my young friend here." "you are mistaken, sir," said wheeler with brazen hardihood. "that casket belongs to me." "indeed. what does it contain?" "i fail to see how that is any of your business," returned wheeler, determined, if possible, to bluff off his visitors. "i admire your cheek, sir. i really do. but i am too old a traveler to be taken in by such tricks. i propose to have that casket." "well, sir, you are the most impudent thief and burglar i ever met. you break into a gentleman's room, and undertake to carry off his private property. unless you go out at once, i will have you arrested." "that you can do very readily, for i have an officer within call." louis wheeler changed color. he began to see that the situation was getting serious. "there is a great mistake here," he said. "i agree with you." the agent went to the door, and called "constable barlow." the constable promptly presented himself. "do you want me, sir?" he asked. "that depends on this gentleman here. if he will peacefully restore to my young friend here yonder jewel casket i am willing to let him go. otherwise--" and he glanced at wheeler significantly. "perhaps i have made a mistake," admitted the thief. "i had a casket exactly like this. possibly i have taken the wrong one." "i have the key to the casket here," said rodney, "and i can tell you without opening it what it contains." "what did yours contain?" asked the agent. "jewelry," answered wheeler shortly. "what articles?" "never mind. i am inclined to think this casket belongs to the boy." "rodney, you can take it and mr. wheeler will probably find his where he left it." no objection was made, and the discomfited thief was left a prey to mortification and disappointment. rodney handed a dollar to the constable which that worthy official received with thanks, and he and the agent resumed their journey by an afternoon train. they saw nothing further of louis wheeler who sent for dinner to be served in his room. chapter v. a young financial wreck. "you have been very fortunate in recovering your jewels," said the agent. "i owe it to you," replied rodney gratefully. "well, perhaps so. if i have rendered you a service i am very glad." "and i am very glad to have found so good a friend. i hope you will let me pay for your ticket to new york." "it won't be necessary. the interruption of our journey won't invalidate the ticket we have." an hour later they reached new york. "what are your plans, rodney?" asked adin woods, who by this time had become quite intimate with his young companion. "i shall call on my guardian, and perhaps he may give me some advice as to what i do. where would you advise me to go--to a hotel?" "no; it will be too expensive. i know of a plain boarding house on west fourteenth street where you can be accommodated with lodging and two meals--breakfast and supper, or dinner as we call it here--for a dollar a day." "i shall be glad to go there, for the present, at least. i haven't much money, and must find something to do as soon as possible." "we will both go there, and if you don't object we will take a room together. that will give us a larger apartment. mrs. marcy is an old acquaintance of mine, and will give you a welcome." rodney was glad to accept his companion's proposal. they proceeded at once to the boarding house, and fortunately found a good room vacant on the third floor. mr. woods went out in the evening to make a call, but rodney was glad to go to bed at nine o'clock. the next morning after breakfast rodney consulted his companion as to what he should do with the casket. "do you want to raise money on it?" asked the agent. "no; i shall not do this unless i am obliged to." "have you any idea as to the value of the jewels?" "no." "then i will take you first to a jeweler in maiden lane, a friend of mine, who will appraise them. afterwards i advise you to deposit the casket at a storage warehouse, or get tiffany to keep it for you." "i will do as you suggest." maiden lane is a street largely devoted to jewelers, wholesale and retail. rodney followed mr. woods into a store about midway between broadway and nassau street. a pleasant looking man of middle age greeted the agent cordially. "what can i do for you?" he asked. "do you wish to buy a diamond ring for the future mrs. woods?" "not much. i would like to have you appraise some jewelry belonging to my young friend here." the casket was opened, and the jeweler examined the contents admiringly. "this is choice jewelry," he said. "does your friend wish to sell?" "not at present," answered rodney. "when you do give me a call. i will treat you fairly. you wish me to appraise these articles?" "yes, sir, if you will." "it will take me perhaps fifteen minutes." the jeweler retired to the back part of the store with the casket. in about a quarter of an hour he returned. "of course i can't give exact figures," he said, "but i value the jewelry at about twelve hundred dollars." rodney looked surprised. "i didn't think it so valuable," he said. "i don't mean that you could sell it for so much, but if you wish to dispose of it i will venture to give you eleven hundred." "thank you. if i decide to sell i will certainly come to you." "now," said the agent, "i advise you on the whole to store the casket with tiffany." "shall i have to pay storage in advance?" asked rodney anxiously. "i think not. the value of the jewels will be a sufficient guarantee that storage will be paid." rodney accompanied adin woods to the great jewelry store on the corner of fifteenth street and union square, and soon transacted his business. "now, you won't have any anxiety as to the safety of the casket," said the agent. "your friend of the train will find it difficult to get hold of the jewels. now i shall have to leave you, as i have some business to attend to. we will meet at supper." rodney decided to call at the office of his late guardian, benjamin fielding. it was in the lower part of the city. on his way down town he purchased a copy of a morning paper. almost the first article he glanced at proved to be of especial interest to him. it was headed skipped to canada rumors have been rife for some time affecting the busines standing of mr. benjamin fielding, the well known commission merchant. yesterday it was discovered that he had left the city, but where he has gone is unknown. it is believed that he is very deeply involved, and seeing no way out of his embarrassment has skipped to canada, or perhaps taken passage to europe. probably his creditors will appoint a committee to look into his affairs and report what can be done. later--an open letter has been found in mr. fielding's desk, addressed to his creditors. it expresses regret for their losses, and promises, if his life is spared, and fortune favors him, to do all in his power to make them good. no one doubts mr. fielding's integrity, and regrets are expressed that he did not remain in the city and help unravel the tangle in which his affairs are involved. he is a man of ability, and as he is still in the prime of life, it may be that he will be able to redeem his promises and pay his debts in full, if sufficient time is given him. "i can get no help or advice from mr. fielding," thought rodney. "i am thrown upon my own resources, and must fight the battle of life as well as i can alone." he got out in front of the astor house. as he left the car he soiled his shoes with the mud so characteristic of new york streets. "shine your boots?" asked a young arab, glancing with a business eye at rodney's spattered shoes. rodney accepted his offer, not so much because he thought the blacking would last, as for the opportunity of questioning the free and independent young citizen who was doing, what he hoped to do, that is, making a living for himself. "is business good with you?" asked rodney. "it ought to be with the street in this condition." "yes; me and de street commissioner is in league together. he makes business good for me." "and do you pay him a commission?" asked rodney smiling. "i can't tell no official secrets. it might be bad for me." "you are an original genius." "am i? i hope you ain't callin' me names." "oh no. i am only paying you a compliment. what is your name?" "mike flynn." "were do you live, mike?" "at the lodge." "i suppose you mean at the newsboys' `lodge?'" "yes." "how much do you have to pay there?" "six cents for lodgin', and six cents for supper and breakfast." "that is, six cents for each." "yes; you ain't comin' to live there, are you?" asked mike. "i don't know--i may have to." "you're jokin'." "what makes you think i am joking?" "because you're a swell. look at them clo'es!" "i have a good suit of clothes, to be sure, but i haven't much money. you are better off than i am." "how's that?" asked mike incredulously. "you've got work to do, and i am earning nothing." "if you've got money enough to buy a box and brush, you can go in with me." "i don't think i should like it, mike. it would spoil my clothes, and i am afraid i wouldn't have money enough to buy others." "i keep my dress suit at home--the one i wear to parties." "haven't you got any father or mother, mike? how does it happen that you are living in new york alone?" "my farder is dead, and me mudder, she married a man wot ain't no good. he'd bate me till i couldn't stand it. so i just run away." "where does your mother live?" "in albany." "some time when you earn money enough you can ask her to come here and live with you." "they don't take women at the lodge." "no, i suppose not," said rodney, smiling. "besides she's got two little girls by her new husband, and she wouldn't want to leave them." by this time the shine was completed, and rodney paid mike. "if i ever come to the lodge, i'll ask for you," he said. "where do you live now?" "i'm just staying at a place on fourteenth street, but i can't afford to stay there long, for they charge a dollar a day." "geewholliker, that would bust me, and make me a financial wreck as the papers say." "how did you lose your fortune and get reduced to blacking boots?" asked rodney jocosely. "i got scooped out of it in wall street," answered mike. "jay gould cleaned me out." "and i suppose now he has added your fortune to his." "you've hit it boss." "well, good day, mike, i'll see you again some day----" "all right! i'm in my office all de mornin'." chapter vi. an impudent adventurer. while rodney was talking with mike flynn he was an object of attention to a man who stood near the corner of barclay street, and was ostensibly looking in at the window of the drug store. as rodney turned away he recognized him at once as his enterprising fellow traveler who had taken possession of the casket of jewels. he did not care to keep up an acquaintance with him, and started to cross the street. but the other came forward smiling, and with a nod said: "i believe you are the young man i met yesterday in the cars and afterwards at kentville?" "yes, sir." "i just wanted to tell you that i had got back my jewel box, the one for which i mistook yours." "indeed!" said rodney, who did not believe a word the fellow said. "quite an amusing mistake, i made." "it might have proved serious to me." "very true, as i shouldn't have known where to find you to restore your property." "i don't think that would have troubled you much," thought rodney. "where did you find your box?" he asked. "in the car. that is, the conductor picked it up and left it at the depot for me. where are you staying here in the city? at the astor house?" "no, i have found a boarding house on west fourteenth street." "if it is a good place, i should like to go there. what is the number?" "i can't recall it, though i could find it," answered rodney with reserve, for he had no wish to have his railroad acquaintance in the house. "is the gentleman who was traveling with you there also?" "yes, sir." "he is a very pleasant gentleman, though he misjudged me. ha, ha! my friends will be very much amused when i tell them that i was taken for a thief. why, i venture to say that my box is more valuable than yours." "very likely," said rodney coldly. "good morning." "good morning. i hope we may meet again." rodney nodded, but he could not in sincerity echo the wish. he was now confronted by a serious problem. he had less than ten dollars in his pocketbook, and this would soon be swallowed up by the necessary expenses of life in a large city. what would he do when that was gone? it was clear that he must go to work as soon as possible. if his guardian had remained in the city, probably through his influence a situation might have been secured. now nothing was to be looked for in that quarter. he bought a morning paper and looked over the want column. he found two places within a short distance of the astor house, and called at each. one was in a railroad office. "my boy," said the manager, a pleasant looking man, "the place was taken hours since. you don't seem to get up very early in the morning." "i could get up at any hour that was necessary," replied rodney, "but i have only just made up my mind to apply for a position." "you won't meet with any luck today. it is too late. get up bright and early tomorrow morning, buy a paper, and make early application for any place that strikes you as desirable." "thank you, sir. i am sure your advice is good." "if you had been the first to call here, i should have taken you. i like your appearance better than that of the boy i have selected." "thank you, sir." "this boy may not prove satisfactory. call in six days, just before his week expires, and if there is likely to be a vacancy i will let you know." "thank you, sir. you are very kind." "i always sympathize with boys. i have two boys of my own." this conversation quite encouraged rodney. it seemed to promise success in the future. if he had probably impressed one man, he might be equally fortunate with another. it was about half past twelve when he passed through nassau street. all at once his arm was grasped, and a cheery voice said, "where are you going, rodney?" "mr. woods!" he exclaimed, with pleased recognition. "yes, it's your old friend woods." "you are not the only railroad friend i have met this morning." "who was the other?" "the gentleman who obligingly took care of my jewel box for a short time." "you don't mean to say you have met him? where did you come across him?" "in front of the astor house, almost two hours since." "did you speak to him?" "he spoke to me. you will be glad to hear that he has recovered his own casket of jewels." adin woods smiled. "he must think you are easily imposed upon," he said, "to believe any such story. anything more?" "he said his friends would be very much surprised to hear that he had been suspected of theft." "so he wanted to clear himself with you?" "yes; he asked where i was staying." "i hope you didn't tell him." "i only said i was at a boarding house on west fourteenth street, but didn't mention the number." "he thinks you have the casket with you, and that he may get possession of it. it is well that you stored it at tiffany's." "i think so. now i have no anxiety about it. do you think he will find out where we live?" "probably, as you gave him a clew. but, rodney, it is about lunch time, and i confess i have an appetite. come and lunch with me." "but i am afraid, mr. woods, i shall not be able to return the compliment." "there is no occasion for it. i feel in good humor this morning. i have sold one lot, and have hopes of disposing of another. the one lot pays me a commission of twenty dollars." "i wish i could make twenty dollars in a week." "sometimes i only sell one lot in a week. it isn't like a regular business. it is precarious. still, take the year through and i make a pretty good income. come in here. we can get a good lunch here," and he led the way into a modest restaurant, not far from the site of the old post office, which will be remembered by those whose residence in new york dates back twenty years or more. "now we will have a nice lunch," said the agent. "i hope you can do justice to it." "i generally can," responded rodney, smiling. "i am seldom troubled with a poor appetite." "ditto for me. now what have you been doing this morning?" "looking for a place." "with what success?" "pretty good if i had only been earlier." rodney told the story of his application to the manager of the railroad office. "you will know better next time. i think you'll succeed. i did. when i came to new york at the age of twenty two i had only fifty dollars. that small sum had to last me twelve weeks. you can judge that i didn't live on the fat of the land during that time. i couldn't often eat at delmonico's. even beefsteak john's would have been too expensive for me. however, those old days are over." the next day and the two following rodney went about the city making application for positions, but every place seemed full. on the third day mr. woods said, "i shall have to leave you for a week or more, rodney." "where are you going?" "to philadelphia. there's a man there who is a capitalist and likes land investments. i am going to visit him, and hope to sell him several lots. he once lived in this city, so he won't object to new york investments." "i hope you will succeed, mr. woods. i think if you are going away i had better give up the room, and find cheaper accommodations. i am getting near the end of my money." "you are right. it is best to be prudent." that evening rodney found a room which he could rent for two dollars a week. he estimated that by economy he could get along for fifty cents a day for his eating, and that would be a decided saving. he was just leaving the house the next morning, gripsack in hand, when on the steps he met louis wheeler, his acquaintance of the train. "where are you going?" asked wheeler. "i am leaving this house. i have hired a room elsewhere." wheeler's countenance fell, and he looked dismayed. "why, i have just taken a room here for a week," he said. "you will find it a good place." "but--i wouldn't have come here if i hadn't thought i should have company." "i ought to feel complimented." rodney was convinced that wheeler had come in the hopes of stealing the casket of jewels a second time, and he felt amused at the fellow's discomfiture. "you haven't got your jewel box with you?" "no, i can take that another time." "then it's still in the house," thought wheeler with satisfaction. "it won't be my fault if i don't get it in my hands. well, good morning," he said. "come around and call on me." "thank you!" chapter vii. at the newsboy's lodging house. within a week rodney had spent all his money, with the exception of about fifty cents. he had made every effort to obtain a place, but without success. boys born and bred in new york have within my observation tried for months to secure a position in vain, so it is not surprising that rodney who was a stranger proved equally unsuccessful. though naturally hopeful rodney became despondent. "there seems to be no place for me," he said to himself. "when i was at boarding school i had no idea how difficult it is for a boy to earn a living." he had one resource. he could withdraw the box of jewels from tiffany's, and sell some article that it contained. but this he had a great objection to doing. one thing was evident however, he must do something. his friend, the lot agent, was out of town, and he hardly knew whom to advise with. at last mike flynn, the friendly bootblack, whose acquaintance he had made in front of the astor house, occurred to him. mike, humble as he was, was better off than himself. moreover he was a new york boy, and knew more about "hustling" than rodney did. so he sought out mike in his "office." "good morning, mike," said rodney, as the bootblack was brushing off a customer. "oh, its you, rodney," said mike smiling with evident pleasure. "how you're gettin' on?" "not at all." "that's bad. can i help you? just say the word, and i'll draw a check for you on the park bank." "is that where you keep your money?" "it's one of my banks. you don't think i'd put all my spondulics in one bank, do you?" "i won't trouble you to draw a check this morning. i only want to ask some advice." "i've got plenty of that." "i haven't been able to get anything to do, and i have only fifty cents left. i can't go on like that." "that's so." "i've got to give up my room on fourteenth street. i can't pay for it any longer. do you think i could get in at the lodge?" "yes. i'll introduce you to mr. o'connor." "when shall i meet you?" "at five o'clock. we'll be in time for supper." "all right." at five o'clock mike accompanied rodney to the large newsboys' lodging house on new chambers street. mr. o'connor, the popular and efficient superintendent, now dead, looked in surprise at mike's companion. he was a stout man with a kindly face, and rodney felt that he would prove to be a friend. "mr. o'connor, let me introduce me friend, mr. rodney ropes," said mike. "could you give me a lodging?" asked rodney in an embarrassed tone. "yes; but i am surprised to see a boy of your appearance here." "i am surprised to be here myself," admitted rodney. the superintendent fixed upon him a shrewd, but kindly glance. "have you run away from home?" he asked. "no, sir. it is my home that has run away from me." "have you parents?" "no, sir." "do you come from the country?" "yes, sir." "where have you been living?" "at a boarding school a few hours from new york." "why did you leave it?" "because my guardian sent me word that he had lost my fortune, and could no longer pay my bills." "you have been unfortunate truly. what do you propose to do now?" "earn my living if i can. i have been in the city for about two weeks, and have applied at a good many places but in vain." "then you were right in coming here. supper is ready, and although it is not what you are used to, it will satisfy hunger. mike, you can take rodney with you." within five minutes rodney was standing at a long table with a bowl of coffee and a segment of bread before him. it wouldn't have been attractive to one brought up to good living, as was the case with him, but he was hungry. he had eaten nothing since morning except an apple which he had bought at a street stand for a penny, and his stomach urgently craved a fresh supply of food. mike stood next to him. the young bootblack, who was used to nothing better, ate his portion with zest, and glanced askance at rodney to see how he relished his supper. he was surprised to see that his more aristocratic companion seemed to enjoy it quite as much as himself. "i didn't think you'd like it" he said. "anything tastes good when you're hungry, mike." "that's so." "and i haven't eaten anything except an apple, since morning." "is dat so? why didn't you tell me? i'd have stood treat at de boss tweed eatin' house." "i had money, but i didn't dare to spend it. i was afraid of having nothing left." when rodney had eaten his supper he felt that he could have eaten more, but the craving was satisfied and he felt relieved. he looked around him with some curiosity, for he had never been in such a motley gathering before. there were perhaps one hundred and fifty boys recruited from the street, to about all of whom except himself the term street arab might be applied. the majority of them had the shrewd and good humored celtic face. many of them were fun loving and even mischievous, but scarcely any were really bad. naturally rodney, with his good clothes, attracted attention. the boys felt that he was not one of them, and they had a suspicion that he felt above them. "get on to de dude!" remarked one boy, who was loosely attired in a ragged shirt and tattered trousers. "he means me, mike," said rodney with a smile. "i say, patsy glenn, what do you mean by callin' me friend rodney a dude?" demanded mike angrily. "coz he's got a dandy suit on." "what if he has? wouldn't you wear one like it if you could!" "you bet!" "then just let him alone! he's just got back from de inauguration." "where'd you pick him up, mike?" "never mind! he's one of us. how much money have you got in your pocket rodney?" "thirty two cents." "he can't put on no frills wid dat money." "that's so. i take it all back," and patsy offered a begrimed hand to rodney, which the latter shook heartily with a pleasant smile. that turned the tide in favor of rodney, the boys gathered around him and he told his story in a few words. "i used to be rich, boys," he said, "but my guardian spent all my money, and now i am as poor as any of you." "you'd ought to have had me for your guardian, rodney," observed mike. "i wish you had. you wouldn't have lost my money for me." "true for you! i say so, boys, if we can find rodney's guardian, what'll we do to him?" "give him de grand bounce," suggested patsy. "drop him out of a high winder," said another. "what's his name?" "i don't care to tell you, boys. he's written me a letter, saying he will try to pay me back some day. i think he will. he isn't a bad man, but he has been unlucky." mike, at the request of mr. o'connor, showed rodney a locker in which he could store such articles of clothing as he had with him. after that he felt more at home, and as if he were staying at a hotel though an humble one. at eight o'clock some of the boys had already gone to bed, but mike and rodney were among those who remained up. rodney noticed with what kindness yet fairness the superintendent managed his unruly flock. unruly they might have been with a different man, but he had no trouble in keeping them within bounds. it was at this time that two strangers were announced, one a new york merchant named goodnow, the other a tall, slender man with sandy whiskers of the mutton chop pattern. "good evening, mr. goodnow," said the superintendent, who recognized the merchant as a friend of the society. "good evening, mr. o'connor. i have brought my friend and correspondent mr. mulgrave, of london, to see some of your young arabs." "i shall be glad to give him all the opportunity he desires." the englishman looked curiously at the faces of the boys who in turn were examining him with equal interest. "they are not unlike our boys of a similar grade, but seem sharper and more intelligent" he said. "but surely," pointing to rodney, "that boy is not one of the--arabs. why, he looks like a young gentleman." "he is a new comer. he only appeared tonight." "he must have a history. may i speak with him?" "by all means. rodney, this gentleman would like to talk with you." rodney came forward with the ease of a boy who was accustomed to good society, and said: "i shall be very happy to speak with him." chapter viii. rodney finds a place. "surely," said the englishman, "you were not brought up in the street?" "oh, no," answered rodney, "i was more fortunate." "then how does it happen that i find you here--among the needy boys of the city?" "because i am needy, too." "but you were not always poor?" "no; i inherited a moderate fortune from my father. it was only within a short time that i learned from my guardian that it was lost. i left the boarding school where i was being educated, and came to the city to try to make a living." "but surely your guardian would try to provide for you?" "he is no longer in the city." "who was he?" asked otis goodnow. "mr. benjamin fielding." "is it possible? why, i lost three thousand dollars by him. he has treated you shamefully." "it was not intentional, i am sure," said rodney. "he was probably drawn into using my money by the hope of retrieving himself. he wrote me that he hoped at some time to make restitution." "you speak of him generously, my lad," said mr. mulgrave. "yet he has brought you to absolute poverty." "yes, sir, and i won't pretend that it is not a hard trial to me, but if i can get a chance to earn my own living, i will not complain." "goodnow, a word with you," said the englishman, and he drew his friend aside. "can't you make room for this boy in your establishment?" otis goodnow hesitated. "at present there is no vacancy," he said. "make room for him, and draw upon me for his wages for the first six months." "i will do so, but before the end of that time i am sure he will justify my paying him out of my own pocket." there was a little further conference, and then the two gentlemen came up to where rodney was standing with mr. o'connor. "my boy," said mr. mulgrave, "my friend here will give you a place at five dollars a week. will that satisfy you?" rodney's face flushed with pleasure. "it will make me very happy," he said. "come round to my warehouse--here is my business card--tomorrow morning," said the merchant. "ask to see me." "at what time shall i call, sir?" "at half past nine o'clock. that is for the first morning. when you get to work you will have to be there at eight." "there will be no trouble about that, sir." "now it is my turn," said the englishman. "here are five dollars to keep you till your first week's wages come due. i dare say you will find them useful." "thank you very much, sir. i was almost out of money." after the two gentlemen left the lodging house rodney looked at the card and found that his new place of employment was situated on reade street not far from broadway. "it's you that's in luck, rodney," said his friend mike. "who'd think that a gentleman would come to the lodging house to give you a place?" "yes, i am in luck, mike, and now i'm going to make you a proposal." "what is it?" "why can't we take a room together? it will be better than living here." "sure you wouldn't room with a poor boy like me?" "why shouldn't i? you are a good friend, and i should like your company. besides i mean to help you get an education. i suppose you're not a first class scholar, mike?" "about fourth class, i guess, rodney." "then you shall study with me. then when you know a little more you may get a chance to get out of your present business, and get into a store." "that will be bully!" said mike with pleasure. "now we'd better go to bed; i must be up bright and early in the morning. we'll engage a room before i go to work." there was no difficulty about rising early. it is one of the rules of the lodging house for the boys to rise at six o'clock, and after a frugal breakfast of coffee and rolls they are expected to go out to their business whatever it may be. mike and rodney dispensed with the regulation breakfast and went out to a restaurant on park row where they fared better. "now where shall we go for a room?" asked rodney. "there's a feller i know has a good room on bleecker street," said mike. "how far is that?" "a little more'n a mile." "all right! let us go and see." bleecker street once stood in better repute than at present. it is said that a. t. stewart once made his home there. now it is given over to shops and cheap lodging houses. finally the boys found a room decently fumished, about ten feet square, of which the rental was two dollars and a half per week. mike succeeded in beating down the lodging house keeper to two dollars, and at that figure they engaged it. "when will you come?" asked mrs. mccarty. "right off," said mike. "i'll need a little time to put it in order." "me and my partner will be at our business till six o'clock," returned mike. "you can send in your trunks during the day if you like." "my trunk is at the windsor hotel," said mike. "i've lent it to a friend for a few days." mrs. mccarty looked at mike with a puzzled expression. she was one of those women who are slow to comprehend a joke, and she could not quite make it seem natural that her new lodger, who was in rather neglige costume, should be a guest at a fashionable hotel. "i will leave my valise," said rodney, "and will send for my trunk. it is in the country." mike looked at him, not feeling quite certain whether he was in earnest, but rodney was perfectly serious. "you're better off than me," said mike, when they reached the street. "if i had a trunk i wouldn't have anything to put into it." "i'll see if i can't rig you out, mike. i've got a good many clothes, bought when i was rich. you and i are about the same size. i'll give you a suit of clothes to wear on sundays." "will you?" exclaimed mike, his face showing pleasure. "i'd like to see how i look in good clo'es. i never wore any yet. it wouldn't do no good in my business." "you won't want to wear them when at work. but wouldn't you like to change your business?" "yes." "have you ever tried?" "what'd be the use of tryin'? they'd know i was a bootblack in these clo'es." "when you wear a better suit you can go round and try your luck." "i'd like to," said mike wistfully. "i don't want you to tell at the store that you room with a bootblack." "it isn't that i think of, mike. i want you to do better. i'm going to make a man of you." "i hope you are. sometimes i've thought i'd have to be a bootblack always. when do you think you'll get the clo'es?" "i shall write to the principal of the boarding school at once, asking him to forward my trunk by express. i want to economize a little this week, and shall have to pay the express charges." "i'll pay up my part of the rent, rodney, a quarter a day." rodney had advanced the whole sum, as mike was not in funds. "if you can't pay a dollar a week i will pay a little more than half." "there ain't no need. i'll pay my half and be glad to have a nice room." "i've got three or four pictures at the school, and some books. i'll send for them later on, and we'll fix up the room." "will you? we'll have a reg'lar bang up place. i tell you that'll be better than livin' at the lodge." "still that seems a very neat place. it is lucky for poor boys that they can get lodging so cheap." "but it isn't like havin' a room of your own, rodney. i say, when we're all fixed i'll ask some of me friends to come in some evenin' and take a look at us. they'll be s'prised." "certainly, mike. i shall be glad to see any of your friends." it may seem strange that rodney, carefully as he had been brought up, should have made a companion of mike, but he recognized in the warm hearted irish boy, illiterate as he was, sterling qualities, and he felt desirous of helping to educate him. he knew that he could always depend on his devoted friendship, and looked forward with pleasure to their more intimate companionship. after selecting their room and making arrangements to take possession of it, the boys went down town. rodney stepped into the reading room at the astor house and wrote the following letter to dr. sampson: dr. pliny sampson: dear sir--will you be kind enough to send my trunk by express to no. 312 bleecker street? i have taken a room there, and that will be my home for the present. i have obtained a position in a wholesale house on reade street, and hope i may give satisfaction. will you remember me with best wishes to all the boys? i don't expect to have so easy or pleasant a time as i had at school, but i hope to get on, and some time--perhaps in the summer--to make you a short visit. yours truly, rodney ropes. chapter ix. the first day at work. a little before half past nine rodney paused in front of a large five story building on reade street occupied by otis goodnow. he entered and found the first floor occupied by quite a large number of clerks and salesmen, and well filled with goods. "well, young fellow, what can i do for you?" asked a dapper looking clerk. "i would like to see mr. goodnow." "he's reading his letters. he won't see you." rodney was provoked. "do you decide who is to see him?" he asked. "you're impudent, young feller." "am i? perhaps you will allow mr. goodnow to see me, as long as he told me to call here this morning." "that's a different thing," returned the other in a different tone. "if you're sure about that you can go to the office in the back part of the room." rodney followed directions and found himself at the entrance of a room which had been partitioned off for the use of the head of the firm. mr. goodnow was seated at a desk with his back to him, and was employed in opening letters. without turning round he said, "sit down and i will attend to you in a few minutes." rodney seated himself on a chair near the door. in about ten minutes mr. goodnow turned around. "who is it?" he asked. "perhaps you remember telling me to call at half past nine. you saw me at the newsboys' lodging house." "ah, yes, i remember. i promised my friend mulgrave that i would give you a place. what can you do? are you a good writer?" "shall i give you a specimen of my handwriting?" "yes; sit down at that desk." it was a desk adjoining his own. rodney seated himself and wrote in a firm, clear, neat hand: "i will endeavor to give satisfaction, if you are kind enough to give me a place in your establishment." then he passed over the paper to the merchant. "ah, very good!" said mr. goodnow approvingly. "you won't be expected to do any writing yet but i like to take into my store those who are qualified for promotion." he rang a little bell on his desk. a boy about two years older than rodney answered the summons. "send mr. james here," said the merchant. mr. james, a sandy complexioned man, partially bald, made his appearance. "mr. james," said the merchant, "i have taken this boy into my employ. i don't know if one is needed, but it is at the request of a friend. you can send him on errands, or employ him in any other way." "very well, sir. i can find something for him to do today at any rate, as young johnson hasn't shown up." "very well. whats your name, my lad?" "rodney ropes." "make a note of his name, mr. james, and enter it in the books. you may go with mr. james, and put yourself at his disposal." rodney followed the subordinate, who was the head of one of the departments, to the second floor. here mr. james had a desk. "wait a minute," he said, "and i will give you a memorandum of places to call at." in five minutes a memorandum containing a list of three places was given to rodney, with brief instructions as to what he was to do at each. they were places not far away, and fortunately rodney had a general idea as to where they were. in his search for positions he had made a study of the lower part of the city which now stood him in good stead. as he walked towards the door he attracted the attention of the young clerk with whom he had just spoken. "well, did you see mr. goodnow?" asked the young man, stroking a sickly looking mustache. "yes." "has he taken you into the firm?" "not yet, but he has given me a place." the clerk whistled. "so you are one of us?" he said. "yes," answered rodney with a smile. "then you ought to know the rules of the house." "you can tell me later on, but now i am going out on an errand." in about an hour rodney returned. he had been detained at two of the places where he called. "do you remember what i said?" asked the young clerk as he passed. "yes." "the first rule of the establishment is for a new hand to treat _me_ on his first day." "that's pretty good for you," said rodney, laughing; "i shall have to wait till my pay is raised." about the middle of the afternoon, as rodney was helping to unpack a crate of goods, the older boy whom he had already seen in the office below, walked up to him and said, "is your name ropes?" "yes." "you are wanted in mr. goodnow's office." rodney went down stairs, feeling a little nervous. had he done wrong, and was he to be reprimanded? he could think of nothing deserving censure. so far as he knew he had attended faithfully to all the duties required of him. as he entered the office, he saw that mr. goodnow had a visitor, whose face looked familiar to him. he recalled it immediately as the face of the english gentleman who had visited the lodging house the day previous with his employer. "so i find you at work?" he said, offering his hand with a smile. "yes, sir," answered rodney gratefully, "thanks to you." "how do you think you will like it?" "very much, sir. it is so much better than going around the street with nothing to do." "i hope you will try to give satisfaction to my friend, mr. goodnow." "i shall try to do so, sir." "you mustn't expect to rise to be head salesman in a year. _festina lente_, as the latin poet has it." "i shall be satisfied with hastening slowly, sir." "what! you understand latin?" "pretty well, sir." "upon my word, i didn't expect to find a boy in the news boys' lodging house with classical attainments. perhaps you know something of greek also!" he said doubtfully. in reply rodney repeated the first line of the iliad. "astonishing!" exclaimed mr. mulgrave, putting up his eyeglass, and surveying rodney as if he were a curious specimen. "you don't happen to know anything of sanscrit, do you?" "no, sir; i confess my ignorance." "i apprehend you won't require it in my friend goodnow's establishment." "if i do, i will learn it," said rodney, rather enjoying the joke. "if i write a book about america, i shall certainly put in a paragraph about a learned office boy. i think you are entitled to something for your knowledge of greek and latin--say five dollars apiece," and mr. mulgrave drew from his pocket two gold pieces and handed them to rodney. "thank you very much, sir," said rodney. "i shall find this money very useful, as i have taken a room, and am setting up housekeeping." "then you have left the lodging house?" "yes, sir; i only spent one night there." "you are right. it is no doubt a great blessing to the needy street boys, but you belong to a different class." "it is very fortunate i went there last evening, or i should not have met you and mr. goodnow." "i am glad to have been the means of doing you a service," said the englishman kindly, shaking hands with rodney, who bowed and went back to his work. "i am not sure but you are taking too much notice of that boy, mulgrave," said the merchant. "no fear! he is not a common boy. you won't regret employing him." "i hope not." then they talked of other matters, for mr. mulgrave was to start on his return to england the following day. at five o'clock rodney's day was over, and he went back to bleecker street. he found mike already there, working hard to get his hands clean, soiled as they were by the stains of blacking. "did you have a good day, mike?" asked rodney. "yes; i made a dollar and ten cents. here's a quarter towards the rent." "all right! i see you are prompt in money matters." "i try to be. do you know, rodney, i worked better for feelin' that i had a room of my own to go to after i got through. i hope i'll soon be able to get into a different business." "i hope so, too." two days later rodney's trunk arrived. in the evening he opened it. he took out a dark mixed suit about half worn, and said, "try that on, mike." mike did so. it fitted as if it were made for him. "you can have it, mike," said rodney. "you don't mean it?" exclaimed mike, delighted. "yes, i do. i have plenty of others." rodney supplemented his gift by a present of underclothing, and on the following sunday the two boys went to central park in the afternoon, mike so transformed that some of his street friends passed him without recognition, much to mike's delight. chapter x. mike puts on a uniform. a wonderful change came over mike flynn. until he met rodney he seemed quite destitute of ambition. the ragged and dirty suit which he wore as bootblack were the best he had. his face and hands generally bore the marks of his business, and as long as he made enough to buy three meals a day, two taken at the lodging house, with something over for lodging, and an occasional visit to a cheap theater, he was satisfied. he was fifteen, and had never given a thought to what he would do when he was older. but after meeting rodney, and especially after taking a room with him, he looked at life with different eyes. he began to understand that his business, though honorable because honest, was not a desirable one. he felt, too, that he ought to change it out of regard for rodney, who was now his close companion. "if i had ten dollars ahead," he said one day, "i'd give up blackin' boots." "what else would you do?" "i'd be a telegraph boy. that's more respectable than blackin' boots, and it 'ould be cleaner." "that is true. do you need money to join?" "i would get paid once in two weeks, and i'd have to live till i got my first salary." "i guess i can see you through, mike." "no; you need all your money, rodney. i'll wait and see if i can't save it myself." this, however, would have taken a long time, if mike had not been favored by circumstances. he was standing near the ladies' entrance to the astor house one day, when casting his eyes downward he espied a neat pocketbook of russia leather. he picked it up, and from the feeling judged that it must be well filled. now i must admit that it did occur to mike that he could divert to his own use the contents without detection, as no one had seen him pick it up. but mike was by instinct an honest boy, and he decided that this would not be right. he thrust it into his pocket, however, as he had no objection to receiving a reward if one was offered. while he was standing near the entrance, a tall lady, dressed in brown silk and wearing glasses, walked up from the direction of broadway. she began to peer about like one who was looking for something. "i guess its hers," thought mike. "are you looking for anything, ma'am?" he asked. she turned and glanced at mike. "i think i must have dropped my pocketbook," she said. "i had it in my hand when i left the hotel, but i had something on my mind and i think i must have dropped it without noticing. won't you help me look for it, for i am short sighted?" "is this it?" asked mike, producing the pocketbook. "oh yes!" exclaimed the lady joyfully. "where did you find it?" "just here," answered mike, indicating a place on the sidewalk. "i suppose there is a good deal of money in it?" said mike, with pardonable curiosity. "then you didn't open it?" "no, ma'am, i didn't have a chance. i just found it." "there may be forty or fifty dollars, but it isn't on that account i should have regretted losing it. it contained a receipt for a thousand dollars which i am to use in a law suit. that is very important for it will defeat a dishonest claim for money that i have already paid." "then i'm glad i found it." "you are an honest boy. you seem to be a poor boy also." "that's true, ma'am. if i was rich i wouldn't black boots for a livin'." "dear me, you are one of the young street arabs i've read about," and the lady looked curiously at mike through her glasses. "i expect i am." "and i suppose you haven't much money." "my bank account is very low, ma'am." "i've read a book about a boy named `ragged dick.' i think he was a bootblack, too. do you know him?" "he's my cousin, ma'am," answered mike promptly. it will be observed that i don't represent mike as possessed of all the virtues. "dear me, how interesting. i bought the book for my little nephew. now i can tell him i have seen `ragged dick's' cousin. where is dick now?" "he's reformed, ma'am." "reformed?" "yes, from blackin' boots. he's in better business now." "if i should give you some of the money in this pocketbook, you wouldn't spend it on drinking and gambling, would you?" "no, ma'am. i'd reform like my cousin, ragged dick." "you look like a good truthful boy. here are ten dollars for you." "oh, thank you, ma'am! you're a gentleman," said mike overjoyed. "no, i don't mean that but i hope you'll soon get a handsome husband." "my young friend, i don't care to marry, though i appreciate your good wishes. i am an old maid from principle. i am an officer of the female suffrage association." "is it a good payin' office, ma'am?" asked mike, visibly impressed. "no, but it is a position of responsibility. please tell me your name that i may make a note of it." "my name is michael flynn." "i see. you are of celtic extraction." "i don't know, ma'am. i never heard that i was. it isn't anything bad, is it?" "not at all. i have some celtic blood in my own veins. if you ever come to boston you can inquire for miss pauline peabody." "thank you, ma'am," said mike, who thought the lady rather a "queer lot." "now i must call upon my lawyer, and leave the receipt which i came so near losing." "well, i'm in luck," thought mike. "i'll go home and dress up, and apply for a position as telegraph boy." when rodney came home at supper time he found mike, dressed in his sunday suit. "what's up now, mike?" he asked. "have you retired from business?" "yes, from the bootblack business. tomorrow i shall be a telegraph boy." "that is good. you haven't saved up ten dollars, have you?" "i saved up two, and a lady gave me ten dollars for findin' her pocketbook." "that's fine, mike." there chanced to be a special demand for telegraph boys at that time, and mike, who was a sharp lad, on passing the necessary examination, was at once set to work. he was immensely fond of his blue uniform when he first put it on, and felt that he had risen in the social scale. true, his earnings did not average as much, but he was content with smaller pay, since the duties were more agreeable. in the evenings under rodney's instruction he devoted an hour and sometimes two to the task of making up the deficiencies in his early education. these were extensive, but mike was naturally a smart boy, and after a while began to improve rapidly. so three months passed. rodney stood well in with mr. goodnow, and was promoted to stock clerk. the discipline which he had revived as a student stood him in good stead, and enabled him to make more rapid advancement than some who had been longer in the employ of the firm. in particular he was promoted over the head of jasper redwood, a boy two years older than himself, who was the nephew of an old employee who had been for fifteen years in the house. jasper's jealousy was aroused, and he conceived a great dislike for rodney, of which rodney was only partially aware. for this dislike there was really no cause. rodney stood in his way only because jasper neglected his duties, and failed to inspire confidence. he was a boy who liked to spend money and found his salary insufficient, though he lived with his uncle and paid but two dollars a week for his board. "uncle james," he said one day, "when do you think i will get a raise?" "you might get one now if it were not for the new boy." "you mean ropes." "yes, he has just been promoted to a place which i hoped to get for you." "it is mean," grumbled jasper. "i have been here longer than he." "true, but he seems to be mr. goodnow's pet. it was an unlucky day for you when he got a place in the establishment." "did you ask mr. goodnow to promote me?" "yes, but he said he had decided to give archer's place to ropes." archer was a young clerk who was obliged, on account of pulmonary weakness, to leave new york and go to southern california. "how much does ropes get now?" "seven dollars a week." "and i only get five, and i am two years older. they ought to have more regard for you, uncle james, or i, as your nephew, would get promoted." "i will see what we can do about it." "i wish ropes would get into some scrape and get discharged." it was a new idea, but jasper dwelt upon it, and out of it grew trouble for rodney. chapter xi. missing goods. james redwood was summoned one morning to the counting room of his employer. "mr. redwood," said the merchant "i have reason to think that one of my clerks is dishonest." "who, sir?" "that is what i want you to find out." "what reason have you for suspecting any one?" "some ladies' cloaks and some dress patterns are missing." "are you sure they were not sold?" "yes: the record of sales has been examined, and they are not included." "that is strange, mr. goodnow" said redwood thoughtfully. "i hope i am not under suspicion." "oh, not at all." "the losses seem to have taken place in my department." "true, but that doesn't involve you." "what do you want me to do?" "watch those under you. let nothing in your manner, however, suggest that you are suspicious. i don't want you to put any one on his guard." "all right, sir. i will be guided by your instructions. have you any idea how long this has been going on?" "only a few weeks." mr. redwood turned to go back to his room, but mr. goodnow called him back. "i needn't suggest to you," he said, "that you keep this to yourself. don't let any clerk into the secret." "very well, sir." james redwood, however, did not keep his promise. after supper he called back jasper as he was about putting on his hat to go out, and said, "jasper, i wish to speak with you for five minutes." "won't it do tomorrow morning? i have an engagement." "put it off, then. this is a matter of importance." "very well, sir," and jasper, albeit reluctantly, laid down his hat and sat down. "jasper," said his uncle, "there's a thief in our establishment." jasper started, and his sallow complexion turned yellower than usual. "what do you mean, uncle?" he asked nervously. "what i say. some articles are missing that have not been sold." "such as what?" "ladies' cloaks and dress patterns." "who told you?" asked jasper in a low tone. "mr. goodnow." "what the boss?" "certainly." "how should he know?" "i didn't inquire, and if i had he probably wouldn't have told me. the main thing is that he does know." "he may not be sure." "he is not a man to speak unless he feels pretty sure." "i don't see how any one could steal the articles without being detected." "it seems they are detected." "did--did mr. goodnow mention any names?" "no. he wants to watch and find out the thief. i wish you to help me, though i am acting against instructions. mr. goodnow asked me to take no one into my confidence. you will see, therefore, that it will be necessary for you to say nothing." "i won't breathe a word," said jasper, who seemed to feel more at ease. "now that i have told you so much, can you suggest any person who would be likely to commit the theft?" jasper remained silent for a moment, then with a smile of malicious satisfaction said, "yes, i can suggest a person." "who is it?" "the new boy, rodney ropes." james redwood shook his head. "i can't believe that it is he. i am not in love with the young fellow, who seems to stand in the way of your advancement but he seems straight enough, and i don't think it at all likely that he should be the guilty person." "yes, uncle james, he _seems_ straight but you know that still waters run deep." "have you seen anything that would indicate guilt on his part?" "i have noticed this, that, he is very well dressed for a boy of his small salary, and seems always to have money to spend." "that will count for something. still he might have some outide means. have you noticed anything else?" jasper hesitated. "i noticed one evening when he left the store that he had a sizable parcel under his arm." "and you think it might have contained some article stolen from the stock?" "that's just what i think now. nothing of the kind occurred to me at that time, for i didn't know any articles were missing." "that seems important. when was it that you noticed this?" "one day last week," answered jasper hesitatingly. "can you remember the day?" "no." "couldn't you fix it some way?" "no. you see, i didn't attach any particular importance to it at the time, and probably it would not have occurred to me again, but for your mentioning that articles were missing." "there may be something in what you say," said his uncle thoughtfully. "i will take special notice of young ropes after this." "so will i." "don't let him observe that he is watched. it would defeat our chances of detecting the thief." "i'll be careful. do you want to say anything more, uncle?" "no. by the way, where were you going this evening?" "i was going to meet a friend, and perhaps go to the theater. you couldn't lend me a dollar, could you, uncle james?" "yes, i could, but you are not quite able to pay for your own pleasures. it costs all my salary to live, and its going to be worse next year, for i shall have to pay a higher rent." "when i have my pay raised, i can get along better." "if ropes loses his place, you will probably step into it." "then i hope he'll go, and that soon." when jasper passed through the front door and stood on the sidewalk, he breathed a sigh of relief. "so, they are on to us," he said to himself. "but how was it found out? that's what i'd like to know. i have been very careful. i must see carton at once." a short walk took him to a billiard room not far from broadway. a young man of twenty five, with a slight mustache, and a thin, dark face, was selecting a cue. "ah, jasper!" he said. "come at last. let us have a game of pool." "not just yet. come outide. i want to speak to you." jasper looked serious, and philip carton, observing it, made no remonstrance, but taking his hat, followed him out. "well, what is it?" he asked. "something serious. it is discovered at the store that goods are missing." "you don't mean it? are we suspected?" "no one is suspected--yet." "but how do you know?" "my uncle spoke to me about it this evening--just after supper." "he doesn't think you are in it." "no." "how did he find out?" "through the boss. goodnow spoke to him about it today." "but how should goodnow know anything about it?" "that no one can tell but himself. he asked uncle james to watch the clerks, and see if he could fasten the theft on any of them." "that is pleasant for us. it is well we are informed so that we can be on our guard. i am afraid our game is up." "for the present at any rate we must suspend operations. now, have you some money for me?" "well, a little." "a little? why there are two cloaks and a silk dress pattern to be accounted for." "true, but i have to be very careful. i have to submit to a big discount for the parties i sell to undoubtedly suspect that the articles are stolen." "wouldn't it be better to pawn them?" "it would be more dangerous. besides you know how liberal pawnbrokers are. i'll tell you what would be better. if i had a sufficient number of articles to warrant it, i could take them on to boston or philadelphia, and there would be less risk selling them there." "that is true. i wish we had thought of that before. now we shall have to give up the business for a time. how much money have you got for me?" "seven dollars." "seven dollars!" exclaimed jasper in disgust. "why, that is ridiculous. the articles must have been worth at retail a hundred dollars." "perhaps so, but i only got fourteen for them. if you think you can do any better you may sell them yourself next time." "i thought i should assuredly get fifteen dollars out of it," said jasper, looking deeply disappointed. "i had a use for the money too." "very likely. so had i." "well, i suppose i must make it do. listen and i will tell you how i think i can turn this thing to my advantage." "go ahead!" chapter xii. what was found in rodney's room. "there is a boy who stands between me and promotion," continued jasper, speaking in a low tone. "the boy you mentioned the other day?" "yes, rodney ropes. mr. goodnow got him from i don't know where, and has taken a ridiculous fancy to him. he has been put over my head and his pay raised, though i have been in the store longer than he. my idea is to connect him with the thefts and get him discharged." "do you mean that we are to make him a confederate?" "no," answered jasper impatiently. "he would be just the fellow to peach and get us all into trouble." "then what do you mean?" "to direct suspicion towards him. we won't do it immediately, but within a week or two. it would do me good to have him turned out of the store." jasper proceeded to explain his idea more fully, and his companion pronounced it very clever. meanwhile rodney, not suspecting the conspiracy to deprive him of his place and his good name, worked zealously, encouraged by his promotion, and resolved to make a place for himself which should insure him a permanent connection with the firm. ten days passed, and mr. redwood again received a summons from the office. entering, he found mr. goodnow with a letter in his hand. "well, mr. redwood," he began, "have you got any clew to the party who has stolen our goods?" "no, sir." "has any thing been taken since i spoke with you on the subject?" "not that i am aware of." "has any one of the clerks attracted your attention by suspicious conduct?" "no, sir," answered redwood, puzzled. "humph! cast your eye over this letter." james redwood took the letter, which was written in a fine hand, and read as follow: mr. goodnow: dear sir,--i don't know whether you are aware that articles have been taken from your stock, say, ladies' cloaks and silk dress patterns, and disposed of outside. i will not tell you how it has come to my knowledge, for i do not want to get any one's ill will, but i will say, to begin with, that they were taken by one of your employees, and the one, perhaps, that you would least suspect, for i am told that he is a favorite of yours. i may as well say that it is rodney ropes. i live near him, and last evening i saw him carry a bundle to his room when he went back from the store. i think if you would send round today when he is out, you would find in his room one or more of the stolen articles. i don't want to get him into trouble, but i don't like to see you robbed, and so i tell you what i know. a friend. mr. redwood read this letter attentively, arching his brows, perhaps to indicate his surprise. then he read it again carefully. "what do you think of it?" asked the merchant. "i don't know," answered redwood slowly. "have you ever seen anything suspicious in the conduct of young ropes?" "i can't say i have. on the contrary, he seems to be a very diligent and industrious clerk." "but about his honesty." "i fancied him the soul of honesty." "so did i, but of course we are liable to be deceived. it wouldn't be the first case where seeming honesty has been a cover for flagrant dishonesty." "what do you wish me to do, mr. goodnow? shall i send ropes down to you?" "no; it would only give him a chance, if guilty, to cover up his dishonesty." "i am ready to follow your instructions." "do you know where he lodges?" "yes, sir." "then i will ask you to go around there, and by some means gain admission to his room. if he has any of our goods secreted take possession of them and report to me." "very well, sir." half an hour later mrs. mccarty, rodney's landlady, in response to a ring admitted mr. james redwood. "does a young man named ropes lodge here?" he asked. "yes, sir." "i come from the house where he is employed. he has inadvertently left in his room a parcel belonging to us, and i should be glad if you would allow me to go up to his room and take it." "you see, sir," said mrs. mccarty in a tone of hesitation, "while you look like a perfect gentleman, i don't know you, and i am not sure whether, in justice to mr. ropes, i ought to admit you to his room." "you are quite right my good lady; i am sure. it is just what i should wish my own landlady to do. i will therefore ask you to go up to the room with me to see that all is right." "that seems all right, sir. in that case i don't object. follow me, if you please." as they entered rodney's room mr. redwood looked about him inquisitively. one article at once fixed his attention. it was a parcel wrapped in brown paper lying on the bed. "this is the parcel, i think," he said. "if you will allow me i will open it, to make sure." mrs. mccarty looked undecided, but as she said nothing in opposition mr. redwood unfastened the strings and unrolled the bundle. his eyes lighted up with satisfaction as he disclosed the contents--a lady's cloak. mrs. mccarty looked surprised. "why, it's a lady's cloak," she said, "and a very handsome one. what would mr. ropes want of such a thing as that?" "perhaps he intended to make you a present of it." "no, he can't afford to make such present." "the explanation is simple. it belongs to the store. perhaps mr. ropes left it here inadvertently." "but he hasn't been here since morning." "he has a pass key to the front door?" "yes, sir." "then he may have been here. would you object to my taking it?" "yes, sir, you see i don't know you." "your objection is a proper one. then i will trouble you to take a look at the cloak, so that you would know it again." "certainly, sir. i shall remember it!" "that is all, mrs. ----?" "mccarty, sir." "mrs. mccarty, i won't take up any more of your time," and mr. redwood started to go down stairs. "who shall i tell mr. ropes called to see him." "you needn't say. i will mention the matter to him myself. i am employed in the same store." "all right sir. where is the store? i never thought to ask mr. ropes." "reade street, near broadway. you know where reade street is?" "yes, sir. my husband used to work in chambers street. that is the first street south." "precisely. well, i can't stay longer, so i will leave, apologizing for having taken up so much of your time." "oh, it's of no consequence, sir." "he is a perfect gentleman," she said to herself, as mr. redwood closed the front door, and went out on the street. "i wonder whether he's a widower." being a widow this was quite a natural thought for mrs. mccarty to indulge in, particularly as mr. redwood looked to be a substantial man with a snug income. mr. redwood went back to the store, and went at once to the office. "well, redwood," said mr. goodnow, "did you learn anything?" "yes, sir." "go on." "i went to the lodging of young ropes, and was admitted to his room." "well?" "and there, wrapped in a brown paper, i found one of our missing cloaks lying on his bed." "is it possible?" "i am afraid he is not what we supposed him to be, mr. goodnow." "it looks like it. i am surprised and sorry. do you think he took the other articles that are missing?" "of course i can't say, sir, but it is fair to presume that he did." "i am exceedingly sorry. i don't mind saying, redwood, that i took an especial interest in that boy. i have already told you the circumstances of my meeting him, and the fancy taken to him by my friend mulgrave." "yes, sir, i have heard you say that." "i don't think i am easily taken in, and that boy impressed me as thoroughly honest. but of course i don't pretend to be infallible and it appears that i have been mistaken in him." the merchant looked troubled, for he had come to feel a sincere regard for rodney. he confessed to himself that he would rather have found any of the other clerks dishonest. "you may send ropes to me," he said, "mr. redwood, and you will please come with him. we will investigate this matter at once." "very well, sir." chapter xiii. charged with theft. rodney entered mr. goodnow's office without a suspicion of the serious accusation which had been made against him. the first hint that there was anything wrong came to him when he saw the stern look in the merchants eyes. "perhaps," said mr. goodnow, as he leaned back in his chair and fixed his gaze on the young clerk, "you may have an idea why i have sent for you." "no, sir," answered rodney, looking puzzled. "you can't think of any reason i may have for wishing to see you?" "no, sir," and rodney returned mr. goodnow's gaze with honest unfaltering eyes. "possibly you are not aware that within a few weeks some articles have been missed from our stock." "i have not heard of it. what kind of articles?" "the boy is more artful than i thought!" soliloquized the merchant. "all the articles missed," he proceeded, "have been from the room in charge of mr. redwood, the room in which you, among others, are employed." something in mr. goodnow's tone gave rodney the hint of the truth. if he had been guilty he would have flushed and showed signs of confusion. as it was, he only wished to learn the truth and he in turn became the questioner. "is it supposed," he asked, "that any one in your employ is responsible for these thefts?" "it is." "is any one in particular suspected?" "yes." "will you tell me who, that is if you think i ought to know?" "certainly you ought to know, for it is you who are suspected." then rodney became indignant. "i can only deny the charge in the most emphatic terms," he said. "if any one has brought such a charge against me, it is a lie." "you can say that to mr. redwood, for it is he who accuses you." "what does this mean, mr. redwood?" demanded rodney quickly. "what have you seen in me that leads you to accuse me of theft." "to tell the truth, ropes, you are about the last clerk in my room whom i would have suspected. but early this morning this letter was received," and he placed in rodney's hands the letter given in a preceding chapter. rodney read it through and handed it back scornfully. "i should like to see the person who wrote this letter," he said. "it is a base lie from beginning to end." "i thought it might be when mr. goodnow showed it to me," said redwood in an even tone, "but mr. goodnow and i agreed that it would be well to investigate. therefore i went to your room." "when, sir?" "this morning." "then it is all right, for i am sure you found nothing." "on the contrary, ropes, i found that the statement made in the letter was true. on your bed was a bundle containing one of the cloaks taken from our stock." rodney's face was the picture of amazement. "is this true?" he said. "it certainly is. i hope you don't doubt my word." "did you bring it back with you?" "no; your worthy landlady was not quite sure whether i was what i represented, and i left the parcel there. however i opened it in her presence so that she can testify what i found." "this is very strange," said rodney, looking at his accuser with puzzled eyes. "i know nothing whatever of the cloak and can't imagine how it got into my room." "perhaps it walked there," said mr. goodnow satirically. rodney colored, for he understood that his employer did not believe him. "may i go to my room," he asked, "and bring back the bundle with me?" observing that mr. goodnow hesitated he added, "you can send some one with me to see that i don't spirit away the parcel, and come back with it." "on these conditions you may go. redwood, send some one with ropes." rodney followed the chief of his department back to the cloak room, and the latter, after a moments thought, summoned jasper. "jasper," he said, "ropes is going to his room to get a parcel which belongs to the store. you may go with him." there was a flash of satisfaction in jasper's eyes as he answered with seeming indifference, "all right! i will go. i shall be glad to have a walk." as the two boys passed out of the store, jasper asked, "what does it mean, ropes?" "i don't know myself. i only know that there is said to be a parcel containing a cloak in my room. this cloak came from the store, and i am suspected of having stolen it." "whew! that's a serious matter. of course it is all a mistake?" "yes, it is all a mistake." "but how could it get to your room unless you carried it there?" rodney gave jasper a sharp look. "some one must have taken it there," he said. "how on earth did uncle james find out?" "an anonymous letter was sent to mr. goodnow charging me with theft. did you hear that articles have been missed for some time from the stock?" "never heard a word of it" said jasper with ready falsehood. "it seems the articles are missing from our room, and some one in the room is suspected of being the thief." "good gracious! i hope no one will suspect me," said jasper in pretended alarm. "it seems i am suspected. i hope no other innocent person will have a like misfortune." presently they reached rodney's lodgings. mrs. mccarty was coming up the basement stairs as they entered. "la, mr. ropes!" she said, "what brings you here in the middle of the day?" "i hear there is a parcel in my room." "yes; it contains such a lovely cloak. the gentleman from your store who called a little while ago thought you might have meant it as a present for me." "i am afraid it will be some time before i can afford to make such present. do you know if any one called and left the cloak here?" "no; i didn't let in no one at the door." "was the parcel there when you made the bed?" "well, no, it wasn't. that is curious." "it shows that the parcel has been left here since. now i certainly couldn't have left it, for i have been at work all the morning. come up stairs, jasper." the two boys went up the stairs, and, entering rodney's room, found the parcel, still on the bed. rodney opened it and identified the cloak as exactly like those which they carried in stock. he examined the paper in which it was inclosed, but it seemed to differ from the wrapping paper used at the store. he called jasper's attention to this. "i have nothing to say," remarked jasper, shrugging his shoulders. "i don't understand the matter at all. i suppose you are expected to carry the cloak back to the store." "yes, that is the only thing to do." "i say, ropes, it looks pretty bad for you." jasper said this, but rodney observed that his words were not accompanied by any expressions of sympathy, or any words that indicated his disbelief of rodney's guilt. "do you think i took this cloak from the store?" he demanded, facing round upon jasper. "really, i don't know. it looks bad, finding it in your room." "i needn't ask any further. i can see what you think." "you wouldn't have me tell a lie, would you, ropes? of course such things have been done before, and your salary is small." "you insult me by your words," said rodney, flaming up. "then i had better not speak, but you asked me, you know." "yes, i did. things may look against me, but i am absolutely innocent." "if you can make mr. goodnow think so," said jasper with provoking coolness, "it will be all right. perhaps he will forgive you." "i don't want his forgiveness. i want him to think me honest." "well, i hope you are, i am sure, but it won't do any good our discussing it, and it doesn't make any difference what i think any way." by this time they had reached the store. chapter xiv. rodney is discharged. rodney reported his return to mr. redwood, and in his company went down stairs to the office, with the package under his arm. "well?" said mr. goodnow inquiringly. "this is the package, sir." "and it was found in your room?" "yes, sir, i found it on my bed." "can't you account for it being there?" asked the merchant searchingly. "no, sir." "you must admit that its presence in your room looks bad for you." "i admit it sir; but i had nothing to do with it being there." "have you any theory to account for it?" "only this, that some one must have carried it to my room and placed it where it was found." "did you question your landlady as to whether she had admitted any one during the morning?" "yes, sir. she had not." "this is very unfavorable to you." "in what way, sir?" "it makes it probable that you carried in the parcel yourself." "that i deny," said rodney boldly. "i expected you to deny it" said the merchant coldly. "if this cloak were the only one that had been taken i would drop the matter. but this is by no means the case. mr. redwood, can you give any idea of the extent to which we have been robbed?" "so far as i can estimate we have lost a dozen cloaks and about half a dozen dress patterns." "this is a serious loss, ropes," said mr. goodnow. "i should think it would foot up several hundred dollars. if you can throw any light upon the thefts, or give me information by which i can get back the goods even at considerable expense, i will be as considerate with you as i can." "mr. goodnow," returned rodney hotly, "i know no more about the matter than you do. i hope you will investigate, and if you can prove that i took any of the missing articles i want no consideration. i shall expect you to have me arrested, and, if convicted, punished." "these are brave words, ropes," said mr. goodnow coldly, "but they are only words. the parcel found in your room affords strong ground for suspicion that you are responsible for at least a part of the thefts. under the circumstances there is only one thing for me to do, and that is to discharge you." "very well, sir." "you may go to the cashier and he will pay you to the end of the week, but your connection with the store will end at once." "i don't care to be paid to the end of the week, sir. if you will give me an order for payment up to tonight, that will be sufficient." "it shall be as you say." mr. goodnow wrote a few words on a slip of paper and handed it to rodney. "i will leave my address, sir, and if i change it i will notify you. if you should hear anything as to the real robber i will ask you as a favor to communicate with me." "mr. redwood, you have heard the request of ropes, i will look to you to comply with it." "very well, sir." the merchant turned back to his letters, and rodney left the office, with what feelings of sorrow and humiliation may be imagined. "i am sorry for this occurrence, ropes," said mr. redwood, with a touch of sympathy in his voice. "do you believe me guilty, mr. redwood?" "i cannot do otherwise. i hope you are innocent, and, if so, that the really guilty party will be discovered sooner or later." "thank you, sir." when they entered the room in which rodney had been employed jasper came up, his face alive with curiosity. "well," he said, "how did you come out?" "i am discharged," said rodney bitterly. "well, you couldn't complain of that. things looked pretty dark for you." "if i had committed the theft, i would not complain. indeed, i would submit to punishment without a murmur. but it is hard to suffer while innocent." "uncle james," said jasper, "if ropes is going will you ask mr. goodnow to put me in his place?" even mr. redwood was disgusted by this untimely request. "it would be more becoming," he said sharply, "if you would wait till ropes was fairly out of the store before applying for his position." "i want to be in time. i don't want any one to get ahead of me." james redwood did not deign a reply. "i am sorry you leave us under such circumstances, ropes," he said. "the time may come when you will be able to establish your innocence, and in that case mr. goodnow will probably take you back again." rodney did not answer, but with his order went to the cashier's desk and received the four dollars due him. then, with a heavy heart, he left the store where it had been such a satisfaction to him to work. on broadway he met his room mate, mike flynn, in the uniform of a telegraph boy. "where are you goin', rodney?" asked mike. "you ain't let off so early, are you?" "i am let off for good and all, mike." "what's that?" "i am discharged." "what for?" asked mike in amazement. "i will tell you when you get home tonight." rodney went back to his room, and lay down sad and despondent. some hours later mike came in, and was told the story. the warm hearted telegraph boy was very angry. "that boss of yours must be a stupid donkey," he said. "i don't know. the parcel was found in my room." "anybody'd know to look at you that you wouldn't steal." "some thieves look very innocent. the only way to clear me is to find out who left the bundle at the house." "doesn't mrs. mccarty know anything about it?" "no; i asked her." "some one might have got into the house without her knowing anything about it. the lock is a very common one. there are plenty of keys that will open it." "if we could find some one that saw a person with a bundle go up the steps, that would give us a clew." "that's so. we'll ask." but for several days no one could be found who had seen any such person. meanwhile rodney was at a loss what to do. he was cut off from applying for another place, for no one would engage him if he were refused a recommendation from his late employer. yet he must obtain some employment for he could not live on nothing. "do you think, mike," he asked doubtfully, "that i could make anything selling papers?" "such business isn't for you," answered the telegraph boy. "but it is one of the few things open to me. i can become a newsboy without recommendations. even your business would be closed to me if it were known that i was suspected of theft." "thats so," said mike, scratching his head in perplexity. "then would you recommend my becoming a newsboy?" "i don't know. you couldn't make more'n fifty or sixty cent a day." "that will be better than nothing." "and i can pay the rent, or most of it, as i'll be doin' better than you." "we will wait and see how much i make." so rodney swallowed his pride, and procuring a supply of afternoon papers set about selling them. he knew that it was an honest business, and there was no disgrace in following it. but one day he was subjected to keen mortification. jasper redwood and a friend--it was philip carton, his confederate--were walking along broadway, and their glances fell on rodney. "i say, jasper," said the elder of the two, "isn't that the boy who was in the same store with you?" jasper looked, and his eyes lighted up with malicious satisfaction. "oho!" he said. "well, this is rich!" "give me a paper, boy," he said, pretending not to recognize rodney at first. "why, it's ropes." "yes," answered rodney, his cheek flushing. "you see what i am reduced to. what paper will you buy?" "the _mail and express_." "here it is." "can't you get another place?" asked jasper curiously. "i might if i could get a recommendation, but probably mr. goodnow wouldn't give me one." "no, i guess not." "so i must take what i can get." "do you make much selling papers?" "very little." "you can't make as much as you did in the store?" "not much more than half as much." "do you live in the same place?" "yes, for the present." "oh, by the way, ropes, i've got your old place," said jasper in exultation. "i thought you would get it," answered rodney, not without a pang. "come into the store some day, ropes. it will seem like old times." "i shall not enter the store till i am able to clear myself of the charge made against me." "then probably you will stay away a long time." "i am afraid so." "well, ta, ta! come along, philip." as rodney followed with his eye the figure of his complacent successor he felt that his fate was indeed a hard one. chapter xv. a rich find. as jasper and his companion moved away, carton said, "i'm sorry for that poor duffer, jasper." "why should you be sorry?" asked jasper, frowning. "because he has lost a good place and good prospects, and all for no fault of his own." "you are getting sentimental, philip," sneered jasper. "no, but i am showing a little humanity. he has lost all this through you----" "through us, you mean." "well, through us. we have made him the scapegoat for our sins." "oh well, he is making a living." "a pretty poor one. i don't think you would like to be reduced to selling papers." "his case and mine are different." "i begin to think also that we have made a mistake in getting him discharged so soon." "we can't take anything more." "why not?" "because there will be no one to lay the blame upon. he is out of the store." "that is true. i didn't think of that. but i invited him to come around and call. if he should, and something else should be missing it would be laid to him." "i don't believe he will call. i am terribly hard up, and our source of income has failed us. haven't you got a dollar or two to spare?" "no," answered jasper coldly. "i only get seven dollars a week." "but you have nearly all that. you only have to hand in two dollars a week to your uncle." "look here, philip carton, i hope you don't expect to live off me. i have all i can do to take care of myself." carton looked at jasper in anger and mortification. "i begin to understand how good a friend you are," he said. "i am not fool enough to pinch myself to keep you," said jasper bluntly. "you are a man of twenty five and i am only a boy. you ought to be able to take care of yourself." "just give me a dollar, or lend it jasper, and i will risk it at play. i may rise from the table with a hundred. if i do i will pay you handsomely for the loan." "i couldn't do it, mr. carton. i have only two dollars in my pocket, and i have none to spare." "humph! what is that?" philip carton's eyes were fixed upon the sidewalk. there was a flimsy piece of paper fluttering about impelled by the wind. he stooped and picked it up. "it is a five dollar bill," he exclaimed in exultation. "my luck has come back." jasper changed his tone at once. now philip was the better off of the two. "that is luck!" he said. "shall we go into delmonico's, and have an ice?" "if it is at your expense, yes." "that wouldn't be fair. you have more money than i." "yes, and i mean to keep it myself. you have set me the example." "come, philip, you are not angry at my refusing you a loan?" "no; i think you were sensible. i shall follow your example. i will bid you good night. i seem to be in luck, and will try my fortune at the gaming table." "i will go with you." "no; i would prefer to go alone." "that fellow is unreasonable," muttered jasper, as he strode off, discontented. "did he expect i would divide my salary with him?" philip carton, after he parted company with jasper, walked back to where rodney was still selling papers. "give me a paper," he said. "which will you have?" "i am not particular. give me the first that comes handy. ah, the _evening sun_ will do." he took the paper and put a quarter into rodney's hand. as he was walking away rodney called out, "stop, here's your change," "never mind," said philip with a wave of the hand. "thank you," said rodney gratefully, for twenty five cents was no trifle to him at this time. "that ought to bring me luck," soliloquized philip carton as he walked on. "it isn't often i do a good deed. it was all the money i had besides the five dollar bill, and i am sure the news boy will make better use of it than i would." "that was the young man that was walking with jasper," reflected rodney. "well, he is certainly a better fellow than he. thanks to this quarter, i shall have made eighty cents today, and still have half a dozen papers. that is encouraging." several days passed that could not be considered lucky. rodney's average profits were only about fifty cent a day, and that was barely sufficient to buy his meals. it left him nothing to put towards paying room rent. he began to consider whether he would not be compelled to pawn some article from his wardrobe, for he was well supplied with clothing, when he had a stroke of luck. on fifteenth street, by the side of tiffany's great jewelry store, he picked up a square box neatly done up in thin paper. opening it, he was dazzled by the gleam of diamonds. the contents were a diamond necklace and pin, which, even to rodney's inexperienced eyes, seemed to be of great value. "some one must have dropped them in coming from the jewelry store," he reflected. "who can it be?" he had not far to seek. there was a card inside on which was engraved: mrs. eliza harvey, with an address on fifth avenue. passing through to fifth avenue rodney began to scan the numbers on the nearest houses. he judged that mrs. harvey must live considerably farther up the avenue, in the direction of central park. "i will go there at once," rodney decided. "no doubt mrs. harvey is very much distressed by her loss. i shall carry her good news." the house he found to be between fortieth and fiftieth street. ascending the steps he rang the bell. the door was opened by a man servant. "does mrs. harvey live here?" asked rodney. "what do you want with her, young man?" demanded the servant in a tone of importance. "that i will tell her." "what's your name?" "i can give you my name, but she won't recognize it." "then you don't know her." "no." "if it's money you want, she don't give to beggars." "you are impudent" said rodney hotly. "if you don't give my message you will get into trouble." the servant opened his eyes. he seemed somewhat impressed by rodney's confident tone. "mrs. harvey doesn't live here," he said. "is she in the house?" "well, yes, she's visiting here." "then why do you waste your time?" said rodney impatiently. he forgot for the time that he was no longer being educated at an expensive boarding school, and spoke in the tone he would have used before his circumstances had changed. "i'll go and ask if she'll see you," said the flunky unwillingly. five minutes later a pleasant looking woman of middle age descended the staircase. "are you the boy that wished to see me?" she asked. "yes, if you are mrs. harvey." "i am. but come in! thomas, why didn't you invite this young gentleman into the parlor?" thomas opened his eyes wide. so the boy whom he had treated so cavalierly was a young gentleman. he privately put down mrs. harvey in his own mind as eccentric. "excuse me, ma'am," he said. "i didn't know as he was parlor company." "well, he is," said mrs. harvey with a cordial smile that won rodney's heart. "follow me!" said the lady. rodney followed her into a handsome apartment and at a signal seated himself on a sofa. "now," she said, "i am ready to listen to your message." "have you lost anything?" asked rodney abruptly. "oh, have you found it?" exclaimed mrs. harvey, clasping her hands. "that depends on what you have lost," answered rodney, who felt that it was necessary to be cautious. "certainly, you are quite right. i have lost a box containing jewelry bought this morning at tiffany's." "what were the articles?" "a diamond necklace and pin. they are intended as a present for my daughter who is to be married. tell me quick have you found them?" "is this the box?" asked rodney. "oh yes, yes! how delightful to recover it. i thought i should never see it again. where did you find it?" "on fifteenth street beside tiffany's store." "and you brought it directly to me?" "yes, madam." "have you any idea of the value of the articles?" "perhaps they may be worth five hundred dollars." "they are worth over a thousand. are you poor?" "yes, madam. i am trying to make a living by selling papers, but find it hard work." "but you don't look like a newsboy." "till a short time since i thought myself moderately rich." "that is strange. tell me your story." chapter xvi. a surprising turn of fortune. rodney told his story frankly. mrs. harvey was very sympathetic by nature, and she listened with the deepest interest, and latterly with indignation when rodney spoke of his dismissal from mr. goodnow's store. "you have been treated shamefully," she said warmly. "i think mr. goodnow really believes me guilty," rejoined rodney. "a dishonest boy would hardly have returned a valuable box of jewelry." "still mr. goodnow didn't know that i would do it." "i see you are disposed to apologize for your late employer." "i do not forget that he treated me kindly till this last occurrence." "your consideration does you credit. so you have really been reduced to earn your living as a newsboy?" "yes, madam." "i must think what i can do for you. i might give you money, but when that was gone you would be no better off." "i would much rather have help in getting a place." mrs. harvey leaned her head on her hand and looked thoughtful. "you are right" she said. "let me think." rodney waited, hoping that the lady would be able to think of something to his advantage. finally she spoke. "i think you said you understood latin and greek?" "i have studied both languages and french also. i should have been ready to enter college next summer." "then perhaps i shall be able to do something for you. i live in philadelphia, but i have a brother living in west fifty eighth street. he has one little boy, arthur, now nine years of age. arthur is quite precocious, but his health is delicate, and my brother has thought of getting a private instructor for him. do you like young children?" "very much. i always wished that i had a little brother." "then i think you would suit my brother better as a tutor for arthur than a young man. being a boy yourself, you would be not only tutor but companion." "i should like such a position very much." "then wait here a moment, and i will write you a letter of introduction." she went up stairs, but soon returned. she put a small perfumed billet into rodney's hands. it was directed to john sargent with an address on west fifty eighth street. "call this evening," she said, "about half past seven o'clock. my brother will be through dinner, and will not have gone out at that hour." "thank you," said rodney gratefully. "here is another envelope which you can open at your leisure. i cannot part from you without thanking you once more for returning my jewelry." "you have thanked me in a very practical way, mrs. harvey." "i hope my letter may lead to pleasant results for you. if you ever come to philadelphia call upon me at no. 1492 walnut street." "thank you." as rodney left the house he felt that his ill fortune had turned, and that a new prospect was opened up before him. he stepped into the windsor hotel, and opened the envelope last given him. it contained five five dollar bills. to one of them was pinned a scrap of paper containing these words: "i hope this money will be useful to you. it is less than the reward i should have offered for the recovery of the jewels." under the circumstances rodney felt that he need not scruple to use the money. he knew that he had rendered mrs. harvey a great service, and that she could well afford to pay him the sum which the envelopes contained. he began to be sensible that he was hungry, not having eaten for some time. he went into a restaurant on sixth avenue, and ordered a sirloin steak. it was some time since he had indulged in anything beyond a common steak, and he greatly enjoyed the more luxurious meal. he didn't go back to selling papers, for he felt that it would hardly be consistent with the position of a classical teacher--the post for which he was about to apply. half past seven found him at the door of mr. john sargent. the house was of brown stone, high stoop, and four stories in height. it was such a house as only a rich man could occupy. he was ushered into the parlor and presently mr. sargent came in from the dining room. "are you mr. ropes?" he asked, looking at rodney's card. it is not usual for newsboys to carry cards, but rodney had some left over from his more prosperous days. "yes, sir. i bring you a note of introduction from mrs. harvey." "ah yes, my sister. let me see it." the note was of some length. that is, it covered three pages of note paper. mr. sargent read it attentively. "my sister recommends you as tutor for my little son, arthur," he said, as he folded up the letter. "yes, sir; she suggested that i might perhaps suit you in that capacity." "she also says that you found and restored to her a valuable box of jewelry which she was careless enough to drop near tiffany's." "yes, sir." "i have a good deal of confidence in my sister's good judgment. she evidently regards you very favorably." "i am glad of that sir," "will you tell me something of your qualifications? arthur is about to commence latin. he is not old enough for greek." "i could teach either, sir." "and of course you are well up in english branches?" "i think i am." "my sister hints that you are poor, and obliged to earn your own living. how, then, have you been able to secure so good an education?" "i have only been poor for a short time. my father left me fifty thousand dollars, but it was lost by my guardian." "who was your guardian?" "mr. benjamin fielding." "i knew him well. i don't think he was an unprincipled man, but he was certainly imprudent, and was led into acts that were reprehensible. did he lose all your money for you?" "yes, sir." "what did you do?" "left the boarding school where i was being educated, and came to this city." "did you obtain any employment?" "yes, sir; i have been employed for a short time by otis goodnow, a merchant of reade street." "and why did you leave?" "because mr. goodnow missed some articles from his stock, and i was charged with taking them." rodney was fearful of the effect of his frank confession upon mr. sargent, but the latter soon reassured him. "your honesty in restoring my sister's jewelry is sufficient proof that the charge was unfounded. i shall not let it influence me." "thank you, sir." "now as to the position of teacher, though very young, i don't see why you should not fill it satisfactorily. i will call arthur." he went to the door and called "arthur." a delicate looking boy with a sweet, intelligent face, came running into the room. "do you want me, papa?" "yes, arthur. i have a new friend for you. will you shake hands with him?" arthur, who was not a shy boy, went up at once to rodney and offered his hand. "i am glad to see you," he said. rodney smiled. he was quite taken with the young boy. "what's your name?" the latter asked. "rodney ropes." "are you going to stay and make us a visit?" mr. sargent answered this question. "would you like to have rodney stay?" he asked. "oh yes." "how would you like to have him give you lessons in latin and other studies?" "i should like it. i am sure he wouldn't be cross. are you a teacher, rodney?" "i will be your teacher if you are willing to have me." "yes, i should like it. and will you go to walk with me in central park?" "yes." "then, papa, you may as well engage him. i was afraid you would get a tiresome old man for my teacher." "that settles it, rodney," said mr. sargent, smiling. "now, arthur, run out and i will speak further with rodney about you." "all right, papa." "as arthur seems to like you, i will give you a trial. as he suggested, i should like to have you become his companion as well as teacher. you will come here at nine o'clock in the morning, and stay till four, taking lunch with your pupil. about the compensation, will you tell me what will be satisfactory to you?" "i prefer to leave that to you, sir." "then we will say fifteen dollars a week--today is thursday. will you present yourself here next monday morning?" "yes, sir." "if you would like an advance of salary, you need only say so." "thank you, sir, but i am fairly provided with money for the present." "then nothing more need be said. as i am to meet a gentleman at the union league club tonight, i will bid you good evening, and expect to see you on monday." rodney rose and mr. sargent accompanied him to the door, shaking hands with him courteously by way of farewell. rodney emerged into the street in a state of joyous excitement. twenty five dollars in his pocket, and fifteen dollars a week! he could hardly credit his good fortune. chapter xvii. jasper's perplexity. mike flynn was overjoyed to hear of rodney's good fortune. "fifteen dollars a week!" he repeated. "why you will be rich." "not exactly that, mike, but it will make me comfortable. by the way, as i have so much more than you, it will only be fair for me to pay the whole rent." "no, rodney, you mustn't do that." "i shall insist upon it, mike. you would do the same in my place." "yes i would." "so you can't object to my doing it." "you are very kind to me, rodney," said mike, who had the warm heart of his race. "it isn't every boy brought up like you who would be willing to room with a bootblack." "but you are not a bootblack now. you are a telegraph boy." "there are plenty that mind me when i blacked boots down in front of the astor house." "you are just as good a boy for all that. how much did you make last week?" "four dollars salary, and a dollar and a half in extra tips." "hereafter you must save your rent money for clothes. we must have you looking respectable." "won't you adopt me, rodney?" asked mike with a laughing face. "that's a good idea. perhaps i will. in that case you must obey all my orders. in the first place, what are you most in want in the way of clothing?" "i haven't got but two shirts." "that is hardly enough for a gentleman of your social position. anything else." "i'm short on collars and socks." "then we'll go out shopping. i'll buy you a supply of each." "but you haven't begun to work yet." "no, but mrs. harvey made me a present of twenty five dollars. we'll go to some of the big stores on sixth avenue where we can get furnishing goods cheap." rodney carried out his purpose, and at the cost of four dollars supplied his room mate with all he needed for the present. "see what it is to be rich, mike," he said. "it seems odd for me to be buying clothes for my adopted son." "you're in luck, rodney, and so am i. i hope some time i can do you a favor." "perhaps you can, mike. if i should get sick, you might take my place as tutor." "you must know an awful lot, rodney," said mike, regarding his companion with new respect. "thank you for the compliment, mike. i hope mr. sargent will have the same opinion." the next day it is needless to say that rodney did not resume the business of newsboy. he was very glad to give it up. he dressed with unusual care and took a walk down town. as he passed reade street by chance jasper was coming around the corner. his face lighted up first with pleasure at seeing rodney, for it gratified his mean nature to triumph over the boy whom he had ousted from his position, and next with surprise at his unusually neat and well dressed appearance. rodney looked far from needing help. he might readily have been taken for a boy of aristocratic lineage. "hallo!" said jasper, surveying rodney curiously. "how are you this morning, jasper?" returned rodney quietly. "why ain't you selling papers?" "i don't like the business." "but you've got to make a living." "quite true." "are you going to black boots?" "why should i? is it a desirable business?" "how should i know?" asked jasper, coloring. "i didn't know but you might have had some experience at it. i haven't." "do you mean to insult me?" demanded jasper hotly. "i never insult anybody. i will only say that you are as likely to take up the business as i." "i've got a place." "how do you know but i have?" "because you were selling papers yesterday and are walking the street today." "that is true. but i have a place engaged for all that. i shall go to work on monday." jasper pricked up his ears. "where is it?" he asked. "i don't care to tell at present." "is it true? have you got a place?" "yes." "i don't see how you could. mr. goodnow wouldn't give you a recommendation." "there is no reason why he should not." "what, after your taking cloaks and dress patterns from the store?" "i did nothing of the kind. sooner or later mr. goodnow will find out his mistake. probably the real thief is still in his employ." jasper turned pale and regarded rodney searchingly, but there was nothing in his manner or expression to indicate that his remark had been personal. he thought it best to turn the conversation. "how much pay do you get--four dollars?" "more than that." "you don't get as much as you did at our store?" "yes; i get more." now it was jasper's turn to show surprise. he did not know whether to believe rodney or not, but there was something in his face which commanded belief. "how much do you get?" he asked. "you would not believe me if i told you." "try me," returned jasper, whose curiosity was aroused. "i am to get fifteen dollars a week." jasper would not have looked more surprised if rodney had informed him that he was to become a cabinet minister. "you're joking!" he ejaculated. "not at all." "how could you have the face to ask such a price. did you pass yourself off as an experienced salesman?" "no." "i don't understand it at all, that is, if you are telling the truth." "i have told you the truth, jasper. i have no object in deceiving you. the salary was fixed by my employer." "who did you say it was?" "i didn't say." jasper's cunning scheme was defeated. he felt disturbed to hear of rodney's good fortune, but he had a shot in reserve. "i don't think you will keep your place long," he said in a malicious tone. "why not?" "your employer will hear under what circumstances you left our store, and then of course he will discharge you." "you will be sorry for that won't you?" asked rodney pointedly. "why of course i don't want you to have bad luck." "thank you. you are very considerate." "suppose you lose your place, shall you go back to selling papers?" "i hope to find something better to do." "where are you going now?" "to get some lunch." "so am i. suppose we go together." "very well, provide{sic} you will lunch with me." "i don't want to impose upon you." "you won't. we may not meet again for some time, and we shall have this meal to remind us of each other." they went to a well known restaurant on park row. rodney ordered a liberal dinner for himself, and jasper followed his example nothing loath. he was always ready to dine at the expense of others, but even as he ate he could not help wondering at the strange chance that had made him the guest of a boy who was selling papers the day before. he had nearly finished eating when a disturbing thought occurred to him. suppose rodney didn't have money enough to settle the bill, and threw it upon him. when rodney took the checks and walked up to the cashier's desk he followed him with some anxiety. but his companion quietly took out a five dollar bill, from his pocket and tendered it to the cashier. the latter gave him back the right change and the two boys went out into the street. "you seem to have plenty of money," said jasper. "there are very few who would admit having that," smiled rodney. "i don't see why you sold papers if you have five dollar bills in your pocket." "i don't want to be idle." "may i tell my uncle and mr. goodnow that you have got a place?" "if you like." "well, good by, i must be hurrying back to the store." rodney smiled. he rather enjoyed jasper's surprise and perplexity. chapter xviii. rodney's secret is discovered. jasper lost no time in acquainting his uncle with rodney's extraordinary good fortune. james redwood was surprised, but not all together incredulous. "i don't understand it" he said, "but ropes appears to be a boy of truth. perhaps he may have exaggerated the amount of his salary." "i hardly think so, uncle. he gave me a tip top dinner down on park row." "he may have been in funds from selling the articles taken from the store." "that's so!" assented jasper, who had the best possible reason for knowing that it was not so. "i wish the boy well," said his uncle. "he always treated me respectfully, and i never had anything against him except the loss of stock, and it is not certain that he is the thief." "i guess there isn't any doubt about that." "yet, believing him to be a thief, you did not hesitate to accept a dinner from him." "i didn't want to hurt his feelings," replied jasper, rather sheepishly. "do you know what sort of a place he has got, or with what house?" "no; he wouldn't tell me." "he thought perhaps you would inform the new firm of the circumstances under which he left us. i don't blame him, but i am surprised that he should have been engaged without a recommendation." "shall you tell mr. goodnow?" "not unless he asks about ropes. i don't want to interfere with the boy in any way." in the store, as has already been stated, jasper succeeded to rodney's place, and in consequence his pay was raised to seven dollars a week. still it was not equal to what it had been when he was receiving additional money from the sale of the articles stolen by philip carton and himself. the way in which they had operated was this: philip would come in and buy a cloak or a dress pattern from jasper, and the young salesman would pack up two or three instead of one. there was a drawback to the profit in those cases, as carton would be obliged to sell both at a reduced price. still they had made a considerable sum from these transactions, though not nearly as much as mr. goodnow had lost. after the discovery of the theft and the discharge of rodney, the two confederates felt that it would be imprudent to do any more in that line. this suspension entailed heavier loss on carton than on jasper. the latter had a fixed income and a home at his uncle's house, while philip had no regular income, though he occasionally secured a little temporary employment. in the meantime rodney had commenced his tutorship. his young pupil became very fond of him, and being a studious boy, made rapid progress in his lessons. mr. sargent felt that his experiment, rash as it might be considered, vindicated his wisdom by its success. at the end of a month he voluntarily raised rodney's salary to twenty dollars a week. "i am afraid you are overpaying me, mr. sargent," said rodney. "that's my lookout. good service is worth a good salary, and i am perfectly satisfied with you." "thank you, sir. i prize that even more than the higher salary." only a portion of rodney's time was spent in teaching. in the afternoon he and his charge went on little excursions, generally to central park. one holiday, about four months after the commencement of rodney's engagement, he was walking in the park when he fell in with jasper. jasper's attention was at once drawn to the little boy, whose dress and general appearance indicated that he belonged to a wealthy family. this excited jasper's curiosity. "how are you, rodney?" said jasper adroitly. "it is a good while since i met you." "yes." "who is the little boy with you?" "his name is arthur sargent." rodney gave this information unwillingly, for he saw that his secret was likely to be discovered. "how do you do, arthur?" asked jasper, with unwonted affability, for he did not care for children. "pretty well," answered arthur politely. "have you known rodney long?" "why, he is my teacher," answered arthur in some surprise. jasper's eyes gleamed with sudden intelligence. so this was rodney's secret, and this was the position for which he was so well paid. rodney bit his lip in vexation, but made no remark. "does he ever punish you for not getting your lessons?" asked jasper without much tact. "of course not" answered arthur indignantly. "arthur always does get his lessons," said rodney. "i suppose you have a holiday from work today, jasper." "yes; i am glad to get away now and then." "i must bid you good morning now." "won't you let me call on you? where do you live, arthur?" the boy gave the number of his house. jasper asked arthur, thinking rightly that he would be more likely to get an answer from him than from rodney. he walked away triumphantly, feeling that he had made a discovery that might prove of advantage to him. "is that a friend of yours, rodney?" asked little arthur. "i have known him for some time." "i don't like him very much." "why?" asked rodney with some curiosity. "i don't know," answered the little boy slowly. "i can't like everybody." "quite true, arthur. jasper is not a special friend of mine, and i am not particular about your liking him. i hope you like me." "you know i do, rodney," and he gave rodney's hand an assuring pressure. ten minutes after he left rodney, jasper fell in with carton. the intimacy between them had perceptibly fallen off. it had grown out of business considerations. now that it was no longer safe to abstract articles from the store, jasper felt that he had no more use for his late confederate. when they met he treated him with marked coldness. on this particular day carton was looking quite shabby. in fact, his best suit was in pawn, and he had fallen back on one half worn and soiled. "hello!" exclaimed jasper, and was about to pass on with a cool nod. "stop!" said philip, looking offended. "i am in a hurry," returned jasper. "i can't stop today." "you are in a hurry, and on a holiday?" "yes; i am to meet a friend near the lake." "i'll go along with you." jasper had to submit though with an ill grace. "wouldn't another day do?" "no; the fact is, jasper, i am in trouble," "you usually are," sneered jasper. "that is so. i have been out of luck lately." "i am sorry, but i can't help it as i see." "how much money do you think i have in my pocket?" "i don't know, i am sure. i am not good at guessing conundrums." "just ten cents." "that isn't much," said jasper, indifferently. "let me have a dollar, thats a good fellow!" "you seem to think i am made of money," said jasper sharply. "i haven't got much more myself." "then you might have. you get a good salary." "only seven dollars." "you are able to keep most of it for yourself." "suppose i am? you seem to know a good deal of my affairs." "haven't you any pity for an old friend?" "yes, i'll give you all the pity you want, but when it comes to money it's a different matter. here you are, a man of twenty six, ten years older than me, and yet you expect me to help support you." "you didn't use to talk to me like that." "well, i do now. you didn't use to try to get money out of me." "look here, jasper! i am poor, but i don't want you to talk to me as you are doing." "indeed!" sneered jasper. "and i won't have it," said carton firmly. "listen to me, and i will propose a plan that will help us both." "what is it?" "you can easily secrete articles, if you are cautious, without attracting notice, and i will dispose of them and share the money with you." jasper shook his head. "i wouldn't dare to do it" he said. "somebody might spy on me." "not if you are careful." "if it were found out i would be bounced like ropes." "what is he doing? have you seen him lately?" "he is getting on finely. he is earning fifteen dollars a week." "you don't mean it?" "yes i do." "what firm is he working for?" "for none at all. he is tutor to a young kid." "i didn't know he was scholar enough." "oh yes, he knows greek and latin and a lot of other stuff." "who is the boy?" "i don't feel at liberty to tell. i don't think he would care to have you know." "i'll tell you what you can do. borrow five dollars of him for me." "i don't know about that. if i were to borrow it would be for myself." "you can do as you please. if you don't do something for me i will write to mr. goodnow that you are the thief who stole the cloaks and dress patterns." "you wouldn't do that?" exclaimed jasper in consternation. "wouldn't i? i am desperate enough to do anything." after a little further conference jasper agreed to do what was asked of him. he did not dare to refuse. chapter xix. jasper's revenge rodney was considerably surprised one evening to receive a call from jasper in his room. he was alone, as mike had been detailed about a week ago for night duty. the room looked more attractive than formerly. rodney had bought a writing desk, which stood in the corner, and had put up three pictures, which, though cheap, were attractive. "good evening, jasper," he said. "it is quite friendly of you to call." "i hadn't anything else on hand this evening, and thought i would come round see how you were getting along." "take a seat and make yourself at home." "do you object to cigarettes?" asked jasper, producing one from a case in his pocket. "i object to smoking them myself, but i don't want to dictate to my friends." "you look quite comfortable here," continued jasper in a patronizing tone. "we try to be comfortable, though our room is not luxurious." "who do you mean by `we'? have you a room mate?" "yes. mike flynn rooms with me." "who is he--a newsboy?" "no. he is a telegraph boy." "you don't seem to very particular," said jasper, shrugging his shoulders. "i am very particular." "yet you room with an irish telegraph boy." "he is a nice boy of good habit, and a devoted friend. what could i want more?" "oh, well, you have a right to consult your own taste." "you have a nice home, no doubt." "i live with my uncle. yes, he has a good house, but i am not so independent as if i had a room outide." "how are things going on at the store?" "about the same as usual. why don't you come in some day?" "for two reasons; i am occupied during the day, and i don't want to go where i am considered a thief." "i wish i was getting your income. it is hard to get along on seven dollars a week." "still you have a nice home, and i suppose you have most of your salary to yourself." "yes, but there isn't much margin in seven dollars. my uncle expects me to buy my own clothes. you were lucky to get out of the store. old goodnow ought to give me ten dollars." "don't let him hear you speak of him as _old_ goodnow, jasper." "oh, i'm smart enough for that. i mean to keep on the right side of the old chap. what sort of a man are you working for?" "mr. sargent is a fine man." "he isn't mean certainly. i should like to be in your shoes." "if i hear of any similar position shall i mention your name?" asked rodney, smiling. "no; i could not take care of a kid. i hate them." "still arthur is a nice boy." "you are welcome to him. what do you have to teach?" "he is studying latin and french, besides english branches." "i know about as much of latin and french as a cow. i couldn't be a teacher. i say, rodney," and jasper cleared his throat, "i want you to do me a favor." "what is it?" "i want you to lend me ten dollars." rodney was not mean, but he knew very well that a loan to jasper would be a permanent one. had jasper been his friend even this consideration would not have inspired a refusal, but he knew very well that jasper had not a particle of regard for him. "i don't think i can oblige you, jasper," he said. "why not? you get fifteen dollars a week." "my expenses are considerable. besides i am helping mike, whose salary is very small. i pay the whole of the rent and i have paid for some clothes for him." "you are spending your money very foolishly," said jasper frowning. "would i spend it any less foolishly if i should lend you ten dollars?" "there is some difference between mike flynn and me. i am a gentleman." "so is mike." "a queer sort of gentleman! he is only a poor telegraph boy." "still he is a gentleman." "i should think you might have money enough for both of us." "i might but i want to save something from my salary. i don't know how long i shall be earning as much. i might lose my place." "so you might." "and i could hardly expect to get another where the pay would be as good." "i would pay you on installment--a dollar a week," urged jasper. "i don't see how you could, as you say your pay is too small for you now." "oh, well, i could manage." "i am afraid i can't oblige you, jasper," said rodney in a decided tone. "i didn't think you were so miserly," answered jasper in vexation. "you may call it so, if you like. you must remember that i am not situated like you. you have your uncle to fall back upon in case you lose your position, but i have no one. i have to hustle for myself." "oh, you needn't make any more excuses. i suppose ten dollars is rather a large sum to lend. can you lend me five?" "i am sorry, but i must refuse you." jasper rose from the chair on which he had been sitting. "then i may as well go," he said. "i am disappointed in you, ropes. i thought you were a good, whole souled fellow, and not a miser." "you must think of me as you please, jasper. i feel that i have a right to regulate my own affairs." "all i have to say is this, if you lose your place as you may very soon, don't come round to the store and expect to be taken back." "i won't" answered rodney, smiling. "i wouldn't go back at any rate unless the charge of theft was withdrawn." "that will never be!" "let it be so, as long as i am innocent." jasper left the room abruptly, not even having the politeness to bid rodney good evening. rodney felt that he was quite justified in refusing to lend jasper money. had he been in need he would have obliged him, though he had no reason to look upon him as a friend. no one who knew rodney could regard him as mean or miserly. could he have read jasper's thoughts as he left the house he would have felt even less regret at disappointing him. about two days afterward when rodney went up to meet his pupil, mr. sargent handed him a letter. "here is something that concerns you, rodney," he said. "it doesn't appear to be from a friend of yours." with some curiosity rodney took the letter and read it. it ran thus: mr. john sargent: dear sir--i think it my duty to write and tell you something about your son's tutor--something that will surprise and shock you. before he entered your house he was employed by a firm on reade street. he was quite a favorite with his employer, mr. otis goodnow, who promoted him in a short time. all at once it was found that articles were missing from the stock. of course it was evident that some one of the clerks was dishonest. a watch was set, and finally it was found that rodney ropes had taken the articles, and one--a lady's cloak--was found in his room by a detective. he was discharged at once without a recommendation. for a time he lived by selling papers, but at last he managed to get into your house. i am sure you won't regard him as fit to educate your little son, though i have no doubt he is a good scholar. but his character is bad--i don't think he ought to have concealed this from you out of friendship for you, and because i think it is my duty, i take the liberty of writing. if you doubt this i will refer to mr. goodnow, or mr. james redwood, who had charge of the room in which ropes was employed. yours very respectually, a friend. "you knew all this before, mr. sargent" said rodney, as he handed back the letter. "yes. have you any idea who wrote it?" "i feel quite sure that it was a boy about two years older than myself, jasper redwood." "is he related to the man of the same name whom he mentions?" "yes, he is his nephew." "has he any particular reason for disliking you, rodney?" "yes, sir. he came round to my room wednesday evening, and asked me to lend him ten dollars." "i presume you refused." "yes, sir. he is not in need. he succeeded to my place, and he has a home at the house of his uncle." "he appears to be a very mean boy. anonymous letters are always cowardly, and generally malicious. this seems to be no exception to the general rule." "i hope it won't affect your feelings towards me, mr. sargent." "don't trouble yourself about that rodney. i am not so easily prejudiced against one of whom i have a good opinion." "i suppose this is jasper's revenge," thought rodney. chapter xx. rodney loses his pupil. jasper had little doubt that his letter would lead to rodney's loss of position. it was certainly a mean thing to plot another's downfall, but jasper was quite capable of it. had he secured the loan he asked he would have been willing to leave rodney alone, but it would only have been the first of a series of similar applications. it was several days before jasper had an opportunity of learning whether his malicious plan had succeeded or not. on sunday forenoon he met rodney on fifth avenue just as the church services were over. he crossed the street and accosted the boy he had tried to injure. "good morning, ropes," he said, examining rodney's face curiously to see whether it indicated trouble of any kind. "good morning!" responded rodney coolly. "how are you getting along in your place?" "very well, thank you." "shall i find you at your pupil's house if i call there some afternoon?" "yes, unless i am out walking with arthur." "i wonder whether he's bluffing," thought jasper. "i daresay he wouldn't tell me if he had been discharged. he takes it pretty coolly." "how long do you think your engagement will last?" he asked. "i don't know. i never had a talk with mr. sargent on that point." "do you still give satisfaction?" rodney penetrated jasper's motives for asking all these questions, and was amused. "i presume if i fail to satisfy mr. sargent he will tell me so." "it would be a nice thing if you could stay there three or four years." "yes: but i don't anticipate it. when arthur get a little older he will be sent to school." "what will you do then?" "i haven't got so far as that." "i can't get anything out of him," said jasper to himself. "i shouldn't be a bit surprised if he were already discharged." they had now reached madison square, and jasper left rodney. the latter looked after him with a smile. "i think i have puzzled jasper," he said to himself. "he was anxious to know how his scheme had worked. he will have to wait a little longer." "if mr. sargent keeps ropes after my letter he must be a fool," jasper decided. "i wonder if ropes handles the mail. he might have suppressed the letter." but rodney was not familiar with his handwriting, and would have no reason to suspect that the particular letter contained anything likely to injure him in the eyes of mr. sargent. later in his walk jasper met philip carton. his former friend was sitting on a bench in madison square. he called out to jasper as he passed. "come here, jasper, i want to talk with you." jasper looked at him in a manner far from friendly. "i am in a hurry," he said. "what hurry can you be in? come and sit down here. i _must_ speak to you." jasper did not like his tone, but it impressed him, and he did not dare to refuse. he seated himself beside philip, but looked at him askance. carton was undeniably shabby. he had the look of a man who was going down hill and that rapidly. "i shall be late for dinner," grumbled jasper. "i wish i had any dinner to look forward to," said carton. "do you see this money?" and he produced a nickel from his pocket. "what is there remarkable about it?" "it is the last money i have. it won't buy me a dinner." "i am sorry, but it is none of my business," said jasper coolly. "you are old enough to attend to your own affairs." "and i once thought you were my friend," murmured philip bitterly. "yes, we were friends in a way." "now you are up and i am down-jasper, i want a dollar." "i dare say you do. plenty want that." "i want it from you." "i can't spare it." "you can spare it better than you can spare your situation." "what do you mean by that?" asked jasper, growing nervous. "i'll tell you what i mean. how long do you think you would stay in the store if mr. goodnow knew that you were concerned in the theft from which he has suffered?" "was i the only one?" "no; i am equally guilty." "i am glad you acknowledge it. you see you had better keep quiet for your own sake." "if i keep quiet i shall starve." "do you want to go to prison?" "i shouldn't mind so much if you went along, too." "are you crazy, philip carton?" "no, i am not, but i am beinning to get sensible. if i go to prison i shall at least have enough to eat, and now i haven't." "what do you mean by all this foolish talk?" "i mean that if you won't give me any money i will go to the store and tell mr. goodnow something that will surprise him." jasper was getting thoroughly frightened. "come, philip." he said, "listen to reason. you know how poor i am." "no doubt. i know you have a good home and enough to eat." "i only get seven dollars a week." "and i get nothing." "i have already been trying to help you. i went to ropes the other day, and asked him to lend me five dollars. i meant it for you." "did he give it to you?" "he wouldn't give me a cent. he is mean and miserly!" "i don't know. he knows very well that you are no friend of his, though he doesn't know how much harm you have done him." "he's rolling in money. however, i've put a spoke in his wheel, i hope." "how?" "i wrote an anonymous letter to mr. sargent telling him that ropes was discharged from the store on suspicion of theft." "you are a precious scamp, jasper." "what do you mean?" "you are not content with getting ropes discharged for something which you yourself did----" "and you too." "and i too. i accept the amendment. not content with that, you try to get him discharged from his present position." "then he might have lent me the money," said jasper sullenly. "it wouldn't have been a loan. it would have been a gift. but no matter about that. i want a dollar." "i can't give it to you." "then i shall call at the store tomorrow morning and tell mr. goodnow about the stolen goods." finding that carton was in earnest jasper finally, but with great reluctance, drew out a dollar and handed it to his companion. "there, i hope that will satisfy you," he said spitefully. "it will--for the present." "i wish he'd get run over or something," thought jasper. "he seems to expect me to support him, and that on seven dollars a week." fortunately for jasper, philip carton obtained employment the next day which lasted for some time, and as he was paid ten dollars a week he was not under the necessity of troubling his old confederate for loans. now and then jasper and rodney met, but there were no cordial relations between them. jasper could not forgive rodney for refusing to lend him money, and rodney was not likely to forget the anonymous letter by which jasper had tried to injure him. so three months passed. one day mr. sargent arrived at home before it was time for rodney to leave. "i am glad to see you, rodney," said his employer. "i have some news for you which i am afraid will not be entirely satisfactory to you." "what is it, sir?" "for the last three years i have been wishing to go to europe with my wife and arthur. the plan has been delayed, because i could not make satisfactory business arrangements. now, however, that difficulty has been overcome, and i propose to sail in about two weeks." "i hope you'll enjoy your trip, sir." "thank you. of course it will terminate, for a time at least your engagement to teach arthur." "i shall be sorry for that, sir, but i am not selfish enough to want you to stay at home on that account." "i thought you would feel that way. i wish i could procure you another position before i go, but that is uncertain. i shall, however, pay you a month's salary in advance in lieu of a notice." "that is very liberal, sir." "i think it only just. i have been very well pleased with your attention to arthur, and i know he has profited by your instructions as well as enjoyed your companionship. i hope you have been able to save something." "yes, sir, i have something in the union dime savings bank." "that's well. you will remain with me one week longer, but the last week arthur will need for preparations." two weeks later rodney stood on the pier and watched the stately etruria steam out into the river. arthur and his father were on deck, and the little boy waved his handkerchief to his tutor as long as he could see him. rodney turned away sadly. "i have lost a good situation," he soliloquized. "when shall i get another?" chapter xxi. continued ill luck. rodney set himself to work searching for a new situation. but wherever he called he found some one ahead of him. at length he saw an advertisement for an entry clerk in a wholesale house in church street. he applied and had the good fortune to please the superintendent. "where have you worked before?" he asked. "at otis goodnow's, on reade street." "how much were you paid there?" "seven dollars a week." "very well, we will start you on that salary, and see if you earn it." rodney was surprised and relieved to find that he was not asked for a recommendation from mr. goodnow, knowing that he could not obtain one. he went to work on a monday morning, and found his duties congenial and satisfactory. seven dollars a week was small, compared with what he had received as a tutor, but he had about two hundred and fifty dollars in the union dime savings bank and drew three dollars from this fund every week in order that he might still assist mike, whose earnings were small. one of his new acquaintances in the store was james hicks, a boy about a year older than himself. "didn't you use to work at otis goodnow's?" asked james one day when they were going to lunch. "yes." "i know a boy employed there. he is older than either of us." "who is it?" "jasper redwood. of course you know him." "yes," answered rodney with a presentiment of evil. he felt that it would be dangerous to have jasper know of his present position, but did not venture to give a hint of this to james. his fears were not groundless. only the day after james met jasper on the street. "anything new?" asked jasper. "yes; we've got one of your old friends in our store." "who is it?" "rodney ropes." jasper stopped short, and whistled. he was excessively surprised, as he supposed rodney still to be arthur sargent's tutor. "you don't mean it?" he ejaculated. "why not? is there anything so strange about it?" "yes. did ropes bring a recommendation from mr. goodnow?" "i suppose so. i don't know." "if he did, it's forged." "why should it be?" "goodnow wouldn't give him a recommendation." "why wouldn't he?" "because he discharged ropes. do you want to know why?" "yes." "for stealing articles from the store." it was the turn of james hicks to be surprised. "i can't believe it," he said. "its true. just mention the matter to ropes, and you'll see he won't deny it." "i think there must be some mistake about it. rodney doesn't look like a fellow that would steal." "oh, you can't tell from appearances--rogues are always plausible." "still mistakes are sometimes made. i'd trust rodney ropes sooner than any boy i know." "you don't know him as well as i do." "you don't like him?" said james shrewdly. "no i don't. i can't like a thief." "you talk as if you had a grudge against him." "nothing but his being a thief. well, what are you going to do about it?" "about what?" "what i have just told you." "i don't feel that i have any call to do anything." "you ought to tell your employer." "i am no telltale," said james scornfully. "then you will let him stay in the store, knowing him to be a thief?" "i don't know him to be a thief. if he steals anything it will probably be found out." jasper urged james to give information about rodney, but he steadily refused. "i leave others to do such dirty work," he said, "and i don't think any better of you, let me tell you, for your eagerness to turn the boy out of his position." "you are a queer boy." "think so if you like," retorted hicks. "i might give my opinion of you." at this point jasper thought it best to let the conversation drop. he was much pleased to learn that rodney had lost his fine position as tutor, and was now in a place from which he might more easily be ousted. as he could not prevail upon james hicks to betray rodney he decided to write an anonymous letter to the firm that employed him. the result was that the next afternoon rodney was summoned to the office. "sit down ropes," said the superintendent. "for what store did you work before you came into our house?" "otis goodnow's." "under what circumstances did you leave?" "i was accused of theft." "you did not mention this matter when you applied for a situation here." "no, sir. i ought perhaps to have done so, but i presumed in that case you would not have given me a place." "you are right he would not." "nor would i have applied had the charge been a true one. articles were certainly missing from mr. goodnow's stock, but in accusing me they did me a great injustice." "how long since you left mr. goodnow's?" "four months." "what have you been doing since?" "i was acting as tutor to the son of mr. sargent, of west fifty eighth street." "a well known citizen. then you are a scholar?" "yes, sir, i am nearly prepared for college." "of course he did not know you were suspected of dishonesty." "on the contrary he did know it. i told him, and later he received an anonymous letter, notifying him of the fact." "we also have received an anonymous letter. here it is. do you recognize the hand writing?" "yes," answered rodney after examining the letter. "it was written by jasper redwood." "who is he?" "a boy employed by mr. goodnow. for some reason he seems to have a spite against me." "i admit that it is pretty small business to write an anonymous letter calculated to injure another. still we shall have to take notice of this." "yes, sir, i suppose so." "i shall have to bring it to the notice of the firm. what they may do i don't know. if the matter was to be decided by me i would let you stay." "thank you, sir," said rodney gratefully. "but i am not mr. hall. you can go now and i will see you again." rodney left the office fully persuaded that his engagement would speedily terminate. he was right; the next day he was sent for again. "i am sorry to tell you, ropes," said the superintendent kindly "that mr. hall insists upon your being discharged. he is a nervous man and rather suspicious. i spoke in your favor but i could not turn him." "at any rate i am grateful to you for your friendly effort." the superintendent hesitated a moment, and then said: "will this discharge seriously embarrass you? are you short of money?" "no, sir. i was very liberally paid by mr. sargent, and i saved money. i have enough in the savings bank to last me several months, should i be idle so long." "i am glad of it. i hope you will remember, my boy, that this is none of my doing. i would gladly retain you. i will say one thing more, should jasper redwood ever apply for a situation here, his name will not be considered." so rodney found himself again without a position. it seemed hard in view of his innocence, but he had confidence to believe that something would turn up for him as before. at any rate he had enough money to live on for some time. when mike flynn learned the circumstances of his discharge he was very angry. "i'd like to meet jasper redwood," he said, his eyes flashing. "if i didn't give him a laying out then my name isn't mike flynn." "i think he will get his desert some time, mickey, without any help from you or me." "should hope he will. and what'll you do now, rodney?" "i don't know. sometimes i think it would be well to go to some other city, boston or philadelphia, where jasper can't get on my track." "should hope you won't do it. i can't get along widout you." "i will stay here for a few weeks, mike, and see if anything turns up." "i might get you in as a telegraph boy." "that wouldn't suit me. it doesn't pay enough." rodney began to hunt for a situation again, but four weeks passed and brought him no success. one afternoon about four o'clock he was walking up broadway when, feeling tired, he stepped into the continental hotel at the corner of twentieth street. he took a seat at some distance back from the door, and in a desultory way began to look about him. all at once he started in surprise, for in a man sitting in one of the front row of chairs he recognized louis wheeler, the railroad thief who had stolen his box of jewelry. wheeler was conversing with a man with a large flapping sombrero, and whose dress and general appearance indicated that he was a westerner. rodney left his seat and going forward sat down in the chair behind wheeler. he suspected that the western man was in danger of being victimized. chapter xxii. an old acquaintance turns up. in his new position rodney could easily hear the conversation which took place between the western man and his old railroad acquaintance. "i am quite a man of leisure," said wheeler, "and it will give me great pleasure to go about with you and show you our city." "you are very obliging." "oh, don't mention it. i shall really be glad to have my time occupied. you see i am a man of means--my father left me a fortune--and so i am not engaged in any business." "you are in luck. i was brought up on a farm in vermont, and had to borrow money to take me to montana four years ago." "i hope you prospered in your new home?" "i did. i picked up twenty five thousand dollars at the mines, and doubled it by investment in lots in helena." "very neat, indeed. i inherited a fortune from my father--a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars--but i never made a cent myself. i don't know whether i am smart enough." "come out to montana and i'll put you in a way of making some money." "really, now, that suggestion strikes me favorably. i believe i will follow your advice. when shall you return to your western home?" "in about a fortnight i think." "you must go to the theater tonight. there is a good play on at the madison square." "i don't mind. when can i get ticket?" "i'll go and secure some. it is only a few blocks away." "do so. how much are the tickets?" "a dollar and a half or two dollars each." "here are five dollars, if it won't trouble you too much." "my dear friend, i meant to pay for the tickets. however, i will pay next time. if you will remain here i will be back in twenty minutes." louis wheeler left the hotel with the five dollars tucked away in his vest pocket. he had no sooner disappeared than rodney went forward and occupied his seat. "excuse me, sir," he said to the miner, "but do you know much of the man who has just left you?" "i only met him here. he seems a good natured fellow. what of him?" "he said he was a man of independent means." "isn't he?" "he is a thief and an adventurer." the miner was instantly on the alert. "how do you know this?" he asked. "because he stole a box of jewelry from me in the cars some months ago." "did you get it again?" "yes; he left the train, but i followed him up and reclaimed the jewelry." "was it of much value?" "they were family jewels, and were worth over a thousand dollars." "do you think he wants to bunco me?" "i have no doubt of it." "i have given him money to buy theater tickets. do you think he will come back?" "yes. he wouldn't be satisfied with that small sum." "tell me about your adventure with him." "i will do it later. the theater is so near that he might come back and surprise us together. i think he would recognize me." "do you advise me to go to the theater?" "yes, but be on your guard." "where can i see you again?" "are you staying at this hotel?" "yes. here is my card." rodney read this name on the card: jefferson pettrigrew. "i wish you were going to the theater with us." "it wouldn't do. mr. wheeler would remember me." "then come round and breakfast with me tomorrow--at eight o'clock, sharp." "i will, sir. now i will take a back seat, and leave you to receive your friend." "don't call him my friend. he seems to be a mean scoundrel." "don't let him suspect anything from your manner." "i won't. i want to see him expose his plans." five minutes afterwards louis wheeler entered the hotel. "i've got the tickets," he said, "but i had to buy them of a speculator, and they cost me more than i expected." "how much?" "two and a half apiece. so there is no change coming back to you." "never mind! as long as you had enough money to pay for them it is all right." as a matter of fact wheeler bought the tickets at the box office at one dollar and fifty cent each, which left him a profit of two dollars. when he saw how easily the western man took it he regretted not having represented that the tickets cost three dollars each. however, he decided that there would be other ways of plundering his new acquaintance. he took his seat again next to the miner. "it is not very late," he said. "would you like a run out to central park or to grant's tomb?" "not today. i feel rather tired. by the way, you did not mention your name." "i haven't a card with me, but my name is louis wheeler." "where do you live, mr. wheeler?" "i am staying with an aunt on fifth avenue, but i think of taking board at the windsor hotel. it is a very high toned house, and quite a number of my friends board there." "is it an expensive hotel?" "oh, yes, but my income is large and----" "i understand. now, mr. wheeler, i must excuse myself, as i feel tired. come at half past seven and we can start for the theater together." "very well." wheeler rose reluctantly, for he had intended to secure a dinner from his new acquaintance, but he was wise enough to take the hint. after he left the room rodney again joined mr. pettigrew. "he didn't give me back any change," said the western man. "he said he bought the tickets of a speculator at two dollars and a half each." "then he made two dollars out of you." "i suppose that is the beginning. well, that doesn't worry me. but i should like to know how he expects to get more money out of me. i don't understand the ways of this gentry." "nor i very well. if you are on your guard i think you won't be in any danger." "i will remember what you say. you seem young to act as adviser to a man like me. are you in business?" "at present i am out of work, but i have money enough to last me three months." "are you, like my new acquaintance, possessed of independent means?" "not now, but i was six months ago." "how did you lose your money?" "i did not lose it. my guardian lost it for me." "what is your name?" "rodney ropes." "you've had some pretty bad luck. come up to my room and tell me about it." "i shall be glad to do so, sir." mr. pettigrew called for his key and led the way up to a plain room on the third floor. "come in," he said. "the room is small, but i guess it will hold us both. now go ahead with your story." in a short time rodney had told his story in full to his new acquaintance, encouraged to do so by his sympathetic manner. mr. pettigrew was quite indignant, when told of jasper's mean and treacherous conduct. "that boy jasper is a snake in the grass," he said. "i'd like to give him a good thrashing." "there isn't any love lost between us, mr. pettigrew, but i think it will turn out right in the end. still i find it hard to get a place in new york with him circulating stories about me." "then why do you stay in new york?" "i have thought it might be better to go to philadelphia or boston." "i can tell you of a better place than either." "what is that?" "montana." "do you really think it would be wise for me to go there?" "think? i haven't a doubt about it." "i have money enough to get there, but not much more. i should soon have to find work, or i might get stranded." "come back with me, and i'll see you through. i'll make a bargain with you. go round with me here, and i'll pay your fare out to montana." "if you are really in earnest i will do so, and thank you for the offer." "jefferson pettigrew means what he says. i'll see you through, rodney." "but i may be interfering with your other friend, louis wheeler." "i shall soon be through with him. you needn't worry yourself about that." mr. pettigrew insisted upon rodney's taking supper with him. fifteen minutes after rodney left him mr. wheeler made his appearance. chapter xxiii. mr. wheeler has a set back. louis wheeler had not seen rodney in the hotel office, and probably would not have recognized him if he had, as rodney was quite differently dressed from the time of their first meeting. he had no reason to suppose, therefore, that mr. pettigrew had been enlightened as to his real character. it was therefore with his usual confidence that he accosted his acquaintance from montana after supper. "it is time to go to the theater, mr. pettigrew," he said. jefferson pettigrew scanned his new acquaintance with interest. he had never before met a man of his type and he looked upon him as a curiosity. he was shrewd, however, and did not propose to let wheeler know that he understood his character. he resolved for the present to play the part of the bluff and unsuspecting country visitor. "you are very kind, mr. wheeler," he said, "to take so much trouble for a stranger." "my dear sir," said wheeler effusively, "i wouldn't do it for many persons, but i have taken a fancy to you." "you don't mean so?" said pettigrew, appearing pleased? "yes, i do, on my honor." "but i don't see why you should. you are a polished city gentleman and i am an ignorant miner from montana." louis wheeler looked complacent when he was referred to as a polished city gentleman. "you do yourself injustice, my dear pettigrew," he said in a patronizing manner. "you do indeed. you may not be polished, but you are certainly smart, as you have shown by accumulating a fortune." "but i am not as rich as you." "perhaps not, but if i should lose my money, i could not make another fortune, while i am sure you could. don't you think it would be a good plan for us to start a business together in new york?" "would you really be willing to go into business with me?" jefferson pettigrew asked this question with so much apparent sincerity that wheeler was completely deceived. "i've got him dead!" he soliloquized complacently. he hooked his arm affectionately in the montana miner's and said, "my dear friend, i have never met a man with whom i would rather be associated in business than with you. how much capital could you contribute?" "i will think it over, mr. wheeler. by the way what business do you propose that we shall go into?" "i will think it over and report to you." by this time they had reached the theater. the play soon commenced. mr. pettigrew enjoyed it highly, for he had not had much opportunity at the west of attending a high class theatrical performance. when the play ended, louis wheeler said, "suppose we go to delmonico's and have a little refreshment." "very well." they adjourned to the well known restaurant, and mr. pettigrew ordered an ice and some cakes, but his companion made a hearty supper. when the bill came, louis wheeler let it lie on the table, but mr. pettigrew did not appear to see it. "i wonder if he expects me to pay for it," wheeler asked himself anxiously. "thank you for this pleasant little supper," said pettigrew mischievously. "delmonico's is certainly a fine place." wheeler changed color. he glanced at the check. it was for two dollars and seventy five cents, and this represented a larger sum than he possessed. he took the check and led the way to the cashier's desk. then he examined his pockets. "by jove," he said, "i left my wallet in my other coat. may i borrow five dollars till tomorrow?" jefferson pettigrew eyed him shrewdly. "never mind," he said, "i will pay the check." "i am very much ashamed of having put you to this expense." "if that is all you have to be ashamed of mr. wheeler," said the miner pointedly, "you can rest easy." "what do you mean?" stammered wheeler. "wait till we get into the street, and i will tell you." they went out at the broadway entrance, and then mr. pettigrew turned to his new acquaintance. "i think i will bid you good night and good by at the same time, mr. wheeler," he said. "my dear sir, i hoped you won't misjudge me on account of my unfortunately leaving my money at home." "i only wish to tell you that i have not been taken in by your plausible statement, mr. wheeler, if that is really your name. before we started for the theater i had gauged you and taken your measure." "sir, i hope you don't mean to insult me!" blustered wheeler. "not at all. you have been mistaken in me, but i am not mistaken in you. i judge you to be a gentlemanly adventurer, ready to take advantage of any who have money and are foolish enough to be gulled by your tricks. you are welcome to the profit you made out of the theater tickets, also to the little supper to which you have done so much justice. i must request you, now, however, to devote yourself to some one else, as i do not care to meet you again." louis wheeler slunk away, deciding that he had made a great mistake in setting down his montana acquaintance as an easy victim. "i didn't think he'd get on to my little game so quick," he reflected. "he's sharper than he looks," rodney took breakfast with mr. pettigrew the next morning. when breakfast was over, the montana man said: "i'm going to make a proposal to you, rodney. how much pay did you get at your last place?" "seven dollars a week." "i'll pay you that and give you your meals. in return i want you to keep me company and go about with me." "i shall not be apt to refuse such an offer as that, mr. pettigrew, but are you sure you prefer me to mr. wheeler?" laughed rodney. "wheeler be--blessed!" returned the miner. "how long are you going to stay in new york?" "about two weeks. then i shall go back to montana and take you with me." "thank you. there is nothing i should like better." two days later, as the two were walking along broadway, they met mr. wheeler. the latter instantly recognized his friend from montana, and scrutinized closely his young companion. rodney's face looked strangely familiar to him, but somehow he could not recollect when or under what circumstances he had met him. he did not, however, like to give up his intended victim, but had the effrontery to address the man from montana. "i hope you are well, mr. pettigrew." "thank you, i am very well." "i hope you are enjoying yourself. i should be glad to show you the sights. have you been to grants tomb?" "not yet." "i should like to take you there." "thank you, but i have a competent guide." "won't you introduce me to the young gentleman?" "i don't require any introduction to you, mr. wheeler," said rodney. "where have i met you before?" asked wheeler abruptly. "in the cars. i had a box of jewelry with me," answered rodney significantly. louis wheeler changed color. now he remembered rodney, and he was satisfied that he owed to him the coolness with which the western man had treated him. "i remember you had," he said spitefully, "but i don't know how you came by it." "it isn't necessary that you should know. i remember i had considerable difficulty in getting it out of your hands." "mr. pettigrew," said wheeler angrily, "i feel interested in you, and i want to warn you against the boy who is with you. he is a dangerous companion." "i dare say you are right," said pettigrew in a quizzical tone. "i shall look after him sharply, and i thank you for your kind and considerate warning. i don't care to take up any more of your valuable time. rodney, let us be going." "it must have been the kid that exposed me," muttered wheeler, as he watched the two go down the street. "i will get even with him some time. that man would have been good for a thousand dollars to me if i had not been interfered with." "you have been warned against me, mr. pettigrew," said rodney, laughing. "mr. wheeler has really been very unkind in interfering with my plans." "i shan't borrow any trouble, or lie awake nights thinking about it, rodney. i don't care to see or think of that rascal again." the week passed, and the arrangement between mr. pettigrew and rodney continued to their mutual satisfaction. one morning, when rodney came to the continental as usual, his new friend said: "i received a letter last evening from my old home in vermont." "i hope it contained good news." "on the contrary it contained bad news. my parents are dead, but i have an old uncle and aunt living. when i left burton he was comfortably fixed, with a small farm of his own, and two thousand dollars in bank. now i hear that he is in trouble. he has lost money, and a knavish neighbor has threatened to foreclose a mortgage on the farm and turn out the old people to die or go to the poorhouse." "is the mortgage a large one?" "it is much less than the value of the farm, but ready money is scarce in the town, and that old sheldon calculates upon. now i think of going to burton to look up the matter." "you must save your uncle, if you can, mr. pettigrew." "i can and i will. i shall start for boston this afternoon by the fall river boat and i want you to go with me." "i should enjoy the journey, mr. pettigrew." "then it is settled. go home and pack your gripsack. you may be gone three or four days." chapter xxiv. a change of scene. "now," said mr. pettigrew, when they were sitting side by side on the upper deck of the puritan, the magnificent steamer on the fall river line. "i want you to consent to a little plan that will mystify my old friends and neighbors." "what is it, mr. pettigrew?" "i have never written home about my good fortune; so far as they know i am no better off than when i went away." "i don't think i could have concealed my success." "it may seem strange, but i'll explain--i want to learn who are my friends and who are not. i am afraid i wasn't very highly thought of when i left burton. i was considered rather shiftless. "i was always in for a good time, and never saved a cent. everybody predicted that i would fail, and i expect most wanted me to fail. there were two or three, including my uncle, aunt and the friend who lent me money, who wished me well. "i mustn't forget to mention the old minister who baptized me when i was an infant. the good old man has been preaching thirty or forty years on a salary of four hundred dollars, and has had to run a small farm to make both ends meet. he believed in me and gave me good advice. outside of these i don't remember any one who felt an interest in jefferson pettigrew." "you will have the satisfaction of letting them see that they did not do you justice." "yes, but i may not tell them--that is none except my true friends. if i did, they would hover round me and want to borrow money, or get me to take them out west with me. so i have hit upon a plan. i shall want to use money, but i will pretend it is yours." rodney opened his eyes in surprise. "i will pass you off as a rich friend from new york, who feels an interest in me and is willing to help me." rodney smiled. "i don't know if i can look the character," he said. "oh yes you can. you are nicely dressed, while i am hardly any better dressed than when i left burton." "i have wondered why you didn't buy some new clothes when you were able to afford it." "you see we western miners don't care much for style, perhaps not enough. still i probably shall buy a suit or two, but not till i have made my visit home. i want to see how people will receive me, when they think i haven't got much money. i shall own up to about five hundred dollars, but that isn't enough to dazzle people even in a small country village." "i am wiling to help you in any way you wish, mr. pettigrew." "then i think we shall get some amusement out of it. i shall represent you as worth about a hundred thousand dollars." "i wish i were." "very likely you will be some time if you go out to montana with me." "how large a place is burton?" "it has not quite a thousand inhabitants. it is set among the hills, and has but one rich man, lemuel sheldon, who is worth perhaps fifty thousand dollars, but put on the airs of a millionaire." "you are as rich as he, then." "yes, and shall soon be richer. however, i don't want him to know it. it is he who holds the mortgage on my uncle's farm." "do you know how large the mortgage is?" "it is twelve hundred dollars. i shall borrow the money of you to pay it." "i understand," said rodney, smiling. "i shall enjoy the way the old man will look down upon me very much as a millionaire looks down upon a town pauper." "how will he look upon me?" "he will be very polite to you, for he will think you richer than himself." "on the whole, we are going to act a comedy, mr. pettigrew. what is the name of the man who lent you money to go to montana?" "a young carpenter, frank dobson. he lent me a hundred dollars, which was about all the money he had saved up." "he was a true friend." "you are right. he was. everybody told frank that he would never see his money again, but he did. as soon as i could get together enough to repay him i sent it on, though i remember it left me with less than ten dollars in my pocket. "i couldn't bear to think that frank would lose anything by me. you see we were chums at school and always stood by each other. he is married and has two children." "while you are an old bachelor." "yes; i ain't in a hurry to travel in double harness. i'll wait till i am ready to leave montana, with money enough to live handsomely at home." "you have got enough now." "but i may as well get more. i am only thirty years old, and i can afford to work a few years longer." "i wish i could be sure of being worth fifty thousand dollars when i am your age." "you have been worth that, you tell me." "yes, but i should value more money that i had made myself." above five o'clock on monday afternoon mr. pettigrew and rodney reached burton. it was a small village about four miles from the nearest railway station. an old fashioned concord stage connected burton with the railway. the driver was on the platform looking out for passengers when jefferson pettigrew stepped out of the car. "how are you, hector?" said the miner, in an off hand way. "why, bless my soul if it isn't jeff!" exclaimed the driver, who had been an old schoolmate of mr. pettigrew's. "i reckon it is," said the miner, his face lighting up with the satisfaction he felt at seeing a home face. "why, you ain't changed a mite, jeff. you look just as you did when you went away. how long have you been gone?" "four years!" "made a fortune? but you don't look like it. that's the same suit you wore when you went away, isn't it?" mr. pettigrew laughed. "well no, it isn't the same, but it's one of the same kind." "i thought maybe you'd come home in a dress suit." "it isn't so easy to make a fortune, hector." "but you have made something, ain't you?" "oh, yes, when i went away i hadn't a cent except what i borrowed. now i've got five hundred dollars." "that ain't much." "no, but it's better than nothing. how much more have you got, hector?" "well, you see i married last year. i haven't had a chance to lay by." "so you see i did as well as if i had stayed at home." "are you going to stay home now?" "for a little while. i may go back to montana after a bit." "is it a good place to make money?" "i made five hundred dollars." "thats only a little more than a hundred dollars a year. frank dobson has saved as much as that and he's stayed right here in burton." "i'm glad of that," said pettigrew heartily. "frank is a rousing good fellow. if it hadn't been for him i couldn't have gone to montana." "it doesn't seem to have done you much good, as i can see." "oh, well, i am satisfied. let me introduce my friend, mr. rodney ropes of new york." "glad to meet you," said hector with a jerk of the head. "rodney, won't you sit inside? i want to sit outide with hector." "all right, mr. pettigrew." "who is that boy?" asked hector with characteristic yankee curiosity, as he seized the lines and started the horses. "a rich young fellow from new york. i got acquainted with him there." "rich is he?" jefferson pettigrew nodded. "how rich do you think?" "shouldn't wonder if he might be worth a hundred thousand." "you don't say! why, he beat squire sheldon." "oh, yes, squire sheldon wouldn't be considered rich in new york." "how did he get his money?" "his father left him a fortune." "is that so? i wish my father had left me a fortune." "he did, didn't he?" "yes, he did! when his estate was settled i got seventy five dollars, if you call that a fortune. but i say, what brings the boy to burton?" "his friendship for me, i expect. besides he may invest in a place." "there's the old morse place for sale. do you think he'd buy that?" "it wouldn't be nice enough for him. i don't know any place that would be good enough except the squire's." "the squire wouldn't sell." "oh, well, i don't know as rodney would care to locate in burton." "you're in luck to get such a friend. say, do you think he would lend you a hundred dollars if you were hard up?" "i know he would. by the way, hector, is there any news? how is my uncle?" "i think the old man is worrying on account of his mortgage." "who holds it?" "the squire. they do say he is goin' to foreclose. that'll be bad for the old man. it'll nigh about break his heart i expect." "can't uncle raise the money to pay him?" "who is there round here who has got any money except the squire?" "that's so." "where are you goin' to stop, jeff?" "i guess i'll stop at the tavern tonight, but i'll go over and call on uncle this evening." chapter xxv. jefferson pettigrew's home. news spreads fast in a country village. scarcely an hour had passed when it was generally known that jefferson pettigrew had come home from montana with a few hundred dollars in money, bringing with him a rich boy who could buy out all burton. at least that is the way the report ran. when the two new arrivals had finished supper and come out on the hotel veranda there were a dozen of jefferson pettigrew's friends ready to welcome him. "how are you, jefferson, old boy?" said one and another. "pretty well, thank you. it seems good to be home." "i hear you've brought back some money." "yes, a few hundred dollars." "that's better than nothing. i reckon you'll stay home now." "i can't afford it, boys." "are ye goin' back to montany?" "yes. i know the country, and i can make a middlin' good livin' there." "i say, is that boy thats with you as rich as they say?" "i don't know what they say." "they say he's worth a million." "oh no, not so much as that. he's pretty well fixed." "hasn't he got a father livin'?" "no, it's his father that left the money." "how did you happen to get in with him?" "oh, we met promiscuous. he took a sort of fancy to me, and that's the way of it." "do you expect to keep him with you?" "he talks of goin' back to montana with me. i'll be sort of guardian to him." "you're in luck, jeff." "yes, i'm in luck to have pleasant company. maybe we'll join together and buy a mine." "would you mind introducin' him?" "not at all," and thus rodney became acquainted with quite a number of the burton young men. he was amused to see with what deference they treated him, but preserved a sober face and treated all cordially, so that he made a favorable impression on those he met. among those who made it in their way to call on the two travelers was lemuel sheldon, the rich man of the village. "how do you do, jefferson?" he said condescendingly. "very well, sir." "you have been quite a traveler." "yes, sir; i have been to the far west." "and met with some success, i am told." "yes, sir; i raised money enough to get home." "i hear you brought home a few hundred dollars." "yes, sir." "oh, well," said the squire patronizingly, "that's good beginning." "it must seem very little to a rich man like you, squire." "oh, no!" said the squire patronizingly. "you are a young man. i shouldn't wonder if by the time you get as old as i am you might be worth five thousand dollars." "i hope so," answered mr. pettigrew demurely. "by the way, you have brought a young man with you, i am told." "yes." "i should like to make his acquaintance. he is rich, is he not?" "i wish i was as rich." "you don't say so! about how much do you estimate he is worth?" "i don't think it amounts to quite as much as a quarter of a million. still, you know it is not always easy to tell how much a person is worth." "he is certainly a _very_ fortunate young man," said the squire, impressed. "what is his name?" "rodney ropes." "the name sounds aristocratic. i shall be glad to know him." "rodney," said mr. pettigrew. "i want to introduce you to squire sheldon, our richest and most prominent citizen." "i am glad to meet you, squire sheldon," said rodney, offering his hand. "i quite reciprocate the feeling, mr. ropes, but mr. pettigrew should not call me a rich man. i am worth something, to be sure." "i should say you were, squire," said jefferson. "rodney, he is as rich as you are." "oh no," returned the squire, modestly, "not as rich as that. indeed, i hardly know how much i am worth. as mr. pettigrew very justly observed it is not easy to gauge a man's possessions. but there is one difference between us. you, mr. ropes, i take it, are not over eighteen." "only sixteen, sir." "and yet you are wealthy. i am rising fifty. when you come to my age you will be worth much more." "perhaps i may have lost all i now possess," said rodney. "within a year i have lost fifty thousand dollars." "you don't say so." "yes; it was through a man who had charge of my property. i think now i shall manage my money matters myself." "doubtless you are right. that was certainly a heavy loss. i shouldn't like to lose so much. i suppose, however, you had something left?" "oh yes," answered rodney in an indifferent tone. "he must be rich to make so little account of fifty thousand dollars," thought the squire. "how long do you propose to stay in town, mr. pettigrew?" he asked. "i can't tell, sir, but i don't think i can spare more than three or four days." "may i hope that you and mr. ropes will take supper with me tomorrow evening?" "say the next day and we'll come. tomorrow i must go to my uncle's." "oh very well!" squire sheldon privately resolved to pump rodney as to the investment of his property. he was curious to learn first how much the boy was worth, for if there was anything that the squire worshiped it was wealth. he was glad to find that mr. pettigrew had only brought home five hundred dollars, as it was not enough to lift the mortgage on his uncle's farm. after they were left alone jefferson pettigrew turned to rodney and said, "do you mind my leaving you a short time and calling at my uncle's?" "not at all, mr. pettigrew. i can pass my time very well." jefferson pettigrew directed his steps to an old fashioned farmhouse about half a mile from the village. in the rear the roof sloped down so that the eaves were only five feet from the ground. the house was large though the rooms were few in number. in the sitting room sat an old man and his wife, who was nearly as old. it was not a picture of cheerful old age, for each looked sad. the sadness of old age is pathetic for there is an absence of hope, and courage, such as younger people are apt to feel even when they are weighed down by trouble. cyrus hooper was seventy one, his wife two years younger. during the greater part of their lives they had been well to do, if not prosperous, but now their money was gone, and there was a mortgage on the old home which they could not pay. "i don't know whats goin' to become of us, nancy," said cyrus hooper. "we'll have to leave the old home, and when the farm's been sold there won't be much left over and above the mortgage which louis sheldon holds." "don't you think the squire will give you a little more time, cyrus?" "no; i saw him yesterday, and he's sot on buyin' in the farm for himself. he reckons it won't fetch more'n eighteen hundred dollars." "thats only six hundred over the mortgage." "it isn't that nancy. there's about a hundred dollars due in interest. we won't get more'n five hundred dollars." "surely, cyrus, the farm is worth three thousand dollars." "so it is, nancy, but that won't do us any good, as long as no one wants it more'n the squire." "i wish jefferson were at home." "what good would it do? i surmise he hasn't made any money. he never did have much enterprise, that boy." "he was allus a good boy, cyrus." "that's so, nancy, but he didn't seem cut out for makin' money. still it would do me good to see him. maybe we might have a home together, and manage to live." just then a neighbor entered. "have you heard the news?" she asked. "no; what is it?" "your nephew jefferson pettigrew has got back." "you don't mean so. there, jefferson, that's one comfort." "and they say he has brought home five hundred dollars." "that's more'n i thought he'd bring. where is he?" "over at the tavern. he's brought a young man with him, leastways a boy, that's got a lot of money." "the boy?" "yes; he's from new york, and is a friend of jefferson's." "well, i'm glad he's back. why didn't he come here?" "it's likely he would if the boy wasn't with him." "perhaps he heard of my misfortune." "i hope it'll all come right, mr. hooper. my, if there ain't jefferson comin' to see you now. i see him through the winder. i guess i'll be goin'. you'll want to see him alone." chapter xxvi. the boy capitalist. "how are you, uncle cyrus?" said jefferson pettigrew heartily, as he clasped his uncle's toil worn hand. "and aunt nancy, too! it pays me for coming all the way from montana just to see you." "i'm glad to see you, jefferson," said his uncle. "it seems a long time since you went away. i hope you've prospered." "well, uncle, i've brought myself back well and hearty, and i've got a few hundred dollars." "i'm glad to hear it, jefferson. you're better off than when you went away." "yes, uncle. i couldn't be much worse off. then i hadn't a cent that i could call my own. but how are you and aunt nancy?" "we're gettin' old, jefferson, and misfortune has come to us. squire sheldon has got a mortgage on the farm and it's likely we'll be turned out. you've come just in time to see it." "is it so bad as that, uncle cyrus? why, when i went away you were prosperous." "yes, jefferson, i owned the farm clear, and i had money in the bank, but now the money's gone and there's a twelve hundred dollar mortgage on the old place," and the old man sighed. "but how did it come about uncle? you and aunt nancy haven't lived extravagantly, have you? aunt nancy, you haven't run up a big bill at the milliner's and dressmaker's?" "you was always for jokin', jefferson," said the old lady, smiling faintly; "but that is not the way our losses came." "how then?" "you see i indorsed notes for sam sherman over at canton, and he failed, and i had to pay. then i bought some wild cat minin' stock on sam's recommendation, and that went down to nothin'. so between the two i lost about three thousand dollars. i've been a fool, jefferson, and it would have been money in my pocket if i'd had a guardeen." "so you mortgaged the place to squire sheldon, uncle?" "yes; i had to. i was obliged to meet my notes." "but surely the squire will extend the mortgage." "no, he won't. i've asked him. he says he must call in the money, and so the old place will have to be sold, and nancy and i must turn out in our old age." again the old man sighed, and tears came into nancy hooper's eyes. "there'll be something left, won't there, uncle cyrus?" "yes, the place should bring six hundred dollars over and above the mortgage. that's little enough, for it's worth three thousand." "so it is, uncle cyrus. but what can you do with six hundred dollars? it won't support you and aunt nancy?" "i thought mebbe, jefferson, i could hire a small house and you could board with us, so that we could still have a home together." "i'll think it over, uncle, if there is no other way. but are you sure squire sheldon won't give you more time?" "no, jefferson. i surmise he wants the place himself. there's talk of a railroad from sherborn, and that'll raise the price of land right around here. it'll probably go right through the farm just south of the three acre lot." "i see, uncle cyrus. you ought to have the benefit of the rise in value." "yes, jefferson, it would probably rise enough to pay off the mortgage, but its no use thinkin' of it. the old farm has got to go." "i don't know about that, uncle cyrus." "why, jefferson, you haven't money enough to lift the mortgage!" said the old man, with faint hope. "if i haven't i may get it for you. tell me just how much money is required." "thirteen hundred dollars, includin' interest." "perhaps you have heard that i have a boy with me--a boy from new york, named rodney ropes. he has money, and perhaps i might get him to advance the sum you want." "oh, jefferson, if you only could!" exclaimed aunt nancy, clasping her thin hands. "it would make us very happy." "i'll see rodney tonight and come over tomorrow morning and tell you what he says. on account of the railroad i shall tell him that it is a good investment. i suppose you will be willing to mortgage the farm to him for the same money that he pays to lift the present mortgage?" "yes, jefferson, i'll be willin' and glad. it'll lift a great burden from my shoulders. i've been worryin' at the sorrow i've brought upon poor nancy, for she had nothing to do with my foolish actions. i was old enough to know better, jefferson, and i'm ashamed of what i did." "well, uncle cyrus, i'll do what i can for you. now let us forget all about your troubles and talk over the village news. you know i've been away for four years, and i haven't had any stiddy correspondence, so a good deal must have happened that i don't know anything about. i hear frank dobson has prospered?" "yes, frank's pretty forehanded. he's got a good economical wife, and they've laid away five or six hundred dollars in the savings bank." "i am glad of it. frank is a good fellow. if it hadn't been for him i couldn't have gone to montana. when he lent me the money everybody said he'd lose it, but i was bound to pay it if i had to live on one meal a day. he was the only man in town who believed in me at that time." "you was a littless shif'less, jefferson. you can't blame people. i wasn't quite sure myself how you'd get along." "no doubt you are right, uncle cyrus. it did me good to leave town. i didn't drink, but i had no ambition. when a man goes to a new country it's apt to make a new man of him. that was the case with me." "are you goin' back again, jefferson?" "yes, uncle. i'm going to stay round here long enough to fix up your affairs and get you out of your trouble. then i'll go back to the west. i have a little mining interest there and i can make more money there than i can here." "if you can get me out of my trouble, jefferson, i'll never forget it. nancy and i have been so worried that we couldn't sleep nights, but now i'm beginnin' to be a little more cheerful." jefferson pettigrew spent another hour at his uncle's house, and then went back to the tavern, where he found rodney waiting for him. he explained briefly the part he wished his boy friend to take in his plan for relieving his uncle. "i shall be receiving credit to which i am not entitled," said rodney. "still, if it will oblige you i am willing to play the part of the boy capitalist." the next morning after breakfast the two friends walked over to the house of cyrus hooper. aunt nancy came to the door and gave them a cordial welcome. "cyrus is over at the barn, jefferson," she said. "i'll ring the bell and he'll come in." "no, aunt nancy, i'll go out and let him know i am here." presently cyrus hooper came in, accompanied by jefferson. "uncle cyrus," said the miner, "let me introduce you to my friend rodney ropes, of new york." "i'm glad to see you," said cyrus heartily. "i'm glad to see any friend of jefferson's," "thank you, sir. i am pleased to meet you." "jefferson says you are goin' to montany with him." "i hope to do so. i am sure i shall enjoy myself in his company." "how far is montany, jefferson?" "it is over two thousand miles away, uncle cyrus." "it must be almost at the end of the world. i don't see how you can feel at home so far away from vermont." jefferson smiled. "i can content myself wherever i can make a good living," he said. "wouldn't you like to go out and make me a visit?" "no, jefferson, i should feel that it was temptin' providence to go so far at my age." "you never were very far from burton, uncle cyrus?" "i went to montpelier once," answered the old man with evident pride. "it is a nice sizable place. i stopped at the tavern, and had a good time." it was the only journey the old man had ever made, and he would never forget it. "uncle cyrus," said jefferson, "this is the young man who i thought might advance you money on a new mortgage. suppose we invite him to go over the farm, and take a look at it so as to see what he thinks of the investment." "sartain, jefferson, sartain! i do hope mr. ropes you'll look favorable on the investment. it is jefferson's idea, but it would be doin' me a great favor." "mr. pettigrew will explain the advantages of the farm as we go along," said rodney. so they walked from field to field, jefferson expatiating to his young friend upon the merits of the investment, rodney asking questions now and then to carry out his part of the shrewd and careful boy capitalist. when they had made a tour of the farm jefferson said: "well, rodney, what do you think of the investment?" "i am satisfied with it," answered rodney. "mr. hooper, i will advance you the money on the conditions mentioned by my friend, mr. pettigrew." tears of joy came into the eyes of cyrus hooper and his worn face showed relief. "i am very grateful, young man," he said. "i will see that you don't regret your kindness." "when will squire sheldon be over to settle matters, uncle cyrus?" asked jefferson. "he is comin' this afternoon at two o'clock." "then rodney and i will be over to take part in the business." chapter xxvii. the failure of squire sheldon's plot. on the morning of the same day squire sheldon sat in his study when the servant came in and brought a card. "it's a gentleman thats come to see you, sir," she said. lemuel sheldon's eye brightened when he saw the name, for it was that of a railroad man who was interested in the proposed road from sherborn. "i am glad to see you, mr. caldwell," he said cordially, rising to receive his guest. "what is the prospect as regards the railroad?" "i look upon it as a certainty," answered enoch caldwell, a grave, portly man of fifty. "and it is sure to pass through our town?" "yes, i look upon that as definitely decided." "the next question is as to the route it will take," went on the squire. "upon that point i should like to offer a few suggestions." "i shall be glad to receive them. in fact, i may say that my report will probably be accepted, and i shall be glad to consult you." "thank you. i appreciate the compliment you pay me, and, though i say it, i don't think you could find any one more thoroughly conversant with the lay of the land and the most advisable route to follow. if you will put on your hat we will go out together and i will give you my views." "i shall be glad to do so." the two gentlemen took a leisurely walk through the village, going by cyrus hooper's house on the way. "in my view," said the squire, "the road should go directly through this farm a little to the north of the house." the squire proceeded to explain his reasons for the route he recommended. "to whom does the farm belong?" asked caldwell, with a shrewd glance at the squire. "to an old man named cyrus hooper." "ahem! perhaps he would be opposed to the road passing so near his house." "i apprehend that he will not have to be consulted," said the squire with a crafty smile. "why not?" "because i hold a mortgage on the farm which i propose to foreclose this afternoon." "i see. so that you will be considerably benefited by the road." "yes, to a moderate extent." "but if a different course should be selected, how then?" "if the road goes through the farm i would be willing to give a quarter of the damages awarded to me to--you understand?" "i think i do. after all it seems the most natural route." "i think there can be no doubt on that point. of course the corporation will be willing to pay a reasonable sum for land taken." "i think i can promise that, as i shall have an important voice in the matter." "i see you are a thorough business man," said the squire. "i hold that it is always best to pursue a liberal policy." "quite so. you have no doubt of obtaining the farm?" "not the slightest." "but suppose the present owner meets the mortgage?" "he can't. he is a poor man, and he has no moneyed friends. i confess i was a little afraid that a nephew of his just returned from montana might be able to help him, but i learn that he has only brought home five hundred dollars while the mortgage, including interest, calls for thirteen hundred." "then you appear to be safe. when did you say the matter would be settled?" "this afternoon at two o'clock. you had better stay over and take supper with me. i shall be prepared to talk with you at that time." "very well." from a window of the farmhouse cyrus hooper saw squire sheldon and his guest walking by the farm, and noticed the interest which they seemed to feel in it. but for the assurance which he had received of help to pay the mortgage he would have felt despondent, for he guessed the subject of their conversation. as it was, he felt an excusable satisfaction in the certain defeat of the squire's hopes of gain. "it seems that the more a man has the more he wants, jefferson," he said to his nephew. "the squire is a rich man--the richest man in burton--but he wants to take from me the little property that i have." "it's the way of the world, uncle cyrus. in this case the squire is safe to be disappointed, thanks to my young friend, rodney." "its lucky for me, jefferson, that you came home just the time you did. if you had come a week later it would have been too late." "then you don't think the squire would have relented?" "i know he wouldn't. i went over a short time since and had a talk with him on the subject. i found he was sot on gettin' the farm into his own hands." "if he were willing to pay a fair value it wouldn't be so bad." "he wasn't. he wanted to get it as cheap as he could." "i wonder," said jefferson pettigrew reflectively, "whether i shall be as hard and selfish if ever i get rich." "i don't believe you will, jefferson. i don't believe you will. it doesn't run in the blood." "i hope not uncle cyrus. how long have you known the squire?" "forty years, jefferson. he is about ten years younger than i am. i was a young man when he was a boy." "and you attend the same church?" "yes." "and still he is willing to take advantage of you and reduce you to poverty. i don't see much religion in that." "when a man's interest is concerned religion has to stand to one side with some people." it was in a pleasant frame of mind that squire sheldon left his house and walked over to the farmhouse which he hoped to own. he had decided to offer eighteen hundred dollars for the farm, which would be five hundred over and above the face of the mortgage with the interest added. this of itelf would give him an excellent profit, but he expected also, as we know, to drive a stiff bargain with the new railroad company, for such land as they would require to use. "stay here till i come back, mr. caldwell," he said. "i apprehend it won't take me long to get through my business." squire sheldon knocked at the door of the farmhouse, which was opened to him by nancy hooper. "walk in, squire," she said. "is your husband at home, mrs. hooper?" "yes; he is waiting for you." mrs. hooper led the way into the sitting room, where her husband was sitting in a rocking chair. "good afternoon, mr. hooper," said the squire. "i hope i see you well." "as well as i expect to be. i'm gettin' to be an old man." "we must all grow old," said the squire vaguely. "and sometimes a man's latter years are his most sorrowful years." "that means that he can't pay the mortgage," thought squire sheldon. "well, ahem! yes, it does sometimes happen so," he said aloud. "still if a man's friends stand by him, that brings him some comfort." "i suppose you know what i've come about, mr. hooper," said the squire, anxious to bring his business to a conclusion. "i suppose it's about the mortgage." "yes, its about the mortgage." "will you be willing to extend it another year?" "i thought," said the squire, frowning, "i had given you to understand that i cannot do this. you owe me a large sum in accrued interest." "but if i make shift to pay this?" "i should say the same. it may as well come first as last. you can't hold the place, and there is no chance of your being better off by waiting." "i understand that the new railroad might go through my farm. that would put me on my feet." "there is no certainty that the road will ever be built. even if it were, it would not be likely to cross your farm." "i see, squire sheldon, you are bound to have the place." "there is no need to put it that way, mr. hooper. i lent you money on mortgage. you can't pay the mortgage, and of course i foreclose. however, i will buy the farm and allow you eighteen hundred dollars for it. that will give you five hundred dollars over and above the money you owe me." "the farm is worth three thousand dollars." "nonsense, mr. hooper. still if you get an offer of that sum _today_ i will advise you to sell." "i certainly won't take eighteen hundred." "you won't? then i shall foreclose, and you may have to take less." "then there is only one thing to do." "as you say, there is only one thing to do." "and that is, to pay off the mortgage and clear the farm." "you can't do it!" exclaimed the squire uneasily. cyrus hooper's only answer was to call "jefferson." jefferson pettigrew entered the room, followed by rodney. "what does this mean?" asked the squire. "it means, squire sheldon," said mr. pettigrew, "that you won't turn my uncle out of his farm this time. my young friend, rodney ropes, has advanced uncle cyrus money enough to pay off the mortgage." "i won't take a check," said the squire hastily. "you would have to if we insisted upon it, but i have the money here in bills. give me a release and surrender the mortgage, and you shall have your money." it was with a crestfallen look that squire sheldon left the farmhouse, though his pockets were full of money. "it's all up," he said to his friend caldwell in a hollow voice. "they have paid the mortgage." after all the railway did cross the farm, and uncle cyrus was paid two thousand dollars for the right of way, much to the disappointment of his disinterested friend lemuel sheldon, who felt that this sum ought to have gone into his own pocket. chapter xxviii. a minister's good fortune. "i have another call to make, rodney," said mr. pettigrew, as they were on their way back to the hotel, "and i want you to go with me." "i shall be glad to accompany you anywhere, mr. pettigrew." "you remember i told you of the old minister whose church i attended as a boy. he has never received but four hundred dollars a year, yet he has managed to rear a family, but has been obliged to use the strictest economy." "yes, i remember." "i am going to call on him, and i shall take the opportunity to make him a handsome present. it will surprise him, and i think it will be the first present of any size that he has received in his pastorate of over forty years. "there he lives!" continued jefferson, pointing out a very modest cottage on the left hand side of the road. it needed painting badly, but it looked quite as well as the minister who came to the door in a ragged dressing gown. he was venerable looking, for his hair was quite white, though he was only sixty five years old. but worldly cares which had come upon him from the difficulty of getting along on his scanty salary had whitened his hair and deepened the wrinkles on his kindly face. "i am glad to see you, jefferson," he said, his face lighting up with pleasure. "i heard you were in town and i hoped you wouldn't fail to call upon me." "i was sure to call, for you were always a good friend to me as well as many others." "i always looked upon you as one of my boys, jefferson. i hear that you have been doing well." "yes, mr. canfield. i have done better than i have let people know." "have you been to see your uncle? poor man, he is in trouble." "he is no longer in trouble. the mortgage is paid off, and as far as squire sheldon is concerned he is independent." "indeed, that is good news," said the old minister with beaming face. "you must surely have done well if you could furnish money enough to clear the farm. it was over a thousand dollars, wasn't it?" "yes, thirteen hundred. my young friend, rodney ropes, and myself managed it between us." "i am glad to see you, mr. ropes. come in both of you. mrs. canfield will be glad to welcome you." they followed him into the sitting room, the floor of which was covered by an old and faded carpet. the furniture was of the plainest description. but it looked pleasant and homelike, and the papers and books that were scattered about made it more attractive to a visitor than many showy city drawing rooms. "and how are all your children, mr. canfield?" asked jefferson. "maria is married to a worthy young man in the next town. benjamin is employed in a book store, and austin wants to go to college, but i don't see any way to send him, poor boy!" and the minister sighed softly. "does it cost much to keep a boy in college?" "not so much as might be supposed. there are beneficiary funds for deserving students, and then there is teaching to eke out a poor young man's income, so that i don't think it would cost over a hundred and fifty dollars a year." "that isn't a large sum." "not in itelf, but you know, jefferson, my salary is only four hundred dollars a year. it would take nearly half my income, so i think austin will have to give up his hopes of going to college and follow in his brother's steps." "how old is austin now?" "he is eighteen." "is he ready for college?" "yes, he could enter at the next commencement but for the financial problem." "i never had any taste for college, or study, as you know, mr. canfield. it is different with my friend rodney, who is a latin and greek scholar." the minister regarded rodney with new interest. "do you think of going to college, mr. ropes?" he asked. "not at present. i am going back to montana with mr. pettigrew. perhaps he and i will both go to college next year." "excuse me," said jefferson pettigrew. "latin and greek ain't in my line. i should make a good deal better miner than minister." "it is not desirable that all should become ministers or go to college," said mr. canfield. "i suspect from what i know of you, jefferson, that you judge yourself correctly. how long shall you stay in burton?" "i expect to go away tomorrow." "your visit is a brief one." "yes, i intended to stay longer, but i begin to be homesick after the west." "do you expect to make your permanent home there?" "i can't tell as to that. for the present i can do better there than here." the conversation lasted for some time. then jefferson pettigrew rose to go. "won't you call again, jefferson?" asked the minister hospitably. "i shall not have time, but before i go i want to make you a small present" and he put into the hands of the astonished minister four fifty dollar bills. "two hundred dollars!" ejaculated the minister. "why, i heard you only brought home a few hundred." "i prefer to leave that impression. to you i will say that i am worth a great deal more than that." "but you mustn't give me so much. i am sure you are too generous for your own interest. why, it's munificent, princely." "don't be troubled about me. i can spare it. send your boy to college, and next year i will send you another sum equally large." "how can i thank you, jefferson?" said mr. canfield, the tears coming into his eyes. "never in forty years have i had such a gift." "not even from squire sheldon?" "the squire is not in the habit of bestowing gifts, but he pays a large parish tax. may i--am i at liberty to say from whom i received this liberal donation?" "please don't! you can say that you have had a gift from a friend." "you have made me very happy, jefferson. your own conscience will reward you." jefferson pettigrew changed the subject, for it embarrassed him to be thanked. "that pays me for hard work and privation," he said to rodney as they walked back to the tavern. "after all there is a great pleasure in making others happy." "squire sheldon hadn't found that out." "and he never will." on the way they met the gentleman of whom they had been speaking. he bowed stiffly, for he could not feel cordial to those whom had snatched from him the house for which he had been scheming so long. "squire sheldon," said jefferson, "you were kind enough to invite rodney and myself to supper some evening. i am sorry to say that we must decline, as we leave burton tomorrow." "use your own pleasure, mr. pettigrew," said the squire coldly. "it doesn't seem to disappoint the squire very much," remarked jefferson, laughing, when the great man of the village had passed on. "it certainly is no disappointment to me." "nor to me. the little time i have left i can use more pleasantly than in going to see the squire. i have promised to supper at my uncle's tonight--that is, i have promised for both of us." returning to new york, jefferson and rodney set about getting ready for their western journey. rodney gave some of his wardrobe to mike flynn, and bought some plain suits suitable for his new home. while walking on broadway the day before the one fixed for his departure he fell in with jasper redwood. "have you got a place yet ropes?" asked jasper. "i am not looking for any." "how is that?" asked jasper in some surprise. "i am going to leave the city." "that is a good idea. all cannot succeed in the city. you may find a chance to work on a farm in the country." "i didn't say i was going to the country." "where are you going, then?" "to montana." "isn't that a good way off?" "yes." "what are you going to do there?" "i may go to mining." "but how can you afford to go so far?" "really, jasper, you show considerable curiosity about my affairs. i have money enough to buy my ticket, and i think i can find work when i get out there." "it seems to me a crazy idea." "it might be--for you." "and why for me?" asked jasper suspiciously. "because you might not be willing to rough it as i am prepared to do." "i guess you are right. i have always been used to living like a gentleman." "i hope you will always be able to do so. now i must bid you good by, as i am busy getting ready for my journey." jasper looked after rodney, not without perplexity. "i can't make out that boy," he said. "so he is going to be a common miner! well, that may suit him, but it wouldn't suit me. there is no chance now of his interfering with me, so i am glad he is going to leave the city." chapter xxix. a mining town in montana. the scene changes. three weeks later among the miners who were sitting on the narrow veranda of the "miners' rest" in oreville in montana we recognize two familiar faces and figures--those of jefferson pettigrew and rodney ropes. both were roughly clad, and if jasper could have seen rodney he would have turned up his nose in scorn, for rodney had all the look of a common miner. it was in oreville that mr. pettigrew had a valuable mining property, on which he employed quite a number of men who preferred certain wages to a compensation depending on the fluctuations of fortune. rodney was among those employed, but although he was well paid he could not get to like the work. of this, however, he said nothing to mr. pettigrew whose company he enjoyed, and whom he held in high esteem. on the evening in question jefferson rose from his seat and signed to rodney to follow him. "well, rodney, how do you like montana?" he asked. "well enough to be glad i came here," answered rodney. "still you are not partial to the work of a miner!" "i can think of other things i would prefer to do." "how would you like keeping a hotel?" "is there any hotel in search of a manager?" asked rodney smiling. "i will explain. yesterday i bought the `miners' rest.'" "what--the hotel where we board?" "exactly. i found that mr. bailey, who has made a comfortable sum of money, wants to leave montana and go east and i bought the hotel." "so that hereafter i shall board with you?" "not exactly. i propose to put you in charge, and pay you a salary. i can oversee, and give you instructions. how will that suit you?" "so you think i am competent, mr. pettigrew?" "yes, i think so. there is a good man cook, and two waiters. the cook will also order supplies and act as steward under you." "what then will be my duties?" "you will act as clerk and cashier, and pay the bills. you will have to look after all the details of management. if there is anything you don't understand you will have me to back you up, and advise you. what do you say?" "that i shall like it much better than mining. my only doubt is as to whether i shall suit you." "it is true that it takes a smart man to run a hotel, but i think we can do it between us. now what will you consider a fair salary?" "i leave that to you, mr. pettigrew." "then we will call it a hundred and fifty dollars a month and board." "but, mr. pettigrew," said rodney in surprise, "how can i possibly earn that much?" "you know we charge big prices, and have about fifty steady boarders. i expect to make considerable money after deducting all the expenses of management." "my friend jasper would be very much surprised if he could know the salary i am to receive. in the store i was only paid seven dollars a week." "the duties were different. almost any boy could discharge the duties of an entry clerk while it takes peculiar qualities to run a hotel." "i was certainly very fortunate to fall in with you, mr. pettigrew." "i expect it will turn out fortunate for me too, rodney." "when do you want me to start in?" "next monday morning. it is now thursday evening. mr. bailey will turn over the hotel to me on saturday night. you needn't go to the mines tomorrow, but may remain in the hotel, and he will instruct you in the details of management." "that will be quite a help to me, and i am at present quite ignorant on the subject." rodney looked forward with pleasure to his new employment. he had good executive talent, though thus far he had had no occasion to exercise it. it was with unusual interest that he set about qualifying himself for his new position. "young man," said the veteran landlord, "i think you'll do. i thought at first that jefferson was foolish to put a young boy in my place, but you've got a head on your shoulders, you have! i guess you'll fill the bill." "i hope to do so, mr. bailey." "jefferson tells me that you understand latin and greek?" "i know something of them." "thats what prejudiced me against you. i hired a college boy once as a clerk and he was the worst failure i ever came across. he seemed to have all kinds of sense except common sense. i reckon he was a smart scholar, and he could have made out the bills for the boarders in latin or greek if it had been necessary, but he was that soft that any one could cheat him. things got so mixed up in the department that i had to turn him adrift in a couple of weeks. i surmised you might be the same sort of a chap. if you were it would be a bad lookout for jefferson." in oreville mr. pettigrew was so well known that nearly everyone called him by his first name. mr. pettigrew did not {care for} {{object to}} this as he had no false pride or artificial dignity. {`care for' is what is printed in this book! but `object to' makes much more sense. post this sentence as you wish! this book was originally serialized in _argosy_ in 1893, if you wish to check what is printed there.} "do you consider this hotel a good property, mr. bailey?" "i'll tell you this much. i started here four years ago, and i've made fifty thousand dollars which i shall take back with me to new hampshire." "that certainly is satisfactory." "i shouldn't wonder if you could improve upon it." "how does it happen that you sell out such a valuable property, mr. bailey? are you tired of making money?" "no, but i must tell you that there's a girl waiting for me at home, an old schoolmate, who will become mrs. bailey as soon as possible after i get back. if she would come out here i wouldn't sell, but she has a mother that she wouldn't leave, and so i must go to her." "that is a good reason, mr. bailey." "besides with fifty thousand dollars i can live as well as i want to in new hampshire, and hold up my head with the best. you will follow my example some day." "it will be a long day first, mr. bailey, for i am only sixteen." on monday morning the old landlord started for his eastern home and rodney took his place. it took him some little time to become familiar with all the details of hotel management, but he spared no pains to insure success. he had some trouble at first with the cook who presumed upon his position and rodney's supposed ignorance to run things as he chose. rodney complained to mr. pettigrew. "i think i can fix things, rodney," he said. "there's a man working for me who used to be cook in a restaurant in new york. i found out about him quietly, for i wanted to be prepared for emergencies. the next time gordon act contrary and threatens to leave, tell him he can do as he pleases. then report to me." the next day there came another conflict of authority. "if you don't like the way i manage you can get somebody else," said the cook triumphantly. "perhaps you'd like to cook the dinner yourself. you're nothing but a boy, and i don't see what jefferson was thinking of to put you in charge." "that is his business, mr. gordon." "i advise you not to interfere with me, for i won't stand it." "why didn't you talk in this way to mr. bailey?" "that's neither here nor there. he wasn't a boy for one thing." "then you propose to have your own way, mr. gordon?" "yes, i do." "very well, then you can leave me at the end of this week." "what!" exclaimed the cook in profound astonishment. "are you going crazy?" "no, i know what i am about." "perhaps you intend to cook yourself." "no, i don't. that would close up the hotel." "look here, young feller, you're gettin' too independent! i've a great mind to leave you tonight." "you can do so if you want to," said rodney indifferently. "then i will!" retorted gordon angrily, bringing down his fist upon the table in vigorous emphasis. oreville was fifty miles from helena, and that was the nearest point, as he supposed, where a new cook could be obtained. after supper rodney told jefferson pettigrew what had happened. "have i done right?" he asked. "yes; we can't have any insubordination here. there can't be two heads of one establishment. send gordon to me." the cook with a defiant look answered the summons. "i understand you want to leave, gordon," said jefferson pettigrew. "that depends. i ain't goin' to have no boy dictatin' to me." "then you insist upon having your own way without interference." "yes, i do." "very well, i accept your resignation. do you wish to wait till the end of the week, or to leave tonight?" "i want to give it up tonight." "very well, go to rodney and he will pay you what is due you." "are you goin' to get along without a cook?" inquired gordon in surprise. "no." "what are you going to do, then?" "i shall employ parker in your place." "what does he know about cookin'?" "he ran a restaurant in new york for five years, the first part of the time having charge of the cooking. we shan't suffer even if you do leave us." "i think i will stay," said gordon in a submissive tone. "it is too late. you have discharged yourself. you can't stay here on any terms." gordon left oreville the next day a sorely disappointed man, for he had received more liberal pay than he was likely to command elsewhere. the young landlord had triumphed. chapter xxx. the mysterious robbery. at the end of a month jefferson pettigrew said: "i've been looking over the books, rodney, and i find the business is better than i expected. how much did i agree to pay you?" "a hundred and fifty dollars a month, but if you think that it is too much----" "too much? why i am going to advance you to two hundred and fifty." "you can't be in earnest, mr. pettigrew?" "i am entirely so." "that is at the rate of three thousand dollars a year!" "yes, but you are earning it." "you know i am only a boy." "that doesn't make any difference as long as you understand your business." "i am very grateful to you, mr. pettigrew. my, i can save two hundred dollars a month." "do so, and i will find you a paying investment for the money." "what would jasper say to my luck?" thought rodney. three months passed without any incident worth recording. one afternoon a tall man wearing a high hat and a prince albert coat with a paste diamond of large size in his shirt bosom entered the public room of the miners' rest and walking up to the bar prepared to register his name. as he stood with his pen in his hand rodney recognized him not without amazement. it was louis wheeler--the railroad thief, whom he had last seen in new york. as for wheeler he had not taken any notice of the young clerk, not suspecting that it was an old acquaintance who was familiar with his real character. "have you just arrived in montana, mr. wheeler?" asked rodney quietly. as rodney had not had an opportunity to examine his signature in the register wheeler looked up in quiet surprise. "do you know me?" he asked. "yes; don't you know me?" "i'll be blowed if it isn't the kid," ejaculated wheeler. "as i run this hotel, i don't care to be called a kid." "all right mr.----" "ropes." "mr. ropes, you are the most extraordinary boy i ever met." "am i?" "who would have thought of your turning up as a montana landlord." "i wouldn't have thought of it myself four months ago. but what brings you out here?" "business," answered wheeler in an important tone. "are you going to become a miner?" "i may buy a mine if i find one to suit me." "i am glad you seem to be prospering." "can you give me a good room?" "yes, but i must ask a week's advance payment." "how much?" "twenty five dollars." "all right. here's the money." louis wheeler pulled out a well filled wallet and handed over two ten dollar bills and a five. "is that satisfactory?" he asked. "quite so. you seem better provided with money than when i saw you last." "true. i was then in temporary difficulty. but i made a good turn in stocks and i am on my feet again." rodney did not believe a word of this, but as long as wheeler was able to pay his board he had no good excuse for refusing him accommodation. "that rascal here!" exclaimed jefferson, when rodney informed him of wheeler's arrival. "well, thats beat all! what has brought him out here?" "business, he says." "it may be the same kind of business that he had with me. he will bear watching." "i agree with you, mr. pettigrew." louis wheeler laid himself out to be social and agreeable, and made himself quite popular with the other boarders at the hotel. as jefferson and rodney said nothing about him, he was taken at his own valuation, and it was reported that he was a heavy capitalist from chicago who had come to montana to buy a mine. this theory received confirmation both from his speech and actions. on the following day he went about in oreville and examined the mines. he expressed his opinion freely in regard to what he saw, and priced one that was for sale at fifty thousand dollars. "i like this mine," he said, "but i don't know enough about it to make an offer. if it comes up to my expectations i will try it." "he must have been robbing a bank," observed jefferson pettigrew. nothing could exceed the cool assurance with which wheeler greeted jefferson and recalled their meeting in new york. "you misjudged me then, mr. pettigrew," he said. "i believe upon my soul you looked upon me as an adventurer--a confidence man." "you are not far from the truth, mr. wheeler," answered jefferson bluntly. "well, i forgive you. our acquaintance was brief and you judged from superficial impressions." "perhaps so, mr. wheeler. have you ever been west before?" "no." "when you came to oreville had you any idea that i was here?" "no; if i had probably i should not have struck the town, as i knew that you didn't have a favorable opinion of me." "i can't make out much of that fellow, rodney," said jefferson. "i can't understand his object in coming here." "he says he wants to buy a mine." "that's all a pretext. he hasn't money enough to buy a mine or a tenth part of it." "he seems to have money." "yes; he may have a few hundred dollars, but mark my words, he hasn't the slightest intention of buying a mine." "he has some object in view." "no doubt! what it is is what i want to find out." there was another way in which louis wheeler made himself popular among the miners of oreville. he had a violin with him, and in the evening he seated himself on the veranda and played popular tunes. he had only a smattering in the way of musical training, but the airs he played took better than classical music would have done. even jefferson pettigrew enjoyed listening to "home, sweet home" and "the last rose of summer," while the miners were captivated by merry dance tunes, which served to enliven them after a long day's work at the mines. one day there was a sensation. a man named john o'donnell came down stairs from his room looking pale and agitated. "boys," he said, "i have been robbed." instantly all eyes were turned upon him. "of what have you been robbed, o'donnell?" asked jefferson. "of two hundred dollars in gold. i was going to send it home to my wife in connecticut next week." "when did you miss it?" "just now." "where did you keep it?" "in a box under my bed." "when do you think it was taken?" "last night." "what makes you think so?" "i am a sound sleeper, and last night you know was very dark. i awoke with a start, and seemed to hear footsteps. i looked towards the door, and saw a form gliding from the room." "why didn't you jump out of bed and seize the intruder whoever he was?" "because i was not sure but it was all a dream. i think now it was some thief who had just robbed me." "i think so too. could you make out anything of his appearance?" "i could only see the outlines of his figure. he was a tall man. he must have taken the money from under my bed." "did any one know that you had money concealed there?" "i don't think i ever mentioned it." "it seems we have a thief among us," said jefferson, and almost unconsciously his glance rested on louis wheeler who was seated near john o'donnell, "what do you think, mr. wheeler?" "i think you are right, mr. pettigrew." "have you any suggestion to make?" asked jefferson. "have you by chance lost anything?" "not that i am aware of." "is there any one else here who has been robbed?" no one spoke. "you asked me if i had any suggestions to make, mr. pettigrew," said louis wheeler after a pause. "i have. "our worthy friend mr. o'donnell has met with a serious loss. i move that we who are his friends make it up to him. here is my contribution," and he laid a five dollar bill on the table. it was a happy suggestion and proved popular. every one present came forward, and tendered his contributions including jefferson, who put down twenty five dollars. mr. wheeler gathered up the notes and gold and sweeping them to his hat went forward and tendered them to john o'donnell. "take this money, mr. o'donnell," he said. "it is the free will offering of your friends. i am sure i may say for them, as for myself, that it gives us all pleasure to help a comrade in trouble." louis wheeler could have done nothing that would have so lifted him in the estimation of the miners. "and now," he said, "as our friend is out of his trouble i will play you a few tunes on my violin, and will end the day happily." "i can't make out that fellow, rodney," said jefferson when they were alone. "i believe he is the thief, but he has an immense amount of nerve." chapter xxxi. mr. wheeler explains. probably there was no one at the hotel who suspected louis wheeler of being a thief except rodney and mr. pettigrew. his action in starting a contribution for john o'donnell helped to make him popular. he was establishing a reputation quite new to him, and it was this fact probably that made him less prudent than he would otherwise have been. as the loss had been made up, the boarders at the miners' rest ceased to talk of it. but jefferson and his young assistant did not forget it. "i am sure wheeler is the thief, but i don't know how to bring it home to him," said jefferson one day, when alone with rodney. "you might search him." "yes, but what good would that do? it might be found that he had money, but one gold coin is like another and it would be impossible to identify it as the stolen property. if o'donnell had lost anything else except money it would be different. i wish he would come to my chamber." "perhaps he would if he thought you were a sound sleeper." "that is an idea. i think i can make use of it.". that evening when wheeler was present mr. pettigrew managed to turn the conversation to the subject of sleeping. "i am a very sound sleeper," he said. "i remember when i was at home sleeping many a time through a severe thunder storm." "don't you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night?" asked rodney. "very seldom, if i am in good health." "its different with me," said another of the company. "a step on the floor or the opening of the door will wake me up at any time." "i am glad i am not so easily roused." "if i had a fish horn," said rodney, laughing, "i should be tempted to come up in the night and give it a blast before your door." "that might wake me up," said mr. pettigrew. "i wouldn't advise you to try it or the other boarders might get up an indignation meeting." the same evening jefferson pettigrew took out a bag of gold and carelessly displayed it. "are you not afraid of being robbed, mr. pettigrew?" asked rodney. "oh no. i never was robbed in my life." "how much money have you there?" "i don't know exactly. perhaps six hundred dollars," said pettigrew in an indifferent tone. among those who listened to this conversation with interest was louis wheeler. rodney did not fail to see the covetous gleam of his eyes when the gold was displayed. the fact was, that wheeler was getting short of cash and at the time he took john o'donnell's money--for he was the thief--he had but about twenty dollars left, and of this he contributed five to the relief of the man he had robbed. his theft realized him two hundred dollars, but this would not last him long, as the expenses of living at the miners' rest were considerable. he was getting tired of oreville, but wanted to secure some additional money before he left it. the problem was whom to make his second victim. it would not have occurred to him to rob jefferson pettigrew, of whom he stood in wholesome fear, but for the admission that he was an unusually sound sleeper; even then he would have felt uncertain whether it would pay. but the display of the bag of money, and the statement that it contained six hundred dollars in gold proved a tempting bait. "if i can capture that bag of gold," thought wheeler, "i shall have enough money to set me up in some new place. there won't be much risk about it, for pettigrew sleeps like a top. i will venture it." jefferson pettigrew's chamber was on the same floor as his own. it was the third room from no. 17 which mr. wheeler occupied. as a general thing the occupants of the miners' rest went to bed early. mining is a fatiguing business, and those who follow it have little difficulty in dropping off to sleep. the only persons who were not engaged in this business were louis wheeler and rodney ropes. as a rule the hotel was closed at half past ten and before this all were in bed and sleeping soundly. when wheeler went to bed he said to himself, "this will probably be my last night in this tavern. i will go from here to helena, and if things turn out right i may be able to make my stay there profitable. i shan't dare to stay here long after relieving pettigrew of his bag of gold." unlike jefferson pettigrew, wheeler was a light sleeper. he had done nothing to induce fatigue, and had no difficulty in keeping awake till half past eleven. then lighting a candle, he examined his watch, and ascertained the time. "it will be safe enough now," he said to himself. he rose from his bed, and drew on his trousers. then in his stocking feet he walked along the corridor till he stood in front of jefferson pettigrew's door. he was in doubt as to whether he would not be obliged to pick the lock, but on trying the door he found that it was not fastened. he opened it and stood within the chamber. cautiously he glanced at the bed. mr. pettigrew appeared to be sleeping soundly. "it's all right" thought louis wheeler. "now where is the bag of gold?" it was not in open view, but a little search showed that the owner had put it under the bed. "he isn't very sharp," thought wheeler. "he is playing right into my hands. door unlocked, and bag of gold under the bed. he certainly is a very unsuspicious man. however, that is all the better for me. really there isn't much credit in stealing where all is made easy for you." there seemed to be nothing to do but to take the gold from its place of deposit and carry it back to his own room. while there were a good many lodgers in the hotel, there seemed to be little risk about this, as every one was asleep. of course should the bag be found in his room that would betray him, but mr. wheeler proposed to empty the gold coins into his gripsack, and throw the bag out of the window into the back yard. "well, here goes!" said wheeler cheerfully, as he lifted the bag, and prepared to leave the chamber. but at this critical moment an unexpected sound struck terror into his soul. it was the sound of a key being turned in the lock. nervously wheeler hastened to the door and tried it. it would not open. evidently it had been locked from the outside. what could it mean? at the same time there was a series of knocks on the outside of the door. it was the signal that had been agreed upon between mr. pettigrew and rodney. jefferson had given his key to rodney, who had remained up and on the watch for mr. wheeler's expected visit. he, too, was in his stocking feet. as soon as he saw wheeler enter his friend's chamber he stole up and locked the door on the outide. then when he heard the thief trying to open the door he rained a shower of knocks on the panel. instantly jefferson pettigrew sprang out of bed and proceeded to act. "what are you doing here?" he demanded, seizing wheeler in his powerful grasp. "where am i?" asked wheeler in a tone of apparent bewilderment. "oh, it's you, mr. wheeler?" said jefferson. "don't you know where you are?" "oh, it is my friend, mr. pettigrew. is it possible i am in your room?" "it is very possible. now tell me why you are here?" "i am really ashamed to find myself in this strange position. it is not the first time that i have got into trouble from walking in my sleep." "oh, you were walking in your sleep!" "yes, friend petttigrew. it has been a habit of mine since i was a boy. but it seems very strange that i should have been led to your room. how could i get in? wasn't the door locked?" "it is locked now?" "it is strange! i don't understand it," said wheeler, passing his hand over his forehead. "perhaps you understand why you have that bag of gold in your hand." "can it be possible?" ejaculated wheeler in well counterfeited surprise. "i don't know how to account for it." "i think i can. rodney, unlock the door and come in." the key was turned in the lock, and rodney entered with a lighted candle in his hand. "you see, rodney, that i have a late visitor. you will notice also that my bag of gold seems to have had an attraction for him." "i am ashamed. i don't really know how to explain it except in this way. when you displayed the gold last night it drew my attention and i must have dreamed of it. it was this which drew me unconsciously to your door. it is certainly an interesting fact in mental science." "it would have been a still more interesting fact if you had carried off the gold." "i might even have done that in my unconsciousness, but of course i should have discovered it tomorrow morning and would have returned it to you." "i don't feel by any means sure of that. look here, mr. wheeler, if that is your name, you can't pull the wool over my eyes. you are a thief, neither more nor less." "how can you misjudge me so, mr. pettigrew?" "because i know something of your past history. it is clear to me now that you were the person that stole john o'donnell's money." "indeed, mr. pettigrew." "it is useless to protest. how much of it have you left?" louis wheeler was compelled to acknowledge the theft, and returned one hundred dollars to jefferson pettigrew. "now," said jefferson, "i advise you to leave the hotel at once. if the boys find out that you are a thief you will stand a chance of being lynched. get out!" the next morning jefferson pettigrew told the other boarders that louis wheeler had had a sudden call east, and it was not for a week that he revealed to them the real reason of wheeler's departure. chapter xxxii. rodney falls into a trap. rodney had reason to be satisfied with his position as landlord of the miners' rest. his pay was large, and enabled him to put away a good sum every month, but his hours were long and he was too closely confined for a boy of his age. at the end of three months he showed this in his appearance. his good friend pettigrew saw it and said one day, "rodney, you are looking fagged out. you need a change." "does that mean that you are going to discharge me?" asked rodney, with a smile. "it means that i am going to give you a vacation." "but what can i do if i take a vacation? i should not like lounging around oreville with nothing to do." "such a vacation would do you no good. i'll tell you the plan i have for you. i own a small mine in babcock, about fifty miles north of oreville. i will send you up to examine it, and make a report to me. can you ride on horseback?" "yes." "that is well, for you will have to make your trip in that way. there are no railroads in that direction, nor any other way of travel except on foot or on horseback. a long ride like that with hours daily in the open air, will do you good. what do you say to it?" "i should like nothing better," replied rodney, with his eyes sparkling. "only, how will you get along without me?" "i have a man in my employ at the mines who will do part of your work, and i will have a general oversight of things. so you need not borrow any trouble on that account. do you think you can find your way?" "give me the general direction, and i will guarantee to do so. when shall i start?" "day after tomorrow. that will give me one day for making arrangements." at nine the appointed morning mr. pettigrew's own horse stood saddled at the door, and rodney in traveling costume with a small satchel in his hand, mounted and rode away, waving a smiling farewell to his friend and employer. rodney did not hurry, and so consumed two days and a half in reaching babcock. here he was cordially received by the superintendent whom jefferson pettigrew had placed in charge of the mine. every facility was afforded him to examine into the management of things and he found all satisfactory. this part of his journey, therefore, may be passed over. but his return trip was destined to be more exciting. riding at an easy jog rodney had got within fifteen miles of oreville, when there was an unexpected interruption. two men started out from the roadside, or rather from one side of the bridle path for there was no road, and advanced to meet him with drawn revolvers. "halt there!" one of them exclaimed in a commanding tone. rodney drew bridle, and gazed at the two men in surprise. "what do you want of me?" he asked. "dismount instantly!" "why should i? what right have you to interfere with my journey?" "might gives right," said one of the men sententiously. "it will be best for you to do as we bid you without too much back talk." "what are you--highwaymen?" asked rodney. "you'd better not talk too much. get off that horse!" rodney saw that remonstrance was useless, and obeyed the order. one of the men seized the horse by the bridle, and led him. "walk in front!" he said. "where are you going to take me?" asked rodney. "you will know in due time." "i hope you will let me go," urged rodney, beginning to be uneasy. "i am expected home this evening, or at all event i want to get there." "no doubt you do, but the miners' rest will have to get along without you for a while." "do you know me then?" "yes; you are the boy clerk at the miners' rest." "you both put up there about two weeks since," said rodney, examining closely the faces of the two men. "right you are, kid!" "what can you possibly want of me?" "don't be too curious. you will know in good time." rodney remembered that the two men had remained at the hotel for a day and night. they spent the day in wandering around oreville. he had supposed when they came that they were in search of employment, but they had not applied for work and only seemed actuated by curiosity. what could be their object in stopping him now he could not understand. it would have been natural to suppose they wanted money, but they had not asked for any as yet. he had about fifty dollars in his pocketbook and he would gladly have given them this if it would have insured his release. but not a word had been said about money. they kept on their journey. montana is a mountainous state, and they were now in the hilly regions. they kept on for perhaps half an hour, gradually getting upon higher ground, until they reached a precipitous hill composed largely of rock. here the two men stopped as if they had reached their journey's end. one of them advanced to the side of the hill and unlocked a thick wooden door which at first had failed to attract rodney's attention. the door swung open, revealing a dark passage, cut partly through stone and partly through earth. inside on the floor was a bell of good size. one of the men lifted the bell and rang it loudly. "what does that mean?" thought rodney, who felt more curious than apprehensive. he soon learned. a curious looking negro, stunted in growth, for he was no taller than a boy of ten, came out from the interior and stood at the entrance of the cave, if such it was. his face was large and hideous, there was a hump on his back, and his legs were not a match, one being shorter than the other, so that as he walked, his motion was a curious one. he bent a scrutinizing glance on rodney. "well, caesar, is dinner ready?" asked one of the men. "no, massa, not yet." "let it be ready then as soon as possible. but first lead the way. we are coming in." he started ahead, leading the horse, for the entrance was high enough to admit the passage of the animal. "push on!" said the other, signing to rodney to precede him. rodney did so, knowing remonstrance to be useless. his curiosity was excited. he wondered how long the passage was and whither it led. the way was dark, but here and there in niches was a kerosene lamp that faintly relieved the otherwise intense blackness. "i have read about such places," thought rodney, "but i never expected to get into one. the wonder is, that they should bring me here. i can't understand their object." rodney followed his guide for perhaps two hundred and fifty feet when they emerged into a large chamber of irregular shape, lighted by four large lamps set on a square wooden table. there were two rude cots in one corner, and it was here apparently that his guides made their home. there was a large cooking stove in one part of the room, and an appetizing odor showed that caesar had the dinner under way. rodney looked about him in curiosity. he could not decide whether the cave was natural or artificial. probably it was a natural cave which had been enlarged by the hand of man. "now hurry up the dinner, caesar," said one of the guides. "we are all hungry." "yes, massa," responded the obedient black. rodney felt hungry also, and hoped that he would have a share of the dinner. later he trusted to find out the object of his new acquaintances in kidnaping him. dinner was soon ready. it was simple, but rodney thoroughly enjoyed it. during the meal silence prevailed. after it his new acquaintances produced pipes and began to smoke. they offered rodney a cigarette, but he declined it. "i don't smoke," he said. "are you a sunday school kid?" asked one in a sneering tone. "well, perhaps so." "how long have you lived at oreville?" "about four months." "who is the head of the settlement there?" "jefferson pettigrew." "he is the moneyed man, is he?" "yes." "is he a friend of yours?" "he is my best friend," answered rodney warmly. "he thinks a good deal of you, then?" "i think he does." "where have you been--on a journey?" "yes, to the town of babcock." "did he send you?" "yes." "what interest has he there?" "he is chief owner of a mine there." "humph! i suppose you would like to know why we brought you here." "i would very much." "we propose to hold you for ransom." "but why should you? i am only a poor boy." "you are the friend of jefferson pettigrew. he is a rich man. if he wants you back he must pay a round sum." it was all out now! these men were emulating a class of outlaws to be found in large numbers in italy and sicily, and were trading upon human sympathy and levying a tax upon human friendship. chapter xxxiii. underground. rodney realized his position. the alternative was not a pleasant one. either he must remain in the power of these men, or cost his friend mr. pettigrew a large sum as ransom. there was little hope of changing the determination of his captors, but he resolved to try what he could do. "mr. pettigrew is under no obligations to pay money out for me," he said. "i am not related to him, and have not yet known him six months." "that makes no difference. you are his friend, and he likes you." "that is the very reason why i should not wish him to lose money on my account." "oh, very well! it will be bad for you is he doesn't come to your help." "why? what do you propose to do to me?" asked rodney boldly. "better not ask!" was the significant reply. "but i want to know. i want to realize my position." "the least that will happen to you is imprisonment in this cave for a term of years." "i don't think i should like it but you would get tired of standing guard over me." "we might, and in that case there is the other thing." "what other thing?" "if we get tired of keeping you here, we shall make short work with you." "would you murder me?" asked rodney, horror struck, as he might well be, for death seems terrible to a boy just on the threshold of life. "we might be obliged to do so." rodney looked in the faces of his captors, and he saw nothing to encourage him. they looked like desperate men, who would stick at nothing to carry out their designs. "i don't see why you should get hold of me," he said. "if you had captured mr. pettigrew himself you would stand a better chance of making it pay." "there is no chance of capturing pettigrew. if there were we would prefer him to you. a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." "how much ransom do you propose to ask?" this rodney said, thinking that if it were a thousand dollars he might be able to make it good to his friend jefferson. but he was destined to be disappointed. "five thousand dollars," answered the chief speaker. "five thousand dollars!" ejaculated rodney in dismay. "five thousand dollars for a boy like me!" "that is the sum we want." "if it were one thousand i think you might get it." "one thousand!" repeated the other scornfully. "that wouldn't half pay us." "then suppose you call it two thousand?" "it won't do." "then i suppose i must make up my mind to remain a prisoner." "five thousand dollars wouldn't be much to a rich man like pettigrew. we have inquired, and found out that he is worth at least a hundred thousand dollars. five thousand is only a twentieth part of this sum." "you can do as you please, but you had better ask a reasonable amount if you expect to get it." "we don't want advice. we shall manage things in our own way." convinced that further discussion would be unavailing, rodney relapsed into silence, but now his captors proceeded to unfold their plans. one of them procured a bottle of ink, some paper and a pen, and set them on the table. "come up here, boy, and write to mr. pettigrew," he said in a tone of authority. "what shall i write?" "tell him that you are a prisoner, and that you will not be released unless he pays five thousand dollars." "i don't want to write that. it will be the same as asking him to pay it for me." "that is what we mean him to understand." "i won't write it." rodney knew his danger, but he looked resolutely into the eyes of the men who held his life in their hands. his voice did not waver, for he was a manly and courageous boy. "the boy's got grit!" said one of the men to the other. "yes, but it won't save him. boy, are you going to write what i told you?" "no." "are you not afraid that we will kill you?" "you have power to do it." "don't you want to live?" "yes. life is sweet to a boy of sixteen." "then why don't you write?" "because i think it would be taking a mean advantage of mr. pettigrew." "you are a fool. roderick, what shall we do with him?" "tell him simply to write that he is in our hands." "well thought of. boy, will you do that?" "yes." rodney gave his consent for he was anxious that mr. pettigrew should know what had prevented him from coming home when he was expected. "very well, write! you will know what to say." rodney drew the paper to him, and wrote as follows: dear mr. pettigrew, on my way home i was stopped by two men who have confined me in a cave, and won't let me go unless a sum of money is paid for my ransom. i don't know what to do. you will know better than i. rodney ropes. his chief captor took the note and read it aloud. "that will do," he said. "now he will believe us when we say that you are in our hands." he signed to rodney to rise from the table and took his place. drawing a pile of paper to him, he penned the following note: rodney ropes is in our hands. he wants his liberty and we want money. send us five thousand dollars, or arrange a meeting at which it can be delivered to us, and he shall go free. otherwise his death be on your hands. his captors. rodney noticed that this missive was written in a handsome business hand. "you write a handsome hand," he said. "i ought to," was the reply. "i was once bookkeeper in a large business house." "and what--" here rodney hesitated. "what made me an outlaw you mean to ask?" "yes." "my nature, i suppose. i wasn't cut out for sober, humdrum life." "don't you think you would have been happier?" "no preaching, kid! i had enough of that when i used to go to church in my old home in missouri. here, caesar!" "yes, massa." "you know oreville?" "yes, massa." "go over there and take this letter with you. ask for jefferson pettigrew, and mind you don't tell him where we live. only if he asks about me and my pal say we are desperate men, have each killed a round dozen of fellows that stood in our way and will stick at nothing." "all right, massa," said caesar with an appreciative grin. "how shall i go, massa?" "you can take the kid's horse. ride to within a mile of oreville, then tether the horse where he won't easily be found, and walk over to the mines. do you understand?" "yes, massa." "he won't probably give you any money, but he may give you a letter. bring it safely to me." caesar nodded and vanished. for an hour the two men smoked their pipes and chatted. then they rose, and the elder said: "we are going out, kid, for a couple of hours. are you afraid to stay alone?" "why should i be?" "that's the way to talk. i won't caution you not to escape, for it would take a smarter lad then you to do it. if you are tired you can lie down on the bed and rest." "all right!" "i am sorry we haven't got the morning paper for you to look over," said his captor with a smile. "the carrier didn't leave it this morning." "i can get along without it. i don't feel much like reading." "you needn't feel worried. you'll be out of this tomorrow if jefferson pettigrew is as much your friend as you think he is." "the only thing that troubles me is the big price you charge at your hotel." "good! the kid has a good wit of his own. after all, we wouldn't mind keeping you with us. it might pay you better than working for pettigrew." "i hope you'll excuse my saying it, but i don't like the business." "you may change your mind. at your age we wouldn't either of us like the sort of life we are leading. come, john." the two men went out but did not allow rodney to accompany them to the place of exit. left to himself, rodney could think soberly of his plight. he could not foresee whether his captivity would be brief or prolonged. after a time the spirit of curiosity seized him. he felt tempted to explore the cavern in which he was confined. he took a lamp, and followed in a direction opposite to that taken by his captors. the cave he found was divided into several irregularly shaped chambers. he walked slowly, holding up the lamp to examine the walls of the cavern. in one passage he stopped short, for something attracted his attention--something the sight of which made his heart beat quicker and filled him with excitement. chapter xxxiv. rodney's discovery. there was a good reason for rodney's excitement. the walls of the subterranean passage revealed distinct and rich indications of gold. there was a time, and that not long before, when they would have revealed nothing to rodney, but since his residence at oreville he had more than once visited the mines and made himself familiar with surface indications of mineral deposit. he stopped short and scanned attentively the walls of the passage. "if i am not mistaken," he said to himself, "this will make one of the richest mines in montana. but after all what good will it do me? here am i a prisoner, unable to leave the cave, or communicate with my friends. if mr. pettigrew knew what i do he would feel justified in paying the ransom these men want." rodney wondered how these rich deposits had failed to attract the attention of his captors, but he soon settled upon the conclusion that they had no knowledge of mines or mining, and were ignorant of the riches that were almost in their grasp. "shall i enlighten them?" he asked himself. it was a question which he could not immediately answer. he resolved to be guided by circumstances. in order not to excite suspicion he retraced his steps to the apartment used by his captors as a common sitting room--carefully fixing in his mind the location of the gold ore. we must now follow the messenger who had gone to oreville with a letter from rodney's captors. as instructed, he left his horse, or rather rodney's, tethered at some distance from the settlement and proceeded on foot to the miners' rest. his strange appearance excited attention and curiosity. both these feelings would have been magnified had it been known on what errand he came. "where can i find mr. jefferson pettigrew?" he asked of a man whom he saw on the veranda. "at the griffin mine," answered the other, removing the pipe from his mouth. "where is that?" "over yonder. are you a miner?" "no. i know nothing about mines." "then why do you want to see jefferson? i thought you might want a chance to work in the mine." "no; i have other business with him--business of importance," added the black dwarf emphatically. "if that is the case i'll take you to him. i am always glad to be of service to jefferson." "thank you. he will thank you, too." the man walked along with a long, swinging gait which made it difficult for caesar to keep up with him. "so you have business with jefferson?" said the man with the pipe, whose curiosity had been excited. "yes." "of what sort?" "i will tell him," answered caesar shortly. "so its private, is it?" "yes. if he wants to tell you he will." "that's fair. well, come along! am i walking too fast for you?" "your legs are much longer than mine." "that's so. you are a little shrimp. i declare." a walk of twenty minutes brought them to the griffin mine. jefferson pettigrew was standing near, giving directions to a party of miners. "jefferson," said the man with the pipe, "here's a chap that wants to see you on business of importance. that is, he says it is." jefferson pettigrew wheeled round and looked at caesar. "well," he said, "what is it?" "i have a letter for you, massa." "give it to me." jefferson took the letter and cast his eye over it. as he read it his countenance changed and became stern and severe. "do you know what is in this letter?" he asked. "yes." "come with me." he led caesar to a place out of earshot. "what fiend's game is this?" he demanded sternly. "i can't tell you, massa; i'm not in it." "who are those men that have written to me?" "i don't know their right names. i calls 'em massa john and massa dick." "it seems they have trapped a boy friend of mine, rodney ropes. did you see him?" "yes; i gave him a good dinner." "that is well. if they should harm a hair of his head i wouldn't rest till i had called them to account. where have they got the boy concealed?" "i couldn't tell you, massa." "you mean, you won't tell me." "yes. it would be as much as my life is worth." "humph, well! i suppose you must be faithful to your employer. do you know that these men want me to pay five thousand dollars for the return of the boy?" "yes, i heard them talking about it." "that is a new kind of rascality. do they expect you to bring back an answer?" "yes, massa." "i must think. what will they do to the boy if i don't give them the money?" "they might kill him." "if they do--but i must have time to think the matter over. are you expected to go back this afternoon?" "yes." "can you get back? it must be a good distance." "i can get back." "stay here. i will consult some of my friends and see if i can raise the money." "very well, massa." one of those whom jefferson called into consultation was the person who had guided caesar to the griffin mine. quickly the proprietor of the miners' rest unfolded the situation. "now," he said, "i want two of you to follow this misshapen dwarf, and find out where he comes from. i want to get hold of the scoundrels who sent him to me." "i will be one," said the man with the pipe. "very well, fred." "and i will go with fred," said a long limbed fellow who had been a kansas cowboy. "i accept you, otto. go armed, and don't lose sight of him." "shall you send the money?" "not i. i will send a letter that will encourage them to hope for it. i want to gain time." "any instructions, jefferson?" "only this, if you see these men, capture or kill them." "all right." chapter xxxv. a bloody conflict. this was the letter that was handed to caesar: i have received your note. i must have time to think, and time perhaps to get hold of the gold. don't harm a hair of the boy's head. if so, i will hunt you to death. jefferson pettigrew. p.s.--meet me tomorrow morning at the rocky gorge at the foot of black mountain. ten o'clock. caesar took the letter, and bent his steps in the direction of the place where he had tethered his horse. he did not observe that he was followed by two men, who carefully kept him in sight, without attracting attention to themselves. when caesar reached the place where he had tethered the horse, he was grievously disappointed at not finding him. one of the miners in roaming about had come upon the animal, and knowing him to be jefferson pettigrew's property, untied him and rode him back to oreville. the dwarf threw up his hands in dismay. "the horse is gone!" he said in his deep bass voice, "and now i must walk back, ten long miles, and get a flogging at the end for losing time. it's hard luck," he groaned. the loss was fortunate for fred and otto who would otherwise have found it hard to keep up with the dwarf. caesar breathed a deep sigh, and then started on his wearisome journey. had the ground been even it would have troubled him less, but there was a steep upward grade, and his short legs were soon weary. not so with his pursuers, both of whom were long limbed and athletic. we will go back now to the cave and the captors of rodney. they waited long and impatiently for the return of their messenger. having no knowledge of the loss of the horse, they could not understand what detained caesar. "do you think the rascal has played us false?" said roderick. "he would be afraid to." "this man pettigrew might try to bribe him. it would be cheaper than to pay five thousand dollars." "he wouldn't dare. he knows what would happen to him," said john grimly. "then why should he be so long?" "that i can't tell." "suppose we go out to meet him. i begin to feel anxious lest we have trusted him too far." "i am with you!" the two outlaws took the path which led to oreville, and walked two miles before they discovered caesar coming towards them at a slow and melancholy gait. "there he is, and on foot! what does it mean?" "he will tell us." "here now, you black imp! where is the horse?" demanded roderick. "i done lost him, massa." "lost him? you'll get a flogging for this, unless you bring good news. did you see jefferson pettigrew?" "yes, massa." "did he give you any money?" "no; he gave me this letter." roderick snatched it from his hand, and showed it to john. "it seems satisfactory," he said. "now how did you lose the horse?" caesar told him. "you didn't fasten him tight." "beg your pardon, massa, but i took good care of that." "well, he's gone; was probably stolen. that is unfortunate; however you may not have been to blame." luckily for caesar the letter which he brought was considered satisfactory, and this palliated his fault in losing the horse. the country was so uneven that the two outlaws did not observe that they were followed, until they came to the entrance of the cave. then, before opening the door, john looked round and caught sight of fred and otto eying them from a little distance. he instantly took alarm. "look," he said, "we are followed. look behind you!" his brother turned and came to the same conclusion. "caesar," said roderick, "did you ever see those men before?" "no, massa." "they must have followed you from oreville. hello, you two!" he added striding towards the miners. "what do you want here?" fred and otto had accomplished their object in ascertaining the place where rodney was confined, and no longer cared for concealment. "none of your business!" retorted fred independently. "the place is as free to us as to you." "are you spies?" "i don't intend to answer any of your questions." "clear out of here!" commanded roderick in a tone of authority. "suppose we don't?" roderick was a man of quick temper, and had never been in the habit of curbing it. he was provoked by the independent tone of the speaker, and without pausing to think of the imprudence of his actions, he raised his rifle and pointing at fred shot him in the left arm. the two miners were both armed, and were not slow in accepting the challenge. simultaneously they raised their rifles and fired at the two men. the result was that both fell seriously wounded and caesar set up a howl of dismay, not so much for his masters as from alarm for himself. fred and otto came forward, and stood looking down upon the outlaws, who were in the agonies of death. "it was our lives or theirs," said fred coolly, for he had been long enough in montana to become used to scenes of bloodshed. "yes," answered otto. "i think these two men are the notorious dixon brothers who are credited with a large number of murders. the country will be well rid of them." roderick turned his glazing eyes upon the tall miner. "i wish i had killed you," he muttered. "no doubt you do. it wouldn't have been your first murder." "don't kill me, massa!" pleaded caesar in tones of piteous entreaty. "i don't know," answered fred. "that depends on yourself. if you obey us strictly we will spare you." "try me, massa!" "you black hound!" said roderick hoarsely. "if i were not disabled i'd kill you myself." here was a new danger for poor caesar, for he knew roderick's fierce temper. "don't let him kill me!" he exclaimed, affrighted. "he shall do you no harm. will you obey me?" "tell me what you want, massa." "is the boy these men captured inside?" "yes, massa." "open the cave, then. we want him." "don't do it," said roderick, but caesar saw at a glance that his old master, of whom he stood in wholesome fear, was unable to harm him, and he proceeded to unlock the door. "go and call the boy!" said fred. caesar disappeared within the cavern, and soon emerged with rodney following him. "are you unhurt?" asked fred anxiously. "yes, and overjoyed to see you. how came you here?" "we followed the nigger from oreville." what happened afterwards rodney did not need to inquire, for the two outstretched figures, stiffening in death, revealed it to him. "they are the dixon brothers, are they not?" asked fred, turning to caesar. "yes, massa." "then we are entitled to a thousand dollars each for their capture. i have never before shed blood, but i don't regret ending the career of these scoundrels." half an hour later the two outlaws were dead and rodney and his friends were on their way back to oreville. chapter xxxvi. the rodney mine. rodney was received by jefferson pettigrew with open arms. "welcome home, boy!" he said. "i was very much worried about you." "i was rather uneasy about myself," returned rodney. "well, it's all over, and all's well that ends well. you are free and there has been no money paid out. fred and otto have done a good thing in ridding the world of the notorious dixon brothers. they will be well paid, for i understand there is a standing reward of one thousand dollars for each of them dead or alive. i don't know but you ought to have a share of this, for it was through you that the outlaws were trapped." "no, mr. pettigrew, they are welcome to the reward. if i am not mistaken i shall make a good deal more out of it than they." "what do you mean?" upon this rodney told the story of what he had seen in the cavern. "when i said i, i meant we, mr. pettigrew. i think if the gold there is as plentiful as i think it is we shall do well to commence working it." "it is yours, rodney, by right of first discovery." "i prefer that you should share it with me." "we will go over tomorrow and make an examination. was there any one else who seemed to have a claim to the cave except the dixons?" "no. the negro, caesar, will still be there, perhaps." "we can easily get rid of him." the next day the two friends went over to the cavern. caesar was still there, but he had an unsettled, restless look, and seemed undecided what to do. "what are you going to do, caesar?" asked pettigrew. "are you going to stay here?" "i don't know, massa. i don't want to lib here. i'm afraid i'll see the ghostes of my old massas. but i haven't got no money." "if you had money where would you go?" "i'd go to chicago. i used to be a whitewasher, and i reckon i'd get work at my old trade." "that's where you are sensible, caesar. this is no place for you. now i'll tell you what i'll do. i'll give you a hundred dollars, and you can go where you like. but i shall want you to go away at once." "i'll go right off, massa," said caesar, overjoyed. "i don't want to come here no more." "have you got anything belonging to you in the cave?" "no, massa, only a little kit of clothes." "take them and go." in fifteen minutes caesar had bidden farewell to his home, and rodney and jefferson were left in sole possession of the cavern. "now, mr. pettigrew, come and let me show you what i saw. i hope i have made no mistake." rodney led the way to the narrow passage already described. by the light of a lantern mr. pettigrew examined the walls. for five minutes not a word was said. "well, what do you think of it?" asked rodney anxiously. "only this: that you have hit upon the richest gold deposits in montana. here is a mining prospect that will make us both rich." "i am glad i was not mistaken," said rodney simply. "your capture by the dixon brothers will prove to have been the luckiest event in your life. i shall lose no time in taking possession in our joint name." there was great excitement when the discovery of the gold deposit was made known. in connection with the killing of the outlaws, it was noised far and wide. the consequence was that there was an influx of mining men, and within a week rodney and jefferson were offered a hundred thousand dollars for a half interest in the mine by a chicago syndicate. "say a hundred and fifty thousand, and we accept the offer," said jefferson pettigrew. after a little haggling this offer was accepted, and rodney found himself the possessor of seventy five thousand dollars in cash. "it was fortunate for me when i fell in with you, mr. pettigrew," he said. "and no less fortunate for me, rodney. this mine will bring us in a rich sum for our share, besides the cash we already have in hand." "if you don't object, mr. pettigrew, i should like to go to new york and continue my education. you can look after my interest here, and i shall be willing to pay you anything you like for doing so." "there won't be any trouble about that, rodney. i don't blame you for wanting to obtain an education. it isn't in my line. you can come out once a year, and see what progress we are making. the mine will be called the rodney mine after you." the miners' rest was sold to the steward, as mr. pettigrew was too busy to attend to it, and in a week rodney was on his way to new york. chapter xxxxvii. conclusion. otis goodnow arrived at his place of business a little earlier than usual, and set himself to looking over his mail. among other letters was one written on paper bearing the name of the fifth avenue hotel. he came to this after a time and read it. it ran thus: dear sir: i was once in your employ, though you may not remember my name. i was in the department of mr. redwood, and there i became acquainted with jasper redwood, his nephew. i was discharged, it is needless to recall why. i had saved nothing, and of course i was greatly embarrassed. i could not readily obtain another place, and in order to secure money to pay living expenses i entered into an arrangement with jasper redwood to sell me articles, putting in more than i paid for. these i was enabled to sell at a profit to smaller stores. this was not as profitable as it might have been to me, as i was obliged to pay jasper a commission for his agency. well, after a time it was ascertained that articles were missing, and search was made for the thief. through a cunningly devised scheme of jasper's the theft was ascribed to rodney ropes, a younger clerk, and he was discharged. ropes was a fine young fellow, and i have always been sorry that he got into trouble through our agency, but there seeemed no help for it. it must rest on him or us. he protested his innocence, but was not believed. i wish to say now that he was absolutely innocent, and only jasper and myself were to blame. if you doubt my statement i will call today, and you may confront me with jasper. i desire that justice should be done. philip carton. "call mr. redwood," said the merchant, summoning a boy. in five minutes mr. redwood entered the office of his employer. "you sent for me, sir?" "yes, mr. redwood; cast your eye over this letter." james redwood read the letter, and his face showed the agitation he felt. "i don't know anything about this, mr. goodnow," he said at last. "it ought to be inquired into." "i agree with you. if my nephew is guilty i want to know it." "we will wait till the writer of this letter calls. do you remember him?" "yes, sir; he was discharged for intemperance." at twelve o'clock philip carton made his appearance, and asked to be conducted to mr. goodnow's private office. "you are the writer of this letter?" asked the merchant. "yes sir." "and you stand by the statement it contains?" "yes, sir." "why, at this late day, have you made a confession?" "because i wish to do justice to rodney ropes, who has been unjustly accused, and also because i have been meanly treated by jasper redwood, who has thrown me over now that he has no further use for me." "are you willing to repeat your statement before him?" "i wish to do so." "call jasper redwood, sherman," said the merchant, addressing himself to sherman white, a boy recently taken into his employ. jasper entered the office, rather surprised at the summons. when he saw his accomplice, he changed color, and looked confused. "jasper," said the merchant, "read this letter and tell me what you have to say in reply." jasper ran his eye over the letter, while his color came and went. "well?" "it's a lie," said jasper hoarsely. "do you still insist that the articles taken from my stock were taken by rodney ropes?" "yes, sir." "what do you say, mr. carton?" "not one was taken by rodney ropes. jasper and i are responsible for them all." "what proof can you bring?" "mr. james redwood will recall the purchase i made at the time of the thefts. he will recall that i always purchased of jasper." "that is true," said mr. redwood in a troubled voice. "do you confess, jasper redwood?" "no, sir." "if you will tell the truth, i will see that no harm comes to you. i want to clear this matter up." jasper thought the matter over. he saw that the game was up--and decided rapidly that confession was the best policy. "very well, sir, if i must i will do so, but that man put me up to it." "you did not need any putting up to it. i wish young ropes were here, that i might clear him." as if in answer to the wish a bronzed and manly figure appeared at the office door. it was rodney, but taller and more robust than when he left the store nearly a year before. "rodney ropes!" ejaculated jasper in great surprise. "yes, jasper, i came here to see you, and beg you to free me from the false charge which was brought against me when i was discharged from this store. i didn't find you in your usual places, and was directed here." "ropes," said mr. goodnow, "your innocence has been established. this man," indicating philip carton, "has confessed that it was he and jasper who stole the missing articles." "i am thankful that my character has been cleared." "i am ready to take you back into my employ." "thank you, sir, but i have now no need of a position. i shall be glad if you will retain jasper." "you are very generous to one who has done so much to injure you." "indirectly he put me in the way of making a fortune. if you will retain him, mr. goodnow, i will guarantee to make up any losses you may incur from him." "how is this? are you able to make this guarantee?" "i am worth seventy five thousand dollars in money, besides being owner of a large mining property in montana." "this is truly wonderful! and you have accumulated all this since you left my store?" "yes, sir." "rodney," said jasper, going up to his old rival, and offering his hand. "i am sorry i tried to injure you. it was to save myself, but i see now how meanly i acted." "that speech has saved you," said the merchant. "go back to your work. i will give you another chance." "will you take me back also, mr. goodnow?" asked philip carton. the merchant hesitated. "no, mr. carton," said rodney. "i will look out for you. i will send you to montana with a letter to my partner. you can do better there than here." tears came into the eyes of the ex-clerk. "thank you," he said gratefully. "i should prefer it. i will promise to turn over a new leaf; and justify your recommendation." "come to see me this evening at the fifth avenue hotel, and i will arrange matters." "shall you stay in the city long, ropes?" asked the merchant. "about a week." "come and dine with me on tuesday evening." "thank you, sir." later in the day rodney sought out his old room mate mike flynn. he found mike in a bad case. he had a bad cold, but did not dare to give up work, because he wouldn't be able to meet his bills. he was still in the employ of the district telegraph company. "give the company notice, mike," said rodney. "henceforth i will take care of you. you can look upon me as your rich uncle," he added with a smile. "i will be your servant, rodney." "not a bit of it. you will be my friend. but you must obey me implicitly. i am going to send you to school, and give you a chance to learn something. next week i shall return to dr. sampson's boarding school and you will go with me as my friend and room mate." "but, rodney, you will be ashamed of me. i am awfully shabby." "you won't be long. you shall be as well dressed as i am." a week later the two boys reached the school. it would have been hard for any of mike's old friends to recognize him in the handsomely dressed boy who accompanied rodney. "really, mike, you are quite good looking, now that you are well dressed," said rodney. "oh, go away with you, rodney? it's fooling me you are!" "not a bit of it. now i want you to improve your time and learn as fast as you can." "i will, rodney." a year later rodney left school, but he kept mike there two years longer. there had been a great change in the telegraph boy, who was quick to learn. he expects, when he leaves school, to join rodney in montana. i will not attempt to estimate rodney's present wealth, but he is already prominent in financial circles in his adopted state. philip carton is prospering, and is respected by his new friends, who know nothing of his earlier life. as i write, rodney has received a letter from his old guardian, benjamin fielding. the letter came from montreal. "my dear rodney," he wrote. "i have worked hard to redeem the past, and restore to you your fortune. i have just succeeded, and send you the amount with interest. it leaves me little or nothing, but my mind is relieved. i hope you have not had to suffer severely from my criminal carelessness, and that you will live long to enjoy what rightfully belongs to you." in reply rodney wrote: "please draw on me for fifty thousand dollars. i do not need it, and you do. five years from now, if you can spare the money you may send it to me. till then use it without interest. i am worth much more than the sum my father intrusted to you for me." this offer was gratefully accepted, and mr. fielding is now in new york, where he is likely to experience a return of his former prosperity. as for rodney, his trials are over. they made a man of him, and proved a blessing in disguise. [end.] 1890 the burden of itys by oscar wilde this english thames is holier far than rome, those harebells like a sudden flush of sea breaking across the woodland, with the foam of meadow-sweet and white anemone to fleck their blue waves,god is likelier there, than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear! those violet-gleaming butterflies that take yon creamy lily for their pavilion are monsignores, and where the rushes shake a lazy pike lies basking in the sun his eyes half-shut,he is some mitred old bishop in partibus! look at those gaudy scales all green and gold! the wind the restless prisoner of the trees does well for palaestrina, one would say the mighty master's hands were on the keys of the maria organ, which they play when early on some sapphire easter morn in a high litter red as blood or sin the pope is borne from his dark house out to the balcony above the bronze gates and the crowded square, whose very fountains seem for ecstasy to toss their silver lances in the air, and stretching out weak hands to east and west in vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest. is not yon lingering orange afterglow that stays to vex moon more fair than all rome's lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago i knelt before some crimson cardinal who bare the host across the esquiline, and nowthose common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine. the blue-green beanfields yonder, tremulous with the last shower, sweeter perfume bring through this cool evening than the odorous flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing, when the gray priest unlocks the curtained shrine, and makes god's body from the common fruit of corn and vine. poor fra giovanni bawling at the mass were out of tune now, for a small brown bird sings overhead, and through the long cool grass i see that throbbing throat which once i heard on starlit hills of flower-starred arcady, once where the white and crescent sand of salamis meets the sea. sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves at daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe, and stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves her little lonely bed, and carols blithe to see the heavy-lowing cattle wait stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate. and sweet the hops upon the kentish leas, and sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay, and sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees that round and round the linden blossoms play; and sweet the heifer breathing in the stall, and the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall. and sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring while the last violet loiters by the well, and sweet to hear the shepherd daphnis sing the song of linus through a sunny dell of warm arcadia where the corn is gold and the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about the wattled fold and sweet with young lycoris to recline in some illyrian valley far away, where canopied on herbs amaracine we too might waste the summer-tranced day matching our reeds in sportive rivalry, while far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea. but sweeter far if silver-sandalled foot of some long-hidden god should ever tread the nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute pressed to his lips some faun might raise his head by the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed to see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock to feed. then sing to me thou tuneful chorister, though what thou sing'st be thine own requiem! tell me thy tale thou hapless chronicler of thine own tragedies! do not contemn these unfamiliar haunts, this english field, for many a lovely coronal our northern isle can yield, which grecian meadows know not, many a rose, which all day long in vales aeolian a lad might seek in vain for, overgrows our hedges like a wanton courtesan unthrifty of her beauty, lilies too ilissus never mirrored star our streams, and cockles blue dot the green wheat which, though they are the signs for swallows going south, would never spread their azure tints between the attic vines; even that little weed of ragged red, which bids the robin pipe, in arcady would be a trespasser, and many an unsung elegy. sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding thames which to awake were sweeter ravishment than ever syrinx wept for, diadems of brown be-studded orchids which were meant for cytheraea's brows are hidden here unknown to cytheraea, and by yonder pasturing steer there is a tiny yellow daffodil, the butterfly can see it from afar, although one summer evening's dew could fill its little cup twice over ere the star had called the lazy shepherd to his fold and be no prodigal, each leaf is flecked with spotted gold as if jove's gorgeous leman danae hot from his gilded arms had stooped to kiss the trembling petals, or young mercury low-flying to the dusky ford of dis had with one feather of his pinions just brushed them!the slight stem which bears the burdens of its suns is hardly thicker than the gossamer, or poor arachne's silver tapestry, men say it bloomed upon the sepulchre of one i sometime worshipped, but to me it seems to bring diviner memories of faun-loved heliconian glades and blue nymph-haunted seas, of an untrodden vale at tempe where on the clear river's marge narcissus lies, the tangle of the forest in his hair, the silence of the woodland in his eyes, wooing that drifting imagery which is no sooner kissed than broken, memories of salmacis. who is not boy or girl and yet is both, fed by two fires and unsatisfied through their excess, each passion being loath for love's own sake to leave the other's side, yet killing love by staying, memories of oreads peeping through the leaves of silent moonlit trees. of lonely ariadne on the wharf at naxos, when she saw the treacherous crew far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf and called the false theseus back again nor knew that dionysos on an amber pard was close behind her: memories of what maeonia's bard with sightless eyes beheld, the wall of troy, queen helen lying in the carven room, and at her side an amorous red-lipped boy trimming with dainty hand his helmet's plume, and far away the moil, the shout, the groan, as hector shielded off the spear and ajax hurled the stone; of winged perseus with his flawless sword cleaving the snaky tresses of the witch, and all those tales imperishably stored in little grecian urns, freightage more rich than any gaudy galleon of spain bare from the indies ever! these at least bring back again, for well i know they are not dead at all, the ancient gods of grecian poesy, they are asleep, and when they hear thee call will wake and think 'tis very thessaly, this thames the daulian waters, this cool glade the yellow-irised mead where once young itys laughed and played. if it was thou dear jasmine-cradled bird who from the leafy stillness of thy throne sang to the wondrous boy, until he heard the horn of atalanta faintly blown across the cumnor hills, and wandering through bagley wood at evening found the attic poet's spring, ah! tiny sober-suited advocate that pleadest for the moon against the day! if thou didst make the shepherd seek his mate on that sweet questing, when proserpina forgot it was not sicily and leant across the mossy sandford stile in ravished wonderment, light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood! if ever thou didst soothe with melody one of that little clan, that brotherhood which loved the morning-star of tuscany more than the perfect sun of raphael, and is immortal, sing to me! for i too love thee well, sing on! sing on! let the dull world grow young, let elemental things take form again, and the old shapes of beauty walk among the simple garths and open crofts, as when the son of leto bare the willow rod, and the soft sheep and shaggy goats followed the boyish god. sing on! sing on! and bacchus will be here astride upon his gorgeous indian throne, and over whimpering tigers shake the spear with yellow ivy crowned and gummy cone, while at his side the wanton bassarid will throw the lion by the mane and catch the mountain kid! sing on! and i will wear the leopard skin, and steal the mooned wings of ashtaroth, upon whose icy chariot we could win cithaeron in an hour e'er the froth has overbrimmed the wine-vat or the faun ceased from the treading! ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn has scared the hooting owlet to its nest, and warned the bat to close its filmy vans, some maenad girl with vine-leaves on her breast will filch their beechnuts from the sleeping pans so softly that the little nested thrush will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush down the green valley where the fallen dew lies thick beneath the elm and count her store, till the brown satyrs in a jolly crew trample the loosestrife down along the shore, and where their horned master sits in state bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate! sing on! and soon with passion-wearied face through the cool leaves apollo's lad will come, the tyrian prince his bristled boar will chase adown the chestnut copses all a-bloom, and ivory-limbed, gray-eyed, with look of pride, after yon velvet-coated deer the virgin maid will ride. sing on! and i the dying boy will, see stain with his purple blood the waxen bell that overweighs the jacinth, and to me the wretched cyprian her woe will tell, and i will kiss her mouth and streaming eyes, and lead her to the myrtle-hidden grove where adon lies! cry out aloud on itys! memory that foster-brother of remorse and pain drops poison in mine earo to be free, to burn one's old ships! and to launch again into the white-plumed battle of the waves and fight old proteus for the spoil of coral-flowered caves? o for medea with her poppied spell! o for the secret of the colchian shrine! o for one leaf of that pale asphodel which binds the tired brows of proserpine, and sheds such wondrous dews at eve that she dreams of the fields of enna, by the far sicilian sea, where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased from lily to lily on the level mead, ere yet her sombre lord had bid her taste the deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed, ere the black steeds had harried her away down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick and sunless day. o for one midnight and as paramour the venus of the little melian farm! o that some antique statue for one hour might wake to passion, and that i could charm the dawn at florence from its dumb despair, mix with those mighty limbs and make that giant breast my lair! sing on! sing on! i would be drunk with life, drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth, i would forget the wearying wasted strife, the riven vale, the gorgon eyes of truth, the prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer, the barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air! sing on! sing on! o feathered niobe, thou canst make sorrow beautiful, and steal from joy its sweetest music, not as we who by dead voiceless silence strive to heal our too untented wounds, and do but keep pain barricaded in our hearts, and murder pillowed sleep. sing louder yet, why must i still behold the wan white face of that deserted christ, whose bleeding hands my hands did once infold. whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed, and now in mute and marble misery sirs in his lone dishonored house and weeps, perchance for me. o memory cast down thy wreathed shell! break thy hoarse lute o sad melpomene! o sorrow, sorrow keep thy cloistered cell nor dim with tears this limpid castaly! cease, cease, sad bird, thou dost the forest wrong to vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned song! cease, cease, or if 'tis anguish to be dumb take from the pastoral thrush her simpler air, whose jocund carelessness doth more become this english woodland than thy keen despair, ah! cease and let the north wind bear thy lay back to the rocky hills of thrace, the stormy daulian bay. a moment more, the startled leaves had stirred, endymion would have passed across the mead moonstruck with love, and this still thames had heard pan plash and paddle groping for some reed to lure from her blue cave that naiad maid who for such piping listens half in joy and half afraid. a moment more, the waking dove had cooed, the silver daughter of the silver sea with the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed her wanton from the chase, the dryope had thrust aside the branches of her oak to see the he lusty gold-haired lad rein in his snorting yoke. a moment more, the trees had stooped to kiss pale daphne just awakening from the swoon of tremulous laurels, lonely salmacis had bared his barren beauty to the moon, and through the vale with sad voluptuous smile antinous had wandered, the red lotus of the nile. down leaning the from his black and clustering hair to shade those slumberous eyelids' caverned bliss, or else on yonder grassy slope with bare high-tuniced limbs unravished artemis had bade her hounds give tongue, and roused the deer from his green ambuscade with shrill hallo and pricking spear. lie still, lie still, o passionate heart, lie still! o melancholy, fold thy raven wing! o sobbing dryad, from thy hollow hill come not with such desponded answering! no more thou winged marsyas complain, apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs of pain! it was a dream, the glade is tenantless, no soft ionian laughter moves the air, the thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness, and from the copse left desolate and bare fled is young bacchus with his revelry, yet still from nuneham wood there comes that thrilling melody so sad, that one might think a human heart brake in each separate note, a quality which music sometimes has, being the art which is most nigh to tears and memory, poor mourning philomel, what dost thou fear? thy sister doth not haunt these fields, pandion is not here, here is no cruel lord with murderous blade, no woven web of bloody heraldries, but mossy dells for roving comrades made, warm valleys where the tired student lies with half-shut book, and many a winding walk where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple talk. the harmless rabbit gambols with its young across the trampled towing-path, where late a troop of laughing boys in jostling throng cheered with their noisy cries the racing eight; the gossamer, with ravelled silver threads, works at its little loom, and from the dusky red-caved sheds of the lone farm a flickering light shines out where the swinked shepherd drives his bleating flock, back to their wattled sheep-cotes, a faint shout comes from some oxford boat at sandford lock, and starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill, and the dim lengthening shadows flit like swallows up the hill. the heron passes homeward to the mere, the blue mist creeps among the shivering trees, gold world by world the silent stars appear, and like a blossom blown before the breeze, a white moon drifts across the shimmering sky, mute arbitress of all thy sad, thy rapturous threnody. she does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed, she knows endymion is not far away, 'tis i, 'tis i, whose soul is as the reed which has no message of its own to play, so pipes another's bidding, it is i, drifting with every wind on the wide sea of misery. ah! the brown bird has ceased: one exquisite trill about the sombre woodland seems to cling, dying in music, else the air is still, so still that one might hear the bat's small wing wander and wheel above the pines, or tell each tiny dewdrop dripping from the, bluebell's brimming cell. and far across the lengthening wold, across the willowy flats and thickets brown, magdalen's tall tower tipped with tremulous gold marks the long high street of the little town, and warns me to return; i must not wait, hark! 'tis the curfew booming from the bell of christ church gate. the end . the project gutenberg etext of the cash boy by horatio alger jr. please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. the cash boy by horatio alger jr. july, 1995 [etext #296] the project gutenberg etext of the cash boy by horatio alger jr. *****this file should be named cashb10.txt or cashb10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, cashb11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, cashb10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $4 million dollars per hour this year as we release some eight text files per month: thus upping our productivity from $2 million. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* scanned with omnipage professional ocr software donated by caere corporation, 1-800-535-7226. contact mike lough <mikel@caere.com> the cash boy by horatio alger, jr. preface ``the cash boy,'' by horatio alger, jr., as the name implies, is a story about a boy and for boys. through some conspiracy, the hero of the story when a baby, was taken from his relatives and given into the care of a kind woman. not knowing his name, she gave him her husband's name, frank fowler. she had one little daughter, grace, and showing no partiality in the treatment of her children, frank never suspected that she was not his sister. however, at the death of mrs. fowler, all this was related to frank. the children were left alone in the world. it seemed as though they would have to go to the poorhouse but frank could not become reconciled to that. a kind neighbor agreed to care for grace, so frank decided to start out in the world to make his way. he had many disappointments and hardships, but through his kindness to an old man, his own relatives and right name were revealed to him. chapter i a revelation a group of boys was assembled in an open field to the west of the public schoolhouse in the town of crawford. most of them held hats in their hands, while two, stationed sixty feet distant from each other, were ``having catch.'' tom pinkerton, son of deacon pinkerton, had just returned from brooklyn, and while there had witnessed a match game between two professional clubs. on his return he proposed that the boys of crawford should establish a club, to be known as the excelsior club of crawford, to play among themselves, and on suitable occasions to challenge clubs belonging to other villages. this proposal was received with instant approval. ``i move that tom pinkerton address the meeting,'' said one boy. ``second the motion,'' said another. as there was no chairman, james briggs was appointed to that position, and put the motion, which was unanimously carried. tom pinkerton, in his own estimation a personage of considerable importance, came forward in a consequential manner, and commenced as follows: ``mr. chairman and boys. you all know what has brought us together. we want to start a club for playing baseball, like the big clubs they have in brooklyn and new york.'' ``how shall we do it?'' asked henry scott. ``we must first appoint a captain of the club, who will have power to assign the members to their different positions. of course you will want one that understands about these matters.'' ``he means himself,'' whispered henry scott, to his next neighbor; and here he was right. ``is that all?'' asked sam pomeroy. ``no; as there will be some expenses, there must be a treasurer to receive and take care of the funds, and we shall need a secretary to keep the records of the club, and write and answer challenges.'' ``boys,'' said the chairman, ``you have heard tom pinkerton's remarks. those who are in favor of organizing a club on this plan will please signify it in the usual way.'' all the boys raised their hands, and it was declared a vote. ``you will bring in your votes for captain,'' said the chairman. tom pinkerton drew a little apart with a conscious look, as he supposed, of course, that no one but himself would be thought of as leader. slips of paper were passed around, and the boys began to prepare their ballots. they were brought to the chairman in a hat, and he forthwith took them out and began to count them. ``boys,'' he announced, amid a universal stillness, ``there is one vote for sam pomeroy, one for eugene morton, and the rest are for frank fowler, who is elected.'' there was a clapping of hands, in which tom pinkerton did not join. frank fowler, who is to be our hero, came forward a little, and spoke modestly as follows: ``boys, i thank you for electing me captain of the club. i am afraid i am not very well qualified for the place, but i will do as well as i can.'' the speaker was a boy of fourteen. he was of medium height for his age, strong and sturdy in build, and with a frank prepossessing countenance, and an open, cordial manner, which made him a general favorite. it was not, however, to his popularity that he owed his election, but to the fact that both at bat and in the field he excelled all the boys, and therefore was the best suited to take the lead. the boys now proceeded to make choice of a treasurer and secretary. for the first position tom pinkerton received a majority of the votes. though not popular, it was felt that some office was due him. for secretary, ike stanton, who excelled in penmanship, was elected, and thus all the offices were filled. the boys now crowded around frank fowler, with petitions for such places as they desired. ``i hope you will give me a little time before i decide about positions, boys,'' frank said; ``i want to consider a little.'' ``all right! take till next week,'' said one and another, ``and let us have a scrub game this afternoon.'' the boys were in the middle of the sixth inning, when some one called out to frank fowler: ``frank, your sister is running across the field. i think she wants you.'' frank dropped his bat and hastened to meet his sister. ``what's the matter, gracie?'' he asked in alarm. ``oh, frank!'' she exclaimed, bursting into tears. ``mother's been bleeding at the lungs, and she looks so white. i'm afraid she's very sick.'' ``boys,'' said frank, turning to his companions, ``i must go home at once. you can get some one to take my place, my mother is very sick.'' when frank reached the little brown cottage which he called home, he found his mother in an exhausted state reclining on the bed. ``how do you feel, mother?'' asked our hero, anxiously. ``quite weak, frank,'' she answered in a low voice. ``i have had a severe attack.'' ``let me go for the doctor, mother.'' ``i don't think it will be necessary, frank. the attack is over, and i need no medicines, only time to bring back my strength.'' but three days passed, and mrs. fowler's nervous prostration continued. she had attacks previously from which she rallied sooner, and her present weakness induced serious misgivings as to whether she would ever recover. frank thought that her eyes followed him with more than ordinary anxiety, and after convincing himself that this was the case, he drew near his mother's bedside, and inquired: ``mother, isn't there something you want me to do?'' ``nothing, i believe, frank.'' ``i thought you looked at me as if you wanted to say something.'' ``there is something i must say to you before i die.'' ``before you die, mother!'' echoed frank, in a startled voice. ``yes. frank, i am beginning to think that this is my last sickness.'' ``but, mother, you have been so before, and got up again.'' ``there must always be a last time, frank; and my strength is too far reduced to rally again, i fear.'' ``i can't bear the thought of losing you, mother,'' said frank, deeply moved. ``you will miss me, then, frank?'' said mrs. fowler. ``shall i not? grace and i will be alone in the world.'' ``alone in the world!'' repeated the sick woman, sorrowfully, ``with little help to hope for from man, for i shall leave you nothing. poor children!'' ``that isn't what i think of,'' said frank, hastily. ``i can support myself.'' ``but grace? she is a delicate girl,'' said the mother, anxiously. ``she cannot make her way as you can.'' ``she won't need to,'' said frank, promptly; ``i shall take care of her.'' ``but you are very young even to support yourself. you are only fourteen.'' ``i know it, mother, but i am strong, and i am not afraid. there are a hundred ways of making a living.'' ``but do you realize that you will have to start with absolutely nothing? deacon pinkerton holds a mortgage on this house for all it will bring in the market, and i owe him arrears of interest besides.'' ``i didn't know that, mother, but it doesn't frighten me.'' ``and you will take care of grace?'' ``i promise it, mother.'' ``suppose grace were not your sister?'' said the sick woman, anxiously scanning the face of the boy. ``what makes you suppose such a thing as that, mother? of course she is my sister.'' ``but suppose she were not,'' persisted mrs. fowler, ``you would not recall your promise?'' ``no, surely not, for i love her. but why do you talk so, mother?'' and a suspicion crossed frank's mind that his mother's intellect might be wandering. ``it is time to tell you all, frank. sit down by the bedside, and i will gather my strength to tell you what must be told.'' ``grace is not your sister, frank!'' ``not my sister, mother?'' he exclaimed. ``you are not in earnest?'' ``i am quite in earnest, frank.'' ``then whose child is she?'' ``she is my child.'' ``then she must be my sister--are you not my mother?'' ``no, frank, i am not your mother!'' chapter ii mrs. fowler's story ``not my mother!'' he exclaimed. ``who, then, is my mother?'' ``i cannot tell you, frank. i never knew. you will forgive me for concealing this from you for so long.'' ``no matter who was my real mother since i have you. you have been a mother to me, and i shall always think of you as such.'' ``you make me happy, frank, when you say that. and you will look upon grace as a sister also, will you not?'' ``always,'' said the boy, emphatically. ``mother, will you tell all you know about me? i don't know what to think; now that i am not your son i cannot rest till i learn who i am.'' ``i can understand your feelings, frank, but i must defer the explanation till to-morrow. i have fatigued myself with talking. but to-morrow you shall know all that i can tell you.'' ``forgive me for not thinking of your being tired, mother,'' and he bent over and pressed his lips upon the cheek of the sick woman. ``but don't talk any more. wait till to-morrow.'' in the afternoon frank had a call from sam pomeroy. ``the club is to play to-morrow afternoon against a picked nine, frank,'' he said. ``will you be there?'' ``i can't, sam,'' he answered. ``my mother is very sick, and it is my duty to stay at home with her.'' ``we shall miss you--that is, all of us but one. tom pinkerton said yesterday that you ought to resign, as you can't attend to your duties. he wouldn't object to filling your place, i fancy.'' ``he is welcome to the place as soon as the club feels like electing him,'' said frank. ``tell the boys i am sorry i can't be on hand. they had better get you to fill my place.'' ``i'll mention it, but i don't think they'll see it in that light. they're all jealous of my superior playing,'' said sam, humorously. ``well, good-bye, frank. i hope your mother'll be better soon.'' ``thank you, sam,'' answered frank, soberly. ``i hope so, too, but she is very sick.'' the next day mrs. fowler again called frank to the bedside. ``grace is gone out on an errand,'' she said, ``and i can find no better time for telling you what i know about you and the circumstances which led to my assuming the charge of you.'' ``are you strong enough, mother?'' ``yes, frank. thirteen years ago my husband and myself occupied a small tenement in that part of brooklyn know as gowanus, not far from greenwood cemetery. my husband was a carpenter, and though his wages were small he was generally employed. we had been married three years, but had no children of our own. our expenses were small, and we got on comfortably, and should have continued to do so, but that mr. fowler met with an accident which partially disabled him. he fell from a high scaffold and broke his arm. this was set and he was soon able to work again, but he must also have met with some internal injury, for his full strength never returned. half a day's work tired him more than a whole day's work formerly had done. of course our income was very much diminished, and we were obliged to economize very closely. this preyed upon my husband's mind and seeing his anxiety, i set about considering how i could help him, and earn my share of the expenses. ``one day in looking over the advertising columns of a new york paper i saw the following advertisement: `` `for adoption--a healthy male infant. the parents are able to pay liberally for the child's maintenance, but circumstances compel them to delegate the care to another. address for interview a. m.' ``i had no sooner read this advertisement than i felt that it was just what i wanted. a liberal compensation was promised, and under our present circumstances would be welcome, as it was urgently needed. i mentioned the matter to my husband, and he was finally induced to give his consent. ``accordingly, i replied to the advertisement. ``three days passed in which i heard nothing from it. but as we were sitting at the supper table at six o'clock one afternoon, there came a knock at our front door. i opened it, and saw before me a tall stranger, a man of about thirty-five, of dark complexion, and dark whiskers. he was well dressed, and evidently a gentleman in station. `` `is this mrs. fowler?' he asked. `` `yes, sir,' i answered, in some surprise `` `then may i beg permission to enter your house for a few minutes? i have something to say to you.' ``still wondering, i led the way into the sittingroom, where your father--where mr. fowler----'' ``call him my father--i know no other,'' said frank. ``where your father was seated. `` `you have answered an advertisement,' said the stranger. `` `yes, sir,' i replied. `` `i am a. m.,' was his next announcement. `of course i have received many letters, but on the whole i was led to consider yours most favorably. i have made inquiries about you in the neighborhood, and the answers have been satisfactory. you have no children of your own?' `` `no, sir.' `` `all the better. you would be able to give more attention to this child.' `` `is it yours, sir?' i asked `` `ye-es,' he answered, with hesitation. `circumstances,' he continued, `circumstances which i need not state, compel me to separate from it. five hundred dollars a year will be paid for its maintenance.' ``five hundred dollars! i heard this with joy, for it was considerably more than my husband was able to earn since his accident. it would make us comfortable at once, and your father might work when he pleased, without feeling any anxiety about our coming to want. `` `will that sum be satisfactory?' asked the stranger. `` `it is very liberal,' i answered. `` `i intended it to be so,' he said. `since there is no difficulty on this score, i am inclined to trust you with the care of the child. but i must make two conditions.' `` `what are they, sir?' `` `in the first place, you must not try to find out the friends of the child. they do not desire to be known. another thing, you must move from brooklyn.' `` `move from brooklyn?' i repeated. `` `yes,' he answered, firmly. `i do not think it necessary to give you a reason for this condition. enough that it is imperative. if you decline, our negotiations are at an end.' ``i looked at my husband. he seemed as much surprised as i was. `` `perhaps you will wish to consult together,' suggested our visitor. `if so, i can give you twenty minutes. i will remain in this room while you go out and talk it over.' ``we acted on this hint, and went into the kitchen. we decided that though we should prefer to live in brooklyn, it would be worth our while to make the sacrifice for the sake of the addition to our income. we came in at the end of ten minutes, and announced our decision. our visitor seemed to be very much pleased. `` `where would you wish us to move?' asked your father. `` `i do not care to designate any particular place. i should prefer some small country town, from fifty to a hundred miles distant. i suppose you will be able to move soon?' `` `yes, sir; we will make it a point to do so. how soon will the child be placed in our hands? shall we send for it?' `` `no, no,' he said, hastily. `i cannot tell you exactly when, but it will be brought here probably in the course of a day or two. i myself shall bring it, and if at that time you wish to say anything additional you can do so.' ``he went away, leaving us surprised and somewhat excited at the change that was to take place in our lives. the next evening the sound of wheels was heard, and a hack stopped at our gate. the same gentleman descended hurriedly with a child in his arms--you were the child, frank--and entered the house. `` `this is the child,' he said, placing it in my arms, `and here is the first quarterly installment of your pay. three months hence you will receive the same sum from my agent in new york. here is his address,' and he placed a card in my hands. `have you anything to ask?' `` `suppose i wish to communicate with you respecting the child? suppose he is sick?' `` `then write to a. m., care of giles warner, no. ---nassau street. by the way, it will be necessary for you to send him your postoffice address after your removal in order that he may send you your quarterly dues.' ``with this he left us, entered the hack, and drove off. i have never seen him since.'' chapter iii left alone frank listened to this revelation with wonder. for the first time in his life he asked himself, ``who am i?'' ``how came i by my name, mother?'' he asked. ``i must tell you. after the sudden departure of the gentleman who brought you, we happened to think that we had not asked your name. we accordingly wrote to the address which had been given us, making the inquiry. in return we received a slip of paper containing these words: `the name is immaterial; give him any name you please. a. m.' '' ``you gave me the name of frank.'' ``it was mr. fowler's name. we should have given it to you had you been our own boy; as the choice was left to us, we selected that.'' ``it suits me as well as any other. how soon did you leave brooklyn, mother?'' ``in a week we had made all arrangements, and removed to this place. it is a small place, but it furnished as much work as my husband felt able to do. with the help of the allowance for your support, we not only got on comfortably, but saved up a hundred and fifty dollars annually, which we deposited in a savings bank. but after five years the money stopped coming. it was the year 1857, the year of the great panic, and among others who failed was giles warner's agent, from whom we received our payments. mr. fowler went to new york to inquire about it, but only learned that mr. warner, weighed down by his troubles, had committed suicide, leaving no clew to the name of the man who left you with us.'' ``how long ago was that, mother?'' ``seven years ago nearly eight.'' ``and you continued to keep me, though the payments stopped.'' ``certainly; you were as dear to us as our own child--for we now had a child of our own--grace. we should as soon have thought of casting off her as you.'' ``but you must have been poor, mother.'' ``we were economical, and we got along till your father died three years ago. since then it has been hard work.'' ``you have had a hard time, mother.'' ``no harder on your account. you have been a great comfort to me, frank. i am only anxious for the future. i fear you and grace will suffer after i am gone.'' ``don't fear, mother, i am young and strong; i am not afraid to face the world with god's help.'' ``what are you thinking of, frank?'' asked mrs. fowler, noticing the boy's fixed look. ``mother,'' he said, earnestly, ``i mean to seek for that man you have told me of. i want to find out who i am. do you think he was my father?'' ``he said he was, but i do not believe it. he spoke with hesitation, and said this to deceive us, probably.'' ``i am glad you think so, i would not like to think him my father. from what you have told me of him i am sure i would not like him.'' ``he must be nearly fifty now--dark complexion, with dark hair and whiskers. i am afraid that description will not help you any. there are many men who look like that. i should know him by his expression, but i cannot describe that to you.'' here mrs. fowler was seized with a very severe fit of coughing, and frank begged her to say no more. two days later, and mrs. fowler was no better. she was rapidly failing, and no hope was entertained that she would rally. she herself felt that death was near at hand and told frank so, but he found it hard to believe. on the second of the two days, as he was returning from the village store with an orange for his mother, he was overtaken by sam pomeroy. ``is your mother very sick, frank?'' he asked. ``yes, sam, i'm afraid she won't live.'' ``is it so bad as that? i do believe,'' he added, with a sudden change of tone, ``tom pinkerton is the meanest boy i ever knew. he is trying to get your place as captain of the baseball club. he says that if your mother doesn't live, you will have to go to the poorhouse, for you won't have any money, and that it will be a disgrace for the club to have a captain from the poorhouse.'' ``did he say that?'' asked frank, indignantly. ``yes.'' ``when he tells you that, you may say that i shall never go to the poorhouse.'' ``he says his father is going to put you and your sister there.'' ``all the deacon pinkertons in the world can never make me go to the poorhouse!'' said frank, resolutely. ``bully for you, frank! i knew you had spunk.'' frank hurried home. as he entered the little house a neighbor's wife, who had been watching with his mother, came to meet him. ``frank,'' she said, gravely, ``you must prepare yourself for sad news. while you were out your mother had another hemorrhage, and--and--'' ``is she dead?'' asked the boy, his face very pale. ``she is dead!'' chapter iv the town autocrat ``the widder fowler is dead,'' remarked deacon pinkerton, at the supper table. ``she died this afternoon.'' ``i suppose she won't leave anything,'' said mrs. pinkerton. ``no. i hold a mortgage on her furniture, and that is all she has.'' ``what will become of the children?'' ``as i observed, day before yesterday, they will be constrained to find a refuge in the poorhouse.'' ``what do you think sam pomeroy told me, father?'' ``i am not able to conjecture what samuel would be likely to observe, my son.'' ``he observed that frank fowler said he wouldn't go to the poorhouse.'' ``ahem!'' coughed the deacon. ``the boy will not be consulted.'' ``that's what i say, father,'' said tom, who desired to obtain his father's co-operation. ``you'll make him go to the poorhouse, won't you?'' ``i shall undoubtedly exercise my authority, if it should be necessary, my son.'' ``he told sam pomeroy that all the deacon pinkertons in the world couldn't make him go to the poorhouse.'' ``i will constrain him,'' said the deacon. ``i would if i were you, father,'' said tom, elated at the effect of his words. ``just teach him a lesson.'' ``really, deacon, you mustn't be too hard upon the poor boy,'' said his better-hearted wife. ``he's got trouble enough on him.'' ``i will only constrain him for his good, jane. in the poorhouse he will be well provided for.'' meanwhile another conversation respecting our hero and his fortunes was held at sam pomeroy's home. it was not as handsome as the deacon's, for mr. pomeroy was a poor man, but it was a happy one, nevertheless, and mr. pomeroy, limited as were his means, was far more liberal than the deacon. ``i pity frank fowler,'' said sam, who was warmhearted and sympathetic, and a strong friend of frank. ``i don't know what he will do.'' ``i suppose his mother left nothing.'' ``i understood,'' said mr. pomeroy, ``that deacon pinkerton holds a mortgage on her furniture.'' ``the deacon wants to send frank and his sister to the poorhouse.'' ``that would be a pity.'' ``i should think so; but frank positively says he won't go.'' ``i am afraid there isn't anything else for him. to be sure, he may get a chance to work in a shop or on a farm, but grace can't support herself.'' ``father, i want to ask you a favor.'' ``what is it, sam?'' ``won't you invite frank and his sister to come and stay here a week?'' ``just as your mother says.'' ``i say yes. the poor children will be quite welcome. if we were rich enough they might stay with us all the time.'' ``when frank comes here i will talk over his affairs with him,'' said mr. pomeroy. ``perhaps we can think of some plan for him.'' ``i wish you could, father.'' ``in the meantime, you can invite him and grace to come and stay with us a week, or a fortnight. shall we say a fortnight, wife?'' ``with all my heart.'' ``all right, father. thank you.'' sam delivered the invitation in a way that showed how strongly his own feelings were enlisted in favor of its acceptance. frank grasped his hand. ``thank you, sam, you are a true friend,'' he said. ``i hadn't begun to think of what we were to do, grace and i.'' ``you'll come, won't you?'' ``you are sure that it won't trouble your mother, sam?'' ``she is anxious to have you come.'' ``then i'll come. i haven't formed any plans yet, but i must as soon--as soon as mother is buried. i think i can earn my living somehow. one thing i am determined about--i won't go to the poorhouse.'' the funeral was over. frank and grace walked back to the little house, now their home no longer. they were to pack up a little bundle of clothes and go over to mr. pomeroy's in time for supper. when frank had made up his bundle, urged by some impulse, he opened a drawer in his mother's bureau. his mind was full of the story she had told him, and he thought it just possible that he might find something to throw additional light upon his past history. while exploring the contents of the drawer he came to a letter directed to him in his mother's well-known handwriting. he opened it hastily, and with a feeling of solemnity, read as follows: ``my dear frank: in the lower drawer, wrapped in a piece of brown paper, you will find two gold eagles, worth twenty dollars. you will need them when i am gone. use them for grace and yourself. i saved these for my children. take them, frank, for i have nothing else to give you. the furniture will pay the debt i owe deacon pinkerton. there ought to be something over, but i think he will take all. i wish i had more to leave you, dear frank, but the god of the fatherless will watch over you-to him i commit you and grace. your affectionate mother, ruth fowler.'' frank, following the instructions of the letter, found the gold pieces and put them carefully into his pocketbook. he did not mention the letter to grace at present, for he knew not but deacon pinkerton might lay claim to the money to satisfy his debt if he knew it. ``i am ready, frank,'' said grace, entering the room. ``shall we go?'' ``yes, grace. there is no use in stopping here any longer.'' as he spoke he heard the outer door open, and a minute later deacon pinkerton entered the room. none of the deacon's pompousness was abated as he entered the house and the room. ``will you take a seat?'' said our hero, with the air of master of the house. ``i intended to,'' said the deacon, not acknowledging his claim. ``so your poor mother is gone?'' ``yes, sir,'' said frank, briefly. ``we must all die,'' said the deacon, feeling that it was incumbent on him to say something religious. ``ahem! your mother died poor? she left no property?'' ``it was not her fault.'' ``of course not. did she mention that i had advanced her money on the furniture?'' ``my mother told me all about it, sir.'' ``ahem! you are in a sad condition. but you will be taken care of. you ought to be thankful that there is a home provided for those who have no means.'' ``what home do you refer to, deacon pinkerton?'' asked frank, looking steadily in the face of his visitor. ``i mean the poorhouse, which the town generously provides for those who cannot support themselves.'' this was the first intimation grace had received of the possibility that they would be sent to such a home, and it frightened her. ``oh, frank!'' she exclaimed, ``must we go to the poorhouse?'' ``no, grace; don't be frightened,'' said frank, soothingly. ``we will not go.'' ``frank fowler,'' said the deacon, sternly, ``cease to mislead your sister.'' ``i am not misleading her, sir.'' ``did you not tell her that she would not be obliged to go to the poorhouse?'' ``yes, sir.'' ``then what do you mean by resisting my authority?'' ``you have no authority over us. we are not paupers,'' and frank lifted his head proudly, and looked steadily in the face of the deacon. ``you are paupers, whether you admit it or not.'' ``we are not,'' said the boy, indignantly. ``where is your money? where is your property?'' ``here, sir,'' said our hero, holding out his hands. ``i have two strong hands, and they will help me make a living for my sister and myself.'' ``may i ask whether you expect to live here and use my furniture?'' ``i do not intend to, sir. i shall ask no favors of you, neither for grace nor myself. i am going to leave the house. i only came back to get a few clothes. mr. pomeroy has invited grace and me to stay at his house for a few days. i haven't decided what i shall do afterward.'' ``you will have to go to the poorhouse, then. i have no objection to your making this visit first. it will be a saving to the town.'' ``then, sir, we will bid you good-day. grace, let us go.'' chapter v a little misunderstanding ``have you carried frank fowler to the poorhouse?'' asked tom pinkerton, eagerly, on his father's return. ``no, said the deacon, ``he is going to make a visit at mr. pomeroy's first.'' ``i shouldn't think you would have let him make a visit,'' said tom, discontentedly. ``i should think you would have taken him to the poorhouse right off.'' ``i feel it my duty to save the town unnecessary expense,'' said deacon pinkerton. so tom was compelled to rest satisfied with his father's assurance that the removal was only deferred. meanwhile frank and grace received a cordial welcome at the house of mr. pomeroy. sam and frank were intimate friends, and our hero had been in the habit of calling frequently, and it seemed homelike. ``i wish you could stay with us all the time, frank --you and grace,'' said sam one evening. ``we should all like it,'' said mr. pomeroy, ``but we cannot always have what we want. if i had it in my power to offer frank any employment which it would be worth his while to follow, it might do. but he has got his way to make in the world. have you formed any plans yet, frank?'' ``that is what i want to consult you about, mr. pomeroy.'' ``i will give you the best advice i can, frank. i suppose you do not mean to stay in the village.'' ``no, sir. there is nothing for me to do here. i must go somewhere where i can make a living for grace and myself.'' ``you've got a hard row to hoe, frank,'' said mr. pomeroy, thoughtfully. ``have you decided where to go?'' ``yes, sir. i shall go to new york.'' ``what! to the city?'' ``yes, sir. i'll get something to do, no matter what it is.'' ``but how are you going to live in the meantime?'' ``i've got a little money.'' ``that won't last long.'' ``i know it, but i shall soon get work, if it is only to black boots in the streets.'' ``with that spirit, frank, you will stand a fair chance to succeed. what do you mean to do with grace?'' ``i will take her with me.'' ``i can think of a better plan. leave her here till you have found something to do. then send for her.'' ``but if i leave her here deacon pinkerton will want to put her in the poorhouse. i can't bear to have grace go there.'' ``she need not. she can stay here with me for three months.'' ``will you let me pay her board?'' ``i can afford to give her board for three months.'' ``you are very kind, mr. pomeroy, but it wouldn't be right for me to accept your kindness. it is my duty to take care of grace.'' ``i honor your independence, frank. it shall be as you say. when you are able-mind, not till then --you may pay me at the rate of two dollars a week for grace's board.'' ``then,'' said frank, ``if you are willing to board grace for a while, i think i had better go to the city at once.'' ``i will look over your clothes to-morrow, frank,'' said mrs. pomeroy, ``and see if they need mending.'' ``then i will start thursday morning--the day after.'' about four o'clock the next afternoon he was walking up the main street, when just in front of deacon pinkerton's house he saw tom leaning against a tree. ``how are you tom?'' he said, and was about to pass on. ``where are you going?'' tom asked abruptly. ``to mr. pomeroy's.'' ``how soon are you going to the poorhouse to live?'' ``who told you i was going?'' ``my father.'' ``then your father's mistaken.'' ``ain't you a pauper?'' said tom, insolently. ``you haven't got any money.'' ``i have got hands to earn money, and i am going to try.'' ``anyway, i advise you to resign as captain of the baseball club.'' ``why?'' ``because if you don't you'll be kicked out. do you think the fellows will be willing to have a pauper for their captain?'' ``that's the second time you have called me a pauper. don't call me so again.'' ``you are a pauper and you know it.'' frank was not a quarrelsome boy, but this repeated insult was too much for him. he seized tom by the collar, and tripping him up left him on the ground howling with rage. as valor was not his strong point, he resolved to be revenged upon frank vicariously. he was unable to report the case to his father till the next morning, as the deacon did not return from a neighboring village, whither he had gone on business, till late, but the result of his communication was a call at mr. pomeroy's from the deacon at nine o'clock the next morning. had he found frank, it was his intention, at tom's request, to take him at once to the poorhouse. but he was too late. our hero was already on his way to new york. chapter vi frank gets a place ``so this is new york,'' said frank to himself, as he emerged from the railway station and looked about him with interest and curiosity. ``black yer boots? shine?'' asked a bootblack, seeing our hero standing still. frank looked at his shoes. they were dirty, without doubt, but he would not have felt disposed to be so extravagant, considering his limited resources, had he not felt it necessary to obtain some information about the city. ``yes,'' he said, ``you may black them.'' the boy was on his knees instantly and at work. ``how much do you make in a day?'' asked frank. ``when it's a good day i make a dollar.'' ``that's pretty good,'' said frank. ``can you show me the way to broadway?'' ``go straight ahead.'' our hero paid for his shine and started in the direction indicated. frank's plans, so far as he had any, were to get into a store. he knew that broadway was the principal business street in the city, and this was about all he did know about it. he reached the great thoroughfare in a few minutes, and was fortunate enough to find on the window of the corner store the sign: ``a boy wanted.'' he entered at once, and going up to the counter, addressed a young man, who was putting up goods. ``do you want a boy?'' ``i believe the boss wants one; i don't. go out to that desk.'' frank found the desk, and propounded the same question to a sandy-whiskered man, who looked up from his writing. ``you're prompt,'' he said. ``that notice was only put out two minutes ago.'' ``i only saw it one minute ago.'' ``so you want the place, do you?'' ``i should like it.'' ``do you know your way about the city?'' ``no, sir, but i could soon find out.'' ``that won't do. i shall have plenty of applications from boys who live in the city and are familiar with the streets.'' frank left the store rather discomfited. he soon came to another store where there was a similar notice of ``a boy wanted.'' it was a dry goods store. ``do you live with your parents?'' was asked. ``my parents are dead,'' said frank, sadly. ``very sorry, but we can't take you.'' ``why not, sir?'' ``in case you took anything we should make your parents responsible.'' ``i shouldn't take anything,'' said frank, indignantly. ``you might; i can't take you.'' our hero left this store a little disheartened by his second rebuff. he made several more fruitless applications, but did not lose courage wholly. he was gaining an appetite, however. it is not surprising therefore, that his attention was drawn to the bills of a restaurant on the opposite side of the street. he crossed over, and standing outside, began to examine them to see what was the scale of prices. while in this position he was suddenly aroused by a slap on the back. turning he met the gaze of a young man of about thirty, who was smiling quite cordially. ``why, frank, my boy, how are you?'' he said, offering his hand. ``pretty well, thank you,'' said our hero bewildered, for he had no recollection of the man who had called him by name. the other smiled a little more broadly, and thought: ``it was a lucky guess; his name is frank.'' ``i am delighted to hear it,'' he continued. ``when did you reach the city?'' ``this morning,'' said the unsuspecting frank. ``well, it's queer i happened to meet you so soon, isn't it? going to stay long?'' ``i shall, if i can get a place.'' ``perhaps i can help you.'' ``i suppose i ought to remember you,'' ventured our hero, ``but i can't think of your name.'' ``jasper wheelock. you don't mean to say you don't remember me? perhaps it isn't strange, as we only met once or twice in your country home. but that doesn't matter. i'm just as ready to help you. by the way, have you dined?'' ``no.'' ``no more have i. come in and dine with me.'' ``what'll you take?'' asked jasper wheelock, passing the bill of fare to frank. ``i think i should like to have some roast beef,'' said frank. ``that will suit me. here, waiter, two plates of roast beef, and two cups of coffee.'' ``how are they all at home?'' asked jasper. ``my mother has just died.'' ``you don't say so,'' said jasper, sympathetically. ``my sister is well.'' ``i forgot your sister's name.'' ``grace.'' ``of course--grace. i find it hard to remember names. the fact is, i have been trying to recall your last name, but it's gone from me.'' ``fowler.'' ``to be sure frank fowler. how could i be so forgetful.'' the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the coffee and roast beet, which both he and his new friend attacked with vigor. ``what kind of pudding will you have?'' asked the stranger. ``apple dumpling,'' said frank. ``that suits me. apple dumpling for two.'' in due time the apple dumpling was disposed of, and two checks were brought, amounting to seventy cents. ``i'll pay for both,'' said jasper. ``no thanks. we are old acquaintances, you know.'' he put his hand into his pocket, and quickly withdrew it with an exclamation of surprise: ``well, if that isn't a good joke,'' he said. ``i've left my money at home. i remember now, i left it in the pocket of my other coat. i shall have to borrow the money of you. you may as well hand me a dollar!'' frank was not disposed to be suspicious, but the request for money made him uneasy. still there seemed no way of refusing, and he reluctantly drew out the money. his companion settled the bill and then led the way into the street. jasper wheelock was not very scrupulous; he was quite capable of borrowing money, without intending to return it; but he had his good side. ``frank,'' said he, as they found themselves in the street, ``you have done me a favor, and i am going to help you in return. have you got very much money?'' ``no. i had twenty dollars when i left home, but i had to pay my fare in the cars and the dinner, i have seventeen dollars and a half left.'' ``then it is necessary for you to get a place as soon as possible.'' ``yes; i have a sister to support; grace, you know.'' ``no, i don't know. the fact is, frank, i have been imposing upon you. i never saw you before in the whole course of my life.'' ``what made you say you knew me?'' ``i wanted to get a dinner out of you. don't be troubled, though; i'll pay back the money. i've been out of a place for three or four weeks, but i enter upon one the first of next week. for the rest of the week i've got nothing to do, and i will try to get you a place. ``the first thing is to get a room somewhere. i'll tell you what, you may have part of my room.'' ``is it expensive?'' ``no; i pay a dollar and a half a week. i think the old lady won't charge more than fifty cents extra for you.'' ``then my share would be a dollar.'' ``you may pay only fifty cents. i'll keep on paying what i do now. my room is on sixth avenue.'' they had some distance to walk. finally jasper halted before a baker's shop. ``it's over this,'' he said. he drew out a latch-key and entered. ``this is my den,'' he said. it isn't large you can't get any better for the money.'' ``i shall have to be satisfied,'' said frank. ``i want to get along as cheap as i can.'' ``i've got to economize myself for a short time. after this week i shall earn fifteen dollars a week.'' ``what business are you in, mr. wheelock?'' ``i am a journeyman printer. it is a very good business, and i generally have steady work. i expect to have after i get started again. now, shall i give you some advice?'' ``i wish you would.'' ``you don't know your way around new york. i believe i have a map somewhere. i'll just show you on it the position of the principal streets, and that will give you a clearer idea of where we go.'' the map was found and jasper explained to frank the leading topographical features of the island city. one thing only was wanting now to make him contented, and this was employment. but it was too late to make any further inquiries. ``i've been thinking, frank,'' said jasper, the next morning, ``that you might get the position as a cash-boy.'' ``what does a cash-boy do?'' ``in large retail establishments every salesman keeps a book in which his sales are entered. he does not himself make change, for it would not do to have so many having access to the money-drawer. the money is carried to the cashier's desk by boys employed for the purpose, who return with the change.'' ``do you think i can get a situation as cash-boy?'' ``i will try at gilbert & mack's. i know one of the principal salesmen. if there is a vacancy he will get it for you to oblige me.'' they entered a large retail store on broadway. it was broad and spacious. twenty salesmen stood behind the counter, and boys were running this way and that with small books in their hands. ``how are you, duncan?'' said jasper. the person addressed was about jasper wheelock's age. he had a keen, energetic look and manner, and would be readily singled out as one of the leading clerks. ``all right, wheelock. how are you?'' he responded. ``do you want anything in our line?'' ``no goods; i want a place for this youngster. he's a friend of mine. i'll answer for his good character.'' ``that will be satisfactory. but what sort of a place does he want?'' ``he is ready to begin as cash-boy.'' ``then we can oblige you, as one of our boys has fallen sick, and we have not supplied his place. i'll speak to mr. gilbert.'' he went up to mr. gilbert, a portly man in the back part of the store. mr. gilbert seemed to be asking two or three questions. frank waited the result in suspense, dreading another disappointment, but this time he was fortunate. ``the boy can stay,'' reported duncan. ``his wages are three dollars a week.'' it was not much, but frank was well pleased to feel that at last he had a place in the city. he wrote a letter to grace in the evening, announcing his success, and expressing the hope that he would soon be able to send for her. chapter vii the cash boy has an adventure four weeks passed. the duties of a cash-boy are simple enough, and frank had no difficulty in discharging them satisfactorily. at first he found it tiresome, being on his feet all day, for the cash-boys were not allowed to sit down, but he got used to this, being young and strong. all this was very satisfactory, but one thing gave frank uneasiness. his income was very inadequate to his wants. ``what makes you so glum, frank?'' asked jasper wheelock one evening. ``do i look glum?'' said frank. ``i was only thinking how i could earn more money. you know how little i get. i can hardly take care of myself, much less take care of grace.'' ``i can lend you some money, frank. thanks to your good advice, i have got some laid up.'' ``thank you, jasper, but that wouldn't help matters. i should owe you the money, and i don't know how i could pay you.'' ``about increasing your income, i really don't know,'' said jasper. ``i am afraid gilbert & mack wouldn't raise your wages.'' ``i don't expect it. all the rest of the cash-boys would ask the same thing.'' ``true; still i know they are very well pleased with you. duncan told me you did more work than any of the rest of the boys.'' ``i try to do all i can.'' ``he said you would make a good salesman, he thought. of course you are too young for that yet.'' ``i suppose i am.'' ``frank, i am earning fifteen dollars a week, you know, and i can get along on ten, but of the five i save let me give you two. i shall never feel it, and by and by when you are promoted it won't be necessary.'' ``jasper, you are a true friend,'' said frank, warmly; ``but it wouldn't be right for me to accept your kind offer, though i shan't forget it. you have been a good friend to me.'' ``and you to me, frank. i'll look out for you. perhaps i may hear of something for you.'' small as frank's income was, he had managed to live within it. it will be remembered that he had paid but fifty cents a week for a room. by great economy he had made his meals cost but two dollars a week, so that out of his three dollars he saved fifty cents. but this saving would not be sufficient to pay for his clothes. however, he had had no occasion to buy any as yet, and his little fund altogether amounted to twenty dollars. of this sum he inclosed{sic} eight dollars to mr. pomeroy to pay for four weeks' board for grace. ``i hope i shall be able to keep it up,'' he said to himself, thoughtfully. ``at any rate, i've got enough to pay for six weeks more. before that time something may turn up.'' several days passed without showing frank any way by which he could increase his income. jasper again offered to give him two dollars a week out of his own wages, but this our hero steadily refused. one friday evening, just as the store was about to close, the head salesman called frank to him. ``where do you live?'' he asked. ``in sixth avenue, near twenty-fifth street.'' ``there's a bundle to go to forty-sixth street. i'll pay your fare upon the stage if you'll carry it. i promised to send it to-night, and i don't like to disappoint the lady.'' ``i can carry it just as well as not.'' frank took the bundle, and got on board a passing omnibus. there was just one seat vacant beside an old gentleman of seventy, who appeared to be quite feeble. at forty-fifth street he pulled the strap and prepared to descend, leaning heavily on his cane as he did so. by some mischance the horses started a little too soon and the old man, losing his footing, fell in the street. frank observed the accident and sprang out instantly to his help. ``i hope you are not much hurt, sir?'' he said, hastily. ``i have hurt my knee,'' said the old gentleman. ``let me assist you, sir,'' said frank, helping him up. ``thank you, my boy. i live at number forty-five, close by. if you will lead me to the door and into the house i shall be much indebted to you.'' ``certainly, sir. it is no trouble to me.'' with slow step, supported by our hero, the old gentleman walked to his own door. it was opened by a maid servant, who looked with some surprise at frank. ``i fell, mary,'' explained her master, ``and this young gentleman has kindly helped me home.'' ``did you hurt yourself much, sir?'' ``not seriously.'' ``can i do anything more for you, sir?'' asked frank. ``come in a moment.'' our hero followed his new acquaintance into a handsomely furnished parlor. ``now, my young friend tell me if you have been taken out of your way by your attention to me?'' ``oh, no, sir; i intended to get out at the next street.'' ``my dinner is just ready. won't you stop and dine with me?'' ``thank you, sir,'' he said, hesitatingly, ``but i promised to carry this bundle. i believe it is wanted at once.'' ``so you shall. you say the house is in the next street. you can go and return in five minutes. you have done me a service, and i may have it in my power to do something for you in return.'' ``perhaps,'' thought frank, ``he can help me to some employment for my evenings.'' then, aloud: ``thank you, sir; i will come.'' five minutes later frank was ushered into a handsome dining-room. the dinner was already on the table, but chairs were only set for three. the one at the head of the table was of course occupied by the old gentleman, the one opposite by mrs. bradley, his housekeeper, and one at the side was placed for frank. ``mrs. bradley,'' said the old gentleman, ``this is a young gentleman who was kind enough to help me home after the accident of which i just spoke to you. i would mention his name, but i must leave that to him.'' ``frank fowler, sir.'' ``and my name is wharton. now that we are all introduced, we can talk more freely.'' ``will you have some soup, mr. fowler?'' asked the housekeeper. she was a tall thin woman, with a reserved manner that was somewhat repellant. she had only nodded slightly at the introduction, fixing her eyes coldly and searchingly on the face of our hero. it was evident that whatever impression the service rendered might have made upon the mind of mr. wharton, it was not calculated to warm the housekeeper to cordiality. ``thank you,'' he answered, but he could not help feeling at the same time that mrs. bradley was not a very agreeable woman. ``you ought to have a good appetite,'' said mr. wharton. ``you have to work hard during the day. our young friend is a cash-boy at gilbert & mack's, mrs. bradley. ``oh, indeed!'' said mrs. bradley, arching her brows as much as to say: ``you have invited strange company to dinner.'' ``do your parents live in the city, frank--i believe your name is frank?'' ``no, sir; they are dead. my mother died only a few weeks since.'' ``and have you no brothers and sisters?'' ``i have one sister--grace.'' ``i suppose she is in the city here with you?'' ``no, sir. i left her in the country. i am here alone.'' ``i will ask you more about yourself after dinner. if you have no engagement, i should like to have you stay with me a part of the evening.'' ``thank you, sir.'' frank accepted the invitation, though he knew jasper would wonder what had become of him. he saw that the old gentleman was kindly disposed toward him, and in his present circumstances he needed such a friend. but in proportion as mr. wharton became more cordial, mrs. bradley became more frosty, until at last the old gentleman noticed her manner. ``don't you feel well this evening, mrs bradley?'' he asked. ``i have a little headache,'' said the housekeeper, coldly. ``you had better do something for it.'' ``it will pass away of itself, sir.'' they arose from the dinner table, and mr. wharton, followed by frank, ascended the staircase to the front room on the second floor, which was handsomely fitted up as a library, ``what makes him take such notice of a mere cashboy?'' said mrs. bradley to herself. ``that boy reminds me of somebody. who is it?'' chapter viii an unexpected engagement ``take a seat, frank,'' said mr. wharton, pointing to a luxurious armchair on one side of the cheerful grate fire; ``i will take the other, and you shall tell me all about yourself.'' ``thank you, sir,'' said our hero. his confidence was won by mr. wharton's kind tone, and he briefly recounted his story. at the conclusion, mr. wharton said: ``how old are you, frank ?'' ``fourteen, sir.'' ``you are a brave boy, and a good boy, and you deserve success.'' ``thank you, sir.'' ``but i am bound to say that you have a hard task before you.'' ``i know it, sir.'' ``why not let your sister go to the poorhouse for a few years, till you are older, and better able to provide for her?'' ``i should be ashamed to do it, sir,'' he said. ``i promised my mother to take care of grace, and i will.'' ``how much do you earn as a cash-boy?'' ``three dollars a week.'' ``only three dollars a week! why, that won't pay your own expenses!'' said the old gentleman in surprise. ``yes, sir, it does. i pay fifty cents a week for my room, and my meals don't cost me much.'' ``but you will want clothes.'' ``i have enough for the present, and i am laying up fifty cents a week to buy more when i need them.'' ``you can't buy many for twenty-six dollars a year. but that doesn't allow anything for your sister's expenses.'' ``that is what puzzles me, sir,'' said frank, fixing a troubled glance upon the fire. ``i shall have to work in the evenings for grace.'' ``what can you do?'' ``i could copy, but i suppose there isn't much chance of getting copying to do.'' ``then you have a good handwriting?'' ``pretty fair, sir.'' ``let me see a specimen. there are pen and ink on the table, and here is a sheet of paper.'' frank seated himself at the table, and wrote his name on the paper. ``very good,'' said his host, approvingly. ``your hand is good enough for a copyist, but you are correct in supposing that work of that kind is hard to get. are you a good reader?'' ``do you mean in reading aloud, sir?'' ``yes.'' ``i will try, if you wish.'' ``take a book from the table--any book--and let me hear you read.'' frank opened the first book that came to hand-one of irving's and read in a clear, unembarrassed voice about half a page. ``very good indeed!'' said mr. wharton. ``you have been well taught. where did you attend school?'' ``only in the town school, sir.'' ``you have, at any rate, made good use of your advantages.'' ``but will it do me any good, sir?'' asked frank. ``people are not paid for reading, are they?'' ``not in general, but we will suppose the case of a person whose eyes are weak, and likely to be badly affected by evening use. then suppose such a person could secure the services of a good, clear, distinct reader, don't you think he would be willing to pay something?'' ``i suppose so. do you know of any such person?'' asked frank. ``i am describing myself, frank. a year since i strained my eyes very severely, and have never dared to use them much since by gaslight. mrs. bradley, my housekeeper, has read to me some, but she has other duties, and i don't think she enjoys it very much. now, why shouldn't i get you to read to me in the evening when you are not otherwise employed?'' ``i wish you would, mr. wharton,'' said frank, eagerly. ``i would do my best.'' ``i have no doubt of that, but there is another question--perhaps you might ask a higher salary than i could afford to pay.'' ``would a dollar a week be too much?'' asked frank. ``i don't think i could complain of that,'' said mr. wharton, gravely. ``very well, i will engage you as my reader.'' ``thank you, sir.'' ``but about the pay; i have made up my mind to pay you five dollars a week.'' ``five dollars a week!'' frank repeated. ``it is much more than my services will be worth sir.'' ``let me judge of that, frank.'' ``i don't know how to thank you, sir,'' said frank, gratefully. ``i never expected to be so rich. i shall have no trouble in paying for grace's board and clothes now. when do you want me to begin reading to you?'' ``you may as well begin to-night--that is, unless you have some other engagement.'' ``oh, no, sir, i have nothing else to do.'' ``take the evening post, then, and read me the leading editorial. afterward, i will tell you what to read.'' frank had been reading about half an hour, when a knock was heard at the door. ``come in,'' said mr. wharton. mrs. bradley entered, with a soft, quiet step. ``i thought, sir,'' she began, ``you might like me to read to you, as usual.'' ``thank you, mrs. bradley, but i am going to relieve you of that portion of your labors. my young friend here is to come every evening and read to me.'' ``indeed!'' ejaculated the housekeeper in a tone of chilly displeasure, and a sharp glance at frank, which indicated no great amount of cordiality. ``then, as i am intruding, i will take my leave.'' there was something in her tone that made frank feel uncomfortable. chapter ix the housekeeper's nephew ``by no means,'' said mr. wharton, as the housekeeper was about to withdraw; ``don't imagine you are intruding. come in and sit down.'' ``thank you, sir,'' said mrs. bradley, in a measured tone. ``you are very considerate, i am sure, but if you'll excuse me, i won't come in this evening.'' ``mrs. bradley has been with me a good many years,'' explained mr. wharton, ``and i dare say she feels a little disturbed at seeing another occupy her place, even in a duty like this.'' ``i am afraid she will be offended with me, sir,'' said frank. ``oh, no; i will explain matters to her. go on with your reading, frank.'' at half-past nine, mr. wharton took out his watch. ``it is getting late,'' he said. ``i have no doubt you are tired and need rest.'' ``i am not tired, sir.'' ``i believe in going to bed early. i shall seldom keep you later than this. do you think you can find your way out?'' ``yes, sir. when shall i come to-morrow evening?'' ``a little before eight.'' ``i will be punctual.'' jasper was waiting for him, not wholly without anxiety, for it was very unusual for frank to be late. ``well, frank!'' he exclaimed; ``this is a pretty time for you to come home. i began to think you had got into trouble. i was just going around to the nearest station house in search of you.'' ``i was in quite a different place, jasper.'' frank told his story, including an account of his engagement. ``so it seems i am to lose your company in the evening. i am sorry for that, but i am glad you are so lucky.'' ``it was better than i expected,'' said frank, with satisfaction. ``what sort of a man is this mr. wharton?'' said jasper. ``he is very kind and generous. i am lucky to have so good a friend. there's only one thing that is likely to be disagreeable.'' ``what's that?'' ``the housekeeper--her name is mrs. bradley-for some reason or other she doesn't want me there.'' ``what makes you think so?'' ``her manner, and the way she speaks. she came in to read to mr. wharton last evening, and didn't seem to like it because i had been taken in her place.'' ``she is evidently jealous. you must take care not to offend her. she might endeavor to have you dismissed.'' ``i shall always treat her politely, but i don't think i can ever like her.'' meanwhile, the housekeeper, on leaving the library, had gone to her own room in dudgeon. ``mr. wharton's a fool!'' she muttered to herself. ``what possessed him to take this cash-boy from the streets, invite him to dinner, and treat him as an honored guest, and finally to engage him as a reader? i never heard of anything so ridiculous! is this little vagabond to take my place in the old man's good graces? i've been slaving and slaving for twenty years, and what have i got by it? i've laid up two thousand dollars; and what is that to provide for my old age? if the old man would die, and remember me handsomely in his will, it would be worth while; but this new favorite may stand in my way. if he does i'll be revenged on him as sure as my name is ulrica bradley.'' here the area bell rang, and in a moment one of the housemaids entered mrs. bradley's room. ``there's your nephew outside, ma'am, and wanting to see you.'' ``tell him to come in,'' and the housekeeper's cold face became softer and pleasanter in aspect as a young man of twenty entered and greeted her carelessly. ``how are you, aunt?'' ``pretty well, thomas,'' she answered. ``you haven't been here for some time.'' ``no. i've had a lot of work to do. nothing but work, work, all the time,'' he grumbled. ``i wish i was rich.'' ``you get through at six o'clock, don't you?'' ``yes.'' ``i hope you spend your evenings profitably, thomas?'' ``i ain't likely to go on any sprees, aunt, if that's what you mean. i only get twelve dollars a week.'' ``i should think you might live on it.'' ``starve, you mean. what's twelve dollars to a young fellow like me when he's got his board to pay, and has to dress like a gentleman?'' ``you are not in debt, i hope, thomas?'' said mrs. bradley, uneasily. ``i owe for the suit i have on, and i don't know where i'm going to get the money to pay for it.'' he was dressed in a flashy style, not unlike what is popularly denominated a swell. his coarse features were disfigured with unhealthy blotches, and his outward appearance was hardly such as to recommend him. but to him alone the cold heart of the housekeeper was warm. he was her sister's son and her nearest relative. her savings were destined for him, and in her attachment she was not conscious of his disagreeable characteristics. she had occasionally given him a five-dollar bill to eke out what he termed his miserable pay, and now whenever he called he didn't spare hints that he was out of pocket, and that a further gift would be acceptable. indeed, the only tie that bound him to his aunt was a mercenary one. but the housekeeper, sharp-sighted as she ordinarily was, did not detect the secret motive of such attention she received from her nephew. she flattered herself that he really loved her, not suspecting that he was too selfish to love anybody but himself. ``thomas,'' she said, with a sudden thought, ``i may be able to help you to an increase of your income. mr. wharton needs somebody to read to him evenings. on my recommendation he might take you.'' ``thank you, aunt, but i don't see it. i don't want to be worked to death.'' ``but, think, thomas,'' said his aunt, earnestly. ``he is very rich. he might take a fancy to you and remember you in his will.'' ``i wish somebody would remember me in his will. do you really think there's any chance of the old boy's doing something handsome for me?'' ``that depends on yourself. you must try to please him.'' ``well, i must do something. what'll he give?'' ``i don't know yet. in fact, there's another reading to him just now.'' ``then there's no chance for me.'' ``listen to me. it's a boy he's picked up in the streets, quite unsuited for the place. he's a cashboy at gilbert & mack's. why, that's where you are,'' she added, with sudden recollection. ``a cash-boy from my own place? what's his name?'' ``fowler, i believe.'' ``i know him--he's lately come. how did he get in with the old man?'' ``mr. wharton fell in the street, and he happened to be near, and helped him home.'' ``you'll have to manage it, aunt.'' ``i'll see what i can do to-morrow. he ought to prefer my nephew to a strange boy, seeing i have been twenty years in his service. i'll let you know as soon as i have accomplished anything.'' ``i don't half like the idea of giving up my evenings. i don't believe i can stand it.'' ``it is only for a little while, to get him interested in you.'' ``maybe i might try it a week, and then tell him my health was failing, and get him to do something else for me.'' ``at any rate, the first thing must be to become acquainted.'' thomas now withdrew, for he did not enjoy spending an evening with his aunt, the richer by five dollars, half of which was spent before the evening closed at a neighboring billiard saloon. chapter x the housekeeper scheming if mrs. bradley had been wiser, she would have felt less confident of her nephew's producing a favorable impression upon mr. wharton. she resolved to open the subject at the breakfast table ``i didn't know, mr. wharton,'' she commenced, ``that you intended to engage a reader.'' ``nor did i propose to do so until last evening.'' ``i think--you'll excuse me for saying so--that you will find that boy too young to suit you.'' ``i don't think so. he reads very clearly and distinctly.'' ``if i had known you thought of engaging a reader, i would have asked you to engage my nephew.'' ``indeed, i was not aware that you had a nephew in the city. is he a boy?'' ``no; he is a young man. he was twenty years old last june.'' ``is he unfavorably situated?'' ``he has a place as salesman.'' ``with what firm?'' ``gilbert & mack.'' ``why, that is the same firm that employs my young friend. it is a good firm.'' ``perhaps it is, but my poor nephew receives a very small salary. he finds it very hard to get along.'' ``your nephew is young. he will be promoted if he serves his employers well.'' ``thomas would have been glad to read to you in the evening, sir,'' said mrs. bradley, commencing the attack. ``but for my present engagement, i might have taken him,'' said mr. wharton, politely. ``have you engaged that boy for any length of time?'' ``no; but it is understood that he will stay while i need him, and he continues to suit me. i have a favorable opinion of him. besides, he needs the pay. he receives but three dollars a week as a cash-boy, and has a sister to support as well as himself.'' ``i am sorry,'' she said in an injured tone. ``i hope you'll excuse my mentioning it, but i took the liberty, having been for twenty years in your employ.'' ``to be sure! you were quite right,'' said her employer, kindly. ``perhaps i may be able to do something for your nephew, though not that. tell him to come and see me some time.'' ``thank you, sir,'' said the housekeeper. there was one question she wanted to determine, and that was the amount of compensation received by frank. she did not like to inquire directly from mr. wharton, but resolved to gain the information from our hero. some evenings later she had the opportunity. mr. wharton had an engagement, and asked her to tell frank, when he arrived that he was released from duty. instead of this she received him in the library herself. ``probably mr. wharton will not be at home this evening,'' she said. ``if he does not return in half an hour, you need not wait.'' she took up her work, seated in mr. wharton's usual place, and frank remained ready for duty. ``mr. wharton tells me you have a sister,'' she said. ``yes, ma'am.'' ``you must find it hard work to provide for her as well as yourself.'' ``i do, or rather i did till i came here.'' ``how much does mr. wharton pay you?'' she asked, in an indifferent tone. ``five dollars a week,'' answered frank. ``you are lucky that you have such a chance,'' she said. ``yes, ma'am; it is more than i earn, i know, but it is a great help to me.'' ``and how much do you get as cash-boy?'' ``three dollars a week.'' ``so you actually receive nearly twice as much for a couple of hours in the evening as for the whole day.'' ``yes, ma'am.'' ``what a pity thomas can't have this chance,'' she thought. when it was nine o'clock, she said: ``you need not wait any longer. mr. wharton will not be home in time to hear you read.'' ``good-evening, mrs. bradley,'' said frank. ``good-evening!'' she responded, coldly. ``that boy is in the way,'' she said to herself, when she was left alone. ``he is in my way, and tom's way. i can see that he is artfully intriguing for mr. wharton's favor, but i must checkmate him. it's odd,'' she resumed, after a pause, ``but there is something in his face and voice that seems familiar to me. what is it?'' * * * * * the following evening the housekeeper received another visit from her nephew. ``how do, aunt?'' said thomas bradley, carelessly, as he entered the housekeeper's room. ``very well, thank you, thomas. i am glad you are here. i have been wanting to see you.'' ``the old man isn't going to do anything for me, is he?'' ``how can you expect it so soon? he doesn't know you yet. how much do you think he pays the cash-boy that reads to him in the evening?'' ``i don't know.'' ``five dollars a week.'' ``i wouldn't give up my evenings for that,'' he said. ``it isn't so much the pay, thomas, though that would be a help. he might take a fancy to you.'' ``that might pay better. when are you going to introduce me?'' ``this evening; that is, i will ask mr. wharton if he will see you.'' mrs. bradley entered the library, where frank was engaged in reading aloud. ``excuse my interruption,'' she said; ``but my nephew has just called, and i should like to introduce him to you, if you will kindly receive him.'' ``certainly, mrs. bradley,'' said mr. wharton. ``bring him in.'' the housekeeper left the room, but speedily reappeared, followed by her nephew, who seemed a little abashed. ``my nephew, thomas bradley, mr. wharton,'' said his aunt, by way of introduction. ``you have often heard me speak of mr. wharton, thomas.'' ``how do you do, sir?'' said thomas awkwardly. ``pray take a seat, mr. bradley. your aunt has been long a member of my family. i am glad to see a nephew of hers. i believe you are a salesman at gilbert & mack's?'' ``yes, sir.'' ``then you must know my young friend here?'' pointing to frank. ``how are you, cash?'' said thomas, laughing, under the impression that he had said something smart. ``very well, mr. bradley,'' answered frank, quietly. ``you see, that's all the name we call 'em in the store,'' said thomas. mr. wharton could not help thinking: ``how poorly this young man compares with my young friend. still, as he is mrs. bradley's nephew, i must be polite to him.'' ``are there many cash-boys in your establishment, mr. bradley?'' ``about a dozen. ain't there, fowler?'' ``i believe so, mr. bradley.'' ``gilbert & mack do a good business, i should judge.'' ``yes, they do; but that doesn't do us poor salesmen much good. we get just enough to keep soul and body together.'' ``i am sorry to hear it,'' said mr. wharton. ``why, sir,'' said thomas, gaining confidence, ``all they pay me is twelve dollars a week. how can they expect a fellow to live on that?'' ``i began my career about your age,'' said mr. wharton, ``or perhaps a little younger, and had to live on but six dollars a week.'' ``didn't you come near starving?'' he asked. ``on the contrary, i saved a little every week.'' ``i can't,'' said thomas, a little discomfited. ``why, it takes half that to dress decently.'' mr. wharton glanced quietly at the rather loud and flashy dress worn by his visitor, but only said: ``a small salary, of course, makes economy necessary.'' ``but when a fellow knows he earns a good deal more than he gets, he doesn't feel like starving himself just that his employers may grow rich.'' ``of course, if he can better himself they cannot object.'' ``that's just what i want to do,'' said thomas; ``but i expect i need influence to help me to something better. that's a good hint,'' thought he. ``i was telling thomas,'' said the housekeeper, ``that you had kindly expressed a desire to be of service to him.'' ``i am not now in active business,'' said mr. wharton, ``and of course have not the opportunities i formerly had for helping young men, but i will bear your case in mind, mr. bradley.'' ``thank you, sir,'' said thomas. ``i am sure i earn a thousand dollars a year.'' ``i think, thomas,'' said mrs. bradley, ``we won't intrude on mr. wharton longer this evening. when he finds something for you he will tell me.'' ``all right, aunt. good-night, mr. wharton. goodnight, cash,'' said thomas, chuckling anew at the old joke. ``well, aunt,'' said he, when they were once more in the housekeeper's room, ``do you think the old gentleman will do anything for me?'' ``i hope so; but i am not sure, thomas, whether you were not too familiar. you spoke of money too quick.'' ``it's my way to come to business.'' ``i wish you were his reader, instead of that boy.'' ``well, i don't. i wouldn't want to he mewed up in that room with the old man every night. i should get tired to death of it.'' ``you would have a chance to get him interested in you. that boy is artful; he is doing all he can to win mr. wharton's favor. he is the one you have most reason to dread.'' ``do you think he will do me any harm?'' ``i think he will injure your chances.'' ``egad! if i thought that, i'd wring the young rascal's neck.'' ``there's a better way, thomas.'' ``what's that?'' ``can't you get him dismissed from gilbert & mack's?'' ``i haven't enough influence with the firm.'' ``suppose they thought him dishonest?'' ``they'd give him the sack, of course.'' ``can't you make them think so, thomas?'' ``i don't know.'' ``then make it your business to find out.'' ``i suppose you know what good it's going to do, aunt, but i don't. he's got his place here with the old man.'' ``if mr. wharton hears that he is discharged, and has lost his situation, he will probably discharge him, too.'' ``perhaps so; i suppose you know best.'' ``do as i tell you, and i will manage the rest.'' ``all right. i need your help enough. to-night, for instance, i'm regularly cleaned out. haven't got but twenty-five cents to my name.'' ``it seems to me, thomas,'' said his aunt, with a troubled look, ``you are always out of money. i'll give you five dollars, thomas, but you must remember that i am not made of money. my wages are small.'' ``you ought to have a good nest-egg laid aside, aunt.'' ``i've got something, thomas, and when i die, it'll be yours.'' ``i hope i shan't have to wait too long,'' thought thomas, but he did not give utterance to the thought.'' ``come again, thomas, and don't forget what i have said,'' said mrs. bradley. chapter xi john wade a tall man, with a sallow complexion, and heavilybearded face, stood on the deck of a cunard steamer, only a few miles distant from new york harbor. ``it's three years since i have seen america,'' he said to himself, thoughtfully. ``i suppose i ought to feel a patriotic fervor about setting foot once more on my native shore, but i don't believe in nonsense. i would be content to live in europe all my life, if my uncle's fortune were once in my possession. i am his sole heir, but he persists in holding on to his money bags, and limits me to a paltry three thousand a year. i must see if i can't induce him to give me a good, round sum on account--fifty thousand, at least--and then i can wait a little more patiently till he drops off.'' ``when shall we reach port, captain?'' he asked, as he passed that officer. ``in four hours, i think, mr. wade.'' ``so this is my birthday,'' he said to himself. ``thirty five years old to-day. half my life gone, and i am still a dependent on my uncle's bounty. suppose he should throw me off--leave me out in the cold--where should i be? if he should find the boy--but no, there is no chance of that. i have taken good care of that. by the way, i must look him up soon--cautiously, of course--and see what has become of him. he will grow up a laborer or mechanic and die without a knowledge of his birth, while i fill his place and enjoy his inheritance.'' at six o'clock the vessel reached the quarantine. most of the passengers decided to remain on board one night more, but john wade was impatient, and, leaving his trunks, obtained a small boat, and soon touched the shore. it was nearly eight when john wade landed in the city. it was half-past eight when he stood on the steps of his uncle's residence and rang the bell. ``is my uncle is mr. wharton--at home?'' he asked of the servant who answered the bell. ``yes, sir.'' ``i am his nephew, just arrived from europe. let him know that i am here, and would like to see him.'' the servant, who had never before seen him, having only been six months in the house, regarded him with a great deal of curiosity, and then went to do his biddng. ``my nephew arrived!'' exclaimed mr. wharton, in surprise. ``why, he never let me know he was coming.'' ``will you see him, sir?'' ``to be sure! bring him in at once.'' ``my dear uncle!'' exclaimed john wade, with effusion, for he was a polite man, and could act when it suited his interests to do so, ``i am glad to see you. how is your health?'' ``i am getting older every day, john.'' ``you don't look a day older, sir,'' said john, who did not believe what he said, for he could plainly see that his uncle had grown older since he last saw him. ``you think so, john, but i feel it. your coming is a surprise. you did not write that you intended sailing.'' ``i formed the determination very suddenly, sir.'' ``were you tired of europe?'' ``no; but i wanted to see you, sir.'' ``thank you, john,'' said his uncle, pressing his nephew's hand. ``i am glad you think so much of me. did you have a pleasant voyage?'' ``rather rough, sir.'' ``you have had no supper, of course? if you will ring the bell, the housekeeper will see that some is got ready for you.'' ``is mrs. bradley still in your employ, uncle?'' ``yes, john. i am so used to her that i shouldn't know how to get along without her.'' hitherto john wade had been so occupied with his uncle that he had not observed frank. but at this moment our hero coughed, involuntarily, and john wade looked at him. he seemed to be singularly affected. he started perceptibly, and his sallow face blanched, as his eager eyes were fixed on the boy's face. ``good heavens!'' he muttered to himself. ``who is that boy? how comes he here?'' frank noticed his intent gaze, and wondered at it, but mr. wharton's eyesight was defective, and he did not perceive his nephew's excitement. ``i see you have a young visitor, uncle,'' said john wade. ``oh, yes,'' said mr. wharton, with a kindly smile. ``he spends all his evenings with me.'' ``what do you mean, sir?'' demanded john wade, with sudden suspicion and fear. ``he seems very young company for----'' ``for a man of my years,'' said mr. wharton, finishing the sentence. ``you are right, john. but, you see, my eyes are weak, and i cannot use them for reading in the evening, so it occurred to me to engage a reader.'' ``very true,'' said his nephew. he wished to inquire the name of the boy whose appearance had so powerfully impressed him but he determined not to do so at present. what information he sought he preferred to obtain from the housekeeper. ``he seemed surprised, as if he had seen me some where before, and recognized me,'' thought frank, ``but i don't remember him. if i had seen his face before, i think i should remember it.'' ``don't come out, uncle.'' said john wade, when summoned to tea by the housekeeper. ``mrs. bradley and i are going to have a chat by ourselves, and i will soon return.'' ``you are looking thin, mr. john,'' said mrs bradley. ``am i thinner than usual? i never was very corpulent, you know. how is my uncle's health? he says he is well.'' ``he is pretty well, but he isn't as young as he was.'' ``i think he looks older,'' said john. ``but that is not surprising--at his age. he is seventy, isn't he?'' ``not quite. he is sixty-nine.'' ``his father died at seventy-one.'' ``yes.'' ``but that is no reason why my uncle should not live till eighty. i hope he will.'' ``we all hope so,'' said the housekeeper; but she knew, while she spoke, that if, as she supposed, mr. wharton's will contained a generous legacy for her, his death would not afflict her much. she suspected also that john wade was waiting impatiently for his uncle's death, that he might enter upon his inheritance. still, their little social fictions must be kept up, and so both expressed a desire for his continued life, though neither was deceived as to the other's real feeling on the subject. ``by the way, mrs. bradley,'' said john wade, ``how came my uncle to engage that boy to read to him?'' ``he was led into it, sir,'' said the housekeeper, with a great deal of indignation, ``by the boy himself. he's an artful and designing fellow, you may rely upon it.'' ``what's his name?'' ``frank fowler.'' ``fowler! is his name fowler?'' he repeated, with a startled expression. ``yes, sir,'' answered the housekeeper, rather surprised at his manner. ``you don't know anything about him, do you?'' ``oh, no,'' said john wade, recovering his composure. ``he is a perfect stranger to me; but i once knew a man of that name, and a precious rascal he was. when you mentioned his name, i thought he might be a son of this man. does he say his father is alive?'' ``no; he is dead, and his mother, too, so the boy says.'' ``you haven't told me how my uncle fell in with him?'' ``it was an accident. your uncle fell in getting out of a broadway stage, and this boy happened to be near, and seeing mr. wharton was a rich gentleman, he helped him home, and was invited in. then he told some story about his poverty, and so worked upon your uncle's feelings that he hired him to read to him at five dollars a week.'' ``is this all the boy does?'' ``no; he is cash-boy in a large store on broadway. he is employed there all day, and he is here only in the evenings.'' ``does my uncle seem attached to him?'' asked john. ``he's getting fond of him, i should say. the other day he asked me if i didn't think it would be a good thing to take him into the house and give him a room. i suppose the boy put it into his head.'' ``no doubt. what did you say?'' ``i opposed it. i told him that a boy would be a great deal of trouble in the family.'' ``you did right, mrs. bradley. what did my uncle say?'' ``he hinted about taking him from the store and letting him go to school. the next thing would be his adopting him. the fact is, mr. john, the boy is so artful that he knows just how to manage your uncle. no doubt he put the idea into mr. wharton's head, and he may do it yet.'' ``does my uncle give any reason for the fancy he has taken to the boy?'' demanded john ``yes,'' said the housekeeper. ``he has taken it into his head that the boy resembles your cousin, george, who died abroad. you were with him, i believe?'' ``yes, i was with him. is the resemblance strong? i took very little notice of him.'' ``you can look for yourself when you go back,'' answered the housekeeper. ``what else did my uncle say? tell me all.'' ``he said: `what would i give, mrs. bradley, if i had such a grandson? if george's boy had lived, he would have been about frank's age. and,'' continued the housekeeper, ``i might as well speak plainly. you're my master's heir, or ought to be; but if this artful boy stays here long, there's no knowing what your uncle may be influenced to do. if he gets into his dotage, he may come to adopt him, and leave the property away from you.'' ``i believe you are quite right. the danger exists, and we must guard against it. i see you don't like the boy,'' said john wade. ``no, i don't. he's separated your uncle and me. before he came, i used to spend my evenings in the library, and read to your uncle. besides, when i found your uncle wanted a reader, i asked him to take my nephew, who is a salesman in the very same store where that boy is a cash-boy, but although i've been twenty years in this house i could not get him to grant the favor, which he granted to that boy, whom he never met till a few weeks ago.'' ``mrs. bradley, i sympathize with you,'' said her companion. ``the boy is evidently working against us both. you have been twenty years in my uncle's service. he ought to remember you handsomely in his will. if i inherit the property, as is my right, your services shall be remembered,'' said john wade. ``thank you, mr. john,'' said the gratified housekeeper. ``that secures her help,'' thought john, in his turn. ``she will now work hard for me. when the time comes, i can do as much or as little for her as i please.'' ``of course, we must work together against this interloper, who appears to have gained a dangerous influence over my uncle.'' ``you can depend upon me, mr. john,'' said mrs. bradley. ``i will think it over, and tell you my plan,'' said john wade. ``but my uncle will wonder at my appetite. i must go back to the library. we will speak of this subject again.'' chapter xii a false friend when john wade re-entered the library, frank was reading, but mr. wharton stopped him. ``that will do, frank,'' he said. ``as i have not seen my nephew for a long time, i shall not require you to read any longer. you can go, if you like.'' frank bowed, and bidding the two good-evening, left the room. ``that is an excellent boy, john.'' said the old gentleman, as the door closed upon our hero. ``how did you fall in with him?'' asked john. mr. wharton told the story with which the reader is already familiar. ``you don't know anything of his antecedents, i suppose?'' said john, carelessly. ``only what he told me. his father and mother are dead, and he is obliged to support himself and his sister. did you notice anything familiar in frank's expression?'' asked mr. wharton. ``i don't know. i didn't observe him very closely.'' ``whenever i look at frank, i think of george. i suppose that is why i have felt more closely drawn to the boy. i proposed to mrs. bradley that the boy should have a room here, but she did not favor it. i think she is prejudiced against him.'' ``probably she is afraid he would be some trouble,'' replied john. ``if george's boy had lived he would be about frank's age. it would have been a great comfort to me to superintend his education, and watch him grow up. i could not have wished him to be more gentlemanly or promising than my young reader.'' ``decidedly, that boy is in my way,'' said john wade to himself. ``i must manage to get rid of him, and that speedily, or my infatuated uncle will be adopting him.'' ``of what disease did george's boy die, john?'' asked mr. wharton. ``a sudden fever.'' ``i wish i could have seen him before he died. but i returned only to find both son and grandson gone. i had only the sad satisfaction of seeing his grave.'' ``yes, he was buried in the family lot at greenwood, five days before you reached home.'' ``when i see men of my own age, surrounded by children and grandchildren, it makes me almost envious,'' said mr. wharton, sadly. ``i declare to you, john, since that boy has been with me, i have felt happier and more cheerful than for years.'' ``that boy again!'' muttered john to himself. ``i begin to hate the young cub, but i mustn't show it. my first work will be to separate him from my uncle. that will require consideration. i wonder whether the boy knows that he is not fowler's son? i must find out. if he does, and should happen to mention it in my uncle's presence, it might awaken suspicions in his mind. i must interview the boy, and find out what i can. to enlist his confidence, i must assume a friendly manner.'' in furtherance of this determination, john wade greeted our hero very cordially the next evening, when they met, a little to frank's surprise. when the reading terminated, john wade said, carelessly: ``i believe, uncle, i will go out for a walk. i think i shall be better for it. ln what direction are you going, frank?'' ``down sixth avenue, sir.'' ``very good; i will walk along with you.'' frank and his companion walked toward sixth avenue. ``my uncle tells me you have a sister to support,'' said wade, opening the conversation. ``yes, sir.'' ``does your sister resemble you?'' asked john wade. ``no, sir! but that is not surprising, for----'' ``why is it not surprising?'' frank hesitated. ``you were about to assign some reason.'' ``it is a secret,'' said our hero, slowly; ``that is, has been a secret, but i don't know why i should conceal it. grace is not my sister. she is mrs. fowler's daughter, but i am not her son. i will tell you the story.'' that story frank told as briefly as possible. john wade listened to it with secret alarm. ``it is a strange story,'' he said. ``do you not feel a strong desire to learn your true parentage?'' ``yes, sir. i don't know, but i feel as if i should some day meet the man who gave me into mrs. fowler's charge.'' ``you have met him, but it is lucky you don't suspect it,'' thought john wade. ``i am glad you told me this story,'' said he, aloud. ``it is quite romantic. i may be able to help you in your search. but let me advise you to tell no one else at present. no doubt there are parties interested in keeping the secret of your birth from you. you must move cautiously, and your chance of solving the mystery will be improved.'' ``thank you, sir. i will follow your advice.'' ``i was mistaken in him,'' thought frank. ``i disliked him at first, but he seems inclined to be my friend.'' when frank reached his lodging he found jasper waiting up for him. he looked thoughtful, so much so that frank noticed it. ``you look as if you had something on your mind,'' jasper. ``you have guessed right. i have read that letter.'' he drew from his pocket a letter, which frank took from his hands. ``it is from an uncle of mine in ohio, who is proprietor of a weekly newspaper. he is getting old, and finds the work too much for him. he offers me a thousand dollars a year if i will come out and relieve him.'' ``that's a good offer, jasper. i suppose you will accept it?'' ``it is for my interest to do so. probably my uncle will, after a while, surrender the whole establishment to me.'' ``i shall be sorry to part with you, jasper. it will seem very lonely, but i think you ought to go. it is a good chance, and if you refuse it you may not get such another.'' ``my uncle wants me to come on at once. i think i will start monday.'' jasper saw no reason to change his determination, and on monday morning he started on his journey to ohio. thus, at a critical moment in his fortunes, when two persons were planning to injure him, he lost the presence and help of a valued friend. chapter xiii the spider and the fly ``uncle,'' said john wade, ``you spoke of inviting frank fowler to occupy a room in the house. why don't you do it? it would be more convenient to you and a very good chance for him.'' ``i should like it,'' said mr. wharton, ``but mrs. bradley did not seem to regard it favorably when i suggested it.'' ``oh, mrs. bradley is unused to boys, and she is afraid he would give her trouble. i'll undertake to bring her around.'' ``i wish you would, john. i don't think frank would give any trouble, and it would enliven the house to have a boy here. besides, he reminds me of george, as i told you the other day.'' ``i agree with you, uncle,'' he said. ``he does remind me a little of george.'' ``well, mrs. bradley, what do you think i have done?'' asked john, entering the housekeeper's room directly after his interview with his uncle. ``i don't know, mr. john,'' she answered. ``i have asked him to give that boy a room in the house.'' ``are you carried away with him as well as your uncle?'' ``not quite. the fact is, i have a motive in what i am doing. i'll tell you.'' he bent over and whispered in her ear. ``i never should have thought of that.'' ``you see, our purpose is to convince my uncle that he is unworthy of his favor. at present that would be rather difficult, but once get him into the house and we shall have no trouble.'' ``i understand.'' in due time john wade announced to his uncle that the housekeeper had withdrawn her objections to his plan. ``then i'll tell him to-night,'' said mr. wharton, brightening up. shortly after frank entered the library that evening mr. wharton made the proposal. ``you are very kind, mr. wharton,'' he said. ``i never thought of such a thing.'' ``then it is settled that you are to come. you can choose your own time for coming.'' ``i will come to-morrow, sir.'' ``very well,'' said mr. wharton, with satisfaction. the next day, by special favor, frank got off from the store two hours earlier than usual. he bought at a sixth avenue basement store, a small, second hand trunk for two dollars. he packed his scanty wardrobe into the trunk, which, small as it was he was unable to fill, and had it carried to mr. wharton's house. he asked to see mrs. bradley, and she came to the door. ``i am glad to see you,'' she said graciously. ``you may leave your trunk in the hall and i will have it carried up by the servants.'' ``thank you,'' said frank, and he followed the housekeeper up the handsome staircase. ``this is to be your room,'' said the housekeeper, opening the door of a small chamber on the third floor. ``it looks very nice and comfortable,'' said frank, looking about him with satisfaction. she left the room, and five minutes later our hero's modest trunk was brought up and deposited in the room. that evening frank read to mr. wharton as usual. when nine o'clock came he said: ``you need not read aloud any more, but if you see any books in my library which you would like to read to yourself you may do so. in fact, frank, you must consider yourself one of the family, and act as freely as if you were at home.'' ``how kind you are to me, mr. wharton,'' said frank. the next morning after frank had left the house for his daily task, john wade entered the housekeeper's room. ``the boy is out of the way now, mrs. bradley,'' he said. ``you had better see if you have a key that will unlock his trunk.'' the two conspirators went upstairs, and together entered frank's room. mrs. bradley brought out a large bunch of keys, and successively tried them, but one after another failed to open it. ``that's awkward,'' said john wade. ``i have a few keys in my pocket. one may possibly answer.'' the housekeeper kneeled down, and made a trial of john wade's keys. the last one was successful. the cover was lifted, and the contents were disclosed. however, neither john nor mrs. bradley seemed particularly interested in the articles for after turning them over they locked the trunk once more. ``so far so good,'' said john wade. ``we have found the means of opening the trunk when we please.'' ``when do you expect to carry out your plan, mr. john?'' ``two weeks from this time my uncle is obliged to go to washington for a few days on business. while he is gone we will spring the trap, and when he comes back he will find the boy gone in disgrace. we'll make short work of him.'' chapter xiv springing the trap ``i am going to give you a few days' vacation, frank,'' said mr. wharton, a fortnight later. ``i am called to washington on business. however, you have got to feel at home here now.'' ``oh, yes, sir.'' ``and mrs. bradley will see that you are comfortable.'' ``i am sure of that, sir,'' said frank, politely. when frank returned at night, mr. wharton was already gone. john wade and the housekeeper seated themselves in the library after dinner, and by their invitation our hero joined them. ``by the way, frank,'' said john wade, ``did i ever show you this russia leather pocketbook?'' producing one from his pocket. ``no, sir, i believe not.'' ``i bought it at vienna, which is noted for its articles of russia leather.'' ``it is very handsome, sir.'' ``so i think. by the way, you may like to look at my sleeve-buttons. they are of venetian mosaic. i got them myself in venice last year.'' ``they are very elegant. you must have enjoyed visiting so many famous cities.'' ``yes; it is very interesting.'' john wade took up the evening paper, and frank occupied himself with a book from his patron's library. after a while john threw down the paper yawning, and said that he had an engagement. nothing else occurred that evening which merits record. two days later frank returned home in his usual spirits. but at the table he was struck by a singular change in the manner of mrs. bradley and john wade. they spoke to him only on what it was absolutely necessary, and answered his questions in monosyllables. ``will you step into the library a moment?'' said john wade, as they arose from the table. frank followed john into the library, and mrs. bradley entered also. ``frank fowler,'' the enemy began, ``do you remember my showing you two evenings since a pocketbook, also some sleeve-buttons of venetian mosaic, expensively mounted in gold?'' ``certainly, sir.'' ``that pocketbook contained a considerable sum of money,'' pursued his questioner. ``i don't know anything about that.'' ``you probably supposed so.'' ``will you tell me what you mean, mr. wade?'' demanded frank, impatiently. ``i have answered your questions, but i can't understand why you ask them.'' ``perhaps you may suspect,'' said wade, sarcastically. ``it looks as if you had lost them and suspected me of taking them.'' ``so it appears.'' ``you are entirely mistaken, mr. wade. i am not a thief. i never stole anything in my life.'' ``it is very easy to say that,'' sneered john wade. ``you and mrs. bradley were the only persons present when i showed the articles, and i suppose you won't pretend that she stole them?'' ``no, sir; though she appears to agree with you that i am a thief. i never thought of accusing her,'' replied frank. ``mr. wade,'' said the housekeeper, ``i feel that it is my duty to insist upon search being made in my room.'' ``do you make the same offer?'' asked john wade, turning to frank. ``yes, sir,'' answered our hero, proudly. ``i wish you to satisfy yourself that i am not a thief. if you will come to my room at once, mr. wade, you and mrs. bradley, i will hand you the key of my trunk.'' the two followed him upstairs, exulting wickedly in his discomfiture, which they had reason to forsee. he handed his key to his artful enemy, and the latter bending over, opened the trunk, which contained all our hero's small possessions. he raised the pile of clothes, and, to frank's dismay, disclosed the missing pocketbook and sleevebuttons in the bottom of the trunk. ``what have you got to say for yourself now, you young villain?'' demanded john wade, in a loud voice. ``i don't understand it,'' frank said, in a troubled tone. ``i don't know how the things came there. i didn't put them there.'' ``probably they crept in themselves,'' sneered john. ``someone put them there,'' said frank, pale, but resolute; ``some wicked person, who wanted to get me into trouble.'' ``what do you mean by that, you young vagabond?'' demanded john wade, suspiciously. ``i mean what i say,'' he asserted. ``i am away all day, and nothing is easier than to open my trunk and put articles in, in order to throw suspicion on me.'' ``look here, you rascal!'' said john wade, roughly. ``i shall treat you better than you deserve. i won't give you over to the police out of regard for my uncle, but you must leave this house and never set foot in it again. it will be the worse for you if you do.'' john wade and the housekeeper left the room, and our hero was left to realize the misfortune which had overwhelmed him. frank arose at an early hour the next morning and left the house. it was necessary for him to find a new home at once in order to be at the store in time. he bought a copy of the sun and turned to the advertising columns. he saw a cheap room advertised near the one he had formerly occupied. finding his way there he rang the bell. the door was opened by a slatternly-looking woman, who looked as if she had just got up. ``i see by the sun you have a room to let,'' said frank. ``yes; do you want to see it now?'' ``i should like to.'' ``come upstairs and i will show you the room.'' the room proved to be small, and by no means neat in appearance, but the rent was only a dollar and a quarter a week, and frank felt that he could not afford to be particular, so he quick closed the bargain. the next day, about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, he was surprised at seeing mrs. bradley enter the store and thread her way to that part of the counter where her nephew was stationed. she darted one quick look at him, but gave him no sign of recognition. his heart sank within him, for he had a presentiment that her visit boded fresh evil for him. chapter xv from bad to worse frank's misgivings were not without good cause. the housekeeper's call at the store was connected with him. how, will be understood from a conversation which took place that morning between her and john wade. ``it's a relief to get that boy out of the house, mrs. bradley,'' he said at the breakfast table. ``that it is, mr. john,'' she replied. ``but he'll be trying to get back, take my word for it.'' ``he won't dare to,'' said john wade, incredulously. ``i told him if he came near the house i would give him up to the police.'' ``i am afraid he will write to your uncle. he's bold enough for anything.'' ``i didn't think of that,'' said john, thoughtfully. ``do you know his handwriting, mrs. bradley?'' ``i think i should know it.'' ``then if any letters come which you know to be from him, keep them back from my uncle.'' ``what shall i do with them?'' ``give them to me. i don't want my uncle worried by his appeals.'' ``your uncle seems to be very attached to him. he may go to the store to see him.'' ``that is true. i should not like that. how shall we prevent it, that's the question.'' ``if gilbert & mack knew that he was not honest they would discharge him.'' ``exactly,'' said john wade; ``and as probably he would be unable to get another situation, he would be compelled to leave the city, and we should get rid of him. i commend your shrewdness, mrs. bradley. your plan is most excellent.'' john wade had more reasons than the housekeeper knew of for desiring the removal of our young hero from the city--reasons which the reader has probably guessed. there was a dark secret in his life connected with a wrong done in years past, from which he hoped some day to reap personal benefit. unconsciously frank fowler stood in his way, and must be removed. such was his determination. ``i am going out this morning,'' said the housekeeper. ``i will make it in my way to call at gilbert & mack's. my nephew is a salesman there, as i have told you. i will drop a word in his ear, and that will be enough to settle that boy's hash.'' ``your language is professional, mrs. bradley,'' said john wade, laughing, ``but you shouldn't allude to hash in an aristocratic household. i shall be glad to have you carry out your plan.'' ``i hope you'll speak to your uncle about my nephew, mr. john. he gets very poor pay where he is.'' ``i won't forget him,'' said john, carelessly. in his heart he thought thomas bradley a very low, obtrusive fellow, whom he felt by no means inclined to assist, but it was cheap to make promises. the reader understands now why mrs. bradley made a morning call at gilbert &; mack's store. she knew at what part of the counter her nephew was stationed, and made her way thither at once. he did not at first recognize her, until she said: ``good-morning, thomas.'' ``good-morning, aunt. what brings you here this morning? any good news for me? has the old gentleman come around and concluded to do something handsome?'' ``mr. wharton is not in the city. he has gone to washington. but that isn't what i came about this morning. you remember that boy who has been reading to mr. wharton?'' ``one of our cash-boys. yes; there he is, just gone by.'' ``well, he has stolen mr. john's pocketbook and some jewelry belonging to him.'' ``what have you done about it? what does mr. wharton say?'' ``he's away from home. he doesn't know yet. mr. john gave him a lecture, and ordered him to leave the house.'' ``does he admit that he took the things?'' ``no; he denied it as bold as brass, but it didn't do him any good. there were the things in his trunk. he couldn't get over that.'' thomas fastened a shrewd glance on his aunt's face, for he suspected the truth. ``so you've got rid of him?'' he said. ``what do you propose to do next?'' ``mr. john thinks your employer ought to know that he is a thief.'' ``are you going to tell them?'' ``i want you to do it.'' ``you must tell them yourself, aunt. i shan't.'' ``then introduce me to mr. gilbert, thomas, and i'll do it.'' ``follow me, aunt.'' he led his aunt to the rear of the store, where mr. gilbert was standing. ``mr. gilbert,'' he said, ``allow me to introduce my aunt, mrs. bradley.'' the housekeeper was courteously received, and invited to be seated. she soon opened her business, and blackened poor frank's character as she had intended. ``really, mrs. bradley, i am sorry to hear this,'' said mr. gilbert. ``you think there is no doubt of the boy's guilt?'' ``i am sorry to say that i have no doubt at all,'' said the housekeeper, hypocritically. ``mr. mack and myself have had a very good opinion of him. he is faithful and prompt.'' ``of course, sir, you will retain him in your employ if you are willing to take the risk, but i thought it my duty to put you on your guard.'' ``i am obliged to you, mrs. bradley; though, as i said, i regret to find that my confidence in the boy has been misplaced.'' late in the afternoon, frank was called to the cashier's desk. ``i am directed by mr. gilbert to say that your services will not be required after to-day,'' he said. ``here are the week's wages.'' ``why am i discharged? what have i done?'' demanded frank, while his heart sank within him. ``i don't know. you must ask mr. gilbert,'' answered the cashier. ``i will speak to him, at any rate,'' and frank walked up to the senior partner, and addressed to him the same question. ``can you not guess?'' asked mr. gilbert, sternly. ``i can guess that a false accusation has been brought against me,'' said frank. ``a respectable lady has informed me that you are not honest. i regret it, for i have been pleased with your diligence. of course, i cannot retain you in my employ.'' ``mr. gilbert,'' said frank, earnestly, ``the charge is false. mrs. bradley is my enemy, and wishes me harm. i don't understand how the things came into my trunk, but i didn't put them there.'' ``i hope you are innocent, but i must discharge you. business is dull now, and i had decided to part with four of my cash-boys. i won't pass judgment upon you, but you must go.'' frank bowed in silence, for he saw that further entreaty would be vain, and left the store more dispirited than at any moment since he had been in the city. ten days frank spent in fruitless efforts to obtain a place. all this time his money steadily diminished. he perceived that he would soon be penniless. evidently, something must be done. he formed two determinations. the first was to write to mr. wharton, who, he thought, must now have returned from washington, asserting his innocence and appealing to him to see gilbert & mack, and re-establish him in their confidence. the second was, since he could not obtain a regular place, to frequent the wharves and seek chances to carry bundles. in this way he might earn enough, with great economy, to pay for his board and lodging. one morning the housekeeper entered the library where john wade sat reading the daily papers. ``mr. john,'' she said, holding out a letter, ``here is a letter from that boy. i expected he would write to your uncle.'' john wade deliberately opened the letter. ``sit down, mrs. bradley, and i will read the letter aloud.'' it will be only necessary to quote the concluding sentences: `` `i hope, mr. wharton, you will not be influenced against me by what mrs. bradley and your nephew say. i don't know why it is, but they are my enemies, though i have always treated them with respect. i am afraid they have a desire to injure me in your estimation. if they had not been, they would have been content with driving me from your house, without also slandering me to my employers, and inducing them to discharge me. since i was discharged, i have tried very hard to get another place, but as i cannot bring a recommendation from gilbert & mack, i have everywhere been refused. i ask you, mr. wharton to consider my situation. already my small supply of money is nearly gone, and i do not know how i am to pay my expenses. if it was any fault of mine that had brought me into this situation, i would not complain, but it seems hard to suffer when i am innocent. `` `i do not ask to return to your house, mr. wharton, for it would not be pleasant, since your nephew and mrs. bradley dislike me, but i have a right to ask that the truth may be told to my employers, so that if they do not wish me to return to their service, they may, at least, be willing to give me a recommendation that will give me a place elsewhere.''' ``i must prevent the boy communicating with my uncle, if it is a possible thing. `strike while the iron is hot,' i say.'' ``i think that is very judicious, mr. john. i have no doubt you will know how to manage matters.'' john wade dressed himself for a walk, and drawing out a cigar, descended the steps of his uncle's house into the street. he reached fifth avenue, and walked slowly downtown. he was about opposite twenty-eighth street, when he came face to face with the subject of his thoughts. ``where are you going?'' john wade demanded sternly. ``i don't know that i am bound to answer your question,'' answered frank, quietly, ``but i have no objection. i am going to thirty-ninth street with this bundle.'' ``hark you, boy! i have something to say to you,'' continued john wade, harshly. ``you have had the impudence to write to my uncle.'' ``what did he say?'' ``nothing that you would like to hear. he looks upon you as a thief.'' ``you have slandered me to him, mr. wade,'' he said, angrily. ``you might be in better business than accusingly a poor boy falsely.'' ``hark you, young man! i have had enough of your impudence. i will give you a bit of advice, which you will do well to follow. leave this city for a place where you are not known, or i may feel disposed to shut you up on a charge of theft.'' ``i shall not leave the city, mr. wade,'' returned frank, firmly. ``i shall stay here in spite of you,'' and without waiting for an answer, he walked on. chapter xvi an accomplice found no sooner had john wade parted from our hero than he saw approaching him a dark, sinister-looking man, whom he had known years before. ``good-morning, mr. wade,'' said the newcomer. ``good-morning, mr. graves. are you busy just now?'' ``no, sir; i am out of employment. i have been unfortunate.'' ``then i will give you a job. do you see that boy?'' said john wade, rapidly. ``yes, i see him.'' ``i want you to follow him. find out where he lives, and let me know this evening. do you understand?'' ``i understand. you may rely upon me, sir,'' answered nathan graves; and quickening his pace, he soon came within a hundred feet of our hero. after fulfilling his errand, frank walked downtown again, but did not succeed in obtaining any further employment. wherever he went, he was followed by graves. unconsciously, he exhausted the patience of that gentleman, who got heartily tired of his tramp about the streets. but the longest day will come to an end, and at last he had the satisfaction of tracking frank to his humble lodging. then, and not till then, he felt justified in leaving him. nathan graves sought the residence of john wade. he rang the bell as the clock struck eight. ``well, what success?'' asked wade, when they met. ``i have tracked the boy. what more can i do for you?'' asked graves. ``i want to get him away from the city. the fact is--i may as well tell you--my uncle has taken a great fancy to the boy, and might be induced to adopt him, and cut me off from my rightful inheritance. the boy is an artful young rascal, and has been doing all he could to get into the good graces of my uncle, who is old and weak-minded.'' it was nine o'clock when nathan graves left the house, john wade himself accompanying him to the door. ``how soon do you think you can carry out my instructions?'' asked wade. ``to-morrow, if possible.'' ``the sooner the better.'' ``it is lucky i fell in with him,'' said nathan graves to himself, with satisfaction, as he slowly walked down fifth avenue. ``it's a queer business, but that's none of my business. the main thing for me to consider is that it brings money to my purse, and of that i have need enough.'' graves left the house richer by a hundred dollars than he entered it. it was eleven o'clock on the forenoon of the next day when frank walked up canal street toward broadway. he had been down to the wharves since early in the morning, seeking for employment. he had offered his services to many, but as yet had been unable to secure a job. as he was walking along a man addressed him: ``will you be kind enough to direct me to broadway?'' it was nathan graves, with whom frank was destined to have some unpleasant experiences. ``straight ahead,'' answered frank. ``i am going there, and will show you, if you like.'' ``thank you, i wish you would. i live only fifteen or twenty miles distant,'' said graves, ``but i don't often come to the city, and am not much acquainted. i keep a dry-goods store, but my partner generally comes here to buy goods. by the way, perhaps you can help me about the errand that calls me here today.'' ``i will, sir, if i can,'' said frank, politely. ``my youngest clerk has just left me, and i want to find a successor--a boy about your age, say. do you know any one who would like such a position?'' ``i am out of employment myself just now. do you think i will suit?'' ``i think you will,'' said mr. graves. ``you won't object to go into the country?'' ``no, sir.'' ``i will give you five dollars a week and your board for the present. if you suit me, your pay will be raised at the end of six months. will that be satisfactory?'' asked his companion. ``quite so, sir. when do you wish me to come?'' ``can you go out with me this afternoon?'' ``yes, sir. i only want to go home and pack up my trunk.'' ``to save time, i will go with you, and we will start as soon as possible.'' nathan graves accompanied frank to his room, where his scanty wardrobe was soon packed. a hack was called, and they were speedily on their way to the cortland street ferry. they crossed the ferry, and mr. graves purchased two tickets to elizabeth. he bought a paper, and occupied himself in reading. frank felt that fortune had begun to shine upon him once more. by and by, he could send for grace, and get her boarded near him. as soon as his wages were raised, he determined to do this. while engaged in these pleasant speculations, they reached the station. ``we get out here,'' said mr. graves. ``is your store in this place?'' asked frank. ``no; it is in the next town.'' nathan graves looked about him for a conveyance. he finally drove a bargain with a man driving a shabby-looking vehicle, and the two took their seats. they were driven about six miles through a flat, unpicturesque country, when they reached a branch road leading away from the main one. it was a narrow road, and apparently not much frequented. frank could see no houses on either side ``is your store on this road?'' he asked. ``oh, no; but i am not going to the store yet. we will go to my house, and leave your trunk.'' at length the wagon stopped, by graves' orders, in front of a gate hanging loosely by one hinge. ``we'll get out here,'' said graves. frank looked with some curiosity, and some disappointment, at his future home. it was a square, unpainted house, discolored by time, and looked far from attractive. there were no outward signs of occupation, and everything about it appeared to have fallen into decay. not far off was a barn, looking even more dilapidated than the house. at the front door, instead of knocking--there was no bell--graves drew a rusty key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock. they found themselves in a small entry, uncarpeted and dingy. ``we'll go upstairs,'' said graves. arrived on the landing, he threw open a door, and ushered in our hero. ``this will be your room,'' he said. frank looked around in dismay. it was a large, square room, uncarpeted, and containing only a bed, two chairs and a washstand, all of the cheapest and rudest manufacture. ``i hope you will soon feel at home here,'' said graves. ``i'll go down and see if i can find something to eat.'' he went out, locking the door behind him ``what does this mean?'' thought frank, with a strange sensation. chapter xvii frank and his jailer it was twenty minutes before frank, waiting impatiently, heard the steps of his late companion ascending the stairs. but the door was not unlocked. instead, a slide was revealed, about eight inches square, through which his late traveling companion pushed a plate of cold meat and bread. ``here's something to eat,'' he said; ``take it.'' ``why do you lock me in?'' demanded our hero. ``you can get along without knowing, i suppose,'' said the other, with a sneer. ``i don't mean to,'' said frank, firmly. ``i demand an explanation. how long do you intend to keep me here?'' ``i am sorry i can't gratify your curiosity, but i don't know myself.'' ``perhaps you think that i am rich, but i am not. i have no money. you can't get anything out of me,'' said frank. ``that may be so, but i shall keep you.'' ``i suppose that was all a lie about your keeping store?'' ``it was a pretty little story, told for your amusement, my dear boy,'' said graves. ``i was afraid you wouldn't come without it.'' ``you are a villain!'' said frank. ``look here, boy,'' said graves, in a different tone, his face darkening, ``you had better not talk in that way. i advise you to eat your dinner and be quiet. some supper will be brought to you before night.'' so saying, he abruptly closed the slide, and descended the stairs, leaving frank to his reflections, which it may be supposed, were not of the pleasantest character. frank did not allow his unpleasant situation to take away his appetite, and though he was fully determined to make the earliest possible attempt to escape, he was sensible enough first to eat the food which his jailer had brought him. his lunch dispatched, he began at once to revolve plans of escape. there were three windows in the room, two on the front of the house, the other at the side. he tried one after another, but the result was the same. all were so fastened that it was quite impossible to raise them. feeling that he could probably escape through one of the windows when he pleased, though at the cost of considerable trouble, frank did not trouble himself much, or allow himself to feel unhappy. he decided to continue his explorations. in the corner of the room was a door, probably admitting to a closet. ``i suppose it is locked,'' thought frank, but on trying it, he found that such was not the case. he looked curiously about him, but found little to repay him. his attention was drawn, however to several dark-colored masks lying upon a shelf. he also discovered a small hole in the wall of the size of a marble. actuated by curiosity, he applied his eye to the opening, and peeped into what was probably the adjoining room. it was furnished in very much the same way as the one in which he was confined, but at present it was untenanted. having seen what little there was to be seen, frank withdrew from his post of observation and returned to his room. it was several hours later when he again heard steps ascending the stairs, and the slide in the door was moved. he looked toward it, but the face that he saw was not that of nathan graves. it was the face of a woman. chapter xviii ``over the hill to the poorhouse'' we are compelled for a time to leave our hero in the hands of his enemies, and return to the town of crawford, where an event has occurred which influences seriously the happiness and position of his sister, grace. ever since frank left the town, grace had been a welcome member of mr. pomeroy's family, receiving the kindest treatment from all, so that she had come to feel very much at home. so they lived happily together, till one disastrous night a fire broke out, which consumed the house, and they were forced to snatch their clothes and escape, saving nothing else. mr. pomeroy's house was insured for two-thirds of its value, and he proposed to rebuild immediately, but it would be three months at least before the new house would be completed. in the interim, he succeeded in hiring a couple of rooms for his family, but their narrow accommodations would oblige them to dispense with their boarder. sorry as mr. and mrs. pomeroy were to part with her, it was obvious that grace must find another home. ``we must let frank know,'' said mr. pomeroy, and having occasion to go up to the city at once to see about insurance, he went to the store of gilbert & mack, and inquired for prank. ``fowler? what was he?'' was asked. ``a cash-boy.'' ``oh, he is no longer here. mr. gilbert discharged him.'' ``do you know why he was discharged?'' asked mr. pomeroy, pained and startled. ``no; but there stands mr. gilbert. he can tell you.'' mr. pomeroy introduced himself to the head of the firm and repeated his inquiry. ``if you are a friend of the lad,'' said mr. gilbert, ``you will be sorry to learn that he was charged with dishonesty. it was a very respectable lady who made the charge. it is only fair to say that the boy denied it, and that, personally, we found him faithful and trusty. but as the dullness of trade compelled us to discharge some of our cash-boys, we naturally discharged him among the number, without, however, judging his case.'' ``then, sir, you have treated the boy very unfairly. on the strength of a charge not proved, you have dismissed him, though personally you had noticed nothing out of the way in him, and rendered it impossible for him to obtain another place.'' ``there is something in what you say, i admit. perhaps i was too hasty. if you will send the boy to me, i will take him back on probation.'' ``thank you, sir,'' said mr. pomeroy, gratefully ``i will send him here.'' but this mr. pomeroy was unable to do. he did not know of frank's new address, and though he was still in the city, he failed to find him. he returned to crawford and communicated the unsatisfactory intelligence. he tried to obtain a new boarding place for grace, but no one was willing to take her at two dollars a week, especially when mr. pomeroy was compelled to admit that frank was now out of employment, and it was doubtful if he would be able to keep up the payment. tom pinkerton managed to learn that grace was now without a home, and mentioned it to his father. ``won't she have to go to the poorhouse now, father?'' he asked eagerly. ``yes,'' said deacon pinkerton. ``there is no other place for her that i can see.'' ``ah, i'm glad,'' said tom, maliciously. ``won't that upstart's pride be taken down? he was too proud to go to the poorhouse, where he belonged, but he can't help his sister's going there. if he isn't a pauper himself, he'll be the brother of a pauper, and that's the next thing to it.'' ``that is true,'' said the deacon. ``he was very impudent in return for my kindness. still, i am sorry for him.'' i am afraid the deacon's sorrow was not very deep, for he certainly looked unusually cheerful when he harnessed up his horse and drove around to the temporary home of the pomeroys. ``good-morning, mr. pomeroy,'' he said, seeing the latter in the yard. ``you've met with a severe loss.'' ``yes, deacon; it is a severe loss to a poor man like me.'' ``to be sure. well, i've called around to relieve you of a part of your cares. i am going to take grace fowler to the poorhouse.'' ``couldn't you get her a place with a private family to help about the house in return for her board, while she goes to school?'' ``there's nobody wants a young girl like her,'' said the deacon. ``her brother would pay part of her board--that is, when he has a place.'' ``hasn't he got a place?'' asked the deacon, pricking up his ears. ``i heard he was in a store in new york.'' ``he lost his place,'' said mr. pomeroy, reluctantly, ``partly because of the dullness of general trade.'' ``then he can't maintain his sister. she will have to go to the poorhouse. will you ask her to get ready, and i'll take her right over to the poorhouse.'' there was no alternative. mr. pomeroy went into the house, and broke the sad news to his wife and grace. ``never mind,'' she said, with attempted cheerfulness, though her lips quivered, ``i shan't have to stay there long. frank will be sure to send for me very shortly.'' ``it's too bad, grace,'' said sam, looking red about the eyes; ``it's too bad that you should have to go to the poorhouse.'' ``come and see me, sam,'' said grace. ``yes, i will, grace. i'll come often, too. you shan't stay there long.'' ``good-by,'' said grace, faltering. ``you have all been very kind to me.'' ``good-by, my dear child,'' said mrs. pomeroy. ``who knows but you can return to us when the new house is done?'' so poor grace went out from her pleasant home to find the deacon, grim-faced and stern, waiting for her. ``jump in, little girl,'' he said. ``you've kept me waiting for you a long time, and my time is valuable.'' the distance to the poorhouse was about a mile and a half. for the first half mile deacon pinkerton kept silence. then he began to speak, in a tone of cold condescension, as if it were a favor for such a superior being to address an insignificant child, about to become a pauper. ``little girl, have you heard from your brother lately?'' ``not very lately, sir.'' ``what is he doing?'' ``he is in a store.'' ``i apprehend you are mistaken. he has lost his place. he has been turned away,'' said the deacon, with satisfaction.'' ``frank turned away! oh, sir, you must be mistaken.'' ``mr. pomeroy told me. he found out yesterday when he went to the city.'' poor grace! she could not longer doubt now, and her brother's misfortune saddened her even more than her own. ``probably you will soon see your brother.'' ``oh, do you think so, sir?'' asked grace, joyfully. ``yes,'' answered the deacon, grimly. ``he will find himself in danger of starvation in the city, and he'll creep back, only too glad to obtain a nice, comfortable home in the poorhouse.'' but grace knew her brother better than that. she knew his courage, his self-reliance and his independent spirit, and she was sure the deacon was mistaken. the home for which grace was expected to be so grateful was now in sight. it was a dark, neglected looking house, situated in the midst of barren fields, and had a lonely and desolate aspect. it was superintended by mr. and mrs. chase, distant relations of deacon pinkerton. mr. chase was an inoffensive man, but mrs. chase had a violent temper. she was at work in the kitchen when deacon pinkerton drove up. hearing the sound of wheels, she came to the door. ``mrs. chase,'' said the deacon, ``i've brought you a little girl, to be placed under your care.'' ``what's her name?'' inquired the lady. ``grace fowler.'' ``grace, humph! why didn't she have a decent name?'' ``you can call her anything you like,'' said the deacon. ``little girl, you must behave well,'' said deacon pinkerton, by way of parting admonition. ``the town expects it. i expect it. you must never cease to be grateful for the good home which it provides you free of expense.'' grace did not reply. looking in the face of her future task-mistress was scarcely calculated to awaken a very deep feeling of gratitude. ``now,'' said mrs. chase, addressing her new boarder, ``just take off your things, betsy, and make yourself useful.'' ``my name isn't betsy, ma'am.'' ``it isn't, isn't it?'' ``no; it is grace.'' ``you don't say so! i'll tell you one thing, i shan't allow anybody to contradict me here, and your name's got to be betsy while you're in this house. now take off your things and hang them up on that peg. i'm going to set you right to work.'' ``yes, ma'am,'' said grace, alarmed. ``there's some dishes i want washed, betsy, and i won't have you loitering over your work, neither.'' ``very well, ma'am.'' such was the new home for which poor grace was expected to be grateful. chapter xix what frank heard through the crevice frank looked with some surprise at the woman who was looking through the slide of his door. he had expected to see nathan graves. she also regarded him with interest. ``i have brought you some supper,'' she said. frank reached out and drew in a small waiter, containing a cup of tea and a plate of toast. ``thank you,'' he said. ``where is the man who brought me here?'' ``he has gone out.'' ``do you know why he keeps me here in confinement?'' ``no,'' said the woman, hastily. ``i know nothing. i see much, but i know nothing.'' ``are many prisoners brought here as i have been?'' asked our hero, in spite of the woman's refusal to speak. ``no.'' ``i can't understand what object they can have in detaining me. if i were rich, i might guess, but i am poor. i am compelled to work for my daily bread, and have been out of a place for two weeks.'' ``i don't understand,'' she said, in a low voice, rather to herself than to him. ``but i cannot wait. i must not stand here. i will come up in fifteen minutes, and if you wish another cup of tea, or some toast, i will bring them.'' his confinement did not affect his appetite, for he enjoyed his tea and toast; and when, as she had promised, the woman came up, he told her he would like another cup of tea, and some more toast. ``will you answer one question?'' asked our hero. ``i don't know,'' answered the woman in a flurried tone. ``you look like a good woman. why do you stay in such a house as this?'' ``i will tell you, though i should do better to be silent. but you won't betray me?'' ``on no account.'' ``i was poor, starving, when i had an application to come here. the man who engaged me told me that it was to be a housekeeper, and i had no suspicion of the character of the house--that it was a den of--'' she stopped short, but frank understood what she would have said. ``when i discovered the character of the house, i would have left but for two reasons. first, i had no other home; next, i had become acquainted with the secrets of the house, and they would have feared that i would reveal them. i should incur great risk. so i stayed.'' here there was a sound below. the woman started. ``some one has come,'' she said. ``i must go down i will come up as soon as i can with the rest of your supper.'' ``thank you. you need not hurry.'' our hero was left to ponder over what he had heard. there was evidently a mystery connected with this lonely house a mystery which he very much desired to solve. but there was one chance. through the aperture in the closet he might both see and hear something, provided any should meet there that evening. the remainder of his supper was brought him by the same woman, but she was in haste, and he obtained no opportunity of exchanging another word with her. frank did not learn who it was that had arrived. listening intently, he thought he heard some sounds in the next room. opening the closet door, and applying his eye to the aperture, he saw two men seated in the room, one of whom was the man who had brought him there. he applied his ear to the opening, and heard the following conversation: ``i hear you've brought a boy here, nathan,'' said the other, who was a stout, low-browed man, with an evil look. ``yes,'' said graves, with a smile; ``i am going to board him here a while.'' ``what's it all about? what are you going to gain by it?'' ``i'll tell you all i know. i've known something of the family for a long time. john wade employed me long ago. the old millionaire had a son who went abroad and died there. his cousin, john wade, brought home his son--a mere baby--the old man's grandson, of course, and sole heir, or likely to be, to the old man's wealth, if he had lived. in that case, john wade would have been left out in the cold, or put off with a small bequest.'' ``yes. did the boy live?'' ``no; he died, very conveniently for john wade, and thus removed the only obstacle from his path.'' ``very convenient. do you think there was any foul play?'' ``there may have been.'' ``but i should think the old man would have suspected.'' ``he was away at the time. when he returned to the city, he heard from his nephew that the boy was dead. it was a great blow to him, of course. now, i'll tell you what,'' said graves, sinking his voice so that frank found it difficult to hear, ``i'll tell you what i've thought at times.'' ``i think the grandson may have been spirited off somewhere. nothing more easy, you know. murder is a risky operation, and john wade is respectable, and wouldn't want to run the risk of a halter.'' ``you may be right. you don't connect this story of yours with the boy you've brought here, do you?'' ``i do,'' answered graves, emphatically. ``i shouldn't be surprised if this was the very boy!'' ``what makes you think so?'' ``first, because there's some resemblance between the boy and the old man's son, as i remember him. next, it would explain john wade's anxiety to get rid of him. it's my belief that john wade has recognized in this boy the baby he got rid of fourteen years ago, and is afraid his uncle will make the same discovery.'' frank left the crevice through which he had received so much information in a whirl of new and bewildering thoughts. ``was it possible,'' he asked himself, ``that he could be the grandson of mr. wharton, his kind benefactor?'' chapter xx the escape it was eight o'clock the next morning before frank's breakfast was brought to him. ``i am sorry you have had to wait,'' the housekeeper said, as she appeared at the door with a cup of coffee and a plate of beefsteak and toast, ``i couldn't come up before.'' ``have the men gone away?'' said frank. ``yes.'' ``then i have something to tell you. i learned something about myself last night. i was in the closet, and heard the man who brought me here talking to another person. may i tell you the story?'' ``if you think it will do any good,'' said the housekeeper, but i can't help you if that is what you want.'' he told the whole story. as he proceeded, the housekeeper betrayed increased, almost eager interest, and from time to time asked him questions in particular as to the personal appearance of john wade. when frank had described him as well as he could, she said, in an excited manner: ``yes, it is--it must be the same man.'' ``the same man!'' repeated our hero, in surprise. ``do you know anything about him?'' ``i know that he is a wicked man. i am afraid that i have helped him carry out his wicked plan, but i did not know it at the time, or i never would have given my consent.'' ``i don't understand you,'' said our hero, puzzled. ``will you tell me what you mean?'' ``fourteen years ago i was very poor--poor and sick besides. my husband had died, leaving me nothing but the care of a young infant, whom it was necessary for me to support besides myself. enfeebled by sickness, i was able to earn but little, but we lived in a wretched room in a crowded tenement house. my infant boy was taken sick and died. as i sat sorrowfully beside the bed on which he lay dead, i heard a knock at the door. i opened it, and admitted a man whom i afterward learned to be john wade. he very soon explained his errand. he agreed to take my poor boy, and pay all the expenses of his burial in greenwood cemetery, provided i would not object to any of his arrangements. he was willing besides to pay me two hundred dollars for the relief of my necessities. though i was almost beside myself with grief for my child's loss, and though this was a very favorable proposal, i hesitated. i could not understand why a stranger should make me such an offer. i asked him the reason.'' `` `you ask too much,' he answered, appearing annoyed. `i have made you a fair offer. will you accept it, or will you leave your child to have a pauper's funeral?' ``that consideration decided me. for my child's sake i agreed to his proposal, and forebore to question him further. he provided a handsome rosewood casket for my dear child, but upon the silver plate was inscribed a name that was strange to me --the name of francis wharton.'' ``francis wharton!'' exclaimed frank. ``i was too weak and sorrowful to make opposition, and my baby was buried as francis wharton. not only this, but a monument is erected over him at greenwood, which bears this name.'' she proceeded after a pause: ``i did not then understand his object. your story makes it clear. i think that you are that francis wharton, under whose name my boy was buried.'' ``how strange!'' said frank, thoughtfully. ``i cannot realize it. but how did you know the name of the man who called upon you?'' ``a card slipped from his pocket, which i secured without his knowledge.'' ``how fortunate that i met you,'' said frank. ``i mean to let mr. wharton know all that i have learned, and then he shall decide whether he will recognize me or not as his grandson.'' ``i have been the means of helping to deprive you of your just rights, though unconsciously. now that i know the wicked conspiracy in which i assisted, i will help undo the work.'' ``thank you,'' said frank. ``the first thing is to get out of this place.'' ``i cannot open the door of your room. they do not trust me with the key.'' ``the windows are not very high from the ground. i can get down from the outside.'' ``i will bring you a clothesline and a hatchet.'' frank received them with exultation. ``before i attempt to escape,'' he said, ``tell me where i can meet you in new york. i want you to go with me to mr. wharton's. i shall need you to confirm my story.'' ``i will meet you to-morrow at no. 15 b--street.'' ``then we shall meet to-morrow. what shall i call your name?'' ``mrs. parker.'' ``thank you. i will get away as quickly as possible, and when we are in the city we will talk over our future plans.'' with the help of the hatchet, frank soon demolished the lower part of the window. fastening the rope to the bedstead, he got out of the window and safely descended to the ground. a long and fatiguing walk lay before him. but at last he reached the cars, and half an hour later the ferry at jersey city. frank thought himself out of danger for the time being, but he was mistaken. standing on the deck of the ferryboat, and looking back to the pier from which he had just started, he met the glance of a man who had intended to take the same boat, but had reached the pier just too late. his heart beat quicker when he recognized in the belated passenger his late jailer, nathan graves. carried away by his rage and disappointment, nathan graves clenched his fist and shook it at his receding victim. our hero walked into the cabin. he wanted a chance to deliberate. he knew that nathan graves would follow him by the next boat, and it was important that he should not find him. where was he to go? fifteen minutes after frank set foot on the pier, his enemy also landed. but now the difficult part of the pursuit began. he had absolutely no clew as to the direction which frank had taken. for an hour and a half he walked the streets in the immediate neighborhood of the square, but his labor was without reward. not a glimpse could he catch of his late prisoner. ``i suppose i must go to see mr. wade,'' he at last reluctantly decided. ``he may be angry, but he can't blame me. i did my best. i couldn't stand guard over the young rascal all day.'' the address which the housekeeper had given frank was that of a policeman's family in which she was at one time a boarder. on giving his reference, he was hospitably received, and succeeded in making arrangements for a temporary residence. about seven o'clock mrs. parker made her appearance. she wag fatigued by her journey and glad to rest. ``i was afraid you might be prevented from coming,'' said frank. ``i feared it also. i was about to start at twelve o'clock, when, to my dismay, one of the men came home. he said he had the headache. i was obliged to make him some tea and toast. he remained about till four o'clock, when, to my relief, he went upstairs to lie down. i was afraid some inquiry might be made about you, and your absence discovered, especially as the rope was still hanging out of the window, and i was unable to do anything more than cut off the lower end of it. when the sick man retired to his bed i instantly left the house, fearing that the return of some other of the band might prevent my escaping altogether.'' ``suppose you had met one of them, mrs. parker?'' ``i did. it was about half a mile from the house.'' ``did he recognize you?'' ``yes. he asked in some surprise where i was going. i was obliged to make up a story about our being out of sugar. he accepted it without suspicion, and i kept on. i hope i shall be forgiven for the lie. i was forced to it.'' ``you met no further trouble?'' ``no.'' ``i must tell you of my adventure,'' said frank. ``i came across the very man whom i most dreaded-the man who made me a prisoner.'' ``since he knows that you have escaped, he is probably on your track,'' said mrs. parker. ``it will be hardly safe for you to go to mr. wharton's.'' ``why?'' ``he will probably think you likely to go there, and be lying in wait somewhere about.'' ``but i must go to mr. wharton,'' said frank. ``i must tell him this story.'' ``it will be safer to write.'' ``the housekeeper, mrs. bradley, or john wade, will get hold of the letter and suppress it. i don't want to put them on their guard.'' ``you are right. it is necessary to be cautious.'' ``you see i am obliged to call on my grandfather, that is, on mr. wharton.'' ``i can think of a better plan.'' ``what is it?'' ``go to a respectable lawyer. tell him your story, and place your case in his hands. he will write to your grandfather, inviting him to call at his office on business of importance, without letting him know what is the nature of it. you and i can be there to meet him, and tell our story. in this way john wade will know nothing, and learn nothing, of your movements.'' ``that is good advice, mrs. parker, but there is one thing you have not thought of,'' said our hero. ``what is that?'' ``lawyers charge a great deal for their services, and i have no money.'' ``you have what is as good a recommendation--a good case. the lawyer will see at once that if not at present rich, you stand a good chance of obtaining a position which will make you so. besides, your grandfather will be willing, if he admits your claim, to recompense the lawyer handsomely.'' ``i did not think of that. i will do as you advise to-morrow.'' chapter xxi john wade's disappointment mr. wharton sat at dinner with his nephew and the housekeeper. he had been at home for some time, and of course on his arrival had been greeted with the news of our hero's perfidy. but, to the indignation of mrs. bradley and john, he was obstinately incredulous. ``there is some mistake, i am sure,'' he said. ``such a boy as frank is incapable of stealing. you may be mistaken after all, john. why did you not let him stay till i got back? i should like to have examined him myself.'' ``i was so angry with him for repaying your kindness in such a way that i instantly ordered him out of the house.'' ``i blame you, john, for your haste,'' said his uncle. ``it was not just to the boy.'' ``i acted for the best, sir,'' he forced himself to say in a subdued tone. ``young people are apt to be impetuous, and i excuse you; but you should have waited for my return. i will call at gilbert & mack's, and inquire of frank himself what explanation he has to give.'' ``of course, sir, you will do what you think proper,'' said his nephew. this ended the conversation, and mr. wharton, according to his declared intention, went to gilbert & mack's. he returned disappointed with the information that our hero was no longer in the store. i now return to mr. wharton at dinner. ``here is a letter for you, sir,'' said the housekeeper. ``it was brought by the postman this afternoon.'' mr. wharton adjusted his spectacles and read as follows: ``no.-wall street. ``dear sir: will you have the kindness to call at my office to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock, if it suits your convenience? i have an important communication to make to you, which will, i think be of an agreeable character. should the time named not suit you, will you have the kindness to name your own time? ``yours respectfully, ``morris hall.'' ``read that, john,'' said his uncle, passing him the letter. ``morris hall is a lawyer, i believe, sir,'' said john. ``have you any idea of the nature of the communication he desires to make?'' ``no idea at all.'' ``if it would relieve you, sir, i will go in your place,'' said john, whose curiosity was aroused. ``thank you, john, but this is evidently a personal matter. i shall go down there to-morrow at the appointed time.'' john was far from suspecting that the communication related to frank, though he had heard the day previous from nathan graves of the boy's escape. he had been very much annoyed, and had given his agent a severe scolding, with imperative orders to recapture the boy, if possible. it was not without a feeling of curiosity that mr. wharton entered the law office of mr. hall. he announced himself and was cordially welcomed. ``you have a communication to make to me,'' said mr. wharton. ``i have.'' ``tell me all without delay.'' ``i will, sir. this is the communication i desire to make.'' the story of john wade's treachery was told, and the means by which he had imposed upon his uncle, but the lawyer carefully abstained from identifying the lost grandson with frank fowler. when the story was concluded, mr. wharton said: ``where is my grandson--my poor george's boy? find him for me, and name your own reward.'' ``i will show him to you at once, sir. frank!'' at the word, frank, who was in an inner office. entered. mr. wharton started in amazement. ``frank!'' he exclaimed. ``my dear boy, is it you who are my grandson?'' ``grandfather!'' mr. wharton held out his arms, and our hero, already attached to him for his kindness, was folded in close embrace. ``then you believe i am your grandson?'' said frank. ``i believe it without further proof.'' ``still, mr. wharton,'' said the lawyer, ``i want to submit my whole proof. mrs. parker!'' mrs. parker entered and detailed her part in the plot, which for fourteen years had separated frank from his family. ``enough!'' said mr. wharton. ``i am convinced-i did not believe my nephew capable of such baseness. mrs. parker, you shall not regret your confession. i will give you a pension which will relieve you from all fear of want. call next week on mr. hall, and you shall learn what provision i have made for you. you, frank, will return with me.'' ``what will mr. john say?'' asked frank. ``he shall no longer sleep under my roof,'' said mr. wharton, sternly. frank was taken to a tailor and fitted out with a handsome new suit, ready-made for immediate use, while three more were ordered. when mr. wharton reached home, he entered the library and rang the bell. to the servant who answered he said: ``is mr. john at home?'' ``yes, sir; he came in ten minutes ago.'' ``tell him i wish to see him at once in the library. summon the housekeeper, also.'' surprised at the summons, john wade answered it directly. he and mrs. bradley met at the door and entered together. their surprise and dismay may be conjectured when they saw our hero seated beside mr. wharton, dressed like a young gentleman. ``john wade,'' said his uncle, sternly, ``the boy whom you malign, the boy you have so deeply wronged, has found a permanent home in this house.'' ``what, sir! you take him back?'' ``i do. there is no more fitting place for him than the house of his grandfather.'' ``his grandfather!'' exclaimed his nephew and the housekeeper, in chorus. ``i have abundant proof of the relationship. this morning i have listened to the story of your treachery. i have seen the woman whose son, represented to me as my grandson, lies in greenwood cemetery. i have learned your wicked plans to defraud him of his inheritance, and i tell you that you have failed.'' ``i shall make my will to-morrow, bequeathing all my property to my grandson, excepting only an annual income of two thousand dollars to yourself. and now i must trouble you to find a boarding place. after what has passed i do not desire to have you in the family.'' ``i do not believe he is your grandson,'' said john wade, too angry to heed prudential considerations. ``your opinion is of little consequence.'' ``then, sir, i have only to wish you good-morning. i will send for my trunks during the day.'' ``good-morning,'' said mr. wharton, gravely, and john wade left the room, baffled and humiliated. ``i hope, sir,'' said the housekeeper, alarmed for her position; ``i hope you don't think i knew mr. frank was your grandson. i never was so astonished and flustrated in my life. i hope you won't discharge me, sir--me that have served you so faithfully for many years.'' ``you shall remain on probation. but if frank ever has any fault to find with you, you must go.'' ``i hope you will forgive me, mr. frank.'' ``i forgive you freely,'' said our hero, who was at a generous disposition. chapter xxii conclusion meanwhile poor grace had fared badly at the poorhouse in crawford. it was a sad contrast to the gentle and kindly circle at mr. pomeroy's. what made it worse for grace was, that she could hear nothing of frank. she feared he was sick, or had met with some great misfortune, which prevented his writing. one day a handsome carriage drove up to the door. from it descended our hero, elegantly attired. he knocked at the door. mrs. chase, who was impressed by wealth, came to the door in a flutter of respect, induced by the handsome carriage. ``what do you wish, sir?'' she asked, not recognizing frank. ``miss grace fowler!'' repeated mrs. chase, almost paralyzed at grace being called for by such stylish acquaintances ``yes, my sister grace.'' ``what! are you frank fowler?'' ``yes. i have come to take grace away.'' ``i don't know as i have the right to let her go,'' said mrs. chase, cautiously, regretting that grace was likely to escape her clutches. ``here is an order from deacon pinkerton, chairman of the overseers of the poor.'' ``that is sufficient. she can go. you look as if you had prospered in the city,'' she added, with curiosity. ``yes. i have found my grandfather, who is very wealthy.'' ``you don't say!'' ejaculated mrs. chase. ``i'll tell grace at once.'' grace at work in the kitchen had not heard of the arrival. what was her surprise when mrs. chase, entering the room, said, graciously: ``go up at once, grace, and change your clothes. your brother has come for you. he is going to take you away.'' grace almost gasped for breath. ``is it true?'' ``it is indeed. your brother looks remarkably well. he is rich. he has found a rich grandfather, and has come for you in a carriage.'' in amazed bewilderment grace went upstairs and put on her best dress, poor enough in comparison with her brother's clothes, and was soon happy in his embrace. ``i am glad to see you, my dear child,'' said mr. wharton, who had accompanied frank. ``will you come to the city and live with me and your brother?'' ``oh, sir, i shall be glad to be wherever frank is.'' ``good-bye, my dear child,'' sand mrs. chase, whose feelings were very much changed, now that grace was a rich young lady. ``come and see me some time.'' ``thank you, mrs. chase. good-bye!'' the carriage rolled on. * * * * * * * a few words only remain. our hero was placed at a classical school, and in due time entered college, where he acquitted himself with distinction. he is now making a tour of europe. grace was also placed at an excellent school, and has developed into a handsome and accomplished young lady. it is thought she will marry sam pomeroy, who obtained a place in a counting-room through mr. wharton's influence, and is now head clerk, with a prospect of partnership. his father received a gift of five thousand dollars from mr. wharton as an acknowledgment of his kindness to frank. tom pinkerton holds a subordinate clerkship in the same house, and is obliged to look up to sam as his superior. it chafes his pride, but his father has become a poor man, and tom is too prudent to run the risk of losing his situation. john wade draws his income regularly, but he is never seen at his uncle's house. mr. wharton is very happy in his grandson, and made happier by the intelligence just received from europe of frank's engagement to a brilliant young new york lady whom he met in his travels. he bids fair, though advanced in age, to live some years yet, to witness the happiness of his dear grandson, once a humble cash-boy. end of the project gutenberg etext of the cash boy by horatio alger jr. **the project gutenberg etext of an inland voyage by stevenson** #23 in our series by robert louis 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* an inland voyage by robert louis stevenson scanned and proofed by david price ccx074@coventry.ac.uk an inland voyage preface to the first edition to equip so small a book with a preface is, i am half afraid, to sin against proportion. but a preface is more than an author can resist, for it is the reward of his labours. when the foundation stone is laid, the architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour before the public eye. so with the writer in his preface: he may have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanour. it is best, in such circumstances, to represent a delicate shade of manner between humility and superiority: as if the book had been written by some one else, and you had merely run over it and inserted what was good. but for my part i have not yet learned the trick to that perfection; i am not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my sentiments towards a reader; and if i meet him on the threshold, it is to invite him in with country cordiality. to say truth, i had no sooner finished reading this little book in proof, than i was seized upon by a distressing apprehension. it occurred to me that i might not only be the first to read these pages, but the last as well; that i might have pioneered this very smiling tract of country all in vain, and find not a soul to follow in my steps. the more i thought, the more i disliked the notion; until the distaste grew into a sort of panic terror, and i rushed into this preface, which is no more than an advertisement for readers. what am i to say for my book? caleb and joshua brought back from palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces naught so nourishing; and for the matter of that, we live in an age when people prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit. i wonder, would a negative be found enticing? for, from the negative point of view, i flatter myself this volume has a certain stamp. although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of god's universe, nor so much as a single hint that i could have made a better one myself. i really do not know where my head can have been. i seem to have forgotten all that makes it glorious to be man. 'tis an omission that renders the book philosophically unimportant; but i am in hopes the eccentricity may please in frivolous circles. to the friend who accompanied me i owe many thanks already, indeed i wish i owed him nothing else; but at this moment i feel towards him an almost exaggerated tenderness. he, at least, will become my reader: if it were only to follow his own travels alongside of mine. r.l.s. antwerp to boom we made a great stir in antwerp docks. a stevedore and a lot of dock porters took up the two canoes, and ran with them for the slip. a crowd of children followed cheering. the cigarette went off in a splash and a bubble of small breaking water. next moment the arethusa was after her. a steamer was coming down, men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the stevedore and his porters were bawling from the quay. but in a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of the scheldt, and all steamers, and stevedores, and other 'long-shore vanities were left behind. the sun shone brightly; the tide was making four jolly miles an hour; the wind blew steadily, with occasional squalls. for my part, i had never been in a canoe under sail in my life; and my first experiment out in the middle of this big river was not made without some trepidation. what would happen when the wind first caught my little canvas? i suppose it was almost as trying a venture into the regions of the unknown as to publish a first book, or to marry. but my doubts were not of long duration; and in five minutes you will not be surprised to learn that i had tied my sheet. i own i was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of course, in company with the rest of my fellow-men, i had always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, i was not prepared to find myself follow the same principle; and it inspired me with some contemptuous views of our regard for life. it is certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened; but i had never before weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable pipe. it is a commonplace, that we cannot answer for ourselves before we have been tried. but it is not so common a reflection, and surely more consoling, that we usually find ourselves a great deal braver and better than we thought. i believe this is every one's experience: but an apprehension that they may belie themselves in the future prevents mankind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment abroad. i wish sincerely, for it would have saved me much trouble, there had been some one to put me in a good heart about life when i was younger; to tell me how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight; and how the good in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of need. but we are all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and not a man among us will go to the head of the march to sound the heady drums. it was agreeable upon the river. a barge or two went past laden with hay. reeds and willows bordered the stream; and cattle and grey venerable horses came and hung their mild heads over the embankment. here and there was a pleasant village among trees, with a noisy shipping-yard; here and there a villa in a lawn. the wind served us well up the scheldt and thereafter up the rupel; and we were running pretty free when we began to sight the brickyards of boom, lying for a long way on the right bank of the river. the left bank was still green and pastoral, with alleys of trees along the embankment, and here and there a flight of steps to serve a ferry, where perhaps there sat a woman with her elbows on her knees, or an old gentleman with a staff and silver spectacles. but boom and its brickyards grew smokier and shabbier with every minute; until a great church with a clock, and a wooden bridge over the river, indicated the central quarters of the town. boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing: that the majority of the inhabitants have a private opinion that they can speak english, which is not justified by fact. this gave a kind of haziness to our intercourse. as for the hotel de la navigation, i think it is the worst feature of the place. it boasts of a sanded parlour, with a bar at one end, looking on the street; and another sanded parlour, darker and colder, with an empty bird-cage and a tricolour subscription box by way of sole adornment, where we made shift to dine in the company of three uncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman. the food, as usual in belgium, was of a nondescript occasional character; indeed i have never been able to detect anything in the nature of a meal among this pleasing people; they seem to peck and trifle with viands all day long in an amateur spirit: tentatively french, truly german, and somehow falling between the two. the empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace of the old piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed apart to hold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer. the engineer apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor indeed to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly to one another, or raked us in the gaslight with a gleam of spectacles. for though handsome lads, they were all (in the scots phrase) barnacled. there was an english maid in the hotel, who had been long enough out of england to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and all sorts of curious foreign ways, which need not here be specified. she spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, asked us information as to the manners of the present day in england, and obligingly corrected us when we attempted to answer. but as we were dealing with a woman, perhaps our information was not so much thrown away as it appeared. the sex likes to pick up knowledge and yet preserve its superiority. it is good policy, and almost necessary in the circumstances. if a man finds a woman admire him, were it only for his acquaintance with geography, he will begin at once to build upon the admiration. it is only by unintermittent snubbing that the pretty ones can keep us in our place. men, as miss howe or miss harlowe would have said, 'are such encroachers.' for my part, i am body and soul with the women; and after a wellmarried couple, there is nothing so beautiful in the world as the myth of the divine huntress. it is no use for a man to take to the woods; we know him; st. anthony tried the same thing long ago, and had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. but there is this about some women, which overtops the best gymnosophist among men, that they suffice to themselves, and can walk in a high and cold zone without the countenance of any trousered being. i declare, although the reverse of a professed ascetic, i am more obliged to women for this ideal than i should be to the majority of them, or indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous kiss. there is nothing so encouraging as the spectacle of self-sufficiency. and when i think of the slim and lovely maidens, running the woods all night to the note of diana's horn; moving among the old oaks, as fancy-free as they; things of the forest and the starlight, not touched by the commotion of man's hot and turbid life although there are plenty other ideals that i should prefer i find my heart beat at the thought of this one. 'tis to fail in life, but to fail with what a grace! that is not lost which is not regretted. and where here slips out the male where would be much of the glory of inspiring love, if there were no contempt to overcome? on the willebroek canal next morning, when we set forth on the willebroek canal, the rain began heavy and chill. the water of the canal stood at about the drinking temperature of tea; and under this cold aspersion, the surface was covered with steam. the exhilaration of departure, and the easy motion of the boats under each stroke of the paddles, supported us through this misfortune while it lasted; and when the cloud passed and the sun came out again, our spirits went up above the range of stay-at-home humours. a good breeze rustled and shivered in the rows of trees that bordered the canal. the leaves flickered in and out of the light in tumultuous masses. it seemed sailing weather to eye and ear; but down between the banks, the wind reached us only in faint and desultory puffs. there was hardly enough to steer by. progress was intermittent and unsatisfactory. a jocular person, of marine antecedents, hailed us from the tow-path with a 'c'est vite, mais c'est long.' the canal was busy enough. every now and then we met or overtook a long string of boats, with great green tillers; high sterns with a window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flowerpot in one of the windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about the day's dinner, and a handful of children. these barges were all tied one behind the other with tow ropes, to the number of twenty-five or thirty; and the line was headed and kept in motion by a steamer of strange construction. it had neither paddle-wheel nor screw; but by some gear not rightly comprehensible to the unmechanical mind, it fetched up over its bow a small bright chain which lay along the bottom of the canal, and paying it out again over the stern, dragged itself forward, link by link, with its whole retinue of loaded skows. until one had found out the key to the enigma, there was something solemn and uncomfortable in the progress of one of these trains, as it moved gently along the water with nothing to mark its advance but an eddy alongside dying away into the wake. of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a canal barge is by far the most delightful to consider. it may spread its sails, and then you see it sailing high above the tree-tops and the windmill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green corn-lands: the most picturesque of things amphibious. or the horse plods along at a foot-pace as if there were no such thing as business in the world; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees the same spire on the horizon all day long. it is a mystery how things ever get to their destination at this rate; and to see the barges waiting their turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how easily the world may be taken. there should be many contented spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel and to stay at home. the chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the banks of the canal slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; the barge floats by great forests and through great cities with their public buildings and their lamps at night; and for the bargee, in his floating home, 'travelling abed,' it is merely as if he were listening to another man's story or turning the leaves of a picture-book in which he had no concern. he may take his afternoon walk in some foreign country on the banks of the canal, and then come home to dinner at his own fireside. there is not enough exercise in such a life for any high measure of health; but a high measure of health is only necessary for unhealthy people. the slug of a fellow, who is never ill nor well, has a quiet time of it in life, and dies all the easier. i am sure i would rather be a bargee than occupy any position under heaven that required attendance at an office. there are few callings, i should say, where a man gives up less of his liberty in return for regular meals. the bargee is on shipboard he is master in his own ship he can land whenever he will he can never be kept beating off a lee-shore a whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as iron; and so far as i can make out, time stands as nearly still with him as is compatible with the return of bed-time or the dinner-hour. it is not easy to see why a bargee should ever die. half-way between willebroek and villevorde, in a beautiful reach of canal like a squire's avenue, we went ashore to lunch. there were two eggs, a junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on board the arethusa; and two eggs and an etna cooking apparatus on board the cigarette. the master of the latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the course of disembarkation; but observing pleasantly that it might still be cooked a la papier, he dropped it into the etna, in its covering of flemish newspaper. we landed in a blink of fine weather; but we had not been two minutes ashore before the wind freshened into half a gale, and the rain began to patter on our shoulders. we sat as close about the etna as we could. the spirits burned with great ostentation; the grass caught flame every minute or two, and had to be trodden out; and before long, there were several burnt fingers of the party. but the solid quantity of cookery accomplished was out of proportion with so much display; and when we desisted, after two applications of the fire, the sound egg was little more than loo-warm; and as for a la papier, it was a cold and sordid fricassee of printer's ink and broken egg-shell. we made shift to roast the other two, by putting them close to the burning spirits; and that with better success. and then we uncorked the bottle of wine, and sat down in a ditch with our canoe aprons over our knees. it rained smartly. discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable and makes no nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous business; and people well steeped and stupefied in the open air are in a good vein for laughter. from this point of view, even egg a la papier offered by way of food may pass muster as a sort of accessory to the fun. but this manner of jest, although it may be taken in good part, does not invite repetition; and from that time forward, the etna voyaged like a gentleman in the locker of the cigarette. it is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch was over and we got aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died away. the rest of the journey to villevorde, we still spread our canvas to the unfavouring air; and with now and then a puff, and now and then a spell of paddling, drifted along from lock to lock, between the orderly trees. it was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green waterlane, going on from village to village. things had a settled look, as in places long lived in. crop-headed children spat upon us from the bridges as we went below, with a true conservative feeling. but even more conservative were the fishermen, intent upon their floats, who let us go by without one glance. they perched upon sterlings and buttresses and along the slope of the embankment, gently occupied. they were indifferent, like pieces of dead nature. they did not move any more than if they had been fishing in an old dutch print. the leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but they continued in one stay like so many churches established by law. you might have trepanned every one of their innocent heads, and found no more than so much coiled fishing-line below their skulls. i do not care for your stalwart fellows in india-rubber stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod; but i do dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art, for ever and a day, by still and depopulated waters. at the last lock, just beyond villevorde, there was a lock-mistress who spoke french comprehensibly, and told us we were still a couple of leagues from brussels. at the same place, the rain began again. it fell in straight, parallel lines; and the surface of the canal was thrown up into an infinity of little crystal fountains. there were no beds to be had in the neighbourhood. nothing for it but to lay the sails aside and address ourselves to steady paddling in the rain. beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shuttered windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, gave a rich and sombre aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk to the shores of the canal. i seem to have seen something of the same effect in engravings: opulent landscapes, deserted and overhung with the passage of storm. and throughout we had the escort of a hooded cart, which trotted shabbily along the tow-path, and kept at an almost uniform distance in our wake. the royal sport nautique the rain took off near laeken. but the sun was already down; the air was chill; and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the pair of us. nay, now we found ourselves near the end of the allee verte, and on the very threshold of brussels, we were confronted by a serious difficulty. the shores were closely lined by canal boats waiting their turn at the lock. nowhere was there any convenient landing-place; nowhere so much as a stable-yard to leave the canoes in for the night. we scrambled ashore and entered an estaminet where some sorry fellows were drinking with the landlord. the landlord was pretty round with us; he knew of no coach-house or stable-yard, nothing of the sort; and seeing we had come with no mind to drink, he did not conceal his impatience to be rid of us. one of the sorry fellows came to the rescue. somewhere in the corner of the basin there was a slip, he informed us, and something else besides, not very clearly defined by him, but hopefully construed by his hearers. sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin; and at the top of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes. the arethusa addressed himself to these. one of them said there would be no difficulty about a night's lodging for our boats; and the other, taking a cigarette from his lips, inquired if they were made by searle and son. the name was quite an introduction. half-adozen other young men came out of a boat-house bearing the superscription royal sport nautique, and joined in the talk. they were all very polite, voluble, and enthusiastic; and their discourse was interlarded with english boating terms, and the names of english boat-builders and english clubs. i do not know, to my shame, any spot in my native land where i should have been so warmly received by the same number of people. we were english boating-men, and the belgian boating-men fell upon our necks. i wonder if french huguenots were as cordially greeted by english protestants when they came across the channel out of great tribulation. but after all, what religion knits people so closely as a common sport? the canoes were carried into the boat-house; they were washed down for us by the club servants, the sails were hung out to dry, and everything made as snug and tidy as a picture. and in the meanwhile we were led upstairs by our new-found brethren, for so more than one of them stated the relationship, and made free of their lavatory. this one lent us soap, that one a towel, a third and fourth helped us to undo our bags. and all the time such questions, such assurances of respect and sympathy! i declare i never knew what glory was before. 'yes, yes, the royal sport nautique is the oldest club in belgium.' 'we number two hundred.' 'we' this is not a substantive speech, but an abstract of many speeches, the impression left upon my mind after a great deal of talk; and very youthful, pleasant, natural, and patriotic it seems to me to be 'we have gained all races, except those where we were cheated by the french.' 'you must leave all your wet things to be dried.' 'o! entre freres! in any boat-house in england we should find the same.' (i cordially hope they might.) 'en angleterre, vous employez des sliding-seats, n'est-ce pas?' 'we are all employed in commerce during the day; but in the evening, voyez-vous, nous sommes serieux.' these were the words. they were all employed over the frivolous mercantile concerns of belgium during the day; but in the evening they found some hours for the serious concerns of life. i may have a wrong idea of wisdom, but i think that was a very wise remark. people connected with literature and philosophy are busy all their days in getting rid of second-hand notions and false standards. it is their profession, in the sweat of their brows, by dogged thinking, to recover their old fresh view of life, and distinguish what they really and originally like, from what they have only learned to tolerate perforce. and these royal nautical sportsmen had the distinction still quite legible in their hearts. they had still those clean perceptions of what is nice and nasty, what is interesting and what is dull, which envious old gentlemen refer to as illusions. the nightmare illusion of middle age, the bear's hug of custom gradually squeezing the life out of a man's soul, had not yet begun for these happy-starred young belgians. they still knew that the interest they took in their business was a trifling affair compared to their spontaneous, long-suffering affection for nautical sports. to know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. such a man may be generous; he may be honest in something more than the commercial sense; he may love his friends with an elective, personal sympathy, and not accept them as an adjunct of the station to which he has been called. he may be a man, in short, acting on his own instincts, keeping in his own shape that god made him in; and not a mere crank in the social engine-house, welded on principles that he does not understand, and for purposes that he does not care for. for will any one dare to tell me that business is more entertaining than fooling among boats? he must have never seen a boat, or never seen an office, who says so. and for certain the one is a great deal better for the health. there should be nothing so much a man's business as his amusements. nothing but money-grubbing can be put forward to the contrary; no one but mammon, the least erected spirit that fell from heaven, durst risk a word in answer. it is but a lying cant that would represent the merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly toiling for mankind, and then most useful when they are most absorbed in their transactions; for the man is more important than his services. and when my royal nautical sportsman shall have so far fallen from his hopeful youth that he cannot pluck up an enthusiasm over anything but his ledger, i venture to doubt whether he will be near so nice a fellow, and whether he would welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of drenched englishmen paddling into brussels in the dusk. when we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a glass of pale ale to the club's prosperity, one of their number escorted us to an hotel. he would not join us at our dinner, but he had no objection to a glass of wine. enthusiasm is very wearing; and i begin to understand why prophets were unpopular in judaea, where they were best known. for three stricken hours did this excellent young man sit beside us to dilate on boats and boat-races; and before he left, he was kind enough to order our bedroom candles. we endeavoured now and again to change the subject; but the diversion did not last a moment: the royal nautical sportsman bridled, shied, answered the question, and then breasted once more into the swelling tide of his subject. i call it his subject; but i think it was he who was subjected. the arethusa, who holds all racing as a creature of the devil, found himself in a pitiful dilemma. he durst not own his ignorance for the honour of old england, and spoke away about english clubs and english oarsmen whose fame had never before come to his ears. several times, and, once above all, on the question of sliding-seats, he was within an ace of exposure. as for the cigarette, who has rowed races in the heat of his blood, but now disowns these slips of his wanton youth, his case was still more desperate; for the royal nautical proposed that he should take an oar in one of their eights on the morrow, to compare the english with the belgian stroke. i could see my friend perspiring in his chair whenever that particular topic came up. and there was yet another proposal which had the same effect on both of us. it appeared that the champion canoeist of europe (as well as most other champions) was a royal nautical sportsman. and if we would only wait until the sunday, this infernal paddler would be so condescending as to accompany us on our next stage. neither of us had the least desire to drive the coursers of the sun against apollo. when the young man was gone, we countermanded our candles, and ordered some brandy and water. the great billows had gone over our head. the royal nautical sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a man would wish to see, but they were a trifle too young and a thought too nautical for us. we began to see that we were old and cynical; we liked ease and the agreeable rambling of the human mind about this and the other subject; we did not want to disgrace our native land by messing an eight, or toiling pitifully in the wake of the champion canoeist. in short, we had recourse to flight. it seemed ungrateful, but we tried to make that good on a card loaded with sincere compliments. and indeed it was no time for scruples; we seemed to feel the hot breath of the champion on our necks. at maubeuge partly from the terror we had of our good friends the royal nauticals, partly from the fact that there were no fewer than fifty-five locks between brussels and charleroi, we concluded that we should travel by train across the frontier, boats and all. fifty-five locks in a day's journey was pretty well tantamount to trudging the whole distance on foot, with the canoes upon our shoulders, an object of astonishment to the trees on the canal side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking children. to pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter for the arethusa. he is somehow or other a marked man for the official eye. wherever he journeys, there are the officers gathered together. treaties are solemnly signed, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and consuls sit throned in state from china to peru, and the union jack flutters on all the winds of heaven. under these safeguards, portly clergymen, school-mistresses, gentlemen in grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and rabble of british touristry pour unhindered, murray in hand, over the railways of the continent, and yet the slim person of the arethusa is taken in the meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing. if he travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about the matter, into noisome dungeons: if his papers are in order, he is suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has been humiliated by a general incredulity. he is a born british subject, yet he has never succeeded in persuading a single official of his nationality. he flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet he is rarely taken for anything better than a spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable means of livelihood but has been attributed to him in some heat of official or popular distrust. . . . for the life of me i cannot understand it. i too have been knolled to church, and sat at good men's feasts; but i bear no mark of it. i am as strange as a jack indian to their official spectacles. i might come from any part of the globe, it seems, except from where i do. my ancestors have laboured in vain, and the glorious constitution cannot protect me in my walks abroad. it is a great thing, believe me, to present a good normal type of the nation you belong to. nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to maubeuge; but i was; and although i clung to my rights, i had to choose at last between accepting the humiliation and being left behind by the train. i was sorry to give way; but i wanted to get to maubeuge. maubeuge is a fortified town, with a very good inn, the grand cerf. it seemed to be inhabited principally by soldiers and bagmen; at least, these were all that we saw, except the hotel servants. we had to stay there some time, for the canoes were in no hurry to follow us, and at last stuck hopelessly in the custom-house until we went back to liberate them. there was nothing to do, nothing to see. we had good meals, which was a great matter; but that was all. the cigarette was nearly taken up upon a charge of drawing the fortifications: a feat of which he was hopelessly incapable. and besides, as i suppose each belligerent nation has a plan of the other's fortified places already, these precautions are of the nature of shutting the stable door after the steed is away. but i have no doubt they help to keep up a good spirit at home. it is a great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. it makes them feel bigger. even the freemasons, who have been shown up to satiety, preserve a kind of pride; and not a grocer among them, however honest, harmless, and empty-headed he may feel himself to be at bottom, but comes home from one of their coenacula with a portentous significance for himself. it is an odd thing, how happily two people, if there are two, can live in a place where they have no acquaintance. i think the spectacle of a whole life in which you have no part paralyses personal desire. you are content to become a mere spectator. the baker stands in his door; the colonel with his three medals goes by to the cafe at night; the troops drum and trumpet and man the ramparts, as bold as so many lions. it would task language to say how placidly you behold all this. in a place where you have taken some root, you are provoked out of your indifference; you have a hand in the game; your friends are fighting with the army. but in a strange town, not small enough to grow too soon familiar, nor so large as to have laid itself out for travellers, you stand so far apart from the business, that you positively forget it would be possible to go nearer; you have so little human interest around you, that you do not remember yourself to be a man. perhaps, in a very short time, you would be one no longer. gymnosophists go into a wood, with all nature seething around them, with romance on every side; it would be much more to the purpose if they took up their abode in a dull country town, where they should see just so much of humanity as to keep them from desiring more, and only the stale externals of man's life. these externals are as dead to us as so many formalities, and speak a dead language in our eyes and ears. they have no more meaning than an oath or a salutation. we are so much accustomed to see married couples going to church of a sunday that we have clean forgotten what they represent; and novelists are driven to rehabilitate adultery, no less, when they wish to show us what a beautiful thing it is for a man and a woman to live for each other. one person in maubeuge, however, showed me something more than his outside. that was the driver of the hotel omnibus: a mean enough looking little man, as well as i can remember; but with a spark of something human in his soul. he had heard of our little journey, and came to me at once in envious sympathy. how he longed to travel! he told me. how he longed to be somewhere else, and see the round world before he went into the grave! 'here i am,' said he. 'i drive to the station. well. and then i drive back again to the hotel. and so on every day and all the week round. my god, is that life?' i could not say i thought it was for him. he pressed me to tell him where i had been, and where i hoped to go; and as he listened, i declare the fellow sighed. might not this have been a brave african traveller, or gone to the indies after drake? but it is an evil age for the gypsily inclined among men. he who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he it is who has the wealth and glory. i wonder if my friend is still driving the omnibus for the grand cerf? not very likely, i believe; for i think he was on the eve of mutiny when we passed through, and perhaps our passage determined him for good. better a thousand times that he should be a tramp, and mend pots and pans by the wayside, and sleep under trees, and see the dawn and the sunset every day above a new horizon. i think i hear you say that it is a respectable position to drive an omnibus? very well. what right has he who likes it not, to keep those who would like it dearly out of this respectable position? suppose a dish were not to my taste, and you told me that it was a favourite amongst the rest of the company, what should i conclude from that? not to finish the dish against my stomach, i suppose. respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations. i would not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but i think i will go as far as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it were as respectable as the church of england, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned. on the sambre canalised to quartes about three in the afternoon the whole establishment of the grand cerf accompanied us to the water's edge. the man of the omnibus was there with haggard eyes. poor cage-bird! do i not remember the time when i myself haunted the station, to watch train after train carry its complement of freemen into the night, and read the names of distant places on the time-bills with indescribable longings? we were not clear of the fortifications before the rain began. the wind was contrary, and blew in furious gusts; nor were the aspects of nature any more clement than the doings of the sky. for we passed through a stretch of blighted country, sparsely covered with brush, but handsomely enough diversified with factory chimneys. we landed in a soiled meadow among some pollards, and there smoked a pipe in a flaw of fair weather. but the wind blew so hard, we could get little else to smoke. there were no natural objects in the neighbourhood, but some sordid workshops. a group of children headed by a tall girl stood and watched us from a little distance all the time we stayed. i heartily wonder what they thought of us. at hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the landing-place being steep and high, and the launch at a long distance. near a dozen grimy workmen lent us a hand. they refused any reward; and, what is much better, refused it handsomely, without conveying any sense of insult. 'it is a way we have in our countryside,' said they. and a very becoming way it is. in scotland, where also you will get services for nothing, the good people reject your money as if you had been trying to corrupt a voter. when people take the trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth while to take a little more, and allow the dignity to be common to all concerned. but in our brave saxon countries, where we plod threescore years and ten in the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our ears from birth to burial, we do our good and bad with a high hand and almost offensively; and make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act of war against the wrong. after hautmont, the sun came forth again and the wind went down; and a little paddling took us beyond the ironworks and through a delectable land. the river wound among low hills, so that sometimes the sun was at our backs, and sometimes it stood right ahead, and the river before us was one sheet of intolerable glory. on either hand, meadows and orchards bordered, with a margin of sedge and water flowers, upon the river. the hedges were of great height, woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms; and the fields, as they were often very small, looked like a series of bowers along the stream. there was never any prospect; sometimes a hill-top with its trees would look over the nearest hedgerow, just to make a middle distance for the sky; but that was all. the heaven was bare of clouds. the atmosphere, after the rain, was of enchanting purity. the river doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror glass; and the dip of the paddles set the flowers shaking along the brink. in the meadows wandered black and white cattle fantastically marked. one beast, with a white head and the rest of the body glossy black, came to the edge to drink, and stood gravely twitching his ears at me as i went by, like some sort of preposterous clergyman in a play. a moment after i heard a loud plunge, and, turning my head, saw the clergyman struggling to shore. the bank had given way under his feet. besides the cattle, we saw no living things except a few birds and a great many fishermen. these sat along the edges of the meadows, sometimes with one rod, sometimes with as many as half a score. they seemed stupefied with contentment; and when we induced them to exchange a few words with us about the weather, their voices sounded quiet and far away. there was a strange diversity of opinion among them as to the kind of fish for which they set their lures; although they were all agreed in this, that the river was abundantly supplied. where it was plain that no two of them had ever caught the same kind of fish, we could not help suspecting that perhaps not any one of them had ever caught a fish at all. i hope, since the afternoon was so lovely, that they were one and all rewarded; and that a silver booty went home in every basket for the pot. some of my friends would cry shame on me for this; but i prefer a man, were he only an angler, to the bravest pair of gills in all god's waters. i do not affect fishes unless when cooked in sauce; whereas an angler is an important piece of river scenery, and hence deserves some recognition among canoeists. he can always tell you where you are after a mild fashion; and his quiet presence serves to accentuate the solitude and stillness, and remind you of the glittering citizens below your boat. the sambre turned so industriously to and fro among his little hills, that it was past six before we drew near the lock at quartes. there were some children on the tow-path, with whom the cigarette fell into a chaffing talk as they ran along beside us. it was in vain that i warned him. in vain i told him, in english, that boys were the most dangerous creatures; and if once you began with them, it was safe to end in a shower of stones. for my own part, whenever anything was addressed to me, i smiled gently and shook my head as though i were an inoffensive person inadequately acquainted with french. for indeed i have had such experience at home, that i would sooner meet many wild animals than a troop of healthy urchins. but i was doing injustice to these peaceable young hainaulters. when the cigarette went off to make inquiries, i got out upon the bank to smoke a pipe and superintend the boats, and became at once the centre of much amiable curiosity. the children had been joined by this time by a young woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm; and this gave me more security. when i let slip my first word or so in french, a little girl nodded her head with a comical grown-up air. 'ah, you see,' she said, 'he understands well enough now; he was just making believe.' and the little group laughed together very good-naturedly. they were much impressed when they heard we came from england; and the little girl proffered the information that england was an island 'and a far way from here bien loin d'ici.' 'ay, you may say that, a far way from here,' said the lad with one arm. i was as nearly home-sick as ever i was in my life; they seemed to make it such an incalculable distance to the place where i first saw the day. they admired the canoes very much. and i observed one piece of delicacy in these children, which is worthy of record. they had been deafening us for the last hundred yards with petitions for a sail; ay, and they deafened us to the same tune next morning when we came to start; but then, when the canoes were lying empty, there was no word of any such petition. delicacy? or perhaps a bit of fear for the water in so crank a vessel? i hate cynicism a great deal worse than i do the devil; unless perhaps the two were the same thing? and yet 'tis a good tonic; the cold tub and bath-towel of the sentiments; and positively necessary to life in cases of advanced sensibility. from the boats they turned to my costume. they could not make enough of my red sash; and my knife filled them with awe. 'they make them like that in england,' said the boy with one arm. i was glad he did not know how badly we make them in england now-adays. 'they are for people who go away to sea,' he added, 'and to defend one's life against great fish.' i felt i was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the little group at every word. and so i suppose i was. even my pipe, although it was an ordinary french clay pretty well 'trousered,' as they call it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as a thing coming from so far away. and if my feathers were not very fine in themselves, they were all from over seas. one thing in my outfit, however, tickled them out of all politeness; and that was the bemired condition of my canvas shoes. i suppose they were sure the mud at any rate was a home product. the little girl (who was the genius of the party) displayed her own sabots in competition; and i wish you could have seen how gracefully and merrily she did it. the young woman's milk-can, a great amphora of hammered brass, stood some way off upon the sward. i was glad of an opportunity to divert public attention from myself, and return some of the compliments i had received. so i admired it cordially both for form and colour, telling them, and very truly, that it was as beautiful as gold. they were not surprised. the things were plainly the boast of the countryside. and the children expatiated on the costliness of these amphorae, which sell sometimes as high as thirty francs apiece; told me how they were carried on donkeys, one on either side of the saddle, a brave caparison in themselves; and how they were to be seen all over the district, and at the larger farms in great number and of great size. pont-sur-sambre we are pedlars the cigarette returned with good news. there were beds to be had some ten minutes' walk from where we were, at a place called pont. we stowed the canoes in a granary, and asked among the children for a guide. the circle at once widened round us, and our offers of reward were received in dispiriting silence. we were plainly a pair of bluebeards to the children; they might speak to us in public places, and where they had the advantage of numbers; but it was another thing to venture off alone with two uncouth and legendary characters, who had dropped from the clouds upon their hamlet this quiet afternoon, sashed and be-knived, and with a flavour of great voyages. the owner of the granary came to our assistance, singled out one little fellow and threatened him with corporalities; or i suspect we should have had to find the way for ourselves. as it was, he was more frightened at the granary man than the strangers, having perhaps had some experience of the former. but i fancy his little heart must have been going at a fine rate; for he kept trotting at a respectful distance in front, and looking back at us with scared eyes. not otherwise may the children of the young world have guided jove or one of his olympian compeers on an adventure. a miry lane led us up from quartes with its church and bickering windmill. the hinds were trudging homewards from the fields. a brisk little woman passed us by. she was seated across a donkey between a pair of glittering milk-cans; and, as she went, she kicked jauntily with her heels upon the donkey's side, and scattered shrill remarks among the wayfarers. it was notable that none of the tired men took the trouble to reply. our conductor soon led us out of the lane and across country. the sun had gone down, but the west in front of us was one lake of level gold. the path wandered a while in the open, and then passed under a trellis like a bower indefinitely prolonged. on either hand were shadowy orchards; cottages lay low among the leaves, and sent their smoke to heaven; every here and there, in an opening, appeared the great gold face of the west. i never saw the cigarette in such an idyllic frame of mind. he waxed positively lyrical in praise of country scenes. i was little less exhilarated myself; the mild air of the evening, the shadows, the rich lights and the silence, made a symphonious accompaniment about our walk; and we both determined to avoid towns for the future and sleep in hamlets. at last the path went between two houses, and turned the party out into a wide muddy high-road, bordered, as far as the eye could reach on either hand, by an unsightly village. the houses stood well back, leaving a ribbon of waste land on either side of the road, where there were stacks of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbishheaps, and a little doubtful grass. away on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of the street. what it had been in past ages, i know not: probably a hold in time of war; but now-a-days it bore an illegible dial-plate in its upper parts, and near the bottom an iron letter-box. the inn to which we had been recommended at quartes was full, or else the landlady did not like our looks. i ought to say, that with our long, damp india-rubber bags, we presented rather a doubtful type of civilisation: like rag-and-bone men, the cigarette imagined. 'these gentlemen are pedlars? ces messieurs sont des marchands?' asked the landlady. and then, without waiting for an answer, which i suppose she thought superfluous in so plain a case, recommended us to a butcher who lived hard by the tower, and took in travellers to lodge. thither went we. but the butcher was flitting, and all his beds were taken down. or else he didn't like our look. as a parting shot, we had 'these gentlemen are pedlars?' it began to grow dark in earnest. we could no longer distinguish the faces of the people who passed us by with an inarticulate goodevening. and the householders of pont seemed very economical with their oil; for we saw not a single window lighted in all that long village. i believe it is the longest village in the world; but i daresay in our predicament every pace counted three times over. we were much cast down when we came to the last auberge; and looking in at the dark door, asked timidly if we could sleep there for the night. a female voice assented in no very friendly tones. we clapped the bags down and found our way to chairs. the place was in total darkness, save a red glow in the chinks and ventilators of the stove. but now the landlady lit a lamp to see her new guests; i suppose the darkness was what saved us another expulsion; for i cannot say she looked gratified at our appearance. we were in a large bare apartment, adorned with two allegorical prints of music and painting, and a copy of the law against public drunkenness. on one side, there was a bit of a bar, with some half-a-dozen bottles. two labourers sat waiting supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness; a plain-looking lass bustled about with a sleepy child of two; and the landlady began to derange the pots upon the stove, and set some beefsteak to grill. 'these gentlemen are pedlars?' she asked sharply. and that was all the conversation forthcoming. we began to think we might be pedlars after all. i never knew a population with so narrow a range of conjecture as the innkeepers of pont-sur-sambre. but manners and bearing have not a wider currency than bank-notes. you have only to get far enough out of your beat, and all your accomplished airs will go for nothing. these hainaulters could see no difference between us and the average pedlar. indeed we had some grounds for reflection while the steak was getting ready, to see how perfectly they accepted us at their own valuation, and how our best politeness and best efforts at entertainment seemed to fit quite suitably with the character of packmen. at least it seemed a good account of the profession in france, that even before such judges we could not beat them at our own weapons. at last we were called to table. the two hinds (and one of them looked sadly worn and white in the face, as though sick with overwork and under-feeding) supped off a single plate of some sort of bread-berry, some potatoes in their jackets, a small cup of coffee sweetened with sugar-candy, and one tumbler of swipes. the landlady, her son, and the lass aforesaid, took the same. our meal was quite a banquet by comparison. we had some beefsteak, not so tender as it might have been, some of the potatoes, some cheese, an extra glass of the swipes, and white sugar in our coffee. you see what it is to be a gentleman i beg your pardon, what it is to be a pedlar. it had not before occurred to me that a pedlar was a great man in a labourer's ale-house; but now that i had to enact the part for an evening, i found that so it was. he has in his hedge quarters somewhat the same pre-eminency as the man who takes a private parlour in an hotel. the more you look into it, the more infinite are the class distinctions among men; and possibly, by a happy dispensation, there is no one at all at the bottom of the scale; no one but can find some superiority over somebody else, to keep up his pride withal. we were displeased enough with our fare. particularly the cigarette, for i tried to make believe that i was amused with the adventure, tough beefsteak and all. according to the lucretian maxim, our steak should have been flavoured by the look of the other people's bread-berry. but we did not find it so in practice. you may have a head-knowledge that other people live more poorly than yourself, but it is not agreeable i was going to say, it is against the etiquette of the universe to sit at the same table and pick your own superior diet from among their crusts. i had not seen such a thing done since the greedy boy at school with his birthday cake. it was odious enough to witness, i could remember; and i had never thought to play the part myself. but there again you see what it is to be a pedlar. there is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country are much more charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth. and i fancy it must arise a great deal from the comparative indistinction of the easy and the not so easy in these ranks. a workman or a pedlar cannot shutter himself off from his less comfortable neighbours. if he treats himself to a luxury, he must do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. and what should more directly lead to charitable thoughts? . . . thus the poor man, camping out in life, sees it as it is, and knows that every mouthful he puts in his belly has been wrenched out of the fingers of the hungry. but at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary matters are thenceforward hidden from his view. he sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order, and positively as good as new. he finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the skylarks. he does not precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so unassuming in his open landau! if all the world dined at one table, this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks. pont-sur-sambre the travelling merchant like the lackeys in moliere's farce, when the true nobleman broke in on their high life below stairs, we were destined to be confronted with a real pedlar. to make the lesson still more poignant for fallen gentlemen like us, he was a pedlar of infinitely more consideration than the sort of scurvy fellows we were taken for: like a lion among mice, or a ship of war bearing down upon two cock-boats. indeed, he did not deserve the name of pedlar at all: he was a travelling merchant. i suppose it was about half-past eight when this worthy, monsieur hector gilliard of maubeuge, turned up at the ale-house door in a tilt cart drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the inhabitants. he was a lean, nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with something the look of an actor, and something the look of a horse-jockey. he had evidently prospered without any of the favours of education; for he adhered with stern simplicity to the masculine gender, and in the course of the evening passed off some fancy futures in a very florid style of architecture. with him came his wife, a comely young woman with her hair tied in a yellow kerchief, and their son, a little fellow of four, in a blouse and military kepi. it was notable that the child was many degrees better dressed than either of the parents. we were informed he was already at a boardingschool; but the holidays having just commenced, he was off to spend them with his parents on a cruise. an enchanting holiday occupation, was it not? to travel all day with father and mother in the tilt cart full of countless treasures; the green country rattling by on either side, and the children in all the villages contemplating him with envy and wonder? it is better fun, during the holidays, to be the son of a travelling merchant, than son and heir to the greatest cotton-spinner in creation. and as for being a reigning prince indeed i never saw one if it was not master gilliard! while m. hector and the son of the house were putting up the donkey, and getting all the valuables under lock and key, the landlady warmed up the remains of our beefsteak, and fried the cold potatoes in slices, and madame gilliard set herself to waken the boy, who had come far that day, and was peevish and dazzled by the light. he was no sooner awake than he began to prepare himself for supper by eating galette, unripe pears, and cold potatoes with, so far as i could judge, positive benefit to his appetite. the landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her own little girl; and the two children were confronted. master gilliard looked at her for a moment, very much as a dog looks at his own reflection in a mirror before he turns away. he was at that time absorbed in the galette. his mother seemed crestfallen that he should display so little inclination towards the other sex; and expressed her disappointment with some candour and a very proper reference to the influence of years. sure enough a time will come when he will pay more attention to the girls, and think a great deal less of his mother: let us hope she will like it as well as she seemed to fancy. but it is odd enough; the very women who profess most contempt for mankind as a sex, seem to find even its ugliest particulars rather lively and high-minded in their own sons. the little girl looked longer and with more interest, probably because she was in her own house, while he was a traveller and accustomed to strange sights. and besides there was no galette in the case with her. all the time of supper, there was nothing spoken of but my young lord. the two parents were both absurdly fond of their child. monsieur kept insisting on his sagacity: how he knew all the children at school by name; and when this utterly failed on trial, how he was cautious and exact to a strange degree, and if asked anything, he would sit and think and think, and if he did not know it, 'my faith, he wouldn't tell you at all foi, il ne vous le dira pas': which is certainly a very high degree of caution. at intervals, m. hector would appeal to his wife, with his mouth full of beefsteak, as to the little fellow's age at such or such a time when he had said or done something memorable; and i noticed that madame usually pooh-poohed these inquiries. she herself was not boastful in her vein; but she never had her fill of caressing the child; and she seemed to take a gentle pleasure in recalling all that was fortunate in his little existence. no schoolboy could have talked more of the holidays which were just beginning and less of the black school-time which must inevitably follow after. she showed, with a pride perhaps partly mercantile in origin, his pockets preposterously swollen with tops and whistles and string. when she called at a house in the way of business, it appeared he kept her company; and whenever a sale was made, received a sou out of the profit. indeed they spoiled him vastly, these two good people. but they had an eye to his manners for all that, and reproved him for some little faults in breeding, which occurred from time to time during supper. on the whole, i was not much hurt at being taken for a pedlar. i might think that i ate with greater delicacy, or that my mistakes in french belonged to a different order; but it was plain that these distinctions would be thrown away upon the landlady and the two labourers. in all essential things we and the gilliards cut very much the same figure in the ale-house kitchen. m. hector was more at home, indeed, and took a higher tone with the world; but that was explicable on the ground of his driving a donkey-cart, while we poor bodies tramped afoot. i daresay, the rest of the company thought us dying with envy, though in no ill sense, to be as far up in the profession as the new arrival. and of one thing i am sure: that every one thawed and became more humanised and conversible as soon as these innocent people appeared upon the scene. i would not very readily trust the travelling merchant with any extravagant sum of money; but i am sure his heart was in the right place. in this mixed world, if you can find one or two sensible places in a man above all, if you should find a whole family living together on such pleasant terms you may surely be satisfied, and take the rest for granted; or, what is a great deal better, boldly make up your mind that you can do perfectly well without the rest; and that ten thousand bad traits cannot make a single good one any the less good. it was getting late. m. hector lit a stable lantern and went off to his cart for some arrangements; and my young gentleman proceeded to divest himself of the better part of his raiment, and play gymnastics on his mother's lap, and thence on to the floor, with accompaniment of laughter. 'are you going to sleep alone?' asked the servant lass. 'there's little fear of that,' says master gilliard. 'you sleep alone at school,' objected his mother. 'come, come, you must be a man.' but he protested that school was a different matter from the holidays; that there were dormitories at school; and silenced the discussion with kisses: his mother smiling, no one better pleased than she. there certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he should sleep alone; for there was but one bed for the trio. we, on our part, had firmly protested against one man's accommodation for two; and we had a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house, furnished, beside the beds, with exactly three hat-pegs and one table. there was not so much as a glass of water. but the window would open, by good fortune. some time before i fell asleep the loft was full of the sound of mighty snoring: the gilliards, and the labourers, and the people of the inn, all at it, i suppose, with one consent. the young moon outside shone very clearly over pont-sur-sambre, and down upon the ale-house where all we pedlars were abed. on the sambre canalised to landrecies in the morning, when we came downstairs, the landlady pointed out to us two pails of water behind the street-door. 'voila de l'eau pour vous debarbouiller,' says she. and so there we made a shift to wash ourselves, while madame gilliard brushed the family boots on the outer doorstep, and m. hector, whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods for the day's campaign in a portable chest of drawers, which formed a part of his baggage. meanwhile the child was letting off waterloo crackers all over the floor. i wonder, by-the-bye, what they call waterloo crackers in france; perhaps austerlitz crackers. there is a great deal in the point of view. do you remember the frenchman who, travelling by way of southampton, was put down in waterloo station, and had to drive across waterloo bridge? he had a mind to go home again, it seems. pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten minutes' walk from quartes by dry land, it is six weary kilometres by water. we left our bags at the inn, and walked to our canoes through the wet orchards unencumbered. some of the children were there to see us off, but we were no longer the mysterious beings of the night before. a departure is much less romantic than an unexplained arrival in the golden evening. although we might be greatly taken at a ghost's first appearance, we should behold him vanish with comparative equanimity. the good folk of the inn at pont, when we called there for the bags, were overcome with marvelling. at sight of these two dainty little boats, with a fluttering union jack on each, and all the varnish shining from the sponge, they began to perceive that they had entertained angels unawares. the landlady stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting she had charged so little; the son ran to and fro, and called out the neighbours to enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from quite a crowd of wrapt observers. these gentlemen pedlars, indeed! now you see their quality too late. the whole day was showery, with occasional drenching plumps. we were soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, then soaked once more. but there were some calm intervals, and one notably, when we were skirting the forest of mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place most gratifying to sight and smell. it looked solemn along the river-side, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft into a wall of leaves. what is a forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses and public monuments? there is nothing so much alive, and yet so quiet, as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, feel very small and bustling by comparison. and surely of all smells in the world, the smell of many trees is the sweetest and most fortifying. the sea has a rude, pistolling sort of odour, that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and carries with it a fine sentiment of open water and tall ships; but the smell of a forest, which comes nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by many degrees in the quality of softness. again, the smell of the sea has little variety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful; it varies with the hour of the day, not in strength merely, but in character; and the different sorts of trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to another, seem to live among different kinds of atmosphere. usually the resin of the fir predominates. but some woods are more coquettish in their habits; and the breath of the forest of mormal, as it came aboard upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less delicate than sweetbrier. i wish our way had always lain among woods. trees are the most civil society. an old oak that has been growing where he stands since before the reformation, taller than many spires, more stately than the greater part of mountains, and yet a living thing, liable to sicknesses and death, like you and me: is not that in itself a speaking lesson in history? but acres on acres full of such patriarchs contiguously rooted, their green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart younglings pushing up about their knees: a whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving colour to the light, giving perfume to the air: what is this but the most imposing piece in nature's repertory? heine wished to lie like merlin under the oaks of broceliande. i should not be satisfied with one tree; but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove, i would be buried under the tap-root of the whole; my parts should circulate from oak to oak; and my consciousness should be diffused abroad in all the forest, and give a common heart to that assembly of green spires, so that it also might rejoice in its own loveliness and dignity. i think i feel a thousand squirrels leaping from bough to bough in my vast mausoleum; and the birds and the winds merrily coursing over its uneven, leafy surface. alas! the forest of mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and it was but for a little way that we skirted by its boundaries. and the rest of the time the rain kept coming in squirts and the wind in squalls, until one's heart grew weary of such fitful, scolding weather. it was odd how the showers began when we had to carry the boats over a lock, and must expose our legs. they always did. this is a sort of thing that readily begets a personal feeling against nature. there seems no reason why the shower should not come five minutes before or five minutes after, unless you suppose an intention to affront you. the cigarette had a mackintosh which put him more or less above these contrarieties. but i had to bear the brunt uncovered. i began to remember that nature was a woman. my companion, in a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction to my jeremiads, and ironically concurred. he instanced, as a cognate matter, the action of the tides, 'which,' said he, 'was altogether designed for the confusion of canoeists, except in so far as it was calculated to minister to a barren vanity on the part of the moon.' at the last lock, some little way out of landrecies, i refused to go any farther; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the bank, to have a reviving pipe. a vivacious old man, whom i take to have been the devil, drew near and questioned me about our journey. in the fulness of my heart, i laid bare our plans before him. he said it was the silliest enterprise that ever he heard of. why, did i not know, he asked me, that it was nothing but locks, locks, locks, the whole way? not to mention that, at this season of the year, we should find the oise quite dry? 'get into a train, my little young man,' said he, i and go you away home to your parents.' i was so astounded at the man's malice, that i could only stare at him in silence. a tree would never have spoken to me like this. at last i got out with some words. we had come from antwerp already, i told him, which was a good long way; and we should do the rest in spite of him. yes, i said, if there were no other reason, i would do it now, just because he had dared to say we could not. the pleasant old gentleman looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to my canoe, and marched of, waggling his head. i was still inwardly fuming, when up came a pair of young fellows, who imagined i was the cigarette's servant, on a comparison, i suppose, of my bare jersey with the other's mackintosh, and asked me many questions about my place and my master's character. i said he was a good enough fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the head. 'o no, no,' said one, 'you must not say that; it is not absurd; it is very courageous of him.' i believe these were a couple of angels sent to give me heart again. it was truly fortifying to reproduce all the old man's insinuations, as if they were original to me in my character of a malcontent footman, and have them brushed away like so many flies by these admirable young men. when i recounted this affair to the cigarette, 'they must have a curious idea of how english servants behave,' says he dryly, 'for you treated me like a brute beast at the lock.' i was a good deal mortified; but my temper had suffered, it is a fact. at landrecies at landrecies the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but we found a double-bedded room with plenty of furniture, real waterjugs with real water in them, and dinner: a real dinner, not innocent of real wine. after having been a pedlar for one night, and a butt for the elements during the whole of the next day, these comfortable circumstances fell on my heart like sunshine. there was an english fruiterer at dinner, travelling with a belgian fruiterer; in the evening at the cafe, we watched our compatriot drop a good deal of money at corks; and i don't know why, but this pleased us. it turned out we were to see more of landrecies than we expected; for the weather next day was simply bedlamite. it is not the place one would have chosen for a day's rest; for it consists almost entirely of fortifications. within the ramparts, a few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks, and a church, figure, with what countenance they may, as the town. there seems to be no trade; and a shopkeeper from whom i bought a sixpenny flint-and-steel, was so much affected that he filled my pockets with spare flints into the bargain. the only public buildings that had any interest for us were the hotel and the cafe. but we visited the church. there lies marshal clarke. but as neither of us had ever heard of that military hero, we bore the associations of the spot with fortitude. in all garrison towns, guard-calls, and reveilles, and such like, make a fine romantic interlude in civic business. bugles, and drums, and fifes, are of themselves most excellent things in nature; and when they carry the mind to marching armies, and the picturesque vicissitudes of war, they stir up something proud in the heart. but in a shadow of a town like landrecies, with little else moving, these points of war made a proportionate commotion. indeed, they were the only things to remember. it was just the place to hear the round going by at night in the darkness, with the solid tramp of men marching, and the startling reverberations of the drum. it reminded you, that even this place was a point in the great warfaring system of europe, and might on some future day be ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name among strong towns. the drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable physiological effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical shape, stands alone among the instruments of noise. and if it be true, as i have heard it said, that drums are covered with asses' skin, what a picturesque irony is there in that! as if this longsuffering animal's hide had not been sufficiently belaboured during life, now by lyonnese costermongers, now by presumptuous hebrew prophets, it must be stripped from his poor hinder quarters after death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night after night round the streets of every garrison town in europe. and up the heights of alma and spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also must the drummer-boy, hurrying with white face over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable donkeys. generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at this trick of bastinadoing asses' hide. we know what effect it has in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating. but in this state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when the hollow skin reverberates to the drummer's wrist, and each duba-dub goes direct to a man's heart, and puts madness there, and that disposition of the pulses which we, in our big way of talking, nickname heroism:is there not something in the nature of a revenge upon the donkey's persecutors? of old, he might say, you drubbed me up hill and down dale, and i must endure; but now that i am dead, those dull thwacks that were scarcely audible in country lanes, have become stirring music in front of the brigade; and for every blow that you lay on my old greatcoat, you will see a comrade stumble and fall. not long after the drums had passed the cafe, the cigarette and the arethusa began to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel, which was only a door or two away. but although we had been somewhat indifferent to landrecies, landrecies had not been indifferent to us. all day, we learned, people had been running out between the squalls to visit our two boats. hundreds of persons, so said report, although it fitted ill with our idea of the town hundreds of persons had inspected them where they lay in a coal-shed. we were becoming lions in landrecies, who had been only pedlars the night before in pont. and now, when we left the cafe, we were pursued and overtaken at the hotel door by no less a person than the juge de paix: a functionary, as far as i can make out, of the character of a scots sheriff-substitute. he gave us his card and invited us to sup with him on the spot, very neatly, very gracefully, as frenchmen can do these things. it was for the credit of landrecies, said he; and although we knew very well how little credit we could do the place, we must have been churlish fellows to refuse an invitation so politely introduced. the house of the judge was close by; it was a well-appointed bachelor's establishment, with a curious collection of old brass warming-pans upon the walls. some of these were most elaborately carved. it seemed a picturesque idea for a collector. you could not help thinking how many night-caps had wagged over these warming-pans in past generations; what jests may have been made, and kisses taken, while they were in service; and how often they had been uselessly paraded in the bed of death. if they could only speak, at what absurd, indecorous, and tragical scenes had they not been present! the wine was excellent. when we made the judge our compliments upon a bottle, 'i do not give it you as my worst,' said he. i wonder when englishmen will learn these hospitable graces. they are worth learning; they set off life, and make ordinary moments ornamental. there were two other landrecienses present. one was the collector of something or other, i forget what; the other, we were told, was the principal notary of the place. so it happened that we all five more or less followed the law. at this rate, the talk was pretty certain to become technical. the cigarette expounded the poor laws very magisterially. and a little later i found myself laying down the scots law of illegitimacy, of which i am glad to say i know nothing. the collector and the notary, who were both married men, accused the judge, who was a bachelor, of having started the subject. he deprecated the charge, with a conscious, pleased air, just like all the men i have ever seen, be they french or english. how strange that we should all, in our unguarded moments, rather like to be thought a bit of a rogue with the women! as the evening went on, the wine grew more to my taste; the spirits proved better than the wine; the company was genial. this was the highest water mark of popular favour on the whole cruise. after all, being in a judge's house, was there not something semiofficial in the tribute? and so, remembering what a great country france is, we did full justice to our entertainment. landrecies had been a long while asleep before we returned to the hotel; and the sentries on the ramparts were already looking for daybreak. sambre and oise canal canal boats next day we made a late start in the rain. the judge politely escorted us to the end of the lock under an umbrella. we had now brought ourselves to a pitch of humility in the matter of weather, not often attained except in the scottish highlands. a rag of blue sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the rain was not heavy, we counted the day almost fair. long lines of barges lay one after another along the canal; many of them looking mighty spruce and shipshape in their jerkin of archangel tar picked out with white and green. some carried gay iron railings, and quite a parterre of flower-pots. children played on the decks, as heedless of the rain as if they had been brought up on loch carron side; men fished over the gunwale, some of them under umbrellas; women did their washing; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way of watch-dog. each one barked furiously at the canoes, running alongside until he had got to the end of his own ship, and so passing on the word to the dog aboard the next. we must have seen something like a hundred of these embarkations in the course of that day's paddle, ranged one after another like the houses in a street; and from not one of them were we disappointed of this accompaniment. it was like visiting a menagerie, the cigarette remarked. these little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect upon the mind. they seemed, with their flower-pots and smoking chimneys, their washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature in the scene; and yet if only the canal below were to open, one junk after another would hoist sail or harness horses and swim away into all parts of france; and the impromptu hamlet would separate, house by house, to the four winds. the children who played together today by the sambre and oise canal, each at his own father's threshold, when and where might they next meet? for some time past the subject of barges had occupied a great deal of our talk, and we had projected an old age on the canals of europe. it was to be the most leisurely of progresses, now on a swift river at the tail of a steam-boat, now waiting horses for days together on some inconsiderable junction. we should be seen pottering on deck in all the dignity of years, our white beards falling into our laps. we were ever to be busied among paint-pots; so that there should be no white fresher, and no green more emerald than ours, in all the navy of the canals. there should be books in the cabin, and tobacco-jars, and some old burgundy as red as a november sunset and as odorous as a violet in april. there should be a flageolet, whence the cigarette, with cunning touch, should draw melting music under the stars; or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his voice somewhat thinner than of yore, and with here and there a quaver, or call it a natural grace-note in rich and solemn psalmody. all this, simmering in my mind, set me wishing to go aboard one of these ideal houses of lounging. i had plenty to choose from, as i coasted one after another, and the dogs bayed at me for a vagrant. at last i saw a nice old man and his wife looking at me with some interest, so i gave them good-day and pulled up alongside. i began with a remark upon their dog, which had somewhat the look of a pointer; thence i slid into a compliment on madame's flowers, and thence into a word in praise of their way of life. if you ventured on such an experiment in england you would get a slap in the face at once. the life would be shown to be a vile one, not without a side shot at your better fortune. now, what i like so much in france is the clear unflinching recognition by everybody of his own luck. they all know on which side their bread is buttered, and take a pleasure in showing it to others, which is surely the better part of religion. and they scorn to make a poor mouth over their poverty, which i take to be the better part of manliness. i have heard a woman in quite a better position at home, with a good bit of money in hand, refer to her own child with a horrid whine as 'a poor man's child.' i would not say such a thing to the duke of westminster. and the french are full of this spirit of independence. perhaps it is the result of republican institutions, as they call them. much more likely it is because there are so few people really poor, that the whiners are not enough to keep each other in countenance. the people on the barge were delighted to hear that i admired their state. they understood perfectly well, they told me, how monsieur envied them. without doubt monsieur was rich; and in that case he might make a canal boat as pretty as a villa joli comme un chateau. and with that they invited me on board their own water villa. they apologised for their cabin; they had not been rich enough to make it as it ought to be. 'the fire should have been here, at this side.' explained the husband. 'then one might have a writing-table in the middle books and' (comprehensively) 'all. it would be quite coquettish ca serait tout-a-fait coquet.' and he looked about him as though the improvements were already made. it was plainly not the first time that he had thus beautified his cabin in imagination; and when next he makes a bit, i should expect to see the writing-table in the middle. madame had three birds in a cage. they were no great thing, she explained. fine birds were so dear. they had sought to get a hollandais last winter in rouen (rouen? thought i; and is this whole mansion, with its dogs and birds and smoking chimneys, so far a traveller as that? and as homely an object among the cliffs and orchards of the seine as on the green plains of sambre?) they had sought to get a hollandais last winter in rouen; but these cost fifteen francs apiece picture it fifteen francs! 'pour un tout petit oiseau for quite a little bird,' added the husband. as i continued to admire, the apologetics died away, and the good people began to brag of their barge, and their happy condition in life, as if they had been emperor and empress of the indies. it was, in the scots phrase, a good hearing, and put me in good humour with the world. if people knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear a man boasting, so long as he boasts of what he really has, i believe they would do it more freely and with a better grace. they began to ask about our voyage. you should have seen how they sympathised. they seemed half ready to give up their barge and follow us. but these canaletti are only gypsies semi-domesticated. the semi-domestication came out in rather a pretty form. suddenly madam's brow darkened. 'cependant,' she began, and then stopped; and then began again by asking me if i were single? 'yes,' said i. 'and your friend who went by just now?' he also was unmarried. o then all was well. she could not have wives left alone at home; but since there were no wives in the question, we were doing the best we could. 'to see about one in the world,' said the husband, 'il n'y a que ca there is nothing else worth while. a man, look you, who sticks in his own village like a bear,' he went on, ' very well, he sees nothing. and then death is the end of all. and he has seen nothing.' madame reminded her husband of an englishman who had come up this canal in a steamer. 'perhaps mr. moens in the ytene,' i suggested. 'that's it,' assented the husband. 'he had his wife and family with him, and servants. he came ashore at all the locks and asked the name of the villages, whether from boatmen or lock-keepers; and then he wrote, wrote them down. oh, he wrote enormously! i suppose it was a wager.' a wager was a common enough explanation for our own exploits, but it seemed an original reason for taking notes. the oise in flood before nine next morning the two canoes were installed on a light country cart at etreux: and we were soon following them along the side of a pleasant valley full of hop-gardens and poplars. agreeable villages lay here and there on the slope of the hill; notably, tupigny, with the hop-poles hanging their garlands in the very street, and the houses clustered with grapes. there was a faint enthusiasm on our passage; weavers put their heads to the windows; children cried out in ecstasy at sight of the two 'boaties' barguettes: and bloused pedestrians, who were acquainted with our charioteer, jested with him on the nature of his freight. we had a shower or two, but light and flying. the air was clean and sweet among all these green fields and green things growing. there was not a touch of autumn in the weather. and when, at vadencourt, we launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, the sun broke forth and set all the leaves shining in the valley of the oise. the river was swollen with the long rains. from vadencourt all the way to origny, it ran with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh heart at each mile, and racing as though it already smelt the sea. the water was yellow and turbulent, swung with an angry eddy among half-submerged willows, and made an angry clatter along stony shores. the course kept turning and turning in a narrow and welltimbered valley. now the river would approach the side, and run griding along the chalky base of the hill, and show us a few open colza-fields among the trees. now it would skirt the garden-walls of houses, where we might catch a glimpse through a doorway, and see a priest pacing in the chequered sunlight. again, the foliage closed so thickly in front, that there seemed to be no issue; only a thicket of willows, overtopped by elms and poplars, under which the river ran flush and fleet, and where a kingfisher flew past like a piece of the blue sky. on these different manifestations the sun poured its clear and catholic looks. the shadows lay as solid on the swift surface of the stream as on the stable meadows. the light sparkled golden in the dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills into communion with our eyes. and all the while the river never stopped running or took breath; and the reeds along the whole valley stood shivering from top to toe. there should be some myth (but if there is, i know it not) founded on the shivering of the reeds. there are not many things in nature more striking to man's eye. it is such an eloquent pantomime of terror; and to see such a number of terrified creatures taking sanctuary in every nook along the shore, is enough to infect a silly human with alarm. perhaps they are only a-cold, and no wonder, standing waist-deep in the stream. or perhaps they have never got accustomed to the speed and fury of the river's flux, or the miracle of its continuous body. pan once played upon their forefathers; and so, by the hands of his river, he still plays upon these later generations down all the valley of the oise; and plays the same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell us of the beauty and the terror of the world. the canoe was like a leaf in the current. it took it up and shook it, and carried it masterfully away, like a centaur carrying off a nymph. to keep some command on our direction required hard and diligent plying of the paddle. the river was in such a hurry for the sea! every drop of water ran in a panic, like as many people in a frightened crowd. but what crowd was ever so numerous, or so single-minded? all the objects of sight went by at a dance measure; the eyesight raced with the racing river; the exigencies of every moment kept the pegs screwed so tight, that our being quivered like a well-tuned instrument; and the blood shook off its lethargy, and trotted through all the highways and byways of the veins and arteries, and in and out of the heart, as if circulation were but a holiday journey, and not the daily moil of three-score years and ten. the reeds might nod their heads in warning, and with tremulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was strong and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy underneath the willows. but the reeds had to stand where they were; and those who stand still are always timid advisers. as for us, we could have shouted aloud. if this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of death's contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with us. i was living three to the minute. i was scoring points against him every stroke of my paddle, every turn of the stream. i have rarely had better profit of my life. for i think we may look upon our little private war with death somewhat in this light. if a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves. and above all, where instead of simply spending, he makes a profitable investment for some of his money, when it will be out of risk of loss. so every bit of brisk living, and above all when it is healthful, is just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher, death. we shall have the less in our pockets, the more in our stomach, when he cries stand and deliver. a swift stream is a favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a comfortable thing per annum; but when he and i come to settle our accounts, i shall whistle in his face for these hours upon the upper oise. towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sunshine and the exhilaration of the pace. we could no longer contain ourselves and our content. the canoes were too small for us; we must be out and stretch ourselves on shore. and so in a green meadow we bestowed our limbs on the grass, and smoked deifying tobacco and proclaimed the world excellent. it was the last good hour of the day, and i dwell upon it with extreme complacency. on one side of the valley, high up on the chalky summit of the hill, a ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared at regular intervals. at each revelation he stood still for a few seconds against the sky: for all the world (as the cigarette declared) like a toy burns who should have just ploughed up the mountain daisy. he was the only living thing within view, unless we are to count the river. on the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry showed among the foliage. thence some inspired bell-ringer made the afternoon musical on a chime of bells. there was something very sweet and taking in the air he played; and we thought we had never heard bells speak so intelligibly, or sing so melodiously, as these. it must have been to some such measure that the spinners and the young maids sang, 'come away, death,' in the shakespearian illyria. there is so often a threatening note, something blatant and metallic, in the voice of bells, that i believe we have fully more pain than pleasure from hearing them; but these, as they sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a plaintive cadence that caught the ear like the burthen of a popular song, were always moderate and tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or the babble of a rookery in spring. i could have asked the bell-ringer for his blessing, good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently to the time of his meditations. i could have blessed the priest or the heritors, or whoever may be concerned with such affairs in france, who had left these sweet old bells to gladden the afternoon, and not held meetings, and made collections, and had their names repeatedly printed in the local paper, to rig up a peal of brandnew, brazen, birmingham-hearted substitutes, who should bombard their sides to the provocation of a brand-new bell-ringer, and fill the echoes of the valley with terror and riot. at last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun withdrew. the piece was at an end; shadow and silence possessed the valley of the oise. we took to the paddle with glad hearts, like people who have sat out a noble performance and returned to work. the river was more dangerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more sudden and violent. all the way down we had had our fill of difficulties. sometimes it was a weir which could be shot, sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes that we must withdraw the boats from the water and carry them round. but the chief sort of obstacle was a consequence of the late high winds. every two or three hundred yards a tree had fallen across the river, and usually involved more than another in its fall. often there was free water at the end, and we could steer round the leafy promontory and hear the water sucking and bubbling among the twigs. often, again, when the tree reached from bank to bank, there was room, by lying close, to shoot through underneath, canoe and all. sometimes it was necessary to get out upon the trunk itself and pull the boats across; and sometimes, when the stream was too impetuous for this, there was nothing for it but to land and 'carry over.' this made a fine series of accidents in the day's career, and kept us aware of ourselves. shortly after our re-embarkation, while i was leading by a long way, and still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honour of the sun, the swift pace, and the church bells, the river made one of its leonine pounces round a corner, and i was aware of another fallen tree within a stone-cast. i had my backboard down in a trice, and aimed for a place where the trunk seemed high enough above the water, and the branches not too thick to let me slip below. when a man has just vowed eternal brotherhood with the universe, he is not in a temper to take great determinations coolly, and this, which might have been a very important determination for me, had not been taken under a happy star. the tree caught me about the chest, and while i was yet struggling to make less of myself and get through, the river took the matter out of my hands, and bereaved me of my boat. the arethusa swung round broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me as still remained on board, and thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted, and went merrily away down stream. i do not know how long it was before i scrambled on to the tree to which i was left clinging, but it was longer than i cared about. my thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre character, but i still clung to my paddle. the stream ran away with my heels as fast as i could pull up my shoulders, and i seemed, by the weight, to have all the water of the oise in my trousers-pockets. you can never know, till you try it, what a dead pull a river makes against a man. death himself had me by the heels, for this was his last ambuscado, and he must now join personally in the fray. and still i held to my paddle. at last i dragged myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humour and injustice. a poor figure i must have presented to burns upon the hill-top with his team. but there was the paddle in my hand. on my tomb, if ever i have one, i mean to get these words inscribed: 'he clung to his paddle.' the cigarette had gone past a while before; for, as i might have observed, if i had been a little less pleased with the universe at the moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther side. he had offered his services to haul me out, but as i was then already on my elbows, i had declined, and sent him down stream after the truant arethusa. the stream was too rapid for a man to mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands. so i crawled along the trunk to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the river-side. i was so cold that my heart was sore. i had now an idea of my own why the reeds so bitterly shivered. i could have given any of them a lesson. the cigarette remarked facetiously that he thought i was 'taking exercise' as i drew near, until he made out for certain that i was only twittering with cold. i had a rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the india-rubber bag. but i was not my own man again for the rest of the voyage. i had a queasy sense that i wore my last dry clothes upon my body. the struggle had tired me; and perhaps, whether i knew it or not, i was a little dashed in spirit. the devouring element in the universe had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a running stream. the bells were all very pretty in their way, but i had heard some of the hollow notes of pan's music. would the wicked river drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time? nature's good-humour was only skin-deep after all. there was still a long way to go by the winding course of the stream, and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in origny sainte-benoite, when we arrived. origny sainte-benoite a by-day the next day was sunday, and the church bells had little rest; indeed, i do not think i remember anywhere else so great a choice of services as were here offered to the devout. and while the bells made merry in the sunshine, all the world with his dog was out shooting among the beets and colza. in the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street at a foot-pace, singing to a very slow, lamentable music 'o france, mes amours.' it brought everybody to the door; and when our landlady called in the man to buy the words, he had not a copy of them left. she was not the first nor the second who had been taken with the song. there is something very pathetic in the love of the french people, since the war, for dismal patriotic music-making. i have watched a forester from alsace while some one was singing 'les malheurs de la france,' at a baptismal party in the neighbourhood of fontainebleau. he arose from the table and took his son aside, close by where i was standing. 'listen, listen,' he said, bearing on the boy's shoulder, 'and remember this, my son.' a little after he went out into the garden suddenly, and i could hear him sobbing in the darkness. the humiliation of their arms and the loss of alsace and lorraine made a sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people; and their hearts are still hot, not so much against germany as against the empire. in what other country will you find a patriotic ditty bring all the world into the street? but affliction heightens love; and we shall never know we are englishmen until we have lost india. independent america is still the cross of my existence; i cannot think of farmer george without abhorrence; and i never feel more warmly to my own land than when i see the stars and stripes, and remember what our empire might have been. the hawker's little book, which i purchased, was a curious mixture. side by side with the flippant, rowdy nonsense of the paris musichalls, there were many pastoral pieces, not without a touch of poetry, i thought, and instinct with the brave independence of the poorer class in france. there you might read how the wood-cutter gloried in his axe, and the gardener scorned to be ashamed of his spade. it was not very well written, this poetry of labour, but the pluck of the sentiment redeemed what was weak or wordy in the expression. the martial and the patriotic pieces, on the other hand, were tearful, womanish productions one and all. the poet had passed under the caudine forks; he sang for an army visiting the tomb of its old renown, with arms reversed; and sang not of victory, but of death. there was a number in the hawker's collection called 'conscrits francais,' which may rank among the most dissuasive war-lyrics on record. it would not be possible to fight at all in such a spirit. the bravest conscript would turn pale if such a ditty were struck up beside him on the morning of battle; and whole regiments would pile their arms to its tune. if fletcher of saltoun is in the right about the influence of national songs, you would say france was come to a poor pass. but the thing will work its own cure, and a sound-hearted and courageous people weary at length of snivelling over their disasters. already paul deroulede has written some manly military verses. there is not much of the trumpet note in them, perhaps, to stir a man's heart in his bosom; they lack the lyrical elation, and move slowly; but they are written in a grave, honourable, stoical spirit, which should carry soldiers far in a good cause. one feels as if one would like to trust deroulede with something. it will be happy if he can so far inoculate his fellow-countrymen that they may be trusted with their own future. and in the meantime, here is an antidote to 'french conscripts' and much other doleful versification. we had left the boats over-night in the custody of one whom we shall call carnival. i did not properly catch his name, and perhaps that was not unfortunate for him, as i am not in a position to hand him down with honour to posterity. to this person's premises we strolled in the course of the day, and found quite a little deputation inspecting the canoes. there was a stout gentleman with a knowledge of the river, which he seemed eager to impart. there was a very elegant young gentleman in a black coat, with a smattering of english, who led the talk at once to the oxford and cambridge boat race. and then there were three handsome girls from fifteen to twenty; and an old gentleman in a blouse, with no teeth to speak of, and a strong country accent. quite the pick of origny, i should suppose. the cigarette had some mysteries to perform with his rigging in the coach-house; so i was left to do the parade single-handed. i found myself very much of a hero whether i would or not. the girls were full of little shudderings over the dangers of our journey. and i thought it would be ungallant not to take my cue from the ladies. my mishap of yesterday, told in an off-hand way, produced a deep sensation. it was othello over again, with no less than three desdemonas and a sprinkling of sympathetic senators in the background. never were the canoes more flattered, or flattered more adroitly. 'it is like a violin,' cried one of the girls in an ecstasy. 'i thank you for the word, mademoiselle,' said i. 'all the more since there are people who call out to me that it is like a coffin.' 'oh! but it is really like a violin. it is finished like a violin,' she went on. 'and polished like a violin,' added a senator. 'one has only to stretch the cords,' concluded another, 'and then tum-tumty-tum' he imitated the result with spirit. was not this a graceful little ovation? where this people finds the secret of its pretty speeches, i cannot imagine; unless the secret should be no other than a sincere desire to please? but then no disgrace is attached in france to saying a thing neatly; whereas in england, to talk like a book is to give in one's resignation to society. the old gentleman in the blouse stole into the coach-house, and somewhat irrelevantly informed the cigarette that he was the father of the three girls and four more: quite an exploit for a frenchman. 'you are very fortunate,' answered the cigarette politely. and the old gentleman, having apparently gained his point, stole away again. we all got very friendly together. the girls proposed to start with us on the morrow, if you please! and, jesting apart, every one was anxious to know the hour of our departure. now, when you are going to crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, a crowd, however friendly, is undesirable; and so we told them not before twelve, and mentally determined to be off by ten at latest. towards evening, we went abroad again to post some letters. it was cool and pleasant; the long village was quite empty, except for one or two urchins who followed us as they might have followed a menagerie; the hills and the tree-tops looked in from all sides through the clear air; and the bells were chiming for yet another service. suddenly we sighted the three girls standing, with a fourth sister, in front of a shop on the wide selvage of the roadway. we had been very merry with them a little while ago, to be sure. but what was the etiquette of origny? had it been a country road, of course we should have spoken to them; but here, under the eyes of all the gossips, ought we to do even as much as bow? i consulted the cigarette. 'look,' said he. i looked. there were the four girls on the same spot; but now four backs were turned to us, very upright and conscious. corporal modesty had given the word of command, and the well-disciplined picket had gone right-about-face like a single person. they maintained this formation all the while we were in sight; but we heard them tittering among themselves, and the girl whom we had not met laughed with open mouth, and even looked over her shoulder at the enemy. i wonder was it altogether modesty after all? or in part a sort of country provocation? as we were returning to the inn, we beheld something floating in the ample field of golden evening sky, above the chalk cliffs and the trees that grow along their summit. it was too high up, too large, and too steady for a kite; and as it was dark, it could not be a star. for although a star were as black as ink and as rugged as a walnut, so amply does the sun bathe heaven with radiance, that it would sparkle like a point of light for us. the village was dotted with people with their heads in air; and the children were in a bustle all along the street and far up the straight road that climbs the hill, where we could still see them running in loose knots. it was a balloon, we learned, which had left saint quentin at half-past five that evening. mighty composedly the majority of the grown people took it. but we were english, and were soon running up the hill with the best. being travellers ourselves in a small way, we would fain have seen these other travellers alight. the spectacle was over by the time we gained the top of the hill. all the gold had withered out of the sky, and the balloon had disappeared. whither? i ask myself; caught up into the seventh heaven? or come safely to land somewhere in that blue uneven distance, into which the roadway dipped and melted before our eyes? probably the aeronauts were already warming themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it is cold in these unhomely regions of the air. the night fell swiftly. roadside trees and disappointed sightseers, returning through the meadows, stood out in black against a margin of low red sunset. it was cheerfuller to face the other way, and so down the hill we went, with a full moon, the colour of a melon, swinging high above the wooded valley, and the white cliffs behind us faintly reddened by the fire of the chalk kilns. the lamps were lighted, and the salads were being made in origny sainte-benoite by the river. origny sainte-benoite the company at table although we came late for dinner, the company at table treated us to sparkling wine. 'that is how we are in france,' said one. 'those who sit down with us are our friends.' and the rest applauded. they were three altogether, and an odd trio to pass the sunday with. two of them were guests like ourselves, both men of the north. one ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with copious black hair and beard, the intrepid hunter of france, who thought nothing so small, not even a lark or a minnow, but he might vindicate his prowess by its capture. for such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like samson's, his arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, produced a feeling of disproportion in the world, as when a steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts. the other was a quiet, subdued person, blond and lymphatic and sad, with something the look of a dane: 'tristes tetes de danois!' as gaston lafenestre used to say. i must not let that name go by without a word for the best of all good fellows now gone down into the dust. we shall never again see gaston in his forest costume he was gaston with all the world, in affection, not in disrespect nor hear him wake the echoes of fontainebleau with the woodland horn. never again shall his kind smile put peace among all races of artistic men, and make the englishman at home in france. never more shall the sheep, who were not more innocent at heart than he, sit all unconsciously for his industrious pencil. he died too early, at the very moment when he was beginning to put forth fresh sprouts, and blossom into something worthy of himself; and yet none who knew him will think he lived in vain. i never knew a man so little, for whom yet i had so much affection; and i find it a good test of others, how much they had learned to understand and value him. his was indeed a good influence in life while he was still among us; he had a fresh laugh, it did you good to see him; and however sad he may have been at heart, he always bore a bold and cheerful countenance, and took fortune's worst as it were the showers of spring. but now his mother sits alone by the side of fontainebleau woods, where he gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth. many of his pictures found their way across the channel: besides those which were stolen, when a dastardly yankee left him alone in london with two english pence, and perhaps twice as many words of english. if any one who reads these lines should have a scene of sheep, in the manner of jacques, with this fine creature's signature, let him tell himself that one of the kindest and bravest of men has lent a hand to decorate his lodging. there may be better pictures in the national gallery; but not a painter among the generations had a better heart. precious in the sight of the lord of humanity, the psalms tell us, is the death of his saints. it had need to be precious; for it is very costly, when by the stroke, a mother is left desolate, and the peace-maker, and peacelooker, of a whole society is laid in the ground with caesar and the twelve apostles. there is something lacking among the oaks of fontainebleau; and when the dessert comes in at barbizon, people look to the door for a figure that is gone. the third of our companions at origny was no less a person than the landlady's husband: not properly the landlord, since he worked himself in a factory during the day, and came to his own house at evening as a guest: a man worn to skin and bone by perpetual excitement, with baldish head, sharp features, and swift, shining eyes. on saturday, describing some paltry adventure at a duckhunt, he broke a plate into a score of fragments. whenever he made a remark, he would look all round the table with his chin raised, and a spark of green light in either eye, seeking approval. his wife appeared now and again in the doorway of the room, where she was superintending dinner, with a 'henri, you forget yourself,' or a 'henri, you can surely talk without making such a noise.' indeed, that was what the honest fellow could not do. on the most trifling matter his eyes kindled, his fist visited the table, and his voice rolled abroad in changeful thunder. i never saw such a petard of a man; i think the devil was in him. he had two favourite expressions: 'it is logical,' or illogical, as the case might be: and this other, thrown out with a certain bravado, as a man might unfurl a banner, at the beginning of many a long and sonorous story: 'i am a proletarian, you see.' indeed, we saw it very well. god forbid that ever i should find him handling a gun in paris streets! that will not be a good moment for the general public. i thought his two phrases very much represented the good and evil of his class, and to some extent of his country. it is a strong thing to say what one is, and not be ashamed of it; even although it be in doubtful taste to repeat the statement too often in one evening. i should not admire it in a duke, of course; but as times go, the trait is honourable in a workman. on the other hand, it is not at all a strong thing to put one's reliance upon logic; and our own logic particularly, for it is generally wrong. we never know where we are to end, if once we begin following words or doctors. there is an upright stock in a man's own heart, that is trustier than any syllogism; and the eyes, and the sympathies and appetites, know a thing or two that have never yet been stated in controversy. reasons are as plentiful as blackberries; and, like fisticuffs, they serve impartially with all sides. doctrines do not stand or fall by their proofs, and are only logical in so far as they are cleverly put. an able controversialist no more than an able general demonstrates the justice of his cause. but france is all gone wandering after one or two big words; it will take some time before they can be satisfied that they are no more than words, however big; and when once that is done, they will perhaps find logic less diverting. the conversation opened with details of the day's shooting. when all the sportsmen of a village shoot over the village territory pro indiviso, it is plain that many questions of etiquette and priority must arise. 'here now,' cried the landlord, brandishing a plate, 'here is a field of beet-root. well. here am i then. i advance, do i not? eh bien! sacristi,' and the statement, waxing louder, rolls off into a reverberation of oaths, the speaker glaring about for sympathy, and everybody nodding his head to him in the name of peace. the ruddy northman told some tales of his own prowess in keeping order: notably one of a marquis. 'marquis,' i said, 'if you take another step i fire upon you. you have committed a dirtiness, marquis.' whereupon, it appeared, the marquis touched his cap and withdrew. the landlord applauded noisily. 'it was well done,' he said. 'he did all that he could. he admitted he was wrong.' and then oath upon oath. he was no marquis-lover either, but he had a sense of justice in him, this proletarian host of ours. from the matter of hunting, the talk veered into a general comparison of paris and the country. the proletarian beat the table like a drum in praise of paris. 'what is paris? paris is the cream of france. there are no parisians: it is you and i and everybody who are parisians. a man has eighty chances per cent. to get on in the world in paris.' and he drew a vivid sketch of the workman in a den no bigger than a dog-hutch, making articles that were to go all over the world. 'eh bien, quoi, c'est magnifique, ca!' cried he. the sad northman interfered in praise of a peasant's life; he thought paris bad for men and women; 'centralisation,' said he but the landlord was at his throat in a moment. it was all logical, he showed him; and all magnificent. 'what a spectacle! what a glance for an eye!' and the dishes reeled upon the table under a cannonade of blows. seeking to make peace, i threw in a word in praise of the liberty of opinion in france. i could hardly have shot more amiss. there was an instant silence, and a great wagging of significant heads. they did not fancy the subject, it was plain; but they gave me to understand that the sad northman was a martyr on account of his views. 'ask him a bit,' said they. 'just ask him.' 'yes, sir,' said he in his quiet way, answering me, although i had not spoken, 'i am afraid there is less liberty of opinion in france than you may imagine.' and with that he dropped his eyes, and seemed to consider the subject at an end. our curiosity was mightily excited at this. how, or why, or when, was this lymphatic bagman martyred? we concluded at once it was on some religious question, and brushed up our memories of the inquisition, which were principally drawn from poe's horrid story, and the sermon in tristram shandy, i believe. on the morrow we had an opportunity of going further into the question; for when we rose very early to avoid a sympathising deputation at our departure, we found the hero up before us. he was breaking his fast on white wine and raw onions, in order to keep up the character of martyr, i conclude. we had a long conversation, and made out what we wanted in spite of his reserve. but here was a truly curious circumstance. it seems possible for two scotsmen and a frenchman to discuss during a long half-hour, and each nationality have a different idea in view throughout. it was not till the very end that we discovered his heresy had been political, or that he suspected our mistake. the terms and spirit in which he spoke of his political beliefs were, in our eyes, suited to religious beliefs. and vice versa. nothing could be more characteristic of the two countries. politics are the religion of france; as nanty ewart would have said, 'a d-d bad religion'; while we, at home, keep most of our bitterness for little differences about a hymn-book, or a hebrew word which perhaps neither of the parties can translate. and perhaps the misconception is typical of many others that may never be cleared up: not only between people of different race, but between those of different sex. as for our friend's martyrdom, he was a communist, or perhaps only a communard, which is a very different thing; and had lost one or more situations in consequence. i think he had also been rejected in marriage; but perhaps he had a sentimental way of considering business which deceived me. he was a mild, gentle creature, anyway; and i hope he has got a better situation, and married a more suitable wife since then. down the oise to moy carnival notoriously cheated us at first. finding us easy in our ways, he regretted having let us off so cheaply; and taking me aside, told me a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five francs for the narrator. the thing was palpably absurd; but i paid up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his place as an inferior with freezing british dignity. he saw in a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; i am sure he would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext. he wished me to drink with him, but i would none of his drinks. he grew pathetically tender in his professions; but i walked beside him in silence or answered him in stately courtesies; and when we got to the landing-place, passed the word in english slang to the cigarette. in spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day before, there must have been fifty people about the bridge. we were as pleasant as we could be with all but carnival. we said good-bye, shaking hands with the old gentleman who knew the river and the young gentleman who had a smattering of english; but never a word for carnival. poor carnival! here was a humiliation. he who had been so much identified with the canoes, who had given orders in our name, who had shown off the boats and even the boatmen like a private exhibition of his own, to be now so publicly shamed by the lions of his caravan! i never saw anybody look more crestfallen than he. he hung in the background, coming timidly forward ever and again as he thought he saw some symptom of a relenting humour, and falling hurriedly back when he encountered a cold stare. let us hope it will be a lesson to him. i would not have mentioned carnival's peccadillo had not the thing been so uncommon in france. this, for instance, was the only case of dishonesty or even sharp practice in our whole voyage. we talk very much about our honesty in england. it is a good rule to be on your guard wherever you hear great professions about a very little piece of virtue. if the english could only hear how they are spoken of abroad, they might confine themselves for a while to remedying the fact; and perhaps even when that was done, give us fewer of their airs. the young ladies, the graces of origny, were not present at our start, but when we got round to the second bridge, behold, it was black with sight-seers! we were loudly cheered, and for a good way below, young lads and lasses ran along the bank still cheering. what with current and paddling, we were flashing along like swallows. it was no joke to keep up with us upon the woody shore. but the girls picked up their skirts, as if they were sure they had good ankles, and followed until their breath was out. the last to weary were the three graces and a couple of companions; and just as they too had had enough, the foremost of the three leaped upon a tree-stump and kissed her hand to the canoeists. not diana herself, although this was more of a venus after all, could have done a graceful thing more gracefully. 'come back again!' she cried; and all the others echoed her; and the hills about origny repeated the words, 'come back.' but the river had us round an angle in a twinkling, and we were alone with the green trees and running water. come back? there is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuous stream of life. 'the merchant bows unto the seaman's star, the ploughman from the sun his season takes.' and we must all set our pocket-watches by the clock of fate. there is a headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with his fancies like a straw, and runs fast in time and space. it is full of curves like this, your winding river of the oise; and lingers and returns in pleasant pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at all. for though it should revisit the same acre of meadow in the same hour, it will have made an ample sweep between-whiles; many little streams will have fallen in; many exhalations risen towards the sun; and even although it were the same acre, it will no more be the same river of oise. and thus, o graces of origny, although the wandering fortune of my life should carry me back again to where you await death's whistle by the river, that will not be the old i who walks the street; and those wives and mothers, say, will those be you? there was never any mistake about the oise, as a matter of fact. in these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry for the sea. it ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings of its channel, that i strained my thumb, fighting with the rapids, and had to paddle all the rest of the way with one hand turned up. sometimes it had to serve mills; and being still a little river, ran very dry and shallow in the meanwhile. we had to put our legs out of the boat, and shove ourselves off the sand of the bottom with our feet. and still it went on its way singing among the poplars, and making a green valley in the world. after a good woman, and a good book, and tobacco, there is nothing so agreeable on earth as a river. i forgave it its attempt on my life; which was after all one part owing to the unruly winds of heaven that had blown down the tree, one part to my own mismanagement, and only a third part to the river itself, and that not out of malice, but from its great preoccupation over its business of getting to the sea. a difficult business, too; for the detours it had to make are not to be counted. the geographers seem to have given up the attempt; for i found no map represent the infinite contortion of its course. a fact will say more than any of them. after we had been some hours, three if i mistake not, flitting by the trees at this smooth, break-neck gallop, when we came upon a hamlet and asked where we were, we had got no farther than four kilometres (say two miles and a half) from origny. if it were not for the honour of the thing (in the scots saying), we might almost as well have been standing still. we lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of poplars. the leaves danced and prattled in the wind all round about us. the river hurried on meanwhile, and seemed to chide at our delay. little we cared. the river knew where it was going; not so we: the less our hurry, where we found good quarters and a pleasant theatre for a pipe. at that hour, stockbrokers were shouting in paris bourse for two or three per cent.; but we minded them as little as the sliding stream, and sacrificed a hecatomb of minutes to the gods of tobacco and digestion. hurry is the resource of the faithless. where a man can trust his own heart, and those of his friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day. and if he die in the meanwhile, why then, there he dies, and the question is solved. we had to take to the canal in the course of the afternoon; because, where it crossed the river, there was, not a bridge, but a siphon. if it had not been for an excited fellow on the bank, we should have paddled right into the siphon, and thenceforward not paddled any more. we met a man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, who was much interested in our cruise. and i was witness to a strange seizure of lying suffered by the cigarette: who, because his knife came from norway, narrated all sorts of adventures in that country, where he has never been. he was quite feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal possession. moy (pronounce moy) was a pleasant little village, gathered round a chateau in a moat. the air was perfumed with hemp from neighbouring fields. at the golden sheep we found excellent entertainment. german shells from the siege of la fere, nurnberg figures, gold-fish in a bowl, and all manner of knick-knacks, embellished the public room. the landlady was a stout, plain, short-sighted, motherly body, with something not far short of a genius for cookery. she had a guess of her excellence herself. after every dish was sent in, she would come and look on at the dinner for a while, with puckered, blinking eyes. 'c'est bon, n'est-ce pas?' she would say; and when she had received a proper answer, she disappeared into the kitchen. that common french dish, partridge and cabbages, became a new thing in my eyes at the golden sheep; and many subsequent dinners have bitterly disappointed me in consequence. sweet was our rest in the golden sheep at moy. la fere of cursed memory we lingered in moy a good part of the day, for we were fond of being philosophical, and scorned long journeys and early starts on principle. the place, moreover, invited to repose. people in elaborate shooting costumes sallied from the chateau with guns and game-bags; and this was a pleasure in itself, to remain behind while these elegant pleasure-seekers took the first of the morning. in this way, all the world may be an aristocrat, and play the duke among marquises, and the reigning monarch among dukes, if he will only outvie them in tranquillity. an imperturbable demeanour comes from perfect patience. quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm. we made a very short day of it to la fere; but the dusk was falling, and a small rain had begun before we stowed the boats. la fere is a fortified town in a plain, and has two belts of rampart. between the first and the second extends a region of waste land and cultivated patches. here and there along the wayside were posters forbidding trespass in the name of military engineering. at last, a second gateway admitted us to the town itself. lighted windows looked gladsome, whiffs of comfortable cookery came abroad upon the air. the town was full of the military reserve, out for the french autumn manoeuvres, and the reservists walked speedily and wore their formidable great-coats. it was a fine night to be within doors over dinner, and hear the rain upon the windows. the cigarette and i could not sufficiently congratulate each other on the prospect, for we had been told there was a capital inn at la fere. such a dinner as we were going to eat! such beds as we were to sleep in! and all the while the rain raining on houseless folk over all the poplared countryside! it made our mouths water. the inn bore the name of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, i forget which. but i shall never forget how spacious and how eminently habitable it looked as we drew near. the carriage entry was lighted up, not by intention, but from the mere superfluity of fire and candle in the house. a rattle of many dishes came to our ears; we sighted a great field of table-cloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden of things to eat. into this, the inmost shrine and physiological heart of a hostelry, with all its furnaces in action, and all its dressers charged with viands, you are now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag upon his arm. i do not believe i have a sound view of that kitchen; i saw it through a sort of glory: but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us with surprise. there was no doubt about the landlady, however: there she was, heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs. her i asked politely too politely, thinks the cigarette if we could have beds: she surveying us coldly from head to foot. 'you will find beds in the suburb,' she remarked. 'we are too busy for the like of you.' if we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a bottle of wine, i felt sure we could put things right; so said i: 'if we cannot sleep, we may at least dine,' and was for depositing my bag. what a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed in the landlady's face! she made a run at us, and stamped her foot. 'out with you out of the door!' she screeched. 'sortez! sortez! sortez par la porte!' i do not know how it happened, but next moment we were out in the rain and darkness, and i was cursing before the carriage entry like a disappointed mendicant. where were the boating men of belgium? where the judge and his good wines? and where the graces of origny? black, black was the night after the firelit kitchen; but what was that to the blackness in our heart? this was not the first time that i have been refused a lodging. often and often have i planned what i should do if such a misadventure happened to me again. and nothing is easier to plan. but to put in execution, with the heart boiling at the indignity? try it; try it only once; and tell me what you did. it is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. six hours of police surveillance (such as i have had), or one brutal rejection from an inn-door, change your views upon the subject like a course of lectures. as long as you keep in the upper regions, with all the world bowing to you as you go, social arrangements have a very handsome air; but once get under the wheels, and you wish society were at the devil. i will give most respectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then i will offer them twopence for what remains of their morality. for my part, when i was turned out of the stag, or the hind, or whatever it was, i would have set the temple of diana on fire, if it had been handy. there was no crime complete enough to express my disapproval of human institutions. as for the cigarette, i never knew a man so altered. 'we have been taken for pedlars again,' said he. 'good god, what it must be to be a pedlar in reality!' he particularised a complaint for every joint in the landlady's body. timon was a philanthropist alongside of him. and then, when he was at the top of his maledictory bent, he would suddenly break away and begin whimperingly to commiserate the poor. 'i hope to god,' he said, and i trust the prayer was answered, 'that i shall never be uncivil to a pedlar.' was this the imperturbable cigarette? this, this was he. o change beyond report, thought, or belief! meantime the heaven wept upon our heads; and the windows grew brighter as the night increased in darkness. we trudged in and out of la fere streets; we saw shops, and private houses where people were copiously dining; we saw stables where carters' nags had plenty of fodder and clean straw; we saw no end of reservists, who were very sorry for themselves this wet night, i doubt not, and yearned for their country homes; but had they not each man his place in la fere barracks? and we, what had we? there seemed to be no other inn in the whole town. people gave us directions, which we followed as best we could, generally with the effect of bringing us out again upon the scene of our disgrace. we were very sad people indeed by the time we had gone all over la fere; and the cigarette had already made up his mind to lie under a poplar and sup off a loaf of bread. but right at the other end, the house next the town-gate was full of light and bustle. 'bazin, aubergiste, loge a pied,' was the sign. 'a la croix de malte.' there were we received. the room was full of noisy reservists drinking and smoking; and we were very glad indeed when the drums and bugles began to go about the streets, and one and all had to snatch shakoes and be off for the barracks. bazin was a tall man, running to fat: soft-spoken, with a delicate, gentle face. we asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself, having pledged reservists all day long. this was a very different type of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling disputatious fellow at origny. he also loved paris, where he had worked as a decorative painter in his youth. there were such opportunities for self-instruction there, he said. and if any one has read zola's description of the workman's marriage-party visiting the louvre, they would do well to have heard bazin by way of antidote. he had delighted in the museums in his youth. 'one sees there little miracles of work,' he said; 'that is what makes a good workman; it kindles a spark.' we asked him how he managed in la fere. 'i am married,' he said, 'and i have my pretty children. but frankly, it is no life at all. from morning to night i pledge a pack of good enough fellows who know nothing.' it faired as the night went on, and the moon came out of the clouds. we sat in front of the door, talking softly with bazin. at the guard-house opposite, the guard was being for ever turned out, as trains of field artillery kept clanking in out of the night, or patrols of horsemen trotted by in their cloaks. madame bazin came out after a while; she was tired with her day's work, i suppose; and she nestled up to her husband and laid her head upon his breast. he had his arm about her, and kept gently patting her on the shoulder. i think bazin was right, and he was really married. of how few people can the same be said! little did the bazins know how much they served us. we were charged for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept in. but there was nothing in the bill for the husband's pleasant talk; nor for the pretty spectacle of their married life. and there was yet another item unchanged. for these people's politeness really set us up again in our own esteem. we had a thirst for consideration; the sense of insult was still hot in our spirits; and civil usage seemed to restore us to our position in the world. how little we pay our way in life! although we have our purses continually in our hand, the better part of service goes still unrewarded. but i like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as good as it gets. perhaps the bazins knew how much i liked them? perhaps they also were healed of some slights by the thanks that i gave them in my manner? down the oise through the golden valley below la fere the river runs through a piece of open pastoral country; green, opulent, loved by breeders; called the golden valley. in wide sweeps, and with a swift and equable gallop, the ceaseless stream of water visits and makes green the fields. kine, and horses, and little humorous donkeys, browse together in the meadows, and come down in troops to the river-side to drink. they make a strange feature in the landscape; above all when they are startled, and you see them galloping to and fro with their incongruous forms and faces. it gives a feeling as of great, unfenced pampas, and the herds of wandering nations. there were hills in the distance upon either hand; and on one side, the river sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of coucy and st. gobain. the artillery were practising at la fere; and soon the cannon of heaven joined in that loud play. two continents of cloud met and exchanged salvos overhead; while all round the horizon we could see sunshine and clear air upon the hills. what with the guns and the thunder, the herds were all frightened in the golden valley. we could see them tossing their heads, and running to and fro in timorous indecision; and when they had made up their minds, and the donkey followed the horse, and the cow was after the donkey, we could hear their hooves thundering abroad over the meadows. it had a martial sound, like cavalry charges. and altogether, as far as the ears are concerned, we had a very rousing battle-piece performed for our amusement. at last the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun shone on the wet meadows; the air was scented with the breath of rejoicing trees and grass; and the river kept unweariedly carrying us on at its best pace. there was a manufacturing district about chauny; and after that the banks grew so high that they hid the adjacent country, and we could see nothing but clay sides, and one willow after another. only, here and there, we passed by a village or a ferry, and some wondering child upon the bank would stare after us until we turned the corner. i daresay we continued to paddle in that child's dreams for many a night after. sun and shower alternated like day and night, making the hours longer by their variety. when the showers were heavy, i could feel each drop striking through my jersey to my warm skin; and the accumulation of small shocks put me nearly beside myself. i decided i should buy a mackintosh at noyon. it is nothing to get wet; but the misery of these individual pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant of time made me flail the water with my paddle like a madman. the cigarette was greatly amused by these ebullitions. it gave him something else to look at besides clay banks and willows. all the time, the river stole away like a thief in straight places, or swung round corners with an eddy; the willows nodded, and were undermined all day long; the clay banks tumbled in; the oise, which had been so many centuries making the golden valley, seemed to have changed its fancy, and be bent upon undoing its performance. what a number of things a river does, by simply following gravity in the innocence of its heart! noyon cathedral noyon stands about a mile from the river, in a little plain surrounded by wooded hills, and entirely covers an eminence with its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, straight-backed cathedral with two stiff towers. as we got into the town, the tile roofs seemed to tumble uphill one upon another, in the oddest disorder; but for all their scrambling, they did not attain above the knees of the cathedral, which stood, upright and solemn, over all. as the streets drew near to this presiding genius, through the marketplace under the hotel de ville, they grew emptier and more composed. blank walls and shuttered windows were turned to the great edifice, and grass grew on the white causeway. 'put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.' the hotel du nord, nevertheless, lights its secular tapers within a stone-cast of the church; and we had the superb east-end before our eyes all morning from the window of our bedroom. i have seldom looked on the east-end of a church with more complete sympathy. as it flanges out in three wide terraces and settles down broadly on the earth, it looks like the poop of some great old battle-ship. hollow-backed buttresses carry vases, which figure for the stern lanterns. there is a roll in the ground, and the towers just appear above the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship were bowing lazily over an atlantic swell. at any moment it might be a hundred feet away from you, climbing the next billow. at any moment a window might open, and some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat, and proceed to take an observation. the old admirals sail the sea no longer; the old ships of battle are all broken up, and live only in pictures; but this, that was a church before ever they were thought upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an appearance by the oise. the cathedral and the river are probably the two oldest things for miles around; and certainly they have both a grand old age. the sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and showed us the five bells hanging in their loft. from above, the town was a tesselated pavement of roofs and gardens; the old line of rampart was plainly traceable; and the sacristan pointed out to us, far across the plain, in a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, the towers of chateau coucy. i find i never weary of great churches. it is my favourite kind of mountain scenery. mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral: a thing as single and specious as a statue to the first glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail. the height of spires cannot be taken by trigonometry; they measure absurdly short, but how tall they are to the admiring eye! and where we have so many elegant proportions, growing one out of the other, and all together into one, it seems as if proportion transcended itself, and became something different and more imposing. i could never fathom how a man dares to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral. what is he to say that will not be an anti-climax? for though i have heard a considerable variety of sermons, i never yet heard one that was so expressive as a cathedral. 'tis the best preacher itself, and preaches day and night; not only telling you of man's art and aspirations in the past, but convicting your own soul of ardent sympathies; or rather, like all good preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself; and every man is his own doctor of divinity in the last resort. as i sat outside of the hotel in the course of the afternoon, the sweet groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the church like a summons. i was not averse, liking the theatre so well, to sit out an act or two of the play, but i could never rightly make out the nature of the service i beheld. four or five priests and as many choristers were singing miserere before the high altar when i went in. there was no congregation but a few old women on chairs and old men kneeling on the pavement. after a while a long train of young girls, walking two and two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed in black with a white veil, came from behind the altar, and began to descend the nave; the four first carrying a virgin and child upon a table. the priests and choristers arose from their knees and followed after, singing 'ave mary' as they went. in this order they made the circuit of the cathedral, passing twice before me where i leaned against a pillar. the priest who seemed of most consequence was a strange, downlooking old man. he kept mumbling prayers with his lips; but as he looked upon me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer were uppermost in his heart. two others, who bore the burthen of the chaunt, were stout, brutal, military-looking men of forty, with bold, over-fed eyes; they sang with some lustiness, and trolled forth 'ave mary' like a garrison catch. the little girls were timid and grave. as they footed slowly up the aisle, each one took a moment's glance at the englishman; and the big nun who played marshal fairly stared him out of countenance. as for the choristers, from first to last they misbehaved as only boys can misbehave; and cruelly marred the performance with their antics. i understood a great deal of the spirit of what went on. indeed it would be difficult not to understand the miserere, which i take to be the composition of an atheist. if it ever be a good thing to take such despondency to heart, the miserere is the right music, and a cathedral a fit scene. so far i am at one with the catholics:an odd name for them, after all? but why, in god's name, these holiday choristers? why these priests who steal wandering looks about the congregation while they feign to be at prayer? why this fat nun, who rudely arranges her procession and shakes delinquent virgins by the elbow? why this spitting, and snuffing, and forgetting of keys, and the thousand and one little misadventures that disturb a frame of mind laboriously edified with chaunts and organings? in any play-house reverend fathers may see what can be done with a little art, and how, to move high sentiments, it is necessary to drill the supernumeraries and have every stool in its proper place. one other circumstance distressed me. i could bear a miserere myself, having had a good deal of open-air exercise of late; but i wished the old people somewhere else. it was neither the right sort of music nor the right sort of divinity for men and women who have come through most accidents by this time, and probably have an opinion of their own upon the tragic element in life. a person up in years can generally do his own miserere for himself; although i notice that such an one often prefers jubilate deo for his ordinary singing. on the whole, the most religious exercise for the aged is probably to recall their own experience; so many friends dead, so many hopes disappointed, so many slips and stumbles, and withal so many bright days and smiling providences; there is surely the matter of a very eloquent sermon in all this. on the whole, i was greatly solemnised. in the little pictorial map of our whole inland voyage, which my fancy still preserves, and sometimes unrolls for the amusement of odd moments, noyon cathedral figures on a most preposterous scale, and must be nearly as large as a department. i can still see the faces of the priests as if they were at my elbow, and hear ave maria, ora pro nobis, sounding through the church. all noyon is blotted out for me by these superior memories; and i do not care to say more about the place. it was but a stack of brown roofs at the best, where i believe people live very reputably in a quiet way; but the shadow of the church falls upon it when the sun is low, and the five bells are heard in all quarters, telling that the organ has begun. if ever i join the church of rome, i shall stipulate to be bishop of noyon on the oise. down the oise to compiegne the most patient people grow weary at last with being continually wetted with rain; except of course in the scottish highlands, where there are not enough fine intervals to point the difference. that was like to be our case, the day we left noyon. i remember nothing of the voyage; it was nothing but clay banks and willows, and rain; incessant, pitiless, beating rain; until we stopped to lunch at a little inn at pimprez, where the canal ran very near the river. we were so sadly drenched that the landlady lit a few sticks in the chimney for our comfort; there we sat in a steam of vapour, lamenting our concerns. the husband donned a game-bag and strode out to shoot; the wife sat in a far corner watching us. i think we were worth looking at. we grumbled over the misfortune of la fere; we forecast other la feres in the future; although things went better with the cigarette for spokesman; he had more aplomb altogether than i; and a dull, positive way of approaching a landlady that carried off the india-rubber bags. talking of la fere put us talking of the reservists. 'reservery,' said he, 'seems a pretty mean way to spend ones autumn holiday.' 'about as mean,' returned i dejectedly, 'as canoeing.' 'these gentlemen travel for their pleasure?' asked the landlady, with unconscious irony. it was too much. the scales fell from our eyes. another wet day, it was determined, and we put the boats into the train. the weather took the hint. that was our last wetting. the afternoon faired up: grand clouds still voyaged in the sky, but now singly, and with a depth of blue around their path; and a sunset in the daintiest rose and gold inaugurated a thick night of stars and a month of unbroken weather. at the same time, the river began to give us a better outlook into the country. the banks were not so high, the willows disappeared from along the margin, and pleasant hills stood all along its course and marked their profile on the sky. in a little while the canal, coming to its last lock, began to discharge its water-houses on the oise; so that we had no lack of company to fear. here were all our old friends; the deo gratias of conde and the four sons of aymon journeyed cheerily down stream along with us; we exchanged waterside pleasantries with the steersman perched among the lumber, or the driver hoarse with bawling to his horses; and the children came and looked over the side as we paddled by. we had never known all this while how much we missed them; but it gave us a fillip to see the smoke from their chimneys. a little below this junction we made another meeting of yet more account. for there we were joined by the aisne, already a fartravelled river and fresh out of champagne. here ended the adolescence of the oise; this was his marriage day; thenceforward he had a stately, brimming march, conscious of his own dignity and sundry dams. he became a tranquil feature in the scene. the trees and towns saw themselves in him, as in a mirror. he carried the canoes lightly on his broad breast; there was no need to work hard against an eddy: but idleness became the order of the day, and mere straightforward dipping of the paddle, now on this side, now on that, without intelligence or effort. truly we were coming into halcyon weather upon all accounts, and were floated towards the sea like gentlemen. we made compiegne as the sun was going down: a fine profile of a town above the river. over the bridge, a regiment was parading to the drum. people loitered on the quay, some fishing, some looking idly at the stream. and as the two boats shot in along the water, we could see them pointing them out and speaking one to another. we landed at a floating lavatory, where the washer-women were still beating the clothes. at compiegne we put up at a big, bustling hotel in compiegne, where nobody observed our presence. reservery and general militarismus (as the germans call it) were rampant. a camp of conical white tents without the town looked like a leaf out of a picture bible; sword-belts decorated the walls of the cafes; and the streets kept sounding all day long with military music. it was not possible to be an englishman and avoid a feeling of elation; for the men who followed the drums were small, and walked shabbily. each man inclined at his own angle, and jolted to his own convenience, as he went. there was nothing of the superb gait with which a regiment of tall highlanders moves behind its music, solemn and inevitable, like a natural phenomenon. who that has seen it can forget the drum-major pacing in front, the drummers' tiger-skins, the pipers' swinging plaids, the strange elastic rhythm of the whole regiment footing it in time and the bang of the drum, when the brasses cease, and the shrill pipes take up the martial story in their place? a girl, at school in france, began to describe one of our regiments on parade to her french schoolmates; and as she went on, she told me, the recollection grew so vivid, she became so proud to be the countrywoman of such soldiers, and so sorry to be in another country, that her voice failed her and she burst into tears. i have never forgotten that girl; and i think she very nearly deserves a statue. to call her a young lady, with all its niminy associations, would be to offer her an insult. she may rest assured of one thing: although she never should marry a heroic general, never see any great or immediate result of her life, she will not have lived in vain for her native land. but though french soldiers show to ill advantage on parade, on the march they are gay, alert, and willing like a troop of fox-hunters. i remember once seeing a company pass through the forest of fontainebleau, on the chailly road, between the bas breau and the reine blanche. one fellow walked a little before the rest, and sang a loud, audacious marching song. the rest bestirred their feet, and even swung their muskets in time. a young officer on horseback had hard ado to keep his countenance at the words. you never saw anything so cheerful and spontaneous as their gait; schoolboys do not look more eagerly at hare and hounds; and you would have thought it impossible to tire such willing marchers. my great delight in compiegne was the town-hall. i doted upon the town-hall. it is a monument of gothic insecurity, all turreted, and gargoyled, and slashed, and bedizened with half a score of architectural fancies. some of the niches are gilt and painted; and in a great square panel in the centre, in black relief on a gilt ground, louis xii. rides upon a pacing horse, with hand on hip and head thrown back. there is royal arrogance in every line of him; the stirruped foot projects insolently from the frame; the eye is hard and proud; the very horse seems to be treading with gratification over prostrate serfs, and to have the breath of the trumpet in his nostrils. so rides for ever, on the front of the town-hall, the good king louis xii., the father of his people. over the king's head, in the tall centre turret, appears the dial of a clock; and high above that, three little mechanical figures, each one with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is to chime out the hours and halves and quarters for the burgesses of compiegne. the centre figure has a gilt breast-plate; the two others wear gilt trunk-hose; and they all three have elegant, flapping hats like cavaliers. as the quarter approaches, they turn their heads and look knowingly one to the other; and then, kling go the three hammers on three little bells below. the hour follows, deep and sonorous, from the interior of the tower; and the gilded gentlemen rest from their labours with contentment. i had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their manoeuvres, and took good care to miss as few performances as possible; and i found that even the cigarette, while he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, was more or less a devotee himself. there is something highly absurd in the exposition of such toys to the outrages of winter on a housetop. they would be more in keeping in a glass case before a nurnberg clock. above all, at night, when the children are abed, and even grown people are snoring under quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these ginger-bread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and the rolling moon? the gargoyles may fitly enough twist their ape-like heads; fitly enough may the potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion in an old german print of the via dolorosa; but the toys should be put away in a box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the children are abroad again to be amused. in compiegne post-office a great packet of letters awaited us; and the authorities were, for this occasion only, so polite as to hand them over upon application. in some ways, our journey may be said to end with this letter-bag at compiegne. the spell was broken. we had partly come home from that moment. no one should have any correspondence on a journey; it is bad enough to have to write; but the receipt of letters is the death of all holiday feeling. 'out of my country and myself i go.' i wish to take a dive among new conditions for a while, as into another element. i have nothing to do with my friends or my affections for the time; when i came away, i left my heart at home in a desk, or sent it forward with my portmanteau to await me at my destination. after my journey is over, i shall not fail to read your admirable letters with the attention they deserve. but i have paid all this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, for no other purpose than to be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with your perpetual communications. you tug the string, and i feel that i am a tethered bird. you pursue me all over europe with the little vexations that i came away to avoid. there is no discharge in the war of life, i am well aware; but shall there not be so much as a week's furlough? we were up by six, the day we were to leave. they had taken so little note of us that i hardly thought they would have condescended on a bill. but they did, with some smart particulars too; and we paid in a civilised manner to an uninterested clerk, and went out of that hotel, with the india-rubber bags, unremarked. no one cared to know about us. it is not possible to rise before a village; but compiegne was so grown a town, that it took its ease in the morning; and we were up and away while it was still in dressing-gown and slippers. the streets were left to people washing door-steps; nobody was in full dress but the cavaliers upon the town-hall; they were all washed with dew, spruce in their gilding, and full of intelligence and a sense of professional responsibility. kling went they on the bells for the half-past six as we went by. i took it kind of them to make me this parting compliment; they never were in better form, not even at noon upon a sunday. there was no one to see us off but the early washerwomen early and late who were already beating the linen in their floating lavatory on the river. they were very merry and matutinal in their ways; plunged their arms boldly in, and seemed not to feel the shock. it would be dispiriting to me, this early beginning and first cold dabble of a most dispiriting day's work. but i believe they would have been as unwilling to change days with us as we could be to change with them. they crowded to the door to watch us paddle away into the thin sunny mists upon the river; and shouted heartily after us till we were through the bridge. changed times there is a sense in which those mists never rose from off our journey; and from that time forth they lie very densely in my notebook. as long as the oise was a small rural river, it took us near by people's doors, and we could hold a conversation with natives in the riparian fields. but now that it had grown so wide, the life along shore passed us by at a distance. it was the same difference as between a great public highway and a country by-path that wanders in and out of cottage gardens. we now lay in towns, where nobody troubled us with questions; we had floated into civilised life, where people pass without salutation. in sparsely inhabited places, we make all we can of each encounter; but when it comes to a city, we keep to ourselves, and never speak unless we have trodden on a man's toes. in these waters we were no longer strange birds, and nobody supposed we had travelled farther than from the last town. i remember, when we came into l'isle adam, for instance, how we met dozens of pleasure-boats outing it for the afternoon, and there was nothing to distinguish the true voyager from the amateur, except, perhaps, the filthy condition of my sail. the company in one boat actually thought they recognised me for a neighbour. was there ever anything more wounding? all the romance had come down to that. now, on the upper oise, where nothing sailed as a general thing but fish, a pair of canoeists could not be thus vulgarly explained away; we were strange and picturesque intruders; and out of people's wonder sprang a sort of light and passing intimacy all along our route. there is nothing but titfor-tat in this world, though sometimes it be a little difficult to trace: for the scores are older than we ourselves, and there has never yet been a settling-day since things were. you get entertainment pretty much in proportion as you give. as long as we were a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared at and followed like a quack doctor or a caravan, we had no want of amusement in return; but as soon as we sank into commonplace ourselves, all whom we met were similarly disenchanted. and here is one reason of a dozen, why the world is dull to dull persons. in our earlier adventures there was generally something to do, and that quickened us. even the showers of rain had a revivifying effect, and shook up the brain from torpor. but now, when the river no longer ran in a proper sense, only glided seaward with an even, outright, but imperceptible speed, and when the sky smiled upon us day after day without variety, we began to slip into that golden doze of the mind which follows upon much exercise in the open air. i have stupefied myself in this way more than once; indeed, i dearly love the feeling; but i never had it to the same degree as when paddling down the oise. it was the apotheosis of stupidity. we ceased reading entirely. sometimes when i found a new paper, i took a particular pleasure in reading a single number of the current novel; but i never could bear more than three instalments; and even the second was a disappointment. as soon as the tale became in any way perspicuous, it lost all merit in my eyes; only a single scene, or, as is the way with these feuilletons, half a scene, without antecedent or consequence, like a piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing my interest. the less i saw of the novel, the better i liked it: a pregnant reflection. but for the most part, as i said, we neither of us read anything in the world, and employed the very little while we were awake between bed and dinner in poring upon maps. i have always been fond of maps, and can voyage in an atlas with the greatest enjoyment. the names of places are singularly inviting; the contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to the eye; and to hit, in a map, upon some place you have heard of before, makes history a new possession. but we thumbed our charts, on these evenings, with the blankest unconcern. we cared not a fraction for this place or that. we stared at the sheet as children listen to their rattle; and read the names of towns or villages to forget them again at once. we had no romance in the matter; there was nobody so fancy-free. if you had taken the maps away while we were studying them most intently, it is a fair bet whether we might not have continued to study the table with the same delight. about one thing we were mightily taken up, and that was eating. i think i made a god of my belly. i remember dwelling in imagination upon this or that dish till my mouth watered; and long before we got in for the night my appetite was a clamant, instant annoyance. sometimes we paddled alongside for a while and whetted each other with gastronomical fancies as we went. cake and sherry, a homely rejection, but not within reach upon the oise, trotted through my head for many a mile; and once, as we were approaching verberie, the cigarette brought my heart into my mouth by the suggestion of oyster-patties and sauterne. i suppose none of us recognise the great part that is played in life by eating and drinking. the appetite is so imperious that we can stomach the least interesting viands, and pass off a dinnerhour thankfully enough on bread and water; just as there are men who must read something, if it were only bradshaw's guide. but there is a romance about the matter after all. probably the table has more devotees than love; and i am sure that food is much more generally entertaining than scenery. do you give in, as walt whitman would say, that you are any the less immortal for that? the true materialism is to be ashamed of what we are. to detect the flavour of an olive is no less a piece of human perfection than to find beauty in the colours of the sunset. canoeing was easy work. to dip the paddle at the proper inclination, now right, now left; to keep the head down stream; to empty the little pool that gathered in the lap of the apron; to screw up the eyes against the glittering sparkles of sun upon the water; or now and again to pass below the whistling tow-rope of the deo gratias of conde, or the four sons of aymon there was not much art in that; certain silly muscles managed it between sleep and waking; and meanwhile the brain had a whole holiday, and went to sleep. we took in, at a glance, the larger features of the scene; and beheld, with half an eye, bloused fishers and dabbling washerwomen on the bank. now and again we might be half-wakened by some church spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail of river grass that clung about the paddle and had to be plucked off and thrown away. but these luminous intervals were only partially luminous. a little more of us was called into action, but never the whole. the central bureau of nerves, what in some moods we call ourselves, enjoyed its holiday without disturbance, like a government office. the great wheels of intelligence turned idly in the head, like flywheels, grinding no grist. i have gone on for half an hour at a time, counting my strokes and forgetting the hundreds. i flatter myself the beasts that perish could not underbid that, as a low form of consciousness. and what a pleasure it was! what a hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about! there is nothing captious about a man who has attained to this, the one possible apotheosis in life, the apotheosis of stupidity; and he begins to feel dignified and longaevous like a tree. there was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which accompanied what i may call the depth, if i must not call it the intensity, of my abstraction. what philosophers call me and not-me, ego and non ego, preoccupied me whether i would or no. there was less me and more not-me than i was accustomed to expect. i looked on upon somebody else, who managed the paddling; i was aware of somebody else's feet against the stretcher; my own body seemed to have no more intimate relation to me than the canoe, or the river, or the river banks. nor this alone: something inside my mind, a part of my brain, a province of my proper being, had thrown off allegiance and set up for itself, or perhaps for the somebody else who did the paddling. i had dwindled into quite a little thing in a corner of myself. i was isolated in my own skull. thoughts presented themselves unbidden; they were not my thoughts, they were plainly some one else's; and i considered them like a part of the landscape. i take it, in short, that i was about as near nirvana as would be convenient in practical life; and if this be so, i make the buddhists my sincere compliments; 'tis an agreeable state, not very consistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly profitable in a money point of view, but very calm, golden, and incurious, and one that sets a man superior to alarms. it may be best figured by supposing yourself to get dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoy it. i have a notion that open-air labourers must spend a large portion of their days in this ecstatic stupor, which explains their high composure and endurance. a pity to go to the expense of laudanum, when here is a better paradise for nothing! this frame of mind was the great exploit of our voyage, take it all in all. it was the farthest piece of travel accomplished. indeed, it lies so far from beaten paths of language, that i despair of getting the reader into sympathy with the smiling, complacent idiocy of my condition; when ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees and church spires along the bank surged up, from time to time into my notice, like solid objects through a rolling cloudland; when the rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song to lull my thoughts asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was sometimes an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion for me, and the object of pleased consideration; and all the time, with the river running and the shores changing upon either hand, i kept counting my strokes and forgetting the hundreds, the happiest animal in france. down the oise: church interiors we made our first stage below compiegne to pont sainte maxence. i was abroad a little after six the next morning. the air was biting, and smelt of frost. in an open place a score of women wrangled together over the day's market; and the noise of their negotiation sounded thin and querulous like that of sparrows on a winter's morning. the rare passengers blew into their hands, and shuffled in their wooden shoes to set the blood agog. the streets were full of icy shadow, although the chimneys were smoking overhead in golden sunshine. if you wake early enough at this season of the year, you may get up in december to break your fast in june. i found my way to the church; for there is always something to see about a church, whether living worshippers or dead men's tombs; you find there the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest deceit; and even where it is not a piece of history, it will be certain to leak out some contemporary gossip. it was scarcely so cold in the church as it was without, but it looked colder. the white nave was positively arctic to the eye; and the tawdriness of a continental altar looked more forlorn than usual in the solitude and the bleak air. two priests sat in the chancel, reading and waiting penitents; and out in the nave, one very old woman was engaged in her devotions. it was a wonder how she was able to pass her beads when healthy young people were breathing in their palms and slapping their chest; but though this concerned me, i was yet more dispirited by the nature of her exercises. she went from chair to chair, from altar to altar, circumnavigating the church. to each shrine she dedicated an equal number of beads and an equal length of time. like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat cynical view of the commercial prospect, she desired to place her supplications in a great variety of heavenly securities. she would risk nothing on the credit of any single intercessor. out of the whole company of saints and angels, not one but was to suppose himself her champion elect against the great assize! i could only think of it as a dull, transparent jugglery, based upon unconscious unbelief. she was as dead an old woman as ever i saw; no more than bone and parchment, curiously put together. her eyes, with which she interrogated mine, were vacant of sense. it depends on what you call seeing, whether you might not call her blind. perhaps she had known love: perhaps borne children, suckled them and given them pet names. but now that was all gone by, and had left her neither happier nor wiser; and the best she could do with her mornings was to come up here into the cold church and juggle for a slice of heaven. it was not without a gulp that i escaped into the streets and the keen morning air. morning? why, how tired of it she would be before night! and if she did not sleep, how then? it is fortunate that not many of us are brought up publicly to justify our lives at the bar of threescore years and ten; fortunate that such a number are knocked opportunely on the head in what they call the flower of their years, and go away to suffer for their follies in private somewhere else. otherwise, between sick children and discontented old folk, we might be put out of all conceit of life. i had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day's paddle: the old devotee stuck in my throat sorely. but i was soon in the seventh heaven of stupidity; and knew nothing but that somebody was paddling a canoe, while i was counting his strokes and forgetting the hundreds. i used sometimes to be afraid i should remember the hundreds; which would have made a toil of a pleasure; but the terror was chimerical, they went out of my mind by enchantment, and i knew no more than the man in the moon about my only occupation. at creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in another floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed with washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they and their broad jokes are about all i remember of the place. i could look up my history-books, if you were very anxious, and tell you a date or two; for it figured rather largely in the english wars. but i prefer to mention a girls' boarding-school, which had an interest for us because it was a girls' boarding-school, and because we imagined we had rather an interest for it. at least there were the girls about the garden; and here were we on the river; and there was more than one handkerchief waved as we went by. it caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how we should have wearied and despised each other, these girls and i, if we had been introduced at a croquet-party! but this is a fashion i love: to kiss the hand or wave a handkerchief to people i shall never see again, to play with possibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to hang upon. it gives the traveller a jog, reminds him that he is not a traveller everywhere, and that his journey is no more than a siesta by the way on the real march of life. the church at creil was a nondescript place in the inside, splashed with gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with medallions of the dolorous way. but there was one oddity, in the way of an ex voto, which pleased me hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat, swung from the vault, with a written aspiration that god should conduct the saint nicolas of creil to a good haven. the thing was neatly executed, and would have made the delight of a party of boys on the water-side. but what tickled me was the gravity of the peril to be conjured. you might hang up the model of a sea-going ship, and welcome: one that is to plough a furrow round the world, and visit the tropic or the frosty poles, runs dangers that are well worth a candle and a mass. but the saint nicolas of creil, which was to be tugged for some ten years by patient draughthorses, in a weedy canal, with the poplars chattering overhead, and the skipper whistling at the tiller; which was to do all its errands in green inland places, and never get out of sight of a village belfry in all its cruising; why, you would have thought if anything could be done without the intervention of providence, it would be that! but perhaps the skipper was a humorist: or perhaps a prophet, reminding people of the seriousness of life by this preposterous token. at creil, as at noyon, saint joseph seemed a favourite saint on the score of punctuality. day and hour can be specified; and grateful people do not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, when prayers have been punctually and neatly answered. whenever time is a consideration, saint joseph is the proper intermediary. i took a sort of pleasure in observing the vogue he had in france, for the good man plays a very small part in my religion at home. yet i could not help fearing that, where the saint is so much commanded for exactitude, he will be expected to be very grateful for his tablet. this is foolishness to us protestants; and not of great importance anyway. whether people's gratitude for the good gifts that come to them be wisely conceived or dutifully expressed, is a secondary matter, after all, so long as they feel gratitude. the true ignorance is when a man does not know that he has received a good gift, or begins to imagine that he has got it for himself. the self-made man is the funniest windbag after all! there is a marked difference between decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the gas in a metropolitan back-parlour with a box of patent matches; and do what we will, there is always something made to our hand, if it were only our fingers. but there was something worse than foolishness placarded in creil church. the association of the living rosary (of which i had never previously heard) is responsible for that. this association was founded, according to the printed advertisement, by a brief of pope gregory sixteenth, on the 17th of january 1832: according to a coloured bas-relief, it seems to have been founded, sometime other, by the virgin giving one rosary to saint dominic, and the infant saviour giving another to saint catharine of siena. pope gregory is not so imposing, but he is nearer hand. i could not distinctly make out whether the association was entirely devotional, or had an eye to good works; at least it is highly organised: the names of fourteen matrons and misses were filled in for each week of the month as associates, with one other, generally a married woman, at the top for zelatrice: the leader of the band. indulgences, plenary and partial, follow on the performance of the duties of the association. 'the partial indulgences are attached to the recitation of the rosary.' on 'the recitation of the required dizaine,' a partial indulgence promptly follows. when people serve the kingdom of heaven with a pass-book in their hands, i should always be afraid lest they should carry the same commercial spirit into their dealings with their fellow-men, which would make a sad and sordid business of this life. there is one more article, however, of happier import. 'all these indulgences,' it appeared, 'are applicable to souls in purgatory.' for god's sake, ye ladies of creil, apply them all to the souls in purgatory without delay! burns would take no hire for his last songs, preferring to serve his country out of unmixed love. suppose you were to imitate the exciseman, mesdames, and even if the souls in purgatory were not greatly bettered, some souls in creil upon the oise would find themselves none the worse either here or hereafter. i cannot help wondering, as i transcribe these notes, whether a protestant born and bred is in a fit state to understand these signs, and do them what justice they deserve; and i cannot help answering that he is not. they cannot look so merely ugly and mean to the faithful as they do to me. i see that as clearly as a proposition in euclid. for these believers are neither weak nor wicked. they can put up their tablet commanding saint joseph for his despatch, as if he were still a village carpenter; they can 'recite the required dizaine,' and metaphorically pocket the indulgence, as if they had done a job for heaven; and then they can go out and look down unabashed upon this wonderful river flowing by, and up without confusion at the pin-point stars, which are themselves great worlds full of flowing rivers greater than the oise. i see it as plainly, i say, as a proposition in euclid, that my protestant mind has missed the point, and that there goes with these deformities some higher and more religious spirit than i dream. i wonder if other people would make the same allowances for me! like the ladies of creil, having recited my rosary of toleration, i look for my indulgence on the spot. precy and the marionnettes we made precy about sundown. the plain is rich with tufts of poplar. in a wide, luminous curve, the oise lay under the hillside. a faint mist began to rise and confound the different distances together. there was not a sound audible but that of the sheep-bells in some meadows by the river, and the creaking of a cart down the long road that descends the hill. the villas in their gardens, the shops along the street, all seemed to have been deserted the day before; and i felt inclined to walk discreetly as one feels in a silent forest. all of a sudden, we came round a corner, and there, in a little green round the church, was a bevy of girls in parisian costumes playing croquet. their laughter, and the hollow sound of ball and mallet, made a cheery stir in the neighbourhood; and the look of these slim figures, all corseted and ribboned, produced an answerable disturbance in our hearts. we were within sniff of paris, it seemed. and here were females of our own species playing croquet, just as if precy had been a place in real life, instead of a stage in the fairyland of travel. for, to be frank, the peasant woman is scarcely to be counted as a woman at all, and after having passed by such a succession of people in petticoats digging and hoeing and making dinner, this company of coquettes under arms made quite a surprising feature in the landscape, and convinced us at once of being fallible males. the inn at precy is the worst inn in france. not even in scotland have i found worse fare. it was kept by a brother and sister, neither of whom was out of their teens. the sister, so to speak, prepared a meal for us; and the brother, who had been tippling, came in and brought with him a tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we ate. we found pieces of loo-warm pork among the salad, and pieces of unknown yielding substance in the ragout. the butcher entertained us with pictures of parisian life, with which he professed himself well acquainted; the brother sitting the while on the edge of the billiard-table, toppling precariously, and sucking the stump of a cigar. in the midst of these diversions, bang went a drum past the house, and a hoarse voice began issuing a proclamation. it was a man with marionnettes announcing a performance for that evening. he had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on another part of the girls' croquet-green, under one of those open sheds which are so common in france to shelter markets; and he and his wife, by the time we strolled up there, were trying to keep order with the audience. it was the most absurd contention. the show-people had set out a certain number of benches; and all who sat upon them were to pay a couple of sous for the accommodation. they were always quite full a bumper house as long as nothing was going forward; but let the show-woman appear with an eye to a collection, and at the first rattle of her tambourine the audience slipped off the seats, and stood round on the outside with their hands in their pockets. it certainly would have tried an angel's temper. the showman roared from the proscenium; he had been all over france, and nowhere, nowhere, 'not even on the borders of germany,' had he met with such misconduct. such thieves and rogues and rascals, as he called them! and every now and again, the wife issued on another round, and added her shrill quota to the tirade. i remarked here, as elsewhere, how far more copious is the female mind in the material of insult. the audience laughed in high good-humour over the man's declamations; but they bridled and cried aloud under the woman's pungent sallies. she picked out the sore points. she had the honour of the village at her mercy. voices answered her angrily out of the crowd, and received a smarting retort for their trouble. a couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly paid for their seats, waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed to each other audibly about the impudence of these mountebanks; but as soon as the show-woman caught a whisper of this, she was down upon them with a swoop: if mesdames could persuade their neighbours to act with common honesty, the mountebanks, she assured them, would be polite enough: mesdames had probably had their bowl of soup, and perhaps a glass of wine that evening; the mountebanks also had a taste for soup, and did not choose to have their little earnings stolen from them before their eyes. once, things came as far as a brief personal encounter between the show-man and some lads, in which the former went down as readily as one of his own marionnettes to a peal of jeering laughter. i was a good deal astonished at this scene, because i am pretty well acquainted with the ways of french strollers, more or less artistic; and have always found them singularly pleasing. any stroller must be dear to the right-thinking heart; if it were only as a living protest against offices and the mercantile spirit, and as something to remind us that life is not by necessity the kind of thing we generally make it. even a german band, if you see it leaving town in the early morning for a campaign in country places, among trees and meadows, has a romantic flavour for the imagination. there is nobody, under thirty, so dead but his heart will stir a little at sight of a gypsies' camp. 'we are not cotton-spinners all'; or, at least, not all through. there is some life in humanity yet: and youth will now and again find a brave word to say in dispraise of riches, and throw up a situation to go strolling with a knapsack. an englishman has always special facilities for intercourse with french gymnasts; for england is the natural home of gymnasts. this or that fellow, in his tights and spangles, is sure to know a word or two of english, to have drunk english aff-'n-aff, and perhaps performed in an english music-hall. he is a countryman of mine by profession. he leaps, like the belgian boating men, to the notion that i must be an athlete myself. but the gymnast is not my favourite; he has little or no tincture of the artist in his composition; his soul is small and pedestrian, for the most part, since his profession makes no call upon it, and does not accustom him to high ideas. but if a man is only so much of an actor that he can stumble through a farce, he is made free of a new order of thoughts. he has something else to think about beside the money-box. he has a pride of his own, and, what is of far more importance, he has an aim before him that he can never quite attain. he has gone upon a pilgrimage that will last him his life long, because there is no end to it short of perfection. he will better upon himself a little day by day; or even if he has given up the attempt, he will always remember that once upon a time he had conceived this high ideal, that once upon a time he had fallen in love with a star. ''tis better to have loved and lost.' although the moon should have nothing to say to endymion, although he should settle down with audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would move with a better grace, and cherish higher thoughts to the end? the louts he meets at church never had a fancy above audrey's snood; but there is a reminiscence in endymion's heart that, like a spice, keeps it fresh and haughty. to be even one of the outskirters of art, leaves a fine stamp on a man's countenance. i remember once dining with a party in the inn at chateau landon. most of them were unmistakable bagmen; others well-to-do peasantry; but there was one young fellow in a blouse, whose face stood out from among the rest surprisingly. it looked more finished; more of the spirit looked out through it; it had a living, expressive air, and you could see that his eyes took things in. my companion and i wondered greatly who and what he could be. it was fair-time in chateau landon, and when we went along to the booths, we had our question answered; for there was our friend busily fiddling for the peasants to caper to. he was a wandering violinist. a troop of strollers once came to the inn where i was staying, in the department of seine et marne. there was a father and mother; two daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang and acted, without an idea of how to set about either; and a dark young man, like a tutor, a recalcitrant house-painter, who sang and acted not amiss. the mother was the genius of the party, so far as genius can be spoken of with regard to such a pack of incompetent humbugs; and her husband could not find words to express his admiration for her comic countryman. 'you should see my old woman,' said he, and nodded his beery countenance. one night they performed in the stable-yard, with flaring lamps a wretched exhibition, coldly looked upon by a village audience. next night, as soon as the lamps were lighted, there came a plump of rain, and they had to sweep away their baggage as fast as possible, and make off to the barn where they harboured, cold, wet, and supperless. in the morning, a dear friend of mine, who has as warm a heart for strollers as i have myself, made a little collection, and sent it by my hands to comfort them for their disappointment. i gave it to the father; he thanked me cordially, and we drank a cup together in the kitchen, talking of roads, and audiences, and hard times. when i was going, up got my old stroller, and off with his hat. 'i am afraid,' said he, 'that monsieur will think me altogether a beggar; but i have another demand to make upon him.' i began to hate him on the spot. 'we play again to-night,' he went on. 'of course, i shall refuse to accept any more money from monsieur and his friends, who have been already so liberal. but our programme of to-night is something truly creditable; and i cling to the idea that monsieur will honour us with his presence.' and then, with a shrug and a smile: 'monsieur understands the vanity of an artist!' save the mark! the vanity of an artist! that is the kind of thing that reconciles me to life: a ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, with the manners of a gentleman, and the vanity of an artist, to keep up his self-respect! but the man after my own heart is m. de vauversin. it is nearly two years since i saw him first, and indeed i hope i may see him often again. here is his first programme, as i found it on the breakfast-table, and have kept it ever since as a relic of bright days: 'mesdames et messieurs, 'mademoiselle ferrario et m. de vauversin auront l'honneur de chanter ce soir les morceaux suivants. 'madermoiselle ferrario chantera mignon oiseaux legers france des francais dorment la le chateau bleu ou voulez-vous aller? 'm. de vauversin madame fontaine et m. robinet les plongeurs a cheval le mari mecontent tais-toi, gamin mon voisin l'original heureux comme ca comme on est trompe.' they made a stage at one end of the salle-a-manger. and what a sight it was to see m. de vauversin, with a cigarette in his mouth, twanging a guitar, and following mademoiselle ferrario's eyes with the obedient, kindly look of a dog! the entertainment wound up with a tombola, or auction of lottery tickets: an admirable amusement, with all the excitement of gambling, and no hope of gain to make you ashamed of your eagerness; for there, all is loss; you make haste to be out of pocket; it is a competition who shall lose most money for the benefit of m. de vauversin and mademoiselle ferrario. m. de vauversin is a small man, with a great head of black hair, a vivacious and engaging air, and a smile that would be delightful if he had better teeth. he was once an actor in the chatelet; but he contracted a nervous affection from the heat and glare of the footlights, which unfitted him for the stage. at this crisis mademoiselle ferrario, otherwise mademoiselle rita of the alcazar, agreed to share his wandering fortunes. 'i could never forget the generosity of that lady,' said he. he wears trousers so tight that it has long been a problem to all who knew him how he manages to get in and out of them. he sketches a little in water-colours; he writes verses; he is the most patient of fishermen, and spent long days at the bottom of the inn-garden fruitlessly dabbling a line in the clear river. you should hear him recounting his experiences over a bottle of wine; such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready smile at his own mishaps, and every now and then a sudden gravity, like a man who should hear the surf roar while he was telling the perils of the deep. for it was no longer ago than last night, perhaps, that the receipts only amounted to a franc and a half, to cover three francs of railway fare and two of board and lodging. the maire, a man worth a million of money, sat in the front seat, repeatedly applauding mlle. ferrario, and yet gave no more than three sous the whole evening. local authorities look with such an evil eye upon the strolling artist. alas! i know it well, who have been myself taken for one, and pitilessly incarcerated on the strength of the misapprehension. once, m. de vauversin visited a commissary of police for permission to sing. the commissary, who was smoking at his ease, politely doffed his hat upon the singer's entrance. 'mr. commissary,' he began, 'i am an artist.' and on went the commissary's hat again. no courtesy for the companions of apollo! 'they are as degraded as that,' said m. de vauversin with a sweep of his cigarette. but what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, when we had been talking all the evening of the rubs, indignities, and pinchings of his wandering life. some one said, it would be better to have a million of money down, and mlle. ferrario admitted that she would prefer that mightily. 'eh bien, moi non; not i,' cried de vauversin, striking the table with his hand. 'if any one is a failure in the world, is it not i? i had an art, in which i have done things well as well as some better perhaps than others; and now it is closed against me. i must go about the country gathering coppers and singing nonsense. do you think i regret my life? do you think i would rather be a fat burgess, like a calf? not i! i have had moments when i have been applauded on the boards: i think nothing of that; but i have known in my own mind sometimes, when i had not a clap from the whole house, that i had found a true intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture; and then, messieurs, i have known what pleasure was, what it was to do a thing well, what it was to be an artist. and to know what art is, is to have an interest for ever, such as no burgess can find in his petty concerns. tenez, messieurs, je vais vous le dire it is like a religion.' such, making some allowance for the tricks of memory and the inaccuracies of translation, was the profession of faith of m. de vauversin. i have given him his own name, lest any other wanderer should come across him, with his guitar and cigarette, and mademoiselle ferrario; for should not all the world delight to honour this unfortunate and loyal follower of the muses? may apollo send him rimes hitherto undreamed of; may the river be no longer scanty of her silver fishes to his lure; may the cold not pinch him on long winter rides, nor the village jack-in-office affront him with unseemly manners; and may he never miss mademoiselle ferrario from his side, to follow with his dutiful eyes and accompany on the guitar! the marionnettes made a very dismal entertainment. they performed a piece, called pyramus and thisbe, in five mortal acts, and all written in alexandrines fully as long as the performers. one marionnette was the king; another the wicked counsellor; a third, credited with exceptional beauty, represented thisbe; and then there were guards, and obdurate fathers, and walking gentlemen. nothing particular took place during the two or three acts that i sat out; but you will he pleased to learn that the unities were properly respected, and the whole piece, with one exception, moved in harmony with classical rules. that exception was the comic countryman, a lean marionnette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose and in a broad patois much appreciated by the audience. he took unconstitutional liberties with the person of his sovereign; kicked his fellow-marionnettes in the mouth with his wooden shoes, and whenever none of the versifying suitors were about, made love to thisbe on his own account in comic prose. this fellow's evolutions, and the little prologue, in which the showman made a humorous eulogium of his troop, praising their indifference to applause and hisses, and their single devotion to their art, were the only circumstances in the whole affair that you could fancy would so much as raise a smile. but the villagers of precy seemed delighted. indeed, so long as a thing is an exhibition, and you pay to see it, it is nearly certain to amuse. if we were charged so much a head for sunsets, or if god sent round a drum before the hawthorns came in flower, what a work should we not make about their beauty! but these things, like good companions, stupid people early cease to observe: and the abstract bagman tittups past in his spring gig, and is positively not aware of the flowers along the lane, or the scenery of the weather overhead. back to the world of the next two days' sail little remains in my mind, and nothing whatever in my note-book. the river streamed on steadily through pleasant river-side landscapes. washerwomen in blue dresses, fishers in blue blouses, diversified the green banks; and the relation of the two colours was like that of the flower and the leaf in the forget-me-not. a symphony in forget-me-not; i think theophile gautier might thus have characterised that two days' panorama. the sky was blue and cloudless; and the sliding surface of the river held up, in smooth places, a mirror to the heaven and the shores. the washerwomen hailed us laughingly; and the noise of trees and water made an accompaniment to our dozing thoughts, as we fleeted down the stream. the great volume, the indefatigable purpose of the river, held the mind in chain. it seemed now so sure of its end, so strong and easy in its gait, like a grown man full of determination. the surf was roaring for it on the sands of havre. for my own part, slipping along this moving thoroughfare in my fiddle-case of a canoe, i also was beginning to grow aweary for my ocean. to the civilised man, there must come, sooner or later, a desire for civilisation. i was weary of dipping the paddle; i was weary of living on the skirts of life; i wished to be in the thick of it once more; i wished to get to work; i wished to meet people who understood my own speech, and could meet with me on equal terms, as a man, and no longer as a curiosity. and so a letter at pontoise decided us, and we drew up our keels for the last time out of that river of oise that had faithfully piloted them, through rain and sunshine, for so long. for so many miles had this fleet and footless beast of burthen charioted our fortunes, that we turned our back upon it with a sense of separation. we had made a long detour out of the world, but now we were back in the familiar places, where life itself makes all the running, and we are carried to meet adventure without a stroke of the paddle. now we were to return, like the voyager in the play, and see what rearrangements fortune had perfected the while in our surroundings; what surprises stood ready made for us at home; and whither and how far the world had voyaged in our absence. you may paddle all day long; but it is when you come back at nightfall, and look in at the familiar room, that you find love or death awaiting you beside the stove; and the most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek. end of the project gutenberg etext an inland voyage the internet wiretap electronic edition of up from slavery: an autobiography by booker t. washington a public domain text released september 1993 entered by aloysius &tsftdotiote aloysius@west.darkside.com -------- up from slavery an autobiography by booker taliaferro washington boston new york chicago houghton mifflin company the riverside press, cambridge copyright 1900, 1901 a public domain text, copyright expired preface this volume is the outgrowth of a series of articles, dealing with incidents in my life, which were published consecutively in the _outlook_. while they were appearing in that magazine i was constantly surprised at the number of requests which came to me from all parts of the country, asking that the articles be permanently preserved in book form. i am most grateful to the _outlook_ for permission to gratify these requests. i have tried to tell a simple, straightforward story, with no attempt at embellishment. my regret is that what i have attempted to do has been done so imperfectly. the greater part of my time and strength is required for the executive work connected with the tuskegee normal and industrial institute, and in securing the money necessary for the support of the institution. much of what i have said has been written on board trains, or at hotels or railroad stations while i have been waiting for trains, or during the moments that i could spare from my work while at tuskegee. without the painstaking and generous assistance of mr. max bennett thrasher i could not have succeeded in any satisfactory degree. up from slavery chapter i a slave among slaves i was born a slave on a plantation in franklin county, virginia. i am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate i suspect i must have been born somewhere and at some time. as nearly as i have been able to learn, i was born near a cross-roads post-office called hale's ford, and the year was 1858 or 1859. i do not know the month or the day. the earliest impressions i can now recall are of the plantation and the slave quarters -the latter being the part of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins. my life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings. this was so, however, not because my owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many others. i was born in a typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen feet square. in this cabin i lived with my mother and a brother and sister till after the civil war, when we were all declared free. of my ancestry i know almost nothing. in the slave quarters, and even later, i heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slave ship while being conveyed from africa to america. i have been unsuccessful in securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon the history of my family beyond my mother. she, i remember, had a half-brother and a half-sister. in the days of slavery not very much attention was given to family history and family records -that is, black family records. my mother, i suppose, attracted the attention of a purchaser who was afterward my owner and hers. her addition to the slave family attracted about as much attention as the purchase of a new horse or cow. of my father i know even less than of my mother. i do not even know his name. i have heard reports to the effect that he was a white man who lived on one of the near-by plantations. whoever he was, i never heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing in any way for my rearing. but i do not find especial fault with him. he was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time. the cabin was not only our living-place, but was also used as the kitchen for the plantation. my mother was the plantation cook. the cabin was without glass windows; it had only openings in the side which let in the light, and also the cold, chilly air of winter. there was a door to the cabin -that is, something that was called a door -but the uncertain hinges by which it was hung, and the large cracks in it, to say nothing of the fact that it was too small, made the room a very uncomfortable one. in addition to these openings there was, in the lower right-hand corner of the room, the "cat-hole," -a contrivance which almost every mansion or cabin in virginia possessed during the ante-bellum period. the "cat-hole" was a square opening, about seven by eight inches, provided for the purpose of letting the cat pass in and out of the house at will during the night. in the case of our particular cabin i could never understand the necessity for this convenience, since there were at least a half-dozen other places in the cabin that would have accommodated the cats. there was no wooden floor in our cabin, the naked earth being used as a floor. in the centre of the earthen floor there was a large, deep opening covered with boards, which was used as a place in which to store sweet potatoes during the winter. an impression of this potato hole is very distinctly engraved upon my memory, because i recall that during the process of putting the potatoes in or taking them out i would often come into possession of one or two, which i roasted and thoroughly enjoyed. there was no cooking-stove on our plantation, and all the cooking for the whites and slaves my mother had to do over an open fireplace, mostly in pots and "skillets." while the poorly built cabin caused us to suffer with cold in the winter, the heat from the open fireplace in summer was equally trying. the early years of my life, which were spent in the little cabin, were not very different from those of thousands of other slaves. my mother, of course, had little time in which to give attention to the training of her children during the day. she snatched a few moments for our care in the early morning before her work began, and at night after the day's work was done. one of my earliest recollections is that of my mother cooking a chicken late at night, and awakening her children for the purpose of feeding them. how or where she got it i do not know. i presume, however, it was procured from our owner's farm. some people may call this theft. if such a thing were to happen now, i should condemn it as theft myself. but taking place at the time it did, and for the reason that it did, no one could ever make me believe that my mother was guilty of thieving. she was simply a victim of the system of slavery. i cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family was declared free by the emancipation proclamation. three children -john, my older brother, amanda, my sister, and myself -had a pallet on the dirt floor, or, to be more correct, we slept in and on a bundle of filthy rags laid upon the dirt floor. i was asked not long ago to tell something about the sports and pastimes that i engaged in during my youth. until that question was asked it had never occurred to me that there was no period of my life that was devoted to play. from the time that i can remember anything, almost every day of my life had been occupied in some kind of labour; though i think i would now be a more useful man if i had had time for sports. during the period that i spent in slavery i was not large enough to be of much service, still i was occupied most of the time in cleaning the yards, carrying water to the men in the fields, or going to the mill to which i used to take the corn, once a week, to be ground. the mill was about three miles from the plantation. this work i always dreaded. the heavy bag of corn would be thrown across the back of the horse, and the corn divided about evenly on each side; but in some way, almost without exception, on these trips, the corn would so shift as to become unbalanced and would fall off the horse, and often i would fall with it. as i was not strong enough to reload the corn upon the horse, i would have to wait, sometimes for many hours, till a chance passer-by came along who would help me out of my trouble. the hours while waiting for some one were usually spent in crying. the time consumed in this way made me late in reaching the mill, and by the time i got my corn ground and reached home it would be far into the night. the road was a lonely one, and often led through dense forests. i was always frightened. the woods were said to be full of soldiers who had deserted from the army, and i had been told that the first thing a deserter did to a negro boy when he found him alone was to cut off his ears. besides, when i was late in getting home i knew i would always get a severe scolding or a flogging. i had no schooling whatever while i was a slave though i remember on several occasions i went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. the picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and i had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise. so far as i can now recall, the first knowledge that i got of the fact that we were slaves, and that freedom of the slaves was being discussed, was early one morning before day, when i was awakened by my mother kneeling over her children and fervently praying that lincoln and his armies might be successful, and that one day she and her children might be free. in this connection i have never been able to understand how the slaves throughout the south, completely ignorant as were the masses so far as books or newspapers were concerned, were able to keep themselves so accurately and completely informed about the great national questions that were agitating the country. from the time that garrison, lovejoy, and others began to agitate for freedom, the slaves throughout the south kept in close touch with the progress of the movement. though i was a mere child during the preparation for the civil war and during the war itself, i now recall the many late-at-night whispered discussions that i heard my mother and the other slaves on the plantation indulge in. these discussions showed that they understood the situation, and that they kept themselves informed of events by what was termed the "grape-vine" telegraph. during the campaign when lincoln was first a candidate for the presidency, the slaves on our far-off plantation, miles from any railroad or large city or daily newspaper, knew what the issues involved were. when war was begun between the north and the south, every slave on our plantation felt and knew that, though other issues were discussed, the primal one was that of slavery. even the most ignorant members of my race on the remote plantations felt in their hearts, with a certainty that admitted of no doubt, that the freedom of the slaves would be the one great result of the war, if the northern armies conquered. every success of the federal armies and every defeat of the confederate forces was watched with the keenest and most intense interest. often the slaves got knowledge of the results of great battles before the white people received it. this news was usually gotten from the coloured man who was sent to the post-office for the mail. in our case the post-office was about three miles from the plantation, and the mail came once or twice a week. the man who was sent to the office would linger about the place long enough to get the drift of the conversation from the group of white people who naturally congregated there, after receiving their mail, to discuss the latest news. the mail-carrier on his way back to our master's house would as naturally retail the news that he had secured among the slaves, and in this way they often heard of important events before the white people at the "big house," as the master's house was called. i cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together, and god's blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a civilized manner. on the plantation in virginia, and even later, meals were gotten by the children very much as dumb animals get theirs. it was a piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there. it was a cup of milk at one time and some potatoes at another. sometimes a portion of our family would eat out of the skillet or pot, while some one else would eat from a tin plate held on the knees, and often using nothing but the hands with which to hold the food. when i had grown to sufficient size, i was required to go to the "big house" at meal-times to fan the flies from the table by means of a large set of paper fans operated by a pulley. naturally much of the conversation of the white people turned upon the subject of freedom and the war, and i absorbed a good deal of it. i remember that at one time i saw two of my young mistresses and some lady visitors eating ginger-cakes, in the yard. at that time those cakes seemed to me to be absolutely the most tempting and desirable things that i had ever seen; and i then and there resolved that, if i ever got free, the height of my ambition would be reached if i could get to the point where i could secure and eat ginger-cakes in the way that i saw those ladies doing. of course as the war was prolonged the white people, in many cases, often found it difficult to secure food for themselves. i think the slaves felt the deprivation less than the whites, because the usual diet for slaves was corn bread and pork, and these could be raised on the plantation; but coffee, tea, sugar, and other articles which the whites had been accustomed to use could not be raised on the plantation, and the conditions brought about by the war frequently made it impossible to secure these things. the whites were often in great straits. parched corn was used for coffee, and a kind of black molasses was used instead of sugar. many times nothing was used to sweeten the so-called tea and coffee. the first pair of shoes that i recall wearing were wooden ones. they had rough leather on the top, but the bottoms, which were about an inch thick, were of wood. when i walked they made a fearful noise, and besides this they were very inconvenient, since there was no yielding to the natural pressure of the foot. in wearing them one presented and exceedingly awkward appearance. the most trying ordeal that i was forced to endure as a slave boy, however, was the wearing of a flax shirt. in the portion of virginia where i lived it was common to use flax as part of the clothing for the slaves. that part of the flax from which our clothing was made was largely the refuse, which of course was the cheapest and roughest part. i can scarcely imagine any torture, except, perhaps, the pulling of a tooth, that is equal to that caused by putting on a new flax shirt for the first time. it is almost equal to the feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen or more chestnut burrs, or a hundred small pin-points, in contact with his flesh. even to this day i can recall accurately the tortures that i underwent when putting on one of these garments. the fact that my flesh was soft and tender added to the pain. but i had no choice. i had to wear the flax shirt or none; and had it been left to me to choose, i should have chosen to wear no covering. in connection with the flax shirt, my brother john, who is several years older than i am, performed one of the most generous acts that i ever heard of one slave relative doing for another. on several occasions when i was being forced to wear a new flax shirt, he generously agreed to put it on in my stead and wear it for several days, till it was "broken in." until i had grown to be quite a youth this single garment was all that i wore. one may get the idea, from what i have said, that there was bitter feeling toward the white people on the part of my race, because of the fact that most of the white population was away fighting in a war which would result in keeping the negro in slavery if the south was successful. in the case of the slaves on our place this was not true, and it was not true of any large portion of the slave population in the south where the negro was treated with anything like decency. during the civil war one of my young masters was killed, and two were severely wounded. i recall the feeling of sorrow which existed among the slaves when they heard of the death of "mars' billy." it was no sham sorrow, but real. some of the slaves had nursed "mars' billy"; others had played with him when he was a child. "mars' billy" had begged for mercy in the case of others when the overseer or master was thrashing them. the sorrow in the slave quarter was only second to that in the "big house." when the two young masters were brought home wounded, the sympathy of the slaves was shown in many ways. they were just as anxious to assist in the nursing as the family relatives of the wounded. some of the slaves would even beg for the privilege of sitting up at night to nurse their wounded masters. this tenderness and sympathy on the part of those held in bondage was a result of their kindly and generous nature. in order to defend and protect the women and children who were left on the plantations when the white males went to war, the slaves would have laid down their lives. the slave who was selected to sleep in the "big house" during the absence of the males was considered to have the place of honour. any one attempting to harm "young mistress" or "old mistress" during the night would have had to cross the dead body of the slave to do so. i do not know how many have noticed it, but i think that it will be found to be true that there are few instances, either in slavery or freedom, in which a member of my race has been known to betray a specific trust. as a rule, not only did the members of my race entertain no feelings of bitterness against the whites before and during the war, but there are many instances of negroes tenderly carrying for their former masters and mistresses who for some reason have become poor and dependent since the war. i know of instances where the former masters of slaves have for years been supplied with money by their former slaves to keep them from suffering. i have known of still other cases in which the former slaves have assisted in the education of the descendants of their former owners. i know of a case on a large plantation in the south in which a young white man, the son of the former owner of the estate, has become so reduced in purse and self control by reason of drink that he is a pitiable creature; and yet, notwithstanding the poverty of the coloured people themselves on this plantation, they have for years supplied this young white man with the necessities of life. one sends him a little coffee or sugar, another a little meat, and so on. nothing that the coloured people possess is too good for the son of "old mars' tom," who will perhaps never be permitted to suffer while any remain on the place who knew directly or indirectly of "old mars' tom." i have said that there are few instances of a member of my race betraying a specific trust. one of the best illustrations of this which i know of is in the case of an ex-slave from virginia whom i met not long ago in a little town in the state of ohio. i found that this man had made a contract with his master, two or three years previous to the emancipation proclamation, to the effect that the slave was to be permitted to buy himself, by paying so much per year for his body; and while he was paying for himself, he was to be permitted to labour where and for whom he pleased. finding that he could secure better wages in ohio, he went there. when freedom came, he was still in debt to his master some three hundred dollars. notwithstanding that the emancipation proclamation freed him from any obligation to his master, this black man walked the greater portion of the distance back to where his old master lived in virginia, and placed the last dollar, with interest, in his hands. in talking to me about this, the man told me that he knew that he did not have to pay the debt, but that he had given his word to the master, and his word he had never broken. he felt that he could not enjoy his freedom till he had fulfilled his promise. from some things that i have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. this is not true. i have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery. i pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. i have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. no one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction, and, besides, it was recognized and protected for years by the general government. having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution. then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of american slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. this is so to such an extend that negroes in this country, who themselves or whose forefathers went through the school of slavery, are constantly returning to africa as missionaries to enlighten those who remained in the fatherland. this i say, not to justify slavery -on the other hand, i condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in america it was established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a missionary motive -but to call attention to a fact, and to show how providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose. when persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, i can have such faith in the future of my race in this country, i remind them of the wilderness through which and out of which, a good providence has already led us. ever since i have been old enough to think for myself, i have entertained the idea that, notwithstanding the cruel wrongs inflicted upon us, the black man got nearly as much out of slavery as the white man did. the hurtful influences of the institution were not by any means confined to the negro. this was fully illustrated by the life upon our own plantation. the whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority. hence labour was something that both races on the slave plantation sought to escape. the slave system on our place, in a large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and self-help out of the white people. my old master had many boys and girls, but not one, so far as i know, ever mastered a single trade or special line of productive industry. the girls were not taught to cook, sew, or to take care of the house. all of this was left to the saves. the slaves, of course, had little personal interest in the life of the plantation, and their ignorance prevented them from learning how to do things in the most improved and thorough manner. as a result of the system, fences were out of repair, gates were hanging half off the hinges, doors creaked, window-panes were out, plastering had fallen but was not replaced, weeds grew in the yard. as a rule, there was food for whites and blacks, but inside the house, and on the dining-room table, there was wanting that delicacy and refinement of touch and finish which can make a home the most convenient, comfortable, and attractive place in the world. withal there was a waste of food and other materials which was sad. when freedom came, the slaves were almost as well fitted to begin life anew as the master, except in the matter of book-learning and ownership of property. the slave owner and his sons had mastered no special industry. they unconsciously had imbibed the feeling that manual labour was not the proper thing for them. on the other hand, the slaves, in many cases, had mastered some handicraft, and none were ashamed, and few unwilling, to labour. finally the war closed, and the day of freedom came. it was a momentous and eventful day to all upon our plantation. we have been expecting it. freedom was in the air, and had been for months. deserting soldiers returning to their homes were to be seen every day. others who had been discharged, or whose regiments had been paroled, were constantly passing near our place. the "grape-vine telegraph" was kept busy night and day. the news and mutterings of great events were swiftly carried from one plantation to another. in the fear of "yankee" invasions, the silverware and other valuables were taken from the "big house," buried in the woods, and guarded by trusted slaves. woe be to any one who would have attempted to disturb the buried treasure. the slaves would give the yankee soldiers food, drink, clothing -anything but that which had been specifically intrusted [sic] to their care and honour. as the great day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. it was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night. most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom. true, they had sung those same verses before, but they had been careful to explain that the "freedom" in these songs referred to the next world, and had no connection with life in this world. now they gradually threw off the mask, and were not afraid to let it be known that the "freedom" in their songs meant freedom of the body in this world. the night before the eventful day, word was sent to the slaver quarters to the effect that something unusual was going to take place at the "big house" the next morning. there was little, if any, sleep that night. all as excitement and expectancy. early the next morning word was sent to all the slaves, old and young, to gather at the house. in company with my mother, brother, and sister, and a large number of other slaves, i went to the master's house. all of our master's family were either standing or seated on the veranda of the house, where they could see what was to take place and hear what was said. there was a feeling of deep interest, or perhaps sadness, on their faces, but not bitterness. as i now recall the impression they made upon me, they did not at the moment seem to be sad because of the loss of property, but rather because of parting with those whom they had reared and who were in many ways very close to them. the most distinct thing that i now recall in connection with the scene was that some man who seemed to be a stranger (a united states officer, i presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper -the emancipation proclamation, i think. after the reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. my mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. she explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see. for some minutes there was great rejoicing, and thanksgiving, and wild scenes of ecstasy. but there was no feeling of bitterness. in fact, there was pity among the slaves for our former owners. the wild rejoicing on the part of the emancipated coloured people lasted but for a brief period, for i noticed that by the time they returned to their cabins there was a change in their feelings. the great responsibility of being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of them. it was very much like suddenly turning a youth of ten or twelve years out into the world to provide for himself. in a few hours the great questions with which the anglo saxon race had been grappling for centuries had been thrown upon these people to be solved. these were the questions of a home, a living, the rearing of children, education, citizenship, and the establishment and support of churches. was it any wonder that within a few hours the wild rejoicing ceased and a feeling of deep gloom seemed to pervade the slave quarters? to some it seemed that, now that they were in actual possession of it, freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to find it. some of the slaves were seventy or eighty years old; their best days were gone. they had no strength with which to earn a living in a strange place and among strange people, even if they had been sure where to find a new place of abode. to this class the problem seemed especially hard. besides, deep down in their hearts there was a strange and peculiar attachment to "old marster" and "old missus," and to their children, which they found it hard to think of breaking off. with these they had spent in some cases nearly a half-century, and it was no light thing to think of parting. gradually, one by one, stealthily at first, the older slaves began to wander from the slave quarters back to the "big house" to have a whispered conversation with their former owners as to the future. chapter ii boyhood days after the coming of freedom there were two points upon which practically all the people on our place were agreed, and i found that this was generally true throughout the south: that they must change their names, and that they must leave the old plantation for at least a few days or weeks in order that they might really feel sure that they were free. in some way a feeling got among the coloured people that it was far from proper for them to bear the surname of their former owners, and a great many of them took other surnames. this was one of the first signs of freedom. when they were slaves, a coloured person was simply called "john" or "susan." there was seldom occasion for more than the use of the one name. if "john" or "susan" belonged to a white man by the name of "hatcher," sometimes he was called "john hatcher," or as often "hatcher's john." but there was a feeling that "john hatcher" or "hatcher's john" was not the proper title by which to denote a freeman; and so in many cases "john hatcher" was changed to "john s. lincoln" or "john s. sherman," the initial "s" standing for no name, it being simply a part of what the coloured man proudly called his "entitles." as i have stated, most of the coloured people left the old plantation for a short while at least, so as to be sure, it seemed, that they could leave and try their freedom on to see how it felt. after they had remained away for a while, many of the older slaves, especially, returned to their old homes and made some kind of contract with their former owners by which they remained on the estate. my mother's husband, who was the stepfather of my brother john and myself, did not belong to the same owners as did my mother. in fact, he seldom came to our plantation. i remember seeing his there perhaps once a year, that being about christmas time. in some way, during the war, by running away and following the federal soldiers, it seems, he found his way into the new state of west virginia. as soon as freedom was declared, he sent for my mother to come to the kanawha valley, in west virginia. at that time a journey from virginia over the mountains to west virginia was rather a tedious and in some cases a painful undertaking. what little clothing and few household goods we had were placed in a cart, but the children walked the greater portion of the distance, which was several hundred miles. i do not think any of us ever had been very far from the plantation, and the taking of a long journey into another state was quite an event. the parting from our former owners and the members of our own race on the plantation was a serious occasion. from the time of our parting till their death we kept up a correspondence with the older members of the family, and in later years we have kept in touch with those who were the younger members. we were several weeks making the trip, and most of the time we slept in the open air and did our cooking over a log fire out-of-doors. one night i recall that we camped near an abandoned log cabin, and my mother decided to build a fire in that for cooking, and afterward to make a "pallet" on the floor for our sleeping. just as the fire had gotten well started a large black snake fully a yard and a half long dropped down the chimney and ran out on the floor. of course we at once abandoned that cabin. finally we reached our destination -a little town called malden, which is about five miles from charleston, the present capital of the state. at that time salt-mining was the great industry in that part of west virginia, and the little town of malden was right in the midst of the salt-furnaces. my stepfather had already secured a job at a salt furnace, and he had also secured a little cabin for us to live in. our new house was no better than the one we had left on the old plantation in virginia. in fact, in one respect it was worse. notwithstanding the poor condition of our plantation cabin, we were at all times sure of pure air. our new home was in the midst of a cluster of cabins crowded closely together, and as there were no sanitary regulations, the filth about the cabins was often intolerable. some of our neighbours were coloured people, and some were the poorest and most ignorant and degraded white people. it was a motley mixture. drinking, gambling, quarrels, fights, and shockingly immoral practices were frequent. all who lived in the little town were in one way or another connected with the salt business. though i was a mere child, my stepfather put me and my brother at work in one of the furnaces. often i began work as early as four o'clock in the morning. the first thing i ever learned in the way of book knowledge was while working in this salt-furnace. each salt-packer had his barrels marked with a certain number. the number allotted to my stepfather was "18." at the close of the day's work the boss of the packers would come around and put "18" on each of our barrels, and i soon learned to recognize that figure wherever i saw it, and after a while got to the point where i could make that figure, though i knew nothing about any other figures or letters. from the time that i can remember having any thoughts about anything, i recall that i had an intense longing to learn to read. i determined, when quite a small child, that, if i accomplished nothing else in life, i would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common books and newspapers. soon after we got settled in some manner in our new cabin in west virginia, i induced my mother to get hold of a book for me. how or where she got it i do not know, but in some way she procured an old copy of webster's "blue-back" spelling book, which contained the alphabet, followed by such meaningless words as "ab," "ba," "ca," "da." i began at once to devour this book, and i think that it was the first one i ever had in my hands. i had learned from somebody that the way to begin to read was to learn the alphabet, so i tried in all the ways i could think of to learn it, -all of course without a teacher, for i could find no one to teach me. at that time there was not a single member of my race anywhere near us who could read, and i was too timid to approach any of the white people. in some way, within a few weeks, i mastered the greater portion of the alphabet. in all my efforts to learn to read my mother shared fully my ambition, and sympathized with me and aided me in every way that she could. though she was totally ignorant, she had high ambitions for her children, and a large fund of good, hard, common sense, which seemed to enable her to meet and master every situation. if i have done anything in life worth attention, i feel sure that i inherited the disposition from my mother. in the midst of my struggles and longing for an education, a young coloured boy who had learned to read in the state of ohio came to malden. as soon as the coloured people found out that he could read, a newspaper was secured, and at the close of nearly every day's work this young man would be surrounded by a group of men and women who were anxious to hear him read the news contained in the papers. how i used to envy this man! he seemed to me to be the one young man in all the world who ought to be satisfied with his attainments. about this time the question of having some kind of a school opened for the coloured children in the village began to be discussed by members of the race. as it would be the first school for negro children that had ever been opened in that part of virginia, it was, of course, to be a great event, and the discussion excited the wildest interest. the most perplexing question was where to find a teacher. the young man from ohio who had learned to read the papers was considered, but his age was against him. in the midst of the discussion about a teacher, another young coloured man from ohio, who had been a soldier, in some way found his way into town. it was soon learned that he possessed considerable education, and he was engaged by the coloured people to teach their first school. as yet no free schools had been started for coloured people in that section, hence each family agreed to pay a certain amount per month, with the understanding that the teacher was to "board 'round" -that is, spend a day with each family. this was not bad for the teacher, for each family tried to provide the very best on the day the teacher was to be its guest. i recall that i looked forward with an anxious appetite to the "teacher's day" at our little cabin. this experience of a whole race beginning to go to school for the first time, presents one of the most interesting studies that has ever occurred in connection with the development of any race. few people who were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea of the intense desire which the people of my race showed for an education. as i have stated, it was a whole race trying to go to school. few were too young, and none too old, to make the attempt to learn. as fast as any kind of teachers could be secured, not only were day-schools filled, but night-schools as well. the great ambition of the older people was to try to learn to read the bible before they died. with this end in view men and women who were fifty or seventy-five years old would often be found in the night-school. some day-schools were formed soon after freedom, but the principal book studied in the sunday-school was the spelling-book. day-school, night-school, sunday-school, were always crowded, and often many had to be turned away for want of room. the opening of the school in the kanawha valley, however, brought to me one of the keenest disappointments that i ever experienced. i had been working in a salt-furnace for several months, and my stepfather had discovered that i had a financial value, and so, when the school opened, he decided that he could not spare me from my work. this decision seemed to cloud my every ambition. the disappointment was made all the more severe by reason of the fact that my place of work was where i could see the happy children passing to and from school mornings and afternoons. despite this disappointment, however, i determined that i would learn something, anyway. i applied myself with greater earnestness than ever to the mastering of what was in the "blue-back" speller. my mother sympathized with me in my disappointment, and sought to comfort me in all the ways she could, and to help me find a way to learn. after a while i succeeded in making arrangements with the teacher to give me some lessons at night, after the day's work was done. these night lessons were so welcome that i think i learned more at night than the other children did during the day. my own experiences in the night-school gave me faith in the night-school idea, with which, in after years, i had to do both at hampton and tuskegee. but my boyish heart was still set upon going to the day school, and i let no opportunity slip to push my case. finally i won, and was permitted to go to the school in the day for a few months, with the understanding that i was to rise early in the morning and work in the furnace till nine o'clock, and return immediately after school closed in the afternoon for at least two more hours of work. the schoolhouse was some distance from the furnace, and as i had to work till nine o'clock, and the school opened at nine, i found myself in a difficulty. school would always be begun before i reached it, and sometimes my class had recited. to get around this difficulty i yielded to a temptation for which most people, i suppose, will condemn me; but since it is a fact, i might as well state it. i have great faith in the power and influence of facts. it is seldom that anything is permanently gained by holding back a fact. there was a large clock in a little office in the furnace. this clock, of course, all the hundred or more workmen depended upon to regulate their hours of beginning and ending the day's work. i got the idea that the way for me to reach school on time was to move the clock hands from half past eight up to the nine o'clock mark. this i found myself doing morning after morning, till the furnace "boss" discovered that something was wrong, and locked the clock in a case. i did not mean to inconvenience anybody. i simply meant to reach that schoolhouse in time. when, however, i found myself at the school for the first time, i also found myself confronted with two other difficulties. in the first place, i found that all the other children wore hats or caps on their heads, and i had neither hat nor cap. in fact, i do not remember that up to the time of going to school i had ever worn any kind of covering upon my head, nor do i recall that either i or anybody else had even thought anything about the need of covering for my head. but, of course, when i saw how all the other boys were dressed, i began to feel quite uncomfortable. as usual, i put the case before my mother, and she explained to me that she had no money with which to buy a "store hat," which was a rather new institution at that time among the members of my race and was considered quite the thing for young and old to own, but that she would find a way to help me out of the difficulty. she accordingly got two pieces of "homespun" (jeans) and sewed them together, and i was soon the proud possessor of my first cap. the lesson that my mother taught me in this has always remained with me, and i have tried as best as i could to teach it to others. i have always felt proud, whenever i think of the incident, that my mother had strength of character enough not to be led into the temptation of seeming to be that which she was not -of trying to impress my schoolmates and others with the fact that she was able to buy me a "store hat" when she was not. i have always felt proud that she refused to go into debt for that which she did not have the money to pay for. since that time i have owned many kinds of caps and hats, but never one of which i have felt so proud as of the cap made of the two pieces of cloth sewed together by my mother. i have noted the fact, but without satisfaction, i need not add, that several of the boys who began their careers with "store hats" and who were my schoolmates and used to join in the sport that was made of me because i had only a "homespun" cap, have ended their careers in the penitentiary, while others are not able now to buy any kind of hat. my second difficulty was with regard to my name, or rather _a_ name. from the time when i could remember anything, i had been called simply "booker." before going to school it had never occurred to me that it was needful or appropriate to have an additional name. when i heard the schoolroll called, i noticed that all of the children had at least two names, and some of them indulged in what seemed to me the extravagance of having three. i was in deep perplexity, because i knew that the teacher would demand of me at least two names, and i had only one. by the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name, an idea occurred to me which i thought would make me equal to the situation; and so, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, i calmly told him "booker washington," as if i had been called by that name all my life; and by that name i have since been known. later in my life i found that my mother had given me the name of "booker taliaferro" soon after i was born, but in some way that part of my name seemed to disappear and for a long while was forgotten, but as soon as i found out about it i revived it, and made my full name "booker taliaferro washington." i think there are not many men in our country who have had the privilege of naming themselves in the way that i have. more than once i have tried to picture myself in the position of a boy or man with an honoured and distinguished ancestry which i could trace back through a period of hundreds of years, and who had not only inherited a name, but fortune and a proud family homestead; and yet i have sometimes had the feeling that if i had inherited these, and had been a member of a more popular race, i should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my colour to do that for me which i should do for myself. years ago i resolved that because i had no ancestry myself i would leave a record of which my children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher effort. the world should not pass judgment upon the negro, and especially the negro youth, too quickly or too harshly. the negro boy has obstacles, discouragements, and temptations to battle with that are little know to those not situated as he is. when a white boy undertakes a task, it is taken for granted that he will succeed. on the other hand, people are usually surprised if the negro boy does not fail. in a word, the negro youth starts out with the presumption against him. the influence of ancestry, however, is important in helping forward any individual or race, if too much reliance is not placed upon it. those who constantly direct attention to the negro youth's moral weaknesses, and compare his advancement with that of white youths, do not consider the influence of the memories which cling about the old family homesteads. i have no idea, as i have stated elsewhere, who my grandmother was. i have, or have had, uncles and aunts and cousins, but i have no knowledge as to where most of them are. my case will illustrate that of hundreds of thousands of black people in every part of our country. the very fact that the white boy is conscious that, if he fails in life, he will disgrace the whole family record, extending back through many generations, is of tremendous value in helping him to resist temptations. the fact that the individual has behind and surrounding him proud family history and connection serves as a stimulus to help him to overcome obstacles when striving for success. the time that i was permitted to attend school during the day was short, and my attendance was irregular. it was not long before i had to stop attending day-school altogether, and devote all of my time again to work. i resorted to the night-school again. in fact, the greater part of the education i secured in my boyhood was gathered through the night-school after my day's work was done. i had difficulty often in securing a satisfactory teacher. sometimes, after i had secured some one to teach me at night, i would find, much to my disappointment, that the teacher knew but little more than i did. often i would have to walk several miles at night in order to recite my night-school lessons. there was never a time in my youth, no matter how dark and discouraging the days might be, when one resolve did not continually remain with me, and that was a determination to secure an education at any cost. soon after we moved to west virginia, my mother adopted into our family, notwithstanding our poverty, an orphan boy, to whom afterward we gave the name of james b. washington. he has ever since remained a member of the family. after i had worked in the salt-furnace for some time, work was secured for me in a coal-mine which was operated mainly for the purpose of securing fuel for the salt-furnace. work in the coal-mine i always dreaded. one reason for this was that any one who worked in a coal-mine was always unclean., at least while at work, and it was a very hard job to get one's skin clean after the day's work was over. then it was fully a mile from the opening of the coal-mine to the face of the coal, and all, of course, was in the blackest darkness. i do not believe that one ever experiences anywhere else such darkness as he does in a coal-mine. the mine was divided into a large number of different "rooms" or departments, and, as i never was able to learn the location of all these "rooms," i many times found myself lost in the mine. to add to the horror of being lost, sometimes my light would go out, and then, if i did not happen to have a match, i would wander about in the darkness until by chance i found some one to give me a light. the work was not only hard, but it was dangerous. there was always the danger of being blown to pieces by a premature explosion of powder, or of being crushed by falling slate. accidents from one or the other of these causes were frequently occurring, and this kept me in constant fear. many children of the tenderest years were compelled then, as is now true i fear, in most coal-mining districts, to spend a large part of their lives in these coal-mines, with little opportunity to get an education; and, what is worse, i have often noted that, as a rule, young boys who begin life in a coal mine are often physically and mentally dwarfed. they soon lose ambition to do anything else than to continue as a coal-miner. in those days, and later as a young man, i used to try to picture in my imagination the feelings and ambitions of a white boy with absolutely no limit placed upon his aspirations and activities. i used to envy the white boy who had no obstacles placed in the way of his becoming a congressman, governor, bishop, or president by reason of the accident of his birth or race. i used to picture the way that i would act under such circumstances; how i would begin at the bottom and keep rising until i reached the highest round of success. in later years, i confess that i do not envy the white boy as i once did. i have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. looked at from this standpoint, i almost reached the conclusion that often the negro boy's birth and connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life is concerned. with few exceptions, the negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition. but out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race. from any point of view, i had rather be what i am, a member of the negro race, than be able to claim membership with the most favoured of any other race. i have always been made sad when i have heard members of any race claiming rights or privileges, or certain badges of distinction, on the ground simply that they were members of this or that race, regardless of their own individual worth or attainments. i have been made to feel sad for such persons because i am conscious of the fact that mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless he has individual worth, and mere connection with what is regarded as an inferior race will not finally hold an individual back if he possesses intrinsic, individual merit. every persecuted individual and race should get much consolation out of the great human law, which is universal and eternal, that merit, no matter under what skin found, is, in the long run, recognized and rewarded. this i have said here, not to call attention to myself as an individual, but to the race to which i am proud to belong. chapter iii the struggle for an education one day, while at work in the coal-mine, i happened to overhear two miners talking about a great school for coloured people somewhere in virginia. this was the first time that i had ever heard anything about any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little coloured school in our town. in the darkness of the mine i noiselessly crept as close as i could to the two men who were talking. i heard one tell the other that not only was the school established for the members of any race, but the opportunities that it provided by which poor but worthy students could work out all or a part of the cost of a board, and at the same time be taught some trade or industry. as they went on describing the school, it seemed to me that it must be the greatest place on earth, and not even heaven presented more attractions for me at that time than did the hampton normal and agricultural institute in virginia, about which these men were talking. i resolved at once to go to that school, although i had no idea where it was, or how many miles away, or how i was going to reach it; i remembered only that i was on fire constantly with one ambition, and that was to go to hampton. this thought was with me day and night. after hearing of the hampton institute, i continued to work for a few months longer in the coal-mine. while at work there, i heard of a vacant position in the household of general lewis ruffner, the owner of the salt-furnace and coal-mine. mrs. viola ruffner, the wife of general ruffner, was a "yankee" woman from vermont. mrs. ruffner had a reputation all through the vicinity for being very strict with her servants, and especially with the boys who tried to serve her. few of them remained with her more than two or three weeks. they all left with the same excuse: she was too strict. i decided, however, that i would rather try mrs. ruffner's house than remain in the coal-mine, and so my mother applied to her for the vacant position. i was hired at a salary of $5 per month. i had heard so much about mrs. ruffner's severity that i was almost afraid to see her, and trembled when i went into her presence. i had not lived with her many weeks, however, before i began to understand her. i soon began to learn that, first of all, she wanted everything kept clean about her, that she wanted things done promptly and systematically, and that at the bottom of everything she wanted absolute honesty and frankness. nothing must be sloven or slipshod; every door, every fence, must be kept in repair. i cannot now recall how long i lived with mrs. ruffner before going to hampton, but i think it must have been a year and a half. at any rate, i here repeat what i have said more than once before, that the lessons that i learned in the home of mrs. ruffner were as valuable to me as any education i have ever gotten anywhere else. even to this day i never see bits of paper scattered around a house or in the street that i do not want to pick them up at once. i never see a filthy yard that i do not want to clean it, a paling off of a fence that i do not want to put it on, an unpainted or unwhitewashed house that i do not want to pain or whitewash it, or a button off one's clothes, or a grease-spot on them or on a floor, that i do not want to call attention to it. from fearing mrs. ruffner i soon learned to look upon her as one of my best friends. when she found that she could trust me she did so implicitly. during the one or two winters that i was with her she gave me an opportunity to go to school for an hour in the day during a portion of the winter months, but most of my studying was done at night, sometimes alone, sometimes under some one whom i could hire to teach me. mrs. ruffner always encouraged and sympathized with me in all my efforts to get an education. it was while living with her that i began to get together my first library. i secured a dry-goods box, knocked out one side of it, put some shelves in it, and began putting into it every kind of book that i could get my hands upon, and called it my "library." notwithstanding my success at mrs. ruffner's i did not give up the idea of going to the hampton institute. in the fall of 1872 i determined to make an effort to get there, although, as i have stated, i had no definite idea of the direction in which hampton was, or of what it would cost to go there. i do not think that any one thoroughly sympathized with me in my ambition to go to hampton unless it was my mother, and she was troubled with a grave fear that i was starting out on a "wild-goose chase." at any rate, i got only a half hearted consent from her that i might start. the small amount of money that i had earned had been consumed by my stepfather and the remainder of the family, with the exception of a very few dollars, and so i had very little with which to buy clothes and pay my travelling expenses. my brother john helped me all that he could, but of course that was not a great deal, for his work was in the coal-mine, where he did not earn much, and most of what he did earn went in the direction of paying the household expenses. perhaps the thing that touched and pleased me most in connection with my starting for hampton was the interest that many of the older coloured people took in the matter. they had spent the best days of their lives in slavery, and hardly expected to live to see the time when they would see a member of their race leave home to attend a boarding-school. some of these older people would give me a nickel, others a quarter, or a handkerchief. finally the great day came, and i started for hampton. i had only a small, cheap satchel that contained a few articles of clothing i could get. my mother at the time was rather weak and broken in health. i hardly expected to see her again, and thus our parting was all the more sad. she, however, was very brave through it all. at that time there were no through trains connecting that part of west virginia with eastern virginia. trains ran only a portion of the way, and the remainder of the distance was travelled by stage-coaches. the distance from malden to hampton is about five hundred miles. i had not been away from home many hours before it began to grow painfully evident that i did not have enough money to pay my fair to hampton. one experience i shall long remember. i had been travelling over the mountains most of the afternoon in an old-fashion stage coach, when, late in the evening, the coach stopped for the night at a common, unpainted house called a hotel. all the other passengers except myself were whites. in my ignorance i supposed that the little hotel existed for the purpose of accommodating the passengers who travelled on the stage-coach. the difference that the colour of one's skin would make i had not thought anything about. after all the other passengers had been shown rooms and were getting ready for supper, i shyly presented myself before the man at the desk. it is true i had practically no money in my pocket with which to pay for bed or food, but i had hoped in some way to beg my way into the good graces of the landlord, for at that season in the mountains of virginia the weather was cold, and i wanted to get indoors for the night. without asking as to whether i had any money, the man at the desk firmly refused to even consider the matter of providing me with food or lodging. this was my first experience in finding out what the colour of my skin meant. in some way i managed to keep warm by walking about, and so got through the night. my whole soul was so bent upon reaching hampton that i did not have time to cherish any bitterness toward the hotel-keeper. by walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the cars, in some way, after a number of days, i reached the city of richmond, virginia, about eighty-two miles from hampton. when i reached there, tired, hungry, and dirty, it was late in the night. i had never been in a large city, and this rather added to my misery. when i reached richmond, i was completely out of money. i had not a single acquaintance in the place, and, being unused to city ways, i did not know where to go. i applied at several places for lodging, but they all wanted money, and that was what i did not have. knowing nothing else better to do, i walked the streets. in doing this i passed by many a food-stands where fried chicken and half-moon apple pies were piled high and made to present a most tempting appearance. at that time it seemed to me that i would have promised all that i expected to possess in the future to have gotten hold of one of those chicken legs or one of those pies. but i could not get either of these, nor anything else to eat. i must have walked the streets till after midnight. at last i became so exhausted that i could walk no longer. i was tired, i was hungry, i was everything but discouraged. just about the time when i reached extreme physical exhaustion, i came upon a portion of a street where the board sidewalk was considerably elevated. i waited for a few minutes, till i was sure that no passers-by could see me, and then crept under the sidewalk and lay for the night upon the ground, with my satchel of clothing for a pillow. nearly all night i could hear the tramp of feet over my head. the next morning i found myself somewhat refreshed, but i was extremely hungry, because it had been a long time since i had had sufficient food. as soon as it became light enough for me to see my surroundings i noticed that i was near a large ship, and that this ship seemed to be unloading a cargo of pig iron. i went at once to the vessel and asked the captain to permit me to help unload the vessel in order to get money for food. the captain, a white man, who seemed to be kind-hearted, consented. i worked long enough to earn money for my breakfast, and it seems to me, as i remember it now, to have been about the best breakfast that i have ever eaten. my work pleased the captain so well that he told me if i desired i could continue working for a small amount per day. this i was very glad to do. i continued working on this vessel for a number of days. after buying food with the small wages i received there was not much left to add on the amount i must get to pay my way to hampton. in order to economize in every way possible, so as to be sure to reach hampton in a reasonable time, i continued to sleep under the same sidewalk that gave me shelter the first night i was in richmond. many years after that the coloured citizens of richmond very kindly tendered me a reception at which there must have been two thousand people present. this reception was held not far from the spot where i slept the first night i spent in the city, and i must confess that my mind was more upon the sidewalk that first gave me shelter than upon the recognition, agreeable and cordial as it was. when i had saved what i considered enough money with which to reach hampton, i thanked the captain of the vessel for his kindness, and started again. without any unusual occurrence i reached hampton, with a surplus of exactly fifty cents with which to begin my education. to me it had been a long, eventful journey; but the first sight of the large, three-story, brick school building seemed to have rewarded me for all that i had undergone in order to reach the place. if the people who gave the money to provide that building could appreciate the influence the sight of it had upon me, as well as upon thousands of other youths, they would feel all the more encouraged to make such gifts. it seemed to me to be the largest and most beautiful building i had ever seen. the sight of it seemed to give me new life. i felt that a new kind of existence had now begun -that life would now have a new meaning. i felt that i had reached the promised land, and i resolved to let no obstacle prevent me from putting forth the highest effort to fit myself to accomplish the most good in the world. as soon as possible after reaching the grounds of the hampton institute, i presented myself before the head teacher for an assignment to a class. having been so long without proper food, a bath, and a change of clothing, i did not, of course, make a very favourable impression upon her, and i could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a student. i felt that i could hardly blame her if she got the idea that i was a worthless loafer or tramp. for some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither did she decide in my favour, and i continued to linger about her, and to impress her in all the ways i could with my worthiness. in the meantime i saw her admitting other students, and that added greatly to my discomfort, for i felt, deep down in my heart, that i could do as well as they, if i could only get a chance to show what was in me. after some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me: "the adjoining recitation-room needs sweeping. take the broom and sweep it." it occurred to me at once that here was my chance. never did i receive an order with more delight. i knew that i could sweep, for mrs. ruffner had thoroughly taught me how to do that when i lived with her. i swept the recitation-room three times. then i got a dusting cloth and dusted it four times. all the woodwork around the walls, every bench, table, and desk, i went over four times with my dusting cloth. besides, every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in the room had been thoroughly cleaned. i had the feeling that in a large measure my future dependent upon the impression i made upon the teacher in the cleaning of that room. when i was through, i reported to the head teacher. she was a "yankee" woman who knew just where to look for dirt. she went into the room and inspected the floor and closets; then she took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the woodwork about the walls, and over the table and benches. when she was unable to find one bit of dirt on the floor, or a particle of dust on any of the furniture, she quietly remarked, "i guess you will do to enter this institution." i was one of the happiest souls on earth. the sweeping of that room was my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for entrance into harvard or yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction. i have passed several examinations since then, but i have always felt that this was the best one i ever passed. i have spoken of my own experience in entering the hampton institute. perhaps few, if any, had anything like the same experience that i had, but about the same period there were hundreds who found their way to hampton and other institutions after experiencing something of the same difficulties that i went through. the young men and women were determined to secure an education at any cost. the sweeping of the recitation-room in the manner that i did it seems to have paved the way for me to get through hampton. miss mary f. mackie, the head teacher, offered me a position as janitor. this, of course, i gladly accepted, because it was a place where i could work out nearly all the cost of my board. the work was hard and taxing but i stuck to it. i had a large number of rooms to care for, and had to work late into the night, while at the same time i had to rise by four o'clock in the morning, in order to build the fires and have a little time in which to prepare my lessons. in all my career at hampton, and ever since i have been out in the world, miss mary f. mackie, the head teacher to whom i have referred, proved one of my strongest and most helpful friends. her advice and encouragement were always helpful in strengthening to me in the darkest hour. i have spoken of the impression that was made upon me by the buildings and general appearance of the hampton institute, but i have not spoken of that which made the greatest and most lasting impression on me, and that was a great man -the noblest, rarest human being that it has ever been my privilege to meet. i refer to the late general samuel c. armstrong. it has been my fortune to meet personally many of what are called great characters, both in europe and america, but i do not hesitate to say that i never met any man who, in my estimation, was the equal of general armstrong. fresh from the degrading influences of the slave plantation and the coal-mines, it was a rare privilege for me to be permitted to come into direct contact with such a character as general armstrong. i shall always remember that the first time i went into his presence he made the impression upon me of being a perfect man: i was made to feel that there was something about him that was superhuman. it was my privilege to know the general personally from the time i entered hampton till he died, and the more i saw of him the greater he grew in my estimation. one might have removed from hampton all the buildings, class-rooms, teachers, and industries, and given the men and women there the opportunity of coming into daily contact with general armstrong, and that alone would have been a liberal education. the older i grow, the more i am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women. instead of studying books so constantly, how i wish that our schools and colleges might learn to study men and things! general armstrong spent two of the last six months of his life in my home at tuskegee. at that time he was paralyzed to the extent that he had lost control of his body and voice in a very large degree. notwithstanding his affliction, he worked almost constantly night and day for the cause to which he had given his life. i never saw a man who so completely lost sight of himself. i do not believe he ever had a selfish thought. he was just as happy in trying to assist some other institution in the south as he was when working for hampton. although he fought the southern white man in the civil war, i never heard him utter a bitter word against him afterward. on the other hand, he was constantly seeking to find ways by which he could be of service to the southern whites. it would be difficult to describe the hold that he had upon the students at hampton, or the faith they had in him. in fact, he was worshipped by his students. it never occurred to me that general armstrong could fail in anything that he undertook. there is almost no request that he could have made that would not have been complied with. when he was a guest at my home in alabama, and was so badly paralyzed that he had to be wheeled about in an invalid's chair, i recall that one of the general's former students had occasion to push his chair up a long, steep hill that taxed his strength to the utmost. when the top of the hill was reached, the former pupil, with a glow of happiness on his face, exclaimed, "i am so glad that i have been permitted to do something that was real hard for the general before he dies!" while i was a student at hampton, the dormitories became so crowded that it was impossible to find room for all who wanted to be admitted. in order to help remedy the difficulty, the general conceived the plan of putting up tents to be used as rooms. as soon as it became known that general armstrong would be pleased if some of the older students would live in the tents during the winter, nearly every student in school volunteered to go. i was one of the volunteers. the winter that we spent in those tents was an intensely cold one, and we suffered severely -how much i am sure general armstrong never knew, because we made no complaints. it was enough for us to know that we were pleasing general armstrong, and that we were making it possible for an additional number of students to secure an education. more than once, during a cold night, when a stiff gale would be blowing, our tend was lifted bodily, and we would find ourselves in the open air. the general would usually pay a visit to the tents early in the morning, and his earnest, cheerful, encouraging voice would dispel any feeling of despondency. i have spoken of my admiration for general armstrong, and yet he was but a type of that christlike body of men and women who went into the negro schools at the close of the war by the hundreds to assist in lifting up my race. the history of the world fails to show a higher, purer, and more unselfish class of men and women than those who found their way into those negro schools. life at hampton was a constant revelation to me; was constantly taking me into a new world. the matter of having meals at regular hours, of eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bath tub and of the tooth-brush, as well as the use of sheets upon the bed, were all new to me. i sometimes feel that almost the most valuable lesson i got at the hampton institute was in the use and value of the bath. i learned there for the first time some of its value, not only in keeping the body healthy, but in inspiring self-respect and promoting virtue. in all my travels in the south and elsewhere since leaving hampton i have always in some way sought my daily bath. to get it sometimes when i have been the guest of my own people in a single-roomed cabin has not always been easy to do, except by slipping away to some stream in the woods. i have always tried to teach my people that some provision for bathing should be a part of every house. for some time, while a student at hampton, i possessed but a single pair of socks, but when i had worn these till they became soiled, i would wash them at night and hang them by the fire to dry, so that i might wear them again the next morning. the charge for my board at hampton was ten dollars per month. i was expected to pay a part of this in cash and to work out the remainder. to meet this cash payment, as i have stated, i had just fifty cents when i reached the institution. aside from a very few dollars that my brother john was able to send me once in a while, i had no money with which to pay my board. i was determined from the first to make my work as janitor so valuable that my services would be indispensable. this i succeeded in doing to such an extent that i was soon informed that i would be allowed the full cost of my board in return for my work. the cost of tuition was seventy dollars a year. this, of course, was wholly beyond my ability to provide. if i had been compelled to pay the seventy dollars for tuition, in addition to providing for my board, i would have been compelled to leave the hampton school. general armstrong, however, very kindly got mr. s. griffitts morgan, of new bedford, mass., to defray the cost of my tuition during the whole time that i was at hampton. after i finished the course at hampton and had entered upon my lifework at tuskegee, i had the pleasure of visiting mr. morgan several times. after having been for a while at hampton, i found myself in difficulty because i did not have book and clothing. usually, however, i got around the trouble about books by borrowing from those who were more fortunate than myself. as to clothes, when i reached hampton i had practically nothing. everything that i possessed was in a small hand satchel. my anxiety about clothing was increased because of the fact that general armstrong made a personal inspection of the young men in ranks, to see that their clothes were clean. shoes had to be polished, there must be no buttons off the clothing, and no grease-spots. to wear one suit of clothes continually, while at work and in the schoolroom, and at the same time keep it clean, was rather a hard problem for me to solve. in some way i managed to get on till the teachers learned that i was in earnest and meant to succeed, and then some of them were kind enough to see that i was partly supplied with second-hand clothing that had been sent in barrels from the north. these barrels proved a blessing to hundreds of poor but deserving students. without them i question whether i should ever have gotten through hampton. when i first went to hampton i do not recall that i had ever slept in a bed that had two sheets on it. in those days there were not many buildings there, and room was very precious. there were seven other boys in the same room with me; most of them, however, students who had been there for some time. the sheets were quite a puzzle to me. the first night i slept under both of them, and the second night i slept on top of them; but by watching the other boys i learned my lesson in this, and have been trying to follow it ever since and to teach it to others. i was among the youngest of the students who were in hampton at the time. most of the students were men and women -some as old as forty years of ago. as i now recall the scene of my first year, i do not believe that one often has the opportunity of coming into contact with three or four hundred men and women who were so tremendously in earnest as these men and women were. every hour was occupied in study or work. nearly all had had enough actual contact with the world to teach them the need of education. many of the older ones were, of course, too old to master the text-books very thoroughly, and it was often sad to watch their struggles; but they made up in earnest much of what they lacked in books. many of them were as poor as i was, and, besides having to wrestle with their books, they had to struggle with a poverty which prevented their having the necessities of life. many of them had aged parents who were dependent upon them, and some of them were men who had wives whose support in some way they had to provide for. the great and prevailing idea that seemed to take possession of every one was to prepare himself to lift up the people at his home. no one seemed to think of himself. and the officers and teachers, what a rare set of human beings they were! they worked for the students night and day, in seasons and out of season. they seemed happy only when they were helping the students in some manner. whenever it is written -and i hope it will be -the part that the yankee teachers played in the education of the negroes immediately after the war will make one of the most thrilling parts of the history off this country. the time is not far distant when the whole south will appreciate this service in a way that it has not yet been able to do. chapter iv helping others at the end of my first year at hampton i was confronted with another difficulty. most of the students went home to spend their vacation. i had no money with which to go home, but i had to go somewhere. in those days very few students were permitted to remain at the school during vacation. it made me feel very sad and homesick to see the other students preparing to leave and starting for home. i not only had no money with which to go home, but i had none with which to go anywhere. in some way, however, i had gotten hold of an extra, second-hand coat which i thought was a pretty valuable coat. this i decided to sell, in order to get a little money for travelling expenses. i had a good deal of boyish pride, and i tried to hide, as far as i could, from the other students the fact that i had no money and nowhere to go. i made it known to a few people in the town of hampton that i had this coat to sell, and, after a good deal of persuading, one coloured man promised to come to my room to look the coat over and consider the matter of buying it. this cheered my drooping spirits considerably. early the next morning my prospective customer appeared. after looking the garment over carefully, he asked me how much i wanted for it. i told him i thought it was worth three dollars. he seemed to agree with me as to price, but remarked in the most matter-of-fact way: "i tell you what i will do; i will take the coat, and will pay you five cents, cash down, and pay you the rest of the money just as soon as i can get it." it is not hard to imagine what my feelings were at the time. with this disappointment i gave up all hope of getting out of the town of hampton for my vacation work. i wanted very much to go where i might secure work that would at least pay me enough to purchase some much-needed clothing and other necessities. in a few days practically all the students and teachers had left for their homes, and this served to depress my spirits even more. after trying for several days in and near the town of hampton, i finally secured work in a restaurant at fortress monroe. the wages, however, were very little more than my board. at night, and between meals, i found considerable time for study and reading; and in this direction i improved myself very much during the summer. when i left school at the end of my first year, i owed the institution sixteen dollars that i had not been able to work out. it was my greatest ambition during the summer to save money enough with which to pay this debt. i felt that this was a debt of honour, and that i could hardly bring myself to the point of even trying to enter school again till it was paid. i economized in every way that i could think of -did my own washing, and went without necessary garments - but still i found my summer vacation ending and i did not have the sixteen dollars. one day, during the last week of my stay in the restaurant, i found under one of the tables a crisp, new ten-dollar bill. i could hardly contain myself, i was so happy. as it was not my place of business i felt it to be the proper thing to show the money to the proprietor. this i did. he seemed as glad as i was, but he coolly explained to me that, as it was his place of business, he had a right to keep the money, and he proceeded to do so. this, i confess, was another pretty hard blow to me. i will not say that i became discouraged, for as i now look back over my life i do not recall that i ever became discouraged over anything that i set out to accomplish. i have begun everything with the idea that i could succeed, and i never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed. i determined to face the situation just as it was. at the end of the week i went to the treasurer of the hampton institute, general j.f.b. marshall, and told him frankly my condition. to my gratification he told me that i could reenter the institution, and that he would trust me to pay the debt when i could. during the second year i continued to work as a janitor. the education that i received at hampton out of the text-books was but a small part of what i learned there. one of the things that impressed itself upon me deeply, the second year, was the unselfishness of the teachers. it was hard for me to understand how any individuals could bring themselves to the point where they could be so happy in working for others. before the end of the year, i think i began learning that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others. this lesson i have tried to carry with me ever since. i also learned a valuable lesson at hampton by coming into contact with the best breeds of live stock and fowls. no student, i think, who has had the opportunity of doing this could go out into the world and content himself with the poorest grades. perhaps the most valuable thing that i got out of my second year was an understanding of the use and value of the bible. miss nathalie lord, one of the teachers, from portland, me., taught me how to use and love the bible. before this i had never cared a great deal about it, but now i learned to love to read the bible, not only for the spiritual help which it gives, but on account of it as literature. the lessons taught me in this respect took such a hold upon me that at the present time, when i am at home, no matter how busy i am, i always make it a rule to read a chapter or a portion of a chapter in the morning, before beginning the work of the day. whatever ability i may have as a public speaker i owe in a measure to miss lord. when she found out that i had some inclination in this direction, she gave me private lessons in the matter of breathing, emphasis, and articulation. simply to be able to talk in public for the sake of talking has never had the least attraction to me. in fact, i consider that there is nothing so empty and unsatisfactory as mere abstract public speaking; but from my early childhood i have had a desire to do something to make the world better, and then to be able to speak to the world about that thing. the debating societies at hampton were a constant source of delight to me. these were held on saturday evening; and during my whole life at hampton i do not recall that i missed a single meeting. i not only attended the weekly debating society, but was instrumental in organizing an additional society. i noticed that between the time when supper was over and the time to begin evening study there were about twenty minutes which the young men usually spent in idle gossip. about twenty of us formed a society for the purpose of utilizing this time in debate or in practice in public speaking. few persons ever derived more happiness or benefit from the use of twenty minutes of time than we did in this way. at the end of my second year at hampton, by the help of some money sent me by my mother and brother john, supplemented by a small gift from one of the teachers at hampton, i was enabled to return to my home in malden, west virginia, to spend my vacation. when i reached home i found that the salt-furnaces were not running, and that the coal-mine was not being operated on account of the miners being out on "strike." this was something which, it seemed, usually occurred whenever the men got two or three months ahead in their savings. during the strike, of course, they spent all that they had saved, and would often return to work in debt at the same wages, or would move to another mine at considerable expense. in either case, my observations convinced me that the miners were worse off at the end of the strike. before the days of strikes in that section of the country, i knew miners who had considerable money in the bank, but as soon as the professional labour agitators got control, the savings of even the more thrifty ones began disappearing. my mother and the other members of my family were, of course, much rejoiced to see me and to note the improvement that i had made during my two years' absence. the rejoicing on the part of all classes of the coloured people, and especially the older ones, over my return, was almost pathetic. i had to pay a visit to each family and take a meal with each, and at each place tell the story of my experiences at hampton. in addition to this i had to speak before the church and sunday-school, and at various other places. the thing that i was most in search of, though, work, i could not find. there was no work on account of the strike. i spent nearly the whole of the first month of my vacation in an effort to find something to do by which i could earn money to pay my way back to hampton and save a little money to use after reaching there. toward the end of the first month, i went to place a considerable distance from my home, to try to find employment. i did not succeed, and it was night before i got started on my return. when i had gotten within a mile or so of my home i was so completely tired out that i could not walk any farther, and i went into an old, abandoned house to spend the remainder of the night. about three o'clock in the morning my brother john found me asleep in this house, and broke to me, as gently as he could, the sad news that our dear mother had died during the night. this seemed to me the saddest and blankest moment in my life. for several years my mother had not been in good health, but i had no idea, when i parted from her the previous day, that i should never see her alive again. besides that, i had always had an intense desire to be with her when she did pass away. one of the chief ambitions which spurred me on at hampton was that i might be able to get to be in a position in which i could better make my mother comfortable and happy. she had so often expressed the wish that she might be permitted to live to see her children educated and started out in the world. in a very short time after the death of my mother our little home was in confusion. my sister amanda, although she tried to do the best she could, was too young to know anything about keeping house, and my stepfather was not able to hire a housekeeper. sometimes we had food cooked for us, and sometimes we did not. i remember that more than once a can of tomatoes and some crackers constituted a meal. our clothing went uncared for, and everything about our home was soon in a tumble-down condition. it seems to me that this was the most dismal period of my life. my good friend, mrs. ruffner, to whom i have already referred, always made me welcome at her home, and assisted me in many ways during this trying period. before the end of the vacation she gave me some work, and this, together with work in a coal-mine at some distance from my home, enabled me to earn a little money. at one time it looked as if i would have to give up the idea of returning to hampton, but my heart was so set on returning that i determined not to give up going back without a struggle. i was very anxious to secure some clothes for the winter, but in this i was disappointed, except for a few garments which my brother john secured for me. notwithstanding my need of money and clothing, i was very happy in the fact that i had secured enough money to pay my travelling expenses back to hampton. once there, i knew that i could make myself so useful as a janitor that i could in some way get through the school year. three weeks before the time for the opening of the term at hampton, i was pleasantly surprised to receive a letter from my good friend miss mary f. mackie, the lady principal, asking me to return to hampton two weeks before the opening of the school, in order that i might assist her in cleaning the buildings and getting things in order for the new school year. this was just the opportunity i wanted. it gave me a chance to secure a credit in the treasurer's office. i started for hampton at once. during these two weeks i was taught a lesson which i shall never forget. miss mackie was a member of one of the oldest and most cultured families of the north, and yet for two weeks she worked by my side cleaning windows, dusting rooms, putting beds in order, and what not. she felt that things would not be in condition for the opening of school unless every window-pane was perfectly clean, and she took the greatest satisfaction in helping to clean them herself. the work which i have described she did every year that i was at hampton. it was hard for me at this time to understand how a woman of her education and social standing could take such delight in performing such service, in order to assist in the elevation of an unfortunate race. ever since then i have had no patience with any school for my race in the south which did not teach its students the dignity of labour. during my last year at hampton every minute of my time that was not occupied with my duties as janitor was devoted to hard study. i was determined, if possible, to make such a record in my class as would cause me to be placed on the "honour roll" of commencement speakers. this i was successful in doing. it was june of 1875 when i finished the regular course of study at hampton. the greatest benefits that i got out of my at the hampton institute, perhaps, may be classified under two heads: - first was contact with a great man, general s.c. armstrong, who, i repeat, was, in my opinion, the rarest, strongest, and most beautiful character that it has ever been my privilege to meet. second, at hampton, for the first time, i learned what education was expected to do for an individual. before going there i had a good deal of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for manual labour. at hampton i not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial value, but for labour's own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. at that institution i got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy. i was completely out of money when i graduated. in company with our other hampton students, i secured a place as a table waiter in a summer hotel in connecticut, and managed to borrow enough money with which to get there. i had not been in this hotel long before i found out that i knew practically nothing about waiting on a hotel table. the head waiter, however, supposed that i was an accomplished waiter. he soon gave me charge of the table at which their sat four or five wealthy and rather aristocratic people. my ignorance of how to wait upon them was so apparent that they scolded me in such a severe manner that i became frightened and left their table, leaving them sitting there without food. as a result of this i was reduced from the position of waiter to that of a dish-carrier. but i determined to learn the business of waiting, and did so within a few weeks and was restored to my former position. i have had the satisfaction of being a guest in this hotel several times since i was a waiter there. at the close of the hotel season i returned to my former home in malden, and was elected to teach the coloured school at that place. this was the beginning of one of the happiest periods of my life. i now felt that i had the opportunity to help the people of my home town to a higher life. i felt from the first that mere book education was not all that the young people of that town needed. i began my work at eight o'clock in the morning, and, as a rule, it did not end until ten o'clock at night. in addition to the usual routine of teaching, i taught the pupils to comb their hair, and to keep their hands and faces clean, as well as their clothing. i gave special attention to teaching them the proper use of the tooth-brush and the bath. in all my teaching i have watched carefully the influence of the tooth-brush, and i am convinced that there are few single agencies of civilization that are more far-reaching. there were so many of the older boys and girls in the town, as well as men and women, who had to work in the daytime and still were craving an opportunity for an education, that i soon opened a night school. from the first, this was crowded every night, being about as large as the school that i taught in the day. the efforts of some of the men and women, who in many cases were over fifty years of age, to learn, were in some cases very pathetic. my day and night school work was not all that i undertook. i established a small reading-room and a debating society. on sundays i taught two sunday-schools, one in the town of malden in the afternoon, and the other in the morning at a place three miles distant from malden. in addition to this, i gave private lessons to several young men whom i was fitting to send to the hampton institute. without regard to pay and with little thought of it, i taught any one who wanted to learn anything that i could teach him. i was supremely happy in the opportunity of being able to assist somebody else. i did receive, however, a small salary from the public fund, for my work as a public-school teacher. during the time that i was a student at hampton my older brother, john, not only assisted me all that he could, but worked all of the time in the coal-mines in order to support the family. he willingly neglected his own education that he might help me. it was my earnest wish to help him to prepare to enter hampton, and to save money to assist him in his expenses there. both of these objects i was successful in accomplishing. in three years my brother finished the course at hampton, and he is now holding the important position of superintendent of industries at tuskegee. when he returned from hampton, we both combined our efforts and savings to send our adopted brother, james, through the hampton institute. this we succeeded in doing, and he is now the postmaster at the tuskegee institute. the year 1877, which was my second year of teaching in malden, i spent very much as i did the first. it was while my home was at malden that what was known as the "ku klux klan" was in the height of its activity. the "ku klux" were bands of men who had joined themselves together for the purpose of regulating the conduct of the coloured people, especially with the object of preventing the members of the race from exercising any influence in politics. they corresponded somewhat to the "patrollers" of whom i used to hear a great deal during the days of slavery, when i was a small boy. the "patrollers" were bands of white men -usually young men -who were organized largely for the purpose of regulating the conduct of the slaves at night in such matters as preventing the slaves from going from one plantation to another without passes, and for preventing them from holding any kind of meetings without permission and without the presence at these meetings of at least one white man. like the "patrollers" the "ku klux" operated almost wholly at night. they were, however, more cruel than the "patrollers." their objects, in the main, were to crush out the political aspirations of the negroes, but they did not confine themselves to this, because schoolhouses as well as churches were burned by them, and many innocent persons were made to suffer. during this period not a few coloured people lost their lives. as a young man, the acts of these lawless bands made a great impression upon me. i saw one open battle take place at malden between some of the coloured and white people. there must have been not far from a hundred persons engaged on each side; many on both sides were seriously injured, among them general lewis ruffner, the husband of my friend mrs. viola ruffner. general ruffner tried to defend the coloured people, and for this he was knocked down and so seriously wounded that he never completely recovered. it seemed to me as i watched this struggle between members of the two races, that there was no hope for our people in this country. the "ku klux" period was, i think, the darkest part of the reconstruction days. i have referred to this unpleasant part of the history of the south simply for the purpose of calling attention to the great change that has taken place since the days of the "ku klux." to-day there are no such organizations in the south, and the fact that such ever existed is almost forgotten by both races. there are few places in the south now where public sentiment would permit such organizations to exist. chapter v the reconstruction period the years from 1867 to 1878 i think may be called the period of reconstruction. this included the time that i spent as a student at hampton and as a teacher in west virginia. during the whole of the reconstruction period two ideas were constantly agitating in the minds of the coloured people, or, at least, in the minds of a large part of the race. one of these was the craze for greek and latin learning, and the other was a desire to hold office. it could not have been expected that a people who had spent generations in slavery, and before that generations in the darkest heathenism, could at first form any proper conception of what an education meant. in every part of the south, during the reconstruction period, schools, both day and night, were filled to overflowing with people of all ages and conditions, some being as far along in age as sixty and seventy years. the ambition to secure an education was most praiseworthy and encouraging. the idea, however, was too prevalent that, as soon as one secured a little education, in some unexplainable way he would be free from most of the hardships of the world, and, at any rate, could live without manual labour. there was a further feeling that a knowledge, however little, of the greek and latin languages would make one a very superior human being, something bordering almost on the supernatural. i remember that the first coloured man whom i saw who knew something about foreign languages impressed me at the time as being a man of all others to be envied. naturally, most of our people who received some little education became teachers or preachers. while among those two classes there were many capable, earnest, godly men and women, still a large proportion took up teaching or preaching as an easy way to make a living. many became teachers who could do little more than write their names. i remember there came into our neighbourhood one of this class, who was in search of a school to teach, and the question arose while he was there as to the shape of the earth and how he could teach the children concerning the subject. he explained his position in the matter by saying that he was prepared to teach that the earth was either flat or round, according to the preference of a majority of his patrons. the ministry was the profession that suffered most -and still suffers, though there has been great improvement -on account of not only ignorant but in many cases immoral men who claimed that they were "called to preach." in the earlier days of freedom almost every coloured man who learned to read would receive "a call to preach" within a few days after he began reading. at my home in west virginia the process of being called to the ministry was a very interesting one. usually the "call" came when the individual was sitting in church. without warning the one called would fall upon the floor as if struck by a bullet, ,and would be there for hours, speechless and motionless. then the news would spread all through the neighborhood that this individual had received a "call." if he were inclined to resist the summons, he would fall or be made to fall a second or third time. in the end he always yielded to the call. while i wanted an education badly, i confess that in my youth i had a fear that when i had learned to read and write very well i would receive one of these "calls"; but, for some reason, my call never came. when we add the number of wholly ignorant men who preached or "exhorted" to that of those who possessed something of an education, it can be seen at a glance that the supply of ministers was large. in fact, some time ago i knew a certain church that had a total membership of about two hundred, and eighteen of that number were ministers. but, i repeat, in many communities in the south the character of the ministry is being improved, and i believe that within the next two or three decades a very large proportion of the unworthy ones will have disappeared. the "calls" to preach, i am glad to say, are not nearly so numerous now as they were formerly, and the calls to some industrial occupation are growing more numerous. the improvement that has taken place in the character of the teachers is even more marked than in the case of the ministers. during the whole of the reconstruction period our people throughout the south looked to the federal government for everything, very much as a child looks to its mother. this was not unnatural. the central government gave them freedom, and the whole nation had been enriched for more than two centuries by the labour of the negro. even as a youth, and later in manhood, i had the feeling that it was cruelly wrong in the central government, at the beginning of our freedom, to fail to make some provision for the general education of our people in addition to what the states might do, so that the people would be the better prepared for the duties of citizenship. it is easy to find fault, to remark what might have been done, and perhaps, after all, and under all the circumstances, those in charge of the conduct of affairs did the only thing that could be done at the time. still, as i look back now over the entire period of our freedom, i cannot help feeling that it would have been wiser if some plan could have been put in operation which would have made the possession of a certain amount of education or property, or both, a test for the exercise of the franchise, and a way provided by which this test should be made to apply honestly and squarely to both the white and black races. though i was but little more than a youth during the period of reconstruction, i had the feeling that mistakes were being made, and that things could not remain in the condition that they were in then very long. i felt that the reconstruction policy, so far as it related to my race, was in a large measure on a false foundation, was artificial and forced. in many cases it seemed to me that the ignorance of my race was being used as a tool with which to help white men into office, and that there was an element in the north which wanted to punish the southern white men by forcing the negro into positions over the heads of the southern whites. i felt that the negro would be the one to suffer for this in the end. besides, the general political agitation drew the attention of our people away from the more fundamental matters of perfecting themselves in the industries at their doors and in securing property. the temptations to enter political life were so alluring that i came very near yielding to them at one time, but i was kept from doing so by the feeling that i would be helping in a more substantial way by assisting in the laying of the foundation of the race through a generous education of the hand, head, and heart. i saw coloured men who were members of the state legislatures, and county officers, who, in some cases, could not read or write, and whose morals were as weak as their education. not long ago, when passing through the streets of a certain city in the south, i heard some brick-masons calling out, from the top of a two-story brick building on which they were working, for the "governor" to "hurry up and bring up some more bricks." several times i heard the command, "hurry up, governor!" "hurry up, governor!" my curiosity was aroused to such an extent that i made inquiry as to who the "governor" was, and soon found that he was a coloured man who at one time had held the position of lieutenant governor of his state. but not all the coloured people who were in office during reconstruction were unworthy of their positions, by any means. some of them, like the late senator b.k. bruce, governor pinchback, and many others, were strong, upright, useful men. neither were all the class designated as carpetbaggers dishonourable men. some of them, like ex-governor bullock, of georgia, were men of high character and usefulness. of course the coloured people, so largely without education, and wholly without experience in government, made tremendous mistakes, just as many people similarly situated would have done. many of the southern whites have a feeling that, if the negro is permitted to exercise his political rights now to any degree, the mistakes of the reconstruction period will repeat themselves. i do not think this would be true, because the negro is a much stronger and wiser man than he was thirty-five years ago, and he is fast learning the lesson that he cannot afford to act in a manner that will alienate his southern white neighbours from him. more and more i am convinced that the final solution of the political end of our race problem will be for each state that finds it necessary to change the law bearing upon the franchise to make the law apply with absolute honesty, and without opportunity for double dealing or evasion, to both races alike. any other course my daily observation in the south convinces me, will be unjust to the negro, unjust to the white man, and unfair to the rest of the state in the union, and will be, like slavery, a sin that at some time we shall have to pay for. in the fall of 1878, after having taught school in malden for two years, and after i had succeeded in preparing several of the young men and women, besides my two brothers, to enter the hampton institute, i decided to spend some months in study at washington, d.c. i remained there for eight months. i derived a great deal of benefit from the studies which i pursued, and i came into contact with some strong men and women. at the institution i attended there was no industrial training given to the students, and i had an opportunity of comparing the influence of an institution with no industrial training with that of one like the hampton institute, that emphasizes the industries. at this school i found the students, in most cases, had more money, were better dressed, wore the latest style of all manner of clothing, and in some cases were more brilliant mentally. at hampton it was a standing rule that, while the institution would be responsible for securing some one to pay the tuition for the students, the men and women themselves must provide for their own board, books, clothing, and room wholly by work, or partly by work and partly in cash. at the institution at which i now was, i found that a large portion of the students by some means had their personal expenses paid for them. at hampton the student was constantly making the effort through the industries to help himself, and that very effort was of immense value in character-building. the students at the other school seemed to be less self-dependent. they seemed to give more attention to mere outward appearances. in a word, they did not appear to me to be beginning at the bottom, on a real, solid foundation, to the extent that they were at hampton. they knew more about latin and greek when they left school, but they seemed to know less about life and its conditions as they would meet it at their homes. having lived for a number of years in the midst of comfortable surroundings, they were not as much inclined as the hampton students to go into the country districts of the south, where there was little of comfort, to take up work for our people, and they were more inclined to yield to the temptation to become hotel waiters and pullman-car porters as their life-work. during the time i was a student at washington the city was crowded with coloured people, many of whom had recently come from the south. a large proportion of these people had been drawn to washington because they felt that they could lead a life of ease there. others had secured minor government positions, and still another large class was there in the hope of securing federal positions. a number of coloured men -some of them very strong and brilliant -were in the house of representatives at that time, and one, the hon. b.k. bruce, was in the senate. all this tended to make washington an attractive place for members of the coloured race. then, too, they knew that at all times they could have the protection of the law in the district of columbia. the public schools in washington for coloured people were better then than they were elsewhere. i took great interest in studying the life of our people there closely at that time. i found that while among them there was a large element of substantial, worthy citizens, there was also a superficiality about the life of a large class that greatly alarmed me. i saw young coloured men who were not earning more than four dollars a week spend two dollars or more for a buggy on sunday to ride up and down pennsylvania avenue in, [sic] in order that they might try to convince the world that they were worth thousands. i saw other young men who received seventy-five or one hundred dollars per month from the government, who were in debt at the end of every month. i saw men who but a few months previous were members of congress, then without employment and in poverty. among a large class there seemed to be a dependence upon the government for every conceivable thing. the members of this class had little ambition to create a position for themselves, but wanted the federal officials to create one for them. how many times i wished them, and have often wished since, that by some power of magic i might remove the great bulk of these people into the county districts and plant them upon the soil, upon the solid and never deceptive foundation of mother nature, where all nations and races that have ever succeeded have gotten their start, -a start that at first may be slow and toilsome, but one that nevertheless is real. in washington i saw girls whose mothers were earning their living by laundrying. these girls were taught by their mothers, in rather a crude way it is true, the industry of laundrying. later, these girls entered the public schools and remained there perhaps six or eight years. when the public school course was finally finished, they wanted more costly dresses, more costly hats and shoes. in a word, while their wants have been increased, their ability to supply their wants had not been increased in the same degree. on the other hand, their six or eight years of book education had weaned them away from the occupation of their mothers. the result of this was in too many cases that the girls went to the bad. i often thought how much wiser it would have been to give these girls the same amount of maternal training -and i favour any kind of training, whether in the languages or mathematics, that gives strength and culture to the mind -but at the same time to give them the most thorough training in the latest and best methods of laundrying and other kindred occupations. chapter vi black race and red race during the year that i spent in washington, and for some little time before this, there had been considerable agitation in the state of west virginia over the question of moving the capital of the state from wheeling to some other central point. as a result of this, the legislature designated three cities to be voted upon by the citizens of the state as the permanent seat of government. among these cities was charleston, only five miles from malden, my home. at the close of my school year in washington i was very pleasantly surprised to receive, from a committee of three white people in charleston, an invitation to canvass the state in the interests of that city. this invitation i accepted, and spent nearly three months in speaking in various parts of the state. charleston was successful in winning the prize, and is now the permanent seat of government. the reputation that i made as a speaker during this campaign induced a number of persons to make an earnest effort to get me to enter political life, but i refused, still believing that i could find other service which would prove of more permanent value to my race. even then i had a strong feeling that what our people most needed was to get a foundation in education, industry, and property, and for this i felt that they could better afford to strive than for political preferment. as for my individual self, it appeared to me to be reasonably certain that i could succeed in political life, but i had a feeling that it would be a rather selfish kind of success - individual success at the cost of failing to do my duty in assisting in laying a foundation for the masses. at this period in the progress of our race a very large proportion of the young men who went to school or to college did so with the expressed determination to prepare themselves to be great lawyers, or congressmen, and many of the women planned to become music teachers; but i had a reasonably fixed idea, even at that early period in my life, that there was a need for something to be done to prepare the way for successful lawyers, congressmen, and music teachers. i felt that the conditions were a good deal like those of an old coloured man, during the days of slavery, who wanted to learn how to play on the guitar. in his desire to take guitar lessons he applied to one of his young masters to teach him, but the young man, not having much faith in the ability of the slave to master the guitar at his age, sought to discourage him by telling him: "uncle jake, i will give you guitar lessons; but, jake, i will have to charge you three dollars for the first lesson, two dollars for the second lesson, and one dollar for the third lesson. but i will charge you only twenty five cents for the last lesson." uncle jake answered: "all right, boss, i hires you on dem terms. but, boss! i wants yer to be sure an' give me dat las' lesson first." soon after my work in connection with the removal of the capital was finished, i received an invitation which gave me great joy and which at the same time was a very pleasant surprise. this was a letter from general armstrong, inviting me to return to hampton at the next commencement to deliver what was called the "post-graduate address." this was an honour which i had not dreamed of receiving. with much care i prepared the best address that i was capable of. i chose for my subject "the force that wins." as i returned to hampton for the purpose of delivering this address, i went over much of the same ground -now, however, covered entirely by railroad -that i had traversed nearly six years before, when i first sought entrance into hampton institute as a student. now i was able to ride the whole distance in the train. i was constantly contrasting this with my first journey to hampton. i think i may say, without seeming egotism, that it is seldom that five years have wrought such a change in the life and aspirations of an individual. at hampton i received a warm welcome from teachers and students. i found that during my absence from hampton the institute each year had been getting closer to the real needs and conditions of our people; that the industrial reaching, as well as that of the academic department, had greatly improved. the plan of the school was not modelled after that of any other institution then in existence, but every improvement was made under the magnificent leadership of general armstrong solely with the view of meeting and helping the needs of our people as they presented themselves at the time. too often, it seems to me, in missionary and educational work among underdeveloped races, people yield to the temptation of doing that which was done a hundred years before, or is being done in other communities a thousand miles away. the temptation often is to run each individual through a certain educational mould, regardless of the condition of the subject or the end to be accomplished. this was not so at hampton institute. the address which i delivered on commencement day seems to have pleased every one, and many kind and encouraging words were spoken to me regarding it. soon after my return to my home in west virginia, where i had planned to continue teaching, i was again surprised to receive a letter from general armstrong, asking me to return to hampton partly as a teacher and partly to pursue some supplementary studies. this was in the summer of 1879. soon after i began my first teaching in west virginia i had picked out four of the brightest and most promising of my pupils, in addition to my two brothers, to whom i have already referred, and had given them special attention, with the view of having them go to hampton. they had gone there, and in each case the teachers had found them so well prepared that they entered advanced classes. this fact, it seems, led to my being called back to hampton as a teacher. one of the young men that i sent to hampton in this way is now dr. samuel e. courtney, a successful physician in boston, and a member of the school board of that city. about this time the experiment was being tried for the first time, by general armstrong, of education indians at hampton. few people then had any confidence in the ability of the indians to receive education and to profit by it. general armstrong was anxious to try the experiment systematically on a large scale. he secured from the reservations in the western states over one hundred wild and for the most part perfectly ignorant indians, the greater proportion of whom were young men. the special work which the general desired me to do was be a sort of "house father" to the indian young men -that is, i was to live in the building with them and have the charge of their discipline, clothing, rooms, and so on. this was a very tempting offer, but i had become so much absorbed in my work in west virginia that i dreaded to give it up. however, i tore myself away from it. i did not know how to refuse to perform any service that general armstrong desired of me. on going to hampton, i took up my residence in a building with about seventy-five indian youths. i was the only person in the building who was not a member of their race. at first i had a good deal of doubt about my ability to succeed. i knew that the average indian felt himself above the white man, and, of course, he felt himself far above the negro, largely on account of the fact of the negro having submitted to slavery -a thing which the indian would never do. the indians, in the indian territory, owned a large number of slaves during the days of slavery. aside from this, there was a general feeling that the attempt to education and civilize the red men at hampton would be a failure. all this made me proceed very cautiously, for i felt keenly the great responsibility. but i was determined to succeed. it was not long before i had the complete confidence of the indians, and not only this, but i think i am safe in saying that i had their love and respect. i found that they were about like any other human beings; that they responded to kind treatment and resented ill-treatment. they were continually planning to do something that would add to my happiness and comfort. the things that they disliked most, i think, were to have their long hair cut, to give up wearing their blankets, and to cease smoking; but no white american ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the white man's language, and professes the white man's religion. when the difficulty of learning the english language was subtracted, i found that in the matter of learning trades and in mastering academic studies there was little difference between the coloured and indian students. it was a constant delight to me to note the interest which the coloured students took in trying to help the indians in every way possible. there were a few of the coloured students who felt that the indians ought not to be admitted to hampton, but these were in the minority. whenever they were asked to do so, the negro students gladly took the indians as room-mates, in order that they might teach them to speak english and to acquire civilized habits. i have often wondered if there was a white institution in this country whose students would have welcomed the incoming of more than a hundred companions of another race in the cordial way that these black students at hampton welcomed the red ones. how often i have wanted to say to white students that they lift themselves up in proportion as they help to lift others, and the more unfortunate the race, and the lower in the scale of civilization, the more does one raise one's self by giving the assistance. this reminds me of a conversation which i once had with the hon. frederick douglass. at one time mr. douglass was travelling in the state of pennsylvania, and was forced, on account of his colour, to ride in the baggage-car, in spite of the fact that he had paid the same price for his passage that the other passengers had paid. when some of the white passengers went into the baggage-car to console mr. douglass, and one of them said to him: "i am sorry, mr. douglass, that you have been degraded in this manner," mr. douglass straightened himself up on the box upon which he was sitting, and replied: "they cannot degrade frederick douglass. the soul that is within me no man can degrade. i am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me." in one part of the country, where the law demands the separation of the races on the railroad trains, i saw at one time a rather amusing instance which showed how difficult it sometimes is to know where the black begins and the white ends. there was a man who was well known in his community as a negro, but who was so white that even an expert would have hard work to classify him as a black man. this man was riding in the part of the train set aside for the coloured passengers. when the train conductor reached him, he showed at once that he was perplexed. if the man was a negro, the conductor did not want to send him to the white people's coach; at the same time, if he was a white man, the conductor did not want to insult him by asking him if he was a negro. the official looked him over carefully, examining his hair, eyes, nose, and hands, but still seemed puzzled. finally, to solve the difficulty, he stooped over and peeped at the man's feet. when i saw the conductor examining the feet of the man in question, i said to myself, "that will settle it;" and so it did, for the trainman promptly decided that the passenger was a negro, and let him remain where he was. i congratulated myself that my race was fortunate in not losing one of its members. my experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own. this is illustrated in no better way than by observing the conduct of the old-school type of southern gentleman when he is in contact with his former salves or their descendants. an example of what i mean is shown in a story told of george washington, who, meeting a coloured man in the road once, who politely lifted his hat, lifted his own in return. some of his white friends who saw the incident criticised washington for his action. in reply to their criticism george washington said: "do you suppose that i am going to permit a poor, ignorant, coloured man to be more polite than i am?" while i was in charge of the indian boys at hampton, i had one or two experiences which illustrate the curious workings of caste in america. one of the indian boys was taken ill, and it became my duty to take him to washington, deliver him over to the secretary of the interior, and get a receipt for him, in order that he might be returned to his western reservation. at that time i was rather ignorant of the ways of the world. during my journey to washington, on a steamboat, when the bell rang for dinner, i was careful to wait and not enter the dining room until after the greater part of the passengers had finished their meal. then, with my charge, i went to the dining saloon. the man in charge politely informed me that the indian could be served, but that i could not. i never could understand how he knew just where to draw the colour line, since the indian and i were of about the same complexion. the steward, however, seemed to be an expert in this manner. i had been directed by the authorities at hampton to stop at a certain hotel in washington with my charge, but when i went to this hotel the clerk stated that he would be glad to receive the indian into the house, but said that he could not accommodate me. an illustration of something of this same feeling came under my observation afterward. i happened to find myself in a town in which so much excitement and indignation were being expressed that it seemed likely for a time that there would be a lynching. the occasion of the trouble was that a dark-skinned man had stopped at the local hotel. investigation, however, developed the fact that this individual was a citizen of morocco, and that while travelling in this country he spoke the english language. as soon as it was learned that he was not an american negro, all the signs of indignation disappeared. the man who was the innocent cause of the excitement, though, found it prudent after that not to speak english. at the end of my first year with the indians there came another opening for me at hampton, which, as i look back over my life now, seems to have come providentially, to help to prepare me for my work at tuskegee later. general armstrong had found out that there was quite a number of young coloured men and women who were intensely in earnest in wishing to get an education, but who were prevented from entering hampton institute because they were too poor to be able to pay any portion of the cost of their board, or even to supply themselves with books. he conceived the idea of starting a night school in connection with the institute, into which a limited number of the most promising of these young men and women would be received, on condition that they were to work for ten hours during the day, and attend school for two hours at night. they were to be paid something above the cost of their board for their work. the greater part of their earnings was to be reserved in the school's treasury as a fund to be drawn on to pay their board when they had become students in the day-school, after they had spent one or two years in the night-school. in this way they would obtain a start in their books and a knowledge of some trade or industry, in addition to the other far-reaching benefits of the institution. general armstrong asked me to take charge of the night-school, and i did so. at the beginning of this school there were about twelve strong, earnest men and women who entered the class. during the day the greater part of the young men worked in the school's sawmill, and the young men worked in the laundry. the work was not easy in either place, but in all my teaching i never taught pupils who gave me much genuine satisfaction as these did. they were good students, and mastered their work thoroughly. they were so much in earnest that only the ringing of the retiring-bell would make them stop studying, and often they would urge me to continue the lessons after the usual hour for going to bed had come. these students showed so much earnestness, both in their hard work during the day, as well as in their application to their studies at night, that i gave them the name of "the plucky class" -a name which soon grew popular and spread throughout the institution. after a student had been in the night-school long enough to prove what was in him, i gave him a printed certificate which read something like this: - "this is to certify that james smith is a member of the plucky class of the hampton institute, and is in good and regular standing." the students prized these certificates highly, and they added greatly to the popularity of the night-school. within a few weeks this department had grown to such an extent that there were about twenty-five students in attendance. i have followed the course of many of these twenty-five men and women ever since then, and they are now holding important and useful positions in nearly every part of the south. the night-school at hampton, which started with only twelve students, now numbers between three and four hundred, and is one of the permanent and most important features of the institution. chapter vii early days at tuskegee during the time that i had charge of the indians and the night-school at hampton, i pursued some studies myself, under the direction of the instructors there. one of these instructors was the rev. dr. h.b. frissell, the present principal of the hampton institute, general armstrong's successor. in may, 1881, near the close of my first year in teaching the night-school, in a way that i had not dared expect, the opportunity opened for me to begin my life-work. one night in the chapel, after the usual chapel exercises were over, general armstrong referred to the fact that he had received a letter from some gentlemen in alabama asking him to recommend some one to take charge of what was to be a normal school for the coloured people in the little town of tuskegee in that state. these gentlemen seemed to take it for granted that no coloured man suitable for the position could be secured, and they were expecting the general to recommend a white man for the place. the next day general armstrong sent for me to come to his office, and, much to my surprise, asked me if i thought i could fill the position in alabama. i told him that i would be willing to try. accordingly, he wrote to the people who had applied to him for the information, that he did not know of any white man to suggest, but if they would be willing to take a coloured man, he had one whom he could recommend. in this letter he gave them my name. several days passed before anything more was heard about the matter. some time afterward, one sunday evening during the chapel exercises, a messenger came in and handed the general a telegram. at the end of the exercises he read the telegram to the school. in substance, these were its words: "booker t. washington will suit us. send him at once." there was a great deal of joy expressed among the students and teachers, and i received very hearty congratulations. i began to get ready at once to go to tuskegee. i went by way of my old home in west virginia, where i remained for several days, after which i proceeded to tuskegee. i found tuskegee to be a town of about two thousand inhabitants, nearly one-half of whom were coloured. it was in what was known as the black belt of the south. in the county in which tuskegee is situated the coloured people outnumbered the whites by about three to one. in some of the adjoining and near-by counties the proportion was not far from six coloured persons to one white. i have often been asked to define the term "black belt." so far as i can learn, the term was first used to designated a part of the country which was distinguished by the colour of the soil. the part of the country possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the south where the slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers. later, and especially since the war, the term seems to be used wholly in a political sense -that is, to designate the counties where the black people outnumber the white. before going to tuskegee i had expected to find there a building and all the necessary apparatus ready for me to begin teaching. to my disappointment, i found nothing of the kind. i did find, though, that which no costly building and apparatus can supply, -hundreds of hungry, earnest souls who wanted to secure knowledge. tuskegee seemed an ideal place for the school. it was in the midst of the great bulk of the negro population, and was rather secluded, being five miles from the main line of railroad, with which it was connected by a short line. during the days of slavery, and since, the town had been a centre for the education of the white people. this was an added advantage, for the reason that i found the white people possessing a degree of culture and education that is not surpassed by many localities. while the coloured people were ignorant, they had not, as a rule, degraded and weakened their bodies by vices such as are common to the lower class of people in the large cities. in general, i found the relations between the two races pleasant. for example, the largest, and i think at that time the only hardware store in the town was owned and operated jointly by a coloured man and a white man. this copartnership continued until the death of the white partner. i found that about a year previous to my going to tuskegee some of the coloured people who had heard something of the work of education being done at hampton had applied to the state legislature, through their representatives, for a small appropriation to be used in starting a normal school in tuskegee. this request the legislature had complied with to the extent of granting an annual appropriation of two thousand dollars. i soon learned, however, that this money could be used only for the payment of the salaries of the instructors, and that there was no provision for securing land, buildings, or apparatus. the task before me did not seem a very encouraging one. it seemed much like making bricks without straw. the coloured people were overjoyed, and were constantly offering their services in any way in which they could be of assistance in getting the school started. my first task was to find a place in which to open the school. after looking the town over with some care, the most suitable place that could be secured seemed to be a rather dilapidated shanty near the coloured methodist church, together with the church itself as a sort of assembly-room. both the church and the shanty were in about as bad condition as was possible. i recall that during the first months of school that i taught in this building it was in such poor repair that, whenever it rained, one of the older students would very kindly leave his lessons and hold an umbrella over me while i heard the recitations of the others. i remember, also, that on more than one occasion my landlady held an umbrella over me while i ate breakfast. at the time i went to alabama the coloured people were taking considerable interest in politics, and they were very anxious that i should become one of them politically, in every respect. they seemed to have a little distrust of strangers in this regard. i recall that one man, who seemed to have been designated by the others to look after my political destiny, came to me on several occasions and said, with a good deal of earnestness: "we wants you to be sure to vote jes' like we votes. we can't read de newspapers very much, but we knows how to vote, an' we wants you to vote jes' like we votes." he added: "we watches de white man, and we keeps watching de white man till we finds out which way de white man's gwine to vote; an' when we finds out which way de white man's gwine to vote, den we votes 'xactly de other way. den we knows we's right." i am glad to add, however, that at the present time the disposition to vote against the white man merely because he is white is largely disappearing, and the race is learning to vote from principle, for what the voter considers to be for the best interests of both races. i reached tuskegee, as i have said, early in june, 1881. the first month i spent in finding accommodations for the school, and in travelling through alabama, examining into the actual life of the people, especially in the court districts, and in getting the school advertised among the glass of people that i wanted to have attend it. the most of my travelling was done over the country roads, with a mule and a cart or a mule and a buggy wagon for conveyance. i ate and slept with the people, in their little cabins. i saw their farms, their schools, their churches. since, in the case of the most of these visits, there had been no notice given in advance that a stranger was expected, i had the advantage of seeing the real, everyday life of the people. in the plantation districts i found that, as a rule, the whole family slept in one room, and that in addition to the immediate family there sometimes were relatives, or others not related to the family, who slept in the same room. on more than one occasion i went outside the house to get ready for bed, or to wait until the family had gone to bed. they usually contrived some kind of a place for me to sleep, either on the floor or in a special part of another's bed. rarely was there any place provided in the cabin where one could bathe even the face and hands, but usually some provision was made for this outside the house, in the yard. the common diet of the people was fat pork and corn bread. at times i have eaten in cabins where they had only corn bread and "black-eye peas" cooked in plain water. the people seemed to have no other idea than to live on this fat meat and corn bread, -the meat, and the meal of which the bread was made, having been bought at a high price at a store in town, notwithstanding the face that the land all about the cabin homes could easily have been made to produce nearly every kind of garden vegetable that is raised anywhere in the country. their one object seemed to be to plant nothing but cotton; and in many cases cotton was planted up to the very door of the cabin. in these cabin homes i often found sewing-machines which had been bought, or were being bought, on instalments [sic], frequently at a cost of as much as sixty dollars, or showy clocks for which the occupants of the cabins had paid twelve or fourteen dollars. i remember that on one occasion when i went into one of these cabins for dinner, when i sat down to the table for a meal with the four members of the family, i noticed that, while there were five of us at the table, there was but one fork for the five of us to use. naturally there was an awkward pause on my part. in the opposite corner of that same cabin was an organ for which the people told me they were paying sixty dollars in monthly instalments [sic]. one fork, and a sixty dollar organ! in most cases the sewing-machine was not used, the clocks were so worthless that they did not keep correct time -and if they had, in nine cases out of ten there would have been no one in the family who could have told the time of day -while the organ, of course, was rarely used for want of a person who could play upon it. in the case to which i have referred, where the family sat down to the table for the meal at which i was their guest, i could see plainly that this was an awkward and unusual proceeding, and was done in my honour. in most cases, when the family got up in the morning, for example, the wife would put a piece of meat in a frying-pan and put a lump of dough in a "skillet," as they called it. these utensils would be placed on the fire, and in ten or fifteen minutes breakfast would be ready. frequently the husband would take his bread and meat in his hand and start for the field, eating as he walked. the mother would sit down in a corner and eat her breakfast, perhaps from a plate and perhaps directly from the "skillet" or frying-pan, while the children would eat their portion of the bread and meat while running about the yard. at certain seasons of the year, when meat was scarce, it was rarely that the children who were not old enough or strong enough to work in the fields would have the luxury of meat. the breakfast over, and with practically no attention given to the house, the whole family would, as a general thing, proceed to the cotton-field. every child that was large enough to carry a hoe was put to work, and the baby -for usually there was at least one baby -would be laid down at the end of the cotton row, so that its mother could give it a certain amount of attention when she had finished chopping her row. the noon meal and the supper were taken in much the same way as the breakfast. all the days of the family would be spent after much this same routine, except saturday and sunday. on saturday the whole family would spent at least half a day, and often a whole day, in town. the idea in going to town was, i suppose, to do shopping, but all the shopping that the whole family had money for could have been attended to in ten minutes by one person. still, the whole family remained in town for most of the day, spending the greater part of the time in standing on the streets, the women, too often, sitting about somewhere smoking or dipping snuff. sunday was usually spent in going to some big meeting. with few exceptions, i found that the crops were mortgaged in the counties where i went, and that the most of the coloured farmers were in debt. the state had not been able to build schoolhouses in the country districts, and, as a rule, the schools were taught in churches or in log cabins. more than once, while on my journeys, i found that there was no provision made in the house used for school purposes for heating the building during the winter, and consequently a fire had to be built in the yard, and teacher and pupils passed in and out of the house as they got cold or warm. with few exceptions, i found the teachers in these country schools to be miserably poor in preparation for their work, and poor in moral character. the schools were in session from three to five months. there was practically no apparatus in the schoolhouses, except that occasionally there was a rough blackboard. i recall that one day i went into a schoolhouse -or rather into an abandoned log cabin that was being used as a schoolhouse -and found five pupils who were studying a lesson from one book. two of these, on the front seat, were using the book between them; behind these were two others peeping over the shoulders of the first two, and behind the four was a fifth little fellow who was peeping over the shoulders of all four. what i have said concerning the character of the schoolhouses and teachers will also apply quite accurately as a description of the church buildings and the ministers. i met some very interesting characters during my travels. as illustrating the peculiar mental processes of the country people, i remember that i asked one coloured man, who was about sixty years old, to tell me something of his history. he said that he had been born in virginia, and sold into alabama in 1845. i asked him how many were sold at the same time. he said, "there were five of us; myself and brother and three mules." in giving all these descriptions of what i saw during my mouth of travel in the country around tuskegee, i wish my readers to keep in mind the fact that there were many encouraging exceptions to the conditions which i have described. i have stated in such plain words what i saw, mainly for the reason that later i want to emphasize the encouraging changes that have taken place in the community, not wholly by the work of the tuskegee school, but by that of other institutions as well. chapter viii teaching school in a stable and a hen-house i confess that what i saw during my month of travel and investigation left me with a very heavy heart. the work to be done in order to lift these people up seemed almost beyond accomplishing. i was only one person, and it seemed to me that the little effort which i could put forth could go such a short distance toward bringing about results. i wondered if i could accomplish anything, and if it were worth while for me to try. of one thing i felt more strongly convinced than ever, after spending this month in seeing the actual life of the coloured people, and that was that, in order to lift them up, something must be done more than merely to imitate new england education as it then existed. i saw more clearly than ever the wisdom of the system which general armstrong had inaugurated at hampton. to take the children of such people as i had been among for a month, and each day give them a few hours of mere book education, i felt would be almost a waste of time. after consultation with the citizens of tuskegee, i set july 4, 1881, as the day for the opening of the school in the little shanty and church which had been secured for its accommodation. the white people, as well as the coloured, were greatly interested in the starting of the new school, and the opening day was looked forward to with much earnest discussion. there were not a few white people in the vicinity of tuskegee who looked with some disfavour upon the project. they questioned its value to the coloured people, and had a fear that it might result in bringing about trouble between the races. some had the feeling that in proportion as the negro received education, in the same proportion would his value decrease as an economic factor in the state. these people feared the result of education would be that the negroes would leave the farms, and that it would be difficult to secure them for domestic service. the white people who questioned the wisdom of starting this new school had in their minds pictures of what was called an educated negro, with a high hat, imitation gold eye-glasses, a showy walking stick, kid gloves, fancy boots, and what not -in a word, a man who was determined to live by his wits. it was difficult for these people to see how education would produce any other kind of a coloured man. in the midst of all the difficulties which i encountered in getting the little school started, and since then through a period of nineteen years, there are two men among all the many friends of the school in tuskegee upon whom i have depended constantly for advice and guidance; and the success of the undertaking is largely due to these men, from whom i have never sought anything in vain. i mention them simply as types. one is a white man and an ex-slaveholder, mr. george w. campbell; the other is a black man and an ex-slave, mr. lewis adams. these were the men who wrote to general armstrong for a teacher. mr. campbell is a merchant and banker, and had had little experience in dealing with matters pertaining to education. mr. adams was a mechanic, and had learned the trades of shoemaking, harness making, and tinsmithing during the days of slavery. he had never been to school a day in his life, but in some way he had learned to read and write while a slave. from the first, these two men saw clearly what my plan of education was, sympathized with me, and supported me in every effort. in the days which were darkest financially for the school, mr. campbell was never appealed to when he was not willing to extend all the aid in his power. i do not know two men, one an ex slaveholder, one an ex-slave, whose advice and judgment i would feel more like following in everything which concerns the life and development of the school at tuskegee than those of these two men. i have always felt that mr. adams, in a large degree, derived his unusual power of mind from the training given his hands in the process of mastering well three trades during the days of slavery. if one goes to-day into any southern town, and asks for the leading and most reliable coloured man in the community, i believe that in five cases out of ten he will be directed to a negro who learned a trade during the days of slavery. on the morning that the school opened, thirty students reported for admission. i was the only teacher. the students were about equally divided between the sexes. most of them lived in macon county, the county in which tuskegee is situated, and of which it is the county-seat. a great many more students wanted to enter the school, but it had been decided to receive only those who were above fifteen years of age, and who had previously received some education. the greater part of the thirty were public-school teachers, and some of them were nearly forty years of age. with the teachers came some of their former pupils, and when they were examined it was amusing to note that in several cases the pupil entered a higher class than did his former teacher. it was also interesting to note how many big books some of them had studied, and how many high-sounding subjects some of them claimed to have mastered. the bigger the book and the longer the name of the subject, the prouder they felt of their accomplishment. some had studied latin, and one or two greek. this they thought entitled them to special distinction. in fact, one of the saddest things i saw during the month of travel which i have described was a young man, who had attended some high school, sitting down in a one-room cabin, with grease on his clothing, filth all around him, and weeks in the yard and garden, engaged in studying a french grammar. the students who came first seemed to be fond of memorizing long and complicated "rules" in grammar and mathematics, but had little thought or knowledge of applying these rules to their everyday affairs of their life. one subject which they liked to talk about, and tell me that they had mastered, in arithmetic, was "banking and discount," but i soon found out that neither they nor almost any one in the neighbourhood in which they had lived had ever had a bank account. in registering the names of the students, i found that almost every one of them had one or more middle initials. when i asked what the "j" stood for, in the name of john j. jones, it was explained to me that this was a part of his "entitles." most of the students wanted to get an education because they thought it would enable them to earn more money as school-teachers. notwithstanding what i have said about them in these respects, i have never seen a more earnest and willing company of young men and women than these students were. they were all willing to learn the right thing as soon as it was shown them what was right. i was determined to start them off on a solid and thorough foundation, so far as their books were concerned. i soon learned that most of them had the merest smattering of the high-sounding things that they had studied. while they could locate the desert of sahara or the capital of china on an artificial globe, i found out that the girls could not locate the proper places for the knives and forks on an actual dinner table, or the places on which the bread and meat should be set. i had to summon a good deal of courage to take a student who had been studying cube root and "banking and discount," and explain to him that the wisest thing for him to do first was thoroughly master the multiplication table. the number of pupils increased each week, until by the end of the first month there were nearly fifty. many of them, however, said that, as they could remain only for two or three months, they wanted to enter a high class and get a diploma the first year if possible. at the end of the first six weeks a new and rare face entered the school as a co-teacher. this was miss olivia a. davidson, who later became my wife. miss davidson was born in ohio, and received her preparatory education in the public schools of that state. when little more than a girl, she heard of the need of teachers in the south. she went to the state of mississippi and began teaching there. later she taught in the city of memphis. while teaching in mississippi, one of her pupils became ill with smallpox. every one in the community was so frightened that no one would nurse the boy. miss davidson closed her school and remained by the bedside of the boy night and day until he recovered. while she was at her ohio home on her vacation, the worst epidemic of yellow fever broke out in memphis, tenn., that perhaps has ever occurred in the south. when she heard of this, she at once telegraphed the mayor of memphis, offering her services as a yellow-fever nurse, although she had never had the disease. miss davidon's experience in the south showed her that the people needed something more than mere book-learning. she heard of the hampton system of education, and decided that this was what she wanted in order to prepare herself for better work in the south. the attention of mrs. mary hemenway, of boston, was attracted to her rare ability. through mrs. hemenway's kindness and generosity, miss davidson, after graduating at hampton, received an opportunity to complete a two years' course of training at the massachusetts state normal school at framingham. before she went to framingham, some one suggested to miss davidson that, since she was so very light in colour, she might find it more comfortable not to be known as a coloured women in this school in massachusetts. she at once replied that under no circumstances and for no considerations would she consent to deceive any one in regard to her racial identity. soon after her graduation from the framingham institution, miss davidson came to tuskegee, bringing into the school many valuable and fresh ideas as to the best methods of teaching, as well as a rare moral character and a life of unselfishness that i think has seldom been equalled. no single individual did more toward laying the foundations of the tuskegee institute so as to insure the successful work that has been done there than olivia a. davidson. miss davidson and i began consulting as to the future of the school from the first. the students were making progress in learning books and in development their minds; but it became apparent at once that, if we were to make any permanent impression upon those who had come to us for training we must do something besides teach them mere books. the students had come from homes where they had had no opportunities for lessons which would teach them how to care for their bodies. with few exceptions, the homes in tuskegee in which the students boarded were but little improvement upon those from which they had come. we wanted to teach the students how to bathe; how to care for their teeth and clothing. we wanted to teach them what to eat, and how to eat it properly, and how to care for their rooms. aside from this, we wanted to give them such a practical knowledge of some one industry, together with the spirit of industry, thrift, and economy, that they would be sure of knowing how to make a living after they had left us. we wanted to teach them to study actual things instead of mere books alone. we found that the most of our students came from the country districts, where agriculture in some form or other was the main dependence of the people. we learned that about eighty-five per cent of the coloured people in the gulf states depended upon agriculture for their living. since this was true, we wanted to be careful not to education our students out of sympathy with agricultural life, so that they would be attracted from the country to the cities, and yield to the temptation of trying to live by their wits. we wanted to give them such an education as would fit a large proportion of them to be teachers, and at the same time cause them to return to the plantation districts and show the people there how to put new energy and new ideas into farming, as well as into the intellectual and moral and religious life of the people. all these ideas and needs crowded themselves upon us with a seriousness that seemed well-night overwhelming. what were we to do? we had only the little old shanty and the abandoned church which the good coloured people of the town of tuskegee had kindly loaned us for the accommodation of the classes. the number of students was increasing daily. the more we saw of them, and the more we travelled through the country districts, the more we saw that our efforts were reaching, to only a partial degree, the actual needs of the people whom we wanted to lift up through the medium of the students whom we should education and send out as leaders. the more we talked with the students, who were then coming to us from several parts of the state, the more we found that the chief ambition among a large proportion of them was to get an education so that they would not have to work any longer with their hands. this is illustrated by a story told of a coloured man in alabama, who, one hot day in july, while he was at work in a cotton-field, suddenly stopped, and, looking toward the skies, said: "o lawd, de cottom am so grassy, de work am so hard, and the sun am so hot dat i b'lieve dis darky am called to preach!" about three months after the opening of the school, and at the time when we were in the greatest anxiety about our work, there came into market for sale an old and abandoned plantation which was situated about a mile from the town of tuskegee. the mansion house - or "big house," as it would have been called -which had been occupied by the owners during slavery, had been burned. after making a careful examination of the place, it seemed to be just the location that we wanted in order to make our work effective and permanent. but how were we to get it? the price asked for it was very little -only five hundred dollars -but we had no money, and we were strangers in the town and had no credit. the owner of the land agreed to let us occupy the place if we could make a payment of two hundred and fifty dollars down, with the understanding that the remaining two hundred and fifty dollars must be paid within a year. although five hundred dollars was cheap for the land, it was a large sum when one did not have any part of it. in the midst of the difficulty i summoned a great deal of courage and wrote to my friend general j.f.b. marshall, the treasurer of the hampton institute, putting the situation before him and beseeching him to lend me the two hundred and fifty dollars on my own personal responsibility. within a few days a reply came to the effect that he had no authority to lend me the money belonging to the hampton institute, but that he would gladly lend me the amount needed from his own personal funds. i confess that the securing of this money in this way was a great surprise to me, as well as a source of gratification. up to that time i never had had in my possession so much money as one hundred dollars at a time, and the loan which i had asked general marshall for seemed a tremendously large sum to me. the fact of my being responsible for the repaying of such a large amount of money weighed very heavily upon me. i lost no time in getting ready to move the school on to the new farm. at the time we occupied the place there were [sic] standing upon it a cabin, formerly used as a dining room, an old kitchen, a stable, and an old hen-house. within a few weeks we had all of these structures in use. the stable was repaired and used as a recitation room, and very presently the hen-house was utilized for the same purpose. i recall that one morning, when i told an old coloured man who lived near, and who sometimes helped me, that our school had grown so large that it would be necessary for us to use the hen-house for school purposes, and that i wanted him to help me give it a thorough cleaning out the next day, he replied, in the most earnest manner: "what you mean, boss? you sholy ain't gwine clean out de hen-house in de _day_-time?" nearly all the work of getting the new location ready for school purposes was done by the students after school was over in the afternoon. as soon as we got the cabins in condition to be used, i determined to clear up some land so that we could plant a crop. when i explained my plan to the young men, i noticed that they did not seem to take to it very kindly. it was hard for them to see the connection between clearing land and an education. besides, many of them had been school-teachers, and they questioned whether or not clearing land would be in keeping with their dignity. in order to relieve them from any embarrassment, each afternoon after school i took my axe and led the way to the woods. when they saw that i was not afraid or ashamed to work, they began to assist with more enthusiasm. we kept at the work each afternoon, until we had cleared about twenty acres and had planted a crop. in the meantime miss davidson was devising plans to repay the loan. her first effort was made by holding festivals, or "suppers." she made a personal canvass among the white and coloured families in the town of tuskegee, and got them to agree to give something, like a cake, a chicken, bread, or pies, that could be sold at the festival. of course the coloured people were glad to give anything that they could spare, but i want to add that miss davidson did not apply to a single white family, so far as i now remember, that failed to donate something; and in many ways the white families showed their interested in the school. several of these festivals were held, and quite a little sum of money was raised. a canvass was also made among the people of both races for direct gifts of money, and most of those applied to gave small sums. it was often pathetic to note the gifts of the older coloured people, most of whom had spent their best days in slavery. sometimes they would give five cents, sometimes twenty-five cents. sometimes the contribution was a quilt, or a quantity of sugarcane. i recall one old coloured women who was about seventy years of age, who came to see me when we were raising money to pay for the farm. she hobbled into the room where i was, leaning on a cane. she was clad in rags; but they were clean. she said: "mr. washin'ton, god knows i spent de bes' days of my life in slavery. god knows i's ignorant an' poor; but," she added, "i knows what you an' miss davidson is tryin' to do. i knows you is tryin' to make better men an' better women for de coloured race. i ain't got no money, but i wants you to take dese six eggs, what i's been savin' up, an' i wants you to put dese six eggs into the eddication of dese boys an' gals." since the work at tuskegee started, it has been my privilege to receive many gifts for the benefit of the institution, but never any, i think, that touched me so deeply as this one. chapter ix anxious days and sleepless nights the coming of christmas, that first year of our residence in alabama, gave us an opportunity to get a farther insight into the real life of the people. the first thing that reminded us that christmas had arrived was the "foreday" visits of scores of children rapping at our doors, asking for "chris'mus gifts! chris'mus gifts!" between the hours of two o'clock and five o'clock in the morning i presume that we must have had a half-hundred such calls. this custom prevails throughout this portion of the south to-day. during the days of slavery it was a custom quite generally observed throughout all the southern states to give the coloured people a week of holiday at christmas, or to allow the holiday to continue as long as the "yule log" lasted. the male members of the race, and often the female members, were expected to get drunk. we found that for a whole week the coloured people in and around tuskegee dropped work the day before christmas, and that it was difficult for any one to perform any service from the time they stopped work until after the new year. persons who at other times did not use strong drink thought it quite the proper thing to indulge in it rather freely during the christmas week. there was a widespread hilarity, and a free use of guns, pistols, and gunpowder generally. the sacredness of the season seemed to have been almost wholly lost sight of. during this first christmas vacation i went some distance from the town to visit the people on one of the large plantations. in their poverty and ignorance it was pathetic to see their attempts to get joy out of the season that in most parts of the country is so sacred and so dear to the heart. in one cabin i notice that all that the five children had to remind them of the coming of christ was a single bunch of firecrackers, which they had divided among them. in another cabin, where there were at least a half-dozen persons, they had only ten cents' worth of ginger-cakes, which had been bought in the store the day before. in another family they had only a few pieces of sugarcane. in still another cabin i found nothing but a new jug of cheap, mean whiskey, which the husband and wife were making free use of, notwithstanding the fact that the husband was one of the local ministers. in a few instances i found that the people had gotten hold of some bright-coloured cards that had been designed for advertising purposes, and were making the most of these. in other homes some member of the family had bought a new pistol. in the majority of cases there was nothing to be seen in the cabin to remind one of the coming of the saviour, except that the people had ceased work in the fields and were lounging about their homes. at night, during christmas week, they usually had what they called a "frolic," in some cabin on the plantation. that meant a kind of rough dance, where there was likely to be a good deal of whiskey used, and where there might be some shooting or cutting with razors. while i was making this christmas visit i met an old coloured man who was one of the numerous local preachers, who tried to convince me, from the experience adam had in the garden of eden, that god had cursed all labour, and that, therefore, it was a sin for any man to work. for that reason this man sought to do as little work as possible. he seemed at that time to be supremely happy, because he was living, as he expressed it, through one week that was free from sin. in the school we made a special effort to teach our students the meaning of christmas, and to give them lessons in its proper observance. in this we have been successful to a degree that makes me feel safe in saying that the season now has a new meaning, not only through all that immediate region, but, in a measure, wherever our graduates have gone. at the present time one of the most satisfactory features of the christmas and thanksgiving season at tuskegee is the unselfish and beautiful way in which our graduates and students spend their time in administering to the comfort and happiness of others, especially the unfortunate. not long ago some of our young men spent a holiday in rebuilding a cabin for a helpless coloured women who was about seventy-five years old. at another time i remember that i made it known in chapel, one night, that a very poor student was suffering from cold, because he needed a coat. the next morning two coats were sent to my office for him. i have referred to the disposition on the part of the white people in the town of tuskegee and vicinity to help the school. from the first, i resolved to make the school a real part of the community in which it was located. i was determined that no one should have the feeling that it was a foreign institution, dropped down in the midst of the people, for which they had no responsibility and in which they had no interest. i noticed that the very fact that they had been asking to contribute toward the purchase of the land made them begin to feel as if it was going to be their school, to a large degree. i noted that just in proportion as we made the white people feel that the institution was a part of the life of the community, and that, while we wanted to make friends in boston, for example, we also wanted to make white friends in tuskegee, and that we wanted to make the school of real service to all the people, their attitude toward the school became favourable. perhaps i might add right here, what i hope to demonstrate later, that, so far as i know, the tuskegee school at the present time has no warmer and more enthusiastic friends anywhere than it has among the white citizens of tuskegee and throughout the state of alabama and the entire south. from the first, i have advised our people in the south to make friends in every straightforward, manly way with their next door neighbour, whether he be a black man or a white man. i have also advised them, where no principle is at stake, to consult the interests of their local communities, and to advise with their friends in regard to their voting. for several months the work of securing the money with which to pay for the farm went on without ceasing. at the end of three months enough was secured to repay the loan of two hundred and fifty dollars to general marshall, and within two months more we had secured the entire five hundred dollars and had received a deed of the one hundred acres of land. this gave us a great deal of satisfaction. it was not only a source of satisfaction to secure a permanent location for the school, but it was equally satisfactory to know that the greater part of the money with which it was paid for had been gotten from the white and coloured people in the town of tuskegee. the most of this money was obtained by holding festivals and concerts, and from small individual donations. our next effort was in the direction of increasing the cultivation of the land, so as to secure some return from it, and at the same time give the students training in agriculture. all the industries at tuskegee have been started in natural and logical order, growing out of the needs of a community settlement. we began with farming, because we wanted something to eat. many of the students, also, were able to remain in school but a few weeks at a time, because they had so little money with which to pay their board. thus another object which made it desirable to get an industrial system started was in order to make in available as a means of helping the students to earn money enough so that they might be able to remain in school during the nine months' session of the school year. the first animal that the school came into possession of was an old blind horse given us by one of the white citizens of tuskegee. perhaps i may add here that at the present time the school owns over two hundred horses, colts, mules, cows, calves, and oxen, and about seven hundred hogs and pigs, as well as a large number of sheep and goats. the school was constantly growing in numbers, so much so that, after we had got the farm paid for, the cultivation of the land begun, and the old cabins which we had found on the place somewhat repaired, we turned our attention toward providing a large, substantial building. after having given a good deal of thought to the subject, we finally had the plans drawn for a building that was estimated to cost about six thousand dollars. this seemed to us a tremendous sum, but we knew that the school must go backward or forward, and that our work would mean little unless we could get hold of the students in their home life. one incident which occurred about this time gave me a great deal of satisfaction as well as surprise. when it became known in the town that we were discussing the plans for a new, large building, a southern white man who was operating a sawmill not far from tuskegee came to me and said that he would gladly put all the lumber necessary to erect the building on the grounds, with no other guarantee for payment than my word that it would be paid for when we secured some money. i told the man frankly that at the time we did not have in our hands one dollar of the money needed. notwithstanding this, he insisted on being allowed to put the lumber on the grounds. after we had secured some portion of the money we permitted him to do this. miss davidson again began the work of securing in various ways small contributions for the new building from the white and coloured people in and near tuskegee. i think i never saw a community of people so happy over anything as were the coloured people over the prospect of this new building. one day, when we were holding a meeting to secure funds for its erection, an old, ante-bellum coloured man came a distance of twelve miles and brought in his ox-card a large hog. when the meeting was in progress, he rose in the midst of the company and said that he had no money which he could give, but he had raised two fine hogs, and that he had brought one of them as a contribution toward the expenses of the building. he closed his announcement by saying: "any nigger that's got any love for his race, or any respect for himself, will bring a hog to the next meeting." quite a number of men in the community also volunteered to give several days' work, each, toward the erection of the building. after we had secured all the help that we could in tuskegee, miss davidson decided to go north for the purpose of securing additional funds. for weeks she visited individuals and spoke in churches and before sunday schools and other organizations. she found this work quite trying, and often embarrassing. the school was not known, but she was not long in winning her way into the confidence of the best people in the north. the first gift from any northern person was received from a new york lady whom miss davidson met on the boat that was bringing her north. they fell into a conversation, and the northern lady became so much interested in the effort being made at tuskegee that before they parted miss davidson was handed a check for fifty dollars. for some time before our marriage, and also after it, miss davidson kept up the work of securing money in the north and in the south by interesting people by personal visits and through correspondence. at the same time she kept in close touch with the work at tuskegee, as lady principal and classroom teacher. in addition to this, she worked among the older people in and near tuskegee, and taught a sunday school class in the town. she was never very strong, but never seemed happy unless she was giving all of her strength to the cause which she loved. often, at night, after spending the day in going from door to door trying to interest persons in the work at tuskegee, she would e so exhausted that she could not undress herself. a lady upon whom she called, in boston, afterward told me that at one time when miss davidson called her to see and send up her card the lady was detained a little before she could see miss davidson, and when she entered the parlour she found miss davidson so exhausted that she had fallen asleep. while putting up our first building, which was named porter hall, after mr. a.h. porter, of brooklyn, n.y., who gave a generous sum toward its erection, the need for money became acute. i had given one of our creditors a promise that upon a certain day he should be paid four hundred dollars. on the morning of that day we did not have a dollar. the mail arrived at the school at ten o'clock, and in this mail there was a check sent by miss davidson for exactly four hundred dollars. i could relate many instances of almost the same character. this four hundred dollars was given by two ladies in boston. two years later, when the work at tuskegee had grown considerably, and when we were in the midst of a season when we were so much in need of money that the future looked doubtful and gloomy, the same two boston ladies sent us six thousand dollars. words cannot describe our surprise, or the encouragement that the gift brought to us. perhaps i might add here that for fourteen years these same friends have sent us six thousand dollars a year. as soon as the plans were drawn for the new building, the students began digging out the earth where the foundations were to be laid, working after the regular classes were over. they had not fully outgrown the idea that it was hardly the proper thing for them to use their hands, since they had come there, as one of them expressed it, "to be education, and not to work." gradually, though, i noted with satisfaction that a sentiment in favour of work was gaining ground. after a few weeks of hard work the foundations were ready, and a day was appointed for the laying of the corner-stone. when it is considered that the laying of this corner-stone took place in the heart of the south, in the "black belt," in the centre of that part of our country that was most devoted to slavery; that at that time slavery had been abolished only about sixteen years; that only sixteen years before no negro could be taught from books without the teacher receiving the condemnation of the law or of public sentiment -when all this is considered, the scene that was witnessed on that spring day at tuskegee was a remarkable one. i believe there are few places in the world where it could have taken place. the principal address was delivered by the hon. waddy thompson, the superintendent of education for the county. about the corner stone were gathered the teachers, the students, their parents and friends, the county officials -who were white -and all the leading white men in that vicinity, together with many of the black men and women whom the same white people but a few years before had held a title to as property. the members of both races were anxious to exercise the privilege of placing under the corner-stone some momento. before the building was completed we passed through some very trying seasons. more than once our hearts were made to bleed, as it were, because bills were falling due that we did not have the money to meet. perhaps no one who has not gone through the experience, month after month, of trying to erect buildings and provide equipment for a school when no one knew where the money was to come from, can properly appreciate the difficulties under which we laboured. during the first years at tuskegee i recall that night after night i would roll and toss on my bed, without sleep, because of the anxiety and uncertainty which we were in regarding money. i knew that, in a large degree, we were trying an experiment -that of testing whether or not it was possible for negroes to build up and control the affairs of a large education institution. i knew that if we failed it would injure the whole race. i knew that the presumption was against us. i knew that in the case of white people beginning such an enterprise it would be taken for granted that they were going to succeed, but in our case i felt that people would be surprised if we succeeded. all this made a burden which pressed down on us, sometimes, it seemed, at the rate of a thousand pounds to the square inch. in all our difficulties and anxieties, however, i never went to a white or a black person in the town of tuskegee for any assistance that was in their power to render, without being helped according to their means. more than a dozen times, when bills figuring up into the hundreds of dollars were falling due, i applied to the white men of tuskegee for small loans, often borrowing small amounts from as many as a half-dozen persons, to meet our obligations. one thing i was determined to do from the first, and that was to keep the credit of the school high; and this, i think i can say without boasting, we have done all through these years. i shall always remember a bit of advice given me by mr. george w. campbell, the white man to whom i have referred to as the one who induced general armstrong to send me to tuskegee. soon after i entered upon the work mr. campbell said to me, in his fatherly way: "washington, always remember that credit is capital." at one time when we were in the greatest distress for money that we ever experienced, i placed the situation frankly before general armstrong. without hesitation he gave me his personal check for all the money which he had saved for his own use. this was not the only time that general armstrong helped tuskegee in this way. i do not think i have ever made this fact public before. during the summer of 1882, at the end of the first year's work of the school, i was married to miss fannie n. smith, of malden, w. va. we began keeping house in tuskegee early in the fall. this made a home for our teachers, who now had been increase to four in number. my wife was also a graduate of the hampton institute. after earnest and constant work in the interests of the school, together with her housekeeping duties, my wife passed away in may, 1884. one child, portia m. washington, was born during our marriage. from the first, my wife most earnestly devoted her thoughts and time to the work of the school, and was completely one with me in every interest and ambition. she passed away, however, before she had an opportunity of seeing what the school was designed to be. chapter x a harder task than making bricks without straw from the very beginning, at tuskegee, i was determined to have the students do not only the agricultural and domestic work, but to have them erect their own buildings. my plan was to have them, while performing this service, taught the latest and best methods of labour, so that the school would not only get the benefit of their efforts, but the students themselves would be taught to see not only utility in labour, but beauty and dignity; would be taught, in fact, how to lift labour up from mere drudgery and toil, and would learn to love work for its own sake. my plan was not to teach them to work in the old way, but to show them how to make the forces of nature -air, water, steam, electricity, horse-power -assist them in their labour. at first many advised against the experiment of having the buildings erected by the labour of the students, but i was determined to stick to it. i told those who doubted the wisdom of the plan that i knew that our first buildings would not be so comfortable or so complete in their finish as buildings erected by the experienced hands of outside workmen, but that in the teaching of civilization, self help, and self-reliance, the erection of buildings by the students themselves would more than compensate for any lack of comfort or fine finish. i further told those who doubted the wisdom of this plan, that the majority of our students came to us in poverty, from the cabins of the cotton, sugar, and rice plantations of the south, and that while i knew it would please the students very much to place them at once in finely constructed buildings, i felt that it would be following out a more natural process of development to teach them how to construct their own buildings. mistakes i knew would be made, but these mistakes would teach us valuable lessons for the future. during the now nineteen years' existence of the tuskegee school, the plan of having the buildings erected by student labour has been adhered to. in this time forty buildings, counting small and large, have been built, and all except four are almost wholly the product of student labour. as an additional result, hundreds of men are now scattered throughout the south who received their knowledge of mechanics while being taught how to erect these buildings. skill and knowledge are now handed down from one set of students to another in this way, until at the present time a building of any description or size can be constructed wholly by our instructors and students, from the drawing of the plans to the putting in of the electric fixtures, without going off the grounds for a single workman. not a few times, when a new student has been led into the temptation of marring the looks of some building by leadpencil marks or by the cuts of a jack-knife, i have heard an old student remind him: "don't do that. that is our building. i helped put it up." in the early days of the school i think my most trying experience was in the matter of brickmaking. as soon as we got the farm work reasonably well started, we directed our next efforts toward the industry of making bricks. we needed these for use in connection with the erection of our own buildings; but there was also another reason for establishing this industry. there was no brickyard in the town, and in addition to our own needs there was a demand for bricks in the general market. i had always sympathized with the "children of israel," in their task of "making bricks without straw," but ours was the task of making bricks with no money and no experience. in the first place, the work was hard and dirty, and it was difficult to get the students to help. when it came to brickmaking, their distaste for manual labour in connection with book education became especially manifest. it was not a pleasant task for one to stand in the mud-pit for hours, with the mud up to his knees. more than one man became disgusted and left the school. we tried several locations before we opened up a pit that furnished brick clay. i had always supposed that brickmaking was very simple, but i soon found out by bitter experience that it required special skill and knowledge, particularly in the burning of the bricks. after a good deal of effort we moulded about twenty-five thousand bricks, and put them into a kiln to be burned. this kiln turned out to be a failure, because it was not properly constructed or properly burned. we began at once, however, on a second kiln. this, four some reason, also proved a failure. the failure of this kiln made it still more difficult to get the students to take part in the work. several of the teachers, however, who had been trained in the industries at hampton, volunteered their services, and in some way we succeeded in getting a third kiln ready for burning. the burning of a kiln required about a week. toward the latter part of the week, when it seemed as if we were going to have a good many thousand bricks in a few hours, in the middle of the night the kiln fell. for the third time we had failed. the failure of this last kiln left me without a single dollar with which to make another experiment. most of the teachers advised the abandoning of the effort to make bricks. in the midst of my troubles ai thought of a watch which had come into my possession years before. i took the watch to the city of montgomery, which was not far distant, and placed it in a pawn-shop. i secured cash upon it to the amount of fifteen dollars, with which to renew the brickmaking experiment. i returned to tuskegee, and, with the help of the fifteen dollars, rallied our rather demoralized and discouraged forces and began a fourth attempt to make bricks. this time, i am glad to say, we were successful. before i got hold of any money, the time-limit on my watch had expired, and i have never seen it since; but i have never regretted the loss of it. brickmaking has now become such an important industry at the school that last season our students manufactured twelve hundred thousand of first-class bricks, of a quality stable to be sold in any market. aside from this, scores of young men have mastered the brickmaking trade -both the making of bricks by hand and by machinery -and are now engaged in this industry in many parts of the south. the making of these bricks taught me an important lesson in regard to the relations of the two races in the south. many white people who had had no contact with the school, and perhaps no sympathy with it, came to us to buy bricks because they found out that ours were good bricks. they discovered that we were supplying a real want in the community. the making of these bricks caused many of the white residents of the neighbourhood to begin to feel that the education of the negro was not making him worthless, but that in educating our students we were adding something to the wealth and comfort of the community. as the people of the neighbourhood came to us to buy bricks, we got acquainted with them; they traded with us and we with them. our business interests became intermingled. we had something which they wanted; they had something which we wanted. this, in a large measure, helped to lay the foundation for the pleasant relations that have continued to exist between us and the white people in that section, and which now extend throughout the south. wherever one of our brickmakers has gone in the south, we find that he has something to contribute to the well-being of the community into which he has gone; something that has made the community feel that, in a degree, it is indebted to him, and perhaps, to a certain extent, dependent upon him. in this way pleasant relations between the races have been simulated. my experience is that there is something in human nature which always makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what colour of skin merit is found. i have found, too, that it is the visible, the tangible, that goes a long ways in softening prejudices. the actual sight of a first-class house that a negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build. the same principle of industrial education has been carried out in the building of our own wagons, carts, and buggies, from the first. we now own and use on our farm and about the school dozens of these vehicles, and every one of them has been built by the hands of the students. aside from this, we help supply the local market with these vehicles. the supplying of them to the people in the community has had the same effect as the supplying of bricks, and the man who learns at tuskegee to build and repair wagons and carts is regarded as a benefactor by both races in the community where he goes. the people with whom he lives and works are going to think twice before they part with such a man. the individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of race. one man may go into a community prepared to supply the people there with an analysis of greek sentences. the community may not at the time be prepared for, or feel the need of, greek analysis, but it may feel its need of bricks and houses and wagons. if the man can supply the need for those, then, it will lead eventually to a demand for the first product, and with the demand will come the ability to appreciate it and to profit by it. about the time that we succeeded in burning our first kiln of bricks we began facing in an emphasized form the objection of the students to being taught to work. by this time it had gotten to be pretty well advertised throughout the state that every student who came to tuskegee, no matter what his financial ability might be, must learn some industry. quite a number of letters came from parents protesting against their children engaging in labour while they were in the school. other parents came to the school to protest in person. most of the new students brought a written or a verbal request from their parents to the effect that they wanted their children taught nothing but books. the more books, the larger they were, and the longer the titles printed upon them, the better pleased the students and their parents seemed to be. i gave little heed to these protests, except that i lost no opportunity to go into as many parts of the state as i could, for the purpose of speaking to the parents, and showing them the value of industrial education. besides, i talked to the students constantly on the subject. notwithstanding the unpopularity of industrial work, the school continued to increase in numbers to such an extent that by the middle of the second year there was an attendance of about one hundred and fifty, representing almost all parts of the state of alabama, and including a few from other states. in the summer of 1882 miss davidson and i both went north and engaged in the work of raising funds for the completion of our new building. on my way north i stopped in new york to try to get a letter of recommendation from an officer of a missionary organization who had become somewhat acquainted with me a few years previous. this man not only refused to give me the letter, but advised me most earnestly to go back home at once, and not make any attempt to get money, for he was quite sure that i would never get more than enough to pay my travelling expenses. i thanked him for his advice, and proceeded on my journey. the first place i went to in the north, was northampton, mass., where i spent nearly a half-day in looking for a coloured family with whom i could board, never dreaming that any hotel would admit me. i was greatly surprised when i found that i would have no trouble in being accommodated at a hotel. we were successful in getting money enough so that on thanksgiving day of that year we held our first service in the chapel of porter hall, although the building was not completed. in looking about for some one to preach the thanksgiving sermon, i found one of the rarest men that it has ever been my privilege to know. this was the rev. robert c. bedford, a white man from wisconsin, who was then pastor of a little coloured congregational church in montgomery, ala. before going to montgomery to look for some one to preach this sermon i had never heard of mr. bedford. he had never heard of me. he gladly consented to come to tuskegee and hold the thanksgiving service. it was the first service of the kind that the coloured people there had ever observed, and what a deep interest they manifested in it! the sight of the new building made it a day of thanksgiving for them never to be forgotten. mr. bedford consented to become one of the trustees of the school, and in that capacity, and as a worker for it, he has been connected with it for eighteen years. during this time he has borne the school upon his heart night and day, and is never so happy as when he is performing some service, no matter how humble, for it. he completely obliterates himself in everything, and looks only for permission to serve where service is most disagreeable, and where others would not be attracted. in all my relations with him he has seemed to me to approach as nearly to the spirit of the master as almost any man i ever met. a little later there came into the service of the school another man, quite young at the time, and fresh from hampton, without whose service the school never could have become what it is. this was mr. warren logan, who now for seventeen years has been the treasurer of the institute, and the acting principal during my absence. he has always shown a degree of unselfishness and an amount of business tact, coupled with a clear judgment, that has kept the school in good condition no matter how long i have been absent from it. during all the financial stress through which the school has passed, his patience and faith in our ultimate success have not left him. as soon as our first building was near enough to completion so that we could occupy a portion of it -which was near the middle of the second year of the school -we opened a boarding department. students had begun coming from quite a distance, and in such increasing numbers that we felt more and more that we were merely skimming over the surface, in that we were not getting hold of the students in their home life. we had nothing but the students and their appetites with which to begin a boarding department. no provision had been made in the new building for a kitchen and dining room; but we discovered that by digging out a large amount of earth from under the building we could make a partially lighted basement room that could be used for a kitchen and dining room. again i called on the students to volunteer for work, this time to assist in digging out the basement. this they did, and in a few weeks we had a place to cook and eat in, although it was very rough and uncomfortable. any one seeing the place now would never believe that it was once used for a dining room. the most serious problem, though, was to get the boarding department started off in running order, with nothing to do with in the way of furniture, and with no money with which to buy anything. the merchants in the town would let us have what food we wanted on credit. in fact, in those earlier years i was constantly embarrassed because people seemed to have more faith in me than i had in myself. it was pretty hard to cook, however, with stoves, and awkward to eat without dishes. at first the cooking was done out-of-doors, in the old-fashioned, primitive style, in pots and skillets placed over a fire. some of the carpenters' benches that had been used in the construction of the building were utilized for tables. as for dishes, there were too few to make it worth while to spend time in describing them. no one connected with the boarding department seemed to have any idea that meals must be served at certain fixed and regular hours, and this was a source of great worry. everything was so out of joint and so inconvenient that i feel safe in saying that for the first two weeks something was wrong at every meal. either the meat was not done or had been burnt, or the salt had been left out of the bread, or the tea had been forgotten. early one morning i was standing near the dining-room door listening to the complaints of the students. the complaints that morning were especially emphatic and numerous, because the whole breakfast had been a failure. one of the girls who had failed to get any breakfast came out and went to the well to draw some water to drink and take the place of the breakfast which she had not been able to get. when she reached the well, she found that the rope was broken and that she could get no water. she turned from the well and said, in the most discouraged tone, not knowing that i was where i could hear her, "we can't even get water to drink at this school." i think no one remark ever came so near discouraging me as that one. at another time, when mr. bedford -whom i have already spoken of as one of our trustees, and a devoted friend of the institution -was visiting the school, he was given a bedroom immediately over the dining room. early in the morning he was awakened by a rather animated discussion between two boys in the dining room below. the discussion was over the question as to whose turn it was to use the coffee-cup that morning. one boy won the case by proving that for three mornings he had not had an opportunity to use the cup at all. but gradually, with patience and hard work, we brought order out of chaos, just as will be true of any problem if we stick to it with patience and wisdom and earnest effort. as i look back now over that part of our struggle, i am glad to see that we had it. i am glad that we endured all those discomforts and inconveniences. i am glad that our students had to dig out the place for their kitchen and dining room. i am glad that our first boarding-place was in the dismal, ill-lighted, and damp basement. had we started in a fine, attractive, convenient room, i fear we would have "lost our heads" and become "stuck up." it means a great deal, i think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for one's self. when our old students return to tuskegee now, as they often do, and go into our large, beautiful, well-ventilated, and well-lighted dining room, and see tempting, well-cooked food -largely grown by the students themselves -and see tables, neat tablecloths and napkins, and vases of flowers upon the tables, and hear singing birds, and note that each meal is served exactly upon the minute, with no disorder, and with almost no complaint coming from the hundreds that now fill our dining room, they, too, often say to me that they are glad that we started as we did, and built ourselves up year by year, by a slow and natural process of growth. chapter xi making their beds before they could lie on them a little later in the history of the school we had a visit from general j.f.b. marshall, the treasurer of the hampton institute, who had had faith enough to lend us the first two hundred and fifty dollars with which to make a payment down on the farm. he remained with us a week, and made a careful inspection of everything. he seemed well pleased with our progress, and wrote back interesting and encouraging reports to hampton. a little later miss mary f. mackie, the teacher who had given me the "sweeping" examination when i entered hampton, came to see us, and still later general armstrong himself came. at the time of the visits of these hampton friends the number of teachers at tuskegee had increase considerably, and the most of the new teachers were graduates of the hampton institute. we gave our hampton friends, especially general armstrong, a cordial welcome. they were all surprised and pleased at the rapid progress that the school had made within so short a time. the coloured people from miles around came to the school to get a look at general armstrong, about whom they had heard so much. the general was not only welcomed by the members of my own race, but by the southern white people as well. this first visit which general armstrong made to tuskegee gave me an opportunity to get an insight into his character such as i had not before had. i refer to his interest in the southern white people. before this i had had the thought that general armstrong, having fought the southern white man, rather cherished a feeling of bitterness toward the white south, and was interested in helping only the coloured man there. but this visit convinced me that i did not know the greatness and the generosity of the man. i soon learned, by his visits to the southern white people, and from his conversations with them, that he was as anxious about the prosperity and the happiness of the white race as the black. he cherished no bitterness against the south, and was happy when an opportunity offered for manifesting his sympathy. in all my acquaintance with general armstrong i never heard him speak, in public or in private, a single bitter word against the white man in the south. from his example in this respect i learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. i learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak. it is now long ago that i learned this lesson from general armstrong, and resolved that i would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. with god's help, i believe that i have completely rid myself of any ill feeling toward the southern white man for any wrong that he may have inflicted upon my race. i am made to feel just as happy now when i am rendering service to southern white men as when the service is rendered to a member of my own race. i pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice. the more i consider the subject, the more strongly i am convinced that the most harmful effect of the practice to which the people in certain sections of the south have felt themselves compelled to resort, in order to get rid of the force of the negroes' ballot, is not wholly in the wrong done to the negro, but in the permanent injury to the morals of the white man. the wrong to the negro is temporary, but to the morals of the white man the injury is permanent. i have noted time and time again that when an individual perjures himself in order to break the force of the black man's ballot, he soon learns to practise dishonesty in other relations of life, not only where the negro is concerned, but equally so where a white man is concerned. the white man who begins by cheating a negro usually ends by cheating a white man. the white man who begins to break the law by lynching a negro soon yields to the temptation to lynch a white man. all this, it seems to me, makes it important that the whole nation lend a hand in trying to lift the burden of ignorance from the south. another thing that is becoming more apparent each year in the development of education in the south is the influence of general armstrong's idea of education; and this not upon the blacks alone, but upon the whites also. at the present time there is almost no southern state that is not putting forth efforts in the direction of securing industrial education for its white boys and girls, and in most cases it is easy to trace the history of these efforts back to general armstrong. soon after the opening of our humble boarding department students began coming to us in still larger numbers. for weeks we not only had to contend with the difficulty of providing board, with no money, but also with that of providing sleeping accommodations. for this purpose we rented a number of cabins near the school. these cabins were in a dilapidated condition, and during the winter months the students who occupied them necessarily suffered from the cold. we charge the students eight dollars a month -all they were able to pay -for their board. this included, besides board, room, fuel, and washing. we also gave the students credit on their board bills for all the work which they did for the school which was of any value to the institution. the cost of tuition, which was fifty dollars a year for each student, we had to secure then, as now, wherever we could. this small charge in cash gave us no capital with which to start a boarding department. the weather during the second winter of our work was very cold. we were not able to provide enough bed-clothes to keep the students warm. in fact, for some time we were not able to provide, except in a few cases, bedsteads and mattresses of any kind. during the coldest nights i was so troubled about the discomfort of the students that i could not sleep myself. i recall that on several occasions i went in the middle of the night to the shanties occupied by the young men, for the purpose of confronting them. often i found some of them sitting huddled around a fire, with the one blanket which we had been able to provide wrapped around them, trying in this way to keep warm. during the whole night some of them did not attempt to lie down. one morning, when the night previous had been unusually cold, i asked those of the students in the chapel who thought that they had been frostbitten during the night to raise their hands. three hands went up. notwithstanding these experiences, there was almost no complaining on the part of the students. they knew that we were doing the best that we could for them. they were happy in the privilege of being permitted to enjoy any kind of opportunity that would enable them to improve their condition. they were constantly asking what they might do to lighten the burdens of the teachers. i have heard it stated more than once, both in the north and in the south, that coloured people would not obey and respect each other when one member of the race is placed in a position of authority over others. in regard to this general belief and these statements, i can say that during the nineteen years of my experience at tuskegee i never, either by word or act, have been treated with disrespect by any student or officer connected with the institution. on the other hand, i am constantly embarrassed by the many acts of thoughtful kindness. the students do not seem to want to see me carry a large book or a satchel or any kind of a burden through the grounds. in such cases more than one always offers to relieve me. i almost never go out of my office when the rain is falling that some student does not come to my side with an umbrella and ask to be allowed to hold it over me. while writing upon this subject, it is a pleasure for me to add that in all my contact with the white people of the south i have never received a single personal insult. the white people in and near tuskegee, to an especial [sic] degree, seem to count it as a privilege to show me all the respect within their power, and often go out of their way to do this. not very long ago i was making a journey between dallas (texas) and houston. in some way it became known in advance that i was on the train. at nearly every station at which the train stopped, numbers of white people, including in most cases of the officials of the town, came aboard and introduced themselves and thanked me heartily for the work that i was trying to do for the south. on another occasion, when i was making a trip from augusta, georgia, to atlanta, being rather tired from much travel, i road in a pullman sleeper. when i went into the car, i found there two ladies from boston whom i knew well. these good ladies were perfectly ignorant, it seems, of the customs of the south, and in the goodness of their hearts insisted that i take a seat with them in their section. after some hesitation i consented. i had been there but a few minutes when one of them, without my knowledge, ordered supper to be served for the three of us. this embarrassed me still further. the car was full of southern white men, most of whom had their eyes on our party. when i found that supper had been ordered, i tried to contrive some excuse that would permit me to leave the section, but the ladies insisted that i must eat with them. i finally settled back in my seat with a sigh, and said to myself, "i am in for it now, sure." to add further to the embarrassment of the situation, soon after the supper was placed on the table one of the ladies remembered that she had in her satchel a special kind of tea which she wished served, and as she said she felt quite sure the porter did not know how to brew it properly, she insisted upon getting up and preparing and serving it herself. at last the meal was over; and it seemed the longest one that i had ever eaten. when we were through, i decided to get myself out of the embarrassing situation and go to the smoking room, where most of the men were by that time, to see how the land lay. in the meantime, however, it had become known in some way throughout the car who i was. when i went into the smoking-room i was never more surprised in my life than when each man, nearly every one of them a citizen of georgia, came up and introduced himself to me and thanked me earnestly for the work that i was trying to do for the whole south. this was not flattery, because each one of these individuals knew that he had nothing to gain by trying to flatter me. from the first i have sought to impress the students with the idea that tuskegee is not my institution, or that of the officers, but that it is their institution, and that they have as much interest in it as any of the trustees or instructors. i have further sought to have them feel that i am at the institution as their friend and adviser, and not as their overseer. it has been my aim to have them speak with directness and frankness about anything that concerns the life of the school. two or three times a year i ask the students to write me a letter criticising or making complaints or suggestions about anything connected with the institution. when this is not done, i have them meet me in the chapel for a heart-to-heart talk about the conduct of the school. there are no meetings with our students that i enjoy more than these, and none are more helpful to me in planning for the future. these meetings, it seems to me, enable me to get at the very heart of all that concerns the school. few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him. when i have read of labour troubles between employers and employees, i have often thought that many strikes and similar disturbances might be avoided if the employers would cultivate the habit of getting nearer to their employees, of consulting and advising with them, and letting them feel that the interests of the two are the same. every individual responds to confidence, and this is not more true of any race than of the negroes. let them once understand that you are unselfishly interested in them, and you can lead them to any extent. it was my aim from the first at tuskegee to not only have the buildings erected by the students themselves, but to have them make their own furniture as far as was possible. i now marvel at the patience of the students while sleeping upon the floor while waiting for some kind of a bedstead to be constructed, or at their sleeping without any kind of a mattress while waiting for something that looked like a mattress to be made. in the early days we had very few students who had been used to handling carpenters' tools, and the bedsteads made by the students then were very rough and very weak. not unfrequently [sic] when i went into the students' rooms in the morning i would find at least two bedsteads lying about on the floor. the problem of providing mattresses was a difficult one to solve. we finally mastered this, however, by getting some cheap cloth and sewing pieces of this together as to make large bags. these bags we filled with the pine straw -or, as it is sometimes called, pine needles -which we secured from the forests near by. i am glad to say that the industry of mattress-making has grown steadily since then, and has been improved to such an extent that at the present time it is an important branch of the work which is taught systematically to a number of our girls, and that the mattresses that now come out of the mattress-shop at tuskegee are about as good as those bought in the average store. for some time after the opening of the boarding department we had no chairs in the students' bedrooms or in the dining rooms. instead of chairs we used stools which the students constructed by nailing together three pieces of rough board. as a rule, the furniture in the students' rooms during the early days of the school consisted of a bed, some stools, and sometimes a rough table made by the students. the plan of having the students make the furniture is still followed, but the number of pieces in a room has been increased, and the workmanship has so improved that little fault can be found with the articles now. one thing that i have always insisted upon at tuskegee is that everywhere there should be absolute cleanliness. over and over again the students were reminded in those first years -and are reminded now -that people would excuse us for our poverty, for our lack of comforts and conveniences, but that they would not excuse us for dirt. another thing that has been insisted upon at the school is the use of the tooth-brush. "the gospel of the tooth-brush," as general armstrong used to call it, is part of our creed at tuskegee. no student is permitted to retain who does not keep and use a tooth brush. several times, in recent years, students have come to us who brought with them almost no other article except a tooth-brush. they had heard from the lips of other students about our insisting upon the use of this, and so, to make a good impression, they brought at least a tooth-brush with them. i remember that one morning, not long ago, i went with the lady principal on her usual morning tour of inspection of the girls' rooms. we found one room that contained three girls who had recently arrived at the school. when i asked them if they had tooth-brushes, one of the girls replied, pointing to a brush: "yes, sir. that is our brush. we bought it together, yesterday." it did not take them long to learn a different lesson. it has been interesting to note the effect that the use of the tooth-brush has had in bringing about a higher degree of civilization among the students. with few exceptions, i have noticed that, if we can get a student to the point where, when the first or second tooth brush disappears, he of his own motion buys another, i have not been disappointed in the future of that individual. absolute cleanliness of the body has been insisted upon from the first. the students have been taught to bathe as regularly as to take their meals. this lesson we began teaching before we had anything in the shape of a bath-house. most of the students came from plantation districts, and often we had to teach them how to sleep at night; that is, whether between the two sheets -after we got to the point where we could provide them two sheets -or under both of them. naturally i found it difficult to teach them to sleep between two sheets when we were able to supply but one. the importance of the use of the night-gown received the same attention. for a long time one of the most difficult tasks was to teach the students that all the buttons were to be kept on their clothes, and that there must be no torn places or grease-spots. this lesson, i am pleased to be able to say, has been so thoroughly learned and so faithfully handed down from year to year by one set of students to another that often at the present time, when the students march out of the chapel in the evening and their dress is inspected, as it is every night, not one button is found to be missing. chapter xii raising money when we opened our boarding department, we provided rooms in the attic of porter hall, our first building, for a number of girls. but the number of students, of both sexes, continued to increase. we could find rooms outside the school grounds for many of the young men, but the girls we did not care to expose in this way. very soon the problem of providing more rooms for the girls, as well as a larger boarding department for all the students, grew serious. as a result, we finally decided to undertake the construction of a still larger building -a building that would contain rooms for the girls and boarding accommodations for all. after having had a preliminary sketch of the needed building made, we found that it would cost about ten thousand dollars. we had no money whatever with which to begin; still we decided to give the needed building a name. we knew we could name it, even though we were in doubt about our ability to secure the means for its construction. we decided to call the proposed building alabama hall, in honour of the state in which we were labouring. again miss davidson began making efforts to enlist the interest and help of the coloured and white people in and near tuskegee. they responded willingly, in proportion to their means. the students, as in the case of our first building, porter hall, began digging out the dirt in order to allow the laying of the foundations. when we seemed at the end of our resources, so far as securing money was concerned, something occurred which showed the greatness of general armstrong -something which proved how far he was above the ordinary individual. when we were in the midst of great anxiety as to where and how we were to get funds for the new building, i received a telegram from general armstrong asking me if i could spend a month travelling with him through the north, and asking me, if i could do so, to come to hampton at once. of course i accepted general armstrong's invitation, and went to hampton immediately. on arriving there i found that the general had decided to take a quartette [sic] of singers through the north, and hold meetings for a month in important cities, at which meetings he and i were to speak. imagine my surprise when the general told me, further, that these meetings were to be held, not in the interests of hampton, but in the interests of tuskegee, and that the hampton institute was to be responsible for all the expenses. although he never told me so in so many words, i found that general armstrong took this method of introducing me to the people of the north, as well as for the sake of securing some immediate funds to be used in the erection of alabama hall. a weak and narrow man would have reasoned that all the money which came to tuskegee in this way would be just so much taken from the hampton institute; but none of these selfish or short-sighted feelings ever entered the breast of general armstrong. he was too big to be little, too good to be mean. he knew that the people in the north who gave money gave it for the purpose of helping the whole cause of negro civilization, and not merely for the advancement of any one school. the general knew, too, that the way to strengthen hampton was to make it a centre of unselfish power in the working out of the whole southern problem. in regard to the addresses which i was to make in the north, i recall just one piece of advice which the general gave me. he said: "give them an idea for every word." i think it would be hard to improve upon this advice; and it might be made to apply to all public speaking. from that time to the present i have always tried to keep his advice in mind. meetings were held in new york, brooklyn, boston, philadelphia, and other large cities, and at all of these meetings general armstrong pleased, together with myself, for help, not for hampton, but for tuskegee. at these meetings an especial [sic] effort was made to secure help for the building of alabama hall, as well as to introduce the school to the attention of the general public. in both these respects the meetings proved successful. after that kindly introduction i began going north alone to secure funds. during the last fifteen years i have been compelled to spend a large proportion of my time away from the school, in an effort to secure money to provide for the growing needs of the institution. in my efforts to get funds i have had some experiences that may be of interest to my readers. time and time again i have been asked, by people who are trying to secure money for philanthropic purposes, what rule or rules i followed to secure the interest and help of people who were able to contribute money to worthy objects. as far as the science of what is called begging can be reduced to rules, i would say that i have had but two rules. first, always to do my whole duty regarding making our work known to individuals and organizations; and, second, not to worry about the results. this second rule has been the hardest for me to live up to. when bills are on the eve of falling due, with not a dollar in hand with which to meet them, it is pretty difficult to learn not to worry, although i think i am learning more and more each year that all worry simply consumes, and to no purpose, just so much physical and mental strength that might otherwise be given to effective work. after considerable experience in coming into contact with wealthy and noted men, i have observed that those who have accomplished the greatest results are those who "keep under the body"; are those who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient, and polite. i think that president william mckinley is the best example of a man of this class that i have ever seen. in order to be successful in any kind of undertaking, i think the main thing is for one to grow to the point where he completely forgets himself; that is, to lose himself in a great cause. in proportion as one loses himself in the way, in the same degree does he get the highest happiness out of his work. my experience in getting money for tuskegee has taught me to have no patience with those people who are always condemning the rich because they are rich, and because they do not give more to objects of charity. in the first place, those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much suffering would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business enterprises. then very few persons have any idea of the large number of applications for help that rich people are constantly being flooded with. i know wealthy people who receive as much as twenty calls a day for help. more than once when i have gone into the offices of rich men, i have found half a dozen persons waiting to see them, and all come for the same purpose, that of securing money. and all these calls in person, to say nothing of the applications received through the mails. very few people have any idea of the amount of money given away by persons who never permit their names to be known. i have often heard persons condemned for not giving away money, who, to my own knowledge, were giving away thousands of dollars every year so quietly that the world knew nothing about it. as an example of this, there are two ladies in new york, whose names rarely appear in print, but who, in a quiet way, have given us the means with which to erect three large and important buildings during the last eight years. besides the gift of these buildings, they have made other generous donations to the school. and they not only help tuskegee, but they are constantly seeking opportunities to help other worthy causes. although it has been my privilege to be the medium through which a good many hundred thousand dollars have been received for the work at tuskegee, i have always avoided what the world calls "begging." i often tell people that i have never "begged" any money, and that i am not a "beggar." my experience and observation have convinced me that persistent asking outright for money from the rich does not, as a rule, secure help. i have usually proceeded on the principle that persons who possess sense enough to earn money have sense enough to know how to give it away, and that the mere making known of the facts regarding tuskegee, and especially the facts regarding the work of the graduates, has been more effective than outright begging. i think that the presentation of facts, on a high, dignified plane, is all the begging that most rich people care for. while the work of going from door to door and from office to office is hard, disagreeable, and costly in bodily strength, yet it has some compensations. such work gives one a rare opportunity to study human nature. it also has its compensations in giving one an opportunity to meet some of the best people in the world -to be more correct, i think i should say _the best_ people in the world. when one takes a broad survey of the country, he will find that the most useful and influential people in it are those who take the deepest interest in institutions that exist for the purpose of making the world better. at one time, when i was in boston, i called at the door of a rather wealthy lady, and was admitted to the vestibule and sent up my card. while i was waiting for an answer, her husband came in, and asked me in the most abrupt manner what i wanted. when i tried to explain the object of my call, he became still more ungentlemanly in his words and manner, and finally grew so excited that i left the house without waiting for a reply from the lady. a few blocks from that house i called to see a gentleman who received me in the most cordial manner. he wrote me his check for a generous sum, and then, before i had had an opportunity to thank him, said: "i am so grateful to you, mr. washington, for giving me the opportunity to help a good cause. it is a privilege to have a share in it. we in boston are constantly indebted to you for doing _our_ work." my experience in securing money convinces me that the first type of man is growing more rare all the time, and that the latter type is increasing; that is, that, more and more, rich people are coming to regard men and women who apply to them for help for worthy objects, not as beggars, but as agents for doing their work. in the city of boston i have rarely called upon an individual for funds that i have not been thanked for calling, usually before i could get an opportunity to thank the donor for the money. in that city the donors seem to feel, in a large degree, that an honour is being conferred upon them in their being permitted to give. nowhere else have i met with, in so large a measure, this fine and christlike spirit as in the city of boston, although there are many notable instances of it outside that city. i repeat my belief that the world is growing in the direction of giving. i repeat that the main rule by which i have been guided in collecting money is to do my full duty in regard to giving people who have money an opportunity for help. in the early years of the tuskegee school i walked the streets or travelled country roads in the north for days and days without receiving a dollar. often as it happened, when during the week i had been disappointed in not getting a cent from the very individuals from whom i most expected help, and when i was almost broken down and discouraged, that generous help has come from some one who i had had little idea would give at all. i recall that on one occasion i obtained information that led me to believe that a gentleman who lived about two miles out in the country from stamford, conn., might become interest in our efforts at tuskegee if our conditions and needs were presented to him. on an unusually cold and stormy day i walked the two miles to see him. after some difficulty i succeeded in securing an interview with him. he listened with some degree of interest to what i had to say, but did not give me anything. i could not help having the feeling that, in a measure, the three hours that i had spent in seeing him had been thrown away. still, i had followed my usual rule of doing my duty. if i had not seen him, i should have felt unhappy over neglect of duty. two years after this visit a letter came to tuskegee from this man, which read like this: "enclosed i send you a new york draft for ten thousand dollars, to be used in furtherance of your work. i had placed this sum in my will for your school, but deem it wiser to give it to you while i live. i recall with pleasure your visit to me two years ago." i can hardly imagine any occurrence which could have given me more genuine satisfaction than the receipt of this draft. it was by far the largest single donation which up to that time the school had ever received. it came at a time when an unusually long period had passed since we had received any money. we were in great distress because of lack of funds, and the nervous strain was tremendous. it is difficult for me to think of any situation that is more trying on the nerves than that of conducting a large institution, with heavy obligations to meet, without knowing where the money is to come from to meet these obligations from month to month. in our case i felt a double responsibility, and this made the anxiety all the more intense. if the institution had been officered by white persons, and had failed, it would have injured the cause of negro education; but i knew that the failure of our institution, officered by negroes, would not only mean the loss of a school, but would cause people, in a large degree, to lose faith in the ability of the entire race. the receipt of this draft for ten thousand dollars, under all these circumstances, partially lifted a burden that had been pressing down upon me for days. from the beginning of our work to the present i have always had the feeling, and lose no opportunity to impress our teachers with the same idea, that the school will always be supported in proportion as the inside of the institution is kept clean and pure and wholesome. the first time i ever saw the late collis p. huntington, the great railroad man, he gave me two dollars for our school. the last time i saw him, which was a few months before he died, he gave me fifty thousand dollars toward our endowment fund. between these two gifts there were others of generous proportions which came every year from both mr. and mrs. huntington. some people may say that it was tuskegee's good luck that brought to us this gift of fifty thousand dollars. no, it was not luck. it was hard work. nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result of hard work. when mr. huntington gave me the first two dollars, i did not blame him for not giving me more, but made up my mind that i was going to convince him by tangible results that we were worthy of larger gifts. for a dozen years i made a strong effort to convince mr. huntington of the value of our work. i noted that just in proportion as the usefulness of the school grew, his donations increased. never did i meet an individual who took a more kindly and sympathetic interest in our school than did mr. huntington. he not only gave money to us, but took time in which to advise me, as a father would a son, about the general conduct of the school. more than once i have found myself in some pretty tight places while collecting money in the north. the following incident i have never related but once before, for the reason that i feared that people would not believe it. one morning i found myself in providence, rhode island, without a cent of money with which to buy breakfast. in crossing the street to see a lady from whom i hoped to get some money, i found a bright new twenty-five-cent piece in the middle of the street track. i not only had this twenty-five cents for my breakfast, but within a few minutes i had a donation from the lady on whom i had started to call. at one of our commencements i was bold enough to invite the rev. e. winchester donald, d.d., rector of trinity church, boston, to preach the commencement sermon. as we then had no room large enough to accommodate all who would be present, the place of meeting was under a large improvised arbour, built partly of brush and partly of rough boards. soon after dr. donald had begun speaking, the rain came down in torrents, and he had to stop, while someone held an umbrella over him. the boldness of what i had done never dawned upon me until i saw the picture made by the rector of trinity church standing before that large audience under an old umbrella, waiting for the rain to cease so that he could go on with his address. it was not very long before the rain ceased and dr. donald finished his sermon; and an excellent sermon it was, too, in spite of the weather. after he had gone to his room, and had gotten the wet threads of his clothes dry, dr. donald ventured the remark that a large chapel at tuskegee would not be out of place. the next day a letter came from two ladies who were then travelling in italy, saying that they had decided to give us the money for such a chapel as we needed. a short time ago we received twenty thousand dollars from mr. andrew carnegie, to be used for the purpose of erecting a new library building. our first library and reading-room were in a corner of a shanty, and the whole thing occupied a space about five by twelve feet. it required ten years of work before i was able to secure mr. carnegie's interest and help. the first time i saw him, ten years ago, he seemed to take but little interest in our school, but i was determined to show him that we were worthy of his help. after ten years of hard work i wrote him a letter reading as follows: december 15, 1900. mr. andrew carnegie, 5 w. fifty-first st., new york. dear sir: complying with the request which you made of me when i saw you at your residence a few days ago, i now submit in writing an appeal for a library building for our institution. we have 1100 students, 86 officers and instructors, together with their families, and about 200 coloured people living near the school, all of whom would make use of the library building. we have over 12,000 books, periodicals, etc., gifts from our friends, but we have no suitable place for them, and we have no suitable reading-room. our graduates go to work in every section of the south, and whatever knowledge might be obtained in the library would serve to assist in the elevation of the whole negro race. such a building as we need could be erected for about $20,000. all of the work for the building, such as brickmaking, brick masonry, carpentry, blacksmithing, etc., would be done by the students. the money which you would give would not only supply the building, but the erection of the building would give a large number of students an opportunity to learn the building trades, and the students would use the money paid to them to keep themselves in school. i do not believe that a similar amount of money often could be made go so far in uplifting a whole race. if you wish further information, i shall be glad to furnish it. yours truly, booker t. washington, principal. the next mail brought back the following reply: "i will be very glad to pay the bills for the library building as they are incurred, to the extent of twenty thousand dollars, and i am glad of this opportunity to show the interest i have in your noble work." i have found that strict business methods go a long way in securing the interest of rich people. it has been my constant aim at tuskegee to carry out, in our financial and other operations, such business methods as would be approved of by any new york banking house. i have spoken of several large gifts to the school; but by far the greater proportion of the money that has built up the institution has come in the form of small donations from persons of moderate means. it is upon these small gifts, which carry with them the interest of hundreds of donors, that any philanthropic work must depend largely for its support. in my efforts to get money i have often been surprised at the patience and deep interest of the ministers, who are besieged on every hand and at all hours of the day for help. if no other consideration had convinced me of the value of the christian life, the christlike work which the church of all denominations in america has done during the last thirty-five years for the elevation of the black man would have made me a christian. in a large degree it has been the pennies, the nickels, and the dimes which have come from the sunday-schools, the christian endeavour societies, and the missionary societies, as well as from the church proper, that have helped to elevate the negro at so rapid a rate. this speaking of small gifts reminds me to say that very few tuskegee graduates fail to send us an annual contribution. these contributions range from twenty-five cents up to ten dollars. soon after beginning our third year's work we were surprised to receive money from three special sources, and up to the present time we have continued to receive help from them. first, the state legislature of alabama increased its annual appropriation from two thousand dollars to three thousand dollars; i might add that still later it increased this sum to four thousand five hundred dollars a year. the effort to secure this increase was led by the hon. m.f. foster, the member of the legislature from tuskegee. second, we received one thousand dollars from the john f. slater fund. our work seemed to please the trustees of this fund, as they soon began increasing their annual grant. this has been added to from time to time until at present we receive eleven thousand dollars annually from the fund. the other help to which i have referred came in the shape of an allowance from the peabody fund. this was at first five hundred dollars, but it has since been increased to fifteen hundred dollars. the effort to secure help from the slater and peabody funds brought me into contact with two rare men -men who have had much to do in shaping the policy for the education of the negro. i refer to the hon. j.l.m. curry, of washington, who is the general agent for these two funds, and mr. morris k. jessup, of new york. dr. curry is a native of the south, an ex-confederate soldier, yet i do not believe there is any man in the country who is more deeply interest in the highest welfare of the negro than dr. curry, or one who is more free from race prejudice. he enjoys the unique distinction of possessing to an equal degree of confidence of the black man and the southern white man. i shall never forget the first time i met him. it was in richmond, va., where he was then living. i had heard much about him. when i first went into his presence, trembling because of my youth and inexperience, he took me by the hand so cordially, and spoke such encouraging words, and gave me such helpful advice regarding the proper course to pursue, that i came to know him then, as i have known him ever since, as a high example of one who is constantly and unselfishly at work for the betterment of humanity. mr. morris k. jessup, the treasurer of the slater fund, i refer to because i know of no man of wealth and large and complication business responsibilities who gives not only money but his time and thought to the subject of the proper method of elevating the negro to the extent that is true of mr. jessup. it is very largely through this effort and influence that during the last few years the subject of industrial education has assumed the importance that it has, and been placed on its present footing. chapter xiii two thousand miles for a five-minute speech soon after the opening of our boarding department, quite a number of students who evidently were worthy, but who were so poor that they did not have any money to pay even the small charges at the school, began applying for admission. this class was composed of both men and women. it was a great trial to refuse admission to these applicants, and in 1884 we established a night-school to accommodate a few of them. the night-school was organized on a plan similar to the one which i had helped to establish at hampton. at first it was composed of about a dozen students. they were admitted to the night-school only when they had no money with which to pay any part of their board in the regular day-school. it was further required that they must work for ten hours during the day at some trade or industry, and study academic branches for two hours during the evening. this was the requirement for the first one or two years of their stay. they were to be paid something above the cost of their board, with the understanding that all of their earnings, except a very small part, were to be reserved in the school's treasury, to be used for paying their board in the regular day-school after they had entered that department. the night-school, started in this manner, has grown until there are at present four hundred and fifty-seven students enrolled in it alone. there could hardly be a more severe test of a student's worth than this branch of the institute's worth. it is largely because it furnishes such a good opportunity to test the backbone of a student that i place such high value upon our night-school. any one who is willing to work ten hours a day at the brick-yard, or in the laundry, through one or two years, in order that he or she may have the privilege of studying academic branches for two hours in the evening, has enough bottom to warrant being further educated. after the student has left the night-school he enters the day school, where he takes academic branches four days in a week, and works at his trade two days. besides this he usually works at his trade during the three summer months. as a rule, after a student has succeeded in going through the night-school test, he finds a way to finish the regular course in industrial and academic training. no student, no matter how much money he may be able to command, is permitted to go through school without doing manual labour. in fact, the industrial work is now as popular as the academic branches. some of the most successful men and women who have graduated from the institution obtained their start in the night-school. while a great deal of stress is laid upon the industrial side of the work at tuskegee, we do not neglect or overlook in any degree the religious and spiritual side. the school is strictly undenominational [sic], but it is thoroughly christian, and the spiritual training or the students is not neglected. our preaching service, prayer meetings, sunday-school, christian endeavour society, young men's christian association, and various missionary organizations, testify to this. in 1885, miss olivia davidson, to whom i have already referred as being largely responsible for the success of the school during its early history, and i were married. during our married life she continued to divide her time and strength between our home and the work for the school. she not only continued to work in the school at tuskegee, but also kept up her habit of going north to secure funds. in 1889 she died, after four years of happy married life and eight years of hard and happy work for the school. she literally wore herself out in her never ceasing efforts in behalf of the work that she so dearly loved. during our married life there were born to us two bright, beautiful boys, booker taliaferro and ernest davidson. the older of these, booker, has already mastered the brick-maker's trade at tuskegee. i have often been asked how i began the practice of public speaking. in answer i would say that i never planned to give any large part of my life to speaking in public. i have always had more of an ambition to _do_ things than merely to talk _about_ doing them. it seems that when i went north with general armstrong to speak at the series of public meetings to which i have referred, the president of the national educational association, the hon. thomas w. bicknell, was present at one of those meetings and heard me speak. a few days afterward he sent me an invitation to deliver an address at the next meeting of the educational association. this meeting was to be held in madison, wis. i accepted the invitation. this was, in a sense, the beginning of my public-speaking career. on the evening that i spoke before the association there must have been not far from four thousand persons present. without my knowing it, there were a large number of people present from alabama, and some from the town of tuskegee. these white people afterward frankly told me that they went to this meeting expecting to hear the south roundly abused, but were pleasantly surprised to find that there was no word of abuse in my address. on the contrary, the south was given credit for all the praiseworthy things that it had done. a white lady who was teacher [sic] in a college in tuskegee wrote back to the local paper that she was gratified, as well as surprised, to note the credit which i gave the white people of tuskegee for their help in getting the school started. this address at madison was the first that i had delivered that in any large measure dealt with the general problem of the races. those who heard it seemed to be pleased with what i said and with the general position that i took. when i first came to tuskegee, i determined that i would make it my home, that i would take as much pride in the right actions of the people of the town as any white man could do, and that i would, at the same time, deplore the wrong-doing of the people as much as any white man. i determined never to say anything in a public address in the north that i would not be willing to say in the south. i early learned that it is a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done. while pursuing this policy i have not failed, at the proper time and in the proper manner, to call attention, in no uncertain terms, to the wrongs which any part of the south has been guilty of. i have found that there is a large element in the south that is quick to respond to straightforward, honest criticism of any wrong policy. as a rule, the place to criticise the south, when criticism is necessary, is in the south -not in boston. a boston man who came to alabama to criticise boston would not effect so much good, i think, as one who had his word of criticism to say in boston. in this address at madison i took the ground that the policy to be pursued with references to the races was, by every honourable means, to bring them together and to encourage the cultivation of friendly relations, instead of doing that which would embitter. i further contended that, in relation to his vote, the negro should more and more consider the interests of the community in which he lived, rather than seek alone to please some one who lived a thousand miles away from him and from his interests. in this address i said that the whole future of the negro rested largely upon the question as to whether or not he should make himself, through his skill, intelligence, and character, of such undeniable value to the community in which he lived that the community could not dispense with his presence. i said that any individual who learned to do something better than anybody else -learned to do a common thing in an uncommon manner -had solved his problem, regardless of the colour of his skin, and that in proportion as the negro learned to produce what other people wanted and must have, in the same proportion would he be respected. i spoke of an instance where one of our graduates had produced two hundred and sixty-six bushels of sweet potatoes from an acre of ground, in a community where the average production had been only forty-nine bushels to the acre. he had been able to do this by reason of his knowledge of the chemistry of the soil and by his knowledge of improved methods of agriculture. the white farmers in the neighbourhood respected him, and came to him for ideas regarding the raising of sweet potatoes. these white farmers honoured and respected him because he, by his skill and knowledge, had added something to the wealth and the comfort of the community in which he lived. i explained that my theory of education for the negro would not, for example, confine him for all time to farm life -to the production of the best and the most sweet potatoes -but that, if he succeeded in this line of industry, he could lay the foundations upon which his children and grand-children could grow to higher and more important things in life. such, in brief, were some of the views i advocated in this first address dealing with the broad question of the relations of the two races, and since that time i have not found any reason for changing my views on any important point. in my early life i used to cherish a feeling of ill will toward any one who spoke in bitter terms against the negro, or who advocated measures that tended to oppress the black man or take from him opportunities for growth in the most complete manner. now, whenever i hear any one advocating measures that are meant to curtail the development of another, i pity the individual who would do this. i know that the one who makes this mistake does so because of his own lack of opportunity for the highest kind of growth. i pity him because i know that he is trying to stop the progress of the world, and because i know that in time the development and the ceaseless advance of humanity will make him ashamed of his weak and narrow position. one might as well try to stop the progress of a mighty railroad train by throwing his body across the track, as to try to stop the growth of the world in the direction of giving mankind more intelligence, more culture, more skill, more liberty, and in the direction of extending more sympathy and more brotherly kindness. the address which i delivered at madison, before the national educational association, gave me a rather wide introduction in the north, and soon after that opportunities began offering themselves for me to address audiences there. i was anxious, however, that the way might also be opened for me to speak directly to a representative southern white audience. a partial opportunity of this kind, one that seemed to me might serve as an entering wedge, presented itself in 1893, when the international meeting of christian workers was held at atlanta, ga. when this invitation came to me, i had engagements in boston that seemed to make it impossible for me to speak in atlanta. still, after looking over my list of dates and places carefully, i found that i could take a train from boston that would get me into atlanta about thirty minutes before my address was to be delivered, and that i could remain in that city before taking another train for boston. my invitation to speak in atlanta stipulated that i was to confine my address to five minutes. the question, then, was whether or not i could put enough into a five-minute address to make it worth while for me to make such a trip. i knew that the audience would be largely composed of the most influential class of white men and women, and that it would be a rare opportunity for me to let them know what we were trying to do at tuskegee, as well as to speak to them about the relations of the races. so i decided to make the trip. i spoke for five minutes to an audience of two thousand people, composed mostly of southern and northern whites. what i said seemed to be received with favour and enthusiasm. the atlanta papers of the next day commented in friendly terms on my address, and a good deal was said about it in different parts of the country. i felt that i had in some degree accomplished my object -that of getting a hearing from the dominant class of the south. the demands made upon me for public addresses continued to increase, coming in about equal numbers from my own people and from northern whites. i gave as much time to these addresses as i could spare from the immediate work at tuskegee. most of the addresses in the north were made for the direct purpose of getting funds with which to support the school. those delivered before the coloured people had for their main object the impressing upon them the importance of industrial and technical education in addition to academic and religious training. i now come to that one of the incidents in my life which seems to have excited the greatest amount of interest, and which perhaps went further than anything else in giving me a reputation that in a sense might be called national. i refer to the address which i delivered at the opening of the atlanta cotton states and international exposition, at atlanta, ga., september 18, 1895. so much has been said and written about this incident, and so many questions have been asked me concerning the address, that perhaps i may be excused for taking up the matter with some detail. the five minute address in atlanta, which i came from boston to deliver, was possibly the prime cause for an opportunity being given me to make the second address there. in the spring of 1895 i received a telegram from prominent citizens in atlanta asking me to accompany a committee from that city to washington for the purpose of appearing before a committee of congress in the interest of securing government help for the exposition. the committee was composed of about twenty-five of the most prominent and most influential white men of georgia. all the members of this committee were white men except bishop grant, bishop gaines, and myself. the mayor and several other city and state officials spoke before the committee. they were followed by the two coloured bishops. my name was the last on the list of speakers. i had never before appeared before such a committee, nor had i ever delivered any address in the capital of the nation. i had many misgivings as to what i ought to say, and as to the impression that my address would make. while i cannot recall in detail what i said, i remember that i tried to impress upon the committee, with all the earnestness and plainness of any language that i could command, that if congress wanted to do something which would assist in ridding the south of the race question and making friends between the two races, it should, in every proper way, encourage the material and intellectual growth of both races. i said that the atlanta exposition would present an opportunity for both races to show what advance they had made since freedom, and would at the same time afford encouragement to them to make still greater progress. i tried to emphasize the fact that while the negro should not be deprived by unfair means of the franchise, political agitation alone would not save him, and that back [sic] of the ballot he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character, and that no race without these elements could permanently succeed. i said that in granting the appropriation congress could do something that would prove to be of real and lasting value to both races, and that it was the first great opportunity of the kind that had been presented since the close of the civil war. i spoke for fifteen or twenty minutes, and was surprised at the close of my address to receive the hearty congratulations of the georgia committee and of the members of congress who were present. the committee was unanimous in making a favourable report, and in a few days the bill passed congress. with the passing of this bill the success of the atlanta exposition was assured. soon after this trip to washington the directors of the exposition decided that it would be a fitting recognition of the coloured race to erect a large and attractive building which should be devoted wholly to showing the progress of the negro since freedom. it was further decided to have the building designed and erected wholly by negro mechanics. this plan was carried out. in design, beauty, and general finish the negro building was equal to the others on the grounds. after it was decided to have a separate negro exhibit, the question arose as to who should take care of it. the officials of the exposition were anxious that i should assume this responsibility, but i declined to do so, on the plea that the work at tuskegee at that time demanded my time and strength. largely at my suggestion, mr. i. garland penn, of lynchburg, va., was selected to be at the head of the negro department. i gave him all the aid that i could. the negro exhibit, as a whole, was large and creditable. the two exhibits in this department which attracted the greatest amount of attention were those from the hampton institute and the tuskegee institute. the people who seemed to be the most surprised, as well as pleased, at what they saw in the negro building were the southern white people. as the day for the opening of the exposition drew near, the board of directors began preparing the programme for the opening exercises. in the discussion from day to day of the various features of this programme, the question came up as to the advisability of putting a member of the negro race on for one of the opening addresses, since the negroes had been asked to take such a prominent part in the exposition. it was argued, further, that such recognition would mark the good feeling prevailing between the two races. of course there were those who were opposed to any such recognition of the rights of the negro, but the board of directors, composed of men who represented the best and most progressive element in the south, had their way, and voted to invite a black man to speak on the opening day. the next thing was to decide upon the person who was thus to represent the negro race. after the question had been canvassed for several days, the directors voted unanimously to ask me to deliver one of the opening-day addresses, and in a few days after that i received the official invitation. the receiving of this invitation brought to me a sense of responsibility that it would be hard for any one not placed in my position to appreciate. what were my feelings when this invitation came to me? i remembered that i had been a slave; that my early years had been spent in the lowest depths of poverty and ignorance, and that i had had little opportunity to prepare me for such a responsibility as this. it was only a few years before that time that any white man in the audience might have claimed me as his slave; and it was easily possible that some of my former owners might be present to hear me speak. i knew, too, that this was the first time in the entire history of the negro that a member of my race had been asked to speak from the same platform with white southern men and women on any important national occasion. i was asked now to speak to an audience composed of the wealth and culture of the white south, the representatives of my former masters. i knew, too, that while the greater part of my audience would be composed of southern people, yet there would be present a large number of northern whites, as well as a great many men and women of my own race. i was determined to say nothing that i did not feel from the bottom of my heart to be true and right. when the invitation came to me, there was not one word of intimation as to what i should say or as to what i should omit. in this i felt that the board of directors had paid a tribute to me. they knew that by one sentence i could have blasted, in a large degree, the success of the exposition. i was also painfully conscious of the fact that, while i must be true to my own race in my utterances, i had it in my power to make such an ill-timed address as would result in preventing any similar invitation being extended to a black man again for years to come. i was equally determined to be true to the north, as well as to the best element of the white south, in what i had to say. the papers, north and south, had taken up the discussion of my coming speech, and as the time for it drew near this discussion became more and more widespread. not a few of the southern white papers were unfriendly to the idea of my speaking. from my own race i received many suggestions as to what i ought to say. i prepared myself as best i could for the address, but as the eighteenth of september drew nearer, the heavier my heart became, and the more i feared that my effort would prove a failure and a disappointment. the invitation had come at a time when i was very busy with my school work, as it was the beginning of our school year. after preparing my address, i went through it, as i usually do with those utterances which i consider particularly important, with mrs. washington, and she approved of what i intended to say. on the sixteenth of september, the day before i was to start for atlanta, so many of the tuskegee teachers expressed a desire to hear my address that i consented to read it to them in a body. when i had done so, and had heard their criticisms and comments, i felt somewhat relieved, since they seemed to think well of what i had to say. on the morning of september 17, together with mrs. washington and my three children, i started for atlanta. i felt a good deal as i suppose a man feels when he is on his way to the gallows. in passing through the town of tuskegee i met a white farmer who lived some distance out in the country. in a jesting manner this man said: "washington, you have spoken before the northern white people, the negroes in the south, and to us country white people in the south; but atlanta, to-morrow, you will have before you the northern whites, the southern whites, and the negroes all together. i am afraid that you have got yourself in a tight place." this farmer diagnosed the situation correctly, but his frank words did not add anything to my comfort. in the course of the journey from tuskegee to atlanta both coloured and white people came to the train to point me out, and discussed with perfect freedom, in my hearings, what was going to take place the next day. we were met by a committee in atlanta. almost the first thing that i heard when i got off the train in that city was an expression something like this, from an old coloured man near by: "dat's de man of my race what's gwine to make a speech at de exposition to-morrow. i'se sho' gwine to hear him." atlanta was literally packed, at the time, with people from all parts of the country, and with representatives of foreign governments, as well as with military and civic organizations. the afternoon papers had forecasts of the next day's proceedings in flaring headlines. all this tended to add to my burden. i did not sleep much that night. the next morning, before day, i went carefully over what i planned to say. i also kneeled down and asked god's blessing upon my effort. right here, perhaps, i ought to add that i make it a rule never to go before an audience, on any occasion, without asking the blessing of god upon what i want to say. i always make it a rule to make especial [sic] preparation for each separate address. no two audiences are exactly alike. it is my aim to reach and talk to the heart of each individual audience, taking it into my confidence very much as i would a person. when i am speaking to an audience, i care little for how what i am saying is going to sound in the newspapers, or to another audience, or to an individual. at the time, the audience before me absorbs all my sympathy, thought, and energy. early in the morning a committee called to escort me to my place in the procession which was to march to the exposition grounds. in this procession were prominent coloured citizens in carriages, as well as several negro military organizations. i noted that the exposition officials seemed to go out of their way to see that all of the coloured people in the procession were properly placed and properly treated. the procession was about three hours in reaching the exposition grounds, and during all of this time the sun was shining down upon us disagreeably hot [sic]. when we reached the grounds, the heat, together with my nervous anxiety, made me feel as if i were about ready to collapse, and to feel that my address was not going to be a success. when i entered the audience-room, i found it packed with humanity from bottom to top, and there were thousands outside who could not get in. the room was very large, and well suited to public speaking. when i entered the room, there were vigorous cheers from the coloured portion of the audience, and faint cheers from some of the white people. i had been told, while i had been in atlanta, that while many white people were going to be present to hear me speak, simply out of curiosity, and that others who would be present would be in full sympathy with me, there was a still larger element of the audience which would consist of those who were going to be present for the purpose of hearing me make a fool of myself, or, at least, of hearing me say some foolish thing so that they could say to the officials who had invited me to speak, "i told you so!" one of the trustees of the tuskegee institute, as well as my personal friend, mr. william h. baldwin, jr. was at the time general manager of the southern railroad, and happened to be in atlanta on that day. he was so nervous about the kind of reception that i would have, and the effect that my speech would produce, that he could not persuade himself to go into the building, but walked back and forth in the grounds outside until the opening exercises were over. chapter xiv the atlanta exposition address the atlanta exposition, at which i had been asked to make an address as a representative of the negro race, as stated in the last chapter, was opened with a short address from governor bullock. after other interesting exercises, including an invocation from bishop nelson, of georgia, a dedicatory ode by albert howell, jr., and addresses by the president of the exposition and mrs. joseph thompson, the president of the woman's board, governor bullock introduce me with the words, "we have with us to-day a representative of negro enterprise and negro civilization." when i arose to speak, there was considerable cheering, especially from the coloured people. as i remember it now, the thing that was uppermost in my mind was the desire to say something that would cement the friendship of the races and bring about hearty cooperation between them. so far as my outward surroundings were concerned, the only thing that i recall distinctly now is that when i got up, i saw thousands of eyes looking intently into my face. the following is the address which i delivered: -mr. president and gentlemen of the board of directors and citizens. one-third of the population of the south is of the negro race. no enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. i but convey to you, mr. president and directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when i say that in no way have the value and manhood of the american negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent exposition at every stage of its progress. it is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom. not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden. a ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. from the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, "water, water; we die of thirst!" the answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, "cast down your bucket where you are." a second time the signal, "water, water; send us water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, "cast down your bucket where you are." and a third and fourth signal for water was answered, "cast down your bucket where you are." the captain of the distressed vessel, at last heading the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the amazon river. to those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the southern white man, who is their next-door neighbour, i would say: "cast down your bucket where you are" -cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. and in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the south may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the south that the negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws [sic] of life and the useful. no race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. it is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities. to those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits of the prosperity of the south, were i permitted i would repeat what i say to my own race: "cast down your bucket where you are." cast it down among the eight millions of negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded [sic] your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the south. casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. while doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. as we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defence of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. in all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. there is no defence or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all. if anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and intelligent citizen. effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per cent interest. these efforts will be twice blessed -"blessing him that gives and him that takes." there is no escape through law of man or god from the inevitable: - the laws of changeless justice bind oppressor with oppressed; and close as sin and suffering joined we march to fate abreast. nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. we shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the south, or one-third its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one third to the business and industrial prosperity of the south, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic. gentlemen of the exposition, as we present to you our humble effort at an exhibition of our progress, you must not expect overmuch. starting thirty years ago with ownership here and there in a few quilts and pumpkins and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), remember the path that has led from these to the inventions and production of agricultural implements, buggies, steam-engines, newspapers, books, statuary, carving, paintings, the management of drug-stores and banks, has not been trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. while we take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a moment forget that our part in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has come to our education life, not only from the southern states, but especially from northern philanthropists, who have made their gifts a constant stream of blessing and encouragement. the wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. no race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized [sic]. it is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercises of these privileges. the opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house. in conclusion, may i repeat that nothing in thirty years has given us more hope and encouragement, and drawn us so near to you of the white race, as this opportunity offered by the exposition; and here bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the results of the struggles of your race and mine, both starting practically empty handed three decades ago, i pledge that in your effort to work out the great and intricate problem which god has laid at the doors of the south, you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only let this be constantly in mind, that, while from representations in these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory, letters, and art, much good will come, yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray god, will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law. this, this, [sic] coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved south a new heaven and a new earth. the first thing that i remember, after i had finished speaking, was that governor bullock rushed across the platform and took me by the hand, and that others did the same. i received so many and such hearty congratulations that i found it difficult to get out of the building. i did not appreciate to any degree, however, the impression which my address seemed to have made, until the next morning, when i went into the business part of the city. as soon as i was recognized, i was surprised to find myself pointed out and surrounded by a crowd of men who wished to shake hands with me. this was kept up on every street on to which i went, to an extent which embarrassed me so much that i went back to my boarding-place. the next morning i returned to tuskegee. at the station in atlanta, and at almost all of the stations at which the train stopped between that city and tuskegee, i found a crowd of people anxious to shake hands with me. the papers in all parts of the united states published the address in full, and for months afterward there were complimentary editorial references to it. mr. clark howell, the editor of the atlanta _constitution_, telegraphed to a new york paper, among other words, the following, "i do not exaggerate when i say that professor booker t. washington's address yesterday was one of the most notable speeches, both as to character and as to the warmth of its reception, ever delivered to a southern audience. the address was a revelation. the whole speech is a platform upon which blacks and whites can stand with full justice to each other." the boston _transcript_ said editorially: "the speech of booker t. washington at the atlanta exposition, this week, seems to have dwarfed all the other proceedings and the exposition itself. the sensation that it has caused in the press has never been equalled." i very soon began receiving all kinds of propositions from lecture bureaus, and editors of magazines and papers, to take the lecture platform, and to write articles. one lecture bureau offered me fifty thousand dollars, or two hundred dollars a night and expenses, if i would place my services at its disposal for a given period. to all these communications i replied that my life-work was at tuskegee; and that whenever i spoke it must be in the interests of tuskegee school and my race, and that i would enter into no arrangements that seemed to place a mere commercial value upon my services. some days after its delivery i sent a copy of my address to the president of the united states, the hon. grover cleveland. i received from him the following autograph reply: - gray gables, buzzard's bay, mass., october 6, 1895. booker t. washington, esq.: my dear sir: i thank you for sending me a copy of your address delivered at the atlanta exposition. i thank you with much enthusiasm for making the address. i have read it with intense interest, and i think the exposition would be fully justified if it did not do more than furnish the opportunity for its delivery. your words cannot fail to delight and encourage all who wish well for your race; and if our coloured fellow-citizens do not from your utterances gather new hope and form new determinations to gain every valuable advantage offered them by their citizenship, it will be strange indeed. yours very truly, grover cleveland. later i met mr. cleveland, for the first time, when, as president, he visited the atlanta exposition. at the request of myself and others he consented to spend an hour in the negro building, for the purpose of inspecting the negro exhibit and of giving the coloured people in attendance an opportunity to shake hands with him. as soon as i met mr. cleveland i became impressed with his simplicity, greatness, and rugged honesty. i have met him many times since then, both at public functions and at his private residence in princeton, and the more i see of him the more i admire him. when he visited the negro building in atlanta he seemed to give himself up wholly, for that hour, to the coloured people. he seemed to be as careful to shake hands with some old coloured "auntie" clad partially in rags, and to take as much pleasure in doing so, as if he were greeting some millionnaire [sic]. many of the coloured people took advantage of the occasion to get him to write his name in a book or on a slip of paper. he was as careful and patient in doing this as if he were putting his signature to some great state document. mr. cleveland has not only shown his friendship for me in many personal ways, but has always consented to do anything i have asked of him for our school. this he has done, whether it was to make a personal donation or to use his influence in securing the donations of others. judging from my personal acquaintance with mr. cleveland, i do not believe that he is conscious of possessing any colour prejudice. he is too great for that. in my contact with people i find that, as a rule, it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books, who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a way to permit them to come into contact with other souls -with the great outside world. no man whose vision is bounded by colour can come into contact with what is highest and best in the world. in meeting men, in many places, i have found that the happiest people are those who do the most for others; the most miserable are those who do the least. i have also found that few things, if any, are capable of making one so blind and narrow as race prejudice. i often say to our students, in the course of my talks to them on sunday evenings in the chapel, that the longer i live and the more experience i have of the world, the more i am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for -and dying for, if need be -is the opportunity of making some one else more happy and more useful. the coloured people and the coloured newspapers at first seemed to be greatly pleased with the character of my atlanta address, as well as with its reception. but after the first burst of enthusiasm began to die away, and the coloured people began reading the speech in cold type, some of them seemed to feel that they had been hypnotized. they seemed to feel that i had been too liberal in my remarks toward the southern whites, and that i had not spoken out strongly enough for what they termed the "rights" of my race. for a while there was a reaction, so far as a certain element of my own race was concerned, but later these reactionary ones seemed to have been won over to my way of believing and acting. while speaking of changes in public sentiment, i recall that about ten years after the school at tuskegee was established, i had an experience that i shall never forget. dr. lyman abbott, then the pastor of plymouth church, and also editor of the _outlook_ (then the _christian union_), asked me to write a letter for his paper giving my opinion of the exact condition, mental and moral, of the coloured ministers in the south, as based upon my observations. i wrote the letter, giving the exact facts as i conceived them to be. the picture painted was a rather black one -or, since i am black, shall i say "white"? it could not be otherwise with a race but a few years out of slavery, a race which had not had time or opportunity to produce a competent ministry. what i said soon reached every negro minister in the country, i think, and the letters of condemnation which i received from them were not few. i think that for a year after the publication of this article every association and every conference or religious body of any kind, of my race, that met, did not fail before adjourning to pass a resolution condemning me, or calling upon me to retract or modify what i had said. many of these organizations went so far in their resolutions as to advise parents to cease sending their children to tuskegee. one association even appointed a "missionary" whose duty it was to warn the people against sending their children to tuskegee. this missionary had a son in the school, and i noticed that, whatever the "missionary" might have said or done with regard to others, he was careful not to take his son away form the institution. many of the coloured papers, especially those that were the organs of religious bodies, joined in the general chorus of condemnation or demands for retraction. during the whole time of the excitement, and through all the criticism, i did not utter a word of explanation of retraction. i knew that i was right, and that time and the sober second thought of the people would vindicate me. it was not long before the bishops and other church leaders began to make careful investigation of the conditions of the ministry, and they found out that i was right. in fact, the oldest and most influential bishop in one branch of the methodist church said that my words were far too mild. very soon public sentiment began making itself felt, in demanding a purifying of the ministry. while this is not yet complete by any means, i think i may say, without egotism, and i have been told by many of our most influential ministers, that my words had much to do with starting a demand for the placing of a higher type of men in the pulpit. i have had the satisfaction of having many who once condemned me thank me heartily for my frank words. the change of the attitude of the negro ministry, so far as regards myself, is so complete that at the present time i have no warmer friends among any class than i have among the clergymen. the improvement in the character and life of the negro ministers is one of the most gratifying evidences of the progress of the race. my experience with them, as well as other events in my life, convince me that the thing to do, when one feels sure that he has said or done the right thing, and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. if he is right, time will show it. in the midst of the discussion which was going on concerning my atlanta speech, i received the letter which i give below, from dr. gilman, the president of johns hopkins university, who had been made chairman of the judges of award in connection with the atlanta exposition: - johns hopkins university, baltimore, president's office, september 30, 1895. dear. mr. washington: would it be agreeable to you to be one of the judges of award in the department of education at atlanta? if so, i shall be glad to place your name upon the list. a line by telegraph will be welcomed. yours very truly, d.c. gilman i think i was even more surprised to receive this invitation than i had been to receive the invitation to speak at the opening of the exposition. it was to be a part of my duty, as one of the jurors, to pass not only upon the exhibits of the coloured schools, but also upon those of the white schools. i accepted the position, and spent a month in atlanta in performance of the duties which it entailed. the board of jurors was a large one, containing in all of sixty members. it was about equally divided between southern white people and northern white people. among them were college presidents, leading scientists and men of letters, and specialists in many subjects. when the group of jurors to which i was assigned met for organization, mr. thomas nelson page, who was one of the number, moved that i be made secretary of that division, and the motion was unanimously adopted. nearly half of our division were southern people. in performing my duties in the inspection of the exhibits of white schools i was in every case treated with respect, and at the close of our labours i parted from my associates with regret. i am often asked to express myself more freely than i do upon the political condition and the political future of my race. these recollections of my experience in atlanta give me the opportunity to do so briefly. my own belief is, although i have never before said so in so many words, that the time will come when the negro in the south will be accorded all the political rights which his ability, character, and material possessions entitle him to. i think, though, that the opportunity to freely exercise such political rights will not come in any large degree through outside or artificial forcing, but will be accorded to the negro by the southern white people themselves, and that they will protect him in the exercise of those rights. just as soon as the south gets over the old feeling that it is being forced by "foreigners," or "aliens," to do something which it does not want to do, i believe that the change in the direction that i have indicated is going to begin. in fact, there are indications that it is already beginning in a slight degree. let me illustrate my meaning. suppose that some months before the opening of the atlanta exposition there had been a general demand from the press and public platform outside the south that a negro be given a place on the opening programme, and that a negro be placed upon the board of jurors of award. would any such recognition of the race have taken place? i do not think so. the atlanta officials went as far as they did because they felt it to be a pleasure, as well as a duty, to reward what they considered merit in the negro race. say what we will, there is something in human nature which we cannot blot out, which makes one man, in the end, recognize and reward merit in another, regardless of colour or race. i believe it is the duty of the negro -as the greater part of the race is already doing -to deport himself modestly in regard to political claims, depending upon the slow but sure influences that proceed from the possession of property, intelligence, and high character for the full recognition of his political rights. i think that the according of the full exercise of political rights is going to be a matter of natural, slow growth, not an over-night, gourd-vine affair. i do not believe that the negro should cease voting, for a man cannot learn the exercise of self-government by ceasing to vote, any more than a boy can learn to swim by keeping out of the water, but i do believe that in his voting he should more and more be influenced by those of intelligence and character who are his next-door neighbours. i know coloured men who, through the encouragement, help, and advice of southern white people, have accumulated thousands of dollars' worth of property, but who, at the same time, would never think of going to those same persons for advice concerning the casting of their ballots. this, it seems to me, is unwise and unreasonable, and should cease. in saying this i do not mean that the negro should truckle, or not vote from principle, for the instant he ceases to vote from principle he loses the confidence and respect of the southern white man even. i do not believe that any state should make a law that permits an ignorant and poverty-stricken white man to vote, and prevents a black man in the same condition from voting. such a law is not only unjust, but it will react, as all unjust laws do, in time; for the effect of such a law is to encourage the negro to secure education and property, and at the same time it encourages the white man to remain in ignorance and poverty. i believe that in time, through the operation of intelligence and friendly race relations, all cheating at the ballot-box in the south will cease. it will become apparent that the white man who begins by cheating a negro out of his ballot soon learns to cheat a white man out of his, and that the man who does this ends his career of dishonesty by the theft of property or by some equally serious crime. in my opinion, the time will come when the south will encourage all of its citizens to vote. it will see that it pays better, from every standpoint, to have healthy, vigorous life than to have that political stagnation which always results when one-half of the population has no share and no interest in the government. as a rule, i believe in universal, free suffrage, but i believe that in the south we are confronted with peculiar conditions that justify the protection of the ballot in many of the states, for a while at least, either by an education test, a property test, or by both combined; but whatever tests are required, they should be made to apply with equal and exact justice to both races. chapter xv the secret of success in public speaking as to how my address at atlanta was received by the audience in the exposition building, i think i prefer to let mr. james creelman, the noted war correspondent, tell. mr. creelman was present, and telegraphed the following account to the new york _world_: - atlanta, september 18. while president cleveland was waiting at gray gables to-day, to send the electric spark that started the machinery of the atlanta exposition, a negro moses stood before a great audience of white people and delivered an oration that marks a new epoch in the history of the south; and a body of negro troops marched in a procession with the citizen soldiery of georgia and louisiana. the whole city is thrilling to-night with a realization of the extraordinary significance of these two unprecedented events. nothing has happened since henry grady's immortal speech before the new england society in new york that indicates so profoundly the spirit of the new south, except, perhaps, the opening of the exposition itself. when professor booker t. washington, principal of an industrial school for coloured people in tuskegee, ala. stood on the platform of the auditorium, with the sun shining over the heads of his auditors into his eyes, and with his whole face lit up with the fire of prophecy, clark howell, the successor of henry grady, said to me, "that man's speech is the beginning of a moral revolution in america." it is the first time that a negro has made a speech in the south on any important occasion before an audience composed of white men and women. it electrified the audience, and the response was as if it had come from the throat of a whirlwind. mrs. thompson had hardly taken her seat when all eyes were turned on a tall tawny negro sitting in the front row of the platform. it was professor booker t. washington, president of the tuskegee (alabama) normal and industrial institute, who must rank from this time forth as the foremost man of his race in america. gilmore's band played the "star-spangled banner," and the audience cheered. the tune changed to "dixie" and the audience roared with shrill "hi-yis." again the music changed, this time to "yankee doodle," and the clamour lessened. all this time the eyes of the thousands present looked straight at the negro orator. a strange thing was to happen. a black man was to speak for his people, with none to interrupt him. as professor washington strode to the edge of the stage, the low, descending sun shot fiery rays through the windows into his face. a great shout greeted him. he turned his head to avoid the blinding light, and moved about the platform for relief. then he turned his wonderful countenance to the sun without a blink of the eyelids, and began to talk. there was a remarkable figure; tall, bony, straight as a sioux chief, high forehead, straight nose, heavy jaws, and strong, determined mouth, with big white teeth, piercing eyes, and a commanding manner. the sinews stood out on his bronzed neck, and his muscular right arm swung high in the air, with a lead-pencil grasped in the clinched brown fist. his big feet were planted squarely, with the heels together and the toes turned out. his voice range out clear and true, and he paused impressively as he made each point. within ten minutes the multitude was in an uproar of enthusiasm -handkerchiefs were waved, canes were flourished, hats were tossed in the air. the fairest women of georgia stood up and cheered. it was as if the orator had bewitched them. and when he held his dusky hand high above his head, with the fingers stretched wide apart, and said to the white people of the south on behalf of his race, "in all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress," the great wave of sound dashed itself against the walls, and the whole audience was on its feet in a delirium of applause, and i thought at that moment of the night when henry grady stood among the curling wreaths of tobacco-smoke in delmonico's banquet-hall and said, "i am a cavalier among roundheads." i have heard the great orators of many countries, but not even gladstone himself could have pleased a cause with most consummate power than did this angular negro, standing in a nimbus of sunshine, surrounded by the men who once fought to keep his race in bondage. the roar might swell ever so high, but the expression of his earnest face never changed. a ragged, ebony giant, squatted on the floor in one of the aisles, watched the orator with burning eyes and tremulous face until the supreme burst of applause came, and then the tears ran down his face. most of the negroes in the audience were crying, perhaps without knowing just why. at the close of the speech governor bullock rushed across the stage and seized the orator's hand. another shout greeted this demonstration, and for a few minutes the two men stood facing each other, hand in hand. so far as i could spare the time from the immediate work at tuskegee, after my atlanta address, i accepted some of the invitations to speak in public which came to me, especially those that would take me into territory where i thought it would pay to plead the cause of my race, but i always did this with the understanding that i was to be free to talk about my life-work and the needs of my people. i also had it understood that i was not to speak in the capacity of a professional lecturer, or for mere commercial gain. in my efforts on the public platform i never have been able to understand why people come to hear me speak. this question i never can rid myself of. time and time again, as i have stood in the street in front of a building and have seen men and women passing in large numbers into the audience room where i was to speak, i have felt ashamed that i should be the cause of people -as it seemed to me - wasting a valuable hour of their time. some years ago i was to deliver an address before a literary society in madison, wis. an hour before the time set for me to speak, a fierce snow-storm began, and continued for several hours. i made up my mind that there would be no audience, and that i should not have to speak, but, as a matter of duty, i went to the church, and found it packed with people. the surprise gave me a shock that i did not recover from during the whole evening. people often ask me if i feel nervous before speaking, or else they suggest that, since i speak often, they suppose that i get used to it. in answer to this question i have to say that i always suffer intensely from nervousness before speaking. more than once, just before i was to make an important address, this nervous strain has been so great that i have resolved never again to speak in public. i not only feel nervous before speaking, but after i have finished i usually feel a sense of regret, because it seems to me as if i had left out of my address the main thing and the best thing that i had meant to say. there is a great compensation, though, for this preliminary nervous suffering, that comes to me after i have been speaking for about ten minutes, and have come to feel that i have really mastered my audience, and that we have gotten into full and complete sympathy with each other. it seems to me that there is rarely such a combination of mental and physical delight in any effort as that which comes to a public speaker when he feels that he has a great audience completely within his control. there is a thread of sympathy and oneness that connects a public speaker with his audience, that is just as strong as though it was something tangible and visible. if in an audience of a thousand people there is one person who is not in sympathy with my views, or is inclined to be doubtful, cold, or critical, i can pick him out. when i have found him i usually go straight at him, and it is a great satisfaction to watch the process of his thawing out. i find that the most effective medicine for such individuals is administered at first in the form of a story, although i never tell an anecdote simply for the sake of telling one. that kind of thing, i think, is empty and hollow, and an audience soon finds it out. i believe that one always does himself and his audience an injustice when he speaks merely for the sake of speaking. i do not believe that one should speak unless, deep down in his heart, he feels convinced that he has a message to deliver. when one feels, from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head, that he has something to say that is going to help some individual or some cause, then let him say it; and in delivering his message i do not believe that many of the artificial rules of elocution can, under such circumstances, help him very much. although there are certain things, such as pauses, breathing, and pitch of voice, that are very important, none of these can take the place of _soul_ in an address. when i have an address to deliver, i like to forget all about the rules for the proper use of the english language, and all about rhetoric and that sort of thing, and i like to make the audience forget all about these things, too. nothing tends to throw me off my balance so quickly, when i am speaking, as to have some one leave the room. to prevent this, i make up my mind, as a rule, that i will try to make my address so interesting, will try to state so many interesting facts one after another, that no one can leave. the average audience, i have come to believe, wants facts rather than generalities or sermonizing. most people, i think, are able to draw proper conclusions if they are given the facts in an interesting form on which to base them. as to the kind of audience that i like best to talk to, i would put at the top of the list an organization of strong, wide-awake, business men, such, for example, as is found in boston, new york, chicago, and buffalo. i have found no other audience so quick to see a point, and so responsive. within the last few years i have had the privilege of speaking before most of the leading organizations of this kind in the large cities of the united states. the best time to get hold of an organization of business men is after a good dinner, although i think that one of the worst instruments of torture that was ever invented is the custom which makes it necessary for a speaker to sit through a fourteen-course dinner, every minute of the time feeling sure that his speech is going to prove a dismal failure and disappointment. i rarely take part in one of these long dinners that i do not wish that i could put myself back in the little cabin where i was a slave boy, and again go through the experience there -one that i shall never forget -of getting molasses to eat once a week from the "big house." our usual diet on the plantation was corn bread and pork, but on sunday morning my mother was permitted to bring down a little molasses from the "big house" for her three children, and when it was received how i did wish that every day was sunday! i would get my tin plate and hold it up for the sweet morsel, but i would always shut my eyes while the molasses was being poured out into the plate, with the hope that when i opened them i would be surprised to see how much i had got. when i opened my eyes i would tip the plate in one direction and another, so as to make the molasses spread all over it, in the full belief that there would be more of it and that it would last longer if spread out in this way. so strong are my childish impressions of those sunday morning feasts that it would be pretty hard for any one to convince me that there is not more molasses on a plate when it is spread all over the plate than when it occupies a little corner -if there is a corner in a plate. at any rate, i have never believed in "cornering" syrup. my share of the syrup was usually about two tablespoonfuls, and those two spoonfuls of molasses were much more enjoyable to me than is a fourteen-course dinner after which i am to speak. next to a company of business men, i prefer to speak to an audience of southern people, of either race, together or taken separately. their enthusiasm and responsiveness are a constant delight. the "amens" and "dat's de truf" that come spontaneously from the coloured individuals are calculated to spur any speaker on to his best efforts. i think that next in order of preference i would place a college audience. it has been my privilege to deliver addresses at many of our leading colleges including harvard, yale, williams, amherst, fisk university, the university of pennsylvania, wellesley, the university of michigan, trinity college in north carolina, and many others. it has been a matter of deep interest to me to note the number of people who have come to shake hands with me after an address, who say that this is the first time they have ever called a negro "mister." when speaking directly in the interests of the tuskegee institute, i usually arrange, some time in advance, a series of meetings in important centres. this takes me before churches, sunday-schools, christian endeavour societies, and men's and women's clubs. when doing this i sometimes speak before as many as four organizations in a single day. three years ago, at the suggestion of mr. morris k. jessup, of new york, and dr. j.l.m. curry, the general agent of the fund, the trustees of the john f. slater fund voted a sum of money to be used in paying the expenses of mrs. washington and myself while holding a series of meetings among the coloured people in the large centres of negro population, especially in the large cities of the ex slaveholding states. each year during the last three years we have devoted some weeks to this work. the plan that we have followed has been for me to speak in the morning to the ministers, teachers, and professional men. in the afternoon mrs. washington would speak to the women alone, and in the evening i spoke to a large mass-meeting. in almost every case the meetings have been attended not only by the coloured people in large numbers, but by the white people. in chattanooga, tenn., for example, there was present at the mass-meeting an audience of not less than three thousand persons, and i was informed that eight hundred of these were white. i have done no work that i really enjoyed more than this, or that i think has accomplished more good. these meetings have given mrs. washington and myself an opportunity to get first-hand, accurate information as to the real condition of the race, by seeing the people in their homes, their churches, their sunday-schools, and their places of work, as well as in the prisons and dens of crime. these meetings also gave us an opportunity to see the relations that exist between the races. i never feel so hopeful about the race as i do after being engaged in a series of these meetings. i know that on such occasions there is much that comes to the surface that is superficial and deceptive, but i have had experience enough not to be deceived by mere signs and fleeting enthusiasms. i have taken pains to go to the bottom of things and get facts, in a cold, business-like manner. i have seen the statement made lately, by one who claims to know what he is talking about, that, taking the whole negro race into account, ninety per cent of the negro women are not virtuous. there never was a baser falsehood uttered concerning a race, or a statement made that was less capable of being proved by actual facts. no one can come into contact with the race for twenty years, as i have done in the heart of the south, without being convinced that the race is constantly making slow but sure progress materially, educationally, and morally. one might take up the life of the worst element in new york city, for example, and prove almost anything he wanted to prove concerning the white man, but all will agree that this is not a fair test. early in the year 1897 i received a letter inviting me to deliver an address at the dedication of the robert gould shaw monument in boston. i accepted the invitation. it is not necessary for me, i am sure, to explain who robert gould shaw was, and what he did. the monument to his memory stands near the head of the boston common, facing the state house. it is counted to be the most perfect piece of art of the kind to be found in the country. the exercises connected with the dedication were held in music hall, in boston, and the great hall was packed from top to bottom with one of the most distinguished audiences that ever assembled in the city. among those present were more persons representing the famous old anti-slavery element that it is likely will ever be brought together in the country again. the late hon. roger wolcott, then governor of massachusetts, was the presiding officer, and on the platform with him were many other officials and hundreds of distinguished men. a report of the meeting which appeared in the boston _transcript_ will describe it better than any words of mine could do: - the core and kernel of yesterday's great noon meeting, in honour of the brotherhood of man, in music hall, was the superb address of the negro president of tuskegee. "booker t. washington received his harvard a.m. last june, the first of his race," said governor wolcott, "to receive an honorary degree from the oldest university in the land, and this for the wise leadership of his people." when mr. washington rose in the flag-filled, enthusiasm warmed, patriotic, and glowing atmosphere of music hall, people felt keenly that here was the civic justification of the old abolition spirit of massachusetts; in his person the proof of her ancient and indomitable faith; in his strong through and rich oratory, the crown and glory of the old war days of suffering and strife. the scene was full of historic beauty and deep significance. "cold" boston was alive with the fire that is always hot in her heart for righteousness and truth. rows and rows of people who are seldom seen at any public function, whole families of those who are certain to be out of town on a holiday, crowded the place to overflowing. the city was at her birthright _fete_ in the persons of hundreds of her best citizens, men and women whose names and lives stand for the virtues that make for honourable civic pride. battle-music had filled the air. ovation after ovation, applause warm and prolonged, had greeted the officers and friends of colonel shaw, the sculptor, st. gaudens, the memorial committee, the governor and his staff, and the negro soldiers of the fifty-fourth massachusetts as they came upon the platform or entered the hall. colonel henry lee, of governor andrew's old staff, had made a noble, simple presentation speech for the committee, paying tribute to mr. john m. forbes, in whose stead he served. governor wolcott had made his short, memorable speech, saying, "fort wagner marked an epoch in the history of a race, and called it into manhood." mayor quincy had received the monument for the city of boston. the story of colonel shaw and his black regiment had been told in gallant words, and then, after the singing of mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord, booker washington arose. it was, of course, just the moment for him. the multitude, shaken out of its usual symphony-concert calm, quivered with an excitement that was not suppressed. a dozen times it had sprung to its feet to cheer and wave and hurrah, as one person. when this man of culture and voice and power, as well as a dark skin, began, and uttered the names of stearns and of andrew, feeling began to mount. you could see tears glisten in the eyes of soldiers and civilians. when the orator turned to the coloured soldiers on the platform, to the colour-bearer of fort wagner, who smilingly bore still the flag he had never lowered even when wounded, and said, "to you, to the scarred and scattered remnants of the fifty-fourth, who, with empty sleeve and wanting leg, have honoured this occasion with your presence, to you, your commander is not dead. though boston erected no monument and history recorded no story, in you and in the loyal race which you represent, robert gould shaw would have a monument which time could not wear away," then came the climax of the emotion of the day and the hour. it was roger wolcott, as well as the governor of massachusetts, the individual representative of the people's sympathy as well as the chief magistrate, who had sprung first to his feet and cried, "three cheers to booker t. washington!" among those on the platform was sergeant william h. carney, of new bedford, mass., the brave coloured officer who was the colour-bearer at fort wagner and held the american flag. in spite of the fact that a large part of his regiment was killed, he escape, and exclaimed, after the battle was over, "the old flag never touched the ground." this flag sergeant carney held in his hands as he sat on the platform, and when i turned to address the survivors of the coloured regiment who were present, and referred to sergeant carney, he rose, as if by instinct, and raised the flag. it has been my privilege to witness a good many satisfactory and rather sensational demonstrations in connection with some of my public addresses, but in dramatic effect i have never seen or experienced anything which equalled this. for a number of minutes the audience seemed to entirely lose control of itself. in the general rejoicing throughout the country which followed the close of the spanish-american war, peace celebrations were arranged in several of the large cities. i was asked by president william r. harper, of the university of chicago, who was chairman of the committee of invitations for the celebration to be held in the city of chicago, to deliver one of the addresses at the celebration there. i accepted the invitation, and delivered two addresses there during the jubilee week. the first of these, and the principal one, was given in the auditorium, on the evening of sunday, october 16. this was the largest audience that i have ever addressed, in any part of the country; and besides speaking in the main auditorium, i also addressed, that same evening, two overflow audiences in other parts of the city. it was said that there were sixteen thousand persons in the auditorium, and it seemed to me as if there were as many more on the outside trying to get in. it was impossible for any one to get near the entrance without the aid of a policeman. president william mckinley attended this meeting, as did also the members of his cabinet, many foreign ministers, and a large number of army and navy officers, many of whom had distinguished themselves in the war which had just closed. the speakers, besides myself, on sunday evening, were rabbi emil g. hirsch, father thomas p. hodnett, and dr. john h. barrows. the chicago _times-herald_, in describing the meeting, said of my address: - he pictured the negro choosing slavery rather than extinction; recalled crispus attucks shedding his blood at the beginning of the american revolution, that white americans might be free, while black americans remained in slavery; rehearsed the conduct of the negroes with jackson at new orleans; drew a vivid and pathetic picture of the southern slaves protecting and supporting the families of their masters while the latter were fighting to perpetuate black slavery; recounted the bravery of coloured troops at port hudson and forts wagner and pillow, and praised the heroism of the black regiments that stormed el caney and santiago to give freedom to the enslaved people of cuba, forgetting, for the time being, the unjust discrimination that law and custom make against them in their own country. in all of these things, the speaker declared, his race had chosen the better part. and then he made his eloquent appeal to the consciences of the white americans: "when you have gotten the full story or the heroic conduct of the negro in the spanish american war, have heard it from the lips of northern soldier and southern soldier, from ex-abolitionist and ex-masters, then decide within yourselves whether a race that is thus willing to die for its country should not be given the highest opportunity to live for its country." the part of the speech which seems to arouse the wildest and most sensational enthusiasm was that in which i thanked the president for his recognition of the negro in his appointments during the spanish american war. the president was sitting in a box at the right of the stage. when i addressed him i turned toward the box, and as i finished the sentence thanking him for his generosity, the whole audience rose and cheered again and again, waving handkerchiefs and hats and canes, until the president arose in the box and bowed his acknowledgements. at that the enthusiasm broke out again, and the demonstration was almost indescribable. one portion of my address at chicago seemed to have been misunderstood by the southern press, and some of the southern papers took occasion to criticise me rather strongly. these criticisms continued for several weeks, until i finally received a letter from the editor of the _age-herald_, published in birmingham, ala., asking me if i would say just what i meant by this part of the address. i replied to him in a letter which seemed to satisfy my critics. in this letter i said that i had made it a rule never to say before a northern audience anything that i would not say before an audience in the south. i said that i did not think it was necessary for me to go into extended explanations; if my seventeen years of work in the heart of the south had not been explanation enough, i did not see how words could explain. i said that i made the same plea that i had made in my address at atlanta, for the blotting out of race prejudice in "commercial and civil relations." i said that what is termed social recognition was a question which i never discussed, and then i quoted from my atlanta address what i had said there in regard to that subject. in meeting crowds of people at public gatherings, there is one type of individual that i dread. i mean the crank. i have become so accustomed to these people now that i can pick them out at a distance when i see them elbowing their way up to me. the average crank has a long beard, poorly cared for, a lean, narrow face, and wears a black coat. the front of his vest and coat are slick with grease, and his trousers bag at the knees. in chicago, after i had spoken at a meeting, i met one of these fellows. they usually have some process for curing all of the ills of the world at once. this chicago specimen had a patent process by which he said indian corn could be kept through a period of three or four years, and he felt sure that if the negro race in the south would, as a whole, adopt his process, it would settle the whole race question. it mattered nothing that i tried to convince him that our present problem was to teach the negroes how to produce enough corn to last them through one year. another chicago crank had a scheme by which he wanted me to join him in an effort to close up all the national banks in the country. if that was done, he felt sure it would put the negro on his feet. the number of people who stand ready to consume one's time, to no purpose, is almost countless. at one time i spoke before a large audience in boston in the evening. the next morning i was awakened by having a card brought to my room, and with it a message that some one was anxious to see me. thinking that it must be something very important, i dressed hastily and went down. when i reached the hotel office i found a blank and innocent-looking individual waiting for me, who coolly remarked: "i heard you talk at a meeting last night. i rather liked your talk, and so i came in this morning to hear you talk some more." i am often asked how it is possible for me to superintend the work at tuskegee and at the same time be so much away from the school. in partial answer to this i would say that i think i have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim which says, "do not get others to do that which you can do yourself." my motto, on the other hand, is, "do not do that which others can do as well." one of the most encouraging signs in connection with the tuskegee school is found in the fact that the organization is so thorough that the daily work of the school is not dependent upon the presence of any one individual. the whole executive force, including instructors and clerks, now numbers eighty-six. this force is so organized and subdivided that the machinery of the school goes on day by day like clockwork. most of our teachers have been connected with the institutions for a number of years, and are as much interested in it as i am. in my absence, mr. warren logan, the treasurer, who has been at the school seventeen years, is the executive. he is efficiently supported by mrs. washington, and by my faithful secretary, mr. emmett j. scott, who handles the bulk of my correspondence and keeps me in daily touch with the life of the school, and who also keeps me informed of whatever takes place in the south that concerns the race. i owe more to his tact, wisdom, and hard work than i can describe. the main executive work of the school, whether i am at tuskegee or not, centres in what we call the executive council. this council meets twice a week, and is composed of the nine persons who are at the head of the nine departments of the school. for example: mrs. b.k. bruce, the lady principal, the widow of the late ex-senator bruce, is a member of the council, and represents in it all that pertains to the life of the girls at the school. in addition to the executive council there is a financial committee of six, that meets every week and decides upon the expenditures for the week. once a month, and sometimes oftener, there is a general meeting of all the instructors. aside from these there are innumerable smaller meetings, such as that of the instructors in the phelps hall bible training school, or of the instructors in the agricultural department. in order that i may keep in constant touch with the life of the institution, i have a system of reports so arranged that a record of the school's work reaches me every day of the year, no matter in what part of the country i am. i know by these reports even what students are excused from school, and why they are excused -whether for reasons of ill health or otherwise. through the medium of these reports i know each day what the income of the school in money is; i know how many gallons of milk and how many pounds of butter come from the diary; what the bill of fare for the teachers and students is; whether a certain kind of meat was boiled or baked, and whether certain vegetables served in the dining room were bought from a store or procured from our own farm. human nature i find to be very much the same the world over, and it is sometimes not hard to yield to the temptation to go to a barrel of rice that has come from the store - rather than to take the time and trouble to go to the field and dig and wash one's own sweet potatoes, which might be prepared in a manner to take the place of the rice. i am often asked how, in the midst of so much work, a large part of which is for the public, i can find time for any rest or recreation, and what kind of recreation or sports i am fond of. this is rather a difficult question to answer. i have a strong feeling that every individual owes it to himself, and to the cause which he is serving, to keep a vigorous, healthy body, with the nerves steady and strong, prepared for great efforts and prepared for disappointments and trying positions. as far as i can, i make it a rule to plan for each day's work -not merely to go through with the same routine of daily duties, but to get rid of the routine work as early in the day as possible, and then to enter upon some new or advance [sic] work. i make it a rule to clear my desk every day, before leaving my office, of all correspondence and memoranda, so that on the morrow i can begin a _new_ day of work. i make it a rule never to let my work drive me, but to so master it, and keep it in such complete control, and to keep so far ahead of it, that i will be the master instead of the servant. there is a physical and mental and spiritual enjoyment that comes from a consciousness of being the absolute master of one's work, in all its details, that is very satisfactory and inspiring. my experience teachers me that, if one learns to follow this plan, he gets a freshness of body and vigour of mind out of work that goes a long way toward keeping him strong and healthy. i believe that when one can grow to the point where he loves his work, this gives him a kind of strength that is most valuable. when i begin my work in the morning, i expect to have a successful and pleasant day of it, but at the same time i prepare myself for unpleasant and unexpected hard places. i prepared myself to hear that one of our school buildings is on fire, or has burned, or that some disagreeable accident has occurred, or that some one has abused me in a public address or printed article, for something that i have done or omitted to do, or for something that he had heard that i had said - probably something that i had never thought of saying. in nineteen years of continuous work i have taken but one vacation. that was two years ago, when some of my friends put the money into my hands and forced mrs. washington and myself to spend three months in europe. i have said that i believe it is the duty of every one to keep his body in good condition. i try to look after the little ills, with the idea that if i take care of the little ills the big ones will not come. when i find myself unable to sleep well, i know that something is wrong. if i find any part of my system the least weak, and not performing its duty, i consult a good physician. the ability to sleep well, at any time and in any place, i find of great advantage. i have so trained myself that i can lie down for a nap of fifteen or twenty minutes, and get up refreshed in body and mind. i have said that i make it a rule to finish up each day's work before leaving it. there is, perhaps, one exception to this. when i have an unusually difficult question to decide -one that appeals strongly to the emotions -i find it a safe rule to sleep over it for a night, or to wait until i have had an opportunity to talk it over with my wife and friends. as to my reading; the most time i get for solid reading is when i am on the cars. newspapers are to me a constant source of delight and recreation. the only trouble is that i read too many of them. fiction i care little for. frequently i have to almost force myself to read a novel that is on every one's lips. the kind of reading that i have the greatest fondness for is biography. i like to be sure that i am reading about a real man or a real thing. i think i do not go too far when i say that i have read nearly every book and magazine article that has been written about abraham lincoln. in literature he is my patron saint. out of the twelve months in a year i suppose that, on an average, i spend six months away from tuskegee. while my being absent from the school so much unquestionably has its disadvantages, yet there are at the same time some compensations. the change of work brings a certain kind of rest. i enjoy a ride of a long distance on the cars, when i am permitted to ride where i can be comfortable. i get rest on the cars, except when the inevitable individual who seems to be on every train approaches me with the now familiar phrase: "isn't this booker washington? i want to introduce myself to you." absence from the school enables me to lose sight of the unimportant details of the work, and study it in a broader and more comprehensive manner than i could do on the grounds. this absence also brings me into contact with the best work being done in educational lines, and into contact with the best educators in the land. but, after all this is said, the time when i get the most solid rest and recreation is when i can be at tuskegee, and, after our evening meal is over, can sit down, as is our custom, with my wife and portia and baker and davidson, my three children, and read a story, or each take turns in telling a story. to me there is nothing on earth equal to that, although what is nearly equal to it is to go with them for an hour or more, as we like to do on sunday afternoons, into the woods, where we can live for a while near the heart of nature, where no one can disturb or vex us, surrounded by pure air, the trees, the shrubbery, the flowers, and the sweet fragrance that springs from a hundred plants, enjoying the chirp of the crickets and the songs of the birds. this is solid rest. my garden, also, what little time i can be at tuskegee, is another source of rest and enjoyment. somehow i like, as often as possible, to touch nature, not something that is artificial or an imitation, but the real thing. when i can leave my office in time so that i can spend thirty or forty minutes in spading the ground, in planting seeds, in digging about the plants, i feel that i am coming into contact with something that is giving me strength for the many duties and hard places that await me out in the big world. i pity the man or woman who has never learned to enjoy nature and to get strength and inspiration out of it. aside from the large number of fowls and animals kept by the school, i keep individually a number of pigs and fowls of the best grades, and in raising these i take a great deal of pleasure. i think the pig is my favourite animal. few things are more satisfactory to me than a high-grade berkshire or poland china pig. games i care little for. i have never seen a game of football. in cards i do not know one card from another. a game of old-fashioned marbles with my two boys, once in a while, is all i care for in this direction. i suppose i would care for games now if i had had any time in my youth to give to them, but that was not possible. chapter xvi europe in 1893 i was married to miss margaret james murray, a native of mississippi, and a graduate of fisk university, in nashville, tenn., who had come to tuskegee as a teacher several years before, and at the time we were married was filling the position of lady principal. not only is mrs. washington completely one with me in the work directly connected with the school, relieving me of many burdens and perplexities, but aside from her work on the school grounds, she carries on a mothers' meeting in the town of tuskegee, and a plantation work among the women, children, and men who live in a settlement connected with a large plantation about eight miles from tuskegee. both the mothers' meeting and the plantation work are carried on, not only with a view to helping those who are directly reached, but also for the purpose of furnishing object-lessons in these two kinds of work that may be followed by our students when they go out into the world for their own life-work. aside from these two enterprises, mrs. washington is also largely responsible for a woman's club at the school which brings together, twice a month, the women who live on the school grounds and those who live near, for the discussion of some important topic. she is also the president of what is known as the federation of southern coloured women's clubs, and is chairman of the executive committee of the national federation of coloured women's clubs. portia, the oldest of my three children, has learned dressmaking. she has unusual ability in instrumental music. aside from her studies at tuskegee, she has already begun to teach there. booker taliaferro is my next oldest child. young as he is, he has already nearly mastered the brick-mason's trade. he began working at this trade when he was quite small, dividing his time between this and class work; and he has developed great skill in the trade and a fondness for it. he says that he is going to be an architect and brickmason. one of the most satisfactory letters that i have ever received from any one came to me from booker last summer. when i left home for the summer, i told him that he must work at his trade half of each day, and that the other half of the day he could spend as he pleased. when i had been away from home two weeks, i received the following letter from him: tuskegee, alabama. my dear papa: before you left home you told me to work at my traded half of each day. i like my work so much that i want to work at my trade all day. besides, i want to earn all the money i can, so that when i go to another school i shall have money to pay my expenses. your son, booker. my youngest child, earnest davidson washington, says that he is going to be a physician. in addition to going to school, where he studies books and has manual training, he regularly spends a portion of his time in the office of our resident physician, and has already learned to do many of the studies which pertain to a doctor's office. the thing in my life which brings me the keenest regret is that my work in connection with public affairs keeps me for so much of the time away from my family, where, of all places in the world, i delight to be. i always envy the individual whose life-work is so laid that he can spend his evenings at home. i have sometimes thought that people who have this rare privilege do not appreciate it as they should. it is such a rest and relief to get away from crowds of people, and handshaking, and travelling, to get home, even if it be for but a very brief while. another thing at tuskegee out of which i get a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction is in the meeting with our students, and teachers, and their families, in the chapel for devotional exercises every evening at half-past eight, the last thing before retiring for the night. it is an inspiring sight when one stands on the platform there and sees before him eleven or twelve hundred earnest young men and women; and one cannot but feel that it is a privilege to help to guide them to a higher and more useful life. in the spring of 1899 there came to me what i might describe as almost the greatest surprise of my life. some good ladies in boston arranged a public meeting in the interests of tuskegee, to be held in the hollis street theatre. this meeting was attended by large numbers of the best people of boston, of both races. bishop lawrence presided. in addition to an address made by myself, mr. paul lawrence dunbar read from his poems, and dr. w.e.b. du bois read an original sketch. some of those who attended this meeting noticed that i seemed unusually tired, and some little time after the close of the meeting, one of the ladies who had been interested in it asked me in a casual way if i had ever been to europe. i replied that i never had. she asked me if i had ever thought of going, and i told her no; that it was something entirely beyond me. this conversation soon passed out of my mind, but a few days afterward i was informed that some friends in boston, including mr. francis j. garrison, had raised a sum of money sufficient to pay all the expenses of mrs. washington and myself during a three or four months' trip to europe. it was added with emphasis that we _must_ go. a year previous to this mr. garrison had attempted to get me to promise to go to europe for a summer's rest, with the understanding that he would be responsible for raising the money among his friends for the expenses of the trip. at that time such a journey seemed so entirely foreign to anything that i should ever be able to undertake that i did confess i did not give the matter very serious attention; but later mr. garrison joined his efforts to those of the ladies whom i have mentioned, and when their plans were made known to me mr. garrison not only had the route mapped out, but had, i believe, selected the steamer upon which we were to sail. the whole thing was so sudden and so unexpected that i was completely taken off my feet. i had been at work steadily for eighteen years in connection with tuskegee, and i had never thought of anything else but ending my life in that way. each day the school seemed to depend upon me more largely for its daily expenses, and i told these boston friends that, while i thanked them sincerely for their thoughtfulness and generosity, i could not go to europe, for the reason that the school could not live financially while i was absent. they then informed me that mr. henry l. higginson, and some other good friends who i know do not want their names made public, were then raising a sum of money which would be sufficient to keep the school in operation while i was away. at this point i was compelled to surrender. every avenue of escape had been closed. deep down in my heart the whole thing seemed more like a dream than like reality, and for a long time it was difficult for me to make myself believe that i was actually going to europe. i had been born and largely reared in the lowest depths of slavery, ignorance, and poverty. in my childhood i had suffered for want of a place to sleep, for lack of food, clothing, and shelter. i had not had the privilege of sitting down to a dining-table until i was quite well grown. luxuries had always seemed to me to be something meant for white people, not for my race. i had always regarded europe, and london, and paris, much as i regarded heaven. and now could it be that i was actually going to europe? such thoughts as these were constantly with me. two other thoughts troubled me a good deal. i feared that people who heard that mrs. washington and i were going to europe might not know all the circumstances, and might get the idea that we had become, as some might say, "stuck up," and were trying to "show off." i recalled that from my youth i had heard it said that too often, when people of my race reached any degree of success, they were inclined to unduly exalt themselves; to try and ape the wealthy, and in so doing to lose their heads. the fear that people might think this of us haunted me a good deal. then, too, i could not see how my conscience would permit me to spare the time from my work and be happy. it seemed mean and selfish in me to be taking a vacation while others were at work, and while there was so much that needed to be done. from the time i could remember, i had always been at work, and i did not see how i could spend three or four months in doing nothing. the fact was that i did not know how to take a vacation. mrs. washington had much the same difficulty in getting away, but she was anxious to go because she thought that i needed the rest. there were many important national questions bearing upon the life of the race which were being agitated at that time, and this made it all the harder for us to decide to go. we finally gave our boston friends our promise that we would go, and then they insisted that the date of our departure be set as soon as possible. so we decided upon may 10. my good friend mr. garrison kindly took charge of all the details necessary for the success of the trip, and he, as well as other friends, gave us a great number of letters of introduction to people in france and england, and made other arrangements for our comfort and convenience abroad. good-bys were said at tuskegee, and we were in new york may 9, ready to sail the next day. our daughter portia, who was then studying in south framingham, mass., came to new york to see us off. mr. scott, my secretary, came with me to new york, in order that i might clear up the last bit of business before i left. other friends also came to new york to see us off. just before we went on board the steamer another pleasant surprise came to us in the form of a letter from two generous ladies, stating that they had decided to give us the money with which to erect a new building to be used in properly housing all our industries for girls at tuskegee. we were to sail on the _friesland_, of the red star line, and a beautiful vessel she was. we went on board just before noon, the hour of sailing. i had never before been on board a large ocean steamer, and the feeling which took possession of me when i found myself there is rather hard to describe. it was a feeling, i think, of awe mingled with delight. we were agreeably surprised to find that the captain, as well as several of the other officers, not only knew who we were, but was [sic] expecting us and gave us a pleasant greeting. there were several passengers whom we knew, including senator sewell, of new jersey, and edward marshall, the newspaper correspondent. i had just a little fear that we would not be treated civilly by some of the passengers. this fear was based upon what i had heard other people of my race, who had crossed the ocean, say about unpleasant experiences in crossing the ocean in american vessels. but in our case, from the captain down to the most humble servant, we were treated with the greatest kindness. nor was this kindness confined to those who were connected with the steamer; it was shown by all the passengers also. there were not a few southern men and women on board, and they were as cordial as those from other parts of the country. as soon as the last good-bys were said, and the steamer had cut loose from the wharf, the load of care, anxiety, and responsibility which i had carried for eighteen years began to lift itself from my shoulders at the rate, it seemed to me, of a pound a minute. it was the first time in all those years that i had felt, even in a measure, free from care; and my feeling of relief it is hard to describe on paper. added to this was the delightful anticipation of being in europe soon. it all seemed more like a dream than like a reality. mr. garrison had thoughtfully arranged to have us have one of the most comfortable rooms on the ship. the second or third day out i began to sleep, and i think that i slept at the rate of fifteen hours a day during the remainder of the ten days' passage. then it was that i began to understand how tired i really was. these long sleeps i kept up for a month after we landed on the other side. it was such an unusual feeling to wake up in the morning and realize that i had no engagements; did not have to take a train at a certain hour; did not have an appointment to meet some one, or to make an address, at a certain hour. how different all this was from the experiences that i have been through when travelling, when i have sometimes slept in three different beds in a single night! when sunday came, the captain invited me to conduct the religious services, but, not being a minister, i declined. the passengers, however, began making requests that i deliver an address to them in the dining-saloon some time during the voyage, and this i consented to do. senator sewell presided at this meeting. after ten days of delightful weather, during which i was not seasick for a day, we landed at the interesting old city of antwerp, in belgium. the next day after we landed happened to be one of those numberless holidays which the people of those countries are in the habit of observing. it was a bright, beautiful day. our room in the hotel faced the main public square, and the sights there -the people coming in from the country with all kinds of beautiful flowers to sell, the women coming in with their dogs drawing large, brightly polished cans filled with milk, the people streaming into the cathedral -filled me with a sense of newness that i had never before experienced. after spending some time in antwerp, we were invited to go with a part of a half-dozen persons on a trip through holland. this party included edward marshall and some american artists who had come over on the same steamer with us. we accepted the invitation, and enjoyed the trip greatly. i think it was all the more interesting and instructive because we went for most of the way on one of the slow, old-fashioned canal-boats. this gave us an opportunity of seeing and studying the real life of the people in the country districts. we went in this way as far as rotterdam, and later went to the hague, where the peace conference was then in session, and where we were kindly received by the american representatives. the thing that impressed itself most on me in holland was the thoroughness of the agriculture and the excellence of the holstein cattle. i never knew, before visiting holland, how much it was possible for people to get out of a small plot of ground. it seemed to me that absolutely no land was wasted. it was worth a trip to holland, too, just to get a sight of three or four hundred fine holstein cows grazing in one of those intensely green fields. from holland we went to belgium, and made a hasty trip through that country, stopping at brussels, where we visited the battlefield of waterloo. from belgium we went direct to paris, where we found that mr. theodore stanton, the son of mrs. elizabeth cady stanton, had kindly provided accommodations for us. we had barely got settled in paris before an invitation came to me from the university club of paris to be its guest at a banquet which was soon to be given. the other guests were ex-president benjamin harrison and archbishop ireland, who were in paris at the time. the american ambassador, general horace porter, presided at the banquet. my address on this occasion seemed to give satisfaction to those who heard it. general harrison kindly devoted a large portion of his remarks at dinner to myself and to the influence of the work at tuskegee on the american race question. after my address at this banquet other invitations came to me, but i declined the most of them, knowing that if i accepted them all, the object of my visit would be defeated. i did, however, consent to deliver an address in the american chapel the following sunday morning, and at this meeting general harrison, general porter, and other distinguished americans were present. later we received a formal call from the american ambassador, and were invited to attend a reception at his residence. at this reception we met many americans, among them justices fuller and harlan, of the united states supreme court. during our entire stay of a month in paris, both the american ambassador and his wife, as well as several other americans, were very kind to us. while in paris we saw a good deal of the now famous american negro painter, mr. henry o. tanner, whom we had formerly known in america. it was very satisfactory to find how well known mr. tanner was in the field of art, and to note the high standing which all classes accorded to him. when we told some americans that we were going to the luxembourg palace to see a painting by an american negro, it was hard to convince them that a negro had been thus honoured. i do not believe that they were really convinced of the fact until they saw the picture for themselves. my acquaintance with mr. tanner reenforced [sic] in my mind the truth which i am constantly trying to impress upon our students at tuskegee -and on our people throughout the country, as far as i can reach them with my voice -that any man, regardless of colour, will be recognized and rewarded just in proportion as he learns to do something well -learns to do it better than some one else -however humble the thing may be. as i have said, i believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make its services of indispensable value. this was the spirit that inspired me in my first effort at hampton, when i was given the opportunity to sweep and dust that schoolroom. in a degree i felt that my whole future life depended upon the thoroughness with which i cleaned that room, and i was determined to do it so well that no one could find any fault with the job. few people ever stopped, i found, when looking at his pictures, to inquire whether mr. tanner was a negro painter, a french painter, or a german painter. they simply knew that he was able to produce something which the world wanted -a great painting -and the matter of his colour did not enter into their minds. when a negro girl learns to cook, to wash dishes, to sew, or write a book, or a negro boy learns to groom horses, or to grow sweet potatoes, or to produce butter, or to build a house, or to be able to practise medicine, as well or better than some one else, they will be rewarded regardless of race or colour. in the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not long keep the world from what it wants. i think that the whole future of my race hinges on the question as to whether or not it can make itself of such indispensible value that the people in the town and the state where we reside will feel that our presence is necessary to the happiness and well-being of the community. no man who continues to add something to the material, intellectual, and moral well-being of the place in which he lives is long left without proper reward. this is a great human law which cannot be permanently nullified. the love of pleasure and excitement which seems in a large measure to possess the french people impressed itself upon me. i think they are more noted in this respect than is true of the people of my own race. in point of morality and moral earnestness i do not believe that the french are ahead of my own race in america. severe competition and the great stress of life have led them to learn to do things more thoroughly and to exercise greater economy; but time, i think, will bring my race to the same point. in the matter of truth and high honour i do not believe that the average frenchman is ahead of the american negro; while so far as mercy and kindness to dumb animals go, i believe that my race is far ahead. in fact, when i left france, i had more faith in the future of the black man in america than i had ever possessed. from paris we went to london, and reached there early in july, just about the height of the london social season. parliament was in session, and there was a great deal of gaiety. mr. garrison and other friends had provided us with a large number of letters of introduction, and they had also sent letters to other persons in different parts of the united kingdom, apprising these people of our coming. very soon after reaching london we were flooded with invitations to attend all manner of social functions, and a great many invitations came to me asking that i deliver public addresses. the most of these invitations i declined, for the reason that i wanted to rest. neither were we able to accept more than a small proportion of the other invitations. the rev. dr. brooke herford and mrs. herford, whom i had known in boston, consulted with the american ambassador, the hon. joseph choate, and arranged for me to speak at a public meeting to be held in essex hall. mr. choate kindly consented to preside. the meeting was largely attended. there were many distinguished persons present, among them several members of parliament, including mr. james bryce, who spoke at the meeting. what the american ambassador said in introducing me, as well as a synopsis of what i said, was widely published in england and in the american papers at the time. dr. and mrs. herford gave mrs. washington and myself a reception, at which we had the privilege of meeting some of the best people in england. throughout our stay in london ambassador choate was most kind and attentive to us. at the ambassador's reception i met, for the first time, mark twain. we were the guests several times of mrs. t. fisher unwin, the daughter of the english statesman, richard cobden. it seemed as if both mr. and mrs. unwin could not do enough for our comfort and happiness. later, for nearly a week, we were the guests of the daughter of john bright, now mrs. clark, of street, england. both mr. and mrs. clark, with their daughter, visited us at tuskegee the next year. in birmingham, england, we were the guests for several days of mr. joseph sturge, whose father was a great abolitionist and friend of whittier and garrison. it was a great privilege to meet throughout england those who had known and honoured the late william lloyd garrison, the hon. frederick douglass, and other abolitionists. the english abolitionists with whom we came in contact never seemed to tire of talking about these two americans. before going to england i had had no proper conception of the deep interest displayed by the abolitionists of england in the cause of freedom, nor did i realize the amount of substantial help given by them. in bristol, england, both mrs. washington and i spoke at the women's liberal club. i was also the principal speaker at the commencement exercises of the royal college for the blind. these exercises were held in the crystal palace, and the presiding officer was the late duke of westminster, who was said to be, i believe, the richest man in england, if not in the world. the duke, as well as his wife and their daughter, seemed to be pleased with what i said, and thanked me heartily. through the kindness of lady aberdeen, my wife and i were enabled to go with a party of those who were attending the international congress of women, then in session in london, to see queen victoria, at windsor castle, where, afterward, we were all the guests of her majesty at tea. in our party was miss susan b. anthony, and i was deeply impressed with the fact that one did not often get an opportunity to see, during the same hour, two women so remarkable in different ways as susan b. anthony and queen victoria. in the house of commons, which we visited several times, we met sir henry m. stanley. i talked with him about africa and its relation to the american negro, and after my interview with him i became more convinced than ever that there was no hope of the american negro's improving his condition by emigrating to africa. on various occasions mrs. washington and i were the guests of englishmen in their country homes, where, i think, one sees the englishman at his best. in one thing, at least, i feel sure that the english are ahead of americans, and that is, that they have learned how to get more out of life. the home life of the english seems to me to be about as perfect as anything can be. everything moves like clockwork. i was impressed, too, with the deference that the servants show to their "masters" and "mistresses," -terms which i suppose would not be tolerated in america. the english servant expects, as a rule, to be nothing but a servant, and so he perfects himself in the art to a degree that no class of servants in america has yet reached. in our country the servant expects to become, in a few years, a "master" himself. which system is preferable? i will not venture an answer. another thing that impressed itself upon me throughout england was the high regard that all classes have for law and order, and the ease and thoroughness with which everything is done. the englishmen, i found, took plenty of time for eating, as for everything else. i am not sure if, in the long run, they do not accomplish as much or more than rushing, nervous americans do. my visit to england gave me a higher regard for the nobility than i had had. i had no idea that they were so generally loved and respected by the classes, nor that i any correct conception of how much time and money they spent in works of philanthropy, and how much real heart they put into this work. my impression had been that they merely spent money freely and had a "good time." it was hard for me to get accustomed to speaking to english audiences. the average englishman is so serious, and is so tremendously in earnest about everything, that when i told a story that would have made an american audience roar with laughter, the englishmen simply looked me straight in the face without even cracking a smile. when the englishman takes you into his heart and friendship, he binds you there as with cords of steel, and i do not believe that there are many other friendships that are so lasting or so satisfactory. perhaps i can illustrate this point in no better way than by relating the following incident. mrs. washington and i were invited to attend a reception given by the duke and duchess of sutherland, at stafford house -said to be the finest house in london; i may add that i believe the duchess of sutherland is said to be the most beautiful woman in england. there must have been at least three hundred persons at this reception. twice during the evening the duchess sought us out for a conversation, and she asked me to write her when we got home, and tell her more about the work at tuskegee. this i did. when christmas came we were surprised and delighted to receive her photograph with her autograph on it. the correspondence has continued, and we now feel that in the duchess of sutherland we have one of our warmest friends. after three months in europe we sailed from southampton in the steamship _st. louis_. on this steamer there was a fine library that had been presented to the ship by the citizens of st. louis, mo. in this library i found a life of frederick douglass, which i began reading. i became especially interested in mr. douglass's description of the way he was treated on shipboard during his first or second visit to england. in this description he told how he was not permitted to enter the cabin, but had to confine himself to the deck of the ship. a few minutes after i had finished reading this description i was waited on by a committee of ladies and gentlemen with the request that i deliver an address at a concert which was to begin the following evening. and yet there are people who are bold enough to say that race feeling in america is not growing less intense! at this concert the hon. benjamin b. odell, jr., the present governor of new york, presided. i was never given a more cordial hearing anywhere. a large proportion of the passengers with southern people. after the concert some of the passengers proposed that a subscription be raised to help the work at tuskegee, and the money to support several scholarships was the result. while we were in paris i was very pleasantly surprised to receive the following invitation from the citizens of west virginia and of the city near which i had spent my boyhood days: - charleston, w. va., may 16, 1899. professor booker t. washington, paris, france: dear sir: many of the best citizens of west virginia have united in liberal expressions of admiration and praise of your worth and work, and desire that on your return from europe you should favour them with your presence and with the inspiration of your words. we must sincerely indorse [sic] this move, and on behalf of the citizens of charleston extend to your our most cordial invitation to have you come to us, that we may honour you who have done so much by your life and work to honour us. we are, very truly yours, the common council of the city of charleston, by w. herman smith, mayor. this invitation from the city council of charleston was accompanied by the following: - professor booker t. washington, paris, france: dear sir: we, the citizens of charleston and west virginia, desire to express our pride in you and the splendid career that you have thus far accomplished, and ask that we be permitted to show our pride and interest in a substantial way. your recent visit to your old home in our midst awoke within us the keenest regret that we were not permitted to hear you and render some substantial aid to your work, before you left for europe. in view of the foregoing, we earnestly invite you to share the hospitality of our city upon your return from europe, and give us the opportunity to hear you and put ourselves in touch with your work in a way that will be most gratifying to yourself, and that we may receive the inspiration of your words and presence. an early reply to this invitation, with an indication of the time you may reach our city, will greatly oblige, yours very respectfully, the charleston _daily gazette_, the _daily mail-tribune_; g.w. atkinson, governor; e.l. boggs, secretary to governor; wm. m.o. dawson, secretary of state; l.m. la follette, auditor; j.r. trotter, superintendent of schools; e.w. wilson, ex-governor; w.a. maccorkle, ex-governor; john q. dickinson, president kanawha valley bank; l. prichard, president charleston national bank; geo. s. couch, president kanawha national bank; ed. reid, cashier kanawha national bank; geo. s. laidley, superintended city schools; l.e. mcwhorter, president board of education; chas. k. payne, wholesale merchant; and many others. this invitation, coming as it did from the city council, the state officers, and all the substantial citizens of both races of the community where i had spent my boyhood, and from which i had gone a few years before, unknown, in poverty and ignorance, in quest of an education, not only surprised me, but almost unmanned me. i could not understand what i had done to deserve it all. i accepted the invitation, and at the appointed day was met at the railway station at charleston by a committee headed by ex-governor w.a. maccorkle, and composed of men of both races. the public reception was held in the opera-house at charleston. the governor of the state, the hon. george w. atkinson, presided, and an address of welcome was made by ex-governor maccorkle. a prominent part in the reception was taken by the coloured citizens. the opera-house was filled with citizens of both races, and among the white people were many for whom i had worked when i was a boy. the next day governor and mrs. atkinson gave me a public reception at the state house, which was attended by all classes. not long after this the coloured people in atlanta, georgia, gave me a reception at which the governor of the state presided, and a similar reception was given me in new orleans, which was presided over by the mayor of the city. invitations came from many other places which i was not able to accept. chapter xvii last words before going to europe some events came into my life which were great surprises to me. in fact, my whole life has largely been one of surprises. i believe that any man's life will be filled with constant, unexpected encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day of his life -that is, tries to make each day reach as nearly as possible the high-water mark of pure, unselfish, useful living. i pity the man, black or white, who has never experienced the joy and satisfaction that come to one by reason of an effort to assist in making some one else more useful and more happy. six months before he died, and nearly a year after he had been stricken with paralysis, general armstrong expressed a wish to visit tuskegee again before he passed away. notwithstanding the fact that he had lost the use of his limbs to such an extent that he was practically helpless, his wish was gratified, and he was brought to tuskegee. the owners of the tuskegee railroad, white men living in the town, offered to run a special train, without cost, out of the main station -chehaw, five miles away -to meet him. he arrived on the school grounds about nine o'clock in the evening. some one had suggested that we give the general a "pine-knot torchlight reception." this plan was carried out, and the moment that his carriage entered the school grounds he began passing between two lines of lighted and waving "fat pine" wood knots held by over a thousand students and teachers. the whole thing was so novel and surprising that the general was completely overcome with happiness. he remained a guest in my home for nearly two months, and, although almost wholly without the use of voice or limb, he spent nearly every hour in devising ways and means to help the south. time and time again he said to me, during this visit, that it was not only the duty of the country to assist in elevating the negro of the south, but the poor white man as well. at the end of his visit i resolved anew to devote myself more earnestly than ever to the cause which was so near his heart. i said that if a man in his condition was willing to think, work, and act, i should not be wanting in furthering in every possible way the wish of his heart. the death of general armstrong, a few weeks later, gave me the privilege of getting acquainted with one of the finest, most unselfish, and most attractive men that i have ever come in contact with. i refer to the rev. dr. hollis b. frissell, now the principal of the hampton institute, and general armstrong's successor. under the clear, strong, and almost perfect leadership of dr. frissell, hampton has had a career of prosperity and usefulness that is all that the general could have wished for. it seems to be the constant effort of dr. frissell to hide his own great personality behind that of general armstrong -to make himself of "no reputation" for the sake of the cause. more than once i have been asked what was the greatest surprise that ever came to me. i have little hesitation in answering that question. it was the following letter, which came to me one sunday morning when i was sitting on the veranda of my home at tuskegee, surrounded by my wife and three children: - harvard university, cambridge, may 28, 1896. president booker t. washington, my dear sir: harvard university desired to confer on you at the approaching commencement an honorary degree; but it is our custom to confer degrees only on gentlemen who are present. our commencement occurs this year on june 24, and your presence would be desirable from about noon till about five o'clock in the afternoon. would it be possible for you to be in cambridge on that day? believe me, with great regard, very truly yours, charles w. eliot. this was a recognition that had never in the slightest manner entered into my mind, and it was hard for me to realize that i was to be honoured by a degree from the oldest and most renowned university in america. as i sat upon my veranda, with this letter in my hand, tears came into my eyes. my whole former life -my life as a slave on the plantation, my work in the coal-mine, the times when i was without food and clothing, when i made my bed under a sidewalk, my struggles for an education, the trying days i had had at tuskegee, days when i did not know where to turn for a dollar to continue the work there, the ostracism and sometimes oppression of my race, -all this passed before me and nearly overcame me. i had never sought or cared for what the world calls fame. i have always looked upon fame as something to be used in accomplishing good. i have often said to my friends that if i can use whatever prominence may have come to me as an instrument with which to do good, i am content to have it. i care for it only as a means to be used for doing good, just as wealth may be used. the more i come into contact with wealthy people, the more i believe that they are growing in the direction of looking upon their money simply as an instrument which god has placed in their hand for doing good with. i never go to the office of mr. john d. rockefeller, who more than once has been generous to tuskegee, without being reminded of this. the close, careful, and minute investigation that he always makes in order to be sure that every dollar that he gives will do the most good -an investigation that is just as searching as if he were investing money in a business enterprise -convinces me that the growth in this direction is most encouraging. at nine o'clock, on the morning of june 24, i met president eliot, the board of overseers of harvard university, and the other guests, at the designated place on the university grounds, for the purpose of being escorted to sanders theatre, where the commencement exercises were to be held and degrees conferred. among others invited to be present for the purpose of receiving a degree at this time were general nelson a. miles, dr. bell, the inventor of the bell telephone, bishop vincent, and the rev. minot j. savage. we were placed in line immediately behind the president and the board of overseers, and directly afterward the governor of massachusetts, escorted by the lancers, arrived and took his place in the line of march by the side of president eliot. in the line there were also various other officers and professors, clad in cap and gown. in this order we marched to sanders theatre, where, after the usual commencement exercises, came the conferring of the honorary degrees. this, it seems, is always considered the most interesting feature at harvard. it is not known, until the individuals appear, upon whom the honorary degrees are to be conferred, and those receiving these honours are cheered by the students and others in proportion to their popularity. during the conferring of the degrees excitement and enthusiasm are at the highest pitch. when my name was called, i rose, and president eliot, in beautiful and strong english, conferred upon me the degree of master of arts. after these exercises were over, those who had received honorary degrees were invited to lunch with the president. after the lunch we were formed in line again, and were escorted by the marshal of the day, who that year happened to be bishop william lawrence, through the grounds, where, at different points, those who had been honoured were called by name and received the harvard yell. this march ended at memorial hall, where the alumni dinner was served. to see over a thousand strong men, representing all that is best in state, church, business, and education, with the glow and enthusiasm of college loyalty and college pride, -which has, i think, a peculiar harvard flavour, -is a sight that does not easily fade from memory. among the speakers after dinner were president eliot, governor roger wolcott, general miles, dr. minot j. savage, the hon. henry cabot lodge, and myself. when i was called upon, i said, among other things: - it would in some measure relieve my embarrassment if i could, even in a slight degree, feel myself worthy of the great honour which you do me to-day. why you have called me from the black belt of the south, from among my humble people, to share in the honours of this occasion, is not for me to explain; and yet it may not be inappropriate for me to suggest that it seems to me that one of the most vital questions that touch our american life is how to bring the strong, wealthy, and learned into helpful touch with the poorest, most ignorant, and humblest, and at the same time make one appreciate the vitalizing, strengthening influence of the other. how shall we make the mansion on yon beacon street feel and see the need of the spirits in the lowliest cabin in alabama cotton-fields or louisiana sugar-bottoms? this problem harvard university is solving, not by bringing itself down, but by bringing the masses up. * * * * * * * if my life in the past has meant anything in the lifting up of my people and the bringing about of better relations between your race and mine, i assure you from this day it will mean doubly more. in the economy of god there is but one standard by which an individual can succeed -there is but one for a race. this country demands that every race shall measure itself by the american standard. by it a race must rise or fall, succeed or fail, and in the last analysis mere sentiment counts for little. during the next half-century and more, my race must continue passing through the severe american crucible. we are to be tested in our patience, our forbearance, our perseverance, our power to endure wrong, to withstand temptations, to economize, to acquire and use skill; in our ability to compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the superficial for the real, the appearance for the substance, to be great and yet small, learned and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all. as this was the first time that a new england university had conferred an honorary degree upon a negro, it was the occasion of much newspaper comment throughout the country. a correspondent of a new york paper said: - when the name of booker t. washington was called, and he arose to acknowledge and accept, there was such an outburst of applause as greeted no other name except that of the popular soldier patriot, general miles. the applause was not studied and stiff, sympathetic and condoling; it was enthusiasm and admiration. every part of the audience from pit to gallery joined in, and a glow covered the cheeks of those around me, proving sincere appreciation of the rising struggle of an ex-slave and the work he has accomplished for his race. a boston paper said, editorially: - in conferring the honorary degree of master of arts upon the principal of tuskegee institute, harvard university has honoured itself as well as the object of this distinction. the work which professor booker t. washington has accomplished for the education, good citizenship, and popular enlightenment in his chosen field of labour in the south entitles him to rank with our national benefactors. the university which can claim him on its list of sons, whether in regular course of _honoris causa_, may be proud. it has been mentioned that mr. washington is the first of his race to receive an honorary degree from a new england university. this, in itself, is a distinction. but the degree was not conferred because mr. washington is a coloured man, or because he was born in slavery, but because he has shown, by his work for the elevation of the people of the black belt of the south, a genius and a broad humanity which count for greatness in any man, whether his skin be white or black. another boston paper said: - it is harvard which, first among new england colleges, confers an honorary degree upon a black man. no one who has followed the history of tuskegee and its work can fail to admire the courage, persistence, and splendid common sense of booker t. washington. well may harvard honour the ex-slave, the value of whose services, alike to his race and country, only the future can estimate. the correspondent of the new york _times_ wrote: - all the speeches were enthusiastically received, but the coloured man carried off the oratorical honours, and the applause which broke out when he had finished was vociferous and long continued. soon after i began work at tuskegee i formed a resolution, in the secret of my heart, that i would try to build up a school that would be of so much service to the country that the president of the united states would one day come to see it. this was, i confess, rather a bold resolution, and for a number of years i kept it hidden in my own thoughts, not daring to share it with any one. in november, 1897, i made the first move in this direction, and that was in securing a visit from a member of president mckinley's cabinet, the hon. james wilson, secretary of agriculture. he came to deliver an address at the formal opening of the slater-armstrong agricultural building, our first large building to be used for the purpose of giving training to our students in agriculture and kindred branches. in the fall of 1898 i heard that president mckinley was likely to visit atlanta, georgia, for the purpose of taking part in the peace jubilee exercises to be held there to commemorate the successful close of the spanish-american war. at this time i had been hard at work, together with our teachers, for eighteen years, trying to build up a school that we thought would be of service to the nation, and i determined to make a direct effort to secure a visit from the president and his cabinet. i went to washington, and i was not long in the city before i found my way to the white house. when i got there i found the waiting rooms full of people, and my heart began to sink, for i feared there would not be much chance of my seeing the president that day, if at all. but, at any rate, i got an opportunity to see mr. j. addison porter, the secretary to the president, and explained to him my mission. mr. porter kindly sent my card directly to the president, and in a few minutes word came from mr. mckinley that he would see me. how any man can see so many people of all kinds, with all kinds of errands, and do so much hard work, and still keep himself calm, patient, and fresh for each visitor in the way that president mckinley does, i cannot understand. when i saw the president he kindly thanked me for the work which we were doing at tuskegee for the interests of the country. i then told him, briefly, the object of my visit. i impressed upon him the fact that a visit from the chief executive of the nation would not only encourage our students and teachers, but would help the entire race. he seemed interested, but did not make a promise to go to tuskegee, for the reason that his plans about going to atlanta were not then fully made; but he asked me to call the matter to his attention a few weeks later. by the middle of the following month the president had definitely decided to attend the peace jubilee at atlanta. i went to washington again and saw him, with a view of getting him to extend his trip to tuskegee. on this second visit mr. charles w. hare, a prominent white citizen of tuskegee, kindly volunteered to accompany me, to reenforce [sic] my invitation with one from the white people of tuskegee and the vicinity. just previous to my going to washington the second time, the country had been excited, and the coloured people greatly depressed, because of several severe race riots which had occurred at different points in the south. as soon as i saw the president, i perceived that his heart was greatly burdened by reason of these race disturbances. although there were many people waiting to see him, he detained me for some time, discussing the condition and prospects of the race. he remarked several times that he was determined to show his interest and faith in the race, not merely in words, but by acts. when i told him that i thought that at that time scarcely anything would go father in giving hope and encouragement to the race than the fact that the president of the nation would be willing to travel one hundred and forty miles out of his way to spend a day at a negro institution, he seemed deeply impressed. while i was with the president, a white citizen of atlanta, a democrat and an ex-slaveholder, came into the room, and the president asked his opinion as to the wisdom of his going to tuskegee. without hesitation the atlanta man replied that it was the proper thing for him to do. this opinion was reenforced [sic] by that friend of the race, dr. j.l.m. curry. the president promised that he would visit our school on the 16th of december. when it became known that the president was going to visit our school, the white citizens of the town of tuskegee -a mile distant from the school -were as much pleased as were our students and teachers. the white people of this town, including both men and women, began arranging to decorate the town, and to form themselves into committees for the purpose of cooperating with the officers of our school in order that the distinguished visitor might have a fitting reception. i think i never realized before this how much the white people of tuskegee and vicinity thought of our institution. during the days when we were preparing for the president's reception, dozens of these people came to me and said that, while they did not want to push themselves into prominence, if there was anything they could do to help, or to relieve me personally, i had but to intimate it and they would be only too glad to assist. in fact, the thing that touched me almost as deeply as the visit of the president itself was the deep pride which all classes of citizens in alabama seemed to take in our work. the morning of december 16th brought to the little city of tuskegee such a crowd as it had never seen before. with the president came mrs. mckinley and all of the cabinet officers but one; and most of them brought their wives or some members of their families. several prominent generals came, including general shafter and general joseph wheeler, who were recently returned from the spanish-american war. there was also a host of newspaper correspondents. the alabama legislature was in session in montgomery at this time. this body passed a resolution to adjourn for the purpose of visited tuskegee. just before the arrival of the president's party the legislature arrived, headed by the governor and other state officials. the citizens of tuskegee had decorated the town from the station to the school in a generous manner. in order to economize in the matter of time, we arranged to have the whole school pass in review before the president. each student carried a stalk of sugar-cane with some open bolls [sic] of cotton fastened to the end of it. following the students the work of all departments of the school passed in review, displayed on "floats" drawn by horses, mules, and oxen. on these floats we tried to exhibit not only the present work of the school, but to show the contrasts between the old methods of doing things and the new. as an example, we showed the old method of dairying in contrast with the improved methods, the old methods of tilling the soil in contrast with the new, the old methods of cooking and housekeeping in contrast with the new. these floats consumed an hour and a half of time in passing. in his address in our large, new chapel, which the students had recently completed, the president said, among other things: - to meet you under such pleasant auspices and to have the opportunity of a personal observation of your work is indeed most gratifying. the tuskegee normal and industrial institute is ideal in its conception, and has already a large and growing reputation in the country, and is not unknown abroad. i congratulate all who are associated in this undertaking for the good work which it is doing in the education of its students to lead lives of honour and usefulness, thus exalting the race for which it was established. nowhere, i think, could a more delightful location have been chosen for this unique educational experiment, which has attracted the attention and won the support even of conservative philanthropists in all sections of the country. to speak of tuskegee without paying special tribute to booker t. washington's genius and perseverance would be impossible. the inception of this noble enterprise was his, and he deserves high credit for it. his was the enthusiasm and enterprise which made its steady progress possible and established in the institution its present high standard of accomplishment. he has won a worthy reputation as one of the great leaders of his race, widely known and much respected at home and abroad as an accomplished educator, a great orator, and a true philanthropist. the hon. john d. long, the secretary of the navy, said in part: - i cannot make a speech to-day. my heart is too full -full of hope, admiration, and pride for my countrymen of both sections and both colours. i am filled with gratitude and admiration for your work, and from this time forward i shall have absolute confidence in your progress and in the solution of the problem in which you are engaged. the problem, i say, has been solved. a picture has been presented to-day which should be put upon canvas with the pictures of washington and lincoln, and transmitted to future time and generations -a picture which the press of the country should spread broadcast over the land, a most dramatic picture, and that picture is this: the president of the united states standing on this platform; on one side the governor of alabama, on the other, completing the trinity, a representative of a race only a few years ago in bondage, the coloured president of the tuskegee normal and industrial institute. god bless the president under whose majesty such a scene as that is presented to the american people. god bless the state of alabama, which is showing that it can deal with this problem for itself. god bless the orator, philanthropist, and disciple of the great master -who, if he were on earth, would be doing the same work -booker t. washington. postmaster general smith closed the address which he made with these words: - we have witnessed many spectacles within the last few days. we have seen the magnificent grandeur and the magnificent achievements of one of the great metropolitan cities of the south. we have seen heroes of the war pass by in procession. we have seen floral parades. but i am sure my colleagues will agree with me in saying that we have witnessed no spectacle more impressive and more encouraging, more inspiring for our future, than that which we have witnessed here this morning. some days after the president returned to washington i received the letter which follows: - executive mansion, washington, dec. 23, 1899. dear sir: by this mail i take pleasure in sending you engrossed copies of the souvenir of the visit of the president to your institution. these sheets bear the autographs of the president and the members of the cabinet who accompanied him on the trip. let me take this opportunity of congratulating you most heartily and sincerely upon the great success of the exercises provided for and entertainment furnished us under your auspices during our visit to tuskegee. every feature of the programme was perfectly executed and was viewed or participated in with the heartiest satisfaction by every visitor present. the unique exhibition which you gave of your pupils engaged in their industrial vocations was not only artistic but thoroughly impressive. the tribute paid by the president and his cabinet to your work was none too high, and forms a most encouraging augury, i think, for the future prosperity of your institution. i cannot close without assuring you that the modesty shown by yourself in the exercises was most favourably commented upon by all the members of our party. with best wishes for the continued advance of your most useful and patriotic undertaking, kind personal regards, and the compliments of the season, believe me, always, very sincerely yours, john addison porter, secretary to the president. to president booker t. washington, tuskegee normal and industrial institute, tuskegee, ala. twenty years have now passed since i made the first humble effort at tuskegee, in a broken-down shanty and an old hen-house, without owning a dollar's worth of property, and with but one teacher and thirty students. at the present time the institution owns twenty three hundred acres of land, one thousand of which are under cultivation each year, entirely by student labour. there are now upon the grounds, counting large and small, sixty-six buildings; and all except four of these have been almost wholly erected by the labour of our students. while the students are at work upon the land and in erecting buildings, they are taught, by competent instructors, the latest methods of agriculture and the trades connected with building. there are in constant operation at the school, in connection with thorough academic and religious training, thirty industrial departments. all of these teach industries at which our men and women can find immediate employment as soon as they leave the institution. the only difficulty now is that the demand for our graduates from both white and black people in the south is so great that we cannot supply more than one-half the persons for whom applications come to us. neither have we the buildings nor the money for current expenses to enable us to admit to the school more than one-half the young men and women who apply to us for admission. in our industrial teaching we keep three things in mind: first, that the student shall be so educated that he shall be enabled to meet conditions as they exist _now_, in the part of the south where he lives -in a word, to be able to do the thing which the world wants done; second, that every student who graduates from the school shall have enough skill, coupled with intelligence and moral character, to enable him to make a living for himself and others; third, to send every graduate out feeling and knowing that labour is dignified and beautiful -to make each one love labour instead of trying to escape it. in addition to the agricultural training which we give to young men, and the training given to our girls in all the usual domestic employments, we now train a number of girls in agriculture each year. these girls are taught gardening, fruit-growing, dairying, bee culture, and poultry-raising. while the institution is in no sense denominational, we have a department known as the phelps hall bible training school, in which a number of students are prepared for the ministry and other forms of christian work, especially work in the country districts. what is equally important, each one of the students works . . . each day at some industry, in order to get skill and the love of work, so that when he goes out from the institution he is prepared to set the people with whom he goes to labour a proper example in the matter of industry. the value of our property is now over $700,000. if we add to this our endowment fund, which at present is $1,000,000, the value of the total property is now $1,700,000. aside from the need for more buildings and for money for current expenses, the endowment fund should be increased to at least $3,000,000. the annual current expenses are now about $150,000. the greater part of this i collect each year by going from door to door and from house to house. all of our property is free from mortgage, and is deeded to an undenominational [sic] board of trustees who have the control of the institution. from thirty students the number has grown to fourteen hundred, coming from twenty-seven states and territories, from africa, cuba, porto rico [sic], jamaica, and other foreign countries. in our departments there are one hundred and ten officers and instructors; and if we add the families of our instructors, we have a constant population upon our grounds of not far from seventeen hundred people. i have often been asked how we keep so large a body of people together, and at the same time keep them out of mischief. there are two answers: that the men and women who come to us for an education are in earnest; and that everybody is kept busy. the following outline of our daily work will testify to this: - 5 a.m., rising bell; 5.50 a.m., warning breakfast bell; 6 a.m., breakfast bell; 6.20 a.m., breakfast over; 6.20 to 6.50 a.m., rooms are cleaned; 6.50, work bell; 7.30, morning study hours; 8.20, morning school bell; 8.25, inspection of young men's toilet in ranks; 8.40, devotional exercises in chapel; 8.55, "five minutes with the daily news;" 9 a.m., class work begins; 12, class work closes; 12.15 p.m., dinner; 1 p.m., work bell; 1.30 p.m., class work begins; 3.30 p.m., class work ends; 5.30 p.m., bell to "knock off" work; 6 p.m., supper; 7.10 p.m., evening prayers; 7.30 p.m., evening study hours; 8.45 p.m., evening study hour closes; 9.20 p.m., warning retiring bell; 9.30 p.m., retiring bell. we try to keep constantly in mind the fact that the worth of the school is to be judged by its graduates. counting those who have finished the full course, together with those who have taken enough training to enable them to do reasonably good work, we can safely say that at least six thousand men and women from tuskegee are now at work in different parts of the south; men and women who, by their own example or by direct efforts, are showing the masses of our race now to improve their material, educational, and moral and religious life. what is equally important, they are exhibiting a degree of common sense and self-control which is causing better relations to exist between the races, and is causing the southern white man to learn to believe in the value of educating the men and women of my race. aside from this, there is the influence that is constantly being exerted through the mothers' meeting and the plantation work conducted by mrs. washington. wherever our graduates go, the changes which soon begin to appear in the buying of land, improving homes, saving money, in education, and in high moral characters are remarkable. whole communities are fast being revolutionized through the instrumentality of these men and women. ten years ago i organized at tuskegee the first negro conference. this is an annual gathering which now brings to the school eight or nine hundred representative men and women of the race, who come to spend a day in finding out what the actual industrial, mental, and moral conditions of the people are, and in forming plans for improvement. out from this central negro conference at tuskegee have grown numerous state an local conferences which are doing the same kind of work. as a result of the influence of these gatherings, one delegate reported at the last annual meeting that ten families in his community had bought and paid for homes. on the day following the annual negro conference, there is the "workers' conference." this is composed of officers and teachers who are engaged in educational work in the larger institutions in the south. the negro conference furnishes a rare opportunity for these workers to study the real condition of the rank and file of the people. in the summer of 1900, with the assistance of such prominent coloured men as mr. t. thomas fortune, who has always upheld my hands in every effort, i organized the national negro business league, which held its first meeting in boston, and brought together for the first time a large number of the coloured men who are engaged in various lines of trade or business in different parts of the united states [sic]. thirty states were represented at our first meeting. out of this national meeting grew state and local business leagues. in addition to looking after the executive side of the work at tuskegee, and raising the greater part of the money for the support of the school, i cannot seem to escape the duty of answering at least a part of the calls which come to me unsought to address southern white audiences and audiences of my own race, as well as frequent gatherings in the north. as to how much of my time is spent in this way, the following clipping from a buffalo (n.y.) paper will tell. this has reference to an occasion when i spoke before the national educational association in that city. booker t. washington, the foremost educator among the coloured people of the world, was a very busy man from the time he arrived in the city the other night from the west and registered at the iroquois. he had hardly removed the stains of travel when it was time to partake of support. then he held a public levee in the parlours of the iroquois until eight o'clock. during that time he was greeted by over two hundred eminent teachers and educators from all parts of the united states. shortly after eight o'clock he was driven in a carriage to music hall, and in one hour and a half he made two ringing addresses, to as many as five thousand people, on negro education. then mr. washington was taken in charge by a delegation of coloured citizens, headed by the rev. mr. watkins, and hustled off to a small informal reception, arranged in honour of the visitor by the people of his race. nor can i, in addition to making these addresses, escape the duty of calling the attention of the south and of the country in general, through the medium of the press, to matters that pertain to the interests of both races. this, for example, i have done in regard to the evil habit of lynching. when the louisiana state constitutional convention was in session, i wrote an open letter to that body pleading for justice for the race. in all such efforts i have received warm and hearty support from the southern newspapers, as well as from those in all other parts of the country. despite superficial and temporary signs which might lead one to entertain a contrary opinion, there was never a time when i felt more hopeful for the race than i do at the present. the great human law that in the end recognizes and rewards merit is everlasting and universal. the outside world does not know, neither can it appreciate, the struggle that is constantly going on in the hearts of both the southern white people and their former slaves to free themselves from racial prejudice; and while both races are thus struggling they should have the sympathy, the support, and the forbearance of the rest of the world. as i write the closing words of this autobiography i find myself -not by design -in the city of richmond, virginia: the city which only a few decades ago was the capital of the southern confederacy, and where, about twenty-five years ago, because of my poverty i slept night after night under a sidewalk. this time i am in richmond as the guest of the coloured people of the city; and came at their request to deliver an address last night to both races in the academy of music, the largest and finest audience room in the city. this was the first time that the coloured people had ever been permitted to use this hall. the day before i came, the city council passed a vote to attend the meeting in a body to hear me speak. the state legislature, including the house of delegates and the senate, also passed a unaminous vote to attend in a body. in the presence of hundreds of coloured people, many distinguished white citizens, the city council, the state legislature, and state officials, i delivered my message, which was one of hope and cheer; and from the bottom of my heart i thanked both races for this welcome back to the state that gave me birth. [end.] . 1881 the prince and the pauper a tale for young people of all ages by mark twain preface preface i will set down a tale as it was told to me by one who had it of his father, which latter had it of his father, this last having in like manner had it of his fatherand so on, back and still back, three hundred years and more, the fathers transmitting it to the sons and so preserving it. it may be history, it may be only legend, a tradition. it may have happened, it may not have happened: but it could have happened. it may be that the wise and the learned believed it in the old days; it may be that only the unlearned and the simple loved it and credited it. hugh latimer, bishop of worcester, to lord cromwell, on the birth of the prince of wales (afterward edward vi). [from the national manuscripts preserved by the british government] ryght honorable, salutem in christo jesu, and syr here ys no lesse joynge and rejossynge in thes partees for the byrth of our prynce, hoom we hungurde for so longe, then ther was (i trow), inter vicinos att the byrth of s. i. baptyste, as thys berer, master erance, can telle you. gode gyffe us alle grace, to yelde dew thankes to our lorde gode, gode of inglonde, for verely he hathe shoyd hym selff gode of inglond, or rather an inglyssh gode, yf we consydyr and pondyr welle alle hys procedynges with us from tyme to tyme. he hath overcumme alle our yllness with hys excedynge goodnesse, so that we ar now moor then compelled to serve hym, seke hys glory, promott hys wurde, yf the devylle of alle devylles be natt in us. we have now the stoppe of vayne trustes ande the stey of vayne expectations; lett us alle pray for hys preservation. and i for my partt wylle wyssh that hys grace allways have, and evyn now from the begynynge, governares, instructores and offyceres of ryght jugmente, ne optimum ingenium non optima educatione depravetur. butt whatt a grett fowlle am i! so, whatt devotione shoyth many tymys butt lytelle dyscretione! ande thus the gode of inglonde be ever with you in alle your procedynges. the 19 of october. yours h. l. b. of wurcestere, now att hartlebury. yf you wolde excytt thys berere to be moore hartye ayen the abuse of ymagry or mor forwarde to promotte the veryte, ytt myght doo goode. natt that ytt came of me butt of your selffe, &c. the quality of mercy... is twice bless'd; it blesseth him that gives, and him that takes 'tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. merchant of venice chapter i the birth of the prince and the pauper in the ancient city of london, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of canty, who did not want him. on the same day another english child was born to a rich family of the name of tudor, who did want him. all england wanted him too. england had so longed for him, and hoped for him, and prayed god for him, that, now that he was really come, the people went nearly mad for joy. mere acquaintances hugged and kissed each other and cried. everybody took a holiday, and high and low, rich and poor, feasted and danced and sang, and got very mellow; and they kept this up for days and nights together. by day, london was a sight to see, with gay banners waving from every balcony and housetop, and splendid pageants marching along. by night, it was again a sight to see, with its great bonfires at every corner, and its troops of revelers making merry around them. there was no talk in all england but of the new baby, edward tudor, prince of wales, who lay lapped in silks and satins, unconscious of all this fuss, and not knowing that great lords and ladies were tending him and watching over himand not caring, either. but there was no talk about the other baby, tom canty, lapped in his poor rags, except among the family of paupers whom he had just come to trouble with his presence. chapter ii tom's early life let us skip a number of years. london was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great townfor that day. it had a hundred thousand inhabitantssome think double as many. the streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty, especially in the part where tom canty lived, which was not far from london bridge. the houses were of wood, with the second story projecting over the first, and the third sticking its elbows out beyond the second. the higher the houses grew, the broader they grew. they were skeletons of strong crisscross beams, with solid material between, coated with plaster. the beams were painted red or blue or black, according to the owner's taste, and this gave the houses a very picturesque look. the windows were small, glazed with little diamond-shaped panes, and they opened outward, on hinges, like doors. the house which tom's father lived in was up a foul little pocket called offal court, out of pudding lane. it was small, decayed, and rickety, but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families. canty's tribe occupied a room on the third floor. the mother and father had a sort of bedstead in the corner; but tom, his grandmother, and his two sisters, bet and nan, were not restrictedthey had all the floor to themselves, and might sleep where they chose. there were the remains of a blanket or two, and some bundles of ancient and dirty straw, but these could not rightly be called beds, for they were not organized; they were kicked into a general pile mornings, and selections made from the mass at night, for service. bet and nan were fifteen years oldtwins. they were good-hearted girls, unclean, clothed in rags, and profoundly ignorant. their mother was like them. but the father and the grandmother were a couple of fiends. they got drunk whenever they could; then they fought each other or anybody else who came in the way; they cursed and swore always, drunk or sober; john canty was a thief, and his mother a beggar. they made beggars of the children, but failed to make thieves of them. among, but not of, the dreadful rabble that inhabited the house, was a good old priest whom the king had turned out of house and home with a pension of a few farthings, and he used to get the children aside and teach them right ways secretly. father andrew also taught tom a little latin, and how to read and write; and would have done the same for the girls, but they were afraid of the jeers of their friends, who could not have endured such a queer accomplishment in them. all offal court was just such another hive as canty's house. drunkenness, riot, and brawling were the order there, every night and nearly all night long. broken heads were as common as hunger in that place. yet little tom was not unhappy. he had a hard time of it, but did not know it. it was the sort of time that all the offal court boys had, therefore he supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing. when he came home empty-handed at night, he knew his father would curse him and thrash him first, and that when he was done the awful grandmother would do it all over again and improve on it; and that away in the night his starving mother would slip to him stealthily with any miserable scrap of crust she had been able to save for him by going hungry herself, notwithstanding she was often caught in that sort of treason and soundly beaten for it by her husband. no, tom's life went along well enough, especially in summer. he only begged just enough to save himself, for the laws against mendicancy were stringent, and the penalties heavy; so he put in a good deal of his time listening to good father andrew's charming old tales and legends about giants and fairies, dwarfs and genii, and enchanted castles, and gorgeous kings and princes. his head grew to be full of these wonderful things, and many a night as he lay in the dark on his scant and offensive straw, tired, hungry, and smarting from a thrashing, he unleashed his imagination and soon forgot his aches and pains in delicious picturings to himself of the charmed life of a petted prince in a regal palace. one desire came in time to haunt him day and night; it was to see a real prince, with his own eyes. he spoke of it once to some of his offal court comrades; but they jeered him and scoffed him so unmercifully that he was glad to keep his dream to himself after that. he often read the priest's old books and got him to explain and enlarge upon them. his dreamings and readings worked certain changes in him by and by. his dream-people were so fine that he grew to lament his shabby clothing and his dirt, and to wish to be clean and better clad. he went on playing in the mud just the same, and enjoying it, too; but instead of splashing around in the thames solely for the fun of it, he began to find an added value in it because of the washings and cleansings it afforded. tom could always find something going on around the maypole in cheapside, and at the fairs; and now and then he and the rest of london had a chance to see a military parade when some famous unfortunate was carried prisoner to the tower, by land or boat. one summer's day he saw poor anne askew and three men burned at the stake in smithfield, and heard an ex-bishop preach a sermon to them which did not interest him. yes, tom's life was varied and pleasant enough, on the whole. by and by tom's reading and dreaming about princely life wrought such a strong effect upon him that he began to act the prince, unconsciously. his speech and manners became curiously ceremonious and courtly, to the vast admiration and amusement of his intimates. but tom's influence among these young people began to grow now, day by day; and in time he came to be looked up to by them with a sort of wondering awe, as a superior being. he seemed to know so much! and he could do such marvellous things! and withal, he was so deep and wise! tom's remarks and tom's performances were reported by the boys to their elders; and these, also, presently began to discuss tom canty, and to regard him as a most gifted and extraordinary creature. full-grown people brought their perplexities to tom for solution, and were often astonished at the wit and wisdom of his decisions. in fact, he was become a hero to all who knew him except his own familythese only saw nothing in him. privately, after a while, tom organized a royal court! he was the prince; his special comrades were guards, chamberlains, equerries, lords and ladies in waiting, and the royal family. daily the mock prince was received with elaborate ceremonials borrowed by tom from his romantic readings; daily the great affairs of the mimic kingdom were discussed in the royal council, and daily his mimic highness issued decrees to his imaginary armies, navies, and viceroyalties. after which he would go forth in his rags and beg a few farthings, eat his poor crust, take his customary cuffs and abuse, and then stretch himself upon his handful of foul straw, and resume his empty grandeurs in his dreams. and still his desire to look just once upon a real prince, in the flesh, grew upon him, day by day, and week by week, until at last it absorbed all other desires, and became the one passion of his life. one january day, on his usual begging tour, he tramped despondently up and down the region round about mincing lane and little east cheap, hour after hour, barefooted and cold, looking in at cook-shop windows and longing for the dreadful pork-pies and other deadly inventions displayed therefor to him these were dainties fit for the angels; that is, judging by the smell, they werefor it had never been his good luck to own and eat one. there was a cold drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was murky; it was a melancholy day. at night tom reached home so wet and tired and hungry that it was not possible for his father and grandmother to observe his forlorn condition and not be movedafter their fashion; wherefore they gave him a brisk cuffing at once and sent him to bed. for a long time his pain and hunger, and the swearing and fighting going on in the building, kept him awake; but at last his thoughts drifted away to far, romantic lands, and he fell asleep in the company of jeweled and gilded princelings who lived in vast palaces, and had servants salaaming before them or flying to execute their orders. and then, as usual, he dreamed that he was a princeling himself. all night long the glories of his royal estate shone upon him; he moved among great lords and ladies, in a blaze of light, breathing perfumes, drinking in delicious music, and answering the reverent obeisances of the glittering throng as it parted to make way for him, with here a smile, and there a nod of his princely head. and when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about him, his dream had had its usual effectit had intensified the sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold. then came bitterness, and heartbreak, and tears. chapter iii tom's meeting with the prince tom got up hungry, and sauntered hungry away, but with his thoughts busy with the shadowy splendors of his night's dreams. he wandered here and there in the city, hardly noticing where he was going, or what was happening around him. people jostled him and some gave him rough speech; but it was all lost on the musing boy. by and by he found himself at temple bar, the farthest from home he had ever traveled in that direction. he stopped and considered a moment, then fell into his imaginings again, and passed on outside the walls of london. the strand had ceased to be a country-road then, and regarded itself as a street, but by a strained construction; for, though there was a tolerably compact row of houses on one side of it, there were only some scattering great buildings on the other, these being palaces of rich nobles, with ample and beautiful grounds stretching to the rivergrounds that are now closely packed with grim acres of brick and stone. tom discovered charing village presently, and rested himself at the beautiful cross built there by a bereaved king of earlier days; then idled down a quiet, lovely road, past the great cardinal's stately palace, toward a far more mighty and majestic palace beyondwestminster. tom stared in glad wonder at the vast pile of masonry, the wide-spreading wings, the frowning bastions and turrets, the huge stone gateways, with its gilded bars and its magnificent array of colossal granite lions, and the other signs and symbols of english royalty. was the desire of his soul to be satisfied at last? here, indeed, was a king's palace. might he not hope to see a prince nowa prince of flesh and blood, if heaven were willing? at each side of the gilded gate stood a living statue, that is to say, an erect and stately and motionless man-at-arms, clad from head to heel in shining steel armor. at a respectful distance were many country-folk, and people from the city, waiting for any chance glimpse of royalty that might offer. splendid carriages, with splendid people in them and splendid servants outside, were arriving and departing by several other noble gateways that pierced the royal inclosure. poor little tom, in his rags, approached, and was moving slowly and timidly past the sentinels, with a beating heart and a rising hope, when all at once he caught sight through the golden bars of a spectacle that almost made him shout for joy. within was a comely boy, tanned and brown with sturdy outdoors sports and exercises, whose clothing was all of lovely silks and satins, shining with jewels; at his hip a little jeweled sword and dagger; dainty buskins on his feet, with red heels; and on his head a jaunty crimson cap, with drooping plumes fastened with a great sparkling gem. several gorgeous gentlemen stood nearhis servants, without a doubt. oh! he was a princea prince, a living prince, a real princewithout the shadow of a question; and the prayer of the pauper boy's heart was answered at last. tom's breath came quick and short with excitement, and his eyes grew big with wonder and delight. everything gave way in his mind instantly to one desire: that was to get close to the prince, and have a good, devouring look at him. before he knew what he was about, he had his face against the gate-bars. the next instant one of the soldiers snatched him rudely away, and sent him spinning among the gaping crowd of country gawks and london idlers. the soldier said: 'mind thy manners, thou young beggar!' the crowd jeered and laughed; but the young prince sprang to the gate with his face flushed, and his eyes flashing with indignation, and cried out: 'how dar'st thou use a poor lad like that! how dar'st thou use the king my father's meanest subject so! open the gates, and let him in!' you should have seen that fickle crowd snatch off their hats then. you should have heard them cheer, and shout, 'long live the prince of wales!' the soldiers presented arms with their halberds, opened the gates, and presented again as the little prince of poverty passed in, in his fluttering rags, to join hands with the prince of limitless plenty. edward tudor said: 'thou lookest tired and hungry; thou'st been treated ill. come with me.' half a dozen attendants sprang forward toi don't know what; interfere, no doubt. but they were waved aside with a right royal gesture, and they stopped stock still where they were like so many statues. edward took tom to a rich apartment in the palace, which he called his cabinet. by his command a repast was brought such as tom had never encountered before except in books. the prince, with princely delicacy and breeding, sent away the servants, so that his humble guest might not be embarrassed by their critical presence; then he sat near by, and asked questions while tom ate. 'what is thy name, lad?' 'tom canty, an it please thee, sir.' ''tis an odd one. where dost live?' 'in the city, please thee, sir. offal court, out of pudding lane.' 'offal court! truly, 'tis another odd one. hast parents?' 'parents have i, sir, and a grandam likewise that is but indifferently precious to me, god forgive me if it be offense to say italso twin sisters, nan and bet.' 'then is thy grandam not overkind to thee, i take it.' 'neither to any other is she, so please your worship. she hath a wicked heart, and worketh evil all her days.' 'doth she mistreat thee?' 'there be times that she stayeth her hand, being asleep or overcome with drink; but when she hath her judgment clear again, she maketh it up to me with goodly beatings.' a fierce look came into the little prince's eyes, and he cried out: 'what! beatings?' 'o, indeed, yes, please you, sir.' 'beatings!and thou so frail and little. hark ye: before the night come, she shall hie her to the tower. the king my father-' 'in sooth, you forget, sir, her low degree. the tower is for the great alone.' 'true, indeed. i had not thought of that. i will consider of her punishment. is thy father kind to thee?' 'not more than gammer canty, sir.' 'fathers be alike, mayhap. mine hath not a doll's temper. he smiteth with a heavy hand, yet spareth me; he spareth me not always with his tongue, though, sooth to say. how doth thy mother use thee?' 'she is good, sir, and giveth me neither sorrow nor pain of any sort. and nan and bet are like to her in this.' 'how old be these?' 'fifteen, an it please you, sir.' 'the lady elizabeth, my sister, is fourteen and the lady jane grey, my cousin, is of mine own age, and comely and gracious withal; but my sister the lady mary, with her gloomy mien andlook you: do thy sisters forbid their servants to smile, lest the sin destroy their souls?' 'they? oh, dost think, sir, that they have servants?' the little prince contemplated the little pauper gravely a moment, then said: 'and prithee, why not? who helpeth them undress at night? who attireth them when they rise?' 'none, sir. wouldst have them take off their garment, and sleep withoutlike the beasts?' 'their garment! have they but one?' 'ah, good your worship, what would they do with more? truly, they have not two bodies each.' 'it is a quaint and marvelous thought! thy pardon, i had not meant to laugh. but thy good nan and thy bet shall have raiment and lackeys enow, and that soon, too: my cofferer shall look to it. no, thank me not; 'tis nothing. thou speakest well; thou hast an easy grace in it. art learned?' 'i know not if i am or not, sir. the good priest that is called father andrew taught me, of his kindness, from his books.' 'know'st thou the latin?' 'but scantily, sir, i doubt.' 'learn it, lad: 'tis hard only at first. the greek is harder; but neither these nor any tongues else, i think, are hard to the lady elizabeth and my cousin. thou shouldst hear those damsels at it! but tell me of thy offal court. hast thou a pleasant life there?' 'in truth, yes, so please you, sir, save when one is hungry. there be punch-and-judy shows, and monkeysoh, such antic creatures! and so bravely dressed!and there be plays wherein they that play do shout and fight till all are slain, and 'tis so fine to see, and costeth but a farthingalbeit 'tis main hard to get the farthing, please your worship.' 'tell me more.' 'we lads of offal court do strive against each other with the cudgel, like to the fashion of the 'prentices, sometimes.' the prince's eyes flashed. said he: 'marry, that would i not mislike. tell me more.' 'we strive in races, sir, to see who of us shall be fleetest.' 'that would i like also. speak on.' 'in summer, sir, we wade and swim in the canals and in the river, and each doth duck his neighbor, and spatter him with water, and dive and shout and tumble and-' ''twould be worth my father's kingdom but to enjoy it once! prithee go on.' 'we dance and sing about the maypole in cheapside; we play in the sand, each covering his neighbor up; and times we make mud pastryoh, the lovely mud, it hath not its like for delightfulness in all the world!we do fairly wallow in the mud, sir, saving your worship's presence.' 'oh, prithee, say no more, 'tis glorious! if that i could but clothe me in raiment like to thine, and strip my feet, and revel in the mud once, just once, with none to rebuke me or forbid, meseemeth i could forego the crown!' 'and if that i could clothe me once, sweet sir, as thou art cladjust once-' 'oho, wouldst like it? then so shall it be. doff thy rags, and don these splendors, lad! it is a brief happiness, but will be not less keen for that. we will have it while we may, and change again before any come to molest.' a few minutes later the little prince of wales was garlanded with tom's fluttering odds and ends, and the little prince of pauperdom was tricked out in the gaudy plumage of royalty. the two went and stood side by side before a great mirror, and lo, a miracle: there did not seem to have been any change made! they stared at each other, then at the glass, then at each other again. at last the puzzled princeling said: 'what dost thou make of this?' 'ah, good your worship, require me not to answer. it is not meet that one of my degree should utter the thing.' 'then will i utter it. thou hast the same hair, the same eyes, the same voice and manner, the same form and stature, the same face and countenance, that i bear. fared we forth naked, there is none could say which was you, and which the prince of wales. and, now that i am clothed as thou wert clothed, it seemeth i should be able the more nearly to feel as thou didst when the brute soldierhark ye, is not this a bruise upon your hand?' 'yes; but it is a slight thing, and your worship knoweth that the poor man-at-arms-' 'peace! it was a shameful thing and a cruel!' cried the little prince, stamping his bare foot. 'if the kingstir not a step till i come again! it is a command!' in a moment he had snatched up and put away an article of national importance that lay upon a table, and was out at the door and flying through the palace grounds in his bannered rags, with a hot face and glowing eyes. as soon as he reached the great gate, he seized the bars, and tried to shake them, shouting: 'open! unbar the gates!' the soldier that had maltreated tom obeyed promptly; and as the prince burst through the portal, half smothered with royal wrath, the soldier fetched him a sounding box on the ear that sent him whirling to the roadway, and said: 'take that, thou beggar's spawn for what thou got'st me from his highness!' the crowd roared with laughter. the prince picked himself out of the mud, and made fiercely at the sentry, shouting: 'i am the prince of wales, my person is sacred; and thou shalt hang for laying thy hand upon me!' the soldier brought his halberd to a present-arms and said mockingly: 'i salute your gracious highness.' then angrily, 'be off, thou crazy rubbish!' here the jeering crowd closed around the poor little prince, and hustled him far down the road, hooting him, and shouting. 'way for his royal highness! way for the prince of wales!' chapter iv the prince's troubles begin after hours of persistent pursuit and persecution, the little prince was at last deserted by the rabble and left to himself. as long as he had been able to rage against the mob, and threaten it royally, and royally utter commands that were good stuff to laugh at, he was very entertaining; but when weariness finally forced him to be silent, he was no longer of use to his tormentors, and they sought amusement elsewhere. he looked about him now, but could not recognize the locality. he was within the city of londonthat was all he knew. he moved on, aimlessly, and in a little while the houses thinned, and the passers-by were infrequent. he bathed his bleeding feet in the brook which flowed then where farringdon street now is; rested a few moments, then passed on, and presently came upon a great space with only a few scattered houses in it, and a prodigious church. he recognized this church. scaffoldings were about, everywhere, and swarms of workmen; for it was undergoing elaborate repairs. the prince took heart at oncehe felt that his troubles were at an end now. he said to himself, 'it is the ancient grey friars' church, which the king my father hath taken from the monks and given for a home forever for poor and forsaken children, and new-named it christ's church. right gladly will they serve the son of him who hath done so generously by themand the more that that son is himself as poor and as forlorn as any that be sheltered here this day, or ever shall be.' he was soon in the midst of a crowd of boys who were running, jumping, playing at ball and leap-frog and otherwise disporting themselves, and right noisily, too. they were all dressed alike, and in the fashion which in that day prevailed among serving-men and 'prentices'*that is to say, each had on the crown of his head a flat black cap about the size of a saucer, which was not useful as a covering, it being of such scanty dimensions, neither was it ornamental; from beneath it the hair fell, unparted, to the middle of the forehead, and was cropped straight around; a clerical band at the neck; a blue gown that fitted closely and hung as low as the knees or lower; full sleeves; a broad red belt; bright yellow stockings, gartered above the knees; low shoes with large metal buckles. it was a sufficiently ugly costume. the boys stopped their play and flocked about the prince, who said with native dignity: 'good lads, say to your master that edward prince of wales desireth speech with him.' a great shout went up at this, and one rude fellow said: 'marry, art thou his grace's messenger, beggar?' the prince's face flushed with anger, and his ready hand flew to his hip, but there was nothing there. there was a storm of laughter, and one boy said: 'didst mark that? he fancied he had a swordbelike he is the prince himself.' this sally brought more laughter. poor edward drew himself up proudly and said: 'i am the prince; and it ill beseemeth you that feed upon the king my father's bounty to use me so.' this was vastly enjoyed, as the laughter testified. the youth who had first spoken shouted to his comrades: 'ho, swine, slaves, pensioners of his grace's princely father, where be your manners? down on your marrow bones, all of ye, and do reverence to his kingly port and royal rags!' with boisterous mirth they dropped upon their knees in a body and did mock homage to their prey. the prince spurned the nearest boy with his foot, and said fiercely: 'take thou that, till the morrow come and i build thee a gibbet!' ah, but this was not a jokethis was going beyond fun. the laughter ceased on the instant and fury took its place. a dozen shouted: 'hale him forth! to the horse-pond, to the horse-pond! where be the dogs? ho, there, lion! ho, fangs!' then followed such a thing as england had never seen beforethe sacred person of the heir to the throne rudely buffeted by plebeian hands, and set upon and torn by dogs. as night drew to a close that day, the prince found himself far down in the close-built portion of the city. his body was bruised, his hands were bleeding, and his rags were all besmirched with mud. he wandered on and on, and grew more and more bewildered, and so tired and faint he could hardly drag one foot after the other. he had ceased to ask questions of any one, since they brought him only insult instead of information. he kept muttering to himself, 'offal courtthat is the name; if i can but find it before my strength is wholly spent and i drop, then am i savedfor his people will take me to the palace and prove that i am none of theirs, but the true prince, and i shall have mine own again.' and now and then his mind reverted to his treatment by those rude christ's hospital boys, and he said, 'when i am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart. i will keep this diligently in my remembrance, that this day's lesson be not lost upon me, and my people suffer thereby; for learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.'*(2) the lights began to twinkle, it came on to rain, the wind rose, and a raw and gusty night set in. the houseless prince, the homeless heir to the throne of england, still moved on, drifting deeper into the maze of squalid alleys where the swarming hives of poverty and misery were massed together. suddenly a great drunken ruffian collared him and said: 'out to this time of night again, and hast not brought a farthing home, i warrant me! if it be so, an i do not break all the bones in thy lean body, then am i not john canty, but some other.' the prince twisted himself loose, unconsciously brushed his profaned shoulder, and eagerly said: 'oh, art his father, truly? sweet heaven grant it be sothen wilt thou fetch him away and restore me!' 'his father? i know not what thou mean'st; i but know i am thy father, as thou shalt soon have cause to-' 'oh, jest not, palter not, delay not!i am worn, i am wounded, i can bear no more. take me to the king my father, and he will make thee rich beyond thy wildest dreams. believe me, man, believe me! i speak no lie, but only the truth!put forth thy hand and save me! i am indeed the prince of wales!' the man stared down, stupefied, upon the lad, then shook his head and muttered: 'gone stark mad as any tom o' bedlam!'then collared him once more, and said with a coarse laugh and an oath, 'but mad or no mad, i and thy gammer canty will soon find where the soft places in thy bones lie, or i'm no true man!' with this he dragged the frantic and struggling prince away, and disappeared up a front court followed by a delighted and noisy swarm of human vermin. chapter v tom as a patrician tom canty, left alone in the prince's cabinet, made good use of his opportunity. he turned himself this way and that before the great mirror, admiring his finery; then walked away, imitating the prince's high-bred carriage, and still observing results in the glass. next he drew the beautiful sword, and bowed, kissing the blade, and laying it across his breast, as he had seen a noble knight do, by way of salute to the lieutenant of the tower, five or six weeks before, when delivering the great lords of norfolk and surrey into his hands for captivity. tom played with the jeweled dagger that hung upon his thigh; he examined the costly and exquisite ornaments of the room; he tried each of the sumptuous chairs, and thought how proud he would be if the offal court herd could only peep in and see him in his grandeur. he wondered if they would believe the marvelous tale he should tell when he got home, or if they would shake their heads, and say his overtaxed imagination had at last upset his reason. at the end of half an hour it suddenly occurred to him that the prince was gone a long time; then right away he began to feel lonely; very soon he fell to listening and longing, and ceased to toy with the pretty things about him; he grew uneasy, then restless, then distressed. suppose some one should come, and catch him in the prince's clothes, and the prince not there to explain. might they not hang him at once, and inquire into his case afterward? he had heard that the great were prompt about small matters. his fears rose higher and higher; and trembling he softly opened the door to the ante-chamber, resolved to fly and seek the prince, and through him, protection and release. six gorgeous gentlemen-servants and two young pages of high degree, clothed like butterflies, sprung to their feet, and bowed low before him. he stepped quickly back, and shut the door. he said: 'oh, they mock at me! they will go and tell. oh! why came i here to cast away my life?' he walked up and down the floor, filled with nameless fears, listening, starting at every trifling sound. presently the door swung open, and a silken page said: 'the lady jane grey.' the door closed, and a sweet young girl, richly clad, bounded toward him. but she stopped suddenly, and said in a distressed voice: 'oh, what aileth thee, my lord?' tom's breath was nearly failing him; but he made shift to stammer out: 'ah, be merciful, thou! in sooth i am no lord, but only poor tom canty of offal court in the city. prithee let me see the prince, and he will of his grace restore to me my rags, and let me hence unhurt. oh, be thou merciful, and save me!' by this time the boy was on his knees, and supplicating with his eyes and uplifted hands as well as with his tongue. the young girl seemed horror-stricken. she cried out: 'oh, my lord, on thy knees? and to me!' then she fled away in fright; and tom, smitten with despair, sank down, murmuring: 'there is no help, there is no hope. now will they come and take me.' whilst he lay there benumbed with terror, dreadful tidings were speeding through the palace. the whisper, for it was whispered always, flew from menial to menial, from lord to lady, down all the long corridors, from story to story, from saloon to saloon, 'the prince hath gone mad, the prince hath gone mad!' soon every saloon, every marble hall, had its groups of glittering lords and ladies, and other groups of dazzling lesser folk, talking earnestly together in whispers, and every face had in it dismay. presently a splendid official came marching by these groups, making solemn proclamation: 'in the name of the king let none list to this false and foolish matter, upon pain of death, nor discuss the same, nor carry it abroad. in the name of the king!' the whisperings ceased as suddenly as if the whisperers had been stricken dumb. soon there was a general buzz along the corridors, of 'the prince! see, the prince comes!' poor tom came slowly walking past the low-bowing groups, trying to bow in return, and meekly gazing upon his strange surroundings with bewildered and pathetic eyes. great nobles walked upon each side of him, making him lean upon them, and so steady his steps. behind him followed the court physicians and some servants. presently tom found himself in a noble apartment of the palace, and heard the door close behind him. around him stood those who had come with him. before him, at a little distance, reclined a very large and very fat man, with a wide, pulpy face, and a stern expression. his large head was very gray; and his whiskers, which he wore only around his face, like a frame, were gray also. his clothing was of rich stuff, but old, and slightly frayed in places. one of his swollen legs had a pillow under it, and was wrapped in bandages. there was silence now; and there was no head there but was bent in reverence, except this man's. this stern-countenanced invalid was the dread henry viii. he saidand his face grew gentle as he began to speak: 'how now, my lord edward, my prince? hast been minded to cozen me, the good king thy father, who loveth thee, and kindly useth thee, with a sorry jest?' poor tom was listening, as well as his dazed faculties would let him, to the beginning of this speech; but when the words 'me the good king' fell upon his ear, his face blanched, and he dropped as instantly upon his knees as if a shot had brought him there. lifting up his hands, he exclaimed: 'thou the king? then am i undone indeed!' this speech seemed to stun the king. his eyes wandered from face to face aimlessly, then rested, bewildered, upon the boy before him. then he said in a tone of deep disappointment: 'alack, i had believed the rumor disproportioned to the truth; but i fear me 'tis not so.' he breathed a heavy sigh, and said in a gentle voice, 'come to thy father, child; thou art not well.' tom was assisted to his feet, and approached the majesty of england, humble and trembling. the king took the frightened face between his hands, and gazed earnestly and lovingly into it awhile, as if seeking some grateful sign of returning reason there, then pressed the curly head against his breast, and patted it tenderly. presently he said: 'dost thou know thy father, child? break not mine old heart; say thou know'st me. thou dost know me, dost thou not?' 'yea; thou art my dread lord the king, whom god preserve.' 'true, truethat is wellbe comforted, tremble not so; there is none here who would hurt thee; there is none here but loves thee. thou art better now; thy ill dream passethis't not so? and thou knowest thyself now alsois't not so? thou wilt not miscall thyself again, as they say thou didst a little while agone?' 'i pray thee of thy grace believe me, i did but speak the truth, most dread lord; for i am the meanest among thy subjects, being a pauper born, and 'tis by a sore mischance and accident i am here, albeit i was therein nothing blameful. i am but young to die, and thou canst save me with one little word. oh, speak it, sir!' 'die? talk not so, sweet princepeace, peace, to thy troubled heartthou shalt not die!' tom dropped upon his knees with a glad cry: 'god requite thy mercy, oh my king, and save thee long to bless thy land!' then springing up, he turned a joyful face toward the two lords in waiting, and exclaimed, 'thou heard'st it! i am not to die: the king hath said it!' there was no movement, save that all bowed with grave respect; but no one spoke. he hesitated, a little confused, then turned timidly toward the king, saying, 'i may go now?' 'go? surely, if thou desirest. but why not tarry yet a little? whither wouldst go?' tom dropped his eyes, and answered humbly: 'peradventure i mistook; but i did think me free, and so was i moved to seek again the kennel where i was born and bred to misery, yet which harboreth my mother and my sisters, and so is home to me; whereas these pomps and splendors whereunto i am not usedoh, please you, sir, to let me go!' the king was silent and thoughtful awhile, and his face betrayed a growing distress and uneasiness. presently he said, with something of hope in his voice: 'perchance he is but mad upon this one strain and hath his wits unmarred as toucheth other matter. god send it may be so! we will make trial.' then he asked tom a question in latin, and tom answered him lamely in the same tongue. the king was delighted, and showed it. the lords and doctors manifested their gratification also. the king said: ''twas not according to his schooling and ability, but sheweth that his mind is but diseased, not stricken fatally. how say you, sir?' the physician addressed bowed low, and replied: 'it jumpeth with mine own conviction, sire, that thou hast divined aright.' the king looked pleased with this encouragement, coming as it did from so excellent authority, and continued with good heart: 'now mark ye all: we will try him further.' he put a question to tom in french. tom stood silent a moment, embarrassed by having so many eyes centered upon him, then said diffidently: 'i have no knowledge of this tongue, so please your majesty.' the king fell back upon his couch. the attendants flew to his assistance; but he put them aside, and said: 'trouble me notit is nothing but a scurvy faintness. raise me! there, 'tis sufficient. come hither, child; there, rest thy poor troubled head upon thy father's heart, and be at peace. thou'lt soon be well; 'tis but a passing fantasy. fear thou not; thou'lt soon be well.' then he turned toward the company; his gentle manner changed, and baleful lightnings began to play from his eyes. he said: 'list ye all! this my son is mad; but it is not permanent. overstudy hath done this, and somewhat too much of confinement. away with his books and teachers! see ye to it. pleasure him with sports, beguile him in wholesome ways, so that his health come again.' he raised himself higher still and went on with energy. 'he is mad; but he is my son, and england's heir; and, mad or sane, still shall he reign! and hear ye further, and proclaim it; whoso speaketh of this his distemper worketh against the peace and order of these realms, and shall to the gallows!... give me to drinki burn: this sorrow sappeth my strength.... there, take away the cup.... support me. there, that is well. mad, is he? were he a thousand times mad, yet is he prince of wales, and i the king will confirm it. this very morrow shall he be installed in his princely dignity in due and ancient form. take instant order for it, my lord hertford.' one of the nobles knelt at the royal couch, and said: 'the king's majesty knoweth that the hereditary great marshal of england lieth attainted in the tower. it were not meet that one attainted-' 'peace! insult not mine ears with his hated name. is this man to live forever? am i to be balked of my will? is the prince to tarry uninstalled, because, forsooth, the realm lacketh an earl marshal free of treasonable taint to invest him with his honors? no, by the splendor of god! warn my parliament to bring me norfolk's doom before the sun rise again, else shall they answer for it grievously!*(3) lord hertford said: 'the king's will is law'; and, rising, returned to his former place. gradually the wrath faded out of the old king's face, and he said: 'kiss me, my prince. there... what fearest thou? am i not thy loving father?' 'thou art good to me that am unworthy, o mighty and gracious lord; that in truth i know. butbutit grieveth me to think of him that is to die, and-' 'ah, 'tis like thee, 'tis like thee! i know thy heart is still the same, even though thy mind hath suffered hurt, for thou wert ever of a gentle spirit. but this duke standeth between thee and thine honors: i will have another in his stead that shall bring no taint to his great office. comfort thee, my prince: trouble not thy poor head with this matter.' 'but is it not i that speed him hence, my liege? how long might he not live, but for me?' 'take no thought of him, my prince: he is not worthy. kiss me once again, and go to thy trifles and amusements; for my malady distresseth me. i am aweary, and would rest. go with thine uncle hertford and thy people, and come again when my body is refreshed.' tom, heavy-hearted, was conducted from the presence, for this last sentence was a death-blow to the hope he had cherished that now he would be set free. once more he heard the buzz of low voices exclaiming, 'the prince, the prince comes!' his spirits sank lower and lower as he moved between the glittering files of bowing courtiers; for he recognized that he was indeed a captive now, and might remain forever shut up in this gilded cage, a forlorn and friendless prince, except god in his mercy take pity on him and set him free. and, turn where he would, he seemed to see floating in the air the severed head and the remembered face of the great duke of norfolk, the eyes fixed on him reproachfully. his old dreams had been so pleasant; but this reality was so dreary! chapter vi tom recieves instructions tom was conducted to the principal apartment of a noble suite, and made to sit downa thing which he was loath to do, since there were elderly men and men of high degree about him. he begged them to be seated, also, but they only bowed their thanks or murmured them, and remained standing. he would have insisted, but his 'uncle,' the earl of hertford, whispered in his ear: 'prithee, insist not, my lord; it is not meet that they sit in thy presence.' the lord st. john was announced, and, after making obeisance to tom, he said: 'i come upon the king's errand, concerning a matter which requireth privacy. will it please your royal highness to dismiss all that attend you here, save my lord the earl of hertford?' observing that tom did not seem to know how to proceed, hertford whispered him to make a sign with his hand and not trouble himself to speak unless he chose. when the waiting gentlemen had retired, lord st. john said: 'his majesty commandeth, that for due and weighty reasons of state, the prince's grace shall hide his infirmity in all ways that be within his power, till it be passed and he be as he was before. to wit, that he shall deny to none that he is the true prince, and heir to england's greatness; that he shall uphold his princely dignity, and shall receive, without word or sign of protest, that reverence and observance which unto it do appertain of right and ancient usage; that he shall cease to speak to any of that lowly birth and life his malady hath conjured out of the unwholesome imaginings of o'erwrought fancy; that he shall strive with diligence to bring unto his memory again those faces which he was wont to knowand where he faileth he shall hold his peace, neither betraying by semblance of surprise, or other sign, that he hath forgot; that upon occasions of state, whensoever any matter shall perplex him as to the thing he should do or the utterance he should make, he shall show naught of unrest to the curious that look on, but take advice in that matter of the lord hertford, or my humble self, which are commanded of the king to be upon this service and close at call, till this commandment be dissolved. thus saith the king's majesty, who sendeth greeting to your royal highness and prayeth that god will of his mercy quickly heal you and have you now and ever in his holy keeping.' the lord st. john made reverence and stood aside. tom replied, resignedly: 'the king hath said it. none may palter with the king's command, or fit it to his ease, where it doth chafe, with deft evasions. the king shall be obeyed.' lord hertford said: 'touching the king's majesty's ordainment concerning books and such like serious matters, it may peradventure please your highness to ease your time with lightsome entertainment, lest you go wearied to the banquet and suffer harm thereby.' tom's face showed inquiring surprise; and a blush followed when he saw lord st. john's eyes bent sorrowfully upon him. his lordship said: 'thy memory still wrongeth thee, and thou hast shown surprisebut suffer it not to trouble thee, for 'tis a matter that will not bide, but depart with thy mending malady. my lord of hertford speaketh of the city's banquet which the king's majesty did promise two months flown, your highness should attend. thou recallest it now?' 'it grieves me to confess it had indeed escaped me,' said tom, in a hesitating voice; and blushed again. at that moment the lady elizabeth and the lady jane grey were announced. the two lords exchanged significant glances, and hertford stepped quickly toward the door. as the young girls passed him, he said in a low voice: 'i pray ye, ladies, seem not to observe his humors, nor show surprise when his memory doth lapseit will grieve you to note how it doth stick at every trifle.' meanwhile lord st. john was saying in tom's ear: 'please you, sir, keep diligently in mind his majesty's desire. remember all thou canstseem to remember all else. let them not perceive that thou art much changed from thy wont, for thou knowest how tenderly thy old playfellows bear thee in their hearts and how 'twould grieve them. art willing, sir, that i remain?and thine uncle?' tom signified assent with a gesture and a murmured word, for he was already learning, and in his simple heart was resolved to acquit himself as best he might according to the king's command. in spite of every precaution, the conversation among the young people became a little embarrassing at times. more than once, in truth, tom was near to breaking down and confessing himself unequal to his tremendous part; but the tact of the princess elizabeth saved him, or a word from one or the other of the vigilant lords, thrown in apparently by chance, had the same happy effect. once the little lady jane turned to tom and dismayed him with this question: 'hast paid thy duty to the queen's majesty today, my lord?' tom hesitated, looked distressed, and was about to stammer out something at hazard when lord st. john took the word and answered for him with the easy grace of a courtier accustomed to encounter delicate difficulties and to be ready for them: 'he hath indeed, madam, and she did greatly hearten him, as touching his majesty's condition; is it not so, your highness?' tom mumbled something that stood for assent, but felt that he was getting upon dangerous ground. somewhat later it was mentioned that tom was to study no more at present, whereupon her little ladyship exclaimed: ''tis a pity, 'tis such a pity! thou were proceeding bravely. but bide thy time in patience; it will not be for long. thou'lt yet be graced with learning like thy father, and make thy tongue master of as many languages as his, good my prince.' 'my father!' cried tom, off his guard for the moment. 'i trow he cannot speak his own so that any but the swine that wallow in the sties may tell his meaning; and as for learning of any sort soever-' he looked up and encountered a solemn warning in my lord st. john's eyes. he stopped, blushed, then continued low and sadly: 'ah, my malady persecuteth me again, and my mind wandereth. i meant the king's grace no irreverence.' 'we know it, sir,' said the princess elizabeth, taking her 'brother's' hand between her two palms, respectfully but caressingly; 'trouble not thyself as to that. the fault is none of thine, but thy distemper's.' 'thou'rt a gentle comforter, sweet lady,' said tom, gratefully, 'and my heart moveth me to thank thee for't, an i may be so bold.' once the giddy little lady jane fired a simple greek phrase at tom. the princess elizabeth's quick eye saw by the serene blankness of the target's front that the shaft was overshot; so she tranquilly delivered a return volley of sounding greek on tom's behalf, and then straightway changed the talk to other matters. time wore on pleasantly, and likewise smoothly, on the whole. snags and sand-bars grew less and less frequent, and tom grew more and more at his ease, seeing that all were so lovingly bent upon helping him and overlooking his mistakes. when it came out that the little ladies were to accompany him to the lord mayor's banquet in the evening, his heart gave a bound of relief and delight, for he felt that he should not be friendless now, among that multitude of strangers, whereas, an hour earlier, the idea of their going with him would have been an insupportable terror to him. tom's guardian angels, the two lords, had had less comfort in the interview than the other parties to it. they felt much as if they were piloting a great ship through a dangerous channel; they were on the alert constantly, and found their office no child's play. wherefore, at last, when the ladies' visit was drawing to a close and the lord guilford dudley was announced, they not only felt that their charge had been sufficiently taxed for the present, but also that they themselves were not in the best condition to take their ship back and make their anxious voyage all over again. so they respectfully advised tom to excuse himself, which he was very glad to do, although a slight shade of disappointment might have been observed upon my lady jane's face when she heard the splendid stripling denied admittance. there was a pause now, a sort of waiting silence which tom could not understand. he glanced at lord hertford, who gave him a signbut he failed to understand that also. the ready elizabeth came to the rescue with her usual easy grace. she made reverence and said: 'have we leave of the prince's grace my brother to go?' tom said: 'indeed, your ladyships can have whatsoever of me they will, for the asking; yet would i rather give them any other thing that in my poor power lieth, than leave to take the light and blessing of their presence hence. give ye good den, and god be with ye!' then he smiled inwardly at the thought, ''tis not for naught i have dwelt but among princes in my reading, and taught my tongue some slight trick of their broidered and gracious speech withal!' when the illustrious maidens were gone, tom turned wearily to his keepers and said: 'may it please your lordships to grant me leave to go into some corner and rest me!' lord hertford said: 'so please your highness, it is for you to command, it is for us to obey. that thou shouldst rest, is indeed a needful thing, since thou must journey to the city presently.' he touched a bell and a page appeared, who was ordered to desire the presence of sir william herbert. this gentleman came straightway, and conducted tom to an inner apartment. tom's first movement there was to reach for a cup of water; but a silk-and-velvet servitor seized it, dropped upon one knee, and offered it to him on a golden salver. next, the tired captive sat down and was going to take off his buskins, timidly asking leave with his eye, but another silk-and-velvet discomforter went down upon his knees and took the office from him. he made two or three further efforts to help himself, but being promptly forestalled each time, he finally gave up, with a sigh of resignation and a murmured 'beshrew me, but i marvel they do not require to breathe for me also!' slippered, and wrapped in a sumptuous robe, he laid himself down at last to rest, but not to sleep, for his head was too full of thoughts and the room too full of people. he could not dismiss the former, so they stayed; he did not know enough to dismiss the latter, so they stayed also, to his vast regretand theirs. tom's departure had left his two noble guardians alone. they mused awhile, with much headshaking and walking the floor, then lord st. john said: 'plainly, what dost thou think?' 'plainly, then, this. the king is near his end, my nephew is mad, mad will mount the throne, and mad remain. god protect england, since she will need it!' 'verily it promiseth so, indeed. but... have you no misgivings as to... as to...' the speaker hesitated, and finally stopped. he evidently felt that he was upon delicate ground. lord hertford stopped before him, looked into his face with a clear, frank eye, and said: 'speak onthere is none to hear but me. misgivings as to what?' 'i am loath to word the thing that is in my mind, and thou so near to him in blood, my lord. but craving pardon if i do offend, seemeth it not strange that madness could so change his port and manner!not but that his port and speech are princely still, but that they differ in one unweighty trifle or another, from what his custom was aforetime. seemeth it not strange that madness should filch from his memory his father's very lineaments; the customs and observances that are his due from such as be about him; and, leaving him his latin, strip him of his greek and french? my lord, be not offended, but ease my mind of its disquiet and receive my grateful thanks. it haunteth me, his saying he was not the prince, and so-' 'peace, my lord, thou utterest treason! hast forgot the king's command? remember i am party to thy crime, if i but listen.' st. john paled, and hastened to say: 'i was in fault, i do confess it. betray me not, grant me this grace out of thy courtesy, and i will neither think nor speak of this thing more. deal not hardly with me, sir, else am i ruined.' 'i am content, my lord. so thou offend not again, here or in the ears of others, it shall be as though thou hadst not spoken. but thou needst not have misgivings. he is my sister's son; are not his voice, his face, his form, familiar to me from his cradle? madness can do all the odd conflicting things thou seest in him, and more. dost not recall how that the old baron marley, being mad, forgot the favor of his own countenance that he had known for sixty years, and held it was another's; nay, even claimed he was the son of mary magdalene, and that his head was made of spanish glass; and sooth to say, he suffered none to touch it, lest by mischance some heedless hand might shiver it. give thy misgivings easement, good my lord. this is the very prince, i know him welland soon will be thy king; it may advantage thee to bear this in mind and more dwell upon it than the other.' after some further talk, in which the lord st. john covered up his mistake as well as he could by repeated protests that his faith was thoroughly grounded now, and could not be assailed by doubts again, the lord hertford relieved his fellow-keeper, and sat down to keep watch and ward alone. he was soon deep in meditation. and evidently the longer he thought, the more he was bothered. by and by he began to pace the floor and mutter. 'tush, he must be the prince! will any he in all the land maintain there can be two, not of one blood and birth, so marvelously twinned? and even were it so, 'twere yet a stranger miracle that chance should cast the one into the other's place. nay, 'tis folly, folly, folly!' presently he said: 'now were he impostor and called himself prince, look you that would be natural; that would be reasonable. but lived ever an impostor yet, who, being called prince by the king, prince by the court, prince by all, denied his dignity and pleaded against his exaltation? no! by the soul of st. swithin, no! this is the true prince, gone mad!' chapter vii tom's first royal dinner somewhat after one in the afternoon, tom resignedly underwent the ordeal of being dressed for dinner. he found himself as finely clothed as before, but everything different, everything changed, from his ruff to his stockings. he was presently conducted with much state to a spacious and ornate apartment, where a table was already set for one. its furniture was all of massy gold, and beautified with designs which well-nigh made it priceless, since they were the work of benvenuto. the room was half filled with noble servitors. a chaplain said grace, and tom was about to fall to, for hunger had long been constitutional with him, but was interrupted by my lord the earl of berkeley, who fastened a napkin about his neck; for the great post of diaperers to the prince of wales was hereditary in this nobleman's family. tom's cupbearer was present, and forestalled all his attempts to help himself to wine. the taster to his highness the prince of wales was there also, prepared to taste any suspicious dish upon requirement, and run the risk of being poisoned. he was only an ornamental appendage at this time, and was seldom called to exercise his function; but there had been times, not many generations past, when the office of taster had its perils, and was not a grandeur to be desired. why they did not use a dog or a plumber seems strange; but all the ways of royalty are strange. my lord d'arcy, first groom of the chamber, was there, to do goodness knows what; but there he waslet that suffice. the lord chief butler was there, and stood behind tom's chair overseeing the solemnities, under command of the lord great steward and the lord head cook, who stood near. tom had three hundred and eighty-four servants besides these; but they were not all in that room, of course, nor the quarter of them; neither was tom aware yet that they existed. all those that were present had been well drilled within the hour to remember that the prince was temporarily out of his head, and to be careful to show no surprise at his vagaries. these 'vagaries' were soon on exhibition before them; but they only moved their compassion and their sorrow, not their mirth. it was a heavy affliction to them to see the beloved prince so stricken. poor tom ate with his fingers mainly; but no one smiled at it, or even seemed to observe it. he inspected his napkin curiously and with deep interest, for it was of a very dainty and beautiful fabric, then said with simplicity: 'prithee, take it away, lest in mine unheedfulness it be soiled.' the hereditary diaperer took it away with reverent manner, and without word or protest of any sort. tom examined the turnips and the lettuce with interest, and asked what they were, and if they were to be eaten; for it was only recently that men had begun to raise these things in england in place of importing them as luxuries from holland.*(4) his question was answered with grave respect, and no surprise manifested. when he had finished his dessert, he filled his pockets with nuts; but nobody appeared to be aware of it, or disturbed by it. but the next moment he was himself disturbed by it, and showed discomposure; for this was the only service he had been permitted to do with his own hands during the meal, and he did not doubt that he had done a most improper and unprincely thing. at that moment the muscles of his nose began to twitch, and the end of that organ to lift and wrinkle. this continued, and tom began to evince a growing distress. he looked appealingly, first at one and then another of the lords about him, and tears came into his eyes. they sprang forward with dismay in their faces, and begged to know his trouble. tom said with genuine anguish: 'i crave your indulgence; my nose itcheth cruelly. what is the custom and usage in this emergence? prithee speed, for 'tis but a little time that i can bear it.' none smiled; but all were sore perplexed, and looked one to the other in deep tribulation for counsel. but, behold, here was a dead wall, and nothing in english history to tell how to get over it. the master of ceremonies was not present; there was no one who felt safe to venture upon this uncharted sea, or risk the attempt to solve this solemn problem. alas! there was no hereditary scratcher. meantime the tears had overflowed their banks, and begun to trickle down tom's cheeks. his twitching nose was pleading more urgently than ever for relief. at last nature broke down the barriers of etiquette; tom lifted up an inward prayer for pardon if he was doing wrong, and brought relief to the burdened hearts of his court by scratching his nose himself. his meal being ended, a lord came and held before him a broad, shallow, golden dish with fragrant rose-water in it, to cleanse his mouth and fingers with; and my lord the hereditary diaperer stood by with a napkin for his use. tom gazed at the dish a puzzled moment or two, then raised it to his lips, and gravely took a draught. then he returned it to the waiting lord, and said: 'nay, it likes me not, my lord; it hath a pretty flavor, but it wanteth strength.' this new eccentricity of the prince's ruined mind made all the hearts about him ache; but the sad sight moved none to merriment. tom's next unconscious blunder was to get up and leave the table just when the chaplain had taken his stand behind his chair and with uplifted hands and closed uplifted eyes, was in the act of beginning the blessing. still nobody seemed to perceive that the prince had done a thing unusual. by his own request, our small friend was now conducted to his private cabinet, and left there alone to his own devices. hanging upon hooks in the oaken wainscoting were the several pieces of a suit of shining steel armor, covered all over with beautiful designs exquisitely inlaid in gold. this martial panoply belonged to the true princea recent present from madam parr, the queen. tom put on the greaves, the gauntlets, the plumed helmet, and such other pieces as he could don without assistance, and for a while was minded to call for help and complete the matter, but bethought him of the nuts he had brought away from dinner, and the joy it would be to eat them with no crowd to eye him, and no grand hereditaries to pester him with undesired services; so he restored the pretty things to their several places, and soon was cracking nuts, and feeling almost naturally happy for the first time since god for his sins had made him a prince. when the nuts were all gone, he stumbled upon some inviting books in a closet, among them one about the etiquette of the english court. this was a prize. he lay down upon a sumptuous divan, and proceeded to instruct himself with honest zeal. let us leave him there for the present. chapter viii the question of the seal about five o'clock henry viii awoke out of an unrefreshing nap, and muttered to himself, 'troublous dreams, troublous dreams! mine end is now at hand; so say these warnings, and my failing pulses do confirm it.' presently a wicked light flamed up in his eye, and he muttered, 'yet will not i die till he go before.' his attendants perceiving that he was awake, one of them asked his pleasure concerning the lord chancellor, who was waiting without. 'admit him, admit him!' exclaimed the king eagerly. the lord chancellor entered, and knelt by the king's couch, saying: 'i have given order, and, according to the king's command, the peers of the realm, in their robes, do now stand at the bar of the house, where, having confirmed the duke of norfolk's doom, they humbly wait his majesty's further pleasure in the matter.' the king's face lit up with a fierce joy. said he: 'lift me up! in mine own person will i go before my parliament, and with mine own hand will i seal the warrant that rids me of-' his voice failed; an ashen pallor swept the flush from his cheeks; and the attendants eased him back upon his pillows, and hurriedly assisted him with restoratives. presently he said sorrowfully: 'alack, how have i longed for this sweet hour! and lo, too late it cometh, and i am robbed of this so coveted chance. but speed ye, speed ye! let others do this happy office sith 'tis denied to me. i put my great seal in commission: choose thou the lords that shall compose it, and get ye to your work. speed ye, man! before the sun shall rise and set again, bring me his head that i may see it.' 'according to the king's command, so shall it be. will't please your majesty to order that the seal be now restored to me, so that i may forth upon the business?' 'the seal! who keepeth the seal but thou?' 'please your majesty, you did take it from me two days since, saying it should no more do its office till your own royal hand should use it upon the duke of norfolk's warrant.' 'why, so in sooth i did; i do remember it.... what did i with it!... i am very feeble.... so oft these days doth my memory play the traitor with me.... 'tis strange, strange-' the king dropped into inarticulate mumblings, shaking his gray head weakly from time to time, and gropingly trying to recollect what he had done with the seal. at last my lord hertford ventured to kneel and offer information 'sire, if that i may be so bold, here be several that do remember with me how that you gave the great seal into the hands of his highness the prince of wales to keep against the day that-' 'true, most true!' interrupted the king. 'fetch it! go: time flieth!' lord hertford flew to tom, but returned to the king before very long, troubled and empty-handed. he delivered himself to this effect: 'it grieveth me, my lord the king, to bear so heavy and unwelcome tidings; but it is the will of god that the prince's affliction abideth still, and he cannot recall to mind that he received the seal. so came i quickly to report, thinking it were waste of precious time, and little worth withal, that any should attempt to search the long array of chambers and saloons that belong unto his royal high-' a groan from the king interrupted my lord at this point. after a while his majesty said, with a deep sadness in his tone: 'trouble him no more, poor child. the hand of god lieth heavy upon him, and my heart goeth out in loving compassion for him, and sorrow that i may not bear his burden on mine own old trouble-weighted shoulders, and so bring him peace.' he closed his eyes, fell to mumbling, and presently was silent. after a time he opened his eyes again, and gazed vacantly around until his glance rested upon the kneeling lord chancellor. instantly his face flushed with wrath: 'what, thou here yet! by the glory of god, an thou gettest not about that traitor's business, thy miter shall have holiday the morrow for lack of a head to grace withal!' the trembling chancellor answered: 'good your majesty, i cry you mercy! i but waited for the seal.' 'man, hast lost thy wits? the small seal which aforetime i was wont to take with me abroad lieth in my treasury. and, since the great seal hath flown away, shall not it suffice? hast lost thy wits? begone! and hark yecome no more till thou do bring his head.' the poor chancellor was not long in removing himself from this dangerous vicinity; nor did the commission waste time in giving the royal assent to the work of the slavish parliament, and appointing the morrow for the beheading of the premier peer of england, the luckless duke of norfolk.*(5) chapter ix the river pageant at nine in the evening the whole vast river-front of the palace was blazing with light. the river itself, as far as the eye could reach cityward, was so thickly covered with watermen's boats and with pleasure barges, all fringed with colored lanterns, and gently agitated by the waves, that it resembled a glowing and limitless garden of flowers stirred to soft motion by summer winds. the grand terrace of stone steps leading down to the water, spacious enough to mass the army of a german principality upon, was a picture to see, with its ranks of royal halberdiers in polished armor, and its troops of brilliantly costumed servitors flitting up and down, and to and fro, in the hurry of preparation. presently a command was given, and immediately all living creatures vanished from the steps. now the air was heavy with the hush of suspense and expectancy. as far as one's vision could carry, he might see the myriads of people in the boats rise up, and shade their eyes from the glare of lanterns and torches, and gaze toward the palace. a file of forty or fifty state barges drew up to the steps. they were richly gilt, and their lofty prows and sterns were elaborately carved. some of them were decorated with banners and streamers; some with cloth-of-gold and arras embroidered with coats of arms; others with silken flags that had numberless little silver bells fastened to them, which shook out tiny showers of joyous music whenever the breezes fluttered them; others of yet higher pretensions, since they belonged to nobles in the prince's immediate service, had their sides picturesquely fenced with shields gorgeously emblazoned with armorial bearings. each state barge was towed by a tender. besides the rowers, these tenders carried each a number of men-at-arms in glossy helmet and breastplate, and a company of musicians. the advance-guard of the expected procession now appeared in the great gateway, a troop of halberdiers. 'they were dressed in striped hose of black and tawny, velvet caps graced at the sides with silver roses, and doublets of murrey and blue cloth, embroidered on the front and back with the three feathers, the prince's blazon, woven in gold. their halberd staves were covered with crimson velvet, fastened with gilt nails, and ornamented with gold tassels. filing off on the right and left, they formed two long lines, extending from the gateway of the palace to the water's edge. a thick, rayed cloth or carpet was then unfolded, and laid down between them by attendants in the gold-and-crimson liveries of the prince. this done, a flourish of trumpets resounded from within. a lively prelude arose from the musicians on the water; and two ushers with white wands marched with a slow and stately pace from the portal. they were followed by an officer bearing the civic mace, after whom came another carrying the city's sword; then several sergeants of the city guard, in their full accoutrements, and with badges on their sleeves; then the garter king-at-arms, in his tabard; then several knights of the bath, each with a white lace on his sleeve; then their esquires; then the judges, in their robes of scarlet and coifs; then the lord high chancellor of england, in a robe of scarlet, open before, and purfled with minever; then a deputation of aldermen, in their scarlet cloaks; and then the heads of the different civic companies, in their robes of state. now came twelve french gentlemen, in splendid habiliments, consisting of pourpoints of white damask barred with gold, short mantles of crimson velvet lined with violet taffeta, and carnation-colored hauts-de-chausses, and took their way down the steps. they were of the suite of the french ambassador, and were followed by twelve cavaliers of the suite of the spanish ambassador, clothed in black velvet, unrelieved by any ornament. following these came several great english nobles with their attendants.' there was a flourish of trumpets within; and the prince's uncle, the future great duke of somerset, emerged from the gateway, arrayed in a 'doublet of black cloth-of-gold, and a cloak of crimson satin flowered with gold, and ribanded with nets of silver.' he turned, doffed his plumed cap, bent his body in a low reverence, and began to step backward, bowing at each step. a prolonged trumpet-blast followed, and a proclamation, 'way for the high and mighty, the lord edward, prince of wales!' high aloft on the palace walls a long line of red tongues of flame leaped forth with a thunder-crash; the massed world on the river burst into a mighty roar of welcome; and tom canty, the cause and hero of it all, stepped into view, and slightly bowed his princely head. he was 'magnificently habited in a doublet of white satin, with a front-piece of purple cloth-of-tissue, powdered with diamonds, and edged with ermine. over this he wore a mantle of white cloth-of-gold, pounced with the triple-feather crest, lined with blue satin, set with pearls and precious stones, and fastened with a clasp of brilliants. about his neck hung the order of the garter, and several princely foreign orders'; and wherever light fell upon him jewels responded with a blinding flash. o, tom canty, born in a hovel, bred in the gutters of london, familiar with rags and dirt and misery, what a spectacle is this! chapter x the prince in the toils we left john canty dragging the rightful prince into offal court, with a noisy and delighted mob at his heels. there was but one person in it who offered a pleading word for the captive, and he was not heeded; he was hardly even heard, so great was the turmoil. the prince continued to struggle for freedom, and to rage against the treatment he was suffering, until john canty lost what little patience was left in him, and raised his oaken cudgel in a sudden fury over the prince's head. the single pleader for the lad sprang to stop the man's arm, and the blow descended upon his own wrist. canty roared out: 'thou'lt meddle, wilt thou? then have thy reward.' his cudgel crashed down upon the meddler's head; there was a groan, a dim form sank to the ground among the feet of the crowd, and the next moment it lay there in the dark alone. the mob pressed on, their enjoyment nothing disturbed by this episode. presently the prince found himself in john canty's abode, with the door closed against the outsiders. by the vague light of a tallow candle which was thrust into a bottle, he made out the main features of the loathsome den, and also of the occupants of it. two frowsy girls and a middle-aged woman cowered against the wall in one corner, with the aspect of animals habituated to harsh usage, and expecting and dreading it now. from another corner stole a withered hag with streaming gray hair and malignant eyes. john canty said to this one: 'tarry! there's fine mummeries here. mar them not till thou'st enjoyed them; then let thy hand be heavy as thou wilt. stand forth, lad. now say thy foolery again, an thou'st not forget it. name thy name. who art thou?' the insulted blood mounted to the little prince's cheek once more, and he lifted a steady and indignant gaze to the man's face, and said: ''tis but ill-breeding in such as thou to command me to speak. i tell thee now, as i told thee before, i am edward, prince of wales, and none other.' the stunning surprise of this reply nailed the hag's feet to the floor where she stood, and almost took her breath. she stared at the prince in stupid amazement, which so amused her ruffianly son that he burst into a roar of laughter. but the effect upon tom canty's mother and sisters was different. their dread of bodily injury gave way at once to distress of a different sort. they ran forward with woe and dismay in their faces, exclaiming: 'oh, poor tom, poor lad!' the mother fell on her knees before the prince, put her hands upon his shoulders, and gazed yearningly into his face through her rising tears. then she said: 'oh, my poor boy! thy foolish reading hath wrought its woeful work at last, and ta'en thy wit away. ah! why didst thou cleave to it when i so warned thee 'gainst it? thou'st broke thy mother's heart.' the prince looked into her face, and said gently: 'thy son is well and hath not lost his wits, good dame. comfort thee; let me to the palace where he is, and straightway will the king my father restore him to thee.' 'the king thy father! oh, my child! unsay these words that be freighted with death for thee, and ruin for all that be near to thee. shake off this gruesome dream. call back thy poor wandering memory. look upon me. am not i thy mother that bore thee, and loveth thee?' the prince shook his head, and reluctantly said: 'god knoweth i am loath to grieve thy heart; but truly have i never looked upon thy face before.' the woman sank back to a sitting posture on the floor, and, covering her eyes with her hands, gave way to heartbroken sobs and wailings. 'let the show go on!' shouted canty. 'what, nan! what, bet! mannerless wenches! will ye stand in the prince's presence? upon your knees, ye pauper scum, and do him reverence!' he followed this with another horse-laugh. the girls began to plead timidly for their brother; and nan said: 'an thou wilt but let him to bed, father, rest and sleep will heal his madness; prithee, do.' 'do, father,' said bet; 'he is more worn than is his wont. to-morrow will he be himself again, and will beg with diligence, and come not empty home again.' this remark sobered the father's joviality, and brought his mind to business. he turned angrily upon the prince, and said: 'the morrow must we pay two pennies to him that owns this hole; two pennies mark yeall this money for a half-year's rent, else out of this we go. show what thou'st gathered with thy lazy begging.' the prince said: 'offend me not with thy sordid matters. i tell thee again i am the king's son.' a sounding blow upon the prince's shoulder from canty's broad palm sent him staggering into good-wife canty's arms, who clasped him to her breast, and sheltered him from a pelting rain of cuffs and slaps by interposing her own person. the frightened girls retreated to their corner; but the grandmother stepped eagerly forward to assist her son. the prince sprang away from mrs. canty, exclaiming: 'thou shalt not suffer for me, madam. let these swine do their will upon me alone.' this speech infuriated the swine to such a degree that they set about their work without waste of time. between them they belabored the boy right soundly, and then gave the girls and their mother a beating for showing sympathy for the victim. 'now,' said canty, 'to bed, all of ye. the entertainment has tired me.' the light was put out, and the family retired. as soon as the snorings of the head of the house and his mother showed that they were asleep, the young girls crept to where the prince lay, and covered him tenderly from the cold with straw and rags; and their mother crept to him also, and stroked his hair, and cried over him, whispering broken words of comfort and compassion in his ear the while. she had saved a morsel for him to eat also; but the boy's pains had swept away all appetiteat least for black and tasteless crusts. he was touched by her brave and costly defense of him, and by her commiseration; and he thanked her in very noble and princely words, and begged her to go to sleep and try to forget her sorrows. and he added that the king his father would not let her loyal kindness and devotion go unrewarded. this return to his 'madness' broke her heart anew, and she strained him to her breast again and again and then went back, drowned in tears, to her bed. as she lay thinking and mourning, the suggestion began to creep into her mind that there was an undefinable something about this boy that was lacking in tom canty, mad or sane. she could not describe it, she could not tell just what it was, and yet her sharp mother-instinct seemed to detect it and perceive it. what if the boy were really not her son, after all? oh, absurd! she almost smiled at the idea, spite of her griefs and troubles. no matter, she found that it was an idea that would not 'down', but persisted in haunting her. it pursued her, it harassed her, it clung to her, and refused to be put away or ignored. at last she perceived that there was not going to be any peace for her until she should devise a test that should prove, dearly and without question, whether this lad was her son or not, and so banish these wearing and worrying doubts. ah, yes, this was plainly the right way out of the difficulty; therefore, she set her wits to work at once to contrive that test. but it was an easier thing to propose than to accomplish. she turned over in her mind one promising test after another, but was obliged to relinquish them allnone of them were absolutely sure, absolutely perfect; and an imperfect one could not satisfy her. evidently she was racking her head in vainit seemed manifest that she must give the matter up. while this depressing thought was passing through her mind, her ear caught the regular breathing of the boy, and she knew he had fallen asleep. and while she listened, the measured breathing was broken by a soft, startled cry, such as one utters in a troubled dream. this chance occurrence furnished her instantly with a plan worth all her labored tests combined. she at once set herself feverishly, but noiselessly, to work to relight her candle, muttering to herself, 'had i but seen him then, i should have known! since that day, when he was little, that the powder burst in his face, he hath never been startled of a sudden out of his dreams or out of his thinkings, but he hath cast his hand before his eyes, even as he did that day, and not as others would do it, with the palm inward, but always with the palm turned outwardi have seen it a hundred times, and it hath never varied nor ever failed. yes, i shall soon know now!' by this time she had crept to the slumbering boy's side, with the candle shaded in her hand. she bent heedfully and warily over him, scarcely breathing, in her suppressed excitement, and suddenly flashed the light in his face and struck the floor by his ear with her knuckles. the sleeper's eyes sprung wide open, and he cast a startled stare about himbut he made no special movement with his hands. the poor woman was smitten almost helpless with surprise and grief; but she contrived to hide her emotions, and to soothe the boy to sleep again; then she crept apart and communed miserably with herself upon the disastrous result of her experiment. she tried to believe that her tom's madness had banished this habitual gesture of his; but she could not do it. 'no,' she said, 'his hands are not mad, they could not unlearn so old a habit in so brief a time. oh, this is a heavy day for me!' still, hope was as stubborn now as doubt had been before; she could not bring herself to accept the verdict of the test; she must try the thing againthe failure must have been only an accident; so she startled the boy out of his sleep a second and a third time, at intervalswith the same result which had marked the first testthen she dragged herself to bed, and fell sorrowfully asleep, saying, 'but i cannot give him upoh, no, i cannothe must be my boy!' the poor mother's interruptions having ceased, and the prince's pains having gradually lost their power to disturb him, utter weariness at last sealed his eyes in a profound and restful sleep. hour after hour slipped away, and still he slept like the dead. thus four or five hours passed. then his stupor began to lighten. presently, while half asleep and half awake, he murmured: 'sir william!' after a moment: 'ho, sir william herbert! hie thee hither, and list to the strangest dream that ever.... sir william! dost hear? man, i did think me changed to a pauper, and... ho there! guards! sir william! what! is there no groom of the chamber in waiting? alack it shall go hard with-' 'what aileth thee?' asked a whisper near him. 'who art thou calling?' 'sir william herbert. who art thou?' 'i? who should i be, but thy sister nan? oh, tom, i had forgot! tbou'rt mad yetpoor lad thou'rt mad yet, would i had never woke to know it again! but, prithee, master thy tongue, lest we be all beaten till we die!' the startled prince sprang partly up, but a sharp reminder from his stiffened bruises brought him to himself, and he sunk back among his foul straw with a moan and the ejaculation: 'alas, it was no dream, then!' in a moment all the heavy sorrow and misery which sleep had banished were upon him again, and he realized that he was no longer a petted prince in a palace, with the adoring eyes of a nation upon him, but a pauper, an outcast, clothed in rags, prisoner in a den fit only for beasts, and consorting with beggars and thieves. in the midst of his grief he began to be conscious of hilarious noises and shoutings, apparently but a block or two away. the next moment there were several sharp raps at the door; john canty ceased from snoring and said: 'who knocketh? what wilt thou?' a voice answered: 'know'st thou who it was thou laid thy cudgel on?' 'no. neither know i, nor care.' 'belike thou'lt change thy note eftsoons. an thou would save thy neck, nothing but flight may stead thee. the man is this moment delivering up the ghost. 'tis the priest, father andrew!' 'god-a-mercy!' exclaimed canty. he roused his family, and hoarsely commanded, 'up with ye all and flyor bide where ye are and perish!' scarcely five minutes later the canty household were in the street and flying for their lives. john canty held the prince by the wrist, and hurried him along the dark way, giving him this caution in a low voice: 'mind thy tongue, thou mad fool, and speak not our name. i will choose me a new name, speedily, to throw the law's dogs off the scent. mind thy tongue, i tell thee!' he growled these words to the rest of the family: 'if it so chance that we be separated, let each make for london bridge; whoso findeth himself as far as the last linen-draper's shop on the bridge, let him tarry there till the others be come, then will we flee into southwark together.' at this moment the party burst suddenly out of darkness into light; and not only into light, but into the midst of a multitude of singing, dancing, and shouting people, massed together on the river-frontage. there was a line of bonfires stretching as far as one could see, up and down the thames; london bridge was illuminated; southwark bridge likewise; the entire river was aglow with the flash and sheen of colored lights, and constant explosions of fireworks filled the skies with an intricate commingling of shooting splendors and a thick rain of dazzling sparks that almost turned night into day; everywhere were crowds of revelers; all london seemed to be at large. john canty delivered himself of a furious curse and commanded a retreat; but it was too late. he and his tribe were swallowed up in that swarming hive of humanity, and hopelessly separated from each other in an instant. we are not considering that the prince was one of his tribe; canty still kept his grip upon him. the prince's heart was beating high with hopes of escape now. a burly waterman, considerably exalted with liquor, found himself rudely shoved by canty in his efforts to plow through the crowd; he laid his great hand on canty's shoulder and said: 'nay, whither so fast, friend? dost canker thy soul with sordid business when all that be leal men and true make holiday?' 'mine affairs are mine own, they concern thee not,' answered canty, roughly; 'take away thy hand and let me pass.' 'sith that is thy humor, thou'lt not pass till thou'st drunk to the prince of wales, i tell thee that,' said the waterman, barring the way resolutely. 'give me the cup, then, and make speed, make speed.' other revelers were interested by this time. they cried out: 'the loving-cup, the loving-cup! make the sour knave drink the loving-cup, else will we feed him to the fishes.' so a huge loving-cup was brought; the waterman, grasping it by one of its handles, and with his other hand bearing up the end of an imaginary napkin, presented it in due and ancient form to canty, who had to grasp the opposite handle with one of his hands and take off the lid with the other, according to ancient custom.*(6) this left the prince hand-free for a second, of course. he wasted no time, but dived among the forest of legs about him and disappeared. in another moment he could not have been harder to find, under that tossing sea of life, if its billows had been the atlantic's and he a lost sixpence. he very soon realized this fact, and straightway busied himself about his own affairs without further thought of john canty. he quickly realized another thing, too. to wit, that a spurious prince of wales was being feasted by the city in his stead. he easily concluded that the pauper lad, tom canty, had deliberately taken advantage of his stupendous opportunity and become a usurper. therefore there was but one course to pursuefind his way to the guildhall, make himself known, and denounce the impostor. he also made up his mind that tom should be allowed a reasonable time for spiritual preparation, and then be hanged, drawn, and quartered, according to the law and usage of the day, in cases of high treason. chapter xi at guildhall the royal barge, attended by its gorgeous fleet, took its stately way down the thames through the wilderness of illuminated boats. the air was laden with music; the river-banks were beruffled with joyflames; the distant city lay in a soft luminous glow from its countless invisible bonfires; above it rose many a slender spire into the sky, incrusted with sparkling lights, wherefore in their remoteness they seemed like jeweled lances thrust aloft; as the fleet swept along, it was greeted from the banks with a continuous hoarse roar of cheers and the ceaseless flash and boom of artillery. to tom canty, half buried in his silken cushions, these sounds and this spectacle were a wonder unspeakably sublime and astonishing. to his little friends at his side, the princess elizabeth and the lady jane grey, they were nothing. arrived at the dowgate, the fleet was towed up the limpid walbrook (whose channel has now been for two centuries buried out of sight under acres of buildings) to bucklersbury, past houses and under bridges populous with merry-makers and brilliantly lighted, and at last came to a halt in a basin where now is barge yard, in the center of the ancient city of london. tom disembarked, and he and his gallant procession crossed cheapside and made a short march through the old jewry and basinghall street to the guildhall. tom and his little ladies were received with due ceremony by the lord mayor and the fathers of the city, in their gold chains and scarlet robes of state, and conducted to a rich canopy of state at the head of the great hall, preceded by heralds making proclamation, and by the mace and the city sword. the lords and ladies who were to attend upon tom and his two small friends took their places behind their chairs. at a lower table the court grandees and other guests of noble degree were seated, with the magnates of the city; the commoners took places at a multitude of tables on the main floor of the hall. from their lofty vantage-ground, the giants gog and magog, the ancient guardians of the city, contemplated the spectacle below them with eyes grown familar to it in forgotten generations. there was a bugle-blast and a proclamation, and a fat butler appeared in a high perch in the leftward wall, followed by his servitors bearing with impressive solemnity a royal baron of beef, smoking hot and ready for the knife. after grace, tom (being instructed) roseand the whole house with himand drank from a portly golden loving-cup with the princess elizabeth; from her it passed to the lady jane, and then traversed the general assemblage. so the banquet began. by midnight the revelry was at its height. now came one of those picturesque spectacles so admired in that old day. a description of it is still extant in the quaint wording of a chronicler who witnessed it: 'space being made, presently entered a baron and an earl appareled after the turkish fashion in long robes of bawdkin powdered with gold; hats on their heads of crimson velvet, with great rolls of gold, girded with two swords, called simitars, hanging by great bawdricks of gold. next came yet another baron and another earl, in two long gowns of yellow satin, traversed with white satin, and in every bend of white was a bend of crimson satin, after the fashion of russia, with furred hats of gray on their heads; either of them having an hatchet in their hands, and boots with pykes' (points a foot long), 'turned up. and after them came a knight, then the lord high admiral, and with him five nobles, in doublets of crimson velvet, voyded low on the back and before to the cannel-bone, laced on the breasts with chains of silver; and, over that, short cloaks of crimson satin, and on their heads hats after the dancers' fashion, with pheasants' feather in them. these were appareled after the fashion of prussia. the torch-bearers, which were about an hundred, were appareled in crimson satin and green, like moors, their faces black. next came in a mommarye. then the minstrels, which were disguised, danced; and the lords and ladies did wildly dance also, that it was a pleasure to behold.' and while tom, in his high seat, was gazing upon this 'wild' dancing, lost in admiration of the dazzling commingling of kaleidoscopic colors which the whirling turmoil of gaudy figures below him presented, the ragged but real little prince of wales was proclaiming his rights and his wrongs, denouncing the impostor, and clamoring for admission at the gates of guildhall! the crowd enjoyed this episode prodigiously, and pressed forward and craned their necks to see the small rioter. presently they began to taunt him and mock at him, purposely to goad him into a higher and still more entertaining fury. tears of mortification sprung to his eyes, but he stood his ground and defied the mob right royally. other taunts followed, added mockings stung him, and he exclaimed: 'i tell ye again, you pack of unmannerly curs, i am the prince of wales! and all forlorn and friendless as i be, with none to give me word of grace or help me in my need, yet will not i be driven from my ground, but will maintain it!' 'though thou be prince or no prince 'tis all one, thou be'st a gallant lad, and not friendless neither! here stand i by thy side to prove it; and mind i tell thee thou might'st have a worser friend than miles hendon and yet not tire thy legs with seeking. rest thy small jaw, my child, i talk the language of these base kennel-rats like to a very native.' the speaker was a sort of don caesar de bazan in dress, aspect, and bearing. he was tall, trim-built, muscular. his doublet and trunks were of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the camp. the speech of this fantastic figure was received with an explosion of jeers and laughter. some cried, ''tis another prince in disguise!' ''ware thy tongue, friend, belike he is dangerous!' 'marry, he looketh itmark his eye!' 'pluck the lad from himto the horse-pond wi' the cub!' instantly a hand was laid upon the prince, under the impulse of this happy thought; as instantly the stranger's long sword was out and the meddler went to the earth under a sounding thump with the flat of it. the next moment a score of voices shouted 'kill the dog! kill him! kill him!' and the mob closed in on the warrior, who backed himself against a wall and began to lay about him with his long weapon like a madman. his victims sprawled this way and that, but the mob-tide poured over their prostrate forms and dashed itself against the champion with undiminished fury. his moments seemed numbered, his destruction certain, when suddenly a trumpet-blast sounded, a voice shouted, 'way for the king's messenger!' and a troop of horsemen came charging down upon the mob, who fled out of harm's reach as fast as their legs could carry them. the bold stranger caught up the prince in his arms, and was soon far away from danger and the multitude. return we within the guildhall. suddenly, high above the jubilant roar and thunder of the revel, broke the clear peal of a bugle-note. there was instant silencea deep hush; then a single voice rosethat of the messenger from the palaceand began to pipe forth a proclamation, the whole multitude standing, listening. the closing words, solemnly pronounced were: 'the king is dead!' the great assemblage bent their heads upon their breasts with one accord; remained so, in profound silence, a few moments, then all sunk upon their knees in a body, stretched out their hands towards tom, and a mighty shout burst forth that seemed to shake the building: 'long live the king!' poor tom's dazed eyes wandered abroad over this stupefying spectacle, and finally rested dreamily upon the kneeling princesses beside him a moment, then upon the earl of hertford. a sudden purpose dawned in his face. he said, in a low tone, at lord hertford's ear: 'answer me truly, on thy faith and honor! uttered i here a command, the which none but a king might hold privilege and prerogative to utter, would such commandment be obeyed, and none rise up to say me nay?' 'none, my liege, in all these realms. in thy person bides the majesty of england. thou art the kingthy word is law.' tom responded, in a strong, earnest voice, and with great animation: 'then shall the king's law be law of mercy, from this day, and never more be law of blood! up from thy knees and away! to the tower and say the king decrees the duke of norfolk shall not die!'*(7) the words were caught up and carried eagerly from lip to lip far and wide over the hall, and as hertford hurried from the presence, another prodigious shout burst forth: 'the reign of blood is ended! long live edward king of england!' chapter xii the prince and his deliverer as soon as miles hendon and the little prince were clear of the mob, they struck down through back lanes and alleys toward the river. their way was unobstructed until they approached london bridge; then they plowed into the multitude again, hendon keeping a fast grip upon the prince'sno, the king'swrist. the tremendous news was already abroad, and the boy learned it from a thousand voices at once'the king is dead!' the tidings struck a chill to the heart of the poor little waif, and sent a shudder through his frame. he realized the greatness of his loss, and was filled with a bitter grief; for the grim tyrant who had been such a terror to others had always been gentle with him. the tears sprung to his eyes and blurred all objects. for an instant he felt himself the most forlorn, outcast, and forsaken of god's creaturesthen another cry shook the night with its far-reaching thunders: 'long live king edward the sixth!' and this made his eyes kindle, and thrilled him with pride to his fingers' ends. 'ah,' he thought, 'how grand and strange it seemsi am king!' our friends threaded their way slowly through the throngs upon the bridge. this structure, which had stood for six hundred years, and had been a noisy and populous thoroughfare all that time, was a curious affair, for a closely packed rank of stores and shops, with family quarters overhead, stretched along both sides of it, from one bank of the river to the other. the bridge was a sort of town to itself; it had its inn, its beerhouses, its bakeries, its haberdasheries, its food markets, its manufacturing industries, and even its church. it looked upon the two neighbors which it linked togetherlondon and southwarkas being well enough, as suburbs, but not otherwise particularly important. it was a close corporation, so to speak; it was a narrow town, of a single street a fifth of a mile long, its population was but a village population, and everybody in it knew all his fellow-townsmen intimately, and had known their fathers and mothers before themand all their little family affairs into the bargain. it had its aristocracy, of courseits fine old families of butchers, and bakers, and what not, who had occupied the same old premises for five or six hundred years, and knew the great history of the bridge from beginning to end, and all its strange legends; and who always talked bridgy talk, and thought bridgy thoughts, and lied in a long, level, direct, substantial bridgy way. it was just the sort of population to be narrow and ignorant and self-conceited. children were born on the bridge, were reared there, grew to old age and finally died without ever having set a foot upon any part of the world but london bridge alone. such people would naturally imagine that the mighty and interminable procession which moved through its street night and day, with its confused roar of shouts and cries, its neighings and bellowings and bleatings and its muffled thunder-tramp, was the one great thing in this world, and themselves somehow the proprietors of it. and so they were in effectat least they could exhibit it from their windows, and didfor a considerationwhenever a returning king or hero gave it a fleeting splendor, for there was no place like it for affording a long, straight, uninterrupted view of marching columns. men born and reared upon the bridge found life unendurably dull and inane elsewhere. history tells of one of these who left the bridge at the age of seventy-one and retired to the country. but he could only fret and toss in his bed; he could not go to sleep, the deep stillness was so painful, so awful, so oppressive. when he was worn out with it, at last, he fled back to his old home, a lean and haggard specter, and fell peacefully to rest and pleasant dreams under the lulling music of the lashing waters and the boom and crash and thunder of london bridge. in the times of which we are writing, the bridge furnished 'object lessons' in english history, for its childrennamely, the livid and decaying heads of renowned men impaled upon iron spikes atop of its gateways. but we digress. hendon's lodgings were in the little inn on the bridge. as he neared the door with his small friend, a rough voice said: 'so, thou'rt come at last! thou'lt not escape again. i warrant thee; and if pounding thy bones to a pudding can teach thee somewhat, thou'lt not keep us waiting another time, mayhap'and john canty put out his hand to seize the boy. miles hendon stepped in the way, and said: 'not too fast, friend. thou art needlessly rough, methinks. what is the lad to thee?' 'if it be any business of thine to make and meddle in others' affairs, he is my son.' ''tis a lie!' cried the little king, hotly. 'boldly said, and i believe thee, whether thy small head-piece be sound or cracked, my boy. but whether this scurvy ruffian be thy father or no, 'tis all one, he shall not have thee to beat thee and abuse, according to his threat, so thou prefer to abide with me.' 'i do, i doi know him not, i loathe him, and will die before i will go with him.' 'then 'tis settled, and there is naught more to say.' 'we will see, as to that!' exclaimed john canty, striding past hendon to get at the boy; 'by force shall he-' 'if thou do but touch him, thou animated offal, i will spit thee like a goose!' said hendon, barring the way and laying his hand upon his sword-hilt. canty drew back. 'now mark ye,' continued hendon, 'i took this lad under my protection when a mob such as thou would have mishandled him, mayhap killed him; dost imagine i will desert him now to a worser fate?for whether thou art his father or noand sooth to say, i think it is a liea decent swift death were better for such a lad than life in such brute hands as thine. so go thy ways, and set quick about it, for i like not much bandying of words, being not overpatient in my nature.' john canty moved off, muttering threats and curses, and was swallowed from sight in the crowd. hendon ascended three flights of stairs to his room, with his charge, after ordering a meal to be sent thither. it was a poor apartment, with a shabby bed and some odds and ends of old furniture in it, and was vaguely lighted by a couple of sickly candles. the little king dragged himself to the bed and lay down upon it, almost exhausted with hunger and fatigue. he had been on his feet a good part of a day and a night, for it was now two or three o'clock in the morning, and had eaten nothing meantime. he murmured drowsily: 'prithee, call me when the table is spread,' and sunk into a deep sleep immediately. a smile twinkled in hendon's eye, and he said to himself: 'by the mass, the little beggar takes to one's quarters and usurps one's bed with as natural and easy a grace as if he owned themwith never a by-your-leave or so-please-it-you, or anything of the sort. in his diseased ravings he called himself the prince of wales, and bravely doth he keep up the character. poor little friendless rat, doubtless his mind has been disordered with ill usage. well, i will be his friend; i have saved him, and it draweth me strongly to him; already i love the bold-tongued little rascal. how soldierlike he faced the smutty rabble and flung back his high defiance! and what a comely, sweet and gentle face he hath, now that sleep hath conjured away its troubles and its griefs. i will teach him, i will cure his malady; yea, i will be his elder brother, and care for him and watch over him; and who so would shame him or do him hurt, may order his shroud, for though i be burnt for it he shall need it!' he bent over the boy and contemplated him with kind and pitying interest, tapping the young cheek tenderly and smoothing back the tangled curls with his great brown hand. a slight shiver passed over the boy's form. hendon muttered: 'see, now, how like a man it was to let him lie here uncovered and fill his body with deadly rheums. now what shall i do? 'twill wake him to take him up and put him within the bed, and he sorely needeth sleep.' he looked about for extra covering, but finding none, doffed his doublet and wrapped the lad in it, saying, 'i am used to nipping air and scant apparel, 'tis little i shall mind the cold'then walked up and down the room to keep his blood in motion, soliloquizing as before. 'his injured mind persuades him he is prince of wales; 'twill be odd to have a prince of wales still with us, now that he that was the prince is prince no more, but kingfor this poor mind is set upon the one fantasy, and will not reason out that now it should cast by the prince and call itself the king.... if my father liveth still, after these seven years that i have heard naught from home in my foreign dungeon, he will welcome the poor lad and give him generous shelter for my sake; so will my good elder brother, arthur; my other brother, hughbut i will crack his crown, an he interfere, the fox-hearted, ill-conditioned animal! yes, thither will we fareand straightway, too.' a servant entered with a smoking meal, disposed it upon a small deal table, placed the chairs, and took his departure, leaving such cheap lodgers as these to wait upon themselves. the door slammed after him, and the noise woke the boy, who sprung to a sitting posture, and shot a glad glance about him; then a grieved look came into his face and he murmured to himself, with a deep sigh, 'alack, it was but a dream. woe is me.' next he noticed miles hendon's doubletglanced from that to hendon, comprehended the sacrifice that had been made for him, and said, gently: 'thou art good to me, yes, thou art very good to me. take it and put it oni shall not need it more.' then he got up and walked to the washstand in the corner, and stood there waiting. hendon said in a cheery voice: 'we'll have a right hearty sup and bite now, for everything is savory and smoking hot, and that and thy nap together will make thee a little man again, never fear!' the boy made no answer, but bent a steady look, that was filled with grave surprise, and also somewhat touched with impatience, upon the tall knight of the sword. hendon was puzzled, and said: 'what's amiss?' 'good sir, i would wash me.' 'oh, is that all! ask no permission of miles hendon for aught thou cravest. make thyself perfectly free here and welcome, with all that are his belongings.' still the boy stood, and moved not; more, he tapped the floor once or twice with his small impatient foot. hendon was wholly perplexed. said he: 'bless us, what is it?' 'prithee, pour the water, and make not so many words!' hendon, suppressing a horse-laugh, and saying to himself, 'by all the saints, but this is admirable!' stepped briskly forward and did the small insolent's bidding; then stood by, in a sort of stupefaction, until the command, 'comethe towel!' woke him sharply up. he took up a towel from under the boy's nose and handed it to him, without comment. he now proceeded to comfort his own face with a wash, and while he was at it his adopted child seated himself at the table and prepared to fall to. hendon despatched his ablutions with alacrity, then drew back the other chair and was about to place himself at table, when the boy said, indignantly: 'forbear! wouldst sit in the presence of the king?' this blow staggered hendon to his foundations. he muttered to himself, 'lo, the poor thing's madness is up with the time! it hath changed with the great change that is come to the realm, and now in fancy is he king! good lack, i must humor the conceit, toothere is no other wayfaith, he would order me to the tower, else!' and pleased with this jest, he removed the chair from the table, took his stand behind the king, and proceeded to wait upon him in the courtliest way he was capable of. when the king ate, the rigor of his royal dignity relaxed a little, and with his growing contentment came a desire to talk. he said: 'i think thou callest thyself miles hendon, if i heard thee aright?' 'yes, sire,' miles replied then observed to himself, 'if i must humor the poor lad's madness, i must sire him, i must majesty him, i must not go by halves, i must stick at nothing that belongeth to the part i play, else shall i play it ill and work evil to this charitable and kindly cause.' the king warmed his heart with a second glass of wine, and said: 'i would know theetell me thy story. thou hast a gallant way with thee, and a nobleart nobly born?' 'we are of the tail of the nobility, good your majesty. my father is a baronetone of the smaller lords, by knight service*(8)sir richard hendon, of hendon hall, by monk's holm in kent.' 'the name has escaped my memory. go ontell me thy story.' ''tis not much, your majesty, yet perchance it may beguile a short half-hour for want of a better. my father, sir richard, is very rich, and of a most generous nature. my mother died whilst i was yet a boy. i have two brothers: arthur, my elder, with a soul like to his father's; and hugh, younger than i, a mean spirit, covetous, treacherous, vicious, underhandeda reptile. such was he from the cradle; such was he ten years past, when i last saw hima ripe rascal at nineteen, i being twenty then, and arthur twenty-two. there is none other of us but the lady edith, my cousinshe was sixteen, thenbeautiful, gentle, good, the daughter of an earl, the last of her race, heiress of a great fortune and a lapsed title. my father was her guardian. i loved her and she loved me; but she was betrothed to arthur from the cradle, and sir richard would not suffer the contract to be broken. arthur loved another maid, and bade us be of good cheer and hold fast to the hope that delay and luck together would some day give success to our several causes. hugh loved the lady edith's fortune, though in truth he said it was herself he lovedbut then 'twas his way, alway, to say one thing and mean the other. but he lost his arts upon the girl; he could deceive my father, but none else. my father loved him best of us all, and trusted and believed him; for he was the youngest child and others hated himthese qualities being in all ages sufficient to win a parent's dearest love; and he had a smooth persuasive tongue, with an admirable gift of lyingand these be qualities which do mightily assist a blind affection to cozen itself. i was wildin troth i might go yet farther and say very wild, though 'twas a wildness of an innocent sort, since it hurt none but me, brought shame to none, nor loss, nor had in it any taint of crime or baseness, or what might not beseem mine honorable degree. 'yet did my brother hugh turn these faults to good accounthe seeing that our brother arthur's health was but indifferent, and hoping the worst might work him profit were i swept out of the pathsobut 'twere a long tale, good my liege, and little worth the telling. briefly, then, this brother did deftly magnify my faults and make them crimes; ending his base work with finding a silken ladder in mine apartmentsconveyed thither by his own meansand did convince my father by this, and suborned evidence of servants and other lying knaves, that i was minded to carry off my edith and marry with her, in rank defiance of his will. 'three years of banishment from home and england might make a soldier and a man of me, my father said, and teach me some degree of wisdom. i fought out my long probation in the continental wars, tasting sumptuously of hard knocks, privation, and adventure; but in my last battle i was taken captive, and during the seven years that have waxed and waned since then, a foreign dungeon hath harbored me. through wit and courage i won to the free air at last, and fled hither straight; and am but just arrived, right poor in purse and raiment, and poorer still in knowledge of what these dull seven years have wrought at hendon hall, its people and belongings. so please you, sir, my meager tale is told.' 'thou hast been shamefully abused!' said the little king, with a flashing eye. 'but i will right theeby the cross will i! the king hath said it.' then, fired by the story of miles's wrongs, he loosed his tongue and poured the history of his own recent misfortunes into the ears of his astonished listener. when he had finished, miles said to himself. 'lo, what an imagination he hath! verily this is no common mind; else, crazed or sane, it could not weave so straight and gaudy a tale as this out of the airy nothings wherewith it hath wrought this curious romaunt. poor ruined little head, it shall not lack friend or shelter whilst i bide with the living. he shall never leave my side; he shall be my pet, my little comrade. and he shall be cured!aye, made whole and soundthen will he make himself a nameand proud shall i be to say, "yes, he is minei took him, a homeless little ragamuffin, but i saw what was in him, and i said his name would be heard some daybehold him, observe himwas i right?"' the king spokein a thoughtful, measured voice: 'thou didst save me injury and shame, perchance my life, and so my crown. such service demandeth rich reward. name thy desire, and so it be within the compass of my royal power, it is thine.' this fantastic suggestion startled hendon out of his reverie. he was about to thank the king and put the matter aside with saying he bad only done his duty and desired no reward, but a wiser thought came into his head, and he asked leave to be silent a few moments and consider the gracious offeran idea which the king gravely approved, remarking that it was best to be not too hasty with a thing of such great import. miles reflected during some moments, then said to himself, 'yes, that is the thing to doby any other means it were impossible to get at itand certes, this hour's experience has taught me 'twould be most wearing and inconvenient to continue it as it is. yes, i will propose it; 'twas a happy accident that i did not throw the chance away.' then he dropped upon one knee and said: 'my poor service went not beyond the limit of a subject's simple duty, and therefore hath no merit; but since your majesty is pleased to hold it worthy some reward, i take heart of grace to make petition to this effect. near four hundred years ago, as your grace knoweth, there being ill blood betwixt john, king of england, and the king of france, it was decreed that two champions should fight together in the lists, and so settle the dispute by what is called the arbitrament of god. these two kings, and the spanish king, being assembled to witness and judge the conflict, the french champion appeared; but so redoubtable was he that our english knights refused to measure weapons with him. so the matter, which was a weighty one, was like to go against the english monarch by default. now in the tower lay the lord de courcy, the mightiest arm in england, stripped of his honors and possessions, and wasting with long captivity. appeal was made to him; he gave assent, and came forth arrayed for battle; but no sooner did the frenchman glimpse his huge frame and hear his famous name but he fled away, and the french king's cause was lost. king john restored de courcy's titles and possessions, and said, "name thy wish and thou shalt have it, though it cost me half my kingdom"; whereat de courcy, kneeling, as i do now, made answerer, "this, then, i ask, my liege; that i and my successors may have and hold the privilege of remaining covered in the presence of the kings of england, henceforth while the throne shall last." the boon was granted, as your majesty knoweth; and there hath been no time, these four hundred years, that that line has failed of an heir; and so, even unto this day, the head of that ancient house still weareth his hat or helm before the king's majesty, without let or hindrance, and this none other may do.*(9) invoking this precedent in aid of my prayer, i beseech the king to grant to me but this one grace and privilegeto my more than sufficient rewardand none other, to wit: that i and my heirs, forever, may sit in the presence of the majesty of england!' 'rise, sir miles hendon, knight,' said the king, gravelygiving the accolade with hendon's sword'rise, and seat thyself. thy petition is granted. while england remains, and the crown continues, the privilege shall not lapse.' his majesty walked apart, musing, and hendon dropped into a chair at table, observing to himself, ''twas a brave thought, and hath wrought me a mighty deliverance; my legs are grievously wearied. an i had not thought of that, i must have had to stand for weeks, till my poor lad's wits are cured.' after a little he went on, 'and so i am become a knight of the kingdom of dreams and shadows! a most odd and strange position, truly, for one so matter-of-fact as i. i will not laughno, god forbid, for this thing which is so substanceless to me is real to him. and to me, also, in one way, it is not a falsity, for it reflects with truth the sweet and generous spirit that is in him.' after a pause: 'ah, what if he should call me by my fine title before folk!there'd be a merry contrast betwixt my glory and my raiment! but no matter; let him call me what he will, so it please him; i shall be content.' chapter xiii the dissappearance of the prince a heavy drowsiness presently fell upon the two comrades. the king said: 'remove these rags'meaning his clothing. hendon disappareled the boy without dissent or remark, tucked him up in bed, then glanced about the room, saying to himself, ruefully, 'he hath taken my bed again, as beforemarry, what shall i do?' the little king observed his perplexity, and dissipated it with a word. he said, sleepily: 'thou wilt sleep athwart the door, and guard it.' in a moment more he was out of his troubles, in a deep slumber. 'dear heart, he should have been born a king!' muttered hendon, admiringly, 'he playeth the part to a marvel.' then he stretched himself across the door, on the floor, saying contentedly: 'i have lodged worse for seven years; 'twould be but ill gratitude to him above to find fault with this.' he dropped asleep as the dawn appeared. toward noon he rose, uncovered his unconscious warda section at a timeand took his measure with a string. the king awoke, just as he had completed his work, complained of the cold, and asked what he was doing. ''tis done now, my liege,' said hendon; 'i have a bit of business outside, but will presently return; sleep thou againthou needest it. therelet me cover thy head alsothou'lt be warm the sooner.' the king was back in dreamland before this speech was ended. miles slipped softly out, and slipped as softly in again, in the course of thirty or forty minutes, with a complete second-hand suit of boy's clothing, of cheap material, and showing signs of wear; but tidy, and suited to the season of the year. he seated himself and began to overhaul his purchase, mumbling to himself: 'a longer purse would have got a better sort, but when one has not the long purse one must be content with what a short one may do '"there was a woman in our town, in our town did dwell" 'he stirred, methinksi must sing in a less thunderous key; 'tis not good to mar his sleep, with this journey before him and he so wearied out, poorchap.... this garment'tis well enougha stitch here and another one there will set it aright. this other is better, albeit a stitch or two will not come amiss in it, likewise.... these be very good and sound, and will keep his small feet warm and dryan odd new thing to him, belike, since he has doubtless been used to foot it bare, winters and summers the same.... would thread were bread, seeing one getteth a year's sufficiency for a farthing, and such a brave big needle without cost, for mere love. now shall i have the demon's own time to thread it!' and so he had. he did as men have always done, and probably always will do, to the end of timeheld the needle still, and tried to thrust the thread through the eye, which is the opposite of a woman's way. time and time again the thread missed the mark, going sometimes on one side of the needle, sometimes on the other, sometimes doubling up against the shaft; but he was patient, having been through these experiences before, when he was soldiering. he succeeded at last, and took up the garment that had lain waiting, meantime, across his lap, and began his work. 'the inn is paidthe breakfast that is to come, includedand there is wherewithal left to buy a couple of donkeys and meet our little costs for the two or three days betwixt this and the plenty that awaits us at hendon hall '"she loved her hus" 'body o' me! i have driven the needle under my nail!... it matters little'tis not a noveltyyet 'tis not a convenience, neither.... we shall be merry there, little one, never doubt it! thy troubles will vanish there, and likewise thy sad distemper '"she loved her husband dearilee, but another man" 'these be noble large stitches!'holding the garment up and viewing it admiringly'they have a grandeur and a majesty that do cause these small stingy ones of the tailor-man to look mighty paltry and plebeian '"she loved her husband dearilee, but another man he loved she," 'marry, 'tis donea goodly piece of work, too, and wrought with expedition. now will i wake him, apparel him, pour for him, feed him, and then will we hie us to the mart by the tabard inn in southwark andbe pleased to rise, my liege!he answereth notwhat ho, my liege!of a truth must i profane his sacred person with a touch, sith his slumber is deaf to speech. what!' he threw back the coversthe boy was gone! he stared about him in speechless astonishment for a moment; noticed for the first time that his ward's ragged raiment was also missing, then he began to rage and storm, and shout for the inn-keeper. at that moment a servant entered with the breakfast. 'explain, thou limb of satan, or thy time is come! 'roared the man of war, and made so savage a spring toward the waiter that this latter could not find his tongue, for the instant, for fright and surprise. 'where is the boy?' in disjointed and trembling syllables the man gave the information desired. 'you were hardly gone from the place, your worship, when a youth came running and said it was your worship's will that the boy come to you straight, at the bridge-end on the southwark side. i brought him thither; and when he woke the lad and gave his message, the lad did grumble some little for being disturbed 'so early,' as he called it, but straightway trussed on his rags and went with the youth, only saying it had been better manners that your worship came yourself, not sent a strangerand so-' 'and so thou'rt a fool!a fool, and easily cozenedhang all thy breed! yet mayhap no hurt is done. possibly no harm is meant the boy. i will go fetch him. make the table ready. stay! the coverings of the bed were disposed as if one lay beneath themhappened that by accident?' 'i know not, good your worship. i saw the youth meddle with themhe that came for the boy.' 'thousand deaths! 'twas done to deceive me'tis plain 'twas done to gain time. hark ye! was that youth alone?' 'all alone, your worship.' 'art sure?' 'sure, your worship.' 'collect thy scattered witsbethink theetake time, man.' after a moment's thought, the servant said: 'when he came, none came with him; but now i remember me that as the two stepped into the throng of the bridge, a ruffian-looking man plunged out from some near place; and just as he was joining them-' 'what then?out with it!' thundered the impatient hendon, interrupting. 'just then the crowd lapped them up and closed them in, and i saw no more, being called by my master, who was in a rage because a joint that the scrivener had ordered was forgot, though i take all the saints to witness that to blame me for that miscarriage were like holding the unborn babe to judgment for sins com-' 'out of my sight, idiot! thy prating drives me mad! hold! whither art flying? canst not bide still an instant? went they toward southwark?' 'even so, your worshipfor, as i said before, as to that detestable joint, the babe unborn is no whit more blameless than-' 'art here yet! and prating still? vanish, lest i throttle thee!' the servitor vanished. hendon followed after him, passed him, and plunged down the stairs two steps at a stride, muttering, ''tis that scurvy villain that claimed he was his son. i have lost thee, my poor little mad masterit is a bitter thoughtand i had come to love thee so! no! by book and bell, not lost! not lost, for i will ransack the land till i find thee again. poor child, yonder is his breakfastand mine, but i have no hunger nowso, let the rats have itspeed, speed! that is the word!' as he wormed his swift way through the noisy multitudes upon the bridge, he several times said to himselfclinging to the thought as if it were a particularly pleasing one: 'he grumbled but he wenthe went, yes, because he thought miles hendon asked it, sweet ladhe would ne'er have done it for another, i know it well!' chapter xiv 'le roi est mort vive le roi' toward daylight of the same morning, tom canty stirred out of a heavy sleep and opened his eyes in the dark. he lay silent a few moments, trying to analyze his confused thoughts and impressions, and get some sort of meaning out of them, then suddenly he burst out in a rapturous but guarded voice: 'i see it all, i see it all! now god be thanked, i am, indeed, awake at last! come, joy! vanish, sorrow! ho, nan! bet! kick off your straw and hie ye hither to my side, till i do pour into your unbelieving ears the wildest madcap dream that ever the spirits of night did conjure up to astonish the soul of man withal!... ho, nan, i say! bet!'... a dim form appeared at his side, and a voice said: 'wilt deign to deliver thy commands?' 'commands?... oh, woe is me, i know thy voice! speak, thouwho am i?' 'thou? in sooth, yesternight wert thou the prince of wales, to-day art thou my most gracious liege, edward, king of england.' tom buried his head among his pillows, murmuring plaintively: 'alack, it was no dream! go to thy rest, sweet sirleave me to my sorrows.' tom slept again, and after a time he had this pleasant dream. he thought it was summer and he was playing, all alone, in the fair meadow called goodman's fields, when a dwarf only a foot high, with long red whiskers and a humped back, appeared to him suddenly and said, 'dig, by that stump.' he did so, and found twelve bright new pennieswonderful riches! yet this was not the best of it; for the dwarf said: 'i know thee. thou art a good lad and deserving; thy distresses shall end, for the day of thy reward is come. dig here every seventh day, and thou shalt find always the same treasure, twelve bright new pennies. tell nonekeep the secret.' then the dwarf vanished, and tom flew to offal court with his prize, saying to himself, 'every night will i give my father a penny; he will think i begged it, it will glad his heart, and i shall no more be beaten. one penny every week the good priest that teacheth me shall have; mother, nan, and bet the other four. we be done with hunger and rags now, done with fears and frets and savage usage.' in his dream he reached his sordid home all out of breath, but with eyes dancing with grateful enthusiasm; cast four of his pennies into his mother's lap and cried out: 'they are for thee!all of them, every one!for thee and nan and betand honestly come by, not begged nor stolen!' the happy and astonished mother strained him to her breast and exclaimed: 'it waxeth latemay it please your majesty to rise?' ah, that was not the answer he was expecting. the dream had snapped asunderhe was awake. he opened his eyesthe richly clad first lord of the bedchamber was kneeling by his couch. the gladness of the lying dream faded awaythe poor boy recognized that he was still a captive and a king. the room was filled with courtiers clothed in purple mantlesthe mourning colorand with noble servants of the monarch. tom sat up in bed and gazed out from the heavy silken curtains upon this fine company. the weighty business of dressing began, and one courtier after another knelt and paid his court and offered to the little king his condolences upon his heavy loss, while the dressing proceeded. in the beginning, a shirt was taken up by the chief equerry in waiting, who passed it to the first lord of the buckhounds, who passed it to the second gentleman of the bedchamber, who passed it to the head ranger of windsor forest, who passed it to the third groom of the stole, who passed it to the chancellor royal of the duchy of lancaster, who passed it to the master of the wardrobe, who passed it to norroy king-at-arms, who passed it to the constable of the tower, who passed it to the chief steward of the household, who passed it to the hereditary grand diaperer, who passed it to the lord high admiral of england, who passed it to the archbishop of canterbury, who passed it to the first lord of the bedchamber, who took what was left of it and put it on tom. poor little wondering chap, it reminded him of passing buckets at a fire. each garment in its turn had to go through this slow and solemn process; consequently tom grew very weary of the ceremony; so weary that he felt an almost gushing gratefulness when he at last saw his long silken hose begin the journey down the line and knew that the end of the matter was drawing near. but he exulted too soon. the first lord of the bedchamber received the hose and was about to encase tom's legs in them, when a sudden flush invaded his face and he hurriedly hustled the things back into the hands of the archbishop of canterbury with an astounded look and a whispered, 'see, my lord!'pointing to a something connected with the hose. the archbishop paled, then flushed, and passed the hose to the lord high admiral, whispering 'see, my lord!' the admiral passed the hose to the hereditary grand diaperer, and had hardly breath enough in his body to ejaculate, 'see, my lord!' the hose drifted backward along the line, to the chief steward of the household, the constable of the tower, norroy king-at-arms, the master of the wardrobe, the chancellor royal of the duchy of lancaster, the third groom of the stole, the head ranger of windsor forest, the second gentleman of the bedchamber, the first lord of the buckhoundsaccompanied always with that amazed and frightened 'see! see!'till they finally reached the hands of the chief equerry in waiting, who gazed a moment, with a pallid face, upon what had caused all this dismay, then hoarsely whispered 'body of my life, a tag gone from a truss point!to the tower with the head keeper of the king's hose!'after which he leaned upon the shoulder of the first lord of the buckhounds to regather his vanished strength while fresh hose, without any damaged strings to them, were brought. but all things must have an end, and so in time tom canty was in a condition to get out of bed. the proper official poured water, the proper official engineered the washing, the proper official stood by with a towel, and by and by tom got safely through the purifying stage and was ready for the services of the hairdresser-royal. when he at length emerged from his master's hands, he was a gracious figure and as pretty as a girl, in his mantle and trunks of purple satin, and purple-plumed cap. he now moved in state toward his breakfast-room, through the midst of the courtly assemblage; and as he passed, these fell back, leaving his way free, and dropped upon their knees. after breakfast he was conducted, with regal ceremony, attended by his great officers and his guard of fifty gentlemen pensioners bearing gilt battle-axes, to the throne-room, where he proceeded to transact business of state. his 'uncle' lord hertford, took his stand by the throne, to assist he royal mind with wise counsel. the body of illustrious men named by the late king as his executors, appeared, to ask tom's approval of certain acts of theirsrather a form, and yet not wholly a form, since there was no protector as yet. the archbishop of canterbury made report of the decree of the council of executors concerning the obsequies of his late most illustrious majesty, and finished by reading the signatures of the executors, to wit: the archbishop of canterbury; the lord chancellor of england; william lord st. john; john lord russell; edward earl of hertford; john viscount lisle; cuthbert bishop of durham tom was not listeningan earlier clause of the document was puzzling him. at this point he turned and whispered to lord hertford: 'what day did he say the burial hath been appointed for?' 'the 16th of the coming month, my liege.' ''tis a strange folly. will he keep?' poor chap, he was still new to the customs of royalty; he was used to seeing the forlorn dead of offal court hustled out of the way with a very different sort of expedition. however, the lord hertford set his mind at rest with a word or two. a secretary of state presented an order of the council appointing the morrow at eleven for the reception of the foreign ambassadors, and desired the king's assent. tom turned an inquiring look toward hertford, who whispered: 'your majesty will signify consent. they come to testify their royal masters' sense of the heavy calamity which hath visited your grace and the realm of england.' tom did as he was bidden. another secretary began to read a preamble concerning the expenses of the late king's household, which had amounted to l28,000 during the preceding six monthsa sum so vast that it made tom canty gasp; he gasped again when the fact appeared that l20,000 of this money were still owing and unpaid;*(10) and once more when it appeared that the king's coffers were about empty, and his twelve hundred servants much embarrassed for lack of the wages due them. tom spoke out, with lively apprehension. 'we be going to the dogs, 'tis plain. 'tis meet and necessary that we take a smaller house and set the servants at large, sith they be of no value but to make delay, and trouble one with offices that harass the spirit and shame the soul, they misbecoming any but a doll, that hath nor brains nor hands to help itself withal. i remember me of a small house that standeth over against the fish-market, by billingsgate-' a sharp pressure upon tom's arm stopped his foolish tongue and sent a blush to his face; but no countenance there betrayed any sign that this strange speech had been remarked or given concern. a secretary made report that forasmuch as the late king had provided in his will for conferring the ducal degree upon the earl of hertford and raising his brother, sir thomas seymour, to the peerage, and likewise hertford's son to an earldom, together similar aggrandizements to other great servants of the crown, the council had resolved to hold a sitting on the 16th february for the delivering and confirming of these honors; and that meantime the late king not having granted, in writing, estates suitable to the support of these dignities, the council, knowing his private wishes in that regard, had thought proper to grant to seymour '500 pound lands' and to hertford's son '800 pound lands, and 300 pound of the next bishop's lands which should fall vacant,'his present majesty being willing.*(11) tom was about to blurt out something about the propriety of paying the late king's debts first before squandering all his money; but a timely touch upon his arm, from the thoughtful hertford, saved him this indiscretion; wherefore he gave the royal assent, without spoken comment, but with much inward discomfort. while he sat reflecting a moment over the ease with which he was doing strange and glittering miracles, a happy thought shot into his mind: why not make his mother duchess of offal court and give her an estate? but a sorrowful thought swept it instantly away; he was only a king in name, these grave veterans and great nobles were his masters; to them his mother was only the creature of a diseased mind; they would simply listen to his project with unbelieving ears, then send for the doctor. the dull work went tediously on. petitions were read, and proclamations, patents, and all manner of wordy, repetitious and wearisome papers relating to the public business; and at last tom sighed pathetically and murmured to himself, 'in what have i offended, that the good god should take me away from the fields and the free air and the sunshine, to shut me up here and make me a king and afflict me so?' then his poor muddled head nodded awhile, and presently dropped to his shoulder; and the business of the empire came to a standstill for want of that august factor, the ratifying power. silence ensued around the slumbering child, and the sages of the realm ceased from their deliberations. during the forenoon, tom had an enjoyable hour, by permission of his keepers, hertford and st. john, with the lady elizabeth and the little lady jane grey; though the spirits of the princesses were rather subdued by the mighty stroke that had fallen upon the royal house; and at the end of the visit his 'elder sister'afterward the 'bloody mary' of historychilled him with a solemn interview which had but one merit in his eyes, its brevity. he had a few moments to himself, and then a slim lad of about twelve years of age was admitted to his presence, whose clothing, except his snowy ruff and the laces about his wrists, was of blackdoublet, hose and all. he bore no badge of mourning but a knot of purple ribbon on his shoulder. he advanced hesitatingly, with head bowed and bare, and dropped upon one knee in front of tom. tom sat still and contemplated him soberly for a moment. then he said: 'rise, lad. who art thou? what wouldst have?' the boy rose, and stood at graceful ease, but with an aspect of concern in his face. he said: 'of a surety thou must remember me, my lord. i am thy whipping-boy. 'my whipping-boy?' 'the same, your grace, i am humphreyhumphrey marlow.' tom perceived that here was some one whom his keepers ought to have posted him about. the situation was delicate. what should he do?pretend he knew this lad, and then betray, by his every utterance, that he had never heard of him before? no, that would not do. an idea came to his relief: accidents like this might be likely to happen with some frequency, now that business urgencies would often call hertford and st. john from his side, they being members of the council of executors; therefore perhaps it would be well to strike out a plan himself to meet the requirements of such emergencies. yes, that would be a wise coursehe would practise on this boy, and see what sort of success he might achieve. so he stroked his brow, perplexedly, a moment or two, and presently said: 'now i seem to remember thee somewhatbut my wit is clogged and dim with suffering-' 'alack, my poor master!' ejaculated the whipping-boy, with feeling; adding, to himself, 'in truth 'tis as they saidhis mind is gonealas, poor soul! but misfortune catch me, how am i forgetting! they said one must not seem to observe that aught is wrong with him.' ''tis strange how my memory doth wanton with me these days,' said tom. 'but mind it noti mend apacea little clue doth often serve to bring me back again the things and names which had escaped me. (and not they, only, forsooth, but e'en such as i ne'er heard beforeas this lad shall see.) give thy business speech.' ''tis matter of small weight, my liege, yet will i touch upon it, an it please your grace. two days gone by, when your majesty faulted thrice in your greekin the morning lessonsdost remember it?' 'ye-e-smethinks i do. (it is not much of a liean i had meddled with the greek at all, i had not faulted simply thrice, but forty times). yes, i do recall it nowgo on.' -'the master, being wroth with what he termed such slovenly and doltish work, did promise that he would soundly whip me for itand-' 'whip thee!' said tom, astonished out of his presence of mind. 'why should he whip thee for faults of mine?' 'ah, your grace forgetteth again. he always scourgeth me, when thou dost fail in thy lessons.' 'true, truei had forgot. thou teachest me in privatethen if i fail, he argueth that thy office was lamely done, and-' 'oh, my liege, what words are these? i, the humblest of thy servants, presume to teach thee!' 'then where is thy blame? what riddle is this? am i in truth gone mad, or is it thou? explainspeak out.' 'but, good your majesty, there's naught that needeth simplifying. none may visit the sacred person of the prince of wales with blows; wherefore when he faulteth, 'tis i that take them; and meet it is and right, for that it is mine office and my livelihood.'*(12) tom stared at the tranquil boy, observing to himself, 'lo, it is a wonderful thinga most strange and curious trade; i marvel they have not hired a boy to take my combings and my dressings for mewould heaven they would!an they will do this thing, i will take my lashings in mine own person, giving thanks to god for the change.' then he said aloud: 'and hast thou been beaten, poor friend, according to the promise?' 'no, good your majesty, my punishment was appointed for this day, and peradventure it may be annulled, as unbefitting the season of mourning that is come upon us; i know not, and so have made bold to come hither and remind your grace about your gracious promise to intercede in my behalf-' 'with the master? to save thee thy whipping?' 'ah, thou dost remember!' 'my memory mendeth, thou seest. set thy mind at easethy back shall go unscathedi will see to it.' 'oh, thanks, my good lord!' cried the boy, dropping upon his knee again. 'mayhap i have ventured far enow; and yet'.... seeing master humphrey hesitate, tom encouraged him to go on, saying he was 'in the granting mood.' 'then will i speak it out, for it lieth near my heart. sith thou art no more prince of wales but king, thou canst order matters as thou wilt, with none to say thee nay; wherefore it is not in reason that thou wilt longer vex thyself with dreary studies, but wilt burn thy books and turn thy mind to things less irksome. then am i ruined, and mine orphan sisters with me!' 'ruined? prithee, how?' 'my back is my bread, o my gracious liege! if it go idle, i starve. an thou cease from study, mine office is gone, thou'lt need no whipping-boy. do not turn me away!' tom was touched with this pathetic distress. he said, with a right royal burst of generosity: 'discomfort thyself no further, lad. thine office shall be permanent in thee and thy line, forever.' then he struck the boy a light blow on the shoulder with the flat of his sword, exclaiming, 'rise, humphrey marlow, hereditary grand whipping-boy to the royal house of england! banish sorrowi will betake me to my books again, and study so ill that they must in justice treble thy wage, so mightily shall the business of thine office be augmented.' the grateful humphrey responded fervidly: 'thanks, oh, most noble master, this princely lavishness doth far surpass my most distempered dreams of fortune. now shall i be happy all my days, and all the house of marlow after me.' tom had wit enough to perceive that here was a lad who could be useful to him. he encouraged humphrey to talk, and he was nothing loath. he was delighted to believe that he was helping in tom's 'cure'; for always, as soon as he had finished calling back to tom's diseased mind the various particulars of his experiences and adventures in the royal schoolroom and elsewhere about the palace, he noticed that tom was then able to 'recall' the circumstances quite clearly. at the end of an hour tom found himself well freighted with very valuable information concerning personages and matters pertaining to the court; so he resolved to draw instruction from this source daily; and to this end he would give order to admit humphrey to the royal closet whenever he might come, provided the majesty of england was not engaged with other people. humphrey had hardly been dismissed when my lord hertford arrived with more trouble for tom. he said that the lords of the council, fearing that some overwrought report of the king's damaged health might have leaked out and got abroad, they deemed it wise and best that his majesty should begin to dine in public after a day or twohis wholesome complexion and vigorous step, assisted by a carefully guarded repose of manner and ease and grace of demeanor, would more surely quiet the general pulsein case any evil rumors had gone aboutthan any other scheme that could be devised. then the earl proceeded, very delicately, to instruct tom as to the observances proper to the stately occasion, under the rather thin disguise of 'reminding' him concerning things already known to him; but to his vast gratification it turned out that tom needed very little help in this linehe had been making use of humphrey in that direction, for humphrey had mentioned that within a few days he was to begin to dine in public; having gathered it from the swift-winged gossip of the court. tom kept these facts to himself, however. seeing the royal memory so improved, the earl ventured to apply a few tests to it, in an apparently casual way, to find out how far its amendment had progressed. the results were happy, here and there, in spotsspots where humphrey's tracks remainedand, on the whole, my lord was greatly pleased and encouraged. so encouraged was he, indeed, that he spoke up and said in a quite hopeful voice: 'now am i persuaded that if your majesty will but tax your memory yet a little further, it will resolve the puzzle of the great seala loss which was of moment yesterday, although of none to-day, since its term of service ended with our late lord's life. may it please your grace to make the trial?' tom was at seaa great seal was a something which he was totally unacquainted with. after a moment's hesitation he looked up innocently and asked: 'what was it like, my lord?' the earl started, almost imperceptibly, muttering to himself, 'alack, his wits are flown again!it was ill wisdom to lead him on to strain them-' then he deftly turned the talk to other matters, with the purpose of sweeping the unlucky seal out of tom's thoughtsa purpose which easily succeeded. chapter xv tom as king the next day the foreign ambassadors came, with their gorgeous trains; and tom, throned in awful state, received them. the splendors of the scene delighted his eye and fired his imagination at first, but the audience was long and dreary, and so were most of the addresseswherefore, what began as a pleasure, grew into weariness and homesickness by and by. tom said the words which hertford put into his mouth from time to time, and tried hard to acquit himself satisfactorily, but he was too new to such things, and too ill at ease to accomplish more than a tolerable success. he looked sufficiently like a king, but he was ill able to feel like one. he was cordially glad when the ceremony was ended. the larger part of his day was 'wasted'as he termed it, in his own mindin labors pertaining to his royal office. even the two hours devoted to certain princely pastimes and recreations were rather a burden to him than otherwise, they were so fettered by restrictions and ceremonious observances. however, he had a private hour with his whipping-boy which he counted clear gain, since he got both entertainment and needful information out of it. the third day of tom canty's kingship came and went much as the others had done, but there was a lifting of his cloud in one wayhe felt less uncomfortable than at first; he was getting a little used to his circumstances and surroundings; his chains still galled, but not all the time; he found that the presence and homage of the great afflicted and embarrassed him less and less sharply with every hour that drifted over his head. but for one single dread, he could have seen the fourth day approach without serious distressthe dining in public; it was to begin that day. there were greater matters in the programfor on that day he would have to preside at a council which would take his views and commands concerning the policy to be pursued toward various foreign nations scattered far and near over the great globe; on that day, too, hertford would be formally chosen to the grand office of lord protector; other things of note were appointed for that fourth day also, but to tom they were all insignificant compared with the ordeal of dining all by himself with a multitude of curious eyes fastened upon him and a multitude of mouths whispering comments upon his performanceand upon his mistakes, if he should be so unlucky as to make any. still, nothing could stop that fourth day, and so it came. it found poor tom low-spirited and absent-minded, and this mood continued; he could not shake it off. the ordinary duties of the morning dragged upon his hands, and wearied him. once more he felt the sense of captivity heavy upon him. late in the forenoon he was in a large audience chamber, conversing with the earl of hertford and duly awaiting the striking of the hour appointed for a visit of ceremony from a considerable number of great officials and courtiers. after a little while tom, who had wandered to a window and become interested in the life and movement of the great highway beyond the palace gatesand not idly interested, but longing with all his heart to take part in person in its stir and freedomsaw the van of a hooting and shouting mob of disorderly men, women, and children of the lowest and poorest degree approaching from up the road. 'i would i knew what 'tis about!' he exclaimed, with all a boy's curiosity in such happenings. 'thou art the king!' solemnly responded the earl, with a reverence. 'have i your grace's leave to act?' 'oh, blithely, yes! oh, gladly, yes!' exclaimed tom, excitedly, adding to himself with a lively sense of satisfaction, 'in truth, being a king is not all drearinessit hath its compensations and conveniences.' the earl called a page, and sent him to the captain of the guard with the order: 'let the mob be halted, and inquiry made concerning, the occasion of its movement. by the king's command!' a few seconds later a long rank of the royal guards, cased in flashing steel, filed out at the gates and formed across the highway in front of the multitude. a messenger returned, to report that the crowd were following a man, a woman, and a young girl to execution for crimes committed against the peace and dignity of the realm. deathand a violent deathfor these poor unfortunates! the thought wrung tom's heartstrings. the spirit of compassion took control of him, to the exclusion of all other considerations; he never thought of the offended laws, or of the grief or loss which these three criminals had inflicted upon their victims, he could think of nothing but the scaffold and the grisly fate hanging over the heads of the condemned. his concern made him even forget, for the moment, that he was but the false shadow of a king, not the substance; and before he knew it he had blurted out the command: 'bring them here!' then he blushed scarlet, and a sort of apology sprung to his lips; but observing that his order had wrought no sort of surprise in the earl or the waiting page, he suppressed the words he was about to utter. the page, in the most matter-of-course way, made a profound obeisance and retired backward out of the room to deliver the command. tom experienced a glow of pride and a renewed sense of the compensating advantages of the kingly office. he said to himself, 'truly it is like what i used to feel when i read the old priest's tales, and did imagine mine own self a prince, giving law and command to all, saying, " do this, do that," while none durst offer let or hindrance to my will.' now the doors swung open; one high-sounding title after another was announced, the personages owning them followed, and the place was quickly half filled with noble folk and finery. but tom was hardly conscious of the presence of these people, so wrought up was he and so intensely absorbed in that other and more interesting matter. he seated himself, absently, in his chair of state, and turned his eyes upon the door with manifestations of impatient expectancy; seeing which, the company forbore to trouble him, and fell to chatting a mixture of public business and court gossip one with another. in a little while the measured tread of military men was heard approaching, and the culprits entered the presence in charge of an under-sheriff and escorted by a detail of the king's guard. the civil officer knelt before tom, then stood aside; the three doomed persons knelt also, and remained so; the guard took position behind tom's chair. tom scanned the prisoners curiously. something about the dress or appearance of the man had stirred a vague memory in him. 'methinks i have seen this man ere now... but the when or the where fail me'such was tom's thought. just then the man glanced quickly up, and quickly dropped his face again, not being able to endure the awful port of sovereignty; but the one full glimpse of the face, which tom got, was sufficient. he said to himself: 'now is the matter clear; this is the stranger that plucked giles witt out of the thames, and saved his life that windy, bitter first day of the new yeara brave, good deedpity he hath been doing baser ones and got himself in this sad case... i have not forgot the day, neither the hour; by reason that an hour after, upon the stroke of eleven, i did get a hiding by the hand of gammer canty which was of so goodly and admired severity that all that went before or followed after it were but fondlings and caresses by comparison.' tom now ordered that the woman and the girl be removed from the presence for a little time; then addressed himself to the under-sheriff, saying: 'good sir, what is this man's offense?' the officer knelt, and answered: 'so please your majesty, he hath taken the life of a subject by poison.' tom's compassion for the prisoner, and admiration of him as the daring rescuer of a drowning boy, experienced a most damaging shock. 'the thing was proven upon him?' he asked. 'most clearly, sire.' tom sighed, and said: 'take him awayhe hath earned his death. 'tis a pity, for he was a brave heartnana, i mean he hath the look of it!' the prisoner clasped his hands together with sudden energy, and wrung them despairingly, at the same time appealing imploringly to the 'king' in broken and terrified phrases: 'oh, my lord the king, an thou canst pity the lost, have pity upon me! i am innocentneither hath that wherewith i am charged been more than but lamely provedyet i speak not of that; the judgment is gone forth against me and may not suffer alteration; yet in mine extremity i beg a boon, for my doom is more than i can bear. a grace, a grace, my lord the king! in thy royal compassion grant my prayergive commandment that i be hanged!' tom was amazed. this was not the outcome he had looked for. 'odds my life, a strange boon! was it not the fate intended thee?' 'oh, good my liege, not so! it is ordered that i be boiled alive!' the hideous surprise of these words almost made tom spring from his chair. as soon as he could recover his wits he cried out: 'have thy wish, poor soul! an thou had poisoned a hundred men thou shouldst not suffer so miserable a death.' the prisoner bowed his face to the ground and burst into passionate expressions of gratitudeending with: 'if ever thou shouldst know misfortunewhich god forbid!may thy goodness to me this day be remembered and requited!' tom turned to the earl of hertford, and said: 'my lord, is it believable that there was warrant for this man's ferocious doom?' 'it is the law, your gracefor poisoners. in germany coiners be boiled to death in oilnot cast in of a sudden, but by a rope let down into the oil by degrees, and slowly; first the feet, then the legs, then-' 'oh, prithee, no more, my lord, i cannot bear it!' cried tom, covering his eyes with his hands to shut out the picture. 'i beseech your good lordship that order be taken to change this lawoh, let no more poor creatures be visited with its tortures.' the earl's face showed profound ratification, for he was a man of merciful and generous impulsesa thing not very common with his class in that fierce age. he said: 'these your grace's noble words have sealed its doom. history will remember it to the honor of your royal house.' the under-sheriff was about to remove his prisoner; tom gave him a sign to wait; then he said: 'good sir, i would look into this matter further. the man has said his deed was but lamely proved. tell me what thou knowest.' 'if the king's grace please, it did appear upon the trial, that this man entered into a house in the hamlet of islington where one lay sickthree witnesses say it was at ten of the clock in the morning and two say it was some minutes laterthe sick man being alone at the time, and sleepingand presently the man came forth again, and went his way. the sick man died within the hour, being torn with spasm and retchings.' 'did any see the poison given? was poison found?' 'marry, no, my liege.' 'then how doth one know there was poison given at all?' 'please your majesty, the doctors testified that none die with such symptoms but by poison.' weighty evidence, thisin that simple age. tom recognized its formidable nature, and said: 'the doctor knoweth his tradebelike they were right. the matter hath an ill look for this poor man.' 'yet was not this all, your majesty; there is more and worse. many testified that a witch, since gone from the village, none know whither, did foretell, and speak it privately in their ears, that the sick man would die by poisonand more, that a stranger would give ita stranger with brown hair and clothed in a worn and common garb; and surely this prisoner doth answer woundily to the bill. please, your majesty, to give the circumstance that solemn weight which is its due, seeing it was foretold.' this was an argument of tremendous force, in that superstitious day. tom felt that the thing was settled; if evidence was worth anything, this poor fellow's guilt was proved. still he offered the prisoner a chance, saying: 'if thou canst say aught in thy behalf, speak.' 'naught that will avail, my king. i am innocent, yet cannot i make it appear. i have no friends, else might i show that i was not in islington that day; so also might i show that at that hour they name i was above a league away, seeing i was at wapping old stairs; yea more, my king, for i could show, that while they say i was taking life, i was saving it. a drowning boy-' 'peace! sheriff, name the day the deed was done!' 'at ten in the morning, or some minutes later, the first day of the new year, most illustrious-' 'let the prisoner go freeit is the king's will!' another blush followed this unregal outburst, and he covered his indecorum as well as he could by adding: 'it enrageth me that a man should be hanged upon such idle, hare-brained evidence!' a low buzz of admiration swept through the assemblage. it was not admiration of the decree that had been delivered by tom, for the propriety or expediency of pardoning a convicted poisoner was a thing which few there would have felt justified in either admitting or admiringno, the admiration was for the intelligence and spirit which tom had displayed. some of the low-voiced remarks were to this effect: 'this is no mad kinghe hath his wits sound.' 'how sanely he put his questionshow like his former natural self was this abrupt, imperious disposal of the matter!' 'god be thanked his infirmity is spent! this is no weakling, but a king. he hath borne himself like to his own father.' the air being filled with applause, tom's ear necessarily caught a little of it. the effect which this had upon him was to put him greatly at his ease, and also to charge his system with very gratifying sensations. however, his juvenile curiosity soon rose superior to these pleasant thoughts and feelings; he was eager to know what sort of deadly mischief the woman and the little girl could have been about; so, by his command the two terrified and sobbing creatures were brought before him. 'what is it that these have done?' he inquired of the sheriff. 'please your majesty, a black crime is charged upon them, and clearly proven; wherefore the judges have decreed, according to the law, that they be hanged. they sold themselves to the devilsuch is their crime.' tom shuddered. he had been taught to abhor people who did this wicked thing. still, he was not going to deny himself the pleasure of feeding his curiosity, for all that; so he asked: 'where was this done?and when?' 'on a midnight, in decemberin a ruined church, your majesty.' tom shuddered again. 'who was there present?' 'only these two, your graceand that other.' 'have these confessed?' 'nay, not so, sirethey do deny it.' 'then, prithee, how was it known?' 'certain witnesses did see them wending thither, good your majesty; this bred the suspicion, and dire effects have since confirmed and justified it. in particular, it is in evidence that through the wicked power so obtained, they did invoke and bring about a storm that wasted all the region round about. above forty witnesses have proved the storm; and sooth one might have had a thousand, for all had reason to remember it, sith all had suffered by it.' 'certes this is a serious matter.' tom turned this dark piece of scoundrelism over in his mind awhile, then asked: 'suffered the woman, also, by the storm?' several old heads among the assemblage nodded their recognition of the wisdom of this question. the sheriff, however, saw nothing consequential in the inquiry; he answered, with simple directness. 'indeed, she did, your majesty, and most righteously, as all aver. her habitation was swept away, and herself and child left shelterless.' 'methinks the power to do herself so ill a turn was dearly bought. she had been cheated, had she paid but a farthing for it; that she paid her soul, and her child's, argueth that she is mad; if she is mad she knoweth not what she doth, therefore sinneth not.' the elderly heads nodded recognition of tom's wisdom once more, and one individual murmured, 'an the king be mad himself, according to report, then it is a madness of a sort that would improve the sanity of some i wot of, if by the gentle providence of god they could but catch it.' 'what age hath the child?' asked tom. 'nine years, please your majesty.' 'by the law of england may a child enter into covenant and sell itself, my lord?' asked tom, turning to a learned judge. 'the law doth not permit a child to make or meddle in any weighty matter, good my liege, holding that its callow wit unfitteth it to cope with the riper wit and evil schemings of them that are its elders. the devil may buy a child, if he so choose, and the child agree thereto, but not an englishmanin this latter case the contract would be null and void.' 'it seemeth a rude unchristian thing, and ill contrived, that english law denieth privileges to englishmen, to waste them on the devil!' cried tom, with honest heat. this novel view of the matter excited many smiles, and was stored away in many heads to be repeated about the court as evidence of tom's originality as well as progress toward mental health. the elder culprit had ceased from sobbing, and was hanging upon tom's words with an excited interest and a growing hope. tom noticed this, and it strongly inclined his sympathies toward her in her perilous and unfriended situation. presently he asked: 'how wrought they, to bring the storm?' 'by pulling off their stockings, sire.' this astonished tom, and also fired his curiosity to fever heat. he said eagerly: 'it is wonderful! hath it always this dread effect?' 'always, my liegeat least if the woman desire it, and utter the needful words, either in her mind or with her tongue.' tom turned to the woman, and said with impetuous zeal: 'exert thy poweri would see a storm.' there was a sudden paling of cheeks in the superstitious assemblage, and a general, though unexpressed, desire to get out of the placeall of which was lost upon tom, who was dead to everything but the proposed cataclysm. seeing a puzzled and astonished look in the woman's face, he added, excitedly: 'never fearthou shalt be blameless. morethou shalt go freenone shall touch thee. exert thy power.' 'o, my lord the king, i have it noti have been falsely accused.' 'thy fears stay thee. be of good heart, thou shalt suffer no harm. make a stormit mattereth not how small a onei require naught great or harmful, but indeed prefer the oppositedo this and thy life is sparedthou shalt go out free, with thy child, bearing the king's pardon, and safe from hurt or malice from any in the realm.' the woman prostrated herself, and protested, with tears, that she had no power to do the miracle, else she would gladly win her child's life alone, and be content to lose her own, if by obedience to the king's command so precious a grace might be acquired. tom urgedthe woman still adhered to her declarations. finally, he said: 'i think the woman hath said true. an my mother were in her place and gifted with the devil's functions, she had not stayed a moment to call her storms and lay the whole land in ruins, if the saving of my forfeit life were the price she got! it is argument that other mothers are made in like mold. thou art free, good wifethou and thy childfor i do think thee innocent. now thou'st naught to fear, being pardonedpull off thy stockings!an thou canst make me a storm, thou shalt be rich!' the redeemed creature was loud in her gratitude, and proceeded to obey, while tom looked on with eager expectancy, a little marred by apprehension; the courtiers at the same time manifesting decided discomfort and uneasiness. the woman stripped her own feet and her little girl's also, and plainly did her best to reward the king's generosity with an earthquake, but it was all a failure and a disappointment. tom sighed and said: 'there, good soul, trouble thyself no further, thy power is departed out of thee. go thy way in peace; and if it return to thee at any time, forget me not, but fetch me a storm.'*(13) chapter xvi the state dinner the dinner-hour drew nearyet, strangely enough, the thought brought but slight discomfort to tom, and hardly any terror. the morning's experiences had wonderfully built up his confidence; the poor little ash-cat was already more wonted to his strange garret, after four days' habit, than a mature person could have become in a full month. a child's facility in accommodating itself to circumstances was never more strikingly illustrated. let us privileged ones hurry to the great banqueting-room and have a glance at matters there while tom is being made ready for the imposing occasion. it is a spacious apartment, with gilded pillars and pilasters, and pictured walls and ceilings. at the door stand tall guards, as rigid as statues, dressed in rich and picturesque costumes, and bearing halberds. in a high gallery which runs all around the place is a band of musicians and a packed company of citizens of both sexes, in brilliant attire. in the center of the room, upon a raised platform, is tom's table. now let the ancient chronicler speak: 'a gentleman enters the room bearing a rod, and along with him another bearing a table-cloth, which, after they have both kneeled three times with the utmost veneration, he spreads upon the table, and after kneeling again they both retire; then come two others, one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; when they have kneeled as the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they too retire with the same ceremonies performed by the first; at last come two nobles richly clothed, one bearing a tasting-knife, who, after prostrating themselves in the most graceful manner, approach and rub the table with bread and salt, with as much awe as if the king had been present.'*(14) so end the solemn preliminaries. now, far down the echoing corridors we hear a bugle-blast, and the indistinct cry, 'place for the king! way for the king's most excellent majesty!' these sounds are momently repeatedthey grow nearer and nearerand presently, almost in our faces, the martial note peals and the cry rings out, 'way for the king!' at this instant the shining pageant appears, and files in at the door, with a measured march. let the chronicler speak again: 'first come gentlemen, barons, earls, knights of the garter, all richly dressed and bareheaded; next comes the chancellor, between two, one of which carries the royal scepter, the other the sword of state in a red scabbard, studded with golden fleurs-de-lis, the point upwards; next comes the king himselfwhom, upon his appearing, twelve trumpets and many drums salute with a great burst of welcome, whilst all in the galleries rise in their places, crying "god save the king!" after him come nobles attached to his person, and on his right and left march his guard of honor, his fifty gentlemen pensioners, with gilt battle-axes.' this was all fine and pleasant. tom's pulse beat high and a glad light was in his eye. he bore himself right gracefully, and all the more so because he was not thinking of how he was doing it, his mind being charmed and occupied with the blithe sights and sounds about himand besides, nobody can be very ungraceful in nicely fitting beautiful clothes after he has grown a little used to themespecially if he is for the moment unconscious of them. tom remembered his instructions, and acknowledged his greeting with a slight inclination of his plumed head, and a courteous 'i thank ye, my good people.' he seated himself at table without removing his cap; and did it without the least embarrassment; for to eat with one's cap on was the one solitary royal custom upon which the kings and the cantys met upon common ground, neither party having any advantage over the other in the matter of old familiarity with it. the pageant broke up and grouped itself picturesquely, and remained bareheaded. now, to the sound of gay music, the yeomen of the guard entered'the tallest and mightiest men in england, they being selected in this regard'but we will let the chronicler tell about it: 'the yeomen of the guard entered bareheaded, clothed in scarlet, with golden roses upon their backs; and these went and came, bringing in each turn a course of dishes, served in plate. these dishes were received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon the table, while the taster gave to each guard a mouthful to eat of the particular dish he had brought, for fear of any poison.' tom made a good dinner, notwithstanding he was conscious that hundreds of eyes followed each morsel to his mouth and watched him eat it with an interest which could not have been more intense if it had been a deadly explosive and was expected to blow him up and scatter him all over the place. he was careful not to hurry, and equally careful not to do anything whatever for himself, but wait till the proper official knelt down and did it for him. he got through without a mistakeflawless and precious triumph. when the meal was over at last and he marched away in the midst of his bright pageant, with the happy noises in his ears of blaring bugles, rolling drums, and thundering acclamations, he felt that if he had seen the worst of dining in public, it was an ordeal which he would be glad to endure several times a day if by that means he could but buy himself free from some of the more formidable requirements of his royal office. chapter xvii foo-foo the first miles hendon hurried along toward the southwark end of the bridge, keeping a sharp lookout for the persons he sought, and hoping and expecting to overtake them presently. he was disappointed in this, however. by asking questions, he was enabled to track them part of the way through southwark; then all traces ceased, and he was perplexed as to how to proceed. still, he continued his efforts as best he could during the rest of the day. nightfall found him leg-weary, half famished, and his desire as far from accomplishment as ever; so he supped at the tabard inn and went to bed, resolved to make an early start in the morning, and give the town an exhaustive search. as he lay thinking and planning, he presently began to reason thus: the boy would escape from the ruffian, his reputed father, if possible; would he go back to london and seek his former haunts? no, he would not do that, he would avoid recapture. what, then, would he do? never having had a friend in the world, or a protector, until he met miles hendon, he would naturally try to find that friend again, provided the effort did not require him to go toward london and danger. he would strike for hendon hall, that is what he would do, for he knew hendon was homeward bound, and there he might expect to find him. yes, the case was plain to hendonhe must lose no more time in southwark, but move at once through kent, toward monk's holm, searching the wood and inquiring as he went. let us return to the vanished little king now. the ruffian, whom the waiter at the inn on the bridge saw 'about to join' the youth and the king, did not exactly join them, but fell in close behind them and followed their steps. he said nothing. his left arm was in a sling, and he wore a large green patch over his left eye; he limped slightly, and used an oaken staff as a support. the youth led the king a crooked course through southwark, and by and by struck into the highroad beyond. the king was irritated now, and said he would stop hereit was hendon's place to come to him, not his to go to hendon. he would not endure such insolence; he would stop where he was. the youth said: 'thou'lt tarry here, and thy friend lying wounded in the wood yonder? so be it, then.' the king's manner changed at once. he cried out: 'wounded? and who hath dared to do it? but that is apart; lead on, lead on! faster, sirrah! art shod with lead? wounded, is he? now though the doer of it be a duke's son, he shall rue it!' it was some distance to the wood, but the space was speedily traversed. the youth looked about him, discovered a bough sticking in the ground, with a small bit of rag tied to it, then led the way into the forest, watching for similar boughs and finding them at intervals; they were evidently guides to the point he was aiming at. by and by an open place was reached, where were the charred remains of a farmhouse, and near them a barn which was falling to ruin and decay. there was no sign of life anywhere, and utter silence prevailed. the youth entered the barn, the king following eagerly upon his heels. no one there! the king shot a surprised and suspicious glance at the youth, and asked: 'where is he?' a mocking laugh was his answer. the king was in a rage in a moment; he seized a billet of wood and was in the act of charging upon the youth when another mocking laugh fell upon his ear. it was from the lame ruffian, who had been following at a distance. the king turned and said angrily: 'who art thou? what is thy business here?' 'leave thy foolery,' said the man, 'and quiet thyself. my disguise is none so good that thou canst pretend thou knowest not thy father through it.' 'thou art not my father. i know thee not. i am the king. if thou hast hid my servant, find him for me, or thou shalt sup sorrow for what thou hast done.' john canty replied, in a stern and measured voice: 'it is plain thou art mad, and i am loath to punish thee; but if thou provoke me, i must. thy prating doth no harm here, where there are no ears that need to mind thy follies, yet is it well to practise thy tongue to wary speech, that it may do no hurt when our quarters change. i have done a murder, and may not tarry at homeneither shalt thou, seeing i need thy service. my name is changed, for wise reasons; it is hobbsjohn hobbs; thine is jackcharge thy memory accordingly. now, then, speak. where is thy mother? where are thy sisters? they came not to the place appointedknowest thou whither they went?' the king answered, sullenly: 'trouble me not with these riddles. my mother is dead; my sisters are in the palace.' the youth near by burst into a derisive laugh, and the king would have assaulted him, but cantyor hobbs, as he now called himselfprevented him, and said: 'peace, hugo, vex him not; his mind is astray, and thy ways fret him. sit thee down, jack, and quiet thyself; thou shalt have a morsel to eat, anon.' hobbs and hugo fell to talking together, in low voices, and the king removed himself as far as he could from their disagreeable company. he withdrew into the twilight of the farther end of the barn, where he found the earthen floor bedded a foot deep with straw. he lay down here, drew straw over himself in lieu of blankets, and was soon absorbed in thinking. he had many griefs, but the minor ones were swept almost into forgetfulness by the supreme one, the loss of his father. to the rest of the world the name of henry viii brought a shiver, and suggested an ogre whose nostrils breathed destruction and whose hand dealt scourgings and death; but to this boy the name brought only sensations of pleasure, the figure it invoked wore a countenance that was all gentleness and affection. he called to mind a long succession of loving passages between his father and himself, and dwelt fondly upon them, his unstinted tears attesting how deep and real was the grief that possessed his heart. as the afternoon wasted away, the lad, wearied with his troubles, sunk gradually into a tranquil and healing slumber. after a considerable timehe could not tell how longhis senses struggled to a half-consciousness, and as he lay with closed eyes vaguely wondering where he was and what had been happening, he noted a murmurous sound, the sullen beating of rain upon the roof. a snug sense of comfort stole over him, which was rudely broken, the next moment, by a chorus of piping cackles and coarse laughter. it startled him disagreeably, and he unmuffled his head to see whence this interruption proceeded. a grim and unsightly picture met his eye. a bright fire was burning in the middle of the floor, at the other end of the barn; and around it, and lit weirdly up by the red glare, lolled and sprawled the motliest company of tattered gutter-scum and ruffians, of both sexes, he had ever read or dreamed of. there were huge, stalwart men, brown with exposure, long-haired, and clothed in fantastic rags; there were middle-sized youths, of truculent countenance, and similarly clad; there were blind medicants, with patched or bandaged eyes; crippled ones, with wooden legs and crutches; there was a villain-looking peddler with his pack; a knife-grinder, a tinker, and a barber-surgeon, with the implements of their trades; some of the females were hardly grown girls, some were at prime, some were old and wrinkled hags, and all were loud, brazen, foul-mouthed; and all soiled and slatternly; there were three sore-faced babies; there were a couple of starveling curs, with strings around their necks, whose office was to lead the blind. the night was come, the gang had just finished feasting, an orgy was beginning, the can of liquor was passing from mouth to mouth. a general cry broke forth: 'a song! a song from the bat and dick dot-and-go-one!' one of the blind men got up, and made ready by casting aside the patches that sheltered his excellent eyes, and the pathetic placard which recited the cause of his calamity. dot-and-go-one disencumbered himself of his timber leg and took his place, upon sound and healthy limbs, beside his fellow-rascal; then they roared out a rollicking ditty, and were reinforced by the whole crew, at the end of each stanza, in a rousing chorus. by the time the last stanza was reached, the half-drunken enthusiasm had risen to such a pitch that everybody joined in and sang it clear through from the beginning, producing a volume of villainous sound that made the rafters quake. these were the inspiring words: 'bien darkmans then, bouse mort and ken, the bien coves bings awast, on chates to trine by rome coves dine for his long lib at last. bing'd out bien morts and toure, and toure, bing out of the rome vile bine, and toure the cove that cloy'd your duds, upon upon the chates to trine.'*(15) conversation followed; not in the thieves' dialect of the song, for that was only used in talk when unfriendly ears might be listening. in the course of it it appeared that 'john hobbs' was not altogether a new recruit, but had trained in the gang at some former time. his later history was called for, and when he said he had 'accidentally' killed a man, considerable satisfaction was expressed; when he added that the man was a priest, he was roundly applauded, and had to take a drink with everybody. old acquaintances welcomed him joyously, and new ones were proud to shake him by the hand. he was asked why he had 'tarried away so many months.' he answered: 'london is better than the country, and safer these late years, the laws be so bitter and so diligently enforced. an i had not had that accident, i had stayed there. i had resolved to stay, and nevermore venture countrywardsbut the accident had ended that.' he inquired how many persons the gang numbered now. the 'ruffler,' or chief, answered: 'five and twenty sturdy budges, bulks, files, clapperdogeons and maunders, counting the dells and doxies and other morts.*(16) most are here, the rest are wandering eastward, along the winter lay. we follow at dawn.' 'i do not see the wen among the honest folk about me. where may he be?' 'poor lad, his diet is brimstone now, and over hot for a delicate taste. he was killed in a brawl, somewhere about midsummer.' 'i sorrow to hear that; the wen was a capable man, and brave.' 'that was he, truly. black bess, his dell, is of us yet, but absent on the eastward tramp; a fine lass, of nice ways and orderly conduct, none ever seeing her drunk above four days in the seven.' 'she was ever stricti remember it wella goodly wench and worthy all commendation. her mother was more free and less particular; a troublesome and ugly-tempered beldame, but furnished with a wit above the common.' 'we lost her through it. her gift of palmistry and other sorts of fortune-telling begot for her at last a witch's name and fame. the law roasted her to death at a slow fire. it did touch me to a sort of tenderness to see the gallant way she met her lotcursing and reviling all the crowd that gaped and gazed around her, whilst the flames licked upward toward her face and catched her thin locks and crackled about her old gray headcursing them, said i?cursing them! why an thou shouldst live a thousand years thou'dst never hear so masterful a cursing. alack, her art died with her. there be base and weakling imitations left, but no true blasphemy.' the ruffler sighed; the listeners sighed in sympathy; a general depression fell upon the company for a moment, for even hardened outcasts like these are not wholly dead to sentiment, but are able to feel a fleeting sense of loss and affliction at wide intervals and under peculiarly favoring circumstancesas in cases like to this, for instance, when genius and culture depart and leave no heir. however, a deep drink all round soon restored the spirits of the mourners. 'have any other of our friends fared hardly?' asked hobbs. 'someyes. particularly new-comerssuch as small husbandmen turned shiftless and hungry upon the world because their farms were taken from them to be changed to sheep-ranges. they begged, and were whipped at the cart's tail, naked from the girdle up, till the blood ran; then set in the stocks to be pelted; they begged again, were whipped again, and deprived of an ear; they begged a third timepoor devils, what else could they do?and were branded on the cheek with a red-hot iron, then sold for slaves; they ran away, were hunted down, and hanged. 'tis a brief tale, and quickly told. others of us have fared less hardly. stand forth, yokel, burns, and hodgeshow your adornments!' these stood up and stripped away some of their rags, exposing their backs, crisscrossed with ropy old welts left by the lash; one turned up his hair and showed the place where a left ear had once been; another showed a brand upon his shoulderthe letter v and a mutilated ear; the third said: 'i am yokel, once a farmer and prosperous, with loving wife and kidsnow am i somewhat different in estate and calling; and the wife and kids are gone; mayhap they are in heaven, mayhap inin the other placebut the kindly god be thanked, they bide no more in england! my good old blameless mother strove to earn bread by nursing the sick; one of these died, the doctors knew not how, so my mother was burned for a witch, whilst my babes looked on and wailed. english law!up, all with your cups!now all together and with a cheer!drink to the merciful english law that delivered her from the english hell! thank you, mates, one and all. i begged, from house to housei and the wifebearing with us the hungry kidsbut it was a crime to be hungry in englandso they stripped us and lashed us through three towns. drink ye all again to the merciful english law!for its lash drank deep of my mary's blood and its blessed deliverance came quick. she lies there, in the potter's field, safe from all harms. and the kidswell, whilst the law lashed me from town to town, they starved. drink ladsonly a dropa drop to the poor kids, that never did any creature harm. i begged againbegged for a crust, and got the stocks and lost an earsee, here bides the stump; i begged again, and here is the stump of the other to keep me minded of it. and still i begged again, and was sold for a slavehere on my cheek under this stain, if i washed it off, ye might see the red s the branding iron left there! a slave! do ye understand that word! an english slave!that is he that stands before ye. i have run from my master, and when i am foundthe heavy curse of heaven fall on the law of the land that hath commanded it!i shall hang!'*(17) a ringing voice came through the murky air: 'thou shalt not!and this day the end of that law is come!' all turned, and saw the fantastic figure of the little king approaching hurriedly; as it emerged into the light and was clearly revealed, a general explosion of inquiries broke out: 'who is it ? what is it? who art thou, manikin?' the boy stood unconfused in the midst of all those surprised and questioning eyes, and answered with princely dignity: 'i am edward, king of england.' a wild burst of laughter followed, partly of derision and partly of delight in the excellence of the joke. the king was stung. he said sharply: 'ye mannerless vagrants, is this your recognition of the royal boon i have promised?' he said more, with angry voice and excited gesture, but it was lost in a whirlwind of laughter and mocking exclamations. 'john hobbs' made several attempts to make himself heard above the din, and at last succeededsaying: 'mates, he is my son, a dreamer, a fool, and stark madmind him nothe thinketh he is the king.' 'i am the king,' said edward, turning toward him, 'as thou shalt know to thy cost, in good time. thou hast confessed a murderthou shalt swing for it.' 'thou'lt betray me!thou? an i get my hands upon thee-' 'tut-tut!' said the burly ruffler, interposing in time to save the king, and emphasizing this service by knocking hobbs down with his fist, 'hast respect for neither kings nor rufflers? an thou insult my presence so again, i'll hang thee up myself.' then he said to his majesty, 'thou must make no threats against thy mates, lad; and thou must guard thy tongue from saying evil of them elsewhere. be king, if it please thy mad humor, but be not harmful in it. sink the title thou hast uttered'tis treason; we be bad men, in some few trifling ways, but none among us is so base as to be traitor to his king; we be loving and loyal hearts, in that regard. note if i speak truth. now-all together: "long live edward, king of england!"' 'long live edward, king of england!' the response came with such a thunder-gust from the motley crew that the crazy building vibrated to the sound. the little king's face lighted with pleasure for an instant, and he slightly inclined his head and said with grave simplicity: 'i thank you, my good people.' this unexpected result threw the company into convulsions of merriment. when something like quiet was presently come again, the ruffler said, firmly, but with an accent of good nature: 'drop it, boy, 'tis not wise, nor well. humor thy fancy, if thou must, but choose some other title.' a tinker shrieked out a suggestion: 'foo-foo the first, king of the mooncalves!' the title 'took' at once, every throat responded, and a roaring shout sent up, of: 'long live foo-foo the first, king of the mooncalves!' followed by hootings, cat-calls, and peals of laughter. 'hale him forth, and crown him!' 'robe him!' 'scepter him!' 'throne him!' these and twenty other cries broke out at once; and almost before the poor little victim could draw a breath he was crowned with a tin basin, robed in a tattered blanket, throned upon a barrel, and sceptered with tinker's soldering-iron. then all flung themselves upon their knees about him and sent up a chorus of ironical wailings, and mocking supplications, while they swabbed their eyes with their soiled and ragged sleeves and aprons: 'be gracious to us, o sweet king!' 'trample not upon thy beseeching worms, o noble majesty!' 'pity thy slaves, and comfort them with a royal kick!' 'cheer us and warm us with thy gracious rays, o flaming sun of sovereignty!' 'sanctify the ground with the touch of thy foot, that we may eat the dirt and be ennobled!' 'deign to spit upon us, o sire, that our children's children may tell of thy princely condescension, and be proud and happy forever!' but the humorous tinker made the 'hit' of the evening and carried off the honors. kneeling, he pretended to kiss the king's foot, and was indignantly spurned; whereupon he went about begging for a rag to paste over the place upon his face which had been touched by the foot, saying it must be preserved from contact with the vulgar air, and that he should make his fortune by going on the highway and exposing it to view at the rate of a hundred shillings a sight. he made himself so killingly funny that he was the envy and admiration of the whole mangy rabble. tears of shame and indignation stood in the little monarch's eyes; and the thought in his heart was, 'had i offered them a deep wrong they could not be more cruelyet have i proffered naught but to do them a kindnessand it is thus they use me for it!' chapter xviii the prince with the tramps the troop of vagabonds turned out at early dawn, and set forward on their march. there was a lowering sky overhead, sloppy ground under foot, and a winter chill in the air. all gaiety was gone from the company; some were sullen and silent, some were irritable and petulant, none were gentle-humored, all were thirsty. the ruffler put 'jack' in hugo's charge, with some brief instructions, and commanded john canty to keep away from him and let him alone; he also warned hugo not to be too rough with the lad. after a while the weather grew milder, and the clouds lifted somewhat. the troop ceased to shiver, and their spirits began to improve. they grew more and more cheerful, and finally began to chaff each other and insult passengers along the highway. this showed that they were awaking to an appreciation of life and its joys once more. the dread in which their sort was held was apparent in the fact that everybody gave them the road, and took their ribald insolences meekly, without venturing to talk back. they snatched linen from the hedges, occasionally, in full view of the owners, who made no protest, but only seemed grateful that they did not take the hedges, too. by and by they invaded a small farmhouse and made themselves at home while the trembling farmer and his people swept the larder clean to furnish a breakfast for them. they chucked the housewife and her daughters under the chin while receiving the food from their hands, and made coarse jests about them, accompanied with insulting epithets and bursts of horse-laughter. they threw bones and vegetables at the farmer and his sons, kept them dodging all the time, and applauded uproariously when a good hit was made. they ended by buttering the head of one of the daughters who resented some of their familiarities. when they took their leave they threatened to come back and burn the house over the heads of the family if any report of their doings got to the ears of the authorities. about noon, after a long and weary tramp, the gang came to a halt behind a hedge on the outskirts of a considerable village. an hour was allowed for rest, then the crew scattered themselves abroad to enter the village at different points to ply their various trades. 'jack' was sent with hugo. they wandered hither and thither for some time, hugo watching for opportunities to do a stroke of business but finding noneso he finally said: 'i see naught to steal; it is a paltry place. wherefore we will beg.' 'we, forsooth! follow thy tradeit befits thee. but i will not beg.' 'thou'lt not beg!' exclaimed hugo, eying the king with surprise. 'prithee, since when hast thou reformed?' 'what dost thou mean?' 'mean? hast thou not begged the streets of london all thy life?' 'i? thou idiot!' 'spare thy complimentsthy stock will last longer. thy father says thou hast begged all thy days. mayhap he lied. peradventure you will even make so bold as to say he lied,' scoffed hugo. 'him you call my father? yes, he lied.' 'come, play not thy merry game of madman so far, mate; use it for thy amusement, not thy hurt. an i tell him this, he will scorch thee finely for it.' 'save thyself the trouble. i will tell him.' 'i like thy spirit, i do in truth; but i do not admire thy judgment. bone-rackings and bastings be plenty enow in this life, without going out of one's way to invite them. but a truce to these matters; i believe your father. i doubt not he can lie; i doubt not he doth lie, upon occasion, for the best of us do that; but there is no occasion here. a wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught. but come; sith it is thy humor to give over begging, wherewithal shall we busy ourselves? with robbing kitchens?' the king said, impatiently: 'have done with this follyyou weary me!' hugo replied, with temper: 'now harkee, mate; you will not beg, you will not rob; so be it. but i will tell you what you will do. you will play decoy whilst i beg. refuse, an you think you may venture!' the king was about to reply contemptuously, when hugo said, interrupting: 'peace! here comes one with a kindly face. now will i fall down in a fit. when the stranger runs to me, set you up a wail, and fall upon your knees, seeming to weep; then cry out as if all the devils of misery were in your belly, and say, "oh, sir, it is my poor afflicted brother, and we be friendless; o' god's name cast through your merciful eyes one pitiful look upon a sick, forsaken, and most miserable wretch; bestow one little penny out of thy riches upon one smitten of god and ready to perish!"and mind you, keep you on wailing, and abate not till we bilk him of his penny, else shall you rue it.' then immediately hugo began to moan, and groan, and roll his eyes, and reel and totter about; and when the stranger was close at hand, down he sprawled before him, with a shriek, and began to writhe and wallow in the dirt, in seeming agony. 'o dear, o dear!' cried the benevolent stranger. 'oh, poor soul, poor soul, how he doth suffer! therelet me help thee up.' 'o, noble sir, forbear, and god love you for a princely gentlemanbut it giveth me cruel pain to touch me when i am taken so. my brother there will tell your worship how i am racked with anguish when these fits be upon me. a penny, dear sir, a penny, to buy a little food; then leave me to my sorrows.' 'a penny! thou shalt have three, thou hapless creature'and he fumbled in his pocket with nervous haste and got them out. 'there, poor lad, take them, and most welcome. now come hither, my boy, and help me carry thy stricken brother to yon house, where-' 'i am not his brother,' said the king, interrupting. 'what! not his brother?' 'oh, hear him!' groaned hugo, then privately ground his teeth. 'he denies his own brotherand he with one foot in the grave!' 'boy, thou art indeed hard of heart, if this is thy brother. for shame!and he scarce able to move hand or foot. if he is not thy brother, who is he, then?' 'a beggar and a thief! he has got your money and has picked your pocket likewise. an thou wouldst do a healing miracle, lay thy staff over his shoulders and trust providence for the rest.' but hugo did not tarry for the miracle. in a moment he was up and off like the wind, the gentleman following after and raising the hue and cry lustily as he went. the king, breathing deep gratitude to heaven for his own release, fled in the opposite direction and did not slacken his pace until he was out of harm's reach. he took the first road that offered, and soon put the village behind him. he hurried along, as briskly as he could, during several hours, keeping a nervous watch over his shoulder for pursuit; but his fears left him at last, and a grateful sense of security took their place. he recognized now that he was hungry; and also very tired. so he halted at a farmhouse; but when he was about to speak, he was cut short and driven rudely away. his clothes were against him. he wandered on, wounded and indignant, and was resolved to put himself in the way of light treatment no more. but hunger is pride's master; so as the evening drew near, he made an attempt at another farmhouse; but here he fared worse than before; for he was called hard names and was promised arrest as a vagrant except he moved on promptly. the night came on, chilly and overcast; and still the footsore monarch labored slowly on. he was obliged to keep moving, for every time he sat down to rest he was soon penetrated to the bone with the cold. all his sensations and experiences, as he moved through the solemn gloom and the empty vastness of the night, were new and strange to him. at intervals he heard voices approach, pass by, and fade into silence; and as he saw nothing more of the bodies they belonged to than a sort of formless drifting blur, there was something spectral and uncanny about it all that made him shudder. occasionally he caught the twinkle of a lightalways far away, apparentlyalmost in another world; if he heard the tinkle of a sheep's bell, it was vague, distant, indistinct; the muffled lowing of the herds floated to him on the night wind in vanishing cadences, a mournful sound; now and then came the complaining howl of a dog over viewless expanses of field and forest; all sounds were remote; they made the little king feel that all life and activity were far removed from him, and that he stood solitary, companionless, in the center of a measureless solitude. he stumbled along, through the gruesome fascinations of this new experience, startled occasionally by the soft rustling of the dry leaves overhead, so like human whispers they seemed to sound; and by and by he came suddenly upon the freckled light of a tin lantern near at hand. he stepped back into the shadows and waited. the lantern stood by the open door of a barn. the king waited some timethere was no sound, and nobody stirring. he got so cold, standing still, and the hospitable barn looked so enticing, that at last he resolved to risk everything and enter. he started swiftly and stealthily, and just as he was crossing the threshold he heard voices behind him. he darted behind a cask, within the barn, and stooped down. two farm laborers came in, bringing the lantern with them, and fell to work, talking meanwhile. whilst they moved about with the light, the king made good use of his eyes and took the bearings of what seemed to be a good-sized stall at the further end of the place, purposing to grope his way to it when he should be left to himself. he also noted the position of a pile of horse-blankets, midway of the route, with the intent to levy upon them for the service of the crown of england for one night. by and by the men finished and went away, fastening the door behind them and taking the lantern with them. the shivering king made for the blankets, with as good speed as the darkness would allow; gathered them up and then groped his way safely to the stall. of two of the blankets he made a bed, then covered himself with the remaining two. he was a glad monarch now, though the blankets were old and thin, and not quite warm enough; and besides gave out a pungent horsy odor that was almost suffocatingly powerful. although the king was hungry and chilly, he was also so tired and so drowsy that these latter influences soon began to get the advantage of the former, and he presently dozed off into a state of semi-consciousness. then, just as he was on the point of losing himself wholly, he distinctly felt something touch him. he was broad awake in a moment, and gasping for breath. the cold horror of that mysterious touch in the dark almost made his heart stand still. he lay motionless, and listened, scarcely breathing. but nothing stirred, and there was no sound. he continued to listen, and wait, during what seemed a long time, but still nothing stirred, and there was no sound. so he began to drop into a drowse once more at last; and all at once he felt that mysterious touch again! it was a grisly thing, this light touch from this noiseless and invisible presence; it made the boy sick with ghostly fears. what should he do? that was the question; but he did not know how to answer it. should he leave these reasonably comfortable quarters and fly from this inscrutable horror? but fly whither? he could not get out of the barn; and the idea of scurrying blindly hither and thither in the dark, within the captivity of the four walls, with this phantom gliding after him, and visiting him with that soft hideous touch upon cheek or shoulder at every turn, was intolerable. but to stay where he was, and endure this living death all nightwas that better? no. what, then, was there left to do? ah, there was but one course; he knew it wellhe must put out his hand and find that thing! it was easy to think this; but it was hard to brace himself up to try it. three times he stretched his hand a little way out into the dark gingerly; and snatched it suddenly back, with a gaspnot because it had encountered anything, but because he had felt so sure it was just going to. but the fourth time he groped a little further, and his hand lightly swept against something soft and warm. this petrified him nearly with frighthis mind was in such a state that he could imagine the thing to be nothing else than a corpse, newly dead and still warm. he thought he would rather die than touch it again. but he thought this false thought because he did not know the immortal strength of human curiosity. in no long time his hand was tremblingly groping againagainst his judgment, and without his consentbut groping persistently on, just the same. it encountered a bunch of long hair; he shuddered, but followed up the hair and found what seemed to be a warm rope; followed up the rope and found an innocent calf; for the rope was not a rope at all, but the calf's tail. the king was cordially ashamed of himself for having gotten all that fright and misery out of so paltry a matter as a slumbering calf; but he need not have felt so about it, for it was not the calf that frightened him but a dreadful non-existent something which the calf stood for; and any other boy, in those old superstitous times, would have acted and suffered just as he had done. the king was not only delighted to find that the creature was only a calf, but delighted to have the calf's company; for he had been feeling so lonesome and friendless that the company and comradeship of even this humble animal was welcome. and he had been so buffeted, so rudely entreated by his own kind, that it was a real comfort to him to feel that he was at last in the society of a fellow-creature that had at least a soft heart and a gentle spirit, whatever loftier attributes might be lacking. so he resolved to waive rank and make friends with the calf. while stroking its sleek, warm backfor it lay near him and within easy reachit occurred to him that this calf might be utilized in more ways than one. whereupon he rearranged his bed, spreading it down close to the calf; then he cuddled himself up to the calf's back, drew the covers up over himself and his friend, and in a minute or two was as warm and comfortable as he had ever been in the downy couches of the regal palace of westminster. pleasant thoughts came at once; life took on a cheerfuler seeming. he was free of the bonds of servitude and crime, free of the companionship of base and brutal outlaws; he was warm, he was sheltered; in a word, he was happy. the night wind was rising; it swept by in fitful gusts that made the old barn quake and rattle, then its forces died down at intervals, and went moaning and wailing around corners and projectionsbut it was all music to the king, now that he was snug and comfortable; let it blow and rage, let it batter and bang, let it moan and wail, he minded it not, he only enjoyed it. he merely snuggled the closer to his friend, in a luxury of warm contentment, and drifted blissfully out of consciousness into a deep and dreamless sleep that was full of serenity and peace. the distant dogs howled, the melancholy kine complained; and the winds went on raging, whilst furious sheets of rain drove along the roof; but the majesty of england slept on undisturbed, and the calf did the same, it being a simple creature and not easily troubled by storms or embarrassed by sleeping with a king. chapter xix the prince with the peasants when the king awoke in the early morning, he found that a wet but thoughtful rat had crept into the place during the night and made a cozy bed for itself in his bosom. being disturbed now, it scampered away. the boy smiled, and said, 'poor fool, why so fearful? i am as forlorn as thou. 'twould be a shame in me to hurt the helpless, who am myself so helpless. moreover, i owe you thanks for a good omen; for when a king has fallen so low that the very rats do make a bed of him, it surely meaneth that his fortunes be upon the turn, since it is plain he can no lower go.' he got up and stepped out of the stall, and just then he heard the sound of children's voices. the barn door opened and a couple of little girls came in. as soon as they saw him their talking and laughing ceased, and they stopped and stood still, gazing at him with strong curiosity; they presently began to whisper together, then they approached nearer, and stopped again to gaze and whisper. by and by they gathered courage and began to discuss him aloud. one said: 'he hath a comely face.' the other added: 'and pretty hair.' 'but is ill clothed enow.' 'and how starved he looketh.' they came still nearer, sidling shyly around and about him, examining him minutely from all points, as if he were some strange new kind of animal; but warily and watchfully the while, as if they half feared he might be a sort of animal that would bite, upon occasion. finally they halted before him, holding each other's hands for protection, and took a good satisfying stare with their innocent eyes; then one of them plucked up all her courage and inquired with honest directness: 'who art thou, boy?' 'i am the king,' was the grave answer. the children gave a little start, and their eyes spread themselves wide open and remained so during a speechless half-minute. then curiosity broke the silence: 'the king? what king?' 'the king of england.' the children looked at each otherthen at himthen at each other againwonderingly, perplexedlythen one said: 'didst hear him, margery?he saith he is the king. can that be true?' 'how can it be else but true, prissy? would he say a lie? for look you, prissy, an it were not true, it would be a lie. it surely would be. now think on't. for all things that be not true, be liesthou canst make naught else out of it.' it was a good, tight argument, without a leak in it anywhere; and it left prissy's half-doubts not a leg to stand on. she considered a moment, then put the king upon his honor with the simple remark: 'if thou art truly the king, then i believe thee.' 'i am truly the king.' this settled the matter. his majesty's royalty was accepted without further question or discussion, and the two little girls began at once to inquire into how he came to be where he was, and how he came to be so unroyally clad, and whither he was bound, and all about his affairs. it was a mighty relief to him to pour out his troubles where they would not be scoffed at or doubted; so he told his tale with feeling, forgetting even his hunger for the time; and it was received with the deepest and tenderest sympathy by the gentle little maids. but when he got down to his latest experiences and they learned how long he had been without food, they cut him short and hurried him away to the farmhouse to find a breakfast for him. the king was cheerful and happy now, and said to himself, 'when i am come to mine own again, i will always honor little children, remembering how that these trusted me and believed in me in my time of trouble; whilst they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held me for a liar.' the children's mother received the king kindly, and was full of pity; for his forlorn condition and apparently crazed intellect touched her womanly heart. she was a widow, and rather poor; consequently she had seen trouble enough to enable her to feel for the unfortunate. she imagined that the demented boy had wandered away from his friends or keepers; so she tried to find out whence he had come, in order that she might take measures to return him; but all her references to neighbouring towns and villages, and all her inquiries in the same line, went for nothingthe boy's face, and his answers, too, showed that the things she was talking of were not familiar to him. he spoke earnestly and simply about court matters; and broke down, more than once, when speaking of the late king 'his father'; but whenever the conversation changed to baser topics, he lost interest and became silent. the woman was mightily puzzled; but she did not give up. as she proceeded with her cooking, she set herself to contriving devices to surprise the boy into betraying his real secret. she talked about cattlehe showed no concern; then about sheepthe same resultso her guess that he had been a shepherd boy was an error; she talked about mills; and about weavers, tinkers, smiths, trades and tradesmen of all sorts; and about bedlam, and jails, and charitable retreats; but no matter, she was baffled at all points. not altogether, either; for she argued that she had narrowed the thing down to domestic service. yes, she was sure she was on the right track nowhe must have been a house-servant. so she led up to that. but the result was discouraging. the subject of sweeping appeared to weary him; fire-building failed to stir him; scrubbing and scouring awoke no enthusiasm. then the goodwife touched, with a perishing hope, and rather as a matter of form, upon the subject of cooking. to her surprise, and her vast delight, the king's face lighted at once! ah, she had hunted him down at last, she thought; and she was right proud, too, of the devious shrewdness and tact which had accomplished it. her tired tongue got a chance to rest now; for the king's, inspired by gnawing hunger and the fragrant smells that came from the sputtering pots and pans, turned itself loose and delivered itself up to such an eloquent dissertation upon certain toothsome dishes, that within three minutes the woman said to herself, 'of a truth i was righthe hath holpen in a kitchen!' then he broadened his bill of fare, and discussed it with such appreciation and animation, that the goodwife said to herself, 'good lack! how can he know so many dishes, and so fine ones withal? for these belong only upon the tables of the rich and great. ah, now i see! ragged outcast as he is, he must have served in the palace before his reason went astray; yes, he must have helped in the very kitchen of the king himself! i will test him.' full of eagerness to prove her sagacity, she told the king to mind the cooking a momenthinting that he might manufacture and add a dish or two, if he chosethen she went out of the room and gave her children a sign to follow after. the king muttered: 'another english king had a commission like to this, in a bygone timeit is nothing against my dignity to undertake an office which the great alfred stooped to assume. but i will try to better serve my trust than he; for he let the cakes burn.' the intent was good, but the performance was not answerable to it; for this king, like the other one, soon fell into deep thinkings concerning his vast affairs, and the same calamity resultedthe cookery got burned. the woman returned in time to save the breakfast from entire destruction; and she promptly brought the king out of his dreams with a brisk and cordial tongue-lashing. then, seeing how troubled he was over his violated trust, she softened at once and was all goodness and gentleness toward him. the boy made a hearty and satisfying meal, and was greatly refreshed and gladdened by it. it was a meal which was distinguished by this curious feature, that rank was waived on both sides; yet neither recipient of the favor was aware that it had been extended. the goodwife had intended to feed this young tramp with broken victuals in a corner, like any other tramp, or like a dog; but she was so remorseful for the scolding she had given him, that she did what she could to atone for it by allowing him to sit at the family table and eat with his betters, on ostensible terms of equality with them; and the king, on his side, was so remorseful for having broken his trust, after the family had been so kind to him, that he forced himself to atone for it by humbling himself to the family level, instead of requiring the woman and her children to stand and wait upon him while he occupied their table in the solitary state due his birth and dignity. it does us all good to unbend sometimes. this good woman was made happy all the day long by the applauses she got out of herself for her magnanimous condescension to a tramp; and the king was just as self-complacent over his gracious humility toward a humble peasant woman. when breakfast was over, the housewife told the king to wash up the dishes. this command was a staggerer for a moment, and the king came near rebelling; but then he said to himself, 'alfred the great watched the cakes; doubtless he would have washed the dishes, tootherefore will i essay it.' he made a sufficiently poor job of it; and to his surprise, too, for the cleaning of wooden spoons and trenchers had seemed an easy thing to do. it was a tedious and troublesome piece of work, but he finished it at last. he was becoming impatient to get away on his journey now; however he was not to lose this thrifty dame's society so easily. she furnished him some little odds and ends of employment, which he got through with after a fair fashion and with some credit. then she set him and the little girls to paring some winter apples; but he was so awkward at this service that she retired him from it and gave him a butcher-knife to grind. afterward she kept him carding wool until he began to think he had laid the good king alfred about far enough in the shade for the present, in the matter of showy menial heroisms that would read picturesquely in story-books and histories, and so he was half minded to resign. and when, just after the noonday dinner, the goodwife gave him a basket of kittens to drown, he did resign. at least he was just going to resignfor he felt that he must draw the line somewhere, and it seemed to him that to draw it at kitten-drowning was about the right thingwhen there was an interruption. the interruption was john cantywith a peddler's pack on his backand hugo! the king discovered these rascals approaching the front gate before they had had a chance to see him; so he said nothing about drawing the line, but took up his basket of kittens and stepped quietly out the back way, without a word. he left the creatures in an outhouse, and hurried on into a narrow lane at the rear. chapter xx the prince and the hermit the high hedge hid him from the house now; and so, under the impulse of a deadly fright, he let out all his forces and sped toward a wood in the distance. he never looked back until he had almost gained the shelter of the forest; then he turned and descried two figures in the distance. that was sufficient; he did not wait to scan them critically, but hurried on, and never abated his pace till he was far within the twilight depths of the wood. then he stopped; being persuaded that he was now tolerably safe. he listened intently, but the stillness was profound and solemnawful, even, and depressing to the spirits. at wide intervals his straining ear did detect sounds, but they were so remote, and hollow, and mysterious, that they seemed not to be real sounds, but only the moaning and complaining ghosts of departed ones. so the sounds were yet more dreary than the silence which they interrupted. it was his purpose, in the beginning, to stay where he was, the rest of the day; but a chill soon invaded his perspiring body, and he was at last obliged to resume movement in order to get warm. he struck straight through the forest, hoping to pierce to a road presently, but he was disappointed in this. he traveled on and on; but the farther he went, the denser the wood became, apparently. the gloom began to thicken, by and by, and the king realized that the night was coming on. it made him shudder to think of spending it in such an uncanny place; so he tried to hurry faster, but he only made the less speed, for he could not now see well enough to choose his steps judiciously; consequently he kept tripping over roots and tangling himself in vines and briers. and how glad he was when at last he caught the glimmer of a light! he approached it warily, stopping often to look about him and listen. it came from an unglazed window-opening in a little hut. he heard a voice now, and felt a disposition to run and hide; but he changed his mind at once, for his voice was praying, evidently. he glided to the one window of the hut, raised himself on tiptoe, and stole a glance within. the room was small; its floor was the natural earth, beaten hard by use; in a corner was a bed of rushes and a ragged blanket or two; near it was a pail, a cup, a basin, and two or three pots and pans; there was a short bench and a three-legged stool; on the hearth the remains of a fagot fire were smoldering; before a shrine, which was lighted by a single candle, knelt an aged man, and on an old wooden box at his side lay an open book and a human skull. the man was of large, bony frame; his hair and whiskers were very long and snowy white; he was clothed in a robe of sheepskins which reached from his neck to his heels. 'a holy hermit!' said the king to himself; 'now am i indeed fortunate.' the hermit rose from his knees; the king knocked. a deep voice responded: 'enter!but leave sin behind, for the ground whereon thou shalt stand is holy!' the king entered, and paused. the hermit turned a pair of gleaming, unrestful eyes upon him, and said: 'who art thou?' 'i am the king,' came the answer, with placid simplicity. 'welcome, king!' cried the hermit, with enthusiasm. then, bustling about with feverish activity, and constantly saying 'welcome, welcome,' he arranged his bench, seated the king on it, by the hearth, threw some fagots on the fire, and finally fell to pacing the floor, with a nervous stride. 'welcome! many have sought sanctuary here, but they were not worthy, and were turned away. but a king who casts his crown away, and despises the vain splendors of his office, and clothes his body in rags, to devote his life to holiness and the mortification of the fleshhe is worthy, he is welcome!here shall he abide all his days till death come.' the king hastened to interrupt and explain, but the hermit paid no attention to himdid not even hear him apparently, but went right on with his talk, with a raised voice and a growing energy. 'and thou shalt be at peace here. none shall find out thy refuge to disquiet thee with supplications to return to that empty and foolish life which god hath moved thee to abandon. thou shalt pray here; thou shalt study the book; thou shalt meditate upon the follies and delusions of this world, and upon the sublimities of the world to come; thou shalt feed upon crusts and herbs, and scourge thy body with whips daily, to the purifying of thy soul. thou shalt wear a hair shirt next thy skin; thou shalt drink water only; and thou shalt be at peace; yes, wholly at peace; for whoso comes to seek thee shall go his way again baffled; he shall not find thee, he shall not molest thee.' the old man, still pacing back and forth, ceased to speak aloud, and began to mutter. the king seized this opportunity to state his case; and he did it with an eloquence inspired by uneasiness and apprehension. but the hermit went on muttering, and gave no heed. and still muttering, he approached the king and said, impressively: ''sh! i will tell you a secret!' he bent down to impart it, but checked himself, and assumed a listening attitude. after a moment or two he went on tiptoe to the window-opening, put his head out and peered around in the gloaming, then came tiptoeing back again, put his face close down to the king's and whispered: 'i am an archangel!' the king started violently, and said to himself, 'would god i were with the outlaws again; for lo, now am i the prisoner of a madman!' his apprehensions were heightened, and they showed plainly in his face. in a low, excited voice, the hermit continued: 'i see you feel my atmosphere! there's awe in your face! none may be in this atmosphere and not be thus affected; for it is the very atmosphere of heaven. i go thither and return, in the twinkling of an eye. i was made an archangel on this very spot, it is five years ago, by angels sent from heaven to confer that awful dignity. their presence filled this place with an intolerable brightness. and they knelt to me, king! yes, they knelt to me! for i was greater than they. i have walked in the courts of heaven, and held speech with the patriarchs. touch my handbe not afraidtouch it. therenow thou hast touched a hand which has been clasped by abraham, and isaac, and jacob! for i have walked in the golden courts, i have seen the deity face to face!' he paused, to give this speech effect; then his face suddenly changed, and he started to his feet again, saying, with angry energy, 'yes, i am an archangel; a mere archangel!i that might have been pope! it is verily true. i was told it from heaven in a dream, twenty years ago; ah, yes, i was to be pope!and i should have been pope, for heaven had said itbut the king dissolved my religious house, and i, poor obscure unfriended monk, was cast homeless upon the world, robbed of my mighty destiny!' here he began to mumble again, and beat his forehead in futile rage, with his fist; now and then articulating a venomous curse, and now and then a pathetic 'wherefore i am naught but an archangeli that should have been pope!' so he went on for an hour, while the poor little king sat and suffered. then all at once the old man's frenzy departed, and he became all gentleness. his voice softened, he came down out of his clouds, and fell to prattling along so simply and so humanely, that he soon won the king's heart completely. the old devotee moved the boy nearer to the fire and made him comfortable; doctored his small bruises and abrasions with a deft and tender hand; and then set about preparing and cooking a supperchatting pleasantly all the time, and occasionally stroking the lad's cheek or patting his head, in such a gently caressing way that in a little while all the fear and repulsion inspired by the archangel were changed to reverence and affection for the man. this happy state of things continued while the two ate the supper; then, after a prayer before the shrine, the hermit put the boy to bed, in a small adjoining room, tucking him in as snugly and lovingly as a mother might; and so, with a parting caress, left him and sat down by the fire, and began to poke the brands about in an absent and aimless way. presently he paused; then tapped his forehead several times with his fingers, as if trying to recall some thought which had escaped from his mind. apparently he was unsuccessful. now he started quickly up, and entered his guest's room, and said: 'thou art king?' 'yes,' was the response, drowsily uttered. 'what king?' 'of england.' 'of england. then henry is gone!' 'alack, it is so. i am his son.' a black frown settled down upon the hermit's face, and he clenched his bony hands with a vindictive energy. he stood a few moments, breathing fast and swallowing repeatedly, then said in a husky voice: 'dost know it was he that turned us out into the world houseless and homeless?' there was no response. the old man bent down and scanned the boy's reposeful face and listened to his placid breathing. 'he sleepssleeps soundly'; and the frown vanished away and gave place to an expression of evil satisfaction. a smile flitted across the dreaming boy's features. the hermit muttered, 'sohis heart is happy'; and he turned away. he went stealthily about the place, seeking here and there for something; now and then halting to listen, now and then jerking his head around and casting a quick glance toward the bed; and always muttering, always mumbling to himself. at last he found what he seemed to wanta rusty old butcher-knife and a whetstone. then he crept to his place by the fire, sat himself down, and began to whet the knife softly on the stone, still muttering, mumbling, ejaculating. the winds sighed around the lonely place, the mysterious voices of the night floated by out of the distances. the shining eyes of venturesome mice and rats peered out at the old man from cracks and coverts, but he went on with his work, rapt, absorbed, and noted none of these things. at long intervals he drew his thumb along the edge of his knife, and nodded his head with satisfaction. 'it grows sharper,' he said; 'yes, it grows sharper.' he took no note of the flight of time, but worked tranquilly on, entertaining himself with his thoughts, which broke out occasionally in articulate speech: 'his father wrought us evil, he destroyed usand is gone down into the eternal fires! yes, down into the eternal fires! he escaped usbut it was god's will, yes it was god's will, we must not repine. but he hath not escaped the fires! no, he hath not escaped the fires, the consuming, unpitying, remorseless firesand they are everlasting!' and so he wrought; and still wrought; mumblingchuckling a low rasping chuckle at timesand at times breaking again into words: 'it was his father that did it all. i am but an archangelbut for him, i should be pope!' the king stirred. the hermit sprang noiselessly to the bedside, and went down upon his knees, bending over the prostrate form with his knife uplifted. the boy stirred again; his eyes came open for an instant, but there was no speculation in them, they saw nothing; the next moment his tranquil breathing showed that his sleep was sound once more. the hermit watched and listened for a time, keeping his position and scarcely breathing; then he slowly lowered his arm, and presently crept away, saying: 'it is long past midnightit is not best that he should cry out, lest by accident some one be passing.' he glided about his hovel, gathering a rag here, a thong there, and another one yonder; then he returned, and by careful and gentle handling he managed to tie the king's ankles together without waking him. next he essayed to tie the wrists; he made several attempts to cross them, but the boy always drew one hand or the other away, just as the cord was ready to be applied; but at last, when the archangel was almost ready to despair, the boy crossed his hands himself, and the next moment they were bound. now a bandage was passed under the sleeper's chin and brought up over his head and tied fastand so softly, so gradually, and so deftly were the knots drawn together and compacted, that the boy slept peacefully through it all without stirring. chapter xxi hendon to the rescue the old man glided away, stooping, stealthily, catlike, and brought the low bench. he seated himself upon it, half his body in the dim and flickering light, and the other half in shadow; and so, with his craving eyes bent upon the slumbering boy, he kept his patient vigil there, heedless of the drift of time, and softly whetted his knife, and mumbled and chuckled; and in aspect and attitude he resembled nothing so much as a grizzly, monstrous spider, gloating over some hapless insect that lay bound and helpless in his web. after a long while, the old man, who was still gazingyet not seeing, his mind having settled into a dreamy abstractionobserved on a sudden that the boy's eyes were openwide open and staring!staring up in frozen horror at the knife. the smile of a gratified devil crept over the old man's face, and he said, without changing his attitude or occupation: 'son of henry the eighth, hast thou prayed?' the boy struggled helplessly in his bonds; and at the same time forced a smothered sound through his closed jaws, which the hermit chose to interpret as an affirmative answer to his question. 'then pray again. pray the prayer for the dying!' a shudder shook the boy's frame, and his face blenched. then he struggled again to free himselfturning and twisting himself this way and that; tugging frantically, fiercely, desperatelybut uselesslyto burst his fetters; and all the while the old ogre smiled down upon him, and nodded his head, and placidly whetted his knife, mumbling, from time to time, 'the moments are precious, they are few and preciouspray the prayer for the dying!' the boy uttered a despairing groan, and ceased from his struggles, panting. the tears came, then, and trickled, one after the other, down his face; but this piteous sight wrought no softening effect upon the savage old man. the dawn was coming now; the hermit observed it, and spoke up sharply, with a touch of nervous apprehension in his voice: 'i may not indulge this ecstasy longer! the night is already gone. it seems but a momentonly a moment; would it had endured a year! seed of the church's spoiler, close thy perishing eyes, an thou fearest to look upon...' the rest was lost in inarticulate mutterings. the old man sank upon his knees, his knife in his hand, and bent himself over the moaning boy hark! there was a sound of voices near the cabinthe knife dropped from the hermit's hand; he cast a sheepskin over the boy and started up, trembling. the sounds increased, and presently the voices became rough and angry; then came blows, and cries for help; then a clatter of swift footsteps retreating. immediately came a succession of thundering knocks upon the cabin door, followed by: 'hullo-o-o! open! and despatch, in the name of all the devils!' oh, this was the blessedest sound that had ever made music in the king's ears; for it was miles hendon's voice! the hermit, grinding his teeth in impotent rage, moved swiftly out of the bedchamber, closing the door behind him; and straightway the king heard a talk, to this effect, proceeding from the 'chapel': 'homage and greeting, reverend sir! where is the boymy boy?' 'what boy, friend?' 'what boy! lie me no lies, sir priest, play me no deceptions! i am not in the humor for it. near to this place i caught the scoundrels who i judged did steal him from me, and i made them confess; they said he was at large again, and they had tracked him to your door. they showed me his very footprints. now palter no more; for look you, holy sir, an thou produce him notwhere is the boy?' 'oh, good sir, peradventure you mean the ragged regal vagrant that tarried here the night. if such as you take interest in such as he, know, then, that i have sent him of an errand. he will be back anon.' 'how soon? how soon? come, waste not the timecannot i overtake him? how soon will he be back?' 'thou needst not stir; he will return quickly.' 'so be it then. i will try to wait. but stop!you sent him of an errand?you! verily, this is a liehe would not go. he would pull thy old beard, an thou didst offer him such an insolence. thou hast lied, friend; thou hast surely lied! he would not go for thee nor for any man.' 'for any manno; haply not. but i am not a man.' 'what! now o' god's name what art thou, then?' 'it is a secretmark thou reveal it not. i am an archangel!' there was a tremendous ejaculation from miles hendonnot altogether unprofanefollowed by: 'this doth well and truly account for his complaisance! right well i knew he would budge nor hand nor foot in the menial service of any mortal; but lord, even a king must obey when an archangel gives the word o' command! let me'sh! what noise was that?' all this while the king had been yonder, alternately quaking with terror and trembling with hope; and all the while, too, he had thrown all the strength he could into his anguished moanings, constantly expecting them to reach hendon's ear, but always realizing, with bitterness, that they failed, or at least made no impression. so this last remark of his servant came as comes a reviving breath from fresh fields to the dying; and he exerted himself once more, and with all his energy, just as the hermit was saying: 'noise? i heard only the wind.' 'mayhap it was. yes, doubtless that was it. i have been hearing it faintly all thethere it is again! it is not the wind! what an odd sound! come, we will hunt it out!' now, the king's joy was nearly insupportable. his tired lungs did their utmostand hopefully, toobut the sealed jaws and the muffling sheepskin sadly crippled the effort. then the poor fellow's heart sank, to hear the hermit say: 'ah, it came from withouti think from the copse yonder. come, i will lead the way.' the king heard the two pass out talking; heard their footsteps die quickly awaythen he was alone with a boding, brooding, awful silence. it seemed an age till he heard the steps and voices approaching againand this time he heard an added soundthe trampling of hoofs, apparently. then he heard hendon say: 'i will not wait longer. i cannot wait longer. he has lost his way in this thick wood. which direction took he? quickpoint it out to me.' 'hebut wait; i will go with thee.' 'goodgood! why, truly thou art better than thy looks. marry, i do think there's not another archangel with so right a heart as thine. wilt ride? wilt take the wee donkey that's for my boy, or wilt thou fork thy holy legs over this ill-conditioned slave of a mule that i have provided for myself?and had been cheated in, too, had he cost but the indifferent sum of a month's usury on a brass farthing let to a tinker out of work.' 'noride thy mule, and lead thine ass; i am surer on mine own feet, and will walk.' 'then, prithee, mind the little beast for me while i take my life in my hands and make what success i may toward mounting the big one.' then followed a confusion of kicks, cuffs, tramplings and plungings, accompanied by a thunderous intermingling of volleyed curses, and finally a bitter apostrophe to the mule, which must have broken its spirit, for hostilities seemed to cease from that moment. with unutterable misery the fettered little king heard the voices and footsteps fade away and die out. all hope forsook him now for the moment, and a dull despair settled down upon his heart. 'my only friend is deceived and got rid of,' he said; 'the hermit will return and-' he finished with a gasp; and at once fell to struggling so frantically with his bonds again, that he shook off the smothering sheepskin. and now he heard the door open! the sound chilled him to the marrowalready he seemed to feel the knife at his throat. horror made him close his eyes; horror made him open them againand before him stood john canty and hugo! he would have said 'thank god!' if his jaws had been free. a moment or two later his limbs were at liberty, and his captors, each gripping him by an arm, were hurrying him with all speed through the forest. chapter xxii a victim of treachery once more 'king foo-foo the first' was roving with the tramps and outlaws, a butt for their coarse jests and dull-witted railleries, and sometimes the victim of small spitefulnesses at the hands of canty and hugo when the ruffler's back was turned. none but canty and hugo really disliked him. some of the others liked him, and all admired his pluck and spirit. during two or three days, hugo, in whose ward and charge the king was, did what he covertly could to make the boy uncomfortable; and at night, during the customary orgies, he amused the company by putting small indignities upon himalways as if by accident. twice he stepped upon the king's toesaccidentallyand the king, as became his royalty, was contemptuously unconscious of it and indifferent to it; but the third time hugo entertained himself in that way, the king felled him to the ground with a cudgel, to the prodigious delight of the tribe. hugo, consumed with anger and shame, sprang up, seized a cudgel, and came at his small adversary in a fury. instantly a ring was formed around the gladiators, and the betting and cheering began. but poor hugo stood no chance whatever. his frantic and lubberly 'prentice-work found but a poor market for itself when pitted against an arm which had been trained by the first masters of europe in single-stick, quarter-staff, and every art and trick of swordsmanship. the little king stood, alert but at graceful ease, and caught and turned aside the thick rain of blows with a facility and precision which set the motley onlookers wild with admiration; and every now and then, when his practised eye detected an opening, and a lightning-swift rap upon hugo's head followed as a result, the storm of cheers and laughter that swept the place was something wonderful to hear. at the end of fifteen minutes, hugo, all battered, bruised, and the target for a pitiless bombardment of ridicule, slunk from the field; and the unscathed hero of the fight was seized and borne aloft upon the shoulders of the joyous rabble to the place of honor beside the ruffler, where with vast ceremony he was crowned king of the game-cocks; his meaner title being at the same time solemnly canceled and annulled, and a decree of banishment from the gang pronounced against any who should henceforth utter it. all attempts to make the king serviceable to the troop had failed. he had stubbornly refused to act; moreover, he was always trying to escape. he had been thrust into an unwatched kitchen, the first day of his return; he not only came forth empty-handed, but tried to rouse the housemates. he was sent out with a tinker to help him at his work; he would not work; moreover, he threatened the tinker with his own soldering-iron; and finally both hugo and the tinker found their hands full with the mere matter of keeping him from getting away. he delivered the thunders of his royalty upon the heads of all who hampered his liberties or tried to force him to service. he was sent out, in hugo's charge, in company with a slatternly woman and a diseased baby, to beg; but the result was not encouraginghe declined to plead for the mendicants, or be a party to their cause in any way. thus several days went by; and the miseries of this tramping life, and the weariness and sordidness and meanness and vulgarity of it, became gradually and steadily so intolerable to the captive that he began at last to feel that his release from the hermit's knife must prove only a temporary respite from death, at best. but at night, in his dreams, these things were forgotten, and he was on his throne, and master again. this, of course, intensified the sufferings of the awakeningso the mortifications of each succeeding morning of the few that passed between his return to bondage and the combat with hugo, grew bitterer, and harder and harder to bear. the morning after that combat, hugo got up with a heart filled with vengeful purposes against the king. he had two plans in particular. one was to inflict upon the lad what would be, to his proud spirit and 'imagined' royalty, a peculiar humiliation; and if he failed to accomplish this, his other plan was to put a crime of some kind upon the king and then betray him into the implacable clutches of the law. in pursuance of the first plan, he proposed to put a 'clime' upon the king's leg, rightly judging that that would mortify him to the last and perfect degree; and as soon as the clime should operate, he meant to get canty's help, and force the king to expose his leg in the highway and beg for alms. 'clime' was the cant term for a sore, artificially created. to make a clime, the operator made a paste or poultice of unslaked lime, soap, and the rust of old iron, and spread it upon a piece of leather, which was then bound tightly upon the leg. this would presently fret off the skin, and make the flesh raw and angry-looking; blood was then rubbed upon the limb, which, being fully dried, took on a dark and repulsive color. then a bandage of soiled rags was put on in a cleverly careless way which would allow the hideous ulcer to be seen and move the compassion of the passer-by.*(18) hugo got the help of the tinker whom the king had cowed with the soldering-iron; they took the boy out on a tinkering tramp, and as soon as they were out of sight of the camp they threw him down and the tinker held him while hugo bound the poultice tight and fast upon his leg. the king raged and stormed, and promised to hang the two the moment the scepter was in his hand again; but they kept a firm grip upon him and enjoyed his impotent struggling and jeered at his threats. this continued until the poultice began to bite; and in no long time its work would have been perfected, if there had been no interruption. but there was; for about this time the 'slave' who had made the speech denouncing england's laws, appeared on the scene and put an end to the enterprise, and stripped off the poultice and bandage. the king wanted to borrow his deliverer's cudgel and warm the jackets of the two rascals on the spot; but the man said no, it would bring troubleleave the matter till night; the whole, tribe being together, then, the outside world would not venture to interfere or interrupt. he marched the party back to camp and reported the affair to the ruffler, who listened, pondered, and then decided that the king should not be again detailed to beg, since it was plain he was worthy of something higher and betterwherefore, on the spot he promoted him from the mendicant rank and appointed him to steal! hugo was overjoyed. he had already tried to make the king steal, and failed; but there would be no more trouble of that sort now, for, of course, the king would not dream of defying a distinct command delivered directly from headquarters. so he planned a raid for that very afternoon, purposing to get the king in the law's grip in the course of it; and to do it, too, with such ingenious strategy, that it should seem to be accidental and unintentional; for the king of the game-cocks was popular now, and the gang might not deal over-gently with an unpopular member who played so serious a treachery upon him as the delivering him over to the common enemy, the law. very well. all in good time hugo strolled off to a neighboring village with his prey; and the two drifted slowly up and down one street after another, the one watching sharply for a sure chance to achieve his evil purpose, and the other watching as sharply for a chance to dart away and get free of his infamous captivity forever. both threw away some tolerably fair-looking opportunities; for both, in their secret hearts, were resolved to make absolutely sure work this time, and neither meant to allow his fevered desires to seduce him into any venture that had much uncertainty about it. hugo's chance came first. for at last a woman approached who carried a fat package of some sort in a basket. hugo's eyes sparkled with sinful pleasure as he said to himself, 'breath o' my life, an i can but put that upon him, 'tis good-den and god keep thee, king of the game-cocks!' he waited and watchedoutwardly patient, but inwardly consuming with excitementtill the woman had passed by, and the time was ripe; then said, in a low voice; 'tarry here till i come again,' and darted stealthily after the prey. the king's heart was filled with joyhe could make his escape now, if hugo's quest only carried him far enough away. but he was to have no such luck. hugo crept behind the woman, snatched the package, and came running back, wrapping it in an old piece of blanket which he carried on his arm. the hue and cry was raised in a moment by the woman, who knew her loss by the lightening of her burden, although she had not seen the pilfering done. hugo thrust the bundle into the king's hands without halting, saying: 'now speed ye after me with the rest, and cry "stop thief!" but mind ye lead them astray.' the next moment hugo turned a corner and darted down a crooked alleyand in another moment or two he lounged into view again, looking innocent and indifferent, and took up a position behind a post to watch results. the insulted king threw the bundle on the ground; and the blanket fell away from it just as the woman arrived, with an augmenting crowd at her heels; she seized the king's wrist with one hand, snatched up her bundle with the other, and began to pour out a tirade of abuse upon the boy while he struggled, without success, to free himself from her grip. hugo had seen enoughhis enemy was captured and the law would get him nowso he slipped away, jubilant and chuckling and wended campward, framing a judicious version of the matter to give to the ruffler's crew as he strode along. the king continued to struggle in the woman's grasp, and now and then cried out, in vexation: 'unhand me, thou foolish creature; it was not i that bereaved thee of thy paltry goods.' the crowd closed around, threatening the king and calling him names; a brawny blacksmith in leather apron, and sleeves rolled to his elbows, made a reach for him, saying he would trounce him well, for a lesson; but just then a long sword flashed in the air and fell with convincing force upon the man's arm, flat-side down, the fantastic owner of it remarking, pleasantly at the same time: 'marry, good souls, let us proceed gently, not with ill blood and uncharitable words. this is matter for the law's consideration, not private and unofficial handling. loose thy hold from the boy, goodwife.' the blacksmith averaged the stalwart soldier with a glance, then went muttering away, rubbing his arm; the woman released the boy's wrist reluctantly; the crowd eyed the stranger unlovingly, but prudently closed their mouths. the king sprang to his deliverer's side, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes exclaiming: 'thou hast lagged sorely, but thou comest in good season now, sir miles; carve me this rabble to rags!' chapter xxiii the prince a prisoner hendon forced back a smile, and bent down and whispered in the king's ear: 'softly, softly my prince, wag thy tongue warilynay, suffer it not to wag at all. trust in meall shall go well in the end.' then he added, to himself: 'sir miles! bless me, i had totally forgot i was a knight! lord how marvelous a thing it is, the grip his memory doth take upon his quaint and crazy fancies!... an empty and foolish title is mine, and yet it is something to have deserved it, for i think it is more honor to be held worthy to be a specter-knight in his kingdom of dreams and shadows, than to be held base enough to be an earl in some of the real kingdoms of this world.' the crowd fell apart to admit a constable, who approached and was about to lay his hand upon the king's shoulder, when hendon said: 'gently, good friend, withhold your handhe shall go peaceably; i am responsible for that. lead on, we will follow.' the officer led, with the woman and her bundle; miles and the king followed after, with the crowd at their heels. the king was inclined to rebel; but hendon said to him in a low voice: 'reflect, sireyour laws are the wholesome breath of your own royalty; shall their source reject them, yet require the branches to respect them? apparently, one of these laws has been broken; when the king is on his throne again, can it ever grieve him to remember that when he was seemingly a private person he loyally sunk the king in the citizen and submitted to its authority?' 'thou art right; say no more; thou shalt see that whatsoever the king of england requires a subject to suffer under the law, he will himself suffer while he holdeth the station of a subject.' when the woman was called upon to testify before the justice of the peace, she swore that the small prisoner at the bar was the person who had committed the theft; there was none able to show the contrary, so the king stood convicted. the bundle was now unrolled, and when the contents proved to be a plump little dressed pig, the judge looked troubled, while hendon turned pale, and his body was thrilled with an electric shiver of dismay; but the king remained unmoved, protected by his ignorance. the judge meditated, during an ominous pause, then turned to the woman, with question: 'what dost thou hold this property to be worth?' the woman courtesied and replied: 'three shillings and eightpence, your worshipi could not abate a penny and set forth the value honestly.' the justice glanced around uncomfortably upon the crowd, then nodded to the constable and said: 'clear the court and close the doors.' it was done. none remained but the two officials, the accused, the accuser, and miles hendon. this latter was rigid and colorless, and on his forehead big drops of cold sweat gathered, broke and blended together, and trickled down his face. the judge turned to the woman again, and said, in a compassionate voice: ''tis a poor ignorant lad, and mayhap was driven hard by hunger, for these be grievous times for the unfortunate; mark you, he hath not an evil facebut when hunger drivethgood woman! dost know that when one steals a thing above the value of thirteen pence ha'penny the law saith he shall hang for it?' the little king started, wide-eyed with consternation, but controlled himself and held his peace; but not so the woman. she sprang to her feet, shaking with fright and cried out: 'oh, good lack, what have i done! god-a-mercy, i would not hang the poor thing for the whole world! ah, save me from this, your worshipwhat shall i do, what can i do?' the justice maintained his judicial composure, and simply said: 'doubtless it is allowable to revise the value, since it is not yet writ upon the record.' 'then in god's name call the pig eightpence, and heaven bless the day that freed my conscience of this awesome thing!' miles hendon forgot all decorum in his delight; and surprised the king and wounded his dignity by throwing his arms around him and hugging him. the woman made her grateful adieux and started away with her pig; and when the constable opened the door for her, he followed her out into the narrow hall. the justice proceeded to write in his record-book. hendon, always alert, thought he would like to know why the officer followed the woman out; so he slipped softly into the dusky hall and listened. he heard a conversation to this effect: 'it is a fat pig, and promises good eating; i will buy it of thee; here is the eightpence.' 'eightpence, indeed! thou'lt do no such thing. it cost me three shillings and eightpence, good honest coin of the last reign, that old harry that's just dead ne'er touched nor tampered with. a fig for thy eightpence!' 'stands the wind in that quarter? thou wast under oath, and so swore falsely when thou saidst the value was but eightpence. come straightway back with me before his worship, and answer for the crime!and then the lad will hang.' 'there, there, dear heart, say no more, i am content. give me the eightpence, and hold thy peace about the matter.' the woman went off crying; hendon slipped back into the courtroom, and the constable presently followed, after hiding his prize in some convenient place. the justice wrote a while longer, then read the king a wise and kindly lecture, and sentenced him to a short imprisonment in the common jail, to be followed by a public flogging. the astounded king opened his mouth and was probably going to order the good judge to be beheaded on the spot; but he caught a warning sign from hendon, and succeeded in closing his mouth again before he lost anything out of it. hendon took him by the hand, now made reverence to the justice, and the two departed in the wake of the constable toward the jail. the moment the street was reached, the inflamed monarch halted, snatched away his hand, and exclaimed: 'idiot, dost imagine i will enter a common jail alive?' hendon bent down and said, somewhat sharply: 'will you trust in me? peace! and forbear to worsen our chances with dangerous speech. what god wills, will happen; thou canst not hurry it, thou canst not alter it; therefore wait; and be patient'twill be time enow to rail or rejoice when what is to happen has happened.'*(19) chapter xxiv the escape the short winter day was nearly ended. the streets were deserted, save for a few random stragglers, and these hurried straight along, with the intent look of people who were only anxious to accomplish their errands as quickly as possible and then snugly house themselves from the rising wind and the gathering twilight. they looked neither to the right nor to the left; they paid no attention to our party, they did not even seem to see them. edward the sixth wondered if the spectacle of a king on his way to jail had ever encountered such marvelous indifference before. by and by the constable arrived at a deserted market-square and proceeded to cross it. when he had reached the middle of it, hendon laid his hand upon his arm, and said in a low voice: 'bide a moment, good sir, there is none in hearing, and i would say a word to thee.' 'my duty forbids it, sir; prithee, hinder me not, the night comes on.' 'stay, nevertheless, for the matter concerns thee nearly. turn thy back moment and seem not to see; let this poor lad escape.' 'this to me, sir! i arrest thee in-' 'nay, be not too hasty. see thou be careful and commit no foolish error'then he shut his voice down to a whisper, and said in the man's ear'the pig thou hast purchased for eightpence may cost thee thy neck, man!' the poor constable, taken by surprise, was speechless at first, then found his tongue and fell to blustering and threatening; but hendon was tranquil, and waited with patience till his breath was spent; then said: 'i have a liking to thee, friend, and would not willingly see thee come to harm. observe, i heard it allevery word. i will prove it to thee.' then he repeated the conversation which the officer and the woman had had together in the hall, word for word, and ended with: 'therehave i set it forth correctly? should not i be able to set it forth correctly before the judge, if occasion required?' the man was dumb with fear and distress for a moment; then he rallied and said with forced lightness: ''tis making a mighty matter indeed, out of a jest; i but plagued the woman for mine amusement.' 'kept you the woman's pig for amusement?' the man answered sharply: 'naught else, good siri tell thee 'twas but a jest.' 'i do begin to believe thee,' said hendon, with a perplexing mixture of mockery and half-conviction in his tone; 'tarry thou here a moment whilst i run and ask his worshipfor nathless, he being a man experienced in law, in jests, in-' he was moving away, still talking; the constable hesitated, fidgeted, spat an oath or two, then cried out: 'hold, hold, good sirprithee, wait a littlethe judge! why man, he hath no more sympathy with a jest than hath a dead corpse!come, and we will speak further. ods body! i seem to be in evil caseand all for an innocent and thoughtless pleasantry. i am a man of family; and my wife and little oneslist to reason, good your worship; what wouldst thou of me?' 'only that thou be blind and dumb and paralytic whilst one may count a hundred thousandcounting slowly,' said hendon, with the expression of a man who asks but a reasonable favor, and that a very little one. 'it is my destruction!' said the constable despairingly. 'ah, be reasonable, good sir; only look at this matter, on all its sides, and see how mere a jest it ishow manifestly and how plainly it is so. and even if one granted it were not a jest, it is a fault so small that e'en the grimmest penalty it could call forth would be but a rebuke and warning from the judge's lips.' hendon replied with a solemnity which chilled the air about him: 'this jest of thine hath a name in lawwot you what it is?' 'i knew it not! peradventure i have been unwise. i never dreamed it had a nameah, sweet heaven, i thought it was original.' 'yes, it hath a name. in the law this crime is called non compos mentis lex talionis sic transit gloria mundi.' 'ah, my god!' 'and the penalty is death!' 'god be merciful to me, a sinner!' 'by advantage taken of one in fault, in dire peril, and at thy mercy, thou hast seized goods worth above thirteen pence ha'penny, paying but a trifle for the same; and this, in the eye of the law, is constructive barratry, misprision of treason, malfeasance in office, ad hominem expurgatis in statu quoand the penalty is death by the halter, without ransom, commutation, or benefit of clergy.' 'bear me up, bear me up, sweet sir, my legs do fail me! be thou mercifulspare me this doom, and i will turn my back and see naught that shall happen.' 'good! now thou'rt wise and reasonable. and thou'lt restore the pig?' 'i will, i will, indeednor ever touch another, though heaven send it and archangel fetch it. goi am blind for thy sakei see nothing. i will say thou didst break in and wrest the prisoner from my hands by force. it is but a crazy, ancient doori will batter it down myself betwixt midnight and the morning.' 'do it, good soul, no harm will come of it; the judge hath a loving charity for this poor lad, and will shed no tears and break no jailer's bones for his escape.' chapter xxv hendon hall as soon as hendon and the king were out of sight of the constable, his majesty was instructed to hurry to a certain place outside the town, and wait there, whilst hendon should go to the inn and settle his account. half an hour later the two friends were blithely jogging eastward on hendon's sorry steeds. the king was warm and comfortable now, for he had cast his rags and clothed himself in the second-hand suit which hendon had bought on london bridge. hendon wished to guard against over-fatiguing the boy; he judged that hard journeys, irregular meals, and illiberal measures of sleep would be bad for his crazed mind, while rest, regularity, and moderate exercise would be pretty sure to hasten its cure; he longed to see the stricken intellect made well again and its diseased visions driven out of the tormented little head; therefore he resolved to move by easy stages toward the home whence he had so long been banished, instead of obeying the impulse of his impatience and hurrying along night and day. when he and the king had journeyed about ten miles, they reached a considerable village, and halted there for the night, at a good inn. the former relations were resumed; hendon stood behind the king's chair while he dined, and waited upon him; undressed him when he was ready for bed; then took the floor for his own quarters, and slept athwart the door, rolled up in a blanket. the next day, and the next day after, they jogged lazily along talking over the adventures they had met since their separation, and mightily enjoying each other's narratives. hendon detailed all his wide wanderings in search of the king, and described how the archangel had led him a fool's journey all over the forest, and taken him back to the hut finally, when he found he could not get rid of him. thenhe saidthe old man went into the bed-chamber and came staggering back looking broken-hearted, and saying he had expected to find that the boy had returned and lain down in there to rest, but it was not so. hendon had waited at the hut all day; hope of the king's return died out then, and he departed upon the quest again. 'and old sanctum sanctorum was truly sorry your highness came not back,' said hendon; 'i saw it in his face.' 'marry, i will never doubt that!' said the kingand then told his own story; after which hendon was sorry he had not destroyed the archangel. during the last day of the trip, hendon's spirits were soaring. his tongue ran constantly. he talked about his old father, and his brother arthur, and told of many things which illustrated their high and generous characters; he went into loving frenzies over his edith, and was so glad-hearted that he was even able to say some gentle and brotherly things about hugh. he dwelt a deal on the coming meeting at hendon hall; what a surprise it would be to everybody, and what an outburst of thanksgiving and delight there would be. it was a fair region, dotted with cottages and orchards, and the road led through broad pasture-lands whose receding expanses, marked with gentle elevations and depressions, suggested the swelling and subsiding undulations of the sea. in the afternoon the returning prodigal made constant deflections from his course to see if by ascending some hillock he might not pierce the distance and catch a glimpse of his home. at last he was successful, and cried out excitedly: 'there is the village, my prince, and there is the hall close by! you may see the towers from here; and that wood therethat is my father's park. ah, now thou'lt know what state and grandeur be! a house with seventy roomsthink of that!and seven and twenty servants! a brave lodging for such as we, is it not so? come, let us speedmy impatience will not brook further delay.' all possible hurry was made; still, it was after three o'clock before the village was reached. the travelers scampered through it, hendon's tongue going all the time. 'here is the churchcovered with the same ivynone gone, none added.' 'yonder is the inn, the old red lionand yonder is the market-place.' 'here is the maypole, and here the pumpnothing is altered; nothing but the people, at any rate; ten years make a change in people; some of these i seem to know, but none know me.' so his chat ran on. the end of the village was soon reached; then the travelers struck into a crooked, narrow road, walled in with tall hedges, and hurried briskly along it for a half-mile, then passed into a vast flower-garden through an imposing gateway whose huge stone pillars bore sculptured armorial devices. a noble mansion was before them. 'welcome to hendon hall, my king!' exclaimed miles. 'ah, 'tis a great day! my father and my brother and the lady edith will be so mad with joy that they will have eyes and tongue for none but me in the first transports of the meeting, and so thou'lt seem but coldly welcomedbut mind it not; 'twill soon seem otherwise; for when i say thou art my ward, and tell them how costly is my love for thee, thou'lt see them take thee to their breasts for miles hendon's sake, and make their house and hearts thy home forever after!' the next moment hendon sprang to the ground before the great door, helped the king down, then took him by the hand and rushed within. a few steps brought him to a spacious apartment; he entered, seated the king with more hurry than ceremony, then ran toward a young man who sat at a writing-table in front of a generous fire of logs. 'embrace me, hugh,' he cried, 'and say thou'rt glad i am come again! and call our father, for home is not home till i shall touch his hand, and see his face, and hear his voice once more!' but hugh only drew back, after betraying a momentary surprise, and bent a grave stare upon the intrudera stare which indicated somewhat of offended dignity at first, then changed, in response to some inward thought or purpose, to an expression of marveling curiosity, mixed with a real or assumed compassion. presently he said, in a mild voice: 'thy wits seem touched, poor stranger; doubtless thou hast suffered privations and rude buffetings at the world's hands; thy looks and dress betoken it. whom dost thou take me to be?' 'take thee? prithee, for whom else than whom thou art? i take thee to be hugh hendon,' said miles, sharply. the other continued, in the same soft tone: 'and whom dost thou imagine thyself to be?' 'imagination hath naught to do with it! dost thou pretend thou knowest me not for thy brother miles hendon?' an expression of pleased surprise flitted across hugh's face, and he exclaimed: 'what! thou art not jesting! can the dead come to life? god be praised if it be so! our poor lost boy restored to our arms after all these cruel years! ah, it seems too good to be true, it is too good to be truei charge thee, have pity, do not trifle with me! quickcome to the lightlet me scan thee well!' he seized miles by the arm, dragged him to the window, and began to devour him from head to foot with his eyes, turning him this way and that, and stepping briskly around him and about him to prove him from all points of view; whilst the returned prodigal, all aglow with gladness, smiled, laughed, and kept nodding his head and saying: 'go on, brother, go on, and fear not; thou'lt find nor limb nor feature that cannot bide the test. scour and scan me to thy content, my dear old hughi am indeed thy old miles, thy same old miles, thy lost brother, is't not so? ah, 'tis a great dayi said 'twas a great day! give me thy hand, give me thy cheeklord, i am like to die of very joy!' he was about to throw himself upon his brother; but hugh put up his hand in dissent, then dropped his chin mournfully upon his breast, saying with emotion: 'ah, god of his mercy give me strength to bear this grievous disappointment!' miles, amazed, could not speak for a moment; then he found his tongue, and cried out: 'what disappointment? am i not thy brother?' hugh shook his head sadly, and said: 'i pray heaven it may prove so, and that other eyes may find the resemblances that are hid from mine. alack, i fear me the letter spoke but too truly.' 'what letter?' 'one that came from oversea, some six or seven years ago. it said my brother died in battle.' 'it was a lie! call thy fatherhe will know me.' 'one may not call the dead.' 'dead?' miles's voice was subdued, and his lips trembled. 'my father dead!oh, this is heavy news. half my new joy is withered now. prithee, let me see my brother arthurhe will know me; he will know me and console me.' 'he, also, is dead.' 'god be merciful to me, a stricken man! goneboth gonethe worthy taken and the worthless spared in me! ah! i crave your mercy!do not say the lady edith-' 'is dead? no, she lives.' 'then god be praised, my joy is whole again! speed thee, brotherlet her come to me! an she say i am not myselfbut she will not; no, no, she will know me, i were a fool to doubt it. bring herbring the old servants; they, too, will know me.' 'all are gone but fivepeter, halsey, david, bernard, and margaret.' so saying, hugh left the room. miles stood musing awhile, then began to walk the floor, muttering: 'the five arch villains have survived the two-and-twenty leal and honest'tis an odd thing.' he continued walking back and forth, muttering to himself; he had forgotten the king entirely. by and by his majesty said gravely, and with a touch of genuine compassion, though the words themselves were capable of being interpreted ironically: 'mind not thy mischance, good man; there be others in the world whose identity is denied, and whose claims are derided. thou hast company.' 'ah, my king,' cried hendon, coloring slightly, 'do not thou condemn mewait, and thou shalt see. i am no impostorshe will say it; you shall hear it from the sweetest lips in england. i an impostor? why i know this old hall, these pictures of my ancestors, and all these things that are about us, as a child knoweth its own nursery. here was i born and bred, my lord; i speak the truth; i would not deceive thee; and should none else believe, i pray thee do not thou doubt mei could not bear it.' 'i do not doubt thee,' said the king, with a childlike simplicity and faith. 'i thank thee out of my heart!' exclaimed hendon, with a fervency which showed that he was touched. the king added, with the same gentle simplicity: 'dost thou doubt me?' a guilty confusion seized upon hendon, and he was grateful that the door opened to admit hugh, at that moment, and saved him the necessity of replying. a beautiful lady, richly clothed, followed hugh, and after her came several liveried servants. the lady walked slowly, with her head bowed and her eyes fixed upon the floor. the face was unspeakably sad. miles hendon sprang forward, crying out: 'oh, my edith, my darling-' but hugh waved him back, gravely, and said to the lady: 'look upon him. do you know him?' at the sound of miles's voice the woman had started slightly, and her cheeks had flushed; she was trembling now. she stood still, during an impressive pause of several moments; then slowly lifted up her head and looked into hendon's eyes with a stony and frightened gaze; the blood sank out of her face, drop by drop, till nothing remained but the gray pallor of death; then she said, in a voice as dead as the face, 'i know him not!' and turned, with a moan and stifled sob, and tottered out of the room. miles hendon sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. after a pause, his brother said to the servants: 'you have observed him. do you know him?' they shook their heads; then the master said: 'the servants know you not, sir. i fear there is some mistake. you have seen that my wife knew you not.' 'thy wife!' in an instant hugh was pinned to the wall, with an iron grip about his throat. 'oh, thou fox-hearted slave, i see it all! thou'st writ the lying letter thyself, and my stolen bride and goods are its fruit. therenow get thee gone, lest i shame mine honorable soldiership with the slaying of so pitiful a manikin!' hugh, red-faced and almost suffocated, reeled to the nearest chair, and commanded the servants to seize and bind the murderous stranger. they hesitated, and one of them said: 'he is armed, sir hugh, and we are weaponless.' 'armed? what of it, and ye so many? upon him, i say!' but miles warned them to be careful what they did, and added: 'ye know me of oldi have not changed; come oh, an it like you.' this reminder did not hearten the servants much; they still held back. 'then go, ye paltry cowards, and arm yourselves and guard the doors, while i send one to fetch the watch,' said hugh. he turned, at the threshold, and said to miles, 'you'll find it to your advantage to offend not with useless endeavours at escape.' 'escape? spare thyself discomfort, an that is all that troubles thee. for miles hendon is master of hendon hall and all its belongings. he will remaindoubt it not.' chapter xxvi disowned the king sat musing a few moments, then looked up and said: ''tis strangemost strange. i cannot account for it.' 'no, it is not strange, my liege. i know him, and this conduct is but natural. he was a rascal from his birth.' 'oh, i spake not of him, sir miles.' 'not of him? then of what? what is it that is strange?' 'that the king is not missed.' 'how? which? i doubt i do not understand.' 'indeed! doth it not strike you as being passing strange that the land is not filled with couriers and proclamations describing my person and making search for me? is it no matter for commotion and distress that the head of the state is gone?that i am vanished away and lost?' 'most true, my king, i had forgot.' then hendon sighed, and muttered to himself. 'poor ruined mindstill busy with its pathetic dream.' 'but i have a plan that shall right us both. i will write a paper, in three tongueslatin, greek, and englishand thou shall haste away with it to london in the morning. give it to none but my uncle, the lord hertford; when he shall see it, he will know and say i wrote it. then he will send for me.' 'might it not be best, my prince, that we wait here until i prove myself and make my rights secure to my domains? i should be so much the better able then to-' the king interrupted him imperiously: 'peace! what are thy paltry domains, thy trivial interests, contrasted with matters which concern the weal of a nation and the integrity of a throne!' then he added, in a gentle voice, as if he were sorry for his severity, 'obey and have no fear; i will right thee, i will make thee wholeyes, more than whole. i shall remember, and requite.' so saying, he took the pen, and set himself to work. hendon contemplated him lovingly awhile, then said to himself: 'an it were dark, i should think it was a king that spoke; there's no denying it, when the humor's upon him he doth thunder and lighten like your true kingnow where got he that trick? see him scribble and scratch away contentedly at his meaningless pot-hooks, fancying them to be latin and greekand except my wit shall serve me with a lucky device for diverting him from his purpose, i shall be forced to pretend to post away to-morrow on this wild errand which he hath invented for me.' the next moment sir miles's thoughts had gone back to the recent episode. so absorbed was he in his musings, that when the king presently handed him the paper which he had been writing, he received it and pocketed it without being conscious of the act. 'how marvelous strange she acted,' he muttered. 'i think she knew meand i think she did not know me. these opinions do conflict, i perceive it plainly; i cannot reconcile them, neither can i, by argument, dismiss either of the two, or even persuade one to outweigh the other. the matter standeth simply thus: she must have known my face, my figure, my voice, for how could it be otherwise? yet she said she knew me not, and that is proof perfect, for she cannot lie. but stopi think i begin to see. peradventure he hath influenced hercommanded her-compelled her to lie. that is the solution! the riddle is unriddled. she seemed dead with fearyes, she was under his compulsion. i will seek her; i will find her; now that he is away, she will speak her true mind. she will remember the old times when we were little playfellows together, and this will soften her heart, and she will no more betray me, but will confess me. there is no treacherous blood in herno, she was always honest and true. she has loved me in those old daysthis is my security; for whom one has loved, one cannot betray.' he stepped eagerly toward the door; at that moment it opened, and the lady edith entered. she was very pale, but she walked with a firm step, and her carriage was full of grace and gentle dignity. her face was as sad as before. miles sprang forward, with a happy confidence, to meet her, but she checked him with a hardly perceptible gesture, and he stopped where he was. she seated herself, and asked him to do likewise. thus simply did she take the sense of old-comradeship out of him, and transform him into a stranger and a guest. the surprise of it, the bewildering unexpectedness of it, made him begin to question, for a moment, if he was the person he was pretending to be, after all. the lady edith said: 'sir, i have come to warn you. the mad cannot be persuaded out of their delusions, perchance; but doubtless they may be persuaded to avoid perils. i think this dream of yours hath the seeming of honest truth to you, and therefore is not criminalbut do not tarry here with it; for here it is dangerous.' she looked steadily into miles's face a moment, then added, impressively, 'it is the more dangerous for that you are much like what our lost lad must have grown to be, if he had lived.' 'heavens, madam, but i am he!' 'i truly think you think it, sir. i question not your honesty in thati but warn you, that is all. my husband is master in this region; his power hath hardly any limit; the people prosper or starve, as he wills. if you resembled not the man whom you profess to be, my husband might bid you pleasure yourself with your dream in peace; but trust me, i know him well, i know what he will do; he will say to all that you are but a mad impostor, and straightway all will echo him.' she bent upon miles that same steady look once more, and added: 'if you were miles hendon, and he knew it and all the region knew itconsider what i am saying, weigh it wellyou would stand in the same peril, your punishment would be no less sure; he would deny you and denounce you, and none would be bold enough to give you countenance.' 'most truly i believe it,' said miles, bitterly. 'the power that can command one lifelong friend to betray and disown another, and be obeyed, may well look to be obeyed in quarters where bread and life are on the stake and no cobweb ties of loyalty and honor are concerned.' a faint tinge appeared for a moment in the lady's cheek, and she dropped her eyes to the floor; but her voice betrayed no emotion when she proceeded: 'i have warned you, i must still warn you, to go hence. this man will destroy you else. he is a tyrant who knows no pity. i, who am his fettered slave, know this. poor miles, and arthur, and my dear guardian, sir richard, are free of him, and at restbetter that you were with them than that you bide here in the clutches of this miscreant. your pretensions are a menace to his title and possessions; you have assaulted him in his own houseyou are ruined if you stay. godo not hesitate. if you lack money, take this purse, i beg of you, and bribe the servants to let you pass. oh, be warned, poor soul, and escape while you may.' miles declined the purse with a gesture, and rose up and stood before her. 'grant me one thing,' he said. 'let your eyes rest upon mine, so that i may see if they be steady. therenow answer me. am i miles hendon?' 'no. i know you not.' 'swear it!' the answer was low, but distinct: 'i swear.' 'oh, this passes belief!' 'fly! why will you waste the precious time? fly and save yourself.' at that moment the officers burst into the room and a violent struggle began; but hendon was soon overpowered and dragged away. the king was taken also, and both were bound and led to prison. chapter xxvii in prison the cells were all crowded; so the two friends were chained in a large room where persons charged with trifling offenses were commonly kept. they had company, for there were some twenty manacled or fettered prisoners here, of both sexes and of varying agesan obscene and noisy gang. the king chafed bitterly over the stupendous indignity thus put upon his royalty, but hendon was moody and taciturn. he was pretty thoroughly bewildered. he had come home, a jubilant prodigal, expecting to find everybody wild with joy over his return; and instead had got the cold shoulder and a jail. the promise and the fulfilment differed so widely, that the effect was stunning; he could not decide whether it was most tragic or most grotesque. he felt much as a man might who had danced blithely out to enjoy a rainbow, and got struck by lightning. but gradually his confused and tormenting thoughts settled down into some sort of order, and then his mind centered itself upon edith. he turned her conduct over, and examined it in all lights, but he could not make anything satisfactory out of it. did she know him?or didn't she know him? it was a perplexing puzzle, and occupied him a long time; but he ended, finally, with the conviction that she did know him, and had repudiated him for interested reasons. he wanted to load her name with curses now; but this name had so long been sacred to him that he found he could not bring his tongue to profane it. wrapped in prison blankets of a soiled and tattered condition, hendon and the king passed a troubled night. for a bribe the jailer had furnished liquor to some of the prisoners; singing of ribald songs, fighting, shouting, and carousing, was the natural consequence. at last, awhile after midnight, a man attacked a woman and nearly killed her by beating her over the head with his manacles before the jailer could come to the rescue. the jailer restored peace by giving the man a sound clubbing about the head and shouldersthen the carousing ceased; and after that, all had an opportunity to sleep who did not mind the annoyance of the moanings and groanings of the two wounded people. during the ensuing week, the days and nights were of a monotonous sameness, as to events; men whose faces hendon remembered more or less distinctly came, by day, to gaze at the 'impostor' and repudiate and insult him; and by night the carousing and brawling went on, with symmetrical regularity. however, there was a change of incident at last. the jailer brought in an old man, and said to him: 'the villain is in this roomcast thy old eyes about and see if thou canst say which is he.' hendon glanced up, and experienced a pleasant sensation for the first time since he had been in the jail. he said to himself, 'this is blake andrews, a servant all his life in my father's familya good honest soul, with a right heart in his breast. that is, formerly. but none are true now; all are liars. this man will know meand will deny me, too, like the rest.' the old man gazed around the room, glanced at each face in turn, and finally said: 'i see none here but paltry knaves, scum o' the streets. which is he?' the jailer laughed. 'here,' he said; 'scan this big animal, and grant me an opinion.' the old man approached, and looked hendon over, long and earnestly, then shook his head and said: 'marry, this is no hendonnor ever was!' 'right! thy old eyes are sound yet. an i were sir hugh, i would take the shabby carle and-' the jailer finished by lifting himself a-tiptoe with an imaginary halter, at the same time making a gurgling noise in his throat suggestive of suffocation. the old man said, vindictively: 'let him bless god an he fare no worse. an i had the handling o' the villain, he should roast, or i am no true man!' the jailer laughed a pleasant hyena laugh, and said: 'give him a piece of thy mind, old manthey all do it. thou'lt find it good diversion.' then he sauntered toward his anteroom and disappeared. the old man dropped upon his knees and whispered: 'god be thanked, thou'rt come again, my master! i believed thou wert dead these seven years, and lo, here thou art alive! i knew thee the moment i saw thee; and main hard work it was to keep a stony countenance and seem to see none here but tuppenny knaves and rubbish o' the streets. i am old and poor, sir miles; but say the word and i will go forth and proclaim the truth though i be strangled for it.' 'no,' said hendon, 'thou shalt not. it would ruin thee, and yet help but little in my cause. but i thank thee; for thou hast given me back somewhat of my lost faith in my kind.' the old servant became very valuable to hendon and the king; for he dropped in several times a day to 'abuse' the former, and always smuggled in a few delicacies to help out the prison bill of fare; he also furnished the current news. hendon reserved the dainties for the king; without them his majesty might not have survived, for he was not able to eat the coarse and wretched food provided by the jailer. andrews was obliged to confine himself to brief visits, in order to avoid suspicion; but he managed to impart a fair degree of information each timeinformation delivered in a low voice, for hendon's benefit, and interlarded with insulting epithets delivered in a louder voice, for the benefit of other hearers. so, little by little, the story of the family came out. arthur had been dead six years. this loss, with the absence of news from hendon, impaired his father's health; he believed he was going to die, and he wished to see hugh and edith settled in life before he passed away; but edith begged hard for delay, hoping for miles's return; then the letter came which brought the news of miles's death; the shock prostrated sir richard; he believed his end was very near, and he and hugh insisted upon the marriage; edith begged for and obtained a month's respite; then another, and finally a third; the marriage then took place, by the death-bed of sir richard. it had not proved a happy one. it was whispered about the country that shortly after the nuptials the bride found among her husband's papers several rough and incomplete drafts of the fatal letter, and had accused him of precipitating the marriageand sir richard's death, tooby a wicked forgery. tales of cruelty to the lady edith and the servants were to be heard on all hands; and since the father's death sir hugh had thrown off all soft disguises and become a pitiless master toward all who in any way depended upon him and his domains for bread. there was a bit of andrews's gossip which the king listened to with a lively interest: 'there is rumor that the king is mad. but in charity forbear to say i mentioned it, for 'tis death to speak of it, they say.' his majesty glared at the old man and said: 'the king is not mad, good manand thou'lt find it to thy advantage to busy thyself with matters that nearer concern thee than this seditious prattle.' 'what doth the lad mean?' said andrews, surprised at this brisk assault from such an unexpected quarter. hendon gave him a sign, and he did not pursue his question, but went on with his budget: 'the late king is to be buried at windsor in a day or twothe sixteenth of the monthand the new king will be crowned at westminster the twentieth.' 'methinks they must needs find him first,' muttered his majesty; then added, confidently, 'but they will look to thatand so also shall i.' 'in the name of-' but the old man got no furthera warning sign from hendon checked his remark. he resumed the thread of his gossip. 'sir hugh goeth to the coronationand with grand hopes. he confidently looketh to come back a peer, for he is high in favor with the lord protector.' 'what lord protector?' asked his majesty. 'his grace the duke of somerset.' 'what duke of somerset?' 'marry, there is but oneseymour, earl of hertford.' the king asked sharply: 'since when is he a duke, and lord protector?' 'since the last day of january.' 'and, prithee, who made him so?' 'himself and the great councilwith the help of the king.' his majesty started violently. 'the king!' he cried. 'what king, good sir?' 'what king, indeed! (god-a-mercy, what aileth the boy?) sith we have but one, 'tis not difficult to answerhis most sacred majesty king edward the sixthwhom god preserve! yea, and a dear and gracious little urchin is he, too; and whether he be mad or noand they say he mendeth dailyhis praises are on all men's lips; and all bless him likewise, and offer prayers that he may be spared to reign long in england; for he began humanely, with saving the old duke of norfolk's life, and now is he bent on destroying the cruelest of the laws that harry and oppress the people.' this news struck his majesty dumb with amazement, and plunged him into so deep and dismal a reverie that he heard no more of the old man's gossip. he wondered if the 'little urchin' was the beggar-boy whom he left dressed in his own garments in the palace. it did not seem possible that this could be, for surely his manners and speech would betray him if he pretended to be the prince of walesthen he would be driven out, and search made for the true prince. could it be that the court had set up some sprig of the nobility in his place? no, for his uncle would not allow thathe was all-powerful and could and would crush such a movement, of course. the boy's musings profited him nothing; the more he tried to unriddle the mystery the more perplexed he became, the more his head ached, and the worse he slept. his impatience to get to london grew hourly, and his captivity became almost unendurable. hendon's arts all failed with the kinghe could not be comforted, but a couple of women who were chained near him, succeeded better. under their gentle ministrations he found peace and learned a degree of patience. he was very grateful, and came to love them dearly and to delight in the sweet and soothing influence of their presence. he asked them why they were in prison, and when they said they were baptists, he smiled, and inquired: 'is that a crime to be shut up for in a prison? now i grieve, for i shall lose yethey will not keep ye long for such a little thing.' they did not answer; and something in their faces made him uneasy. he said, eagerly: 'you do not speakbe good to me, and tell methere will be no other punishment? prithee, tell me there is no fear of that.' they tried to change the topic, but his fears were aroused, and he pursued it: 'will they scourge thee? no, no, they would not be so cruel! say they would not. come, they will not, will they?' the women betrayed confusion and distress, but there was no avoiding an answer, so one of them said, in a voice choked with emotion: 'oh, thou'lt break our hearts, thou gentle spirit! god will help us to bear our-' 'it is a confession!' the king broke in. 'then they will scourge thee, the stony-hearted wretches! but oh, thou must not weep, i cannot bear it. keep up thy couragei shall come to my own in time to save thee from this bitter thing, and i will do it!' when the king awoke in the morning, the women were gone. 'they are saved!' he said, joyfully; then added, despondently, 'but woe is me!for they were my comforters.' each of them had left a shred of ribbon pinned to his clothing, in token of remembrance. he said he would keep these things always; and that soon he would seek out these dear good friends of his and take them under his protection. just then the jailer came in with some subordinates and commanded that the prisoners be conducted to the jail-yard. the king was overjoyedit would be a blessed thing to see the blue sky and breathe the fresh air once more. he fretted and chafed at the slowness of the officers, but his turn came at last and he was released from his staple and ordered to follow the other prisoners, with hendon. the court, or quadrangle, was stone-paved, and open to the sky. the prisoners entered it through a massive archway of masonry, and were placed in file, standing, with their backs against the wall. a rope was stretched in front of them, and they were also guarded by their officers. it was a chill and lowering morning, and a light snow which had fallen during the night whitened the great empty space and added to the general dismalness of its aspect. now and then a wintry wind shivered through the place and sent the snow eddying hither and thither. in the center of the court stood two women, chained to posts. a glance showed the king that these were his good friends. he shuddered, and said to himself, 'alack, they are not gone free, as i had thought. to think that such as these should know the lash!in england! ay, there's the shame of itnot in heathenesse, but christian england! they will be scourged; and i, whom they have comforted and kindly entreated, must look on and see the great wrong done; it is strange, so strange! that i, the very source of power in this broad realm, am helpless to protect them. but let these miscreants look well to themselves, for there is a day coming when i will require of them a heavy reckoning for this work. for every blow they strike now they shall feel a hundred then.' a great gate swung open and a crowd of citizens poured in. they flocked around the two women, and hid them from the king's view. a clergyman entered and passed through the crowd, and he also was hidden. the king now heard talking, back and forth, as if questions were being asked and answered, but he could not make out what was said. next there was a deal of bustle and preparation, and much passing and repassing of officials through that part of the crowd that stood on the further side of the women; and while this proceeded a deep hush gradually fell upon the people. now, by command, the masses parted and fell aside, and the king saw a spectacle that froze the marrow in his bones. fagots had been piled about the two women, and a kneeling man was lighting them! the women bowed their heads, and covered their faces with their hands; the yellow flames began to climb upward among the snapping and crackling fagots, and wreaths of blue smoke to stream away on the wind; the clergyman lifted his hands and began a prayerjust then two young girls came flying through the great gate, uttering piercing screams, and threw themselves upon the women at the stake. instantly they were torn away by the officers, and one of them was kept in a tight grip, but the other broke loose, saying she would die with her mother; and before she could be stopped she had flung her arms about her mother's neck again. she was torn away once more, and with her gown on fire. two or three men held her, and the burning portion of her gown was snatched off and thrown flaming aside, she struggling all the while to free herself, and saying she would be alone in the world now, and begging to be allowed to die with her mother. both the girls screamed continually, and fought for freedom; but suddenly this tumult was drowned under a volley of heart-piercing shrieks of mortal agony. the king glanced from the frantic girls to the stake, then turned away and leaned his ashen face against the wall, and looked no more. he said, 'that which i have seen, in that one little moment, will never go out from my memory, but will abide there; and i shall see it all the days, and dream of it all the nights, till i die. would god i had been blind!' hendon was watching the king. he said to himself, with satisfaction, 'his disorder mendeth; he hath changed, and groweth gentler. if he had followed his wont, he would have stormed at these varlets, and said he was king, and commanded that the women be turned loose unscathed. soon his delusion will pass away and be forgotten, and his poor mind will be whole again. god speed the day!' that same day several prisoners were brought in to remain overnight, who were being conveyed, under guard, to various places in the kingdom, to undergo punishment for crimes committed. the king conversed with thesehe had made it a point, from the beginning, to instruct himself for the kingly office by questioning prisoners whenever the opportunity offeredand the tale of their woes wrung his heart. one of them was a poor half-witted woman who had stolen a yard or two of cloth from a weavershe was to be hanged for it. another was a man who had been accused of stealing a horse; he said the proof had failed, and he had imagined that he was safe from the halter; but nohe was hardly free before he was arraigned for killing a deer in the king's park; this was proved against him, and now he was on his way to the gallows. there was a tradesman's apprentice whose case particularly distressed the king; this youth said he found a hawk one evening that had escaped from its owner, and he took it home with him, imagining himself entitled to it; but the court convicted him of stealing it, and sentenced him to death. the king was furious over these inhumanities, and wanted hendon to break jail and fly with him to westminster, so that he could mount his throne and hold out his scepter in mercy over these unfortunate people and save their lives. 'poor child,' sighed hendon, 'these woeful tales have brought his malady upon him againalack, but for this evil hap, he would have been well in a little time.' among these prisoners was an old lawyera man with a strong face and a dauntless mien, three years past, he had written a pamphlet against the lord chancellor, accusing him of injustice, and had been punished for it by the loss of his ears in the pillory and degradation from the bar, and in addition had been fined l3,000 and sentenced to imprisonment for life. lately he had repeated his offense; and in consequence was now under sentence to lose what remained of his ears, pay a fine of l5,000, be branded on both cheeks, and remain in prison for life. 'these be honorable scars,' he said, and turned back his gray hair and showed the mutilated stubs of what had once been his ears. the king's eye burned with passion. he said: 'none believe in meneither wilt thou. but no matterwithin the compass of a month thou shalt be free; and more, the laws that have dishonored thee, and shamed the english name, shall be swept from the statute-books. the world is made wrong, kings should go to school to their own laws at times, and so learn mercy.'*(20) chapter xxviii the sacrifice meantime miles was growing sufficiently tired of confinment and inaction. but now his trial came on, to his great gratification, and he thought he could welcome any sentence provided a further imprisonment should not be a part of it. but he was mistaken about that. he was in a fine fury when he found himself described as a 'sturdy vagabond' and sentenced to sit two hours in the pillory for bearing that character and for assaulting the master of hendon hall. his pretensions as to brothership with his prosecutor, and rightful heirship to the hendon honors and estates, were left contemptuously unnoticed, as being not even worth examination. he raged and threatened on his way to punishment, but it did no good; he was snatched roughly along by the officers, and got an occasional cuff, besides, for his unreverent conduct. the king could not pierce through the rabble that swarmed behind; so he was obliged to follow in the rear, remote from his good friend and servant. the king had been nearly condemned to the stocks himself, for being in such bad company, but had been let off with a lecture and a warning, in consideration of his youth. when the crowd at last halted, he flitted feverishly from point to point around its outer rim, hunting a place to get through; and at last, after a deal of difficulty and delay, succeeded. there sat his poor henchman in the degrading stocks, the sport and butt of a dirty mobhe, the body servant of the king of england! edward had heard the sentence pronounced, but he had not realized the half that it meant. his anger began to rise as the sense of this new indignity which had been put upon him sank home; it jumped to summer heat the next moment, when he saw an egg sail through the air and crush itself against hendon's cheek, and heard the crowd roar its enjoyment of the episode. he sprang across the open circle and confronted the officer in charge, crying: 'for shame! this is my servantset him free! i am the-' 'oh, peace!' exclaimed hendon, in a panic, 'thou'lt destroy thyself. mind him not, officer, he is mad.' 'give thyself no trouble as to the matter of minding him, good man, i have small mind to mind him; but as to teaching him somewhat, to that i am well inclined.' he turned to a subordinate and said, 'give the little fool a taste or two of the lash, to mend his manners.' 'half a dozen will better serve his turn,' suggested sir hugh, who had ridden up a moment before to take a passing glance at the proceedings. the king was seized. he did not even struggle, so paralyzed was he with the mere thought of the monstrous outrage that was proposed to be inflicted upon his sacred person. history was already defiled with the record of the scourging of an english king with whipsit was an intolerable reflection that he must furnish a duplicate of that shameful page. he was in the toils, there was no help for him; he must either take this punishment or beg for its remission. hard conditions; he would take the stripesa king might do that, but a king could not beg. but meantime, miles hendon was resolving the difficulty. 'let the child go,' said he; 'ye heartless dogs, do ye not see how young and frail he is? let him goi will take his lashes.' 'marry, a good thoughtand thanks for it,' said sir hugh, his face lighting with a sardonic satisfaction. 'let the little beggar go, and give this fellow a dozen in his placean honest dozen, well laid on.' the king was in the act of entering a fierce protest, but sir hugh silenced him with the potent remark, 'yes, speak up, do, and free thy mindonly, mark ye, that for each word you utter he shall get six strokes the more.' hendon was removed from the stocks, and his back laid bare; and while the lash was applied the poor little king turned away his face and allowed unroyal tears to channel his cheeks unchecked. 'ah, brave good heart,' he said to himself, 'this loyal deed shall never perish out of my memory. i will not forget itand neither shall they!' he added, with passion. while he mused, his appreciation of hendon's magnanimous conduct grew to greater and still greater dimensions in his mind, and so also did his gratefulness for it. presently he said to himself, 'who saves his prince from wounds and possible deathand this he did for meperforms high service; but it is littleit is nothing! -oh, less than nothing!when 'tis weighed against the act of him who saves his prince from shame!' hendon made no outcry under the scourge, but bore the heavy blows with soldierly fortitude. this, together with his redeeming the boy by taking his stripes for him, compelled the respect of even that forlorn and degraded mob that was gathered there; and its gibes and hootings died away, and no sound remained but the sound of the falling blows. the stillness that pervaded the place when hendon found himself once more in the stocks, was in strong contrast with the insulting clamour which had prevailed there so little a while before. the king came softly to hendon's side, and whispered in his ear: 'kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for one who is higher than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility to men.' he picked up the scourge from the ground, touched hendon's bleeding shoulders lightly with it, and whispered, 'edward of england dubs thee earl!' hendon was touched. the water welled to his eyes, yet at the same time the grisly humor of the situation and circumstances so undermined his gravity that it was all he could do to keep some sign of his inward mirth from showing outside. to be suddenly hoisted, naked and gory, from the common stocks to the alpine altitude and splendor of an earldom, seemed to him the last possibility in the line of the grotesque. he said to himself, 'now am i finely tinseled, indeed! the specter-knight of the kingdom of dreams and shadows is become a specter-earl!a dizzy flight for a callow wing! an this go on, i shall presently be hung like a very may-pole with fantastic gauds and make-believe honors. but i shall value them, all valueless as they are, for the love that doth bestow them. better these poor mock dignities of mine, that come unasked from a clean hand and a right spirit, than real ones bought by servility from grudging and interested power.' the dreaded sir hugh wheeled his horse about, and, as he spurred away, the living wall divided silently to let him pass, and as silently closed together again. and so remained; nobody went so far as to venture a remark in favor of the prisoner, or in compliment to him; but no matter, the absence of abuse was a sufficient homage in itself. a late comer who was not posted as to the present circumstances, and who delivered a sneer at the 'impostor' and was in the act of following it with a dead cat, was promptly knocked down and kicked out, without any words, and then the deep quiet resumed sway once more. chapter xxix to london when hendon's term of service in the stocks was finished, he was released and ordered to quit the region and come back no more. his sword was restored to him, and also his mule and his donkey. he mounted and rode off, followed by the king, the crowd opening with quiet respectfulness to let them pass, and then dispersing when they were gone. hendon was soon absorbed in thought. there were questions of high import to be answered. what should he do? whither should he go? powerful help must be found somewhere, or he must relinquish his inheritance and remain under the imputation of being an impostor besides. where could he hope to find this powerful help? where, indeed! it was a knotty question. by and by a thought occurred to him which pointed to a possibilitythe slenderest of slender possibilities, certainly, but still worth considering, for lack of any other that promised anything at all. he remembered what old andrews had said about the young king's goodness and his generous championship of the wronged and unfortunate. why not go and try to get speech of him and beg for justice? ah, yes, but could so fantastic a pauper get admission to the august presence of a monarch? never mindlet that matter take care of itself; it was a bridge that would not need to be crossed till he should come to it. he was an old campaigner, and used to inventing shifts and expedients; no doubt he would be able to find a way. yes, he would strike for the capital. maybe his father's old friend, sir humphrey marlow, would help him'good old sir humphrey, head lieutenant of the late king's kitchen, or stables, or something'miles could not remember just what or which. now that he had something to turn his energies to, a distinctly defined object to accomplish, the fog of humiliation and depression that had settled down upon his spirits lifted and blew away, and he raised his head and looked about him. he was surprised to see how far he had come; the village was away behind him. the king was jogging along in his wake, with his head bowed; for he, too, was deep in plans and thinkings. a sorrowful misgiving clouded hendon's newborn cheerfulness; would the boy be willing to go again to a city where, during all his brief life, he had never known anything but ill usage and pinching want? but the question must be asked; it could not be avoided; so hendon reined up, and called out: 'i had forgotten to inquire whither we are bound. thy commands, my liege?' 'to london!' hendon moved on again, mightily contented with the answerbut astonished at it, too. the whole journey was made without an adventure of importance. but it ended with one. about ten o'clock on the night of the night of the 19th of february, they stepped upon london bridge, in the midst of a writhing, struggling jam of howling and hurrahing people, whose beer-jolly faces stood out strongly in the glare from manifold torchesand at that instant the decaying head of some former duke or other grandee tumbled down between them, striking hendon on the elbow and then bounding off among the hurrying confusion of feet. so evanescent and unstable are men's works in this world!the late good king is but three weeks dead and three days in his grave, and already the adornments which he took such pains to select from prominent people for his noble bridge are falling. a citizen stumbled over that head, and drove his own head into the back of somebody in front of him, who turned and knocked down the first person that came handy, and was promptly laid out himself by that person's friend. it was the right ripe time for a free fight, for the festivities of the morrowcoronation daywere already beginning; everybody was full of strong drink and patriotism; within five minutes the free fight was occupying a good deal of ground; within ten or twelve it covered an acre or so, and was become a riot. by this time hendon and the king were hopelessly separated from each other and lost in the rush and turmoil of the roaring masses of humanity. and so we leave them. chapter xxx tom's progress whilst the true king wandered about the land, poorly clad, poorly fed, cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves and murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by all impartially, the mock king tom canty enjoyed a quite different experience. when we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright side for him. this bright side went on brightening more and more every day; in a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and delightfulness. he lost his fears; his misgivings faded out and died; his embarrassments departed, and gave place to an easy and confident bearing. he worked the whipping-boy mine to ever-increasing profit. he ordered my lady elizabeth and my lady jane grey into his presence when he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he was done with them, with the air of one familiarly accustomed to such performances. it no longer confused him to have these lofty personages kiss his hand at parting. he came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and dressed with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. it came to be a proud pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering procession of officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and made them a hundred. he liked to hear the bugles sounding down the long corridors, and the distant voices responding, 'way for the king!' he even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and seeming to be something more than the lord protector's mouthpiece. he liked to receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and listen to the affectionate messages they brought from illustrious monarchs who called him 'brother.' oh, happy tom canty, late of offal court! he enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more; he found his four hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled them. the adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to his ears. he remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and determined champion of all that were oppressed, and he made tireless war upon unjust laws; yet upon occasion, being offended, he could turn upon an earl, or even a duke, and give him a look that would make him tremble. once, when his royal 'sister,' the grimly holy lady mary, set herself to reason with him against the wisdom of his course in pardoning so many people who would otherwise be jailed, or hanged, or burned, and reminded him that their august late father's prisons had sometimes contained as high as sixty thousand convicts at one time, and that during his admirable reign he had delivered seventy-two thousand thieves and robbers over to death by the executioner,*(21) the boy was filled with generous indignation, and commanded her to go to her closet, and beseech god to take away the stone that was in her breast, and give her a human heart. did tom canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful prince who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot zeal to avenge him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace gate? yes; his first royal days and nights were pretty well sprinkled with painful thoughts about the lost prince, and with sincere longings for his return and happy restoration to his native rights and splendors. but as time wore on, and the prince did not come, tom's mind became more and more occupied with his new and enchanting experiences, and by little and little the vanished monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and finally, when he did intrude upon them at intervals, he was become an unwelcome specter, for he made tom feel guilty and ashamed. tom's poor mother and sisters traveled the same road out of his mind. at first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them; but later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty place and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums, made him shudder. at last they ceased to trouble his thoughts almost wholly. and he was content, even glad; for, whenever their mournful and accusing faces did rise before him now, they made him feel more despicable than the worms that crawl. at midnight of the 19th of february, tom canty was sinking to sleep in his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals, and surrounded by the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for to-morrow was the day appointed for his solemn crowning as king of england. at that same hour, edward, the true king, hungry and thirsty, soiled and draggled, worn with travel, and clothed in rags and shredshis share of the results of the riotwas wedged in among a crowd of people who were watching with deep interest certain hurrying gangs of workmen who streamed in and out of westminster abbey, busy as ants; they were making the last preparation for the royal coronation. chapter xxxi the recognition procession when tom canty awoke the next morning, the air was heavy with a thunderous murmur; all the distances were charged with it. it was music to him; for it meant that the english world was out in its strength to give loyal welcome to the great day. presently tom found himself once more the chief figure in a wonderful floating pageant on the thames; for by ancient custom the 'recognition procession' through london must start from the tower, and he was bound thither. when he arrived there, the sides of the venerable fortress seemed suddenly rent in a thousand places, and from every rent leaped a red tongue of flame and a white gush of smoke; a deafening explosion followed, which drowned the shoutings of the multitude, and made the ground tremble; the flame-jets, the smoke, and the explosions were repeated over and over again with marvelous celerity, so that in a few moments the old tower disappeared in the vast fog of its own smoke, all but the very top of the tall pile called the white tower; this, with its banners, stood out above the dense bank of vapor as a mountain peak projects above a cloud-rack. tom canty, splendidly arrayed, mounted a prancing war-steed, whose rich trappings almost reached to the ground; his 'uncle,' the lord protector somerset, similarly mounted, took place in his rear; the king's guard formed in single ranks on either side, clad in burnished armor; after the protector followed a seemingly interminable procession of resplendent nobles attended by their vassals; after these came the lord mayor and the aldermanic body, in crimson velvet robes, and with their gold chains across their breasts; and after these the officers and members of all the guilds of london, in rich raiment, and bearing the showy banners of the several corporations. also in the procession, as a special guard of honor through the city, was the ancient and honorable artillery companyan organization already three hundred years old at that time, and the only military body in england possessing the privilege (which it still possesses in our day) of holding itself independent of the commands of parliament. it was a brilliant spectacle, and was hailed with acclamations all along the line, as it took its stately way through the packed multitudes of citizens. the chronicler says, 'the king, as he entered the city, was received by the people with prayers, welcomings, cries, and tender words, and all signs which argue an earnest love of subjects toward their sovereign; and the king, by holding up his glad countenance to such as stood afar off, and most tender language to those that stood nigh his grace, showed himself no less thankful to receive the people's good will than they to offer it. to all that wished him well, he gave thanks. to such as bade "god save his grace," he said in return, "god save you all!" and added that "he thanked them with all his heart." wonderfully transported were the people with the loving answers and gestures of their king.' in fenchurch street a 'fair child, in costly apparel,' stood on a stage to welcome his majesty to the city. the last verse of his greeting was in these words: welcome, o king! as much as hearts can think; welcome again, as much as tongue can tell welcome to joyous tongues, and hearts that will not shrink; god thee preserve, we pray, and wish thee ever well. the people burst forth in a glad shout, repeating with one voice what the child had said. tom canty gazed abroad over the surging sea of eager faces, and his heart swelled with exultation; and he felt that the one thing worth living for in this world was to be a king, and a nation's idol. presently he caught sight, at a distance, of a couple of his ragged offal court comradesone of them the lord high admiral in his late mimic court, the other the first lord of the bedchamber in the same pretentious fiction; and his pride swelled higher than ever. oh, if they could only recognize him now! what unspeakable glory it would be, if they could recognize him, and realize that the derided mock king of the slums and back alleys was become a real king, with illustrious dukes and princes for his humble menials, and the english world at his feet! but he had to deny himself, and choke down his desire, for such a recognition might cost more than it would come to; so he turned away his head, and left the two soiled lads to go on with their shoutings and glad adulations, unsuspicious of whom it was they were lavishing them upon. every now and then rose the cry, 'a largess! a largess!' and tom responded by scattering a handful of bright new coins abroad for the multitude to scramble for. the chronicler says, 'at the upper end of gracechurch street, before the sign of the eagle, the city had erected a gorgeous arch, beneath which was a stage, which stretched from one side of the street to the other. this was a historical pageant, representing the king's immediate progenitors. there sat elizabeth of york in the midst of an immense white rose, whose petals formed elaborate furbelows around her; by her side was henry vii, issuing out of a vast red rose, disposed in the same manner; the hands of the royal pair were locked together, and the wedding-ring ostentatiously displayed. from the red and white roses proceeded a stem, which reached up to a second stage, occupied by henry viii, issuing from a red-and-white rose, with the effigy of the new king's mother, jane seymour, represented by his side. one branch sprang from this pair, which mounted to a third stage, where sat the effigy of edward vi himself, enthroned in royal majesty; and the whole pageant was framed with wreaths of roses, red and white.' this quaint and gaudy spectacle so wrought upon the rejoicing people, that their acclamations utterly smothered the small voice of the child whose business it was to explain the thing in eulogistic rhymes. but tom canty was not sorry; for this loyal uproar was sweeter music to him than any poetry, no matter what its quality might be. whithersoever tom turned his happy young face, the people recognized the exactness of his effigy's likeness to himself, the flesh-and-blood counterpart; and new whirlwinds of applause burst forth. the great pageant moved on, and still on, under one triumphal arch after another, and past a bewildering succession of spectacular and symbolical tableaux, each of which typified and exalted some virtue, or talent, or merit, of the little king's. 'throughout the whole of cheapside, from every penthouse and window, hung banners and streamers; and the richest carpets, stuffs, and cloth-of-gold tapestried the streetsspecimens of the great wealth of the stores within; and the splendor of this thoroughfare was equaled in the other streets, and in some even surpassed.' 'and all these wonders and these marvels are to welcome meme!' murmured tom canty. the mock king's cheeks were flushed with excitement, his eyes were flashing, his senses swam in a delirium of pleasure. at this point, just as he was raising his hand to fling another rich largess, he caught sight of a pale, astounded face which was strained forward out of the second rank of the crowd, its intense eyes riveted upon him, a sickening consternation struck through him; he recognized his mother! and up flew his hand, palm outward, before his eyesthat old involuntary gesture, born of a forgotten episode, and perpetuated by habit. in an instant more she had torn her way out of the press, and past the guards, and was at his side. she embraced his leg, she covered it with kisses, she cried, 'o, my child, my darling!' lifting toward him a face that was transfigured with joy and love. the same instant an officer of the king's guard snatched her away with a curse, and sent her reeling back whence she came with a vigorous impulse from his strong arm. the words 'i do not know you, woman!' were falling from tom canty's lips when this piteous thing occurred; but it smote him to the heart to see her treated so; and as she turned for a last glimpse of him, whilst the crowd was swallowing her from his sight, she seemed so wounded, so broken-hearted, that a shame fell upon him which consumed his pride to ashes, and withered his stolen royalty. his grandeurs were stricken valueless; they seemed to fall away from him like rotten rags. the procession moved on, and still on, through ever-augmenting splendors and ever-augmenting tempests of welcome; but to tom canty they were as if they had not been. he neither saw nor heard. royalty had lost its grace and sweetness; its pomps were become a reproach. remorse was eating his heart out. he said, 'would god i were free of my captivity!' he had unconsciously dropped back into the phraseology of the first days of his compulsory greatness. the shining pageant still went winding like a radiant and interminable serpent down the crooked lanes of the quaint old city, and through the huzzaing hosts; but still the king rode with bowed head and vacant eyes, seeing only his mother's face and that wounded look in it. 'largess, largess!' the cry fell upon an unheeding ear. 'long live edward of england!' it seemed as if the earth shook with the explosion; but there was no response from the king. he heard it only as one hears the thunder of the surf when it is blown to the ear out of a great distance, for it was smothered under another sound which was still nearer, in his own breast, in his accusing consciencea voice which kept repeating those shameful words, 'i do not know you, woman!' the words smote upon the king's soul as the strokes of a funeral bell smite upon the soul of a surviving friend when they remind him of secret treacheries suffered at his hands by him that is gone. new glories were unfolded at every turning; new wonders, new marvels, sprung into view; the pent clamors of waiting batteries were released; new raptures poured from the throats of the waiting multitudes; but the king gave no sign, and the accusing voice that went moaning through his comfortless breast was all the sound he heard. by and by the gladness in the faces of the populace changed a little, and became touched with a something like solicitude or anxiety; an abatement in the volume of applause was observable too. the lord protector was quick to notice these things; he was as quick to detect the cause. he spurred to the king's side, bent low in his saddle, uncovered, and said: 'my liege, it is an ill time for dreaming. the people observe thy downcast head, thy clouded mien, and they take it for an omen. be advised; unveil the sun of royalty, and let it shine upon these boding vapors, and disperse them. lift up thy face, and smile upon the people.' so saying, the duke scattered a handful of coins to right and left, then retired to his place. the mock king did mechanically as he had been bidden. his smile had no heart in it, but few eyes were near enough or sharp enough to detect that. the noddings of his plumed head as he saluted his subjects were full of grace and graciousness; the largess which he delivered from his hand was royally liberal; so the people's anxiety vanished, and the acclamations burst forth again in as mighty a volume as before. still once more, a little before the progress was ended, the duke was obliged to ride forward, and make remonstrance. he whispered: 'o dread sovereign! shake off these fatal humors; the eyes of the world are upon thee.' then he added with sharp annoyance, 'perdition catch that crazy pauper! 'twas she that hath disturbed your highness.' the gorgeous figure turned a lusterless eye upon the duke, and said in a dead voice: 'she was my mother!' 'my god!' groaned the protector as he reined his horse backward to his post, 'the omen was pregnant with prophecy. he is gone mad again!' chapter xxxii coronation day let us go backward a few hours, and place ourselves in westminster abbey, at four o'clock in the morning of this memorable coronation day. we are not without company; for although it is still night, we find the torch-lighted galleries already filling up with people who are well content to sit still and wait seven or eight hours till the time shall come for them to see what they may not hope to see twice in their livesthe coronation of a king. yes, london and westminster have been astir ever since the warning guns boomed at three o'clock, and already crowds of untitled rich folk who have bought the privilege of trying to find sitting-room in the galleries are flocking in at the entrances reserved for their sort. the hours drag along, tediously enough. all stir has ceased for some time, for every gallery has long ago been packed. we may sit now, and look and think at our leisure. we have glimpses here and there and yonder, through the dim cathedral twilight, of portions of many galleries and balconies, wedged full with people, the other portions of these galleries and balconies being cut off from sight by intervening pillars and architectural projections. we have in view the whole of the great north transeptempty, and waiting for england's privileged ones. we see also the ample area or platform, carpeted with rich stuffs, whereon the throne stands. the throne occupies the center of the platform, and is raised above it upon an elevation of four steps. within the seat of the throne is inclosed a rough flat rockthe stone of sconewhich many generations of scottish kings sat on to be crowned, and so it in time became holy enough to answer a like purpose for english monarchs. both the throne and its footstool are covered with cloth-of-gold. stillness reigns, the torches blink dully, the time drags heavily. but at last the lagging daylight asserts itself, the torches are extinguished, and a mellow radiance suffuses the great spaces. all features of the noble building are distinct now, but soft and dreamy, for the sun is lightly veiled with clouds. at seven o'clock the first break in the drowsy monotony occurs; for on the stroke of this hour the first peeress enters the transept, clothed like solomon for splendor, and is conducted to her appointed place by an official clad in satins and velvets, whilst a duplicate of him gathers up the lady's long train, follows after, and, when the lady is seated, arranges the train across her lap for her. he then places her footstool according to her desire, after which he puts her coronet where it will be convenient to her hand when the time for the simultaneous coroneting of the nobles shall arrive. by this time the peeresses are flowing in in a glittering stream, and satin-clad officials are flitting and glinting everywhere, seating them and making them comfortable. the scene is animated enough now. there is stir and life, and shifting color everywhere. after a time, quiet reigns again; for the peeresses are all come, and are all in their placesa solid acre, or such a matter, of human flowers, resplendent in variegated colors, and frosted like a milky way with diamonds. there are all ages here: brown, wrinkled, white-haired dowagers who are able to go back, and still back, down the stream of time, and recall the crowning of richard iii and the troublous days of that old forgotten age; and there are handsome middle-aged dames; and lovely and gracious young matrons; and gentle and beautiful young girls, with beaming eyes and fresh complexions, who may possibly put on their jeweled coronets awkwardly when the great time comes; for the matter will be new to them, and their excitement will be a sore hindrance. still, this may not happen, for the hair of all these ladies has been arranged with a special view to the swift and successful lodging of the crown in its place when the signal comes. we have seen that this massed array of peeresses is sown thick with diamonds, and we also see that it is a marvelous spectaclebut now we are about to be astonished in earnest. about nine, the clouds suddenly break away and a shaft of sunshine cleaves the mellow atmosphere, and drifts slowly along the ranks of ladies; and every rank it touches flames into a dazzling splendor of many-colored fires, and we tingle to our finger-tips with the electric thrill that is shot through us by the surprise and the beauty of the spectacle! presently a special envoy from some distant corner of the orient, marching with the general body of foreign ambassadors, crosses this bar of sunshine, and we catch our breath, the glory that streams and flashes and palpitates about him is so overpowering; for he is crusted from head to heels with gems, and his slightest movement showers a dancing radiance all around him. let us change the tense for convenience. the time drifted alongone hourtwo hourstwo hours and a half; then the deep booming of artillery told that the king and his grand procession had arrived at last; so the waiting multitude rejoiced. all knew that a further delay must follow, for the king must be prepared and robed for the solemn ceremony; but this delay would be pleasantly occupied by the assembling of the peers of the realm in their stately robes. these were conducted ceremoniously to their seats, and their coronets placed conveniently at hand; and meanwhile the multitude in the galleries were alive with interest, for most of them were beholding for the first time, dukes, earls, and barons, whose names had been historical for five hundred years. when all were finally seated, the spectacle from the galleries and all coigns of vantage was complete; a gorgeous one to look upon and to remember. now the robed and mitered great heads of the church, and their attendants, filed in upon the platform and took their appointed places; these were followed by the lord protector and other great officials, and these again by a steel-clad detachment of the guard. there was a waiting pause; then, at a signal, a triumphant peal of music burst forth, and tom canty, dothed in a long robe of cloth-of-gold, appeared at a door, and stepped upon the platform. the entire multitude rose, and the ceremony of the recognition ensued. then a noble anthem swept the abbey with its rich waves of sound; and thus heralded and welcomed, tom canty was conducted to the throne. the ancient ceremonies went on with impressive solemnity, whilst the audience gazed; and as they drew nearer and nearer to completion, tom canty grew pale, and still paler, and a deep and steadily deepening woe and despondency settled down upon his spirits and upon his remorseful heart. at last the final act was at hand. the archbishop of canterbury lifted up the crown of england from its cushion and held it out over the trembling mock king's head. in the same instant a rainbow radiance flashed along the spacious transept; for with one impulse every individual in the great concourse of nobles lifted a coronet and poised it over his or her headand paused in that attitude. a deep hush pervaded the abbey. at this impressive moment, a startling apparition intruded upon the scenean apparition observed by none in the absorbed multitude, until it suddenly appeared, moving up the great central aisle. it was a boy, bareheaded, ill shod, and clothed in coarse plebeian garments that were falling to rags. he raised his hand with a solemnity which ill comported with his soiled and sorry aspect, and delivered this note of warning: 'i forbid you to set the crown of england upon that forfeited head. i am the king!' in an instant several indignant hands were laid upon the boy; but in the same instant tom canty, in his regal vestments, made a swift step forward and cried out in a ringing voice: 'loose him and forbear! he is the king!' a sort of panic of astonishment swept the assemblage, and they partly rose in their places and stared in a bewildered way at one another and at the chief figures in this scene, like persons who wondered whether they were awake and in their senses, or asleep and dreaming. the lord protector was as amazed as the rest, but quickly recovered himself and exclaimed in a voice of authority: 'mind not his majesty, his malady is upon him againseize the vagabond!' he would have been obeyed, but the mock king stamped his foot and cried out: 'on your peril! touch him not, he is the king!' the hands were withheld; a paralysis fell upon the house, no one moved, no one spoke; indeed, no one knew how to act or what to say, in so strange and surprising an emergency. while all minds were struggling to right themselves, the boy still moved steadily forward, with high port and confident mien; he had never halted from the beginning; and while the tangled minds still floundered helplessly, he stepped upon the platform, and the mock king ran with a glad face to meet him; and fell on his knees before him and said: 'oh, my lord the king, let poor tom canty be first to swear fealty to thee, and say " put on thy crown and enter into thine own again!"' the lord protector's eye fell sternly upon the new-comer's face; but straightway the sternness vanished away, and gave place to an expression of wondering surprise. this thing happened also to the other great officers. they glanced at each other, and retreated a step by a common and unconscious impulse. the thought in each mind was the same: 'what a strange resemblance!' the lord protector reflected a moment or two in perplexity, then he said, with grave respectfulness: 'by your favor, sir, i desire to ask certain questions which-' 'i will answer them, my lord.' the duke asked him many questions about the court, the late king, the prince, the princesses. the boy answered them correctly and without hesitating. he described the rooms of state in the palace, the late king's apartments, and those of the prince of wales. it was strange; it was wonderful; yes, it was unaccountableso all said that heard it. the tide was beginning to turn, and tom canty's hopes to run high, when the lord protector shook his head and said: 'it is true it is most wonderfulbut it is no more than our lord the king likewise can do.' this remark, and this reference to himself, as still the king, saddened tom canty, and he felt his hopes crumbling from under him. 'these are not proofs,' added the protector. the tide was turning very fast now, very fast, indeedbut in the wrong direction; it was leaving poor tom canty stranded on the throne, and sweeping the other out to sea. the lord protector communed with himselfshook his headthe thought forced itself upon him, 'it is perilous to the state and to us all, to entertain so fateful a riddle as this; it could divide the nation and undermine the throne.' he turned and said, 'sir thomas, arrest thisno, hold!' his face lighted, and he confronted the ragged candidate with this question: 'where lieth the great seal? answer me this truly, and the riddle is unriddled; for only he that was prince of wales can so answer! on so trivial a thing hang a throne and a dynasty!' it was a lucky thought, a happy thought. that it was so considered by the great officials was manifested by the silent applause that shot from eye to eye around their circle in the form of bright approving glances. yes, none but the true prince could dissolve the stubborn mystery of the vanished great sealthis forlorn little impostor had been taught his lesson well, but here his teachings must fail, for his teacher himself could not answer that questionah, very good, very good indeed; now we shall be rid of this troublesome and perilous business in short order! and so they nodded invisibly and smiled inwardly with satisfaction, and looked to see this foolish lad stricken with a palsy of guilty confusion. how surprised they were, then, to see nothing of the sort happenhow they marveled to hear him answer up promptly, in a confident and untroubled voice, and say: 'there is naught in this riddle that is difficult.' then, without so much as a by-your-leave to anybody, he turned and gave this command, with the easy manner of one accustomed to doing such things: 'my lord st. john, go you to my private cabinet in the palacefor none knoweth the place better than youand, close down to the floor, in the left corner remotest from the door that opens from the antechamber, you shall find in the wall a brazen nail-head; press upon it and a little jewel closet will fly open which not even you do know ofno, nor any soul else in all the world but me and the trusty artisan that did contrive it for me. the first thing that falleth under your eye will be the great sealfetch it hither.' all the company wondered at this speech, and wondered still more to see the little mendicant pick out this peer without hesitancy or apparent fear of mistake, and call him by name with such a placidly convincing air of having known him all his life. the peer was almost surprised into obeying. he even made a movement as if to go, but quickly recovered his tranquil attitude and confessed his blunder with a blush. tom canty turned upon him and said, sharply: 'why dost thou hesitate? hast not heard the king's command? go!' the lord st. john made a deep obeisanceand it was observed that it was a significantly cautious and non-committal one, it not being delivered at either of the kings, but at the neutral ground about half-way between the twoand took his leave. now began a movement of the gorgeous particles of that official group which was slow, scarcely perceptible, and yet steady and persistenta movement such as is observed in a kaleidoscope that is turned slowly, whereby the components of one splendid cluster fall away and join themselves to anothera movement which, little by little, in the present case, dissolved the glittering crowd that stood about tom canty and clustered it together again in the neighborhood of the new-comer. tom canty stood almost alone. now ensued a brief season of deep suspense and waitingduring which even the few faint-hearts still remaining near tom canty gradually scraped together courage enough to glide, one by one, over to the majority. so at last tom canty, in his royal robes and jewels, stood wholly alone and isolated from the world, a conspicuous figure, occupying an eloquent vacancy. now the lord st. john was seen returning. as he advanced up the mid-aisle the interest was so intense that the low murmur of conversation in the great assemblage died out and was succeeded by a profound hush, a breathless stillness, through which his footfalls pulsed with a dull and distant sound. every eye was fastened upon him as he moved along. he reached the platform, paused a moment, then moved toward tom canty with a deep obeisance, and said: 'sire, the seal is not there!' a mob does not melt away from the presence of a plague-patient with more haste than the band of pallid and terrified courtiers melted away from the presence of the shabby little claimant of the crown. in a moment he stood all alone, without a friend or supporter, a target upon which was concentrated a bitter fire of scornful and angry looks. the lord protector called out fiercely: 'cast the beggar into the street, and scourge him through the townthe paltry knave is worth no more consideration!' officers of the guard sprang forward to obey, but tom canty waved them off and said: 'back! whoso touches him perils his life!' the lord protector was perplexed in the last degree. he said to the lord st. john: 'searched you well?but it boots not to ask that. it doth seem passing strange. little things, trifles, slip out of one's ken, and one does not think it matter for surprise; but how a so bulky thing as the seal of england can vanish away and no man be able to get track of it againa massy golden disk-' tom canty, with beaming eyes, sprang forward and shouted: 'hold, that is enough! was it round?and thick?and had it letters and devices graved upon it?yes? oh, now i know what this great seal is that there's been such worry and pother about! an ye had described it to me, ye could have had it three weeks ago. right well i know where it lies; but it was not i that put it therefirst.' 'who, then, my liege?' asked the lord protector. 'he that stands therethe rightful king of england. and he shall tell you himself where it liesthen you will believe he knew it of his own knowledge. bethink thee, my kingspur thy memoryit was the last, the very last thing thou didst that day before thou didst rush forth from the palace, clothed in my rags, to punish the soldier that insulted me.' a silence ensued, undisturbed by a movement or a whisper, and all eyes were fixed upon the new-comer, who stood, with bent head and corrugated brow, groping in his memory among a thronging multitude of valueless recollections for one single little elusive fact, which found, would seat him upon a throneunfound, would leave him as he was, for good and alla pauper and an outcast. moment after moment passedthe moments built themselves into minutesstill the boy struggled silently on, and gave no sign. but at last he heaved a sigh, shook his head slowly, and said, with a trembling lip and in a despondent voice: 'i call the scene backall of itbut the seal hath no place in it.' he paused, then looked up, and said with gentle dignity, 'my lords and gentlemen, if ye will rob your rightful sovereign of his own for lack of this evidence which he is not able to furnish, i may not stay ye, being powerless. but-' 'o folly, o madness, my king!' cried tom canty, in a panic, 'wait!think! do not give up!the cause is not lost! nor shall be, neither! list to what i sayfollow every wordi am going to bring that morning back again, every hap just as it happened. we talkedi told you of my sisters, nan and betah, yes, you remember that; and about mine old grandamand the rough games of the lads of offal courtyes, you remember these things also; very well, follow me still, you shall recall everything. you gave me food and drink, and did with princely courtesy send away the servants, so that my low breeding might not shame me before themah, yes, this also you remember.' as tom checked off his details, and the other boy nodded his head in recognition of them, the great audience and the officials stared in puzzled wonderment; the tale sounded like true history, yet how could this impossible conjunction between a prince and a beggar boy have come about? never was a company of people so perplexed, so interested, and so stupefied, before. 'for a jest, my prince, we did exchange garments. then we stood before a mirror; and so alike were we that both said it seemed as if there had been no change madeyes, you remember that. then you noticed that the soldier had hurt my handlook! here it is, i cannot yet even write with it, the fingers are so stiff. at this your highness sprang up, vowing vengeance upon that soldier, and ran toward the dooryou passed a tablethat thing you call the seal lay on that tableyou snatched it up and looked eagerly about, as if for a place to hide ityour eye caught sight of-' 'there, 'tis sufficient!and the dear god be thanked!' exclaimed the ragged claimant, in a mighty excitement. 'go, my good st. johnin an arm-piece of the milanese armor that hangs on the wall, thou'lt find the seal!' 'right, my king! right!' cried tom canty; 'now the scepter of england is thine own; and it were better for him that would dispute it that he had been born dumb! go, my lord st. john, give thy feet wings!' the whole assemblage was on its feet now, and well-nigh out of its mind with uneasiness, apprehension, and consuming excitement. on the floor and on the platform a deafening buzz of frantic conversation burst forth, and for some time nobody knew anything or heard anything or was interested in anything but what his neighbor was shouting into his ear, or he was shouting into his neighbor's ear. timenobody knew how much of itswept by unheeded and unnoted. at last a sudden hush fell upon the house, and in the same moment st. john appeared upon the platform and held the great seal aloft in his hand. then such a shout went up! 'long live the true king!' for five minutes the air quaked with shouts and the crash of musical instruments, and was white with a storm of waving handkerchiefs; and through it all a ragged lad, the most conspicuous figure in england, stood, flushed and happy and proud, in the center of the spacious platform, with the great vassals of the kingdom kneeling around him. then all rose, and tom canty cried out: 'now, o my king, take these regal garments back, and give poor tom, thy servant, his shreds and remnants again.' the lord protector spoke up: 'let the small varlet be stripped and flung into the tower.' but the new king, the true king, said: 'i will not have it so. but for him i had not got my crown againnone shall lay a hand upon him to harm him. and as for thee, my good uncle, my lord protector, this conduct of thine is not grateful toward this poor lad, for i hear he hath made thee a duke'the protector blushed-' yet he was not a king; wherefore, what is thy fine title worth now? to-morrow you shall sue to me, through him, for its confirmation, else no duke, but a simple earl, shalt thou remain.' under this rebuke, his grace the duke of somerset retired a little from the front for the moment. the king turned to tom, and said, kindly: 'my poor boy, how was it that you could remember where i hid the seal when i could not remember it myself?' 'ah, my king, that was easy, since i used it divers days.' 'used ityet could not explain where it was?' 'i did not know it was that they wanted. they did not describe it, your majesty.' 'then how used you it?' the red blood began to steal up into tom's cheeks, and he dropped his eyes and was silent. 'speak up, good lad, and fear nothing,' said the king. 'how used you the great seal of england?' tom stammered a moment, in a pathetic confusion, then got it out: 'to crack nuts with!' poor child, the avalanche of laughter that greeted this, nearly swept him off his feet. but if a doubt remained in any mind that tom canty was not the king of england and familiar with the august appurtenances of royalty, this reply disposed of it utterly. meantime the sumptuous robe of state had been removed from tom's shoulders to the king's, whose rags were effectively hidden from sight under it. then the coronation ceremonies were resumed; the true king was anointed and the crown set upon his head, whilst cannon thundered the news to the city, and all london seemed to rock with applause. chapter xxxiii edward as king miles hendon was picturesque enough before he got into the riot on london bridgehe was more so when he got out of it. he had but little money when he got in, none at all when he got out. the pickpockets had stripped him of his last farthing. but no matter, so he found his boy. being a soldier, he did not go at his task in a random way, but set to work, first of all, to arrange his campaign. what would the boy naturally do? where would he naturally go? wellargued mileshe would naturally go to his former haunts, for that is the instinct of unsound minds, when homeless and forsaken, as well as of sound ones. whereabouts were his former haunts? his rags, taken together with the low villain who seemed to know him and who even claimed to be his father, indicated that his home was in one or other of the poorest and meanest districts of london. would the search for him be difficult, or long? no, it was likely to be easy and brief. he would not hunt for the boy, he would hunt for a crowd; in the center of a big crowd or a little one, sooner or later he should find his poor little friend, sure; and the mangy mob would be entertaining itself with pestering and aggravating the boy, who would be proclaiming himself king, as usual. then miles hendon would cripple some of those people, and carry off his little ward, and comfort and cheer him with loving words, and the two would never be separated any more. so miles started on his quest. hour after hour he tramped through back alleys and squalid streets, seeking groups and crowds, and finding no end of them, but never any sign of the boy. this greatly surprised him, but did not discourage him. to his notion, there was nothing the matter with his plan of campaign; the only miscalculation about it was that the campaign was becoming a lengthy one, whereas he had expected it to be short. when daylight arrived at last, he had made many a mile, and canvassed many a crowd, but the only result was that he was tolerably tired, rather hungry, and very sleepy. he wanted some breakfast, but there was no way to get it. to beg for it did not occur to him; as to pawning his sword, he would as soon have thought of parting with his honor; he could spare some of his clothesyes, but one could as easily find a customer for a disease as for such clothes. at noon he was still trampingamong the rabble which followed after the royal procession now; for he argued that this regal display would attract his little lunatic powerfully. he followed the pageant through all its devious windings about london, and all the way to westminster and the abbey. he drifted here and there among the multitudes that were massed in the vicinity for a weary long time, baffled and perplexed, and finally wandered off thinking, and trying to contrive some way to better his plan of campaign. by and by, when he came to himself out of his musings, he discovered that the town was far behind him and that the day was growing old. he was near the river, and in the country; it was a region of fine rural seatsnot the sort of district to welcome clothes like his. it was not at all cold; so he stretched himself on the ground in the lee of a hedge to rest and think. drowsiness presently began to settle upon his senses; the faint and far-off boom of cannon was wafted to his ear, and he said to himself, 'the new king is crowned,' and straightway fell asleep. he had not slept or rested, before, for more than thirty hours. he did not wake again until near the middle of the next morning. he got up, lame, stiff, and half famished, washed himself in the river, stayed his stomach with a pint or two of water, and trudged off toward westminster grumbling at himself for having wasted so much time. hunger helped him to a new plan now; he would try to get speech with old sir humphrey marlow and borrow a few marks, andbut that was enough of a plan for the present; it would be time enough to enlarge it when this first stage should be accomplished. toward eleven o'clock he approached the palace; and although a host of showy people were about him, moving in the same direction, he was not inconspicuoushis costume took care of that. he watched these people's faces narrowly, hoping to find a charitable one whose possessor might be willing to carry his name to the old lieutenantas to trying to get into the palace himself, that was simply out of the question. presently our whipping-boy passed him, then wheeled about and scanned his figure well, saying to himself, 'an that is not the very vagabond his majesty is in such a worry about, then am i an assthough belike i was that before. he answereth the description to a ragthat god should make two such, would be to cheapen miracles, by wasteful repetition. i would i could contrive an excuse to speak with him.' miles hendon saved him the trouble; for he turned about, then, as a man generally will when somebody mesmerizes him by gazing hard at him from behind; and observing a strong interest in the boy's eyes, he stepped toward him and said: 'you have just come out from the palace; do you belong there?' 'yes, your worship.' 'know you sir humphrey marlow?' the boy started, and said to himself, 'lord! mine old departed father!' then he answered, aloud, 'right well, your worship.' 'goodis he within?' 'yes,' said the boy; and added, to himself, 'within his grave.' might i crave your favor to carry my name to him, and say i beg to say a word in his ear?' 'i will despatch the business right willingly, fair sir.' 'then say miles hendon, son of sir richard, is here withouti shall be greatly bounden to you, my good lad.' the boy looked disappointed'the king did not name him so,' he said to himself'but it mattereth not, this is his twin brother, and can give his majesty news of t'other sir-odds-and-ends, i warrant.' so he said to miles, 'step in there a moment, good sir, and wait till i bring you word.' hendon retired to the place indicatedit was a recess sunk in the palace wall, with a stone bench in ita shelter for sentinels in bad weather. he had hardly seated himself when some halberdiers, in charge of an officer, passed by. the officer saw him, halted his men, and commanded hendon to come forth. he obeyed, and was promptly arrested as a suspicious character prowling within the precincts of the palace. things began to look ugly. poor miles was going to explain, but the officer roughly silenced him, and ordered his men to disarm him and search him. 'god of his mercy grant that they find somewhat,' said poor miles; 'i have searched enow, and failed, yet is my need greater than theirs.' nothing was found but a document. the officer tore it open, and hendon smiled when he recognized the 'pot-hooks' made by his lost little friend that black day at hendon hall. the officer's face grew dark as he read the english paragraph, and miles blenched to the opposite color as he listened. 'another new claimant of the crown!' cried the officer. 'verily they breed like rabbits to-day. seize the rascal, men, and see ye keep him fast while i convey this precious paper within and send it to the king. he hurried away, leaving the prisoner in the grip of the halberdiers. 'now is my evil luck ended at last,' muttered hendon, 'for i shall dangle at a rope's end for a certainty, by reason of that bit of writing. and what will become of my poor lad!ah, only the good god knoweth.' by and by he saw the officer coming again, in a great hurry; so he plucked his courage together, purposing to meet his trouble as became a man. the officer ordered the men to loose the prisoner and return his sword to him; then bowed respectfully, and said: 'please you, sir, to follow me.' hendon followed, saying to himself, 'an i were not travelling to death and judgment, and so must needs economize in sin, i would throttle this knave for his mock courtesy.' the two traversed a populous court, and arrived at the grand entrance of the palace, where the officer, with another bow, delivered hendon into the hands of a gorgeous official, who received him with profound respect and led him forward through a great hall, lined on both sides with rows of splendid flunkies (who made reverential obeisance as the two passed along, but fell into death-throes of silent laughter at our stately scarecrow the moment his back was turned), and up a broad staircase, among flocks of fine folk, and finally conducted him to a vast room, clove a passage for him through the assembled nobility of england, then made a bow, reminded him to take his hat off, and left him standing in the middle of the room, a mark for all eyes, for plenty of indignant frowns, and for a sufficiency of amused and derisive smiles. miles hendon was entirely bewildered. there sat the young king, under a canopy of state, five steps away, with his head bent down and aside, speaking with a sort of human bird of paradisea duke, maybe; hendon observed to himself that it was hard enough to be sentenced to death in the full vigor of life, without having this peculiarly public humiliation added. he wished the king would hurry about itsome of the gaudy people near by were becoming pretty offensive. at this moment the king raised his head slightly and hendon caught a good view of his face. the sight nearly took his breath away! he stood gazing at the fair young face like one transfixed; then presently ejaculated: 'lo, the lord of the kingdom of dreams and shadows on his throne!' he muttered some broken sentences, still gazing and marveling; then turned his eyes around and about, scanning the gorgeous throng and the splendid saloon, murmuring, 'but these are realverily these are realsurely it is not a dream.' he stared at the king againand thought, 'is it a dream?... or is he the veritable sovereign of england, and not the friendless poor tom o' bedlam i took him forwho shall solve me this riddle?' a sudden idea flashed in his eye, and he strode to the wall, gathered up a chair, brought it back, planted it on the floor, and sat down in it! a buzz of indignation broke out, a rough hand was laid upon him, and a voice exclaimed: 'up, thou mannerless clown!wouldst sit in the presence of the king?' the disturbance attracted his majesty's attention, who stretched forth his hand and cried out: 'touch him not, it is his right!' the throng fell back, stupefied. the king went on: 'learn ye all, ladies, lords and gentlemen, that this is my trusty and well-beloved servant, miles hendon, who interposed his good sword and saved his prince from bodily harm and possible deathand for this he is a knight, by the king's voice. also learn, that for a higher service, in that he saved his sovereign stripes and shame, taking these upon himself, he is a peer of england, earl of kent, and shall have gold and lands meet for the dignity. morethe privilege which he hath just exercised is his by royal grant; for we have ordained that the chiefs of his line shall have and hold the right to sit in the presence of the majesty of england henceforth, age after age, so long as the crown shall endure. molest him not.' two persons, who, through delay, had only arrived from the country during this morning, and had now been in this room only five minutes, stood listening to these words and looking at the king, then at the scarecrow, then at the king again, in a sort of torpid bewilderment. these were sir hugh and the lady edith. but the new earl did not see them. he was still staring at the monarch, in a dazed way, and muttering: 'oh, body o' me! this my pauper! this my lunatic! this is he whom i would show what grandeur was, in my house of seventy rooms and seven and twenty servants! this is he who had never known aught but rags for raiment, kicks for comfort, and offal for diet! this is he whom i adopted and would make respectable! would god i had a bag to hide my head in!' then his manners suddenly came back to him, and he dropped upon his knees, with his hands between the king's, and swore allegiance and did homage for his lands and titles. then he rose and stood respectfully aside, a mark still for all eyesand much envy, too. now the king discovered sir hugh, and spoke out, with wrathful voice and kindling eye: 'strip this robber of his false show and stolen estates, and put him under lock and key till i have need of him.' the late sir hugh was led away. there was a stir at the other end of the room now; the assemblage fell apart, and tom canty, quaintly but richly clothed, marched down, between these living walls, preceded by an usher. he knelt before the king, who said: 'i have learned the story of these past few weeks, and am well pleased with thee. thou hast governed the realm with right royal gentleness and mercy. thou hast found thy mother and thy sisters again? good; they shall be cared forand thy father shall hang, if thou desire it and the law consent. know, all ye that hear my voice, that from this day, they that abide in the shelter of christ's hospital and share the king's bounty, shall have their minds and hearts fed, as well as their baser parts; and this boy shall dwell there, and hold the chief place in its honorable body of governors, during life. and for that he hath been a king, it is meet that other than common observance shall be his due; wherefore, note this his dress of state, for by it he shall be known, and none shall copy it; and wheresoever he shall come, it shall remind the people that he hath been royal, in his time, and none shall deny him his due of reverence or fail to give him salutation. he hath the throne's protection, he hath the crown's support, he shall be known and called by the honorable title of the king's ward.' the proud and happy tom canty rose and kissed the king's hand, and was conducted from the presence. he did not waste any time, but flew to his mother, to tell her and nan and bet all about it and get them to help him enjoy the great news.*(22) conclusion conclusion justice and retribution when the mysteries were all cleared up, it came out, by confession of hugh hendon, that his wife had repudiated miles by his command that day at hendon halla command assisted and supported by the perfectly trustworthy promise that if she did not deny that he was miles hendon, and stand firmly to it, he would have her life; whereupon she said take it, she did not value itand she would not repudiate miles; then her husband said he would spare her life, but have miles assassinated! this was a different matter; so she gave her word and kept it. hugh was not prosecuted for his threats or for stealing his brother's estates and title, because the wife and brother would not testify against himand the former would not have been allowed to do it, even if she had wanted to. hugh deserted his wife and went over to the continent, where he presently died; and by and by the earl of kent married his relict. there were grand times and rejoicings at hendon village when the couple paid their first visit to the hall. tom canty's father was never heard of again. the king sought out the farmer who had been branded and sold as a slave, and reclaimed him from his evil life with the ruffler's gang, and put him in the way of a comfortable livelihood. he also took that old lawyer out of prison and remitted his fine. he provided good homes for the daughters of the two baptist women whom he saw burned at the stake, and roundly punished the official who laid the undeserved stripes upon miles hendon's back. he saved from the gallows the boy who had captured the stray falcon, and also the woman who had stolen the remnant of cloth from a weaver; but he was too late to save the man who had been convicted of killing a deer in the royal forest. he showed favor to the justice who had pitied him when he was supposed to have stolen a pig, and he had the gratification of seeing him grow in the public esteem and become a great and honored man. as long as the king lived he was fond of telling the story of his adventures, all through, from the hour that the sentinel cuffed him away from the palace gate till the final midnight when he deftly mixed himself into a gang of hurrying workmen and so slipped into the abbey and climbed up and hid himself in the confessor's tomb, and then slept so long, next day, that he came within one of missing the coronation altogether. he said that the frequent rehearsing of the precious lesson kept him strong in his purpose to make its teachings yield benefits to his people; and so, while his life was spared he should continue to tell the story, and thus keep its sorrowful spectacles fresh in his memory and the springs of pity replenished in his heart. miles hendon and tom canty were favorites of the king, all through his brief reign, and his sincere mourners when he died. the good earl of kent had too much good sense to abuse his peculiar privilege; but he exercised it twice after the instance we have seen of it before he was called from the world; once at the accession of queen mary, and once at the accession of queen elizabeth. a descendant of his exercised it at the accession of james i. before this one's son chose to use the privilege, near a quarter of a century had elapsed, and the 'privilege of the kents' had faded out of most people's memories; so, when the kent of that day appeared before charles i and his court and sat down in the sovereign's presence to assert and perpetuate the right of his house, there was a fine stir, indeed! but the matter was soon explained and the right confirmed. the last earl of the line fell in the wars of the commonwealth fighting for the king, and the odd privilege ended with him. tom canty lived to be a very old man, a handsome, white-haired old fellow, of grave and benignant aspect. as long as he lasted he was honored; and he was also reverenced, for his striking and peculiar costume kept the people reminded that 'in his time he had been royal'; so, wherever he appeared the crowd fell apart, making way for him, and whispering, one to another, 'doff thy hat, it is the king's ward!'and so they saluted, and got his kindly smile in returnand they valued it, too, for his was an honorable history. yes, king edward vi lived only a few years, poor boy, but he lived them worthily. more than once, when some great dignitary, some gilded vassal of the crown, made argument against his leniency, and urged that some law which he was bent upon amending was gentle enough for its purpose, and wrought no suffering or oppression which any one need mightily mind, the young king turned the mournful eloquence of his great compassionate eyes upon him and answered: 'what dost thou know of suffering and oppression! i and my people know, but not thou.' the reign of edward vi was a singularly merciful one for those harsh times. now that we are taking leave of him let us try to keep this in our minds, to his credit. notes notes * christ's hospital costume. it is most reasonable to regard the dress as copied from the costume of the citizens of london of that period, when long blue coats were the common habit of apprentices and serving-men, and yellow stockings were generally worn; the coat fits closely to the body, but has loose sleeves, and beneath is worn a sleeveless yellow undercoat; around the waist is a red leathern girdle; a clerical band around the neck, and a small flat black cap, about the size of a saucer, completes the costume.timbs's 'curiosities of london.' *(2) it appears that christ's hospital was not originally founded as a school; its object was to rescue children from the streets, to shelter, feed, clothe them, etc.timb's 'curiosities of london.' *(3) the duke of norfolk's condemnation commanded. the king was now approaching fast toward his end; and fearing lest norfolk should escape him, he sent a message to the commons, by which he desired them to hasten the bill, on pretense that norfolk enjoyed the dignity of earl marshal, and it was necessary to appoint another, who might officiate at the ensuing ceremony of installing his son prince of wales.hume, vol. iii, p. 307 *(4) it was not till the end of this reign (henry viii) that any salads, carrots, turnips, or other edible roots were produced in england. the little of these vegetables that was used was formerly imported from holland and flanders. queen catherine, when she wanted a salad, was obliged to despatch a messenger thither on purpose.hume's history of england, vol. iii, p. 314. *(5) attainder of norfolk. the house of peers, without examining the prisoner, without trial or evidence, passed a bill of attainder against him and sent it down to the commons.... the obsequious commons obeyed his (the king's) directions; and the king, having affixed the royal assent to the bill by commissioners, issued orders for the execution of norfolk on the morning of the twenty-ninth of january (the next day).hume's england, vol. iii, p. 306. *(6) the loving-cup. the loving-cup, and the peculiar ceremonies observed in drinking from it, are older than english history. it is thought that both are danish importations. as far back as knowledge goes, the loving-cup has always been drunk at english banquets. tradition explains the ceremonies in this way: in the rude ancient times it was deemed a wise precaution to have both hands of both drinkers employed, lest while the pledger pledged his love and fidelity to the pledgee the pledgee take that opportunity to slip a dirk into him! *(7) the duke of norfolks narrow escape. had henry viii survived a few hours longer, his order for the duke's execution would have been carried into effect. 'but news being carried to the tower that the king himself had expired that night, the lieutenant deferred obeying the warrant; and it was not thought advisable by the council to begin a new reign by the death of the greatest nobleman in the kingdom, who had been condemned by a sentence so unjust and tyrannical.'hume's england, vol. iii, p 307. *(8) he refers to the order of baronets, or baronettesthe barones minor, as distinct from the parliamentary barons;not, it need hardly be said, the baronets of later creation. *(9) the lords of kingsale, descendants of de courcy, still enjoy this curious privilege. *(10) hume. *(11) hume. *(12) the whipping-boy. james i and charles ii had whipping-boys when they were little fellows, to take their punishment for them when they fell short in their lessons; so i have ventured to furnish my small prince with one, for my own purposes. *(13) character of hertford. the young king discovered an extreme attachment to his uncle, who was, in the main, a man of moderation and probity.hume's england, vol. iii, p. 324. but if he (the protector) gave offense by assuming too much state, he deserves great praise on account of the laws passed this session, by which the rigor of former statutes was much mitigated, and some security given to the freedom of the constitution. all laws were repealed which extended the crime of treason beyond the statute of the twenty-fifth of edward iii; all laws enacted during the late reign extending the crime of felony; all the former laws against lollardy or heresy, together with the statute of the six articles. none were to be accused for words, but within a month after they were spoken. by these repeals several of the most rigorous laws that ever had passed in england were annulled; and some dawn, both of civil and religious liberty, began to appear to the people. a repeal also passed of that law, the destruction of all laws, by which the king's proclamation was made of equal force with a statute.ibid., vol. iii, p. 339. boiling to death. in the reign of henry viii, poisoners were, by act of parliament condemned to be boiled to death. this act was repealed in the following reign. in germany, even in the 17th century, this horrible punishment was inflicted on coiners and counterfeiters. taylor, the water poet, describes an execution he witnessed in hamburg, in 1616. the judgement pronounced against a coiner of false money was that he should 'be boiled to death in oil: not thrown into the vessel at once, but with a pulley or rope to be hanged under the armpits, and then let down into the oil by degrees; first the feet, and next the legs, and so to boil his flesh from his bones alive.'dr. j. hammond trumbull's 'blue laws, true and false,' p. 13. the famous stocking case. a woman and her daughter, nine years old, were hanged in huntingdon for selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off their stockings!ibid., p. 20. *(14) leigh hunt's the town, p. 408, quotation from an early tourist. *(15) from 'the english rogue': london, 1665. *(16) canting terms for various kinds of thieves, beggars and vagabonds, and their female companions. *(17) enslaving. so young a king, and so ignorant a peasant were likely to make mistakesand this is an instance in point. this peasant was suffering from this law by anticipation; the king was venting his indignation against a law which was not yet in existence: for this hideous statute was to have birth in this little king's own reign. however, we know, from the humanity of his character, that it could never have been suggested by him. *(18) from 'the english rogue': london, 1665. *(19) death for trifling larcenies. when connecticut and new haven were framing their first codes, larceny above the value of twelve pence was a capital crime in england, as it had been since the time of henry i.dr. j. hammond trumbull's 'blue laws, true and false.' p. 17. the curious old book called the english rogue makes the limit thirteen pence ha'penny; death being the portion of any who steal a thing 'above the value of thirteen pence ha'penny.' *(20) from many descriptions of larceny, the law expressly took away the benefit of clergy; to steal a horse, or a hawk, or woolen cloth from the weaver, was a hanging matter. so it was to kill a deer from the king's forest, or to export sheep from the kingdom.dr. j. hammond trumbull's 'blue laws, true and false,' p. 13. william prynne, a learned barrister, was sentenced(long after edward the sixth's time)to lose both his ears in the pillory; to degradation from the bar; a fine of l3,000, and imprisonment for life. three years afterward, he gave new offense to laud, by publishing a pamphlet against the hierarchy. he was again prosecuted, and was sentenced to lose what remained of his ears; to pay a fine of l5,000; to be branded on both his cheeks with the letters s. l. (for seditious libeler), and to remain in prison for life. the severity of this sentence was equaled by the savage rigor of its execution.ibid., p. 12. *(21) hume's england. *(22) christ's hospital or blue coat scbool, 'the noblest institution in the world.' the ground on which the priory of the grey friars stood was conferred by henry the eighth on the corporation of london (who caused the institution there of a home for poor boys and girls). subsequently, edward the sixth caused the old priory to be properly repaired, and founded within it that noble establishment called the blue coat school, or christ's hospital, for the education and maintenance of orphans and the children of indigent persons.... edward would not let him (bishop ridley) depart till the letter was written (to the lord mayor), and then charged him to deliver it himself, and signify his special request and commandment that no time might be lost in proposing what was convenient, and apprising him of the proceedings. the work was zealously undertaken, ridley himself engaging in it; and the result was, the founding of christ's hospital for the education of poor children. (the king endowed several other charities at the same time.) 'lord god,' said he, 'i yield thee most hearty thanks that thou hast given me life thus long, to finish this work to the glory of thy name!' that innocent and most exemplary life was drawing rapidly to its close, and in a few days he rendered up his spirit to his creator, praying god to defend the realm from papistry.j. heneage jesse's 'london,its celebrated characters and places.' in the great hall hangs a large picture of king edward vi seated on his throne, in a scarlet and ermined robe, holding the scepter in his left hand, presenting with the other the charter to the kneeling lord mayor. by his side stands the chancellor, holding the seals, and next to him are other officers of state. bishop ridley kneels before him with uplifted hands, as if supplicating a blessing on the event; while the aldermen, etc, with the lord mayor, kneel on both sides, occupying the middle ground of the picture; and lastly, in front, are a double row of boys on one side, and girls on the other, from the master and matron down to the boy and girl who have stepped forward from their respective rows, and kneel with raised hands before the king.timbs's 'curiosities of london,' p. 98. christ's hospital, by ancient custom, possesses the privilege of addressing the sovereign on the occasion of his or her coming into the city to partake of the hospitality of the corporation of london.ibid. the dining-hall, with its lobby and organ-gallery, occupies the entire story, which is 187 feet long, 51 feet wide, and 47 feet high; it is lit by nine large windows, filled with stained glass on the south side; that is, next to westminster hall, the noblest room in the metropolis. here the boys, now about 800 in number, dine; and here are held the 'suppings in public,' to which visitors are admitted by tickets, issued by the treasurer and by the governors of christ's hospital. the tables are laid with cheese in wooden bowls; beer in wooden piggins, poured from leathern jacks; and bread brought in large baskets. the official company enter; the lord mayor, or president, takes his seat in a state chair, made of oak from st. catherine's church by the tower; a hymn is sung, accompanied by the organ; a 'grecian,' or head boy, reads the prayers from the pulpit, silence being enforced by three drops of a wooden hammer. after prayer the supper commences, and the visitors walk between the tables. at its close, the 'trade-boys' take up the baskets, bowls, jacks, piggins, and candlesticks, and pass in procession, the bowing to the governors being curiously formal. this spectacle was witnessed by queen victoria and prince albert in 1845. among the more eminent blue coat boys are joshua bames, editor of anacreon and euripides; jeremiah markland, the eminent critic, particularly in greek literature; camden, the antiquary; bishop stillingfleet; samuel richardson, the novelist; thomas mitchell, the translator of aristophanes; thomas barnes, many years editor of the london times; coleridge, charles lamb, and leigh hunt. no boy is admitted before he is seven years old, or after he is nine; and no boy can remain in the school after he is fifteen, king's boys and 'grecians' alone excepted. there are about 500 governors, at the head of whom are the sovereign and the prince of wales. the qualification for a governor is payment of l500.ibid. general note one hears much about the 'hideous blue-laws of connecticut,' and is accustomed to shudder piously when they are mentioned. there are people in americaand even in england!who imagine that they were a very monument of malignity, pitilessness, and inhumanity; whereas, in reality they were about the first sweeping departure from judicial atrocity which the 'civilized' world had seen. this humane and kindly blue-law code, of two hundred and forty years ago, stands all by itself, with ages of bloody law on the further side of it, and a century and three-quarters of bloody english law on this side of it. there has never been a timeunder the blue-laws or any otherwhen above fourteen crimes were punishable by death in connecticut. but in england, within the memory of men who are still hale in body and mind, two hundred and twenty-three crimes were punishable by death!* these facts are worth knowingand worth thinking about, too. * see dr. j. hammond trumbull's blue laws, true and false, p. 11. the end . *****the project gutenberg etext of the silverado squatters***** #23 in our series by robert louis stevenson copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* the silverado squatters by robert louis stevenson scanned and proofed by david price, ccx074@coventry.ac.uk the silverado squatters the scene of this little book is on a high mountain. there are, indeed, many higher; there are many of a nobler outline. it is no place of pilgrimage for the summary globe-trotter; but to one who lives upon its sides, mount saint helena soon becomes a centre of interest. it is the mont blanc of one section of the californian coast range, none of its near neighbours rising to one-half its altitude. it looks down on much green, intricate country. it feeds in the spring-time many splashing brooks. from its summit you must have an excellent lesson of geography: seeing, to the south, san francisco bay, with tamalpais on the one hand and monte diablo on the other; to the west and thirty miles away, the open ocean; eastward, across the corn-lands and thick tule swamps of sacramento valley, to where the central pacific railroad begins to climb the sides of the sierras; and northward, for what i know, the white head of shasta looking down on oregon. three counties, napa county, lake county, and sonoma county, march across its cliffy shoulders. its naked peak stands nearly four thousand five hundred feet above the sea; its sides are fringed with forest; and the soil, where it is bare, glows warm with cinnabar. life in its shadow goes rustically forward. bucks, and bears, and rattle-snakes, and former mining operations, are the staple of men's talk. agriculture has only begun to mount above the valley. and though in a few years from now the whole district may be smiling with farms, passing trains shaking the mountain to the heart, many-windowed hotels lighting up the night like factories, and a prosperous city occupying the site of sleepy calistoga; yet in the mean time, around the foot of that mountain the silence of nature reigns in a great measure unbroken, and the people of hill and valley go sauntering about their business as in the days before the flood. to reach mount saint helena from san francisco, the traveller has twice to cross the bay: once by the busy oakland ferry, and again, after an hour or so of the railway, from vallejo junction to vallejo. thence he takes rail once more to mount the long green strath of napa valley. in all the contractions and expansions of that inland sea, the bay of san francisco, there can be few drearier scenes than the vallejo ferry. bald shores and a low, bald islet inclose the sea; through the narrows the tide bubbles, muddy like a river. when we made the passage (bound, although yet we knew it not, for silverado) the steamer jumped, and the black buoys were dancing in the jabble; the ocean breeze blew killing chill; and, although the upper sky was still unflecked with vapour, the sea fogs were pouring in from seaward, over the hilltops of marin county, in one great, shapeless, silver cloud. south vallejo is typical of many californian towns. it was a blunder; the site has proved untenable; and, although it is still such a young place by the scale of europe, it has already begun to be deserted for its neighbour and namesake, north vallejo. a long pier, a number of drinking saloons, a hotel of a great size, marshy pools where the frogs keep up their croaking, and even at high noon the entire absence of any human face or voice these are the marks of south vallejo. yet there was a tall building beside the pier, labelled the star flour mills; and sea-going, full-rigged ships lay close along shore, waiting for their cargo. soon these would be plunging round the horn, soon the flour from the star flour mills would be landed on the wharves of liverpool. for that, too, is one of england's outposts; thither, to this gaunt mill, across the atlantic and pacific deeps and round about the icy horn, this crowd of great, three-masted, deep-sea ships come, bringing nothing, and return with bread. the frisby house, for that was the name of the hotel, was a place of fallen fortunes, like the town. it was now given up to labourers, and partly ruinous. at dinner there was the ordinary display of what is called in the west a two-bit house: the tablecloth checked red and white, the plague of flies, the wire hencoops over the dishes, the great variety and invariable vileness of the food and the rough coatless men devoting it in silence. in our bedroom, the stove would not burn, though it would smoke; and while one window would not open, the other would not shut. there was a view on a bit of empty road, a few dark houses, a donkey wandering with its shadow on a slope, and a blink of sea, with a tall ship lying anchored in the moonlight. all about that dreary inn frogs sang their ungainly chorus. early the next morning we mounted the hill along a wooden footway, bridging one marish spot after another. here and there, as we ascended, we passed a house embowered in white roses. more of the bay became apparent, and soon the blue peak of tamalpais rose above the green level of the island opposite. it told us we were still but a little way from the city of the golden gates, already, at that hour, beginning to awake among the sand-hills. it called to us over the waters as with the voice of a bird. its stately head, blue as a sapphire on the paler azure of the sky, spoke to us of wider outlooks and the bright pacific. for tamalpais stands sentry, like a lighthouse, over the golden gates, between the bay and the open ocean, and looks down indifferently on both. even as we saw and hailed it from vallejo, seamen, far out at sea, were scanning it with shaded eyes; and, as if to answer to the thought, one of the great ships below began silently to clothe herself with white sails, homeward bound for england. for some way beyond vallejo the railway led us through bald green pastures. on the west the rough highlands of marin shut off the ocean; in the midst, in long, straggling, gleaming arms, the bay died out among the grass; there were few trees and few enclosures; the sun shone wide over open uplands, the displumed hills stood clear against the sky. but by-and-by these hills began to draw nearer on either hand, and first thicket and then wood began to clothe their sides; and soon we were away from all signs of the sea's neighbourhood, mounting an inland, irrigated valley. a great variety of oaks stood, now severally, now in a becoming grove, among the fields and vineyards. the towns were compact, in about equal proportions, of bright, new wooden houses and great and growing forest trees; and the chapel bell on the engine sounded most festally that sunny sunday, as we drew up at one green town after another, with the townsfolk trooping in their sunday's best to see the strangers, with the sun sparkling on the clean houses, and great domes of foliage humming overhead in the breeze. this pleasant napa valley is, at its north end, blockaded by our mountain. there, at calistoga, the railroad ceases, and the traveller who intends faring farther, to the geysers or to the springs in lake county, must cross the spurs of the mountain by stage. thus, mount saint helena is not only a summit, but a frontier; and, up to the time of writing, it has stayed the progress of the iron horse. part i in the valley chapter i calistoga it is difficult for a european to imagine calistoga, the whole place is so new, and of such an accidental pattern; the very name, i hear, was invented at a supper-party by the man who found the springs. the railroad and the highway come up the valley about parallel to one another. the street of calistoga joins the perpendicular to both a wide street, with bright, clean, low houses, here and there a verandah over the sidewalk, here and there a horse-post, here and there lounging townsfolk. other streets are marked out, and most likely named; for these towns in the new world begin with a firm resolve to grow larger, washington and broadway, and then first and second, and so forth, being boldly plotted out as soon as the community indulges in a plan. but, in the meanwhile, all the life and most of the houses of calistoga are concentrated upon that street between the railway station and the road. i never heard it called by any name, but i will hazard a guess that it is either washington or broadway. here are the blacksmith's, the chemist's, the general merchant's, and kong sam kee, the chinese laundryman's; here, probably, is the office of the local paper (for the place has a paper they all have papers); and here certainly is one of the hotels, cheeseborough's, whence the daring foss, a man dear to legend, starts his horses for the geysers. it must be remembered that we are here in a land of stagedrivers and highwaymen: a land, in that sense, like england a hundred years ago. the highway robber road-agent, he is quaintly called is still busy in these parts. the fame of vasquez is still young. only a few years go, the lakeport stage was robbed a mile or two from calistoga. in 1879, the dentist of mendocino city, fifty miles away upon the coast, suddenly threw off the garments of his trade, like grindoff, in the miller and his men, and flamed forth in his second dress as a captain of banditti. a great robbery was followed by a long chase, a chase of days if not of weeks, among the intricate hill-country; and the chase was followed by much desultory fighting, in which several and the dentist, i believe, amongst the number bit the dust. the grass was springing for the first time, nourished upon their blood, when i arrived in calistoga. i am reminded of another highwayman of that same year. "he had been unwell," so ran his humorous defence, "and the doctor told him to take something, so he took the express-box." the cultus of the stage-coachman always flourishes highest where there are thieves on the road, and where the guard travels armed, and the stage is not only a link between country and city, and the vehicle of news, but has a faint warfaring aroma, like a man who should be brother to a soldier. california boasts her famous stage-drivers, and among the famous foss is not forgotten. along the unfenced, abominable mountain roads, he launches his team with small regard to human life or the doctrine of probabilities. flinching travellers, who behold themselves coasting eternity at every corner, look with natural admiration at their driver's huge, impassive, fleshy countenance. he has the very face for the driver in sam weller's anecdote, who upset the election party at the required point. wonderful tales are current of his readiness and skill. one in particular, of how one of his horses fell at a ticklish passage of the road, and how foss let slip the reins, and, driving over the fallen animal, arrived at the next stage with only three. this i relate as i heard it, without guarantee. i only saw foss once, though, strange as it may sound, i have twice talked with him. he lives out of calistoga, at a ranche called fossville. one evening, after he was long gone home, i dropped into cheeseborough's, and was asked if i should like to speak with mr. foss. supposing that the interview was impossible, and that i was merely called upon to subscribe the general sentiment, i boldly answered "yes." next moment, i had one instrument at my ear, another at my mouth and found myself, with nothing in the world to say, conversing with a man several miles off among desolate hills. foss rapidly and somewhat plaintively brought the conversation to an end; and he returned to his night's grog at fossville, while i strolled forth again on calistoga high street. but it was an odd thing that here, on what we are accustomed to consider the very skirts of civilization, i should have used the telephone for the first time in my civilized career. so it goes in these young countries; telephones, and telegraphs, and newspapers, and advertisements running far ahead among the indians and the grizzly bears. alone, on the other side of the railway, stands the springs hotel, with its attendant cottages. the floor of the valley is extremely level to the very roots of the hills; only here and there a hillock, crowned with pines, rises like the barrow of some chieftain famed in war; and right against one of these hillocks is the springs hotel is or was; for since i was there the place has been destroyed by fire, and has risen again from its ashes. a lawn runs about the house, and the lawn is in its turn surrounded by a system of little five-roomed cottages, each with a verandah and a weedy palm before the door. some of the cottages are let to residents, and these are wreathed in flowers. the rest are occupied by ordinary visitors to the hotel; and a very pleasant way this is, by which you have a little country cottage of your own, without domestic burthens, and by the day or week. the whole neighbourhood of mount saint helena is full of sulphur and of boiling springs. the geysers are famous; they were the great health resort of the indians before the coming of the whites. lake county is dotted with spas; hot springs and white sulphur springs are the names of two stations on the napa valley railroad; and calistoga itself seems to repose on a mere film above a boiling, subterranean lake. at one end of the hotel enclosure are the springs from which it takes its name, hot enough to scald a child seriously while i was there. at the other end, the tenant of a cottage sank a well, and there also the water came up boiling. it keeps this end of the valley as warm as a toast. i have gone across to the hotel a little after five in the morning, when a sea fog from the pacific was hanging thick and gray, and dark and dirty overhead, and found the thermometer had been up before me, and had already climbed among the nineties; and in the stress of the day it was sometimes too hot to move about. but in spite of this heat from above and below, doing one on both sides, calistoga was a pleasant place to dwell in; beautifully green, for it was then that favoured moment in the californian year, when the rains are over and the dusty summer has not yet set in; often visited by fresh airs, now from the mountain, now across sonoma from the sea; very quiet, very idle, very silent but for the breezes and the cattle bells afield. and there was something satisfactory in the sight of that great mountain that enclosed us to the north: whether it stood, robed in sunshine, quaking to its topmost pinnacle with the heat and brightness of the day; or whether it set itself to weaving vapours, wisp after wisp growing, trembling, fleeting, and fading in the blue. the tangled, woody, and almost trackless foot-hills that enclose the valley, shutting it off from sonoma on the west, and from yolo on the east rough as they were in outline, dug out by winter streams, crowned by cliffy bluffs and nodding pine trees wore dwarfed into satellites by the bulk and bearing of mount saint helena. she over-towered them by two-thirds of her own stature. she excelled them by the boldness of her profile. her great bald summit, clear of trees and pasture, a cairn of quartz and cinnabar, rejected kinship with the dark and shaggy wilderness of lesser hilltops. chapter ii the petrified forest we drove off from the springs hotel about three in the afternoon. the sun warmed me to the heart. a broad, cool wind streamed pauselessly down the valley, laden with perfume. up at the top stood mount saint helena, a bulk of mountain, bare atop, with tree-fringed spurs, and radiating warmth. once we saw it framed in a grove of tall and exquisitely graceful white oaks, in line and colour a finished composition. we passed a cow stretched by the roadside, her bell slowly beating time to the movement of her ruminating jaws, her big red face crawled over by half a dozen flies, a monument of content. a little farther, and we struck to the left up a mountain road, and for two hours threaded one valley after another, green, tangled, full of noble timber, giving us every now and again a sight of mount saint helena and the blue hilly distance, and crossed by many streams, through which we splashed to the carriage-step. to the right or the left, there was scarce any trace of man but the road we followed; i think we passed but one ranchero's house in the whole distance, and that was closed and smokeless. but we had the society of these bright streams dazzlingly clear, as is their wont, splashing from the wheels in diamonds, and striking a lively coolness through the sunshine. and what with the innumerable variety of greens, the masses of foliage tossing in the breeze, the glimpses of distance, the descents into seemingly impenetrable thickets, the continual dodging of the road which made haste to plunge again into the covert, we had a fine sense of woods, and spring-time, and the open air. our driver gave me a lecture by the way on californian trees a thing i was much in need of, having fallen among painters who know the name of nothing, and mexicans who know the name of nothing in english. he taught me the madrona, the manzanita, the buck-eye, the maple; he showed me the crested mountain quail; he showed me where some young redwoods were already spiring heavenwards from the ruins of the old; for in this district all had already perished: redwoods and redskins, the two noblest indigenous living things, alike condemned. at length, in a lonely dell, we came on a huge wooden gate with a sign upon it like an inn. "the petrified forest. proprietor: c. evans," ran the legend. within, on a knoll of sward, was the house of the proprietor, and another smaller house hard by to serve as a museum, where photographs and petrifactions were retailed. it was a pure little isle of touristry among these solitary hills. the proprietor was a brave old white-faced swede. he had wandered this way, heaven knows how, and taken up his acres i forget how many years ago all alone, bent double with sciatica, and with six bits in his pocket and an axe upon his shoulder. long, useless years of seafaring had thus discharged him at the end, penniless and sick. without doubt he had tried his luck at the diggings, and got no good from that; without doubt he had loved the bottle, and lived the life of jack ashore. but at the end of these adventures, here he came; and, the place hitting his fancy, down he sat to make a new life of it, far from crimps and the salt sea. and the very sight of his ranche had done him good. it was "the handsomest spot in the californy mountains." "isn't it handsome, now?" he said. every penny he makes goes into that ranche to make it handsomer. then the climate, with the seabreeze every afternoon in the hottest summer weather, had gradually cured the sciatica; and his sister and niece were now domesticated with him for company or, rather, the niece came only once in the two days, teaching music the meanwhile in the valley. and then, for a last piece of luck, "the handsomest spot in the californy mountains" had produced a petrified forest, which mr. evans now shows at the modest figure of half a dollar a head, or two-thirds of his capital when he first came there with an axe and a sciatica. this tardy favourite of fortune hobbling a little, i think, as if in memory of the sciatica, but with not a trace that i can remember of the sea thoroughly ruralized from head to foot, proceeded to escort us up the hill behind his house. "who first found the forest?" asked my wife. "the first? i was that man," said he. "i was cleaning up the pasture for my beasts, when i found this" kicking a great redwood seven feet in diameter, that lay there on its side, hollow heart, clinging lumps of bark, all changed into gray stone, with veins of quartz between what had been the layers of the wood. "were you surprised?" "surprised? no! what would i be surprised about? what did i know about petrifactions following the sea? petrifaction! there was no such word in my language! i knew about putrifaction, though! i thought it was a stone; so would you, if you was cleaning up pasture." and now he had a theory of his own, which i did not quite grasp, except that the trees had not "grewed" there. but he mentioned, with evident pride, that he differed from all the scientific people who had visited the spot; and he flung about such words as "tufa" and "scilica" with careless freedom. when i mentioned i was from scotland, "my old country," he said; "my old country" with a smiling look and a tone of real affection in his voice. i was mightily surprised, for he was obviously scandinavian, and begged him to explain. it seemed he had learned his english and done nearly all his sailing in scotch ships. "out of glasgow," said he, "or greenock; but that's all the same they all hail from glasgow." and he was so pleased with me for being a scotsman, and his adopted compatriot, that he made me a present of a very beautiful piece of petrifaction i believe the most beautiful and portable he had. here was a man, at least, who was a swede, a scot, and an american, acknowledging some kind allegiance to three lands. mr. wallace's scoto-circassian will not fail to come before the reader. i have myself met and spoken with a fifeshire german, whose combination of abominable accents struck me dumb. but, indeed, i think we all belong to many countries. and perhaps this habit of much travel, and the engendering of scattered friendships, may prepare the euthanasia of ancient nations. and the forest itself? well, on a tangled, briery hillside for the pasture would bear a little further cleaning up, to my eyes there lie scattered thickly various lengths of petrified trunk, such as the one already mentioned. it is very curious, of course, and ancient enough, if that were all. doubtless, the heart of the geologist beats quicker at the sight; but, for my part, i was mightily unmoved. sightseeing is the art of disappointment. "there's nothing under heaven so blue, that's fairly worth the travelling to." but, fortunately, heaven rewards us with many agreeable prospects and adventures by the way; and sometimes, when we go out to see a petrified forest, prepares a far more delightful curiosity, in the form of mr. evans, whom may all prosperity attend throughout a long and green old age. chapter iii napa wine i was interested in californian wine. indeed, i am interested in all wines, and have been all my life, from the raisin wine that a schoolfellow kept secreted in his play-box up to my last discovery, those notable valtellines, that once shone upon the board of caesar. some of us, kind old pagans, watch with dread the shadows falling on the age: how the unconquerable worm invades the sunny terraces of france, and bordeaux is no more, and the rhone a mere arabia petraea. chateau neuf is dead, and i have never tasted it; hermitage a hermitage indeed from all life's sorrows lies expiring by the river. and in the place of these imperial elixirs, beautiful to every sense, gem-hued, flower-scented, dream-compellers:behold upon the quays at cette the chemicals arrayed; behold the analyst at marseilles, raising hands in obsecration, attesting god lyoeus, and the vats staved in, and the dishonest wines poured forth among the sea. it is not pan only; bacchus, too, is dead. if wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, the sun of the white dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or three, all fervent, hushing their talk, degusting tenderly, and storing reminiscences for a bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect if wine is to desert us, go thy ways, old jack! now we begin to have compunctions, and look back at the brave bottles squandered upon dinner-parties, where the guests drank grossly, discussing politics the while, and even the schoolboy "took his whack," like liquorice water. and at the same time, we look timidly forward, with a spark of hope, to where the new lands, already weary of producing gold, begin to green with vineyards. a nice point in human history falls to be decided by californian and australian wines. wine in california is still in the experimental stage; and when you taste a vintage, grave economical questions are involved. the beginning of vine-planting is like the beginning of mining for the precious metals: the wine-grower also "prospects." one corner of land after another is tried with one kind of grape after another. this is a failure; that is better; a third best. so, bit by bit, they grope about for their clos vougeot and lafite. those lodes and pockets of earth, more precious than the precious ores, that yield inimitable fragrance and soft fire; those virtuous bonanzas, where the soil has sublimated under sun and stars to something finer, and the wine is bottled poetry: these still lie undiscovered; chaparral conceals, thicket embowers them; the miner chips the rock and wanders farther, and the grizzly muses undisturbed. but there they bide their hour, awaiting their columbus; and nature nurses and prepares them. the smack of californian earth shall linger on the palate of your grandson. meanwhile the wine is merely a good wine; the best that i have tasted better than a beaujolais, and not unlike. but the trade is poor; it lives from hand to mouth, putting its all into experiments, and forced to sell its vintages. to find one properly matured, and bearing its own name, is to be fortune's favourite. bearing its own name, i say, and dwell upon the innuendo. "you want to know why california wine is not drunk in the states?" a san francisco wine merchant said to me, after he had shown me through his premises. "well, here's the reason." and opening a large cupboard, fitted with many little drawers, he proceeded to shower me all over with a great variety of gorgeously tinted labels, blue, red, or yellow, stamped with crown or coronet, and hailing from such a profusion of clos and chateaux, that a single department could scarce have furnished forth the names. but it was strange that all looked unfamiliar. "chateau x-?" said i. "i never heard of that." "i dare say not," said he. "i had been reading one of x-'s novels." they were all castles in spain! but that sure enough is the reason why california wine is not drunk in the states. napa valley has been long a seat of the wine-growing industry. it did not here begin, as it does too often, in the low valley lands along the river, but took at once to the rough foot-hills, where alone it can expect to prosper. a basking inclination, and stones, to be a reservoir of the day's heat, seem necessary to the soil for wine; the grossness of the earth must be evaporated, its marrow daily melted and refined for ages; until at length these clods that break below our footing, and to the eye appear but common earth, are truly and to the perceiving mind, a masterpiece of nature. the dust of richebourg, which the wind carries away, what an apotheosis of the dust! not man himself can seem a stranger child of that brown, friable powder, than the blood and sun in that old flask behind the faggots. a californian vineyard, one of man's outposts in the wilderness, has features of its own. there is nothing here to remind you of the rhine or rhone, of the low cote d'or, or the infamous and scabby deserts of champagne; but all is green, solitary, covert. we visited two of them, mr. schram's and mr. m'eckron's, sharing the same glen. some way down the valley below calistoga, we turned sharply to the south and plunged into the thick of the wood. a rude trail rapidly mounting; a little stream tinkling by on the one hand, big enough perhaps after the rains, but already yielding up its life; overhead and on all sides a bower of green and tangled thicket, still fragrant and still flowerbespangled by the early season, where thimble-berry played the part of our english hawthorn, and the buck-eyes were putting forth their twisted horns of blossom: through all this, we struggled toughly upwards, canted to and fro by the roughness of the trail, and continually switched across the face by sprays of leaf or blossom. the last is no great inconvenience at home; but here in california it is a matter of some moment. for in all woods and by every wayside there prospers an abominable shrub or weed, called poison-oak, whose very neighbourhood is venomous to some, and whose actual touch is avoided by the most impervious. the two houses, with their vineyards, stood each in a green niche of its own in this steep and narrow forest dell. though they were so near, there was already a good difference in level; and mr. m'eckron's head must be a long way under the feet of mr. schram. no more had been cleared than was necessary for cultivation; close around each oasis ran the tangled wood; the glen enfolds them; there they lie basking in sun and silence, concealed from all but the clouds and the mountain birds. mr. m'eckron's is a bachelor establishment; a little bit of a wooden house, a small cellar hard by in the hillside, and a patch of vines planted and tended single-handed by himself. he had but recently began; his vines were young, his business young also; but i thought he had the look of the man who succeeds. he hailed from greenock: he remembered his father putting him inside mons meg, and that touched me home; and we exchanged a word or two of scotch, which pleased me more than you would fancy. mr. schram's, on the other hand, is the oldest vineyard in the valley, eighteen years old, i think; yet he began a penniless barber, and even after he had broken ground up here with his black malvoisies, continued for long to tramp the valley with his razor. now, his place is the picture of prosperity: stuffed birds in the verandah, cellars far dug into the hillside, and resting on pillars like a bandit's cave:all trimness, varnish, flowers, and sunshine, among the tangled wildwood. stout, smiling mrs. schram, who has been to europe and apparently all about the states for pleasure, entertained fanny in the verandah, while i was tasting wines in the cellar. to mr. schram this was a solemn office; his serious gusto warmed my heart; prosperity had not yet wholly banished a certain neophite and girlish trepidation, and he followed every sip and read my face with proud anxiety. i tasted all. i tasted every variety and shade of schramberger, red and white schramberger, burgundy schramberger, schramberger hock, schramberger golden chasselas, the latter with a notable bouquet, and i fear to think how many more. much of it goes to london most, i think; and mr. schram has a great notion of the english taste. in this wild spot, i did not feel the sacredness of ancient cultivation. it was still raw, it was no marathon, and no johannisberg; yet the stirring sunlight, and the growing vines, and the vats and bottles in the cavern, made a pleasant music for the mind. here, also, earth's cream was being skimmed and garnered; and the london customers can taste, such as it is, the tang of the earth in this green valley. so local, so quintessential is a wine, that it seems the very birds in the verandah might communicate a flavour, and that romantic cellar influence the bottle next to be uncorked in pimlico, and the smile of jolly mr. schram might mantle in the glass. but these are but experiments. all things in this new land are moving farther on: the wine-vats and the miner's blasting tools but picket for a night, like bedouin pavillions; and to-morrow, to fresh woods! this stir of change and these perpetual echoes of the moving footfall, haunt the land. men move eternally, still chasing fortune; and, fortune found, still wander. as we drove back to calistoga, the road lay empty of mere passengers, but its green side was dotted with the camps of travelling families: one cumbered with a great waggonful of household stuff, settlers going to occupy a ranche they had taken up in mendocino, or perhaps tehama county; another, a party in dust coats, men and women, whom we found camped in a grove on the roadside, all on pleasure bent, with a chinaman to cook for them, and who waved their hands to us as we drove by. chapter iv the scot abroad a few pages back, i wrote that a man belonged, in these days, to a variety of countries; but the old land is still the true love, the others are but pleasant infidelities. scotland is indefinable; it has no unity except upon the map. two languages, many dialects, innumerable forms of piety, and countless local patriotisms and prejudices, part us among ourselves more widely than the extreme east and west of that great continent of america. when i am at home, i feel a man from glasgow to be something like a rival, a man from barra to be more than half a foreigner. yet let us meet in some far country, and, whether we hail from the braes of manor or the braes of mar, some ready-made affection joins us on the instant. it is not race. look at us. one is norse, one celtic, and another saxon. it is not community of tongue. we have it not among ourselves; and we have it almost to perfection, with english, or irish, or american. it is no tie of faith, for we detest each other's errors. and yet somewhere, deep down in the heart of each one of us, something yearns for the old land, and the old kindly people. of all mysteries of the human heart, this is perhaps the most inscrutable. there is no special loveliness in that gray country, with its rainy, sea-beat archipelago; its fields of dark mountains; its unsightly places, black with coal; its treeless, sour, unfriendly looking corn-lands; its quaint, gray, castled city, where the bells clash of a sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and beat. i do not even know if i desire to live there; but let me hear, in some far land, a kindred voice sing out, "oh, why left i my hame?" and it seems at once as if no beauty under the kind heavens, and no society of the wise and good, can repay me for my absence from my country. and though i think i would rather die elsewhere, yet in my heart of hearts i long to be buried among good scots clods. i will say it fairly, it grows on me with every year: there are no stars so lovely as edinburgh street-lamps. when i forget thee, auld reekie, may my right hand forget its cunning! the happiest lot on earth is to be born a scotchman. you must pay for it in many ways, as for all other advantages on earth. you have to learn the paraphrases and the shorter catechism; you generally take to drink; your youth, as far as i can find out, is a time of louder war against society, of more outcry and tears and turmoil, than if you had been born, for instance, in england. but somehow life is warmer and closer; the hearth burns more redly; the lights of home shine softer on the rainy street; the very names, endeared in verse and music, cling nearer round our hearts. an englishman may meet an englishman to-morrow, upon chimborazo, and neither of them care; but when the scotch wine-grower told me of mons meg, it was like magic. "from the dim shieling on the misty island mountains divide us, and a world of seas; yet still our hearts are true, our hearts are highland, and we, in dreams, behold the hebrides." and, highland and lowland, all our hearts are scotch. only a few days after i had seen m'eckron, a message reached me in my cottage. it was a scotchman who had come down a long way from the hills to market. he had heard there was a countryman in calistoga, and came round to the hotel to see him. we said a few words to each other; we had not much to say should never have seen each other had we stayed at home, separated alike in space and in society; and then we shook hands, and he went his way again to his ranche among the hills, and that was all. another scotchman there was, a resident, who for the more love of the common country, douce, serious, religious man, drove me all about the valley, and took as much interest in me as if i had been his son: more, perhaps; for the son has faults too keenly felt, while the abstract countryman is perfect like a whiff of peats. and there was yet another. upon him i came suddenly, as he was calmly entering my cottage, his mind quite evidently bent on plunder: a man of about fifty, filthy, ragged, roguish, with a chimney-pot hat and a tail coat, and a pursing of his mouth that might have been envied by an elder of the kirk. he had just such a face as i have seen a dozen times behind the plate. "hullo, sir!" i cried. "where are you going?" he turned round without a quiver. "you're a scotchman, sir?" he said gravely. "so am i; i come from aberdeen. this is my card," presenting me with a piece of pasteboard which he had raked out of some gutter in the period of the rains. "i was just examining this palm," he continued, indicating the misbegotten plant before our door, "which is the largest spacimen i have yet observed in califoarnia." there were four or five larger within sight. but where was the use of argument? he produced a tape-line, made me help him to measure the tree at the level of the ground, and entered the figures in a large and filthy pocket-book, all with the gravity of solomon. he then thanked me profusely, remarking that such little services were due between countrymen; shook hands with me, "for add lang syne," as he said; and took himself solemnly away, radiating dirt and humbug as he went. a month or two after this encounter of mine, there came a scot to sacramento perhaps from aberdeen. anyway, there never was any one more scotch in this wide world. he could sing and dance, and drink, i presume; and he played the pipes with vigour and success. all the scotch in sacramento became infatuated with him, and spent their spare time and money, driving him about in an open cab, between drinks, while he blew himself scarlet at the pipes. this is a very sad story. after he had borrowed money from every one, he and his pipes suddenly disappeared from sacramento, and when i last heard, the police were looking for him. i cannot say how this story amused me, when i felt myself so thoroughly ripe on both sides to be duped in the same way. it is at least a curious thing, to conclude, that the races which wander widest, jews and scotch, should be the most clannish in the world. but perhaps these two are cause and effect: "for ye were strangers in the land of egypt." part ii with the children of israel chapter i. to introduce mr. kelmar one thing in this new country very particularly strikes a stranger, and that is the number of antiquities. already there have been many cycles of population succeeding each other, and passing away and leaving behind them relics. these, standing on into changed times, strike the imagination as forcibly as any pyramid or feudal tower. the towns, like the vineyards, are experimentally founded: they grow great and prosper by passing occasions; and when the lode comes to an end, and the miners move elsewhere, the town remains behind them, like palmyra in the desert. i suppose there are, in no country in the world, so many deserted towns as here in california. the whole neighbourhood of mount saint helena, now so quiet and sylvan, was once alive with mining camps and villages. here there would be two thousand souls under canvas; there one thousand or fifteen hundred ensconced, as if for ever, in a town of comfortable houses. but the luck had failed, the mines petered out; and the army of miners had departed, and left this quarter of the world to the rattlesnakes and deer and grizzlies, and to the slower but steadier advance of husbandry. it was with an eye on one of these deserted places, pine flat, on the geysers road, that we had come first to calistoga. there is something singularly enticing in the idea of going, rent-free, into a ready-made house. and to the british merchant, sitting at home at ease, it may appear that, with such a roof over your head and a spring of clear water hard by, the whole problem of the squatter's existence would be solved. food, however, has yet to be considered, i will go as far as most people on tinned meats; some of the brightest moments of my life were passed over tinned mulligatawney in the cabin of a sixteen-ton schooner, storm-stayed in portree bay; but after suitable experiments, i pronounce authoritatively that man cannot live by tins alone. fresh meat must be had on an occasion. it is true that the great foss, driving by along the geysers road, wooden-faced, but glorified with legend, might have been induced to bring us meat, but the great foss could hardly bring us milk. to take a cow would have involved taking a field of grass and a milkmaid; after which it would have been hardly worth while to pause, and we might have added to our colony a flock of sheep and an experienced butcher. it is really very disheartening how we depend on other people in this life. "mihi est propositum," as you may see by the motto, "id quod regibus;" and behold it cannot be carried out, unless i find a neighbour rolling in cattle. now, my principal adviser in this matter was one whom i will call kelmar. that was not what he called himself, but as soon as i set eyes on him, i knew it was or ought to be his name; i am sure it will be his name among the angels. kelmar was the store-keeper, a russian jew, good-natured, in a very thriving way of business, and, on equal terms, one of the most serviceable of men. he also had something of the expression of a scotch country elder, who, by some peculiarity, should chance to be a hebrew. he had a projecting under lip, with which he continually smiled, or rather smirked. mrs. kelmar was a singularly kind woman; and the oldest son had quite a dark and romantic bearing, and might be heard on summer evenings playing sentimental airs on the violin. i had no idea, at the time i made his acquaintance, what an important person kelmar was. but the jew store-keepers of california, profiting at once by the needs and habits of the people, have made themselves in too many cases the tyrants of the rural population. credit is offered, is pressed on the new customer, and when once he is beyond his depth, the tune changes, and he is from thenceforth a white slave. i believe, even from the little i saw, that kelmar, if he choose to put on the screw, could send half the settlers packing in a radius of seven or eight miles round calistoga. these are continually paying him, but are never suffered to get out of debt. he palms dull goods upon them, for they dare not refuse to buy; he goes and dines with them when he is on an outing, and no man is loudlier welcomed; he is their family friend, the director of their business, and, to a degree elsewhere unknown in modern days, their king. for some reason, kelmar always shook his head at the mention of pine flat, and for some days i thought he disapproved of the whole scheme and was proportionately sad. one fine morning, however, he met me, wreathed in smiles. he had found the very place for me silverado, another old mining town, right up the mountain. rufe hanson, the hunter, could take care of us fine people the hansons; we should be close to the toll house, where the lakeport stage called daily; it was the best place for my health, besides. rufe had been consumptive, and was now quite a strong man, ain't it? in short, the place and all its accompaniments seemed made for us on purpose. he took me to his back door, whence, as from every point of calistoga, mount saint helena could be seen towering in the air. there, in the nick, just where the eastern foothills joined the mountain, and she herself began to rise above the zone of forest there was silverado. the name had already pleased me; the high station pleased me still more. i began to inquire with some eagerness. it was but a little while ago that silverado was a great place. the mine a silver mine, of course had promised great things. there was quite a lively population, with several hotels and boarding-houses; and kelmar himself had opened a branch store, and done extremely well "ain't it?" he said, appealing to his wife. and she said, "yes; extremely well." now there was no one living in the town but rufe the hunter; and once more i heard rufe's praises by the yard, and this time sung in chorus. i could not help perceiving at the time that there was something underneath; that no unmixed desire to have us comfortably settled had inspired the kelmars with this flow of words. but i was impatient to be gone, to be about my kingly project; and when we were offered seats in kelmar's waggon, i accepted on the spot. the plan of their next sunday's outing took them, by good fortune, over the border into lake county. they would carry us so far, drop us at the toll house, present us to the hansons, and call for us again on monday morning early. chapter ii first impressions of silverado we were to leave by six precisely; that was solemnly pledged on both sides; and a messenger came to us the last thing at night, to remind us of the hour. but it was eight before we got clear of calistoga: kelmar, mrs. kelmar, a friend of theirs whom we named abramina, her little daughter, my wife, myself, and, stowed away behind us, a cluster of ship's coffee-kettles. these last were highly ornamental in the sheen of their bright tin, but i could invent no reason for their presence. our carriageful reckoned up, as near as we could get at it, some three hundred years to the six of us. four of the six, besides, were hebrews. but i never, in all my life, was conscious of so strong an atmosphere of holiday. no word was spoken but of pleasure; and even when we drove in silence, nods and smiles went round the party like refreshments. the sun shone out of a cloudless sky. close at the zenith rode the belated moon, still clearly visible, and, along one margin, even bright. the wind blew a gale from the north; the trees roared; the corn and the deep grass in the valley fled in whitening surges; the dust towered into the air along the road and dispersed like the smoke of battle. it was clear in our teeth from the first, and for all the windings of the road it managed to keep clear in our teeth until the end. for some two miles we rattled through the valley, skirting the eastern foothills; then we struck off to the right, through haugh-land, and presently, crossing a dry watercourse, entered the toll road, or, to be more local, entered on "the grade." the road mounts the near shoulder of mount saint helena, bound northward into lake county. in one place it skirts along the edge of a narrow and deep canyon, filled with trees, and i was glad, indeed, not to be driven at this point by the dashing foss. kelmar, with his unvarying smile, jogging to the motion of the trap, drove for all the world like a good, plain, country clergyman at home; and i profess i blessed him unawares for his timidity. vineyards and deep meadows, islanded and framed with thicket, gave place more and more as we ascended to woods of oak and madrona, dotted with enormous pines. it was these pines, as they shot above the lower wood, that produced that pencilling of single trees i had so often remarked from the valley. thence, looking up and from however far, each fir stands separate against the sky no bigger than an eyelash; and all together lend a quaint, fringed aspect to the hills. the oak is no baby; even the madrona, upon these spurs of mount saint helena, comes to a fine bulk and ranks with forest trees but the pines look down upon the rest for underwood. as mount saint helena among her foothills, so these dark giants out-top their fellow-vegetables. alas! if they had left the redwoods, the pines, in turn, would have been dwarfed. but the redwoods, fallen from their high estate, are serving as family bedsteads, or yet more humbly as field fences, along all napa valley. a rough smack of resin was in the air, and a crystal mountain purity. it came pouring over these green slopes by the oceanful. the woods sang aloud, and gave largely of their healthful breath. gladness seemed to inhabit these upper zones, and we had left indifference behind us in the valley. "i to the hills lift mine eyes!" there are days in a life when thus to climb out of the lowlands, seems like scaling heaven. as we continued to ascend, the wind fell upon us with increasing strength. it was a wonder how the two stout horses managed to pull us up that steep incline and still face the athletic opposition of the wind, or how their great eyes were able to endure the dust. ten minutes after we went by, a tree fell, blocking the road; and even before us leaves were thickly strewn, and boughs had fallen, large enough to make the passage difficult. but now we were hard by the summit. the road crosses the ridge, just in the nick that kelmar showed me from below, and then, without pause, plunges down a deep, thickly wooded glen on the farther side. at the highest point a trail strikes up the main hill to the leftward; and that leads to silverado. a hundred yards beyond, and in a kind of elbow of the glen, stands the toll house hotel. we came up the one side, were caught upon the summit by the whole weight of the wind as it poured over into napa valley, and a minute after had drawn up in shelter, but all buffetted and breathless, at the toll house door. a water-tank, and stables, and a gray house of two stories, with gable ends and a verandah, are jammed hard against the hillside, just where a stream has cut for itself a narrow canyon, filled with pines. the pines go right up overhead; a little more and the stream might have played, like a firehose, on the toll house roof. in front the ground drops as sharply as it rises behind. there is just room for the road and a sort of promontory of croquet ground, and then you can lean over the edge and look deep below you through the wood. i said croquet ground, not green; for the surface was of brown, beaten earth. the toll-bar itself was the only other note of originality: a long beam, turning on a post, and kept slightly horizontal by a counterweight of stones. regularly about sundown this rude barrier was swung, like a derrick, across the road and made fast, i think, to a tree upon the farther side. on our arrival there followed a gay scene in the bar. i was presented to mr. corwin, the landlord; to mr. jennings, the engineer, who lives there for his health; to mr. hoddy, a most pleasant little gentleman, once a member of the ohio legislature, again the editor of a local paper, and now, with undiminished dignity, keeping the toll house bar. i had a number of drinks and cigars bestowed on me, and enjoyed a famous opportunity of seeing kelmar in his glory, friendly, radiant, smiling, steadily edging one of the ship's kettles on the reluctant corwin. corwin, plainly aghast, resisted gallantly, and for that bout victory crowned his arms. at last we set forth for silverado on foot. kelmar and his jolly jew girls were full of the sentiment of sunday outings, breathed geniality and vagueness, and suffered a little vile boy from the hotel to lead them here and there about the woods. for three people all so old, so bulky in body, and belonging to a race so venerable, they could not but surprise us by their extreme and almost imbecile youthfulness of spirit. they were only going to stay ten minutes at the toll house; had they not twenty long miles of road before them on the other side? stay to dinner? not they! put up the horses? never. let us attach them to the verandah by a wisp of straw rope, such as would not have held a person's hat on that blustering day. and with all these protestations of hurry, they proved irresponsible like children. kelmar himself, shrewd old russian jew, with a smirk that seemed just to have concluded a bargain to its satisfaction, intrusted himself and us devoutly to that boy. yet the boy was patently fallacious; and for that matter a most unsympathetic urchin, raised apparently on gingerbread. he was bent on his own pleasure, nothing else; and kelmar followed him to his ruin, with the same shrewd smirk. if the boy said there was "a hole there in the hill" a hole, pure and simple, neither more nor less kelmar and his jew girls would follow him a hundred yards to look complacently down that hole. for two hours we looked for houses; and for two hours they followed us, smelling trees, picking flowers, foisting false botany on the unwary. had we taken five, with that vile lad to head them off on idle divagations, for five they would have smiled and stumbled through the woods. however, we came forth at length, and as by accident, upon a lawn, sparse planted like an orchard, but with forest instead of fruit trees. that was the site of silverado mining town. a piece of ground was levelled up, where kelmar's store had been; and facing that we saw rufe hanson's house, still bearing on its front the legend silverado hotel. not another sign of habitation. silverado town had all been carted from the scene; one of the houses was now the school-house far down the road; one was gone here, one there, but all were gone away. it was now a sylvan solitude, and the silence was unbroken but by the great, vague voice of the wind. some days before our visit, a grizzly bear had been sporting round the hansons' chicken-house. mrs. hanson was at home alone, we found. rufe had been out after a "bar," had risen late, and was now gone, it did not clearly appear whither. perhaps he had had wind of kelmar's coming, and was now ensconced among the underwood, or watching us from the shoulder of the mountain. we, hearing there were no houses to be had, were for immediately giving up all hopes of silverado. but this, somehow, was not to kelmar's fancy. he first proposed that we should "camp someveres around, ain't it?" waving his hand cheerily as though to weave a spell; and when that was firmly rejected, he decided that we must take up house with the hansons. mrs. hanson had been, from the first, flustered, subdued, and a little pale; but from this proposition she recoiled with haggard indignation. so did we, who would have preferred, in a manner of speaking, death. but kelmar was not to be put by. he edged mrs. hanson into a corner, where for a long time he threatened her with his forefinger, like a character in dickens; and the poor woman, driven to her entrenchments, at last remembered with a shriek that there were still some houses at the tunnel. thither we went; the jews, who should already have been miles into lake county, still cheerily accompanying us. for about a furlong we followed a good road alone, the hillside through the forest, until suddenly that road widened out and came abruptly to an end. a canyon, woody below, red, rocky, and naked overhead, was here walled across by a dump of rolling stones, dangerously steep, and from twenty to thirty feet in height. a rusty iron chute on wooden legs came flying, like a monstrous gargoyle, across the parapet. it was down this that they poured the precious ore; and below here the carts stood to wait their lading, and carry it mill-ward down the mountain. the whole canyon was so entirely blocked, as if by some rude guerilla fortification, that we could only mount by lengths of wooden ladder, fixed in the hillside. these led us round the farther corner of the dump; and when they were at an end, we still persevered over loose rubble and wading deep in poison oak, till we struck a triangular platform, filling up the whole glen, and shut in on either hand by bold projections of the mountain. only in front the place was open like the proscenium of a theatre, and we looked forth into a great realm of air, and down upon treetops and hilltops, and far and near on wild and varied country. the place still stood as on the day it was deserted: a line of iron rails with a bifurcation; a truck in working order; a world of lumber, old wood, old iron; a blacksmith's forge on one side, half buried in the leaves of dwarf madronas; and on the other, an old brown wooden house. fanny and i dashed at the house. it consisted of three rooms, and was so plastered against the hill, that one room was right atop of another, that the upper floor was more than twice as large as the lower, and that all three apartments must be entered from a different side and level. not a window-sash remained. the door of the lower room was smashed, and one panel hung in splinters. we entered that, and found a fair amount of rubbish: sand and gravel that had been sifted in there by the mountain winds; straw, sticks, and stones; a table, a barrel; a plate-rack on the wall; two home-made bootjacks, signs of miners and their boots; and a pair of papers pinned on the boarding, headed respectively "funnel no. 1," and "funnel no. 2," but with the tails torn away. the window, sashless of course, was choked with the green and sweetly smelling foliage of a bay; and through a chink in the floor, a spray of poison oak had shot up and was handsomely prospering in the interior. it was my first care to cut away that poison oak, fanny standing by at a respectful distance. that was our first improvement by which we took possession. the room immediately above could only be entered by a plank propped against the threshold, along which the intruder must foot it gingerly, clutching for support to sprays of poison oak, the proper product of the country. herein was, on either hand, a triple tier of beds, where miners had once lain; and the other gable was pierced by a sashless window and a doorless doorway opening on the air of heaven, five feet above the ground. as for the third room, which entered squarely from the ground level, but higher up the hill and farther up the canyon, it contained only rubbish and the uprights for another triple tier of beds. the whole building was overhung by a bold, lion-like, red rock. poison oak, sweet bay trees, calcanthus, brush, and chaparral, grew freely but sparsely all about it. in front, in the strong sunshine, the platform lay overstrewn with busy litter, as though the labours of the mine might begin again to-morrow in the morning. following back into the canyon, among the mass of rotting plant and through the flowering bushes, we came to a great crazy staging, with a wry windless on the top; and clambering up, we could look into an open shaft, leading edgeways down into the bowels of the mountain, trickling with water, and lit by some stray sun-gleams, whence i know not. in that quiet place the still, far-away tinkle of the water-drops was loudly audible. close by, another shaft led edgeways up into the superincumbent shoulder of the hill. it lay partly open; and sixty or a hundred feet above our head, we could see the strata propped apart by solid wooden wedges, and a pine, half undermined, precariously nodding on the verge. here also a rugged, horizontal tunnel ran straight into the unsunned bowels of the rock. this secure angle in the mountain's flank was, even on this wild day, as still as my lady's chamber. but in the tunnel a cold, wet draught tempestuously blew. nor have i ever known that place otherwise than cold and windy. such was our fist prospect of juan silverado. i own i had looked for something different: a clique of neighbourly houses on a village green, we shall say, all empty to be sure, but swept and varnished; a trout stream brawling by; great elms or chestnuts, humming with bees and nested in by song-birds; and the mountains standing round about, as at jerusalem. here, mountain and house and the old tools of industry were all alike rusty and downfalling. the hill was here wedged up, and there poured forth its bowels in a spout of broken mineral; man with his picks and powder, and nature with her own great blasting tools of sun and rain, labouring together at the ruin of that proud mountain. the view up the canyon was a glimpse of devastation; dry red minerals sliding together, here and there a crag, here and there dwarf thicket clinging in the general glissade, and over all a broken outline trenching on the blue of heaven. downwards indeed, from our rock eyrie, we behold the greener side of nature; and the bearing of the pines and the sweet smell of bays and nutmegs commanded themselves gratefully to our senses. one way and another, now the die was cast. silverado be it! after we had got back to the toll house, the jews were not long of striking forward. but i observed that one of the hanson lads came down, before their departure, and returned with a ship's kettle. happy hansons! nor was it until after kelmar was gone, if i remember rightly, that rufe put in an appearance to arrange the details of our installation. the latter part of the day, fanny and i sat in the verandah of the toll house, utterly stunned by the uproar of the wind among the trees on the other side of the valley. sometimes, we would have it it was like a sea, but it was not various enough for that; and again, we thought it like the roar of a cataract, but it was too changeful for the cataract; and then we would decide, speaking in sleepy voices, that it could be compared with nothing but itself. my mind was entirely preoccupied by the noise. i hearkened to it by the hour, gapingly hearkened, and let my cigarette go out. sometimes the wind would make a sally nearer hand, and send a shrill, whistling crash among the foliage on our side of the glen; and sometimes a back-draught would strike into the elbow where we sat, and cast the gravel and torn leaves into our faces. but for the most part, this great, streaming gale passed unweariedly by us into napa valley, not two hundred yards away, visible by the tossing boughs, stunningly audible, and yet not moving a hair upon our heads. so it blew all night long while i was writing up my journal, and after we were in bed, under a cloudless, starset heaven; and so it was blowing still next morning when we rose. it was a laughable thought to us, what had become of our cheerful, wandering hebrews. we could not suppose they had reached a destination. the meanest boy could lead them miles out of their way to see a gopher-hole. boys, we felt to be their special danger; none others were of that exact pitch of cheerful irrelevancy to exercise a kindred sway upon their minds: but before the attractions of a boy their most settled resolutions would be war. we thought we could follow in fancy these three aged hebrew truants wandering in and out on hilltop and in thicket, a demon boy trotting far ahead, their will-o'-the-wisp conductor; and at last about midnight, the wind still roaring in the darkness, we had a vision of all three on their knees upon a mountain-top around a glowworm. chapter iii. the return next morning we were up by half-past five, according to agreement, and it was ten by the clock before our jew boys returned to pick us up. kelmar, mrs. kelmar, and abramina, all smiling from ear to ear, and full of tales of the hospitality they had found on the other side. it had not gone unrewarded; for i observed with interest that the ship's kettles, all but one, had been "placed." three lake county families, at least, endowed for life with a ship's kettle. come, this was no misspent sunday. the absence of the kettles told its own story: our jews said nothing about them; but, on the other hand, they said many kind and comely things about the people they had met. the two women, in particular, had been charmed out of themselves by the sight of a young girl surrounded by her admirers; all evening, it appeared, they had been triumphing together in the girl's innocent successes, and to this natural and unselfish joy they gave expression in language that was beautiful by its simplicity and truth. take them for all in all, few people have done my heart more good; they seemed so thoroughly entitled to happiness, and to enjoy it in so large a measure and so free from afterthought; almost they persuaded me to be a jew. there was, indeed, a chink of money in their talk. they particularly commanded people who were well to do. "he don't care ain't it?" was their highest word of commendation to an individual fate; and here i seem to grasp the root of their philosophy it was to be free from care, to be free to make these sunday wanderings, that they so eagerly pursued after wealth; and all this carefulness was to be careless. the fine, good humour of all three seemed to declare they had attained their end. yet there was the other side to it; and the recipients of kettles perhaps cared greatly. no sooner had they returned, than the scene of yesterday began again. the horses were not even tied with a straw rope this time it was not worth while; and kelmar disappeared into the bar, leaving them under a tree on the other side of the road. i had to devote myself. i stood under the shadow of that tree for, i suppose, hard upon an hour, and had not the heart to be angry. once some one remembered me, and brought me out half a tumblerful of the playful, innocuous american cocktail. i drank it, and lo! veins of living fire ran down my leg; and then a focus of conflagration remained seated in my stomach, not unpleasantly, for quarter of an hour. i love these sweet, fiery pangs, but i will not court them. the bulk of the time i spent in repeating as much french poetry as i could remember to the horses, who seemed to enjoy it hugely. and now it went "o ma vieille font-georges ou volent les rouges-gorges:" and again, to a more trampling measure "et tout tremble, irun, coimbre, sautander, almodovar, sitot qu'on entend le timbre des cymbales do bivar." the redbreasts and the brooks of europe, in that dry and songless land; brave old names and wars, strong cities, cymbals, and bright armour, in that nook of the mountain, sacred only to the indian and the bear! this is still the strangest thing in all man's travelling, that he should carry about with him incongruous memories. there is no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign, and now and again, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the earth. but while i was thus wandering in my fancy, great feats had been transacted in the bar. corwin the bold had fallen, kelmar was again crowned with laurels, and the last of the ship's kettles had changed hands. if i had ever doubted the purity of kelmar's motives, if i had ever suspected him of a single eye to business in his eternal dallyings, now at least, when the last kettle was disposed of, my suspicions must have been allayed. i dare not guess how much more time was wasted; nor how often we drove off, merely to drive back again and renew interrupted conversations about nothing, before the toll house was fairly left behind. alas! and not a mile down the grade there stands a ranche in a sunny vineyard, and here we must all dismount again and enter. only the old lady was at home, mrs. guele, a brown old swiss dame, the picture of honesty; and with her we drank a bottle of wine and had an age-long conversation, which would have been highly delightful if fanny and i had not been faint with hunger. the ladies each narrated the story of her marriage, our two hebrews with the prettiest combination of sentiment and financial bathos. abramina, specially, endeared herself with every word. she was as simple, natural, and engaging as a kid that should have been brought up to the business of a money-changer. one touch was so resplendently hebraic that i cannot pass it over. when her "old man" wrote home for her from america, her old man's family would not intrust her with the money for the passage, till she had bound herself by an oath on her knees, i think she said not to employ it otherwise. this had tickled abramina hugely, but i think it tickled me fully more. mrs. guele told of her home-sickness up here in the long winters; of her honest, country-woman troubles and alarms upon the journey; how in the bank at frankfort she had feared lest the banker, after having taken her cheque, should deny all knowledge of it a fear i have myself every time i go to a bank; and how crossing the luneburger heath, an old lady, witnessing her trouble and finding whither she was bound, had given her "the blessing of a person eighty years old, which would be sure to bring her safely to the states. and the first thing i did," added mrs. guele, "was to fall downstairs." at length we got out of the house, and some of us into the trap, when judgment of heaven! here came mr. guele from his vineyard. so another quarter of an hour went by; till at length, at our earnest pleading, we set forth again in earnest, fanny and i white-faced and silent, but the jews still smiling. the heart fails me. there was yet another stoppage! and we drove at last into calistoga past two in the afternoon, fanny and i having breakfasted at six in the morning, eight mortal hours before. we were a pallid couple; but still the jews were smiling. so ended our excursion with the village usurers; and, now that it was done, we had no more idea of the nature of the business, nor of the part we had been playing in it, than the child unborn. that all the people we had met were the slaves of kelmar, though in various degrees of servitude; that we ourselves had been sent up the mountain in the interests of none but kelmar; that the money we laid out, dollar by dollar, cent by cent, and through the hands of various intermediaries, should all hop ultimately into kelmar's till; these were facts that we only grew to recognize in the course of time and by the accumulation of evidence. at length all doubt was quieted, when one of the kettle-holders confessed. stopping his trap in the moonlight, a little way out of calistoga, he told me, in so many words, that he dare not show face therewith an empty pocket. "you see, i don't mind if it was only five dollars, mr. stevens," he said, "but i must give mr. kelmar something." even now, when the whole tyranny is plain to me, i cannot find it in my heart to be as angry as perhaps i should be with the hebrew tyrant. the whole game of business is beggar my neighbour; and though perhaps that game looks uglier when played at such close quarters and on so small a scale, it is none the more intrinsically inhumane for that. the village usurer is not so sad a feature of humanity and human progress as the millionaire manufacturer, fattening on the toil and loss of thousands, and yet declaiming from the platform against the greed and dishonesty of landlords. if it were fair for cobden to buy up land from owners whom he thought unconscious of its proper value, it was fair enough for my russian jew to give credit to his farmers. kelmar, if he was unconscious of the beam in his own eye, was at least silent in the matter of his brother's mote. the act of squatting there were four of us squatters myself and my wife, the king and queen of silverado; sam, the crown prince; and chuchu, the grand duke. chuchu, a setter crossed with spaniel, was the most unsuited for a rough life. he had been nurtured tenderly in the society of ladies; his heart was large and soft; he regarded the sofa-cushion as a bed-rook necessary of existence. though about the size of a sheep, he loved to sit in ladies' laps; he never said a bad word in all his blameless days; and if he had seen a flute, i am sure he could have played upon it by nature. it may seem hard to say it of a dog, but chuchu was a tame cat. the king and queen, the grand duke, and a basket of cold provender for immediate use, set forth from calistoga in a double buggy; the crown prince, on horseback, led the way like an outrider. bags and boxes and a second-hand stove were to follow close upon our heels by hanson's team. it was a beautiful still day; the sky was one field of azure. not a leaf moved, not a speck appeared in heaven. only from the summit of the mountain one little snowy wisp of cloud after another kept detaching itself, like smoke from a volcano, and blowing southward in some high stream of air: mount saint helena still at her interminable task, making the weather, like a lapland witch. by noon we had come in sight of the mill: a great brown building, half-way up the hill, big as a factory, two stories high, and with tanks and ladders along the roof; which, as a pendicle of silverado mine, we held to be an outlying province of our own. thither, then, we went, crossing the valley by a grassy trail; and there lunched out of the basket, sitting in a kind of portico, and wondering, while we ate, at this great bulk of useless building. through a chink we could look far down into the interior, and see sunbeams floating in the dust and striking on tier after tier of silent, rusty machinery. it cost six thousand dollars, twelve hundred english sovereigns; and now, here it stands deserted, like the temple of a forgotten religion, the busy millers toiling somewhere else. all the time we were there, mill and mill town showed no sign of life; that part of the mountain-side, which is very open and green, was tenanted by no living creature but ourselves and the insects; and nothing stirred but the cloud manufactory upon the mountain summit. it was odd to compare this with the former days, when the engine was in fall blast, the mill palpitating to its strokes, and the carts came rattling down from silverado, charged with ore. by two we had been landed at the mine, the buggy was gone again, and we were left to our own reflections and the basket of cold provender, until hanson should arrive. hot as it was by the sun, there was something chill in such a home-coming, in that world of wreck and rust, splinter and rolling gravel, where for so many years no fire had smoked. silverado platform filled the whole width of the canyon. above, as i have said, this was a wild, red, stony gully in the mountains; but below it was a wooded dingle. and through this, i was told, there had gone a path between the mine and the toll house our natural north-west passage to civilization. i found and followed it, clearing my way as i went through fallen branches and dead trees. it went straight down that steep canyon, till it brought you out abruptly over the roofs of the hotel. there was nowhere any break in the descent. it almost seemed as if, were you to drop a stone down the old iron chute at our platform, it would never rest until it hopped upon the toll house shingles. signs were not wanting of the ancient greatness of silverado. the footpath was well marked, and had been well trodden in the old clays by thirsty miners. and far down, buried in foliage, deep out of sight of silverado, i came on a last outpost of the mine a mound of gravel, some wreck of wooden aqueduct, and the mouth of a tunnel, like a treasure grotto in a fairy story. a stream of water, fed by the invisible leakage from our shaft, and dyed red with cinnabar or iron, ran trippingly forth out of the bowels of the cave; and, looking far under the arch, i could see something like an iron lantern fastened on the rocky wall. it was a promising spot for the imagination. no boy could have left it unexplored. the stream thenceforward stole along the bottom of the dingle, and made, for that dry land, a pleasant warbling in the leaves. once, i suppose, it ran splashing down the whole length of the canyon, but now its head waters had been tapped by the shaft at silverado, and for a great part of its course it wandered sunless among the joints of the mountain. no wonder that it should better its pace when it sees, far before it, daylight whitening in the arch, or that it should come trotting forth into the sunlight with a song. the two stages had gone by when i got down, and the toll house stood, dozing in sun and dust and silence, like a place enchanted. my mission was after hay for bedding, and that i was readily promised. but when i mentioned that we were waiting for rufe, the people shook their heads. rufe was not a regular man any way, it seemed; and if he got playing poker well, poker was too many for rufe. i had not yet heard them bracketted together; but it seemed a natural conjunction, and commended itself swiftly to my fears; and as soon as i returned to silverado and had told my story, we practically gave hanson up, and set ourselves to do what we could find do-able in our desert-island state. the lower room had been the assayer's office. the floor was thick with debris part human, from the former occupants; part natural, sifted in by mountain winds. in a sea of red dust there swam or floated sticks, boards, hay, straw, stones, and paper; ancient newspapers, above all for the newspaper, especially when torn, soon becomes an antiquity and bills of the silverado boarding-house, some dated silverado, some calistoga mine. here is one, verbatim; and if any one can calculate the scale of charges, he has my envious admiration. calistoga mine, may 3rd, 1875. john stanley to s. chapman, cr. to board from april 1st, to april 30 $25 75 " " " may lst, to 3rd ... 2 00 27 75 where is john stanley mining now? where is s. chapman, within whose hospitable walls we were to lodge? the date was but five years old, but in that time the world had changed for silverado; like palmyra in the desert, it had outlived its people and its purpose; we camped, like layard, amid ruins, and these names spoke to us of prehistoric time. a boot-jack, a pair of boots, a dog-hutch, and these bills of mr. chapman's were the only speaking relics that we disinterred from all that vast silverado rubbish-heap; but what would i not have given to unearth a letter, a pocketbook, a diary, only a ledger, or a roll of names, to take me back, in a more personal manner, to the past? it pleases me, besides, to fancy that stanley or chapman, or one of their companions, may light upon this chronicle, and be struck by the name, and read some news of their anterior home, coming, as it were, out of a subsequent epoch of history in that quarter of the world. as we were tumbling the mingled rubbish on the floor, kicking it with our feet, and groping for these written evidences of the past, sam, with a somewhat whitened face, produced a paper bag. "what's this?" said he. it contained a granulated powder, something the colour of gregory's mixture, but rosier; and as there were several of the bags, and each more or less broken, the powder was spread widely on the floor. had any of us ever seen giant powder? no, nobody had; and instantly there grew up in my mind a shadowy belief, verging with every moment nearer to certitude, that i had somewhere heard somebody describe it as just such a powder as the one around us. i have learnt since that it is a substance not unlike tallow, and is made up in rolls for all the world like tallow candles. fanny, to add to our happiness, told us a story of a gentleman who had camped one night, like ourselves, by a deserted mine. he was a handy, thrifty fellow, and looked right and left for plunder, but all he could lay his hands on was a can of oil. after dark he had to see to the horses with a lantern; and not to miss an opportunity, filled up his lamp from the oil can. thus equipped, he set forth into the forest. a little while after, his friends heard a loud explosion; the mountain echoes bellowed, and then all was still. on examination, the can proved to contain oil, with the trifling addition of nitro-glycerine; but no research disclosed a trace of either man or lantern. it was a pretty sight, after this anecdote, to see us sweeping out the giant powder. it seemed never to be far enough away. and, after all, it was only some rock pounded for assay. so much for the lower room. we scraped some of the rougher dirt off the floor, and left it. that was our sitting-room and kitchen, though there was nothing to sit upon but the table, and no provision for a fire except a hole in the roof of the room above, which had once contained the chimney of a stove. to that upper room we now proceeded. there were the eighteen bunks in a double tier, nine on either hand, where from eighteen to thirty-six miners had once snored together all night long, john stanley, perhaps, snoring loudest. there was the roof, with a hole in it through which the sun now shot an arrow. there was the floor, in much the same state as the one below, though, perhaps, there was more hay, and certainly there was the added ingredient of broken glass, the man who stole the window-frames having apparently made a miscarriage with this one. without a broom, without hay or bedding, we could but look about us with a beginning of despair. the one bright arrow of day, in that gaunt and shattered barrack, made the rest look dirtier and darker, and the sight drove us at last into the open. here, also, the handiwork of man lay ruined: but the plants were all alive and thriving; the view below was fresh with the colours of nature; and we had exchanged a dim, human garret for a corner, even although it were untidy, of the blue hall of heaven. not a bird, not a beast, not a reptile. there was no noise in that part of the world, save when we passed beside the staging, and heard the water musically falling in the shaft. we wandered to and fro. we searched among that drift of lumber-wood and iron, nails and rails, and sleepers and the wheels of tracks. we gazed up the cleft into the bosom of the mountain. we sat by the margin of the dump and saw, far below us, the green treetops standing still in the clear air. beautiful perfumes, breaths of bay, resin, and nutmeg, came to us more often and grew sweeter and sharper as the afternoon declined. but still there was no word of hanson. i set to with pick and shovel, and deepened the pool behind the shaft, till we were sure of sufficient water for the morning; and by the time i had finished, the sun had begun to go down behind the mountain shoulder, the platform was plunged in quiet shadow, and a chill descended from the sky. night began early in our cleft. before us, over the margin of the dump, we could see the sun still striking aslant into the wooded nick below, and on the battlemented, pinebescattered ridges on the farther side. there was no stove, of course, and no hearth in our lodging, so we betook ourselves to the blacksmith's forge across the platform. if the platform be taken as a stage, and the outcurving margin of the dump to represent the line of the footlights, then our house would be the first wing on the actor's left, and this blacksmith's forge, although no match for it in size, the foremost on the right. it was a low, brown cottage, planted close against the hill, and overhung by the foliage and peeling boughs of a madrona thicket. within it was full of dead leaves and mountain dust, and rubbish from the mine. but we soon had a good fire brightly blazing, and sat close about it on impromptu seats. chuchu, the slave of sofa-cushions, whimpered for a softer bed; but the rest of us were greatly revived and comforted by that good creaturefire, which gives us warmth and light and companionable sounds, and colours up the emptiest building with better than frescoes. for a while it was even pleasant in the forge, with the blaze in the midst, and a look over our shoulders on the woods and mountains where the day was dying like a dolphin. it was between seven and eight before hanson arrived, with a waggonful of our effects and two of his wife's relatives to lend him a hand. the elder showed surprising strength. he would pick up a huge packing-case, full of books of all things, swing it on his shoulder, and away up the two crazy ladders and the breakneck spout of rolling mineral, familiarly termed a path, that led from the cart-track to our house. even for a man unburthened, the ascent was toilsome and precarious; but irvine sealed it with a light foot, carrying box after box, as the hero whisks the stage child up the practicable footway beside the waterfall of the fifth act. with so strong a helper, the business was speedily transacted. soon the assayer's office was thronged with our belongings, piled higgledy-piggledy, and upside down, about the floor. there were our boxes, indeed, but my wife had left her keys in calistoga. there was the stove, but, alas! our carriers had forgot the chimney, and lost one of the plates along the road. the silverado problem was scarce solved. rufe himself was grave and good-natured over his share of blame; he even, if i remember right, expressed regret. but his crew, to my astonishment and anger, grinned from ear to ear, and laughed aloud at our distress. they thought it "real funny" about the stove-pipe they had forgotten; "real funny" that they should have lost a plate. as for hay, the whole party refused to bring us any till they should have supped. see how late they were! never had there been such a job as coming up that grade! nor often, i suspect, such a game of poker as that before they started. but about nine, as a particular favour, we should have some hay. so they took their departure, leaving me still staring, and we resigned ourselves to wait for their return. the fire in the forge had been suffered to go out, and we were one and all too weary to kindle another. we dined, or, not to take that word in vain, we ate after a fashion, in the nightmare disorder of the assayer's office, perched among boxes. a single candle lighted us. it could scarce be called a housewarming; for there was, of course, no fire, and with the two open doors and the open window gaping on the night, like breaches in a fortress, it began to grow rapidly chill. talk ceased; nobody moved but the unhappy chuchu, still in quest of sofa-cushions, who tumbled complainingly among the trunks. it required a certain happiness of disposition to look forward hopefully, from so dismal a beginning, across the brief hours of night, to the warm shining of to-morrow's sun. but the hay arrived at last, and we turned, with our last spark of courage, to the bedroom. we had improved the entrance, but it was still a kind of rope-walking; and it would have been droll to see us mounting, one after another, by candle-light, under the open stars. the western door that which looked up the canyon, and through which we entered by our bridge of flying plank was still entire, a handsome, panelled door, the most finished piece of carpentry in silverado. and the two lowest bunks next to this we roughly filled with hay for that night's use. through the opposite, or eastern-looking gable, with its open door and window, a faint, disused starshine came into the room like mist; and when we were once in bed, we lay, awaiting sleep, in a haunted, incomplete obscurity. at first the silence of the night was utter. then a high wind began in the distance among the tree-tops, and for hours continued to grow higher. it seemed to me much such a wind as we had found on our visit; yet here in our open chamber we were fanned only by gentle and refreshing draughts, so deep was the canyon, so close our house was planted under the overhanging rock. the hunter's family there is quite a large race or class of people in america, for whom we scarcely seem to have a parallel in england. of pure white blood, they are unknown or unrecognizable in towns; inhabit the fringe of settlements and the deep, quiet places of the country; rebellious to all labour, and pettily thievish, like the english gipsies; rustically ignorant, but with a touch of wood-lore and the dexterity of the savage. whence they came is a moot point. at the time of the war, they poured north in crowds to escape the conscription; lived during summer on fruits, wild animals, and petty theft; and at the approach of winter, when these supplies failed, built great fires in the forest, and there died stoically by starvation. they are widely scattered, however, and easily recognized. loutish, but not ill-looking, they will sit all day, swinging their legs on a field fence, the mind seemingly as devoid of all reflection as a suffolk peasant's, careless of politics, for the most part incapable of reading, but with a rebellious vanity and a strong sense of independence. hunting is their most congenial business, or, if the occasion offers, a little amateur detection. in tracking a criminal, following a particular horse along a beaten highway, and drawing inductions from a hair or a footprint, one of those somnolent, grinning hodges will suddenly display activity of body and finesse of mind. by their names ye may know them, the women figuring as loveina, larsenia, serena, leanna, orreana; the men answering to alvin, alva, or orion, pronounced orrion, with the accent on the first. whether they are indeed a race, or whether this is the form of degeneracy common to all back-woodsmen, they are at least known by a generic byword, as poor whites or low-downers. i will not say that the hanson family was poor white, because the name savours of offence; but i may go as far as this they were, in many points, not unsimilar to the people usually so-cared. rufe himself combined two of the qualifications, for he was both a hunter and an amateur detective. it was he who pursued russel and dollar, the robbers of the lake port stage, and captured them the very morning after the exploit, while they were still sleeping in a hayfield. russel, a drunken scotch carpenter, was even an acquaintance of his own, and he expressed much grave commiseration for his fate. in all that he said and did, rufe was grave. i never saw him hurried. when he spoke, he took out his pipe with ceremonial deliberation, looked east and west, and then, in quiet tones and few words, stated his business or told his story. his gait was to match; it would never have surprised you if, at any step, he had turned round and walked away again, so warily and slowly, and with so much seeming hesitation did he go about. he lay long in bed in the morning rarely indeed, rose before noon; he loved all games, from poker to clerical croquet; and in the toll house croquet ground i have seen him toiling at the latter with the devotion of a curate. he took an interest in education, was an active member of the local school-board, and when i was there, he had recently lost the schoolhouse key. his waggon was broken, but it never seemed to occur to him to mend it. like all truly idle people, he had an artistic eye. he chose the print stuff for his wife's dresses, and counselled her in the making of a patchwork quilt, always, as she thought, wrongly, but to the more educated eye, always with bizarre and admirable taste the taste of an indian. with all this, he was a perfect, unoffending gentleman in word and act. take his clay pipe from him, and he was fit for any society but that of fools. quiet as he was, there burned a deep, permanent excitement in his dark blue eyes; and when this grave man smiled, it was like sunshine in a shady place. mrs. hanson (nee, if you please, lovelands) was more commonplace than her lord. she was a comely woman, too, plump, fair-coloured, with wonderful white teeth; and in her print dresses (chosen by rufe) and with a large sun-bonnet shading her valued complexion, made, i assure you, a very agreeable figure. but she was on the surface, what there was of her, out-spoken and loud-spoken. her noisy laughter had none of the charm of one of hanson's rare, slow-spreading smiles; there was no reticence, no mystery, no manner about the woman: she was a first-class dairymaid, but her husband was an unknown quantity between the savage and the nobleman. she was often in and out with us, merry, and healthy, and fair; he came far seldomer only, indeed, when there was business, or now and again, to pay a visit of ceremony, brushed up for the occasion, with his wife on his arm, and a clean clay pipe in his teeth. these visits, in our forest state, had quite the air of an event, and turned our red canyon into a salon. such was the pair who ruled in the old silverado hotel, among the windy trees, on the mountain shoulder overlooking the whole length of napa valley, as the man aloft looks down on the ship's deck. there they kept house, with sundry horses and fowls, and a family of sons, daniel webster, and i think george washington, among the number. nor did they want visitors. an old gentleman, of singular stolidity, and called breedlove i think he had crossed the plains in the same caravan with rufe housed with them for awhile during our stay; and they had besides a permanent lodger, in the form of mrs. hanson's brother, irvine lovelands. i spell irvine by guess; for i could get no information on the subject, just as i could never find out, in spite of many inquiries, whether or not rufe was a contraction for rufus. they were all cheerfully at sea about their names in that generation. and this is surely the more notable where the names are all so strange, and even the family names appear to have been coined. at one time, at least, the ancestors of all these alvins and alvas, loveinas, lovelands, and breedloves, must have taken serious council and found a certain poetry in these denominations; that must have been, then, their form of literature. but still times change; and their next descendants, the george washingtons and daniel websters, will at least be clear upon the point. and anyway, and however his name should be spelt, this irvine lovelands was the most unmitigated caliban i ever knew. our very first morning at silverado, when we were full of business, patching up doors and windows, making beds and seats, and getting our rough lodging into shape, irvine and his sister made their appearance together, she for neighbourliness and general curiosity; he, because he was working for me, to my sorrow, cutting firewood at i forget how much a day. the way that he set about cutting wood was characteristic. we were at that moment patching up and unpacking in the kitchen. down he sat on one side, and down sat his sister on the other. both were chewing pine-tree gum, and he, to my annoyance, accompanied that simple pleasure with profuse expectoration. she rattled away, talking up hill and down dale, laughing, tossing her head, showing her brilliant teeth. he looked on in silence, now spitting heavily on the floor, now putting his head back and uttering a loud, discordant, joyless laugh. he had a tangle of shock hair, the colour of wool; his mouth was a grin; although as strong as a horse, he looked neither heavy nor yet adroit, only leggy, coltish, and in the road. but it was plain he was in high spirits, thoroughly enjoying his visit; and he laughed frankly whenever we failed to accomplish what we were about. this was scarcely helpful: it was even, to amateur carpenters, embarrassing; but it lasted until we knocked off work and began to get dinner. then mrs. hanson remembered she should have been gone an hour ago; and the pair retired, and the lady's laughter died away among the nutmegs down the path. that was irvine's first day's work in my employment the devil take him! the next morning he returned and, as he was this time alone, he bestowed his conversation upon us with great liberality. he prided himself on his intelligence; asked us if we knew the school ma'am. he didn't think much of her, anyway. he had tried her, he had. he had put a question to her. if a tree a hundred feet high were to fall a foot a day, how long would it take to fall right down? she had not been able to solve the problem. "she don't know nothing," he opined. he told us how a friend of his kept a school with a revolver, and chuckled mightily over that; his friend could teach school, he could. all the time he kept chewing gum and spitting. he would stand a while looking down; and then he would toss back his shock of hair, and laugh hoarsely, and spit, and bring forward a new subject. a man, he told us, who bore a grudge against him, had poisoned his dog. "that was a low thing for a man to do now, wasn't it? it wasn't like a man, that, nohow. but i got even with him: i pisoned his dog." his clumsy utterance, his rude embarrassed manner, set a fresh value on the stupidity of his remarks. i do not think i ever appreciated the meaning of two words until i knew irvine the verb, loaf, and the noun, oaf; between them, they complete his portrait. he could lounge, and wriggle, and rub himself against the wall, and grin, and be more in everybody's way than any other two people that i ever set my eyes on. nothing that he did became him; and yet you were conscious that he was one of your own race, that his mind was cumbrously at work, revolving the problem of existence like a quid of gum, and in his own cloudy manner enjoying life, and passing judgment on his fellows. above all things, he was delighted with himself. you would not have thought it, from his uneasy manners and troubled, struggling utterance; but he loved himself to the marrow, and was happy and proud like a peacock on a rail. his self-esteem was, indeed, the one joint in his harness. he could be got to work, and even kept at work, by flattery. as long as my wife stood over him, crying out how strong he was, so long exactly he would stick to the matter in hand; and the moment she turned her back, or ceased to praise him, he would stop. his physical strength was wonderful; and to have a woman stand by and admire his achievements, warmed his heart like sunshine. yet he was as cowardly as he was powerful, and felt no shame in owning to the weakness. something was once wanted from the crazy platform over the shaft, and he at once refused to venture there "did not like," as he said, "foolen' round them kind o' places," and let my wife go instead of him, looking on with a grin. vanity, where it rules, is usually more heroic: but irvine steadily approved himself, and expected others to approve him; rather looked down upon my wife, and decidedly expected her to look up to him, on the strength of his superior prudence. yet the strangest part of the whole matter was perhaps this, that irvine was as beautiful as a statue. his features were, in themselves, perfect; it was only his cloudy, uncouth, and coarse expression that disfigured them. so much strength residing in so spare a frame was proof sufficient of the accuracy of his shape. he must have been built somewhat after the pattern of jack sheppard; but the famous housebreaker, we may be certain, was no lout. it was by the extraordinary powers of his mind no less than by the vigour of his body, that he broke his strong prison with such imperfect implements, turning the very obstacles to service. irvine, in the same case, would have sat down and spat, and grumbled curses. he had the soul of a fat sheep, but, regarded as an artist's model, the exterior of a greek god. it was a cruel thought to persons less favoured in their birth, that this creature, endowed to use the language of theatres with extraordinary "means," should so manage to misemploy them that he looked ugly and almost deformed. it was only by an effort of abstraction, and after many days, that you discovered what he was. by playing on the oaf's conceit, and standing closely over him, we got a path made round the corner of the dump to our door, so that we could come and go with decent ease; and he even enjoyed the work, for in that there were boulders to be plucked up bodily, bushes to be uprooted, and other occasions for athletic display: but cutting wood was a different matter. anybody could cut wood; and, besides, my wife was tired of supervising him, and had other things to attend to. and, in short, days went by, and irvine came daily, and talked and lounged and spat; but the firewood remained intact as sleepers on the platform or growing trees upon the mountainside. irvine, as a woodcutter, we could tolerate; but irvine as a friend of the family, at so much a day, was too bald an imposition, and at length, on the afternoon of the fourth or fifth day of our connection, i explained to him, as clearly as i could, the light in which i had grown to regard his presence. i pointed out to him that i could not continue to give him a salary for spitting on the floor; and this expression, which came after a good many others, at last penetrated his obdurate wits. he rose at once, and said if that was the way he was going to be spoke to, he reckoned he would quit. and, no one interposing, he departed. so far, so good. but we had no firewood. the next afternoon, i strolled down to rufe's and consulted him on the subject. it was a very droll interview, in the large, bare north room of the silverado hotel, mrs. hanson's patchwork on a frame, and rufe, and his wife, and i, and the oaf himself, all more or less embarrassed. rufe announced there was nobody in the neighbourhood but irvine who could do a day's work for anybody. irvine, thereupon, refused to have any more to do with my service; he "wouldn't work no more for a man as had spoke to him's i had done." i found myself on the point of the last humiliation driven to beseech the creature whom i had just dismissed with insult: but i took the high hand in despair, said there must be no talk of irvine coming back unless matters were to be differently managed; that i would rather chop firewood for myself than be fooled; and, in short, the hansons being eager for the lad's hire, i so imposed upon them with merely affected resolution, that they ended by begging me to re-employ him again, on a solemn promise that he should be more industrious. the promise, i am bound to say, was kept. we soon had a fine pile of firewood at our door; and if caliban gave me the cold shoulder and spared me his conversation, i thought none the worse of him for that, nor did i find my days much longer for the deprivation. the leading spirit of the family was, i am inclined to fancy, mrs. hanson. her social brilliancy somewhat dazzled the others, and she had more of the small change of sense. it was she who faced kelmar, for instance; and perhaps, if she had been alone, kelmar would have had no rule within her doors. rufe, to be sure, had a fine, sober, open-air attitude of mind, seeing the world without exaggeration perhaps, we may even say, without enough; for he lacked, along with the others, that commercial idealism which puts so high a value on time and money. sanity itself is a kind of convention. perhaps rufe was wrong; but, looking on life plainly, he was unable to perceive that croquet or poker were in any way less important than, for instance, mending his waggon. even his own profession, hunting, was dear to him mainly as a sort of play; even that he would have neglected, had it not appealed to his imagination. his hunting-suit, for instance, had cost i should be afraid to say how many bucks the currency in which he paid his way: it was all befringed, after the indian fashion, and it was dear to his heart. the pictorial side of his daily business was never forgotten. he was even anxious to stand for his picture in those buckskin hunting clothes; and i remember how he once warmed almost into enthusiasm, his dark blue eyes growing perceptibly larger, as he planned the composition in which he should appear, "with the horns of some real big bucks, and dogs, and a camp on a crick" (creek, stream). there was no trace in irvine of this woodland poetry. he did not care for hunting, nor yet for buckskin suits. he had never observed scenery. the world, as it appeared to him, was almost obliterated by his own great grinning figure in the foreground: caliban malvolio. and it seems to me as if, in the persons of these brothers-in-law, we had the two sides of rusticity fairly well represented: the hunter living really in nature; the clodhopper living merely out of society: the one bent up in every corporal agent to capacity in one pursuit, doing at least one thing keenly and thoughtfully, and thoroughly alive to all that touches it; the other in the inert and bestial state, walking in a faint dream, and taking so dim an impression of the myriad sides of life that he is truly conscious of nothing but himself. it is only in the fastnesses of nature, forests, mountains, and the back of man's beyond, that a creature endowed with five senses can grow up into the perfection of this crass and earthy vanity. in towns or the busier country sides, he is roughly reminded of other men's existence; and if he learns no more, he learns at least to fear contempt. but irvine had come scatheless through life, conscious only of himself, of his great strength and intelligence; and in the silence of the universe, to which he did not listen, dwelling with delight on the sound of his own thoughts. the sea fogs a change in the colour of the light usually called me in the morning. by a certain hour, the long, vertical chinks in our western gable, where the boards had shrunk and separated, flashed suddenly into my eyes as stripes of dazzling blue, at once so dark and splendid that i used to marvel how the qualities could be combined. at an earlier hour, the heavens in that quarter were still quietly coloured, but the shoulder of the mountain which shuts in the canyon already glowed with sunlight in a wonderful compound of gold and rose and green; and this too would kindle, although more mildly and with rainbow tints, the fissures of our crazy gable. if i were sleeping heavily, it was the bold blue that struck me awake; if more lightly, then i would come to myself in that earlier and fairier fight. one sunday morning, about five, the first brightness called me. i rose and turned to the east, not for my devotions, but for air. the night had been very still. the little private gale that blew every evening in our canyon, for ten minutes or perhaps a quarter of an hour, had swiftly blown itself out; in the hours that followed not a sigh of wind had shaken the treetops; and our barrack, for all its breaches, was less fresh that morning than of wont. but i had no sooner reached the window than i forgot all else in the sight that met my eyes, and i made but two bounds into my clothes, and down the crazy plank to the platform. the sun was still concealed below the opposite hilltops, though it was shining already, not twenty feet above my head, on our own mountain slope. but the scene, beyond a few near features, was entirely changed. napa valley was gone; gone were all the lower slopes and woody foothills of the range; and in their place, not a thousand feet below me, rolled a great level ocean. it was as though i had gone to bed the night before, safe in a nook of inland mountains, and had awakened in a bay upon the coast. i had seen these inundations from below; at calistoga i had risen and gone abroad in the early morning, coughing and sneezing, under fathoms on fathoms of gray sea vapour, like a cloudy sky a dull sight for the artist, and a painful experience for the invalid. but to sit aloft one's self in the pure air and under the unclouded dome of heaven, and thus look down on the submergence of the valley, was strangely different and even delightful to the eyes. far away were hilltops like little islands. nearer, a smoky surf beat about the foot of precipices and poured into all the coves of these rough mountains. the colour of that fog ocean was a thing never to be forgotten. for an instant, among the hebrides and just about sundown, i have seen something like it on the sea itself. but the white was not so opaline; nor was there, what surprisingly increased the effect, that breathless, crystal stillness over all. even in its gentlest moods the salt sea travails, moaning among the weeds or lisping on the sand; but that vast fog ocean lay in a trance of silence, nor did the sweet air of the morning tremble with a sound. as i continued to sit upon the dump, i began to observe that this sea was not so level as at first sight it appeared to be. away in the extreme south, a little hill of fog arose against the sky above the general surface, and as it had already caught the sun, it shone on the horizon like the topsails of some giant ship. there were huge waves, stationary, as it seemed, like waves in a frozen sea; and yet, as i looked again, i was not sure but they were moving after all, with a slow and august advance. and while i was yet doubting, a promontory of the some four or five miles away, conspicuous by a bouquet of tall pines, was in a single instant overtaken and swallowed up. it reappeared in a little, with its pines, but this time as an islet, and only to be swallowed up once more and then for good. this set me looking nearer, and i saw that in every cove along the line of mountains the fog was being piled in higher and higher, as though by some wind that was inaudible to me. i could trace its progress, one pine tree first growing hazy and then disappearing after another; although sometimes there was none of this fore-running haze, but the whole opaque white ocean gave a start and swallowed a piece of mountain at a gulp. it was to flee these poisonous fogs that i had left the seaboard, and climbed so high among the mountains. and now, behold, here came the fog to besiege me in my chosen altitudes, and yet came so beautifully that my first thought was of welcome. the sun had now gotten much higher, and through all the gaps of the hills it cast long bars of gold across that white ocean. an eagle, or some other very great bird of the mountain, came wheeling over the nearer pine-tops, and hung, poised and something sideways, as if to look abroad on that unwonted desolation, spying, perhaps with terror, for the eyries of her comrades. then, with a long cry, she disappeared again towards lake county and the clearer air. at length it seemed to me as if the flood were beginning to subside. the old landmarks, by whose disappearance i had measured its advance, here a crag, there a brave pine tree, now began, in the inverse order, to make their reappearance into daylight. i judged all danger of the fog was over. this was not noah's flood; it was but a morning spring, and would now drift out seaward whence it came. so, mightily relieved, and a good deal exhilarated by the sight, i went into the house to light the fire. i suppose it was nearly seven when i once more mounted the platform to look abroad. the fog ocean had swelled up enormously since last i saw it; and a few hundred feet below me, in the deep gap where the toll house stands and the road runs through into lake county, it had already topped the slope, and was pouring over and down the other side like driving smoke. the wind had climbed along with it; and though i was still in calm air, i could see the trees tossing below me, and their long, strident sighing mounted to me where i stood. half an hour later, the fog had surmounted all the ridge on the opposite side of the gap, though a shoulder of the mountain still warded it out of our canyon. napa valley and its bounding hills were now utterly blotted out. the fog, sunny white in the sunshine, was pouring over into lake county in a huge, ragged cataract, tossing treetops appearing and disappearing in the spray. the air struck with a little chill, and set me coughing. it smelt strong of the fog, like the smell of a washing-house, but with a shrewd tang of the sea salt. had it not been for two things the sheltering spur which answered as a dyke, and the great valley on the other side which rapidly engulfed whatever mounted our own little platform in the canyon must have been already buried a hundred feet in salt and poisonous air. as it was, the interest of the scene entirely occupied our minds. we were set just out of the wind, and but just above the fog; we could listen to the voice of the one as to music on the stage; we could plunge our eyes down into the other, as into some flowing stream from over the parapet of a bridge; thus we looked on upon a strange, impetuous, silent, shifting exhibition of the powers of nature, and saw the familiar landscape changing from moment to moment like figures in a dream. the imagination loves to trifle with what is not. had this been indeed the deluge, i should have felt more strongly, but the emotion would have been similar in kind. i played with the idea, as the child flees in delighted terror from the creations of his fancy. the look of the thing helped me. and when at last i began to flee up the mountain, it was indeed partly to escape from the raw air that kept me coughing, but it was also part in play. as i ascended the mountain-side, i came once more to overlook the upper surface of the fog; but it wore a different appearance from what i had beheld at daybreak. for, first, the sun now fell on it from high overhead, and its surface shone and undulated like a great nor'land moor country, sheeted with untrodden morning snow. and next the new level must have been a thousand or fifteen hundred feet higher than the old, so that only five or six points of all the broken country below me, still stood out. napa valley was now one with sonoma on the west. on the hither side, only a thin scattered fringe of bluffs was unsubmerged; and through all the gaps the fog was pouring over, like an ocean, into the blue clear sunny country on the east. there it was soon lost; for it fell instantly into the bottom of the valleys, following the water-shed; and the hilltops in that quarter were still clear cut upon the eastern sky. through the toll house gap and over the near ridges on the other side, the deluge was immense. a spray of thin vapour was thrown high above it, rising and falling, and blown into fantastic shapes. the speed of its course was like a mountain torrent. here and there a few treetops were discovered and then whelmed again; and for one second, the bough of a dead pine beckoned out of the spray like the arm of a drowning man. but still the imagination was dissatisfied, still the ear waited for something more. had this indeed been water (as it seemed so, to the eye), with what a plunge of reverberating thunder would it have rolled upon its course, disembowelling mountains and deracinating pines! and yet water it was, and sea-water at that true pacific billows, only somewhat rarefied, rolling in mid air among the hilltops. i climbed still higher, among the red rattling gravel and dwarf underwood of mount saint helena, until i could look right down upon silverado, and admire the favoured nook in which it lay. the sunny plain of fog was several hundred feet higher; behind the protecting spur a gigantic accumulation of cottony vapour threatened, with every second, to blow over and submerge our homestead; but the vortex setting past the toll house was too strong; and there lay our little platform, in the arms of the deluge, but still enjoying its unbroken sunshine. about eleven, however, thin spray came flying over the friendly buttress, and i began to think the fog had hunted out its jonah after all. but it was the last effort. the wind veered while we were at dinner, and began to blow squally from the mountain summit; and by half-past one, all that world of sea-fogs was utterly routed and flying here and there into the south in little rags of cloud. and instead of a lone sea-beach, we found ourselves once more inhabiting a high mountainside, with the clear green country far below us, and the light smoke of calistoga blowing in the air. this was the great russian campaign for that season. now and then, in the early morning, a little white lakelet of fog would be seen far down in napa valley; but the heights were not again assailed, nor was the surrounding world again shut off from silverado. the toll house the toll house, standing alone by the wayside under nodding pines, with its streamlet and water-tank; its backwoods, toll-bar, and well trodden croquet ground; the ostler standing by the stable door, chewing a straw; a glimpse of the chinese cook in the back parts; and mr. hoddy in the bar, gravely alert and serviceable, and equally anxious to lend or borrow books; dozed all day in the dusty sunshine, more than half asleep. there were no neighbours, except the hansons up the hill. the traffic on the road was infinitesimal; only, at rare intervals, a couple in a waggon, or a dusty farmer on a springboard, toiling over "the grade" to that metropolitan hamlet, calistoga; and, at the fixed hours, the passage of the stages. the nearest building was the school-house, down the road; and the school-ma'am boarded at the toll house, walking thence in the morning to the little brown shanty, where she taught the young ones of the district, and returning thither pretty weary in the afternoon. she had chosen this outlying situation, i understood, for her health. mr. corwin was consumptive; so was rufe; so was mr. jennings, the engineer. in short, the place was a kind of small davos: consumptive folk consorting on a hilltop in the most unbroken idleness. jennings never did anything that i could see, except now and then to fish, and generally to sit about in the bar and the verandah, waiting for something to happen. corwin and rufe did as little as possible; and if the school-ma'am, poor lady, had to work pretty hard all morning, she subsided when it was over into much the same dazed beatitude as all the rest. her special corner was the parlour a very genteel room, with bible prints, a crayon portrait of mrs. corwin in the height of fashion, a few years ago, another of her son (mr. corwin was not represented), a mirror, and a selection of dried grasses. a large book was laid religiously on the table "from palace to hovel," i believe, its name full of the raciest experiences in england. the author had mingled freely with all classes, the nobility particularly meeting him with open arms; and i must say that traveller had ill requited his reception. his book, in short, was a capital instance of the penny messalina school of literature; and there arose from it, in that cool parlour, in that silent, wayside, mountain inn, a rank atmosphere of gold and blood and "jenkins," and the "mysteries of london," and sickening, inverted snobbery, fit to knock you down. the mention of this book reminds me of another and far racier picture of our island life. the latter parts of rocambole are surely too sparingly consulted in the country which they celebrate. no man's education can be said to be complete, nor can he pronounce the world yet emptied of enjoyment, till he has made the acquaintance of "the reverend patterson, director of the evangelical society." to follow the evolutions of that reverend gentleman, who goes through scenes in which even mr. duffield would hesitate to place a bishop, is to rise to new ideas. but, alas! there was no patterson about the toll house. only, alongside of "from palace to hovel," a sixpenny "ouida" figured. so literature, you see, was not unrepresented. the school-ma'am had friends to stay with her, other schoolma'ams enjoying their holidays, quite a bevy of damsels. they seemed never to go out, or not beyond the verandah, but sat close in the little parlour, quietly talking or listening to the wind among the trees. sleep dwelt in the toll house, like a fixture: summer sleep, shallow, soft, and dreamless. a cuckoo-clock, a great rarity in such a place, hooted at intervals about the echoing house; and mr. jenning would open his eyes for a moment in the bar, and turn the leaf of a newspaper, and the resting school-ma'ams in the parlour would be recalled to the consciousness of their inaction. busy mrs. corwin and her busy chinaman might be heard indeed, in the penetralia, pounding dough or rattling dishes; or perhaps rufe had called up some of the sleepers for a game of croquet, and the hollow strokes of the mallet sounded far away among the woods: but with these exceptions, it was sleep and sunshine and dust, and the wind in the pine trees, all day long. a little before stage time, that castle of indolence awoke. the ostler threw his straw away and set to his preparations. mr. jennings rubbed his eyes; happy mr. jennings, the something he had been waiting for all day about to happen at last! the boarders gathered in the verandah, silently giving ear, and gazing down the road with shaded eyes. and as yet there was no sign for the senses, not a sound, not a tremor of the mountain road. the birds, to whom the secret of the hooting cuckoo is unknown, must have set down to instinct this premonitory bustle. and then the first of the two stages swooped upon the toll house with a roar and in a cloud of dust; and the shock had not yet time to subside, before the second was abreast of it. huge concerns they were, well-horsed and loaded, the men in their shirt-sleeves, the women swathed in veils, the long whip cracking like a pistol; and as they charged upon that slumbering hostelry, each shepherding a dust storm, the dead place blossomed into life and talk and clatter. this the toll house? with its city throng, its jostling shoulders, its infinity of instant business in the bar? the mind would not receive it! the heartfelt bustle of that hour is hardly credible; the thrill of the great shower of letters from the post-bag, the childish hope and interest with which one gazed in all these strangers' eyes. they paused there but to pass: the blue-clad china-boy, the san francisco magnate, the mystery in the dust coat, the secret memoirs in tweed, the ogling, well-shod lady with her troop of girls; they did but flash and go; they were hull-down for us behind life's ocean, and we but hailed their topsails on the line. yet, out of our great solitude of four and twenty mountain hours, we thrilled to their momentary presence gauged and divined them, loved and hated; and stood light-headed in that storm of human electricity. yes, like piccadilly circus, this is also one of life's crossing-places. here i beheld one man, already famous or infamous, a centre of pistol-shots: and another who, if not yet known to rumour, will fill a column of the sunday paper when he comes to hang a burly, thickset, powerful chinese desperado, six long bristles upon either lip; redolent of whiskey, playing cards, and pistols; swaggering in the bar with the lowest assumption of the lowest european manners; rapping out blackguard english oaths in his canorous oriental voice; and combining in one person the depravities of two races and two civilizations. for all his lust and vigour, he seemed to look cold upon me from the valley of the shadow of the gallows. he imagined a vain thing; and while he drained his cock-tail, holbein's death was at his elbow. once, too, i fell in talk with another of these flitting strangers like the rest, in his shirtsleeves and all begrimed with dust and the next minute we were discussing paris and london, theatres and wines. to him, journeying from one human place to another, this was a trifle; but to me! no, mr. lillie, i have not forgotten it. and presently the city-tide was at its flood and began to ebb. life runs in piccadilly circus, say, from nine to one, and then, there also, ebbs into the small hours of the echoing policeman and the lamps and stars. but the toll house is far up stream, and near its rural springs; the bubble of the tide but touches it. before you had yet grasped your pleasure, the horses were put to, the loud whips volleyed, and the tide was gone. north and south had the two stages vanished, the towering dust subsided in the woods; but there was still an interval before the flush had fallen on your cheeks, before the ear became once more contented with the silence, or the seven sleepers of the toll house dozed back to their accustomed corners. yet a little, and the ostler would swing round the great barrier across the road; and in the golden evening, that dreamy inn begin to trim its lamps and spread the board for supper. as i recall the place the green dell below; the spires of pine; the sun-warm, scented air; that gray, gabled inn, with its faint stirrings of life amid the slumber of the mountains i slowly awake to a sense of admiration, gratitude, and almost love. a fine place, after all, for a wasted life to doze away in the cuckoo clock hooting of its far home country; the croquet mallets, eloquent of english lawns; the stages daily bringing news of the turbulent world away below there; and perhaps once in the summer, a salt fog pouring overhead with its tale of the pacific. a starry drive in our rule at silverado, there was a melancholy interregnum. the queen and the crown prince with one accord fell sick; and, as i was sick to begin with, our lone position on mount saint helena was no longer tenable, and we had to hurry back to calistoga and a cottage on the green. by that time we had begun to realize the difficulties of our position. we had found what an amount of labour it cost to support life in our red canyon; and it was the dearest desire of our hearts to get a china-boy to go along with us when we returned. we could have given him a whole house to himself, selfcontained, as they say in the advertisements; and on the money question we were prepared to go far. kong sam kee, the calistoga washerman, was entrusted with the affair; and from day to day it languished on, with protestations on our part and mellifluous excuses on the part of kong sam kee. at length, about half-past eight of our last evening, with the waggon ready harnessed to convey us up the grade, the washerman, with a somewhat sneering air, produced the boy. he was a handsome, gentlemanly lad, attired in rich dark blue, and shod with snowy white; but, alas! he had heard rumours of silverado. he know it for a lone place on the mountain-side, with no friendly wash-house near by, where he might smoke a pipe of opium o' nights with other china-boys, and lose his little earnings at the game of tan; and he first backed out for more money; and then, when that demand was satisfied, refused to come point-blank. he was wedded to his wash-houses; he had no taste for the rural life; and we must go to our mountain servantless. it must have been near half an hour before we reached that conclusion, standing in the midst of calistoga high street under the stars, and the china-boy and kong sam kee singing their pigeon english in the sweetest voices and with the most musical inflections. we were not, however, to return alone; for we brought with us joe strong, the painter, a most good-natured comrade and a capital hand at an omelette. i do not know in which capacity he was most valued as a cook or a companion; and he did excellently well in both. the kong sam kee negotiation had delayed us unduly; it must have been half-past nine before we left calistoga, and night came fully ere we struck the bottom of the grade. i have never seen such a night. it seemed to throw calumny in the teeth of all the painters that ever dabbled in starlight. the sky itself was of a ruddy, powerful, nameless, changing colour, dark and glossy like a serpent's back. the stars, by innumerable millions, stuck boldly forth like lamps. the milky way was bright, like a moonlit cloud; half heaven seemed milky way. the greater luminaries shone each more clearly than a winter's moon. their light was dyed in every sort of colour red, like fire; blue, like steel; green, like the tracks of sunset; and so sharply did each stand forth in its own lustre that there was no appearance of that flat, star-spangled arch we know so well in pictures, but all the hollow of heaven was one chaos of contesting luminaries a hurry-burly of stars. against this the hills and rugged treetops stood out redly dark. as we continued to advance, the lesser lights and milky ways first grew pale, and then vanished; the countless hosts of heaven dwindled in number by successive millions; those that still shone had tempered their exceeding brightness and fallen back into their customary wistful distance; and the sky declined from its first bewildering splendour into the appearance of a common night. slowly this change proceeded, and still there was no sign of any cause. then a whiteness like mist was thrown over the spurs of the mountain. yet a while, and, as we turned a corner, a great leap of silver light and net of forest shadows fell across the road and upon our wondering waggonful; and, swimming low among the trees, we beheld a strange, misshapen, waning moon, half-tilted on her back. "where are ye when the moon appears?" so the old poet sang, half-taunting, to the stars, bent upon a courtly purpose. "as the sunlight round the dim earth's midnight tower of shadow pours, streaming past the dim, wide portals, viewless to the eyes of mortals, till it floods the moon's pale islet or the morning's golden shores." so sings mr. trowbridge, with a noble inspiration. and so had the sunlight flooded that pale islet of the moon, and her lit face put out, one after another, that galaxy of stars. the wonder of the drive was over; but, by some nice conjunction of clearness in the air and fit shadow in the valley where we travelled, we had seen for a little while that brave display of the midnight heavens. it was gone, but it had been; nor shall i ever again behold the stars with the same mind. he who has seen the sea commoved with a great hurricane, thinks of it very differently from him who has seen it only in a calm. and the difference between a calm and a hurricane is not greatly more striking than that between the ordinary face of night and the splendour that shone upon us in that drive. two in our waggon knew night as she shines upon the tropics, but even that bore no comparison. the nameless colour of the sky, the hues of the star-fire, and the incredible projection of the stars themselves, starting from their orbits, so that the eye seemed to distinguish their positions in the hollow of space these were things that we had never seen before and shall never see again. meanwhile, in this altered night, we proceeded on our way among the scents and silence of the forest, reached the top of the grade, wound up by hanson's, and came at last to a stand under the flying gargoyle of the chute. sam, who had been lying back, fast asleep, with the moon on his face, got down, with the remark that it was pleasant "to be home." the waggon turned and drove away, the noise gently dying in the woods, and we clambered up the rough path, caliban's great feat of engineering, and came home to silverado. the moon shone in at the eastern doors and windows, and over the lumber on the platform. the one tall pine beside. the ledge was steeped in silver. away up the canyon, a wild cat welcomed us with three discordant squalls. but once we had lit a candle, and began to review our improvements, homely in either sense, and count our stores, it was wonderful what a feeling of possession and permanence grow up in the hearts of the lords of silverado. a bed had still to be made up for strong, and the morning's water to be fetched, with clinking pail; and as we set about these household duties, and showed off our wealth and conveniences before the stranger, and had a glass of wine, i think, in honour of our return, and trooped at length one after another up the flying bridge of plank, and lay down to sleep in our shattered, moon-pierced barrack, we were among the happiest sovereigns in the world, and certainly ruled over the most contented people. yet, in our absence, the palace had been sacked. wild cats, so the hansons said, had broken in and carried off a side of bacon, a hatchet, and two knives. episodes in the story of a mine no one could live at silverado and not be curious about the story of the mine. we were surrounded by so many evidences of expense and toil, we lived so entirely in the wreck of that great enterprise, like mites in the ruins of a cheese, that the idea of the old din and bustle haunted our repose. our own house, the forge, the dump, the chutes, the rails, the windlass, the mass of broken plant; the two tunnels, one far below in the green dell, the other on the platform where we kept our wine; the deep shaft, with the sun-glints and the water-drops; above all, the ledge, that great gaping slice out of the mountain shoulder, propped apart by wooden wedges, on whose immediate margin, high above our heads, the one tall pine precariously nodded these stood for its greatness; while, the dog-hutch, boot-jacks, old boots, old tavern bills, and the very beds that we inherited from bygone miners, put in human touches and realized for us the story of the past. i have sat on an old sleeper, under the thick madronas near the forge, with just a look over the dump on the green world below, and seen the sun lying broad among the wreck, and heard the silence broken only by the tinkling water in the shaft, or a stir of the royal family about the battered palace, and my mind has gone back to the epoch of the stanleys and the chapmans, with a grand tutti of pick and drill, hammer and anvil, echoing about the canyon; the assayer hard at it in our dining-room; the carts below on the road, and their cargo of red mineral bounding and thundering down the iron chute. and now all gone all fallen away into this sunny silence and desertion: a family of squatters dining in the assayer's office, making their beds in the big sleeping room erstwhile so crowded, keeping their wine in the tunnel that once rang with picks. but silverado itself, although now fallen in its turn into decay, was once but a mushroom, and had succeeded to other mines and other flitting cities. twenty years ago, away down the glen on the lake county side there was a place, jonestown by name, with two thousand inhabitants dwelling under canvas, and one roofed house for the sale of whiskey. round on the western side of mount saint helena, there was at the same date, a second large encampment, its name, if it ever had one, lost for me. both of these have perished, leaving not a stick and scarce a memory behind them. tide after tide of hopeful miners have thus flowed and ebbed about the mountain, coming and going, now by lone prospectors, now with a rush. last, in order of time came silverado, reared the big mill, in the valley, founded the town which is now represented, monumentally, by hanson's, pierced all these slaps and shafts and tunnels, and in turn declined and died away. "our noisy years seem moments in the wake of the eternal silence." as to the success of silverado in its time of being, two reports were current. according to the first, six hundred thousand dollars were taken out of that great upright seam, that still hung open above us on crazy wedges. then the ledge pinched out, and there followed, in quest of the remainder, a great drifting and tunnelling in all directions, and a great consequent effusion of dollars, until, all parties being sick of the expense, the mine was deserted, and the town decamped. according to the second version, told me with much secrecy of manner, the whole affair, mine, mill, and town, were parts of one majestic swindle. there had never come any silver out of any portion of the mine; there was no silver to come. at midnight trains of packhorses might have been observed winding by devious tracks about the shoulder of the mountain. they came from far away, from amador or placer, laden with silver in "old cigar boxes." they discharged their load at silverado, in the hour of sleep; and before the morning they were gone again with their mysterious drivers to their unknown source. in this way, twenty thousand pounds' worth of silver was smuggled in under cover of night, in these old cigar boxes; mixed with silverado mineral; carted down to the mill; crushed, amalgated, and refined, and despatched to the city as the proper product of the mine. stock-jobbing, if it can cover such expenses, must be a profitable business in san francisco. i give these two versions as i got them. but i place little reliance on either, my belief in history having been greatly shaken. for it chanced that i had come to dwell in silverado at a critical hour; great events in its history were about to happen did happen, as i am led to believe; nay, and it will be seen that i played a part in that revolution myself. and yet from first to last i never had a glimmer of an idea what was going on; and even now, after full reflection, profess myself at sea. that there was some obscure intrigue of the cigar-box order, and that i, in the character of a wooden puppet, set pen to paper in the interest of somebody, so much, and no more, is certain. silverado, then under my immediate sway, belonged to one whom i will call a mr. ronalds. i only knew him through the extraordinarily distorting medium of local gossip, now as a momentous jobber; now as a dupe to point an adage; and again, and much more probably, as an ordinary christian gentleman like you or me, who had opened a mine and worked it for a while with better and worse fortune. so, through a defective window-pane, you may see the passer-by shoot up into a hunchbacked giant or dwindle into a potbellied dwarf. to ronalds, at least, the mine belonged; but the notice by which he held it would ran out upon the 30th of june or rather, as i suppose, it had run out already, and the month of grace would expire upon that day, after which any american citizen might post a notice of his own, and make silverado his. this, with a sort of quiet slyness, rufe told me at an early period of our acquaintance. there was no silver, of course; the mine "wasn't worth nothing, mr. stevens," but there was a deal of old iron and wood around, and to gain possession of this old wood and iron, and get a right to the water, rufe proposed, if i had no objections, to "jump the claim." of course, i had no objection. but i was filled with wonder. if all he wanted was the wood and iron, what, in the name of fortune, was to prevent him taking them? "his right there was none to dispute." he might lay hands on all to-morrow, as the wild cats had laid hands upon our knives and hatchet. besides, was this mass of heavy mining plant worth transportation? if it was, why had not the rightful owners carted it away? if it was, would they not preserve their title to these movables, even after they had lost their title to the mine? and if it were not, what the better was rufe? nothing would grow at silverado; there was even no wood to cut; beyond a sense of property, there was nothing to be gained. lastly, was it at all credible that ronalds would forget what rufe remembered? the days of grace were not yet over: any fine morning he might appear, paper in hand, and enter for another year on his inheritance. however, it was none of my business; all seemed legal; rufe or ronalds, all was one to me. on the morning of the 27th, mrs. hanson appeared with the milk as usual, in her sun-bonnet. the time would be out on tuesday, she reminded us, and bade me be in readiness to play my part, though i had no idea what it was to be. and suppose ronalds came? we asked. she received the idea with derision, laughing aloud with all her fine teeth. he could not find the mine to save his life, it appeared, without rufe to guide him. last year, when he came, they heard him "up and down the road a hollerin' and a raisin' cain." and at last he had to come to the hansons in despair, and bid rufe, "jump into your pants and shoes, and show me where this old mine is, anyway!" seeing that ronalds had laid out so much money in the spot, and that a beaten road led right up to the bottom of the clump, i thought this a remarkable example. the sense of locality must be singularly in abeyance in the case of ronalds. that same evening, supper comfortably over, joe strong busy at work on a drawing of the dump and the opposite hills, we were all out on the platform together, sitting there, under the tented heavens, with the same sense of privacy as if we had been cabined in a parlour, when the sound of brisk footsteps came mounting up the path. we pricked our ears at this, for the tread seemed lighter and firmer than was usual with our country neighbours. and presently, sure enough, two town gentlemen, with cigars and kid gloves, came debauching past the house. they looked in that place like a blasphemy. "good evening," they said. for none of us had stirred; we all sat stiff with wonder. "good evening," i returned; and then, to put them at their ease, "a stiff climb," i added. "yes," replied the leader; "but we have to thank you for this path." i did not like the man's tone. none of us liked it. he did not seem embarrassed by the meeting, but threw us his remarks like favours, and strode magisterially by us towards the shaft and tunnel. presently we heard his voice raised to his companion. "we drifted every sort of way, but couldn't strike the ledge." then again: "it pinched out here." and once more: "every minor that ever worked upon it says there's bound to be a ledge somewhere." these were the snatches of his talk that reached us, and they had a damning significance. we, the lords of silverado, had come face to face with our superior. it is the worst of all quaint and of all cheap ways of life that they bring us at last to the pinch of some humiliation. i liked well enough to be a squatter when there was none but hanson by; before ronalds, i will own, i somewhat quailed. i hastened to do him fealty, said i gathered he was the squattee, and apologized. he threatened me with ejection, in a manner grimly pleasant more pleasant to him, i fancy, than to me; and then he passed off into praises of the former state of silverado. "it was the busiest little mining town you ever saw:" a population of between a thousand and fifteen hundred souls, the engine in full blast, the mill newly erected; nothing going but champagne, and hope the order of the day. ninety thousand dollars came out; a hundred and forty thousand were put in, making a net loss of fifty thousand. the last days, i gathered, the days of john stanley, were not so bright; the champagne had ceased to flow, the population was already moving elsewhere, and silverado had begun to wither in the branch before it was cut at the root. the last shot that was fired knocked over the stove chimney, and made that hole in the roof of our barrack, through which the sun was wont to visit slug-a-beds towards afternoon. a noisy, last shot, to inaugurate the days of silence. throughout this interview, my conscience was a good deal exercised; and i was moved to throw myself on my knees and own the intended treachery. but then i had hanson to consider. i was in much the same position as old rowley, that royal humourist, whom "the rogue had taken into his confidence." and again, here was ronalds on the spot. he must know the day of the month as well as hanson and i. if a broad hint were necessary, he had the broadest in the world. for a large board had been nailed by the crown prince on the very front of our house, between the door and window, painted in cinnabar the pigment of the country with doggrel rhymes and contumelious pictures, and announcing, in terms unnecessarily figurative, that the trick was already played, the claim already jumped, and master sam the legitimate successor of mr. ronalds. but no, nothing could save that man; quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat. as he came so he went, and left his rights depending. late at night, by silverado reckoning, and after we were all abed, mrs. hanson returned to give us the newest of her news. it was like a scene in a ship's steerage: all of us abed in our different tiers, the single candle struggling with the darkness, and this plump, handsome woman, seated on an upturned valise beside the bunks, talking and showing her fine teeth, and laughing till the rafters rang. any ship, to be sure, with a hundredth part as many holes in it as our barrack, must long ago have gone to her last port. up to that time i had always imagined mrs. hanson's loquacity to be mere incontinence, that she said what was uppermost for the pleasure of speaking, and laughed and laughed again as a kind of musical accompaniment. but i now found there was an art in it, i found it less communicative than silence itself. i wished to know why ronalds had come; how he had found his way without rufe; and why, being on the spot, he had not refreshed his title. she talked interminably on, but her replies were never answers. she fled under a cloud of words; and when i had made sure that she was purposely eluding me, i dropped the subject in my turn, and let her rattle where she would. she had come to tell us that, instead of waiting for tuesday, the claim was to be jumped on the morrow. how? if the time were not out, it was impossible. why? if ronalds had come and gone, and done nothing, there was the less cause for hurry. but again i could reach no satisfaction. the claim was to be jumped next morning, that was all that she would condescend upon. and yet it was not jumped the next morning, nor yet the next, and a whole week had come and gone before we heard more of this exploit. that day week, however, a day of great heat, hanson, with a little roll of paper in his hand, and the eternal pipe alight; breedlove, his large, dull friend, to act, i suppose, as witness; mrs. hanson, in her sunday best; and all the children, from the oldest to the youngest; arrived in a procession, tailing one behind another up the path. caliban was absent, but he had been chary of his friendly visits since the row; and with that exception, the whole family was gathered together as for a marriage or a christening. strong was sitting at work, in the shade of the dwarf madronas near the forge; and they planted themselves about him in a circle, one on a stone, another on the waggon rails, a third on a piece of plank. gradually the children stole away up the canyon to where there was another chute, somewhat smaller than the one across the dump; and down this chute, for the rest of the afternoon, they poured one avalanche of stones after another, waking the echoes of the glen. meantime we elders sat together on the platform, hanson and his friend smoking in silence like indian sachems, mrs. hanson rattling on as usual with an adroit volubility, saying nothing, but keeping the party at their ease like a courtly hostess. not a word occurred about the business of the day. once, twice, and thrice i tried to slide the subject in, but was discouraged by the stoic apathy of rufe, and beaten down before the pouring verbiage of his wife. there is nothing of the indian brave about me, and i began to grill with impatience. at last, like a highway robber, i cornered hanson, and bade him stand and deliver his business. thereupon he gravely rose, as though to hint that this was not a proper place, nor the subject one suitable for squaws, and i, following his example, led him up the plank into our barrack. there he bestowed himself on a box, and unrolled his papers with fastidious deliberation. there were two sheets of note-paper, and an old mining notice, dated may 30th, 1879, part print, part manuscript, and the latter much obliterated by the rains. it was by this identical piece of paper that the mine had been held last year. for thirteen months it had endured the weather and the change of seasons on a cairn behind the shoulder of the canyon; and it was now my business, spreading it before me on the table, and sitting on a valise, to copy its terms, with some necessary changes, twice over on the two sheets of note-paper. one was then to be placed on the same cairn a "mound of rocks" the notice put it; and the other to be lodged for registration. rufe watched me, silently smoking, till i came to the place for the locator's name at the end of the first copy; and when i proposed that he should sign, i thought i saw a scare in his eye. "i don't think that'll be necessary," he said slowly; "just you write it down." perhaps this mighty hunter, who was the most active member of the local school board, could not write. there would be nothing strange in that. the constable of calistoga is, and has been for years, a bed-ridden man, and, if i remember rightly, blind. he had more need of the emoluments than another, it was explained; and it was easy for him to "depytize," with a strong accent on the last. so friendly and so free are popular institutions. when i had done my scrivening, hanson strolled out, and addressed breedlove, "will you step up here a bit?" and after they had disappeared a little while into the chaparral and madrona thicket, they came back again, minus a notice, and the deed was done. the claim was jumped; a tract of mountain-side, fifteen hundred feet long by six hundred wide, with all the earth's precious bowels, had passed from ronalds to hanson, and, in the passage, changed its name from the "mammoth" to the "calistoga." i had tried to get rufe to call it after his wife, after himself, and after garfield, the republican presidential candidate of the hour since then elected, and, alas! dead but all was in vain. the claim had once been called the calistoga before, and he seemed to feel safety in returning to that. and so the history of that mine became once more plunged in darkness, lit only by some monster pyrotechnical displays of gossip. and perhaps the most curious feature of the whole matter is this: that we should have dwelt in this quiet corner of the mountains, with not a dozen neighbours, and yet struggled all the while, like desperate swimmers, in this sea of falsities and contradictions. wherever a man is, there will be a lie. toils and pleasures i must try to convey some notion of our life, of how the days passed and what pleasure we took in them, of what there was to do and how we set about doing it, in our mountain hermitage. the house, after we had repaired the worst of the damages, and filled in some of the doors and windows with white cotton cloth, became a healthy and a pleasant dwellingplace, always airy and dry, and haunted by the outdoor perfumes of the glen. within, it had the look of habitation, the human look. you had only to go into the third room, which we did not use, and see its stones, its sifting earth, its tumbled litter; and then return to our lodging, with the beds made, the plates on the rack, the pail of bright water behind the door, the stove crackling in a corner, and perhaps the table roughly laid against a meal, and man's order, the little clean spots that he creates to dwell in, were at once contrasted with the rich passivity of nature. and yet our house was everywhere so wrecked and shattered, the air came and went so freely, the sun found so many portholes, the golden outdoor glow shone in so many open chinks, that we enjoyed, at the same time, some of the comforts of a roof and much of the gaiety and brightness of al fresco life. a single shower of rain, to be sure, and we should have been drowned out like mice. but ours was a californian summer, and an earthquake was a far likelier accident than a shower of rain. trustful in this fine weather, we kept the house for kitchen and bedroom, and used the platform as our summer parlour. the sense of privacy, as i have said already, was complete. we could look over the clump on miles of forest and rough hilltop; our eyes commanded some of napa valley, where the train ran, and the little country townships sat so close together along the line of the rail. but here there was no man to intrude. none but the hansons were our visitors. even they came but at long intervals, or twice daily, at a stated hour, with milk. so our days, as they were never interrupted, drew out to the greater length; hour melted insensibly into hour; the household duties, though they were many, and some of them laborious, dwindled into mere islets of business in a sea of sunny day-time; and it appears to me, looking back, as though the far greater part of our life at silverado had been passed, propped upon an elbow, or seated on a plank, listening to the silence that there is among the hills. my work, it is true, was over early in the morning. i rose before any one else, lit the stove, put on the water to boil, and strolled forth upon the platform to wait till it was ready. silverado would then be still in shadow, the sun shining on the mountain higher up. a clean smell of trees, a smell of the earth at morning, hung in the air. regularly, every day, there was a single bird, not singing, but awkwardly chirruping among the green madronas, and the sound was cheerful, natural, and stirring. it did not hold the attention, nor interrupt the thread of meditation, like a blackbird or a nightingale; it was mere woodland prattle, of which the mind was conscious like a perfume. the freshness of these morning seasons remained with me far on into the day. as soon as the kettle boiled, i made porridge and coffee; and that, beyond the literal drawing of water, and the preparation of kindling, which it would be hyperbolical to call the hewing of wood, ended my domestic duties for the day. thenceforth my wife laboured single-handed in the palace, and i lay or wandered on the platform at my own sweet will. the little corner near the forge, where we found a refuge under the madronas from the unsparing early sun, is indeed connected in my mind with some nightmare encounters over euclid, and the latin grammar. these were known as sam's lessons. he was supposed to be the victim and the sufferer; but here there must have been some misconception, for whereas i generally retired to bed after one of these engagements, he was no sooner set free than he dashed up to the chinaman's house, where he had installed a printing press, that great element of civilization, and the sound of his labours would be faintly audible about the canyon half the day. to walk at all was a laborious business; the foot sank and slid, the boots were cut to pieces, among sharp, uneven, rolling stones. when we crossed the platform in any direction, it was usual to lay a course, following as much as possible the line of waggon rails. thus, if water were to be drawn, the water-carrier left the house along some tilting planks that we had laid down, and not laid down very well. these carried him to that great highroad, the railway; and the railway served him as far as to the head of the shaft. but from thence to the spring and back again he made the best of his unaided way, staggering among the stones, and wading in low growth of the calcanthus, where the rattlesnakes lay hissing at his passage. yet i liked to draw water. it was pleasant to dip the gray metal pail into the clean, colourless, cool water; pleasant to carry it back, with the water ripping at the edge, and a broken sunbeam quivering in the midst. but the extreme roughness of the walking confined us in common practice to the platform, and indeed to those parts of it that were most easily accessible along the line of rails. the rails came straight forward from the shaft, here and there overgrown with little green bushes, but still entire, and still carrying a truck, which it was sam's delight to trundle to and fro by the hour with various ladings. about midway down the platform, the railroad trended to the right, leaving our house and coasting along the far side within a few yards of the madronas and the forge, and not far of the latter, ended in a sort of platform on the edge of the dump. there, in old days, the trucks were tipped, and their load sent thundering down the chute. there, besides, was the only spot where we could approach the margin of the dump. anywhere else, you took your life in your right hand when you came within a yard and a half to peer over. for at any moment the dump might begin to slide and carry you down and bury you below its ruins. indeed, the neighbourhood of an old mine is a place beset with dangers. for as still as silverado was, at any moment the report of rotten wood might tell us that the platform had fallen into the shaft; the dump might begin to pour into the road below; or a wedge slip in the great upright seam, and hundreds of tons of mountain bury the scene of our encampment. i have already compared the dump to a rampart, built certainly by some rude people, and for prehistoric wars. it was likewise a frontier. all below was green and woodland, the tall pines soaring one above another, each with a firm outline and full spread of bough. all above was arid, rocky, and bald. the great spout of broken mineral, that had dammed the canyon up, was a creature of man's handiwork, its material dug out with a pick and powder, and spread by the service of the tracks. but nature herself, in that upper district, seemed to have had an eye to nothing besides mining; and even the natural hill-side was all sliding gravel and precarious boulder. close at the margin of the well leaves would decay to skeletons and mummies, which at length some stronger gust would carry clear of the canyon and scatter in the subjacent woods. even moisture and decaying vegetable matter could not, with all nature's alchemy, concoct enough soil to nourish a few poor grasses. it is the same, they say, in the neighbourhood of all silver mines; the nature of that precious rock being stubborn with quartz and poisonous with cinnabar. both were plenty in our silverado. the stones sparkled white in the sunshine with quartz; they were all stained red with cinnabar. here, doubtless, came the indians of yore to paint their faces for the war-path; and cinnabar, if i remember rightly, was one of the few articles of indian commerce. now, sam had it in his undisturbed possession, to pound down and slake, and paint his rude designs with. but to me it had always a fine flavour of poetry, compounded out of indian story and hawthornden's allusion: "desire, alas! i desire a zeuxis new, from indies borrowing gold, from eastern skies most bright cinoper . . ." yet this is but half the picture; our silverado platform has another side to it. though there was no soil, and scarce a blade of grass, yet out of these tumbled gravel-heaps and broken boulders, a flower garden bloomed as at home in a conservatory. calcanthus crept, like a hardy weed, all over our rough parlour, choking the railway, and pushing forth its rusty, aromatic cones from between two blocks of shattered mineral. azaleas made a big snow-bed just above the well. the shoulder of the hill waved white with mediterranean heath. in the crannies of the ledge and about the spurs of the tall pine, a red flowering stone-plant hung in clusters. even the low, thorny chaparral was thick with pea-like blossom. close at the foot of our path nutmegs prospered, delightful to the sight and smell. at sunrise, and again late at night, the scent of the sweet bay trees filled the canyon, and the down-blowing night wind must have borne it hundreds of feet into the outer air. all this vegetation, to be sure, was stunted. the madrona was here no bigger than the manzanita; the bay was but a stripling shrub; the very pines, with four or five exceptions in all our upper canyon, were not so tall as myself, or but a little taller, and the most of them came lower than my waist. for a prosperous forest tree, we must look below, where the glen was crowded with green spires. but for flowers and ravishing perfume, we had none to envy: our heap of roadmetal was thick with bloom, like a hawthorn in the front of june; our red, baking angle in the mountain, a laboratory of poignant scents. it was an endless wonder to my mind, as i dreamed about the platform, following the progress of the shadows, where the madrona with its leaves, the azalea and calcanthus with their blossoms, could find moisture to support such thick, wet, waxy growths, or the bay tree collect the ingredients of its perfume. but there they all grew together, healthy, happy, and happy-making, as though rooted in a fathom of black soil. nor was it only vegetable life that prospered. we had, indeed, few birds, and none that had much of a voice or anything worthy to be called a song. my morning comrade had a thin chirp, unmusical and monotonous, but friendly and pleasant to hear. he had but one rival: a fellow with an ostentatious cry of near an octave descending, not one note of which properly followed another. this is the only bird i ever knew with a wrong ear; but there was something enthralling about his performance. you listened and listened, thinking each time he must surely get it right; but no, it was always wrong, and always wrong the same way. yet he seemed proud of his song, delivered it with execution and a manner of his own, and was charming to his mate. a very incorrect, incessant human whistler had thus a chance of knowing how his own music pleased the world. two great birds eagles, we thought dwelt at the top of the canyon, among the crags that were printed on the sky. now and again, but very rarely, they wheeled high over our heads in silence, or with a distant, dying scream; and then, with a fresh impulse, winged fleetly forward, dipped over a hilltop, and were gone. they seemed solemn and ancient things, sailing the blue air: perhaps co-oeval with the mountain where they haunted, perhaps emigrants from rome, where the glad legions may have shouted to behold them on the morn of battle. but if birds were rare, the place abounded with rattlesnakes the rattlesnake's nest, it might have been named. wherever we brushed among the bushes, our passage woke their angry buzz. one dwelt habitually in the wood-pile, and sometimes, when we came for firewood, thrust up his small head between two logs, and hissed at the intrusion. the rattle has a legendary credit; it is said to be awe-inspiring, and, once heard, to stamp itself for ever in the memory. but the sound is not at all alarming; the hum of many insects, and the buzz of the wasp convince the ear of danger quite as readily. as a matter of fact, we lived for weeks in silverado, coming and going, with rattles sprung on every side, and it never occurred to us to be afraid. i used to take sun-baths and do calisthenics in a certain pleasant nook among azalea and calcanthus, the rattles whizzing on every side like spinningwheels, and the combined hiss or buzz rising louder and angrier at any sudden movement; but i was never in the least impressed, nor ever attacked. it was only towards the end of our stay, that a man down at calistoga, who was expatiating on the terrifying nature of the sound, gave me at last a very good imitation; and it burst on me at once that we dwelt in the very metropolis of deadly snakes, and that the rattle was simply the commonest noise in silverado. immediately on our return, we attacked the hansons on the subject. they had formerly assured us that our canyon was favoured, like ireland, with an entire immunity from poisonous reptiles; but, with the perfect inconsequence of the natural man, they were no sooner found out than they went off at score in the contrary direction, and we were told that in no part of the world did rattlesnakes attain to such a monstrous bigness as among the warm, flower-dotted rocks of silverado. this is a contribution rather to the natural history of the hansons, than to that of snakes. one person, however, better served by his instinct, had known the rattle from the first; and that was chuchu, the dog. no rational creature has ever led an existence more poisoned by terror than that dog's at silverado. every whiz of the rattle made him bound. his eyes rolled; he trembled; he would be often wet with sweat. one of our great mysteries was his terror of the mountain. a little away above our nook, the azaleas and almost all the vegetation ceased. dwarf pines not big enough to be christmas trees, grew thinly among loose stone and gravel scaurs. here and there a big boulder sat quiescent on a knoll, having paused there till the next rain in his long slide down the mountain. there was here no ambuscade for the snakes, you could see clearly where you trod; and yet the higher i went, the more abject and appealing became chuchu's terror. he was an excellent master of that composite language in which dogs communicate with men, and he would assure me, on his honour, that there was some peril on the mountain; appeal to me, by all that i held holy, to turn back; and at length, finding all was in vain, and that i still persisted, ignorantly foolhardy, he would suddenly whip round and make a bee-line down the slope for silverado, the gravel showering after him. what was he afraid of? there were admittedly brown bears and california lions on the mountain; and a grizzly visited rufe's poultry yard not long before, to the unspeakable alarm of caliban, who dashed out to chastise the intruder, and found himself, by moonlight, face to face with such a tartar. something at least there must have been: some hairy, dangerous brute lodged permanently among the rocks a little to the north-west of silverado, spending his summer thereabout, with wife and family. and there was, or there had been, another animal. once, under the broad daylight, on that open stony hillside, where the baby pines were growing, scarcely tall enough to be a badge for a macgregor's bonnet, i came suddenly upon his innocent body, lying mummified by the dry air and sun: a pigmy kangaroo. i am ingloriously ignorant of these subjects; had never heard of such a beast; thought myself face to face with some incomparable sport of nature; and began to cherish hopes of immortality in science. rarely have i been conscious of a stranger thrill than when i raised that singular creature from the stones, dry as a board, his innocent heart long quiet, and all warm with sunshine. his long hind legs were stiff, his tiny forepaws clutched upon his breast, as if to leap; his poor life cut short upon that mountain by some unknown accident. but the kangaroo rat, it proved, was no such unknown animal; and my discovery was nothing. crickets were not wanting. i thought i could make out exactly four of them, each with a corner of his own, who used to make night musical at silverado. in the matter of voice, they far excelled the birds, and their ringing whistle sounded from rock to rock, calling and replying the same thing, as in a meaningless opera. thus, children in full health and spirits shout together, to the dismay of neighbours; and their idle, happy, deafening vociferations rise and fall, like the song of the crickets. i used to sit at night on the platform, and wonder why these creatures were so happy; and what was wrong with man that he also did not wind up his days with an hour or two of shouting; but i suspect that all long-lived animals are solemn. the dogs alone are hardly used by nature; and it seems a manifest injustice for poor chuchu to die in his teens, after a life so shadowed and troubled, continually shaken with alarm, and the tear of elegant sentiment permanently in his eye. there was another neighbour of ours at silverado, small but very active, a destructive fellow. this was a black, ugly fly a bore, the hansons called him who lived by hundreds in the boarding of our house. he entered by a round hole, more neatly pierced than a man could do it with a gimlet, and he seems to have spent his life in cutting out the interior of the plank, but whether as a dwelling or a store-house, i could never find. when i used to lie in bed in the morning for a rest we had no easy-chairs in silverado i would hear, hour after hour, the sharp cutting sound of his labours, and from time to time a dainty shower of sawdust would fall upon the blankets. there lives no more industrious creature than a bore. and now that i have named to the reader all our animals and insects without exception only i find i have forgotten the flies he will be able to appreciate the singular privacy and silence of our days. it was not only man who was excluded: animals, the song of birds, the lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, clouds even, and the variations of the weather, were here also wanting; and as, day after day, the sky was one dome of blue, and the pines below us stood motionless in the still air, so the hours themselves were marked out from each other only by the series of our own affairs, and the sun's great period as he ranged westward through the heavens. the two birds cackled a while in the early morning; all day the water tinkled in the shaft, the bores ground sawdust in the planking of our crazy palace infinitesimal sounds; and it was only with the return of night that any change would fall on our surroundings, or the four crickets begin to flute together in the dark. indeed, it would be hard to exaggerate the pleasure that we took in the approach of evening. our day was not very long, but it was very tiring. to trip along unsteady planks or wade among shifting stones, to go to and fro for water, to clamber down the glen to the toll house after meat and letters, to cook, to make fires and beds, were all exhausting to the body. life out of doors, besides, under the fierce eye of day, draws largely on the animal spirits. there are certain hours in the afternoon when a man, unless he is in strong health or enjoys a vacant mind, would rather creep into a cool corner of a house and sit upon the chairs of civilization. about that time, the sharp stones, the planks, the upturned boxes of silverado, began to grow irksome to my body; i set out on that hopeless, never-ending quest for a more comfortable posture; i would be fevered and weary of the staring sun; and just then he would begin courteously to withdraw his countenance, the shadows lengthened, the aromatic airs awoke, and an indescribable but happy change announced the coming of the night. the hours of evening, when we were once curtained in the friendly dark, sped lightly. even as with the crickets, night brought to us a certain spirit of rejoicing. it was good to taste the air; good to mark the dawning of the stars, as they increased their glittering company; good, too, to gather stones, and send them crashing down the chute, a wave of light. it seemed, in some way, the reward and the fulfilment of the day. so it is when men dwell in the open air; it is one of the simple pleasures that we lose by living cribbed and covered in a house, that, though the coming of the day is still the most inspiriting, yet day's departure, also, and the return of night refresh, renew, and quiet us; and in the pastures of the dusk we stand, like cattle, exulting in the absence of the load. our nights wore never cold, and they were always still, but for one remarkable exception. regularly, about nine o'clock, a warm wind sprang up, and blew for ten minutes, or maybe a quarter of an hour, right down the canyon, fanning it well out, airing it as a mother airs the night nursery before the children sleep. as far as i could judge, in the clear darkness of the night, this wind was purely local: perhaps dependant on the configuration of the glen. at least, it was very welcome to the hot and weary squatters; and if we were not abed already, the springing up of this lilliputian valley-wind would often be our signal to retire. i was the last to go to bed, as i was still the first to rise. many a night i have strolled about the platform, taking a bath of darkness before i slept. the rest would be in bed, and even from the forge i could hear them talking together from bunk to bunk. a single candle in the neck of a pint bottle was their only illumination; and yet the old cracked house seemed literally bursting with the light. it shone keen as a knife through all the vertical chinks; it struck upward through the broken shingles; and through the eastern door and window, it fell in a great splash upon the thicket and the overhanging rock. you would have said a conflagration, or at the least a roaring forge; and behold, it was but a candle. or perhaps it was yet more strange to see the procession moving bedwards round the corner of the house, and up the plank that brought us to the bedroom door; under the immense spread of the starry heavens, down in a crevice of the giant mountain these few human shapes, with their unshielded taper, made so disproportionate a figure in the eye and mind. but the more he is alone with nature, the greater man and his doings bulk in the consideration of his fellow-men. miles and miles away upon the opposite hilltops, if there were any hunter belated or any traveller who had lost his way, he must have stood, and watched and wondered, from the time the candle issued from the door of the assayer's office till it had mounted the plank and disappeared again into the miners' dormitory. end of the project gutenberg etext the silverado squatters internet wiretap edition of political economy by mark twain from "sketches new and old", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain (jun 1993, #17). (written about 1870.) political economy political economy is the basis of all good government. the wisest men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the -[here i was interrupted and informed that a stranger wished to see me down at the door. i went and confronted him, and asked to know his business, struggling all the time to keep a tight rein on my seething political economy ideas, and not let them break away from me or get tangled in their harness. and privately i wished the stranger was in the bottom of the canal with a cargo of wheat on top of him. i was all in a fever, but he was cool. he said he was sorry to disturb me, but as he was passing he noticed that i needed some lightningrods. i said, "yes, yes -go on -what about it?" he said there was nothing about it, in particular -nothing except that he would like to put them up for me. i am new to housekeeping; have been used to hotels and boarding-houses all my life. like anybody else of similar experience, i try to appear (to strangers) to be an old housekeeper; consequently i said in an off-hand way that i had been intending for some time to have six or eight lightning-rods put up, but - the stranger started, and looked inquiringly at me, but i was serene. i thought that if i chanced to make any mistakes, he would not catch me by my countenance. he said he would rather have my custom than any man's in town. i said, "all right," and started off to wrestle with my great subject again, when he called me back and said it would be necessary to know exactly how many "points" i wanted put up, what parts of the house i wanted them on, and what quality of rod i preferred. it was close quarters for a man not used to the exigencies of housekeeping; but i went through creditably, and he probably never suspected that i was a novice. i told him to put up eight "points," and put them all on the roof, and use the best quality of rod. he said he could furnish the "plain" article at 20 cents a foot; "coppered," 25 cents; "zinc-plated spiral-twist," at 30 cents, that would stop a streak of lightning any time, no matter where it was bound, and "render its errand harmless and its further progress apocryphal." i said apocryphal was no slouch of a word, emanating from the source it did, but, philology aside, i liked the spiral-twist and would take that brand. then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer; but to do it right, and make the best job in town of it, and attract the admiration of the just and the unjust alike, and compel all parties to say they never saw a more symmetrical and hypothetical display of lightning-rods since they were born, he supposed he really couldn't get along without four hundred, though he was not vindictive, and trusted he was willing to try. i said, go ahead and use four hundred, and make any kind of a job he pleased out of it, but let me get back to my work. so i got rid of him at last; and now, after half an hour spent in getting my train of political economy thoughts coupled together again, i am ready to go on once more.] richest treasures of their genius, their experience of life, and their learning. the great lights of commercial jurisprudence, international confraternity, and biological deviation, of all ages, all civilizations, and all nationalities, from zoroaster down to horace greeley, have -[here i was interrupted again, and required to go down and confer further with that lightning-rod man. i hurried off, boiling and surging with prodigious thoughts wombed in words of such majesty that each one of them was in itself a straggling procession of syllables that might be fifteen minutes passing a given point, and once more i confronted him -he so calm and sweet, i so hot and frenzied. he was standing in the contemplative attitude of the colossus of rhodes, with one foot on my infant tuberose, and the other among my pansies, his hands on his hips, his hat-brim tilted forward, one eye shut and the other gazing critically and admiringly in the direction of my principal chimney. he said now there was a state of things to make a man glad to be alive; and added, "i leave it to you if you ever saw anything more deliriously picturesque than eight lightning-rods on one chimney?" i said i had no present recollection of anything that transcended it. he said that in his opinion nothing on earth but niagara falls was superior to it in the way of natural scenery. all that was needed now, he verily believed, to make my house a perfect balm to the eye, was to kind of touch up the other chimneys a little, and thus "add to the generous coup d'oeil a soothing uniformity of achievement which would allay the excitement naturally consequent upon the first coup d'etat." i asked him if he learned to talk out of a book, and if i could borrow it anywhere? he smiled pleasantly, and said that his manner of speaking was not taught in books, and that nothing but familiarity with lightning could enable a man to handle his conversational style with impunity. he then figured up an estimate, and said that about eight more rods scattered about my roof would about fix me right, and he guessed five hundred feet of stuff would do it; and added that the first eight had got a little the start of him, so to speak, and used up a mere trifle of material more than he had calculated on -a hundred feet or along there. i said i was in a dreadful hurry, and i wished we could get this business permanently mapped out, so that i could go on with my work. he said, "i could have put up those eight rods, and marched off about my business -some men would have done it. but no; i said to myself, this man is a stranger to me, and i will die before i'll wrong him; there ain't lightning-rods enough on that house, and for one i'll never stir out of my tracks till i've done as i would be done by, and told him so. stranger, my duty is accomplished; if the recalcitrant and dephlogistic messenger of heaven strikes your --" "there, now, there," i said, "put on the other eight -add five hundred feet of spiral-twist -do anything and everything you want to do; but calm your sufferings, and try to keep your feelings where you can reach them with the dictionary. meanwhile, if we understand each other now, i will go to work again." i think i have been sitting here a full hour this time, trying to get back to where i was when my train of thought was broken up by the last interruption; but i believe i have accomplished it at last, and may venture to proceed again.] wrestled with this great subject, and the greatest among them have found it a worthy adversary, and one that always comes up fresh and smiling after every throw. the great confucius said that he would rather be a profound political economist than chief of police. cicero frequently said that political economy was the grandest consummation that the human mind was capable of consuming; and even our own greeley has said vaguely but forcibly that "political -[here the lightning-rod man sent up another call for me. i went down in a state of mind bordering on impatience. he said he would rather have died than interrupt me, but when he was employed to do a job, and that job was expected to be done in a clean, workmanlike manner, and when it was finished and fatigue urged him to seek the rest and recreation he stood so much in need of, and he was about to do it, but looked up and saw at a glance that all the calculations had been a little out, and if a thunder storm were to come up, and that house, which he felt a personal interest in, stood there with nothing on earth to protect it but sixteen lightning-rods -"let us have peace!" i shrieked. "put up a hundred and fifty! put some on the kitchen! put a dozen on the barn! put a couple on the cow! -put one on the cook! -scatter them all over the persecuted place till it looks like a zinc-plated, spiral-twisted, silver-mounted cane-brake! move! use up all the material you can get your hands on, and when you run out of lightning-rods put up ramrods, cam-rods, stair-rods, piston-rods -anything that will pander to your dismal appetite for artificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain and healing to my lacerated soul!" wholly unmoved -further than to smile sweetly -this iron being simply turned back his wristbands daintily, and said he would now proceed to hump himself. well, all that was nearly three hours ago. it is questionable whether i am calm enough yet to write on the noble theme of political economy, but i cannot resist the desire to try, for it is the one subject that is nearest to my heart and dearest to my brain of all this world's philosophy.] "-economy is heaven's best boon to man." when the loose but gifted byron lay in his venetian exile he observed that, if it could be granted him to go back and live his misspent life over again, he would give his lucid and unintoxicated intervals to the composition, not of frivolous rhymes, but of essays upon political economy. washington loved this exquisite science; such names as baker, beckwith, judson, smith, are imperishably linked with it; and even imperial homer, in the ninth book of the iliad, has said: - fiat justitia, ruat coelum, post mortem unum, ante bellum, hic jacet hoc, ex-parte res, politicum e-conomico est. the grandeur of these conceptions of the old poet, together with the felicity of the wording which clothes them, and the sublimity of the imagery whereby they are illustrated, have singled out that stanza, and made it more celebrated than any that ever -["now, not a word out of you -not a single word. just state your bill and relapse into impenetrable silence for ever and ever on these premises. nine hundred dollars? is that all? this check for the amount will be honored at any respectable bank in america. what is that multitude of people gathered in the street for? how? -'looking at the lightning-rods!' bless my life, did they never see any lightning-rods before? never saw 'such a stack of them on one establishment,' did i understand you to say? i will step down and critically observe this popular ebullition of ignorance."] three days later. -we are all about worn out. for four-and-twenty hours our bristling premises were the talk and wonder of the town. the theaters languished, for their happiest scenic inventions were tame and commonplace compared with my lightning-rods. our street was blocked night and day with spectators, and among them were many who came from the country to see. it was a blessed relief on the second day when a thunder storm came up and the lightning began to "go for" my house, as the historian josephus quaintly phrases it. it cleared the galleries, so to speak. in five minutes there was not a spectator within half a mile of my place; but all the high houses about that distance away were full, windows, roof, and all. and well they might be, for all the falling stars and fourth of july fireworks of a generation, put together and rained down simultaneously out of heaven in one brilliant shower upon one helpless roof, would not have any advantage of the pyrotechnic display that was making my house so magnificently conspicuous in the general gloom of the storm. by actual count, the lightning struck at my establishment seven hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes, but tripped on one of those faithful rods every time, and slid down the spiral-twist and shot into the earth before it probably had time to be surprised at the way the thing was done. and through all that bombardment only one patch of slates was ripped up, and that was because, for a single instant, the rods in the vicinity were transporting all the lightning they could possibly accommodate. well, nothing was ever seen like it since the world began. for one whole day and night not a member of my family stuck his head out of the window but he got the hair snatched off it as smooth as a billiard-ball; and, if the reader will believe me, not one of us ever dreamt of stirring abroad. but at last the awful siege came to an end -because there was absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds above us within grappling distance of my insatiable rods. then i sallied forth, and gathered daring workmen together, and not a bite or a nap did we take till the premises were utterly stripped of all their terrific armament except just three rods on the house, one on the kitchen, and one on the barn -and, behold, these remain there even unto this day. and then, and not till then, the people ventured to use our street again. i will remark here, in passing, that during that fearful time i did not continue my essay upon political economy. i am not even yet settled enough in nerve and brain to resume it. to whom it may concern. -parties having need of three thousand two hundred and eleven feet of best quality zinc-plated spiral-twist lightning-rod stuff, and sixteen hundred and thirty-one silvertipped points, all in tolerable repair (and, although much worn by use, still equal to any ordinary emergency), can hear of a bargain by addressing the publisher. end. . the time machine h. g. wells chapter i the time traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. his grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. the fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought runs gracefully free of the trammels of precision. and he put it to us in this way--marking the points with a lean forefinger--as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it:) and his fecundity. `you must follow me carefully. i shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. the geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.' `is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?' said filby, an argumentative person with red hair. 'i do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it. you will soon admit as much as i need from you. you know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real existence. they taught you that? neither has a mathematical plane. these things are mere abstractions.' `that is all right,' said the psychologist. `nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real existence.' `there i object,' said filby. `of course a solid body may exist. all real things--' `so most people think. but wait a moment. can an instantaneous cube exist?' `don't follow you,' said filby. `can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?' filby became pensive. `clearly,' the time traveller proceeded, `any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have length, breadth, thickness, and--duration. but through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which i will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. there are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of space, and a fourth, time. there is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.' `that,' said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his cigar over the lamp; `that ... very clear indeed.' `now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,' continued the time traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness. `really this is what is meant by the fourth dimension, though some people who talk about the fourth dimension do not know they mean it. it is only another way of looking at time. there is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it. but some foolish people have got hold of the wrong side of that idea. you have all heard what they have to say about this fourth dimension?' `i have not,' said the provincial mayor. `it is simply this. that space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call length, breadth, and thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others. but some philosophical people have been asking why three dimensions particularly--why not another direction at right angles to the other three?--and have even tried to construct a four-dimension geometry. professor simon newcomb was expounding this to the new york mathematical society only a month or so ago. you know how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they could represent one of four--if they could master the perspective of the thing. see?' `i think so,' murmured the provincial mayor; and, knitting his brows, he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one who repeats mystic words. `yes, i think i see it now,' he said after some time, brightening in a quite transitory manner. `well, i do not mind telling you i have been at work upon this geometry of four dimensions for some time. some of my results are curious. for instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight years old, another at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at twenty-three, and so on. all these are evidently sections, as it were, three-dimensional representations of his four-dimensioned being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing.' `scientific people,' proceeded the time traveller, after the pause required for the proper assimilation of this, `know very well that time is only a kind of space. here is a popular scientific diagram, a weather record. this line i trace with my finger shows the movement of the barometer. yesterday it was so high, yesterday night it fell, then this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to here. surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the dimensions of space generally recognized? but certainly it traced such a line, and that line, therefore, we must conclude was along the time-dimension.' `but,' said the medical man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, `if time is really only a fourth dimension of space, why is it, and why has it always been, regarded as something different? and why cannot we move in time as we move about in the other dimensions of space?' the time traveller smiled. `are you sure we can move freely in space? right and left we can go, backward and forward freely enough, and men always have done so. i admit we move freely in two dimensions. but how about up and down? gravitation limits us there.' `not exactly,' said the medical man. `there are balloons.' `but before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical movement.' `still they could move a little up and down,' said the medical man. `easier, far easier down than up.' `and you cannot move at all in time, you cannot get away from the present moment.' `my dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. that is just where the whole world has gone wrong. we are always getting away from the present movement. our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the time-dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave. just as we should travel down if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth's surface.' `but the great difficulty is this,' interrupted the psychologist. `you can move about in all directions of space, but you cannot move about in time.' `that is the germ of my great discovery. but you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in time. for instance, if i am recalling an incident very vividly i go back to the instant of its occurrence: i become absent-minded, as you say. i jump back for a moment. of course we have no means of staying back for any length of time, any more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. but a civilized man is better off than the savage in this respect. he can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the time-dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?' `oh, this,' began filby, `is all--' `why not?' said the time traveller. `it's against reason,' said filby. `what reason?' said the time traveller. `you can show black is white by argument,' said filby, `but you will never convince me.' `possibly not,' said the time traveller. `but now you begin to see the object of my investigations into the geometry of four dimensions. long ago i had a vague inkling of a machine--' `to travel through time!' exclaimed the very young man. `that shall travel indifferently in any direction of space and time, as the driver determines.' filby contented himself with laughter. `but i have experimental verification,' said the time traveller. `it would be remarkably convenient for the historian,' the psychologist suggested. `one might travel back and verify the accepted account of the battle of hastings, for instance!' `don't you think you would attract attention?' said the medical man. `our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.' `one might get one's greek from the very lips of homer and plato,' the very young man thought. `in which case they would certainly plough you for the little-go. the german scholars have improved greek so much.' `then there is the future,' said the very young man. `just think! one might invest all one's money, leave it to accumulate at interest, and hurry on ahead!' `to discover a society,' said i, `erected on a strictly communistic basis.' `of all the wild extravagant theories!' began the psychologist. `yes, so it seemed to me, and so i never talked of it until--' `experimental verification!' cried i. `you are going to verify that?' `the experiment!' cried filby, who was getting brain-weary. `let's see your experiment anyhow,' said the psychologist, `though it's all humbug, you know.' the time traveller smiled round at us. then, still smiling faintly, and with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, he walked slowly out of the room, and we heard his slippers shuffling down the long passage to his laboratory. the psychologist looked at us. `i wonder what he's got?' `some sleight-of-hand trick or other,' said the medical man, and filby tried to tell us about a conjurer he had seen at burslem; but before he had finished his preface the time traveller came back, and filby's anecdote collapsed. the thing the time traveller held in his hand was a glittering metallic framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very delicately made. there was ivory in it, and some transparent crystalline substance. and now i must be explicit, for this that follows--unless his explanation is to be accepted--is an absolutely unaccountable thing. he took one of the small octagonal tables that were scattered about the room, and set it in front of the fire, with two legs on the hearthrug. on this table he placed the mechanism. then he drew up a chair, and sat down. the only other object on the table was a small shaded lamp, the bright light of which fell upon the model. there were also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in brass candlesticks upon the mantel and several in sconces, so that the room was brilliantly illuminated. i sat in a low arm-chair nearest the fire, and i drew this forward so as to be almost between the time traveller and the fire-place. filby sat behind him, looking over his shoulder. the medical man and the provincial mayor watched him in profile from the right, the psychologist from the left. the very young man stood behind the psychologist. we were all on the alert. it appears incredible to me that any kind of trick, however subtly conceived and however adroitly done, could have been played upon us under these conditions. the time traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism. `well?' said the psychologist. `this little affair,' said the time traveller, resting his elbows upon the table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus, `is only a model. it is my plan for a machine to travel through time. you will notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there is an odd twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in some way unreal.' he pointed to the part with his finger. `also, here is one little white lever, and here is another.' the medical man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing. `it's beautifully made,' he said. `it took two years to make,' retorted the time traveller. then, when we had all imitated the action of the medical man, he said: `now i want you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over, sends the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses the motion. this saddle represents the seat of a time traveller. presently i am going to press the lever, and off the machine will go. it will vanish, pass into future time, and disappear. have a good look at the thing. look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no trickery. i don't want to waste this model, and then be told i'm a quack.' there was a minute's pause perhaps. the psychologist seemed about to speak to me, but changed his mind. then the time traveller put forth his finger towards the lever. `no,' he said suddenly. `lend me your hand.' and turning to the psychologist, he took that individual's hand in his own and told him to put out his forefinger. so that it was the psychologist himself who sent forth the model time machine on its interminable voyage. we all saw the lever turn. i am absolutely certain there was no trickery. there was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame jumped. one of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone--vanished! save for the lamp the table was bare. everyone was silent for a minute. then filby said he was damned. the psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked under the table. at that the time traveller laughed cheerfully. `well?' he said, with a reminiscence of the psychologist. then, getting up, he went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his back to us began to fill his pipe. we stared at each other. `look here,' said the medical man, `are you in earnest about this? do you seriously believe that that machine has travelled into time?' `certainly,' said the time traveller, stooping to light a spill at the fire. then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the psychologist's face. (the psychologist, to show that he was not unhinged, helped himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.) `what is more, i have a big machine nearly finished in there'--he indicated the laboratory--`and when that is put together i mean to have a journey on my own account.' `you mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?' said filby. `into the future or the past--i don't, for certain, know which.' after an interval the psychologist had an inspiration. `it must have gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,' he said. `why?' said the time traveller. `because i presume that it has not moved in space, and if it travelled into the future it would still be here all this time, since it must have travelled through this time.' `but,' i said, `if it travelled into the past it would have been visible when we came first into this room; and last thursday when we were here; and the thursday before that; and so forth!' `serious objections,' remarked the provincial mayor, with an air of impartiality, turning towards the time traveller. `not a bit,' said the time traveller, and, to the psychologist: `you think. you can explain that. it's presentation below the threshold, you know, diluted presentation.' `of course,' said the psychologist, and reassured us. `that's a simple point of psychology. i should have thought of it. it's plain enough, and helps the paradox delightfully. we cannot see it, nor can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. if it is traveling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than we are, if it gets through a minute while we get through a second, the impression it creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it would make if it were not travelling in time. that's plain enough.' he passed his hand through the space in which the machine had been. `you see?' he said, laughing. we sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. then the time traveller asked us what we thought of it all. `it sounds plausible enough to-night,' said the medical man; `but wait until to-morrow. wait for the common sense of the morning.' `would you like to see the time machine itself?' asked the time traveller. and therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. i remember vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette, the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our eyes. parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock crystal. the thing was generally complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of drawings, and i took one up for a better look at it. quartz it seemed to be. `look here,' said the medical man, `are you perfectly serious? or is this a trick--like that ghost you showed us last christmas?' `upon that machine,' said the time traveller, holding the lamp aloft, `i intend to explore time. is that plain? i was never more serious in my life.' none of us quite knew how to take it. i caught filby's eye over the shoulder of the medical man, and he winked at me solemnly. the time machine chapter ii i think that at that time none of us quite believed in the time machine. the fact is, the time traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness. had filby shown the model and explained the matter in the time traveller's words, we should have shown him far less scepticism. for we should have perceived his motives; a pork butcher could understand filby. but the time traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him. things that would have made the frame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands. it is a mistake to do things too easily. the serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery with egg-shell china. so i don't think any of us said very much about time travelling in the interval between that thursday and the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it suggested. for my own part, i was particularly preoccupied with the trick of the model. that i remember discussing with the medical man, whom i met on friday at the linnaean. he said he had seen a similar thing at tubingen, and laid considerable stress on the blowing out of the candle. but how the trick was done he could not explain. the next thursday i went again to richmond--i suppose i was one of the time traveller's most constant guests--and, arriving late, found four or five men already assembled in his drawing room. the medical man was standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and his watch in the other. i looked round for the time traveller, and--`it's half-past seven now,' said the medical man. `i suppose we'd better have dinner?' `where's--?' said i, naming our host. `you've just come? it's rather odd. he's unavoidably detained. he asks me in this note to lead off with dinner at seven if he's not back. says he'll explain when he comes.' `it seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,' said the editor of a well-known daily paper; and thereupon the doctor rang the bell. the psychologist was the only person besides the doctor and myself who had attended the previous dinner. the other men were blank, the editor aforementioned, a certain journalist, and another--a quiet, shy man with a beard--whom i didn't know, and who, as far as my observation went, never opened his mouth all the evening. there was some speculation at the dinner-table about the time traveller's absence, and i suggested time travelling, in a half-jocular spirit. the editor wanted that explained to him, and the psychologist volunteered a wooden account of the `ingenious paradox and trick' we had witnessed that day week. he was in the midst of his exposition when the door from the corridor opened slowly and without noise. i was facing the door, and saw it first. `hallo!' i said. `at last!' and the door opened wider, and the time traveller stood before us. i gave a cry of surprise. `good heavens! man, what's the matter?' cried the medical man, who saw him next. and the whole tableful turned towards the door. he was in an amazing plight. his coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared with green down the sleeves; his hair disordered, and as it seemed to me greyer--either with dust and dirt or because its colour had actually faded. his face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut on it--a cut half healed; his expression was haggard and drawn, as by intense suffering. for a moment he hesitated in the doorway, as if he had been dazzled by the light. then he came into the room. he walked with just such a limp as i have seen in footsore tramps. we stared at him in silence, expecting him to speak. he said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a motion towards the wine. the editor filled a glass of champagne, and pushed it towards him. he drained it, and it seemed to do him good: for he looked round the table, and the ghost of his old smile flickered across his face. `what on earth have you been up to, man?' said the doctor. the time traveller did not seem to hear. `don't let me disturb you,' he said, with a certain faltering articulation. `i'm all right.' he stopped, held out his glass for more, and took it off at a draught. `that's good,' he said. his eyes grew brighter, and a faint colour came into his cheeks. his glance flickered over our faces with a certain dull approval, and then went round the warm and comfortable room. then he spoke again, still as it were feeling his way among his words. `i'm going to wash and dress, and then i'll come down and explain things. ... save me some of that mutton. i'm starving for a bit of meat.' he looked across at the editor, who was a rare visitor, and hoped he was all right. the editor began a question. `tell you presently,' said the time traveller. `i'm--funny. be all right in a minute.' he put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. again i remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall, and standing up in my place, i saw his feet as he went out. he had nothing on them but a pair of tattered, blood-stained socks. then the door closed upon him. i had half a mind to follow, till i remembered how he detested any fuss about himself. for a minute, perhaps, my mind was wool-gathering. then, `remarkable behaviour of an eminent scientist,' i heard the editor say, thinking (after his wont) in headlines. and this brought my attention back to the bright dinner-table. `what's the game?' said the journalist. `has he been doing the amateur cadger? i don't follow.' i met the eye of the psychologist, and read my own interpretation in his face. i thought of the time traveller limping painfully upstairs. i don't think any one else had noticed his lameness. the first to recover completely from this surprise was the medical man, who rang the bell--the time traveller hated to have servants waiting at dinner--for a hot plate. at that the editor turned to his knife and fork with a grunt, and the silent man followed suit. the dinner was resumed. conversation was exclamatory for a little while, with gaps of wonderment; and then the editor got fervent in his curiosity. `does our friend eke out his modest income with a crossing? or has he his nebuchadnezzar phases?' he inquired. `i feel assured it's this business of the time machine,' i said, and took up the psychologist's account of our previous meeting. the new guests were frankly incredulous. the editor raised objections. `what was this time travelling? a man couldn't cover himself with dust by rolling in a paradox, could he?' and then, as the idea came home to him, he resorted to caricature. hadn't they any clothes-brushes in the future? the journalist, too, would not believe at any price, and joined the editor in the easy work of heaping ridicule on the whole thing. they were both the new kind of journalist--very joyous, irreverent young men. `our special correspondent in the day after to-morrow reports,' the journalist was saying--or rather shouting--when the time traveller came back. he was dressed in ordinary evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard look remained of the change that had startled me. `i say,' said the editor hilariously, `these chaps here say you have been travelling into the middle of next week!! tell us all about little rosebery, will you? what will you take for the lot?' the time traveller came to the place reserved for him without a word. he smiled quietly, in his old way. `where's my mutton?' he said. `what a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!' `story!' cried the editor. `story be damned!' said the time traveller. `i want something to eat. i won't say a word until i get some peptone into my arteries. thanks. and the salt.' `one word,' said i. `have you been time travelling?' `yes,' said the time traveller, with his mouth full, nodding his head. `i'd give a shilling a line for a verbatim note,' said the editor. the time traveller pushed his glass towards the silent man and rang it with his fingernail; at which the silent man, who had been staring at his face, started convulsively, and poured him wine. the rest of the dinner was uncomfortable. for my own part, sudden questions kept on rising to my lips, and i dare say it was the same with the others. the journalist tried to relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of hettie potter. the time traveller devoted his attention to his dinner, and displayed the appetite of a tramp. the medical man smoked a cigarette, and watched the time traveller through his eyelashes. the silent man seemed even more clumsy than usual, and drank champagne with regularity and determination out of sheer nervousness. at last the time traveller pushed his plate away, and looked round us. `i suppose i must apologize,' he said. `i was simply starving. i've had a most amazing time.' he reached out his hand for a cigar, and cut the end. `but come into the smoking-room. it's too long a story to tell over greasy plates.' and ringing the bell in passing, he led the way into the adjoining room. `you have told blank, and dash, and chose about the machine?' he said to me, leaning back in his easy-chair and naming the three new guests. `but the thing's a mere paradox,' said the editor. `i can't argue tonight. i don't mind telling you the story, but i can't argue. i will,' he went on, `tell you the story of what has happened to me, if you like, but you must refrain from interruptions. i want to tell it. badly. most of it will sound like lying. so be it! it's true--every word of it, all the same. i was in my laboratory at four o'clock, and since then ... i've lived eight days ... such days as no human being ever lived before! i'm nearly worn out, but i shan't sleep till i've told this thing over to you. then i shall go to bed. but no interruptions! is it agreed?' `agreed,' said the editor, and the rest of us echoed `agreed.' and with that the time traveller began his story as i have set it forth. he sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man. afterwards he got more animated. in writing it down i feel with only too much keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink--and, above all, my own inadequacy--to express its quality. you read, i will suppose, attentively enough; but you cannot see the speaker's white, sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation of his voice. you cannot know how his expression followed the turns of his story! most of us hearers were in shadow, for the candles in the smoking-room had not been lighted, and only the face of the journalist and the legs of the silent man from the knees downward were illuminated. at first we glanced now and again at each other. after a time we ceased to do that, and looked only at the time traveller's face. the time machine chapter iii `i told some of you last thursday of the principles of the time machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the workshop. there it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of the ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of it's sound enough. i expected to finish it on friday, but on friday, when the putting together was nearly done, i found that one of the nickel bars was exactly one inch too short, and this i had to get remade; so that the thing was not complete until this morning. it was at ten o'clock to-day that the first of all time machines began its career. i gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. i suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at what will come next as i felt then. i took the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other, pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. i seemed to reel; i felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round, i saw the laboratory exactly as before. had anything happened? for a moment i suspected that my intellect had tricked me. then i noted the clock. a moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past three! `i drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both hands, and went off with a thud. the laboratory got hazy and went dark. mrs. watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing me, towards the garden door. i suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room like a rocket. i pressed the lever over to its extreme position. the night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came to-morrow. the laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. to-morrow night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and faster still. an eddying murmur filled my ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on my mind. `i am afraid i cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling. they are excessively unpleasant. there is a feeling exactly like that one has upon a switchback--of a helpless headlong motion! i felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent smash. as i put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a black wing. the dim suggestion of the laboratory seemed presently to fall away from me, and i saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. i supposed the laboratory had been destroyed and i had come into the open air. i had a dim impression of scaffolding, but i was already going too fast to be conscious of any moving things. the slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by too fast for me. the twinkling succession of darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye. then, in the intermittent darknesses, i saw the moon spinning swiftly through her quarters from new to full, and had a faint glimpse of the circling stars. presently, as i went on, still gaining velocity, the palpitation of night and day merged into one continuous greyness; the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous color like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating band; and i could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a brighter circle flickering in the blue. `the landscape was misty and vague. i was still on the hill-side upon which this house now stands, and the shoulder rose above me grey and dim. i saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour, now brown, now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away. i saw huge buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams. the whole surface of the earth seemed changed--melting and flowing under my eyes. the little bands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round faster and faster. presently i noted that the sun belt swayed up and down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or less, and that consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and minute by minute the white snow flashed across the world, and vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief green of spring. `the unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. they merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration. i remarked indeed a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which i was unable to account. but my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kind of madness growing upon me, i flung myself into futurity. at first i scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but these new sensations. but presently a fresh series of impressions grew up in my mind--a certain curiosity and therewith a certain dread--until at last they took complete possession of me. what strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilization, i thought, might not appear when i came to look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes! i saw great and splendid, architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. i saw a richer green flow up the hill-side, and remain there without any wintry intermission. even through the veil of my confusion the earth seemed very fair. and so my mind came round to the business of stopping. the peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which i, or the machine, occupied. so long as i travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered; i was, so to speak, attenuated--was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of intervening substances! but to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical reaction--possibly a far-reaching explosion- would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions--into the unknown. this possibility had occurred to me again and again while i was making the machine; but then i had cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk--one of the risks a man has got to take! now the risk was inevitable, i no longer saw it in the same cheerful light. the fact is that, insensibly, the absolute strangeness of everything, the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine, above all, the feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely upset my nerve. i told myself that i could never stop, and with a gust of petulance i resolved to stop forthwith. like an impatient fool, i lugged over the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over, and i was flung headlong through the air. `there was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. i may have been stunned for a moment. a pitiless hail was hissing round me, and i was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine. everything still seemed grey, but presently i remarked that the confusion in my ears was gone. i looked round me. i was on what seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and i noticed that their mauve and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating of the hailstones. the rebounding, dancing hail hung in a cloud over the machine, and drove along the ground like smoke. in a moment i was wet to the skin. "fine hospitality," said i, "to a man who has travelled innumerable years to see you." `presently i thought what a fool i was to get wet. i stood up and looked round me. a colossal figure, carved apparently in some white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy downpour. but all else of the world was invisible. `my sensations would be hard to describe. as the columns of hail grew thinner, i saw the white figure more distinctly. it was very large, for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. it was of white marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to hover. the pedestal, it appeared to me, was of bronze, and was thick with verdigris. it chanced that the face was towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile on the lips. it was greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. i stood looking at it for a little space--half a minute, perhaps, or half an hour. it seemed to advance and to recede as the hail drove before it denser or thinner. at last i tore my eyes from it for a moment, and saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that the sky was lightening with the promise of the sun. `i looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me. what might appear when that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? what might not have happened to men? what if cruelty had grown into a common passion? what if in this interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? i might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness--a foul creature to be incontinently slain. `already i saw other vast shapes--huge buildings with intricate parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping in upon me through the lessening storm. i was seized with a panic fear. i turned frantically to the time machine, and strove hard to readjust it. as i did so the shafts of the sun smote through the thunderstorm. the grey downpour was swept aside and vanished like the trailing garments of a ghost. above me, in the intense blue of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into nothingness. the great buildings about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out in white by the unmelted hailstones piled along their courses. i felt naked in a strange world. i felt as perhaps a bird may feel in the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. my fear grew to frenzy. i took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. it gave under my desperate onset and turned over. it struck my chin violently. one hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, i stood panting heavily in attitude to mount again. `but with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. i looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote future. in a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer house, i saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. they had seen me, and their faces were directed towards me. `then i heard voices approaching me. coming through the bushes by the white sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. one of these emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon which i stood with my machine. he was a slight creature--perhaps four feet high--clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt. sandals or buskins--i could not clearly distinguish which--were on his feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his head was bare. noticing that, i noticed for the first time how warm the air was. `he struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but indescribably frail. his flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful kind of consumptive--that hectic beauty of which we used to hear so much. at the sight of him i suddenly regained confidence. i took my hands from the machine. the time machine chapter iv `in another moment we were standing face to face, i and this fragile thing out of futurity. he came straight up to me and laughed into my eyes. the absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at once. then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue. `there were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. one of them addressed me. it came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was too harsh and deep for them. so i shook my head, and, pointing to my ears, shook it again. he came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched my hand. then i felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders. they wanted to make sure i was real. there was nothing in this at all alarming. indeed, there was something in these pretty little people that inspired confidence--a graceful gentleness, a certain childlike ease. and besides, they looked so frail that i could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen of them about like nine-pins. but i made a sudden motion to warn them when i saw their little pink hands feeling at the time machine. happily then, when it was not too late, i thought of a danger i had hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the machine i unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my pocket. then i turned again to see what i could do in the way of communication. `and then, looking more nearly into their features, i saw some further peculiarities in their dresden-china type of prettiness. their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly minute. the mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. the eyes were large and mild; and--this may seem egotism on my part--i fancied even that there was a certain lack of the interest i might have expected in them. `as they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round me smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, i began the conversation. i pointed to the time machine and to myself. then hesitating for a moment how to express time, i pointed to the sun. at once a quaintly pretty little figure in checkered purple and white followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of thunder. `for a moment i was staggered, though the import of his gesture was plain enough. the question had come into my mind abruptly: were these creatures fools? you may hardly understand how it took me. you see i had always anticipated that the people of the year eight hundred and two thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything. then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children--asked me, in fact, if i had come from the sun in a thunderstorm! it let loose the judgment i had suspended upon their clothes, their frail light limbs, and fragile features. a flow of disappointment rushed across my mind. for a moment i felt that i had built the time machine in vain. `i nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering of a thunderclap as startled them. they all withdrew a pace or so and bowed. then came one laughing towards me, carrying a chain of beautiful flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck. the idea was received with melodious applause; and presently they were all running to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until i was almost smothered with blossom. you who have never seen the like can scarcely imagine what delicate and wonderful flowers countless years of culture had created. then someone suggested that their plaything should be exhibited in the nearest building, and so i was led past the sphinx of white marble, which had seemed to watch me all the while with a smile at my astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone. as i went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible merriment, to my mind. `the building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal dimensions. i was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of little people, and with the big open portals that yawned before me shadowy and mysterious. my general impression of the world i saw over their heads was a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and flowers, a long-neglected and yet weedless garden. i saw a number of tall spikes of strange white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps across the spread of the waxen petals. they grew scattered, as if wild, among the variegated shrubs, but, as i say, i did not examine them closely at this time. the time machine was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons. `the arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally i did not observe the carving very narrowly, though i fancied i saw suggestions of old phoenician decorations as i passed through, and it struck me that they were very badly broken and weather-worn. several more brightly clad people met me in the doorway, and so we entered, i, dressed in dingy nineteenth-century garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers, and surrounded by an eddying mass of bright, soft-colored robes and shining white limbs, in a melodious whirl of laughter and laughing speech. `the big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with brown. the roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed with colored glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered light. the floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white metal, not plates nor slabs--blocks, and it was so much worn, as i judged by the going to and fro of past generations, as to be deeply channelled along the more frequented ways. transverse to the length were innumerable tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised perhaps a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits. some i recognized as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange, but for the most part they were strange. `between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions. upon these my conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do likewise. with a pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat the fruit with their hands, flinging peel and stalks, and so forth, into the round openings in the sides of the tables. i was not loath to follow their example, for i felt thirsty and hungry. as i did so i surveyed the hall at my leisure. `and perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look. the stained-glass windows, which displayed only a geometrical pattern, were broken in many places, and the curtains that hung across the lower end were thick with dust. and it caught my eye that the corner of the marble table near me was fractured. nevertheless, the general effect was extremely rich and picturesque. there were, perhaps, a couple of hundred people dining in the hall, and most of them, seated as near to me as they could come, were watching me with interest, their little eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. all were clad in the same soft, and yet strong, silky material. `fruit, by the by, was all their diet. these people of the remote future were strict vegetarians, and while i was with them, in spite of some carnal cravings, i had to be frugivorous also. indeed, i found afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the ichthyosaurus into extinction. but the fruits were very delightful; one, in particular, that seemed to be in season all the time i was there--a floury thing in a three-sided husk--was especially good, and i made it my staple. at first i was puzzled by all these strange fruits, and by the strange flowers i saw, but later i began to perceive their import. `however, i am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future now. so soon as my appetite was a little checked, i determined to make a resolute attempt to learn the speech of these new men of mine. clearly that was the next thing to do. the fruits seemed a convenient thing to begin upon, and holding one of these up i began a series of interrogative sounds and gestures. i had some considerable difficulty in conveying my meaning. at first my efforts met with a stare of surprise or inextinguishable laughter, but presently a fair-haired little creature seemed to grasp my intention and repeated a name. they had to chatter and explain the business at great length to each other, and my first attempts to make the exquisite little sounds of their language caused an immense amount of amusement. however, i felt like a schoolmaster amidst children, and persisted, and presently i had a score of noun substantives at least at my command; and then i got to demonstrative pronouns, and even the verb "to eat." but it was slow work, and the little people soon tired and wanted to get away from my interrogations, so i determined, rather of necessity, to let them give their lessons in little doses when they felt inclined. and very little doses i found they were before long, for i never met people more indolent or more easily fatigued. `a queer thing i soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was their lack of interest. they would come to me with eager cries of astonishment, like children, but like children they would soon stop examining me and wander away after some other toy. the dinner and my conversational beginnings ended, i noted for the first time that almost all these who had surrounded me at first were gone. it is odd, too, how speedily i came to disregard these little people. i went out through the portal into the sunlit world again so soon as my hunger was satisfied. i was continually meeting more of these men of the future, who would follow me a little distance, chatter and laugh about me, and, having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly way, leave me again to my own devices. `the calm of evening was upon the world as i emerged from the great hall, and the scene was lit by the warm glow of the setting sun. at first things were very confusing. everything was so entirely different from the world i had known--even the flowers. the big building i had left was situated on the slope of a broad river valley, but the thames had shifted perhaps a mile from its present position. i resolved to mount to the summit of a crest, perhaps a mile and a half away, from which i could get a wider view of this our planet in the year eight hundred and two thousand seven hundred and one a.d. for that, i should explain, was the date the little dials of my machine recorded. `as i walked i was watchful for every impression that could possibly help to explain the condition of ruinous splendour in which i found the world--for ruinous it was. a little way up the hill, for instance, was a great heap of granite, bound together by masses of aluminium, a vast labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumbled heaps, amidst which were thick heaps of very beautiful pagoda-like plants--nettles possibly--but wonderfully tinted with brown about the leaves, and incapable of stinging. it was evidently the derelict remains of some vast structure, to what end built i could not determine. it was here that i was destined, at a later date, to have a very strange experience--the first intimation of a still stranger discovery--but of that i will speak in its proper place. `looking round with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which i rested for a while, i realized that there were no small houses to be seen. apparently the single house, and possibly even the household, had vanished. here and there among the greenery were palace-like buildings, but the house and the cottage, which form such characteristic features of our own english landscape, had disappeared. `"communism," said i to myself. `and on the heels of that came another thought. i looked at the half-dozen little figures that were following me. then, in a flash, i perceived that all had the same form of costume, the same soft hairless visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb. it may seem strange, perhaps, that i had not noticed this before. but everything was so strange. now, i saw the fact plainly enough. in costume, and in all the differences of texture and bearing that now mark off the sexes from each other, these people of the future were alike. and the children seemed to my eyes to be but the miniatures of their parents. i judged, then, that the children of that time were extremely precocious, physically at least, and i found afterwards abundant verification of my opinion. `seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, i felt that this close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force; where population is balanced and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the state; where violence comes but rarely and off-spring are secure, there is less necessity--indeed there is no necessity--for an efficient family, and the specialization of the sexes with reference to their children's needs disappears. we see some beginnings of this even in our own time, and in this future age it was complete. this, i must remind you, was my speculation at the time. later, i was to appreciate how far it fell short of the reality. `while i was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by a pretty little structure, like a well under a cupola. i thought in a transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then resumed the thread of my speculations. there were no large buildings towards the top of the hill, and as my walking powers were evidently miraculous, i was presently left alone for the first time. with a strange sense of freedom and adventure i pushed on up to the crest. `there i found a seat of some yellow metal that i did not recognize, corroded in places with a kind of pinkish rust and half smothered in soft moss, the arm-rests cast and filed into the resemblance of griffins' heads. i sat down on it, and i surveyed the broad view of our old world under the sunset of that long day. it was as sweet and fair a view as i have ever seen. the sun had already gone below the horizon and the west was flaming gold, touched with some horizontal bars of purple and crimson. below was the valley of the thames, in which the river lay like a band of burnished steel. i have already spoken of the great palaces dotted about among the variegated greenery, some in ruins and some still occupied. here and there rose a white or silvery figure in the waste garden of the earth, here and there came the sharp vertical line of some cupola or obelisk. there were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rights, no evidences of agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden. `so watching, i began to put my interpretation upon the things i had seen, and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my interpretation was something in this way. (afterwards i found i had got only a half-truth--or only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.) `it seemed to me that i had happened upon humanity upon the wane. the ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind. for the first time i began to realize an odd consequence of the social effort in which we are at present engaged. and yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough. strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. the work of ameliorating the conditions of life--the true civilizing process that makes life more and more secure--had gone steadily on to a climax. one triumph of a united humanity over nature had followed another. things that are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and carried forward. and the harvest was what i saw! `after all, the sanitation and the agriculture of to-day are still in the rudimentary stage. the science of our time has attacked but a little department of the field of human disease, but, even so, it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently. our agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as they can. we improve our favorite plants and animals- and how few they are--gradually by selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle. we improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. some day all this will be better organized, and still better. that is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies. the whole world will be intelligent, educated, and co-operating; things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of nature. in the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable life to suit our human needs. `this adjustment, i say, must have been done, and done well; done indeed for all time, in the space of time across which my machine had leaped. the air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi; everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers; brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither. the ideal of preventive medicine was attained. diseases had been stamped out. i saw no evidence of any contagious diseases during all my stay. and i shall have to tell you later that even the processes of putrefaction and decay had been profoundly affected by these changes. `social triumphs, too, had been effected. i saw mankind housed in splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet i had found them engaged in no toil. there were no signs of struggle, neither social nor economical struggle. the shop, the advertisement, traffic, all that commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone. it was natural on that golden evening that i should jump at the idea of a social paradise. the difficulty of increasing population had been met, i guessed, and population had ceased to increase. `but with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to the change. what, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigour? hardship and freedom: conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and decision. and the institution of the family, and the emotions that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring, parental self-devotion, all found their justification and support in the imminent dangers of the young. now, where are these imminent dangers? there is a sentiment arising, and it will grow, against connubial jealousy, against fierce maternity, against passion of all sorts; unnecessary things now, and things that make us uncomfortable, savage survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant life. `i thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of intelligence, and those big abundant ruins, and it strengthened my belief in a perfect conquest of nature. for after the battle comes quiet. humanity had been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which it lived. and now came the reaction of the altered conditions. `under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness. even in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary to survival, are a constant source of failure. physical courage and the love of battle, for instance, are no great help--may even be hindrances--to a civilized man. and in a state of physical balance and security, power, intellectual as well as physical, would be out of place. for countless years i judged there had been no danger of war or solitary violence, no danger from wild beasts, no wasting disease to require strength of constitution, no need of toil. for such a life, what we should call the weak are as well equipped as the strong, are indeed no longer weak. better equipped indeed they are, for the strong would be fretted by an energy for which there was no outlet. no doubt the exquisite beauty of the buildings i saw was the outcome of the last surgings of the now purposeless energy of mankind before it settled down into perfect harmony with the conditions under which it lived--the flourish of that triumph which began the last great peace. this has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor and decay. `even this artistic impetus would at last die away--had almost died in the time i saw. to adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to sing in the sunlight: so much was left of the artistic spirit, and no more. even that would fade in the end into a contented inactivity. we are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity, and, it seemed to me, that here was that hateful grindstone broken at last! `as i stood there in the gathering dark i thought that in this simple explanation i had mastered the problem of the world--mastered the whole secret of these delicious people. possibly the checks they had devised for the increase of population had succeeded too well, and their numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary. that would account for the abandoned ruins. very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough--as most wrong theories are! the time machine chapter v `as i stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the full moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver light in the northeast. the bright little figures ceased to move about below, a noiseless owl flitted by, and i shivered with the chill of the night. i determined to descend and find where i could sleep. `i looked for the building i knew. then my eye travelled along to the figure of the white sphinx upon the pedestal of bronze, growing distinct as the light of the rising moon grew brighter. i could see the silver birch against it. there was the tangle of rhododendron bushes, black in the pale light, and there was the little lawn. i looked at the lawn again. a queer doubt chilled my complacency. "no," said i stoutly to myself, "that was not the lawn." `but it was the lawn. for the white leprous face of the sphinx was towards it. can you imagine what i felt as this conviction came home to me? but you cannot. the time machine was gone! `at once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of losing my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new world. the bare thought of it was an actual physical sensation. i could feel it grip me at the throat and stop my breathing. in another moment i was in a passion of fear and running with great leaping strides down the slope. once i fell headlong and cut my face; i lost no time in stanching the blood, but jumped up and ran on, with a warm trickle down my cheek and chin. all the time i ran i was saying to myself: "they have moved it a little, pushed it under the bushes out of the way." nevertheless, i ran with all my might. all the time, with the certainty that sometimes comes with excessive dread, i knew that such assurance was folly, knew instinctively that the machine was removed out of my reach. my breath came with pain. i suppose i covered the whole distance from the hill crest to the little lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes. and i am not a young man. i cursed aloud, as i ran, at my confident folly in leaving the machine, wasting good breath thereby. i cried aloud, and none answered. not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit world. `when i reached the lawn my worst fears were realized. not a trace of the thing was to be seen. i felt faint and cold when i faced the empty space among the black tangle of bushes. i ran round it furiously, as if the thing might be hidden in a corner, and then stopped abruptly, with my hands clutching my hair. above me towered the sphinx, upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in the light of the rising moon. it seemed to smile in mockery of my dismay. `i might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put the mechanism in some shelter for me, had i not felt assured of their physical and intellectual inadequacy. that is what dismayed me: the sense of some hitherto unsuspected power, through whose intervention my invention had vanished. yet, for one thing i felt assured: unless some other age had produced its exact duplicate, the machine could not have moved in time. the attachment of the levers--i will show you the method later- prevented any one from tampering with it in that way when they were removed. it had moved, and was hid, only in space. but then, where could it be? `i think i must have had a kind of frenzy. i remember running violently in and out among the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx, and startling some white animal that, in the dim light, i took for a small deer. i remember, too, late that night, beating the bushes with my clenched fist until my knuckles were gashed and bleeding from the broken twigs. then, sobbing and raving in my anguish of mind, i went down to the great building of stone. the big hall was dark, silent, and deserted. i slipped on the uneven floor, and fell over one of the malachite tables, almost breaking my shin. i lit a match and went on past the dusty curtains, of which i have told you. `there i found a second great hall covered with cushions, upon which, perhaps, a score or so of the little people were sleeping. i have no doubt they found my second appearance strange enough, coming suddenly out of the quiet darkness with inarticulate noises and the splutter and flare of a match. for they had forgotten about matches. "where is my time machine?" i began, bawling like an angry child, laying hands upon them and shaking them up together. it must have been very queer to them. some laughed, most of them looked sorely frightened. when i saw them standing round me, it came into my head that i was doing as foolish a thing as it was possible for me to do under the circumstances, in trying to revive the sensation of fear. for, reasoning from their daylight behaviour, i thought that fear must be forgotten. `abruptly, i dashed down the match, and, knocking one of the people over in my course, went blundering across the big dining-hall again, out under the moonlight. i heard cries of terror and their little feet running and stumbling this way and that. i do not remember all i did as the moon crept up the sky. i suppose it was the unexpected nature of my loss that maddened me. i felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind--a strange animal in an unknown world. i must have raved to and fro, screaming and crying upon god and fate. i have a memory of horrible fatigue, as the long night of despair wore away; of looking in this impossible place and that; of groping among moonlit ruins and touching strange creatures in the black shadows; at last, of lying on the ground near the sphinx and weeping with absolute wretchedness. i had nothing left but misery. then i slept, and when i woke again it was full day, and a couple of sparrows were hopping round me on the turf within reach of my arm. `i sat up in the freshness of the morning, trying to remember how i had got there, and why i had such a profound sense of desertion and despair. then things came clear in my mind. with the plain, reasonable daylight, i could look my circumstances fairly in the face. i saw the wild folly of my frenzy overnight, and i could reason with myself. "suppose the worst?" i said. "suppose the machine altogether lost--perhaps destroyed? it behoves me to be calm and patient, to learn the way of the people, to get a clear idea of the method of my loss, and the means of getting materials and tools; so that in the end, perhaps, i may make another." that would be my only hope, perhaps, but better than despair. and, after all, it was a beautiful and curious world. `but probably, the machine had only been taken away. still, i must be calm and patient, find its hiding-place, and recover it by force or cunning. and with that i scrambled to my feet and looked about me, wondering where i could bathe. i felt weary, stiff, and travel-soiled. the freshness of the morning made me desire an equal freshness. i had exhausted my emotion. indeed, as i went about my business, i found myself wondering at my intense excitement overnight. i made a careful examination of the ground about the little lawn. i wasted some time in futile questionings, conveyed, as well as i was able, to such of the little people as came by. they all failed to understand my gestures; some were simply stolid, some thought it was a jest and laughed at me. i had the hardest task in the world to keep my hands off their pretty laughing faces. it was a foolish impulse, but the devil begotten of fear and blind anger was ill curbed and still eager to take advantage of my perplexity. the turf gave better counsel. i found a groove ripped in it, about midway between the pedestal of the sphinx and the marks of my feet where, on arrival, i had struggled with the overturned machine. there were other signs of removal about, with queer narrow footprints like those i could imagine made by a sloth. this directed my closer attention to the pedestal. it was, as i think i have said, of bronze. it was not a mere block, but highly decorated with deep framed panels on either side. i went and rapped at these. the pedestal was hollow. examining the panels with care i found them discontinuous with the frames. there were no handles or keyholes, but possibly the panels, if they were doors, as i supposed, opened from within. one thing was clear enough to my mind. it took no very great mental effort to infer that my time machine was inside that pedestal. but how it got there was a different problem. `i saw the heads of two orange-clad people coming through the bushes and under some blossom-covered apple-trees towards me. i turned smiling to them and beckoned them to me. they came, and then, pointing to the bronze pedestal, i tried to intimate my wish to open it. but at my first gesture towards this they behaved very oddly. i don't know how to convey their expression to you. suppose you were to use a grossly improper gesture to a delicate-minded woman--it is how she would look. they went off as if they had received the last possible insult. i tried a sweet-looking little chap in white next, with exactly the same result. somehow, his manner made me feel ashamed of myself. but, as you know, i wanted the time machine, and i tried him once more. as he turned off, like the others, my temper got the better of me. in three strides i was after him, had him by the loose part of his robe round the neck, and began dragging him towards the sphinx. then i saw the horror and repugnance of his face, and all of a sudden i let him go. `but i was not beaten yet. i banged with my fist at the bronze panels, i thought i heard something stir inside--to be explicit, i thought i heard a sound like a chuckle--but i must have been mistaken. then i got a big pebble from the river, and came and hammered till i had flattened a coil in the decorations, and the verdigris came off in powdery flakes. the delicate little people must have heard me hammering in gusty outbreaks a mile away on either hand, but nothing came of it. i saw a crowd of them upon the slopes, looking furtively at me. at last, hot and tired, i sat down to watch the place. but i was too restless to watch long; i am too occidental for a long vigil. i could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours- that is another matter. `i got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the bushes towards the hill again. "patience," said i to myself. "if you want your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone. if they mean to take your machine away, it's little good your wrecking their bronze panels, and if they don't, you will get it back as soon as you can ask for it. to sit among all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is hopeless. that way lies monomania. face this world. learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. in the end you will find clues to it all." then suddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought of the years i had spent in study and toil to get into the future age, and now my passion of anxiety to get out of it. i had made myself the most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a man devised. although it was at my own expense, i could not help myself. i laughed aloud. `going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the little people avoided me. it may have been my fancy, or it may have had something to do with my hammering at the gates of bronze. yet i felt tolerably sure of the avoidance. i was careful, however, to show no concern and to abstain from any pursuit of them, and in the course of a day or two things got back to the old footing. i made what progress i could in the language, and in addition i pushed my explorations here and there. either i missed some subtle point, or their language was excessively simple--almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs. there seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of figurative language. their sentences were usually simple and of two words, and i failed to convey or understand any but the simplest propositions. i determined to put the thought of my time machine and the mystery of the bronze doors under the sphinx as much as possible in a corner of memory, until my growing knowledge would lead me back to them in a natural way. yet a certain feeling, you may understand, tethered me in a circle of a few miles round the point of my arrival. `so far as i could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant richness as the thames valley. from every hill i climbed i saw the same abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in material and style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same blossom-laden trees and tree-ferns. here and there water shone like silver, and beyond, the land rose into blue undulating hills, and so faded into the serenity of the sky. a peculiar feature, which presently attracted my attention, was the presence of certain circular wells, several, as it seemed to me, of a very great depth. one lay by the path up the hill, which i had followed during my first walk. like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously wrought, and protected by a little cupola from the rain. sitting by the side of these wells, and peering down into the shafted darkness, i could see no gleam of water, nor could i start any reflection with a lighted match. but in all of them i heard a certain sound: a thud--thud--thud, like the beating of some big engine; and i discovered, from the flaring of my matches, that a steady current of air set down the shafts. further, i threw a scrap of paper into the throat of one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at once sucked swiftly out of sight. `after a time, too, i came to connect these wells with tall towers standing here and there upon the slopes; for above them there was often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day above a sun-scorched beach. putting things together, i reached a strong suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose true import it was difficult to imagine. i was at first inclined to associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these people. it was an obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong. `and here i must admit that i learned very little of drains and bells and modes of conveyance, and the like conveniences, during my time in this real future. in some of these visions of utopias and coming times which i have read, there is a vast amount of detail about building, and social arrangements, and so forth. but while such details are easy enough to obtain when the whole world is contained in one's imagination, they are altogether inaccessible to a real traveller amid such realities as i found here. conceive the tale of london which a negro, fresh from central africa, would take back to his tribe! what would he know of railway companies, of social movements, of telephone and telegraph wires, of the parcels delivery company, and postal orders and the like? yet we, at least, should be willing enough to explain these things to him! and even of what he knew, how much could he make his untravelled friend either apprehend or believe? then, think how narrow the gap between a negro and a white man of our own times, and how wide the interval between myself and these of the golden age! i was sensible of much which was unseen, and which contributed to my comfort; but save for a general impression of automatic organization, i fear i can convey very little of the difference to your mind. `in the matter of sepulture, for instance, i could see no signs of crematoria nor anything suggestive of tombs. but it occurred to me that, possibly, there might be cemeteries (or crematoria) somewhere beyond the range of my explorings. this, again, was a question i deliberately put to myself, and my curiosity was at first entirely defeated upon the point. the thing puzzled me, and i was led to make a further remark, which puzzled me still more: that aged and infirm among this people there were none. `i must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an automatic civilization and a decadent humanity did not long endure. yet i could think of no other. let me put my difficulties. the several big palaces i had explored were mere living places, great dining-halls and sleeping apartments. i could find no machinery, no appliances of any kind. yet these people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at times need renewal, and their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metalwork. somehow such things must be made. and the little people displayed no vestige of a creative tendency. there were no shops, no workshops, no sign of importations among them. they spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. i could not see how things were kept going. `then, again, about the time machine: something, i knew not what, had taken it into the hollow pedestal of the white sphinx. why? for the life of me i could not imagine. those waterless wells, too, those flickering pillars. i felt i lacked a clue. i felt--how shall i put it? suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here and there in excellent plain english, and interpolated therewith, others made up of words, of letters even, absolutely unknown to you? well, on the third day of my visit, that was how the world of eight hundred and two thousand seven hundred and one presented itself to me! `that day, too, i made a friends--of a sort. it happened that, as i was watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of them was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. the main current ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer. it will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these creatures, when i tell you that none made the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing which was drowning before their eyes. when i realized this, i hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a point lower down, i caught the poor mite and drew her safe to land. a little rubbing of the limbs soon brought her round, and i had the satisfaction of seeing she was all right before i left her. i had got to such a low estimate of her kind that i did not expect any gratitude from her. in that, however, i was wrong. `this happened in the morning. in the afternoon i met my little woman, as i believe it was, as i was returning towards my centre from an exploration, and she received me with cries of delight and presented me with a big garland of flowers--evidently made for me and me alone. the thing took my imagination. very possibly i had been feeling desolate. at any rate i did my best to display my appreciation of the gift. we were soon seated together in a little stone arbour, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles. the creature's friendliness affected me exactly as a child's might have done. we passed each other flowers, and she kissed my hands. i did the same to hers. then i tried talk, and found that her name was weena, which, though i don't know what it meant, somehow seemed appropriate enough. that was the beginning of a queer friendship which lasted a week, and ended--as i will tell you! `she was exactly like a child. she wanted to be with me always. she tried to follow me every where, and on my next journey out and about it went to my heart to tire her down, and leave her at last, exhausted and calling after me rather plaintively. but the problems of the world had to be mastered. i had not, i said to myself, come into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation. yet her distress when i left her was very great, her expostulations at the parting were sometimes frantic, and i think, altogether, i had as much trouble as comfort from her devotion. nevertheless she was, somehow, a very great comfort. i thought it was mere childish affection that made her cling to me. until it was too late, i did not clearly know what i had inflicted upon her when i left her. nor until it was too late did i clearly understand what she was to me. for, by merely seeming fond of me, and showing in her weak, futile way that she cared for me, the little doll of a creature presently gave my return to the neighbourhood of the white sphinx almost the feeling of coming home; and i would watch for her tiny figure of white and gold so soon as i came over the hill. `it was from her, too, that i learned that fear had not yet left the world. she was fearless enough in the daylight, and she had the oddest confidence in me; for once, in a foolish moment, i made threatening grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them. but she dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. darkness to her was the one thing dreadful. it was a singularly passionate emotion, and it set me thinking and observing. i discovered then, among other things, that these little people gathered into the great houses after dark, and slept in droves. to enter upon them without a light was to put them into a tumult of apprehension. i never found one out of doors, or one sleeping alone within doors, after dark. yet i was still such a blockhead that i missed the lesson of that fear, and in spite of weena's distress i insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering multitudes. `it troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me triumphed, and for five of the nights of our acquaintance, including the last night of all, she slept with her head pillowed on my arm. but my story slips away from me as i speak of her. it must have been the night before her rescue that i was awakened about dawn. i had been restless, dreaming most disagreeably that i was drowned, and that sea-anemones were feeling over my face with their soft palps. i woke with a start, and with an odd fancy that some greyish animal had just rushed out of the chamber. i tried to get to sleep again, but i felt restless and uncomfortable. it was that dim grey hour when things are just creeping out of darkness, when everything is colourless and clear cut, and yet unreal. i got up, and went down into the great hall, and so out upon the flagstones in front of the palace. i thought i would make a virtue of necessity, and see the sunrise. `the moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light. the bushes were inky black, the ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless. and up the hill i thought i could see ghosts. there several times, as i scanned the slope, i saw white figures. twice i fancied i saw a solitary white, apelike creature running rather quickly up the hill, and once near the ruins i saw a leash of them carrying some dark body. they moved hastily. i did not see what became of them. it seemed that they vanished among the bushes. the dawn was still indistinct, you must understand. i was feeling that chill, uncertain, early-morning feeling you may have known. i doubted my eyes. `as the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on and its vivid colouring returned upon the world once more, i scanned the view keenly. but i saw no vestige of my white figures. they were mere creatures of the half-light. "they must have been ghosts," i said; "i wonder whence they dated." for a queer notion of grant allen's came into my head, and amused me. if each generation die and leave ghosts, he argued, the world at last will get overcrowded with them. on that theory they would have grown innumerable some eight hundred thousand years hence, and it was no great wonder to see four at once. but the jest was unsatisfying, and i was thinking of these figures all the morning, until weena's rescue drove them out of my head. i associated them in some indefinite way with the white animal i had startled in my first passionate search for the time machine. but weena was a pleasant substitute. yet all the same, they were soon destined to take far deadlier possession of my mind. `i think i have said how much hotter than our own was the weather of this golden age. i cannot account for it. it may be that the sun was hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. it is usual to assume that the sun will go on cooling steadily in the future. but people, unfamiliar with such speculations as those of the younger darwin, forget that the planets must ultimately fall back one by one into the parent body. as these catastrophes occur, the sun will blaze with renewed energy; and it may be that some inner planet had suffered this fate. whatever the reason, the fact remains that the sun was very much hotter than we know it. `well, one very hot morning--my fourth, i think--as i was seeking shelter from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the great house where i slept and fed, there happened this strange thing: clambering among these heaps of masonry, i found a narrow gallery, whose end and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone. by contrast with the brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me. i entered it groping, for the change from light to blackness made spots of colour swim before me. suddenly i halted spellbound. a pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against the daylight without, was watching me out of the darkness. `the old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. i clenched my hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. i was afraid to turn. then the thought of the absolute security in which humanity appeared to be living came to my mind. and then i remembered that strange terror of the dark. overcoming my fear to some extent, i advanced a step and spoke. i will admit that my voice was harsh and ill controlled. i put out my hand and touched something soft. at once the eyes darted sideways, and something white ran past me. i turned with my heart in my mouth, and saw a queer little apelike figure, its head held down in a peculiar manner, running across the sunlit space behind me. it blundered against a block of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment was hidden in a black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry. `my impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but i knew it was a dull white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen hair on its head and down its back. but, as i say, it went too fast for me to see distinctly. i cannot even say whether it ran on all-fours, or only with its forearms held very low. after an instant's pause i followed it into the second heap of ruins. i could not find it at first; but, after a time in the profound obscurity, i came upon one of those round well-like openings of which i have told you, half closed by a fallen pillar. a sudden thought came to me. could this thing have vanished down the shaft? i lit a match, and, looking down, i saw a small, white, moving creature, with large bright eyes which regarded me steadfastly as it retreated. it made me shudder. it was so like a human spider! it was clambering down the wall, and now i saw for the first time a number of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind of ladder down the shaft. then the light burned my fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as it dropped, and when i had lit another the little monster had disappeared. `i do not know how long i sat peering down that well. it was not for some time that i could succeed in persuading myself that the thing i had seen was human. but, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that man had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct animals: that my graceful children of the upper-world were not the sole descendants of our generation, but that this bleached, obscene, nocturnal thing, which had flashed before me, was also heir to all the ages. `i thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory of an underground ventilation. i began to suspect their true import. and what, i wondered, was this lemur doing in my scheme of a perfectly balanced organization? how was it related to the indolent serenity of the beautiful upper-worlders? and what was hidden down there, at the foot of that shaft? i sat upon the edge of the well telling myself that, at any rate, there was nothing to fear, and that there i must descend for the solution of my difficulties. and withal i was absolutely afraid to go! as i hesitated, two of the beautiful upper-world people came running in their amorous sport across the daylight in the shadow. the male pursued the female, flinging flowers at her as he ran. `they seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturned pillar, peering down the well. apparently it was considered bad form to remark these apertures; for when i pointed to this one, and tried to frame a question about it in their tongue, they were still more visibly distressed and turned away. but they were interested by my matches, and i struck some to amuse them. i tried them again about the well, and again i failed. so presently i left them, meaning to go back to weena, and see what i could get from her. but my mind was already in revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping and sliding to a new adjustment. i had now a clue to the import of these wells, to the ventilating towers, to the mystery of the ghosts; to say nothing of a hint at the meaning of the bronze gates and the fate of the time machine! and very vaguely there came a suggestion towards the solution of the economic problem that had puzzled me. `here was the new view. plainly, this second species of man was subterranean. there were three circumstances in particular which made me think that its rare emergence above ground was the outcome of a long-continued underground look common in most animals that live largely in the dark--the white fish of the kentucky caves, for instance. then, those large eyes, with that capacity for reflecting light, are common features of nocturnal things--witness the owl and the cat. and last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar carriage of the head while in the light--all reinforced the theory of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina. `beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and these tunnellings were the habitat of the new race. the presence of ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes--everywhere, in fact, except along the river valley--showed how universal were its ramifications. what so natural, then, as to assume that it was in this artificial under-world that such work as was necessary to the comfort of the daylight race was done? the notion was so plausible that i at once accepted it, and went on to assume the how of this splitting of the human species. i dare say you will anticipate the shape of my theory; though, for myself, i very soon felt that it fell far short of the truth. `at first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present merely temporary and social difference between the capitalist and the labourer, was the key to the whole position. no doubt it will seem grotesque enough to you--and wildly incredible!--and yet even now there are existing circumstances to point that way. there is a tendency to utilize underground space for the less ornamental purposes of civilization; there is the metropolitan railway in london, for instance, there are new electric railways, there are subways, there are underground workrooms and restaurants, and they increase and multiply. evidently, i thought, this tendency had increased till industry had gradually lost its birthright in the sky. i mean that it had gone deeper and deeper into larger and ever larger underground factories, spending a still-increasing amount of its time therein, till, in the end--! even now, does not an east-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth? `again, the exclusive tendency of richer people--due, no doubt, to the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor--is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land. about london, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against intrusion. and this same widening gulf--which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations towards refined habits on the part of the rich--will make that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent. so, in the end, above ground you must have the haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the have-nots, the workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the upper-world people were to theirs. as it seemed to me, the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor followed naturally enough. `the great triumph of humanity i had dreamed of took a different shape in my mind. it had been no such triumph of moral education and general co-operation as i had imagined. instead, i saw a real aristocracy, armed with a perfected science and working to a logical conclusion the industrial system of today. its triumph had not been simply a triumph over nature, but a triumph over nature and the fellow-man. this, i must warn you, was my theory at the time. i had no convenient cicerone in the pattern of the utopian books. my explanation may be absolutely wrong. i still think it is the most plausible one. but even on this supposition the balanced civilization that was at last attained must have long since passed its zenith, and was now far fallen into decay. the too-perfect security of the upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence. that i could see clearly enough already. what had happened to the under-grounders i did not yet suspect; but from what i had seen of the morlocks--that, by the by, was the name by which these creatures were called--i could imagine that the modification of the human type was even far more profound than among the "eloi," the beautiful race that i already knew. `then came troublesome doubts. why had the morlocks taken my time machine? for i felt sure it was they who had taken it. why, too, if the eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine to me? and why were they so terribly afraid of the dark? i proceeded, as i have said, to question weena about this under-world, but here again i was disappointed. at first she would not understand my questions, and presently she refused to answer them. she shivered as though the topic was unendurable. and when i pressed her, perhaps a little harshly, she burst into tears. they were the only tears, except my own, i ever saw in that golden age. when i saw them i ceased abruptly to trouble about the morlocks, and was only concerned in banishing these signs of the human inheritance from weena's eyes. and very soon she was smiling and clapping her hands, while i solemnly burned a match. the time machine chapter vi `it may seem odd to you, but it was two days before i could follow up the new-found clue in what was manifestly the proper way. i felt a peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies. they were just the half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological museum. and they were filthily cold to the touch. probably my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic influence of the eloi, whose disgust of the morlocks i now began to appreciate. `the next night i did not sleep well. probably my health was a little disordered. i was oppressed with perplexity and doubt. once or twice i had a feeling of intense fear for which i could perceive no definite reason. i remember creeping noiselessly into the great hall where the little people were sleeping in the moonlight--that night weena was among them--and feeling reassured by their presence. it occurred to me even then, that in the course of a few days the moon must pass through its last quarter, and the nights grow dark, when the appearances of these unpleasant creatures from below, these whitened lemurs, this new vermin that had replaced the old, might be more abundant. and on both these days i had the restless feeling of one who shirks an inevitable duty. i felt assured that the time machine was only to be recovered by boldly penetrating these underground mysteries. yet i could not face the mystery. if only i had had a companion it would have been different. but i was so horribly alone, and even to clamber down into the darkness of the well appalled me. i don't know if you will understand my feeling, but i never felt quite safe at my back. `it was this restlessness, this insecurity, perhaps, that drove me further and further afield in my exploring expeditions. going to the south-westward towards the rising country that is now called combe wood, i observed far off, in the direction of nineteenth-century banstead, a vast green structure, different in character from any i had hitherto seen. it was larger than the largest of the palaces or ruins i knew, and the facade had an oriental look: the face of it having the lustre, as well as the pale-green tint, a kind of bluish-green, of a certain type of chinese porcelain. this difference in aspect suggested a difference in use, and i was minded to push on and explore. but the day was growing late, and i had come upon the sight of the place after a long and tiring circuit; so i resolved to hold over the adventure for the following day, and i returned to the welcome and the caresses of little weena. but next morning i perceived clearly enough that my curiosity regarding the palace of green porcelain was a piece of self-deception, to enable me to shirk, by another day, an experience i dreaded. i resolved i would make the descent without further waste of time, and started out in the early morning towards a well near the ruins of granite and aluminium. `little weena ran with me. she danced beside me to the well, but when she saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she seemed strangely disconcerted. "good-bye, little weena," i said, kissing her; and then, putting her down, i began to feel over the parapet for the climbing hooks. rather hastily, i may as well confess, for i feared my courage might leak away! at first she watched me in amazement. then she gave a most piteous cry, and, running to me, she began to pull at me with her little hands. i think her opposition nerved me rather to proceed. i shook her off, perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment i was in the throat of the well. i saw her agonized face over the parapet, and smiled to reassure her. then i had to look down at the unstable hooks to which i clung. `i had to clamber down a shaft of perhaps two hundred yards. the descent was effected by means of metallic bars projecting from the sides of the well, and these being adapted to the needs of a creature much smaller and lighter than myself, i was speedily cramped and fatigued by the descent. and not simply fatigued! one of the bars bent suddenly under my weight, and almost swung me off into the blackness beneath. for a moment i hung by one hand, and after that experience i did not dare to rest again. though my arms and back were presently acutely painful, i went on clambering down the sheer descent with as quick a motion as possible. glancing upward, i saw the aperture, a small blue disk, in which a star was visible, while little weena's head showed as a round black projection. the thudding sound of a machine below grew louder and more oppressive. everything save that little disk above was profoundly dark, and when i looked up again weena had disappeared. `i was in an agony of discomfort. i had some thought of trying to go up the shaft again, and leave the under-world alone. but even while i turned this over in my mind i continued to descend. at last, with intense relief, i saw dimly coming up, a foot to the right of me, a slender loophole in the wall. swinging myself in, i found it was the aperture of a narrow horizontal tunnel in which i could lie down and rest. it was not too soon. my arms ached, my back was cramped, and i was trembling with the prolonged terror of a fall. besides this, the unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect upon my eyes. the air was full of the throb and hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft. `i do not know how long i lay. i was roused by a soft hand touching my face. starting up in the darkness i snatched at my matches and, hastily striking one, i saw three stooping white creatures similar to the one i had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating before the light. living, as they did, in what appeared to me impenetrable darkness, their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive, just as are the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and they reflected the light in the same way. i have no doubt they could see me in that rayless obscurity, and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light. but, so soon as i struck a match in order to see them, they fled incontinently, vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes glared at me in the strangest fashion. `i tried to call to them, but the language they had was apparently different from that of the over-world people; so that i was needs left to my own unaided efforts, and the thought of flight before exploration was even then in my mind. but i said to myself. "you are in for it now," and, feeling my way along the tunnel, i found the noise of machinery grow louder. presently the walls fell away from me, and i came to a large open space, and striking another match, saw that i had entered a vast arched cavern, which stretched into utter darkness beyond the range of my light. the view i had of it was as much as one could see in the burning of a match. `necessarily my memory is vague. great shapes like big machines rose out of the dimness, and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim spectral morlocks sheltered from the glare. the place, by the by, was very stuffy and oppressive, and the faint halitus of freshly shed blood was in the air. some way down the central vista was a little table of white metal, laid with what seemed a meal. the morlocks at any rate were carnivorous! even at the time, i remember wondering what large animal could have survived to furnish the red joint i saw. it was all very indistinct: the heavy smell, the big unmeaning shapes, the obscene figures lurking in the shadows, and only waiting for the darkness to come at me again! then the match burned down, and stung my fingers, and fell, a wriggling red spot in the blackness. `i have thought since how particularly ill-equipped i was for such an experience. when i had started with the time machine, i had started with the absurd assumption that the men of the future would certainly be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances. i had come without arms, without medicine, without anything to smoke--at times i missed tobacco frightfully--even without enough matches. if only i had thought of a kodak! i could have flashed that glimpse of the underworld in a second, and examined it at leisure. but, as it was, i stood there with only the weapons and the powers that nature had endowed me with--hands, feet, and teeth; these, and four safety-matches that still remained to me. `i was afraid to push my way in among all this machinery in the dark, and it was only with my last glimpse of light i discovered that my store of matches had run low. it had never occurred to me until that moment that there was any need to economize them, and i had wasted almost half the box in astonishing the upper-worlders, to whom fire was a novelty. now, as i say, i had four left, and while i stood in the dark, a hand touched mine, lank fingers came feeling over my face, and i was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odour. i fancied i heard the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings about me. i felt the box of matches in my hand being gently disengaged, and other hands behind me plucking at my clothing. the sense of these unseen creatures examining me was indescribably unpleasant. the sudden realization of my ignorance of their ways of thinking and doing came home to me very vividly in the darkness. i shouted at them as loudly as i could. they started away, and then i could feel them approaching me again. they clutched at me more boldly, whispering odd sounds to each other. i shivered violently, and shouted again--rather discordantly. this time they were not so seriously alarmed, and they made a queer laughing noise as they came back at me. i will confess i was horribly frightened. i determined to strike another match and escape under the protection of its glare. i did so, and eking out the flicker with a scrap of paper from my pocket, i made good my retreat to the narrow tunnel. but i had scarce entered this when my light was blown out, and in the blackness i could hear the morlocks rustling like wind among leaves, and pattering like the rain, as they hurried after me. `in a moment i was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that they were trying to haul me back. i struck another light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. you can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked--those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!--as they stared in their blindness and bewilderment. but i did not stay to look, i promise you: i retreated again, and when my second match had ended, i struck my third. it had almost burned through when i reached the opening into the shaft. i lay down on the edge, for the throb of the great pump below made me giddy. then i felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and, as i did so, my feet were grasped from behind, and i was violently tugged backward. i lit my last match ... and it incontinently went out. but i had my hand on the climbing bars now, and, kicking violently, i disengaged myself from the clutches of the morlocks and was speedily clambering up the shaft, while they stayed peering and blinking up at me: all but one little wretch who followed me for some way, and wellnigh secured my boot as a trophy. that climb seemed interminable to me. with the last twenty or thirty feet of it a deadly nausea came upon me. i had the greatest difficulty in keeping my hold. the last few yards was a frightful struggle against this faintness. several times my head swam, and i felt all the sensations of falling. at last, however, i got over the well-mouth somehow, and staggered out of the ruin into the blinding sunlight. i fell upon my face. even the soil smelt sweet and clean. then i remember weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of others among the eloi. then, for a time, i was insensible. the time machine chapter vii `now, indeed, i seemed in a worse case than before. hitherto, except during my night's anguish at the loss of the time machine, i had felt a sustaining hope of ultimate escape, but that hope was staggered by these new discoveries. hitherto i had merely thought myself impeded by the childish simplicity of the little people, and by some unknown forces which i had only to understand to overcome; but there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality of the morlocks--a something inhuman and malign. instinctively i loathed them. before, i had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of it. now i felt like a beast in a trap, whose enemy would come upon him soon. `the enemy i dreaded may surprise you. it was the darkness of the new moon. weena had put this into my head by some at first incomprehensible remarks about the dark nights. it was not now such a very difficult problem to guess what the coming dark nights might mean. the moon was on the wane: each night there was a longer interval of darkness. and i now understood to some slight degree at least the reason of the fear of the little upper-world people for the dark. i wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be that the morlocks did under the new moon. i felt pretty sure now that my second hypothesis was all wrong. the upper-world people might once have been the favoured aristocracy, and the morlocks their mechanical servants: but that had long since passed away. the two species that had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding down towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether new relationship. the eloi, like the carlovingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility. they still possessed the earth on sufferance: since the morlocks, subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find the daylit surface intolerable. and the morlocks made their garments, i inferred, and maintained them in their habitual needs, perhaps through the survival of an old habit of service. they did it as a standing horse paws with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing animals in sport: because ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on the organism. but, clearly, the old order was already in part reversed. the nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace. ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease and the sunshine. and now that brother was coming back--changed! already the eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew. they were becoming reacquainted with fear. and suddenly there came into my head the memory of the meat i had seen in the under-world. it seemed odd how it floated into my mind: not stirred up as it were by the current of my meditations, but coming in almost like a question from outside. i tried to recall the form of it. i had a vague sense of something familiar, but i could not tell what it was at the time. `still, however helpless the little people in the presence of their mysterious fear, i was differently constituted. i came out of this age of ours, this ripe prime of the human race, when fear does not paralyse and mystery has lost its terrors. i at least would defend myself. without further delay i determined to make myself arms and a fastness where i might sleep. with that refuge as a base, i could face this strange world with some of that confidence i had lost in realizing to what creatures night by night i lay exposed. i felt i could never sleep again until my bed was secure from them. i shuddered with horror to think how they must already have examined me. `i wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the thames, but found nothing that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible. all the buildings and trees seemed easily practicable to such dexterous climbers as the morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be. then the tall pinnacles of the palace of green porcelain and the polished gleam of its walls came back to my memory; and in the evening, taking weena like a child upon my shoulder, i went up the hills towards the south-west. the distance, i had reckoned, was seven or eight miles, but it must have been nearer eighteen. i had first seen the place on a moist afternoon when distances are deceptively diminished. in addition, the heel of one of my shoes was loose, and a nail was working through the sole--they were comfortable old shoes i wore about indoors--so that i was lame. and it was already long past sunset when i came in sight of the palace, silhouetted black against the pale yellow of the sky. `weena had been hugely delighted when i began to carry her, but after a time she desired me to let her down, and ran along by the side of me, occasionally darting off on either hand to pick flowers to stick in my pockets. my pockets had always puzzled weena, but at the last she had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vase for floral decoration. at least she utilized them for that purpose. and that reminds me! in changing my jacket i found ...' the time traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, and silently placed two withered flowers, not unlike very large white mallows, upon the little table. then he resumed his narrative. `as the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded over the hill crest towards wimbledon, weena grew tired and wanted to return to the house of grey stone. but i pointed out the distant pinnacles of the palace of green porcelain to her, and contrived to make her understand that we were seeking a refuge there from her fear. you know that great pause that comes upon things before the dusk? even the breeze stops in the trees. to me there is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness. the sky was clear, remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the sunset. well, that night the expectation took the colour of my fears. in that darkling calm my senses seemed preternaturally sharpened. i fancied i could even feel the hollowness of the ground beneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see through it the morlocks on their anthill going hither and thither and waiting for the dark. in my excitement i fancied that they would receive my invasion of their burrows as a declaration of war. and why had they taken my time machine? `so we went on in the quiet, and the twilight deepened into night. the clear blue of the distance faded, and one star after another came out. the ground grew dim and the trees black. weena's fears and her fatigue grew upon her. i took her in my arms and talked to her and caressed her. then, as the darkness grew deeper, she put her arms round my neck, and, closing her eyes, tightly pressed her face against my shoulder. so we went down a long slope into a valley, and there in the dimness i almost walked into a little river. this i waded, and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a number of sleeping houses, and by a statue--a faun, or some such figure, minus the head. here too were acacias. so far i had seen nothing of the morlocks, but it was yet early in the night, and the darker hours before the old moon rose were still to come. `from the brow of the next hill i saw a thick wood spreading wide and black before me. i hesitated at this. i could see no end to it, either to the right or the left. feeling tired--my feet, in particular, were very sore--i carefully lowered weena from my shoulder as i halted, and sat down upon the turf. i could no longer see the palace of green porcelain, and i was in doubt of my direction. i looked into the thickness of the wood and thought of what it might hide. under that dense tangle of branches one would be out of sight of the stars. even were there no other lurking danger--a danger i did not care to let my imagination loose upon--there would still be all the roots to stumble over and the tree-boles to strike against. `i was very tired, too, after the excitements of the day; so i decided that i would not face it, but would pass the night upon the open hill. `weena, i was glad to find, was fast asleep. i carefully wrapped her in my jacket, and sat down beside her to wait for the moonrise. the hill-side was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood there came now and then a stir of living things. above me shone the stars, for the night was very clear. i felt a certain sense of friendly comfort in their twinkling. all the old constellations had gone from the sky, however: that slow movement which is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long since rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. but the milky way, it seemed to me, was still the same tattered streamer of star-dust as of yore. southward (as i judged it) was a very bright red star that was new to me; it was even more splendid than our own green sirius. and amid all these scintillating points of light one bright planet shone kindly and steadily like the face of an old friend. `looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. i thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future. i thought of the great precessional cycle that the pole of the earth describes. only forty times had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that i had traversed. and during these few revolutions all the activity, all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations, languages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of man as i knew him, had been swept out of existence. instead were these frail creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white things of which i went in terror. then i thought of the great fear that was between the two species, and for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came the clear knowledge of what the meat i had seen might be. yet it was too horrible! i looked at little weena sleeping beside me, her face white and starlike under the stars, and forthwith dismissed the thought. `through that long night i held my mind off the morlocks as well as i could, and whiled away the time by trying to fancy i could find signs of the old constellations in the new confusion. the sky kept very clear, except for a hazy cloud or so. no doubt i dozed at times. then, as my vigil wore on, came a faintness in the eastward sky, like the reflection of some colourless fire, and the old moon rose, thin and peaked and white. and close behind, and overtaking it, and overflowing it, the dawn came, pale at first, and then growing pink and warm. no morlocks had approached us. indeed, i had seen none upon the hill that night. and in the confidence of renewed day it almost seemed to me that my fear had been unreasonable. i stood up and found my foot with the loose heel swollen at the ankle and painful under the heel, so i sat down again, took off my shoes, and flung them away. `i awakened weena, and we went down into the wood, now green and pleasant instead of black and forbidding. we found some fruit wherewith to break our fast. we soon met others of the dainty ones, laughing and dancing in the sunlight as though there was no such thing in nature as the night. and then i thought once more of the meat that i had seen. i felt assured now of what it was, and from the bottom of my heart i pitied this last feeble rill from the great flood of humanity. clearly, at some time in the long-ago of human decay the morlocks' food had run short. possibly they had lived on rats and such-like vermin. even now man is far less discriminating and exclusive in his food than he was--far less than any monkey. his prejudice against human flesh is no deep-seated instinct. and so these inhuman sons of men--! i tried to look at the thing in a scientific spirit. after all, they were less human and more remote than our cannibal ancestors of three or four thousand years ago. and the intelligence that would have made this state of things a torment had gone. why should i trouble myself? these eloi were mere fatted cattle, which the ant-like morlocks preserved and preyed upon--probably saw to the breeding of. and there was weena dancing at my side! `then i tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon me, by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human selfishness. man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his fellow-man, had taken necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of time necessity had come home to him. i even tried a carlyle-like scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay. but this attitude of mind was impossible. however great their intellectual degradation, the eloi had kept too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation and their fear. `i had at that time very vague ideas as to the course i should pursue. my first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and to make myself such arms of metal or stone as i could contrive. that necessity was immediate. in the next place, i hoped to procure some means of fire, so that i should have the weapon of a torch at hand, for nothing, i knew, would be more efficient against these morlocks. then i wanted to arrange some contrivance to break open the doors of bronze under the white sphinx. i had in mind a battering-ram. i had a persuasion that if i could enter those doors and carry a blaze of light before me i should discover the time machine and escape. i could not imagine the morlocks were strong enough to move it far away. weena i had resolved to bring with me to our own time. and turning such schemes over in my mind i pursued our way towards the building which my fancy had chosen as our dwelling. the time machine chapter viii `i found the palace of green porcelain, when we approached it about noon, deserted and falling into ruin. only ragged vestiges of glass remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. it lay very high upon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before i entered it, i was surprised to see a large estuary, or even creek, where i judged wandsworth and battersea must once have been. i thought then--though i never followed up the thought--of what might have happened, or might be happening, to the living things in the sea. `the material of the palace proved on examination to be indeed porcelain, and along the face of it i saw an inscription in some unknown character. i thought, rather foolishly, that weena might help me to interpret this, but i only learned that the bare idea of writing had never entered her head. she always seemed to me, i fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because her affection was so human. `within the big valves of the door--which were open and broken--we found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by many side windows. at the first glance i was reminded of a museum. the tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. then i perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. i recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the fashion of the megatherium. the skull and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had been worn away. further in the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of a brontosaurus. my museum hypothesis was confirmed. going towards the side i found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and clearing away the thick dust, i found the old familiar glass cases of our own time. but they must have been air-tight to judge from the fair preservation of some of their contents. `clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day south kensington! here, apparently, was the palaeontological section, and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a time, and had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures. here and there i found traces of the little people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. and the cases had in some instances been bodily removed--by the morlocks as i judged. the place was very silent. the thick dust deadened our footsteps. weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently came, as i stared about me, and very quietly took my hand and stood beside me. `and at first i was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an intellectual age, that i gave no thought to the possibilities it presented. even my preoccupation about the time machine receded a little from my mind. `to judge from the size of the place, this palace of green porcelain had a great deal more in it than a gallery of palaeontology; possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a library! to me, at least in my present circumstances, these would be vastly more interesting than this spectacle of old-time geology in decay. exploring, i found another short gallery running transversely to the first. this appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the sight of a block of sulphur set my mind running on gunpowder. but i could find no saltpeter; indeed, no nitrates of any kind. doubtless they had deliquesced ages ago. yet the sulphur hung in my mind, and set up a train of thinking. as for the rest of the contents of that gallery, though on the whole they were the best preserved of all i saw, i had little interest. i am no specialist in mineralogy, and i went on down a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall i had entered. apparently this section had been devoted to natural history, but everything had long since passed out of recognition. a few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been stuffed animals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held spirit, a brown dust of departed plants: that was all! i was sorry for that, because i should have been glad to trace the patent readjustments by which the conquest of animated nature had been attained. then we came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularly ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle from the end at which i entered. at intervals white globes hung from the ceiling--many of them cracked and smashed--which suggested that originally the place had been artificially lit. here i was more in my element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big machines, all greatly corroded and many broken down, but some still fairly complete. you know i have a certain weakness for mechanism, and i was inclined to linger among these; the more so as for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and i could make only the vaguest guesses at what they were for. i fancied that if i could solve their puzzles i should find myself in possession of powers that might be of use against the morlocks. `suddenly weena came very close to my side. so suddenly that she startled me. had it not been for her i do not think i should have noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all.(1) the end i had come in at was quite above ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. as you went down the length, the ground came up against these windows, until at last there was a pit like the "area" of a london house before each, and only a narrow line of daylight at the top. i went slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been too intent upon them to notice the gradual diminution of the light, until weena's increasing apprehensions drew my attention. then i saw that the gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness. i hesitated, and then, as i looked round me, i saw that the dust was less abundant and its surface less even. further away towards the dimness, it appeared to be broken by a number of small narrow footprints. my sense of the immediate presence of the morlocks revived at that. i felt that i was wasting my time in this academic examination of machinery. i called to mind that it was already far advanced in the afternoon, and that i had still no weapon, no refuge, and no means of making a fire. and then down in the remote blackness of the gallery i heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises i had heard down the well. `i took weena's hand. then, struck with a sudden idea, i left her and turned to a machine from which projected a lever not unlike those in a signal-box. clambering upon the stand, and grasping this lever in my hands, i put all my weight upon it sideways. suddenly weena, deserted in the central aisle, began to whimper. i had judged the strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a minute's strain, and i rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, i judged, for any morlock skull i might encounter. and i longed very much to kill a morlock or so. very inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing one's own descendants! but it was impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things. only my disinclination to leave weena, and a persuasion that if i began to slake my thirst for murder my time machine might suffer, restrained me from going straight down the gallery and killing the brutes i heard. `well, mace in one hand and weena in the other, i went out of that gallery and into another and still larger one, which at the first glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. the brown and charted rags that hung from the sides of it, i presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. they had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. but here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. had i been a literary man i might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition. but as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified. at the time i will confess that i thought chiefly of the philosophical transactions and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics. `then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have been a gallery of technical chemistry. and here i had not a little hope of useful discoveries. except at one end where the roof had collapsed, this gallery was well preserved. i went eagerly to every unbroken case. and at last, in one of the really air-tight cases, i found a box of matches. very eagerly i tried them. they were perfectly good. they were not even damp. i turned to weena. "dance," i cried to her in her own tongue. for now i had a weapon indeed against the horrible creatures we feared. and so, in that derelict museum, upon the thick soft carpeting of dust, to weena's huge delight, i solemnly performed a kind of composite dance, whistling the land of the leal as cheerfully as i could. in part it was a modest cancan, in part a step-dance, in part a skirt-dance (so far as my tailcoat permitted), and in part original. for i am naturally inventive, as you know. `now, i still think that for this box of matches to have escaped the wear of time for immemorial years was a most strange, as for me it was a most fortunate thing. yet, oddly enough, i found a far unlikelier substance, and that was camphor. i found it in a sealed jar, that by chance, i suppose, had been really hermetically sealed. i fancied at first that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly. but the odour of camphor was unmistakable. in the universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousands of centuries. it reminded me of a sepia painting i had once seen done from the ink of a fossil belemnite that must have perished and become fossilized millions of years ago. i was about to throw it away, but i remembered that it was inflammable and burned with a good bright flame--was, in fact, an excellent candle--and i put it in my pocket. i found no explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down the bronze doors. as yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing i had chanced upon. nevertheless i left that gallery greatly elated. `i cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. it would require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations in at all the proper order. i remember a long gallery of rusting stands of arms, and how i hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a sword. i could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised best against the bronze gates. there were numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles. the most were masses of rust, but many were of some new metal, and still fairly sound. but any cartridges or powder there may once have been had rotted into dust. one corner i saw was charred and shattered; perhaps, i thought, by an explosion among the specimens. in another place was a vast array of idols--polynesian, mexican, grecian, phoenician, every country on earth i should think. and here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, i wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster from south america that particularly took my fancy. `as the evening drew on, my interest waned. i went through gallery after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. in one place i suddenly found myself near the model of a tin-mine, and then by the merest accident i discovered, in an air-tight case, two dynamite cartridges! i shouted "eureka!" and smashed the case with joy. then came a doubt. i hesitated. then, selecting a little side gallery, i made my essay. i never felt such a disappointment as i did in waiting five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion that never came. of course the things were dummies, as i might have guessed from their presence. i really believe that, had they not been so, i should have rushed off incontinently and blown sphinx, bronze doors, and (as it proved) my chances of finding the time machine, all together into non-existence. `it was after that, i think, that we came to a little open court within the palace. it was turfed, and had three fruit-trees. so we rested and refreshed ourselves. towards sunset i began to consider our position. night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible hiding-place had still to be found. but that troubled me very little now. i had in my possession a thing that was, perhaps, the best of all defences against the morlocks--i had matches! i had the camphor in my pocket, too, if a blaze were needed. it seemed to me that the best thing we could do would be to pass the night in the open, protected by a fire. in the morning there was the getting of the time machine. towards that, as yet, i had only my iron mace. but now, with my growing knowledge, i felt very differently towards those bronze doors. up to this, i had refrained from forcing them, largely because of the mystery on the other side. they had never impressed me as being very strong, and i hoped to find my bar of iron not altogether inadequate for the work. the time machine chapter ix `we emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above the horizon. i was determined to reach the white sphinx early the next morning, and ere the dusk i purposed pushing through the woods that had stopped me on the previous journey. my plan was to go as far as possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep in the protection of its glare. accordingly, as we went along i gathered any sticks or dried grass i saw, and presently had my arms full of such litter. thus loaded, our progress was slower than i had anticipated, and besides weena was tired. and i began to suffer from sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached the wood. upon the shrubby hill of its edge weena would have stopped, fearing the darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward. i had been without sleep for a night and two days, and i was feverish and irritable. i felt sleep coming upon me, and the morlocks with it. `while we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against their blackness, i saw three crouching figures. there was scrub and long grass all about us, and i did not feel safe from their insidious approach. the forest, i calculated, was rather less than a mile across. if we could get through it to the bare hill-side, there, as it seemed to me, was an altogether safer resting-place; i thought that with my matches and my camphor i could contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods. yet it was evident that if i was to flourish matches with my hands i should have to abandon my firewood; so, rather reluctantly, i put it down. and then it came into my head that i would amaze our friends behind by lighting it. i was to discover the atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for covering our retreat. `i don't know if you have ever thought that a rare thing flame must be in the absence of man and in a temperate climate. the sun's heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focused by dewdrops, as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts. lightning may blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire. decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame. in this decadence, too, the art of fire-making had been forgotten on the earth. the red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to weena. `she wanted to run to it and play with it. i believe she would have cast herself into it had i not restrained her. but i caught her up, and, in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the wood. for a little way the glare of my fire lit the path. looking back presently, i could see, through the crowded stems, that from my heap of sticks the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a curved line of fire was creeping up the grass of the hill. i laughed at that, and turned again to the dark trees before me. it was very black, and weena clung to me convulsively, but there was still, as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, sufficient light for me to avoid the stems. overhead it was simply black, except where a gap of remote blue sky shone down upon us here and there. i struck none of my matches because i had no hand free. upon my left arm i carried my little one, in my right hand i had my iron bar. `for some way i heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet, the faint rustle of the breeze above, and my own breathing and the throb of the blood-vessels in my ears. then i seemed to know of a pattering about me. i pushed on grimly. the pattering grew more distinct, and then i caught the same queer sound and voices i had heard in the under-world. there were evidently several of the morlocks, and they were closing in upon me. indeed, in another minute i felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm. and weena shivered violently, and became quite still. `it was time for a match. but to get one i must put her down. i did so, and, as i fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in the darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the same peculiar cooing sounds from the morlocks. soft little hands, too, were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my neck. then the match scratched and fizzed. i held it flaring, and saw the white backs of the morlocks in flight amid the trees. i hastily took a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared to light it as soon as the match should wane. then i looked at weena. she was lying clutching my feet and quite motionless, with her face to the ground. with a sudden fright i stooped to her. she seemed scarcely to breathe. i lit the block of camphor and flung it to the ground, and as it split and flared up and drove back the morlocks and the shadows, i knelt down and lifted her. the wood behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company! `she seemed to have fainted. i put her carefully upon my shoulder and rose to push on, and then there came a horrible realization. in manoeuvring with my matches and weena, i had turned myself about several times, and now i had not the faintest idea in what direction lay my path. for all i knew, i might be facing back towards the palace of green porcelain. i found myself in a cold sweat. i had to think rapidly what to do. i determined to build a fire and encamp where we were. i put weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy bole, and very hastily, as my first lump of camphor waned, i began collecting sticks and leaves. here and there out of the darkness round me the morlocks' eyes shone like carbuncles. `the camphor flickered and went out. i lit a match, and as i did so, two white forms that had been approaching weena dashed hastily away. one was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me, and i felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist. he gave a whoop of dismay, staggered a little way, and fell down. i lit another piece of camphor, and went on gathering my bonfire. presently i noticed how dry was some of the foliage above me, for since my arrival on the time machine, a matter of a week, no rain had fallen. so, instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, i began leaping up and dragging down branches. very soon i had a choking smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks, and could economize my camphor. then i turned to where weena lay beside my iron mace. i tried what i could to revive her, but she lay like one dead. i could not even satisfy myself whether or not she breathed. `now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have made me heavy of a sudden. moreover, the vapour of camphor was in the air. my fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so. i felt very weary after my exertion, and sat down. the wood, too, was full of a slumbrous murmur that i did not understand. i seemed just to nod and open my eyes. but all was dark, and the morlocks had their hands upon me. flinging off their clinging fingers i hastily felt in my pocket for the match-box, and--it had gone! then they gripped and closed with me again. in a moment i knew what had happened. i had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness of death came over my soul. the forest seemed full of the smell of burning wood. i was caught by the neck, by the hair, by the arms, and pulled down. it was indescribably horrible in the darkness to feel all these soft creatures heaped upon me. i felt as if i was in a monstrous spider's web. i was overpowered, and went down. i felt little teeth nipping at my neck. i rolled over, and as i did so my hand came against my iron lever. it gave me strength. i struggled up, shaking the human rats from me, and, holding the bar short, i thrust where i judged their faces might be. i could feel the succulent giving of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment i was free. `the strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting came upon me. i knew that both i and weena were lost, but i determined to make the morlocks pay for their meat. i stood with my back to a tree, swinging the iron bar before me. the whole wood was full of the stir and cries of them. a minute passed. their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement, and their movements grew faster. yet none came within reach. i stood glaring at the blackness. then suddenly came hope. what if the morlocks were afraid? and close on the heels of that came a strange thing. the darkness seemed to grow luminous. very dimly i began to see the morlocks about me--three battered at my feet--and then i recognized, with incredulous surprise, that the others were running, in an incessant stream, as it seemed, from behind me, and away through the wood in front. and their backs seemed no longer white, but reddish. as i stood agape, i saw a little red spark go drifting across a gap of starlight between the branches, and vanish. and at that i understood the smell of burning wood, the slumbrous murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow, and the morlocks' flight. `stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, i saw, through the black pillars of the nearer trees, the flames of the burning forest. it was my first fire coming after me. with that i looked for weena, but she was gone. the hissing and crackling behind me, the explosive thud as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little time for reflection. my iron bar still gripped, i followed in the morlocks' path. it was a close race. once the flames crept forward so swiftly on my right as i ran that i was outflanked and had to strike off to the left. but at last i emerged upon a small open space, and as i did so, a morlock came blundering towards me, and past me, and went on straight into the fire! `and now i was to see the most weird and horrible thing, i think, of all that i beheld in that future age. this whole space was as bright as day with the reflection of the fire. in the centre was a hillock or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn. beyond this was another arm of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already writhing from it, completely encircling the space with a fence of fire. upon the hill-side were some thirty or forty morlocks, dazzled by the light and heat, and blundering hither and thither against each other in their bewilderment. at first i did not realize their blindness, and struck furiously at them with my bar, in a frenzy of fear, as they approached me, killing one and crippling several more. but when i had watched the gestures of one of them groping under the hawthorn against the red sky, and heard their moans, i was assured of their absolute helplessness and misery in the glare, and i struck no more of them. `yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting loose a quivering horror that made me quick to elude him. at one time the flames died down somewhat, and i feared the foul creatures would presently be able to see me. i was thinking of beginning the fight by killing some of them before this should happen; but the fire burst out again brightly, and i stayed my hand. i walked about the hill among them and avoided them, looking for some trace of weena. but weena was gone. `at last i sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this strange incredible company of blind things groping to and fro, and making uncanny noises to each other, as the glare of the fire beat on them. the coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the sky, and through the rare tatters of that red canopy, remote as though they belonged to another universe, shone the little stars. two or three morlocks came blundering into me, and i drove them off with blows of my fists, trembling as i did so. `for the most part of that night i was persuaded it was a nightmare. i bit myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake. i beat the ground with my hands, and got up and sat down again, and wandered here and there, and again sat down. then i would fall to rubbing my eyes and calling upon god to let me awake. thrice i saw morlocks put their heads down in a kind of agony and rush into the flames. but, at last, above the subsiding red of the fire, above the streaming masses of black smoke and the whitening and blackening tree stumps, and the diminishing numbers of these dim creatures, came the white light of the day. `i searched again for traces of weena, but there were none. it was plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest. i cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful fate to which it seemed destined. as i thought of that, i was almost moved to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about me, but i contained myself. the hillock, as i have said, was a kind of island in the forest. from its summit i could now make out through a haze of smoke the palace of green porcelain, and from that i could get my bearings for the white sphinx. and so, leaving the remnant of these damned souls still going hither and thither and moaning, as the day grew clearer, i tied some grass about my feet and limped on across smoking ashes and among black stems, that still pulsated internally with fire, towards the hiding-place of the time machine. i walked slowly, for i was almost exhausted, as well as lame, and i felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible death of little weena. it seemed an overwhelming calamity. now, in this old familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an actual loss. but that morning it left me absolutely lonely again--terribly alone. i began to think of this house of mine, of this fireside, of some of you, and with such thoughts came a longing that was pain. `but, as i walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky, i made a discovery. in my trouser pocket were still some loose matches. the box must have leaked before it was lost. the time machine chapter x `about eight or nine in the morning i came to the same seat of yellow metal from which i had viewed the world upon the evening of my arrival. i thought of my hasty conclusions upon that evening and could not refrain from laughing bitterly at my confidence. here was the same beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same splendid palaces and magnificent ruins, the same silver river running between ill fertile banks. the gay robes of the beautiful people moved hither and thither among the trees. some were bathing in exactly the place where i had saved weena, and that suddenly gave me a keen stab of pain. and like blots upon the landscape rose the cupolas above the ways to the under-world. i understood now what all the beauty of the over-world people covered. very pleasant was their day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the field. like the cattle, they knew of no enemies and provided against no needs. and their end was the same. `i grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. it had committed suicide. it had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes--to come to this at last. once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. the rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. no doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. and a great quiet had followed. `it is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. an animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. there is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers. `so, as i see it, the upper-world man had drifted towards his feeble prettiness, and the under-world to mere mechanical industry. but that perfect state had lacked one thing even for mechanical perfection--absolute permanency. apparently as time went on, the feeding of the under-world, however it was effected, had become disjointed. mother necessity, who had been staved off for a few thousand years, came back again, and she began below. the under-world being in contact with machinery, which, however perfect, still needs some little thought outside habit, had probably retained perforce rather more initiative, if less of every other human character, than the upper. and when other meat failed them, they turned to what old habit had hitherto forbidden. so i say i saw it in my last view of the world of eight hundred and two thousand seven hundred and one. it may be as wrong an explanation as mortal wit could invent. it is how the thing shaped itself to me, and as that i give it to you. `after the fatigues, excitements, and terrors of the past days, and in spite of my grief, this seat and the tranquil view and the warm sunlight were very pleasant. i was very tired and sleepy, and soon my theorizing passed into dozing. catching myself at that, i took my own hint, and spreading myself out upon the turf i had a long and refreshing sleep. `i awoke a little before sunsetting. i now felt safe against being caught napping by the morlocks, and, stretching myself, i came on down the hill towards the white sphinx. i had my crowbar in one hand, and the other hand played with the matches in my pocket. `and now came a most unexpected thing. as i approached the pedestal of the sphinx i found the bronze valves were open. they had slid down into grooves. `at that i stopped short before them, hesitating to enter. `within was a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner of this was the time machine. i had the small levers in my pocket. so here, after all my elaborate preparations for the siege of the white sphinx, was a meek surrender. i threw my iron bar away, almost sorry not to use it. `a sudden thought came into my head as i stooped towards the portal. for once, at least, i grasped the mental operations of the morlocks. suppressing a strong inclination to laugh, i stepped through the bronze frame and up to the time machine. i was surprised to find it had been carefully oiled and cleaned. i have suspected since that the morlocks had even partially taken it to pieces while trying in their dim way to grasp its purpose. `now as i stood and examined it, finding a pleasure in the mere touch of the contrivance, the thing i had expected happened. the bronze panels suddenly slid up and struck the frame with a clang. i was in the dark--trapped. so the morlocks thought. at that i chuckled gleefully. `i could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came towards me. very calmly i tried to strike the match. i had only to fix on the levers and depart then like a ghost. but i had overlooked one little thing. the matches were of that abominable kind that light only on the box. `you may imagine how all my calm vanished. the little brutes were close upon me. one touched me. i made a sweeping blow in the dark at them with the levers, and began to scramble into the saddle of the machine. then came one hand upon me and then another. then i had simply to fight against their persistent fingers for my levers, and at the same time feel for the studs over which these fitted. one, indeed, they almost got away from me. as it slipped from my hand, i had to butt in the dark with my head--i could hear the morlock's skull ring--to recover it. it was a nearer thing than the fight in the forest, i think, this last scramble. `but at last the lever was fixed and pulled over. the clinging hands slipped from me. the darkness presently fell from my eyes. i found myself in the same grey light and tumult i have already described. the time machine chapter xi `i have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. and this time i was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. for an indefinite time i clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how i went, and when i brought myself to look at the dials again i was amazed to find where i had arrived. one dial records days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. now, instead of reversing the levers, i had pulled them over so as, to go forward with them, and when i came to look at these indicators i found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch--into futurity. `as i drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. the palpitating greyness grew darker; then--though i was still traveling with prodigious velocity--the blinking succession of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and grew more and more marked. this puzzled me very much at first. the alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries. at last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky. the band of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set--it simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more red. all trace of the moon had vanished. the circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points of light. at last, some time before i stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. at one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. i perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done. the earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. very cautiously, for i remembered my former headlong fall, i began to reverse my motion. slower and slower went the circling hands until the thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was no longer a mere mist upon its scale. still slower, until the dim outlines of a desolate beach grew visible. `i stopped very gently and sat upon the time machine, looking round. the sky was no longer blue. north-eastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars. overhead it was a deep indian red and starless, and south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. the rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of life that i could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their south-eastern face. it was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plants which like these grow in a perpetual twilight. `the machine was standing on a sloping beach. the sea stretched away to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan sky. there were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was stirring. only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living. and along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of salt--pink under the lurid sky. there was a sense of oppression in my head, and i noticed that i was breathing very fast. the sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and from that i judged the air to be more rarefied than it is now. `far away up the desolate slope i heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into the sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. the sound of its voice was so dismal that i shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine. looking round me again, i saw that, quite near, what i had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. then i saw the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennae, like carters' whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. i could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it moved. `as i stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, i felt a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. i tried to brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost immediately came another by my ear. i struck at this, and caught something threadlike. it was drawn swiftly out of my hand. with a frightful qualm, i turned, and i saw that i had grasped the antenna of another monster crab that stood just behind me. its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon me. in a moment my hand was on the lever, and i had placed a month between myself and these monsters. but i was still on the same beach, and i saw them distinctly now as soon as i stopped. dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green. `i cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. the red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt dead sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect. i moved on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun--a little larger, a little duller--the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks. and in the westward sky, i saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon. `so i travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate, watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. at last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. then i stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. and now it was flecked with white. a bitter cold assailed me. rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. to the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight of the sable sky and i could see an undulating crest of hillocks pinkish white. there were fringes of ice along the sea margin, with drifting masses further out; but the main expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still unfrozen. `i looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. a certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the machine. but i saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. the green slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. a shallow sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded from the beach. i fancied i saw some black object flopping about upon this bank, but it became motionless as i looked at it, and i judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was merely a rock. the stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very little. `suddenly i noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. i saw this grow larger. for a minute perhaps i stared aghast at this blackness that was creeping over the day, and then i realized that an eclipse was beginning. either the moon or the planet mercury was passing across the sun's disk. naturally, at first i took it to be the moon, but there is much to incline me to believe that what i really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to the earth. `the darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. from the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. silent? it would be hard to convey the stillness of it. all the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives--all that was over. as the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense. at last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into blackness. the breeze rose to a moaning wind. i saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. in another moment the pale stars alone were visible. all else was rayless obscurity. the sky was absolutely black. `a horror of this great darkness came on me. the cold, that smote to my marrow, and the pain i felt in breathing, overcame me. i shivered, and a deadly nausea seized me. then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. i got off the machine to recover myself. i felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. as i stood sick and confused i saw again the moving thing upon the shoal--there was no mistake now that it was a moving thing--against the red water of the sea. it was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. then i felt i was fainting. but a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote and awful twilight sustained me while i clambered upon the saddle. the time machine chapter xii `so i came back. for a long time i must have been insensible upon the machine. the blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed, the sun got golden again, the sky blue. i breathed with greater freedom. the fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. the hands spun backward upon the dials. at last i saw again the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity. these, too, changed and passed, and others came. presently, when the million dial was at zero, i slackened speed. i began to recognize our own petty and familiar architecture, the thousands hand ran back to the starting-point, the night and day flapped slower and slower. then the old walls of the laboratory came round me. very gently, now, i slowed the mechanism down. `i saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. i think i have told you that when i set out, before my velocity became very high, mrs. watchett had walked across the room, travelling, as it seemed to me, like a rocket. as i returned, i passed again across that minute when she traversed the laboratory. but now her every motion appeared to he the exact inversion of her previous ones. the door at the lower end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory, back foremost, and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered. just before that i seemed to see hillyer for a moment; but he passed like a flash. `then i stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar laboratory, my tools, my appliances just as i had left them. i got off the thing very shakily, and sat down upon my bench. for several minutes i trembled violently. then i became calmer. around me was my old workshop again, exactly as it had been. i might have slept there, and the whole thing have been a dream. `and yet, not exactly! the thing had started from the south-east corner of the laboratory. it had come to rest again in the north-west, against the wall where you saw it. that gives you the exact distance from my little lawn to the pedestal of the white sphinx, into which the morlocks had carried my machine. `for a time my brain went stagnant. presently i got up and came through the passage here, limping, because my heel was still painful, and feeling sorely begrimed. i saw the pall mall gazette on the table by the door. i found the date was indeed today, and looking at the timepiece, saw the hour was almost eight o'clock. i heard your voices and the clatter of plates. i hesitated--i felt so sick and weak. then i sniffed good wholesome meat, and opened the door on you. you know the rest. i washed, and dined, and now i am telling you the story. `i know,' he said, after a pause, `that all this will be absolutely incredible to you. to me the one incredible thing is that i am here to-night in this old familiar room looking into your friendly faces and telling you these strange adventures.' he looked at the medical man. `no. i cannot expect you to believe it. take it as a lie--or a prophecy. say i dreamed it in the workshop. consider i have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until i have hatched this fiction. treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. and taking it as a story, what do you think of it?' he took up his pipe, and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap with it nervously upon the bars of the grate. there was a momentary stillness. then chairs began to creak and shoes to scrape upon the carpet. i took my eyes off the time traveller's face, and looked round at his audience. they were in the dark, and little spots of colour swam before them. the medical man seemed absorbed in the contemplation of our host. the editor was looking hard at the end of his cigar--the sixth. the journalist fumbled for his watch. the others, as far as i remember, were motionless. the editor stood up with a sigh. `what a pity it is you're not a writer of stories!' he said, putting his hand on the time traveller's shoulder. `you don't believe it?' `well--' `i thought not.' the time traveller turned to us. `where are the matches?' he said. he lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing. `to tell you the truth ... i hardly believe it myself. ... and yet ...' his eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the withered white flowers upon the little table. then he turned over the hand holding his pipe, and i saw he was looking at some half-healed scars on his knuckles. the medical man rose, came to the lamp, and examined the flowers. `the gynaeceum's odd,' he said. the psychologist leant forward to see, holding out his hand for a specimen. `i'm hanged if it isn't a quarter to one,' said the journalist. `how shall we get home?' `plenty of cabs at the station,' said the psychologist. `it's a curious thing,' said the medical man; `but i certainly don't know the natural order of these flowers. may i have them?' the time traveller hesitated. then suddenly: `certainly not.' `where did you really get them?' said the medical man. the time traveller put his hand to his head. he spoke like one who was trying to keep hold of an idea that eluded him. `they were put into my pocket by weena, when i travelled into time.' he stared round the room. `i'm damned if it isn't all going. this room and you and the atmosphere of every day is too much for my memory. did i ever make a time machine, or a model of a time machine? or is it all only a dream? they say life is a dream, a precious poor dream at times--but i can't stand another that won't fit. it's madness. and where did the dream come from? ... i must look at that machine. if there is one!' he caught up the lamp swiftly, and carried it, flaring red, through the door into the corridor. we followed him. there in the flickering light of the lamp was the machine sure enough, squat, ugly, and askew; a thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent glimmering quartz. solid to the touch--for i put out my hand and felt the rail of it--and with brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail bent awry. the time traveller put the lamp down on the bench, and ran his hand along the damaged rail. `it's all right now,' he said. `the story i told you was true. i'm sorry to have brought you out here in the cold.' he took up the lamp, and, in an absolute silence, we returned to the smoking-room. he came into the hall with us and helped the editor on with his coat. the medical man looked into his face and, with a certain hesitation, told him he was suffering from overwork, at which he laughed hugely. i remember him standing in the open doorway, bawling good night. i shared a cab with the editor. he thought the tale a `gaudy lie.' for my own part i was unable to come to a conclusion. the story was so fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. i lay awake most of the night thinking about it. i determined to go next day and see the time traveller again. i was told he was in the laboratory, and being on easy terms in the house, i went up to him. the laboratory, however, was empty. i stared for a minute at the time machine and put out my hand and touched the lever. at that the squat substantial-looking mass swayed like a bough shaken by the wind. its instability startled me extremely, and i had a queer reminiscence of the childish days when i used to be forbidden to meddle. i came back through the corridor. the time traveller met me in the smoking-room. he was coming from the house. he had a small camera under one arm and a knapsack under the other. he laughed when he saw me, and gave me an elbow to shake. `i'm frightfully busy,' said he, `with that thing in there.' `but is it not some hoax?' i said. `do you really travel through time?' `really and truly i do.' and he looked frankly into my eyes. he hesitated. his eye wandered about the room. `i only want half an hour,' he said. `i know why you came, and it's awfully good of you. there's some magazines here. if you'll stop to lunch i'll prove you this time travelling up to the hilt, specimen and all. if you'll forgive my leaving you now?' i consented, hardly comprehending then the full import of his words, and he nodded and went on down the corridor. i heard the door of the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair, and took up a daily paper. what was he going to do before lunch-time? then suddenly i was reminded by an advertisement that i had promised to meet richardson, the publisher, at two. i looked at my watch, and saw that i could barely save that engagement. i got up and went down the passage to tell the time traveller. as i took hold of the handle of the door i heard an exclamation, oddly truncated at the end, and a click and a thud. a gust of air whirled round me as i opened the door, and from within came the sound of broken glass falling on the floor. the time traveller was not there. i seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and brass for a moment--a figure so transparent that the bench behind with its sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct; but this phantasm vanished as i rubbed my eyes. the time machine had gone. save for a subsiding stir of dust, the further end of the laboratory was empty. a pane of the skylight had, apparently, just been blow in. i felt an unreasonable amazement. i knew that something strange had happened, and for the moment could not distinguish what the strange thing might be. as i stood staring, the door into the garden opened, and the man-servant appeared. we looked at each other. then ideas began to come. `has mr.--gone out that way?' said i. `no, sir. no one has come out this way. i was expecting to find him here.' at that i understood. at the risk of disappointing richardson i stayed on, waiting for the time traveller; waiting for the second, perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens and photographs he would bring with him. but i am beginning now to fear that i must wait a lifetime. the time traveller vanished three years ago. and, as everybody knows now, he has never returned. the time machine epilogue one cannot choose but wonder. will he ever return? it may be that he swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy savages of the age of unpolished stone; into the abysses of the cretaceous sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the jurassic times. he may even now--if i may use the phrase--be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the triassic age. or did he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men, but with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome problems solved? into the manhood of the race: for i, for my own part, cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man's culminating time! i say, for my own part. he, i know--for the question had been discussed among us long before the time machine was made--thought but cheerlessly of the advancement of mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. if that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. but to me the future is still black and blank--is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. and i have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers- shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle--to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man. . the rape of lucrece to the right honorable henry wriothesly, earl of southampton, and baron of tichfield. the love i dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. the warrant i have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. what i have done is yours; what i have to do is yours; being part in all i have, devoted yours. were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom i wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness. your lordship's in all duty, william shakespeare. the rape of lucrece the argument lucius tarquinius, for his excessive pride surnamed superbus, after he had caused his own father-in-law servius tullius to be cruelly murdered, and, contrary to the roman laws and customs, not requiring or staying for the people's suffrages, had possessed himself of the kingdom, went, accompanied with his sons and other noblemen of rome, to besiege ardea. during which siege the principal men of the army meeting one evening at the tent of sextus tarquinius, the king's son, in their discourses after supper every one commended the virtues of his own wife: among whom collatinus extolled the incomparable chastity of his wife lucretia. in that pleasant humour they posted to rome; and intending, by their secret and sudden arrival, to make trial of that which every one had before avouched, only collatinus finds his wife, though it were late in the night, spinning amongst her maids: the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or in several disports. whereupon the noblemen yielded collatinus the victory, and his wife the fame. at that time sextus tarquinius being inflamed with lucrece' beauty, yet smothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and was, according to his estate, royally entertained and lodged by lucrece at collatium. the same night he treacherously stealeth into her chamber, violently ravished her, and early in the morning speedeth away. lucrece, in this lamentable plight, hastily dispatcheth messengers, one to rome for her father, another to the camp for collatine. they came, the one accompanied with junius brutus, the other with publius valerius; and finding lucrece attired in mourning habit, demanded the cause of her sorrow. she, first taking an oath of them for her revenge, revealed the actor, and whole manner of his dealing, and withal suddenly stabbed herself. which done, with one consent they all vowed to root out the whole hated family of the tarquins; and bearing the dead body to rome, brutus acquainted the people with the doer and manner of the vile deed, with a bitter invective against the tyranny of the king: wherewith the people were so moved, that with one consent and a general acclamation the tarquins were all exiled, and the state government changed from kings to consuls. the rape of lucrece from the besieged ardea all in post, borne by the trustless wings of false desire, lust-breathed tarquin leaves the roman host, and to collatium bears the lightless fire which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire and girdle with embracing flames the waist of collatine's fair love, lucrece the chaste. haply that name of 'chaste' unhappily set this bateless edge on his keen appetite; when collatine unwisely did not let to praise the clear unmatched red and white which triumph'd in that sky of his delight, where mortal stars, as bright as heaven's beauties, with pure aspects did him peculiar duties. for he the night before, in tarquin's tent, unlock'd the treasure of his happy state; what priceless wealth the heavens had him lent in the possession of his beauteous mate; reckoning his fortune at such high-proud rate, that kings might be espoused to more fame, but king nor peer to such a peerless dame. o happiness enjoy'd but of a few! and, if possess'd, as soon decay'd and done as is the morning's silver-melting dew against the golden splendor of the sun! an expired date, cancell'd ere well begun: honour and beauty, in the owner's arms, are weakly fortress'd from a world of harms. beauty itself doth of itself persuade the eyes of men without an orator; what needeth then apologies be made, to set forth that which is so singular? or why is collatine the publisher of that rich jewel he should keep unknown from thievish ears, because it is his own? perchance his boast of lucrece' sovereignty suggested this proud issue of a king; for by our ears our hearts oft tainted be: perchance that envy of so rich a thing, braving compare, disdainfully did sting his high-pitch'd thoughts, that meaner men should vaunt that golden hap which their superiors want. but some untimely thought did instigate his all-too-timeless speed, if none of those: his honour, his affairs, his friends, his state, neglected all, with swift intent he goes to quench the coal which in his liver glows. o rash false heat, wrapp'd in repentant cold, thy hasty spring still blasts, and ne'er grows old! when at collatium this false lord arrived, well was he welcomed by the roman dame, within whose face beauty and virtue strived which of them both should underprop her fame: when virtue bragg'd, beauty would blush for shame; when beauty boasted blushes, in despite virtue would stain that o'er with silver white. but beauty, in that white intituled, from venus' doves doth challenge that fair field: then virtue claims from beauty beauty's red, which virtue gave the golden age to gild their silver cheeks, and call'd it then their shield; teaching them thus to use it in the fight, when shame assail'd, the red should fence the white. this heraldry in lucrece' face was seen, argued by beauty's red and virtue's white of either's colour was the other queen, proving from world's minority their right: yet their ambition makes them still to fight; the sovereignty of either being so great, that oft they interchange each other's seat. their silent war of lilies and of roses, which tarquin view'd in her fair face's field, in their pure ranks his traitor eye encloses; where, lest between them both it should be kill'd, the coward captive vanquished doth yield to those two armies that would let him go, rather than triumph in so false a foe. now thinks he that her husband's shallow tongue,-the niggard prodigal that praised her so,-in that high task hath done her beauty wrong, which far exceeds his barren skill to show: therefore that praise which collatine doth owe enchanted tarquin answers with surmise, in silent wonder of still-gazing eyes. this earthly saint, adored by this devil, little suspecteth the false worshipper; for unstain'd thoughts do seldom dream on evil; birds never limed no secret bushes fear: so guiltless she securely gives good cheer and reverend welcome to her princely guest, whose inward ill no outward harm express'd: for that he colour'd with his high estate, hiding base sin in plaits of majesty; that nothing in him seem'd inordinate, save something too much wonder of his eye, which, having all, all could not satisfy; but, poorly rich, so wanteth in his store, that, cloy'd with much, he pineth still for more. but she, that never coped with stranger eyes, could pick no meaning from their parling looks, nor read the subtle-shining secrecies writ in the glassy margents of such books: she touch'd no unknown baits, nor fear'd no hooks; nor could she moralize his wanton sight, more than his eyes were open'd to the light. he stories to her ears her husband's fame, won in the fields of fruitful italy; and decks with praises collatine's high name, made glorious by his manly chivalry with bruised arms and wreaths of victory: her joy with heaved-up hand she doth express, and, wordless, so greets heaven for his success. far from the purpose of his coming hither, he makes excuses for his being there: no cloudy show of stormy blustering weather doth yet in his fair welkin once appear; till sable night, mother of dread and fear, upon the world dim darkness doth display, and in her vaulty prison stows the day. for then is tarquin brought unto his bed, intending weariness with heavy spright; for, after supper, long he questioned with modest lucrece, and wore out the night: now leaden slumber with life's strength doth fight; and every one to rest themselves betake, save thieves, and cares, and troubled minds, that wake. as one of which doth tarquin lie revolving the sundry dangers of his will's obtaining; yet ever to obtain his will resolving, though weak-built hopes persuade him to abstaining: despair to gain doth traffic oft for gaining; and when great treasure is the meed proposed, though death be adjunct, there's no death supposed. those that much covet are with gain so fond, for what they have not, that which they possess they scatter and unloose it from their bond, and so, by hoping more, they have but less; or, gaining more, the profit of excess is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain, that they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain. the aim of all is but to nurse the life with honour, wealth, and ease, in waning age; and in this aim there is such thwarting strife, that one for all, or all for one we gage; as life for honour in fell battle's rage; honour for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost the death of all, and all together lost. so that in venturing ill we leave to be the things we are for that which we expect; and this ambitious foul infirmity, in having much, torments us with defect of that we have: so then we do neglect the thing we have; and, all for want of wit, make something nothing by augmenting it. such hazard now must doting tarquin make, pawning his honour to obtain his lust; and for himself himself be must forsake: then where is truth, if there be no self-trust? when shall he think to find a stranger just, when he himself himself confounds, betrays to slanderous tongues and wretched hateful days? now stole upon the time the dead of night, when heavy sleep had closed up mortal eyes: no comfortable star did lend his light, no noise but owls' and wolves' death-boding cries; now serves the season that they may surprise the silly lambs: pure thoughts are dead and still, while lust and murder wake to stain and kill. and now this lustful lord leap'd from his bed, throwing his mantle rudely o'er his arm; is madly toss'd between desire and dread; th' one sweetly flatters, th' other feareth harm; but honest fear, bewitch'd with lust's foul charm, doth too too oft betake him to retire, beaten away by brain-sick rude desire. his falchion on a flint he softly smiteth, that from the cold stone sparks of fire do fly; whereat a waxen torch forthwith he lighteth, which must be lode-star to his lustful eye; and to the flame thus speaks advisedly, 'as from this cold flint i enforced this fire, so lucrece must i force to my desire.' here pale with fear he doth premeditate the dangers of his loathsome enterprise, and in his inward mind he doth debate what following sorrow may on this arise: then looking scornfully, he doth despise his naked armour of still-slaughter'd lust, and justly thus controls his thoughts unjust: 'fair torch, burn out thy light, and lend it not to darken her whose light excelleth thine: and die, unhallow'd thoughts, before you blot with your uncleanness that which is divine; offer pure incense to so pure a shrine: let fair humanity abhor the deed that spots and stains love's modest snow-white weed. 'o shame to knighthood and to shining arms! o foul dishonour to my household's grave! o impious act, including all foul harms! a martial man to be soft fancy's slave! true valour still a true respect should have; then my digression is so vile, so base, that it will live engraven in my face. 'yea, though i die, the scandal will survive, and be an eye-sore in my golden coat; some loathsome dash the herald will contrive, to cipher me how fondly i did dote; that my posterity, shamed with the note shall curse my bones, and hold it for no sin to wish that i their father had not bin. 'what win i, if i gain the thing i seek? a dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week? or sells eternity to get a toy? for one sweet grape who will the vine destroy? or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown, would with the sceptre straight be strucken down? 'if collatinus dream of my intent, will he not wake, and in a desperate rage post hither, this vile purpose to prevent? this siege that hath engirt his marriage, this blur to youth, this sorrow to the sage, this dying virtue, this surviving shame, whose crime will bear an ever-during blame? 'o, what excuse can my invention make, when thou shalt charge me with so black a deed? will not my tongue be mute, my frail joints shake, mine eyes forego their light, my false heart bleed? the guilt being great, the fear doth still exceed; and extreme fear can neither fight nor fly, but coward-like with trembling terror die. 'had collatinus kill'd my son or sire, or lain in ambush to betray my life, or were he not my dear friend, this desire might have excuse to work upon his wife, as in revenge or quittal of such strife: but as he is my kinsman, my dear friend, the shame and fault finds no excuse nor end. 'shameful it is; ay, if the fact be known: hateful it is; there is no hate in loving: i'll beg her love; but she is own: the worst is but denial and reproving: my will is strong, past reason's weak removing. who fears a sentence or an old man's saw shall by a painted cloth be kept in awe.' thus, graceless, holds he disputation 'tween frozen conscience and hot-burning will, and with good thoughts make dispensation, urging the worser sense for vantage still; which in a moment doth confound and kill all pure effects, and doth so far proceed, that what is vile shows like a virtuous deed. quoth he, 'she took me kindly by the hand, and gazed for tidings in my eager eyes, fearing some hard news from the warlike band, where her beloved collatinus lies. o, how her fear did make her colour rise! first red as roses that on lawn we lay, then white as lawn, the roses took away. 'and how her hand, in my hand being lock'd forced it to tremble with her loyal fear! which struck her sad, and then it faster rock'd, until her husband's welfare she did hear; whereat she smiled with so sweet a cheer, that had narcissus seen her as she stood, self-love had never drown'd him in the flood. 'why hunt i then for colour or excuses? all orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth; poor wretches have remorse in poor abuses; love thrives not in the heart that shadows dreadeth: affection is my captain, and he leadeth; and when his gaudy banner is display'd, the coward fights and will not be dismay'd. 'then, childish fear, avaunt! debating, die! respect and reason, wait on wrinkled age! my heart shall never countermand mine eye: sad pause and deep regard beseem the sage; my part is youth, and beats these from the stage: desire my pilot is, beauty my prize; then who fears sinking where such treasure lies?' as corn o'ergrown by weeds, so heedful fear is almost choked by unresisted lust. away he steals with open listening ear, full of foul hope and full of fond mistrust; both which, as servitors to the unjust, so cross him with their opposite persuasion, that now he vows a league, and now invasion. within his thought her heavenly image sits, and in the self-same seat sits collatine: that eye which looks on her confounds his wits; that eye which him beholds, as more divine, unto a view so false will not incline; but with a pure appeal seeks to the heart, which once corrupted takes the worser part; and therein heartens up his servile powers, who, flatter'd by their leader's jocund show, stuff up his lust, as minutes fill up hours; and as their captain, so their pride doth grow, paying more slavish tribute than they owe. by reprobate desire thus madly led, the roman lord marcheth to lucrece' bed. the locks between her chamber and his will, each one by him enforced, retires his ward; but, as they open, they all rate his ill, which drives the creeping thief to some regard: the threshold grates the door to have him heard; night-wandering weasels shriek to see him there; they fright him, yet he still pursues his fear. as each unwilling portal yields him way, through little vents and crannies of the place the wind wars with his torch to make him stay, and blows the smoke of it into his face, extinguishing his conduct in this case; but his hot heart, which fond desire doth scorch, puffs forth another wind that fires the torch: and being lighted, by the light he spies lucretia's glove, wherein her needle sticks: he takes it from the rushes where it lies, and griping it, the needle his finger pricks; as who should say 'this glove to wanton tricks is not inured; return again in haste; thou see'st our mistress' ornaments are chaste.' but all these poor forbiddings could not stay him; he in the worst sense construes their denial: the doors, the wind, the glove, that did delay him, he takes for accidental things of trial; or as those bars which stop the hourly dial, who with a lingering slay his course doth let, till every minute pays the hour his debt. 'so, so,' quoth he, 'these lets attend the time, like little frosts that sometime threat the spring, to add a more rejoicing to the prime, and give the sneaped birds more cause to sing. pain pays the income of each precious thing; huge rocks, high winds, strong pirates, shelves and sands, the merchant fears, ere rich at home he lands.' now is he come unto the chamber-door, that shuts him from the heaven of his thought, which with a yielding latch, and with no more, hath barr'd him from the blessed thing be sought. so from himself impiety hath wrought, that for his prey to pray he doth begin, as if the heavens should countenance his sin. but in the midst of his unfruitful prayer, having solicited th' eternal power that his foul thoughts might compass his fair fair, and they would stand auspicious to the hour, even there he starts: quoth he, 'i must deflower: the powers to whom i pray abhor this fact, how can they then assist me in the act? 'then love and fortune be my gods, my guide! my will is back'd with resolution: thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried; the blackest sin is clear'd with absolution; against love's fire fear's frost hath dissolution. the eye of heaven is out, and misty night covers the shame that follows sweet delight.' this said, his guilty hand pluck'd up the latch, and with his knee the door he opens wide. the dove sleeps fast that this night-owl will catch: thus treason works ere traitors be espied. who sees the lurking serpent steps aside; but she, sound sleeping, fearing no such thing, lies at the mercy of his mortal sting. into the chamber wickedly he stalks, and gazeth on her yet unstained bed. the curtains being close, about he walks, rolling his greedy eyeballs in his head: by their high treason is his heart misled; which gives the watch-word to his hand full soon to draw the cloud that hides the silver moon. look, as the fair and fiery-pointed sun, rushing from forth a cloud, bereaves our sight; even so, the curtain drawn, his eyes begun to wink, being blinded with a greater light: whether it is that she reflects so bright, that dazzleth them, or else some shame supposed; but blind they are, and keep themselves enclosed. o, had they in that darksome prison died! then had they seen the period of their ill; then collatine again, by lucrece' side, in his clear bed might have reposed still: but they must ope, this blessed league to kill; and holy-thoughted lucrece to their sight must sell her joy, her life, her world's delight. her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under, cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss; who, therefore angry, seems to part in sunder, swelling on either side to want his bliss; between whose hills her head entombed is: where, like a virtuous monument, she lies, to be admired of lewd unhallow'd eyes. without the bed her other fair hand was, on the green coverlet; whose perfect white show'd like an april daisy on the grass, with pearly sweat, resembling dew of night. her eyes, like marigolds, had sheathed their light, and canopied in darkness sweetly lay, till they might open to adorn the day. her hair, like golden threads, play'd with her breath; o modest wantons! wanton modesty! showing life's triumph in the map of death, and death's dim look in life's mortality: each in her sleep themselves so beautify, as if between them twain there were no strife, but that life lived in death, and death in life. her breasts, like ivory globes circled with blue, a pair of maiden worlds unconquered, save of their lord no bearing yoke they knew, and him by oath they truly honoured. these worlds in tarquin new ambition bred; who, like a foul ursurper, went about from this fair throne to heave the owner out. what could he see but mightily he noted? what did he note but strongly he desired? what he beheld, on that he firmly doted, and in his will his wilful eye he tired. with more than admiration he admired her azure veins, her alabaster skin, her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin. as the grim lion fawneth o'er his prey, sharp hunger by the conquest satisfied, so o'er this sleeping soul doth tarquin stay, his rage of lust by gazing qualified; slack'd, not suppress'd; for standing by her side, his eye, which late this mutiny restrains, unto a greater uproar tempts his veins: and they, like straggling slaves for pillage fighting, obdurate vassals fell exploits effecting, in bloody death and ravishment delighting, nor children's tears nor mothers' groans respecting, swell in their pride, the onset still expecting: anon his beating heart, alarum striking, gives the hot charge and bids them do their liking. his drumming heart cheers up his burning eye, his eye commends the leading to his hand; his hand, as proud of such a dignity, smoking with pride, march'd on to make his stand on her bare breast, the heart of all her land; whose ranks of blue veins, as his hand did scale, left there round turrets destitute and pale. they, mustering to the quiet cabinet where their dear governess and lady lies, do tell her she is dreadfully beset, and fright her with confusion of their cries: she, much amazed, breaks ope her lock'd-up eyes, who, peeping forth this tumult to behold, are by his flaming torch dimm'd and controll'd. imagine her as one in dead of night from forth dull sleep by dreadful fancy waking, that thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite, whose grim aspect sets every joint a-shaking; what terror or 'tis! but she, in worser taking, from sleep disturbed, heedfully doth view the sight which makes supposed terror true. wrapp'd and confounded in a thousand fears, like to a new-kill'd bird she trembling lies; she dares not look; yet, winking, there appears quick-shifting antics, ugly in her eyes: such shadows are the weak brain's forgeries; who, angry that the eyes fly from their lights, in darkness daunts them with more dreadful sights. his hand, that yet remains upon her breast,-rude ram, to batter such an ivory wall!-may feel her heart-poor citizen!--distress'd, wounding itself to death, rise up and fall, beating her bulk, that his hand shakes withal. this moves in him more rage and lesser pity, to make the breach and enter this sweet city. first, like a trumpet, doth his tongue begin to sound a parley to his heartless foe; who o'er the white sheet peers her whiter chin, the reason of this rash alarm to know, which he by dumb demeanor seeks to show; but she with vehement prayers urgeth still under what colour he commits this ill. thus he replies: 'the colour in thy face, that even for anger makes the lily pale, and the red rose blush at her own disgrace, shall plead for me and tell my loving tale: under that colour am i come to scale thy never-conquer'd fort: the fault is thine, for those thine eyes betray thee unto mine. 'thus i forestall thee, if thou mean to chide: thy beauty hath ensnared thee to this night, where thou with patience must my will abide; my will that marks thee for my earth's delight, which i to conquer sought with all my might; but as reproof and reason beat it dead, by thy bright beauty was it newly bred. 'i see what crosses my attempt will bring; i know what thorns the growing rose defends; i think the honey guarded with a sting; all this beforehand counsel comprehends: but will is deaf and hears no heedful friends; only he hath an eye to gaze on beauty, and dotes on what he looks, 'gainst law or duty. 'i have debated, even in my soul, what wrong, what shame, what sorrow i shall breed; but nothing can affection's course control, or stop the headlong fury of his speed. i know repentant tears ensue the deed, reproach, disdain, and deadly enmity; yet strive i to embrace mine infamy.' this said, he shakes aloft his roman blade, which, like a falcon towering in the skies, coucheth the fowl below with his wings' shade, whose crooked beak threats if he mount he dies: so under his insulting falchion lies harmless lucretia, marking what he tells with trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon's bells. 'lucrece,' quoth he,'this night i must enjoy thee: if thou deny, then force must work my way, for in thy bed i purpose to destroy thee: that done, some worthless slave of thine i'll slay, to kill thine honour with thy life's decay; and in thy dead arms do i mean to place him, swearing i slew him, seeing thee embrace him. 'so thy surviving husband shall remain the scornful mark of every open eye; thy kinsmen hang their heads at this disdain, thy issue blurr'd with nameless bastardy: and thou, the author of their obloquy, shalt have thy trespass cited up in rhymes, and sung by children in succeeding times. 'but if thou yield, i rest thy secret friend: the fault unknown is as a thought unacted; a little harm done to a great good end for lawful policy remains enacted. the poisonous simple sometimes is compacted in a pure compound; being so applied, his venom in effect is purified. 'then, for thy husband and thy children's sake, tender my suit: bequeath not to their lot the shame that from them no device can take, the blemish that will never be forgot; worse than a slavish wipe or birth-hour's blot: for marks descried in men's nativity are nature's faults, not their own infamy.' here with a cockatrice' dead-killing eye he rouseth up himself and makes a pause; while she, the picture of pure piety, like a white hind under the gripe's sharp claws, pleads, in a wilderness where are no laws, to the rough beast that knows no gentle right, nor aught obeys but his foul appetite. but when a black-faced cloud the world doth threat, in his dim mist the aspiring mountains hiding, from earth's dark womb some gentle gust doth get, which blows these pitchy vapours from their bidding, hindering their present fall by this dividing; so his unhallow'd haste her words delays, and moody pluto winks while orpheus plays. yet, foul night-waking cat, he doth but dally, while in his hold-fast foot the weak mouse panteth: her sad behavior feeds his vulture folly, a swallowing gulf that even in plenty wanteth: his ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth no penetrable entrance to her plaining: tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining. her pity-pleading eyes are sadly fix'd in the remorseless wrinkles of his face; her modest eloquence with sighs is mix'd, which to her oratory adds more grace. she puts the period often from his place; and midst the sentence so her accent breaks, that twice she doth begin ere once she speaks. she conjures him by high almighty jove, by knighthood, gentry, and sweet friendship's oath, by her untimely tears, her husband's love, by holy human law, and common troth, by heaven and earth, and all the power of both, that to his borrow'd bed he make retire, and stoop to honour, not to foul desire. quoth she, 'reward not hospitality with such black payment as thou hast pretended; mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee; mar not the thing that cannot be amended; end thy ill aim before thy shoot be ended; he is no woodman that doth bend his bow to strike a poor unseasonable doe. 'my husband is thy friend; for his sake spare me: thyself art mighty; for thine own sake leave me: myself a weakling; do not then ensnare me: thou look'st not like deceit; do not deceive me. my sighs, like whirlwinds, labour hence to heave thee: if ever man were moved with woman moans, be moved with my tears, my sighs, my groans: 'all which together, like a troubled ocean, beat at thy rocky and wreck-threatening heart, to soften it with their continual motion; for stones dissolved to water do convert. o, if no harder than a stone thou art, melt at my tears, and be compassionate! soft pity enters at an iron gate. 'in tarquin's likeness i did entertain thee: hast thou put on his shape to do him shame? to all the host of heaven i complain me, thou wrong'st his honour, wound'st his princely name. thou art not what thou seem'st; and if the same, thou seem'st not what thou art, a god, a king; for kings like gods should govern everything. 'how will thy shame be seeded in thine age, when thus thy vices bud before thy spring! if in thy hope thou darest do such outrage, what darest thou not when once thou art a king? o, be remember'd, no outrageous thing from vassal actors can be wiped away; then kings' misdeeds cannot be hid in clay. 'this deed will make thee only loved for fear; but happy monarchs still are fear'd for love: with foul offenders thou perforce must bear, when they in thee the like offences prove: if but for fear of this, thy will remove; for princes are the glass, the school, the book, where subjects' eyes do learn, do read, do look. 'and wilt thou be the school where lust shall learn? must he in thee read lectures of such shame? wilt thou be glass wherein it shall discern authority for sin, warrant for blame, to privilege dishonour in thy name? thou black'st reproach against long-living laud, and makest fair reputation but a bawd. 'hast thou command? by him that gave it thee, from a pure heart command thy rebel will: draw not thy sword to guard iniquity, for it was lent thee all that brood to kill. thy princely office how canst thou fulfil, when, pattern'd by thy fault, foul sin may say, he learn'd to sin, and thou didst teach the way? 'think but how vile a spectacle it were, to view thy present trespass in another. men's faults do seldom to themselves appear; their own transgressions partially they smother: this guilt would seem death-worthy in thy brother. o, how are they wrapp'd in with infamies that from their own misdeeds askance their eyes! 'to thee, to thee, my heaved-up hands appeal, not to seducing lust, thy rash relier: i sue for exiled majesty's repeal; let him return, and flattering thoughts retire: his true respect will prison false desire, and wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne, that thou shalt see thy state and pity mine.' 'have done,' quoth he: 'my uncontrolled tide turns not, but swells the higher by this let. small lights are soon blown out, huge fires abide, and with the wind in greater fury fret: the petty streams that pay a daily debt to their salt sovereign, with their fresh falls' haste add to his flow, but alter not his taste.' 'thou art,' quoth she, 'a sea, a sovereign king; and, lo, there falls into thy boundless flood black lust, dishonour, shame, misgoverning, who seek to stain the ocean of thy blood. if all these pretty ills shall change thy good, thy sea within a puddle's womb is hearsed, and not the puddle in thy sea dispersed. 'so shall these slaves be king, and thou their slave; thou nobly base, they basely dignified; thou their fair life, and they thy fouler grave: thou loathed in their shame, they in thy pride: the lesser thing should not the greater hide; the cedar stoops not to the base shrub's foot, but low shrubs wither at the cedar's root. 'so let thy thoughts, low vassals to thy state'-no more,' quoth he; 'by heaven, i will not hear thee: yield to my love; if not, enforced hate, instead of love's coy touch, shall rudely tear thee; that done, despitefully i mean to bear thee unto the base bed of some rascal groom, to be thy partner in this shameful doom.' this said, he sets his foot upon the light, for light and lust are deadly enemies: shame folded up in blind concealing night, when most unseen, then most doth tyrannize. the wolf hath seized his prey, the poor lamb cries; till with her own white fleece her voice controll'd entombs her outcry in her lips' sweet fold: for with the nightly linen that she wears he pens her piteous clamours in her head; cooling his hot face in the chastest tears that ever modest eyes with sorrow shed. o, that prone lust should stain so pure a bed! the spots whereof could weeping purify, her tears should drop on them perpetually. but she hath lost a dearer thing than life, and he hath won what he would lose again: this forced league doth force a further strife; this momentary joy breeds months of pain; this hot desire converts to cold disdain: pure chastity is rifled of her store, and lust, the thief, far poorer than before. look, as the full-fed hound or gorged hawk, unapt for tender smell or speedy flight, make slow pursuit, or altogether balk the prey wherein by nature they delight; so surfeit-taking tarquin fares this night: his taste delicious, in digestion souring, devours his will, that lived by foul devouring. o, deeper sin than bottomless conceit can comprehend in still imagination! drunken desire must vomit his receipt, ere he can see his own abomination. while lust is in his pride, no exclamation can curb his heat or rein his rash desire, till like a jade self-will himself doth tire. and then with lank and lean discolour'd cheek, with heavy eye, knit brow, and strengthless pace, feeble desire, all recreant, poor, and meek, like to a bankrupt beggar wails his case: the flesh being proud, desire doth fight with grace, for there it revels; and when that decays, the guilty rebel for remission prays. so fares it with this faultful lord of rome, who this accomplishment so hotly chased; for now against himself he sounds this doom, that through the length of times he stands disgraced: besides, his soul's fair temple is defaced; to whose weak ruins muster troops of cares, to ask the spotted princess how she fares. she says, her subjects with foul insurrection have batter'd down her consecrated wall, and by their mortal fault brought in subjection her immortality, and made her thrall to living death and pain perpetual: which in her prescience she controlled still, but her foresight could not forestall their will. even in this thought through the dark night he stealeth, a captive victor that hath lost in gain; bearing away the wound that nothing healeth, the scar that will, despite of cure, remain; leaving his spoil perplex'd in greater pain. she bears the load of lust he left behind, and he the burden of a guilty mind. he like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence; she like a wearied lamb lies panting there; he scowls and hates himself for his offence; she, desperate, with her nails her flesh doth tear; he faintly flies, sneaking with guilty fear; she stays, exclaiming on the direful night; he runs, and chides his vanish'd, loathed delight. he thence departs a heavy convertite; she there remains a hopeless castaway; he in his speed looks for the morning light; she prays she never may behold the day, 'for day,' quoth she, 'nights scapes doth open lay, and my true eyes have never practised how to cloak offences with a cunning brow. 'they think not but that every eye can see the same disgrace which they themselves behold; and therefore would they still in darkness be, to have their unseen sin remain untold; for they their guilt with weeping will unfold, and grave, like water that doth eat in steel, upon my cheeks what helpless shame i feel.' here she exclaims against repose and rest, and bids her eyes hereafter still be blind. she wakes her heart by beating on her breast, and bids it leap from thence, where it may find some purer chest to close so pure a mind. frantic with grief thus breathes she forth her spite against the unseen secrecy of night: 'o comfort-killing night, image of hell! dim register and notary of shame! black stage for tragedies and murders fell! vast sin-concealing chaos! nurse of blame! blind muffled bawd! dark harbour for defame! grim cave of death! whispering conspirator with close-tongued treason and the ravisher! 'o hateful, vaporous, and foggy night! since thou art guilty of my cureless crime, muster thy mists to meet the eastern light, make war against proportion'd course of time; or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb his wonted height, yet ere he go to bed, knit poisonous clouds about his golden head. 'with rotten damps ravish the morning air; let their exhaled unwholesome breaths make sick the life of purity, the supreme fair, ere he arrive his weary noon-tide prick; and let thy misty vapours march so thick, that in their smoky ranks his smother'd light may set at noon and make perpetual night. 'were tarquin night, as he is but night's child, the silver-shining queen he would distain; her twinkling handmaids too, by him defiled, through night's black bosom should not peep again: so should i have co-partners in my pain; and fellowship in woe doth woe assuage, as palmers' chat makes short their pilgrimage. 'where now i have no one to blush with me, to cross their arms and hang their heads with mine, to mask their brows and hide their infamy; but i alone alone must sit and pine, seasoning the earth with showers of silver brine, mingling my talk with tears, my grief with groans, poor wasting monuments of lasting moans. 'o night, thou furnace of foul-reeking smoke, let not the jealous day behold that face which underneath thy black all-hiding cloak immodestly lies martyr'd with disgrace! keep still possession of thy gloomy place, that all the faults which in thy reign are made may likewise be sepulchred in thy shade! 'make me not object to the tell-tale day! the light will show, character'd in my brow, the story of sweet chastity's decay, the impious breach of holy wedlock vow: yea the illiterate, that know not how to cipher what is writ in learned books, will quote my loathsome trespass in my looks. 'the nurse, to still her child, will tell my story, and fright her crying babe with tarquin's name; the orator, to deck his oratory, will couple my reproach to tarquin's shame; feast-finding minstrels, tuning my defame, will tie the hearers to attend each line, how tarquin wronged me, i collatine. 'let my good name, that senseless reputation, for collatine's dear love be kept unspotted: if that be made a theme for disputation, the branches of another root are rotted, and undeserved reproach to him allotted that is as clear from this attaint of mine as i, ere this, was pure to collatine. 'o unseen shame! invisible disgrace! o unfelt sore! crest-wounding, private scar! reproach is stamp'd in collatinus' face, and tarquin's eye may read the mot afar, how he in peace is wounded, not in war. alas, how many bear such shameful blows, which not themselves, but he that gives them knows! 'if, collatine, thine honour lay in me, from me by strong assault it is bereft. my honour lost, and i, a drone-like bee, have no perfection of my summer left, but robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft: in thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept, and suck'd the honey which thy chaste bee kept. 'yet am i guilty of thy honour's wrack; yet for thy honour did i entertain him; coming from thee, i could not put him back, for it had been dishonour to disdain him: besides, of weariness he did complain him, and talk'd of virtue: o unlook'd-for evil, when virtue is profaned in such a devil! 'why should the worm intrude the maiden bud? or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows' nests? or toads infect fair founts with venom mud? or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts? or kings be breakers of their own behests? but no perfection is so absolute, that some impurity doth not pollute. 'the aged man that coffers-up his gold is plagued with cramps and gouts and painful fits; and scarce hath eyes his treasure to behold, but like still-pining tantalus he sits, and useless barns the harvest of his wits; having no other pleasure of his gain but torment that it cannot cure his pain. 'so then he hath it when he cannot use it, and leaves it to be master'd by his young; who in their pride do presently abuse it: their father was too weak, and they too strong, to hold their cursed-blessed fortune long. the sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours even in the moment that we call them ours. 'unruly blasts wait on the tender spring; unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers; the adder hisses where the sweet birds sing; what virtue breeds iniquity devours: we have no good that we can say is ours, but ill-annexed opportunity or kills his life or else his quality. 'o opportunity, thy guilt is great! 'tis thou that executest the traitor's treason: thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get; whoever plots the sin, thou 'point'st the season; 'tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason; and in thy shady cell, where none may spy him, sits sin, to seize the souls that wander by him. 'thou makest the vestal violate her oath; thou blow'st the fire when temperance is thaw'd; thou smother'st honesty, thou murder'st troth; thou foul abettor! thou notorious bawd! thou plantest scandal and displacest laud: thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief, thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief! 'thy secret pleasure turns to open shame, thy private feasting to a public fast, thy smoothing titles to a ragged name, thy sugar'd tongue to bitter wormwood taste: thy violent vanities can never last. how comes it then, vile opportunity, being so bad, such numbers seek for thee? 'when wilt thou be the humble suppliant's friend, and bring him where his suit may be obtain'd? when wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end? or free that soul which wretchedness hath chain'd? give physic to the sick, ease to the pain'd? the poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee; but they ne'er meet with opportunity. 'the patient dies while the physician sleeps; the orphan pines while the oppressor feeds; justice is feasting while the widow weeps; advice is sporting while infection breeds: thou grant'st no time for charitable deeds: wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder's rages, thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages. 'when truth and virtue have to do with thee, a thousand crosses keep them from thy aid: they buy thy help; but sin ne'er gives a fee, he gratis comes; and thou art well appaid as well to hear as grant what he hath said. my collatine would else have come to me when tarquin did, but he was stay'd by thee. guilty thou art of murder and of theft, guilty of perjury and subornation, guilty of treason, forgery, and shift, guilty of incest, that abomination; an accessary by thine inclination to all sins past, and all that are to come, from the creation to the general doom. 'mis-shapen time, copesmate of ugly night, swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care, eater of youth, false slave to false delight, base watch of woes, sin's pack-horse, virtue's snare; thou nursest all and murder'st all that are: o, hear me then, injurious, shifting time! be guilty of my death, since of my crime. 'why hath thy servant, opportunity, betray'd the hours thou gavest me to repose, cancell'd my fortunes, and enchained me to endless date of never-ending woes? time's office is to fine the hate of foes; to eat up errors by opinion bred, not spend the dowry of a lawful bed. 'time's glory is to calm contending kings, to unmask falsehood and bring truth to light, to stamp the seal of time in aged things, to wake the morn and sentinel the night, to wrong the wronger till he render right, to ruinate proud buildings with thy hours, and smear with dust their glittering golden towers; 'to fill with worm-holes stately monuments, to feed oblivion with decay of things, to blot old books and alter their contents, to pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings, to dry the old oak's sap and cherish springs, to spoil antiquities of hammer'd steel, and turn the giddy round of fortune's wheel; 'to show the beldam daughters of her daughter, to make the child a man, the man a child, to slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter, to tame the unicorn and lion wild, to mock the subtle in themselves beguiled, to cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops, and waste huge stones with little water drops. 'why work'st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage, unless thou couldst return to make amends? one poor retiring minute in an age would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends, lending him wit that to bad debtors lends: o, this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come back, i could prevent this storm and shun thy wrack! 'thou ceaseless lackey to eternity, with some mischance cross tarquin in his flight: devise extremes beyond extremity, to make him curse this cursed crimeful night: let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright; and the dire thought of his committed evil shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil. 'disturb his hours of rest with restless trances, afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans; let there bechance him pitiful mischances, to make him moan; but pity not his moans: stone him with harden'd hearts harder than stones; and let mild women to him lose their mildness, wilder to him than tigers in their wildness. 'let him have time to tear his curled hair, let him have time against himself to rave, let him have time of time's help to despair, let him have time to live a loathed slave, let him have time a beggar's orts to crave, and time to see one that by alms doth live disdain to him disdained scraps to give. 'let him have time to see his friends his foes, and merry fools to mock at him resort; let him have time to mark how slow time goes in time of sorrow, and how swift and short his time of folly and his time of sport; and ever let his unrecalling crime have time to wail th' abusing of his time. 'o time, thou tutor both to good and bad, teach me to curse him that thou taught'st this ill! at his own shadow let the thief run mad, himself himself seek every hour to kill! such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill; for who so base would such an office have as slanderous death's-man to so base a slave? 'the baser is he, coming from a king, to shame his hope with deeds degenerate: the mightier man, the mightier is the thing that makes him honour'd, or begets him hate; for greatest scandal waits on greatest state. the moon being clouded presently is miss'd, but little stars may hide them when they list. 'the crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire, and unperceived fly with the filth away; but if the like the snow-white swan desire, the stain upon his silver down will stay. poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day: gnats are unnoted wheresoe'er they fly, but eagles gazed upon with every eye. 'out, idle words, servants to shallow fools! unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators! busy yourselves in skill-contending schools; debate where leisure serves with dull debaters; to trembling clients be you mediators: for me, i force not argument a straw, since that my case is past the help of law. 'in vain i rail at opportunity, at time, at tarquin, and uncheerful night; in vain i cavil with mine infamy, in vain i spurn at my confirm'd despite: this helpless smoke of words doth me no right. the remedy indeed to do me good is to let forth my foul-defiled blood. 'poor hand, why quiver'st thou at this decree? honour thyself to rid me of this shame: for if i die, my honour lives in thee; but if i live, thou livest in my defame: since thou couldst not defend thy loyal dame, and wast afeard to scratch her wicked foe, kill both thyself and her for yielding so.' this said, from her be-tumbled couch she starteth, to find some desperate instrument of death: but this no slaughterhouse no tool imparteth to make more vent for passage of her breath; which, thronging through her lips, so vanisheth as smoke from aetna, that in air consumes, or that which from discharged cannon fumes. 'in vain,' quoth she, 'i live, and seek in vain some happy mean to end a hapless life. i fear'd by tarquin's falchion to be slain, yet for the self-same purpose seek a knife: but when i fear'd i was a loyal wife: so am i now: o no, that cannot be; of that true type hath tarquin rifled me. 'o, that is gone for which i sought to live, and therefore now i need not fear to die. to clear this spot by death, at least i give a badge of fame to slander's livery; a dying life to living infamy: poor helpless help, the treasure stol'n away, to burn the guiltless casket where it lay! 'well, well, dear collatine, thou shalt not know the stained taste of violated troth; i will not wrong thy true affection so, to flatter thee with an infringed oath; this bastard graff shall never come to growth: he shall not boast who did thy stock pollute that thou art doting father of his fruit. 'nor shall he smile at thee in secret thought, nor laugh with his companions at thy state: but thou shalt know thy interest was not bought basely with gold, but stol'n from forth thy gate. for me, i am the mistress of my fate, and with my trespass never will dispense, till life to death acquit my forced offence. 'i will not poison thee with my attaint, nor fold my fault in cleanly-coin'd excuses; my sable ground of sin i will not paint, to hide the truth of this false night's abuses: my tongue shall utter all; mine eyes, like sluices, as from a mountain-spring that feeds a dale, shall gush pure streams to purge my impure tale.' by this, lamenting philomel had ended the well-tuned warble of her nightly sorrow, and solemn night with slow sad gait descended to ugly hell; when, lo, the blushing morrow lends light to all fair eyes that light will borrow: but cloudy lucrece shames herself to see, and therefore still in night would cloister'd be. revealing day through every cranny spies, and seems to point her out where she sits weeping; to whom she sobbing speaks: 'o eye of eyes, why pry'st thou through my window? leave thy peeping: mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping: brand not my forehead with thy piercing light, for day hath nought to do what's done by night.' thus cavils she with every thing she sees: true grief is fond and testy as a child, who wayward once, his mood with nought agrees: old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild; continuance tames the one; the other wild, like an unpractised swimmer plunging still, with too much labour drowns for want of skill. so she, deep-drenched in a sea of care, holds disputation with each thing she views, and to herself all sorrow doth compare; no object but her passion's strength renews; and as one shifts, another straight ensues: sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words; sometime 'tis mad and too much talk affords. the little birds that tune their morning's joy make her moans mad with their sweet melody: for mirth doth search the bottom of annoy; sad souls are slain in merry company; grief best is pleased with grief's society: true sorrow then is feelingly sufficed when with like semblance it is sympathized. 'tis double death to drown in ken of shore; he ten times pines that pines beholding food; to see the salve doth make the wound ache more; great grief grieves most at that would do it good; deep woes roll forward like a gentle flood, who being stopp'd, the bounding banks o'erflows; grief dallied with nor law nor limit knows. 'you mocking-birds,' quoth she, 'your tunes entomb within your hollow-swelling feather'd breasts, and in my hearing be you mute and dumb: my restless discord loves no stops nor rests; a woeful hostess brooks not merry guests: relish your nimble notes to pleasing ears; distress likes dumps when time is kept with tears. 'come, philomel, that sing'st of ravishment, make thy sad grove in my dishevell'd hair: as the dank earth weeps at thy languishment, so i at each sad strain will strain a tear, and with deep groans the diapason bear; for burden-wise i'll hum on tarquin still, while thou on tereus descant'st better skill. 'and whiles against a thorn thou bear'st thy part, to keep thy sharp woes waking, wretched i, to imitate thee well, against my heart will fix a sharp knife to affright mine eye; who, if it wink, shall thereon fall and die. these means, as frets upon an instrument, shall tune our heart-strings to true languishment. 'and for, poor bird, thou sing'st not in the day, as shaming any eye should thee behold, some dark deep desert, seated from the way, that knows not parching heat nor freezing cold, will we find out; and there we will unfold to creatures stern sad tunes, to change their kinds: since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds.' as the poor frighted deer, that stands at gaze, wildly determining which way to fly, or one encompass'd with a winding maze, that cannot tread the way out readily; so with herself is she in mutiny, to live or die which of the twain were better, when life is shamed, and death reproach's debtor. 'to kill myself,' quoth she, 'alack, what were it, but with my body my poor soul's pollution? they that lose half with greater patience bear it than they whose whole is swallow'd in confusion. that mother tries a merciless conclusion who, having two sweet babes, when death takes one, will slay the other and be nurse to none. 'my body or my soul, which was the dearer, when the one pure, the other made divine? whose love of either to myself was nearer, when both were kept for heaven and collatine? ay me! the bark peel'd from the lofty pine, his leaves will wither and his sap decay; so must my soul, her bark being peel'd away. 'her house is sack'd, her quiet interrupted, her mansion batter'd by the enemy; her sacred temple spotted, spoil'd, corrupted, grossly engirt with daring infamy: then let it not be call'd impiety, if in this blemish'd fort i make some hole through which i may convey this troubled soul. 'yet die i will not till my collatine have heard the cause of my untimely death; that he may vow, in that sad hour of mine, revenge on him that made me stop my breath. my stained blood to tarquin i'll bequeath, which by him tainted shall for him be spent, and as his due writ in my testament. 'my honour i'll bequeath unto the knife that wounds my body so dishonoured. 'tis honour to deprive dishonour'd life; the one will live, the other being dead: so of shame's ashes shall my fame be bred; for in my death i murder shameful scorn: my shame so dead, mine honour is new-born. 'dear lord of that dear jewel i have lost, what legacy shall i bequeath to thee? my resolution, love, shall be thy boast, by whose example thou revenged mayest be. how tarquin must be used, read it in me: myself, thy friend, will kill myself, thy foe, and for my sake serve thou false tarquin so. 'this brief abridgement of my will i make: my soul and body to the skies and ground; my resolution, husband, do thou take; mine honour be the knife's that makes my wound; my shame be his that did my fame confound; and all my fame that lives disbursed be to those that live, and think no shame of me. 'thou, collatine, shalt oversee this will; how was i overseen that thou shalt see it! my blood shall wash the slander of mine ill; my life's foul deed, my life's fair end shall free it. faint not, faint heart, but stoutly say 'so be it:' yield to my hand; my hand shall conquer thee: thou dead, both die, and both shall victors be.' this plot of death when sadly she had laid, and wiped the brinish pearl from her bright eyes, with untuned tongue she hoarsely calls her maid, whose swift obedience to her mistress hies; for fleet-wing'd duty with thought's feathers flies. poor lucrece' cheeks unto her maid seem so as winter meads when sun doth melt their snow. her mistress she doth give demure good-morrow, with soft-slow tongue, true mark of modesty, and sorts a sad look to her lady's sorrow, for why her face wore sorrow's livery; but durst not ask of her audaciously why her two suns were cloud-eclipsed so, nor why her fair cheeks over-wash'd with woe. but as the earth doth weep, the sun being set, each flower moisten'd like a melting eye; even so the maid with swelling drops gan wet her circled eyne, enforced by sympathy of those fair suns set in her mistress' sky, who in a salt-waved ocean quench their light, which makes the maid weep like the dewy night. a pretty while these pretty creatures stand, like ivory conduits coral cisterns filling: one justly weeps; the other takes in hand no cause, but company, of her drops spilling: their gentle sex to weep are often willing; grieving themselves to guess at others' smarts, and then they drown their eyes or break their hearts. for men have marble, women waxen, minds, and therefore are they form'd as marble will; the weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kinds is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill: then call them not the authors of their ill, no more than wax shall be accounted evil wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil. their smoothness, like a goodly champaign plain, lays open all the little worms that creep; in men, as in a rough-grown grove, remain cave-keeping evils that obscurely sleep: through crystal walls each little mote will peep: though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks, poor women's faces are their own fault's books. no man inveigh against the wither'd flower, but chide rough winter that the flower hath kill'd: not that devour'd, but that which doth devour, is worthy blame. o, let it not be hild poor women's faults, that they are so fulfill'd with men's abuses: those proud lords, to blame, make weak-made women tenants to their shame. the precedent whereof in lucrece view, assail'd by night with circumstances strong of present death, and shame that might ensue by that her death, to do her husband wrong: such danger to resistance did belong, that dying fear through all her body spread; and who cannot abuse a body dead? by this, mild patience bid fair lucrece speak to the poor counterfeit of her complaining: 'my girl,' quoth she, 'on what occasion break those tears from thee, that down thy cheeks are raining? if thou dost weep for grief of my sustaining, know, gentle wench, it small avails my mood: if tears could help, mine own would do me good. 'but tell me, girl, when went'--and there she stay'd till after a deep groan--'tarquin from hence?' 'madam, ere i was up,' replied the maid, 'the more to blame my sluggard negligence: yet with the fault i thus far can dispense; myself was stirring ere the break of day, and, ere i rose, was tarquin gone away. 'but, lady, if your maid may be so bold, she would request to know your heaviness.' 'o, peace!' quoth lucrece: 'if it should be told, the repetition cannot make it less; for more it is than i can well express: and that deep torture may be call'd a hell when more is felt than one hath power to tell. 'go, get me hither paper, ink, and pen: yet save that labour, for i have them here. what should i say? one of my husband's men bid thou be ready, by and by, to bear a letter to my lord, my love, my dear; bid him with speed prepare to carry it; the cause craves haste, and it will soon be writ.' her maid is gone, and she prepares to write, first hovering o'er the paper with her quill: conceit and grief an eager combat fight; what wit sets down is blotted straight with will; this is too curious-good, this blunt and ill: much like a press of people at a door, throng her inventions, which shall go before. at last she thus begins: 'thou worthy lord of that unworthy wife that greeteth thee, health to thy person! next vouchsafe t' afford-if ever, love, thy lucrece thou wilt see-some present speed to come and visit me. so, i commend me from our house in grief: my woes are tedious, though my words are brief.' here folds she up the tenor of her woe, her certain sorrow writ uncertainly. by this short schedule collatine may know her grief, but not her grief's true quality: she dares not thereof make discovery, lest he should hold it her own gross abuse, ere she with blood had stain'd her stain'd excuse. besides, the life and feeling of her passion she hoards, to spend when he is by to hear her: when sighs and groans and tears may grace the fashion of her disgrace, the better so to clear her from that suspicion which the world might bear her. to shun this blot, she would not blot the letter with words, till action might become them better. to see sad sights moves more than hear them told; for then eye interprets to the ear the heavy motion that it doth behold, when every part a part of woe doth bear. 'tis but a part of sorrow that we hear: deep sounds make lesser noise than shallow fords, and sorrow ebbs, being blown with wind of words. her letter now is seal'd, and on it writ 'at ardea to my lord with more than haste.' the post attends, and she delivers it, charging the sour-faced groom to hie as fast as lagging fowls before the northern blast: speed more than speed but dull and slow she deems: extremity still urgeth such extremes. the homely villain court'sies to her low; and, blushing on her, with a steadfast eye receives the scroll without or yea or no, and forth with bashful innocence doth hie. but they whose guilt within their bosoms lie imagine every eye beholds their blame; for lucrece thought he blush'd to her see shame: when, silly groom! god wot, it was defect of spirit, life, and bold audacity. such harmless creatures have a true respect to talk in deeds, while others saucily promise more speed, but do it leisurely: even so this pattern of the worn-out age pawn'd honest looks, but laid no words to gage. his kindled duty kindled her mistrust, that two red fires in both their faces blazed; she thought he blush'd, as knowing tarquin's lust, and, blushing with him, wistly on him gazed; her earnest eye did make him more amazed: the more she saw the blood his cheeks replenish, the more she thought he spied in her some blemish. but long she thinks till he return again, and yet the duteous vassal scarce is gone. the weary time she cannot entertain, for now 'tis stale to sigh, to weep, and groan: so woe hath wearied woe, moan tired moan, that she her plaints a little while doth stay, pausing for means to mourn some newer way. at last she calls to mind where hangs a piece of skilful painting, made for priam's troy: before the which is drawn the power of greece. for helen's rape the city to destroy, threatening cloud-kissing ilion with annoy; which the conceited painter drew so proud, as heaven, it seem'd, to kiss the turrets bow'd. a thousand lamentable objects there, in scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life: many a dry drop seem'd a weeping tear, shed for the slaughter'd husband by the wife: the red blood reek'd, to show the painter's strife; and dying eyes gleam'd forth their ashy lights, like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights. there might you see the labouring pioner begrimed with sweat, and smeared all with dust; and from the towers of troy there would appear the very eyes of men through loop-holes thrust, gazing upon the greeks with little lust: such sweet observance in this work was had, that one might see those far-off eyes look sad. in great commanders grace and majesty you might behold, triumphing in their faces; in youth, quick bearing and dexterity; pale cowards, marching on with trembling paces; which heartless peasants did so well resemble, that one would swear he saw them quake and tremble. in ajax and ulysses, o, what art of physiognomy might one behold! the face of either cipher'd either's heart; their face their manners most expressly told: in ajax' eyes blunt rage and rigor roll'd; but the mild glance that sly ulysses lent show'd deep regard and smiling government. there pleading might you see grave nestor stand, as 'twere encouraging the greeks to fight; making such sober action with his hand, that it beguiled attention, charm'd the sight: in speech, it seem'd, his beard, all silver white, wagg'd up and down, and from his lips did fly thin winding breath, which purl'd up to the sky. about him were a press of gaping faces, which seem'd to swallow up his sound advice; all jointly listening, but with several graces, as if some mermaid did their ears entice, some high, some low, the painter was so nice; the scalps of many, almost hid behind, to jump up higher seem'd, to mock the mind. here one man's hand lean'd on another's head, his nose being shadow'd by his neighbour's ear; here one being throng'd bears back, all boll'n and red; another smother'd seems to pelt and swear; and in their rage such signs of rage they bear, as, but for loss of nestor's golden words, it seem'd they would debate with angry swords. for much imaginary work was there; conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, that for achilles' image stood his spear, griped in an armed hand; himself, behind, was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: a hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, stood for the whole to be imagined. and from the walls of strong-besieged troy when their brave hope, bold hector, march'd to field, stood many trojan mothers, sharing joy to see their youthful sons bright weapons wield; and to their hope they such odd action yield, that through their light joy seemed to appear, like bright things stain'd, a kind of heavy fear. and from the strand of dardan, where they fought, to simois' reedy banks the red blood ran, whose waves to imitate the battle sought with swelling ridges; and their ranks began to break upon the galled shore, and than retire again, till, meeting greater ranks, they join and shoot their foam at simois' banks. to this well-painted piece is lucrece come, to find a face where all distress is stell'd. many she sees where cares have carved some, but none where all distress and dolour dwell'd, till she despairing hecuba beheld, staring on priam's wounds with her old eyes, which bleeding under pyrrhus' proud foot lies. in her the painter had anatomized time's ruin, beauty's wreck, and grim care's reign: her cheeks with chaps and wrinkles were disguised; of what she was no semblance did remain: her blue blood changed to black in every vein, wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had fed, show'd life imprison'd in a body dead. on this sad shadow lucrece spends her eyes, and shapes her sorrow to the beldam's woes, who nothing wants to answer her but cries, and bitter words to ban her cruel foes: the painter was no god to lend her those; and therefore lucrece swears he did her wrong, to give her so much grief and not a tongue. 'poor instrument,' quoth she,'without a sound, i'll tune thy woes with my lamenting tongue; and drop sweet balm in priam's painted wound, and rail on pyrrhus that hath done him wrong; and with my tears quench troy that burns so long; and with my knife scratch out the angry eyes of all the greeks that are thine enemies. 'show me the strumpet that began this stir, that with my nails her beauty i may tear. thy heat of lust, fond paris, did incur this load of wrath that burning troy doth bear: thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here; and here in troy, for trespass of thine eye, the sire, the son, the dame, and daughter die. 'why should the private pleasure of some one become the public plague of many moe? let sin, alone committed, light alone upon his head that hath transgressed so; let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe: for one's offence why should so many fall, to plague a private sin in general? 'lo, here weeps hecuba, here priam dies, here manly hector faints, here troilus swounds, here friend by friend in bloody channel lies, and friend to friend gives unadvised wounds, and one man's lust these many lives confounds: had doting priam cheque'd his son's desire, troy had been bright with fame and not with fire.' here feelingly she weeps troy's painted woes: for sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell, once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; then little strength rings out the doleful knell: so lucrece, set a-work, sad tales doth tell to pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; she lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow. she throws her eyes about the painting round, and whom she finds forlorn she doth lament. at last she sees a wretched image bound, that piteous looks to phrygian shepherds lent: his face, though full of cares, yet show'd content; onward to troy with the blunt swains he goes, so mild, that patience seem'd to scorn his woes. in him the painter labour'd with his skill to hide deceit, and give the harmless show an humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still, a brow unbent, that seem'd to welcome woe; cheeks neither red nor pale, but mingled so that blushing red no guilty instance gave, nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have. but, like a constant and confirmed devil, he entertain'd a show so seeming just, and therein so ensconced his secret evil, that jealousy itself could not mistrust false-creeping craft and perjury should thrust into so bright a day such black-faced storms, or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms. the well-skill'd workman this mild image drew for perjured sinon, whose enchanting story the credulous old priam after slew; whose words like wildfire burnt the shining glory of rich-built ilion, that the skies were sorry, and little stars shot from their fixed places, when their glass fell wherein they view'd their faces. this picture she advisedly perused, and chid the painter for his wondrous skill, saying, some shape in sinon's was abused; so fair a form lodged not a mind so ill: and still on him she gazed; and gazing still, such signs of truth in his plain face she spied, that she concludes the picture was belied. 'it cannot be,' quoth she,'that so much guile'-she would have said 'can lurk in such a look;' but tarquin's shape came in her mind the while, and from her tongue 'can lurk' from 'cannot' took: 'it cannot be' she in that sense forsook, and turn'd it thus,' it cannot be, i find, but such a face should bear a wicked mind. 'for even as subtle sinon here is painted. so sober-sad, so weary, and so mild, as if with grief or travail he had fainted, to me came tarquin armed; so beguiled with outward honesty, but yet defiled with inward vice: as priam him did cherish, so did i tarquin; so my troy did perish. 'look, look, how listening priam wets his eyes, to see those borrow'd tears that sinon sheds! priam, why art thou old and yet not wise? for every tear he falls a trojan bleeds: his eye drops fire, no water thence proceeds; those round clear pearls of his, that move thy pity, are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city. 'such devils steal effects from lightless hell; for sinon in his fire doth quake with cold, and in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell; these contraries such unity do hold, only to flatter fools and make them bold: so priam's trust false sinon's tears doth flatter, that he finds means to burn his troy with water.' here, all enraged, such passion her assails, that patience is quite beaten from her breast. she tears the senseless sinon with her nails, comparing him to that unhappy guest whose deed hath made herself herself detest: at last she smilingly with this gives o'er; 'fool, fool!' quoth she, 'his wounds will not be sore.' thus ebbs and flows the current of her sorrow, and time doth weary time with her complaining. she looks for night, and then she longs for morrow, and both she thinks too long with her remaining: short time seems long in sorrow's sharp sustaining: though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps, and they that watch see time how slow it creeps. which all this time hath overslipp'd her thought, that she with painted images hath spent; being from the feeling of her own grief brought by deep surmise of others' detriment; losing her woes in shows of discontent. it easeth some, though none it ever cured, to think their dolour others have endured. but now the mindful messenger, come back, brings home his lord and other company; who finds his lucrece clad in mourning black: and round about her tear-stained eye blue circles stream'd; like rainbows in the sky: these water-galls in her dim element foretell new storms to those already spent. which when her sad-beholding husband saw, amazedly in her sad face he stares: her eyes, though sod in tears, look'd red and raw, her lively colour kill'd with deadly cares. he hath no power to ask her how she fares: both stood, like old acquaintance in a trance, met far from home, wondering each other's chance. at last he takes her by the bloodless hand, and thus begins: 'what uncouth ill event hath thee befall'n, that thou dost trembling stand? sweet love, what spite hath thy fair colour spent? why art thou thus attired in discontent? unmask, dear dear, this moody heaviness, and tell thy grief, that we may give redress.' three times with sighs she gives her sorrow fire, ere once she can discharge one word of woe: at length address'd to answer his desire, she modestly prepares to let them know her honour is ta'en prisoner by the foe; while collatine and his consorted lords with sad attention long to hear her words. and now this pale swan in her watery nest begins the sad dirge of her certain ending; 'few words,' quoth she, 'shall fit the trespass best, where no excuse can give the fault amending: in me moe woes than words are now depending; and my laments would be drawn out too long, to tell them all with one poor tired tongue. 'then be this all the task it hath to say dear husband, in the interest of thy bed a stranger came, and on that pillow lay where thou was wont to rest thy weary head; and what wrong else may be imagined by foul enforcement might be done to me, from that, alas, thy lucrece is not free. 'for in the dreadful dead of dark midnight, with shining falchion in my chamber came a creeping creature, with a flaming light, and softly cried 'awake, thou roman dame, and entertain my love; else lasting shame on thee and thine this night i will inflict, if thou my love's desire do contradict. ' 'for some hard-favour'd groom of thine,' quoth he, 'unless thou yoke thy liking to my will, i'll murder straight, and then i'll slaughter thee and swear i found you where you did fulfil the loathsome act of lust, and so did kill the lechers in their deed: this act will be my fame and thy perpetual infamy.' 'with this, i did begin to start and cry; and then against my heart he sets his sword, swearing, unless i took all patiently, i should not live to speak another word; so should my shame still rest upon record, and never be forgot in mighty rome th' adulterate death of lucrece and her groom. 'mine enemy was strong, my poor self weak, and far the weaker with so strong a fear: my bloody judge forbade my tongue to speak; no rightful plea might plead for justice there: his scarlet lust came evidence to swear that my poor beauty had purloin'd his eyes; and when the judge is robb'd the prisoner dies. 'o, teach me how to make mine own excuse! or at the least this refuge let me find; though my gross blood be stain'd with this abuse, immaculate and spotless is my mind; that was not forced; that never was inclined to accessary yieldings, but still pure doth in her poison'd closet yet endure.' lo, here, the hopeless merchant of this loss, with head declined, and voice damm'd up with woe, with sad set eyes, and wretched arms across, from lips new-waxen pale begins to blow the grief away that stops his answer so: but, wretched as he is, he strives in vain; what he breathes out his breath drinks up again. as through an arch the violent roaring tide outruns the eye that doth behold his haste, yet in the eddy boundeth in his pride back to the strait that forced him on so fast; in rage sent out, recall'd in rage, being past: even so his sighs, his sorrows, make a saw, to push grief on, and back the same grief draw. which speechless woe of his poor she attendeth, and his untimely frenzy thus awaketh: 'dear lord, thy sorrow to my sorrow lendeth another power; no flood by raining slaketh. my woe too sensible thy passion maketh more feeling-painful: let it then suffice to drown one woe, one pair of weeping eyes. 'and for my sake, when i might charm thee so, for she that was thy lucrece, now attend me: be suddenly revenged on my foe, thine, mine, his own: suppose thou dost defend me from what is past: the help that thou shalt lend me comes all too late, yet let the traitor die; for sparing justice feeds iniquity. 'but ere i name him, you fair lords,' quoth she, speaking to those that came with collatine, 'shall plight your honourable faiths to me, with swift pursuit to venge this wrong of mine; for 'tis a meritorious fair design to chase injustice with revengeful arms: knights, by their oaths, should right poor ladies' harms.' at this request, with noble disposition each present lord began to promise aid, as bound in knighthood to her imposition, longing to hear the hateful foe bewray'd. but she, that yet her sad task hath not said, the protestation stops. 'o, speak, ' quoth she, 'how may this forced stain be wiped from me? 'what is the quality of mine offence, being constrain'd with dreadful circumstance? may my pure mind with the foul act dispense, my low-declined honour to advance? may any terms acquit me from this chance? the poison'd fountain clears itself again; and why not i from this compelled stain?' with this, they all at once began to say, her body's stain her mind untainted clears; while with a joyless smile she turns away the face, that map which deep impression bears of hard misfortune, carved in it with tears. 'no, no,' quoth she, 'no dame, hereafter living, by my excuse shall claim excuse's giving.' here with a sigh, as if her heart would break, she throws forth tarquin's name; 'he, he,' she says, but more than 'he' her poor tongue could not speak; till after many accents and delays, untimely breathings, sick and short assays, she utters this, 'he, he, fair lords, 'tis he, that guides this hand to give this wound to me.' even here she sheathed in her harmless breast a harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheathed: that blow did that it from the deep unrest of that polluted prison where it breathed: her contrite sighs unto the clouds bequeath'd her winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly life's lasting date from cancell'd destiny. stone-still, astonish'd with this deadly deed, stood collatine and all his lordly crew; till lucrece' father, that beholds her bleed, himself on her self-slaughter'd body threw; and from the purple fountain brutus drew the murderous knife, and, as it left the place, her blood, in poor revenge, held it in chase; and bubbling from her breast, it doth divide in two slow rivers, that the crimson blood circles her body in on every side, who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stood bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood. some of her blood still pure and red remain'd, and some look'd black, and that false tarquin stain'd. about the mourning and congealed face of that black blood a watery rigol goes, which seems to weep upon the tainted place: and ever since, as pitying lucrece' woes, corrupted blood some watery token shows; and blood untainted still doth red abide, blushing at that which is so putrified. 'daughter, dear daughter,' old lucretius cries, 'that life was mine which thou hast here deprived. if in the child the father's image lies, where shall i live now lucrece is unlived? thou wast not to this end from me derived. if children predecease progenitors, we are their offspring, and they none of ours. 'poor broken glass, i often did behold in thy sweet semblance my old age new born; but now that fresh fair mirror, dim and old, shows me a bare-boned death by time out-worn: o, from thy cheeks my image thou hast torn, and shivered all the beauty of my glass, that i no more can see what once i was! 'o time, cease thou thy course and last no longer, if they surcease to be that should survive. shall rotten death make conquest of the stronger and leave the faltering feeble souls alive? the old bees die, the young possess their hive: then live, sweet lucrece, live again and see thy father die, and not thy father thee! by this, starts collatine as from a dream, and bids lucretius give his sorrow place; and then in key-cold lucrece' bleeding stream he falls, and bathes the pale fear in his face, and counterfeits to die with her a space; till manly shame bids him possess his breath and live to be revenged on her death. the deep vexation of his inward soul hath served a dumb arrest upon his tongue; who, mad that sorrow should his use control, or keep him from heart-easing words so long, begins to talk; but through his lips do throng weak words, so thick come in his poor heart's aid, that no man could distinguish what he said. yet sometime 'tarquin' was pronounced plain, but through his teeth, as if the name he tore. this windy tempest, till it blow up rain, held back his sorrow's tide, to make it more; at last it rains, and busy winds give o'er: then son and father weep with equal strife who should weep most, for daughter or for wife. the one doth call her his, the other his, yet neither may possess the claim they lay. the father says 'she's mine.' 'o, mine she is,' replies her husband: 'do not take away my sorrow's interest; let no mourner say he weeps for her, for she was only mine, and only must be wail'd by collatine.' 'o,' quoth lucretius,' i did give that life which she too early and too late hath spill'd.' 'woe, woe,' quoth collatine, 'she was my wife, i owed her, and 'tis mine that she hath kill'd.' 'my daughter' and 'my wife' with clamours fill'd the dispersed air, who, holding lucrece' life, answer'd their cries, 'my daughter' and 'my wife.' brutus, who pluck'd the knife from lucrece' side, seeing such emulation in their woe, began to clothe his wit in state and pride, burying in lucrece' wound his folly's show. he with the romans was esteemed so as silly-jeering idiots are with kings, for sportive words and uttering foolish things: but now he throws that shallow habit by, wherein deep policy did him disguise; and arm'd his long-hid wits advisedly, to cheque the tears in collatinus' eyes. 'thou wronged lord of rome,' quoth be, 'arise: let my unsounded self, supposed a fool, now set thy long-experienced wit to school. 'why, collatine, is woe the cure for woe? do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds? is it revenge to give thyself a blow for his foul act by whom thy fair wife bleeds? such childish humour from weak minds proceeds: thy wretched wife mistook the matter so, to slay herself, that should have slain her foe. 'courageous roman, do not steep thy heart in such relenting dew of lamentations; but kneel with me and help to bear thy part, to rouse our roman gods with invocations, that they will suffer these abominations, since rome herself in them doth stand disgraced, by our strong arms from forth her fair streets chased. 'now, by the capitol that we adore, and by this chaste blood so unjustly stain'd, by heaven's fair sun that breeds the fat earth's store, by all our country rights in rome maintain'd, and by chaste lucrece' soul that late complain'd her wrongs to us, and by this bloody knife, we will revenge the death of this true wife.' this said, he struck his hand upon his breast, and kiss'd the fatal knife, to end his vow; and to his protestation urged the rest, who, wondering at him, did his words allow: then jointly to the ground their knees they bow; and that deep vow, which brutus made before, he doth again repeat, and that they swore. when they had sworn to this advised doom, they did conclude to bear dead lucrece thence; to show her bleeding body thorough rome, and so to publish tarquin's foul offence: which being done with speedy diligence, the romans plausibly did give consent to tarquin's everlasting banishment. coriolanus dramatis personae caius marcius (marcus:) afterwards caius marcius coriolanus. (coriolanus:) titus lartius (lartius:) | | generals against the volscians. cominius | menenius agrippa friend to coriolanus. (menenius:) sicinius velutus (sicinius:) | | tribunes of the people. junius brutus (brutus:) | young marcus son to coriolanus. a roman herald. (herald:) tullus aufidius general of the volscians. (aufidius:) lieutenant to aufidius. (lieutenant:) conspirators with aufidius. (first conspirator:) (second conspirator:) (third conspirator:) a citizen of antium. two volscian guards. volumnia mother to coriolanus. virgilia wife to coriolanus. valeria friend to virgilia. gentlewoman, attending on virgilia. (gentlewoman:) roman and volscian senators, patricians, aediles, lictors, soldiers, citizens, messengers, servants to aufidius, and other attendants. (first senator:) (second senator:) (a patrician:) (second patrician:) (aedile:) (first soldier:) (second soldier:) (first citizen:) (second citizen:) (third citizen:) (fourth citizen:) (fifth citizen:) (sixth citizen:) (seventh citizen:) (messenger:) (second messenger:) (first serviceman:) (second serviceman:) (third serviceman:) (officer:) (first officer:) (second officer:) (roman:) (first roman:) (second roman:) (third roman:) (volsce:) (first lord:) (second lord:) (third lord:) scene rome and the neighbourhood; corioli and the neighbourhood; antium. coriolanus act i scene i rome. a street. [enter a company of mutinous citizens, with staves, clubs, and other weapons] first citizen before we proceed any further, hear me speak. all speak, speak. first citizen you are all resolved rather to die than to famish? all resolved. resolved. first citizen first, you know caius marcius is chief enemy to the people. all we know't, we know't. first citizen let us kill him, and we'll have corn at our own price. is't a verdict? all no more talking on't; let it be done: away, away! second citizen one word, good citizens. first citizen we are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good. what authority surfeits on would relieve us: if they would yield us but the superfluity, while it were wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely; but they think we are too dear: the leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularise their abundance; our sufferance is a gain to them let us revenge this with our pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know i speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge. second citizen would you proceed especially against caius marcius? all against him first: he's a very dog to the commonalty. second citizen consider you what services he has done for his country? first citizen very well; and could be content to give him good report fort, but that he pays himself with being proud. second citizen nay, but speak not maliciously. first citizen i say unto you, what he hath done famously, he did it to that end: though soft-conscienced men can be content to say it was for his country he did it to please his mother and to be partly proud; which he is, even till the altitude of his virtue. second citizen what he cannot help in his nature, you account a vice in him. you must in no way say he is covetous. first citizen if i must not, i need not be barren of accusations; he hath faults, with surplus, to tire in repetition. [shouts within] what shouts are these? the other side o' the city is risen: why stay we prating here? to the capitol! all come, come. first citizen soft! who comes here? [enter menenius agrippa] second citizen worthy menenius agrippa; one that hath always loved the people. first citizen he's one honest enough: would all the rest were so! menenius what work's, my countrymen, in hand? where go you with bats and clubs? the matter? speak, i pray you. first citizen our business is not unknown to the senate; they have had inkling this fortnight what we intend to do, which now we'll show 'em in deeds. they say poor suitors have strong breaths: they shall know we have strong arms too. menenius why, masters, my good friends, mine honest neighbours, will you undo yourselves? first citizen we cannot, sir, we are undone already. menenius i tell you, friends, most charitable care have the patricians of you. for your wants, your suffering in this dearth, you may as well strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them against the roman state, whose course will on the way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs of more strong link asunder than can ever appear in your impediment. for the dearth, the gods, not the patricians, make it, and your knees to them, not arms, must help. alack, you are transported by calamity thither where more attends you, and you slander the helms o' the state, who care for you like fathers, when you curse them as enemies. first citizen care for us! true, indeed! they ne'er cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor. if the wars eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us. menenius either you must confess yourselves wondrous malicious, or be accused of folly. i shall tell you a pretty tale: it may be you have heard it; but, since it serves my purpose, i will venture to stale 't a little more. first citizen well, i'll hear it, sir: yet you must not think to fob off our disgrace with a tale: but, an 't please you, deliver. menenius there was a time when all the body's members rebell'd against the belly, thus accused it: that only like a gulf it did remain i' the midst o' the body, idle and unactive, still cupboarding the viand, never bearing like labour with the rest, where the other instruments did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel, and, mutually participate, did minister unto the appetite and affection common of the whole body. the belly answer'd- first citizen well, sir, what answer made the belly? menenius sir, i shall tell you. with a kind of smile, which ne'er came from the lungs, but even thus- for, look you, i may make the belly smile as well as speak--it tauntingly replied to the discontented members, the mutinous parts that envied his receipt; even so most fitly as you malign our senators for that they are not such as you. first citizen your belly's answer? what! the kingly-crowned head, the vigilant eye, the counsellor heart, the arm our soldier, our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter. with other muniments and petty helps in this our fabric, if that they- menenius what then? 'fore me, this fellow speaks! what then? what then? first citizen should by the cormorant belly be restrain'd, who is the sink o' the body,- menenius well, what then? first citizen the former agents, if they did complain, what could the belly answer? menenius i will tell you if you'll bestow a small--of what you have little- patience awhile, you'll hear the belly's answer. first citizen ye're long about it. menenius note me this, good friend; your most grave belly was deliberate, not rash like his accusers, and thus answer'd: 'true is it, my incorporate friends,' quoth he, 'that i receive the general food at first, which you do live upon; and fit it is, because i am the store-house and the shop of the whole body: but, if you do remember, i send it through the rivers of your blood, even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain; and, through the cranks and offices of man, the strongest nerves and small inferior veins from me receive that natural competency whereby they live: and though that all at once, you, my good friends,'--this says the belly, mark me,- first citizen ay, sir; well, well. menenius 'though all at once cannot see what i do deliver out to each, yet i can make my audit up, that all from me do back receive the flour of all, and leave me but the bran.' what say you to't? first citizen it was an answer: how apply you this? menenius the senators of rome are this good belly, and you the mutinous members; for examine their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly touching the weal o' the common, you shall find no public benefit which you receive but it proceeds or comes from them to you and no way from yourselves. what do you think, you, the great toe of this assembly? first citizen i the great toe! why the great toe? menenius for that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest, of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost: thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run, lead'st first to win some vantage. but make you ready your stiff bats and clubs: rome and her rats are at the point of battle; the one side must have bale. [enter caius marcius] hail, noble marcius! marcius thanks. what's the matter, you dissentious rogues, that, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, make yourselves scabs? first citizen we have ever your good word. marcius he that will give good words to thee will flatter beneath abhorring. what would you have, you curs, that like nor peace nor war? the one affrights you, the other makes you proud. he that trusts to you, where he should find you lions, finds you hares; where foxes, geese: you are no surer, no, than is the coal of fire upon the ice, or hailstone in the sun. your virtue is to make him worthy whose offence subdues him and curse that justice did it. who deserves greatness deserves your hate; and your affections are a sick man's appetite, who desires most that which would increase his evil. he that depends upon your favours swims with fins of lead and hews down oaks with rushes. hang ye! trust ye? with every minute you do change a mind, and call him noble that was now your hate, him vile that was your garland. what's the matter, that in these several places of the city you cry against the noble senate, who, under the gods, keep you in awe, which else would feed on one another? what's their seeking? menenius for corn at their own rates; whereof, they say, the city is well stored. marcius hang 'em! they say! they'll sit by the fire, and presume to know what's done i' the capitol; who's like to rise, who thrives and who declines; side factions and give out conjectural marriages; making parties strong and feebling such as stand not in their liking below their cobbled shoes. they say there's grain enough! would the nobility lay aside their ruth, and let me use my sword, i'll make a quarry with thousands of these quarter'd slaves, as high as i could pick my lance. menenius nay, these are almost thoroughly persuaded; for though abundantly they lack discretion, yet are they passing cowardly. but, i beseech you, what says the other troop? marcius they are dissolved: hang 'em! they said they were an-hungry; sigh'd forth proverbs, that hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat, that meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not corn for the rich men only: with these shreds they vented their complainings; which being answer'd, and a petition granted them, a strange one- to break the heart of generosity, and make bold power look pale--they threw their caps as they would hang them on the horns o' the moon, shouting their emulation. menenius what is granted them? marcius five tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms, of their own choice: one's junius brutus, sicinius velutus, and i know not--'sdeath! the rabble should have first unroof'd the city, ere so prevail'd with me: it will in time win upon power and throw forth greater themes for insurrection's arguing. menenius this is strange. marcius go, get you home, you fragments! [enter a messenger, hastily] messenger where's caius marcius? marcius here: what's the matter? messenger the news is, sir, the volsces are in arms. marcius i am glad on 't: then we shall ha' means to vent our musty superfluity. see, our best elders. [enter cominius, titus lartius, and other senators; junius brutus and sicinius velutus] first senator marcius, 'tis true that you have lately told us; the volsces are in arms. marcius they have a leader, tullus aufidius, that will put you to 't. i sin in envying his nobility, and were i any thing but what i am, i would wish me only he. cominius you have fought together. marcius were half to half the world by the ears and he. upon my party, i'ld revolt to make only my wars with him: he is a lion that i am proud to hunt. first senator then, worthy marcius, attend upon cominius to these wars. cominius it is your former promise. marcius sir, it is; and i am constant. titus lartius, thou shalt see me once more strike at tullus' face. what, art thou stiff? stand'st out? titus no, caius marcius; i'll lean upon one crutch and fight with t'other, ere stay behind this business. menenius o, true-bred! first senator your company to the capitol; where, i know, our greatest friends attend us. titus [to cominius] lead you on. [to marcius] follow cominius; we must follow you; right worthy you priority. cominius noble marcius! first senator [to the citizens] hence to your homes; be gone! marcius nay, let them follow: the volsces have much corn; take these rats thither to gnaw their garners. worshipful mutiners, your valour puts well forth: pray, follow. [citizens steal away. exeunt all but sicinius and brutus] sicinius was ever man so proud as is this marcius? brutus he has no equal. sicinius when we were chosen tribunes for the people,- brutus mark'd you his lip and eyes? sicinius nay. but his taunts. brutus being moved, he will not spare to gird the gods. sicinius be-mock the modest moon. brutus the present wars devour him: he is grown too proud to be so valiant. sicinius such a nature, tickled with good success, disdains the shadow which he treads on at noon: but i do wonder his insolence can brook to be commanded under cominius. brutus fame, at the which he aims, in whom already he's well graced, can not better be held nor more attain'd than by a place below the first: for what miscarries shall be the general's fault, though he perform to the utmost of a man, and giddy censure will then cry out of marcius 'o if he had borne the business!' sicinius besides, if things go well, opinion that so sticks on marcius shall of his demerits rob cominius. brutus come: half all cominius' honours are to marcius. though marcius earned them not, and all his faults to marcius shall be honours, though indeed in aught he merit not. sicinius let's hence, and hear how the dispatch is made, and in what fashion, more than his singularity, he goes upon this present action. brutus lets along. [exeunt] coriolanus act i scene ii corioli. the senate-house. [enter tullus aufidius and certain senators] first senator so, your opinion is, aufidius, that they of rome are entered in our counsels and know how we proceed. aufidius is it not yours? what ever have been thought on in this state, that could be brought to bodily act ere rome had circumvention? 'tis not four days gone since i heard thence; these are the words: i think i have the letter here; yes, here it is. [reads] 'they have press'd a power, but it is not known whether for east or west: the dearth is great; the people mutinous; and it is rumour'd, cominius, marcius your old enemy, who is of rome worse hated than of you, and titus lartius, a most valiant roman, these three lead on this preparation whither 'tis bent: most likely 'tis for you: consider of it.' first senator our army's in the field we never yet made doubt but rome was ready to answer us. aufidius nor did you think it folly to keep your great pretences veil'd till when they needs must show themselves; which in the hatching, it seem'd, appear'd to rome. by the discovery. we shall be shorten'd in our aim, which was to take in many towns ere almost rome should know we were afoot. second senator noble aufidius, take your commission; hie you to your bands: let us alone to guard corioli: if they set down before 's, for the remove bring your army; but, i think, you'll find they've not prepared for us. aufidius o, doubt not that; i speak from certainties. nay, more, some parcels of their power are forth already, and only hitherward. i leave your honours. if we and caius marcius chance to meet, 'tis sworn between us we shall ever strike till one can do no more. all the gods assist you! aufidius and keep your honours safe! first senator farewell. second senator farewell. all farewell. [exeunt] coriolanus act i scene iii rome. a room in marcius' house. [enter volumnia and virgilia they set them down on two low stools, and sew] volumnia i pray you, daughter, sing; or express yourself in a more comfortable sort: if my son were my husband, i should freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he won honour than in the embracements of his bed where he would show most love. when yet he was but tender-bodied and the only son of my womb, when youth with comeliness plucked all gaze his way, when for a day of kings' entreaties a mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding, i, considering how honour would become such a person. that it was no better than picture-like to hang by the wall, if renown made it not stir, was pleased to let him seek danger where he was like to find fame. to a cruel war i sent him; from whence he returned, his brows bound with oak. i tell thee, daughter, i sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man. virgilia but had he died in the business, madam; how then? volumnia then his good report should have been my son; i therein would have found issue. hear me profess sincerely: had i a dozen sons, each in my love alike and none less dear than thine and my good marcius, i had rather had eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action. [enter a gentlewoman] gentlewoman madam, the lady valeria is come to visit you. virgilia beseech you, give me leave to retire myself. volumnia indeed, you shall not. methinks i hear hither your husband's drum, see him pluck aufidius down by the hair, as children from a bear, the volsces shunning him: methinks i see him stamp thus, and call thus: 'come on, you cowards! you were got in fear, though you were born in rome:' his bloody brow with his mail'd hand then wiping, forth he goes, like to a harvest-man that's task'd to mow or all or lose his hire. virgilia his bloody brow! o jupiter, no blood! volumnia away, you fool! it more becomes a man than gilt his trophy: the breasts of hecuba, when she did suckle hector, look'd not lovelier than hector's forehead when it spit forth blood at grecian sword, contemning. tell valeria, we are fit to bid her welcome. [exit gentlewoman] virgilia heavens bless my lord from fell aufidius! volumnia he'll beat aufidius 'head below his knee and tread upon his neck. [enter valeria, with an usher and gentlewoman] valeria my ladies both, good day to you. volumnia sweet madam. virgilia i am glad to see your ladyship. valeria how do you both? you are manifest house-keepers. what are you sewing here? a fine spot, in good faith. how does your little son? virgilia i thank your ladyship; well, good madam. volumnia he had rather see the swords, and hear a drum, than look upon his school-master. valeria o' my word, the father's son: i'll swear,'tis a very pretty boy. o' my troth, i looked upon him o' wednesday half an hour together: has such a confirmed countenance. i saw him run after a gilded butterfly: and when he caught it, he let it go again; and after it again; and over and over he comes, and again; catched it again; or whether his fall enraged him, or how 'twas, he did so set his teeth and tear it; o, i warrant it, how he mammocked it! volumnia one on 's father's moods. valeria indeed, la, 'tis a noble child. virgilia a crack, madam. valeria come, lay aside your stitchery; i must have you play the idle husewife with me this afternoon. virgilia no, good madam; i will not out of doors. valeria not out of doors! volumnia she shall, she shall. virgilia indeed, no, by your patience; i'll not over the threshold till my lord return from the wars. valeria fie, you confine yourself most unreasonably: come, you must go visit the good lady that lies in. virgilia i will wish her speedy strength, and visit her with my prayers; but i cannot go thither. volumnia why, i pray you? virgilia 'tis not to save labour, nor that i want love. valeria you would be another penelope: yet, they say, all the yarn she spun in ulysses' absence did but fill ithaca full of moths. come; i would your cambric were sensible as your finger, that you might leave pricking it for pity. come, you shall go with us. virgilia no, good madam, pardon me; indeed, i will not forth. valeria in truth, la, go with me; and i'll tell you excellent news of your husband. virgilia o, good madam, there can be none yet. valeria verily, i do not jest with you; there came news from him last night. virgilia indeed, madam? valeria in earnest, it's true; i heard a senator speak it. thus it is: the volsces have an army forth; against whom cominius the general is gone, with one part of our roman power: your lord and titus lartius are set down before their city corioli; they nothing doubt prevailing and to make it brief wars. this is true, on mine honour; and so, i pray, go with us. virgilia give me excuse, good madam; i will obey you in every thing hereafter. volumnia let her alone, lady: as she is now, she will but disease our better mirth. valeria in troth, i think she would. fare you well, then. come, good sweet lady. prithee, virgilia, turn thy solemness out o' door. and go along with us. virgilia no, at a word, madam; indeed, i must not. i wish you much mirth. valeria well, then, farewell. [exeunt] coriolanus act i scene iv before corioli. [enter, with drum and colours, marcius, titus lartius, captains and soldiers. to them a messenger] marcius yonder comes news. a wager they have met. lartius my horse to yours, no. marcius 'tis done. lartius agreed. marcius say, has our general met the enemy? messenger they lie in view; but have not spoke as yet. lartius so, the good horse is mine. marcius i'll buy him of you. lartius no, i'll nor sell nor give him: lend you him i will for half a hundred years. summon the town. marcius how far off lie these armies? messenger within this mile and half. marcius then shall we hear their 'larum, and they ours. now, mars, i prithee, make us quick in work, that we with smoking swords may march from hence, to help our fielded friends! come, blow thy blast. [they sound a parley. enter two senators with others on the walls] tutus aufidius, is he within your walls? first senator no, nor a man that fears you less than he, that's lesser than a little. [drums afar off] hark! our drums are bringing forth our youth. we'll break our walls, rather than they shall pound us up: our gates, which yet seem shut, we, have but pinn'd with rushes; they'll open of themselves. [alarum afar off] hark you. far off! there is aufidius; list, what work he makes amongst your cloven army. marcius o, they are at it! lartius their noise be our instruction. ladders, ho! [enter the army of the volsces] marcius they fear us not, but issue forth their city. now put your shields before your hearts, and fight with hearts more proof than shields. advance, brave titus: they do disdain us much beyond our thoughts, which makes me sweat with wrath. come on, my fellows: he that retires i'll take him for a volsce, and he shall feel mine edge. [alarum. the romans are beat back to their trenches. re-enter marcius cursing] marcius all the contagion of the south light on you, you shames of rome! you herd of--boils and plagues plaster you o'er, that you may be abhorr'd further than seen and one infect another against the wind a mile! you souls of geese, that bear the shapes of men, how have you run from slaves that apes would beat! pluto and hell! all hurt behind; backs red, and faces pale with flight and agued fear! mend and charge home, or, by the fires of heaven, i'll leave the foe and make my wars on you: look to't: come on; if you'll stand fast, we'll beat them to their wives, as they us to our trenches followed. [another alarum. the volsces fly, and marcius follows them to the gates] so, now the gates are ope: now prove good seconds: 'tis for the followers fortune widens them, not for the fliers: mark me, and do the like. [enters the gates] first soldier fool-hardiness; not i. second soldier nor i. [marcius is shut in] first soldier see, they have shut him in. all to the pot, i warrant him. [alarum continues] [re-enter titus lartius] lartius what is become of marcius? all slain, sir, doubtless. first soldier following the fliers at the very heels, with them he enters; who, upon the sudden, clapp'd to their gates: he is himself alone, to answer all the city. lartius o noble fellow! who sensibly outdares his senseless sword, and, when it bows, stands up. thou art left, marcius: a carbuncle entire, as big as thou art, were not so rich a jewel. thou wast a soldier even to cato's wish, not fierce and terrible only in strokes; but, with thy grim looks and the thunder-like percussion of thy sounds, thou madst thine enemies shake, as if the world were feverous and did tremble. [re-enter marcius, bleeding, assaulted by the enemy] first soldier look, sir. lartius o,'tis marcius! let's fetch him off, or make remain alike. [they fight, and all enter the city] coriolanus act i scene v corioli. a street. [enter certain romans, with spoils] first roman this will i carry to rome. second roman and i this. third roman a murrain on't! i took this for silver. [alarum continues still afar off] [enter marcius and titus lartius with a trumpet] marcius see here these movers that do prize their hours at a crack'd drachm! cushions, leaden spoons, irons of a doit, doublets that hangmen would bury with those that wore them, these base slaves, ere yet the fight be done, pack up: down with them! and hark, what noise the general makes! to him! there is the man of my soul's hate, aufidius, piercing our romans: then, valiant titus, take convenient numbers to make good the city; whilst i, with those that have the spirit, will haste to help cominius. lartius worthy sir, thou bleed'st; thy exercise hath been too violent for a second course of fight. marcius sir, praise me not; my work hath yet not warm'd me: fare you well: the blood i drop is rather physical than dangerous to me: to aufidius thus i will appear, and fight. lartius now the fair goddess, fortune, fall deep in love with thee; and her great charms misguide thy opposers' swords! bold gentleman, prosperity be thy page! marcius thy friend no less than those she placeth highest! so, farewell. lartius thou worthiest marcius! [exit marcius] go, sound thy trumpet in the market-place; call thither all the officers o' the town, where they shall know our mind: away! [exeunt] coriolanus act i scene vi near the camp of cominius. [enter cominius, as it were in retire, with soldiers] cominius breathe you, my friends: well fought; we are come off like romans, neither foolish in our stands, nor cowardly in retire: believe me, sirs, we shall be charged again. whiles we have struck, by interims and conveying gusts we have heard the charges of our friends. ye roman gods! lead their successes as we wish our own, that both our powers, with smiling fronts encountering, may give you thankful sacrifice. [enter a messenger] thy news? messenger the citizens of corioli have issued, and given to lartius and to marcius battle: i saw our party to their trenches driven, and then i came away. cominius though thou speak'st truth, methinks thou speak'st not well. how long is't since? messenger above an hour, my lord. cominius 'tis not a mile; briefly we heard their drums: how couldst thou in a mile confound an hour, and bring thy news so late? messenger spies of the volsces held me in chase, that i was forced to wheel three or four miles about, else had i, sir, half an hour since brought my report. cominius who's yonder, that does appear as he were flay'd? o gods he has the stamp of marcius; and i have before-time seen him thus. marcius [within] come i too late? cominius the shepherd knows not thunder from a tabour more than i know the sound of marcius' tongue from every meaner man. [enter marcius] marcius come i too late? cominius ay, if you come not in the blood of others, but mantled in your own. marcius o, let me clip ye in arms as sound as when i woo'd, in heart as merry as when our nuptial day was done, and tapers burn'd to bedward! cominius flower of warriors, how is it with titus lartius? marcius as with a man busied about decrees: condemning some to death, and some to exile; ransoming him, or pitying, threatening the other; holding corioli in the name of rome, even like a fawning greyhound in the leash, to let him slip at will. cominius where is that slave which told me they had beat you to your trenches? where is he? call him hither. marcius let him alone; he did inform the truth: but for our gentlemen, the common file--a plague! tribunes for them!- the mouse ne'er shunn'd the cat as they did budge from rascals worse than they. cominius but how prevail'd you? marcius will the time serve to tell? i do not think. where is the enemy? are you lords o' the field? if not, why cease you till you are so? cominius marcius, we have at disadvantage fought and did retire to win our purpose. marcius how lies their battle? know you on which side they have placed their men of trust? cominius as i guess, marcius, their bands i' the vaward are the antiates, of their best trust; o'er them aufidius, their very heart of hope. marcius i do beseech you, by all the battles wherein we have fought, by the blood we have shed together, by the vows we have made to endure friends, that you directly set me against aufidius and his antiates; and that you not delay the present, but, filling the air with swords advanced and darts, we prove this very hour. cominius though i could wish you were conducted to a gentle bath and balms applied to, you, yet dare i never deny your asking: take your choice of those that best can aid your action. marcius those are they that most are willing. if any such be here- as it were sin to doubt--that love this painting wherein you see me smear'd; if any fear lesser his person than an ill report; if any think brave death outweighs bad life and that his country's dearer than himself; let him alone, or so many so minded, wave thus, to express his disposition, and follow marcius. [they all shout and wave their swords, take him up in their arms, and cast up their caps] o, me alone! make you a sword of me? if these shows be not outward, which of you but is four volsces? none of you but is able to bear against the great aufidius a shield as hard as his. a certain number, though thanks to all, must i select from all: the rest shall bear the business in some other fight, as cause will be obey'd. please you to march; and four shall quickly draw out my command, which men are best inclined. cominius march on, my fellows: make good this ostentation, and you shall divide in all with us. [exeunt] coriolanus act i scene vii the gates of corioli. [titus lartius, having set a guard upon corioli, going with drum and trumpet toward cominius and caius marcius, enters with lieutenant, other soldiers, and a scout] lartius so, let the ports be guarded: keep your duties, as i have set them down. if i do send, dispatch those centuries to our aid: the rest will serve for a short holding: if we lose the field, we cannot keep the town. lieutenant fear not our care, sir. lartius hence, and shut your gates upon's. our guider, come; to the roman camp conduct us. [exeunt] coriolanus act i scene viii a field of battle. [alarum as in battle. enter, from opposite sides, marcius and aufidius] marcius i'll fight with none but thee; for i do hate thee worse than a promise-breaker. aufidius we hate alike: not afric owns a serpent i abhor more than thy fame and envy. fix thy foot. marcius let the first budger die the other's slave, and the gods doom him after! aufidius if i fly, marcius, holloa me like a hare. marcius within these three hours, tullus, alone i fought in your corioli walls, and made what work i pleased: 'tis not my blood wherein thou seest me mask'd; for thy revenge wrench up thy power to the highest. aufidius wert thou the hector that was the whip of your bragg'd progeny, thou shouldst not scape me here. [they fight, and certain volsces come to the aid of aufidius. marcius fights till they be driven in breathless] officious, and not valiant, you have shamed me in your condemned seconds. [exeunt] coriolanus act i scene ix the roman camp. [flourish. alarum. a retreat is sounded. flourish. enter, from one side, cominius with the romans; from the other side, marcius, with his arm in a scarf] cominius if i should tell thee o'er this thy day's work, thou'ldst not believe thy deeds: but i'll report it where senators shall mingle tears with smiles, where great patricians shall attend and shrug, i' the end admire, where ladies shall be frighted, and, gladly quaked, hear more; where the dull tribunes, that, with the fusty plebeians, hate thine honours, shall say against their hearts 'we thank the gods our rome hath such a soldier.' yet camest thou to a morsel of this feast, having fully dined before. [enter titus lartius, with his power, from the pursuit] lartius o general, here is the steed, we the caparison: hadst thou beheld- marcius pray now, no more: my mother, who has a charter to extol her blood, when she does praise me grieves me. i have done as you have done; that's what i can; induced as you have been; that's for my country: he that has but effected his good will hath overta'en mine act. cominius you shall not be the grave of your deserving; rome must know the value of her own: 'twere a concealment worse than a theft, no less than a traducement, to hide your doings; and to silence that, which, to the spire and top of praises vouch'd, would seem but modest: therefore, i beseech you in sign of what you are, not to reward what you have done--before our army hear me. marcius i have some wounds upon me, and they smart to hear themselves remember'd. cominius should they not, well might they fester 'gainst ingratitude, and tent themselves with death. of all the horses, whereof we have ta'en good and good store, of all the treasure in this field achieved and city, we render you the tenth, to be ta'en forth, before the common distribution, at your only choice. marcius i thank you, general; but cannot make my heart consent to take a bribe to pay my sword: i do refuse it; and stand upon my common part with those that have beheld the doing. [a long flourish. they all cry 'marcius! marcius!' cast up their caps and lances: cominius and lartius stand bare] marcius may these same instruments, which you profane, never sound more! when drums and trumpets shall i' the field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be made all of false-faced soothing! when steel grows soft as the parasite's silk, let him be made a coverture for the wars! no more, i say! for that i have not wash'd my nose that bled, or foil'd some debile wretch.- which, without note, here's many else have done,- you shout me forth in acclamations hyperbolical; as if i loved my little should be dieted in praises sauced with lies. cominius too modest are you; more cruel to your good report than grateful to us that give you truly: by your patience, if 'gainst yourself you be incensed, we'll put you, like one that means his proper harm, in manacles, then reason safely with you. therefore, be it known, as to us, to all the world, that caius marcius wears this war's garland: in token of the which, my noble steed, known to the camp, i give him, with all his trim belonging; and from this time, for what he did before corioli, call him, with all the applause and clamour of the host, caius marcius coriolanus! bear the addition nobly ever! [flourish. trumpets sound, and drums] all caius marcius coriolanus! coriolanus i will go wash; and when my face is fair, you shall perceive whether i blush or no: howbeit, i thank you. i mean to stride your steed, and at all times to undercrest your good addition to the fairness of my power. cominius so, to our tent; where, ere we do repose us, we will write to rome of our success. you, titus lartius, must to corioli back: send us to rome the best, with whom we may articulate, for their own good and ours. lartius i shall, my lord. coriolanus the gods begin to mock me. i, that now refused most princely gifts, am bound to beg of my lord general. cominius take't; 'tis yours. what is't? coriolanus i sometime lay here in corioli at a poor man's house; he used me kindly: he cried to me; i saw him prisoner; but then aufidius was within my view, and wrath o'erwhelm'd my pity: i request you to give my poor host freedom. cominius o, well begg'd! were he the butcher of my son, he should be free as is the wind. deliver him, titus. lartius marcius, his name? coriolanus by jupiter! forgot. i am weary; yea, my memory is tired. have we no wine here? cominius go we to our tent: the blood upon your visage dries; 'tis time it should be look'd to: come. [exeunt] coriolanus act i scene x the camp of the volsces. [a flourish. cornets. enter tullus aufidius, bloody, with two or three soldiers] aufidius the town is ta'en! first soldier 'twill be deliver'd back on good condition. aufidius condition! i would i were a roman; for i cannot, being a volsce, be that i am. condition! what good condition can a treaty find i' the part that is at mercy? five times, marcius, i have fought with thee: so often hast thou beat me, and wouldst do so, i think, should we encounter as often as we eat. by the elements, if e'er again i meet him beard to beard, he's mine, or i am his: mine emulation hath not that honour in't it had; for where i thought to crush him in an equal force, true sword to sword, i'll potch at him some way or wrath or craft may get him. first soldier he's the devil. aufidius bolder, though not so subtle. my valour's poison'd with only suffering stain by him; for him shall fly out of itself: nor sleep nor sanctuary, being naked, sick, nor fane nor capitol, the prayers of priests nor times of sacrifice, embarquements all of fury, shall lift up their rotten privilege and custom 'gainst my hate to marcius: where i find him, were it at home, upon my brother's guard, even there, against the hospitable canon, would i wash my fierce hand in's heart. go you to the city; learn how 'tis held; and what they are that must be hostages for rome. first soldier will not you go? aufidius i am attended at the cypress grove: i pray you- 'tis south the city mills--bring me word thither how the world goes, that to the pace of it i may spur on my journey. first soldier i shall, sir. [exeunt] coriolanus act ii scene i rome. a public place. [enter menenius with the two tribunes of the people, sicinius and brutus. menenius the augurer tells me we shall have news to-night. brutus good or bad? menenius not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not marcius. sicinius nature teaches beasts to know their friends. menenius pray you, who does the wolf love? sicinius the lamb. menenius ay, to devour him; as the hungry plebeians would the noble marcius. brutus he's a lamb indeed, that baes like a bear. menenius he's a bear indeed, that lives like a lamb. you two are old men: tell me one thing that i shall ask you. both well, sir. menenius in what enormity is marcius poor in, that you two have not in abundance? brutus he's poor in no one fault, but stored with all. sicinius especially in pride. brutus and topping all others in boasting. menenius this is strange now: do you two know how you are censured here in the city, i mean of us o' the right-hand file? do you? both why, how are we censured? menenius because you talk of pride now,--will you not be angry? both well, well, sir, well. menenius why, 'tis no great matter; for a very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience: give your dispositions the reins, and be angry at your pleasures; at the least if you take it as a pleasure to you in being so. you blame marcius for being proud? brutus we do it not alone, sir. menenius i know you can do very little alone; for your helps are many, or else your actions would grow wondrous single: your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone. you talk of pride: o that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves! o that you could! brutus what then, sir? menenius why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates, alias fools, as any in rome. sicinius menenius, you are known well enough too. menenius i am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying tiber in't; said to be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint; hasty and tinder-like upon too trivial motion; one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning: what i think i utter, and spend my malice in my breath. meeting two such wealsmen as you are--i cannot call you lycurguses--if the drink you give me touch my palate adversely, i make a crooked face at it. i can't say your worships have delivered the matter well, when i find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables: and though i must be content to bear with those that say you are reverend grave men, yet they lie deadly that tell you you have good faces. if you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it that i am known well enough too? what barm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character, if i be known well enough too? brutus come, sir, come, we know you well enough. menenius you know neither me, yourselves nor any thing. you are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs: you wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange wife and a fosset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy of three pence to a second day of audience. when you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers; set up the bloody flag against all patience; and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding the more entangled by your hearing: all the peace you make in their cause is, calling both the parties knaves. you are a pair of strange ones. brutus come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher in the capitol. menenius our very priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. when you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's pack saddle. yet you must be saying, marcius is proud; who in a cheap estimation, is worth predecessors since deucalion, though peradventure some of the best of 'em were hereditary hangmen. god-den to your worships: more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians: i will be bold to take my leave of you. [brutus and sicinius go aside] [enter volumnia, virgilia, and valeria] how now, my as fair as noble ladies,--and the moon, were she earthly, no nobler,--whither do you follow your eyes so fast? volumnia honourable menenius, my boy marcius approaches; for the love of juno, let's go. menenius ha! marcius coming home! volumnia ay, worthy menenius; and with most prosperous approbation. menenius take my cap, jupiter, and i thank thee. hoo! marcius coming home! volumnia | | nay,'tis true. virgilia | volumnia look, here's a letter from him: the state hath another, his wife another; and, i think, there's one at home for you. menenius i will make my very house reel tonight: a letter for me! virgilia yes, certain, there's a letter for you; i saw't. menenius a letter for me! it gives me an estate of seven years' health; in which time i will make a lip at the physician: the most sovereign prescription in galen is but empiricutic, and, to this preservative, of no better report than a horse-drench. is he not wounded? he was wont to come home wounded. virgilia o, no, no, no. volumnia o, he is wounded; i thank the gods for't. menenius so do i too, if it be not too much: brings a' victory in his pocket? the wounds become him. volumnia on's brows: menenius, he comes the third time home with the oaken garland. menenius has he disciplined aufidius soundly? volumnia titus lartius writes, they fought together, but aufidius got off. menenius and 'twas time for him too, i'll warrant him that: an he had stayed by him, i would not have been so fidiused for all the chests in corioli, and the gold that's in them. is the senate possessed of this? volumnia good ladies, let's go. yes, yes, yes; the senate has letters from the general, wherein he gives my son the whole name of the war: he hath in this action outdone his former deeds doubly valeria in troth, there's wondrous things spoke of him. menenius wondrous! ay, i warrant you, and not without his true purchasing. virgilia the gods grant them true! volumnia true! pow, wow. menenius true! i'll be sworn they are true. where is he wounded? [to the tribunes] god save your good worships! marcius is coming home: he has more cause to be proud. where is he wounded? volumnia i' the shoulder and i' the left arm there will be large cicatrices to show the people, when he shall stand for his place. he received in the repulse of tarquin seven hurts i' the body. menenius one i' the neck, and two i' the thigh,--there's nine that i know. volumnia he had, before this last expedition, twenty-five wounds upon him. menenius now it's twenty-seven: every gash was an enemy's grave. [a shout and flourish] hark! the trumpets. volumnia these are the ushers of marcius: before him he carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears: death, that dark spirit, in 's nervy arm doth lie; which, being advanced, declines, and then men die. [a sennet. trumpets sound. enter cominius the general, and titus lartius; between them, coriolanus, crowned with an oaken garland; with captains and soldiers, and a herald] herald know, rome, that all alone marcius did fight within corioli gates: where he hath won, with fame, a name to caius marcius; these in honour follows coriolanus. welcome to rome, renowned coriolanus! [flourish] all welcome to rome, renowned coriolanus! coriolanus no more of this; it does offend my heart: pray now, no more. cominius look, sir, your mother! coriolanus o, you have, i know, petition'd all the gods for my prosperity! [kneels] volumnia nay, my good soldier, up; my gentle marcius, worthy caius, and by deed-achieving honour newly named,- what is it?--coriolanus must i call thee?- but o, thy wife! coriolanus my gracious silence, hail! wouldst thou have laugh'd had i come coffin'd home, that weep'st to see me triumph? ay, my dear, such eyes the widows in corioli wear, and mothers that lack sons. menenius now, the gods crown thee! coriolanus and live you yet? [to valeria] o my sweet lady, pardon. volumnia i know not where to turn: o, welcome home: and welcome, general: and ye're welcome all. menenius a hundred thousand welcomes. i could weep and i could laugh, i am light and heavy. welcome. a curse begin at very root on's heart, that is not glad to see thee! you are three that rome should dote on: yet, by the faith of men, we have some old crab-trees here at home that will not be grafted to your relish. yet welcome, warriors: we call a nettle but a nettle and the faults of fools but folly. cominius ever right. coriolanus menenius ever, ever. herald give way there, and go on! coriolanus [to volumnia and virgilia] your hand, and yours: ere in our own house i do shade my head, the good patricians must be visited; from whom i have received not only greetings, but with them change of honours. volumnia i have lived to see inherited my very wishes and the buildings of my fancy: only there's one thing wanting, which i doubt not but our rome will cast upon thee. coriolanus know, good mother, i had rather be their servant in my way, than sway with them in theirs. cominius on, to the capitol! [flourish. cornets. exeunt in state, as before. brutus and sicinius come forward] brutus all tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights are spectacled to see him: your prattling nurse into a rapture lets her baby cry while she chats him: the kitchen malkin pins her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck, clambering the walls to eye him: stalls, bulks, windows, are smother'd up, leads fill'd, and ridges horsed with variable complexions, all agreeing in earnestness to see him: seld-shown flamens do press among the popular throngs and puff to win a vulgar station: or veil'd dames commit the war of white and damask in their nicely-gawded cheeks to the wanton spoil of phoebus' burning kisses: such a pother as if that whatsoever god who leads him were slily crept into his human powers and gave him graceful posture. sicinius on the sudden, i warrant him consul. brutus then our office may, during his power, go sleep. sicinius he cannot temperately transport his honours from where he should begin and end, but will lose those he hath won. brutus in that there's comfort. sicinius doubt not the commoners, for whom we stand, but they upon their ancient malice will forget with the least cause these his new honours, which that he will give them make i as little question as he is proud to do't. brutus i heard him swear, were he to stand for consul, never would he appear i' the market-place nor on him put the napless vesture of humility; nor showing, as the manner is, his wounds to the people, beg their stinking breaths. sicinius 'tis right. brutus it was his word: o, he would miss it rather than carry it but by the suit of the gentry to him, and the desire of the nobles. sicinius i wish no better than have him hold that purpose and to put it in execution. brutus 'tis most like he will. sicinius it shall be to him then as our good wills, a sure destruction. brutus so it must fall out to him or our authorities. for an end, we must suggest the people in what hatred he still hath held them; that to's power he would have made them mules, silenced their pleaders and dispropertied their freedoms, holding them, in human action and capacity, of no more soul nor fitness for the world than camels in the war, who have their provand only for bearing burdens, and sore blows for sinking under them. sicinius this, as you say, suggested at some time when his soaring insolence shall touch the people--which time shall not want, if he be put upon 't; and that's as easy as to set dogs on sheep--will be his fire to kindle their dry stubble; and their blaze shall darken him for ever. [enter a messenger] brutus what's the matter? messenger you are sent for to the capitol. 'tis thought that marcius shall be consul: i have seen the dumb men throng to see him and the blind to bear him speak: matrons flung gloves, ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers, upon him as he pass'd: the nobles bended, as to jove's statue, and the commons made a shower and thunder with their caps and shouts: i never saw the like. brutus let's to the capitol; and carry with us ears and eyes for the time, but hearts for the event. sicinius have with you. [exeunt] coriolanus act ii scene ii the same. the capitol. [enter two officers, to lay cushions] first officer come, come, they are almost here. how many stand for consulships? second officer three, they say: but 'tis thought of every one coriolanus will carry it. first officer that's a brave fellow; but he's vengeance proud, and loves not the common people. second officer faith, there had been many great men that have flattered the people, who ne'er loved them; and there be many that they have loved, they know not wherefore: so that, if they love they know not why, they hate upon no better a ground: therefore, for coriolanus neither to care whether they love or hate him manifests the true knowledge he has in their disposition; and out of his noble carelessness lets them plainly see't. first officer if he did not care whether he had their love or no, he waved indifferently 'twixt doing them neither good nor harm: but he seeks their hate with greater devotion than can render it him; and leaves nothing undone that may fully discover him their opposite. now, to seem to affect the malice and displeasure of the people is as bad as that which he dislikes, to flatter them for their love. second officer he hath deserved worthily of his country: and his ascent is not by such easy degrees as those who, having been supple and courteous to the people, bonneted, without any further deed to have them at an into their estimation and report: but he hath so planted his honours in their eyes, and his actions in their hearts, that for their tongues to be silent, and not confess so much, were a kind of ingrateful injury; to report otherwise, were a malice, that, giving itself the lie, would pluck reproof and rebuke from every ear that heard it. first officer no more of him; he is a worthy man: make way, they are coming. [a sennet. enter, with actors before them, cominius the consul, menenius, coriolanus, senators, sicinius and brutus. the senators take their places; the tribunes take their places by themselves. coriolanus stands] menenius having determined of the volsces and to send for titus lartius, it remains, as the main point of this our after-meeting, to gratify his noble service that hath thus stood for his country: therefore, please you, most reverend and grave elders, to desire the present consul, and last general in our well-found successes, to report a little of that worthy work perform'd by caius marcius coriolanus, whom we met here both to thank and to remember with honours like himself. first senator speak, good cominius: leave nothing out for length, and make us think rather our state's defective for requital than we to stretch it out. [to the tribunes] masters o' the people, we do request your kindest ears, and after, your loving motion toward the common body, to yield what passes here. sicinius we are convented upon a pleasing treaty, and have hearts inclinable to honour and advance the theme of our assembly. brutus which the rather we shall be blest to do, if he remember a kinder value of the people than he hath hereto prized them at. menenius that's off, that's off; i would you rather had been silent. please you to hear cominius speak? brutus most willingly; but yet my caution was more pertinent than the rebuke you give it. menenius he loves your people but tie him not to be their bedfellow. worthy cominius, speak. [coriolanus offers to go away] nay, keep your place. first senator sit, coriolanus; never shame to hear what you have nobly done. coriolanus your horror's pardon: i had rather have my wounds to heal again than hear say how i got them. brutus sir, i hope my words disbench'd you not. coriolanus no, sir: yet oft, when blows have made me stay, i fled from words. you soothed not, therefore hurt not: but your people, i love them as they weigh. menenius pray now, sit down. coriolanus i had rather have one scratch my head i' the sun when the alarum were struck than idly sit to hear my nothings monster'd. [exit] menenius masters of the people, your multiplying spawn how can he flatter- that's thousand to one good one--when you now see he had rather venture all his limbs for honour than one on's ears to hear it? proceed, cominius. cominius i shall lack voice: the deeds of coriolanus should not be utter'd feebly. it is held that valour is the chiefest virtue, and most dignifies the haver: if it be, the man i speak of cannot in the world be singly counterpoised. at sixteen years, when tarquin made a head for rome, he fought beyond the mark of others: our then dictator, whom with all praise i point at, saw him fight, when with his amazonian chin he drove the bristled lips before him: be bestrid an o'er-press'd roman and i' the consul's view slew three opposers: tarquin's self he met, and struck him on his knee: in that day's feats, when he might act the woman in the scene, he proved best man i' the field, and for his meed was brow-bound with the oak. his pupil age man-enter'd thus, he waxed like a sea, and in the brunt of seventeen battles since he lurch'd all swords of the garland. for this last, before and in corioli, let me say, i cannot speak him home: he stopp'd the fliers; and by his rare example made the coward turn terror into sport: as weeds before a vessel under sail, so men obey'd and fell below his stem: his sword, death's stamp, where it did mark, it took; from face to foot he was a thing of blood, whose every motion was timed with dying cries: alone he enter'd the mortal gate of the city, which he painted with shunless destiny; aidless came off, and with a sudden reinforcement struck corioli like a planet: now all's his: when, by and by, the din of war gan pierce his ready sense; then straight his doubled spirit re-quicken'd what in flesh was fatigate, and to the battle came he; where he did run reeking o'er the lives of men, as if 'twere a perpetual spoil: and till we call'd both field and city ours, he never stood to ease his breast with panting. menenius worthy man! first senator he cannot but with measure fit the honours which we devise him. cominius our spoils he kick'd at, and look'd upon things precious as they were the common muck of the world: he covets less than misery itself would give; rewards his deeds with doing them, and is content to spend the time to end it. menenius he's right noble: let him be call'd for. first senator call coriolanus. officer he doth appear. [re-enter coriolanus] menenius the senate, coriolanus, are well pleased to make thee consul. coriolanus i do owe them still my life and services. menenius it then remains that you do speak to the people. coriolanus i do beseech you, let me o'erleap that custom, for i cannot put on the gown, stand naked and entreat them, for my wounds' sake, to give their suffrage: please you that i may pass this doing. sicinius sir, the people must have their voices; neither will they bate one jot of ceremony. menenius put them not to't: pray you, go fit you to the custom and take to you, as your predecessors have, your honour with your form. coriolanus it is apart that i shall blush in acting, and might well be taken from the people. brutus mark you that? coriolanus to brag unto them, thus i did, and thus; show them the unaching scars which i should hide, as if i had received them for the hire of their breath only! menenius do not stand upon't. we recommend to you, tribunes of the people, our purpose to them: and to our noble consul wish we all joy and honour. senators to coriolanus come all joy and honour! [flourish of cornets. exeunt all but sicinius and brutus] brutus you see how he intends to use the people. sicinius may they perceive's intent! he will require them, as if he did contemn what he requested should be in them to give. brutus come, we'll inform them of our proceedings here: on the marketplace, i know, they do attend us. [exeunt] coriolanus act ii scene iii the same. the forum. [enter seven or eight citizens] first citizen once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to deny him. second citizen we may, sir, if we will. third citizen we have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do; for if he show us his wounds and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those wounds and speak for them; so, if he tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell him our noble acceptance of them. ingratitude is monstrous, and for the multitude to be ingrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude: of the which we being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous members. first citizen and to make us no better thought of, a little help will serve; for once we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck not to call us the many-headed multitude. third citizen we have been called so of many; not that our heads are some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, but that our wits are so diversely coloured: and truly i think if all our wits were to issue out of one skull, they would fly east, west, north, south, and their consent of one direct way should be at once to all the points o' the compass. second citizen think you so? which way do you judge my wit would fly? third citizen nay, your wit will not so soon out as another man's will;'tis strongly wedged up in a block-head, but if it were at liberty, 'twould, sure, southward. second citizen why that way? third citizen to lose itself in a fog, where being three parts melted away with rotten dews, the fourth would return for conscience sake, to help to get thee a wife. second citizen you are never without your tricks: you may, you may. third citizen are you all resolved to give your voices? but that's no matter, the greater part carries it. i say, if he would incline to the people, there was never a worthier man. [enter coriolanus in a gown of humility, with menenius] here he comes, and in the gown of humility: mark his behavior. we are not to stay all together, but to come by him where he stands, by ones, by twos, and by threes. he's to make his requests by particulars; wherein every one of us has a single honour, in giving him our own voices with our own tongues: therefore follow me, and i direct you how you shall go by him. all content, content. [exeunt citizens] menenius o sir, you are not right: have you not known the worthiest men have done't? coriolanus what must i say? 'i pray, sir'--plague upon't! i cannot bring my tongue to such a pace:--'look, sir, my wounds! i got them in my country's service, when some certain of your brethren roar'd and ran from the noise of our own drums.' menenius o me, the gods! you must not speak of that: you must desire them to think upon you. coriolanus think upon me! hang 'em! i would they would forget me, like the virtues which our divines lose by 'em. menenius you'll mar all: i'll leave you: pray you, speak to 'em, i pray you, in wholesome manner. [exit] coriolanus bid them wash their faces and keep their teeth clean. [re-enter two of the citizens] so, here comes a brace. [re-enter a third citizen] you know the cause, air, of my standing here. third citizen we do, sir; tell us what hath brought you to't. coriolanus mine own desert. second citizen your own desert! coriolanus ay, but not mine own desire. third citizen how not your own desire? coriolanus no, sir,'twas never my desire yet to trouble the poor with begging. third citizen you must think, if we give you any thing, we hope to gain by you. coriolanus well then, i pray, your price o' the consulship? first citizen the price is to ask it kindly. coriolanus kindly! sir, i pray, let me ha't: i have wounds to show you, which shall be yours in private. your good voice, sir; what say you? second citizen you shall ha' it, worthy sir. coriolanus a match, sir. there's in all two worthy voices begged. i have your alms: adieu. third citizen but this is something odd. second citizen an 'twere to give again,--but 'tis no matter. [exeunt the three citizens] [re-enter two other citizens] coriolanus pray you now, if it may stand with the tune of your voices that i may be consul, i have here the customary gown. fourth citizen you have deserved nobly of your country, and you have not deserved nobly. coriolanus your enigma? fourth citizen you have been a scourge to her enemies, you have been a rod to her friends; you have not indeed loved the common people. coriolanus you should account me the more virtuous that i have not been common in my love. i will, sir, flatter my sworn brother, the people, to earn a dearer estimation of them; 'tis a condition they account gentle: and since the wisdom of their choice is rather to have my hat than my heart, i will practise the insinuating nod and be off to them most counterfeitly; that is, sir, i will counterfeit the bewitchment of some popular man and give it bountiful to the desirers. therefore, beseech you, i may be consul. fifth citizen we hope to find you our friend; and therefore give you our voices heartily. fourth citizen you have received many wounds for your country. coriolanus i will not seal your knowledge with showing them. i will make much of your voices, and so trouble you no further. both citizens the gods give you joy, sir, heartily! [exeunt] coriolanus most sweet voices! better it is to die, better to starve, than crave the hire which first we do deserve. why in this woolvish toge should i stand here, to beg of hob and dick, that do appear, their needless vouches? custom calls me to't: what custom wills, in all things should we do't, the dust on antique time would lie unswept, and mountainous error be too highly heapt for truth to o'er-peer. rather than fool it so, let the high office and the honour go to one that would do thus. i am half through; the one part suffer'd, the other will i do. [re-enter three citizens more] here come more voices. your voices: for your voices i have fought; watch'd for your voices; for your voices bear of wounds two dozen odd; battles thrice six i have seen and heard of; for your voices have done many things, some less, some more your voices: indeed i would be consul. sixth citizen he has done nobly, and cannot go without any honest man's voice. seventh citizen therefore let him be consul: the gods give him joy, and make him good friend to the people! all citizens amen, amen. god save thee, noble consul! [exeunt] coriolanus worthy voices! [re-enter menenius, with brutus and sicinius] menenius you have stood your limitation; and the tribunes endue you with the people's voice: remains that, in the official marks invested, you anon do meet the senate. coriolanus is this done? sicinius the custom of request you have discharged: the people do admit you, and are summon'd to meet anon, upon your approbation. coriolanus where? at the senate-house? sicinius there, coriolanus. coriolanus may i change these garments? sicinius you may, sir. coriolanus that i'll straight do; and, knowing myself again, repair to the senate-house. menenius i'll keep you company. will you along? brutus we stay here for the people. sicinius fare you well. [exeunt coriolanus and menenius] he has it now, and by his looks methink 'tis warm at 's heart. brutus with a proud heart he wore his humble weeds. will you dismiss the people? [re-enter citizens] sicinius how now, my masters! have you chose this man? first citizen he has our voices, sir. brutus we pray the gods he may deserve your loves. second citizen amen, sir: to my poor unworthy notice, he mock'd us when he begg'd our voices. third citizen certainly he flouted us downright. first citizen no,'tis his kind of speech: he did not mock us. second citizen not one amongst us, save yourself, but says he used us scornfully: he should have show'd us his marks of merit, wounds received for's country. sicinius why, so he did, i am sure. citizens no, no; no man saw 'em. third citizen he said he had wounds, which he could show in private; and with his hat, thus waving it in scorn, 'i would be consul,' says he: 'aged custom, but by your voices, will not so permit me; your voices therefore.' when we granted that, here was 'i thank you for your voices: thank you: your most sweet voices: now you have left your voices, i have no further with you.' was not this mockery? sicinius why either were you ignorant to see't, or, seeing it, of such childish friendliness to yield your voices? brutus could you not have told him as you were lesson'd, when he had no power, but was a petty servant to the state, he was your enemy, ever spake against your liberties and the charters that you bear i' the body of the weal; and now, arriving a place of potency and sway o' the state, if he should still malignantly remain fast foe to the plebeii, your voices might be curses to yourselves? you should have said that as his worthy deeds did claim no less than what he stood for, so his gracious nature would think upon you for your voices and translate his malice towards you into love, standing your friendly lord. sicinius thus to have said, as you were fore-advised, had touch'd his spirit and tried his inclination; from him pluck'd either his gracious promise, which you might, as cause had call'd you up, have held him to or else it would have gall'd his surly nature, which easily endures not article tying him to aught; so putting him to rage, you should have ta'en the advantage of his choler and pass'd him unelected. brutus did you perceive he did solicit you in free contempt when he did need your loves, and do you think that his contempt shall not be bruising to you, when he hath power to crush? why, had your bodies no heart among you? or had you tongues to cry against the rectorship of judgment? sicinius have you ere now denied the asker? and now again of him that did not ask, but mock, bestow your sued-for tongues? third citizen he's not confirm'd; we may deny him yet. second citizen and will deny him: i'll have five hundred voices of that sound. first citizen i twice five hundred and their friends to piece 'em. brutus get you hence instantly, and tell those friends, they have chose a consul that will from them take their liberties; make them of no more voice than dogs that are as often beat for barking as therefore kept to do so. sicinius let them assemble, and on a safer judgment all revoke your ignorant election; enforce his pride, and his old hate unto you; besides, forget not with what contempt he wore the humble weed, how in his suit he scorn'd you; but your loves, thinking upon his services, took from you the apprehension of his present portance, which most gibingly, ungravely, he did fashion after the inveterate hate he bears you. brutus lay a fault on us, your tribunes; that we laboured, no impediment between, but that you must cast your election on him. sicinius say, you chose him more after our commandment than as guided by your own true affections, and that your minds, preoccupied with what you rather must do than what you should, made you against the grain to voice him consul: lay the fault on us. brutus ay, spare us not. say we read lectures to you. how youngly he began to serve his country, how long continued, and what stock he springs of, the noble house o' the marcians, from whence came that ancus marcius, numa's daughter's son, who, after great hostilius, here was king; of the same house publius and quintus were, that our beat water brought by conduits hither; and [censorinus,] nobly named so, twice being [by the people chosen] censor, was his great ancestor. sicinius one thus descended, that hath beside well in his person wrought to be set high in place, we did commend to your remembrances: but you have found, scaling his present bearing with his past, that he's your fixed enemy, and revoke your sudden approbation. brutus say, you ne'er had done't- harp on that still--but by our putting on; and presently, when you have drawn your number, repair to the capitol. all we will so: almost all repent in their election. [exeunt citizens] brutus let them go on; this mutiny were better put in hazard, than stay, past doubt, for greater: if, as his nature is, he fall in rage with their refusal, both observe and answer the vantage of his anger. sicinius to the capitol, come: we will be there before the stream o' the people; and this shall seem, as partly 'tis, their own, which we have goaded onward. [exeunt] coriolanus act iii scene i rome. a street. [cornets. enter coriolanus, menenius, all the gentry, cominius, titus lartius, and other senators] coriolanus tullus aufidius then had made new head? lartius he had, my lord; and that it was which caused our swifter composition. coriolanus so then the volsces stand but as at first, ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road. upon's again. cominius they are worn, lord consul, so, that we shall hardly in our ages see their banners wave again. coriolanus saw you aufidius? lartius on safe-guard he came to me; and did curse against the volsces, for they had so vilely yielded the town: he is retired to antium. coriolanus spoke he of me? lartius he did, my lord. coriolanus how? what? lartius how often he had met you, sword to sword; that of all things upon the earth he hated your person most, that he would pawn his fortunes to hopeless restitution, so he might be call'd your vanquisher. coriolanus at antium lives he? lartius at antium. coriolanus i wish i had a cause to seek him there, to oppose his hatred fully. welcome home. [enter sicinius and brutus] behold, these are the tribunes of the people, the tongues o' the common mouth: i do despise them; for they do prank them in authority, against all noble sufferance. sicinius pass no further. coriolanus ha! what is that? brutus it will be dangerous to go on: no further. coriolanus what makes this change? menenius the matter? cominius hath he not pass'd the noble and the common? brutus cominius, no. coriolanus have i had children's voices? first senator tribunes, give way; he shall to the market-place. brutus the people are incensed against him. sicinius stop, or all will fall in broil. coriolanus are these your herd? must these have voices, that can yield them now and straight disclaim their tongues? what are your offices? you being their mouths, why rule you not their teeth? have you not set them on? menenius be calm, be calm. coriolanus it is a purposed thing, and grows by plot, to curb the will of the nobility: suffer't, and live with such as cannot rule nor ever will be ruled. brutus call't not a plot: the people cry you mock'd them, and of late, when corn was given them gratis, you repined; scandal'd the suppliants for the people, call'd them time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness. coriolanus why, this was known before. brutus not to them all. coriolanus have you inform'd them sithence? brutus how! i inform them! coriolanus you are like to do such business. brutus not unlike, each way, to better yours. coriolanus why then should i be consul? by yond clouds, let me deserve so ill as you, and make me your fellow tribune. sicinius you show too much of that for which the people stir: if you will pass to where you are bound, you must inquire your way, which you are out of, with a gentler spirit, or never be so noble as a consul, nor yoke with him for tribune. menenius let's be calm. cominius the people are abused; set on. this paltering becomes not rome, nor has coriolanus deserved this so dishonour'd rub, laid falsely i' the plain way of his merit. coriolanus tell me of corn! this was my speech, and i will speak't again- menenius not now, not now. first senator not in this heat, sir, now. coriolanus now, as i live, i will. my nobler friends, i crave their pardons: for the mutable, rank-scented many, let them regard me as i do not flatter, and therein behold themselves: i say again, in soothing them, we nourish 'gainst our senate the cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition, which we ourselves have plough'd for, sow'd, and scatter'd, by mingling them with us, the honour'd number, who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that which they have given to beggars. menenius well, no more. first senator no more words, we beseech you. coriolanus how! no more! as for my country i have shed my blood, not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs coin words till their decay against those measles, which we disdain should tatter us, yet sought the very way to catch them. brutus you speak o' the people, as if you were a god to punish, not a man of their infirmity. sicinius 'twere well we let the people know't. menenius what, what? his choler? coriolanus choler! were i as patient as the midnight sleep, by jove, 'twould be my mind! sicinius it is a mind that shall remain a poison where it is, not poison any further. coriolanus shall remain! hear you this triton of the minnows? mark you his absolute 'shall'? cominius 'twas from the canon. coriolanus 'shall'! o good but most unwise patricians! why, you grave but reckless senators, have you thus given hydra here to choose an officer, that with his peremptory 'shall,' being but the horn and noise o' the monster's, wants not spirit to say he'll turn your current in a ditch, and make your channel his? if he have power then vail your ignorance; if none, awake your dangerous lenity. if you are learn'd, be not as common fools; if you are not, let them have cushions by you. you are plebeians, if they be senators: and they are no less, when, both your voices blended, the great'st taste most palates theirs. they choose their magistrate, and such a one as he, who puts his 'shall,' his popular 'shall' against a graver bench than ever frown in greece. by jove himself! it makes the consuls base: and my soul aches to know, when two authorities are up, neither supreme, how soon confusion may enter 'twixt the gap of both and take the one by the other. cominius well, on to the market-place. coriolanus whoever gave that counsel, to give forth the corn o' the storehouse gratis, as 'twas used sometime in greece,- menenius well, well, no more of that. coriolanus though there the people had more absolute power, i say, they nourish'd disobedience, fed the ruin of the state. brutus why, shall the people give one that speaks thus their voice? coriolanus i'll give my reasons, more worthier than their voices. they know the corn was not our recompense, resting well assured that ne'er did service for't: being press'd to the war, even when the navel of the state was touch'd, they would not thread the gates. this kind of service did not deserve corn gratis. being i' the war their mutinies and revolts, wherein they show'd most valour, spoke not for them: the accusation which they have often made against the senate, all cause unborn, could never be the motive of our so frank donation. well, what then? how shall this bisson multitude digest the senate's courtesy? let deeds express what's like to be their words: 'we did request it; we are the greater poll, and in true fear they gave us our demands.' thus we debase the nature of our seats and make the rabble call our cares fears; which will in time break ope the locks o' the senate and bring in the crows to peck the eagles. menenius come, enough. brutus enough, with over-measure. coriolanus no, take more: what may be sworn by, both divine and human, seal what i end withal! this double worship, where one part does disdain with cause, the other insult without all reason, where gentry, title, wisdom, cannot conclude but by the yea and no of general ignorance,--it must omit real necessities, and give way the while to unstable slightness: purpose so barr'd, it follows, nothing is done to purpose. therefore, beseech you,- you that will be less fearful than discreet, that love the fundamental part of state more than you doubt the change on't, that prefer a noble life before a long, and wish to jump a body with a dangerous physic that's sure of death without it, at once pluck out the multitudinous tongue; let them not lick the sweet which is their poison: your dishonour mangles true judgment and bereaves the state of that integrity which should become't, not having the power to do the good it would, for the in which doth control't. brutus has said enough. sicinius has spoken like a traitor, and shall answer as traitors do. coriolanus thou wretch, despite o'erwhelm thee! what should the people do with these bald tribunes? on whom depending, their obedience fails to the greater bench: in a rebellion, when what's not meet, but what must be, was law, then were they chosen: in a better hour, let what is meet be said it must be meet, and throw their power i' the dust. brutus manifest treason! sicinius this a consul? no. brutus the aediles, ho! [enter an aedile] let him be apprehended. sicinius go, call the people: [exit aedile] in whose name myself attach thee as a traitorous innovator, a foe to the public weal: obey, i charge thee, and follow to thine answer. coriolanus hence, old goat! senators, &c we'll surety him. cominius aged sir, hands off. coriolanus hence, rotten thing! or i shall shake thy bones out of thy garments. sicinius help, ye citizens! [enter a rabble of citizens (plebeians), with the aediles] menenius on both sides more respect. sicinius here's he that would take from you all your power. brutus seize him, aediles! citizens down with him! down with him! senators, &c weapons, weapons, weapons! [they all bustle about coriolanus, crying] 'tribunes!' 'patricians!' 'citizens!' 'what, ho!' 'sicinius!' 'brutus!' 'coriolanus!' 'citizens!' 'peace, peace, peace!' 'stay, hold, peace!' menenius what is about to be? i am out of breath; confusion's near; i cannot speak. you, tribunes to the people! coriolanus, patience! speak, good sicinius. sicinius hear me, people; peace! citizens let's hear our tribune: peace speak, speak, speak. sicinius you are at point to lose your liberties: marcius would have all from you; marcius, whom late you have named for consul. menenius fie, fie, fie! this is the way to kindle, not to quench. first senator to unbuild the city and to lay all flat. sicinius what is the city but the people? citizens true, the people are the city. brutus by the consent of all, we were establish'd the people's magistrates. citizens you so remain. menenius and so are like to do. cominius that is the way to lay the city flat; to bring the roof to the foundation, and bury all, which yet distinctly ranges, in heaps and piles of ruin. sicinius this deserves death. brutus or let us stand to our authority, or let us lose it. we do here pronounce, upon the part o' the people, in whose power we were elected theirs, marcius is worthy of present death. sicinius therefore lay hold of him; bear him to the rock tarpeian, and from thence into destruction cast him. brutus aediles, seize him! citizens yield, marcius, yield! menenius hear me one word; beseech you, tribunes, hear me but a word. aedile peace, peace! menenius [to brutus] be that you seem, truly your country's friend, and temperately proceed to what you would thus violently redress. brutus sir, those cold ways, that seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous where the disease is violent. lay hands upon him, and bear him to the rock. coriolanus no, i'll die here. [drawing his sword] there's some among you have beheld me fighting: come, try upon yourselves what you have seen me. menenius down with that sword! tribunes, withdraw awhile. brutus lay hands upon him. cominius help marcius, help, you that be noble; help him, young and old! citizens down with him, down with him! [in this mutiny, the tribunes, the aediles, and the people, are beat in] menenius go, get you to your house; be gone, away! all will be naught else. second senator get you gone. cominius stand fast; we have as many friends as enemies. menenius sham it be put to that? first senator the gods forbid! i prithee, noble friend, home to thy house; leave us to cure this cause. menenius for 'tis a sore upon us, you cannot tent yourself: be gone, beseech you. cominius come, sir, along with us. coriolanus i would they were barbarians--as they are, though in rome litter'd--not romans--as they are not, though calved i' the porch o' the capitol- menenius be gone; put not your worthy rage into your tongue; one time will owe another. coriolanus on fair ground i could beat forty of them. cominius i could myself take up a brace o' the best of them; yea, the two tribunes: but now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic; and manhood is call'd foolery, when it stands against a falling fabric. will you hence, before the tag return? whose rage doth rend like interrupted waters and o'erbear what they are used to bear. menenius pray you, be gone: i'll try whether my old wit be in request with those that have but little: this must be patch'd with cloth of any colour. cominius nay, come away. [exeunt coriolanus, cominius, and others] a patrician this man has marr'd his fortune. menenius his nature is too noble for the world: he would not flatter neptune for his trident, or jove for's power to thunder. his heart's his mouth: what his breast forges, that his tongue must vent; and, being angry, does forget that ever he heard the name of death. [a noise within] here's goodly work! second patrician i would they were abed! menenius i would they were in tiber! what the vengeance! could he not speak 'em fair? [re-enter brutus and sicinius, with the rabble] sicinius where is this viper that would depopulate the city and be every man himself? menenius you worthy tribunes,- sicinius he shall be thrown down the tarpeian rock with rigorous hands: he hath resisted law, and therefore law shall scorn him further trial than the severity of the public power which he so sets at nought. first citizen he shall well know the noble tribunes are the people's mouths, and we their hands. citizens he shall, sure on't. menenius sir, sir,- sicinius peace! menenius do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt with modest warrant. sicinius sir, how comes't that you have holp to make this rescue? menenius hear me speak: as i do know the consul's worthiness, so can i name his faults,- sicinius consul! what consul? menenius the consul coriolanus. brutus he consul! citizens no, no, no, no, no. menenius if, by the tribunes' leave, and yours, good people, i may be heard, i would crave a word or two; the which shall turn you to no further harm than so much loss of time. sicinius speak briefly then; for we are peremptory to dispatch this viperous traitor: to eject him hence were but one danger, and to keep him here our certain death: therefore it is decreed he dies to-night. menenius now the good gods forbid that our renowned rome, whose gratitude towards her deserved children is enroll'd in jove's own book, like an unnatural dam should now eat up her own! sicinius he's a disease that must be cut away. menenius o, he's a limb that has but a disease; mortal, to cut it off; to cure it, easy. what has he done to rome that's worthy death? killing our enemies, the blood he hath lost- which, i dare vouch, is more than that he hath, by many an ounce--he dropp'd it for his country; and what is left, to lose it by his country, were to us all, that do't and suffer it, a brand to the end o' the world. sicinius this is clean kam. brutus merely awry: when he did love his country, it honour'd him. menenius the service of the foot being once gangrened, is not then respected for what before it was. brutus we'll hear no more. pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence: lest his infection, being of catching nature, spread further. menenius one word more, one word. this tiger-footed rage, when it shall find the harm of unscann'd swiftness, will too late tie leaden pounds to's heels. proceed by process; lest parties, as he is beloved, break out, and sack great rome with romans. brutus if it were so,- sicinius what do ye talk? have we not had a taste of his obedience? our aediles smote? ourselves resisted? come. menenius consider this: he has been bred i' the wars since he could draw a sword, and is ill school'd in bolted language; meal and bran together he throws without distinction. give me leave, i'll go to him, and undertake to bring him where he shall answer, by a lawful form, in peace, to his utmost peril. first senator noble tribunes, it is the humane way: the other course will prove too bloody, and the end of it unknown to the beginning. sicinius noble menenius, be you then as the people's officer. masters, lay down your weapons. brutus go not home. sicinius meet on the market-place. we'll attend you there: where, if you bring not marcius, we'll proceed in our first way. menenius i'll bring him to you. [to the senators] let me desire your company: he must come, or what is worst will follow. first senator pray you, let's to him. [exeunt] coriolanus act iii scene ii a room in coriolanus's house. [enter coriolanus with patricians] coriolanus let them puff all about mine ears, present me death on the wheel or at wild horses' heels, or pile ten hills on the tarpeian rock, that the precipitation might down stretch below the beam of sight, yet will i still be thus to them. a patrician you do the nobler. coriolanus i muse my mother does not approve me further, who was wont to call them woollen vassals, things created to buy and sell with groats, to show bare heads in congregations, to yawn, be still and wonder, when one but of my ordinance stood up to speak of peace or war. [enter volumnia] i talk of you: why did you wish me milder? would you have me false to my nature? rather say i play the man i am. volumnia o, sir, sir, sir, i would have had you put your power well on, before you had worn it out. coriolanus let go. volumnia you might have been enough the man you are, with striving less to be so; lesser had been the thwartings of your dispositions, if you had not show'd them how ye were disposed ere they lack'd power to cross you. coriolanus let them hang. a patrician ay, and burn too. [enter menenius and senators] menenius come, come, you have been too rough, something too rough; you must return and mend it. first senator there's no remedy; unless, by not so doing, our good city cleave in the midst, and perish. volumnia pray, be counsell'd: i have a heart as little apt as yours, but yet a brain that leads my use of anger to better vantage. menenius well said, noble woman? before he should thus stoop to the herd, but that the violent fit o' the time craves it as physic for the whole state, i would put mine armour on, which i can scarcely bear. coriolanus what must i do? menenius return to the tribunes. coriolanus well, what then? what then? menenius repent what you have spoke. coriolanus for them! i cannot do it to the gods; must i then do't to them? volumnia you are too absolute; though therein you can never be too noble, but when extremities speak. i have heard you say, honour and policy, like unsever'd friends, i' the war do grow together: grant that, and tell me, in peace what each of them by the other lose, that they combine not there. coriolanus tush, tush! menenius a good demand. volumnia if it be honour in your wars to seem the same you are not, which, for your best ends, you adopt your policy, how is it less or worse, that it shall hold companionship in peace with honour, as in war, since that to both it stands in like request? coriolanus why force you this? volumnia because that now it lies you on to speak to the people; not by your own instruction, nor by the matter which your heart prompts you, but with such words that are but rooted in your tongue, though but bastards and syllables of no allowance to your bosom's truth. now, this no more dishonours you at all than to take in a town with gentle words, which else would put you to your fortune and the hazard of much blood. i would dissemble with my nature where my fortunes and my friends at stake required i should do so in honour: i am in this, your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles; and you will rather show our general louts how you can frown than spend a fawn upon 'em, for the inheritance of their loves and safeguard of what that want might ruin. menenius noble lady! come, go with us; speak fair: you may salve so, not what is dangerous present, but the loss of what is past. volumnia i prithee now, my son, go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand; and thus far having stretch'd it--here be with them- thy knee bussing the stones--for in such business action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant more learned than the ears--waving thy head, which often, thus, correcting thy stout heart, now humble as the ripest mulberry that will not hold the handling: or say to them, thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess, were fit for thee to use as they to claim, in asking their good loves, but thou wilt frame thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far as thou hast power and person. menenius this but done, even as she speaks, why, their hearts were yours; for they have pardons, being ask'd, as free as words to little purpose. volumnia prithee now, go, and be ruled: although i know thou hadst rather follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf than flatter him in a bower. here is cominius. [enter cominius] cominius i have been i' the market-place; and, sir,'tis fit you make strong party, or defend yourself by calmness or by absence: all's in anger. menenius only fair speech. cominius i think 'twill serve, if he can thereto frame his spirit. volumnia he must, and will prithee now, say you will, and go about it. coriolanus must i go show them my unbarbed sconce? must i with base tongue give my noble heart a lie that it must bear? well, i will do't: yet, were there but this single plot to lose, this mould of marcius, they to dust should grind it and throw't against the wind. to the market-place! you have put me now to such a part which never i shall discharge to the life. cominius come, come, we'll prompt you. volumnia i prithee now, sweet son, as thou hast said my praises made thee first a soldier, so, to have my praise for this, perform a part thou hast not done before. coriolanus well, i must do't: away, my disposition, and possess me some harlot's spirit! my throat of war be turn'd, which quired with my drum, into a pipe small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice that babies lulls asleep! the smiles of knaves tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys' tears take up the glasses of my sight! a beggar's tongue make motion through my lips, and my arm'd knees, who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his that hath received an alms! i will not do't, lest i surcease to honour mine own truth and by my body's action teach my mind a most inherent baseness. volumnia at thy choice, then: to beg of thee, it is my more dishonour than thou of them. come all to ruin; let thy mother rather feel thy pride than fear thy dangerous stoutness, for i mock at death with as big heart as thou. do as thou list thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me, but owe thy pride thyself. coriolanus pray, be content: mother, i am going to the market-place; chide me no more. i'll mountebank their loves, cog their hearts from them, and come home beloved of all the trades in rome. look, i am going: commend me to my wife. i'll return consul; or never trust to what my tongue can do i' the way of flattery further. volumnia do your will. [exit] cominius away! the tribunes do attend you: arm yourself to answer mildly; for they are prepared with accusations, as i hear, more strong than are upon you yet. coriolanus the word is 'mildly.' pray you, let us go: let them accuse me by invention, i will answer in mine honour. menenius ay, but mildly. coriolanus well, mildly be it then. mildly! [exeunt] coriolanus act iii scene iii the same. the forum. [enter sicinius and brutus] brutus in this point charge him home, that he affects tyrannical power: if he evade us there, enforce him with his envy to the people, and that the spoil got on the antiates was ne'er distributed. [enter an aedile] what, will he come? aedile he's coming. brutus how accompanied? aedile with old menenius, and those senators that always favour'd him. sicinius have you a catalogue of all the voices that we have procured set down by the poll? aedile i have; 'tis ready. sicinius have you collected them by tribes? aedile i have. sicinius assemble presently the people hither; and when they bear me say 'it shall be so i' the right and strength o' the commons,' be it either for death, for fine, or banishment, then let them if i say fine, cry 'fine;' if death, cry 'death.' insisting on the old prerogative and power i' the truth o' the cause. aedile i shall inform them. brutus and when such time they have begun to cry, let them not cease, but with a din confused enforce the present execution of what we chance to sentence. aedile very well. sicinius make them be strong and ready for this hint, when we shall hap to give 't them. brutus go about it. [exit aedile] put him to choler straight: he hath been used ever to conquer, and to have his worth of contradiction: being once chafed, he cannot be rein'd again to temperance; then he speaks what's in his heart; and that is there which looks with us to break his neck. sicinius well, here he comes. [enter coriolanus, menenius, and cominius, with senators and patricians] menenius calmly, i do beseech you. coriolanus ay, as an ostler, that for the poorest piece will bear the knave by the volume. the honour'd gods keep rome in safety, and the chairs of justice supplied with worthy men! plant love among 's! throng our large temples with the shows of peace, and not our streets with war! first senator amen, amen. menenius a noble wish. [re-enter aedile, with citizens] sicinius draw near, ye people. aedile list to your tribunes. audience: peace, i say! coriolanus first, hear me speak. both tribunes well, say. peace, ho! coriolanus shall i be charged no further than this present? must all determine here? sicinius i do demand, if you submit you to the people's voices, allow their officers and are content to suffer lawful censure for such faults as shall be proved upon you? coriolanus i am content. menenius lo, citizens, he says he is content: the warlike service he has done, consider; think upon the wounds his body bears, which show like graves i' the holy churchyard. coriolanus scratches with briers, scars to move laughter only. menenius consider further, that when he speaks not like a citizen, you find him like a soldier: do not take his rougher accents for malicious sounds, but, as i say, such as become a soldier, rather than envy you. cominius well, well, no more. coriolanus what is the matter that being pass'd for consul with full voice, i am so dishonour'd that the very hour you take it off again? sicinius answer to us. coriolanus say, then: 'tis true, i ought so. sicinius we charge you, that you have contrived to take from rome all season'd office and to wind yourself into a power tyrannical; for which you are a traitor to the people. coriolanus how! traitor! menenius nay, temperately; your promise. coriolanus the fires i' the lowest hell fold-in the people! call me their traitor! thou injurious tribune! within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths, in thy hand clutch'd as many millions, in thy lying tongue both numbers, i would say 'thou liest' unto thee with a voice as free as i do pray the gods. sicinius mark you this, people? citizens to the rock, to the rock with him! sicinius peace! we need not put new matter to his charge: what you have seen him do and heard him speak, beating your officers, cursing yourselves, opposing laws with strokes and here defying those whose great power must try him; even this, so criminal and in such capital kind, deserves the extremest death. brutus but since he hath served well for rome,- coriolanus what do you prate of service? brutus i talk of that, that know it. coriolanus you? menenius is this the promise that you made your mother? cominius know, i pray you,- coriolanus i know no further: let them pronounce the steep tarpeian death, vagabond exile, raying, pent to linger but with a grain a day, i would not buy their mercy at the price of one fair word; nor cheque my courage for what they can give, to have't with saying 'good morrow.' sicinius for that he has, as much as in him lies, from time to time envied against the people, seeking means to pluck away their power, as now at last given hostile strokes, and that not in the presence of dreaded justice, but on the ministers that do distribute it; in the name o' the people and in the power of us the tribunes, we, even from this instant, banish him our city, in peril of precipitation from off the rock tarpeian never more to enter our rome gates: i' the people's name, i say it shall be so. citizens it shall be so, it shall be so; let him away: he's banish'd, and it shall be so. cominius hear me, my masters, and my common friends,- sicinius he's sentenced; no more hearing. cominius let me speak: i have been consul, and can show for rome her enemies' marks upon me. i do love my country's good with a respect more tender, more holy and profound, than mine own life, my dear wife's estimate, her womb's increase, and treasure of my loins; then if i would speak that,- sicinius we know your drift: speak what? brutus there's no more to be said, but he is banish'd, as enemy to the people and his country: it shall be so. citizens it shall be so, it shall be so. coriolanus you common cry of curs! whose breath i hate as reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves i prize as the dead carcasses of unburied men that do corrupt my air, i banish you; and here remain with your uncertainty! let every feeble rumour shake your hearts! your enemies, with nodding of their plumes, fan you into despair! have the power still to banish your defenders; till at length your ignorance, which finds not till it feels, making not reservation of yourselves, still your own foes, deliver you as most abated captives to some nation that won you without blows! despising, for you, the city, thus i turn my back: there is a world elsewhere. [exeunt coriolanus, cominius, menenius, senators, and patricians] aedile the people's enemy is gone, is gone! citizens our enemy is banish'd! he is gone! hoo! hoo! [shouting, and throwing up their caps] sicinius go, see him out at gates, and follow him, as he hath followed you, with all despite; give him deserved vexation. let a guard attend us through the city. citizens come, come; let's see him out at gates; come. the gods preserve our noble tribunes! come. [exeunt] coriolanus act iv scene i rome. before a gate of the city. [enter coriolanus, volumnia, virgilia, menenius, cominius, with the young nobility of rome] coriolanus come, leave your tears: a brief farewell: the beast with many heads butts me away. nay, mother, where is your ancient courage? you were used to say extremity was the trier of spirits; that common chances common men could bear; that when the sea was calm all boats alike show'd mastership in floating; fortune's blows, when most struck home, being gentle wounded, craves a noble cunning: you were used to load me with precepts that would make invincible the heart that conn'd them. virgilia o heavens! o heavens! coriolanus nay! prithee, woman,- volumnia now the red pestilence strike all trades in rome, and occupations perish! coriolanus what, what, what! i shall be loved when i am lack'd. nay, mother. resume that spirit, when you were wont to say, if you had been the wife of hercules, six of his labours you'ld have done, and saved your husband so much sweat. cominius, droop not; adieu. farewell, my wife, my mother: i'll do well yet. thou old and true menenius, thy tears are salter than a younger man's, and venomous to thine eyes. my sometime general, i have seen thee stem, and thou hast oft beheld heart-hardening spectacles; tell these sad women 'tis fond to wail inevitable strokes, as 'tis to laugh at 'em. my mother, you wot well my hazards still have been your solace: and believe't not lightly--though i go alone, like to a lonely dragon, that his fen makes fear'd and talk'd of more than seen--your son will or exceed the common or be caught with cautelous baits and practise. volumnia my first son. whither wilt thou go? take good cominius with thee awhile: determine on some course, more than a wild exposture to each chance that starts i' the way before thee. coriolanus o the gods! cominius i'll follow thee a month, devise with thee where thou shalt rest, that thou mayst hear of us and we of thee: so if the time thrust forth a cause for thy repeal, we shall not send o'er the vast world to seek a single man, and lose advantage, which doth ever cool i' the absence of the needer. coriolanus fare ye well: thou hast years upon thee; and thou art too full of the wars' surfeits, to go rove with one that's yet unbruised: bring me but out at gate. come, my sweet wife, my dearest mother, and my friends of noble touch, when i am forth, bid me farewell, and smile. i pray you, come. while i remain above the ground, you shall hear from me still, and never of me aught but what is like me formerly. menenius that's worthily as any ear can hear. come, let's not weep. if i could shake off but one seven years from these old arms and legs, by the good gods, i'ld with thee every foot. coriolanus give me thy hand: come. [exeunt] coriolanus act iv scene ii the same. a street near the gate. [enter sicinius, brutus, and an aedile] sicinius bid them all home; he's gone, and we'll no further. the nobility are vex'd, whom we see have sided in his behalf. brutus now we have shown our power, let us seem humbler after it is done than when it was a-doing. sicinius bid them home: say their great enemy is gone, and they stand in their ancient strength. brutus dismiss them home. [exit aedile] here comes his mother. sicinius let's not meet her. brutus why? sicinius they say she's mad. brutus they have ta'en note of us: keep on your way. [enter volumnia, virgilia, and menenius] volumnia o, ye're well met: the hoarded plague o' the gods requite your love! menenius peace, peace; be not so loud. volumnia if that i could for weeping, you should hear,- nay, and you shall hear some. [to brutus] will you be gone? virgilia [to sicinius] you shall stay too: i would i had the power to say so to my husband. sicinius are you mankind? volumnia ay, fool; is that a shame? note but this fool. was not a man my father? hadst thou foxship to banish him that struck more blows for rome than thou hast spoken words? sicinius o blessed heavens! volumnia more noble blows than ever thou wise words; and for rome's good. i'll tell thee what; yet go: nay, but thou shalt stay too: i would my son were in arabia, and thy tribe before him, his good sword in his hand. sicinius what then? virgilia what then! he'ld make an end of thy posterity. volumnia bastards and all. good man, the wounds that he does bear for rome! menenius come, come, peace. sicinius i would he had continued to his country as he began, and not unknit himself the noble knot he made. brutus i would he had. volumnia 'i would he had'! 'twas you incensed the rabble: cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth as i can of those mysteries which heaven will not have earth to know. brutus pray, let us go. volumnia now, pray, sir, get you gone: you have done a brave deed. ere you go, hear this:- as far as doth the capitol exceed the meanest house in rome, so far my son- this lady's husband here, this, do you see- whom you have banish'd, does exceed you all. brutus well, well, we'll leave you. sicinius why stay we to be baited with one that wants her wits? volumnia take my prayers with you. [exeunt tribunes] i would the gods had nothing else to do but to confirm my curses! could i meet 'em but once a-day, it would unclog my heart of what lies heavy to't. menenius you have told them home; and, by my troth, you have cause. you'll sup with me? volumnia anger's my meat; i sup upon myself, and so shall starve with feeding. come, let's go: leave this faint puling and lament as i do, in anger, juno-like. come, come, come. menenius fie, fie, fie! [exeunt] coriolanus act iv scene iii a highway between rome and antium. [enter a roman and a volsce, meeting] roman i know you well, sir, and you know me: your name, i think, is adrian. volsce it is so, sir: truly, i have forgot you. roman i am a roman; and my services are, as you are, against 'em: know you me yet? volsce nicanor? no. roman the same, sir. volsce you had more beard when i last saw you; but your favour is well approved by your tongue. what's the news in rome? i have a note from the volscian state, to find you out there: you have well saved me a day's journey. roman there hath been in rome strange insurrections; the people against the senators, patricians, and nobles. volsce hath been! is it ended, then? our state thinks not so: they are in a most warlike preparation, and hope to come upon them in the heat of their division. roman the main blaze of it is past, but a small thing would make it flame again: for the nobles receive so to heart the banishment of that worthy coriolanus, that they are in a ripe aptness to take all power from the people and to pluck from them their tribunes for ever. this lies glowing, i can tell you, and is almost mature for the violent breaking out. volsce coriolanus banished! roman banished, sir. volsce you will be welcome with this intelligence, nicanor. roman the day serves well for them now. i have heard it said, the fittest time to corrupt a man's wife is when she's fallen out with her husband. your noble tullus aufidius will appear well in these wars, his great opposer, coriolanus, being now in no request of his country. volsce he cannot choose. i am most fortunate, thus accidentally to encounter you: you have ended my business, and i will merrily accompany you home. roman i shall, between this and supper, tell you most strange things from rome; all tending to the good of their adversaries. have you an army ready, say you? volsce a most royal one; the centurions and their charges, distinctly billeted, already in the entertainment, and to be on foot at an hour's warning. roman i am joyful to hear of their readiness, and am the man, i think, that shall set them in present action. so, sir, heartily well met, and most glad of your company. volsce you take my part from me, sir; i have the most cause to be glad of yours. roman well, let us go together. [exeunt] coriolanus act iv scene iv antium. before aufidius's house. [enter coriolanus in mean apparel, disguised and muffled] coriolanus a goodly city is this antium. city, 'tis i that made thy widows: many an heir of these fair edifices 'fore my wars have i heard groan and drop: then know me not, lest that thy wives with spits and boys with stones in puny battle slay me. [enter a citizen] save you, sir. citizen and you. coriolanus direct me, if it be your will, where great aufidius lies: is he in antium? citizen he is, and feasts the nobles of the state at his house this night. coriolanus which is his house, beseech you? citizen this, here before you. coriolanus thank you, sir: farewell. [exit citizen] o world, thy slippery turns! friends now fast sworn, whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart, whose house, whose bed, whose meal, and exercise, are still together, who twin, as 'twere, in love unseparable, shall within this hour, on a dissension of a doit, break out to bitterest enmity: so, fellest foes, whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep, to take the one the other, by some chance, some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends and interjoin their issues. so with me: my birth-place hate i, and my love's upon this enemy town. i'll enter: if he slay me, he does fair justice; if he give me way, i'll do his country service. [exit] coriolanus act iv scene v the same. a hall in aufidius's house. [music within. enter a servingman] first servingman wine, wine, wine! what service is here! i think our fellows are asleep. [exit] [enter a second servingman] second servingman where's cotus? my master calls for him. cotus! [exit] [enter coriolanus] coriolanus a goodly house: the feast smells well; but i appear not like a guest. [re-enter the first servingman] first servingman what would you have, friend? whence are you? here's no place for you: pray, go to the door. [exit] coriolanus i have deserved no better entertainment, in being coriolanus. [re-enter second servingman] second servingman whence are you, sir? has the porter his eyes in his head; that he gives entrance to such companions? pray, get you out. coriolanus away! second servingman away! get you away. coriolanus now thou'rt troublesome. second servingman are you so brave? i'll have you talked with anon. [enter a third servingman. the first meets him] third servingman what fellow's this? first servingman a strange one as ever i looked on: i cannot get him out of the house: prithee, call my master to him. [retires] third servingman what have you to do here, fellow? pray you, avoid the house. coriolanus let me but stand; i will not hurt your hearth. third servingman what are you? coriolanus a gentleman. third servingman a marvellous poor one. coriolanus true, so i am. third servingman pray you, poor gentleman, take up some other station; here's no place for you; pray you, avoid: come. coriolanus follow your function, go, and batten on cold bits. [pushes him away] third servingman what, you will not? prithee, tell my master what a strange guest he has here. second servingman and i shall. [exit] third servingman where dwellest thou? coriolanus under the canopy. third servingman under the canopy! coriolanus ay. third servingman where's that? coriolanus i' the city of kites and crows. third servingman i' the city of kites and crows! what an ass it is! then thou dwellest with daws too? coriolanus no, i serve not thy master. third servingman how, sir! do you meddle with my master? coriolanus ay; 'tis an honester service than to meddle with thy mistress. thou pratest, and pratest; serve with thy trencher, hence! [beats him away. exit third servingman] [enter aufidius with the second servingman] aufidius where is this fellow? second servingman here, sir: i'ld have beaten him like a dog, but for disturbing the lords within. [retires] aufidius whence comest thou? what wouldst thou? thy name? why speak'st not? speak, man: what's thy name? coriolanus if, tullus, [unmuffling] not yet thou knowest me, and, seeing me, dost not think me for the man i am, necessity commands me name myself. aufidius what is thy name? coriolanus a name unmusical to the volscians' ears, and harsh in sound to thine. aufidius say, what's thy name? thou hast a grim appearance, and thy face bears a command in't; though thy tackle's torn. thou show'st a noble vessel: what's thy name? coriolanus prepare thy brow to frown: know'st thou me yet? aufidius i know thee not: thy name? coriolanus my name is caius marcius, who hath done to thee particularly and to all the volsces great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may my surname, coriolanus: the painful service, the extreme dangers and the drops of blood shed for my thankless country are requited but with that surname; a good memory, and witness of the malice and displeasure which thou shouldst bear me: only that name remains; the cruelty and envy of the people, permitted by our dastard nobles, who have all forsook me, hath devour'd the rest; and suffer'd me by the voice of slaves to be whoop'd out of rome. now this extremity hath brought me to thy hearth; not out of hope- mistake me not--to save my life, for if i had fear'd death, of all the men i' the world i would have 'voided thee, but in mere spite, to be full quit of those my banishers, stand i before thee here. then if thou hast a heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge thine own particular wrongs and stop those maims of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight, and make my misery serve thy turn: so use it that my revengeful services may prove as benefits to thee, for i will fight against my canker'd country with the spleen of all the under fiends. but if so be thou darest not this and that to prove more fortunes thou'rt tired, then, in a word, i also am longer to live most weary, and present my throat to thee and to thy ancient malice; which not to cut would show thee but a fool, since i have ever follow'd thee with hate, drawn tuns of blood out of thy country's breast, and cannot live but to thy shame, unless it be to do thee service. aufidius o marcius, marcius! each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my heart a root of ancient envy. if jupiter should from yond cloud speak divine things, and say 'tis true,' i'ld not believe them more than thee, all noble marcius. let me twine mine arms about that body, where against my grained ash an hundred times hath broke and scarr'd the moon with splinters: here i clip the anvil of my sword, and do contest as hotly and as nobly with thy love as ever in ambitious strength i did contend against thy valour. know thou first, i loved the maid i married; never man sigh'd truer breath; but that i see thee here, thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart than when i first my wedded mistress saw bestride my threshold. why, thou mars! i tell thee, we have a power on foot; and i had purpose once more to hew thy target from thy brawn, or lose mine arm fort: thou hast beat me out twelve several times, and i have nightly since dreamt of encounters 'twixt thyself and me; we have been down together in my sleep, unbuckling helms, fisting each other's throat, and waked half dead with nothing. worthy marcius, had we no quarrel else to rome, but that thou art thence banish'd, we would muster all from twelve to seventy, and pouring war into the bowels of ungrateful rome, like a bold flood o'er-bear. o, come, go in, and take our friendly senators by the hands; who now are here, taking their leaves of me, who am prepared against your territories, though not for rome itself. coriolanus you bless me, gods! aufidius therefore, most absolute sir, if thou wilt have the leading of thine own revenges, take the one half of my commission; and set down- as best thou art experienced, since thou know'st thy country's strength and weakness,--thine own ways; whether to knock against the gates of rome, or rudely visit them in parts remote, to fright them, ere destroy. but come in: let me commend thee first to those that shall say yea to thy desires. a thousand welcomes! and more a friend than e'er an enemy; yet, marcius, that was much. your hand: most welcome! [exeunt coriolanus and aufidius. the two servingmen come forward] first servingman here's a strange alteration! second servingman by my hand, i had thought to have strucken him with a cudgel; and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report of him. first servingman what an arm he has! he turned me about with his finger and his thumb, as one would set up a top. second servingman nay, i knew by his face that there was something in him: he had, sir, a kind of face, methought,--i cannot tell how to term it. first servingman he had so; looking as it were--would i were hanged, but i thought there was more in him than i could think. second servingman so did i, i'll be sworn: he is simply the rarest man i' the world. first servingman i think he is: but a greater soldier than he you wot on. second servingman who, my master? first servingman nay, it's no matter for that. second servingman worth six on him. first servingman nay, not so neither: but i take him to be the greater soldier. second servingman faith, look you, one cannot tell how to say that: for the defence of a town, our general is excellent. first servingman ay, and for an assault too. [re-enter third servingman] third servingman o slaves, i can tell you news,-news, you rascals! first servingman | | what, what, what? let's partake. second servingman | third servingman i would not be a roman, of all nations; i had as lieve be a condemned man. first servingman | | wherefore? wherefore? second servingman | third servingman why, here's he that was wont to thwack our general, caius marcius. first servingman why do you say 'thwack our general '? third servingman i do not say 'thwack our general;' but he was always good enough for him. second servingman come, we are fellows and friends: he was ever too hard for him; i have heard him say so himself. first servingman he was too hard for him directly, to say the troth on't: before corioli he scotched him and notched him like a carbon ado. second servingman an he had been cannibally given, he might have broiled and eaten him too. first servingman but, more of thy news? third servingman why, he is so made on here within, as if he were son and heir to mars; set at upper end o' the table; no question asked him by any of the senators, but they stand bald before him: our general himself makes a mistress of him: sanctifies himself with's hand and turns up the white o' the eye to his discourse. but the bottom of the news is that our general is cut i' the middle and but one half of what he was yesterday; for the other has half, by the entreaty and grant of the whole table. he'll go, he says, and sowl the porter of rome gates by the ears: he will mow all down before him, and leave his passage polled. second servingman and he's as like to do't as any man i can imagine. third servingman do't! he will do't; for, look you, sir, he has as many friends as enemies; which friends, sir, as it were, durst not, look you, sir, show themselves, as we term it, his friends whilst he's in directitude. first servingman directitude! what's that? third servingman but when they shall see, sir, his crest up again, and the man in blood, they will out of their burrows, like conies after rain, and revel all with him. first servingman but when goes this forward? third servingman to-morrow; to-day; presently; you shall have the drum struck up this afternoon: 'tis, as it were, a parcel of their feast, and to be executed ere they wipe their lips. second servingman why, then we shall have a stirring world again. this peace is nothing, but to rust iron, increase tailors, and breed ballad-makers. first servingman let me have war, say i; it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war's a destroyer of men. second servingman 'tis so: and as war, in some sort, may be said to be a ravisher, so it cannot be denied but peace is a great maker of cuckolds. first servingman ay, and it makes men hate one another. third servingman reason; because they then less need one another. the wars for my money. i hope to see romans as cheap as volscians. they are rising, they are rising. all in, in, in, in! [exeunt] coriolanus act iv scene vi rome. a public place. [enter sicinius and brutus] sicinius we hear not of him, neither need we fear him; his remedies are tame i' the present peace and quietness of the people, which before were in wild hurry. here do we make his friends blush that the world goes well, who rather had, though they themselves did suffer by't, behold dissentious numbers pestering streets than see our tradesmen with in their shops and going about their functions friendly. brutus we stood to't in good time. [enter menenius] is this menenius? sicinius 'tis he,'tis he: o, he is grown most kind of late. both tribunes hail sir! menenius hail to you both! sicinius your coriolanus is not much miss'd, but with his friends: the commonwealth doth stand, and so would do, were he more angry at it. menenius all's well; and might have been much better, if he could have temporized. sicinius where is he, hear you? menenius nay, i hear nothing: his mother and his wife hear nothing from him. [enter three or four citizens] citizens the gods preserve you both! sicinius god-den, our neighbours. brutus god-den to you all, god-den to you all. first citizen ourselves, our wives, and children, on our knees, are bound to pray for you both. sicinius live, and thrive! brutus farewell, kind neighbours: we wish'd coriolanus had loved you as we did. citizens now the gods keep you! both tribunes farewell, farewell. [exeunt citizens] sicinius this is a happier and more comely time than when these fellows ran about the streets, crying confusion. brutus caius marcius was a worthy officer i' the war; but insolent, o'ercome with pride, ambitious past all thinking, self-loving,- sicinius and affecting one sole throne, without assistance. menenius i think not so. sicinius we should by this, to all our lamentation, if he had gone forth consul, found it so. brutus the gods have well prevented it, and rome sits safe and still without him. [enter an aedile] aedile worthy tribunes, there is a slave, whom we have put in prison, reports, the volsces with two several powers are enter'd in the roman territories, and with the deepest malice of the war destroy what lies before 'em. menenius 'tis aufidius, who, hearing of our marcius' banishment, thrusts forth his horns again into the world; which were inshell'd when marcius stood for rome, and durst not once peep out. sicinius come, what talk you of marcius? brutus go see this rumourer whipp'd. it cannot be the volsces dare break with us. menenius cannot be! we have record that very well it can, and three examples of the like have been within my age. but reason with the fellow, before you punish him, where he heard this, lest you shall chance to whip your information and beat the messenger who bids beware of what is to be dreaded. sicinius tell not me: i know this cannot be. brutus not possible. [enter a messenger] messenger the nobles in great earnestness are going all to the senate-house: some news is come that turns their countenances. sicinius 'tis this slave;- go whip him, 'fore the people's eyes:--his raising; nothing but his report. messenger yes, worthy sir, the slave's report is seconded; and more, more fearful, is deliver'd. sicinius what more fearful? messenger it is spoke freely out of many mouths- how probable i do not know--that marcius, join'd with aufidius, leads a power 'gainst rome, and vows revenge as spacious as between the young'st and oldest thing. sicinius this is most likely! brutus raised only, that the weaker sort may wish good marcius home again. sicinius the very trick on't. menenius this is unlikely: he and aufidius can no more atone than violentest contrariety. [enter a second messenger] second messenger you are sent for to the senate: a fearful army, led by caius marcius associated with aufidius, rages upon our territories; and have already o'erborne their way, consumed with fire, and took what lay before them. [enter cominius] cominius o, you have made good work! menenius what news? what news? cominius you have holp to ravish your own daughters and to melt the city leads upon your pates, to see your wives dishonour'd to your noses,- menenius what's the news? what's the news? cominius your temples burned in their cement, and your franchises, whereon you stood, confined into an auger's bore. menenius pray now, your news? you have made fair work, i fear me.--pray, your news?- if marcius should be join'd with volscians,- cominius if! he is their god: he leads them like a thing made by some other deity than nature, that shapes man better; and they follow him, against us brats, with no less confidence than boys pursuing summer butterflies, or butchers killing flies. menenius you have made good work, you and your apron-men; you that stood so up much on the voice of occupation and the breath of garlic-eaters! cominius he will shake your rome about your ears. menenius as hercules did shake down mellow fruit. you have made fair work! brutus but is this true, sir? cominius ay; and you'll look pale before you find it other. all the regions do smilingly revolt; and who resist are mock'd for valiant ignorance, and perish constant fools. who is't can blame him? your enemies and his find something in him. menenius we are all undone, unless the noble man have mercy. cominius who shall ask it? the tribunes cannot do't for shame; the people deserve such pity of him as the wolf does of the shepherds: for his best friends, if they should say 'be good to rome,' they charged him even as those should do that had deserved his hate, and therein show'd like enemies. menenius 'tis true: if he were putting to my house the brand that should consume it, i have not the face to say 'beseech you, cease.' you have made fair hands, you and your crafts! you have crafted fair! cominius you have brought a trembling upon rome, such as was never so incapable of help. both tribunes say not we brought it. menenius how! was it we? we loved him but, like beasts and cowardly nobles, gave way unto your clusters, who did hoot him out o' the city. cominius but i fear they'll roar him in again. tullus aufidius, the second name of men, obeys his points as if he were his officer: desperation is all the policy, strength and defence, that rome can make against them. [enter a troop of citizens] menenius here come the clusters. and is aufidius with him? you are they that made the air unwholesome, when you cast your stinking greasy caps in hooting at coriolanus' exile. now he's coming; and not a hair upon a soldier's head which will not prove a whip: as many coxcombs as you threw caps up will he tumble down, and pay you for your voices. 'tis no matter; if he could burn us all into one coal, we have deserved it. citizens faith, we hear fearful news. first citizen for mine own part, when i said, banish him, i said 'twas pity. second citizen and so did i. third citizen and so did i; and, to say the truth, so did very many of us: that we did, we did for the best; and though we willingly consented to his banishment, yet it was against our will. cominius ye re goodly things, you voices! menenius you have made good work, you and your cry! shall's to the capitol? cominius o, ay, what else? [exeunt cominius and menenius] sicinius go, masters, get you home; be not dismay'd: these are a side that would be glad to have this true which they so seem to fear. go home, and show no sign of fear. first citizen the gods be good to us! come, masters, let's home. i ever said we were i' the wrong when we banished him. second citizen so did we all. but, come, let's home. [exeunt citizens] brutus i do not like this news. sicinius nor i. brutus let's to the capitol. would half my wealth would buy this for a lie! sicinius pray, let us go. [exeunt] coriolanus act iv scene vii a camp, at a small distance from rome. [enter aufidius and his lieutenant] aufidius do they still fly to the roman? lieutenant i do not know what witchcraft's in him, but your soldiers use him as the grace 'fore meat, their talk at table, and their thanks at end; and you are darken'd in this action, sir, even by your own. aufidius i cannot help it now, unless, by using means, i lame the foot of our design. he bears himself more proudlier, even to my person, than i thought he would when first i did embrace him: yet his nature in that's no changeling; and i must excuse what cannot be amended. lieutenant yet i wish, sir,- i mean for your particular,--you had not join'd in commission with him; but either had borne the action of yourself, or else to him had left it solely. aufidius i understand thee well; and be thou sure, when he shall come to his account, he knows not what i can urge against him. although it seems, and so he thinks, and is no less apparent to the vulgar eye, that he bears all things fairly. and shows good husbandry for the volscian state, fights dragon-like, and does achieve as soon as draw his sword; yet he hath left undone that which shall break his neck or hazard mine, whene'er we come to our account. lieutenant sir, i beseech you, think you he'll carry rome? aufidius all places yield to him ere he sits down; and the nobility of rome are his: the senators and patricians love him too: the tribunes are no soldiers; and their people will be as rash in the repeal, as hasty to expel him thence. i think he'll be to rome as is the osprey to the fish, who takes it by sovereignty of nature. first he was a noble servant to them; but he could not carry his honours even: whether 'twas pride, which out of daily fortune ever taints the happy man; whether defect of judgment, to fail in the disposing of those chances which he was lord of; or whether nature, not to be other than one thing, not moving from the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace even with the same austerity and garb as he controll'd the war; but one of these- as he hath spices of them all, not all, for i dare so far free him--made him fear'd, so hated, and so banish'd: but he has a merit, to choke it in the utterance. so our virtues lie in the interpretation of the time: and power, unto itself most commendable, hath not a tomb so evident as a chair to extol what it hath done. one fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail; rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail. come, let's away. when, caius, rome is thine, thou art poor'st of all; then shortly art thou mine. [exeunt] coriolanus act v scene i rome. a public place. [enter menenius, cominius, sicinius, brutus, and others] menenius no, i'll not go: you hear what he hath said which was sometime his general; who loved him in a most dear particular. he call'd me father: but what o' that? go, you that banish'd him; a mile before his tent fall down, and knee the way into his mercy: nay, if he coy'd to hear cominius speak, i'll keep at home. cominius he would not seem to know me. menenius do you hear? cominius yet one time he did call me by my name: i urged our old acquaintance, and the drops that we have bled together. coriolanus he would not answer to: forbad all names; he was a kind of nothing, titleless, till he had forged himself a name o' the fire of burning rome. menenius why, so: you have made good work! a pair of tribunes that have rack'd for rome, to make coals cheap,--a noble memory! cominius i minded him how royal 'twas to pardon when it was less expected: he replied, it was a bare petition of a state to one whom they had punish'd. menenius very well: could he say less? cominius i offer'd to awaken his regard for's private friends: his answer to me was, he could not stay to pick them in a pile of noisome musty chaff: he said 'twas folly, for one poor grain or two, to leave unburnt, and still to nose the offence. menenius for one poor grain or two! i am one of those; his mother, wife, his child, and this brave fellow too, we are the grains: you are the musty chaff; and you are smelt above the moon: we must be burnt for you. sicinius nay, pray, be patient: if you refuse your aid in this so never-needed help, yet do not upbraid's with our distress. but, sure, if you would be your country's pleader, your good tongue, more than the instant army we can make, might stop our countryman. menenius no, i'll not meddle. sicinius pray you, go to him. menenius what should i do? brutus only make trial what your love can do for rome, towards marcius. menenius well, and say that marcius return me, as cominius is return'd, unheard; what then? but as a discontented friend, grief-shot with his unkindness? say't be so? sicinius yet your good will must have that thanks from rome, after the measure as you intended well. menenius i'll undertake 't: i think he'll hear me. yet, to bite his lip and hum at good cominius, much unhearts me. he was not taken well; he had not dined: the veins unfill'd, our blood is cold, and then we pout upon the morning, are unapt to give or to forgive; but when we have stuff'd these and these conveyances of our blood with wine and feeding, we have suppler souls than in our priest-like fasts: therefore i'll watch him till he be dieted to my request, and then i'll set upon him. brutus you know the very road into his kindness, and cannot lose your way. menenius good faith, i'll prove him, speed how it will. i shall ere long have knowledge of my success. [exit] cominius he'll never hear him. sicinius not? cominius i tell you, he does sit in gold, his eye red as 'twould burn rome; and his injury the gaoler to his pity. i kneel'd before him; 'twas very faintly he said 'rise;' dismiss'd me thus, with his speechless hand: what he would do, he sent in writing after me; what he would not, bound with an oath to yield to his conditions: so that all hope is vain. unless his noble mother, and his wife; who, as i hear, mean to solicit him for mercy to his country. therefore, let's hence, and with our fair entreaties haste them on. [exeunt] coriolanus act v scene ii entrance of the volscian camp before rome. two sentinels on guard. [enter to them, menenius] first senator stay: whence are you? second senator stand, and go back. menenius you guard like men; 'tis well: but, by your leave, i am an officer of state, and come to speak with coriolanus. first senator from whence? menenius from rome. first senator you may not pass, you must return: our general will no more hear from thence. second senator you'll see your rome embraced with fire before you'll speak with coriolanus. menenius good my friends, if you have heard your general talk of rome, and of his friends there, it is lots to blanks, my name hath touch'd your ears it is menenius. first senator be it so; go back: the virtue of your name is not here passable. menenius i tell thee, fellow, the general is my lover: i have been the book of his good acts, whence men have read his name unparallel'd, haply amplified; for i have ever verified my friends, of whom he's chief, with all the size that verity would without lapsing suffer: nay, sometimes, like to a bowl upon a subtle ground, i have tumbled past the throw; and in his praise have almost stamp'd the leasing: therefore, fellow, i must have leave to pass. first senator faith, sir, if you had told as many lies in his behalf as you have uttered words in your own, you should not pass here; no, though it were as virtuous to lie as to live chastely. therefore, go back. menenius prithee, fellow, remember my name is menenius, always factionary on the party of your general. second senator howsoever you have been his liar, as you say you have, i am one that, telling true under him, must say, you cannot pass. therefore, go back. menenius has he dined, canst thou tell? for i would not speak with him till after dinner. first senator you are a roman, are you? menenius i am, as thy general is. first senator then you should hate rome, as he does. can you, when you have pushed out your gates the very defender of them, and, in a violent popular ignorance, given your enemy your shield, think to front his revenges with the easy groans of old women, the virginal palms of your daughters, or with the palsied intercession of such a decayed dotant as you seem to be? can you think to blow out the intended fire your city is ready to flame in, with such weak breath as this? no, you are deceived; therefore, back to rome, and prepare for your execution: you are condemned, our general has sworn you out of reprieve and pardon. menenius sirrah, if thy captain knew i were here, he would use me with estimation. second senator come, my captain knows you not. menenius i mean, thy general. first senator my general cares not for you. back, i say, go; lest i let forth your half-pint of blood; back,--that's the utmost of your having: back. menenius nay, but, fellow, fellow,- [enter coriolanus and aufidius] coriolanus what's the matter? menenius now, you companion, i'll say an errand for you: you shall know now that i am in estimation; you shall perceive that a jack guardant cannot office me from my son coriolanus: guess, but by my entertainment with him, if thou standest not i' the state of hanging, or of some death more long in spectatorship, and crueller in suffering; behold now presently, and swoon for what's to come upon thee. [to coriolanus] the glorious gods sit in hourly synod about thy particular prosperity, and love thee no worse than thy old father menenius does! o my son, my son! thou art preparing fire for us; look thee, here's water to quench it. i was hardly moved to come to thee; but being assured none but myself could move thee, i have been blown out of your gates with sighs; and conjure thee to pardon rome, and thy petitionary countrymen. the good gods assuage thy wrath, and turn the dregs of it upon this varlet here,--this, who, like a block, hath denied my access to thee. coriolanus away! menenius how! away! coriolanus wife, mother, child, i know not. my affairs are servanted to others: though i owe my revenge properly, my remission lies in volscian breasts. that we have been familiar, ingrate forgetfulness shall poison, rather than pity note how much. therefore, be gone. mine ears against your suits are stronger than your gates against my force. yet, for i loved thee, take this along; i writ it for thy sake [gives a letter] and would have rent it. another word, menenius, i will not hear thee speak. this man, aufidius, was my beloved in rome: yet thou behold'st! aufidius you keep a constant temper. [exeunt coriolanus and aufidius] first senator now, sir, is your name menenius? second senator 'tis a spell, you see, of much power: you know the way home again. first senator do you hear how we are shent for keeping your greatness back? second senator what cause, do you think, i have to swoon? menenius i neither care for the world nor your general: for such things as you, i can scarce think there's any, ye're so slight. he that hath a will to die by himself fears it not from another: let your general do his worst. for you, be that you are, long; and your misery increase with your age! i say to you, as i was said to, away! [exit] first senator a noble fellow, i warrant him. second senator the worthy fellow is our general: he's the rock, the oak not to be wind-shaken. [exeunt] coriolanus act v scene iii the tent of coriolanus. [enter coriolanus, aufidius, and others] coriolanus we will before the walls of rome tomorrow set down our host. my partner in this action, you must report to the volscian lords, how plainly i have borne this business. aufidius only their ends you have respected; stopp'd your ears against the general suit of rome; never admitted a private whisper, no, not with such friends that thought them sure of you. coriolanus this last old man, whom with a crack'd heart i have sent to rome, loved me above the measure of a father; nay, godded me, indeed. their latest refuge was to send him; for whose old love i have, though i show'd sourly to him, once more offer'd the first conditions, which they did refuse and cannot now accept; to grace him only that thought he could do more, a very little i have yielded to: fresh embassies and suits, nor from the state nor private friends, hereafter will i lend ear to. ha! what shout is this? [shout within] shall i be tempted to infringe my vow in the same time 'tis made? i will not. [enter in mourning habits, virgilia, volumnia, leading young marcius, valeria, and attendants] my wife comes foremost; then the honour'd mould wherein this trunk was framed, and in her hand the grandchild to her blood. but, out, affection! all bond and privilege of nature, break! let it be virtuous to be obstinate. what is that curt'sy worth? or those doves' eyes, which can make gods forsworn? i melt, and am not of stronger earth than others. my mother bows; as if olympus to a molehill should in supplication nod: and my young boy hath an aspect of intercession, which great nature cries 'deny not.' let the volsces plough rome and harrow italy: i'll never be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand, as if a man were author of himself and knew no other kin. virgilia my lord and husband! coriolanus these eyes are not the same i wore in rome. virgilia the sorrow that delivers us thus changed makes you think so. coriolanus like a dull actor now, i have forgot my part, and i am out, even to a full disgrace. best of my flesh, forgive my tyranny; but do not say for that 'forgive our romans.' o, a kiss long as my exile, sweet as my revenge! now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss i carried from thee, dear; and my true lip hath virgin'd it e'er since. you gods! i prate, and the most noble mother of the world leave unsaluted: sink, my knee, i' the earth; [kneels] of thy deep duty more impression show than that of common sons. volumnia o, stand up blest! whilst, with no softer cushion than the flint, i kneel before thee; and unproperly show duty, as mistaken all this while between the child and parent. [kneels] coriolanus what is this? your knees to me? to your corrected son? then let the pebbles on the hungry beach fillip the stars; then let the mutinous winds strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun; murdering impossibility, to make what cannot be, slight work. volumnia thou art my warrior; i holp to frame thee. do you know this lady? coriolanus the noble sister of publicola, the moon of rome, chaste as the icicle that's curdied by the frost from purest snow and hangs on dian's temple: dear valeria! volumnia this is a poor epitome of yours, which by the interpretation of full time may show like all yourself. coriolanus the god of soldiers, with the consent of supreme jove, inform thy thoughts with nobleness; that thou mayst prove to shame unvulnerable, and stick i' the wars like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw, and saving those that eye thee! volumnia your knee, sirrah. coriolanus that's my brave boy! volumnia even he, your wife, this lady, and myself, are suitors to you. coriolanus i beseech you, peace: or, if you'ld ask, remember this before: the thing i have forsworn to grant may never be held by you denials. do not bid me dismiss my soldiers, or capitulate again with rome's mechanics: tell me not wherein i seem unnatural: desire not to ally my rages and revenges with your colder reasons. volumnia o, no more, no more! you have said you will not grant us any thing; for we have nothing else to ask, but that which you deny already: yet we will ask; that, if you fail in our request, the blame may hang upon your hardness: therefore hear us. coriolanus aufidius, and you volsces, mark; for we'll hear nought from rome in private. your request? volumnia should we be silent and not speak, our raiment and state of bodies would bewray what life we have led since thy exile. think with thyself how more unfortunate than all living women are we come hither: since that thy sight, which should make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts, constrains them weep and shake with fear and sorrow; making the mother, wife and child to see the son, the husband and the father tearing his country's bowels out. and to poor we thine enmity's most capital: thou barr'st us our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort that all but we enjoy; for how can we, alas, how can we for our country pray. whereto we are bound, together with thy victory, whereto we are bound? alack, or we must lose the country, our dear nurse, or else thy person, our comfort in the country. we must find an evident calamity, though we had our wish, which side should win: for either thou must, as a foreign recreant, be led with manacles thorough our streets, or else triumphantly tread on thy country's ruin, and bear the palm for having bravely shed thy wife and children's blood. for myself, son, i purpose not to wait on fortune till these wars determine: if i cannot persuade thee rather to show a noble grace to both parts than seek the end of one, thou shalt no sooner march to assault thy country than to tread- trust to't, thou shalt not--on thy mother's womb, that brought thee to this world. virgilia ay, and mine, that brought you forth this boy, to keep your name living to time. young marcius a' shall not tread on me; i'll run away till i am bigger, but then i'll fight. coriolanus not of a woman's tenderness to be, requires nor child nor woman's face to see. i have sat too long. [rising] volumnia nay, go not from us thus. if it were so that our request did tend to save the romans, thereby to destroy the volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us, as poisonous of your honour: no; our suit is that you reconcile them: while the volsces may say 'this mercy we have show'd;' the romans, 'this we received;' and each in either side give the all-hail to thee and cry 'be blest for making up this peace!' thou know'st, great son, the end of war's uncertain, but this certain, that, if thou conquer rome, the benefit which thou shalt thereby reap is such a name, whose repetition will be dogg'd with curses; whose chronicle thus writ: 'the man was noble, but with his last attempt he wiped it out; destroy'd his country, and his name remains to the ensuing age abhorr'd.' speak to me, son: thou hast affected the fine strains of honour, to imitate the graces of the gods; to tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air, and yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt that should but rive an oak. why dost not speak? think'st thou it honourable for a noble man still to remember wrongs? daughter, speak you: he cares not for your weeping. speak thou, boy: perhaps thy childishness will move him more than can our reasons. there's no man in the world more bound to 's mother; yet here he lets me prate like one i' the stocks. thou hast never in thy life show'd thy dear mother any courtesy, when she, poor hen, fond of no second brood, has cluck'd thee to the wars and safely home, loaden with honour. say my request's unjust, and spurn me back: but if it be not so, thou art not honest; and the gods will plague thee, that thou restrain'st from me the duty which to a mother's part belongs. he turns away: down, ladies; let us shame him with our knees. to his surname coriolanus 'longs more pride than pity to our prayers. down: an end; this is the last: so we will home to rome, and die among our neighbours. nay, behold 's: this boy, that cannot tell what he would have but kneels and holds up bands for fellowship, does reason our petition with more strength than thou hast to deny 't. come, let us go: this fellow had a volscian to his mother; his wife is in corioli and his child like him by chance. yet give us our dispatch: i am hush'd until our city be a-fire, and then i'll speak a little. [he holds her by the hand, silent] coriolanus o mother, mother! what have you done? behold, the heavens do ope, the gods look down, and this unnatural scene they laugh at. o my mother, mother! o! you have won a happy victory to rome; but, for your son,--believe it, o, believe it, most dangerously you have with him prevail'd, if not most mortal to him. but, let it come. aufidius, though i cannot make true wars, i'll frame convenient peace. now, good aufidius, were you in my stead, would you have heard a mother less? or granted less, aufidius? aufidius i was moved withal. coriolanus i dare be sworn you were: and, sir, it is no little thing to make mine eyes to sweat compassion. but, good sir, what peace you'll make, advise me: for my part, i'll not to rome, i'll back with you; and pray you, stand to me in this cause. o mother! wife! aufidius [aside] i am glad thou hast set thy mercy and thy honour at difference in thee: out of that i'll work myself a former fortune. [the ladies make signs to coriolanus] coriolanus ay, by and by; [to volumnia, virgilia, &c] but we will drink together; and you shall bear a better witness back than words, which we, on like conditions, will have counter-seal'd. come, enter with us. ladies, you deserve to have a temple built you: all the swords in italy, and her confederate arms, could not have made this peace. [exeunt] coriolanus act v scene iv rome. a public place. [enter menenius and sicinius] menenius see you yond coign o' the capitol, yond corner-stone? sicinius why, what of that? menenius if it be possible for you to displace it with your little finger, there is some hope the ladies of rome, especially his mother, may prevail with him. but i say there is no hope in't: our throats are sentenced and stay upon execution. sicinius is't possible that so short a time can alter the condition of a man! menenius there is differency between a grub and a butterfly; yet your butterfly was a grub. this marcius is grown from man to dragon: he has wings; he's more than a creeping thing. sicinius he loved his mother dearly. menenius so did he me: and he no more remembers his mother now than an eight-year-old horse. the tartness of his face sours ripe grapes: when he walks, he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading: he is able to pierce a corslet with his eye; talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery. he sits in his state, as a thing made for alexander. what he bids be done is finished with his bidding. he wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in. sicinius yes, mercy, if you report him truly. menenius i paint him in the character. mark what mercy his mother shall bring from him: there is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger; that shall our poor city find: and all this is long of you. sicinius the gods be good unto us! menenius no, in such a case the gods will not be good unto us. when we banished him, we respected not them; and, he returning to break our necks, they respect not us. [enter a messenger] messenger sir, if you'ld save your life, fly to your house: the plebeians have got your fellow-tribune and hale him up and down, all swearing, if the roman ladies bring not comfort home, they'll give him death by inches. [enter a second messenger] sicinius what's the news? second messenger good news, good news; the ladies have prevail'd, the volscians are dislodged, and marcius gone: a merrier day did never yet greet rome, no, not the expulsion of the tarquins. sicinius friend, art thou certain this is true? is it most certain? second messenger as certain as i know the sun is fire: where have you lurk'd, that you make doubt of it? ne'er through an arch so hurried the blown tide, as the recomforted through the gates. why, hark you! [trumpets; hautboys; drums beat; all together] the trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries and fifes, tabours and cymbals and the shouting romans, make the sun dance. hark you! [a shout within] menenius this is good news: i will go meet the ladies. this volumnia is worth of consuls, senators, patricians, a city full; of tribunes, such as you, a sea and land full. you have pray'd well to-day: this morning for ten thousand of your throats i'd not have given a doit. hark, how they joy! [music still, with shouts] sicinius first, the gods bless you for your tidings; next, accept my thankfulness. second messenger sir, we have all great cause to give great thanks. sicinius they are near the city? second messenger almost at point to enter. sicinius we will meet them, and help the joy. [exeunt] coriolanus act v scene v the same. a street near the gate. [enter two senators with volumnia, virgilia, valeria, &c. passing over the stage, followed by patricians and others] first senator behold our patroness, the life of rome! call all your tribes together, praise the gods, and make triumphant fires; strew flowers before them: unshout the noise that banish'd marcius, repeal him with the welcome of his mother; cry 'welcome, ladies, welcome!' all welcome, ladies, welcome! [a flourish with drums and trumpets. exeunt] coriolanus act v scene vi antium. a public place. [enter tullus aufidius, with attendants] aufidius go tell the lords o' the city i am here: deliver them this paper: having read it, bid them repair to the market place; where i, even in theirs and in the commons' ears, will vouch the truth of it. him i accuse the city ports by this hath enter'd and intends to appear before the people, hoping to purge herself with words: dispatch. [exeunt attendants] [enter three or four conspirators of aufidius' faction] most welcome! first conspirator how is it with our general? aufidius even so as with a man by his own alms empoison'd, and with his charity slain. second conspirator most noble sir, if you do hold the same intent wherein you wish'd us parties, we'll deliver you of your great danger. aufidius sir, i cannot tell: we must proceed as we do find the people. third conspirator the people will remain uncertain whilst 'twixt you there's difference; but the fall of either makes the survivor heir of all. aufidius i know it; and my pretext to strike at him admits a good construction. i raised him, and i pawn'd mine honour for his truth: who being so heighten'd, he water'd his new plants with dews of flattery, seducing so my friends; and, to this end, he bow'd his nature, never known before but to be rough, unswayable and free. third conspirator sir, his stoutness when he did stand for consul, which he lost by lack of stooping,- aufidius that i would have spoke of: being banish'd for't, he came unto my hearth; presented to my knife his throat: i took him; made him joint-servant with me; gave him way in all his own desires; nay, let him choose out of my files, his projects to accomplish, my best and freshest men; served his designments in mine own person; holp to reap the fame which he did end all his; and took some pride to do myself this wrong: till, at the last, i seem'd his follower, not partner, and he waged me with his countenance, as if i had been mercenary. first conspirator so he did, my lord: the army marvell'd at it, and, in the last, when he had carried rome and that we look'd for no less spoil than glory,- aufidius there was it: for which my sinews shall be stretch'd upon him. at a few drops of women's rheum, which are as cheap as lies, he sold the blood and labour of our great action: therefore shall he die, and i'll renew me in his fall. but, hark! [drums and trumpets sound, with great shouts of the people] first conspirator your native town you enter'd like a post, and had no welcomes home: but he returns, splitting the air with noise. second conspirator and patient fools, whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear with giving him glory. third conspirator therefore, at your vantage, ere he express himself, or move the people with what he would say, let him feel your sword, which we will second. when he lies along, after your way his tale pronounced shall bury his reasons with his body. aufidius say no more: here come the lords. [enter the lords of the city] all the lords you are most welcome home. aufidius i have not deserved it. but, worthy lords, have you with heed perused what i have written to you? lords we have. first lord and grieve to hear't. what faults he made before the last, i think might have found easy fines: but there to end where he was to begin and give away the benefit of our levies, answering us with our own charge, making a treaty where there was a yielding,--this admits no excuse. aufidius he approaches: you shall hear him. [enter coriolanus, marching with drum and colours; commoners being with him] coriolanus hail, lords! i am return'd your soldier, no more infected with my country's love than when i parted hence, but still subsisting under your great command. you are to know that prosperously i have attempted and with bloody passage led your wars even to the gates of rome. our spoils we have brought home do more than counterpoise a full third part the charges of the action. we have made peace with no less honour to the antiates than shame to the romans: and we here deliver, subscribed by the consuls and patricians, together with the seal o' the senate, what we have compounded on. aufidius read it not, noble lords; but tell the traitor, in the high'st degree he hath abused your powers. coriolanus traitor! how now! aufidius ay, traitor, marcius! coriolanus marcius! aufidius ay, marcius, caius marcius: dost thou think i'll grace thee with that robbery, thy stol'n name coriolanus in corioli? you lords and heads o' the state, perfidiously he has betray'd your business, and given up, for certain drops of salt, your city rome, i say 'your city,' to his wife and mother; breaking his oath and resolution like a twist of rotten silk, never admitting counsel o' the war, but at his nurse's tears he whined and roar'd away your victory, that pages blush'd at him and men of heart look'd wondering each at other. coriolanus hear'st thou, mars? aufidius name not the god, thou boy of tears! coriolanus ha! aufidius no more. coriolanus measureless liar, thou hast made my heart too great for what contains it. boy! o slave! pardon me, lords, 'tis the first time that ever i was forced to scold. your judgments, my grave lords, must give this cur the lie: and his own notion- who wears my stripes impress'd upon him; that must bear my beating to his grave--shall join to thrust the lie unto him. first lord peace, both, and hear me speak. coriolanus cut me to pieces, volsces; men and lads, stain all your edges on me. boy! false hound! if you have writ your annals true, 'tis there, that, like an eagle in a dove-cote, i flutter'd your volscians in corioli: alone i did it. boy! aufidius why, noble lords, will you be put in mind of his blind fortune, which was your shame, by this unholy braggart, 'fore your own eyes and ears? all conspirators let him die for't. all the people 'tear him to pieces.' 'do it presently.' 'he kill'd my son.' 'my daughter.' 'he killed my cousin marcus.' 'he killed my father.' second lord peace, ho! no outrage: peace! the man is noble and his fame folds-in this orb o' the earth. his last offences to us shall have judicious hearing. stand, aufidius, and trouble not the peace. coriolanus o that i had him, with six aufidiuses, or more, his tribe, to use my lawful sword! aufidius insolent villain! all conspirators kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him! [the conspirators draw, and kill coriolanus: aufidius stands on his body] lords hold, hold, hold, hold! aufidius my noble masters, hear me speak. first lord o tullus,- second lord thou hast done a deed whereat valour will weep. third lord tread not upon him. masters all, be quiet; put up your swords. aufidius my lords, when you shall know--as in this rage, provoked by him, you cannot--the great danger which this man's life did owe you, you'll rejoice that he is thus cut off. please it your honours to call me to your senate, i'll deliver myself your loyal servant, or endure your heaviest censure. first lord bear from hence his body; and mourn you for him: let him be regarded as the most noble corse that ever herald did follow to his urn. second lord his own impatience takes from aufidius a great part of blame. let's make the best of it. aufidius my rage is gone; and i am struck with sorrow. take him up. help, three o' the chiefest soldiers; i'll be one. beat thou the drum, that it speak mournfully: trail your steel pikes. though in this city he hath widow'd and unchilded many a one, which to this hour bewail the injury, yet he shall have a noble memory. assist. [exeunt, bearing the body of coriolanus. a dead march sounded] 1898 the ballad of reading gaol by oscar wilde i he did not wear his scarlet coat, for blood and wine are red, and blood and wine were on his hands when they found him with the dead, the poor dead woman whom he loved, and murdered in her bed. he walked amongst the trial men in a suit of shabby gray; a cricket cap was on his head, and his step seemed light and gay; but i never saw a man who looked so wistfully at the day. i never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky, and at every drifting cloud that went with sails of silver by. i walked, with other souls in pain, within another ring, and was wondering if the man had done a great or little thing, when a voice behind me whispered low, "that fellow's got to swing." dear christ! the very prison walls suddenly seemed to reel, and the sky above my head became like a casque of scorching steel; and, though i was a soul in pain, my pain i could not feel. i only knew what haunted thought quickened his step, and why he looked upon the garish day with such a wistful eye; the man had killed the thing he loved, and so he had to die. yet each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard, some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word, the coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword! some kill their love when they are young, and some when they are old; some strangle with the hands of lust, some with the hands of gold: the kindest use a knife, because the dead so soon grow cold. some love too little, some too long, some sell, and others buy; some do the deed with many tears, and some without a sigh: for each man kills the thing he loves, yet each man does not die. he does not die a death of shame on a day of dark disgrace, nor have a noose about his neck, nor a cloth upon his face, nor drop feet foremost through the floor into an empty space. he does not sit with silent men who watch him night and day; who watch him when he tries to weep, and when he tries to pray; who watch him lest himself should rob the prison of its prey. he does not wake at dawn to see dread figures throng his room, the shivering chaplain robed in white, the sheriff stern with gloom, and the governor all in shiny black, with the yellow face of doom. he does not rise in piteous haste to put on convict-clothes, while some coarse-mouthed doctor gloats, and notes each new and nerve-twitched pose, fingering a watch whose little ticks are like horrible hammer-blows. he does not feel that sickening thirst that sands one's throat, before the hangman with his gardener's gloves comes through the padded door, and binds one with three leathern thongs, that the throat may thirst no more. he does not bend his head to hear the burial office read, nor, while the anguish of his soul tells him he is not dead, cross his own coffin, as he moves into the hideous shed. he does not stare upon the air through a little roof of glass: he does not pray with lips of clay for his agony to pass; nor feel upon his shuddering cheek the kiss of caiaphas. ii six weeks the guardsman walked the yard, in the suit of shabby gray: his cricket cap was on his head, and his step was light and gay, but i never saw a man who looked so wistfully at the day. i never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky, and at every wandering cloud that trailed its ravelled fleeces by. he did not wring his hands, as do those witless men who dare to try to rear the changeling hope in the cave of black despair: he only looked upon the sun, and drank the morning air. he did not wring his hands nor weep, nor did he peek or pine, but he drank the air as though it held some healthful anodyne; with open mouth he drank the sun as though it had been wine! and i and all the souls in pain, who tramped the other ring, forgot if we ourselves had done a great or little thing, and watched with gaze of dull amaze the man who had to swing. for strange it was to see him pass with a step so light and gay, and strange it was to see him look so wistfully at the day, and strange it was to think that he had such a debt to pay. the oak and elm have pleasant leaves that in the spring-time shoot: but grim to see is the gallows-tree, with its alder-bitten root, and, green or dry, a man must die before it bears its fruit! the loftiest place is the seat of grace for which all worldlings try: but who would stand in hempen band upon a scaffold high, and through a murderer's collar take his last look at the sky? it is sweet to dance to violins when love and life are fair: to dance to flutes, to dance to lutes is delicate and rare: but it is not sweet with nimble feet to dance upon the air! so with curious eyes and sick surmise we watched him day by day, and wondered if each one of us would end the self-same way, for none can tell to what red hell his sightless soul may stray. at last the dead man walked no more amongst the trial men, and i knew that he was standing up in the black dock's dreadful pen, and that never would i see his face for weal or woe again. like two doomed ships that pass in storm we had crossed each other's way: but we made no sign, we said no word, we had no word to say; for we did not meet in the holy night, but in the shameful day. a prison wall was round us both, two outcast men we were: the world had thrust us from its heart, and god from out his care: and the iron gin that waits for sin had caught us in its snare. iii in debtors' yard the stones are hard, and the dripping wall is high, so it was there he took the air beneath the leaden sky, and by each side a warder walked, for fear the man might die. or else he sat with those who watched his anguish night and day; who watched him when he rose to weep, and when he crouched to pray; who watched him lest himself should rob their scaffold of its prey. the governor was strong upon the regulations act: the doctor said that death was but a scientific fact: and twice a day the chaplain called, and left a little tract. and twice a day he smoked his pipe, and drank his quart of beer: his soul was resolute, and held no hiding-place for fear; he often said that he was glad the hangman's day was near. but why he said so strange a thing no warder dared to ask: for he to whom a watcher's doom is given as his task, must set a lock upon his lips, and make his face a mask. or else he might be moved, and try to comfort or console: and what should human pity do pent up in murderers' hole? what word of grace in such a place could help a brother's soul? with slouch and swing around the ring we trod the fools' parade! we did not care: we knew we were the devils' own brigade: and shaven head and feet of lead make a merry masquerade. we tore the tarry rope to shreds with blunt and bleeding nails; we rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors, and cleaned the shining rails: and, rank by rank, we soaped the plank, and clattered with the pails. we sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, we turned the dusty drill: we banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, and sweated on the mill: but in the heart of every man terror was lying still. so still it lay that every day crawled like a weed-clogged wave: and we forgot the bitter lot that waits for fool and knave, till once, as we tramped in from work, we passed an open grave. with yawning mouth the horrid hole gaped for a living thing; the very mud cried out for blood to the thirsty asphalte ring: and we knew that ere one dawn grew fair the fellow had to swing. right in we went, with soul intent on death and dread and doom: the hangman, with his little bag, went shuffling through the gloom: and i trembled as i groped my way into my numbered tomb. that night the empty corridors were full of forms of fear, and up and down the iron town stole feet we could not hear, and through the bars that hide the stars white faces seemed to peer. he lay as one who lies and dreams in a pleasant meadow-land, the watchers watched him as he slept, and could not understand how one could sleep so sweet a sleep with a hangman close at hand. but there is no sleep when men must weep who never yet have wept: so wethe fool, the fraud, the knave that endless vigil kept, and through each brain on hands of pain another's terror crept. alas! it is a fearful thing to feel another's guilt! for, right within, the sword of sin pierced to its poisoned hilt, and as molten lead were the tears we shed for the blood we had not spilt. the warders with their shoes of felt crept by each padlocked door, and peeped and saw, with eyes of awe, gray figures on the floor, and wondered why men knelt to pray who never prayed before. all through the night we knelt and prayed, mad mourners of a corse! the troubled plumes of midnight shook like the plumes upon a hearse: and as bitter wine upon a sponge was the savour of remorse. the gray cock crew, the red cock crew, but never came the day: and crooked shapes of terror crouched, in the corners where we lay: and each evil sprite that walks by night before us seemed to play. they glided past, the glided fast, like travellers through a mist: they mocked the moon in a rigadoon of delicate turn and twist, and with formal pace and loathsome grace the phantoms kept their tryst. with mop and mow, we saw them go, slim shadows hand in hand: about, about, in ghostly rout they trod a saraband: and the damned grotesques made arabesques, like the wind upon the sand! with the pirouettes of marionettes, they tripped on pointed tread: but with flutes of fear they filled the ear, as their grisly masque they led, and loud they sang, and long they sang, for they sang to wake the dead. "oho!" they cried, "the world is wide, but fettered limbs go lame! and once, or twice, to throw the dice is a gentlemanly game, but he does not win who plays with sin in the secret house of shame." no things of air these antics were, that frolicked with such glee: to men whose lives were held in gyves, and whose feet might not go free, ah! wounds of christ! they were living things, most terrible to see. around, around, they waltzed and wound; some wheeled in smirking pairs; with the mincing step of a demirep some sidled up the stairs: and with subtle sneer, and fawning leer, each helped us at our prayers. the morning wind began to moan, but still the night went on: through its giant loom the web of gloom crept till each thread was spun: and, as we prayed, we grew afraid of the justice of the sun. the moaning wind went wandering round the weeping prison wall: till like a wheel of turning steel we felt the minutes crawl: o moaning wind! what had we done to have such a seneschal? at last i saw the shadowed bars, like a lattice wrought in lead, move right across the whitewashed wall that faced my three-plank bed, and i knew that somewhere in the world god's dreadful dawn was red. at six o'clock we cleaned our cells, at seven all was still, but the sough and swing of a mighty wing the prison seemed to fill, for the lord of death with icy breath had entered in to kill. he did not pass in purple pomp, nor ride a moon-white steed. three yards of cord and a sliding board are all the gallows' need: so with rope of shame the herald came to do the secret deed. we were as men who through a fen of filthy darkness grope: we did not dare to breathe a prayer, or to give our anguish scope: something was dead in each of us, and what was dead was hope. for man's grim justice goes its way and will not swerve aside: it slays the weak, it slays the strong, it has a deadly stride: with iron heel it slays the strong the monstrous parricide! we waited for the stroke of eight: each tongue was thick with thirst: for the stroke of eight is the stroke of fate that makes a man accursed, and fate will use a running noose for the best man and the worst. we had no other thing to do, save to wait for the sign to come: so, like things of stone in a valley lone, quiet we sat and dumb: but each man's heart beat thick and quick, like a madman on a drum! with sudden shock the prison-clock smote on the shivering air, and from all the gaol rose up a wail of impotent despair, like the sound the frightened marshes hear from some leper in his lair. and as one sees most fearful things in the crystal of a dream, we saw the greasy hempen rope hooked to the blackened beam, and heard the prayer the hangman's snare strangled into a scream. and all the woe that moved him so that he gave that bitter cry, and the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, none knew so well as i: for he who lives more lives than one more deaths that one must die. iv there is no chapel on the day on which they hang a man: the chaplain's heart is far too sick, or his face is far too wan, or there is that written in his eyes which none should look upon. so they kept us close till nigh on noon, and then they rang the bell, and the warders with their jingling keys opened each listening cell, and down the iron stair we tramped, each from his separate hell. out into god's sweet air we went, but not in wonted way, for this man's face was white with fear, and that man's face was gray, and i never saw sad men who looked so wistfully at the day. i never saw sad men who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue we prisoners called the sky, and at every happy cloud that passed in such strange freedom by. but there were those amongst us all who walked with downcast head, and knew that, had each got his due, they should have died instead: he had but killed a thing that lived, whilst they had killed the dead. for he who sins a second time wakes a dead soul to pain, and draws it from its spotted shroud and makes it bleed again, and makes it bleed great gouts of blood, and makes it bleed in vain! like ape or clown, in monstrous garb with crooked arrows starred, silently we went round and round the slippery asphalte yard; silently we went round and round, and no man spoke a word. silently we went round and round, and through each hollow mind the memory of dreadful things rushed like a dreadful wind, and horror stalked before each man, and terror crept behind. the warders strutted up and down, and watched their herd of brutes, their uniforms were spick and span, and they wore their sunday suits, but we knew the work they had been at, by the quicklime on their boots. for where a grave had opened wide, there was no grave at all: only a stretch of mud and sand by the hideous prison-wall, and a little heap of burning lime, that the man should have his pall. for he has a pall, this wretched man, such as few men can claim: deep down below a prison-yard, naked, for greater shame, he lies, with fetters on each foot, wrapt in a sheet of flame! and all the while the burning lime eats flesh and bone away, it eats the brittle bones by night, and the soft flesh by day, it eats the flesh and bone by turns, but it eats the heart alway. for three long years they will not sow or root or seedling there: for three long years the unblessed spot will sterile be and bare, and look upon the wondering sky with unreproachful stare. they think a murderer's heart would taint each simple seed they sow. it is not true! god's kindly earth is kindlier than men know, and the red rose would but glow more red, the white rose whiter blow. out of his mouth a red, red rose! out of his heart a white! for who can say by what strange way, christ brings his will to light, since the barren staff the pilgrim bore bloomed in the great pope's sight? but neither milk-white rose nor red may bloom in prison air; the shard, the pebble, and the flint, are what they give us there: for flowers have been known to heal a common man's despair. so never will wine-red rose or white, petal by petal, fall on that stretch of mud and sand that lies by the hideous prison-wall, to tell the men who tramp the yard that god's son died for all. yet though the hideous prison-wall still hems him round and round, and a spirit may not walk by night that is with fetters bound, and a spirit may but weep that lies in such unholy ground, he is at peacethis wretched man at peace, or will be soon: there is no thing to make him mad, nor does terror walk at noon, for the lampless earth in which he lies has neither sun nor moon. they hanged him as a beast is hanged: they did not even toll a requiem that might have brought rest to his startled soul, but hurriedly they took him out, and hid him in a hole. the warders stripped him of his clothes, and gave him to the flies: they mocked the swollen purple throat, and the stark and staring eyes: and with laughter loud they heaped the shroud in which the convict lies. the chaplain would not kneel to pray by his dishonoured grave: nor mark it with that blessed cross that christ for sinners gave, because the man was one of those whom christ came down to save. yet all is well; he has but passed to life's appointed bourne: and alien tears will fill for him pity's long-broken urn, for his mourners be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn. v i know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; all that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; and that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long. but this i know, that every law that men have made for man, since first man took his brother's life, and the sad world began, but straws the wheat and saves the chaff with a most evil fan. this too i knowand wise it were if each could know the same that every prison that men build is built with bricks of shame, and bound with bars lest christ should see how men their brothers maim. with bars they blur the gracious moon, and blind the goodly sun: and the do well to hide their hell, for in it things are done that son of things nor son of man ever should look upon! the vilest deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison-air: it is only what is good in man that wastes and withers there: pale anguish keeps the heavy gate, and the warder is despair. for they starve the little frightened child till it weeps both night and day: and they scourge the weak, and flog the fool, and gibe the old and gray, and some grow mad, and all grow bad, and none a word may say. each narrow cell in which we dwell is a foul and dark latrine, and the fetid breath of living death chokes up each grated screen, and all, but lust, is turned to dust in humanity's machine. the brackish water that we drink creeps with a loathsome slime, and the bitter bread they weigh in scales is full of chalk and lime, and sleep will not lie down, but walks wild-eyed, and cries to time. but though lean hunger and green thirst like asp with adder fight, we have little care of prison fare, for what chills and kills outright is that every stone one lifts by day becomes one's heart by night. with midnight always in one's heart, and twilight in one's cell, we turn the crank, or tear the rope, each in his separate hell, and the silence is more awful far than the sound of a brazen bell. and never a human voice comes near to speak a gentle word: and the eye that watches through the door is pitiless and hard: and by all forgot, we rot and rot, with soul and body marred. and thus we rust life's iron chain degraded and alone: and some men curse, and some men weep, and some men make no moan: but god's eternal laws are kind and break the heart of stone. and every human heart that breaks, in prison-cell or yard, is as that broken box that gave its treasure to the lord, and filled the unclean leper's house with the scent of costliest nard. ah! happy they whose hearts can break and peace of pardon win! how else may man make straight his plan and cleanse his soul from sin? how else but through a broken heart may lord christ enter in? and he of the swollen purple throat, and the stark and staring eyes, waits for the holy hands that took the thief to paradise; and a broken and a contrite heart the lord will not despise. the man in red who reads the law gave him three weeks of life, three little weeks in which to heal his soul of his soul's strife, and cleanse from every blot of blood the hand that held the knife. and with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, the hand that held the steel: for only blood can wipe out blood, and only tears can heal: and the crimson stain that was of cain became christ's snow-white seal. vi in reading gaol by reading town there is a pit of shame, and in it lies a wretched man eaten by teeth of flame, in a burning winding-sheet he lies, and his grave has got no name. and there, till christ call forth the dead, in silence let him lie: no need to waste the foolish tear, or heave the windy sigh: the man had killed the thing he loved, and so he had to die. and all men kill the thing they love, by all let this be heard, some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word, the coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword! c. 3. 3. the end . the uncrowned king, by harold bell wright. digitized by cardinalis etext press, c.e.k. posted to wiretap in july 1993, as uncrown.txt. this text is in the public domain. the uncrowned king by harold bell wright author of "the shepherd of the hills" etc., etc. the book supply company publishers, chicago copyright, 1910 by harold bell wright --- copyright, 1910 by elsbery w. reynolds --- all rights reserved --- published, october, 1910 to mr. elsbery w. reynolds my publisher and friend, whose belief in my work has made my work possible, i gratefully dedicate this tale of the uncrowned king redlands, california, may fourth, 1910 "eyes blinded by the fog of things cannot see truth. ears deafened by the din of things cannot hear truth. brains bewildered by the whirl of things cannot think truth. hearts deadened by the weight of things cannot feel truth. throats choked by the dust of things cannot speak truth." contents i the pilgrim and his pilgrimage ii and the first voice was the voice of the waves iii and the second voice was the voice of the evening wind iv and the third voice was the voice of the night v and the fourth voice was the voice of the new day chapter i. the pilgrim and his pilgrimage for many, many, weary months the pilgrim journeyed in the wide and pathless desert of facts. so many indeed were the months that the wayworn pilgrim, himself, came at last to forget their number. and always, for the pilgrim, the sky by day was a sky of brass, softened not by so much as a wreath of cloud mist. always, for him, the hot air was stirred not by so much as the lift of a wild bird's wing. never, for him, was the awful stillness of the night broken by voice of his kind, by foot-fall of beast, or by rustle of creeping thing. for the toiling pilgrim in the vast and pathless desert of facts there was no kindly face, no friendly fire. only the stars were many--many and very near. day after day, as the pilgrim labored onward, through the torturing heat, under the sky of brass, he saw on either hand lakes of living waters and groves of many palms. and the waters called him to their healing coolness: the palms beckoned him to their restful shade and shelter. night after night, in the dreadful solitude, frightful shapes came on silent feet out of the silent darkness to stare at him with doubtful, questioning, threatening eyes; drawing back at last, if he stood still, as silently as they had come, or, if he advanced, vanishing quickly, only to reappear as silently in another place. but the pilgrim knew that the enchanting scenes that lured him by day were but pictures in the heated air. he knew that the fearful shapes that haunted him by night were but creatures of his own overwrought fancy. and so he journeyed on and ever on, in the staggering heat, under the sky of brass, in the awful stillness of the night: on and ever on, through the wide and pathless waste, until he came at last to the outer-edge-of-things--came to the place that is between the desert of facts and the beautiful sea, even as it is written in the law of the pilgrimage. the tired feet of the traveler left now the rough, hot floor of the desert for a soft, cool carpet of velvet grass all inwrought with blossoms that filled the air with fragrance. over his head, tall trees gently shook their glistening, shadowy leaves, while sweet voiced birds of rare and wondrous plumage flitted from bough to bough. across a sky of deepest blue, fleets of fairy cloud ships, light as feathery down, floated--floated--drifting lazily, as though, piloted only by the wind, their pilot slept. all about him, as he walked, multitudes of sunlight and shadow fairies danced gaily hand in hand. and over the shimmering surface of the sea a thousand thousand fairy waves ran joyously, one after the other, from the sky line to the pebbly beach, making liquid music clearer and softer than the softest of clear toned bells. and there it was, in that wondrously beautiful place, the outer-edge-of-things, that the pilgrim found, fashioned of sheerest white, with lofty dome, towering spires, and piercing minarets lifting out of the living green, the temple of truth. in reverent awe the pilgrim stood before the sacred object of his pilgrimage. at last, with earnest step, the worshiper approached the holy edifice. but when he would have passed through the high arched door, his way was barred by one whose garments were white even as the whiteness of the temple, whose eyes were clear even as the skies, and whose face shone even as the shining beautiful sea. the pilgrim, hesitating, spoke: "you are?" the other answered in a voice that was even as the soft wind that stirred the leaves of the forest: "i am thyself." then the pilgrim--"and your office?" "i am the appointed keeper of the temple of truth; save by my permission none may enter here." cried the pilgrim eagerly: "but i? i may enter? surely i have fulfilled the law! surely i have paid the price!" "what law have you fulfilled? what price have you paid?" gently asked he in the garments of white. proudly now the other answered: "i have accomplished alone the long journey through the desert of facts. alone i have endured the days under the sky of brass; alone i have borne the awful solitude of the nights. i was not drawn aside by the lovely scenes that tempted me. i was not turned back by the dreadful shapes that threatened me. and so i have attained the outer-edge-of-things." "you have indeed fulfilled the, law" said he of the shining face. "and the price?" the pilgrim answered sadly: "i left behind all things dearest to the heart of man--wealth of traditions inherited from the long ago, holy prejudices painfully gathered through the ages of the past, sacred opinions, customs, favors and honors of the world that is, in the times that are." "you have indeed paid the price," said the soft voice of the other," but still, still there is one thing more." "and the one thing more?" asked the pilgrim," i knew not that there could be one thing more." the keeper of the temple was silent for a little, then said very gently: "is there nothing, o hadji, that you would ask thyself?" then all at once the pilgrim understood. said he slowly: "there is still one thing more. tell me, tell me--why? why the law of the pilgrimage? why the journey so long? why the way so hard? why is the temple of truth here on the outer-edge-of-things?" and thyself answered clearly: "he who lives always within things can never worship in truth. eyes blinded by the fog of things cannot see truth. ears deafened by the din of things cannot hear truth. brains bewildered by the whirl of things cannot think truth. hearts deadened by the weight of things cannot feel truth. throats choked by the dust of things cannot speak truth. therefore, o hadji, is the temple of truth here on the outer-edge-of-things; therefore is the law of the pilgrimage." "and the price?" asked the pilgrim; "it was so great a price. why?" thyself answered: "found you no bones in the desert? found you no graves by the way?" the other replied: "i saw the desert white with bones--i found the way set among many graves." "and the hands of the dead?"--asked thyself, in that voice so like the wind that stirred the leaves of the forest-"and the hands of the dead?" and the pilgrim answered now with understanding: "the hands of the dead held fast to their treasures--held fast to their wealth of traditions, to their holy prejudices, to the sacred opinions, customs, favors and honors of men." then thyself, the appointed keeper of the temple of truth, went quietly aside from the path. with slow and reverent step, with bowed uncovered head, the pilgrim crossed the threshold and through the high arched doorway entered the sacred corridors. but within the temple, before approaching the altar with his offering, the pilgrim was constrained to retire to the quiet room, there to spend the hours until a new day in prayerful meditation. it was there that this tale of the uncrowned king came to him--came to him at the end of his long pilgrimage across the desert of facts--came to him after he had paid the price, after he had fulfilled the law, after he had asked of thyself, the keeper of the temple," why?" there, in the quiet room in the temple of truth on the outer-edge-of-things, the voices to the pilgrim told this tale of the uncrowned king. chapter ii. and the first voice was the voice of the waves it was nearing the fall of day when first the pilgrim laid himself to meditate upon his couch in the quiet room. without the temple, the tall trees rustled softly their glossy leaves and over the flower-figured carpet of green the sunlight and shadow fairies danced along the lanes of gold. high in the blue above, the fairy cloud-fleets were drifting--drifting--idly floating. over the beautiful sea, the glad wave fairies ran one after the other from beyond the far horizon to the sandy shore. in the quiet room where the pilgrim lay, it was very, very, still. only the liquid music of the waves came through the open window--came to the pilgrim clearer and sweeter than the sweetest notes from clear toned bells. and after a little there was in the music of the waves a voice. said the voice: "to thee, o hadji, i come from the beautiful sea; the interminable, unfathomable sea, that begins at the outer-edge-of-things and stretches away into neverness. i speak from out the deeps beneath. i tell of the great that is. i am a voice of life, o hadji, and mine it is to begin for you the tale of the uncrowned king." and this is the beginning of the tale that the voice of the waves began. very great and very wonderful, o hadji, is the land of allthetime. very great and very wonderful is the royal city daybyday. beautiful in allthetime are the lakes and rivers, the mountains, plains and streams. beautiful in daybyday are the groves and gardens, the drives and parks, the harbors and canals. countless, in this royal city, are the palaces. without number are the people--without number and of many races, languages, and names. but amid the countless palaces in this marvelous city daybyday, there is one temple only--only one. for the numberless people of the many races, languages, and names, there is but one god--only one. about this royal city there is no wall. for the king of allthetime, who dwells in daybyday, there is no crown. but the days that were were not as the days that are, o hadji, and therefore is this tale. in the long ago olden days, when king what-soever-youthink ruled over the land of allthetime, there were, in this royal city daybyday, religions many--as many quite as the races, languages and names of the people. many then were the temples built by the many followers of the many religions to their many gods. for you must know that king what-soever-youthink was, of all wise kings that ever were or will be, the very wisest and, therefore, permitted his subjects to worship whom they would. always in the city streets there were vast throngs of people passing to and fro among the temples, bearing offerings and singing praises to the gods of their choice; for the chiefest occupation of the dwellers in daybyday was then, as it is now, the old, old, occupation of worship. some of the temples, it is true, were at times quite deserted, while in others there was not room for the multitudes; but even in the nearly empty temples the priests and beggars always remained, for, in that age, the people of daybyday changed often their gods nor followed any very far. and you must know, too, o hadji, that in those long ago olden days--the days of the reign of what-soever-youthink there was for the ruler of allthetime a crown; and that of all the wonders in that wonderful land this crown was the most wonderful. more dear to the people of daybyday than their city itself, more precious than their splendid temples, more sacred even than their many gods, was this--the crown of their king. it was so, first, because the crown was extremely old. from the beginning of the reign of the the royal family everyone, no one knows how many thousands of ages ago, it had passed from king to king, even until that day. it was so, second, because the crown was exceedingly valuable. from the very beginning of the beginning each ruler had in turn added a jewel to the golden, gem encrusted emblem of his rank. it was so, third, because the crown was a magic crown, though no one then knew its magic--they knew only that its magic was. therefore, again, o hadji, is this tale. also, in those days, there was about this royal city a wall--a wall built, so they said, on the very foundations of the world; so strong that no force could breach it, and so high that the clouds often hid its towers and battlements. only from the topmost cupola of the royal palace could one see over this mighty barrier. only by the two great gates could one pass through. and so the good people of allthetime could all quite clearly see that in the royal city daybyday the precious magic crown was as safe as ever crown could be. and it was so, o hadji--it was so the crown was as safe as ever crown could be--as safe indeed as ever a crown can be. and this too is truth, o hadji; that in daybyday, even now, you may find ruins of the many temples, and here and there a little of the many gods. even now you may see where the great wall was. but of the crown, in these days, there is nothing--nothing. and this is how it happened--this is the way it came to be. king what-soever-youthink was the father of two sons; twins they were, and their names--really-is and seemsto-be. no one in all the kingdom could tell them one from the other, though the princes themselves knew that really-is was first born, and that when the wise king, their father, died, it would be for him to occupy the throne, to wear the crown, and rule the land of allthetime. one day when the young princes were playing in the palace yard they discovered, by chance, an old door that led to the stairway in a tower. of course they climbed up, up, up, until they stood at last in the cupola at the very top. far beneath their feet they saw the roofs of the royal palace, and the gardens, fields, and orchards, like spots and splashes of color. the walks and courts appeared as lines and squares of white, while the soldiers and servants moved about like tiny animated dots. reaching away from the palace grounds on every side was the wonderful city daybyday, so far below that no sound could reach their ears. to their delight, the princes found that they could even look down upon the great wall; and, because there were that day no clouds to shut out the view, they could see far, far away over the land of allthetime." look, brother," cried seemsto-be, catching really-is by the arm in quick excitement, "look! what is that flashing and gleaming in the sun?" as he spoke, he pointed afar off to the land beyond the river that marks the end of allthetime. "i'm sure i cannot tell;" answered really-is, shading his eyes with his open hand and gazing long and earnestly in the direction his brother indicated; "it looks--it looks like a city." "it is, it is," cried seemsto-be. "it is the city sometime in the land of yettocome. i remember hearing once the chief gardener telling the chief coachman about it, and he said that the chief cook said that he heard the captain of the guard say that it is far more wonderful than our own city daybyday; and it must be so, really-is, for see, brother, how the walls shine like polished silver, and look! is not that a palace or a temple blazing so like a ruby flame?" often after that did the twin princes, really-is and seemsto-be, climb the winding stairs in the palace tower and look away over the great wall of daybyday to the city sometime in the land of yettocome. many were the hours they spent talking of the marvelous place that so filled the distance with dazzling splendor. and at last, when the princes were quite grown, they went before their royal father and asked permission to visit the city they had seen. now king what-soever-youthink was very sad when his sons made their request, but nevertheless, because he was a wise king, he gave his royal consent, and, that the brothers might make their journey in comfort, presented to each a priceless horse from the palace stables. to really-is he, reality; to seemsto-be he gave gave appearance; and both were steeds of noble breeding, swift and strong, beautiful and proud--as like even as the royal twins, their masters. so it came that the two princes bade farewell to their father, the king, and rode bravely out of the city daybyday, through the land of allthetime, and along the way that leads to the city sometime in the land of yettocome. "and this, o hadji," said the voice of the waves, "is all of the tale of the uncrowned king that is given me to tell." the liquid music of the waves came no longer through the open window--the voice that was in the music came no more to the pilgrim in the quiet room. without the temple the tall trees were still--still and silent were the sweet-voiced birds. the sunlight and shadow fairies had danced to the ends of the lanes of gold--danced to the very ends and were gone. the feathery cloud ships in the blue above seemed to lie at anchor, and over the surface of the beautiful sea no laughing ripples ran to play on the pebbly beach. the pilgrim arose from his couch, and, going to the open window, looked, and there, in the still, fathomless, depth of the clear water, he saw as in a crystal glass the wonderful city daybyday with its canals and harbors, its parks and drives, its groves and gardens, its palaces and temples. then, even as the pilgrim looked, quickly the evening wind sprang up. again the tall trees rustled their leaves, the cloud ships lifted their anchors, the waves of the beautiful sea ran joyously; the vision in the deeps beneath was gone. chapter iii. and the second voice was the voice of the evening wind it was early twilight when the pilgrim in the quiet room returned to his couch and to his meditations. without the temple, the last of the day was stealing over the rim of the world into the mysterious realm of the yesterdays. the feathery cloud ships no longer floated white in the depth of blue, but with wide flung sails of rose and crimson swept over an ocean of amethyst and gold. the ripples that ran on the beautiful sea were edged with yellow and scarlet flame, while leaf, and blade, and flower, and bird, and all of their kind and kin, were singing their evensong. sweetly, softly, the choral anthem stole through the open window into the quiet room. and after a little the pilgrim heard, whispering low, in the twilight hymn, the voice of the evening wind. said the voice: "to thee, o hadji, i come from the boundless ocean above that begins wherever you are and extends farther away than the farthest point your thought can reach. i speak from out the deeps beyond. i tell of the great that may be. i too am a voice of life and mine it is to continue for you the tale of the uncrowned king." and this is the part of the tale that was told by the voice of the evening wind. the twin princes really-is and seemsto-be, on their good horses reality and appearance, journeyed very pleasantly through the land of allthetime toward the city sometime in the land of yettocome. ever as they went the royal travelers saw before them the walls of the city gleaming like polished silver in the sun, and high above the shining walls the great palace or temple that flamed like a ruby flame. always as they rode the two talked gaily, in glad anticipation of the marvels they would certainly see, of the pleasures they would surely find, and of the delightful adventures that without doubt awaited them. so at last they arrived at the city gate, which was a gate all scrolled and patterned with precious gems. fairer than the dreams of angels, o hadji, is the city sometime in the land of yettocome. of such radiant splendors, such dazzling brilliancy, such transcending glory there are yet no words fashioned to tell. it is a city, in the form and manner of its building, of exquisite loveliness, of fairy grace, of towering grandeur. it is a city in the beauty and richness of its color, all emerald, rose, and purple, all ruby, crimson and gold. as the twin princes of allthetime rode slowly through the wide jeweled gate and along the noble streets and stately avenues, they exclaimed aloud with delight and wonder at the enchanting beauty of the scene. more than they had heard at home was true. the poorest of the buildings in sometime far exceeded in splendor the richest of the palaces in daybyday; while before the palaces of sometime, really-is and seemsto-be stood speechless and amazed. they were fairly drunken with the flashing, flaming, blazing, blinding glory of the sight. the people of sometime, too, were exceeding fair and very charming in their manner, and they welcomed the princes from daybyday with a joyous welcome, answering their questions gladly and escorting them to the palace of their king. for you must know, o hadji, that the city sometime, too, is a royal city, the home of lookingahead, who rules over the land of yettocome. and king lookingahead received his noble visitors with gladness and had great pleasure, he said, in presenting them to his two daughters, the princesses of yettocome, fancy and imagination, who were fairer than any women the princes of daybyday had ever seen, even in the loveliest of their dreams. for a long happy, happy time really-is and seemsto-be remained in the city sometime. every day, and every day, with the royal princesses fancy and imagination for their guides, they rode or drove through the wide streets and broad avenues, walked in the beautiful gardens, explored the shadowy groves or visited the many palaces. and in this way it was that the charming princesses showed to their noble guests all the wonders of the royal city of the realm of yettocome, pointing out for them every day new beauties, finding for them always new pleasures, leading them ever to fresh scenes of enchanting loveliness. and in turn the princes told their fair guides many things of their own city, daybyday, in the land of allthetime; of the people with their many temples and their many gods; of their father what-soever-youthink and his wise reign. but most of all did they tell of the wonderful crown, so very old, so very valuable, and how it was a magic crown, though no one then knew its magic, but knew only that its magic was. thus really-is and seemsto-be learned that the dwellers in sometime were unlike the people of daybyday in many ways, but in no way more than this, that they worshiped one god only, only one. the temple sacred to this god stood in the very heart of the city, which is the very heart of the land, and it was this temple, blazing like a ruby flame high above the shining city walls, the princes had seen from the tower of their palace home. often, very often did the four young people visit this shrine in sometime with rich offerings to the god, itmightbe. but there came a time at last when, returning from a long ramble through the city, really-is and seemsto-be were met at the palace door by a royal messenger from home with the word that king what-soever-youthink was dead, and that the princes must hasten back to daybyday, where really-is would be crowned with the magic crown and become the ruler of allthetime. all was hurry and confusion in the palace of lookingahead as the guests made swift preparations for their journey. quickly the word went throughout the city and many charming people came to express regret, to sympathize and to bid the young men good-speed and safe going on their homeward way. the princesses, fancy and imagination, were very sad at losing their pleasant companions; and the chief high priest of the temple commanded services and offerings extraordinary to the god itmightbe. "and this, o hadji," whispered the voice of the evening wind, "is all of the tale of the uncrowned king that is given me to tell." the evening song of leaf and blade, and flower and bird, and all their kind and kin, ceased to come through the open window into the quiet room. the low voice of the evening wind no longer whispered to the pilgrim as he lay upon his couch. without the temple the eventide was passing from over the silent land and over the silent sea. for a little the pilgrim waited; then rising from his couch, again he went to the open window, and lo! in the evening sky he saw the city sometime in the land of yettocome. all the wondrous castles and palaces were there, marvelous in their beauty, glorious in their splendor, dazzling in their colors of emerald, rose and purple, of ruby, crimson and gold. from spire and dome, cupola and turret, tower and battlement the lights flashed and gleamed, while the pilgrim looked in wonder and in awe. and high above the city walls, that shone as burnished silver in the sun, rose the temple flaming like a ruby flame--the temple sacred to the god itmightbe. slowly, slowly, the last of the twilight passed. slowly, the graceful lines, the proud forms, the majestic piles of the city melted--melted, blurred and were lost even as are lost the form and loveliness of a snow flake on the sleeve. slowly, slowly, the glorious colors faded as fade the flowers at the touch of frost. the lights went out. the darkness came. the city that is fairer than an angel's dream was gone. chapter iv. and the third voice was the voice of the night it was full night when the pilgrim turned again to seek his couch. without the temple it was very still--dark and still. very still was it within the quiet room, and the darkness that came stealing through the open window was a thick and heavy darkness. the pilgrim lay upon his couch staring with blank, unseeing eyes into a blackness wherein there was not even a spot of gray to show where the window was. and after a little there came out of the heavy darkness the sad, sad voice of the night. said the voice: "to thee, o hadji, i come from the limitless realm of the past that begins this moment and reaches back even beyond the day of all beginnings. i speak from the deeps above. i tell of the great that was. i also am a voice of life, and mine it is to tell you yet more of the tale of the uncrowned king." and this is the part of the tale that was told by the voice of the night. now it happened, as things sometime so happen, that really-is lingered over long, saying goodbye to his friends in the city sometime in the land of yettocome; and that when he had lingered long with his friends he stayed yet longer with the beautiful princess, imagination. so it was that, while the prince was promising many promises and receiving in turn promises as many, his brother, seemsto-be, mounted and was well started on his journey before the heir to the throne of allthetime was in the saddle. with the last good-bye spoken to his royal friends, the last promise promised to the fair princess, and the last farewell waved to the charming people, really-is urged his horse fast and faster, thinking thus to overtake his brother. but very soon really-is found that, fast as he rode his good horse reality, seemsto-be on appearance rode faster. greater and greater grew the distance between the two princes--farther and farther ahead rode seemsto-be; until at last, when the distance between them was such that he could no longer see his brother, really-is, the rightful heir to the throne of allthetime, understood that seemsto-be was riding to win the crown. "for you must not forget, o hadji," said the sad voice of the night," that no one in daybyday could tell the twins, really-is and seemsto-be, one from the other, and therefore, you see, the prince who first reached the royal city would surely be proclaimed king." hard and fast, fast and hard, rode the two who raced for the crown of allthetime. but always appearance the horse of seemsto-be, proved faster than reality, the horse of really-is, and so the prince who was first born rode far behind. now just this side of the river that marks the end of the land of allthetime the road divides, the way to the left leading to the brazen gate called chance, and the other, to the right, going straight to the golden gate, opportunity. and just here it is, at the parting of the ways, that wisdom lives in his little house beside the road. when really-is in turn arrived at this place, he dismounted from his tired horse, and approaching the little house, asked of wisdom if he had seen one pass that way riding in great haste. "aye, that i have," replied wisdom with a smile, "that i have, young sir, and many would say that it was yourself who rode so hard." "it was my brother, good sir," replied the prince." may i ask which way he went and how far he rides ahead?" the old man, pointing, answered: "he took the road to the left there and he rides so far ahead that you cannot now overtake him this side the city walls." "at least i must try to overtake him," answered the prince, and, thanking the old man, he turned quickly to mount his horse again. but wisdom cried, "why so fast? why so fast? is not your brother's name seemsto-be? and are not you, really-is, the rightful heir to the throne of allthetime?" "it is indeed so, sir," replied the young man sadly. "i am really-is. i was born before my brother, seemsto-be, and am, therefore, the rightful heir to the crown. our father, king what-soever-youthink, is dead, and i must hasten or my brother will be crowned king, for as you see, the people cannot tell us one from the other." then said wisdom: "but you will gain nothing by haste, oh really-is,--nothing but time, and there is much of greater value than time to a king of allthetime. even now is seemsto-be entering the city. even now is he by the people being hailed king. therefore, tarry a while before you act and listen to my words." so it was that really-is paused on his journey to sit awhile with wisdom in the little house by the side of the road. then did wisdom take from his shelves many a ponderous, time worn volume and read to the prince history, prophecy and law, revealing to him thus the secret of the magic of the crown of allthetime. and from the last volume, that which wisdom read to really-is was this: "be it known, o whosoever readeth, that if any prince of the royal family everyone enter the city daybyday through the brazen gate called chance, he shall be forever held unworthy of the throne and crown. in the sacred law of all the ages it is written that a king of allthetime may enter the royal city only through the golden gate opportunity." wisdom closed the book and returned this volume also to its place. really-is arose to go." and what now is your mind, young sir?" asked wisdom kindly. then really-is answered royally. "this you have taught me, o wisdom--this is my mind: the crown is not the kingdom, nor is one king because he wears a crown." then did wisdom with bowed head salute the true king. "and your will, sire; may i know your majesty's will?" king really-is replied: "my will is this: that i myself obey the sacred law of the ages." "and your brother, sire, your brother, seemsto-be?" "i will pity seemsto-be," replied the king in sorrow, "i will have much pity for that poor, foolish one." "and peace will dwell in thy heart, o king of allthetime," said wisdom, "true peace and understanding." then really-is, alone and unattended, rode slowly on his way. and seemsto-be, who rode so fast and so far ahead of really-is, and who paused not at the house of wisdom, entered the city daybyday through the brazen gate called chance, and was received by the people of many races, languages, names and religions as their king. with great tumult and shouting, with grand processions and ceremonies, the false prince ascended the throne of allthetime and was crowned with the magic crown--the crown of which no one then knew its magic, but knew only that its magic was. then began such times as were never before nor since seen in daybyday; with holiday after holiday for the people, with festivals and parades, with carnivals and games, with feasting and dancing; until the chief occupation of the people was forgotten--until their many temples were empty, their many gods neglected; until with a fete extraordinary, seemsto-be decreed that there should be from henceforth and forever, in daybyday, one temple only--one temple sacred to one god, the god thingsare-good-enough. "and this, o hadji," said the sad voice of the night, "is all the tale of the uncrowned king that is given me to tell." the voice in the darkness ceased. the pilgrim, rising, groped his way to the window. without, all was dark with a thick darkness--all was still with a heavy stillness. only the stars were in the deeps above. the stars so old, so ever new--only the stars. lifting his face, the pilgrim looked at the stars, and lo! as he looked, those whirling worlds of light shaped themselves into mighty letters, and the letters shaped themselves into words, until in the heavens the pilgrim read the truth that wisdom had given to really-is in the little house beside the road. "the crown is not the kingdom, nor is one king because he wears a crown." then even as he stood the pilgrim saw the sad night preparing to depart. far away beyond the stars the first faint light of the morning touched the sky. slowly the world began to awake. slowly the message in the stars was lost in the dawning greater light of a new day. chapter v. and the fourth voice was the voice of the new day it was gray dawn when the pilgrim turned once more to his couch in the quiet room. without the temple, tree and bush and plant and grass were beginning to stir with fresh and joyous strength, while the clean air was rich with the smell of the earth life and filled with murmuring, twittering, whispering, morning calls. through the open window, into the quiet room where the pilgrim lay, the bright morning entered, and out of the morning came the glad, glad voice of the new day. said this voice to the pilgrim: "to thee, o hadji, i come from the infinite future. the interminable, eternal times that are to come, that begin but never end. i cry from the deeps within. i call from the great that will be. i, too, am a voice of life, and mine it is to complete for you the tale of the uncrowned king." and this is the part of the tale that the voice of the new day completed. really-is, the true king of allthetime, after leaving wisdom in his little house beside the road, journeyed slowly and thoughtfully toward the royal city daybyday, along the way that leads to the golden gate opportunity. and while the pretender, seemsto-be, was delighting the people with great feasts, and amusing them with all manner of festivals, parades and games, really-is, very quietly--so quietly that his brother did not know--entered the city and took up his abode in a tiny house under the walls of a deserted temple once sacred to the god things-that-ought-to-be. and so it was that when seemsto-be went forth from the royal palace to ride in grand procession, clothed in regal splendors, with the crown upon his head, and surrounded by gorgeous soldiers of rank and pompous officials of state, with the royal trumpeters proclaiming his greatness and power and the multitude shouting loud expressions of their loyalty, really-is, the king, stood still beside the way, smiling, smiling sadly at the pretty show. and never did really-is neglect to make his offering every morning in the temple sacred to the god things-that-ought-to-be; though in secret he worshiped there because of the decree of seemsto-be. and no one told the false ruler that his commandment was broken, nor spoke to him the name of his brother really-is. but after a while, as time passed by, things went not so gaily with the imposter on the throne of allthetime. and it was the crown that did it--that wonderful magic crown. the court fool noticed it first and made a jest about it, and seemsto-be laughed royally long and loud, and all the court laughed with him, for the fool, thinks-he-is, is a most famous fool, the greatest that has ever been since the father of fools was born. next, the lord chief high chamberlain noticed, and the lord chief high chamberlain whispered to seemsto-be a most portentous whisper. and the portentous whisper of the lord chief high chamberlain reached the ears of the chief first officer of state; then passed from officer of state to officer of state until it reached the chief captain of the guard, and soon the soldiers of the royal army and even the royal servants of the palace were whispering, whispering, whispering about the strange affair. then it was that seemsto-be sent throughout the kingdom, commanding in haste to the palace the most expert workers in gems and the most cunning workers in gold to be found in the land of allthetime. it was true. the priceless jewels of the magic crown were losing their brilliancy. the precious gold of the crown was becoming dull. nor could all the skill of the workers in gems, all the craft of the workers in gold restore the beauty of the crown or keep its fading splendor. and so the whispers grew louder and louder until the people began to talk in low tones among themselves, questioning, questioning one another of the meaning of this thing. and at last the royal officers of state began to look with distrust and fear upon their ruler, who tried so hard to wear bravely his crown of tarnished gold and lusterless gems; and the soldiers came to look with doubt and fear upon the officers, who whispered so among themselves; and the people looked with suspicion and fear upon them all. without understanding, filled with dread and apprehension, worn with wracking worry, poor seemsto-be sought with honors, decorations, and distinguishing titles to hold the fast-failing confidence of his court and army, and with holidays more frequent, festivals more gay, games more interesting, and parades more gorgeous, tried to keep the waning loyalty of his people. now all this time, while the poor foolish pretender, seemsto-be, was losing his power even as the beauty of the magic crown was fading, king really-is lived very quietly in his little house under the walls of the abandoned temple, and never did he fail to make his daily offering to his god, the god things-that-ought-to-be. and always when his brother seemsto-be with the fading crown upon his head, passed in gorgeous procession of state, surrounded by his distrustful officers, doubting soldiers and suspicious people, really-is smiled sadly and whispered to himself: "poor seemsto-be, poor foolish one!" so it was, that in all the royal city daybyday, in the land of allthetime, peace and understanding dwelt only in the heart of this king. and the people more and more came to love really-is, even as they more and more turned from seemsto-be, notwithstanding the holidays, feasts and parades. little by little, they learned to watch daily for their king, and with the children would run to greet him. more and more the multitude pressed about really-is when he stood quietly in the street, watching seemsto-be pass by in the splendid chariot of state. more and more the people went daily with really-is to worship in the temple sacred to the god things-that-ought-to-be. so the time came at last when the magic crown, tarnished and dull, seemed but a mockery, fit only for the rubbish heap; when the officers of state spoke aloud their doubts and fears and the soldiers were openly disobedient; when the people, as the pretender passed through the city streets, no longer shouted aloud expressions of their loyalty, but, with dark looks of doubt and anger, stood silent, or laughed in mocking glee. and seemsto-be grew afraid. then in secret the false price went alone to the house of his brother the king and prostrated himself humbly. "what is your wish, my brother?" asked really-is, kindly, "make known to me your request." and seemsto-be taking heart at the gentleness of really-is answered: "this is my wish, o king--my brother, this is my request; that you come to dwell with me in the royal palace, that you share with me the throne. twins we are, sons of our royal father, of the royal family everyone. therefore let us rule together the land of allthetime. answered really-is." by your coming to me, seemsto-be, i know that you, too, at last have learned the secret of the magic of the crown. what of the crown, brother?" and the pretender replied: "no one can tell us one from the other. you only shall wear the crown; then for us both will its glory come again and remain, then will all be well." but king really-is answered sadly: "o my brother, that which you ask cannot be. in the law of the ages it is written that a king of allthetime cannot, if he would, share his throne and power with one who is false, else would he himself be held unworthy i have seen your wretchedness, my brother; i have seen and i have pitied." then seemsto-be went sadly out from the presence of his brother, the king, and the next morning they found him dead on the steps of the temple sacred to the god things-are-good-enough. and now with great tumult and shouting the people gathered to do homage to really-is. and never was there seen in daybyday such a multitude. from the uttermost parts of allthetime they came, for the word of his life had gone far, far abroad and all the world that is, gathered to do him honor. and it happened, when all was ready for really-is to ascend the throne, and the royal trumpeters had lifted their trumpets ready to proclaim him king of allthetime, with the vast multitude breathless, ready at the signal of the trumpets to break forth in a great, glad shout, "long live the king," and the lord chief high chamberlain turned to take the magic crown from the hands of the high priest of things-that-ought-to-be, that even as he turned the crown vanished, and lo! there was in the hands of the priest, nothing. in consternation the lord chief high chamberlain whispered to the royal high officials about him, asking what should be done. in consternation, the royal high officials whispered among themselves. in consternation they whispered back to the chamberlain. and this was their whisper: "ask the king." really-is, when he was asked what should be done, answered with a smile: "the crown is not the kingdom, nor is one king because he wears a crown." and the people, when the trumpets made it known that there was no crown and declared the word of really-is, with one voice cried loudly: "really-is is king! really-is needs no crown! long live really-is, our king!" thus the true king ascended the throne of allthetime, and the trumpeters trumpeted loudly many times: "long live the king who needs no crown!" and with a great shout the people answered again many times: "long live our uncrowned king! long live our uncrowned king!" "and this, o hadji," said the glad voice of the new day, "is how it came to be that in the days that now are, there is, in this royal city daybyday, in the wonderful land of allthetime, no crown. and this also you must know, that in the reign of really-is the people of daybyday have more and more turned from their many gods to worship only the god of their king, until there is left now of the many deserted temples only ruins, and of the many gods of the many people of many races, languages and names only one, the god of really-is, things-that-ought-to-be. the mighty wall that was built, they thought, on the foundations of the world, when there was no longer a crown to keep, of its own great weight fell. and the royal city daybyday, in the reign of really-is, is extending its borders more and more, until there are those who think that with the city sometime it will soon be one, and then they say that the promises made by really-is and the princess of yettocome will be fulfilled and that the glory and splendor of their reign will fill the world. "but of that, o hadji," said the glad voice of the new day, "i cannot tell you now. i have finished the tale of the uncrowned king." the voice that was in the morning ceased. the quiet room was filled with light. quickly the pilgrim arose and going to the window saw in all its glory the new day. every leaf of the tall trees, every blade and every inwoven flower in the velvet carpet of green, wore beads of shining crystal that sparkled and glittered in radiant splendor. every tiny ripple that ran on the beautiful sea was a line of silver flame. and in the overhead ocean of pearly light, floated glowing banks of orange, and scarlet and gold, while, to the pilgrim, bird and tree and plant and flower and wave and cloud seemed to join in one glad triumphant shout: "long live really-is! long live the uncrowned king!" then the pilgrim who had paid the price, who had fulfilled the law of the pilgrimage, who had asked of thyself, the keeper of the temple of truth, "why," went to lay his offering on the altar to the god that-never-can-change. and his offering was himself. the end the calling of dan matthews "mr. wright has written other novels, but this one is so strong and wholesome, so attractive as literature, so interesting as a story, so artistic in preparation, that it wins increasing favor as one gets into it."--buffalo evening news. ----------- "mr. wright has the gift of knowing people well and of being able to set out their characteristics so clearly that his reader also knows them well."--chicago journal. ----------- "it is a privilege to meet the people whom the author allows you to know. they are worth while; and to cry and feel with them, get into the fresh, sweet atmosphere with which the writer surrounds them and above all, to understand dan matthews and to go with him in his unfoldment these will repay you."--portland spectator. ---------- "harold bell wright has done a fine big piece of work. * * * one might quote at length from the old doctor's homely philosophy. the book can not be read without the keenest enjoyment and at the end of the story one feels that the people are old friends, real flesh and blood characters, so human are they all."--san francisco call. the shepherd of the hills "there are many bits of excellent description in the course of the story, and an atmosphere as fresh and sweet and free from modern grime as one would breathe on the ozark trails themselves."--new york times. "amidst all the ordinary literature of the day, it is as a pure, white stone set up along a dreary road of unending monotony."--buffalo courier. "it is filled with laughs and tears, this beautiful story, and no one can help laughing or crying in turn, if his heart is right."--pueblo chieftain. "it is a heart-stirring story. a tale to bring laughter and tears; a story to be read and read again."--grand rapids herald. that printer of udell's "altogether an estimable story."--new york sun. "done to the life."--chicago tribune. "well written and decidedly interesting."--new york times. "a thoroughly good novel."--boston globe. "wrings tears and laughter."--record-herald, chicago. "absorbing, thoughtful novel."--kansas city journal. "full of movement and passion."--standard, chicago. "it is human to the very core."--nashville american. "excellent character creation."--st. louis republic. "wholesome and strengthening."--albany press. "rich in humor and good sense."--philadelphia telegraph "full of thrilling interest and moral heroism."--pittsburg dispatch. "many well drawn characters."--washington post. "has not a peer in english fiction."--providence telegram "it is strong and wholesome."--chicago post. "not a chapter that is not interesting."--st. paul news. "it is a fascinating story."--portland telegram. "it should be read to be understood."--grand rapids herald. "the reader's interest is stirred to its very depths"--omaha world-herald. [end.] . kidnapped, by robert louis stevenson digitized by cardinalis etext press, c.e.k. posted to wiretap in july 1993, as kidnap.txt. this text is in the public domain. kidnapped being memoirs of the adventures of david balfour in the year 1751 how he was kidnapped and cast away; his sufferings in a desert isle; his journey in the wild highlands; his acquaintance with alan breck stewart and other notorious highland jacobites; with all that he suffered at the hands of his uncle, ebenezer balfour of shaws, falsely so called written by himself and now set forth by robert louis stevenson with a preface by mrs. stevenson new york charles scribner's sons 1917 copyright 1905 by charles scribner's sons preface to the biographical edition while my husband and mr. henley were engaged in writing plays in bournemouth they made a number of titles, hoping to use them in the future. dramatic composition was not what my husband preferred, but the torrent of mr. henley's enthusiasm swept him off his feet. however, after several plays had been finished, and his health seriously impaired by his endeavours to keep up with mr. henley, play writing was abandoned forever, and my husband returned to his legitimate vocation. having added one of the titles, the hanging judge, to the list of projected plays, now thrown aside, and emboldened by my husband's offer to give me any help needed, i concluded to try and write it myself. as i wanted a trial scene in the old bailey, i chose the period of 1700 for my purpose; but being shamefully ignorant of my subject, and my husband confessing to little more knowledge than i possessed, a london bookseller was commissioned to send us everything he could procure bearing on old bailey trials. a great package came in response to our order, and very soon we were both absorbed, not so much in the trials as in following the brilliant career of a mr garrow, who appeared as counsel in many of the cases. we sent for more books, and yet more, still intent on mr. garrow, whose subtle cross-examination of witnesses and masterly, if sometimes startling, methods of arriving at the truth seemed more thrilling to us than any novel. occasionally other trials than those of the old bailey would be included in the package of books we received from london; among these my husband found and read with avidity:- the trial of james stewart in aucharn in duror of appin for the murder of colin campbell of glenure, esq; factor for his majesty on the forfeited estate of ardshiel. my husband was always interested in this period of his country's history, and had already the intention of writing a story that should turn on the appin murder. the tale was to be of a boy, david balfour, supposed to belong to my husband's own family, who should travel in scotland as though it were a foreign country, meeting with various adventures and misadventures by the way. from the trial of james stewart my husband gleaned much valuable material for his novel, the most important being the character of alan breck. aside from having described him as "smallish in stature," my husband seems to have taken alan breck's personal appearance, even to his clothing, from the book. a letter from james stewart to mr. john macfarlane, introduced as evidence in the trial, says: "there is one alan stewart, a distant friend of the late ardshiel's, who is in the french service, and came over in march last, as he said to some, in order to settle at home; to others, that he was to go soon back; and was, as i hear, the day that the murder was committed, seen not far from the place where it happened, and is not now to be seen; by which it is believed he was the actor. he is a desperate foolish fellow; and if he is guilty, came to the country for that very purpose. he is a tall, pock-pitted lad, very black hair, and wore a blue coat and metal buttons, an old red vest, and breeches of the same colour." a second witness testified to having seen him wearing "a blue coat with silver buttons, a red waistcoat, black shag breeches, tartan hose, and a feathered hat, with a big coat, dun coloured," a costume referred to by one of the counsel as "french cloathes which were remarkable." there are many incidents given in the trial that point to alan's fiery spirit and highland quickness to take offence. one witness "declared also that the said alan breck threatened that he would challenge ballieveolan and his sons to fight because of his removing the declarant last year from glenduror." on another page: "duncan campbell, change-keeper at annat, aged thirty-five years, married, witness cited, sworn, purged and examined ut supra, depones, that, in the month of april last, the deponent met with alan breck stewart, with whom he was not acquainted, and john stewart, in auchnacoan, in the house of the walk miller of auchofragan, and went on with them to the house: alan breck stewart said, that he hated all the name of campbell; and the deponent said, he had no reason for doing so: but alan said, he had very good reason for it: that thereafter they left that house; and, after drinking a dram at another house, came to the deponent's house, where they went in, and drunk some drams, and alan breck renewed the former conversation; and the deponent, making the same answer, alan said, that, if the deponent had any respect for his friends, he would tell them, that if they offered to turn out the possessors of ardshiel's estate, he would make black cocks of them, before they entered into possession by which the deponent understood shooting them, it being a common phrase in the country." some time after the publication of kidnapped we stopped for a short while in the appin country, where we were surprised and interested to discover that the feeling concerning the murder of glenure (the "red fox," also called "colin roy") was almost as keen as though the tragedy had taken place the day before. for several years my husband received letters of expostulation or commendation from members of the campbell and stewart clans. i have in my possession a paper, yellow with age, that was sent soon after the novel appeared, containing "the pedigree of the family of appine," wherein it is said that "alan 3rd baron of appine was not killed at flowdoun, tho there, but lived to a great old age. he married cameron daughter to ewen cameron of lochiel." following this is a paragraph stating that "john stewart 1st of ardsheall of his descendants alan breck had better be omitted. duncan baan stewart in achindarroch his father was a bastard." one day, while my husband was busily at work, i sat beside him reading an old cookery book called the compleat housewife: or accomplish'd gentlewoman's companion. in the midst of receipts for "rabbits, and chickens mumbled, pickled samphire, skirret pye, baked tansy," and other forgotten delicacies, there were directions for the preparation of several lotions for the preservation of beauty. one of these was so charming that i interrupted my husband to read it aloud. "just what i wanted!" he exclaimed; and the receipt for the "lily of the valley water" was instantly incorporated into kidnapped. f. v. de g. s. dedication my dear charles baxter: if you ever read this tale, you will likely ask yourself more questions than i should care to answer: as for instance how the appin murder has come to fall in the year 1751, how the torran rocks have crept so near to earraid, or why the printed trial is silent as to all that touches david balfour. these are nuts beyond my ability to crack. but if you tried me on the point of alan's guilt or innocence, i think i could defend the reading of the text. to this day you will find the tradition of appin clear in alan's favour. if you inquire, you may even hear that the descendants of "the other man" who fired the shot are in the country to this day. but that other man's name, inquire as you please, you shall not hear; for the highlander values a secret for itself and for the congenial exercise of keeping it i might go on for long to justify one point and own another indefensible; it is more honest to confess at once how little i am touched by the desire of accuracy. this is no furniture for the scholar's library, but a book for the winter evening school-room when the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day has in this new avatar no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman's attention from his ovid, carry him awhile into the highlands and the last century, and pack him to bed with some engaging images to mingle with his dreams. as for you, my dear charles, i do not even ask you to like this tale. but perhaps when he is older, your son will; he may then be pleased to find his father's name on the fly-leaf; and in the meanwhile it pleases me to set it there, in memory of many days that were happy and some (now perhaps as pleasant to remember) that were sad. if it is strange for me to look back from a distance both in time and space on these bygone adventures of our youth, it must be stranger for you who tread the same streets--who may to-morrow open the door of the old speculative, where we begin to rank with scott and robert emmet and the beloved and inglorious macbean--or may pass the corner of the close where that great society, the l. j. r., held its meetings and drank its beer, sitting in the seats of burns and his companions. i think i see you, moving there by plain daylight, beholding with your natural eyes those places that have now become for your companion a part of the scenery of dreams. how, in the intervals of present business, the past must echo in your memory! let it not echo often without some kind thoughts of your friend, r.l.s. skerryvore, bournemouth. contents chapter page i i set off upon my journey to the house of shaws ii i come to my journey's end. iii i make acquaintance of my uncle . iv i run a great danger in the house of shaws . v i go to the queen's ferry . vi what befell at the queen's ferry. vii i go to sea in the brig "covenant" of dysart. viii the round-house . ix the man with the belt of gold . x the siege of the round-house. xi the captain knuckles under. xii i hear of the "red fox" . xiii the loss of the brig. xiv the islet . xv the lad with the silver button: through the isle of mull. xvi the lad with the silver button: across morven. xvii the death of the red fox . xviiii talk with alan in the wood of lettermore. xix the house of fear . xx the flight in the heather: the rocks. xxi the flight in the heather: the heugh of corrynakiegh . xxii the flight in the heather: the moor . xxiii cluny's cage. xxiv the flight in the heather: the quarrel. xxv in balquhidder. xxvi end of the flight: we pass the forth. xxvii i come to mrrankeillor. xxviii i go in quest of my inheritance . xxix i come into my kingdom. xxx good-bye. chapter i i set off upon my journey to the house of shaws i will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of june, the year of grace 1751, when i took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house. the sun began to shine upon the summit of the hills as i went down the road; and by the time i had come as far as the manse, the blackbirds were whistling in the garden lilacs, and the mist that hung around the valley in the time of the dawn was beginning to arise and die away. mr. campbell, the minister of essendean, was waiting for me by the garden gate, good man! he asked me if i had breakfasted; and hearing that i lacked for nothing, he took my hand in both of his and clapped it kindly under his arm. "well, davie, lad," said he, "i will go with you as far as the ford, to set you on the way." and we began to walk forward in silence. "are ye sorry to leave essendean?" said he, after awhile. "why, sir," said i, "if i knew where i was going, or what was likely to become of me, i would tell you candidly. essendean is a good place indeed, and i have been very happy there; but then i have never been anywhere else. my father and mother, since they are both dead, i shall be no nearer to in essendean than in the kingdom of hungary, and, to speak truth, if i thought i had a chance to better myself where i was going i would go with a good will." "ay?" said mr. campbell. "very well, davie. then it behoves me to tell your fortune; or so far as i may. when your mother was gone, and your father (the worthy, christian man) began to sicken for his end, he gave me in charge a certain letter, which he said was your inheritance. 'so soon,' says he, 'as i am gone, and the house is redd up and the gear disposed of' (all which, davie, hath been done), 'give my boy this letter into his hand, and start him off to the house of shaws, not far from cramond. that is the place i came from,' he said, 'and it's where it befits that my boy should return. he is a steady lad,' your father said, 'and a canny goer; and i doubt not he will come safe, and be well lived where he goes.'" "the house of shaws!" i cried. "what had my poor father to do with the house of shaws?" "nay," said mr. campbell, "who can tell that for a surety? but the name of that family, davie, boy, is the name you bear -balfours of shaws: an ancient, honest, reputable house, peradventure in these latter days decayed. your father, too, was a man of learning as befitted his position; no man more plausibly conducted school; nor had he the manner or the speech of a common dominie; but (as ye will yourself remember) i took aye a pleasure to have him to the manse to meet the gentry" and those of my own house, campbell of kilrennet, campbell of dunswire, campbell of minch, and others, all well-kenned gentlemen, had pleasure in his society. lastly, to put all the elements of this affair before you, here is the testamentary letter itself, superscrived by the own hand of our departed brother." he gave me the letter, which was addressed in these words: "to the hands of ebenezer balfour, esquire, of shaws, in his house of shaws, these will be delivered by my son, david balfour." my heart was beating hard at this great prospect now suddenly opening before a lad of seventeen years of age, the son of a poor country dominie in the forest of ettrick. "mr. campbell," i stammered, "and if you were in my shoes, would you go?" "of a surety," said the minister, "that would i, and without pause. a pretty lad like you should get to cramond (which is near in by edinburgh) in two days of walk. if the worst came to the worst, and your high relations (as i cannot but suppose them to be somewhat of your blood) should put you to the door, ye can but walk the two days back again and risp at the manse door. but i would rather hope that ye shall be well received, as your poor father forecast for you, and for anything that i ken come to be a great man in time. and here, davie, laddie," he resumed, "it lies near upon my conscience to improve this parting, and set you on the right guard against the dangers of the world." here he cast about for a comfortable seat, lighted on a big boulder under a birch by the trackside, sate down upon it with a very long, serious upper lip, and the sun now shining in upon us between two peaks, put his pocket-handkerchief over his cocked hat to shelter him. there, then, with uplifted forefinger, he first put me on my guard against a considerable number of heresies, to which i had no temptation, and urged upon me to be instant in my prayers and reading of the bible. that done, he drew a picture of the great house that i was bound to, and how i should conduct myself with its inhabitants. "be soople, davie, in things immaterial," said he." bear ye this in mind, that, though gentle born, ye have had a country rearing. dinnae shame us, davie, dinnae shame us in yon great, muckle house, with all these domestics, upper and under, show yourself as nice, as circumspect, as quick at the conception, and as slow of speech as any. as for the laird -remember he's the laird; i say no more: honour to whom honour. it's a pleasure to obey a laird; or should be, to the young." "well, sir," said i, "it may be; and i'll promise you i'll try to make it so." "why, very well said," replied mr. campbell, heartily. "and now to come to the material, or (to make a quibble) to the immaterial. i have here a little packet which contains four things." he tugged it, as he spoke, and with some great difficulty, from the skirt pocket of his coat." of these four things, the first is your legal due: the little pickle money for your father's books and plenishing, which i have bought (as i have explained from the first) in the design of re-selling at a profit to the incoming dominie. the other three are gifties that mrs. campbell and myself would be blithe of your acceptance. the first, which is round, will likely please ye best at the first off-go; but, o davie, laddie, it's but a drop of water in the sea; it'll help you but a step, and vanish like the morning. the second, which is flat and square and written upon, will stand by you through life, like a good staff for the road, and a good pillow to your head in sickness. and as for the last, which is cubical, that'll see you, it's my prayerful wish, into a better land." with that he got upon his feet, took off his hat, and prayed a little while aloud, and in affecting terms, for a young man setting out into the world; then suddenly took me in his arms and embraced me very hard; then held me at arm's length, looking at me with his face all working with sorrow; and then whipped about, and crying good-bye to me, set off backward by the way that we had come at a sort of jogging run. it might have been laughable to another; but i was in no mind to laugh. i watched him as long as he was in sight; and he never stopped hurrying, nor once looked back. then it came in upon my mind that this was all his sorrow at my departure; and my conscience smote me hard and fast, because i, for my part, was overjoyed to get away out of that quiet country-side, and go to a great, busy house, among rich and respected gentlefolk of my own name and blood. "davie, davie," i thought," was ever seen such black ingratitude? can you forget old favours and old friends at the mere whistle of a name? fie, fie; think shame." and i sat down on the boulder the good man had just left, and opened the parcel to see the nature of my gifts. that which he had called cubical, i had never had much doubt of; sure enough it was a little bible, to carry in a, plaid-neuk. that which he had called round, i found to be a shilling piece; and the third, which was to help me so wonderfully both in health and sickness all the days of my life, was a little piece of coarse yellow paper, written upon thus in red ink: "to make lilly of the valley water.--take the flowers of lilly of the valley and distil them in sack, and drink a spooneful or two as there is occasion. it restores speech to those that have the dumb palsey. it is good against the gout; it comforts the heart and strengthens the memory; and the flowers, put into a glasse, close stopt, and set into ane hill of ants for a month, then take it out, and you will find a liquor which comes from the flowers, which keep in a vial; it is good, ill or well, and whether man or woman." and then, in the minister's own hand, was added: "likewise for sprains, rub it in; and for the cholic, a great spooneful in the hour." to be sure, i laughed over this; but it was rather tremulous laughter; and i was glad to get my bundle on my staff's end and set out over the ford and up the hill upon the farther side; till, just as i came on the green drove-road running wide through the heather, i took my last look of kirk essendean, the trees about the manse, and the big rowans in the kirkyard where my father and my mother lay. chapter ii i come to my journey's end on the forenoon of the second day, coming to the top of a hill, i saw all the country fall away before me down to the sea; and in the midst of this descent, on a long ridge, the city of edinburgh smoking like a kiln. there was a flag upon the castle, and ships moving or lying anchored in the firth; both of which, for as far away as they were, i could distinguish clearly; and both brought my country heart into my mouth. presently after, i came by a house where a shepherd lived, and got a rough direction for the neighbourhood of cramond; and so, from one to another, worked my way to the westward of the capital by colinton, till i came out upon the glasgow road. and there, to my great pleasure and wonder, i beheld a regiment marching to the fifes, every foot in time; an old red-faced general on a grey horse at the one end, and at the other the company of grenadiers, with their pope's-hats. the pride of life seemed to mount into my brain at the sight of the red coats and the hearing of that merry music. a little farther on, and i was told i was in cramond parish, and began to substitute in my inquiries the name of the house of shaws. it was a word that seemed to surprise those of whom i sought my way. at first i thought the plainness of my appearance, in my country habit, and that all dusty from the road, consorted ill with the greatness of the place to which i was bound. but after two, or maybe three, had given me the same look and the same answer, i began to take it in my head there was something strange about the shaws itself. the better to set this fear at rest, i changed the form of my inquiries; and spying an honest fellow coming along a lane on the shaft of his cart, i asked him if he had ever heard tell of a house they called the house of shaws. he stopped his cart and looked at me, like the others. "ay" said he. "what for?" "it's a great house?" i asked. "doubtless," says he. "the house is a big, muckle house." "ay," said i, "but the folk that are in it?" "folk?" cried he. "are ye daft? there's nae folk there -to call folk." "what?" say i; "not mr. ebenezer?" "ou, ay" says the man; "there's the laird, to be sure, if it's him you're wanting. what'll like be your business, mannie?" "i was led to think that i would get a situation," i said, looking as modest as i could. "what?" cries the carter, in so sharp a note that his very horse started; and then, "well, mannie," he added, "it's nane of my affairs; but ye seem a decent-spoken lad; and if ye'll take a word from me, ye'll keep clear of the shaws." the next person i came across was a dapper little man in a beautiful white wig, whom i saw to be a barber on his rounds; and knowing well that barbers were great gossips, i asked him plainly what sort of a man was mr. balfour of the shaws. "hoot, hoot, hoot," said the barber, "nae kind of a man, nae kind of a man at all;" and began to ask me very shrewdly what my business was; but i was more than a match for him at that, and he went on to his next customer no wiser than he came. i cannot well describe the blow this dealt to my illusions. the more indistinct the accusations were, the less i liked them, for they left the wider field to fancy. what kind of a great house was this, that all the parish should start and stare to be asked the way to it? or what sort of a gentleman, that his ill-fame should be thus current on the wayside? if an hour's walking would have brought me back to essendean, had left my adventure then and there, and returned to mr. campbell's. but when i had come so far a way already, mere shame would not suffer me to desist till i had put the matter to the touch of proof; i was bound, out of mere self-respect, to carry it through; and little as i liked the sound of what i heard, and slow as i began to travel, i still kept asking my way and still kept advancing. it was drawing on to sundown when i met a stout, dark, sour-looking woman coming trudging down a hill; and she, when i had put my usual question, turned sharp about, accompanied me back to the summit she had just left, and pointed to a great bulk of building standing very bare upon a green in the bottom of the next valley. the country was pleasant round about, running in low hills, pleasantly watered and wooded, and the crops, to my eyes, wonderfully good; but the house itself appeared to be a kind of ruin; no road led up to it; no smoke arose from any of the chimneys; nor was there any semblance of a garden. my heart sank. "that!" i cried. the woman's face lit up with a malignant anger. "that is the house of shaws!" she cried." blood built it; blood stopped the building of it; blood shall bring it down. see here!" she cried again -"i spit upon the ground, and crack my thumb at it! black be its fall! if ye see the laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and nineteen time that jennet clouston has called down the curse on him and his house, byre and stable, man, guest, and master, wife, miss, or bairn -black, black be their fall!" and the woman, whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song, turned with a skip, and was gone. i stood where she left me, with my hair on end. in those days folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse; and this one, falling so pat, like a wayside omen, to arrest me ere i carried out my purpose, took the pith out of my legs. i sat me down and stared at the house of shaws. the more i looked, the pleasanter that country-side appeared; being all set with hawthorn bushes full of flowers; the fields dotted with sheep; a fine flight of rooks in the sky; and every sign of a kind soil and climate; and yet the barrack in the midst of it went sore against my fancy. country folk went by from the fields as i sat there on the side of the ditch, but i lacked the spirit to give them a good-e'en. at last the sun went down, and then, right up against the yellow sky, i saw a scroll of smoke go mounting, not much thicker, as it seemed to me, than the smoke of a candle; but still there it was, and meant a fire, and warmth, and cookery, and some living inhabitant that must have lit it; and this comforted my heart. so i set forward by a little faint track in the grass that led in my direction. it was very faint indeed to be the only way to a place of habitation; yet i saw no other. presently it brought me to stone uprights, with an unroofed lodge beside them, and coats of arms upon the top. a main entrance it was plainly meant to be, but never finished; instead of gates of wrought iron, a pair of hurdles were tied across with a straw rope; and as there were no park walls, nor any sign of avenue, the track that i was following passed on the right hand of the pillars, and went wandering on toward the house. the nearer i got to that, the drearier it appeared. it seemed like the one wing of a house that had never been finished. what should have been the inner end stood open on the upper floors, and showed against the sky with steps and stairs of uncompleted masonry. many of the windows were unglazed, and bats flew in and out like doves out of a dove-cote. the night had begun to fall as i got close; and in three of the lower windows, which were very high up and narrow, and well barred, the changing light of a little fire began to glimmer. was this the palace i had been coming to? was it within these walls that i was to seek new friends and begin great fortunes? why, in my father's house on essen-waterside, the fire and the bright lights would show a mile away, and the door open to a beggar's knock! i came forward cautiously, and giving ear as i came, heard some one rattling with dishes, and a little dry, eager cough that came in fits; but there was no sound of speech, and not a dog barked. the door, as well as i could see it in the dim light, was a great piece of wood all studded with nails; and i lifted my hand with a faint heart under my jacket, and knocked once. then i stood and waited. the house had fallen into a dead silence; a whole minute passed away, and nothing stirred but the bats overhead. i knocked again, and hearkened again. by this time my ears had grown so accustomed to the quiet, that i could hear the ticking of the clock inside as it slowly counted out the seconds; but whoever was in that house kept deadly still, and must have held his breath. i was in two minds whether to run away; but anger got the upper hand, and i began instead to rain kicks and buffets on the door, and to shout out aloud for mr. balfour. i was in full career, when i heard the cough right overhead, and jumping back and looking up, beheld a man's head in a tall nightcap, and the bell mouth of a blunderbuss, at one of the first-storey windows. "it's loaded," said a voice. "i have come here with a letter," i said, "to mr. ebenezer balfour of shaws. is he here?" "from whom is it?" asked the man with the blunderbuss. "that is neither here nor there," said i, for i was growing very wroth. "well," was the reply, "ye can put it down upon the doorstep, and be off with ye." "i will do no such thing," i cried. "i will deliver it into mr. balfour's hands, as it was meant i should. it is a letter of introduction." "a what?" cried the voice, sharply. i repeated what i had said. "who are ye, yourself?" was the next question, after a considerable pause. "i am not ashamed of my name," said i. "they call me david balfour." at that, i made sure the man started, for i heard the blunderbuss rattle on the window-sill; and it was after quite a long pause, and with a curious change of voice, that the next question followed: "is your father dead?" i was so much surprised at this, that i could find no voice to answer, but stood staring. "ay" the man resumed, "he'll be dead, no doubt; and that'll be what brings ye chapping to my door." another pause, and then defiantly, "well, man," he said, "i'll let ye in;" and he disappeared from the window. chapter iii i make acquaintance of my uncle presently there came a great rattling of chains and bolts, and the door was cautiously opened and shut to again behind me as soon as i had passed. "go into the kitchen and touch naething," said the voice; and while the person of the house set himself to replacing the defences of the door, i groped my way forward and entered the kitchen. the fire had burned up fairly bright, and showed me the barest room i think i ever put my eyes on. half-a-dozen dishes stood upon the shelves; the table was laid for supper with a bowl of porridge, a horn spoon, and a cup of small beer. besides what i have named, there was not another thing in that great, stone-vaulted, empty chamber but lockfast chests arranged along the wall and a corner cupboard with a padlock. as soon as the last chain was up, the man rejoined me. he was a mean, stooping, narrow-shouldered, clay-faced creature; and his age might have been anything between fifty and seventy. his nightcap was of flannel, and so was the nightgown that he wore, instead of coat and waistcoat, over his ragged shirt. he was long unshaved; but what most distressed and even daunted me, he would neither take his eyes away from me nor look me fairly in the face. what he was, whether by trade or birth, was more than i could fathom; but he seemed most like an old, unprofitable serving-man, who should have been left in charge of that big house upon board wages. "are ye sharp-set?" he asked, glancing at about the level of my knee. "ye can eat that drop parritch?" i said i feared it was his own supper. "o," said he, "i can do fine wanting it. i'll take the ale, though, for it slockens[1] my cough." he drank the cup about half out, still keeping an eye upon me as he drank; and then suddenly held out his hand. "let's see the letter," said he. i told him the letter was for mr. balfour; not for him. "and who do ye think i am?" says he. "give me alexander's letter." "you know my father's name?" "it would be strange if i didnae," he returned, "for he was my born brother; and little as ye seem to like either me or my house, or my good parritch, i'm your born uncle, davie, my man, and you my born nephew. so give us the letter, and sit down and fill your kyte." if i had been some years younger, what with shame, weariness, and disappointment, i believe i had burst into tears. as it was, i could find no words, neither black nor white, but handed him the letter, and sat down to the porridge with as little appetite for meat as ever a young man had. meanwhile, my uncle, stooping over the fire, turned the letter over and over in his hands. "do ye ken what's in it?" he asked, suddenly. "you see for yourself, sir," said i, "that the seal has not been broken." "ay," said he, "but what brought you here?" "to give the letter," said i. "no," says he, cunningly, "but ye'll have had some hopes, nae doubt?" "i confess, sir," said i, "when i was told that i had kinsfolk well-to-do, i did indeed indulge the hope that they might help me in my life. but i am no beggar; i look for no favours at your hands, and i want none that are not freely given. for as poor as i appear, i have friends of my own that will be blithe to help me." "hoot-toot!" said uncle ebenezer, "dinnae fly up in the snuff at me. we'll agree fine yet. and, davie, my man, if you're done with that bit parritch, i could just take a sup of it myself. ay," he continued, as soon as he had ousted me from the stool and spoon, "they're fine, halesome food -they're grand food, parritch." he murmured a little grace to himself and fell to. "your father was very fond of his meat, i mind; he was a hearty, if not a great eater; but as for me, i could never do mair than pyke at food." he took a pull at the small beer, which probably reminded him of hospitable duties, for his next speech ran thus: "if ye're dry ye'll find water behind the door." to this i returned no answer, standing stiffly on my two feet, and looking down upon my uncle with a mighty angry heart. he, on his part, continued to eat like a man under some pressure of time, and to throw out little darting glances now at my shoes and now at my home-spun stockings. once only, when he had ventured to look a little higher, our eyes met; and no thief taken with a hand in a man's pocket could have shown more lively signals of distress. this set me in a muse, whether his timidity arose from too long a disuse of any human company; and whether perhaps, upon a little trial, it might pass off, and my uncle change into an altogether different man. from this i was awakened by his sharp voice. "your father's been long dead?" he asked." three weeks, sir," said i. "he was a secret man, alexander -a secret, silent man," he continued. "he never said muckle when he was young. he'll never have spoken muckle of me?" "i never knew, sir, till you told it me yourself, that he had any brother." "dear me, dear me!" said ebenezer. "nor yet of shaws, i dare say?" "not so much as the name, sir," said i. "to think o' that!" said he. "a strange nature of a man!" for all that, he seemed singularly satisfied, but whether with himself, or me, or with this conduct of my father's, was more than i could read. certainly, however, he seemed to be outgrowing that distaste, or ill-will, that he had conceived at first against my person; for presently he jumped up, came across the room behind me, and hit me a smack upon the shoulder. "we'll agree fine yet!" he cried. "i'm just as glad i let you in. and now come awa' to your bed." to my surprise, he lit no lamp or candle, but set forth into the dark passage, groped his way, breathing deeply, up a flight of steps, and paused before a door, which he unlocked. i was close upon his heels, having stumbled after him as best i might; and then he bade me go in, for that was my chamber. i did as he bid, but paused after a few steps, and begged a light to go to bed with. "hoot-toot." said uncle ebenezer, "there's a fine moon." "neither moon nor star, sir, and pit-mirk,"[2] said i. "i cannae see the bed." "hoot-toot, hoot-toot!" said he. "lights in a house is a thing i dinnae agree with. i'm unco feared of fires. good-night to ye, davie, my man." and before i had time to add a further protest, he pulled the door to, and i heard him lock me in from the outside. i did not know whether to laugh or cry. the room was as cold as a well, and the bed, when i had found my way to it, as damp as a peat-hag; but by good fortune i had caught up my bundle and my plaid, and rolling myself in the latter, i lay down upon the floor under lee of the big bedstead, and fell speedily asleep. with the first peep of day i opened my eyes, to find myself in a great chamber, hung with stamped leather, furnished with fine embroidered furniture, and lit by three fair windows. ten years ago, or perhaps twenty, it must have been as pleasant a room to lie down or to awake in as a man could wish; but damp, dirt, disuse, and the mice and spiders had done their worst since then. many of the window-panes, besides, were broken; and indeed this was so common a feature in that house, that i believe my uncle must at some time have stood a siege from his indignant neighbours perhaps with jennet clouston at their head. meanwhile the sun was shining outside; and being very cold in that miserable room, i knocked and shouted till my gaoler came and let me out. he carried me to the back of the house, where was a draw-well, and told me to "wash my face there, if i wanted;" and when that was done, i made the best of my own way back to the kitchen, where he had lit the fire and was making the porridge. the table was laid with two bowls and two horn spoons, but the same single measure of small beer. perhaps my eye rested on this particular with some surprise, and perhaps my uncle observed it; for he spoke up as if in answer to my thought, asking me if i would like to drink ale -for so he called it. i told him such was my habit, but not to put himself about. "na, na," said he; "i'll deny you nothing in reason." he fetched another cup from the shelf; and then, to my great surprise, instead of drawing more beer, he poured an accurate half from one cup to the other. there was a kind of nobleness in this that took my breath away; if my uncle was certainly a miser, he was one of that thorough breed that goes near to make the vice respectable. when we had made an end of our meal, my uncle ebenezer unlocked a drawer, and drew out of it a clay pipe and a lump of tobacco, from which he cut one fill before he locked it up again. then he sat down in the sun at one of the windows and silently smoked. from time to time his eyes came coasting round to me, and he shot out one of his questions. once it was, "and your mother?" and when i had told him that she, too, was dead, "ay, she was a bonnie lassie!" then, after another long pause, "whae were these friends o' yours?" i told him they were different gentlemen of the name of campbell; though, indeed, there was only one, and that the minister, that had ever taken the least note of me; but i began to think my uncle made too light of my position, and finding myself all alone with him, i did not wish him to suppose me helpless. he seemed to turn this over in his mind; and then, "davie, my man," said he, "ye've come to the right bit when ye came to your uncle ebenezer. i've a great notion of the family, and i mean to do the right by you; but while i'm taking a bit think to mysel' of what's the best thing to put you to -whether the law, or the meenistry, or maybe the army, whilk is what boys are fondest of -i wouldnae like the balfours to be humbled before a wheen hieland campbells, and i'll ask you to keep your tongue within your teeth. nae letters; nae messages; no kind of word to onybody; or else -there's my door." "uncle ebenezer," said i, "i've no manner of reason to suppose you mean anything but well by me. for all that, i would have you to know that i have a pride of my own. it was by no will of mine that i came seeking you; and if you show me your door again, i'll take you at the word." he seemed grievously put out. "hoots-toots," said he, "ca' cannie, man -ca' cannie! bide a day or two. i'm nae warlock, to find a fortune for you in the bottom of a parritch bowl; but just you give me a day or two, and say naething to naebody, and as sure as sure, i'll do the right by you." "very well," said i, "enough said. if you want to help me, there's no doubt but i'll be glad of it, and none but i'll be grateful." it seemed to me (too soon, i dare say) that i was getting the upper hand of my uncle; and i began next to say that i must have the bed and bedclothes aired and put to sun-dry; for nothing would make me sleep in such a pickle." is this my house or yours?" said he, in his keen voice, and then all of a sudden broke off. "na, na," said he, "i didnae mean that. what's mine is yours, davie, my man, and what's yours is mine. blood's thicker than water; and there's naebody but you and me that ought the name." and then on he rambled about the family, and its ancient greatness, and his father that began to enlarge the house, and himself that stopped the building as a sinful waste; and this put it in my head to give him jennet clouston's message. "the limmer." he cried. "twelve hunner and fifteen -that's every day since i had the limmer rowpit![3] dod, david, i'll have her roasted on red peats before i'm by with it! a witch -a proclaimed witch! i'll aff and see the session clerk." and with that he opened a chest, and got out a very old and well-preserved blue coat and waistcoat, and a good enough beaver hat, both without lace. these he threw on any way, and taking a staff from the cupboard, locked all up again, and was for setting out, when a thought arrested him." i cannae leave you by yoursel' in the house," said he. "i'll have to lock you out." the blood came to my face. "if you lock me out," i said, "it'll be the last you'll see of me in friendship." he turned very pale, and sucked his mouth in." this is no the, way" he said, looking wickedly at a corner of the floor -"this is no the way to win my favour, david." "sir," says i, "with a proper reverence for your age and our common blood, i do not value your favour at a boddle's purchase. i was brought up to have a good conceit of myself; and if you were all the uncle, and all the family, i had in the world ten times over, i wouldn't buy your liking at such prices." uncle ebenezer went and looked out of the window for awhile. i could see him all trembling and twitching, like a man with palsy. but when he turned round, he had a smile upon his face. "well, well," said he, "we must bear and forbear. i'll no go; that's all that's to be said of it." "uncle ebenezer," i said, "i can make nothing out of this. you use me like a thief; you hate to have me in this house; you let me see it, every word and every minute: it's not possible that you can like me; and as for me, i've spoken to you as i never thought to speak to any man. why do you seek to keep me, then? let me gang back -let me gang back to the friends i have, and that like me!" "na, na; na, na," he said, very earnestly. "i like you fine; we'll agree fine yet; and for the honour of the house i couldnae let you leave the way ye came. bide here quiet, there's a good lad; just you bide here quiet a bittie, and ye'll find that we agree." "well, sir," said i, after i had thought the matter out in silence, "i'll stay awhile. it's more just i should be helped by my own blood than strangers; and if we don't agree, i'll do my best it shall be through no fault of mine." [1] moistens. [2] dark as the pit. [3] sold up. chapter iv i run a great danger in the house of shaws for a day that was begun so ill, the day passed fairly well. we had the porridge cold again at noon, and hot porridge at night; porridge and small beer was my uncle's diet. he spoke but little, and that in the same way as before, shooting a question at me after a long silence; and when i sought to lead him to talk about my future, slipped out of it again. in a room next door to the kitchen, where he suffered me to go, i found a great number of books, both latin and english, in which i took great pleasure all the afternoon. indeed, the time passed so lightly in this good company, that i began to be almost reconciled to my residence at shaws; and nothing but the sight of my uncle, and his eyes playing hide and seek with mine, revived the force of my distrust. one thing i discovered, which put me in some doubt. this was an entry on the fly-leaf of a chap-book (one of patrick walker's) plainly written by my father's hand and thus conceived:" to my brother ebenezer on his fifth birthday" now, what puzzled me was this: that, as my father was of course the younger brother, he must either have made some strange error, or he must have written, before he was yet five, an excellent, clear manly hand of writing. i tried to get this out of my head; but though i took down many interesting authors, old and new, history, poetry, and story-book, this notion of my father's hand of writing stuck to me; and when at length i went back into the kitchen, and sat down once more to porridge and small beer, the first thing i said to uncle ebenezer was to ask him if my father had not been very quick at his book. "alexander? no him!" was the reply. "i was far quicker mysel'; i was a clever chappie when i was young. why, i could read as soon as he could." this puzzled me yet more; and a thought coming into my head, i asked if he and my father had been twins. he jumped upon his stool, and the horn spoon fell out of his hand upon the floor. "what gars ye ask that?" he said, and he caught me by the breast of the jacket, and looked this time straight into my eyes: his own were little and light, and bright like a bird's, blinking and winking strangely. "what do you mean?" i asked, very calmly, for i was far stronger than he, and not easily frightened. "take your hand from my jacket. this is no way to behave." my uncle seemed to make a great effort upon himself. "dod man, david," he said, "ye shouldnae speak to me about your father. that's where the mistake is." he sat awhile and shook, blinking in his plate:" he was all the brother that ever i had," he added, but with no heart in his voice; and then he caught up his spoon and fell to supper again, but still shaking. now this last passage, this laying of hands upon my person and sudden profession of love for my dead father, went so clean beyond my comprehension that it put me into both fear and hope. on the one hand, i began to think my uncle was perhaps insane and might be dangerous; on the other, there came up into my mind (quite unbidden by me and even discouraged) a story like some ballad i had heard folk singing, of a poor lad that was a rightful heir and a wicked kinsman that tried to keep him from his own. for why should my uncle play a part with a relative that came, almost a beggar, to his door, unless in his heart he had some cause to fear him? with this notion, all unacknowledged, but nevertheless getting firmly settled in my head, i now began to imitate his covert looks; so that we sat at table like a cat and a mouse, each stealthily observing the other. not another word had he to say to me, black or white, but was busy turning something secretly over in his mind; and the longer we sat and the more i looked at him, the more certain i became that the something was unfriendly to myself. when he had cleared the platter, he got out a single pipeful of tobacco, just as in the morning, turned round a stool into the chimney corner, and sat awhile smoking, with his back to me. "davie," he said, at length, "i've been thinking;" then he paused, and said it again. "there's a wee bit siller that i half promised ye before ye were born," he continued; "promised it to your father. o, naething legal, ye understand; just gentlemen daffing at their wine. well, i keepit that bit money separate -it was a great expense, but a promise is a promise -and it has grown by now to be a matter of just precisely -just exactly" -and here he paused and stumbled -"of just exactly forty pounds!" this last he rapped out with a sidelong glance over his shoulder; and the next moment added, almost with a scream, "scots!" the pound scots being the same thing as an english shilling, the difference made by this second thought was considerable; i could see, besides, that the whole story was a lie, invented with some end which it puzzled me to guess; and i made no attempt to conceal the tone of raillery in which i answered" o, think again, sir pounds sterling, i believe!" "that's what i said," returned my uncle: "pounds sterling! and if you'll step out-by to the door a minute, just to see what kind of a night it is, i'll get it out to ye and call ye in again." i did his will, smiling to myself in my contempt that he should think i was so easily to be deceived. it was a dark night, with a few stars low down; and as i stood just outside the door, i heard a hollow moaning of wind far off among the hills. i said to myself there was something thundery and changeful in the weather, and little knew of what a vast importance that should prove to me before the evening passed. when i was called in again, my uncle counted out into my hand seven and thirty golden guinea pieces; the rest was in his hand, in small gold and silver; but his heart failed him there, and he crammed the change into his pocket. "there," said he, "that'll show you! i'm a queer man, and strange wi' strangers; but my word is my bond, and there's the proof of it." now, my uncle seemed so miserly that i was struck dumb by this sudden generosity, and could find no words in which to thank him. "no a word!" said he. "nae thanks; i want nae thanks. i do my duty. i'm no saying that everybody would have, done it; but for my part (though i'm a careful body, too) it's a pleasure to me to do the right by my brother's son; and it's a pleasure to me to think that now we'll agree as such near friends should." i spoke him in return as handsomely as i was able; but all the while i was wondering what would come next, and why he had parted with his precious guineas; for as to the reason he had given, a baby would have refused it. presently he looked towards me sideways. "and see here," says he, "tit for tat." i told him i was ready to prove my gratitude in any reasonable degree, and then waited, looking for some monstrous demand. and yet, when at last he plucked up courage to speak, it was only to tell me (very properly, as i thought) that he was growing old and a little broken, and that he would expect me to help him with the house and the bit garden. i answered, and expressed my readiness to serve. "well," he said, "let's begin." he pulled out of his pocket a rusty key. "there," says he, "there's the key of the stair-tower at the far end of the house. ye can only win into it from the outside, for that part of the house is no finished. gang ye in there, and up the stairs, and bring me down the chest that's at the top. there's papers in't," he added. "can i have a light, sir?" said i. "na," said he, very cunningly. "nae lights in my house." "very well, sir," said i. "are the stairs good?" "they're grand," said he; and then, as i was going, "keep to the wall," he added; "there's nae bannisters. but the stairs are grand underfoot." out i went into the night. the wind was still moaning in the distance, though never a breath of it came near the house of shaws. it had fallen blacker than ever; and i was glad to feel along the wall, till i came the length of the stairtower door at the far end of the unfinished wing. i had got the key into the keyhole and had just turned it, when all upon a sudden, without sound of wind or thunder, the whole sky lighted up with wild fire and went black again. i had to put my hand over my eyes to get back to the colour of the darkness; and indeed i was already half blinded when i stepped into the tower. it was so dark inside, it seemed a body could scarce breathe; but i pushed out with foot and hand, and presently struck the wall with the one, and the lowermost round of the stair with the other. the wall, by the touch, was of fine hewn stone; the steps too, though somewhat steep and narrow, were of polished masonwork, and regular and solid underfoot. minding my uncle's word about the bannisters, i kept close to the tower side, and felt my way in the pitch darkness with a beating heart. the house of shaws stood some five full storeys high, not counting lofts. well, as i advanced, it seemed to me the stair grew airier and a thought more lightsome; and i was wondering what might be the cause of this change, when a second blink of the summer lightning came and went. if i did not cry out, it was because fear had me by the throat; and if i did not fall, it was more by heaven's mercy than my own strength. it was not only that the flash shone in on every side through breaches in the wall, so that i seemed to be clambering aloft upon an open scaffold, but the same passing brightness showed me the steps were of unequal length, and that one of my feet rested that moment within two inches of the well. this was the grand stair! i thought; and with the thought, a gust of a kind of angry courage came into my heart. my uncle had sent me here, certainly to run great risks, perhaps to die. i swore i would settle that "perhaps," if i should break my neck for it; got me down upon my hands and knees; and as slowly as a snail, feeling before me every inch, and testing the solidity of every stone, i continued to ascend the stair. the darkness, by contrast with the flash, appeared to have redoubled; nor was that all, for my ears were now troubled and my mind confounded by a great stir of bats in the top part of the tower, and the foul beasts, flying downwards, sometimes beat about my face and body. the tower, i should have said, was square; and in every corner the step was made of a great stone of a different shape to join the flights. well, i had come close to one of these turns, when, feeling forward as usual, my hand slipped upon an edge and found nothing but emptiness beyond it. the stair had been carried no higher; to set a stranger mounting it in the darkness was to send him straight to his death; and (although, thanks to the lightning and my own precautions, i was safe enough) the mere thought of the peril in which i might have stood, and the dreadful height i might have fallen from, brought out the sweat upon my body and relaxed my joints. but i knew what i wanted now, and turned and groped my way down again, with a wonderful anger in my heart. about half-way down, the wind sprang up in a clap and shook the tower, and died again; the rain followed; and before i had reached the ground level it fell in buckets. i put out my head into the storm, and looked along towards the kitchen. the door, which i had shut behind me when i left, now stood open, and shed a little glimmer of light; and i thought i could see a figure standing in the rain, quite still, like a man hearkening. and then there came a blinding flash, which showed me my uncle plainly, just where i had fancied him to stand; and hard upon the heels of it, a great tow-row of thunder. now, whether my uncle thought the crash to be the sound of my fall, or whether he heard in it god's voice denouncing murder, i will leave you to guess. certain it is, at least, that he was seized on by a kind of panic fear, and that he ran into the house and left the door open behind him. i followed as softly as i could, and, coming unheard into the kitchen, stood and watched him. he had found time to open the corner cupboard and bring out a great case bottle of aqua vitae, and now sat with his back towards me at the table. ever and again he would be seized with a fit of deadly shuddering and groan aloud, and carrying the bottle to his lips, drink down the raw spirits by the mouthful. i stepped forward, came close behind him where he sat, and suddenly clapping my two hands down upon his shoulders --"ah!" cried i. my uncle gave a kind of broken cry like a sheep's bleat, flung up his arms, and tumbled to the floor like a dead man. i was somewhat shocked at this; but i had myself to look to first of all, and did not hesitate to let him lie as he had fallen. the keys were hanging in the cupboard; and it was my design to furnish myself with arms before my uncle should come again to his senses and the power of devising evil. in the cupboard were a few bottles, some apparently of medicine; a great many bills and other papers, which i should willingly enough have rummaged, had i had the time; and a few necessaries that were nothing to my purpose. thence i turned to the chests. the first was full of meal; the second of moneybags and papers tied into sheaves; in the third, with many other things (and these for the most part clothes) i found a rusty, ugly-looking highland dirk without the scabbard. this, then, i concealed inside my waistcoat, and turned to my uncle. he lay as he had fallen, all huddled, with one knee up and one arm sprawling abroad; his face had a strange colour of blue, and he seemed to have ceased breathing. fear came on me that he was dead; then i got water and dashed it in his face; and with that he seemed to come a little to himself, working his mouth and fluttering his eyelids. at last he looked up and saw me, and there came into his eyes a terror that was not of this world. "come, come," said i; "sit up." "are ye alive?" he sobbed. "o man, are ye alive?" "that am i," said i. "small thanks to you!" he had begun to seek for his breath with deep sighs. "the blue phial," said he -"in the aumry -the blue phial." his breath came slower still. i ran to the cupboard, and, sure enough, found there a blue phial of medicine, with the dose written on it on a paper, and this i administered to him with what speed i might. "it's the trouble," said he, reviving a little; "i have a trouble, davie. it's the heart." i set him on a chair and looked at him. it is true i felt some pity for a man that looked so sick, but i was full besides of righteous anger; and i numbered over before him the points on which i wanted explanation: why he lied to me at every word; why he feared that i should leave him; why he disliked it to be hinted that he and my father were twins "is that because it is true?" i asked; why he had given me money to which i was convinced i had no claim; and, last of all, why he had tried to kill me. he heard me all through in silence; and then, in a broken voice, begged me to let him go to bed. "i'll tell ye the morn," he said; "as sure as death i will." and so weak was he that i could do nothing but consent. i locked him into his room, however, and pocketed the, key, and then returning to the kitchen, made up such a blaze as had not shone there for many a long year, and wrapping myself in my plaid, lay down upon the chests and fell asleep. chapter v i go to the queen's ferry much rain fell in the night; and the next morning there blew a bitter wintry wind out of the north-west, driving scattered clouds. for all that, and before the sun began to peep or the last of the stars had vanished, i made my way to the side of the burn, and had a plunge in a deep whirling pool. all aglow from my bath, i sat down once more beside the fire, which i replenished, and began gravely to consider my position. there was now no doubt about my uncle's enmity; there was no doubt i carried my life in my hand, and he would leave no stone unturned that he might compass my destruction. but i was young and spirited, and like most lads that have been country-bred, i had a great opinion of my shrewdness. i had come to his door no better than a beggar and little more than a child; he had met me with treachery and violence; it would be a fine consummation to take the upper hand, and drive him like a herd of sheep. i sat there nursing my knee and smiling at the fire; and i saw myself in fancy smell out his secrets one after another, and grow to be that man's king and ruler. the warlock of essendean, they say, had made a mirror in which men could read the future; it must have been of other stuff than burning coal; for in all the shapes and pictures that i sat and gazed at, there was never a ship, never a seaman with a hairy cap, never a big bludgeon for my silly head, or the least sign of all those tribulations that were ripe to fall on me. presently, all swollen with conceit, i went up-stairs and gave my prisoner his liberty. he gave me good-morning civilly; and i gave the same to him, smiling down upon him, from the heights of my sufficiency. soon we were set to breakfast, as it might have been the day before. "well, sir," said i, with a jeering tone, "have you nothing more to say to me?" and then, as he made no articulate reply, "it will be time, i think, to understand each other," i continued. "you took me for a country johnnie raw, with no more mother-wit or courage than a porridge-stick. i took you for a good man, or no worse than others at the least. it seems we were both wrong. what cause you have to fear me, to cheat me, and to attempt my life--" he murmured something about a jest, and that he liked a bit of fun; and then, seeing me smile, changed his tone, and assured me he would make all clear as soon as we had breakfasted. i saw by his face that he had no lie ready for me, though he was hard at work preparing one; and i think i was about to tell him so, when we were interrupted by a knocking at the door. bidding my uncle sit where he was, i went to open it, and found on the doorstep a half-grown boy in sea-clothes. he had no sooner seen me than he began to dance some steps of the sea-hornpipe (which i had never before heard of far less seen), snapping his fingers in the air and footing it right cleverly. for all that, he was blue with the cold; and there was something in his face, a look between tears and laughter, that was highly pathetic and consisted ill with this gaiety of manner. "what cheer, mate?" says he, with a cracked voice. i asked him soberly to name his pleasure. "o, pleasure!" says he; and then began to sing: "for it's my delight, of a shiny night, in the season of the year." "well," said i, "if you have no business at all, i will even be so unmannerly as to shut you out." "stay, brother!" he cried." have you no fun about you? or do you want to get me thrashed? i've brought a letter from old heasyoasy to mr. belflower." he showed me a letter as he spoke." and i say, mate," he added, "i'm mortal hungry." "well," said i, "come into the house, and you shall have a bite if i go empty for it." with that i brought him in and set him down to my own place, where he fell-to greedily on the remains of breakfast, winking to me between whiles, and making many faces, which i think the poor soul considered manly. meanwhile, my uncle had read the letter and sat thinking; then, suddenly, he got to his feet with a great air of liveliness, and pulled me apart into the farthest corner of the room. "read that," said he, and put the letter in my hand. here it is, lying before me as i write: "the hawes inn, at the queen's ferry. "sir, -i lie here with my hawser up and down, and send my cabin-boy to informe. if you have any further commands for over-seas, to-day will be the last occasion, as the wind will serve us well out of the firth i will not seek to deny that i have had crosses with your doer,[1] mr. rankeillor. of which, if not speedily redd up, you may looke to see some, losses follow i have drawn a bill upon you, as per margin, and am, sir, your most obedt., humble servant, "elias hoseason." "you see, davie," resumed my uncle, as soon as he saw that i had done, "i have a venture with this man hoseason, the captain of a trading brig, the covenant, of dysart. now, if you and me was to walk over with yon lad, i could see the captain at the hawes, or maybe on board the covenant if there was papers to be signed; and so far from a loss of time, we can jog on to the lawyer, mr. rankeillor's. after a' that's come and gone, ye would be swier[2] to believe me upon my naked word; but ye'll believe rankeillor. he's factor to half the gentry in these parts; an auld man, forby: highly respeckit, and he kenned your father." i stood awhile and thought. i was going to some place of shipping, which was doubtless populous, and where my uncle durst attempt no violence, and, indeed, even the society of the cabin-boy so far protected me. once there, i believed i could force on the visit to the lawyer, even if my uncle were now insincere in proposing it; and, perhaps, in the bottom of my heart, i wished a nearer view of the sea and ships. you are to remember i had lived all my life in the inland hills, and just two days before had my first sight of the firth lying like a blue floor, and the sailed ships moving on the face of it, no bigger than toys. one thing with another, i made up my mind. "very well," says i, "let us go to the ferry." my uncle got into his hat and coat, and buckled an old rusty cutlass on; and then we trod the fire out, locked the door, and set forth upon our walk. the wind, being in that cold quarter the north-west, blew nearly in our faces as we went. it was the month of june; the grass was all white with daisies, and the trees with blossom; but, to judge by our blue nails and aching wrists, the time might have been winter and the whiteness a december frost. uncle ebenezer trudged in the ditch, jogging from side to side like an old ploughman coming home from work. he never said a word the whole way; and i was thrown for talk on the cabin-boy. he told me his name was ransome, and that he had followed the sea since he was nine, but could not say how old he was, as he had lost his reckoning. he showed me tattoo marks, baring his breast in the teeth of the wind and in spite of my remonstrances, for i thought it was enough to kill him; he swore horribly whenever he remembered, but more like a silly schoolboy than a man; and boasted of many wild and bad things that he had done: stealthy thefts, false accusations, ay, and even murder; but all with such a dearth of likelihood in the details, and such a weak and crazy swagger in the delivery, as disposed me rather to pity than to believe him. i asked him of the brig (which he declared was the finest ship that sailed) and of captain hoseason, in whose praises he was equally loud. heasyoasy (for so he still named the skipper) was a man, by his account, that minded for nothing either in heaven or earth; one that, as people said, would "crack on all sail into the day of judgment;" rough, fierce, unscrupulous, and brutal; and all this my poor cabin-boy had taught himself to admire as something seamanlike and manly. he would only admit one flaw in his idol." he ain't no seaman," he admitted. "that's mr. shuan that navigates the brig; he's the finest seaman in the trade, only for drink; and i tell you i believe it! why, look'ere;" and turning down his stocking he showed me a great, raw, red wound that made my blood run cold. "he done that -mr. shuan done it," he said, with an air of pride. "what!" i cried, "do you take such savage usage at his hands? why, you are no slave, to be so handled!" "no," said the poor moon-calf, changing his tune at once, "and so he'll find. see'ere;" and he showed me a great case-knife, which he told me was stolen. "o," says he, "let me see him, try; i dare him to; i'll do for him! o, he ain't the first!" and he confirmed it with a poor, silly, ugly oath. i have never felt such pity for any one in this wide world as i felt for that half-witted creature, and it began to come over me that the brig covenant (for all her pious name) was little better than a hell upon the seas. "have you no friends?" said i. he said he had a father in some english seaport, i forget which. "he was a fine man, too," he said, "but he's dead." "in heaven's name," cried i, "can you find no reputable life on shore?" "o, no," says he, winking and looking very sly, "they would put me to a trade. i know a trick worth two of that, i do!" i asked him what trade could be so dreadful as the one he followed, where he ran the continual peril of his life, not alone from wind and sea, but by the horrid cruelty of those who were his masters. he said it was very true; and then began to praise the life, and tell what a pleasure it was to get on shore with money in his pocket, and spend it like a man, and buy apples, and swagger, and surprise what he called stick-in-the-mud boys. "and then it's not all as bad as that," says he; "there's worse off than me: there's the twenty-pounders. o, laws! you should see them taking on. why, i've seen a man as old as you, i dessay" -(to him i seemed old)--" ah, and he had a beard, too -well, and as soon as we cleared out of the river, and he had the drug out of his head -my! how he cried and carried on! i made a fine fool of him, i tell you! and then there's little uns, too: oh, little by me! i tell you, i keep them in order. when we carry little uns, i have a rope's end of my own to wollop'em." and so he ran on, until it came in on me what he meant by twenty-pounders were those unhappy criminals who were sent over-seas to slavery in north america, or the still more unhappy innocents who were kidnapped or trepanned (as the word went) for private interest or vengeance. just then we came to the top of the hill, and looked down on the ferry and the hope. the firth of forth (as is very well known) narrows at this point to the width of a good-sized river, which makes a convenient ferry going north, and turns the upper reach into a landlocked haven for all manner of ships. right in the midst of the narrows lies an islet with some ruins; on the south shore they have built a pier for the service of the ferry; and at the end of the pier, on the other side of the road, and backed against a pretty garden of holly-trees and hawthorns, i could see the building which they called the hawes inn. the town of queensferry lies farther west, and the neighbourhood of the inn looked pretty lonely at that time of day, for the boat had just gone north with passengers. a skiff, however, lay beside the pier, with some seamen sleeping on the thwarts; this, as ransome told me, was the brig's boat waiting for the captain; and about half a mile off, and all alone in the anchorage, he showed me the covenant herself. there was a sea-going bustle on board; yards were swinging into place; and as the wind blew from that quarter, i could hear the song of the sailors as they pulled upon the ropes. after all i had listened to upon the way, i looked at that ship with an extreme abhorrence; and from the bottom of my heart i pitied all poor souls that were condemned to sail in her. we had all three pulled up on the brow of the hill; and now i marched across the road and addressed my uncle. "i think it right to tell you, sir." says i, "there's nothing that will bring me on board that covenant." he seemed to waken from a dream. "eh?" he said. "what's that?" i told him over again. "well, well," he said, "we'll have to please ye, i suppose. but what are we standing here for? it's perishing cold; and if i'm no mistaken, they're busking the covenant for sea." [1] agent. [2] unwilling. chapter vi what befell at the queen's ferry as soon as we came to the inn, ransome led us up the stair to a small room, with a bed in it, and heated like an oven by a great fire of coal. at a table hard by the chimney, a tall, dark, sober-looking man sat writing. in spite of the heat of the room, he wore a thick sea-jacket, buttoned to the neck, and a tall hairy cap drawn down over his ears; yet i never saw any man, not even a judge upon the bench, look cooler, or more studious and self-possessed, than this ship-captain. he got to his feet at once, and coming forward, offered his large hand to ebenezer. "i am proud to see you, mr. balfour," said he, in a fine deep voice, "and glad that ye are here in time. the wind's fair, and the tide upon the turn; we'll see the old coal-bucket burning on the isle of may before to-night." "captain hoseason," returned my uncle, "you keep your room unco hot." "it's a habit i have, mr. balfour," said the skipper. "i'm a cold-rife man by my nature; i have a cold blood, sir. there's neither fur, nor flannel -no, sir, nor hot rum, will warm up what they call the temperature. sir, it's the same with most men that have been carbonadoed, as they call it, in the tropic seas." "well, well, captain," replied my uncle, "we must all be the way we're made." but it chanced that this fancy of the captain's had a great share in my misfortunes. for though i had promised myself not to let my kinsman out of sight, i was both so impatient for a nearer look of the sea, and so sickened by the closeness of the room, that when he told me to "run down-stairs and play myself awhile," i was fool enough to take him at his word. away i went, therefore, leaving the two men sitting down to a bottle and a great mass of papers; and crossing the road in front of the inn, walked down upon the beach. with the wind in that quarter, only little wavelets, not much bigger than i had seen upon a lake, beat upon the shore. but the weeds were new to me -some green, some brown and long, and some with little bladders that crackled between my fingers. even so far up the firth, the smell of the sea-water was exceedingly salt and stirring; the covenant, besides, was beginning to shake out her sails, which hung upon the yards in clusters; and the spirit of all that i beheld put me in thoughts of far voyages and foreign places. i looked, too, at the seamen with the skiff -big brown fellows, some in shirts, some with jackets, some with coloured handkerchiefs about their throats, one with a brace of pistols stuck into his pockets, two or three with knotty bludgeons, and all with their case-knives. i passed the time of day with one that looked less desperate than his fellows, and asked him of the sailing of the brig. he said they would get under way as soon as the ebb set, and expressed his gladness to be out of a port where there were no taverns and fiddlers; but all with such horrifying oaths, that i made haste to get away from him. this threw me back on ransome, who seemed the least wicked of that gang, and who soon came out of the inn and ran to me, crying for a bowl of punch. i told him i would give him no such thing, for neither he nor i was of an age for such indulgences. "but a glass of ale you may have, and welcome," said i. he mopped and mowed at me, and called me names; but he was glad to get the ale, for all that; and presently we were set down at a table in the front room of the inn, and both eating and drinking with a good appetite. here it occurred to me that, as the landlord was a man of that county, i might do well to make a friend of him. i offered him a share, as was much the custom in those days; but he was far too great a man to sit with such poor customers as ransome and myself, and he was leaving the room, when i called him back to ask if he knew mr. rankeillor. "hoot, ay," says he, "and a very honest man. and, o, by-the-by," says he, "was it you that came in with ebenezer?" and when i had told him yes, "ye'll be no friend of his?" he asked, meaning, in the scottish way, that i would be no relative. i told him no, none." i thought not," said he, "and yet ye have a kind of gliff[1] of mr. alexander." i said it seemed that ebenezer was ill-seen in the country. "nae doubt," said the landlord. "he's a wicked auld man, and there's many would like to see him girning in the tow.[2] jennet clouston and mony mair that he has harried out of house and hame. and yet he was ance a fine young fellow, too. but that was before the sough[3] gaed abroad about mr. alexander, that was like the death of him." "and what was it?" i asked. "ou, just that he had killed him," said the landlord. "did ye never hear that?" "and what would he kill him for?" said i. "and what for, but just to get the place," said he. "the place?" said i. "the shaws?" "nae other place that i ken," said he. "ay, man?" said i. "is that so? was my -was alexander the eldest son?" "'deed was he," said the landlord. "what else would he have killed him for?" and with that he went away, as he had been impatient to do from the beginning. of course, i had guessed it a long while ago; but it is one thing to guess, another to know; and i sat stunned with my good fortune, and could scarce grow to believe that the same poor lad who had trudged in the dust from ettrick forest not two days ago, was now one of the rich of the earth, and had a house and broad lands, and might mount his horse tomorrow. all these pleasant things, and a thousand others, crowded into my mind, as i sat staring before me out of the inn window, and paying no heed to what i saw; only i remember that my eye lighted on captain hoseason down on the pier among his seamen, and speaking with some authority. and presently he came marching back towards the house, with no mark of a sailor's clumsiness, but carrying his fine, tall figure with a manly bearing, and still with the same sober, grave expression on his face. i wondered if it was possible that ransome's stories could be true, and half disbelieved them; they fitted so ill with the man's looks. but indeed, he was neither so good as i supposed him, nor quite so bad as ransome did; for, in fact, he was two men, and left the better one behind as soon as he set foot on board his vessel. the next thing, i heard my uncle calling me, and found the pair in the road together. it was the captain who addressed me, and that with an air (very flattering to a young lad) of grave equality. "sir," said he, "mr. balfour tells me great things of you; and for my own part, i like your looks. i wish i was for longer here, that we might make the better friends; but we'll make the most of what we have. ye shall come on board my brig for half an hour, till the ebb sets, and drink a bowl with me." now, i longed to see the inside of a ship more than words can tell; but i was not going to put myself in jeopardy, and i told him my uncle and i had an appointment with a lawyer. "ay, ay," said he, "he passed me word of that. but, ye see, the boat'll set ye ashore at the town pier, and that's but a penny stonecast from rankeillor's house." and here he suddenly leaned down and whispered in my ear: "take care of the old tod;[4] he means mischief. come aboard till i can get a word with ye." and then, passing his arm through mine, he continued aloud, as he set off towards his boat: "but, come, what can i bring ye from the carolinas? any friend of mr. balfour's can command. a roll of tobacco? indian feather-work? a skin of a wild beast? a stone pipe? the mocking-bird that mews for all the world like a cat? the cardinal bird that is as red as blood? -take your pick and say your pleasure." by this time we were at the boat-side, and he was handing me in. i did not dream of hanging back; i thought (the poor fool!) that i had found a good friend and helper, and i was rejoiced to see the ship. as soon as we were all set in our places, the boat was thrust off from the pier and began to move over the waters: and what with my pleasure in this new movement and my surprise at our low position, and the appearance of the shores, and the growing bigness of the brig as we drew near to it, i could hardly understand what the captain said, and must have answered him at random. as soon as we were alongside (where i sat fairly gaping at the ship's height, the strong humming of the tide against its sides, and the pleasant cries of the seamen at their work) hoseason, declaring that he and i must be the first aboard, ordered a tackle to be sent down from the main-yard. in this i was whipped into the air and set down again on the deck, where the captain stood ready waiting for me, and instantly slipped back his arm under mine. there i stood some while, a little dizzy with the unsteadiness of all around me, perhaps a little afraid, and yet vastly pleased with these strange sights; the captain meanwhile pointing out the strangest, and telling me their names and uses. "but where is my uncle?" said i suddenly. "ay," said hoseason, with a sudden grimness, "that's the point." i felt i was lost. with all my strength, i plucked myself clear of him and ran to the bulwarks. sure enough, there was the boat pulling for the town, with my uncle sitting in the stern. i gave a piercing cry -"help, help! murder!" -so that both sides of the anchorage rang with it, and my uncle turned round where he was sitting, and showed me a face full of cruelty and terror. it was the last i saw. already strong hands had been plucking me back from the ship's side; and now a thunderbolt seemed to strike me; i saw a great flash of fire, and fell senseless. [1] look. [2] rope. [3] report. [4] fox. chapter vii i go to sea in the brig "covenant" of dysart i came to myself in darkness, in great pain, bound hand and foot, and deafened by many unfamiliar noises. there sounded in my ears a roaring of water as of a huge mill-dam, the thrashing of heavy sprays, the thundering of the sails, and the shrill cries of seamen. the whole world now heaved giddily up, and now rushed giddily downward; and so sick and hurt was i in body, and my mind so much confounded, that it took me a long while, chasing my thoughts up and down, and ever stunned again by a fresh stab of pain, to realise that i must be lying somewhere bound in the belly of that unlucky ship, and that the wind must have strengthened to a gale. with the clear perception of my plight, there fell upon me a blackness of despair, a horror of remorse at my own folly, and a passion of anger at my uncle, that once more bereft me of my senses. when i returned again to life, the same uproar, the same confused and violent movements, shook and deafened me; and presently, to my other pains and distresses, there was added the sickness of an unused landsman on the sea. in that time of my adventurous youth, i suffered many hardships; but none that was so crushing to my mind and body, or lit by so few hopes, as these first hours aboard the brig. i heard a gun fire, and supposed the storm had proved too strong for us, and we were firing signals of distress. the thought of deliverance, even by death in the deep sea, was welcome to me. yet it was no such matter; but (as i was afterwards told) a common habit of the captain's, which i here set down to show that even the worst man may have his kindlier side. we were then passing, it appearcd, within some miles of dysart, where the brig was built, and where old mrs. hoseason, the captain's mother, had come some years before to live; and whether outward or inward bound, the covenant was never suffered to go by that place by day, without a gun fired and colours shown. i had no measure of time; day and night were alike in that ill-smelling cavern of the ship's bowels where, i lay. and the misery of my situation drew out the hours to double. how long, therefore, i lay waiting to hear the ship split upon some rock, or to feel her reel head foremost into the depths of the sea, i have not the means of computation. but sleep at length stole from me the consciousness of sorrow. i was awakened by the light of a hand-lantern shining in my face. a small man of about thirty, with green eyes and a tangle of fair hair, stood looking down at me. "well," said he, "how goes it?" i answered by a sob; and my visitor then felt my pulse and temples, and set himself to wash and dress the wound upon my scalp. "ay," said he, "a sore dunt.[1] what, man? cheer up! the world's no done; you've made a bad start of it but you'll make a better. have you had any meat?" i said i could not look at it: and thereupon he gave me some brandy and water in a tin pannikin, and left me once more to myself. the next time he came to see me, i was lying betwixt sleep and waking, my eyes wide open in the darkness, the sickness quite departed, but succeeded by a horrid giddiness and swimming that was almost worse to bear. i ached, besides, in every limb, and the cords that bound me seemed to be of fire. the smell of the hole in which i lay seemed to have become a part of me; and during the long interval since his last visit i had suffered tortures of fear, now from the scurrying of the ship's rats, that sometimes pattered on my very face, and now from the dismal imaginings that haunt the bed of fever. the glimmer of the lantern, as a trap opened, shone in like the heaven's sunlight; and though it only showed me the strong, dark beams of the ship that was my prison, i could have cried aloud for gladness. the man with the green eyes was the first to descend the ladder, and i noticed that he came somewhat unsteadily. he was followed by the captain. neither said a word; but the first set to and examined me, and dressed my wound as before, while hoseason looked me in my face with an odd, black look. "now, sir, you see for yourself," said the first: "a high fever, no appetite, no light, no meat: you see for yourself what that means." "i am no conjurer, mr. riach," said the captain. "give me leave, sir" said riach; "you've a good head upon your shoulders, and a good scotch tongue to ask with; but i will leave you no manner of excuse; i want that boy taken out of this hole and put in the forecastle." "what ye may want, sir, is a matter of concern to nobody but yoursel'," returned the captain; "but i can tell ye that which is to be. here he is; here he shall bide." "admitting that you have been paid in a proportion," said the other, "i will crave leave humbly to say that i have not. paid i am, and none too much, to be the second officer of this old tub, and you ken very well if i do my best to earn it. but i was paid for nothing more." "if ye could hold back your hand from the tin-pan, mr. riach, i would have no complaint to make of ye," returned the skipper. "and instead of asking riddles, i make bold to say that ye would keep your breath to cool your porridge. we'll be required on deck," he added, in a sharper note, and set one foot upon the ladder. but mr. riach caught him by the sleeve. "admitting that you have been paid to do a murder ----" he began. hoseason turned upon him with a flash. "what's that?" he cried. "what kind of talk is that?" "it seems it is the talk that you can understand," said mr. riach, looking him steadily in the face. "mr. riach, i have sailed with ye three cruises," replied the captain. "in all that time, sir, ye should have learned to know me: i'm a stiff man, and a dour man; but for what ye say the now -fie, fie! -it comes from a bad heart and a black conscience. if ye say the lad will die----" "ay, will he!" said mr. riach. "well, sir, is not that enough?" said hoseason. "flit him where ye please!" thereupon the captain ascended the ladder; and i, who had lain silent throughout this strange conversation, beheld mr. riach turn after him and bow as low as to his knees in what was plainly a spirit of derision. even in my then state of sickness, i perceived two things: that the mate was touched with liquor, as the captain hinted, and that (drunk or sober) he was like to prove a valuable friend. five minutes afterwards my bonds were cut, i was hoisted on a man's back, carried up to the forecastle, and laid in a bunk on some sea-blankets; where the first thing that i did was to lose my senses. it was a blessed thing indeed to open my eyes again upon the daylight, and to find myself in the society of men. the forecastle was a roomy place enough, set all about with berths, in which the men of the watch below were seated smoking, or lying down asleep. the day being calm and the wind fair, the scuttle was open, and not only the good daylight, but from time to time (as the ship rolled) a dusty beam of sunlight shone in, and dazzled and delighted me. i had no sooner moved, moreover, than one of the men brought me a drink of something healing which mr. riach had prepared, and bade me lie still and i should soon be well again. there were no bones broken, he explained: "a clour[2] on the head was naething. man," said he, "it was me that gave it ye!" here i lay for the space of many days a close prisoner, and not only got my health again, but came to know my companions. they were a rough lot indeed, as sailors mostly are: being men rooted out of all the kindly parts of life, and condemned to toss together on the rough seas, with masters no less cruel. there were some among them that had sailed with the pirates and seen things it would be a shame even to speak of; some were men that had run from the king's ships, and went with a halter round their necks, of which they made no secret; and all, as the saying goes, were "at a word and a blow" with their best friends. yet i had not been many days shut up with them before i began to be ashamed of my first judgment, when i had drawn away from them at the ferry pier, as though they had been unclean beasts. no class of man is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine were no exception to the rule. rough they were, sure enough; and bad, i suppose; but they had many virtues. they were kind when it occurred to them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty. there was one man, of maybe forty, that would sit on my berthside for hours and tell me of his wife and child. he was a fisher that had lost his boat, and thus been driven to the deep-sea voyaging. well, it is years ago now: but i have never forgotten him. his wife (who was "young by him," as he often told me) waited in vain to see her man return; he would never again make the fire for her in the morning, nor yet keep the bairn when she was sick. indeed, many of these poor fellows (as the event proved) were upon their last cruise; the deep seas and cannibal fish received them; and it is a thankless business to speak ill of the dead. among other good deeds that they did, they returned my money, which had been shared among them; and though it was about a third short, i was very glad to get it, and hoped great good from it in the land i was going to. the ship was bound for the carolinas; and you must not suppose that i was going to that place merely as an exile. the trade was even then much depressed; since that, and with the rebellion of the colonies and the formation of the united states, it has, of course, come to an end; but in those days of my youth, white men were still sold into slavery on the plantations, and that was the destiny to which my wicked uncle had condemned me. the cabin-boy ransome (from whom i had first heard of these atrocities) came in at times from the round-house, where he berthed and served, now nursing a bruised limb in silent agony, now raving against the cruelty of mr. shuan. it made my heart bleed; but the men had a great respect for the chief mate, who was, as they said, "the only seaman of the whole jing-bang, and none such a bad man when he was sober." indeed, i found there was a strange peculiarity about our two mates: that mr. riach was sullen, unkind, and harsh when he was sober, and mr. shuan would not hurt a fly except when he was drinking. i asked about the captain; but i was told drink made no difference upon that man of iron. i did my best in the small time allowed me to make some thing like a man, or rather i should say something like a boy, of the poor creature, ransome. but his mind was scarce truly human. he could remember nothing of the time before he came to sea; only that his father had made clocks, and had a starling in the parlour, which could whistle "the north countrie;" all else had been blotted out in these years of hardship and cruelties. he had a strange notion of the dry land, picked up from sailor's stories: that it was a place where lads were put to some kind of slavery called a trade, and where apprentices were continually lashed and clapped into foul prisons. in a town, he thought every second person a decoy, and every third house a place in which seamen would be drugged and murdered. to be sure, i would tell him how kindly i had myself been used upon that dry land he was so much afraid of, and how well fed and carefully taught both by my friends and my parents: and if he had been recently hurt, he would weep bitterly and swear to run away; but if he was in his usual crackbrain humour, or (still more) if he had had a glass of spirits in the roundhouse, he would deride the notion. it was mr. riach (heaven forgive him!) who gave the boy drink; and it was, doubtless, kindly meant; but besides that it was ruin to his health, it was the pitifullest thing in life to see this unhappy, unfriended creature staggering, and dancing, and talking he knew not what. some of the men laughed, but not all; others would grow as black as thunder (thinking, perhaps, of their own childhood or their own children) and bid him stop that nonsense, and think what he was doing. as for me, i felt ashamed to look at him, and the poor child still comes about me in my dreams. all this time, you should know, the covenant was meeting continual head-winds and tumbling up and down against head-seas, so that the scuttle was almost constantly shut, and the forecastle lighted only by a swinging lantern on a beam. there was constant labour for all hands; the sails had to be made and shortened every hour; the strain told on the men's temper; there was a growl of quarrelling all day, long from berth to berth; and as i was never allowed to set my foot on deck, you can picture to yourselves how weary of my life i grew to be, and how impatient for a change. and a change i was to get, as you shall hear; but i must first tell of a conversation i had with mr. riach, which put a little heart in me to bear my troubles. getting him in a favourable stage of drink (for indeed he never looked near me when he was sober), i pledged him to secrecy, and told him my whole story. he declared it was like a ballad; that he would do his best to help me; that i should have paper, pen, and ink, and write one line to mr. campbell and another to mr. rankeillor; and that if i had told the truth, ten to one he would be able (with their help) to pull me through and set me in my rights. "and in the meantime," says he, "keep your heart up. you're not the only one, i'll tell you that. there's many a man hoeing tobacco over-seas that should be mounting his horse at his own door at home; many and many! and life is all a variorum, at the best. look at me: i'm a laird's son and more than half a doctor, and here i am, man-jack to hoseason!" i thought it would be civil to ask him for his story. he whistled loud. "never had one," said he. "i like fun, that's all." and he skipped out of the forecastle. [1] stroke. [2] blow. chapter viii the round-house one night, about eleven o'clock, a man of mr. riach's watch (which was on deck) came below for his jacket; and instantly there began to go a whisper about the forecastle that "shuan had done for him at last." there was no need of a name; we all knew who was meant; but we had scarce time to get the idea rightly in our heads, far less to speak of it, when the scuttle was again flung open, and captain hoseason came down the ladder. he looked sharply round the bunks in the tossing light of the lantern; and then, walking straight up to me, he addressed me, to my surprise, in tones of kindness. "my man," said he, "we want ye to serve in the round-house. you and ransome are to change berths. run away aft with ye." even as he spoke, two seamen appeared in the scuttle, carrying ransome in their arms; and the ship at that moment giving a great sheer into the sea, and the lantern swinging, the light fell direct on the boy's face. it was as white as wax, and had a look upon it like a dreadful smile. the blood in me ran cold, and i drew in my breath as if i had been struck. "run away aft; run away aft with ye!" cried hoseason. and at that i brushed by the sailors and the boy (who neither spoke nor moved), and ran up the ladder on deck. the brig was sheering swiftly and giddily through a long, cresting swell. she was on the starboard tack, and on the left hand, under the arched foot of the foresail, i could see the sunset still quite bright. this, at such an hour of the night, surprised me greatly; but i was too ignorant to draw the true conclusion -that we were going north-about round scotland, and were now on the high sea between the orkney and shetland islands, having avoided the dangerous currents of the pentland firth. for my part, who had been so long shut in the dark and knew nothing of head-winds, i thought we might be half-way or more across the atlantic. and indeed (beyond that i wondered a little at the lateness of the sunset light) i gave no heed to it, and pushed on across the decks, running between the seas, catching at ropes, and only saved from going overboard by one of the hands on deck, who had been always kind to me. the round-house, for which i was bound, and where i was now to sleep and serve, stood some six feet above the decks, and considering the size of the brig, was of good dimensions. inside were a fixed table and bench, and two berths, one for the captain and the other for the two mates, turn and turn about. it was all fitted with lockers from top to bottom, so as to stow away the offieers' belongings and a part of the ship's stores; there was a second store-room underneath, which you entered by a hatchway in the middle of the deck; indeed, all the best of the meat and drink and the whole of the powder were collected in this place; and all the firearms, except the two pieces of brass ordnance, were set in a rack in the aftermost wall of the round-house. the most of the cutlasses were in another place. a small window with a shutter on each side, and a skylight in the roof, gave it light by, day; and after dark there was a lamp always burning. it was burning when i entered, not brightly, but enough to show mr. shuan sitting at the table, with the brandy bottle and a tin pannikin in front of him. he was a tall man, strongly made and very black; and he stared before him on the table like one stupid. he took no notice of my coming in; nor did he move when the captain followed and leant on the berth beside me, looking darkly at the mate. i stood in great fear of hoseason, and had my reasons for it; but something told me i need not be afraid of him just then; and i whispered in his ear: "how is he?" he shook his head like one that does not know and does not wish to think, and his face was very stern. presently mr. riach came in. he gave the captain a glance that meant the boy was dead as plain as speaking, and took his place like the rest of us; so that we all three stood without a word, staring down at mr. shuan, and mr. shuan (on his side) sat without a word, looking hard upon the table. all of a sudden he put out his hand to take the bottle; and at that mr. riach started forward and caught it away from him, rather by surprise than violence, crying out, with an oath, that there had been too much of this work altogether, and that a judgment would fall upon the ship. and as he spoke (the weather sliding-doors standing open) he tossed the bottle into the sea. mr. shuan was on his feet in a trice; he still looked dazed, but he meant murder, ay, and would have done it, for the second time that night, had not the captain stepped in between him and his victim. "sit down!" roars the captain. "ye sot and swine, do ye know what ye've done? ye've murdered the boy!" mr. shuan seemed to understand; for he sat down again, and put up his hand to his brow. "well," he said, "he brought me a dirty pannikin!" at that word, the captain and i and mr. riach all looked at each other for a second with a kind of frightened look; and then hoseason walked up to his chief officer, took him by the shoulder, led him across to his bunk, and bade him lie down and go to sleep, as you might speak to a bad child. the murderer cried a little, but he took off his sea-boots and obeyed. "ah!" cried mr. riach, with a dreadful voice, "ye should have interfered long syne. it's too late now." "mr. riach," said the captain, "this night's work must never be kennt in dysart. the boy went overboard, sir; that's what the story is; and i would give five pounds out of my pocket it was true!" he turned to the table. "what made ye throw the good bottle away?" he added. "there was nae sense in that, sir. here, david, draw me another. they're in the bottom locker;" and he tossed me a key. "ye'll need a glass yourself, sir," he added to riach." yon was an ugly thing to see." so the pair sat down and hob-a-nobbed; and while they did so, the murderer, who had been lying and whimpering in his berth, raised himself upon his elbow and looked at them and at me. that was the first night of my new duties; and in the course of the next day i had got well into the run of them. i had to serve at the meals, which the captain took at regular hours, sitting down with the officer who was off, duty; all the day through i would be running with a dram to one or other of my three masters; and at night i slept on a blanket thrown on the deck boards at the aftermost end of the round-house, and right in the draught of the two doors. it was a hard and a cold bed; nor was i suffered to sleep without interruption; for some one would be always coming in from deck to get a dram, and when a fresh watch was to be set, two and sometimes all three would sit down and brew a bowl together. how they kept their health, i know not, any more than how i kept my own. and yet in other ways it was an easy service. there was no cloth to lay; the meals were either of oatmeal porridge or salt junk, except twice a week, when there was duff: and though i was clumsy enough and (not being firm on my sealegs) sometimes fell with what i was bringing them, both mr. riach and the captain were singularly patient. i could not but fancy they were making up lee-way with their consciences, and that they would scarce have been so good with me if they had not been worse with ransome. as for mr. shuan, the drink or his crime, or the two together, had certainly troubled his mind. i cannot say i ever saw him in his proper wits. he never grew used to my being there, stared at me continually (sometimes, i could have thought, with terror), and more than once drew back from my hand when i was serving him. i was pretty sure from the first that he had no clear mind of what he had done, and on my second day in the round-house i had the proof of it. we were alone, and he had been staring at me a long time, when all at once, up he got, as pale as death, and came close up to me, to my great terror. but i had no cause to be afraid of him. "you were not here before?" he asked. "no, sir," said i." "there was another boy?" he asked again; and when i had answered him, "ah!" says he, "i thought that," and went and sat down, without another word, except to call for brandy. you may think it strange, but for all the horror i had, i was still sorry for him. he was a married man, with a wife in leith; but whether or no he had a family, i have now forgotten; i hope not. altogether it was no very hard life for the time it lasted, which (as you are to hear) was not long. i was as well fed as the best of them; even their pickles, which were the great dainty, i was allowed my share of; and had i liked i might have been drunk from morning to night, like mr. shuan. i had company, too, and good company of its sort. mr. riach, who had been to the college, spoke to me like a friend when he was not sulking, and told me many curious things, and some that were informing; and even the captain, though he kept me at the stick's end the most part of the time, would sometimes unbuckle a bit, and tell me of the fine countries he had visited. the shadow of poor ransome, to be sure, lay on all four of us, and on me and mr. shuan in particular, most heavily. and then i had another trouble of my own. here i was, doing dirty work for three men that i looked down upon, and one of whom, at least, should have hung upon a gallows; that was for the present; and as for the future, i could only see myself slaving alongside of negroes in the tobacco fields. mr. riach, perhaps from caution, would never suffer me to say another word about my story; the captain, whom i tried to approach, rebuffed me like a dog and would not hear a word; and as the days came and went, my heart sank lower and lower, till i was even glad of the work which kept me from thinking. chapter ix the man with the belt of gold more than a week went by, in which the ill-luck that had hitherto pursued the covenant upon this voyage grew yet more strongly marked. some days she made a little way; others, she was driven actually back. at last we were beaten so far to the south that we tossed and tacked to and fro the whole of the ninth day, within sight of cape wrath and the wild, rocky coast on either hand of it. there followed on that a council of the officers, and some decision which i did not rightly understand, seeing only the result: that we had made a fair wind of a foul one and were running south. the tenth afternoon there was a falling swell and a thick, wet, white fog that hid one end of the brig from the other. all afternoon, when i went on deck, i saw men and officers listening hard over the bulwarks -"for breakers," they said; and though i did not so much as understand the word, i felt danger in the air, and was excited. maybe about ten at night, i was serving mr. riach and the captain at their supper, when the ship struck something with a great sound, and we heard voices singing out. my two masters leaped to their feet. "she's struck!" said mr. riach. "no, sir," said the captain. "we've only run a boat down." and they hurried out. the captain was in the right of it. we had run down a boat in the fog, and she had parted in the midst and gone to the bottom with all her crew but one. this man (as i heard afterwards) had been sitting in the stern as a passenger, while the rest were on the benches rowing. at the moment of the blow, the stern had been thrown into the air, and the man (having his hands free, and for all he was encumbered with a frieze overcoat that came below his knees) had leaped up and caught hold of the brig's bowsprit. it showed he had luck and much agility and unusual strength, that he should have thus saved himself from such a pass. and yet, when the captain brought him into the round-house, and i set eyes on him for the first time, he looked as cool as i did. he was smallish in stature, but well set and as nimble as a goat; his face was of a good open expression, but sunburnt very dark, and heavily freckled and pitted with the small-pox; his eyes were unusually light and had a kind of dancing madness in them, that was both engaging and alarming; and when he took off his great-coat, he laid a pair of fine silver-mounted pistols on the table, and i saw that he was belted with a great sword. his manners, besides, were elegant, and he pledged the captain handsomely. altogether i thought of him, at the first sight, that here was a man i would rather call my friend than my enemy. the captain, too, was taking his observations, but rather of the man's clothes than his person. and to be sure, as soon as he had taken off the great-coat, he showed forth mighty fine for the round-house of a merchant brig: having a hat with feathers, a red waistcoat, breeches of black plush, and a blue coat with silver buttons and handsome silver lace; costly clothes, though somewhat spoiled with the fog and being slept in. "i'm vexed, sir, about the boat," says the captain. "there are some pretty men gone to the bottom," said the stranger, "that i would rather see on the dry land again than half a score of boats." "friends of yours?" said hoseason. "you have none such friends in your country," was the reply. "they would have died for me like dogs." "well, sir," said the captain, still watching him, "there are more men in the world than boats to put them in." "and that's true, too," cried the other, "and ye seem to be a gentleman of great penetration." "i have been in france, sir," says the captain, so that it was plain he meant more by the words than showed upon the face of them. "well, sir," says the other, "and so has many a pretty man, for the matter of that." "no doubt, sir" says the captain, "and fine coats." "oho!" says the stranger, "is that how the wind sets?" and he laid his hand quickly on his pistols. "don't be hasty," said the captain. "don't do a mischief before ye see the need of it. ye've a french soldier's coat upon your back and a scotch tongue in your head, to be sure; but so has many an honest fellow in these days, and i dare say none the worse of it." "so?" said the gentleman in the fine coat: "are ye of the honest party?" (meaning, was he a jacobite? for each side, in these sort of civil broils, takes the name of honesty for its own). "why, sir," replied the captain, "i am a true-blue protestant, and i thank god for it." (it was the first word of any religion i had ever heard from him, but i learnt afterwards he was a great church-goer while on shore.) "but, for all that," says he, "i can be sorry to see another man with his back to the wall." "can ye so, indeed?" asked the jacobite. "well, sir, to be quite plain with ye, i am one of those honest gentlemen that were in trouble about the years forty-five and six; and (to be still quite plain with ye) if i got into the hands of any of the red-coated gentry, it's like it would go hard with me. now, sir, i was for france; and there was a french ship cruising here to pick me up; but she gave us the go-by in the fog -as i wish from the heart that ye had done yoursel'! and the best that i can say is this: if ye can set me ashore where i was going, i have that upon me will reward you highly for your trouble." "in france?" says the captain. "no, sir; that i cannot do. but where ye come from -we might talk of that." and then, unhappily, he observed me standing in my corner, and packed me off to the galley to get supper for the gentleman. i lost no time, i promise you; and when i came back into the round-house, i found the gentleman had taken a money-belt from about his waist, and poured out a guinea or two upon the table. the captain was looking at the guineas, and then at the belt, and then at the gentleman's face; and i thought he seemed excited. "half of it," he cried, "and i'm your man!" the other swept back the guineas into the belt, and put it on again under his waistcoat. "i have told ye" sir" said he, "that not one doit of it belongs to me. it belongs to my chieftain," and here he touched his hat," and while i would be but a silly messenger to grudge some of it that the rest might come safe, i should show myself a hound indeed if i bought my own carcase any too dear. thirty guineas on the sea-side, or sixty if ye set me on the linnhe loch. take it, if ye will; if not, ye can do your worst." "ay," said hoseason. "and if i give ye over to the soldiers?" "ye would make a fool's bargain," said the other. "my chief, let me tell you, sir, is forfeited, like every honest man in scotland. his estate is in the hands of the man they call king george; and it is his officers that collect the rents, or try to collect them. but for the honour of scotland, the poor tenant bodies take a thought upon their chief lying in exile; and this money is a part of that very rent for which king george is looking. now, sir, ye seem to me to be a man that understands things: bring this money within the reach of government, and how much of it'll come to you?" "little enough, to be sure," said hoseason; and then, "if they, knew" he added, drily. "but i think, if i was to try, that i could hold my tongue about it." "ah, but i'll begowk[1] ye there!" cried the gentleman. "play me false, and i'll play you cunning. if a hand is laid upon me, they shall ken what money it is." "well," returned the captain, "what must be must. sixty guineas, and done. here's my hand upon it." "and here's mine," said the other. and thereupon the captain went out (rather hurriedly, i thought), and left me alone in the round-house with the stranger. at that period (so soon after the forty-five) there were many exiled gentlemen coming back at the peril of their lives, either to see their friends or to collect a little money; and as for the highland chiefs that had been forfeited, it was a common matter of talk how their tenants would stint themselves to send them money, and their clansmen outface the soldiery to get it in, and run the gauntlet of our great navy to carry it across. all this i had, of course, heard tell of; and now i had a man under my eyes whose life was forfeit on all these counts and upon one more, for he was not only a rebel and a smuggler of rents, but had taken service with king louis of france. and as if all this were not enough, he had a belt full of golden guineas round his loins. whatever my opinions, i could not look on such a man without a lively interest. "and so you're a jacobite?" said i, as i set meat before him." "ay" said he, beginning to eat. "and you, by your long face, should be a whig?"[2] "betwixt and between," said i, not to annoy him; for indeed i was as good a whig as mr. campbell could make me. "and that's naething," said he. "but i'm saying, mr. betwixt-and-between," he added, "this bottle of yours is dry; and it's hard if i'm to pay sixty guineas and be grudged a dram upon the back of it." "i'll go and ask for the key," said i, and stepped on deck. the fog was as close as ever, but the swell almost down. they had laid the brig to, not knowing precisely where they were, and the wind (what little there was of it) not serving well for their true course. some of the hands were still hearkening for breakers; but the captain and the two officers were in the waist with their heads together. it struck me (i don't know why) that they were after no good; and the first word i heard, as i drew softly near, more than confirmed me. it was mr. riach, crying out as if upon a sudden thought:" could n't we wile him out of the round-house?" "he's better where he is," returned hoseason; "he has n't room to use his sword." "well, that's true," said riach; "but he's hard to come at." "hut!" said hoseason. "we can get the man in talk, one upon each side, and pin him by the two arms; or if that'll not hold, sir, we can make a run by both the doors and get him under hand before he has the time to draw" at this hearing, i was seized with both fear and anger at these treacherous, greedy, bloody men that i sailed with. my first mind was to run away; my second was bolder. "captain," said i, "the gentleman is seeking a dram, and the bottle's out. will you give me the key?" they all started and turned about. "why, here's our chance to get the firearms!" riach cried; and then to me: "hark ye, david," he said, "do ye ken where the pistols are?" "ay, ay," put in hoseason. "david kens; david's a good lad. ye see, david my man, yon wild hielandman is a danger to the ship, besides being a rank foe to king george, god bless him!" i had never been so be-davided since i came on board: but i said yes, as if all i heard were quite natural. "the trouble is," resumed the captain, "that all our firelocks, great and little, are in the round-house under this man's nose; likewise the powder. now, if i, or one of the officers, was to go in and take them, he would fall to thinking. but a lad like you, david, might snap up a horn and a pistol or two without remark. and if ye can do it cleverly, i'll bear it in mind when it'll be good for you to have friends; and that's when we come to carolina." here mr. riach whispered him a little. "very right, sir," said the captain; and then to myself:" and see here, david, yon man has a beltful of gold, and i give you my word that you shall have your fingers in it." i told him i would do as he wished, though indeed i had scarce breath to speak with; and upon that he gave me the key of the spirit locker, and i began to go slowly back to the round-house. what was i to do? they were dogs and thieves; they had stolen me from my own country; they had killed poor ransome; and was i to hold the candle to another murder? but then, upon the other hand, there was the fear of death very plain before me; for what could a boy and a man, if they were as brave as lions, against a whole ship's company? i was still arguing it back and forth, and getting no great clearness, when i came into the round-house and saw the jacobite eating his supper under the lamp; and at that my mind was made up all in a moment. i have no credit by it; it was by no choice of mine, but as if by compulsion, that i walked right up to the table and put my hand on his shoulder. "do ye want to be killed?" said i. he sprang to his feet, and looked a question at me as clear as if he had spoken. "o!" cried i, "they're all murderers here; it's a ship full of them! they've murdered a boy already. now it's you." "ay, ay" said he; "but they have n't got me yet." and then looking at me curiously, "will ye stand with me?" "that will i!" said i. "i am no thief, nor yet murderer. i'll stand by you." "why, then," said he, "what's your name?" "david balfour," said i; and then, thinking that a man with so fine a coat must like fine people, i added for the first time, "of shaws." it never occurred to him to doubt me, for a highlander is used to see great gentlefolk in great poverty; but as he had no estate of his own, my words nettled a very childish vanity he had. "my name is stewart," he said, drawing himself up. "alan breck, they call me. a king's name is good enough for me, though i bear it plain and have the name of no farm-midden to clap to the hind-end of it." and having administered this rebuke, as though it were something of a chief importance, he turned to examine our defences. the round-house was built very strong, to support the breaching of the seas. of its five apertures, only the skylight and the two doors were large enough for the passage of a man. the doors, besides, could be drawn close: they were of stout oak, and ran in grooves, and were fitted with hooks to keep them either shut or open, as the need arose. the one that was already shut i secured in this fashion; but when i was proceeding to slide to the other, alan stopped me. "david," said he --" for i cannae bring to mind the name of your landed estate, and so will make so bold as to call you david -that door, being open, is the best part of my defences." "it would be yet better shut," says i. "not so, david," says he. "ye see, i have but one face; but so long as that door is open and my face to it, the best part of my enemies will be in front of me, where i would aye wish to find them." then he gave me from the rack a cutlass (of which there were a few besides the firearms), choosing it with great care, shaking his head and saying he had never in all his life seen poorer weapons; and next he set me down to the table with a powder-horn, a bag of bullets and all the pistols, which he bade me charge. "and that will be better work, let me tell you," said he, "for a gentleman of decent birth, than scraping plates and raxing[3] drams to a wheen tarry sailors." thereupon he stood up in the midst with his face to the door, and drawing his great sword, made trial of the room he had to wield it in. "i must stick to the point," he said, shaking his head;" and that's a pity, too. it does n't set my genius, which is all for the upper guard. and, now" said he, "do you keep on charging the pistols, and give heed to me." i told him i would listen closely. my chest was tight, my mouth dry, the light dark to my eyes; the thought of the numbers that were soon to leap in upon us kept my heart in a flutter: and the sea, which i heard washing round the brig, and where i thought my dead body would be cast ere morning, ran in my mind strangely. "first of all," said he, "how many are against us?" i reckoned them up; and such was the hurry of my mind, i had to cast the numbers twice. "fifteen," said i. alan whistled. "well," said he, "that can't be cured. and now follow me. it is my part to keep this door, where i look for the main battle. in that, ye have no hand. and mind and dinnae fire to this side unless they get me down; for i would rather have ten foes in front of me than one friend like you cracking pistols at my back." i told him, indeed i was no great shot." and that, s very bravely said," he cried, in a great admiration of my candour. "there's many a pretty gentleman that wouldnae dare to say it." "but then, sir" said i, "there is the door behind you" which they may perhaps break in." "ay," said he, "and that is a part of your work. no sooner the pistols charged, than ye must climb up into yon bed where ye're handy at the window; and if they lift hand, against the door, ye're to shoot. but that's not all. let's make a bit of a soldier of ye, david. what else have ye to guard?" "there's the skylight," said i. "but indeed, mr. stewart, i would need to have eyes upon both sides to keep the two of them; for when my face is at the one, my back is to the other." "and that's very true," said alan. "but have ye no ears to your head?" "to be sure!" cried i. "i must hear the bursting of the glass!" "ye have some rudiments of sense," said alan, grimly. [1] befool [2] whig or whigamore was the cant name for those who were loyal to king george. [3] reaching. chapter x the siege of the round-house but now our time of truce was come to an end. those on deck had waited for my coming till they grew impatient; and scarce had alan spoken, when the captain showed face in the open door. "stand!" cried alan, and pointed his sword at him. the captain stood. indeed; but he neither winced nor drew back a foot. "a naked sword?" says he. "this is a strange return for hospitality." "do ye see me?" said alan. "i am come of kings; i bear a king's name. my badge is the oak. do ye see my sword? it has slashed the heads off mair whigamores than you have toes upon your feet. call up your vermin to your back, sir, and fall on! the sooner the clash begins, the sooner ye'll taste this steel throughout your vitals." the captain said nothing to alan, but he looked over at me with an ugly look. "david," said he, "i'll mind this;" and the sound of his voice went through me with a jar. next moment he was gone. "and now," said alan, "let your hand keep your head, for the grip is coming." alan drew a dirk, which he held in his left hand in case they should run in under his sword. i, on my part, clambered up into the berth with an armful of pistols and something of a heavy heart, and set open the window where i was to watch. it was a small part of the deck that i could overlook, but enough for our purpose. the sea had gone down, and the wind was steady and kept the sails quiet; so that there was a great stillness in the ship, in which i made sure i heard the sound of muttering voices. a little after, and there came a clash of steel upon the deck, by which i knew they were dealing out the cutlasses and one had been let fall; and after that, silence again. i do not know if i was what you call afraid; but my heart beat like a bird's, both quick and little; and there was a dimness came before my eyes which i continually rubbed away, and which continually returned. as for hope, i had none; but only a darkness of despair and a sort of anger against all the world that made me long to sell my life as dear as i was able. i tried to pray, i remember, but that same hurry of my mind, like a man running, would not suffer me to think upon the words; and my chief wish was to have the thing begin and be done with it. it came all of a sudden when it did, with a rush of feet and a roar, and then a shout from alan, and a sound of blows and some one crying out as if hurt. i looked back over my shoulder, and saw mr. shuan in the doorway, crossing blades with alan. "that's him that killed the boy!" i cried. "look to your window!" said alan; and as i turned back to my place, i saw him pass his sword through the mate's body. it was none too soon for me to look to my own part; for my head was scarce back at the window, before five men, carrying a spare yard for a battering-ram, ran past me and took post to drive the door in. i had never fired with a pistol in my life, and not often with a gun; far less against a fellow-creature. but it was now or never; and just as they swang the yard, i cried out: "take that!" and shot into their midst. i must have hit one of them, for he sang out and gave back a step, and the rest stopped as if a little disconcerted. before they had time to recover, i sent another ball over their heads; and at my third shot (which went as wide as the second) the whole party threw down the yard and ran for it. then i looked round again into the deck-house. the whole place was full of the smoke of my own firing, just as my ears seemed to be burst with the noise of the shots. but there was alan, standing as before; only now his sword was running blood to the hilt, and himself so swelled with triumph and fallen into so fine an attitude, that he looked to be invincible. right before him on the floor was mr. shuan, on his hands and knees; the blood was pouring from his mouth, and he was sinking slowly lower, with a terrible, white face; and just as i looked, some of those from behind caught hold of him by the heels and dragged him bodily out of the round-house. i believe he died as they were doing it. "there's one of your whigs for ye!" cried alan; and then turing to me, he asked if i had done much execution. i told him i had winged one, and thought it was the captain. "and i've settled two," says he. "no, there's not enough blood let; they'll be back again. to your watch, david. this was but a dram before meat." i settled back to my place, re-charging the three pistols i had fired, and keeping watch with both eye and ear. our enemies were disputing not far off upon the deck, and that so loudly that i could hear a word or two above the washing of the seas. "it was shuan bauchled[1] it," i heard one say. and another answered him with a "wheesht, man! he's paid the piper." after that the voices fell again into the same muttering as before. only now, one person spoke most of the time, as though laying down a plan, and first one and then another answered him briefly, like men taking orders. by this, i made sure they were coming on again, and told alan. "it's what we have to pray for," said he. "unless we can give them a good distaste of us, and done with it, there'll be nae sleep for either you or me. but this time, mind, they'll be in earnest." by this, my pistols were ready, and there was nothing to do but listen and wait. while the brush lasted, i had not the time to think if i was frighted; but now, when all was still again, my mind ran upon nothing else. the thought of the sharp swords and the cold steel was strong in me; and presently, when i began to hear stealthy steps and a brushing of men's clothes against the round-house wall, and knew they were taking their places in the dark, i could have found it in my mind to cry out aloud. all this was upon alan's side; and i had begun to think my share of the fight was at an end, when i heard some one drop softly on the roof above me. then there came a single call on the sea-pipe, and that was the signal. a knot of them made one rush of it, cutlass in hand, against the door; and at the same moment, the glass of the skylight was dashed in a thousand pieces, and a man leaped through and landed on the floor. before he got his feet, i had clapped a pistol to his back, and might have shot him, too; only at the touch of him (and him alive) my whole flesh misgave me, and i could no more pull the trigger than i could have flown. he had dropped his cutlass as he jumped, and when he felt the pistol, whipped straight round and laid hold of me, roaring out an oath; and at that either my courage came again, or i grew so much afraid as came to the same thing; for i gave a shriek and shot him in the midst of the body. he gave the most horrible, ugly groan and fell to the floor. the foot of a second fellow, whose legs were dangling through the skylight, struck me at the same time upon the head; and at that i snatched another pistol and shot this one through the thigh, so that he slipped through and tumbled in a lump on his companion's body. there was no talk of missing, any more than there was time to aim; i clapped the muzzle to the very place and fired. i might have stood and stared at them for long, but i heard alan shout as if for help, and that brought me to my senses. he had kept the door so long; but one of the seamen, while he was engaged with others, had run in under his guard and caught him about the body. alan was dirking him with his left hand, but the fellow clung like a leech. anothcr had broken in and had his cutlass raised. the door was thronged with their faces. i thought we were lost, and catching up my cutlass, fell on them in flank. but i had not time to be of help. the wrestler dropped at last; and alan, leaping back to get his distance, ran upon the others like a bull, roaring as he went. they broke before him like water, turning, and running, and falling one against another in their haste. the sword in his hands flashed like quicksilver into the huddle of our fleeing enemies; and at every flash there came the scream of a man hurt. i was still thinking we were lost, when lo! they were all gone, and alan was driving them along the deck as a sheep-dog chases sheep. yet he was no sooner out than he was back again, being as cautious as he was brave; and meanwhile the seamen continued running and crying out as if he was still behind them; and we heard them tumble one upon another into the forecastle, and clap-to the hatch upon the top. the round-house was like a shambles; three were dead inside, another lay in his death agony across the threshold; and there were alan and i victorious and unhurt. he came up to me with open arms. "come to my arms!" he cried, and embraced and kissed me hard upon both cheek. "david," said he, "i love you like a brother. and o, man," he cried in a kind of ecstasy, "am i no a bonny fighter?" thereupon he turned to the four enemies, passed his sword clean through each of them, and tumbled them out of doors one after the other. as he did so, he kept humming and singing and whistling to himself, like a man trying to recall an air; only what he was trying was to make one. all the while, the flush was in his face, and his eyes were as bright as a five-year-old child's with a new toy. and presently he sat down upon the table, sword in hand; the air that he was making all the time began to run a little clearer, and then clearer still; and then out he burst with a great voice into a gaelic song. i have translated it here, not in verse (of which i have no skill) but at least in the king's english. he sang it often afterwards, and the thing became popular; so that i have, heard it, and had it explained to me, many's the time." this is the song of the sword of alan; the smith made it, the fire set it; now it shines in the hand of alan breck. their eyes were many and bright, swift were they to behold, many the hands they guided: the sword was alone. the dun deer troop over the hill, they are many, the hill is one; the dun deer vanish, the hill remains. come to me from the hills of heather, come from the isles of the sea. o far-beholding eagles, here is your meat. now this song which he made (both words and music) in the hour of our victory, is something less than just to me, who stood beside him in the tussle. mr. shuan and five more were either killed outright or thoroughly disabled; but of these, two fell by my hand, the two that came by the skylight. four more were hurt, and of that number, one (and he not the least important) got his hurt from me. so that, altogether, i did my fair share both of the killing and the wounding, and might have claimed a place in alan's verses. but poets have to think upon their rhymes; and in good prose talk, alan always did me more than justice. in the meanwhile, i was innocent of any wrong being done me. for not only i knew no word of the gaelic; but what with the long suspense of the waiting, and the scurry and strain of our two spirts of fighting, and more than all, the horror i had of some of my own share in it, the thing was no sooner over than i was glad to stagger to a seat. there was that tightness on my chest that i could hardly breathe; the thought of the two men i had shot sat upon me like a nightmare; and all upon a sudden, and before i had a guess of what was coming, i began to sob and cry like any child. alan clapped my shoulder, and said i was a brave lad and wanted nothing but a sleep. "i'll take the first watch," said he. "ye've done well by me, david, first and last; and i wouldn't lose you for all appin -no, nor for breadalbane." so i made up my bed on the floor; and he took the first spell, pistol in hand and sword on knee, three hours by the captain's watch upon the wall. then he roused me up, and i took my turn of three hours; before the end of which it was broad day, and a very quiet morning, with a smooth, rolling sea that tossed the ship and made the blood run to and fro on the round-house floor, and a heavy rain that drummed upon the roof. all my watch there was nothing stirring; and by the banging of the helm, i knew they had even no one at the tiller. indeed (as i learned afterwards) there were so many of them hurt or dead, and the rest in so ill a temper, that mr. riach and the captain had to take turn and turn like alan and me, or the brig might have gone ashore and nobody the wiser. it was a mercy the night had fallen so still, for the wind had gone down as soon as the rain began. even as it was, i judged by the wailing of a great number of gulls that went crying and fishing round the ship, that she must have drifted pretty near the coast or one of the islands of the hebrides; and at last, looking out of the door of the round-house, i saw the great stone hills of skye on the right hand, and, a little more astern, the strange isle of rum. [1] bungled. chapter xi the captain knuckles under alan and i sat down to breakfast about six of the clock. the floor was covered with broken glass and in a horrid mess of blood, which took away my hunger. in all other ways we were in a situation not only agreeable but merry; having ousted the officers from their own cabin, and having at command all the drink in the ship -both wine and spirits -and all the dainty part of what was eatable, such as the pickles and the fine sort of bread. this, of itself, was enough to set us in good humour, but the richest part of it was this, that the two thirstiest men that ever came out of scotland (mr. shuan being dead) were now shut in the fore-part of the ship and condemned to what they hated most -cold water. "and depend upon it," alan said, "we shall hear more of them ere long. ye may keep a man from the fighting, but never from his bottle." we made good company for each other. alan, indeed, expressed himself most lovingly; and taking a knife from the table, cut me off one of the silver buttons from his coat. "i had them," says he, "from my father, duncan stewart; and now give ye one of them to be a keepsake for last night's work. and wherever ye go and show that button, the friends of alan breck will come around you." he said this as if he had been charlemagne, and commanded armies; and indeed, much as i admired his courage, i was always in danger of smiling at his vanity: in danger, i say, for had i not kept my countenance, i would be afraid to think what a quarrel might have followed. as soon as we were through with our meal he rummaged in the captain's locker till he found a clothes-brush; and then taking off his coat, began to visit his suit and brush away the stains, with such care and labour as i supposed to have been only usual with women. to be sure, he had no other; and, besides (as he said), it belonged to a king and so behoved to be royally looked after. for all that, when i saw what care he took to pluck out the threads where the button had been cut away, i put a higher value on his gift. he was still so engaged when we were hailed by mr. riach from the deck, asking for a parley; and i, climbing through the skylight and sitting on the edge of it, pistol in hand and with a bold front, though inwardly in fear of broken glass, hailed him back again and bade him speak out. he came to the edge of the round-house, and stood on a coil of rope, so that his chin was on a level with the roof; and we looked at each other awhile in silence. mr. riach, as i do not think he had been very forward in the battle, so he had got off with nothing worse than a blow upon the cheek: but he looked out of heart and very weary, having been all night afoot, either standing watch or doctoring the wounded. "this is a bad job," said he at last, shaking his head. "it was none of our choosing," said i. "the captain," says he, "would like to speak with your friend. they might speak at the window." "and how do we know what treachery he means?" cried i. "he means none, david," returned mr. riach, "and if he did, i'll tell ye the honest truth, we couldnae get the men to follow." "is that so?" said i. "i'll tell ye more than that," said he. "it's not only the men; it's me. i'm frich'ened, davie." and he smiled across at me. "no," he continued, "what we want is to be shut of him." thereupon i consulted with alan, and the parley was agreed to and parole given upon either side; but this was not the whole of mr. riach's business, and he now begged me for a dram with such instancy and such reminders of his former kindness, that at last i handed him a pannikin with about a gill of brandy. he drank a part, and then carried the rest down upon the deck, to share it (i suppose) with his superior. a little after, the captain came (as was agreed) to one of the windows, and stood there in the rain, with his arm in a sling, and looking stern and pale, and so old that my heart smote me for having fired upon him. alan at once held a pistol in his face. "put that thing up!" said the captain. "have i not passed my word, sir? or do ye seek to affront me?" "captain," says alan, "i doubt your word is a breakable. last night ye haggled and argle-bargled like an apple-wife; and then passed me your word, and gave me your hand to back it; and ye ken very well what was the upshot. be damned to your word!" says he. "well, well, sir," said the captain, "ye'll get little good by swearing." (and truly that was a fault of which the captain was quite free.) "but we have other things to speak," he continued, bitterly. "ye've made a sore hash of my brig; i haven't hands enough left to work her; and my first officer (whom i could ill spare) has got your sword throughout his vitals, and passed without speech. there is nothing left me, sir, but to put back into the port of glasgow after hands; and there (by your leave) ye will find them that are better able to talk to you." "ay?" said alan; "and faith, i'll have a talk with them mysel'! unless there's naebody speaks english in that town, i have a bonny tale for them. fifteen tarry sailors upon the one side, and a man and a halfling boy upon the other! o, man, it's peetiful!" hoseason flushed red. "no," continued alan, "that'll no do. ye'll just have to set me ashore as we agreed." "ay," said hoseason, "but my first officer is dead -ye ken best how. there's none of the rest of us acquaint with this coast" sir; and it's one very dangerous to ships." "i give ye your choice," says alan. "set me on dry ground in appin, or ardgour, or in morven, or arisaig, or morar; or, in brief, where ye please, within thirty miles of my own country; except in a country of the campbells. that's a broad target. if ye miss that, ye must be as feckless at the sailoring as i have found ye at the fighting. why, my poor country people in their bit cobles[1] pass from island to island in all weathers, ay, and by night too, for the matter of that." "a coble's not a ship" sir" said the captain. "it has nae draught of water." "well, then, to glasgow if ye list!" says alan. "we'll have the laugh of ye at the least." "my mind runs little upon laughing," said the captain. "but all this will cost money, sir." "well" sir" says alan, "i am nae weathercock. thirty guineas, if ye land me on the sea-side; and sixty, if ye put me in the linnhe loch." "but see, sir, where we lie, we are but a few hours' sail from ardnamurchan," said hoseason. "give me sixty, and i'll set ye there." "and i'm to wear my brogues and run jeopardy of the red-coats to please you?" cries alan. "no, sir; if ye want sixty guineas earn them, and set me in my own country." "it's to risk the brig, sir," said the captain, "and your own lives along with her." "take it or want it," says alan. "could ye pilot us at all?" asked the captain, who was frowning to himself. "well, it's doubtful," said alan. "i'm more of a fighting man (as ye have seen for yoursel') than a sailor-man. but i have been often enough picked up and set down upon this coast, and should ken something of the lie of it." the captain shook his head, still frowning. "if i had lost less money on this unchancy cruise," says he, "i would see you in a rope's end before i risked my brig, sir. but be it as ye will. as soon as i get a slant of wind (and there's some coming, or i'm the more mistaken) i'll put it in hand. but there's one thing more. we may meet in with a king's ship and she may lay us aboard, sir, with no blame of mine: they keep the cruisers thick upon this coast, ye ken who for. now, sir, if that was to befall, ye might leave the money." "captain," says alan, "if ye see a pennant, it shall be your part to run away. and now, as i hear you're a little short of brandy in the fore-part, i'll offer ye a change: a bottle of brandy against two buckets of water." that was the last clause of the treaty, and was duly executed on both sides; so that alan and i could at last wash out the round-house and be quit of the memorials of those whom we had slain, and the captain and mr. riach could be happy again in their own way, the name of which was drink. [1] coble: a small boat used in fishing. chapter xii i hear of the "red fox" before we had done cleaning out the round-house, a breeze sprang up from a little to the east of north. this blew off the rain and brought out the sun. and here i must explain; and the reader would do well to look at a map. on the day when the fog fell and we ran down alan's boat, we had been running through the little minch. at dawn after the battle, we lay becalmed to the east of the isle of canna or between that and isle eriska in the chain of the long island. now to get from there to the linnhe loch, the straight course was through the narrows of the sound of mull. but the captain had no chart; he was afraid to trust his brig so deep among the islands; and the wind serving well, he preferred to go by west of tiree and come up under the southern coast of the great isle of mull. all day the breeze held in the same point, and rather freshened than died down; and towards afternoon, a swell began to set in from round the outer hebrides. our course, to go round about the inner isles, was to the west of south, so that at first we had this swell upon our beam, and were much rolled about. but after nightfall, when we had turned the end of tiree and began to head more to the east, the sea came right astern. meanwhile, the early part of the day, before the swell came up, was very pleasant; sailing, as we were, in a bright sunshine and with many mountainous islands upon different sides. alan and i sat in the round-house with the doors open on each side (the wind being straight astern), and smoked a pipe or two of the captain's fine tobacco. it was at this time we heard each other's stories, which was the more important to me, as i gained some knowledge of that wild highland country on which i was so soon to land. in those days, so close on the back of the great rebellion, it was needful a man should know what he was doing when he went upon the heather. it was i that showed the example, telling him all my misfortune; which he heard with great good-nature. only, when i came to mention that good friend of mine, mr. campbell the minister, alan fired up and cried out that he hated all that were of that name. "why," said i, "he is a man you should be proud to give your hand to." "i know nothing i would help a campbell to," says he, "unless it was a leaden bullet. i would hunt all of that name like blackcocks. if i lay dying, i would crawl upon my knees to my chamber window for a shot at one." "why, alan," i cried, "what ails ye at the campbells?" "well," says he, "ye ken very well that i am an appin stewart, and the campbells have long harried and wasted those of my name; ay, and got lands of us by treachery--but never with the sword," he cried loudly, and with the word brought down his fist upon the table. but i paid the less attention to this, for i knew it was usually said by those who have the underhand. "there's more than that," he continued, "and all in the same story: lying words, lying papers, tricks fit for a peddler, and the show of what's legal over all, to make a man the more angry." "you that are so wasteful of your buttons," said i, "i can hardly think you would be a good judge of business." "ah!" says he, falling again to smiling, "i got my wastefulness from the same man i got the buttons from; and that was my poor father, duncan stewart, grace be to him! he was the prettiest man of his kindred; and the best swordsman in the hielands, david, and that is the same as to say, in all the world, i should ken, for it was him that taught me. he was in the black watch, when first it was mustered; and, like other gentlemen privates, had a gillie at his back to carry his firelock for him on the march. well, the king, it appears, was wishful to see hieland swordsmanship; and my father and three more were chosen out and sent to london town, to let him see it at the best. so they were had into the palace and showed the whole art of the sword for two hours at a stretch, before king george and queen carline, and the butcher cumberland, and many more of whom i havenae mind. and when they were through, the king (for all he was a rank usurper) spoke them fair and gave each man three guineas in his hand. now, as they were going out of the palace, they had a porter's lodge to go, by; and it came in on my father, as he was perhaps the first private hieland gentleman that had ever gone by that door, it was right he should give the poor porter a proper notion of their quality. so he gives the king's three guineas into the man's hand, as if it was his common custom; the three others that came behind him did the same; and there they were on the street, never a penny the better for their pains. some say it was one, that was the first to fee the king's porter; and some say it was another; but the truth of it is, that it was duncan stewart, as i am willing to prove with either sword or pistol. and that was the father that i had, god rest him!" "i think he was not the man to leave you rich," said i. "and that's true," said alan. "he left me my breeks to cover me, and little besides. and that was how i came to enlist, which was a black spot upon my character at the best of times, and would still be a sore job for me if i fell among the red-coats." "what," cried i, "were you in the english army?" "that was i," said alan. "but i deserted to the right side at preston pans -and that's some comfort." i could scarcely share this view: holding desertion under arms for an unpardonable fault in honour. but for all i was so young, i was wiser than say my thought. "dear, dear," says i, "the punishment is death." "ay" said he," if they got hands on me, it would be a short shrift and a lang tow for alan! but i have the king of france's commission in my pocket, which would aye be some protection." "i misdoubt it much," said i. "i have doubts mysel'," said alan drily. "and, good heaven, man," cried i, "you that are a condemned rebel, and a deserter, and a man of the french king's -what tempts ye back into this country? it's a braving of providence." "tut!" says alan, "i have been back every year since forty-six!" "and what brings ye, man?" cried i. "well, ye see, i weary for my friends and country," said he. "france is a braw place, nae doubt; but i weary for the heather and the deer. and then i have bit things that i attend to. whiles i pick up a few lads to serve the king of france: recruits, ye see; and that's aye a little money. but the heart of the matter is the business of my chief, ardshiel." "i thought they called your chief appin," said i. "ay, but ardshiel is the captain of the clan," said he, which scarcely cleared my mind. "ye see, david, he that was all his life so great a man, and come of the blood and bearing the name of kings, is now brought down to live in a french town like a poor and private person. he that had four hundred swords at his whistle, i have seen, with these eyes of mine, buying butter in the market-place, and taking it home in a kale-leaf. this is not only a pain but a disgrace to us of his family and clan. there are the bairns forby, the children and the hope of appin, that must be learned their letters and how to hold a sword, in that far country. now, the tenants of appin have to pay a rent to king george; but their hearts are staunch, they are true to their chief; and what with love and a bit of pressure, and maybe a threat or two, the poor folk scrape up a second rent for ardshiel. well, david, i'm the hand that carries it." and he struck the belt about his body, so that the guineas rang. "do they pay both?" cried i. "ay, david, both," says he. "what! two rents?" i repeated. "ay, david," said he. "i told a different tale to yon captain man; but this is the truth of it. and it's wonderful to me how little pressure is needed. but that's the handiwork of my good kinsman and my father's friend, james of the glens: james stewart, that is: ardshiel's half-brother. he it is that gets the money in, and does the management." this was the first time i heard the name of that james stewart, who was afterwards so famous at the time of his hanging. but i took little heed at the moment, for all my mind was occupied with the generosity of these poor highlanders. "i call it noble," i cried. "i'm a whig, or little better; but i call it noble." "ay" said he, "ye're a whig, but ye're a gentleman; and that's what does it. now, if ye were one of the cursed race of campbell, ye would gnash your teeth to hear tell of it. if ye were the red fox."... and at that name, his teeth shut together, and he ceased speaking. i have seen many a grim face, but never a grimmer than alan's when he had named the red fox. "and who is the red fox?" i asked, daunted, but still curious. "who is he?" cried alan. "well, and i'll tell you that. when the men of the clans were broken at culloden, and the good cause went down, and the horses rode over the fetlocks in the best blood of the north, ardshiel had to flee like a poor deer upon the mountains -he and his lady and his bairns. a sair job we had of it before we got him shipped; and while he still lay in the heather, the english rogues, that couldnae come at his life, were striking at his rights. they stripped him of his powers; they stripped him of his lands; they plucked the weapons from the hands of his clansmen, that had borne arms for thirty centuries; ay, and the very clothes off their backs -so that it's now a sin to wear a tartan plaid, and a man may be cast into a gaol if he has but a kilt about his legs. one thing they couldnae kill. that was the love the clansmen bore their chief. these guineas are the proof of it. and now, in there steps a man, a campbell, red-headed colin of glenure ----" "is that him you call the red fox?" said i. "will ye bring me his brush?" cries alan, fiercely. "ay, that's the man. in he steps, and gets papers from king george, to be so-called king's factor on the lands of appin. and at first he sings small, and is hail-fellow-well-met with sheamus that's james of the glens, my chieftain's agent. but by-and-by, that came to his ears that i have just told you; how the poor commons of appin, the farmers and the crofters and the boumen, were wringing their very plaids to get a second rent, and send it over-seas for ardshiel and his poor bairns. what was it ye called it, when i told ye?" "i called it noble, alan," said i. "and you little better than a common whig!" cries alan. "but when it came to colin roy, the black campbell blood in him ran wild. he sat gnashing his teeth at the wine table. what! should a stewart get a bite of bread, and him not be able to prevent it? ah! red fox, if ever i hold you at a gun's end, the lord have pity upon ye!" (alan stopped to swallow down his anger.) "well, david, what does he do? he declares all the farms to let. and, thinks he, in his black heart,' i'll soon get other tenants that'll overbid these stewarts, and maccolls, and macrobs' (for these are all names in my clan, david). 'and then,' thinks he, 'ardshiel will have to hold his bonnet on a french roadside.'" "well," said i, "what followed?" alan laid down his pipe, which he had long since suffered to go out, and set his two hands upon his knees. "ay," said he, "ye'll never guess that! for these same stewarts, and maccolls, and macrobs (that had two rents to pay, one to king george by stark force, and one to ardshiel by natural kindness) offered him a better price than any campbell in all broad scotland; and far he sent seeking them -as far as to the sides of clyde and the cross of edinburgh -seeking, and fleeching, and begging them to come, where there was a stewart to be starved and a red-headed hound of a campbell to be pleasured!" "well, alan," said i, "that is a strange story, and a fine one, too. and whig as i may be, i am glad the man was beaten." "him beaten?" echoed alan. "it's little ye ken of campbells, and less of the red fox. him beaten? no: nor will be, till his blood's on the hillside! but if the day comes, david man, that i can find time and leisure for a bit of hunting, there grows not enough heather in all scotland to hide him from my vengeance!" "man alan," said i, "ye are neither very wise nor very christian to blow off so many words of anger. they will do the man ye call the fox no harm, and yourself no good. tell me your tale plainly out. what did he next?" "and that's a good observe, david," said alan. "troth and indeed, they will do him no harm; the more's the pity! and barring that about christianity (of which my opinion is quite otherwise, or i would be nae christian), i am much of your mind." "opinion here or opinion there," said i, "it's a kent thing that christianity forbids revenge." "ay" said he, "it's well seen it was a campbell taught ye! it would be a convenient world for them and their sort, if there was no such a thing as a lad and a gun behind a heather bush! but that's nothing to the point. this is what he did." "ay" said i, "come to that." "well, david," said he, "since he couldnae be rid of the loyal commons by fair means, he swore he would be rid of them by foul. ardshiel was to starve: that was the thing he aimed at. and since them that fed him in his exile wouldnae be bought out -right or wrong, he would drive them out. therefore he sent for lawyers, and papers, and red-coats to stand at his back. and the kindly folk of that country must all pack and tramp, every father's son out of his father's house, and out of the place where he was bred and fed, and played when he was a callant. and who are to succeed them? bare-leggit beggars! king george is to whistle for his rents; he maun dow with less; he can spread his butter thinner: what cares red colin? if he can hurt ardshiel, he has his wish; if he can pluck the meat from my chieftain's table, and the bit toys out of his children's hands, he will gang hame singing to glenure!" "let me have a word," said i. "be sure, if they take less rents, be sure government has a finger in the pie. it's not this campbell's fault, man -it's his orders. and if ye killed this colin to-morrow, what better would ye be? there would be another factor in his shoes, as fast as spur can drive." "ye're a good lad in a fight," said alan; "but, man! ye have whig blood in ye!" he spoke kindly enough, but there was so much anger under his contempt that i thought it was wise to change the conversation. i expressed my wonder how, with the highlands covered with troops, and guarded like a city in a siege, a man in his situation could come and go without arrest. "it's easier than ye would think," said alan. "a bare hillside (ye see) is like all one road; if there's a sentry at one place, ye just go by another. and then the heather's a great help. and everywhere there are friends' houses and friends' byres and haystacks. and besides, when folk talk of a country covered with troops, it's but a kind of a byword at the best. a soldier covers nae mair of it than his boot-soles. i have fished a water with a sentry on the other side of the brae, and killed a fine trout; and i have sat in a heather bush within six feet of another, and learned a real bonny tune from his whistling. this was it," said he, and whistled me the air." and then, besides," he continued, "it's no sae bad now as it was in forty-six. the hielands are what they call pacified. small wonder, with never a gun or a sword left from cantyre to cape wrath, but what tenty[1] folk have hidden in their thatch! but what i would like to ken, david, is just how long? not long, ye would think, with men like ardshiel in exile and men like the red fox sitting birling the wine and oppressing the poor at home. but it's a kittle thing to decide what folk'll bear, and what they will not. or why would red colin be riding his horse all over my poor country of appin, and never a pretty lad to put a bullet in him?" and with this alan fell into a muse, and for a long time sate very sad and silent. i will add the rest of what i have to say about my friend, that he was skilled in all kinds of music, but principally pipemusic; was a well-considered poet in his own tongue; had read several books both in french and english; was a dead shot, a good angler, and an excellent fencer with the small sword as well as with his own particular weapon. for his faults, they were on his face, and i now knew them all. but the worst of them, his childish propensity to take offence and to pick quarrels, he greatly laid aside in my case, out of regard for the battle of the round-house. but whether it was because i had done well myself, or because i had been a witness of his own much greater prowess, is more than i can tell. for though he had a great taste for courage in other men, yet he admired it most in alan breck. [1] careful chapter xiii the loss of the brig it was already late at night, and as dark as it ever would be at that season of the year (and that is to say, it was still pretty bright), when hoseason clapped his head into the round-house door. "here," said he, "come out and see if ye can pilot." "is this one of your tricks?" asked alan. "do i look like tricks?" cries the captain. "i have other things to think of -my brig's in danger!" by the concerned look of his face, and, above all, by the sharp tones in which he spoke of his brig, it was plain to both of us he was in deadly earnest; and so alan and i, with no great fear of treachery, stepped on deck. the sky was clear; it blew hard, and was bitter cold; a great deal of daylight lingered; and the moon, which was nearly full, shone brightly. the brig was close hauled, so as to round the southwest corner of the island of mull, the hills of which (and ben more above them all, with a wisp of mist upon the top of it) lay full upon the larboard bow. though it was no good point of sailing for the covenant, she tore through the seas at a great rate, pitching and straining, and pursued by the westerly swell. altogether it was no such ill night to keep the seas in; and i had begun to wonder what it was that sat so heavily upon the captain, when the brig rising suddenly on the top of a high swell, he pointed and cried to us to look. away on the lee bow, a thing like a fountain rose out of the moonlit sea, and immediately after we heard a low sound of roaring. "what do ye call that?" asked the captain, gloomily. "the sea breaking on a reef," said alan. "and now ye ken where it is; and what better would ye have?" "ay," said hoseason, "if it was the only one." and sure enough, just as he spoke there came a second fountain farther to the south. "there!" said hoseason. "ye see for yourself. if i had kent of these reefs, if i had had a chart, or if shuan had been spared, it's not sixty guineas, no, nor six hundred, would have made me risk my brig in sic a stoneyard! but you, sir, that was to pilot us, have ye never a word?" "i'm thinking," said alan, "these'll be what they call the torran rocks." "are there many of them?" says the captain. "truly, sir, i am nae pilot," said alan; "but it sticks in my mind there are ten miles of them." mr. riach and the captain looked at each other. "there's a way through them, i suppose?" said the captain. "doubtless," said alan, "but where? but it somehow runs in my mind once more that it is clearer under the land." "so?" said hoseason. "we'll have to haul our wind then, mr. riach; we'll have to come as near in about the end of mull as we can take her, sir; and even then we'll have the land to kep the wind off us, and that stoneyard on our lee. well, we're in for it now, and may as well crack on." with that he gave an order to the steersman, and sent riach to the foretop. there were only five men on deck, counting the officers; these being all that were fit (or, at least, both fit and willing) for their work. so, as i say, it fell to mr. riach to go aloft, and he sat there looking out and hailing the deck with news of all he saw. "the sea to the south is thick," he cried; and then, after a while, "it does seem clearer in by the land." "well, sir," said hoseason to alan, "we'll try your way of it. but i think i might as well trust to a blind fiddler. pray god you're right." "pray god i am!" says alan to me. "but where did i hear it? well, well, it will be as it must." as we got nearer to the turn of the land the reefs began to be sown here and there on our very path; and mr. riach sometimes cried down to us to change the course. sometimes, indeed, none too soon; for one reef was so close on the brig's weather board that when a sea burst upon it the lighter sprays fell upon her deck and wetted us like rain. the brightness of the night showed us these perils as clearly as by day, which was, perhaps, the more alarming. it showed me, too, the face of the captain as he stood by the steersman, now on one foot, now on the other, and sometimes blowing in his hands, but still listening and looking and as steady as steel. neither he nor mr. riach had shown well in the fighting; but i saw they were brave in their own trade, and admired them all the more because i found alan very white. "ochone, david," says he, "this is no the kind of death i fancy!" "what, alan!" i cried, "you're not afraid?" "no," said he, wetting his lips, "but you'll allow, yourself, it's a cold ending." by this time, now and then sheering to one side or the other to avoid a reef, but still hugging the wind and the land, we had got round iona and begun to come alongside mull. the tide at the tail of the land ran very strong, and threw the brig about. two hands were put to the helm, and hoseason himself would sometimes lend a help; and it was strange to see three strong men throw their weight upon the tiller, and it (like a living thing) struggle against and drive them back. this would have been the greater danger had not the sea been for some while free of obstacles. mr. riach, besides, announced from the top that he saw clear water ahead. "ye were right," said hoseason to alan. "ye have saved the brig, sir. i'll mind that when we come to clear accounts." and i believe he not only meant what he said, but would have done it; so high a place did the covenant hold in his affections. but this is matter only for conjecture, things having gone otherwise than he forecast. "keep her away a point," sings out mr. riach. "reef to windward!" and just at the same time the tide caught the brig, and threw the wind out of her sails. she came round into the wind like a top, and the next moment struck the reef with such a dunch as threw us all flat upon the deck, and came near to shake mr. riach from his place upon the mast. i was on my feet in a minute. the reef on which we had struck was close in under the southwest end of mull, off a little isle they call earraid, which lay low and black upon the larboard. sometimes the swell broke clean over us; sometimes it only ground the poor brig upon the reef, so that we could hear her beat herself to pieces; and what with the great noise of the sails, and the singing of the wind, and the flying of the spray in the moonlight, and the sense of danger, i think my head must have been partly turned, for i could scarcely understand the things i saw. presently i observed mr. riach and the seamen busy round the skiff, and, still in the same blank, ran over to assist them; and as soon as i set my hand to work, my mind came clear again. it was no very easy task, for the skiff lay amidships and was full of hamper, and the breaking of the heavier seas continually forced us to give over and hold on; but we all wrought like horses while we could. meanwhile such of the wounded as could move came clambering out of the fore-scuttle and began to help; while the rest that lay helpless in their bunks harrowed me with screaming and begging to be saved. the captain took no part. it seemed he was struck stupid. he stood holding by the shrouds, talking to himself and groaning out aloud whenever the ship hammered on the rock. his brig was like wife and child to him; he had looked on, day by day, at the mishandling of poor ransome; but when it came to the brig, he seemed to suffer along with her. all the time of our working at the boat, i remember only one other thing: that i asked alan, looking across at the shore, what country it was; and he answered, it was the worst possible for him, for it was a land of the campbells. we had one of the wounded men told off to keep a watch upon the seas and cry us warning. well, we had the boat about ready to be launched, when this man sang out pretty shrill: "for god's sake, hold on!" we knew by his tone that it was someting more than ordinary; and sure enough, there followed a sea so huge that it lifted the brig right up and canted her over on her beam. whether the cry came too late, or my hold was too weak, i know not; but at the sudden tilting of the ship i was cast clean over the bulwarks into the sea. i went down, and drank my fill, and then came up, and got a blink of the moon, and then down again. they say a man sinks a third time for good. i cannot be made like other folk, then; for i would not like to write how often i went down, or how often i came up again. all the while, i was being hurled along, and beaten upon and choked, and then swallowed whole; and the thing was so distracting to my wits, that i was neither sorry nor afraid. presently, i found i was holding to a spar, which helped me somewhat. and then all of a sudden i was in quiet water, and began to come to myself. it was the spare yard i had got hold of, and i was amazed to see how far i had travelled from the brig. i hailed her, indeed; but it was plain she was already out of cry. she was still holding together; but whether or not they had yet launched the boat, i was too far off and too low down to see. while i was hailing the brig, i spied a tract of water lying between us where no great waves came, but which yet boiled white all over and bristled in the moon with rings and bubbles. sometimes the whole tract swung to one side, like the tail of a live serpent; sometimes, for a glimpse, it would all disappear and then boil up again. what it was i had no guess, which for the time increased my fear of it; but i now know it must have been the roost or tide race, which had carried me away so fast and tumbled me about so cruelly, and at last, as if tired of that play, had flung out me and the spare yard upon its landward margin. i now lay quite becalmed, and began to feel that a man can die of cold as well as of drowning. the shores of earraid were close in; i could see in the moonlight the dots of heather and the sparkling of the mica in the rocks. "well," thought i to myself, "if i cannot get as far as that, it's strange!" i had no skill of swimming, essen water being small in our neighbourhood; but when i laid hold upon the yard with both arms, and kicked out with both feet, i soon begun to find that i was moving. hard work it was, and mortally slow; but in about an hour of kicking and splashing, i had got well in between the points of a sandy bay surrounded by low hills. the sea was here quite quiet; there was no sound of any surf; the moon shone clear; and i thought in my heart i had never seen a place so desert and desolate. but it was dry land; and when at last it grew so shallow that i could leave the yard and wade ashore upon my feet, i cannot tell if i was more tired or more grateful. both, at least, i was: tired as i never was before that night; and grateful to god as i trust i have been often, though never with more cause. chapter xiv the islet with my stepping ashore i began the most unhappy part of my adventures. it was half-past twelve in the morning, and though the wind was broken by the land, it was a cold night. i dared not sit down (for i thought i should have frozen), but took off my shoes and walked to and fro upon the sand, bare-foot, and beating my breast with infinite weariness. there was no sound of man or cattle; not a cock crew, though it was about the hour of their first waking; only the surf broke outside in the distance, which put me in mind of my perils and those of my friend. to walk by the sea at that hour of the morning, and in a place so desert-like and lonesome, struck me with a kind of fear. as soon as the day began to break i put on my shoes and climbed a hill -the ruggedest scramble i ever undertook-falling, the whole way, between big blocks of granite, or leaping from one to another. when i got to the top the dawn was come. there was no sign of the brig, which must have lifted from the reef and sunk. the boat, too, was nowhere to be seen. there was never a sail upon the ocean; and in what i could see of the land was neither house nor man. i was afraid to think what had befallen my shipmates, and afraid to look longer at so empty a scene. what with my wet clothes and weariness, and my belly that now began to ache with hunger, i had enough to trouble me without that. so i set off eastward along the south coast, hoping to find a house where i might warm myself, and perhaps get news of those i had lost. and at the worst, i considered the sun would soon rise and dry my clothes. after a little, my way was stopped by a creek or inlet of the sea, which seemed to run pretty deep into the land; and as i had no means to get across, i must needs change my direction to go about the end of it. it was still the roughest kind of walking; indeed the whole, not only of earraid, but of the neighbouring part of mull (which they call the ross) is nothing but a jumble of granite rocks with heather in among. at first the creek kept narrowing as i had looked to see; but presently to my surprise it began to widen out again. at this i scratched my head, but had still no notion of the truth: until at last i came to a rising ground, and it burst upon me all in a moment that i was cast upon a little barren isle, and cut off on every side by the salt seas. instead of the sun rising to dry me, it came on to rain, with a thick mist; so that my case was lamentable. i stood in the rain, and shivered, and wondered what to do, till it occurred to me that perhaps the creek was fordable. back i went to the narrowest point and waded in. but not three yards from shore, i plumped in head over ears; and if ever i was heard of more, it was rather by god's grace than my own prudence. i was no wetter (for that could hardly be), but i was all the colder for this mishap; and having lost another hope was the more unhappy. and now, all at once, the yard came in my head. what had carried me through the roost would surely serve me to cross this little quiet creek in safety. with that i set off, undaunted, across the top of the isle, to fetch and carry it back. it was a weary tramp in all ways, and if hope had not buoyed me up, i must have cast myself down and given up. whether with the sea salt, or because i was growing fevered, i was distressed with thirst, and had to stop, as i went, and drink the peaty water out of the hags. i came to the bay at last, more dead than alive; and at the first glance, i thought the yard was something farther out than when i left it. in i went, for the third time, into the sea. the sand was smooth and firm, and shelved gradually down, so that i could wade out till the water was almost to my neck and the little waves splashed into my face. but at that depth my feet began to leave me, and i durst venture in no farther. as for the yard, i saw it bobbing very quietly some twenty feet beyond. i had borne up well until this last disappointment; but at that i came ashore, and flung myself down upon the sands and wept. the time i spent upon the island is still so horrible a thought to me, that i must pass it lightly over. in all the books i have read of people cast away, they had either their pockets full of tools, or a chest of things would be thrown upon the beach along with them, as if on purpose. my case was very different. i had nothing in my pockets but money and alan's silver button; and being inland bred, i was as much short of knowledge as of means. i knew indeed that shell-fish were counted good to eat; and among the rocks of the isle i found a great plenty of limpets, which at first i could scarcely strike from their places, not knowing quickness to be needful. there were, besides, some of the little shells that we call buckies; i think periwinkle is the english name. of these two i made my whole diet, devouring them cold and raw as i found them; and so hungry was i, that at first they seemed to me delicious. perhaps they were out of season, or perhaps there was something wrong in the sea about my island. but at least i had no sooner eaten my first meal than i was seized with giddiness and retching, and lay for a long time no better than dead. a second trial of the same food (indeed i had no other) did better with me, and revived my strength. but as long as i was on the island, i never knew what to expect when i had eaten; sometimes all was well, and sometimes i was thrown into a miserable sickness; nor could i ever distinguish what particular fish it was that hurt me. all day it streamed rain; the island ran like a sop, there was no dry spot to be found; and when i lay down that night, between two boulders that made a kind of roof, my feet were in a bog. the second day i crossed the island to all sides. there was no one part of it better than another; it was all desolate and rocky; nothing living on it but game birds which i lacked the means to kill, and the gulls which haunted the outlying rocks in a prodigious number. but the creek, or strait, that cut off the isle from the main-land of the ross, opened out on the north into a bay, and the bay again opened into the sound of iona; and it was the neighbourhood of this place that i chose to be my home; though if i had thought upon the very name of home in such a spot, i must have burst out weeping. i had good reasons for my choice. there was in this part of the isle a little hut of a house like a pig's hut, where fishers used to sleep when they came there upon their business; but the turf roof of it had fallen entirely in; so that the hut was of no use to me, and gave me less shelter than my rocks. what was more important, the shell-fish on which i lived grew there in great plenty; when the tide was out i could gather a peck at a time: and this was doubtless a convenience. but the other reason went deeper. i had become in no way used to the horrid solitude of the isle, but still looked round me on all sides (like a man that was hunted), between fear and hope that i might see some human creature coming. now, from a little up the hillside over the bay, i could catch a sight of the great, ancient church and the roofs of the people's houses in iona. and on the other hand, over the low country of the ross, i saw smoke go up, morning and evening, as if from a homestead in a hollow of the land. i used to watch this smoke, when i was wet and cold, and had my head half turned with loneliness; and think of the fireside and the company, till my heart burned. it was the same with the roofs of iona. altogether, this sight i had of men's homes and comfortable lives, although it put a point on my own sufferings, yet it kept hope alive, and helped me to eat my raw shell-fish (which had soon grown to be a disgust), and saved me from the sense of horror i had whenever i was quite alone with dead rocks, and fowls, and the rain, and the cold sea. i say it kept hope alive; and indeed it seemed impossible that i should be left to die on the shores of my own country, and within view of a church-tower and the smoke of men's houses. but the second day passed; and though as long as the light lasted i kept a bright look-out for boats on the sound or men passing on the ross, no help came near me. it still rained, and i turned in to sleep, as wet as ever, and with a cruel sore throat, but a little comforted, perhaps, by having said good-night to my next neighbours, the people of iona. charles the second declared a man could stay outdoors more days in the year in the climate of england than in any other. this was very like a king, with a palace at his back and changes of dry clothes. but he must have had better luck on his flight from worcester than i had on that miserable isle. it was the height of the summer; yet it rained for more than twenty-four hours, and did not clear until the afternoon of the third day. this was the day of incidents. in the morning i saw a red deer, a buck with a fine spread of antlers, standing in the rain on the top of the island; but he had scarce seen me rise from under my rock, before he trotted off upon the other side. i supposed he must have swum the strait; though what should bring any creature to earraid, was more than i could fancy. a little after, as i was jumping about after my limpets, i was startled by a guinea-piece, which fell upon a rock in front of me and glanced off into the sea. when the sailors gave me my money again, they kept back not only about a third of the whole sum, but my father's leather purse; so that from that day out, i carried my gold loose in a pocket with a button. i now saw there must be a hole, and clapped my hand to the place in a great hurry. but this was to lock the stable door after the steed was stolen. i had left the shore at queensferry with near on fifty pounds; now i found no more than two guinea-pieces and a silver shilling. it is true i picked up a third guinea a little after, where it lay shining on a piece of turf. that made a fortune of three pounds and four shillings, english money, for a lad, the rightful heir of an estate, and now starving on an isle at the extreme end of the wild highlands. this state of my affairs dashed me still further; and, indeed my plight on that third morning was truly pitiful. my clothes were beginning to rot; my stockings in particular were quite worn through, so that my shanks went naked; my hands had grown quite soft with the continual soaking; my throat was very sore, my strength had much abated, and my heart so turned against the horrid stuff i was condemned to eat, that the very sight of it came near to sicken me. and yet the worst was not yet come. there is a pretty high rock on the northwest of earraid, which (because it had a flat top and overlooked the sound) i was much in the habit of frequenting; not that ever i stayed in one place, save when asleep, my misery giving me no rest. indeed, i wore myself down with continual and aimless goings and comings in the rain. as soon, however, as the sun came out, i lay down on the top of that rock to dry myself. the comfort of the sunshine is a thing i cannot tell. it set me thinking hopefully of my deliverance, of which i had begun to despair; and i scanned the sea and the ross with a fresh interest. on the south of my rock, a part of the island jutted out and hid the open ocean, so that a boat could thus come quite near me upon that side, and i be none the wiser. well, all of a sudden, a coble with a brown sail and a pair of fishers aboard of it, came flying round that corner of the isle, bound for iona. i shouted out, and then fell on my knees on the rock and reached up my hands and prayed to them. they were near enough to hear -i could even see the colour of their hair; and there was no doubt but they observed me, for they cried out in the gaelic tongue, and laughed. but the boat never turned aside, and flew on, right before my eyes, for iona. i could not believe such wickedness, and ran along the shore from rock to rock, crying on them piteously. even after they were out of reach of my voice, i still cried and waved to them; and when they were quite gone, i thought my heart would have burst. all the time of my troubles i wept only twice. once, when i could not reach the yard, and now, the second time, when these fishers turned a deaf ear to my cries. but this time i wept and roared like a wicked child, tearing up the turf with my nails, and grinding my face in the earth. if a wish would kill men, those two fishers would never have seen morning, and i should likely have died upon my island. when i was a little over my anger, i must eat again, but with such loathing of the mess as i could now scarce control. sure enough, i should have done as well to fast, for my fishes poisoned me again. i had all my first pains; my throat was so sore i could scarce swallow; i had a fit of strong shuddering, which clucked my teeth together; and there came on me that dreadful sense of illness, which we have no name for either in scotch or english. i thought i should have died, and made my peace with god, forgiving all men, even my uncle and the fishers; and as soon as i had thus made up my mind to the worst, clearness came upon me; i observed the night was falling dry; my clothes were dried a good deal; truly, i was in a better case than ever before, since i had landed on the isle; and so i got to sleep at last, with a thought of gratitude. the next day (which was the fourth of this horrible life of mine) i found my bodily strength run very low. but the sun shone, the air was sweet, and what i managed to eat of the shell-fish agreed well with me and revived my courage. i was scarce back on my rock (where i went always the first thing after i had eaten) before i observed a boat coming down the sound, and with her head, as i thought, in my direction. i began at once to hope and fear exceedingly; for i thought these men might have thought better of their cruelty and be coming back to my assistance. but another disappointment, such as yesterday's, was more than i could bear. i turned my back, accordingly, upon the sea, and did not look again till i had counted many hundreds. the boat was still heading for the island. the next time i counted the full thousand, as slowly as i could, my heart beating so as to hurt me. and then it was out of all question. she was coming straight to earraid! i could no longer hold myself back, but ran to the seaside and out, from one rock to another, as far as i could go. it is a marvel i was not drowned; for when i was brought to a stand at last, my legs shook under me, and my mouth was so dry, i must wet it with the sea-water before i was able to shout. all this time the boat was coming on; and now i was able to perceive it was the same boat and the same two men as yesterday. this i knew by their hair, which the one had of a bright yellow and the other black. but now there was a third man along with them, who looked to be of a better class. as soon as they were come within easy speech, they let down their sail and lay quiet. in spite of my supplications, they drew no nearer in, and what frightened me most of all, the new man tee-hee'd with laughter as he talked and looked at me. then he stood up in the boat and addressed me a long while, speaking fast and with many wavings of his hand. i told him i had no gaelic; and at this he became very angry, and i began to suspect he thought he was talking english. listening very close, i caught the word "whateffer" several times; but all the rest was gaelic and might have been greek and hebrew for me. "whatever," said i, to show him i had caught a word. "yes, yes -yes, yes," says he, and then he looked at the other men, as much as to say, "i told you i spoke english," and began again as hard as ever in the gaelic. this time i picked out another word, "tide." then i had a flash of hope. i remembered he was always waving his hand towards the mainland of the ross. "do you mean when the tide is out --?" i cried, and could not finish. "yes, yes," said he. "tide." at that i turned tail upon their boat (where my adviser had once more begun to tee-hee with laughter), leaped back the way i had come, from one stone to another, and set off running across the isle as i had never run before. in about half an hour i came out upon the shores of the creek; and, sure enough, it was shrunk into a little trickle of water, through which i dashed, not above my knees, and landed with a shout on the main island. a sea-bred boy would not have stayed a day on earraid; which is only what they call a tidal islet, and except in the bottom of the neaps, can be entered and left twice in every twenty-four hours, either dry-shod, or at the most by wading. even i, who had the tide going out and in before me in the bay, and even watchcd for the ebbs, the better to get my shellfish -even i (i say) if i had sat down to think, instead of raging at my fate, must have soon guessed the secret, and got free. it was no wonder the fishers had not understood me. the wonder was rather that they had ever guessed my pitiful illusion, and taken the trouble to come back. i had starved with cold and hunger on that island for close upon one hundred hours. but for the fishers, i might have left my bones there, in pure folly. and even as it was, i had paid for it pretty dear, not only in past sufferings, but in my present case; being clothed like a beggar-man, scarce able to walk, and in great pain of my sore throat. i have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and i believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first. chapter xv the lad with the silver button: through the isle of mull the ross of mull, which i had now got upon, was rugged and trackless, like the isle i had just left; being all bog, and brier, and big stone. there may be roads for them that know that country well; but for my part i had no better guide than my own nose, and no other landmark than ben more. i aimed as well as i could for the smoke i had seen so often from the island; and with all my great weariness and the difficulty of the way came upon the house in the bottom of a little hollow about five or six at night. it was low and longish, roofed with turf and built of unmortared stones; and on a mound in front of it, an old gentleman sat smoking his pipe in the sun. with what little english he had, he gave me to understand that my shipmates had got safe ashore, and had broken bread in that very house on the day after. "was there one," i asked, "dressed like a gentleman?" he said they all wore rough great-coats; but to be sure, the first of them, the one that came alone, wore breeches and stockings, while the rest had sailors' trousers. "ah," said i, "and he would have a feathered hat?" he told me, no, that he was bareheaded like myself. at first i thought alan might have lost his hat; and then the rain came in my mind, and i judged it more likely he had it out of harm's way under his great-coat. this set me smiling, partly because my friend was safe, partly to think of his vanity in dress. and then the old gentleman clapped his hand to his brow, and cried out that i must be the lad with the silver button. "why, yes!" said i, in some wonder. "well, then," said the old gentleman, "i have a word for you, that you are to follow your friend to his country, by torosay." he then asked me how i had fared, and i told him my tale. a south-country man would certainly have laughed; but this old gentleman (i call him so because of his manners, for his clothes were dropping off his back) heard me all through with nothing but gravity and pity. when i had done, he took me by the hand, led me into his hut (it was no better) and presented me before his wife, as if she had been the queen and i a duke. the good woman set oat-bread before me and a cold grouse, patting my shoulder and smiling to me all the time, for she had no english; and the old gentleman (not to be behind) brewed me a strong punch out of their country spirit. all the while i was eating, and after that when i was drinking the punch, i could scarce come to believe in my good fortune; and the house, though it was thick with the peat-smoke and as full of holes as a colander, seemed like a palace. the punch threw me in a strong sweat and a deep slumber; the good people let me lie; and it was near noon of the next day before i took the road, my throat already easier and my spirits quite restored by good fare and good news. the old gentleman, although i pressed him hard, would take no money, and gave me an old bonnet for my head; though i am free to own i was no sooner out of view of the house than i very jealously washed this gift of his in a wayside fountain. thought i to myself: "if these are the wild highlanders, i could wish my own folk wilder." i not only started late, but i must have wandered nearly half the time. true, i met plenty of people, grubbing in little miserable fields that would not keep a cat, or herding little kine about the bigness of asses. the highland dress being forbidden by law since the rebellion, and the people condemned to the lowland habit, which they much disliked, it was strange to see the variety of their array. some went bare, only for a hanging cloak or great-coat, and carried their trousers on their backs like a useless burthen: some had made an imitation of the tartan with little parti-coloured stripes patched together like an old wife's quilt; others, again, still wore the highland philabeg, but by putting a few stitches between the legs transformed it into a pair of trousers like a dutchman's. all those makeshifts were condemned and punished, for the law was harshly applied, in hopes to break up the clan spirit; but in that out-of-the-way, sea-bound isle, there were few to make remarks and fewer to tell tales. they seemed in great poverty; which was no doubt natural, now that rapine was put down, and the chiefs kept no longer an open house; and the roads (even such a wandering, country by-track as the one i followed) were infested with beggars. and here again i marked a difference from my own part of the country. for our lowland beggars -even the gownsmen themselves, who beg by patent -had a louting, flattering way with them, and if you gave them a plaek and asked change, would very civilly return you a boddle. but these highland beggars stood on their dignity, asked alms only to buy snuff (by their account) and would give no change. to be sure, this was no concern of mine, except in so far as it entertained me by the way. what was much more to the purpose, few had any english, and these few (unless they were of the brotherhood of beggars) not very anxious to place it at my service. i knew torosay to be my destination, and repeated the name to them and pointed; but instead of simply pointing in reply, they would give me a screed of the gaelic that set me foolish; so it was small wonder if i went out of my road as often as i stayed in it. at last, about eight at night, and already very weary, i came to a lone house, where i asked admittance, and was refused, until i bethought me of the power of money in so poor a country, and held up one of my guineas in my finger and thumb. thereupon, the man of the house, who had hitherto pretended to have no english, and driven me from his door by signals, suddenly began to speak as clearly as was needful, and agreed for five shillings to give me a night's lodging and guide me the next day to torosay. i slept uneasily that night, fearing i should be robbed; but i might have spared myself the pain; for my host was no robber, only miserably poor and a great cheat. he was not alone in his poverty; for the next morning, we must go five miles about to the house of what he called a rich man to have one of my guineas changed. this was perhaps a rich man for mull; he would have scarce been thought so in the south; for it took all he had -the whole house was turned upside down, and a neighbour brought under contribution, before he could scrape together twenty shillings in silver. the odd shilling he kept for himself, protesting he could ill afford to have so great a sum of money lying "locked up." for all that he was very courteous and well spoken, made us both sit down with his family to dinner, and brewed punch in a fine china bowl, over which my rascal guide grew so merry that he refused to start. i was for getting angry, and appealed to the rich man (hector maclean was his name), who had been a witness to our bargain and to my payment of the five shillings. but maclean had taken his share of the punch, and vowed that no gentleman should leave his table after the bowl was brewed; so there was nothing for it but to sit and hear jacobite toasts and gaelic songs, till all were tipsy and staggered off to the bed or the barn for their night's rest. next day (the fourth of my travels) we were up before five upon the clock; but my rascal guide got to the bottle at once, and it was three hours before i had him clear of the house, and then (as you shall hear) only for a worse disappointment. as long as we went down a heathery valley that lay before mr. maclean's house, all went well; only my guide looked constantly over his shoulder, and when i asked him the cause, only grinned at me. no sooner, however, had we crossed the back of a hill, and got out of sight of the house windows, than he told me torosay lay right in front, and that a hill-top (which he pointed out) was my best landmark. "i care very little for that," said i, "since you are going with me." the impudent cheat answered me in the gaelic that he had no english. "my fine fellow," i said, "i know very well your english comes and goes. tell me what will bring it back? is it more money you wish?" "five shillings mair," said he, "and hersel' will bring ye there." i reflected awhile and then offered him two, which he accepted greedily, and insisted on having in his hands at once "for luck," as he said, but i think it was rather for my misfortune. the two shillings carried him not quite as many miles; at the end of which distance, he sat down upon the wayside and took off his brogues from his feet, like a man about to rest. i was now red-hot. "ha!" said i, "have you no more english?" he said impudently, "no." at that i boiled over, and lifted my hand to strike him; and he, drawing a knife from his rags, squatted back and grinned at me like a wildcat. at that, forgetting everything but my anger, i ran in upon him, put aside his knife with my left, and struck him in the mouth with the right. i was a strong lad and very angry, and he but a little man; and he went down before me heavily. by good luck, his knife flew out of his hand as he fell. i picked up both that and his brogues, wished him a good morning, and set off upon my way, leaving him barefoot and disarmed. i chuckled to myself as i went, being sure i was done with that rogue, for a variety of reasons. first, he knew he could have no more of my money; next, the brogues were worth in that country only a few pence; and, lastly, the knife, which was really a dagger, it was against the law for him to carry. in about half an hour of walk, i overtook a great, ragged man, moving pretty fast but feeling before him with a staff. he was quite blind, and told me he was a catechist, which should have put me at my ease. but his face went against me; it seemed dark and dangerous and secret; and presently, as we began to go on alongside, i saw the steel butt of a pistol sticking from under the flap of his coat-pocket. to carry such a thing meant a fine of fifteen pounds sterling upon a first offence, and transportation to the colonies upon a second. nor could i quite see why a religious teacher should go armed, or what a blind man could be doing with a pistol. i told him about my guide, for i was proud of what i had done, and my vanity for once got the heels of my prudence. at the mention of the five shillings he cried out so loud that i made up my mind i should say nothing of the other two, and was glad he could not see my blushes. "was it too much?" i asked, a little faltering. "too much!" cries he. "why, i will guide you to torosay myself for a dram of brandy. and give you the great pleasure of my company (me that is a man of some learning) in the bargain." i said i did not see how a blind man could be a guide; but at that he laughed aloud, and said his stick was eyes enough for an eagle. "in the isle of mull, at least," says he, "where i know every stone and heather-bush by mark of head. see, now," he said, striking right and left, as if to make sure, "down there a burn is running; and at the head of it there stands a bit of a small hill with a stone cocked upon the top of that; and it's hard at the foot of the hill, that the way runs by to torosay; and the way here, being for droves, is plainly trodden, and will show grassy through the heather." i had to own he was right in every feature, and told my wonder. "ha!" says he, "that's nothing. would ye believe me now, that before the act came out, and when there were weepons in this country, i could shoot? ay, could i!" cries he, and then with a leer: "if ye had such a thing as a pistol here to try with, i would show ye how it's done." i told him i had nothing of the sort, and gave him a wider berth. if he had known, his pistol stuck at that time quite plainly out of his pocket, and i could see the sun twinkle on the steel of the butt. but by the better luck for me, he knew nothing, thought all was covered, and lied on in the dark. he then began to question me cunningly, where i came from, whether i was rich, whether i could change a five-shilling piece for him (which he declared he had that moment in his sporran), and all the time he kept edging up to me and i avoiding him. we were now upon a sort of green cattle-track which crossed the hills towards torosay, and we kept changing sides upon that like dancers in a reel. i had so plainly the upper-hand that my spirits rose, and indeed i took a pleasure in this game of blindman's buff; but the catechist grew angrier and angrier, and at last began to swear in gaelic and to strike for my legs with his staff. then i told him that, sure enough, i had a pistol in my pocket as well as he, and if he did not strike across the hill due south i would even blow his brains out. he became at once very polite, and after trying to soften me for some time, but quite in vain, he cursed me once more in gaelic and took himself off. i watched him striding along, through bog and brier, tapping with his stick, until he turned the end of a hill and disappeared in the next hollow. then i struck on again for torosay, much better pleased to be alone than to travel with that man of learning. this was an unlucky day; and these two, of whom i had just rid myself, one after the other, were the two worst men i met with in the highlands. at torosay, on the sound of mull and looking over to the mainland of morven, there was an inn with an innkeeper, who was a maclean, it appeared, of a very high family; for to keep an inn is thought even more genteel in the highlands than it is with us, perhaps as partaking of hospitality, or perhaps because the trade is idle and drunken. he spoke good english, and finding me to be something of a scholar, tried me first in french, where he easily beat me, and then in the latin, in which i don't know which of us did best. this pleasant rivalry put us at once upon friendly terms; and i sat up and drank punch with him (or to be more correct, sat up and watched him drink it), until he was so tipsy that he wept upon my shoulder. i tried him, as if by accident, with a sight of alan's button; but it was plain he had never seen or heard of it. indeed, he bore some grudge against the family and friends of ardshiel, and before he was drunk he read me a lampoon, in very good latin, but with a very ill meaning, which he had made in elegiac verses upon a person of that house. when i told him of my catechist, he shook his head, and said i was lucky to have got clear off. "that is a very dangerous man," he said; "duncan mackiegh is his name; he can shoot by the ear at several yards, and has been often accused of highway robberies, and once of murder." "the cream of it is," says i, "that he called himself a catechist." "and why should he not?" says he, "when that is what he is. it was maclean of duart gave it to him because he was blind. but perhaps it was a peety," says my host, "for he is always on the road, going from one place to another to hear the young folk say their religion; and, doubtless, that is a great temptation to the poor man." at last, when my landlord could drink no more, he showed me to a bed, and i lay down in very good spirits; having travelled the greater part of that big and crooked island of mull, from earraid to torosay, fifty miles as the crow flies, and (with my wanderings) much nearer a hundred, in four days and with little fatigue. indeed i was by far in better heart and health of body at the end of that long tramp than i had been at the beginning. chapter xvi the lad with the silver button: across morven there is a regular ferry from torosay to kinlochaline on the mainland. both shores of the sound are in the country of the strong clan of the macleans, and the people that passed the ferry with me were almost all of that clan. the skipper of the boat, on the other hand, was called neil roy macrob; and since macrob was one of the names of alan's clansmen, and alan himself had sent me to that ferry, i was eager to come to private speech of neil roy. in the crowded boat this was of course impossible, and the passage was a very slow affair. there was no wind, and as the boat was wretchedly equipped, we could pull but two oars on one side, and one on the other. the men gave way, however, with a good will, the passengers taking spells to help them, and the whole company giving the time in gaelic boat-songs. and what with the songs, and the sea-air, and the good-nature and spirit of all concerned, and the bright weather, the passage was a pretty thing to have seen. but there was one melancholy part. in the mouth of loch aline we found a great sea-going ship at anchor; and this i supposed at first to be one of the king's cruisers which were kept along that coast, both summer and winter, to prevent communication with the french. as we got a little nearer, it became plain she was a ship of merchandise; and what still more puzzled me, not only her decks, but the sea-beach also, were quite black with people, and skiffs were continually plying to and fro between them. yet nearer, and there began to come to our ears a great sound of mourning, the people on board and those on the shore crying and lamenting one to another so as to pierce the heart. then i understood this was an emigrant ship bound for the american colonies. we put the ferry-boat alongside, and the exiles leaned over the bulwarks, weeping and reaching out their hands to my fellow-passengers, among whom they counted some near friends. how long this might have gone on i do not know, for they seemed to have no sense of time: but at last the captain of the ship, who seemed near beside himself (and no great wonder) in the midst of this crying and confusion, came to the side and begged us to depart. thereupon neil sheered off; and the chief singer in our boat struck into a melancholy air, which was presently taken up both by the emigrants and their friends upon the beach, so that it sounded from all sides like a lament for the dying. i saw the tears run down the cheeks of the men and women in the boat, even as they bent at the oars; and the circumstances and the music of the song (which is one called "lochaber no more") were highly affecting even to myself. at kinlochaline i got neil roy upon one side on the beach, and said i made sure he was one of appin's men. "and what for no?" said he. "i am seeking somebody," said i; "and it comes in my mind that you will have news of him. alan breck stewart is his name." and very foolishly, instead of showing him the button, i sought to pass a shilling in his hand. at this he drew back. "i am very much affronted," he said; "and this is not the way that one shentleman should behave to another at all. the man you ask for is in france; but if he was in my sporran," says he, "and your belly full of shillings, i would not hurt a hair upon his body." i saw i had gone the wrong way to work, and without wasting time upon apologies, showed him the button lying in the hollow of my palm. "aweel, aweel," said neil; "and i think ye might have begun with that end of the stick, whatever! but if ye are the lad with the silver button, all is well, and i have the word to see that ye come safe. but if ye will pardon me to speak plainly," says he, "there is a name that you should never take into your mouth, and that is the name of alan breck; and there is a thing that ye would never do, and that is to offer your dirty money to a hieland shentleman." it was not very easy to apologise; for i could scarce tell him (what was the truth) that i had never dreamed he would set up to be a gentleman until he told me so. neil on his part had no wish to prolong his dealings with me, only to fulfil his orders and be done with it; and he made haste to give me my route. this was to lie the night in kinlochaline in the public inn; to cross morven the next day to ardgour, and lie the night in the house of one john of the claymore, who was warned that i might come; the third day, to be set across one loch at corran and another at balachulish, and then ask my way to the house of james of the glens, at aucharn in duror of appin. there was a good deal of ferrying, as you hear; the sea in all this part running deep into the mountains and winding about their roots. it makes the country strong to hold and difficult to travel, but full of prodigious wild and dreadful prospects. i had some other advice from neil: to speak with no one by the way, to avoid whigs, campbells, and the "red-soldiers;" to leave the road and lie in a bush if i saw any of the latter coming, "for it was never chancy to meet in with them;" and in brief, to conduct myself like a robber or a jacobite agent, as perhaps neil thought me. the inn at kinlochaline was the most beggarly vile place that ever pigs were styed in, full of smoke, vermin, and silent highlanders. i was not only discontented with my lodging, but with myself for my mismanagement of neil, and thought i could hardly be worse off. but very wrongly, as i was soon to see; for i had not been half an hour at the inn (standing in the door most of the time, to ease my eyes from the peat smoke) when a thunderstorm came close by, the springs broke in a little hill on which the inn stood, and one end of the house became a running water. places of public entertainment were bad enough all over scotland in those days; yet it was a wonder to myself, when i had to go from the fireside to the bed in which i slept, wading over the shoes. early in my next day's journey i overtook a little, stout, solemn man, walking very slowly with his toes turned out, sometimes reading in a book and sometimes marking the place with his finger, and dressed decently and plainly in something of a clerical style. this i found to be another catechist, but of a different order from the blind man of mull: being indeed one of those sent out by the edinburgh society for propagating christian knowledge, to evangelise the more savage places of the highlands. his name was henderland; he spoke with the broad south-country tongue, which i was beginning to weary for the sound of; and besides common countryship, we soon found we had a more particular bond of interest. for my good friend, the minister of essendean, had translated into the gaelic in his by-time a number of hymns and pious books which henderland used in his work, and held in great esteem. indeed, it was one of these he was carrying and reading when we met. we fell in company at once, our ways lying together as far as to kingairloch. as we went, he stopped and spoke with all the wayfarers and workers that we met or passed; and though of course i could not tell what they discoursed about, yet i judged mr. henderland must be well liked in the countryside, for i observed many of them to bring out their mulls and share a pinch of snuff with him. i told him as far in my affairs as i judged wise; as far, that is, as they were none of alan's; and gave balachulish as the place i was travelling to, to meet a friend; for i thought aucharn, or even duror, would be too particular, and might put him on the scent. on his part, he told me much of his work and the people he worked among, the hiding priests and jacobites, the disarming act, the dress, and many other curiosities of the time and place. he seemed moderate; blaming parliament in several points, and especially because they had framed the act more severely against those who wore the dress than against those who carried weapons. this moderation put it in my mind to question him of the red fox and the appin tenants; questions which, i thought, would seem natural enough in the mouth of one travelling to that country. he said it was a bad business. "it's wonderful," said he, "where the tenants find the money, for their life is mere starvation. (ye don't carry such a thing as snuff, do ye, mr. balfour? no. well, i'm better wanting it.) but these tenants (as i was saying) are doubtless partly driven to it. james stewart in duror (that's him they call james of the glens) is half-brother to ardshiel, the captain of the clan; and he is a man much looked up to, and drives very hard. and then there's one they call alan breck" "ah!" i cried, "what of him?" "what of the wind that bloweth where it listeth?" said henderland. "he's here and awa; here to-day and gone to-morrow: a fair heather-cat. he might be glowering at the two of us out of yon whin-bush, and i wouldnae wonder! ye'll no carry such a thing as snuff, will ye?" i told him no, and that he had asked the same thing more than once. "it's highly possible," said he, sighing. "but it seems strange ye shouldnae carry it. however, as i was saying, this alan breck is a bold, desperate customer, and well kent to be james's right hand. his life is forfeit already; he would boggle at naething; and maybe, if a tenant-body was to hang back he would get a dirk in his wame." "you make a poor story of it all, mr. henderland," said i. "if it is all fear upon both sides, i care to hear no more of it." "na," said mr. henderland, "but there's love too, and self-denial that should put the like of you and me to shame. there's something fine about it; no perhaps christian, but humanly fine. even alan breck, by all that i hear, is a chield to be respected. there's many a lying sneck-draw sits close in kirk in our own part of the country, and stands well in the world's eye, and maybe is a far worse man, mr. balfour, than yon misguided shedder of man's blood. ay, ay, we might take a lesson by them. -ye'll perhaps think i've been too long in the hielands?" he added, smiling to me. i told him not at all; that i had seen much to admire among the highlanders; and if he came to that, mr. campbell himself was a highlander. "ay," said he, "that's true. it's a fine blood." "and what is the king's agent about?" i asked. "colin campbell?" says henderland. "putting his head in a bees' byke!" "he is to turn the tenants out by force, i hear?" said i. "yes," says he, "but the business has gone back and forth, as folk say. first, james of the glens rode to edinburgh, and got some lawyer (a stewart, nae doubt -they all hing together like bats in a steeple) and had the proceedings stayed. and then colin campbell cam' in again, and had the upper-hand before the barons of exchequer. and now they tell me the first of the tenants are to flit to-morrow. it's to begin at duror under james's very windows, which doesnae seem wise by my humble way of it." "do you think they'll fight?" i asked. "well," says henderland, "they're disarmed -or supposed to be -for there's still a good deal of cold iron lying by in quiet places. and then colin campbell has the sogers coming. but for all that, if i was his lady wife, i wouldnae be well pleased till i got him home again. they're queer customers, the appin stewarts." i asked if they were worse than their neighbours. "no they," said he. "and that's the worst part of it. for if colin roy can get his business done in appin, he has it all to begin again in the next country, which they call mamore, and which is one of the countries of the camerons. he's king's factor upon both, and from both he has to drive out the tenants; and indeed, mr. balfour (to be open with ye), it's my belief that if he escapes the one lot, he'll get his death by the other." so we continued talking and walking the great part of the, day; until at last, mr. henderland after expressing his delight in my company, and satisfaction at meeting with a friend of mr. campbell's ("whom," says he, "i will make bold to call that sweet singer of our covenanted zion"), proposed that i should make a short stage, and lie the night in his house a little beyond kingairloch. to say truth, i was overjoyed; for i had no great desire for john of the claymore, and since my double misadventure, first with the guide and next with the gentleman skipper, i stood in some fear of any highland stranger. accordingly we shook hands upon the bargain, and came in the afternoon to a small house, standing alone by the shore of the linnhe loch. the sun was already gone from the desert mountains of ardgour upon the hither side, but shone on those of appin on the farther; the loch lay as still as a lake, only the gulls were crying round the sides of it; and the whole place seemed solemn and uncouth. we had no sooner come to the door of mr. henderland's dwelling, than to my great surprise (for i was now used to the politeness of highlanders) he burst rudely past me, dashed into the room, caught up a jar and a small horn-spoon, and began ladling snuff into his nose in most excessive quantities. then he had a hearty fit of sneezing, and looked round upon me with a rather silly smile. "it's a vow i took," says he. "i took a vow upon me that i wouldnae carry it. doubtless it's a great privation; but when i think upon the martyrs, not only to the scottish covenant but to other points of christianity, i think shame to mind it." as soon as we had eaten (and porridge and whey was the best of the good man's diet) he took a grave face and said he had a duty to perform by mr. campbell, and that was to inquire into my state of mind towards god. i was inclined to smile at him since the business of the snuff; but he had not spoken long before he brought the tears into my eyes. there are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people; but mr. henderland had their very speech upon his tongue. and though i was a good deal puffed up with my adventures and with having come off, as the saying is, with flying colours; yet he soon had me on my knees beside a simple, poor old man, and both proud and glad to be there. before we went to bed he offered me sixpence to help me on my way, out of a scanty store he kept in the turf wall of his house; at which excess of goodness i knew not what to do. but at last he was so earnest with me that i thought it the more mannerly part to let him have his way, and so left him poorer than myself. chapter xvii the death of the red fox the next day mr. henderland found for me a man who had a boat of his own and was to cross the linnhe loch that afternoon into appin, fishing. him he prevailed on to take me, for he was one of his flock; and in this way i saved a long day's travel and the price of the two public ferries i must otherwise have passed. it was near noon before we set out; a dark day with clouds, and the sun shining upon little patches. the sea was here very deep and still, and had scarce a wave upon it; so that i must put the water to my lips before i could believe it to be truly salt. the mountains on either side were high, rough and barren, very black and gloomy in the shadow of the clouds, but all silver-laced with little watercourses where the sun shone upon them. it seemed a hard country, this of appin, for people to care as much about as alan did. there was but one thing to mention. a little after we had started, the sun shone upon a little moving clump of scarlet close in along the water-side to the north. it was much of the same red as soldiers' coats; every now and then, too, there came little sparks and lightnings, as though the sun had struck upon bright steel. i asked my boatman what it should be, and he answered he supposed it was some of the red soldiers coming from fort william into appin, against the poor tenantry of the country. well, it was a sad sight to me; and whether it was because of my thoughts of alan, or from something prophetic in my bosom, although this was but the second time i had seen king george's troops, i had no good will to them. at last we came so near the point of land at the entering in of loch leven that i begged to be set on shore. my boatman (who was an honest fellow and mindful of his promise to the catechist) would fain have carried me on to balachulish; but as this was to take me farther from my secret destination, i insisted, and was set on shore at last under the wood of lettermore (or lettervore, for i have heard it both ways) in alan's country of appin. this was a wood of birches, growing on a steep, craggy side of a mountain that overhung the loch. it had many openings and ferny howes; and a road or bridle track ran north and south through the midst of it, by the edge of which, where was a spring, i sat down to eat some oat-bread of mr. henderland's and think upon my situation. here i was not only troubled by a cloud of stinging midges, but far more by the doubts of my mind. what i ought to do, why i was going to join myself with an outlaw and a would-be murderer like alan, whether i should not be acting more like a man of sense to tramp back to the south country direct, by my own guidance and at my own charges, and what mr. campbell or even mr. henderland would think of me if they should ever learn my folly and presumption: these were the doubts that now began to come in on me stronger than ever. as i was so sitting and thinking, a sound of men and horses came to me through the wood; and presently after, at a turning of the road, i saw four travellers come into view. the way was in this part so rough and narrow that they came single and led their horses by the reins. the first was a great, red-headed gentleman, of an imperious and flushed face, who carried his hat in his hand and fanned himself, for he was in a breathing heat. the second, by his decent black garb and white wig, i correctly took to be a lawyer. the third was a servant, and wore some part of his clothes in tartan, which showed that his master was of a highland family, and either an outlaw or else in singular good odour with the government, since the wearing of tartan was against the act. if i had been better versed in these things, i would have known the tartan to be of the argyle (or campbell) colours. this servant had a good-sized portmanteau strapped on his horse, and a net of lemons (to brew punch with) hanging at the saddle-bow; as was often enough the custom with luxurious travellers in that part of the country. as for the fourth, who brought up the tail, i had seen his like before, and knew him at once to be a sheriff's officer. i had no sooner seen these people coming than i made up my mind (for no reason that i can tell) to go through with my adventure; and when the first came alongside of me, i rose up from the bracken and asked him the way to aucharn. he stopped and looked at me, as i thought, a little oddly; and then, turning to the lawyer, "mungo," said he, "there's many a man would think this more of a warning than two pyats. here am i on my road to duror on the job ye ken; and here is a young lad starts up out of the bracken, and speers if i am on the way to aucharn." "glenure," said the other, "this is an ill subject for jesting." these two had now drawn close up and were gazing at me, while the two followers had halted about a stone-cast in the rear. "and what seek ye in aucharn?" said colin roy campbell of glenure, him they called the red fox; for he it was that i had stopped. "the man that lives there," said i. "james of the glens," says glenure, musingly; and then to the lawyer: "is he gathering his people, think ye?" "anyway," says the lawyer, "we shall do better to bide where we are, and let the soldiers rally us." "if you are concerned for me," said i, "i am neither of his people nor yours, but an honest subject of king george, owing no man and fearing no man." "why, very well said," replies the factor. "but if i may make so bold as ask, what does this honest man so far from his country? and why does he come seeking the brother of ardshiel? i have power here, i must tell you. i am king's factor upon several of these estates, and have twelve files of soldiers at my back." "i have heard a waif word in the country," said i, a little nettled, "that you were a hard man to drive." he still kept looking at me, as if in doubt. "well," said he, at last, "your tongue is bold; but i am no unfriend to plainness. if ye had asked me the way to the door of james stewart on any other day but this, i would have set ye right and bidden ye god speed. but to-day -eh, mungo?" and he turned again to look at the lawyer. but just as he turned there came the shot of a firelock from higher up the hill; and with the very sound of it glenure fell upon the road. "o, i am dead!" he cried, several times over. the lawyer had caught him up and held him in his arms, the servant standing over and clasping his hands. and now the wounded man looked from one to another with scared eyes, and there was a change in his voice, that went to the heart. "take care of yourselves," says he. "i am dead." he tried to open his clothes as if to look for the wound, but his fingers slipped on the buttons. with that he gave a great sigh, his head rolled on his shoulder, and he passed away. the lawyer said never a word, but his face was as sharp as a pen and as white as the dead man's; the servant broke out into a great noise of crying and weeping, like a child; and i, on my side, stood staring at them in a kind of horror. the sheriff's officer had run back at the first sound of the shot, to hasten the coming of the soldiers. at last the lawyer laid down the dead man in his blood upon the road, and got to his own feet with a kind of stagger. i believe it was his movement that brought me to my senses; for he had no sooner done so than i began to scramble up the hill, crying out, "the murderer! the murderer!" so little a time had elapsed, that when i got to the top of the first steepness, and could see some part of the open mountain, the murderer was still moving away at no great distance. he was a big man, in a black coat, with metal buttons, and carried a long fowling-piece. "here!" i cried. "i see him!" at that the murderer gave a little, quick look over his shoulder, and began to run. the next moment he was lost in a fringe of birches; then he came out again on the upper side, where i could see him climbing like a jackanapes, for that part was again very steep; and then he dipped behind a shoulder, and i saw him no more. all this time i had been running on my side, and had got a good way up, when a voice cried upon me to stand. i was at the edge of the upper wood, and so now, when i halted and looked back, i saw all the open part of the hill below me. the lawyer and the sheriff's officer were standing just above the road, crying and waving on me to come back; and on their left, the red-coats, musket in hand, were beginning to struggle singly out of the lower wood. "why should i come back?" i cried. "come you on!" "ten pounds if ye take that lad!" cried the lawyer. "he's an acomplice. he was posted here to hold us in talk." at that word (which i could hear quite plainly, though it was to the soldiers and not to me that he was crying it) my heart came in my mouth with quite a new kind of terror. indeed, it is one thing to stand the danger of your life, and quite another to run the peril of both life and character. the thing, besides, had come so suddenly, like thunder out of a clear sky, that i was all amazed and helpless. the soldiers began to spread, some of them to run, and others to put up their pieces and cover me; and still i stood. "jouk[1] in here among the trees," said a voice close by. indeed, i scarce knew what i was doing, but i obeyed; and as i did so, i heard the firelocks bang and the balls whistle in the birches. just inside the shelter of the trees i found alan breck standing, with a fishing-rod. he gave me no salutation; indeed it was no time for civilities; only "come!" says he, and set off running along the side of the mountain towards balaehulish; and i, like a sheep, to follow him. now we ran among the birches; now stooping behind low humps upon the mountain-side; now crawling on all fours among the heather. the pace was deadly: my heart seemed bursting against my ribs; and i had neither time to think nor breath to speak with. only i remember seeing with wonder, that alan every now and then would straighten himself to his full height and look back; and every time he did so, there came a great far-away cheering and crying of the soldiers. quarter of an hour later, alan stopped, clapped down flat in the heather, and turned to me. "now," said he, "it's earnest. do as i do, for your life." and at the same speed, but now with infinitely more precaution, we traced back again across the mountain-side by the same way that we had come, only perhaps higher; till at last alan threw him-self down in the upper wood of lettermore, where i had found him at the first, and lay, with his face in the bracken, panting like a dog. my own sides so ached, my head so swam, my tongue so hung out of my mouth with heat and dryness, that i lay beside him like one dead. [1] duck. chapter xviii i talk with alan in the wood of lettermore alan was the first to come round. he rose, went to the border of the wood, peered out a little, and then returned and sat down. "well," said he, "yon was a hot burst, david." i said nothing, nor so much as lifted my face. i had seen murder done, and a great, ruddy, jovial gentleman struck out of life in a moment; the pity of that sight was still sore within me, and yet that was but a part of my concern. here was murder done upon the man alan hated; here was alan skulking in the trees and running from the troops; and whether his was the hand that fired or only the head that ordered, signified but little. by my way of it, my only friend in that wild country was blood-guilty in the first degree; i held him in horror; i could not look upon his face; i would have rather lain alone in the rain on my cold isle, than in that warm wood beside a murderer. "are ye still wearied?" he asked again. "no," said i, still with my face in the bracken; "no, i am not wearied now, and i can speak. you and me must twine,"[1] i said. "i liked you very well, alan, but your ways are not mine, and they're not god's: and the short and the long of it is just that we must twine." "i will hardly twine from ye, david, without some kind of reason for the same," said alan, mighty gravely. "if ye ken anything against my reputation, it's the least thing that ye should do, for old acquaintance' sake, to let me hear the name of it; and if ye have only taken a distaste to my society, it will be proper for me to judge if i'm insulted." "alan," said i, "what is the sense of this? ye ken very well yon campbell-man lies in his blood upon the road." he was silent for a little; then says he, "did ever ye hear tell of the story of the man and the good people?" -by which he meant the fairies. "no," said i, "nor do i want to hear it." "with your permission, mr. balfour, i will tell it you, whatever," says alan. "the man, ye should ken, was cast upon a rock in the sea, where it appears the good people were in use to come and rest as they went through to ireland. the name of this rock is called the skerryvore, and it's not far from where we suffered ship-wreck. well, it seems the man cried so sore, if he could just see his little bairn before he died! that at last the king of the good people took peety upon him, and sent one flying that brought back the bairn in a poke[2] and laid it down beside the man where he lay sleeping. so when the man woke, there was a poke beside him and something into the inside of it that moved. well, it seems he was one of these gentry that think aye the worst of things; and for greater seeurity, he stuck his dirk throughout that poke before he opened it, and there was his bairn dead. i am thinking to myself, mr. balfour, that you and the man are very much alike." "do you mean you had no hand in it?" cried i, sitting up. "i will tell you first of all, mr. balfour of shaws, as one friend to another," said alan, "that if i were going to kill a gentleman, it would not be in my own country, to bring trouble on my clan; and i would not go wanting sword and gun, and with a long fishing-rod upon my back." "well," said i, "that's true!" "and now," continued alan, taking out his dirk and laying his hand upon it in a certain manner, "i swear upon the holy iron i had neither art nor part, act nor thought in it." "i thank god for that!" cried i, and offered him my hand. he did not appear to see it. "and here is a great deal of work about a campbell!" said he. "they are not so scarce, that i ken!" "at least," said i, "you cannot justly blame me, for you know very well what you told me in the brig. but the temptation and the act are different, i thank god again for that. we may all be tempted; but to take a life in cold blood, alan!" and i could say no more for the moment." and do you know who did it?" i added. "do you know that man in the black coat?" "i have nae clear mind about his coat," said alan cunningly." but it sticks in my head that it was blue." "blue or black, did ye know him?" said i. "i couldnae just conscientiously swear to him," says alan. "he gaed very close by me, to be sure, but it's a strange thing that i should just have been tying my brogues." "can you swear that you don't know him, alan?" i cried, half angered, half in a mind to laugh at his evasions. "not yet," says he; "but i've a grand memory for forgetting, david." "and yet there was one thing i saw clearly," said i; "and that was, that you exposed yourself and me to draw the soldiers." "it's very likely," said alan; "and so would any gentleman. you and me were innocent of that transaction." "the better reason, since we were falsely suspected, that we should get clear," i cried. "the innocent should surely come before the guilty." "why, david," said he, "the innocent have aye a chance to get assoiled in court; but for the lad that shot the bullet, i think the best place for him will be the heather. them that havenae dipped their hands in any little difficulty, should be very mindful of the case of them that have. and that is the good christianity. for if it was the other way round about, and the lad whom i couldnae just clearly see had been in our shoes, and we in his (as might very well have been), i think we would be a good deal obliged to him oursel's if he would draw the soldiers." when it came to this, i gave alan up. but he looked so innocent all the time, and was in such clear good faith in what he said, and so ready to sacrifice himself for what he deemed his duty, that my mouth was closed. mr. henderland's words came back to me: that we ourselves might take a lesson by these wild highlanders. well, here i had taken mine. alan's morals were all tail-first; but he was ready to give his life for them, such as they were. "alan," said i, "i'll not say it's the good christianity as i understand it, but it's good enough. and here i offer ye my hand for the second time." whereupon he gave me both of his, saying surely i had cast a spell upon him, for he could forgive me anything. then he grew very grave, and said we had not much time to throw away, but must both flee that country: he, because he was a deserter, and the whole of appin would now be searched like a chamber, and every one obliged to give a good account of himself; and i, because i was certainly involved in the murder. "o!" says i, willing to give him a little lesson, "i have no fear of the justice of my country." "as if this was your country!" said he. "or as if ye would be tried here, in a country of stewarts!" "it's all scotland," said i. "man, i whiles wonder at ye," said alan. "this is a campbell that's been killed. well, it'll be tried in inverara, the campbells' head place; with fifteen campbells in the jury-box and the biggest campbell of all (and that's the duke) sitting cocking on the bench. justice, david? the same justice, by all the world, as glenure found awhile ago at the roadside." this frightened me a little, i confess, and would have frightened me more if i had known how nearly exact were alan's predictions; indeed it was but in one point that he exaggerated, there being but eleven campbells on the jury; though as the other four were equally in the duke's dependence, it mattered less than might appear. still, i cried out that he was unjust to the duke of argyle, who (for all he was a whig) was yet a wise and honest nobleman. "hoot!" said alan, "the man's a whig, nae doubt; but i would never deny he was a good chieftain to his clan. and what would the clan think if there was a campbell shot, and naebody hanged, and their own chief the justice general? but i have often observed," says alan, "that you low-country bodies have no clear idea of what's right and wrong." at this i did at last laugh out aloud, when to my surprise, alan joined in, and laughed as merrily as myself. "na, na," said he, "we're in the hielands, david; and when i tell ye to run, take my word and run. nae doubt it's a hard thing to skulk and starve in the heather, but it's harder yet to lie shackled in a red-coat prison." i asked him whither we should flee; and as he told me "to the lowlands," i was a little better inclined to go with him; for, indeed, i was growing impatient to get baek and have the upper-hand of my uncle. besides, alan made so sure there would be no question of justice in the matter, that i began to be afraid he might be right. of all deaths, i would truly like least to die by the gallows; and the picture of that uncanny instrument came into my head with extraordinary clearness (as i had once seen it engraved at the top of a pedlar's ballad) and took away my appetite for courts of justice. "i'll chance it, alan," said i. "i'll go with you." "but mind you," said alan, "it's no small thing. ye maun lie bare and hard, and brook many an empty belly. your bed shall be the moorcock's, and your life shall be like the hunted deer's, and ye shall sleep with your hand upon your weapons. ay, man, ye shall taigle many a weary foot, or we get clear! i tell ye this at the start, for it's a life that i ken well. but if ye ask what other chance ye have, i answer: nane. either take to the heather with me, or else hang." "and that's a choice very easily made," said i; and we shook hands upon it. "and now let's take another keek at the red-coats," says alan, and he led me to the north-eastern fringe of the wood. looking out between the trees, we could see a great side of mountain, running down exceeding steep into the waters of the loch. it was a rough part, all hanging stone, and heather, and big scrogs of birchwood; and away at the far end towards balachulish, little wee red soldiers were dipping up and down over hill and howe, and growing smaller every minute. there was no cheering now, for i think they had other uses for what breath was left them; but they still stuck to the trail, and doubtless thought that we were close in front of them. alan watched them, smiling to himself. "ay," said he, "they'll be gey weary before they've got to the end of that employ! and so you and me, david, can sit down and eat a bite, and breathe a bit longer, and take a dram from my bottle. then we'll strike for aucharn, the house of my kinsman, james of the glens, where i must get my clothes, and my arms, and money to carry us along; and then, david, we'll cry, 'forth, fortune!' and take a cast among the heather." so we sat again and ate and drank, in a place whence we could see the sun going down into a field of great, wild, and houseless mountains, such as i was now condemned to wander in with my companion. partly as we so sat, and partly afterwards, on the way to aucharn, each of us narrated his adventures; and i shall here set down so much of alan's as seems either curious or needful. it appears he ran to the bulwarks as soon as the wave was passed; saw me, and lost me, and saw me again, as i tumbled in the roost; and at last had one glimpse of me clinging on the yard. it was this that put him in some hope i would maybe get to land after all, and made him leave those clues and messages which had brought me (for my sins) to that unlucky country of appin. in the meanwhile, those still on the brig had got the skiff launched, and one or two were on board of her already, when there came a second wave greater than the first, and heaved the brig out of her place, and would certainly have sent her to the bottom, had she not struck and caught on some projection of the reef. when she had struck first, it had been bows-on, so that the stern had hitherto been lowest. but now her stern was thrown in the air, and the bows plunged under the sea; and with that, the water began to pour into the fore-scuttle like the pouring of a mill-dam. it took the colour out of alan's face, even to tell what followed. for there were still two men lying impotent in their bunks; and these, seeing the water pour in and thinking the ship had foundered, began to cry out aloud, and that with such harrowing cries that all who were on deck tumbled one after another into the skiff and fell to their oars. they were not two hundred yards away, when there came a third great sea; and at that the brig lifted clean over the reef; her canvas filled for a moment, and she seemed to sail in chase of them, but settling all the while; and presently she drew down and down, as if a hand was drawing her; and the sea closed over the covenant of dysart. never a word they spoke as they pulled ashore. being stunned with the horror of that screaming; but they had scarce set foot upon the beach when hoseason woke up, as if out of a muse, and bade them lay hands upon alan. they hung back indeed, having little taste for the employment; but hoseason was like a fiend, crying that alan was alone, that he had a great sum about him, that he had been the means of losing the brig and drowning all their comrades, and that here was both revenge and wealth upon a single cast. it was seven against one; in that part of the shore there was no rock that alan could set his back to; and the sailors began to spread out and come behind him. "and then," said alan, "the little man with the red head -i havenae mind of the name that he is called." "riach," said i. "ay" said alan," riach! well, it was him that took up the clubs for me, asked the men if they werenae feared of a judgment, and, says he 'dod, i'll put my back to the hielandman's mysel'.' that's none such an entirely bad little man, yon little man with the red head," said alan "he has some spunks of decency." "well," said i, "he was kind to me in his way." "and so he was to alan," said he; "and by my troth, i found his way a very good one! but ye see, david, the loss of the ship and the cries of these poor lads sat very ill upon the man; and i'm thinking that would be the cause of it." "well, i would think so," says i; "for he was as keen as any of the rest at the beginning. but how did hoseason take it?" "it sticks in my mind that he would take it very ill," says alan. "but the little man cried to me to run, and indeed i thought it was a good observe, and ran. the last that i saw they were all in a knot upon the beach, like folk that were not agreeing very well together." "what do you mean by that?" said i. "well, the fists were going," said alan; "and i saw one man go down like a pair of breeks. but i thought it would be better no to wait. ye see there's a strip of campbells in that end of mull, which is no good company for a gentleman like me. if it hadnae been for that i would have waited and looked for ye mysel', let alone giving a hand to the little man." (it was droll how alan dwelt on mr. riach's stature, for, to say the truth, the one was not much smaller than the other.) "so," says he, continuing, "i set my best foot forward, and whenever i met in with any one i cried out there was a wreck ashore. man, they didnae stop to fash with me! ye should have seen them linking for the beach! and when they got there they found they had had the pleasure of a run, which is aye good for a campbell. i'm thinking it was a judgment on the clan that the brig went down in the lump and didnae break. but it was a very unlucky thing for you, that same; for if any wreck had come ashore they would have hunted high and low, and would soon have found ye." [1] part. [2] bag. chapter xix the house of fear night fell as we were walking, and the clouds, which had broken up in the afternoon, settled in and thickened, so that it fell, for the season of the year, extremely dark. the way we went was over rough mountainsides; and though alan pushed on with an assured manner, i could by no means see how he directed himself. at last, about half-past ten of the clock, we came to the top of a brae, and saw lights below us. it seemed a house door stood open and let out a beam of fire and candle-light; and all round the house and steading five or six persons were moving hurriedly about, each carrying a lighted brand. "james must have tint his wits," said alan. "if this was the soldiers instead of you and me, he would be in a bonny mess. but i dare say he'll have a sentry on the road, and he would ken well enough no soldiers would find the way that we came." hereupon he whistled three times, in a particular manner. it was strange to see how, at the first sound of it, all the moving torches came to a stand, as if the bearers were affrighted; and how, at the third, the bustle began again as before. having thus set folks' minds at rest, we came down the brae, and were met at the yard gate (for this place was like a well-doing farm) by a tall, handsome man of more than fifty, who cried out to alan in the gaelic. "james stewart," said alan, "i will ask ye to speak in scotch, for here is a young gentleman with me that has nane of the other. this is him," he added, putting his arm through mine, "a young gentleman of the lowlands, and a laird in his country too, but i am thinking it will be the better for his health if we give his name the go-by." james of the glens turned to me for a moment, and greeted me courteously enough; the next he had turned to alan. "this has been a dreadful accident," he cried. "it will bring trouble on the country." and he wrung his hands. "hoots!" said alan, "ye must take the sour with the sweet, man. colin roy is dead, and be thankful for that!" "ay" said james, "and by my troth, i wish he was alive again! it's all very fine to blow and boast beforehand; but now it's done, alan; and who's to bear the wyte[1] of it? the accident fell out in appin -mind ye that, alan; it's appin that must pay; and i am a man that has a family." while this was going on i looked about me at the servants. some were on ladders, digging in the thatch of the house or the farm buildings, from which they brought out guns, swords, and different weapons of war; others carried them away; and by the sound of mattock blows from somewhere farther down the brae, i suppose they buried them. though they were all so busy, there prevailed no kind of order in their efforts; men struggled together for the same gun and ran into each other with their burning torches; and james was continually turning about from his talk with alan, to cry out orders which were apparently never understood. the faces in the torchlight were like those of people overborne with hurry and panic; and though none spoke above his breath, their speech sounded both anxious and angry. it was about this time that a lassie came out of the house carrying a pack or bundle; and it has often made me smile to think how alan's instinct awoke at the mere sight of it. "what's that the lassie has?" he asked. "we're just setting the house in order, alan," said james, in his frightened and somewhat fawning way. "they'll search appin with candles, and we must have all things straight. we're digging the bit guns and swords into the moss, ye see; and these, i am thinking, will be your ain french clothes. we'll be to bury them, i believe." "bury my french clothes!" cried alan. "troth, no!" and he laid hold upon the packet and retired into the barn to shift himself, recommending me in the meanwhile to his kinsman. james carried me accordingly into the kitchen, and sat down with me at table, smiling and talking at first in a very hospitable manner. but presently the gloom returned upon him; he sat frowning and biting his fingers; only remembered me from time to time; and then gave me but a word or two and a poor smile, and back into his private terrors. his wife sat by the fire and wept, with her face in her hands; his eldest son was crouched upon the floor, running over a great mass of papers and now and again setting one alight and burning it to the bitter end; all the while a servant lass with a red face was rummaging about the room, in a blind hurry of fear, and whimpering as she went; and every now and again one of the men would thrust in his face from the yard, and cry for orders. at last james could keep his seat no longer, and begged my permission to be so unmannerly as walk about. "i am but poor company altogether, sir," says he, "but i can think of nothing but this dreadful accident, and the trouble it is like to bring upon quite innocent persons." a little after he observed his son burning a paper which he thought should have been kept; and at that his excitement burst out so that it was painful to witness. he struck the lad repeatedly. "are you gone gyte?"[2] he cried. "do you wish to hang your father?" and forgetful of my presence, carried on at him a long time together in the gaelic, the young man answering nothing; only the wife, at the name of hanging, throwing her apron over her face and sobbing out louder than before. this was all wretched for a stranger like myself to hear and see; and i was right glad when alan returned, looking like himself in his fine french clothes, though (to be sure) they were now grown almost too battered and withered to deserve the name of fine. i was then taken out in my turn by another of the sons, and given that change of clothing of which i had stood so long in need, and a pair of highland brogues made of deer-leather, rather strange at first, but after a little practice very easy to the feet. by the time i came back alan must have told his story; for it seemed understood that i was to fly with him, and they were all busy upon our equipment. they gave us each a sword and pistols, though i professed my inability to use the former; and with these, and some ammunition, a bag of oatmeal, an iron pan, and a bottle of right french brandy, we were ready for the heather. money, indeed, was lacking. i had about two guineas left; alan's belt having been despatched by another hand, that trusty messenger had no more than seventeen-pence to his whole fortune; and as for james, it appears he had brought himself so low with journeys to edinburgh and legal expenses on behalf of the tenants, that he could only scrape together three-and-five-pence-halfpenny, the most of it in coppers. "this'll no do," said alan. "ye must find a safe bit somewhere near by," said james, "and get word sent to me. ye see, ye'll have to get this business prettily off, alan. this is no time to be stayed for a guinea or two. they're sure to get wind of ye, sure to seek ye, and by my way of it, sure to lay on ye the wyte of this day's accident. if it falls on you, it falls on me that am your near kinsman and harboured ye while ye were in the country. and if it comes on me----" he paused, and bit his fingers, with a white face." it would be a painful thing for our friends if i was to hang," said he. "it would be an ill day for appin," says alan. "it's a day that sticks in my throat," said james. "o man, man, man--man alan! you and me have spoken like two fools!" he cried, striking his hand upon the wall so that the house rang again. "well, and that's true, too," said alan; "and my friend from the lowlands here" (nodding at me) "gave me a good word upon that head, if i would only have listened to him." "but see here," said james, returning to his former manner, "if they lay me by the heels, alan, it's then that you'll be needing the money. for with all that i have said and that you have said, it will look very black against the two of us; do ye mark that? well, follow me out, and ye'll, i'll see that i'll have to get a paper out against ye mysel'; have to offer a reward for ye; ay, will i! it's a sore thing to do between such near friends; but if i get the dirdum[3] of this dreadful accident, i'll have to fend for myself, man. do ye see that?" he spoke with a pleading earnestness, taking alan by the breast of the coat. "ay" said alan, "i see that." "and ye'll have to be clear of the country, alan -ay, and clear of scotland -you and your friend from the lowlands, too. for i'll have to paper your friend from the lowlands. ye see that, alan -say that ye see that!" i thought alan flushed a bit. "this is unco hard on me that brought him here, james," said he, throwing his head back. "it's like making me a traitor!" "now, alan, man!" cried james. "look things in the face! he'll be papered anyway; mungo campbell'll be sure to paper him; what matters if i paper him too? and then, alan, i am a man that has a family." and then, after a little pause on both sides, "and, alan, it'll be a jury of campbells," said he. "there's one thing," said alan, musingly, "that naebody kens his name." "nor yet they shallnae, alan! there's my hand on that," cried james, for all the world as if he had really known my name and was foregoing some advantage. "but just the habit he was in, and what he looked like, and his age, and the like? i couldnae well do less." "i wonder at your father's son," cried alan, sternly. "would ye sell the lad with a gift? would ye change his clothes and then betray him?" "no, no, alan," said james. "no, no: the habit he took off -the habit mungo saw him in." but i thought he seemed crestfallen; indeed, he was clutching at every straw, and all the time, i dare say, saw the faces of his hereditary foes on the bench, and in the jury-box, and the gallows in the background. "well, sir" says alan, turning to me, "what say ye to, that? ye are here under the safeguard of my honour; and it's my part to see nothing done but what shall please you." "i have but one word to say," said i; "for to all this dispute i am a perfect stranger. but the plain common-sense is to set the blame where it belongs, and that is on the man who fired the shot. paper him, as ye call it, set the hunt on him; and let honest, innocent folk show their faces in safety." but at this both alan and james cried out in horror; bidding me hold my tongue, for that was not to be thought of; and asking me what the camerons would think? (which confirmed me, it must have been a cameron from mamore that did the act) and if i did not see that the lad might be caught? "ye havenae surely thought of that?" said they, with such innocent earnestness, that my hands dropped at my side and i despaired of argument. "very well, then," said i, "paper me, if you please, paper alan, paper king george! we're all three innocent, and that seems to be what's wanted. but at least, sir," said i to james, recovering from my little fit of annoyance, "i am alan's friend, and if i can be helpful to friends of his, i will not stumble at the risk." i thought it best to put a fair face on my consent, for i saw alan troubled; and, besides (thinks i to myself), as soon as my back is turned, they will paper me, as they call it, whether i consent or not. but in this i saw i was wrong; for i had no sooner said the words, than mrs. stewart leaped out of her chair, came running over to us, and wept first upon my neck and then on alan's, blessing god for our goodness to her family. "as for you, alan, it was no more than your bounden duty," she said. "but for this lad that has come here and seen us at our worst, and seen the goodman fleeching like a suitor, him that by rights should give his commands like any king -as for you, my lad," she says, "my heart is wae not to have your name, but i have your face; and as long as my heart beats under my bosom, i will keep it, and think of it, and bless it." and with that she kissed me, and burst once more into such sobbing, that i stood abashed. "hoot, hoot," said alan, looking mighty silly. "the day comes unco soon in this month of july; and to-morrow there'll be a fine to-do in appin, a fine riding of dragoons, and crying of, cruachan!,[4] and running of red-coats; and it behoves you and me to the sooner be gone." thereupon we said farewell, and set out again, bending somewhat eastwards, in a fine mild dark night, and over much the same broken country as before. [1] blame. [2] mad. [3] blame. [4] the rallying-word of the campbells. chapter xx the flight in the heather: the rocks sometimes we walked, sometimes ran; and as it drew on to morning, walked ever the less and ran the more. though, upon its face, that country appeared to be a desert, yet there were huts and houses of the people, of which we must have passed more than twenty, hidden in quiet places of the hills. when we came to one of these, alan would leave me in the way, and go himself and rap upon the side of the house and speak awhile at the window with some sleeper awakened. this was to pass the news; which, in that country, was so much of a duty that alan must pause to attend to it even while fleeing for his life; and so well attended to by others, that in more than half of the houses where we called they had heard already of the murder. in the others, as well as i could make out (standing back at a distance and hearing a strange tongue), the news was received with more of consternation than surprise. for all our hurry, day began to come in while we were still far from any shelter. it found us in a prodigious valley, strewn with rocks and where ran a foaming river. wild mountains stood around it; there grew there neither grass nor trees; and i have sometimes thought since then, that it may have been the valley called glencoe, where the massacre was in the time of king william. but for the details of our itinerary, i am all to seek; our way lying now by short cuts, now by great detours; our pace being so hurried, our time of journeying usually by night; and the names of such places as i asked and heard being in the gaelic tongue and the more easily forgotten. the first peep of morning, then, showed us this horrible place, and i could see alan knit his brow. "this is no fit place for you and me," he said. "this is a place they're bound to watch." and with that he ran harder than ever down to the waterside, in a part where the river was split in two among three rocks. it went through with a horrid thundering that made my belly quake; and there hung over the lynn a little mist of spray. alan looked neither to the right nor to the left, but jumped clean upon the middle rock and fell there on his hands and knees to check himself, for that rock was small and he might have pitched over on the far side. i had scarce time to measure the distance or to understand the peril before i had followed him, and he had caught and stopped me. so there we stood, side by side upon a small rock slippery with spray, a far broader leap in front of us, and the river dinning upon all sides. when i saw where i was, there came on me a deadly sickness of fear, and i put my hand over my eyes. alan took me and shook me; i saw he was speaking, but the roaring of the falls and the trouble of my mind prevented me from hearing; only i saw his face was red with anger, and that he stamped upon the rock. the same look showed me the water raging by, and the mist hanging in the air: and with that i covered my eyes again and shuddered. the next minute alan had set the brandy bottle to my lips, and forced me to drink about a gill, which sent the blood into my head again. then, putting his hands to his mouth, and his mouth to my ear, he shouted, "hang or drown!" and turning his back upon me, leaped over the farther branch of the stream, and landed safe. i was now alone upon the rock, which gave me the more room; the brandy was singing in my ears; i had this good example fresh before me, and just wit enough to see that if i did not leap at once, i should never leap at all. i bent low on my knees and flung myself forth, with that kind of anger of despair that has sometimes stood me in stead of courage. sure enough, it was but my hands that reached the full length; these slipped, caught again, slipped again; and i was sliddering back into the lynn, when alan seized me, first by the hair, then by the collar, and with a great strain dragged me into safety. never a word he said, but set off running again for his life, and i must stagger to my feet and run after him. i had been weary before, but now i was sick and bruised, and partly drunken with the brandy; i kept stumbling as i ran, i had a stitch that came near to overmaster me; and when at last alan paused under a great rock that stood there among a number of others, it was none too soon for david balfour. a great rock i have said; but by rights it was two rocks leaning together at the top, both some twenty feet high, and at the first sight inaccessible. even alan (though you may say he had as good as four hands) failed twice in an attempt to climb them; and it was only at the third trial, and then by standing on my shoulders and leaping up with such force as i thought must have broken my collar-bone, that he secured a lodgment. once there, he let down his leathern girdle; and with the aid of that and a pair of shallow footholds in the rock, i scrambled up beside him. then i saw why we had come there; for the two rocks, being both somewhat hollow on the top and sloping one to the other, made a kind of dish or saucer, where as many as three or four men might have lain hidden. all this while alan had not said a word, and had run and climbed with such a savage, silent frenzy of hurry, that i knew that he was in mortal fear of some miscarriage. even now we were on the rock he said nothing, nor so much as relaxed the frowning look upon his face; but clapped flat down, and keeping only one eye above the edge of our place of shelter scouted all round the compass. the dawn had come quite, clear; we could see the stony sides of the valley, and its bottom, which was bestrewed with rocks, and the river, which went from one side to another, and made white falls; but nowhere the smoke of a house, nor any living creature but some eagles screaming round a cliff. then at last alan smiled. "ay" said he, "now we have a chance;" and then looking at me with some amusement. "ye're no very gleg[1] at the jumping," said he. at this i suppose i coloured with mortification, for he added at once, "hoots! small blame to ye! to be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man. and then there was water there, and water's a thing that dauntons even me. no, no," said alan, "it's no you that's to blame, it's me." i asked him why. "why," said he, "i have proved myself a gomeral this night. for first of all i take a wrong road, and that in my own country of appin; so that the day has caught us where we should never have been; and thanks to that, we lie here in some danger and mair discomfort. and next (which is the worst of the two, for a man that has been so much among the heather as myself) i have come wanting a water-bottle, and here we lie for a long summer's day with naething but neat spirit. ye may think that a small matter; but before it comes night, david, ye'll give me news of it." i was anxious to redeem my character, and offered, if he would pour out the brandy, to run down and fill the bottle at the river. "i wouldnae waste the good spirit either," says he. "it,s been a good friend to you this night; or in my poor opinion, ye would still be cocking on yon stone. and what's mair," says he, "ye may have observed (you that's a man of so much penetration) that alan breck stewart was perhaps walking quicker than his ordinar'." "you!" i cried, "you were running fit to burst." "was i so?" said he. "well, then, ye may depend upon it, there was nae time to be lost. and now here is enough said; gang you to your sleep, lad, and i'll watch." accordingly, i lay down to sleep; a little peaty earth had drifted in between the top of the two rocks, and some bracken grew there, to be a bed to me; the last thing i heard was still the crying of the eagles. i dare say it would be nine in the morning when i was roughly awakened, and found alan's hand pressed upon my mouth. "wheesht!" he whispered. "ye were snoring." "well," said i, surprised at his anxious and dark face, "and why not?" he peered over the edge of the rock, and signed to me to do the like. it was now high day, cloudless, and very hot. the valley was as clear as in a picture. about half a mile up the water was a camp of red-coats; a big fire blazed in their midst, at which some were cooking; and near by, on the top of a rock about as high as ours, there stood a sentry, with the sun sparkling on his arms. all the way down along the river-side were posted other sentries; here near together, there widelier scattered; some planted like the first, on places of command, some on the ground level and marching and counter-marching, so as to meet half-way. higher up the glen, where the ground was more open, the chain of posts was continued by horse-soldiers, whom we could see in the distance riding to and fro. lower down, the infantry continued; but as the stream was suddenly swelled by the confluence of a considerable burn, they were more widely set, and only watched the fords and stepping-stones. i took but one look at them, and ducked again into my place. it was strange indeed to see this valley, which had lain so solitary in the hour of dawn, bristling with arms and dotted with the red coats and breeches. "ye see," said alan, "this was what i was afraid of, davie: that they would watch the burn-side. they began to come in about two hours ago, and, man! but ye're a grand hand at the sleeping! we're in a narrow place. if they get up the sides of the hill, they could easy spy us with a glass; but if they'll only keep in the foot of the valley, we'll do yet. the posts are thinner down the water; and, come night, we'll try our hand at getting by them." "and what are we to do till night?" i asked. "lie here," says he, "and birstle." that one good scotch word, "birstle," was indeed the most of the story of the day that we had now to pass. you are to remember that we lay on the bare top of a rock, like scones upon a girdle; the sun beat upon us cruelly; the rock grew so heated, a man could scarce endure the touch of it; and the little patch of earth and fern, which kept cooler, was only large enough for one at a time. we took turn about to lie on the naked rock, which was indeed like the position of that saint that was martyred on a gridiron; and it ran in my mind how strange it was, that in the same climate and at only a few days' distance, i should have suffered so cruelly, first from cold upon my island and now from heat upon this rock. all the while we had no water, only raw brandy for a drink, which was worse than nothing; but we kept the bottle as cool as we could, burying it in the earth, and got some relief by bathing our breasts and temples. the soldiers kept stirring all day in the bottom of the valley, now changing guard, now in patrolling parties hunting among the rocks. these lay round in so great a number, that to look for men among them was like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay; and being so hopeless a task, it was gone about with the less care. yet we could see the soldiers pike their bayonets among the heather, which sent a cold thrill into my vitals; and they would sometimes hang about our rock, so that we scarce dared to breathe. it was in this way that i first heard the right english speech; one fellow as he went by actually clapping his hand upon the sunny face of the rock on which we lay, and plucking it off again with an oath. "i tell you it's 'ot," says he; and i was amazed at the clipping tones and the odd sing-song in which he spoke, and no less at that strange trick of dropping out the letter "h." to be sure, i had heard ransome; but he had taken his ways from all sorts of people, and spoke so imperfectly at the best, that i set down the most of it to childishness. my surprise was all the greater to hear that manner of speaking in the mouth of a grown man; and indeed i have never grown used to it; nor yet altogether with the english grammar, as perhaps a very critical eye might here and there spy out even in these memoirs. the tediousness and pain of these hours upon the rock grew only the greater as the day went on; the rock getting still the hotter and the sun fiercer. there were giddiness, and sickness, and sharp pangs like rheumatism, to be supported. i minded then, and have often minded since, on the lines in our scotch psalm: - "the moon by night thee shall not smite, nor yet the sun by day;" and indeed it was only by god's blessing that we were neither of us sun-smitten. at last, about two, it was beyond men's bearing, and there was now temptation to resist, as well as pain to thole. for the sun being now got a little into the west, there came a patch of shade on the east side of our rock, which was the side sheltered from the soldiers. "as well one death as another," said alan, and slipped over the edge and dropped on the ground on the shadowy side. i followed him at once, and instantly fell all my length, so weak was i and so giddy with that long exposure. here, then, we lay for an hour or two, aching from head to foot, as weak as water, and lying quite naked to the eye of any soldier who should have strolled that way. none came, however, all passing by on the other side; so that our rock continued to be our shield even in this new position. presently we began again to get a little strength; and as the soldiers were now lying closer along the river-side, alan proposed that we should try a start. i was by this time afraid of but one thing in the world; and that was to be set back upon the rock; anything else was welcome to me; so we got ourselves at once in marching order, and began to slip from rock to rock one after the other, now crawling flat on our bellies in the shade, now making a run for it, heart in mouth. the soldiers, having searched this side of the valley after a fashion, and being perhaps somewhat sleepy with the sultriness of the afternoon, had now laid by much of their vigilance, and stood dozing at their posts or only kept a look-out along the banks of the river; so that in this way, keeping down the valley and at the same time towards the mountains, we drew steadily away from their neighbourhood. but the business was the most wearing i had ever taken part in. a man had need of a hundred eyes in every part of him, to keep concealed in that uneven country and within cry of so many and scattered sentries. when we must pass an open place, quickness was not all, but a swift judgment not only of the lie of the whole country, but of the solidity of every stone on which we must set foot; for the afternoon was now fallen so breathless that the rolling of a pebble sounded abroad like a pistol shot, and would start the echo calling among the hills and cliffs. by sundown we had made some distance, even by our slow rate of progress, though to be sure the sentry on the rock was still plainly in our view. but now we came on something that put all fears out of season; and that was a deep rushing burn, that tore down, in that part, to join the glen river. at the sight of this we cast ourselves on the ground and plunged head and shoulders in the water; and i cannot tell which was the more pleasant, the great shock as the cool stream went over us, or the greed with which we drank of it. we lay there (for the banks hid us), drank again and again, bathed our chests, let our wrists trail in the running water till they ached with the chill; and at last, being wonderfullv renewed, we got out the meal-bag and made drammach in the iron pan. this, though it is but cold water mingled with oatmeal, yet makes a good enough dish for a hungry man; and where there are no means of making fire, or (as in our case) good reason for not making one, it is the chief stand-by of those who have taken to the heather. as soon as the shadow of the night had fallen, we set forth again, at first with the same caution, but presently with more boldness, standing our full height and stepping out at a good pace of walking. the way was very intricate, lying up the steep sides of mountains and along the brows of cliffs; clouds had come in with the sunset, and the night was dark and cool; so that i walked without much fatigue, but in continual fear of falling and rolling down the mountains, and with no guess at our direction. the moon rose at last and found us still on the road; it was in its last quarter, and was long beset with clouds; but after awhile shone out and showed me many dark heads of mountains, and was reflected far underneath us on the narrow arm of a sea-loch. at this sight we both paused: i struck with wonder to find myself so high and walking (as it seemed to me) upon clouds; alan to make sure of his direction. seemingly he was well pleased, and he must certainly have judged us out of ear-shot of all our enemies; for throughout the rest of our night-march he beguiled the way with whistling of many tunes, warlike, merry, plaintive; reel tunes that made the foot go faster; tunes of my own south country that made me fain to be home from my adventures; and all these, on the great, dark, desert mountains, making company upon the way. [1] brisk. chapter xxi the flight in the heather: the heugh of corrynakiegh early as day comes in the beginning of july, it was still dark when we reached our destination, a cleft in the head of a great mountain, with a water running through the midst, and upon the one hand a shallow cave in a rock. birches grew there in a thin, pretty wood, which a little farther on was changed into a wood of pines. the burn was full of trout; the wood of cushat-doves; on the open side of the mountain beyond, whaups would be always whistling, and cuckoos were plentiful. from the mouth of the cleft we looked down upon a part of mamore, and on the sea-loch that divides that country from appin; and this from so great a height as made it my continual wonder and pleasure to sit and behold them. the name of the cleft was the heugh of corrynakiegh; and although from its height and being so near upon the sea, it was often beset with clouds, yet it was on the whole a pleasant place, and the five days we lived in it went happily. we slept in the cave, making our bed of heather bushes which we cut for that purpose, and covering ourselves with alan's great-coat. there was a low concealed place, in a turning of the glen, where we were so bold as to make fire: so that we could warm ourselves when the clouds set in, and cook hot porridge, and grill the little trouts that we caught with our hands under the stones and overhanging banks of the burn. this was indeed our chief pleasure and business; and not only to save our meal against worse times, but with a rivalry that much amused us, we spent a great part of our days at the water-side, stripped to the waist and groping about or (as they say) guddling for these fish. the largest we got might have been a quarter of a pound; but they were of good flesh and flavour, and when broiled upon the coals, lacked only a little salt to be delicious. in any by-time alan must teach me to use my sword, for my ignorance had much distressed him; and i think besides, as i had sometimes the upper-hand of him in the fishing, he was not sorry to turn to an exercise where he had so much the upper-hand of me. he made it somewhat more of a pain than need have been, for he stormed at me all through the lessons in a very violent manner of scolding, and would push me so close that i made sure he must run me through the body. i was often tempted to turn tail, but held my ground for all that, and got some profit of my lessons; if it was but to stand on guard with an assured countenance, which is often all that is required. so, though i could never in the least please my master, i was not altogether displeased with myself. in the meanwhile, you are not to suppose that we neglected our chief business, which was to get away. "it will be many a long, day" alan said to me on our first morning, "before the red-coats think upon seeking corrynakiegh; so now we must get word sent to james, and he must find the siller for us." "and how shall we send that word?" says i. "we are here in a desert place, which yet we dare not leave; and unless ye get the fowls of the air to be your messengers, i see not what we shall be able to do." "ay?" said alan. "ye're a man of small contrivance, david." thereupon he fell in a muse, looking in the embers of the fire; and presently, getting a piece of wood, he fashioned it in a cross, the four ends of which he blackened on the coals. then he looked at me a little shyly. "could ye lend me my button?" says he. "it seems a strange thing to ask a gift again, but i own i am laith to cut another." i gave him the button; whereupon he strung it on a strip of his great-coat which he had used to bind the cross; and tying in a little sprig of birch and another of fir, he looked upon his work with satisfaction. "now," said he, "there is a little clachan" (what is called a hamlet in the english) "not very far from corrynakiegh, and it has the name of koalisnacoan. there there are living many friends of mine whom i could trust with my life, and some that i am no just so sure of. ye see, david, there will be money set upon our heads; james himsel' is to set money on them; and as for the campbells, they would never spare siller where there was a stewart to be hurt. if it was otherwise, i would go down to koalisnacoan whatever, and trust my life into these people's hands as lightly as i would trust another with my glove." "but being so?" said i. "being so," said he, "i would as lief they didnae see me. there's bad folk everywhere, and what's far worse, weak ones. so when it comes dark again, i will steal down into that clachan, and set this that i have been making in the window of a good friend of mine, john breck maccoll, a bouman[1] of appin's." "with all my heart," says i; "and if he finds it, what is he to think?" "well," says alan, "i wish he was a man of more penetration, for by my troth i am afraid he will make little enough of it! but this is what i have in my mind. this cross is something in the nature of the crosstarrie, or fiery cross, which is the signal of gathering in our clans; yet he will know well enough the clan is not to rise, for there it is standing in his window, and no word with it. so he will say to himsel', the clan is not to rise, but there is something. then he will see my button, and that was duncan stewart's. and then he will say to himsel', the son of duncan is in the heather, and has need of me." "well," said i, "it may be. but even supposing so, there is a good deal of heather between here and the forth." "and that is a very true word," says alan. "but then john breck will see the sprig of birch and the sprig of pine; and he will say to himsel' (if he is a man of any penetration at all, which i misdoubt), alan will be lying in a wood which is both of pines and birches. then he will think to himsel', that is not so very rife hereabout; and then he will come and give us a look up in corrynakiegh. and if he does not, david, the devil may fly away with him, for what i care; for he will no be worth the salt to his porridge." "eh, man," said i, drolling with him a little, "you're very ingenious! but would it not be simpler for you to write him a few words in black and white?" "and that is an excellent observe, mr. balfour of shaws," says alan, drolling with me; "and it would certainly be much simpler for me to write to him, but it would be a sore job for john breck to read it. he would have to go to the school for two-three years; and it's possible we might be wearied waiting on him." so that night alan carried down his fiery cross and set it in the bouman's window. he was troubled when he came back; for the dogs had barked and the folk run out from their houses; and he thought he had heard a clatter of arms and seen a red-coat come to one of the doors. on all accounts we lay the next day in the borders of the wood and kept a close look-out, so that if it was john breck that came we might be ready to guide him, and if it was the red-coats we should have time to get away. about noon a man was to be spied, straggling up the open side of the mountain in the sun, and looking round him as he came, from under his hand. no sooner had alan seen him than he whistled; the man turned and came a little towards us: then alan would give another "peep!" and the man would come still nearer; and so by the sound of whistling, he was guided to the spot where we lay. he was a ragged, wild, bearded man, about forty, grossly disfigured with the small pox, and looked both dull and savage. although his english was very bad and broken, yet alan (according to his very handsome use, whenever i was by) would suffer him to speak no gaelic. perhaps the strange language made him appear more backward than he really was; but i thought he had little good-will to serve us, and what he had was the child of terror. alan would have had him carry a message to james; but the bouman would hear of no message. "she was forget it," he said in his screaming voice; and would either have a letter or wash his hands of us. i thought alan would be gravelled at that, for we lacked the means of writing in that desert. but he was a man of more resources than i knew; searched the wood until he found the quill of a cushat-dove, which he shaped into a pen; made himself a kind of ink with gunpowder from his horn and water from the running stream; and tearing a corner from his french military commission (which he carried in his pocket, like a talisman to keep him from the gallows), he sat down and wrote as follows: "dear kinsman, -please send the money by the bearer to the place he kens of. "your affectionate cousin, "a. s." this he intrusted to the bouman, who promised to make what manner of speed he best could, and carried it off with him down the hill. he was three full days gone, but about five in the evening of the third, we heard a whistling in the wood, which alan answered; and presently the bouman came up the water-side, looking for us, right and left. he seemed less sulky than before, and indeed he was no doubt well pleased to have got to the end of such a dangerous commission. he gave us the news of the country; that it was alive with red-coats; that arms were being found, and poor folk brought in trouble daily; and that james and some of his servants were already clapped in prison at fort william, under strong suspicion of complicity. it seemed it was noised on all sides that alan breck had fired the shot; and there was a bill issued for both him and me, with one hundred pounds reward. this was all as bad as could be; and the little note the bouman had carried us from mrs. stewart was of a miserable sadness. in it she besought alan not to let himself be captured, assuring him, if he fell in the hands of the troops, both he and james were no better than dead men. the money she had sent was all that she could beg or borrow, and she prayed heaven we could be doing with it. lastly, she said, she enclosed us one of the bills in which we were described. this we looked upon with great curiosity and not a little fear, partly as a man may look in a mirror, partly as he might look into the barrel of an enemy's gun to judge if it be truly aimed. alan was advertised as "a small, pock-marked, active man of thirty-five or thereby, dressed in a feathered hat, a french side-coat of blue with silver buttons, and lace a great deal tarnished, a red waistcoat and breeches of black, shag;" and i as "a tall strong lad of about eighteen, wearing an old blue coat, very ragged, an old highland bonnet, a long homespun waistcoat, blue breeches; his legs bare, low-country shoes, wanting the toes; speaks like a lowlander, and has no beard." alan was well enough pleased to see his finery so fully remembered and set down; only when he came to the word tarnish, he looked upon his lace like one a little mortified. as for myself, i thought i cut a miserable figure in the bill; and yet was well enough pleased too, for since i had changed these rags, the description had ceased to be a danger and become a source of safety. "alan," said i, "you should change your clothes." "na, troth!" said alan, "i have nae others. a fine sight i would be, if i went back to france in a bonnet!" this put a second reflection in my mind: that if i were to separate from alan and his tell-tale clothes i should be safe against arrest, and might go openly about my business. nor was this all; for suppose i was arrested when i was alone, there was little against me; but suppose i was taken in company with the reputed murderer, my case would begin to be grave. for generosity's sake i dare not speak my mind upon this head; but i thought of it none the less. i thought of it all the more, too, when the bouman brought out a green purse with four guineas in gold, and the best part of another in small change. true, it was more than i had. but then alan, with less than five guineas, had to get as far as france; i, with my less than two, not beyond queensferry; so that taking things in their proportion, alan's society was not only a peril to my life, but a burden on my purse. but there was no thought of the sort in the honest head of my companion. he believed he was serving, helping, and protecting me. and what could i do but hold my peace, and chafe, and take my chance of it? "it's little enough," said alan, putting the purse in his pocket, "but it'll do my business. and now, john breck, if ye will hand me over my button, this gentleman and me will be for taking the road." but the bouman, after feeling about in a hairy purse that hung in front of him in the highland manner (though he wore otherwise the lowland habit, with sea-trousers), began to roll his eyes strangely, and at last said, "her nainsel will loss it," meaning he thought he had lost it. "what!" cried alan, "you will lose my button, that was my father's before me? now i will tell you what is in my mind, john breck: it is in my mind this is the worst day's work that ever ye did since ye was born." and as alan spoke, he set his hands on his knees and looked at the bouman with a smiling mouth, and that dancing light in his eyes that meant mischief to his enemies. perhaps the bouman was honest enough; perhaps he had meant to cheat and then, finding himself alone with two of us in a desert place, cast back to honesty as being safer; at least, and all at once, he seemed to find that button and handed it to alan. "well, and it is a good thing for the honour of the maccolls," said alan, and then to me, "here is my button back again, and i thank you for parting with it, which is of a piece with all your friendships to me." then he took the warmest parting of the bouman. "for," says he, "ye have done very well by me, and set your neck at a venture, and i will always give you the name of a good man." lastly, the bouman took himself off by one way; and alan i (getting our chattels together) struck into another to resume our flight. [1] a bouman is a tenant who takes stock from the landlord and shares with him the increase. chapter xxii the flight in the heather: the moor some seven hours' incessant, hard travelling brought us early in the morning to the end of a range of mountains. in front of us there lay a piece of low, broken, desert land, which we must now cross. the sun was not long up, and shone straight in our eyes; a little, thin mist went up from the face of the moorland like a smoke; so that (as alan said) there might have been twenty squadron of dragoons there and we none the wiser. we sat down, therefore, in a howe of the hill-side till the mist should have risen, and made ourselves a dish of drammach, and held a council of war. "david," said alan, "this is the kittle bit. shall we lie here till it comes night, or shall we risk it, and stave on ahead?" "well," said i, "i am tired indeed, but i could walk as far again, if that was all." "ay, but it isnae," said alan, "nor yet the half. this is how we stand: appin's fair death to us. to the south it's all campbells, and no to be thought of. to the north; well, there's no muckle to be gained by going north; neither for you, that wants to get to queensferry, nor yet for me, that wants to get to france. well, then, we'll can strike east." "east be it!" says i, quite cheerily; but i was thinking" in to myself: "o, man, if you would only take one point of the compass and let me take any other, it would be the best for both of us." "well, then, east, ye see, we have the muirs," said alan. "once there, david, it's mere pitch-and-toss. out on yon bald, naked, flat place, where can a body turn to? let the red-coats come over a hill, they can spy you miles away; and the sorrow's in their horses' heels, they would soon ride you down. it's no good place, david; and i'm free to say, it's worse by daylight than by dark." "alan," said i, "hear my way of it. appin's death for us; we have none too much money, nor yet meal; the longer they seek, the nearer they may guess where we are; it's all a risk; and i give my word to go ahead until we drop." alan was delighted. "there are whiles," said he, "when ye are altogether too canny and whiggish to be company for a gentleman like me; but there come other whiles when ye show yoursel' a mettle spark; and it's then, david, that i love ye like a brother." the mist rose and died away, and showed us that country lying as waste as the sea; only the moorfowl and the pewees crying upon it, and far over to the east, a herd of deer, moving like dots. much of it was red with heather; much of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty pools; some had been burnt black in a heath fire; and in another place there was quite a forest of dead firs, standing like skeletons. a wearier-looking desert man never saw; but at least it was clear of troops, which was our point. we went down accordingly into the waste, and began to make our toilsome and devious travel towards the eastern verge. there were the tops of mountains all round (you are to remember) from whence we might be spied at any moment; so it behoved us to keep in the hollow parts of the moor, and when these turned aside from our direction to move upon its naked face with infinite care. sometimes, for half an hour together, we must crawl from one heather bush to another, as hunters do when they are hard upon the deer. it was a clear day again, with a blazing sun; the water in the brandy bottle was soon gone; and altogether, if i had guessed what it would be to crawl half the time upon my belly and to walk much of the rest stooping nearly to the knees, i should certainly have held back from such a killing enterprise. toiling and resting and toiling again, we wore away the morning; and about noon lay down in a thick bush of heather to sleep. alan took the first watch; and it seemed to me i had scarce closed my eyes before i was shaken up to take the second. we had no clock to go by; and alan stuck a sprig of heath in the ground to serve instead; so that as soon as the shadow of the bush should fall so far to the east, i might know to rouse him. but i was by this time so weary that i could have slept twelve hours at a stretch; i had the taste of sleep in my throat; my joints slept even when my mind was waking; the hot smell of the heather, and the drone of the wild bees, were like possets to me; and every now and again i would give a jump and find i had been dozing. the last time i woke i seemed to come back from farther away, and thought the sun had taken a great start in the heavens. i looked at the sprig of heath, and at that i could have cried aloud: for i saw i had betrayed my trust. my head was nearly turned with fear and shame; and at what i saw, when i looked out around me on the moor, my heart was like dying in my body. for sure enough, a body of horse-soldiers had come down during my sleep, and were drawing near to us from the south-east, spread out in the shape of a fan and riding their horses to and fro in the deep parts of the heather. when i waked alan, he glanced first at the soldiers, then at the mark and the position of the sun, and knitted his brows with a sudden, quick look, both ugly and anxious, which was all the reproach i had of him. "what are we to do now?" i asked. "we'll have to play at being hares," said he. "do ye see yon mountain?" pointing to one on the north-eastern sky. "ay," said i. "well, then," says he, "let us strike for that. its name is ben alder. it is a wild, desert mountain full of hills and hollows, and if we can win to it before the morn, we may do yet." "but, alan," cried i, "that will take us across the very coming of the soldiers!" "i ken that fine," said he; "but if we are driven back on appin, we are two dead men. so now, david man, be brisk!" with that he began to run forward on his hands and knees with an incredible quickness, as though it were his natural way of going. all the time, too, he kept winding in and out in the lower parts of the moorland where we were the best concealed. some of these had been burned or at least scathed with fire; and there rose in our faces (which were close to the ground) a blinding, choking dust as fine as smoke. the water was long out; and this posture of running on the hands and knees brings an overmastering weakness and weariness, so that the joints ache and the wrists faint under your weight. now and then, indeed, where was a big bush of heather, we lay awhile, and panted, and putting aside the leaves, looked back at the dragoons. they had not spied us, for they held straight on; a half-troop, i think, covering about two miles of ground, and beating it mighty thoroughly as they went. i had awakened just in time; a little later, and we must have fled in front of them, instead of escaping on one side. even as it was, the least misfortune might betray us; and now and again, when a grouse rose out of the heather with a clap of wings, we lay as still as the dead and were afraid to breathe. the aching and faintness of my body, the labouring of my heart, the soreness of my hands, and the smarting of my throat and eyes in the continual smoke of dust and ashes, had soon grown to be so unbearable that i would gladly have given up. nothing but the fear of alan lent me enough of a false kind of courage to continue. as for himself (and you are to bear in mind that he was cumbered with a great-coat) he had first turned crimson, but as time went on the redness began to be mingled with patches of white; his breath cried and whistled as it came; and his voice, when he whispered his observations in my ear during our halts, sounded like nothing human. yet he seemed in no way dashed in spirits, nor did he at all abate in his activity. so that i was driven, to marvel at the man's endurance. at length, in the first gloaming of the night, we heard a trumpet sound, and looking back from among the heather, saw the troop beginning to collect. a little after, they had built a fire and camped for the night, about the middle of the waste. at this i begged and besought that we might lie down and sleep. "there shall be no sleep the night!" said alan. "from now on, these weary dragoons of yours will keep the crown of the muirland, and none will get out of appin but winged fowls. we got through in the nick of time, and shall we jeopard what we've gained? na, na, when the day comes, it shall find you and me in a fast place on ben alder." "alan," i said, "it's not the want of will: it's the strength that i want. if i could, i would; but as sure as i'm alive i cannot." "very well, then," said alan. "i'll carry ye." i looked to see if he were jesting; but no, the little man was in dead earnest; and the sight of so much resolution shamed me. "lead away!" said i. "i'll follow." he gave me one look as much as to say, "well done, david!" and off he set again at his top speed. it grew cooler and even a little darker (but not much) with the coming of the night. the sky was cloudless; it was still early in july, and pretty far north; in the darkest part of that night, you would have needed pretty good eyes to read, but for all that, i have often seen it darker in a winter mid-day. heavy dew fell and drenched the moor like rain; and this refreshed me for a while. when we stopped to breathe, and i had time to see all about me, the clearness and sweetness of the night, the shapes of the hills like things asleep, and the fire dwindling away behind us, like a bright spot in the midst of the moor, anger would come upon me in a clap that i must still drag myself in agony and eat the dust like a worm. by what i have read in books, i think few that have held a pen were ever really wearied, or they would write of it more strongly. i had no care of my life, neither past nor future, and i scarce remembered there was such a lad as david balfour. i did not think of myself, but just of each fresh step which i was sure would be my last, with despair -and of alan, who was the cause of it, with hatred. alan was in the right trade as a soldier; this is the officer's part to make men continue to do things, they know not wherefore, and when, if the choice was offered, they would lie down where they were and be killed. and i dare say i would have made a good enough private; for in these last hours it never occurred to me that i had any choice but just to obey as long as i was able, and die obeying. day began to come in, after years, i thought; and by that time we were past the greatest danger, and could walk upon our feet like men, instead of crawling like brutes. but, dear heart have mercy! what a pair we must have made, going double like old grandfathers, stumbling like babes, and as white as dead folk. never a word passed between us; each set his mouth and kept his eyes in front of him, and lifted up his foot and set it down again, like people lifting weights at a country, play;[1] all the while, with the moorfowl crying "peep!" in the heather, and the light coming slowly clearer in the east. i say alan did as i did. not that ever i looked at him, for i had enough ado to keep my feet; but because it is plain he must have been as stupid with weariness as myself, and looked as little where we were going, or we should not have walked into an ambush like blind men. it fell in this way. we were going down a heathery brae, alan leading and i following a pace or two behind, like a fiddler and his wife; when upon a sudden the heather gave a rustle, three or four ragged men leaped out, and the next moment we were lying on our backs, each with a dirk at his throat. i don't think i cared; the pain of this rough handling was quite swallowed up by the pains of which i was already full; and i was too glad to have stopped walking to mind about a dirk. i lay looking up in the face of the man that held me; and i mind his face was black with the sun, and his eyes very light, but i was not afraid of him. i heard alan and another whispering in the gaelic; and what they said was all one to me. then the dirks were put up, our weapons were taken away, and we were set face to face, sitting in the heather. "they are cluny's men," said alan. "we couldnae have fallen better. we're just to bide here with these, which are his out-sentries, till they can get word to the chief of my arrival." now cluny macpherson, the chief of the clan vourich, had been one of the leaders of the great rebellion six years before; there was a price on his life; and i had supposed him long ago in france, with the rest of the heads of that desperate party. even tired as i was, the surprise of what i heard half wakened me. "what," i cried, "is cluny still here?" "ay, is he so!" said alan. "still in his own country and kept by his own clan. king george can do no more." i think i would have asked farther, but alan gave me the put-off. "i am rather wearied," he said, "and i would like fine to get a sleep." and without more words, he rolled on his face in a deep heather bush, and seemed to sleep at once. there was no such thing possible for me. you have heard grasshoppers whirring in the grass in the summer time? well, i had no sooner closed my eyes, than my body, and above all my head, belly, and wrists, seemed to be filled with whirring grasshoppers; and i must open my eyes again at once, and tumble and toss, and sit up and lie down; and look at the sky which dazzled me, or at cluny's wild and dirty sentries, peering out over the top of the brae and chattering to each other in the gaelic. that was all the rest i had, until the messenger returned; when, as it appeared that cluny would be glad to receive us, we must get once more upon our feet and set forward. alan was in excellent good spirits, much refreshed by his sleep, very hungry, and looking pleasantly forward to a dram and a dish of hot collops, of which, it seems, the messenger had brought him word. for my part, it made me sick to hear of eating. i had been dead-heavy before, and now i felt a kind of dreadful lightness, which would not suffer me to walk. i drifted like a gossamer; the ground seemed to me a cloud, the hills a feather-weight, the air to have a current, like a running burn, which carried me to and fro. with all that, a sort of horror of despair sat on my mind, so that i could have wept at my own helplessness. i saw alan knitting his brows at me, and supposed it was in anger; and that gave me a pang of light-headed fear, like what a child may have. i remember, too, that i was smiling, and could not stop smiling, hard as i tried; for i thought it was out of place at such a time. but my good companion had nothing in his mind but kindness; and the next moment, two of the gillies had me by the arms, and i began to be carried forward with great swiftness (or so it appeared to me, although i dare say it was slowly enough in truth), through a labyrinth of dreary glens and hollows and into the heart of that dismal mountain of ben alder. [1] village fair. chapter xxiii cluny's cage we came at last to the foot of an exceeding steep wood, which scrambled up a craggy hillside, and was crowned by a naked precipice. "it's here," said one of the guides, and we struck up hill. the trees clung upon the slope, like sailors on the shrouds of a ship, and their trunks were like the rounds of a ladder, by which we mounted. quite at the top, and just before the rocky face of the cliff sprang above the foliage, we found that strange house which was known in the country as "cluny's cage." the trunks of several trees had been wattled across, the intervals strengthened with stakes, and the ground behind this barricade levelled up with earth to make the floor. a tree, which grew out from the hillside, was the living centre-beam of the roof. the walls were of wattle and covered with moss. the whole house had something of an egg shape; and it half hung, half stood in that steep, hillside thicket, like a wasp's nest in a green hawthorn. within, it was large enough to shelter five or six persons with some comfort. a projection of the cliff had been cunningly employed to be the fireplace; and the smoke rising against the face of the rock, and being not dissimilar in colour, readily escaped notice from below. this was but one of cluny's hiding-places; he had caves, besides, and underground chambers in several parts of his country; and following the reports of his scouts, he moved from one to another as the soldiers drew near or moved away. by this manner of living, and thanks to the affection of his clan, he had not only stayed all this time in safety, while so many others had fled or been taken and slain: but stayed four or five years longer, and only went to france at last by the express command of his master. there he soon died; and it is strange to reflect that he may have regretted his cage upon ben alder. when we came to the door he was seated by his rock chimney, watching a gillie about some cookery. he was mighty plainly habited, with a knitted nightcap drawn over his ears, and smoked a foul cutty pipe. for all that he had the manners of a king, and it was quite a sight to see him rise out of his place to welcome us. "well, mr. stewart, come awa', sir!" said he, "and bring in your friend that as yet i dinna ken the name of." "and how is yourself, cluny?" said alan. "i hope ye do brawly, sir. and i am proud to see ye, and to present to ye my friend the laird of shaws, mr. david balfour." alan never referred to my estate without a touch of a sneer, when we were alone; but with strangers, he rang the words out like a herald. "step in by, the both of ye, gentlemen," says cluny. "i make ye welcome to my house, which is a queer, rude place for certain, but one where i have entertained a royal personage, mr. stewart -ye doubtless ken the personage i have in my eye. we'll take a dram for luck, and as soon as this handless man of mine has the collops ready, we'll dine and take a hand at the cartes as gentlemen should. my life is a bit driegh," says he, pouring out the brandy;" i see little company, and sit and twirl my thumbs, and mind upon a great day that is gone by, and weary for another great day that we all hope will be upon the road. and so here's a toast to ye: the restoration!" thereupon we all touched glasses and drank. i am sure i wished no ill to king george; and if he had been there himself in proper person, it's like he would have done as i did. no sooner had i taken out the drain than i felt hugely better, and could look on and listen, still a little mistily perhaps, but no longer with the same groundless horror and distress of mind. it was certainly a strange place, and we had a strange host. in his long hiding, cluny had grown to have all manner of precise habits, like those of an old maid. he had a particular place, where no one else must sit; the cage was arranged in a particular way, which none must disturb; cookery was one of his chief fancies, and even while he was greeting us in, he kept an eye to the collops. it appears, he sometimes visited or received visits from his wife and one or two of his nearest friends, under the cover of night; but for the more part lived quite alone, and communicated only with his sentinels and the gillies that waited on him in the cage. the first thing in the morning, one of them, who was a barber, came and shaved him, and gave him the news of the country, of which he was immoderately greedy. there was no end to his questions; he put them as earnestly as a child; and at some of the answers, laughed out of all bounds of reason, and would break out again laughing at the mere memory, hours after the barber was gone. to be sure, there might have been a purpose in his questions; for though he was thus sequestered, and like the other landed gentlemen of scotland, stripped by the late act of parliament of legal powers, he still exercised a patriarchal justice in his clan. disputes were brought to him in his hiding-hole to be decided; and the men of his country, who would have snapped their fingers at the court of session, laid aside revenge and paid down money at the bare word of this forfeited and hunted outlaw. when he was angered, which was often enough, he gave his commands and breathed threats of punishment like any, king; and his gillies trembled and crouched away from him like children before a hasty father. with each of them, as he entered, he ceremoniously shook hands, both parties touching their bonnets at the same time in a military manner. altogether, i had a fair chance to see some of the inner workings of a highland clan; and this with a proscribed, fugitive chief; his country conquered; the troops riding upon all sides in quest of him, sometimes within a mile of where he lay; and when the least of the ragged fellows whom he rated and threatened, could have made a fortune by betraying him. on that first day, as soon as the collops were ready, cluny gave them with his own hand a squeeze of a lemon (for he was well supplied with luxuries) and bade us draw in to our meal. "they," said he, meaning the collops, "are such as i gave his royal highness in this very house; bating the lemon juice, for at that time we were glad to get the meat and never fashed for kitchen.[1] indeed, there were mair dragoons than lemons in my country in the year forty-six." i do not know if the collops were truly very good, but my heart rose against the sight of them, and i could eat but little. all the while cluny entertained us with stories of prince charlie's stay in the cage, giving us the very words of the speakers, and rising from his place to show us where they stood. by these, i gathered the prinee was a gracious, spirited boy, like the son of a race of polite kings, but not so wise as solomon. i gathered, too, that while he was in the cage, he was often drunk; so the fault that has since, by all accounts, made such a wreck of him, had even then begun to show itself. we were no sooner done eating than cluny brought out an old, thumbed, greasy pack of cards, such as you may find in a mean inn; and his eyes brightened in his face as he proposed that we should fall to playing. now this was one of the things i had been brought up to eschew like disgrace; it being held by my father neither the part of a christian nor yet of a gentleman to set his own livelihood and fish for that of others, on the cast of painted pasteboard. to be sure, i might have pleaded my fatigue, which was excuse enough; but i thought it behoved that i should bear a testimony. i must have got very red in the face, but i spoke steadily, and told them i had no call to be a judge of others, but for my own part, it was a matter in which i had no clearness. cluny stopped mingling the cards. "what in deil's name is this?" says he. "what kind of whiggish, canting talk is this, for the house of cluny macpherson?" "i will put my hand in the fire for mr. balfour," says alan. "he is an honest and a mettle gentleman, and i would have ye bear in mind who says it. i bear a king's name," says he, cocking his hat; "and i and any that i call friend are company for the best. but the gentleman is tired, and should sleep; if he has no mind to the cartes, it will never hinder you and me. and i'm fit and willing, sir, to play ye any game that ye can name." "sir," says cluny, "in this poor house of mine i would have you to ken that any gentleman may follow his pleasure. if your friend would like to stand on his head, he is welcome. and if either he, or you, or any other man, is not preceesely satisfied, i will be proud to step outside with him." i had no will that these two friends should cut their throats for my sake. "sir," said i, "i am very wearied, as alan says; and what's more, as you are a man that likely has sons of your own, i may tell you it was a promise to my father." "say nae mair, say nae mair," said cluny, and pointed me to a bed of heather in a corner of the cage. for all that he was displeased enough, looked at me askance, and grumbled when he looked. and indeed it must be owned that both my scruples and the words in which i declared them, smacked somewhat of the covenanter, and were little in their place among wild highland jacobites. what with the brandy and the venison, a strange heaviness had come over me; and i had scarce lain down upon the bed before i fell into a kind of trance, in which i continued almost the whole time of our stay in the cage. sometimes i was broad awake and understood what passed; sometimes i only heard voices, or men snoring, like the voice of a silly river; and the plaids upon the wall dwindled down and swelled out again, like firelight shadows on the roof. i must sometimes have spoken or cried out, for i remember i was now and then amazed at being answered; yet i was conscious of no particular nightmare, only of a general, black, abiding horror -a horror of the place i was in, and the bed i lay in, and the plaids on the wall, and the voices, and the fire, and myself. the barber-gillie, who was a doctor too, was called in to prescribe for me; but as he spoke in the gaelic, i understood not a word of his opinion, and was too sick even to ask for a translation. i knew well enough i was ill, and that was all i cared about. i paid little heed while i lay in this poor pass. but alan and cluny were most of the time at the cards, and i am clear that alan must have begun by winning; for i remember sitting up, and seeing them hard at it, and a great glittering pile of as much as sixty or a hundred guineas on the table. it looked strange enough, to see all this wealth in a nest upon a cliff-side, wattled about growing trees. and even then, i thought it seemed deep water for alan to be riding, who had no better battle-horse than a green purse and a matter of five pounds. the luck, it seems, changed on the second day. about noon i was wakened as usual for dinner, and as usual refused to eat, and was given a dram with some bitter infusion which the barber had prescribed. the sun was shining in at the open door of the cage, and this dazzled and offended me. cluny sat at the table, biting the pack of cards. alan had stooped over the bed, and had his face close to my eyes; to which, troubled as they were with the fever, it seemed of the most shocking bigness. he asked me for a loan of my money. "what for?" said i. "o, just for a loan," said he. "but why?" i repeated. "i don't see." "hut, david!" said alan, "ye wouldnae grudge me a loan?" i would, though, if i had had my senses! but all i thought of then was to get his face away, and i handed him my money. on the morning of the third day, when we had been fortyeight hours in the cage, i awoke with a great relief of spirits, very weak and weary indeed, but seeing things of the right size and with their honest, everyday appearance. i had a mind to eat, moreover, rose from bed of my own movement, and as soon as we had breakfasted, stepped to the entry of the cage and sat down outside in the top of the wood. it was a grey day with a cool, mild air: and i sat in a dream all morning, only disturbed by the passing by of cluny's scouts and servants coming with provisions and reports; for as the coast was at that time clear, you might almost say he held court openly. when i returned, he and alan had laid the cards aside, and were questioning a gillie; and the chief turned about and spoke to me in the gaelic. "i have no gaelic, sir," said i. now since the card question, everything i said or did had the power of annoying cluny. "your name has more sense than yourself, then," said he angrily. "for it's good gaelic. but the point is this. my scout reports all clear in the south, and the question is, have ye the strength to go?" i saw cards on the table, but no gold; only a heap of little written papers, and these all on cluny's side. alan, besides, had an odd look, like a man not very well content; and i began to have a strong misgiving. "i do not know if i am as well as i should be," said i, looking at alan; "but the little money we have has a long way to carry us." alan took his under-lip into his mouth, and looked upon the ground. "david," says he at last, "i've lost it; there's the naked truth." "my money too?" said i. "your money too," says alan, with a groan. "ye shouldnae have given it me. i'm daft when i get to the cartes." "hoot-toot! hoot-toot!" said cluny. "it was all daffing; it's all nonsense. of course you'll have your money back again, and the double of it, if ye'll make so free with me. it would be a singular thing for me to keep it. it's not to be supposed that i would be any hindrance to gentlemen in your situation; that would be a singular thing!" cries he, and began to pull gold out of his pocket with a mighty red face. alan said nothing, only looked on the ground. will you step to the door with me, sir?" said i. cluny said he would be very glad, and followed me readily enough, but he looked flustered and put out. "and now, sir," says i, "i must first acknowledge your generosity." "nonsensical nonsense!" cries cluny. "where's the generosity? this is just a most unfortunate affair; but what would ye have me do -boxed up in this bee-skep of a cage of mine -but just set my friends to the cartes, when i can get them? and if they lose, of course, it's not to be supposed ----" and here he came to a pause. "yes," said i, "if they lose, you give them back their money; and if they win, they carry away yours in their pouches! i have said before that i grant your generosity; but to me, sir, it's a very painful thing to be placed in this position." there was a little silence, in which cluny seemed always as if he was about to speak, but said nothing. all the time he grew redder and redder in the face. "i am a young man," said i, "and i ask your advice. advise me as you would your son. my friend fairly lost his money, after having fairly gained a far greater sum of yours; can i accept it back again? would that be the right part for me to play? whatever i do, you can see for yourself it must be hard upon a man of any pride." "it's rather hard on me, too, mr. balfour," said cluny, "and ye give me very much the look of a man that has entrapped poor people to their hurt. i wouldnae have my friends come to any house of mine to accept affronts; no," he cried, with a sudden heat of anger, "nor yet to give them!" "and so you see, sir," said i, "there is something to be said upon my side; and this gambling is a very poor employ for gentlefolks. but i am still waiting your opinion." i am sure if ever cluny hated any man it was david balfour. he looked me all over with a warlike eye, and i saw the challenge at his lips. but either my youth disarmed him, or perhaps his own sense of justice. certainly it was a mortifying matter for all concerned, and not least cluny; the more credit that he took it as he did." mr. balfour," said he, "i think you are too nice and covenanting, but for all that you have the spirit of a very pretty gentleman. upon my honest word, ye may take this money -it's what i would tell my son -and here's my hand along with it!" [1] condiment. chapter xxiv the flight in the heather: the quarrel alan and i were put across loch errocht under cloud of night, and went down its eastern shore to another hiding-place near the head of loch rannoch, whither we were led by one of the gillies from the cage. this fellow carried all our luggage and alan's great-coat in the bargain, trotting along under the burthen, far less than the half of which used to weigh me to the ground, like a stout hill pony with a feather; yet he was a man that, in plain contest, i could have broken on my knee. doubtless it was a great relief to walk disencumbered; and perhaps without that relief, and the consequent sense of liberty and lightness, i could not have walked at all. i was but new risen from a bed of sickness; and there was nothing in the state of our affairs to hearten me for much exertion; travelling, as we did, over the most dismal deserts in scotland, under a cloudy heaven, and with divided hearts among the travellers. for long, we said nothing; marching alongside or one behind the other, each with a set countenance: i, angry and proud, and drawing what strength i had from these two violent and sinful feelings; alan angry and ashamed, ashamed that he had lost my money, angry that i should take it so ill. the thought of a separation ran always the stronger in my mind; and the more i approved of it, the more ashamed i grew of my approval. it would be a fine, handsome, generous thing, indeed, for alan to turn round and say to me: "go, i am in the most danger, and my company only increases yours." but for me to turn to the friend who certainly loved me, and say to him: "you are in great danger, i am in but little; your friendship is a burden; go, take your risks and bear your hardships alone ----" no, that was impossible; and even to think of it privily to myself, made my cheeks to burn. and yet alan had behaved like a child, and (what is worse) a treacherous child. wheedling my money from me while i lay half-conscious was scarce better than theft; and yet here he was trudging by my side, without a penny to his name, and by what i could see, quite blithe to sponge upon the money he had driven me to beg. true, i was ready to share it with him; but it made me rage to see him count upon my readiness. these were the two things uppermost in my mind; and i could open my mouth upon neither without black ungenerosity. so i did the next worst, and said nothing, nor so much as looked once at my companion, save with the tail of my eye. at last, upon the other side of loch errocht, going over a smooth, rushy place, where the walking was easy, he could bear it no longer, and came close to me. "david," says he, "this is no way for two friends to take a small accident. i have to say that i'm sorry; and so that's said. and now if you have anything, ye'd better say it." "o," says i, "i have nothing." he seemed disconcerted; at which i was meanly pleased. "no," said he, with rather a trembling voice, "but when i say i was to blame?" "why, of course, ye were to blame," said i, coolly; "and you will bear me out that i have never reproached you." "never," says he; "but ye ken very well that ye've done worse. are we to part? ye said so once before. are ye to say it again? there's hills and heather enough between here and the two seas, david; and i will own i'm no very keen to stay where i'm no wanted." this pierced me like a sword, and seemed to lay bare my private disloyalty. "alan breck!" i cried; and then: "do you think i am one to turn my back on you in your chief need? you dursn't say it to my face. my whole conduct's there to give the lie to it. it's true, i fell asleep upon the muir; but that was from weariness, and you do wrong to cast it up to me----" "which is what i never did," said alan. "but aside from that," i continued, "what have i done that you should even me to dogs by such a supposition? i never yet failed a friend, and it's not likely i'll begin with you. there are things between us that i can never forget, even if you can." "i will only say this to ye, david," said alan, very quietly, "that i have long been owing ye my life, and now i owe ye money. ye should try to make that burden light for me." this ought to have touched me, and in a manner it did, but the wrong manner. i felt i was behaving, badly; and was now not only angry with alan, but angry with myself in the bargain; and it made me the more cruel. "you asked me to speak," said i. "well, then, i will. you own yourself that you have done me a disservice; i have had to swallow an affront: i have never reproached you, i never named the thing till you did. and now you blame me," cried i, "because i cannae laugh and sing as if i was glad to be affronted. the next thing will be that i'm to go down upon my knees and thank you for it! ye should think more of others, alan breck. if ye thought more of others, ye would perhaps speak less about yourself; and when a friend that likes you very well has passed over an offence without a word, you would be blithe to let it lie, instead of making it a stick to break his back with. by your own way of it, it was you that was to blame; then it shouldnae be you to seek the quarrel." "aweel," said alan, "say nae mair." and we fell back into our former silence; and came to our journey's end, and supped, and lay down to sleep, without another word. the gillie put us across loch rannoch in the dusk of the next day, and gave us his opinion as to our best route. this was to get us up at once into the tops of the mountains: to go round by a circuit, turning the heads of glen lyon, glen lochay, and glen dochart, and come down upon the lowlands by kippen and the upper waters of the forth. alan was little pleased with a route which led us through the country of his blood-foes, the glenorchy campbells. he objected that by turning to the east, we should come almost at once among the athole stewarts, a race of his own name and lineage, although following a different chief, and come besides by a far easier and swifter way to the place whither we were bound. but the gillie, who was indeed the chief man of cluny's scouts, had good reasons to give him on all hands, naming the force of troops in every district, and alleging finally (as well as i could understand) that we should nowhere be so little troubled as in a country of the campbells. alan gave way at last, but with only half a heart. "it's one of the dowiest countries in scotland," said he. "there's naething there that i ken, but heath, and crows, and campbells. but i see that ye're a man of some penetration; and be it as ye please!" we set forth accordingly by this itinerary; and for the best part of three nights travelled on eerie mountains and among the well-heads of wild rivers; often buried in mist, almost continually blown and rained upon, and not once cheered by any glimpse of sunshine. by day, we lay and slept in the drenching heather; by night, incessantly clambered upon break-neck hills and among rude crags. we often wandered; we were often so involved in fog, that we must lie quiet till it lightened. a fire was never to be thought of. our only food was drammach and a portion of cold meat that we had carried from the cage; and as for drink, heaven knows we had no want of water. this was a dreadful time, rendered the more dreadful by the gloom of the weather and the country. i was never warm; my teeth chattered in my head; i was troubled with a very sore throat, such as i had on the isle; i had a painful stitch in my side, which never left me; and when i slept in my wet bed, with the rain beating above and the mud oozing below me, it was to live over again in fancy the worst part of my adventures -to see the tower of shaws lit by lightning, ransome carried below on the men's backs, shuan dying on the round-house floor, or colin campbell grasping at the bosom of his coat. from such broken slumbers, i would be aroused in the gloaming, to sit up in the same puddle where i had slept, and sup cold drammach; the rain driving sharp in my face or running down my back in icy trickles; the mist enfolding us like as in a gloomy chamber -or, perhaps, if the wind blew, falling suddenly apart and showing us the gulf of some dark valley where the streams were crying aloud. the sound of an infinite number of rivers came up from all round. in this steady rain the springs of the mountain were broken up; every glen gushed water like a cistern; every stream was in high spate, and had filled and overflowed its channel. during our night tramps, it was solemn to hear the voice of them below in the valleys, now booming like thunder, now with an angry cry. i could well understand the story of the water kelpie, that demon of the streams, who is fabled to keep wailing and roaring at the ford until the coming of the doomed traveller. alan i saw believed it, or half believed it; and when the cry of the river rose more than usually sharp, i was little surprised (though, of course, i would still be shocked) to see him cross himself in the manner of the catholics. during all these horrid wanderings we had no familiarity, scarcely even that of speech. the truth is that i was sickening for my grave, which is my best excuse. but besides that i was of an unforgiving disposition from my birth, slow to take offence, slower to forget it, and now incensed both against my companion and myself. for the best part of two days he was unweariedly kind; silent, indeed, but always ready to help, and always hoping (as i could very well see) that my displeasure would blow by. for the same length of time i stayed in myself, nursing my anger, roughly refusing his services, and passing him over with my eyes as if he had been a bush or a stone. the second night, or rather the peep of the third day, found us upon a very open hill, so that we could not follow our usual plan and lie down immediately to eat and sleep. before we had reached a place of shelter, the grey had come pretty clear, for though it still rained, the clouds ran higher; and alan, looking in my face, showed some marks of concern. "ye had better let me take your pack," said he, for perhaps the ninth time since we had parted from the scout beside loch rannoch. "i do very well, i thank you," said i, as cold as ice. alan flushed darkly. "i'll not offer it again," he said. "i'm not a patient man, david." "i never said you were," said i, which was exactly the rude, silly speech of a boy of ten. alan made no answer at the time, but his conduct answered for him. henceforth, it is to be thought, he quite forgave himself for the affair at cluny's; cocked his hat again, walked jauntily, whistled airs, and looked at me upon one side with a provoking smile. the third night we were to pass through the western end of the country of balquhidder. it came clear and cold, with a touch in the air like frost, and a northerly wind that blew the clouds away and made the stars bright. the streams were full, of course, and still made a great noise among the hills; but i observed that alan thought no more upon the kelpie, and was in high good spirits. as for me, the change of weather came too late; i had lain in the mire so long that (as the bible has it) my very clothes" abhorred me." i was dead weary, deadly sick and full of pains and shiverings; the chill of the wind went through me, and the sound of it confused my ears. in this poor state i had to bear from my companion something in the nature of a persecution. he spoke a good deal, and never without a taunt. "whig" was the best name he had to give me. "here," he would say, "here's a dub for ye to jump, my whiggie! i ken you're a fine jumper!" and so on; all the time with a gibing voice and face. i knew it was my own doing, and no one else's; but i was too miserable to repent. i felt i could drag myself but little farther; pretty soon, i must lie down and die on these wet mountains like a sheep or a fox, and my bones must whiten there like the bones of a beast. my head was light perhaps; but i began to love the prospect, i began to glory in the thought of such a death, alone in the desert, with the wild eagles besieging my last moments. alan would repent then, i thought; he would remember, when i was dead, how much he owed me, and the remembrance would be torture. so i went like a sick, silly, and bad-hearted schoolboy, feeding my anger against a fellow-man, when i would have been better on my knees, crying on god for mercy. and at each of alan's taunts, i hugged myself. "ah!" thinks i to myself, "i have a better taunt in readiness; when i lie down and die, you will feel it like a buffet in your face; ah, what a revenge! ah, how you will regret your ingratitude and cruelty!" all the while, i was growing worse and worse. once i had fallen, my leg simply doubling under me, and this had struck alan for the moment; but i was afoot so briskly, and set off again with such a natural manner, that he soon forgot the incident. flushes of heat went over me, and then spasms of shuddering. the stitch in my side was hardly bearable. at last i began to feel that i could trail myself no farther: and with that, there came on me all at once the wish to have it out with alan, let my anger blaze, and be done with my life in a more sudden manner. he had just called me "whig." i stopped. "mr. stewart," said i, in a voice that quivered like a fiddle-string, "you are older than i am, and should know your manners. do you think it either very wise or very witty to cast my politics in my teeth? i thought, where folk differed, it was the part of gentlemen to differ civilly; and if i did not, i may tell you i could find a better taunt than some of yours." alan had stopped opposite to me, his hat cocked, his hands in his breeches pockets, his head a little on one side. he listened, smiling evilly, as i could see by the starlight; and when i had done he began to whistle a jacobite air. it was the air made in mockery of general cope's defeat at preston pans: "hey, johnnie cope, are ye waukin' yet? and are your drums a-beatin' yet?" and it came in my mind that alan, on the day of that battle, had been engaged upon the royal side. "why do ye take that air, mr. stewart?" said i. "is that to remind me you have been beaten on both sides?" the air stopped on alan's lips. "david!" said he. "but it's time these manners ceased," i continued; "and i mean you shall henceforth speak civilly of my king and my good friends the campbells." "i am a stewart --" began alan. "o!" says i, "i ken ye bear a king's name. but you are to remember, since i have been in the highlands, i have seen a good many of those that bear it; and the best i can say of them is this, that they would be none the worse of washing." "do you know that you insult me?" said alan, very low. "i am sorry for that," said i, "for i am not done; and if you distaste the sermon, i doubt the pirliecue[1] will please you as little. you have been chased in the field by the grown men of my party; it seems a poor kind of pleasure to out-face a boy. both the campbells and the whigs have beaten you; you have run before them like a hare. it behoves you to speak of them as of your betters." alan stood quite still, the tails of his great-coat clapping behind him in the wind. "this is a pity" he said at last. "there are things said that cannot be passed over." "i never asked you to," said i. "i am as ready as yourself." "ready?" said he. "ready," i repeated. "i am no blower and boaster like some that i could name. come on!" and drawing my sword, i fell on guard as alan himself had taught me. "david!" he cried. "are ye daft? i cannae draw upon ye, david. it's fair murder." "that was your look-out when you insulted me," said i. "it's the truth!" cried alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity. "it's the bare truth," he said, and drew his sword. but before i could touch his blade with mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground. "na, na," he kept saying, "na, na -i cannae, i cannae." at this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and i found myself only sick, and sorry, and blank, and wondering at myself. i would have given the world to take back what i had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it? i minded me of all alan's kindness and courage in the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that i had lost for ever that doughty friend. at the same time, the sickness that hung upon me seemed to redouble, and the pang in my side was like a sword for sharpness. i thought i must have swooned where i stood. this it was that gave me a thought. no apology could blot out what i had said; it was needless to think of one, none could cover the offence; but where an apology was vain, a mere cry for help might bring alan back to my side. i put my pride away from me. "alan!" i said; "if ye cannae help me, i must just die here." he started up sitting, and looked at me. "it's true," said i. "i'm by with it. o, let me get into the bield of a house -i'll can die there easier." i had no need to pretend; whether i chose or not, i spoke in a weeping voice that would have melted a heart of stone. "can ye walk?" asked alan. "no," said i, "not without help. this last hour my legs have been fainting under me; i've a stitch in my side like a red-hot iron; i cannae breathe right. if i die, ye'll can forgive me, alan? in my heart, i liked ye fine -even when i was the angriest." "wheesht, wheesht!" cried alan. "dinna say that! david man, ye ken --" he shut his mouth upon a sob. "let me get my arm about ye," he continued; "that's the way! now lean upon me hard. gude kens where there's a house! we're in balwhidder, too; there should be no want of houses, no, nor friends' houses here. do ye gang easier so, davie?" "ay" said i, "i can be doing this way;" and i pressed his arm with my hand. again he came near sobbing. "davie," said he, "i'm no a right man at all; i have neither sense nor kindness; i could nae remember ye were just a bairn, i couldnae see ye were dying on your feet; davie, ye'll have to try and forgive me." "o man, let's say no more about it!" said i. "we're neither one of us to mend the other -that's the truth! we must just bear and forbear, man alan. o, but my stitch is sore! is there nae house?" "i'll find a house to ye, david," he said, stoutly. "we'll follow down the burn, where there's bound to be houses. my poor man, will ye no be better on my back?" "o, alan," says i, "and me a good twelve inches taller?" "ye're no such a thing," cried alan, with a start. "there may be a trifling matter of an inch or two; i'm no saying i'm just exactly what ye would call a tall man, whatever; and i dare say," he added, his voice tailing off in a laughable manner, "now when i come to think of it, i dare say ye'll be just about right. ay, it'll be a foot, or near hand; or may be even mair!" it was sweet and laughable to hear alan eat his words up in the fear of some fresh quarrel. i could have laughed, had not my stitch caught me so hard; but if i had laughed, i think i must have wept too. "alan," cried i, "what makes ye so good to me? what makes ye care for such a thankless fellow?" "'deed, and i don't, know" said alan. "for just precisely what i thought i liked about ye, was that ye never quarrelled: -and now i like ye better!" [1] a second sermon. chapter xxv in balquhidder at the door of the first house we came to, alan knocked, which was of no very safe enterprise in such a part of the highlands as the braes of balquhidder. no great clan held rule there; it was filled and disputed by small septs, and broken remnants, and what they call "chiefless folk," driven into the wild country about the springs of forth and teith by the advance of the campbells. here were stewarts and maclarens, which came to the same thing, for the maclarens followed alan's chief in war, and made but one clan with appin. here, too, were many of that old, proscribed, nameless, red-handed clan of the macgregors. they had always been ill-considered, and now worse than ever, having credit with no side or party in the whole country of scotland. their chief, macgregor of macgregor, was in exile; the more immediate leader of that part of them about balquhidder, james more, rob roy's eldest son, lay waiting his trial in edinburgh castle; they were in ill-blood with highlander and lowlander, with the grahames, the maclarens, and the stewarts; and alan, who took up the quarrel of any friend, however distant, was extremely wishful to avoid them. chance served us very well; for it was a household of maclarens that we found, where alan was not only welcome for his name's sake but known by reputation. here then i was got to bed without delay, and a doctor fetched, who found me in a sorry plight. but whether because he was a very good doctor, or i a very young, strong man, i lay bedridden for no more than a week, and before a month i was able to take the road again with a good heart. all this time alan would not leave me though i often pressed him, and indeed his foolhardiness in staying was a common subject of outcry with the two or three friends that were let into the secret. he hid by day in a hole of the braes under a little wood; and at night, when the coast was clear, would come into the house to visit me. i need not say if i was pleased to see him; mrs. maclaren, our hostess, thought nothing good enough for such a guest; and as duncan dhu (which was the name of our host) had a pair of pipes in his house, and was much of a lover of music, this time of my recovery was quite a festival, and we commonly turned night into day. the soldiers let us be; although once a party of two companies and some dragoons went by in the bottom of the valley, where i could see them through the window as i lay in bed. what was much more astonishing, no magistrate came near me, and there was no question put of whence i came or whither i was going; and in that time of excitement, i was as free of all inquiry as though i had lain in a desert. yet my presence was known before i left to all the people in balquhidder and the adjacent parts; many coming about the house on visits and these (after the custom of the country) spreading the news among their neighbours. the bills, too, had now been printed. there was one pinned near the foot of my bed, where i could read my own not very flattering portrait and, in larger characters, the amount of the blood money that had been set upon my life. duncan dhu and the rest that knew that i had come there in alan's company, could have entertained no doubt of who i was; and many others must have had their guess. for though i had changed my clothes, i could not change my age or person; and lowland boys of eighteen were not so rife in these parts of the world, and above all about that time, that they could fail to put one thing with another, and connect me with the bill. so it was, at least. other folk keep a secret among two or three near friends, and somehow it leaks out; but among these clansmen, it is told to a whole countryside, and they will keep it for a century. there was but one thing happened worth narrating; and that is the visit i had of robin oig, one of the sons of the notorious rob roy. he was sought upon all sides on a charge of carrying a young woman from balfron and marrying her (as was alleged) by force; yet he stepped about balquhidder like a gentleman in his own walled policy. it was he who had shot james maclaren at the plough stilts, a quarrel never satisfied; yet he walked into the house of his blood enemies as a rider[1] might into a public inn. duncan had time to pass me word of who it was; and we looked at one another in concern. you should understand, it was then close upon the time of alan's coming; the two were little likely to agree; and yet if we sent word or sought to make a signal, it was sure to arouse suspicion in a man under so dark a cloud as the macgregor. he came in with a great show of civility, but like a man among inferiors; took off his bonnet to mrs. maclaren, but clapped it on his head again to speak to duncan; and leaving thus set himself (as he would have thought) in a proper light, came to my bedside and bowed. "i am given to know, sir," says he, "that your name is balfour." "they call me david balfour," said i, "at your service." "i would give ye my name in return, sir" he replied, "but it's one somewhat blown upon of late days; and it'll perhaps suffice if i tell ye that i am own brother to james more drummond or macgregor, of whom ye will scarce have failed to hear." "no, sir," said i, a little alarmed; "nor yet of your father, macgregor-campbell." and i sat up and bowed in bed; for i thought best to compliment him, in case he was proud of having had an outlaw to his father. he bowed in return. "but what i am come to say, sir," he went on, "is this. in the year '45, my brother raised a part of the 'gregara' and marched six companies to strike a stroke for the good side; and the surgeon that marched with our clan and cured my brother's leg when it was broken in the brush at preston pans, was a gentleman of the same name precisely as yourself. he was brother to balfour of baith; and if you are in any reasonable degree of nearness one of that gentleman's kin, i have come to put myself and my people at your command." you are to remember that i knew no more of my descent than any cadger's dog; my uncle, to be sure, had prated of some of our high connections, but nothing to the present purpose; and there was nothing left me but that bitter disgrace of owning that i could not tell. robin told me shortly he was sorry he had put himself about, turned his back upon me without a sign of salutation, and as he went towards the door, i could hear him telling duncan that i was "only some kinless loon that didn't know his own father." angry as i was at these words, and ashamed of my own ignorance, i could scarce keep from smiling that a man who was under the lash of the law (and was indeed hanged some three years later) should be so nice as to the descent of his acquaintances. just in the door, he met alan coming in; and the two drew back and looked at each other like strange dogs. they were neither of them big men, but they seemed fairly to swell out with pride. each wore a sword, and by a movement of his haunch, thrust clear the hilt of it, so that it might be the more readily grasped and the blade drawn. "mr. stewart, i am thinking," says robin. "troth, mr. macgregor, it's not a name to be ashamed of," answered alan. "i did not know ye were in my country, sir" says robin. "it sticks in my mind that i am in the country of my friends the maclarens," says alan. "that's a kittle point," returned the other. "there may be two words to say to that. but i think i will have heard that you are a man of your sword?" "unless ye were born deaf, mr. macgregor, ye will have heard a good deal more than that," says alan. "i am not the only man that can draw steel in appin; and when my kinsman and captain, ardshiel, had a talk with a gentleman of your name, not so many years back, i could never hear that the macgregor had the best of it." "do ye mean my father, sir?" says robin. "well, i wouldnae wonder," said alan. "the gentleman i have in my mind had the ill-taste to clap campbell to his name." "my father was an old man," returned robin. "the match was unequal. you and me would make a better pair, sir." "i was thinking that," said alan. i was half out of bed, and duncan had been hanging at the elbow of these fighting cocks, ready to intervene upon the least occasion. but when that word was uttered, it was a case of now or never; and duncan, with something of a white face to be sure, thrust himself between. "gentlemen," said he, "i will have been thinking of a very different matter, whateffer. here are my pipes, and here are you two gentlemen who are baith acclaimed pipers. it's an auld dispute which one of ye's the best. here will be a braw chance to settle it." "why, sir," said alan, still addressing robin, from whom indeed he had not so much as shifted his eyes, nor yet robin from him, "why, sir," says alan, "i think i will have heard some sough[2] of the sort. have ye music, as folk say? are ye a bit of a piper?" "i can pipe like a macrimmon!" cries robin. "and that is a very bold word," quoth alan. "i have made bolder words good before now," returned robin, "and that against better adversaries." "it is easy to try that," says alan. duncan dhu made haste to bring out the pair of pipes that was his principal possession, and to set before his guests a mutton-ham and a bottle of that drink which they call athole brose, and which is made of old whiskey, strained honey and sweet cream, slowly beaten together in the right order and proportion. the two enemies were still on the very breach of a quarrel; but down they sat, one upon each side of the peat fire, with a mighty show of politeness. maclaren pressed them to taste his mutton-ham and "the wife's brose," reminding them the wife was out of athole and had a name far and wide for her skill in that confection. but robin put aside these hospitalities as bad for the breath. "i would have ye to remark, sir," said alan, "that i havenae broken bread for near upon ten hours, which will be worse for the breath than any brose in scotland." "i will take no advantages, mr. stewart," replied robin. "eat and drink; i'll follow you." each ate a small portion of the ham and drank a glass of the brose to mrs. maclaren; and then after a great number of civilities, robin took the pipes and played a little spring in a very ranting manner. "ay, ye can, blow" said alan; and taking the instrument from his rival, he first played the same spring in a manner identical with robin's; and then wandered into variations, which, as he went on, he decorated with a perfect flight of grace-notes, such as pipers love, and call the "warblers." i had been pleased with robin's playing, alan's ravished me. "that's no very bad, mr. stewart," said the rival, "but ye show a poor device in your warblers." "me!" cried alan, the blood starting to his face. "i give ye the lie." "do ye own yourself beaten at the pipes, then," said robin, "that ye seek to change them for the sword?" "and that's very well said, mr. macgregor," returned alan; "and in the meantime" (laying a strong accent on the word) "i take back the lie. i appeal to duncan." "indeed, ye need appeal to naebody," said robin. "ye're a far better judge than any maclaren in balquhidder: for it's a god's truth that you're a very creditable piper for a stewart. hand me the pipes." alan did as he asked; and robin proceeded to imitate and correct some part of alan's variations, which it seemed that he remembered perfectly. "ay, ye have music," said alan, gloomily. "and now be the judge yourself, mr. stewart," said robin; and taking up the variations from the beginning, he worked them throughout to so new a purpose, with such ingenuity and sentiment, and with so odd a fancy and so quick a knack in the grace-notes, that i was amazed to hear him. as for alan, his face grew dark and hot, and he sat and gnawed his fingers, like a man under some deep affront. "enough!" he cried. "ye can blow the pipes -make the most of that." and he made as if to rise. but robin only held out his hand as if to ask for silence, and struck into the slow measure of a pibroch. it was a fine piece of music in itself, and nobly played; but it seems, besides, it was a piece peculiar to the appin stewarts and a chief favourite with alan. the first notes were scarce out, before there came a change in his face; when the time quickened, he seemed to grow restless in his seat; and long before that piece was at an end, the last signs of his anger died from him, and he had no thought but for the music. "robin oig," he said, when it was done, "ye are a great piper. i am not fit to blow in the same kingdom with ye. body of me! ye have mair music in your sporran than i have in my head! and though it still sticks in my mind that i could maybe show ye another of it with the cold steel, i warn ye beforehand -it'll no be fair! it would go against my heart to haggle a man that can blow the pipes as you can!" thereupon that quarrel was made up; all night long the brose was going and the pipes changing hands; and the day had come pretty bright, and the three men were none the better for what they had been taking, before robin as much as thought upon the road. [1] commercial traveller. [2] rumour. chapter xxvi end of the flight: we pass the forth the month, as i have said, was not yet out, but it was already far through august, and beautiful warm weather, with every sign of an early and great harvest, when i was pronounced able for my journey. our money was now run to so low an ebb that we must think first of all on speed; for if we came not soon to mr. rankeillor's, or if when we came there he should fail to help me, we must surely starve. in alan's view, besides, the hunt must have now greatly slackened; and the line of the forth and even stirling bridge, which is the main pass over that river, would be watched with little interest. "it's a chief principle in military affairs," said he, "to go where ye are least expected. forth is our trouble; ye ken the saying, 'forth bridles the wild hielandman.' well, if we seek to creep round about the head of that river and come down by kippen or balfron, it's just precisely there that they'll be looking to lay hands on us. but if we stave on straight to the auld brig of stirling, i'll lay my sword they let us pass unchallenged." the first night, accordingly, we pushed to the house of a maclaren in strathire, a friend of duncan's, where we slept the twenty-first of the month, and whence we set forth again about the fall of night to make another easy stage. the twenty-second we lay in a heather bush on the hillside in uam var, within view of a herd of deer, the happiest ten hours of sleep in a fine, breathing sunshine and on bone-dry ground, that i have ever tasted. that night we struck allan water, and followed it down; and coming to the edge of the hills saw the whole carse of stirling underfoot, as flat as a pancake, with the town and castle on a hill in the midst of it, and the moon shining on the links of forth. "now," said alan, "i kenna if ye care, but ye're in your own land again. we passed the hieland line in the first hour; and now if we could but pass yon crooked water, we might cast our bonnets in the air." in allan water, near by where it falls into the forth, we found a little sandy islet, overgrown with burdock, butterbur and the like low plants, that would just cover us if we lay flat. here it was we made our camp, within plain view of stirling castle, whence we could hear the drums beat as some part of the garrison paraded. shearers worked all day in a field on one side of the river, and we could hear the stones going on the hooks and the voices and even the words of the men talking. it behoved to lie close and keep silent. but the sand of the little isle was sun-warm, the green plants gave us shelter for our heads, we had food and drink in plenty; and to crown all, we were within sight of safety. as soon as the shearers quit their work and the dusk began to fall, we waded ashore and struck for the bridge of stirling, keeping to the fields and under the field fences. the bridge is close under the castle hill, an old, high, narrow bridge with pinnacles along the parapet; and you may conceive with how much interest i looked upon it, not only as a place famous in history, but as the very doors of salvation to alan and myself. the moon was not yet up when we came there; a few lights shone along the front of the fortress, and lower down a few lighted windows in the town; but it was all mighty still, and there seemed to be no guard upon the passage. i was for pushing straight across; but alan was more wary. "it looks unco' quiet," said he; "but for all that we'll lie down here cannily behind a dyke, and make sure." so we lay for about a quarter of an hour, whiles whispering, whiles lying still and hearing nothing earthly but the washing of the water on the piers. at last there came by an old, hobbling woman with a crutch stick; who first stopped a little, close to where we lay, and bemoaned herself and the long way she had travelled; and then set forth again up the steep spring of the bridge. the woman was so little, and the night still so dark, that we soon lost sight of her; only heard the sound of her steps, and her stick, and a cough that she had by fits, draw slowly farther away. "she's bound to be across now," i whispered. "na," said alan, "her foot still sounds boss[1] upon the bridge." and just then -"who goes?" cried a voice, and we heard the butt of a musket rattle on the stones. i must suppose the sentry had been sleeping, so that had we tried, we might have passed unseen; but he was awake now, and the chance forfeited. "this'll never do," said alan. "this'll never, never do for us, david." and without another word, he began to crawl away through the fields; and a little after, being well out of eye-shot, got to his feet again, and struck along a road that led to the eastward. i could not conceive what he was doing; and indeed i was so sharply cut by the disappointment, that i was little likely to be pleased with anything. a moment back and i had seen myself knocking at mr. rankeillor's door to claim my inheritance, like a hero in a ballad; and here was i back again, a wandering, hunted blackguard, on the wrong side of forth. "well?" said i. "well," said alan, "what would ye have? they're none such fools as i took them for. we have still the forth to pass, davie -weary fall the rains that fed and the hillsides that guided it!" "and why go east?" said i. "ou, just upon the chance!" said he. "if we cannae pass the river, we'll have to see what we can do for the firth." "there are fords upon the river, and none upon the firth," said i. "to be sure there are fords, and a bridge forbye," quoth alan; "and of what service, when they are watched?" "well," said i, "but a river can be swum." "by them that have the skill of it," returned he; "but i have yet to hear that either you or me is much of a hand at that exercise; and for my own part, i swim like a stone." "i'm not up to you in talking back, alan," i said; "but i can see we're making bad worse. if it's hard to pass a river, it stands to reason it must be worse to pass a sea." "but there's such a thing as a boat," says alan, "or i'm the more deceived." "ay, and such a thing as money," says i. "but for us that have neither one nor other, they might just as well not have been invented." "ye think so?" said alan. "i do that," said i. "david," says he, "ye're a man of small invention and less faith. but let me set my wits upon the hone, and if i cannae beg, borrow, nor yet steal a boat, i'll make one!" "i think i see ye!" said i. "and what's more than all that: if ye pass a bridge, it can tell no tales; but if we pass the firth, there's the boat on the wrong side -somebody must have brought it -the country-side will all be in a bizz" "man!" cried alan, "if i make a boat, i'll make a body to take it back again! so deave me with no more of your nonsense, but walk (for that's what you've got to do) --and let alan think for ye." all night, then, we walked through the north side of the carse under the high line of the ochil mountains; and by alloa and clackmannan and culross, all of which we avoided: and about ten in the morning, mighty hungry and tired, came to the little clachan of limekilns. this is a place that sits near in by the water-side, and looks across the hope to the town of the queensferry. smoke went up from both of these, and from other villages and farms upon all hands. the fields were being reaped; two ships lay anchored, and boats were coming and going on the hope. it was altogether a right pleasant sight to me; and i could not take my fill of gazing at these comfortable, green, cultivated hills and the busy people both of the field and sea. for all that, there was mr. rankeillor's house on the south shore, where i had no doubt wealth awaited me; and here was i upon the north, clad in poor enough attire of an outlandish fashion, with three silver shillings left to me of all my fortune, a price set upon my head, and an outlawed man for my sole company. "o, alan!" said i, "to think of it! over there, there's all that heart could want waiting me; and the birds go over, and the boats go over -all that please can go, but just me only! o, man, but it's a heart-break!" in limekilns we entered a small change-house, which we only knew to be a public by the wand over the door, and bought some bread and cheese from a good-looking lass that was the servant. this we carried with us in a bundle, meaning to sit and eat it in a bush of wood on the sea-shore, that we saw some third part of a mile in front. as we went, i kept looking across the water and sighing to myself; and though i took no heed of it, alan had fallen into a muse. at last he stopped in the way." did ye take heed of the lass we bought this of?" says he, tapping on the bread and cheese. "to be sure," said i, "and a bonny lass she was." "ye thought that?" cries he. "man, david, that's good news." "in the name of all that's wonderful, why so?" says i. "what good can that do?" "well," said alan, with one of his droll looks, "i was rather in hopes it would maybe get us that boat." "if it were the other way about, it would be liker it," said i. "that's all that you ken, ye see," said alan. "i don't want the lass to fall in love with ye, i want her to be sorry for ye, david; to which end there is no manner of need that she should take you for a beauty. let me see" (looking me curiously over). "i wish ye were a wee thing paler; but apart from that ye'll do fine for my purpose -ye have a fine, hang-dog, rag-and-tatter, clappermaclaw kind of a look to ye, as if ye had stolen the coat from a potato-bogle. come; right about, and back to the change-house for that boat of ours." i followed him, laughing. "david balfour," said he, "ye're a very funny gentleman by your way of it, and this is a very funny employ for ye, no doubt. for all that, if ye have any affection for my neck (to say nothing of your own) ye will perhaps be kind enough to take this matter responsibly. i am going to do a bit of play-acting, the bottom ground of which is just exactly as serious as the gallows for the pair of us. so bear it, if ye please, in mind, and conduct yourself according." "well, well," said i, "have it as you will." as we got near the clachan, he made me take his arm and hang upon it like one almost helpless with weariness; and by the time he pushed open the change-house door, he seemed to be half carrying me. the maid appeared surprised (as well she might be) at our speedy return; but alan had no words to spare for her in explanation, helped me to a chair, called for a tass of brandy with which he fed me in little sips, and then breaking up the bread and cheese helped me to eat it like a nursery-lass; the whole with that grave, concerned, affectionate countenance, that might have imposed upon a judge. it was small wonder if the maid were taken with the picture we presented, of a poor, sick, overwrought lad and his most tender comrade. she drew quite near, and stood leaning with her back on the next table. "what's like wrong with him?" said she at last. alan turned upon her, to my great wonder, with a kind of fury. "wrong?" cries he. "he's walked more hundreds of miles than he has hairs upon his chin, and slept oftener in wet heather than dry sheets. wrong, quo' she! wrong enough, i would think! wrong, indeed!" and he kept grumbling to himself as he fed me, like a man ill-pleased" he's young for the like of that," said the maid. "ower young," said alan, with his back to her." he would be better riding," says she. "and where could i get a horse to him?" cried alan, turning on her with the same appearance of fury. "would ye have me steal?" i thought this roughness would have sent her off in dudgeon, as indeed it closed her mouth for the time. but my companion knew very well what he was doing; and for as simple as he was in some things of life, had a great fund of roguishness in such affairs as these. "ye neednae tell me," she said at last -"ye're gentry." "well," said alan, softened a little (i believe against his will) by this artless comment, "and suppose we were? did ever you hear that gentrice put money in folk's pockets?" she sighed at this, as if she were herself some disinherited great lady. "no," says she, "that's true indeed." i was all this while chafing at the part i played, and sitting tongue-tied between shame and merriment; but somehow at this i could hold in no longer, and bade alan let me be, for i was better already. my voice stuck in my throat, for i ever hated to take part in lies; but my very embarrassment helped on the plot, for the lass no doubt set down my husky voice to sickness and fatigue. "has he nae friends?" said she, in a tearful voice. "that has he so!" cried alan, "if we could but win to them! -friends and rich friends, beds to lie in, food to eat, doctors to see to him -and here he must tramp in the dubs and sleep in the heather like a beggarman." "and why that?" says the lass. "my dear," said alan, "i cannae very safely say; but i'll tell ye what i'll do instead," says he, "i'll whistle ye a bit tune." and with that he leaned pretty far over the table, and in a mere breath of a whistle, but with a wonderful pretty sentiment, gave her a few bars of "charlie is my darling." "wheesht," says she, and looked over her shoulder to the door. "that's it," said alan. "and him so young!" cries the lass. "he's old enough to----" and alan struck his forefinger on the back part of his neck, meaning that i was old enough to lose my head. "it would be a black shame," she cried, flushing high. "it's what will be, though," said alan, "unless we manage the better." at this the lass turned and ran out of that part of the house, leaving us alone together. alan in high good humour at the furthering of his schemes, and i in bitter dudgeon at being called a jacobite and treated like a child. "alan," i cried, "i can stand no more of this." "ye'll have to sit it then, davie," said he. "for if ye upset the pot now, ye may scrape your own life out of the fire, but alan breck is a dead man." this was so true that i could only groan; and even my groan served alan's purpose, for it was overheard by the lass as she came flying in again with a dish of white puddings and a bottle of strong ale. "poor lamb!" says she, and had no sooner set the meat before us, than she touched me on the shoulder with a little friendly touch, as much as to bid me cheer up. then she told us to fall to, and there would be no more to pay; for the inn was her own, or at least her father's, and he was gone for the day to pittencrieff. we waited for no second bidding, for bread and cheese is but cold comfort and the puddings smelt excellently well; and while we sat and ate, she took up that same place by the next table, looking on, and thinking, and frowning to herself, and drawing the string of her apron through her hand. "i'm thinking ye have rather a long tongue," she said at last to alan. "ay" said alan; "but ye see i ken the folk i speak to." "i would never betray ye," said she, "if ye mean that." "no," said he, "ye're not that kind. but i'll tell ye what ye would do, ye would help." "i couldnae," said she, shaking her head. "na, i couldnae." "no," said he, "but if ye could?" she answered him nothing. "look here, my lass," said alan, "there are boats in the kingdom of fife, for i saw two (no less) upon the beach, as i came in by your town's end. now if we could have the use of a boat to pass under cloud of night into lothian, and some secret, decent kind of a man to bring that boat back again and keep his counsel, there would be two souls saved -mine to all likelihood -his to a dead surety. if we lack that boat, we have but three shillings left in this wide world; and where to go, and how to do, and what other place there is for us except the chains of a gibbet -i give you my naked word, i kenna! shall we go wanting, lassie? are ye to lie in your warm bed and think upon us, when the wind gowls in the chimney and the rain tirls on the roof? are ye to eat your meat by the cheeks of a red fire, and think upon this poor sick lad of mine, biting his finger ends on a blae muir for cauld and hunger? sick or sound, he must aye be moving; with the death grapple at his throat he must aye be trailing in the rain on the lang roads; and when he gants his last on a rickle of cauld stanes, there will be nae friends near him but only me and god." at this appeal, i could see the lass was in great trouble of mind, being tempted to help us, and yet in some fear she might be helping malefactors; and so now i determined to step in myself and to allay her scruples with a portion of the truth. "did ever you, hear" said i, "of mr. rankeillor of the ferry?" "rankeillor the writer?" said she. " daur say that!" "well," said i, "it's to his door that i am bound, so you may judge by that if i am an ill-doer; and i will tell you more, that though i am indeed, by a dreadful error, in some peril of my life, king george has no truer friend in all scotland than myself." her face cleared up mightily at this, although alan's darkened. "that's more than i would ask," said she. "mr. rankeillor is a kennt man." and she bade us finish our meat, get clear of the clachan as soon as might be, and lie close in the bit wood on the sea-beach. "and ye can trust me," says she, "i'll find some means to put you over." at this we waited for no more, but shook hands with her upon the bargain, made short work of the puddings, and set forth again from limekilns as far as to the wood. it was a small piece of perhaps a score of elders and hawthorns and a few young ashes, not thick enough to veil us from passersby upon the road or beach. here we must lie, however, making the best of the brave warm weather and the good hopes we now had of a deliverance, and planing more particularly what remained for us to do. we had but one trouble all day; when a strolling piper came and sat in the same wood with us; a red-nosed, bleareyed, drunken dog, with a great bottle of whisky in his pocket, and a long story of wrongs that had been done him by all sorts of persons, from the lord president of the court of session, who had denied him justice, down to the bailies of inverkeithing who had given him more of it than he desired. it was impossible but he should conceive some suspicion of two men lying all day concealed in a thicket and having no business to allege. as long as he stayed there he kept us in hot water with prying questions; and after he was gone, as he was a man not very likely to hold his tongue, we were in the greater impatience to be gone ourselves. the day came to an end with the same brightness; the night fell quiet and clear; lights came out in houses and hamlets and then, one after another, began to be put out; but it was past eleven, and we were long since strangely tortured with anxieties, before we heard the grinding of oars upon the rowing-pins. at that, we looked out and saw the lass herself coming rowing to us in a boat. she had trusted no one with our affairs, not even her sweetheart, if she had one; but as soon as her father was asleep, had left the house by a window, stolen a neighbour's boat, and come to our assistance single-handed. i was abashed how to find expression for my thanks; but she was no less abashed at the thought of hearing them; begged us to lose no time and to hold our peace, saying (very properly) that the heart of our matter was in haste and silence; and so, what with one thing and another, she had set us on the lothian shore not far from carriden, had shaken hands with us, and was out again at sea and rowing for limekilns, before there was one word said either of her service or our gratitude. even after she was gone, we had nothing to say, as indeed nothing was enough for such a kindness. only alan stood a great while upon the shore shaking his head. "it is a very fine lass," he said at last. "david, it is a very fine lass." and a matter of an hour later, as we were lying in a den on the sea-shore and i had been already dozing, he broke out again in commendations of her character. for my part, i could say nothing, she was so simple a creature that my heart smote me both with remorse and fear: remorse because we had traded upon her ignorance; and fear lest we should have anyway involved her in the dangers of our situation. [1] hollow. chapter xxvii i come to mr. rankeillor the next day it was agreed that alan should fend for himself till sunset; but as soon as it began to grow dark, he should lie in the fields by the roadside near to newhalls, and stir for naught until he heard me whistling. at first i proposed i should give him for a signal the "bonnie house of airlie," which was a favourite of mine; but he objected that as the piece was very commonly known, any ploughman might whistle it by accident; and taught me instead a little fragment of a highland air, which has run in my head from that day to this, and will likely run in my head when i lie dying. every time it comes to me, it takes me off to that last day of my uncertainty, with alan sitting up in the bottom of the den, whistling and beating the measure with a finger, and the grey of the dawn coming on his face. i was in the long street of queensferry before the sun was up. it was a fairly built burgh, the houses of good stone, many slated; the town-hall not so fine, i thought, as that of peebles, nor yet the street so noble; but take it altogether, it put me to shame for my foul tatters. as the morning went on, and the fires began to be kindled, and the windows to open, and the people to appear out of the houses, my concern and despondency grew ever the blacker. i saw now that i had no grounds to stand upon; and no clear proof of my rights, nor so much as of my own identity. if it was all a bubble, i was indeed sorely cheated and left in a sore pass. even if things were as i conceived, it would in all likelihood take time to establish my contentions; and what time had i to spare with less than three shillings in my pocket, and a condemned, hunted man upon my hands to ship out of the country? truly, if my hope broke with me, it might come to the gallows yet for both of us. and as i continued to walk up and down, and saw people looking askance at me upon the street or out of windows, and nudging or speaking one to another with smiles, i began to take a fresh apprehension: that it might be no easy matter even to come to speech of the lawyer, far less to convince him of my story. for the life of me i could not muster up the courage to address any of these reputable burghers; i thought shame even to speak with them in such a pickle of rags and dirt; and if i had asked for the house of such a man as mr. rankeillor, i suppose they would have burst out laughing in my face. so i went up and down, and through the street, and down to the harbour-side, like a dog that has lost its master, with a strange gnawing in my inwards, and every now and then a movement of despair. it grew to be high day at last, perhaps nine in the forenoon; and i was worn with these wanderings, and chanced to have stopped in front of a very good house on the landward side, a house with beautiful, clear glass windows, flowering knots upon the sills, the walls new-harled[1] and a chase-dog sitting yawning on the step like one that was at home. well, i was even envying this dumb brute, when the door fell open and there issued forth a shrewd, ruddy, kindly, consequential man in a well-powdered wig and spectacles. i was in such a plight that no one set eyes on me once, but he looked at me again; and this gentleman, as it proved, was so much struck with my poor appearance that he came straight up to me and asked me what i did. i told him i was come to the queensferry on business, and taking heart of grace, asked him to direct me to the house of mr. rankeillor. "why," said he, "that is his house that i have just come out of; and for a rather singular chance, i am that very man." "then, sir," said i, "i have to beg the favour of an interview." "i do not know your name," said he, "nor yet your face." "my name is david balfour," said i. "david balfour?" he repeated, in rather a high tone, like one surprised. "and where have you come from, mr. david balfour?" he asked, looking me pretty drily in the face. "i have come from a great many strange places, sir," said i; "but i think it would be as well to tell you where and how in a more private manner." he seemed to muse awhile, holding his lip in his hand, and looking now at me and now upon the causeway of the street. "yes," says he, "that will be the best, no doubt." and he led me back with him into his house, cried out to some one whom i could not see that he would be engaged all morning, and brought me into a little dusty chamber full of books and documents. here he sate down, and bade me be seated; though i thought he looked a little ruefully from his clean chair to my muddy rags. "and now," says he, "if you have any business, pray be brief and come swiftly to the point. nec gemino bellum trojanum orditur ab ovo --do you understand that?" says he, with a keen look. "i will even do as horace says, sir," i answered, smiling, "and carry you in medias res." he nodded as if he was well pleased, and indeed his scrap of latin had been set to test me. for all that, and though i was somewhat encouraged, the blood came in my face when i added: "i have reason to believe myself some rights on the estate of shaws." he got a paper book out of a drawer and set it before him open. "well?" said he. but i had shot my bolt and sat speechless. "come, come, mr. balfour," said he, "you must continue. where were you born?" "in essendean, sir," said i, "the year 1733, the 12th of march." he seemed to follow this statement in his paper book; but what that meant i knew not. "your father and mother?" said he. "my father was alexander balfour, schoolmaster of that place," said i, "and my mother grace pitarrow; i think her people were from angus." "have you any papers proving your identity?" asked mr. rankeillor. "no, sir," said i, "but they are in the hands of mr. campbell, the minister, and could be readily produced. mr. campbell, too, would give me his word; and for that matter, i do not think my uncle would deny me." "meaning mr. ebenezer balfour?" says he. "the same," said i. "whom you have seen?" he asked. "by whom i was received into his own house," i answered. "did you ever meet a man of the name of hoseason?" asked mr. rankeillor. "i did so, sir, for my sins," said i; "for it was by his means and the procurement of my uncle, that i was kidnapped within sight of this town, carried to sea, suffered shipwreck and a hundred other hardships, and stand before you to-day in this poor accoutrement." "you say you were shipwrecked," said rankeillor; "where was that?" "off the south end of the isle of mull," said i. "the name of the isle on which i was cast up is the island earraid." "ah!" says he, smiling, "you are deeper than me in the geography. but so far, i may tell you, this agrees pretty exactly with other informations that i hold. but you say you were kidnapped; in what sense?" "in the plain meaning of the word, sir," said i. "i was on my way to your house, when i was trepanned on board the brig, cruelly struck down, thrown below, and knew no more of anything till we were far at sea. i was destined for the plantations; a fate that, in god's providence, i have escaped." "the brig was lost on june the 27th," says he, looking in his book," and we are now at august the 24th. here is a considerable hiatus, mr. balfour, of near upon two months. it has already caused a vast amount of trouble to your friends; and i own i shall not be very well contented until it is set right." "indeed, sir," said i, "these months are very easily filled up; but yet before i told my story, i would be glad to know that i was talking to a friend." "this is to argue in a circle," said the lawyer. "i cannot be convinced till i have heard you. i cannot be your friend till i am properly informed. if you were more trustful, it would better befit your time of life. and you know, mr. balfour, we have a proverb in the country that evil-doers are aye evil-dreaders." "you are not to forget, sir," said i, "that i have already suffered by my trustfulness; and was shipped off to be a slave by the very man that (if i rightly understand) is your employer?" all this while i had been gaining ground with mr. rankeillor, and in proportion as i gained ground, gaining confidence. but at this sally, which i made with something of a smile myself, he fairly laughed aloud. "no, no," said he, "it is not so bad as that. fui, non sum. i was indeed your uncle's man of business; but while you (imberbis juvenis custode remoto) were gallivanting in the west, a good deal of water has run under the bridges; and if your ears did not sing, it was not for lack of being talked about. on the very day of your sea disaster, mr. campbell stalked into my office, demanding you from all the winds. i had never heard of your existence; but i had known your father; and from matters in my competence (to be touched upon hereafter) i was disposed to fear the worst. mr. ebenezer admitted having seen you; declared (what seemed improbable) that he had given you considerable sums; and that you had started for the continent of europe, intending to fulfil your education, which was probable and praiseworthy. interrogated how you had come to send no word to mr. campbell, he deponed that you had expressed a great desire to break with your past life. further interrogated where you now were, protested ignorance, but believed you were in leyden. that is a close sum of his replies. i am not exactly sure that any one believed him," continued mr. rankeillor with a smile; "and in particular he so much disrelished me expressions of mine that (in a word) he showed me to the door. we were then at a full stand; for whatever shrewd suspicions we might entertain, we had no shadow of probation. in the very article, comes captain hoseason with the story of your drowning; whereupon all fell through; with no consequences but concern to mr. campbell, injury to my pocket, and another blot upon your uncle's character, which could very ill afford it. and now, mr. balfour," said he, "you understand the whole process of these matters, and can judge for yourself to what extent i may be trusted." indeed he was more pedantic than i can represent him, and placed more scraps of latin in his speech; but it was all uttered with a fine geniality of eye and manner which went far to conquer my distrust. moreover, i could see he now treated me as if i was myself beyond a doubt; so that first point of my identity seemed fully granted. "sir," said i, "if i tell you my story, i must commit a friend's life to your discretion. pass me your word it shall be sacred; and for what touches myself, i will ask no better guarantee than just your face." he passed me his word very seriously. "but," said he, "these are rather alarming prolocutions; and if there are in your story any little jostles to the law, i would beg you to bear in mind that i am a lawyer, and pass lightly." thereupon i told him my story from the first, he listening with his spectacles thrust up and his eyes closed, so that i sometimes feared he was asleep. but no such matter! he heard every word (as i found afterward) with such quickness of hearing and precision of memory as often surprised me. even strange outlandish gaelic names, heard for that time only, he remembered and would remind me of, years after. yet when i called alan breck in full, we had an odd scene. the name of alan had of course rung through scotland, with the news of the appin murder and the offer of the reward; and it had no sooner escaped me than the lawyer moved in his seat and opened his eyes. "i would name no unneccssary names, mr. balfour," said he; "above all of highlanders, many of whom are obnoxious to the law." "well, it might have been better not," said i, "but since i have let it slip, i may as well continue." "not at all," said mr. rankeillor. "i am somewhat dull of hearing, as you may have remarked; and i am far from sure i caught the name exactly. we will call your friend, if you please, mr. thomson -that there may be no reflections. and in future, i would take some such way with any highlander that you may have to mention -dead or alive." by this, i saw he must have heard the name all too clearly, and had already guessed i might be coming to the murder. if he chose to play this part of ignorance, it was no matter of mine; so i smiled, said it was no very highland-sounding name, and consented. through all the rest of my story alan was mr. thomson; which amused me the more, as it was a piece of policy after his own heart. james stewart, in like manner, was mentioned under the style of mr. thomson's kinsman; colin campbell passed as a mr. glen; and to cluny, when i came to that part of my tale, i gave the name of "mr. jameson, a highland chief." it was truly the most open farce, and i wondered that the lawyer should care to keep it up; but, after all, it was quite in the taste of that age, when there were two parties in the state, and quiet persons, with no very high opinions of their own, sought out every cranny to avoid offence to either. "well, well," said the lawyer, when i had quite done, "this is a great epic, a great odyssey of yours. you must tell it, sir, in a sound latinity when your scholarship is riper; or in english if you please, though for my part i prefer the stronger tongue. you have rolled much; quae regio in terris -what parish in scotland (to make a homely translation) has not been filled with your wanderings? you have shown, besides, a singular aptitude for getting into false positions; and, yes, upon the whole, for behaving well in them. this mr. thomson seems to me a gentleman of some choice qualities, though perhaps a trifle bloody-minded. it would please me none the worse, if (with all his merits) he were soused in the north sea, for the man, mr. david, is a sore embarrassment. but you are doubtless quite right to adhere to him; indubitably, he adhered to you. it comes -we may say -he was your true companion; nor less paribus curis vestigia figit, for i dare say you would both take an orra thought upon the gallows. well, well, these days are fortunately, by; and i think (speaking humanly) that you are near the end of your troubles." as he thus moralised on my adventures, he looked upon me with so much humour and benignity that i could scarce contain my satisfaction. i had been so long wandering with lawless people, and making my bed upon the hills and under the bare sky, that to sit once more in a clean, covered house, and to talk amicably with a gentleman in broadcloth, seemed mighty elevations. even as i thought so, my eye fell on my unseemly tatters, and i was once more plunged in confusion. but the lawyer saw and understood me. he rose, called over the stair to lay another plate, for mr. balfour would stay to dinner, and led me into a bedroom in the upper part of the house. here he set before me water and soap, and a comb; and laid out some clothes that belonged to his son; and here, with another apposite tag, he left me to my toilet. [1] newly rough-cast. chapter xxviii i go in quest of my inheritance i made what change i could in my appearance; and blithe was i to look in the glass and find the beggarman a thing of the past, and david balfour come to life again. and yet i was ashamed of the change too, and, above all, of the borrowed clothes. when i had done, mr. rankeillor caught me on the stair, made me his compliments, and had me again into the cabinet. "sit ye down, mr. david," said he, "and now that you are looking a little more like yourself, let me see if i can find you any news. you will be wondering, no doubt, about your father and your uncle? to be sure it is a singular tale; and the explanation is one that i blush to have to offer you. for," says he, really with embarrassment, "the matter hinges on a love affair." "truly," said i, "i cannot very well join that notion with my uncle." "but your uncle, mr. david, was not always old," replied the lawyer, "and what may perhaps surprise you more, not always ugly. he had a fine, gallant air; people stood in their doors to look after him, as he went by upon a mettle horse. i have seen it with these eyes, and i ingenuously confess, not altogether without envy; for i was a plain lad myself and a plain man's son; and in those days it was a case of odi te, qui bellus es, sabelle." "it sounds like a dream," said i. "ay, ay," said the lawyer, "that is how it is with youth and age. nor was that all, but he had a spirit of his own that seemed to promise great things in the future. in 1715, what must he do but run away to join the rebels? it was your father that pursued him, found him in a ditch, and brought him back multum gementem; to the mirth of the whole country. however, majora canamus -the two lads fell in love, and that with the same lady. mr. ebenezer, who was the admired and the beloved, and the spoiled one, made, no doubt, mighty certain of the victory; and when he found he had deceived himself, screamed like a peacock. the whole country heard of it; now he lay sick at home, with his silly family standing round the bed in tears; now he rode from public-house to public-house, and shouted his sorrows into the lug of tom, dick, and harry. your father, mr. david, was a kind gentleman; but he was weak, dolefully weak; took all this folly with a long countenance; and one day -by your leave! -resigned the lady. she was no such fool, however; it's from her you must inherit your excellent good sense; and she refused to be bandied from one to another. both got upon their knees to her; and the upshot of the matter for that while was that she showed both of them the door. that was in august; dear me! the same year i came from college. the scene must have been highly farcical." i thought myself it was a silly business, but i could not forget my father had a hand in it. "surely, sir, it had some note of tragedy," said i. "why, no, sir, not at all," returned the lawyer. "for tragedy implies some ponderable matter in dispute, some dignus vindice nodus; and this piece of work was all about the petulance of a young ass that had been spoiled, and wanted nothing so much as to be tied up and soundly belted. however, that was not your father's view; and the end of it was, that from concession to concession on your father's part, and from one height to another of squalling, sentimental selfishness upon your uncle's, they came at last to drive a sort of bargain, from whose ill results you have recently been smarting. the one man took the lady, the other the estate. now, mr. david, they talk a great deal of charity and generosity; but in this disputable state of life, i often think the happiest consequences seem to flow when a gentleman consults his lawyer, and takes all the law allows him. anyhow, this piece of quixotry on your father's part, as it was unjust in itself, has brought forth a monstrous family of injustices. your father and mother lived and died poor folk; you were poorly reared; and in the meanwhile, what a time it has been for the tenants on the estate of shaws! and i might add (if it was a matter i cared much about) what a time for mr. ebenezer!" "and yet that is certainly the strangest part of all," said i, "that a man's nature should thus change." "true," said mr. rankeillor. "and yet i imagine it was natural enough. he could not think that he had played a handsome part. those who knew the story gave him the cold shoulder; those who knew it not, seeing one brother disappear, and the other succeed in the estate, raised a cry of murder; so that upon all sides he found himself evited. money was all he got by his bargain; well, he came to think the more of money. he was selfish when he was young, he is selfish now that he is old; and the latter end of all these pretty manners and fine feelings you have seen for yourself." "well, sir," said i, "and in all this, what is my position?" "the estate is yours beyond a doubt," replied the lawyer. "it matters nothing what your father signed, you are the heir of entail. but your uncle is a man to fight the indefensible; and it would be likely your identity that he would call in question. a lawsuit is always expensive, and a family lawsuit always scandalous; besides which, if any of your doings with your friend mr. thomson were to come out, we might find that we had burned our fingers. the kidnapping, to be sure, would be a court card upon our side, if we could only prove it. but it may be difficult to prove; and my advice (upon the whole) is to make a very easy bargain with your uncle, perhaps even leaving him at shaws where he has taken root for a quarter of a century, and contenting yourself in the meanwhile with a fair provision." i told him i was very willing to be easy, and that to carry family concerns before the public was a step from which i was naturally much averse. in the meantime (thinking to myself) i began to see the outlines of that scheme on which we afterwards acted. "the great affair," i asked, "is to bring home to him the kidnapping?" "surely," said mr. rankeillor, "and if possible, out of court. for mark you here, mr. david: we could no doubt find some men of the covenant who would swear to your reclusion; but once they were in the box, we could no longer check their testimony, and some word of your friend mr. thomson must certainly crop out. which (from what you have let fall) i cannot think to be desirable." "well, sir," said i, "here is my way of it." and i opened my plot to him. "but this would seem to involve my meeting the man thomson?" says he, when i had done. "i think so, indeed, sir," said i. "dear doctor!" cries he, rubbing his brow. "dear doctor! no, mr. david, i am afraid your scheme is inadmissible. i say nothing against your friend, mr. thomson: i know nothing against him; and if i did -mark this, mr. david! -it would be my duty to lay hands on him. now i put it to you: is it wise to meet? he may have matters to his charge. he may not have told you all. his name may not be even thomson!" cries the lawyer, twinkling; "for some of these fellows will pick up names by the roadside as another would gather haws." "you must be the judge, sir," said i. but it was clear my plan had taken hold upon his fancy, for he kept musing to himself till we were called to dinner and the company of mrs. rankeillor; and that lady had scarce left us again to ourselves and a bottle of wine, ere he was back harping on my proposal. when and where was i to meet my friend mr. thomson; was i sure of mr. t.'s discretion; supposing we could catch the old fox tripping, would i consent to such and such a term of an agreement -these and the like questions he kept asking at long intervals, while he thoughtfully rolled his wine upon his tongue. when i had answered all of them, seemingly to his contentment, he fell into a still deeper muse, even the claret being now forgotten. then he got a sheet of paper and a pencil, and set to work writing and weighing every word; and at last touched a bell and had his clerk into the chamber. "torrance," said he, "i must have this written out fair against to-night; and when it is done, you will be so kind as put on your hat and be ready to come along with this gentleman and me, for you will probably be wanted as a witness." "what, sir," cried i, as soon as the clerk was gone, "are you to venture it?" "why, so it would appear," says he, filling his glass. "but let us speak no more of business. the very sight of torrance brings in my head a little droll matter of some years ago, when i had made a tryst with the poor oaf at the cross of edinburgh. each had gone his proper errand; and when it came four o'clock, torrance had been taking a glass and did not know his master, and i, who had forgot my spectacles, was so blind without them, that i give you my word i did not know my own clerk." and thereupon he laughed heartily. i said it was an odd chance, and smiled out of politeness; but what held me all the afternoon in wonder, he kept returning and dwelling on this story, and telling it again with fresh details and laughter; so that i began at last to be quite put out of countenance and feel ashamed for my friend's folly. towards the time i had appointed with alan, we set out from the house, mr. rankeillor and i arm in arm, and torrance following behind with the deed in his pocket and a covered basket in his hand. all through the town, the lawyer was bowing right and left, and continually being button-holed by gentlemen on matters of burgh or private business; and i could see he was one greatly looked up to in the county. at last we were clear of the houses, and began to go along the side of the haven and towards the hawes inn and the ferry pier, the scene of my misfortune. i could not look upon the place without emotion, recalling how many that had been there with me that day were now no more: ransome taken, i could hope, from the evil to come; shuan passed where i dared not follow him; and the poor souls that had gone down with the brig in her last plunge. all these, and the brig herself, i had outlived; and come through these hardships and fearful perils without scath. my only thought should have been of gratitude; and yet i could not behold the place without sorrow for others and a chill of recollected fear. i was so thinking when, upon a sudden, mr. rankeillor cried out, clapped his hand to his pockets, and began to laugh. "why," he cries, "if this be not a farcical adventure! after all that i said, i have forgot my glasses!" at that, of course, i understood the purpose of his anecdote, and knew that if he had left his spectacles at home, it had been done on purpose, so that he might have the benefit of alan's help without the awkwardness of recognising him. and indeed it was well thought upon; for now (suppose things to go the very worst) how could rankeillor swear to my friend's identity, or how be made to bear damaging evidence against myself? for all that, he had been a long while of finding out his want, and had spoken to and recognised a good few persons as we came through the town; and i had little doubt myself that he saw reasonably well. as soon as we were past the hawes (where i recognised the landlord smoking his pipe in the door, and was amazed to see him look no older) mr. rankeillor changed the order of march, walking behind with torrance and sending me forward in the manner of a scout. i went up the hill, whistling from time to time my gaelic air; and at length i had the pleasure to hear it answered and to see alan rise from behind a bush. he was somewhat dashed in spirits, having passed a long day alone skulking in the county, and made but a poor meal in an alehouse near dundas. but at the mere sight of my clothes, he began to brighten up; and as soon as i had told him in what a forward state our matters were and the part i looked to him to play in what remained, he sprang into a new man. "and that is a very good notion of yours," says he; "and i dare to say that you could lay your hands upon no better man to put it through than alan breck. it is not a thing (mark ye) that any one could do, but takes a gentleman of penetration. but it sticks in my head your lawyer-man will be somewhat wearying to see me," says alan. accordingly i cried and waved on mr. rankeillor, who came up alone and was presented to my friend, mr. thomson. "mr. thomson, i am pleased to meet you," said he. "but i have forgotten my glasses; and our friend, mr. david here" (clapping me on the shoulder), "will tell you that i am little better than blind, and that you must not be surprised if i pass you by to-morrow." this he said, thinking that alan would be pleased; but the highlandman's vanity was ready to startle at a less matter than that. "why, sir," says he, stiffly, "i would say it mattered the less as we are met here for a particular end, to see justice done to mr. balfour; and by what i can see, not very likely to have much else in common. but i accept your apology, which was a very proper one to make." "and that is more than i could look for, mr. thomson," said rankeillor, heartily. "and now as you and i are the chief actors in this enterprise, i think we should come into a nice agreement; to which end, i propose that you should lend me your arm, for (what with the dusk and the want of my glasses) i am not very clear as to the path; and as for you, mr. david, you will find torrance a pleasant kind of body to speak with. only let me remind you, it's quite needless he should hear more of your adventures or those of -ahem -mr. thomson." accordingly these two went on ahead in very close talk, and torrance and i brought up the rear. night was quite come when we came in view of the house of shaws. ten had been gone some time; it was dark and mild, with a pleasant, rustling wind in the south-west that covered the sound of our approach; and as we drew near we saw no glimmer of light in any portion of the building. it seemed my uncle was already in bed, which was indeed the best thing for our arrangements. we made our last whispered consultations some fifty yards away; and then the lawyer and torrance and i crept quietly up and crouched down beside the corner of the house; and as soon as we were in our places, alan strode to the door without concealment and began to knock. chapter xxix i come into my kingdom for some time alan volleyed upon the door, and his knocking only roused the echoes of the house and neighbourhood. at last, however, i could hear the noise of a window gently thrust up, and knew that my uncle had come to his observatory. by what light there was, he would see alan standing, like a dark shadow, on the steps; the three witnesses were hidden quite out of his view; so that there was nothing to alarm an honest man in his own house. for all that, he studied his visitor awhile in silence, and when he spoke his voice had a quaver of misgiving. "what's this?" says he. "this is nae kind of time of night for decent folk; and i hae nae trokings[1] wi' night-hawks. what brings ye here? i have a blunderbush." "is that yoursel', mr. balfour?" returned alan, steppig back and looking up into the darkness. "have a care of that blunderbuss; they're nasty things to burst." "what brings ye here? and whae are ye?" says my uncle, angrily. "i have no manner of inclination to rowt out my name to the country-side," said alan; "but what brings me here is another story, being more of your affair than mine; and if ye're sure it's what ye would like, i'll set it to a tune and sing it to you." "and what is't?" asked my uncle. "david," says alan. "what was that?" cried my uncle, in a mighty changed voice. "shall i give ye the rest of the name, then?" said alan. there was a pause; and then, "i'm thinking i'll better let ye in," says my uncle, doubtfully. "i dare say that," said alan; "but the point is, would i go? now i will tell you what i am thinking. i am thinking that it is here upon this doorstep that we must confer upon this business; and it shall be here or nowhere at all whatever; for i would have you to understand that i am as stiffnecked as yoursel', and a gentleman of better family." this change of note disconcerted ebenezer; he was a little while digesting it, and then says he, "weel, weel, what must be must," and shut the window. but it took him a long time to get down-stairs, and a still longer to undo the fastenings, repenting (i dare say) and taken with fresh claps of fear at every second step and every bolt and bar. at last, however, we heard the creak of the hinges, and it seems my uncle slipped gingerly out and (seeing that alan had stepped back a pace or two) sate him down on the top doorstep with the blunderbuss ready in his hands. "and, now" says he, "mind i have my blunderbush, and if ye take a step nearer ye're as good as deid." "and a very civil speech," says alan, "to be sure." "na," says my uncle, "but this is no a very chanty kind of a proceeding, and i'm bound to be prepared. and now that we understand each other, ye'll can name your business." "why," says alan, "you that are a man of so much understanding, will doubtless have perceived that i am a hieland gentleman. my name has nae business in my story; but the county of my friends is no very far from the isle of mull, of which ye will have heard. it seems there was a ship lost in those parts; and the next day a gentleman of my family was seeking wreck-wood for his fire along the sands, when he came upon a lad that was half drowned. well, he brought him to; and he and some other gentleman took and clapped him in an auld, ruined castle, where from that day to this he has been a great expense to my friends. my friends are a wee wild-like, and not so particular about the law as some that i could name; and finding that the lad owned some decent folk, and was your born nephew, mr. balfour, they asked me to give ye a bit call and confer upon the matter. and i may tell ye at the off-go, unless we can agree upon some terms, ye are little likely to set eyes upon him. for my friends," added alan, simply, "are no very well off." my uncle cleated his throat. "i'm no very caring," says he. "he wasnae a good lad at the best of it, and i've nae tall to interfere." "ay, ay," said alan, "i see what ye would be at: pretending ye don't care, to make the ransom smaller." "na," said my uncle, "it's the mere truth. i take nae manner of interest in the lad, and i'll pay nae ransome, and ye can make a kirk and a mill of him for what i care." "hoot, sir," says alan. "blood's thicker than water, in the deil's name! ye cannae desert your brother's son for the fair shame of it; and if ye did, and it came to be kennt, ye wouldnae be very popular in your country-side, or i'm the more deceived." "i'm no just very popular the way it is," returned ebenezer; "and i dinnae see how it would come to be kennt. no by me, onyway; nor yet by you or your friends. so that's idle talk, my buckie," says he. "then it'll have to be david that tells it," said alan. "how that?" says my uncle, sharply." ou, just this, way" says alan. "my friends would doubtless keep your nephew as long as there was any likelihood of siller to be made of it, but if there was nane, i am clearly of opinion they would let him gang where he pleased, and be damned to him!" "ay, but i'm no very caring about that either," said my uncle. "i wouldnae be muckle made up with that." "i was thinking that," said alan. "and what for why?" asked ebenezer. "why, mr. balfour," replied alan, "by all that i could hear, there were two ways of it: either ye liked david and would pay to get him back; or else ye had very good reasons for not wanting him, and would pay for us to keep him. it seems it's not the first; well then, it's the second; and blythe am i to ken it, for it should be a pretty penny in my pocket and the pockets of my friends." "i dinnae follow ye there," said my uncle. "no?" said alan. "well, see here: you dinnae want the lad back; well, what do ye want done with him, and how much will ye pay?" my uncle made no answer, but shifted uneasily on his seat. "come, sir," cried alan. "i would have you to ken that i am a gentleman; i bear a king's name; i am nae rider to kick my shanks at your hall door. either give me an answer in civility, and that out of hand; or by the top of glencoe, i will ram three feet of iron through your vitals." "eh, man," cried my uncle, scrambling to his feet, "give me a meenit! what's like wrong with ye? i'm just a plain man and nae dancing master; and i'm tryin to be as ceevil as it's morally possible. as for that wild talk, it's fair disrepitable. vitals, says you! and where would i be with my blunderbush?" he snarled. "powder and your auld hands are but as the snail to the swallow against the bright steel in the hands of alan," said the other. "before your jottering finger could find the trigger, the hilt would dirl on your breast-bane." "eh, man, whae's denying it?" said my uncle. "pit it as ye please, hae't your ain way; i'll do naething to cross ye. just tell me what like ye'll be wanting, and ye'll see that we'll can agree fine." "troth, sir," said alan, "i ask for nothing but plain dealing. in two words: do ye want the lad killed or kept?" "o, sirs!" cried ebenezer. "o, sirs, me! that's no kind of language!" "killed or kept!" repeated alan. "o, keepit, keepit!" wailed my uncle. "we'll have nae bloodshed, if you please." "well," says alan, "as ye please; that'll be the dearer." "the dearer?" cries ebenezer. "would ye fyle your hands wi' crime?" "hoot!" said alan, "they're baith crime, whatever! and the killing's easier, and quicker, and surer. keeping the lad'll be a fashious[2] job, a fashious, kittle business." "i'll have him keepit, though," returned my uncle. "i never had naething to do with onything morally wrong; and i'm no gaun to begin to pleasure a wild hielandman." "ye're unco scrupulous," sneered alan. "i'm a man o' principle," said ebenezer, simply; "and if i have to pay for it, i'll have to pay for it. and besides," says he, "ye forget the lad's my brother's son." "well, well," said alan, "and now about the price. it's no very easy for me to set a name upon it; i would first have to ken some small matters. i would have to ken, for instance, what ye gave hoseason at the first off-go?" "hoseason!" cries my uncle, struck aback. "what for?" "for kidnapping david," says alan. "it's a lee, it's a black lee!" cried my uncle. "he was never kidnapped. he leed in his throat that tauld ye that. kidnapped? he never was!" "that's no fault of mine nor yet of yours," said alan; "nor yet of hoseason's, if he's a man that can be trusted." "what do ye mean?" cried ebenezer. "did hoseason tell ye?" "why, ye donnered auld runt, how else would i ken?" cried alan. "hoseason and me are partners; we gang shares; so ye can see for yoursel' what good ye can do leeing. and i must plainly say ye drove a fool's bargain when ye let a man like the sailor-man so far forward in your private matters. but that's past praying for; and ye must lie on your bed the way ye made it. and the point in hand is just this: what did ye pay him?" "has he tauld ye himsel'?" asked my uncle. "that's my concern," said alan. "weel," said my uncle, "i dinnae care what he said, he leed, and the solemn god's truth is this, that i gave him twenty pound. but i'll be perfec'ly honest with ye: forby that, he was to have the selling of the lad in caroliny, whilk would be as muckle mair, but no from my pocket, ye see." "thank you, mr. thomson. that will do excellently well," said the lawyer, stepping forward; and then mighty civilly, "good-evening, mr. balfour," said he. and, "good-evening, uncle ebenezer," said i. and, "it's a braw nicht, mr. balfour" added torrance. never a word said my uncle, neither black nor white; but just sat where he was on the top door-step and stared upon us like a man turned to stone. alan filched away his blunderbuss; and the lawyer, taking him by the arm, plucked him up from the doorstep, led him into the kitchen, whither we all followed, and set him down in a chair beside the hearth, where the fire was out and only a rush-light burning. there we all looked upon him for a while, exulting greatly in our success, but yet with a sort of pity for the man's shame. "come, come, mr. ebenezer," said the lawyer, "you must not be down-hearted, for i promise you we shall make easy terms. in the meanwhile give us the cellar key, and torrance shall draw us a bottle of your father's wine in honour of the event." then, turning to me and taking me by the hand, "mr. david," says he, "i wish you all joy in your good fortune, which i believe to be deserved." and then to alan, with a spice of drollery, "mr. thomson, i pay you my compliment; it was most artfully conducted; but in one point you somewhat outran my comprehension. do i understand your name to be james? or charles? or is it george, perhaps?" "and why should it be any of the three, sir?" quoth alan, drawing himself up, like one who smelt an offence. "only, sir, that you mentioned a king's name," replied rankeillor." and as there has never yet been a king thomson, or his fame at least has never come my way, i judged you must refer to that you had in baptism." this was just the stab that alan would feel keenest, and i am free to confess he took it very ill. not a word would he answer, but stepped off to the far end of the kitchen, and sat down and sulked; and it was not till i stepped after him, and gave him my hand, and thanked him by title as the chief spring of my success, that he began to smile a bit, and was at last prevailed upon to join our party. by that time we had the fire lighted, and a bottle of wine uncorked; a good supper came out of the basket, to which torrance and i and alan set ourselves down; while the lawyer and my uncle passed into the next chamber to consult. they stayed there closeted about an hour; at the end of which period they had come to a good understanding, and my uncle and i set our hands to the agreement in a formal manner. by the terms of this, my uncle bound himself to satisfy rankeillor as to his intromissions, and to pay me two clear thirds of the yearly income of shaws. so the beggar in the ballad had come home; and when i lay down that night on the kitchen chests, i was a man of means and had a name in the country. alan and torrance and rankeillor slept and snored on their hard beds; but for me who had lain out under heaven and upon dirt and stones, so many days and nights, and often with an empty belly, and in fear of death, this good change in my case unmanned me more than any of the former evil ones; and i lay till dawn, looking at the fire on the roof and planing the future. [1] dealings. [2] troublesome. chapter xxx good-bye so far as i was concerned myself, i had come to port; but i had still alan, to whom i was so much beholden, on my hands; and i felt besides a heavy charge in the matter of the murder and james of the glens. on both these heads i unbosomed to rankeillor the next morning, walking to and fro about six of the clock before the house of shaws, and with nothing in view but the fields and woods that had been my ancestors' and were now mine. even as i spoke on these grave subjects, my eye would take a glad bit of a run over the prospect, and my heart jump with pride. about my clear duty to my friend, the lawyer had no doubt. i must help him out of the county at whatever risk; but in the case of james, he was of a different mind. "mr. thomson," says he, "is one thing, mr. thomson's kinsman quite another. i know little of the facts, but i gather that a great noble (whom we will call, if you like, the d. of a.)[1] has some concern and is even supposed to feel some aimosity in the matter. the d. of a. is doubtless an excellent nobleman; but, mr. david, timeo qui nocuere deos. if you interfere to balk his vengeance, you should remember there is one way to shut your testimony out; and that is to put you in the dock. there, you would be in the same pickle as mr. thomson's kinsman. you will object that you are innocent; well, but so is he. and to be tried for your life before a highland jury, on a highland quarrel and with a highland judge upon the bench, would be a brief transition to the gallows." now i had made all these reasonings before and found no very good reply to them; so i put on all the simplicity i could. "in that case, sir," said i, "i would just have to be hanged -would i not?" "my dear boy," cries he, "go in god's name, and do what you think is right. it is a poor thought that at my time of life i should be advising you to choose the safe and shameful; and i take it back with an apology. go and do your duty; and be hanged, if you must, like a gentleman. there are worse things in the world than to be hanged." "not many, sir," said i, smiling. "why, yes, sir," he cried, "very many. and it would be ten times better for your uncle (to go no farther afield) if he were dangling decently upon a gibbet." thereupon he turned into the house (still in a great fervour of mind, so that i saw i had pleased him heartily) and there he wrote me two letters, making his comments on them as he wrote. "this," says he, "is to my bankers, the british linen company, placing a credit to your name. consult mr. thomson, he will know of ways; and you, with this credit, can supply the means. i trust you will be a good husband of your money; but in the affair of a friend like mr. thompson, i would be even prodigal. then for his kinsman, there is no better way than that you should seek the advocate, tell him your tale, and offer testimony. whether he may take it or not, is quite another matter, and will turn on the d. of a. now, that you may reach the lord advocate well recommended, i give you here a letter to a namesake of your own, the learned mr. balfour of pilrig, a man whom i esteem. it will look better that you should be presented by one of your own name; and the laird of pilrig is much looked up to in the faculty and stands well with lord advocate grant. i would not trouble him, if i were you, with any particulars; and (do you know?) i think it would be needless to refer to mr. thomson. form yourself upon the laird, he is a good model; when you deal with the advocate, be discreet; and in all these matters, may the lord guide you, mr. david!" thereupon he took his farewell, and set out with torrance for the ferry, while alan and i turned our faces for the city of edinburgh. as we went by the footpath and beside the gateposts and the unfinished lodge, we kept looking back at the house of my fathers. it stood there, bare and great and smokeless, like a place not lived in; only in one of the top windows, there was the peak of a nightcap bobbing up and down and back and forward, like the head of a rabbit from a burrow. i had little welcome when i came, and less kindness while i stayed; but at least i was watched as i went away. alan and i went slowly forward upon our way, having little heart either to walk or speak. the same thought was uppermost in both, that we were near the time of our parting; and remembrance of all the bygone days sate upon us sorely. we talked indeed of what should be done; and it was resolved that alan should keep to the county, biding now here, now there, but coming once in the day to a particular place where i might be able to communicate with him, either in my own person or by messenger. in the meanwhile, i was to seek out a lawyer, who was an appin stewart, and a man therefore to be wholly trusted; and it should be his part to find a ship and to arrange for alan's safe embarkation. no sooner was this business done, than the words seemed to leave us; and though i would seek to jest with alan under the name of mr. thomson, and he with me on my new clothes and my estate, you could feel very well that we were nearer tears than laughter. we came the by-way over the hill of corstorphine; and when we got near to the place called rest-and-be-thankful, and looked down on corstorphine bogs and over to the city and the castle on the hill, we both stopped, for we both knew without a word said that we had come to where our ways parted. here he repeated to me once again what had been agreed upon between us: the address of the lawyer, the daily hour at which alan might be found, and the signals that were to be made by any that came seeking him. then i gave what money i had (a guinea or two of rankeillor's) so that he should not starve in the meanwhile; and then we stood a space, and looked over at edinburgh in silence. "well, good-bye," said alan, and held out his left hand. "good-bye," said i, and gave the hand a little grasp, and went off down hill. neither one of us looked the other in the face, nor so long as he was in my view did i take one back glance at the friend i was leaving. but as i went on my way to the city, i felt so lost and lonesome, that i could have found it in my heart to sit down by the dyke, and cry and weep like any baby. it was coming near noon when i passed in by the west kirk and the grassmarket into the streets of the capital. the huge height of the buildings, running up to ten and fifteen storeys, the narrow arched entries that continually vomited passengers, the wares of the merchants in their windows, the hubbub and endless stir, the foul smells and the fine clothes, and a hundred other particulars too small to mention, struck me into a kind of stupor of surprise, so that i let the crowd carry me to and fro; and yet all the time what i was thinking of was alan at rest-and-be-thankful; and all the time (although you would think i would not choose but be delighted with these braws and novelties) there was a cold gnawing in my inside like a remorse for something wrong. the hand of providence brought me in my drifting to the very doors of the british linen company's bank. [1]the duke of argyle. ****** the end ****** benedict de spinoza's political treatise, wherein is demonstrated, how the society in which monarchical dominion finds place, as also that in which the dominion is aristocratic, should be ordered, so as not to lapse into a tyranny, but to preserve inviolate the peace and freedom of the citizens. [tractatus politicus.] edited with an introduction by r. h. m. elwes translated by a. h. gosset published by g. bell & son london 1883 rendered into html and text by jon roland of the constitution society 1998 -----------------------from the editor's preface to the posthumous works of benedict de spinoza. our author composed the political treatise shortly before his death [in 1677]. its reasonings are exact, its style clear. abandoning the opinions of many political writers, he most firmly propounds therein his own judgment; and throughout draws his conclusions from his premisses. in the first five chapters, he treats of political science in general -in the sixth and seventh, of monarchy; in the eighth, ninth, and tenth, of aristocracy; lastly, the eleventh begins the subject of democratic government. but his untimely death was the reason that he did not finish this treatise, and that he did not deal with the subject of laws, nor with the various questions about politics, as may be seen from the following "letter of the author to a friend, which may properly be prefixed to this political treatise, and serve it for a preface:" -"dear friend, -your welcome letter was delivered to me yesterday. i heartily thank you for the kind interest you take in me. i would not miss this opportunity, were i not engaged in something, which i think more useful, and which, i believe, will please you more -that is, in preparing a political treatise, which i began some time since, upon your advice. of this treatise, six chapters are already finished. the first contains a kind of introduction to the actual work; the second treats of natural right; the third, of the right of supreme authorities. in the fourth, i inquire, what political matters are subject to the direction of supreme authorities; in the fifth, what is the ultimate and highest end which a society can contemplate; and, in the sixth, how a monarchy should be ordered, so as not to lapse into a tyranny. i am at present writing the seventh chapter, wherein i make a regular demonstration of all the heads of my preceding sixth chapter, concerning the ordering of a well-regulated monarchy. i shall afterwards pass to the subjects of aristocratic and popular dominion, and, lastly, to that of laws and other particular questions about politics. and so, farewell." the author's aim appears clearly from this letter; but being hindered by illness, and snatched away by death, he was unable, as the reader will find for himself, to continue this work further than to the end of the subject of aristocracy. -----------------------a political treatise. chapter i. introduction. philosophers conceive of the passions which harass us as vices into which men fall by their own fault, and, therefore, generally deride, bewail, or blame them, or execrate them, if they wish to seem unusually pious. and so they think they are doing something wonderful, and reaching the pinnacle of learning, when they are clever enough to bestow manifold praise on such human nature, as is nowhere to be found, and to make verbal attacks on that which, in fact, exists. for they conceive of men, not as they are, but as they themselves would like them to be. whence it has come to pass that, instead of ethics, they have generally written satire, and that they have never conceived a theory of politics, which could be turned to use, but such as might be taken for a chimera, or might have been formed in utopia, or in that golden age of the poets when, to be sure, there was least need of it. accordingly, as in all sciences, which have a useful application, so especially in that of politics, theory is supposed to be at variance with practice; and no men are esteemed less fit to direct public affairs than theorists or philosophers. 2. but statesmen, on the other hand, are suspected of plotting against mankind, rather than consulting their interests, and are esteemed more crafty than learned. no doubt nature has taught them, that vices will exist, while men do. and so, while they study to anticipate human wickedness, and that by arts, which experience and long practice have taught, and which men generally use under the guidance more of fear than of reason, they are thought to be enemies of religion, especially by divines, who believe that supreme authorities should handle public affairs in accordance with the same rules of piety, as bind a private individual. yet there can be no doubt, that statesmen have written about politics far more happily than philosophers. for, as they had experience for their mistress, they taught nothing that was inconsistent with practice. 3. and, certainly, i am fully persuaded that experience has revealed all conceivable sorts of commonwealth, which are consistent with men's living in unity, and likewise the means by which the multitude may be guided or kept within fixed bounds. so that i do not believe that we can by meditation discover in this matter anything not yet tried and ascertained, which shall be consistent with experience or practice. for men are so situated, that they cannot live without some general law. but general laws and public affairs are ordained and managed by men of the utmost acuteness, or, if you like, of great cunning or craft. and so it is hardly credible, that we should be able to conceive of anything serviceable to a general society, that occasion or chance has not offered, or that men, intent upon their common affairs, and seeking their own safety, have not seen for themselves. 4. therefore, on applying my mind to politics, i have resolved to demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of argument, or to deduce from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of, but only such things as agree best with practice. and that i might investigate the subject-matter of this science with the same freedom of spirit as we generally use in mathematics, i have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions; and to this end i have looked upon passions, such as love, hatred, anger, envy, ambition, pity, and the other perturbations of the mind, not in the light of vices of human nature, but as properties, just as pertinent to it, as are heat, cold, storm, thunder, and the like to the nature of the atmosphere, which phenomena, though inconvenient, are yet necessary, and have fixed causes, by means of which we endeavour to understand their nature, and the mind has just as much pleasure in viewing them aright, as in knowing such things as flatter the senses. 5. for this is certain, and we have proved its truth in our ethics, [1] that men are of necessity liable to passions, and so constituted as to pity those who are ill, and envy those who are well off; and to be prone to vengeance more than to mercy: and moreover, that every individual wishes the rest to live after his own mind, and to approve what he approves, and reject what he rejects. and so it comes to pass, that, as all are equally eager to be first, they fall to strife, and do their utmost mutually to oppress one another; and he who comes out conqueror is more proud of the harm he has done to the other, than of the good he has done to himself. and although all are persuaded, that religion, on the contrary, teaches every man to love his neighbour as himself, that is to defend another's right just as much as his own, yet we showed that this persuasion has too little power over the passions. it avails, indeed, in the hour of death, when disease has subdued the very passions, and man lies inert, or in temples, where men hold no traffic, but least of all, where it is most needed, in the law-court or the palace. we showed too, that reason can, indeed, do much to restrain and moderate the passions, but we saw at the same time, that the road, which reason herself points out, is very steep; [2] so that such as persuade themselves, that the multitude or men distracted by politics can ever be induced to live according to the bare dictate of reason, must be dreaming of the poetic golden age, or of a stage-play. 6. a dominion then, whose well-being depends on any man's good faith, and whose affairs cannot be properly administered, unless those who are engaged in them will act honestly, will be very unstable. on the contrary, to insure its permanence, its public affairs should be so ordered, that those who administer them, whether guided by reason or passion, cannot be led to act treacherously or basely. nor does it matter to the security of a dominion, in what spirit men are led to rightly administer its affairs. for liberality of spirit, or courage, is a private virtue; but the virtue of a state is its security. 7. lastly, inasmuch as all men, whether barbarous or civilized, everywhere frame customs, and form some kind of civil state, we must not, therefore, look to proofs of reason for the causes and natural bases of dominion, but derive them from the general nature or position of mankind, as i mean to do in the next chapter. -----1. ethics, iv. 4, coroll. iii. 31, note; 32, note. 2. ibid., v. 42, note. -----------------------chapter ii. of natural right. in our theologico-political treatise we have treated of natural and civil right, [1] and in our ethics have explained the nature of wrong-doing, merit, justice, injustice, [2] and lastly, of human liberty. [3] yet, lest the readers of the present treatise should have to seek elsewhere those points, which especially concern it, i have determined to explain them here again, and give a deductive proof of them. 2. any natural thing whatever can be just as well conceived, whether it exists or does not exist. as then the beginning of the existence of natural things cannot be inferred from their definition, so neither can their continuing to exist. for their ideal essence is the same, after they have begun to exist, as it was before they existed. as then their beginning to exist cannot be inferred from their essence, so neither can their continuing to exist; but they need the same power to enable them to go on existing, as to enable them to begin to exist. from which it follows, that the power, by which natural things exist, and therefore that by which they operate, can be no other than the eternal power of god itself. for were it another and a created power, it could not preserve itself, much less natural things, but it would itself, in order to continue to exist, have need of the same power which it needed to be created. 3. from this fact therefore, that is, that the power whereby natural things exist and operate is the very power of god itself, we easily understand what natural right is. for as god has a right to everything, and god's right is nothing else, but his very power, as far as the latter is considered to be absolutely free; it follows from this, that every natural thing has by nature as much right, as it has power to exist and operate; since the natural power of every natural thing, whereby it exists and operates, is nothing else but the power of god, which is absolutely free. 4. and so by natural right i understand the very laws or rules of nature, in accordance with which everything takes place, in other words, the power of nature itself. and so the natural right of universal nature, and consequently of every individual thing, extends as far as its power: and accordingly, whatever any man does after the laws of his nature, he does by the highest natural right, and he has as much right over nature as he has power. 5. if then human nature had been so constituted, that men should live according to the mere dictate of reason, and attempt nothing inconsistent therewith, in that case natural right, considered as special to mankind, would be determined by the power of reason only. but men are more led by blind desire, than by reason: and therefore the natural power or right of human beings should be limited, not by reason, but by every appetite, whereby they are determined to action, or seek their own preservation. i, for my part, admit, that those desires, which arise not from reason, are not so much actions as passive affections of man. but as we are treating here of the universal power or right of nature, we cannot here recognize any distinction between desires, which are engendered in us by reason, and those which are engendered by other causes; since the latter, as much as the former, are effects of nature, and display the natural impulse, by which man strives to continue in existence. for man, be he learned or ignorant, is part of nature, and everything, by which any man is determined to action, ought to be referred to the power of nature, that is, to that power, as it is limited by the nature of this or that man. for man, whether guided by reason or mere desire, does nothing save in accordance with the laws and rules of nature, that is, by natural right. (section 4.) 6. but most people believe, that the ignorant rather disturb than follow the course of nature, and conceive of mankind, in nature as of one dominion within another. for they maintain, that the human mind is produced by no natural causes, but created directly by god, and is so independent of other things, that it has an absolute power to determine itself, and make a right use of reason. experience, however, teaches us but too well, that it is no more in our power to have a sound mind, than a sound body. next, inasmuch as everything whatever, as far as in it lies, strives to preserve its own existence, we cannot at all doubt, that, were it as much in our power to live after the dictate of reason, as to be led by blind desire, all would be led by reason, and order their lives wisely; which is very far from being the case. for "each is attracted by his own delight." [4] nor do divines remove this difficulty, at least not by deciding, that the cause of this want of power is a vice or sin in human nature, deriving its origin from our first parents' fall. for if it was even in the first man's power as much to stand as to fall, and he was in possession of his senses, and had his nature unimpaired, how could it be, that he fell in spite of his knowledge and foresight? but they say, that he was deceived by the devil. who then was it, that deceived the devil himself? who, i say, so maddened the very being that excelled all other created intelligences, that he wished to be greater than god? for was not his effort too, supposing him of sound mind, to preserve himself and his existence, as far as in him lay? besides, how could it happen, that the first man himself, being in his senses, and master of his own will, should be led astray, and suffer himself to be taken mentally captive? for if he had the power to make a right use of reason, it was not possible for him to be deceived, for as far as in him lay, he of necessity strove to preserve his existence and his soundness of mind. but the hypothesis is, that he had this in his power; therefore he of necessity maintained his soundness of mind, and could not be deceived. but this from his history, is known to be false. and, accordingly, it must be admitted, that it was not in the first man's power to make a right use of reason, but that, like us, he was subject to passions. 7. but that man, like other beings, as far as in him lies, strives to preserve his existence, no one can deny. for if any distinction could be conceived on this point, it must arise from man's having a free will. but the freer we conceived man to be, the more we should be forced to maintain, that he must of necessity preserve his existence and be in possession of his senses; as anyone will easily grant me, that does not confound liberty with contingency. for liberty is a virtue, or excellence. whatever, therefore, convicts a man of weakness cannot be ascribed to his liberty. and so man can by no means be called free, because he is able not to exist or not to use his reason, but only in so far as he preserves the power of existing and operating according to the laws of human nature. the more, therefore, we consider man to be free, the less we can say, that he can neglect to use reason, or choose evil in preference to good; and, therefore, god, who exists in absolute liberty, also understands and operates of necessity, that is, exists, understands, and operates according to the necessity of his own nature. for there is no doubt, that god operates by the same liberty whereby he exists. as then he exists by the necessity of his own nature, by the necessity of his own nature also he acts, that is, he acts with absolute liberty. 8. so we conclude, that it is not in the power of any man always to use his reason, and be at the highest pitch of human liberty, and yet that everyone always, as far as in him lies, strives to preserve his own existence; and that (since each has as much right as he has power) whatever anyone, be he learned or ignorant, attempts and does, he attempts and does by supreme natural right. from which it follows that the law and ordinance of nature, under which all men are born, and for the most part live, forbids nothing but what no one wishes or is able to do, and is not opposed to strifes, hatred, anger, treachery, or, in general, anything that appetite suggests. for the bounds of nature are not the laws of human reason, which do but pursue the true interest and preservation of mankind, but other infinite laws, which regard the eternal order of universal nature, whereof man is an atom; and according to the necessity of this order only are all individual beings determined in a fixed manner to exist and operate. whenever, then, anything in nature seems to us ridiculous, absurd, or evil, it is because we have but a partial knowledge of things, and are in the main ignorant of the order and coherence of nature as a whole, and because we want everything to be arranged according to the dictate of our own reason; although, in fact, what our reason pronounces bad, is not bad as regards the order and laws of universal nature, but only as regards the laws of our own nature taken separately. 9. besides, it follows that everyone is so far rightfully dependent on another, as he is under that other's authority, and so far independent, as he is able to repel all violence, and avenge to his heart's content all damage done to him, and in general to live after his own mind. 10. he has another under his authority, who holds him bound, or has taken from him arms and means of defence or escape, or inspired him with fear, or so attached him to himself by past favour, that the man obliged would rather please his benefactor than himself, and live after his mind than after his own. he that has another under authority in the first or second of these ways, holds but his body, not his mind. but in the third or fourth way he has made dependent on himself as well the mind as the body of the other; yet only as long as the fear or hope lasts, for upon the removal of the feeling the other is left independent. 11. the judgment can be dependent on another, only as far as that other can deceive the mind; whence it follows that the mind is so far independent, as it uses reason aright. nay, inasmuch as human power is to be reckoned less by physical vigour than by mental strength, it follows that those men are most independent whose reason is strongest, and who are most guided thereby. and so i am altogether for calling a man so far free, as he is led by reason; because so far he is determined to action by such causes, as can be adequately understood by his unassisted nature, although by these causes he be necessarily determined to action. for liberty, as we showed above (sec. 7), does not take away the necessity of acting, but supposes it. 12. the pledging of faith to any man, where one has but verbally promised to do this or that, which one might rightfully leave undone, or vice versâ, remains so long valid as the will of him that gave his word remains unchanged. for he that has authority to break faith has, in fact, bated nothing of his own right, but only made a present of words. if, then, he, being by natural right judge in his own case, comes to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly (for "to err is human"), that more harm than profit will come of his promise, by the judgment of his own mind he decides that the promise should be broken, and by natural right (sec. 9) he will break the same. 13. if two come together and unite their strength, they have jointly more power, and consequently more right over nature than both of them separately, and the more there are that have so joined in alliance, the more right they all collectively will possess. 14. in so far as men are tormented by anger, envy, or any passion implying hatred, they are drawn asunder and made contrary one to another, and therefore are so much the more to be feared, as they are more powerful, crafty, and cunning than the other animals. and because men are in the highest degree liable to these passions (chap. i, sec. 5), therefore men are naturally enemies. for he is my greatest enemy, whom i must most fear and be on my guard against. 15. but inasmuch as (sec. 6) in the state of nature each is so long independent, as he can guard against oppression by another, and it is in vain for one man alone to try and guard against all, it follows hence that so long as the natural right of man is determined by the power of every individual, and belongs to everyone, so long it is a nonentity, existing in opinion rather than fact, as there is no assurance of making it good. and it is certain that the greater cause of fear every individual has, the less power, and consequently the less right, he possesses. to this must be added, that without mutual help men can hardly support life and cultivate the mind. and so our conclusion is, that that natural right, which is special to the human race, can hardly be conceived, except where men have general rights, and combine to defend the possession of the lands they inhabit and cultivate, to protect themselves, to repel all violence, and to live according to the general judgment of all. for (sec. 18) the more there are that combine together, the more right they collectively possess. and if this is why the schoolmen want to call man a sociable animal -i mean because men in the state of nature can hardly be independent -i have nothing to say against them. 16. where men have general rights, and are all guided, as it were, by one mind, it is certain (sec. 13), that every individual has the less right the more the rest collectively exceed him in power; that is, he has, in fact, no right over nature but that which the common law allows him. but whatever he is ordered by the general consent, he is bound to execute, or may rightfully be compelled thereto (sec. 4). 17. this right, which is determined by the power of a multitude, is generally called dominion. and, speaking generally, he holds dominion, to whom are entrusted by common consent affairs of state -such as the laying down, interpretation, and abrogation of laws, the fortification of cities, deciding on war and peace, &c. but if this charge belong to a council, composed of the general multitude, then the dominion is called a democracy; if the council be composed of certain chosen persons, then it is an aristocracy; and if, lastly, the care of affairs of state and, consequently, the dominion rest with one man, then it has the name of monarchy. 18. from what we have proved in this chapter, it becomes clear to us that, in the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. for no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power (secs. 5 and 8). but wrongdoing is action, which cannot lawfully be committed. but if men by the ordinance of nature were bound to be led by reason, then all of necessity would be so led. for the ordinances of nature are the ordinances of god (secs. 2, 3), which god has instituted by the liberty, whereby he exists, and they follow, therefore, from the necessity of the divine nature (sec. 7), and, consequently, are eternal, and cannot be broken. but men are chiefly guided by appetite, without reason; yet for all this they do not disturb the course of nature, but follow it of necessity. and, therefore, a man ignorant and weak of mind, is no more bound by natural law to order his life wisely, than a sick man is bound to be sound of body. 19. therefore wrong-doing cannot be conceived of, but under dominion -that is, where, by the general right of the whole dominion, it is decided what is good and what evil, and where no one does anything rightfully, save what he does in accordance with the general decree or consent (sec. 16). for that, as we said in the last section, is wrong-doing, which cannot lawfully be committed, or is by law forbidden. but obedience is the constant will to execute that, which by law is good, and by the general decree ought to be done. 20. yet we are accustomed to call that also wrong, which is done against the sentence of sound reason, and to give the name of obedience to the constant will to moderate the appetite according to the dictate of reason: a manner of speech which i should quite approve, did human liberty consist in the licence of appetite, and slavery in the dominion of reason. but as human liberty is the greater, the more man can be guided by reason, and moderate his appetite, we cannot without great impropriety call a rational life obedience, and give the name of wrong-doing to that which is, in fact, a weakness of the mind, not a licence of the mind directed against itself, and for which a man may be called a slave, rather than free (secs. 7 and 11). 21. however, as reason teaches one to practise piety, and be of a calm and gentle spirit, which cannot be done save under dominion; and, further, as it is impossible for a multitude to be guided, as it were, by one mind, as under dominion is required, unless it has laws ordained according to the dictate of reason; men who are accustomed to live under dominion are not, therefore, using words so improperly, when they call that wrong-doing which is done against the sentence of reason, because the laws of the best dominion ought to be framed according to that dictate (sec. 18). but, as for my saying (sec. 18) that man in a state of nature, if he does wrong at all, does it against himself, see, on this point, chap. iv., secs. 4, 5, where is shown, in what sense we can say, that he who holds dominion and possesses natural right, is bound by laws and can do wrong. 22. as far as religion is concerned, it is further clear, that a man is most free and most obedient to himself when he most loves god, and worships him in sincerity. but so far as we regard, not the course of nature, which we do not understand, but the dictates of reason only, which respect religion, and likewise reflect that these dictates are revealed to us by god, speaking, as it were, within ourselves, or else were revealed to prophets as laws; so far, speaking in human fashion, we say that man obeys god when he worships him in sincerity, and, on the contrary, does wrong when he is led by blind desire. but, at the same time, we should remember that we are subject to god's authority, as clay to that of the potter, who of the same lump makes some vessels unto honour, and others unto dishonour. [5] and thus man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of god, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of god, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing. 23. as, then, wrong-doing and obedience, in their strict sense, so also justice and injustice cannot be conceived of, except under dominion. for nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's; but under nature everything belongs to all -that is, they have authority to claim it for themselves. but under dominion, where it is by common law determined what belongs to this man, and what to that, he is called just who has a constant will to render to every man his own, but he unjust who strives, on the contrary, to make his own that which belongs to another. 24. but that praise and blame are emotions of joy and sadness, accompanied by an idea of human excellence or weakness as their cause, we have explained in our ethics. -----1. theologico-political treatise, chap. xvi. 2. ethics, iv. 37, note 2. 3. ibid., ii. 48, 49, note. 4. virgil, ecl. ii. 65. 5. romans ix. 21. -----------------------chapter iii. of the right of supreme authorities. under every dominion the state is said to be civil; but the entire body subject to a dominion is called a commonwealth, and the general business of the dominion, subject to the direction of him that holds it, has the name of affairs of state. next we call men citizens, as far as they enjoy by the civil law all the advantages of the commonwealth, and subjects, as far as they are bound to obey its ordinances or laws. lastly, we have already said that, of the civil state, there are three kinds -democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy (chap. ii. sec. 17). now, before i begin to treat of each kind separately, i will first deduce all the properties of the civil state in general. and of these, first of all comes to be considered the supreme right of the commonwealth, or the right of the supreme authorities. 2. from chap. ii. sec. 15, it is clear that the right of the supreme authorities is nothing else than simple natural right, limited, indeed, by the power, not of every individual, but of the multitude, which is guided, as it were, by one mind -that is, as each individual in the state of nature, so the body and mind of a dominion have as much right as they have power. and thus each single citizen or subject has the less right, the more the commonwealth exceeds him in power (chap. ii. sec. 16), and each citizen consequently does and has nothing, but what he may by the general decree of the commonwealth defend. 3. if the commonwealth grant to any man the right, and therewith the authority (for else it is but a gift of words, chap. ii. sec. 12), to live after his own mind, by that very act it abandons its own right, and transfers the same to him, to whom it has given such authority. but if it has given this authority to two or more, i mean authority to live each after his own mind, by that very act it has divided the dominion, and if, lastly, it has given this same authority to every citizen, it has thereby destroyed itself, and there remains no more a commonwealth, but everything returns to the state of nature; all of which is very manifest from what goes before. and thus it follows, that it can by no means be conceived, that every citizen should by the ordinance of the commonwealth live after his own mind, and accordingly this natural right of being one's own judge ceases in the civil state. i say expressly "by the ordinance of the commonwealth," for, if we weigh the matter aright, the natural right of every man does not cease in the civil state. for man, alike in the natural and in the civil state, acts according to the laws of his own nature, and consults his own interest. man, i say, in each state is led by fear or hope to do or leave undone this or that; but the main difference between the two states is this, that in the civil state all fear the same things, and all have the same ground of security, and manner of life; and this certainly does not do away with the individual's faculty of judgment. for he that is minded to obey all the commonwealth's orders, whether through fear of its power or through love of quiet, certainly consults after his own heart his own safety and interest. 4. moreover, we cannot even conceive, that every citizen should be allowed to interpret the commonwealth's decrees or laws. for were every citizen allowed this, he would thereby be his own judge, because each would easily be able to give a colour of right to his own deeds, which by the last section is absurd. 5. we see then, that every citizen depends not on himself, but on the commonwealth, all whose commands he is bound to execute, and has no right to decide, what is equitable or iniquitous, just or unjust. but, on the contrary, as the body of the dominion should, so to speak, be guided by one mind, and consequently the will of the commonwealth must be taken to be the will of all; what the state decides to be just and good must be held to be so decided by every individual. and so, however iniquitous the subject may think the commonwealth's decisions, he is none the less bound to execute them. 6. but (it may be objected) is it not contrary to the dictate of reason to subject one's self wholly to the judgment of another, and consequently, is not the civil state repugnant to reason? whence it would follow, that the civil state is irrational, and could only be created by men destitute of reason, not at all by such as are led by it. but since reason teaches nothing contrary to nature, sound reason cannot therefore dictate, that every one should remain independent, so long as men are liable to passions (chap. ii. sec. 15), that is, reason pronounces against such independence (chap. i. sec. 5). besides, reason altogether teaches to seek peace, and peace cannot be maintained, unless the commonwealth's general laws be kept unbroken. and so, the more a man is guided by reason, that is (chap. ii. sec. 11), the more he is free, the more constantly he will keep the laws of the commonwealth, and execute the commands of the supreme authority, whose subject he is. furthermore, the civil state is naturally ordained to remove general fear, and prevent general sufferings, and therefore pursues above everything the very end, after which everyone, who is led by reason, strives, but in the natural state strives vainly (chap. ii. sec. 15). wherefore, if a man, who is led by reason, has sometimes to do by the commonwealth's order what he knows to be repugnant to reason, that harm is far compensated by the good, which he derives from the existence of a civil state. for it is reason's own law, to choose the less of two evils; and accordingly we may conclude, that no one is acting against the dictate of his own reason, so far as he does what by the law of the commonwealth is to be done. and this anyone will more easily grant us, after we have explained, how far the power and consequently the right of the commonwealth extends. 7. for, first of all, it must be considered, that, as in the state of nature the man who is led by reason is most powerful and most independent, so too that commonwealth will be most powerful and most independent, which is founded and guided by reason. for the right of the commonwealth is determined by the power of the multitude, which is led, as it were, by one mind. but this unity of mind can in no wise be conceived, unless the commonwealth pursues chiefly the very end, which sound reason teaches is to the interest of all men. 8. in the second place it comes to be considered, that subjects are so far dependent not on themselves, but on the commonwealth, as they fear its power or threats, or as they love the civil state (chap. ii. sect. 10). whence it follows, that such things, as no one can be induced to do by rewards or threats, do not fall within the rights of the commonwealth. for instance, by reason of his faculty of judgment, it is in no man's power to believe. for by what rewards or threats can a man be brought to believe, that the whole is not greater than its part, or that god does not exist, or that that is an infinite being, which he sees to be finite, or generally anything contrary to his sense or thought? so, too, by what rewards or threats can a man be brought to love one, whom he hates, or to hate one, whom he loves? and to this head must likewise be referred such things as are so abhorrent to human nature, that it regards them as actually worse than any evil, as that a man should be witness against himself, or torture himself, or kill his parents, or not strive to avoid death, and the like, to which no one can be induced by rewards or threats. but if we still choose to say, that the commonwealth has the right or authority to order such things, we can conceive of it in no other sense, than that in which one might say, that a man has the right to be mad or delirious. for what but a delirious fancy would such a right be, as could bind no one? and here i am speaking expressly of such things as cannot be subject to the right of a commonwealth and are abhorrent to human nature in general. for the fact, that a fool or madman can by no rewards or threats be induced to execute orders, or that this or that person, because he is attached to this or that religion, judges the laws of a dominion worse than any possible evil, in no wise makes void the laws of the commonwealth, since by them most of the citizens are restrained. and so, as those who are without fear or hope are so far independent (chap. ii. sec. 10), they are, therefore, enemies of the dominion (chap. ii. sec. 14), and may lawfully be coerced by force. 9. thirdly and lastly, it comes to be considered, that those things are not so much within the commonwealth's right, which cause indignation in the majority. for it is certain, that by the guidance of nature men conspire together, either through common fear, or with the desire to avenge some common hurt; and as the right of the commonwealth is determined by the common power of the multitude, it is certain that the power and right of the commonwealth are so far diminished, as it gives occasion for many to conspire together. there are certainly some subjects of fear for a commonwealth, and as every separate citizen or in the state of nature every man, so a commonwealth is the less independent, the greater reason it has to fear. so much for the right of supreme authorities over subjects. now before i treat of the right of the said authorities as against others, we had better resolve a question commonly mooted about religion. 10. for it may be objected to us, do not the civil state, and the obedience of subjects, such as we have shown is required in the civil state, do away with religion, whereby we are bound to worship god? but if we consider the matter, as it really is, we shall find nothing that can suggest a scruple. for the mind, so far as it makes use of reason, is dependent, not on the supreme authorities, but on itself (chap. ii. sec. 11). and so the true knowledge and the love of god cannot be subject to the dominion of any, nor yet can charity towards one's neighbour (sec. 8). and if we further reflect, that the highest exercise of charity is that which aims at keeping peace and joining in unity, we shall not doubt that he does his duty, who helps everyone, so far as the commonwealth's laws, that is so far as unity and quiet allow. as for external rites, it is certain, that they can do no good or harm at all in respect of the true knowledge of god, and the love which necessarily results from it; and so they ought not to be held of such importance, that it should be thought worth while on their account to disturb public peace and quiet. moreover it is certain, that i am not a champion of religion by the law of nature, that is (chap. ii. sec. 3), by the divine decree. for i have no authority, as once the disciples of christ had, to cast out unclean spirits and work miracles; which authority is yet so necessary to the propagating of religion in places where it is forbidden, that without it one not only, as they say, wastes one's time [1] and trouble, but causes besides very many inconveniences, whereof all ages have seen most mournful examples. everyone therefore, wherever he may be, can worship god with true religion, and mind his own business, which is the duty of a private man. but the care of propagating religion should be left to god, or the supreme authorities, upon whom alone falls the charge of affairs of state. but i return to my subject. 11. after explaining the right of supreme authorities over citizens and the duty of subjects, it remains to consider the right of such authorities against the world at large, which is now easily intelligible from what has been said. for since (sec. 2) the right of the supreme authorities is nothing else but simple natural right, it follows that two dominions stand towards each other in the same relation as do two men in the state of nature, with this exception, that a commonwealth can provide against being oppressed by another; which a man in the state of nature cannot do, seeing that he is overcome daily by sleep, often by disease or mental infirmity, and in the end by old age, and is besides liable to other inconveniences, from which a commonwealth can secure itself. 12. a commonwealth then is so far independent, as it can plan and provide against oppression by another (chap. ii. secs. 9, 15), and so far dependent on another commonwealth, as it fears that other's power, or is hindered by it from executing its own wishes, or lastly, as it needs its help for its own preservation or increase (chap. ii. secs. 10, 15). for we cannot at all doubt, that if two commonwealths are willing to offer each other mutual help, both together are more powerful, and therefore have more right, than either alone (chap. ii. sec. 13). 13. but this will be more clearly intelligible, if we reflect, that two commonwealths are naturally enemies. for men in the state of nature are enemies (chap. ii. sec. 14). those, then, who stand outside a commonwealth, and retain their natural rights, continue enemies. accordingly, if one commonwealth wishes to make war on another and employ extreme measures to make that other dependent on itself, it may lawfully make the attempt, since it needs but the bare will of the commonwealth for war to be waged. but concerning peace it can decide nothing, save with the concurrence of another commonwealth's will. whence it follows, that laws of war regard every commonwealth by itself, but laws of peace regard not one, but at the least two commonwealths, which are therefore called "contracting powers." 14. this "contract" remains so long unmoved as the motive for entering into it, that is, fear of hurt or hope of gain, subsists. but take away from either commonwealth this hope or fear, and it is left independent (chap. ii. sec. 10), and the link, whereby the commonwealths were mutually bound, breaks of itself. and therefore every commonwealth has the right to break its contract, whenever it chooses, and cannot be said to act treacherously or perfidiously in breaking its word, as soon as the motive of hope or fear is removed. for every contracting party was on equal terms in this respect, that whichever could first free itself of fear should be independent, and make use of its independence after its own mind; and, besides, no one makes a contract respecting the future, but on the hypothesis of certain precedent circumstances. but when these circumstances change, the reason of policy applicable to the whole position changes with them; and therefore every one of the contracting commonwealths retains the right of consulting its own interest, and consequently endeavours, as far as possible, to be free from fear and thereby independent, and to prevent another from coming out of the contract with greater power. if then a commonwealth complains that it has been deceived, it cannot properly blame the bad faith of another contracting commonwealth, but only its own folly in having entrusted its own welfare to another party, that was independent, and had for its highest law the welfare of its own dominion. 15. to commonwealths, which have contracted a treaty of peace, it belongs to decide the questions, which may be mooted about the terms or rules of peace, whereby they have mutually bound themselves, inasmuch as laws of peace regard not one commonwealth, but the commonwealths which contract taken together (sec. 18). but if they cannot agree together about the conditions, they by that very fact return to a state of war. 16. the more commonwealths there are, that have contracted a joint treaty of peace, the less each of them by itself is an object of fear to the remainder, or the less it has the authority to make war. but it is so much the more bound to observe the conditions of peace; that is (sec. 13), the less independent, and the more bound to accommodate itself to the general will of the contracting parties. 17. but the good faith, inculcated by sound reason and religion, is not hereby made void; for neither reason nor scripture teaches one to keep one's word in every case. for if i have promised a man, for instance, to keep safe a sum of money he has secretly deposited with me, i am not bound to keep my word, from the time that i know or believe the deposit to have been stolen, but i shall act more rightly in endeavouring to restore it to its owners. so likewise, if the supreme authority has promised another to do something, which subsequently occasion or reason shows or seems to show is contrary to the welfare of its subjects, it is surely bound to break its word. as then scripture only teaches us to keep our word in general, and leaves to every individual's judgment the special cases of exception, it teaches nothing repugnant to what we have just proved. 18. but that i may not have so often to break the thread of my discourse, and to resolve hereafter similar objections, i would have it known that all this demonstration of mine proceeds from the necessity of human nature, considered in what light you will -i mean, from the universal effort of all men after self-preservation, an effort inherent in all men, whether learned or unlearned. and therefore, however one considers men are led, whether by passion or by reason, it will be the same thing; for the demonstration, as we have said, is of universal application. -----1. literally, "oil and trouble " -a common proverbial expression in latin. -----------------------chapter iv. of the functions of supreme authorities. that the right of the supreme authorities is limited by their power, we showed in the last chapter, and saw that the most important part of that right is, that they are, as it were, the mind of the dominion, whereby all ought to be guided; and accordingly, that such authorities alone have the right of deciding what is good, evil, equitable, or iniquitous, that is, what must be done or left undone by the subjects severally or collectively. and, accordingly, we saw that they have the sole right of laying down laws, and of interpreting the same, whenever their meaning is disputed, and of deciding whether a given case is in conformity with or violation of the law (chap. iii. secs. 3-5); and, lastly, of waging war, and of drawing up and offering propositions for peace, or of accepting such when offered (chap. iii. secs. 12, 13). 2. as all these functions, and also the means required to execute them, are matters which regard the whole body of the dominion, that is, are affairs of state, it follows, that affairs of state depend on the direction of him only, who holds supreme dominion. and hence it follows, that it is the right of the supreme authority alone to judge the deeds of every individual, and demand of him an account of the same; to punish criminals, and decide questions of law between citizens, or appoint jurists acquainted with the existing laws, to administer these matters on its behalf; and, further, to use and order all means to war and peace, as to found and fortify cities, levy soldiers, assign military posts, and order what it would have done, and, with a view to peace, to send and give audience to ambassadors; and, finally, to levy the costs of all this. 3. since, then, it is the right of the supreme authority alone to handle public matters, or choose officials to do so, it follows, that that subject is a pretender to the dominion, who, without the supreme council's knowledge, enters upon any public matter, although he believe that his design will be to the best interest of the commonwealth. 4. but it is often asked, whether the supreme authority is bound by laws, and, consequently, whether it can do wrong. now as the words "law" and "wrong-doing" often refer not merely to the laws of a commonwealth, but also to the general rules which concern all natural things, and especially to the general rules of reason, we cannot, without qualification, say that the commonwealth is bound by no laws, or can do no wrong. for were the commonwealth bound by no laws or rules, which removed, the commonwealth were no commonwealth, we should have to regard it not as a natural thing, but as a chimera. a commonwealth then does wrong, when it does, or suffers to be done, things which may be the cause of its own ruin; and we can say that it then does wrong, in the sense in which philosophers or doctors say that nature does wrong; and in this sense we can say, that a commonwealth does wrong, when it acts against the dictate of reason. for a commonwealth is most independent when it acts according to the dictate of reason (chap. iii. sec. 7); so far, then, as it acts against reason, it fails itself, or does wrong. and we shall be able more easily to understand this if we reflect, that when we say, that a man can do what he will with his own, this authority must be limited not only by the power of the agent, but by the capacity of the object. if, for instance, i say that i can rightfully do what i will with this table, i do not certainly mean, that i have the right to make it eat grass. so, too, though we say, that men depend not on themselves, but on the commonwealth, we do not mean, that men lose their human nature and put on another; nor yet that the commonwealth has the right to make men wish for this or that, or (what is just as impossible) regard with honour things which excite ridicule or disgust. but it is implied, that there are certain intervening circumstances, which supposed, one likewise supposes the reverence and fear of the subjects towards the commonwealth, and which abstracted, one makes abstraction likewise of that fear and reverence, and therewith of the commonwealth itself. the commonwealth, then, to maintain its independence, is bound to preserve the causes of fear and reverence, otherwise it ceases to be a commonwealth. for the person or persons that hold dominion, can no more combine with the keeping up of majesty the running with harlots drunk or naked about the streets, or the performances of a stage-player, or the open violation or contempt of laws passed by themselves, than they can combine existence with non-existence. but to proceed to slay and rob subjects, ravish maidens, and the like, turns fear into indignation and the civil state into a state of enmity. 5. we see, then, in what sense we may say, that a commonwealth is bound by laws and can do wrong. but if by "law" we understand civil law, and by "wrong" that which, by civil law, is forbidden to be done, that is, if these words be taken in their proper sense, we cannot at all say, that a commonwealth is bound by laws, or can do wrong. for the maxims and motives of fear and reverence, which a commonwealth is bound to observe in its own interest, pertain not to civil jurisprudence, but to the law of nature, since (sec. 4) they cannot be vindicated by the civil law, but by the law of war. and a commonwealth is bound by them in no other sense than that in which in the state of nature a man is bound to take heed, that he preserve his independence and be not his own enemy, lest he should destroy himself; and in this taking heed lies not the subjection, but the liberty of human nature. but civil jurisprudence depends on the mere decree of the commonwealth, which is not bound to please any but itself, nor to hold anything to be good or bad, but what it judges to be such for itself. and, accordingly, it has not merely the right to avenge itself, or to lay down and interpret laws, but also to abolish the same, and to pardon any guilty person out of the fullness of its power. 6. contracts or laws, whereby the multitude transfers its right to one council or man, should without doubt be broken, when it is expedient for the general welfare to do so. but to decide this point, whether, that is, it be expedient for the general welfare to break them or not, is within the right of no private person, but of him only who holds dominion (sec. 3); therefore of these laws he who holds dominion remains sole interpreter. moreover, no private person can by right vindicate these laws, and so they do not really bind him who holds dominion. notwithstanding, if they are of such a nature that they cannot be broken, without at the same time weakening the commonwealth's strength, that is, without at the same time changing to indignation the common fear of most of the citizens, by this very fact the commonwealth is dissolved, and the contract comes to an end; and therefore such contract is vindicated not by the civil law, but by the law of war. and so he who holds dominion is not bound to observe the terms of the contract by any other cause than that, which bids a man in the state of nature to beware of being his own enemy, lest he should destroy himself, as we said in the last section. -----------------------chapter v. of the best state of a dominion. in chap. ii. sec. 2, we showed, that man is then most independent, when he is most led by reason, and, in consequence (chap. iii. sec. 7), that that commonwealth is most powerful and most independent, which is founded and guided by reason. but, as the best plan of living, so as to assure to the utmost self-preservation, is that which is framed according to the dictate of reason, therefore it follows, that that in every kind is best done, which a man or commonwealth does, so far as he or it is in the highest degree independent. for it is one thing to till a field by right, and another to till it in the best way. one thing, i say, to defend or preserve one's self, and to pass judgment by right, and another to defend or preserve one's self in the best way, and to pass the best judgment; and, consequently, it is one thing to have dominion and care of affairs of state by right, and another to exercise dominion and direct affairs of state in the best way. and so, as we have treated of the right of every commonwealth in general, it is time to treat of the best state of every dominion. 2. now the quality of the state of any dominion is easily perceived from the end of the civil state, which end is nothing else but peace and security of life. and therefore that dominion is the best, where men pass their lives in unity, and the laws are kept unbroken. for it is certain, that seditions, wars, and contempt or breach of the laws are not so much to be imputed to the wickedness of the subjects, as to the bad state of a dominion. for men are not born fit for citizenship, but must be made so. besides, men's natural passions are everywhere the same; and if wickedness more prevails, and more offences are committed in one commonwealth than in another, it is certain that the former has not enough pursued the end of unity, nor framed its laws with sufficient forethought; and that, therefore, it has failed in making quite good its right as a commonwealth. for a civil state, which has not done away with the causes of seditions, where war is a perpetual object of fear, and where, lastly, the laws are often broken, differs but little from the mere state of nature, in which everyone lives after his own mind at the great risk of his life. 3. but as the vices and inordinate licence and contumacy of subjects must be imputed to the commonwealth, so, on the other hand, their virtue and constant obedience to the laws are to be ascribed in the main to the virtue and perfect right of the commonwealth, as is clear from chap. ii. sec. 15. and so it is deservedly reckoned to hannibal as an extraordinary virtue, that in his army there never arose a sedition. [1] 4. of a commonwealth, whose subjects are but hindered by terror from taking arms, it should rather be said, that it is free from war, than that it has peace. for peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character: for obedience (chap. ii. sec. 19) is the constant will to execute what, by the general decree of the commonwealth, ought to be done. besides that commonwealth, whose peace depends on the sluggishness of its subjects, that are led about like sheep, to learn but slavery, may more properly be called a desert than a commonwealth. 5. when, then, we call that dominion best, where men pass their lives in unity, i understand a human life, defined not by mere circulation of the blood, and other qualities common to all animals, but above all by reason, the true excellence and life of the mind. 6. but be it remarked that, by the dominion which i have said is established for this end, i intend that which has been established by a free multitude, not that which is acquired over a multitude by right of war. for a free multitude is guided more by hope than fear; a conquered one, more by fear than hope: inasmuch as the former aims at making use of life, the latter but at escaping death. the former, i say, aims at living for its own ends, the latter is forced to belong to the conqueror; and so we say that this is enslaved, but that free. and, therefore, the end of a dominion, which one gets by right of war, is to be master, and have rather slaves than subjects. and although between the dominion created by a free multitude, and that gained by right of war, if we regard generally the right of each, we can make no essential distinction; yet their ends, as we have already shown, and further the means to the preservation of each are very different. 7. but what means a prince, whose sole motive is lust of mastery, should use to establish and maintain his dominion, the most ingenious machiavelli has set forth at large, [2] but with what design one can hardly be sure. if, however, he had some good design, as one should believe of a learned man, it seems to have been to show, with how little foresight many attempt to remove a tyrant, though thereby the causes which make the prince a tyrant can in no wise be removed, but, on the contrary, are so much the more established, as the prince is given more cause to fear, which happens when the multitude has made an example of its prince, and glories in the parricide as in a thing well done. moreover, he perhaps wished to show how cautious a free multitude should be of entrusting its welfare absolutely to one man, who, unless in his vanity he thinks he can please everybody, must be in daily fear of plots, and so is forced to look chiefly after his own interest, and, as for the multitude, rather to plot against it than consult its good. and i am the more led to this opinion concerning that most far-seeing man, because it is known that he was favourable to liberty, for the maintenance of which he has besides given the most wholesome advice. -----1. justin, histories, xxxii. iv. 12. 2. in his book called "il principe," or "the prince." -----------------------chapter vi. of monarchy. inasmuch as men are led, as we have said, more by passion than reason, it follows, that a multitude comes together, and wishes to be guided, as it were, by one mind, not at the suggestion of reason, but of some common passion -that is (chap. iii. sec. 9), common hope, or fear, or the desire of avenging some common hurt. but since fear of solitude exists in all men, because no one in solitude is strong enough to defend himself, and procure the necessaries of life, it follows that men naturally aspire to the civil state; nor can it happen that men should ever utterly dissolve it. 2. accordingly, from the quarrels and seditions which are often stirred up in a commonwealth, it never results that the citizens dissolve it, as often happens in the case of other associations; but only that they change its form into some other -that is, of course, if the disputes cannot be settled, and the features of the commonwealth at the same time preserved. wherefore, by means necessary to preserve a dominion, i intend such things as are necessary to preserve the existing form of the dominion, without any notable change. 3. but if human nature were so constituted, that men most desired what is most useful, no art would be needed to produce unity and confidence. but, as it is admittedly far otherwise with human nature, a dominion must of necessity be so ordered, that all, governing and governed alike, whether they will or no, shall do what makes for the general welfare; that is, that all, whether of their own impulse, or by force or necessity, shall be compelled to live according to the dictate of reason. and this is the case, if the affairs of the dominion be so managed, that nothing which affects the general welfare is entirely entrusted to the good faith of any one. for no man is so watchful, that he never falls asleep; and no man ever had a character so vigorous and honest, but he sometimes, and that just when strength of character was most wanted, was diverted from his purpose and let himself be overcome. and it is surely folly to require of another what one can never obtain from one's self; i mean, that he should be more watchful for another's interest than his own, that he should be free from avarice, envy, and ambition, and so on; especially when he is one, who is subject daily to the strongest temptations of every passion. 4. but, on the other hand, experience is thought to teach, that it makes for peace and concord, to confer the whole authority upon one man. for no dominion has stood so long without any notable change, as that of the turks, and on the other hand there were none so little lasting, as those, which were popular or democratic, nor any in which so many seditions arose. yet if slavery, barbarism, and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune. no doubt there are usually more and sharper quarrels between parents and children, than between masters and slaves; yet it advances not the art of housekeeping, to change a father's right into a right of property, and count children but as slaves. slavery then, not peace, is furthered by handing over to one man the whole authority. for peace, as we said before, consists not in mere absence of war, but in a union or agreement of minds. 5. and in fact they are much mistaken, who suppose that one man can by himself hold the supreme right of a commonwealth. for the only limit of right, as we showed (chap. ii.), is power. but the power of one man is very inadequate to support so great a load. and hence it arises, that the man, whom the multitude has chosen king, looks out for himself generals, or counsellors, or friends, to whom he entrusts his own and the common welfare; so that the dominion, which is thought to be a perfect monarchy, is in actual working an aristocracy, not, indeed, an open but a hidden one, and therefore the worst of all. besides which, a king, who is a boy, or ill, or overcome by age, is but king on sufferance; and those in this case have the supreme authority, who administer the highest business of the dominion, or are near the king's person; not to mention, that a lascivious king often manages everything at the caprice of this or that mistress or minion. "i had heard," says orsines, "that women once reigned in asia, but for a eunuch to reign is something new." [1] 6. it is also certain, that a commonwealth is always in greater danger from its citizens than from its enemies; for the good are few. whence it follows, that he, upon whom the whole right of the dominion has been conferred, will always be more afraid of citizens than of enemies, and therefore will look to his own safety, and not try to consult his subjects' interests, but to plot against them, especially against those who are renowned for learning, or have influence through wealth. 7. it must besides be added, that kings fear their sons also more than they love them, and so much the more as the latter are skilled in the arts of war and peace, and endeared to the subjects by their virtues. whence it comes, that kings try so to educate their sons, that they may have no reason to fear them. wherein ministers very readily obey the king, and will be at the utmost pains, that the successor may be an inexperienced king, whom they can hold tightly in hand. 8. from all which it follows, that the more absolutely the commonwealth's right is transferred to the king, the less independent he is, and the more unhappy is the condition of his subjects. and so, that a monarchical dominion may be duly established, it is necessary to lay solid foundations, to build it on; from which may result to the monarch safety, and to the multitude peace; and, therefore, to lay them in such a way, that the monarch may then be most independent, when he most consults the multitude's welfare. but i will first briefly state, what these foundations of a monarchical dominion are, and afterwards prove them in order. 9. one or more cities must be founded and fortified, whose citizens, whether they live within the walls, or outside for purposes of agriculture, are all to enjoy the same right in the commonwealth; yet on this condition, that every city provide an ascertained number of citizens for its own and the general defence. but a city, which cannot supply this, must be held in subjection on other terms. 10. the militia must be formed out of citizens alone, none being exempt, and of no others. and, therefore, all are to be bound to have arms, and no one to be admitted into the number of the citizens, till he has learnt his drill, and promised to practise it at stated times in the year. next, the militia of each clan is to be divided into battalions and regiments, and no captain of a battalion chosen, that is not acquainted with military engineering. moreover, though the commanders of battalions and regiments are to be chosen for life, yet the commander of the militia of a whole clan is to be chosen only in time of war, to hold command for a year at most, without power of being continued or afterwards re-appointed. and these last are to be selected out of the king's counsellors, of whom we shall speak in the fifteenth and following sections, or out of those who have filled the post of counsellor. 11. the townsmen and countrymen of every city, that is, the whole of the citizens, are to be divided into clans, distinguished by some name and badge, and all persons born of any of these clans are to be received into the number of citizens, and their names inscribed on the roll of their clan, as soon as they have reached the age, when they can carry arms and know their duty; with the exception of those, who are infamous from some crime, or dumb, or mad, or menials supporting life by some servile office. 12. the fields, and the whole soil, and, if it can be managed, the houses should be public property, that is, the property of him, who holds the right of the commonwealth: and let him let them at a yearly rent to the citizens, whether townsmen or countrymen, and with this exception let them all be free or exempt from every kind of taxation in time of peace. and of this rent a part is to be applied to the defences of the state, a part to the king's private use. for it is necessary in time of peace to fortify cities against war, and also to have ready ships and other munitions of war. 13. after the selection of the king from one of the clans, none are to be held noble, but his descendants, who are therefore to be distinguished by royal insignia from their own and the other clans. 14. those male nobles, who are the reigning king's collaterals, and stand to him in the third or fourth degree of consanguinity, must not marry, and any children they may have had, are to be accounted bastards, and unworthy of any dignity, nor may they be recognized as heirs to their parents, whose goods must revert to the king. 15. moreover the king's counsellors, who are next to him in dignity, must be numerous, and chosen out of the citizens only; that is (supposing there to be no more than six hundred clans) from every clan three or four or five, who will form together one section of this council; and not for life, but for three, four, or five years, so that every year a third, fourth, or fifth part may be replaced by selection, in which selection it must be observed as a first condition, that out of every clan at least one counsellor chosen be a jurist. 16. the selection must be made by the king himself, who should fix a time of year for the choice of fresh counsellors. each clan must then submit to the king the names of all its citizens, who have reached their fiftieth year, and have been duly put forward as candidates for this office, and out of these the king will choose whom he pleases. but in that year, when the jurist of any clan is to be replaced, only the names of jurists are to be submitted to the king. those who have filled this office of counsellor for the appointed time, are not to be continued therein, nor to be replaced on the list of candidates for five years or more. but the reason why one is to be chosen every year out of every clan is, that the council may not be composed alternately of untried novices, and of veterans versed in affairs, which must necessarily be the case, were all to retire at once, and new men to succeed them. but if every year one be chosen out of every family, then only a fifth, fourth, or at most a third part of the council will consist of novices. further, if the king be prevented by other business, or for any other reason, from being able to spare time for this choice, then let the counsellors themselves choose others for a time, until the king either chooses different ones, or confirms the choice of the council. 17. let the primary function of this council be to defend the fundamental laws of the dominion, and to give advice about administration, that the king may know, what for the public good ought to be decreed: and that on the understanding, that the king may not decide in any matter, without first hearing the opinion of this council. but if, as will generally happen, the council is not of one mind, but is divided in opinion, even after discussing the same subject two or three times, there must be no further delay, but the different opinions are to be submitted to the king, as in the twenty-fifth section of this chapter we shall show. 18. let it be also the duty of this council to publish the king's orders or decrees, and to see to the execution of any decree concerning affairs of state, and to supervise the administration of the whole dominion, as the king's deputies. 19. the citizens should have no access to the king, save through this council, to which are to be handed all demands or petitions, that they may be presented to the king. nor should the envoys of other commonwealths be allowed to obtain permission to address the king, but through the council. letters, too, sent from elsewhere to the king, must be handed to him by the council. and in general the king is to be accounted as the mind of the commonwealth, but the council as the senses outside the mind, or the commonwealth's body, through whose intervention the mind understands the state of the commonwealth, and acts as it judges best for itself. 20. the care of the education of the king's sons should also fall on this council, and the guardianship, where a king has died, leaving as his successor an infant or boy. yet lest meanwhile the council should be left without a king, one of the elder nobles of the commonwealth should be chosen to fill the king's place, till the legitimate heir has reached the age at which he can support the weight of government. 21. let the candidates for election to this council be such as know the system of government, and the foundations, and state or condition of the commonwealth, whose subjects they are. but he that would fill the place of a jurist must, besides the government and condition of the commonwealth, whose subject he is, be likewise acquainted with those of the other commonwealths, with which it has any intercourse. but none are to be placed upon the list of candidates, unless they have reached their fiftieth year without being convicted of crime. 22. in this council no decision is to be taken about the affairs of the dominion, but in the presence of all the members. but if anyone be unable through illness or other cause to attend, he must send in his stead one of the same clan, who has filled the office of counsellor or been put on the list of candidates. which if he neglect to do, and the council through his absence be forced to adjourn any matter, let him be fined a considerable sum. but this must be understood to mean, when the question is of a matter affecting the whole dominion, as of peace or war, of abrogating or establishing a law, of trade, &c. but if the question be one that affects only a particular city or two, as about petitions, &c., it will suffice that a majority of the council attend. 23. to maintain a perfect equality between the clans, and a regular order in sitting, making proposals, and speaking, every clan is to take in turn the presidency at the sittings, a different clan at every sitting, and that which was first at one sitting is to be last at the next. but among members of the same clan, let precedence go by priority of election. 24. this council should be summoned at least four times a year, to demand of the ministers account of their administration of the dominion, to ascertain the state of affairs, and see if anything else needs deciding. for it seems impossible for so large a number of citizens to have constant leisure for public business. but as in the meantime public business must none the less be carried on, therefore fifty or more are to be chosen out of this council to supply its place after its dismissal; and these should meet daily in a chamber next the king's, and so have daily care of the treasury, the cities, the fortifications, the education of the king's son, and in general of all those duties of the great council, which we have just enumerated, except that they cannot take counsel about new matters, concerning which no decision has been taken. 25. on the meeting of the council, before anything is proposed in it, let five, six, or more jurists of the clans, which stand first in order of place at that session, attend on the king, to deliver to him petitions or letters, if they have any, to declare to him the state of affairs, and, lastly, to understand from him what he bids them propose in his council; and when they have heard this, let them return to the council, and let the first in precedence open the matter of debate. but, in matters which seem to any of them to be of some moment, let not the votes be taken at once, but let the voting be adjourned to such a date as the urgency of the matter allows. when, then, the council stands adjourned till the appointed time, the counsellors of every clan will meanwhile be able to debate the matter separately, and, if they think it of great moment, to consult others that have been counsellors, or are candidates for the council. and if within the appointed time the counsellors of any clan cannot agree among themselves, that clan shall lose its vote, for every clan can give but one vote. but, otherwise, let the jurist of the clan lay before the council the opinion they have decided to be best; and so with the rest. and if the majority of the council think fit, after hearing the grounds of every opinion, to consider the matter again, let the council be again adjourned to a date, at which every clan shall pronounce its final opinion; and then, at last, before the entire council, let the votes be taken, and that opinion be invalidated which has not at least a hundred votes. but let the other opinions be submitted to the king by all the jurists present at the council, that, after hearing every party's arguments, he may select which opinion he pleases. and then let the jurists leave him, and return to the council; and there let all await the king at the time fixed by himself, that all may hear which opinion of those proposed he thinks fit to adopt, and what he decides should be done. 26. for the administration of justice, another council is to be formed of jurists, whose business should be to decide suits, and punish criminals, but so that all the judgments they deliver be tested by those who are for the time members of the great council -that is, as to their having been delivered according to the due process of justice, and without partiality. but if the losing party can prove, that any judge has been bribed by the adversary, or that there is some mutual cause of friendship between the judge and the adversary, or of hatred between the judge and himself, or, lastly, that the usual process of justice has not been observed, let such party be restored to his original position. but this would, perhaps, not be observed by such as love to convict the accused in a criminal case, rather by torture than proofs. but, for all that, i can conceive on this point of no other process of justice than the above, that befits the best system of governing a commonwealth. 27. of these judges, there should be a large and odd number -for instance, sixty-one, or at least forty-one, -and not more than one is to be chosen of one clan, and that not for life, but every year a certain proportion are to retire, and be replaced by as many others out of different clans, that have reached their fortieth year. 28. in this council, let no judgment be pronounced save in the presence of all the judges. but if any judge, from disease or other cause, shall for a long time be unable to attend the council, let another be chosen for that time to fill his place. but in giving their votes, they are all not to utter their opinions aloud, but to signify them by ballot. 29. let those who supply others' places in this and the first-mentioned council first be paid out of the goods of those whom they have condemned to death, and also out of the fines of which any are mulcted. next, after every judgment they pronounce in a civil suit, let them receive a certain proportion of the whole sum at stake for the benefit of both councils. 30. let there be in every city other subordinate councils, whose members likewise must not be chosen for life, but must be partially renewed every year, out of the clans who live there only. but there is no need to pursue this further. 31. no military pay is to be granted in time of peace; but, in time of war, military pay is to be allowed to those only, who support their lives by daily labour. but the commanders and other officers of the battalions are to expect no other advantage from war but the spoil of the enemy. 32. if a foreigner takes to wife the daughter of a citizen, his children are to be counted citizens, and put on the roll of their mother's clan. but those who are born and bred within the dominion of foreign parents should be allowed to purchase at a fixed price the right of citizenship from the captains of thousands of any clan, and to be enrolled in that clan. for no harm can arise thence to the dominion, even though the captains of thousands, for a bribe, admit a foreigner into the number of their citizens for less than the fixed price; but, on the contrary, means should be devised for more easily increasing the number of citizens, and producing a large confluence of men. as for those who are not enrolled as citizens, it is but fair that, at least in war-time, they should pay for their exemption from service by some forced labour or tax. 33. the envoys to be sent in time of peace to other commonwealths must be chosen out of the nobles only, and their expenses met by the state treasury, and not the king's privy purse. 34. those that attend the court, and are the king's servants, and are paid out of his privy purse, must be excluded from every appointment and office in the commonwealth. i say expressly, "and are paid out of the king's privy purse," to except the body-guard. for there should be no other body-guard, but the citizens of the king's city, who should take turns to keep guard at court before the king's door. 35. war is only to be made for the sake of peace, so that, at its end, one may be rid of arms. and so, when cities have been taken by right of war, and terms of peace are to be made after the enemies are subdued, the captured cities must not be garrisoned and kept; but either the enemy, on accepting the terms of peace, should be allowed to redeem them at a price, or, if by following that policy, there would, by reason of the danger of the position, remain a constant lurking anxiety, they must be utterly destroyed, and the inhabitants removed elsewhere. 36. the king must not be allowed to contract a foreign marriage, but only to take to wife one of his kindred, or of the citizens; yet, on condition that, if he marries a citizen, her near relations become incapable of holding office in the commonwealth. 37. the dominion must be indivisible. and so, if the king leaves more than one child, let the eldest one succeed; but by no means be it allowed to divide the dominion between them, or to give it undivided to all or several of them, much less to give a part of it as a daughter's dowry. for that daughters should be admitted to the inheritance of a dominion is in no wise to be allowed. 38. if the king die leaving no male issue, let the next to him in blood be held the heir to the dominion, unless he chance to have married a foreign wife, whom he will not put away. 39. as for the citizens, it is manifest (chap. iii. sec. 5) that every one of them ought to obey all the commands of the king, and the decrees published by the great council, although he believe them to be most absurd, and otherwise he may rightfully be forced to obey. and these are the foundations of a monarchical dominion, on which it must be built, if it is to be stable, as we shall show in the next chapter. 40. as for religion, no temples whatever ought to be built at the public expense; nor ought laws to be established about opinions, unless they be seditious and overthrow the foundations of the commonwealth. and so let such as are allowed the public exercise of their religion build a temple at their own expense. but the king may have in his palace a chapel of his own, that he may practise the religion to which he belongs. -----1. curtius, x. 1. -----------------------chapter vii. of monarchy (continuation). after explaining the foundations of a monarchical dominion, i have taken in hand to prove here in order the fitness of such foundations. and to this end the first point to be noted is, that it is in no way repugnant to experience, for laws to be so firmly fixed, that not the king himself can abolish them. for though the persians worshipped their kings as gods, yet had not the kings themselves authority to revoke laws once established, as appears from daniel, [1] and nowhere, as far as i know, is a monarch chosen absolutely without any conditions expressed. nor yet is it repugnant to reason or the absolute obedience due to a king. for the foundations of the dominion are to be considered as eternal decrees of the king, so that his ministers entirely obey him in refusing to execute his orders, when he commands anything contrary to the same. which we can make plain by the example of ulysses. [2] for his comrades were executing his own order, when they would not untie him, when he was bound to the mast and captivated by the sirens' song, although he gave them manifold orders to do so, and that with threats. and it is ascribed to his forethought, that he afterwards thanked his comrades for obeying him according to his first intention. and, after this example of ulysses, kings often instruct judges, to administer justice without respect of persons, not even of the king himself, if by some singular accident he order anything contrary to established law. for kings are not gods, but men, who are often led captive by the sirens' song. if then everything depended on the inconstant will of one man, nothing would be fixed. and so, that a monarchical dominion may be stable, it must be ordered, so that everything be done by the king's decree only, that is, so that every law be an explicit will of the king, but not every will of the king a law; as to which see chap. vi. sects. 3, 5, 6. 2. it must next be observed, that in laying foundations it is very necessary to study the human passions: and it is not enough to have shown, what ought to be done, but it ought, above all, to be shown how it can be effected, that men, whether led by passion or reason, should yet keep the laws firm and unbroken. for if the constitution of the dominion, or the public liberty depends only on the weak assistance of the laws, not only will the citizens have no security for its maintenance (as we showed in the third section of the last chapter), but it will even turn to their ruin. for this is certain, that no condition of a commonwealth is more wretched than that of the best, when it begins to totter, unless at one blow it falls with a rush into slavery, which seems to be quite impossible. and, therefore, it would be far better for the subjects to transfer their rights absolutely to one man, than to bargain for unascertained and empty, that is unmeaning, terms of liberty, and so prepare for their posterity a way to the most cruel servitude. but if i succeed in showing that the foundation of monarchical dominion, which i stated in the last chapter, are firm and cannot be plucked up, without the indignation of the larger part of an armed multitude, and that from them follow peace and security for king and multitude, and if i deduce this from general human nature, no one will be able to doubt, that these foundations are the best and the true ones (chap. iii. sec. 9, and chap. vi. sects. 3, 8). but that such is their nature, i will show as briefly as possible. 3. that the duty of him, who holds the dominion, is always to know its state and condition, to watch over the common welfare of all, and to execute whatever is to the interest of the majority of the subjects, is admitted by all. but as one person alone is unable to examine into everything, and cannot always have his mind ready and turn it to meditation, and is often hindered by disease, or old age, or other causes, from having leisure for public business; therefore it is necessary that the monarch have counsellors to know the state of affairs, and help the king with their advice, and frequently supply his place; and that so it come to pass, that the dominion or commonwealth may continue always in one and the same mind. 4. but as human nature is so constituted, that everyone seeks with the utmost passion his own advantage, and judges those laws to be most equitable, which he thinks necessary to preserve and increase his substance, and defends another's cause so far only as he thinks he is thereby establishing his own; it follows hence, that the counsellors chosen must be such, that their private affairs and their own interests depend on the general welfare and peace of all. and so it is evident, that if from every sort or class of citizens a certain number be chosen, what has most votes in such a council will be to the interest of the greater part of the subjects. and though this council, because it is composed of so large a number of citizens, must of necessity be attended by many of very simple intellect, yet this is certain, that everyone is pretty clever and sagacious in business which he has long and eagerly practised. and, therefore, if none be chosen but such as have till their fiftieth year practised their own business without disgrace, they will be fit enough to give their advice about their own affairs, especially if, in matters of considerable importance, a time be allowed for consideration. besides, it is far from being the fact, that a council composed of a few is not frequented by this kind of men. for, on the contrary, its greatest part must consist of such, since everyone, in that case, tries hard to have dullards for colleagues, that they may hang on his words, for which there is no opportunity in large councils. 5. furthermore, it is certain, that everyone would rather rule than be ruled. "for no one of his own will yields up dominion to another," as sallust has it in his first speech to caesar. [3] and, therefore, it is clear, that a whole multitude will never transfer its right to a few or to one, if it can come to an agreement with itself, without proceeding from the controversies, which generally arise in large councils, to seditions. and so the multitude does not, if it is free, transfer to the king anything but that, which it cannot itself have absolutely within its authority, namely, the ending of controversies and the using despatch in decisions. for as to the case which often arises, where a king is chosen on account of war, that is, because war is much more happily conducted by kings, it is manifest folly, i say, that men should choose slavery in time of peace for the sake of better fortune in war; if, indeed, peace can be conceived of in a dominion, where merely for the sake of war the highest authority is transferred to one man, who is, therefore, best able to show his worth and the importance to everyone of his single self in time of war; whereas, on the contrary, democracy has this advantage, that its excellence is greater in peace than in war. however, for whatever reason a king is chosen, he cannot by himself, as we said just now, know what will be to the interest of the dominion: but for this purpose, as we showed in the last section, will need many citizens for his counsellors. and as we cannot at all suppose, that any opinion can be conceived about a matter proposed for discussion, which can have escaped the notice of so large a number of men, it follows, that no opinion can be conceived tending to the people's welfare, besides all the opinions of this council, which are submitted to the king. and so, since the people's welfare is the highest law, or the king's utmost right, it follows, that the king's utmost right is but to choose one of the opinions offered by the council, not to decree anything, or offer any opinion contrary to the mind of all the council at once (chap. vi. sec. 25). but if all the opinions offered in the council were to be submitted to the king, then it might happen that the king would always favour the small cities, which have the fewest votes. for though by the constitution of the council it be ordained, that the opinions should be submitted to the king without mention of their supporters, yet they will never be able to take such good care, but that some opinion will get divulged. and, therefore, it must of necessity be provided, that that opinion, which has not gained at least a hundred votes, shall be held void; and this law the larger cities will be sure to defend with all their might. 6. and here, did i not study brevity, i would show other advantages of this council; yet one, which seems of the greatest importance, i will allege. i mean, that there can be given no greater inducement to virtue, than this general hope of the highest honour. for by ambition are we all most led, as in our ethics we showed to be the case. [4] 7. but it cannot be doubted that the majority of this council will never be minded to wage war, but rather always pursue and love peace. for besides that war will always cause them fear of losing their property and liberty, it is to be added, that war requires fresh expenditure, which they must meet, and also that their own children and relatives, though intent on their domestic cares, will be forced to turn their attention to war and go a-soldiering, whence they will never bring back anything but unpaid-for scars. for, as we said (chap. vi. sec. 31), no pay is to be given to the militia, and (chap. vi. sec. 10) it is to be formed out of citizens only and no others. 8. there is another accession to the cause of peace and concord, which is also of great weight: i mean, that no citizen can have immovable property (chap. vi. sec. 12). hence all will have nearly an equal risk in war. for all will be obliged, for the sake of gain, to practise trade, or lend money to one another, if, as formerly by the athenians, a law be passed, forbidding to lend money at interest to any but inhabitants; and thus they will be engaged in business, which either is mutually involved, one man's with another's, or needs the same means for its furtherance. and thus the greatest part of this council will generally have one and the same mind about their common affairs and the arts of peace. for, as we said (sec. 4), every man defends another's cause, so far as he thinks thereby to establish his own. 9. it cannot be doubted, that it will never occur to anyone to corrupt this council with bribes. for were any man to draw over to his side some one or two out of so great a number of men, he would gain nothing. for, as we said, the opinion, which does not gain at least a hundred votes, is void. 10. we shall also easily see, that, once this council is established its members cannot be reduced to a less number, if we consider the common passions of mankind. for all are guided mostly by ambition, and there is no man who lives in health but hopes to attain extreme old age. if then we calculate the number of those who actually reach their fiftieth or sixtieth year, and further take into account the number that are every year chosen of this great council, we shall see, that there can hardly be a man of those who bear arms, but is under the influence of a great hope of attaining this dignity. and so they will all, to the best of their power, defend this law of the council. for be it noted, that corruption, unless it creep in gradually, is easily prevented. but as it can be more easily supposed, and would be less invidious, that a less number should be chosen out of every clan, than that a less number should be chosen out of a few clans, or that one or two clans should be altogether excluded; therefore (chap. vi. sec. 15) the number of counsellors cannot be reduced, unless a third, fourth, or fifth part be removed simultaneously, which change is a very great one, and therefore quite repugnant to common practice. nor need one be afraid of delay or negligence in choosing, because this is remedied by the council itself. see chap. vi. sec. 16. 11. the king, then, whether he is induced by fear of the multitude, or aims at binding to himself the majority of an armed multitude, or is guided by a generous spirit, a wish that is, to consult the public interest, will always confirm that opinion, which has gained most votes, that is (sec. 5), [5] which is to the interest of the greater part of the dominion; and will study to reconcile the divergent opinions referred to him, if it can be done, that he may attach all to himself (in which he will exert all his powers), and that alike in peace and war they may find out, what an advantage his single self is to them. and thus he will then be most independent, and most in possession of dominion, when he most consults the general welfare of the multitude. 12. for the king by himself cannot restrain all by fear. but his power, as we have said, rests upon the number of his soldiers, and especially on their valour and faith, which will always remain so long enduring between men, as with them is joined need, be that need honourable or disgraceful. and this is why kings usually are fonder of exciting than restraining their soldiery, and shut their eyes more to their vices than to their virtues, and generally, to hold under the best of them, seek out, distinguish, and assist with money or favour the idle, and those who have ruined themselves by debauchery, and shake hands with them, and throw them kisses, and for the sake of mastery stoop to every servile action. in order therefore that the citizens may be distinguished by the king before all others, and, as far as the civil state and equity permit, may remain independent, it is necessary that the militia should consist of citizens only, and that citizens should be his counsellors; and on the contrary citizens are altogether subdued, and are laying the foundations of eternal war, from the moment that they suffer mercenaries to be levied, whose trade is war, and who have most power in strifes and seditions. 13. that the king's counsellors ought not to be elected for life, but for three, four, or five years, is clear as well from the tenth, as from what we said in the ninth section of this chapter. for if they were chosen for life, not only could the greatest part of the citizens conceive hardly any hope of obtaining this honour, and thus there would arise a great inequality, and thence envy, and constant murmurs, and at last seditions, which, no doubt, would be welcome to kings greedy of mastery: but also the counsellors, being rid of the fear of their successors, would assume a great licence in all respects, which the king would be far from opposing. for the more the citizens hate them, the more they will cling to the king, and be ready to flatter him. nay, the interval of five years seems even too much, for in such a space of time it does not seem so impossible to corrupt by bribes or favour a very large part of the council, however large it be. and therefore it will be far safer, if every year two out of every clan retire, and be replaced by as many more (supposing that there are to be five counsellors of each clan), except in the year in which the jurist of any clan retires, and a fresh one is chosen in his place. 14. moreover, no king can promise himself more safety, than he who reigns in a commonwealth of this sort. for besides that a king soon perishes, when his soldiers cease to desire his safety, it is certain that kings are always in the greatest danger from those who are nearest their persons. the fewer counsellors, then, there are, and the more powerful they consequently are, the more the king is in danger of their transferring the dominion to another. nothing in fact more alarmed david, than that his own counsellor ahitophel sided with absalom. [6] still more is this the case, if the whole authority has been transferred absolutely to one man, because it can then be more easily transferred from one to another. for two private soldiers once took in hand to transfer the roman empire, and did transfer it. [7] i omit the arts and cunning wiles, whereby counsellors have to assure themselves against falling victims to their unpopularity; for they are but too well known, and no one, who has read history, can be ignorant, that the good faith of counsellors has generally turned to their ruin. and so, for their own safety, it behoves them to be cunning, not faithful. but if the counsellors are too numerous to unite in the same crime, and are all equal, and do not hold their office beyond a period of four years, they cannot be at all objects of fear to the king, except he attempt to take away their liberty, wherein he will offend all the citizens equally. for, as antonio perez [8] excellently observes, an absolute dominion is to the prince very dangerous, to the subjects very hateful, and to the institutes of god and man alike opposed, as innumerable instances show. 15. besides these we have, in the last chapter, laid other foundations, by which the king is greatly secured in his dominion, and the citizens in their hold of peace and liberty, which foundations we will reason out in their proper places. for i was anxious above everything to reason out all those, which refer to the great council and are of the greatest importance. now i will continue with the others, in the same order in which i stated them. 16. it is undoubted, that citizens are more powerful, and, therefore, more independent, the larger and better fortified their towns are. for the safer the place is, in which they are, the better they can defend their liberty, and the less they need fear an enemy, whether without or within; and it is certain that the more powerful men are by their riches, the more they by nature study their own safety. but cities which need the help of another for their preservation are not on terms of equal right with that other, but are so far dependent on his right as they need his help. for we showed in the second chapter, that right is determined by power alone. 17. for the same reason, also, i mean that the citizens may continue independent, and defend their liberty, the militia ought to be composed of the citizens only, and none of them to be exempted. for an armed man is more independent than an unarmed (sec. 12); and those citizens transfer absolutely their own right to another, and entrust it entirely to his good faith, who have given him their arms and the defences of their cities. human avarice, by which most men are very much led, adds its weight to this view. for it cannot be, that a mercenary force be hired without great expense; and citizens can hardly endure the exactions required to maintain an idle soldiery. but that no man, who commands the whole or a large part of the militia, should, except under pressure of necessity, be chosen for the extreme term of a year, all are aware, who have read history, alike sacred and profane. for there is nothing that reason more clearly teaches. for surely the might of dominion is altogether entrusted to him, who is allowed enough time to gain military glory, and raise his fame above the king's, or to make the army faithful to himself by flattery, largesses, and the other arts, whereby generals are accustomed to procure the enslavement of others, and the mastery for themselves. lastly, i have added this point for the greater safety of the whole dominion, that these commanders of the militia are to be selected from the king's counsellors or ex-counsellors -that is, from men who have reached the age at which mankind generally prefer what is old and safe to what is new and dangerous. [9] 18. i said that the citizens were to be divided into clans, [10] and an equal number of counsellors chosen from each, in order that the larger towns might have, in proportion to the number of their citizens, a greater number of counsellors, and be able, as is equitable, to contribute more votes. for the power and, therefore, the right of a dominion is to be estimated by the number of its citizens; and i do not believe that any fitter means can be devised for maintaining this equality between citizens, who are all by nature so constituted, that everyone wishes to be attributed to his own stock, and be distinguished by race from the rest. 19. furthermore, in the state of nature, there is nothing which any man can less claim for himself, and make his own, than the soil, and whatever so adheres to the soil, that he cannot hide it anywhere, nor carry it whither he pleases. the soil, therefore, and whatever adheres to it in the way we have mentioned, must be quite common property of the commonwealth -that is, of all those who, by their united force, can vindicate their claim to it, or of him to whom all have given authority to vindicate his claim. and therefore the soil, and all that adheres to it, ought to have a value with the citizens proportionate to the necessity there is, that they may be able to set their feet thereon, and defend their common right or liberty. but in the eighth section of this chapter we have shown the advantages that the commonwealth must necessarily derive hence. 20. in order that the citizens may be as far as possible equal, which is of the first necessity in a commonwealth, none but the descendants of a king are to be thought noble. but if all the descendants of kings were allowed to marry wives, or beget children, they would grow, in process of time, to a very large number, and would be, not only burdensome, but also a cause of very great fear, to king and all. for men who nave too much leisure generally meditate crime. and hence it is that kings are, on account of their nobles, very much induced to make war, because kings surrounded with nobles find more quiet and safety in war than in peace. but i pass by this as notorious enough, and also the points which i have mentioned in secs. 15-27 of the last chapter. for the main points have been proved in this chapter, and the rest are self-evident. 21. that the judges ought to be too numerous for a large proportion of them to be accessible to the bribes of a private man, and that they should not vote openly, but secretly, and that they deserve payment for their time, is known to everyone [11] but they everywhere have by custom a yearly salary; and so they make no great haste to determine suits, and there is often no end to trials. next, where confiscations accrue to the king, there frequently in trials not truth nor right, but the greatness of a man's riches is regarded. informers are ever at work, and everyone who has money is snatched as a prey, which evils, though grievous and intolerable, are excused by the necessity of warfare, and continue even in time of peace. but the avarice of judges that are appointed but for two or three years at most is moderated by fear of their successors, not to mention, again, that they can have no fixed property, but must lend their money at interest to their fellow-citizens. and so they are forced rather to consult their welfare than to plot against them, especially if the judges themselves, as we have said, are numerous. 22. but we have said, that no military pay is to be voted [12] for the chief reward of military service is liberty. for in the state of nature everyone strives, for bare liberty's sake, to defend himself to the utmost of his power, and expects no other reward of warlike virtue but his own independence. but, in the civil state, all the citizens together are to be considered as a man in the state of nature; and, therefore, when all fight on behalf of that state, all are defending themselves, and engaged on their own business. but counsellors, judges, magistrates, and the like, are engaged more on others' business than on their own; and so it is but fair to pay them for their time. besides, in war, there can be no greater or more honourable inducement to victory than the idea of liberty. but if, on the contrary, a certain portion of the citizens be designated as soldiers, on which account it will be necessary to award them a fixed pay, the king will, of necessity, distinguish them above the rest (as we showed. sec. 12) -that is, will distinguish men who are acquainted only with the arts of war, and, in time of peace, from excess of leisure, become debauched, and, finally, from poverty, meditate nothing but rapine, civil discord, and wars. and so we can affirm, that a monarchy of this sort is, in fact, a state of war, and in it only the soldiery enjoy liberty, but the rest are slaves. 23. our remarks about the admission of foreigners (chap. vi. sec. 32) i believe to be obvious. besides, no one can doubt that the king's blood-relations should be at a distance from him, and occupied, not by warlike, but by peaceful business, whence they may get credit and the dominion quiet. though even this has not seemed a sufficient precaution to the turkish despots, who, therefore, make a point of slaughtering all their brothers. and no wonder: for the more absolutely the right of dominion has been conferred on one man, the more easily, as we showed by an instance (sec. 14), it can be transferred from one to another. but that in such a monarchy, as we here suppose, in which, i mean, there is not one mercenary soldier, the plan we have mentioned provides sufficiently for the king's safety, is not to be doubted. 24. nor can anyone hesitate about what we have said in the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth sections of the last chapter. but that the king must not marry a foreigner [13] is easily proved. for not to mention that two commonwealths, although united by a treaty, are yet in a state of hostility (chap. iii. sec. 14), it is very much to be avoided that war should be stirred up, on account of the king's domestic affairs, both because disputes and dissensions arise peculiarly from an alliance founded on marriage, and because questions between two commonwealths are mostly settled by war. of this we read a fatal instance in scripture. for after the death of solomon, who had married the king of egypt's daughter, his son rehoboam waged a most disastrous war with shishak, king of the egyptians, who utterly subdued him. [14] moreover, the marriage of lewis xiv., king of france with the daughter of philip iv. was the seed of a fresh war. [15] and, besides these, very many instances may be read in history. 25. the form of the dominion ought to be kept one and the same, and, consequently, there should be but one king, and that of the same sex, and the dominion should be indivisible. [16] but as to my saying that the king's eldest son should succeed his father by right, or (if there be no issue) the nearest to him in blood, it is clear as well from chap. vi. sec. 13, as because the election of the king made by the multitude should, if possible, last for ever. otherwise it will necessarily happen, that the supreme authority of the dominion will frequently pass to the multitude, which is an extreme and, therefore, exceedingly dangerous change. but those who, from the fact that the king is master of the dominion, and holds it by absolute right, infer that he can hand it over to whom he pleases, and that, therefore, the king's son is by right heir to the dominion, are greatly mistaken. for the king's will has so long the force of law, as he holds the sword of the commonwealth; for the right of dominion is limited by power only. therefore, a king may indeed abdicate, but cannot hand the dominion over to another, unless with the concurrence of the multitude or its stronger part. and that this may be more clearly understood, we must remark, that children are heirs to their parents, not by natural, but by civil law. for by the power of the commonwealth alone is anyone master of definite property. and, therefore, by the same power or right, whereby the will of any man concerning his property is held good, by the same also his will remains good after his own death, as long as the commonwealth endures. and this is the reason, why everyone in the civil state maintains after death the same right as he had in his lifetime, because, as we said, it is not by his own power, but by that of the commonwealth, which is everlasting, that he can decide anything about his property. but the king's case is quite different. for the king's will is the civil law itself, and the king the commonwealth itself. therefore, by the death of the king, the commonwealth is in a manner dead, and the civil state naturally returns to the state of nature, and consequently the supreme authority to the multitude, which can, therefore, lawfully lay down new and abolish old laws. and so it appears that no man succeeds the king by right, but him whom the multitude wills to be successor, or in a theocracy, such as the commonwealth of the hebrews once was, him whom god has chosen by a prophet. we might likewise infer this from the fact that the king's sword, or right, is in reality the will of the multitude itself, or its stronger part; or else from the fact, that men endowed with reason never so utterly abdicate their right, that they cease to be men, and are accounted as sheep. but to pursue this further is unnecessary. 26. but the right of religion, or of worshipping god, no man can transfer to another. however, we have treated of this point at length in the last chapters of our theologico-political treatise, which it is superfluous to repeat here. and herewith i claim to have reasoned out the foundations of the best monarchy, though briefly, yet with sufficient clearness. but their mutual interdependence, or, in other words, the proportions of my dominion, anyone will easily remark, who will be at the pains to observe them as a whole with some attention. it remains only to warn the reader, that i am here conceiving of that monarchy, which is instituted by a free multitude, for which alone these foundations can serve. for a multitude that has grown used to another form of dominion will not be able without great danger of overthrow to pluck up the accepted foundations of the whole dominion, and change its entire fabric. 27. and what we have written will, perhaps, be received with derision by those who limit to the populace only the vices which are inherent in all mortals; and use such phrases as, "the mob, if it is not frightened, inspires no little fear," and "the populace is either a humble slave, or a haughty master," and "it has no truth or judgment," etc. but all have one common nature. only we are deceived by power and refinement. whence it comes that when two do the same thing we say, "this man may do it with impunity, that man may not;" not because the deed, but because the doer is different. haughtiness is a property of rulers. men are haughty, but by reason of an appointment for a year; how much more then nobles, that have their honours eternal! but their arrogance is glossed over with importance, luxury, profusion, and a kind of harmony of vices, and a certain cultivated folly, and elegant villainy, so that vices, each of which looked at separately is foul and vile, because it is then most conspicuous, appear to the inexperienced and untaught honourable and becoming. "the mob, too, if it is not frightened, inspires no little fear;" yes, for liberty and slavery are not easily mingled. lastly, as for the populace being devoid of truth and judgment, that is nothing wonderful, since the chief business of the dominion is transacted behind its back, and it can but make conjectures from the little, which cannot be hidden. for it is an uncommon virtue to suspend one's judgment. so it is supreme folly to wish to transact everything behind the backs of the citizens, and to expect that they will not judge ill of the same, and will not give everything an unfavourable interpretation. for if the populace could moderate itself, and suspend its judgment about things with which it is imperfectly acquainted, or judge rightly of things by the little it knows already, it would surely be more fit to govern, than to be governed. but, as we said, all have the same nature. all grow haughty with rule, and cause fear if they do not feel it, and everywhere truth is generally transgressed by enemies or guilty people; especially where one or a few have mastery, and have respect in trials not to justice or truth, but to amount of wealth. 28. besides, paid soldiers, that are accustomed to military discipline, and can support cold and hunger, are likely to despise a crowd of citizens as very inferior for storming towns or fighting pitched battles. but that my dominion is, therefore, more unhappy or less durable, no one of sound mind will affirm. but, on the contrary, everyone that judges things fairly will admit, that that dominion is the most durable of all, which can content itself with preserving what it has got, without coveting what belongs to others, and strives, therefore, most eagerly by every means to avoid war and preserve peace. 29. but i admit that the counsels of such a dominion can hardly be concealed. but everyone will also admit with me that it is far better for the right counsels of a dominion to be known to its enemies, than for the evil secrets of tyrants to be concealed from the citizens. they who can treat secretly of the affairs of a dominion have it absolutely under their authority, and, as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace. now that this secrecy is often serviceable to a dominion, no one can deny; but that without it the said dominion cannot subsist, no one will ever prove. but, on the contrary, to entrust affairs of state absolutely to any man is quite incompatible with the maintenance of liberty; and so it is folly to choose to avoid a small loss by means of the greatest of evils. but the perpetual refrain of those who lust after absolute dominion is, that it is to the essential interest of the commonwealth that its business be secretly transacted, and other like pretences, which end in the more hateful a slavery, the more they are clothed with a show of utility. 30. lastly, although no dominion, as far as i know, has ever been founded on all the conditions we have mentioned, yet from experience itself we shall be able to prove that this form of monarchy is the best, if we consider the causes of the preservation and overthrow of any dominion that is not barbarous. but this i could not do without greatly wearying the reader. however, i cannot pass over in silence one instance, that seems worth remembering: i mean the dominion of the arragonese, who showed a singular loyalty towards their kings, and with equal constancy preserved unbroken the constitution of the kingdom. for as soon as they had cast off the slavish yoke of the moors, they resolved to choose themselves a king, but on what conditions they could not quite make up their minds, and they therefore determined to consult the sovereign pontiff of rome. he, who in this matter certainly bore himself as christ's vicar, blamed them for so obstinately wishing to choose a king, unwarned by the example of the hebrews. however, if they would not change their minds, then he advised them not to choose a king, without first instituting customs equitable and suitable to the national genius, and above all he would have them create some supreme council, to balance the king's power like the ephors of the lacedaemonians, and to have absolute right to determine the disputes, which might arise between the king and the citizens. so then, following this advice, they established the laws, which seemed to them most equitable, of which the supreme interpreter, and therefore supreme judge, was to be, not the king, but the council, which they call the seventeen, and whose president has the title of justice [17] this justice then, and the seventeen, who are chosen for life, not by vote but by lot, have the absolute right of revising and annulling all sentences passed upon any citizen by other courts, civil or ecclesiastical, or by the king himself, so that every citizen had the right to summon the king himself before this council. moreover, they once had the right of electing and deposing the king. but after the lapse of many years the king, don pedro, who is called the dagger, by canvassing, bribery, promises, and every sort of practice, at length procured the revocation of this right. and as soon as he gained his point, he cut off, or, as i would sooner believe, wounded his hand before them all, saying, that not without the loss of royal blood could subjects be allowed to choose their king [18] yet he effected this change, but upon this condition, "that the subjects have had and shall have the right of taking arms against any violence whatever, whereby any may wish to enter upon the dominion to their hurt, nay, against the king himself, or the prince, his heir, if he thus encroach." by which condition they certainly rather rectified than abolished that right. for, as we have shown (chap. iv. secs. 5, 6), a king can be deprived of the power of ruling, not by the civil law, but by the law of war, in other words the subjects may resist his violence with violence. besides this condition they stipulated others, which do not concern our present design. having by these customs given themselves a constitution to the mind of all, they continued for an incredible length of time unharmed, the king's loyalty towards his subjects being as great as theirs towards him. but after that the kingdom fell by inheritance to ferdinand of castile, who first had the surname of catholic; this liberty of the arragonese began to displease the castilians, who therefore ceased not to urge ferdinand to abolish these rights. but he, not yet being accustomed to absolute dominion, dared make no such attempt, but replied thus to his counsellors: that (not to mention that he had received the kingdom of arragon on those terms, which they knew, and had most solemnly sworn to observe the same, and that it was inhuman to break his word) he was of opinion, that his kingdom would be stable, as long as its safety was as much to the subjects' as to the king's interest, so that neither the king should outweigh the subjects, nor yet the subjects the king; for that if either party were too powerful, the weaker would not only try to recover its former equality, but in vexation at its injury to retaliate upon the other, whence would follow the ruin of either or both. which very wise language i could not enough wonder at, had it proceeded from a king accustomed to command not freemen but slaves. accordingly the arragonese retained their liberties after the time of ferdinand, though no longer by right but by the favour of their too powerful kings, until the reign of philip ii., who oppressed them with better luck, but no less cruelty, than he did the united provinces. and although philip iii. is supposed to have restored everything to its former position, yet the arragonese, partly from eagerness to flatter the powerful (for it is folly to kick against the pricks), partly from terror, have kept nothing but the specious names and empty forms of liberty. 31. we conclude, therefore, that the multitude may preserve under a king an ample enough liberty; if it contrive that the king's power be determined by the sole power, and preserved by the defence of the multitude itself. and this was the single rule which i followed in laying the foundations of monarchy. -----1. daniel vi. 15. 2. hom. "odys.," xii. 156-200. 3. chap. i. sec. 4 of the speech, or rather letter, which is not now admitted to be a genuine work of sallust. 4. ethics, iii. 29, &c. 5. this seems to be a mistake for sec. 4, "id majori subditorum parti utile erit, quod in hoc concilio plurima habuerit suffragia." "what has most votes in such a council, will be to the interest of the greater part of the subjects." 6. 2 sam. xv. 31. 7. tacitus, histories, i., 7. 8. antonio perez, a publicist, and professor of law in the university of louvain in the first part of the seventeenth century. 9. chap. vi. sec. 10. 10. chap. vi. secs. 11, 15, 16. 11. chap. vi. secs. 27, 28. 12. chap. vi. sec. 31. 13. chap. vi. sec. 36. 14. 1 kings xiv. 25; 2 chron. xii. 15. the war between france and spain, terminated by the first peace of aix-la-chapelle, 1665. 16. chap. vi. sec. 37. 17. see hallam's "history of the middle ages," chap. iv., for the constitutional history of arragon. hallam calls the justiza the justiciary, but the literal translation, justice, seems warranted by our own english use of the word to designate certain judges. 18. hallam says, that the king merely cut the obnoxious privilege of union, which he describes rather differently, through with his sword. the privilege of union was so utterly "eradicated from the records of the kingdom, that its precise words have never been recovered." -----------------------chapter viii. of aristocracy. so far of monarchy. but now we will say, on what plan an aristocracy is to be framed, so that it may be lasting. we have defined an aristocratic dominion as that, which is held not by one man, but by certain persons chosen out of the multitude, whom we shall henceforth call patricians. i say expressly, "that which is held by certain persons chosen." for the chief difference between this and a democracy is, that the right of governing depends in an aristocracy on election only, but in a democracy for the most part on some right either congenital or acquired by fortune (as we shall explain in its place); and therefore, although in any dominion the entire multitude be received into the number of the patricians, provided that right of theirs is not inherited, and does not descend by some law to others, the dominion will for all that be quite an aristocracy, because none are received into the number of the patricians save by express election. but if these chosen persons were but two, each of them will try to be more powerful than the other, and from the too great power of each, the dominion will easily be split into two factions; and in like manner into three, four, or five factions, if three, four, or five persons were put into possession of it. but the factions will be the weaker, the more there are to whom the dominion was delegated. and hence it follows, that to secure the stability of an aristocracy, it is necessary to consider the proportionate size of the actual dominion, in order to determine the minimum number of patricians. 2. let it be supposed, then, that for a dominion of moderate size it suffices to be allowed a hundred of the best men, and that upon them has been conferred the supreme authority of the dominion, and that they have consequently the right to elect their patrician colleagues, when any of the number die. these men will certainly endeavour to secure their succession to their children or next in blood. and thus the supreme authority of the dominion will always be with those, whom fortune has made children or kinsmen to patricians. and, as out of a hundred men who rise to office by fortune, hardly three are found that excel in knowledge and counsel, it will thus come to pass, that the authority of the dominion will rest, not with a hundred, but only with two or three who excel by vigour of mind, and who will easily draw to themselves everything, and each of them, as is the wont of human greed, will be able to prepare the way to a monarchy. and so, if we make a right calculation, it is necessary, that the supreme authority of a dominion, whose size requires at least a hundred first-rate men, should be conferred on not less than five thousand. for by this proportion it will never fail, but a hundred shall be found excelling in mental vigour, that is, on the hypothesis that, out of fifty that seek and obtain office, one will always be found not less than first-rate, besides others that imitate the virtues of the first-rate, and are therefore worthy to rule. 3. the patricians are most commonly citizens of one city, which is the head of the whole dominion, so that the commonwealth or republic has its name from it, as once that of rome, and now those of venice, genoa, etc. but the republic of the dutch has its name from an entire province, whence it arises, that the subjects of this dominion enjoy a greater liberty. now, before we can determine the foundations on which this aristocratic dominion ought to rest, we must observe a very great difference, which exists between the dominion which is conferred on one man and that which is conferred on a sufficiently large council. for, in the first place, the power of one man is (as we said, chap. vi. sec. 5) very inadequate to support the entire dominion; but this no one, without manifest absurdity, can affirm of a sufficiently large council. for, in declaring the council to be sufficiently large, one at the same time denies, that it is inadequate to support the dominion. a king, therefore, is altogether in need of counsellors, but a council like this is not so in the least. in the second place, kings are mortal, but councils are everlasting. and so the power of the dominion which has once been transferred to a large enough council never reverts to the multitude. but this is otherwise in a monarchy, as we showed (chap. vii. sec. 25). thirdly, a king's dominion is often on sufferance, whether from his minority, sickness, or old age, or from other causes; but the power of a council of this kind, on the contrary, remains always one and the same. in the fourth place, one man's will is very fluctuating and inconstant; and, therefore, in a monarchy, all law is, indeed, the explicit will of the king (as we said. chap. vii. sec. 1), but not every will of the king ought to be law; but this cannot be said of the will of a sufficiently numerous council. for since the council itself, as we have just shown, needs no counsellors, its every explicit will ought to be law. and hence we conclude, that the dominion conferred upon a large enough council is absolute, or approaches nearest to the absolute. for if there be any absolute dominion, it is, in fact, that which is held by an entire multitude. 4. yet in so far as this aristocratic dominion never (as has just been shown) reverts to the multitude, and there is under it no consultation with the multitude, but, without qualification, every will of the council is law, it must be considered as quite absolute, and therefore its foundations ought to rest only on the will and judgment of the said council, and not on the watchfulness of the multitude, since the latter is excluded from giving its advice or its vote. the reason, then, why in practice aristocracy is not absolute, is that the multitude is a cause of fear to the rulers, and therefore succeeds in retaining for itself some liberty, which it asserts and holds as its own, if not by an express law, yet on a tacit understanding. 5. and thus it is manifest that this kind of dominion will be in the best possible condition, if its institutions are such that it most nearly approaches the absolute -that is, that the multitude is as little as possible a cause of fear, and retains no liberty, but such as must necessarily be assigned it by the law of the dominion itself, and is therefore not so much a right of the multitude as of the whole dominion, asserted and maintained by the aristocrats only as their own. for thus practice agrees best with theory, as appears from the last section, and is also self-evident. for we cannot doubt that the dominion rests the less with the patricians, the more rights the commons assert for themselves, such as those which the corporations of artisans in lower germany, commonly called guilds, generally possess. 6. but the commons need not apprehend any danger of a hateful slavery from this form of dominion, merely because it is conferred on the council absolutely. for the will of so large a council cannot be so much determined by lust as by reason; because men are drawn asunder by an evil passion, and cannot be guided, as it were, by one mind, except so far as they desire things honourable, or that have at least an honourable appearance. 7. in determining, then, the foundations of an aristocracy, it is above all to be observed, that they should rest on the sole will and power of the supreme council, so that it may be as independent as possible, and be in no danger from the multitude. in order to determine these foundations, which are to rest, i say, upon the sole will and power of the council, let us see what foundations of peace are peculiar to monarchy, and unsuited to this form of dominion. for if we substitute for these equivalent foundations fit for an aristocracy, and leave the rest, as they are already laid, we shall have removed without doubt every cause of seditions; or, at least, this kind of dominion will be no less safe than the monarchical, but, on the contrary, so much the more so, and of so much better a condition, as, without danger to peace and liberty, it approaches nearer than monarchy to the absolute (secs. 3, 6). for the greater the right of the supreme authority, the more the form of dominion agrees with the dictate of reason (chap. iii. sec. 5 [1]), and, therefore, the fitter it is to maintain peace and liberty. let us run through, therefore, the points we stated in our sixth chapter, beginning with the ninth section, that we may reject what is unfit for this kind of dominion, and see what agrees with it. 8. that it is necessary, in the first place, to found and fortify one or more cities, no one can doubt. but that city is above all to be fortified, which is the head of the whole dominion, and also those that are on its frontiers. for that which is the head of the whole dominion, and has the supreme right, ought to be more powerful than the rest. but under this kind of dominion it is quite unnecessary to divide all the inhabitants into clans. 9. as for the military, since under this dominion equality is not to be looked for among all, but between the patricians only, and, in particular, the power of the patricians is greater than that of the commons, it is certain that it makes no difference to the laws or fundamental principles of this dominion, that the military be formed of others besides subjects. [2] but it is of the first importance that no one be admitted into the number of the patricians, that has not a proper knowledge of the art of war. but for the subjects to be excluded, as some would have it, from military service, is surely folly. for besides that the military pay given to subjects remains within the realm, whereas, on the contrary, what is paid to a foreign soldiery is altogether lost, the greatest strength of the dominion is also thereby weakened. for it is certain that those fight with peculiar valour who fight for altar and hearth. whence, also, it is manifest that those are no less wrong, who lay down that military commanders, tribunes, centurions, etc., should be chosen from among the patricians only. for with what courage will those soldiers fight who are deprived of all hope of gaining glory and advancement? but, on the other hand, to establish a law forbidding the patricians to hire foreign soldiers when circumstances require it, whether to defend themselves, and suppress seditions, or for any other reason, besides being inconsiderate, would also be repugnant to the supreme right of the patricians, concerning which see secs. 3, 4, 5 of this chapter. but the general of a single army, or of the entire military, is to be chosen but in time of war, and among the patricians only, and is to hold the command for a year at most, without power of being continued therein, or afterwards reappointed. for this law, necessary as it is under a monarchy, is so above all under this kind of dominion. for although it is much easier, as we have said above, to transfer the dominion from one man to another than from a free council to one man; yet it does often happen, that patricians are subdued by their own generals, and that to the much greater harm of the commonwealth. for when a monarch is removed, it is but a change of tyrant, not of the form of dominion; but, under an aristocracy, this cannot happen, without an upsetting of the form of dominion, and a slaughter of the greatest men. of which thing rome has offered the most mournful examples. but our reason for saying that, under a monarchy, the militia should serve without pay, is here inapplicable. for since the subjects are excluded from giving their advice or votes, they are to be reckoned as foreigners, and are, therefore, to be hired for service on no worse terms than foreigners. and there is in this case no danger of their being distinguished above the rest by the patricians: nay, further, to avoid the partial judgment which everyone is apt to form of his own exploits, it is wiser for the patricians to assign a fixed payment to the soldiers for their service. 10. furthermore, for this same reason, that all but the patricians are foreigners, it cannot be without danger to the whole dominion, that the lands and houses and the whole soil should remain public property, and be let to the inhabitants at a yearly rent. for the subjects having no part in the dominion would easily, in bad times, all forsake their cities, if they could carry where they pleased what goods they possess. and, therefore, lands and farms are not to be let, but sold to the subjects, yet on condition that they pay every year an aliquot part of the year's produce, etc., as is done in holland. 11. these points considered, i proceed to the foundations on which the supreme council should rest and be established. we have shown (sec. 2) that, in a moderate-sized dominion, this council ought to have about five thousand members. and so we must look for means of preventing the dominion from gradually getting into fewer hands, and of insuring, on the contrary, that the number of members be increased in proportion to the growth of the dominion itself; and, next, that between the patricians, equality be as far as possible maintained; and, further, that there may be speed and expedition in their counsels, and that they tend to the general good; and, lastly, that the power of the patricians or council exceed the power of the multitude, yet so that the multitude suffer no harm thereby. 12. but jealousy causes a great difficulty in maintaining our first point. for men are, as we have said, by nature enemies, so that however they be associated, and bound together by laws, they still retain their nature. and hence i think it is, that democracies change into aristocracies, and these at length into monarchies. for i am fully persuaded that most aristocracies were formerly democracies. for when a given multitude, in search of fresh territories, has found and cultivated them, it retains, as a whole, its equal right of dominion, because no man gives dominion to another spontaneously. but although every one of them thinks it fair, that he should have the same right against another that that other has against him, he yet thinks it unfair, that the foreigners that join them should have equal right in the dominion with themselves, who sought it by their own toil, and won it at the price of their own blood. and this not even the foreigners themselves deny, for, of course, they migrate thither, not to hold dominion, but for the benefit of their own private business, and are quite satisfied if they are but allowed the liberty of transacting that business in safety. but meanwhile the multitude is augmented by the influx of foreigners, who gradually acquire the national manners, until at last they are distinguished by no other difference than that of incapacity to get office; and while their number daily increases, that of the citizens, on the contrary, is by many causes diminished. for families often die out, and some persons are disqualified for their crimes, and a great many are driven by domestic poverty to neglect affairs of state, and meanwhile the more powerful aim at nothing else, but to govern alone; and thus the dominion is gradually limited to a few, and at length by faction to one. and here we might add other causes that destroy dominions of this sort; but as they are well known, i pass them by, and proceed now to state the laws by which this dominion, of which we are treating, ought to be maintained. 13. the primary law of this dominion ought to be that which determines the proportionate numbers of patricians and multitude. for a proportion (sec. 1) ought to be maintained between the multitude and the patricians, so that with the increase of the former the number of the latter should be raised. and this proportion (in accordance with our remarks in the second section) ought to be about fifty to one, that is, the inequality between the members of each should never be greater. for (sec. 1) without destroying the form of dominion, the number of patricians may be greater than the number of the multitude. but there is no danger except in the smallness of their number. but how it is to be provided that this law be kept unbroken, i will presently show in its own place. 14. patricians, in some places, are chosen only out of particular families. but it is ruinous to lay this down expressly by law. for not to mention that families often die out, and that the other families can never be excluded without disgrace, it is also repugnant to the form of this dominion, that the dignity of patrician should be hereditary (sec. 1). but on this system a dominion seems rather a democracy, such as we have described in sec. 12, that is in the hands of very few citizens. but, on the other hand, to provide against the patricians choosing their own sons and kinsmen, and thereby against the right of dominion remaining in particular families, is impossible, and indeed absurd, as i shall show (sec. 39). but provided that they hold that right by no express law, and that the rest (i mean, such as are born within the dominion, and use the vulgar tongue, and have not a foreign wife, and are not infamous, nor servants, nor earning their living by any servile trade, among which are to be reckoned those of a wine-merchant, or brewer) are not excluded, the form of the dominion will, notwithstanding, be retained, and it will be possible to maintain the proportion between the patricians and the multitude. 15. but if it be further by law appointed that no young men be chosen, it will never happen that a few families hold the right of government in their hands. and, therefore, be it by law appointed, that no man that has not reached his thirtieth year be put on the list of candidates. 16. thirdly, it is next to be ordained, that all the patricians must be assembled at certain fixed times in a particular part of the city, and that whoever does not attend the council, unless he be hindered by illness or some public business, shall be fined some considerable amount. for, were it otherwise, most of them would neglect the public, for the sake of their own private affairs. 17. let this council's functions be to pass and repeal laws, and to choose their patrician colleagues, and all the ministers of the dominion. for he, that has supreme right, as we have decided that this council has, cannot give to anyone authority to pass and repeal laws, without at the same time abdicating his own right, and transferring it to him, to whom he gives that power. for he, that has but for one day only authority to pass and repeal laws, is able to change the entire form of the dominion. but one can, without forfeiting one's supreme right, temporarily entrust to others the daily business of dominion to be administered according to the established laws. furthermore, if the ministers of dominion were chosen by any other but this council, then its members would be more properly called wards than patricians. 18. hence some are accustomed to create for the council a ruler or prince, either for life, as the venetians, or for a time, as the genoese; but yet with such great precautions, as make it clear enough, that it is not done without great risk. and assuredly we cannot doubt but that the dominion thereby approaches the monarchical form, and as far as we can conjecture from their histories, it was done for no other reason, than that before the institution of these councils they had lived under a ruler, or doge, as under a king. and so the creation of a ruler is a necessary requisite indeed for the particular nation, but not for the aristocratic dominion considered in itself. 19. but, inasmuch as the supreme authority of this dominion rests with this council as a whole, not with every individual member of it (for otherwise it would be but the gathering of an undisciplined mob), it is, therefore, necessary that all the patricians be so bound by the laws as to form, as it were, one body governed by one mind. but the laws by themselves alone are weak and easily broken, when their vindicators are the very persons who are able to transgress them, and the only ones who are to take warning by the punishment, and must punish their colleagues in order by fear of the same punishment to restrain their own desire: for all this involves a great absurdity. and, therefore, means must be sought to preserve order in this supreme council and keep unbroken the constitution of the dominion, so that yet the greatest possible equality may exist between patricians. 20. but since, from a single ruler or prince, able also to vote in the debates, there must necessarily arise a great inequality, especially on account of the power, which must of necessity be granted him, in order to enable him to discharge his duty in safety; therefore, if we consider the whole matter aright, nothing can be devised more useful to the general welfare than the institution of another council of certain patricians subordinate to the supreme council, whose only duty should be to see that the constitution, as far as it concerns the councils and ministers of the dominion, be kept unbroken, and who should, therefore, have authority to summon to judgment and, in conformity with established law, to condemn any delinquent who, as a minister of the dominion, has transgressed the laws concerning his office. and these patricians we shall hereafter call syndics. 21. and they are to be chosen for life. for, were they to be chosen for a time, so that they should afterwards be eligible for other offices in the dominion, we should fall into the very absurdity which we have just pointed out in the nineteenth section. but lest they should become quite haughty by very long rule, none are to be elected to this office, but those who have reached their sixtieth year or more, and have discharged the duties of senator, of which below. 22. of these, too, we shall easily determine the number, if we consider that these syndics stand to the patricians in the same relation as the whole body of patricians together does to the multitude, which they cannot govern, if they are fewer than a proper number. and, therefore, the number of the syndics should be to that of patricians as their number is to that of the multitude, that is (sec. 13), as one to fifty. 23. moreover, that this council may discharge its functions in security, some portion of the soldiery must be assigned to it, and be subject to its orders. 24. the syndics and other ministers of state are to have no salary, but such emoluments, that they cannot maladminister affairs of state without great loss to themselves. for we cannot doubt that it is fair, that the ministers of this kind of dominion should be awarded a recompense for their time, since the commons are the majority in this dominion, and the patricians look after their safety, while they themselves have no trouble with affairs of state, but only with their own private ones. but since, on the other hand, no man (chap. vii. sec. 4) defends another's cause, save in so far as he thereby hopes to establish his own interest, things must, of necessity, be so ordered that the ministers, who have charge of affairs of state, should most pursue their own interest, when they are most watchful for the general good. 25. to the syndics then, whose duty, as we said, it is to see that the constitution is kept unbroken, the following emoluments are to be awarded: namely, that every householder that inhabits any place in the dominion, be bound to pay every year a coin of small value, say a quarter of an ounce of silver, to the syndics, that thus they may know the number of inhabitants, and so observe what proportion of them the patricians constitute; and next that every new patrician on his election must pay the syndics some large sum, for instance, twenty or twenty-five pounds of silver. moreover, that money, in which the absent patricians (i mean those who have failed to attend the meeting of the council) are condemned, is also to be awarded to the syndics; and a part, too, of the goods of defaulting ministers, who are bound to abide their judgment, and who are fined a certain sum of money, or have their goods confiscated, should be devoted to them, not to all indeed, but to those only who sit daily, and whose duty it is to summon the council of syndics, concerning whom see sec. 28. but, in order that the council of syndics may always be maintained at its full number, before all other business in the supreme council, when it is assembled at the usual time, inquiry is to be made about this. which, if the syndics neglect, let it then devolve upon the president of the senate (concerning which we shall soon have occasion to speak), to admonish the supreme council on this head, to demand of the president of the syndics the reason of his silence, and to inquire what is the supreme council's opinion in the matter. but if the president of the senate is likewise silent, let the case be taken up by the president of the supreme court of justice, or if he too is silent by some other patrician, and let him demand an explanation of their silence from the presidents of the senate and the court of justice, as well as from the president of the syndics. lastly, that that law, whereby young men are excluded, may likewise be strictly observed, it is to be appointed that all who have reached the thirtieth year of their age, and who are not by express law excluded, are to have their names inscribed on a list, in presence of the syndics, and to receive from them, at a fixed price, some sign of the honour conferred on them, namely, that they may be allowed to wear a particular ornament only permitted to them, to distinguish them and make them to be had in honour by the rest; and, at the same time, be it ordained, that in elections none may nominate as patrician anyone whose name is not inscribed on the general list, and that under a heavy penalty. and, further, let no one be allowed to refuse the burden of a duty or office, which he is chosen to bear. lastly, that all the absolutely fundamental laws of the dominion may be everlasting, it must be ordained that if anyone in the supreme council raise a question about any fundamental law, as of prolonging the command of any general of an army, or of diminishing the number of patricians, or the like, he is guilty of treason, and not only is he to be condemned to death, and his goods confiscated, but some sign of his punishment is to remain visible in public for an eternal memorial of the event. but for the confirming of the other general rights of the dominion, it is enough, if it be only ordained, that no law can be repealed nor new law passed, unless first the college of syndics, and then three-fourths or four-fifths of the supreme council agree thereto. 26. let the right also of summoning the supreme council and proposing the matters to be decided in it, rest with the syndics, and let them likewise be given the first place in the council, but without the right to vote. but before they take their seats, they must swear by the safety of that supreme council and by the public liberty, that they will strive with the utmost zeal to preserve unbroken the ancient laws. and to consult the general good. after which let them through their secretary open in order the subjects of discussion. 27. but that all the patricians may have equal authority in making decrees and electing the ministers of the dominion, and that speed and expedition in all matters may be possible, the order observed by the venetians is altogether to be approved, for they appoint by lot a certain number of the council to name the ministers, and when these have named in order the candidates for office, every patrician signifies by ballot his opinion, approving or rejecting the candidate in question, so that it is not afterwards known, who voted in this or that sense. whereby it is contrived, not only that the authority of all the patricians in the decision is equal, and that business is quickly despatched, but also, that everyone has absolute liberty (which is of the first necessity in councils) to give his opinion without danger of unpopularity. 28. but in the councils of syndics and the other councils, the same order is to be observed, that voting is to be by ballot. but the right of convoking the council of syndics and of proposing the matters to be decided in the same ought to belong to their president, who is to sit every day with ten or more other syndics, to hear the complaints and secret accusations of the commons against the ministers, and to look after the accusers, if circumstances require, and to summon the supreme council even before the appointed time, if any of them judge that there is danger in the delay. now this president and those who meet with him every day are to be appointed by the supreme council and out of the number of syndics, not indeed for life, but for six months, and they must not have their term renewed but after the lapse of three or four years. and these, as we said above, are to be awarded the goods that are confiscated and the pecuniary fines, or some part of them. the remaining points which concern the syndics we will mention in their proper places. 29. the second council, which is subordinate to the supreme one, we will call the senate, and let its duty be to transact public business, for instance, to publish the laws of the dominion, to order the fortifications of the cities according to law, to confer military commissions, to impose taxes on the subjects and apply the same, to answer foreign embassies, and decide where embassies are to be sent. but let the actual appointment of ambassadors be the duty of the supreme council. for it is of the greatest consequence to see that no patrician be called to any office in the dominion but by the supreme council itself, lest the patricians themselves should try to curry favour with the senate. secondly, all matters are to be referred to the supreme council, which in any way alter the existing state of things, as the deciding on peace and war. wherefore, that the senate's decrees concerning peace and war may be valid, they must be confirmed by the supreme council. and therefore i should say, that it belonged to the supreme council only, not to the senate, to impose new taxes. 30. in determining the number of senators these points are to be taken into consideration: first, that all the patricians should have an equal hope of gaining senatorial rank; secondly, that notwithstanding the same senators, whose time (for which they were elected) is elapsed, may be continued after a short interval, that so the dominion may always be governed by skilled and experienced men; and lastly, that among the senators many may be found illustrious for wisdom and virtue. but to secure all these conditions, there can be no other means devised, than that it should be by law appointed, that no one who has not reached his fiftieth year, be received into the number of senators, and that four hundred, that is about a twelfth part of the patricians, be appointed for a year, and that two years after that year has elapsed, the same be capable of re-appointment. for in this manner about a twelfth part of the patricians will be constantly engaged in the duty of senator, with only short intervening periods; and this number surely, together with that made up by the syndics, will be little less than the number of patricians that have attained their fiftieth year. and so all the patricians will always have a great hope of gaining the rank of senator or syndic, and yet notwithstanding, the same patricians, at only short intervals, will always hold senatorial rank, and (according to what we said, sec. 2) there will never be wanting in the senate distinguished men, excelling in counsel and skill. and because this law cannot be broken without exciting great jealousy on the part of many patricians, it needs no other safeguard for its constant validity, than that every patrician who has reached the age we mentioned, should offer the proof thereof to the syndics, who shall put his name on the list of candidates for the senatorial duties, and read the name before the supreme council, so that he may occupy, with the rest of the same rank, a place set apart in this supreme council for his fellows, next to the place of the senators. 31. the emoluments of the senators should be of such a kind, that their profit is greater from peace than from war. and therefore let there be awarded to them a hundredth or a fiftieth part of the merchandise exported abroad from the dominion, or imported into it from abroad. for we cannot doubt, that by this means they will, as far as they can, preserve peace, and never desire to protract war. and from this duty not even the senators themselves, if any of them are merchants, ought to be exempt; for such an immunity cannot be granted without great risk to trade, as i think no one is ignorant. nay, on the contrary, it must be by law ordained, that no senator or ex-senator may fill any military post; and further, that no one may be declared general or praetor, which officers we said (sec. 9) were to be only appointed in time of war, whose father or grandfather is a senator, or has held the dignity of senator within two years. which laws we cannot doubt, that the patricians outside the senate will defend with all their might: and so it will be the case, that the senators will always have more profit from peace than from war, and will, therefore, never advise war, except the utmost need of the dominion compels them. but it may be objected to us, that on this system, if, that is, syndics and senators are to be allowed so great profits, an aristocracy will be as burdensome to the subjects as any monarchy. but not to mention that royal courts require larger expenditure, and are yet not provided in order to secure peace, and that peace can never be bought too dear; it is to be added, first, that all that under a monarchy is conferred on one or a few, is here conferred upon very many. next kings and their ministers do not bear the burden of the dominion with the subjects, but under this form of dominion it is just the reverse; for the patricians, who are always chosen from the rich, bear the largest share of the weight of the commonwealth. lastly, the burdens of a monarchy spring not so much from its king's expenditure, as from its secret policy. for those burdens of a dominion, that are imposed on the citizens in order to secure peace and liberty, great though they be, are yet supported and lightened by the usefulness of peace. what nation ever had to pay so many and so heavy taxes as the dutch? yet it not only has not been exhausted, but, on the contrary, has been so mighty by its wealth, that all envied its good fortune. if therefore the burdens of a monarchy were imposed for the sake of peace, they would not oppress the citizens; but, as i have said, it is from the secret policy of that sort of dominion, that the subjects faint under their lord; that is, because the virtue of kings counts for more in time of war than in time of peace, and because they, who would reign by themselves, ought above all to try and have their subjects poor; not to mention other things, which that most prudent dutchman v. h. [3] formerly remarked, because they do not concern my design, which is only to describe the best state of every kind of dominion. 32. of the syndics chosen by the supreme council, some should sit in the senate, but without the right of voting, so that they may see whether the laws concerning that assembly be duly observed, and may have the supreme council convoked, when anything is to be referred to it from the senate. for the supreme right of convoking this council, and proposing to it subjects of discussion, is, as we have already said, with the syndics. but before the votes of the contemporaries of the senators be taken, the president of the senate for the time being shall explain the state of affairs, and what the senate's own opinion is on the matter in question, and why; after which the votes shall be collected in the accustomed order. 33. the entire senate ought not to meet every day, but, like all great councils, at a certain fixed time. but as in the mean time the business of the dominion must be executed, it is, therefore, necessary that some part of the senators be chosen, who, on the dismissal of the senate, shall supply its place, and whose duty it shall be to summon the senate itself, when need is; to execute its orders about affairs of state; to read letters written to the senate and supreme council; and, lastly, to consult about the matters to be proposed in the senate. but that all these points, and the order of this assembly, as a whole, may be more easily conceived, i will describe the whole matter more precisely. 34. the senators who, as we have said already, are to be chosen for a year, are to be divided into four or six series, of which let the first have the first seat in the senate for the first three or two months in the year; and at the expiration of this time, let the second series take the place of the first, and so on, observing their turns, so that that series which was first in the first months may be last in the second period. furthermore, there are to be appointed as many presidents as there are series, and the same number of vice-presidents to fill their places when required -that is, two are to be chosen out of every series, one to be its president, the other its vice-president. and let the president of the first series preside in the senate also, for the first months; or, in his absence, let his vice-president fill his place; and so on with the rest, observing the same order as above. next, out of the first series, some are to be chosen by vote or lot to fill the place of the senate, when it is dismissed, in conjunction with the president and vice-president of the same series; and that, for the same space of time, as the said series occupies the first place in the senate; and thus, when that time is past, as many are again to be chosen out of the second series, by vote or lot, to fill, in conjunction with their president and vice-president, the place of the first series, and supply the lack of a senate; and so on with the rest. and there is no need that the election of these men -i mean those that i have said are to be chosen for periods of three or two months, by vote or lot -should be made by the supreme council. for the reason which we gave in the twenty-ninth section is not here applicable, much less the reason stated in the seventeenth. it suffices, then, that they be elected by the senate and the syndics present at its meeting. 35. but of these persons we cannot so precisely ascertain the number. however, this is certain, that they must be too numerous to be easily susceptible of corruption. for though they can by themselves determine nothing concerning affairs of state, yet they can delay the senate, or, what would be worst of all, delude it by putting forward matters of no importance, and keeping back those that are of greater -not to mention that, if they were too few, the absence of one or two might delay public business. but as, on the contrary, these consuls are for that very reason appointed, because great councils cannot devote themselves every day to public business, a remedy must be looked for necessarily here, and their inadequacy of number be made up for by the shortness of their term of office. and thus, if only thirteen or so be chosen for two or three months, they will be too many to be corrupted in this short period. and for this cause, also, did i recommend that their successors should by no means be appointed, except at the very time when they do succeed, and the others go away. 36. we have said, that it is also their duty, when any, though few, of them think it needful, to convoke the senate, to put before it the matters to be decided, to dismiss it, and to execute its orders about public business. but i will now briefly state the order in which this ought to be done, so that business may not be long protracted by useless questions. let, then, the consuls consult about the matter to be proposed in the senate, and what is required to be done; and, if they are all of one mind about it, then let them convoke the senate, and, having duly explained the question, let them set forth what their opinion is, and, without waiting for another's opinion, collect the votes in their order. but if the consuls support more than one opinion, then, in the senate, that opinion is first to be stated on the question proposed, which was supported by the larger number of consuls. and if the same is not approved by the majority of senate and consuls, but the waverers and opponents together are in a majority, which is to be determined by ballot, as we have already mentioned, then let them set forth the second opinion, which had fewer votes than the former among the consuls, and so on with the rest. but if none be approved by a majority of the whole senate, the senate is to be adjourned to the next day, or for a short time, that the consuls meanwhile may see, if they can find other means, that may give more satisfaction. but if they do not succeed in finding other means, or if the majority of the senate refuses to approve such as they have found, then the opinion of every senator is to be heard; and if the majority of the senate also refuses to support any of these, then the votes are to be taken again on every opinion, and not only the affirmative votes, as hitherto, but the doubtful and negative are to be counted. and if the affirmative prove more numerous than the doubtful or negative, then that opinion is to hold good; but, on the contrary, to be lost, if the negative prove more numerous than the doubtful or affirmative. but if on every opinion there is a greater number of doubters than of voters for and against, then let the council of syndics join the senate, and vote with the senators, with only affirmative and negative votes, omitting those that signify a hesitating mind. and the same order is to be observed about matters referred by the senate to the supreme council. so much for the senate. 37. as for the court of justice or bench, it cannot rest upon the same foundations as that which exists under a monarch, as we described it in chap. vi. secs. 26, and following. for (sec. 14) it agrees not with the foundations of our present dominion, that any account be made of families or clans. and there must be a further difference, because judges chosen from the patricians only might indeed be restrained by the fear of their patrician successors, from pronouncing any unjust judgment against any of the patricians, and, perhaps, would hardly have the courage to punish them after their deserts; but they would, on the other hand, dare everything against the commons, and daily carry off the rich among them for a prey. i know that the plan of the genoese is therefore approved by many, for they choose their judges not among the patricians, but among foreigners. but this seems to me, considering the matter in the abstract, absurdly ordained, that foreigners and not patricians should be called in to interpret the laws. for what are judges but interpreters of the laws? and i am therefore persuaded that herein also the genoese have had regard rather to the genius of their own race, than to the very nature of this kind of dominion. we must, therefore, by considering the matter in the abstract, devise the means which best agree with the form of this government. 38. but as far as regards the number of the judges, the theory of this constitution requires no peculiar number; but as under monarchical dominion, so under this, it suffices that they be too numerous to be corrupted by a private man. for their duty is but to provide against one private person doing wrong to another, and therefore to decide disputes between private persons, as well patricians as commons, and to exact penalties from delinquents, and even from patricians, syndics, and senators, as far as they have offended against the laws, whereby all are bound. but disputes that may arise between cities that are subject to the dominion, are to be decided in the supreme council. 39. furthermore the principle regulating the time, for which the judges should be appointed, is the same in both dominions, and also the principle of a certain part of them retiring every year; and, lastly, although it is not necessary for every one of them to be of a different family, yet it is necessary that two related by blood should not sit on the same bench together. and this last point is to be observed also in the other councils, except the supreme one, in which it is enough, if it be only provided by law that in elections no man may nominate a relation, nor vote upon his nomination by another, and also that two relations may not draw lots from the urn for the nomination of any minister of the dominion. this, i say, is sufficient in a council that is composed of so large a number of men, and has no special profits assigned to it. and so utterly unharmed will the dominion be in this quarter, that it is absurd to pass a law excluding from the supreme council the relations of all the patricians, as we said in the fourteenth section. but that it is absurd is manifest. for that law could not be instituted by the patricians themselves, without their thereby all absolutely abdicating their own right, and therefore not the patricians themselves but the commons would defend this law, which is directly contrary to what we proved in secs. 5 and 6. but that law of the dominion, whereby it is ordained that the same uniform proportion be maintained between the numbers of the patricians and the multitude, chiefly contemplates this end of preserving the patricians' right and power, that is, provides against their becoming too few to be able to govern the multitude. 40. but the judges are to be chosen by the supreme council out of the patricians only, that is (sec. 17) out of the actual authors of the laws, and the judgments they pass, as well in civil as criminal cases, shall be valid, if they were pronounced in due course of justice and without partiality; into which matter the syndics shall be by law authorized to inquire, and to judge and determine thereof. 41. the judges' emoluments ought to be the same, as we mentioned in the twenty-ninth section of the sixth chapter; namely, that they receive from the losing party upon every judgment which they pass in civil cases, an aliquot part of the whole sum at stake. but as to their sentences in criminal cases, let there be here this difference only, that the goods which they confiscate, and every fine whereby lesser crimes are punished, be assigned to themselves only, yet on this condition, that they may never compel anyone to confess by torture, and thus, precaution enough will be taken against their being unfair to the commons, and through fear too lenient to the patricians. for besides that this fear is tempered by avarice itself, and that veiled under the specious name of justice, they are also numerous, and vote, not openly, but by ballot, so that a man may be indignant at losing his case, but can have no reason to impute it to a particular person. moreover the fear of the syndics will restrain them from pronouncing an inequitable, or at least absurd sentence, or from acting any of them treacherously, besides that in so large a number of judges there will always be one or two, that the unfair stand in awe of. lastly, as far as the commons are concerned, they also will be adequately secured if they are allowed to appeal to the syndics, who, as i have said, are by law authorized to inquire, judge, and determine about the conduct of the judges. for it is certain that the syndics will not be able to escape the hatred of the patricians, and on the other hand, will always be most popular with the commons, whose applause they will try as far as they can to bid for. to which end, opportunity being given them, they will not fail to reverse sentences pronounced against the laws of the court, and to examine any judge, and to punish those that are partial, for nothing moves the hearts of a multitude more than this. nor is it an objection, but, on the contrary, an advantage, that such examples can but rarely occur. for not to mention that that commonwealth is ill ordered where examples are daily made of criminals (as we showed chap. v. sec. 2), those events must surely be very rare that are most renowned by fame. 42. those who are sent as governors to cities and provinces ought to be chosen out of the rank of senators, because it is the duty of senators to look after the fortifications of cities, the treasury, the military, etc. but those, who were sent to somewhat distant regions, would be unable to attend the senate, and, therefore, those only are to be summoned from the senate itself, who are destined to cities founded on their native soil; but those whom they wish to send to places more remote are to be chosen out of those, whose age is consistent with senatorial rank. but not even thus do i think that the peace of the dominion will be sufficiently provided for, that is, if the neighbouring cities are altogether denied the right of vote, unless they are so weak, that they can be openly set at naught, which cannot surely be supposed. and so it is necessary, that the neighbouring cities be granted the right of citizenship, and that from every one of them twenty, or thirty, or forty chosen citizens (for the number should vary with the size of the city) be enrolled among the patricians, out of whom three, four, or five ought to be yearly elected to be of the senate, and one for life to be a syndic. and let those who are of the senate be sent with their syndic, to govern the city out of which they were chosen. 43. moreover, judges are to be established in every city, chosen out of the patricians of that city. but of these i think it unnecessary to treat at length, because they concern not the foundations of this sort of dominion in particular. 44. in every council the secretaries and other officials of this kind, as they have not the right of voting, should be chosen from the commons. but as these, by their long practice of business, are the most conversant with the affairs to be transacted, it often arises that more deference than right is shown to their advice, and that the state of the whole dominion depends chiefly on their guidance: which thing has been fatal to the dutch. for this cannot happen without exciting the jealousy of many of the noblest. and surely we cannot doubt, that a senate, whose wisdom is derived from the advice, not of senators, but of officials, will be most frequented by the sluggish, and the condition of this sort of dominion will be little better than that of a monarchy directed by a few counsellors of the king. (see chap. vi. secs. 5-7). however, to this evil the dominion will be more or less liable, according as it was well or ill founded. for the liberty of a dominion is never defended without risk, if it has not firm enough foundations; and, to avoid that risk, patricians choose from the commons ambitious ministers, who are slaughtered as victims to appease the wrath of those, who are plotting against liberty. but where liberty has firm enough foundations, there the patricians themselves vie for the honour of defending it, and are anxious that prudence in the conduct of affairs should flow from their own advice only; and in laying the foundations of this dominion we have studied above all these two points, namely, to exclude the commons from giving advice as much as from giving votes (secs. 3, 4), and, therefore, to place the whole authority of the dominion with the whole body of patricians, but its exercise with the syndics and senate, and, lastly, the right of convoking the senate, and treating of matters affecting the common welfare with consuls chosen from the senate itself. but, if it is further ordained that the secretary, whether in the senate or in other councils, be appointed for four or five years at most, and have attached to him an assistant-secretary appointed for the same period, to bear part of the work during that time, or that the senate have not one, but several secretaries, employed one in one department, and another in another, the power of the officials will never become of any consequence. 45. treasurers are likewise to be chosen from the commons, and are to be bound to submit the treasury accounts to the syndics as well as to the senate. 46. matters concerning religion we have set forth at sufficient length in our theologico-political treatise. yet certain points we then omitted, of which it was not there the place to treat; for instance, that all the patricians must be of the same religion, that is, of that most simple and general religion, which in that treatise we described. for it is above all to be avoided, that the patricians themselves should be divided into sects, and show favour, some to this, and others to that, and thence become mastered by superstition, and try to deprive the subjects of the liberty of speaking out their opinions. in the second place, though everyone is to be given liberty to speak out his opinion, yet great conventicles are to be forbidden. and, therefore, those that are attached to another religion are, indeed, to be allowed to build as many temples as they please; yet these are to be small, and limited to a certain standard of size, and on sites at some little distance one from another. but it is very important, that the temples consecrated to the national religion should be large and costly, and that only patricians or senators should be allowed to administer its principal rites, and thus that patricians only be suffered to baptize, celebrate marriages, and lay on hands, and that in general they be recognized as the priests of the temples and the champions and interpreters of the national religion. but, for preaching, and to manage the church treasury and its daily business, let some persons be chosen from the commons by the senate itself, to be, as it were, the senate's deputies, and, therefore, bound to render it account of everything. 47. and these are points that concern the foundations of this sort of dominion; to which i will add some few others less essential indeed, but yet of great importance. namely, that the patricians, when they walk, should be distinguished by some special garment, or dress, and be saluted by some special title; and that every man of the commons should give way to them; and that, if any patrician has lost his property by some unavoidable misfortune, he should be restored to his old condition at the public expense; but if, on the contrary, it be proved that he has spent the same in presents, ostentation, gaming, debauchery, &c., or that he is insolvent, he must lose his dignity, and be held unworthy of every honour and office. for he, that cannot govern himself and his own private affairs, will much less be able to advise on public affairs. 48. those, whom the law compels to take an oath, will be much more cautious of perjury, if they are bidden to swear by the country's safety and liberty and by the supreme council, than if they are told to swear by god. for he who swears by god, gives as surety some private advantage to himself, whereof he is judge; but he, who by his oath gives as surety his country's liberty and safety, swears by what is the common advantage of all, whereof he is not judge, and if he perjures himself, thereby declares that he is his country's enemy. 49. academies, that are founded at the public expense, are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them. but in a free commonwealth arts and sciences will be best cultivated to the full, if everyone that asks leave is allowed to teach publicly, and that at his own cost and risk. but these and the like points i reserve for another place. [4] for here i determined to treat only such matters as concern an aristocratic dominion only. -----1. ought not this reference to be to chap. iii. sec. 6? 2. cf. chap. vi. sec. 10. 3. "this v. h. is pieter de la court (1618-85), an eminent publicist, who wrote under the initials d. c. (de la court), v. h. (van den hove, the dutch equivalent). he was a friend of john de witt, and opposed to the party of the statholders." -pollock's life and philosophy of spinoza, towards end of chap. x. 4. this promise is not kept by the author, no doubt owing to his not living to finish the work. -----------------------chapter ix. of aristocracy. continuation. hitherto we have considered an aristocracy, so far as it takes its name from one city, which is the head of the whole dominion. it is now time to treat of that, which is in the hands of more than one city, and which i think preferable to the former. but that we may notice its difference and its superiority, we will pass in review the foundations of dominion, one by one, rejecting those foundations, which are unsuited to the present kind, and laying in their place others for it to rest upon. 2. the cities, then, which enjoy the right of citizenship, must be so built and fortified, that, on the one hand, each city by itself may be unable to subsist without the rest, and that yet, on the other hand, it cannot desert the rest without great harm to the whole dominion. for thus they will always remain united. but cities, which are so constituted, that they can neither maintain themselves, nor be dangerous to the rest, are clearly not independent, but absolutely subject to the rest. 3. but the contents of the ninth and tenth sections of the last chapter are deduced from the general nature of aristocracy, as are also the proportion between the numbers of the patricians and the multitude, and the proper age and condition of those that are to be made patricians; so that on these points no difference can arise, whether the dominion be in the hands of one or more cities. but the supreme council must here be on a different footing. for if any city of the dominion were assigned for the meeting of this supreme council, it would in reality be the head of the dominion; and, therefore, either they would have to take turns, or a place would have to be assigned for this council, that has not the right of citizenship, and belongs equally to all. but either alternative is as difficult to effect, as it is easy to state; i mean, either that so many thousands of men should have to go often outside their cities, or that they should have to assemble sometimes in one place, sometimes in another. 4. but that we may conclude aright what should be done in this matter, and on what plan the councils of this dominion ought to be formed, from its own very nature and condition, these points are to be considered; namely, that every city has so much more right than a private man, as it excels him in power (chap. ii. sec. 4), and consequently that every city of this dominion has as much right within its walls, or the limits of its jurisdiction, as it has power; and, in the next place, that all the cities are mutually associated and united, not as under a treaty, but as forming one dominion, yet so that every city has so much more right as against the dominion than the others, as it exceeds the others in power. for he who seeks equality between unequals, seeks an absurdity. citizens, indeed, are rightly esteemed equal, because the power of each, compared with that of the whole dominion, is of no account. but each city's power constitutes a large part of the power of the dominion itself, and so much the larger, as the city itself is greater. and, therefore, the cities cannot all be held equal. but, as the power of each, so also its right should be estimated by its greatness. the bonds, however, by which they should be bound into one dominion, are above all a senate and a court of justice (chap. iv. sec. 1). but how by these bonds they are all to be so united, that each of them may yet remain, as far as possible, independent, i will here briefly show. 5. i suppose then, that the patricians of every city, who, according to its size, should be more, or fewer (sec. 3), have supreme right over their own city, and that, in that city's supreme council, they have supreme authority to fortify the city and enlarge its walls, to impose taxes, to pass and repeal laws, and, in general, to do everything which they judge necessary to their city's preservation and increase. but to manage the common business of the dominion, a senate is to be created on just the same footing as we described in the last chapter, so that there be between this senate and the former no difference, except that this has also authority to decide the disputes, which may arise between cities. for in this dominion, of which no city is head, it cannot be done by the supreme council. (see chap. vi. sec. 38.) 6. but, in this dominion, the supreme council is not to be called together, unless there is need to alter the form of the dominion itself, or on some difficult business, to which the senators shall think themselves unequal; and so it will very rarely happen, that all the patricians are summoned to council. for we have said (chap. viii. sec. 17), that the supreme council's function is to pass and repeal laws, and to choose the ministers of the dominion. but the laws, or general constitution of the whole dominion, ought not to be changed as soon as instituted. if, however, time and occasion suggest the institution of some new law or the change of one already ordained, the question may first be discussed in the senate, and after the agreement of the senate in the matter, then let envoys next be sent to the cities by the senate itself, to inform the patricians of every city of the opinion of the senate, and lastly, if the majority of the cities follow that opinion, it shall then remain good, but otherwise be of no effect. and this same order may be observed in choosing the generals of the army and the ambassadors to be sent to other realms, as also about decrees concerning the making of war or accepting conditions of peace. but in choosing the other public officials, since (as we showed in sec. 4) every city, as far as can be, ought to remain independent, and to have as much more right than the others in the dominion, as it exceeds them in power, the following order must necessarily be observed. the senators are to be chosen by the patricians of each city; that is, the patricians of one city are to elect in their own council a fixed number of senators from their colleagues of their own city, which number is to be to that of the patricians of that city as one to twelve (chap. viii. sec. 30); and they are to designate whom they will to be of the first, second, third, or other series; and in like manner the patricians of the other cities, in proportion to their number, are to choose more or fewer senators, and distribute them among the series, into a certain number of which we have said the senate is to be divided. (chap. viii. sec. 34.) by which means it will result, that in every series of senators there will be found senators of every city, more or fewer, according to its size. but the presidents and vice-presidents of the series, being fewer in number than the cities, are to be chosen by lot by the senate out of the consuls, who are to be appointed first. the same order is to be maintained in appointing the supreme judges of the dominion, namely, that the patricians of every city are to elect from their colleagues in proportion to their number more or fewer judges. and so it will be the case, that every city in choosing officials will be as independent as possible, and that each, in proportion to its power, will have the more right alike in the senate and the court of justice; supposing, that is, that the order observed by senate and court in deciding public affairs, and settling disputes is such in all respects, as we have described it in the thirty-third and thirty-fourth sections of the last chapter. [1] 7. next, the commanders of battalions and military tribunes are also to be chosen from the patricians. for as it is fair, that every city in proportion to its size should be bound to levy a certain number of soldiers for the general safety of the whole dominion, it is also fair, that from the patricians of every city in proportion to the number of regiments, which they are bound to maintain, they may appoint so many tribunes, captains, ensigns, etc., as are needed to discipline that part of the military, which they supply to the dominion. 8. no taxes are to be imposed by the senate on the subjects; but to meet the expenditure, which by decree of the senate is necessary to carry on public business, not the subjects, but the cities themselves are to be called to assessment by the senate, so that every city, in proportion to its size, should pay a larger or smaller share of the expense. and this share indeed is to be exacted by the patricians of every city from their own citizens in what way they please, either by compelling them to an assessment, or, as is much fairer, by imposing taxes on them. 9. further, although all the cities of this dominion are not maritime, nor the senators summoned from the maritime cities only, yet may the same emoluments be awarded to the senators, as we mentioned in the thirty-first section of the last chapter. to which end it will be possible to devise means, varying with the composition of the dominion, to link the cities to one another more closely. but the other points concerning the senate and the court of justice and the whole dominion in general, which i delivered in the last chapter, are to be applied to this dominion also. and so we see, that in a dominion which is in the hands of several cities, it will not be necessary to assign a fixed time or place for assembling the supreme council. but for the senate and court of justice a place is to be appointed in a village, or in a city, that has not the right of voting. but i return to those points, which concern the cities taken by themselves. 10. the order to be observed by the supreme council of a single city, in choosing officials of the dominion and of the city, and in making decrees, should be the same that i have delivered in the twenty-seventh and thirty-sixth sections of the last chapter. for the policy is the same here as it was there. next a council of syndics is to be formed, subordinate to the council of the city, and having the same relation to it as the council of syndics of the last chapter had to the council of the entire dominion, and let its functions within the limits of the city be also the same, and let it enjoy the same emoluments. but if a city, and consequently the number of its patricians be so small that it cannot create more than one syndic or two, which two are not enough to make a council, then the supreme council of the city is to appoint judges to assist the syndics in trials according to the matter at issue, or else the dispute must be referred to the supreme council of syndics. for from every city some also out of the syndics are to be sent to the place where the senate sits, to see that the constitution of the whole dominion is preserved unbroken, and they are to sit in the senate without the right of voting. 11. the consuls of the cities are likewise to be chosen by the patricians of their city, and are to constitute a sort of senate for it. but their number i cannot determine, nor yet do i think it necessary, since the city's business of great importance is transacted by its supreme council, and matters concerning the whole dominion by the great senate. but if they be few, it will be necessary that they give their votes in their council openly, and not by ballot, as in large councils. for in small councils, when votes are given secretly, by a little extra cunning one can easily detect the author of every vote, and in many ways deceive the less attentive. 12. besides, in every city judges are to be appointed by its supreme council, from whose sentence, however, let everyone but an openly convicted criminal or confessed debtor have a right of appeal to the supreme court of justice of the dominion. but this need not be pursued further. 13. it remains, therefore, to speak of the cities which are not independent. if these were founded in an actual province or district of the dominion, and their inhabitants are of the same nation and language, they ought of necessity, like villages, to be esteemed parts of the neighbouring cities, so that each of them should be under the government of this or that independent city. and the reason of this is, that the patricians are chosen by the supreme council, not of the dominion, but of every city, and in every city are more or fewer, according to the number of inhabitants within the limits of its jurisdiction (sec. 5). and so it is necessary, that the multitude of the city, which is not independent, be referred to the census of another which is independent, and depend upon the latter's government. but cities captured by right of war, and annexed to the dominion, are either to be esteemed associates in the dominion, and though conquered put under an obligation by that benefit, or else colonies to enjoy the right of citizenship are to be sent thither, and the natives removed elsewhere or utterly destroyed. 14. and these are the things, which touch the foundations of the dominion. but that its condition is better than that of the aristocracy, which is called after one city only, i conclude from this, namely, that the patricians of every city, after the manner of human desire, will be eager to keep, and if possible increase their right, both in their city and in the senate; and therefore will try, as far as possible, to attract the multitude to themselves, and consequently to make a stir in the dominion by good deeds rather than by fear, and to increase their own number; because the more numerous they are, the more senators they will choose out of their own council (sec. 6), and hence the more right (sec. 6) they will possess in the dominion. nor is it an objection, that while every city is consulting its own interest and suspecting the rest, they more often quarrel among themselves, and waste time in disputing. for if, while the romans are debating, saguntum is lost: [2] on the other hand, while a few are deciding everything in conformity with their own passions only, liberty and the general good are lost. for men's natural abilities are too dull to see through everything at once; but by consulting, listening, and debating, they grow more acute, and while they are trying all means, they at last discover those which they want, which all approve, but no one would have thought of in the first instance. but if anyone retorts, that the dominion of the dutch has not long endured without a count or one to fill his place, let him have this reply, that the dutch thought, that to maintain their liberty it was enough to abandon their count, and to behead the body of their dominion, but never thought of remoulding it, and left its limbs, just as they had been first constituted, so that the county of holland has remained without a count, like a headless body, and the actual dominion has lasted on without the name. and so it is no wonder that most of its subjects have not known, with whom the authority of the dominion lay. and even had this been otherwise, yet those who actually held dominion were far too few to govern the multitude and suppress their powerful adversaries. whence it has come to pass, that the latter have often been able to plot against them with impunity, and at last to overthrow them. and so the sudden overthrow of the said republic [3] has not arisen from a useless waste of time in debates, but from the misformed state of the said dominion and the fewness of its rulers. 15. this aristocracy in the hands of several cities is also preferable to the other, because it is not necessary, as in the first described, to provide against its whole supreme council being overpowered by a sudden attack, since (sec. 9) no time or place is appointed for its meeting. moreover, powerful citizens in this dominion are less to be feared. for where several cities enjoy liberty, it is not enough for him, who is making ready his way to dominion, to seize one city, in order to hold dominion over the rest. and, lastly, liberty under this dominion is common to more. for where one city reigns alone, there the advantage of the rest is only so far considered, as suits that reigning city. -----1. so the text: but the court of justice is not described till the thirty-seventh and following sections of chap. viii. 2. livy, "hist.," bk. xxi. chaps. vi. and following. 3. a.d. 1672. william henry, prince of orange, afterwards william iii. of england, was made statholder by a popular insurrection, consequent on the invasion of the french. -----------------------chapter x. of aristocracy. conclusion. having explained and made proof of the foundations of both kinds of aristocracy, it remains to inquire whether by reason of any fault they are liable to be dissolved or changed into another form. the primary cause, by which dominions of this kind are dissolved, is that, which that most acute florentine [1] observes in his "discourses on livy" (bk. iii. chap. i.), namely, that like a human body, "a dominion has daily added to it something that at some time or other needs to be remedied." and so, he says, it is necessary for something occasionally to occur, to bring back the dominion to that first principle, on which it was in the beginning established. and if this does not take place within the necessary time, its blemishes will go on increasing, till they cannot be removed, but with the dominion itself. and this restoration, he says, may either happen accidentally, or by the design and forethought of the laws or of a man of extraordinary virtue. and we cannot doubt, that this matter is of the greatest importance, and that, where provision has not been made against this inconvenience, the dominion will not be able to endure by its own excellence, but only by good fortune; and on the other hand that, where a proper remedy has been applied to this evil, it will not be possible for it to fall by its own fault, but only by some inevitable fate, as we shall presently show more clearly. the first remedy, that suggested itself for this evil, was to appoint every five years a supreme dictator for one or two months, who should have the right to inquire, decide, and make ordinances concerning the acts of the senators and of every official, and thereby to bring back the dominion to its first principle. but he who studies to avoid the inconveniences, to which a dominion is liable, must apply remedies that suit its nature, and can be derived from its own foundations; otherwise in his wish to avoid charybdis he falls upon scylla. it is, indeed, true that all, as well rulers as ruled, ought to be restrained by fear of punishment or loss, so that they may not do wrong with impunity or even advantage; but, on the other hand, it is certain, that if this fear becomes common to good and bad men alike, the dominion must be in the utmost danger. now as the authority of a dictator is absolute, it cannot fail to be a terror to all, especially if, as is here required, he were appointed at a stated time, because in that case every ambitious man would pursue this office with the utmost energy; and it is certain that in time of peace virtue is thought less of than wealth, so that the more haughty a man he is, the more easily he will get office. and this perhaps is why the romans used to make a dictator at no fixed time, but under pressure of some accidental necessity. though for all that, to quote cicero's words, "the tumour of a dictator was displeasing to the good." [2] and to be sure, as this authority of a dictator is quite royal, it is impossible for the dominion to change into a monarchy without great peril to the republic, although it happen for ever so short a time. furthermore, if no fixed time were appointed for creating a dictator, no notice would be paid to the interval between one dictator and another, which is the very thing that we said was most to be observed; and the whole thing would be exceedingly vague, and therefore easily neglected. unless, then, this authority of a dictator be eternal and fixed, and therefore impossible to be conferred on one man without destroying the form of dominion, the dictatorial authority itself, and consequently the safety and preservation of the republic will be very uncertain. 2. but, on the other hand, we cannot doubt (chap. vi. sec. 3), that, if without destroying the form of dominion, the sword of the dictator might be permanent, and only terrible to the wicked, evils will never grow to such a pitch, that they cannot be eradicated or amended. in order, therefore, to secure all these conditions, we have said, that there is to be a council of syndics subordinate to the supreme council, to the end that the sword of the dictator should be permanent in the hands not of any natural person, but of a civil person, whose members are too numerous to divide the dominion amongst themselves (chap. ix. secs. 1, 2), or to combine in any wickedness. to which is to be added, that they are forbidden to fill any other office in the dominion, that they are not the paymasters of the soldiery, and, lastly, that they are of an age to prefer actual security to things new and perilous. wherefore the dominion is in no danger from them, and consequently they cannot, and in fact will not be a terror to the good, but only to the wicked. for as they are less powerful to accomplish criminal designs, so are they more so to restrain wickedness. for, not to mention that they can resist it in its beginnings (since the council lasts for ever), they are also sufficiently numerous to dare to accuse and condemn this or that influential man without fear of his enmity; especially as they vote by ballot, and the sentence is pronounced in the name of the entire council. 3. but the tribunes of the commons at rome were likewise regularly appointed; but they were too weak to restrain the power of a scipio, and had besides to submit to the senate their plans for the public welfare, [3] which also frequently eluded them, by contriving that the one whom the senators were least afraid of should be most popular with the commons. besides which, the tribunes' authority was supported against the patricians by the favour of the commons. and whenever they convoked the commons, it looked as if they were raising a sedition rather than assembling a council. which inconveniences have certainly no place in the dominion which we have described in the last two chapters. 4. however, this authority of the syndics will only be able to secure the preservation of the form of the dominion, and thus to prevent the laws from being broken, or anyone from gaining by transgressing; but will by no means suffice to prevent the growth of vices, which cannot be forbidden by law, such as those into which men fall from excess of leisure, and from which the ruin of a dominion not uncommonly follows. for men in time of peace lay aside fear, and gradually from being fierce savages become civilized or humane, and from being humane become soft and sluggish, and seek to excel one another not in virtue, but in ostentation and luxury. and hence they begin to put off their native manners and to put on foreign ones, that is, to become slaves. 5. to avoid these evils many have tried to establish sumptuary laws; but in vain. for all laws which can be broken without any injury to another, are counted but a laughing-stock, and are so far from bridling the desires and lusts of men, that on the contrary they stimulate them. for "we are ever eager for forbidden fruit, and desire what is denied." [4] nor do idle men ever lack ability to elude the laws which are instituted about things, which cannot absolutely be forbidden, as banquets, plays, ornaments, and the like, of which only the excess is bad; and that is to be judged according to the individual's fortune, so that it cannot be determined by any general law. 6. i conclude, therefore, that the common vices of peace, of which we are here speaking, are never to be directly, but indirectly forbidden; that is, by laying such foundations of dominion, that the result may be, that the majority, i do not say are anxious to live wisely (for that is impossible), but are guided by those passions whence the republic has most advantage. and therefore the chief point to be studied is, that the rich may be, if not thrifty, yet avaricious. for there is no doubt, that, if this passion of avarice, which is general and lasting, be encouraged by the desire of glory, most people would set their chief affection upon increasing their property without disgrace, in order to acquire honours, while avoiding extreme infamy. if then we examine the foundations of both kinds of aristocracy which i have explained in the last two chapters, we shall see, that this very result follows from them. for the number of rulers in both is so large, that most of the rich have access to government and to the offices of the dominion open to them. 7. but if it be further ordained (as we said, chap. viii. sec. 47), that patricians who are insolvent be deposed from patrician rank, and that those who have lost their property by misfortune be restored to their former position, there is no doubt that all will try their best to keep their property. moreover, they will never desire foreign costumes, nor disdain their native ones, if it is by law appointed, that patricians and candidates for office should be distinguished by a special robe, concerning which see chap. viii. secs. 25, 47. and besides these, other means may be devised in every dominion agreeable to the nature of its situation and the national genius, and herein it is above all to be studied, that the subjects may do their duty rather spontaneously than under pressure of the law. 8. for a dominion, that looks no farther than to lead men by fear, will be rather free from vices, than possessed of virtue. but men are so to be led, that they may think that they are not led, but living after their own mind, and according to their free decision; and so that they are restrained only by love of liberty, desire to increase their property, and hope of gaining the honours of the dominion. but effigies, triumphs, and other incitements to virtue, are signs rather of slavery than liberty. for rewards of virtue are granted to slaves, not freemen. i admit, indeed, that men are very much stimulated by these incitements; but, as in the first instance, they are awarded to great men, so afterwards, with the growth of envy, they are granted to cowards and men swollen with the extent of their wealth, to the great indignation of all good men. secondly, those, who boast of their ancestors' effigies and triumphs, think they are wronged, if they are not preferred to others. lastly, not to mention other objections, it is certain that equality, which once cast off the general liberty is lost, can by no means be maintained, from the time that peculiar honours are by public law decreed to any man renowned for his virtue. 9. after which premisses, let us now see whether dominions of this kind can be destroyed by any cause to which blame attaches. but if any dominion can be everlasting, that will necessarily be so, whose constitution being once rightly instituted remains unbroken. for the constitution is the soul of a dominion. therefore, if it is preserved, so is the dominion. but a constitution cannot remain unconquered, unless it is defended alike by reason and common human passion: otherwise, if it relies only on the help of reason, it is certainly weak and easily overcome. now since the fundamental constitution of both kinds of aristocracy has been shown to agree with reason and common human passion, we can therefore assert that these, if any kinds of dominion, will be eternal, in other words, that they cannot be destroyed by any cause to which blame attaches, but only by some inevitable fate. 10. but it may still be objected to us, that, although the constitution of dominion above set forth is defended by reason and common human passion, yet for all that it may at some time be overpowered. for there is no passion, that is not sometimes overpowered, by a stronger contrary one; for we frequently see the fear of death overpowered by the greed for another's property. men, who are running away in panic fear from the enemy, can be stopped by the fear of nothing else, but throw themselves into rivers, or rush into fire, to escape the enemy's steel. in whatever degree, therefore, a commonwealth is rightly ordered, and its laws well made; yet in the extreme difficulties of a dominion, when all, as sometimes happens, are seized by a sort of panic terror, all, without regard to the future or the laws, approve only that which their actual fear suggests, all turn towards the man who is renowned for his victories, and set him free from the laws, and (establishing thereby the worst of precedents), continue him in command, and entrust to his fidelity all affairs of state: and this was, in fact, the cause of the destruction of the roman dominion. but to answer this objection, i say, first, that in a rightly constituted republic such terror does not arise but from a due cause. and so such terror and consequent confusion can be attributed to no cause avoidable by human foresight. in the next place, it is to be observed, that in a republic such as we have above described, it is impossible (chap. viii. secs. 9, 25) for this or that man so to distinguish himself by the report of his virtue, as to turn towards himself the attention of all, but he must have many rivals favoured by others. and so, although from terror there arise some confusion in the republic, yet no one will be able to elude the law and declare the election of anyone to an illegal military command, without its being immediately disputed by other candidates; and to settle the dispute, it will, in the end, be necessary to have recourse to the constitution ordained once for all, and approved by all, and to order the affairs of the dominion according to the existing laws. i may therefore absolutely assert, that as the aristocracy, which is in the hands of one city only, so especially that which is in the hands of several, is everlasting, or, in other words, can be dissolved or changed into another form by no internal cause. -----1. machiavelli. 2. cic. ad quint. grat. iii. 8, 4. the better reading is "rumour," not "tumour." "the good" in such a passage means the aristocratic party. 3. not by law, except before b.c. 287 and in the interval between the dictatorship of sulla and the consulship of pompey and crassus. but in the golden age of the republic the senate in fact controlled the tribunes. 4. ovid, "amores," iii. iv. 17. -----------------------chapter xi. of democracy. i pass, at length, to the third and perfectly absolute dominion, which we call democracy. the difference between this and aristocracy consists, we have said, chiefly in this, that in an aristocracy it depends on the supreme council's will and free choice only, that this or that man is made a patrician, so that no one has the right to vote or fill public offices by inheritance, and that no one can by right demand this right, as is the case in the dominion, whereof we are now treating. for all, who are born of citizen parents, or on the soil of the country, or who have deserved well of the republic, or have accomplished any other conditions upon which the law grants to a man right of citizenship; they all, i say, have a right to demand for themselves the right to vote in the supreme council and to fill public offices, nor can they be refused it, but for crime or infamy. 2. if, then, it is by a law appointed, that the elder men only, who have reached a certain year of their age, or the first-born only, as soon as their age allows, or those who contribute to the republic a certain sum of money, shall have the right of voting in the supreme council and managing the business of the dominion; then, although on this system the result might be, that the supreme council would be composed of fewer citizens than that of the aristocracy of which we treated above, yet, for all that, dominions of this kind should be called democracies, because in them the citizens, who are destined to manage affairs of state, are not chosen as the best by the supreme council, but are destined to it by a law. and although for this reason dominions of this kind, that is, where not the best, but those who happen by chance to be rich, or who are born eldest, are destined to govern, are thought inferior to an aristocracy; yet, if we reflect on the practice or general condition of mankind, the result in both cases will come to the same thing. for patricians will always think those the best, who are rich, or related to themselves in blood, or allied by friendship. and, indeed, if such were the nature of patricians, that they were free from all passion, and guided by mere zeal for the public welfare in choosing their patrician colleagues, no dominion could be compared with aristocracy. but experience itself teaches us only too well, that things pass in quite a contrary manner, above all, in oligarchies, where the will of the patricians, from the absence of rivals, is most free from the law. for there the patricians intentionally keep away the best men from the council, and seek for themselves such colleagues in it, as hang upon their words, so that in such a dominion things are in a much more unhappy condition, because the choice of patricians depends entirely upon the arbitrary will of a few, which is free or unrestrained by any law. but i return to my subject. 3. from what has been said in the last section, it is manifest that we can conceive of various kinds of democracy. but my intention is not to treat of every kind, but of that only, "wherein all, without exception, who owe allegiance to the laws of the country only, and are further independent and of respectable life, have the right of voting in the supreme council and of filling the offices of the dominion." i say expressly. "who owe allegiance to the laws of the country only," to exclude foreigners, who are treated as being under another's dominion. i added, besides, "who are independent," except in so far as they are under allegiance to the laws of the dominion, to exclude women and slaves, who are under the authority of men and masters, and also children and wards, as long as they are under the authority of parents and guardians. i said, lastly, "and of respectable life," to exclude, above all, those that are infamous from crime, or some disgraceful means of livelihood. 4. but, perhaps, someone will ask, whether women are under men's authority by nature or institution? for if it has been by mere institution, then we had no reason compelling us to exclude women from government. but if we consult experience itself, we shall find that the origin of it is in their weakness. for there has never been a case of men and women reigning together, but wherever on the earth men are found, there we see that men rule, and women are ruled, and that on this plan, both sexes live in harmony. but on the other hand, the amazons, who are reported to have held rule of old, did not suffer men to stop in their country, but reared only their female children, killing the males to whom they gave birth. [1] but if by nature women were equal to men, and were equally distinguished by force of character and ability, in which human power and therefore human right chiefly consist; surely among nations so many and different some would be found, where both sexes rule alike, and others, where men are ruled by women, and so brought up, that they can make less use of their abilities. and since this is nowhere the case, one may assert with perfect propriety, that women have not by nature equal right with men: but that they necessarily give way to men, and that thus it cannot happen, that both sexes should rule alike, much less that men should be ruled by women. but if we further reflect upon human passions, how men, in fact, generally love women merely from the passion of lust, and esteem their cleverness and wisdom in proportion to the excellence of their beauty, and also how very ill-disposed men are to suffer the women they love to show any sort of favour to others, and other facts of this kind, we shall easily see that men and women cannot rule alike without great hurt to peace. but of this enough. -----1. justin, histories, ii. 4. -----------------------end 1890 the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde chapter i the studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. from the corner of the divan of persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, lord henry wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters of tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. the sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. the dim roar of london was like the burdon note of a distant organ. in the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, basil hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures. as the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. but he suddenly started up, and, closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake. "it is your best work, basil, the best thing you have ever done," said lord henry, languidly. "you must certainly send it next year to the grosvenor. the academy is too large and too vulgar. whenever i have gone there, there have either been so many people that i have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that i have not been able to see the people, which was worse. the grosvenor is really the only place." "i don't think i shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at oxford. "no; i won't send it anywhere." lord henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette. "not send it anywhere? my dear fellow, why? have you any reason? what odd chaps you painters are! you do anything in the world to gain a reputation. as soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. it is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. a portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in england, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion." "i know you will laugh at me," he replied, "but i really can't exhibit it. i have put too much of myself into it." lord henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed. "yes, i knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same." "too much of yourself in it! upon my word, basil, i didn't know you were so vain; and i really can't see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. why, my dear basil, he is a narcissus, and youwell, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. but beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. the moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. how perfectly hideous they are! except, of course, in the church. but then in the church they don't think. a bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. i feel quite sure of that. he is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should always be here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. don't flatter yourself, basil, you are not in the least like him." "you don't understand me, harry," answered the artist. "of course i am not like him. i know that perfectly well. indeed, i should be sorry to look like him. you shrug your shoulders? i am telling you the truth. there is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. it is better not to be different from one's fellows. the ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. they can sit at their ease and gape at the play. if they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. they live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. they neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it, from alien hands. your rank and wealth, harry; my brains, such as they aremy art, whatever it may be worth; dorian gray's good lookswe shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly." "dorian gray? is that his name?" asked lord henry, walking across the studio towards basil hallward. "yes, that is his name. i didn't intend to tell it to you." "but why not?" "oh, i can't explain. when i like people immensely i never tell their names to any one. it is like surrendering a part of them. i have grown to love secrecy. it seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. the commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. when i leave town now i never tell my people where i am going. if i did, i would lose all my pleasure. it is a silly habit, i dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one's life. i suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?" "not at all," answered lord henry, "not at all, my dear basil. you seem to forget that i am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. i never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what i am doing. when we meetwe do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the duke'swe tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. my wife is very good at itmuch better, in fact, than i am. she never gets confused over her dates, and i always do. but when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. i sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at me." "i hate the way you talk about your married life, harry," said basil hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. "i believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. you are an extraordinary fellow. you never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. your cynicism is simply a pose." "being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose i know," cried lord henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the garden together, and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. the sunlight slipped over the polished leaves. in the grass, white daisies were tremulous. after a pause, lord henry pulled out his watch. "i am afraid i must be going, basil," he murmured, "and before i go, i insist on your answering a question i put to you some time ago." "what is that?" said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground. "you know quite well." "i do not, harry." "well, i will tell you what it is. i want you to explain to me why you won't exhibit dorian gray's picture. i want the real reason." "i told you the real reason." "no, you did not. you said it was because there was too much of yourself in it. now, that is childish." "harry," said basil hallward, looking him straight in the face, "every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. the sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. it is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. the reason i will not exhibit this picture is that i am afraid that i have shown in it the secret of my own soul." lord henry laughed. "and what is that?" he asked. "i will tell you," said hallward; but an expression of perplexity came over his face. "i am all expectation, basil," continued his companion, glancing at him. "oh, there is really very little to tell, harry," answered the painter; "and i am afraid you will hardly understand it. perhaps vou will hardly believe it." lord henry smiled, and, leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from the grass, and examined it. "i am quite sure i shall understand it," he replied, gazing intently at the little golden white-feathered disk, "and as for believing things, i can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible." the wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. a grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. lord henry felt as if he could hear basil hallward's heart beating, and wondered what was coming. "the story is simply this," said the painter after some time. "two months ago i went to a crush at lady brandon's. you know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages. with an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized. well, after i had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to huge overdressed dowagers and tedious academicians, i suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at me. i turned halfway round, and saw dorian gray for the first time. when our eyes met, i felt that i was growing pale. a curious sensation of terror came over me. i knew that i had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if i allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. i did not want any external influence in my life. you know yourself, harry, how independent i am by nature. i have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till i met dorian gray. thenbut i don't know how to explain it to you. something seemed to tell me that i was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. i had a strange feeling that fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. i grew afraid, and turned to quit the room. it was not conscience that made me do it: it was a sort of cowardice. i take no credit to myself for trying to escape." "conscience and cowardice are really the same things, basil. conscience is the trade-name of the firm. that is all." "i don't believe that, harry, and i don't believe you do either. however, whatever was my motiveand it may have been pride, for i used to be very proudi certainly struggled to the door. there, of course, i stumbled against lady brandon. 'you are not going to run away so soon, mr. hallward?' she screamed out. you know her curiously shrill voice?" "yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said lord henry, pulling the daisy to bits with his long, nervous fingers. "i could not get rid of her. she brought me up to royalties, and people with stars and garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and parrot noses. she spoke of me as her dearest friend. i had only met her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. i believe some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century standard of immortality. suddenly i found myself face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely stirred me. we were quite close, almost touching. our eyes met again. it was reckless of me, but i asked lady brandon to introduce me to him. perhaps it was not so reckless, after all. it was simply inevitable. we would have spoken to each other without any introduction. i am sure of that. dorian told me so afterwards. he, too, felt that we were destined to know each other." "and how did lady brandon describe this wonderful young man?" asked his companion. "i know she goes in for giving a rapid precis of all her guests. i remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-faced old gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to everybody in the room, the most astounding details. i simply fled. i like to find out people for myself. but lady brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. she either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants to know." "poor lady brandon! you are hard on her, harry!" said hallward, listlessly. "my dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in opening a restaurant. how could i admire her? but tell me, what did she say about mr. dorian gray?" "oh, something like 'charming boypoor dear mother and i absolutely inseparable. quite forget what he doesafraid hedoesn't do anythingoh, yes, plays the pianoor is it the violin, dear mr. gray?' neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at once." "laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one," said the young lord, plucking another daisy. hallward shook his head. "you don't understand what friendship is, harry," he murmured"or what enmity is, for that matter. you like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one." "how horribly unjust of you!" cried lord henry, tilting his hat back, and looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer sky. "yes, horribly unjust of you. i make a great difference between people. i choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. a man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. i have not got one who is a fool, they are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. is that very vain of me? i think it is rather vain." "i should think it was, harry. but according to your category i must be merely an acquaintance." "my dear old basil, you are much more than an acquaintance." "and much less than a friend. a sort of brother, i suppose?" "oh, brothers! i don't care for brothers. my elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else." "harry!" exclaimed hallward, frowning. "my dear fellow, i am not quite serious. but i can't help detesting my relations. i suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves. i quite sympathize with the rage of the english democracy against what they call the vices of the upper orders. the masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and immorality should be their own special property, and that if any one of us makes an ass of himself he is poaching on their preserves. when poor southwark got into the divorce court, their indignation was quite magnificent. and yet i don't suppose that ten per cent of the proletariat live correctly." "i don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more, harry, i feel sure that you don't either." lord henry stroked his pointed brown beard, and tapped the toe of his patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. "how english you are, basil! that is the second time you have made that observation. if one puts forward an idea to a true englishmanalways a rash thing to dohe never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. the only thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself. now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices. however, i don't propose to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. i like persons better than principles, and i like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. tell me more about mr. dorian gray. how often do you see him?" "every day. i couldn't be happy if i didn't see him every day. he is absolutely necessary to me." "how extraordinary! i thought you would never care for anything but your art." "he is all my art to me now," said the painter, gravely. "i sometimes think, harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the world's history. the first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. what the invention of oil-painting was to the venetians, the face of antinous was to late greek sculpture, and the face of dorian gray will some day be to me. it is not merely that i paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. of course i have done all that. but he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. i won't tell you that i am dissatisfied with what i have done of him or that his beauty is such that art cannot express it. there is nothing that art cannot express, and i know that the work i have done, since i met dorian gray, is good work, is the best work of my life. but in some curious wayi wonder will you understand me?his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. i see things differently, i think of them differently. i can now re-create life in a way that was hidden from me before. 'a dream of form in days of thought:'who is it who says that? i forget; but it is what dorian gray has been to me. the merely visible presence of this ladfor he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twentyhis merely visible presenceah! i wonder can you realize all that that means? unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is greek. the harmony of soul and bodyhow much that is! we in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void. harry! if you only knew what dorian gray is to me! you remember that landscape of mine, for which agnew offered me such a huge price, but which i would not part with? it is one of the best things i have ever done. and why is it so? because, while i was painting it, dorian gray sat beside me. some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life i saw in the plain woodland the wonder i had always looked for, and always missed." "basil, this is extraordinary! i must see dorian gray." hallward got up from his seat, and walked up and down the garden. after some time he came back. "harry," he said, "dorian gray is to me simply a motive in art. you might see nothing in him. i see everything in him. he is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. he is a suggestion, as i have said, of a new manner. i find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours. that is all." "then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked lord henry. "because, without intending it, i have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, i have never cared to speak to him. he knows nothing about it. he shall never know anything about it. but the world might guess it; and i will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. my heart shall never be put under their microscope. there is too much of myself in the thing, harrytoo much of myself!" "poets are not so scrupulous as you are. they know how useful passion is for publication. nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions." "i hate them for it," cried hallward. "an artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. we live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. we have lost the abstract sense of beauty. some day i will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of dorian gray." "i think you are wrong, basil, but i won't argue with you. it is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. tell me, is dorian gray very fond of you?" the painter considered for a few moments. "he likes me," he answered after a pause; "i know he likes me. of course i flatter him dreadfully. i find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that i know i shall be sorry for having said. as a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. then i feel, harry, that i have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day." "days in summer, basil, are apt to linger," murmured lord henry. "perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. it is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. that accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. in the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. the thoroughly well-informed manthat is the modern idea. and the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. it is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value. i think you will tire first, all the same. some day you will look at your friend and he will seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won't like his tone of colour, or something. you will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. the next time he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. it will be a great pity, for it will alter you. what you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic." "harry, don't talk like that. as long as i live, the personality of dorian gray will dominate me. you can't feel what i feel. you change too often." "ah, my dear basil, that is exactly why i can feel it. those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies." and lord henry struck a light on a dainty silver case, and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and satisfied air, as if he had summed up the world in a phrase. there was a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows. how pleasant it was in the garden! and how delightful other people's emotions were!much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. one's own soul, and the passions of one's friendsthose were the fascinating things in life. he pictured to himself with silent amusement the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with basil hallward. had he gone to his aunt's, he would have been sure to have met lord goodbody there, and the whole conversation would have been about the feeding of the poor, and the necessity for model lodging-houses. each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. the rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. it was charming to have escaped all that! as he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. he turned to hallward, and said, "my dear fellow, i have just remembered." "remembered what, harry?" "where i heard the name of dorian gray." "where was it?" asked hallward, with a slight frown. "don't look so angry, basil. it was at my aunt, lady agatha's. she told me she had discovered a wonderful young man, who was going to help her in the east end, and that his name was dorian gray. i am bound to state that she never told me he was good-looking. women have no appreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not. she said that he was very earnest, and had a beautiful nature. i at once pictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, horribly freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. i wish i had known it was your friend." "i am very glad you didn't, harry." "why?" "i don't want you to meet him." "you don't want me to meet him?" "no." "mr. dorian gray is in the studio, sir," said the butler, coming into the garden. "you must introduce me now," cried lord henry, laughing. the painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight. "ask mr. gray to wait, parker: i shall be in in a few moments." the man bowed, and went up the walk. then he looked at lord henry. "dorian gray is my dearest friend," he said. "he has a simple and beautiful nature. your aunt was quite right in what she said of him. don't spoil him. don't try to influence him. your influence would be bad. the world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it. don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm it possesses; my life as an artist depends on him. mind, harry, i trust you." he spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung out of him almost against his will. "what nonsense you talk!" said lord henry, smiling, and, taking hallward by the arm, he almost led him into the house. chapter ii as they entered they saw dorian gray. he was seated at the piano, with his back to them, turning over the pages of a volume of schumann's "forest scenes." "you must lend me these, basil," he cried. "i want to learn them. they are perfectly charming." "that depends entirely on how you sit to-day, dorian." "oh, i am tired of sitting, and i don't want a life-sized portrait of myself," answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool, in a wilful, petulant manner. when he caught sight of lord henry, a faint blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. "i beg your pardon, basil, but i didn't know you had any one with you." "this is lord henry wotton, dorian, an old oxford friend of mine. i have just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you have spoiled everything." "you have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, mr. gray," said lord henry, stepping forward and extending his hand. "my aunt has often spoken to me about you. you are one of her favourites, and, i am afraid, one of her victims, also." "i am in lady agatha's black books at present," answered dorian, with a funny look of penitence. "i promised to go to a club in whitechapel with her last tuesday, and i really forgot all about it. we were to have played a duet togetherthree duets, i believe. i don't know what she will say to me. i am far too frightened to call." "oh, i will make your peace with my aunt. she is quite devoted to you. and i don't think it really matters about your not being there. the audience probably thought it was a duet. when aunt agatha sits down to the piano she makes quite enough noise for two people." "that is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me," answered dorian, laughing. lord henry looked at him. yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely-curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. there was something in his face that made one trust him at once. all the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate purity. one felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. no wonder basil hallward worshipped him. "you are too charming to go in for philanthropy, mr. grayfar too charming." and lord henry flung himself down on the divan, and opened his cigarette-case. the painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes ready. he was looking worried, and when he heard lord henry's last remark he glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said, "harry, i want to finish this picture to-day. would vou think it awfully rude of me if i asked you to go away?" lord henry smiled, and looked at dorian gray. "am i to go, mr. gray?" he asked. "oh, please don't, lord henry. i see that basil is in one of his sulky moods; and i can't bear him when he sulks. besides, i want you to tell me why i should not go in for philanthropy." "i don't know that i shall tell you that, mr. gray. it is so tedious a subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. but i certainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. you don't really mind, basil, do you? you have often told me that you liked your sitters to have some one to chat to." hallward bit his lip. "if dorian wishes it, of course you must stay. dorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself." lord henry took up his hat and gloves. "you are very pressing, basil, but i am afraid i must go. i have promised to meet a man at the orleans. good-bye, mr. gray. come and see me some afternoon in curzon street. i am nearly always at home at five o'clock. write to me when you are coming. i should be sorry to miss you." "basil," cried dorian gray, "if lord henry wotton goes i shall go too. you never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. ask him to stay. i insist upon it." "stay, harry, to oblige dorian, and to oblige me," said hallward, gazing intently at his picture. "it is quite true, i never talk when i am working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for my unfortunate sitters. i beg you to stay." "but what about my man at the orleans?" the painter laughed. "i don't think there will be any difficulty about that. sit down again, harry. and now, dorian, get up on the platform, and don't move about too much, or pay any attention to what lord henry says. he has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of myself." dorian gray stepped up on the dais, with the air of a young greek martyr, and made a little moue of discontent to lord henry, to whom he had rather taken a fancy. he was so unlike basil. they made a delightful contrast. and he had such a beautiful voice. after a few moments he said to him, "have you really a very bad influence, lord henry? as bad as basil says?" "there is no such thing as a good influence, mr. gray. all influence is immoralimmoral from the scientific point of view." "why?" "because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. he does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. his virtues are not real to him. his sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. he becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. the aim of life is self-development. to realize one's nature perfectlythat is what each of us is here for. people are afraid of themselves, nowadays. they have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. of course they are charitable. they feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. but their own souls starve, and are naked. courage has gone out of our race. perhaps we never really had it. the terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of god, which is the secret of religionthese are the two things that govern us. and yet--" "just turn your head a little more to the right, dorian, like a good boy," said the painter, deep in his work, and conscious only that a look had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before. "and yet," continued lord henry, in his low, musical voice, and with that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of him, and that he had even in his eton days, "i believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dreami believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the hellenic idealto something finer, richer, than the hellenic ideal, it may be. but the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. the mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. we are punished for our refusals. every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. the body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. it has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. it is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. you, mr. gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame-" "stop!" faltered dorian gray, "stop! you bewilder me. i don't know what to say. there is some answer to you, but i cannot find it. don't speak. let me think. or, rather, let me try not to think." for nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips, and eyes strangely bright. he was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him. yet they seemed to him to have come really from himself. the few words that basil's friend had said to himwords spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in themhad touched some secret chord that had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses. music had stirred him like that. music had troubled him many times. but music was not articulate. it was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. words! mere words! how terrible they were! how clear, and vivid, and cruel. one could not escape from them. and yet what a subtle magic there was in them. they seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. mere words! was there anything so real as words? yes, there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. he understood them now. life suddenly had become fiery-coloured to him. it seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. why had he not known it? with his subtle smile, lord henry watched him. he knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing. he felt intensely interested. he was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered whether dorian gray was passing through a similar experience. he had merely shot an arrow into the air. had it hit the mark? how fascinating the lad was! hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate, comes only from strength. he was unconscious of the silence. "basil, i am tired of standing," cried dorian gray, suddenly. "i must go out and sit in the garden. the air is stifling here." "my dear fellow, i am so sorry. when i am painting, i can't think of anything else. but you never sat better. you were perfectly still. and i have caught the effect i wantedthe half-parted lips and the bright look in the eyes. i don't know what harry has been saying to you, but he has certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. i suppose he has been paying you compliments. you mustn't believe a word that he says." "he has certainly not been paying me compliments. perhaps that is the reason that i don't believe anything he has told me." "you know you believe it all," said lord henry, looking at him with his dreamy, languorous eyes. "i will go out to the garden with you. it is horribly hot in the studio. basil, let us have something iced to drink, something with strawberries in it." "certainly, harry. just touch the bell, and when parker comes i will tell him what you want. i have got to work up this background, so i will join you later on. don't keep dorian too long. i have never been in better form for painting than i am to-day. this is going to be my masterpiece. it is my masterpiece as it stands." lord henry went out to the garden, and found dorian gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. he came close to him, and put his hand upon his shoulder. "you are quite right to do that," he murmured. "nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul." the lad started and drew back. he was bare-headed, and the leaves had tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. there was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are suddenly awakened. his finely-chiselled nostrils quivered, and some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling. "yes," continued lord henry, "that is one of the great secrets of lifeto cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. you are a wonderful creation. you know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know." dorian gray frowned and turned his head away. he could not help liking the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. his romantic olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. there was something in his low, languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. his cool, white, flower-like hands, even, had a curious charm. they moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own. but he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself? he had known basil hallward for months, but the friendship between them had never altered him. suddenly there had come some one across his life who seemed to have disclosed to him life's mystery. and, yet, what was there to be afraid of? he was not a schoolboy or a girl. it was absurd to be frightened. "let us go and sit in the shade," said lord henry. "parker has brought out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare you will be quite spoiled, and basil will never paint you again. you really must not allow yourself to become sunburnt. it would be unbecoming." "what can it matter?" cried dorian gray, laughing, as he sat down on the seat at the end of the garden. "it should matter everything to you, mr. gray." "why?" "because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having." "i don't feel that, lord henry." "no, you don't feel it now. some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. now, wherever you go, you charm the world. will it always be so?... you have a wonderfully beautiful face, mr. gray. don't frown. you have. and beauty is a form of geniusis higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. it is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. it cannot be questioned. it has its divine right of sovereignty. it makes princes of those who have it. you smile? ah! when you have lost it you won't smile.... people say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. that may be so. but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. to me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. it is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. the true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.... yes, mr. gray, the gods have been good to you. but what the gods give they quickly take away. you have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. when your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. you will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. you will suffer horribly.... ah! realize your youth while you have it. don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. these are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. live! live the wonderful life that is in you! let nothing be lost upon you. be always searching for new sensations. be afraid of nothing.... a new hedonismthat is what our century wants. you might be its visible symbol. with your personality there is nothing you could not do. the world belongs to you for a season.... the moment i met you i saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you really might be. there was so much in you that charmed me that i felt i must tell you something about yourself. i thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. for there is such a little time that your youth will lastsuch a little time. the common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. the laburnum will be as yellow next june as it is now. in a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. but we never get back our youth. the pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. our limbs fail, our senses rot. we degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. youth! youth! there is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!" dorian gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. the spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. a furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of its tiny blossoms. he watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. after a time the bee flew away. he saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a tyrian convolvulus. the flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro. suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio, and made staccato signs for them to come in. they turned to each other, and smiled. "i am waiting," he cried. "do come in. the light is quite perfect, and you can bring your drinks." they rose up, and sauntered down the walk together. two green-and-white butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of the garden a thrush began to sing. "you are glad you have met me, mr. gray," said lord henry, looking at him. "yes, i am glad now. i wonder shall i always be glad?" "always! that is a dreadful word. it makes me shudder when i hear it. women are so fond of using it. they spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. it is a meaningless word, too. the only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer." as they entered the studio, dorian gray put his hand upon lord henry's arm. "in that case, let our friendship be a caprice," he murmured, flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and resumed his pose. lord henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him. the sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that broke the stillness, except when, now and then, hallward stepped back to look at his work from a distance. in the slanting beams that streamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. the heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything. after about a quarter of an hour hallward stopped painting, looked for a long time at dorian gray, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of one of his huge brushes, and frowning. "it is quite finished," he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in long vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas. lord henry came over and examined the picture. it was certainly a wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well. "my dear fellow, i congratulate you most warmly," he said. "it is the finest portrait of modern times. mr. gray, come over and look at yourself." the lad started, as if awakened from some dream. "is it really finished?" he murmured, stepping down from the platform. "quite finished," said the painter. "and you have sat splendidly to-day. i am awfully obliged to you." "that is entirely due to me," broke in lord henry. "isn't it, mr. gray?" dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned towards it. when he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. a look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time. he stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of his words. the sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. he had never felt it before. basil hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the charming exaggerations of friendship. he had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them. they had not influenced his nature. then had come lord henry wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. that had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him. yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizened, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. the scarlet would pass away from his lips, and the gold steal from his hair. the life that was to make his soul would mar his body. he would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth. as he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife, and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. his eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. he felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart. "don't you like it?" cried hallward at last, stung a little by the lad's silence, not understanding what it meant. "of course he likes it," said lord henry. "who wouldn't like it? it is one of the greatest things in modern art. i will give you anything you like to ask for it. i must have it." "it is not my property, harry." "whose property is it?" "dorian's, of course," answered the painter. "he is a very lucky fellow." "how sad it is!" murmured dorian gray, with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "how sad it is! i shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. but this picture will remain always young. it will never be older than this particular day of june.... if it were only the other way! if it were i who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! for thatfor thati would give everything! yes, there is nothing in the whole world i would not give! i would give my soul for that!" "you would hardly care for such an arrangement, basil," cried lord henry, laughing. "it would be rather hard lines on your work." "i should object very strongly, harry," said hallward. dorian gray turned and looked at him. "i believe you would, basil. you like your art better than your friends. i am no more to you than a green bronze figure. hardly as much, i dare say." the painter stared in amazement. it was so unlike dorian to speak like that. what had happened? he seemed quite angry. his face was flushed and his cheeks burning. "yes," he continued, "i am less to you than your ivory hermes or your silver faun. you will like them always. how long will you like me? till i have my first wrinkle, i suppose. i know, now, that when one loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. your picture has taught me that. lord henry wotton is perfectly, right. youth is the only thing worth having. when i find that i am growing old, i shall kill myself." hallward turned pale, and caught his hand. "dorian! dorian!" he cried, "don't talk like that. i have never had such a friend as you, and i shall never have such another. you are not jealous of material things, are you?you who are finer than any of them!" "i am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. i am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. why should it keep what i must lose? every moment that passes takes something from me, and gives something to it. oh, if it were only the other way! if the picture could change. and i could be always what i am now! why did you paint it? it will mock me some daymock me horribly!" the hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away, and, flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying. "this is your doing, harry," said the painter, bitterly. lord henry shrugged his shoulders. "it is the real dorian graythat is all." "it is not." "if it is not, what have i to do with it?" "you should have gone away when i asked you," he muttered. "i stayed when you asked me," was lord henry's answer. "harry, i can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work i have ever done, and i will destroy it. what is it but canvas and colour? i will not let it come across our three lives and mar them." dorian gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face and tear-stained eyes looked at him, as he walked over to the deal painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window. what was he doing there? his fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. yes, it was for the long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. he had found it at last. he was going to rip up the canvas. with a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the studio. "don't, basil, don't!" he cried. "it would be murder!" "i am glad you appreciate my work at last, dorian," said the painter, coldly, when he had recovered from his surprise. "i never thought you would." "appreciate it? i am in love with it, basil. it is part of myself. i feel that." "well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and sent home. then you can do what you like with yourself." and he walked across the room and rang the bell for tea. "you will have tea, of course, dorian? and so will you, harry? or do you object to such simple pleasures?" "i adore simple pleasures," said lord henry. "they are the last refuge of the complex. but i don't like scenes, except on the stage. what absurd fellows you are, both of you! i wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. it was the most premature definition ever given. man is many things, but he is not rational. i am glad he is not, after all: though i wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. you had much better let me have it, basil. this silly boy doesn't really want it, and i really do." "if you let any one have it but me, basil, i shall never forgive you!" cried dorian gray; "and i don't allow people to call me a silly boy." "you know the picture is yours, dorian. i gave it to you before it existed." "and you know you have been a little silly, mr. gray, and that you don't really object to being reminded that you are extremely young." "i should have objected very strongly this morning, lord henry." "ah! this morning! you have lived since then." there came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden tea-tray, and set it down upon a small japanese table. there was a rattle of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted georgian urn. two globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page. dorian gray went over and poured out the tea. the two men sauntered languidly to the table, and examined what was under the covers. "let us go to the theatre to-night," said lord henry. "there is sure to be something on, somewhere. i have promised to dine at white's, but it is only with an old friend, so i can send him a wire to say that i am ill, or that i am prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent engagement. i think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have all the surprise of candour." "it is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes," muttered hallward. "and, when one has them on, they are so horrid." "yes," answered lord henry, dreamily, "the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. it is so sombre, so depressing. sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life." "you really must not say things like that before dorian, harry." "before which dorian? the one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?" "before either." "i should like to come to the theatre with you, lord henry," said the lad. "then you shall come; and you will come too, basil, won't you?" "i can't really. i would sooner not. i have a lot of work to do." "well, then, you and i will go, mr. gray." "i should like that awfully." the painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. "i shall stay with the real dorian," he said, sadly. "is it the real dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, strolling across to him. "am i really like that?" "yes; you are just like that." "how wonderful, basil!" "at least you are like it in appearance. but it will never alter," sighed hallward. "that is something." "what a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed lord henry. "why, even in love it is purely a question of physiology. it has nothing to do with our own will. young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say." "don't go to the theatre to-night, dorian," said hallward. "stop and dine with me." "i can't, basil." "why?" "because i have promised lord henry wotton to go with him." "he won't like you any better for keeping your promises. he always breaks his own. i beg you not to go." dorian gray laughed and shook his head. "i entreat you." the lad hesitated, and looked over at lord henry, who was watching them from the tea-table with an amused smile. "i must go, basil," he answered. "very well," said hallward; and he went over and laid down his cup on the tray. "it is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had better lose no time. good-bye, harry. good-bye, dorian. come and see me soon. come to-morrow." "certainly." "you won't forget?" "no, of course not," cried dorian. "and... harry!" "yes, basil?" "remember what i asked you, when we were in the garden this morning?" "i have forgotten it." "i trust you." "i wish i could trust myself," said lord henry, laughing. "come, mr. gray, my hansom is outside, and i can drop you at your own place. good-bye, basil. it has been a most interesting afternoon." as the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a sofa, and a look of pain came into his face. chapter iii at half-past twelve next day lord henry wotton strolled from curzon street over to the albany to call on his uncle, lord fermor, a genial if somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was considered generous by society as he fed the people who amused him. his father had been our ambassador at madrid when isabella was young, and prim unthought of, but had retired from the diplomatic service in a capricious moment of annoyance on not being offered the embassy at paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by reason of his birth, his indolence, the good english of his despatches, and his inordinate passion for pleasure. the son, who had been his father's secretary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat foolishly as was thought at the time, and on succeeding some months later to the title, had set himself to the serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing. he had two large town houses, but preferred to live in chambers as it was less trouble, and took most of his meals at his club. he paid some attention to the management of his collieries in the midland counties, excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth. in politics he was a tory, except when the tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack of radicals. he was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. only england could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going to the dogs. his principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices. when lord henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough shooting coat, smoking a cheroot and grumbling over the times. "well, harry," said the old gentleman, "what brings you out so early? i thought you dandies never got up until two, and were not visible until five." "pure family affection, i assure you, uncle george. i want to get something out of you." "money, i suppose," said lord fermor, making a wry face. "well, sit down and tell me all about it. young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything." "yes," murmured lord henry, settling his buttonhole in his coat; "and when they grow older they know it. but i don't want money. it is only people who pay their bills who want that, uncle george, and i never pay mine. credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly upon it. besides, i always deal with dartmoor's tradesmen, and consequently they never bother me. what i want is information; not useful information, of course; useless information." "well, i can tell you anything that is in an english blue-book, harry, although those fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense. when i was in the diplomatic, things were much better. but i hear they let them in now by examination. what can you expect? examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. if a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him." "mr. dorian gray does not belong to blue-books, uncle george," said lord henry, languidly. "mr. dorian gray? who is he?" asked lord fermor, knitting his bushy white eyebrows. "that is what i have come to learn, uncle george. or rather, i know who, he is. he is the last lord kelso's grandson. his mother was a devereux, lady margaret devereux. i want you to tell me about his mother. what was she like? whom did she marry? you have known nearly everybody in your time, so you might have known her. i am very much interested in mr. gray at present. i have only just met him." "kelso's grandson!" echoed the old gentleman. "kelso's grandson!... of course.... i knew his mother intimately. i believe i was at her christening. she was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, margaret devereux, and made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless young fellow, a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or something of that kind. certainly. i remember the whole thing as if it happened yesterday. the poor chap was killed in a duel at spa a few months after the marriage. there was an ugly story about it. they said kelso got some rascally adventurer, some belgian brute, to insult his son-in-law in public, paid him, sir, to do it, paid him, and that the fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon. the thing was hushed up, but, egad, kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some time afterwards. he brought his daughter back with him, i was told, and she never spoke to him again. oh, yes; it was a bad business. the girl died too, died within a year. so she left a son, did she? i had forgotten that. what sort of a boy is he? if he is like his mother he must be a good-looking chap." "he is very good-looking," assented lord henry. "i hope he will fall into proper hands," continued the old man. "he should have a pot of money waiting for him if kelso did the right thing by him. his mother had money too. all the selby property came to her, through her grandfather. her grandfather hated kelso, thought him a mean dog. he was, too. came to madrid once when i was there. egad, i was ashamed of him. the queen used to ask me about the english noble who was always quarrelling with the cabmen about their fares. they made quite a story of it. i didn't dare show my face at court for a month. i hope he treated his grandson better than he did the jarvies." "i don't know," answered lord henry. "i fancy that the boy will be well off. he is not of age yet. he has selby, i know. he told me so. and... his mother was very beautiful?" "margaret devereux was one of the loveliest creatures i ever saw, harry. what on earth induced her to behave as she did, i never could understand. she could have married anybody she chose. carlington was mad after her. she was romantic though. all the women of that family were. the men were a poor lot, but, egad! the women were wonderful. carlington went on his knees to her. told me so himself. she laughed at him, and there wasn't a girl in london at the time who wasn't after him. and by the way, harry, talking about silly marriages, what is this humbug your father tells me about dartmoor wanting to marry an american? ain't english girls good enough for him?" "it is rather fashionable to marry americans just now, uncle george." "i'll back english women against the world, harry," said lord fermor, striking the table with his fist. "the betting is on the americans." "they don't last, i am told," muttered his uncle. "a long engagement exhausts them, but they are capital at a steeplechase. they take things flying. i don't think dartmoor has a chance." "who are her people?" grumbled the old gentleman. "has she got any?" lord henry shook his head. "american girls are as clever at concealing their parents, as english women are at concealing their past," he said, rising to go. "they are pork-packers, i suppose?" "i hope so, uncle george, for dartmoor's sake. i am told that pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in america, after politics." "is she pretty?" "she behaves as if she was beautiful. most american women do. it is the secret of their charm." "why can't these american women stay in their own country? they are always telling us that it is the paradise for women." "it is. that is the reason why, like eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it," said lord henry. "good-bye, uncle george. i shall be late for lunch, if i stop any longer. thanks for giving me the information i wanted. i always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones." "where are you lunching, harry?" "at aunt agatha's. i have asked myself and mr. gray. he is her latest protege." "humph! tell your aunt agatha, harry, not to bother me with any more of her charity appeals. i am sick of them. why, the good woman thinks that i have nothing to do but write cheques for her silly fads." "all right, uncle george, i'll tell her, but it won't have any effect. philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. it is their distinguishing characteristic." the old gentleman growled approvingly, and rang the bell for his servant. lord henry passed up the low arcade into burlington street, and turned his steps in the direction of berkeley square. so that was the story of dorian gray's parentage. crudely as it had been told to him, it had yet stirred him by its suggestion of a strange, almost modern romance. a beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. a few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. the mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. yes; it was an interesting background. it posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow.... and how charming he had been at dinner the night before, as with startled eyes and lips parted in frightened pleasure he had sat opposite to him at the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening wonder of his face. talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. he answered to every touch and thrill of the bow.... there was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. no other activity was like it. to project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in thatperhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims.... he was a marvellous type, too, this lad, whom by so curious a chance he had met in basil's studio, or could be fashioned into a marvellous type, at any rate. grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty such as old greek marbles have kept for us. there was nothing that one could not do with him. he could be made a titan or a toy. what a pity it was that such beauty was destined to fade!... and basil? from a psychological point of view, how interesting he was! the new manner in art, the fresh mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by the merely visible presence of one who was unconscious of it all; the silent spirit that dwelt in dim woodland, and walked unseen in open field, suddenly showing herself, dryad-like and not afraid, because in his soul who sought for her there had been awakened that wonderful vision to which alone are wonderful things revealed; the mere shapes and patterns of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other and more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how strange it all was! he remembered something like it in history. was it not plato, that artist in thought, who had first analyzed it? was it not buonarotti who had carved it in the coloured marbles of a sonnet-sequence? but in our own country it was strange.... yes; he would try to be to dorian gray what, without knowing it, the lad was to the painter who had fashioned the wonderful portrait. he would seek to dominate himhad already, indeed, half done so. he would make that wonderful spirit his own. there was something fascinating in this son of love and death. suddenly he stopped, and glanced up at the houses. he found that he had passed his aunt's some distance, and smiling to himself, turned back. when he entered the somewhat sombre hall the butler told him that they had gone in to lunch. he gave one of the footmen his hat and stick and passed into the dining-room. "late as usual, harry," cried his aunt, shaking her head at him. he invented a facile excuse, and having taken the vacant seat next to her, looked round to see who was there. dorian bowed to him shyly from the end of the table, a flush of pleasure stealing into his cheek. opposite was the duchess of harley, a lady of admirable good-nature and good temper, much liked by every one who knew her, and of those ample architectural proportions that in women who are not duchesses are described by contemporary historians as stoutness. next to her sat, on her right, sir thomas burdon, a radical member of parliament, who followed his leader in public life and in private life followed the best cooks, dining with the tories, and thinking with the liberals, in accordance with a wise and well-known rule. the post on her left was occupied by mr. erskine of treadley, an old gentleman of considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he explained once to lady agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was thirty. his own neighbour was mrs. vandeleur, one of his aunt's oldest friends, a perfect saint amongst women, but so dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn book. fortunately for him she had on the other side lord faudel, a most intelligent middle-aged mediocrity, as bad as a ministerial statement in the house of commons, with whom she was conversing in that intensely earnest manner which is the one unpardonable error, as he remarked once himself, that all really good people fall into, and from which none of them ever quite escape. "we are talking about poor dartmoor, lord henry," cried the duchess, nodding pleasantly to him across the table. "do you think he will really marry this fascinating young person?" "i believe she has made up her mind to propose to him, duchess." "how dreadful!" exclaimed lady agatha. "really, some one should interfere." "i am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an american dry-goods store," said sir thomas burdon, looking supercilious. "my uncle has already suggested pork-packing, sir thomas." "dry-goods! what are american dry-goods?" asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder, and accentuating the verb. "american novels," answered lord henry, helping himself to some quail. the duchess looked puzzled. "don't mind him, my dear," whispered lady agatha. "he never means anything that he says." "when america was discovered," said the radical member, and he began to give some wearisome facts. like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners. the duchess sighed, and exercised her privilege of interruption. "i wish to goodness it never had been discovered at all!" she exclaimed. "really, our girls have no chance nowadays. it is most unfair." "perhaps, after all, america never has been discovered," said mr. erskine; "i myself would say that it had merely been detected." "oh! but i have seen specimens of the inhabitants," answered the duchess, vaguely. "i must confess that most of them are extremely pretty. and they dress well, too. they get all their dresses in paris. i wish i could afford to do the same." "they say that when good americans die they go to paris," chuckled sir thomas, who had a large wardrobe of humour's cast-off clothes. "really! and where do bad americans go when they die?" inquired the duchess. "they go to america," murmured lord henry. sir thomas frowned. "i am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced against that great country," he said to lady agatha. "i have travelled all over it, in cars provided by the directors, who, in such matters, are extremely civil. i assure you that it is an education to visit it." "but must we really see chicago in order to be educated?" asked mr. erskine, plaintively. "i don't feel up to the journey." sir thomas waved his hand. "mr. erskine of treadley has the world on his shelves. we practical men like to see things, not to read about them. the americans are an extremely interesting people. they are absolutely reasonable. i think that is their distinguishing characteristic. yes, mr. erskine, an absolutely reasonable people. i assure you there is no nonsense about the americans." "how dreadful!" cried lord henry. "i can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. there is something unfair about its use. it is hitting below the intellect." "i do not understand you," said sir thomas, growing rather red. "i do, lord henry," murmured mr. erskine, with a smile. "paradoxes are all very well in their way..." rejoined the baronet. "was that a paradox?" asked mr. erskine. "i did not think so. perhaps it was. well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. to test reality we must see it on the tight-rope. when the verities become acrobats we can judge them." "dear me!" said lady agatha, "how you men argue! i am sure i never can make out what you are talking about. oh! harry, i am quite vexed with you. why do you try to persuade our nice mr. dorian gray to give up the east end? i assure you he would be quite invaluable. they would love his playing." "i want him to play to me," cried lord henry, smiling, and he looked down the table and caught a bright answering glance. "but they are so unhappy in whitechapel," continued lady agatha. "i can sympathize with everything, except suffering," said lord henry, shrugging his shoulders. "i cannot sympathize with that. it is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. there is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. one should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. the less said about life's sores the better." "still, the east end is a very important problem," remarked sir thomas, with a grave shake of the head. "quite so," answered the young lord. "it is the problem of slavery, and we try to solve it by amusing the slaves." the politician looked at him keenly. "what change do you propose, then?" he asked. lord henry laughed. "i don't desire to change anything in england except the weather," he answered. "i am quite content with philosophic contemplation. but, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt through an over-expenditure of sympathy, i would suggest that we should appeal to science to put us straight. the advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional." "but we have such grave responsibilities," ventured mrs. vandeleur, timidly. "terribly grave," echoed lady agatha. lord henry looked over at mr. erskine. "humanity takes itself too seriously. it is the world's original sin. if the caveman had known how to laugh; history would have been different." "you are really very comforting," warbled the duchess. "i have always felt rather guilty when i came to see your dear aunt, for i take no interest at all in the east end. for the future i shall be able to look her in the face without a blush." "a blush is very becoming, duchess," remarked lord henry. "only when one is young," she answered. "when an old woman like myself blushes, it is a very bad sign. ah! lord henry, i wish you would tell me how to become young again." he thought for a moment. "can you remember any great error that you committed in your early days, duchess?" he asked, looking at her across the table. "a great many, i fear," she cried. "then commit them over again," he said, gravely. "to get back one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies." "a delightful theory!" she exclaimed. "i must put it into practice." "a dangerous theory," came from sir thomas's tight lips. lady agatha shook her head, but could not help being amused. mr. erskine listened. "yes," he continued, "that is one of the great secrets of life. nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes." a laugh ran round the room. he played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox. the praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow silenus for being sober. facts fled before her like frightened forest things. her white feet trod the huge press at which wise omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. it was an extraordinary improvisation. he felt that the eyes of dorian gray were fixed on him, and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate, seemed to give his wit keenness, and to lend colour to his imagination. he was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. he charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they followed his pipe laughing. dorian gray never took his gaze off him, but sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips, and wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes. at last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room in the shape of a servant to tell the duchess that her carriage was waiting. she wrung her hands in mock despair. "how annoying!" she cried. "i must go. i have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting at willis's rooms, where he is going to be in the chair. if i am late he is sure to be furious, and i couldn't have a scene in this bonnet. it is far too fragile. a harsh word would ruin it. no, i must go, dear agatha. good-bye, lord henry, you are quite delightful, and dreadfully demoralizing. i am sure i don't know what to say about your views. you must come and dine with us some night. tuesday,? are you disengaged tuesday?" "for you i would throw over anybody, duchess," said lord henry, with a bow. "ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you," she cried; "so mind you come;" and she swept out of the room, followed by lady agatha and the other ladies. when lord henry had sat down again, mr. erskine moved round, and taking a chair close to him, placed his hand upon his arm. "you talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?" "i am too fond of reading books to care to write them, mr. erskine. i should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a persian carpet and as unreal. but there is no literary public in england for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopaedies. of all people in the world the english have the least sense of the beauty of literature." "i fear you are right," answered mr. erskine. "i myself used to have literary ambitions, but i gave them up long ago. and now, my dear young friend, if you will allow me to call you so, may i ask if you really meant all that you said to us at lunch?" "i quite forget what i said," smiled lord henry. "was it all very bad?" "very bad indeed. in fact i consider you extremely dangerous, and if anything happens to our good duchess we shall all look on you as being primarily responsible. but i should like to talk to you about life. the generation into which i was born was tedious. some day, when you are tired of london, come down to treadley, and expound to me your philosophy of pleasure over some admirable burgundy i am fortunate enough to possess." "i shall be charmed. a visit to treadley would be a great privilege. it has a perfect host, and a perfect library." "you will complete it," answered the old gentleman, with a courteous bow. "and now i must bid good-bye to your excellent aunt. i am due at the athenaeum. it is the hour when we sleep there." "all of you, mr. erskine?" "forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. we are practising for an english academy of letters." lord henry laughed, and rose. "i am going to the park," he cried. as he was passing out of the door dorian gray touched him on the arm. "let me come with you," he murmured. "but i thought you had promised basil hallward to go and see him," answered lord henry. "i would sooner come with you; yes, i feel i must come with you. do let me. and you will promise to talk to me all the time? no one talks so wonderfully as you do." "ah! i have talked quite enough for to-day," said lord henry, smiling. "all i want now is to look at life. you may come and look at it with me, if you care to." chapter iv one afternoon, a month later, dorian gray was reclining in a luxurious arm-chair, in the little library of lord henry's house in mayfair. it was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high panelled wainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-coloured frieze and ceiling of raised plaster-work, and its brick-dust felt carpet strewn with silk long-fringed persian rugs. on a tiny satinwood table stood a statuette by clodion, and beside it lay a copy of "les cent nouvelles," bound for margaret of valois by clovis eve, and powdered with the gilt daisies that queen had selected for her device. some large blue china jars and parrot-tulips were ranged on the mantelshelf, and through the small leaded panes of the window streamed the apricot-coloured light of a summer day in london. lord henry had not yet come in. he was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. so the lad was looking rather sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages of an elaborately-illustrated edition of "manon lescaut" that he had found in one of the bookcases. the formal monotonous ticking of the louis quatorze clock annoyed him. once or twice he thought of going away. at last he heard a step outside, and the door opened. "how late you are, harry!" he murmured. "i am afraid it is not harry, mr. gray," answered a shrill voice. he glanced quickly round, and rose to his feet. "i beg your pardon. i thought--" "you thought it was my husband. it is only his wife. you must let me introduce myself. i know you quite well by your photographs. i think my husband has got seventeen of them." "not seventeen, lady henry?" "well, eighteen, then. and i saw you with him the other night at the opera." she laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her vague forget-me-not eyes. she was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. she was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. she tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. her name was victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church. "that was at 'lohengrin,' lady henry, i think?" "yes; it was at dear 'lohengrin.' i like wagner's music better than anybody's. it is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says. that is a great advantage: don't you think so, mr. gray?" the same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her fingers began to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife. dorian smiled, and shook his head: "i am afraid i don't think so, lady henry. i never talk during musicat least, during good music. if one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation." "ah! that is one of harry's views, isn't it, mr. gray? i always hear harry's views from his friends. it is the only way i get to know of them. but you must not think i don't like good music. i adore it, but i am afraid of it. it makes me too romantic. i have simply worshipped pianiststwo at a time, sometimes, harry tells me. i don't know what it is about them. perhaps it is that they are foreigners. they all are, ain't they? even those that are born in england become foreigners after a time, don't they? it is so clever of them, and such a compliment to art. makes it quite cosmopolitan, doesn't it? you have never been to any of my parties, have you, mr. gray? you must come. i can't afford orchids, but i spare no expense in foreigners. they make one's rooms look so picturesque. but here is harry!harry, i came in to look for you, to ask you somethingi forget what it wasand i found mr. gray here. we have had such a pleasant chat about music. we have quite the same ideas. no; i think our ideas are quite different. but he has been most pleasant. i am so glad i've seen him." "i am charmed, my love, quite charmed," said lord henry, elevating his dark crescent-shaped eyebrows and looking at them both with an amused smile. "so sorry i am late, dorian. i went to look after a piece of old brocade in wardour street, and had to bargain for hours for it. nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing." "i am afraid i must be going," exclaimed lady henry, breaking an awkward silence with her silly sudden laugh. "i have promised to drive with the duchess. good-bye, mr. gray. good-bye, harry. you are dining out, i suppose? so am i. perhaps i shall see you at lady thornbury's." "i dare say, my dear," said lord henry, shutting the door behind her, as, looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all night in the rain, she flitted out of the room, leaving a faint odour of frangi-pani. then he lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on the sofa. "never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, dorian," he said, after a few puffs. "why, harry?" "because they are so sentimental." "but i like sentimental people." "never marry at all, dorian. men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious: both are disappointed." "i don't think i am likely to marry, harry. i am too much in love. that is one of your aphorisms. i am putting it into practice, as i do everything that you say." "who are you in love with?" asked lord henry, after a pause. "with an actress," said dorian gray, blushing. lord henry shrugged his shoulders. "that is a rather commonplace debut." "you would not say so if you saw her, harry." "who is she?" "her name is sibyl vane." "never heard of her." "no one has. people will some day, however. she is a genius." "my dear boy, no woman is a genius. women are a decorative sex. they never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals." "harry, how can you?" "my dear dorian, it is quite true. i am analyzing women at present, so i ought to know. the subject is not so abstruse as i thought it was. i find that, ultimately, there are only two kinds of women, the plain and the coloured. the plain women are very useful. if you want to gain a reputation for respectability, you have merely to take them down to supper. the other women are very charming. they commit one mistake, however. they paint in order to try and look young. our grandmothers painted in order to try and talk brilliantly. rouge and esprit used to go together. that is all over now. as long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied. as for conversation, there are only five women in london worth talking to and two of these can't be admitted into decent society. however, tell me about your genius. how long have you known her?" "ah! harry, your views terrify me." "never mind that. how long have you known her?" "about three weeks." "and where did you come across her?" "i will tell you, harry; but you mustn't be unsympathetic about it. after all, it never would have happened if i had not met you. you filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life. for days after i met you, something seemed to throb in my veins. as i lounged in the park, or strolled down piccadilly, i used to look at every one who passed me, and wonder, with a mad curiosity, what sort of lives they led. some of them fascinated me. others filled me with terror. there was an exquisite poison in the air. i had a passion for sensations.... well, one evening about seven o'clock, i determined to go out in search of some adventure. i felt that this grey, monstrous london of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you once phrased it, must have something in store for me. i fancied a thousand things. the mere danger gave me a sense of delight. i remembered what you had said to me on that wonderful evening when we first dined together, about the search for beauty being the real secret of life. i don't know what i expected, but i went out and wandered eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black, grassless squares. about half-past eight i passed by an absurd little theatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy playbills. a hideous jew, in the most amazing waistcoat i ever beheld in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. he had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt. 'have a box, my lord?' he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with an air of gorgeous servility. there was something about him, harry, that amused me. he was such a monster. you will laugh at me, i know, but i really went in and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box. to the present day i can't make out why i did so; and yet if i hadn'tmy dear harry, if i hadn't, i should have missed the greatest romance of my life. i see you are laughing. it is horrid of you!" "i am not laughing, dorian; at least i am not laughing at you. but you should not say the greatest romance of your life. you should say the first romance of your life. you will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. a grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. that is the one use of the idle classes of a country. don't be afraid. there are exquisite things in store for you. this is merely the beginning." "do you think my nature so shallow?" cried dorian gray, angrily. "no; i think your nature so deep." "how do you mean?" "my dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. what they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, i call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellectsimply a confession of failure. faithfulness! i must analyze it some day. the passion for property is in it. there are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. but i don't want to interrupt you. go on with your story." "well, i found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a vulgar drop-scene staring me in the face. i looked out from behind the curtain, and surveyed the house. it was a tawdry affair, all cupids and cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding-cake. the gallery and pit were fairly full, but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty, and there was hardly a person in what i suppose they called the dress-circle. women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there was a terrible consumption of nuts going on." "it must have been just like the palmy days of the british drama." "just like, i should fancy, and very depressing. i began to wonder what on earth i should do, when i caught sight of the play-bill. what do you think the play was, harry?" "i should think 'the idiot boy, or dumb but innocent.' our fathers used to like that sort of piece, i believe. the longer i live, dorian, the more keenly i feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us. in art, as in politics, les grandperes ont toujours tort." "this play was good enough for us, harry. it was 'romeo and juliet.' i must admit i was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing shakespeare done in such a wretched hole of a place. still, i felt interested, in a sort of way. at any rate, i determined to wait for the first act. there was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young hebrew who sat at a cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, but at last the drop-scene was drawn up, and the play began. romeo was a stout elderly gentleman, with corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice, and a figure like a beer-barrel. mercutio was almost as bad. he was played by the low-comedian, who had introduced gags of his own and was on most friendly terms with the pit. they were both as grotesque as the scenery, and that looked as if it had come out of a country-booth. but juliet! harry, imagine a girl, hardly seventeen years of age, with a little flower-like face, a small greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. she was the loveliest thing i had ever seen in my life. you said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears. i tell you, harry, i could hardly see this girl for the mist of tears that came across me. and her voicei never heard such a voice. it was very low at first, with deep mellow notes, that seemed to fall singly upon one's ear. then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a distant haut-bois. in the garden-scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing. there was moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of violins. you know how a voice can stir one. your voice and the voice of sibyl vane are two things that i shall never forget. when i close my eyes, i hear them, and each of them says something different. i don't know which to follow. why should i not love her? harry, i do love her. she is everything to me in life. night after night i go to see her play. one evening she is rosalind, and the next eveningshe is imogen. i have seen her die in the gloom of an italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. i have watched her wandering through the forest of arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. she has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. she has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. i have seen her in every age and in every costume. ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. they are limited to their century. no glamour ever transfigures them. one knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. one can always find them. there is no mystery in any of them: they ride in the park in the morning, and chatter at tea-parties in the afternoon. they have their stereotyped smile, and their fashionable manner. they are quite obvious. but an actress! how different an actress is! harry! why didn't you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an actress?" "because i have loved so many of them, dorian." "oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces." "don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. there is an extraordinary charm in them, sometimes," said lord henry. "i wish now i had not told you about sibyl vane." "you could not have helped telling me, dorian. all through your life you will tell me everything you do." "yes, harry, i believe that is true, i cannot help telling you things. you have a curious influence over me. if i ever did a crime, i would come and confess it to you. you would understand me." "people like youthe wilful sunbeams of lifedon't commit crimes, dorian. but i am much obliged for the compliment, all the same. and now tell mereach me the matches, like a good boy: thanks:what are your actual relations with sibyl vane?" dorian gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes. "harry! sibyl vane is sacred!" "it is only the sacred things that are worth touching, dorian," said lord henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice. "but why should you be annoyed? i suppose she will belong to you some day. when one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. that is what the world calls a romance. you know her, at any rate, i suppose?" "of course i know her. on the first night i was at the theatre, the horrid old jew came round to the box after the performance was over, and offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. i was furious with him, and told him that juliet had been dead for hundreds of years, and that her body was lying in a marble tomb in verona. i think, from his blank look of amazement, that he was under the impression that i had taken too much champagne, or something." "i am not surprised." "then he asked me if i wrote for any of the newspapers. i told him i never even read them. he seemed terribly disappointed at that, and confided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy against him, and that they were every one of them to be bought." "i should not wonder if he was quite right there. but, on the other hand, judging from their appearance, most of them cannot be at all expensive." "well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means," laughed dorian. "by this time, however, the lights were being put out in the theatre, and i had to go. he wanted me to try some cigars that he strongly recommended. i declined. the next night, of course, i arrived at the place again. when he saw me he made a low bow, and assured me that i was a munificent patron of art. he was a most offensive brute, though he had an extraordinary passion for shakespeare. he told me once, with an air of pride, that his five bankruptcies were entirely due to 'the bard,' as he insisted on calling him. he seemed to think it a distinction." "it was a distinction, my dear doriana great distinction. most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. to have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour. but when did you first speak to miss sibyl vane?" "the third night. she had been playing rosalind. i could not help going round. i had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at me; at least i fancied that she had. the old jew was persistent. he seemed determined to take me behind, so i consented. it was curious my not wanting to know her, wasn't it?" "no; i don't think so." "my dear harry, why?" "i will tell you some other time. now i want to know about the girl." "sibyl? oh, she was so shy, and so gentle. there is something of a child about her. her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when i told her what i thought of her performance, and she seemed quite unconscious of her power. i think we were both rather nervous. the old jew stood grinning at the doorway of the dusty greenroom, making elaborate speeches about us both, while we stood looking at each other like children. he would insist on calling me 'my lord,' so i had to assure sibyl that i was not anything of the kind. she said quite simply to me, 'you look more like a prince. i must call you prince charming.'" "upon my word, dorian, miss sibyl knows how to pay compliments." "you don't understand her, harry. she regarded me merely as a person in a play. she knows nothing of life. she lives with her mother, a faded tired woman who played lady capulet in a sort of magenta dressing-wrapper on the first night, and looks as if she had seen better days." "i know that look. it depresses me," murmured lord henry, examining his rings. "the jew wanted to tell me her history, but i said it did not interest me." "you were quite right. there is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies." "sibyl is the only thing i care about. what is it to me where she came from? from her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and entirely divine. every night of my life i go to see her act, and every night she is more marvellous." "that is the reason, i suppose, that you never dine with me now. i thought you must have some curious romance on hand. you have; but it is not quite what i expected." "my dear harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and i have been to the opera with you several times," said dorian, opening his blue eyes in wonder. "you always come dreadfully late." "well, i can't help going to see sibyl play," he cried, "even if it is only for a single act. i get hungry for her presence; and when i think of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, i am filled with awe." "you can dine with me to-night, dorian, can't you?" he shook his head. "to-night she is imogen," he answered, "and to-morrow night she will be juliet." "when is she sibyl vane?" "never." "i congratulate you." "how horrid you are! she is all the great heroines of the world in one. she is more than an individual. you laugh, but i tell you she has genius. i love her, and i must make her love me. you, who know all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm sibyl vane to love me! i want to make romeo jealous. i want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. i want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. my god, harry, how i worship her!" he was walking up and down the room as he spoke. hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. he was terribly excited. lord henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure. how different he was now from the shy, frightened boy he had met in basil hallward's studio! his nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of scarlet flame. out of its secret hiding-place had crept his soul, and desire had come to meet it on the way. "and what do you propose to do?" said lord henry, at last. "i want you and basil to come with me some night and see her act. i have not the slightest fear of the result. you are certain to acknowledge her genius. then we must get her out of the jew's hands. she is bound to him for three yearsat least for two years and eight monthsfrom the present time. i shall have to pay him something, of course. when all that is settled, i shall take a west end theatre and bring her out properly. she will make the world as mad as she has made me." "that would be impossible, my dear boy." "yes, she will. she has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, in her but she has personality also; and you have often told me that it is personalities, not principles, that move the age." "well, what night shall we go?" "let me see. to-day is tuesday. let us fix to-morrow. she plays juliet to-morrow." "all right. the bristol at eight o'clock; and i will get basil." "not eight, harry, please. half-past six. we must be there before the curtain rises. you must see her in the first act, where she meets romeo." "half-past six! what an hour! it will be like having a meat-tea, or reading an english novel. it must be seven. no gentleman dines before seven. shall you see basil between this and then? or shall i write to him?" "dear basil! i have not laid eyes on him for a week. it is rather horrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful frame, specially designed by himself, and, though i am a little jealous of the picture for being a whole month younger than i am, i must admit that i delight in it. perhaps you had better write to him. i don't want to see him alone. he says things that annoy me. he gives me good advice." lord henry smiled. "people are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. it is what i call the depth of generosity." "oh, basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit of a philistine. since i have known you, harry, i have discovered that." "basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. the consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. the only artists i have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. a great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. but inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. the worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. the mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. he lives the poetry that he cannot write. the others write the poetry that they dare not realize." "i wonder is that really so, harry?" said dorian gray, putting some perfume on his handkerchief out of a large gold-topped bottle that stood on the table. "it must be, if you say it. and now i'm off. imogen is waiting for me. don't forget about to-morrow. good-bye." as he left the room lord henry's heavy eyelids drooped, and he began to think. certainly few people had ever interested him so much as dorian gray, and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else caused him not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. he was pleased by it. it made him a more interesting study. he had always been enthralled by the methods of natural science, but the ordinary subject matter of that science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. and so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others. human lifethat appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. compared to it there was nothing else of any value. it was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. there were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. there were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature. and, yet, what a great reward one received! how wonderful the whole world became to one! to note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional coloured life of the intellectto observe where they met, and where they separated, at what point they were in unison, and at what point they were at discordthere was a delight in that. what matter what the cost was? one could never pay too high a price for any sensation. he was consciousand the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyesthat it was through certain words of his, musical words said with musical utterance, that dorian gray's soul had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. to a large extent the lad was his own creation. he had made him premature. that was something. ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. but now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting. yes, the lad was premature. he was gathering his harvest while it was yet spring. the pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he was becoming self-conscious. it was delightful to watch him. with his beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. it was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. he was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses. soul and body, body and soulhow mysterious they were! there was animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. the senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. who could say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began? how shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! and yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? or was the body really in the soul, as giordano bruno thought? the separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also. he began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. as it was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others. experience was of no ethical value. it was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. but there was no motive power in experience. it was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. all that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy. it was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly dorian gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. his sudden mad love for sibyl vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. there was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion. what there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of boyhood had been transformed by the workings of the imagination, changed into something that seemed to the lad himself to be remote from sense, and was for that very reason all the more dangerous. it was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. it often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves. while lord henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the door, and his valet entered, and reminded him it was time to dress for dinner. he got up and looked out into the street. the sunset had smitten into scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite. the panes glowed like plates of heated metal. the sky above was like a faded rose. he thought of his friend's young fiery-coloured life, and wondered how it was all going to end. when he arrived home, about half-past twelve o'clock, he saw a telegram lying on the hall table. he opened it, and found it was from dorian gray. it was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to sibyl vane. chapter v "mother, mother, i am so happy!" whispered the girl, burying her face in the lap of the faded, tired-looking woman who, with back turned to the shrill intrusive light, was sitting in the one arm-chair that their dingy sitting-room contained. "i am so happy!" she repeated, "and you must be happy too!" mrs. vane winced, and put her thin bismuth-whitened hands on her daughter's head. "happy!" she echoed, "i am only happy, sibyl, when i see you act. you must not think of anything but your acting. mr. isaacs has been very good to us, and we owe him money." the girl looked up and pouted. "money, mother?" she cried. "what does money matter? love is more than money." "mr. isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay off our debts, and to get a proper outfit for james. you must not forget that, sibyl. fifty pounds is a very large sum. mr. isaacs has been most considerate." "he is not a gentleman, mother, and i hate the way he talks to me," said the girl, rising to her feet, and going over to the window. "i don't know how we could manage without him," answered the elder woman, querulously. sibyl vane tossed her head and laughed. "we don't want him any more, mother. prince charming rules life for us now." then she paused. a rose shook in her blood, and shadowed her cheeks. quick breaths parted the petals of her lips. they trembled. some southern wind of passion swept over her, and stirred the dainty folds of her dress. "i love him," she said, simply,. "foolish child! foolish child!" was the parrot-phrase flung in answer. the waving of crooked, false-jewelled fingers gave grotesqueness to the words. the girl laughed again. the joy of a caged bird was in her voice. her eyes caught the melody and echoed it in radiance: then closed for a moment, as though to hide their secret. when they opened, the mist of a dream had passed across them. thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense. she did not listen. she was free in her prison of passion. her prince, prince charming, was with her. she had called on memory to remake him. she had sent her soul to search for him, and it had brought him back. his kiss burned again upon her mouth. her eyelids were warm with his breath. then wisdom altered its method and spoke of espial and discovery. this young man might be rich. if so, marriage should be thought of. against the shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning. the arrows of craft shot by her. she saw the thin lips moving, and smiled. suddenly she felt the need to speak. the wordy silence troubled her. "mother, mother," she cried, "why does he love me so much? i know why i love him. i love him because he is like what love himself should be. but what does he see in me? i am not worthy of him. and yetwhy, i cannot tellthough i feel so much beneath him, i don't feel humble. i feel proud, terribly proud. mother, did you love my father as i love prince charming?" the elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse powder that daubed her cheeks, and her dry lips twitched with a spasm of pain. sibyl rushed to her, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her. "forgive me, mother. i know it pains you to talk about our father. but it only pains you because you loved him so much. don't look so sad. i am as happy to-day as you were twenty years ago. ah! let me be happy forever!" "my child, you are far too young to think of falling in love. besides, what do you know of this young man. you don't even know his name. the whole thing is most inconvenient, and really, when james is going away to australia, and i have so much to think of, i must say that you should have shown more consideration. however, as i said before, if he is rich..." "ah! mother, mother, let me be happy!" mrs. vane glanced at her, and with one of those false theatrical gestures that so often become a mode of second nature to a stage-player, clasped her in her arms. at this moment the door opened, and a young lad with rough brown hair came into the room. he was thick-set of figure, and his hands and feet were large, and somewhat clumsy in movement. he was not so finely bred as his sister. one would hardly have guessed the close relationship that existed between them. mrs. vane fixed her eyes on him, and intensified her smile. she mentally elevated her son to the dignity of an audience. she felt sure that the tableau was interesting. "you might keep some of your kisses for me, sibyl, i think," said the lad, with a good-natured grumble. "ah! but you don't like being kissed, jim," she cried. "you are a dreadful old bear." and she ran across the room and hugged him. james vane looked into his sister's face with tenderness. "i want you to come out with me for a walk, sibyl. i don't suppose i shall ever see this horrid london again. i am sure i don't want to." "my son, don't say such dreadful things," murmured mrs. vane, taking up a tawdry theatrical dress, with a sigh, and beginning to patch it. she felt a little disappointed that he had not joined the group. it would have increased the theatrical picturesqueness of the situation. "why not, mother? i mean it." "you pain me, my son. i trust you will return from australia in a position of affluence. i believe there is no society of any kind in the colonies, nothing that i would call society; so when you have made your fortune you must come back and assert yourself in london." "society!" muttered the lad. "i don't want to know anything about that. i should like to make some money to take you and sibyl off the stage. i hate it." "oh, jim!" said sibyl, laughing, "how unkind of you! but are you really going for a walk with me? that will be nice! i was afraid you were going to say good-bye to some of your friendsto tom hardy, who gave you that hideous pipe, or ned langton, who makes fun of you for smoking it. it is very sweet of you to let me have your last afternoon. where shall we go? let us go to the park." "i am too shabby," he answered, frowning. "only swell people go to the park." "nonsense, jim," she whispered, stroking the sleeve of his coat. he hesitated for a moment. "very well," he said at last, "but don't be to long dressing." she danced out of the door. one could hear her singing as she ran upstairs. her little feet pattered overhead. he walked up and down the room two or three times. then he turned to the still figure in the chair. "mother, are my things ready?" he asked. "quite ready, james," she answered, keeping her eyes on her work. for some months past she had felt ill at ease when she was alone with this rough, stern son of hers. her shallow secret nature was troubled when their eyes met. she used to wonder if he suspected anything. the silence, for he made no other observation, became intolerable to her. she began to complain. women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders. "i hope you will be contented, james, with your sea-faring life," she said. "you must remember that it is your own choice. you might have entered a solicitor's office. solicitors are a very respectable class, and in the country often dine with the best families." "i hate offices, and i hate clerks," he replied. "but you are quite right. i have chosen my own life. all i say is, watch over sibyl. don't let her come to any harm. mother, you must watch over her." "james, you really talk very strangely. of course i watch over sibyl." "i hear a gentleman comes every night to the theatre, and goes behind to talk to her. is that right? what about that?" "you are speaking about things you don't understand, james. in the profession we are accustomed to receive a great deal of most gratifying attention. i myself used to receive many bouquets at one time. that was when acting was really understood. as for sibyl, i do not know at present whether her attachment is serious or not. but there is no doubt that the young man in question is a perfect gentleman. he is always most polite to me. besides, he has the appearance of being rich, and the flowers he sends are lovely." "you don't know his name, though," said the lad, harshly. "no," answered his mother, with a placid expression in her face. "he has not yet revealed his real name. i think it is quite romantic of him. he is probably a member of the aristocracy." james vane bit his lip. "watch over sibyl, mother," he cried, "watch over her." "my son, you distress me very much. sibyl is always under my special care. of course, if this gentleman is wealthy, there is no reason why she could not contract an alliance with him. i trust he is one of the aristocracy. he has all the appearance of it, i must say. it might be a most brilliant marriage for sibyl. they would make a charming couple. his good looks are really quite remarkable; everybody notices them." the lad muttered something to himself, and drummed on the windowpane with his coarse fingers. he had just turned round to say something, when the door opened, and sibyl ran in. "how serious you both are!" she cried. "what is the matter?" "nothing," he answered. "i suppose one must be serious sometimes. good-bye, mother. i will have my dinner at five o'clock. everything is packed, except my shirts, so you need not trouble." "good-bye, my son," she answered, with a bow of strained stateliness. she was extremely annoyed at the tone he had adopted with her, and there was something in his look that had made her feel afraid. "kiss me, mother," said the girl. her flower-like lips touched the withered cheek, and warmed its frost. "my child! my child!" cried mrs. vane, looking up to the ceiling in search of an imaginary gallery. "come, sibyl," said her brother, impatiently. he hated his mother's affectations. they went out into the flickering wind-blown sunlight, and strolled down the dreary euston road. the passers-by glanced in wonder at the sullen, heavy youth, who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes, was in the company of such a graceful, refined-looking girl. he was like a common gardener walking with a rose. jim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive glance of some stranger. he had that dislike of being stared at which comes on geniuses late in life, and never leaves the commonplace. sibyl, however, was quite unconscious of the effect she was producing. her love was trembling in laughter on her lips. she was thinking of prince charming, and, that she might think of him all the more, she did not talk of him, but prattled on about the ship in which jim was going to sail, about the gold he was certain to find, about the wonderful heiress whose life he was to save from the wicked, red-shirted bushrangers. for he was not to remain a sailor, or a super-cargo, or whatever he was going to be. oh, no! a sailor's existence was dreadful. fancy being cooped up in a horrid ship, with the hoarse, hump-backed waves trying to get in, and a black wind blowing the masts down, and tearing the sails into long screaming ribands! he was to leave the vessel at melbourne, bid a polite good-bye to the captain, and go off at once to the gold-fields. before a week was over he was to come across a large nugget of pure gold, the largest nugget that had ever been discovered, and bring it down to the coast in a waggon guarded by six mounted policemen. the bushrangers were to attack them three times, and be defeated with immense slaughter. or, no. he was not to go to the gold-fields at all. they were horrid places, where men got intoxicated, and shot each other in bar-rooms, and used bad language. he was to be a nice sheep-farmer, and one evening, as he was riding home, he was to see the beautiful heiress being carried off by a robber on a black horse, and give chase, and rescue her. of course she would fall in love with him, and he with her, and they would get married, and come home, and live in an immense house in london. yes, there were delightful things in store for him. but he must be very good, and not lose his temper, or spend his money foolishly. she was only a year older than he was, but she knew so much more of life. he must be sure, also, to write to her by every mail, and to say his prayers each night before he went to sleep. god was very good, and would watch over him. she would pray for him too, and in a few years he would come back quite rich and happy. the lad listened sulkily to her, and made no answer. he was heart-sick at leaving home. yet it was not this alone that made him gloomy and morose. inexperienced though he was, he had still a strong sense of the danger of sibyl's position. this young dandy who was making love to her could mean her no good. he was a gentleman, and he hated him for that, hated him through some curious race-instinct for which he could not account, and which for that reason was all the more dominant within him. he was conscious also of the shallowness and vanity of his mother's nature, and in that saw infinite peril for sibyl and sibyl's happiness. children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them. his mother! he had something on his mind to ask her, something that he had brooded on for many months of silence. a chance phrase that he had heard at the theatre, a whispered sneer that had reached his ears one night as he waited at the stage-door, had set loose a train of horrible thoughts. he remembered it as if it had been the lash of a hunting-crop across his face. his brows knit together into a wedge-like furrow, and with a twitch of pain he bit his under-lip. "you are not listening to a word i am saying, jim," cried sibyl, "and i am making the most delightful plans for your future. do say something." "what do you want me to say?" "oh! that you will be a good boy, and not forget us," she answered, smiling at him. he shrugged his shoulders. "you are more likely to forget me, than i am to forget you, sibyl." she flushed. "what do you mean, jim?" she asked. "you have a new friend, i hear. who is he? why have you not told me about him? he means you no good." "stop, jim!" she exclaimed. "you must not say anything against him. i love him." "why, you don't even know his name," answered the lad. "who is he? i have a right to know." "he is called prince charming. don't you like the name? oh! you silly boy,! you should never forget it. if you only saw him, you would think him the most wonderful person in the world. some day you will meet him: when you come back from australia. you will like him so much. everybody likes him, and i... love him. i wish you could come to the theatre to-night. he is going to be there, and i am to play juliet. oh! how i shall play it! fancy, jim, to be in love and play juliet! to have him sitting there! to play for his delight! i am afraid i may frighten the company, frighten or enthrall them. to be in love is to surpass one's self. poor dreadful mr. isaacs will be shouting 'genius' to his loafers at the bar. he has preached me as a dogma; to-night he will announce me as a revelation. i feel it. and it is all his, his only, prince charming, my wonderful lover, my god of graces. but i am poor beside him. poor? what does that matter? when poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window. our proverbs want re-writing. they were made in winter, and it is summer now; spring-time for me, i think, a very dance of blossoms in blue skies." "he is a gentleman," said the lad, sullenly. "a prince!" she cried, musically. "what more do you want?" "he wants to enslave you." "i shudder at the thought of being free." "i want you to beware of him." "to see him is to worship him, to know him is to trust him." "sibyl, you are mad about him." she laughed, and took his arm. "you dear old jim, you talk as if you were a hundred. some day you will be in love yourself. then you will know what it is. don't look so sulky. surely you should be glad to think that, though you are going away, you leave me happier than i have ever been before. life has been hard for us both, terribly hard and difficult. but it will be different now. you are going to a new world, and i have found one. here are two chairs; let us sit down and see the smart people go by." they took their seats amidst a crowd if watchers. the tulip-beds across the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. a white dust, tremulous cloud of orris-root it seemed, hung in the panting air. the brightly-coloured parasols danced and dipped like monstrous butterflies. she made her brother talk of himself, his hopes, his prospects. he spoke slowly and with effort. they passed words to each other as players at a game pass counters. sibyl felt pressed. she could not communicate her joy. a faint smile curving that sullen mouth was all the echo she could win. after some time she became silent. suddenly she caught a glimpse of golden hair and laughing lips, and in an open carriage with two ladies dorian gray drove past. she started to her feet. "there he is!" she cried. "who?" said jim vane. "prince charming," she answered, looking after the victoria. he jumped up, and seized her roughly by the arm. "show him to me. which is he? point him out. i must see him!" he exclaimed; but at that moment the duke of berwick's four-in-hand came between, and when it had left the space clear, the carriage had swept out of the park. "he is gone," murmured sibyl, sadly. "i wish you had seen him." "i wish i had, for as sure as there is a god in heaven, if he ever does you any wrong, i shall kill him." she looked at him in horror. he repeated his words. they cut the air like a dagger. the people round began to gape. a lady standing close to her tittered. "come away, jim; come away," she whispered. he followed her doggedly as she passed through the crowd. he felt glad at what he had said. when they reached the achilles statue she turned round. there was pity in her eyes that became laughter on her lips. she shook her head at him. "you are foolish, jim, utterly foolish; a bad-tempered boy, that is all. how can you say such horrible things? you don't know what you are talking about. you are simply jealous and unkind. ah! i wish you would fall in love. love makes people good, and what you said was wicked." "i am sixteen," he answered, "and i know what i am about. mother is no help to you. she doesn't understand how to look after you. i wish now that i was not going to australia at all. i have a great mind to chuck the whole thing up. i would, if my articles hadn't been signed." "oh, don't be so serious, jim. you are like one of the heroes of those silly melodramas mother used to be so fond of acting in. i am not going to quarrel with you. i have seen him, and oh! to see him is perfect happiness. we won't quarrel. i know you would never harm any one i love, would you?" "not as long as you love him, i suppose," was the sullen answer. "i shall love him for ever!" she cried. "and he?" "for ever, too!" "he had better." she shrank from him. then she laughed and put her hand on his arm. he was merely a boy. at the marble arch they hailed an omnibus, which left them close to their shabby home in the euston road. it was after five o'clock, and sibyl had to lie down for a couple of hours before acting. jim insisted that she should do so. he said that he would sooner part with her when their mother was not present. she would be sure to make a scene, and he detested scenes of every kind. in sibyl's own room they parted. there was jealousy in the lad's heart, and a fierce, murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed to him, had come between them. yet, when her arms were flung around his neck, and her fingers strayed through his hair, he softened, and kissed her with real affection. there were tears in his eyes as he went downstairs. his mother was waiting for him below. she grumbled at his unpunctuality, as he entered. he made no answer, but sat down to his meagre meal. the flies buzzed round the table, and crawled over the stained cloth. through the rumble of omnibuses, and the clatter of street-cabs, he could hear the droning voice devouring each minute that was left to him. after some time, he thrust away his plate, and put his head in his hands. he felt that he had a right to know. it should have been told to him before, if it was as he suspected. leaden with fear, his mother watched him. words dropped mechanically from her lips. a tattered lace handkerchief twitched in her fingers. when the clock struck six, he got up, and went to the door. when he turned back, and looked at her. their eyes met. in hers he saw a wild appeal for mercy. it enraged him. "mother, i have something to ask you," he said. her eyes wandered vaguely about the room. she made no answer. "tell me the truth. i have a right to know. were you married to my father?" she heaved a deep sigh. it was a sigh of relief. the terrible moment, the moment that night and day, for weeks and months, she had dreaded, had come at last, and yet she felt no terror. indeed in some measure it was a disappointment to her. the vulgar directness of the question called for a direct answer. the situation had not been gradually led up to. it was crude. it reminded her of a bad rehearsal. "no," she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life. "my father was a scoundrel then!" cried the lad, clenching his fists. she shook her head. "i knew he was not free. we loved each other very much. if he had lived, he would have made provision for us. don't speak against him, my son. he was your father, and a gentleman. indeed he was highly connected." an oath broke from his lips. "i don't care for myself," he exclaimed, "but don't let sibyl... it is a gentleman, isn't it, who is in love with her, or says he is? highly connected, too, i suppose." for a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman. her head drooped. she wiped her eyes with shaking hands. "sibyl has a mother," she murmured; "i had none." the lad was touched. he went towards her, and stooping down he kissed her. "i am sorry if i have pained you by asking about my father," he said, "but i could not help it. i must go now. good-bye. don't forget that you will have only one child now to look after, and believe me that if this man wrongs my sister, i will find out who he is, track him down, and kill him like a dog. i swear it." the exaggerated folly of the threat, the passionate gesture that accompanied it, the mad melodramatic words, made life seem more vivid to her. she was familiar with the atmosphere. she breathed more freely, and for the first time in many months she really admired her son. she would have liked to have continued the scene on the same emotional scale, but he cut her short. trunks had to be carried down, and mufflers looked for. the lodging-house drudge bustled in and out. there was the bargaining with the cab-man. the moment was lost in vulgar details. it was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that she waved the tattered lace handkerchief from the window, as her son drove away. she was conscious that a great opportunity had been wasted. she consoled herself by telling sibyl how desolate she felt her life would be, now that she had only one child to look after. she remembered the phrase. it had pleased her. of the threat she said nothing. it was vividly and dramatically expressed. she felt that they would all laugh at it some day. chapter vi "i suppose you have heard the news, basil?" said lord henry that evening, as hallward was shown into a little private room at the bristol where dinner had been laid for three. "no, harry," answered the artist, giving his hat and coat to the bowing waiter. "what is it? nothing about politics, i hope? they don't interest me. there is hardly a single person in the house of commons worth painting; though many of them would be the better for a little whitewashing." "dorian gray is engaged to be married," said lord henry, watching him as he spoke. hallward started, and then frowned. "dorian engaged to be married!" he cried. "impossible!" "it is perfectly true." "to whom?" "to some little actress or other." "i can't believe it. dorian is far too sensible." "dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear basil." "marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, harry." "except in america," rejoined lord henry, languidly. "but i didn't say he was married. i said he was engaged to be married. there is a great difference. i have a distinct remembrance of being married, but i have no recollection at all of being engaged. i am inclined to think that i never was engaged." "but think of dorian's birth, and position, and wealth. it would be absurd for him to marry so much beneath him." "if you want to make him marry this girl tell him that, basil. he is sure to do it, then. whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives." "i hope the girl is good, harry. i don't want to see dorian tied to some vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect." "oh, she is better than goodshe is beautiful," murmured lord henry, sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. "dorian says she is beautiful; and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. your portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal appearance of other people. it has had that excellent effect, amongst others. we are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn't forget his appointment." "are you serious?" "quite serious, basil. i should be miserable if i thought i should ever be more serious than i am at the present moment." "but do you approve of it, harry?" asked the painter, walking up and down the room, and biting his lip. "you can't approve of it, possibly. it is some silly infatuation." "i never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. it is an absurd attitude to take towards life. we are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. i never take any notice of what common people say, and i never interfere with what charming people do. if a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is absolutely delightful to me. dorian gray falls in love with a beautiful girl who acts juliet, and proposes to marry her. why not? if he wedded messalina he would be none the less interesting. you know i am not a champion of marriage. the real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. and unselfish people are colourless. they lack individuality. still, there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex. they retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. they are forced to have more than one life. they become highly organized, and to be highly organized is, i should fancy, the object of man's existence. besides, every experience is of value, and, whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience. i hope that dorian gray will make this girl his wife, passionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by some one else. he would be a wonderful study." "you don't mean a single word of all that, harry; you know you don't. if dorian gray's life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself. you are much better than you pretend to be." lord henry laughed. "the reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. the basis of optimism is sheer terror. we think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. we praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. i mean everything that i have said. i have the greatest contempt for optimism. as for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. if you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it. as for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other and more interesting bonds between men and women. i will certainly encourage them. they have the charm of being fashionable. but here is dorian himself. he will tell you more than i can." "my dear harry, my dear basil, you must both congratulate me!" said the lad, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings, and shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn. "i have never been so happy. of course it is sudden: all really delightful things are. and yet it seems to me to be the one thing i have been looking for all my life." he was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked extraordinarily handsome. "i hope you will always be very happy, dorian," said hallward, "but i don't quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement. you let harry know." "and i don't forgive you for being late for dinner," broke in lord henry, putting his hand on the lad's shoulder, and smiling as he spoke. "come, let us sit down and try what the new chef here is like, and then you will tell us how it all came about." "there is really not much to tell," cried dorian, as they took their seats at the small round table. "what happened was simply this. after i left you yesterday evening, harry, i dressed, had some dinner at that little italian restaurant in rupert street, you introduced me to, and went down at eight o'clock to the theatre. sibyl was playing rosalind. of course the scenery was dreadful, and the orlando absurd. but sibyl! you should have seen her! when she came on in her boy's clothes she was perfectly wonderful. she wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves, slim brown cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red. she had never seemed to me more exquisite. she had all the delicate grace of that tanagra figurine that you have in your studio, basil. her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round a pale rose. as for her actingwell, you shall see her to-night. she is simply a born artist. i sat in the dingy box absolutely enthralled. i forgot that i was in london and in the nineteenth century. i was away with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen. after the performance was over i went behind, and spoke to her. as we were sitting together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look that i had never seen there before. my lips moved toward hers. we kissed each other. i can't describe to you what i felt at that moment. it seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-coloured joy. she trembled all over, and shook like a white narcissus. then she flung herself on her knees and kissed my hands. i feel that i should not tell you all this, but i can't help it. of course our engagement is a dead secret. she has not even told her own mother. i don't know what my guardian will say. lord radley is sure to be furious. i don't care. i shall be of age in less than a year, and then i can do what i like. i have been right, basil, haven't i, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in shakespeare's plays? lips that shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. i have had the arms of rosalind around me, and kissed juliet on the mouth." "yes, dorian, i suppose you were right," said hallward, slowly. "have you seen her to-day?" asked lord henry. dorian gray shook his head. "i left her in the forest of arden, i shall find her in an orchard in verona." lord henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner. "at what particular point did you mention the word marriage, dorian? and what did she say in answer? perhaps you forgot all about it." "my dear harry, i did not treat it as a business transaction, and i did not make any formal proposal. i told her that i loved her, and she said she was not worthy to be my wife. not worthy! why, the whole world is nothing to me compared with her." "women are wonderfully practical," murmured lord henry, "much more practical than we are. in situations of that kind we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always remind us." hallward laid his hand upon his arm. "don't, harry. you have annoyed dorian. he is not like other men. he would never bring misery upon any one, his nature is too fine for that." lord henry looked across the table. "dorian is never annoyed with me," he answered. "i asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any questionsimply curiosity. i have a theory that it is always the women who propose to us, and not we who propose to the women. except, of course, in the middle-class life. but then the middle classes are not modern." dorian gray laughed, and tossed his head. "you are quite incorrigible, harry; but i don't mind. it is impossible to be angry with you. when you see sibyl vane you will feel that the man who could wrong her would be a beast, a beast without a heart. i cannot understand how any one can wish to shame the thing he loves. i love sibyl vane. i want to place her on a pedestal of gold, and to see the world worship the woman who is mine. what is marriage? an irrevocable vow. you mock at it for that. ah! don't mock. it is an irrevocable vow that i want to take. her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good. when i am with her, i regret all that you have taught me. i become different from what you have known me to be. i am changed, and the mere touch of sibyl vane's hand makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories." "and those are...?" asked lord henry, helping himself to some salad. "oh, your theories about life, your theories about love, your theories about pleasure. all your theories, in fact, harry." "pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about," he answered, in his slow, melodious voice. "but i am afraid i cannot claim my theory as my own. it belongs to nature, not to me. pleasure is nature's test, her sign of approval. when we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." "ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried basil hallward. "yes," echoed dorian, leaning back in his chair, and looking at lord henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, harry?" "to be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied, touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. "discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. one's own lifethat is the important thing. as for the lives of one's neighbors, if one wishes to be a prig or a puritan, one can flaunt one's moral views about them, but they are not one's concern. besides, individualism has really the higher aim. modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. i consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality." "but, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, harry, one pays a terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter. "yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. i should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich." "one has to pay in other ways but money." "what sort of ways, basil?" "oh! i should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in... well, in the consciousness of degradation." lord henry shrugged his shoulders. "my dear fellow, mediaeval art is charming, but mediaeval emotions are out of date. one can use them in fiction, of course. but then the only things that one can use in fiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact. believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is." "i know what pleasure is," cried dorian gray. "it is to adore some one." "that is certainly better than being adored," he answered, toying with some fruits. "being adored is a nuisance. women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. they worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them." "i should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to us," murmured the lad, gravely. "they create love in our natures. they have a right to demand it back." "that is quite true, dorian," cried hallward. "nothing is ever quite true," said lord henry. "this is," interrupted dorian. "you must admit, harry, that women give to men the very gold of their lives." "possibly," he sighed, "but they invariably want it back in such very small change. that is the worry. women, as some witty frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces, and always prevent us from carrying them out." "harry, you are dreadful! i don't know why i like you so much." "you will always like me, dorian," he replied. "will you have some coffee, you fellows? waiter, bring coffee, and fine-champagne, and some cigarettes. no; don't mind the cigarettes; i have some. basil, i can't allow you to smoke cigars. you must have a cigarette. a cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. it is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. what more can one want? yes, dorian, you will always be fond of me. i represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit." "what nonsense you talk, harry!" cried the lad, taking a light from a fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table. "let us go down to the theatre. when sibyl comes on the stage you will have a new ideal of life. she will represent something to you that you have never known." "i have known everything," said lord henry, with a tired look in his eyes, "but i am always ready for a new emotion. i am afraid, however, that, for me at any rate, there is no such thing. still, your wonderful girl may thrill me. i love acting. it is so much more real than life. let us go. dorian, you will come with me. i am so sorry, basil, but there is only room for two in the brougham, you must follow us in a hansom." they got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing. the painter was silent and preoccupied. there was a gloom over him. he could not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better than many other things that might have happened. after a few minutes, they all passed downstairs. he drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in front of him. a strange sense of loss came over him. he felt that dorian gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. life had come between them.... his eyes darkened, and the crowded, flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. when the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older. chapter vii for some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat jew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with an oily, tremulous smile. he escorted them to their box with sort of pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands, and talking at the top of his voice. dorian gray loathed him more than ever. he felt as if he had come to look for miranda and had been met by caliban. lord henry, upon the other hand, rather liked him. at least he declared he did, and insisted on shaking him by the hand, and assuring him that he was proud to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone bankrupt over a poet. hallward amused himself with watching the faces in the pit. the heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight flamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire. the youths in the gallery had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung them over the side. they talked to each other across the theatre, and shared their oranges with the tawdry girls who sat beside them. some women were laughing in the pit. their voices were horribly shrill and discordant. the sound of the popping of corks came from the bar. "what a place to find one's divinity in!" said lord henry. "yes!" answered dorian gray. "it was here i found her, and she is divine beyond all living things. when she acts you will forget everything. these common, rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures, become quite different when she is on the stage. they sit silently and watch her. they weep and laugh as she wills them to do. she makes them as responsive as a violin. she spiritualizes them, and one feels that they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self." "the same flesh and blood as one's self! oh, i hope not!" exclaimed lord henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery through his opera-glass. "don't pay an attention to him, dorian," said the painter. "i understand what you mean, and i believe in this girl. any one you love must be marvellous, and any girl that has the effect you describe must be fine and noble. to spiritualize one's agethat is something worth doing. if this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world. this marriage is quite right. i did not think so at first, but i admit it now. the gods made sibyl vane for you. without her you would have been incomplete." "thanks, basil," answered dorian gray, pressing his hand. "i knew that you would understand me. harry is so cynical, he terrifies me. but here is the orchestra. it is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about five minutes. then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom i am going to give all my life, to whom i have given everything that is good in me." a quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of applause, sibyl vane stepped on the stage. yes, she was certainly, lovely to look atone of the loveliest creatures, lord henry thought, that he had ever seen. there was something of the fawn in her shy grace and startled eyes. a faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded, enthusiastic house. she stepped back a few paces, and her lips seemed to tremble. basil hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud. motionless, and as one in a dream, sat dorian gray, gazing at her. lord henry peered through his glasses, murmuring, "charming! charming!" the scene was the hall of capulet's house, and romeo in his pilgrim's dress had entered with mercutio and his other friends. the band, such as it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began. through the crowd of ungainly, shabbily-dressed actors, sibyl vane moved like a creature from a finer world. her body swayed, while she danced, as a plant sways in the water. the curves of her throat were the curves of the white lily. her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory. yet she was curiously listless. she showed no sign of love when her eyes rested on romeo. the few words she had to speak good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this' for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kisswith the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly artificial manner. the voice was exquisite, but from the point of view of tone it was absolutely false. it was wrong in colour. it took away all life from the verse. it made the passion unreal. dorian gray grew pale as he watched her. he was puzzled and anxious. neither of his friends dared to say anything to him. she seemed to them to be absolutely incompetent. they were horribly disappointed. yet they felt that the true test of any juliet is the balcony scene of the second act. they waited for that. if she failed there, there was nothing in her. she looked charming as she came out in the moonlight. that could not be denied. but the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and grew worse as she went on. her gestures became absurdly artificial. she overemphasized everything that she had to say. the beautiful passage thou knowest the mask of night is on my face, else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek for that which thou hast heard me speak to-nightwas declaimed with the painful precision of a school-girl who has been taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. when she leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines although i joy in thee, i have no joy of this contract to-night; it is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; too like the lightning, which doth cease to be ere one can say, "it lightens." sweet, good-night! this bud of love by summer's ripening breath may prove a beauteous flower when next we meetshe spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. it was not nervousness. indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely self-contained. it was simply bad art. she was a complete failure. even the common, uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their interest in the play. they got restless, and began to talk loudly and to whistle. the jew manager, who was standing, at the back of the dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. the only person unmoved was the girl herself. when the second act was over there came a storm of hisses, and lord henry got up from his chair and put on his coat. "she is quite beautiful, dorian," he said, "but she can't act. let us go." "i am going to see the play through," answered the lad, in a hard, bitter voice. "i am awfully sorry that i have made you waste an evening, harry. i apologize to you both." "my dear dorian, i should think miss vane was ill," interrupted hallward. "we will come some other night." "i wish she were ill," he rejoined. "but she seems to me to be simply callous and cold. she has entirely altered. last night she was a great artist. this evening she is merely a conmmon-place, mediocre actress." "don't talk like that about any one you love, dorian. love is a more wonderful thing than art." "they are both simply forms of imitation," remarked lord henry. "but do let us go. dorian, you must not stay here any longer. it is not good for one's morals to see bad acting. besides, i don't suppose you will want your wife to act. so what does it matter if she plays juliet like a wooden doll? she is very lovely, and if she knows as little about life as she does about acting, she will be a delightful experience. there are only two kinds of people who are really fascinatingpeople who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. good heavens, my dear boy, don't look so tragic! the secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming. come to the club with basil and myself. we will smoke cigarettes and drink to the beauty of sibyl vane. she is beautiful. what more can you want?" "go away, harry," cried the lad. "i want to be alone. basil, you must go. ah! can't you see that my heart is breaking?" the hot tears came to his eyes. his lips trembled, and rushing to the back of the box, he leaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands. "let us go, basil," said lord henry, with a strange tenderness in his voice; and the two young men passed out together. a few moments afterwards the footlights flared up, and the curtain rose on the third act. dorian gray went back to his seat. he looked pale, and proud, and indifferent. the play ragged on, and seemed interminable. half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots, and laughing. the whole thing was a fiasco. the last act was played to almost empty benches. the curtain went down on a titter, and some groans. as soon as it was over, dorian gray rushed behind the scenes into the greenroom. the girl was standing there alone, with a look of triumph on her face. her eyes lit with an exquisite fire. there was a radiance about her. her parted lips were smiling over some secret of their own. when he entered, she looked at him and an expression of infinite joy came over her. "how badly i acted to-night, dorian!" she cried. "horribly!" he answered, gazing at her in amazement, "horribly! it was dreadful. are you ill? you have no idea what it was. you have no idea what i suffered." the girl smiled. "dorian," she answered, lingering over his name with long-drawn music in her voice, as though it were sweeter than honey to the red petals of her mouth"dorian, you should have understood. but you understand now, don't you?" "understand what?" he asked angrily. "why i was so bad to-night. why i shall always be bad. why i shall never act well again." he shrugged his shoulders. "you are ill, i suppose. when you are ill you shouldn't act. you make yourself ridiculous. my friends were bored. i was bored." she seemed not to listen to him. she was transfigured with joy. an ecstasy of happiness dominated her. "dorian, dorian," she cried, "before i knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. it was only in the theatre that i lived. i thought that it was all true. i was rosalind one night, and portia the other. the joy of beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of cordelia were mine also. i believed in everything. the common people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. the painted scenes were my world. i knew nothing but shadows, and i thought them real. you cameoh, my beautiful love!and you freed my soul from prison. you taught me what reality really is. to-night, for the first time in my life, i saw through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which i had always played. to-night, for the first time, i became conscious that the romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, and that the moonlight in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words i had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not what i wanted to say. you had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection. you had made me understand what love really is. my love! my love! prince charming! prince of life! i have grown sick of shadows. you are more to me than all art can ever be. what have i to do with the puppets of a play? when i came on to-night, i could not understand how it was that everything had gone from me. i thought that i was going to be wonderful. i found that i could do nothing. suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all meant. the knowledge was exquisite to me. i heard them hissing, and i smiled. what could they know of love such as ours? take me away, doriantake me away with you, where we can be quite alone. i hate the stage. i might mimic a passion that i do not feel, but i cannot mimic one that burns me like fire. oh, dorian, dorian, you understand now what it signifies? even if i could do it, it would be profanation for me to play at being in love. you have made me see that." he flung himself down on the sofa, and turned away his face. "you have killed my love," he muttered. she looked at him in wonder, and laughed. he made no answer. she came across to him, and with her little fingers stroked his hair. she knelt down and pressed his hands to her lips. he drew them away, and a shudder ran through him. then he leaped up, and went to the door. "yes," he cried, "you have killed my love. you used to stir my imagination. now you don't even stir my curiosity. you simply produce no effect. i loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. you have thrown it all away. you are shallow and stupid. my god! how mad i was to love you! what a fool i have been! you are nothing to me now. i will never see you again. i will never think of you. i will never mention your name. you don't know what you were to me, once. why, once... oh, i can't bear to think of it! i wish i had never laid eyes upon you! you have spoiled the romance of my life. how little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art! without your art you are nothing. i would have made you famous, splendid, magnificent. the world would have worshipped you, and you would have borne my name. what are you now? a third-rate actress with a pretty face." the girl grew white, and trembled. she clenched her hands together, and her voice seemed to catch in her throat. "you are not serious, dorian?" she murmured. "you are acting." "acting! i leave that to you. you do it so well," he answered, bitterly. she rose from her knees, and, with a piteous expression of pain in her face, came across the room to him. she put her hand upon his arm, and looked into his eyes. he thrust her back. "don't touch me!" he cried. a low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet, and lay there like a trampled flower. "dorian, dorian, don't leave me!" she whispered. "i am so sorry i didn't act well. i was thinking of you all the time. but i will tryindeed, i will try. it came so suddenly across me, my love for you. i think i should never have known it if you had not kissed meif we had not kissed each other. kiss me again, my love. don't go away from me. i couldn't bear it. oh! don't go away from me. my brother... no; never mind. he didn't mean it. he was in jest... but you, oh! can't you forgive me for to-night? i will work so hard, and try to improve. don't be cruel to me because i love you better than anything in the world. after all, it is only once that i have not pleased you. but you are quite right, dorian. i should have shown myself more of an artist. it was foolish of me; and yet i couldn't help it. oh, don't leave me, don't leave me." a fit of passionate sobbing choked her. she crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and dorian gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled in exquisite disdain. there is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. sibyl vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodromatic. her tears and sobs annoyed him. "i am going," he said at last, in his calm, clear voice. "i don't wish to be unkind, but i can't see you again. you have disappointed me." she wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer. her little hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him. he turned on his heel, and left the room. in a few moments he was out of the theatre. where he went to he hardly knew. he remembered wandering through dimly-lit streets, past gaunt black-shadowed archways and evil-looking houses. women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after him. drunkards had reeled by cursing, and chattering to themselves like monstrous apes. he had seen grotesque children huddled upon doorsteps, and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts. as the dawn was just breaking he found himself close to covent garden. the darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself into a perfect pearl. huge carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. the air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an anodyne for his pain. he followed into the market, and watched the men unloading their waggons. a white-smocked carter offered him some cherries. he thanked him, wondered why he refused to accept any money for them, and began to eat them listlessly. they had been plucked at midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them. a long line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge jade-green piles of vegetables. under the portico, with its grey sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls, waiting for the auction to be over. others crowded round the swinging doors of the coffee-house in the piazza. the heavy cart-horses slipped and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings. some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks. iris-necked, and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about picking up seeds. after a little while, he hailed a hansom, and drove home. for a few moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round at the silent square with its blank close-shuttered windows, and its staring blinds. the sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like silver against it. from some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke was rising. it curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air. in the huge gilt venetian lantern, spoil of some doge's barge, that hung from the ceiling of the great oak-panelled hall of entrance, lights were still burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals of flame they seemed, trimmed with white fire. he turned them out, and, having thrown his hat and cape on the table, passed through the library towards the door of his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the ground floor that, in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had just had decorated for himself, and hung with some curious renaissance tapestries that had been discovered stored in a disused attic at selby royal. as he was turning the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait basil hallward had painted of him. he started back as if in surprise. then he went on into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled. after he had taken the buttonhole out of his coat, he seemed to hesitate. finally he came back, went over to the picture, and examined it. in the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-coloured silk blinds, the face appeared to him to be a little changed. the expression looked different. one would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. it was certainly strange. he turned round, and, walking to the window, drew up the blind. the bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering. but the strange expression that he had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to linger there, to be more intensified even. the quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing. he winced, and taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory cupids, one of lord henry's many presents to him, glanced hurriedly into its polished depths. no line like that warped his red lips. what did it mean? he rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it again. there were no signs of any change when he looked into the actual painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression had altered. it was not a mere fancy of his own. the thing was horribly apparent. he threw himself into a chair, and began to think. suddenly there flashed across his mind what he had said in basil hallward's studio the day the picture had been finished. yes, he remembered it perfectly. he had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood. surely his wish had not been fulfilled? such things were impossible. it seemed monstrous even to think of them. and, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the mouth. cruelty! had he been cruel? it was the girl's fault, not his. he had dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he had thought her great. then she had disappointed him. she had been shallow and unworthy. and, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over him, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little child. he remembered with what callousness he had watched her. why had he been made like that? why had such a soul been given to him? but he had suffered also. during the three terrible hours that the play had lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of torture. his life was well worth hers. she had marred him for a moment, if he had wounded her for an age. besides, women were better suited to bear sorrow than men. they lived on their emotions. they only thought of their emotions. when they took lovers, it was merely to have some one with whom they could have scenes. lord henry had told him that, and lord henry knew what women were. why should he trouble about sibyl vane? she was nothing to him now. but the picture? what was he to say of that? it held the secret of his life, and told his story. it had taught him to love his own beauty. would it teach him to loathe his own soul? would he ever look at it again? no; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses. the horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. suddenly there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that makes men mad. the picture had not changed. it was folly to think so. yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel smile. its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. its blue eyes met his own. a sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted image of himself, came over him. it had altered already, and would alter more. its gold would wither into grey. its red and white roses would die. for every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness. but he would not sin. the picture, changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience. he would resist temptation. he would not see lord henry any morewould not, at any rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in basil hallward's garden had first stirred within him the passion for impossible things. he would go back to sibyl vane, make her amends, marry her, try to love her again. yes, it was his duty to do so. she must have suffered more than he had. poor child! he had been selfish and cruel to her. the fascination that she had exercised over him would return. they would be happy together. his life with her would be beautiful and pure. he got up from his chair, and drew a large screen right in front of the portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it. "how horrible!" he murmured to himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it. when he stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath. the fresh morning air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. he thought only of sibyl. a faint echo of his love came back to him. he repeated her name over and over again. the birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her. chapter viii it was long past noon when he awoke. his valet had crept several times on tiptoe into the room to see if he was stirring, and had wondered what made his young master sleep so late. finally his bell sounded, and victor came in softly with a cup of tea, and a pile of letters, on a small tray of old sevres china, and drew back the olive-satin curtains, with, their shimmering blue lining, that hung in front of the three tall windows. "monsieur has slept well this morning," he said, smiling. "what o'clock is it, victor?" asked dorian gray, drowsily. "one hour and a quarter, monsieur." how late it was! he sat up, and, having sipped some tea, turned over his letters. one of them was from lord henry, and had been brought by hand this morning. he hesitated for a moment, and then put it aside. the others he opened listlessly. they contained the usual collection of cards, invitations to dinner, tickets for private views, programmes of charity concerts, and the like, that are showered on fashionable young men every morning during the season. there was a rather heavy bill, for a chased silver louis-quinze toilet-set, that he had not yet had the courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely old-fashioned people and did not realize that we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities; and there were several very courteously worded communications from jermyn street money-lenders offering to advance any sum of money at a moment's notice and at the most reasonable rates of interest. after about ten minutes he got up, and, throwing on an elaborate dressing-gown of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the onyx-paved bathroom. the cool water refreshed him after his long sleep. he seemed to have forgotten all that he had gone through. a dim sense of having taken part in some strange tragedy came to him once or twice, but there was the unreality of a dream about it. as soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat down to a light french breakfast, that had been laid out for him on a small round table close to the open window. it was an exquisite day. the warm air seemed laden with spices. a bee flew in, and buzzed round the blue-dragon bowl that, filled with sulphur-yellow roses, stood before him. he felt perfectly happy. suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front of the portrait, and he started. "too cold for monsieur?" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the table. "i shut the window?" dorian shook his head. "i am not cold," he murmured. was it all true? had the portrait really changed? or had it been simply his own imagination that had made him see a look of evil where there had been a look of joy? surely a painted canvas could not alter? the thing was absurd. it would serve as a tale to tell basil some day. it would make him smile. and, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing! first in the dim twilight, and then in the bright dawn, he had seen the touch of cruelty round the warped lips. he almost dreaded his valet leaving the room. he knew that when he was alone he would have to examine the portrait. he was afraid of certainty. when the coffee and cigarettes had been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a wild desire to tell him to remain. as the door was closing behind him he called him back. the man stood waiting for his orders. dorian looked at him for a moment. "i am not at home to any one, victor," he said, with a sigh. the man bowed and retired. then he rose from the table, lit a cigarette and flung himself down on a luxuriously-cushioned couch that stood facing the screen. the screen was an old one, of gilt spanish leather, stamped and wrought with a rather florid louis-quatorze pattern. he scanned it curiously, wondering if ever before it had concealed the secret of a man's life. should he move it aside, after all? why not let it stay there? what was the use of knowing? if the thing was true, it was terrible. if it was not true, why trouble about it? but what if, by some fate or deadlier chance, eyes other than his spied behind, and saw the horrible change? what should he do if basil hallward came and asked to look at his own picture? basil would be sure to do that. no; the thing had to be examined, and at once. anything would be better than this dreadful state of doubt. he got up, and locked both doors. at least he would be alone when he looked upon the mask of his shame. then he drew the screen aside, and saw himself face to face. it was perfectly true. the portrait had altered. as he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small wonder, he found himself at first gazing at the portrait with a feeling of almost scientific interest. that such a change should have taken place was incredible to him. and yet it was a fact. was there some subtle affinity between the chemical atoms, that shaped themselves into form and colour on the canvas, and the soul that was within him? could it be that what that soul thought, they realized?that what it dreamed, they made true? or was there some other, more terrible reason? he shuddered, and felt afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there, gazing at the picture in sickened horror. one thing, however, he felt that it had done for him. it had made him conscious how unjust, how cruel, he had been to sibyl vane. it was not too late to make reparation for that. she could still be his wife. his unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would be transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that basil hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the fear of god to us all. there were opiates for remorse, drugs that could lull the moral sense to sleep. but here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin. here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls. three o'clock struck, and four, and the half-hour rang its double chime, but dorian gray did not stir. he was trying to gather up the scarlet threads of life, and to weave them into a pattern; to find his way through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was wandering. he did not know what to do, or what to think. finally, he went over to the table and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had loved, imploring her forgiveness, and accusing himself of madness. he covered page after page with wild words of sorrow, and wilder words of pain. there is a luxury in self-reproach. when we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. it is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. when dorian had finished the letter, he felt that he had been forgiven. suddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard lord henry's voice outside. "my dear boy, i must see you. let me in at once. i can't bear your shutting yourself up like this." he made no answer at first, but remained quite still. the knocking still continued, and grew louder. yes, it was better to let lord henry in, and to explain to him the new life he was going to lead, to quarrel with him if it became necessary to quarrel, to part if parting was inevitable. he jumped up, drew the screen hastily across the picture, and unlocked the door. "i am so sorry for it all, dorian," said lord henry, as he entered. "but you must not think too much about it." "do you mean about sibyl vane?" asked the lad. "yes, of course," answered lord henry, sinking into a chair, and slowly pulling off his yellow gloves. "it is dreadful, from one point of view, but it was not your fault. tell me, did you go behind and see her, after the play was over?" "yes." "i felt sure you had. did you make a scene with her?" "i was brutal, harry, perfectly brutal. but it is all right now. i am not sorry for anything that has happened. it has taught me to know myself better." "ah, dorian, i am so glad you take it in that way! i was afraid i would find you plunged in remorse, and tearing that nice curly hair of yours." "i have got through all that," said dorian, shaking his head, and smiling. "i am perfectly happy now. i know what conscience is, to begin with. it is not what you told me it was. it is the divinest thing in us. don't sneer at it, harry, any moreat least not before me. i want to be good. i can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous." "a very charming artistic basis for ethics, dorian! i congratulate you on it. but how are you going to begin?" "by marrying sibyl vane." "marrying sibyl vane! " cried lord henry, standing up, and looking at him in perplexed amazement. "but, my dear dorian--" "yes, harry, i know what you are going to say. something dreadful about marriage. don't say it. don't ever say things of that kind to me again. two days ago i asked sibyl to marry me. i am not going to break my word to her. she is to be my wife." "your wife! dorian!... didn't you get my letter? i wrote to you this morning, and sent the note down, by my own man." "your letter? oh, yes, i remember. i have not read it yet, harry. i was afraid there might be something in it that i wouldn't like. you cut life to pieces with your epigrams." "you know nothing, then?" "what do you mean?" lord henry walked across the room, and, sitting down by dorian gray, took both his hands in his own, and held them tightly. "dorian," he said, "my letterdon't be frightenedwas to tell you that sibyl vane is dead." a cry of pain broke from the lad's lips, and he leaped to his feet, tearing his hands away from lord henry's grasp. "dead! sibyl dead! it is not true! it is a horrible lie! how dare you say it?" "it is quite true, dorian," said lord henry, gravely. "it is in all the morning papers. i wrote down to you to ask you not to see any one till i came. there will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must not be mixed up in it. things like that make a man fashionable in paris. but in london people are so prejudiced. here, one should never make one's debut with a scandal. one should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age. i suppose they don't know your name at the theatre? if they don't, it is all right. did any one see you going round to her room? that is an important point." dorian did not answer for a few moments. he was dazed with horror. finally he stammered, in a stifled voice, "harry, did you say an inquest? what did you mean by that? did sibyl--? oh, harry, i can't bear it! but be quick. tell me everything at once." "i have no doubt it was not an accident, dorian, though it must be put in that way to the public. it seems that as she was leaving the theatre with her mother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had forgotten something upstairs. they waited some time for her, but she did not come down again. they ultimately found her lying dead on the floor of her dressing room. she had swallowed something by mistake, some dreadful thing they use at theatres. i don't know what it was, but it had either prussic acid or white lead in it. i should fancy it was prussic acid, as she seems to have died instantaneously." "harry, harry, it is terrible!" cried the lad. "yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself mixed up in it. i see by the standard that she was seventeen. i should have thought she was almost younger than that. she looked such a child, and seemed to know so little about acting. dorian, you mustn't let this thing get on your nerves. you must come and dine with me, and afterwards we will look in at the opera. it is a patti night, and everybody will be there. you can come to my sister's box. she has got some smart women with her." "so i have murdered sibyl vane," said dorian gray, half to himself, "murdered her as surely as if i had cut her little throat with a knife. yet the roses are not less lovely for all that. the birds sing just as happily in my garden. and to-night i am to dine with you, and then go on to the opera, and sup somewhere, i suppose, afterwards. how extraordinarily dramatic life is! if i had read all this in a book, harry, i think i would have wept over it. somehow, now that it has happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears. here is the first passionate love-letter i have ever written in my life. strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed to a dead girl. can they feel, i wonder, those white silent people we call the dead? sibyl! can she feel, or know, or listen? oh, harry, how i loved her once! it seems years ago to me now. she was everything to me. then came that dreadful nightwas it really only last night?when she played so badly, and my heart almost broke. she explained it all to me. it was terribly pathetic. but i was not moved a bit. i thought her shallow. suddenly something happened that made me afraid. i can't tell you what it was, but it was terrible. i said i would go back to her. i felt i had done wrong. and now she is dead. my god! my god! harry, what shall i do? you don't know the danger i am in, and there is nothing to keep me straight. she would have done that for me. she had no right to kill herself. it was selfish of her." "my dear dorian," answered lord henry, taking a cigarette from his case, and producing a gold-latten matchbox, "the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life. if you had married this girl you would have been wretched. of course you would have treated her kindly. one can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. but she would have soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her. and when a woman finds that out about her husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's husband has to pay for. i say nothing about the social mistake, which would have been abject, which, of course, i would not have allowed, but i assure you that in any case the whole thing would have been an absolute failure." "i suppose it would," muttered the lad, walking up and down the room, and looking horribly pale. "but i thought it was my duty. it is not my fault that this terrible tragedy has prevented my doing what was right. i remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good resolutionsthat they are always made too late. mine certainly were." "good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. their origin is pure vanity. their result is absolutely nil. they give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. that is all that can be said for them. they are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account." "harry," cried dorian gray, coming over and sitting down beside him, "why is it that i cannot feel this tragedy as much as i want to? i don't think i am heartless. do you?" "you have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight to be entitled to give yourself that name, dorian," answered lord henry, with his sweet, melancholy smile. the lad frowned. "i don't like that explanation, harry," he rejoined, "but i am glad you don't think i'm heartless. i am nothing of the kind. i know i am not. and yet i must admit that this thing that has happened does not affect me as it should. it seems to me to be simply like a wonderful ending to a wonderful play. it has all the terrible beauty of a greek tragedy, a tragedy in which i took a great part, but by which i have not been wounded." "it is an interesting question," said lord henry, who found an exquisite pleasure in playing on the lad's unconscious egotism"an extremely interesting question. i fancy that the true explanation is this. it often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. they affect us just as vulgarity affects us. they give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. if these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. or rather we are both. we watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us. in the present case, what is it that has really happened? some one has killed herself for love of you. i wish that i had ever had such an experience. it would have made me in love with love for the rest of my life. the people who have adored methere have not been very many, but there have been somehave always insisted on living on, long after i had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me. they have become stout and tedious, and when i meet them they go in at once for reminiscences. that awful memory of woman! what a fearful thing it is! and what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals! one should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. details are always vulgar." "i must sow poppies in my garden," sighed dorian. "there is no necessity," rejoined his companion. "life has always poppies in her hands. of course, now and then things linger. i once wore nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic mourning for a romance that would not die. ultimately, however, it did die. i forget what killed it. i think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. that is always a dreadful moment. it fills one with the terror of eternity. wellwould you believe it?a week ago, at lady hampshire's, i found myself seated at dinner next the lady in question, and she insisted on going over the whole thing again, and digging up the past, and raking up the future. i had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel. she dragged it out again, and assured me that i had spoiled her life, i am bound to state that she ate an enormous dinner, so i did not feel any anxiety. but what a lack of taste she showed! the one charm of the past is that it is the past. but women never know when the curtain has fallen. they always want a sixth act, and as soon the interest of the play is entirely over they propose to continue it. if they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. they are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art. you are more fortunate than i am. i assure you, dorian, that not one of the women i have known would have done for me what sibyl vane did for you. ordinary women always console themselves. some of them do it by going in for sentimental colours. never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. it always means that they have a history. others find a great consolation in suddenly discovering the good qualities of their husbands. they flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins. religion consoles some. its mysteries have all the charm of a flirtation, a woman once told me, and i can quite understand it. besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. conscience makes egotists of us all. yes; there is really no end to the consolations that women find in modern life. indeed, i have not mentioned the most important one." "what is that, harry?" said the lad, listlessly. "oh, the obvious consolation. taking some one else's admirer when one loses one's own. in good society that always whitewashes a woman. but really, dorian, how different sibyl vane must have been from all the women one meets! there is something to me quite beautiful about her death. i am glad i am living in a century when such wonders happen. they make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with, such as romance, passion, and love." "i was terribly cruel to her. you forget that." "i am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else. they have wonderfully primitive instincts. we have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all the same. they love being dominated. i am sure you were splendid. i have never seen you really and absolutely angry, but i can fancy how delightful you looked. and, after all, you said something to the me the day before yesterday that seemed to me at the time to be merely fanciful, but that i see now was absolutely true, and it holds the key to everything." "what was that, harry?" "you said to me that sibyl vane represented to you all the heroines of romancethat she was desdemona one night, and ophelia the other; that if she died as juliet, she came to life as imogen." "she will never come to life again now," muttered the lad, burying his face in his hands. "no, she will never come to life. she has played her last part. but you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a strange lurid fragment from some jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene from webster, or ford, or cyril tourneur. the girl never really lived, and so she has never really died. to you at least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted through shakespeare's plays and left them lovelier for its presence, a reed through which shakespeare's music sounded richer and more full of joy. the moment she touched actual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away. mourn for ophelia, if you like. put ashes on your head because cordelia was strangled. cry out against heaven because the daughter of brabantio died. but don't waste your tears over sibyl vane. she was less real than they are." there was silence. the evening darkened in the room. noiselessly, and with silver feet, the shadows crept in from the garden. the colours faded wearily out of things. after some time dorian gray looked up. "you have explained me to myself, harry," he murmured, with something of a sigh of relief. "i felt all that you have said, but somehow i was afraid of it, and i could not express it to myself. how well you know me! but we will not talk again of what has happened. it has been a marvellous experience. that is all. i wonder if life has still in store for me anything as marvellous." "life has everything in store for you, dorian. there is nothing that you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do." "but suppose, harry, i became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? what then?" "ah, then," said lord henry, rising to go, "then, my dear dorian, you would have to fight for your victories. as it is, they are brought to you. no, you must keep your good looks. we live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. we cannot spare you. and now you had better dress, and drive down to the club. we are rather late, as it is." "i think i shall join you at the opera, harry. i feel too tired to eat anything. what is the number of your sister's box?" "twenty-seven, i believe. it is on the grand tier. you will see her name on the door. but i am sorry you won't come and dine." "i don't feel up to it," said dorian, listlessly. "but i am awfully obliged to you for all that you have said to me. you are certainly my best friend. no one has ever understood me as you have." "we are only at the beginning of our friendship, dorian," answered lord henry, shaking him by the hand. "good-bye. i shall see you before nine-thirty, i hope. remember, patti is singing." as he closed the door behind him, dorian gray touched the bell, and in a few minutes victor appeared with the lamps and drew the blinds down. he waited impatiently for him to go. the man seemed to take an interminable time over everything. as soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen, and drew it back. no; there was no further change in the picture. it had received the news of sibyl vane's death before he had known of it himself. it was conscious of the events of life as they occurred. the vicious cruelty that marred the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the very moment that the girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was. or was it indifferent to results? did it merely take cognizance of what passed within the soul? he wondered, and hoped that some day he would see the change taking place before his very eyes, shuddering as he hoped it. poor sibyl! what a romance it had all been! she had often mimicked death on the stage. then death himself had touched her, and taken her with him. how had she played that dreadful last scene, had she cursed him, as she died? no; she had died for love of him, and love would always be a sacrament to him now. she had atoned for everything, by the sacrifice she had made of her life. he would not think any more of what she had made him go through, on that horrible night at the theatre. when he thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the world's stage to show the supreme reality of love. a wonderful tragic figure? tears came to his eyes as he remembered her childlike look and winsome fanciful ways and shy tremulous grace. he brushed them away hastily, and looked again at the picture. he felt that the time had really come for making his choice. or had his choice already been made? yes, life had decided that for himlife, and his own infinite curiosity about life. eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasure subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sinshe was to have all these things. the portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all. a feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that was in store for the fair face on the canvas. once, in boyish mockery of narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips that now smiled so cruelly at him. morning after morning he had sat before the portrait wondering at its beauty, almost enamoured of it, as it seemed to him at times. was it to alter now with every mood to which he yielded? was it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to be hidden away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight that had so often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its hair? the pity of it! the pity of it! for a moment he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy that existed between him and the picture might cease. it had changed in answer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain unchanged. and, yet, who, that knew anything about life, would surrender the chance of remaining always young, however fantastic that chance might be, or with what fateful consequences it might be fraught? besides, was it really under his control? had it indeed been prayer that had produced the substitution? might there not be some curious scientific reason for it all? if thought could exercise its influence upon a living organism, might not thought exercise an influence upon dead and inorganic things? nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity? but the reason was of no importance. he would never again tempt by a prayer any terrible power. if the picture was to alter, it was to alter. that was all. why inquire too closely into it? for there would be a real pleasure in watching it. he would be able to follow his mind into its secret places. this portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. as it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul. and when winter came upon it, he would still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of summer. when the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid mask of chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood. not one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. not one pulse of his life would ever weaken. like the gods of the greeks, he would be strong, and fleet, and joyous. what did it matter what happened to the coloured image on the canvas? he would be safe. that was everything. he drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture, smiling as he did so, and passed into his bedroom, where his valet was already waiting for him. an hour later he was at the opera, and lord henry was leaning over his chair. chapter ix as he was sitting at breakfast next morning, basil hallward was shown into the room. "i am glad i have found you, dorian," he said gravely. "i called last night, and they told me you were at the opera. of course i knew that was impossible. but i wish you hid left word where you had really gone to. i passed a dreadful evening, half afraid that one tragedy might be followed by another. i think you might have telegraphed for me when you heard of it first. i read of it quite by chance in a late edition of the globe, that i picked up at the club. i came here at once, and was miserable at not finding you. i can't tell you how heartbroken i am about the whole thing. i know what you must suffer. but where were you? did you go down and see the girl's mother? for a moment i thought of following you there. they gave the address in the paper. somewhere in the euston road, isn't it? but i was afraid of intruding upon a sorrow that i could not lighten. poor woman! what a state she must be in! and her only child, too! what did she say about it all?" "my dear basil, how do i know?" murmured dorian gray, sipping some pale-yellow wine from a delicate gold-beaded bubble of venetian glass, and looking dreadfully bored. "i was at the opera. you should have come on there. met lady gwendolyn, harry's sister, for the first time. we were in her box. she is perfectly charming; and patti sang divinely. don't talk about horrid subjects. if one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. it is simply expression, as harry says, that gives reality to things. i may mention that she was not the woman's only child. there is a son, a charming fellow, i believe. but he is not on the stage. he is a sailor, or something. and now, tell me about yourself and what you are painting." "you went to the opera?" said hallward, speaking very slowly, and with a strained touch of pain in his voice. "you went to the opera while sibyl vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging? you can talk to me of other women being charming, and of patti singing divinely, before the girl you loved has even the quiet of a grave to sleep in? why, man, there are horrors in store for that little white body of hers!" "stop, basil! i won't hear it!" cried dorian, leaping to his feet. "you must not tell me about things. what is done is done. what is past is past." "you call yesterday the past?" "what has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? it is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. a man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. i don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. i want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them." "dorian, this is horrible! something has changed you completely. you look exactly like the same wonderful boy who, day after day, used to come down to my studio to sit for his picture. but you were simple, natural, and affectionate then. you were the most unspoiled creature in the whole world. now, i don't know what has come over you. you talk as if you had no heart, no pity in you. it is all harry's influence. i see that." the lad flushed up, and, going to the window, looked out for a few moments on the green, flickering, sun-lashed garden. "i owe a great deal to harry, basil," he said, at last, "more than i owe to you. you only taught me to be vain." "well, i am punished for that, dorianor shall be some day." "i don't know what you mean, basil," he exclaimed, turning round. "i don't know what you want. what do you want?" "i want the dorian gray i used to paint," said the artist, sadly. "basil," said the lad, going over to him, and putting his hand on his shoulder, "you have come too late. yesterday when i heard that sibyl vane had killed herself--" "killed herself! good heavens! is there no doubt about that?" cried hallward, looking up at him with an expression of horror. "my dear basil! surely you don't think it was a vulgar accident? of course she killed herself." the elder man buried his face in his hands. "how fearful," he muttered, and a shudder ran through him. "no," said dorian gray, "there is nothing fearful about it. it is one of the great romantic tragedies of the age. as a rule, people who act lead the most commonplace lives. they are good husbands, or faithful wives, or something tedious. you know what i meanmiddle-class virtue, and all that kind of thing. how different sibyl was! she lived her finest tragedy. she was always a heroine. the last night she playedthe night you saw hershe acted badly because she had known, the reality of love. when she knew its unreality, she died, as juliet might have died. she passed again into the sphere of art. there is something of the martyr about her. her death has all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty. but as i was saying, you must not think i have not suffered. if you had come in yesterday at a particular momentabout half-past five, perhaps, or a quarter to sixyou would have found me in tears. even harry, who was here, who brought me the news, in fact, had no idea what i was going through. i suffered immensely. then it passed away. i cannot repeat an emotion. no one can, except sentimentalists. and you are awfully unjust, basil. you come down here to console me. that is charming of you. you find me consoled, and you are furious. how like a sympathetic person! you remind me of a story harry told me about a certain philanthropist who spent twenty years of his life in trying to get some grievance redressed, or some unjust law alteredi forget exactly what it was. finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his disappointment. he had absolutely nothing to do, almost died of ennui, and became a confirmed misanthrope. and besides, my dear old basil, if you really want to console me, teach me rather to forget what has happened, or to see it from a proper artistic point of view. was it not gautier who used to write about la consolation des arts? i remember picking up a little vellum-covered book in our studio one day and chancing on that delightful phrase. well, i am not like that young man you told me of when we were down at marlow together, the young man who used to say that yellow satin could console one for all the miseries of life. i love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. old brocades, green bronzes, lacquerwork, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury, pomp, there is much to be got from all these. but the artistic temperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is still more to me. to become the spectator of one's own life, as harry says, is to escape the suffering of life. i know you are surprised at my talking to you like this. you have not realized how i have developed. i was a schoolboy when you knew me. i am a man now. i have new passions, new thoughts, new ideas. i am different, but you must not like me less. i am changed, but you must always be my friend. of course i am very fond of harry. but i know that you are better than he is. you are not strongeryou are too much afraid of lifebut you are better. and how happy we used to be together! don't leave me, basil, and don't quarrel with me. i am what i am. there is nothing more to be said." the painter felt strangely moved. the lad was infinitely dear to him, and his personality had been the great turning-point in his art. he could not bear the idea of reproaching him any more. after all, his indifference was probably merely a mood that would pass away. there was so much in him that was good, so much in him that was noble. "well, dorian," he said, at length, with a sad smile, "i won't speak to you again about this horrible thing, after to-day. i only trust your name won't be mentioned in connection with it. the inquest is to take place this afternoon. have they summoned you?" dorian shook his head, and a look of annoyance passed over his face at the mention of the word "inquest." there was something so crude and vulgar about everything of the kind. "they don't know my name," he answered. "but surely she did?" "only my christian name, and that i am quite sure she never mentioned to any one. she told me once that they were all rather curious to learn who i was, and that she invariably told them my name was prince charming. it was pretty of her. you must do me a drawing of sibyl, basil. i should like to have something more of her than the memory of a few kisses and some broken pathetic words." "i will try and do something, dorian, if it would please you. but you must come and sit to me yourself again. i can't get on without you." "i can never sit to you again, basil. it is impossible!" he exclaimed, starting back. the painter stared at him. "my dear boy, what nonsense!" he cried. "do you mean to say you don't like what i did for you? where is it? why, have you pulled the screen in front of it? let me look at it? it is the best thing i have ever done. do take the screen away, dorian. it is simply, disgraceful of your servant hiding my work like that. i felt the room looked different as i came in." "my servant has nothing to do with it, basil. you don't imagine i let him arrange my room for me? he settles my flowers for me sometimesthat is all. no; i did it myself. the light was too strong on the portrait." "too strong! surely not, my dear fellow? it is an admirable place for it. let me see it." and hallward walked towards the corner of the room. a cry of terror broke from dorian gray's lips, and he rushed between the painter and the screen. "basil," he said, looking very pale, "you must not look at it. i don't wish you to." "not look at my own work! you are not serious. why shouldn't i look at it?" exclaimed hallward, laughing. "if you try to look at it, basil, on my word of honour i will never speak to you again as long as i live. i am quite serious. i don't offer any explanation, and you are not to ask for any. but, remember, if you touch this screen, everything is over between us." hallward was thunderstruck. he looked at dorian gray in absolute amazement. he had never seen him like this before. the lad was actually pallid with rage. his hands were clenched, and the pupils of his eyes were like disks of blue fire. he was trembling all over. "dorian!" "don't speak!" "but what is the matter? of course i won't look at it if you don't want me to," he said, rather coldly, turning on his heel, and going over towards the window. "but, really, it seems rather absurd that i shouldn't see my own work. especially as i am going to exhibit it in paris in the autumn. i shall probably have to give it another coat of varnish before that, so i must see it some day, and why not to-day?" "to exhibit it! you want to exhibit it;" exclaimed dorian gray, a strange sense of terror creeping over him. was the world going to be shown his secret? were people to gape at the mystery of his life? that was impossible. somethinghe did not know whathad to be done at once. "yes; i don't suppose you will object to that. georges petit is going to collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the rue de seze, which will open the first week in october. the portrait will only be away a month. i should think you could easily spare it for that time. in fact, you are sure to be out of town. and if you keep it always behind a screen, you can't care much about it." dorian gray passed his hand over his forehead. there were beads of perspiration there. he felt that he was on the brink of a horrible danger. "you told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it," he cried. "why have you changed your mind? you people who go in for being consistent have just as many moods as others have. the only difference is that your moods are rather meaningless. you can't have forgotten that you assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world would induce you to send it to any exhibition. you told harry exactly the same thing." he stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into his eyes. he remembered that lord henry had said to him once, half seriously, and half in jest, "if you want to have a strange quarter of an hour, get basil to tell you why he won't exhibit your picture. he told me why he wouldn't, and it was a revelation to me." yes, perhaps, basil, too, had his secret. he would ask him and try. "basil," he said, coming over quite close, and looking him straight in the face, "we have each of us a secret. let me know yours, and i shall tell you mine. what was your reason for refusing to exhibit my picture?" the painter shuddered in spite of himself. "dorian, if i told you, you might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me. i could not bear your doing either of those two things. if you wish me never to look at your picture again, i am content. i have always you to look at. if you wish the best work i have ever done to be hidden from the world, i am satisfied. your friendship is dearer to me than any fame or reputation." "no, basil, you must tell me," insisted dorian gray. "i think i have a right to know." his feeling of terror had passed away, and curiosity had taken its place. he was determined to find out basil hallward's mystery. "let us sit down, dorian," said the painter, looking troubled. "let us sit down. and just answer me one question. have you noticed in the picture something curious?something that probably at first did not strike you, but that revealed itself to you suddenly?" "basil!" cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with trembling hands, and gazing at him with wild, startled eyes. "i see you did. don't speak. wait till you hear what i have to say. dorian, from the moment i met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. i was dominated, soul, brain, and power by you. you became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. i worshipped you. i grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. i wanted to have you all to myself. i was only happy when i was with you. when you were away from me you were still present in my art.... of course i never let you know anything about this. it would have been impossible. you would not have understood it. i hardly understood it myself. i only, knew that i had seen perfection face to face, and that the world had become wonderful to my eyestoo wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is peril, the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of keeping them.... weeks and weeks went on, and i grew more and more absorbed in you. then came a new development. i had drawn you as paris in dainty armour, and as adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished boar-spear. crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms you had sat on the prow of adrian's barge, gazing across the green turbid nile. you had leaned over the still pool of some greek woodland, and seen in the water's silent silver the marvel of your own face. and it had all been what art should be, unconscious, ideal, and remote. one day, a fatal day i sometimes think, i determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you as you actually are, not in the costume of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your own time. whether it was the realism of the method or the mere wonder of your own personality, thus directly presented to me without mist or veil, i cannot tell. but i know that as i worked at it, every flake and film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. i grew afraid that others would know of my idolatry. i felt, dorian, that i had told too much, that i had put too much of myself into it. then it was that i resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited. you were a little annoyed; but then you did not realize all that it meant to me. harry, to whom i talked about it, laughed at me. but i did not mind that. when the picture was finished, and i sat alone with it, i felt that i was right.... well, after a few days the thing left my studio, and as soon as i had got rid of the intolerable fascination of its presence it seemed to me that i had been foolish in imagining that i had seen anything in it, more than that you were extremely good-looking and that i could paint. even now i cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates. art is always more abstract than we fancy. form and colour tell us of form and colourthat is all. it often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him. and so when i got this offer from paris i determined to make your portrait the principal thing in my exhibition. it never occurred to me that you would refuse. i see now that you were right. the picture cannot be shown. you must not be angry with me, dorian, for what i have told you. as i said to harry, once, you are made to be worshipped." dorian gray drew a long breath. the colour came back to his cheeks, and a smile played about his lips. the peril was over. he was safe for the time. yet he could not help feeling infinite pity for the painter who had just made this strange confession to him, and wondered if he himself would ever be so dominated by the personality of a friend. lord henry had the charm of being very dangerous. but that was all. he was too clever and too cynical to be really fond of. would there ever be some one who would fill him with a strange idolatry? was that one of the things that life had in store? "it is extraordinary, to me, dorian," said hallward, "that you should have seen this in the portrait. did you really see it?" "i saw something in it," he answered, "something that seemed to me very curious." "well, you don't mind my looking at the thing now?" dorian shook his head. "you must not ask me that, basil. i could not possibly let you stand in front of that picture." "you will some day, surely?" "never." "well, perhaps you are right. and now good-bye, dorian. you have been the one person in my life who has really influenced my art. whatever i have done that is good, i owe to you. ah! you don't know what it cost me to tell you all that i have told you." "my dear basil," said dorian, "what have you told me? simply that you felt that you admired me too much. that is not even a compliment." "it was not intended as a compliment. it was a confession. now that i have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. perhaps one should never put one's worship into words." "it was a disappointing confession." "why, what did you expect, dorian? you didn't see anything else in the picture, did you? there was nothing else to see?" "no; there was nothing else to see. why do you ask? but you mustn't talk about worship. it is foolish. you and i are friends, basil, and we must always remain so." "you have got harry," said the painter, sadly. "oh, harry,?" cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. "harry spends his days in saying what is incredible, and his evenings in doing what is improbable. just the sort of life i would like to lead. but still i don't think i would go to harry if i were in trouble. i would sooner go to you, basil." "you will sit to me again?" "impossible!" "you spoil my life as an artist by refusing, dorian. no man came across two ideal things. few come across one." "i can't explain it to you, basil, but i must never sit to you again. there is something fatal about a portrait. it has a life of its own. i will come and have tea with you. that will be just as pleasant." "pleasanter for you, i am afraid," murmured hallward, regretfully. "and now good-bye. i am sorry you won't let me look at the picture once again. but that can't be helped. i quite understand what you feel about it." as he left the room, dorian gray smiled to himself. poor basil! how little he knew of the true reason! and how strange it was that, instead of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! how much that strange confession explained to him! the painter's absurd fits of jealousy, his wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticenceshe understood them all now, and he felt sorry. there seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured by romance. he sighed and touched a bell. the portrait must be hidden away at all costs. he could not run such a risk of discovery again. it had been mad of him to have allowed the thing to remain, even for an hour, in a room to which any of his friends had access. chapter x when his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly, and wondered if he had thought of peering behind the screen. the man was quite impassive, and waited for his orders. dorian lit a cigarette, and walked over to the glass and glanced into it. he could see the reflection of victor's face perfectly. it was like a placid mask of servility. there was nothing to be afraid of, there. yet he thought it best to be on his guard. speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the housekeeper that he wanted to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to send two of his men round at once. it seemed to him that as the man left the room his eyes wandered in the direction of the screen. or was that merely his own fancy? after a few moments, in her black silk dress with old-fashioned thread mittens on her wrinkled hands, mrs. leaf bustled into the library. he asked for the key of the schoolroom. "the old schoolroom, mr. dorian," she exclaimed. "why, it is full of dust. i must get it arranged, and put it straight before you go into it. it is not fit for you to see, sir. it is not, indeed." "i don't want it put straight, leaf. i only want the key." "well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. why, it hasn't been opened for nearly five years, not since his lordship died." he winced at the mention of his grandfather. he had hateful memories of him. "that does not matter," he answered. "i simply want to see the placethat is all. give me the key." "and here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over the contents of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. "here is the key. i'll have it off the bunch in a moment. but you don't think of living up there, sir, and you so comfortable here?" "no, no," he cried, petulantly. "thank you, leaf. that will do." she lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of the household. he sighed, and told her to manage things as she thought best. she left the room, wreathed in smiles. as the door closed, dorian put the key in his pocket, and looked round the room. his eye fell on a large purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century venetian work that his grandfather had found it a convent near bologna. yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. it had perhaps served often as a pall for the dead. now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itselfsomething that would breed horrors and yet would never die. what the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. they would mar its beauty, and eat its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. and yet the thing would still live on. it would be always alive. he shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told basil the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. basil would have helped him to resist lord henry's influence, and the still more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. the love that he bore himfor it was really lovehad nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. it was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire. it was such love as michael angelo had known, and montaigne, and winckelmann, and shakespeare himself. yes, basil could have saved him. but it was too late now. the past could always be annihilated. regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. but the future was inevitable. there were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real. he took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that covered it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen. was the face on the canvas viler than before, it seemed to him that it was unchanged; and yet his loathing of it was intensified. gold hair, blue eyes, and rose-red lipsthey all were there. it was simply the expression that had altered. that was horrible in its cruelty. compared to what he saw in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow basil's reproaches about sibyl vane had been!how shallow, and of what little account! his own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgment. a look of pain came across him, and he flung the rich pall over the picture. as he did so, a knock came to the door. he passed out as his servant entered. "the persons are here, monsieur." he felt that the man must be got rid of at once. he must not be allowed to know where the picture was being taken to. there was something sly about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes. sitting down at the writing-table, he scribbled a note to lord henry, asking him to send him round something to read, and reminding him that they were to meet at eight-fifteen that evening. "wait for an answer," he said, handing it to him, "and show the men in here." in two or three minutes there was another knock, and mr. hubbard himself, the celebrated frame-maker of south audley street, came in with a somewhat rough-looking young assistant. mr. hubbard was a florid, red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was considerably tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the artists who dealt with him. as a rule, he never left his shop. he waited for people to come to him. but he always made an exception in favor of dorian gray. there was something about dorian that charmed everybody. it was a pleasure even to see him. "what can i do for you, mr. gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled hands. "i thought i would do myself the honour of coming round in person. i have just got a beauty of a frame, sir. picked it up at a sale. came from fonthill, i believe. admirably suited for a religious subject, mr. gray." "i am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, mr. hubbard. i shall certainly drop in and look at the framethough i don't go in much at present for religious artbut to-day, i only want a picture carried to the top of the house for me. it is rather heavy, so i thought i would ask you to lend me a couple of your men." "no trouble at all, mr. gray. i am delighted to be of any service to you. which is the work of art, sir?" "this," replied dorian, moving the screen back. "can you move it, covering and all, just as it is? i don't want it to get scratched going upstairs." "there will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial frame-maker, beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from the long brass chains by which it was suspended. "and, now, where shall we carry it to, mr. gray?" "i will show you the way, mr. hubbard, if you will kindly follow me. or perhaps you had better go in front. i am afraid it is right at the top of the house. we will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider." he held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and began the ascent. the elaborate character of the frame had made the picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious protests of mr. hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike of seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, dorian put his hand to it so as to help them. "something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man, when they reached the top landing. and he wiped his shiny forehead. "i am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured dorian, as he unlocked the door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men. he had not entered the place for more than four yearsnot, indeed, since he had used it first as a playroom when he was a child, and then as a study when he grew somewhat older. it was a large, well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last lord kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange likeness to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always hated and desired to keep at a distance. it appeared to dorian to have but little changed. there was the huge italian cassone, with its fantastically-painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which he had so often hidden himself as a boy. there the satinwood bookcase filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks. on the wall behind it was hanging the same ragged flemish tapestry where a faded king and queen were playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists. how well he remembered it all! every moment of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked round. he recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be hidden away. how little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that was in store for him! but there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as this. he had the key, and no one else could enter it. beneath its purple pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and unclean. what did it matter? no one could see it. he himself would not see it. why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? he kept his youththat was enough. and, besides, might not his nature grow finer, after all? there was no reason that the future should be so full of shame. some love might come across his life, and purify him, and shield him from those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit and in fleshthose curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them their subtlety and their charm. perhaps, some day, the cruel look would have passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show to the world basil hallward's masterpiece. no; that was impossible. hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon the canvas was growing old. it might escape the hideousness of sin, but the hideousness of age was in store for it. the cheeks would become hollow or flaccid. yellow crow's-feet would creep round the fading eyes and make them horrible. the hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men are. there would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been so stern to him in his boyhood. the picture had to be concealed. there was no help for it. "bring it in, mr. hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round. "i am sorry i kept you waiting so long. i was thinking of something else." "always glad to have a rest, mr. gray," answered the frame-maker, who was still gasping for breath. "where shall we put it, sir?" "oh, anywhere. here: this will do. i don't want to have it hung up. just lean it against the wall. thanks." "might one look at the work of art, sir?" dorian started. "it would not interest you, mr. hubbard," he said, keeping his eye on the man. he felt ready to leap upon him and fling him to the ground if he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that concealed the secret of his life. "i shan't trouble you any more now. i am much obliged for your kindness in coming round." "not at all, not at all, mr. gray. ever ready to do anything for you, sir." and mr. hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant, who glanced back at dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough, uncomely face. he had never seen any one so marvellous. when the sound of their footsteps had died away, dorian locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. he felt safe now. no one would ever look upon the horrible thing. no eye but his would ever see his shame. on reaching the library he found that it was just after five o'clock, and that the tea had been already brought up. on a little table of dark perfumed wood thickly encrusted with nacre, a present from lady radley, his guardian's wife, a pretty professional invalid, who had spent the preceding winter in cairo, was lying a note from lord henry, and beside it was a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the edges soiled. a copy of the third edition of the st. james gazette had been placed on the tea-tray. it was evident that victor had returned. he wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were leaving the house, and had wormed out of them what they had been doing. he would be sure to miss the picturehad no doubt missed it already, while he had been laying the tea-things. the screen had not been set back, and a blank space was visible on the wall. perhaps some night he might find him creeping upstairs and trying to force the door of the room. it was a horrible thing to have a spy in one's house. he had heard of rich men who had been blackmailed all their lives by some servant who had read a letter, or overheard a conversation, or picked up a card with an address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower or a shred of crumpled lace. he sighed, and, having poured himself out some tea, opened lord henry's note. it was simply to say, that he sent him round the evening paper, and book that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at eight-fifteen. he opened the st. james languidly, and looked through it. a red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye. it drew attention to the following paragraph: "inquest on an actress.an inquest was held this morning at the bell tavern, hoxton road, by mr. danby, the district coroner, on the body of sibyl vane, a young actress recently engaged at the royal theatre, holborn. a verdict of death by misadventure was returned. considerable sympathy was expressed for the mother of the deceased, who was greatly affected during the giving of her own evidence and that of dr. birrell, who had made the postmortem examination of the deceased." he frowned, and, tearing the paper in two went across the room and flung the pieces away. how ugly it all was! and how horribly real ugliness made things! he felt a little annoyed with lord henry for having sent him the report. and it was certainly stupid of him to have marked it with red pencil. victor might have read it. the man knew more than enough english for that. perhaps he had read it, and had begun to suspect something. and, yet, what did it matter, what had dorian gray to do with sibyl vane's death? there was nothing to fear. dorian gray had not killed her. his eye fell on the yellow book that lord henry had sent him. what was it, he wondered. he went towards the little pearl-coloured octagonal stand, that had always looked to him like the work of some strange egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung himself into an armchair, and began to turn over the leaves. after a few minutes he became absorbed. it was the strangest book that he had ever read. it seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed. it was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young parisian, who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. the style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of argot and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some of the finest artists of the french school of symbolistes. there were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in colour. the life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. one hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. it was a poisonous book. the heavy odor of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. the mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows. cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed through the windows. he read on by its wan light till he could read no more. then, after his valet had reminded him several times of the lateness of the hour, he got up, and, going into the next room, placed the book on the little florentine table that always stood at his bedside, and began to dress for dinner. it was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found lord henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored. "i am so sorry, harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your fault. that book you sent me so fascinated me that i forgot how the time was going." "yes: i thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his chair. "i didn't say i liked it, harry. i said it fascinated me. there is a great difference." "ah, you have discovered that?" murmured lord henry. and they passed into the dining-room. chapter xi for years, dorian gray could not free himself from the influence of this book. or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it. he procured from paris no less than nine large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in different colours, so that they might suit his various moods and the changing fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have almost entirely lost control. the hero, the wonderful young parisian, in whom the romantic and the scientific temperaments were so strangely blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself. and, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it. in one point he was more fortunate than the novel's fantastic hero. he never knewnever, indeed, had any cause to knowthat somewhat grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still waters, which came upon the young parisian so early in his life, and was occasioned by the sudden decay of a beauty that had once, apparently, been so remarkable. it was with an almost cruel joyand perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its placethat he used to read the latter part of the book, with its really tragic, if somewhat over-emphasized, account of the sorrow and despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world, he had most dearly valued. for the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated basil hallward, and many others besides him, seemed never to leave him. even those who had heard the most evil things against him, and from time to time strange rumours about his mode of life crept through london and became the chatter of the clubs, could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw him. he had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from the world. men who talked grossly became silent when dorian gray entered the room. there was something in the purity of his face that rebuked them. his mere presence seemed to recall to them the memory of the innocence that they had tarnished. they wondered how one so charming and graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an age that was at once sordid and sensual. often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture among those who were his friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that basil hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass. the very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his sense of pleasure. he grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. he would examine with minute care, and sometimes with monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. he would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. he mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs. there were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own delicately-scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little ill-famed tavern near the docks, which, under an assumed name, and in disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he had brought upon his soul, with a pity that was all the more poignant because it was purely selfish. but moments such as these were rare. that curiosity about life which lord henry had first stirred in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase with gratification. the more he knew, the more he desired to know. he had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them. yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to society. once or twice every month during the winter, and on each wednesday evening while the season lasted, he would throw open to the world his beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the day to charm his guests with the wonder's of their art. his little dinners, in the settling of which lord henry always assisted him, were noted as much for the careful selection and placing of those invited, as for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, with its subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered cloths, and antique plate of gold and silver. indeed, there were many, especially among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw, in dorian gray the true realization of a type of which they had often dreamed in eton or oxford days, a type that was to combine something of the real culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and perfect manner of a citizen of the world. to them he seemed to be of the company of those whom dante describes as having sought to "make themselves perfect by the worship of beauty." like gautier, he was one for whom "the visible world existed." and certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation. fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment universal, and dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for him. his mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to time he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of the mayfair balls and pall mall club windows, who copied him in everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of his graceful, though to him only half-serious fopperies. for, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was almost immediately offered to him on his coming of age, and found, indeed, a subtle pleasure in the thought that he might really become to the london of his own day what to imperial neronian rome the author of the "satyricon" once had been, yet in his inmost heart he desired to be something more than a mere arbiter elegantiarum, to be consulted on the wearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of a cane. he sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization. the worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are conscious of sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence. but it appeared to dorian gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic. as he looked back upon man moving through history, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. so much had been surrendered! and to such little purpose! there had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear, and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape, nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out the anchorite to feed with the wild animals of the desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of the field as his companions. yes: there was to be, as lord henry had prophesied, a new hedonisim that was to re-create life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. it was to have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet, it was never to accept any theory, or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. but it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment. there are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. in black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills, and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the steepers, and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave. veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. the wan mirrors get back their mimic life. the flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. nothing seems to us changed. out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. we have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain. it was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to dorian gray to be the true object, or amongst the true objects, of like; and in his search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and possess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he would often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and then, having, as it were, caught their colour and satisfied his intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and that indeed, according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition of it. it was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the roman catholic communion; and certainly the roman ritual had always a great attraction for him. the daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. he loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement, and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "panis caelestis," the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the passion of christ, breaking the host into the chalice, and smiting his breast for his sins. the fuming censers, that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers, had their subtle fascination for him. as he passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals, and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women whispering through the worn grating the true story of their lives. but he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a night or for a few hours of a night in which there are no stars and the moon is in travail. mysticism, with its marvellous power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a season; and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of the darwinismus movement in germany, and found a curious pleasure in tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions, morbid or healthy, normal or diseased. yet, as has been said of him before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. he felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment. he knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal. and so he would now study perfumes, and the secrets of their manufacture, distilling heavily-scented oils, and burning odorous gums from the east. he saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flowers, of aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that sickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to be able to expel melancholy from the soul. at another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts in which mad gypsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawled tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while grinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums, and, crouching upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned indians blew through long pipes of reed or brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and horrible horned adders. the harsh intervals and shrill discords of barbaric music stirred him at times when schubert's grace, and chopin's beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of beethoven himself, fell unheeded on his ear. he collected together from all parts of the world the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact with western civilizations, and loved to touch and try them. he had the mysterious juruparis of the rio negro indians, that women are not allowed to look at, and that even youths may not see till they have been subjected to fasting and scourging, and the earthen jars of the peruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human bones such as alfonso de ovalle heard in chile, and the sonorous green jaspers that are found near cuzco and give forth a note of singular sweetness. he had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when they were shaken; the long clarin of the mexicans, into which the performer does not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh ture of the amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who sit all day long in high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three leagues; the teponaztli, that has two vibrating tongues of wood, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with an elastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants; the yotl-bells of the aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, like the one that bernal diaz saw when he went with cortes into the mexican temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a description. the fantastic character of these instruments fascinated him, and he felt a curious delight in the thought that art, like nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices. yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the opera, either alone or with lord henry, listening in rapt pleasure to "tannhauser," and seeing in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul. on one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a costume ball as anne de joyeuse, admiral of france, in a dress covered with five hundred and sixty pearls. this taste enthralled him for years, and, indeed, may be said never to have left him. he would often spend a whole day settling and resettling in their cases the various stones that he had collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by lamplight, the cymophane with its wire-like line of silver, the pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes, carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous four-rayed stars, flame-red cinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with their alternate layers of ruby, and sapphire. he loved the red gold of the sunstone, and the moonstone's pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow of the milky opal. he procured from amsterdam three emeralds of extraordinary size and richness of colour, and had a turquoise de la vieille roche that was the envy of all the connoisseurs. he discovered wonderful stories, also about jewels. in alphonso's "clericalis disciplina" a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real jacinth, and in the romantic history of alexander, the conqueror of emathia was said to have found in the vale of jordan, snakes "with collars of real emeralds growing on their backs." there was a gem in the brain of the dragon, philostratus told us, and "by the exhibition of golden letters and a scarlet robe" the monster could be thrown into a magical sleep, and slain. according to the great alchemist, pierre de boniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of india made him eloquent. the cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. the garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her colour. the selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus, that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids. leonardus camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a newly-killed toad, that was certain antidote against poison. the bezoar, that was found in the heart of the arabian deer, was a charm that could cure the plague. in the nests of arabian birds was the aspilates, that, according to democritus, kept the wearer from his city with fire. the king of ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand, at the ceremony of his coronation. the gates of the palace of john the priest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake inwrought, so that no man might bring poison within." over the gable were "two golden apples, in which were two carbuncles," so that the gold might shine by day, and the carbuncles by night. in lodge's strange romance "a margarite of america" it was stated that in the chamber of the queen one could behold "all the chaste ladies of the world, inchased out of silver, looking through fair mirrors of chrysolites, carbuncles, sapphires, and greene emeraults." marco polo had seen the inhabitants of zipangu place rose-coloured pearls in the mouths of the dead. a sea monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to king perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss. when the huns lured the king into the great pit, he flung it awayprocopius tells the storynor was it ever found again, though the emperor anastasius offered five hundred-weight of gold pieces for it. the king of malabar had shown to a certain venetian a rosary of three hundred and four pearls, one for every god that he worshipped. when the duke de valentinois, son of alexander vi., visited louis xii. of france, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to brantome, and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light. charles of england had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and twenty-one diamonds. richard ii. had a coat, valued at thirty thousand marks, which was covered with balas rubies. hall described henry viii., on his way to the tower previous to his coronation, as wearing "a jacket of raised gold, the placard embroidered with diamonds and other rich stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses." the favourites of james i. wore earrings of emeralds set in gold filigrane. edward ii. gave to piers gaveston a suit of red-gold armour studded with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a skull-cap parseme with pearls. henry ii. wore jewelled gloves reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with twelve rubies and fifty-two great orients. the ducal hat of charles the rash, the last duke of burgundy of his race, was hung with pear-shaped pearls, and studded with sapphires. how exquisite life had once been! how gorgeous in its pomp and decoration! even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful. then he turned his attention to embroideries, and to the tapestries that performed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of the northern nations of europe. as he investigated the subjectand he always had an extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment in whatever he took uphe was almost saddened by the reflection of the ruin that time brought on beautiful and wonderful things. he, at any rate, had escaped that. summer followed summer, and the yellow jonquils bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the story of their shame, but he was unchanged. no winter marred his face or stained his flower-like bloom. flow different it was with material things! where had they passed to? where was the great crocus-coloured robe, on which the gods had fought against the giants, that had been worked by brown girls for the pleasure of athena? where, the huge velarium that nero had stretched across the colosseum at rome, that titan sail of purple on which was represented the starry sky, and apollo driving a chariot drawn by white gilt-reined steeds? he longed to see the curious table-napkins wrought for the priest of the sun, on which were displayed all the dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast; the mortuary cloth of king chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees; the fantastic robes that excited the indignation of the bishop of pontus, and were figured with "lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks, huntersall, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature;"and the coat that charles of orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which were embroidered the verses of a song beginning "madame, je suis tout joyeux," the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold thread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four pearls. he read of the room that was prepared at the palace at rheims for the use of queen joan of burgundy, and was decorated with "thirteen hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the king's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings were similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked in gold." catherine de medicis had a mourning-bed made for her of black velvet powdered with crescents and suns. its curtains were of damask, with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver ground, and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black velvet upon cloth of silver. louis xiv. had gold embroidered caryatides fifteen feet high in his apartment. the state bed of sobieski, king of poland, was made of smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with verses from the koran. its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully chased, and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. it had been taken from the turkish camp before vienna, and the standard of mohammed had stood beneath the tremulous gilt of its canopy. and so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite specimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting the dainty delhi muslines, finely wrought with gold with gold thread palmates, and stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the dacca gauzes, that from their transparency are known in the east as "wovenair," and "running water," and "evening dew"; strange figured cloths from java; elaborate yellow chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair blue silks, and wrought with fleurs de lys, birds and images: veils of lacis worked in hungary point; sicilian brocades, and stiff spanish velvets; georgian work with its gilt coins, and japanese foukousas with their green-toned golds and their marvellously plumaged birds. he had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed he had for everything connected with the service of the church. in the long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house he had stored away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the raiment of the bride of christ, who must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering that she seeks for, and wounded by self-inflicted pain. he possessed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask, figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in six-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the pineapple device wrought in seed-pearls. the orphreys were divided into panels representing scenes from the life of the virgin, and the coronation of the virgin was figured in coloured silks upon the hood. this was italian work of the fifteenth century. another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. the morse bore a seraph's head in gold-thread raised work. the orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was st. sebastian, he has chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with representations of the passion and crucifixion of christ, and embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and fleurs de lys; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria. in the mystic offices to which such things were put, there was something that quickened his imagination. for these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be almost too great to be borne. upon the walls of the lonely locked room where he had spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with his own hands the terrible portrait whose changing features showed him the real degradation of his life, and in front of it had draped the purple-and-gold pall as a curtain. for weeks he would not go there, would forget the hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart, his wonderful joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere existence. then, suddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down to dreadful places near blue gate fields, and stay there, day after day, until he was driven away. on his return he would sit in front of the picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other times, with that pride of individualism that is half the fascination of sin, and smiling, with secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own. after a few years he could not endure to be long out of england, and gave up the villa that he had shared at trouville with lord henry, as well as the little white walled-in house at algiers where they had more than once spent the winter. he hated to be separated from the picture that was such a part of his life, and was also afraid that during his absence some one might gain access to the room, in spite of the elaborate bars that he had caused to be placed upon the door. he was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing. it was true that the portrait still preserved, under all the foulness and ugliness of the face, its marked likeness to himself; but what could they learn from that? he would laugh at any one who tried to taunt him. he had not painted it. what was it to him how vile and full of shame it looked? even if he told them, would they believe it? yet he was afraid. sometimes when he was down at his great house in nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his own rank who were his chief companions, and astounding the county by the wanton luxury and gorgeous splendor of his mode of life, he would suddenly leave his guests and rush back to town to see that the door had not been tampered with, and that the picture was still there. what if it should be stolen? the mere thought made him cold with horror. surely the world would know his secret then. perhaps the world already suspected it. for, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him. he was very nearly blackballed at a west end club of which his birth and social position fully entitled him to become a member, and it was said that on one occasion, when he was brought by a friend into the smoking-room of the churchill, the duke of berwick and another gentleman got up in a marked manner and went out. curious stories became current about him after he had passed his twenty-fifth year. it was rumoured that he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors in a low den in the distant parts of whitechapel, and that he consorted with thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade. his extraordinary absences became notorious, and, when he used to reappear again in society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him with a sneer, or look at him with cold, searching eyes, as though they were determined to discover his secret. of such insolences and attempted slights, he, of course, took no notice, and in the opinion of most people his frank debonnair manner, his charming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth that seemed never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answer to the calumnies, for so they termed them, that were circulated about him. it was remarked, however, that some of those who had been most intimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun him. women who had wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved all social censure and set convention at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or horror if dorian gray entered the room. yet these whispered scandals only increased in the eyes of many, his strange and dangerous charm. his great wealth was a certain element of security. society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. it feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef. and, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life. even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees, as lord henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject; and there is possibly a good deal to be said for his view. for the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. form is absolutely essential to it. it should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that makes such plays delightful to us. is insincerity such a terrible thing? i think not. it is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities. such, at any rate, was dorian gray's opinion. he used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. to him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. he loved to stroll through the gaunt cold picture-gallery of his country house and look at the various portraits of those whose blood flowed in his veins. here was philip herbert, described by francis osborne, in his "memoires on the reigns of queen elizabeth and king james," as one who was "caressed by the court for his handsome face, which kept him not long company." was it young herbert's life that he sometimes led? had some strange poisonous germ crept from body to body till it had reached his own? was it some dim sense of that ruined grace that had made him so suddenly, and almost without cause, give utterance, in basil hallward's studio, to the mad prayer that had so changed his life? here, in gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelled surcoat, and gilt-edged ruff and wrist-bands, stood sir anthony sherard, with his silver-and-black armour piled at his feet. what had this man's legacy been? had the lover of giovanna of naples bequeathed him some inheritance of sin and shame? were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead man had not dared to realize? here, from the fading canvas, smiled lady elizabeth devereux, in her gauze hood, pearl stomacher, and pink slashed sleeves. a flower was in her right hand, and her left clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses. on a table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple. there were large green rosettes upon her little pointed shoes. he knew her life, and the strange stories that were told about her lovers. had he something of her temperament in him? these oval heavy-lidded eyes seemed to look curiously at him. what of george willoughby, with his powdered hair and fantastic patches? how evil he looked! the face was saturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with disdain. delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that were so overladen with rings. he had been a macaroni of the eighteenth century, and the friend, in his youth, of lord ferrars. what of the second lord beckenham, the companion of the prince regent in his wildest days, and one of the witnesses at the secret marriage with mrs. fitzherbert? how proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curls and insolent pose! what passions had he bequeathed? the world had looked upon him as infamous. he had led the orgies at carlton house. the star of the garter glittered upon his breast. beside him hung the portrait of his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped woman in black. her blood, also, stirred within him. how curious it all seemed! and his mother with her lady hamilton face, and her moist wine-dashed lipshe knew what he had got from her. he had got from her his beauty, and his passion for the beauty of others. she laughed at him in her loose bacchante dress. there were vine leaves in her hair. the purple spilled from the cup she was holding. the carnations of the painting had withered, but the eyes were still wonderful in their depth and brilliancy of colour. they seemed to follow him wherever he went. yet one had ancestors in literature, as well as in one's own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. there were times when it appeared to dorian gray that the whole of history was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it had been in his brain and in his passions. he felt that he had known them all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the stage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of subtlety. it seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his own. the hero of the wonderful novel that had so influenced his life had himself known this curious fancy. in the seventh chapter he tells how, crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as tiberius, in a garden at capri reading the shameful books of elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and the flute-player mocked the swagger of the censer, and, as caligula, had caroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables, and supped in an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as domitian, had wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round with haggard eyes for the reflection of the digger that was to end his days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible taedium vitae, that comes on those to whom life denies nothing: and had peered through a clear emerald at the red shambles of the circus, and then, in a litter of pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the street of pomegranates to a house of gold, and heard men cry on nero caesar as he passed by; and, as elagabalus, had painted his face with colours, and plied the distaff among the women, and brought the moon from carthage, and given her in mystic marriage to the sun. over and over again dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and the two chapters immediately following, in which, as in some curious tapestries or cunningly-wrought enamels, were pictured the awful and beautiful forms of those whom vice and blood and weariness had made monstrous or mad: filippo, duke of milan, who slew his wife, and painted her lips with a scarlet poison that her lover might suck death from the dead thing he fondled; pietro barbi, the venetian, known as paul the second, who sought in his vanity to assume the title of formosus, and whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was bought at the price of a terrible sin; gian maria visconti, who used hounds to chase living men, and whose murdered body was covered with roses by a harlot who had loved him; the borgia on his white horse, with fratricide riding beside him, and his mantle stained with the blood of perotto; pietro riario, the young cardinal archbishop of florence, child and minion of sixtus iv., whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who received leonora of aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy that he might serve at the feast as ganymede or hylas; ezzelin, whose melancholy could be cured only by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood, as other men have for red winethe son of the fiend, as was reported, and one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling with him for his own soul: giambattista cibo, who in mockery took the name of innocent, and into whose torpid veins the blood of three lads was infused by a jewish doctor; sigismondo malatesta, the lover of isotta, and the lord of rimini, whose effigy was burned at rome as the enemy of god and man, who strangled polyssena with a napkin, and gave poison to ginevra d'este in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a shameful passion built a pagan church for christian worship; charles vi., who had so wildly adored his brother's wife that a leper had warned him of the insanity that was coming on him, and who, when his brain had sickened and grown strange, could only be soothed by saracen cards painted with the images of love and death and madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and acanthus-like curls, grifonetto baglioni, who slew astorre with his bride, and simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying in the yellow piazza of perugia, those who had hated him could not choose but weep, and atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed him. there was a horrible fascination in them all. he saw them at night, and they troubled his imagination in the day. the renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoningpoisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by an amber chain. dorian gray had been poisoned by a book. there were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful. chapter xii it was on the ninth of november, the eve of his own thirty-eighth birthday, as he often remembered afterwards. he was walking home about eleven o'clock from lord henry's, where he had been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and foggy. at the corner of grosvenor square and south audley street a man passed him in the mist, walking very fast, and with the collar of his grey ulster turned up. he had a bag in his hand. dorian recognized him. it was basil hallward. a strange sense of fear, for which he could not account, came over him. he made no sign of recognition, and went on quickly, in the direction of his own house. but hallward had seen him. dorian heard him first stopping on the pavement and then hurrying after him. in a few moments his hand was on his arm. "dorian! what an extraordinary piece of luck! i have been waiting for you in your library ever since nine o'clock. finally i took pity on your tired servant, and told him to go to bed, as he let me out. i am off to paris by the midnight train, and i particularly wanted to see you, before i left. i thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as you passed me. but i wasn't quite sure. didn't you recognize me?" "in this fog, my dear basil? why, i can't even recognize grosvenor square, i believe my house is somewhere about here, but i don't feel at all certain about it. i am sorry you are going away, as i have not seen you for ages. but i suppose you will be back soon?" "no: i am going to be out of england for six months. i intend to take a studio in paris, and shut myself up till i have finished a great picture i have in my head. however, it wasn't about myself i wanted to talk. here we are at your door. let me come in for a moment. i have something to say to you." "i shall be charmed. but won't you miss your train?" said dorian gray, languidly, as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his latch-key. the lamp-light struggled out through the fog, and hallward looked at his watch. "i have heaps of time," he answered. "the train doesn't go till twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven. in fact, i was on my way to the club to look for you, when i met you. you see, i sha'n't have any delay about luggage, as i have sent on my heavy things. all i have with me is in this bag, and i can easily get to victoria in twenty minutes." dorian looked at him and smiled. "what a way for a fashionable painter to travel! a gladstone bag and an ulster! come in, or the fog will get into the house. and mind you don't talk about anything serious. nothing is serious nowadays. at least nothing should be." hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed dorian into the library. there was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth. the lamps were lit, and an open dutch silver spirit-case stood, with some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little marqueterie table. "you see your servant made me quite at home, dorian. he gave me everything i wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes. he is a most hospitable creature. i like him much better than the frenchman you used to have. what has become of the frenchman, by the bye?" dorian shrugged his shoulders. "i believe he married lady radley's maid, and has established her in paris as an english dressmaker. anglomanie is very fashionable over there now, i hear. it seems silly of the french, doesn't it? butdo you know?he was not at all a bad servant. i never liked him, but i had nothing to complain about. one often imagines things that are quite absurd. he was really very devoted to me, and seemed quite sorry when he went away. have another brandy-and-soda? or would you like hock-and-seltzer? i always take hock-and-seltzer myself. there is sure to be some in the next room." "thanks, i won't have anything more," said the painter, taking his cap and coat off, and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the corner. "and now, my dear fellow, i want to speak to you seriously. don't frown like that. you make it so much more difficult for me." "what is it all about?" cried dorian, in his petulant way, flinging himself down on the sofa. "i hope it is not about myself. i am tired of myself to-night. i should like to be somebody else." "it is about yourself," answered hallward, in his grave, deep voice, "and i must say it to you. i shall only keep you half an hour." dorian sighed, and lit a cigarette. "half an hour!" he murmured. "it is not much to ask of you, dorian, and it is entirely for your own sake that i am speaking. i think it right that you should know that the most dreadful things are being said against you in london." "i don't wish to know anything about them. i love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. they have not got the charm of novelty." "they must interest you, dorian. every gentleman is interested in his good name. you don't want people to talk of you as something vile and degraded. of course you have your position, and your wealth, and all that kind of thing. but position and wealth are not everything. mind you, i don't believe these rumours at all. at least, i can't believe them when i see you. sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. it cannot be concealed. people talk sometimes of secret vices. there are no such things. if a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even. somebodyi won't mention his name, but you know himcame to me last year to have his portrait done. i had never seen him before, and had never heard anything about him at the time, though i have heard a good deal since. he offered an extravagant price. i refused him. there was something in the shape of his fingers that i hated. i know now that i was quite right in what i fancied about him. his life is dreadful. but you, dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youthi can't believe anything against you. and yet i see you very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, and when i am away from you, and i hear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, i don't know what to say. why is it, dorian, that a man like the duke of berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it? why is it that so many gentlemen in london will neither go to your house nor invite you to theirs? you used to be a friend of lord staveley. i met him at dinner last week. your name happened to come up in conversation, in connection with the miniatures you have lent to the exhibition at the dudley. staveley curled his lip, and said that you might have the most artistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no pure-minded girl should be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman would sit in the same room with. i reminded him that i was a friend of yours, and asked him what he meant. he told me. he told me right out before everybody. it was horrible! why is your friendship so fatal to young men? there was that wretched boy in the guards who committed suicide. you were his great friend. there was sir henry ashton, who had to leave england, with a tarnished name. you and he were inseparable. what about adrian singleton, and his dreadful end? what about lord kent's only son, and his career? i met his father yesterday in st. james's street. he seemed broken with shame and sorrow. what about the young duke of perth? what sort of life has he got now? what gentleman would associate with him?" "stop, basil. you are talking about things of which you know nothing," said dorian gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt in his voice. "you ask me why berwick leaves a room when i enter it. it is because i know everything about his life, not because he knows anything about mine. with such blood as he has in his veins, how could his record be clean? you ask me about henry ashton and young perth. did i teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? if kent's silly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me? if adrian singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am i his keeper? i know how people chatter in england. the middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society, and on intimate terms with the people they slander. in this country it is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him. and what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? my dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite." "dorian," cried hallward, "that is not the question. england is bad enough i know, and english society is all wrong. that is the reason why i want you to be fine. you have not been fine. one has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends. yours seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. you have filled them with a madness for pleasure. they have gone down into the depths. you led them there. yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now. and there is worse behind. i, know you and harry are inseparable. surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not have made his sister's name a byword." "take care, basil. you go too far." "i must speak, and you must listen. you shall listen. when you met lady gwendolyn, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. is there a single decent woman in london now who would drive with her in the park? why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. then there are other storiesstories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in london. are they true? can they be true? when i first heard them, i laughed. i hear them now, and they make me shudder. what about your country house, and the life that is led there? dorian, you don't know what is said about you. i won't tell you that i don't want to preach to you. i remember harry saying once that every man who turned himself into an amateur curate for the moment always begin by saying that, and then proceeded to break his word. i do want to preach to you. i want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect you. i want you to have a clean name and a fair record. i want you to get rid of the dreadful people you associate with. don't shrug your shoulders like that. don't be so indifferent. you have a wonderful influence. let it be for good, not for evil. they say that you corrupt every one with whom you become intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house, for shame of some kind to follow after. i don't know whether it is or not. how should i know? but it is said of you. i am told things that it seems impossible to doubt. lord gloucester was one of my greatest friends at oxford. he showed me a letter that his wife had written to him when she was dying alone in her villa at mentone. your name was implicated in the most terrible confession i ever read. i told him that it was absurdthat i knew you thoroughly, and that you were incapable of anything of the kind. know you? i wonder do i know you? before i could answer that, i should have to see your soul." "to see my soul!" muttered dorian gray, starting up from the sofa and turning almost white from fear. "yes," answered hallward, gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his voice, "to see your soul. but only god can do that." a bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man. "you shall see it yourself, to-night!" he cried, seizing a lamp from the table. "come: it is your own handiwork. why shouldn't you look at it? you can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose. nobody would believe you. if they did believe you, they would like me all the better for it. i know the age better than you do, though you will prate about it so tediously. come, i tell you. you have chattered enough about corruption. now you shall look on it face to face." there was the madness of pride in every word he uttered. he stamped his foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner. he felt a terrible joy at the thought that some one else was to share his secret, and that the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of all his shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the hideous memory of what he had done. "yes," he continued, coming closer to him, and looking steadfastly into his stern eyes, "i shall show you my soul. you shall see the thing that you fancy only god can see." hallward started back. "this is blasphemy, dorian!" he cried. "you must not say things like that. they are horrible, and they don't mean anything." "you think so?" he laughed again. "i know so. as for what i said to you to-night, i said it for your good. you know i have always been a staunch friend to you." "don't touch me. finish what you have to say." a twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face. he paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. after all, what right had he to pry into the life of dorian gray? if he had done a tithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fireplace, and stood there, looking at the burning logs with their frost-like ashes and their throbbing cores of flame. "i am waiting, basil," said the young man, in a hard, clear voice. he turned round. "what i have to say is this," he cried. "you must give me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against you. if you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to end, i shall believe you. deny them, dorian, deny them! can't you see what i am going through? my god! don't tell me that you are bad, and corrupt, and shameful." dorian gray smiled. there was a curl of contempt in his lips. "come upstairs, basil," he said, quietly. "i keep a diary of my life from day to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written. i shall show it to you if you come with me." "i shall come with you, dorian, if you wish it. i see i have missed my train. that makes no matter. i can go to-morrow. but don't ask me to read anything to-night. all i want is a plain answer to my question." "that shall be given to you upstairs. i could not give it here. you will not have to read long." chapter xiii he passed out of the room and began the ascent, basil hallward following close behind. they walked softly, as men do instinctively at night. the lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase. a rising wind made some of the windows rattle. when they reached the top landing, dorian set the lamp down on the floor and taking out the key turned it in the lock. "you insist on knowing, basil?" he asked, in a low voice. "yes." "i am delighted," he answered, smiling. then he added, somewhat harshly: "you are the one man in the world who is entitled to know everything about me. you have had more to do with my life than you think:" and, taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in. a cold current of air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in a flame of murky orange. he shuddered. "shut the door behind you," he whispered, as he placed the lamp on the table. hallward glanced around him, with a puzzled expression. the room looked as if it had not been lived in for years. a faded flemish tapestry, a curtained picture, an old italian cassone, and an almost empty bookcasethat was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a table. as dorian gray was lighting a half-burned candle that was standing on the mantelshelf he saw that the whole place was covered with dust, and that the carpet was in holes. a mouse ran scuffling behind the wainscoting. there was a damp odour of mildew. "so you think that it is only god who sees the soul, basil? draw that curtain back, and you will see mine." the voice that spoke was cold and cruel. "you are mad, dorian, or playing a part," muttered hallward, frowning. "you won't? then i must do it myself," said the young man; and he tore the curtain from its rod, and flung it on the ground. an exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. there was something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing. good heavens! it was dorian gray's own face that he was looking at! the horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty. there was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual mouth. the sodden eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet completely passed away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. yes, it was dorian himself. but who had done it? he seemed to recognize his own brush-work, and the frame was his own design. the idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. he seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. in the left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright vermilion. it was some foul parody, some infamous, ignoble satire. he had never done that. still, it was his own picture. he knew it, and he felt as if his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. his own picture! what did it mean? why had it altered? he turned, and looked at dorian gray with the eyes of a sick man. his mouth twitched, and his parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. he passed his hand across his forehead. it was dank with clammy sweat. the young man was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching him with that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. there was neither real sorrow in it nor real joy. there was simply the passion of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. he had taken the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so. "what does this mean?" cried hallward, at last. his own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears. "years ago, when i was a boy," said dorian gray, crushing the flower in his hand, "you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks. one day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. in a mad moment, that, even now, i don't know whether i regret or not, i made a wish, perhaps you would call it a prayer...." "i remember it! oh, how well i remember it! no! the thing is impossible. the room is damp. mildew has got into the canvas. the paints i used had some wretched mineral poison in them. i tell you the thing is impossible." "ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the window, and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass. "you told me you had destroyed it." "i was wrong. it has destroyed me." "i don't believe it is my picture." "can't you see your ideal in it?" said dorian, bitterly. "my ideal, as you call it...." "as you called it." "there was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. you were to me such an ideal as i shall never meet again. this is the face of a satyr." "is it the face of my soul." "christ! what a thing i must have worshipped! it has the eyes of a devil." "each of us has heaven and hell in him, basil," cried dorian, with a wild gesture of despair. hallward turned again to the portrait, and gazed at it. "my god! if it is true," he exclaimed, "and this is what you have done with your life, why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to be!" he held the light up again to the canvas, and examined it. the surface seemed to be quite undisturbed, and as he had left it. it was from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. the rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful. his hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor, and lay there sputtering. he placed his foot on it and put it out. then he flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table and buried his face in his hands. "good god, dorian, what a lesson! what an awful lesson!" there was no answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window. "pray, dorian, pray," he murmured. "what is it that one was taught to say in one's boyhood? 'lead us not into temptation. forgive us our sins. wash away our iniquities.' let us say that together. the prayer of your pride has been answered. the prayer of your repentance will be answered also. i worshipped you too much. i am punished for it. you worshipped yourself too. we are both punished." dorian gray turned slowly around, and looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes. "it is too late, basil," he faltered. "it is never too late, dorian. let us kneel down and try if we cannot remember a prayer. isn't there a verse somewhere, 'though your sins be as scarlet, yet i will make them as white as snow'?" "those words mean nothing to me now." "hush! don't say that. you have done enough evil in your life. my god! don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?" dorian gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for basil hallward came over him, as though it had been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his ear by those grinning lips. the mad passions of a hunted animal stirred within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table, more than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything. he glanced wildly around. something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that faced him. his eye fell on it. he knew what it was. it was a knife that he had brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten to take away with him. he moved slowly towards it, passing hallward as he did so. as soon as he got behind him, he seized it, and turned round. hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise. he rushed at him, and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man's head down on the table, and stabbing again and again. there was a stifled groan, and the horrible sound of some one choking with blood. three times the outstretched arms shot up convulsively, waving grotesque stiff-fingered hands in the air. he stabbed him twice more, but the man did not move. something began to trickle on the floor. he waited for a moment, still pressing the head down. then he threw the knife on the table, and listened. he could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. he opened the door and went out on the landing. the house was absolutely quiet. no one was about. for a few seconds he stood bending over the balustrade, and peering down into the black seething well of darkness. then he took out the key and returned to the room, locking himself in as he did so. the thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with bowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms. had it not been for the red, jagged tear in the neck, and the clotted black pool that was slowly widening on the table, one would have said that the man was simply asleep. how quickly it had all been done! he felt strangely calm, and, walking over to the window, opened it and stepped out on the balcony. the wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes. he looked down, and saw the policeman going his rounds and flashing the long beam of his lantern on the doors of the silent houses. the crimson spot of a prowling hansom gleamed at the corner, and then vanished. a woman in a fluttering shawl was creeping slowly by the railings, staggering as she went. now and then she stopped, and peered back. once, she began to sing in a hoarse voice. the policeman strolled over and said something to her. she stumbled away, laughing. a bitter blast swept across the square. the gas lamps flickered, and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their black iron branches to and fro. he shivered, and went back, closing the window behind him. having reached the door, he turned the key, and opened it. he did not even glance at the murdered man. he felt that the secret of the whole thing was not to realize the situation. the friend who had painted the fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due, had gone out of his life. that was enough. then he remembered the lamp. it was a rather curious one of moorish workmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished steel, and studded with coarse turquoises. perhaps it might be missed by his servant, and questions would be asked. he hesitated for a moment, then he turned back and took it from the table. he could not help seeing the dead thing. how still it was! how horribly white the long hands looked! it was like a dreadful wax image. having locked the door behind him, he crept quietly downstairs. the woodwork creaked, and seemed to cry out as if in pain. he stopped several times, and waited. no: everything was still. it was merely. the sound of his own footsteps. when he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner. they must be hidden away somewhere. he unlocked a secret press that was in the wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious disguises, and put them into it. he could easily burn them afterwards. then he pulled out his watch. it was twenty minutes to two. he sat down and began to think. every yearevery month, almostmen were strangled in england for what he had done. there had been a madness of murder in the air. some red star had come too close to the earth.... and yet what evidence was there against him? basil hallward had left the house at eleven. no one had seen him come in again. most of the servants were at selby royal. his valet had gone to bed.... paris? yes. it was to paris that basil had gone, and by the midnight train, as he had intended. with his curious reserved habits, it would be months before any suspicions would be aroused. months! everything could be destroyed long before then. a sudden thought struck him. he put on his fur coat and hat, and went out into the hall. there he paused, hearing the slow, heavy tread of the policeman on the pavement outside, and seeing the flash of the bull's-eye reflected in the window. he waited, and held his breath. after a few moments he drew back the latch, and slipped out, shutting the door very gently behind him. then he began ringing, the bell. in about five minutes his valet appeared, half dressed, and looking very drowsy. "i am sorry to have had to wake you up, francis," he said, stepping in; "but i had forgotten my latchkey. what time is it?" "ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock and blinking. "ten minutes past two? how horribly late! you must wake me at nine to-morrow. i have some work to do." "all right, sir." "did any one call this evening?" "mr. hallward, sir. he stayed here till eleven, and then he went away to catch his train." "oh! i am sorry i didn't see him. did he leave any message?" "no, sir, except that he would write to you from paris, if he did not find you at the club." "that will do, francis. don't forget to call me at nine to-morrow." "no, sir." the man shambled down the passage in his slippers. dorian gray threw his hat and coat upon the table, and passed into the library. for a quarter of an hour he walked up and down the room biting his lip, and thinking. then he took down the blue book from one of the shelves, and began to turn over the leaves. "alan campbell, 152, hertford street, mayfair." yes; that was the man he wanted. chapter xiv at nine o'clock the next morning his servant came in with a cup of chocolate on a tray, and opened the shutters. dorian was sleeping quite peacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek. he looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study. the man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and as he opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though he had been lost in some delightful dream. yet he had not dreamed at all. his night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain. but youth smiles without any reason. it is one of its chiefest charms. he turned round, and, leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his chocolate. the mellow november sun came streaming into the room. the sky was bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air. it was almost like a morning in may. gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent bloodstained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness. he winced at the memory of all that he had suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for basil hallward, that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair, came back to him, and he grew cold with passion. the dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. how horrible that was! such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day. he felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would sicken or grow mad. there were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than a joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses. but this was not one of them. it was a thing to be driven out of the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might strangle one itself. when the half-hour struck, he passed his hand across his forehead, and then got up hastily, and dressed himself with even more than his usual care, giving a good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie and scarf-pin, and changing his rings more than once. he spent a long time also over breakfast, tasting the various dishes, talking to his valet about some new liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the servants at selby, and going through his correspondence. at some of the letters he smiled. three of them bored him. one he read several times over, and then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in his face. "that awful thing, a woman's memory!" as lord henry had once said. after he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped his lips slowly with a napkin, motioned to his servant to wait, and going over to the table sat down and wrote two letters. one he put in his pocket, the other he handed to the valet. "take this round to 152, hertford street, francis, and if mr. campbell is out of town, get his address." as soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette, and began sketching upon a piece of paper, drawing first flowers, and bits of architecture, and then human faces. suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew seemed to have a fantastic likeness to basil hallward. he frowned, and getting up, went over to the bookcase and took out a volume at hazard. he was determined that he would not think about what had happened until it became absolutely necessary that he should do so. when he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page of the book. it was gautier's "emaux et camees," charpentier's japanese-paper edition, with the jacquemart etching. the binding was of citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted pomegranates. it had been given to him by adrian singleton. as he turned over the pages his eye fell on the poem about the hand of lacenaire, the cold yellow hand "du supplice encore mal lavee," with its downy red hairs and its "doigts de faune." he glanced at his own white taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and passed on, till he came to those lovely stanzas upon venice; "sur une gamme chromatique, le sein de perles ruisselant, la venus de l'adriatique sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc. les domes, sur l'azur des ondes suivant la phrase au pur contour, s'enflent comme des gorges rondes que souleve un soupir d'amour. l'esquif aborde et me depose, jetant son amarre au pilier, devant une facade rose, sur le marbre d'un escalier." how exquisite they were! as one read them, one seemed to be floating down the green waterways of the pink and pearl city, seated in a black gondola with silver prow and trailing curtains. the mere lines looked to him like those straight lines of turquoise-blue that follow one as one pushes out to the lido. the sudden flashes of colour reminded him of the gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the tall honey-combed campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace, through the dim, dust-stained arcades. leaning back with half-closed eyes, he kept saying over and over to himself: "devant une facade rose, sur le marbre d'un escalier." the whole of venice was in those two lines. he remembered the autumn that he had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred him to mad, delightful follies. there was romance in every place. but venice, like oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true romantic, background was everything, or almost everything. basil had been with him part of the time, and had gone wild over tintoret. poor basil! what a horrible way for a man to die! he sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried to forget. he read of the swallows that fly in and out of the little cafe at smyrna where the hadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbaned merchants smoke their long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to each other; he read of the obelisk in the place de la concorde that weeps tears of granite in its lonely sunless exile, and longs to be back by the hot lotus-covered nile, where there are sphinxes, and rose-red ibises, and white vultures with gilded claws, and crocodiles, with small beryl eyes, that crawl over the green steaming mud; he began to brood over those verses which, drawing music from kiss-stained marble, tell of that curious statue that gautier compares to a contralto voice, the "monstre charmant" that couches in the porphyry-room of the louvre. but after a time the book fell from his hand. he grew nervous, and a horrible fit of terror came over him. what if alan campbell should be out of england? days would elapse before he could come back. perhaps he might refuse to come. what could he do then? every moment was of vital importance. they had been great friends once, five years beforealmost inseparable, indeed. then the intimacy had come suddenly to an end. when they met in society now, it was only dorian gray who smiled; alan campbell never did. he was an extremely clever young man, though he had no real appreciation of the visible arts, and whatever little sense of the beauty of poetry he possessed he had gained entirely from dorian. his dominant intellectual passion was for science. at cambridge he had spent a great deal of his time working in the laboratory, and had taken a good class in the natural science tripos of his year. indeed, he was still devoted to the study of chemistry, and had a laboratory of his own, in which he used to shut himself up all day long, greatly to the annoyance of his mother, who had set her heart on his standing for parliament and had a vague idea that a chemist was a person who made up prescriptions. he was an excellent musician, however, as well, and played both the violin and the piano better than most amateurs. in fact, it was music that had first brought him and dorian gray togethermusic and that indefinable attraction that dorian seemed to be able to exercise whenever he wished, and indeed exercised often without being conscious of it. they had met at lady berkshire's the night that rubinstein played there, and after that used to be always seen together at the opera, and wherever good music was going on. for eighteen months their intimacy lasted. campbell was always either at selby royal or in grosvenor square. to him, as to many others, dorian dorian gray was the type of everything that is wonderful and fascinating in life. whether or not a quarrel had taken place between them no one ever knew. but suddenly people remarked that they scarcely spoke when they met, and that campbell seemed always to go away early from any party at which dorian gray was present. he had changed, toowas strangely melancholy at times, appeared almost to dislike hearing music, and would never himself play, giving as his excuse, when he was called upon, that he was so absorbed in science that he had no time left in which to practise. and this was certainly true. every day he seemed to become more interested in biology, and his name appeared once or twice in some of the scientific reviews, in connection with certain curious experiments. this was the man dorian gray was waiting for. every second he kept glancing at the clock. as the minutes went by he became horribly agitated. at last he got up, and began to pace up and down the room, looking like a beautiful caged thing. he took long stealthy strides. his hands were curiously cold. the suspense became unbearable. time seemed to him to be crawling with feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards the jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. he knew what was waiting for him there; saw it indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight, and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. it was useless. the brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand, and grinned through moving masks. then, suddenly, time stopped for him. yes: that blind, slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, time being dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its grave, and showed it to him. he stared at it. its very horror made him stone. at last the door opened, and his servant entered. he turned glazed eyes upon him. "mr. campbell, sir," said the man. a sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the colour came back to his cheeks. "ask him to come in at once, francis." he felt that he was himself again. his mood of cowardice had passed away. the man bowed, and retired. in a few moments alan campbell walked in, looking very stern and rather pale, his pallor being intensified by his coal-black hair and dark eyebrows. "alan! this is kind of you. i thank you for coming." "i had intended never to enter your house again, gray. but you said it was a matter of life and death." his voice was hard and cold. he spoke with slow deliberation. there was a look of contempt in the steady searching gaze that he turned on dorian. he kept his hands in the pockets of his astrakhan coat, and seemed not to have noticed the gesture with which he had been greeted. "yes: it is a matter of life and death, alan, and to more than one person. sit down." campbell took a chair by the table, and dorian sat opposite to him. the two men's eyes met. in dorian's there was infinite pity. he knew that what he was going to do was dreadful. after a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, very quietly, but watching the effect of each word upon the face of him he had sent for, "alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a room to which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a table. he has been dead ten hours now. don't stir, and don't look at me like that. who the man is, why he died, how he died, are matters that do not concern you. what you have to do is this-" "stop, gray. i don't want to know anything further. whether what you have told me is true or not true, doesn't concern me. i entirely decline to be mixed up in your life. keep your horrible secrets to yourself. they don't interest me any more." "alan, they will have to interest you. this one will have to interest you. i am awfully sorry for you, alan. but i can't help myself. you are the one mark who is able to save me. i am forced to bring you into the matter. i have no option. alan, you are scientific. you know about chemistry, and things of that kind. you have made experiments. what you have got to do is to destroy the thing that is upstairsto destroy it so that not a vestige of it will be left. nobody saw this person come into the house. indeed, at the present moment he is supposed to be in paris. he will not be missed for months. when he is missed, there must be no trace of him found here. you, alan, you must change him, and everything that belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that i may scatter in the air." "you are mad, dorian." "ah! i was waiting for you to call me dorian." "you are mad, i tell youmad to imagine that i would raise a finger to help you, mad to make this monstrous confession. i will have nothing to do with this matter, whatever it is. do you think i am going to peril my reputation for you? what is it to me what devil's work you are up to?" "it was suicide, alan." "i am glad of that. but who drove him to it? you, i should fancy." "do you still refuse to do this for me?" "of course i refuse. i will have absolutely nothing to do with it. i don't care what shame comes on you. you deserve it all. i should not be sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced. how dare you ask me, of all men in the world, to mix myself up in this horror? i should have thought you knew more about people's characters. your friend lord henry wotton can't have taught you much about psychology, whatever else he has taught you. nothing will induce me to stir a step to help you. you have come to the wrong man. go to some of your friends. don't come to me." "alan, it was murder. i killed him. you don't know what he had made me suffer. whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making or marring of it than poor harry has had. he may not have intended it, the result was he same." "murder! good god, dorian, is that what you have come to? i shall not inform upon you. it is not my business. besides, without my stirring in the matter, you are certain to be arrested. nobody ever commits a crime without doing something stupid. but i will have nothing to do with it." "you must have something to do with it. wait, wait a moment; listen to me. only listen, alan. all i ask of you is to perform a certain scientific experiment. you go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the horrors that you do there don't affect you. if in some hideous dissecting-room or fetid laboratory you found this man lying on a leaden table with red gutters scooped out in it for the blood to flow through you would simply look upon him as an admirable subject. you would not turn a hair. you would not believe that you were doing anything wrong. on the contrary, you would probably feel that you were benefiting the human race, or increasing the sum of knowledge in the world, or gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind. what i want you to do is merely what you have often done before. indeed, to destroy a body must be far less horrible than what you are accustomed to work at. and, remember, it is the only piece of evidence against me. if it is discovered, i am lost; and it is sure to be discovered unless you help me." "i have no desire to help you. you forget that. i am simply indifferent to the whole thing. it has nothing to do with me." "alan, i entreat you. think of the position i am in. just before you came i almost fainted with terror. you may know terror yourself some day. no! don't think of that. look at the matter purely from the scientific point of view. you don't inquire where the dead things on which you experiment come from. don't inquire now. i have told you too much as it is. but i beg of you to do this. we were friends once, alan." "don't speak about those days, dorian: they are dead." "the dead linger sometimes. the man upstairs will not go away. he is sitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms. alan! alan! if you don't come to my assistance i am ruined. why, they will hang me, alan! don't you understand? they will hang me for what i have done." "there is no good in prolonging this scene. i absolutely refuse to do anything in the matter. it is insane of you to ask me." "you refuse?" "yes." "i entreat you, alan." "it is useless." the same look of pity came into dorian gray's eyes. then he stretched out his hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on it. he read it over twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the table. having done this, he got up, and went over to the window. campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, and opened it. as he read it, his face became ghastly pale, and he fell back in his chair. a horrible sense of sickness came over him. he felt as if his heart was beating itself to death in some empty hollow. after two or three minutes of terrible silence, dorian turned round, and came and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder. "i am so sorry for you, alan," he murmured, "but you leave me no alternative. i have a letter written already. here it is. you see the address. if you don't help me, i must send it. if you don't help me, i will send it. you know what the result will be. but you are going to help me. it is impossible for you to refuse now. i tried to spare you. you will do me the justice to admit that. you were stern, harsh, offensive. you treated me as no man has ever dared to treat meno living man, at any rate. i bore it all. now it is for me to dictate terms." campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed through him. "yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, alan. you know what they are. the thing is quite simple. come, don't work yourself into this fever. the thing has to be done. face it, and do it." a groan broke from campbell's lips, and he shivered all over. the ticking of the clock on the mantel-piece seemed to him to be dividing time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be borne. he felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his forehead, as if the disgrace with which he was threatened had already come upon him. the hand upon his shoulder weighed like a band of lead. it was intolerable. it seemed to crush him. "come, alan, you must decide at once." "i cannot do it," he said mechanically, as though words could alter things. "you must. you have no choice. don't delay." he hesitated a moment. "is there a fire in the room upstairs?" "yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos." "i shall have to go home and get some things from the laboratory." "no, alan, you must not leave the house. write out on a sheet of notepaper what you want, and my servant will take a cab and bring the things back to you." campbell scrawled a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an envelope to his assistant. dorian took the note up and read it carefully. then he rang the bell, and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as soon as possible, and to bring the things with him. as the hall door shut, campbell started nervously, and, having got up from the chair, went over to the chimney-piece. he was shivering with a kind of ague. for nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke. a fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was like the beat of a hammer. as the chime struck one, campbell turned round, and, looking at dorian gray, saw that his eyes were filled with tears. there was something in the purity and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage him. "you are infamous, absolutely infamous!" he muttered. "hush, alan: you have saved my life," said dorian. "your life? good heavens! what a life that is. you have gone from corruption to corruption, and you have culminated in crime. in doing what i am going to do, what you force me to do, it is not of your life that i am thinking." "ah, alan," murmured dorian, with a sigh, "i wish you had a thousandth part of the pity for me that i have for you." he turned away as he spoke, and stood looking out at the garden. campbell made no answer. after about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servant entered, carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil of steel and platinum wire and two rather curiously-shaped iron clamps. "shall i leave the things here, sir?" he asked campbell. "yes," said dorian. "and i am afraid, francis, that i have another errand for you. what is the name of the man at richmond who supplies selby with orchids?" "harden, sir." "yesharden. you must go down to richmond at once, see harden personally, and tell him to send twice as many orchids as i ordered, and to have as few white ones as possible. in fact, i don't want any white ones. it is a lovely day, francis, and richmond is a very pretty place, otherwise i wouldn't bother you about it." "no trouble, sir. at what time shall i be back?" dorian looked at campbell. "how long will your experiment take, alan?" he said, in a calm, indifferent voice. the presence of a third person in the room seemed to give him extraordinary courage. campbell frowned, and bit his lip. "it will take about five hours," he answered. "it will be time enough, then, if you are back at half-past seven, francis. or stay: just leave my things out for dressing. you can have the evening to yourself. i am not dining at home, so i shall not want you." "thank you, sir," said the man, leaving the room. "now, alan, there is not a moment to be lost. how heavy this chest is! i'll take it for you. you bring the other things." he spoke rapidly, and in an authoritative manner. campbell felt dominated by him. they left the room together. when they reached the top landing, dorian took out the key and turned it in the lock. then he stopped, and a troubled look came into his eyes. he shuddered. "i don't think i can go in, alan," he murmured. "it is nothing to me. i don't require you," said campbell, coldly. dorian half opened the door. as he did so, he saw the face of his portrait leering in the sunlight. on the floor in front of it the torn curtain was lying. he remembered that the night before he had forgotten, for the first time in his life, to hide the fatal canvas, and was about to rush forward, when he drew back with a shudder. what was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood? how horrible it was!more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than the silent thing he knew was stretched across the table, the thing whose grotesque misshapen shadow, on the spotted carpet showed him that it had not stirred, but was still there, as he had left it. he heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little wider, and with half-closed eyes and averted head walked quickly in, determined that he would not look even once upon the dead man. then, stooping down, and taking up the gold-and-purple hanging, he flung it right over the picture. there he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes fixed themselves on the intricacies of the pattern before him. he heard campbell bringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other things that he had required for his dreadful work. he began to wonder if he and basil hallward had ever met, and, if so, what they had thought of each other. "leave me now," said a stern voice behind him. he turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had been thrust back into the chair, and that campbell was gazing into a glistening yellow face. as he was going downstairs he heard the key being turned in the lock. it was long after seven when campbell came back into the library. he was pale, but absolutely calm. "i have done what you asked me to do," he muttered. "and now, good-bye. let us never see each other again." "you have saved me from ruin, alan. i cannot forget that," said dorian, simply. as soon as campbell had left, he went upstairs. there was a horrible smell of nitric acid in the room. but the thing that had been sitting at the table was gone. chapter xv that evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed, and wearing a large button-hole of parma violets, dorian gray was ushered into lady narborough's drawing-room by bowing servants. his forehead was throbbing with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his manner as he bent over his hostess's hand was as easy and graceful as ever. perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part. certainly no one looking at dorian gray that night could have believed that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age. those finely-shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife of sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on god and goodness. he himself could not help wondering at the calm of his demeanour, and for a moment felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life. it was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by lady narborough, who was a very clever woman, with what lord henry used to describe as the remains of really remarkable ugliness. she had proved an excellent wife to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and having buried her husband properly in a marble mausoleum, which she had herself designed, and married off her daughters to some rich, rather elderly men, she devoted herself now to the pleasures of french fiction, french cookery, and french esprit when she could get it. dorian was one of her especial favourites, and she always told him that she was extremely glad she had not met him in early life. "i know, my dear, i should have fallen madly in love with you," she used to say, "and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. it is most fortunate that you were not thought of at the time. as it was, our bonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were so occupied in trying to raise the wind, that i never had even a flirtation with anybody. however, that was all narborough's fault. he was dreadfully short-sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who never sees anything." her guests this evening were rather tedious. the fact was, as she explained to dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make matters worse, had actually brought her husband with her. "i think it is most unkind of her, my dear," she whispered. "of course i go and stay with them every summer after i come from homburg, but then an old woman like me must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, i really wake them up. you don't know what an existence they lead down there. it is pure unadulterated country life. they get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early because they have so little to think about. there has not been a scandal in the neighbourhood since the time of queen elizabeth, and consequently they all fall asleep after dinner. you sha'n't sit next either of them. you shall sit by me, and amuse me." dorian murmured a graceful compliment, and looked round the room. yes: it was certainly a tedious party. two of the people he had never seen before, and the others consisted of ernest harrowden, one of those middle-aged mediocrities so common in london clubs who have no enemies, but are thoroughly disliked by their friends; lady roxton, an overdressed woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose, who was always trying to get herself compromised, but was so peculiarly plain that to her great disappointment no one would ever believe anything against her; mrs. erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp, and venetian-red hair; lady alice chapman, his hostess's daughter, a dowdy dull girl, with one of those characteristic british faces, that, once seen are never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked, white-whiskered creature who, like so many of his class, was under the impression that inordinate joviality can atone for an entire lack of ideas. he was rather sorry he had come, till lady narborough, looking at the great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the mauve-draped mantelshelf, exclaimed: "how horrid of henry wotton to be so late! i sent round to him this morning on chance, and he promised faithfully not to disappoint me." it was some consolation that harry was to be there, and when the door opened and he heard his slow musical voice lending charm to some insincere apology, he ceased to feel bored. but at dinner he could not eat anything. plate after plate went away untasted. lady narborough kept scolding him for what she called "an insult to poor adolphe, who invented the menu specially for you," and now and then lord henry looked across at him, wondering at his silence and abstracted manner. from time to time the butler filled his glass with champagne. he drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed to increase. "dorian," said lord henry, at last, as the chaudfroid was being handed round, "what is the matter with you to-night? you are quite out of sorts." "i believe he is in love," cried lady narborough, "and that he is afraid to tell me for fear i should be jealous. he is quite right. i certainly should." "dear lady narborough," murmured dorian, smiling, "i have not been in love for a whole weeknot, in fact, since madame de ferrol left town." "how you men can fall in love with that woman!" exclaimed the old lady. "i really cannot understand it." "it is simply because she remembers you when you were a little girl, lady narborough," said lord henry. "she is the one link between us and your short frocks." "she does not remember my short frocks at all, lord henry. but i remember her very well at vienna thirty years ago, and how dicolletee she was then." "she is still dicolletee," he answered, taking an olive in his long fingers; "and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an edition de luxe of a bad french novel. she is really wonderful, and full of surprises. her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. when her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief." "how can you, harry!" cried dorian. "it is a most romantic explanation," laughed the hostess. "but her third husband, lord henry! you don't mean to say ferrol is the fourth?" "certainly, lady narborough." "i don't believe a word of it." "well, ask mr. gray. he is one of her most intimate friends." "is it true, mr. gray?" "she assures me so, lady narborough," said dorian. "i asked her whether, like marguerite de navarre, she had their hearts embalmed and hung at her girdle. she told me she didn't, because none of them had had any hearts at all." "four husbands! upon my word that is trop de zele." "trop d' audace, i tell her," said dorian. "oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my dear. and what is ferrol like? i don't know him." "the husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes," said lord henry, sipping his wine. lady narborough hit him with her fan. "lord henry, i am not at all surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked." "but what world says that?" asked lord henry, elevating his eyebrows. "it can only be the next world. this world and i are on excellent terms." "everybody i know says you are very wicked," cried the old lady, shaking her head. lord henry looked serious for some moments. "it is perfectly monstrous," he said, at last, "the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true." "isn't he incorrigible?" cried dorian, leaning forward in his chair. "i hope so," said his hostess, laughing. "but really if you all worship madame de ferrol in this ridiculous way, i shall have to marry again so as to be in the fashion." "you will never marry again, lady narborough," broke in lord henry. "you were far too happy. when a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. when a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. women try their luck; men risk theirs." "narborough wasn't perfect," cried the old lady. "if he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady," was the rejoinder. "women love us for our defects. if we have enough of them they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. you will never ask me to dinner again, after saying this, i am afraid, lady narborough; but it is quite true." "of course it is true, lord henry. if we women did not love you for your defects, where would you all be? not one of you would ever be married. you would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. not, however, that that would alter you much. nowadays all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men." "fin de siecle," murmured lord henry. "fin du globe," answered his hostess. "i wish it were fin du globe," said dorian, with a sigh. "life is a great disappointment." "ah, my dear," cried lady narborough, putting on her gloves, "don't tell me that you have exhausted life. when a man says that one knows that life has exhausted him. lord henry is very wicked, and i sometimes wish that i had been; but you are made to be goodyou look so good. i must find you a nice wife. lord henry, don't you think that mr. gray should get married?" "i am always telling him so, lady narborough," said lord henry, with a bow. "well, we must look out for a suitable match for him. i shall go through debrett carefully to-night. and draw out a list of all the eligible young ladies." "with their ages, lady narborough?" asked dorian. "of course, with their ages, slightly edited. but nothing must be done in a hurry. i want it to be what the morning post calls a suitable alliance, and i want you both to be happy." "what nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed lord henry. "a man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her." "ah! what a cynic you are!" cried the old lady, pushing back her chair, and nodding to lady ruxton. "you must come and dine with me soon again. you are really an admirable tonic, much better than what sir andrew prescribes for me. you must tell me what people you would like to meet, though. i want it to be a delightful gathering." "i like men who have a future, and women who have a past," he answered. "or do you think that would make it a petticoat party?" "i fear so," she said, laughing, as she stood up. "a thousand pardons, my dear lady ruxton," she added, "i didn't see you hadn't finished your cigarette." "never mind, lady narborough. i smoke a great deal too much. i am going to limit myself, for the future." "pray don't, lady ruxton," said lord henry. "moderation is a fatal thing. enough is as bad as a meal. more than enough is as good as a feast." lady ruxton glanced at him curiously. "you must come and explain that to me some afternoon, lord henry. it sounds a fascinating theory," she murmured, as she swept out of the room. "now, mind you don't stay too long over your politics and scandal," cried lady narborough from the door. "if you do, we are sure to squabble upstairs." the men laughed, and mr. chapman got up solemnly from the foot of the table and came up to the top. dorian gray changed his seat, and went and sat by lord henry. mr. chapman began to talk in a loud voice about the situation in the house of commons. he guffawed at his adversaries. the word doctrinaireword full of terror to the british mindreappeared from time to time between his explosions. an alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory. he hoisted the union jack on the pinnacles of thought. the inherited stupidity of the racesound english common sense he jovially termed itwas shown to be the proper bulwark for society. a smile curved lord henry's lips, and he turned round and looked at dorian. "are you better, my dear fellow?" he asked. "you seemed rather out of sorts at dinner." "i am quite well, harry. i am tired. that is all." "you were charming last night. the little duchess is quite devoted to you. she tells me she is going down to selby." "she has promised to come on the twentieth." "is monmouth to be there too?" "oh, yes, harry." "he bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her. she is very clever, too clever for a woman. she lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. it is the feet of clay that makes the gold of the image precious. her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. white porcelain feet, if you like. they have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. she has had experiences." "how long has she been married?" asked dorian. "an eternity, she tells me. i believe, according to the peerage, it is ten years, but ten years with monmouth must have been like eternity, with time thrown in. who else is coming?" "oh, the willoughbys, lord rugby and his wife, our hostess, geoffrey clouston, the usual set. i have asked lord grotrian." "i like him," said lord henry. "a great many people don't, but i find him charming. he atones for being occasionally somewhat over-dressed, by being always absolutely over-educated. he is a very modern type." "i don't know if he will be able to come, harry. he may have to go to monte carlo with his father." "ah! what a nuisance people's people are! try and make him come. by the way, dorian, you ran off very early last night. you left before eleven. what did you do afterwards? did you go straight home?" dorian glanced at him hurriedly, and frowned. "no, harry," he said at last, "i did not get home till nearly three." "did you go to the club?" "yes," he answered. then he bit his lip. "no, i don't mean that. i didn't go to the club. i walked about. i forget what i did.... how inquisitive you are, harry! you always want to know what one has been doing. i always want to forget what i have been doing. i came in at half-past two, if you wish to know the exact time. i had left my latchkey at home, and my servant had to let me in. if you want any corroborative evidence on the subject you can ask him." lord henry shrugged his shoulders. "my dear fellow, as if i cared! let us go up to the drawing-room. no sherry, thank you, mr. chapman. something has happened to you, dorian. tell me what it is. you are not yourself to-night." "don't mind me, harry. i am irritable, and out of temper. i shall come round and see you to-morrow or next day. make my excuses to lady. narborough. i sha'n't go upstairs. i shall go home. i must go home." "all right, dorian. i dare say i shall see you to-morrow at tea-time. the duchess is coming." "i will try to be there, harry," he said, leaving the room. as he drove back to his own house he was conscious that the sense of terror he thought he had strangled had come back to him. lord henry's casual questioning had made him lose his nerves for the moment, and he wanted his nerve still. things that were dangerous had to be destroyed. he winced. he hated the idea of even touching them. yet it had to be done. he realized that, and when he had locked the door of his library, he opened the secret press into which he had thrust basil hallward's coat and bag. a huge fire was blazing. he piled another log on it. the smell of singeing clothes and burning leather was horrible. it took him three-quarters of an hour to consume everything. at the end he felt faint and sick, and having lit some algerian pastilles in a pierced copper brazier, he bathed his hands and forehead with a cool musk-scented vinegar. suddenly he started. his eyes grew strangely bright and he gnawed nervously at his under-lip. between two of the windows stood a large florentine cabinet, made out of ebony, and inlaid with ivory and blue lapis. he watched it as though it were a thing that could fascinate and make afraid, as though it held something that he longed for and yet almost loathed. his breath quickened. a mad craving came over him. he lit a cigarette and then threw it away. his eyelids drooped till the long fringed lashes almost touched his cheek. but he still watched the cabinet. at last he got up from the sofa on which he had been lying, went over to it, and, having unlocked it, touched some hidden spring. a triangular drawer passed slowly out. his fingers moved instinctively towards it, dipped in, and closed on something. it was a small chinese box of black and gold-dust lacquer, elaborately wrought, the sides patterned with curved waves, and the silken cords hung with round crystals and tasselled in plaited metal threads. he opened it. inside was a green paste waxy in lustre, the odour curiously heavy and persistent. he hesitated for some moments, with a strangely immobile smile upon his face. then shivering, though the atmosphere of the room was terribly hot, he drew himself up, and glanced at the clock. it was twenty minutes to twelve. he put the box back, shutting the cabinet doors as he did so, and went into his bedroom. as midnight was striking bronze blows upon the dusky air, dorian gray, dressed commonly, and with a muffler wrapped round his throat, crept quietly out of his house. in bond street he found a hansom with a good horse. he hailed it, and in a low voice gave the driver an address. the man shook his head. "it is too far for me," he muttered. "here is a sovereign for you," said dorian. "you shall have another if you drive fast." "all right, sir," answered the man, "you will be there in an hour," and after his fare had got in he turned his horse round, and drove rapidly towards the river. chapter xvi a cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly in the dripping mist. the public-houses were just closing, and dim men and women were clustering in broken groups round their doors. from some of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter. in others, drunkards brawled and screamed. lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, dorian gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and now and then he repeated to himself the words that lord henry had said to him on the first day they had met, "to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul." yes, that was the secret. he had often tried it, and would try it again now. there were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new. the moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull. from time to time a huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it. the gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. once the man lost his way, and had to drive back half a mile. a steam rose from the horse as it splashed up the puddles. the side-windows of the hansom were clogged with a grey-flannel mist. "to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul!" how the words rang in his ears! his soul, certainly, was sick to death. was it true that the senses could cure it? innocent blood had been spilt. what could atone for that? ah! for that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one. indeed, what right had basil to have spoken to him as he had done? who had made him a judge over others? he had said things that were dreadful, horrible, not to be endured. on and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each step. he thrust up the trap, and called to the man to drive faster. the hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him. his throat burned, and his delicate hands twitched nervously together. he struck at the horse madly with his stick. the driver laughed, and whipped up. he laughed in answer, and the man was silent. the way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some sprawling spider. the monotony became unbearable, and, as the mist thickened, he felt afraid. then they passed by lonely brickfields. the fog was lighter here, and he could see the strange bottle-shaped kilns with their orange fan-like tongues of fire. a dog barked as they went by, and far away in the darkness some wandering seagull screamed. the horse stumbled in a rut, then swerved aside, and broke into a gallop. after some time they left the clay road, and rattled again over rough-paven streets. most of the windows were dark, but now and then fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamp-lit blind. he watched them curiously. they moved like monstrous marionettes, and made gestures like live things. he hated them. a dull rage was in his heart. as they turned a corner a woman yelled something at them from an open door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred yards. the driver beat at them with his whip. it is said that passion makes one think in a circle. certainly with hideous iteration the bitten lips of dorian gray shaped and reshaped those subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by intellectual approval, passions that without such justification would still have dominated his temper. from cell to cell of his brain crept the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all man's appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre. ugliness that had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became dear to him now for that very reason. ugliness was the one reality. the coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude vileness of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song. they were what he needed for forgetfulness. in three days he would be free. suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane. over the low roofs and jagged chimney-stacks of the houses rose the black masts of ships. wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the yards. "somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked huskily through the trap. dorian started, and peered round. "this will do," he answered, and, having got out hastily, and given the driver the extra fare he had promised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay. here and there a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman. the light shook and splintered in the puddles. a red glare came from an outward-bound steamer that was coaling. the slimy pavement looked like a wet mackintosh. he hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if he was being followed. in about seven or eight minutes he reached a small shabby house, that was wedged in between two gaunt factories. in one of the top windows stood a lamp. he stopped, and gave a peculiar knock. after a little while he heard steps in the passage, and the chain being unhooked. the door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a word to the squat misshapen figure that flattened itself upon the shadow as he passed. at the end of the hall hung a tattered green curtain that swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him in from the street. he dragged it aside, and entered a long, low room which looked as if it had once been a third-rate dancing-saloon. shrill flaring gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown mirrors that faced them, were ranged round the walls. greasy reflectors of ribbed tin backed them, making quivering discs of light. the floor was covered with ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud, and stained with rings of spilt liquor. some malays were crouching by a little charcoal stove playing with bone counters, and showing their white teeth as they chattered. in one corner with his head buried in his arms, a sailor sprawled over a table, and by the tawdrily-painted bar that ran across one complete side stood two haggard women mocking an old man who was brushing the sleeves of his coat with an expression of disgust. "he thinks he's got red ants on him," laughed one of them, as dorian passed by. the man looked at her in terror, and began to whimper. at the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a darkened chamber. as dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the heavy odour of opium met him. he heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils quivered with pleasure. when he entered, a young man with smooth yellow hair, who was bending over a lamp lighting a long thin pipe, looked up at him, and nodded in a hesitating manner. "you here, adrian?" muttered dorian. "where else should i be?" he answered, listlessly. "none of the chaps will speak to me now." "i thought you had left england." "darlington is not going to do anything. my brother paid the bill at last. george doesn't speak to me either.... i don't care," he added, with a sigh. "as long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends. i think i have had too many friends." dorian winced, and looked around at the grotesque things that lay in such fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. the twisted limbs, the gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him. he knew in what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were teaching them the secret of some new joy. they were better off than he was. he was prisoned in thought. memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away. from time to time he seemed to see the eyes of basil hallward looking at him. yet he felt he could not stay. the presence of adrian singleton troubled him. he wanted to be where no one would know who he was. he wanted to escape from himself. "i am going on to the other place," he said, after a pause. "on the wharf?" "yes." "that mad-cat is sure to be there. they won't have her in this place now." dorian shrugged his shoulders. "i am sick of women who love one. women who hate one are much more interesting. besides, the stuff is better." "much the same." "i like it better. come and have something to drink. i must have something." "i don't want anything," murmured the young man. "never mind." adrian singleton rose up wearily, and followed dorian to the bar. a half caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of them. the women sidled up, and began to chatter. dorian turned his back on them, and said something in a low voice to adrian singleton. a crooked smile, like a malay crease, writhed across the face of one of the women. "we're very proud to-night," she sneered. "for god's sake don't talk to me," cried dorian, stamping his foot on the ground. "what do you want? money? here it is. don't ever talk to me again." two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman's sodden eyes, then flickered out, and left them dull and glazed. she tossed her head, and raked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers. her companion watched her enviously. "it's no use," sighed adrian singleton "i don't care to go back. what does it matter? i am quite happy here." "you will write to me if you want anything, won't you?" said dorian, after a pause. "perhaps." "good-night, then." "good-night," answered the young man, passing up the steps, and wiping his parched mouth with a handkerchief. dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face. as he drew the curtain aside a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of the woman who had taken the money. "there goes the devil's bargain!" she hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice. "curse you," he answered, "don't call me that." she snapped her fingers. "prince charming is what you like to be called, ain't it?" she yelled after him. the drowsy sailor leapt to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly round. the sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear. he rushed out as if in pursuit. dorian gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. his meeting with adrian singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as basil hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult. he bit his lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad. yet, after all, what did it matter to him? one's days were too brief to take the burden of another's errors on one's shoulders. each man lived his own life, and paid his own price for living it. the only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. one had to pay over and over again, indeed. in her dealings with man destiny never closed her accounts. there are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. they move to their terrible end as automatons move. choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm. for all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. when that high spirit, that morning-star of evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell. callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for rebellion, dorian gray hastened on, quickening his steps as he went, but as he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself suddenly seized from behind, and before he had time to defend himself he was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his throat. he struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the tightening fingers away. in a second he heard the click of a revolver, and saw the gleam of a polished barrel pointing straight at his head, and the dusky form of a short thick-set man facing him. "what do you want?" he gasped. "keep quiet," said the man. "if you stir, i shoot you." "you are mad. what have i done to you?" "you wrecked the life of sibyl vane," was the answer, "and sibyl vane was my sister. she killed herself. i know it. her death is at your door. i swore i would kill you in return. for years i have sought you. i had no clue, no trace. the two people who could have described you were dead. i knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you. i heard it to-night by chance. make your peace with god, for to-night you are going to die." dorian gray grew sick with fear. "i never knew her," he stammered. "i never heard of her. you are mad." "you had better confess your sin, for as sure as i am james vane, you are going to die." there was a horrible moment. dorian did not know what to say or do. "down on your knees!" growled the man. "i give you one minute to make your peaceno more. i go on board to-night for india, and i must do my job first. one minute. that's all." dorian's arms fell to his side. paralyzed with terror, he did not know what to do. suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain. "stop," he cried. "how long ago is it since your sister died? quick, tell me!" "eighteen years," said the man. "why do you ask me? what do years matter?" "eighteen years," laughed dorian gray, with a touch of triumph in his voice. "eighteen years! set me under the lamp and look at my face." james vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant. then he seized dorian gray and dragged him from the archway. dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the unstained purity of youth. he seemed little more than a lad of twenty summers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, than his sister had been when they had parted so many years ago. it was obvious that this was not the man who had destroyed her life. he loosened his hold and reeled back. "my god! my god!" he cried, "and i would have murdered you!" dorian gray drew a long breath. "you have been on the brink of committing a terrible crime, my man," he said, looking at him sternly. "let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own hands." "forgive me, sir," muttered james vane. "i was deceived. a chance word i heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track." "you had better go home, and put that pistol away, or you may get into trouble," said dorian, turning on his heel, and going slowly down the street. james vane stood on the pavement in horror. he was trembling from head to foot. after a little while a black shadow that had been creeping along the dripping wall, moved out into the light and came close to him with stealthy footsteps. he felt a hand laid on his arm and looked round with a start. it was one of the women who had been drinking at the bar. "why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, putting her haggard face quite close to his. "i knew you were following him when you rushed out from daly's. you fool! you should have killed him. he has lots of money, and he's as bad as bad." "he is not the man i am looking for," he answered, "and i want no man's money. i want a man's life. the man whose life i want must be nearly forty now. this one is little more than a boy. thank god, i have not got his blood upon my hands." the woman gave a bitter laugh. "little more than a boy!" she sneered. "why, man, it's nigh on eighteen years since prince charming made me what i am." "you lie!" cried james vane. she raised her hand up to heaven. "before god i am telling the truth," she cried. "before god?" "strike me dumb if it ain't so. he is the worst one that comes here. they say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. it's nigh on eighteen years since i met him. he hasn't changed much since then. i have though," she added with a sickly leer. "you swear this?" "i swear it," came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth. "but don't give me away to him," she whined; "i am afraid of him. let me have some money for my night's lodging." he broke from her with an oath, and rushed to the corner of the street, but dorian gray had disappeared. when he looked back, the woman had vanished also. chapter xvii a week later dorian gray was sitting in the conservatory at selby royal talking to the pretty duchess of monmouth, who with her husband, a jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. it was tea-time, and the mellow light of the huge lace-covered lamp that stood on the table lit up the delicate china and hammered silver of the service at which the duchess was presiding. her white hands were moving daintily among the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at something that dorian had whispered to her. lord henry was lying back in a silk-draped wicker chair looking at them. on a peach-coloured divan sat lady narborough pretending to listen to the duke's description of the last brazilian beetle that he had added to his collection. three young men in elaborate smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of the women. the house-party consisted of twelve people, and there were more expected to arrive on the next day. "what are you two talking about?" said lord henry, strolling over to the table, and putting his cup down. "i hope dorian has told you about my plan for rechristening everything, gladys. it is a delightful idea." "but i don't want to be rechristened, harry," rejoined the duchess, looking up at him with her wonderful eyes. "i am quite satisfied with my own name, and i am sure mr. gray should be satisfied with his." "my dear gladys, i would not alter either name for the world. they are both perfect. i was thinking chiefly of flowers. yesterday i cut an orchid, for my buttonhole. it was a marvellous spotted thing, as effective as the seven deadly sins. in a thoughtless moment i asked one of the gardeners what it was called. he told me that it was a fine specimen of rooinsoniana, or something dreadful of that kind. it is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. names are everything. i never quarrel with actions. my one quarrel is with words. that is the reason i hate vulgar realism in literature. the man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. it is the only thing he is fit for." "then what should we call you, harry?" she asked. "his name is prince paradox," said dorian. "i recognize him in a flash," exclaimed the duchess. "i won't hear of it," laughed lord henry, sinking into a chair. "from a label there is no escape! i refuse the title." "royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning from pretty lips. "you wish me to defend my throne, then?" "yes." "i give the truths of to-morrow." "i prefer the mistakes of to-day," she answered. "you disarm me, gladys," he cried, catching the wilfulness of her mood. "of your shield, harry: not of your spear." "i never tilt against beauty," he said, with a wave of his hand. "that is your error, harry, believe me. you value beauty far too much." "how can you say that, i admit that i think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. but on the other hand no one is more ready than i am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly?" "ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?" cried the duchess. "what becomes of your simile about the orchid?" "ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, gladys. you, as a good tory, must not underrate them. beer, the bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made our england what she is." "you don't like your country, then?" she asked. "i live in it." "that you may censure it the better." "would you have me take the verdict of europe on it?" he enquired. "what do they say of us?" "that tartuffe has emigrated to england and opened a shop." "is that yours, harry?" "i give it to you." "i could not use it. it is too true." "you need not be afraid. our countrymen never recognize a description." "they are practical." "they are more cunning than practical. when they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy." "still, we have done great things." "great things have been thrust on us, gladys." "we have carried their burden." "only as far as the stock exchange." she shook her head. "i believe in the race," she cried. "it represents the survival of the pushing." "it has development." "decay fascinates me more." "what of art?" she asked. "it is a malady." "love?" "an illusion." "religion?" "the fashionable substitute for belief." "you are a sceptic." "never! scepticism is the beginning of faith." "what are you?" "to define is to limit." "give me a clue." "threads snap. you would lose your way in the labyrinth." "you bewilder me. let us talk of some one else." "our host is a delightful topic. years ago he was christened prince charming." "ah! don't remind me of that," cried dorian gray. "our host is rather horrid this evening," answered the duchess, colouring. "i believe he thinks that monmouth married me on purely scientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern butterfly." "well, i hope he won't stick pins into you, duchess," laughed dorian. "oh! my maid does that already, mr. gray, when she is annoyed with me." "and what does she get annoyed with you about, duchess?" "for the most trivial things, mr. gray, i assure you. usually because i come in at ten minutes to nine and tell her that i must be dressed by half-past eight." "how unreasonable of her! you should give her warning." "i daren't, mr. gray. why, she invents hats for me. you remember the one i wore at lady hilstone's garden-party? you don't, but it is nice of you to pretend that you do. well, she made it out of nothing. all good hats are made out of nothing." "like all good reputations, gladys," interrupted lord henry. "every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. to be popular one must be a mediocrity." "not with women," said the duchess, shaking her head, "and women rule the world. i assure you we can't bear mediocrities. we women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all." "it seems to me that we never do anything else," murmured dorian. "ah! then, you never really love, mr. gray," answered the duchess, with mock sadness. "my dear gladys!" cried lord henry. "how can you say that? romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. it merely intensifies it. we can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible." "even when one has been wounded by it, harry?" asked the duchess, after a pause. "especially when one has been wounded by it," answered lord henry. the duchess turned and looked at dorian gray with a curious expression in her eyes. "what do you say to that, mr. gray?" she enquired. dorian hesitated a moment. then he threw back his head and laughed. "i always agree with harry, duchess." "even when he is wrong?" "harry is never wrong, duchess." "and does his philosophy make you happy?" "i have never searched for happiness. who wants happiness? i have searched for pleasure." "and found it, mr. gray?" "often. too often." the duchess sighed. "i am searching for peace," she said, "and if i don't go and dress, i shall have none this evening." "let me get you some orchids, duchess," cried dorian, starting to his feet, and walking down the conservatory. "you are flirting disgracefully with him," said lord henry to his cousin. "you had better take care. he is very fascinating." "if he were not, there would be no battle." "greek meets greek then?" "i am on the side of the trojans. they fought for a woman." "they were defeated." "there are worse things than capture," she answered. "you gallop with a loose rein." "pace gives life," was the riposte. "i shall write it in my diary to-night." "what?" "that a burnt child loves the fire." "i am not even singed. my wings are untouched." "you use them for everything, except flight." "courage has passed from men to women. it is a new experience for us." "you have a rival." "who?" he laughed. "lady narborough," he whispered. "she perfectly adores him." "you fill me with apprehension. the appeal to antiquity is fatal to us who are romanticists." "romanticists! you have all the methods of science." "men have educated us." "but not explained you." "describe us as a sex," was her challenge. "sphinxes without secrets." she looked at him, smiling. "how long mr. gray is!" she said. "let us go and help him. i have not yet told him the colour of my frock." "ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, gladys." "that would be a premature surrender." "romantic art begins with its climax." "i must keep an opportunity for retreat." "in the parthian manner?" "they found safety in the desert. i could not do that." "women are not always allowed a choice," he answered, but hardly had he finished the sentence before from the far end of the conservatory came a stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall. everybody started up. the duchess stood motionless in horror. and with fear in his eves lord henry rushed through the flapping palms, to find dorian gray lying face downwards on the tiled floor in a death-like swoon. he was carried at once into the blue drawing-room, and laid upon one of the sofas. after a short time he came to himself, and looked round with a dazed expression. "what has happened?" he asked. "oh! i remember. am i safe here, harry,?" he began to tremble. "my dear dorian," answered lord henry, "you merely fainted. that was all. you must have overtired yourself. you had better not come down to dinner. i will take your place." "no, i will come down," he said, struggling to his feet. "i would rather come down. i must not be alone." he went to his room and dressed. there was a wild recklessness of gaiety in his manner as he sat at table, but now and then a thrill of terror ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the window of the conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the face of james vane watching him. chapter xviii the next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet indifferent to life itself. the consciousness of being hunted, snared, tracked down, had begun to dominate him. if the tapestry did but tremble in the wind, he shook. the dead leaves that were blown against the leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild regrets. when he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailor's face peering through the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed once more to lay its hand upon his heart. but perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out of the night, and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him. actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. it was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. it was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. in the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. that was all. besides, had any stranger been prowling round the house he would have been seen by the servants or the keepers. had any footmarks been found on the flower-beds, the gardeners would have reported it. yes: it had been merely fancy. sibyl vane's brother had not come back to kill him. he had sailed away in his ship to founder in some winter sea. from him, at any rate, he was safe. why, the man did not know who he was, could not know who he was. the mask of youth had saved him. and yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them visible form, and make them move before one! what sort of life would his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep! as the thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and the air seemed to him to have become suddenly colder. oh! in what a wild hour of madness he had killed his friend! how ghastly the mere memory of the scene! he saw it all again. each hideous detail came back to him with added horror. out of the black cave of time, terrible and swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin. when lord henry came in at six o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will break. it was not till the third day that he ventured to go out. there was something in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life. but it was not merely the physical conditions of environment that had caused the change. his own nature had revolted against the excess of anguish that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm. with subtle and finely-wrought temperaments it is always so. their strong passions must either bruise or bend. they either slay the man, or themselves die. shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. the loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude. besides, he had convinced himself that he had been the victim of a terror-stricken imagination, and looked back now on his fears with something of pity and not a little of contempt. after breakfast he walked with the duchess for an hour in the garden, and then drove across the park to join the shooting-party. the crisp frost lay like salt upon the grass. the sky was an inverted cup of blue metal. a thin film of ice bordered the flat reed-grown lake. at the corner of the pine wood he caught sight of sir geoffrey clouston, the duchess's brother, jerking two spent cartridges out of his gun. he jumped from the cart, and having told the groom to take the mare home, made his way towards his guest through the withered bracken and rough undergrowth. "have you had good sport, geoffrey?" he asked. "not very good, dorian. i think most of the birds have gone to the open. i dare say it will be better after lunch, when we get to new ground." dorian strolled along by his side. the keen aromatic air, the brown and red lights that glimmered in the wood, the hoarse cries of the beaters ringing out from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns that followed, fascinated him, and filled him with a sense of delightful freedom. he was dominated by the carelessness of happiness, by the high indifference of joy. suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass, some twenty yards in front of them, with black-tipped ears erect, and long hinder limbs throwing it forward, started a hare. it bolted for a thicket of alders. sir geoffrey put his gun to his shoulder, but there was something in the animal's grace of movement that strangely charmed dorian gray, and he cried out at once, "don't shoot it, geoffrey. let it live." "what nonsense, dorian!" laughed his companion, and as the hare bounded into the thicket he fired. there were two cries heard, the cry of a hare in pain, which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony, which is worse. "good heavens! i have hit a beater!" exclaimed sir geoffrey. "what an ass the man was to get in front of the guns! stop shooting there!" he called out at the top of his voice. "a man is hurt." the head-keeper came running up with a stick in his hand. "where, sir? where is he?" he shouted. at the same time the firing ceased along the line. "here," answered sir geoffrey angrily, hurrying towards the thicket. "why on earth don't you keep your men back? spoiled my shooting for the day." dorian watched them as they plunged into the alder-clump, brushing the lithe, swinging branches aside. in a few moments they emerged, dragging a body after them into the sunlight. he turned away in horror. it seemed to him that misfortune followed wherever he went. he heard sir geoffrey ask if the man was really dead, and the affirmative answer of the keeper. the wood seemed to him to have become suddenly alive with faces. there was the trampling of myriad feet, and the low buzz of voices. a great copper-breasted pheasant came beating through the boughs overhead. after few moments, that were to him, in his perturbed state, like endless hours of pain, he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. he started, and looked round. "dorian," said lord henry, "i had better tell them that the shooting is stopped for to-day. it would not look well to go on." "i wish it were stopped for ever, harry," he answered, bitterly. "the whole thing is hideous and cruel. is the man...?" he could not finish the sentence. "i am afraid so," rejoined lord henry. "he got the whole charge of shot in his chest. he must have died almost instantaneously. come; let us go home." they walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly fifty yards without speaking. then dorian looked at lord henry, and said, with a heavy sigh, "it is a bad omen, harry, a very bad omen." "what is?" asked lord henry. "oh! this accident, i suppose. my dear fellow, it can't be helped. it was the man's own fault. why did he get in front of the guns? besides, it is nothing to us. it is rather awkward for geoffrey, of course. it does not do to pepper beaters. it makes people think that one is a wild shot. and geoffrey is not; he shoots very straight. but there is no use talking about the matter." dorian shook his head. "it is a bad omen, harry. i feel as if something horrible were going to happen to some of us. to myself, perhaps," he added, passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of pain. the elder man laughed. "the only horrible thing in the world is ennui, dorian. that is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness. but we are not likely to suffer from it, unless these fellows keep chattering about this thing at dinner. i must tell them that the subject is to be tabooed. as for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. destiny does not send us heralds. she is too wise or too cruel for that. besides, what on earth could happen to you, dorian? you have everything in the world that a man can want. there is no one who would not be delighted to change places with you." "there is no one with whom i would not change places, harry. don't laugh like that. i am telling you the truth. the wretched peasant who has just died is better off than i am. i have no terror of death. it is the coming of death that terrifies me. its monstrous wings seem to wheel in the leaden air around me. good heavens! don't you see a man moving, behind the trees there, watching me, waiting for me?" lord henry looked in the direction in which the trembling gloved hand was pointing. "yes," he said, smiling, "i see the gardener waiting for you. i suppose he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to have on the table to-night. how absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow! you must come and see my doctor, when we get back to town." dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching. the man touched his hat, glanced for a moment at lord henry in a hesitating manner, and then produced a letter, which he handed to his master. "her grace told me to wait for an answer," he murmured. dorian put the letter into his pocket. "tell her grace that i am coming in," he said, coldly. the man turned round, and went rapidly in the direction of the house. "how fond women are of doing dangerous things!" laughed lord henry. "it is one of the qualities in them that i admire most. a woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on." "how fond you are of saying dangerous things, harry! in the present instance you are quite astray. i like the duchess very much, but i don't love her." "and the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, as you are so excellently matched." "you are talking scandal, harry, and there is never any basis for scandal." "the basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty," said lord henry, lighting a cigarette. "you would sacrifice anybody, harry, for the sake of an epigram." "the world goes to the altar of its own accord," was the answer. "i wish i could love," cried dorian gray, with a deep note of pathos in his voice. "but i seem to have lost the passion, and forgotten the desire. i am too much concentrated on myself. my own personality has become a burden to me. i want to escape, to go away, to forget. it was silly of me to come down here at all. i think i shall send a wire to harvey to have the yacht got ready. on a yacht one is safe." "safe from what, dorian? you are in some trouble. why not tell me what it is? you know i would help you." "i can't tell you, harry," he answered, sadly. "and i dare say it is only a fancy of mine. this unfortunate accident has upset me. i have a horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen to me." "what nonsense!" "i hope it is, but i can't help feeling it. ah! here is the duchess, looking the artemis in a tailor-made gown. you see we have come back, duchess." "i have heard all about it, mr. gray," she answered. "poor geoffrey is terribly upset. and it seems that you asked him not to shoot the hare. how curious!" "yes, it was very curious. i don't know what made me say it. some whim, i suppose. it looked the loveliest of little live things. but i am sorry they told you about the man. it is a hideous subject." "it is an annoying subject," broke in lord henry. "it has no psychological value at all. now if geoffrey had done the thing on purpose, how interesting he would be! i should like to know some one who had committed a real murder." "how horrid of you, harry!" cried the duchess. "isn't it, mr. gray? harry, mr. gray is ill again. he is going to faint." dorian drew himself up with an effort, and smiled. "it is nothing, duchess," he murmured; "my nerves are dreadfully out of order. that is all. i am afraid i walked too far this morning. i didn't hear what harry said. was it very bad? you must tell me some other time. i think i must go and lie down. you will excuse me, won't you?" they had reached the great flight of steps that led from the conservatory onto the terrace. as the glass door closed behind dorian, lord henry turned and looked at the duchess with his slumberous eyes. "are you very much in love with him?" he asked. she did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape. "i wish i knew," she said at last. he shook his head. "knowledge would be fatal. it is the uncertainty that charms one. a mist makes things wonderful." "one may lose one's way." "all ways end at the same point, my dear gladys." "what is that?" "disillusion." "it was my debut in life," she sighed. "it came to you crowned." "i am tired of strawberry leaves." "they become you." "only in public." "you would miss them," said lord henry. "i will not part with a petal." "monmouth has cars." "old age is dull of hearing." "has he never been jealous?" "i wish he had been." he glanced about as if in search of something. "what are you looking for?" she enquired. "the button from your foil," he answered. "you have dropped it." she laughed. "i have still the mask." "it makes your eyes lovelier," was his reply. she laughed again. her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet fruit. upstairs, in his own room, dorian gray was lying on a sofa, with terror in every tingling fibre of his body. life had suddenly become too hideous a burden for him to bear. the dreadful death of the unlucky beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal, had seemed to him to prefigure death for himself also. he had nearly swooned at what lord henry had said in a chance mood of cynical jesting. at five o'clock he rang his bell for his servant, and gave him orders to pack his things for the night-express to town, and to have the brougham at the door by eight-thirty. he was determined not to sleep another night at selby royal. it was an ill-omened place. death walked there in the sunlight. the grass of the forest had been spotted with blood. then he wrote a note to lord henry, telling him that he was going up to town to consult his doctor, and asking him to entertain his guests in his absence. as he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to the door, and his valet informed him that the head-keeper wished to see him. he frowned, and bit his lip. "send him in," he muttered, after some moments' hesitation. as soon as the man entered dorian pulled his cheque-book out of a drawer, and spread it out before him. "i suppose you have come about the unfortunate accident of this morning, thornton?" he said, taking up a pen. "yes, sir," answered the game-keeper. "was the poor fellow married? had he any people dependent on him?" asked dorian, looking bored. "if so, i should not like them to be left in want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary." "we don't know who he is, sir. that is what i took the liberty of coming to you about." "don't know who he is?" said dorian, listlessly. "what do you mean? wasn't he one of your men?" "no, sir. never saw him before. seems like a sailor, sir." the pen dropped from dorian gray's hand, and he felt as if his heart had suddenly stopped beating. "a sailor?" he cried out. "did you say a sailor?" "yes, sir. he looks as if he had been a sort of sailor; tattooed on both arms, and that kind of thing." "was there anything found on him?" said dorian, leaning forward and looking at the man with startled eyes. "anything that would tell his name?" "some money, sirnot much, and a six-shooter. there was no name of any kind. a decent-looking man, sir, but rough-like. a sort of sailor we think." dorian started to his feet. a terrible hope fluttered past him. he clutched at it madly. "where is the body?" he exclaimed. "quick! i must see it at once." "it is in an empty stable in the home farm, sir. the folk don't like to have that sort of thing in their houses. they say a corpse brings bad luck." "the home farm! go there at once and meet me. tell one of the grooms to bring my horse round. no. never mind. i'll go to the stables myself. it will save time." in less than a quarter of an hour dorian gray was galloping down the long avenue as hard as he could go. the trees seemed to sweep past him in spectral procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves across his path. once the mare swerved at a white gate-post and nearly threw him. he lashed her across the neck with his crop. she cleft the dusky air like an arrow. the stones flew from her hoofs. at last he reached the home farm. two men were loitering in the yard. he leapt from the saddle and threw the reins to one of them. in the farthest stable a light was glimmering. something seemed to tell him that the body was there, and he hurried to the door, and put his hand upon the latch. there he paused for a moment, feeling that he was on the brink of a discovery that would either make or mar his life. then he thrust the door open, and entered. on a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying the dead body of a man dressed in a coarse shirt and a pair of blue trousers. a spotted handkerchief had been placed over the face. a coarse candle, stuck in a bottle, sputtered beside it. dorian gray shuddered. he felt that his could not be the hand to take the handkerchief away, and called out to one of the farm-servants to come to him. "take that thing off the face. i wish to see it," he said, clutching at the door-post for support. when the farm-servant had done so, he stepped forward. a cry of joy broke from his lips. the man who had been shot in the thicket was james vane. he stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body. as he rode home, his eyes were full of tears, for he knew that he was safe. chapter xix "there is no use your telling me that you are going to be good," cried lord henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled with rose-water. "you are quite perfect. pray, don't change." dorian gray shook his head. "no, harry, i have done too many dreadful things in my life. i am not going to do any more. i began my good actions yesterday." "where were you yesterday?" "in the country, harry. i was staying at a little inn by myself." "my dear boy," said lord henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. there are no temptations there. that is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. there are only two ways by which man can reach it. one is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate." "culture and corruption," echoed dorian. "i have known something of both. it seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found together. for i have a new ideal, harry. i am going to alter. i think i have altered." "you have not yet told me what your good action was. or did you say you had done more than one?" asked his companion, as he spilt into his plate a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries, and through a perforated shell-shaped spoon snowed white sugar upon them. "i can tell you, harry. it is not a story i could tell to any one else. i spared somebody. it sounds vain, but you understand what i mean. she was quite beautiful, and wonderfully like sibyl vane. i think it was that which first attracted me to her. you remember sibyl, don't you? how long ago that seems! well, hetty was not one of our own class, of course. she was simply a girl in a village. but i really loved her. i am quite sure that i loved her. all during this wonderful may that we have been having, i used to run down and see her two or three times a week. yesterday she met me in a little orchard. the apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair, and she was laughing. we were to have gone away together this morning at dawn. suddenly i determined to leave her as flower-like as i had found her." "i should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill of real pleasure, dorian," interrupted lord henry. "but i can finish your idyll for you. you gave her good advice, and broke her heart. that was the beginning of your reformation." "harry, you are horrible! you mustn't say these dreadful things. hetty's heart is not broken. of course she cried, and all that. but there is no disgrace upon her. she can live, like perdita, in her garden of mint and marigold." "and weep over faithless florizel," said lord henry, laughing, as he leant back in his chair. "my dear dorian, you have the most curiously boyish moods. do you think this girl will ever be really contented now with any one of her own rank? i suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter or a grinning ploughman. well, the fact of having met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be wretched. from a moral point of view, i cannot say that i think much of your great renunciation. even as a beginning, it is poor. besides, how do you know that hetty isn't floating at the present moment in some star-lit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round her, like ophelia? "i can't bear this, harry! you mock at everything, and then suggest the most serious tragedies. i am sorry i told you now. i don't care what you say to me. i know i was right in acting as i did. poor hetty! as i rode past the farm this morning, i saw her white face at the window, like a spray of jasmine. don't let us talk about it any more, and don't try to persuade me that the first good action i have done for years, the first little bit of self-sacrifice i have ever known, is really a sort of sin. i want to be better. i am going to be better. tell me something about yourself. what is going on in town? i have not been to the club for days." "the people are still discussing poor basil's disappearance." "i should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," said dorian, pouring himself out some wine, and frowning slightly. "my dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and the british public are really not equal to the mental strain of having more than one topic every three months. they have been very fortunate lately, however. they have had my own divorce-case, and alan campbell's suicide. now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist. scotland yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left for paris by the midnight train on the ninth of november was poor basil, and the french police declare that basil never arrived in paris at all. i suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in san francisco. it is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at san francisco. it must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world." "what do you think has happened to basil?" asked dorian, holding up his burgundy against the light, and wondering how it was he could discuss the matter so calmly. "i have not the slightest idea. if basil chooses to hide himself, it is no business of mine. if he is dead, i don't want to think about him. death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. i hate it." "why?" said the young man, wearily. "because," said lord henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt trellis of an open vinaigrette box, "one can survive everything nowadays except that. death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. let us have our coffee in the music-room, dorian. you must play chopin to me. the man with whom my wife ran away played chopin exquisitely. poor victoria! i was very fond of her. the house is rather lonely without her. of course married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. but then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. perhaps one regrets them the most. they are such an essential part of one's personality." dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and, passing into the next room, sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the white and black ivory of the keys. after the coffee had been brought in, he stopped, and, looking over at lord henry, said, "harry, did it ever occur to you that basil was murdered?" lord henry yawned. "basil was very popular, and always wore a waterbury watch. why should he have been murdered? he was not clever enough to have enemies. of course he had a wonderful genius for painting. but a man can paint like velasquez and yet be as dull as possible. basil was really rather dull. he only interested me once, and that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you, and that you were the dominant motive of his art." "i was very fond of basil," said dorian, with a note of sadness in his voice. "but don't people say that he was murdered?" "oh, some of the papers do. it does not seem to me to be at all probable. i know there are dreadful places in paris, but basil was not the sort of man to have gone to them. he had no curiosity. it was his chief defect." "what would you say, harry, if i told you that i had murdered basil?" said the younger man. he watched him intently after he had spoken. "i would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that doesn't suit you. all crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime. it is not in you, dorian, to commit a murder. i am sorry if i hurt your vanity by saying so, but i assure you it is true. crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. i don't blame them in the smallest degree. i should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations." "a method of procuring sensations? do you think, then, that a man who has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again? don't tell me that." "oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," cried lord henry, laughing. "that is one of the most important secrets of life. i should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. one should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner. but let us pass from poor basil. i wish i could believe that he had come to such a really romantic end as you suggest; but i can't. i dare say he fell into the seine off an omnibus, and that the conductor hushed up the scandal. yes: i should fancy that was his end. i see him now lying on his back under those dull-green waters with the heavy barges floating over him, and long weeds catching in his hair. do you know, i don't think he would have done much more good work. during the last ten years his painting had gone off very much." dorian heaved a sigh, and lord henry strolled across the room and began to stroke the head of a curious java parrot, a large grey-plumaged bird, with pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a bamboo perch. as his pointed fingers touched it, it dropped the white scurf of crinkled lids over black glass-like eyes, and began to sway backwards and forwards. "yes," he continued, turning round, and taking his handkerchief out of his pocket; "his painting had quite gone off. it seemed to me to have lost something. it had lost an ideal. when you and he ceased to be great friends, he ceased to be a great artist. what was it separated you? i suppose he bored you. if so, he never forgave you. it's a habit bores have. by the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did of you? i don't think i have ever seen it since he finished it. oh! i remember your telling me years ago that you had sent it down to selby, and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the way. you never got it back? what a pity! it was really a masterpiece. i remember i wanted to buy it. i wish i had now. it belonged to basil's best period. since then, his work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called a representative british artist. did you advertise for it? you should." "i forget," said dorian. "i suppose i did. but i never really liked it. i am sorry i sat for it. the memory of the thing is hateful to me. why do you talk of it? it used to remind me of those curious lines in some play'hamlet,' i thinkhow do they run? "'like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart.' yes: that is what it was like." lord henry laughed. "if a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair. dorian gray shook his head, and struck some soft chords on the piano. "'like the painting of a sorrow?'" he repeated, "'a face without a heart.'" the elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes. "by the way, dorian," he said, after a pause, "'what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose'how does the quotation run?'his own soul?'" the music jarred and dorian gray started, and stared at his friend. "why do you ask me that, harry?" "my dear fellow," said lord henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise, "i asked you because i thought you might be able to give me an answer. that is all. i was going through the park last sunday, and close by the marble arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people listening to some vulgar street-preacher. as i passed by, i heard the man yelling out that question to his audience. it struck me as being rather dramatic. london is very rich in curious effects of that kind. a wet sunday, an uncouth christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase flung into the air by shrill, hysterical lipsit was really very good in its way, quite a suggestion. i thought of telling the prophet that art had a soul, but that man had not. i am afraid, however, he would not have understood me." "don't, harry. the soul is a terrible reality. it can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. it can be poisoned, or made perfect. there is a soul in each one of us. i know it." "do you feel quite sure of that, dorian?" "quite sure." "ah! then it must be an illusion. the things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. that is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance. how grave you are! don't be so serious. what have you or i to do with the superstitions of our age? no: we have given up our belief in the soul. play me something. play me a nocturne, dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth. you must have some secret. i am only ten years older than you are, and i am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. you are really wonderful, dorian. you have never looked more charming than you do to-night. you remind me of the day i saw you first. you were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. you have changed, of course, but not in appearance. i wish you would tell me your secret. to get back my youth i would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. youth! there is nothing like it. it's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. the only people to whose opinions i listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. they seem in front of me. life has revealed to them her latest wonder. as for the aged, i always contradict the aged. i do it on principle. if you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knew absolutely nothing. how lovely that thing you are playing is! i wonder did chopin write it at majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa, and the salt spray dashing against the panes? it is marvellously romantic. what a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that is not imitative! don't stop. i want music to-night. it seems to me that you are the young apollo, and that i am marsyas listening to you. i have sorrows, dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of. the tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. i am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. ah, dorian, how happy you are! what an exquisite life you have had! you have drunk deeply of everything. you have crushed the grapes against your palate. nothing has been hidden from you. and it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. it has not marred you. you are still the same." "i am not the same, harry." "yes: you are the same. i wonder what the rest of your life will be. don't spoil it by renunciations. at present you are a perfect type. don't make yourself incomplete. you are quite flawless now. you need not shake your head: you know you are. besides, dorian, don't deceive yourself. life is not governed by will or intention. life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. you may fancy yourself safe, and think yourself strong. but a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to playi tell you, dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagine them for us. there are moments when the odour of lilas blanc passes suddenly across me, and i have to live the strangest month of my life over again. i wish i could change places with you, dorian. the world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. it always will worship you. you are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. i am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside yourself! life has been your art. you have set yourself to music. your days are your sonnets." dorian rose up from the piano, and passed his hand through his hair. "yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but i am not going to have the same life, harry. and you must not say these extravagant things to me. you don't know everything about me. i think that if you did, even you would turn from me. you laugh. don't laugh." "why have you stopped playing, dorian? go back and give me the nocturne over again. look at that great honey-coloured moon that hangs in the dusky air. she is waiting for you to charm her, and if you play she will come closer to the earth. you won't? let us go to the club, then. it has been a charming evening, and we must end it charmingly. there is some one at white's who wants immensely to know youyoung lord poole, bournemouth's eldest son. he has already copied your neckties, and has begged me to introduce him to you. he is quite delightful, and rather reminds me of you." "i hope not," said dorian, with a sad look in his eyes. "but i am tired to-night, harry. i sha'n't go to the club. it is nearly eleven, and i want to go to bed early." "do stay. you have never played so well as to-night. there was something in your touch that was wonderful. it had more expression than i had ever heard from it before." "it is because i am going to be good," he answered, smiling. "i am a little changed already." "you cannot change to me, dorian," said lord henry. "you and i will always be friends." "yet you poisoned me with a book once. i should not forgive that. harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. it does harm." "my dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. you will soon be going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. you are much too delightful to do that. besides, it is no use. you and i are what we are, and will be what we will be. as for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. art has no influence upon action. it annihilates the desire to act. it is superbly sterile. the books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. that is all. but we won't discuss literature. come round to-morrow. i am going to ride at eleven. we might go together, and i will take you to lunch afterwards with lady branksome. she is a charming woman, and wants to consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying. mind you come. or shall we lunch with our little duchess? she says she never sees you now. perhaps you are tired of gladys? i thought you would be. her clever tongue gets on one's nerves. well, in any case, be here at eleven." "must i really come, harry?" "certainly. the park is quite lovely now. i don't think there have been such lilacs since the year i met you." "very well. i shall be here at eleven," said dorian. "good-night, harry." as he reached the door he hesitated for a moment, as if he had something more to say. then he sighed and went out. chapter xx it was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm, and did not even put his silk scarf round his throat. as he strolled home, smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him. he heard one of them whisper to the other, "that is dorian gray." he remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared at, or talked about. he was tired of hearing his own name now. half the charm of the little village where he had been so often lately was that no one knew who he was. he had often told the girl whom he had lured to love him that he was poor, and she had believed him. he had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him, and answered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly. what a laugh she had!just like a thrush singing. and how pretty she had been in her cotton dresses and her large hats! she knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost. when he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him. he sent him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, and began to think over some of the things that lord henry had said to him. was it really true that one could never change? he felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhoodhis rose-white boyhood, as lord henry had once called it. he knew that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption and given horror to his fancy; that he had been an evil influence to others and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame. but was it all irretrievable? was there no hope for him? ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the unsullied splendour of eternal youth! all his failure had been due to that. better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure, swift penalty along with it. there was purification in punishment. not "forgive us our sins" but "smite us for our iniquities" should be the prayer of man to a most just god. the curiously-carved mirror that lord henry had given to him, so many years ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed cupids laughed round it as of old. he took it up, as he had done on that night of horror, when he had first noted the change in the fatal picture, and with wild tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield. once, some one who had terribly loved him, had written to him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words: "the world is changed because you are made of ivory, and gold. the curves of your lips rewrite history." the phrases came back to his memory, and he repeated them over and over to himself. then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror to the floor crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. it was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. but for these two things, his life might have been free from stain. his beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. what was youth at best? a green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. why had he worn its livery? youth had spoiled him. it was better not to think of the past. nothing could alter that. it was of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think. james vane was hidden in a nameless grave in selby churchyard. alan campbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the secret that he had been forced to know. the excitement, such as it was, over basil hallward's disappearance would soon pass away. it was already waning. he was perfectly safe there. nor, indeed, was it the death of basil hallward that weighed most upon his mind. it was the living death of his own soul that troubled him. basil had painted the portrait that had marred his life. he could not forgive him that. it was the portrait that had done everything. basil had said things to him that were unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience. the murder had been simply the madness of a moment. as for alan campbell, his suicide had been his own act. he had chosen to do it. it was nothing to him. a new life! that was what he wanted. that was what he was waiting for. surely he had begun it already. he had spared one innocent thing, at any rate. he would never again tempt innocence. he would be good. as he thought of hetty merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in the locked room had changed. surely it was not still so horrible as it had been? perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every sign of evil passion from the face. perhaps the signs of evil had already gone away. he would go and look. he took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs. as he unbarred the door, a smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face and lingered for a moment about his lips. yes, he would be good, and the hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to him. he felt as if the load had been lifted from him already. he went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom, and dragged the purple hanging from the portrait. a cry of pain and indignation broke from him. he could see no change, save that in the eyes there was a look of cunning, and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. the thing was still loathsomemore loathsome, if possible, than beforeand the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilt. then he trembled. had it been merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed? or the desire for a new sensation, as lord henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh? or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves? or, perhaps, all these? and why was the red stain larger than it had been? it seemed to have crept like a horrible disease over the wrinkled fingers. there was blood on the painted feet, as though the thing had drippedblood even on the hand that had not held the knife. confess? did it mean that he was to confess? to give himself up, and be put to death? he laughed. he felt that the idea was monstrous. besides, even if he did confess, who would believe him? there was no trace of the murdered man anywhere. everything belonging to him had been destroyed. he himself had burned what had been below-stairs. the world would simply say that he was mad. they would shut him up if he persisted in his story.... yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer public shame, and to make public atonement. there was a god who called upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. nothing that he could do would cleanse him till he had told his own sin. his sin? he shrugged his shoulders. the death of basil hallward seemed very little to him. he was thinking of hetty merton. for it was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. vanity? curiosity? hypocrisy? had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that? there had been something more. at least he thought so. but who could tell?... no. there had been nothing more. through vanity he had spared her. in hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. for curiosity's sake he had tried the denial of self. he recognized that now. but this murderwas it to dog him all his life? was he always to be burdened by his past? was he really to confess? never. there was only one bit of evidence left against him. the picture itselfthat was evidence. he would destroy it. why had he kept it so long? once it had given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. of late he had felt no such pleasure. it had kept him awake at night. when he had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. it had brought melancholy across his passions. its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. it had been like conscience to him. yes, it had been conscience. he would destroy it. he looked round, and saw the knife that had stabbed basil hallward. he had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. it was bright, and glistened. as it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter's work, and all that that meant. it would kill the past, and when that was dead he would be free. it would kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. he seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it. there was a cry heard, and a crash. the cry was so horrible in its agony that the frightened servants woke, and crept out of their rooms. two gentlemen, who were passing in the square below, stopped, and looked up at the great house. they walked on till they met a policeman, and brought him back. the man rang the bell several times, but there was no answer. except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all dark. after a time, he went away, and stood in an adjoining portico and watched. "whose house is that, constable?" asked the elder of the two gentlemen. "mr. dorian gray's, sir," answered the policeman. they looked at each other, as they walked away, and sneered. one of them was sir henry ashton's uncle. inside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics were talking in low whispers to each other. old mrs. leaf was crying, and wringing her hands. francis was as pale as death. after about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the footmen and crept upstairs. they knocked, but there was no reply. they called out. everything was still. finally, after vainly trying to force the door, they got on the roof, and dropped down on to the balcony. the windows yielded easily: their bolts were old. when they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. he was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. it was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was. the end . 1729 a modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in ireland from being aburden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public by jonathan swift it is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. these mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the pretender in spain, or sell themselves to the barbadoes. i think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation. but my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets. as to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors, i have always found them grossly mistaken in the computation. it is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a solar year, with little other nourishment; at most not above the value of 2s., which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that i propose to provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands. there is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us! sacrificing the poor innocent babes i doubt more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast. the number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these i calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number i subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although i apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. i again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. there only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. the question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as i have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. for we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses (i mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing, till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly parts, although i confess they learn the rudiments much earlier, during which time, they can however be properly looked upon only as probationers, as i have been informed by a principal gentleman in the county of cavan, who protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art. i am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half-a-crown at most on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that value. i shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which i hope will not be liable to the least objection. i have been assured by a very knowing american of my acquaintance in london, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and i make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout. i do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. that the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. a child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter. i have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increaseth to 28 pounds. i grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children. infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in march, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent french physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in roman catholic countries about nine months after lent than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom: and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the number of papists among us. i have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list i reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and i believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as i have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants; the mother will have eight shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child. those who are more thrifty (as i must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen. as to our city of dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although i rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs. a very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues i highly esteem, was lately pleased in discoursing on this matter to offer a refinement upon my scheme. he said that many gentlemen of this kingdom, having of late destroyed their deer, he conceived that the want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age nor under twelve; so great a number of both sexes in every country being now ready to starve for want of work and service; and these to be disposed of by their parents, if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. but with due deference to so excellent a friend and so deserving a patriot, i cannot be altogether in his sentiments; for as to the males, my american acquaintance assured me, from frequent experience, that their flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable; and to fatten them would not answer the charge. then as to the females, it would, i think, with humble submission be a loss to the public, because they soon would become breeders themselves; and besides, it is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice (although indeed very unjustly), as a little bordering upon cruelty; which, i confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection against any project, however so well intended. but in order to justify my friend, he confessed that this expedient was put into his head by the famous psalmanazar, a native of the island formosa, who came from thence to london above twenty years ago, and in conversation told my friend, that in his country when any young person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to persons of quality as a prime dainty; and that in his time the body of a plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison the emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty's prime minister of state, and other great mandarins of the court, in joints from the gibbet, at four hundred crowns. neither indeed can i deny, that if the same use were made of several plump young girls in this town, who without one single groat to their fortunes cannot stir abroad without a chair, and appear at playhouse and assemblies in foreign fineries which they never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse. some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and i have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance. but i am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. and as to the young laborers, they are now in as hopeful a condition; they cannot get work, and consequently pine away for want of nourishment, to a degree that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labor, they have not strength to perform it; and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come. i have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. i think the advantages by the proposal which i have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance. for first, as i have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation as well as our most dangerous enemies; and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate. secondly, the poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress and help to pay their landlord's rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money a thing unknown. thirdly, whereas the maintenance of an hundred thousand children, from two years old and upward, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a-piece per annum, the nation's stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom who have any refinement in taste. and the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture. fourthly, the constant breeders, beside the gain of eight shillings sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year. fifthly, this food would likewise bring great custom to taverns; where the vintners will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best receipts for dressing it to perfection, and consequently have their houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen, who justly value themselves upon their knowledge in good eating: and a skilful cook, who understands how to oblige his guests, will contrive to make it as expensive as they please. sixthly, this would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by laws and penalties. it would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the public, to their annual profit instead of expense. we should see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the market. men would become as fond of their wives during the time of their pregnancy as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, their sows when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage. many other advantages might be enumerated. for instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barreled beef, the propagation of swine's flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well-grown, fat, yearling child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a lord mayor's feast or any other public entertainment. but this and many others i omit, being studious of brevity. * * * * * after all, i am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. but before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, i desire the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points. first, as things now stand, how they will be able to find food and raiment for an hundred thousand useless mouths and backs. and secondly, there being a round million of creatures in human figure throughout this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock would leave them in debt two millions of pounds sterling, adding those who are beggars by profession to the bulk of farmers, cottagers, and laborers, with their wives and children who are beggars in effect: i desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold as to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food, at a year old in the manner i prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever. i profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that i have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. i have no children by which i can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing. (1729) the end . 1890 eleutheria by oscar wilde sonnet to liberty not that i love thy children, whose dull eyes see nothing save their own unlovely woe, whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know, but that the roar of thy democracies, thy reigns of terror, thy great anarchies, mirror my wildest passions like the sea, and give my rage a brother-! liberty! for his sake only do thy dissonant cries delight my discreet soul, else might all kings by bloody knout or treacherous cannonades rob nations of their rights inviolate and i remain unmovedand yet, and yet, these christs that die upon the barricades, god knows it i am with them, in some things. ave imperatrix set in this stormy northern sea, queen of these restless fields of tide, england! what shall men say of thee, before whose feet the worlds divide? the earth, a brittle globe of glass, lies in the hollow of thy hand, and through its heart of crystal pass, like shadows through a twilight land, the spears of crimson-suited war, the long white-crested waves of fight, and all the deadly fires which are the torches of the lords of night. the yellow leopards, strained and lean, the treacherous russian knows so well, with gaping blackened jaws are seen leap through the hail of screaming shell. the strong sea-lion of england's wars hath left his sapphire cave of sea, to battle with the storm that mars the star of england's chivalry. the brazen-throated clarion blows across the pathan's reedy fen, and the high steeps of indian snows shake to the tread of armed men. and many an afghan chief, who lies beneath his cool pomegranate-trees, clutches his sword in fierce surmise when on the mountain-side he sees the fleet-foot marri scout, who comes to tell how he hath heard afar the measured roll of english drums beat at the gates of kandahar. for southern wind and east wind meet where, girt and crowned by sword and fire, england with bare and bloody feet climbs the steep road of wide empire. o lonely himalayan height, gray pillar of the indian sky, where saw'st thou last in clanging fight, our winged dogs of victory? the almond groves of samarcand, bokhara, where red lilies blow, and oxus, by whose yellow sand the grave white-turbaned merchants go: and on from thence to ispahan, the gilded garden of the sun, whence the long dusty caravan brings cedar and vermilion; and that dread city of cabool set at the mountain's scarped feet, whose marble tanks are ever full with water for the noon-day heat: where through the narrow straight bazaar a little maid circassian is led, a present from the czar unto some old and bearded khan, here have our wild war-eagles flown, and flapped wide wings in fiery fight; but the sad dove, that sits alone in englandshe hath no delight. in vain the laughing girl will lean to greet her love with love-lit eyes: down in some treacherous black ravine, clutching his flag, the dead boy lies. and many a moon and sun will see the lingering wistful children wait to climb upon their father's knee; and in each house made desolate pale women who have lost their lord will kiss the relics of the slain some tarnished epauletsome sword poor toys to soothe such anguished pain. for not in quiet english fields are these, our brothers, laid to rest. where we might deck their broken shields with all the flowers the dead love best. for some are by the delhi walls, and many in the afghan land, and many where the ganges falls through seven mouths of shifting sand. and some in russian waters lie, and others in the seas which are the portals to the east, or by the wind-swept heights of trafalgar. o wandering graves! o restless sleep! o silence of the sunless day! o still ravine! o stormy deep! give up your prey! give up your prey! and thou whose wounds are never healed, whose weary race is never won, o cromwell's england! must thou yield for every inch of ground a son? go! crown with thorns thy gold-crowned head, change thy glad song to song of pain; wind and wild wave have got thy dead, and will not yield them back again. wave and wild wind and foreign shore possess the flower of english land lips that thy lips shall kiss no more, hands that shall never clasp thy hand. what profit now that we have bound the whole round world with net of gold, if hidden in our heart is found the care that groweth never old? what profit that our galleys ride, pine-forest-like, on every main? ruin and wreck are at our side, grim warders of the house of pain. where are the brave, the strong, the fleet where is our english chivalry? wild grasses are their burial-sheet, and sobbing waves their threnody. o loved ones lying far away, what word of love can dead lips send! o wasted dust! o senseless clay! is this the end! is this the end! peace, peace! we wrong the noble dead to vex their solemn slumber so: though childless, and with thorn-crowned head, up the steep road must england go, yet when this fiery web is spun, her watchmen shall decry from far the young republic like a sun rise from these crimson seas of war. to milton milton! i think thy spirit hath passed away from these white cliffs, and high embattled-towers; this gorgeous fiery-colored world of ours seems fallen into ashes dull and gray, and the age changed unto a mimic play, wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours: for all our pomp and pageantry and powers we are but fit to delve the common clay, seeing this little isle on which we stand, this england, this sea-lion of the sea, by ignorant demagogues is held in fee, who love her not: dear god! is this the land which bare a triple empire in her hand when cromwell spake the word democracy! louis napoleon eagle of austerlitz! where were thy wings when far away upon a barbarous strand, in fight unequal, by an obscure hand, fell the last scion of thy brood of kings! poor boy! thou wilt not flaunt thy cloak of red, nor ride in state through paris in the van of thy returning legions, but instead thy mother france, free and republican, shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place the better laurels of a soldier's crown, that not dishonored should thy soul go down to tell the mighty sire of thy race that france hath kissed the mouth of liberty, and found it sweeter than his honeyed bees, and that the giant wave democracy breaks on the shores where kings lay couched at ease. sonnet on the massacre of the christians in bulgaria. christ, dost thou live indeed? or are thy bones still straightened in their rock-hewn sepulchre? and was thy rising only dreamed by her whose love of thee for all her sin atones? for here the air is horrid with men's groans, the priests who call upon thy name are slain, dost thou not hear the bitter wail of pain from those whose children lie upon the stones? come down, o son of god! incestuous gloom curtains the land, and through the starless night over thy cross the crescent moon i see! if thou in very truth didst burst the tomb come down, o son of man! and show thy might lest mahomet be crowned instead of thee! quantum mutata there was a time in europe long ago, when no man died for freedom anywhere, but england's lion leaping from its lair laid hands on the oppressor! it was so while england could a great republic show. witness the men of piedmont, chiefest care of cromwell, when with impotent despair the pontiff in his painted portico trembled before our stern embassadors. how comes it then that from such high estate we have thus fallen, save that luxury with barren merchandise piles up the gate where nobler thoughts and deeds should enter by: else might we still be milton's heritors. libertatis sacra fames albeit nurtured in democracy, and liking best that state republican where every man is kinglike and no man is crowned above his fellows, yet i see spite of this modern fret for liberty, better the rule of one, whom all obey, than to let clamorous demagogues betray our freedom with the kiss of anarchy. wherefore i love them not whose hands profane plant the red flag upon the piled-up street for no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign arts, culture, reverence, honor, all things fade, save treason and the dagger of her trade, and murder with his silent bloody feet. theoretikos this mighty empire hath but feet of clay; of all its ancient chivalry and might our little island is forsaken quite: some enemy hath stolen its crown of bay, and from its hills that voice hath passed away which spake of freedom: o come out of it, come out of it, my soul, thou art not fit for this vile traffic-house, where day by day wisdom and reverence are sold at mart, and the rude people rage with ignorant cries against an heritage of centuries. it mars my calm: wherefore in dreams of art and loftiest culture i would stand apart, neither for god, nor for his enemies. the end . internet wiretap edition of a new crime by mark twain from "sketches new and old", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain (jun 1993, #18). a new crime legislation needed this country, during the last thirty or forty years, has produced some of the most remarkable cases of insanity of which there is any mention in history. for instance, there was the baldwin case, in ohio, twenty-two years ago. baldwin, from his boyhood up, had been of a vindictive, malignant, quarrelsome nature. he put a boy's eye out once, and never was heard upon any occasion to utter a regret for it. he did many such things. but at last he did something that was serious. he called at a house just after dark one evening, knocked, and when the occupant came to the door, shot him dead, and then tried to escape, but was captured. two days before, he had wantonly insulted a helpless cripple, and the man he afterward took swift vengeance upon with an assassin bullet had knocked him down. such was the baldwin case. the trial was long and exciting; the community was fearfully wrought up. men said this spiteful, bad-hearted villain had caused grief enough in his time, and now he should satisfy the law. but they were mistaken; baldwin was insane when he did the deed -they had not thought of that. by the argument of counsel it was shown that at half-past ten in the morning on the day of the murder, baldwin became insane, and remained so for eleven hours and a half exactly. this just covered the case comfortably, and he was acquitted. thus, if an unthinking and excited community had been listened to instead of the arguments of counsel, a poor crazy creature would have been held to a fearful responsibility for a mere freak of madness. baldwin went clear, and although his relatives and friends were naturally incensed against the community for their injurious suspicions and remarks, they said let it go for this time, and did not prosecute. the baldwins were very wealthy. this same baldwin had momentary fits of insanity twice afterward, and on both occasions killed people he had grudges against. and on both these occasions the circumstances of the killing were so aggravated, and the murders so seemingly heartless and treacherous, that if baldwin had not been insane he would have been hanged without the shadow of a doubt. as it was, it required all his political and family influence to get him clear in one of the cases, and cost him not less than ten thousand dollars to get clear in the other. one of these men he had notoriously been threatening to kill for twelve years. the poor creature happened, by the merest piece of ill fortune, to come along a dark alley at the very moment that baldwin's insanity came upon him, and so he was shot in the back with a gun loaded with slugs. take the case of lynch hackett, of pennsylvania. twice, in public, he attacked a german butcher by the name of bemis feldner, with a cane, and both times feldner whipped him with his fists. hackett was a vain, wealthy, violent gentleman, who held his blood and family in high esteem, and believed that a reverent respect was due to his great riches. he brooded over the shame of his chastisement for two weeks, and then, in a momentary fit of insanity, armed himself to the teeth, rode into town, waited a couple of hours until he saw feldner coming down the street with his wife on his arm, and then, as the couple passed the doorway in which he had partially concealed himself, he drove a knife into feldner's neck, killing him instantly. the widow caught the limp form and eased it to the earth. both were drenched with blood. hackett jocosely remarked to her that as a professional butcher's recent wife she could appreciate the artistic neatness of the job that left her in condition to marry again, in case she wanted to. this remark, and another which he made to a friend, that his position in society made the killing of an obscure citizen simply an "eccentricity" instead of a crime, were shown to be evidences of insanity, and so hackett escaped punishment. the jury were hardly inclined to accept these as proofs at first, inasmuch as the prisoner had never been insane before the murder, and under the tranquilizing effect of the butchering had immediately regained his right mind; but when the defense came to show that a third cousin of hackett's wife's stepfather was insane, and not only insane, but had a nose the very counterpart of hackett's, it was plain that insanity was hereditary in the family, and hackett had come by it by legitimate inheritance. of course the jury then acquitted him. but it was a merciful providence that mrs. h.'s people had been afflicted as shown, else hackett would certainly have been hanged. however, it is not possible to recount all the marvelous cases of insanity that have come under the public notice in the last thirty or forty years. there was the durgin case in new jersey three years ago. the servant girl, bridget durgin, at dead of night, invaded her mistress' bedroom and carved the lady literally to pieces with a knife. then she dragged the body to the middle of the floor, and beat and banged it with chairs and such things. next she opened the feather beds, and strewed the contents around, saturated everything with kerosene, and set fire to the general wreck. she now took up the young child of the murdered woman in her bloodsmeared hands and walked off, through the snow, with no shoes on, to a neighbor's house a quarter of a mile off, and told a string of wild, incoherent stories about some men coming and setting fire to the house; and then she cried piteously, and without seeming to think there was anything suggestive about the blood upon her hands, her clothing, and the baby, volunteered the remark that she was afraid those men had murdered her mistress! afterward, by her own confession and other testimony, it was proved that the mistress had always been kind to the girl, consequently there was no revenge in the murder; and it was also shown that the girl took nothing away from the burning house, not even her own shoes, and consequently robbery was not the motive. now, the reader says, "here comes that same old plea of insanity again." but the reader has deceived himself this time. no such plea was offered in her defense. the judge sentenced her, nobody persecuted the governor with petitions for her pardon, and she was promptly hanged. there was that youth in pennsylvania, whose curious confession was published some years ago. it was simply a conglomeration of incoherent drivel from beginning to end, and so was his lengthy speech on the scaffold afterward. for a whole year he was haunted with a desire to disfigure a certain young woman, so that no one would marry her. he did not love her himself, and did not want to marry her, but he did not want anybody else to do it. he would not go anywhere with her, and yet was opposed to anybody else's escorting her. upon one occasion he declined to go to a wedding with her, and when she got other company, lay in wait for the couple by the road, intending to make them go back or kill the escort. after spending sleepless nights over his ruling desire for a full year, he at last attempted its execution -that is, attempted to disfigure the young woman. it was a success. it was permanent. in trying to shoot her cheek (as she sat at the supper table with her parents and brothers and sisters) in such a manner as to mar its comeliness, one of his bullets wandered a little out of the course, and she dropped dead. to the very last moment of his life he bewailed the ill luck that made her move her face just at the critical moment. and so he died, apparently about half persuaded that somehow it was chiefly her own fault that she got killed. this idiot was hanged. the plea of insanity was not offered. insanity certainly is on the increase in the world, and crime is dying out. there are no longer any murders -none worth mentioning, at any rate. formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane -but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man, it is evidence that you are a lunatic. in these days, too, if a person of good family and high social standing steals anything, they call it kleptomania, and send him to the lunatic asylum. if a person of high standing squanders his fortune in dissipation, and closes his career with strychnine or a bullet, "temporary aberration" is what was the trouble with him. is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? and is it not so cheap, and so common, and often so trivial, that the reader smiles in derision when the newspaper mentions it? and is it not curious to note how very often it wins acquittal for the prisoner? of late years it does not seem possible for a man to so conduct himself, before killing another man, as not to be manifestly insane. if he talks about the stars, he is insane. if he appears nervous and uneasy an hour before the killing, he is insane. if he weeps over a great grief, his friends shake their heads, and fear that he is "not right." if, an hour after the murder, he seems ill at ease, preoccupied and excited, he is unquestionably insane. really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. there is where the true evil lies. end. . all's well that ends well dramatis personae king of france (king:) duke of florence (duke:) bertram count of rousillon. lafeu an old lord. parolles a follower of bertram. steward | | servants to the countess of rousillon. clown | a page. (page:) countess of rousillon mother to bertram. (countess:) helena a gentlewoman protected by the countess. an old widow of florence. (widow:) diana daughter to the widow. violenta | | neighbours and friends to the widow. mariana | lords, officers, soldiers, &c., french and florentine. (first lord:) (second lord:) (fourth lord:) (first gentleman:) (second gentleman:) (first soldier:) (gentleman:) scene rousillon; paris; florence; marseilles. all's well that ends well act i scene i rousillon. the count's palace. [enter bertram, the countess of rousillon, helena, and lafeu, all in black] countess in delivering my son from me, i bury a second husband. bertram and i in going, madam, weep o'er my father's death anew: but i must attend his majesty's command, to whom i am now in ward, evermore in subjection. lafeu you shall find of the king a husband, madam; you, sir, a father: he that so generally is at all times good must of necessity hold his virtue to you; whose worthiness would stir it up where it wanted rather than lack it where there is such abundance. countess what hope is there of his majesty's amendment? lafeu he hath abandoned his physicians, madam; under whose practises he hath persecuted time with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time. countess this young gentlewoman had a father,--o, that 'had'! how sad a passage 'tis!--whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. would, for the king's sake, he were living! i think it would be the death of the king's disease. lafeu how called you the man you speak of, madam? countess he was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so: gerard de narbon. lafeu he was excellent indeed, madam: the king very lately spoke of him admiringly and mourningly: he was skilful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality. bertram what is it, my good lord, the king languishes of? lafeu a fistula, my lord. bertram i heard not of it before. lafeu i would it were not notorious. was this gentlewoman the daughter of gerard de narbon? countess his sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my overlooking. i have those hopes of her good that her education promises; her dispositions she inherits, which makes fair gifts fairer; for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity; they are virtues and traitors too; in her they are the better for their simpleness; she derives her honesty and achieves her goodness. lafeu your commendations, madam, get from her tears. countess 'tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in. the remembrance of her father never approaches her heart but the tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood from her cheek. no more of this, helena; go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow than have it. helena i do affect a sorrow indeed, but i have it too. lafeu moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living. countess if the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal. bertram madam, i desire your holy wishes. lafeu how understand we that? countess be thou blest, bertram, and succeed thy father in manners, as in shape! thy blood and virtue contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness share with thy birthright! love all, trust a few, do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy rather in power than use, and keep thy friend under thy own life's key: be cheque'd for silence, but never tax'd for speech. what heaven more will, that thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down, fall on thy head! farewell, my lord; 'tis an unseason'd courtier; good my lord, advise him. lafeu he cannot want the best that shall attend his love. countess heaven bless him! farewell, bertram. [exit] bertram [to helena] the best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts be servants to you! be comfortable to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her. lafeu farewell, pretty lady: you must hold the credit of your father. [exeunt bertram and lafeu] helena o, were that all! i think not on my father; and these great tears grace his remembrance more than those i shed for him. what was he like? i have forgot him: my imagination carries no favour in't but bertram's. i am undone: there is no living, none, if bertram be away. 'twere all one that i should love a bright particular star and think to wed it, he is so above me: in his bright radiance and collateral light must i be comforted, not in his sphere. the ambition in my love thus plagues itself: the hind that would be mated by the lion must die for love. 'twas pretty, though plague, to see him every hour; to sit and draw his arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls, in our heart's table; heart too capable of every line and trick of his sweet favour: but now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy must sanctify his reliques. who comes here? [enter parolles] [aside] one that goes with him: i love him for his sake; and yet i know him a notorious liar, think him a great way fool, solely a coward; yet these fixed evils sit so fit in him, that they take place, when virtue's steely bones look bleak i' the cold wind: withal, full oft we see cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly. parolles save you, fair queen! helena and you, monarch! parolles no. helena and no. parolles are you meditating on virginity? helena ay. you have some stain of soldier in you: let me ask you a question. man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it against him? parolles keep him out. helena but he assails; and our virginity, though valiant, in the defence yet is weak: unfold to us some warlike resistance. parolles there is none: man, sitting down before you, will undermine you and blow you up. helena bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers up! is there no military policy, how virgins might blow up men? parolles virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. it is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. loss of virginity is rational increase and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. that you were made of is metal to make virgins. virginity by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is ever lost: 'tis too cold a companion; away with 't! helena i will stand for 't a little, though therefore i die a virgin. parolles there's little can be said in 't; 'tis against the rule of nature. to speak on the part of virginity, is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible disobedience. he that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. keep it not; you cannot choose but loose by't: out with 't! within ten year it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the principal itself not much the worse: away with 't! helena how might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking? parolles let me see: marry, ill, to like him that ne'er it likes. 'tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with 't while 'tis vendible; answer the time of request. virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion: richly suited, but unsuitable: just like the brooch and the tooth-pick, which wear not now. your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek; and your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our french withered pears, it looks ill, it eats drily; marry, 'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet 'tis a withered pear: will you anything with it? helena not my virginity yet [ ] there shall your master have a thousand loves, a mother and a mistress and a friend, a phoenix, captain and an enemy, a guide, a goddess, and a sovereign, a counsellor, a traitress, and a dear; his humble ambition, proud humility, his jarring concord, and his discord dulcet, his faith, his sweet disaster; with a world of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms, that blinking cupid gossips. now shall he- i know not what he shall. god send him well! the court's a learning place, and he is one- parolles what one, i' faith? helena that i wish well. 'tis pity- parolles what's pity? helena that wishing well had not a body in't, which might be felt; that we, the poorer born, whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes, might with effects of them follow our friends, and show what we alone must think, which never return us thanks. [enter page] page monsieur parolles, my lord calls for you. [exit] parolles little helen, farewell; if i can remember thee, i will think of thee at court. helena monsieur parolles, you were born under a charitable star. parolles under mars, i. helena i especially think, under mars. parolles why under mars? helena the wars have so kept you under that you must needs be born under mars. parolles when he was predominant. helena when he was retrograde, i think, rather. parolles why think you so? helena you go so much backward when you fight. parolles that's for advantage. helena so is running away, when fear proposes the safety; but the composition that your valour and fear makes in you is a virtue of a good wing, and i like the wear well. parolles i am so full of businesses, i cannot answer thee acutely. i will return perfect courtier; in the which, my instruction shall serve to naturalize thee, so thou wilt be capable of a courtier's counsel and understand what advice shall thrust upon thee; else thou diest in thine unthankfulness, and thine ignorance makes thee away: farewell. when thou hast leisure, say thy prayers; when thou hast none, remember thy friends; get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee; so, farewell. [exit] helena our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky gives us free scope, only doth backward pull our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. what power is it which mounts my love so high, that makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye? the mightiest space in fortune nature brings to join like likes and kiss like native things. impossible be strange attempts to those that weigh their pains in sense and do suppose what hath been cannot be: who ever strove so show her merit, that did miss her love? the king's disease--my project may deceive me, but my intents are fix'd and will not leave me. [exit] all's well that ends well act i scene ii paris. the king's palace. [flourish of cornets. enter the king of france, with letters, and divers attendants] king the florentines and senoys are by the ears; have fought with equal fortune and continue a braving war. first lord so 'tis reported, sir. king nay, 'tis most credible; we here received it a certainty, vouch'd from our cousin austria, with caution that the florentine will move us for speedy aid; wherein our dearest friend prejudicates the business and would seem to have us make denial. first lord his love and wisdom, approved so to your majesty, may plead for amplest credence. king he hath arm'd our answer, and florence is denied before he comes: yet, for our gentlemen that mean to see the tuscan service, freely have they leave to stand on either part. second lord it well may serve a nursery to our gentry, who are sick for breathing and exploit. king what's he comes here? [enter bertram, lafeu, and parolles] first lord it is the count rousillon, my good lord, young bertram. king youth, thou bear'st thy father's face; frank nature, rather curious than in haste, hath well composed thee. thy father's moral parts mayst thou inherit too! welcome to paris. bertram my thanks and duty are your majesty's. king i would i had that corporal soundness now, as when thy father and myself in friendship first tried our soldiership! he did look far into the service of the time and was discipled of the bravest: he lasted long; but on us both did haggish age steal on and wore us out of act. it much repairs me to talk of your good father. in his youth he had the wit which i can well observe to-day in our young lords; but they may jest till their own scorn return to them unnoted ere they can hide their levity in honour; so like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness were in his pride or sharpness; if they were, his equal had awaked them, and his honour, clock to itself, knew the true minute when exception bid him speak, and at this time his tongue obey'd his hand: who were below him he used as creatures of another place and bow'd his eminent top to their low ranks, making them proud of his humility, in their poor praise he humbled. such a man might be a copy to these younger times; which, follow'd well, would demonstrate them now but goers backward. bertram his good remembrance, sir, lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb; so in approof lives not his epitaph as in your royal speech. king would i were with him! he would always say- methinks i hear him now; his plausive words he scatter'd not in ears, but grafted them, to grow there and to bear,--'let me not live,'- this his good melancholy oft began, on the catastrophe and heel of pastime, when it was out,--'let me not live,' quoth he, 'after my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses all but new things disdain; whose judgments are mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies expire before their fashions.' this he wish'd; i after him do after him wish too, since i nor wax nor honey can bring home, i quickly were dissolved from my hive, to give some labourers room. second lord you are loved, sir: they that least lend it you shall lack you first. king i fill a place, i know't. how long is't, count, since the physician at your father's died? he was much famed. bertram some six months since, my lord. king if he were living, i would try him yet. lend me an arm; the rest have worn me out with several applications; nature and sickness debate it at their leisure. welcome, count; my son's no dearer. bertram thank your majesty. [exeunt. flourish] all's well that ends well act i scene iii rousillon. the count's palace. [enter countess, steward, and clown] countess i will now hear; what say you of this gentlewoman? steward madam, the care i have had to even your content, i wish might be found in the calendar of my past endeavours; for then we wound our modesty and make foul the clearness of our deservings, when of ourselves we publish them. countess what does this knave here? get you gone, sirrah: the complaints i have heard of you i do not all believe: 'tis my slowness that i do not; for i know you lack not folly to commit them, and have ability enough to make such knaveries yours. clown 'tis not unknown to you, madam, i am a poor fellow. countess well, sir. clown no, madam, 'tis not so well that i am poor, though many of the rich are damned: but, if i may have your ladyship's good will to go to the world, isbel the woman and i will do as we may. countess wilt thou needs be a beggar? clown i do beg your good will in this case. countess in what case? clown in isbel's case and mine own. service is no heritage: and i think i shall never have the blessing of god till i have issue o' my body; for they say barnes are blessings. countess tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry. clown my poor body, madam, requires it: i am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives. countess is this all your worship's reason? clown faith, madam, i have other holy reasons such as they are. countess may the world know them? clown i have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are; and, indeed, i do marry that i may repent. countess thy marriage, sooner than thy wickedness. clown i am out o' friends, madam; and i hope to have friends for my wife's sake. countess such friends are thine enemies, knave. clown you're shallow, madam, in great friends; for the knaves come to do that for me which i am aweary of. he that ears my land spares my team and gives me leave to in the crop; if i be his cuckold, he's my drudge: he that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh and blood is my friend: ergo, he that kisses my wife is my friend. if men could be contented to be what they are, there were no fear in marriage; for young charbon the puritan and old poysam the papist, howsome'er their hearts are severed in religion, their heads are both one; they may jowl horns together, like any deer i' the herd. countess wilt thou ever be a foul-mouthed and calumnious knave? clown a prophet i, madam; and i speak the truth the next way: for i the ballad will repeat, which men full true shall find; your marriage comes by destiny, your cuckoo sings by kind. countess get you gone, sir; i'll talk with you more anon. steward may it please you, madam, that he bid helen come to you: of her i am to speak. countess sirrah, tell my gentlewoman i would speak with her; helen, i mean. clown was this fair face the cause, quoth she, why the grecians sacked troy? fond done, done fond, was this king priam's joy? with that she sighed as she stood, with that she sighed as she stood, and gave this sentence then; among nine bad if one be good, among nine bad if one be good, there's yet one good in ten. countess what, one good in ten? you corrupt the song, sirrah. clown one good woman in ten, madam; which is a purifying o' the song: would god would serve the world so all the year! we'ld find no fault with the tithe-woman, if i were the parson. one in ten, quoth a'! an we might have a good woman born but one every blazing star, or at an earthquake, 'twould mend the lottery well: a man may draw his heart out, ere a' pluck one. countess you'll be gone, sir knave, and do as i command you. clown that man should be at woman's command, and yet no hurt done! though honesty be no puritan, yet it will do no hurt; it will wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a big heart. i am going, forsooth: the business is for helen to come hither. [exit] countess well, now. steward i know, madam, you love your gentlewoman entirely. countess faith, i do: her father bequeathed her to me; and she herself, without other advantage, may lawfully make title to as much love as she finds: there is more owing her than is paid; and more shall be paid her than she'll demand. steward madam, i was very late more near her than i think she wished me: alone she was, and did communicate to herself her own words to her own ears; she thought, i dare vow for her, they touched not any stranger sense. her matter was, she loved your son: fortune, she said, was no goddess, that had put such difference betwixt their two estates; love no god, that would not extend his might, only where qualities were level; dian no queen of virgins, that would suffer her poor knight surprised, without rescue in the first assault or ransom afterward. this she delivered in the most bitter touch of sorrow that e'er i heard virgin exclaim in: which i held my duty speedily to acquaint you withal; sithence, in the loss that may happen, it concerns you something to know it. countess you have discharged this honestly; keep it to yourself: many likelihoods informed me of this before, which hung so tottering in the balance that i could neither believe nor misdoubt. pray you, leave me: stall this in your bosom; and i thank you for your honest care: i will speak with you further anon. [exit steward] [enter helena] even so it was with me when i was young: if ever we are nature's, these are ours; this thorn doth to our rose of youth rightly belong; our blood to us, this to our blood is born; it is the show and seal of nature's truth, where love's strong passion is impress'd in youth: by our remembrances of days foregone, such were our faults, or then we thought them none. her eye is sick on't: i observe her now. helena what is your pleasure, madam? countess you know, helen, i am a mother to you. helena mine honourable mistress. countess nay, a mother: why not a mother? when i said 'a mother,' methought you saw a serpent: what's in 'mother,' that you start at it? i say, i am your mother; and put you in the catalogue of those that were enwombed mine: 'tis often seen adoption strives with nature and choice breeds a native slip to us from foreign seeds: you ne'er oppress'd me with a mother's groan, yet i express to you a mother's care: god's mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood to say i am thy mother? what's the matter, that this distemper'd messenger of wet, the many-colour'd iris, rounds thine eye? why? that you are my daughter? helena that i am not. countess i say, i am your mother. helena pardon, madam; the count rousillon cannot be my brother: i am from humble, he from honour'd name; no note upon my parents, his all noble: my master, my dear lord he is; and i his servant live, and will his vassal die: he must not be my brother. countess nor i your mother? helena you are my mother, madam; would you were,- so that my lord your son were not my brother,- indeed my mother! or were you both our mothers, i care no more for than i do for heaven, so i were not his sister. can't no other, but, i your daughter, he must be my brother? countess yes, helen, you might be my daughter-in-law: god shield you mean it not! daughter and mother so strive upon your pulse. what, pale again? my fear hath catch'd your fondness: now i see the mystery of your loneliness, and find your salt tears' head: now to all sense 'tis gross you love my son; invention is ashamed, against the proclamation of thy passion, to say thou dost not: therefore tell me true; but tell me then, 'tis so; for, look thy cheeks confess it, th' one to th' other; and thine eyes see it so grossly shown in thy behaviors that in their kind they speak it: only sin and hellish obstinacy tie thy tongue, that truth should be suspected. speak, is't so? if it be so, you have wound a goodly clew; if it be not, forswear't: howe'er, i charge thee, as heaven shall work in me for thine avail, tell me truly. helena good madam, pardon me! countess do you love my son? helena your pardon, noble mistress! countess love you my son? helena do not you love him, madam? countess go not about; my love hath in't a bond, whereof the world takes note: come, come, disclose the state of your affection; for your passions have to the full appeach'd. helena then, i confess, here on my knee, before high heaven and you, that before you, and next unto high heaven, i love your son. my friends were poor, but honest; so's my love: be not offended; for it hurts not him that he is loved of me: i follow him not by any token of presumptuous suit; nor would i have him till i do deserve him; yet never know how that desert should be. i know i love in vain, strive against hope; yet in this captious and intenible sieve i still pour in the waters of my love and lack not to lose still: thus, indian-like, religious in mine error, i adore the sun, that looks upon his worshipper, but knows of him no more. my dearest madam, let not your hate encounter with my love for loving where you do: but if yourself, whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth, did ever in so true a flame of liking wish chastely and love dearly, that your dian was both herself and love: o, then, give pity to her, whose state is such that cannot choose but lend and give where she is sure to lose; that seeks not to find that her search implies, but riddle-like lives sweetly where she dies! countess had you not lately an intent,--speak truly,- to go to paris? helena madam, i had. countess wherefore? tell true. helena i will tell truth; by grace itself i swear. you know my father left me some prescriptions of rare and proved effects, such as his reading and manifest experience had collected for general sovereignty; and that he will'd me in heedfull'st reservation to bestow them, as notes whose faculties inclusive were more than they were in note: amongst the rest, there is a remedy, approved, set down, to cure the desperate languishings whereof the king is render'd lost. countess this was your motive for paris, was it? speak. helena my lord your son made me to think of this; else paris and the medicine and the king had from the conversation of my thoughts haply been absent then. countess but think you, helen, if you should tender your supposed aid, he would receive it? he and his physicians are of a mind; he, that they cannot help him, they, that they cannot help: how shall they credit a poor unlearned virgin, when the schools, embowell'd of their doctrine, have left off the danger to itself? helena there's something in't, more than my father's skill, which was the greatest of his profession, that his good receipt shall for my legacy be sanctified by the luckiest stars in heaven: and, would your honour but give me leave to try success, i'ld venture the well-lost life of mine on his grace's cure by such a day and hour. countess dost thou believe't? helena ay, madam, knowingly. countess why, helen, thou shalt have my leave and love, means and attendants and my loving greetings to those of mine in court: i'll stay at home and pray god's blessing into thy attempt: be gone to-morrow; and be sure of this, what i can help thee to thou shalt not miss. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act ii scene i paris. the king's palace. [flourish of cornets. enter the king, attended with divers young lords taking leave for the florentine war; bertram, and parolles] king farewell, young lords; these warlike principles do not throw from you: and you, my lords, farewell: share the advice betwixt you; if both gain, all the gift doth stretch itself as 'tis received, and is enough for both. first lord 'tis our hope, sir, after well enter'd soldiers, to return and find your grace in health. king no, no, it cannot be; and yet my heart will not confess he owes the malady that doth my life besiege. farewell, young lords; whether i live or die, be you the sons of worthy frenchmen: let higher italy,- those bated that inherit but the fall of the last monarchy,--see that you come not to woo honour, but to wed it; when the bravest questant shrinks, find what you seek, that fame may cry you loud: i say, farewell. second lord health, at your bidding, serve your majesty! king those girls of italy, take heed of them: they say, our french lack language to deny, if they demand: beware of being captives, before you serve. both our hearts receive your warnings. king farewell. come hither to me. [exit, attended] first lord o, my sweet lord, that you will stay behind us! parolles 'tis not his fault, the spark. second lord o, 'tis brave wars! parolles most admirable: i have seen those wars. bertram i am commanded here, and kept a coil with 'too young' and 'the next year' and ''tis too early.' parolles an thy mind stand to't, boy, steal away bravely. bertram i shall stay here the forehorse to a smock, creaking my shoes on the plain masonry, till honour be bought up and no sword worn but one to dance with! by heaven, i'll steal away. first lord there's honour in the theft. parolles commit it, count. second lord i am your accessary; and so, farewell. bertram i grow to you, and our parting is a tortured body. first lord farewell, captain. second lord sweet monsieur parolles! parolles noble heroes, my sword and yours are kin. good sparks and lustrous, a word, good metals: you shall find in the regiment of the spinii one captain spurio, with his cicatrice, an emblem of war, here on his sinister cheek; it was this very sword entrenched it: say to him, i live; and observe his reports for me. first lord we shall, noble captain. [exeunt lords] parolles mars dote on you for his novices! what will ye do? bertram stay: the king. [re-enter king. bertram and parolles retire] parolles [to bertram] use a more spacious ceremony to the noble lords; you have restrained yourself within the list of too cold an adieu: be more expressive to them: for they wear themselves in the cap of the time, there do muster true gait, eat, speak, and move under the influence of the most received star; and though the devil lead the measure, such are to be followed: after them, and take a more dilated farewell. bertram and i will do so. parolles worthy fellows; and like to prove most sinewy sword-men. [exeunt bertram and parolles] [enter lafeu] lafeu [kneeling] pardon, my lord, for me and for my tidings. king i'll fee thee to stand up. lafeu then here's a man stands, that has brought his pardon. i would you had kneel'd, my lord, to ask me mercy, and that at my bidding you could so stand up. king i would i had; so i had broke thy pate, and ask'd thee mercy for't. lafeu good faith, across: but, my good lord 'tis thus; will you be cured of your infirmity? king no. lafeu o, will you eat no grapes, my royal fox? yes, but you will my noble grapes, an if my royal fox could reach them: i have seen a medicine that's able to breathe life into a stone, quicken a rock, and make you dance canary with spritely fire and motion; whose simple touch, is powerful to araise king pepin, nay, to give great charlemain a pen in's hand, and write to her a love-line. king what 'her' is this? lafeu why, doctor she: my lord, there's one arrived, if you will see her: now, by my faith and honour, if seriously i may convey my thoughts in this my light deliverance, i have spoke with one that, in her sex, her years, profession, wisdom and constancy, hath amazed me more than i dare blame my weakness: will you see her for that is her demand, and know her business? that done, laugh well at me. king now, good lafeu, bring in the admiration; that we with thee may spend our wonder too, or take off thine by wondering how thou took'st it. lafeu nay, i'll fit you, and not be all day neither. [exit] king thus he his special nothing ever prologues. [re-enter lafeu, with helena] lafeu nay, come your ways. king this haste hath wings indeed. lafeu nay, come your ways: this is his majesty; say your mind to him: a traitor you do look like; but such traitors his majesty seldom fears: i am cressid's uncle, that dare leave two together; fare you well. [exit] king now, fair one, does your business follow us? helena ay, my good lord. gerard de narbon was my father; in what he did profess, well found. king i knew him. helena the rather will i spare my praises towards him: knowing him is enough. on's bed of death many receipts he gave me: chiefly one. which, as the dearest issue of his practise, and of his old experience the oily darling, he bade me store up, as a triple eye, safer than mine own two, more dear; i have so; and hearing your high majesty is touch'd with that malignant cause wherein the honour of my dear father's gift stands chief in power, i come to tender it and my appliance with all bound humbleness. king we thank you, maiden; but may not be so credulous of cure, when our most learned doctors leave us and the congregated college have concluded that labouring art can never ransom nature from her inaidible estate; i say we must not so stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope, to prostitute our past-cure malady to empirics, or to dissever so our great self and our credit, to esteem a senseless help when help past sense we deem. helena my duty then shall pay me for my pains: i will no more enforce mine office on you. humbly entreating from your royal thoughts a modest one, to bear me back a again. king i cannot give thee less, to be call'd grateful: thou thought'st to help me; and such thanks i give as one near death to those that wish him live: but what at full i know, thou know'st no part, i knowing all my peril, thou no art. helena what i can do can do no hurt to try, since you set up your rest 'gainst remedy. he that of greatest works is finisher oft does them by the weakest minister: so holy writ in babes hath judgment shown, when judges have been babes; great floods have flown from simple sources, and great seas have dried when miracles have by the greatest been denied. oft expectation fails and most oft there where most it promises, and oft it hits where hope is coldest and despair most fits. king i must not hear thee; fare thee well, kind maid; thy pains not used must by thyself be paid: proffers not took reap thanks for their reward. helena inspired merit so by breath is barr'd: it is not so with him that all things knows as 'tis with us that square our guess by shows; but most it is presumption in us when the help of heaven we count the act of men. dear sir, to my endeavours give consent; of heaven, not me, make an experiment. i am not an impostor that proclaim myself against the level of mine aim; but know i think and think i know most sure my art is not past power nor you past cure. king are thou so confident? within what space hopest thou my cure? helena the great'st grace lending grace ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring their fiery torcher his diurnal ring, ere twice in murk and occidental damp moist hesperus hath quench'd his sleepy lamp, or four and twenty times the pilot's glass hath told the thievish minutes how they pass, what is infirm from your sound parts shall fly, health shall live free and sickness freely die. king upon thy certainty and confidence what darest thou venture? helena tax of impudence, a strumpet's boldness, a divulged shame traduced by odious ballads: my maiden's name sear'd otherwise; nay, worse--if worse--extended with vilest torture let my life be ended. king methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak his powerful sound within an organ weak: and what impossibility would slay in common sense, sense saves another way. thy life is dear; for all that life can rate worth name of life in thee hath estimate, youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, all that happiness and prime can happy call: thou this to hazard needs must intimate skill infinite or monstrous desperate. sweet practiser, thy physic i will try, that ministers thine own death if i die. helena if i break time, or flinch in property of what i spoke, unpitied let me die, and well deserved: not helping, death's my fee; but, if i help, what do you promise me? king make thy demand. helena but will you make it even? king ay, by my sceptre and my hopes of heaven. helena then shalt thou give me with thy kingly hand what husband in thy power i will command: exempted be from me the arrogance to choose from forth the royal blood of france, my low and humble name to propagate with any branch or image of thy state; but such a one, thy vassal, whom i know is free for me to ask, thee to bestow. king here is my hand; the premises observed, thy will by my performance shall be served: so make the choice of thy own time, for i, thy resolved patient, on thee still rely. more should i question thee, and more i must, though more to know could not be more to trust, from whence thou camest, how tended on: but rest unquestion'd welcome and undoubted blest. give me some help here, ho! if thou proceed as high as word, my deed shall match thy meed. [flourish. exeunt] all's well that ends well act ii scene ii rousillon. the count's palace. [enter countess and clown] countess come on, sir; i shall now put you to the height of your breeding. clown i will show myself highly fed and lowly taught: i know my business is but to the court. countess to the court! why, what place make you special, when you put off that with such contempt? but to the court! clown truly, madam, if god have lent a man any manners, he may easily put it off at court: he that cannot make a leg, put off's cap, kiss his hand and say nothing, has neither leg, hands, lip, nor cap; and indeed such a fellow, to say precisely, were not for the court; but for me, i have an answer will serve all men. countess marry, that's a bountiful answer that fits all questions. clown it is like a barber's chair that fits all buttocks, the pin-buttock, the quatch-buttock, the brawn buttock, or any buttock. countess will your answer serve fit to all questions? clown as fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your french crown for your taffeta punk, as tib's rush for tom's forefinger, as a pancake for shrove tuesday, a morris for may-day, as the nail to his hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a scolding queen to a wrangling knave, as the nun's lip to the friar's mouth, nay, as the pudding to his skin. countess have you, i say, an answer of such fitness for all questions? clown from below your duke to beneath your constable, it will fit any question. countess it must be an answer of most monstrous size that must fit all demands. clown but a trifle neither, in good faith, if the learned should speak truth of it: here it is, and all that belongs to't. ask me if i am a courtier: it shall do you no harm to learn. countess to be young again, if we could: i will be a fool in question, hoping to be the wiser by your answer. i pray you, sir, are you a courtier? clown o lord, sir! there's a simple putting off. more, more, a hundred of them. countess sir, i am a poor friend of yours, that loves you. clown o lord, sir! thick, thick, spare not me. countess i think, sir, you can eat none of this homely meat. clown o lord, sir! nay, put me to't, i warrant you. countess you were lately whipped, sir, as i think. clown o lord, sir! spare not me. countess do you cry, 'o lord, sir!' at your whipping, and 'spare not me?' indeed your 'o lord, sir!' is very sequent to your whipping: you would answer very well to a whipping, if you were but bound to't. clown i ne'er had worse luck in my life in my 'o lord, sir!' i see things may serve long, but not serve ever. countess i play the noble housewife with the time to entertain't so merrily with a fool. clown o lord, sir! why, there't serves well again. countess an end, sir; to your business. give helen this, and urge her to a present answer back: commend me to my kinsmen and my son: this is not much. clown not much commendation to them. countess not much employment for you: you understand me? clown most fruitfully: i am there before my legs. countess haste you again. [exeunt severally] all's well that ends well act ii scene iii paris. the king's palace. [enter bertram, lafeu, and parolles] lafeu they say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear. parolles why, 'tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out in our latter times. bertram and so 'tis. lafeu to be relinquish'd of the artists,- parolles so i say. lafeu both of galen and paracelsus. parolles so i say. lafeu of all the learned and authentic fellows,- parolles right; so i say. lafeu that gave him out incurable,- parolles why, there 'tis; so say i too. lafeu not to be helped,- parolles right; as 'twere, a man assured of a- lafeu uncertain life, and sure death. parolles just, you say well; so would i have said. lafeu i may truly say, it is a novelty to the world. parolles it is, indeed: if you will have it in showing, you shall read it in--what do you call there? lafeu a showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor. parolles that's it; i would have said the very same. lafeu why, your dolphin is not lustier: 'fore me, i speak in respect- parolles nay, 'tis strange, 'tis very strange, that is the brief and the tedious of it; and he's of a most facinerious spirit that will not acknowledge it to be the- lafeu very hand of heaven. parolles ay, so i say. lafeu in a most weak- [pausing] and debile minister, great power, great transcendence: which should, indeed, give us a further use to be made than alone the recovery of the king, as to be- [pausing] generally thankful. parolles i would have said it; you say well. here comes the king. [enter king, helena, and attendants. lafeu and parolles retire] lafeu lustig, as the dutchman says: i'll like a maid the better, whilst i have a tooth in my head: why, he's able to lead her a coranto. parolles mort du vinaigre! is not this helen? lafeu 'fore god, i think so. king go, call before me all the lords in court. sit, my preserver, by thy patient's side; and with this healthful hand, whose banish'd sense thou hast repeal'd, a second time receive the confirmation of my promised gift, which but attends thy naming. [enter three or four lords] fair maid, send forth thine eye: this youthful parcel of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing, o'er whom both sovereign power and father's voice i have to use: thy frank election make; thou hast power to choose, and they none to forsake. helena to each of you one fair and virtuous mistress fall, when love please! marry, to each, but one! lafeu i'ld give bay curtal and his furniture, my mouth no more were broken than these boys', and writ as little beard. king peruse them well: not one of those but had a noble father. helena gentlemen, heaven hath through me restored the king to health. all we understand it, and thank heaven for you. helena i am a simple maid, and therein wealthiest, that i protest i simply am a maid. please it your majesty, i have done already: the blushes in my cheeks thus whisper me, 'we blush that thou shouldst choose; but, be refused, let the white death sit on thy cheek for ever; we'll ne'er come there again.' king make choice; and, see, who shuns thy love shuns all his love in me. helena now, dian, from thy altar do i fly, and to imperial love, that god most high, do my sighs stream. sir, will you hear my suit? first lord and grant it. helena thanks, sir; all the rest is mute. lafeu i had rather be in this choice than throw ames-ace for my life. helena the honour, sir, that flames in your fair eyes, before i speak, too threateningly replies: love make your fortunes twenty times above her that so wishes and her humble love! second lord no better, if you please. helena my wish receive, which great love grant! and so, i take my leave. lafeu do all they deny her? an they were sons of mine, i'd have them whipped; or i would send them to the turk, to make eunuchs of. helena be not afraid that i your hand should take; i'll never do you wrong for your own sake: blessing upon your vows! and in your bed find fairer fortune, if you ever wed! lafeu these boys are boys of ice, they'll none have her: sure, they are bastards to the english; the french ne'er got 'em. helena you are too young, too happy, and too good, to make yourself a son out of my blood. fourth lord fair one, i think not so. lafeu there's one grape yet; i am sure thy father drunk wine: but if thou be'st not an ass, i am a youth of fourteen; i have known thee already. helena [to bertram] i dare not say i take you; but i give me and my service, ever whilst i live, into your guiding power. this is the man. king why, then, young bertram, take her; she's thy wife. bertram my wife, my liege! i shall beseech your highness, in such a business give me leave to use the help of mine own eyes. king know'st thou not, bertram, what she has done for me? bertram yes, my good lord; but never hope to know why i should marry her. king thou know'st she has raised me from my sickly bed. bertram but follows it, my lord, to bring me down must answer for your raising? i know her well: she had her breeding at my father's charge. a poor physician's daughter my wife! disdain rather corrupt me ever! king 'tis only title thou disdain'st in her, the which i can build up. strange is it that our bloods, of colour, weight, and heat, pour'd all together, would quite confound distinction, yet stand off in differences so mighty. if she be all that is virtuous, save what thou dislikest, a poor physician's daughter, thou dislikest of virtue for the name: but do not so: from lowest place when virtuous things proceed, the place is dignified by the doer's deed: where great additions swell's, and virtue none, it is a dropsied honour. good alone is good without a name. vileness is so: the property by what it is should go, not by the title. she is young, wise, fair; in these to nature she's immediate heir, and these breed honour: that is honour's scorn, which challenges itself as honour's born and is not like the sire: honours thrive, when rather from our acts we them derive than our foregoers: the mere word's a slave debosh'd on every tomb, on every grave a lying trophy, and as oft is dumb where dust and damn'd oblivion is the tomb of honour'd bones indeed. what should be said? if thou canst like this creature as a maid, i can create the rest: virtue and she is her own dower; honour and wealth from me. bertram i cannot love her, nor will strive to do't. king thou wrong'st thyself, if thou shouldst strive to choose. helena that you are well restored, my lord, i'm glad: let the rest go. king my honour's at the stake; which to defeat, i must produce my power. here, take her hand, proud scornful boy, unworthy this good gift; that dost in vile misprision shackle up my love and her desert; that canst not dream, we, poising us in her defective scale, shall weigh thee to the beam; that wilt not know, it is in us to plant thine honour where we please to have it grow. cheque thy contempt: obey our will, which travails in thy good: believe not thy disdain, but presently do thine own fortunes that obedient right which both thy duty owes and our power claims; or i will throw thee from my care for ever into the staggers and the careless lapse of youth and ignorance; both my revenge and hate loosing upon thee, in the name of justice, without all terms of pity. speak; thine answer. bertram pardon, my gracious lord; for i submit my fancy to your eyes: when i consider what great creation and what dole of honour flies where you bid it, i find that she, which late was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now the praised of the king; who, so ennobled, is as 'twere born so. king take her by the hand, and tell her she is thine: to whom i promise a counterpoise, if not to thy estate a balance more replete. bertram i take her hand. king good fortune and the favour of the king smile upon this contract; whose ceremony shall seem expedient on the now-born brief, and be perform'd to-night: the solemn feast shall more attend upon the coming space, expecting absent friends. as thou lovest her, thy love's to me religious; else, does err. [exeunt all but lafeu and parolles] lafeu [advancing] do you hear, monsieur? a word with you. parolles your pleasure, sir? lafeu your lord and master did well to make his recantation. parolles recantation! my lord! my master! lafeu ay; is it not a language i speak? parolles a most harsh one, and not to be understood without bloody succeeding. my master! lafeu are you companion to the count rousillon? parolles to any count, to all counts, to what is man. lafeu to what is count's man: count's master is of another style. parolles you are too old, sir; let it satisfy you, you are too old. lafeu i must tell thee, sirrah, i write man; to which title age cannot bring thee. parolles what i dare too well do, i dare not do. lafeu i did think thee, for two ordinaries, to be a pretty wise fellow; thou didst make tolerable vent of thy travel; it might pass: yet the scarfs and the bannerets about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great a burthen. i have now found thee; when i lose thee again, i care not: yet art thou good for nothing but taking up; and that thou't scarce worth. parolles hadst thou not the privilege of antiquity upon thee,- lafeu do not plunge thyself too far in anger, lest thou hasten thy trial; which if--lord have mercy on thee for a hen! so, my good window of lattice, fare thee well: thy casement i need not open, for i look through thee. give me thy hand. parolles my lord, you give me most egregious indignity. lafeu ay, with all my heart; and thou art worthy of it. parolles i have not, my lord, deserved it. lafeu yes, good faith, every dram of it; and i will not bate thee a scruple. parolles well, i shall be wiser. lafeu even as soon as thou canst, for thou hast to pull at a smack o' the contrary. if ever thou be'st bound in thy scarf and beaten, thou shalt find what it is to be proud of thy bondage. i have a desire to hold my acquaintance with thee, or rather my knowledge, that i may say in the default, he is a man i know. parolles my lord, you do me most insupportable vexation. lafeu i would it were hell-pains for thy sake, and my poor doing eternal: for doing i am past: as i will by thee, in what motion age will give me leave. [exit] parolles well, thou hast a son shall take this disgrace off me; scurvy, old, filthy, scurvy lord! well, i must be patient; there is no fettering of authority. i'll beat him, by my life, if i can meet him with any convenience, an he were double and double a lord. i'll have no more pity of his age than i would of--i'll beat him, an if i could but meet him again. [re-enter lafeu] lafeu sirrah, your lord and master's married; there's news for you: you have a new mistress. parolles i most unfeignedly beseech your lordship to make some reservation of your wrongs: he is my good lord: whom i serve above is my master. lafeu who? god? parolles ay, sir. lafeu the devil it is that's thy master. why dost thou garter up thy arms o' this fashion? dost make hose of sleeves? do other servants so? thou wert best set thy lower part where thy nose stands. by mine honour, if i were but two hours younger, i'ld beat thee: methinks, thou art a general offence, and every man should beat thee: i think thou wast created for men to breathe themselves upon thee. parolles this is hard and undeserved measure, my lord. lafeu go to, sir; you were beaten in italy for picking a kernel out of a pomegranate; you are a vagabond and no true traveller: you are more saucy with lords and honourable personages than the commission of your birth and virtue gives you heraldry. you are not worth another word, else i'ld call you knave. i leave you. [exit] parolles good, very good; it is so then: good, very good; let it be concealed awhile. [re-enter bertram] bertram undone, and forfeited to cares for ever! parolles what's the matter, sweet-heart? bertram although before the solemn priest i have sworn, i will not bed her. parolles what, what, sweet-heart? bertram o my parolles, they have married me! i'll to the tuscan wars, and never bed her. parolles france is a dog-hole, and it no more merits the tread of a man's foot: to the wars! bertram there's letters from my mother: what the import is, i know not yet. parolles ay, that would be known. to the wars, my boy, to the wars! he wears his honour in a box unseen, that hugs his kicky-wicky here at home, spending his manly marrow in her arms, which should sustain the bound and high curvet of mars's fiery steed. to other regions france is a stable; we that dwell in't jades; therefore, to the war! bertram it shall be so: i'll send her to my house, acquaint my mother with my hate to her, and wherefore i am fled; write to the king that which i durst not speak; his present gift shall furnish me to those italian fields, where noble fellows strike: war is no strife to the dark house and the detested wife. parolles will this capriccio hold in thee? art sure? bertram go with me to my chamber, and advise me. i'll send her straight away: to-morrow i'll to the wars, she to her single sorrow. parolles why, these balls bound; there's noise in it. 'tis hard: a young man married is a man that's marr'd: therefore away, and leave her bravely; go: the king has done you wrong: but, hush, 'tis so. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act ii scene iv paris. the king's palace. [enter helena and clown] helena my mother greets me kindly; is she well? clown she is not well; but yet she has her health: she's very merry; but yet she is not well: but thanks be given, she's very well and wants nothing i', the world; but yet she is not well. helena if she be very well, what does she ail, that she's not very well? clown truly, she's very well indeed, but for two things. helena what two things? clown one, that she's not in heaven, whither god send her quickly! the other that she's in earth, from whence god send her quickly! [enter parolles] parolles bless you, my fortunate lady! helena i hope, sir, i have your good will to have mine own good fortunes. parolles you had my prayers to lead them on; and to keep them on, have them still. o, my knave, how does my old lady? clown so that you had her wrinkles and i her money, i would she did as you say. parolles why, i say nothing. clown marry, you are the wiser man; for many a man's tongue shakes out his master's undoing: to say nothing, to do nothing, to know nothing, and to have nothing, is to be a great part of your title; which is within a very little of nothing. parolles away! thou'rt a knave. clown you should have said, sir, before a knave thou'rt a knave; that's, before me thou'rt a knave: this had been truth, sir. parolles go to, thou art a witty fool; i have found thee. clown did you find me in yourself, sir? or were you taught to find me? the search, sir, was profitable; and much fool may you find in you, even to the world's pleasure and the increase of laughter. parolles a good knave, i' faith, and well fed. madam, my lord will go away to-night; a very serious business calls on him. the great prerogative and rite of love, which, as your due, time claims, he does acknowledge; but puts it off to a compell'd restraint; whose want, and whose delay, is strew'd with sweets, which they distil now in the curbed time, to make the coming hour o'erflow with joy and pleasure drown the brim. helena what's his will else? parolles that you will take your instant leave o' the king and make this haste as your own good proceeding, strengthen'd with what apology you think may make it probable need. helena what more commands he? parolles that, having this obtain'd, you presently attend his further pleasure. helena in every thing i wait upon his will. parolles i shall report it so. helena i pray you. [exit parolles] come, sirrah. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act ii scene v paris. the king's palace. [enter lafeu and bertram] lafeu but i hope your lordship thinks not him a soldier. bertram yes, my lord, and of very valiant approof. lafeu you have it from his own deliverance. bertram and by other warranted testimony. lafeu then my dial goes not true: i took this lark for a bunting. bertram i do assure you, my lord, he is very great in knowledge and accordingly valiant. lafeu i have then sinned against his experience and transgressed against his valour; and my state that way is dangerous, since i cannot yet find in my heart to repent. here he comes: i pray you, make us friends; i will pursue the amity. [enter parolles] parolles [to bertram] these things shall be done, sir. lafeu pray you, sir, who's his tailor? parolles sir? lafeu o, i know him well, i, sir; he, sir, 's a good workman, a very good tailor. bertram [aside to parolles] is she gone to the king? parolles she is. bertram will she away to-night? parolles as you'll have her. bertram i have writ my letters, casketed my treasure, given order for our horses; and to-night, when i should take possession of the bride, end ere i do begin. lafeu a good traveller is something at the latter end of a dinner; but one that lies three thirds and uses a known truth to pass a thousand nothings with, should be once heard and thrice beaten. god save you, captain. bertram is there any unkindness between my lord and you, monsieur? parolles i know not how i have deserved to run into my lord's displeasure. lafeu you have made shift to run into 't, boots and spurs and all, like him that leaped into the custard; and out of it you'll run again, rather than suffer question for your residence. bertram it may be you have mistaken him, my lord. lafeu and shall do so ever, though i took him at 's prayers. fare you well, my lord; and believe this of me, there can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this man is his clothes. trust him not in matter of heavy consequence; i have kept of them tame, and know their natures. farewell, monsieur: i have spoken better of you than you have or will to deserve at my hand; but we must do good against evil. [exit] parolles an idle lord. i swear. bertram i think so. parolles why, do you not know him? bertram yes, i do know him well, and common speech gives him a worthy pass. here comes my clog. [enter helena] helena i have, sir, as i was commanded from you, spoke with the king and have procured his leave for present parting; only he desires some private speech with you. bertram i shall obey his will. you must not marvel, helen, at my course, which holds not colour with the time, nor does the ministration and required office on my particular. prepared i was not for such a business; therefore am i found so much unsettled: this drives me to entreat you that presently you take our way for home; and rather muse than ask why i entreat you, for my respects are better than they seem and my appointments have in them a need greater than shows itself at the first view to you that know them not. this to my mother: [giving a letter] 'twill be two days ere i shall see you, so i leave you to your wisdom. helena sir, i can nothing say, but that i am your most obedient servant. bertram come, come, no more of that. helena and ever shall with true observance seek to eke out that wherein toward me my homely stars have fail'd to equal my great fortune. bertram let that go: my haste is very great: farewell; hie home. helena pray, sir, your pardon. bertram well, what would you say? helena i am not worthy of the wealth i owe, nor dare i say 'tis mine, and yet it is; but, like a timorous thief, most fain would steal what law does vouch mine own. bertram what would you have? helena something; and scarce so much: nothing, indeed. i would not tell you what i would, my lord: faith yes; strangers and foes do sunder, and not kiss. bertram i pray you, stay not, but in haste to horse. helena i shall not break your bidding, good my lord. bertram where are my other men, monsieur? farewell. [exit helena] go thou toward home; where i will never come whilst i can shake my sword or hear the drum. away, and for our flight. parolles bravely, coragio! [exeunt] all's well that ends well act iii scene i florence. the duke's palace. [flourish. enter the duke of florence attended; the two frenchmen, with a troop of soldiers. duke so that from point to point now have you heard the fundamental reasons of this war, whose great decision hath much blood let forth and more thirsts after. first lord holy seems the quarrel upon your grace's part; black and fearful on the opposer. duke therefore we marvel much our cousin france would in so just a business shut his bosom against our borrowing prayers. second lord good my lord, the reasons of our state i cannot yield, but like a common and an outward man, that the great figure of a council frames by self-unable motion: therefore dare not say what i think of it, since i have found myself in my incertain grounds to fail as often as i guess'd. duke be it his pleasure. first lord but i am sure the younger of our nature, that surfeit on their ease, will day by day come here for physic. duke welcome shall they be; and all the honours that can fly from us shall on them settle. you know your places well; when better fall, for your avails they fell: to-morrow to the field. [flourish. exeunt] all's well that ends well act iii scene ii rousillon. the count's palace. [enter countess and clown] countess it hath happened all as i would have had it, save that he comes not along with her. clown by my troth, i take my young lord to be a very melancholy man. countess by what observance, i pray you? clown why, he will look upon his boot and sing; mend the ruff and sing; ask questions and sing; pick his teeth and sing. i know a man that had this trick of melancholy sold a goodly manor for a song. countess let me see what he writes, and when he means to come. [opening a letter] clown i have no mind to isbel since i was at court: our old ling and our isbels o' the country are nothing like your old ling and your isbels o' the court: the brains of my cupid's knocked out, and i begin to love, as an old man loves money, with no stomach. countess what have we here? clown e'en that you have there. [exit] countess [reads] i have sent you a daughter-in-law: she hath recovered the king, and undone me. i have wedded her, not bedded her; and sworn to make the 'not' eternal. you shall hear i am run away: know it before the report come. if there be breadth enough in the world, i will hold a long distance. my duty to you. your unfortunate son, bertram. this is not well, rash and unbridled boy. to fly the favours of so good a king; to pluck his indignation on thy head by the misprising of a maid too virtuous for the contempt of empire. [re-enter clown] clown o madam, yonder is heavy news within between two soldiers and my young lady! countess what is the matter? clown nay, there is some comfort in the news, some comfort; your son will not be killed so soon as i thought he would. countess why should he be killed? clown so say i, madam, if he run away, as i hear he does: the danger is in standing to't; that's the loss of men, though it be the getting of children. here they come will tell you more: for my part, i only hear your son was run away. [exit] [enter helena, and two gentlemen] first gentleman save you, good madam. helena madam, my lord is gone, for ever gone. second gentleman do not say so. countess think upon patience. pray you, gentlemen, i have felt so many quirks of joy and grief, that the first face of neither, on the start, can woman me unto't: where is my son, i pray you? second gentleman madam, he's gone to serve the duke of florence: we met him thitherward; for thence we came, and, after some dispatch in hand at court, thither we bend again. helena look on his letter, madam; here's my passport. [reads] when thou canst get the ring upon my finger which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that i am father to, then call me husband: but in such a 'then' i write a 'never.' this is a dreadful sentence. countess brought you this letter, gentlemen? first gentleman ay, madam; and for the contents' sake are sorry for our pain. countess i prithee, lady, have a better cheer; if thou engrossest all the griefs are thine, thou robb'st me of a moiety: he was my son; but i do wash his name out of my blood, and thou art all my child. towards florence is he? second gentleman ay, madam. countess and to be a soldier? second gentleman such is his noble purpose; and believe 't, the duke will lay upon him all the honour that good convenience claims. countess return you thither? first gentleman ay, madam, with the swiftest wing of speed. helena [reads] till i have no wife i have nothing in france. 'tis bitter. countess find you that there? helena ay, madam. first gentleman 'tis but the boldness of his hand, haply, which his heart was not consenting to. countess nothing in france, until he have no wife! there's nothing here that is too good for him but only she; and she deserves a lord that twenty such rude boys might tend upon and call her hourly mistress. who was with him? first gentleman a servant only, and a gentleman which i have sometime known. countess parolles, was it not? first gentleman ay, my good lady, he. countess a very tainted fellow, and full of wickedness. my son corrupts a well-derived nature with his inducement. first gentleman indeed, good lady, the fellow has a deal of that too much, which holds him much to have. countess you're welcome, gentlemen. i will entreat you, when you see my son, to tell him that his sword can never win the honour that he loses: more i'll entreat you written to bear along. second gentleman we serve you, madam, in that and all your worthiest affairs. countess not so, but as we change our courtesies. will you draw near! [exeunt countess and gentlemen] helena 'till i have no wife, i have nothing in france.' nothing in france, until he has no wife! thou shalt have none, rousillon, none in france; then hast thou all again. poor lord! is't i that chase thee from thy country and expose those tender limbs of thine to the event of the none-sparing war? and is it i that drive thee from the sportive court, where thou wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark of smoky muskets? o you leaden messengers, that ride upon the violent speed of fire, fly with false aim; move the still-peering air, that sings with piercing; do not touch my lord. whoever shoots at him, i set him there; whoever charges on his forward breast, i am the caitiff that do hold him to't; and, though i kill him not, i am the cause his death was so effected: better 'twere i met the ravin lion when he roar'd with sharp constraint of hunger; better 'twere that all the miseries which nature owes were mine at once. no, come thou home, rousillon, whence honour but of danger wins a scar, as oft it loses all: i will be gone; my being here it is that holds thee hence: shall i stay here to do't? no, no, although the air of paradise did fan the house and angels officed all: i will be gone, that pitiful rumour may report my flight, to consolate thine ear. come, night; end, day! for with the dark, poor thief, i'll steal away. [exit] all's well that ends well act iii scene iii florence. before the duke's palace. [flourish. enter the duke of florence, bertram, parolles, soldiers, drum, and trumpets] duke the general of our horse thou art; and we, great in our hope, lay our best love and credence upon thy promising fortune. bertram sir, it is a charge too heavy for my strength, but yet we'll strive to bear it for your worthy sake to the extreme edge of hazard. duke then go thou forth; and fortune play upon thy prosperous helm, as thy auspicious mistress! bertram this very day, great mars, i put myself into thy file: make me but like my thoughts, and i shall prove a lover of thy drum, hater of love. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act iii scene iv rousillon. the count's palace. [enter countess and steward] countess alas! and would you take the letter of her? might you not know she would do as she has done, by sending me a letter? read it again. steward [reads] i am saint jaques' pilgrim, thither gone: ambitious love hath so in me offended, that barefoot plod i the cold ground upon, with sainted vow my faults to have amended. write, write, that from the bloody course of war my dearest master, your dear son, may hie: bless him at home in peace, whilst i from far his name with zealous fervor sanctify: his taken labours bid him me forgive; i, his despiteful juno, sent him forth from courtly friends, with camping foes to live, where death and danger dogs the heels of worth: he is too good and fair for death and me: whom i myself embrace, to set him free. countess ah, what sharp stings are in her mildest words! rinaldo, you did never lack advice so much, as letting her pass so: had i spoke with her, i could have well diverted her intents, which thus she hath prevented. steward pardon me, madam: if i had given you this at over-night, she might have been o'erta'en; and yet she writes, pursuit would be but vain. countess what angel shall bless this unworthy husband? he cannot thrive, unless her prayers, whom heaven delights to hear and loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath of greatest justice. write, write, rinaldo, to this unworthy husband of his wife; let every word weigh heavy of her worth that he does weigh too light: my greatest grief. though little he do feel it, set down sharply. dispatch the most convenient messenger: when haply he shall hear that she is gone, he will return; and hope i may that she, hearing so much, will speed her foot again, led hither by pure love: which of them both is dearest to me. i have no skill in sense to make distinction: provide this messenger: my heart is heavy and mine age is weak; grief would have tears, and sorrow bids me speak. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act iii scene v florence. without the walls. a tucket afar off. [enter an old widow of florence, diana, violenta, and mariana, with other citizens] widow nay, come; for if they do approach the city, we shall lose all the sight. diana they say the french count has done most honourable service. widow it is reported that he has taken their greatest commander; and that with his own hand he slew the duke's brother. [tucket] we have lost our labour; they are gone a contrary way: hark! you may know by their trumpets. mariana come, let's return again, and suffice ourselves with the report of it. well, diana, take heed of this french earl: the honour of a maid is her name; and no legacy is so rich as honesty. widow i have told my neighbour how you have been solicited by a gentleman his companion. mariana i know that knave; hang him! one parolles: a filthy officer he is in those suggestions for the young earl. beware of them, diana; their promises, enticements, oaths, tokens, and all these engines of lust, are not the things they go under: many a maid hath been seduced by them; and the misery is, example, that so terrible shows in the wreck of maidenhood, cannot for all that dissuade succession, but that they are limed with the twigs that threaten them. i hope i need not to advise you further; but i hope your own grace will keep you where you are, though there were no further danger known but the modesty which is so lost. diana you shall not need to fear me. widow i hope so. [enter helena, disguised like a pilgrim] look, here comes a pilgrim: i know she will lie at my house; thither they send one another: i'll question her. god save you, pilgrim! whither are you bound? helena to saint jaques le grand. where do the palmers lodge, i do beseech you? widow at the saint francis here beside the port. helena is this the way? widow ay, marry, is't. [a march afar] hark you! they come this way. if you will tarry, holy pilgrim, but till the troops come by, i will conduct you where you shall be lodged; the rather, for i think i know your hostess as ample as myself. helena is it yourself? widow if you shall please so, pilgrim. helena i thank you, and will stay upon your leisure. widow you came, i think, from france? helena i did so. widow here you shall see a countryman of yours that has done worthy service. helena his name, i pray you. diana the count rousillon: know you such a one? helena but by the ear, that hears most nobly of him: his face i know not. diana whatsome'er he is, he's bravely taken here. he stole from france, as 'tis reported, for the king had married him against his liking: think you it is so? helena ay, surely, mere the truth: i know his lady. diana there is a gentleman that serves the count reports but coarsely of her. helena what's his name? diana monsieur parolles. helena o, i believe with him, in argument of praise, or to the worth of the great count himself, she is too mean to have her name repeated: all her deserving is a reserved honesty, and that i have not heard examined. diana alas, poor lady! 'tis a hard bondage to become the wife of a detesting lord. widow i warrant, good creature, wheresoe'er she is, her heart weighs sadly: this young maid might do her a shrewd turn, if she pleased. helena how do you mean? may be the amorous count solicits her in the unlawful purpose. widow he does indeed; and brokes with all that can in such a suit corrupt the tender honour of a maid: but she is arm'd for him and keeps her guard in honestest defence. mariana the gods forbid else! widow so, now they come: [drum and colours] [enter bertram, parolles, and the whole army] that is antonio, the duke's eldest son; that, escalus. helena which is the frenchman? diana he; that with the plume: 'tis a most gallant fellow. i would he loved his wife: if he were honester he were much goodlier: is't not a handsome gentleman? helena i like him well. diana 'tis pity he is not honest: yond's that same knave that leads him to these places: were i his lady, i would poison that vile rascal. helena which is he? diana that jack-an-apes with scarfs: why is he melancholy? helena perchance he's hurt i' the battle. parolles lose our drum! well. mariana he's shrewdly vexed at something: look, he has spied us. widow marry, hang you! mariana and your courtesy, for a ring-carrier! [exeunt bertram, parolles, and army] widow the troop is past. come, pilgrim, i will bring you where you shall host: of enjoin'd penitents there's four or five, to great saint jaques bound, already at my house. helena i humbly thank you: please it this matron and this gentle maid to eat with us to-night, the charge and thanking shall be for me; and, to requite you further, i will bestow some precepts of this virgin worthy the note. both we'll take your offer kindly. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act iii scene vi camp before florence. [enter bertram and the two french lords] second lord nay, good my lord, put him to't; let him have his way. first lord if your lordship find him not a hilding, hold me no more in your respect. second lord on my life, my lord, a bubble. bertram do you think i am so far deceived in him? second lord believe it, my lord, in mine own direct knowledge, without any malice, but to speak of him as my kinsman, he's a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality worthy your lordship's entertainment. first lord it were fit you knew him; lest, reposing too far in his virtue, which he hath not, he might at some great and trusty business in a main danger fail you. bertram i would i knew in what particular action to try him. first lord none better than to let him fetch off his drum, which you hear him so confidently undertake to do. second lord i, with a troop of florentines, will suddenly surprise him; such i will have, whom i am sure he knows not from the enemy: we will bind and hoodwink him so, that he shall suppose no other but that he is carried into the leaguer of the adversaries, when we bring him to our own tents. be but your lordship present at his examination: if he do not, for the promise of his life and in the highest compulsion of base fear, offer to betray you and deliver all the intelligence in his power against you, and that with the divine forfeit of his soul upon oath, never trust my judgment in any thing. first lord o, for the love of laughter, let him fetch his drum; he says he has a stratagem for't: when your lordship sees the bottom of his success in't, and to what metal this counterfeit lump of ore will be melted, if you give him not john drum's entertainment, your inclining cannot be removed. here he comes. [enter parolles] second lord [aside to bertram] o, for the love of laughter, hinder not the honour of his design: let him fetch off his drum in any hand. bertram how now, monsieur! this drum sticks sorely in your disposition. first lord a pox on't, let it go; 'tis but a drum. parolles 'but a drum'! is't 'but a drum'? a drum so lost! there was excellent command,--to charge in with our horse upon our own wings, and to rend our own soldiers! first lord that was not to be blamed in the command of the service: it was a disaster of war that caesar himself could not have prevented, if he had been there to command. bertram well, we cannot greatly condemn our success: some dishonour we had in the loss of that drum; but it is not to be recovered. parolles it might have been recovered. bertram it might; but it is not now. parolles it is to be recovered: but that the merit of service is seldom attributed to the true and exact performer, i would have that drum or another, or 'hic jacet.' bertram why, if you have a stomach, to't, monsieur: if you think your mystery in stratagem can bring this instrument of honour again into his native quarter, be magnanimous in the enterprise and go on; i will grace the attempt for a worthy exploit: if you speed well in it, the duke shall both speak of it. and extend to you what further becomes his greatness, even to the utmost syllable of your worthiness. parolles by the hand of a soldier, i will undertake it. bertram but you must not now slumber in it. parolles i'll about it this evening: and i will presently pen down my dilemmas, encourage myself in my certainty, put myself into my mortal preparation; and by midnight look to hear further from me. bertram may i be bold to acquaint his grace you are gone about it? parolles i know not what the success will be, my lord; but the attempt i vow. bertram i know thou'rt valiant; and, to the possibility of thy soldiership, will subscribe for thee. farewell. parolles i love not many words. [exit] second lord no more than a fish loves water. is not this a strange fellow, my lord, that so confidently seems to undertake this business, which he knows is not to be done; damns himself to do and dares better be damned than to do't? first lord you do not know him, my lord, as we do: certain it is that he will steal himself into a man's favour and for a week escape a great deal of discoveries; but when you find him out, you have him ever after. bertram why, do you think he will make no deed at all of this that so seriously he does address himself unto? second lord none in the world; but return with an invention and clap upon you two or three probable lies: but we have almost embossed him; you shall see his fall to-night; for indeed he is not for your lordship's respect. first lord we'll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him. he was first smoked by the old lord lafeu: when his disguise and he is parted, tell me what a sprat you shall find him; which you shall see this very night. second lord i must go look my twigs: he shall be caught. bertram your brother he shall go along with me. second lord as't please your lordship: i'll leave you. [exit] bertram now will i lead you to the house, and show you the lass i spoke of. first lord but you say she's honest. bertram that's all the fault: i spoke with her but once and found her wondrous cold; but i sent to her, by this same coxcomb that we have i' the wind, tokens and letters which she did re-send; and this is all i have done. she's a fair creature: will you go see her? first lord with all my heart, my lord. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act iii scene vii florence. the widow's house. [enter helena and widow] helena if you misdoubt me that i am not she, i know not how i shall assure you further, but i shall lose the grounds i work upon. widow though my estate be fallen, i was well born, nothing acquainted with these businesses; and would not put my reputation now in any staining act. helena nor would i wish you. first, give me trust, the count he is my husband, and what to your sworn counsel i have spoken is so from word to word; and then you cannot, by the good aid that i of you shall borrow, err in bestowing it. widow i should believe you: for you have show'd me that which well approves you're great in fortune. helena take this purse of gold, and let me buy your friendly help thus far, which i will over-pay and pay again when i have found it. the count he wooes your daughter, lays down his wanton siege before her beauty, resolved to carry her: let her in fine consent, as we'll direct her how 'tis best to bear it. now his important blood will nought deny that she'll demand: a ring the county wears, that downward hath succeeded in his house from son to son, some four or five descents since the first father wore it: this ring he holds in most rich choice; yet in his idle fire, to buy his will, it would not seem too dear, howe'er repented after. widow now i see the bottom of your purpose. helena you see it lawful, then: it is no more, but that your daughter, ere she seems as won, desires this ring; appoints him an encounter; in fine, delivers me to fill the time, herself most chastely absent: after this, to marry her, i'll add three thousand crowns to what is passed already. widow i have yielded: instruct my daughter how she shall persever, that time and place with this deceit so lawful may prove coherent. every night he comes with musics of all sorts and songs composed to her unworthiness: it nothing steads us to chide him from our eaves; for he persists as if his life lay on't. helena why then to-night let us assay our plot; which, if it speed, is wicked meaning in a lawful deed and lawful meaning in a lawful act, where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact: but let's about it. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act iv scene i without the florentine camp. [enter second french lord, with five or six other soldiers in ambush] second lord he can come no other way but by this hedge-corner. when you sally upon him, speak what terrible language you will: though you understand it not yourselves, no matter; for we must not seem to understand him, unless some one among us whom we must produce for an interpreter. first soldier good captain, let me be the interpreter. second lord art not acquainted with him? knows he not thy voice? first soldier no, sir, i warrant you. second lord but what linsey-woolsey hast thou to speak to us again? first soldier e'en such as you speak to me. second lord he must think us some band of strangers i' the adversary's entertainment. now he hath a smack of all neighbouring languages; therefore we must every one be a man of his own fancy, not to know what we speak one to another; so we seem to know, is to know straight our purpose: choughs' language, gabble enough, and good enough. as for you, interpreter, you must seem very politic. but couch, ho! here he comes, to beguile two hours in a sleep, and then to return and swear the lies he forges. [enter parolles] parolles ten o'clock: within these three hours 'twill be time enough to go home. what shall i say i have done? it must be a very plausive invention that carries it: they begin to smoke me; and disgraces have of late knocked too often at my door. i find my tongue is too foolhardy; but my heart hath the fear of mars before it and of his creatures, not daring the reports of my tongue. second lord this is the first truth that e'er thine own tongue was guilty of. parolles what the devil should move me to undertake the recovery of this drum, being not ignorant of the impossibility, and knowing i had no such purpose? i must give myself some hurts, and say i got them in exploit: yet slight ones will not carry it; they will say, 'came you off with so little?' and great ones i dare not give. wherefore, what's the instance? tongue, i must put you into a butter-woman's mouth and buy myself another of bajazet's mule, if you prattle me into these perils. second lord is it possible he should know what he is, and be that he is? parolles i would the cutting of my garments would serve the turn, or the breaking of my spanish sword. second lord we cannot afford you so. parolles or the baring of my beard; and to say it was in stratagem. second lord 'twould not do. parolles or to drown my clothes, and say i was stripped. second lord hardly serve. parolles though i swore i leaped from the window of the citadel. second lord how deep? parolles thirty fathom. second lord three great oaths would scarce make that be believed. parolles i would i had any drum of the enemy's: i would swear i recovered it. second lord you shall hear one anon. parolles a drum now of the enemy's,- [alarum within] second lord throca movousus, cargo, cargo, cargo. all cargo, cargo, cargo, villiando par corbo, cargo. parolles o, ransom, ransom! do not hide mine eyes. [they seize and blindfold him] first soldier boskos thromuldo boskos. parolles i know you are the muskos' regiment: and i shall lose my life for want of language; if there be here german, or dane, low dutch, italian, or french, let him speak to me; i'll discover that which shall undo the florentine. first soldier boskos vauvado: i understand thee, and can speak thy tongue. kerely bonto, sir, betake thee to thy faith, for seventeen poniards are at thy bosom. parolles o! first soldier o, pray, pray, pray! manka revania dulche. second lord oscorbidulchos volivorco. first soldier the general is content to spare thee yet; and, hoodwink'd as thou art, will lead thee on to gather from thee: haply thou mayst inform something to save thy life. parolles o, let me live! and all the secrets of our camp i'll show, their force, their purposes; nay, i'll speak that which you will wonder at. first soldier but wilt thou faithfully? parolles if i do not, damn me. first soldier acordo linta. come on; thou art granted space. [exit, with parolles guarded. a short alarum within] second lord go, tell the count rousillon, and my brother, we have caught the woodcock, and will keep him muffled till we do hear from them. second soldier captain, i will. second lord a' will betray us all unto ourselves: inform on that. second soldier so i will, sir. second lord till then i'll keep him dark and safely lock'd. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act iv scene ii florence. the widow's house. [enter bertram and diana] bertram they told me that your name was fontibell. diana no, my good lord, diana. bertram titled goddess; and worth it, with addition! but, fair soul, in your fine frame hath love no quality? if quick fire of youth light not your mind, you are no maiden, but a monument: when you are dead, you should be such a one as you are now, for you are cold and stem; and now you should be as your mother was when your sweet self was got. diana she then was honest. bertram so should you be. diana no: my mother did but duty; such, my lord, as you owe to your wife. bertram no more o' that; i prithee, do not strive against my vows: i was compell'd to her; but i love thee by love's own sweet constraint, and will for ever do thee all rights of service. diana ay, so you serve us till we serve you; but when you have our roses, you barely leave our thorns to prick ourselves and mock us with our bareness. bertram how have i sworn! diana 'tis not the many oaths that makes the truth, but the plain single vow that is vow'd true. what is not holy, that we swear not by, but take the high'st to witness: then, pray you, tell me, if i should swear by god's great attributes, i loved you dearly, would you believe my oaths, when i did love you ill? this has no holding, to swear by him whom i protest to love, that i will work against him: therefore your oaths are words and poor conditions, but unseal'd, at least in my opinion. bertram change it, change it; be not so holy-cruel: love is holy; and my integrity ne'er knew the crafts that you do charge men with. stand no more off, but give thyself unto my sick desires, who then recover: say thou art mine, and ever my love as it begins shall so persever. diana i see that men make ropes in such a scarre that we'll forsake ourselves. give me that ring. bertram i'll lend it thee, my dear; but have no power to give it from me. diana will you not, my lord? bertram it is an honour 'longing to our house, bequeathed down from many ancestors; which were the greatest obloquy i' the world in me to lose. diana mine honour's such a ring: my chastity's the jewel of our house, bequeathed down from many ancestors; which were the greatest obloquy i' the world in me to lose: thus your own proper wisdom brings in the champion honour on my part, against your vain assault. bertram here, take my ring: my house, mine honour, yea, my life, be thine, and i'll be bid by thee. diana when midnight comes, knock at my chamber-window: i'll order take my mother shall not hear. now will i charge you in the band of truth, when you have conquer'd my yet maiden bed, remain there but an hour, nor speak to me: my reasons are most strong; and you shall know them when back again this ring shall be deliver'd: and on your finger in the night i'll put another ring, that what in time proceeds may token to the future our past deeds. adieu, till then; then, fail not. you have won a wife of me, though there my hope be done. bertram a heaven on earth i have won by wooing thee. [exit] diana for which live long to thank both heaven and me! you may so in the end. my mother told me just how he would woo, as if she sat in 's heart; she says all men have the like oaths: he had sworn to marry me when his wife's dead; therefore i'll lie with him when i am buried. since frenchmen are so braid, marry that will, i live and die a maid: only in this disguise i think't no sin to cozen him that would unjustly win. [exit] all's well that ends well act iv scene iii the florentine camp. [enter the two french lords and some two or three soldiers] first lord you have not given him his mother's letter? second lord i have delivered it an hour since: there is something in't that stings his nature; for on the reading it he changed almost into another man. first lord he has much worthy blame laid upon him for shaking off so good a wife and so sweet a lady. second lord especially he hath incurred the everlasting displeasure of the king, who had even tuned his bounty to sing happiness to him. i will tell you a thing, but you shall let it dwell darkly with you. first lord when you have spoken it, 'tis dead, and i am the grave of it. second lord he hath perverted a young gentlewoman here in florence, of a most chaste renown; and this night he fleshes his will in the spoil of her honour: he hath given her his monumental ring, and thinks himself made in the unchaste composition. first lord now, god delay our rebellion! as we are ourselves, what things are we! second lord merely our own traitors. and as in the common course of all treasons, we still see them reveal themselves, till they attain to their abhorred ends, so he that in this action contrives against his own nobility, in his proper stream o'erflows himself. first lord is it not meant damnable in us, to be trumpeters of our unlawful intents? we shall not then have his company to-night? second lord not till after midnight; for he is dieted to his hour. first lord that approaches apace; i would gladly have him see his company anatomized, that he might take a measure of his own judgments, wherein so curiously he had set this counterfeit. second lord we will not meddle with him till he come; for his presence must be the whip of the other. first lord in the mean time, what hear you of these wars? second lord i hear there is an overture of peace. first lord nay, i assure you, a peace concluded. second lord what will count rousillon do then? will he travel higher, or return again into france? first lord i perceive, by this demand, you are not altogether of his council. second lord let it be forbid, sir; so should i be a great deal of his act. first lord sir, his wife some two months since fled from his house: her pretence is a pilgrimage to saint jaques le grand; which holy undertaking with most austere sanctimony she accomplished; and, there residing the tenderness of her nature became as a prey to her grief; in fine, made a groan of her last breath, and now she sings in heaven. second lord how is this justified? first lord the stronger part of it by her own letters, which makes her story true, even to the point of her death: her death itself, which could not be her office to say is come, was faithfully confirmed by the rector of the place. second lord hath the count all this intelligence? first lord ay, and the particular confirmations, point from point, so to the full arming of the verity. second lord i am heartily sorry that he'll be glad of this. first lord how mightily sometimes we make us comforts of our losses! second lord and how mightily some other times we drown our gain in tears! the great dignity that his valour hath here acquired for him shall at home be encountered with a shame as ample. first lord the web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues. [enter a messenger] how now! where's your master? servant he met the duke in the street, sir, of whom he hath taken a solemn leave: his lordship will next morning for france. the duke hath offered him letters of commendations to the king. second lord they shall be no more than needful there, if they were more than they can commend. first lord they cannot be too sweet for the king's tartness. here's his lordship now. [enter bertram] how now, my lord! is't not after midnight? bertram i have to-night dispatched sixteen businesses, a month's length a-piece, by an abstract of success: i have congied with the duke, done my adieu with his nearest; buried a wife, mourned for her; writ to my lady mother i am returning; entertained my convoy; and between these main parcels of dispatch effected many nicer needs; the last was the greatest, but that i have not ended yet. second lord if the business be of any difficulty, and this morning your departure hence, it requires haste of your lordship. bertram i mean, the business is not ended, as fearing to hear of it hereafter. but shall we have this dialogue between the fool and the soldier? come, bring forth this counterfeit module, he has deceived me, like a double-meaning prophesier. second lord bring him forth: has sat i' the stocks all night, poor gallant knave. bertram no matter: his heels have deserved it, in usurping his spurs so long. how does he carry himself? second lord i have told your lordship already, the stocks carry him. but to answer you as you would be understood; he weeps like a wench that had shed her milk: he hath confessed himself to morgan, whom he supposes to be a friar, from the time of his remembrance to this very instant disaster of his setting i' the stocks: and what think you he hath confessed? bertram nothing of me, has a'? second lord his confession is taken, and it shall be read to his face: if your lordship be in't, as i believe you are, you must have the patience to hear it. [enter parolles guarded, and first soldier] bertram a plague upon him! muffled! he can say nothing of me: hush, hush! first lord hoodman comes! portotartarosa first soldier he calls for the tortures: what will you say without 'em? parolles i will confess what i know without constraint: if ye pinch me like a pasty, i can say no more. first soldier bosko chimurcho. first lord boblibindo chicurmurco. first soldier you are a merciful general. our general bids you answer to what i shall ask you out of a note. parolles and truly, as i hope to live. first soldier [reads] 'first demand of him how many horse the duke is strong.' what say you to that? parolles five or six thousand; but very weak and unserviceable: the troops are all scattered, and the commanders very poor rogues, upon my reputation and credit and as i hope to live. first soldier shall i set down your answer so? parolles do: i'll take the sacrament on't, how and which way you will. bertram all's one to him. what a past-saving slave is this! first lord you're deceived, my lord: this is monsieur parolles, the gallant militarist,--that was his own phrase,--that had the whole theoric of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practise in the chape of his dagger. second lord i will never trust a man again for keeping his sword clean. nor believe he can have every thing in him by wearing his apparel neatly. first soldier well, that's set down. parolles five or six thousand horse, i said,-i will say true,--or thereabouts, set down, for i'll speak truth. first lord he's very near the truth in this. bertram but i con him no thanks for't, in the nature he delivers it. parolles poor rogues, i pray you, say. first soldier well, that's set down. parolles i humbly thank you, sir: a truth's a truth, the rogues are marvellous poor. first soldier [reads] 'demand of him, of what strength they are a-foot.' what say you to that? parolles by my troth, sir, if i were to live this present hour, i will tell true. let me see: spurio, a hundred and fifty; sebastian, so many; corambus, so many; jaques, so many; guiltian, cosmo, lodowick, and gratii, two hundred and fifty each; mine own company, chitopher, vaumond, bentii, two hundred and fifty each: so that the muster-file, rotten and sound, upon my life, amounts not to fifteen thousand poll; half of the which dare not shake snow from off their cassocks, lest they shake themselves to pieces. bertram what shall be done to him? first lord nothing, but let him have thanks. demand of him my condition, and what credit i have with the duke. first soldier well, that's set down. [reads] 'you shall demand of him, whether one captain dumain be i' the camp, a frenchman; what his reputation is with the duke; what his valour, honesty, and expertness in wars; or whether he thinks it were not possible, with well-weighing sums of gold, to corrupt him to revolt.' what say you to this? what do you know of it? parolles i beseech you, let me answer to the particular of the inter'gatories: demand them singly. first soldier do you know this captain dumain? parolles i know him: a' was a botcher's 'prentice in paris, from whence he was whipped for getting the shrieve's fool with child,--a dumb innocent, that could not say him nay. bertram nay, by your leave, hold your hands; though i know his brains are forfeit to the next tile that falls. first soldier well, is this captain in the duke of florence's camp? parolles upon my knowledge, he is, and lousy. first lord nay look not so upon me; we shall hear of your lordship anon. first soldier what is his reputation with the duke? parolles the duke knows him for no other but a poor officer of mine; and writ to me this other day to turn him out o' the band: i think i have his letter in my pocket. first soldier marry, we'll search. parolles in good sadness, i do not know; either it is there, or it is upon a file with the duke's other letters in my tent. first soldier here 'tis; here's a paper: shall i read it to you? parolles i do not know if it be it or no. bertram our interpreter does it well. first lord excellently. first soldier [reads] 'dian, the count's a fool, and full of gold,'- parolles that is not the duke's letter, sir; that is an advertisement to a proper maid in florence, one diana, to take heed of the allurement of one count rousillon, a foolish idle boy, but for all that very ruttish: i pray you, sir, put it up again. first soldier nay, i'll read it first, by your favour. parolles my meaning in't, i protest, was very honest in the behalf of the maid; for i knew the young count to be a dangerous and lascivious boy, who is a whale to virginity and devours up all the fry it finds. bertram damnable both-sides rogue! first soldier [reads] 'when he swears oaths, bid him drop gold, and take it; after he scores, he never pays the score: half won is match well made; match, and well make it; he ne'er pays after-debts, take it before; and say a soldier, dian, told thee this, men are to mell with, boys are not to kiss: for count of this, the count's a fool, i know it, who pays before, but not when he does owe it. thine, as he vowed to thee in thine ear, parolles.' bertram he shall be whipped through the army with this rhyme in's forehead. second lord this is your devoted friend, sir, the manifold linguist and the armipotent soldier. bertram i could endure any thing before but a cat, and now he's a cat to me. first soldier i perceive, sir, by the general's looks, we shall be fain to hang you. parolles my life, sir, in any case: not that i am afraid to die; but that, my offences being many, i would repent out the remainder of nature: let me live, sir, in a dungeon, i' the stocks, or any where, so i may live. first soldier we'll see what may be done, so you confess freely; therefore, once more to this captain dumain: you have answered to his reputation with the duke and to his valour: what is his honesty? parolles he will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister: for rapes and ravishments he parallels nessus: he professes not keeping of oaths; in breaking 'em he is stronger than hercules: he will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool: drunkenness is his best virtue, for he will be swine-drunk; and in his sleep he does little harm, save to his bed-clothes about him; but they know his conditions and lay him in straw. i have but little more to say, sir, of his honesty: he has every thing that an honest man should not have; what an honest man should have, he has nothing. first lord i begin to love him for this. bertram for this description of thine honesty? a pox upon him for me, he's more and more a cat. first soldier what say you to his expertness in war? parolles faith, sir, he has led the drum before the english tragedians; to belie him, i will not, and more of his soldiership i know not; except, in that country he had the honour to be the officer at a place there called mile-end, to instruct for the doubling of files: i would do the man what honour i can, but of this i am not certain. first lord he hath out-villained villany so far, that the rarity redeems him. bertram a pox on him, he's a cat still. first soldier his qualities being at this poor price, i need not to ask you if gold will corrupt him to revolt. parolles sir, for a quart d'ecu he will sell the fee-simple of his salvation, the inheritance of it; and cut the entail from all remainders, and a perpetual succession for it perpetually. first soldier what's his brother, the other captain dumain? second lord why does be ask him of me? first soldier what's he? parolles e'en a crow o' the same nest; not altogether so great as the first in goodness, but greater a great deal in evil: he excels his brother for a coward, yet his brother is reputed one of the best that is: in a retreat he outruns any lackey; marry, in coming on he has the cramp. first soldier if your life be saved, will you undertake to betray the florentine? parolles ay, and the captain of his horse, count rousillon. first soldier i'll whisper with the general, and know his pleasure. parolles [aside] i'll no more drumming; a plague of all drums! only to seem to deserve well, and to beguile the supposition of that lascivious young boy the count, have i run into this danger. yet who would have suspected an ambush where i was taken? first soldier there is no remedy, sir, but you must die: the general says, you that have so traitorously discovered the secrets of your army and made such pestiferous reports of men very nobly held, can serve the world for no honest use; therefore you must die. come, headsman, off with his head. parolles o lord, sir, let me live, or let me see my death! first lord that shall you, and take your leave of all your friends. [unblinding him] so, look about you: know you any here? bertram good morrow, noble captain. second lord god bless you, captain parolles. first lord god save you, noble captain. second lord captain, what greeting will you to my lord lafeu? i am for france. first lord good captain, will you give me a copy of the sonnet you writ to diana in behalf of the count rousillon? an i were not a very coward, i'ld compel it of you: but fare you well. [exeunt bertram and lords] first soldier you are undone, captain, all but your scarf; that has a knot on't yet parolles who cannot be crushed with a plot? first soldier if you could find out a country where but women were that had received so much shame, you might begin an impudent nation. fare ye well, sir; i am for france too: we shall speak of you there. [exit with soldiers] parolles yet am i thankful: if my heart were great, 'twould burst at this. captain i'll be no more; but i will eat and drink, and sleep as soft as captain shall: simply the thing i am shall make me live. who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this, for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass. rust, sword? cool, blushes! and, parolles, live safest in shame! being fool'd, by foolery thrive! there's place and means for every man alive. i'll after them. [exit] all's well that ends well act iv scene iv florence. the widow's house. [enter helena, widow, and diana] helena that you may well perceive i have not wrong'd you, one of the greatest in the christian world shall be my surety; 'fore whose throne 'tis needful, ere i can perfect mine intents, to kneel: time was, i did him a desired office, dear almost as his life; which gratitude through flinty tartar's bosom would peep forth, and answer, thanks: i duly am inform'd his grace is at marseilles; to which place we have convenient convoy. you must know i am supposed dead: the army breaking, my husband hies him home; where, heaven aiding, and by the leave of my good lord the king, we'll be before our welcome. widow gentle madam, you never had a servant to whose trust your business was more welcome. helena nor you, mistress, ever a friend whose thoughts more truly labour to recompense your love: doubt not but heaven hath brought me up to be your daughter's dower, as it hath fated her to be my motive and helper to a husband. but, o strange men! that can such sweet use make of what they hate, when saucy trusting of the cozen'd thoughts defiles the pitchy night: so lust doth play with what it loathes for that which is away. but more of this hereafter. you, diana, under my poor instructions yet must suffer something in my behalf. diana let death and honesty go with your impositions, i am yours upon your will to suffer. helena yet, i pray you: but with the word the time will bring on summer, when briers shall have leaves as well as thorns, and be as sweet as sharp. we must away; our wagon is prepared, and time revives us: all's well that ends well; still the fine's the crown; whate'er the course, the end is the renown. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act iv scene v rousillon. the count's palace. [enter countess, lafeu, and clown] lafeu no, no, no, your son was misled with a snipt-taffeta fellow there, whose villanous saffron would have made all the unbaked and doughy youth of a nation in his colour: your daughter-in-law had been alive at this hour, and your son here at home, more advanced by the king than by that red-tailed humble-bee i speak of. countess i would i had not known him; it was the death of the most virtuous gentlewoman that ever nature had praise for creating. if she had partaken of my flesh, and cost me the dearest groans of a mother, i could not have owed her a more rooted love. lafeu 'twas a good lady, 'twas a good lady: we may pick a thousand salads ere we light on such another herb. clown indeed, sir, she was the sweet marjoram of the salad, or rather, the herb of grace. lafeu they are not herbs, you knave; they are nose-herbs. clown i am no great nebuchadnezzar, sir; i have not much skill in grass. lafeu whether dost thou profess thyself, a knave or a fool? clown a fool, sir, at a woman's service, and a knave at a man's. lafeu your distinction? clown i would cozen the man of his wife and do his service. lafeu so you were a knave at his service, indeed. clown and i would give his wife my bauble, sir, to do her service. lafeu i will subscribe for thee, thou art both knave and fool. clown at your service. lafeu no, no, no. clown why, sir, if i cannot serve you, i can serve as great a prince as you are. lafeu who's that? a frenchman? clown faith, sir, a' has an english name; but his fisnomy is more hotter in france than there. lafeu what prince is that? clown the black prince, sir; alias, the prince of darkness; alias, the devil. lafeu hold thee, there's my purse: i give thee not this to suggest thee from thy master thou talkest of; serve him still. clown i am a woodland fellow, sir, that always loved a great fire; and the master i speak of ever keeps a good fire. but, sure, he is the prince of the world; let his nobility remain in's court. i am for the house with the narrow gate, which i take to be too little for pomp to enter: some that humble themselves may; but the many will be too chill and tender, and they'll be for the flowery way that leads to the broad gate and the great fire. lafeu go thy ways, i begin to be aweary of thee; and i tell thee so before, because i would not fall out with thee. go thy ways: let my horses be well looked to, without any tricks. clown if i put any tricks upon 'em, sir, they shall be jades' tricks; which are their own right by the law of nature. [exit] lafeu a shrewd knave and an unhappy. countess so he is. my lord that's gone made himself much sport out of him: by his authority he remains here, which he thinks is a patent for his sauciness; and, indeed, he has no pace, but runs where he will. lafeu i like him well; 'tis not amiss. and i was about to tell you, since i heard of the good lady's death and that my lord your son was upon his return home, i moved the king my master to speak in the behalf of my daughter; which, in the minority of them both, his majesty, out of a self-gracious remembrance, did first propose: his highness hath promised me to do it: and, to stop up the displeasure he hath conceived against your son, there is no fitter matter. how does your ladyship like it? countess with very much content, my lord; and i wish it happily effected. lafeu his highness comes post from marseilles, of as able body as when he numbered thirty: he will be here to-morrow, or i am deceived by him that in such intelligence hath seldom failed. countess it rejoices me, that i hope i shall see him ere i die. i have letters that my son will be here to-night: i shall beseech your lordship to remain with me till they meet together. lafeu madam, i was thinking with what manners i might safely be admitted. countess you need but plead your honourable privilege. lafeu lady, of that i have made a bold charter; but i thank my god it holds yet. [re-enter clown] clown o madam, yonder's my lord your son with a patch of velvet on's face: whether there be a scar under't or no, the velvet knows; but 'tis a goodly patch of velvet: his left cheek is a cheek of two pile and a half, but his right cheek is worn bare. lafeu a scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good livery of honour; so belike is that. clown but it is your carbonadoed face. lafeu let us go see your son, i pray you: i long to talk with the young noble soldier. clown faith there's a dozen of 'em, with delicate fine hats and most courteous feathers, which bow the head and nod at every man. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act v scene i marseilles. a street. [enter helena, widow, and diana, with two attendants] helena but this exceeding posting day and night must wear your spirits low; we cannot help it: but since you have made the days and nights as one, to wear your gentle limbs in my affairs, be bold you do so grow in my requital as nothing can unroot you. in happy time; [enter a gentleman] this man may help me to his majesty's ear, if he would spend his power. god save you, sir. gentleman and you. helena sir, i have seen you in the court of france. gentleman i have been sometimes there. helena i do presume, sir, that you are not fallen from the report that goes upon your goodness; an therefore, goaded with most sharp occasions, which lay nice manners by, i put you to the use of your own virtues, for the which i shall continue thankful. gentleman what's your will? helena that it will please you to give this poor petition to the king, and aid me with that store of power you have to come into his presence. gentleman the king's not here. helena not here, sir! gentleman not, indeed: he hence removed last night and with more haste than is his use. widow lord, how we lose our pains! helena all's well that ends well yet, though time seem so adverse and means unfit. i do beseech you, whither is he gone? gentleman marry, as i take it, to rousillon; whither i am going. helena i do beseech you, sir, since you are like to see the king before me, commend the paper to his gracious hand, which i presume shall render you no blame but rather make you thank your pains for it. i will come after you with what good speed our means will make us means. gentleman this i'll do for you. helena and you shall find yourself to be well thank'd, whate'er falls more. we must to horse again. go, go, provide. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act v scene ii rousillon. before the count's palace. [enter clown, and parolles, following] parolles good monsieur lavache, give my lord lafeu this letter: i have ere now, sir, been better known to you, when i have held familiarity with fresher clothes; but i am now, sir, muddied in fortune's mood, and smell somewhat strong of her strong displeasure. clown truly, fortune's displeasure is but sluttish, if it smell so strongly as thou speakest of: i will henceforth eat no fish of fortune's buttering. prithee, allow the wind. parolles nay, you need not to stop your nose, sir; i spake but by a metaphor. clown indeed, sir, if your metaphor stink, i will stop my nose; or against any man's metaphor. prithee, get thee further. parolles pray you, sir, deliver me this paper. clown foh! prithee, stand away: a paper from fortune's close-stool to give to a nobleman! look, here he comes himself. [enter lafeu] here is a purr of fortune's, sir, or of fortune's cat,--but not a musk-cat,--that has fallen into the unclean fishpond of her displeasure, and, as he says, is muddied withal: pray you, sir, use the carp as you may; for he looks like a poor, decayed, ingenious, foolish, rascally knave. i do pity his distress in my similes of comfort and leave him to your lordship. [exit] parolles my lord, i am a man whom fortune hath cruelly scratched. lafeu and what would you have me to do? 'tis too late to pare her nails now. wherein have you played the knave with fortune, that she should scratch you, who of herself is a good lady and would not have knaves thrive long under her? there's a quart d'ecu for you: let the justices make you and fortune friends: i am for other business. parolles i beseech your honour to hear me one single word. lafeu you beg a single penny more: come, you shall ha't; save your word. parolles my name, my good lord, is parolles. lafeu you beg more than 'word,' then. cox my passion! give me your hand. how does your drum? parolles o my good lord, you were the first that found me! lafeu was i, in sooth? and i was the first that lost thee. parolles it lies in you, my lord, to bring me in some grace, for you did bring me out. lafeu out upon thee, knave! dost thou put upon me at once both the office of god and the devil? one brings thee in grace and the other brings thee out. [trumpets sound] the king's coming; i know by his trumpets. sirrah, inquire further after me; i had talk of you last night: though you are a fool and a knave, you shall eat; go to, follow. parolles i praise god for you. [exeunt] all's well that ends well act v scene iii rousillon. the count's palace. [flourish. enter king, countess, lafeu, the two french lords, with attendants] king we lost a jewel of her; and our esteem was made much poorer by it: but your son, as mad in folly, lack'd the sense to know her estimation home. countess 'tis past, my liege; and i beseech your majesty to make it natural rebellion, done i' the blaze of youth; when oil and fire, too strong for reason's force, o'erbears it and burns on. king my honour'd lady, i have forgiven and forgotten all; though my revenges were high bent upon him, and watch'd the time to shoot. lafeu this i must say, but first i beg my pardon, the young lord did to his majesty, his mother and his lady offence of mighty note; but to himself the greatest wrong of all. he lost a wife whose beauty did astonish the survey of richest eyes, whose words all ears took captive, whose dear perfection hearts that scorn'd to serve humbly call'd mistress. king praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear. well, call him hither; we are reconciled, and the first view shall kill all repetition: let him not ask our pardon; the nature of his great offence is dead, and deeper than oblivion we do bury the incensing relics of it: let him approach, a stranger, no offender; and inform him so 'tis our will he should. gentleman i shall, my liege. [exit] king what says he to your daughter? have you spoke? lafeu all that he is hath reference to your highness. king then shall we have a match. i have letters sent me that set him high in fame. [enter bertram] lafeu he looks well on't. king i am not a day of season, for thou mayst see a sunshine and a hail in me at once: but to the brightest beams distracted clouds give way; so stand thou forth; the time is fair again. bertram my high-repented blames, dear sovereign, pardon to me. king all is whole; not one word more of the consumed time. let's take the instant by the forward top; for we are old, and on our quick'st decrees the inaudible and noiseless foot of time steals ere we can effect them. you remember the daughter of this lord? bertram admiringly, my liege, at first i stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart durst make too bold a herald of my tongue where the impression of mine eye infixing, contempt his scornful perspective did lend me, which warp'd the line of every other favour; scorn'd a fair colour, or express'd it stolen; extended or contracted all proportions to a most hideous object: thence it came that she whom all men praised and whom myself, since i have lost, have loved, was in mine eye the dust that did offend it. king well excused: that thou didst love her, strikes some scores away from the great compt: but love that comes too late, like a remorseful pardon slowly carried, to the great sender turns a sour offence, crying, 'that's good that's gone.' our rash faults make trivial price of serious things we have, not knowing them until we know their grave: oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust, destroy our friends and after weep their dust our own love waking cries to see what's done, while shame full late sleeps out the afternoon. be this sweet helen's knell, and now forget her. send forth your amorous token for fair maudlin: the main consents are had; and here we'll stay to see our widower's second marriage-day. countess which better than the first, o dear heaven, bless! or, ere they meet, in me, o nature, cesse! lafeu come on, my son, in whom my house's name must be digested, give a favour from you to sparkle in the spirits of my daughter, that she may quickly come. [bertram gives a ring] by my old beard, and every hair that's on't, helen, that's dead, was a sweet creature: such a ring as this, the last that e'er i took her at court, i saw upon her finger. bertram hers it was not. king now, pray you, let me see it; for mine eye, while i was speaking, oft was fasten'd to't. this ring was mine; and, when i gave it helen, i bade her, if her fortunes ever stood necessitied to help, that by this token i would relieve her. had you that craft, to reave her of what should stead her most? bertram my gracious sovereign, howe'er it pleases you to take it so, the ring was never hers. countess son, on my life, i have seen her wear it; and she reckon'd it at her life's rate. lafeu i am sure i saw her wear it. bertram you are deceived, my lord; she never saw it: in florence was it from a casement thrown me, wrapp'd in a paper, which contain'd the name of her that threw it: noble she was, and thought i stood engaged: but when i had subscribed to mine own fortune and inform'd her fully i could not answer in that course of honour as she had made the overture, she ceased in heavy satisfaction and would never receive the ring again. king plutus himself, that knows the tinct and multiplying medicine, hath not in nature's mystery more science than i have in this ring: 'twas mine, 'twas helen's, whoever gave it you. then, if you know that you are well acquainted with yourself, confess 'twas hers, and by what rough enforcement you got it from her: she call'd the saints to surety that she would never put it from her finger, unless she gave it to yourself in bed, where you have never come, or sent it us upon her great disaster. bertram she never saw it. king thou speak'st it falsely, as i love mine honour; and makest conjectural fears to come into me which i would fain shut out. if it should prove that thou art so inhuman,--'twill not prove so;- and yet i know not: thou didst hate her deadly, and she is dead; which nothing, but to close her eyes myself, could win me to believe, more than to see this ring. take him away. [guards seize bertram] my fore-past proofs, howe'er the matter fall, shall tax my fears of little vanity, having vainly fear'd too little. away with him! we'll sift this matter further. bertram if you shall prove this ring was ever hers, you shall as easy prove that i husbanded her bed in florence, where yet she never was. [exit, guarded] king i am wrapp'd in dismal thinkings. [enter a gentleman] gentleman gracious sovereign, whether i have been to blame or no, i know not: here's a petition from a florentine, who hath for four or five removes come short to tender it herself. i undertook it, vanquish'd thereto by the fair grace and speech of the poor suppliant, who by this i know is here attending: her business looks in her with an importing visage; and she told me, in a sweet verbal brief, it did concern your highness with herself. king [reads] upon his many protestations to marry me when his wife was dead, i blush to say it, he won me. now is the count rousillon a widower: his vows are forfeited to me, and my honour's paid to him. he stole from florence, taking no leave, and i follow him to his country for justice: grant it me, o king! in you it best lies; otherwise a seducer flourishes, and a poor maid is undone. diana capilet. lafeu i will buy me a son-in-law in a fair, and toll for this: i'll none of him. king the heavens have thought well on thee lafeu, to bring forth this discovery. seek these suitors: go speedily and bring again the count. i am afeard the life of helen, lady, was foully snatch'd. countess now, justice on the doers! [re-enter bertram, guarded] king i wonder, sir, sith wives are monsters to you, and that you fly them as you swear them lordship, yet you desire to marry. [enter widow and diana] what woman's that? diana i am, my lord, a wretched florentine, derived from the ancient capilet: my suit, as i do understand, you know, and therefore know how far i may be pitied. widow i am her mother, sir, whose age and honour both suffer under this complaint we bring, and both shall cease, without your remedy. king come hither, count; do you know these women? bertram my lord, i neither can nor will deny but that i know them: do they charge me further? diana why do you look so strange upon your wife? bertram she's none of mine, my lord. diana if you shall marry, you give away this hand, and that is mine; you give away heaven's vows, and those are mine; you give away myself, which is known mine; for i by vow am so embodied yours, that she which marries you must marry me, either both or none. lafeu your reputation comes too short for my daughter; you are no husband for her. bertram my lord, this is a fond and desperate creature, whom sometime i have laugh'd with: let your highness lay a more noble thought upon mine honour than for to think that i would sink it here. king sir, for my thoughts, you have them ill to friend till your deeds gain them: fairer prove your honour than in my thought it lies. diana good my lord, ask him upon his oath, if he does think he had not my virginity. king what say'st thou to her? bertram she's impudent, my lord, and was a common gamester to the camp. diana he does me wrong, my lord; if i were so, he might have bought me at a common price: do not believe him. o, behold this ring, whose high respect and rich validity did lack a parallel; yet for all that he gave it to a commoner o' the camp, if i be one. countess he blushes, and 'tis it: of six preceding ancestors, that gem, conferr'd by testament to the sequent issue, hath it been owed and worn. this is his wife; that ring's a thousand proofs. king methought you said you saw one here in court could witness it. diana i did, my lord, but loath am to produce so bad an instrument: his name's parolles. lafeu i saw the man to-day, if man he be. king find him, and bring him hither. [exit an attendant] bertram what of him? he's quoted for a most perfidious slave, with all the spots o' the world tax'd and debosh'd; whose nature sickens but to speak a truth. am i or that or this for what he'll utter, that will speak any thing? king she hath that ring of yours. bertram i think she has: certain it is i liked her, and boarded her i' the wanton way of youth: she knew her distance and did angle for me, madding my eagerness with her restraint, as all impediments in fancy's course are motives of more fancy; and, in fine, her infinite cunning, with her modern grace, subdued me to her rate: she got the ring; and i had that which any inferior might at market-price have bought. diana i must be patient: you, that have turn'd off a first so noble wife, may justly diet me. i pray you yet; since you lack virtue, i will lose a husband; send for your ring, i will return it home, and give me mine again. bertram i have it not. king what ring was yours, i pray you? diana sir, much like the same upon your finger. king know you this ring? this ring was his of late. diana and this was it i gave him, being abed. king the story then goes false, you threw it him out of a casement. diana i have spoke the truth. [enter parolles] bertram my lord, i do confess the ring was hers. king you boggle shrewdly, every feather stars you. is this the man you speak of? diana ay, my lord. king tell me, sirrah, but tell me true, i charge you, not fearing the displeasure of your master, which on your just proceeding i'll keep off, by him and by this woman here what know you? parolles so please your majesty, my master hath been an honourable gentleman: tricks he hath had in him, which gentlemen have. king come, come, to the purpose: did he love this woman? parolles faith, sir, he did love her; but how? king how, i pray you? parolles he did love her, sir, as a gentleman loves a woman. king how is that? parolles he loved her, sir, and loved her not. king as thou art a knave, and no knave. what an equivocal companion is this! parolles i am a poor man, and at your majesty's command. lafeu he's a good drum, my lord, but a naughty orator. diana do you know he promised me marriage? parolles faith, i know more than i'll speak. king but wilt thou not speak all thou knowest? parolles yes, so please your majesty. i did go between them, as i said; but more than that, he loved her: for indeed he was mad for her, and talked of satan and of limbo and of furies and i know not what: yet i was in that credit with them at that time that i knew of their going to bed, and of other motions, as promising her marriage, and things which would derive me ill will to speak of; therefore i will not speak what i know. king thou hast spoken all already, unless thou canst say they are married: but thou art too fine in thy evidence; therefore stand aside. this ring, you say, was yours? diana ay, my good lord. king where did you buy it? or who gave it you? diana it was not given me, nor i did not buy it. king who lent it you? diana it was not lent me neither. king where did you find it, then? diana i found it not. king if it were yours by none of all these ways, how could you give it him? diana i never gave it him. lafeu this woman's an easy glove, my lord; she goes off and on at pleasure. king this ring was mine; i gave it his first wife. diana it might be yours or hers, for aught i know. king take her away; i do not like her now; to prison with her: and away with him. unless thou tell'st me where thou hadst this ring, thou diest within this hour. diana i'll never tell you. king take her away. diana i'll put in bail, my liege. king i think thee now some common customer. diana by jove, if ever i knew man, 'twas you. king wherefore hast thou accused him all this while? diana because he's guilty, and he is not guilty: he knows i am no maid, and he'll swear to't; i'll swear i am a maid, and he knows not. great king, i am no strumpet, by my life; i am either maid, or else this old man's wife. king she does abuse our ears: to prison with her. diana good mother, fetch my bail. stay, royal sir: [exit widow] the jeweller that owes the ring is sent for, and he shall surety me. but for this lord, who hath abused me, as he knows himself, though yet he never harm'd me, here i quit him: he knows himself my bed he hath defiled; and at that time he got his wife with child: dead though she be, she feels her young one kick: so there's my riddle: one that's dead is quick: and now behold the meaning. [re-enter widow, with helena] king is there no exorcist beguiles the truer office of mine eyes? is't real that i see? helena no, my good lord; 'tis but the shadow of a wife you see, the name and not the thing. bertram both, both. o, pardon! helena o my good lord, when i was like this maid, i found you wondrous kind. there is your ring; and, look you, here's your letter; this it says: 'when from my finger you can get this ring and are by me with child,' &c. this is done: will you be mine, now you are doubly won? bertram if she, my liege, can make me know this clearly, i'll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly. helena if it appear not plain and prove untrue, deadly divorce step between me and you! o my dear mother, do i see you living? lafeu mine eyes smell onions; i shall weep anon: [to parolles] good tom drum, lend me a handkercher: so, i thank thee: wait on me home, i'll make sport with thee: let thy courtesies alone, they are scurvy ones. king let us from point to point this story know, to make the even truth in pleasure flow. [to diana] if thou be'st yet a fresh uncropped flower, choose thou thy husband, and i'll pay thy dower; for i can guess that by thy honest aid thou keep'st a wife herself, thyself a maid. of that and all the progress, more or less, resolvedly more leisure shall express: all yet seems well; and if it end so meet, the bitter past, more welcome is the sweet. [flourish] all's well that ends well epilogue king the king's a beggar, now the play is done: all is well ended, if this suit be won, that you express content; which we will pay, with strife to please you, day exceeding day: ours be your patience then, and yours our parts; your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts. [exeunt] 1876 the adventures of tom sawyer by mark twain dedication dedication to my wife this book is affectionately dedicated preface preface most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. huck finn is drawn from life; tom sawyer also, but not from an individualhe is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom i knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture. the odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the west at the period of this storythat is to say, thirty or forty years ago. although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, i hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in. the author. hartford, 1876. chapter 1 tom plays, fights, and hides "tom!" no answer. "tom!" no answer. "what's gone with that boy, i wonder? you tom!" no answer. the old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them, about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. she seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service;she could have seen through a pair of stove lids just as well. she looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear: "well, i lay if i get hold of you i'll-" she did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broomand so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. she resurrected nothing but the cat. "i never did see the beat of that boy!" she went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. no tom. so she lifted up her voice, at an angle calculated for distance, and shouted: "y-o-u-u tom!" there was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight. "there! i might 'a' thought of that closet. what you been doing in there?" "nothing." "nothing! look at your hands. and look at your mouth. what is that truck?" "i don't know, aunt." "well, i know. it's jamthat's what it is. forty times i've said if you didn't let that jam alone i'd skin you. hand me that switch." the switch hovered in the airthe peril was desperate "my! look behind you, aunt!" the old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. the lad fled, on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and disappeared over it. his aunt polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle laugh. "hang the boy, can't i never learn anything? ain't he played me tricks enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? but old fools is the biggest fools there is. can't learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. but my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, and how is a body to know what's coming? he 'pears to know just how long he can torment me before i get my dander up, and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and i can't hit him a lick. i ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the lord's truth, goodness knows. spare the rod and spile the child, as the good book says. i'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both, i know. he's full of the old scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and i ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow. every time i let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time i hit him my old heart most breaks. well-a-well, man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the scripture says, and i reckon it's so. he'll play hookey this evening, and i'll just be obleeged to make him work, to-morrow, to punish him. it's mighty hard to make him work saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and i've got to do some of my duty by him, or i'll be the ruination of the child." tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. he got back home barely in season to help jim, the small colored boy, saw next day's wood and split the kindlings, before supperat least he was there in time to tell his adventures to jim while jim did three-fourths of the work. tom's younger brother, (or rather, half-brother) sid, was already through with his part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a quiet boy, and had no adventurous, troublesome ways. while tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity offered, aunt polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and very deepfor she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning. said she: "tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?" "yes'm." "powerful warm, warn't it?" "yes'm." "didn't you want to go in a-swimming, tom?" a bit of a scare shot through toma touch of uncomfortable suspicion. he searched aunt polly's face, but it told him nothing. so he said: "no'mwell, not very much." the old lady reached out her hand and felt tom's shirt, and said: "but you ain't too warm now, though." and it flattered her to reflect that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing that that was what she had in her mind. but in spite of her, tom knew where the wind lay, now. so he forestalled what might be the next move: "some of us pumped on our headsmine's damp yet. see?" aunt polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. then she had a new inspiration: "tom, you didn't have to undo your shirt collar where i sewed it, to pump on your head, did you? unbutton your jacket!" the trouble vanished out of tom's face. he opened his jacket. his shirt collar was securely sewed. "bother! well, go 'long with you. i'd made sure you'd played hookey and been a-swimming. but i forgive ye, tom. i reckon you're a kind of a singed cat, as the saying isbetter'n you look. this time." she was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that tom had stumbled into obedient conduct for once. but sidney said: "well, now, if i didn't think you sewed his collar with white thread, but it's black." "why i did sew it with white! tom!" but tom did not wait for the rest. as he went out at the door he said: "siddy, i'll lick you for that." in a safe place tom examined two large needles which were thrust into the lappels of his jacket, and had thread bound about themone needle carried white thread and the other black. he said: "she'd never noticed, if it hadn't been for sid. consound it! sometimes she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. i wish to geeminy she'd stick to one or t'otheri can't keep the run of 'em. but i bet you i'll lam sid for that. i'll learn him!" he was not the model boy of the village. he knew the model boy very well thoughand loathed him. within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man's are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the timejust as men's misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. this new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practice it undisturbed. it consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the musicthe reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy. diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. he felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet. no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer. the summer evenings were long. it was not dark, yet. presently tom checked his whistle. a stranger was before hima boy a shade larger than himself. a new-comer of any age or either sex was an impressive curiosity in the poor little shabby village of st. peterburg. this boy was well dressed, toowell dressed on a week-day. this was simply astounding. his cap was a dainty thing, his close-buttoned blue cloth roundabout was new and natty, and so were his pantaloons. he had shoes onand yet it was only friday. he even wore a necktie, a bright bit of ribbon. he had a citified air about him that ate into tom's vitals. the more tom stared at the splendid marvel, the higher he turned up his nose at his finery and the shabbier and shabbier his own outfit seemed to him to grow. neither boy spoke. if one moved, the other movedbut only sidewise, in a circle; they kept face to face and eye to eye all the time. finally tom said: "i can lick you!" "i'd like to see you try it." "well, i can do it." "no you can't, either." "yes i can." "no you can't." "i can." "you can't." "can." "can't." an uncomfortable pause. then tom said: "what's your name?" "'tisn't any of your business, maybe." "well i 'low i'll make it my business." "well why don't you?" "if you say much i will." "muchmuchmuch. there now." "o, you think you're mighty smart, don't you? i could lick you with one hand tied behind me, if i wanted to." "well why don't you do it? you say you can do it." "well i will, if you fool with me." "o yesi've seen whole families in the same fix." "smarty! you think you're some, now, don't you? o what a hat!" "you can lump that hat if you don't like it. i dare you to knock it offand anybody that'll take a dare will suck eggs." "you're a liar!" "you're another." "you're a fighting liar and dasn't take it up." "awtake a walk!" "sayif you gimme much more of your sass i'll take and bounce a rock off'n your head." "o, of course you will." "well i will." "well why don't you do it then? what do you keep saying you will for? why don't you do it? it's because you're afraid." "i ain't afraid." "you are." "i ain't." "you are." another pause, and more eyeing and sidling around each other. presently they were shoulder to shoulder. tom said: "get away from here!" "go away yourself!" "i won't." "i won't either." so they stood, each with a foot placed at an angle as a brace, and both shoving with might and main, and glowering at each other with hate. but neither could get an advantage. after struggling till both were hot and flushed, each relaxed his strain with watchful caution, and tom said: "you're a coward and a pup. i'll tell my big brother on you, and he can thrash you with his little finger, and i'll make him do it, too." "what do i care for your big brother? i've got a brother that's bigger than he isand what's more, he can throw him over that fence, too." [both brothers were imaginary.] "that's a lie." "your saying so don't make it so." tom drew a line in the dust with his big toe, and said: "i dare you to step over that, and i'll lick you till you can't stand up. anybody that'll take a dare will steal a sheep." the new boy stepped over promptly, and said: "now you said you'd do it, now let's see you do it." "don't you crowd me, now; you better look out." "well you said you'd do itwhy don't you do it?" "by jingo! for two cents i will do it." the new boy took two broad coppers out of his pocket and held them out with derision. tom struck them to the ground. in an instant both boys were rolling and tumbling in the dirt, gripped together like cats; and for the space of a minute they tugged and tore at each other's hair and clothes, punched and scratched each other's noses, and covered themselves with dust and glory. presently the confusion took form, and through the fog of battle tom appeared, seated astride the new boy and pounding him with his fists. "holler 'nuff!" said he. the boy only struggled to free himself. he was crying,mainly from rage. "holler 'nuff!"and the pounding went on. at last the stranger got out a smothered "nuff!" and tom let him up and said: "now that'll learn you. better look out who you're fooling with, next time." the new boy went off brushing the dust from his clothes, sobbing, snuffling, and occasionally looking back and shaking his head and threatening what he would do to tom the "next time he caught him out." to which tom responded with jeers, and started off in high feather, and as soon as his back was turned the new boy snatched up a stone, threw it and hit him between the shoulders and then turned tail and ran like an antelope. tom chased the traitor home, and thus found out where he lived. he then held a position at the gate for some time, daring the enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made faces at him through the window and declined. at last the enemy's mother appeared, and called tom a bad, vicious, vulgar child, and ordered him away. so he went away; but he said he "'lowed" to "lay" for that boy. he got home pretty late, that night, and when he climbed cautiously in at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt; and when she saw the state his clothes were in her resolution to turn his saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine in its firmness. chapter 2 a the glorious whitewasher saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. there was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips. there was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. the locust trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. cardiff hill, beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation, and it lay just far enough away to seem a delectable land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting. tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. he surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. thirty yards of board fence, nine feet high. life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. jim came skipping out at the gate with a tin pail, and singing "buffalo gals." bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in tom's eyes, before, but now it did not strike him so. he remembered that there was company at the pump. white, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarreling, fighting, skylarking. and he remembered that although the pump was only a hundred and fifty yards off, jim never got back with a bucket of water under an hourand even then somebody generally had to go after him. tom said: "say, jim, i'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some." jim shook his head and said: "can't, mars tom. ole missis, she tole me i got to go an' git dis water an' not stop foolin' roun' wid anybody. she say she spec' mars tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an' she tole me go 'long an' 'tend to my own businessshe 'lowed she'd 'tend to de whitewashin'." "o, never you mind what she said, jim. that's the way she always talks. gimme the bucketi won't be gone only a minute. she won't ever know." "o, i dasn't, mars tom. ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n me. 'deed she would." "she! she never licks anybodywhacks 'em over the head with her thimbleand who cares for that, i'd like to know. she talks awful, but talk don't hurtanyways it don't if she don't cry. jim, i'll give you a marvel. i'll give you a white alley!" jim began to waver. "white alley, jim! and it's a bully taw." "my! dat's a mighty gay marvel, i tell you! but mars tom i's powerful 'fraid ole missis-" "and besides, if you will i'll show you my sore toe." jim was only humanthis attraction was too much for him. he put down his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being unwound. in another moment he was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, tom was whitewashing with vigor, and aunt polly was retiring from the field with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye. but tom's energy did not last. he began to think of the fun he had planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. soon the free boys would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and they would make a world of fun of him for having to workthe very thought of it burnt him like fire. he got out his worldly wealth and examined itbits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange of work, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of pure freedom. so he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. at this dark and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! nothing less than a great, magnificent inspiration! he took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. ben rogers hove in sight presentlythe very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jumpproof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. he was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. as he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp and circumstancefor he was personating the "big missouri," and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. he was boat, and captain, and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them: "stop her, sir! ting-a-ling-ling!" the headway ran almost out and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk. "ship up to back! ting-a-ling-ling!" his arms straightened and stiffened down his sides. "set her back on the stabboard! ting-a-ling-ling! chow! ch-chow-wow! chow!" his right hand, meantime, describing stately circles,for it was representing a forty-foot wheel. "let her go back on the labbord! ting-a-ling-ling! chow-ch-chow-chow!" the left hand began to describe circles. "stop the stabboard! ting-a-ling-ling! stop the labbord! come ahead on the stabboard! stop her! let your outside turn over slow! ting-a-ling-ling! chow-ow-ow! get out that head-line! lively now! comeout with your spring-linewhat're you about there! take a turn round that stump with the bight of it! stand by that stage, nowlet her go! done with the engines, sir! ting-a-ling-ling! sh't! s'h't! sh't!" (trying the gauge-cocks.) tom went on whitewashingpaid no attention to the steamboat. ben stared a moment and then said: "hi-yi! you're up a stump, ain't you!" no answer. tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist; then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. ben ranged up alongside of him. tom's mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work. ben said: "hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?" tom wheeled suddenly and said: "why it's you, ben! i warn't noticing." "sayi'm going in a-swimming, i am. don't you wish you could? but of course you'd druther workwouldn't you? 'course you would!" tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said: "what do you call work?" "why ain't that work?" tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly: "well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. all i know, is, it suits tom sawyer." "o, come, now, you don't mean to let on that you like it?" the brush continued to move. "like it? well i don't see why i oughtn't to like it. does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?" that put the thing in a new light. ben stopped nibbling his apple. tom swept his brush daintily back and forthstepped back to note the effectadded a touch here and therecriticised the effect againben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. presently he said: "say, tom, let me whitewash a little." tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind: "nonoi reckon it wouldn't hardly do, ben. you see, aunt polly's awful particular about this fenceright here on the street, you knowbut if it was the back fence i wouldn't mind and she wouldn't. yes, she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful; i reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done." "nois that so? oh come, nowlemme just try. only just a littlei'd let you, if you was me, tom." "ben, i'd like to, honest injun; but aunt pollywell jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let him; sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let sid. now don't you see how i'm fixed? if you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it-" "o, shucks, i'll be just as careful. now lemme try. sayi'll give you the core of my apple." "well, hereno, ben, now don't. i'm afeard-" "i'll give you all of it!" tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face but alacrity in his heart. and while the late steamer "big missouri" worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. there was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. by the time ben was fagged out, tom had traded the next chance to billy fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, johnny miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it withand so on, and so on, hour after hour. and when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, tom was literally rolling in wealth. he had beside the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six firecrackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog-collarbut no dogthe handle of a knife, four pieces of orange peel, and a dilapidated old window sash. he had had a nice, good, idle time all the whileplenty of companyand the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! if he hadn't run out of whitewash, he would have bankrupted every boy in the village. tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. he had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing itnamely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. if he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. and this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a treadmill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing mont blanc is only amusement. there are wealthy gentlemen in england who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign. the boy mused a while over the substantial change which had taken place in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to report. chapter 3 busy at war and love tom presented himself before aunt polly, who was sitting by an open window in a pleasant rearward apartment, which was bed-room, breakfast-room, dining-room, and library, combined. the balmy summer air, the restful quiet, the odor of the flowers, and the drowsing murmur of the bees had had their effect, and she was nodding over her knittingfor she had no company but the cat, and it was asleep in her lap. her spectacles were propped up on her gray head for safety. she had thought that of course tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered at seeing him place himself in her power again in this intrepid way. he said: "mayn't i go and play now, aunt?" "what, a'ready? how much have you done?" "it's all done, aunt." "tom, don't lie to mei can't bear it." "i ain't, aunt; it is all done." aunt polly placed small trust in such evidence. she went out to see for herself; and she would have been content to find twenty per cent of tom's statement true. when she found the entire fence whitewashed, and not only whitewashed but elaborately coated and recoated, and even a streak added to the ground, her astonishment was almost unspeakable. she said: "well, i never! there's no getting round it, you can work when you're a mind to, tom." and then she diluted the compliment by adding, "but it's powerful seldom you're a mind to, i'm bound to say. well, go 'long and play; but mind you get back sometime in a week, or i'll tan you." she was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to him, along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a treat took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort. and while she closed with a happy scriptural flourish, he "hooked" a doughnut. then he skipped out, and saw sid just starting up the outside stairway that led to the back rooms on the second floor. clods were handy and the air was full of them in a twinkling. they raged around sid like a hail-storm; and before aunt polly could collect her surprised faculties and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect and tom was over the fence and gone. there was a gate, but as a general thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it. his soul was at peace, now that he had settled with sid for calling attention to his black thread and getting him into trouble. tom skirted the block, and came round into a muddy alley that led by the back of his aunt's cow-stable; he presently got safely beyond the reach of capture and punishment, and hasted toward the public square of the village, where two "military" companies of boys had met for conflict, according to previous appointment. tom was general of one of these armies, joe harper (a bosom friend,) general of the other. these two great commanders did not condescend to fight in personthat being better suited to the still smaller frybut sat together on an eminence and conducted the field operations by orders delivered through aides-de-camp. tom's army won a great victory, after a long and hard-fought battle. then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged, the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon and the day for the necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and marched away, and tom turned homeward alone. as he was passing by the house where jeff thatcher lived, he saw a new girl in the gardena lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair plaited into two long tails, white summer frock and embroidered pantalettes. the fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. a certain amy lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a memory of herself behind. he had thought he loved her to distraction, he had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold it was only a poor little evanescent partiality. he had been months winning her; she had confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is done. he worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she had discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present, and began to "show off" in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to win her admiration. he kept up this grotesque foolishness for some time; but by and by, while he was in the midst of some dangerous gymnastic performances, he glanced aside and saw that the little girl was wending her way toward the house. tom came up to the fence and leaned on it, grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet a while longer. she halted a moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. tom heaved a great sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. but his face lit up, right away, for she tossed a pansy over the fence a moment before she disappeared. the boy ran around and stopped within a foot or two of the flower, and then shaded his eyes with his hand and began to look down street as if he had discovered something of interest going on in that direction. presently he picked up a straw and began trying to balance it on his nose, with his head tilted far back; and as he moved from side to side, in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy; finally his bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner. but only for a minuteonly while he could button the flower inside his jacket, next his heartor next his stomach, possibly, for he was not much posted in anatomy, and not hypercritical, anyway. he returned, now, and hung about the fence till nightfall, "showing off," as before; but the girl never exhibited herself again, though tom comforted himself a little with the hope that she had been near some window, meantime, and been aware of his attentions. finally he rode home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions. all through supper his spirits were so high that his aunt wondered "what had got into the child." he took a good scolding about clodding sid, and did not seem to mind it in the least. he tried to steal sugar under his aunt's very nose, and got his knuckles rapped for it. he said: "aunt, you don't whack sid when he takes it." "well, sid don't torment a body the way you do. you'd be always into that sugar if i warn't watching you." presently she stepped into the kitchen, and sid, happy in his immunity, reached for the sugar-bowla sort of glorying over tom which was well-nigh unbearable. but sid's fingers slipped and the bowl dropped and broke. tom was in ecstasies. in such ecstasies that he even controlled his tongue and was silent. he said to himself that he would not speak a word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly still till she asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and there would be nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model "catch it." he was so brim-full of exultation that he could hardly hold himself when the old lady came back and stood above the wreck discharging lightnings of wrath from over her spectacles. he said to himself, "now it's coming!" and the next instant he was sprawling on the floor! the potent palm was uplifted to strike again when tom cried out: "hold on, now, what 'er you belting me for?sid broke it!" aunt polly paused, perplexed, and tom looked for healing pity. but when she got her tongue again, she only said: "umf! well, you didn't get a lick amiss, i reckon. you been into some other owdacious mischief when i wasn't around, like enough." then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that. so she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart. tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes. he knew that in her heart his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the consciousness of it. he would hang out no signals, he would take notice of none. he knew that a yearning glance fell upon him, now and then, through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it. he pictured himself lying sick unto death and his aunt bending over him beseeching one little forgiving word, but he would turn his face to the wall, and die with that word unsaid. ah, how would she feel then? and he pictured himself brought home from the river, dead, with his curls all wet, and his poor hands still forever, and his sore heart at rest. how she would throw herself upon him, and how her tears would fall like rain, and her lips pray god to give her back her boy and she would never never abuse him any more! but he would lie there cold and white and make no signa poor little sufferer whose griefs were at an end. he so worked upon his feelings with the pathos of these dreams that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to choke; and his eyes swam in a blur of water, which overflowed when he winked, and ran down and trickled from the end of his nose. and such a luxury to him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bear to have any worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it; it was too sacred for such contact; and so, presently, when his cousin mary danced in, all alive with the joy of seeing home again after an age-long visit of one week to the country, he got up and moved in clouds and darkness out at one door as she brought song and sunshine in at the other. he wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought desolate places that were in harmony with his spirit. a log raft in the river invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and contemplated the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while, that he could only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without undergoing the uncomfortable routine devised by nature. then he thought of his flower. he got it out, rumpled and wilted, and it mightily increased his dismal felicity. he wondered if she would pity him if she knew? would she cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms around his neck and comfort him? or would she turn coldly away like all the hollow world? this picture brought such an agony of pleasurable suffering that he worked it over and over again in his mind and set it up in new and varied lights till he wore it threadbare. at last he rose up sighing, and departed in the darkness. about half past nine or ten o'clock he came along the deserted street to where the adored unknown lived; he paused a moment; no sound fell upon his listening ear; a candle was casting a dull glow upon the curtain of a second-story window. was the sacred presence there? he climbed the fence, threaded his stealthy way through the plants, till he stood under that window; he looked up at it long, and with emotion; then he laid him down on the ground under it, disposing himself upon his back, with his hands clasped upon his breast and holding his poor wilted flower. and thus he would dieout in the cold world, with no shelter over his homeless head, no friendly hand to wipe the death-damps from his brow, no loving face to bend pityingly over him when the great agony came. and thus she would see him when she looked out upon the glad morningand o! would she drop one little tear upon his poor, lifeless form, would she heave one little sigh to see a bright young life so rudely blighted, so untimely cut down? the window went up, a maid-servant's discordant voice profaned the holy calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains! the strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort, there was a whiz as of a missile in the air, mingled with the murmur of a curse, a sound as of shivering glass followed, and a small, vague form went over the fence and shot away in the gloom. not long after, as tom, all undressed for bed, was surveying his drenched garments by the light of a tallow dip, sid woke up; but if he had any dim idea of making any "references to allusions," he thought better of it and held his peacefor there was danger in tom's eye. tom turned in without the added vexation of prayers, and sid made mental note of the omission. chapter 4 showing off in sunday school the sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful village like a benediction. breakfast over, aunt polly had family worship; it began with a prayer built from the ground up of solid courses of scriptural quotations welded together with a thin mortar of originality; and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter of the mosaic law, as from sinai. then tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to "get his verses." sid had learned his lesson days before. tom bent all his energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of the sermon on the mount, because he could find no verses that were shorter. at the end of half an hour tom had a vague general idea of his lesson, but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field of human thought, and his hands were busy with distracting recreations. mary took his book to hear him recite, and he tried to find his way through the fog: "blessed are theaa-" "poor" "yespoor; blessed are the pooraa-" "in spirit-" "in spirit; blessed are the poor in spirit, for theythey-" "theirs-" "for theirs. blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. blessed are they that mourn, for theythey-" "sh-" "for theya-" "s, h, a-" "for they s, h,o i don't know what it is!" "shall!" "o, shall! for they shallfor they shallaashall mournaablessed are they that shallthey thatathey that shall mourn, for they shallashall what? why don't you tell me mary?what do you want to be so mean for?" "o, tom, you poor thick-headed thing, i'm not teasing you. i wouldn't do that. you must go and learn it again. don't you be discouraged, tom, you'll manage itand if you do, i'll give you something ever so nice. there, now, that's a good boy." "all right! what is it, mary, tell me what it is." "never you mind, tom. you know if i say it's nice, it is nice." "you bet you that's so, mary. all right, i'll tackle it again." and he did "tackle it again"and under the double pressure of curiosity and prospective gain, he did it with such spirit that he accomplished a shining success. mary gave him a brand-new "barlow" knife worth twelve and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that swept his system shook him to his foundations. true, the knife would not cut anything, but it was a "sure-enough" barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur in thatthough where the western boys ever got the idea that such a weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its injury, is an imposing mystery and will always remain so, perhaps. tom contrived to scarify the cupboard with it, and was arranging to begin on the bureau, when he was called off to dress for sunday-school. mary gave him a tin basin of water and a piece of soap, and he went outside the door and set the basin on a little bench there; then he dipped the soap in the water and laid it down; turned up his sleeves; poured out the water on the ground, gently, and then entered the kitchen and began to wipe his face diligently on the towel behind the door. but mary removed the towel and said: "now ain't you ashamed, tom. you mustn't be so bad. water won't hurt you." tom was a trifle disconcerted. the basin was refilled, and this time he stood over it a little while, gathering resolution; took in a big breath and began. when he entered the kitchen presently, with both eyes shut, and groping for the towel with his hands, an honorable testimony of suds and water was dripping from his face. but when he emerged from the towel, he was not yet satisfactory, for the clean territory stopped short at his chin and his jaws, like a mask; below and beyond this line there was a dark expanse of unirrigated soil that spread downward in front and backward around his neck. mary took him in hand, and when she was done with him he was a man and a brother, without distinction of color, and his saturated hair was neatly brushed, and its short curls wrought into a dainty and symmetrical general effect. [he privately smoothed out the curls, with labor and difficulty, and plastered his hair close down to his head; for he held curls to be effeminate, and his own filled his life with bitterness.] then mary got out a suit of his clothing that had been used only on sundays during two yearsthey were simply called his "other clothes"and so by that we know the size of his wardrobe. the girl "put him to rights" after he had dressed himself, she buttoned his neat roundabout up to his chin, turned his vast shirt collar down over his shoulders, brushed him off and crowned him with his speckled straw hat. he now looked exceedingly improved and uncomfortable. he was fully as uncomfortable as he looked; for there was a restraint about whole clothes and cleanliness that galled him. he hoped that mary would forget his shoes, but the hope was blighted; she coated them thoroughly with tallow, as was the custom, and brought them out. he lost his temper and said he was always being made to do everything he didn't want to do. but mary said, persuasively: "please, tomthat's a good boy." so he got into the shoes snarling. mary was soon ready, and the three children set out for sunday-schoola place that tom hated with his whole heart; but sid and mary were fond of it. sabbath-school hours were from nine to half past ten; and then church service. two of the children always remained for the sermon, voluntarily, and the other always remained, toofor stronger reasons. the church's high-backed, uncushioned pews would seat about three hundred persons; the edifice was but a small, plain affair, with a sort of pine board tree-box on top of it for a steeple. at the door tom dropped back a step and accosted a sunday-dressed comrade: "say, billy, got a yaller ticket?" "yes." "what'll you take for her?" "what'll you give?" "piece of lickrish and a fish-hook." "less see 'em." tom exhibited. they were satisfactory, and the property changed hands. then tom traded a couple of white alleys for three red tickets, and some small trifle or other for a couple of blue ones. he waylaid other boys as they came, and went on buying tickets of various colors ten or fifteen minutes longer. he entered the church, now, with a swarm of clean and noisy boys and girls, proceeded to his seat and started a quarrel with the first boy that came handy. the teacher, a grave, elderly man, interfered; then turned his back a moment and tom pulled a boy's hair in the next bench, and was absorbed in his book when the boy turned around; stuck a pin in another boy, present, in order to hear him say "ouch!" and got a new reprimand from his teacher. tom's whole class were of a patternrestless, noisy and troublesome. when they came to recite their lessons, not one of them knew his verses perfectly, but had to be prompted all along. however, they worried through, and each got his rewardin small blue tickets, each with a passage of scripture on it; each blue ticket was pay for two verses of the recitation. ten blue tickets equalled a red one, and could be exchanged for it; ten red tickets equalled a yellow one: for ten yellow tickets the superintendent gave a very plainly bound bible, (worth forty cents in those easy times,) to the pupil. how many of my readers would have the industry and application to memorize two thousand verses, even for a dore bible? and yet mary had acquired two bibles in this wayit was the patient work of two yearsand a boy of german parentage had won four or five. he once recited three thousand verses without stopping; but the strain upon his mental faculties was too great, and he was little better than an idiot from that day fortha grievous misfortune for the school, for on great occasions, before company, the superintendent (as tom expressed it) had always made this boy come out and "spread himself." only the older pupils managed to keep their tickets and stick to their tedious work long enough to get a bible, and so the delivery of one of these prizes was a rare and noteworthy circumstance; the successful pupil was so great and conspicuous for that day that on the spot every scholar's breast was fired with a fresh ambition that often lasted a couple of weeks. it is possible that tom's mental stomach had never really hungered for one of those prizes, but unquestionably his entire being had for many a day longed for the glory and the eclat that came with it. in due course the superintendent stood up in front of the pulpit, with a closed hymn-book in his hand and his forefinger inserted between its leaves, and commanded attention. when a sunday-school superintendent makes his customary little speech, a hymn-book in the hand is as necessary as is the inevitable sheet of music in the hand of a singer who stands forward on the platform and sings a solo at a concertthough why, is a mystery: for neither the hymn-book nor the sheet of music is ever referred to by the sufferer. this superintendent was a slim creature of thirty-five, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair; he wore a stiff standing-collar whose upper edge almost reached his ears and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his moutha fence that compelled a straight lookout ahead, and a turning of the whole body when a side view was required; his chin was propped on a spreading cravat which was as broad and as long as a bank note, and had fringed ends; his boot toes were turned sharply up, in the fashion of the day, like sleigh-runnersan effect patiently and laboriously produced by the young men by sitting with their toes pressed against a wall for hours together. mr. walters was very earnest of mien, and very sincere and honest at heart; and he held sacred things and places in such reverence, and so separated them from worldly matters, that unconsciously to himself his sunday-school voice had acquired a peculiar intonation which was wholly absent on week-days. he began after this fashion: "now children, i want you all to sit up just as straight and pretty as you can and give me all your attention for a minute or two. therethat is it. that is the way good little boys and girls should do. i see one little girl who is looking out of the windowi am afraid she thinks i am out there somewhereperhaps up in one of the trees making a speech to the little birds. [applausive titter.] i want to tell you how good it makes me feel to see so many bright, clean little faces assembled in a place like this, learning to do right and be good." and so forth and so on. it is not necessary to set down the rest of the oration. it was of a pattern which does not vary, and so it is familiar to us all. the latter third of the speech was marred by the resumption of fights and other recreations among certain of the bad boys, and by fidgetings and whisperings that extended far and wide, washing even to the bases of isolated and incorruptible rocks like sid and mary. but now every sound ceased suddenly, with the subsidence of mr. walters's voice, and the conclusion of the speech was received with a burst of silent gratitude. a good part of the whispering had been occasioned by an event which was more or less rarethe entrance of visitors; lawyer thatcher, accompanied by a very feeble and aged man; a fine, portly, middle-aged gentleman with iron-gray hair; and a dignified lady who was doubtless the latter's wife. the lady was leading a child. tom had been restless and full of chafings and repinings; conscience-smitten, toohe could not meet amy lawrence's eye, he could not brook her loving gaze. but when he saw this small new-comer his soul was all ablaze with bliss in a moment. the next moment he was "showing off" with all his mightcuffing boys, pulling hair, making facesin a word, using every art that seemed likely to fascinate a girl and win her applause. his exaltation had but one alloythe memory of his humiliation in this angel's gardenand that record in sand was fast washing out, under the waves of happiness that were sweeping over it now. the visitors were given the highest seat of honor, and as soon as mr. walters' speech was finished, he introduced them to the school. the middle-aged man turned out to be a prodigious personageno less a one than the county judgealtogether the most august creation these children had ever looked uponand they wondered what kind of material he was made ofand they half wanted to hear him roar, and were half afraid he might, too. he was from constantinople, twelve miles awayso he had traveled, and seen the worldthese very eyes had looked upon the county court housewhich was said to have a tin roof. the awe which these reflections inspired was attested by the impressive silence and the ranks of staring eyes. this was the great judge thatcher, brother of their own lawyer. jeff thatcher immediately went forward, to be familiar with the great man and be envied by the school. it would have been music to his soul to hear the whisperings: "look at him, jim! he's a-going up there. saylook! he's a-going to shake hands with himhe is shaking hands with him! by jings, don't you wish you was jeff?" mr. walters fell to "showing off", with all sorts of official bustlings and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments, discharging directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a target. the librarian "showed off"running hither and thither with his arms full of books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that insect authority delights in. the young lady teachers "showed off"bending sweetly over pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting pretty warning fingers at bad little boys and patting good ones lovingly. the young gentlemen teachers "showed off" with small scoldings and other little displays of authority and fine attention to disciplineand most of the teachers, of both sexes, found business up at the library, by the pulpit; and it was business that frequently had to be done over again two or three times, (with much seeming vexation.) the little girls "showed off" in various ways, and the little boys "showed off" with such diligence that the air was thick with paper wads and the murmur of scufflings. and above it all the great man sat and beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all the house, and warmed himself in the sun of his own grandeurfor he was "showing off," too. there was only one thing wanting, to make mr. walters' ecstasy complete, and that was, a chance to deliver a bible-prize and exhibit a prodigy. several pupils had a few yellow tickets, but none had enoughhe had been around among the star pupils inquiring. he would have given worlds, now, to have that german lad back again with a sound mind. and now at this moment, when hope was dead, tom sawyer came forward with nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue ones, and demanded a bible. this was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. walters was not expecting an application from this source for the next ten years. but there was no getting around ithere were the certified checks, and they were good for their face. tom was therefore elevated to a place with the judge and the other elect, and the great news was announced from head-quarters. it was the most stunning surprise of the decade; and so profound was the sensation that it lifted the new hero up to the judicial one's altitude, and the school had two marvels to gaze upon in place of one. the boys were all eaten up with envybut those that suffered the bitterest pangs were those who perceived too late that they themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by trading tickets to tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling whitewashing privileges. these despised themselves, as being the dupes of a wily fraud, a guileful snake in the grass. the prize was delivered to tom with as much effusion as the superintendent could pump up under the circumstances; but it lacked somewhat of the true gush, for the poor fellow's instinct taught him that there was a mystery here that could not well bear the light, perhaps; it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two thousand sheaves of scriptural wisdom on his premisesa dozen would strain his capacity, without a doubt. amy lawrence was proud and glad, and she tried to make tom see it in her facebut he wouldn't look. she wondered; then she was just a grain troubled; next a dim suspicion came and wentcame again; she watched; a furtive glance told her worldsand then her heart broke, and she was jealous, and angry, and the tears came and she hated everybody. tom most of all, (she thought.) tom was introduced to the judge; but his tongue was tied, his breath would hardly come, his heart quakedpartly because of the awful greatness of the man, but mainly because he was her parent. he would have liked to fall down and worship him, if it were in the dark. the judge put his hand on tom's head and called him a fine little man, and asked him what his name was. the boy stammered, gasped, and got it out: "tom." "o, no, not tomit is-" "thomas." "ah, that's it. i thought there was more to it, maybe. that's very well. but you've another one i daresay, and you'll tell it to me, won't you?" "tell the gentleman your other name, thomas," said walters, "and say sir.you mustn't forget your manners." "thomas sawyersir." "that's it! that's a good boy. fine boy. fine, manly little fellow. two thousand verses is a great manyvery, very great many. and you never can be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world; it's what makes great men and good men; you'll be a great man and a good man yourself, someday, thomas, and then you'll look back and say, it's all owing to the precious sunday-school privileges of my boyhoodit's all owing to my dear teachers that taught me to learnit's all owing to the good superintendent, who encouraged me, and watched over me, and gave me a beautiful biblea splendid elegant bible, to keep and have it all for my own, alwaysit's all owing to right bringing up! that is what you will say, thomasand you wouldn't take any money for those two thousand verses thenno indeed you wouldn't. and now you wouldn't mind telling me and this lady some of the things you've learnedno, i know you wouldn'tfor we are proud of little boys that learn. now no doubt you know the names of all the twelve disciples. won't you tell us the names of the first two that were appointed?" tom was tugging at a button and looking sheepish. he blushed, now, and his eyes fell. mr. walters's heart sank within him. he said to himself, it is not possible that the boy can answer the simplest questionwhy did the judge ask him? yet he felt obliged to speak up and say; "answer the gentleman, thomasdon't be afraid." tom still hung fire. "now i know you'll tell me" said the lady. "the names of the first two disciples were-" "david and goliath!" let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene. chapter 5 the pinch bug and his prey about half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to ring, and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon. the sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house and occupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision. aunt polly came, and tom and sid and mary sat with hertom being placed next the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open window and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible. the crowd filed up the aisles: the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better days; the mayor and his wifefor they had a mayor there, among other unnecessaries; the justice of the peace; the widow douglas, fair, smart and forty, a generous, goodhearted soul and well-to-do, her hill mansion the only palace in the town, and the most hospitable and much the most lavish in the matter of festivities that st. petersburg could boast; the bent and venerable major and mrs. ward; lawyer riverson, the new notable from a distance; next the belle of the village, followed by a troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked young heart-breakers; then all the young clerks in town in a bodyfor they had stood in the vestibule sucking their cane-heads, a circling wall of oiled and simpering admirers, till the last girl had run their gauntlet; and last of all came the model boy, willie mufferson, taking as heedful care of his mother as if she were cut glass. he always brought his mother to church, and was the pride of all the matrons. the boys all hated him, he was so good. and besides, he had been "thrown up to them" so much. his white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as usual on sundaysaccidentally. tom had no handkerchief, and he looked upon boys who had, as snobs. the congregation being fully assembled, now, the bell rang once more, to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the church which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of the choir in the gallery. the choir always tittered and whispered all through service. there was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but i have forgotten where it was, now. it was a great many years ago, and i can scarcely remember anything about it, but i think it was in some foreign country. the minister gave out the hymn, and read it through with a relish, in a peculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country. his voice began on a medium key and climbed steadily up till it reached a certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost word and then plunged down as if from a spring-board: shall i be car-ri-ed to the skies, on flow'ry beds of ease, whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro' blood -y seas? he was regarded as a wonderful reader. at church "sociables" he was always called upon to read poetry; and when he was through, the ladies would lift up their hands and let them fall helplessly in their laps, and "wall" their eyes, and shake their heads, as much as to say, "words cannot express it; it is too beautiful, too beautiful for this mortal earth." after the hymn had been sung, the rev. mr. sprague turned himself into a bulletin board and read off "notices" of meetings and societies and things till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of dooma queer custom which is still kept up in america, even in cities, away here in this age of abundant newspapers. often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it. and now the minister prayed. a good, generous prayer, it was, and went into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the church; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself; for the county; for the state; for the state officers; for the united states; for the churches of the united states; for congress; for the president; for the officers of the government; for poor sailors, tossed by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of european monarchies and oriental despotisms; for such as have the light and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a grateful harvest of good. amen. there was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat down. the boy whose history this book relates, did not enjoy the prayer, he only endured itif he even did that much. he was restive, all through it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciouslyfor he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the clergyman's regular route over itand when a little trifle of new matter was interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole nature resented it; he considered additions unfair, and scoundrelly. in the midst of the prayer a fly had lit on the back of the pew in front of him and tortured his spirit by calmly rubbing its hands together; embracing its head with its arms and polishing it so vigorously that it seemed to almost part company with the body, and the slender thread of a neck was exposed to view; scraping its wings with its hind legs and smoothing them to its body as if they had been coat tails; going through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectly safe. as indeed it was; for as sorely as tom's hands itched to grab for it they did not darehe believed his soul would be instantly destroyed if he did such a thing while the prayer was going on. but with the closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal forward; and the instant the "amen" was out the fly was a prisoner of war. his aunt detected the act and made him let it go. the minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nodand yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving. tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourse. however, this time he was really interested for a little while. the minister made a grand and moving picture of the assembling together of the world's hosts at the millennium when the lion and the lamb should lie down together and a little child should lead them. but the pathos, the lesson, the moral of the great spectacle were lost upon the boy; he only thought of the conspicuousness of the principal character before the on-looking nations; his face lit with the thought, and he said to himself that he wished he could be that child, if it was a tame lion. now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed. presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. it was a large black beetle with formidable jawsa "pinch-bug," he called it. it was in a percussion-cap box. the first thing the beetle did was to take him by the finger. a natural fillip followed, the beetle went floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went into the boy's mouth. the beetle lay there working its helpless legs, unable to turn over. tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was safe out of his reach. other people uninterested in the sermon, found relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. presently a vagrant poodle dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. he spied the beetle; the drooping tail lifted and wagged. he surveyed the prize; walked around it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again; grew bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a gingerly snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another; began to enjoy the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle between his paws, and continued his experiments; grew weary at last, and then indifferent and absent-minded. his head nodded, and little by little his chin descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. there was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of yards away, and lit on its back once more. the neighboring spectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind fans and handkerchiefs, and tom was entirely happy. the dog looked foolish, and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart, too, and a craving for revenge. so he went to the beetle and began a wary attack on it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with his forepaws within an inch of the creature, making even closer snatches at it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his ears flapped again. but he grew tired once more, after a while; tried to amuse himself with a fly but found no relief; followed an ant around, with his nose close to the floor, and quickly wearied of that; yawned, sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and sat down on it! then there was a wild yelp of agony and the poodle went sailing up the aisle; the yelps continued, and so did the dog; he crossed the house in front of the altar; he flew down the other aisle; he crossed before the doors; he clamored up the home-stretch; his anguish grew with his progress, till presently he was but a woolly comet moving in its orbit with the gleam and the speed of light. at last the frantic sufferer sheered from its course, and sprang into its master's lap; he flung it out of the window, and the voice of distress quickly thinned away and died in the distance. by this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead stand-still. the discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson had said a rarely facetious thing. it was a genuine relief to the whole congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction pronounced. tom sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of variety in it. he had but one marring thought; he was willing that the dog should play with his pinch-bug, but he did not think it was upright in him to carry it off. chapter 6 tom meets becky monday morning found tom sawyer miserable. monday morning always found him sobecause it began another week's slow suffering in school. he generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening holiday, it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much more odious. tom lay thinking. presently it occurred to him that he wished he was sick; then he could stay home from school. here was a vague possibility. he canvassed his system. no ailment was found, and he investigated again. this time he thought he could detect colicky symptoms, and he began to encourage them with considerable hope. but they soon grew feeble, and presently died wholly away. he reflected further. suddenly he discovered something. one of his upper front teeth was loose. this was lucky; he was about to begin to groan, as a "starter," as he called it, when it occured to him that if he came into court with that argument, his aunt would pull it out, and that would hurt. so he thought he would hold the tooth in reserve for the present, and seek further. nothing offered for some little time, and then he remembered hearing the doctor tell about a certain thing that laid up a patient for two or three weeks and threatened to make him lose a finger. so the boy eagerly drew his sore toe from under the sheet and held it up for inspection. but now he did not know the necessary symptoms. however, it seemed well worth while to chance it, so he fell to groaning with considerable spirit. but sid slept on unconscious. tom groaned louder, and fancied that he began to feel pain in the toe. no result from sid. tom was panting with his exertions by this time. he took a rest and then swelled himself up and fetched a succession of admirable groans. sid snored on. tom was aggravated. he said, "sid, sid!" and shook him. this course worked well, and tom began to groan again. sid yawned, stretched, then brought himself up on his elbow with a snort, and began to stare at tom. tom went on groaning. sid said: "tom! say, tom!" [no response.] "here, tom! tom! what is the matter, tom?" and he shook him, and looked in his face anxiously. tom moaned out: "o don't, sid. don't joggle me." "why what's the matter, tom? i must call auntie." "nonever mind. it'll be over by and by, maybe. don't call anybody." "but i must! don't groan so, tom, it's awful. how long you been this way?" "hours. ouch! o don't stir so, sid, you'll kill me." "tom, why didn't you wake me sooner? o, tom, don't! it makes my flesh crawl to hear you. tom, what is the matter?" "i forgive you everything, sid. [groan.] everything you've ever done to me. when i'm gone-" "o, tom, you ain't dying, are you? don't, tomo, don't. maybe-" "i forgive everybody, sid. [groan.] tell 'em so, sid. and sid, you give my window-sash and my cat with one eye to that new girl that's come to town, and tell her-" but sid had snatched his clothes and gone. tom was suffering in reality, now, so handsomely was his imagination working, and so his groans had gathered quite a genuine tone. sid flew down stairs and said: "o, aunt polly, come! tom's dying!" "dying." "yes'm. don't waitcome quick!" "rubbage! i don't believe it!" but she fled up stairs, nevertheless, with sid and mary at her heels. and her face grew white, too, and her lip trembled. when she reached the bedside she gasped out: "you tom! tom, what's the matter with you?" "o, auntie, i'm-" "what's the matter with youwhat is the matter with you, child!" "o, auntie, my sore toe's mortified!" the old lady sank down into a chair and laughed a little, then cried a little, then did both together. this restored her and she said: "tom, what a turn you did give me. now you shut up that nonsense and climb out of this." the groans ceased and the pain vanished from the toe. the boy felt a little foolish, and he said: "aunt polly it seemed mortified, and it hurt so i never minded my tooth at all." "your tooth, indeed! what's the matter with your tooth?" "one of them's loose, and it aches perfectly awful." "there, there, now, don't begin that groaning again. open your mouth. wellyour tooth is loose, but you're not going to die about that. mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen." tom said: "o, please auntie, don't pull it out. it don't hurt any more. i wish i may never stir if it does. please don't, auntie. i don't want to stay home from school." "oh, you don't, don't you? so all this row was because you thought you'd get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? tom, tom, i love you so, and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart with your outrageousness." by this time the dental instruments were ready. the old lady made one end of the silk thread fast to tom's tooth with a loop and tied the other to the bedpost. then she seized the chunk of fire and suddenly thrust it almost into the boy's face. the tooth hung dangling by the bedpost, now. but all trials bring their compensations. as tom wended to school after breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in his upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and admirable way. he gathered quite a following of lads interested in the exhibition; and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of fascination and homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly without an adherent, and shorn of his glory. his heart was heavy, and he said with a disdain which he did not feel, that it wasn't anything to spit like tom sawyer; but another boy said "sour grapes!" and he wandered away a dismantled hero. shortly tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, huckleberry finn, son of the town drunkard. huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town because he was idle, and lawless, and vulgar and badand because all their children admired him so, and delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like him. tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him. so he played with him every time he got a chance. huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. his hat was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat, when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing; the fringed legs dragged in the dirt when not rolled up. huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. he slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. in a word, everything that goes to make life precious, that boy had. so thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in st. petersburg. tom hailed the romantic outcast: "hello, huckleberry!" "hello yourself, and see how you like it." "what's that you got?" "dead cat." "lemme see him, huck. my, he's pretty stiff. where'd you get him?" "bought him off'n a boy." "what did you give?" "i give a blue ticket and a bladder that i got at the slaughter house." "where'd you get the blue ticket?" "bought it off'n ben rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick." "saywhat is dead cats good for, huck?" "good for? cure warts with." "no! is that so? i know something that's better." "i bet you don't. what is it?" "why, spunk-water." "spunk-water! i wouldn't give a dem for spunk-water." "you wouldn't, wouldn't you? d'you ever try it?" "no, i hain't. but bob tanner did." "who told you so!" "why he told jeff thatcher, and jeff told johnny baker, and johnny told jim hollis, and jim told ben rogers, and ben told a nigger, and the nigger told me. there, now!" "well, what of it? they'll all lie. leastways all but the nigger. i don't know him. but i never see a nigger that wouldn't lie. shucks! now you tell me how bob tanner done it, huck." "why he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the rain water was." "in the daytime?" "cert'nly." "with his face to the stump?" "yes. least i reckon so." "did he say anything?" "i don't reckon he did. i don't know." "aha! talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame fool way as that! why that ain't a-going to do any good. you got to go all by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the stump and jam your hand in and say: "barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts, spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts;" and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody. because if you speak the charm's busted." "well that sounds like a good way; but that ain't the way bob tanner done." "no, sir, you can bet he didn't, becuz he's the wartiest boy in this town; and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to work spunk-water. i've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way, huck. i play with frogs so much that i've always got considerable many warts. sometimes i take 'em off with a bean." "yes, bean's good. i've done that." "have you? what's your way?" "you take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some blood, and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and dig a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the cross-roads in the dark of the moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. you see that piece that's got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the wart, and pretty soon off she comes." "yes, that's it, huckthat's it; though when you're burying it, if you say 'down bean; off, wart; come no more to bother me!' it's better. that's the way joe harper does, and he's been nearly to constantinople and most everywheres. but sayhow do you cure 'em with dead cats?" "why you take your cat and go and get in the graveyard 'long about midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried; and when it's midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em talk; and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat after 'em and say 'devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, i'm done with ye!' that'll fetch any wart." "sounds right. d'you ever try it, huck?" "no, but old mother hopkins told me." "well i reckon it's so, then. becuz they say she's a witch." "say! why tom i know she is. she witched pap. pap says so his own self. he come along one day, and he see she was a-witching him, so he took up a rock, and if she hadn't dodged, he'd a got her. well that very night he rolled off'n a shed wher' he was a-layin' drunk, and broke his arm." "why that's awful. how did he know she was a-witching him." "lord, pap can tell, easy. pap says when they keep looking at you right stiddy, they're a-witching you. specially if they mumble. becuz when they mumble they're a-saying the lord's prayer back'ards." "say, huck, when you going to try the cat?" "to-night. i reckon they'll come after old hoss williams to-night." "but they buried him saturday, huck. didn't they get him saturday night?" "why how you talk! how could their charms work till midnight?and then it's sunday. devils don't slosh around much of a sunday, i don't reckon." "i never thought of that. that's so. lemme go with you?" "of courseif you ain't afeard." "afeard! 'tain't likely. will you meow?" "yesand you meow back, if you get a chance. last time, you kep' me a-meowing around till old hays went to throwing rocks at me and says 'dem that cat!' and so i hove a brick through his windowbut don't you tell." "i won't. i couldn't meow that night, becuz auntie was watching me, but i'll meow this time. say, huck, what's that?" "nothing but a tick." "where'd you get him?" "out in the woods." "what'll you take for him?" "i don't know. i don't want to sell him." "all right. it's a mighty small tick, anyway." "o, anybody can run a tick down that don't belong to them. i'm satisfied with it. it's a good enough tick for me." "sho, there's ticks a plenty. i could have a thousand of 'em if i wanted to." "well why don't you? becuz you know mighty well you can't. this is a pretty early tick, i reckon. it's the first one i've seen this year." "say hucki'll give you my tooth for him." "less see it." tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. huckleberry viewed it wistfully. the temptation was very strong. at last he said: "is it genuwyne?" tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy. "well, all right," said huckleberry, "it's a trade." tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the pinch-bug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than before. when tom reached the little isolated frame school-house, he strode in briskly, with the manner of one who had come with all honest speed. he hung his hat on a peg and flung himself into his seat with business-like alacrity. the master, throned on high in his great splint-bottom arm-chair, was dozing, lulled by the drowsy hum of study. the interruption roused him. "thomas sawyer!" tom knew that when his name was pronounced in full, it meant trouble. "sir!" "come up here. now sir, why are you late again, as usual?" tom was about to take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric sympathy of love; and by that form was the only vacant place on the girl's side of the school-house. he instantly said: "i stopped to talk with huckleberry finn!" the master's pulse stood still, and he stared helplessly. the buzz of study ceased. the pupils wondered if this fool-hardy boy had lost his mind. the master said: "youyou did what?" "stopped to talk with huckleberry finn." there was no mistaking the words. "thomas sawyer, this is the most astounding confession i have ever listened to. no mere ferule will answer for this offense. take off your jacket." the master's arm performed until it was tired and the stock of switches notably diminished. then the order followed: "now sir, go and sit with the girls! and let this be a warning to you." the titter that rippled around the room appeared to abash the boy, but in reality that result was caused rather more by his worshipful awe of his unknown idol and the dread pleasure that lay in his high good fortune. he sat down upon the end of the pine bench and the girl hitched herself away from him with a toss of her head. nudges and winks and whispers traversed the room, but tom sat still, with his arms upon the long, low desk before him, and seemed to study his book. by and by attention ceased from him, and the accustomed school murmur rose upon the dull air once more. presently the boy began to steal furtive glances at the girl. she observed it, "made a mouth" at him and gave him the back of her head for the space of a minute. when she cautiously faced around again, a peach lay before her. she thrust it away. tom gently put it back. she thrust it away, again, but with less animosity. tom patiently returned it to its place. then she let it remain. tom scrawled on his slate, "please take iti got more." the girl glanced at the words, but made no sign. now the boy began to draw something on the slate, hiding his work with his left hand. for a time the girl refused to notice; but her human curiosity presently began to manifest itself by hardly perceptible signs. the boy worked on, apparently unconscious. the girl made a sort of non-committal attempt to see, but the boy did not betray that he was aware of it. at last she gave in and hesitatingly whispered: "let me see it." tom partly uncovered a dismal caricature of a house with two gable ends to it and a cork-screw of smoke issuing from the chimneys. then the girl's interest began to fasten itself upon the work and she forgot everything else. when it was finished, she gazed a moment, then whispered: "it's nicemake a man." the artist erected a man in the front yard, that resembled a derrick. he could have stepped over the house; but the girl was not hypercritical; she was satisfied with the monster, and whispered: "it's a beautiful mannow make me coming along." tom drew an hour-glass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and armed the spreading fingers with a portentous fan. the girl said: "it's ever so nicei wish i could draw." "it's easy," whispered tom, "i'll learn you." "o, will you? when?" "at noon. do you go home to dinner?" "i'll stay, if you will." "good,that's a whack. what's your name?" "becky thatcher. what's yours? oh, know. it's thomas sawyer." "that's the name they lick me by. i'm tom, when i'm good. you call me tom, will you?" "yes." now tom began to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from the girl. but she was not backward this time. she begged to see. tom said: "oh it ain't anything." "yes it is." "no it ain't. you don't want to see." "yes i do, indeed i do. please let me." "you'll tell." "no i won'tdeed and deed and double deed i won't." "you won't tell anybody at all?ever, as long as you live?" "no i won't ever tell anybody. now let me." "oh, you don't want to see!" "now that you treat me so, i will see." and she put her small hand upon his and a little scuffle ensued, tom pretending to resist in earnest but letting his hand slip by degrees till these words were revealed: "i love you." "o, you bad thing!" and she hit his hand a smart rap, but reddened and looked pleased, nevertheless. just at this juncture the boy felt a slow, fateful grip closing on his ear, and a steady, lifting impulse. in that vise he was borne across the house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles from the whole school. then the master stood over him during a few awful moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a word. but although tom's ear tingled, his heart was jubilant. as the school quieted down tom made an honest effort to study, but the turmoil within him was too great. in turn he took his place in the reading class and made a botch of it; then in the geography class and turned lakes into mountains, mountains into rivers, and rivers into continents, till chaos was come again; then in the spelling class, and got "turned down," by a succession of mere baby words till he brought up at the foot and yielded up the pewter medal which he had worn with ostentation for months. chapter 7 tick-running and heartbreak the harder tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas wandered. so at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. it seemed to him that the noon recess would never come. the air was utterly dead. there was not a breath stirring. it was the sleepiest of sleepy days. the drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying scholars soothed the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees. away off in the flaming sunshine, cardiff hill lifted its soft green sides through a shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of distance; a few birds floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other living thing was visible but some cows, and they were asleep. tom's heart ached to be free, or else to have something of interest to do to pass the dreary time. his hand wandered into his pocket and his face lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. he released the tick and put him on the long flat desk. the creature probably glowed with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, tom turned him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction. tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as tom had been, and now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in an instant. this bosom friend was joe harper. the two boys were sworn friends all the week, and embattled enemies on saturdays. joe took a pin out of his lappel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner. the sport grew in interest momently. soon tom said that they were interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of the tick. so he put joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the middle of it from top to bottom. "now," said he, "as long as he is on your side you can stir him up and i'll let him alone; but if you let him get away and get on my side, you're to leave him alone as long as i can keep him from crossing over." "all rightgo aheadstart him up." the tick escaped from tom, presently, and crossed the equator. joe harassed him a while, and then he got away and crossed back again. this change of base occurred often. while one boy was worrying the tick with absorbing interest, the other would look on with interest as strong, the two heads bowed together over the slate, and the two souls dead to all things else. at last luck seemed to settle and abide with joe. the tick tried this, that, and the other course, and got as excited and as anxious as the boys themselves, but time and again just as he would have victory in his very grasp, so to speak, and tom's fingers would be twitching to begin, joe's pin would deftly head him off, and keep possession. at last tom could stand it no longer. the temptation was too strong. so he reached out and lent a hand with his pin. joe was angry in a moment. said he: "tom, you let him alone." "i only just want to stir him up a little, joe." "no, sir, it ain't fair; you just let him alone." "blame it, i ain't going to stir him much." "let him alone, i tell you!" "i won't!" "you shallhe's on my side of the line." "look here, joe harper, whose is that tick?" "i don't care whose tick he ishe's on my side of the line, and you shan't touch him." "well i'll just bet i will, though. he's my tick and i'll do what i blame please with him, or die!" a tremendous whack came down on tom's shoulders, and its duplicate on joe's; and for the space of two minutes the dust continued to fly from the two jackets and the whole school to enjoy it. the boys had been too absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school a while before when the master came tip-toeing down the room and stood over them. he had contemplated a good part of the performance before he contributed his bit of variety to it. when school broke up at noon, tom flew to becky thatcher, and whispered in her ear: "put on your bonnet and let on you're going home; and when you get to the corner, give the rest of 'em the slip, and turn down through the lane and come back. i'll go the other way and come it over 'em the same way." so the one went off with one group of scholars, and the other with another. in a little while the two met at the bottom of the lane, and when they reached the school they had it all to themselves. then they sat together, with a slate before them, and tom gave becky the pencil and held her hand in his, guiding it, and so created another surprising house. when the interest in art began to wane, the two fell to talking. tom was swimming in bliss. he said: "do you love rats?" "no! i hate them!" "well, i do toolive ones. but i mean dead ones, to swing round your head with a string." "no, i don't care for rats much, anyway. what i like, is chewing-gum." "o, i should say so! i wish i had some now." "do you? i've got some. i'll let you chew it a while, but you must give it back to me." that was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their legs against the bench in excess of contentment. "was you ever at a circus?" said tom. "yes, and my pa's going to take me again some time, if i'm good." "i been to the circus three or four timeslots of times. church ain't shucks to a circus. there's things going on at a circus all the time. i'm going to be a clown in a circus when i grow up." "o, are you! that will be nice. they're so lovely, all spotted up." "yes, that's so. and they get slathers of moneymost a dollar a day, ben rogers says. say, becky, was you ever engaged?" "what's that?" "why, engaged to be married." "no." "would you like to?" "i reckon so. i don't know. what is it like?" "like? why it ain't like anything. you only just tell a boy you won't ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that's all. anybody can do it." "kiss? what do you kiss for?" "why that, you know, is towell, they always do that." "everybody." "why yes, everybody that's in love with each other. do you remember what i wrote on the slate?" "yeyes." "what was it?" "i shan't tell you." "shall i tell you?" "yeyesbut some other time." "no, now." "no, not nowto-morrow." "o, no, now. please beckyi'll whisper it, i'll whisper it ever so easy." becky hesitating, tom took silence for consent, and passed his arm about her waist and whispered the tale ever so softly, with his mouth close to her ear. and then he added: "now you whisper it to mejust the same." she resisted, for a while, and then said: "you turn your face away so you can't see, and then i will. but you mustn't ever tell anybodywill you, tom? now you won't, will you?" "no, indeed indeed i won't. now becky." he turned his face away. she bent timidly around till her breath stirred his curls and whispered, "iloveyou!" then she sprang away and ran around and around the desks and benches, with tom after her, and took refuge in a corner at last, with her little white apron to her face. tom clasped her about her neck and pleaded: "now becky, it's all doneall over but the kiss. don't you be afraid of thatit ain't anything at all. please, becky."and he tugged at her apron and the hands. by and by she gave up, and let her hands drop; her face, all glowing with the struggle, came up and submitted. tom kissed the red lips and said: "now it's all done, becky. and always after this, you know, you ain't ever to love anybody but me, and you ain't ever to marry anybody but me, never never and forever. will you?" "no, i'll never love anybody but you, tom, and i'll never marry anybody but youand you ain't to ever marry anybody but me, either." "certainly. of course. that's part of it. and always coming to school or when we're going home, you're to walk with me, when there ain't anybody lookingand you choose me and i choose you at parties, because that's the way you do when you're engaged." "it's so nice. i never heard of it before." "o it's ever so gay! why me and amy lawrence" the big eyes told tom his blunder and he stopped, confused. "o, tom! then i ain't the first you've ever been engaged to!" the child began to cry. tom said: "o don't cry, becky, i don't care for her any more." "yes you do, tom,you know you do." tom tried to put his arm about her neck, but she pushed him away and turned her face to the wall, and went on crying. tom tried again, with soothing words in his mouth, and was repulsed again. then his pride was up, and he strode away and went outside. he stood about, restless and uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door, every now and then, hoping she would repent and come to find him. but she did not. then he began to feel badly and fear that he was in the wrong. it was a hard struggle with him to make new advances, now, but he nerved himself to it and entered. she was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing, with her face to the wall. tom's heart smote him. he went to her and stood a moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed. then he said hesitatingly: "becky, ii don't care for anybody but you." no replybut sobs. "becky,"pleadingly. "becky, won't you say something?" more sobs. tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an andiron, and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said: "please, becky, won't you take it?" she struck it to the floor. then tom marched out of the house and over the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. presently becky began to suspect. she ran to the door; he was not in sight; she flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. then she called: "tom! come back, tom!" she listened intently, but there was no answer. she had no companions but silence and loneliness. so she sat down to cry again and upbraid herself; and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers about her to exchange sorrows with. chapter 8 a pirate bold to be tom dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. he crossed a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. half an hour later he was disappearing behind the douglas mansion on the summit of cardiff hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the valley behind him. he entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak. there was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound. the boy's soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings. he sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. it seemed to him that life was but a trouble, at best, and he more than half envied jimmy hodges, so lately released; it must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more. if he only had a clean sunday-school record he could be willing to go, and be done with it all. now as to this girl. what had he done? nothing. he had meant the best in the world, and been treated like a doglike a very dog. she would be sorry some daymaybe when it was too late. ah, if he could only die temporarily! but the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time. tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the concerns of this life again. what if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? what if he went awayever so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seasand never came back any more! how would she feel then! the idea of being a clown recurred to him now, only to fill him with disgust. for frivolity, and jokes, and spotted tights were an offense, when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague august realm of the romantic. no, he would be a soldier, and return, after long years, all war-worn and illustrious. nobetter still, he would join the indians, and hunt buffaloes and go on the war-path in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the far west, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and prance into sunday-school, some drowsy summer morning, with a blood-curdling war-whoop, and sear the eye-balls of all his companions with unappeasable envy. but no, there was something gaudier even than this. he would be a pirate! that was it! now his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. how his name would fill the world, and make people shudder! how gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the "spirit of the storm," with his grisly flag flying at the fore! and at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village and stalk into church, all brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson sash, his belt bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull and cross-bones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings, "it's tom sawyer the pirate!the black avenger of the spanish main!" yes, it was settled; his career was determined. he would run away from home and enter upon it. he would start the very next morning. therefore he must now begin to get ready. he would collect his resources together. he went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under one end of it with his barlow knife. he soon struck wood that sounded hollow. he put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively: "what hasn't come here, come! what's here, stay here!" then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. he took it up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides were of shingles. in it lay a marble. tom's astonishment was boundless! he scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said: "well, that beats anything!" then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. the truth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. if you buried a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they had been separated. but now, this thing had actually and unquestionably failed. tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. he had many a time heard of this thing succeeding, but never of its failing before. it did not occur to him that he had tried it several times before, himself, but could never find the hiding places afterwards. he puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided that some witch had interfered and broken the charm. he thought he would satisfy himself on that point; so he searched around till he found a small sandy spot with a little funnel-shaped depression in it. he laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and called: "doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what i want to know! doodle-bug, doodle-bug tell me what i want to know!" the sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a second and then darted under again in a fright. "he dasn't tell! so it was a witch that done it. i just knowed it." he well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he gave up discouraged. but it occurred to him that he might as well have the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a patient search for it. but he could not find it. now he went back to his treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying: "brother go find your brother!" he watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. but it must have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. the last repetition was successful. the two marbles lay within a foot of each other. just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green aisles of the forest. tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log, disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin trumpet, and in a moment had seized these things and bounded away, bare-legged, with fluttering shirt. he presently halted under a great elm, blew an answering blast, and then began to tip-toe and look warily out, this way and that. he said cautiouslyto an imaginary company: "hold, my merry men! keep hid till i blow." now appeared joe harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as tom. tom called: "hold! who comes here into sherwood forest without my pass?" "guy of guisborne wants no man's pass. who art thou thatthat-" -"dares to hold such language," said tom, promptingfor they talked "by the book," from memory. "who art thou that dares to hold such language?" "i, indeed! i am robin hood, as thy caitiff carcass soon shall know." "then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? right gladly will i dispute with thee the passes of the merry wood. have at thee!" they took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground, struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful combat, "two up and two down." presently tom said: "now if you've got the hang, go it lively!" so they "went it lively," panting and perspiring with the work. by and by tom shouted: "fall! fall! why don't you fall?" "i shan't! why don't you fall yourself.? you're getting the worst of it." "why that ain't anything. i can't fall; that ain't the way it is in the book. the book says 'then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor guy of guisborne.' you're to turn around and let me hit you in the back." there was no getting around the authorities, so joe turned, received the whack and fell. "now," said joegetting up, "you got to let me kill you. that's fair." "why i can't do that, it ain't in the book." "well it's blamed mean,that's all." "well, say, joe, you can be friar tuck or much the miller's son and lam me with a quarter-staff; or i'll be the sheriff of nottingham and you be robin hood a little while and kill me." this was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. then tom became robin hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to bleed his strength away through his neglected wound. and at last joe, representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged him sadly forth, gave his bow into his feeble hands, and tom said, "where this arrow falls, there bury poor robin hood under the greenwood tree." then he shot the arrow and fell back and would have died but he lit on a nettle and sprang up too gaily for a corpse. the boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss. they said they would rather be outlaws a year in sherwood forest than president of the united states forever. chapter 9 tragedy in the grave yard at half past nine, that night, tom and sid were sent to bed, as usual. they said their prayers, and sid was soon asleep. tom lay awake and waited, in restless impatience. when it seemed to him that it must be nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! this was despair. he would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was afraid he might wake sid. so he lay still, and stared up into the dark. everything was dismally still. by and by, out of the stillness little scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. the ticking of the clock began to bring itself into notice. old beams began to crack mysteriously. the stairs creaked faintly. evidently spirits were abroad. a measured, muffled snore issued from aunt polly's chamber. and now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could locate, began. next the ghastly ticking of a death-watch in the wall at the bed's head made tom shudderit meant that somebody's days were numbered. then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air and was answered by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. tom was in an agony. at last he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity begun; he began to doze, in spite of himself, the clock chimed eleven but he did not hear it. and then there came mingling with his half-formed dreams, a most melancholy caterwauling. the raising of a neighboring window disturbed him. a cry of "scat! you devil!" and the crash of an empty bottle against the back of his aunt's woodshed brought him wide awake, and a single minute later he was dressed and out of the window and creeping along the roof of the "ell" on all fours. he "meow'd" with caution once or twice, as he went; then jumped to the roof of the woodshed and thence to the ground. huckleberry finn was there, with his dead cat. the boys moved off and disappeared in the gloom. at the end of half an hour they were wading through the tall grass of the graveyard. it was a graveyard of the old-fashioned western kind. it was on a hill, about a mile and a half from the village. it had a crazy board fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of the time, but stood upright nowhere. grass and weeds grew rank over the whole cemetery. all the old graves were sunken in. there was not a tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over the graves, leaning for support and finding none. "sacred to the memory of" so-and-so had been painted on them once, but it could no longer have been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light. a faint wind moaned through the trees, and tom feared it might be the spirits of the dead complaining at being disturbed. the boys talked little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. they found the sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet of the grave. then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. the hooting of a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness. tom's reflections grew oppressive. he must force some talk. so he said in a whisper: "hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?" huckleberry whispered: "i wisht i knowed. it's awful solemn like, ain't it?" "i bet it is." there was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter inwardly. then tom whispered: "say, huckydo you reckon hoss williams hears us talking?" "o' course he does. least his sperrit does." tom, after a pause: "i wish i'd said mister williams. but i never meant any harm. everybody calls him hoss." "a body can't be too partic'lar how they talk 'bout these-yer dead people, tom." this was a damper, and conversation died again, presently tom seized his comrade's arm and said: "sh!" "what is it, tom?" and the two clung together with beating hearts. "sh! there 'tis again! didn't you hear it?" "i-" "there! now you hear it." "lord, tom they're coming! they're coming, sure. what'll we do?" "i dono. think they'll see us?" "o, tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. i wisht i hadn't come." "o, don't be afeard. i don't believe they'll bother us. we ain't doing any harm. if we keep perfectly still, maybe they won't notice us at all." "i'll try to, tom, but lord i'm all of a shiver." "listen!" the boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. a muffled sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard. "look! see there!" whispered tom. "what is it?" "it's devil-fire. o, tom, this is awful." some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an old-fashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable little spangles of light. presently huckleberry whispered with a shudder: "it's the devils sure enough. three of 'em! lordy, tom, we're goners! can you pray?" "i'll try, but don't you be afeard. they ain't going to hurt us. now i lay me down to sleep, i-" "sh!" "what is it, huck?" "they're humans! one of 'em is, anyway. one of 'em's old muff potter's voice." "no'tain't so, is it?" "i bet i know it. don't you stir nor budge. he ain't sharp enough to notice us. drunk, same as usual, likelyblamed old rip!" "all right, i'll keep still. now they're stuck. can't find it. here they come again. now they're hot. cold again. hot again. red hot! they're p'inted right, this time. say huck, i know another o' them voices; it's injun joe." "that's sothat murderin' half-breed! i'd druther they was devils, a dem sight. what kin they be up to?" the whispers died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the grave and stood within a few feet of the boys' hiding-place. "here it is," said the third voice; and the owner of it held the lantern up and revealed the face of young dr. robinson. potter and injun joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a couple of shovels on it. they cast down their load and began to open the grave. the doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came and sat down with his back against one of the elm trees. he was so close the boys could have touched him. "hurry, men!" he said in a low voice; "the moon might come out at any moment." they growled a response and went on digging. for some time there was no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of mould and gravel. it was very monotonous. finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. they pried off the lid with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. the moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. the barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said: "now the cussed thing's ready, sawbones, and you'll just out with another five, or here she stays." "that's the talk!" said injun joe. "look here, what does this mean?" said the doctor. "you required your pay in advance, and i've paid you." "yes, and you done more than that," said injun joe, approaching the doctor, who was now standing. "five year ago you drove me away from your father's kitchen one night, when i come to ask for something to eat, and you said i warn't there for any good; and when i swore i'd get even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for a vagrant. did you think i'd forget? the injun blood ain't in me for nothing. and now i've got you, and you got to settle, you know!" he was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this time. the doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the ground. potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed: "here, now, don't you hit my pard!" and the next moment he had grappled with the doctor and the two were struggling with might and main, trampling the grass and tearing the ground with their heels. injun joe sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched up potter's knife, and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and round about the combatants, seeking an opportunity. all at once the doctor flung himself free, seized the heavy head-board of williams' grave and felled potter to the earth with itand in the same instant the half-breed saw his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the young man's breast. he reeled and fell partly upon potter, flooding him with his blood, and in the same moment the clouds blotted out the dreadful spectacle and the two frightened boys went speeding away in the dark. presently, when the moon emerged again, injun joe was standing over the two forms, contemplating them. the doctor murmured inarticulately, gave a long gasp or two and was still. the half-breed muttered: "that score is settleddamn you." then he robbed the body. after which he put the fatal knife in potter's open right hand, and sat down on the dismantled coffin. threefourfive minutes passed, and then potter began to stir and moan. his hand closed upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it fall, with a shudder. then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and gazed at it, and then around him, confusedly. his eyes met joe's. "lord, how is this, joe?" he said. "it's a dirty business," said joe, without moving. "what did you do it for?" "i! i never done it!" "look here! that kind of talk won't wash." potter trembled and grew white. "i thought i'd got sober. i'd no business to drink to-night. but it's in my head yetworse'n when we started here. i'm all in a muddle; can't recollect anything of it hardly. tell me, joehonest, now, old fellerdid i do it? joe, i never meant to'pon my soul and honor i never meant to, joe. tell me how it was, joe. o, it's awfuland him so young and promising." "why you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard and you fell flat; and then up you come, all reeling and staggering, like, and snatched the knife and jammed it into him, just as he fetched you another awful clipand here you've laid, as dead as a wedge till now." "o, i didn't know what i was a-doing. i wish i may die this minute if i did. it was all on account of the whisky; and the excitement, i reckon. i never used a weepon in my life before, joe. i've fought, but never with weepons. they'll all say that. joe, don't tell! say you won't tell, joethat's a good feller. i always liked you joe, and stood up for you, too. don't you remember? you won't tell, will you joe?" and the poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid murderer, and clasped his appealing hands. "no, you've always been fair and square with me, muff potter, and i won't go back on you.there, now, that's as fair as a man can say." "o, joe, you're an angel. i'll bless you for this the longest day i live." and potter began to cry. "come, now, that's enough of that. this ain't any time for blubbering. you be off yonder way and i'll go this. move, now, and don't leave any tracks behind you." potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. the halfbreed stood looking after him. he muttered: "if he's as much stunned with the lick and fuddled with the rum as he had the look of being, he won't think of the knife till he's gone so far he'll be afraid to come back after it to such a place by himselfchicken-heart!" two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the lidless coffin and the open grave were under no inspection but the moon's. the stillness was complete again, too. chapter 10 dire prophecy of the howling dog the two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with horror. they glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time, apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. every stump that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them catch their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay near the village, the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed to give wings to their feet. "if we can only get to the old tannery, before we break down!" whispered tom, in short catches between breaths, "i can't stand it much longer." huckleberry's hard pantings were his only reply, and the boys fixed their eyes on the goal of their hopes and bent to their work to win it. they gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to breast they burst through the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the sheltering shadows beyond. by and by their pulses slowed down, and tom whispered: "huckleberry, what do you reckon 'll come of this?" "if dr. robinson dies, i reckon hanging 'll come of it." "do you though?" "why i know it, tom." tom thought a while, then he said: "who'll tell? we?" "what are you talking about? s'pose something happened and injun joe didn't hang? why he'd kill us some time or other, just as dead sure as we're a-laying here." "that's just what i was thinking to myself, huck." "if anybody tells, let muff potter do it, if he's fool enough. he's generally drunk enough." tom said nothingwent on thinking. presently he whispered: "huck, muff potter don't know it. how can he tell?" "what's the reason he don't know it?" "because he'd just got that whack when injun joe done it. d' you reckon he could see anything? d' you reckon he knowed anything?" "by hokey, that's so tom!" "and besides, look-a-heremaybe that whack done for him!" "no, 'tain't likely tom. he had liquor in him; i could see that; and besides, he always has. well when pap's full, you might take and belt him over the head with a church and you couldn't phase him. he says so, his own self. so it's the same with muff potter, of course. but if a man was dead sober, i reckon maybe that whack might fetch him; i dono." after another reflective silence, tom said: "hucky, you sure you can keep mum?" "tom, we got to keep mum. you know that. that injun devil wouldn't make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak 'bout this and they didn't hang him. now look-a-here, tom, less take and swear to one anotherthat's what we got to doswear to keep mum." "i'm agreed, huck. it's the best thing. would you just hold hands and swear that we-" "o, no, that wouldn't do for this. that's good enough for little rubbishy common thingsspecially with gals, cuz they go back on you anyway, and blab if they get in a huffbut there orter be writing 'bout a big thing like this. and blood." tom's whole being applauded this idea. it was deep, and dark, and awful; the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping with it. he picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moonlight, took a little fragment of "red keel" out of his pocket, got the moon on his work, and painfully scrawled these lines, emphasizing each slow down-stroke by clamping his tongue between his teeth, and letting up the pressure on the up-strokes: (see illustration.) huckleberry was filled with admiration of tom's facility in writing, and the sublimity of his language. he at once took a pin from his lappel and was going to prick his flesh, but tom said: "hold on! don't do that. a pin's brass. it might have verdigrease on it." "what's verdigrease?" "it's p'ison. that's what it is. you just swaller some of it onceyou'll see." so tom unwound the thread from one of his needles, and each boy pricked the ball of his thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood. in time, after many squeezes, tom managed to sign his initials, using the ball of his little finger for a pen. then he showed huckleberry how to make an h and an f, and the oath was complete. they buried the shingle close to the wall, with some dismal ceremonies and incantations, and the fetters that bound their tongues were considered to be locked and the key thrown away. a figure crept stealthily through a break in the other end of the ruined building, now, but they did not notice it. "tom," whispered huckleberry, "does this keep us from ever tellingalways?" "of course it does. it don't make any difference what happens, we got to keep mum. we'd drop down deaddon't you know that?" "yes, i reckon that's so." they continued to whisper for some little time. presently a dog set up a long, lugubrious howl just outsidewithin ten feet of them. the boys clasped each other suddenly, in an agony of fright. "which of us does he mean?" gasped huckleberry. "i donopeep through the crack. quick!" "no, you, tom!" "i canti can't do it, huck!" "please, tom. there 'tis again!" "o, lordy, i'm thankful!" whispered tom. "i know his voice. it's bull harbison." "o, that's goodi tell you, tom, i was most scared to death; i'd a bet anything it was a stray dog." the dog howled again. the boys' hearts sank once more. "o, my! that ain't no bull harbison!" whispered huckleberry. "do, tom!" tom, quaking with fear, yielded, and put his eye to the crack. his whisper was hardly audible when he said: "o, huck, it's a stray dog!" "quick, tom, quick! who does he mean?" "huck, he must mean us bothwe're right together." "o, tom, i reckon we're goners. i reckon there ain't no mistake 'bout where i'll go to. i been so wicked." "dad fetch it! this comes of playing hookey and doing everything a feller's told not to do. i might a been good, like sid, if i'd a triedbut no, i wouldn't, of course. but if ever i get off this time, i lay i'll just waller in sunday-schools!" and tom began to snuffle a little. "you bad!" and huckleberry began to snuffle, too. "consound it, tom sawyer, you're just old pie, 'longside o'what i am. o, lordy, lordy, lordy, i wisht i only had half your chance." tom choked off and whispered: "look, hucky, look! he's got his back to us!" hucky looked, with joy in his heart. "well he has, by jingoes! did he before?" "yes, he did. but i, like a fool, never thought. o, this is bully, you know. now, who can he mean?" the howling stopped. tom pricked up his ears. "sh! what's that?" he whispered. "sounds likelike hogs grunting. noit's somebody snoring, tom." "that is it? where 'bouts is it, huck?" "i bleeve it's down at t'other end. sounds so, anyway. pap used to sleep there, sometimes, 'long with the hogs, but laws bless you, he just lifts things when he snores. besides, i reckon he ain't ever coming back to this town any more." the spirit of adventure rose in the boys' souls once more. "hucky do you das't to go if i lead?" "i don't like to, much. tom, s'pose it's injun joe!" tom quailed. but presently the temptation rose up strong again and the boys agreed to try, with the understanding that they would take to their heels if the snoring stopped. so they went tip-toeing stealthily down, the one behind the other. when they had got to within five steps of the snorer, tom stepped on a stick, and it broke with a sharp snap. the man moaned, writhed a little, and his face came into the moonlight. it was muff potter. the boys' hearts had stood still, and their hopes too, when the man moved, but their fears passed away now. they tip-toed out, through the broken weather-boarding, and stopped at a little distance to exchange a parting word. that long, lugubrious howl rose on the night air again! they turned and saw the strange dog standing within a few feet of where potter was lying, and facing potter, with his nose pointing heavenward. "o, geeminy it's him!" exclaimed both boys, in a breath. "say, tomthey say a stray dog come howling around johnny miller's house, 'bout midnight, as much as two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill come in and lit on the bannisters and sung, the very same evening; and there ain't anybody dead there yet." "well i know that. and suppose there ain't. didn't gracie miller fall in the kitchen fire and burn herself terrible the very next saturday?" "yes, but she ain't dead. and what's more, she's getting better, too." "all right, you wait and see. she's a goner, just as dead sure as muff potter's a goner. that's what the niggers say, and they know all about these kind of things, huck." then they separated, cogitating. when tom crept in at his bedroom window, the night was almost spent. he undressed with excessive caution, and fell asleep congratulating himself that nobody knew of his escapade. he was not aware that the gently-snoring sid was awake, and had been so for an hour. when tom awoke, sid was dressed and gone. there was a late look in the light, a late sense in the atmosphere. he was startled. why had he not been calledpersecuted till he was up, as usual? the thought filled him with bodings. within five minutes he was dressed and down stairs, feeling sore and drowsy. the family were still at table, but they had finished breakfast. there was no voice of rebuke; but there were averted eyes; there was a silence and an air of solemnity that struck a chill to the culprit's heart. he sat down and tried to seem gay, but it was up-hill work; it roused no smile, no response, and he lapsed into silence and let his heart sink down to the depths. after breakfast his aunt took him aside, and tom almost brightened in the hope that he was going to be flogged; but it was not so. his aunt wept over him and asked him how he could go and break her old heart so; and finally told him to go on, and ruin himself and bring her gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, for it was no use for her to try any more. this was worse than a thousand whippings, and tom's heart was sorer now than his body. he cried, he pleaded for forgiveness, promised reform over and over again and then received his dismissal, feeling that he had won but an imperfect forgiveness and established but a feeble confidence. he left the presence too miserable to even feel revengeful toward sid; and so the latter's prompt retreat through the back gate was unnecessary. he moped to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging, along with joe harper, for playing hooky the day before, with the air of one whose heart was busy with heavier woes and wholly dead to trifles. then he betook himself to his seat, rested his elbows on his desk and his jaws in his hands and stared at the wall with the stony stare of suffering that has reached the limit and can no further go. his elbow was pressing against some hard substance. after a long time he slowly and sadly changed his position, and took up this object with a sigh. it was in a paper. he unrolled it. a long, lingering, colossal sigh followed, and his heart broke. it was his brass andiron knob! this final feather broke the camel's back. chapter 11 conscience racks torn close upon the hour of noon the whole village was suddenly electrified with the ghastly news. no need of the as yet undreamed-of telegraph; the tale flew from man to man, from group to group, from house to house, with little less than telegraphic speed. of course the schoolmaster gave holiday for that afternoon; the town would have thought strangely of him if he had not. a gory knife had been found close to the murdered man, and it had been recognized by somebody as belonging to muff potterso the story ran. and it was said that a belated citizen had come upon potter washing himself in the "branch" about one or two o'clock in the morning, and that potter had at once sneaked offsuspicious circumstances, especially the washing, which was not a habit with potter. it was also said that the town had been ransacked for this "murderer" (the public are not slow in the matter of sifting evidence and arriving at a verdict) but that he could not be found. horsemen had departed down all the roads in every direction, and the sheriff "was confident" that he would be captured before night. all the town was drifting toward the graveyard. tom's heart-break vanished and he joined the procession, not because he would not a thousand times rather go anywhere else, but because an awful, unaccountable fascination drew him on. arrived at the dreadful place, he wormed his small body through the crowd and saw the dismal spectacle. it seemed to him an age since he was there before. somebody pinched his arm. he turned, and his eyes met huckleberry's. then both looked elsewhere at once, and wondered if anybody had noticed anything in their mutual glance. but everybody was talking, and intent upon the grisly spectacle before them. "poor fellow!" "poor young fellow!" "this ought to be a lesson to grave-robbers!" "muff potter'll hang for this if they catch him!" this was the drift of remark; and the minister said, "it was a judgment; his hand is here." now tom shivered from head to heel; for his eye fell upon the stolid face of injun joe. at this moment the crowd began to sway and struggle, and voices shouted, "it's him! it's him! he's coming himself!" "who? who?" from twenty voices. "muff potter!" "hallo, he's stopped!look out, he's turning! don't let him get away!" people in the branches of the trees over tom's head, said he wasn't trying to get awayhe only looked doubtful and perplexed. "infernal impudence!" said a bystander; "wanted to come and take a quiet look at his work, i reckondidn't expect any company." the crowd fell apart, now, and the sheriff came through, ostentatiously leading potter by the arm. the poor fellow's face was haggard, and his eyes showed the fear that was upon him. when he stood before the murdered man, he shook as with a palsy, and he put his face in his hands and burst into tears. "i didn't do it, friends," he sobbed; "'pon my word and honor i never done it." "who's accused you?" shouted a voice. this shot seemed to carry home. potter lifted his face and looked around him with a pathetic hopelessness in his eyes. he saw injun joe, and exclaimed: "o, injun joe, you promised me you'd never-" "is that your knife?" and it was thrust before him by the sheriff. potter would have fallen if they had not caught him and eased him to the ground. then he said: "something told me 't if i didn't come back and get-" he shuddered; then waved his nerveless hand with a vanquished gesture and said, "tell 'em, joe, tell 'emit ain't any use any more." then huckleberry and tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the stony-hearted liar reel off his serene statement, they expecting every moment that the clear sky would deliver god's lightnings upon his head, and wondering to see how long the stroke was delayed. and when he had finished and still stood alive and whole, their wavering impulse to break their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner's life faded and vanished away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to satan and it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that. "why didn't you leave? what did you want to come here for?" somebody said. "i couldn't help iti couldn't help it," potter moaned. "i wanted to run away, but i couldn't seem to come anywhere but here." and he fell to sobbing again. injun joe repeated his statement, just as calmly, a few minutes afterward on the inquest, under oath; and the boys, seeing that the lightnings were still withheld, were confirmed in their belief that joe had sold himself to the devil. he was now become, to them, the most balefully interesting object they had ever looked upon, and they could not take their fascinated eyes from his face. they inwardly resolved to watch him, nights, when opportunity should offer, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his dread master. injun joe helped to raise the body of the murdered man and put it in a wagon for removal; and it was whispered through the shuddering crowd that the wound bled a little! the boys thought that this happy circumstance would turn suspicion in the right direction; but they were disappointed, for more than one villager remarked: "it was within three feet of muff potter when it done it." tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience disturbed his sleep for as much as a week after this; and at breakfast one morning sid said: "tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me awake about half the time." tom blanched and dropped his eyes. "it's a bad sign," said aunt polly, gravely. "what you got on your mind, tom?" "nothing. nothing 't i know of." but the boy's hand shook so that he spilled his coffee. "and you do talk such stuff," sid said. "last night you said 'it's blood, it's blood, that's what it is!' you said that over and over. and you said, 'don't torment me soi'll tell!' tell what? what is it you'll tell?" everything was swimming before tom. there is no telling what might have happened, now, but luckily the concern passed out of aunt polly's face and she came to tom's relief without knowing it. she said: "sho! it's that dreadful murder. i dream about it most every night myself. sometimes i dream it's me that done it." mary said she had been affected much the same way. sid seemed satisfied. tom got out of the presence as quick as he plausibly could, and after that he complained of toothache for a week and tied up his jaws every night. he never knew that sid lay nightly watching, and frequently slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow listening a good while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage back to its place again. tom's distress of mind wore off gradually and the toothache grew irksome and was discarded. if sid really managed to make anything out of tom's disjointed mutterings, he kept it to himself. it seemed to tom that his schoolmates never would get done holding inquests on dead cats, and thus keeping his trouble present to his mind. sid noticed that tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries, though it had been his habit to take the lead in all new enterprises; he noticed, too, that tom never acted as a witness,and that was strange; and sid did not overlook the fact that tom even showed a marked aversion to these inquests, and always avoided them when he could. sid marveled, but said nothing. however, even inquests went out of vogue at last, and ceased to torture tom's conscience. every day or two, during this time of sorrow, tom watched his opportunity and went to the little grated jail-window and smuggled such small comforts through to the "murderer" as he could get hold of. the jail was a trifling little brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge of the village, and no guards were afforded for it; indeed it was seldom occupied. these offerings greatly helped to ease tom's conscience. the villagers had a strong desire to tar-and-feather injun joe and ride him on a rail, for body-snatching, but so formidable was his character that nobody could be found who was willing to take the lead in the matter, so it was dropped. he had been careful to begin both of his inquest-statements with the fight, without confessing the grave-robbery that preceded it; therefore it was deemed wisest not to try the case in the courts at present. chapter 12 the cat and the painkiller one of the reasons why tom's mind had drifted away from its secret troubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest itself about. becky thatcher had stopped coming to school. tom had struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to "whistle her down the wind," but failed. he began to find himself hanging around her father's house, nights, and feeling very miserable. she was ill. what if she should die! there was distraction in the thought. he no longer took an interest in war, nor even in piracy. the charm of life was gone; there was nothing but dreariness left. he put his hoop away, and his bat; there was no joy in them any more. his aunt was concerned. she began to try all manner of remedies on him. she was one of those people who are infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of producing health or mending it. she was an inveterate experimenter in these things. when something fresh in this line came out she was in a fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing, but on anybody else that came handy. she was a subscriber for all the "health" periodicals and phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils. all the "rot" they contained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up, and what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and what frame of mind to keep one's self in, and what sort of clothing to wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her health-journals of the current month customarily upset everything they had recommended the month before. she was as simple-hearted and honest as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. she gathered together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with "hell following after." but she never suspected that she was not an angel of healing and the balm of gilead in disguise, to the suffering neighbors. the water treatment was new, now, and tom's low condition was a windfall to her. she had him out at daylight every morning, stood him up in the woodshed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water; then she scrubbed him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to; then she rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets till she sweated his soul clean and "the yellow stains of it came through his pores"as tom said. yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and pale and dejected. she added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths and plunges. the boy remained as dismal as a hearse. she began to assist the water with a slim oatmeal diet and blister plasters. she calculated his capacity as she would a jug's, and filled him up every day with quack cure-alls. tom had become indifferent to persecution, by this time. this phase filled the old lady's heart with consternation. this indifference must be broken up at any cost. now she heard of pain-killer for the first time. she ordered a lot at once. she tasted it and was filled with gratitude. it was simply fire in a liquid form. she dropped the water treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to pain-killer. she gave tom a tea-spoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the result. her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again; for the "indifference" was broken up. the boy could not have shown a wilder, heartier interest, if she had build a fire under him. tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. so he thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit upon that of professing to be fond of pain-killer. he asked for it so often that he became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her. if it had been sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was tom, she watched the bottle clandestinely. she found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting-room floor with it. one day tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow cat came along, puffing, eyeing the tea-spoon avariciously, and begging for a taste. tom said: "don't ask for it unless you want it, peter." but peter signified that he did want it. "you better make sure." peter was sure. "now you've asked for it, and i'll give it to you, because there ain't anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you musn't blame anybody but your own self." peter was agreeable. so tom pried his mouth open and poured down the pain-killer. peter sprang a couple of yards into the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots and making general havoc. next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. aunt polly entered in time to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. the old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter. "tom, what on earth ails that cat?" "i don't know, aunt," gasped the boy. "why i never see anything like it. what did make him act so?" "deed i don't know aunt polly; cats always act so when they're having a good time." "they do, do they?" there was something in the tone that made tom apprehensive. "yes'm. that is, i believe they do." "you do?" "yes'm." the old lady was bending down, tom watching, with interest emphasized by anxiety. too late he divined her "drift." the handle of the tell-tale tea-spoon was visible under the bed-valance. aunt polly took it, held it up. tom winced, and dropped his eyes. aunt polly raised him by the usual handlehis earand cracked his head soundly with her thimble. "now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?" "i done it out of pity for himbecause he hadn't any aunt." "hadn't any aunt!you numscull. what has that got to do with it?" "heaps. because if he'd a had one she'd a burnt him out herself! she'd a roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a human!" aunt polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. this was putting the thing in a new light; what was cruelty to a cat might be cruelty to a boy, too. she began to soften; she felt sorry. her eyes watered a little, and she put her hand on tom's head and said gently: "i was meaning for the best, tom. and tom, it did do you good." tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping through his gravity: "i know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was i with peter. it done him good, too. i never see him get around so since-" "o, go 'long with you, tom, before you aggravate me again. and you try and see if you can't be a good boy, for once, and you needn't take any more medicine." tom reached school ahead of time. it was noticed that this strange thing had been occurring every day latterly. and now, as usual of late, he hung about the gate of the school-yard instead of playing with his comrades. he was sick, he said, and he looked it. he tried to seem to be looking everywhere but whither he really was lookingdown the road. presently jeff thatcher hove in sight, and tom's face lighted; he gazed a moment, and then turned sorrowfully away. when jeff arrived, tom accosted him, and "led up" warily to opportunities for remark about becky, but the giddy lad never could see the bait. tom watched and watched, hoping whenever a frisking frock came in sight, and hating the owner of it as soon as he saw she was not the right one. at last frocks ceased to appear, and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps; he entered the empty school-house and sat down to suffer. then one more frock passed in at the gate, and tom's heart gave a great bound. the next instant he was out, and "going on" like an indian; yelling, laughing, chasing boys, jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb, throwing hand-springs, standing on his headdoing all the heroic things he could conceive of, and keeping a furtive eye out, all the while, to see if becky thatcher was noticing. but she seemed to be unconscious of it all; she never looked. could it be possible that she was not aware that he was there? he carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity; came war-whooping around, snatched a boy's cap, hurled it to the roof of the school-house, broke through a group of boys, tumbling them in every direction, and fell sprawling, himself, under becky's nose, almost upsetting herand she turned, with her nose in the air, and he heard her say. "mf! some people think they're mighty smartalways showing off!" tom's cheeks burned. he gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed and crestfallen. chapter 13 the pirate crew set sail tom's mind was made up now. he was gloomy and desperate. he was a forsaken, friendless boy, he said; nobody loved him; when they found out what they had driven him to, perhaps they would be sorry; he had tried to do right and get along, but they would not let him; since nothing would do them but to be rid of him, let it be so; and let them blame him for the consequenceswhy shouldn't they? what right had the friendless to complain? yes, they had forced him to it at last: he would lead a life of crime. there was no choice. by this time he was far down meadow lane, and the bell for school to "take up" tinkled faintly upon his ear. he sobbed, now, to think he should never, never hear that old familiar sound any moreit was very hard, but it was forced on him; since he was driven out into the cold world, he must submitbut he forgave them. then the sobs came thick and fast. just at this point he met his soul's sworn comrade, hoe harperhard-eyed, and with evidently a great and dismal purpose in his heart. plainly here were "two souls with but a single thought." tom, wiping his eyes with his sleeve, began to blubber out something about a resolution to escape from hard usage and lack of sympathy at home by roaming abroad into the great world never to return; and ended by hoping that joe would not forget him. but it transpired that this was a request which joe had just been going to make of tom, and had come to hunt him up for that purpose. his mother had whipped him for drinking some cream which he had never tasted and knew nothing about; it was plain that she was tired of him and wished him to go; if she felt that way, there was nothing for him to do but succumb; he hoped she would be happy, and never regret having driven her poor boy out into the unfeeling world to suffer and die. as the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a new compact to stand by each other and be brothers and never separate till death relieved them of their troubles. then they began to lay their plans. joe was for being a hermit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and dying, some time, of cold, and want, and grief; but after listening to tom, he conceded that there were some conspicuous advantages about a life of crime, and so he consented to be a pirate. three miles below st. petersburg, at a point where the mississippi river was a trifle over a mile wide, there was a long, narrow, wooded island, with a shallow bar at the head of it, and this offered well as a rendezvous. it was not inhabited; it lay far over toward the further shore, abreast a dense and almost wholly unpeopled forest. so jackson's island was chosen. who were to be the subjects of their piracies, was a matter that did not occur to them. then they hunted up huckleberry finn, and he joined them promptly, for all careers were one to him; he was indifferent. they presently separated to meet at a lonely spot on the river bank two miles above the village at the favorite hourwhich was midnight. there was a small log raft there which they meant to capture. each would bring hooks and lines, and such provision as he could steal in the most dark and mysterious wayas became outlaws. and before the afternoon was done, they had all managed to enjoy the sweet glory of spreading the fact that pretty soon the town would "hear something." all who got this vague hint were cautioned to "be mum and wait." about midnight tom arrived with a boiled ham and a few trifles, and stopped in a dense undergrowth on a small bluff overlooking the meeting-place. it was starlight, and very still. the mighty river lay like an ocean at rest. tom listened a moment, but no sound disturbed the quiet. then he gave a low, distinct whistle. it was answered from under the bluff. tom whistled twice more; these signals were answered in the same way. then a guarded voice said: "who goes there?" "tom sawyer, the black avenger of the spanish main. name your names." "huck finn the red-handed, and joe harper the terror of the seas." tom had furnished these titles, from his favorite literature. "'tis well. give the countersign." two hoarse whispers delivered the same awful word simultaneously to the brooding night: "blood!" then tom tumbled his ham over the bluff and let himself down after it, tearing both skin and clothes to some extent in the effort. there was an easy, comfortable path along the shore under the bluff, but it lacked the advantages of difficulty and danger so valued by a pirate. the terror of the seas had brought a side of bacon, and had about worn himself out with getting it there. finn the red-handed had stolen a skillet, and a quantity of half-cured leaf tobacco, and had also brought a few corn-cobs to make pipes with. but none of the pirates smoked or "chewed" but himself. the black avenger of the spanish main said it would never do to start without some fire. that was a wise thought; matches were hardly known there in that day. they saw a fire smouldering upon a great raft a hundred yards above, and they went stealthily thither and helped themselves to a chunk. they made an imposing adventure of it, saying "hist!" every now and then and suddenly halting with finger on lip; moving with hands on imaginary dagger-hilts; and giving orders in dismal whispers that if "the foe" stirred, to "let him have it to the hilt," because "dead men tell no tales." they knew well enough that the raftsmen were all down at the village laying in stores or having a spree, but still that was no excuse for their conducting this thing in an unpiratical way. they shoved off, presently, tom in command, huck at the after oar and joe at the forward. tom stood amidships, gloomy-browed, and with folded arms, and gave his orders in a low, stern whisper: "luff, and bring her to the wind!" "aye-aye, sir!" "steady, stead-y-y-y!" "steady it is, sir!" "let her go off a point!" "point it is, sir!" as the boys steadily and monotonously drove the raft toward midstream, it was no doubt understood that these orders were given only for "style," and were not intended to mean anything in particular. "what sail's she carrying?" "courses, tops'ls and flying-jib, sir." "send the r'yals up! lay out aloft, there, half a dozen of ye,foretopmast-stuns'l! lively, now!" "aye-aye, sir!" "shake out that maintogalans'l! sheets and braces! now, my hearties!" "aye-aye, sir!" "hellum-a-leehard a port! stand by to meet her when she comes! port, port! now, men! with a will! stead-y-y-y!" "steady it is, sir!" the raft drew beyond the middle of the river; the boys pointed her head right, and then lay on their oars. the river was not high, so there was not more than a twoor three-mile current. hardly a word was said during the next three-quarters of an hour. now the raft was passing before the distant town. two or three glimmering lights showed where it lay, peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of star-gemmed water, unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening. the black avenger stood, still with folded arms, "looking his last" upon the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing "she" could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with dauntless heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips. it was but a small strain on his imagination to remove jackson's island beyond eye-shot of the village, and so he "looked his last" with a broken and satisfied heart. the other pirates were looking their last, too; and they all looked so long that they came near letting the current drift them out of the range of the island. but they discovered the danger in time, and made shift to avert it. about two o'clock in the morning the raft grounded on the bar two hundred yards above the head of the island, and they waded back and forth until they had landed their freight. part of the little rafts belongings consisted of an old sail, and this they spread over a nook in the bushes for a tent to shelter their provisions; but they themselves would sleep in the open air in good weather, as became outlaws. they built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty steps within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some bacon in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn "pone" stock they had brought. it seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island, far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would return to civilization. the climbing fire lit up their faces and threw its ruddy glare upon the pillared tree trunks of their forest temple, and upon the varnished foliage and festooning vines. when the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance of corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass, filled with contentment. they could have found a cooler place, but they would not deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting camp-fire. "ain't it gay?" said joe. "it's nuts!" said tom. "what would the boys say if they could see us?" "say? well they'd just die to be herehey hucky?" "i reckon so," said huckleberry; "anyways i'm suited. i don't want nothing better'n this. i don't ever get enough to eat, gen'allyand here they can't come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so." "it's just the life for me," said tom. "you don't have to get up, mornings, and you don't have to go to school, and wash, and all that blame foolishness. you see a pirate don't have to do anything, joe, when he's ashore, but a hermit he has to be praying considerable, and then he don't have any fun, anyway, all by himself that way." "o yes, that's so," said joe, "but i hadn't thought much about it, you know. i'd a good deal ruther be a pirate, now that i've tried it." "you see," said tom, "people don't go much on hermits, now-a-days, like they used to in old times, but a pirate's always respected. and a hermit's got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put sack-cloth and ashes on his head, and stand out in the rain, and-" "what does he put sack-cloth and ashes on his head for?" inquired huck. "i dono. but they've got to do it. hermits always do. you'd have to do that if you was a hermit." "dern'd if i would," said huck. "well what would you do?" "i dono. but i wouldn't do that." "why huck, you'd have to. how'd you get around it?" "why i just wouldn't stand it. i'd run away." "run away! well you would be a nice old slouch of a hermit. you'd be a disgrace." the red-handed made no response, being better employed. he had finished gouging out a cob, and now he fitted a weed stem to it, loaded it with tobacco, and was pressing a coal to the charge and blowing a cloud of fragrant smokehe was in the full bloom of luxurious contentment. the other pirates envied him this majestic vice, and secretly resolved to acquire it shortly. presently huck said: "what does pirates have to do?" tom said: "o they have just a bully timetake ships, and burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there's ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the shipsmake 'em walk a plank." "and they carry the women to the island," said joe; "they don't kill the women." "no," assented tom, "they don't kill the womenthey're too noble. and the women's always beautiful, too." "and don't they wear the bulliest clothes! oh, no! all gold and silver and di'monds," said joe, with enthusiasm. "who?" said huck. "why the pirates." huck scanned his own clothing forlornly. "i reckon i ain't dressed fitten for a pirate," said he, with a regretful pathos in his voice; "but i ain't got none but these." but the other boys told him the fine clothes would come fast enough, after they should have begun their adventures. they made him understand that his poor rags would do to begin with, though it was customary for wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe. gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began to steal upon the eyelids of the little waifs. the pipe dropped from the fingers of the red-handed, and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the weary. the terror of the seas and the black avenger of the spanish main had more difficulty in getting to sleep. they said their prayers inwardly, and lying down, since there was nobody there with authority to make them kneel and recite aloud; in truth they had a mind not to say them at all, but they were afraid to proceed to such lengths as that, lest they might call down a sudden and special thunderbolt from heaven. then at once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge of sleepbut an intruder came, now, that would not "down." it was conscience. they began to feel a vague fear that they had been doing wrong to run away; and next they thought of the stolen meat, and then the real torture came. they tried to argue it away by reminding conscience that they had purloined sweetmeats and apples scores of times; but conscience was not to be appeased by such thin plausibilities. it seemed to them, in the end, that there was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only "hooking," while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealingand there was a command against that in the bible. so they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing. then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously inconsistent pirates fell peacefully to sleep. chapter 14 happy camp of the freebooters when tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. he sat up and rubbed his eyes and looked around. then he comprehended. it was the cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. not a leaf stirred; not a sound obtruded upon great nature's meditation. beaded dew-drops stood upon the leaves and grasses. a white layer of ashes covered the fire, and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. joe and huck still slept. now, far away in the woods a bird called; another answered; presently the hammering of a woodpecker was heard. gradually the cool dim gray of the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life manifested itself. the marvel of nature shaking off sleep and going to work unfolded itself to the musing boy. a little green worm came crawling over a dewy leaf, lifting two-thirds of his body into the air from time to time and "sniffing around," then proceeding againfor he was measuring, tom said; and when the worm approached him, of its own accord, he sat as still as a stone, with his hopes rising and falling, by turns, as the creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to go elsewhere; and when at last it considered a painful moment with its curved body in the air and then came decisively down upon tom's leg and began a journey over him, his whole heart was gladfor that meant that he was going to have a new suit of clotheswithout the shadow of a doubt a gaudy piratical uniform. now a procession of ants appeared, from nowhere in particular, and went about their labors; one struggled manfully by with a dead spider five times as big as itself in its arms, and lugged it straight up a tree-trunk. a brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass-blade, and tom bent down close to it and said, "lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about itwhich did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations and he had practiced upon its simplicity more than once. a tumble-bug came next, heaving sturdily at its ball, and tom touched the creature, to see it shut its legs against its body and pretend to be dead. the birds were fairly rioting by this time. a cat-bird, the northern mocker, lit in a tree over tom's head, and trilled out her imitations of her neighbors in a rapture of enjoyment; then a shrill jay swept down, a flash of blue flame, and stopped on a twig almost within the boy's reach, cocked his head to one side and eyed the strangers with a consuming curiosity; a gray squirrel and a big fellow of the "fox" kind came kurrying along, sitting up at intervals to inspect and chatter at the boys, for the wild things had probably never seen a human being before and scarcely knew whether to be afraid or not. all nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far and near, and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene. tom stirred up the other pirates and they all clattered away with a shout, and in a minute or two were stripped and chasing after and tumbling over each other in the shallow limpid water of the white sand-bar. they felt no longing for the little village sleeping in the distance beyond the majestic waste of water. a vagrant current or a slight rise in the river had carried off their raft, but this only gratified them, since its going was something like burning the bridge between them and civilization. they came back to camp wonderfully refreshed, glad-hearted, and ravenous; and they soon had the camp-fire blazing up again. huck found a spring of clear cold water close by, and the boys made cups of broad oak or hickory leaves, and felt that water, sweetened with such a wild-wood charm as that, would be a good enough substitute for coffee. while joe was slicing bacon for breakfast, tom and huck asked him to hold on a minute; they stepped to a promising nook in the river bank and threw in their lines; almost immediately they had reward. joe had not had time to get impatient before they were back again with some handsome bass, a couple of sun-perch and a small catfishprovision enough for quite a family. they fried the fish with the bacon and were astonished; for no fish had ever seemed so delicious before. they did not know that the quicker a fresh water fish is on the fire after he is caught the better he is; and they reflected little upon what a sauce open air sleeping, open air exercise, bathing, and a large ingredient of hunger makes, too. they lay around in the shade, after breakfast, while huck had a smoke, and then went off through the woods on an exploring expedition. they tramped gaily along, over decaying logs, through tangled underbrush, among solemn monarchs of the forest, hung from their crowns to the ground with a drooping regalia of grape-vines. now and then they came upon snug nooks carpeted with grass and jeweled with flowers. they found plenty of things to be delighted with but nothing to be astonished at. they discovered that the island was about three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide, and that the shore it lay closest to was only separated from it by a narrow channel hardly two hundred yards wide. they took a swim about every hour, so it was close upon the middle of the afternoon when they got back to camp. they were too hungry to stop to fish, but they fared sumptuously upon cold ham, and then threw themselves down in the shade to talk. but the talk soon began to drag, and then died. the stillness, the solemnity that brooded in the woods, and the sense of loneliness, began to tell upon the spirits of the boys. they fell to thinking. a sort of undefined longing crept upon them. this took dim shape, presentlyit was budding homesickness. even finn the red-handed was dreaming of his door-steps and empty hogsheads. but they were all ashamed of their weakness, and none was brave enough to speak his thought. for some time, now, the boys had been dully conscious of a peculiar sound in the distance, just as one sometimes is of the ticking of a clock which he takes no distinct note of. but now this mysterious sound became more pronounced, and forced a recognition. the boys started, glanced at each other, and then each assumed a listening attitude. there was a long silence, profound and unbroken; then a deep, sullen boom came floating down out of the distance. "what is it!" exclaimed joe, under his breath. "i wonder," said tom in a whisper. "'tain't thunder," said huckleberry, in an awed tone, "becuz thunder-" "hark!" said tom. "listendon't talk." they waited a time that seemed an age, and then the same muffled boom troubled the solemn hush. "let's go and see." they sprang to their feet and hurried to the shore toward the town. they parted the bushes on the bank and peered out over the water. the little steam ferry boat was about a mile below the village, drifting with the current. her broad deck seemed crowded with people. there were a great many skiffs rowing about or floating with the stream in the neighborhood of the ferry boat, but the boys could not determine what the men in them were doing. presently a great jet of white smoke burst from the ferry boat's side, and as it expanded and rose in a lazy cloud, that same dull throb of sound was borne to the listeners again. "i know now!" exclaimed tom; "somebody's drownded!" "that's it!" said huck; "they done that last summer, when bill turner got drownded; they shoot a cannon over the water, and that makes him come up to the top. yes, and they take loaves of bread and put quicksilver in 'em and set 'em afloat, and wherever there's anybody that's drownded, they'll float right there and stop." "yes, i've heard about that," said joe. "i wonder what makes the bread do that." "o it ain't the bread, so much," said tom; "i reckon it's mostly what they say over it before they start it out." "but they don't say anything over it," said huck. "i've seen 'em and they don't." "well that's funny", said tom. "but maybe they say it to themselves. of course they do. anybody might know that." the other boys agreed that there was reason in what tom said, because an ignorant lump of bread, uninstructed by an incantation, could not be expected to act very intelligently when sent upon an errand of such gravity. "by jings i wish i was over there, now," said joe. "i do too," said huck. "i'd give heaps to know who it is." the boys still listened and watched. presently a revealing thought flashed through tom's mind, and he exclaimed: "boys, i know who's drowndedit's us!" they felt like heroes in an instant. here was a gorgeous triumph; they were missed; they were mourned; hearts were breaking on their account; tears were being shed; accusing memories of unkindnesses to these poor lost lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being indulged; and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole town, and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety was concerned. this was fine. it was worth while to be a pirate, after all. as twilight drew on, the ferry boat went back to her accustomed business and the skiffs disappeared. the pirates returned to camp. they were jubilant with vanity over their new grandeur and the illustrious trouble they were making. they caught fish, cooked supper and ate it, and then fell to guessing at what the village was thinking and saying about them; and the pictures they drew of the public distress on their account were gratifying to look uponfrom their point of view. but when the shadows of night closed them in, they gradually ceased to talk, and sat gazing into the fire, with their minds evidently wandering elsewhere. the excitement was gone, now, and tom and joe could not keep back thoughts of certain persons at home who were not enjoying this fine frolic as much as they were. misgivings came; they grew troubled and unhappy; a sigh or two escaped, unawares. by and by joe timidly ventured upon a roundabout "feeler" as to how the others might look upon a return to civilizationnot right now, but tom withered him with derision! huck, being uncommitted, as yet, joined in with tom, and the waverer quickly "explained," and was glad to get out of the scrape with as little taint of chicken-hearted homesickness clinging to his garments as he could. mutiny was effectually laid to rest for the moment. as the night deepened, huck began to nod, and presently to snore. joe followed next. tom lay upon his elbow motionless, for some time, watching the two intently. at last he got up cautiously, on his knees, and went searching among the grass and the flickering reflections flung by the camp-fire. he picked up and inspected several large semi-cylinders of the thin white bark of a sycamore, and finally chose two which seemed to suit him. then he knelt by the fire and painfully wrote something upon each of these with his "red keel;" one he rolled up and put in his jacket pocket, and the other he put in joe's hat and removed it to a little distance from the owner. and he also put into the hat certain schoolboy treasures of almost inestimable valueamong them a lump of chalk, an india rubber ball, three fish-hooks, and one of that kind of marbles known as a "sure 'nough crystal." then he tip-toed his way cautiously among the trees till he felt that he was out of hearing, and straightway broke into a keen run in the direction of the sand-bar. chapter 15 tom's stealthy visit home a few minutes later tom was in the shoal water of the bar, wading toward the illinois shore. before the depth reached his middle he was half way over; the current would permit no more wading, now, so he struck out confidently to swim the remaining hundred yards. he swam quartering up stream, but still was swept downward rather faster than he had expected. however, he reached the shore finally, and drifted along till he found a low place and drew himself out. he put his hand on his jacket pocket, found his piece of bark safe, and then struck through the woods, following the shore, with streaming garments. shortly before ten o'clock he came out into an open place opposite the village, and saw the ferry boat lying in the shadow of the trees and the high bank. everything was quiet under the blinking stars. he crept down the bank, watching with all his eyes, slipped into the water, swam three or four strokes and climbed into the skiff that did "yawl" duty at the boat's stern. he laid himself down under the thwarts and waited, panting. presently the cracked bell tapped and a voice gave the order to "cast off." a minute or two later the skiff's head was standing high up, against the boat's swell, and the voyage was begun. tom felt happy in his success, for he knew it was the boat's last trip for the night. at the end of a long twelve or fifteen minutes the wheels stopped, and tom slipped overboard and swam ashore in the dusk, landing fifty yards down stream, out of danger of possible stragglers. he flew along unfrequented alleys, and shortly found himself at his aunt's back fence. he climbed over, approached the "ell" and looked in at the sitting-room window, for a light was burning there. there sat aunt polly, sid, mary, and joe harper's mother, grouped together, talking. they were by the bed, and the bed was between them and the door. tom went to the door and began to softly lift the latch; then he pressed gently and the door yielded a crack; he continued pushing cautiously, and quaking every time it creaked, till he judged he might squeeze through on his knees; and so he put his head through and began, warily. "what makes the candle blow so?" said aunt polly. tom hurried up. "why that door's open, i believe. why of course it is. no end of strange things now. go 'long and shut it, sid." tom disappeared under the bed just in time. he lay and "breathed" himself for a time, and then crept to where he could almost touch his aunt's foot. "but as i was saying," said aunt polly, "he warn't bad, so to sayonly mischeevous. only just giddy, and harum-scarum, you know. he warn't any more responsible than a colt. he never meant any harm, and he was the best-hearted boy that ever was"and she began to cry. "it was just so with my joealways full of his devilment, and up to every kind of mischief, but he was just as unselfish and kind as he could beand laws bless me, to think i went and whipped him for taking that cream, never once recollecting that i throwed it out myself because it was sour, and i never to see him again in this world, never, never, poor abused boy!" and mrs. harper sobbed as if her heart would break. "i hope tom's better off where he is," said sid, "but if he'd been better in some ways-" "sid!" tom felt the glare of the old lady's eye, though he could not see it. "not a word against my tom, now that he's gone! god'll take care of himnever you trouble yourself, sir! oh, mrs. harper, i don't know how to give him up, i don't know how to give him up! he was such a comfort to me, although he tormented my old heart out of me, 'most." "the lord giveth and the lord hath taken away. blessed be the name of the lord! but it's so hardo, it's so hard! only last saturday my joe busted a fire-cracker right under my nose and i knocked him sprawling. little did i know then, how soono, if it was to do over again i'd hug him and bless him for it." "yes, yes, yes, i know just how you feel, mrs. harper, i know just exactly how you feel. no longer ago than yesterday noon, my tom took and filled the cat full of pain-killer, and i did think the cretur would tear the house down. and god forgive me, i cracked tom's head with my thimble, poor boy, poor dead boy. but he's out of all his troubles now. and the last words i ever heard him say was to reproach-" but this memory was too much for the old lady, and she broke entirely down. tom was snuffling, now, himselfand more in pity of himself than anybody else. he could hear mary crying, and putting in a kindly word for him from time to time. he began to have a nobler opinion of himself than ever before. still he was sufficiently touched by his aunt's grief to long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm her with joyand the theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to his nature, too, but he resisted and lay still. he went on listening, and gathered by odds and ends that it was conjectured at first that the boys had got drowned while taking a swim; then the small raft had been missed; next, certain boys said the missing lads had promised that the village should "hear something" soon; the wise-heads had "put this and that together" and decided that the lads had gone off on that raft and would turn up at the next town below, presently; but toward noon the raft had been found, lodged against the missouri shore some five or six miles below the village,and then hope perished; they must be drowned, else hunger would have driven them home by nightfall if not sooner. it was believed that the search for the bodies had been a fruitless effort merely because the drowning must have occurred in mid-channel, since the boys, being good swimmers, would otherwise have escaped to shore. this was wednesday night. if the bodies continued missing until sunday, all hope would be given over, and the funerals would be preached on that morning. tom shuddered. mrs. harper gave a sobbing good-night and turned to go. then with a mutual impulse the two bereaved women flung themselves into each other's arms and had a good, consoling cry, and then parted. aunt polly was tender far beyond her wont, in her good-night to sid and mary. sid snuffled a bit and mary went off crying with all her heart. aunt polly knelt down and prayed for tom so touchingly, so appealingly, and with such measureless love in her words and her old trembling voice, that he was weltering in tears again, long before she was through. he had to keep still long after she went to bed, for she kept making broken-hearted ejaculations from time to time, tossing unrestfully, and turning over. but at last she was still, only moaning a little in her sleep. now the boy stole out, rose gradually by the bedside, shaded the candle-light with his hand, and stood regarding her. his heart was full of pity for her. he took out his sycamore scroll and placed it by the candle. but something occurred to him, and he lingered, considering. his face lighted with a happy solution of his thought; he put the bark hastily in his pocket. then he bent over and kissed the faded lips, and straightway made his stealthy exit, latching the door behind him. he threaded his way back to the ferry landing, found nobody at large there, and walked boldly on board the boat, for he knew she was tenantless except that there was a watchman, who always turned in and slept like a graven image. he untied the skiff at the stern, slipped into it, and was soon rowing cautiously up stream. when he had pulled a mile above the village, he started quartering across and bent himself stoutly to his work. he hit the landing on the other side neatly, for this was a familiar bit of work to him. he was moved to capture the skiff, arguing that it might be considered a ship and therefore legitimate prey for a pirate, but he knew a thorough search would be made for it and that might end in revelations. so he stepped ashore and entered the wood. he sat down and took a long rest, torturing himself meantime to keep awake, and then started wearily down the home-stretch. the night was far spent. it was broad daylight before he found himself fairly abreast the island bar. he rested again until the sun was well up and gilding the great river with its splendor, and then he plunged into the stream. a little later he paused, dripping, upon the threshold of the camp, and heard joe say: "no, tom's true-blue, huck, and he'll come back. he won't desert. he knows that would be a disgrace to a pirate, and tom's too proud for that sort of thing. he's up to something or other. now i wonder what?" "well, the things is ours, anyway, ain't they?" "pretty near, but not yet, huck. the writing says they are if he ain't back here to breakfast." "which he is!" exclaimed tom, with fine dramatic effect, stepping grandly into camp. a sumptuous breakfast of bacon and fish was shortly provided, and as the boys set to work upon it, tom recounted (and adorned) his adventures. they were a vain and boastful company of heroes when the tale was done. then tom hid himself away in a shady nook to sleep till noon, and the other pirates got ready to fish and explore. chapter 16 first pipes"i've lost my knife" after dinner all the gang turned out to hunt for turtle eggs on the bar. they went about poking sticks into the sand, and when they found a soft place they went down on their knees and dug with their hands. sometimes they would take fifty or sixty eggs out of one hole. they were perfectly round white things a trifle smaller than an english walnut. they had a famous fried-egg feast that night, and another on friday morning. after breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun. and now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays and finally gripping and struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing, sputtering, laughing and gasping for breath at one and the same time. when they were well exhausted, they would run out and sprawl on the dry, hot sand, and lie there and cover themselves up with it, and by and by break for the water again and go through the original performance once more. finally it occurred to them that their naked skin represented flesh-colored "tights" very fairly; so they drew a ring in the sand and had a circuswith three clowns in it, for none would yield this proudest post to his neighbor. next they got their marbles and played "knucks" and "ring-taw" and "keeps" till that amusement grew stale. then joe and huck had another swim, but tom would not venture, because he found that in kicking off his trousers he had kicked his string of rattlesnake rattles off his ankle, and he wondered how he had escaped cramp so long without the protection of this mysterious charm. he did not venture again until he had found it, and by that time the other boys were tired and ready to rest. they gradually wandered apart, dropped into the "dumps," and fell to gazing longingly across the wide river to where the village lay drowsing in the sun. tom found himself writing "becky" in the sand with his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his weakness. but he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it. he erased it once more and then took himself out of temptation by driving the other boys together and joining them. but joe's spirits had gone down almost beyond resurrection. he was so homesick that he could hardly endure the misery of it. the tears lay very near the surface. huck was melancholy, too. tom was downhearted, but tried hard not to show it. he had a secret which he was not ready to tell, yet, but if this mutinous depression was not broken up soon, he would have to bring it out. he said, with a great show of cheerfulness: "i bet there's been pirates on this island before, boys. we'll explore it again. they've hid treasures here somewhere. how'd you feel to light on a rotten chest full of gold and silverhey?" but it roused only a faint enthusiasm, which faded out, with no reply. tom tried one or two other seductions; but they failed, too. it was discouraging work. joe sat poking up the sand with a stick and looking very gloomy. finally he said: "o, boys, let's give it up. i want to go home. it's so lonesome." "o, no, joe, you'll feel better by and by," said tom. "just think of the fishing that's here." "i don't care for fishing. i want to go home." "but joe, there ain't such another swimming place anywhere." "swimming's no good. i don't seem to care for it, somehow, when there ain't anybody to say i shan't go in. i mean to go home." "o, shucks! baby! you want to see your mother, i reckon." "yes, i do want to see my motherand you would too, if you had one. i ain't any more baby than you are." and joe snuffled a little. "well, we'll let the cry-baby go home to his mother, won't we huck? poor thingdoes it want to see its mother? and so it shall. you like it here, don't you huck? we'll stay, won't we?" huck said "y-e-s"without any heart in it. "i'll never speak to you again as long as i live," said joe, rising. "there now!" and he moved moodily away and began to dress himself. "who cares!" said tom. "nobody wants you to. go 'long home and get laughed at. o, you're a nice pirate. huck and me ain't cry-babies. we'll stay, won't we huck? let him go if he wants to. i reckon we can get along without him, per'aps." but tom was uneasy, nevertheless, and was alarmed to see joe go sullenly on with his dressing. and then it was discomforting to see huck eyeing joe's preparations so wistfully, and keeping up such an ominous silence. presently, without a parting word, joe began to wade off toward the illinois shore. tom's heart began to sink. he glanced at huck. huck could not bear the look, and dropped his eyes. then he said: "i want to go, too, tom. it was getting so lonesome anyway, and now it'll be worse. let's us go too, tom." "i won't! you can all go, if you want to. i mean to stay." "tom, i better go." "well go 'longwho's hendering you." huck began to pick up his scattered clothes. he said: "tom, i wisht you'd come too. now you think it over. we'll wait for you when we get to shore." "well you'll wait a blame long time, that's all." huck started sorrowfully away, and tom stood looking after him, with a strong desire tugging at his heart to yield his pride and go along too. he hoped the boys would stop, but they still waded slowly on. it suddenly dawned on tom that it was become very lonely and still. he made one final struggle with his pride, and then darted after his comrades, yelling: "wait! wait! i want to tell you something!" they presently stopped and turned around. when he got to where they were, he began unfolding his secret, and they listened moodily till at last they saw the "point" he was driving at, and then they set up a war-whoop of applause and said it was "splendid!" and said if he had told them at first, they wouldn't have started away. he made a plausible excuse; but his real reason had been the fear that not even the secret would keep them with him any very great length of time, and so he had meant to hold it in reserve as a last seduction. the lads came gaily back and went at their sports again with a will, chattering all the time about tom's stupendous plan and admiring the genius of it. after a dainty egg and fish dinner, tom said he wanted to learn to smoke, now. joe caught at the idea and said he would like to try, too. so huck made pipes and filled them. these novices had never smoked anything before but cigars made of grape-vine and they "bit" the tongue and were not considered manly, anyway. now they stretched themselves out on their elbows and began to puff, charily, and with slender confidence. the smoke had an unpleasant taste, and they gagged a little, but tom said: "why it's just as easy! if i'd a knowed this was all, i'd a learnt long ago." "so would i," said joe. "it's just nothing." "why many a time i've looked at people smoking, and thought well i wish i could do that; but i never thought i could," said tom. "that's just the way with me, hain't it huck? you've heard me talk just that wayhaven't you huck? i'll leave it to huck if i haven't." "yesheaps of times," said huck. "well i have too," said tom; "o, hundreds of times. once down there by the slaughter-house. don't you remember, huck? bob tanner was there, and johnny miller, and jeff thatcher, when i said it. don't you remember huck, 'bout me saying that?" "yes, that's so," said huck. "that was the day after i lost a white alley. no, 'twas the day before." "therei told you so," said tom. "huck recollects it." "i bleeve i could smoke this pipe all day," said joe. "i don't feel sick." "neither do i," said tom. "i could smoke it all day. but i bet you jeff thatcher couldn't." "jeff thatcher! why he'd keel over just with two draws. just let him try it once. he'd see!" "i bet he would. and johnny milleri wish i could see johnny miller tackle it once." "o, don't i" said joe, "why i bet you johnny miller couldn't any more do this than nothing. just one little snifter would fetch him." "'deed it would, joe. sayi wish the boys could see us now." "so do i." "sayboys, don't say anything about it, and some time when they're around, i'll come up to you and say 'joe, got a pipe? i want a smoke.' and you'll say, kind of careless like, as if it warn't anything, you'll say, 'yes, i got my old pipe, and another one, but my tobacker ain't very good.' i'll say, 'o, that's all right, if it's strong enough.' and then you'll out with the pipes, and we'll light up just as ca'm, and then just see 'em look!" "by jings that'll be gay, tom! i wish it was now!" "so do i! and when we tell 'em we learned when we was off pirating, won't they wish they'd been along?" "o, i reckon not! i'll just bet they will!" so the talk ran on. but presently it began to flag a trifle, and grow disjointed. the silences widened; the expectoration marvelously increased. every pore inside the boys' cheeks became a spouting fountain; they could scarcely bail out the cellars under their tongues fast enough to prevent an inundation; little overflowings down their throats occurred in spite of all they could do, and sudden retchings followed every time. both boys were looking very pale and miserable, now. joe's pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers. tom's followed. both fountains were going furiously and both pumps bailing with might and main. joe said feebly: "i've lost my knife. i reckon i better go and find it." tom said, with quivering lip and halting utterance: "i'll help you. you go over that way and i'll hunt around by the spring. no, you needn't come, huckwe can find it." so huck sat down again, and waited an hour. then he found it lonesome, and went to find his comrades. they were wide apart in the woods, both very pale, both fast asleep. but something informed him that if they had had any trouble they had got rid of it. they were not talkative at supper that night. they had a humble look, and when huck prepared his pipe after the meal and was going to prepare theirs, they said no, they were not feeling very wellsomething they ate at dinner had disagreed with them. about midnight joe awoke, and called the boys. there was a brooding oppressiveness in the air that seemed to bode something. the boys huddled themselves together and sought the friendly companionship of the fire, though the dull dead heat of the breathless atmosphere was stifling. they sat still, intent and waiting. the solemn hush continued. beyond the light of the fire everything was swallowed up in the blackness of darkness. presently there came a quivering glow that vaguely revealed the foliage for a moment and then vanished. by and by another came, a little stronger. then another. then a faint moan came sighing through the branches of the forest and the boys felt a fleeting breath upon their cheeks, and shuddered with the fancy that the spirit of the night had gone by. there was a pause. now a weird flash turned night into day and showed every little grass-blade, separate and distinct, that grew about their feet. and it showed three white, startled faces, too. a deep peal of thunder went rolling and tumbling down the heavens and lost itself in sullen rumblings in the distance. a sweep of chilly air passed by, rustling all the leaves and snowing the flaky ashes broadcast about the fire. another fierce glare lit up the forest and an instant crash followed that seemed to rend the tree-tops right over the boys' heads. they clung together in terror, in the thick gloom that followed. a few big rain-drops fell pattering upon the leaves. "quick! boys, go for the tent!" exclaimed tom. they sprang away, stumbling over roots and among vines in the dark, no two plunging in the same direction. a furious blast roared through the trees, making everything sing as it went. one blinding flash after another came, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. and now a drenching rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets along the ground. the boys cried out to each other, but the roaring wind and the booming thunder-blasts drowned their voices utterly. however, one by one they straggled in at last and took shelter under the tent, cold scared, and streaming with water; but to have company in misery seemed something to be grateful for. they could not talk, the old sail flapped so furiously, even if the other noises would have allowed them. the tempest rose higher and higher, and presently the sail tore loose from its fastenings and went winging away on the blast. the boys seized each others' hands and fled, with many tumblings and bruises, to the shelter of a great oak that stood upon the river bank. now the battle was at its highest. under the ceaseless conflagration of lightning that flamed in the skies, everything below stood out in clean-cut and shadowless distinctness: the bending trees, the billowy river, white with foam, the driving spray of spume-flakes, the dim outlines of the high bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the drifting cloud-rack and the slanting veil of rain. every little while some giant tree yielded the fight and fell crashing through the younger growth; and the unflagging thunder-peals came now in ear-splitting explosive bursts, keen and sharp, and unspeakably appalling. the storm culminated in one matchless effort that seemed likely to tear the island to pieces, burn it up, drown it to the tree-tops, blow it away, and deafen every creature in it, all at one and the same moment. it was a wild night for homeless young heads to be out in. but at last the battle was done, and the forces retired with weaker and weaker threatenings and grumblings, and peace resumed her sway. the boys went back to camp, a good deal awed; but they found there was still something to be thankful for, because the great sycamore, the shelter of their beds, was a ruin now, blasted by the lightnings, and they were not under it when the catastrophe happened. everything in camp was drenched, the camp-fire as well; for they were but heedless lads, like their generation, and had made no provision against rain. here was matter for dismay, for they were soaked through and chilled. they were eloquent in their distress; but they presently discovered that the fire had eaten so far up under the great log it had been built against, (where it curved upward and separated itself from the ground,) that a hand-breadth or so of it had escaped wetting; so they patiently wrought until, with shreds and bark gathered from the under sides of sheltered logs, they coaxed the fire to burn again. then they piled on great dead boughs till they had a roaring furnace and were glad-hearted once more. they dried their boiled ham and had a feast, and after that they sat by the fire and expanded and glorified their midnight adventure until morning, for there was not a dry spot to sleep on, anywhere around. as the sun began to steal in upon the boys, drowsiness came over them and they went out on the sand-bar and lay down to sleep. they got scorched out by and by, and drearily set about getting breakfast. after the meal they felt rusty, and stiff-jointed, and a little homesick once more. tom saw the signs, and fell to cheering up the pirates as well as he could. but they cared nothing for marbles, or circus, or swimming, or anything. he reminded them of the imposing secret, and raised a ray of cheer. while it lasted, he got them interested in a new device. this was to knock off being pirates, for a while, and be indians for a change. they were attracted by this idea; so it was not long before they were stripped, and striped from head to heel with black mud, like so many zebras,all of them chiefs, of courseand then they went tearing through the woods to attack an english settlement. by and by they separated into three hostile tribes, and darted upon each other from ambush with dreadful war-whoops, and killed and scalped each other by thousands. it was a gory day. consequently it was an extremely satisfactory one. they assembled in camp toward supper time, hungry and happy; but now a difficulty arosehostile indians could not break the bread of hospitality together without first making peace, and this was a simple impossibility without smoking a pipe of peace. there was no other process that ever they had heard of. two of the savages almost wished they had remained pirates. however, there was no other way: so with such show of cheerfulness as they could muster they called for the pipe and took their whiff as it passed, in due form. and behold they were glad they had gone into savagery, for they had gained something; they found that they could now smoke a little without having to go and hunt for a lost knife; they did not get sick enough to be seriously uncomfortable. they were not likely to fool away this high promise for lack of effort. no, they practiced cautiously, after supper, with right fair success, and so they spent a jubilant evening. they were prouder and happier in their new acquirement than they would have been in the scalping and skinning of the six nations. we will leave them to smoke and chatter and brag, since we have no further use for them at present. chapter 17 pirates at their own funeral but there was no hilarity in the little town that same tranquil saturday afternoon. the harpers, and aunt polly's family, were being put into mourning, with great grief and many tears. an unusual quiet possessed the village, although it was ordinarily quiet enough, in all conscience. the villagers conducted their concerns with an absent air, and talked little; but they sighed often. the saturday holiday seemed a burden to the children. they had no heart in their sports, and gradually gave them up. in the afternoon becky thatcher found herself moping about the deserted school-house yard, and feeling very melancholy. but she found nothing there to comfort her. she soliloquised: "o, if i only had his brass andiron-knob again! but i haven't got anything now to remember him by." and she choked back a little sob. presently she stopped, and said to herself: "it was right here. o, if it was to do over again, i wouldn't say thati wouldn't say it for the whole world. but he's gone now; i'll never never never see him any more." this thought broke her down and she wandered away, with the tears rolling down her cheeks. then quite a group of boys and girls,playmates of tom's and joe'scame by, and stood looking over the paling fence and talking in reverent tones of how tom did so-and-so, the last time they saw him, and how joe said this and that small trifle (pregnant with awful prophecy, as they could easily see now!)and each speaker pointed out the exact spot where the lost lads stood at the time, and then added something like "and i was a-standing just sojust as i am now, and as if you was himi was as close as thatand he smiled, just this wayand then something seemed to go all over me, like,awful, you knowand i never thought what it meant, of course, but i can see now!" then there was a dispute about who saw the dead boys last in life, and many claimed that dismal distinction, and offered evidences, more or less tampered with by the witness; and when it was ultimately decided who did see the departed last, and exchanged the last words with them, the lucky parties took upon themselves a sort of sacred importance, and were gaped at and envied by all the rest. one poor chap, who had no other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest pride in the remembrance: "well, tom sawyer he licked me once." but that bid for glory was a failure. most of the boys could say that, and so that cheapened the distinction too much. the group loitered away, still recalling memories of the lost heroes, in awed voices. when the sunday-school hour was finished, the next morning, the bell began to toll, instead of ringing in the usual way. it was a very still sabbath, and the mournful sound seemed in keeping with the musing hush that lay upon nature. the villagers began to gather, loitering a moment in the vestibule to converse in whispers about the sad event. but there was no whispering in the house; only the funereal rustling of dresses as the women gathered to their seats disturbed the silence there. none could remember when the little church had been so full before. there was finally a waiting pause, an expectant dumbness, and then aunt polly entered, followed by sid and mary, and they by the harper family, all in deep black, and the whole congregation, the old minister as well, rose reverently and stood, until the mourners were seated in the front pew. there was another communing silence, broken at intervals by muffled sobs, and then the minister spread his hands abroad and prayed. a moving hymn was sung, and the text followed: "i am the resurrection, and the life." as the service proceeded, the clergyman drew such pictures of the graces, the winning ways and the rare promise of the lost lads, that every soul there, thinking he recognized these pictures, felt a pang in remembering that he had persistently blinded himself to them, always before, and had as persistently seen only faults and flaws in the poor boys. the minister related many a touching incident in the lives of the departed, too, which illustrated their sweet, generous natures, and the people could easily see, now, how noble and beautiful those episodes were, and remembered with grief that at the time they occurred they had seemed rank rascalities, well deserving of the cowhide. the congregation became more and more moved, as the pathetic tale went on, till at last the whole company broke down and joined the weeping mourners in a chorus of anguished sobs, the preacher himself giving way to his feelings, and crying in the pulpit. there was a rustle in the gallery, which nobody noticed; a moment later the church door creaked; the minister raised his streaming eyes above his handkerchief, and stood transfixed! first one and then another pair of eyes followed the minister's, and then almost with one impulse the congregation rose and stared while the three dead boys came marching up the aisle, tom in the lead, joe next, and huck, a ruin of drooping rags, sneaking sheepishly in the rear! they had been hid in the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon! aunt polly, mary and the harpers threw themselves upon their restored ones, smothered them with kisses and poured out thanksgivings, while poor huck stood abashed and uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what to do or where to hide from so many unwelcoming eyes. he wavered, and started to slink-away, but tom seized him and said: "aunt polly, it ain't fair. somebody's got to be glad to see huck." "and so they shall. i'm glad to see him, poor motherless thing!" and the loving attentions aunt polly lavished upon him were the one thing capable of making him more uncomfortable than he was before. suddenly the minister shouted at the top of his voice: "praise god from whom all blessings flowsing!and put your hearts in it!" and they did. old hundred swelled up with a triumphant burst, and while it shook the rafters tom sawyer the pirate looked around upon the envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was the proudest moment of his life. as the "sold" congregation trooped out they said they would almost be willing to be made ridiculous again to hear old hundred sung like that once more. tom got more cuffs and kisses that dayaccording to aunt polly's varying moodsthan he had earned before in a year; and he hardly knew which expressed the most gratefulness to god and affection for himself. chapter 18 tom reveals his dream secret that was tom's great secretthe scheme to return home with his brother pirates and attend their own funerals. they had paddled over to the missouri shore on a log, at dusk on saturday, landing five or six miles below the village; they had slept in the woods at the edge of the town till nearly daylight, and had then crept through back lanes and alleys and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church among a chaos of invalided benches. at breakfast monday morning, aunt polly and mary were very loving to tom, and very attentive to his wants. there was an unusual amount of talk. in the course of it aunt polly said: "well, i don't say it wasn't a fine joke, tom, to keep everybody suffering 'most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity you could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. if you could come over on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give me a hint some way that you warn't dead, but only run off." "yes, you could have done that, tom," said mary; "and i believe you would if you had thought of it." "would you tom?" said aunt polly, her face lighting wistfully. "say, now, would you, if you'd thought of it?" "iwell i don't know. 'twould a spoiled everything." "tom, i hoped you loved me that much," said aunt polly, with a grieved tone that discomforted the boy. "it would been something if you'd cared enough to think of it, even if you didn't do it." "now auntie, that ain't any harm," pleaded mary; "it's only tom's giddy wayhe is always in such a rush that he never thinks of anything." "more's the pity. sid would have thought. and sid would have come and done it, too. tom, you'll look back, some day, when it's too late, and wish you'd cared a little more for me when it would have cost you so little." "now auntie, you know i do care for you," said tom. "i'd know it better if you acted more like it." "i wish now i'd thought," said tom, with a repentant tone; "but i dreamed about you anyway. that's something, ain't it?" "it ain't mucha cat does that muchbut it's better than nothing. what did you dream?" "why wednesday night i dreamt that you was sitting over there by the bed, and sid was sitting by the wood-box, and mary next to him." "well, so we did. so we always do. i'm glad your dreams could take even that much trouble about us." "and i dreamt that joe harper's mother was here." "why, she was here! did you dream any more?" "o, lots. but it's so dim, now." "well, try to recollectcan't you?" "somehow it seems to me that the windthe wind blowed thethe-" "try harder, tom! the wind did blow something. come!" tom pressed his fingers on his forehead an anxious minute, and then said: "i've got it now! i've got it now! it blowed the candle!" "mercy on us! go on, tomgo on!" "and it seems to me that you said, 'why i believe that that door-'" "go on, tom!" "just let me study a momentjust a moment. o, yesyou said you believed the door was open." "as i'm a-sitting here, i did! didn't i, mary? go on!" "and thenand thenwell i won't be certain, but it seems like as if you made sid go andand-" "well? well? what did i make him do, tom? what did i make him do?" "you made himyouo, you made him shut it." "well for the land's sake! i never heard the beat of that in all my days! don't tell me there ain't anything in dreams, any more. sereny harper shall know of this before i'm an hour older. i'd like to see her get around this with her rubbage 'bout superstition. go on, tom!" "o, it's all getting just as bright as day, now. next you said i warn't bad, only mischeevous and harum-scarum, and not any more responsible thanthani think it was a colt, or something." "and so it was! well, goodness gracious! go on, tom!" "and then you began to cry." "so i did. so i did. not the first time, neither. and then-" "then mrs. harper she began to cry, and said joe was just the same and she wished she hadn't whipped him for taking cream when she'd throwed it out her own self-" "tom! the sperrit was upon you! you was a-prophecyingthat's what you was doing! land alive, go on, tom!" "then sid he saidhe said-" "i don't think i said anything," said sid. "yes you did, sid," said mary. "shut your heads and let tom go on! what did he say, tom?" "he saidi think he said he hoped i was better off where i was gone to, but if i'd been better sometimes-" "there, d'you hear that! it was his very words!" "and you shut him up sharp." "i lay i did! there must a been an angel there. there was an angel there, somewheres!" "and mrs. harper told about joe scaring her with a fire-cracker, and you told about peter and the pain-killer-" "just as true as i live!" "and then there was a whole lot of talk 'bout dragging the river for us, and 'bout having the funeral sunday, and then you and old miss harper hugged and cried, and she went." "it happened just so! it happened just so, as sure as i'm a-sitting in these very tracks. tom you couldn't told it more like, if you'd a seen it! and then what? go on, tom?" "then i thought you prayed for meand i could see you and hear every word you said. and you went to bed, and i was so sorry, that i took and wrote on a piece of sycamore bark, 'we ain't deadwe are only off being pirates,' and put it on the table by the candle; and then you looked so good, laying there asleep, that i thought i went and leaned over and kissed you on the lips." "did you, tom, did you! i just forgive you everything for that!" and she seized the boy in a crushing embrace that made him feel like the guiltiest of villains. "it was very kind, even though it was only adream," sid soliloquised just audibly. "shut up sid! a body does just the same in a dream as he'd do if he was awake. here's a big milum apple i've been saving for you tom, if you was ever found againnow go 'long to school. i'm thankful to the good god and father of us all i've got you back, that's long-suffering and merciful to them that believe on him and keep his word, though goodness knows i'm unworthy of it, but if only the worthy ones got his blessings and had his hand to help them over the rough places, there's few enough would smile here or ever enter into his rest when the long night comes. go 'long sid, mary, tomtake yourselves offyou've hendered me long enough." the children left for school, and the old lady to call on mrs. harper and vanquish her realism with tom's marvelous dream. sid had better judgment than to utter the thought that was in his mind as he left the house. it was this: "pretty thinas long a dream as that, without any mistakes in it!" what a hero tom was become, now! he did not go skipping and prancing, but moved with a dignified swagger as became a pirate who felt that the public eye was on him. and indeed it was; he tried not to seem to see the looks or hear the remarks as he passed along, but they were food and drink to him. smaller boys than himself flocked at his heels, as proud to be seen with him and tolerated by him, as if he had been the drummer at the head of a procession or the elephant leading a menagerie into town. boys of his own size pretended not to know he had been away at all; but they were consuming with envy, nevertheless. they would have given anything to have that swarthy sun-tanned skin of his, and his glittering notoriety; and tom would not have parted with either for a circus. at school the children made so much of him and of joe, and delivered such eloquent admiration from their eyes, that the two heroes were not long in becoming insufferably "stuck-up." they began to tell their adventures to hungry listenersbut they only began; it was not a thing likely to have an end, with imaginations like theirs to furnish material. and finally, when they got out their pipes and went serenely puffing around, the very summit of glory was reached. tom decided that he could be independent of becky thatcher now. glory was sufficient. he would live for glory. now that he was distinguished, maybe she would be wanting to "make up." well, let hershe should see that he could be as indifferent as some other people. presently she arrived. tom pretended not to see her. he moved away and joined a group of boys and girls and began to talk. soon he observed that she was tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and dancing eyes, pretending to be busy chasing school-mates, and screaming with laughter when she made a capture; but he noticed that she always made her captures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a conscious eye in his direction at such times, too. it gratified all the vicious vanity that was in him; and so, instead of winning him it only "set him up" the more and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that he knew she was about. presently she gave over skylarking, and moved irresolutely about, sighing once or twice and glancing furtively and wistfully toward tom. then she observed that now tom was talking more particularly to amy lawrence than to any one else. she felt a sharp pang and grew disturbed and uneasy at once. she tried to go away, but her feet were treacherous, and carried her to the group instead. she said to a girl almost at tom's elbowwith sham vivacity: "why mary austin! you bad girl, why didn't you come to sunday-school?" "i did comedidn't you see me?" "why no! did you? where did you sit?" "i was in miss peter's class, where i always go. i saw you." "did you? why it's funny i didn't see you. i wanted to tell you about the picnic." "o, that's jolly. who's going to give it?" "my ma's going to let me have one." "o, goody; i hope she'll let me come." "well she will. the picnic's for me. she'll let anybody come that i want, and i want you." "that's ever so nice. when is it going to be?" "by and by. maybe about vacation." "o, won't it be fun! you going to have all the girls and boys?" "yes, every one that's friends to meor wants to be;" and she glanced ever so furtively at tom, but he talked right along to amy lawrence about the terrible storm on the island, and how the lightning tore the great sycamore tree "all to flinders" while he was "standing within three feet of it." "o, may i come?" said gracie miller. "yes." "and me?" said sally rogers. "yes." "and me, too?" said susy harper. "and joe?" "yes." and so on, with clapping of joyful hands till all the group had begged for invitations but tom and amy. then tom turned coolly away, still talking, and took amy with him. becky's lips trembled and the tears came to her eyes; she hid these signs with a forced gayety and went on chattering, but the life had gone out of the picnic, now, and out of everything else; she got away as soon as she could and hid herself and had what her sex call "a good cry." then she sat moody, with wounded pride till the bell rang. she roused up, now, with a vindictive cast in her eye, and gave her plaited tails a shake and said she knew what she'd do. at recess tom continued his flirtation with amy with jubilant self-satisfaction. and he kept drifting about to find becky and lacerate her with the performance. at last he spied her, but there was a sudden falling of his mercury. she was sitting cosily on a little bench behind the school-house looking at a picture book with alfred templeand so absorbed were they, and their heads so close together over the book that they did not seem to be conscious of anything in the world beside. jealousy ran red hot through tom's veins. he began to hate himself for throwing away the chance becky had offered for a reconciliation. he called himself a fool, and all the hard names he could think of. he wanted to cry with vexation. amy chatted happily along, as they walked, for her heart was singing, but tom's tongue had lost its function. he did not hear what amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly he could only stammer an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced as otherwise. he kept drifting to the rear of the schoolhouse, again and again, to sear his eye-balls with the hateful spectacle there. he could not help it. and it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that becky thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the living. but she did see, nevertheless; and she knew she was winning her fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered. amy's happy prattle became intolerable. tom hinted at things he had to attend to; things that must be done; and time was fleeting. but in vainthe girl chirped on. tom thought, "o hang her, ain't i ever going to get rid of her?" at last he must be attending to those things; and she said artlessly that she would be "around" when school let out. and he hastened away, hating her for it. "any other boy!" tom thought, grating his teeth. "any boy in the whole town but that saint louis smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is aristocracy! o, all right, i licked you the first day you ever saw this town, mister, and i'll lick you again! you just wait till i catch you out! i'll just take and-" and he went through the motions of thrashing an imaginary boypummeling the air, and kicking and gouging. "o, you do, do you? you holler 'nough, do you? now, then, let that learn you!" and so the imaginary flogging was finished to his satisfaction. tom fled home at noon. his conscience could not endure any more of amy's grateful happiness, and his jealousy could bear no more of the other distress. becky resumed her picture-inspections with alfred, but as the minutes dragged along and no tom came to suffer, her triumph began to cloud and she lost interest; gravity and absent-mindedness followed, and then melancholy; two or three times she pricked up her ear at a footstep, but it was a false hope; no tom came. at last she grew entirely miserable and wished she hadn't carried it so far. when poor alfred, seeing that he was losing her, he did not know how, and kept exclaiming: "o here's a jolly one! look at this!" she lost patience at last, and said, "o, don't bother me! i don't care for them!" and burst into tears, and got up and walked away. alfred dropped alongside and was going to try to comfort her, but she said: "go away and leave me alone, can't you! i hate you!" so the boy halted, wondering what he could have donefor she had said she would look at pictures all through the nooningand she walked on, crying. then alfred went musing into the deserted schoolhouse. he was humiliated and angry. he easily guessed his way to the truththe girl had simply made a convenience of him to vent her spite upon tom sawyer. he was far from hating tom the less when this thought occurred to him. he wished there was some way to get that boy into trouble without much risk to himself. tom's spelling book fell under his eye. here was his opportunity. he gratefully opened to the lesson for the afternoon and poured ink upon the page. becky, glancing in at a window behind him at the moment, saw the act, and moved on, without discovering herself. she started homeward, now, intending to find tom and tell him; tom would be thankful and their troubles would be healed. before she was half way home, however, she had changed her mind. the thought of tom's treatment of her when she was talking about her picnic came scorching back and filled her with shame. she resolved to let him get whipped on the damaged spelling-book's account, and to hate him forever, into the bargain. chapter 19 the cruelty of "i didn't think" tom arrived at home in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt said to him showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an unpromising market: "tom, i've a notion to skin you alive!" "auntie, what have i done?" "well, you've done enough. here i go over to sereny harper, like an old softy, expecting i'm going to make her believe all that rubbage about that dream, when lo and behold you she'd found out from joe that you was over here and heard all the talk we had that night. tom i don't know what is to become of a boy that will act like that. it makes me feel so bad to think you could let me go to sereny harper and make such a fool of myself and never say a word." this was a new aspect of the thing. his smartness of the morning had seemed to tom a good joke before, and very ingenious. it merely looked mean and shabby now. he hung his head and could not think of anything to say for a moment. then he said: "auntie, i wish i hadn't done itbut i didn't think." "o, child you never think. you never think of anything but your own selfishness. you could think to come all the way over here from jackson's island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn't ever think to pity us and save us from sorrow." "auntie, i know now it was mean, but i didn't mean to be mean. i didn't, honest. and besides i didn't come over here to laugh at you that night." "what did you come for, then?" "it was to tell you not to be uneasy about us, because we hadn't got drownded." "tom, tom, i would be the thankfullest soul in this world if i could believe you ever had as good a thought as that, but you know you never didand i know it, tom." "indeed and 'deed i did, auntiei wish i may never stir if i didn't." "o, tom, don't liedon't do it. it only makes things a hundred times worse." "it ain't a lie, auntie, it's the truth. i wanted to keep you from grievingthat was all that made me come." "i'd give the whole world to believe thatit would cover up a power of sins, tom. i'd most be glad you'd run off and acted so bad. but it ain't reasonable; because, why didn't you tell me, child?" "why, you see, auntie, when you got to talking about the funeral, i just got all full of the idea of our coming and hiding in the church, and i couldn't somehow bear to spoil it. so i just put the bark back in my pocket and kept mum." "what bark?" "the bark i had wrote on to tell you we'd gone pirating. i wish, now, you'd waked up when i kissed youi do, honest." the hard lines in his aunt's face relaxed and a sudden tenderness dawned in her eyes. "did you kiss me, tom?" "why yes i did." "are you sure you did, tom?" "why yes i did, auntiecertain sure." "what did you kiss me for, tom?" "because i loved you so, and you laid there moaning and i was so sorry." the words sounded like truth. the old lady could not hide a tremor in her voice when she said: "kiss me again, tom!and be off with you to school, now, and don't bother me any more." the moment he was gone, she ran to a closet and got out the ruin of a jacket which tom had gone pirating in. then she stopped, with it in her hand, and said to herself. "no, i don't dare. poor boy, i reckon he's lied about itbut it's a blessed, blessed lie, there's such comfort come from it. i hope the lordi know the lord will forgive him, because it was such good-heartedness in him to tell it. but i don't want to find out it's a lie. i won't look." she put the jacket away, and stood by musing a minute. twice she put out her hand to take the garment again, and twice she refrained. once more she ventured, and this time she fortified herself with the thought: "it's a good lieit's a good liei won't let it grieve me." so she sought the jacket pocket. a moment later she was reading tom's piece of bark through flowing tears and saying: "i could forgive the boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins!" chapter 20 tom takes becky's punishment there was something about aunt polly's manner, when she kissed tom, that swept away his low spirits and made him lighthearted and happy again. he started to school and had the luck of coming upon becky thatcher at the head of meadow lane. his mood always determined his manner. without a moment's hesitation he ran to her and said: "i acted mighty mean to-day, becky, and i'm so sorry. i won't ever, ever do that way again, as long as ever i liveplease make up, won't you?" the girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the face: "i'll thank you to keep yourself to yourself, mr. thomas sawyer. i'll never speak to you again." she tossed her head and passed on. tom was so stunned that he had not even presence of mind enough to say "who cares, miss smarty?" until the right time to say it had gone by. so he said nothing. but he was in a fine rage, nevertheless. he moped into the school-yard wishing she were a boy, and imagining how he would trounce her if she were. he presently encountered her and delivered a stinging remark as he passed. she hurled one in return, and the angry breach was complete. it seemed to becky, in her hot resentment, that she could hardly wait for school to "take in," she was so impatient to see tom flogged for the injured spelling-book. if she had had lingering notion of exposing alfred temple, tom's offensive fling had driven it entirely away. poor girl, she did not know how fast she was nearing trouble herself. the master, mr. dobbins, had reached middle age with an unsatisfied ambition. the darling of his desires was to be a doctor, but poverty had decreed that he should be nothing higher than a village schoolmaster. every day he took a mysterious book out of his desk and absorbed himself in it at times when no classes were reciting. he kept that book under lock and key. there was not an urchin in school but was perishing to have a glimpse of it, but the chance never came. every boy and girl had a theory about the nature of that book; but no two theories were alike, and there was no way of getting at the facts in the case. now, as becky was passing by the desk, which stood near the door, she noticed that the key was in the lock! it was a precious moment. she glanced around; found herself alone, and the next instant she had the book in her hands. the title pageprofessor somebody's "anatomy"carried no information to her mind; so she began to turn the leaves. she came at once upon a handsomely engraved and colored frontispiecea human figure, stark naked. at that moment a shadow fell on the page and tom sawyer stepped in at the door, and caught a glimpse of the picture. becky snatched at the book to close it, and had the hard luck to tear the pictured page half down the middle. she thrust the volume into the desk, turned the key, and burst out crying with shame and vexation. "tom sawyer, you are just as mean as you can be, to sneak up on a person and look at what they're looking at." "how could i know you was looking at anything?" "you ought to be ashamed of yourself tom sawyer; you know you're going to tell on me, and o, what shall i do, what shall i do! i'll be whipped, and i never was whipped in school." then she stamped her little foot and said: "be so mean if you want to! i know something that's going to happen. you just wait and you'll see! hateful, hateful, hateful!"and she flung out of the house with a new explosion of crying. tom stood still, rather flustered by this onslaught. presently he said to himself. "what a curious kind of a fool a girl is. never been licked in school! shucks, what's a licking! that's just like a girlthey're so thin-skinned and chicken-hearted. well, of course i ain't going to tell old dobbins on this little fool, because there's other ways of getting even on her, that ain't so mean; but what of it? old dobbins will ask who it was tore his book. nobody'll answer. then he'll do just the way he always doesask first one and then t'other, and when he comes to the right girl he'll know it, without any telling. girls' faces always tell on them. they ain't got any backbone. she'll get licked. well, it's a kind of a tight place for becky thatcher, because there ain't any way out of it." tom conned the thing a moment longer and then added: "all right, though; she'd like to see me in just such a fixlet her sweat it out!" tom joined the mob of skylarking scholars outside. in a few moments the master arrived and school "took in." tom did not feel a strong interest in his studies. every time he stole a glance at the girls' side of the room becky's face troubled him. considering all things, he did not want to pity her, and yet it was all he could do to help it. he could get up no exultation that was really worthy the name. presently the spelling-book discovery was made, and tom's mind was entirely full of his own matters for a while after that. becky roused up from her lethargy of distress and showed good interest in the proceedings. she did not expect that tom could get out of his trouble by denying that he spilt the ink on the book himself, and she was right. the denial only seemed to make the thing worse for tom. becky supposed she would be glad of that, and she tried to believe she was glad of it, but she found she was not certain. when the worst came to the worst, she had an impulse to get up and tell on alfred temple, but she made an effort and forced herself to keep stillbecause, said she to herself, "he'll tell about me tearing the picture, sure. i wouldn't say a word, not to save his life!" tom took his whipping and went back to his seat not at all brokenhearted, for he thought it was possible that he had unknowingly upset the ink on the spelling-book himself, in some skylarking bouthe had denied it for form's sake and because it was custom, and had stuck to the denial from principle. a whole hour drifted by, the master sat nodding in his throne, the air was drowsy with the hum of study. by and by, mr. dobbins straightened himself up, yawned, then unlocked his desk, and reached for his book, but seemed undecided whether to take it out or leave it. most of the pupils glanced up languidly, but there were two among them that watched his movements with intent eyes. mr. dobbins fingered his book absently for a while, then took it out and settled himself in his chair to read! tom shot a glance at becky. he had seen a hunted and helpless rabbit look as she did, with a gun leveled at its head. instantly he forgot his quarrel with her. quicksomething must be done! done in a flash, too! but the very imminence of the emergency paralyzed his invention. good!he had an inspiration! he would run and snatch the book, spring through the door and fly. but his resolution shook for one little instant, and the chance was lostthe master opened the volume. if tom only had the wasted opportunity back again! too late; there was no help for becky now, he said. the next moment the master faced the school. every eye sunk under his gaze. there was that in it which smote even the innocent with fear. there was silence while one might count ten; the master was gathering his wrath. then he spoke: "who tore this book?" there was not a sound. one could have heard a pin drop. the stillness continued; the master searched face after face for signs of guilt. "benjamin rogers, did you tear this book?" a denial. another pause. "joseph harper, did you?" another denial. tom's uneasiness grew more and more intense under the slow torture of these proceedings. the master scanned the ranks of boysconsidered a while, then turned to the girls: "amy lawrence?" a shake of the head. "gracie miller?" the same sign. "susan harper, did you do this?" another negative. the next girl was becky thatcher. tom was trembling from head to foot with excitement and a sense of the hopelessness of the situation. "rebecca thatcher," (tom glanced at her faceit was white with terror,)"did you tearno, look me in the face"(her hands rose in appeal)"did you tear this book?" a thought shot like lightning through tom's brain. he sprang to his feet and shouted "i done it!" the school stared in perplexity at this incredible folly. tom stood a moment, to gather his dismembered faculties; and when he stepped forward to go to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the adoration that shone upon him out of poor becky's eyes seemed pay enough for a hundred floggings. inspired by the splendor of his own act, he took without an outcry the most merciless flaying that even mr. dobbins had ever administered; and also received with indifference the added cruelty of a command to remain two hours after school should be dismissedfor he knew who would wait for him outside till his captivity was done, and not count the tedious time as loss, either. tom went to bed that night planning vengeance against alfred temple; for with shame and repentance becky had told him all, not forgetting her own treachery; but even the longing for vengeance had to give way, soon, to pleasanter musings, and he fell asleep at last, with becky's latest words lingering dreamily in his ear "tom, how could you be so noble!" chapter 21 eloquenceand the master's gilded dome vacation was approaching. the schoolmaster, always sever, grew severer and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to make a good showing on "examination" day. his rod and his ferule were seldom idle nowat least among the smaller pupils. only the biggest boys, and young ladies of eighteen and twenty escaped lashing. mr. dobbins's lashings were very vigorous ones, too; for although he carried, under his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only reached middle age and there was no sign of feebleness in his muscle. as the great day approached, all the tyranny that was in him came to the surface; he seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in punishing the least shortcomings. the consequence was, that the smaller boys spent their days in terror and suffering and their nights in plotting revenge. they threw away no opportunity to do the master a mischief. but he kept ahead all the time. the retribution that followed every vengeful success was so sweeping and majestic that the boys always retired from the field badly worsted. at last they conspired together and hit upon a plan that promised a dazzling victory. they swore-in the sign-painter's boy, told him the scheme, and asked his help. he had his own reasons for being delighted, for the master boarded in his father's family and had given the boy ample cause to hate him. the master's wife would go on a visit to the country in a few days, and there would be nothing to interfere with the plan; the master always prepared himself for great occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and the sign-painter's boy said that when the dominie had reached the proper condition on examination evening he would "manage the thing" while he napped in his chair; then he would have him awakened at the right time and hurried away to school. in the fullness of time the interesting occasion arrived. at eight in the evening the school-house was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. the master sat throned in his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard behind him. he was looking tolerably mellow. three rows of benches on each side and six rows in front of him were occupied by the dignitaries of the town and by the parents of the pupils. to his left, back of the rows of citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were seated the scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows of small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort; rows of gawky big boys; snow-banks of girls and young ladies clad in lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their grandmothers' ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and the flowers in their hair. all the rest of the house was filled with nonparticipating scholars. the exercises began. a very little boy stood up and sheepishly recited, "you'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage, etc"accompanying himself with the painfully exact and spasmodic gestures which a machine might have usedsupposing the machine to be a trifle out of order. but he got through safely, though cruelly scared, and got a fine round of applause when he made his manufactured bow and retired. a little shame-faced girl lisped "mary had a little lamb, etc.," performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and sat down flushed and happy. tom sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into the unquenchable and indestructible "give me liberty or give me death" speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the middle of it. a ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked under him and he was like to choke. true, he had the manifest sympathy of the housebut he had the house's silence, too, which was even worse than its sympathy. the master frowned, and this completed the disaster. tom struggled a while and then retired, utterly defeated. there was a weak attempt at applause, but it died early. "the boy stood on the burning deck" followed; also "the assyrian came down," and other declaratory gems. then there were reading exercises, and a spelling fight. the meager latin class recited with honor. the prime feature of the evening was in order, noworiginal "compositions" by the young ladies. each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of the platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript (tied with dainty ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored attention to "expression" and punctuation. the themes were the same that had been illuminated upon similar occasions by their mothers before them, their grandmothers, and doubtless all their ancestors in the female line clear back to the crusades. "friendship" was one; "memories of other days;" "religion in history;" "dream land;" "the advantages of culture;" "forms of political government compared and contrasted;" "melancholy;" "filial love;" "heart longings," etc., etc. a prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of "fine language;" another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one of them. no matter what the subject might be, a brainracking effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious mind could contemplate with edification. the glaring insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the banishment of the fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient to-day; it never will be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps. there is no school in all our land where the young ladies do not feel obliged to close their compositions with a sermon; and you will find that the sermon of the most frivolous and least religious girl in the school is always the longest and the most relentlessly pious. but enough of this. homely truth is unpalatable. let us return to the "examination." the first composition that was read was one entitled "is this, then, life?" perhaps the reader can endure an extract from it: in the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity! imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. in fancy, the voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng, "the observed of all observers." her graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly. in such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into the elysian world, of which she has had such bright dreams. how fairy-like does every thing appear to her enchanted vision! each new scene is more charming than the last. but after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity: the flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates harshly upon her ear; the ball-room has lost its charms; and with wasted health and embittered heart, she turns away with the conviction that earthly pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul! and so forth and so on. there was a buzz of gratification from time to time during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations of "how sweet!" "how eloquent!" "so true!" etc., and after the thing had closed with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the applause was enthusiastic. then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting" paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a "poem." two stanzas of it will do: a missouri maiden's farewell to alabama alabama, good-bye! i love thee well! but yet for awhile do i leave thee now! sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell, and burning recollections throng my brow! for i have wandered through thy flowery woods; have roamed and read near tallapoosa's stream; have listened to tallassee's warring floods, and wooed on coosa's side aurora's beam. yet shame i not to bear an o'er-full heart, nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes; 'tis from no stranger land i now must part, 'tis to no strangers left i yield these sighs. welcome and home were mine within this state, whose vales i leavewhose spires fade fast from me; and cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and tete, when, dear alabama! they turn cold on thee! there were very few there who knew what "tete" meant, but the poem was very satisfactory, nevertheless. next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young lady, who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and began to read in a measured, solemn tone. a vision dark and tempestuous was night. around the throne on high not a single star quivered; but the deep intonations of the heavy thunder constantly vibrated upon the ear; whilst the terrific lightning revelled in angry mood through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming to scorn the power exerted over its terror by the illustrious franklin! even the boisterous winds unanimously came forth from their mystic homes, and blustered about as if to enhance by their aid the wildness of the scene. at such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human sympathy my very spirit sighed; but instead thereof, "my dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter and guide my joy in grief, my second bliss in joy," came to my side. she moved like one of those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks of fancy's eden by the romantic and young, a queen of beauty unadorned save by her own transcendent loveliness. so soft was her step, it failed to make even a sound, and but for the magical thrill imparted by her genial touch, as other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided away unperceivedunsought. a strange sadness rested upon her features, like icy tears upon the robe of december, as she pointed to the contending elements without, and bade me contemplate the two beings presented. this nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-presbyterians that it took the first prize. this composition was considered to be the very finest effort of the evening. the mayor of the village, in delivering the prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it was by far the most "eloquent" thing he had ever listened to, and that daniel webster himself might well be proud of it. it may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in which the word "beauteous" was over-fondled, and human experience referred to as "life's page," was up to the usual average. now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his chair aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a map of america on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class upon. but he made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered titter rippled over the house. he knew what the matter was and set himself to right it. he sponged out lines and re-made them; but he only distorted them more than ever, and the tittering was more pronounced. he threw his entire attention upon his work, now, as if determined not to be put down by the mirth. he felt that all eyes were fastened upon him; he imagined he was succeeding, and yet the tittering continued; it even manifestly increased. and well it might. there was a garret above, pierced with a scuttle over his head; and down through this scuttle came a cat, suspended around the haunches by a string; she had a rag tied about her head and jaws to keep her from mewing; as she slowly descended she curved upward and clawed at the string, she swung downward and clawed at the intangible air. the tittering rose higher and higherthe cat was within six inches of the absorbed teacher's headdown, down, a little lower, and she grabbed his wig with her desperate claws, clung to it and was snatched up into the garret in an instant with her trophy still in her possession! and how the light did blaze abroad from the master's bald patefor the sign-painter's boy had gilded it! that broke up the meeting. the boys were avenged. vacation had come. chapter 22 huck finn quotes scripture tom joined the new order of cadets of temperance, being attracted by the showy character of their "regalia." he promised to abstain from smoking, chewing and profanity as long as he remained a member. now he found out a new thingnamely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. tom soon found himself tormented with a desire to drink and swear; the desire grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a chance to display himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing from the order. fourth of july was coming; but he soon gave that upgave it up before he had worn his shackles over forty-eight hoursand fixed his hopes upon old judge frazer, justice of the peace, who was apparently on his death-bed and would have a big public funeral, since he was so high an official. during three days tom was deeply concerned about the judge's condition and hungry for news of it. sometimes his hopes ran highso high that he would venture to get out his regalia and practice before the looking-glass. but the judge had a most discouraging way of fluctuating. at last he was pronounced upon the mendand then convalescent. tom was disgusted; and felt a sense of injury, too. he handed in his resignation at onceand that night the judge suffered a relapse and died. tom resolved that he would never trust a man like that again. the funeral was a fine thing. the cadets paraded in a style calculated to kill the late member with envy. tom was a free boy again, howeverthere was something in that. he could drink and swear, nowbut found to his surprise that he did not want to. the simple fact that he could, took the desire away, and the charm of it. tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was beginning to hang a little heavily on his hands. he attempted a diarybut nothing happened during three days, and so he abandoned it. the first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a sensation. tom and joe harper got up a band of performers and were happy for two days. even the glorious fourth was in some sense a failure, for it rained hard, there was no procession in consequence, and the greatest man in the world (as tom supposed) mr. benton, an actual united states senator, proved an overwhelming disappointmentfor he was not twenty-five feet high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood of it. a circus came. the boys played circus for three days afterward in tents made of rag carpetingadmission, three pins for boys, two for girlsand then circusing was abandoned. a phrenologist and a mesmerizer cameand went again and left the village duller and drearier than ever. there were some boys-and-girls' parties, but they were so few and so delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the harder. becky thatcher was gone to her constantinople home to stay with her parents during vacationso there was no bright side to life anywhere. the dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. it was a very cancer for permanency and pain. then came the measles. during two long weeks tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its happenings. he was very ill, he was interested in nothing. when he got upon his feet at last and moved feebly down town, a melancholy change had come over everything and every creature. there had been a "revival," and everybody had "got religion"; not only the adults, but even the boys and girls. tom went about, hoping against hope for the sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him everywhere. he found joe harper studying a testament, and turned sadly away from the depressing spectacle. he sought ben rogers, and found him visiting the poor with a basket of tracts. he hunted up jim hollis, who called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a warning. every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression; and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of huckleberry finn and was received with a scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he crept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all the town was lost, forever and forever. and that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain, awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. he covered his head with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for his doom; for he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was about him. he believed he had taxed the forbearance of the powers above to the extremity of endurance and that this was the result. it might have seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the getting up such an expensive thunderstorm as this to knock the turf from under an insect like himself. by and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing its object. the boy's first impulse was to be grateful, and reform. his second was to waitfor there might not be any more storms. the next day the doctors were back; tom had relapsed. the three weeks he spent on his back this time seemed an entire age. when he got abroad at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was. he drifted listlessly down the street and found jim hollis acting as judge in a juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her victim, a bird. he found joe harper and huck finn up an alley eating a stolen melon. poor lads! theylike tomhad suffered a relapse. chapter 23 the salvation of muff potter at last the sleepy atmosphere was stirredand vigorously: the murder trial came on in the court. it became the absorbing topic of village talk immediately. tom could not get away from it. every reference to the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his troubled conscience and fears almost persuaded him that these remarks were put forth in his hearing as "feelers"; he did not see how he could be suspected of knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be comfortable in the midst of this gossip. it kept him in a cold shiver all the time. he took huck to a lonely place to have a talk with him. it would be some relief to unseal his tongue for a little while; to divide his burden of distress with another sufferer. moreover, he wanted to assure himself that huck had remained discreet. "huck, have you ever told anybody aboutthat?" "'bout what?" "you know what." "o'course i haven't." "never a word?" "never a solitary word, so help me. what makes you ask?" "well, i was afeard." "why tom sawyer, we wouldn't be alive two days if that got found out. you know that." tom felt more comfortable. after a pause: "huck, they couldn't anybody get you to tell, could they?" "get me to tell? why if i wanted that half-breed devil to drownd me they could get me to tell. they ain't no different way." "well, that's all right, then. i reckon we're safe as long as we keep mum. but let's swear again, anyway. it's more surer." "i'm agreed." so they swore again with dread solemnities. "what is the talk around, huck? i've heard a power of it." "talk? well, it's just muff potter, muff potter, muff potter all the time. it keeps me in a sweat, constant, so's i want to hide som'ers." "that's just the same way they go on round me. i reckon he's a goner. don't you feel sorry for him, sometimes?" "most alwaysmost always. he ain't no account; but then he hain't ever done anything to hurt anybody. just fishes a little, to get money to get drunk onand loafs around considerable; but lord we all do thatleastways most of us,preachers and such like. but he's kind of goodhe give me half a fish, once, when there warn't enough for two; and lots of times he's kind of stood by me when i was out of luck." "well, he's mended kites for me, huck, and knitted hooks on to my line. i wish we could get him out of there." "my! we couldn't get him out tom. and besides, it wouldn't do any good; they'd ketch him again." "yesso they would. but i hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the dickens when he never donethat." "i do too, tom. lord, i hear 'em say he's the bloodiest-looking villain in this country, and they wonder he wasn't ever hung before." "yes, they talk like that, all the time. i've heard 'em say that if he was to get free they'd lynch him." "and they'd do it, too." the boys had a long talk, but it brought them little comfort. as the twilight drew on, they found themselves hanging about the neighborhood of the little isolated jail, perhaps with an undefined hope that something would happen that might clear away their difficulties. but nothing happened; there seemed to be no angels or fairies interested in this luckless captive. the boys did as they had often done beforewent to the cell grating and gave potter some tobacco and matches. he was on the ground floor and there were no guards. his gratitude for their gifts had always smote their consciences beforeit cut deeper than ever, this time. they felt cowardly and treacherous to the last degree when potter said: "you've ben mighty good to me, boysbetter'n anybody else in this town. and i don't forget it, i don't. often i says to myself, says i, 'i used to mend all the boys' kites and things, and show 'em where the good fishin' places was, and befriend 'em what i could, and now they've all forgot old muff when he's in trouble; but tom don't, and huck don'tthey don't forget him,' says i, 'and i don't forget them.' well, boys, i done an awful thingdrunk and crazy at the timethat's the only way i account for itand now i got to swing for it, and it's right. right, and best, too i reckonhope so, anyway. well, we won't talk about that. i don't want to make you feel bad; you've befriended me. but what i want to say, is, don't you ever get drunkthen you won't ever get here. stand a little furder westsothat's it; it's a prime comfort to see faces that's friendly when a body's in such a muck of trouble, and there don't none come here but yourn. good friendly facesgood friendly faces. git up on one another's backs and let me touch 'em. that's it. shake handsyourn'll come through the bars, but mine's too big. little hands, and weakbut they've helped muff potter a power, and they'd help him more if they could." tom went home miserable, and his dreams that night were full of horrors. the next day and the day after, he hung about the court room, drawn by an almost irresistible impulse to go in, but forcing himself to stay out. huck was having the same experience. they studiously avoided each other. each wandered away, from time to time, but the same dismal fascination always brought them back presently. tom kept his ears open when idlers sauntered out of the courtroom, but invariably heard distressing newsthe toils were closing more and more relentlessly around poor potter. at the end of the second day the village talk was to the effect that injun joe's evidence stood firm and unshaken, and that there was not the slightest question as to what the jury's verdict would be. tom was out late, that night, and came to bed through the window. he was in a tremendous state of excitement. it was hours before he got to sleep. all the village flocked to the courthouse the next morning, for this was to be the great day. both sexes were about equally represented in the packed audience. after a long wait the jury filed in and took their places; shortly afterward, potter, pale and haggard, timid and hopeless, was brought in, with chains upon him, and seated where all the curious eyes could stare at him; no less conspicuous was injun joe, stolid as ever. there was another pause, and then the judge arrived and the sheriff proclaimed the opening of the court. the usual whisperings among the lawyers and gathering together of papers followed. these details and accompanying delays worked up an atmosphere of preparation that was as impressive as it was fascinating. now a witness was called who testified that he found muff potter washing in the brook, at an early hour of the morning that the murder was discovered, and that he immediately sneaked away. after some further questioning, counsel for the prosecution said "take the witness." the prisoner raised his eyes for a moment, but dropped them again when his own counsel said "i have no questions to ask him." the next witness proved the finding of the knife near the corpse. counsel for the prosecution said: "take the witness." "i have no questions to ask him." potter's lawyer replied. a third witness swore he had often seen the knife in potter's possession. "take the witness." counsel for potter declined to question him. the faces of the audience began to betray annoyance. did this attorney mean to throw away his client's life without an effort? several witnesses deposed concerning potter's guilty behavior when brought to the scene of the murder. they were allowed to leave the stand without being cross-questioned. every detail of the damaging circumstances that occurred in the graveyard upon that morning which all present remembered so well, was brought out by credible witnesses, but none of them were cross-examined by potter's lawyer. the perplexity and dissatisfaction of the house expressed itself in murmurs and provoked a reproof from the bench. counsel for the prosecution now said: "by the oaths of citizens whose simple word is above suspicion, we have fastened this awful crime beyond all possibility of question, upon the unhappy prisoner at the bar. we rest our case here." a groan escaped from poor potter, and he put his face in his hands and rocked his body softly to and fro, while a painful silence reigned in the courtroom. many men were moved, and many women's compassion testified itself in tears. counsel for the defense rose and said: "your honor, in our remarks at the opening of this trial, we foreshadowed our purpose to prove that our client did this fearful deed while under the influence of a blind and irresponsible delirium produced by drink. we have changed our mind. we shall not offer that plea." [then to the clerk]: "call thomas sawyer!" a puzzled amazement awoke in every face in the house, not even excepting potter's. every eye fastened itself with wondering interest upon tom as he rose and took his place upon the stand. the boy looked wild enough, for he was badly scared. the oath was administered. "thomas sawyer, where were you on the seventeenth of june, about the hour of midnight?" tom glanced at injun joe's iron face and his tongue failed him. the audience listened breathless, but the words refused to come. after a few moments, however, the boy got a little of his strength back, and managed to put enough of it into his voice to make part of the house hear: "in the graveyard!" "a little bit louder, please. don't be afraid. you were-" "in the graveyard." a contemptuous smile flitted across injun joe's face. "were you anywhere near horse williams's grave?" "yes, sir." "speak upjust a trifle louder. how near were you?" "near as i am to you." "were you hidden, or not?" "i was hid." "where?" "behind the elms that's on the edge of the grave." injun joe gave a barely perceptible start. "any one with you?" "yes, sir. i went there with-" "waitwait a moment. never mind mentioning your companion's name. we will produce him at the proper time. did you carry anything there with you?" tom hesitated and looked confused. "speak out my boydon't be diffident. the truth is always respectable. what did you take there?" "only aadead cat." there was a ripple of mirth, which the court checked. "we will produce the skeleton of that cat. now my boy, tell us everything that occurredtell it in your own waydon't skip anything, and don't be afraid." tom beganhesitatingly at first, but as he warmed to his subject his words flowed more and more easily; in a little while every sound ceased but his own voice; every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale. the strain upon pent emotion reached its climax when the boy said "-and as the doctor fetched the board around and muff potter fell, injun joe jumped with the knife and-" crash! quick as lightning the half-breed sprang for a window, tore his way through all opposers, and was gone! chapter 24 splendid days and fearsome nights tom was a glittering hero once morethe pet of the old, the envy of the young. his name even went into immortal print, for the village paper magnified him. there were some that believed he would be president, yet, if he escaped hanging. as usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took muff potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. but that sort of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not well to find fault with it. tom's days were days of splendor and exultation to him, but his nights were seasons of horror. injun joe infested all his dreams, and always with doom in his eye. hardly any temptation could persuade the boy to stir abroad after nightfall. poor huck was in the same state of wretchedness and terror, for tom had told the whole story to the lawyer the night before the great day of the trial, and huck was sore afraid that his share in the business might leak out, yet, notwithstanding injun joe's flight had saved him the suffering of testifying in court. the poor fellow had got the attorney to promise secrecy, but what of that? since tom's harassed conscience had managed to drive him to the lawyer's house by night and wring a dread tale from lips that had been sealed with the dismalest and most formidable of oaths, huck's confidence in the human race was well-nigh obliterated. daily muff potter's gratitude made tom glad he had spoken; but nightly he wished he had sealed up his tongue. half the time tom was afraid injun joe would never be captured; the other half he was afraid he would be. he felt sure he never could draw a safe breath again until that man was dead and he had seen the corpse. rewards had been offered, the country had been scoured, but no injun joe was found. one of those omniscient and awe-inspiring marvels, a detective, came up from st. louis, moused around, shook his head, looked wise, and made that sort of astounding success which members of that craft usually achieve. that is to say he "found a clue." but you can't hang a "clue" for murder and so after that detective had got through and gone home, tom felt just as insecure as he was before. the slow days drifted on, and each left behind it a slightly lightened weight of apprehension. chapter 25 seeking the buried treasure there comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. this desire suddenly came upon tom one day. he sallied out to find joe harper, but failed of success. next he sought ben rogers; he had gone fishing. presently he stumbled upon huck finn the red-handed. huck would answer. tom took him to a private place and opened the matter to him confidentially. huck was willing. huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time which is not money. "where'll we dig?" said huck. "o, most anywhere." "why, is it hid all around?" "no indeed it ain't. it's hid in mighty particular places, hucksometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of a limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight; but mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses." "who hides it?" "why robbers, of coursewho'd you reckon? sunday-school sup'rintendents?" "i don't know. if 'twas mine i wouldn't hide it; i'd spend it and have a good time." "so would i. but robbers don't do that way. they always hide it and leave it there." "don't they come after it any more?" "no, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks, or else they die. anyway it lays there a long time and gets rusty; and by and by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the marksa paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because it's mostly signs and hy'rogliphics." "hyrowhich?" "hy'rogliphicspictures and things, you know, that don't seem to mean anything." "have you got one of them papers, tom?" "no." "well then, how you going to find the marks?" "i don't want any marks. they always bury it under a ha'nted house or on an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking out. well, we've tried jackson's island a little, and we can try it again some time; and there's the old ha'nted house up the still-house branch, and there's lots of dead-limb treesdead loads of 'em." "is it under all of them?" "how you talk! no!" "then how you going to know which one to go for?" "go for all of 'em!" "why tom, it'll take all summer." "well, what of that? suppose you find a brass pot with a hundred dollars in it, all rusty and gray, or a rotten chest full of di'monds. how's that?" huck's eyes glowed. "that's bully. plenty bully enough for me. just you gimme the hundred dollars and i don't want no di'monds." "all right. but i bet you i ain't going to throw off on di'monds. some of 'em's worth twenty dollars apiecethere ain't any, hardly, but's worth six bits or a dollar." "no! is that so?" "cert'nlyanybody'll tell you so. hain't you ever seen one, huck?" "not as i remember." "o, kings have slathers of them." "well, i don't know no kings, tom." "i reckon you don't. but if you was to go to europe you'd see a raft of 'em hopping around." "do they hop?" "hop?you granny! no!" "well what did you say they did, for?" "shucks, i only meant you'd see 'emnot hopping, of coursewhat do they want to hop for?but i mean you'd just see 'emscattered around, you know, in a kind of a general way. like that old hump-backed richard." "richard? what's his other name?" "he didn't have any other name. kings don't have any but a given name." "no?" "but they don't." "well, if they like it, tom, all right; but i don't want to be a king and have only just a given name, like a nigger. but saywhere you going to dig first?" "well, i don't know. s'pose we tackle that old dead-limb tree on the hill t'other side of still-house branch?" so they got a crippled pick and a shovel, and set out on their three-mile tramp. they arrived hot and panting, and threw themselves down in the shade of a neighboring elm to rest and have a smoke. "i like this," said tom. "so do i." "say, huck, if we find a treasure here, what you going to do with your share?" "well i'll have pie and a glass of soda every day, and i'll go to every circus that comes along. i bet i'll have a gay time." "well ain't you going to save any of it?" "save it? what for?" "why so as to have something to live on, by and by." "o, that ain't any use. pap would come back to thish-yer town some day and get his claws on it if i didn't hurry up, and i tell you he'd clean it out pretty quick. what you going to do with yourn, tom?" "i'm going to buy a new drum, and a sure-'nough sword, and a red neck-tie and a bull pup, and get married." "married!" "that's it." "tom, youwhy you ain't in your right mind." "waityou'll see." "well that's the foolishest thing you could do, tom. look at pap and my mother. fight? why they used to fight all the time. i remember, mighty well." "that ain't anything. the girl i'm going to marry won't fight." "tom, i reckon they're all alike. they'll all comb a body. now you better think 'bout this a while. i tell you you better. what's the name of the gal?" "it ain't a gal at allit's a girl." "it's all the same, i reckon; some says gal, some says girlboth's right, like enough. anyway, what's her name, tom?" "i'll tell you some timenot now." "all rightthat'll do. only if you get married i'll be more lonesomer than ever." "no you won't. you'll come and live with me. now stir out of this and we'll go to digging." they worked and sweated for half an hour. no result. they toiled another half-hour. still no result. huck said: "do they always bury it as deep as this?" "sometimesnot always. not generally. i reckon we haven't got the right place." so they chose a new spot and began again. the labor dragged a little, but still they made progress. they pegged away in silence for some time. finally huck leaned on his shovel, swabbed the beaded drops from his brow with his sleeve, and said: "where you going to dig next, after we get this one?" "i reckon maybe we'll tackle the old tree that's over yonder on cardiff hill back of the widow's." "i reckon that'll be a good one. but won't the widow take it away from us, tom? it's on her land." "she take it away! maybe she'd like to try it once. whoever finds one of these hid treasures, it belongs to him. it don't make any difference whose land it's on." that was satisfactory. the work went on. by and by huck said: "blame it, we must be in the wrong place again. what do you think?" "it is mighty curious huck. i don't understand it. sometimes witches interfere. i reckon maybe that's what's the trouble now." "shucks, witches ain't got no power in the daytime." "well, that's so. i didn't think of that. oh, i know what the matter is! what a blamed lot of fools we are! you got to find out where the shadow of the limb falls at midnight, and that's where you dig!" "then consound it, we've fooled away all this work for nothing. now hang it all, we got to come back in the night. it's an awful long way. can you get out?" "i bet i will. we've got to do it to-night, too, because if somebody sees these holes they'll know in a minute what's here and they'll go for it." "well, i'll come around and meow to night." "all right. let's hide the tools in the bushes." the boys were there that night, about the appointed time. they sat in the shadow waiting. it was a lonely place, and an hour made solemn by old traditions. spirits whispered in the rustling leaves, ghosts lurked in the murky nooks, the deep baying of a hound floated up out of the distance, an owl answered with his sepulchral note. the boys were subdued by these solemnities, and talked little. by and by they judged that twelve had come; they marked where the shadow fell, and began to dig. their hopes commenced to rise. their interest grew stronger, and their industry kept pace with it. the hole deepened and still deepened, but every time their hearts jumped to hear the pick strike upon something, they only suffered a new disappointment. it was only a stone or a chunk. at last tom said: "it ain't any use, huck, we're wrong again." "well but we can't be wrong. we spotted the shadder to a dot." "i know it, but then there's another thing." "what's that?" "why we only guessed at the time. like enough it was too late or too early." huck dropped his shovel. "that's it," said he. "that's the very trouble. we got to give this one up. we can't ever tell the right time, and besides this kind of thing's too awful, here this time of night with witches and ghosts a-fluttering around so. i feel as if something's behind me all the time; and i'm afeard to turn around, becuz maybe there's others in front a-waiting for a chance. i been creeping all over, ever since i got here." "well, i've been pretty much so, too, huck. they most always put in a dead man when they bury a treasure under a tree, to look out for it." "lordy!" "yes, they do. i've always heard that." "tom i don't like to fool around much where there's dead people. a body's bound to get into trouble with 'em, sure." "i don't like to stir 'em up, either, huck. s'pose this one here was to stick his skull out and say something!" "don't, tom! it's awful." "well it just is. huck, i don't feel comfortable a bit." "say, tom, let's give this place up, and try somewheres else." "all right, i reckon we better." "what'll it be?" tom considered a while; and then said "the ha'nted house. that's it!" "blame it, i don't like ha'nted houses, tom. why they're a dem sight worse'n dead people. dead people might talk, maybe, but they don't come sliding around in a shroud, when you ain't noticing, and peep over your shoulder all of a sudden and grit their teeth, the way a ghost does. i couldn't stand such a thing as that, tomnobody could." "yes, but huck, ghosts don't travel around only at night. they won't hender us from digging there in the daytime." "well that's so. but you know mighty well people don't go about that ha'nted house in the day nor the night." "well, that's mostly because they don't like to go where a man's been murdered, anywaybut nothing's ever been seen around that house except in the nightjust some blue lights slipping by the windowsno regular ghosts." "well where you see one of them blue lights flickering around, tom, you can bet there's a ghost mighty close behind it. it stands to reason. becuz you know that they don't anybody but ghosts use 'em." "yes, that's so. but anyway they don't come around in the daytime, so what's the use of our being afeared?" "well, all right. we'll tackle the ha'nted house if you say sobut i reckon it's taking chances." they had started down the hill by this time. there in the middle of the moonlit valley below them stood the "ha'nted" house, utterly isolated, its fences gone long ago, rank weeds smothering the very doorsteps, the chimney crumbled to ruin, the window-sashes vacant, a corner of the roof caved in. the boys gazed a while, half expecting to see a blue light flit past a window; then talking in a low tone, as befitted the time and the circumstances, they struck far off to the right, to give the haunted house a wide berth, and took their way homeward through the woods that adorned the rearward side of cardiff hill. chapter 26 real robbers seize the box of gold about noon the next day the boys arrived at the dead tree; they had come for their tools. tom was impatient to go to the haunted house; huck was measurably so, alsobut suddenly said "looky-here, tom, do you know what day it is?" tom mentally ran over the days of the week, and then quickly lifted his eyes with a startled look in them "my! i never once thought of it, huck!" "well i didn't neither, but all at once it popped onto me that it was friday." "blame it, a body can't be too careful, huck. we might a got into an awful scrape, tackling such a thing on a friday." "might! better say we would! there's some lucky days, maybe, but friday ain't." "any fool knows that. i don't reckon you was the first that found it out, huck." "well, i never said i was, did i? and friday ain't all, neither. i had a rotten bad dream last nightdreampt about rats." "no! sure sign of trouble. did they fight?" "no." "well that's good, huck. when they don't fight it's only a sign that there's trouble around, you know. all we got to do is to look mighty sharp and keep out of it. we'll drop this thing for to-day, and play. do you know robin hood, huck?" "no. who's robin hood?" "why he was one of the greatest men that was ever in englandand the best. he was a robber." "cracky, i wisht i was. who did he rob?" "only sheriffs and bishops and rich people and kings, and such like. but he never bothered the poor. he loved 'em. he always divided up with 'em perfectly square." "well, he must 'a' ben a brick." "i bet you he was, huck. oh, he was the noblest man that ever was. they ain't any such men now, i can tell you. he could lick any man in england, with one hand tied behind him; and he could take his yew bow and plug a ten-cent piece every time, a mile and a half." "what's a yew bow?" "i don't know. it's some kind of a bow, of course. and if he hit that dime only on the edge he would set down and cryand curse. but we'll play robin hoodit's noble fun. i'll learn you." "i'm agreed." so they played robin hood all the afternoon, now and then casting a yearning eye down upon the haunted house and passing a remark about the morrow's prospects and possibilities there. as the sun began to sink into the west they took their way homeward athwart the long shadows of the trees and soon were buried from sight in the forests of cardiff hill. on saturday, shortly after noon, the boys were at the dead tree again. they had a smoke and a chat in the shade, and then dug a little in their last hole, not with great hope, but merely because tom said there were so many cases where people had given up a treasure after getting down within six inches of it, and then somebody else had come along and turned it up with a single thrust of a shovel. the thing failed this time, however, so the boys shouldered their tools and went away feeling that they had not trifled with fortune but had fulfilled all the requirements that belong to the business of treasure-hunting. when they reached the haunted house there was something so weird and grisly about the dead silence that reigned there under the baking sun, and something so depressing about the loneliness and desolation of the place, that they were afraid, for a moment, to venture in. then they crept to the door and took a trembling peep. they saw a weed grown, floorless room, unplastered, an ancient fireplace, vacant windows, a ruinous staircase; and here, there, and everywhere, hung ragged and abandoned cobwebs. they presently entered, softly, with quickened pulses; talking in whispers, ears alert to catch the slightest sound, and muscles tense and ready for instant retreat. in a little while familiarity modified their fears and they gave the place a critical and interested examination, rather admiring their own boldness, and wondering at it, too. next they wanted to look upstairs. this was something like cutting off retreat, but they got to daring each other, and of course there could be but one resultthey threw their tools into a corner and made the ascent. up there were the same signs of decay. in one corner they found a closet that promised mystery, but the promise was a fraudthere was nothing in it. their courage was up now and well in hand. they were about to go down and begin work when "sh!" said tom. "what is it?" whispered huck, blanching with fright. "sh!....... there!...... hear it?" "yes!..... o, my! let's run!" "keep still! don't you budge! they're coming right toward the door." the boys stretched themselves upon the floor with their eyes to knot holes in the planking, and lay waiting, in a misery of fear. "they've stopped...... nocoming...... here they are. don't whisper another word, huck. my goodness, i wish i was out of this!" two men entered. each boy said to himself. "there's the old deaf and dumb spaniard that's been about town once or twice latelynever saw t'other man before." "t'other" was a ragged, unkempt creature, with nothing very pleasant in his face. the spaniard was wrapped in a serape; he had bushy white whiskers; long white hair flowed from under his sombrero, and he wore green goggles. when they came in, "t'other" was talking in a low voice; they sat down on the ground, facing the door, with their backs to the wall, and the speaker continued his remarks. his manner became less guarded and his words more distinct as he proceeded: "no," said he, "i've thought it all over, and i don't like it. it's dangerous." "dangerous!" grunted the "deaf and dumb" spaniard,to the vast surprise of the boys. "milksop!" this voice made the boys gasp and quake. it was injun joe's! there was silence for some time. then joe said: "what's any more dangerous than that job up yonderbut nothing's come of it." "that's different. away up the river so, and not another house about. 'twon't ever be known that we tried, anyway, long as we didn't succeed." "well, what's more dangerous than coming here in the day time?anybody would suspicion us that saw us." "i know that. but there warn't any other place as handy after that fool of a job. i want to quit this shanty. i wanted to yesterday, only it warn't any use trying to stir out of here, with those infernal boys playing over there on the hill right in full view." "those infernal boys," quaked again under the inspiration of this remark, and thought how lucky it was that they had remembered it was friday and concluded to wait a day. they wished in their hearts they had waited a year. the two men got out some food and made a luncheon. after a long and thoughtful silence, injun joe said: "look here, ladyou go back up the river where you belong. wait there till you hear from me. i'll take the chances on dropping into this town just once more, for a look. we'll do that 'dangerous' job after i've spied around a little and think things look well for it. then for texas! we'll leg it together!" this was satisfactory. both men presently fell to yawning, and injun joe said: "i'm dead for sleep! it's your turn to watch." he curled down in the weeds and soon began to snore. his comrade stirred him once or twice and he became quiet. presently the watcher began to nod; his head drooped lower and lower, both men began to snore now. the boys drew a long, grateful breath. tom whispered "now's our chancecome!" huck said: "i canti'd die if they was to wake." tom urgedhuck held back. at last tom rose slowly and softly, and started alone. but the first step he made wrung such a hideous creak from the crazy floor that he sank down almost dead with fright. he never made a second attempt. the boys lay there counting the dragging moments till it seemed to them that time must be done and eternity growing gray; and then they were grateful to note that at last the sun was setting. now one snore ceased. injun joe sat up, stared aroundsmiled grimly upon his comrade, whose head was drooping upon his kneesstirred him up with his foot and said "here! you're a watchman, ain't you! all right, though-nothing's happened." "my! have i been asleep?" "o, partly, partly. nearly time for us to be moving, pard. what'll we do with what little swag we've got left?" "i don't knowleave it here as we've always done, i reckon. no use to take it away till we start south. six hundred and fifty in silver's something to carry." "wellall rightit won't matter to come here once more." "nobut i'd say come in the night as we used to doit's better." "yes; but look here; it may be a good while before i get the right chance at that job; accidents might happen; 'tain't in such a very good place; we'll just regularly bury itand bury it deep." "good idea," said the comrade, who walked across the room, knelt down, raised one of the rearward hearthstones and took out a bag that jingled pleasantly. he subtracted from it twenty or thirty dollars for himself and as much for injun joe and passed the bag to the latter, who was on his knees in the corner, now, digging with his bowie knife. the boys forgot all their fears, all their miseries in an instant. with gloating eyes they watched every movement. luck!the splendor of it was beyond all imagination! six hundred dollars was money enough to make half a dozen boys rich! here was treasure-hunting under the happiest auspicesthere would not be any bothersome uncertainty as to where to dig. they nudged each other every momenteloquent nudges and easily understood, for they simply meant"o, but ain't you glad now we're here!" joe's knife struck upon something. "hello!" said he. "what is it?" said his comrade. "half-rotten plankno it's a box, i believe. herebear a hand and we'll see what it's here for. never mind, i've broke a hole." he reached his hand in and drew it out "man, it's money!" the two men examined the handful of coins. they were gold. the boys above were as excited as themselves, and as delighted. joe's comrade said "we'll make quick work of this. there's an old rusty pick over amongst the weeds in the corner the other side of the fire-placei saw it a minute ago." he ran and brought the boys' pick and shovel. injun joe took the pick, looked it over critically, shook his head, muttered something to himself, and then began to use it. the box was soon unearthed. it was not very large; it was iron bound and had been very strong before the slow years had injured it. the men contemplated the treasure a while in blissful silence. "pard, there's thousands of dollars here," said injun joe. "'twas always said that murrel's gang used around here one summer," the stranger observed. "i know it," said injun joe; "and this looks like it, i should say." "now you won't need to do that job." the half-breed frowned. said he "you don't know me. least you don't know all about that thing. 'tain't robbery altogetherit's revenge!" and a wicked light flamed in his eyes. "i'll need your help in it. when it's finishedthen texas. go home to your nance, and your kids, and stand by till you hear from me." "wellif you say so, what'll we do with thisbury it again?" "yes." [ravishing delight overhead.] "no! by the great sachem, no!" [profound distress overhead.] "i'd nearly forgot. that pick had fresh earth on it!" [the boys were sick with terror in a moment.] "what business has a pick and a shovel here? what business with fresh earth on them? who brought them hereand where are they gone? have you heard anybody?seen anybody? what! bury it again and leave them to come and see the ground disturbed? not exactlynot exactly. we'll take it to my den." "why of course! might have thought of that before. you mean number one?" "nonumber twounder the cross. the other place is badtoo common." "all right. it's nearly dark enough to start." injun joe got up and went about from window to window cautiously peeping out. presently he said: "who could have brought those tools here? do you reckon they can be upstairs?" the boys' breath forsook them. injun joe put his hand on his knife, halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the stairway. the boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone. the steps came creaking up the stairsthe intolerable distress of the situation woke the stricken resolution of the ladsthey were about to spring for the closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers and injun joe landed on the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway. he gathered himself up cursing, and his comrade said: "now what's the use of all that? if it's anybody, and they're up there, let them stay therewho cares? if they want to jump down, now, and get into trouble, who objects? it will be dark in fifteen minutesand then let them follow us if they want to. i'm willing. in my opinion, whoever hove those things in here caught a sight of us and took us for ghosts or devils or something. i'll bet they're running yet." joe grumbled a while; then he agreed with his friend that what daylight was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for leaving. shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the deepening twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious box. tom and huck rose up, weak but vastly relieved, and stared after them through the chinks between the logs of the house. follow? not they. they were content to reach ground again without broken necks, and take the townward track over the hill. they did not talk much. they were too much absorbed in hating themselveshating the ill luck that made them take the spade and the pick there. but for that, injun joe never would have suspected. he would have hidden the silver with the gold to wait there till his "revenge" was satisfied, and then he would have had the misfortune to find that money turn up missing. bitter, bitter luck that the tools were ever brought there! they resolved to keep a lookout for that spaniard when he should come to town spying out for chances to do his revengeful job, and follow him to "number two," wherever that might be. then a ghastly thought occurred to tom: "revenge? what if he means us, huck!" "o, don't!" said huck, nearly fainting. they talked it all over, and as they entered town they agreed to believe that he might possibly mean somebody elseat least that he might at least mean nobody but tom, since only tom had testified. very, very small comfort it was to tom to be alone in danger! company would be a palpable improvement, he thought. chapter 27 trembling on the trail the adventure of the day mightily tormented tom's dreams that night. four times he had his hands on that rich treasure and four times it wasted to nothingness in his fingers as sleep forsook him and wakefulness brought back the hard reality of his misfortune. as he lay in the early morning recalling the incidents of his great adventure, he noticed that they seemed curiously subdued and far awaysomewhat as if they had happened in another world, or in a time long gone by. then it occurred to him that the great adventure itself must be a dream! there was one very strong argument in favor of this ideanamely, that the quantity of coin he had seen was too vast to be real. he had never seen as much as fifty dollars in one mass before, and he was like all boys of his age and station in life, in that he imagined that all references to "hundreds" and "thousands" were mere fanciful forms of speech, and that no such sums really existed in the world. he never had supposed for a moment that so large a sum as a hundred dollars was to be found in actual money in anyone's possession. if his notions of hidden treasure had been analyzed, they would have been found to consist of a handful of real dimes and a bushel of vague, splendid, ungraspable dollars. but the incidents of his adventure grew sensibly sharper and clearer under the attrition of thinking them over, and so he presently found himself leaning to the impression that the thing might not have been a dream, after all. this uncertainty must be swept away. he would snatch a hurried breakfast and go and find huck. huck was sitting on the gunwale of a flatboat, listlessly dangling his feet in the water and looking very melancholy. tom concluded to let huck lead up to the subject. if he did not do it, then the adventure would be proved to have been only a dream. "hello, huck!" "hello, yourself." [silence, for a minute.] "tom, if we'd a left the blame tools at the dead tree, we'd 'a' got the money. o, ain't it awful!" "'tain't a dream, then, 'tain't a dream! somehow i most wish it was. dog'd if i don't, huck." "what ain't a dream?" "o, that thing yesterday. i been half thinking it was." "dream! if them stairs hadn't broke down you'd 'a' seen how much dream it was! i've had dreams enough all nightwith that patch-eyed spanish devil going for me all through 'emrot him!" "no, not rot him. find him! track the money!" "tom, we'll never find him. a feller don't have only one chance for such a pileand that one's lost. i'd feel mighty shaky if i was to see him, anyway." "well, so'd i; but i'd like to see him, anywayand track him outto his number two." "number twoyes, that's it. i ben thinking 'bout that. but i can't make nothing out of it. what do you reckon it is?" "i dono. it's too deep. say, huckmaybe it's the number of a house!" "goody!...... no, tom, that ain't it. if it is, it ain't in this onehorse town. they ain't no numbers here." "well, that's so. lemme think a minute. hereit's the number of a roomin a tavern, you know!" "o, that's the trick! they ain't only two taverns. we can find out quick." "you stay here, huck, till i come." tom was off at once. he did not care to have huck's company in public places. he was gone half an hour. he found that in the best tavern, no. 2 had long been occupied by a young lawyer, and was still so occupied. in the less ostentatious house no. 2 was a mystery. the tavern-keeper's young son said it was kept locked all the time, and he never saw anybody go into it or come out of it except at night; he did not know any particular reason for this state of things; had had some little curiosity, but it was rather feeble; had made the most of the mystery by entertaining himself with the idea that that room was "ha'nted"; had noticed that there was a light in there the night before. "that's what i've found out, huck. i reckon that's the very no. 2 we're after." "i reckon it is, tom. now what you going to do?" "lemme think." tom thought a long time. then he said: "i'll tell you. the back door of that no. 2 is the door that comes out into that little close alley between the tavern and the old rattle-trap of a brick store. now you get hold of all the door-keys you can find, and i'll nip all of auntie's and the first dark night we'll go there and try 'em. and mind you keep a lookout for injun joe, because he said he was going to drop into town and spy around once more for a chance to get his revenge. if you see him, you just follow him; and if he don't go to that no. 2, that ain't the place." "lordy i don't want to foller him by myself!" "why it'll be night, sure. he mightn't ever see youand if he did, maybe he'd never think anything." "well, if it's pretty dark i reckon i'll track him. i donoi dono. i'll try." "you bet i'll follow him, if it's dark, huck. why he might 'a' found out he couldn't get his revenge, and be going right after that money." "it's so, tom, it's so. i'll foller him; i will, by jingoes!" "now you're talking! don't you ever weaken, huck, and i won't." chapter 28 in the lair of injun joe that night tom and huck were ready for their adventure. they hung about the neighborhood of the tavern until after nine, one watching the alley at a distance and the other the tavern door. nobody entered the alley or left it; nobody resembling the spaniard entered or left the tavern door. the night promised to be a fair one; so tom went home with the understanding that if a considerable degree of darkness came on, huck was to come and "meow," whereupon he would slip out and try the keys. but the night remained clear, and huck closed his watch and retired to bed in an empty sugar-hogshead about twelve. tuesday the boys had the same ill luck. also wednesday. but thursday night promised better. tom slipped out in good season with his aunt's old tin lantern, and a large towel to blindfold it with. he hid the lantern in huck's sugar-hogshead and the watch began. an hour before midnight the tavern closed up and its lights (the only ones thereabouts) were put out. no spaniard had been seen. nobody had entered or left the alley. everything was auspicious. the blackness of darkness reigned, the perfect stillness was interrupted only by occasional mutterings of distant thunder. tom got his lantern, lit it in the hogshead, wrapped it closely in the towel, and the two adventurers crept in the gloom toward the tavern. huck stood sentry and tom felt his way into the alley. then there was a season of waiting anxiety that weighed upon huck's spirits like a mountain. he began to wish he could see a flash from the lanternit would frighten him, but it would at least tell him that tom was alive yet. it seemed hours since tom had disappeared. surely he must have fainted; maybe he was dead; maybe his heart had burst under terror and excitement. in his uneasiness huck found himself drawing closer and closer to the alley; fearing all sorts of dreadful things, and momentarily expecting some catastrophe to happen that would take away his breath. there was not much to take away, for he seemed only able to inhale it by thimblefuls, and his heart would soon wear itself out, the way it was beating. suddenly there was a flash of light and tom came tearing by him: "run!" said he; "run, for your life!" he needn't have repeated it; once was enough; huck was making thirty or forty miles an hour before the repetition was uttered. the boys never stopped till they reached the shed of a deserted slaughter-house at the lower end of the village. just as they got within its shelter the storm burst and the rain poured down. as soon as tom got his breath he said: "huck, it was awful! i tried two of the keys, just as soft as i could; but they seemed to make such a power of racket that i couldn't hardly get my breath i was so scared. they wouldn't turn in the lock, either. well, without noticing what i was doing, i took hold of the knob, and open comes the door! it warn't locked! i hopped in, and shook off the towel, and, great caesar's ghost!" "what!what'd you see, tom!" "huck, i most stepped onto injun joe's hand!" "no!" "yes! he was laying there, sound asleep on the floor, with his old patch on his eye and his arms spread out." "lordy, what did you do? did he wake up?" "no, never budged. drunk, i reckon. i just grabbed that towel and started!" "i'd never 'a' thought of the towel, i bet!" "well, i would. my aunt would make me mighty sick if i lost it." "say, tom, did you see that box?" "huck, i didn't wait to look around. i didn't see the box, i didn't see the cross. i didn't see anything but a bottle and a tin cup on the floor by injun joe; yes, and i saw two barrels and lots more bottles in the room. don't you see, now, what's the matter with that ha'nted room?" "how?" "why it's with whisky! maybe all the temperance taverns have got a ha'nted room, hey huck?" "well i reckon maybe that's so. who'd 'a' thought such a thing? but say, tom, now's a mighty good time to get that box, if injun joe's drunk." "it is, that! you try it!" huck shuddered. "well, noi reckon not." "and i reckon not, huck. only one bottle alongside of injun joe ain't enough. if there'd been three, he'd be drunk enough and i'd do it." there was a long pause for reflection, and then tom said: "looky-here, huck, less not try that thing any more till we know injun joe's not in there. it's too scary. now if we watch every night, we'll be dead sure to see him go out, some time or other, and then we'll snatch that box quicker'n lightning." "well, i'm agreed, i'll watch the whole night long, and i'll do it every night, too, if you'll do the other part of the job." "all right, i will. all you got to do is to trot up hooper street a block and meowand if i'm asleep, you throw some gravel at the window and that'll fetch me." "agreed, and good as wheat!" "now huck, the storm's over, and i'll go home. it'll begin to be daylight in a couple of hours. you go back and watch that long, will you?" "i said i would, tom, and i will. i'll ha'nt that tavern every night for a year! i'll sleep all day and i'll stand watch all night." "that's all right. now where you going to sleep?" "in ben rogers's hayloft. he let's me, and so does his pap's nigger man, uncle jake. i tote water for uncle jake whenever he wants me to, and anytime i ask him he gives me a little something to eat if he can spare it. that's a mighty good nigger, tom. he likes me, becuz i don't ever act as if i was above him. sometimes i've set right down and eat with him. but you needn't tell that. a body's got to do things when he's awful hungry he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing." "well, if i don't want you in the daytime, huck, i'll let you sleep. i won't come bothering around. any time you see something's up, in the night, just skip right around and meow." chapter 29 huck saves the widow the first thing tom heard on friday morning was a glad piece of newsjudge thatcher's family had come back to town the night before. both injun joe and the treasure sunk into secondary importance for a moment, and becky took the chief place in the boy's interest. he saw her and they had an exhausting good time playing "hi-spy" and "gully-keeper" with a crowd of their schoolmates. the day was completed and crowned in a peculiarly satisfactory way: becky teased her mother to appoint the next day for the long-promised and long-delayed picnic, and she consented. the child's delight was boundless; and tom's not more moderate. the invitations were sent out before sunset, and straightway the young folks of the village were thrown into a fever of preparation and pleasurable anticipation. tom's excitement enabled him to keep awake until a pretty late hour, and he had good hopes of hearing huck's "meow," and of having his treasure to astonish becky and the picnickers with, next day; but he was disappointed. no signal came that night. morning came, eventually, and by ten or eleven o'clock a giddy and rollicking company were gathered at judge thatcher's, and everything was ready for a start. it was not the custom for elderly people to mar picnics with their presence. the children were considered safe enough under the wings of a few young ladies of eighteen and a few young gentlemen of twenty-three or thereabouts. the old steam ferry boat was chartered for the occasion; presently the gay throng filed up the main street laden with provision baskets. sid was sick and had to miss the fun; mary remained at home to entertain him. the last thing mrs. thatcher said to becky, was "you'll not get back till late. perhaps you'd better stay all night with some of the girls that live near the ferry landing, child." "then i'll stay with susy harper, mamma." "very well. and mind and behave yourself and don't be any trouble." presently, as they tripped along, tom said to becky: "sayi'll tell you what we'll do. 'stead of going to joe harper's we'll climb right up the hill and stop at the widow douglas's. she'll have ice cream! she has it 'most every daydead loads of it. and she'll be awful glad to have us." "o, that will be fun!" then becky reflected a moment and said: "but what will mamma say?" "how'll she ever know?" the girl turned the idea over in her mind, and said reluctantly: "i reckon it's wrongbut-" "but shucks! your mother won't know, and so what's the harm? all she wants is that you'll be safe; and i bet you she'd 'a' said go there if she'd 'a' thought of it. i know she would!" the widow douglas's splendid hospitality was a tempting bait. it and tom's persuasions presently carried the day. so it was decided to say nothing to anybody about the night's programme. presently it occurred to tom that maybe huck might come this very night and give the signal. the thought took a deal of the spirit out of his anticipations. still he could not bear to give up the fun at widow douglas's. and why should he give it up, he reasonedthe signal did not come the night before, so why should it be any more likely to come to-night? the sure fun of the evening outweighed the uncertain treasure; and boy like, he determined to yield to the stronger inclination and not allow himself to think of the box of money another time that day. three miles below town the ferry boat stopped at the mouth of a woody hollow and tied up. the crowd swarmed ashore and soon the forest distances and craggy heights echoed far and near with shoutings and laughter. all the different ways of getting hot and tired were gone through with, and by and by the rovers straggled back to camp fortified with responsible appetites, and then the destruction of the good things began. after the feast there was a refreshing season of rest and chat in the shade of spreading oaks. by and by somebody shouted "who's ready for the cave?" everybody was. bundles of candles were produced, and straightway there was a general scamper up the hill. the mouth of the cave was up the hillsidean opening shaped like a letter a. its massive oaken door stood unbarred. within was a small chamber, chilly as an ice-house, and walled by nature with solid limestone that was dewy with a cold sweat. it was romantic and mysterious to stand here in the deep gloom and look out upon the green valley shining in the sun. but the impressiveness of the situation quickly wore off, and the romping began again. the moment a candle was lighted there was a general rush upon the owner of it; a struggle and a gallant defense followed, but the candle was soon knocked down or blown out, and then there was a glad clamor of laughter and a new chase. but all things have an end. by and by the procession went filing down the steep descent of the main avenue, the flickering rank of lights dimly revealing the lofty walls of rock almost to their point of junction sixty feet overhead. this main avenue was not more than eight or ten feet wide. every few steps other lofty and still narrower crevices branched from it on either handfor mcdougal's cave was but a vast labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and out again and led nowhere. it was said that one might wander days and nights together through its intricate tangle of rifts and chasms, and never find the end of the cave; and that he might go down, and down, and still down, into the earth, and it was just the samelabyrinth underneath labyrinth, and no end to any of them. no man "knew" the cave. that was an impossible thing. most of the young men knew a portion of it, and it was not customary to venture much beyond this known portion. tom sawyer knew as much of the cave as any one. the procession moved along the main avenue some three-quarters of a mile, and then groups and couples began to slip aside into branch avenues, fly along the dismal corridors, and take each other by surprise at points where the corridors joined again. parties were able to elude each other for the space of half an hour without going beyond the "known" ground. by and by, one group after another came straggling back to the mouth of the cave, panting, hilarious, smeared from head to foot with tallow drippings, daubed with clay, and entirely delighted with the success of the day. then they were astonished to find that they had been taking no note of time and that night was about at hand. the clanging bell had been calling for half an hour. however, this sort of close to the day's adventures was romantic and therefore satisfactory. when the ferry boat with her wild freight pushed into the stream, nobody cared sixpence for the wasted time but the captain of the craft. huck was already upon his watch when the ferry boat's lights went glinting past the wharf. he heard no noise on board, for the young people were as subdued and still as people usually are who are nearly tired to death. he wondered what boat it was, and why she did not stop at the wharfand then he dropped her out of his mind and put his attention upon his business. the night was growing cloudy and dark. ten o'clock came, and the noise of vehicles ceased, scattered lights began to wink out, all straggling foot passengers disappeared, the village betook itself to its slumbers and left the small watcher alone with the silence and the ghosts. eleven o'clock came, and the tavern lights were put out; darkness everywhere, now. huck waited what seemed a weary long time, but nothing happened. his faith was weakening. was there any use? was there really any use? why not give it up and turn in? a noise fell upon his ear. he was all attention in an instant. the alley door closed softly. he sprang to the corner of the brick store. the next moment two men brushed by him, and one seemed to have something under his arm. it must be that box! so they were going to remove the treasure. why call tom now? it would be absurdthe men would get away with the box and never be found again. no, he would stick to their wake and follow them; he would trust to the darkness for security from discovery. so communing with himself, huck stepped out and glided along behind the men, cat-like, with bare feet, allowing them to keep just far enough ahead not to be invisible. they moved up the river street three blocks, then turned to the left up a cross street. they went straight ahead, then, until they came to the path that led up cardiff hill; this they took. they passed by the old welchman's house, half way up the hill without hesitating, and still climbed upward. good, thought huck, they will bury it in the old quarry. but they never stopped at the quarry. they passed on, up the summit. they plunged into the narrow path between the tall sumach bushes, and were at once hidden in the gloom. huck closed up and shortened his distance, now, for they would never be able to see him. he trotted along a while; then slackened his pace, fearing he was gaining too fast; moved on a piece, then stopped altogether; listened; no sound; none, save that he seemed to hear the beating of his own heart. the hooting of an owl came from over the hillominous sound! but no footsteps. heavens, was everything lost! he was about to spring with winged feet, when a man cleared his throat not four feet from him! huck's heart shot into his throat, but he swallowed it again; and then he stood there shaking as if a dozen agues had taken charge of him at once, and so weak that he thought he must surely fall to the ground. he knew where he was. he knew he was within five steps of the stile leading into widow douglas's grounds. very well, he thought, let them bury it there; it won't be hard to find. now there was a voicea very low voiceinjun joe's: "damn her, maybe she's got companythere's lights, late as it is." "i can't see any." this was that stranger's voicethe stranger of the haunted house. a deadly chill went to huck's heartthis, then, was the "revenge" job! his thought was, to fly. then he remembered that the widow douglas had been kind to him more than once, and maybe these men were going to murder her. he wished he dared venture to warn her; but he knew he didn't darethey might come and catch him. he thought all this and more in the moment that elapsed between the stranger's remark and injun joe's nextwhich was "because the bush is in your way. nowthis waynow you see, don't you?" "yes. well there is company there, i reckon. better give it up." "give it up, and i just leaving this country forever! give it up and maybe never have another chance. i tell you again, as i've told you before, i don't care for her swagyou may have it. but her husband was rough on memany times he was rough on meand mainly he was the justice of the peace that jugged me for a vagrant. and that ain't all. it ain't a millionth part of it! he had me horsewhipped!horsewhipped in front of the jail, like a nigger!with all the town looking on! horsewhipped!do you understand? he took advantage of me and died. but i'll take it out of her." "o, don't kill her! don't do that!" "kill? who said anything about killing? i would kill him if he was here; but not her. when you want to get revenge on a woman you don't kill herbosh! you go for her looks. you slit her nostrilsyou notch her ears like a sow's!" "by god, that's-" "keep your opinion to yourself! it will be safest for you. i'll tie her to the bed. if she bleeds to death, is that my fault? i'll not cry, if she does. my friend, you'll help in this thingfor my sakethat's why you're herei mightn't be able alone. if you flinch, i'll kill you. do you understand that? and if i have to kill you, i'll kill herand then i reckon nobody'll ever know much about who done this business." "well, if it's got to be done, let's get at it. the quicker the betteri'm all in a shiver." "do it now? and company there? look herei'll get suspicious of you, first thing you know. nowe'll wait till the lights are outthere's no hurry." huck felt that a silence was going to ensuea thing still more awful than any amount of murderous talk; so he held his breath and stepped gingerly back; planted his foot carefully and firmly, after balancing, one-legged, in a precarious way and almost toppling over, first on one side and then on the other. he took another step back, with the same elaboration and the same risks; then another and another, anda twig snapped under his foot! his breath stopped and he listened. there was no soundthe stillness was perfect. his gratitude was measureless. now he turned in his tracks, between the walls of sumach bushesturned himself as carefully as if he were a shipand then stepped quickly but cautiously along. when he emerged at the quarry he felt secure, and so he picked up his nimble heels and flew. down, down he sped, till he reached the welchman's. he banged at the door, and presently the heads of the old man and his two stalwart sons were thrust from windows. "what's the row there? who's banging? what do you want?" "let me inquick! i'll tell everything." "why who are you?" "huckleberry finnquick, let me in!" "huckleberry finn, indeed! it ain't a name to open many doors, i judge! but let him in, lads, and let's see what's the trouble." "please don't ever tell i told you," were huck's first words when he got in. "please donti'd be killed, surebut the widow's been good friends to me sometimes, and i want to telli will tell if you'll promise you won't ever say it was me." "by george he has got something to tell, or he wouldn't act so!" exclaimed the old man; "out with it and nobody here'll ever tell, lad." three minutes later the old man and his sons, well armed, were up the hill, and just entering the sumach path on tip-toe, their weapons in their hands. huck accompanied them no further. he hid behind a great boulder and fell to listening. there was a lagging, anxious silence, and then all of a sudden there was an explosion of firearms and a cry. huck waited for no particulars. he sprang away and sped down the hill as fast as his legs could carry him. chapter 30 tom and becky in the cave the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on sunday morning, huck came groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old welchman's door. the inmates were asleep but it was a sleep that was set on a hair-trigger, on account of the exciting episode of the night. a call came from a window "who's there!" huck's scared voice answered in a low tone: "please let me in! it's only huck finn!" "it's a name that can open this door night or day, lad!and welcome!" these were strange words to the vagabond boy's ears, and the pleasantest he had ever heard. he could not recollect that the closing word had ever been applied in his case before. the door was quickly locked, and he entered. huck was given a seat and the old man and his brace of tall sons speedily dressed themselves. "now my boy i hope you're good and hungry, because breakfast will be ready as soon as the sun's up, and we'll have a piping hot one, toomake yourself easy about that! i and the boys hoped you'd turn up and stop here last night." "i was awful scared," said huck, "and i run. i took out when the pistols went off, and i didn't stop for three mile. i've come now becuz i wanted to know about it, you know; and i come before daylight becuz i didn't want to run acrost them devils, even if they was dead." "well, poor chap, you do look as if you'd had a hard night of itbut there's a bed here for you when you've had your breakfast. no, they ain't dead, ladwe are sorry enough for that. you see we knew right where to put our hands on them, by your description; so we crept along on tip-toe till we got within fifteen feet of themdark as a cellar that sumach path wasand just then i found i was going to sneeze. it was the meanest kind of luck! i tried to keep it back, but no use'twas bound to come, and it did come! i was in the lead with my pistol raised, and when the sneeze started those scoundrels a-rustling to get out of the path, i sung out, 'fire, boys!' and blazed away at the place where the rustling was. so did the boys. but they were off in a jiffy, those villains, and we after them, down through the woods. i judge we never touched them. they fired a shot apiece as they started, but their bullets whizzed by and didn't do us any harm. as soon as we lost the sound of their feet we quit chasing, and went down and stirred up the constables. they got a posse together, and went off to guard the river bank, and as soon as it is light the sheriff and a gang are going to beat up the woods. my boys will be with them presently. i wish we had some sort of description of those rascals'twould help a good deal. but you couldn't see what they were like, in the dark, lad, i suppose?" "o, yes, i saw them down town and follered them." "splendid! describe themdescribe them, my boy!" "one's the old deaf and dumb spaniard that's ben around here once or twice, and t'other's a mean looking ragged-" "that's enough, lad, we know the men! happened on them in the woods back of the widow's one day, and they slunk away. off with you, boys, and tell the sheriffget your breakfast to-morrow morning!" the welchman's sons departed at once. as they were leaving the room huck sprang up and exclaimed: "o, please don't tell anybody it was me that blowed on them! o, please!" "all right if you say it, huck, but you ought to have the credit of what you did." "o, no, no! please don't tell!" when the young men were gone, the old welchman said "they won't telland i won't. but why don't you want it known?" huck would not explain, further than to say that he already knew too much about one of those men and would not have the man know that he knew anything against him for the whole worldhe would be killed for knowing it, sure. the old man promised secrecy once more, and said: "how did you come to follow these fellows, lad? were they looking suspicious?" huck was silent while he framed a duly cautious reply. then he said: "well, you see, i'm a kind of a hard lot,least everybody says so, and i don't see nothing agin itand sometimes i can't sleep much, on accounts of thinking about it and sort of trying to strike out a new way of doing. that was the way of it last night. i couldn't sleep, and so i come along up street 'bout midnight, a-turning it all over, and when i got to that old shackly brick store by the temperance tavern, i backed up agin the wall to have another think. well, just then along comes these two chaps slipping along close by me, with something under their arm and i reckoned they'd stole it. one was a-smoking, and t'other one wanted a light; so they stopped right before me and the cigars lit up their faces and i see that the big one was the deaf and dumb spaniard, by his white whiskers and the patch on his eye, and t'other one was a rusty, ragged looking devil." "could you see the rags by the light of the cigars?" this staggered huck for a moment. then he said: "well, i don't knowbut somehow it seems as if i did." "then they went on, and you-" "follered 'emyes. that was it. i wanted to see what was upthey sneaked along so. i dogged 'em to the widder's stile, and stood in the dark and heard the ragged one beg for the widder, and the spaniard swear he'd spile her looks just as i told you and your two-" "what! the deaf and dumb man said all that!" huck had made another terrible mistake! he was trying his best to keep the old man from getting the faintest hint of who the spaniard might be, and yet his tongue seemed determined to get him into trouble in spite of all he could do. he made several efforts to creep out of his scrape, but the old man's eye was upon him and he made blunder after blunder. presently the welchman said: "my boy, don't be afraid of me. i wouldn't hurt a hair of your head for all the world. noi'd protect youi'd protect you. this spaniard is not deaf and dumb; you've let that slip without intending it; you can't cover that up now. you know something about that spaniard that you want to keep dark. now trust metell me what it is, and trust mei won't betray you." huck looked into the old man's honest eyes a moment, then bent over and whispered in his ear "'tain't a spaniardit's injun joe!" the welchman almost jumped out of his chair. in a moment he said: "it's all plain enough, now. when you talked about notching ears and slitting noses i judged that that was your own embellishment, because white men don't take that sort of revenge. but an injun! that's a different matter altogether." during breakfast the talk went on, and in the course of it the old man said that the last thing which he and his sons had done, before going to bed, was to get a lantern and examine the stile and its vicinity for marks of blood. they found none, but captured a bulky bundle of "of what?" if the words had been lightning they could not have leaped with a more stunning suddenness from huck's blanched lips. his eyes were staring wide, now, and his breath suspendedwaiting for the answer. the welchman startedstared in returnthree secondsfive secondstenthen replied "of burglar's tools. why what's the matter with you?" huck sank back, panting gently, but deeply, unutterably grateful. the welchman eyed him gravely, curiouslyand presently said "yes, burglar's tools. that appears to relieve you a good deal. but what did give you that turn? what were you expecting we'd found?" huck was in a close placethe inquiring eye was upon himhe would have given anything for material for a plausible answernothing suggested itselfthe inquiring eye was boring deeper and deepera senseless reply offeredthere was no time to weigh it, so at a venture he uttered itfeebly: "sunday-school books, maybe." poor huck was too distressed to smile, butthe old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a man's pocket, because it cut down the doctor's bills like everything. then he added: "poor old chap, you're white and jadedyou ain't well a bitno wonder you're a little flighty and off your balance. but you'll come out of it. rest and sleep will fetch you out all right, i hope." huck was irritated to think he had been such a goose and betrayed such a suspicious excitement, for he had dropped the idea that the parcel brought from the tavern was the treasure, as soon as he had heard the talk at the widow's stile. he had only thought it was not the treasure, howeverhe had not known that it wasn'tand so the suggestion of a captured bundle was too much for his self-possession. but on the whole he felt glad the little episode had happened, for now he knew beyond all question that that bundle was not the bundle, and so his mind was at rest and exceedingly comfortable. in fact everything seemed to be drifting just in the right direction, now; the treasure must be still in no. 2, the men would be captured and jailed that day, and he and tom could seize the gold that night without any trouble or any fear of interruption. just as breakfast was completed there was a knock at the door. huck jumped for a hiding place, for he had no mind to be connected even remotely with the late event. the welchman admitted several ladies and gentlemen, among them the widow douglas, and noticed that groups of citizens were climbing up the hillto stare at the stile. so the news had spread. the welchman had to tell the story of the night to the visitors. the widow's gratitude for her preservation was outspoken. "don't say a word about it, madam. there's another that you're more beholden to than you are to me and my boys, maybe, but he don't allow me to tell his name. we wouldn't have been there but for him." of course this excited a curiosity so vast that it almost belittled the main matterbut the welchman allowed it to eat into the vitals of his visitors, and through them be transmitted to the whole town, for he refused to part with his secret. when all else had been learned, the widow said: "i went to sleep reading in bed and slept straight through all that noise. why didn't you come and wake me?" "we judged it warn't worth while. those fellows warn't likely to come againthey hadn't any tools left to work with, and what was the use of waking you up and scaring you to death? my three negro men stood guard at your house all the rest of the night. they've just come back." more visitors came, and the story had to be told and re-told for a couple of hours more. there was no sabbath-school during day-school vacation, but everybody was early at church. the stirring event was well canvassed. news came that not a sign of the two villains had been yet discovered. when the sermon was finished, judge thatcher's wife dropped alongside of mrs. harper as she moved down the aisle with the crowd and said: "is my becky going to sleep all day? i just expected she would be tired to death." "your becky?" "yes,"with a startled look,"didn't she stay with you last night?" "why, no." mrs. thatcher turned pale, and sank into a pew, just as aunt polly, talking briskly with a friend, passed by. aunt polly said: "good morning, mrs. thatcher. good morning, mrs. harper. i've got a boy that's turned up missing. i reckon my tom staid at your house last nightone of you. and now he's afraid to come to church. i've got to settle with him." mrs. thatcher shook her head feebly and turned paler than ever. "he didn't stay with us," said mrs. harper, beginning to look uneasy. a marked anxiety came into aunt polly's face. "joe harper, have you seen my tom this morning?" "no'm." "when did you see him last?" joe tried to remember, but was not sure he could say. the people had stopped moving out of church. whispers passed along, and a boding uneasiness took possession of every countenance. children were anxiously questioned, and young teachers. they all said they had not noticed whether tom and becky were on board the ferry boat on the homeward trip; it was dark; no one thought of inquiring if any one was missing. one young man finally blurted out his fear that they were still in the cave! mrs. thatcher swooned away; aunt polly fell to crying and wringing her hands. the alarm swept from lip to lip, from group to group, from street to street, and within five minutes the bells were wildly clanging and the whole town was up! the cardiff hill episode sank into instant insignificance, the burglars were forgotten, horses were saddled, skiffs were manned, the ferry boat ordered out, and before the horror was half an hour old, two hundred men were pouring down high-road and river toward the cave. all the long afternoon the village seemed empty and dead. many women visited aunt polly and mrs. thatcher and tried to comfort them. they cried with them, too, and that was still better than words. all the tedious night the town waited for news; but when the morning dawned at last, all the word that came was, "send more candlesand send food." mrs. thatcher was almost crazed; and aunt polly also. judge thatcher sent messages of hope and encouragement from the cave, but they conveyed no real cheer. the old welchman came home toward daylight, spattered with candle grease, smeared with clay, and almost worn out. he found huck still in the bed that had been provided for him, and delirious with fever. the physicians were all at the cave, so the widow douglas came and took charge of the patient. she said she would do her best by him, because, whether he was good, bad, or indifferent, he was the lord's, and nothing that was the lord's was a thing to be neglected. the welchman said huck had good spots in him, and the widow said "you can depend on it. that's the lord's mark. he don't leave it off. he never does. puts it somewhere on every creature that comes from his hands." early in the forenoon parties of jaded men began to straggle into the village, but the strongest of the citizens continued searching. all the news that could be gained was that remotenesses of the cavern were being ransacked that had never been visited before; that every corner and crevice was going to be thoroughly searched; that wherever one wandered through the maze of passages, lights were to be seen flitting hither and thither in the distance, and shoutings and pistol shots sent their hollow reverberations to the ear down the somber aisles. in one place, far from the section usually traversed by tourists, the names "becky & tom" had been found traced upon the rocky wall with candle smoke, and near at hand a grease-soiled bit of ribbon. mrs. thatcher recognized the ribbon and cried over it. she said it was the last relic she should ever have of her child; and that no other memorial of her could ever be so precious, because this one parted latest from the living body before the awful death came. some said that now and then, in the cave, a far-away speck of light would glimmer, and then a glorious shout would burst forth and a score of men go trooping down the echoing aisleand then a sickening disappointment always followed; the children were not there; it was only a searcher's light. three dreadful days and nights dragged their tedious hours along, and the village sank into a hopeless stupor. no one had heart for anything. the accidental discovery, just made, that the proprietor of the temperance tavern kept liquor on his premises, scarcely fluttered the public pulse, tremendous as the fact was. in a lucid interval, huck feebly led up to the subject of taverns, and finally askeddimly dreading the worstif anything had been discovered at the temperance tavern since he had been ill? "yes." said the widow. huck started up in bed, wild-eyed: "what! what was it?" "liquor!and the place has been shut up. lie down, childwhat a turn you did give me!" "only tell me just one thingonly just oneplease! was it tom sawyer that found it?" the widow burst into tears. "hush, hush, child, hush! i've told you before, you must not talk. you are very, very sick!" then nothing but liquor had been found; there would have been a great powwow if it had been the gold. so the treasure was gone forevergone forever! but what could she be crying about? curious that she should cry. these thoughts worked their dim way through huck's mind, and under the weariness they gave him he fell asleep. the widow said to herself: "therehe's asleep, poor wreck. tom sawyer find it! pity but somebody could find tom sawyer! ah, there aint many left, now, that's got hope enough, or strength enough, either, to go on searching." chapter 31 found and lost again now to return to tom and becky's share in the picnic. they tripped along the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting the familiar wonders of the cavewonders dubbed with rather over-descriptive names, such as "the drawing-room," "the cathedral," "aladdin's palace," and so on. presently the hide-and-seek frolicking began, and tom and becky engaged in it with zeal until the exertion began to grow a trifle wearisome; then they wandered down a sinuous avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled web-work of names, dates, post-office addresses and mottoes with which the rocky walls had been frescoed (in candle smoke). still drifting along and talking, they scarcely noticed that they were now in a part of the cave whose walls were not frescoed. they smoked their own names under an overhanging shelf and moved on. presently they came to a place where a little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and ruffled niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone. tom squeezed his small body behind it in order to illuminate it for becky's gratification. he found that it curtained a sort of steep natural stairway which was enclosed between narrow walls, and at once the ambition to be a discoverer seized him. becky responded to his call, and they made a smoke-mark for future guidance, and started upon their quest. they wound this way and that, far down into the secret depths of the cave, made another mark, and branched off in search of novelties to tell the upper world about. in one place they found a spacious cavern, from whose ceiling depended a multitude of shining stalactites of the length and circumference of a man's leg; they walked all about it, wondering and admiring, and presently left it by one of the numerous passages that opened into it. this shortly brought them to a bewitching spring, whose basin was encrusted with a frost work of glittering crystals; it was in the midst of a cavern whose walls were supported by many fantastic pillars which had been formed by the joining of great stalactites and stalagmites together, the result of the ceaseless water-drip of centuries. under the roof vast knots of bats had packed themselves together, thousands in a bunch; the lights disturbed the creatures and they came flocking down by hundreds, squeaking and darting furiously at the candles. tom knew their ways and the danger of this sort of conduct. he seized becky's hand and hurried her into the first corridor that offered; and none too soon, for a bat struck becky's light out with its wing while she was passing out of the cavern. the bats chased the children a good distance; but the fugitives plunged into every new passage that offered, and at last got rid of the perilous things. tom found a subterranean lake, shortly, which stretched its dim length away until its shape was lost in the shadows. he wanted to explore its borders, but concluded that it would be best to sit down and rest a while, first. now, for the first time, the deep stillness of the place laid a clammy hand upon the spirits of the children. becky said "why, i didn't notice, but it seems ever so long since i heard any of the others." "come to think, becky, we are away down below themand i don't know how far away north, or south, or east, or whichever it is. we couldn't hear them here." becky grew apprehensive. "i wonder how long we've been down here, tom. we better start back." "yes, i reckon we better. p'raps we better." "can you find the way, tom? it's all a mixed-up crookedness to me." "i reckon i could find itbut then the bats. if they put both our candles out it will be an awful fix. let's try some other way, so as not to go through there." "well. but i hope we won't get lost. it would be so awful!" and the girl shuddered at the thought of the dreadful possibilities. they started through a corridor, and traversed it in silence a long way, glancing at each new opening, to see if there was anything familiar about the look of it; but they were all strange. every time tom made an examination, becky would watch his face for an encouraging sign, and he would say cheerily "o, it's all right. this ain't the one, but we'll come to it right away!" but he felt less and less hopeful with each failure, and presently began to turn off into diverging avenues at sheer random, in the desperate hope of finding the one that was wanted. he still said it was "all right," but there was such a leaden dread at his heart, that the words had lost their ring and sounded just as if he had said, "all is lost!" becky clung to his side in an anguish of fear, and tried hard to keep back the tears, but they would come. at last she said: "o, tom, never mind the bats, let's go back that way! we seem to get worse and worse off all the time." tom stopped. "listen!" said he. profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were conspicuous in the hush. tom shouted. the call went echoing down the empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that resembled a ripple of mocking laughter. "o, don't do it again, tom, it is too horrid," said becky. "it is horrid, but i better, becky; they might hear us, you know;" and he shouted again. the "might" was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it so confessed a perishing hope. the children stood still and listened; but there was no result. tom turned upon the back track at once, and hurried his steps. it was but a little while before a certain indecision in his manner revealed another fearful fact to beckyhe could not find his way back! "o, tom, you didn't make any marks!" "becky i was such a fool! such a fool! i never thought we might want to come back! noi can't find the way. it's all mixed up." "tom, tom, we're lost! we're lost! we never can get out of this awful place! o, why did we ever leave the others!" she sank to the ground and burst into such a frenzy of crying that tom was appalled with the idea that she might die, or lose her reason. he sat down by her and put his arms around her; she buried her face in his bosom, she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering laughter. tom begged her to pluck up hope again, and she said she could not. he fell to blaming and abusing himself for getting her into this miserable situation; this had a better effect. she said she would try to hope again, she would get up and follow wherever he might lead if only he would not talk like that any more. for he was no more to blame than she, she said. so they moved on, againaimlesslysimply at randomall they could do was to move, keep moving. for a little while, hope made a show of revivingnot with any reason to back it, but only because it is its nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age and familiarity with failure. by and by tom took becky's candle and blew it out. this economy meant so much! words were not needed. becky understood, and her hope died again. she knew that tom had a whole candle and three or four pieces in his pocketsyet he must economize. by and by, fatigue began to assert its claims; the children tried to pay no attention, for it was dreadful to think of sitting down when time was grown to be so precious; moving, in some direction, in any direction, was at least progress and might bear fruit; but to sit down was to invite death and shorten its pursuit. at last becky's frail limbs refused to carry her farther. she sat down. tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends there, and the comfortable beds and above all, the light! becky cried, and tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his encouragements were grown threadbare with use, and sounded like sarcasms. fatigue bore so heavily upon becky that she drowsed off to sleep. tom was grateful. he sat looking into her drawn face and saw it grow smooth and natural under the influence of pleasant dreams; and by and by a smile dawned and rested there. the peaceful face reflected somewhat of peace and healing into his own spirit, and his thoughts wandered away to bygone times and dreamy memories. while he was deep in his musings, becky woke up with a breezy little laughbut it was stricken dead upon her lips, and a groan followed it. "o, how could i sleep! i wish i never never had waked! no! no, i don't, tom! don't look so! i won't say it again." "i'm glad you've slept, becky; you'll feel rested, now, and we'll find the way out." "we can try, tom; but i've seen such a beautiful country in my dream. i reckon we are going there." "maybe not, maybe not. cheer up, becky, and let's go on trying." they rose up and wandered along, hand in hand and hopeless. they tried to estimate how long they had been in the cave, but all they knew was that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not be, for their candles were not gone yet. a long time after thisthey could not tell how longtom said they must go softly and listen for dripping waterthey must find a spring. they found one presently, and tom said it was time to rest again. both were cruelly tired, yet becky said she thought she could go on a little farther. she was surprised to hear tom dissent. she could not understand it. they sat down, and tom fastened his candle to the wall in front of them with some clay. thought was soon busy; nothing was said for some time. then becky broke the silence: "tom, i am so hungry!" tom took something out of his pocket. "do you remember this?" said he. becky almost smiled. "it's our wedding cake, tom." "yesi wish it was as big as a barrel, for it's all we've got." "i saved it from the picnic for us to dream on, tom, the way grown-up people do with wedding cakebut it'll be our-" she dropped the sentence where it was. tom divided the cake and becky ate with good appetite, while tom nibbled at his moiety. there was abundance of cold water to finish the feast with. by and by becky suggested that they move on again. tom was silent a moment. then he said: "becky, can you bear it if i tell you something?" becky's face paled, but she said she thought she could. "well then, becky, we must stay here, where there's water to drink. that little piece is our last candle!" becky gave loose to tears and wailings. tom did what he could to comfort her but with little effect. at length becky said: "tom!" "well, becky?" "they'll, miss us and hunt for us!" "yes they will! certainly they will!" "maybe they're hunting for us now, tom?" "why i reckon maybe they are. i hope they are." "when would they miss us, tom?" "when they get back to the boat, reckon." "tom, it might be dark, thenwould they notice we hadn't come?" "i don't know. but anyway, your mother would miss you as soon as they got home." a frightened look in becky's face brought tom to his senses and he saw that he had made a blunder. becky was not to have gone home that night! the children became silent and thoughtful. in a moment a new burst of grief from becky showed tom that the thing in his mind had struck hers alsothat the sabbath morning might be half spent before mrs. thatcher discovered that becky was not at mrs. harper's. the children fastened their eyes upon their bit of candle and watched it melt slowly and pitilessly away; saw the half inch of wick stand alone at last; saw the feeble flame rise and fall, climb the thin column of smoke, linger at its top a moment, and thenthe horror of utter darkness reigned! how long afterward it was that becky came to a slow consciousness that she was crying in tom's arms, neither could tell. all that they knew was, that after what seemed a mighty stretch of time, both awoke out of a dead stupor of sleep and resumed their miseries once more. tom said it might be sunday, nowmaybe monday. he tried to get becky to talk, but her sorrows were too oppressive, all her hopes were gone. tom said that they must have been missed long ago, and no doubt the search was going on. he would shout and maybe some one would come. he tried it; but in the darkness the distant echoes sounded so hideously that he tried it no more. the hours wasted away, and hunger came to torment the captives again. a portion of tom's half of the cake was left; they divided and ate it. but they seemed hungrier than before. the poor morsel of food only whetted desire. by and by tom said: "sh! did you hear that?" both held their breath and listened. there was a sound like the faintest, far-off shout. instantly tom answered it, and leading becky by the hand, started groping down the corridor in its direction. presently he listened again; again the sound was heard, and apparently a little nearer. "it's them!" said tom; "they're coming! come along, beckywe're all right now!" the joy of the prisoners was almost overwhelming. their speed was slow, however, because pitfalls were somewhat common, and had to be guarded against. they shortly came to one and had to stop. it might be three feet deep, it might be a hundredthere was no passing it, at any rate. tom got down on his breast and reached as far down as he could. no bottom. they must stay there and wait until the searchers came. they listened; evidently the distant shoutings were growing more distant! a moment or two more and they had gone altogether. the heartsinking misery of it! tom whooped until he was hoarse, but it was of no use. he talked hopefully to becky; but an age of anxious waiting passed and no sounds came again. the children groped their way back to the spring. the weary time dragged on; they slept again, and awoke famished and woe-stricken. tom believed it must be tuesday by this time. now an idea struck him. there were some side passages near at hand. it would be better to explore some of these than bear the weight of the heavy time in idleness. he took a kite-line from his pocket, tied it to a projection, and he and becky started, tom in the lead, unwinding the line as he groped along. at the end of twenty steps the corridor ended in a "jumping-off place." tom got down on his knees and felt below, and then as far around the corner as he could reach with his hands conveniently; he made an effort to stretch yet a little further to the right, and at that moment, not twenty yards away, a human hand, holding a candle, appeared from behind a rock! tom lifted up a glorious shout, and instantly that hand was followed by the body it belonged toinjun joe's! tom was paralyzed; he could not move. he was vastly gratified, the next moment, to see the "spaniard" take to his heels and get himself out of sight. tom wondered that joe had not recognized his voice and come over and killed him for testifying in court. but the echoes must have disguised the voice. without doubt, that was it, he reasoned. tom's fright weakened every muscle in his body. he said to himself that if he had strength enough to get back to the spring he would stay there, and nothing should tempt him to run the risk of meeting injun joe again. he was careful to keep from becky what it was he had seen. he told her he had only shouted "for luck." but hunger and wretchedness rise superior to fears in the long run. another tedious wait at the spring and another long sleep brought changes. the children awoke tortured with a raging hunger. tom believed that it must be wednesday or thursday or even friday or saturday, now, and that the search had been given over. he proposed to explore another passage. he felt willing to risk injun joe and all other terrors. but becky was very weak. she had sunk into a dreary apathy and would not be roused. she said she would wait, now, where she was, and dieit would not be long. she told tom to go with the kite-line and explore if he chose; but she implored him to come back every little while and speak to her; and she made him promise that when the awful time came, he would stay by her and hold her hand until all was over. tom kissed her, with a choking sensation in his throat, and made a show of being confident of finding the searchers or an escape from the cave; then he took the kite-line in his hand and went groping down one of the passages on his hands and knees, distressed with hunger and sick with bodings of coming doom. chapter 32 "turn out! they're found!" tuesday afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. the village of st. petersburg still mourned. the lost children had not been found. public prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a private prayer that had the petitioner's whole heart in it; but still no good news came from the cave. the majority of the searchers had given up the quest and gone back to their daily avocations, saying that it was plain the children could never be found. mrs. thatcher was very ill, and a great part of the time delirious. people said it was heart-breaking to hear her call her child, and raise her head and listen a whole minute at a time, then lay it wearily down again with a moan. aunt polly had drooped into a settled melancholy, and her gray hair had grown almost white. the village went to its rest on tuesday night, sad and forlorn. away in the middle of the night a wild peal burst from the village bells, and in a moment the streets were swarming with frantic half-clad people, who shouted, "turn out! turn out! they're found! they're found!" tin pans and horns were added to the din, the population massed itself and moved toward the river, met the children coming in an open carriage drawn by shouting citizens, thronged around it, joined its homeward march, and swept magnificently up the main street roaring huzzah after huzzah! the village was illuminated; nobody went to bed again; it was the greatest night the little town had ever seen. during the first half hour a procession of villagers filed through judge thatcher's house, seized the saved ones and kissed them, squeezed mrs. thatcher's hand, tried to speak but couldn'tand drifted out raining tears all over the place. aunt polly's happiness was complete, and mrs. thatcher's nearly so. it would be complete, however, as soon as the messenger dispatched with the great news to the cave should get the word to her husband. tom lay upon a sofa with an eager auditory about him and told the history of the wonderful adventure, putting in many striking additions to adorn it withal; and closed with a description of how he left becky and went on an exploring expedition; how he followed two avenues as far as his kite-line would reach; how he followed a third to the fullest stretch of the kite-line, and was about to turn back when he glimpsed a far-off speck that looked like daylight; dropped the line and groped toward it, pushed his head and shoulders through a small hole and saw the broad mississippi rolling by! and if it had only happened to be night he would not have seen that speck of daylight and would not have explored that passage any more! he told how he went back for becky and broke the good news and she told him not to fret her with such stuff, for she was tired, and knew she was going to die, and wanted to. he described how he labored with her and convinced her; and how she almost died for joy when she had groped to where she actually saw the blue speck of daylight; how he pushed his way out at the hole and then helped her out; how they sat there and cried for gladness; how some men came along in a skiff and tom hailed them and told them their situation and their famished condition; how the men didn't believe the wild tale at first, "because," said they, "you are five miles down the river below the valley the cave is in"then took them aboard, rowed to a house, gave them supper, made them rest till two or three hours, after dark and then brought them home. before day-dawn, judge thatcher and the handful of searchers with him were tracked out, in the cave, by the twine clues they had strung behind them, and informed of the great news. three days and nights of toil and hunger in the cave were not to be shaken off at once, as tom and becky soon discovered. they were bedridden all of wednesday and thursday, and seemed to grow more and more tired and worn, all the time. tom got about, a little, on thursday, was downtown friday, and nearly as whole as ever saturday; but becky did not leave her room until sunday, and then she looked as if she had passed through a wasting illness. tom learned of huck's sickness and went to see him on friday, but could not be admitted to the bedroom; neither could he on saturday or sunday. he was admitted daily after that, but was warned to keep still about his adventure and introduce no exciting topic. the widow douglas stayed by to see that he obeyed. at home tom learned of the cardiff hill event; also that the "ragged man's" body had eventually been found in the river near the ferry landing; he had been drowned while trying to escape, perhaps. about a fortnight after tom's rescue from the cave, he started off to visit huck, who had grown plenty strong enough, now, to hear exciting talk, and tom had some that would interest him, he thought. judge thatcher's house was on tom's way, and he stopped to see becky. the judge and some friends set tom to talking, and some one asked him ironically if he wouldn't like to go to the cave again. tom said yes, he thought he wouldn't mind it. the judge said: "well, there are others just like you, tom, i've not the least doubt. but we have taken care of that. nobody will get lost in that cave any more." "why?" "because i had its big door sheathed with boiler iron two weeks ago, and triple-lockedand i've got the keys." tom turned as white as a sheet. "what's the matter, boy! here, run, somebody! fetch a glass of water!" the water was brought and thrown into tom's face. "ah, now you're all right. what was the matter with you, tom?" "o, judge, injun joe's in the cave!" chapter 33 the fate of injun joe within a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen were on their way to mcdougal's cave, at, well filled with passengers, soon followed. tom sawyer was in the skiff that bore judge thatcher. when the cave door was unlocked a sorrowful sight presented itself in the dim twilight of the place. injun joe lay stretched upon the ground, dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer of the free world outside. tom was touched, for he knew by his own experience how this wretch had suffered. his pity was moved, but nevertheless he felt an abounding sense of relief and security, now, which revealed to him in a degree which he had not fully appreciated before how vast a weight of dread had been lying upon him since the day he lifted his voice against this bloody-minded outcast. injun joe's bowie knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. the great foundation-beam of the door had been chipped and hacked through, with tedious labor; useless labor, too, it was, for the native rock formed a sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife had wrought no effect; the only damage done was to the knife itself. but if there had been no stony obstruction there the labor would have been useless still, for if the beam had been wholly cut away injun joe could not have squeezed his body under the door, and he knew it. so he had only hacked that place in order to be doing somethingin order to pass the weary timein order to employ his tortured faculties. ordinarily one could find half a dozen bits of candle stuck around in the crevices of this vestibule, left there by tourists; but there were none now. the prisoner had searched them out and eaten them. he had also contrived to catch a few bats, and these, also, he had eaten, leaving only their claws. the poor unfortunate had starved to death. in one place near at hand, a stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages, builded by the water-drip from a stalactite overhead. the captive had broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock-ticka dessert spoonful once in four and twenty hours. that drop was falling when the pyramids were new; when troy fell; when the foundations of rome were laid; when christ was crucified; when the conqueror created the british empire; when columbus sailed; when the massacre at lexington was "news." it is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. has everything a purpose and a mission? did this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect's need? and has it another important object to accomplish ten thousand years to come? no matter. it is many and many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped out the stone to catch the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist stares longest at that pathetic stone and that slow dropping water when he comes to see the wonders of mcdougal's cave. injun joe's cup stands first in the list of the cavern's marvels; even "aladdin's palace" cannot rival it. injun joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people flocked there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and all sorts of provisions, and confessed that they had had almost as satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the hanging. this funeral stopped the further growth of one thingthe petition to the governor for injun joe's pardon. the petition had been largely signed; many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a committee of sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail around the governor and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample his duty under foot. injun joe was believed to have killed five citizens of the village, but what of that? if he had been satan himself there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon-petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired and leaky water-works. the morning after the funeral tom took huck to a private place to have an important talk. huck had learned all about tom's adventure from the welchman and the widow douglas, by this time, but tom said he reckoned there was one thing they had not told him; that thing was what he wanted to talk about now. huck's face saddened. he said: "i know what it is. you got into no. 2 and never found anything but whisky. nobody told me it was you; but i just knowed it must 'a' ben you, soon as i heard 'bout that whisky business; and i knowed you hadn't got the money becuz you'd 'a' got at me some way or other and told me even if you was mum to everybody else. tom, something's always told me we'd never get holt of that swag." "why huck, i never told on that tavern-keeper. you know his you know his tavern was all right the saturday i went to the picnic. don't you remember you was to watch there that night?" "o, yes! why it seems 'bout a year ago. it was that very night that i follered injun joe to the widder's." "you followed him?" "yesbut you keep mum. i reckon injun joe's left friends behind him, and i don't want souring on me and doing me mean tricks. if it hadn't ben for me he'd be down in texas now, all right." then huck told his entire adventure in confidence to tom, who had only heard of the welchman's part of it before. "well," said huck, presently, coming back to the main question, "whoever nipped the whisky in no. 2, nipped the money too, i reckonanyways it's a goner for us, tom." "huck, that money wasn't ever in no. 2!" "what!" huck searched his comrade's face keenly. "tom, have you got on the track of that money again?" "huck, it's in the cave!" huck's eyes blazed. "say it again, tom!" "the money's in the cave!" "tom,honest injun, nowis it fun, or earnest?" "earnest, huckjust as earnest as ever i was in my life. will you go in there with me and help get it out?" "i bet i will! i will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and not get lost." "huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the world." "good as wheat! what makes you think the money's-" "huck, you just wait till we get in there. if we don't find it i'll agree to give you my drum and everything i've got in the world. i will, by jings." "all rightit's a whiz. when do you say?" "right now, if you say it. are you strong enough?" "is it far in the cave? i ben on my pins a little, three or four days, now, but i can't walk more'n a mile, tomleast i don't think i could." "it's about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go, huck, but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me know about. huck, i'll take you right to it in a skiff. i'll float the skiff down there, and i'll pull it back again all by myself. you needn't ever turn your hand over." "less start right off, tom." "all right. we want some bread and meat, and our pipes, and a little bag or two, and two or three kite-strings, and some of these newfangled things they call lucifer matches. i tell you many's the time i wished i had some when i was in there before." a trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a citizen who was absent, and got under way at once. when they were several miles below "cave hollow," tom said: "now you see this bluff here looks all alike all the way down from the cave hollowno houses, no wood-yards, bushes all alike. but do you see that white place up yonder where there's been a landslide? well that's one of my marks. we'll get ashore, now." they landed. "now huck, where we're a-standing you could touch that hole i got out of with a fishing-pole. see if you can find it." huck searched all the place about, and found nothing. tom proudly marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said "here you are! look at it, huck; it's the snuggest hole in this country. you just keep mum about it. all along i've been wanting to be a robber, but i knew i'd got to have a thing like this, and where to run across it was the bother. we've got it now, and we'll keep it quiet, only we'll let joe harper and ben rogers inbecause of course there's got to be a gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it. tom sawyer's gangit sounds splendid, don't it, huck?" "well it just does, tom. and who'll we rob?" "o, most anybody. waylay peoplethat's mostly the way." "and kill them?" "nonot always. hide them in the cave till they raise a ransom." "what's a ransom?" "money. you make them raise all they can, off'n their friends; and after you've kept them a year, if it ain't raised then you kill them. that's the general way. only you don't kill the women. you shut up the women, but you don't kill them. they're always beautiful and rich, and awfully scared. you take their watches and things, but you always take your hat off and talk polite. they ain't anybody as polite as robbersyou'll see that in any book. well the women get to loving you, and after they've been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and after that you couldn't get them to leave. if you drove them out they'd turn right around and come back. it's so in all the books." "why it's real bully, tom. i b'lieve it's better'n to be a pirate." "yes, it's better in some ways, because it's close to home and circuses and all that." by this time everything was ready and the boys entered the hole, tom in the lead. they toiled their way to the farther end of the tunnel, then made their spliced kite-strings fast and moved on. a few steps brought them to the spring and tom felt a shudder quiver all through him. he showed huck the fragment of candle-wick perched on a lump of clay against the wall, and described how he and becky had watched the flame struggle and expire. the boys began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and gloom of the place oppressed their spirits. they went on, and presently entered and followed tom's other corridor until they reached the "jumping-off place." the candles revealed the fact that it was not really a precipice, but only a steep clay hill twenty or thirty feet high. tom whispered "now i'll show you something, huck." he held his candle aloft and said "look as far around the corner as you can. do you see that? thereon the big rock over yonderdone with candle smoke." "tom, it's a cross!" "now where's your number two? 'under the cross,' hey? right yonder's where i saw injun joe poke up his candle, huck!" huck stared at the mystic sign a while, and then said with a shaky voice "tom, less git out of here!" "what! and leave the treasure?" "yesleave it. injun joe's ghost is round about there, certain." "no it ain't, huck, no it ain't. it would ha'nt the place where he diedaway out at the mouth of the cavefive mile from here." "no, tom, it wouldn't. it would hang round the money. i know the ways of ghosts, and so do you." tom began to fear that huck was right. misgivings gathered in his mind. but presently an idea occurred to him "looky-here huck, what fools we're making of ourselves! injun joe's ghost ain't a-going to come around where there's a cross!" the point was well taken. it had its effect. "tom i didn't think of that. but that's so. it's luck for us, that cross is. i reckon we'll climb down there and have a hunt for that box." tom went first, cutting rude steps in the clay hill as he descended. huck followed. four avenues opened out of the small cavern which the great rock stood in. the boys examined three of them with no result. they found a small recess in the one nearest the base of the rock, with a pallet of blankets spread down in it; also an old suspender, some bacon rind, and the well gnawed bones of two or three fowls. but there was no money box. the lads searched and re-searched this place, but in vain. tom said: "he said under the cross. well, this comes nearest to being under the cross. it can't be under the rock itself, because that sets solid on the ground." they searched everywhere once more, and then sat down discouraged. huck could suggest nothing. by and by tom said: "looky-here, huck, there's foot-prints and some candle grease on the clay about one side of this rock, but not on the other sides. now what's that for? i bet you the money is under the rock. i'm going to dig in the clay." "that ain't no bad notion, tom!" said huck with animation. tom's "real barlow" was out at once, and he had not dug four inches before he struck wood. "hey, huck!you hear that?" huck began to dig and scratch now. some boards were soon uncovered and removed. they had concealed a natural chasm which led under the rock. tom got into this and held his candle as far under the rock as he could, but said he could not see to the end of the rift. he proposed to explore. he stooped and passed under; the narrow way descended gradually. he followed its winding course, first to the right, then to the left, huck at his heels. tom turned a short curve, by and by, and exclaimed "my goodness, huck, looky-here!" it was the treasure box, sure enough, occupying a snug little cavern, along with an empty powder keg, a couple of guns in leather cases, two or three pairs of old moccasins, a leather belt, and some other rubbish well soaked with the water-drip. "got it at last!" said huck, plowing among the tarnished coins with his hand. "my, but we're rich, tom!" "huck, i always reckoned we'd get it. it's just too good to believe, but we have got it, sure! saylet's not fool around here. let's snake it out. lemme see if i can lift the box." it weighed about fifty pounds. tom could lift it, after an awkward fashion, but could not carry it conveniently. "i thought so," he said; "they carried it like it was heavy, that day at the ha'nted house. i noticed that. i reckon i was right to think of fetching the little bags along." the money was soon in the bags and the boys took it up to the cross-rock. "now less fetch the guns and things," said huck. "no, huckleave them there. they're just the tricks to have when we go to robbing. we'll keep them there all the time, and we'll hold our orgies there, too. it's an awful snug place for orgies." "what's orgies?" "i dono. but robbers always have orgies, and of course we've got to have them, too. come along, huck, we've been in here a long time. it's getting late, i reckon. i'm hungry, too. we'll eat and smoke when we get to the skiff." they presently emerged into the clump of sumach bushes, looked warily out, found the coast clear, and were soon lunching and smoking in the skiff. as the sun dipped toward the horizon they pushed out and got under way. tom skimmed up the shore through the long twilight, chatting cheerily with huck, and landed shortly after dark. "now huck," said tom, "we'll hide the money in the loft of the widow's wood-shed, and i'll come up in the morning and we'll count it and divide, and then we'll hunt up a place out in the woods for it where it will be safe. just you lay quiet here and watch the stuff till i run and hook benny taylor's little wagon; i won't be gone a minute." he disappeared, and presently returned with the wagon, put the two small sacks into it, threw some old rags on top of them, and started off, dragging his cargo behind him. when the boys reached the welchman's house, they stopped to rest. just as they were about to move on, the welchman stepped out and said: "hallo, who's that?" "huck and tom sawyer." "good! come along with me, boys, you keeping everybody waiting. herehurry up, trot aheadi'll haul the wagon for you. why, it's not as light as it might be. got bricks in it?or old metal?" "old metal," said tom. "i judged so; the boys in this town will take more trouble and fool away more time, hunting up six bits' worth of old iron to sell to the foundry than they would to make twice the money at regular work. but that's human naturehurry along, hurry along!" the boys wanted to know what the hurry was about. "never mind; you'll see, when we get to the widow douglas's." huck said with some apprehensionfor he was long used to being falsely accused "mr. jones, we haven't been doing nothing." the welchman laughed. "well, i don't know, huck, my boy. i don't know about that. ain't you and the widow good friends?" "yes. well, she's ben good friends to me, any ways." "all right, then. what do you want to be afraid for?" this question was not entirely answered in huck's slow mind before he found himself pushed, along with tom, into mrs. douglas's drawing-room. mr. jones left the wagon near the door and followed. the place was grandly lighted, and everybody that was of any consequence in the village was there. the thatchers were there, the harpers, the rogerses, aunt polly, sid, mary, the minister, the editor, and a great many more, and all dressed in their best. the widow received the boys as heartily as any one could well receive two such looking beings. they were covered with clay and candle grease. aunt polly blushed crimson with humiliation, and frowned and shook her head at tom. nobody suffered half as much as the two boys did, however. mr. jones said: "tom wasn't at home, yet, so i gave him up; but i stumbled on him and huck right at my door, and so i just brought them along in a hurry." "and you did just right," said the widow:"come with me, boys." she took them to a bed chamber and said: "now wash and dress yourselves. here are two new suits of clothesshirts, socks, everything complete. they're huck'sno, no thanks, huckmr. jones bought one and i the other. but they'll fit both of you. get into them. we'll waitcome down when you are slicked up enough." then she left. chapter 34 floods of gold huck said: "tom, we can slope, if we can find a rope. the window ain't high from the ground." "shucks, what do you want to slope for?" "well i ain't used to that kind of a crowd. i can't stand it. i ain't going down there, tom." "o, bother! it ain't anything. i don't mind it a bit. i'll take care of you." sid appeared. "tom," said he, "auntie has been waiting for you all the afternoon. mary got your sunday clothes ready, and everybody's been fretting about you. sayain't this grease and clay, on your clothes?" "now mr. siddy, you just 'tend to your own business. what's all this blow-out about, anyway?" "it's one of the widow's parties that she's always having. this time it's for the welchman and his sons, on account of that scrape they helped her out of the other night. and sayi can tell you something, if you want to know." "well, what?" "why old mr. jones is going to try to spring something on the people here to-night, but i overheard him tell auntie to-day about it, as a secret, but i reckon it's not much of a secret now. everybody knowsthe widow, too, for all she tries to let on she don't. oh, mr. jones was bound huck should be herecouldn't get along with his grand secret without huck, you know!" "secret about what, sid?" "about huck tracking the robbers to the widow's. i reckon mr. jones was going to make a grand time over his surprise, but i bet you it will drop pretty flat." sid chuckled in a very contented and satisfied way. "sid, was it you that told?" "o, never mind who it was. somebody toldthat's enough." "sid, there's only one person in this town mean enough to do that, and that's you. if you had been in huck's place you'd 'a' sneaked down the hill and never told anybody on the robbers. you can't do any but mean things, and you can't bear to see anybody praised for doing good ones. thereno thanks, as the widow says"and tom cuffed sid's ears and helped him to the door with several kicks. "now go and tell auntie if you dareand to-morrow you'll catch it!" some minutes later the widow's guests were at the supper table, and a dozen children were propped up at little side tables in the same room, after the fashion of that country and that day. at the proper time mr. jones made his little speech, in which he thanked the widow for the honor she was doing himself and his sons, but said that there was another person whose modesty and so forth and so on. he sprung his secret about huck's share in the adventure in the finest dramatic manner he was master of, but the surprise it occasioned was largely counterfeit and not as clamorous and effusive as it might have been under happier circumstances. however, the widow made a pretty fair show of astonishment, and heaped so many compliments and so much gratitude upon huck that he almost forgot the nearly intolerable discomfort of his new clothes in the entirely intolerable discomfort of being set up as a target for everybody's gaze and everybody's laudations. the widow said she meant to give huck a home under her roof and have him educated; and that when she could spare the money she would start him in business in a modest way. tom's chance was come. he said: "huck don't need it. huck's rich!" nothing but a heavy strain upon the good manners of the company kept back the due and proper complimentary laugh at this pleasant joke. but the silence was a little awkward. tom broke it "huck's got money. maybe you don't believe it, but he's got lots of it. o, you needn't smilei reckon i can show you. you just wait a minute." tom ran out of doors. the company looked at each other with a perplexed interestand inquiringly at huck, who was tongue-tied. "sid, what ails tom?" said aunt polly. "hewell, there ain't ever any making of that boy out. i never-" tom entered, struggling with the weight of his sacks, and aunt polly did not finish her sentence. tom poured the mass of yellow coin upon the table and said "therewhat did i tell you? half of it's huck's and half of it's mine!" the spectacle took the general breath away. all gazed, nobody spoke for a moment. then there was a unanimous call for an explanation. tom said he could furnish it, and he did. the tale was long, but brim full of interest. there was scarcely an interruption from anyone to break the charm of its flow. when he had finished, mr. jones said "i thought i had fixed up a little surprise for this occasion, but it don't amount to anything now. this one makes it sing mighty small, i'm willing to allow." the money was counted. the sum amounted to a little over twelve thousand dollars. it was more than any one present had ever seen at one time before, though several persons were there who were worth considerably more than that in property. chapter 35 respectable huck joins the gang the reader may rest satisfied that tom's and huck's windfall made a mighty stir in the poor little village of st. petersburg. so vast a sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. it was talked about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. every "haunted" house in st. petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected, plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden treasureand not by boys, but menpretty grave, unromantic men, too, some of them. wherever tom and huck appeared they were courted, admired, stared at. the boys were not able to remember that their remarks had possessed weight before; but now their sayings were treasured and repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be regarded as remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing and saying commonplace things; moreover, their past history was raked up and discovered to bear marks of conspicuous originality. the village paper published biographical sketches of the boys. the widow douglas put huck's money out at six per cent, and judge thatcher did the same with tom's at aunt polly's request. each lad had an income, now, that was simply prodigiousa dollar for every week-day in the year and half of the sundays. it was just what the minister gotno, it was what he was promisedhe generally couldn't collect it. a dollar and a quarter a week would board, lodge and school a boy in those old simple daysand clothe him and wash him, too, for that matter. judge thatcher had conceived a great opinion of tom. he said that no commonplace boy would ever have got his daughter out of the cave. when becky told her father, in strict confidence, how tom had taken her whipping at school, the judge was visibly moved; and when she pleaded grace for the mighty lie which tom had told in order to shift that whipping from her shoulders to his own, the judge said with a fine outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a magnanimous liea lie that was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to breast with george washington's lauded truth about the hatchet! becky thought her father had never looked so tall and so superb as when he walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that. she went straight off and told tom about it. judge thatcher hoped to see tom a great lawyer or a great soldier some day. he said he meant to look to it that tom should be admitted to the national military academy and afterwards trained in the best law school in the country, in order that he might be ready for either career or both. huck finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the widow douglas's protection, introduced him into societyno, dragged him into it, hurled him into itand his sufferings were almost more then he could bear. the widow's servants kept him clean and neat, combed and brushed, and they bedded him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had not one little spot or stain which he could press to his heart and know for a friend. he had to eat with knife and fork; he had to use napkin, cup and plate; he had to learn his book, he had to go to church; he had to talk so properly that speech was become insipid in his mouth; whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles of civilization shut him in and bound him hand and foot. he bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up missing. for forty-eight hours the widow hunted for him everywhere in great distress. the public were profoundly concerned; they searched high and low, they dragged the river for his body. early the third morning tom sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads down behind the abandoned slaughter-house, and in one of them he found the refugee. huck had slept there; he had just breakfasted upon some stolen odds and ends of food, and was lying off, now, in comfort with his pipe. he was unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old ruin of rags that had made him picturesque in the days when he was free and happy. tom routed him out, told him the trouble he had been causing, and urged him to go home. huck's face lost its tranquil content, and took a melancholy cast. he said: "don't talk about it, tom. i've tried it, and it don't work; it don't work, tom. it ain't for me; i ain't used to it. the widder's good to me, and friendly; but i can't stand them ways. she makes me git up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the wood-shed; i got to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, tom; they don't seem to any air git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that i can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; i hain't slid on a cellar-door forwell, it 'pears to be years; i got to go to church and sweat and sweati hate them ornery sermons! i can't ketch a fly in there, i can't chaw, i got to wear shoes all sunday. the widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a belleverything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it." "well, everybody does that way, huck." "tom, it don't make no difference. i ain't everybody, and i can't stand it. it's awful to be tied up so. and grub comes too easyi don't take no interest in vittles, that way. i got to ask, to go a-fishing; i got to ask, to go in a-swimmingdern'd if i hain't got to ask to do everything. well, i'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comforti'd got to go up in the attic and rip out a while, every day, to git a taste in my mouth, or i'd a died, tom. the widder wouldn't let me smoke; she wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't let me gape, nor stretch, nor scratch, before folks-" [then with a spasm of special irritation and injury],"and dad fetch it, she prayed all the time! i never see such a woman! i had to shove, tomi just had to. and besides, that school's going to open, and i'd a had to go to itwell, i wouldn't stand that, tom. looky-here, tom, being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. it's just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time. now these clothes suits me, and this bar'l suits me, and i ain't ever going to shake 'em any more. tom, i wouldn't ever got into all this trouble if it hadn't 'a' ben for that money; now you just take my sheer of it along with your'n, and gimme a ten-center sometimesnot many times, becuz i don't give a dem for a thing 'thout it's tollable hard to gitand you go and beg off for me with the widder." "o, huck, you know i can't do that. 'tain't fair; and besides if you'll try this thing just a while longer you'll come to like it." "like it! yesthe way i'd like a hot stove if i was to set on it long enough. no, tom, i won't be rich, and i won't live in them cussed smothery houses. i like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and i'll stick to 'em, too. blame it all! just as we'd got guns, and a cave, and all just fixed to rob, here this dem foolishness has got to come up and spile it all!" tom saw his opportunity "looky-here, huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from turning robber." "no! o, good-licks, are you in real dead-wood earnest, tom?" "just as dead earnest as i'm a-sitting here. but huck, we can't let you into the gang if you ain't respectable, you know." huck's joy was quenched. "can't let me in, tom? didn't you let me go for a pirate?" "yes, but that's different. a robber is more high-toned than what a pirate isas a general thing. in most countries they're awful high up in the nobilitydukes and such." "now tom, hain't you always ben friendly to me? you wouldn't shet me out, would you, tom? you wouldn't do that, now, would you, tom?" "huck, i wouldn't want to, and i don't want tobut what would people say? why they'd say, 'mph! tom sawyer's gang! pretty low characters in it!' they'd mean you, huck. you wouldn't like that, and i wouldn't." huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. finally he said: "well, i'll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if i can come to stand it, if you'll let me b'long to the gang, tom." "all right, huck, it's a whiz! come along, old chap, and i'll ask the widow to let up on you a little, huck." "will you tomnow will you? that's good. if she'll let up on some of the roughest things, i'll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd through or bust. when you going to start the gang and turn robbers?" "o, right off. we'll get the boys together and have the initiation to-night, maybe." "have the which?" "have the initiation." "what's that?" "it's to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang's secrets, even if you're chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and all his family that hurts one of the gang." "that's gaythat's mighty gay, tom, i tell you." "well i bet it is. and all that swearing's got to be done at midnight, in the lonesomest, awfulest place you can finda ha'nted house is the best, but they're all ripped up now." "well, midnight's good, anyway, tom." "yes, so it is. and you've got to swear on a coffin, and sign it with blood." "now that's something like! why it's a million times bullier than pirating. i'll stick to the widder till i rot, tom; and if i git to be a reg'lar ripper of a robber, and everybody talking 'bout it, i reckon she'll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet." conclusion conclusion. so endeth this chronicle. it being strictly a history of a boy, it must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man. when one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stopthat is, with a marriage; but when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can. most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are prosperous and happy. some day it may seem worth while to take up the story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any of that part of their lives at present. the end . love's labour's lost dramatis personae ferdinand king of navarre. biron | | longaville | lords attending on the king. | dumain | boyet | | lords attending on the princess of france. mercade | don adriano de armado a fantastical spaniard. sir nathaniel a curate. holofernes a schoolmaster. dull a constable. costard a clown. moth page to armado. a forester. the princess of france: (princess:) rosaline | | maria | ladies attending on the princess. | katharine | jaquenetta a country wench. lords, attendants, &c. (first lord:) scene navarre. love's labours lost act i scene i the king of navarre's park. [enter ferdinand king of navarre, biron, longaville and dumain] ferdinand let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, live register'd upon our brazen tombs and then grace us in the disgrace of death; when, spite of cormorant devouring time, the endeavor of this present breath may buy that honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge and make us heirs of all eternity. therefore, brave conquerors,--for so you are, that war against your own affections and the huge army of the world's desires,- our late edict shall strongly stand in force: navarre shall be the wonder of the world; our court shall be a little academe, still and contemplative in living art. you three, biron, dumain, and longaville, have sworn for three years' term to live with me my fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes that are recorded in this schedule here: your oaths are pass'd; and now subscribe your names, that his own hand may strike his honour down that violates the smallest branch herein: if you are arm'd to do as sworn to do, subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too. longaville i am resolved; 'tis but a three years' fast: the mind shall banquet, though the body pine: fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits. dumain my loving lord, dumain is mortified: the grosser manner of these world's delights he throws upon the gross world's baser slaves: to love, to wealth, to pomp, i pine and die; with all these living in philosophy. biron i can but say their protestation over; so much, dear liege, i have already sworn, that is, to live and study here three years. but there are other strict observances; as, not to see a woman in that term, which i hope well is not enrolled there; and one day in a week to touch no food and but one meal on every day beside, the which i hope is not enrolled there; and then, to sleep but three hours in the night, and not be seen to wink of all the day- when i was wont to think no harm all night and make a dark night too of half the day- which i hope well is not enrolled there: o, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep, not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep! ferdinand your oath is pass'd to pass away from these. biron let me say no, my liege, an if you please: i only swore to study with your grace and stay here in your court for three years' space. longaville you swore to that, biron, and to the rest. biron by yea and nay, sir, then i swore in jest. what is the end of study? let me know. ferdinand why, that to know, which else we should not know. biron things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense? ferdinand ay, that is study's godlike recompense. biron come on, then; i will swear to study so, to know the thing i am forbid to know: as thus,--to study where i well may dine, when i to feast expressly am forbid; or study where to meet some mistress fine, when mistresses from common sense are hid; or, having sworn too hard a keeping oath, study to break it and not break my troth. if study's gain be thus and this be so, study knows that which yet it doth not know: swear me to this, and i will ne'er say no. ferdinand these be the stops that hinder study quite and train our intellects to vain delight. biron why, all delights are vain; but that most vain, which with pain purchased doth inherit pain: as, painfully to pore upon a book to seek the light of truth; while truth the while doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look: light seeking light doth light of light beguile: so, ere you find where light in darkness lies, your light grows dark by losing of your eyes. study me how to please the eye indeed by fixing it upon a fairer eye, who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed and give him light that it was blinded by. study is like the heaven's glorious sun that will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks: small have continual plodders ever won save base authority from others' books these earthly godfathers of heaven's lights that give a name to every fixed star have no more profit of their shining nights than those that walk and wot not what they are. too much to know is to know nought but fame; and every godfather can give a name. ferdinand how well he's read, to reason against reading! dumain proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding! longaville he weeds the corn and still lets grow the weeding. biron the spring is near when green geese are a-breeding. dumain how follows that? biron fit in his place and time. dumain in reason nothing. biron something then in rhyme. ferdinand biron is like an envious sneaping frost, that bites the first-born infants of the spring. biron well, say i am; why should proud summer boast before the birds have any cause to sing? why should i joy in any abortive birth? at christmas i no more desire a rose than wish a snow in may's new-fangled mirth; but like of each thing that in season grows. so you, to study now it is too late, climb o'er the house to unlock the little gate. ferdinand well, sit you out: go home, biron: adieu. biron no, my good lord; i have sworn to stay with you: and though i have for barbarism spoke more than for that angel knowledge you can say, yet confident i'll keep what i have swore and bide the penance of each three years' day. give me the paper; let me read the same; and to the strict'st decrees i'll write my name. ferdinand how well this yielding rescues thee from shame! biron [reads] 'item, that no woman shall come within a mile of my court:' hath this been proclaimed? longaville four days ago. biron let's see the penalty. [reads] 'on pain of losing her tongue.' who devised this penalty? longaville marry, that did i. biron sweet lord, and why? longaville to fright them hence with that dread penalty. biron a dangerous law against gentility! [reads] 'item, if any man be seen to talk with a woman within the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the rest of the court can possibly devise.' this article, my liege, yourself must break; for well you know here comes in embassy the french king's daughter with yourself to speak- a maid of grace and complete majesty- about surrender up of aquitaine to her decrepit, sick and bedrid father: therefore this article is made in vain, or vainly comes the admired princess hither. ferdinand what say you, lords? why, this was quite forgot. biron so study evermore is overshot: while it doth study to have what it would it doth forget to do the thing it should, and when it hath the thing it hunteth most, 'tis won as towns with fire, so won, so lost. ferdinand we must of force dispense with this decree; she must lie here on mere necessity. biron necessity will make us all forsworn three thousand times within this three years' space; for every man with his affects is born, not by might master'd but by special grace: if i break faith, this word shall speak for me; i am forsworn on 'mere necessity.' so to the laws at large i write my name: [subscribes] and he that breaks them in the least degree stands in attainder of eternal shame: suggestions are to other as to me; but i believe, although i seem so loath, i am the last that will last keep his oath. but is there no quick recreation granted? ferdinand ay, that there is. our court, you know, is haunted with a refined traveller of spain; a man in all the world's new fashion planted, that hath a mint of phrases in his brain; one whom the music of his own vain tongue doth ravish like enchanting harmony; a man of complements, whom right and wrong have chose as umpire of their mutiny: this child of fancy, that armado hight, for interim to our studies shall relate in high-born words the worth of many a knight from tawny spain lost in the world's debate. how you delight, my lords, i know not, i; but, i protest, i love to hear him lie and i will use him for my minstrelsy. biron armado is a most illustrious wight, a man of fire-new words, fashion's own knight. longaville costard the swain and he shall be our sport; and so to study, three years is but short. [enter dull with a letter, and costard] dull which is the duke's own person? biron this, fellow: what wouldst? dull i myself reprehend his own person, for i am his grace's tharborough: but i would see his own person in flesh and blood. biron this is he. dull signior arme--arme--commends you. there's villany abroad: this letter will tell you more. costard sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me. ferdinand a letter from the magnificent armado. biron how low soever the matter, i hope in god for high words. longaville a high hope for a low heaven: god grant us patience! biron to hear? or forbear laughing? longaville to hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately; or to forbear both. biron well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness. costard the matter is to me, sir, as concerning jaquenetta. the manner of it is, i was taken with the manner. biron in what manner? costard in manner and form following, sir; all those three: i was seen with her in the manor-house, sitting with her upon the form, and taken following her into the park; which, put together, is in manner and form following. now, sir, for the manner,--it is the manner of a man to speak to a woman: for the form,- in some form. biron for the following, sir? costard as it shall follow in my correction: and god defend the right! ferdinand will you hear this letter with attention? biron as we would hear an oracle. costard such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh. ferdinand [reads] 'great deputy, the welkin's vicegerent and sole dominator of navarre, my soul's earth's god, and body's fostering patron.' costard not a word of costard yet. ferdinand [reads] 'so it is,'- costard it may be so: but if he say it is so, he is, in telling true, but so. ferdinand peace! costard be to me and every man that dares not fight! ferdinand no words! costard of other men's secrets, i beseech you. ferdinand [reads] 'so it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, i did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air; and, as i am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. the time when. about the sixth hour; when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper: so much for the time when. now for the ground which; which, i mean, i walked upon: it is y-cleped thy park. then for the place where; where, i mean, i did encounter that obscene and preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest; but to the place where; it standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious knotted garden: there did i see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth,'- costard me? ferdinand [reads] 'that unlettered small-knowing soul,'- costard me? ferdinand [reads] 'that shallow vassal,'- costard still me? ferdinand [reads] 'which, as i remember, hight costard,'- costard o, me! ferdinand [reads] 'sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed edict and continent canon, which with,--o, with--but with this i passion to say wherewith,- costard with a wench. ferdinand [reads] 'with a child of our grandmother eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman. him i, as my ever-esteemed duty pricks me on, have sent to thee, to receive the meed of punishment, by thy sweet grace's officer, anthony dull; a man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation.' dull 'me, an't shall please you; i am anthony dull. ferdinand [reads] 'for jaquenetta,--so is the weaker vessel called which i apprehended with the aforesaid swain,--i keep her as a vessel of the law's fury; and shall, at the least of thy sweet notice, bring her to trial. thine, in all compliments of devoted and heart-burning heat of duty. don adriano de armado.' biron this is not so well as i looked for, but the best that ever i heard. ferdinand ay, the best for the worst. but, sirrah, what say you to this? costard sir, i confess the wench. ferdinand did you hear the proclamation? costard i do confess much of the hearing it but little of the marking of it. ferdinand it was proclaimed a year's imprisonment, to be taken with a wench. costard i was taken with none, sir: i was taken with a damsel. ferdinand well, it was proclaimed 'damsel.' costard this was no damsel, neither, sir; she was a virgin. ferdinand it is so varied, too; for it was proclaimed 'virgin.' costard if it were, i deny her virginity: i was taken with a maid. ferdinand this maid will not serve your turn, sir. costard this maid will serve my turn, sir. ferdinand sir, i will pronounce your sentence: you shall fast a week with bran and water. costard i had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge. ferdinand and don armado shall be your keeper. my lord biron, see him deliver'd o'er: and go we, lords, to put in practise that which each to other hath so strongly sworn. [exeunt ferdinand, longaville, and dumain] biron i'll lay my head to any good man's hat, these oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn. sirrah, come on. costard i suffer for the truth, sir; for true it is, i was taken with jaquenetta, and jaquenetta is a true girl; and therefore welcome the sour cup of prosperity! affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow! [exeunt] love's labours lost act i scene ii the same. [enter don adriano de armado and moth] don adriano de armado boy, what sign is it when a man of great spirit grows melancholy? moth a great sign, sir, that he will look sad. don adriano de armado why, sadness is one and the self-same thing, dear imp. moth no, no; o lord, sir, no. don adriano de armado how canst thou part sadness and melancholy, my tender juvenal? moth by a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough senior. don adriano de armado why tough senior? why tough senior? moth why tender juvenal? why tender juvenal? don adriano de armado i spoke it, tender juvenal, as a congruent epitheton appertaining to thy young days, which we may nominate tender. moth and i, tough senior, as an appertinent title to your old time, which we may name tough. don adriano de armado pretty and apt. moth how mean you, sir? i pretty, and my saying apt? or i apt, and my saying pretty? don adriano de armado thou pretty, because little. moth little pretty, because little. wherefore apt? don adriano de armado and therefore apt, because quick. moth speak you this in my praise, master? don adriano de armado in thy condign praise. moth i will praise an eel with the same praise. don adriano de armado what, that an eel is ingenious? moth that an eel is quick. don adriano de armado i do say thou art quick in answers: thou heatest my blood. moth i am answered, sir. don adriano de armado i love not to be crossed. moth [aside] he speaks the mere contrary; crosses love not him. don adriano de armado i have promised to study three years with the duke. moth you may do it in an hour, sir. don adriano de armado impossible. moth how many is one thrice told? don adriano de armado i am ill at reckoning; it fitteth the spirit of a tapster. moth you are a gentleman and a gamester, sir. don adriano de armado i confess both: they are both the varnish of a complete man. moth then, i am sure, you know how much the gross sum of deuce-ace amounts to. don adriano de armado it doth amount to one more than two. moth which the base vulgar do call three. don adriano de armado true. moth why, sir, is this such a piece of study? now here is three studied, ere ye'll thrice wink: and how easy it is to put 'years' to the word 'three,' and study three years in two words, the dancing horse will tell you. don adriano de armado a most fine figure! moth to prove you a cipher. don adriano de armado i will hereupon confess i am in love: and as it is base for a soldier to love, so am i in love with a base wench. if drawing my sword against the humour of affection would deliver me from the reprobate thought of it, i would take desire prisoner, and ransom him to any french courtier for a new-devised courtesy. i think scorn to sigh: methinks i should outswear cupid. comfort, me, boy: what great men have been in love? moth hercules, master. don adriano de armado most sweet hercules! more authority, dear boy, name more; and, sweet my child, let them be men of good repute and carriage. moth samson, master: he was a man of good carriage, great carriage, for he carried the town-gates on his back like a porter: and he was in love. don adriano de armado o well-knit samson! strong-jointed samson! i do excel thee in my rapier as much as thou didst me in carrying gates. i am in love too. who was samson's love, my dear moth? moth a woman, master. don adriano de armado of what complexion? moth of all the four, or the three, or the two, or one of the four. don adriano de armado tell me precisely of what complexion. moth of the sea-water green, sir. don adriano de armado is that one of the four complexions? moth as i have read, sir; and the best of them too. don adriano de armado green indeed is the colour of lovers; but to have a love of that colour, methinks samson had small reason for it. he surely affected her for her wit. moth it was so, sir; for she had a green wit. don adriano de armado my love is most immaculate white and red. moth most maculate thoughts, master, are masked under such colours. don adriano de armado define, define, well-educated infant. moth my father's wit and my mother's tongue, assist me! don adriano de armado sweet invocation of a child; most pretty and pathetical! moth if she be made of white and red, her faults will ne'er be known, for blushing cheeks by faults are bred and fears by pale white shown: then if she fear, or be to blame, by this you shall not know, for still her cheeks possess the same which native she doth owe. a dangerous rhyme, master, against the reason of white and red. don adriano de armado is there not a ballad, boy, of the king and the beggar? moth the world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since: but i think now 'tis not to be found; or, if it were, it would neither serve for the writing nor the tune. don adriano de armado i will have that subject newly writ o'er, that i may example my digression by some mighty precedent. boy, i do love that country girl that i took in the park with the rational hind costard: she deserves well. moth [aside] to be whipped; and yet a better love than my master. don adriano de armado sing, boy; my spirit grows heavy in love. moth and that's great marvel, loving a light wench. don adriano de armado i say, sing. moth forbear till this company be past. [enter dull, costard, and jaquenetta] dull sir, the duke's pleasure is, that you keep costard safe: and you must suffer him to take no delight nor no penance; but a' must fast three days a week. for this damsel, i must keep her at the park: she is allowed for the day-woman. fare you well. don adriano de armado i do betray myself with blushing. maid! jaquenetta man? don adriano de armado i will visit thee at the lodge. jaquenetta that's hereby. don adriano de armado i know where it is situate. jaquenetta lord, how wise you are! don adriano de armado i will tell thee wonders. jaquenetta with that face? don adriano de armado i love thee. jaquenetta so i heard you say. don adriano de armado and so, farewell. jaquenetta fair weather after you! dull come, jaquenetta, away! [exeunt dull and jaquenetta] don adriano de armado villain, thou shalt fast for thy offences ere thou be pardoned. costard well, sir, i hope, when i do it, i shall do it on a full stomach. don adriano de armado thou shalt be heavily punished. costard i am more bound to you than your fellows, for they are but lightly rewarded. don adriano de armado take away this villain; shut him up. moth come, you transgressing slave; away! costard let me not be pent up, sir: i will fast, being loose. moth no, sir; that were fast and loose: thou shalt to prison. costard well, if ever i do see the merry days of desolation that i have seen, some shall see. moth what shall some see? costard nay, nothing, master moth, but what they look upon. it is not for prisoners to be too silent in their words; and therefore i will say nothing: i thank god i have as little patience as another man; and therefore i can be quiet. [exeunt moth and costard] don adriano de armado i do affect the very ground, which is base, where her shoe, which is baser, guided by her foot, which is basest, doth tread. i shall be forsworn, which is a great argument of falsehood, if i love. and how can that be true love which is falsely attempted? love is a familiar; love is a devil: there is no evil angel but love. yet was samson so tempted, and he had an excellent strength; yet was solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit. cupid's butt-shaft is too hard for hercules' club; and therefore too much odds for a spaniard's rapier. the first and second cause will not serve my turn; the passado he respects not, the duello he regards not: his disgrace is to be called boy; but his glory is to subdue men. adieu, valour! rust rapier! be still, drum! for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth. assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for i am sure i shall turn sonnet. devise, wit; write, pen; for i am for whole volumes in folio. [exit] love's labours lost act ii scene i the same. [enter the princess of france, rosaline, maria, katharine, boyet, lords, and other attendants] boyet now, madam, summon up your dearest spirits: consider who the king your father sends, to whom he sends, and what's his embassy: yourself, held precious in the world's esteem, to parley with the sole inheritor of all perfections that a man may owe, matchless navarre; the plea of no less weight than aquitaine, a dowry for a queen. be now as prodigal of all dear grace as nature was in making graces dear when she did starve the general world beside and prodigally gave them all to you. princess good lord boyet, my beauty, though but mean, needs not the painted flourish of your praise: beauty is bought by judgement of the eye, not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues: i am less proud to hear you tell my worth than you much willing to be counted wise in spending your wit in the praise of mine. but now to task the tasker: good boyet, you are not ignorant, all-telling fame doth noise abroad, navarre hath made a vow, till painful study shall outwear three years, no woman may approach his silent court: therefore to's seemeth it a needful course, before we enter his forbidden gates, to know his pleasure; and in that behalf, bold of your worthiness, we single you as our best-moving fair solicitor. tell him, the daughter of the king of france, on serious business, craving quick dispatch, importunes personal conference with his grace: haste, signify so much; while we attend, like humble-visaged suitors, his high will. boyet proud of employment, willingly i go. princess all pride is willing pride, and yours is so. [exit boyet] who are the votaries, my loving lords, that are vow-fellows with this virtuous duke? first lord lord longaville is one. princess know you the man? maria i know him, madam: at a marriage-feast, between lord perigort and the beauteous heir of jaques falconbridge, solemnized in normandy, saw i this longaville: a man of sovereign parts he is esteem'd; well fitted in arts, glorious in arms: nothing becomes him ill that he would well. the only soil of his fair virtue's gloss, if virtue's gloss will stain with any soil, is a sharp wit matched with too blunt a will; whose edge hath power to cut, whose will still wills it should none spare that come within his power. princess some merry mocking lord, belike; is't so? maria they say so most that most his humours know. princess such short-lived wits do wither as they grow. who are the rest? katharine the young dumain, a well-accomplished youth, of all that virtue love for virtue loved: most power to do most harm, least knowing ill; for he hath wit to make an ill shape good, and shape to win grace though he had no wit. i saw him at the duke alencon's once; and much too little of that good i saw is my report to his great worthiness. rosaline another of these students at that time was there with him, if i have heard a truth. biron they call him; but a merrier man, within the limit of becoming mirth, i never spent an hour's talk withal: his eye begets occasion for his wit; for every object that the one doth catch the other turns to a mirth-moving jest, which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor, delivers in such apt and gracious words that aged ears play truant at his tales and younger hearings are quite ravished; so sweet and voluble is his discourse. princess god bless my ladies! are they all in love, that every one her own hath garnished with such bedecking ornaments of praise? first lord here comes boyet. [re-enter boyet] princess now, what admittance, lord? boyet navarre had notice of your fair approach; and he and his competitors in oath were all address'd to meet you, gentle lady, before i came. marry, thus much i have learnt: he rather means to lodge you in the field, like one that comes here to besiege his court, than seek a dispensation for his oath, to let you enter his unpeopled house. here comes navarre. [enter ferdinand, longaville, dumain, biron, and attendants] ferdinand fair princess, welcome to the court of navarre. princess 'fair' i give you back again; and 'welcome' i have not yet: the roof of this court is too high to be yours; and welcome to the wide fields too base to be mine. ferdinand you shall be welcome, madam, to my court. princess i will be welcome, then: conduct me thither. ferdinand hear me, dear lady; i have sworn an oath. princess our lady help my lord! he'll be forsworn. ferdinand not for the world, fair madam, by my will. princess why, will shall break it; will and nothing else. ferdinand your ladyship is ignorant what it is. princess were my lord so, his ignorance were wise, where now his knowledge must prove ignorance. i hear your grace hath sworn out house-keeping: tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord, and sin to break it. but pardon me. i am too sudden-bold: to teach a teacher ill beseemeth me. vouchsafe to read the purpose of my coming, and suddenly resolve me in my suit. ferdinand madam, i will, if suddenly i may. princess you will the sooner, that i were away; for you'll prove perjured if you make me stay. biron did not i dance with you in brabant once? rosaline did not i dance with you in brabant once? biron i know you did. rosaline how needless was it then to ask the question! biron you must not be so quick. rosaline 'tis 'long of you that spur me with such questions. biron your wit's too hot, it speeds too fast, 'twill tire. rosaline not till it leave the rider in the mire. biron what time o' day? rosaline the hour that fools should ask. biron now fair befall your mask! rosaline fair fall the face it covers! biron and send you many lovers! rosaline amen, so you be none. biron nay, then will i be gone. ferdinand madam, your father here doth intimate the payment of a hundred thousand crowns; being but the one half of an entire sum disbursed by my father in his wars. but say that he or we, as neither have, received that sum, yet there remains unpaid a hundred thousand more; in surety of the which, one part of aquitaine is bound to us, although not valued to the money's worth. if then the king your father will restore but that one half which is unsatisfied, we will give up our right in aquitaine, and hold fair friendship with his majesty. but that, it seems, he little purposeth, for here he doth demand to have repaid a hundred thousand crowns; and not demands, on payment of a hundred thousand crowns, to have his title live in aquitaine; which we much rather had depart withal and have the money by our father lent than aquitaine so gelded as it is. dear princess, were not his requests so far from reason's yielding, your fair self should make a yielding 'gainst some reason in my breast and go well satisfied to france again. princess you do the king my father too much wrong and wrong the reputation of your name, in so unseeming to confess receipt of that which hath so faithfully been paid. ferdinand i do protest i never heard of it; and if you prove it, i'll repay it back or yield up aquitaine. princess we arrest your word. boyet, you can produce acquittances for such a sum from special officers of charles his father. ferdinand satisfy me so. boyet so please your grace, the packet is not come where that and other specialties are bound: to-morrow you shall have a sight of them. ferdinand it shall suffice me: at which interview all liberal reason i will yield unto. meantime receive such welcome at my hand as honour without breach of honour may make tender of to thy true worthiness: you may not come, fair princess, in my gates; but here without you shall be so received as you shall deem yourself lodged in my heart, though so denied fair harbour in my house. your own good thoughts excuse me, and farewell: to-morrow shall we visit you again. princess sweet health and fair desires consort your grace! ferdinand thy own wish wish i thee in every place! [exit] biron lady, i will commend you to mine own heart. rosaline pray you, do my commendations; i would be glad to see it. biron i would you heard it groan. rosaline is the fool sick? biron sick at the heart. rosaline alack, let it blood. biron would that do it good? rosaline my physic says 'ay.' biron will you prick't with your eye? rosaline no point, with my knife. biron now, god save thy life! rosaline and yours from long living! biron i cannot stay thanksgiving. [retiring] dumain sir, i pray you, a word: what lady is that same? boyet the heir of alencon, katharine her name. dumain a gallant lady. monsieur, fare you well. [exit] longaville i beseech you a word: what is she in the white? boyet a woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light. longaville perchance light in the light. i desire her name. boyet she hath but one for herself; to desire that were a shame. longaville pray you, sir, whose daughter? boyet her mother's, i have heard. longaville god's blessing on your beard! boyet good sir, be not offended. she is an heir of falconbridge. longaville nay, my choler is ended. she is a most sweet lady. boyet not unlike, sir, that may be. [exit longaville] biron what's her name in the cap? boyet rosaline, by good hap. biron is she wedded or no? boyet to her will, sir, or so. biron you are welcome, sir: adieu. boyet farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you. [exit biron] maria that last is biron, the merry madcap lord: not a word with him but a jest. boyet and every jest but a word. princess it was well done of you to take him at his word. boyet i was as willing to grapple as he was to board. maria two hot sheeps, marry. boyet and wherefore not ships? no sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips. maria you sheep, and i pasture: shall that finish the jest? boyet so you grant pasture for me. [offering to kiss her] maria not so, gentle beast: my lips are no common, though several they be. boyet belonging to whom? maria to my fortunes and me. princess good wits will be jangling; but, gentles, agree: this civil war of wits were much better used on navarre and his book-men; for here 'tis abused. boyet if my observation, which very seldom lies, by the heart's still rhetoric disclosed with eyes, deceive me not now, navarre is infected. princess with what? boyet with that which we lovers entitle affected. princess your reason? boyet why, all his behaviors did make their retire to the court of his eye, peeping thorough desire: his heart, like an agate, with your print impress'd, proud with his form, in his eye pride express'd: his tongue, all impatient to speak and not see, did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be; all senses to that sense did make their repair, to feel only looking on fairest of fair: methought all his senses were lock'd in his eye, as jewels in crystal for some prince to buy; who, tendering their own worth from where they were glass'd, did point you to buy them, along as you pass'd: his face's own margent did quote such amazes that all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes. i'll give you aquitaine and all that is his, an you give him for my sake but one loving kiss. princess come to our pavilion: boyet is disposed. boyet but to speak that in words which his eye hath disclosed. i only have made a mouth of his eye, by adding a tongue which i know will not lie. rosaline thou art an old love-monger and speakest skilfully. maria he is cupid's grandfather and learns news of him. rosaline then was venus like her mother, for her father is but grim. boyet do you hear, my mad wenches? maria no. boyet what then, do you see? rosaline ay, our way to be gone. boyet you are too hard for me. [exeunt] love's labours lost act iii scene i the same. [enter don adriano de armado and moth] don adriano de armado warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing. moth concolinel. [singing] don adriano de armado sweet air! go, tenderness of years; take this key, give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately hither: i must employ him in a letter to my love. moth master, will you win your love with a french brawl? don adriano de armado how meanest thou? brawling in french? moth no, my complete master: but to jig off a tune at the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you swallowed love with singing love, sometime through the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling love; with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin-belly doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in your pocket like a man after the old painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away. these are complements, these are humours; these betray nice wenches, that would be betrayed without these; and make them men of note--do you note me?--that most are affected to these. don adriano de armado how hast thou purchased this experience? moth by my penny of observation. don adriano de armado but o,--but o,- moth 'the hobby-horse is forgot.' don adriano de armado callest thou my love 'hobby-horse'? moth no, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love perhaps a hackney. but have you forgot your love? don adriano de armado almost i had. moth negligent student! learn her by heart. don adriano de armado by heart and in heart, boy. moth and out of heart, master: all those three i will prove. don adriano de armado what wilt thou prove? moth a man, if i live; and this, by, in, and without, upon the instant: by heart you love her, because your heart cannot come by her; in heart you love her, because your heart is in love with her; and out of heart you love her, being out of heart that you cannot enjoy her. don adriano de armado i am all these three. moth and three times as much more, and yet nothing at all. don adriano de armado fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter. moth a message well sympathized; a horse to be ambassador for an ass. don adriano de armado ha, ha! what sayest thou? moth marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse, for he is very slow-gaited. but i go. don adriano de armado the way is but short: away! moth as swift as lead, sir. don adriano de armado the meaning, pretty ingenious? is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow? moth minime, honest master; or rather, master, no. don adriano de armado i say lead is slow. moth you are too swift, sir, to say so: is that lead slow which is fired from a gun? don adriano de armado sweet smoke of rhetoric! he reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that's he: i shoot thee at the swain. moth thump then and i flee. [exit] don adriano de armado a most acute juvenal; voluble and free of grace! by thy favour, sweet welkin, i must sigh in thy face: most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place. my herald is return'd. [re-enter moth with costard] moth a wonder, master! here's a costard broken in a shin. don adriano de armado some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l'envoy; begin. costard no enigma, no riddle, no l'envoy; no salve in the mail, sir: o, sir, plantain, a plain plantain! no l'envoy, no l'envoy; no salve, sir, but a plantain! don adriano de armado by virtue, thou enforcest laughter; thy silly thought my spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous smiling. o, pardon me, my stars! doth the inconsiderate take salve for l'envoy, and the word l'envoy for a salve? moth do the wise think them other? is not l'envoy a salve? don adriano de armado no, page: it is an epilogue or discourse, to make plain some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain. i will example it: the fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, were still at odds, being but three. there's the moral. now the l'envoy. moth i will add the l'envoy. say the moral again. don adriano de armado the fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, were still at odds, being but three. moth until the goose came out of door, and stay'd the odds by adding four. now will i begin your moral, and do you follow with my l'envoy. the fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, were still at odds, being but three. don adriano de armado until the goose came out of door, staying the odds by adding four. moth a good l'envoy, ending in the goose: would you desire more? costard the boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that's flat. sir, your pennyworth is good, an your goose be fat. to sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose: let me see; a fat l'envoy; ay, that's a fat goose. don adriano de armado come hither, come hither. how did this argument begin? moth by saying that a costard was broken in a shin. then call'd you for the l'envoy. costard true, and i for a plantain: thus came your argument in; then the boy's fat l'envoy, the goose that you bought; and he ended the market. don adriano de armado but tell me; how was there a costard broken in a shin? moth i will tell you sensibly. costard thou hast no feeling of it, moth: i will speak that l'envoy: i costard, running out, that was safely within, fell over the threshold and broke my shin. don adriano de armado we will talk no more of this matter. costard till there be more matter in the shin. don adriano de armado sirrah costard, i will enfranchise thee. costard o, marry me to one frances: i smell some l'envoy, some goose, in this. don adriano de armado by my sweet soul, i mean setting thee at liberty, enfreedoming thy person; thou wert immured, restrained, captivated, bound. costard true, true; and now you will be my purgation and let me loose. don adriano de armado i give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance; and, in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this: bear this significant [giving a letter] to the country maid jaquenetta: there is remuneration; for the best ward of mine honour is rewarding my dependents. moth, follow. [exit] moth like the sequel, i. signior costard, adieu. costard my sweet ounce of man's flesh! my incony jew! [exit moth] now will i look to his remuneration. remuneration! o, that's the latin word for three farthings: three farthings--remuneration.--'what's the price of this inkle?'--'one penny.'--'no, i'll give you a remuneration:' why, it carries it. remuneration! why, it is a fairer name than french crown. i will never buy and sell out of this word. [enter biron] biron o, my good knave costard! exceedingly well met. costard pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for a remuneration? biron what is a remuneration? costard marry, sir, halfpenny farthing. biron why, then, three-farthing worth of silk. costard i thank your worship: god be wi' you! biron stay, slave; i must employ thee: as thou wilt win my favour, good my knave, do one thing for me that i shall entreat. costard when would you have it done, sir? biron this afternoon. costard well, i will do it, sir: fare you well. biron thou knowest not what it is. costard i shall know, sir, when i have done it. biron why, villain, thou must know first. costard i will come to your worship to-morrow morning. biron it must be done this afternoon. hark, slave, it is but this: the princess comes to hunt here in the park, and in her train there is a gentle lady; when tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name, and rosaline they call her: ask for her; and to her white hand see thou do commend this seal'd-up counsel. there's thy guerdon; go. [giving him a shilling] costard gardon, o sweet gardon! better than remuneration, a'leven-pence farthing better: most sweet gardon! i will do it sir, in print. gardon! remuneration! [exit] biron and i, forsooth, in love! i, that have been love's whip; a very beadle to a humorous sigh; a critic, nay, a night-watch constable; a domineering pedant o'er the boy; than whom no mortal so magnificent! this whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy; this senior-junior, giant-dwarf, dan cupid; regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms, the anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, liege of all loiterers and malcontents, dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces, sole imperator and great general of trotting 'paritors:--o my little heart:- and i to be a corporal of his field, and wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop! what, i! i love! i sue! i seek a wife! a woman, that is like a german clock, still a-repairing, ever out of frame, and never going aright, being a watch, but being watch'd that it may still go right! nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all; and, among three, to love the worst of all; a wightly wanton with a velvet brow, with two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes; ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed though argus were her eunuch and her guard: and i to sigh for her! to watch for her! to pray for her! go to; it is a plague that cupid will impose for my neglect of his almighty dreadful little might. well, i will love, write, sigh, pray, sue and groan: some men must love my lady and some joan. [exit] love's labours lost act iv scene i the same. [enter the princess, and her train, a forester, boyet, rosaline, maria, and katharine] princess was that the king, that spurred his horse so hard against the steep uprising of the hill? boyet i know not; but i think it was not he. princess whoe'er a' was, a' show'd a mounting mind. well, lords, to-day we shall have our dispatch: on saturday we will return to france. then, forester, my friend, where is the bush that we must stand and play the murderer in? forester hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice; a stand where you may make the fairest shoot. princess i thank my beauty, i am fair that shoot, and thereupon thou speak'st the fairest shoot. forester pardon me, madam, for i meant not so. princess what, what? first praise me and again say no? o short-lived pride! not fair? alack for woe! forester yes, madam, fair. princess nay, never paint me now: where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow. here, good my glass, take this for telling true: fair payment for foul words is more than due. forester nothing but fair is that which you inherit. princess see see, my beauty will be saved by merit! o heresy in fair, fit for these days! a giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise. but come, the bow: now mercy goes to kill, and shooting well is then accounted ill. thus will i save my credit in the shoot: not wounding, pity would not let me do't; if wounding, then it was to show my skill, that more for praise than purpose meant to kill. and out of question so it is sometimes, glory grows guilty of detested crimes, when, for fame's sake, for praise, an outward part, we bend to that the working of the heart; as i for praise alone now seek to spill the poor deer's blood, that my heart means no ill. boyet do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty only for praise sake, when they strive to be lords o'er their lords? princess only for praise: and praise we may afford to any lady that subdues a lord. boyet here comes a member of the commonwealth. [enter costard] costard god dig-you-den all! pray you, which is the head lady? princess thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest that have no heads. costard which is the greatest lady, the highest? princess the thickest and the tallest. costard the thickest and the tallest! it is so; truth is truth. an your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit, one o' these maids' girdles for your waist should be fit. are not you the chief woman? you are the thickest here. princess what's your will, sir? what's your will? costard i have a letter from monsieur biron to one lady rosaline. princess o, thy letter, thy letter! he's a good friend of mine: stand aside, good bearer. boyet, you can carve; break up this capon. boyet i am bound to serve. this letter is mistook, it importeth none here; it is writ to jaquenetta. princess we will read it, i swear. break the neck of the wax, and every one give ear. [reads] boyet 'by heaven, that thou art fair, is most infallible; true, that thou art beauteous; truth itself, that thou art lovely. more fairer than fair, beautiful than beauteous, truer than truth itself, have commiseration on thy heroical vassal! the magnanimous and most illustrate king cophetua set eye upon the pernicious and indubitate beggar zenelophon; and he it was that might rightly say, veni, vidi, vici; which to annothanize in the vulgar,--o base and obscure vulgar!--videlicet, he came, saw, and overcame: he came, one; saw two; overcame, three. who came? the king: why did he come? to see: why did he see? to overcome: to whom came he? to the beggar: what saw he? the beggar: who overcame he? the beggar. the conclusion is victory: on whose side? the king's. the captive is enriched: on whose side? the beggar's. the catastrophe is a nuptial: on whose side? the king's: no, on both in one, or one in both. i am the king; for so stands the comparison: thou the beggar; for so witnesseth thy lowliness. shall i command thy love? i may: shall i enforce thy love? i could: shall i entreat thy love? i will. what shalt thou exchange for rags? robes; for tittles? titles; for thyself? me. thus, expecting thy reply, i profane my lips on thy foot, my eyes on thy picture. and my heart on thy every part. thine, in the dearest design of industry, don adriano de armado.' thus dost thou hear the nemean lion roar 'gainst thee, thou lamb, that standest as his prey. submissive fall his princely feet before, and he from forage will incline to play: but if thou strive, poor soul, what art thou then? food for his rage, repasture for his den. princess what plume of feathers is he that indited this letter? what vane? what weathercock? did you ever hear better? boyet i am much deceived but i remember the style. princess else your memory is bad, going o'er it erewhile. boyet this armado is a spaniard, that keeps here in court; a phantasime, a monarcho, and one that makes sport to the prince and his bookmates. princess thou fellow, a word: who gave thee this letter? costard i told you; my lord. princess to whom shouldst thou give it? costard from my lord to my lady. princess from which lord to which lady? costard from my lord biron, a good master of mine, to a lady of france that he call'd rosaline. princess thou hast mistaken his letter. come, lords, away. [to rosaline] here, sweet, put up this: 'twill be thine another day. [exeunt princess and train] boyet who is the suitor? who is the suitor? rosaline shall i teach you to know? boyet ay, my continent of beauty. rosaline why, she that bears the bow. finely put off! boyet my lady goes to kill horns; but, if thou marry, hang me by the neck, if horns that year miscarry. finely put on! rosaline well, then, i am the shooter. boyet and who is your deer? rosaline if we choose by the horns, yourself come not near. finely put on, indeed! maria you still wrangle with her, boyet, and she strikes at the brow. boyet but she herself is hit lower: have i hit her now? rosaline shall i come upon thee with an old saying, that was a man when king pepin of france was a little boy, as touching the hit it? boyet so i may answer thee with one as old, that was a woman when queen guinover of britain was a little wench, as touching the hit it. rosaline thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it, thou canst not hit it, my good man. boyet an i cannot, cannot, cannot, an i cannot, another can. [exeunt rosaline and katharine] costard by my troth, most pleasant: how both did fit it! maria a mark marvellous well shot, for they both did hit it. boyet a mark! o, mark but that mark! a mark, says my lady! let the mark have a prick in't, to mete at, if it may be. maria wide o' the bow hand! i' faith, your hand is out. costard indeed, a' must shoot nearer, or he'll ne'er hit the clout. boyet an if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in. costard then will she get the upshoot by cleaving the pin. maria come, come, you talk greasily; your lips grow foul. costard she's too hard for you at pricks, sir: challenge her to bowl. boyet i fear too much rubbing. good night, my good owl. [exeunt boyet and maria] costard by my soul, a swain! a most simple clown! lord, lord, how the ladies and i have put him down! o' my troth, most sweet jests! most incony vulgar wit! when it comes so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it were, so fit. armado o' th' one side,--o, a most dainty man! to see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan! to see him kiss his hand! and how most sweetly a' will swear! and his page o' t' other side, that handful of wit! ah, heavens, it is a most pathetical nit! sola, sola! [shout within] [exit costard, running] love's labours lost act iv scene ii the same. [enter holofernes, sir nathaniel, and dull] sir nathaniel very reverend sport, truly; and done in the testimony of a good conscience. holofernes the deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth. sir nathaniel truly, master holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least: but, sir, i assure ye, it was a buck of the first head. holofernes sir nathaniel, haud credo. dull 'twas not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket. holofernes most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were, replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his inclination, after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather, unlettered, or ratherest, unconfirmed fashion, to insert again my haud credo for a deer. dull i said the deer was not a haud credo; twas a pricket. holofernes twice-sod simplicity, his coctus! o thou monster ignorance, how deformed dost thou look! sir nathaniel sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts: and such barren plants are set before us, that we thankful should be, which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that do fructify in us more than he. for as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool, so were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school: but omne bene, say i; being of an old father's mind, many can brook the weather that love not the wind. dull you two are book-men: can you tell me by your wit what was a month old at cain's birth, that's not five weeks old as yet? holofernes dictynna, goodman dull; dictynna, goodman dull. dull what is dictynna? sir nathaniel a title to phoebe, to luna, to the moon. holofernes the moon was a month old when adam was no more, and raught not to five weeks when he came to five-score. the allusion holds in the exchange. dull 'tis true indeed; the collusion holds in the exchange. holofernes god comfort thy capacity! i say, the allusion holds in the exchange. dull and i say, the pollusion holds in the exchange; for the moon is never but a month old: and i say beside that, 'twas a pricket that the princess killed. holofernes sir nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal epitaph on the death of the deer? and, to humour the ignorant, call i the deer the princess killed a pricket. sir nathaniel perge, good master holofernes, perge; so it shall please you to abrogate scurrility. holofernes i will something affect the letter, for it argues facility. the preyful princess pierced and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket; some say a sore; but not a sore, till now made sore with shooting. the dogs did yell: put l to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket; or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting. if sore be sore, then l to sore makes fifty sores one sorel. of one sore i an hundred make by adding but one more l. sir nathaniel a rare talent! dull [aside] if a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent. holofernes this is a gift that i have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. but the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and i am thankful for it. sir nathaniel sir, i praise the lord for you; and so may my parishioners; for their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit very greatly under you: you are a good member of the commonwealth. holofernes mehercle, if their sons be ingenuous, they shall want no instruction; if their daughters be capable, i will put it to them: but vir sapit qui pauca loquitur; a soul feminine saluteth us. [enter jaquenetta and costard] jaquenetta god give you good morrow, master parson. holofernes master parson, quasi pers-on. an if one should be pierced, which is the one? costard marry, master schoolmaster, he that is likest to a hogshead. holofernes piercing a hogshead! a good lustre of conceit in a tuft of earth; fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine: 'tis pretty; it is well. jaquenetta good master parson, be so good as read me this letter: it was given me by costard, and sent me from don armado: i beseech you, read it. holofernes fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra ruminat,--and so forth. ah, good old mantuan! i may speak of thee as the traveller doth of venice; venetia, venetia, chi non ti vede non ti pretia. old mantuan, old mantuan! who understandeth thee not, loves thee not. ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa. under pardon, sir, what are the contents? or rather, as horace says in his--what, my soul, verses? sir nathaniel ay, sir, and very learned. holofernes let me hear a staff, a stanze, a verse; lege, domine. sir nathaniel [reads] if love make me forsworn, how shall i swear to love? ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vow'd! though to myself forsworn, to thee i'll faithful prove: those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bow'd. study his bias leaves and makes his book thine eyes, where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend: if knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice; well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend, all ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder; which is to me some praise that i thy parts admire: thy eye jove's lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder, which not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire. celestial as thou art, o, pardon, love, this wrong, that sings heaven's praise with such an earthly tongue. holofernes you find not the apostraphas, and so miss the accent: let me supervise the canzonet. here are only numbers ratified; but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret. ovidius naso was the man: and why, indeed, naso, but for smelling out the odouriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention? imitari is nothing: so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider. but, damosella virgin, was this directed to you? jaquenetta ay, sir, from one monsieur biron, one of the strange queen's lords. holofernes i will overglance the superscript: 'to the snow-white hand of the most beauteous lady rosaline.' i will look again on the intellect of the letter, for the nomination of the party writing to the person written unto: 'your ladyship's in all desired employment, biron.' sir nathaniel, this biron is one of the votaries with the king; and here he hath framed a letter to a sequent of the stranger queen's, which accidentally, or by the way of progression, hath miscarried. trip and go, my sweet; deliver this paper into the royal hand of the king: it may concern much. stay not thy compliment; i forgive thy duty; adieu. jaquenetta good costard, go with me. sir, god save your life! costard have with thee, my girl. [exeunt costard and jaquenetta] sir nathaniel sir, you have done this in the fear of god, very religiously; and, as a certain father saith,- holofernes sir tell me not of the father; i do fear colourable colours. but to return to the verses: did they please you, sir nathaniel? sir nathaniel marvellous well for the pen. holofernes i do dine to-day at the father's of a certain pupil of mine; where, if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table with a grace, i will, on my privilege i have with the parents of the foresaid child or pupil, undertake your ben venuto; where i will prove those verses to be very unlearned, neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention: i beseech your society. sir nathaniel and thank you too; for society, saith the text, is the happiness of life. holofernes and, certes, the text most infallibly concludes it. [to dull] sir, i do invite you too; you shall not say me nay: pauca verba. away! the gentles are at their game, and we will to our recreation. [exeunt] love's labours lost act iv scene iii the same. [enter biron, with a paper] biron the king he is hunting the deer; i am coursing myself: they have pitched a toil; i am toiling in a pitch,--pitch that defiles: defile! a foul word. well, set thee down, sorrow! for so they say the fool said, and so say i, and i the fool: well proved, wit! by the lord, this love is as mad as ajax: it kills sheep; it kills me, i a sheep: well proved again o' my side! i will not love: if i do, hang me; i' faith, i will not. o, but her eye,--by this light, but for her eye, i would not love her; yes, for her two eyes. well, i do nothing in the world but lie, and lie in my throat. by heaven, i do love: and it hath taught me to rhyme and to be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and here my melancholy. well, she hath one o' my sonnets already: the clown bore it, the fool sent it, and the lady hath it: sweet clown, sweeter fool, sweetest lady! by the world, i would not care a pin, if the other three were in. here comes one with a paper: god give him grace to groan! [stands aside] [enter ferdinand, with a paper] ferdinand ay me! biron [aside] shot, by heaven! proceed, sweet cupid: thou hast thumped him with thy bird-bolt under the left pap. in faith, secrets! ferdinand [reads] so sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not to those fresh morning drops upon the rose, as thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote the night of dew that on my cheeks down flows: nor shines the silver moon one half so bright through the transparent bosom of the deep, as doth thy face through tears of mine give light; thou shinest in every tear that i do weep: no drop but as a coach doth carry thee; so ridest thou triumphing in my woe. do but behold the tears that swell in me, and they thy glory through my grief will show: but do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep my tears for glasses, and still make me weep. o queen of queens! how far dost thou excel, no thought can think, nor tongue of mortal tell. how shall she know my griefs? i'll drop the paper: sweet leaves, shade folly. who is he comes here? [steps aside] what, longaville! and reading! listen, ear. biron now, in thy likeness, one more fool appear! [enter longaville, with a paper] longaville ay me, i am forsworn! biron why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers. ferdinand in love, i hope: sweet fellowship in shame! biron one drunkard loves another of the name. longaville am i the first that have been perjured so? biron i could put thee in comfort. not by two that i know: thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society, the shape of love's tyburn that hangs up simplicity. longaville i fear these stubborn lines lack power to move: o sweet maria, empress of my love! these numbers will i tear, and write in prose. biron o, rhymes are guards on wanton cupid's hose: disfigure not his slop. longaville this same shall go. [reads] did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye, 'gainst whom the world cannot hold argument, persuade my heart to this false perjury? vows for thee broke deserve not punishment. a woman i forswore; but i will prove, thou being a goddess, i forswore not thee: my vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love; thy grace being gain'd cures all disgrace in me. vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is: then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine, exhalest this vapour-vow; in thee it is: if broken then, it is no fault of mine: if by me broke, what fool is not so wise to lose an oath to win a paradise? biron this is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity, a green goose a goddess: pure, pure idolatry. god amend us, god amend! we are much out o' the way. longaville by whom shall i send this?--company! stay. [steps aside] biron all hid, all hid; an old infant play. like a demigod here sit i in the sky. and wretched fools' secrets heedfully o'ereye. more sacks to the mill! o heavens, i have my wish! [enter dumain, with a paper] dumain transform'd! four woodcocks in a dish! dumain o most divine kate! biron o most profane coxcomb! dumain by heaven, the wonder in a mortal eye! biron by earth, she is not, corporal, there you lie. dumain her amber hair for foul hath amber quoted. biron an amber-colour'd raven was well noted. dumain as upright as the cedar. biron stoop, i say; her shoulder is with child. dumain as fair as day. biron ay, as some days; but then no sun must shine. dumain o that i had my wish! longaville and i had mine! ferdinand and i mine too, good lord! biron amen, so i had mine: is not that a good word? dumain i would forget her; but a fever she reigns in my blood and will remember'd be. biron a fever in your blood! why, then incision would let her out in saucers: sweet misprision! dumain once more i'll read the ode that i have writ. biron once more i'll mark how love can vary wit. dumain [reads] on a day--alack the day!- love, whose month is ever may, spied a blossom passing fair playing in the wanton air: through the velvet leaves the wind, all unseen, can passage find; that the lover, sick to death, wish himself the heaven's breath. air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow; air, would i might triumph so! but, alack, my hand is sworn ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn; vow, alack, for youth unmeet, youth so apt to pluck a sweet! do not call it sin in me, that i am forsworn for thee; thou for whom jove would swear juno but an ethiope were; and deny himself for jove, turning mortal for thy love. this will i send, and something else more plain, that shall express my true love's fasting pain. o, would the king, biron, and longaville, were lovers too! ill, to example ill, would from my forehead wipe a perjured note; for none offend where all alike do dote. longaville [advancing] dumain, thy love is far from charity. you may look pale, but i should blush, i know, to be o'erheard and taken napping so. ferdinand [advancing] come, sir, you blush; as his your case is such; you chide at him, offending twice as much; you do not love maria; longaville did never sonnet for her sake compile, nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart his loving bosom to keep down his heart. i have been closely shrouded in this bush and mark'd you both and for you both did blush: i heard your guilty rhymes, observed your fashion, saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion: ay me! says one; o jove! the other cries; one, her hairs were gold, crystal the other's eyes: [to longaville] you would for paradise break faith, and troth; [to dumain] and jove, for your love, would infringe an oath. what will biron say when that he shall hear faith so infringed, which such zeal did swear? how will he scorn! how will he spend his wit! how will he triumph, leap and laugh at it! for all the wealth that ever i did see, i would not have him know so much by me. biron now step i forth to whip hypocrisy. [advancing] ah, good my liege, i pray thee, pardon me! good heart, what grace hast thou, thus to reprove these worms for loving, that art most in love? your eyes do make no coaches; in your tears there is no certain princess that appears; you'll not be perjured, 'tis a hateful thing; tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting! but are you not ashamed? nay, are you not, all three of you, to be thus much o'ershot? you found his mote; the king your mote did see; but i a beam do find in each of three. o, what a scene of foolery have i seen, of sighs, of groans, of sorrow and of teen! o me, with what strict patience have i sat, to see a king transformed to a gnat! to see great hercules whipping a gig, and profound solomon to tune a jig, and nestor play at push-pin with the boys, and critic timon laugh at idle toys! where lies thy grief, o, tell me, good dumain? and gentle longaville, where lies thy pain? and where my liege's? all about the breast: a caudle, ho! ferdinand too bitter is thy jest. are we betray'd thus to thy over-view? biron not you to me, but i betray'd by you: i, that am honest; i, that hold it sin to break the vow i am engaged in; i am betray'd, by keeping company with men like men of inconstancy. when shall you see me write a thing in rhyme? or groan for love? or spend a minute's time in pruning me? when shall you hear that i will praise a hand, a foot, a face, an eye, a gait, a state, a brow, a breast, a waist, a leg, a limb? ferdinand soft! whither away so fast? a true man or a thief that gallops so? biron i post from love: good lover, let me go. [enter jaquenetta and costard] jaquenetta god bless the king! ferdinand what present hast thou there? costard some certain treason. ferdinand what makes treason here? costard nay, it makes nothing, sir. ferdinand if it mar nothing neither, the treason and you go in peace away together. jaquenetta i beseech your grace, let this letter be read: our parson misdoubts it; 'twas treason, he said. ferdinand biron, read it over. [giving him the paper] where hadst thou it? jaquenetta of costard. ferdinand where hadst thou it? costard of dun adramadio, dun adramadio. [biron tears the letter] ferdinand how now! what is in you? why dost thou tear it? biron a toy, my liege, a toy: your grace needs not fear it. longaville it did move him to passion, and therefore let's hear it. dumain it is biron's writing, and here is his name. [gathering up the pieces] biron [to costard] ah, you whoreson loggerhead! you were born to do me shame. guilty, my lord, guilty! i confess, i confess. ferdinand what? biron that you three fools lack'd me fool to make up the mess: he, he, and you, and you, my liege, and i, are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die. o, dismiss this audience, and i shall tell you more. dumain now the number is even. biron true, true; we are four. will these turtles be gone? ferdinand hence, sirs; away! costard walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay. [exeunt costard and jaquenetta] biron sweet lords, sweet lovers, o, let us embrace! as true we are as flesh and blood can be: the sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face; young blood doth not obey an old decree: we cannot cross the cause why we were born; therefore of all hands must we be forsworn. ferdinand what, did these rent lines show some love of thine? biron did they, quoth you? who sees the heavenly rosaline, that, like a rude and savage man of inde, at the first opening of the gorgeous east, bows not his vassal head and strucken blind kisses the base ground with obedient breast? what peremptory eagle-sighted eye dares look upon the heaven of her brow, that is not blinded by her majesty? ferdinand what zeal, what fury hath inspired thee now? my love, her mistress, is a gracious moon; she an attending star, scarce seen a light. biron my eyes are then no eyes, nor i biron: o, but for my love, day would turn to night! of all complexions the cull'd sovereignty do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek, where several worthies make one dignity, where nothing wants that want itself doth seek. lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues,- fie, painted rhetoric! o, she needs it not: to things of sale a seller's praise belongs, she passes praise; then praise too short doth blot. a wither'd hermit, five-score winters worn, might shake off fifty, looking in her eye: beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born, and gives the crutch the cradle's infancy: o, 'tis the sun that maketh all things shine. ferdinand by heaven, thy love is black as ebony. biron is ebony like her? o wood divine! a wife of such wood were felicity. o, who can give an oath? where is a book? that i may swear beauty doth beauty lack, if that she learn not of her eye to look: no face is fair that is not full so black. ferdinand o paradox! black is the badge of hell, the hue of dungeons and the suit of night; and beauty's crest becomes the heavens well. biron devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light. o, if in black my lady's brows be deck'd, it mourns that painting and usurping hair should ravish doters with a false aspect; and therefore is she born to make black fair. her favour turns the fashion of the days, for native blood is counted painting now; and therefore red, that would avoid dispraise, paints itself black, to imitate her brow. dumain to look like her are chimney-sweepers black. longaville and since her time are colliers counted bright. ferdinand and ethiopes of their sweet complexion crack. dumain dark needs no candles now, for dark is light. biron your mistresses dare never come in rain, for fear their colours should be wash'd away. ferdinand 'twere good, yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain, i'll find a fairer face not wash'd to-day. biron i'll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here. ferdinand no devil will fright thee then so much as she. dumain i never knew man hold vile stuff so dear. longaville look, here's thy love: my foot and her face see. biron o, if the streets were paved with thine eyes, her feet were much too dainty for such tread! dumain o, vile! then, as she goes, what upward lies the street should see as she walk'd overhead. ferdinand but what of this? are we not all in love? biron nothing so sure; and thereby all forsworn. ferdinand then leave this chat; and, good biron, now prove our loving lawful, and our faith not torn. dumain ay, marry, there; some flattery for this evil. longaville o, some authority how to proceed; some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil. dumain some salve for perjury. biron 'tis more than need. have at you, then, affection's men at arms. consider what you first did swear unto, to fast, to study, and to see no woman; flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth. say, can you fast? your stomachs are too young; and abstinence engenders maladies. and where that you have vow'd to study, lords, in that each of you have forsworn his book, can you still dream and pore and thereon look? for when would you, my lord, or you, or you, have found the ground of study's excellence without the beauty of a woman's face? [from women's eyes this doctrine i derive; they are the ground, the books, the academes from whence doth spring the true promethean fire] why, universal plodding poisons up the nimble spirits in the arteries, as motion and long-during action tires the sinewy vigour of the traveller. now, for not looking on a woman's face, you have in that forsworn the use of eyes and study too, the causer of your vow; for where is any author in the world teaches such beauty as a woman's eye? learning is but an adjunct to ourself and where we are our learning likewise is: then when ourselves we see in ladies' eyes, do we not likewise see our learning there? o, we have made a vow to study, lords, and in that vow we have forsworn our books. for when would you, my liege, or you, or you, in leaden contemplation have found out such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes of beauty's tutors have enrich'd you with? other slow arts entirely keep the brain; and therefore, finding barren practisers, scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil: but love, first learned in a lady's eyes, lives not alone immured in the brain; but, with the motion of all elements, courses as swift as thought in every power, and gives to every power a double power, above their functions and their offices. it adds a precious seeing to the eye; a lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind; a lover's ear will hear the lowest sound, when the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd: love's feeling is more soft and sensible than are the tender horns of cockl'd snails; love's tongue proves dainty bacchus gross in taste: for valour, is not love a hercules, still climbing trees in the hesperides? subtle as sphinx; as sweet and musical as bright apollo's lute, strung with his hair: and when love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. never durst poet touch a pen to write until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs; o, then his lines would ravish savage ears and plant in tyrants mild humility. from women's eyes this doctrine i derive: they sparkle still the right promethean fire; they are the books, the arts, the academes, that show, contain and nourish all the world: else none at all in ought proves excellent. then fools you were these women to forswear, or keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools. for wisdom's sake, a word that all men love, or for love's sake, a word that loves all men, or for men's sake, the authors of these women, or women's sake, by whom we men are men, let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves, or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths. it is religion to be thus forsworn, for charity itself fulfills the law, and who can sever love from charity? ferdinand saint cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field! biron advance your standards, and upon them, lords; pell-mell, down with them! but be first advised, in conflict that you get the sun of them. longaville now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by: shall we resolve to woo these girls of france? ferdinand and win them too: therefore let us devise some entertainment for them in their tents. biron first, from the park let us conduct them thither; then homeward every man attach the hand of his fair mistress: in the afternoon we will with some strange pastime solace them, such as the shortness of the time can shape; for revels, dances, masks and merry hours forerun fair love, strewing her way with flowers. ferdinand away, away! no time shall be omitted that will betime, and may by us be fitted. biron allons! allons! sow'd cockle reap'd no corn; and justice always whirls in equal measure: light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn; if so, our copper buys no better treasure. [exeunt] love's labours lost act v scene i the same. [enter holofernes, sir nathaniel, and dull] holofernes satis quod sufficit. sir nathaniel i praise god for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange with out heresy. i did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king's, who is intituled, nomi nated, or called, don adriano de armado. holofernes novi hominem tanquam te: his humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behavior vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. he is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as i may call it. sir nathaniel a most singular and choice epithet. [draws out his table-book] holofernes he draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. i abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak dout, fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he should pronounce debt,--d, e, b, t, not d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour vocatur nebor; neigh abbreviated ne. this is abhominable,--which he would call abbominable: it insinuateth me of insanie: anne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic. sir nathaniel laus deo, bene intelligo. holofernes bon, bon, fort bon, priscian! a little scratch'd, 'twill serve. sir nathaniel videsne quis venit? holofernes video, et gaudeo. [enter don adriano de armado, moth, and costard] don adriano de armado chirrah! [to moth] holofernes quare chirrah, not sirrah? don adriano de armado men of peace, well encountered. holofernes most military sir, salutation. moth [aside to costard] they have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps. costard o, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. i marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon. moth peace! the peal begins. don adriano de armado [to holofernes] monsieur, are you not lettered? moth yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook. what is a, b, spelt backward, with the horn on his head? holofernes ba, pueritia, with a horn added. moth ba, most silly sheep with a horn. you hear his learning. holofernes quis, quis, thou consonant? moth the third of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the fifth, if i. holofernes i will repeat them,--a, e, i,- moth the sheep: the other two concludes it,--o, u. don adriano de armado now, by the salt wave of the mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit! snip, snap, quick and home! it rejoiceth my intellect: true wit! moth offered by a child to an old man; which is wit-old. holofernes what is the figure? what is the figure? moth horns. holofernes thou disputest like an infant: go, whip thy gig. moth lend me your horn to make one, and i will whip about your infamy circum circa,--a gig of a cuckold's horn. costard an i had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread: hold, there is the very remuneration i had of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion. o, an the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but my bastard, what a joyful father wouldst thou make me! go to; thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers' ends, as they say. holofernes o, i smell false latin; dunghill for unguem. don adriano de armado arts-man, preambulate, we will be singled from the barbarous. do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the mountain? holofernes or mons, the hill. don adriano de armado at your sweet pleasure, for the mountain. holofernes i do, sans question. don adriano de armado sir, it is the king's most sweet pleasure and affection to congratulate the princess at her pavilion in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon. holofernes the posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable, congruent and measurable for the afternoon: the word is well culled, chose, sweet and apt, i do assure you, sir, i do assure. don adriano de armado sir, the king is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, i do assure ye, very good friend: for what is inward between us, let it pass. i do beseech thee, remember thy courtesy; i beseech thee, apparel thy head: and among other important and most serious designs, and of great import indeed, too, but let that pass: for i must tell thee, it will please his grace, by the world, sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder, and with his royal finger, thus, dally with my excrement, with my mustachio; but, sweet heart, let that pass. by the world, i recount no fable: some certain special honours it pleaseth his greatness to impart to armado, a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world; but let that pass. the very all of all is,--but, sweet heart, i do implore secrecy,--that the king would have me present the princess, sweet chuck, with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antique, or firework. now, understanding that the curate and your sweet self are good at such eruptions and sudden breaking out of mirth, as it were, i have acquainted you withal, to the end to crave your assistance. holofernes sir, you shall present before her the nine worthies. sir, as concerning some entertainment of time, some show in the posterior of this day, to be rendered by our assistants, at the king's command, and this most gallant, illustrate, and learned gentleman, before the princess; i say none so fit as to present the nine worthies. sir nathaniel where will you find men worthy enough to present them? holofernes joshua, yourself; myself and this gallant gentleman, judas maccabaeus; this swain, because of his great limb or joint, shall pass pompey the great; the page, hercules,- don adriano de armado pardon, sir; error: he is not quantity enough for that worthy's thumb: he is not so big as the end of his club. holofernes shall i have audience? he shall present hercules in minority: his enter and exit shall be strangling a snake; and i will have an apology for that purpose. moth an excellent device! so, if any of the audience hiss, you may cry 'well done, hercules! now thou crushest the snake!' that is the way to make an offence gracious, though few have the grace to do it. don adriano de armado for the rest of the worthies?- holofernes i will play three myself. moth thrice-worthy gentleman! don adriano de armado shall i tell you a thing? holofernes we attend. don adriano de armado we will have, if this fadge not, an antique. i beseech you, follow. holofernes via, goodman dull! thou hast spoken no word all this while. dull nor understood none neither, sir. holofernes allons! we will employ thee. dull i'll make one in a dance, or so; or i will play on the tabour to the worthies, and let them dance the hay. holofernes most dull, honest dull! to our sport, away! [exeunt] love's labours lost act v scene ii the same. [enter the princess, katharine, rosaline, and maria] princess sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart, if fairings come thus plentifully in: a lady wall'd about with diamonds! look you what i have from the loving king. rosaline madame, came nothing else along with that? princess nothing but this! yes, as much love in rhyme as would be cramm'd up in a sheet of paper, writ o' both sides the leaf, margent and all, that he was fain to seal on cupid's name. rosaline that was the way to make his godhead wax, for he hath been five thousand years a boy. katharine ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too. rosaline you'll ne'er be friends with him; a' kill'd your sister. katharine he made her melancholy, sad, and heavy; and so she died: had she been light, like you, of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit, she might ha' been a grandam ere she died: and so may you; for a light heart lives long. rosaline what's your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word? katharine a light condition in a beauty dark. rosaline we need more light to find your meaning out. katharine you'll mar the light by taking it in snuff; therefore i'll darkly end the argument. rosaline look what you do, you do it still i' the dark. katharine so do not you, for you are a light wench. rosaline indeed i weigh not you, and therefore light. katharine you weigh me not? o, that's you care not for me. rosaline great reason; for 'past cure is still past care.' princess well bandied both; a set of wit well play'd. but rosaline, you have a favour too: who sent it? and what is it? rosaline i would you knew: an if my face were but as fair as yours, my favour were as great; be witness this. nay, i have verses too, i thank biron: the numbers true; and, were the numbering too, i were the fairest goddess on the ground: i am compared to twenty thousand fairs. o, he hath drawn my picture in his letter! princess any thing like? rosaline much in the letters; nothing in the praise. princess beauteous as ink; a good conclusion. katharine fair as a text b in a copy-book. rosaline 'ware pencils, ho! let me not die your debtor, my red dominical, my golden letter: o, that your face were not so full of o's! katharine a pox of that jest! and i beshrew all shrows. princess but, katharine, what was sent to you from fair dumain? katharine madam, this glove. princess did he not send you twain? katharine yes, madam, and moreover some thousand verses of a faithful lover, a huge translation of hypocrisy, vilely compiled, profound simplicity. maria this and these pearls to me sent longaville: the letter is too long by half a mile. princess i think no less. dost thou not wish in heart the chain were longer and the letter short? maria ay, or i would these hands might never part. princess we are wise girls to mock our lovers so. rosaline they are worse fools to purchase mocking so. that same biron i'll torture ere i go: o that i knew he were but in by the week! how i would make him fawn and beg and seek and wait the season and observe the times and spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes and shape his service wholly to my hests and make him proud to make me proud that jests! so perttaunt-like would i o'ersway his state that he should be my fool and i his fate. princess none are so surely caught, when they are catch'd, as wit turn'd fool: folly, in wisdom hatch'd, hath wisdom's warrant and the help of school and wit's own grace to grace a learned fool. rosaline the blood of youth burns not with such excess as gravity's revolt to wantonness. maria folly in fools bears not so strong a note as foolery in the wise, when wit doth dote; since all the power thereof it doth apply to prove, by wit, worth in simplicity. princess here comes boyet, and mirth is in his face. [enter boyet] boyet o, i am stabb'd with laughter! where's her grace? princess thy news boyet? boyet prepare, madam, prepare! arm, wenches, arm! encounters mounted are against your peace: love doth approach disguised, armed in arguments; you'll be surprised: muster your wits; stand in your own defence; or hide your heads like cowards, and fly hence. princess saint denis to saint cupid! what are they that charge their breath against us? say, scout, say. boyet under the cool shade of a sycamore i thought to close mine eyes some half an hour; when, lo! to interrupt my purposed rest, toward that shade i might behold addrest the king and his companions: warily i stole into a neighbour thicket by, and overheard what you shall overhear, that, by and by, disguised they will be here. their herald is a pretty knavish page, that well by heart hath conn'd his embassage: action and accent did they teach him there; 'thus must thou speak,' and 'thus thy body bear:' and ever and anon they made a doubt presence majestical would put him out, 'for,' quoth the king, 'an angel shalt thou see; yet fear not thou, but speak audaciously.' the boy replied, 'an angel is not evil; i should have fear'd her had she been a devil.' with that, all laugh'd and clapp'd him on the shoulder, making the bold wag by their praises bolder: one rubb'd his elbow thus, and fleer'd and swore a better speech was never spoke before; another, with his finger and his thumb, cried, 'via! we will do't, come what will come;' the third he caper'd, and cried, 'all goes well;' the fourth turn'd on the toe, and down he fell. with that, they all did tumble on the ground, with such a zealous laughter, so profound, that in this spleen ridiculous appears, to cheque their folly, passion's solemn tears. princess but what, but what, come they to visit us? boyet they do, they do: and are apparell'd thus. like muscovites or russians, as i guess. their purpose is to parle, to court and dance; and every one his love-feat will advance unto his several mistress, which they'll know by favours several which they did bestow. princess and will they so? the gallants shall be task'd; for, ladies, we shall every one be mask'd; and not a man of them shall have the grace, despite of suit, to see a lady's face. hold, rosaline, this favour thou shalt wear, and then the king will court thee for his dear; hold, take thou this, my sweet, and give me thine, so shall biron take me for rosaline. and change your favours too; so shall your loves woo contrary, deceived by these removes. rosaline come on, then; wear the favours most in sight. katharine but in this changing what is your intent? princess the effect of my intent is to cross theirs: they do it but in mocking merriment; and mock for mock is only my intent. their several counsels they unbosom shall to loves mistook, and so be mock'd withal upon the next occasion that we meet, with visages displayed, to talk and greet. rosaline but shall we dance, if they desire to't? princess no, to the death, we will not move a foot; nor to their penn'd speech render we no grace, but while 'tis spoke each turn away her face. boyet why, that contempt will kill the speaker's heart, and quite divorce his memory from his part. princess therefore i do it; and i make no doubt the rest will ne'er come in, if he be out there's no such sport as sport by sport o'erthrown, to make theirs ours and ours none but our own: so shall we stay, mocking intended game, and they, well mock'd, depart away with shame. [trumpets sound within] boyet the trumpet sounds: be mask'd; the maskers come. [the ladies mask] [enter blackamoors with music; moth; ferdinand, biron, longaville, and dumain, in russian habits, and masked] moth all hail, the richest beauties on the earth!- boyet beauties no richer than rich taffeta. moth a holy parcel of the fairest dames. [the ladies turn their backs to him] that ever turn'd their--backs--to mortal views! biron [aside to moth] their eyes, villain, their eyes! moth that ever turn'd their eyes to mortal views!--out- boyet true; out indeed. moth out of your favours, heavenly spirits, vouchsafe not to behold- biron [aside to moth] once to behold, rogue. moth once to behold with your sun-beamed eyes, --with your sun-beamed eyes- boyet they will not answer to that epithet; you were best call it 'daughter-beamed eyes.' moth they do not mark me, and that brings me out. biron is this your perfectness? be gone, you rogue! [exit moth] rosaline what would these strangers? know their minds, boyet: if they do speak our language, 'tis our will: that some plain man recount their purposes know what they would. boyet what would you with the princess? biron nothing but peace and gentle visitation. rosaline what would they, say they? boyet nothing but peace and gentle visitation. rosaline why, that they have; and bid them so be gone. boyet she says, you have it, and you may be gone. ferdinand say to her, we have measured many miles to tread a measure with her on this grass. boyet they say, that they have measured many a mile to tread a measure with you on this grass. rosaline it is not so. ask them how many inches is in one mile: if they have measured many, the measure then of one is easily told. boyet if to come hither you have measured miles, and many miles, the princess bids you tell how many inches doth fill up one mile. biron tell her, we measure them by weary steps. boyet she hears herself. rosaline how many weary steps, of many weary miles you have o'ergone, are number'd in the travel of one mile? biron we number nothing that we spend for you: our duty is so rich, so infinite, that we may do it still without accompt. vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face, that we, like savages, may worship it. rosaline my face is but a moon, and clouded too. ferdinand blessed are clouds, to do as such clouds do! vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine, those clouds removed, upon our watery eyne. rosaline o vain petitioner! beg a greater matter; thou now request'st but moonshine in the water. ferdinand then, in our measure do but vouchsafe one change. thou bid'st me beg: this begging is not strange. rosaline play, music, then! nay, you must do it soon. [music plays] not yet! no dance! thus change i like the moon. ferdinand will you not dance? how come you thus estranged? rosaline you took the moon at full, but now she's changed. ferdinand yet still she is the moon, and i the man. the music plays; vouchsafe some motion to it. rosaline our ears vouchsafe it. ferdinand but your legs should do it. rosaline since you are strangers and come here by chance, we'll not be nice: take hands. we will not dance. ferdinand why take we hands, then? rosaline only to part friends: curtsy, sweet hearts; and so the measure ends. ferdinand more measure of this measure; be not nice. rosaline we can afford no more at such a price. ferdinand prize you yourselves: what buys your company? rosaline your absence only. ferdinand that can never be. rosaline then cannot we be bought: and so, adieu; twice to your visor, and half once to you. ferdinand if you deny to dance, let's hold more chat. rosaline in private, then. ferdinand i am best pleased with that. [they converse apart] biron white-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee. princess honey, and milk, and sugar; there is three. biron nay then, two treys, and if you grow so nice, metheglin, wort, and malmsey: well run, dice! there's half-a-dozen sweets. princess seventh sweet, adieu: since you can cog, i'll play no more with you. biron one word in secret. princess let it not be sweet. biron thou grievest my gall. princess gall! bitter. biron therefore meet. [they converse apart] dumain will you vouchsafe with me to change a word? maria name it. dumain fair lady,- maria say you so? fair lord,- take that for your fair lady. dumain please it you, as much in private, and i'll bid adieu. [they converse apart] katharine what, was your vizard made without a tongue? longaville i know the reason, lady, why you ask. katharine o for your reason! quickly, sir; i long. longaville you have a double tongue within your mask, and would afford my speechless vizard half. katharine veal, quoth the dutchman. is not 'veal' a calf? longaville a calf, fair lady! katharine no, a fair lord calf. longaville let's part the word. katharine no, i'll not be your half take all, and wean it; it may prove an ox. longaville look, how you butt yourself in these sharp mocks! will you give horns, chaste lady? do not so. katharine then die a calf, before your horns do grow. longaville one word in private with you, ere i die. katharine bleat softly then; the butcher hears you cry. [they converse apart] boyet the tongues of mocking wenches are as keen as is the razor's edge invisible, cutting a smaller hair than may be seen, above the sense of sense; so sensible seemeth their conference; their conceits have wings fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things. rosaline not one word more, my maids; break off, break off. biron by heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff! ferdinand farewell, mad wenches; you have simple wits. princess twenty adieus, my frozen muscovits. [exeunt ferdinand, lords, and blackamoors] are these the breed of wits so wonder'd at? boyet tapers they are, with your sweet breaths puff'd out. rosaline well-liking wits they have; gross, gross; fat, fat. princess o poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout! will they not, think you, hang themselves tonight? or ever, but in vizards, show their faces? this pert biron was out of countenance quite. rosaline o, they were all in lamentable cases! the king was weeping-ripe for a good word. princess biron did swear himself out of all suit. maria dumain was at my service, and his sword: no point, quoth i; my servant straight was mute. katharine lord longaville said, i came o'er his heart; and trow you what he called me? princess qualm, perhaps. katharine yes, in good faith. princess go, sickness as thou art! rosaline well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps. but will you hear? the king is my love sworn. princess and quick biron hath plighted faith to me. katharine and longaville was for my service born. maria dumain is mine, as sure as bark on tree. boyet madam, and pretty mistresses, give ear: immediately they will again be here in their own shapes; for it can never be they will digest this harsh indignity. princess will they return? boyet they will, they will, god knows, and leap for joy, though they are lame with blows: therefore change favours; and, when they repair, blow like sweet roses in this summer air. princess how blow? how blow? speak to be understood. boyet fair ladies mask'd are roses in their bud; dismask'd, their damask sweet commixture shown, are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown. princess avaunt, perplexity! what shall we do, if they return in their own shapes to woo? rosaline good madam, if by me you'll be advised, let's, mock them still, as well known as disguised: let us complain to them what fools were here, disguised like muscovites, in shapeless gear; and wonder what they were and to what end their shallow shows and prologue vilely penn'd and their rough carriage so ridiculous, should be presented at our tent to us. boyet ladies, withdraw: the gallants are at hand. princess whip to our tents, as roes run o'er land. [exeunt princess, rosaline, katharine, and maria] [re-enter ferdinand, biron, longaville, and dumain, in their proper habits] ferdinand fair sir, god save you! where's the princess? boyet gone to her tent. please it your majesty command me any service to her thither? ferdinand that she vouchsafe me audience for one word. boyet i will; and so will she, i know, my lord. [exit] biron this fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease, and utters it again when god doth please: he is wit's pedler, and retails his wares at wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs; and we that sell by gross, the lord doth know, have not the grace to grace it with such show. this gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve; had he been adam, he had tempted eve; a' can carve too, and lisp: why, this is he that kiss'd his hand away in courtesy; this is the ape of form, monsieur the nice, that, when he plays at tables, chides the dice in honourable terms: nay, he can sing a mean most meanly; and in ushering mend him who can: the ladies call him sweet; the stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet: this is the flower that smiles on every one, to show his teeth as white as whale's bone; and consciences, that will not die in debt, pay him the due of honey-tongued boyet. ferdinand a blister on his sweet tongue, with my heart, that put armado's page out of his part! biron see where it comes! behavior, what wert thou till this madman show'd thee? and what art thou now? [re-enter the princess, ushered by boyet, rosaline, maria, and katharine] ferdinand all hail, sweet madam, and fair time of day! princess 'fair' in 'all hail' is foul, as i conceive. ferdinand construe my speeches better, if you may. princess then wish me better; i will give you leave. ferdinand we came to visit you, and purpose now to lead you to our court; vouchsafe it then. princess this field shall hold me; and so hold your vow: nor god, nor i, delights in perjured men. ferdinand rebuke me not for that which you provoke: the virtue of your eye must break my oath. princess you nickname virtue; vice you should have spoke; for virtue's office never breaks men's troth. now by my maiden honour, yet as pure as the unsullied lily, i protest, a world of torments though i should endure, i would not yield to be your house's guest; so much i hate a breaking cause to be of heavenly oaths, vow'd with integrity. ferdinand o, you have lived in desolation here, unseen, unvisited, much to our shame. princess not so, my lord; it is not so, i swear; we have had pastimes here and pleasant game: a mess of russians left us but of late. ferdinand how, madam! russians! princess ay, in truth, my lord; trim gallants, full of courtship and of state. rosaline madam, speak true. it is not so, my lord: my lady, to the manner of the days, in courtesy gives undeserving praise. we four indeed confronted were with four in russian habit: here they stay'd an hour, and talk'd apace; and in that hour, my lord, they did not bless us with one happy word. i dare not call them fools; but this i think, when they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink. biron this jest is dry to me. fair gentle sweet, your wit makes wise things foolish: when we greet, with eyes best seeing, heaven's fiery eye, by light we lose light: your capacity is of that nature that to your huge store wise things seem foolish and rich things but poor. rosaline this proves you wise and rich, for in my eye,- biron i am a fool, and full of poverty. rosaline but that you take what doth to you belong, it were a fault to snatch words from my tongue. biron o, i am yours, and all that i possess! rosaline all the fool mine? biron i cannot give you less. rosaline which of the vizards was it that you wore? biron where? when? what vizard? why demand you this? rosaline there, then, that vizard; that superfluous case that hid the worse and show'd the better face. ferdinand we are descried; they'll mock us now downright. dumain let us confess and turn it to a jest. princess amazed, my lord? why looks your highness sad? rosaline help, hold his brows! he'll swoon! why look you pale? sea-sick, i think, coming from muscovy. biron thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury. can any face of brass hold longer out? here stand i lady, dart thy skill at me; bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout; thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance; cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit; and i will wish thee never more to dance, nor never more in russian habit wait. o, never will i trust to speeches penn'd, nor to the motion of a schoolboy's tongue, nor never come in vizard to my friend, nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper's song! taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, figures pedantical; these summer-flies have blown me full of maggot ostentation: i do forswear them; and i here protest, by this white glove;--how white the hand, god knows!- henceforth my wooing mind shall be express'd in russet yeas and honest kersey noes: and, to begin, wench,--so god help me, la!- my love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw. rosaline sans sans, i pray you. biron yet i have a trick of the old rage: bear with me, i am sick; i'll leave it by degrees. soft, let us see: write, 'lord have mercy on us' on those three; they are infected; in their hearts it lies; they have the plague, and caught it of your eyes; these lords are visited; you are not free, for the lord's tokens on you do i see. princess no, they are free that gave these tokens to us. biron our states are forfeit: seek not to undo us. rosaline it is not so; for how can this be true, that you stand forfeit, being those that sue? biron peace! for i will not have to do with you. rosaline nor shall not, if i do as i intend. biron speak for yourselves; my wit is at an end. ferdinand teach us, sweet madam, for our rude transgression some fair excuse. princess the fairest is confession. were not you here but even now disguised? ferdinand madam, i was. princess and were you well advised? ferdinand i was, fair madam. princess when you then were here, what did you whisper in your lady's ear? ferdinand that more than all the world i did respect her. princess when she shall challenge this, you will reject her. ferdinand upon mine honour, no. princess peace, peace! forbear: your oath once broke, you force not to forswear. ferdinand despise me, when i break this oath of mine. princess i will: and therefore keep it. rosaline, what did the russian whisper in your ear? rosaline madam, he swore that he did hold me dear as precious eyesight, and did value me above this world; adding thereto moreover that he would wed me, or else die my lover. princess god give thee joy of him! the noble lord most honourably doth unhold his word. ferdinand what mean you, madam? by my life, my troth, i never swore this lady such an oath. rosaline by heaven, you did; and to confirm it plain, you gave me this: but take it, sir, again. ferdinand my faith and this the princess i did give: i knew her by this jewel on her sleeve. princess pardon me, sir, this jewel did she wear; and lord biron, i thank him, is my dear. what, will you have me, or your pearl again? biron neither of either; i remit both twain. i see the trick on't: here was a consent, knowing aforehand of our merriment, to dash it like a christmas comedy: some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany, some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some dick, that smiles his cheek in years and knows the trick to make my lady laugh when she's disposed, told our intents before; which once disclosed, the ladies did change favours: and then we, following the signs, woo'd but the sign of she. now, to our perjury to add more terror, we are again forsworn, in will and error. much upon this it is: and might not you [to boyet] forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue? do not you know my lady's foot by the squier, and laugh upon the apple of her eye? and stand between her back, sir, and the fire, holding a trencher, jesting merrily? you put our page out: go, you are allow'd; die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud. you leer upon me, do you? there's an eye wounds like a leaden sword. boyet full merrily hath this brave manage, this career, been run. biron lo, he is tilting straight! peace! i have done. [enter costard] welcome, pure wit! thou partest a fair fray. costard o lord, sir, they would know whether the three worthies shall come in or no. biron what, are there but three? costard no, sir; but it is vara fine, for every one pursents three. biron and three times thrice is nine. costard not so, sir; under correction, sir; i hope it is not so. you cannot beg us, sir, i can assure you, sir we know what we know: i hope, sir, three times thrice, sir,- biron is not nine. costard under correction, sir, we know whereuntil it doth amount. biron by jove, i always took three threes for nine. costard o lord, sir, it were pity you should get your living by reckoning, sir. biron how much is it? costard o lord, sir, the parties themselves, the actors, sir, will show whereuntil it doth amount: for mine own part, i am, as they say, but to parfect one man in one poor man, pompion the great, sir. biron art thou one of the worthies? costard it pleased them to think me worthy of pompion the great: for mine own part, i know not the degree of the worthy, but i am to stand for him. biron go, bid them prepare. costard we will turn it finely off, sir; we will take some care. [exit] ferdinand biron, they will shame us: let them not approach. biron we are shame-proof, my lord: and tis some policy to have one show worse than the king's and his company. ferdinand i say they shall not come. princess nay, my good lord, let me o'errule you now: that sport best pleases that doth least know how: where zeal strives to content, and the contents dies in the zeal of that which it presents: their form confounded makes most form in mirth, when great things labouring perish in their birth. biron a right description of our sport, my lord. [enter don adriano de armado] don adriano de armado anointed, i implore so much expense of thy royal sweet breath as will utter a brace of words. [converses apart with ferdinand, and delivers him a paper] princess doth this man serve god? biron why ask you? princess he speaks not like a man of god's making. don adriano de armado that is all one, my fair, sweet, honey monarch; for, i protest, the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical; too, too vain, too too vain: but we will put it, as they say, to fortuna de la guerra. i wish you the peace of mind, most royal couplement! [exit] ferdinand here is like to be a good presence of worthies. he presents hector of troy; the swain, pompey the great; the parish curate, alexander; armado's page, hercules; the pedant, judas maccabaeus: and if these four worthies in their first show thrive, these four will change habits, and present the other five. biron there is five in the first show. ferdinand you are deceived; 'tis not so. biron the pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool and the boy:- abate throw at novum, and the whole world again cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein. ferdinand the ship is under sail, and here she comes amain. [enter costard, for pompey] costard i pompey am,- boyet you lie, you are not he. costard i pompey am,- boyet with libbard's head on knee. biron well said, old mocker: i must needs be friends with thee. costard i pompey am, pompey surnamed the big- dumain the great. costard it is, 'great,' sir:- pompey surnamed the great; that oft in field, with targe and shield, did make my foe to sweat: and travelling along this coast, i here am come by chance, and lay my arms before the legs of this sweet lass of france, if your ladyship would say, 'thanks, pompey,' i had done. princess great thanks, great pompey. costard 'tis not so much worth; but i hope i was perfect: i made a little fault in 'great.' biron my hat to a halfpenny, pompey proves the best worthy. [enter sir nathaniel, for alexander] sir nathaniel when in the world i lived, i was the world's commander; by east, west, north, and south, i spread my conquering might: my scutcheon plain declares that i am alisander,- boyet your nose says, no, you are not for it stands too right. biron your nose smells 'no' in this, most tender-smelling knight. princess the conqueror is dismay'd. proceed, good alexander. sir nathaniel when in the world i lived, i was the world's commander,- boyet most true, 'tis right; you were so, alisander. biron pompey the great,- costard your servant, and costard. biron take away the conqueror, take away alisander. costard [to sir nathaniel] o, sir, you have overthrown alisander the conqueror! you will be scraped out of the painted cloth for this: your lion, that holds his poll-axe sitting on a close-stool, will be given to ajax: he will be the ninth worthy. a conqueror, and afeard to speak! run away for shame, alisander. [sir nathaniel retires] there, an't shall please you; a foolish mild man; an honest man, look you, and soon dashed. he is a marvellous good neighbour, faith, and a very good bowler: but, for alisander,--alas, you see how 'tis,--a little o'erparted. but there are worthies a-coming will speak their mind in some other sort. [enter holofernes, for judas; and moth, for hercules] holofernes great hercules is presented by this imp, whose club kill'd cerberus, that three-headed canis; and when he was a babe, a child, a shrimp, thus did he strangle serpents in his manus. quoniam he seemeth in minority, ergo i come with this apology. keep some state in thy exit, and vanish. [moth retires] judas i am,- dumain a judas! holofernes not iscariot, sir. judas i am, ycliped maccabaeus. dumain judas maccabaeus clipt is plain judas. biron a kissing traitor. how art thou proved judas? holofernes judas i am,- dumain the more shame for you, judas. holofernes what mean you, sir? boyet to make judas hang himself. holofernes begin, sir; you are my elder. biron well followed: judas was hanged on an elder. holofernes i will not be put out of countenance. biron because thou hast no face. holofernes what is this? boyet a cittern-head. dumain the head of a bodkin. biron a death's face in a ring. longaville the face of an old roman coin, scarce seen. boyet the pommel of caesar's falchion. dumain the carved-bone face on a flask. biron saint george's half-cheek in a brooch. dumain ay, and in a brooch of lead. biron ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth-drawer. and now forward; for we have put thee in countenance. holofernes you have put me out of countenance. biron false; we have given thee faces. holofernes but you have out-faced them all. biron an thou wert a lion, we would do so. boyet therefore, as he is an ass, let him go. and so adieu, sweet jude! nay, why dost thou stay? dumain for the latter end of his name. biron for the ass to the jude; give it him:--jud-as, away! holofernes this is not generous, not gentle, not humble. boyet a light for monsieur judas! it grows dark, he may stumble. [holofernes retires] princess alas, poor maccabaeus, how hath he been baited! [enter don adriano de armado, for hector] biron hide thy head, achilles: here comes hector in arms. dumain though my mocks come home by me, i will now be merry. ferdinand hector was but a troyan in respect of this. boyet but is this hector? ferdinand i think hector was not so clean-timbered. longaville his leg is too big for hector's. dumain more calf, certain. boyet no; he is best endued in the small. biron this cannot be hector. dumain he's a god or a painter; for he makes faces. don adriano de armado the armipotent mars, of lances the almighty, gave hector a gift,- dumain a gilt nutmeg. biron a lemon. longaville stuck with cloves. dumain no, cloven. don adriano de armado peace!- the armipotent mars, of lances the almighty gave hector a gift, the heir of ilion; a man so breathed, that certain he would fight; yea from morn till night, out of his pavilion. i am that flower,- dumain that mint. longaville that columbine. don adriano de armado sweet lord longaville, rein thy tongue. longaville i must rather give it the rein, for it runs against hector. dumain ay, and hector's a greyhound. don adriano de armado the sweet war-man is dead and rotten; sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the buried: when he breathed, he was a man. but i will forward with my device. [to the princess] sweet royalty, bestow on me the sense of hearing. princess speak, brave hector: we are much delighted. don adriano de armado i do adore thy sweet grace's slipper. boyet [aside to dumain] loves her by the foot,- dumain [aside to boyet] he may not by the yard. don adriano de armado this hector far surmounted hannibal,- costard the party is gone, fellow hector, she is gone; she is two months on her way. don adriano de armado what meanest thou? costard faith, unless you play the honest troyan, the poor wench is cast away: she's quick; the child brags in her belly already: tis yours. don adriano de armado dost thou infamonize me among potentates? thou shalt die. costard then shall hector be whipped for jaquenetta that is quick by him and hanged for pompey that is dead by him. dumain most rare pompey! boyet renowned pompey! biron greater than great, great, great, great pompey! pompey the huge! dumain hector trembles. biron pompey is moved. more ates, more ates! stir them on! stir them on! dumain hector will challenge him. biron ay, if a' have no man's blood in's belly than will sup a flea. don adriano de armado by the north pole, i do challenge thee. costard i will not fight with a pole, like a northern man: i'll slash; i'll do it by the sword. i bepray you, let me borrow my arms again. dumain room for the incensed worthies! costard i'll do it in my shirt. dumain most resolute pompey! moth master, let me take you a buttonhole lower. do you not see pompey is uncasing for the combat? what mean you? you will lose your reputation. don adriano de armado gentlemen and soldiers, pardon me; i will not combat in my shirt. dumain you may not deny it: pompey hath made the challenge. don adriano de armado sweet bloods, i both may and will. biron what reason have you for't? don adriano de armado the naked truth of it is, i have no shirt; i go woolward for penance. boyet true, and it was enjoined him in rome for want of linen: since when, i'll be sworn, he wore none but a dishclout of jaquenetta's, and that a' wears next his heart for a favour. [enter mercade] mercade god save you, madam! princess welcome, mercade; but that thou interrupt'st our merriment. mercade i am sorry, madam; for the news i bring is heavy in my tongue. the king your father- princess dead, for my life! mercade even so; my tale is told. biron worthies, away! the scene begins to cloud. don adriano de armado for mine own part, i breathe free breath. i have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion, and i will right myself like a soldier. [exeunt worthies] ferdinand how fares your majesty? princess boyet, prepare; i will away tonight. ferdinand madam, not so; i do beseech you, stay. princess prepare, i say. i thank you, gracious lords, for all your fair endeavors; and entreat, out of a new-sad soul, that you vouchsafe in your rich wisdom to excuse or hide the liberal opposition of our spirits, if over-boldly we have borne ourselves in the converse of breath: your gentleness was guilty of it. farewell worthy lord! a heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue: excuse me so, coming too short of thanks for my great suit so easily obtain'd. ferdinand the extreme parts of time extremely forms all causes to the purpose of his speed, and often at his very loose decides that which long process could not arbitrate: and though the mourning brow of progeny forbid the smiling courtesy of love the holy suit which fain it would convince, yet, since love's argument was first on foot, let not the cloud of sorrow justle it from what it purposed; since, to wail friends lost is not by much so wholesome-profitable as to rejoice at friends but newly found. princess i understand you not: my griefs are double. biron honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief; and by these badges understand the king. for your fair sakes have we neglected time, play'd foul play with our oaths: your beauty, ladies, hath much deform'd us, fashioning our humours even to the opposed end of our intents: and what in us hath seem'd ridiculous,- as love is full of unbefitting strains, all wanton as a child, skipping and vain, form'd by the eye and therefore, like the eye, full of strange shapes, of habits and of forms, varying in subjects as the eye doth roll to every varied object in his glance: which parti-coated presence of loose love put on by us, if, in your heavenly eyes, have misbecomed our oaths and gravities, those heavenly eyes, that look into these faults, suggested us to make. therefore, ladies, our love being yours, the error that love makes is likewise yours: we to ourselves prove false, by being once false for ever to be true to those that make us both,--fair ladies, you: and even that falsehood, in itself a sin, thus purifies itself and turns to grace. princess we have received your letters full of love; your favours, the ambassadors of love; and, in our maiden council, rated them at courtship, pleasant jest and courtesy, as bombast and as lining to the time: but more devout than this in our respects have we not been; and therefore met your loves in their own fashion, like a merriment. dumain our letters, madam, show'd much more than jest. longaville so did our looks. rosaline we did not quote them so. ferdinand now, at the latest minute of the hour, grant us your loves. princess a time, methinks, too short to make a world-without-end bargain in. no, no, my lord, your grace is perjured much, full of dear guiltiness; and therefore this: if for my love, as there is no such cause, you will do aught, this shall you do for me: your oath i will not trust; but go with speed to some forlorn and naked hermitage, remote from all the pleasures of the world; there stay until the twelve celestial signs have brought about the annual reckoning. if this austere insociable life change not your offer made in heat of blood; if frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love, but that it bear this trial and last love; then, at the expiration of the year, come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts, and, by this virgin palm now kissing thine i will be thine; and till that instant shut my woeful self up in a mourning house, raining the tears of lamentation for the remembrance of my father's death. if this thou do deny, let our hands part, neither entitled in the other's heart. ferdinand if this, or more than this, i would deny, to flatter up these powers of mine with rest, the sudden hand of death close up mine eye! hence ever then my heart is in thy breast. biron [and what to me, my love? and what to me? rosaline you must be purged too, your sins are rack'd, you are attaint with faults and perjury: therefore if you my favour mean to get, a twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest, but seek the weary beds of people sick] dumain but what to me, my love? but what to me? a wife? katharine a beard, fair health, and honesty; with three-fold love i wish you all these three. dumain o, shall i say, i thank you, gentle wife? katharine not so, my lord; a twelvemonth and a day i'll mark no words that smooth-faced wooers say: come when the king doth to my lady come; then, if i have much love, i'll give you some. dumain i'll serve thee true and faithfully till then. katharine yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again. longaville what says maria? maria at the twelvemonth's end i'll change my black gown for a faithful friend. longaville i'll stay with patience; but the time is long. maria the liker you; few taller are so young. biron studies my lady? mistress, look on me; behold the window of my heart, mine eye, what humble suit attends thy answer there: impose some service on me for thy love. rosaline oft have i heard of you, my lord biron, before i saw you; and the world's large tongue proclaims you for a man replete with mocks, full of comparisons and wounding flouts, which you on all estates will execute that lie within the mercy of your wit. to weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, and therewithal to win me, if you please, without the which i am not to be won, you shall this twelvemonth term from day to day visit the speechless sick and still converse with groaning wretches; and your task shall be, with all the fierce endeavor of your wit to enforce the pained impotent to smile. biron to move wild laughter in the throat of death? it cannot be; it is impossible: mirth cannot move a soul in agony. rosaline why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, whose influence is begot of that loose grace which shallow laughing hearers give to fools: a jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears, deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans, will hear your idle scorns, continue then, and i will have you and that fault withal; but if they will not, throw away that spirit, and i shall find you empty of that fault, right joyful of your reformation. biron a twelvemonth! well; befall what will befall, i'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital. princess [to ferdinand] ay, sweet my lord; and so i take my leave. ferdinand no, madam; we will bring you on your way. biron our wooing doth not end like an old play; jack hath not jill: these ladies' courtesy might well have made our sport a comedy. ferdinand come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day, and then 'twill end. biron that's too long for a play. [re-enter don adriano de armado] don adriano de armado sweet majesty, vouchsafe me,- princess was not that hector? dumain the worthy knight of troy. don adriano de armado i will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave. i am a votary; i have vowed to jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three years. but, most esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? it should have followed in the end of our show. ferdinand call them forth quickly; we will do so. don adriano de armado holla! approach. [re-enter holofernes, sir nathaniel, moth, costard, and others] this side is hiems, winter, this ver, the spring; the one maintained by the owl, the other by the cuckoo. ver, begin. [the song] spring. when daisies pied and violets blue and lady-smocks all silver-white and cuckoo-buds of yellow hue do paint the meadows with delight, the cuckoo then, on every tree, mocks married men; for thus sings he, cuckoo; cuckoo, cuckoo: o word of fear, unpleasing to a married ear! when shepherds pipe on oaten straws and merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, when turtles tread, and rooks, and daws, and maidens bleach their summer smocks the cuckoo then, on every tree, mocks married men; for thus sings he, cuckoo; cuckoo, cuckoo: o word of fear, unpleasing to a married ear! winter. when icicles hang by the wall and dick the shepherd blows his nail and tom bears logs into the hall and milk comes frozen home in pail, when blood is nipp'd and ways be foul, then nightly sings the staring owl, tu-whit; tu-who, a merry note, while greasy joan doth keel the pot. when all aloud the wind doth blow and coughing drowns the parson's saw and birds sit brooding in the snow and marian's nose looks red and raw, when roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, then nightly sings the staring owl, tu-whit; tu-who, a merry note, while greasy joan doth keel the pot. don adriano de armado the words of mercury are harsh after the songs of apollo. you that way: we this way. [exeunt] *the project gutenberg etext of vailima prayers & sabbath morn* #27 & #28 in our series by robert louis stevenson copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. prayers written at vailima and a lowden sabbath morn by robert louis stevenson august, 1996 [etext #616] *the project gutenberg etext of vailima prayers & sabbath morn* *****this file should be named vpasm10.txt or vpasm10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, vpasm11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, vpasm10a.txt. scanned and proofed by david price ccx074@coventry.ac.uk second proofing by stephen booth we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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when in sorrow, or pain, to call for strength to bear what must be borne. vailima lay up some three miles of continual rise from apia, and more than half that distance from the nearest village. it was a long way for a tired man to walk down every evening with the sole purpose of joining in family worship; and the road through the bush was dark, and, to the samoan imagination, beset with supernatural terrors. wherefore, as soon as our household had fallen into a regular routine, and the bonds of samoan family life began to draw us more closely together, tusitala felt the necessity of including our retainers in our evening devotions. i suppose ours was the only white man's family in all samoa, except those of the missionaries, where the day naturally ended with this homely, patriarchal custom. not only were the religious scruples of the natives satisfied, but, what we did not foresee, our own respectability and incidentally that of our retainers became assured, and the influence of tusitala increased tenfold. after all work and meals were finished, the 'pu,' or war conch, was sounded from the back veranda and the front, so that it might be heard by all. i don't think it ever occurred to us that there was any incongruity in the use of the war conch for the peaceful invitation to prayer. in response to its summons the white members of the family took their usual places in one end of the large hall, while the samoans men, women, and children trooped in through all the open doors, some carrying lanterns if the evening were dark, all moving quietly and dropping with samoan decorum in a wide semicircle on the floor beneath a great lamp that hung from the ceiling. the service began by my son reading a chapter from the samoan bible, tusitala following with a prayer in english, sometimes impromptu, but more often from the notes in this little book, interpolating or changing with the circumstance of the day. then came the singing of one or more hymns in the native tongue, and the recitation in concert of the lord's prayer, also in samoan. many of these hymns were set to ancient tunes, very wild and warlike, and strangely at variance with the missionary words. sometimes a passing band of hostile warriors, with blackened faces, would peer in at us through the open windows, and often we were forced to pause until the strangely savage, monotonous noise of the native drums had ceased; but no samoan, nor, i trust, white person, changed his reverent attitude. once, i remember a look of surprised dismay crossing the countenance of tusitala when my son, contrary to his usual custom of reading the next chapter following that of yesterday, turned back the leaves of his bible to find a chapter fiercely denunciatory, and only too applicable to the foreign dictators of distracted samoa. on another occasion the chief himself brought the service to a sudden check. he had just learned of the treacherous conduct of one in whom he had every reason to trust. that evening the prayer seemed unusually short and formal. as the singing stopped he arose abruptly and left the room. i hastened after him, fearing some sudden illness. 'what is it?' i asked. 'it is this,' was the reply; 'i am not yet fit to say, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."' it is with natural reluctance that i touch upon the last prayer of my husband's life. many have supposed that he showed, in the wording of this prayer, that he had some premonition of his approaching death. i am sure he had no such premonition. it was i who told the assembled family that i felt an impending disaster approaching nearer and nearer. any scot will understand that my statement was received seriously. it could not be, we thought, that danger threatened any one within the house; but mr. graham balfour, my husband's cousin, very near and dear to us, was away on a perilous cruise. our fears followed the various vessels, more or less unseaworthy, in which he was making his way from island to island to the atoll where the exiled king, mataafa, was at that time imprisoned. in my husband's last prayer, the night before his death, he asked that we should be given strength to bear the loss of this dear friend, should such a sorrow befall us. contents for success for grace at morning evening another for evening in time of rain another in time of rain before a temporary separation for friends for the family sunday for self-blame for self-forgetfulness for renewal of joy for success lord, behold our family here assembled. we thank thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food, and the bright skies, that make our lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth, and our friendly helpers in this foreign isle. let peace abound in our small company. purge out of every heart the lurking grudge. give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. offenders, give us the grace to accept and to forgive offenders. forgetful ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully the forgetfulness of others. give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. if it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and, down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another. as the clay to the potter, as the windmill to the wind, as children of their sire, we beseech of thee this help and mercy for christ's sake. for grace grant that we here before thee may be set free from the fear of vicissitude and the fear of death, may finish what remains before us of our course without dishonour to ourselves or hurt to others, and, when the day comes, may die in peace. deliver us from fear and favour: from mean hopes and cheap pleasures. have mercy on each in his deficiency; let him be not cast down; support the stumbling on the way, and give at last rest to the weary. at morning the day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry. give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep. evening we come before thee, o lord, in the end of thy day with thanksgiving. our beloved in the far parts of the earth, those who are now beginning the labours of the day what time we end them, and those with whom the sun now stands at the point of noon, bless, help, console, and prosper them. our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and the hour come to rest. we resign into thy hands our sleeping bodies, our cold hearths, and open doors. give us to awake with smiles, give us to labour smiling. as the sun returns in the east, so let our patience be renewed with dawn; as the sun lightens the world, so let our loving-kindness make bright this house of our habitation. another for evening lord, receive our supplications for this house, family, and country. protect the innocent, restrain the greedy and the treacherous, lead us out of our tribulation into a quiet land. look down upon ourselves and upon our absent dear ones. help us and them; prolong our days in peace and honour. give us health, food, bright weather, and light hearts. in what we meditate of evil, frustrate our will; in what of good, further our endeavours. cause injuries to be forgot and benefits to be remembered. let us lie down without fear and awake and arise with exultation. for his sake, in whose words we now conclude. in time of rain we thank thee, lord, for the glory of the late days and the excellent face of thy sun. we thank thee for good news received. we thank thee for the pleasures we have enjoyed and for those we have been able to confer. and now, when the clouds gather and the rain impends over the forest and our house, permit us not to be cast down; let us not lose the savour of past mercies and past pleasures; but, like the voice of a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memory survive in the hour of darkness. if there be in front of us any painful duty, strengthen us with the grace of courage; if any act of mercy, teach us tenderness and patience. another in time of rain lord, thou sendest down rain upon the uncounted millions of the forest, and givest the trees to drink exceedingly. we are here upon this isle a few handfuls of men, and how many myriads upon myriads of stalwart trees! teach us the lesson of the trees. the sea around us, which this rain recruits, teems with the race of fish; teach us, lord, the meaning of the fishes. let us see ourselves for what we are, one out of the countless number of the clans of thy handiwork. when we would despair, let us remember that these also please and serve thee. before a temporary separation to-day we go forth separate, some of us to pleasure, some of us to worship, some upon duty. go with us, our guide and angel; hold thou before us in our divided paths the mark of our low calling, still to be true to what small best we can attain to. help us in that, our maker, the dispenser of events thou, of the vast designs, in which we blindly labour, suffer us to be so far constant to ourselves and our beloved. for friends for our absent loved ones we implore thy loving-kindness. keep them in life, keep them in growing honour; and for us, grant that we remain worthy of their love. for christ's sake, let not our beloved blush for us, nor we for them. grant us but that, and grant us courage to endure lesser ills unshaken, and to accept death, loss, and disappointment as it were straws upon the tide of life. for the family aid us, if it be thy will, in our concerns. have mercy on this land and innocent people. help them who this day contend in disappointment with their frailties. bless our family, bless our forest house, bless our island helpers. thou who hast made for us this place of ease and hope, accept and inflame our gratitude; help us to repay, in service one to another, the debt of thine unmerited benefits and mercies, so that, when the period of our stewardship draws to a conclusion, when the windows begin to be darkened, when the bond of the family is to be loosed, there shall be no bitterness of remorse in our farewells. help us to look back on the long way that thou hast brought us, on the long days in which we have been served, not according to our deserts, but our desires; on the pit and the miry clay, the blackness of despair, the horror of misconduct, from which our feet have been plucked out. for our sins forgiven or prevented, for our shame unpublished, we bless and thank thee, o god. help us yet again and ever. so order events, so strengthen our frailty, as that day by day we shall come before thee with this song of gratitude, and in the end we be dismissed with honour. in their weakness and their fear, the vessels of thy handiwork so pray to thee, so praise thee. amen. sunday we beseech thee, lord, to behold us with favour, folk of many families and nations gathered together in the peace of this roof, weak men and women subsisting under the covert of thy patience. be patient still; suffer us yet awhile longer; with our broken purposes of good, with our idle endeavours against evil, suffer us awhile longer to endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better. bless to us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be taken, brace us to play the man under affliction. be with our friends, be with ourselves. go with each of us to rest; if any awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when the day returns, return to us, our sun and comforter, and call us up with morning faces and with morning hearts eager to labour eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our portion and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure it. we thank thee and praise thee; and in the words of him to whom this day is sacred, close our oblation. for self-blame lord, enlighten us to see the beam that is in our own eye, and blind us to the mote that is in our brother's. let us feel our offences with our hands, make them great and bright before us like the sun, make us eat them and drink them for our diet. blind us to the offences of our beloved, cleanse them from our memories, take them out of our mouths for ever. let all here before thee carry and measure with the false balances of love, and be in their own eyes and in all conjunctures the most guilty. help us at the same time with the grace of courage, that we be none of us cast down when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our happiness or our integrity: touch us with fire from the altar, that we may be up and doing to rebuild our city: in the name and by the method of him in whose words of prayer we now conclude. for self-forgetfulness lord, the creatures of thy hand, thy disinherited children, come before thee with their incoherent wishes and regrets: children we are, children we shall be, till our mother the earth hath fed upon our bones. accept us, correct us, guide us, thy guilty innocents. dry our vain tears, wipe out our vain resentments, help our yet vainer efforts. if there be any here, sulking as children will, deal with and enlighten him. make it day about that person, so that he shall see himself and be ashamed. make it heaven about him, lord, by the only way to heaven, forgetfulness of self, and make it day about his neighbours, so that they shall help, not hinder him. for renewal of joy we are evil, o god, and help us to see it and amend. we are good, and help us to be better. look down upon thy servants with a patient eye, even as thou sendest sun and rain; look down, call upon the dry bones, quicken, enliven; recreate in us the soul of service, the spirit of peace; renew in us the sense of joy. end of the project gutenberg etext prayers written at vailima *** a lowden sabbath morn by robert louis stevenson scanned and proofed by david price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk a lowden sabbath morn i the clinkum-clank o' sabbath bells noo to the hoastin' rookery swells, noo faintin' laigh in shady dells, sounds far an' near, an' through the simmer kintry tells its tale o' cheer. ii an' noo, to that melodious play, a deidly awn the quiet sway a' ken their solemn holiday, bestial an' human, the singin' lintie on the brae, the restin' plou'man. iii he, mair than a' the lave o' men, his week completit joys to ken; half-dressed, he daunders out an' in, perplext wi' leisure; an' his raxt limbs he'll rax again wi' painfu' pleesure. iv the steerin' mither strang afit noo shoos the bairnies but a bit; noo cries them ben, their sinday shuit to scart upon them, or sweeties in their pouch to pit, wi' blessin's on them. v the lasses, clean frae tap to taes, are busked in crunklin' underclaes; the gartened hose, the weel-filled stays, the nakit shift, a' bleached on bonny greens for days, an' white's the drift. vi an' noo to face the kirkward mile the guidman's hat o' dacent style, the blackit shoon, we noon maun fyle as white's the miller: a waefu' peety tae, to spile the warth o' siller. vii our marg'et, aye sae keen to crack, douce-stappin' in the stoury track, her emeralt goun a' kiltit back frae snawy coats, white-ankled, leads the kirkward pack wi' dauvit groats. viii a thocht ahint, in runkled breeks, a' spiled wi' lyin' by for weeks, the guidman follows closs, an' cleiks the sonsie misses; his sarious face at aince bespeaks the day that this is. ix and aye an' while we nearer draw to whaur the kirkton lies alaw, mair neebours, comin' saft an' slaw frae here an' there, the thicker thrang the gate, an' caw the stour in air. x but hark! the bells frae nearer clang to rowst the slaw, their sides they bang an' see! black coats a'ready thrang the green kirkyaird; and at the yett, the chestnuts spang that brocht the laird. xi the solemn elders at the plate stand drinkin' deep the pride o' state: the practised hands as gash an' great as lords o' session; the later named, a wee thing blate in their expression. xii the prentit stanes that mark the deid, wi' lengthened lip, the sarious read; syne way a moraleesin' heid, an then an' there their hirplin' practice an' their creed try hard to square. xiii it's here our merren lang has lain, a wee bewast the table-stane; an' yon's the grave o' sandy blane; an' further ower, the mither's brithers, dacent men! lie a' the fower. xiv here the guidman sall bide awee to dwall amang the deid; to see auld faces clear in fancy's e'e; belike to hear auld voices fa'in saft an' slee on fancy's ear. xv thus, on the day o' solemn things, the bell that in the steeple swings to fauld a scaittered faim'ly rings its walcome screed; an' just a wee thing nearer brings the quick an' deid. xvi but noo the bell is ringin' in; to tak their places, folk begin; the minister himsel' will shune be up the gate, filled fu' wi' clavers about sin an' man's estate. xvii the tunes are up french, to be shure, the faithfu' french, an' twa-three mair; the auld prezentor, hoastin' sair, wales out the portions, an' yirks the tune into the air wi' queer contortions. xviii follows the prayer, the readin' next, an' than the fisslin' for the text the twa-three last to find it, vext but kind o' proud; an' than the peppermints are raxed, an' southernwood. xix for noo's the time whan pows are seen nid-noddin' like a mandareen; when tenty mithers stap a preen in sleepin' weans; an' nearly half the parochine forget their pains. xx there's just a waukrif' twa or three: thrawn commentautors sweer to `gree, weans glowrin' at the bumlin' bee on windie-glasses, or lads that tak a keek a-glee at sonsie lasses. xxi himsel', meanwhile, frae whaur he cocks an' bobs belaw the soundin'-box, the treesures of his words unlocks wi' prodigality, an' deals some unco dingin' knocks to infidality. xxii wi' snappy unction, hoo he burkes the hopes o' men that trust in works, expounds the fau'ts o' ither kirks, an' shaws the best o' them no muckle better than mere turks, when a's confessed o' them. xxiii bethankit! what a bonny creed! what mair would ony christian need? the braw words rumm'le ower his heid, nor steer the sleeper; and in their restin' graves, the deid sleep aye the deeper. author's note it may be guessed by some that i had a certain parish in my eye, and this makes it proper i should add a word of disclamation. in my time there have been two ministers in that parish. of the first i have a special reason to speak well, even had there been any to think ill. the second i have often met in private and long (in the due phrase) "sat under" in his church, and neither here nor there have i heard an unkind or ugly word upon his lips. the preacher of the text had thus no original in that particular parish; but when i was a boy he might have been observed in many others; he was then (like the schoolmaster) abroad; and by recent advices, it would seem he has not yet entirely disappeared. end of the project gutenberg etext a lowden sabbath morn end of the project gutenberg etext of vailima prayers & sabbath morn 1850 von kempelen and his discovery by edgar allan poe after the very minute and elaborate paper by arago, to say nothing of the summary in 'silliman's journal,' with the detailed statement just published by lieutenant maury, it will not be supposed, of course, that in offering a few hurried remarks in reference to von kempelen's discovery, i have any design to look at the subject in a scientific point of view. my object is simply, in the first place, to say a few words of von kempelen himself (with whom, some years ago, i had the honor of a slight personal acquaintance), since every thing which concerns him must necessarily, at this moment, be of interest; and, in the second place, to look in a general way, and speculatively, at the results of the discovery. it may be as well, however, to premise the cursory observations which i have to offer, by denying, very decidedly, what seems to be a general impression (gleaned, as usual in a case of this kind, from the newspapers), viz.: that this discovery, astounding as it unquestionably is, is unanticipated. by reference to the 'diary of sir humphrey davy' (cottle and munroe, london, pp. 150), it will be seen at pp. 53 and 82, that this illustrious chemist had not only conceived the idea now in question, but had actually made no inconsiderable progress, experimentally, in the very identical analysis now so triumphantly brought to an issue by von kempelen, who although he makes not the slightest allusion to it, is, without doubt (i say it unhesitatingly, and can prove it, if required), indebted to the 'diary' for at least the first hint of his own undertaking. the paragraph from the 'courier and enquirer,' which is now going the rounds of the press, and which purports to claim the invention for a mr. kissam, of brunswick, maine, appears to me, i confess, a little apocryphal, for several reasons; although there is nothing either impossible or very improbable in the statement made. i need not go into details. my opinion of the paragraph is founded principally upon its manner. it does not look true. persons who are narrating facts, are seldom so particular as mr. kissam seems to be, about day and date and precise location. besides, if mr. kissam actually did come upon the discovery he says he did, at the period designatednearly eight years agohow happens it that he took no steps, on the instant, to reap the immense benefits which the merest bumpkin must have known would have resulted to him individually, if not to the world at large, from the discovery? it seems to me quite incredible that any man of common understanding could have discovered what mr. kissam says he did, and yet have subsequently acted so like a babyso like an owlas mr. kissam admits that he did. by-the-way, who is mr. kissam? and is not the whole paragraph in the 'courier and enquirer' a fabrication got up to 'make a talk'? it must be confessed that it has an amazingly moon-hoaxy-air. very little dependence is to be placed upon it, in my humble opinion; and if i were not well aware, from experience, how very easily men of science are mystified, on points out of their usual range of inquiry, i should be profoundly astonished at finding so eminent a chemist as professor draper, discussing mr. kissam's (or is it mr. quizzem's?) pretensions to the discovery, in so serious a tone. but to return to the 'diary' of sir humphrey davy. this pamphlet was not designed for the public eye, even upon the decease of the writer, as any person at all conversant with authorship may satisfy himself at once by the slightest inspection of the style. at page 13, for example, near the middle, we read, in reference to his researches about the protoxide of azote: 'in less than half a minute the respiration being continued, diminished gradually and were succeeded by analogous to gentle pressure on all the muscles.' that the respiration was not 'diminished,' is not only clear by the subsequent context, but by the use of the plural, 'were.' the sentence, no doubt, was thus intended: 'in less than half a minute, the respiration [being continued, these feelings] diminished gradually, and were succeeded by [a sensation] analogous to gentle pressure on all the muscles.' a hundred similar instances go to show that the ms. so inconsiderately published, was merely a rough note-book, meant only for the writer's own eye, but an inspection of the pamphlet will convince almost any thinking person of the truth of my suggestion. the fact is, sir humphrey davy was about the last man in the world to commit himself on scientific topics. not only had he a more than ordinary dislike to quackery, but he was morbidly afraid of appearing empirical; so that, however fully he might have been convinced that he was on the right track in the matter now in question, he would never have spoken out, until he had every thing ready for the most practical demonstration. i verily believe that his last moments would have been rendered wretched, could he have suspected that his wishes in regard to burning this 'diary' (full of crude speculations) would have been unattended to; as, it seems, they were. i say 'his wishes,' for that he meant to include this note-book among the miscellaneous papers directed 'to be burnt,' i think there can be no manner of doubt. whether it escaped the flames by good fortune or by bad, yet remains to be seen. that the passages quoted above, with the other similar ones referred to, gave von kempelen the hint, i do not in the slightest degree question; but i repeat, it yet remains to be seen whether this momentous discovery itself (momentous under any circumstances) will be of service or disservice to mankind at large. that von kempelen and his immediate friends will reap a rich harvest, it would be folly to doubt for a moment. they will scarcely be so weak as not to 'realize,' in time, by large purchases of houses and land, with other property of intrinsic value. in the brief account of von kempelen which appeared in the 'home journal,' and has since been extensively copied, several misapprehensions of the german original seem to have been made by the translator, who professes to have taken the passage from a late number of the presburg 'schnellpost.' 'viele' has evidently been misconceived (as it often is), and what the translator renders by 'sorrows,' is probably 'lieden,' which, in its true version, 'sufferings,' would give a totally different complexion to the whole account; but, of course, much of this is merely guess, on my part. von kempelen, however, is by no means 'a misanthrope,' in appearance, at least, whatever he may be in fact. my acquaintance with him was casual altogether; and i am scarcely warranted in saying that i know him at all; but to have seen and conversed with a man of so prodigious a notoriety as he has attained, or will attain in a few days, is not a small matter, as times go. 'the literary world' speaks of him, confidently, as a native of presburg (misled, perhaps, by the account in 'the home journal') but i am pleased in being able to state positively, since i have it from his own lips, that he was born in utica, in the state of new york, although both his parents, i believe, are of presburg descent. the family is connected, in some way, with maelzel, of automaton-chess-player memory. in person, he is short and stout, with large, fat, blue eyes, sandy hair and whiskers, a wide but pleasing mouth, fine teeth, and i think a roman nose. there is some defect in one of his feet. his address is frank, and his whole manner noticeable for bonhomie. altogether, he looks, speaks, and acts as little like 'a misanthrope' as any man i ever saw. we were fellow-sojouners for a week about six years ago, at earl's hotel, in providence, rhode island; and i presume that i conversed with him, at various times, for some three or four hours altogether. his principal topics were those of the day, and nothing that fell from him led me to suspect his scientific attainments. he left the hotel before me, intending to go to new york, and thence to bremen; it was in the latter city that his great discovery was first made public; or, rather, it was there that he was first suspected of having made it. this is about all that i personally know of the now immortal von kempelen; but i have thought that even these few details would have interest for the public. there can be little question that most of the marvellous rumors afloat about this affair are pure inventions, entitled to about as much credit as the story of aladdin's lamp; and yet, in a case of this kind, as in the case of the discoveries in california, it is clear that the truth may be stranger than fiction. the following anecdote, at least, is so well authenticated, that we may receive it implicitly. von kempelen had never been even tolerably well off during his residence at bremen; and often, it was well known, he had been put to extreme shifts in order to raise trifling sums. when the great excitement occurred about the forgery on the house of gutsmuth & co., suspicion was directed toward von kempelen, on account of his having purchased a considerable property in gasperitch lane, and his refusing, when questioned, to explain how he became possessed of the purchase money. he was at length arrested, but nothing decisive appearing against him, was in the end set at liberty. the police, however, kept a strict watch upon his movements, and thus discovered that he left home frequently, taking always the same road, and invariably giving his watchers the slip in the neighborhood of that labyrinth of narrow and crooked passages known by the flash name of the 'dondergat.' finally, by dint of great perseverance, they traced him to a garret in an old house of seven stories, in an alley called flatzplatz,and, coming upon him suddenly, found him, as they imagined, in the midst of his counterfeiting operations. his agitation is represented as so excessive that the officers had not the slightest doubt of his guilt. after hand-cuffing him, they searched his room, or rather rooms, for it appears he occupied all the mansarde. opening into the garret where they caught him, was a closet, ten feet by eight, fitted up with some chemical apparatus, of which the object has not yet been ascertained. in one corner of the closet was a very small furnace, with a glowing fire in it, and on the fire a kind of duplicate crucibletwo crucibles connected by a tube. one of these crucibles was nearly full of lead in a state of fusion, but not reaching up to the aperture of the tube, which was close to the brim. the other crucible had some liquid in it, which, as the officers entered, seemed to be furiously dissipating in vapor. they relate that, on finding himself taken, kempelen seized the crucibles with both hands (which were encased in gloves that afterwards turned out to be asbestic), and threw the contents on the tiled floor. it was now that they hand-cuffed him; and before proceeding to ransack the premises they searched his person, but nothing unusual was found about him, excepting a paper parcel, in his coat-pocket, containing what was afterward ascertained to be a mixture of antimony and some unknown substance, in nearly, but not quite, equal proportions. all attempts at analyzing the unknown substance have, so far, failed, but that it will ultimately be analyzed, is not to be doubted. passing out of the closet with their prisoner, the officers went through a sort of ante-chamber, in which nothing material was found, to the chemist's sleeping-room. they here rummaged some drawers and boxes, but discovered only a few papers, of no importance, and some good coin, silver and gold. at length, looking under the bed, they saw a large, common hair trunk, without hinges, hasp, or lock, and with the top lying carelessly across the bottom portion. upon attempting to draw this trunk out from under the bed, they found that, with their united strength (there were three of them, all powerful men), they 'could not stir it one inch.' much astonished at this, one of them crawled under the bed, and looking into the trunk, said: 'no wonder we couldn't move itwhy it's full to the brim of old bits of brass!' putting his feet, now, against the wall so as to get a good purchase, and pushing with all his force, while his companions pulled with an theirs, the trunk, with much difficulty, was slid out from under the bed, and its contents examined. the supposed brass with which it was filled was all in small, smooth pieces, varying from the size of a pea to that of a dollar; but the pieces were irregular in shape, although more or less flat-looking, upon the whole, 'very much as lead looks when thrown upon the ground in a molten state, and there suffered to grow cool.' now, not one of these officers for a moment suspected this metal to be any thing but brass. the idea of its being gold never entered their brains, of course; how could such a wild fancy have entered it? and their astonishment may be well conceived, when the next day it became known, all over bremen, that the 'lot of brass' which they had carted so contemptuously to the police office, without putting themselves to the trouble of pocketing the smallest scrap, was not only goldreal goldbut gold far finer than any employed in coinage-gold, in fact, absolutely pure, virgin, without the slightest appreciable alloy. i need not go over the details of von kempelen's confession (as far as it went) and release, for these are familiar to the public. that he has actually realized, in spirit and in effect, if not to the letter, the old chimaera of the philosopher's stone, no sane person is at liberty to doubt. the opinions of arago are, of course, entitled to the greatest consideration; but he is by no means infallible; and what he says of bismuth, in his report to the academy, must be taken cum grano salis. the simple truth is, that up to this period all analysis has failed; and until von kempelen chooses to let us have the key to his own published enigma, it is more than probable that the matter will remain, for years, in statu quo. all that as yet can fairly be said to be known is, that 'pure gold can be made at will, and very readily from lead in connection with certain other substances, in kind and in proportions, unknown.' speculation, of course, is busy as to the immediate and ultimate results of this discoverya discovery which few thinking persons will hesitate in referring to an increased interest in the matter of gold generally, by the late developments in california; and this reflection brings us inevitably to anotherthe exceeding inopportuneness of von kempelen's analysis. if many were prevented from adventuring to california, by the mere apprehension that gold would so materially diminish in value, on account of its plentifulness in the mines there, as to render the speculation of going so far in search of it a doubtful onewhat impression will be wrought now, upon the minds of those about to emigrate, and especially upon the minds of those actually in the mineral region, by the announcement of this astounding discovery of von kempelen? a discovery which declares, in so many words, that beyond its intrinsic worth for manufacturing purposes (whatever that worth may be), gold now is, or at least soon will be (for it cannot be supposed that von kempelen can long retain his secret), of no greater value than lead, and of far inferior value to silver. it is, indeed, exceedingly difficult to speculate prospectively upon the consequences of the discovery, but one thing may be positively maintainedthat the announcement of the discovery six months ago would have had material influence in regard to the settlement of california. in europe, as yet, the most noticeable results have been a rise of two hundred per cent. in the price of lead, and nearly twenty-five per cent. that of silver. the end . ***the project gutenberg etext of moral emblems, by stevenson*** #35 in our series by robert louis stevenson copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. moral emblems by robert louis stevenson** january, 1997 [etext #772] ***the project gutenberg etext of moral emblems, by stevenson** *****this file should be named morem10.txt or morem10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, morem11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, morem10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / benedictine university" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / benedictine university". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* moral emblems by robert louis stevenson. scanned and proofed by david price ccx074@coventry.ac.uk moral emblems contents not i, and other poems i. some like drink ii. here, perfect to a wish iii. as seamen on the seas iv. the pamphlet here presented moral emblems: a collection of cuts and verses i. see how the children in the print ii. reader, your soul upraise to see iii. a peak in darien broad-gazing on untrodden lands iv. see in the print how, moved by whim v. mark, printed on the opposing page moral emblems: a second collection of cuts and verses i. with storms a-weather, rocks-a-lee ii. the careful angler chose his nook iii. the abbot for a walk went out iv. the frozen peaks he once explored v. industrious pirate! see him sweep a martial elegy for some lead soldiers for certain soldiers lately dead the graver and the pen: or, scenes from nature, with appropriate verses i. proem unlike the common run of men ii. the precarious mill alone above the stream it stands iii. the disputatious pines the first pine to the second said iv. the tramps now long enough had day endured v. the foolhardy geographer the howling desert miles around vi. the angler and the clown the echoing bridge you here may see moral tales i. robin and ben: or, the pirate and the apothecary come, lend me an attentive ear ii. the builder's doom in eighteen-twenty deacon thin *** not i, and other poems poem: not i some like drink in a pint pot, some like to think; some not. strong dutch cheese, old kentucky rye, some like these; not i. some like poe, and others like scott, some like mrs. stowe; some not. some like to laugh, some like to cry, some like chaff; not i. poem: ii here, perfect to a wish, we offer, not a dish, but just the platter: a book that's not a book, a pamphlet in the look but not the matter. i own in disarray: as to the flowers of may the frosts of winter; to my poetic rage, the smallness of the page and of the printer. poem: iii as seamen on the seas with song and dance descry adown the morning breeze an islet in the sky: in araby the dry, as o'er the sandy plain the panting camels cry to smell the coming rain: so all things over earth a common law obey, and rarity and worth pass, arm in arm, away; and even so, to-day, the printer and the bard, in pressless davos, pray their sixpenny reward. poem: iv the pamphlet here presented was planned and printed by a printer unindented, a bard whom all decry. the author and the printer, with various kinds of skill, concocted it in winter at davos on the hill. they burned the nightly taper; but now the work is ripe observe the costly paper, remark the perfect type! moral emblems i poem: i see how the children in the print bound on the book to see what's in 't! o, like these pretty babes, may you seize and apply this volume too! and while your eye upon the cuts with harmless ardour opes and shuts, reader, may your immortal mind to their sage lessons not be blind. poem: ii reader, your soul upraise to see, in yon fair cut designed by me, the pauper by the highwayside vainly soliciting from pride. mark how the beau with easy air contemns the anxious rustic's prayer, and, casting a disdainful eye, goes gaily gallivanting by. he from the poor averts his head . . . he will regret it when he's dead. poem: iii a peak in darien broad-gazing on untrodden lands, see where adventurous cortez stands; while in the heavens above his head the eagle seeks its daily bread. how aptly fact to fact replies: heroes and eagles, hills and skies. ye who contemn the fatted slave look on this emblem, and be brave. poem: iv see in the print how, moved by whim, trumpeting jumbo, great and grim, adjusts his trunk, like a cravat, to noose that individual's hat. the sacred ibis in the distance joys to observe his bold resistance. poem: v mark, printed on the opposing page, the unfortunate effects of rage. a man (who might be you or me) hurls another into the sea. poor soul, his unreflecting act his future joys will much contract, and he will spoil his evening toddy by dwelling on that mangled body. moral emblems ii poem: i with storms a-weather, rocks a-lee, the dancing skiff puts forth to sea. the lone dissenter in the blast recoils before the sight aghast. but she, although the heavens be black, holds on upon the starboard tack, for why? although to-day she sink, still safe she sails in printer's ink, and though to-day the seamen drown, my cut shall hand their memory down. poem: ii the careful angler chose his nook at morning by the lilied brook, and all the noon his rod he plied by that romantic riverside. soon as the evening hours decline tranquilly he'll return to dine, and, breathing forth a pious wish, will cram his belly full of fish. poem: iii the abbot for a walk went out, a wealthy cleric, very stout, and robin has that abbot stuck as the red hunter spears the buck. the djavel or the javelin has, you observe, gone bravely in, and you may hear that weapon whack bang through the middle of his back. hence we may learn that abbots should never go walking in a wood. poem: iv the frozen peaks he once explored, but now he's dead and by the board. how better far at home to have stayed attended by the parlour maid, and warmed his knees before the fire until the hour when folks retire! so, if you would be spared to friends, do nothing but for business ends. poem: v industrious pirate! see him sweep the lonely bosom of the deep, and daily the horizon scan from hatteras or matapan. be sure, before that pirate's old, he will have made a pot of gold, and will retire from all his labours and be respected by his neighbours. you also scan your life's horizon for all that you can clap your eyes on. a martial elegy for some lead soldiers for certain soldiers lately dead our reverent dirge shall here be said. them, when their martial leader called, no dread preparative appalled; but leaden-hearted, leaden-heeled, i marked them steadfast in the field. death grimly sided with the foe, and smote each leaden hero low. proudly they perished one by one: the dread pea-cannon's work was done! o not for them the tears we shed, consigned to their congenial lead; but while unmoved their sleep they take, we mourn for their dear captain's sake, for their dear captain, who shall smart both in his pocket and his heart, who saw his heroes shed their gore, and lacked a shilling to buy more! the graver the pen: or, scenes from nature, with appropriate verses poem: i proem unlike the common run of men, i wield a double power to please, and use the graver and the pen with equal aptitude and ease. i move with that illustrious crew, the ambidextrous kings of art; and every mortal thing i do brings ringing money in the mart. hence, in the morning hour, the mead, the forest and the stream perceive me wandering as the muses lead or back returning in the eve. two muses like two maiden aunts, the engraving and the singing muse, follow, through all my favourite haunts, my devious traces in the dews. to guide and cheer me, each attends; each speeds my rapid task along; one to my cuts her ardour lends, one breathes her magic in my song. poem: ii the precarious mill alone above the stream it stands, above the iron hill, the topsy-turvy, tumble-down, yet habitable mill. still as the ringing saws advance to slice the humming deal, all day the pallid miller hears the thunder of the wheel. he hears the river plunge and roar as roars the angry mob; he feels the solid building quake, the trusty timbers throb. all night beside the fire he cowers: he hears the rafters jar: o why is he not in a proper house as decent people are! the floors are all aslant, he sees, the doors are all a-jam; and from the hook above his head all crooked swings the ham. 'alas,' he cries and shakes his head, 'i see by every sign, there soon all be the deuce to pay, with this estate of mine.' poem: iii the disputatious pines the first pine to the second said: 'my leaves are black, my branches red; i stand upon this moor of mine, a hoar, unconquerable pine.' the second sniffed and answered: 'pooh! i am as good a pine as you.' 'discourteous tree,' the first replied, 'the tempest in my boughs had cried, the hunter slumbered in my shade, a hundred years ere you were made.' the second smiled as he returned: 'i shall be here when you are burned.' so far dissension ruled the pair, each turned on each a frowning air, when flickering from the bank anigh, a flight of martens met their eye. sometime their course they watched; and then they nodded off to sleep again. poem: iv the tramps now long enough had day endured, or king apollo palinured, seaward he steers his panting team, and casts on earth his latest gleam. but see! the tramps with jaded eye their destined provinces espy. long through the hills their way they took, long camped beside the mountain brook; 'tis over; now with rising hope they pause upon the downward slope, and as their aching bones they rest, their anxious captain scans the west. so paused alaric on the alps and ciphered up the roman scalps. poem: v the foolhardy geographer the howling desert miles around, the tinkling brook the only sound wearied with all his toils and feats, the traveller dines on potted meats; on potted meats and princely wines, not wisely but too well he dines. the brindled tiger loud may roar, high may the hovering vulture soar; alas! regardless of them all, soon shall the empurpled glutton sprawl soon, in the desert's hushed repose, shall trumpet tidings through his nose! alack, unwise! that nasal song shall be the ounce's dinner-gong! a blemish in the cut appears; alas! it cost both blood and tears. the glancing graver swerved aside, fast flowed the artist's vital tide! and now the apologetic bard demands indulgence for his pard! poem: vi the angler and the clown the echoing bridge you here may see, the pouring lynn, the waving tree, the eager angler fresh from town above, the contumelious clown. the angler plies his line and rod, the clodpole stands with many a nod, with many a nod and many a grin, he sees him cast his engine in. 'what have you caught?' the peasant cries. 'nothing as yet,' the fool replies. moral tales poem: i robin and ben: or, the pirate and the apothecary come, lend me an attentive ear a startling moral tale to hear, of pirate rob and chemist ben, and different destinies of men. deep in the greenest of the vales that nestle near the coast of wales, the heaving main but just in view, robin and ben together grew, together worked and played the fool, together shunned the sunday school, and pulled each other's youthful noses around the cots, among the roses. together but unlike they grew; robin was rough, and through and through bold, inconsiderate, and manly, like some historic bruce or stanley. ben had a mean and servile soul, he robbed not, though he often stole. he sang on sunday in the choir, and tamely capped the passing squire. at length, intolerant of trammels wild as the wild bithynian camels, wild as the wild sea-eagles bob his widowed dam contrives to rob, and thus with great originality effectuates his personality. thenceforth his terror-haunted flight he follows through the starry night; and with the early morning breeze, behold him on the azure seas. the master of a trading dandy hires robin for a go of brandy; and all the happy hills of home vanish beyond the fields of foam. ben, meanwhile, like a tin reflector, attended on the worthy rector; opened his eyes and held his breath, and flattered to the point of death; and was at last, by that good fairy, apprenticed to the apothecary. so ben, while robin chose to roam, a rising chemist was at home, tended his shop with learned air, watered his drugs and oiled his hair, and gave advice to the unwary, like any sleek apothecary. meanwhile upon the deep afar robin the brave was waging war, with other tarry desperadoes about the latitude of barbadoes. he knew no touch of craven fear; his voice was thunder in the cheer; first, from the main-to'-gallan' high, the skulking merchantmen to spy the first to bound upon the deck, the last to leave the sinking wreck. his hand was steel, his word was law, his mates regarded him with awe. no pirate in the whole profession held a more honourable position. at length, from years of anxious toil, bold robin seeks his native soil; wisely arranges his affairs, and to his native dale repairs. the bristol swallow sets him down beside the well-remembered town. he sighs, he spits, he marks the scene, proudly he treads the village green; and, free from pettiness and rancour, takes lodgings at the 'crown and anchor.' strange, when a man so great and good once more in his home-country stood, strange that the sordid clowns should show a dull desire to have him go. his clinging breeks, his tarry hat, the way he swore, the way he spat, a certain quality of manner, alarming like the pirate's banner something that did not seem to suit all something, o call it bluff, not brutal something at least, howe'er it's called, made robin generally black-balled. his soul was wounded; proud and glum, alone he sat and swigged his rum, and took a great distaste to men till he encountered chemist ben. bright was the hour and bright the day that threw them in each other's way; glad were their mutual salutations, long their respective revelations. before the inn in sultry weather they talked of this and that together; ben told the tale of his indentures, and rob narrated his adventures. last, as the point of greatest weight, the pair contrasted their estate, and robin, like a boastful sailor, despised the other for a tailor. 'see,' he remarked, 'with envy, see a man with such a fist as me! bearded and ringed, and big, and brown, i sit and toss the stingo down. hear the gold jingle in my bag all won beneath the jolly flag!' ben moralised and shook his head: 'you wanderers earn and eat your bread. the foe is found, beats or is beaten, and, either how, the wage is eaten. and after all your pully-hauly your proceeds look uncommon small-ly. you had done better here to tarry apprentice to the apothecary. the silent pirates of the shore eat and sleep soft, and pocket more than any red, robustious ranger who picks his farthings hot from danger. you clank your guineas on the board; mine are with several bankers stored. you reckon riches on your digits, you dash in chase of sals and bridgets, you drink and risk delirium tremens, your whole estate a common seaman's! regard your friend and school companion, soon to be wed to miss trevanion (smooth, honourable, fat and flowery, with heaven knows how much land in dowry), look at me am i in good case? look at my hands, look at my face; look at the cloth of my apparel; try me and test me, lock and barrel; and own, to give the devil his due, i have made more of life than you. yet i nor sought nor risked a life; i shudder at an open knife; the perilous seas i still avoided and stuck to land whate'er betided. i had no gold, no marble quarry, i was a poor apothecary, yet here i stand, at thirty-eight, a man of an assured estate.' 'well,' answered robin 'well, and how?' the smiling chemist tapped his brow. 'rob,' he replied, 'this throbbing brain still worked and hankered after gain. by day and night, to work my will, it pounded like a powder mill; and marking how the world went round a theory of theft it found. here is the key to right and wrong: steal little, but steal all day long; and this invaluable plan marks what is called the honest man. when first i served with doctor pill, my hand was ever in the till. now that i am myself a master, my gains come softer still and faster. as thus: on wednesday, a maid came to me in the way of trade. her mother, an old farmer's wife, required a drug to save her life. 'at once, my dear, at once,' i said, patted the child upon the head, bade her be still a loving daughter, and filled the bottle up with water.' 'well, and the mother?' robin cried. 'o she!' said ben 'i think she died.' 'battle and blood, death and disease, upon the tainted tropic seas the attendant sharks that chew the cud the abhorred scuppers spouting blood the untended dead, the tropic sun the thunder of the murderous gun the cut-throat crew the captain's curse the tempest blustering worse and worse these have i known and these can stand, but you i settle out of hand!' out flashed the cutlass, down went ben dead and rotten, there and then. poem: ii the builder's doom in eighteen-twenty deacon thin feu'd the land and fenced it in, and laid his broad foundations down about a furlong out of town. early and late the work went on. the carts were toiling ere the dawn; the mason whistled, the hodman sang; early and late the trowels rang; and thin himself came day by day to push the work in every way. an artful builder, patent king of all the local building ring, who was there like him in the quarter for mortifying brick and mortar, or pocketing the odd piastre by substituting lath and plaster? with plan and two-foot rule in hand, he by the foreman took his stand, with boisterous voice, with eagle glance to stamp upon extravagance. for thrift of bricks and greed of guilders, he was the buonaparte of builders. the foreman, a desponding creature, demurred to here and there a feature: 'for surely, sir with your permeession bricks here, sir, in the main parteetion. . . . ' the builder goggled, gulped, and stared, the foreman's services were spared. thin would not count among his minions a man of wesleyan opinions. 'money is money,' so he said. 'crescents are crescents, trade is trade. pharaohs and emperors in their seasons built, i believe, for different reasons charity, glory, piety, pride to pay the men, to please a bride, to use their stone, to spite their neighbours, not for a profit on their labours. they built to edify or bewilder; i build because i am a builder. crescent and street and square i build, plaster and paint and carve and gild. around the city see them stand, these triumphs of my shaping hand, with bulging walls, with sinking floors, with shut, impracticable doors, fickle and frail in every part, and rotten to their inmost heart. there shall the simple tenant find death in the falling window-blind, death in the pipe, death in the faucet, death in the deadly water-closet! a day is set for all to die: caveat emptor! what care i?' as to amphion's tuneful kit thebes rose, with towers encircling it; as to the mage's brandished wand a spiry palace clove the sand; to thin's indomitable financing, that phantom crescent kept advancing. when first the brazen bells of churches called clerk and parson to their perches, the worshippers of every sect already viewed it with respect; a second sunday had not gone before the roof was rattled on: and when the fourth was there, behold the crescent finished, painted, sold! the stars proceeded in their courses, nature with her subversive forces, time, too, the iron-toothed and sinewed, and the edacious years continued. thrones rose and fell; and still the crescent, unsanative and now senescent, a plastered skeleton of lath, looked forward to a day of wrath. in the dead night, the groaning timber would jar upon the ear of slumber, and, like dodona's talking oak, of oracles and judgments spoke. when to the music fingered well the feet of children lightly fell, the sire, who dozed by the decanters, started, and dreamed of misadventures. the rotten brick decayed to dust; the iron was consumed by rust; each tabid and perverted mansion hung in the article of declension. so forty, fifty, sixty passed; until, when seventy came at last, the occupant of number three called friends to hold a jubilee. wild was the night; the charging rack had forced the moon upon her back; the wind piped up a naval ditty; and the lamps winked through all the city. before that house, where lights were shining, corpulent feeders, grossly dining, and jolly clamour, hum and rattle, fairly outvoiced the tempest's battle. as still his moistened lip he fingered, the envious policeman lingered; while far the infernal tempest sped, and shook the country folks in bed, and tore the trees and tossed the ships, he lingered and he licked his lips. lo, from within, a hush! the host briefly expressed the evening's toast; and lo, before the lips were dry, the deacon rising to reply! 'here in this house which once i built, papered and painted, carved and gilt, and out of which, to my content, i netted seventy-five per cent.; here at this board of jolly neighbours, i reap the credit of my labours. these were the days i will say more these were the grand old days of yore! the builder laboured day and night; he watched that every brick was right: the decent men their utmost did; and the house rose a pyramid! these were the days, our provost knows, when forty streets and crescents rose, the fruits of my creative noddle, all more or less upon a model, neat and commodious, cheap and dry, a perfect pleasure to the eye! i found this quite a country quarter; i leave it solid lath and mortar. in all, i was the single actor and am this city's benefactor! since then, alas! both thing and name, shoddy across the ocean came shoddy that can the eye bewilder and makes me blush to meet a builder! had this good house, in frame or fixture, been tempered by the least admixture of that discreditable shoddy, should we to-day compound our toddy, or gaily marry song and laughter below its sempiternal rafter? not so!' the deacon cried. the mansion had marked his fatuous expansion. the years were full, the house was fated, the rotten structure crepitated! a moment, and the silent guests sat pallid as their dinner vests. a moment more and, root and branch, that mansion fell in avalanche, story on story, floor on floor, roof, wall and window, joist and door, dead weight of damnable disaster, a cataclysm of lath and plaster. siloam did not choose a sinner all were not builders at the dinner. end of the project gutenberg etext of moral emblems, by stevenson a lover's complaint from off a hill whose concave womb reworded a plaintful story from a sistering vale, my spirits to attend this double voice accorded, and down i laid to list the sad-tuned tale; ere long espied a fickle maid full pale, tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain, storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain. upon her head a platted hive of straw, which fortified her visage from the sun, whereon the thought might think sometime it saw the carcass of beauty spent and done: time had not scythed all that youth begun, nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage, some beauty peep'd through lattice of sear'd age. oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne, which on it had conceited characters, laundering the silken figures in the brine that season'd woe had pelleted in tears, and often reading what contents it bears; as often shrieking undistinguish'd woe, in clamours of all size, both high and low. sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride, as they did battery to the spheres intend; sometime diverted their poor balls are tied to the orbed earth; sometimes they do extend their view right on; anon their gazes lend to every place at once, and, nowhere fix'd, the mind and sight distractedly commix'd. her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat, proclaim'd in her a careless hand of pride for some, untuck'd, descended her sheaved hat, hanging her pale and pined cheek beside; some in her threaden fillet still did bide, and true to bondage would not break from thence, though slackly braided in loose negligence. a thousand favours from a maund she drew of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet, which one by one she in a river threw, upon whose weeping margent she was set; like usury, applying wet to wet, or monarch's hands that let not bounty fall where want cries some, but where excess begs all. of folded schedules had she many a one, which she perused, sigh'd, tore, and gave the flood; crack'd many a ring of posied gold and bone bidding them find their sepulchres in mud; found yet moe letters sadly penn'd in blood, with sleided silk feat and affectedly enswathed, and seal'd to curious secrecy. these often bathed she in her fluxive eyes, and often kiss'd, and often 'gan to tear: cried 'o false blood, thou register of lies, what unapproved witness dost thou bear! ink would have seem'd more black and damned here!' this said, in top of rage the lines she rents, big discontent so breaking their contents. a reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh-sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew of court, of city, and had let go by the swiftest hours, observed as they flew-towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew, and, privileged by age, desires to know in brief the grounds and motives of her woe. so slides he down upon his grained bat, and comely-distant sits he by her side; when he again desires her, being sat, her grievance with his hearing to divide: if that from him there may be aught applied which may her suffering ecstasy assuage, 'tis promised in the charity of age. 'father,' she says, 'though in me you behold the injury of many a blasting hour, let it not tell your judgment i am old; not age, but sorrow, over me hath power: i might as yet have been a spreading flower, fresh to myself, if i had self-applied love to myself and to no love beside. 'but, woe is me! too early i attended a youthful suit--it was to gain my grace-of one by nature's outwards so commended, that maidens' eyes stuck over all his face: love lack'd a dwelling, and made him her place; and when in his fair parts she did abide, she was new lodged and newly deified. 'his browny locks did hang in crooked curls; and every light occasion of the wind upon his lips their silken parcels hurls. what's sweet to do, to do will aptly find: each eye that saw him did enchant the mind, for on his visage was in little drawn what largeness thinks in paradise was sawn. 'small show of man was yet upon his chin; his phoenix down began but to appear like unshorn velvet on that termless skin whose bare out-bragg'd the web it seem'd to wear: yet show'd his visage by that cost more dear; and nice affections wavering stood in doubt if best were as it was, or best without. 'his qualities were beauteous as his form, for maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free; yet, if men moved him, was he such a storm as oft 'twixt may and april is to see, when winds breathe sweet, untidy though they be. his rudeness so with his authorized youth did livery falseness in a pride of truth. 'well could he ride, and often men would say 'that horse his mettle from his rider takes: proud of subjection, noble by the sway, what rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes!' and controversy hence a question takes, whether the horse by him became his deed, or he his manage by the well-doing steed. 'but quickly on this side the verdict went: his real habitude gave life and grace to appertainings and to ornament, accomplish'd in himself, not in his case: all aids, themselves made fairer by their place, came for additions; yet their purposed trim pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him. 'so on the tip of his subduing tongue all kinds of arguments and question deep, all replication prompt, and reason strong, for his advantage still did wake and sleep: to make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep, he had the dialect and different skill, catching all passions in his craft of will: 'that he did in the general bosom reign of young, of old; and sexes both enchanted, to dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain in personal duty, following where he haunted: consents bewitch'd, ere he desire, have granted; and dialogued for him what he would say, ask'd their own wills, and made their wills obey. 'many there were that did his picture get, to serve their eyes, and in it put their mind; like fools that in th' imagination set the goodly objects which abroad they find of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assign'd; and labouring in moe pleasures to bestow them than the true gouty landlord which doth owe them: 'so many have, that never touch'd his hand, sweetly supposed them mistress of his heart. my woeful self, that did in freedom stand, and was my own fee-simple, not in part, what with his art in youth, and youth in art, threw my affections in his charmed power, reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower. 'yet did i not, as some my equals did, demand of him, nor being desired yielded; finding myself in honour so forbid, with safest distance i mine honour shielded: experience for me many bulwarks builded of proofs new-bleeding, which remain'd the foil of this false jewel, and his amorous spoil. 'but, ah, who ever shunn'd by precedent the destined ill she must herself assay? or forced examples, 'gainst her own content, to put the by-past perils in her way? counsel may stop awhile what will not stay; for when we rage, advice is often seen by blunting us to make our wits more keen. 'nor gives it satisfaction to our blood, that we must curb it upon others' proof; to be forbod the sweets that seem so good, for fear of harms that preach in our behoof. o appetite, from judgment stand aloof! the one a palate hath that needs will taste, though reason weep, and cry, 'it is thy last.' 'for further i could say 'this man's untrue,' and knew the patterns of his foul beguiling; heard where his plants in others' orchards grew, saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling; knew vows were ever brokers to defiling; thought characters and words merely but art, and bastards of his foul adulterate heart. 'and long upon these terms i held my city, till thus he gan besiege me: 'gentle maid, have of my suffering youth some feeling pity, and be not of my holy vows afraid: that's to ye sworn to none was ever said; for feasts of love i have been call'd unto, till now did ne'er invite, nor never woo. ''all my offences that abroad you see are errors of the blood, none of the mind; love made them not: with acture they may be, where neither party is nor true nor kind: they sought their shame that so their shame did find; and so much less of shame in me remains, by how much of me their reproach contains. ''among the many that mine eyes have seen, not one whose flame my heart so much as warm'd, or my affection put to the smallest teen, or any of my leisures ever charm'd: harm have i done to them, but ne'er was harm'd; kept hearts in liveries, but mine own was free, and reign'd, commanding in his monarchy. ''look here, what tributes wounded fancies sent me, of paled pearls and rubies red as blood; figuring that they their passions likewise lent me of grief and blushes, aptly understood in bloodless white and the encrimson'd mood; effects of terror and dear modesty, encamp'd in hearts, but fighting outwardly. ''and, lo, behold these talents of their hair, with twisted metal amorously impleach'd, i have received from many a several fair, their kind acceptance weepingly beseech'd, with the annexions of fair gems enrich'd, and deep-brain'd sonnets that did amplify each stone's dear nature, worth, and quality. ''the diamond,--why, 'twas beautiful and hard, whereto his invised properties did tend; the deep-green emerald, in whose fresh regard weak sights their sickly radiance do amend; the heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend with objects manifold: each several stone, with wit well blazon'd, smiled or made some moan. ''lo, all these trophies of affections hot, of pensived and subdued desires the tender, nature hath charged me that i hoard them not, but yield them up where i myself must render, that is, to you, my origin and ender; for these, of force, must your oblations be, since i their altar, you enpatron me. ''o, then, advance of yours that phraseless hand, whose white weighs down the airy scale of praise; take all these similes to your own command, hallow'd with sighs that burning lungs did raise; what me your minister, for you obeys, works under you; and to your audit comes their distract parcels in combined sums. ''lo, this device was sent me from a nun, or sister sanctified, of holiest note; which late her noble suit in court did shun, whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote; for she was sought by spirits of richest coat, but kept cold distance, and did thence remove, to spend her living in eternal love. ''but, o my sweet, what labour is't to leave the thing we have not, mastering what not strives, playing the place which did no form receive, playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves? she that her fame so to herself contrives, the scars of battle 'scapeth by the flight, and makes her absence valiant, not her might. ''o, pardon me, in that my boast is true: the accident which brought me to her eye upon the moment did her force subdue, and now she would the caged cloister fly: religious love put out religion's eye: not to be tempted, would she be immured, and now, to tempt, all liberty procured. ''how mighty then you are, o, hear me tell! the broken bosoms that to me belong have emptied all their fountains in my well, and mine i pour your ocean all among: i strong o'er them, and you o'er me being strong, must for your victory us all congest, as compound love to physic your cold breast. ''my parts had power to charm a sacred nun, who, disciplined, ay, dieted in grace, believed her eyes when they to assail begun, all vows and consecrations giving place: o most potential love! vow, bond, nor space, in thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine, for thou art all, and all things else are thine. ''when thou impressest, what are precepts worth of stale example? when thou wilt inflame, how coldly those impediments stand forth of wealth, of filial fear, law, kindred, fame! love's arms are peace, 'gainst rule, 'gainst sense, 'gainst shame, and sweetens, in the suffering pangs it bears, the aloes of all forces, shocks, and fears. ''now all these hearts that do on mine depend, feeling it break, with bleeding groans they pine; and supplicant their sighs to you extend, to leave the battery that you make 'gainst mine, lending soft audience to my sweet design, and credent soul to that strong-bonded oath that shall prefer and undertake my troth.' 'this said, his watery eyes he did dismount, whose sights till then were levell'd on my face; each cheek a river running from a fount with brinish current downward flow'd apace: o, how the channel to the stream gave grace! who glazed with crystal gate the glowing roses that flame through water which their hue encloses. 'o father, what a hell of witchcraft lies in the small orb of one particular tear! but with the inundation of the eyes what rocky heart to water will not wear? what breast so cold that is not warmed here? o cleft effect! cold modesty, hot wrath, both fire from hence and chill extincture hath. 'for, lo, his passion, but an art of craft, even there resolved my reason into tears; there my white stole of chastity i daff'd, shook off my sober guards and civil fears; appear to him, as he to me appears, all melting; though our drops this difference bore, his poison'd me, and mine did him restore. 'in him a plenitude of subtle matter, applied to cautels, all strange forms receives, of burning blushes, or of weeping water, or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves, in either's aptness, as it best deceives, to blush at speeches rank to weep at woes, or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows. 'that not a heart which in his level came could 'scape the hail of his all-hurting aim, showing fair nature is both kind and tame; and, veil'd in them, did win whom he would maim: against the thing he sought he would exclaim; when he most burn'd in heart-wish'd luxury, he preach'd pure maid, and praised cold chastity. 'thus merely with the garment of a grace the naked and concealed fiend he cover'd; that th' unexperient gave the tempter place, which like a cherubin above them hover'd. who, young and simple, would not be so lover'd? ay me! i fell; and yet do question make what i should do again for such a sake. 'o, that infected moisture of his eye, o, that false fire which in his cheek so glow'd, o, that forced thunder from his heart did fly, o, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestow'd, o, all that borrow'd motion seeming owed, would yet again betray the fore-betray'd, and new pervert a reconciled maid!' the project gutenberg etext of louisa may alcott's flower fables. please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. flower fables by louisa may alcott september, 1994 [etext #163] the project gutenberg etext of flower fables, by louisa may alcott *******this file should be named ffabl10.txt or ffabl10.zip******* corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, ffabl11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, ffabl10a.txt. prepared by miriam bobkoff <mbobkoff@delphi.com> <mbobkof@spy.org> scanned by john hamm <john_hamm@mindlink.bc.ca> with omnipage professional ocr software donated to project gutenberg by caere corporation 1-800-535-7226 contact mike lough <mikel@caere.com> the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar, then we produce 2 million dollars per hour this year we, will have to do four text files per month: thus upping our productivity from one million. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college". this "small print!" by charles b. kramer, attorney internet (72600.2026@compuserve.com); tel: (212-254-5093) *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* the project gutenberg etext of flower fables by louisa may alcott "pondering shadows, colors, clouds grass-buds, and caterpillar shrouds boughs on which the wild bees settle, tints that spot the violet's petal." emerson's wood-notes. to ellen emerson, for whom they were fancied, these flower fables are inscribed, by her friend, the author. boston, dec. 9, 1854. contents the frost king: or, the power of love eva's visit to fairy-land the flower's lesson lily-bell and thistledown little bud clover-blossom little annie's dream: or, the fairy flower ripple, the water-spirit fairy song flower fables. the summer moon shone brightly down upon the sleeping earth, while far away from mortal eyes danced the fairy folk. fire-flies hung in bright clusters on the dewy leaves, that waved in the cool night-wind; and the flowers stood gazing, in very wonder, at the little elves, who lay among the fern-leaves, swung in the vine-boughs, sailed on the lake in lily cups, or danced on the mossy ground, to the music of the hare-bells, who rung out their merriest peal in honor of the night. under the shade of a wild rose sat the queen and her little maids of honor, beside the silvery mushroom where the feast was spread. "now, my friends," said she, "to wile away the time till the bright moon goes down, let us each tell a tale, or relate what we have done or learned this day. i will begin with you, sunny lock," added she, turning to a lovely little elf, who lay among the fragrant leaves of a primrose. with a gay smile, "sunny lock" began her story. "as i was painting the bright petals of a blue bell, it told me this tale." the frost-king: or, the power of love. three little fairies sat in the fields eating their breakfast; each among the leaves of her favorite flower, daisy, primrose, and violet, were happy as elves need be. the morning wind gently rocked them to and fro, and the sun shone warmly down upon the dewy grass, where butterflies spread their gay wings, and bees with their deep voices sung among the flowers; while the little birds hopped merrily about to peep at them. on a silvery mushroom was spread the breakfast; little cakes of flower-dust lay on a broad green leaf, beside a crimson strawberry, which, with sugar from the violet, and cream from the yellow milkweed, made a fairy meal, and their drink was the dew from the flowers' bright leaves. "ah me," sighed primrose, throwing herself languidly back, "how warm the sun grows! give me another piece of strawberry, and then i must hasten away to the shadow of the ferns. but while i eat, tell me, dear violet, why are you all so sad? i have scarce seen a happy face since my return from rose land; dear friend, what means it?" "i will tell you," replied little violet, the tears gathering in her soft eyes. "our good queen is ever striving to keep the dear flowers from the power of the cruel frost-king; many ways she tried, but all have failed. she has sent messengers to his court with costly gifts; but all have returned sick for want of sunlight, weary and sad; we have watched over them, heedless of sun or shower, but still his dark spirits do their work, and we are left to weep over our blighted blossoms. thus have we striven, and in vain; and this night our queen holds council for the last time. therefore are we sad, dear primrose, for she has toiled and cared for us, and we can do nothing to help or advise her now." "it is indeed a cruel thing," replied her friend; "but as we cannot help it, we must suffer patiently, and not let the sorrows of others disturb our happiness. but, dear sisters, see you not how high the sun is getting? i have my locks to curl, and my robe to prepare for the evening; therefore i must be gone, or i shall be brown as a withered leaf in this warm light." so, gathering a tiny mushroom for a parasol, she flew away; daisy soon followed, and violet was left alone. then she spread the table afresh, and to it came fearlessly the busy ant and bee, gay butterfly and bird; even the poor blind mole and humble worm were not forgotten; and with gentle words she gave to all, while each learned something of their kind little teacher; and the love that made her own heart bright shone alike on all. the ant and bee learned generosity, the butterfly and bird contentment, the mole and worm confidence in the love of others; and each went to their home better for the little time they had been with violet. evening came, and with it troops of elves to counsel their good queen, who, seated on her mossy throne, looked anxiously upon the throng below, whose glittering wings and rustling robes gleamed like many-colored flowers. at length she rose, and amid the deep silence spoke thus:-"dear children, let us not tire of a good work, hard though it be and wearisome; think of the many little hearts that in their sorrow look to us for help. what would the green earth be without its lovely flowers, and what a lonely home for us! their beauty fills our hearts with brightness, and their love with tender thoughts. ought we then to leave them to die uncared for and alone? they give to us their all; ought we not to toil unceasingly, that they may bloom in peace within their quiet homes? we have tried to gain the love of the stern frost-king, but in vain; his heart is hard as his own icy land; no love can melt, no kindness bring it back to sunlight and to joy. how then may we keep our frail blossoms from his cruel spirits? who will give us counsel? who will be our messenger for the last time ? speak, my subjects." then a great murmuring arose, and many spoke, some for costlier gifts, some for war; and the fearful counselled patience and submission. long and eagerly they spoke, and their soft voices rose high. then sweet music sounded on the air, and the loud tones were hushed, as in wondering silence the fairies waited what should come. through the crowd there came a little form, a wreath of pure white violets lay among the bright locks that fell so softly round the gentle face, where a deep blush glowed, as, kneeling at the throne, little violet said:-"dear queen, we have bent to the frost-king's power, we have borne gifts unto his pride, but have we gone trustingly to him and spoken fearlessly of his evil deeds? have we shed the soft light of unwearied love around his cold heart, and with patient tenderness shown him how bright and beautiful love can make even the darkest lot? "our messengers have gone fearfully, and with cold looks and courtly words offered him rich gifts, things he cared not for, and with equal pride has he sent them back. "then let me, the weakest of your band, go to him, trusting in the love i know lies hidden in the coldest heart. "i will bear only a garland of our fairest flowers; these will i wind about him, and their bright faces, looking lovingly in his, will bring sweet thoughts to his dark mind, and their soft breath steal in like gentle words. then, when he sees them fading on his breast, will he not sigh that there is no warmth there to keep them fresh and lovely? this will i do, dear queen, and never leave his dreary home, till the sunlight falls on flowers fair as those that bloom in our own dear land." silently the queen had listened, but now, rising and placing her hand on little violet's head, she said, turning to the throng below:-"we in our pride and power have erred, while this, the weakest and lowliest of our subjects, has from the innocence of her own pure heart counselled us more wisely than the noblest of our train. all who will aid our brave little messenger, lift your wands, that we may know who will place their trust in the power of love." every fairy wand glistened in the air, as with silvery voices they cried, "love and little violet." then down from the throne, hand in hand, came the queen and violet, and till the moon sank did the fairies toil, to weave a wreath of the fairest flowers. tenderly they gathered them, with the night-dew fresh upon their leaves, and as they wove chanted sweet spells, and whispered fairy blessings on the bright messengers whom they sent forth to die in a dreary land, that their gentle kindred might bloom unharmed. at length it was done; and the fair flowers lay glowing in the soft starlight, while beside them stood the fairies, singing to the music of the wind-harps:- "we are sending you, dear flowers, forth alone to die, where your gentle sisters may not weep o'er the cold graves where you lie; but you go to bring them fadeless life in the bright homes where they dwell, and you softly smile that 't is so, as we sadly sing farewell. o plead with gentle words for us, and whisper tenderly of generous love to that cold heart, and it will answer ye; and though you fade in a dreary home, yet loving hearts will tell of the joy and peace that you have given: flowers, dear flowers, farewell!" the morning sun looked softly down upon the broad green earth, which like a mighty altar was sending up clouds of perfume from its breast, while flowers danced gayly in the summer wind, and birds sang their morning hymn among the cool green leaves. then high above, on shining wings, soared a little form. the sunlight rested softly on the silken hair, and the winds fanned lovingly the bright face, and brought the sweetest odors to cheer her on. thus went violet through the clear air, and the earth looked smiling up to her, as, with the bright wreath folded in her arms, she flew among the soft, white clouds. on and on she went, over hill and valley, broad rivers and rustling woods, till the warm sunlight passed away, the winds grew cold, and the air thick with falling snow. then far below she saw the frost-king's home. pillars of hard, gray ice supported the high, arched roof, hung with crystal icicles. dreary gardens lay around, filled with withered flowers and bare, drooping trees; while heavy clouds hung low in the dark sky, and a cold wind murmured sadly through the wintry air. with a beating heart violet folded her fading wreath more closely to her breast, and with weary wings flew onward to the dreary palace. here, before the closed doors, stood many forms with dark faces and harsh, discordant voices, who sternly asked the shivering little fairy why she came to them. gently she answered, telling them her errand, beseeching them to let her pass ere the cold wind blighted her frail blossoms. then they flung wide the doors, and she passed in. walls of ice, carved with strange figures, were around her; glittering icicles hung from the high roof, and soft, white snow covered the hard floors. on a throne hung with clouds sat the frost-king; a crown of crystals bound his white locks, and a dark mantle wrought with delicate frost-work was folded over his cold breast. his stern face could not stay little violet, and on through the long hall she went, heedless of the snow that gathered on her feet, and the bleak wind that blew around her; while the king with wondering eyes looked on the golden light that played upon the dark walls as she passed. the flowers, as if they knew their part, unfolded their bright leaves, and poured forth their sweetest perfume, as, kneeling at the throne, the brave little fairy said,-"o king of blight and sorrow, send me not away till i have brought back the light and joy that will make your dark home bright and beautiful again. let me call back to the desolate gardens the fair forms that are gone, and their soft voices blessing you will bring to your breast a never failing joy. cast by your icy crown and sceptre, and let the sunlight of love fall softly on your heart. "then will the earth bloom again in all its beauty, and your dim eyes will rest only on fair forms, while music shall sound through these dreary halls, and the love of grateful hearts be yours. have pity on the gentle flower-spirits, and do not doom them to an early death, when they might bloom in fadeless beauty, making us wiser by their gentle teachings, and the earth brighter by their lovely forms. these fair flowers, with the prayers of all fairy land, i lay before you; o send me not away till they are answered." and with tears falling thick and fast upon their tender leaves, violet laid the wreath at his feet, while the golden light grew ever brighter as it fell upon the little form so humbly kneeling there. the king's stern face grew milder as he gazed on the gentle fairy, and the flowers seemed to look beseechingly upon him; while their fragrant voices sounded softly in his ear, telling of their dying sisters, and of the joy it gives to bring happiness to the weak and sorrowing. but he drew the dark mantle closer over his breast and answered coldly,-"i cannot grant your prayer, little fairy; it is my will the flowers should die. go back to your queen, and tell her that i cannot yield my power to please these foolish flowers." then violet hung the wreath above the throne, and with weary foot went forth again, out into the cold, dark gardens, and still the golden shadows followed her, and wherever they fell, flowers bloomed and green leaves rustled. then came the frost-spirits, and beneath their cold wings the flowers died, while the spirits bore violet to a low, dark cell, saying as they left her, that their king was angry that she had dared to stay when he had bid her go. so all alone she sat, and sad thoughts of her happy home came back to her, and she wept bitterly. but soon came visions of the gentle flowers dying in their forest homes, and their voices ringing in her ear, imploring her to save them. then she wept no longer, but patiently awaited what might come. soon the golden light gleamed faintly through the cell, and she heard little voices calling for help, and high up among the heavy cobwebs hung poor little flies struggling to free themselves, while their cruel enemies sat in their nets, watching their pain. with her wand the fairy broke the bands that held them, tenderly bound up their broken wings, and healed their wounds; while they lay in the warm light, and feebly hummed their thanks to their kind deliverer. then she went to the ugly brown spiders, and in gentle words told them, how in fairy land their kindred spun all the elfin cloth, and in return the fairies gave them food, and then how happily they lived among the green leaves, spinning garments for their neigbbors. "and you too," said she, "shall spin for me, and i will give you better food than helpless insects. you shall live in peace, and spin your delicate threads into a mantle for the stern king; and i will weave golden threads amid the gray, that when folded over his cold heart gentle thoughts may enter in and make it their home. and while she gayly sung, the little weavers spun their silken threads, the flies on glittering wings flew lovingly above her head, and over all the golden light shone softly down. when the frost-spirits told their king, he greatly wondered and often stole to look at the sunny little room where friends and enemies worked peacefully together. still the light grew brighter, and floated out into the cold air, where it hung like bright clouds above the dreary gardens, whence all the spirits' power could not drive it; and green leaves budded on the naked trees, and flowers bloomed; but the spirits heaped snow upon them, and they bowed their heads and died. at length the mantle was finished, and amid the gray threads shone golden ones, making it bright; and she sent it to the king, entreating him to wear it, for it would bring peace and love to dwell within his breast. but he scornfully threw it aside, and bade his spirits take her to a colder cell, deep in the earth; and there with harsh words they left her. still she sang gayly on, and the falling drops kept time so musically, that the king in his cold ice-halls wondered at the low, sweet sounds that came stealing up to him. thus violet dwelt, and each day the golden light grew stronger; and from among the crevices of the rocky walls came troops of little velvet-coated moles, praying that they might listen to the sweet music, and lie in the warm light. "we lead," said they, "a dreary life in the cold earth; the flower-roots are dead, and no soft dews descend for us to drink, no little seed or leaf can we find. ah, good fairy, let us be your servants: give us but a few crumbs of your daily bread, and we will do all in our power to serve you." and violet said, yes; so day after day they labored to make a pathway through the frozen earth, that she might reach the roots of the withered flowers; and soon, wherever through the dark galleries she went, the soft light fell upon the roots of flowers, and they with new life spread forth in the warm ground, and forced fresh sap to the blossoms above. brightly they bloomed and danced in the soft light, and the frost-spirits tried in vain to harm them, for when they came beneath the bright clouds their power to do evil left them. from his dark castle the king looked out on the happy flowers, who nodded gayly to him, and in sweet colors strove to tell him of the good little spirit, who toiled so faithfully below, that they might live. and when he turned from the brightness without, to his stately palace, it seemcd so cold and dreary, that he folded violet's mantle round him, and sat beneath the faded wreath upon his ice-carved throne, wondering at the strange warmth that came from it; till at length he bade his spirits bring the little fairy from her dismal prison. soon they came hastening back, and prayed him to come and see how lovely the dark cell had grown. the rough floor was spread with deep green moss, and over wall and roof grew flowery vines, filling the air with their sweet breath; while above played the clear, soft light, casting rosy shadows on the glittering drops that lay among the fragrant leaves; and beneath the vines stood violet, casting crumbs to the downy little moles who ran fearlessly about and listened as she sang to them. when the old king saw how much fairer she had made the dreary cell than his palace rooms, gentle thoughts within whispered him to grant her prayer, and let the little fairy go back to her friends and home; but the frost-spirits breathed upon the flowers and bid him see how frail they were, and useless to a king. then the stern, cold thoughts came back again, and he harshly bid her follow him. with a sad farewell to her little friends she followed him, and before the throne awaited his command. when the king saw how pale and sad the gentle face had grown, how thin her robe, and weak her wings, and yet how lovingly the golden shadows fell around her and brightened as they lay upon the wand, which, guided by patient love, had made his once desolate home so bright, he could not be cruel to the one who had done so much for him, and in kindly tone he said,-"little fairy, i offer you two things, and you may choose between them. if i will vow never more to harm the flowers you may love, will you go back to your own people and leave me and my spirits to work our will on all the other flowers that bloom? the earth is broad, and we can find them in any land, then why should you care what happens to their kindred if your own are safe? will you do this?" "ah!" answered violet sadly, "do you not know that beneath the flowers' bright leaves there beats a little heart that loves and sorrows like our own? and can i, heedless of their beauty, doom them to pain and grief, that i might save my own dear blossoms from the cruel foes to which i leave them? ah no! sooner would i dwell for ever in your darkest cell, than lose the love of those warm, trusting hearts." "then listen," said the king, "to the task i give you. you shall raise up for me a palace fairer than this, and if you can work that miracle i will grant your prayer or lose my kingly crown. and now go forth, and begin your task; my spirits shall not harm you, and i will wait till it is done before i blight another flower." then out into the gardens went violet with a heavy heart; for she had toiled so long, her strength was nearly gone. but the flowers whispered their gratitude, and folded their leaves as if they blessed her; and when she saw the garden filled with loving friends, who strove to cheer and thank her for her care, courage and strength returned; and raising up thick clouds of mist, that hid her from the wondering flowers, alone and trustingly she began her work. as time went by, the frost-king feared the task had been too hard for the fairy; sounds were heard behind the walls of mist, bright shadows seen to pass within, but the little voice was never heard. meanwhile the golden light had faded from the garden, the flowers bowed their heads, and all was dark and cold as when the gentle fairy came. and to the stern king his home seemed more desolate and sad; for he missed the warm light, the happy flowers, and, more than all, the gay voice and bright face of little violet. so he wandered through his dreary palace, wondering how he had been content to live before without sunlight and love. and little violet was mourned as dead in fairy-land, and many tears were shed, for the gentle fairy was beloved by all, from the queen down to the humblest flower. sadly they watched over every bird and blossom which she had loved, and strove to be like her in kindly words and deeds. they wore cypress wreaths, and spoke of her as one whom they should never see again. thus they dwelt in deepest sorrow, till one day there came to them an unknown messenger, wrapped in a dark mantle, who looked with wondering eyes on the bright palace, and flower-crowned elves, who kindly welcomed him, and brought fresh dew and rosy fruit to refresh the weary stranger. then he told them that he came from the frost-king, who begged the queen and all her subjects to come and see the palace little violet had built; for the veil of mist would soon be withdrawn, and as she could not make a fairer home than the ice-castle, the king wished her kindred near to comfort and to bear her home. and while the elves wept, he told them how patiently she had toiled, how her fadeless love had made the dark cell bright and beautiful. these and many other things he told them; for little violet had won the love of many of the frost-spirits, and even when they killed the flowers she had toiled so hard to bring to life and beauty, she spoke gentle words to them, and sought to teach them how beautiful is love. long stayed the messenger, and deeper grew his wonder that the fairy could have left so fair a home, to toil in the dreary palace of his cruel master, and suffer cold and weariness, to give life and joy to the weak and sorrowing. when the elves had promised they would come, he bade farewell to happy fairy-land, and flew sadly home. at last the time arrived, and out in his barren garden, under a canopy of dark clouds, sat the frost-king before the misty wall, behind which were heard low, sweet sounds, as of rustling trees and warbling birds. soon through the air came many-colored troops of elves. first the queen, known by the silver lilies on her snowy robe and the bright crown in her hair, beside whom fiew a band of elves in crimson and gold, making sweet music on their flower-trumpets, while all around, with smiling faces and bright eyes, fluttered her loving subjects. on they came, like a flock of brilliant butterflies, their shining wings and many-colored garments sparkling in the dim air; and soon the leafless trees were gay with living flowers, and their sweet voices filled the gardens with music. like his subjects, the king looked on the lovely elves, and no longer wondered that little violet wept and longed for her home. darker and more desolate seemed his stately home, and when the fairies asked for flowers, he felt ashamed that he had none to give them. at length a warm wind swept through the gardens, and the mist-clouds passed away, while in silent wonder looked the frost-king and the elves upon the scene before them. far as eye could reach were tall green trees whose drooping boughs made graceful arches, through which the golden light shone softly, making bright shadows on the deep green moss below, where the fairest flowers waved in the cool wind, and sang, in their low, sweet voices, how beautiful is love. flowering vines folded their soft leaves around the trees, making green pillars of their rough trunks. fountains threw their bright waters to the roof, and flocks of silver-winged birds flew singing among the flowers, or brooded lovingly above their nests. doves with gentle eyes cooed among the green leaves, snow-white clouds floated in the sunny shy, and the golden light, brighter than before, shone softly down. soon through the long aisles came violet, flowers and green leaves rustling as she passed. on she went to the frost-king's throne, bearing two crowns, one of sparkling icicles, the other of pure white lilies, and kneeling before him, said,-"my task is done, and, thanks to the spirits of earth and air, i have made as fair a home as elfin hands can form. you must now decide. will you be king of flower-land, and own my gentle kindred for your loving friends? will you possess unfading peace and joy, and the grateful love of all the green earth's fragrant children? then take this crown of flowers. but if you can find no pleasure here, go back to your own cold home, and dwell in solitude and darkness, where no ray of sunlight or of joy can enter. "send forth your spirits to carry sorrow and desolation over the happy earth, and win for yourself the fear and hatred of those who would so gladly love and reverence you. then take this glittering crown, hard and cold as your own heart will be, if you will shut out all that is bright and beautiful. both are before you. choose." the old king looked at the little fairy, and saw how lovingly the bright shadows gathered round her, as if to shield her from every harm; the timid birds nestled in her bosom, and the flowers grew fairer as she looked upon them; while her gentle friends, with tears in their bright eyes, folded their hands beseechingly, and smiled on her. kind thought came thronging to his mind, and he turned to look at the two palaces. violet's, so fair and beautiful, with its rustling trees, calm, sunny skies, and happy birds and flowers, all created by her patient love and care. his own, so cold and dark and dreary, his empty gardens where no flowers could bloom, no green trees dwell, or gay birds sing, all desolate and dim;--and while he gazed, his own spirits, casting off their dark mantles, knelt before him and besought him not to send them forth to blight the things the gentle fairies loved so much. "we have served you long and faithfully," said they, "give us now our freedom, that we may learn to be beloved by the sweet flowers we have harmed so long. grant the little fairy's prayer; and let her go back to her own dear home. she has taught us that love is mightier than fear. choose the flower crown, and we will be the truest subjects you have ever had." then, amid a burst of wild, sweet music, the frost-king placed the flower crown on his head, and knelt to little violet; while far and near, over the broad green earth, sounded the voices of flowers, singing their thanks to the gentle fairy, and the summer wind was laden with perfumes, which they sent as tokens of their gratitude; and wherever she went, old trees bent down to fold their slender branches round her, flowers laid their soft faces against her own, and whispered blessings; even the humble moss bent over the little feet, and kissed them as they passed. the old king, surrounded by the happy fairies, sat in violet's lovely home, and watched his icy castle melt away beneath the bright sunlight; while his spirits, cold and gloomy no longer, danced with the elves, and waited on their king with loving eagerness. brighter grew the golden light, gayer sang the birds, and the harmonious voices of grateful flowers, sounding over the earth, carried new joy to all their gentle kindred. brighter shone the golden shadows; on the cool wind softly came the low, sweet tones of happy flowers, singing little violet's name. 'mong the green trees was it whispered, and the bright waves bore it on to the lonely forest flowers, where the glad news had not gone. thus the frost-king lost his kingdom, and his power to harm and blight. violet conquered, and his cold heart warmed with music, love, and light; and his fair home, once so dreary, gay with lovely elves and flowers, brought a joy that never faded through the long bright summer hours. thus, by violet's magic power, all dark shadows passed away, and o'er the home of happy flowers the golden light for ever lay. thus the fairy mission ended, and all flower-land was taught the "power of love," by gentle deeds that little violet wrought. as sunny lock ceased, another little elf came forward; and this was the tale "silver wing" told. eva's visit to fairy-land. down among the grass and fragrant clover lay little eva by the brook-side, watching the bright waves, as they went singing by under the drooping flowers that grew on its banks. as she was wondering where the waters went, she heard a faint, low sound, as of far-off music. she thought it was the wind, but not a leaf was stirring, and soon through the rippling water came a strange little boat. it was a lily of the valley, whose tall stem formed the mast, while the broad leaves that rose from the roots, and drooped again till they reached the water, were filled with gay little elves, who danced to the music of the silver lily-bells above, that rang a merry peal, and filled the air with their fragrant breath. on came the fairy boat, till it reached a moss-grown rock; and here it stopped, while the fairies rested beneath the violet-leaves, and sang with the dancing waves. eva looked with wonder on their gay faces and bright garments, and in the joy of her heart sang too, and threw crimson fruit for the little folks to feast upon. they looked kindly on the child, and, after whispering long among themselves, two little bright-eyed elves flew over the shining water, and, lighting on the clover-blossoms, said gently, "little maiden, many thanks for your kindness; and our queen bids us ask if you will go with us to fairy-land, and learn what we can teach you." "gladly would i go with you, dear fairies," said eva, "but i cannot sail in your little boat. see! i can hold you in my hand, and could not live among you without harming your tiny kingdom, i am so large." then the elves laughed gayly, as they folded their arms about her, saying, "you are a good child, dear eva, to fear doing harm to those weaker than yourself. you cannot hurt us now. look in the water and see what we have done." eva looked into the brook, and saw a tiny child standing between the elves. "now i can go with you," said she, "but see, i can no longer step from the bank to yonder stone, for the brook seems now like a great river, and you have not given me wings like yours." but the fairies took each a hand, and flew lightly over the stream. the queen and her subjects came to meet her, and all seemed glad to say some kindly word of welcome to the little stranger. they placed a flower-crown upon her head, laid their soft faces against her own, and soon it seemed as if the gentle elves had always been her friends. "now must we go home," said the queen, "and you shall go with us, little one." then there was a great bustle, as they flew about on shining wings, some laying cushions of violet leaves in the boat, others folding the queen's veil and mantle more closely round her, lest the falling dews should chill her. the cool waves' gentle plashing against the boat, and the sweet chime of the lily-bells, lulled little eva to sleep, and when she woke it was in fairy-land. a faint, rosy light, as of the setting sun, shone on the white pillars of the queen's palace as they passed in, and the sleeping flowers leaned gracefully on their stems, dreaming beneath their soft green curtains. all was cool and still, and the elves glided silently about, lest they should break their slumbers. they led eva to a bed of pure white leaves, above which drooped the fragrant petals of a crimson rose. "you can look at the bright colors till the light fades, and then the rose will sing you to sleep," said the elves, as they folded the soft leaves about her, gently kissed her, and stole away. long she lay watching the bright shadows, and listening to the song of the rose, while through the long night dreams of lovely things floated like bright clouds through her mind; while the rose bent lovingly above her, and sang in the clear moonlight. with the sun rose the fairies, and, with eva, hastened away to the fountain, whose cool waters were soon filled with little forms, and the air ringing with happy voices, as the elves floated in the blue waves among the fair white lilies, or sat on the green moss, smoothing their bright locks, and wearing fresh garlands of dewy flowers. at length the queen came forth, and her subjects gathered round her, and while the flowers bowed their heads, and the trees hushed their rustling, the fairies sang their morning hymn to the father of birds and blossoms, who had made the earth so fair a home for them. then they flew away to the gardens, and soon, high up among the tree-tops, or under the broad leaves, sat the elves in little groups, taking their breakfast of fruit and pure fresh dew; while the bright-winged birds came fearlessly among them, pecking the same ripe berries, and dipping their little beaks in the same flower-cups, and the fairies folded their arms lovingly about them, smoothed their soft bosoms, and gayly sang to them. "now, little eva," said they, "you will see that fairies are not idle, wilful spirits, as mortals believe. come, we will show you what we do." they led her to a lovely room, through whose walls of deep green leaves the light stole softly in. here lay many wounded insects, and harmless little creatures, whom cruel hands had hurt; and pale, drooping flowers grew beside urns of healing herbs, from whose fresh leaves came a faint, sweet perfume. eva wondered, but silently followed her guide, little rose-leaf, who with tender words passed among the delicate blossoms, pouring dew on their feeble roots, cheering them with her loving words and happy smile. then she went to the insects; first to a little fly who lay in a flower-leaf cradle. "do you suffer much, dear gauzy-wing?" asked the fairy. "i will bind up your poor little leg, and zephyr shall rock you to sleep." so she folded the cool leaves tenderly about the poor fly, bathed his wings, and brought him refreshing drink, while he hummed his thanks, and forgot his pain, as zephyr softly sung and fanned him with her waving wings. they passed on, and eva saw beside each bed a fairy, who with gentle hands and loving words soothed the suffering insects. at length they stopped beside a bee, who lay among sweet honeysuckle flowers, in a cool, still place, where the summer wind blew in, and the green leaves rustled pleasantly. yet he seemed to find no rest, and murmured of the pain he was doomed to bear. " why must i lie here, while my kindred are out in the pleasant fields, enjoying the sunlight and the fresh air, and cruel hands have doomed me to this dark place and bitter pain when i have done no wrong? uncared for and forgotten, i must stay here among these poor things who think only of themselves. come here, rose-leaf, and bind up my wounds, for i am far more useful than idle bird or fly." then said the fairy, while she bathed the broken wing,-"love-blossom, you should not murmur. we may find happiness in seeking to be patient even while we suffer. you are not forgotten or uncared for, but others need our care more than you, and to those who take cheerfully the pain and sorrow sent, do we most gladly give our help. you need not be idle, even though lying here in darkness and sorrow; you can be taking from your heart all sad and discontented feelings, and if love and patience blossom there, you will be better for the lonely hours spent here. look on the bed beside you; this little dove has suffered far greater pain than you, and all our care can never ease it; yet through the long days he hath lain here, not an unkind word or a repining sigh hath he uttered. ah, love-blossom, the gentle bird can teach a lesson you will be wiser and better for." then a faint voice whispered, "little rose-leaf, come quickly, or i cannot thank you as i ought for all your loving care of me." so they passed to the bed beside the discontented bee, and here upon the softest down lay the dove, whose gentle eyes looked gratefully upon the fairy, as she knelt beside the little couch, smoothed the soft white bosom, folded her arms about it and wept sorrowing tears, while the bird still whispered its gratitude and love. "dear fairy, the fairest flowers have cheered me with their sweet breath, fresh dew and fragrant leaves have been ever ready for me, gentle hands to tend, kindly hearts to love; and for this i can only thank you and say farewell." then the quivering wings were still, and the patient little dove was dead; but the bee murmured no longer, and the dew from the flowers fell like tears around the quiet bed. sadly rose-leaf led eva away, saying, "lily-bosom shall have a grave tonight beneath our fairest blossoms, and you shall see that gentleness and love are prized far above gold or beauty, here in fairy-land. come now to the flower palace, and see the fairy court." beneath green arches, bright with birds and flowers, beside singing waves, went eva into a lofty hall. the roof of pure white lilies rested on pillars of green clustering vines, while many-colored blossoms threw their bright shadows on the walls, as they danced below in the deep green moss, and their low, sweet voices sounded softly through the sunlit palace, while the rustling leaves kept time. beside the throne stood eva, and watched the lovely forms around her, as they stood, each little band in its own color, with glistening wings, and flower wands. suddenly the music grew louder and sweeter, and the fairies knelt, and bowed their heads, as on through the crowd of loving subjects came the queen, while the air was filled with gay voices singing to welcome her. she placed the child beside her, saying, "little eva, you shall see now how the flowers on your great earth bloom so brightly. a band of loving little gardeners go daily forth from fairy-land, to tend and watch them, that no harm may befall the gentle spirits that dwell beneath their leaves. this is never known, for like all good it is unseen by mortal eyes, and unto only pure hearts like yours do we make known our secret. the humblest flower that grows is visited by our messengers, and often blooms in fragrant beauty unknown, unloved by all save fairy friends, who seek to fill the spirits with all sweet and gentle virtues, that they may not be useless on the earth; for the noblest mortals stoop to learn of flowers. now, eglantine, what have you to tell us of your rosy namesakes on the earth?" from a group of elves, whose rose-wreathed wands showed the flower they loved, came one bearing a tiny urn, and, answering the queen, she said,-"over hill and valley they are blooming fresh and fair as summer sun and dew can make them. no drooping stem or withered leaf tells of any evil thought within their fragrant bosoms, and thus from the fairest of their race have they gathered this sweet dew, as a token of their gratitude to one whose tenderness and care have kept them pure and happy; and this, the loveliest of their sisters, have i brought to place among the fairy flowers that never pass away." eglantine laid the urn before the queen, and placed the fragrant rose on the dewy moss beside the throne, while a murmur of approval went through the hall, as each elfin wand waved to the little fairy who had toiled so well and faithful]y, and could bring so fair a gift to their good queen. then came forth an elf bearing a withered leaf, while her many-colored robe and the purple tulips in her hair told her name and charge. "dear queen," she sadly said, "i would gladly bring as pleasant tidings as my sister, but, alas! my flowers are proud and wilful, and when i went to gather my little gift of colored leaves for royal garments, they bade me bring this withered blossom, and tell you they would serve no longer one who will not make them queen over all the other flowers. they would yield neither dew nor honey, but proudly closed their leaves and bid me go." "your task has been too hard for you," said the queen kindly, as she placed the drooping flower in the urn eglantine had given, "you will see how this dew from a sweet, pure heart will give new life and loveliness even to this poor faded one. so can you, dear rainbow, by loving words and gentle teachings, bring back lost purity and peace to those whom pride and selfishness have blighted. go once again to the proud flowers, and tell them when they are queen of their own hearts they will ask no fairer kingdom. watch more tenderly than ever over them, see that they lack neither dew nor air, speak lovingly to them, and let no unkind word or deed of theirs anger you. let them see by your patient love and care how much fairer they might be, and when next you come, you will be laden with gifts from humble, loving flowers." thus they told what they had done, and received from their queen some gentle chiding or loving word of praise. "you will be weary of this," said little rose-leaf to eva; "come now and see where we are taught to read the tales written on flowerleaves, and the sweet language of the birds, and all that can make a fairy heart wiser and better." then into a cheerful place they went, where were many groups of flowers, among whose leaves sat the child elves, and learned from their flower-books all that fairy hands had written there. some studied how to watch the tender buds, when to spread them to the sunlight, and when to shelter them from rain; how to guard the ripening seeds, and when to lay them in the warm earth or send them on the summer wind to far off hills and valleys, where other fairy hands would tend and cherish them, till a sisterhood of happy flowers sprang up to beautify and gladden the lonely spot where they had fallen. others learned to heal the wounded insects, whose frail limbs a breeze could shatter, and who, were it not for fairy hands, would die ere half their happy summer life had gone. some learned how by pleasant dreams to cheer and comfort mortal hearts, by whispered words bf love to save from evil deeds those who had gone astray, to fill young hearts with gentle thoughts and pure affections, that no sin might mar the beauty of the human flower; while others, like mortal children, learned the fairy alphabet. thus the elves made loving friends by care and love, and no evil thing could harm them, for those they helped to cherish and protect ever watched to shield and save them. eva nodded to the gay little ones, as they peeped from among the leaves at the stranger, and then she listened to the fairy lessons. several tiny elves stood on a broad leaf while the teacher sat among the petals of a flower that bent beside them, and asked questions that none but fairies would care to know. "twinkle, if there lay nine seeds within a flower-cup and the wind bore five away, how many would the blossom have?" "four," replied the little one. "rosebud, if a cowslip opens three leaves in one day and four the next, how many rosy leaves will there be when the whole flower has bloomed?" "seven," sang the gay little elf. "harebell, if a silkworm spin one yard of fairy cloth in an hour, how many will it spin in a day?" "twelve," said the fairy child. "primrose, where ]ies violet island?" "in the lake of ripples." "lilla, you may bound rose land." "on the north by ferndale, south by sunny wave river, east by the hill of morning clouds, and west by the evening star." "now, little ones," said the teacher, "you may go to your painting, that our visitor may see how we repair the flowers that earthly hands have injured." then eva saw how, on large, white leaves, the fairies learned to imitate the lovely colors, and with tiny brushes to brighten the blush on the anemone's cheek, to deepen the blue of the violet's eye, and add new light to the golden cowslip. "you have stayed long enough," said the elves at length, "we have many things to show you. come now and see what is our dearest work." so eva said farewell to the child elves, and hastened with little rose-leaf to the gates. here she saw many bands of fairies, folded in dark mantles that mortals might not know them, who, with the child among them, flew away over hill and valley. some went to the cottages amid the hills, some to the sea-side to watch above the humble fisher folks; but little rose-leaf and many others went into the noisy city. eva wondered within herself what good the tiny elves could do in this great place; but she soon learned, for the fairy band went among the poor and friendless, bringing pleasant dreams to the sick and old, sweet, tender thoughts of love and gentleness to the young, strength to the weak, and patient cheerfulness to the poor and lonely. then the child wondered no longer, but deeper grew her love for the tender-hearted elves, who left their own happy home to cheer and comfort those who never knew what hands had clothed and fed them, what hearts had given of their own joy, and brought such happiness to theirs. long they stayed, and many a lesson little eva learned: but when she begged them to go back, they still led her on, saying, "our work is not yet done; shall we leave so many sad hearts when we may cheer them, so many dark homes that we may brighten? we must stay yet longer, little eva, and you may learn yet more." then they went into a dark and lonely room, and here they found a pale, sad-eyed child, who wept bitter tears over a faded flower. "ah," sighed the little one, "it was my only friend, and i cherished it with all my lone heart's love; 't was all that made my sad life happy; and it is gone." tenderly the child fastened the drooping stem, and placed it where the one faint ray of sunlight stole into the dreary room. "do you see," said the elves, "through this simple flower will we keep the child pure and stainless amid the sin and sorrow around her. the love of this shall lead her on through temptation and through grief, and she shall be a spirit of joy and consolation to the sinful and the sorrowing." and with busy love toiled the elves amid the withered leaves, and new strength was given to the flower; while, as day by day the friendless child watered the growing buds, deeper grew her love for the unseen friends who had given her one thing to cherish in her lonely home; sweet, gentle thoughts filled her heart as she bent above it, and the blossom's fragrant breath was to her a whispered voice of all fair and lovely things; and as the flower taught her, so she taught others. the loving elves brought her sweet dreams by night, and happy thoughts by day, and as she grew in childlike beauty, pure and patient amid poverty and sorrow, the sinful were rebuked, sorrowing hearts grew light, and the weak and selfish forgot their idle fears, when they saw her trustingly live on with none to aid or comfort her. the love she bore the tender flower kept her own heart innocent and bright, and the pure human flower was a lesson to those who looked upon it; and soon the gloomy house was bright with happy hearts, that learned of the gentle child to bear poverty and grief as she had done, to forgive those who brought care and wrong to them, and to seek for happiness in humble deeds of charity and love. "our work is done," whispered the elves, and with blessings on the two fair flowers, they flew away to other homes;--to a blind old man who dwelt alone with none to love him, till through long years of darkness and of silent sorrow the heart within had grown dim and cold. no sunlight could enter at the darkened eyes, and none were near to whisper gentle words, to cheer and comfort. thus he dwelt forgotten and alone, seeking to give no joy to others, possessing none himself. life was dark and sad till the untiring elves came to his dreary home, bringing sunlight and love. they whispered sweet words of comfort,--how, if the darkened eyes could find no light without, within there might be never-failing happiness; gentle feelings and sweet, loving thoughts could make the heart fair, if the gloomy, selfish sorrow were but cast away, and all would be bright and beautiful. they brought light-hearted children, who gathered round him, making the desolate home fair with their young faces, and his sad heart gay with their sweet, childish voices. the love they bore he could not cast away, sunlight stole in, the dark thoughts passed away, and the earth was a pleasant home to him. thus their little hands led him back to peace and happiness, flowers bloomed beside his door, and their fragrant breath brought happy thoughts of pleasant valleys and green hills; birds sang to him, and their sweet voices woke the music in his own soul, that never failed to calm and comfort. happy sounds were heard in his once lonely home, and bright faces gathered round his knee, and listened tenderly while he strove to tell them all the good that gentleness and love had done for him. still the elves watched near, and brighter grew the heart as kindly thoughts and tender feelings entered in, and made it their home; and when the old man fell asleep, above his grave little feet trod lightly, and loving hands laid fragrant flowers. then went the elves into the dreary prison-houses, where sad hearts pined in lonely sorrow for the joy and freedom they had lost. to these came the loving band with tender words, telling of the peace they yet might win by patient striving and repentant tears, thus waking in their bosoms all the holy feelings and sweet affections that had slept so long. they told pleasant tales, and sang their sweetest songs to cheer and gladden, while the dim cells grew bright with the sunlight, and fragrant with the flowers the loving elves had brought, and by their gentle teachings those sad, despairing hearts were filled with patient hope and earnest longing to win back their lost innocence and joy. thus to all who needed help or comfort went the faithful fairies; and when at length they turned towards fairy-land, many were the grateful, happy hearts they left behind. then through the summer sky, above the blossoming earth, they journeyed home, happier for the joy they had given, wiser for the good they had done. all fairy-land was dressed in flowers, and the soft wind went singing by, laden with their fragrant breath. sweet music sounded through the air, and troops of elves in their gayest robes hastened to the palace where the feast was spread. soon the bright hall was filled with smiling faces and fair forms, and little eva, as she stood beside the queen, thought she had never seen a sight so lovely. the many-colored shadows of the fairest flowers played on the pure white walls, and fountains sparkled in the sunlight, making music as the cool waves rose and fell, while to and fro, with waving wings and joyous voices, went the smiling elves, bearing fruit and honey, or fragrant garlands for each other's hair. long they feasted, gayly they sang, and eva, dancing merrily among them, longed to be an elf that she might dwell forever in so fair a home. at length the music ceased, and the queen said, as she laid her hand on little eva's shining hair:-"dear child, tomorrow we must bear you home, for, much as we long to keep you, it were wrong to bring such sorrow to your loving earthly friends; therefore we will guide you to the brook-side, and there say farewell till you come again to visit us. nay, do not weep, dear rose-leaf; you shall watch over little eva's flowers, and when she looks at them she will think of you. come now and lead her to the fairy garden, and show her what we think our fairest sight. weep no more, but strive to make her last hours with us happy as you can." with gentle caresses and most tender words the loving elves gathered about the child, and, with rose-leaf by her side, they led her through the palace, and along green, winding paths, till eva saw what seemed a wall of flowers rising before her, while the air was filled with the most fragrant odors, and the low, sweet music as of singing blossoms. "where have you brought me, and what mean these lovely sounds?" asked eva. "look here, and you shall see," said rose-leaf, as she bent aside the vines, "but listen silently or you cannot hear." then eva, looking through the drooping vines, beheld a garden filled with the loveliest flowers; fair as were all the blossoms she had seen in fairy-land, none were so beautiful as these. the rose glowed with a deeper crimson, the lily's soft leaves were more purely white, the crocus and humble cowslip shone like sunlight, and the violet was blue as the sky that smiled above it. "how beautiful they are," whispered eva, "but, dear rose-leaf, why do you keep them here, and why call you this your fairest sight?" "look again, and i will tell you," answered the fairy. eva looked, and saw from every flower a tiny form come forth to welcome the elves, who all, save rose-leaf, had flown above the wall, and were now scattering dew upon the flowers' bright leaves and talking gayly with the spirits, who gathered around them, and seemed full of joy that they had come. the child saw that each one wore the colors of the flower that was its home. delicate and graceful were the little forms, bright the silken hair that fell about each lovely face; and eva heard the low, sweet murmur of their silvery voices and the rustle of their wings. she gazed in silent wonder, forgetting she knew not who they were, till the fairy said,-"these are the spirits of the flowers, and this the fairy home where those whose hearts were pure and loving on the earth come to bloom in fadeless beauty here, when their earthly life is past. the humblest flower that blooms has a home with us, for outward beauty is a worthless thing if all be not fair and sweet within. do you see yonder lovely spirit singing with my sister moonlight? a clover blossom was her home, and she dwelt unknown, unloved; yet patient and content, bearing cheerfully the sorrows sent her. we watched and saw how fair and sweet the humble flower grew, and then gladly bore her here, to blossom with the lily and the rose. the flowers' lives are often short, for cruel hands destroy them; therefore is it our greatest joy to bring them hither, where no careless foot or wintry wind can harm them, where they bloom in quiet beauty, repaying our care by their love and sweetest perfumes." "i will never break another flower," cried eva; " but let me go to them, dear fairy; i would gladly know the lovely spirits, and ask forgiveness for the sorrow i have caused. may i not go in?" "nay, dear eva, you are a mortal child, and cannot enter here; but i will tell them of the kind little maiden who has learned to love them, and they will remember you when you are gone. come now, for you have seen enough, and we must be away." on a rosy morning cloud, surrounded by the loving elves, went eva through the sunny sky. the fresh wind bore them gently on, and soon they stood again beside the brook, whose waves danced brightly as if to welcome them. "now, ere we say farewell," said the queen, as they gathered nearer to the child, "tell me, dear eva, what among all our fairy gifts will make you happiest, and it shall be yours." "you good little fairies," said eva, folding them in her arms, for she was no longer the tiny child she had been in fairy-land, "you dear good little elves, what can i ask of you, who have done so much to make me happy, and taught me so many good and gentle lessons, the memory of which will never pass away? i can only ask of you the power to be as pure and gentle as yourselves, as tender and loving to the weak and sorrowing, as untiring in kindly deeds to all. grant me this gift, and you shall see that little eva has not forgotten what you have taught her." "the power shall be yours," said the elves, and laid their soft hands on her head; we will watch over you in dreams, and when you would have tidings of us, ask the flowers in your garden, and they will tell you all you would know. farewell. remember fairy-land and all your loving friends." they clung about her tenderly, and little rose-leaf placed a flower crown on her head, whispering softly, "when you would come to us again, stand by the brook-side and wave this in the air, and we will gladly take you to our home again. farewell, dear eva. think of your little rose-leaf when among the flowers." long eva watched their shining wings, and listened to the music of their voices as they flew singing home, and when at length the last little form had vanished among the clouds, she saw that all around her where the elves had been, the fairest flowers had sprung up, and the lonely brook-side was a blooming garden. thus she stood among the waving blossoms, with the fairy garland in her hair, and happy feelings in her heart, better and wiser for her visit to fairy-land. "now, star-twinkle, what have you to teach?" asked the queen. "nothing but a little song i heard the hare-bells singing," replied the fairy, and, taking her harp, sang, in a low, sweet voice:-the flower's lesson. there grew a fragrant rose-tree where the brook flows, with two little tender buds, and one full rose; when the sun went down to his bed in the west, the little buds leaned on the rose-mother's breast, while the bright eyed stars their long watch kept, and the flowers of the valley in their green cradles slept; then silently in odors they communed with each otber, the two little buds on the bosom of their mother. "o sister," said the little one, as she gazed at the sky, "i wish that the dew elves, as they wander lightly by, would bring me a star; for they never grow dim, and the father does not need them to burn round him. the shining drops of dew the elves bring each day and place in my bosom, so soon pass away; but a star would glitter brightly through the long summer hours, and i should be fairer than all my sister flowers. that were better far than the dew-drops that fall on the high and the low, and come alike to all. i would be fair and stately, with a bright star to shine and give a queenly air to this crimson robe of mine." and proudly she cried, "these fire-flies shall be my jewels, since the stars can never come to me." just then a tiny dew-drop that hung o'er the dell on the breast of the bud like a soft star fell; but impatiently she flung it away from her leaf, and it fell on her mother like a tear of grief, while she folded to her breast, with wilful pride, a glittering fire-fly that hung by her side. "heed," said the mother rose, "daughter mine, why shouldst thou seek for beauty not thine? the father hath made thee what thou now art; and what he most loveth is a sweet, pure heart. then why dost thou take with such discontent the loving gift which he to thee hath sent? for the cool fresh dew will render thee far more lovely and sweet than the brightest star; they were made for heaven, and can never come to shine like the fire-fly thou hast in that foolish breast of thine. o my foolish little bud, do listen to thy mother; care only for true beauty, and seek for no other. there will be grief and trouble in that wilful little heart; unfold thy leaves, my daughter, and let the fly depart." but the proud little bud would have her own will, and folded the fire-fly more closely still; till the struggling insect tore open the vest of purple and green, that covered her breast. when the sun came up, she saw with grief the blooming of her sister bud leaf by leaf. while she, once as fair and bright as the rest, hung her weary head down on her wounded breast. bright grew the sunshine, and the soft summer air was filled with the music of flowers singing there; but faint grew the little bud with thirst and pain, and longed for the cool dew; but now 't was in vain. then bitterly she wept for her folly and pride, as drooping she stood by her fair sister's side. then the rose mother leaned the weary little head on her bosom to rest, and tenderly she said: "thon hast learned, my little bud, that, whatever may betide, thou canst win thyself no joy by passion or by pride. the loving father sends the sunshine and the shower, that thou mayst become a perfect little flower;- the sweet dews to feed thee, the soft wind to cheer, and the earth as a pleasant home, while thou art dwelling here. then shouldst thou not be grateful for all this kindly care, and strive to keep thyself most innocent and fair? then seek, my little blossom, to win humility; be fair without, be pure within, and thou wilt happy be. so when the quiet autumn of thy fragrant life shall come, thou mayst pass away, to bloom in the flower spirits' home." then from the mother's breast, where it still lay hid, into the fading bud the dew-drop gently slid; stronger grew the little form, and happy tears fell, as the dew did its silent work, and the bud grew well, while the gentle rose leaned, with motherly pride, o'er the fair little ones that bloomed at her side. night came again, and the fire-flies flew; but the bud let them pass, and drank of the dew; while the soft stars shone, from the still summer heaven, on the happy little flower that had learned the lesson given. the music-loving elves clapped their hands, as star-twinkle ceased; and the queen placed a flower crown, with a gentle smile, upon the fairy's head, saying,-"the little bud's lesson shall teach us how sad a thing is pride, and that humility alone can bring true happiness to flower and fairy. you shall come next, zephyr." and the little fairy, who lay rocking to and fro upon a fluttering vine-leaf, thus began her story:-"as i lay resting in the bosom of a cowslip that bent above the brook, a little wind, tired of play, told me this tale of lily-bell and thistledown. once upon a time, two little fairies went out into the world, to seek their fortune. thistle-down was as gay and gallant a little elf as ever spread a wing. his purple mantle, and doublet of green, were embroidered with the brightest threads, and the plume in his cap came always from the wing of the gayest butterfly. but he was not loved in fairy-land, for, like the flower whose name and colors he wore, though fair to look upon, many were the little thorns of cruelty and selfishness that lay concealed by his gay mantle. many a gentle flower and harmless bird died by his hand, for he cared for himself alone, and whatever gave him pleasure must be his, though happy hearts were rendered sad, and peaceful homes destroyed. such was thistledown; but far different was his little friend, lily-bell. kind, compassionate, and loving, wherever her gentle face was seen, joy and gratitude were found; no suffering flower or insect, that did not love and bless the kindly fairy; and thus all elf-land looked upon her as a friend. nor did this make her vain and heedless of others; she humb]y dwelt among them, seeking to do all the good she might; and many a houseless bird and hungry insect that thistledown had harmed did she feed and shelter, and in return no evil could befall her, for so many friends were all about her, seeking to repay her tenderness and love by their watchful care. she would not now have left fairy-land, but to help and counsel her wild companion, thistledown, who, discontented with his quiet home, would seek his fortune in the great world, and she feared he would suffer from his own faults for others would not always be as gentle and forgiving as his kindred. so the kind little fairy left her home and friends to go with him; and thus, side by side, they flew beneath the bright summer sky. on and on, over hill and valley, they went, chasing the gay butterflies, or listening to the bees, as they flew from flower to flower like busy little housewives, singing as they worked; till at last they reached a pleasant garden, filled with flowers and green, old trees. "see," cried thistledown, "what a lovely home is here; let us rest among the cool leaves, and hear the flowers sing, for i am sadly tired and hungry." so into the quiet garden they went, and the winds gayly welcomed them, while the flowers nodded on their stems, offering their bright leaves for the elves to rest upon, and fresh, sweet honey to refresh them. "now, dear thistle, do not harm these friendly blossoms," said lily-bell; "see how kindly they spread their leaves, and offer us their dew. it would be very wrong in you to repay their care with cruelty and pain. you will be tender for my sake, dear thistle." then she went among the flowers, and they bent lovingly before her, and laid their soft leaves against her little face, that she might see how glad they were to welcome one so good and gentle, and kindly offered their dew and honey to the weary little fairy, who sat among their fragrant petals and looked smilingly on the happy blossoms, who, with their soft, low voices, sang her to sleep. while lily-bell lay dreaming among the rose-leaves, thistledown went wandering through the garden. first he robbed the bees of their honey, and rudely shook the little flowers, that he might get the dew they had gathered to bathe their buds in. then he chased the bright winged flies, and wounded them with the sharp thorn he carried for a sword; he broke the spider's shining webs, lamed the birds, and soon wherever he passed lay wounded insects and drooping flowers; while the winds carried the tidings over the garden, and bird and blossom looked upon him as an evil spirit, and fled away or closed their leaves, lest he should harm them. thus he went, leaving sorrow and pain behind him, till he came to the roses where lily-bell lay sleeping. there, weary of his cruel sport, he stayed to rest beneath a graceful rose-tree, where grew one blooming flower and a tiny bud. "why are you so slow in blooming, little one? you are too old to be rocked in your green cradle longer, and should be out among your sister flowers," said thistle, as he lay idly in the shadow of the tree. "my little bud is not yet strong enough to venture forth," replied the rose, as she bent fondly over it; "the sunlight and the rain would blight her tender form, were she to blossom now, but soon she will be fit to bear them; till then she is content to rest beside her mother, and to wait." "you silly flower," said thistledown, "see how quickly i will make you bloom! your waiting is all useless." and speaking thus, he pulled rudely apart the folded leaves, and laid them open to the sun and air; while the rose mother implored the cruel fairy to leave her little bud untouched. "it is my first, my only one," said she, "and i have watched over it with such care, hoping it would soon bloom beside me; and now you have destroyed it. how could you harm the little helpless one, that never did aught to injure you?" and while her tears fell like summer rain, she drooped in grief above the little bud, and sadly watched it fading in the sunlight; but thistledown, heedless of the sorrow he had given, spread his wings and flew away. soon the sky grew dark, and heavy drops began to fall. then thistle hastened to the lily, for her cup was deep, and the white leaves fell like curtains over the fragrant bed; he was a dainty little elf, and could not sleep among the clovers and bright buttercups. but when he asked the flower to unfold her leaves and take him in, she turned her pale, soft face away, and answered sadly, "i must shield my little drooping sisters whom you have harmed, and cannot let you in." then thistledown was very angry, and turned to find shelter among the stately roses; but they showed their sharp thorns, and, while their rosy faces glowed with anger, told him to begone, or they would repay him for the wrong he had done their gentle kindred. he would have stayed to harm them, but the rain fell fast, and he hurried away, saying, "the tulips will take me in, for i have praised their beauty, and they are vain and foolish flowers." but when he came, all wet and cold, praying for shelter among their thick leaves, they only laughed and said scornfully, "we know you, and will not let you in, for you are false and cruel, and will only bring us sorrow. you need not come to us for another mantle, when the rain has spoilt your fine one; and do not stay here, or we will do you harm." then they waved their broad leaves stormily, and scattered the heavy drops on his dripping garments. "now must i go to the humble daisies and blue violets," said thistle, "they will be glad to let in so fine a fairy, and i shall die in this cold wind and rain." so away he flew, as fast as his heavy wings would bear him, to the daisies; but they nodded their heads wisely, and closed their leaves yet closer, saying sharply,-"go away with yourself, and do not imagine we will open our leaves to you, and spoil our seeds by letting in the rain. it serves you rightly; to gain our love and confidence, and repay it by such cruelty! you will find no shelter here for one whose careless hand wounded our little friend violet, and broke the truest heart that ever beat in a flower's breast. we are very angry with you, wicked fairy; go away and hide yourself." "ah," cried the shivering elf, "where can i find shelter? i will go to the violets: they will forgive and take me in." but the daisies had spoken truly; the gentle little flower was dead, and her blue-eyed sisters were weeping bitterly over her faded leaves. "now i have no friends," sighed poor thistle-down, "and must die of cold. ah, if i had but minded lily-bell, i might now be dreaming beneath some flower's leaves." "others can forgive and love, beside lily-bell and violet," said a faint, sweet voice; "i have no little bud to shelter now, and you can enter here." it was the rose mother that spoke, and thistle saw how pale the bright leaves had grown, and how the slender stem was bowed. grieved, ashamed, and wondering at the flower's forgiving words, he laid his weary head on the bosom he had filled with sorrow, and the fragrant leaves were folded carefully about him. but he could find no rest. the rose strove to comfort him; but when she fancied he was sleeping, thoughts of her lost bud stole in, and the little heart beat so sadly where he lay, that no sleep came; while the bitter tears he had caused to flow fell more coldly on him than the rain without. then he heard the other flowers whispering among themselves of his cruelty, and the sorrow he had brought to their happy home; and many wondered how the rose, who had suffered most, could yet forgive and shelter him. "never could i forgive one who had robbed me of my children. i could bow my head and die, but could give no happiness to one who had taken all my own," said hyacinth, bending fondly over the little ones that blossomed by her side. "dear violet is not the only one who will leave us," sobbed little mignonette; "the rose mother will fade like her little bud, and we shall lose our gentlest teacher. her last lesson is forgiveness; let us show our love for her, and the gentle stranger lily-bell, by allowing no unkind word or thought of him who has brought us all this grief." the angry words were hushed, and through the long night nothing was heard but the dropping of the rain, and the low sighs of the rose. soon the sunlight came again, and with it lily-bell seeking for thistledown; but he was ashamed, and stole away. when the flowers told their sorrow to kind-hearted lily-be]l, she wept bitterly at the pain her friend had given, and with loving words strove to comfort those whom he had grieved; with gentle care she healed the wounded birds, and watched above the flowers he had harmed, bringing each day dew and sunlight to refresh and strengthen, till all were well again; and though sorrowing for their dead friends, still they forgave thistle for the sake of her who had done so much for them. thus, erelong, buds fairer than that she had lost lay on the rose mother's breast, and for all she had suffered she was well repaid by the love of lily-bell and her sister flowers. and when bird, bee, and blossom were strong and fair again, the gentle fairy said farewell, and flew away to seek her friend, leaving behind many grateful hearts, who owed their joy and life to her. meanwhile, over hill and dale went thistledown, and for a time was kind and gentle to every living thing. he missed sadly the little friend who had left her happy home to watch over him, but he was too proud to own his fault, and so went on, hoping she would find him. one day he fell asleep, and when he woke the sun had set, and the dew began to fall; the flower-cups were closed, and he had nowhere to go, till a friendly little bee, belated by his heavy load of honey, bid the weary fairy come with him. "help me to bear my honey home, and you can stay with us tonight," he kindly said. so thistle gladly went with him, and soon they came to a pleasant garden, where among the fairest flowers stood the hive, covered with vines and overhung with blossoming trees. glow-worms stood at the door to light them home, and as they passed in, the fairy thought how charming it must be to dwell in such a lovely place. the floor of wax was pure and white as marble, while the walls were formed of golden honey-comb, and the air was fragrant with the breath of flowers. "you cannot see our queen to-night," said the little bee, "but i will show you to a bed where you can rest." and he led the tired fairy to a little cell, where on a bed of flower-leaves he folded his wings and fell asleep. as the first ray of sunlight stole in, he was awakened by sweet music. it was the morning song of the bees. "awake! awake! for the earliest gleam of golden sunlight shines on the rippling waves, that brightly flow beneath the flowering vines. awake! awake! for the low, sweet chant of the wild-birds' morning hymn comes floating by on the fragrant air, through the forest cool and dim; then spread each wing, and work, and sing, through the long, bright sunny hours; o'er the pleasant earth we journey forth, for a day among the flowers. "awake! awake! for the summer wind hath bidden the blossoms unclose, hath opened the violet's soft blue eye, and wakened the sleeping rose. and lightly they wave on their slender stems fragrant, and fresh, and fair, waiting for us, as we singing come to gather our honey-dew there. then spread each wing, and work, and sing, through the long, bright sunny hours; o'er the pleasant earth we journey forth, for a day among the flowers!" soon his friend came to bid him rise, as the queen desired to speak with him. so, with his purple mantle thrown gracefully over his shoulder, and his little cap held respectfully in his hand, he followed nimble-wing to the great hall, where the queen was being served by her little pages. some bore her fresh dew and honey, some fanned her with fragrant flower-leaves, while others scattered the sweetest perfumes on the air. "little fairy," said the queen, "you are welcome to my palace; and we will gladly have you stay with us, if you will obey our laws. we do not spend the pleasant summer days in idleness and pleasure, but each one labors for the happiness and good of all. if our home is beautiful, we have made it so by industry; and here, as one large, loving family, we dwell; no sorrow, care, or discord can enter in, while all obey the voice of her who seeks to be a wise and gentle queen to them. if you will stay with us, we will teach you many things. order, patience, industry, who can teach so well as they who are the emblems of these virtues? "our laws are few and simple. you must each day gather your share of honey, see that your cell is sweet and fresh, as you yourself must be; rise with the sun, and with him to sleep. you must harm no flower in doing your work, nor take more than your just share of honey; for they so kindly give us food, it were most cruel to treat them with aught save gentleness and gratitude. now will you stay with us, and learn what even mortals seek to know, that labor brings true happiness?" and thistle said he would stay and dwell with them; for he was tired of wandering alone, and thought he might live here till lily-bell should come, or till he was weary of the kind-hearted bees. then they took away his gay garments, and dressed him like themselves, in the black velvet cloak with golden bands across his breast. "now come with us," they said. so forth into the green fields they went, and made their breakfast among the dewy flowers; and then till the sun set they flew from bud to blossom, singing as they went; and thistle for a while was happier than when breaking flowers and harming gentle birds. but he soon grew tired of working all day in the sun, and longed to be free again. he could find no pleasure with the industrious bees, and sighed to be away with his idle friends, the butterflies; so while the others worked he slept or played, and then, in haste to get his share, he tore the flowers, and took all they had saved for their own food. nor was this all; he told such pleasant tales of the life he led before he came to live with them, that many grew unhappy and discontented, and they who had before wished no greater joy than the love and praise of their kind queen, now disobeyed and blamed her for all she had done for them. long she bore with their unkind words and deeds; and when at length she found it was the ungrateful fairy who had wrought this trouble in her quiet kingdom, she strove, with sweet, forgiving words, to show him all the wrong he had done; but he would not listen, and still went on destroying the happiness of those who had done so much for him. then, when she saw that no kindness could touch his heart, she said:-"thistledown, we took you in, a friendless stranger, fed and clothed you, and made our home as pleasant to you as we could; and in return for all our care, you have brought discontent and trouble to my subjects, grief and care to me. i cannot let my peaceful kingdom be disturbed by you; therefore go and seek another home. you may find other friends, but none will love you more than we, had you been worthy of it; so farewell." and the doors of the once happy home he had disturbed were closed behind him. then he was very angry, and determined to bring some great sorrow on the good queen. so he sought out the idle, wilful bees, whom he had first made discontented, bidding them follow him, and win the honey the queen had stored up for the winter. "let us feast and make merry in the pleasant summer-time," said thistle; "winter is far off, why should we waste these lovely days, toiling to lay up the food we might enjoy now. come, we will take what we have made, and think no more of what the queen has said." so while the industrious bees were out among the flowers, he led the drones to the hive, and took possession of the honey, destroying and laying waste the home of the kind bees; then, fearing that in their grief and anger they might harm him, thistle flew away to seek new friends. after many wanderings, he came at length to a great forest, and here beside a still lake he stayed to rest. delicate wood-flowers grew near him in the deep green moss, with drooping heads, as if they listened to the soft wind sing-ing among the pines. bright-eyed birds peeped at him from their nests, and many-colored insects danced above the cool, still lake. "this is a pleasant place," said thistle; "it shall be my home for a while. come hither, blue dragon-fly, i would gladly make a friend of you, for i am all alone." the dragon-fly folded his shining wings beside the elf, listened to the tale he told, promised to befriend the lonely one, and strove to make the forest a happy home to him. so here dwelt thistle, and many kind friends gathered round him, for he spoke gently to them, and they knew nothing of the cruel deeds he had done; and for a while he was happy and content. but at length he grew weary of the gentle birds, and wild-flowers, and sought new pleasure in destroying the beauty he was tired of; and soon the friends who had so kindly welcomed him looked upon him as an evil spirit, and shrunk away as he approached. at length his friend the dragon-fly besought him to leave the quiet home he had disturbed. then thistle was very angry, and while the dragon-fly was sleeping among the flowers that hung over the lake, he led an ugly spider to the spot, and bade him weave his nets about the sleeping insect, and bind him fast. the cruel spider gladly obeyed the ungrateful fairy; and soon the poor fly could move neither leg nor wing. then thistle flew away through the wood, leaving sorrow and trouble behind him. he had not journeyed far before he grew weary, and lay down to rest. long he slept, and when he awoke, and tried to rise, his hands and wings were bound; while beside him stood two strange little figures, with dark faces and garments, that rustled like withered leaves; who cried to him, as he struggled to get free,-"lie still, you naughty fairy, you are in the brownies' power, and shall be well punished for your cruelty ere we let you go." so poor thistle lay sorrowfully, wondering what would come of it, and wishing lily-bell would come to help and comfort him; but he had left her, and she could not help him now. soon a troop of brownies came rustling through the air, and gathered round him, while one who wore an acorn-cup on his head, and was their king, said, as he stood beside the trembling fairy,-"you have done many cruel things, and caused much sorrow to happy hearts; now you are in my power, and i shall keep you prisoner till you have repented. you cannot dwell on the earth without harming the fair things given you to enjoy, so you shall live alone in solitude and darkness, till you have learned to find happiness in gentle deeds, and forget yourself in giving joy to others. when you have learned this, i will set you free." then the brownies bore him to a high, dark rock, and, entering a little door, led him to a small cell, dimly lighted by a crevice through which came a single gleam of sunlight; and there, through long, long days, poor thistle sat alone, and gazed with wistful eyes at the little opening, longing to be out on the green earth. no one came to him, but the silent brownies who brought his daily food; and with bitter tears he wept for lily-bell, mourning his cruelty and selfishness, seeking to do some kindly deed that might atone for his wrong-doing. a little vine that grew outside his prison rock came creeping up, and looked in through the crevice, as if to cheer the lonely fairy, who welcomed it most gladly, and daily sprinkled its soft leaves with his small share of water, that the little vine might live, even if it darkened more and more his dim cell. the watchful brownies saw this kind deed, and brought him fresh flowers, and many things, which thistle gratefully received, though he never knew it was his kindness to the vine that gained for him these pleasures. thus did poor thistle strive to be more gentle and unselfish, and grew daily happier and better. now while thistledown was a captive in the lonely cell, lily-bell was seeking him far and wide, and sadly traced him by the sorrowing hearts he had left behind. she healed the drooping flowers, cheered the queen bee's grief, brought back her discontented subjects, restored the home to peace and order, and left them blessing her. thus she journeyed on, till she reached the forest where thistledown had lost his freedom. she unbound the starving dragon-fly, and tended the wounded birds; but though all learned to love her, none could tell where the brownies had borne her friend, till a little wind came whispering by, and told her that a sweet voice had been heard, singing fairy songs, deep in a moss-grown rock. then lily-bell went seeking through the forest, listening for the voice. long she looked and listened in vain; when one day, as she was wandering through a lonely dell, she heard a faint, low sound of music, and soon a distant voice mournfully singing,- "bright shines the summer sun, soft is the summer air; gayly the wood-birds sing, flowers are blooming fair. "but, deep in the dark, cold rock, sadly i dwell, longing for thee, dear friend, lily-bell! lily-bell!" "thistle, dear thistle, where are you?" joyfully cried lily-bell, as she flew from rock to rock. but the voice was still, and she would have looked in vain, had she not seen a little vine, whose green leaves fluttering to and fro seemed beckoning her to come; and as she stood among its flowers she sang,- "through sunlight and summer air i have sought for thee long, guided by birds and flowers, and now by thy song. "thistledown! thistledown! o'er hill and dell hither to comfort thee comes lily-bell." then from the vine-leaves two little arms were stretched out to her, and thistledown was found. so lily-bell made her home in the shadow of the vine, and brought such joy to thistle, that his lonely cell seemed pleasanter to him than all the world beside; and he grew daily more like his gentle friend. but it did not last long, for one day she did not come. he watched and waited long, for the little face that used to peep smiling in through the vine-leaves. he called and beckoned through the narrow opening, but no lily-bell answered; and he wept sadly as he thought of all she had done for him, and that now he could not go to seek and help her, for he had lost his freedom by his own cruel and wicked deeds. at last he besought the silent brownie earnestly to tell him whither she had gone. "o let me go to her," prayed thistle; "if she is in sorrow, i will comfort her, and show my gratitude for all she has done for me: dear brownie, set me free, and when she is found i will come and be your prisoner again. i will bear and suffer any danger for her sake." "lily-bell is safe," replied the brownie; "come, you shall learn the trial that awaits you." then he led the wondering fairy from his prison, to a group of tall, drooping ferns, beneath whose shade a large white lily had been placed, forming a little tent, within which, on a couch of thick green moss, lay lily-bell in a deep sleep; the sunlight stole softly in, and all was cool and still. "you cannot wake her," said the brownie, as thistle folded his arms tenderly about her. "it is a magic slumber, and she will not wake till you shall bring hither gifts from the earth, air, and water spirits. 't is a long and weary task, for you have made no friends to help you, and will have to seek for them alone. this is the trial we shall give you; and if your love for lily-bell be strong enough to keep you from all cruelty and selfishness, and make you kind and loving as you should be, she will awake to welcome you, and love you still more fondly than before." then thistle, with a last look on the little friend he loved so well, set forth alone to his long task. the home of the earth spirits was the first to find, and no one would tell him where to look. so far and wide he wandered, through gloomy forests and among lonely hills, with none to cheer him when sad and weary, none to guide him on his way. on he went, thinking of lily-bell, and for her sake bearing all; for in his quiet prison many gentle feelings and kindly thoughts had sprung up in his heart, and he now strove to be friends with all, and win for himself the love and confidence of those whom once he sought to harm and cruelly destroy. but few believed him; for they remembered his false promises and evil deeds, and would not trust him now; so poor thistle found few to love or care for him. long he wandered, and carefully he sought; but could not find the earth spirits' home. and when at length he reached the pleasant garden where he and lily-bell first parted, he said within himself,-"here i will stay awhile, and try to win by kindly deeds the flowers' forgiveness for the pain and sorrow i brought them long ago; and they may learn to love and trust me. so, even if i never find the spirits, i shall be worthier lily-bell's affection if i strive to atone for the wrong i have done." then he went among the flowers, but they closed their leaves, and shrank away, trembling with fear; while the birds fled to hide among the leaves as he passed. this grieved poor thistle, and he longed to tell them how changed he had become; but they would not listen. so he tried to show, by quiet deeds of kindness, that he meant no harm to them; and soon the kind-hearted birds pitied the lonely fairy, and when he came near sang cheering songs, and dropped ripe berries in his path, for he no longer broke their eggs, or hurt their little ones. and when the flowers saw this, and found the once cruel elf now watering and tending little buds, feeding hungry insects, and helping the busy ants to bear their heavy loads, they shared the pity of the birds, and longed to trust him; but they dared not yet. he came one day, while wandering through the garden, to the little rose he had once harmed so sadly. many buds now bloomed beside her, and her soft face glowed with motherly pride, as she bent fondly over them. but when thistle came, he saw with sorrow how she bade them close their green curtains, and conceal themselves beneath the leaves, for there was danger near; and, drooping still more closely over them, she seemed to wait with trembling fear the cruel fairy's coming. but no rude hand tore her little ones away, no unkind words were spoken; but a soft shower of dew fell lightly on them, and thistle, bending tenderly above them, said,-"dear flower, forgive the sorrow i once brought you, and trust me now for lily-bell's sake. her gentleness has changed my cruelty to kindness, and i would gladly repay all for the harm i have done; but none will love and trust me now." then the little rose looked up, and while the dew-drops shone like happy tears upon her leaves, she said,-"i will love and trust you, thistle, for you are indeed much changed. make your home among us, and my sister flowers will soon learn to love you as you deserve. not for sweet lily-bell's sake, but for your own, will i become your friend; for you are kind and gentle now, and worthy of our love. look up, my little ones, there is no danger near; look up, and welcome thistle to our home." then the little buds raised their rosy faces, danced again upon their stems, and nodded kindly at thistle, who smiled on them through happy tears, and kissed the sweet, forgiving rose, who loved and trusted him when most forlorn and friendless. but the other flowers wondered among themselves, and hyacinth said,-"if rose-leaf is his friend, surely we may be; yet still i fear he may soon grow weary of this gentleness, and be again the wicked fairy he once was, and we shall suffer for our kindness to him now." "ah, do not doubt him!" cried warm-hearted little mignonette; "surely some good spirit has changed the wicked thistle into this good little elf. see how tenderly he lifts aside the leaves that overshadow pale harebell, and listen now how softly he sings as he rocks little eglantine to sleep. he has done many friendly things, though none save rose-leaf has been kind to him, and he is very sad. last night when i awoke to draw my curtains closer, he sat weeping in the moonlight, so bitterly, i longed to speak a kindly word to him. dear sisters, let us trust him." and they all said little mignonette was right; and, spreading wide their leaves, they bade him come, and drink their dew, and lie among the fragrant petals, striving to cheer his sorrow. thistle told them all, and, after much whispering together, they said,-"yes, we will help you to find the earth spirits, for you are striving to be good, and for love of lily-bell we will do much for you." so they called a little bright-eyed mole, and said, "downy-back, we have given you a pleasant home among our roots, and you are a grateful little friend; so will you guide dear thistle to the earth spirits' home?" downy-back said, "yes," and thistle, thanking the kindly flowers, followed his little guide, through long, dark galleries, deeper and deeper into the ground; while a glow-worm flew before to light the way. on they went, and after a while, reached a path lit up by bright jewels hung upon the walls. here downy-back, and glimmer, the glow-worm, left him, saying,-"we can lead you no farther; you must now go on alone, and the music of the spirits will guide you to their home." then they went quickly up the winding path, and thistle, guided by the sweet music, went on alone. he soon reached a lovely spot, whose golden halls were bright with jewels, which sparkled brightly, and threw many-colored shadows on the shining garments of the little spirits, who danced below to the melody of soft, silvery bells. long thistle stood watching the brilliant forms that flashed and sparkled round him; but he missed the flowers and the sunlight, and rejoiced that he was not an earth spirit. at last they spied him out, and, gladly welcoming him, bade him join in their dance. but thistledown was too sad for that, and when he told them all his story they no longer urged, but sought to comfort him; and one whom they called little sparkle (for her crown and robe shone with the brightest diamonds), said: "you will have to work for us, ere you can win a gift to show the brownies; do you see those golden bells that make such music, as we wave them to and fro? we worked long and hard ere they were won, and you can win one of those, if you will do the task we give you." and thistle said, "no task will be too hard for me to do for dear lily-bell's sake." then they led him to a strange, dark place, lit up with torches; where troops of spirits flew busily to and fro, among damp rocks, and through dark galleries that led far down into the earth. "what do they here?" asked thistle. "i will tell," replied little sparkle, "for i once worked here myself. some of them watch above the flower-roots, and keep them fresh and strong; others gather the clear drops that trickle from the damp rocks, and form a little spring, which, growing ever larger, rises to the light above, and gushes forth in some green field or lonely forest; where the wild-birds come to drink, and wood-flowers spread their thirsty leaves above the clear, cool waves, as they go dancing away, carrying joy and freshness wherever they go. others shape the bright jewels into lovely forms, and make the good-luck pennies which we give to mortals whom we love. and here you must toil till the golden flower is won." then thistle went among the spirits, and joined in their tasks; he tended the flower-roots, gathered the water-drops, and formed the good-luck pennies. long and hard he worked, and was often sad and weary, often tempted by unkind and selfish thoughts; but he thought of lily-bell, and strove to be kind and loving as she had been; and soon the spirits learned to love the patient fairy, who had left his home to toil among them for the sake of his gentle friend. at length came little sparkle to him, saying, "you have done enough; come now, and dance and feast with us, for the golden flower is won." but thistle could not stay, for half his task was not yet done; and he longed for sunlight and lily-bell. so, taking a kind farewell, he hastened through the torch-lit path up to the light again; and, spreading his wings, flew over hill and dale till he reached the forest where lily-bell lay sleeping. it was early morning, and the rosy light shone brightly through the lily-leaves upon her, as thistle entered, and laid his first gift at the brownie king's feet. "you have done well," said he, "we hear good tidings of you from bird and flower, and you are truly seeking to repair the evil you have done. take now one look at your little friend, and then go forth to seek from the air spirits your second gift." then thistle said farewell again to lily-bell, and flew far and wide among the clouds, seeking the air spirits; but though he wandered till his weary wings could bear him no longer, it was in vain. so, faint and sad, he lay down to rest on a broad vine-leaf, that fluttered gently in the wind; and as he lay, he saw beneath him the home of the kind bees whom he had so disturbed, and lily-bell had helped and comforted. "i will seek to win their pardon, and show them that i am no longer the cruel fairy who so harmed them," thought thistle, "and when they become again my friends, i will ask their help to find the air spirits; and if i deserve it, they will gladly aid me on my way." so he flew down into the field below, and hastened busily from flower to flower, till he had filled a tiny blue-bell with sweet, fresh honey. then he stole softly to the hive, and, placing it near the door, concealed himself to watch. soon his friend nimble-wing came flying home, and when he spied the little cup, he hummed with joy, and called his companions around him. "surely, some good elf has placed it here for us," said they; "let us bear it to our queen; it is so fresh and fragrant it will be a fit gift for her"; and they joyfully took it in, little dreaming who had placed it there. so each day thistle filled a flower-cup, and laid it at the door; and each day the bees wondered more and more, for many strange things happened. the field-flowers told of the good spirit who watched above them, and the birds sang of the same kind little elf bringing soft moss for their nests, and food for their hungry young ones; while all around the hive had grown fairer since the fairy came. but the bees never saw him, for he feared he had not yet done enough to win their forgiveness and friendship; so he lived alone among the vines, daily bringing them honey, and doing some kindly action. at length, as he lay sleeping in a flower-bell, a little bee came wandering by, and knew him for the wicked thistle; so he called his friends, and, as they flew murmuring around him, he awoke. "what shall we do to you, naughty elf?" said they. "you are in our power, and we will sting you if you are not still." "let us close the flower-leaves around him and leave him here to starve," cried one, who had not yet forgotten all the sorrow thistle had caused them long ago. "no, no, that were very cruel, dear buzz," said little hum; "let us take him to our queen, and she will tell us how to show our anger for the wicked deeds he did. see how bitterly he weeps; be kind to him, he will not harm us more. "you good little hum!" cried a kind-hearted robin who had hopped near to listen to the bees. "dear friends, do you not know that this is the good fairy who has dwelt so quietly among us, watching over bird and blossom, giving joy to all he helps? it is he who brings the honey-cup each day to you, and then goes silently away, that you may never know who works so faithfully for you. be kind to him, for if he has done wrong, he has repented of it, as you may see." "can this be naughty thistle?" said nimble-wing. "yes, it is i," said thistle, "but no longer cruel and unkind. i have tried to win your love by patient industry. ah, trust me now, and you shall see i am not naughty thistle any more." then the wondering bees led him to their queen, and when he had told his tale, and begged their forgiveness, it was gladly given; and all strove to show him that he was loved and trusted. then he asked if they could tell him where the air spirits dwelt, for he must not forget dear lily-bell; and to his great joy the queen said, "yes," and bade little hum guide thistle to cloud-land. little hum joyfully obeyed; and thistle followed him, as he flew higher and higher among the soft clouds, till in the distance they saw a radiant light. "there is their home, and i must leave you now, dear thistle," said the little bee; and, bidding him farewell, he flew singing back; while thistle, following the light, soon found himself in the air spirits' home. the sky was gold and purple like an autumn sunset, and long walls of brilliant clouds lay round him. a rosy light shone through the silver mist, on gleaming columns and the rainbow roof; soft, fragrant winds went whispering by, and airy little forms were flitting to and fro. long thistle wondered at the beauty round him; and then he went among the shining spirits, told his tale, and asked a gift. but they answered like the earth spirits. "you must serve us first, and then we will gladly give you a robe of sunlight like our own " and then they told him how they wafted flower-seeds over the earth, to beautify and brighten lonely spots; how they watched above the blossoms by day, and scattered dews at night, brought sunlight into darkened places, and soft winds to refresh and cheer. "these are the things we do," said they, " and you must aid us for a time." and thistle gladly went with the lovely spirits; by day he joined the sunlight and the breeze in their silent work; by night, with star-light and her sister spirits, he flew over the moon-lit earth, dropping cool dew upon the folded flowers, and bringing happy dreams to sleeping mortals. many a kind deed was done, many a gentle word was spoken; and each day lighter grew his heart, and stronger his power of giving joy to others. at length star-light bade him work no more, and gladly gave him the gift he had won. then his second task was done, and he flew gayly back to the green earth and slumbering lily-bell. the silvery moonlight shone upon her, as he came to give his second gift; and the brownie spoke more kindly than before. "one more trial, thistle, and she will awake. go bravely forth and win your last and hardest gift." then with a light heart thistle journeyed away to the brooks and rivers, seeking the water spirits. but he looked in vain; till, wandering through the forest where the brownies took him captive, he stopped beside the quiet lake. as he stood here he heard a sound of pain, and, looking in the tall grass at his side, he saw the dragon-fly whose kindness he once repayed by pain and sorrow, and who now lay suffering and alone. thistle bent tenderly beside him, saying, "dear flutter, do not fear me. i will gladly ease your pain, if you will let me; i am your friend, and long to show you how i grieve for all the wrong i did you, when you were so kind to me. forgive, and let me help and comfort you." then he bound up the broken wing, and spoke so tenderly that flutter doubted him no longer, and was his friend again. day by day did thistle watch beside him, making little beds of cool, fresh moss for him to rest upon, fanning him when he slept, and singing sweet songs to cheer him when awake. and often when poor flutter longed to be dancing once again over the blue waves, the fairy bore him in his arms to the lake, and on a broad leaf, with a green flag for a sail, they floated on the still water; while the dragon-fly's companions flew about them, playing merry games. at length the broken wing was well, and thistle said he must again seek the water spirits. "i can tell you where to find them," said flutter; "you must follow yonder little brook, and it will lead you to the sea, where the spirits dwell. i would gladly do more for you, dear thistle, but i cannot, for they live deep beneath the waves. you will find some kind friend to aid you on your way; and so farewell." thistle followed the little brook, as it flowed through field and valley, growing ever larger, till it reached the sea. here the wind blew freshly, and the great waves rolled and broke at thistle's feet, as he stood upon the shore, watching the billows dancing and sparkling in the sun. "how shall i find the spirits in this great sea, with none to help or guide me? yet it is my last task, and for lily-bell's sake i must not fear or falter now," said thistle. so he flew hither and thither over the sea, looking through the waves. soon he saw, far below, the branches of the coral tree. "they must be here," thought he, and, folding his wings, he plunged into the deep, cold sea. but he saw only fearful monsters and dark shapes that gathered round him; and, trembling with fear, he struggled up again. the great waves tossed him to and fro, and cast him bruised and faint upon the shore. here he lay weeping bitterly, till a voice beside him said, "poor little elf, what has befallen you? these rough waves are not fit playmates for so delicate a thing as you. tell me your sorrow, and i will comfort you." and thistle, looking up, saw a white sea-bird at his side, who tried with friendly words to cheer him. so he told all his wanderings, and how he sought the sea spirits. "surely, if bee and blossom do their part to help you, birds should aid you too," said the sea-bird. "i will call my friend, the nautilus, and he will bear you safely to the coral palace where the spirits dwell." so, spreading his great wings, he flew away, and soon thistle saw a little boat come dancing over the waves, and wait beside the shore for him. in he sprang. nautilus raised his little sail to the wind, and the light boat glided swiftly over the blue sea. at last thistle cried, "i see lovely arches far below; let me go, it is the spirits' home." "nay, close your eyes, and trust to me. i will bear you safely down," said nautilus. so thistle closed his eyes, and listened to the murmur of the sea, as they sank slowly through the waves. the soft sound lulled him to sleep, and when he awoke the boat was gone, and he stood among the water spirits, in their strange and lovely home. lofty arches of snow-white coral bent above him, and the walls of brightly tinted shells were wreathed with lovely sea-flowers, and the sunlight shining on the waves cast silvery shadows on the ground, where sparkling stones glowed in the sand. a cool, fresh wind swept through the waving garlands of bright sea-moss, and the distant murmur of dashing waves came softly on the air. soon troops of graceful spirits flitted by, and when they found the wondering elf, they gathered round him, bringing pearl-shells heaped with precious stones, and all the rare, strange gifts that lie beneath the sea. but thistle wished for none of these, and when his tale was told, the kindly spirits pitied him; and little pearl sighed, as she told him of the long and weary task he must perform, ere he could win a crown of snow-white pearls like those they wore. but thistle had gained strength and courage in his wanderings, and did not falter now, when they led bim to a place among the coral-workers, and told him he must labor here, till the spreading branches reached the light and air, through the waves that danced above. with a patient hope that he might yet be worthy of lily-bell, the fairy left the lovely spirits and their pleasant home, to toil among the coral-builders, where all was strange and dim. long, long, he worked; but still the waves rolled far above them, and his task was not yet done; and many bitter tears poor thistle shed, and sadly he pined for air and sunlight, the voice of birds, and breath of flowers. often, folded in the magic garments which the spirits gave him, that he might pass unharmed among the fearful creatures dwelling there, he rose to the surface of the sea, and, gliding through the waves, gazed longingly upon the hills, now looking blue and dim so far away, or watched the flocks of summer birds, journeying to a warmer land; and they brought sad memories of green old forests, and sunny fields, to the lonely little fairy floating on the great, wild sea. day after day went by, and slowly thistle's task drew towards an end. busily toiled the coral-workers, but more busily toiled he; insect and spirit daily wondered more and more, at the industry and patience of the silent little elf, who had a friendly word for all, though he never joined them in their sport. higher and higher grew the coral-boughs, and lighter grew the fairy's heart, while thoughts of dear lily-bell cheered him on, as day by day he steadily toiled; and when at length the sun shone on his work, and it was done, he stayed but to take the garland he had won, and to thank the good spirits for their love and care. then up through the cold, blue waves he swiftly glided, and, shaking the bright drops from his wings, soared singing up to the sunny sky. on through the fragrant air went thistle, looking with glad face upon the fair, fresh earth below, where flowers looked smiling up, and green trees bowed their graceful heads as if to welcome him. soon the forest where lily-bell lay sleeping rose before him, and as he passed along the cool, dim wood-paths, never had they seemed so fair. but when he came where his little friend had slept, it was no longer the dark, silent spot where he last saw her. garlands hung from every tree, and the fairest flowers filled the air with their sweet breath. bird's gay voices echoed far and wide, and the little brook went singing by, beneath the arching ferns that bent above it; green leaves rustled in the summer wind, and the air was full of music. but the fairest sight was lily-bell, as she lay on the couch of velvet moss that fairy hands had spread. the golden flower lay beside her, and the glittering robe was folded round her little form. the warmest sunlight fell upon her, and the softest breezes lifted her shining hair. happy tears fell fast, as thistle folded his arms around her, crying, "o lily-bell, dear lily-bell, awake! i have been true to you, and now my task is done." then, with a smile, lily-bell awoke, and looked with wondering eyes upon the beauty that had risen round her. "dear thistle, what mean these fair things, and why are we in this lovely place?" "listen, lily-bell," said the brownie king, as he appeared beside her. and then he told all that thistle had done to show his love for her; how he had wandered far and wide to seek the fairy gifts, and toiled long and hard to win them; how he had been loving, true, and tender, when most lonely and forsaken. "bird, bee, and blossom have forgiven him, and none is more loved and trusted now by all, than the once cruel thistle," said the king, as he bent down to the happy elf, who bowed low before him. "you have learned the beauty of a gentle, kindly heart, dear thistle; and you are now worthy to become the friend of her for whom you have done so much. place the crown upon her head, for she is queen of all the forest fairies now." and as the crown shone on the head that lily-bell bent down on thistle's breast, the forest seemed alive with little forms, who sprang from flower and leaf, and gathered round her, bringing gifts for their new queen. "if i am queen, then you are king, dear thistle," said the fairy. "take the crown, and i will have a wreath of flowers. you have toiled and suffered for my sake, and you alone should rule over these little elves whose love you have won." "keep your crown, lily-bell, for yonder come the spirits with their gifts to thistle," said the brownie. and, as he pointed with his wand, out from among the mossy roots of an old tree came trooping the earth spirits, their flower-bells ringing softly as they came, and their jewelled garments glittering in the sun. on to where thistledown stood beneath the shadow of the flowers, with lily-bell beside him, went the spirits; and then forth sprang little sparkle, waving a golden flower, whose silvery music filled the air. "dear thistle," said the shining spirit, "what you toiled so faithfully to win for another, let us offer now as a token of our love for you." as she ceased, down through the air came floating bands of lovely air spirits, bringing a shining robe, and they too told their love for the gentle fairy who had dwelt with them. then softly on the breeze came distant music, growing ever nearer, till over the rippling waves came the singing water spirits, in their boats of many-colored shells; and as they placed their glittering crown on thistle's head, loud rang the flowers, and joyously sang the birds, while all the forest fairies cried, with silvery voices, "lily-bell and thistledown! long live our king and queen!" "have you a tale for us too, dear violet-eye?" said the queen, as zephyr ceased. the little elf thus named looked from among the flower-leaves where she sat, and with a smile replied, "as i was weaving garlands in the field, i heard a primrose tell this tale to her friend golden-rod." little bud. in a great forest, high up among the green boughs, lived bird brown-breast, and his bright-eyed little mate. they were now very happy; their home was done, the four blue eggs lay in the soft nest, and the little wife sat still and patient on them, while the husband sang, and told her charming tales, and brought her sweet berries and little worms. things went smoothly on, till one day she found in the nest a little white egg, with a golden band about it. "my friend," cried she, "come and see! where can this fine egg have come from? my four are here, and this also; what think you of it?" the husband shook his head gravely, and said, "be not alarmed, my love; it is doubtless some good fairy who has given us this, and we shall find some gift within; do not let us touch it, but do you sit carefully upon it, and we shall see in time what has been sent us." so they said nothing about it, and soon their home had four little chirping children; and then the white egg opened, and, behold, a little maiden lay singing within. then how amazed were they, and how they welcomed her, as she lay warm beneath the mother's wing, and how the young birds did love her. great joy was in the forest, and proud were the parents of their family, and still more of the little one who had come to them; while all the neighbors flocked in, to see dame brown-breast's little child. and the tiny maiden talked to them, and sang so merrily, that they could have listened for ever. soon she was the joy of the whole forest, dancing from tree to tree, making every nest her home, and none were ever so welcome as little bud; and so they lived right merrily in the green old forest. the father now had much to do to supply his family with food, and choice morsels did he bring little bud. the wild fruits were her food, the fresh dew in the flower-cups her drink, while the green leaves served her for little robes; and thus she found garments in the flowers of the field, and a happy home with mother brown-breast; and all in the wood, from the stately trees to the little mosses in the turf, were friends to the merry child. and each day she taught the young birds sweet songs, and as their gay music rang through the old forest, the stern, dark pines ceased their solemn waving, that they might hear the soft sounds stealing through the dim wood-paths, and mortal children came to listen, saying softly, "hear the flowers sing, and touch them not, for the fairies are here." then came a band of sad little elves to bud, praying that they might hear the sweet music; and when she took them by the hand, and spoke gently to them, they wept and said sadly, when she asked them whence they came,-"we dwelt once in fairy-land, and o how happy were we then! but alas! we were not worthy of so fair a home, and were sent forth into the cold world. look at our robes, they are like the withered leaves; our wings are dim, our crowns are gone, and we lead sad, lonely lives in this dark forest. let us stay with you; your gay music sounds like fairy songs, and you have such a friendly way with you, and speak so gently to us. it is good to be near one so lovely and so kind; and you can tell us how we may again become fair and innocent. say we may stay with you, kind little maiden." and bud said, "yes," and they stayed; but her kind little heart was grieved that they wept so sadly, and all she could say could not make them happy; till at last she said,-"do not weep, and i will go to queen dew-drop, and beseech her to let you come back. i will tell her that you are repentant, and will do anything to gain her love again; that you are sad, and long to be forgiven. this will i say, and more, and trust she will grant my prayer." "she will not say no to you, dear bud," said the poor little fairies; "she will love you as we do, and if we can but come again to our lost home, we cannot give you thanks enough. go, bud, and if there be power in fairy gifts, you shall be as happy as our hearts' best love can make you." the tidings of bud's departure flew through the forest, and all her friends came to say farewell, as with the morning sun she would go; and each brought some little gift, for the land of fairies was far away, and she must journey long. "nay, you shall not go on your feet, my child," said mother brown-breast; "your friend golden-wing shall carry you. call him hither, that i may seat you rightly, for if you should fall off my heart would break." then up came golden-wing, and bud was safely seated on the cushion of violet-leaves; and it was really charming to see her merry little face, peeping from under the broad brim of her cow-slip hat, as her butterfly steed stood waving his bright wings in the sunlight. then came the bee with his yellow honey-bags, which he begged she would take, and the little brown spider that lived under the great leaves brought a veil for her hat, and besought her to wear it, lest the sun should shine too brightly; while the ant came bringing a tiny strawberry, lest she should miss her favorite fruit. the mother gave her good advice, and the papa stood with his head on one side, and his round eyes twinkling with delight, to think that his little bud was going to fairy-land. then they all sang gayly together, till she passed out of sight over the hills, and they saw her no more. and now bud left the old forest far behind her. golden-wing bore her swiftly along, and she looked down on the green mountains, and the peasant's cottages, that stood among overshadowing trees; and the earth looked bright, with its broad, blue rivers winding through soft meadows, the singing birds, and flowers, who kept their bright eyes ever on the sky. and she sang gayly as they floated in the clear air, while her friend kept time with his waving wings, and ever as they went along all grew fairer; and thus they came to fairy-land. as bud passed through the gates, she no longer wondered that the exiled fairies wept and sorrowed for the lovely home they had lost. bright clouds floated in the sunny sky, casting a rainbow light on the fairy palaces below, where the elves were dancing; while the low, sweet voices of the singing flowers sounded softly through the fragrant air, and mingled with the music of the rippling waves, as they flowed on beneath the blossoming vines that drooped above them. all was bright and beautiful; but kind little bud would not linger, for the forms of the weeping fairies were before her; and though the blossoms nodded gayly on their stems to welcome her, and the soft winds kissed her cheek, she would not stay, but on to the flower palace she went, into a pleasant hall whose walls were formed of crimson roses, amid whose leaves sat little elves, making sweet music on their harps. when they saw bud, they gathered round her, and led her through the flower-wreathed arches to a group of the most beautiful fairies, who were gathered about a stately lily, in whose fragrant cup sat one whose purple robe and glittering crown told she was their queen. bud knelt before her, and, while tears streamed down her little face, she told her errand, and pleaded earnestly that the exiled fairies might be forgiven, and not be left to pine far from their friends and kindred. and as she prayed, many wept with her; and when she ceased, and waited for her answer, many knelt beside her, praying forgiveness for the unhappy elves. with tearful eyes, queen dew-drop replied,-"little maiden, your prayer has softened my heart. they shall not be left sorrowing and alone, nor shall you go back without a kindly word to cheer and comfort them. we will pardon their fault, and when they can bring hither a perfect fairy crown, robe, and wand, they shall be again received as children of their loving queen. the task is hard, for none but the best and purest can form the fairy garments; yet with patience they may yet restore their robes to their former brightness. farewell, good little maiden; come with them, for but for you they would have dwelt for ever without the walls of fairy-land." "good speed to you, and farewell," cried they all, as, with loving messages to their poor friends, they bore her to the gates. day after day toiled little bud, cheering the fairies, who, angry and disappointed, would not listen to her gentle words, but turned away and sat alone weeping. they grieved her kind heart with many cruel words; but patiently she bore with them, and when they told her they could never perform so hard a task, and must dwell for ever in the dark forest, she answered gently, that the snow-white lily must be planted, and watered with repentant tears, before the robe of innocence could be won; that the sun of love must shine in their hearts, before the light could return to their dim crowns, and deeds of kindness must be performed, ere the power would come again to their now useless wands. then they planted the lilies; but they soon drooped and died, and no light came to their crowns. they did no gentle deeds, but cared only for themselves; and when they found their labor was in vain, they tried no longer, but sat weeping. bud, with ceaseless toil and patient care, tended the lilies, which bloomed brightly, the crowns grew bright, and in her hands the wands had power over birds and blossoms, for she was striving to give happiness to others, forgetful of herself. and the idle fairies, with thankful words, took the garments from her, and then with bud went forth to fairy-land, and stood with beating hearts before the gates; where crowds of fairy friends came forth to welcome them. but when queen dew-drop touched them with her wand, as they passed in, the light faded from their crowns, their robes became like withered leaves, and their wands were powerless. amid the tears of all the fairies, the queen led them to the gates, and said,-"farewell! it is not in my power to aid you; innocence and love are not within your hearts, and were it not for this untiring little maiden, who has toiled while you have wept, you never would have entered your lost home. go and strive again, for till all is once more fair and pure, i cannot call you mine." "farewell!" sang the weeping fairies, as the gates closed on their outcast friends; who, humbled and broken-hearted, gathered around bud; and she, with cheering words, guided them back to the forest. time passed on, and the fairies had done nothing to gain their lovely home again. they wept no longer, but watched little bud, as she daily tended the flowers, restoring thelr strength and beauty, or with gentle words flew from nest to nest, teaching the little birds to live happily together; and wherever she went blessings fell, and loving hearts were filled with gratitude. then, one by one, the elves secretly did some little work of kindness, and found a quiet joy come back to repay them. flowers looked lovingly up as they passed, birds sang to cheer them when sad thoughts made them weep. and soon little bud found out their gentle deeds, and her friendly words gave them new strength. so day after day they followed her, and like a band of guardian spirits they flew far and wide, carrying with them joy and peace. and not only birds and flowers blessed them, but human beings also; for with tender hands they guided little children from danger, and kept their young hearts free from evil thoughts; they whispered soothing words to the sick, and brought sweet odors and fair flowers to their lonely rooms. they sent lovely visions to the old and blind, to make their hearts young and bright with happy thoughts. but most tenderly did they watch over the poor and sorrowing, and many a poor mother blessed the unseen hands that laid food before her hungry little ones, and folded warm garments round their naked limbs. many a poor man wondered at the fair flowers that sprang up in his little garden-plot, cheering him with their bright forms, and making his dreary home fair with their loveliness, and looked at his once barren field, where now waved the golden corn, turning its broad leaues to the warm sun, and promising a store of golden ears to give him food; while the care-worn face grew bright, and the troubled heart filled with gratitude towards the invisible spirits who had brought him such joy. thus time passed on, and though the exiled fairies longed often for their home, still, knowing they did not deserve it, they toiled on, hoping one day to see the friends they had lost; while the joy of their own hearts made their life full of happiness. one day came little bud to them, saying,-"listen, dear friends. i have a hard task to offer you. it is a great sacrifice for you lightloving fairies to dwell through the long winter in the dark, cold earth, watching over the flowerroots, to keep them free from the little grubs and worms that seek to harm them. but in the sunny spring when they bloom again, their love and gratitude will give you happy homes among their bright leaves. "it is a wearisome task, and i can give you no reward for all your tender care, but the blessings of the gentle flowers you will have saved from death. gladly would i aid you; but my winged friends are preparing for their journey to warmer lands, and i must help them teach their little ones to fly, and see them safely on their way. then, through the winter, must i seek the dwellings of the poor and suffering, comfort the sick and lonely, and give hope and courage to those who in their poverty are led astray. these things must i do; but when the flowers bloom again i will be with you, to welcome back our friends from over the sea." then, with tears, the fairies answered, "ah, good little bud, you have taken the hardest task yourself, and who will repay you for all your deeds of tenderness and mercy in the great world? should evil befall you, our hearts would break. we will labor trustingly in the earth, and thoughts of you shall cheer us on; for without you we had been worthless beings, and never known the joy that kindly actions bring. yes, dear bud, we will gladly toil among the roots, that the fair flowers may wear their gayest robes to welcome you. then deep in the earth the fairies dwelt, and no frost or snow could harm the blossoms they tended. every little seed was laid in the soft earth, watered, and watched. tender roots were folded in withered leaves, that no chilling drops might reach them; and safely dreamed the flowers, till summer winds should call them forth; while lighter grew each fairy heart, as every gentle deed was tenderly performed. at length the snow was gone, and they heard little voices calling them to come up; but patiently they worked, till seed and root were green and strong. then, with eager feet, they hastened to the earth above, where, over hill and valley, bright flowers and budding trees smiled in the warm sunlight, blossoms bent lovingly before them, and rang their colored bells, till the fragrant air was full of music; while the stately trees waved their great arms above them, and scattered soft leaves at their feet. then came the merry birds, making the wood alive with their gay voices, calling to one another, as they flew among the vines, building their little homes. long waited the elves, and at last she came with father brown-breast. happy days passed; and summer flowers were in their fullest beauty, when bud bade the fairies come with her. mounted on bright-winged butterflies, they flew over forest and meadow, till with joyful eyes they saw the flower-crowned walls of fairy-land. before the gates they stood, and soon troops of loving elves came forth to meet them. and on through the sunny gardens they went, into the lily hall, where, among the golden stamens of a graceful flower, sat the queen; while on the broad, green leaves around it stood the brighteyed little maids of honor. then, amid the deep silence, little bud, leading the fairies to the throne, said,-"dear queen, i here bring back your subjects, wiser for their sorrow, better for their hard trial; and now might any queen be proud of them, and bow to learn from them that giving joy and peace to others brings it fourfold to us, bearing a double happiness in the blessings to those we help. through the dreary months, when they might have dwelt among fair southern flowers, beneath a smiling sky, they toiled in the dark and silent earth, filling the hearts of the gentle flower spirits with grateful love, seeking no reward but the knowledge of their own good deeds, and the joy they always bring. this they have done unmurmuringly and alone; and now, far and wide, flower blessings fall upon them, and the summer winds bear the glad tidings unto those who droop in sorrow, and new joy and strength it brings, as they look longingly for the friends whose gentle care hath brought such happiness to their fair kindred. "are they not worthy of your love, dear queen? have they not won their lovely home? say they are pardoned, and you have gained the love of hearts pure as the snow-white robes now folded over them." as bud ceased, she touched the wondering fairies with her wand, and the dark faded garments fell away; and beneath, the robes of lily-leaves glittered pure and spotless in the sun-light. then, while happy tears fell, queen dew-drop placed the bright crowns on the bowed heads of the kneeling fairies, and laid before them the wands their own good deeds had rendered powerful. they turned to thank little bud for all her patient love, but she was gone; and high above, in the clear air, they saw the little form journeying back to the quiet forest. she needed no reward but the joy she had given. the fairy hearts were pure again, and her work was done; yet all fairy-land had learned a lesson from gentle little bud. "now, little sunbeam, what have you to tell us?" said the queen, looking down on a bright-eyed elf, who sat half hidden in the deep moss at her feet. "i too, like star-twinkle, have nothing but a song to offer," replied the fairy; and then, while the nightingale's sweet voice mingled with her own, she sang,-clover-blossom. in a quiet, pleasant meadow, beneath a summer sky, where green old trees their branches waved, and winds went singing by; where a little brook went rippling so musically low, and passing clouds cast shadows on the waving grass below; where low, sweet notes of brooding birds stole out on the fragrant air, and golden sunlight shone undimmed on al1 most fresh and fair;- there bloomed a lovely sisterhood of happy little flowers, together in this pleasant home, through quiet summer hours. no rude hand came to gather them, no chilling winds to blight; warm sunbeams smiled on them by day, and soft dews fell at night. so here, along the brook-side, beneath the green old trees, the flowers dwelt among their friends, the sunbeams and the breeze. one morning, as the flowers awoke, fragrant, and fresh, and fair, a little worm came creeping by, and begged a shelter there. "ah! pity and love me," sighed the worm, "i am lonely, poor, and weak; a little spot for a resting-plaee, dear flowers, is all i seek. i am not fair, and have dwelt unloved by butterfly, bird, and bee. they little knew that in this dark form lay the beauty they yet may see. then let me lie in the deep green moss, and weave my little tomb, and sleep my long, unbroken sleep till spring's first flowers come. then will i come in a fairer dress, and your gentle care repay by the grateful love of the humble worm; kind flowers, o let me stay!" but the wild rose showed her little thorns, while her soft face glowed with pride; the violet hid beneath the drooping ferns, and the daisy turned aside. little houstonia seornfully laughed, as she danced on her slender stem; while the cowslip bent to the rippling waves, and whispered the tale to them. a blue-eyed grass looked down on the worm, as it silently turned away, and cried, "thou wilt harm our delicate leaves, and therefore thou canst not stay." then a sweet, soft voice, called out from far, "come hither, poor worm, to me; the sun lies warm in this quiet spot, and i'11 share my home with thee." the wondering flowers looked up to see who had offered the worm a home: 't was a clover-blossom, whose fluttering leaves seemed beckoning him to come; it dwelt in a sunny little nook, where cool winds rustled by, and murmuring bees and butterflies came, on the flower's breast to lie. down through the leaves the sunlight stole, and seemed to linger there, as if it loved to brighten the home of one so sweet and fair. its rosy face smiled kindly down, as the friendless worm drew near; and its low voice, softly whispering, said "poor thing, thou art welcome here; close at my side, in the soft green moss, thou wilt find a quiet bed, where thou canst softly sleep till spring, with my leaves above thee spread. i pity and love thee, friendless worm, though thou art not graceful or fair; for many a dark, unlovely form, hath a kind heart dwelling there; no more o'er the green and pleasant earth, lonely and poor, shalt thou roam, for a loving friend hast thou found in me, and rest in my little home." then, deep in its quiet mossy bed, sheltered from sun and shower, the grateful worm spun its winter tomb, in the shadow of the flower. and clover guarded well its rest, till autumn's leaves were sere, till all her sister flowers were gone, and her winter sleep drew near. then her withered leaves were softly spread o'er the sleeping worm below, ere the faithful little flower lay beneath the winter snow. spring came again, and the flowers rose from their quiet winter graves, and gayly danced on their slender stems, and sang with the rippling waves. softly the warm winds kissed their cheeks; brightly the sunbeams fell, as, one by one, they came again in their summer homes to dwell. and little clover bloomed once more, rosy, and sweet, and fair, and patiently watched by the mossy bed, for the worm still slumbered there. then her sister flowers scornfully cried, as they waved in the summer air, "the ugly worm was friendless and poor; little clover, why shouldst thou care? then watch no more, nor dwell alone, away from thy sister flowers; come, dance and feast, and spend with us these pleasant summer hours. we pity thee, foolish little flower, to trust what the false worm said; he will not come in a fairer dress, for he lies in the green moss dead." but little clover still watched on, alone in her sunny home; she did not doubt the poor worm's truth, and trusted he would come. at last the small cell opened wide, and a glittering butterfly, from out the moss, on golden wings, soared up to the sunny sky. then the wondering flowers cried aloud, "clover, thy watch was vain; he only sought a shelter here, and never will come again." and the unkind flowers danced for joy, when they saw him thus depart; for the love of a beautiful butterfly is dear to a flower's heart. they feared he would stay in clover's home, and her tender care repay; so they danced for joy, when at last he rose and silently flew away. then little clover bowed her head, while her soft tears fell like dew; for her gentle heart was grieved, to find that her sisters' words were true, and the insect she had watched so long when helpless, poor, and lone, thankless for all her faithful care, on his golden wings had flown. but as she drooped, in silent grief, she heard little daisy cry, "o sisters, look! i see him now, afar in the sunny sky; he is floating back from cloud-land now, borne by the fragrant air. spread wide your leaves, that he may choose the flower he deems most fair." then the wild rose glowed with a deeper blush, as she proudly waved on her stem; the cowslip bent to the clear blue waves, and made her mirror of them. little houstonia merrily danced, and spread her white leaves wide; while daisy whispered her joy and hope, as she stood by her gay friends' side. violet peeped from the tall green ferns, and lifted her soft blue eye to watch the glittering form, that shone afar in the summer sky. they thought no more of the ugly worm, who once had wakened their scorn; but looked and longed for the butterfly now, as the soft wind bore him on. nearer and nearer the bright form came, and fairer the blossoms grew; each welcomed him, in her sweetest tones; each offered her honey and dew. but in vain did they beckon, and smile, and call, and wider their leaves unclose; the glittering form still floated on, by violet, daisy, and rose. lightly it flew to the pleasant home of the flower most truly fair, on clover's breast he softly lit, and folded his bright wings there. "dear flower," the butterfly whispered low, "long hast thou waited for me; now i am come, and my grateful love shall brighten thy home for thee; thou hast loved and cared for me, when alone, hast watched o'er me long and well; and now will i strive to show the thanks the poor worm could not tell. sunbeam and breeze shall come to thee, and the coolest dews that fall; whate'er a flower can wish is thine, for thou art worthy all. and the home thou shared with the friendless worm the butterfly's home shall be; and thou shalt find, dear, faithful flower, a loving friend in me." then, through the long, bright summer hours through sunshine and through shower, together in their happy home dwelt butterfly and flower. "ah, that is very lovely," cried the elves, gathering round little sunbeam as she ceased, to place a garland in her hair and praise her song. "now," said the queen, "call hither moon-light and summer-wind, for they have seen many pleasant things in their long wanderings, and will gladly tell us them." "most joyfully will we do our best, dear queen," said the elves, as they folded their wings beside her. "now, summer-wind," said moonlight, "till your turn comes, do you sit here and fan me while i tell this tale of little annie's dream; or, the fairy flower. in a large and pleasant garden sat little annie all alone, and she seemed very sad, for drops that were not dew fell fast upon the flowers beside her, who looked wonderingly up, and bent still nearer, as if they longed to cheer and comfort her. the warm wind lifted up her shining hair and softly kissed her cheek, while the sunbeams, looking most kindly in her face, made little rainbows in her tears, and lingered lovingly about her. but annie paid no heed to sun, or wind, or flower; still the bright tears fell, and she forgot all but her sorrow. "little annie, tell me why you weep," said a low voice in her ear; and, looking up, the child beheld a little figure standing on a vine-leaf at her side; a lovely face smiled on her, from amid bright locks of hair, and shining wings were folded on a white and glittering robe, that fluttered in the wind. "who are you, lovely little thing?" cried annie, smiling through her tears. "i am a fairy, little child, and am come to help and comfort you; now tell me why you weep, and let me be your friend," replied the spirit, as she smiled more kindly still on annie's wondering face. "and are you really, then, a little elf, such as i read of in my fairy books? do you ride on butterflies, sleep in flower-cups, and live among the clouds?" "yes, all these things i do, and many stranger still, that all your fairy books can never tell; but now, dear annie," said the fairy, bending nearer, "tell me why i found no sunshine on your face; why are these great drops shining on the flowers, and why do you sit alone when bird and bee are calling you to play?" "ah, you will not love me any more if i should tell you all," said annie, while the tears began to fall again; "i am not happy, for i am not good; how shall i learn to be a patient, gentle child? good little fairy, will you teach me how?" "gladly will i aid you, annie, and if you truly wish to be a happy child, you first must learn to conquer many passions that you cherish now, and make your heart a home for gentle feelings and happy thoughts; the task is hard, but i will give this fairy flower to help and counsel you. bend hither, that i may place it in your breast; no hand can take it hence, till i unsay the spell that holds it there." as thus she spoke, the elf took from her bosom a graceful flower, whose snow-white leaves shone with a strange, soft light. "this is a fairy flower," said the elf, "invisible to every eye save yours; now listen while i tell its power, annie. when your heart is filled with loving thoughts, when some kindly deed has been done, some duty well performed, then from the flower there will arise the sweetest, softest fragrance, to reward and gladden you. but when an unkind word is on your lips, when a selfish, angry feeling rises in your heart, or an unkind, cruel deed is to be done, then will you hear the soft, low chime of the flower-bell; listen to its warning, let the word remain unspoken, the deed undone, and in the quiet joy of your own heart, and the magic perfume of your bosom flower, you will find a sweet reward." "o kind and generous fairy, how can i ever thank you for this lovely gift!" cried annie. "i will be true, and listen to my little bell whenever it may ring. but shall i never see you more? ah! if you would only stay with me, i should indeed be good." "i cannot stay now, little annie," said the elf, "but when another spring comes round, i shall be here again, to see how well the fairy gift has done its work. and now farewell, dear child; be faithful to yourself, and the magic flower will never fade." then the gentle fairy folded her little arms around annie's neck, laid a soft kiss on her cheek, and, spreading wide her shining wings, flew singing up among the white clouds floating in the sky. and little annie sat among her flowers, and watched with wondering joy the fairy blossom shining on her breast. the pleasant days of spring and summer passed away, and in little annie's garden autumn flowers were blooming everywhere, with each day's sun and dew growing still more beautiful and bright; but the fairy flower, that should have been the loveliest of all, hung pale and drooping on little annie's bosom; its fragrance seemed quite gone, and the clear, low music of its warning chime rang often in her ear. when first the fairy placed it there, she had been pleased with her new gift, and for a while obeyed the fairy bell, and often tried to win some fragrance from the flower, by kind and pleasant words and actions; then, as the fairy said, she found a sweet reward in the strange, soft perfume of the magic blossom, as it shone upon her breast; but selfish thoughts would come to tempt her, she would yield, and unkind words fell from her lips; and then the flower drooped pale and scentless, the fairy bell rang mournfully, annie would forget her better resolutions, and be again a selfish, wilful little child. at last she tried no longer, but grew angry with the faithful flower, and would have torn it from her breast; but the fairy spell still held it fast, and all her angry words but made it ring a louder, sadder peal. then she paid no heed to the silvery music sounding in her ear, and each day grew still more unhappy, discontented, and unkind; so, when the autumn days came round, she was no better for the gentle fairy's gift, and longed for spring, that it might be returned; for now the constant echo of the mournful music made her very sad. one sunny morning, when the fresh, cool winds were blowing, and not a cloud was in the sky, little annie walked among her flowers, looking carefully into each, hoping thus to find the fairy, who alone could take the magic blossom from her breast. but she lifted up their drooping leaves, peeped into their dewy cups in vain; no little elf lay hidden there, and she turned sadly from them all, saying, "i will go out into the fields and woods, and seek her there. i will not listen to this tiresome music more, nor wear this withered flower longer." so out into the fields she went, where the long grass rustled as she passed, and timid birds looked at her from their nests; where lovely wild-flowers nodded in the wind, and opened wide their fragrant leaves, to welcome in the murmuring bees, while butterflies, like winged flowers, danced and glittered in the sun. little annie looked, searched, and asked them all if any one could tell her of the fairy whom she sought; but the birds looked wonderingly at her with their soft, bright eyes, and still sang on; the flowers nodded wisely on their stems, but did not speak, while butterfly and bee buzzed and fluttered away, one far too busy, the other too idle, to stay and tell her what she asked. then she went through broad fields of yellow grain, that waved around her like a golden forest; here crickets chirped, grasshoppers leaped, and busy ants worked, but they could not tell her what she longed to know. "now will i go among the hills," said annie, "she may be there." so up and down the green hill-sides went her little feet; long she searched and vainly she called; but still no fairy came. then by the river-side she went, and asked the gay dragon-flies, and the cool white lilies, if the fairy had been there; but the blue waves rippled on the white sand at her feet, and no voice answered her. then into the forest little annie went; and as she passed along the dim, cool paths, the wood-flowers smiled up in her face, gay squirrels peeped at her, as they swung amid the vines, and doves cooed softly as she wandered by; but none could answer her. so, weary with her long and useless search, she sat amid the ferns, and feasted on the rosy strawberries that grew beside her, watching meanwhile the crimson evening clouds that glowed around the setting sun. the night-wind rustled through the boughs, rocking the flowers to sleep; the wild birds sang their evening hymns, and all within the wood grew calm and still; paler and paler grew the purple light, lower and lower drooped little annie's head, the tall ferns bent to shield her from the dew, the whispering pines sang a soft lullaby; and when the autumn moon rose up, her silver light shone on the child, where, pillowed on green moss, she lay asleep amid the wood-flowers in the dim old forest. and all night long beside her stood the fairy she had sought, and by elfin spell and charm sent to the sleeping child this dream. little annie dreamed she sat in her own garden, as she had often sat before, with angry feelings in her heart, and unkind words upon her lips. the magic flower was ringing its soft warning, but she paid no heed to anything, save her own troubled thoughts; thus she sat, when suddenly a low voice whispered in her ear,-"little annie, look and see the evil things that you are cherishing; i will clothe in fitting shapes the thoughts and feelings that now dwell within your heart, and you shall see how great their power becomes, unless you banish them for ever." then annie saw, with fear and wonder, that the angry words she uttered changed to dark, unlovely forms, each showing plainly from what fault or passion it had sprung. some of the shapes had scowling faces and bright, fiery eyes; these were the spirits of anger. others, with sullen, anxious looks, seemed gathering up all they could reach, and annie saw that the more they gained, the less they seemed to have; and these she knew were shapes of selfishness. spirits of pride were there, who folded their shadowy garments round them, and turned scornfully away from all the rest. these and many others little annie saw, which had come from her own heart, and taken form before her eyes. when first she saw them, they were small and weak; but as she looked they seemed to grow and gather strength, and each gained a strange power over her. she could not drive them from her sight, and they grew ever stronger, darker, and more unlovely to her eyes. they seemed to cast black shadows over all around, to dim the sunshine, blight the flowers, and drive away all bright and lovely things; while rising slowly round her annie saw a high, dark wal], that seemed to shut out everything she loved; she dared not move, or speak, but, with a strange fear at her heart, sat watching the dim shapes that hovered round her. higher and higher rose the shadowy wall, slowly the flowers near her died, lingeringly the sunlight faded; but at last they both were gone, and left her all alone behind the gloomy wall. then the spirits gathered round her, whispering strange things in her ear, bidding her obey, for by her own will she had yielded up her heart to be their home, and she was now their slave. then she could hear no more, but, sinking down among the withered flowers, wept sad and bitter tears, for her lost liberty and joy; then through the gloom there shone a faint, soft light, and on her breast she saw her fairy flower, upon whose snow-white leaves her tears lay shining. clearer and brighter grew the radiant light, till the evil spirits turned away to the dark shadow of the wall, and left the child alone. the light and perfume of the flower seemed to bring new strength to annie, and she rose up, saying, as she bent to kiss the blossom on her breast, "dear flower, help and guide me now, and i will listen to your voice, and cheerfully obey my faithful fairy bell." then in her dream she felt how hard the spirits tried to tempt and trouble her, and how, but for her flower, they would have led her back, and made all dark and dreary as before. long and hard she struggled, and tears often fell; but after each new trial, brighter shone her magic flower, and sweeter grew its breath, while the spirits lost still more their power to tempt her. meanwhile, green, flowering vines crept up the high, dark wall, and hid its roughness from her sight; and over these she watched most tenderly, for soon, wherever green leaves and flowers bloomed, the wall beneath grew weak, and fell apart. thus little annie worked and hoped, till one by one the evil spirits fled away, and in their place came shining forms, with gentle eyes and smiling lips, who gathered round her with such loving words, and brought such strength and joy to annie's heart, that nothing evil dared to enter in; while slowly sank the gloomy wall, and, over wreaths of fragrant flowers, she passed out into the pleasant world again, the fairy gift no longer pale and drooping, but now shining like a star upon her breast. then the low voice spoke again in annie's sleeping ear, saying, "the dark, unlovely passions you have looked upon are in your heart; watch well while they are few and weak, lest they should darken your whole life, and shut out love and happiness for ever. remember well the lesson of the dream, dear child, and let the shining spirits make your heart their home." and with that voice sounding in her ear, little annie woke to find it was a dream; but like other dreams it did not pass away; and as she sat alone, bathed in the rosy morning light, and watched the forest waken into life, she thought of the strange forms she had seen, and, looking down upon the flower on her breast, she silently resolved to strive, as she had striven in her dream, to bring back light and beauty to its faded leaves, by being what the fairy hoped to render her, a patient, gentle little child. and as the thought came to her mind, the flower raised its drooping head, and, looking up into the earnest little face bent over it, seemed by its fragrant breath to answer annie's silent thought, and strengthen her for what might come. meanwhile the forest was astir, birds sang their gay good-morrows from tree to tree, while leaf and flower turned to greet the sun, who rose up smiling on the world; and so beneath the forest boughs and through the dewy fields went little annie home, better and wiser for her dream. autumn flowers were dead and gone, yellow leaves lay rustling on the ground, bleak winds went whistling through the naked trees, and cold, white winter snow fell softly down; yet now, when all without looked dark and dreary, on little annie's breast the fairy flower bloomed more beautiful than ever. the memory of her forest dream had never passed away, and through trial and temptation she had been true, and kept her resolution still unbroken; seldom now did the warning bell sound in her ear, and seldom did the flower's fragrance cease to float about her, or the fairy light to brighten all whereon it fell. so, through the long, cold winter, little annie dwelt like a sunbeam in her home, each day growing richer in the love of others, and happier in herself; often was she tempted, but, remembering her dream, she listened only to the music of the fairy bell, and the unkind thought or feeling fled away, the smiling spirits of gentleness and love nestled in her heart, and all was bright again. so better and happier grew the child, fairer and sweeter grew the flower, till spring came smiling over the earth, and woke the flowers, set free the streams, and welcomed back the birds; then daily did the happy child sit among her flowers, longing for the gentle elf to come again, that she might tell her gratitude for all the magic gift had done. at length, one day, as she sat singing in the sunny nook where all her fairest flowers bloomed, weary with gazing at the far-off sky for the little form she hoped would come, she bent to look with joyful love upon her bosom flower; and as she looked, its folded leaves spread wide apart, and, rising slowly from the deep white cup, appeared the smiling face of the lovely elf whose coming she had waited for so long. "dear annie, look for me no longer; i am here on your own breast, for you have learned to love my gift, and it has done its work most faithfully and well," the fairy said, as she looked into the happy child's bright face, and laid her little arms most tenderly about her neck. "and now have i brought another gift from fairy-land, as a fit reward for you, dear child," she said, when annie had told all her gratitude and love; then, touching the child with her shining wand, the fairy bid her look and listen silently. and suddenly the world seemed changed to annie; for the air was filled with strange, sweet sounds, and all around her floated lovely forms. in every flower sat little smiling elves, singing gayly as they rocked amid the leaves. on every breeze, bright, airy spirits came floating by; some fanned her cheek with their cool breath, and waved her long hair to and fro, while others rang the flower-bells, and made a pleasant rustling among the leaves. in the fountain, where the water danced and sparkled in the sun, astride of every drop she saw merry little spirits, who plashed and floated in the clear, cool waves, and sang as gayly as the flowers, on whom they scattered glittering dew. the tall trees, as their branches rustled in the wind, sang a low, dreamy song, while the waving grass was filled with little voices she had never heard before. butterflies whispered lovely tales in her ear, and birds sang cheerful songs in a sweet language she had never understood before. earth and air seemed filled with beauty and with music she had never dreamed of until now. "o tell me what it means, dear fairy! is it another and a lovelier dream, or is the earth in truth so beautiful as this?" she cried, looking with wondering joy upon the elf, who lay upon the flower in her breast. "yes, it is true, dear child," replied the fairy, "and few are the mortals to whom we give this lovely gift; what to you is now so full of music and of light, to others is but a pleasant summer world; they never know the language of butterfly or bird or flower, and they are blind to ail that i have given you the power to see. these fair things are your friends and playmates now, and they will teach you many pleasant lessons, and give you many happy hours; while the garden where you once sat, weeping sad and bitter tears, is now brightened by your own happiness, filled with loving friends by your own kindly thoughts and feelings; and thus rendered a pleasant summer home for the gentle, happy child, whose bosom flower will never fade. and now, dear annie, i must go; but every springtime, with the earliest flowers, will i come again to visit you, and bring some fairy gift. guard well the magic flower, that i may find all fair and bright when next i come." then, with a kind farewell, the gentle fairy floated upward through the sunny air, smiling down upon the child, until she vanished in the soft, white clouds, and little annie stood alone in her enchanted garden, where all was brightened with the radiant light, and fragrant with the perfume of her fairy flower. when moonlight ceased, summer-wind laid down her rose-leaf fan, and, leaning back in her acorn cup, told this tale of ripple, the water-spirit. down in the deep blue sea lived ripple, a happy little water-spirit; all day long she danced beneath the coral arches, made garlands of bright ocean flowers, or floated on the great waves that sparkled in the sunlight; but the pastime that she loved best was lying in the many-colored shells upon the shore, listening to the low, murmuring music the waves had taught them long ago; and here for hours the little spirit lay watching the sea and sky, while singing gayly to herself. but when tempests rose, she hastened down below the stormy billows, to where all was calm and still, and with her sister spirits waited till it should be fair again, listening sadly, meanwhile, to the cries of those whom the wild waves wrecked and cast into the angry sea, and who soon came floating down, pale and cold, to the spirits' pleasant home; then they wept pitying tears above the lifeless forms, and laid them in quiet graves, where flowers bloomed, and jewels sparkled in the sand. this was ripple's only grief, and she often thought of those who sorrowed for the friends they loved, who now slept far down in the dim and silent coral caves, and gladly would she have saved the lives of those who lay around her; but the great ocean was far mightier than all the tender-hearted spirits dwelling in its bosom. thus she could only weep for them, and lay them down to sleep where no cruel waves could harm them more. one day, when a fearful storm raged far and wide, and the spirits saw great billows rolling like heavy clouds above their heads, and heard the wild winds sounding far away, down through the foaming waves a little child came floating to their home; its eyes were closed as if in sleep, the long hair fell like sea-weed round its pale, cold face, and the little hands still clasped the shells they had been gathering on the beach, when the great waves swept it into the troubled sea. with tender tears the spirits laid the little form to rest upon its bed of flowers, and, singing mournful songs, as if to make its sleep more calm and deep, watched long and lovingly above it, till the storm had died away, and all was still again. while ripple sang above the little child, through the distant roar of winds and waves she heard a wild, sorrowing voice, that seemed to call for help. long she listened, thinking it was but the echo of their own plaintive song, but high above the music still sounded the sad, wailing cry. then, stealing silently away, she glided up through foam and spray, till, through the parting clouds, the sunlight shone upon her from the tranquil sky; and, guided by the mournful sound, she floated on, till, close before her on the beach, she saw a woman stretching forth her arms, and with a sad, imploring voice praying the restless sea to give her back the little child it had so cruelly borne away. but the waves dashed foaming up among the bare rocks at her feet, mingling their cold spray with her tears, and gave no answer to her prayer. when ripple saw the mother's grief, she longed to comfort her; so, bending tenderly beside her, where she knelt upon the shore, the little spirit told her how her child lay softly sleeping, far down in a lovely place, where sorrowing tears were shed, and gentle hands laid garlands over him. but all in vain she whispered kindly words; the weeping mother only cried,-"dear spirit, can you use no charm or spell to make the waves bring back my child, as full of life and strength as when they swept him from my side? o give me back my little child, or let me lie beside him in the bosom of the cruel sea." "most gladly will i help you if i can, though i have little power to use; then grieve no more, for i will search both earth and sea, to find some friend who can bring back all you have lost. watch daily on the shore, and if i do not come again, then you will know my search has been in vain. farewell, poor mother, you shall see your little child again, if fairy power can win him back." and with these cheering words ripple sprang into the sea; while, smiling through her tears, the woman watched the gentle spirit, till her bright crown vanished in the waves. when ripple reached her home, she hastened to the palace of the queen, and told her of the little child, the sorrowing mother, and the promise she had made. "good little ripple," said the queen, when she had told her all, "your promise never can be kept; there is no power below the sea to work this charm, and you can never reach the fire-spirits' home, to win from them a flame to warm the little body into life. i pity the poor mother, and would most gladly help her; but alas! i am a spirit like yourself, and cannot serve you as i long to do." "ah, dear queen! if you had seen her sorrow, you too would seek to keep the promise i have made. i cannot let her watch for me in vain, till i have done my best: then tell me where the fire-spirits dwell, and i will ask of them the flame that shall give life to the little child and such great happiness to the sad, lonely mother: tell me the path, and let me go." "it is far, far away, high up above the sun, where no spirit ever dared to venture yet," replied the queen. "i cannot show the path, for it is through the air. dear ripple, do not go, for you can never reach that distant place: some harm most surely will befall; and then how shall we live, without our dearest, gentlest spirit? stay here with us in your own pleasant home, and think more of this, for i can never let you go." but ripple would not break the promise she had made, and besought so earnestly, and with such pleading words, that the queen at last with sorrow gave consent, and ripple joyfully prepared to go. she, with her sister spirits, built up a tomb of delicate, bright-colored shells, wherein the child might lie, till she should come to wake him into life; then, praying them to watch most faithfully above it, she said farewell, and floated bravely forth, on her long, unknown journey, far away. "i will search the broad earth till i find a path up to the sun, or some kind friend who will carry me; for, alas! i have no wings, and cannot glide through the blue air as through the sea," said ripple to herself, as she went dancing over the waves, which bore her swiftly onward towards a distant shore. long she journeyed through the pathless ocean, with no friends to cheer her, save the white sea-birds who went sweeping by, and only stayed to dip their wide wings at her side, and then flew silently away. sometimes great ships sailed by, and then with longing eyes did the little spirit gaze up at the faces that looked down upon the sea; for often they were kind and pleasant ones, and she gladly would have called to them and asked them to be friends. but they would never understand the strange, sweet language that she spoke, or even see the lovely face that smiled at them above the waves; her blue, transparent garments were but water to their eyes, and the pearl chains in her hair but foam and sparkling spray; so, hoping that the sea would be most gentle with them, silently she floated on her way, and left them far behind. at length green hills were seen, and the waves gladly bore the little spirit on, till, rippling gently over soft white sand, they left her on the pleasant shore. "ah, what a lovely place it is!" said ripple, as she passed through sunny valleys, where flowers began to bloom, and young leaves rustled on the trees. "why are you all so gay, dear birds?" she asked, as their cheerful voices sounded far and near; "is there a festival over the earth, that all is so beautiful and bright?" "do you not know that spring is coming? the warm winds whispered it days ago, and we are learning the sweetest songs, to welcome her when she shall come," sang the lark, soaring away as the music gushed from his little throat. "and shall i see her, violet, as she journeys over the earth?" asked ripple again. "yes, you will meet her soon, for the sunlight told me she was near; tell her we long to see her again, and are waiting to welcome her back," said the blue flower, dancing for joy on her stem, as she nodded and smiled on the spirit. "i will ask spring where the fire-spirits dwell; she travels over the earth each year, and surely can show me the way," thought ripple, as she went journeying on. soon she saw spring come smiling over the earth; sunbeams and breezes floated before, and then, with her white garments covered with flowers, with wreaths in her hair, and dew-drops and seeds falling fast from her hands the beautiful season came singing by. "dear spring, will you listen, and help a poor little spirit, who seeks far and wide for the fire-spirits' home?" cried ripple; and then told why she was there, and begged her to tell what she sought. "the fire-spirits' home is far, far away, and i cannot guide you there; but summer is coming behind me," said spring, "and she may know better than i. but i will give you a breeze to help you on your way; it will never tire nor fail, but bear you easily over land and sea. farewell, little spirit! i would gladly do more, but voices are calling me far and wide, and i cannot stay." "many thanks, kind spring!" cried ripple, as she floated away on the breeze; "give a kindly word to the mother who waits on the shore, and tell her i have not forgotten my vow, but hope soon to see her again." then spring flew on with her sunshine and flowers, and ripple went swiftly over hill and vale, till she came to the land where summer was dwelling. here the sun shone warmly down on the early fruit, the winds blew freshly over fields of fragrant hay, and rustled with a pleasant sound among the green leaves in the forests; heavy dews fell softly down at night, and long, bright days brought strength and beauty to the blossoming earth. "now i must seek for summer," said ripple, as she sailed slowly through the sunny sky. "i am here, what would you with me, little spirit?" said a musical voice in her ear; and, floating by her side, she saw a graceful form, with green robes fluttering in the air, whose pleasant face looked kindly on her, from beneath a crown of golden sunbeams that cast a warm, bright glow on all beneath. then ripple told her tale, and asked where she should go; but summer answered,-"i can tell no more than my young sister spring where you may find the spirits that you seek; but i too, like her, will give a gift to aid you. take this sunbeam from my crown; it will cheer and brighten the most gloomy path through which you pass. farewell! i shall carry tidings of you to the watcher by the sea, if in my journey round the world i find her there." and summer, giving her the sunbeam, passed away over the distant hills, leaving all green and bright behind her. so ripple journeyed on again, till the earth below her shone with ye]low harvests waving in the sun, and the air was filled with cheerful voices, as the reapers sang among the fields or in the pleasant vineyards, where purple fruit hung gleaming through the leaves; while the sky above was cloudless, and the changing forest-trees shone like a many-colored garland, over hill and plain; and here, along the ripening corn-fields, with bright wreaths of crimson leaves and golden wheat-ears in her hair and on her purple mantle, stately autumn passed, with a happy smile on her calm face, as she went scattering generous gifts from her full arms. but when the wandering spirit came to her, and asked for what she sought, this season, like the others, could not tell her where to go; so, giving her a yellow leaf, autumn said, as she passed on,-"ask winter, little ripple, when you come to his cold home; he knows the fire-spirits well, for when he comes they fly to the earth, to warm and comfort those dwelling there; and perhaps he can tell you where they are. so take this gift of mine, and when you meet his chilly winds, fold it about you, and sit warm beneath its shelter, till you come to sunlight again. i will carry comfort to the patient woman, as my sisters have already done, and tell her you are faithful still." then on went the never-tiring breeze, over forest, hill, and field, till the sky grew dark, and bleak winds whistled by. then ripple, folded in the soft, warm leaf, looked sadly down on the earth, that seemed to lie so desolate and still beneath its shroud of snow, and thought how bitter cold the leaves and flowers must be; for the little water-spirit did not know that winter spread a soft white covering above their beds, that they might safely sleep below till spring should waken them again. so she went sorrowfully on, till winter, riding on the strong north-wind, came rushing by, with a sparkling ice-crown in his streaming hair, while from beneath his crimson cloak, where glittering frost-work shone like silver threads, he scattered snow-flakes far and wide. "what do you seek with me, fair little spirit, that you come so bravely here amid my ice and snow? do not fear me; i am warm at heart, though rude and cold without," said winter, looking kindly on her, while a bright smile shone like sunlight on his pleasant face, as it glowed and glistened in the frosty air. when ripple told him why she had come, he pointed upward, where the sunlight dimly shone through the heavy clouds, saying,-"far off there, beside the sun, is the fire-spirits' home; and the only path is up, through cloud and mist. it is a long, strange path, for a lonely little spirit to be going; the fairies are wild, wilful things, and in their play may harm and trouble you. come back with me, and do not go this dangerous journey to the sky. i'll gladly bear you home again, if you will come." but ripple said, "i cannot turn back now, when i am nearly there. the spirits surely will not harm me, when i tell them why i am come; and if i win the flame, i shall be the happiest spirit in the sea, for my promise will be kept, and the poor mother happy once again. so farewell, winter! speak to her gently, and tell her to hope still, for i shall surely come." "adieu, little ripple! may good angels watch above you! journey bravely on, and take this snow-flake that will never melt, as my gift," winter cried, as the north-wind bore him on, leaving a cloud of falling snow behind. "now, dear breeze," said ripple, "fly straight upward through the air, until we reach the place we have so long been seeking; sunbeam shall go before to light the way, yellow-leaf shall shelter me from heat and rain, while snow-flake shall lie here beside me till it comes of use. so farewell to the pleasant earth, until we come again. and now away, up to the sun!" when ripple first began her airy journey, all was dark and dreary; heavy clouds lay piled like hills around her, and a cold mist filled the air but the sunbeam, like a star, lit up the way, the leaf lay warmly round her, and the tireless wind went swiftly on. higher and higher they floated up, still darker and darker grew the air, closer the damp mist gathered, while the black clouds rolled and tossed, like great waves, to and fro. "ah!" sighed the weary little spirit, "shall i never see the light again, or feel the warm winds on my cheek? it is a dreary way indeed, and but for the seasons' gifts i should have perished long ago; but the heavy clouds must pass away at last, and all be fair again. so hasten on, good breeze, and bring me quickly to my journey's end." soon the cold vapors vanished from her path, and sunshine shone upon her pleasantly; so she went gayly on, till she came up among the stars, where many new, strange sights were to be seen. with wondering eyes she looked upon the bright worlds that once seemed dim and distant, when she gazed upon them from the sea; but now they moved around her, some shining with a softly radiant light, some circled with bright, many-colored rings, while others burned with a red, angry glare. ripple would have gladly stayed to watch them longer, for she fancied low, sweet voices called her, and lovely faces seemed to look upon her as she passed; but higher up still, nearer to the sun, she saw a far-off light, that glittered like a brilliant crimson star, and seemed to cast a rosy glow along the sky. "the fire-spirits surely must be there, and i must stay no longer here," said ripple. so steadily she floated on, till straight before her lay a broad, bright path, that led up to a golden arch, beyond which she could see shapes flitting to and fro. as she drew near, brighter glowed the sky, hotter and hotter grew the air, till ripple's leaf-cloak shrivelled up, and could no longer shield her from the heat; then she unfolded the white snow-flake, and, gladly wrapping the soft, cool mantle round her, entered through the shining arch. through the red mist that floated all around her, she could see high walls of changing light, where orange, blue, and violet flames went flickering to and fro, making graceful figures as they danced and glowed; and underneath these rainbow arches, little spirits glided, far and near, wearing crowns of fire, beneath which flashed their wild, bright eyes; and as they spoke, sparks dropped quickly from their lips, and ripple saw with wonder, through their garments of transparent light, that in each fairy's breast there burned a steady flame, that never wavered or went out. as thus she stood, the spirits gathered round her, and their hot breath would have scorched her, but she drew the snow-cloak closer round her, saying,-"take me to your queen, that i may tell her why i am here, and ask for what i seek." so, through long halls of many-colored fire, they led her to a spirit fairer than the rest, whose crown of flames waved to and fro like golden plumes, while, underneath her violet robe, the light within her breast glowed bright and strong. "this is our queen," the spirits said, bending low before her, as she turned her gleaming eyes upon the stranger they had brought. then ripple told how she had wandered round the world in search of them, how the seasons had most kindly helped her on, by giving sun-beam, breeze, leaf, and flake; and how, through many dangers, she had come at last to ask of them the magic flame that could give life to the little child again. when she had told her tale, the spirits whispered earnestly among themselves, while sparks fell thick and fast with every word; at length the fire-queen said aloud,-"we cannot give the flame you ask, for each of us must take a part of it from our own breasts; and this we will not do, for the brighter our bosom-fire burns, the lovelier we are. so do not ask us for this thing; but any other gift we will most gladly give, for we feel kindly towards you, and will serve you if we may." but ripple asked no other boon, and, weeping sadly, begged them not to send her back without the gift she had come so far to gain. "o dear, warm-hearted spirits! give me each a little light from your own breasts, and surely they will glow the brighter for this kindly deed; and i will thankfully repay it if i can." as thus she spoke, the queen, who had spied out a chain of jewels ripple wore upon her neck, replied,-"if you will give me those bright, sparkling stones, i will bestow on you a part of my own flame; for we have no such lovely things to wear about our necks, and i desire much to have them. will you give it me for what i offer, little spirit?" joyfully ripple gave her the chain; but, as soon as it touched her hand, the jewels melted like snow, and fell in bright drops to the ground; at this the queen's eyes flashed, and the spirits gathered angrily about poor ripple, who looked sadly at the broken chain, and thought in vain what she could give, to win the thing she longed so earnestly for. "i have many fairer gems than these, in my home below the sea; and i will bring all i can gather far and wide, if you will grant my prayer, and give me what i seek," she said, turning gently to the fiery spirits, who were hovering fiercely round her. "you must bring us each a jewel that will never vanish from our hands as these have done," they said, "and we will each give of our fire; and when the child is brought to life, you must bring hither all the jewels you can gather from the depths of the sea, that we may try them here among the flames; but if they melt away like these, then we shall keep you prisoner, till you give us back the light we lend. if you consent to this, then take our gift, and journey home again; but fail not to return, or we shall seek you out." and ripple said she would consent, though she knew not if the jewels could be found; still, thinking of the promise she had made, she forgot all else, and told the spirits what they asked most surely should be done. so each one gave a little of the fire from their breasts, and placed the flame in a crystal vase, through which it shone and glittered like a star. then, bidding her remember all she had promised them, they led her to the golden arch, and said farewell. so, down along the shining path, through mist and cloud, she travelled back; till, far below, she saw the broad blue sea she left so long ago. gladly she plunged into the clear, cool waves, and floated back to her pleasant home; where the spirits gathered joyfully about her, listening with tears and smiles, as she told all her many wanderings, and showed the crystal vase that she had brought. "now come," said they, "and finish the good work you have so bravely carried on." so to the quiet tomb they went, where, like a marble image, cold and still, the little child was lying. then ripple placed the flame upon his breast, and watched it gleam and sparkle there, while light came slowly back into the once dim eyes, a rosy glow shone over the pale face, and breath stole through the parted lips; still brighter and warmer burned the magic fire, until the child awoke from his long sleep, and looked in smiling wonder at the faces bending over him. then ripple sang for joy, and, with her sister spirits, robed the child in graceful garments, woven of bright sea-weed, while in his shining hair they wreathed long garlands of their fairest flowers, and on his little arms hung chains of brilliant shells. "now come with us, dear child," said ripple; "we will bear you safely up into the sunlight and the pleasant air; for this is not your home, and yonder, on the shore, there waits a loving friend for you." so up they went, through foam and spray, till on the beach, where the fresh winds played among her falling hair, and the waves broke sparkling at her feet, the lonely mother still stood, gazing wistfully across the sea. suddenly, upon a great blue billow that came rolling in, she saw the water-spirits smiling on her; and high aloft, in their white gleaming arms, her child stretched forth his hands to welcome her; while the little voice she so longed to hear again cried gayly,-"see, dear mother, i am come; and look what lovely things the gentle spirits gave, that i might seem more beautiful to you." then gently the great wave broke, and rolled back to the sea, leaving ripple on the shore, and the child clasped in his mother's arms. "o faithful little spirit! i would gladly give some precious gift to show my gratitude for this kind deed; but i have nothing save this chain of little pearls: they are the tears i shed, and the sea has changed them thus, that i might offer them to you," the happy mother said, when her first joy was passed, and ripple turned to go. "yes, i will gladly wear your gift, and look upon it as my fairest ornament," the water-spirit said; and with the pearls upon her breast, she left the shore, where the child was playing gayly to and fro, and the mother's glad smile shone upon her, till she sank beneath the waves. and now another task was to be done; her promise to the fire-spirits must be kept. so far and wide she searched among the caverns of the sea, and gathered all the brightest jewels shining there; and then upon her faithful breeze once more went journeying through the sky. the spirits gladly welcomed her, and led her to the queen, before whom she poured out the sparkling gems she had gathered with such toil and care; but when the spirits tried to form them into crowns, they trickled from their hands like colored drops of dew, and ripple saw with fear and sorrow how they melted one by one away, till none of all the many she had brought remained. then the fire-spirits looked upon her angrily, and when she begged them to be merciful, and let her try once more, saying,-"do not keep me prisoner here. i cannot breathe the flames that give you life, and but for this snow-mantle i too should melt away, and vanish like the jewels in your hands. o dear spirits, give me some other task, but let me go from this warm place, where all is strange and fearful to a spirit of the sea." they would not listen; and drew nearer, saying, while bright sparks showered from their lips, "we will not let you go, for you have promised to be ours if the gems you brought proved worthless; so fling away this cold white cloak, and bathe with us in the fire fountains, and help us bring back to our bosom flames the light we gave you for the child." then ripple sank down on the burning floor, and felt that her life was nearly done; for she well knew the hot air of the fire-palace would be death to her. the spirits gathered round, and began to lift her mantle off; but underneath they saw the pearl chain, shining with a clear, soft light, that only glowed more brightly when they laid their hands upon it. "o give us this!" cried they; "it is far lovelier than all the rest, and does not melt away like them; and see how brilliantly it glitters in our hands. if we may but have this, all will be well, and you are once more free." and ripple, safe again beneath her snow flake, gladly gave the chain to them; and told them how the pearls they now placed proudly on their breasts were formed of tears, which but for them might still be flowing. then the spirits smiled most kindly on her, and would have put their arms about her, and have kissed her cheek, but she drew back, telling them that every touch of theirs was like a wound to her. "then, if we may not tell our pleasure so, we will show it in a different way, and give you a pleasant journey home. come out with us," the spirits said, "and see the bright path we have made for you." so they led her to the lofty gate, and here, from sky to earth, a lovely rainbow arched its radiant colors in the sun. "this is indeed a pleasant road," said ripple. "thank you, friendly spirits, for your care; and now farewell. i would gladly stay yet longer, but we cannot dwell together, and i am longing sadly for my own cool home. now sunbeam, breeze, leaf, and flake, fly back to the seasons whence you came, and tell them that, thanks to their kind gifts, ripple's work at last is done." then down along the shining pathway spread before her, the happy little spirit glided to the sea. "thanks, dear summer-wind," said the queen; "we will remember the lessons you have each taught us, and when next we meet in fern dale, you shall tell us more. and now, dear trip, call them from the lake, for the moon is sinking fast, and we must hasten home." the elves gathered about their queen, and while the rustling leaves were still, and the flowers' sweet voices mingled with their own, they sang this fairy song. the moonlight fades from flower and tree, and the stars dim one by one; the tale is told, the song is sung, and the fairy feast is done. the night-wind rocks the sleeping flowers, and sings to them, soft and low. the early birds erelong will wake: 't is time for the elves to go. o'er the sleeping earth we silently pass, unseen by mortal eye, and send sweet dreams, as we lightly float through the quiet moonlit sky;- for the stars' soft eyes alone may see, and the flowers alone may know, the feasts we hold, the tales we tell: so 't is time for the elves to go. from bird, and blossom, and bee, we learn the lessons they teach; and seek, by kindly deeds, to win a loving friend in each. and though unseen on earth we dwell, sweet voices whisper low, and gentle hearts most joyously greet the elves where'er they go. when next me meet in the fairy dell, may the silver moon's soft light shine then on faces gay as now, and elfin hearts as light. now spread each wing, for the eastern sky with sunlight soon will glow. the morning star shall light us home: farewell! for the elves must go. as the music ceased, with a soft, rustling sound the elves spread their shining wings, and flew silently over the sleeping earth; the flowers closed their bright eyes, the little winds were still, for the feast was over, and the fairy lessons ended. the end of the project gutenberg etext of flower fables by alcott. ragged dick by horatio alger jr. digitized by cardinalis etext press [c.e.k.] posted to wiretap in august 1993, as ragged.txt. italics are represented as _italics_. this text is in the public domain. ---from the book "ragged dick and struggling upward", published by penguin books, 1985. ragged dick was first published in the united states by a.k. loring, 1868. the introduction written by carl bode is not included in this etext, and is (c)1985 by viking penguin, inc., all rights reserved. the text itself is not copyright, and this etext is public domain. ragged dick or street life in new york chapter i ragged dick is introduced to the reader "wake up there, youngster," said a rough voice. ragged dick opened his eyes slowly, and stared stupidly in the face of the speaker, but did not offer to get up. "wake up, you young vagabond!" said the man a little impatiently; "i suppose you'd lay there all day, if i hadn't called you." "what time is it?" asked dick. "seven o'clock." "seven o'clock! i oughter've been up an hour ago. i know what 'twas made me so precious sleepy. i went to the old bowery last night, and didn't turn in till past twelve." "you went to the old bowery? where'd you get your money?" asked the man, who was a porter in the employ of a firm doing business on spruce street. "made it by shines, in course. my guardian don't allow me no money for theatres, so i have to earn it." "some boys get it easier than that," said the porter significantly. "you don't catch me stealin', if that's what you mean," said dick. "don't you ever steal, then?" "no, and i wouldn't. lots of boys does it, but i wouldn't." "well, i'm glad to hear you say that. i believe there's some good in you, dick, after all." "oh, i'm a rough customer!" said dick. "but i wouldn't steal. it's mean." "i'm glad you think so, dick," and the rough voice sounded gentler than at first. "have you got any money to buy your breakfast?" "no, but i'll soon get some." while this conversation had been going on, dick had got up. his bedchamber had been a wooden box half full of straw, on which the young bootblack had reposed his weary limbs, and slept as soundly as if it had been a bed of down. he dumped down into the straw without taking the trouble of undressing. getting up too was an equally short process. he jumped out of the box, shook himself, picked out one or two straws that had found their way into rents in his clothes, and, drawing a well-worn cap over his uncombed locks, he was all ready for the business of the day. dick's appearance as he stood beside the box was rather peculiar. his pants were torn in several places, and had apparently belonged in the first instance to a boy two sizes larger than himself. he wore a vest, all the buttons of which were gone except two, out of which peeped a shirt which looked as if it had been worn a month. to complete his costume he wore a coat too long for him, dating back, if one might judge from its general appearance, to a remote antiquity. washing the face and hands is usually considered proper in commencing the day, but dick was above such refinement. he had no particular dislike to dirt, and did not think it necessary to remove several dark streaks on his face and hands. but in spite of his dirt and rags there was something about dick that was attractive. it was easy to see that if he had been clean and well dressed he would have been decidedly good-looking. some of his companions were sly, and their faces inspired distrust; but dick had a frank, straight-forward manner that made him a favorite. dick's business hours had commenced. he had no office to open. his little blacking-box was ready for use, and he looked sharply in the faces of all who passed, addressing each with, "shine yer boots, sir?" "how much?" asked a gentleman on his way to his office. "ten cents," said dick, dropping his box, and sinking upon his knees on the sidewalk, flourishing his brush with the air of one skilled in his profession. "ten cents! isn't that a little steep?" "well, you know 'taint all clear profit," said dick, who had already set to work. "there's the _blacking_ costs something, and i have to get a new brush pretty often." "and you have a large rent too," said the gentleman quizzically, with a glance at a large hole in dick's coat. "yes, sir," said dick, always ready to joke; "i have to pay such a big rent for my manshun up on fifth avenoo, that i can't afford to take less than ten cents a shine. i'll give you a bully shine, sir." "be quick about it, for i am in a hurry. so your house is on fifth avenue, is it?" "it isn't anywhere else, said dick, and dick spoke the truth there. "what tailor do you patronize?" asked the gentleman, surveying dick's attire. "would you like to go to the same one?" asked dick, shrewdly. "well, no; it strikes me that he didn't give you a very good fit." "this coat once belonged to general washington," said dick, comically. "he wore it all through the revolution, and it got torn some, 'cause he fit so hard. when he died he told his widder to give it to some smart young feller that hadn't got none of his own; so she gave it to me. but if you'd like it, sir, to remember general washington by, i'll let you have it reasonable." "thank you, but i wouldn't want to deprive you of it. and did your pants come from general washington too?" "no, they was a gift from lewis napoleon. lewis had outgrown 'em and sent 'em to me,--he's bigger than me, and that's why they don't fit." "it seems you have distinguished friends. now, my lad, i suppose you would like your money." "i shouldn't have any objection," said dick. "i believe," said the gentleman, examining his pocket-book, "i haven't got anything short of twenty-five cents. have you got any change?" "not a cent," said dick. "all my money's invested in the erie railroad." "that's unfortunate." "shall i get the money changed, sir?" "i can't wait; i've got to meet an appointment immediately. i'll hand you twenty-five cents, and you can leave the change at my office any time during the day." "all right, sir. where is it?" "no. 125 fulton street. shall you remember?" "yes, sir. what name?" "greyson,--office on second floor." "all right, sir; i'll bring it." "i wonder whether the little scamp will prove honest," said mr. greyson to himself, as he walked away. "if he does, i'll give him my custom regularly. if he don't as is most likely, i shan't mind the loss of fifteen cents." mr. greyson didn't understand dick. our ragged hero wasn't a model boy in all respects. i am afraid he swore sometimes, and now and then he played tricks upon unsophisticated boys from the country, or gave a wrong direction to honest old gentlemen unused to the city. a clergyman in search of the cooper institute he once directed to the tombs prison, and, following him unobserved, was highly delighted when the unsuspicious stranger walked up the front steps of the great stone building on centre street, and tried to obtain admission. "i guess he wouldn't want to stay long if he did get in," thought ragged dick, hitching up his pants. "leastways i shouldn't. they're so precious glad to see you that they won't let you go, but board you gratooitous, and never send in no bills." another of dick's faults was his extravagance. being always wide-awake and ready for business, he earned enough to have supported him comfortably and respectably. there were not a few young clerks who employed dick from time to time in his professional capacity, who scarcely earned as much as he, greatly as their style and dress exceeded his. but dick was careless of his earnings. where they went he could hardly have told himself. however much he managed to earn during the day, all was generally spent before morning. he was fond of going to the old bowery theatre, and to tony pastor's, and if he had any money left afterwards, he would invite some of his friends in somewhere to have an oyster stew; so it seldom happened that he commenced the day with a penny. then i am sorry to add that dick had formed the habit of smoking. this cost him considerable, for dick was rather fastidious about his cigars, and wouldn't smoke the cheapest. besides, having a liberal nature, he was generally ready to treat his companions. but of course the expense was the smallest objection. no boy of fourteen can smoke without being affected injuriously. men are frequently injured by smoking, and boys always. but large numbers of the newsboys and boot-blacks form the habit. exposed to the cold and wet they find that it warms them up, and the self-indulgence grows upon them. it is not uncommon to see a little boy, too young to be out of his mother's sight, smoking with all the apparent satisfaction of a veteran smoker. there was another way in which dick sometimes lost money. there was a noted gambling-house on baxter street, which in the evening was sometimes crowded with these juvenile gamesters, who staked their hard earnings, generally losing of course, and refreshing themselves from time to time with a vile mixture of liquor at two cents a glass. sometimes dick strayed in here, and played with the rest. i have mentioned dick's faults and defects, because i want it understood, to begin with, that i don't consider him a model boy. but there were some good points about him nevertheless. he was above doing anything mean or dishonorable. he would not steal, or cheat, or impose upon younger boys, but was frank and straight-forward, manly and self-reliant. his nature was a noble one, and had saved him from all mean faults. i hope my young readers will like him as i do, without being blind to his faults. perhaps, although he was only a boot-black, they may find something in him to imitate. and now, having fairly introduced ragged dick to my young readers, i must refer them to the next chapter for his further adventures. chapter ii johnny nolan after dick had finished polishing mr. greyson's boots he was fortunate enough to secure three other customers, two of them reporters in the tribune establishment, which occupies the corner of spruce street and printing house square. when dick had got through with his last customer the city hall clock indicated eight o'clock. he had been up an hour, and hard at work, and naturally began to think of breakfast. he went up to the head of spruce street, and turned into nassau. two blocks further, and he reached ann street. on this street was a small, cheap restaurant, where for five cents dick could get a cup of coffee, and for ten cents more, a plate of beefsteak with a plate of bread thrown in. these dick ordered, and sat down at a table. it was a small apartment with a few plain tables unprovided with cloths, for the class of customers who patronized it were not very particular. our hero's breakfast was soon before him. neither the coffee nor the steak were as good as can be bought at delmonico's; but then it is very doubtful whether, in the present state of his wardrobe, dick would have been received at that aristocratic restaurant, even if his means had admitted of paying the high prices there charged. dick had scarcely been served when he espied a boy about his own size standing at the door, looking wistfully into the restaurant. this was johnny nolan, a boy of fourteen, who was engaged in the same profession as ragged dick. his wardrobe was in very much the same condition as dick's. "had your breakfast, johnny?" inquired dick, cutting off a piece of steak. "no." "come in, then. here's room for you." "i ain't got no money," said johnny, looking a little enviously at his more fortunate friend. "haven't you had any shines?" "yes, i had one, but i shan't get any pay till to-morrow." "are you hungry?" "try me, and see." "come in. i'll stand treat this morning." johnny nolan was nowise slow to accept this invitation, and was soon seated beside dick. "what'll you have, johnny?" "same as you." "cup o' coffee and beefsteak," ordered dick. these were promptly brought, and johnny attacked them vigorously. now, in the boot-blacking business, as well as in higher avocations, the same rule prevails, that energy and industry are rewarded, and indolence suffers. dick was energetic and on the alert for business, but johnny the reverse. the consequence was that dick earned probably three times as much as the other. "how do you like it?" asked dick, surveying johnny's attacks upon the steak with evident complacency. "it's hunky." i don't believe "hunky" is to be found in either webster's or worcester's big dictionary; but boys will readily understand what it means. "do you come here often?" asked johnny. "most every day. you'd better come too." "i can't afford it." "well, you'd ought to, then," said dick. "what do you do i'd like to know?" i don't get near as much as you, dick." well you might if you tried. i keep my eyes open,--that's the way i get jobs. you're lazy, that's what's the matter." johnny did not see fit to reply to this charge. probably he felt the justice of it, and preferred to proceed with the breakfast, which he enjoyed the more as it cost him nothing. breakfast over, dick walked up to the desk, and settled the bill. then, followed by johnny, he went out into the street. "where are you going, johnny?" "up to mr. taylor's, on spruce street, to see if he don't want a shine." "do you work for him reg'lar?" "yes. him and his partner wants a shine most every day. where are you goin'?" "down front of the astor house. i guess i'll find some customers there." at this moment johnny started, and, dodging into an entry way, hid behind the door, considerably to dick's surprise. "what's the matter now?" asked our hero. "has he gone?" asked johnny, his voice betraying anxiety. "who gone, i'd like to know?" "that man in the brown coat." "what of him. you ain't scared of him, are you?" "yes, he got me a place once." "where?" "ever so far off." "what if he did?" "i ran away." "didn't you like it?" "no, i had to get up too early. it was on a farm, and i had to get up at five to take care of the cows. i like new york best." "didn't they give you enough to eat?" "oh, yes, plenty." "and you had a good bed?" "yes." "then you'd better have stayed. you don't get either of them here. where'd you sleep last night?" "up an alley in an old wagon." "you had a better bed than that in the country, didn't you?" "yes, it was as soft as--as cotton." johnny had once slept on a bale of cotton, the recollection supplying him with a comparison. "why didn't you stay?" "i felt lonely," said johnny. johnny could not exactly explain his feelings, but it is often the case that the young vagabond of the streets, though his food is uncertain, and his bed may be any old wagon or barrel that he is lucky enough to find unoccupied when night sets in, gets so attached to his precarious but independent mode of life, that he feels discontented in any other. he is accustomed to the noise and bustle and ever-varied life of the streets, and in the quiet scenes of the country misses the excitement in the midst of which he has always dwelt. johnny had but one tie to bind him to the city. he had a father living, but he might as well have been without one. mr. nolan was a confirmed drunkard, and spent the greater part of his wages for liquor. his potations made him ugly, and inflamed a temper never very sweet, working him up sometimes to such a pitch of rage that johnny's life was in danger. some months before, he had thrown a flat-iron at his son's head with such terrific force that unless johnny had dodged he would not have lived long enough to obtain a place in our story. he fled the house, and from that time had not dared to re-enter it. somebody had given him a brush and box of blacking, and he had set up in business on his own account. but he had not energy enough to succeed, as has already been stated, and i am afraid the poor boy had met with many hardships, and suffered more than once from cold and hunger. dick had befriended him more than once, and often given him a breakfast or dinner, as the case might be. "how'd you get away?" asked dick, with some curiosity. "did you walk?" "no, i rode on the cars." "where'd you get your money? i hope you didn't steal it." "i didn't have none." "what did you do, then?" "i got up about three o'clock, and walked to albany." "where's that?" asked dick, whose ideas on the subject of geography were rather vague. "up the river." "how far?" "about a thousand miles," said johnny, whose conceptions of distance were equally vague. go ahead. what did you do then?" i hid on top of a freight car, and came all the way without their seeing me.* that man in the brown coat was the man that got me the place, and i'm afraid he'd want to send me back." * a fact. "well," said dick, reflectively, "i dunno as i'd like to live in the country. i couldn't go to tony pastor's or the old bowery. there wouldn't be no place to spend my evenings. but i say, it's tough in winter, johnny, 'specially when your overcoat's at the tailor's, an' likely to stay there." "that's so, dick. but i must be goin', or mr. taylor'll get somebody else to shine his boots." johnny walked back to nassau street, while dick kept on his way to broadway. "that boy," soliloquized dick, as johnny took his departure, "ain't got no ambition. i'll bet he won't get five shines to-day. i'm glad i ain't like him. i couldn't go to the theatre, nor buy no cigars, nor get half as much as i wanted to eat.--shine yer boots, sir?" dick always had an eye to business, and this remark was addressed to a young man, dressed in a stylish manner, who was swinging a jaunty cane. "i've had my boots blacked once already this morning, but this confounded mud has spoiled the shine." "i'll make 'em all right, sir, in a minute." "go ahead, then." the boots were soon polished in dick's best style, which proved very satisfactory, our hero being a proficient in the art. "i haven't got any change," said the young man, fumbling in his pocket, "but here's a bill you may run somewhere and get changed. i'll pay you five cents extra for your trouble." he handed dick a two-dollar bill, which our hero took into a store close by. "will you please change that, sir?" said dick, walking up to the counter. the salesman to whom he proffered it took the bill, and, slightly glancing at it, exclaimed angrily, "be off, you young vagabond, or i'll have you arrested." "what's the row?" "you've offered me a counterfeit bill." "i didn't know it," said dick. "don't tell me. be off, or i'll have you arrested." chapter iii dick makes a proposition though dick was somewhat startled at discovering that the bill he had offered was counterfeit, he stood his ground bravely. "clear out of this shop, you young vagabond," repeated the clerk. "then give me back my bill." "that you may pass it again? no, sir, i shall do no such thing." "it doesn't belong to me," said dick. "a gentleman that owes me for a shine gave it to me to change." "a likely story," said the clerk; but he seemed a little uneasy. "i'll go and call him," said dick. he went out, and found his late customer standing on the astor house steps. "well, youngster, have you brought back my change? you were a precious long time about it. i began to think you had cleared out with the money." "that ain't my style," said dick, proudly. "then where's the change?" "i haven't got it." "where's the bill then?" "i haven't got that either." "you young rascal!" "hold on a minute, mister," said dick, "and i'll tell you all about it. the man what took the bill said it wasn't good, and kept it." "the bill was perfectly good. so he kept it, did he? i'll go with you to the store, and see whether he won't give it back to me." dick led the way, and the gentleman followed him into the store. at the reappearance of dick in such company, the clerk flushed a little, and looked nervous. he fancied that he could browbeat a ragged boot-black, but with a gentleman he saw that it would be a different matter. he did not seem to notice the newcomers, but began to replace some goods on the shelves. now, said the young man, "point out the clerk that has my money." "that's him," said dick, pointing out the clerk. the gentleman walked up to the counter. "i will trouble you," he said a little haughtily, "for a bill which that boy offered you, and which you still hold in your possession." "it was a bad bill," said the clerk, his cheek flushing, and his manner nervous. "it was no such thing. i require you to produce it, and let the matter be decided." the clerk fumbled in his vest-pocket, and drew out a badlooking bill. "this is a bad bill, but it is not the one i gave the boy." "it is the one he gave me." the young man looked doubtful. "boy," he said to dick, "is this the bill you gave to be changed?" "no, it isn't." "you lie, you young rascal!" exclaimed the clerk, who began to find himself in a tight place, and could not see the way out. this scene naturally attracted the attention of all in the store, and the proprietor walked up from the lower end, where he had been busy. "what's all this, mr. hatch?" he demanded. "that boy," said the clerk, "came in and asked change for a bad bill. i kept the bill, and told him to clear out. now he wants it again to pass on somebody else." "show the bill." the merchant looked at it. "yes, that's a bad bill," he said. "there is no doubt about that." "but it is not the one the boy offered," said dick's patron. "it is one of the same denomination, but on a different bank." "do you remember what bank it was on?" "it was on the merchants' bank of boston." "are you sure of it?" "i am." "perhaps the boy kept it and offered the other." "you may search me if you want to," said dick, indignantly. "he doesn't look as if he was likely to have any extra bills. i suspect that your clerk pocketed the good bill, and has substituted the counterfeit note. it is a nice little scheme of his for making money " "i haven't seen any bill on the merchants' bank," said the clerk, doggedly. "you had better feel in your pockets." "this matter must be investigated," said the merchant, firmly. "if you have the bill, produce it." "i haven't got it," said the clerk; but he looked guilty notwithstanding. "i demand that he be searched," said dick's patron. "i tell you i haven't got it." "shall i send for a police officer, mr. hatch, or will you allow yourself to be searched quietly?" said the merchant. alarmed at the threat implied in these words, the clerk put his hand into his vest-pocket, and drew out a two-dollar bill on the merchants' bank. "is this your note?" asked the shopkeeper, showing it to the young man. "it is." "i must have made a mistake," faltered the clerk. "i shall not give you a chance to make such another mistake in my employ," said the merchant sternly. "you may go up to the desk and ask for what wages are due you. i shall have no further occasion for your services." "now, youngster," said dick's patron, as they went out of the store, after he had finally got the bill changed. "i must pay you something extra for your trouble. here's fifty cents." "thank you, sir," said dick. "you're very kind. don't you want some more bills changed?" "not to-day," said he with a smile. "it's too expensive." "i'm in luck," thought our hero complacently. "i guess i'll go to barnum's to-night, and see the bearded lady, the eightfoot giant, the two-foot dwarf, and the other curiosities, too numerous to mention." dick shouldered his box and walked up as far as the astor house. he took his station on the sidewalk, and began to look about him. just behind him were two persons,--one, a gentleman of fifty; the other, a boy of thirteen or fourteen. they were speaking together, and dick had no difficulty in hearing what was said. "i am sorry, frank, that i can't go about, and show you some of the sights of new york, but i shall be full of business to-day. it is your first visit to the city, too." "yes, sir." there's a good deal worth seeing here. but i'm afraid you'll have to wait to next time. you can go out and walk by yourself, but don't venture too far, or you will get lost." frank looked disappointed. "i wish tom miles knew i was here," he said. "he would go around with me." "where does he live?" "somewhere up town, i believe." "then, unfortunately, he is not available. if you would rather go with me than stay here, you can, but as i shall be most of the time in merchants'-counting-rooms, i am afraid it would not be very interesting." "i think," said frank, after a little hesitation, "that i will go off by myself. i won't go very far, and if i lose my way, i will inquire for the astor house." "yes, anybody will direct you here. very well, frank, i am sorry i can't do better for you." "oh, never mind, uncle, i shall be amused in walking around, and looking at the shop-windows. there will be a great deal to see." now dick had listened to all this conversation. being an enterprising young man, he thought he saw a chance for a speculation, and determined to avail himself of it. accordingly he stepped up to the two just as frank's uncle was about leaving, and said, "i know all about the city, sir; i'll show him around, if you want me to." the gentleman looked a little curiously at the ragged figure before him. "so you are a city boy, are you?" "yes, sir," said dick, "i've lived here ever since i was a baby." "and you know all about the public buildings, i suppose?" "yes, sir." "and the central park?" "yes, sir. i know my way all round." the gentleman looked thoughtful. "i don't know what to say, frank," he remarked after a while. "it is rather a novel proposal. he isn't exactly the sort of guide i would have picked out for you. still he looks honest. he has an open face, and i think can be depended upon." "i wish he wasn't so ragged and dirty," said frank, who felt a little shy about being seen with such a companion. "i'm afraid you haven't washed your face this morning," said mr. whitney, for that was the gentleman's name. "they didn't have no wash-bowls at the hotel where i stopped," said dick. "what hotel did you stop at?" "the box hotel." "the box hotel?" "yes, sir, i slept in a box on spruce street." frank surveyed dick curiously. "how did you like it?" he asked. "i slept bully." "suppose it had rained." "then i'd have wet my best clothes," said dick. "are these all the clothes you have?" "yes, sir." mr. whitney spoke a few words to frank, who seemed pleased with the suggestion. "follow me, my lad," he said. dick in some surprise obeyed orders, following mr. whitney and frank into the hotel, past the office, to the foot of the staircase. here a servant of the hotel stopped dick, but mr. whitney explained that he had something for him to do, and he was allowed to proceed. they entered a long entry, and finally paused before a door. this being opened a pleasant chamber was disclosed. "come in, my lad," said mr. whitney. dick and frank entered. chapter iv dick's new suit "now," said mr. whitney to dick, "my nephew here is on his way to a boarding-school. he has a suit of clothes in his trunk about half worn. he is willing to give them to you. i think they will look better than those you have on." dick was so astonished that he hardly knew what to say. presents were something that he knew very little about, never having received any to his knowledge. that so large a gift should be made to him by a stranger seemed very wonderful. the clothes were brought out, and turned out to be a neat gray suit. "before you put them on, my lad, you must wash yourself. clean clothes and a dirty skin don't go very well together. frank, you may attend to him. i am obliged to go at once. have you got as much money as you require?" "yes, uncle." "one more word, my lad," said mr. whitney, addressing dick; "i may be rash in trusting a boy of whom i know nothing, but i like your looks, and i think you will prove a proper guide for my nephew." "yes, i will, sir," said dick, earnestly. "honor bright!" "very well. a pleasant time to you." the process of cleansing commenced. to tell the truth dick needed it, and the sensation of cleanliness he found both new and pleasant. frank added to his gift a shirt, stockings, and an old pair of shoes. "i am sorry i haven't any cap," said he. "i've got one," said dick. "it isn't so new as it might be," said frank, surveying an old felt hat, which had once been black, but was now dingy, with a large hole in the top and a portion of the rim torn off. "no," said dick; "my grandfather used to wear it when he was a boy, and i've kep' it ever since out of respect for his memory. but i'll get a new one now. i can buy one cheap on chatham street." "is that near here?" "only five minutes' walk." "then we can get one on the way." when dick was dressed in his new attire, with his face and hands clean, and his hair brushed, it was difficult to imagine that he was the same boy. he now looked quite handsome, and might readily have been taken for a young gentleman, except that his hands were red and grimy. "look at yourself," said frank, leading him before the mirror. "by gracious!" said dick, starting back in astonishment, "that isn't me, is it?" "don't you know yourself?" asked frank, smiling. "it reminds me of cinderella," said dick, "when she was changed into a fairy princess. i see it one night at barnum's. what'll johnny nolan say when he sees me? he won't dare to speak to such a young swell as i be now. ain't it rich?" and dick burst into a loud laugh. his fancy was tickled by the anticipation of his friend's surprise. then the thought of the valuable gifts he had revived occurred to him, and he looked gratefully at frank. "you're a brick," he said. "a what?" "a brick! you're a jolly good fellow to give me such a present." "you're quite welcome, dick," said frank, kindly. "i'm better off than you are, and i can spare the clothes just as well as not. you must have a new hat though. but that we can get when we go out. the old clothes you can make into a bundle." "wait a minute till i get my handkercher," and dick pulled from the pocket of the pants a dirty rag, which might have been white once, though it did not look like it, and had apparently once formed a part of a sheet or shirt. "you mustn't carry that," said frank. "but i've got a cold," said dick. "oh, i don't mean you to go without a handkerchief. i'll give you one." frank opened his trunk and pulled out two, which he gave to dick. "i wonder if i ain't dreamin'" said dick, once more surveying himself doubtfully in the glass. "i'm afraid i'm dreamin', and shall wake up in a barrel, as i did night afore last." "shall i pinch you so you can wake here?" asked frank, playfully. "yes," said dick, seriously, "i wish you would." he pulled up the sleeve of his jacket, and frank pinched him pretty hard, so that dick winced. "yes, i guess i'm awake," said dick; "you've got a pair of nippers, you have. but what shall i do with my brush and blacking?" he asked. "you can leave them here till we come back," said frank. "they will be safe." "hold on a minute," said dick, surveying frank's boots with a professional eye, "you ain't got a good shine on them boots. i'll make 'em shine so you can see your face in 'em." and he was as good as his word. "thank you," said frank; "now you had better brush your own shoes." this had not occurred to dick, for in general the professional boot-black considers his blacking too valuable to expend on his own shoes or boots, if he is fortunate enough to possess a pair. the two boys now went downstairs together. they met the same servant who had spoken to dick a few minutes before, but there was no recognition. "he don't know me," said dick. "he thinks i'm a young swell like you." "what's a swell?" "oh, a feller that wears nobby clothes like you." "and you, too, dick." "yes," said dick, "who'd ever have thought as i should have turned into a swell?" they had now got out on broadway, and were slowly walking along the west side by the park, when who should dick see in front of him, but johnny nolan? instantly dick was seized with a fancy for witnessing johnny's amazement at his change in appearance. he stole up behind him, and struck him on the back. "hallo, johnny, how many shines have you had?" johnny turned round expecting to see dick, whose voice he recognized, but his astonished eyes rested on a nicely dressed boy (the hat alone excepted) who looked indeed like dick, but so transformed in dress that it was difficult to be sure of his identity. "what luck, johnny?" repeated dick. johnny surveyed him from head to foot in great bewilderment. "who be you?" he said. "well, that's a good one," laughed dick; "so you don't know dick?" "where'd you get all them clothes?" asked johnny. "have you been stealin'?" "say that again, and i'll lick you. no, i've lent my clothes to a young feller as was goin' to a party, and didn't have none fit to wear, and so i put on my second-best for a change." without deigning any further explanation, dick went off, followed by the astonished gaze of johnny nolan, who could not quite make up his mind whether the neat-looking boy he had been talking with was really ragged dick or not. in order to reach chatham street it was necessary to cross broadway. this was easier proposed than done. there is always such a throng of omnibuses, drays, carriages, and vehicles of all kinds in the neighborhood of the astor house, that the crossing is formidable to one who is not used to it. dick made nothing of it, dodging in and out among the horses and wagons with perfect self-possession. reaching the opposite sidewalk, he looked back, and found that frank had retreated in dismay, and that the width of the street was between them. "come across!" called out dick. "i don't see any chance," said frank, looking anxiously at the prospect before him. "i'm afraid of being run over." "if you are, you can sue 'em for damages," said dick. finally frank got safely over after several narrow escapes, as he considered them. "is it always so crowded?" he asked. "a good deal worse sometimes," said dick. "i knowed a young man once who waited six hours for a chance to cross, and at last got run over by an omnibus, leaving a widder and a large family of orphan children. his widder, a beautiful young woman, was obliged to start a peanut and apple stand. there she is now." "where?" dick pointed to a hideous old woman, of large proportions, wearing a bonnet of immense size, who presided over an applestand close by. frank laughed. "if that is the case," he said, "i think i will patronize her." "leave it to me," said dick, winking. he advanced gravely to the apple-stand, and said, "old lady, have you paid your taxes?" the astonished woman opened her eyes. "i'm a gov'ment officer," said dick, "sent by the mayor to collect your taxes. i'll take it in apples just to oblige. that big red one will about pay what you're owin' to the gov'ment." "i don't know nothing about no taxes," said the old woman, in bewilderment. "then," said dick, "i'll let you off this time. give us two of your best apples, and my friend here, the president of the common council, will pay you." frank smiling, paid three cents apiece for the apples, and they sauntered on, dick remarking, "if these apples ain't good, old lady, we'll return 'em, and get our money back." this would have been rather difficult in his case, as the apple was already half consumed. chatham street, where they wished to go, being on the east side, the two boys crossed the park. this is an enclosure of about ten acres, which years ago was covered with a green sward, but is now a great thoroughfare for pedestrians and contains several important public buildings. dick pointed out the city hall, the hall of records, and the rotunda. the former is a white building of large size, and surmounted by a cupola. "that's where the mayor's office is," said dick. "him and me are very good friends. i once blacked his boots by partic'lar appointment. that's the way i pay my city taxes." chapter v chatham street and broadway they were soon in chatham street, walking between rows of ready-made clothing shops, many of which had half their stock in trade exposed on the sidewalk. the proprietors of these establishments stood at the doors, watching attentively the passersby, extending urgent invitations to any who even glanced at the goods to enter. "walk in, young gentlemen," said a stout man, at the entrance of one shop. "no, i thank you," replied dick, "as the fly said to the spider." "we're selling off at less than cost." "of course you be. that's where you makes your money," said dick. "there ain't nobody of any enterprise that pretends to make any profit on his goods." the chatham street trader looked after our hero as if he didn't quite comprehend him; but dick, without waiting for a reply, passed on with his companion. in some of the shops auctions seemed to be going on. "i am only offered two dollars, gentlemen, for this elegant pair of doeskin pants, made of the very best of cloth. it's a frightful sacrifice. who'll give an eighth? thank you, sir. only seventeen shillings! why the cloth cost more by the yard!" this speaker was standing on a little platform haranguing to three men, holding in his hand meanwhile a pair of pants very loose in the legs, and presenting a cheap bowery look. frank and dick paused before the shop door, and finally saw them knocked down to rather a verdant-looking individual at three dollars. "clothes seem to be pretty cheap here," said frank. "yes, but baxter street is the cheapest place." "is it?" "yes. johnny nolan got a whole rig-out there last week, for a dollar,--coat, cap, vest, pants, and shoes. they was very good measure, too, like my best clothes that i took off to oblige you." "i shall know where to come for clothes next time," said frank, laughing. "i had no idea the city was so much cheaper than the country. i suppose the baxter street tailors are fashionable?" "in course they are. me and horace greeley always go there for clothes. when horace gets a new suit, i always have one made just like it; but i can't go the white hat. it ain't becomin' to my style of beauty." a little farther on a man was standing out on the sidewalk, distributing small printed handbills. one was handed to frank, which he read as follows,-"grand closing-out sale!--a variety of beautiful and costly articles for sale, at a dollar apiece. unparalleled inducements! walk in, gentlemen!" "whereabouts is this sale?" asked frank. "in here, young gentlemen," said a black-whiskered individual, who appeared suddenly on the scene. "walk in." "shall we go in, dick?" "it's a swindlin' shop," said dick, in a low voice. "i've been there. that man's a regular cheat. he's seen me before, but he don't know me coz of my clothes." "step in and see the articles," said the man, persuasively. "you needn't buy, you know." "are all the articles worth more'n a dollar?" asked dick. "yes," said the other, "and some worth a great deal more." "such as what?" "well, there's a silver pitcher worth twenty dollars." "and you sell it for a dollar. that's very kind of you," said dick, innocently. "walk in, and you'll understand it." "no, i guess not," said dick. "my servants is so dishonest that i wouldn't like to trust 'em with a silver pitcher. come along, frank. i hope you'll succeed in your charitable enterprise of supplyin' the public with silver pitchers at nineteen dollars less than they are worth." "how does he manage, dick?" asked frank, as they went on. "all his articles are numbered, and he makes you pay a dollar, and then shakes some dice, and whatever the figgers come to, is the number of the article you draw. most of 'em ain't worth sixpence." a hat and cap store being close at hand, dick and frank went in. for seventy-five cents, which frank insisted on paying, dick succeeded in getting quite a neat-looking cap, which corresponded much better with his appearance than the one he had on. the last, not being considered worth keeping, dick dropped on the sidewalk, from which, on looking back, he saw it picked up by a brother boot-black who appeared to consider it better than his own. they retraced their steps and went up chambers street to broadway. at the corner of broadway and chambers street is a large white marble warehouse, which attracted frank's attention. "what building is that?" he asked, with interest. "that belongs to my friend a. t. stewart," said dick. "it's the biggest store on broadway.* if i ever retire from bootblackin', and go into mercantile pursuits, i may buy him out, or build another store that'll take the shine off this one." * mr. stewart's tenth street store was not open at the time dick spoke. "were you ever in the store?" asked frank. "no," said dick; "but i'm intimate with one of stewart's partners. he is a cash boy, and does nothing but take money all day." "a very agreeable employment," said frank, laughing. "yes," said dick, "i'd like to be in it." the boys crossed to the west side of broadway, and walked slowly up the street. to frank it was a very interesting spectacle. accustomed to the quiet of the country, there was something fascinating in the crowds of people thronging the sidewalks, and the great variety of vehicles constantly passing and repassing in the street. then again the shop-windows with their multifarious contents interested and amused him, and he was constantly checking dick to look in at some well-stocked window. "i don't see how so many shopkeepers can find people enough to buy of them," he said. "we haven't got but two stores in our village, and broadway seems to be full of them." "yes," said dick; "and its pretty much the same in the avenoos, 'specially the third, sixth, and eighth avenoos. the bowery, too, is a great place for shoppin'. there everybody sells cheaper'n anybody else, and nobody pretends to make no profit on their goods." "where's barnum's museum?" asked frank. "oh, that's down nearly opposite the astor house," said dick. "didn't you see a great building with lots of flags?" "yes." "well, that's barnum's.* that's where the happy family live, and the lions, and bears, and curiosities generally. it's a tip-top place. haven't you ever been there? it's most as good as the old bowery, only the plays isn't quite so excitin'." * since destroyed by fire, and rebuilt farther up broadway, and again burned down in february. "i'll go if i get time," said frank. "there is a boy at home who came to new york a month ago, and went to barnum's, and has been talking about it ever since, so i suppose it must be worth seeing." "they've got a great play at the old bowery now," pursued dick. "'tis called the `demon of the danube.' the demon falls in love with a young woman, and drags her by the hair up to the top of a steep rock where his castle stands." "that's a queer way of showing his love," said frank, laughing. "she didn't want to go with him, you know, but was in love with another chap. when he heard about his girl bein' carried off, he felt awful, and swore an oath not to rest till he had got her free. well, at last he got into the castle by some underground passage, and he and the demon had a fight. oh, it was bully seein' 'em roll round on the stage, cuttin' and slashin' at each other." "and which got the best of it?" "at first the demon seemed to be ahead, but at last the young baron got him down, and struck a dagger into his heart, sayin', `die, false and perjured villain! the dogs shall feast upon thy carcass!' and then the demon give an awful howl and died. then the baron seized his body, and threw it over the precipice." "it seems to me the actor who plays the demon ought to get extra pay, if he has to be treated that way." "that's so," said dick; "but i guess he's used to it. it seems to agree with his constitution." "what building is that?" asked frank, pointing to a structure several rods back from the street, with a large yard in front. it was an unusual sight for broadway, all the other buildings in that neighborhood being even with the street. "that is the new york hospital," said dick. "they're a rich institution, and take care of sick people on very reasonable terms." "did you ever go in there?" "yes," said dick; "there was a friend of mine, johnny mullen, he was a newsboy, got run over by a omnibus as he was crossin' broadway down near park place. he was carried to the hospital, and me and some of his friends paid his board while he was there. it was only three dollars a week, which was very cheap, considerin' all the care they took of him. i got leave to come and see him while he was here. everything looked so nice and comfortable, that i thought a little of coaxin' a omnibus driver to run over me, so i might go there too." "did your friend have to have his leg cut off?" asked frank, interested. "no," said dick; "though there was a young student there that was very anxious to have it cut off; but it wasn't done, and johnny is around the streets as well as ever." while this conversation was going on they reached no. 365, at the corner of franklin street.* * now the office of the merchants' union express company. "that's taylor's saloon," said dick. "when i come into a fortun' i shall take my meals there reg'lar." "i have heard of it very often," said frank. "it is said to be very elegant. suppose we go in and take an ice-cream. it will give us a chance to see it to better advantage." "thank you," said dick; "i think that's the most agreeable way of seein' the place myself." the boys entered, and found themselves in a spacious and elegant saloon, resplendent with gilding, and adorned on all sides by costly mirrors. they sat down to a small table with a marble top, and frank gave the order. "it reminds me of aladdin's palace," said frank, looking about him. "does it?" said dick; "he must have had plenty of money." "he had an old lamp, which he had only to rub, when the slave of the lamp would appear, and do whatever he wanted." "that must have been a valooable lamp. i'd be willin' to give all my erie shares for it." there was a tall, gaunt individual at the next table, who apparently heard this last remark of dick's. turning towards our hero, he said, "may i inquire, young man, whether you are largely interested in this erie railroad?" "i haven't got no property except what's invested in erie," said dick, with a comical side-glance at frank. "indeed! i suppose the investment was made by your guardian." "no," said dick; "i manage my property myself." "and i presume your dividends have not been large?" "why, no," said dick; "you're about right there. they haven't." "as i supposed. it's poor stock. now, my young friend, i can recommend a much better investment, which will yield you a large annual income. i am agent of the excelsior copper mining company, which possesses one of the most productive mines in the world. it's sure to yield fifty per cent. on the investment. now, all you have to do is to sell out your erie shares, and invest in our stock, and i'll insure you a fortune in three years. how many shares did you say you had?" "i didn't say, that i remember," said dick. "your offer is very kind and obligin', and as soon as i get time i'll see about it." "i hope you will," said the stranger. "permit me to give you my card. `samuel snap, no.-wall street.' i shall be most happy to receive a call from you, and exhibit the maps of our mine. i should be glad to have you mention the matter also to your friends. i am confident you could do no greater service than to induce them to embark in our enterprise." "very good," said dick. here the stranger left the table, and walked up to the desk to settle his bill. "you see what it is to be a man of fortun', frank," said dick, "and wear good clothes. i wonder what that chap'll say when he sees me blackin' boots to-morrow in the street?" "perhaps you earn your money more honorably than he does, after all," said frank. "some of these mining companies are nothing but swindles, got up to cheat people out of their money " "he's welcome to all he gets out of me," said dick. chapter vi up broadway to madison square as the boys pursued their way up broadway, dick pointed out the prominent hotels and places of amusement. frank was particularly struck with the imposing fronts of the st. nicholas and metropolitan hotels, the former of white marble, the latter of a subdued brown hue, but not less elegant in its internal appointments. he was not surprised to be informed that each of these splendid structures cost with the furnishing not far from a million dollars. at eighth street dick turned to the right, and pointed out the clinton hall building now occupied by the mercantile library, comprising at that time over fifty thousand volumes.* * now not far from one hundred thousand. a little farther on they came to a large building standing by itself just at the opening of third and fourth avenues, and with one side on each. "what is that building?" asked frank. "that's the cooper institute," said dick; "built by mr. cooper, a particular friend of mine. me and peter cooper used to go to school together." "what is there inside?" asked frank. "there's a hall for public meetin's and lectures in the basement, and a readin' room and a picture gallery up above," said dick. directly opposite cooper institute, frank saw a very large building of brick, covering about an acre of ground. "is that a hotel?" he asked. "no," said dick; "that's the bible house. it's the place where they make bibles. i was in there once,--saw a big pile of 'em." "did you ever read the bible?" asked frank, who had some idea of the neglected state of dick's education. "no," said dick; "i've heard it's a good book, but i never read one. i ain't much on readin'. it makes my head ache." "i suppose you can't read very fast." "i can read the little words pretty well, but the big ones is what stick me." "if i lived in the city, you might come every evening to me, and i would teach you." "would you take so much trouble about me?" asked dick, earnestly. "certainly; i should like to see you getting on. there isn't much chance of that if you don't know how to read and write." "you're a good feller," said dick, gratefully. "i wish you did live in new york. i'd like to knows omethin'. whereabouts do you live?" "about fifty miles off, in a town on the left bank of the hudson. i wish you'd come up and see me sometime. i would like to have you come and stop two or three days." "honor bright?" "i don't understand." "do you mean it?" asked dick, incredulously. "of course i do. why shouldn't i?" "what would your folks say if they knowed you asked a boot-black to visit you?" "you are none the worse for being a boot-black, dick." "i ain't used to genteel society," said dick. "i shouldn't know how to behave." "then i could show you. you won't be a boot-black all your life, you know." "no," said dick; "i'm goin' to knock off when i get to be ninety." "before that, i hope, said frank, smiling. "i really wish i could get somethin' else to do," said dick, soberly. "i'd like to be a office boy, and learn business, and grow up 'spectable." "why don't you try, and see if you can't get a place, dick?" "who'd take ragged dick?" "but you ain't ragged now, dick." "no," said dick; "i look a little better than i did in my washington coat and louis napoleon pants. but if i got in a office, they wouldn't give me more'n three dollars a week, and i couldn't live 'spectable on that." "no, i suppose not," said frank, thoughtfully. "but you would get more at the end of the first year." "yes," said dick; "but by that time i'd be nothin' but skin and bones." frank laughed. "that reminds me," he said, "of the story of an irishman, who, out of economy, thought he would teach his horse to feed on shavings. so he provided the horse with a pair of green spectacles which made the shavings look eatable. but unfortunately, just as the horse got learned, he up and died." "the hoss must have been a fine specimen of architectur' by the time he got through," remarked dick. "whereabouts are we now?" asked frank, as they emerged from fourth avenue into union square. "that is union park," said dick, pointing to a beautiful enclosure, in the centre of which was a pond, with a fountain playing. "is that the statue of general washington?" asked frank, pointing to a bronze equestrian statue, on a granite pedestal. "yes," said dick; "he's growed some since he was president. if he'd been as tall as that when he fit in the revolution, he'd have walloped the britishers some, i reckon." frank looked up at the statue, which is fourteen and a half feet high, and acknowledged the justice of dick's remark. "how about the coat, dick?" he asked. "would it fit you?" "well, it might be rather loose," said dick, "i ain't much more'n ten feet high with my boots off." "no, i should think not," said frank, smiling. "you're a queer boy, dick." "well, i've been brought up queer. some boys is born with a silver spoon in their mouth. victoria's boys is born with a gold spoon, set with di'monds; but gold and silver was scarce when i was born, and mine was pewter." "perhaps the gold and silver will come by and by, dick. did you ever hear of dick whittington?" "never did. was he a ragged dick?" "i shouldn't wonder if he was. at any rate he was very poor when he was a boy, but he didn't stay so. before he died, he became lord mayor of london." "did he?" asked dick, looking interested. "how did he do it?" "why, you see, a rich merchant took pity on him, and gave him a home in his own house, where he used to stay with the servants, being employed in little errands. one day the merchant noticed dick picking up pins and needles that had been dropped, and asked him why he did it. dick told him he was going to sell them when he got enough. the merchant was pleased with his saving disposition, and when soon after, he was going to send a vessel to foreign parts, he told dick he might send anything he pleased in it, and it should be sold to his advantage. now dick had nothing in the world but a kitten which had been given him a short time before." "how much taxes did he have to pay on it?" asked dick. "not very high, probably. but having only the kitten, he concluded to send it along. after sailing a good many months, during which the kitten grew up to be a strong cat, the ship touched at an island never before known, which happened to be infested with rats and mice to such an extent that they worried everybody's life out, and even ransacked the king's palace. to make a long story short, the captain, seeing how matters stood, brought dick's cat ashore, and she soon made the rats and mice scatter. the king was highly delighted when he saw what havoc she made among the rats and mice, and resolved to have her at any price. so he offered a great quantity of gold for her, which, of course, the captain was glad to accept. it was faithfully carried back to dick, and laid the foundation of his fortune. he prospered as he grew up, and in time became a very rich merchant, respected by all, and before he died was elected lord mayor of london." "that's a pretty good story" said dick; "but i don't believe all the cats in new york will ever make me mayor." "no, probably not, but you may rise in some other way. a good many distinguished men have once been poor boys. there's hope for you, dick, if you'll try." "nobody ever talked to me so before," said dick. "they just called me ragged dick, and told me i'd grow up to be a vagabone (boys who are better educated need not be surprised at dick's blunders) and come to the gallows." "telling you so won't make it turn out so, dick. if you'll try to be somebody, and grow up into a respectable member of society, you will. you may not become rich,--it isn't everybody that becomes rich, you know--but you can obtain a good position, and be respected." "i'll try," said dick, earnestly. "i needn't have been ragged dick so long if i hadn't spent my money in goin' to the theatre, and treatin' boys to oyster-stews, and bettin' money on cards, and such like." "have you lost money that way?" "lots of it. one time i saved up five dollars to buy me a new rig-out, cos my best suit was all in rags, when limpy jim wanted me to play a game with him." "limpy jim?" said frank, interrogatively. "yes, he's lame; that's what makes us call him limpy jim." "i suppose you lost?" "yes, i lost every penny, and had to sleep out, cos i hadn't a cent to pay for lodgin'. 'twas a awful cold night, and i got most froze." "wouldn't jim let you have any of the money he had won to pay for a lodging?" "no; i axed him for five cents, but he wouldn't let me have it." "can you get lodging for five cents?" asked frank, in surprise. "yes," said dick, "but not at the fifth avenue hotel. that's it right out there." chapter vii the pocket-book they had reached the junction of broadway and of fifth avenue. before them was a beautiful park of ten acres. on the left-hand side was a large marble building, presenting a fine appearance with its extensive white front. this was the building at which dick pointed. "is that the fifth avenue hotel?" asked frank. "i've heard of it often. my uncle william always stops there when he comes to new york." "i once slept on the outside of it," said dick. "they was very reasonable in their charges, and told me i might come again." "perhaps sometime you'll be able to sleep inside," said frank. "i guess that'll be when queen victoria goes to the five points to live." "it looks like a palace," said frank. "the queen needn't be ashamed to live in such a beautiful building as that." though frank did not know it, one of the queen's palaces is far from being as fine a looking building as the fifth avenue hotel. st. james' palace is a very ugly-looking brick structure, and appears much more like a factory than like the home of royalty. there are few hotels in the world as fine-looking as this democratic institution. at that moment a gentleman passed them on the sidewalk, who looked back at dick, as if his face seemed familiar. "i know that man," said dick, after he had passed. "he's one of my customers." "what is his name?" "i don't know." "he looked back as if he thought he knew you." "he would have knowed me at once if it hadn't been for my new clothes," said dick. "i don't look much like ragged dick now." "i suppose your face looked familiar." "all but the dirt," said dick, laughing. "i don't always have the chance of washing my face and hands in the astor house." "you told me," said frank, "that there was a place where you could get lodging for five cents. where's that?" "it's the news-boys' lodgin' house, on fulton street," said dick, "up over the `sun' office. it's a good place. i don't know what us boys would do without it. they give you supper for six cents, and a bed for five cents more." "i suppose some boys don't even have the five cents to pay,-do they?" "they'll trust the boys," said dick. "but i don't like to get trusted. i'd be ashamed to get trusted for five cents, or ten either. one night i was comin' down chatham street, with fifty cents in my pocket. i was goin' to get a good oyster-stew, and then go to the lodgin' house; but somehow it slipped through a hole in my trowses-pocket, and i hadn't a cent left. if it had been summer i shouldn't have cared, but it's rather tough stayin' out winter nights." frank, who had always possessed a good home of his own, found it hard to realize that the boy who was walking at his side had actually walked the streets in the cold without a home, or money to procure the common comfort of a bed. "what did you do?" he asked, his voice full of sympathy. "i went to the `times' office. i knowed one of the pressmen, and he let me set down in a corner , where i was warm, and i soon got fast asleep." "why don't you get a room somewhere, and so always have a home to go to?" "i dunno," said dick. "i never thought of it. p'rhaps i may hire a furnished house on madison square." "that's where flora mcflimsey lived." "i don't know her," said dick, who had never read the popular poem of which she is the heroine. while this conversation was going on, they had turned into twenty-fifth street, and had by this time reached third avenue. just before entering it, their attention was drawn to the rather singular conduct of an individual in front of them. stopping suddenly, he appeared to pick up something from the sidewalk, and then looked about him in rather a confused way. "i know his game," whispered dick. "come along and you'll see what it is." he hurried frank forward until they overtook the man, who had come to a stand-still. "have you found anything?" asked dick. "yes," said the man, "i've found this." he exhibited a wallet which seemed stuffed with bills, to judge from its plethoric appearance. "whew!" exclaimed dick; "you're in luck." "i suppose somebody has lost it," said the man, "and will offer a handsome reward." "which you'll get." "unfortunately i am obliged to take the next train to boston. that's where i live. i haven't time to hunt up the owner." "then i suppose you'll take the pocket-book with you," said dick, with assumed simplicity. "i should like to leave it with some honest fellow who would see it returned to the owner," said the man, glancing at the boys. "i'm honest," said dick. "i've no doubt of it," said the other. "well, young man, "i'll make you an offer. you take the pocket-book--" "all right. hand it over, then." "wait a minute. there must be a large sum inside. i shouldn't wonder if there might be a thousand dollars. the owner will probably give you a hundred dollars reward." "why don't you stay and get it?" asked frank. "i would, only there is sickness in my family, and i must get home as soon as possible. just give me twenty dollars, and i'll hand you the pocket-book, and let you make whatever you can out of it. come, that's a good offer. what do you say?" dick was well dressed, so that the other did not regard it as at all improbable that he might possess that sum. he was prepared, however, to let him have it for less, if necessary. "twenty dollars is a good deal of money," said dick, appearing to hesitate. "you'll get it back, and a good deal more," said the stranger, persuasively. "i don't know but i shall. what would you do, frank?" "i don't know but i would," said frank, "if you've got the money." he was not a little surprised to think that dick had so much by him. "i don't know but i will," said dick, after some irresolution. "i guess i won't lose much." "you can't lose anything," said the stranger briskly. "only be quick, for i must be on my way to the cars. i am afraid i shall miss them now." dick pulled out a bill from his pocket, and handed it to the stranger, receiving the pocket-book in return. at that moment a policeman turned the corner, and the stranger, hurriedly thrusting the bill into his pocket, without looking at it, made off with rapid steps. "what is there in the pocket-book, dick?" asked frank in some excitement. "i hope there's enough to pay you for the money you gave him." dick laughed. "i'll risk that," said he. "but you gave him twenty dollars. that's a good deal of money." "if i had given him as much as that, i should deserve to be cheated out of it." "but you did,--didn't you?" "he thought so." "what was it, then?" "it was nothing but a dry-goods circular got up to imitate a bank-bill." frank looked sober. "you ought not to have cheated him, dick," he said, reproachfully. "didn't he want to cheat me?" "i don't know." "what do you s'pose there is in that pocket-book?" asked dick, holding it up. frank surveyed its ample proportions, and answered sincerely enough, "money, and a good deal of it." "there ain't stamps enough in it to buy a oyster-stew" said dick. "if you don't believe it, just look while i open it." so saying he opened the pocket-book, and showed frank that it was stuffed out with pieces of blank paper, carefully folded up in the shape of bills. frank, who was unused to city life, and had never heard anything of the "drop-game" looked amazed at this unexpected development. "i knowed how it was all the time," said dick. "i guess i got the best of him there. this wallet's worth somethin'. i shall use it to keep my stiffkit's of erie stock in, and all my other papers what ain't of no use to anybody but the owner." "that's the kind of papers it's got in it now," said frank, smiling. "that's so!" said dick. "by hokey!" he exclaimed suddenly, "if there ain't the old chap comin' back ag'in. he looks as if he'd heard bad news from his sick family." by this time the pocket-book dropper had come up. approaching the boys, he said in an undertone to dick, "give me back that pocket-book, you young rascal!" "beg your pardon, mister," said dick, "but was you addressin' me?" "yes, i was." "'cause you called me by the wrong name. i've knowed some rascals, but i ain't the honor to belong to the family." he looked significantly at the other as he spoke, which didn't improve the man's temper. accustomed to swindle others, he did not fancy being practised upon in return. "give me back that pocket-book," he repeated in a threatening voice. "couldn't do it," said dick, coolly. "i'm go'n' to restore it to the owner. the contents is so valooable that most likely the loss has made him sick, and he'll be likely to come down liberal to the honest finder." "you gave me a bogus bill," said the man. "it's what i use myself," said dick. "you've swindled me." "i thought it was the other way." "none of your nonsense," said the man angrily. "if you don't give up that pocket-book, i'll call a policeman." "i wish you would," said dick. "they'll know most likely whether it's stewart or astor that's lost the pocket-book, and i can get 'em to return it." the "dropper," whose object it was to recover the pocketbook, in order to try the same game on a more satisfactory customer, was irritated by dick's refusal, and above all by the coolness he displayed. he resolved to make one more attempt. "do you want to pass the night in the tombs?" he asked. "thank you for your very obligin' proposal," said dick; "but it ain't convenient to-day. any other time, when you'd like to have me come and stop with you, i'm agreeable; but my two youngest children is down with the measles, and i expect i'll have to set up all night to take care of 'em. is the tombs, in gineral, a pleasant place of residence?" dick asked this question with an air of so much earnestness that frank could scarcely forbear laughing, though it is hardly necessary to say that the dropper was by no means so inclined. "you'll know sometime," he said, scowling. "i'll make you a fair offer" said dick. "if i get more'n fifty dollars as a reward for my honesty, i'll divide with you. but i say, ain't it most time to go back to your sick family in boston?" finding that nothing was to be made out of dick, the man strode away with a muttered curse. "you were too smart for him, dick," said frank. "yes," said dick, "i ain't knocked round the city streets all my life for nothin'." chapter viii dick's early history "have you always lived in new york, dick?" asked frank, after a pause. "ever since i can remember." "i wish you'd tell me a little about yourself. have you got any father or mother?" "i ain't got no mother. she died when i wasn't but three years old. my father went to sea; but he went off before mother died, and nothin' was ever heard of him. i expect he got wrecked, or died at sea." "and what became of you when your mother died?" "the folks she boarded with took care of me, but they was poor, and they couldn't do much. when i was seven the woman died, and her husband went out west, and then i had to scratch for myself." "at seven years old!" exclaimed frank, in amazement. "yes," said dick, "i was a little feller to take care of myself, but," he continued with pardonable pride, "i did it." "what could you do?" "sometimes one thing, and sometimes another," said dick. "i changed my business accordin' as i had to. sometimes i was a newsboy, and diffused intelligence among the masses, as i heard somebody say once in a big speech he made in the park. them was the times when horace greeley and james gordon bennett made money." "through your enterprise?" suggested frank. "yes," said dick; "but i give it up after a while." "what for?" "well, they didn't always put news enough in their papers, and people wouldn't buy 'em as fast as i wanted 'em to. so one mornin' i was stuck on a lot of heralds, and i thought i'd make a sensation. so i called out `great news! queen victoria assassinated!' all my heralds went off like hot cakes, and i went off, too, but one of the gentlemen what got sold remembered me, and said he'd have me took up, and that's what made me change my business." "that wasn't right, dick," said frank. "i know it," said dick; "but lots of boys does it." "that don't make it any better." "no," said dick, "i was sort of ashamed at the time, 'specially about one poor old gentleman,--a englishman he was. he couldn't help cryin' to think the queen was dead, and his hands shook when he handed me the money for the paper." "what did you do next?" "i went into the match business," said dick; "but it was small sales and small profits. most of the people i called on had just laid in a stock, and didn't want to buy. so one cold night, when i hadn't money enough to pay for a lodgin', i burned the last of my matches to keep me from freezin'. but it cost too much to get warm that way, and i couldn't keep it up." "you've seen hard times, dick," said frank, compassionately. "yes," said dick, "i've knowed what it was to be hungry and cold, with nothin' to eat or to warm me; but there's one thing i never could do," he added, proudly. "what's that?" "i never stole," said dick. "it's mean and i wouldn't do it." "were you ever tempted to?" "lots of times. once i had been goin' round all day, and hadn't sold any matches, except three cents' worth early in the mornin'. with that i bought an apple, thinkin' i should get some more bimeby. when evenin' come i was awful hungry. i went into a baker's just to look at the bread. it made me feel kind o' good just to look at the bread and cakes, and i thought maybe they would give me some. i asked 'em wouldn't they give me a loaf, and take their pay in matches. but they said they'd got enough matches to last three months; so there wasn't any chance for a trade. while i was standin' at the stove warmin' me, the baker went into a back room, and i felt so hungry i thought i would take just one loaf, and go off with it. there was such a big pile i don't think he'd have known it." "but you didn't do it?" "no, i didn't and i was glad of it, for when the man came in ag'in, he said he wanted some one to carry some cake to a lady in st. mark's place. his boy was sick, and he hadn't no one to send; so he told me he'd give me ten cents if i would go. my business wasn't very pressin' just then, so i went, and when i come back, i took my pay in bread and cakes. didn't they taste good, though?" "so you didn't stay long in the match business, dick?" "no, i couldn't sell enough to make it pay. then there was some folks that wanted me to sell cheaper to them; so i couldn't make any profit. there was one old lady--she was rich, too, for she lived in a big brick house--beat me down so, that i didn't make no profit at all; but she wouldn't buy without, and i hadn't sold none that day; so i let her have them. i don't see why rich folks should be so hard upon a poor boy that wants to make a livin'." "there's a good deal of meanness in the world, i'm afraid, dick." "if everybody was like you and your uncle," said dick, "there would be some chance for poor people. if i was rich i'd try to help 'em along." "perhaps you will be rich sometime, dick." dick shook his head. "i'm afraid all my wallets will be like this," said dick, indicating the one he had received from the dropper, "and will be full of papers what ain't of no use to anybody except the owner." "that depends very much on yourself, dick," said frank. "stewart wasn't always rich, you know." "wasn't he?" "when he first came to new york as a young man he was a teacher, and teachers are not generally very rich. at last he went into business, starting in a small way, and worked his way up by degrees. but there was one thing he determined in the beginning: that he would be strictly honorable in all his dealings, and never overreach any one for the sake of making money. if there was a chance for him, dick, there is a chance for you." "he knowed enough to be a teacher, and i'm awful ignorant," said dick. "but you needn't stay so." "how can i help it?" "can't you learn at school?" "i can't go to school 'cause i've got my livin' to earn. it wouldn't do me much good if i learned to read and write, and just as i'd got learned i starved to death." "but are there no night-schools?" "yes." "why don't you go? i suppose you don't work in the evenings." "i never cared much about it," said dick, "and that's the truth. but since i've got to talkin' with you, i think more about it. i guess i'll begin to go." "i wish you would, dick. you'll make a smart man if you only get a little education." "do you think so?" asked dick, doubtfully. "i know so. a boy who has earned his own living since he was seven years old must have something in him. i feel very much interested in you, dick. you've had a hard time of it so far in life, but i think better times are in store. i want you to do well, and i feel sure you can if you only try." "you're a good fellow," said dick, gratefully. "i'm afraid i'm a pretty rough customer, but i ain't as bad as some. i mean to turn over a new leaf, and try to grow up 'spectable." "there've been a great many boys begin as low down as you, dick, that have grown up respectable and honored. but they had to work pretty hard for it." "i'm willin' to work hard," said dick. "and you must not only work hard, but work in the right way." "what's the right way?" "you began in the right way when you determined never to steal, or do anything mean or dishonorable, however strongly tempted to do so. that will make people have confidence in you when they come to know you. but, in order to succeed well, you must manage to get as good an education as you can. until you do, you cannot get a position in an office or counting-room, even to run errands." "that's so," said dick, soberly. "i never thought how awful ignorant i was till now." "that can be remedied with perseverance," said frank. "a year will do a great deal for you." "i'll go to work and see what i can do," said dick, energetically. chapter ix a scene in a thlrd avenue car the boys had turned into third avenue, a long street, which, commencing just below tbe cooper institute, runs out to harlem. a man came out of a side street, uttering at intervals a monotonous cry which sounded like "glass puddin'." "glass pudding!" repeated frank, looking in surprised wonder at dick. "what does he mean?" "perhaps you'd like some," said dick. "i never heard of it before." "suppose you ask him what he charges for his puddin'." frank looked more narrowly at the man, and soon concluded that he was a glazier. "oh, i understand," he said. "he means `glass put in.'" frank's mistake was not a singular one. the monotonous cry of these men certainly sounds more like "glass puddin'," than the words they intend to utter. "now," said dick, "where shall we go?" "i should like to see central park," said frank. "is it far off?" "it is about a mile and a half from here," said dick. "this is twenty-ninth street, and the park begins at fifty-ninth street." it may be explained, for the benefit of readers who have never visited new york, that about a mile from the city hall the cross-streets begin to be numbered in regular order. there is a continuous line of houses as far as one hundred and thirtieth street, where may be found the terminus of the harlem line of horse-cars. when the entire island is laid out and settled, probably the numbers will reach two hundred or more. central park, which lies between fifty-ninth street on the south, and one hundred and tenth street on the north, is true to its name, occupying about the centre of the island. the distance between two parallel streets is called a block, and twenty blocks make a mile. it will therefore be seen that dick was exactly right, when he said they were a mile and a half from central park. "that is too far to walk," said frank. "'twon't cost but six cents to ride," said dick. "you mean in the horse-cars?" "yes." "all right then. we'll jump aboard the next car." the third avenue and harlem line of horse-cars is better patronized than any other in new york, though not much can be said for the cars, which are usually dirty and overcrowded. still, when it is considered that only seven cents are charged for the entire distance to harlem, about seven miles from the city hall, the fare can hardly be complained of. but of course most of the profit is made from the way-passengers who only ride a short distance. a car was at that moment approaching, but it seemed pretty crowded. "shall we take that, or wait for another?" asked frank. "the next'll most likely be as bad," said dick. the boys accordingly signalled to the conductor to stop, and got on the front platform. they were obliged to stand up till the car reached fortieth street, when so many of the passengers had got off that they obtained seats. frank sat down beside a middle-aged woman, or lady, as she probably called herself, whose sharp visage and thin lips did not seem to promise a very pleasant disposition. when the two gentlemen who sat beside her arose, she spread her skirts in the endeavor to fill two seats. disregarding this, the boys sat down. "there ain 't room for two," she said, looking sourly at frank. "there were two here before." "well, there ought not to have been. some people like to crowd in where they're not wanted." "and some like to take up a double allowance of room," thought frank; but he did not say so. he saw that the woman had a bad temper, and thought it wisest to say nothing. frank had never ridden up the city as far as this, and it was with much interest that he looked out of the car windows at the stores on either side. third avenue is a broad street, but in the character of its houses and stores it is quite inferior to broadway, though better than some of the avenues further east. fifth avenue, as most of my readers already know, is the finest street in the city, being lined with splendid private residences, occupied by the wealthier classes. many of the cross streets also boast houses which may be considered palaces, so elegant are they externally and internally. frank caught glimpses of some of these as he was carried towards the park. after the first conversation, already mentioned, with the lady at his side, he supposed he should have nothing further to do with her. but in this he was mistaken. while he was busy looking out of the car window, she plunged her hand into her pocket in search of her purse, which she was unable to find. instantly she jumped to the conclusion that it had been stolen, and her suspicions fastened upon frank, with whom she was already provoked for "crowding her," as she termed it. "conductor!" she exclaimed in a sharp voice. "what's wanted, ma'am?" returned that functionary. "i want you to come here right off." "what's the matter?" "my purse has been stolen. there was four dollars and eighty cents in it. i know, because i counted it when i paid my fare." "who stole it?" "that boy," she said pointing to frank, who listened to the charge in the most intense astonishment. "he crowded in here on purpose to rob me, and i want you to search him right off." "that's a lie!" exclaimed dick, indignantly. "oh, you're in league with him, i dare say," said the woman spitefully. "you're as bad as he is, i'll be bound." "you're a nice female, you be!" said dick, ironically. "don't you dare to call me a female, sir," said the lady, furiously. "why, you ain't a man in disguise, be you?" said dick. "you are very much mistaken, madam," said frank, quietly. "the conductor may search me, if you desire it." a charge of theft, made in a crowded car, of course made quite a sensation. cautious passengers instinctively put their hands on their pockets, to make sure that they, too, had not been robbed. as for frank, his face flushed, and he felt very indignant that he should even be suspected of so mean a crime. he had been carefully brought up, and been taught to regard stealing as low and wicked. dick, on the contrary, thought it a capital joke that such a charge should have been made against his companion. though he had brought himself up, and known plenty of boys and men, too, who would steal, he had never done so himself. he thought it mean. but he could not be expected to regard it as frank did. he had been too familiar with it in others to look upon it with horror. meanwhile the passengers rather sided with the boys. appearances go a great ways, and frank did not look like a thief. "i think you must be mistaken, madam," said a gentleman sitting opposite. "the lad does not look as if he would steal." "you can't tell by looks," said the lady, sourly. "they're deceitful; villains are generally well dressed." "be they?" said dick. "you'd ought to see me with my washington coat on. you'd think i was the biggest villain ever you saw." "i've no doubt you are," said the lady, scowling in the direction of our hero. "thank you, ma'am," said dick. "'tisn't often i get such fine compliments." "none of your impudence," said the lady, wrathfully. "i believe you're the worst of the two." meanwhile the car had been stopped. "how long are we going to stop here?" demanded a passenger, impatiently. "i'm in a hurry, if none of the rest of you are." "i want my pocket-book," said the lady, defiantly. "well, ma'am, i haven't got it, and i don't see as it's doing you any good detaining us all here." "conductor, will you call a policeman to search that young scamp?" continued the aggrieved lady. "you don't expect i'm going to lose my money, and do nothing about it." "i'll turn my pockets inside out if you want me to," said frank, proudly. "there's no need of a policeman. the conductor, or any one else, may search me." "well, youngster," said the conductor, "if the lady agrees, i'll search you." the lady signified her assent. frank accordingly turned his pockets inside out, but nothing was revealed except his own porte-monnaie and a penknife. "well, ma'am, are you satisfied?" asked the conductor. "no, i ain't," said she, decidedly. "you don't think he's got it still?" "no, but he's passed it over to his confederate, that boy there that's so full of impudence." "that's me," said dick, comically. "he confesses it," said the lady; "i want him searched." "all right," said dick, "i'm ready for the operation, only, as i've got valooable property about me, be careful not to drop any of my erie bonds." the conductor's hand forthwith dove into dick's pocket, and drew out a rusty jack-knife, a battered cent, about fifty cents in change, and the capacious pocket-book which he had received from the swindler who was anxious to get back to his sick family in boston. "is that yours, ma'am?" asked the conductor, holding up the wallet which excited some amazement, by its size, among the other passengers. "it seems to me you carry a large pocket-book for a young man of your age," said the conductor. "that's what i carry my cash and valooable papers in," said dick. "i suppose that isn't yours, ma'am," said the conductor, turning to the lady. "no," said she, scornfully. "i wouldn't carry round such a great wallet as that. most likely he's stolen it from somebody else." "what a prime detective you'd be!" said dick. "p'rhaps you know who i took it from." "i don't know but my money's in it," said the lady , sharply. "conductor, will you open that wallet, and see what there is in it?" "don't disturb the valooable papers," said dick, in a tone of pretended anxiety. the contents of the wallet excited some amusement among the passengers. "there don't seem to be much money here," said the conductor, taking out a roll of tissue paper cut out in the shape of bills, and rolled up. "no," said dick. "didn't i tell you them were papers of no valoo to anybody but the owner? if the lady'd like to borrow, i won't charge no interest." "where is my money, then?" said the lady, in some discomfiture. "i shouldn't wonder if one of the young scamps had thrown it out of the window." "you'd better search your pocket once more," said the gentleman opposite. "i don't believe either of the boys is in fault. they don't look to me as if they would steal." "thank you, sir" said frank. the lady followed out the suggestion, and, plunging her hand once more into her pocket, drew out a small porte-monnaie. she hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry at this discovery. it placed her in rather an awkward position after the fuss she had made, and the detention to which she had subjected the passengers, now, as it proved, for nothing. "is that the pocket-book you thought stolen?" asked the conductor. "yes," said she, rather confusedly. "then you've been keeping me waiting all this time for nothing," he said, sharply. "i wish you'd take care to be sure next time before you make such a disturbance for nothing. i've lost five minutes, and shall not be on time." "i can't help it," was the cross reply; "i didn't know it was in my pocket." "it seems to me you owe an apology to the boys you accused of a theft which they have not committed," said the gentleman opposite. "i shan't apologize to anybody," said the lady, whose temper was not of the best; "least of all to such whipper-snappers as they are." "thank you, ma'am," said dick, comically; "your handsome apology is accepted. it ain't of no consequence, only i didn't like to expose the contents of my valooable pocket-book, for fear it might excite the envy of some of my poor neighbors." "you're a character," said the gentleman who had already spoken, with a smile. "a bad character!" muttered the lady. but it was quite evident that the sympathies of those present were against the lady, and on the side of the boys who had been falsely accused, while dick's drollery had created considerable amusement. the cars had now reached fifty-ninth street, the southern boundary of the park, and here our hero and his companion got off. "you'd better look out for pickpockets, my lad," said the conductor, pleasantly. "that big wallet of yours might prove a great temptation." "that's so," said dick. "that's the misfortin' of being rich. astor and me don't sleep much for fear of burglars breakin' in and robbin' us of our valooable treasures. sometimes i think i'll give all my money to an orphan asylum, and take it out in board. i guess i'd make money by the operation." while dick was speaking, the car rolled away, and the boys turned up fifty-ninth street, for two long blocks yet separated them from the park. chapter x introduces a victim of misplaced confidence "what a queer chap you are, dick!" said frank, laughing. "you always seem to be in good spirits." "no, i ain't always. sometimes i have the blues." "when?" "well, once last winter it was awful cold, and there was big holes in my shoes, and my gloves and all my warm clothes was at the tailor's. i felt as if life was sort of tough, and i'd like it if some rich man would adopt me, and give me plenty to eat and drink and wear, without my havin' to look so sharp after it. then agin' when i've seen boys with good homes, and fathers, and mothers, i've thought i'd like to have somebody to care for me." dick's tone changed as he said this, from his usual levity, and there was a touch of sadness in it. frank, blessed with a good home and indulgent parents, could not help pitying the friendless boy who had found life such up-hill work. "don't say you have no one to care for you, dick," he said, lightly laying his hand on dick's shoulder. "i will care for you." "will you?" "if you will let me." "i wish you would," said dick, earnestly. "i'd like to feel that i have one friend who cares for me." central park was now before them, but it was far from presenting the appearance which it now exhibits. it had not been long since work had been commenced upon it, and it was still very rough and unfinished. a rough tract of land, two miles and a half from north to south, and a half a mile broad, very rocky in parts, was the material from which the park commissioners have made the present beautiful enclosure. there were no houses of good appearance near it, buildings being limited mainly to rude temporary huts used by the workmen who were employed in improving it. the time will undoubtedly come when the park will be surrounded by elegant residences, and compare favorably in this respect with the most attractive parts of any city in the world. but at the time when frank and dick visited it, not much could be said in favor either of the park or its neighborhood. "if this is central park," said frank, who naturally felt disappointed, "i don't think much of it. my father's got a large pasture that is much nicer." "it'll look better some time," said dick. "there ain't much to see now but rocks. we will take a walk over it if you want to." "no," said frank, "i've seen as much of it as i want to. besides, i feel tired." "then we'll go back. we can take the sixth avenue cars. they will bring us out at vesey street just beside the astor house." "all right," said frank. "that will be the best course. i hope," he added, laughing, "our agreeable lady friend won't be there. i don't care about being accused of _stealing_ again." "she was a tough one," said dick. "wouldn't she make a nice wife for a man that likes to live in hot water, and didn't mind bein' scalded two or three times a day?" "yes, i think she'd just suit him. is that the right car, dick?" "yes, jump in, and i'll follow." the sixth avenue is lined with stores, many of them of very good appearance, and would make a very respectable principal street for a good-sized city. but it is only one of several long business streets which run up the island, and illustrate the extent and importance of the city to which they belong. no incidents worth mentioning took place during their ride down town. in about three-quarters of an hour the boys got out of the car beside the astor house. "are you goin' in now, frank?" asked dick. "that depends upon whether you have anything else to show me." "wouldn't you like to go to wall street?" "that's the street where there are so many bankers and brokers,--isn't it?" "yes, i s'pose you ain't afraid of bulls and bears,--are you?" "bulls and bears?" repeated frank, puzzled. "yes." "what are they?" "the bulls is what tries to make the stocks go up, and the bears is what try to growl 'em down." "oh, i see. yes, i'd like to go." accordingly they walked down on the west side of broadway as far as trinity church, and then, crossing, entered a street not very wide or very long, but of very great importance. the reader would be astonished if he could know the amount of money involved in the transactions which take place in a single day in this street. it would be found that although broadway is much seater in length, and lined with stores, it stands second to wall street in this respect. "what is that large marble building?" asked frank, pointing to a massive structure on the corner of wall and nassau streets. it was in the form of a parallelogram, two hundred feet long by ninety wide, and about eighty feet in height, the ascent to the entrance being by eighteen granite steps. "that's the custom house," said dick. "it looks like pictures i've seen of the parthenon at athens," said frank, meditatively. "where's athens?" asked dick. "it ain't in york state,--is it?" "not the athens i mean, at any rate. it is in greece, and was a famous city two thousand years ago." "that's longer than i can remember," said dick. "i can't remember distinctly more'n about a thousand years." "what a chap you are, dick! do you know if we can go in?" the boys ascertained, after a little inquiry, that they would be allowed to do so. they accordingly entered the custom house and made their way up to the roof, from which they had a fine view of the harbor, the wharves crowded with shipping, and the neighboring shores of long island and new jersey. towards the north they looked down for many miles upon continuous lines of streets, and thousands of roofs, with here and there a church-spire rising above its neighbors. dick had never before been up there, and he, as well as frank, was interested in the grand view spread before them. at length they descended, and were going down the granite steps on the outside of the building, when they were addressed by a young man, whose appearance is worth describing. he was tall, and rather loosely put together, with small eyes and rather a prominent nose. his clothing had evidently not been furnished by a city tailor. he wore a blue coat with brass buttons, and pantaloons of rather scanty dimensions, which were several inches too short to cover his lower limbs. he held in his hand a piece of paper, and his countenance wore a look of mingled bewilderment and anxiety. "be they a-payin' out money inside there?" he asked, indicating the interior by a motion of his hand. "i guess so," said dick. "are you a-goin' in for some?" "wal, yes. i've got an order here for sixty dollars,--made a kind of speculation this morning." "how was it?" asked frank. "wal, you see i brought down some money to put in the bank, fifty dollars it was, and i hadn't justly made up my mind what bank to put it into, when a chap came up in a terrible hurry, and said it was very unfortunate, but the bank wasn't open, and he must have some money right off. he was obliged to go out of the city by the next train. i asked him how much he wanted. he said fifty dollars. i told him i'd got that, and he offered me a check on the bank for sixty, and i let him have it. i thought that was a pretty easy way to earn ten dollars, so i counted out the money and he went off. he told me i'd hear a bell ring when they began to pay out money. but i've waited most two hours, and i hain't heard it yet. i'd ought to be goin', for i told dad i'd be home to-night. do you think i can get the money now?" "will you show me the check?" asked frank, who had listened attentively to the countryman's story, and suspected that he had been made the victim of a swindler. it was made out upon the "washington bank," in the sum of sixty dollars, and was signed "ephraim smith." "washington bank!" repeated frank. "dick, is there such a bank in the city?" "not as i knows on," said dick. "leastways i don't own any shares in it." "ain't this the washington bank?" asked the countryman, pointing to the building on the steps of which the three were now standing. "no, it's the custom house." "and won't they give me any money for this?" asked the young man, the perspiration standing on his brow. "i am afraid the man who gave it to you was a swindler," said frank, gently. "and won't i ever see my fifty dollars again?" asked the youth in agony. "i am afraid not." "what'll dad say?" ejaculated the miserable youth. "it makes me feel sick to think of it. i wish i had the feller here. i'd shake him out of his boots." "what did he look like? i'll call a policeman and you shall describe him. perhaps in that way you can get track of your money." dick called a policeman, who listened to the description, and recognized the operator as an experienced swindler. he assured the countryman that there was very little chance of his ever seeing his money again. the boys left the miserable youth loudly bewailing his bad luck, and proceeded on their way down the street. "he's a baby," said dick, contemptuously. "he'd ought to know how to take care of himself and his money. a feller has to look sharp in this city, or he'll lose his eye-teeth before he knows it." "i suppose you never got swindled out of fifty dollars, dick?" "no, i don't carry no such small bills. i wish i did," he added "so do i, dick. what's that building there at the end of the street?" "that's the wall-street ferry to brooklyn." "how long does it take to go across?" "not more'n five minutes." "suppose we just ride over and back." "all right!" said dick. "it's rather expensive; but if you don't mind, i don't." "why, how much does it cost?" "two cents apiece." "i guess i can stand that. let us go." they passed the gate, paying the fare to a man who stood at the entrance, and were soon on the ferry-boat, bound for brooklyn. they had scarcely entered the boat, when dick, grasping frank by the arm, pointed to a man just outside of the gentlemen's cabin. "do you see that man, frank?" he inquired. "yes, what of him?" "he's the man that cheated the country chap out of his fifty dollars." chapter xi dick as a detectlve dick's ready identification of the rogue who had cheated the countryman, surprised frank. "what makes you think it is he?" he asked. "because i've seen him before, and i know he's up to them kind of tricks. when i heard how he looked, i was sure i knowed him." "our recognizing him won't be of much use," said frank. "it won't give back the countryman his money." "i don't know," said dick, thoughtfully. "may be i can get it." "how?" asked frank, incredulously. "wait a minute, and you'll see." dick left his companion, and went up to the man whom he suspected. "ephraim smith," said dick, in a low voice. the man turned suddenly, and looked at dick uneasily. "what did you say?" he asked. "i believe your name is ephraim smith," continued dick. "you're mistaken," said the man, and was about to move off. "stop a minute," said dick. "don't you keep your money in the washington bank?" "i don't know any such bank. i'm in a hurry, young man, and i can't stop to answer any foolish questions." the boat had by this time reached the brooklyn pier, and mr. ephraim smith seemed in a hurry to land. "look here," said dick, significantly; "you'd better not go on shore unless you want to jump into the arms of a policeman." "what do you mean?" asked the man, startled. "that little affair of yours is known to the police," said dick; "about how you got fifty dollars out of a greenhorn on a false check, and it mayn't be safe for you to go ashore." "i don't know what you're talking about," said the swindler with affected boldness, though dick could see that he was ill at ease. "yes you do," said dick. "there isn't but one thing to do. just give me back that money, and i'll see that you're not touched. if you don't, i'll give you up to the first p'liceman we meet." dick looked so determined, and spoke so confidently, that the other, overcome by his fears, no longer hesitated, but passed a roll of bills to dick and hastily left the boat. all this frank witnessed with great amazement, not understanding what influence dick could have obtained over the swindler sufficient to compel restitution. "how did you do it?" he asked eagerly . "i told him i'd exert my influence with the president to have him tried by _habease corpus_," said dick. "and of course that frightened him. but tell me, without joking, how you managed." dick gave a truthful account of what occurred, and then said, "now we'll go back and carry the money." "suppose we don't find the poor countryman?" "then the p'lice will take care of it." they remained on board the boat, and in five minutes were again in new york. going up wall street, they met the countryman a little distance from the custom house. his face was marked with the traces of deep anguish; but in his case even grief could not subdue the cravings of appetite. he had purchased some cakes of one of the old women who spread out for the benefit of passers-by an array of apples and seedcakes, and was munching them with melancholy satisfaction. "hilloa!" said dick. "have you found your money?" "no," ejaculated the young man, with a convulsive gasp. "i sha'n't ever see it again. the mean skunk's cheated me out of it. consarn his picter! it took me most six months to save it up. i was workin' for deacon pinkham in our place. oh, i wish i'd never come to new york! the deacon, he told me he'd keep it for me; but i wanted to put it in the bank, and now it's all gone, boo hoo!" and the miserable youth, having despatched his cakes, was so overcome by the thought of his loss that he burst into tears. "i say," said dick, "dry up, and see what i've got here." the youth no sooner saw the roll of bills, and comprehended that it was indeed his lost treasure, than from the depths of anguish he was exalted to the most ecstatic joy. he seized dick's hand, and shook it with so much energy that our hero began to feel rather alarmed for its safety. "'pears to me you take my arm for a pump-handle," said he. "couldn't you show your gratitood some other way? it's just possible i may want to use my arm ag'in some time." the young man desisted, but invited dick most cordially to come up and stop a week with him at his country home, assuring him that he wouldn't charge him anything for board. "all right!" said dick. "if you don't mind i'll bring my wife along, too. she's delicate, and the country air might do her good." jonathan stared at him in amazement, uncertain whether to credit the fact of his marriage. dick walked on with frank, leaving him in an apparent state of stupefaction, and it is possible that he has not yet settled the affair to his satisfaction. "now," said frank, "i think i'll go back to the astor house. uncle has probably got through his business and returned." "all right," said dick. the two boys walked up to broadway, just where the tall steeple of trinity faces the street of bankers and brokers, and walked leisurely to the hotel. when they arrived at the astor house, dick said, "good-by, frank." "not yet," said frank; "i want you to come in with me." dick followed his young patron up the steps. frank went to the reading-room, where, as he had thought probable, he found his uncle already arrived, and reading a copy of "the evening post," which he had just purchased outside. "well, boys," he said, looking up, "have you had a pleasant jaunt?" "yes, sir," said frank. "dick's a capital guide." "so this is dick," said mr. whitney, surveying him with a smile. "upon my word, i should hardly have known him. i must congratulate him on his improved appearance." "frank's been very kind to me," said dick, who, rough streetboy as he was, had a heart easily touched by kindness, of which he had never experienced much. "he's a tip-top fellow." "i believe he is a good boy," said mr. whitney. "i hope, my lad, you will prosper and rise in the world. you know in this free country poverty in early life is no bar to a man's advancement. i haven't risen very high myself," he added, with a smile, "but have met with moderate success in life; yet there was a time when i was as poor as you." "were you, sir," asked dick, eagerly. "yes, my boy, i have known the time i have been obliged to go without my dinner because i didn't have enough money to pay for it." "how did you get up in the world," asked dick, anxiously. "i entered a printing-office as an apprentice, and worked for some years. then my eyes gave out and i was obliged to give that up. not knowing what else to do, i went into the country, and worked on a farm. after a while i was lucky enough to invent a machine, which has brought me in a great deal of money. but there was one thing i got while i was in the printing-office which i value more than money." "what was that, sir?" "a taste for reading and study. during my leisure hours i improved myself by study, and acquired a large part of the knowledge which i now possess. indeed, it was one of my books that first put me on the track of the invention, which i afterwards made. so you see, my lad, that my studious habits paid me in money, as well as in another way." "i'm awful ignorant," said dick, soberly. "but you are young, and, i judge, a smart boy. if you try to learn, you can, and if you ever expect to do anything in the world, you must know something of books." "i will," said dick, resolutely. "i ain't always goin' to black boots for a livin'." "all labor is respectable, my lad, and you have no cause to be ashamed of any honest business; yet when you can get something to do that promises better for your future prospects, i advise you to do so. till then earn your living in the way you are accustomed to, avoid extravagance, and save up a little money if you can." "thank you for your advice," said our hero. "there aint many that takes an interest in ragged dick." "so that's your name," said mr. whitney. "if i judge you rightly, it won't be long before you change it. save your money, my lad, buy books, and determine to be somebody, and you may yet fill an honorable position." "i'll try," said dick. "good-night, sir." "wait a minute, dick," said frank. "your blacking-box and old clothes are upstairs. you may want them." "in course," said dick. "i couldn't get along without my best clothes, and my stock in trade." "you may go up to the room with him, frank," said mr. whitney. "the clerk will give you the key. i want to see you, dick, before you go." "yes, sir," said dick. "where are you going to sleep to-night, dick?" asked frank, as they went upstairs together. "p'r'aps at the fifth avenue hotel--on the outside," said dick. "haven't you any place to sleep, then?" "i slept in a box, last night." "in a box?" "yes, on spruce street." "poor fellow!" said frank, compassionately. "oh, 'twas a bully bed--full of straw! i slept like a top." "don't you earn enough to pay for a room, dick?" "yes," said dick; "only i spend my money foolish, goin' to the old bowery, and tony pastor's, and sometimes gamblin' in baxter street." "you won't gamble any more,--will you, dick?" said frank, laying his hand persuasively on his companion's shoulder. "no, i won't," said dick. "you'll promise?" "yes, and i'll keep it. you're a good feller. i wish you was goin' to be in new york." "i am going to a boarding-school in connecticut. the name of the town is barnton. will you write to me, dick?" "my writing would look like hens' tracks," said our hero. "never mind. i want you to write. when you write you can tell me how to direct, and i will send you a letter." "i wish you would," said dick. "i wish i was more like you." "i hope you will make a much better boy, dick. now we'll go in to my uncle. he wishes to see you before you go." they went into the reading-room. dick had wrapped up his blacking-brush in a newspaper with which frank had supplied him, feeling that a guest of the astor house should hardly be seen coming out of the hotel displaying such a professional sign. "uncle, dick's ready to go," said frank. "good-by, my lad," said mr. whitney. "i hope to hear good accounts of you sometime. don't forget what i have told you. remember that your future position depends mainly upon yourself, and that it will be high or low as you choose to make it." he held out his hand, in which was a five-dollar bill. dick shrunk back. "i don't like to take it," he said. "i haven't earned it." "perhaps not," said mr. whitney; "but i give it to you because i remember my own friendless youth. i hope it may be of service to you. sometime when you are a prosperous man, you can repay it in the form of aid to some poor boy, who is struggling upward as you are now." "i will, sir," said dick, manfully. he no longer refused the money, but took it gratefully, and, bidding frank and his uncle good-by, went out into the street. a feeling of loneliness came over him as he left the presence of frank, for whom he had formed a strong attachment in the few hours he had known him. chapter xii dick hires a room on mott street going out into the fresh air dick felt the pangs of hunger. he accordingly went to a restaurant and got a substantial supper. perhaps it was the new clothes he wore, which made him feel a little more aristocratic. at all events, instead of patronizing the cheap restaurant where he usually procured his meals, he went into the refectory attached to lovejoy's hotel, where the prices were higher and the company more select. in his ordinary dress, dick would have been excluded, but now he had the appearance of a very respectable, gentlemanly boy, whose presence would not discredit any establishment. his orders were therefore received with attention by the waiter and in due time a good supper was placed before him. "i wish i could come here every day," thought dick. "it seems kind o' nice and 'spectable, side of the other place. there's a gent at that other table that i've shined boots for more'n once. he don't know me in my new clothes. guess he don't know his boot-black patronizes the same establishment." his supper over, dick went up to the desk, and, presenting his check, tendered in payment his five-dollar bill, as if it were one of a large number which he possessed. receiving back his change he went out into the street. two questions now arose: how should he spend the evening, and where should he pass the night? yesterday, with such a sum of money in his possession, he would have answered both questions readily. for the evening, he would have passed it at the old bowery, and gone to sleep in any out-of-the-way place that offered. but he had turned over a new leaf, or resolved to do so. he meant to save his money for some useful purpose,--to aid his advancement in the world. so he could not afford the theatre. besides, with his new clothes, he was unwilling to pass the night out of doors. "i should spile 'em," he thought, "and that wouldn't pay." so he determined to hunt up a room which he could occupy regularly, and consider as his own, where he could sleep nights, instead of depending on boxes and old wagons for a chance shelter. this would be the first step towards respectability, and dick determined to take it. he accordingly passed through the city hall park, and walked leisurely up centre street. he decided that it would hardly be advisable for him to seek lodgings in fifth avenue, although his present cash capital consisted of nearly five dollars in money, besides the valuable papers contained in his wallet. besides, he had reason to doubt whether any in his line of business lived on that aristocratic street. he took his way to mott street, which is considerably less pretentious, and halted in front of a shabby brick lodging-house kept by a mrs. mooney, with whose son tom, dick was acquainted. dick rang the bell, which sent back a shrill metallic response. the door was opened by a slatternly servant, who looked at him inquiringly, and not without curiosity. it must be remembered that dick was well dressed, and that nothing in his appearance bespoke his occupation. being naturally a good-looking boy, he might readily be mistaken for a gentleman's son. "well, queen victoria," said dick, "is your missus at home?" "my name's bridget," said the girl. "oh, indeed!" said dick. "you looked so much like the queen's picter what she gave me last christmas in exchange for mine, that i couldn't help calling you by her name." "oh, go along wid ye!" said bridget. "it's makin' fun ye are." "if you don't believe me," said dick, gravely, "all you've got to do is to ask my partic'lar friend, the duke of newcastle." "bridget!" called a shrill voice from the basement. "the missus is calling me," said bridget, hurriedly. "i'll tell her ye want her." "all right!" said dick. the servant descended into the lower regions, and in a short time a stout, red-faced woman appeared on the scene. "well, sir, what's your wish?" she asked. "have you got a room to let?" asked dick. "is it for yourself you ask?" questioned the woman, in some surprise. dick answered in the affirmative. "i haven't got any very good rooms vacant. there's a small room in the third story." "i'd like to see it," said dick. "i don't know as it would be good enough for you," said the woman, with a glance at dick's clothes. "i ain't very partic'lar about accommodations," said our hero. "i guess i'll look at it." dick followed the landlady up two narrow stair-cases, uncarpeted and dirty, to the third landing, where he was ushered into a room about ten feet square. it could not be considered a very desirable apartment. it had once been covered with an oilcloth carpet, but this was now very ragged, and looked worse than none. there was a single bed in the corner, covered with an indiscriminate heap of bed-clothing, rumpled and not over-clean. there was a bureau, with the veneering scratched and in some parts stripped off, and a small glass, eight inches by ten, cracked across the middle; also two chairs in rather a disjointed condition. judging from dick's appearance, mrs. mooney thought he would turn from it in disdain. but it must be remembered that dick's past experience had not been of a character to make him fastidious. in comparison with a box, or an empty wagon, even this little room seemed comfortable. he decided to hire it if the rent proved reasonable. "well, what's the tax?" asked dick. "i ought to have a dollar a week," said mrs. mooney, hesitatingly. "say seventy-five cents, and i'll take it," said dick. "every week in advance?" "yes." "well, as times is hard, and i can't afford to keep it empty, you may have it. when will you come?" "to-night," said dick. "it ain't lookin' very neat. i don't know as i can fix it up to-night." "well, i'll sleep here to-night, and you can fix it up tomorrow." "i hope you'll excuse the looks. i'm a lone woman, and my help is so shiftless, i have to look after everythilng myself; so i can't keep things as straight as i want to." "all right!" said dick. "can you pay me the first week in advance?" asked the landlady, cautiously. dick responded by drawing seventy-five cents from his pocket, and placing it in her hand. "what's your business, sir, if i may inquire?" said mrs. mooney. "oh, i'm professional!" said dick. "indeed!" said the landlady, who did not feel much enlightened by this answer. "how's tom?" asked dick. "do you know my tom?" said mrs. mooney in surprise. "he's gone to sea,--to californy. he went last week." "did he?" said dick. "yes, i knew him." mrs. mooney looked upon her new lodger with increased favor, on finding that he was acquainted with her son, who, by the way, was one of the worst young scamps in mott street, which is saying considerable. "i'll bring over my baggage from the astor house this evening," said dick in a tone of importance. "from the astor house!" repeated mrs. mooney, in fresh amazement. "yes, i've been stoppin' there a short time with some friends," said dick. mrs. mooney might be excused for a little amazement at finding that a guest from the astor house was about to become one of her lodgers--such transfers not being common. "did you say you was purfessional?" she asked. "yes, ma'am," said dick, politely. "you ain't a--a--" mrs. mooney paused, uncertain what conjecture to hazard. "oh, no, nothing of the sort," said dick, promptly. "how could you think so, mrs. mooney?" "no offence, sir," said the landlady, more perplexed than ever. "certainly not," said our hero. "but you must excuse me now, mrs. mooney, as i have business of great importance to attend to." "you'll come round this evening?" dick answered in the affirmative, and turned away. "i wonder what he is!" thought the landlady, following him with her eyes as he crossed the street. "he's got good clothes on, but he don't seem very particular about his room. well; i've got all my rooms full now. that's one comfort." dick felt more comfortable now that he had taken the decisive step of hiring a lodging, and paying a week's rent in advance. for seven nights he was sure of a shelter and a bed to sleep in. the thought was a pleasant one to our young vagrant, who hitherto had seldom known when he rose in the morning where he should find a resting-place at night. "i must bring my traps round," said dick to himself. "i guess i'll go to bed early to-night. it'll feel kinder good to sleep in a reg'lar bed. boxes is rather hard to the back, and ain't comfortable in case of rain. i wonder what johnny nolan would say if he knew i'd got a room of my own." chapter xiii mlcky magulre about nine o'clock dick sought his new lodgings. in his hands he carried his professional wardrobe, namely, the clothes which he had worn at the commencement of the day, and the implements of his business. these he stowed away in the bureau drawers, and by the light of a flickering candle took off his clothes and went to bed. dick had a good digestion and a reasonably good conscience; consequently he was a good sleeper. perhaps, too, the soft feather bed conduced to slumber. at any rate his eyes were soon closed, and he did not awake until half-past six the next morning. he lifted himself on his elbow, and stared around him in transient bewilderment. "blest if i hadn't forgot where i was," he said to himself. "so this is my room, is it? well, it seems kind of 'spectable to have a room and a bed to sleep in. i'd orter be able to afford seventy-five cents a week. i've throwed away more money than that in one evenin'. there ain't no reason why i shouldn't live 'spectable. i wish i knowed as much as frank. he's a tip-top feller. nobody ever cared enough for me before to give me good advice. it was kicks, and cuffs, and swearin' at me all the time. i'd like to show him i can do something." while dick was indulging in these reflections, he had risen from bed, and, finding an accession to the furniture of his room, in the shape of an ancient wash-stand bearing a cracked bowl and broken pitcher, indulged himself in the rather unusual ceremony of a good wash. on the whole, dick preferred to be clean, but it was not always easy to gratify his desire. lodging in the street as he had been accustomed to do, he had had no opportunity to perform his toilet in the customary manner. even now he found himself unable to arrange his dishevelled locks, having neither comb nor brush. he determined to purchase a comb, at least, as soon as possible, and a brush too, if he could get one cheap. meanwhile he combed his hair with his fingers as well as he could, though the result was not quite so satisfactory as it might have been. a question now came up for consideration. for the first time in his life dick possessed two suits of clothes. should he put on the clothes frank had given him, or resume his old rags? now, twenty-four hours before, at the time dick was introduced to the reader's notice, no one could have been less fastidious as to his clothing than he. indeed, he had rather a contempt for good clothes, or at least he thought so. but now, as he surveyed the ragged and dirty coat and the patched pants, dick felt ashamed of them. he was unwilling to appear in the streets with them. yet, if he went to work in his new suit, he was in danger of spoiling it, and he might not have it in his power to purchase a new one. economy dictated a return to the old garments. dick tried them on, and surveyed himself in the cracked glass; but the reflection did not please him. "they don't look 'spectable," he decided; and, forthwith taking them off again, he put on the new suit of the day before. "i must try to earn a little more," he thought, "to pay for my room, and to buy some new clo'es when these is wore out." he opened the door of his chamber, and went downstairs and into the street, carrying his blacking-box with him. it was dick's custom to commence his business before breakfast; generally it must be owned, because he began the day penniless, and must earn his meal before he ate it. to-day it was different. he had four dollars left in his pocket-book; but this he had previously determined not to touch. in fact he had formed the ambitious design of starting an account at a savings' bank, in order to have something to fall back upon in case of sickness or any other emergency, or at any rate as a reserve fund to expend in clothing or other necessary articles when he required them. hitherto he had been content to live on from day to day without a penny ahead; but the new vision of respectability which now floated before dick's mind, owing to his recent acquaintance with frank, was beginning to exercise a powerful effect upon him. in dick's profession as in others there are lucky days, when everything seems to flow prosperously. as if to encourage him in his new-born resolution, our hero obtained no less than six jobs in the course of an hour and a half. this gave him sixty cents, quite abundant to purchase his breakfast, and a comb besides. his exertions made him hungry, and, entering a small eating-house he ordered a cup of coffee and a beefsteak. to this he added a couple of rolls. this was quite a luxurious breakfast for dick, and more expensive than he was accustomed to indulge himself with. to gratify the curiosity of my young readers, i will put down the items with their cost,- coffee, . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5cts. beefsteak,. . . . . . . . . . . . 15 a couple of rolls,. . . . . . . . 5 --25 cts. it will thus be seen that our hero had expended nearly onehalf of his morning's earnings. some days he had been compelled to breakfast on five cents, and then he was forced to content himself with a couple of apples, or cakes. but a good breakfast is a good preparation for a busy day, and dick sallied forth from the restaurant lively and alert, ready to do a good stroke of business. dick's change of costume was liable to lead to one result of which he had not thought. his brother boot-blacks might think he had grown aristocratic, and was putting on airs,--that, in fact, he was getting above his business, and desirous to outshine his associates. dick had not dreamed of this, because in fact, in spite of his new-born ambition, he entertained no such feeling. there was nothing of what boys call "big-feeling" about him. he was a borough democrat, using the word not politically, but in its proper sense, and was disposed to fraternize with all whom he styled "good fellows," without regard to their position. it may seem a little unnecessary to some of my readers to make this explanation; but they must remember that pride and "big-feeling" are confined to no age or class, but may be found in boys as well as men, and in boot-blacks as well as those of a higher rank. the morning being a busy time with the boot-blacks, dick's changed appearance had not as yet attracted much attention. but when business slackened a little, our hero was destined to be reminded of it. among the down-town boot-blacks was one hailing from the five points,--a stout, red-haired, freckled-faced boy of fourteen, bearing the name of micky maguire. this boy, by his boldness and recklessness, as well as by his personal strength, which was considerable, had acquired an ascendency among his fellow professionals, and had a gang of subservient followers, whom he led on to acts of ruffianism, not unfrequently terminating in a month or two at blackwell's island. micky himself had served two terms there; but the confinement appeared to have had very little effect in amending his conduct, except, perhaps, in making him a little more cautious about an encounter with the "copps," as the members of the city police are, for some unknown reason, styled among the five-point boys. now micky was proud of his strength, and of the position of leader which it had secured him. moreover he was democratic in his tastes, and had a jealous hatred of those who wore good clothes and kept their faces clean. he called it putting on airs, and resented the implied superiority. if he had been fifteen years older, and had a trifle more education, he would have interested himself in politics, and been prominent at ward meetings, and a terror to respectable voters on election day. as it was, he contented himself with being the leader of a gang of young ruffians, over whom he wielded a despotic power. now it is only justice to dick to say that, so far as wearing good clothes was concerned, he had never hitherto offended the eyes of micky maguire. indeed, they generally looked as if they patronized the same clothing establishment. on this particular morning it chanced that micky had not been very fortunate in a business way, and, as a natural consequence, his temper, never very amiable, was somewhat ruffled by the fact. he had had a very frugal breakfast,--not because he felt abstemious, but owing to the low state of his finances. he was walking along with one of his particular friends, a boy nicknamed limpy jim, so called from a slight peculiarity in his walk, when all at once he espied our friend dick in his new suit. "my eyes!" he exclaimed, in astonishment; "jim, just look at ragged dick. he' s come into a fortun', and turned gentleman. see his new clothes." "so he has," said jim. "where'd he get 'em, i wonder?" "hooked 'em, p'raps. let's go and stir him up a little. we don't want no gentlemen on our beat. so he's puttin' on airs,--is he? i'll give him a lesson." so saying the two boys walked up to our hero, who had not observed them, his back being turned, and micky maguire gave him a smart slap on the shoulder. dick turned round quickly. chapter xiv a battle and a victory "what's that for?" demanded dick, turning round to see who had struck him. "you're gettin' mighty fine!" said micky maguire, surveying dick's new clothes with a scornful air. there was something in his words and tone, which dick, who was disposed to stand up for his dignity, did not at all relish. "well, what's the odds if i am?" he retorted. "does it hurt you any?" "see him put on airs, jim," said micky, turning to his companion. "where'd you get them clo'es?" "never mind where i got 'em. maybe the prince of wales gave 'em to me." "hear him, now, jim," said micky. "most likely he stole 'em." "stealin' ain't in _my_ line." it might have been unconscious the emphasis which dick placed on the word "my." at any rate micky chose to take offence. "do you mean to say _i_ steal?" he demanded, doubling up his fist, and advancing towards dick in a threatening manner. "i don't say anything about it," answered dick, by no means alarmed at this hostile demonstration. "i know you've been to the island twice. p'r'aps 'twas to make a visit along of the mayor and aldermen. maybe you was a innocent victim of oppression. i ain't a goin' to say." micky's freckled face grew red with wrath, for dick had only stated the truth. "do you mean to insult me?" he demanded shaking the fist already doubled up in dick's face. "maybe you want a lickin'?" "i ain't partic'larly anxious to get one," said dick, coolly. "they don't agree with my constitution which is nat'rally delicate. i'd rather have a good dinner than a lickin' any time." "you're afraid," sneered micky. "isn't he, jim?" "in course he is." "p'r'aps i am," said dick, composedly, "but it don't trouble me much." "do you want to fight?" demanded micky, encouraged by dick's quietness, fancying he was afraid to encounter him. "no, i don't," said dick. "i ain't fond of fightin'. it's a very poor amusement, and very bad for the complexion, 'specially for the eyes and nose, which is apt to turn red, white, and blue." micky misunderstood dick, and judged from the tenor of his speech that he would be an easy victim. as he knew, dick very seldom was concerned in any street fight,--not from cowardice, as he imagined, but because he had too much good sense to do so. being quarrelsome, like all bullies, and supposing that he was more than a match for our hero, being about two inches taller, he could no longer resist an inclination to assault him, and tried to plant a blow in dick's face which would have hurt him considerably if he had not drawn back just in time. now, though dick was far from quarrelsome, he was ready to defend himself on all occasions, and it was too much to expect that he would stand quiet and allow himself to be beaten. he dropped his blacking-box on the instant, and returned micky's blow with such good effect that the young bully staggered back, and would have fallen, if he had not been propped up by his confederate, limpy jim. "go in, micky!" shouted the latter, who was rather a coward on his own account, but liked to see others fight. "polish him off, that's a good feller." micky was now boiling over with rage and fury, and required no urging. he was fully determined to make a terrible example of poor dick. he threw himself upon him, and strove to bear him to the ground; but dick, avoiding a close hug, in which he might possibly have got the worst of it, by an adroit movement, tripped up his antagonist, and stretched him on the side walk. "hit him, jim!" exclaimed micky, furiously. limpy jim did not seem inclined to obey orders. there was a quiet strength and coolness about dick, which alarmed him. he preferred that micky should incur all the risks of battle, and accordingly set himself to raising his fallen comrade. "come, micky," said dick, quietly, "you'd better give it up. i wouldn't have touched you if you hadn't hit me first. i don't want to fight. it's low business." "you're afraid of hurtin' your clo'es," said micky, with a sneer. "maybe i am," said dick. "i hope i haven't hurt yours." micky's answer to this was another attack, as violent and impetuous as the first. but his fury was in the way. he struck wildly, not measuring his blows, and dick had no difficulty in turning aside, so that his antagonist's blow fell upon the empty air, and his momentum was such that he nearly fell forward headlong. dick might readily have taken advantage of his unsteadiness, and knocked him down; but he was not vindictive, and chose to act on the defensive, except when he could not avoid it. recovering himself, micky saw that dick was a more formidable antagonist than he had supposed, and was meditating another assault, better planned, which by its impetuosity might bear our hero to the ground. but there was an unlooked-for interference. "look out for the `copp,'" said jim, in a low voice. micky turned round and saw a tall policeman heading towards him, and thought it might be prudent to suspend hostilities. he accordingly picked up his black-box, and, hitching up his pants, walked off, attended by limpy jim. "what's that chap been doing?" asked the policeman of dick. "he was amoosin' himself by pitchin' into me," replied dick. "what for?" "he didn't like it 'cause i patronized a different tailor from him." "well, it seems to me you _are_ dressed pretty smart for a boot-black," said the policeman. "i wish i wasn't a boot-black," said dick. "never mind, my lad. it's an honest business," said the policeman, who was a sensible man and a worthy citizen. "it's an honest business. stick to it till you get something better." "i mean to," said dick. "it ain't easy to get out of it, as the prisoner remarked, when he was asked how he liked his residence." "i hope you don't speak from experience." "no," said dick; "i don't mean to get into prison if i can help it." "do you see that gentleman over there?" asked the officer, pointing to a well-dressed man who was walking on the other side of the street. "yes." "well, he was once a newsboy." "and what is he now?" "he keeps a bookstore, and is quite prosperous." dick looked at the gentleman with interest, wondering if he should look as respectable when he was a grown man. it will be seen that dick was getting ambitious. hitherto he had thought very little of the future, but was content to get along as he could, dining as well as his means would allow, and spending the evenings in the pit of the old bowery, eating peanuts between the acts if he was prosperous, and if unlucky supping on dry bread or an apple, and sleeping in an old box or a wagon. now, for the first time, he began to reflect that he could not black boots all his life. in seven years he would be a man, and, since his meeting with frank, he felt that he would like to be a respectable man. he could see and appreciate the difference between frank and such a boy as micky maguire, and it was not strange that he preferred the society of the former. in the course of the next morning, in pursuance of his new resolutions for the future, he called at a savings bank, and held out four dollars in bills besides another dollar in change. there was a high railing, and a number of clerks busily writing at desks behind it. dick, never having been in a bank before, did not know where to go. he went, by mistake, to the desk where money was paid out. "where's your book?" asked the clerk "i haven't got any." "have you any money deposited here?" "no, sir, i want to leave some here." "then go to the next desk." dick followed directions, and presented himself before an elderly man with gray hair, who looked at him over the rims of his spectacles. "i want you to keep that for me," said dick, awkwardly emptying his money out on the desk. "how much is there?" "five dollars." "have you got an account here?" "no, sir." "of course you can write?" the "of course" was said on account of dick's neat dress. "have i got to do any writing?" asked our hero, a little embarrassed. "we want you to sign your name in this book," and the old gentleman shoved round a large folio volume containing the names of depositors. dick surveyed the book with some awe. "i ain't much on writin'," he said. "very well; write as well as you can." the pen was put into dick's hand, and, after dipping it in the inkstand, he succeeded after a hard effort, accompanied by many contortions of the face, in inscribing upon the book of the bank the name dick hunter. "dick!--that means richard, i suppose," said the bank officer, who had some difficulty in making out the signature. "no; ragged dick is what folks call me." "you don't look very ragged." "no, i've left my rags to home. they might get wore out if i used 'em too common." "well, my lad, i'll make out a book in the name of dick hunter, since you seem to prefer dick to richard. i hope you will save up your money and deposit more with us." our hero took his bank-book, and gazed on the entry "five dollars" with a new sense of importance. he had been accustomed to joke about erie shares, but now, for the first time, he felt himself a capitalist; on a small scale, to be sure, but still it was no small thing for dick to have five dollars which he could call his own. he firmly determined that he would lay by every cent he could spare from his earnings towards the fund he hoped to accumulate. but dick was too sensible not to know that there was something more than money needed to win a respectable position in the world. he felt that he was very ignorant. of reading and writing he only knew the rudiments, and that, with a slight acquaintance with arithmetic, was all he did know of books. dick knew he must study hard, and he dreaded it. he looked upon learning as attended with greater difficulties than it really possesses. but dick had good pluck. he meant to learn, nevertheless, and resolved to buy a book with his first spare earnings. when dick went home at night he locked up his bank-book in one of the drawers of the bureau. it was wonderful how much more independent he felt whenever he reflected upon the contents of that drawer, and with what an important air of joint ownership he regarded the bank building in which his small savings were deposited. chapter xv dick secures a tutor the next morning dick was unusually successful, having plenty to do, and receiving for one job twentv-five cents,--the gentleman refusing to take change. then flashed upon dick's mind the thought that he had not yet returned the change due to the gentleman whose boots he had blacked on the morning of his introduction to the reader. "what'll he think of me?" said dick to himself. "i hope he won't think i'm mean enough to keep the money." now dick was scrupulously honest, and though the temptation to be otherwise had often been strong, he had always resisted it. he was not willing on any account to keep money which did not belong to him, and he immediately started for 125 fulton street (the address which had been given him) where he found mr. greyson's name on the door of an office on the first floor. the door being open, dick walked in. "is mr. greyson in?" he asked of a clerk who sat on a high stool before a desk. "not just now. he'll be in soon. will you wait?" "yes," said dick. "very well; take a seat then." dick sat down and took up the morning "tribune," but presently came to a word of four syllables, which he pronounced to himself a "sticker," and laid it down. but he had not long to wait, for five minutes later mr. greyson entered. "did you wish to speak to me, my lad?" said he to dick, whom in his new clothes he did not recognize. "yes, sir," said dick. "i owe you some money." "indeed!" said mr. greyson, pleasantly; "that's an agreeable surprise. i didn't know but you had come for some. so you are a debtor of mine, and not a creditor?" "i b'lieve that's right," said dick, drawing fifteen cents from his pocket, and placing in mr. greyson's hand. "fifteen cents!" repeated he, in some surprise. "how do you happen to be indebted to me in that amount?" "you gave me a quarter for a-shinin' your boots, yesterday mornin', and couldn't wait for the change. i meant to have brought it before, but i forgot all about it till this mornin'." "it had quite slipped my mind also. but you don't look like the boy i employed. if i remember rightly he wasn't as well dressed as you." "no," said dick. "i was dressed for a party, then, but the clo'es was too well ventilated to be comfortable in cold weather." "you're an honest boy," said mr. greyson. "who taught you to be honest?" "nobody," said dick. "but it's mean to cheat and steal. i've always knowed that." "then you've got ahead of some of our business men. do you read the bible?" "no," said dick. "i've heard it's a good book, but i don't know much about it." "you ought to go to some sunday school. would you be willing?" "yes," said dick, promptly. "i want to grow up 'spectable. but i don't know where to go." "then i'll tell you. the church i attend is at the corner of fifth avenue and twenty-first street." "i've seen it," said dick. "i have a class in the sunday school there. if you'll come next sunday, i'll take you into my class, and do what i can to help you." "thank you," said dick, "but p'r'aps you'll get tired of teaching me. i'm awful ignorant." "no, my lad," said mr.greyson, kindly. "you evidently have some good principles to start with, as you have shown by your scorn of dishonesty. i shall hope good things of you in the future." "well, dick," said our hero, apostrophizing himself, as he left the office; "you're gettin' up in the world. you've got money invested, and are goin' to attend church, by partic'lar invitation, on fifth avenue. i shouldn't wonder much if you should find cards, when you get home, from the mayor, requestin' the honor of your company to dinner, along with other distinguished guests." dick felt in very good spirits. he seemed to be emerging from the world in which he had hitherto lived, into a new atmosphere of respectability, and the change seemed very pleasant to him. at six o'clock dick went into a restaurant on chatham street, and got a comfortable supper. he had been so successful during the day that, after paying for this, he still had ninety cents left. while he was despatching his supper, another boy came in, smaller and slighter than dick, and sat down beside him. dick recognized him as a boy who three months before had entered the ranks of the boot-blacks, but who, from a natural timidity, had not been able to earn much. he was ill-fitted for the coarse companionship of the street boys, and shrank from the rude jokes of his present associates. dick had never troubled him; for our hero had a certain chivalrous feeling which would not allow him to bully or disturb a younger and weaker boy than himself. "how are you, fosdick?" said dick, as the other seated himself. "pretty well," said fosdick. "i suppose you're all right." "oh, yes, i'm right side up with care. i've been havin' a bully supper. what are you goin' to have?" "some bread and butter." "why don't you get a cup o' coffee?" "why," said fosdick, reluctantly, "i haven't got money enough to-night." "never mind," said dick; "i'm in luck to-day, i'll stand treat." "that's kind in you," said fosdick, gratefully. "oh, never mind that," said dick. accordingly he ordered a cup of coffee, and a plate of beefsteak, and was gratified to see that his young companion partook of both with evident relish. when the repast was over, the boys went out into the street together, dick pausing at the desk to settle for both suppers. "where are you going to sleep to-night, fosdick?" asked dick, as they stood on the sidewalk. "i don't know," said fosdick, a little sadly. "in some doorway, i expect. but i'm afraid the police will find me out, and make me move on." "i'll tell you what," said dick, "you must go home with me. i guess my bed will hold two." "have you got a room?" asked the other, in surprise. "yes," said dick, rather proudly, and with a little excusable exultation. "i've got a room over in mott street; there i can receive my friends. that'll be better than sleepin' in a door-way,-won't it?" "yes, indeed it will," said fosdick. "how lucky i was to come across you! it comes hard to me living as i do. when my father was alive i had every comfort." "that's more'n i ever had," said dick. "but i'm goin' to try to live comfortable now. is your father dead?" "yes," said fosdick, sadly. "he was a printer; but he was drowned one dark night from a fulton ferry-boat, and, as i had no relations in the city, and no money, i was obliged to go to work as quick as i could. but i don't get on very well." "didn't you have no brothers nor sisters?" asked dick. "no," said fosdick; "father and i used to live alone. he was always so much company to me that i feel very lonesome without him. there's a man out west somewhere that owes him two thousand dollars. he used to live in the city, and father lent him all his money to help him go into business; but he failed, or pretended to, and went off. if father hadn't lost that money he would have left me well off; but no money would have made up his loss to me." "what's the man's name that went off with your father's money?" "his name is hiram bates." "p'r'aps you'll get the money again, sometime." "there isn't much chance of it," said fosdick. "i'd sell out my chances of that for five dollars." "maybe i'll buy you out sometime," said dick. "now, come round and see what sort of a room i've got. i used to go to the theatre evenings, when i had money; but now i'd rather go to bed early, and have a good sleep." "i don't care much about theatres," said fosdick. "father didn't use to let me go very often. he said it wasn't good for boys." "i like to go to the old bowery sometimes. they have tiptop plays there. can you read and write well?" he asked, as a sudden thought came to him. "yes," said fosdick. "father always kept me at school when he was alive, and i stood pretty well in my classes. i was expecting to enter at the free academy* next year." * now the college of the city of new york. "then i'll tell you what," said dick; "i'll make a bargain with you. i can't read much more'n a pig; and my writin' looks like hens' tracks. i don't want to grow up knowin' no more'n a four-year-old boy. if you'll teach me readin' and writin' evenin's, you shall sleep in my room every night. that'll be better'n door-steps or old boxes, where i've slept many a time." "are you in earnest?" said fosdick, his face lighting up hopefully. "in course i am," said dick. "it' s fashionable for young gentlemen to have private tootors to introduct 'em into the flower-beds of literatoor and science, and why shouldn't i foller the fashion? you shall be my perfessor; only you must promise not to be very hard if my writin' looks like a rail-fence on a bender." "i'll try not to be too severe," said fosdick, laughing. "i shall be thankful for such a chance to get a place to sleep. have you got anything to read out of?" "no," said dick. "my extensive and well-selected library was lost overboard in a storm, when i was sailin' from the sandwich islands to the desert of sahara. but i'll buy a paper. that'll do me a long time." accordingly dick stopped at a paper-stand, and bought a copy of a weekly paper, filled with the usual variety of reading matter,-stories, sketches, poems, etc. they soon arrived at dick's lodging-house. our hero, procuring a lamp from the landlady, led the way into his apartment, which he entered with the proud air of a proprietor. "well, how do you like it, fosdick?" he asked, complacently. the time was when fosdick would have thought it untidy and not particularly attractive. but he had served a severe apprenticeship in the streets, and it was pleasant to feel himself under shelter, and he was not disposed to be critical. "it looks very comfortable, dick," he said. "the bed ain't very large," said dick; "but i guess we can get along." "oh, yes," said fosdick, cheerfully. "i don't take up much room." "then that's all right. there's two chairs, you see, one for you and one for me. in case the mayor comes in to spend the evenin' socially, he can sit on the bed." the boys seated themselves, and five minutes later, under the guidance of his young tutor, dick had commenced his studies. chapter xvi the flrst lesson fortunately for dick, his young tutor was well qualified to instruct him. henry fosdick, though only twelve years old, knew as much as many boys of fourteen. he had always been studious and ambitious to excel. his father, being a printer, employed in an office where books were printed, often brought home new books in sheets, which henry was always glad to read. mr. fosdick had been, besides, a subscriber to the mechanics' apprentices' library, which contains many thousands of well-selected and instructive books. thus henry had acquired an amount of general information, unusual in a boy of his age. perhaps he had devoted too much time to study, for he was not naturally robust. all this, however, fitted him admirably for the office to which dick had appointed him,--that of his private instructor. the two boys drew up their chairs to the rickety table, and spread out the paper before them. "the exercises generally commence with ringin' the bell," said dick; "but as i ain't got none, we'll have to do without." "and the teacher is generally provided with a rod," said fosdick. "isn't there a poker handy, that i can use in case my scholar doesn't behave well?" "'tain't lawful to use fire-arms," said dick. "now, dick," said fosdick, "before we begin, i must find out how much you already know. can you read any?" "not enough to hurt me," said dick. "all i know about readin' you could put in a nutshell, and there'd be room left for a small family." "i suppose you know your letters?" "yes," said dick, "i know 'em all, but not intimately. i guess i can call 'em all by name." "where did you learn them? did you ever go to school?" "yes; i went two days." "why did you stop?" "it didn't agree with my constitution." "you don't look very delicate," said fosdick. "no," said dick, "i ain't troubled much that way; but i found lickin's didn't agree with me." "did you get punished?" "awful," said dick. "what for?" "for indulgin' in a little harmless amoosement," said dick. "you see the boy that was sittin' next to me fell asleep, which i considered improper in school-time; so i thought i'd help the teacher a little by wakin' him up. so i took a pin and stuck into him; but i guess it went a little too far, for he screeched awful. the teacher found out what it was that made him holler, and whipped me with a ruler till i was black and blue. i thought 'twas about time to take a vacation; so that's the last time i went to school." "you didn't learn to read in that time, of course?" "no," said dick; "but i was a newsboy a little while; so i learned a little, just so's to find out what the news was. sometimes i didn't read straight and called the wrong news. one mornin' i asked another boy what the paper said, and he told me the king of africa was dead. i thought it was all right till folks began to laugh." "well, dick, if you'll only study well, you won't be liable to make such mistakes." "i hope so," said dick. "my friend horace greeley told me the other day that he'd get me to take his place now and then when he was off makin' speeches if my edication hadn't been neglected." "i must find a good piece for you to begin on," said fosdick, looking over the paper. "find an easy one," said dick, "with words of one story." fosdick at length found a piece which he thought would answer. he discovered on trial that dick had not exaggerated his deficiencies. words of two syllables he seldom pronounced right, and was much surprised when he was told how "through" was sounded. "seems to me it's throwin' away letters to use all them," he said. "how would you spell it?" asked his young teacher. "t-h-r-u," said dick. "well," said fosdick, "there's a good many other words that are spelt with more letters than they need to have. but it's the fashion, and we must follow it." but if dick was ignorant, he was quick, and had an excellent capacity. moreover he had perseverance, and was not easily discouraged. he had made up his mind he must know more, and was not disposed to complain of the difficulty of his task. fosdick had occasion to laugh more than once at his ludicrous mistakes; but dick laughed too, and on the whole both were quite interested in the lesson. at the end of an hour and a half the boys stopped for the evening. "you're learning fast, dick," said fosdick. "at this rate you will soon learn to read well." "will i?" asked dick with an expression of satisfaction. "i'm glad of that. i don't want to be ignorant. i didn't use to care, but i do now. i want to grow up 'spectable." "so do i, dick. we will both help each other, and i am sure we can accomplish something. but i am beginning to feel sleepy." "so am i," said dick. "them hard words make my head ache. i wonder who made 'em all?" "that's more than i can tell. i suppose you've seen a dictionary." "that's another of 'em. no, i can't say i have, though i may have seen him in the street without knowin' him." "a dictionary is a book containing all the words in the language." "how many are there?" "i don't rightly know; but i think there are about fifty thousand." "it's a pretty large family," said dick. "have i got to learn 'em all?" "that will not be necessary. there are a large number which you would never find occasion to use." "i'm glad of that," said dick; "for i don't expect to live to be more'n a hundred, and by that time i wouldn't be more'n half through." by this time the flickering lamp gave a decided hint to the boys that unless they made haste they would have to undress in the dark. they accordingly drew off their clothes, and dick jumped into bed. but fosdick, before doing so, knelt down by the side of the bed, and said a short prayer. "what's that for?" asked dick, curiously. "i was saying my prayers," said fosdick, as he rose from his knees. "don't you ever do it?" "no," said dick. "nobody ever taught me." "then i'll teach you. shall i?" "i don't know," said dick, dubiously. "what's the good?" fosdick explained as well as he could, and perhaps his simple explanation was better adapted to dick's comprehension than one from an older person would have been. dick felt more free to ask questions, and the example of his new friend, for whom he was beginning to feel a warm attachment, had considerable effect upon him. when, therefore, fosdick asked again if he should teach him a prayer, dick consented, and his young bedfellow did so. dick was not naturally irreligious. if he had lived without a knowledge of god and of religious things, it was scarcely to be wondered at in a lad who, from an early age, had been thrown upon his own exertions for the means of living, with no one to care for him or give him good advice. but he was so far good that he could appreciate goodness in others, and this it was that had drawn him to frank in the first place, and now to henry fosdick. he did not, therefore, attempt to ridicule his companion, as some boys better brought up might have done, but was willing to follow his example in what something told him was right. our young hero had taken an important step toward securing that genuine respectability which he was ambitious to attain. weary with the day's work, and dick perhaps still more fatigued by the unusual mental effort he had made, the boys soon sank into a deep and peaceful slumber, from which they did not awaken till six o'clock the next morning. before going out dick sought mrs. mooney, and spoke to her on the subject of taking fosdick as a room-mate. he found that she had no objection, provided he would allow her twenty-five cents a week extra, in consideration of the extra trouble which his companion might be expected to make. to this dick assented, and the arrangement was definitely concluded. this over, the two boys went out and took stations near each other. dick had more of a business turn than henry, and less shrinking from publicity, so that his earnings were greater. but he had undertaken to pay the entire expenses of the room, and needed to earn more. sometimes, when two customers presented themselves at the same time, he was able to direct one to his friend. so at the end of the week both boys found themselves with surplus earnings. dick had the satisfaction of adding two dollars and a half to his deposits in the savings bank, and fosdick commenced an account by depositing seventy-five cents. on sunday morning dick bethought himself of his promise to mr. greyson to come to the church on fifth avenue. to tell the truth, dick recalled it with some regret. he had never been inside a church since he could remember, and he was not much attracted by the invitation he had received. but henry, finding him wavering, urged him to go, and offered to go with him. dick gladly accepted the offer, feeling that he required someone to lend him countenance under such unusual circumstances. dick dressed himself with scrupulous care, giving his shoes a "shine" so brilliant that it did him great credit in a professional point of view, and endeavored to clean his hands thoroughly; but, in spite of all he could do, they were not so white as if his business had been of a different character. having fully completed his preparations, he descended into the street, and, with henry by his side, crossed over to broadway. the boys pursued their way up broadway, which on sunday presents a striking contrast in its quietness to the noise and confusion of ordinary week-days, as far as union square, then turned down fourteenth street, which brought them to fifth avenue. "suppose we dine at delmonico's," said fosdick, looking towards that famous restaurant. "i'd have to sell some of my erie shares," said dick. a short walk now brought them to the church of which mention has already been made. they stood outside, a little abashed, watching the fashionably attired people who were entering, and were feeling a little undecided as to whether they had better enter also, when dick felt a light touch upon his shoulder. turning round, he met the smiling glance of mr. greyson. "so, my young friend, you have kept your promise," he said. "and whom have you brought with you?" "a friend of mine," said dick. "his name is henry fosdick." "i am glad you have brought him. now follow me, and i will give you seats." chapter xvii dick's first appearance in society it was the hour for morning service. the boys followed mr. greyson into the handsome church, and were assigned seats in his own pew. there were two persons already seated in it,--a good-looking lady of middle age, and a pretty little girl of nine. they were mrs. greyson and her only daughter ida. they looked pleasantly at the boys as they entered, smiling a welcome to them. the morning service commenced. it must be acknowledged that dick felt rather awkward. it was an unusual place for him, and it need not be wondered at that he felt like a cat in a strange garret. he would not have known when to rise if he had not taken notice of what the rest of the audience did, and followed their example. he was sitting next to ida, and as it was the first time he had ever been near so well-dressed a young lady, he naturally felt bashful. when the hymns were announced, ida found the place, and offered a hymn-book to our hero. dick took it awkwardly, but his studies had not yet been pursued far enough for him to read the words readily. however, he resolved to keep up appearances, and kept his eyes fixed steadily on the hymn-book. at length the service was over. the people began to file slowly out of church, and among them, of course, mr. greyson's family and the two boys. it seemed very strange to dick to find himself in such different companionship from what he had been accustomed, and he could not help thinking, "wonder what johnny nolan 'ould say if he could see me now!" but johnny's business engagements did not often summon him to fifth avenue, and dick was not likely to be seen by any of his friends in the lower part of the city. "we have our sunday school in the afternoon," said mr. greyson. "i suppose you live at some distance from here?" "in mott street, sir," answered dick. "that is too far to go and return. suppose you and your friend come and dine with us, and then we can come here together in the afternoon." dick was as much astonished at this invitation as if he had really been invited by the mayor to dine with him and the board of aldermen. mr. greyson was evidently a rich man, and yet he had actually invited two boot-blacks to dine with him. "i guess we'd better go home, sir," said dick, hesitating. "i don't think you can have any very pressing engagements to interfere with your accepting my invitation," said mr. greyson, good-humoredly, for he understood the reason of dick's hesitation. "so i take it for granted that you both accept." before dick fairly knew what he intended to do, he was walking down fifth avenue with his new friends. now, our young hero was not naturally bashful; but he certainly felt so now, especially as miss ida greyson chose to walk by his side, leaving henry fosdick to walk with her father and mother. "what is your name?" asked ida, pleasantly. our hero was about to answer "ragged dick," when it occurred to him that in the present company he had better forget his old nickname. "dick hunter," he answered. "dick!" repeated ida. "that means richard, doesn't it?" "everybody calls me dick." "i have a cousin dick," said the young lady, sociably. "his name is dick wilson. i suppose you don't know him?" "no," said dick. "i like the name of dick," said the young lady, with charming frankness. without being able to tell why, dick felt rather glad she did. he plucked up courage to ask her name. "my name is ida," answered the young lady. "do you like it?" "yes," said dick. "it's a bully name." dick turned red as soon as he had said it, for he felt that he had not used the right expression. the little girl broke into a silvery laugh. "what a funny boy you are!" she said. "i didn't mean it," said dick, stammering. "i meant it's a tip-top name." here ida laughed again, and dick wished himself back in mott street. "how old are you?" inquired ida, continuing her examination. "i'm fourteen,--goin' on fifteen," said dick. "you're a big boy of your age," said ida. "my cousin dick is a year older than you, but he isn't as large." dick looked pleased. boys generally like to be told that they are large of their age. "how old be you?" asked dick, beginning to feel more at his ease. "i'm nine years old," said ida. "i go to miss jarvis's school. i've just begun to learn french. do you know french?" "not enough to hurt me," said dick. ida laughed again, and told him that he was a droll boy. "do you like it?" asked dick. "i like it pretty well, except the verbs. i can't remember them well. do you go to school?" "i'm studying with a private tutor," said dick. "are you? so is my cousin dick. he's going to college this year. are you going to college?" "not this year." "because, if you did, you know you'd be in the same class with my cousin. it would be funny to have two dicks in one class." they turned down twenty-fourth street, passing the fifth avenue hotel on the left, and stopped before an elegant house with a brown stone front. the bell was rung, and the door being opened, the boys, somewhat abashed, followed mr. greyson into a handsome hall. they were told where to hang their hats, and a moment afterwards were ushered into a comfortable dining-room, where a table was spread for dinner. dick took his seat on the edge of a sofa, and was tempted to rub his eyes to make sure that he was really awake. he could hardly believe that he was a guest in so fine a mansion. ida helped to put the boys at their ease. "do you like pictures?" she asked. "very much," answered henry. the little girl brought a book of handsome engravings, and, seating herself beside dick, to whom she seemed to have taken a decided fancy, commenced showing them to him. "there are the pyramids of egypt," she said, pointing to one engraving. "what are they for?" asked dick, puzzled. "i don't see any winders." "no," said ida, "i don't believe anybody lives there. do they, papa?" "no, my dear. they were used for the burial of the dead. the largest of them is said to be the loftiest building in the world with one exception. the spire of the cathedral of strasburg is twenty-four feet higher, if i remember rightly." "is egypt near here?" asked dick. "oh, no, it's ever so many miles off; about four or five hundred. didn't you know?" "no," said dick. "i never heard." "you don't appear to be very accurate in your information, ida," said her mother. "four or five thousand miles would be considerably nearer the truth." after a little more conversation they sat down to dinner. dick seated himself in an embarrassed way. he was very much afraid of doing or saying something which would be considered an impropriety, and had the uncomfortable feeling that everybody was looking at him, and watching his behavior. "where do you live, dick?" asked ida, familiarly. "in mott street." "where is that?" "more than a mile off." "is it a nice street?" "not very," said dick. "only poor folks live there." "are you poor?" "little girls should be seen and not heard," said her mother, gently. "if you are," said ida, "i'll give you the five-dollar gold-piece aunt gave me for a birthday present." "dick cannot be called poor, my child," said mrs. greyson, "since he earns his living by his own exertions." "do you earn your living?" asked ida, who was a very inquisitive young lady, and not easily silenced. "what do you do?" dick blushed violently. at such a table, and in presence of the servant who was standing at that moment behind his chair, he did not like to say that he was a shoe-black, although he well knew that there was nothing dishonorable in the occupation. mr. greyson perceived his feelings, and to spare them, said, "you are too inquisitive, ida. sometime dick may tell you, but you know we don't talk of business on sundays." dick in his embarrassment had swallowed a large spoonful of hot soup, which made him turn red in the face. for the second time, in spite of the prospect of the best dinner he had ever eaten, he wished himself back in mott street. henry fosdick was more easy and unembarrassed than dick, not having led such a vagabond and neglected life. but it was to dick that ida chiefly directed her conversation, having apparently taken a fancy to his frank and handsome face. i believe i have already said that dick was a very good-looking boy, especially now since he kept his face clean. he had a frank, honest expression, which generally won its way to the favor of those with whom he came in contact. dick got along pretty well at the table by dint of noticing how the rest acted, but there was one thing he could not manage, eating with his fork, which, by the way, he thought a very singular arrangement. at length they arose from the table, somewhat to dick's relief. again ida devoted herself to the boys, and exhibited a profusely illustrated bible for their entertainment. dick was interested in looking at the pictures, though he knew very little of their subjects. henry fosdick was much better informed, as might have been expected. when the boys were about to leave the house with mr. greyson for the sunday school, ida placed her hand in dick's, and said persuasively. "you'll come again, dick, won't you?" "thank you," said dick, "i'd like to," and he could not help thinking ida the nicest girl he had ever seen. "yes," said mrs. greyson, hospitably, "we shall be glad to see you both here again." "thank you very much," said henry fosdick, gratefully. "we shall like very much to come." i will not dwell upon the hour spent in sunday school, nor upon the remarks of mr. greyson to his class. he found dick's ignorance of religious subjects so great that he was obliged to begin at the beginning with him. dick was interested in hearing the children sing, and readily promised to come again the next sunday. when the service was over dick and henry walked homewards. dick could not help letting his thoughts rest on the sweet little girl who had given him so cordial a welcome, and hoping that he might meet her again. "mr. greyson is a nice man,--isn't he, dick?" asked henry, as they were turning into mott street, and were already in sight of their lodging-house. "ain't he, though?" said dick. "he treated us just as if we were young gentlemen." "ida seemed to take a great fancy to you." "she's a tip-top girl," said dick, "but she asked so many questions that i didn't know what to say." he had scarcely finished speaking, when a stone whizzed by his head, and, turning quickly, he saw micky maguire running round the corner of the street which they had just passed. chapter xviii micky maguire's second defeat dick was no coward. nor was he in the habit of submitting passively to an insult. when, therefore, he recognized micky as his assailant, he instantly turned and gave chase. micky anticipated pursuit, and ran at his utmost speed. it is doubtful if dick would have overtaken him, but micky had the ill luck to trip just as he had entered a narrow alley, and, falling with some violence, received a sharp blow from the hard stones, which made him scream with pain. "ow!" he whined. "don't you hit a feller when he's down." "what made you fire that stone at me?" demanded our hero, looking down at the fallen bully. "just for fun," said micky. "it would have been a very agreeable s'prise if it had hit me," said dick. "s'posin' i fire a rock at you jest for fun." "don't!" exclaimed micky, in alarm. "it seems you don't like agreeable s'prises," said dick, "any more'n the man did what got hooked by a cow one mornin', before breakfast. it didn't improve his appetite much." "i've most broke my arm," said micky, ruefully, rubbing the affected limb. "if it's broke you can't fire no more stones, which is a very cheerin' reflection," said dick. "ef you haven't money enough to buy a wooden one i'll lend you a quarter. there's one good thing about wooden ones, they ain't liable to get cold in winter, which is another cheerin' reflection." "i don't want none of yer cheerin' reflections," said micky, sullenly. "yer company ain't wanted here." "thank you for your polite invitation to leave," said dick, bowing ceremoniously. "i'm willin' to go, but ef you throw any more stones at me, micky maguire, i'll hurt you worse than the stones did." the only answer made to this warning was a scowl from his fallen opponent. it was quite evident that dick had the best of it, and he thought it prudent to say nothing. "as i've got a friend waitin' outside, i shall have to tear myself away," said dick. "you'd better not throw any more stones, micky maguire, for it don't seem to agree with your constitution." micky muttered something which dick did not stay to hear. he backed out of the alley, keeping a watchful eye on his fallen foe, and rejoined henry fosdick, who was awaiting his return. "who was it, dick?" he asked. "a partic'lar friend of mine, micky maguire," said dick. "he playfully fired a rock at my head as a mark of his 'fection. he loves me like a brother, micky does." "rather a dangerous kind of a friend, i should think," said fosdick. "he might have killed you." "i've warned him not to be so 'fectionate another time," said dick. "i know him," said henry fosdick. "he's at the head of a gang of boys living at the five-points. he threatened to whip me once because a gentleman employed me to black his boots instead of him." "he's been at the island two or three times for stealing," said dick. "i guess he won't touch me again. he'd rather get hold of small boys. if he ever does anything to you, fosdick, just let me know, and i'll give him a thrashing." dick was right. micky maguire was a bully, and like most bullies did not fancy tackling boys whose strength was equal or superior to his own. although he hated dick more than ever, because he thought our hero was putting on airs, he had too lively a remembrance of his strength and courage to venture upon another open attack. he contented himself, therefore, whenever he met dick, with scowling at him. dick took this very philosophically, remarking that, "if it was soothin' to micky's feelings, he might go ahead, as it didn't hurt him much." it will not be necessary to chronicle the events of the next few weeks. a new life had commenced for dick. he no longer haunted the gallery of the old bowery; and even tony pastor's hospitable doors had lost their old attractions. he spent two hours every evening in study. his progress was astonishingly rapid. he was gifted with a natural quickness; and he was stimulated by the desire to acquire a fair education as a means of "growin' up 'spectable," as he termed it. much was due also to the patience and perseverance of henry fosdick, who made a capital teacher. "you're improving wonderfully, dick," said his friend, one evening, when dick had read an entire paragraph without a mistake. "am i?" said dick, with satisfaction. "yes. if you'll buy a writing-book to-morrow, we can begin writing to-morrow evening." "what else do you know, henry?" asked dick "arithmetic, and geography, and grammar." "what a lot you know!" said dick, admiringly. "i don't _know_ any of them," said fosdick. "i've only studied them. i wish i knew a great deal more." "i'll be satisfied when i know as much as you," said dick. "it seems a great deal to you now, dick, but in a few months you'll think differently. the more you know, the more you'll want to know." "then there ain't any end to learnin'?" said dick. "no." "well," said dick, "i guess i'll be as much as sixty before i know everything." "yes; as old as that, probably," said fosdick, laughing. "anyway, you know too much to be blackin' boots. leave that to ignorant chaps like me." "you won't be ignorant long, dick." "you'd ought to get into some office or countin'-room." "i wish i could," said fosdick, earnestly. "i don't succeed very well at blacking boots. you make a great deal more than i do." "that's cause i ain't troubled with bashfulness," said dick. "bashfulness ain't as natural to me as it is to you. i'm always on hand, as the cat said to the milk. you'd better give up shines, fosdick, and give your 'tention to mercantile pursuits." "i've thought of trying to get a place," said fosdick; "but no one would take me with these clothes;" and he directed his glance to his well-worn suit, which he kept as neat as he could, but which, in spite of all his care, began to show decided marks of use. there was also here and there a stain of blacking upon it, which, though an advertisement of his profession, scarcely added to its good appearance. "i almost wanted to stay at home from sunday school last sunday," he continued, "because i thought everybody would notice how dirty and worn my clothes had got to be." "if my clothes wasn't two sizes too big for you," said dick, generously, "i'd change. you'd look as if you'd got into your great-uncle's suit by mistake." "you're very kind, dick, to think of changing," said fosdick, "for your suit is much better than mine; but i don't think that mine would suit you very well. the pants would show a little more of your ankles than is the fashion, and you couldn't eat a very hearty dinner without bursting the buttons off the vest." "that wouldn't be very convenient," said dick. "i ain't fond of lacin' to show my elegant figger. but i say," he added with a sudden thought, "how much money have we got in the savings' bank?" fosdick took a key from his pocket, and went to the drawer in which the bank-books were kept, and, opening it, brought them out for inspection. it was found that dick had the sum of eighteen dollars and ninety cents placed to his credit, while fosdick had six dollars and forty-five cents. to explain the large difference, it must be remembered that dick had deposited five dollars before henry deposited anything, being the amount he had received as a gift from mr. whitney. "how much does that make, the lot of it?" asked dick. "i ain't much on figgers yet, you know." "it makes twenty-five dollars and thirty-five cents, dick," said his companion, who did not understand the thought which suggested the question. "take it, and buy some clothes, henry," said dick, shortly. "what, your money too?" "in course." "no, dick, you are too generous. i couldn't think of it. almost three-quarters of the money is yours. you must spend it on yourself." "i don't need it," said dick. "you may not need it now, but you will some time." "i shall have some more then." "that may be; but it wouldn't be fair for me to use your money, dick. i thank you all the same for your kindness." "well, i'll lend it to you, then," persisted dick, "and you can pay me when you get to be a rich merchant." "but it isn't likely i ever shall be one." "how d'you know? i went to a fortun' teller once, and she told me i was born under a lucky star with a hard name, and i should have a rich man for my particular friend, who would make my fortun'. i guess you are going to be the rich man." fosdick laughed, and steadily refused for some time to avail himself of dick's generous proposal; but at length, perceiving that our hero seemed much disappointed, and would be really glad if his offer were accepted, he agreed to use as much as might be needful. this at once brought back dick's good-humor, and he entered with great enthusiasm into his friend's plans. the next day they withdrew the money from the bank, and, when business got a little slack, in the afternoon set out in search of a clothing store. dick knew enough of the city to be able to find a place where a good bargain could be obtained. he was determined that fosdick should have a good serviceable suit, even if it took all the money they had. the result of their search was that for twenty-three dollars fosdick obtained a very neat outfit, including a couple of shirts, a hat, and a pair of shoes, besides a dark mixed suit, which appeared stout and of good quality. "shall i sent the bundle home?" asked the salesman, impressed by the off-hand manner in which dick drew out the money in payment for the clothes. "thank you," said dick, "you're very kind, but i'll take it home myself, and you can allow me something for my trouble." "all right," said the clerk, laughing; "i'll allow it on your next purchase." proceeding to their apartment in mott street, fosdick at once tried on his new suit, and it was found to be an excellent fit. dick surveyed his new friend with much satisfaction. "you look like a young gentleman of fortun'" he said, "and do credit to your governor." "i suppose that means you, dick," said fosdick, laughing. "in course it does." "you should say _of_ course," said fosdick, who, in virtue of his position as dick's tutor, ventured to correct his language from time to time. "how dare you correct your gov'nor?" said dick, with comic indignation. "`i'll cut you off with a shillin', you young dog,' as the markis says to his nephew in the play at the old bowery." chapter xix fosdick changes his business fosdick did not venture to wear his new clothes while engaged in his business. this he felt would have been wasteful extravagance. about ten o' clock in the morning, when business slackened, he went home, and dressing himself went to a hotel where he could see copies of the "morning herald" and "sun," and, noting down the places where a boy was wanted, went on a round of applications. but he found it no easy thing to obtain a place. swarms of boys seemed to be out of employment, and it was not unusual to find from fifty to a hundred applicants for a single place. there was another difficulty. it was generally desired that the boy wanted should reside with his parents. when fosdick, on being questioned, revealed the fact of his having no parents, and being a boy of the street, this was generally sufficient of itself to insure a refusal. merchants were afraid to trust one who had led such a vagabond life. dick, who was always ready for an emergency, suggested borrowing a white wig, and passing himself off for fosdick's father or grandfather. but henry thought this might be rather a difficult character for our hero to sustain. after fifty applications and as many failures, fosdick began to get discouraged. there seemed to be no way out of his present business, for which he felt unfitted. "i don't know but i shall have to black boots all my life," he said, one day, despondently, to dick. "keep a stiff upper lip," said dick. "by the time you get to be a gray-headed veteran, you may get a chance to run errands for some big firm on the bowery, which is a very cheerin' reflection." so dick by his drollery and perpetual good spirits kept up fosdick's courage. "as for me," said dick, "i expect by that time to lay up a colossal fortun' out of shines, and live in princely style on the avenoo." but one morning, fosdick, straying into french's hotel, discovered the following advertisement in the columns of "the herald,"-"wanted--a smart, capable boy to run errands, and make himself generally useful in a hat and cap store. salary three dollars a week at first. inquire at no. -broadway, after ten o'clock, a.m." he determined to make application, and, as the city hall clock just then struck the hour indicated, lost no time in proceeding to the store, which was only a few blocks distant from the astor house. it was easy to find the store, as from a dozen to twenty boys were already assembled in front of it. they surveyed each other askance, feeling that they were rivals, and mentally calculating each other's chances. "there isn't much chance for me," said fosdick to dick, who had accompanied him. "look at all these boys. most of them have good homes, i suppose, and good recommendations, while i have nobody to refer to." "go ahead," said dick. "your chance is as good as anybody's." while this was passing between dick and his companion, one of the boys, a rather supercilious-looking young gentleman, genteelly dressed, and evidently having a very high opinion of his dress and himself turned suddenly to dick, and remarked,-"i've seen you before." "oh, have you?" said dick, whirling round; "then p'r'aps you'd like to see me behind." at this unexpected answer all the boys burst into a laugh with the exception of the questioner, who, evidently, considered that dick had been disrespectful. "i've seen you somewhere," he said, in a surly tone, correcting himself. "most likely you have," said dick. "that's where i generally keep myself." there was another laugh at the expense of roswell crawford, for that was the name of the young aristocrat. but he had his revenge ready. no boy relishes being an object of ridicule, and it was with a feeling of satisfaction that he retorted,-"i know you for all your impudence. you're nothing but a boot-black." this information took the boys who were standing around by surprise, for dick was well-dressed, and had none of the implements of his profession with him. "s'pose i be," said dick. "have you got any objection?" "not at all," said roswell, curling his lip; "only you'd better stick to blacking boots, and not try to get into a store." "thank you for your kind advice," said dick. "is it gratooitous, or do you expect to be paid for it?" "you're an impudent fellow." "that's a very cheerin' reflection," said dick, good-naturedly. "do you expect to get this place when there's gentlemen's sons applying for it? a boot-black in a store! that would be a good joke." boys as well as men are selfish, and, looking upon dick as a possible rival, the boys who listened seemed disposed to take the same view of the situation. "that's what i say," said one of them, taking sides with roswell. "don't trouble yourselves," said dick. "i ain't agoin' to cut you out. i can't afford to give up a independent and loocrative purfession for a salary of three dollars a week." "hear him talk!" said roswell crawford, with an unpleasant sneer. "if you are not trying to get the place, what are you here for?" "i came with a friend of mine," said dick, indicating fosdick, "who's goin' in for the situation." "is he a boot-black, too?" demanded roswell, superciliously. "he!" retorted dick, loftily. "didn't you know his father was a member of congress, and intimately acquainted with all the biggest men in the state?" the boys surveyed fosdick as if they did not quite know whether to credit this statement, which, for the credit of dick's veracity, it will be observed he did not assert, but only propounded in the form of a question. there was no time for comment, however, as just then the proprietor of the store came to the door, and, casting his eyes over the waiting group, singled out roswell crawford, and asked him to enter. "well, my lad, how old are you?" "fourteen years old," said roswell, consequentially. "are your parents living?" "only my mother. my father is dead. he was a gentleman," he added, complacently. "oh, was he?" said the shop-keeper. "do you live in the city?" "yes, sir. in clinton place." "have you ever been in a situation before?" "yes, sir," said roswell, a little reluctantly. "where was it?" "in an office on dey street." "how long were you there?" "a week." "it seems to me that was a short time. why did you not stay longer?" "because," said roswell, loftily, "the man wanted me to get to the office at eight o'clock, and make the fire. i'm a gentleman's son, and am not used to such dirty work." "indeed!" said the shop-keeper. "well, young gentleman, you may step aside a few minutes. i will speak with some of the other boys before making my selection." several other boys were called in and questioned. roswell stood by and listened with an air of complacency. he could not help thinking his chances the best. "the man can see i'm a gentleman, and will do credit to his store," he thought. at length it came to fosdick's turn. he entered with no very sanguine anticipations of success. unlike roswell, he set a very low estimate upon his qualifications when compared with those of other applicants. but his modest bearing, and quiet, gentlemanly manner, entirely free from pretension, prepossessed the shop-keeper, who was a sensible man, in his favor. "do you reside in the city?" he asked. "yes, sir," said henry. "what is your age?" "twelve." "have you ever been in any situation?" "no, sir." "i should like to see a specimen of your handwriting. here, take the pen and write your name." henry fosdick had a very handsome handwriting for a boy of his age, while roswell, who had submitted to the same test, could do little more than scrawl. "do you reside with your parents?" "no, sir, they are dead." "where do you live, then?" "in mott street." roswell curled his lip when this name was pronounced, for mott street, as my new york readers know, is in the immediate neighborhood of the five-points, and very far from a fashionable locality. "have you any testimonials to present?" asked mr. henderson, for that was his name. fosdick hesitated. this was the question which he had foreseen would give him trouble. but at this moment it happened most opportunely that mr. greyson entered the shop with the intention of buying a hat. "yes," said fosdick, promptly; "i will refer to this gentleman." "how do you do, fosdick?" asked mr. greyson, noticing him for the first time. "how do you happen to be here?" "i am applying for a place, sir," said fosdick. "may i refer the gentleman to you?" "certainly, i shall be glad to speak a good word for you. mr. henderson, this is a member of my sunday-school class, of whose good qualities and good abilities i can speak confidently." "that will be sufficient," said the shop-keeper, who knew mr. greyson's high character and position. "he could have no better recommendation. you may come to the store to-morrow morning at half past seven o'clock. the pay will be three dollars a week for the first six months. if i am satisfied with you, i shall then raise it to five dollars." the other boys looked disappointed, but none more so than roswell crawford. he would have cared less if any one else had obtained the situation; but for a boy who lived in mott street to be preferred to him, a gentleman's son, he considered indeed humiliating. in a spirit of petty spite, he was tempted to say, "he's a boot-black. ask him if he isn't." "he's an honest and intelligent lad," said mr. greyson. "as for you, young man, i only hope you have one-half his good qualities." roswell crawford left the store in disgust, and the other unsuccessful applicants with him. "what luck, fosdick?" asked dick, eagerly, as his friend came out of the store. "i've got the place," said fosdick, in accents of satisfaction; "but it was only because mr. greyson spoke up for me." "he's a trump," said dick, enthusiastically. the gentleman, so denominated, came out before the boys went away, and spoke with them kindly. both dick and henry were highly pleased at the success of the application. the pay would indeed be small, but, expended economically, fosdick thought he could get along on it, receiving his room rent, as before, in return for his services as dick's private tutor. dick determined, as soon as his education would permit, to follow his companion's example. "i don't know as you'll be willin' to room with a boot-black," he said, to henry, "now you're goin' into business." "i couldn't room with a better friend, dick," said fosdick, affectionately, throwing his arm round our hero. "when we part, it'll be because you wish it." so fosdick entered upon a new career. chapter xx nine months later the next morning fosdick rose early, put on his new suit, and, after getting breakfast, set out for the broadway store in which he had obtained a position. he left his little blacking-box in the room. "it'll do to brush my own shoes," he said. "who knows but i may have to come back to it again?" "no danger," said dick; "i'll take care of the feet, and you'll have to look after the heads, now you're in a hat-store." "i wish you had a place too," said fosdick. "i don't know enough yet," said dick. "wait till i've gradooated." "and can put a. b. after your name." "what's that?" "it stands for bachelor of arts. it's a degree that students get when they graduate from college." "oh," said dick, "i didn't know but it meant a boot-black. i can put that after my name now. wouldn't dick hunter, a.b., sound tip-top?" "i must be going," said fosdick. "it won't do for me to be late the very first morning." "that's the difference between you and me," said dick. "i'm my own boss, and there ain't no one to find fault with me if i'm late. but i might as well be goin' too. there's a gent as comes down to his store pretty early that generally wants a shine." the two boys parted at the park. fosdick crossed it, and proceeded to the hat-store, while dick, hitching up his pants, began to look about him for a customer. it was seldom that dick had to wait long. he was always on the alert, and if there was any business to do he was always sure to get his share of it. he had now a stronger inducement than ever to attend strictly to business; his little stock of money in the savings bank having been nearly exhausted by his liberality to his room-mate. he determined to be as economical as possible, and moreover to study as hard as he could, that he might be able to follow fosdick's example, and obtain a place in a store or counting-room. as there were no striking incidents occurring in our hero's history within the next nine months, i propose to pass over that period, and recount the progress he made in that time. fosdick was still at the hat-store, having succeeded in giving perfect satisfaction to mr. henderson. his wages had just been raised to five dollars a week. he and dick still kept house together at mrs. mooney's lodging-house, and lived very frugally, so that both were able to save up money. dick had been unusually successful in business. he had several regular patrons, who had been drawn to him by his ready wit, and quick humor, and from two of them he had received presents of clothing, which had saved him any expense on that score. his income had averaged quite seven dollars a week in addition to this. of this amount he was now obliged to pay one dollar weekly for the room which he and fosdick occupied, but he was still able to save one half the remainder. at the end of nine months therefore, or thirty-nine weeks, it will be seen that he had accumulated no less a sum than one hundred and seventeen dollars. dick may be excused for feeling like a capitalist when he looked at the long row of deposits in his little bank-book. there were other boys in the same business who had earned as much money, but they had had little care for the future, and spent as they went along, so that few could boast a bank-account, however small. "you'll be a rich man some time, dick," said henry fosdick, one evening." "and live on fifth avenoo," said dick. "perhaps so. stranger things have happened." "well," said dick, "if such a misfortin' should come upon me i should bear it like a man. when you see a fifth avenoo manshun for sale for a hundred and seventeen dollars, just let me know and i'll buy it as an investment." "two hundred and fifty years ago you might have bought one for that price, probably. real estate wasn't very high among the indians." "just my luck," said dick; "i was born too late. i'd orter have been an indian, and lived in splendor on my present capital." "i'm afraid you'd have found your present business rather unprofitable at that time." but dick had gained something more valuable than money. he had studied regularly every evening, and his improvement had been marvellous. he could now read well, write a fair hand, and had studied arithmetic as far as interest. besides this he had obtained some knowledge of grammar and geography. if some of my boy readers, who have been studying for years, and got no farther than this, should think it incredible that dick, in less than a year, and studying evenings only, should have accomplished it, they must remember that our hero was very much in earnest in his desire to improve. he knew that, in order to grow up respectable, he must be well advanced, and he was willing to work. but then the reader must not forget that dick was naturally a smart boy. his street education had sharpened his faculties, and taught him to rely upon himself. he knew that it would take him a long time to reach the goal which he had set before him, and he had patience to keep on trying. he knew that he had only himself to depend upon, and he determined to make the most of himself,--a resolution which is the secret of success in nine cases out of ten. "dick," said fosdick, one evening, after they had completed their studies, "i think you'll have to get another teacher soon." "why?" asked dick, in some surprise. "have you been offered a more loocrative position?" "no," said fosdick, "but i find i have taught you all i know myself. you are now as good a scholar as i am." "is that true?" said dick, eagerly, a flush of gratification coloring his brown cheek. "yes," said fosdick. "you've made wonderful progress. i propose, now that evening schools have begun, that we join one, and study together through the winter." "all right," said dick. "i'd be willin' to go now; but when i first began to study i was ashamed to have anybody know that i was so ignorant. do you really mean, fosdick, that i know as much as you?" "yes, dick, it's true." "then i've got you to thank for it," said dick, earnestly. "you've made me what i am." "and haven't you paid me, dick?" "by payin' the room-rent," said dick, impulsively. "what's that? it isn't half enough. i wish you'd take half my money; you deserve it." "thank you, dick, but you're too generous. you've more than paid me. who was it took my part when all the other boys imposed upon me? and who gave me money to buy clothes, and so got me my situation?" "oh, that's nothing!" said dick. "it's a great deal, dick. i shall never forget it. but now it seems to me you might try to get a situation yourself." "do i know enough?" "you know as much as i do." "then i'll try," said dick, decidedly. "i wish there was a place in our store," said fosdick. "it would be pleasant for us to be together." "never mind," said dick; "there'll be plenty of other chances. p'r'aps a. t. stewart might like a partner. i wouldn't ask more'n a quarter of the profits." "which would be a very liberal proposal on your part," said fosdick, smiling. "but perhaps mr. stewart might object to a partner living on mott street." "i'd just as lieves move to fifth avenoo," said dick. "i ain't got no prejudices in favor of mott street." "nor i," said fosdick, "and in fact i have been thinking it might be a good plan for us to move as soon as we could afford. mrs. mooney doesn't keep the room quite so neat as she might." "no," said dick. "she ain't got no prejudices against dirt. look at that towel." dick held up the article indicated, which had now seen service nearly a week, and hard service at that,--dick's avocation causing him to be rather hard on towels. "yes," said fosdick, "i've got about tired of it. i guess we can find some better place without having to pay much more. when we move, you must let me pay my share of the rent." "we'll see about that," said dick. "do you propose to move to fifth avenoo?" "not just at present, but to some more agreeable neighborhood than this. we'll wait till you get a situation, and then we can decide." a few days later, as dick was looking about for customers in the neighborhood of the park, his attention was drawn to a fellow boot-black, a boy about a year younger than himself, who appeared to have been crying. "what's the matter, tom?" asked dick. "haven't you had luck to-day?" "pretty good," said the boy; "but we're havin' hard times at home. mother fell last week and broke her arm, and to-morrow we've got to pay the rent, and if we don't the landlord says he'll turn us out." "haven't you got anything except what you earn?" asked dick. "no," said tom, "not now. mother used to earn three or four dollars a week; but she can't do nothin' now, and my little sister and brother are too young." dick had quick sympathies. he had been so poor himself, and obliged to submit to so many privations that he knew from personal experience how hard it was. tom wilkins he knew as an excellent boy who never squandered his money, but faithfully carried it home to his mother. in the days of his own extravagance and shiftlessness he had once or twice asked tom to accompany him to the old bowery or tony pastor's, but tom had always steadily refused. "i'm sorry for you, tom," he said. "how much do you owe for rent?" "two weeks now," said tom. "how much is it a week?" "two dollars a week--that makes four." "have you got anything towards it?" "no; i've had to spend all my money for food for mother and the rest of us. i've had pretty hard work to do that. i don't know what we'll do. i haven't any place to go to, and i'm afraid mother'll get cold in her arm." "can't you borrow the money somewhere?" asked dick. tom shook his head despondingly. "all the people i know are as poor as i am," said he. "they'd help me if they could, but it's hard work for them to get along themselves." "i'll tell you what, tom," said dick, impulsively, "i'll stand your friend." "have you got any money?" asked tom, doubtfully. "got any money!" repeated dick. "don't you know that i run a bank on my own account? how much is it you need?" "four dollars," said tom. "if we don't pay that before tomorrow night, out we go. you haven't got as much as that, have you?" "here are three dollars," said dick, drawing out his pocketbook. "i'll let you have the rest to-morrow, and maybe a little more." "you're a right down good fellow, dick," said tom; "but won't you want it yourself?" "oh, i've got some more," said dick. "maybe i'll never be able to pay you." "s'pose you don't," said dick; "i guess i won't fail." "i won't forget it, dick. i hope i'll be able to do somethin' for you sometime." "all right," said dick. "i'd ought to help you. i haven't got no mother to look out for. i wish i had." there was a tinge of sadness in his tone, as he pronounced the last four words; but dick's temperament was sanguine, and he never gave way to unavailing sadness. accordingly he began to whistle as he turned away, only adding, "i'll see you to-morrow, tom." the three dollars which dick had handed to tom wilkins were his savings for the present week. it was now thursday afternoon. his rent, which amounted to a dollar, he expected to save out of the earnings of friday and saturday. in order to give tom the additional assistance he had promised, dick would be obliged to have recourse to his bank-savings. he would not have ventured to trench upon it for any other reason but this. but he felt that it would be selfish to allow tom and his mother to suffer when he had it in his power to relieve them. but dick was destined to be surprised, and that in a disagreeable manner, when he reached home. chapter xxi dick loses his bank-book it was hinted at the close of the last chapter that dick was destined to be disagreeably surprised on reaching home. having agreed to give further assistance to tom wilkins, he was naturally led to go to the drawer where he and fosdick kept their bank-books. to his surprise and uneasiness _the drawer proved to be empty!_ "come here a minute, fosdick," he said. "what's the matter, dick?" "i can't find my bank-book, nor yours either. what's `come of them?" "i took mine with me this morning, thinking i might want to put in a little more money. i've got it in my pocket, now." "but where's mine?" asked dick, perplexed. "i don't know. i saw it in the drawer when i took mine this morning." "are you sure?" "yes, positive, for i looked into it to see how much you had got." "did you lock it again?" asked dick. "yes; didn't you have to unlock it just now?" "so i did," said dick. "but it's gone now. somebody opened it with a key that fitted the lock, and then locked it ag'in." "that must have been the way." "it's rather hard on a feller," said dick, who, for the first time since we became acquainted with him, began to feel downhearted. "don't give it up, dick. you haven't lost the money, only the bank-book." "ain't that the same thing?" "no. you can go to the bank to-morrow morning, as soon as it opens, and tell them you have lost the book, and ask them not to pay the money to any one except yourself." "so i can," said dick, brightening up. "that is, if the thief hasn't been to the bank to-day." "if he has, they might detect him by his handwriting." "i'd like to get hold of the one that stole it," said dick, indignantly. "i'd give him a good lickin'." "it must have been somebody in the house. suppose we go and see mrs. mooney. she may know whether anybody came into our room to-day." the two boys went downstairs, and knocked at the door of a little back sitting-room where mrs. mooney generally spent her evenings. it was a shabby little room, with a threadbare carpet on the floor, the walls covered with a certain large-figured paper, patches of which had been stripped off here and there, exposing the plaster, the remainder being defaced by dirt and grease. but mrs. mooney had one of those comfortable temperaments which are tolerant of dirt, and didn't mind it in the least. she was seated beside a small pine work-table, industriously engaged in mending stockings. "good-evening, mrs. mooney," said fosdick, politely. "good-evening," said the landlady. "sit down, if you can find chairs. i'm hard at work as you see, but a poor lone widder can't afford to be idle." "we can't stop long, mrs. mooney, but my friend here has had something taken from his room to-day, and we thought we'd come and see you about it." "what is it?" asked the landlady. "you don't think i'd take anything? if i am poor, it's an honest name i've always had, as all my lodgers can testify." "certainly not, mrs. mooney; but there are others in the house that may not be honest. my friend has lost his bank-book. it was safe in the drawer this morning, but tonight it is not to be found." "how much money was there in it?" asked mrs. mooney. "over a hundred dollars," said fosdick. "it was my whole fortun'," said dick. "i was goin' to buy a house next year." mrs. mooney was evidently surprised to learn the extent of dick's wealth, and was disposed to regard him with increased respect. "was the drawer locked?" she asked. "yes." "then it couldn't have been bridget. i don't think she has any keys." "she wouldn't know what a bank-book was," said fosdick. "you didn't see any of the lodgers go into our room today, did you?" "i shouldn't wonder if it was jim travis," said mrs. mooney, suddenly. this james travis was a bar-tender in a low groggery in mulberry street, and had been for a few weeks an inmate of mrs. mooney's lodging-house. he was a coarse-looking fellow who, from his appearance, evidently patronized liberally the liquor he dealt out to others. he occupied a room opposite dick's, and was often heard by the two boys reeling upstairs in a state of intoxication, uttering shocking oaths. this travis had made several friendly overtures to dick and his room-mate, and had invited them to call round at the bar-room where he tended, and take something. but this invitation had never been accepted, partly because the boys were better engaged in the evening, and partly because neither of them had taken a fancy to mr. travis; which certainly was not strange, for nature had not gifted him with many charms, either of personal appearance or manners. the rejection of his friendly proffers had caused him to take a dislike to dick and henry, whom he considered stiff and unsocial. "what makes you think it was travis?" asked fosdick. "he isn't at home in the daytime." "but he was to-day. he said he had got a bad cold, and had to come home for a clean handkerchief." "did you see him?" asked dick. "yes," said mrs. mooney. "bridget was hanging out clothes, and i went to the door to let him in." "i wonder if he had a key that would fit our drawer," said fosdick. "yes," said mrs. mooney. "the bureaus in the two rooms are just alike. i got 'em at auction, and most likely the locks is the same." "it must have been he," said dick, looking towards fosdick. "yes," said fosdick, "it looks like it." "what's to be done? that's what i'd like to know," said dick. "of course he'll say he hasn't got it; and he won't be such a fool as to leave it in his room." "if he hasn't been to the bank, it's all right," said fosdick. "you can go there the first thing tomorrow morning, and stop their paying any money on it." "but i can't get any money on it myself," said dick. "i told tom wilkins i'd let him have some more money tomorrow, or his sick mother'll have to turn out of their lodgin's." "how much money were you going to give him?" "i gave him three dollars to-day, and was goin' to give him two dollars tomorrow." "i've got the money, dick. i didn't go to the bank this morning." "all right. i'll take it, and pay you back next week." "no, dick; if you've given three dollars, you must let me give two." "no, fosdick, i'd rather give the whole. you know i've got more money than you. no, i haven't, either," said dick, the memory of his loss flashing upon him. "i thought i was rich this morning, but now i'm in destitoot circumstances." "cheer up, dick; you'll get your money back." "i hope so," said our hero, rather ruefully. the fact was, that our friend dick was beginning to feel what is so often experienced by men who do business of a more important character and on a larger scale than he, the bitterness of a reverse of circumstances. with one hundred dollars and over carefully laid away in the savings bank, he had felt quite independent. wealth is comparative, and dick probably felt as rich as many men who are worth a hundred thousand dollars. he was beginning to feel the advantages of his steady self-denial, and to experience the pleasures of property. not that dick was likely to be unduly attached to money. let it be said to his credit that it had never given him so much satisfaction as when it enabled him to help tom wilkins in his trouble. besides this, there was another thought that troubled him. when he obtained a place he could not expect to receive as much as he was now making from blacking boots,--probably not more than three dollars a week,--while his expenses without clothing would amount to four dollars. to make up the deficiency he had confidently relied upon his savings, which would be sufficient to carry him along for a year, if necessary. if he should not recover his money, he would be compelled to continue a boot-black for at least six months longer; and this was rather a discouraging reflection. on the whole it is not to be wondered at that dick felt unusually sober this evening, and that neither of the boys felt much like studying. the two boys consulted as to whether it would be best to speak to travis about it. it was not altogether easy to decide. fosdick was opposed to it. "it will only put him on his guard," said he, "and i don't see as it will do any good. of course he will deny it. we'd better keep quiet, and watch him, and, by giving notice at the bank, we can make sure that he doesn't get any money on it. if he does present himself at the bank, they will know at once that he is a thief, and he can be arrested." this view seemed reasonable, and dick resolved to adopt it. on the whole, he began to think prospects were brighter than he had at first supposed, and his spirits rose a little. "how'd he know i had any bank-book? that's what i can't make out," he said. "don't you remember?" said fosdick, after a moment's thought, "we were speaking of our savings, two or three evenings since?" "yes," said dick. "our door was a little open at the time, and i heard somebody come upstairs, and stop a minute in front of it. it must have been jim travis. in that way he probably found out about your money, and took the opportunity to-day to get hold of it." this might or might not be the correct explanation. at all events it seemed probable. the boys were just on the point of going to bed, later in the evening, when a knock was heard at the door, and, to their no little surprise, their neighbor, jim travis, proved to be the caller. he was a sallow-complexioned young man, with dark hair and bloodshot eyes. he darted a quick glance from one to the other as he entered, which did not escape the boys' notice. "how are ye, to-night?" he said, sinking into one of the two chairs with which the room was scantily furnished. "jolly," said dick. "how are you?" "tired as a dog," was the reply. "hard work and poor pay; that's the way with me. i wanted to go to the theater, to-night, but i was hard up, and couldn't raise the cash." here he darted another quick glance at the boys; but neither betrayed anything. "you don't go out much, do you?" he said "not much," said fosdick. "we spend our evenings in study." "that's precious slow," said travis, rather contemptuously. "what's the use of studying so much? you don't expect to be a lawyer, do you, or anything of that sort?" "maybe," said dick. "i haven't made up my mind yet. if my feller-citizens should want me to go to congress some time, i shouldn't want to disapp'int 'em; and then readin' and writin' might come handy." "well," said travis, rather abruptly, "i'm tired and i guess i'll turn in." "good-night," said fosdick. the boys looked at each other as their visitor left the room. "he came in to see if we'd missed the bank-book," said dick. "and to turn off suspicion from himself, by letting us know he had no money," added fosdick. "that's so," said dick. "i'd like to have searched them pockets of his." chapter xxii tracking the thlef fosdick was right in supposing that jim travis had stolen the bank-book. he was also right in supposing that that worthy young man had come to the knowledge of dick's savings by what he had accidentally overheard. now, travis, like a very large number of young men of his class, was able to dispose of a larger amount of money than he was able to earn. moreover, he had no great fancy for work at all, and would have been glad to find some other way of obtaining money enough to pay his expenses. he had recently received a letter from an old companion, who had strayed out to california, and going at once to the mines had been lucky enough to get possession of a very remunerative claim. he wrote to travis that he had already realized two thousand dollars from it, and expected to make his fortune within six months. two thousand dollars! this seemed to travis a very large sum, and quite dazzled his imagination. he was at once inflamed with the desire to go out to california and try his luck. in his present situation he only received thirty dollars a month, which was probably all that his services were worth, but went a very little way towards gratifying his expensive tastes. accordingly he determined to take the next steamer to the land of gold, if he could possibly manage to get money enough to pay the passage. the price of a steerage passage at that time was seventy-five dollars,--not a large sum, certainly,--but it might as well have been seventy-five hundred for any chance james travis had of raising the amount at present. his available funds consisted of precisely two dollars and a quarter; of which sum, one dollar and a half was due to his washerwoman. this, however, would not have troubled travis much, and he would conveniently have forgotten all about it; but, even leaving this debt unpaid, the sum at his command would not help him materially towards paying his passage money. travis applied for help to two or three of his companions; but they were all of that kind who never keep an account with savings banks, but carry all their spare cash about with them. one of these friends offered to lend him thirty-seven cents, and another a dollar; but neither of these offers seemed to encourage him much. he was about giving up his project in despair, when he learned, accidentally, as we have already said, the extent of dick's savings. one hundred and seventeen dollars! why, that would not only pay his passage, but carry him up to the mines, after he had arrived in san francisco. he could not help thinking it over, and the result of this thinking was that he determined to borrow it of dick without leave. knowing that neither of the boys were in their room in the daytime, he came back in the course of the morning, and, being admitted by mrs. mooney herself, said, by way of accounting for his presence, that he had a cold, and had come back for a handkerchief. the landlady suspected nothing, and, returning at once to her work in the kitchen, left the coast clear. travis at once entered dick's room, and, as there seemed to be no other place for depositing money, tried the bureaudrawers. they were all readily opened, except one, which proved to be locked. this he naturally concluded must contain the money, and going back to his own chamber for the key of the bureau, tried it on his return, and found to his satisfaction that it would fit. when he discovered the bank-book, his joy was mingled with disappointment. he had expected to find bank-bills instead. this would have saved all further trouble, and would have been immediately available. obtaining money at the savings bank would involve fresh risk. travis hesitated whether to take it or not; but finally decided that it would be worth the trouble and hazard. he accordingly slipped the book into his pocket, locked the drawer again, and, forgetting all about the handkerchief for which he had come home went downstairs, and into the street. there would have been time to go to the savings bank that day, but travis had already been absent from his place of business some time, and did not venture to take the additional time required. besides, not being very much used to savings banks, never having had occasion to use them, he thought it would be more prudent to look over the rules and regulations, and see if he could not get some information as to the way he ought to proceed. so the day passed, and dick's money was left in safety at the bank. in the evening, it occurred to travis that it might be well to find out whether dick had discovered his loss. this reflection it was that induced the visit which is recorded at the close of the last chapter. the result was that he was misled by the boys' silence on the subject, and concluded that nothing had yet been discovered. "good!" thought travis, with satisfaction. "if they don't find out for twenty-four hours, it'll be too late, then, and i shall be all right." there being a possibility of the loss being discovered before the boys went out in the morning, travis determined to see them at that time, and judge whether such was the case. he waited, therefore, until he heard the boys come out, and then opened his own door. "morning, gents," said he, sociably. "going to business?" "yes," said dick. "i'm afraid my clerks'll be lazy if i ain't on hand." "good joke!" said travis. "if you pay good wages, i'd like to speak for a place." "i pay all i get myself," said dick. "how's business with you?" "so so. why don't you call round, some time?" "all my evenin's is devoted to literatoor and science," said dick. "thank you all the same." "where do you hang out?" inquired travis, in choice language, addressing fosdick. "at henderson's hat and cap store, on broadway." "i'll look in upon you some time when i want a tile," said travis. "i suppose you sell cheaper to your friends." "i'll be as reasonable as i can," said fosdick, not very cordially; for he did not much fancy having it supposed by his employer that such a disreputable-looking person as travis was a friend of his. however, travis had no idea of showing himself at the broadway store, and only said this by way of making conversation, and encouraging the boys to be social. "you haven't any of you gents seen a pearl-handled knife, have you?" he asked. "no," said fosdick; "have you lost one?" "yes," said travis, with unblushing falsehood. "i left it on my bureau a day or two since. i've missed one or two other little matters. bridget don't look to me any too honest. likely she's got 'em." "what are you goin' to do about it?" said dick. "i'll keep mum unless i lose something more, and then i'll kick up a row, and haul her over the coals. have you missed anything?" "no," said fosdick, answering for himself, as he could do without violating the truth. there was a gleam of satisfaction in the eyes of travis, as he heard this. "they haven't found it out yet," he thought. "i'll bag the money to-day, and then they may whistle for it." having no further object to serve in accompanying the boys, he bade them good-morning, and turned down another street. "he's mighty friendly all of a sudden," said dick. "yes," said fosdick; "it's very evident what it all means. he wants to find out whether you have discovered your loss or not." "but he didn't find out." "no; we've put him on the wrong track. he means to get his money to-day, no doubt." "my money," suggested dick. "i accept the correction," said fosdick. "of course, dick, you'll be on hand as soon as the bank opens." "in course i shall. jim travis'll find he's walked into the wrong shop." "the bank opens at ten o'clock, you know." "i'll be there on time." the two boys separated. "good luck, dick," said fosdick, as he parted from him. "it'll all come out right, i think." "i hope 'twill," said dick. he had recovered from his temporary depression, and made up his mind that the money would be recovered. he had no idea of allowing himself to be outwitted by jim travis, and enjoyed already, in anticipation, the pleasure of defeating his rascality. it wanted two hours and a half yet to ten o'clock, and this time to dick was too precious to be wasted. it was the time of his greatest harvest. he accordingly repaired to his usual place of business, succeeded in obtaining six customers, which yielded him sixty cents. he then went to a restaurant, and got some breakfast. it was now half-past nine, and dick, feeling that it wouldn't do to be late, left his box in charge of johnny nolan, and made his way to the bank. the officers had not yet arrived, and dick lingered on the outside, waiting till they should come. he was not without a little uneasiness, fearing that travis might be as prompt as himself, and finding him there, might suspect something, and so escape the snare. but, though looking cautiously up and down the street, he could discover no traces of the supposed thief. in due time ten o'clock struck, and immediately afterwards the doors of the bank were thrown open, and our hero entered. as dick had been in the habit of making a weekly visit for the last nine months, the cashier had come to know him by sight. "you're early, this morning, my lad," he said, pleasantly. "have you got some more money to deposit? you'll be getting rich, soon." "i don't know about that," said dick. "my bank-book's been stole." "stolen!" echoed the cashier. "that's unfortunate. not so bad as it might be, though. the thief can't collect the money." "that's what i came to see about," said dick. "i was afraid he might have got it already." "he hasn't been here yet. even if he had, i remember you, and should have detected him. when was it taken?" "yesterday," said dick. "i missed it in the evenin' when i got home." "have you any suspicion as to the person who took it?" asked the cashier. dick thereupon told all he knew as to the general character and suspicious conduct of jim travis, and the cashier agreed with him that he was probably the thief. dick also gave his reason for thinking that he would visit the bank that morning, to withdraw the funds. "very good," said the cashier. "we'll be ready for him. what is the number of your book?" "no. 5,678," said dick. "now give me a litttle description of this travis whom you suspect." dick accordingly furnished a brief outline sketch of travis, not particularly complimentary to the latter. "that will answer. i think i shall know him," said the cashier. "you may depend upon it that he shall receive no money on your account." "thank you," said dick. considerably relieved in mind, our hero turned towards the door, thinking that there would be nothing gained by his remaining longer, while he would of course lose time. he had just reached the doors, which were of glass, when through them he perceived james travis himself just crossing the street, and apparently coming towards the bank. it would not do, of course, for him to be seen. "here he is," he exclaimed, hurrying back. "can't you hide me somewhere? i don't want to be seen." the cashier understood at once how the land lay. he quickly opened a little door, and admitted dick behind the counter. "stoop down," he said, "so as not to be seen." dick had hardly done so when jim travis opened the outer door, and, looking about him in a little uncertainty, walked up to the cashier' s desk. chapter xxiii travis ls arrested jim travis advanced into the bank with a doubtful step, knowing well that he was on a dishonest errand, and heartily wishing that he were well out of it. after a little hesitation, he approached the paying-teller, and, exhibiting the bank-book, said, "i want to get my money out." the bank-officer took the book, and, after looking at it a moment, said, "how much do you want?" "the whole of it," said travis. "you can draw out any part of it, but to draw out the whole requires a week's notice." "then i'll take a hundred dollars." "are you the person to whom the book belongs?" "yes, sir," said travis, without hesitation. "your name is--" "hunter." the bank-clerk went to a large folio volume, containing the names of depositors, and began to turn over the leaves. while he was doing this, he managed to send out a young man connected with the bank for a policeman. travis did not perceive this, or did not suspect that it had anything to do with himself. not being used to savings banks, he supposed the delay only what was usual. after a search, which was only intended to gain time that a policeman might be summoned, the cashier came back, and, sliding out a piece of paper to travis, said, "it will be necessary for you to write an order for the money." travis took a pen, which he found on the ledge outside, and wrote the order, signing his name "dick hunter," having observed that name on the outside of the book. "your name is dick hunter, then?" said the cashier, taking the paper, and looking at the thief over his spectacles. "yes," said travis, promptly. "but," continued the cashier, "i find hunter's age is put down on the bank-book as fourteen. surely you must be more than that." travis would gladly have declared that he was only fourteen; but, being in reality twenty-three, and possessing a luxuriant pair of whiskers, this was not to be thought of. he began to feel uneasy. "dick hunter's my younger brother," he said. "i'm getting out the money for him." "i thought you said your own name was dick hunter," said the cashier. "i said my name was hunter," said travis, ingeniously. "i didn't understand you." "but you've signed the name of dick hunter to this order. how is that?" questioned the troublesome cashier. travis saw that he was getting himself into a tight place; but his self-possession did not desert him. "i thought i must give my brother's name," he answered. "what is your own name?" "henry hunter." "can you bring any one to testify that the statement you are making is correct?" "yes, a dozen if you like," said travis, boldly. "give me the book, and i'll come back this afternoon. i didn't think there'd be such a fuss about getting out a little money." "wait a moment. why don't your brother come himself?" "because he's sick. he's down with the measles," said travis. here the cashier signed to dick to rise and show himself. our hero accordingly did so. "you will be glad to find that he has recovered," said the cashier, pointing to dick. with an exclamation of anger and dismay, travis, who saw the game was up, started for the door, feeling that safety made such a course prudent. but he was too late. he found himself confronted by a burly policeman, who seized him by the arm, saying, "not so fast, my man. i want you." "let me go," exclaimed travis, struggling to free himself. "i'm sorry i can't oblige you," said the officer. "you'd better not make a fuss, or i may have to hurt you a little." travis sullenly resigned himself to his fate, darting a look of rage at dick, whom he considered the author of his present misfortune. "this is your book," said the cashier, handing back his rightful property to our hero. "do you wish to draw out any money?" "two dollars," said dick. "very well. write an order for the amount." before doing so, dick, who now that he saw travis in the power of the law began to pity him, went up to the officer, and said,-"won't you let him go? i've got my bank-book back, and i don't want anything done to him." "sorry i can't oblige you," said the officer; "but i'm not allowed to do it. he'll have to stand his trial." "i'm sorry for you, travis," said dick. "i didn't want you arrested. i only wanted my bank-book back." "curse you!" said travis, scowling vindictively. "wait till i get free. see if i don't fix you." "you needn't pity him too much," said the officer. "i know him now. he's been to the island before." "it's a lie," said travis, violently. "don't be too noisy, my friend," said the officer. "if you've got no more business here, we'll be going." he withdrew with the prisoner in charge, and dick, having drawn his two dollars, left the bank. notwithstanding the violent words the prisoner had used towards himself, and his attempted robbery, he could not help feeling sorry that he had been instrumental in causing his arrest. "i'll keep my book a little safer hereafter," thought dick. "now i must go and see tom wilkins." before dismissing the subject of travis and his theft, it may be remarked that he was duly tried, and, his guilt being clear, was sent to blackwell's island for nine months. at the end of that time, on his release, he got a chance to work his passage on a ship to san francisco, where he probably arrived in due time. at any rate, nothing more has been heard of him, and probably his threat of vengence against dick will never be carried into effect. returning to the city hall park, dick soon fell in with tom wilkins. "how are you, tom?" he said. "how's your mother?" "she's better, dick, thank you. she felt worried about bein' turned out into the street; but i gave her that money from you, and now she feels a good deal easier." "i've got some more for you, tom," said dick, producing a two-dollar bill from his pocket. "i ought not to take it from you, dick." "oh, it's all right, tom. don't be afraid." "but you may need it yourself." "there's plenty more where that came from." "any way, one dollar will be enough. with that we can pay the rent." "you'll want the other to buy something to eat." "you're very kind, dick." "i'd ought to be. i've only got myself to take care of." "well, i'll take it for my mother's sake. when you want anything done just call on tom wilkins." "all right. next week, if your mother doesn't get better, i'll give you some more." tom thanked our hero very gratefully, and dick walked away, feeling the self-approval which always accompanies a generous and disinterested action. he was generous by nature, and, before the period at which he is introduced to the reader's notice, he frequently treated his friends to cigars and oyster-stews. sometimes he invited them to accompany him to the theatre at his expense. but he never derived from these acts of liberality the same degree of satisfaction as from this timely gift to tom wilkins. he felt that his money was well bestowed, and would save an entire family from privation and discomfort. five dollars would, to be sure, make something of a difference in the mount of his savings. it was more than he was able to save up in a week. but dick felt fully repaid for what he had done, and he felt prepared to give as much more, if tom's mother should continue to be sick, and should appear to him to need it. besides all this, dick felt a justifiable pride in his financial ability to afford so handsome a gift. a year before, however much he might have desired to give, it would have been quite out of his power to give five dollars. his cash balance never reached that amount. it was seldom, indeed, that it equalled one dollar. in more ways than one dick was beginning to reap the advantage of his self-denial and judicious economy. it will be remembered that when mr. whitney at parting with dick presented him with five dollars, he told him that he might repay it to some other boy who was struggling upward. dick thought of this, and it occurred to him that after all he was only paying up an old debt. when fosdick came home in the evening, dick announced his success in recovering his lost money, and described the manner it had been brought about. "you're in luck," said fosdick. "i guess we'd better not trust the bureau-drawer again." "i mean to carry my book round with me," said dick. "so shall i, as long as we stay at mrs. mooney's. i wish we were in a better place." "i must go down and tell her she needn't expect travis back. poor chap, i pity him!" travis was never more seen in mrs. mooney's establishment. he was owing that lady for a fortnight's rent of his room, which prevented her feeling much compassion for him. the room was soon after let to a more creditable tenant who proved a less troublesome neighbor than his predecessor. chapter xxiv dick receives a letter it was about a week after dick's recovery of his bank-book, that fosdick brought home with him in the evening a copy of the "daily sun." "would you like to see your name in print, dick?" he asked. "yes," said dick, who was busy at the wash-stand, endeavoring to efface the marks which his day's work had left upon his hands. "they haven't put me up for mayor, have they? 'cause if they have, i shan't accept. it would interfere too much with my private business." "no," said fosdick, "they haven't put you up for office yet, though that may happen sometime. but if you want to see your name in print, here it is." dick was rather incredulous, but, having dried his hands on the towel, took the paper, and following the directions of fosdick's finger, observed in the list of advertised letters the name of "ragged dick." "by gracious, so it is," said he. "do you s'poseit means me?" "i don't know of any other ragged dick,--do you?" "no," said dick, reflectively; "it must be me. but i don't know of anybody that would be likely to write to me." "perhaps it is frank whitney," suggested fosdick, after a little reflection. "didn't he promise to write to you?" "yes," said dick, "and he wanted me to write to him." "where is he now?" "he was going to a boarding-school in connecticut, he said. the name of the town was barnton." "very likely the letter is from him." "i hope it is. frank was a tip-top boy, and he was the first that made me ashamed of bein' so ignorant and dirty." "you had better go to the post-office to-morrow morning, and ask for the letter." "p'r'aps they won't give it to me." "suppose you wear the old clothes you used to a year ago, when frank first saw you? they won't have any doubt of your being ragged dick then." "i guess i will. i'll be sort of ashamed to be seen in 'em though," said dick, who had considerable more pride in a neat personal appearance than when we were first introduced to him. "it will be only for one day, or one morning," said fosdick. "i'd do more'n that for the sake of gettin' a letter from frank. i'd like to see him." the next morning, in accordance with the suggestion of fosdick, dick arrayed himself in the long disused washington coat and napoleon pants, which he had carefully preserved, for what reason he could hardly explain. when fairly equipped, dick surveyed himself in the mirror,-if the little seven-by-nine-inch looking-glass, with which the room was furnished, deserved the name. the result of the survey was not on the whole a pleasing one. to tell the truth, dick was quite ashamed of his appearance, and, on opening the chamber-door, looked around to see that the coast was clear, not being willing to have any of his fellow-boarders see him in his present attire he managed to slip out into the street unobserved, and, after attending to two or three regular customers who came down-town early in the morning, he made his way down nassau street to the post-office. he passed along until he came to a compartment on which he read advertised letters, and, stepping up to the little window, said,-"there's a letter for me. i saw it advertised in the `sun' yesterday." "what name?" demanded the clerk. "ragged dick," answered our hero. "that's a queer name," said the clerk, surveying him a little curiously. "are you ragged dick?" "if you don't believe me, look at my clo'es," said dick. "that's pretty good proof, certainly," said the clerk, laughing. "if that isn't your name, it deserves to be." "i believe in dressin' up to your name," said dick. "do you know any one in barnton, connecticut?" asked the clerk, who had by this time found the letter. "yes," said dick. "i know a chap that's at boardin'-school there." "it appears to be in a boy's hand. i think it must be yours." the letter was handed to dick through the window. he received it eagerly, and drawing back so as not to be in the way of the throng who were constantly applying for letters, or slipping them into the boxes provided for them, hastily opened it, and began to read. as the reader may be interested in the contents of the letter as well as dick, we transcribe it below. it was dated barnton, conn., and commenced thus,-"dear dick,--you must excuse my addressing this letter to `ragged dick'; but the fact is, i don't know what your last name is, nor where you live. i am afraid there is not much chance of your getting this letter; but i hope you will. i have thought of you very often, and wondered how you were getting along, and i should have written to you before if i had known where to direct. "let me tell you a little about myself. barnton is a very pretty country town, only about six miles from hartford. the boarding-school which i attend is under the charge of ezekiel munroe, a.m. he is a man of about fifty, a graduate of yale college, and has always been a teacher. it is a large two-story house, with an addition containing a good many small bed-chambers for the boys. there are about twenty of us, and there is one assistant teacher who teaches the english branches. mr. munroe, or old zeke, as we call him behind his back, teaches latin and greek. i am studying both these languages, because father wants me to go to college. "but you won't be interested in hearing about our studies. i will tell you how we amuse ourselves. there are about fifty acres of land belonging to mr. munroe; so that we have plenty of room for play. about a quarter of a mile from the house there is a good-sized pond. there is a large, round-bottomed boat, which is stout and strong. every wednesday and saturday afternoon, when the weather is good, we go out rowing on the pond. mr.barton, the assistant teacher, goes with us, to look after us. in the summer we are allowed to go in bathing. in the winter there is splendid skating on the pond. "besides this, we play ball a good deal, and we have various other plays. so we have a pretty good time, although we study pretty hard too. i am getting on very well in my studies. father has not decided yet where he will send me to college. "i wish you were here, dick. i should enjoy your company, and besides i should like to feel that you were getting an education. i think you are naturally a pretty smart boy; but i suppose, as you have to earn your own living, you don't get much chance to learn. i only wish i had a few hundred dollars of my own. i would have you come up here, and attend school with us. if i ever have a chance to help you in any way, you may be sure that i will. "i shall have to wind up my letter now, as i have to hand in a composition to-morrow, on the life and character of washington. i might say that i have a friend who wears a coat that once belonged to the general. but i suppose that coat must be worn out by this time. i don't much like writing compositions. i would a good deal rather write letters. "i have written a longer letter than i meant to. i hope you will get it, though i am afraid not. if you do, you must be sure to answer it, as soon as possible. you needn't mind if your writing does look like `hens-tracks,' as you told me once. "good-by, dick. you must always think of me, as your very true friend, "frank whitney." dick read this letter with much satisfaction. it is always pleasant to be remembered, and dick had so few friends that it was more to him than to boys who are better provided. again, he felt a new sense of importance in having a letter addressed to him. it was the first letter he had ever received. if it had been sent to him a year before, he would not have been able to read it. but now, thanks to fosdick's instructions, he could not only read writing, but he could write a very good hand himself. there was one passage in the letter which pleased dick. it was where frank said that if he had the money he would pav for his education himself. "he's a tip-top feller," said dick. "i wish i could see him ag'in." there were two reasons why dick would like to have seen frank. one was, the natural pleasure he would have in meeting a friend; but he felt also that he would like to have frank witness the improvement he had made in his studies and mode of life. "he'd find me a little more 'spectable than when he first saw me," thought dick. dick had by this time got up to printing house square. standing on spruce street, near the "tribune" office, was his old enemy, micky maguire. it has already been said that micky felt a natural enmity towards those in his own condition in life who wore better clothes than himself. for the last nine months, dick's neat appearance had excited the ire of the young philistine. to appear in neat attire and with a clean face micky felt was a piece of presumption, and an assumption of superiority on the part of our hero, and he termed it "tryin' to be a swell." now his astonished eyes rested on dick in his ancient attire, which was very similar to his own. it was a moment of triumph to him. he felt that "pride had had a fall," and he could not forbear reminding dick of it. "them's nice clo'es you've got on," said he, sarcastically, as dick came up. "yes," said dick, promptly. "i've been employin' your tailor. if my face was only dirty we'd be taken for twin brothers." "so you've give up tryin' to be a swell?" "only for this partic'lar occasion," said dick. "i wanted to make a fashionable call, so i put on my regimentals." "i don't b'lieve you've got any better clo'es," said micky. "all right," said dick, "i won't charge you nothin' for what you believe." here a customer presented himself for micky, and dick went back to his room to change his clothes, before resuming business. chapter xxv dick writes his first letter when fosdick reached home in the evening, dick displayed his letter with some pride. "it's a nice letter," said fosdick, after reading it "i should like to know frank." "i'll bet you would," said dick. "he's a trump." "when are you going to answer it?" "i don't know," said dick, dubiously. "i never writ a letter." "that's no reason why you shouldn't. there's always a first time, you know." "i don't know what to say," said dick. "get some paper and sit down to it, and you'll find enough to say. you can do that this evening instead of studying." "if you'll look it over afterwards, and shine it up a little." "yes, if it needs it; but i rather think frank would like it best just as you wrote it." dick decided to adopt fosdick's suggestion. he had very serious doubts as to his ability to write a letter. like a good many other boys, he looked upon it as a very serious job, not reflecting that, after all, letter-writing is nothing but talking upon paper. still, in spite of his misgivings, he felt that the letter ought to be answered, and he wished frank to hear from him. after various preparations, he at last got setttled down to his task, and, before the evening was over, a letter was written. as the first letter which dick had ever produced, and because it was characteristic of him, my readers may like to read it. here it is,-"dear frank,--i got your letter this mornin', and was very glad to hear you hadn't forgotten ragged dick. i ain't so ragged as i was. openwork coats and trowsers has gone out of fashion. i put on the washington coat and napoleon pants to go to the post-office, for fear they wouldn't think i was the boy that was meant. on my way back i received the congratulations of my intimate friend, micky maguire, on my improved appearance. "i've give up sleepin' in boxes, and old wagons, findin' it didn't agree with my constitution. i've hired a room in mott street, and have got a private tooter, who rooms with me and looks after my studies in the evenin'. mott street ain't very fashionable; but my manshun on fifth avenoo isn't finished yet, and i'm afraid it won't be till i'm a gray-haired veteran. i've got a hundred dollars towards it, which i've saved up from my earnin's. i haven't forgot what you and your uncle said to me, and i'm tryin' to grow up 'spectable. i haven't been to tony pastor's, or the old bowery, for ever so long. i'd rather save up my money to support me in my old age. when my hair gets gray, i'm goin' to knock off blackin' boots, and go into some light, genteel employment, such as keepin' an apple-stand, or disseminatin' pea-nuts among the people. "i've got so as to read pretty well, so my tooter says. i've been studyin' geography and grammar also. i've made such astonishin' progress that i can tell a noun from a conjunction as far away as i can see 'em. tell mr. munroe that if he wants an accomplished teacher in his school, he can send for me, and i'll come on by the very next train. or, if he wants to sell out for a hundred dollars, i'll buy the whole concern, and agree to teach the scholars all i know myself in less than six months. is teachin' as good business, generally speakin', as blackin' boots? my private tooter combines both, and is makin' a fortun' with great rapidity. he'll be as rich as astor some time, _if he only lives long enough._ "i should think you'd have a bully time at your school. i should like to go out in the boat, or play ball with you. when are you comin' to the city? i wish you'd write and let me know when you do, and i'll call and see you. i'll leave my business in the hands of my numerous clerks, and go round with you. there's lots of things you didn't see when you was here before. they're getting on fast at the central park. it looks better than it did a year ago. "i ain't much used to writin' letters. as this is the first one i ever wrote, i hope you'll excuse the mistakes. i hope you'll write to me again soon. i can't write so good a letter as you; but, i'll do my best, as the man said when he was asked if he could swim over to brooklyn backwards. good-by, frank. thank you for all your kindness. direct your next letter to no. -mott street. "your true friend, "dick hunter," when dick had written the last word, he leaned back in his chair, and surveyed the letter with much satisfaction. "i didn't think i could have wrote such a long letter, fosdick," said he. "written would be more grammatical, dick," suggested his friend. "i guess there's plenty of mistakes in it," said dick. "just look at it, and see." fosdick took the letter, and read it over carefully. "yes, there are some mistakes," he said; "but it sounds so much like you that i think it would be better to let it go just as it is. it will be more likely to remind frank of what you were when he first saw you." "is it good enough to send?" asked dick, anxiously. "yes; it seems to me to be quite a good letter. it is written just as you talk. nobody but you could have written such a letter, dick. i think frank will be amused at your proposal to come up there as teacher." "p'r'aps it would be a good idea for us to open a seleck school here in mott street," said dick, humorously. "we could call it `professor fosdick and hunter's mott street seminary.' boot-blackin' taught by professor hunter." the evening was so far advanced that dick decided to postpone copying his letter till the next evening. by this time he had come to have a very fair handwriting, so that when the letter was complete it really looked quite creditable, and no one would have suspected that it was dick's first attempt in this line. our hero surveyed it with no little complacency. in fact, he felt rather proud of it, since it reminded him of the great progress he had made. he carried it down to the post-office, and deposited it with his own hands in the proper box. just on the steps of the building, as he was coming out, he met johnny nolan, who had been sent on an errand to wall street by some gentleman, and was just returning. "what are you doin' down nere, dick?" asked johnny. "i've been mailin' a letter." "who sent you?" "nobody." "i mean, who writ the letter?" "i wrote it myself." "can you write letters?" asked johnny, in amazement. "why shouldn't i?" "i didn't know you could write. i can't." "then you ought to learn." "i went to school once; but it was too hard work, so i give it up." "you're lazy, johnny,--that's what's the matter. how'd you ever expect to know anything, if you don't try?" "i can't learn." "you can, if you want to." johnny nolan was evidently of a different opinion. he was a good-natured boy, large of his age, with nothing particularly bad about him, but utterly lacking in that energy, ambition, and natural sharpness, for which dick was distinguished. he was not adapted to succeed in the life which circumstances had forced upon him; for in the street-life of the metropolis a boy needs to be on the alert, and have all his wits about him, or he will find himself wholly distanced by his more enterprising competitors for popular favor. to succeed in his profession, humble as it is, a boot-black must depend upon the same qualities which gain success in higher walks in life. it was easy to see that johnny, unless very much favored by circumstances, would never rise much above his present level. for dick, we cannot help hoping much better things. chapter xxvi an exciting adventure dick now began to look about for a position in a store or counting-room. until he should obtain one he determined to devote half the day to blacking boots, not being willing to break in upon his small capital. he found that he could earn enough in half a day to pay all his necessary expenses, including the entire rent of the room. fosdick desired to pay his half; but dick steadily refused, insisting upon paying so much as compensation for his friend's services as instructor. it should be added that dick's peculiar way of speaking and use of slang terms had been somewhat modified by his education and his intimacy with henry fosdick. still he continued to indulge in them to some extent, especially when he felt like joking, and it was natural to dick to joke, as my readers have probably found out by this time. still his manners were considerably improved, so that he was more likely to obtain a situation than when first introduced to our notice. just now, however, business was very dull, and merchants, instead of hiring new assistants, were disposed to part with those already in their employ. after making several ineffectual applications, dick began to think he should be obliged to stick to his profession until the next season. but about this time something occurred which considerably improved his chances of preferment. this is the way it happened. as dick, with a balance of more than a hundred dollars in the savings bank, might fairly consider himself a young man of property, he thought himself justified in occasionally taking a half holiday from business, and going on an excursion. on wednesday afternoon henry fosdick was sent by his employer on an errand to that part of brooklyn near greenwood cemetery. dick hastily dressed himself in his best, and determined to accompany him. the two boys walked down to the south ferry, and, paying their two cents each, entered the ferry boat. they remained at the stern, and stood by the railing, watching the great city, with its crowded wharves, receding from view. beside them was a gentleman with two children,--a girl of eight and a little boy of six. the children were talking gayly to their father. while he was pointing out some object of interest to the little girl, the boy managed to creep, unobserved, beneath the chain that extends across the boat, for the protection of passengers, and, stepping incautiously to the edge of the boat, fell over into the foaming water. at the child's scream, the father looked up, and, with a cry of horror, sprang to the edge of the boat. he would have plunged in, but, being unable to swim, would only have endangered his own life, without being able to save his child. "my child!" he exclaimed in anguish,-"who will save my child? a thousand--ten thousand dollars to any one who will save him!" there chanced to be but few passengers on board at the time, and nearly all these were either in the cabins or standing forward. among the few who saw the child fall was our hero. now dick was an expert swimmer. it was an accomplishment which he had possessed for years, and he no sooner saw the boy fall than he resolved to rescue him. his determination was formed before he heard the liberal offer made by the boy's father. indeed, i must do dick the justice to say that, in the excitement of the moment, he did not hear it at all, nor would it have stimulated the alacrity with which he sprang to the rescue of the little boy. little johnny had already risen once, and gone under for the second time, when our hero plunged in. he was obliged to strike out for the boy, and this took time. he reached him none too soon. just as he was sinking for the third and last time, he caught him by the jacket. dick was stout and strong, but johnny clung to him so tightly, that it was with great difficulty he was able to sustain himself. "put your arms round my neck," said dick. the little boy mechanically obeyed, and clung with a grasp strengthened by his terror. in this position dick could bear his weight better. but the ferry-boat was receding fast. it was quite impossible to reach it. the father, his face pale with terror and anguish, and his hands clasped in suspense, saw the brave boy's struggles, and prayed with agonizing fervor that he might be successful. but it is probable, for they were now midway of the river, that both dick and the little boy whom he had bravely undertaken to rescue would have been drowned, had not a row-boat been fortunately near. the two men who were in it witnessed the accident, and hastened to the rescue of our hero. "keep up a little longer," they shouted, bending to their oars, "and we will save you." dick heard the shout, and it put fresh strength into him. he battled manfully with the treacherous sea, his eyes fixed longingly upon the approaching boat. "hold on tight, little boy," he said. "there's a boat coming." the little boy did not see the boat. his eyes were closed to shut out the fearful water, but he clung the closer to his young preserver. six long, steady strokes, and the boat dashed along side. strong hands seized dick and his youthful burden, and drew them into the boat, both dripping with water. "god be thanked!" exclaimed the father, as from the steamer he saw the child's rescue. "that brave boy shall be rewarded, if i sacrifice my whole fortune to compass it." "you've had a pretty narrow escape, young chap," said one of the boatmen to dick. "it was a pretty tough job you undertook." "yes," said dick. "that's what i thought when i was in the water. if it hadn't been for you, i don't know what would have 'come of us." "anyhow you're a plucky boy, or you wouldn't have dared to jump into the water after this little chap. it was a risky thing to do." "i'm used to the water," said dick, modestly. "i didn't stop to think of the danger, but i wasn't going to see that little fellow drown without tryin' to save him." the boat at once headed for the ferry wharf on the brooklyn side. the captain of the ferry-boat, seeing the rescue, did not think it necessary to stop his boat, but kept on his way. the whole occurrence took place in less time than i have occupied in telling it. the father was waiting on the wharf to receive his little boy, with what feelings of gratitude and joy can be easily understood. with a burst of happy tears he clasped him to his arms. dick was about to withdraw modestly, but the gentleman perceived the movement, and, putting down the child, came forward, and, clasping his hand, said with emotion, "my brave boy, i owe you a debt i can never repay. but for your timely service i should now be plunged into an anguish which i cannot think of without a shudder." our hero was ready enough to speak on most occasions, but always felt awkward when he was praised. "it wasn't any trouble," he said, modestly. "i can swim like a top." "but not many boys would have risked their lives for a stranger," said the gentleman. "but," he added with a sudden thought,as his glance rested on dick's dripping garments, "both you and my little boy will take cold in wet clothes. fortunately i have a friend living close at hand, at whose house you will have an opportunity of taking off your clothes, and having them dried." dick protested that he never took cold; but fosdick, who had now joined them, and who, it is needless to say, had been greatly alarmed at dick's danger, joined in urging compliance with the gentleman's proposal, and in the end our hero had to yield. his new friend secured a hack, the driver of which agreed for extra recompense to receive the dripping boys into his carriage, and they were whirled rapidly to a pleasant house in a side street, where matters were quickly explained, and both boys were put to bed. "i ain't used to goin' to bed quite so early," thought dick. "this is the queerest excursion i ever took." like most active boys dick did not enjoy the prospect of spending half a day in bed; but his confinement did not last as long as he anticipated. in about an hour the door of his chamber was opened, and a servant appeared, bringing a new and handsome suit of clothes throughout. "you are to put on these," said the servant to dick; "but you needn't get up till you feel like it." "whose clothes are they?" asked dick. "they are yours." "mine! where did they come from?" "mr.rockwell sent out and bought them for you. they are the same size as your wet ones." "is he here now?" "no. he bought another suit for the little boy, and has gone back to new york. here's a note he asked me to give you." dick opened the paper, and read as follows,-"please accept this outfit of clothes as the first instalment of a debt which i can never repay. i have asked to have your wet suit dried, when you can reclaim it. will you oblige me by calling to-morrow at my counting room, no. --, pearl street. "your friend, "james rockwell." chapter xxvii concluslon when dick was dressed in his new suit, he surveyed his figure with pardonable complacency. it was the best he had ever worn, and fitted him as well as if it had been made expressly for him. "he's done the handsome thing," said dick to himself; "but there wasn't no 'casion for his givin' me these clothes. my lucky stars are shinin' pretty bright now. jumpin' into the water pays better than shinin' boots; but i don't think i'd like to try it more'n once a week." about eleven o'clock the next morning dick repaired to mr. rockwell's counting-room on pearl street. he found himself in front of a large and handsome warehouse. the counting-room was on the lower floor. our hero entered, and found mr. rockwell sitting at a desk. no sooner did that gentleman see him than he arose, and, advancing, shook dick by the hand in the most friendly manner. "my young friend," he said, "you have done me so great service that i wish to be of some service to you in return. tell me about yourself, and what plans or wishes you have formed for the future." dick frankly related his past history, and told mr. rockwell of his desire to get into a store or counting-room, and of the failure of all his applications thus far. the merchant listened attentively to dick's statement, and, when he had finished, placed a sheet of paper before him, and, handing him a pen, said, "will you write your name on this piece of paper?" dick wrote in a free, bold hand, the name richard hunter. he had very much improved in his penmanship, as has already been mentioned, and now had no cause to be ashamed of it. mr. rockwell surveyed it approvingly. "how would you like to enter my counting-room as clerk, richard?" he asked. dick was about to say "bully," when he recollected himself, and answered, "very much." "i suppose you know something of arithmetic, do you not?" "yes, sir." "then you may consider yourself engaged at a salary of ten dollars a week. you may come next monday morning." "ten dollars!" repeated dick, thinking he must have misunderstood. "yes; will that be sufficient?" "it's more than i can earn," said dick, honestly. "perhaps it is at first," said mr. rockwell, smiling; "but i am willing to pay you that. i will besides advance you as fast as your progress will justify it." dick was so elated that he hardly restrained himself from some demonstration which would have astonished the merchant; but he exercised self-control, and only said, "i'll try to serve you so faithfully, sir, that you won't repent having taken me into your service." "and i think you will succeed," said mr. rockwell, encouragingly. "i will not detain you any longer, for i have some important business to attend to. i shall expect to see you on monday morning." dick left the counting-room, hardly knowing whether he stood on his head or his heels, so overjoyed was he at the sudden change in his fortunes. ten dollars a week was to him a fortune, and three times as much as he had expected to obtain at first. indeed he would have been glad, only the day before, to get a place at three dollars a week. he reflected that with the stock of clothes which he had now on hand, he could save up at least half of it, and even then live better than he had been accustomed to do; so that his little fund in the savings bank, instead of being diminished, would be steadily increasing. then he was to be advanced if he deserved it. it was indeed a bright prospect for a boy who, only a year before, could neither read nor write, and depended for a night's lodging upon the chance hospitality of an alley-way or old wagon. dick's great ambition to "grow up 'spectable" seemed likely to be accomplished after all. "i wish fosdick was as well off as i am," he thought generously. but he determined to help his less fortunate friend, and assist him up the ladder as he advanced himself. when dick entered his room on mott street, he discovered that some one else had been there before him, and two articles of wearing apparel had disappeared. "by gracious!" he exclaimed; "somebody's stole my washington coat and napoleon pants. maybe it's an agent of barnum's, who expects to make a fortun' by exhibitin' the valooable wardrobe of a gentleman of fashion." dick did not shed many tears over his loss, as, in his present circumstances, he never expected to have any further use for the well-worn garments. it may be stated that he afterwards saw them adorning the figure of micky maguire; but whether that estimable young man stole them himself, he never ascertained. as to the loss. dick was rather pleased that it had occurred. it seemed to cut him off from the old vagabond life which he hoped never to resume. henceforward he meant to press onward, and rise as high as possible. although it was yet only noon, dick did not go out again with his brush. he felt that it was time to retire from business. he would leave his share of the public patronage to other boys less fortunate than himself. that evening dick and fosdick had a long conversation. fosdick rejoiced heartily in his friend's success, and on his side had the pleasant news to communicate that his pay had been advanced to six dollars a week. "i think we can afford to leave mott street now," he continued. "this house isn't as neat as it might be, and i shall like to live in a nicer quarter of the city." "all right," said dick. "we'll hunt up a new room to-morrow. i shall have plenty of time, having retired from business. i'll try to get my reg'lar customers to take johnny nolan in my place. that boy hasn't any enterprise. he needs some body to look out for him." "you might give him your box and brush, too, dick." "no," said dick; "i'll give him some new ones, but mine i want to keep, to remind me of the hard times i've had, when i was an ignorant boot-black, and never expected to be anything better." "when, in short, you were `ragged dick.' you must drop that name, and think of yourself now as"-"richard hunter, esq.," said our hero, smiling. "a young gentleman on the way to fame and fortune," added fosdick. ------here ends the story of ragged dick. as fosdick said, he is ragged dick no longer. he has taken a step upward, and is determined to mount still higher. there are fresh adventures in store for him, and for others who have been introduced in these pages. those who have felt interested in his early life will find his history continued in a new volume, forming the second of the series, to be called,- fame and fortune; or, the progress of richard hunter. [end.] [pg/etext94/treas10.txt] treasure island, by robert louis stevenson this etext was typed by judy boss in omaha, nebraska. and proofread by john hamm <john_hamm@mindlink.bc.ca> treasure island, by robert louis stevenson april, 1994 [etext #120] this text is in the public domain. treasure island by robert louis stevenson treasure island to s.l.o., an american gentleman in accordance with whose classic taste the following narrative has been designed, it is now, in return for numerous delightful hours, and with the kindest wishes, dedicated by his affectionate friend, the author. to the hesitating purchaser if sailor tales to sailor tunes, storm and adventure, heat and cold, if schooners, islands, and maroons, and buccaneers, and buried gold, and all the old romance, retold exactly in the ancient way, can please, as me they pleased of old, the wiser youngsters of today: --so be it, and fall on! if not, if studious youth no longer crave, his ancient appetites forgot, kingston, or ballantyne the brave, or cooper of the wood and wave: so be it, also! and may i and all my pirates share the grave where these and their creations lie! contents part one the old buccaneer 1. the old sea-dog at the admiral benbow 11 2. black dog appears and disappears . . . . 17 3. the black spot . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 4. the sea-chest . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 5. the last of the blind man . . . . . . . 36 6. the captain's papers . . . . . . . . . . 41 part two the sea cook 7. i go to bristol . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 8. at the sign of the spy-glass . . . . . . 54 9. powder and arms . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 10. the voyage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 11. what i heard in the apple barrel . . . . 70 12. council of war . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 part three my shore adventure 13. how my shore adventure began . . . . . . 82 14. the first blow . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 15. the man of the island. . . . . . . . . . 93 part four the stockade 16. narrative continued by the doctor: how the ship was abandoned . . . . . . 100 17. narrative continued by the doctor: the jolly-boat's last trip . . . . . . 105 18. narrative continued by the doctor: end of the first day's fighting . . . 109 19. narrative resumed by jim hawkins: the garrison in the stockade . . . . . 114 20. silver's embassy . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 21. the attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 part five my sea adventure 22. how my sea adventure began . . . . . . . 132 23. the ebb-tide runs . . . . . . . . . . . 138 24. the cruise of the coracle . . . . . . . 143 25. i strike the jolly roger . . . . . . . . 148 26. israel hands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 27. "pieces of eight" . . . . . . . . . . . 161 part six captain silver 28. in the enemy's camp . . . . . . . . . . 168 29. the black spot again . . . . . . . . . . 176 30. on parole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 31. the treasure-hunt--flint's pointer . . . 189 32. the treasure-hunt--the voice among the trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 33. the fall of a chieftain . . . . . . . . 201 34. and last . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 treasure island part one the old buccaneer 1 the old sea-dog at the admiral benbow squire trelawney, dr. livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about treasure island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, i take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the admiral benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof. i remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow--a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. i remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards: "fifteen men on the dead man's chest- yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. this, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard. "this is a handy cove," says he at length; "and a pleasant sittyated grog-shop. much company, mate?" my father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity. "well, then," said he, "this is the berth for me. here you, matey," he cried to the man who trundled the barrow; "bring up alongside and help up my chest. i'll stay here a bit," he continued. "i'm a plain man; rum and bacon and eggs is what i want, and that head up there for to watch ships off. what you mought call me? you mought call me captain. oh, i see what you're at-there"; and he threw down three or four gold pieces on the threshold. "you can tell me when i've worked through that," says he, looking as fierce as a commander. and indeed bad as his clothes were and coarsely as he spoke, he had none of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like a mate or skipper accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. the man who came with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at the royal george, that he had inquired what inns there were along the coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, i suppose, and described as lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. and that was all we could learn of our guest. he was a very silent man by custom. all day he hung round the cove or upon the cliffs with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner of the parlour next the fire and drank rum and water very strong. mostly he would not speak when spoken to, only look up sudden and fierce and blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came about our house soon learned to let him be. every day when he came back from his stroll he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along the road. at first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind that made him ask this question, but at last we began to see he was desirous to avoid them. when a seaman did put up at the admiral benbow (as now and then some did, making by the coast road for bristol) he would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the parlour; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such was present. for me, at least, there was no secret about the matter, for i was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms. he had taken me aside one day and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if i would only keep my "weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg" and let him know the moment he appeared. often enough when the first of the month came round and i applied to him for my wage, he would only blow through his nose at me and stare me down, but before the week was out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my four-penny piece, and repeat his orders to look out for "the seafaring man with one leg." how that personage haunted my dreams, i need scarcely tell you. on stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, i would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. now the leg would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the middle of his body. to see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch was the worst of nightmares. and altogether i paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies. but though i was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring man with one leg, i was far less afraid of the captain himself than anybody else who knew him. there were nights when he took a deal more rum and water than his head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked, old, wild sea-songs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would call for glasses round and force all the trembling company to listen to his stories or bear a chorus to his singing. often i have heard the house shaking with "yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum," all the neighbours joining in for dear life, with the fear of death upon them, and each singing louder than the other to avoid remark. for in these fits he was the most overriding companion ever known; he would slap his hand on the table for silence all round; he would fly up in a passion of anger at a question, or sometimes because none was put, and so he judged the company was not following his story. nor would he allow anyone to leave the inn till he had drunk himself sleepy and reeled off to bed. his stories were what frightened people worst of all. dreadful stories they were--about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, and the dry tortugas, and wild deeds and places on the spanish main. by his own account he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men that god ever allowed upon the sea, and the language in which he told these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the crimes that he described. my father was always saying the inn would be ruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over and put down, and sent shivering to their beds; but i really believe his presence did us good. people were frightened at the time, but on looking back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country life, and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to admire him, calling him a "true sea-dog" and a "real old salt" and such like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made england terrible at sea. in one way, indeed, he bade fair to ruin us, for he kept on staying week after week, and at last month after month, so that all the money had been long exhausted, and still my father never plucked up the heart to insist on having more. if ever he mentioned it, the captain blew through his nose so loudly that you might say he roared, and stared my poor father out of the room. i have seen him wringing his hands after such a rebuff, and i am sure the annoyance and the terror he lived in must have greatly hastened his early and unhappy death. all the time he lived with us the captain made no change whatever in his dress but to buy some stockings from a hawker. one of the cocks of his hat having fallen down, he let it hang from that day forth, though it was a great annoyance when it blew. i remember the appearance of his coat, which he patched himself upstairs in his room, and which, before the end, was nothing but patches. he never wrote or received a letter, and he never spoke with any but the neighbours, and with these, for the most part, only when drunk on rum. the great sea-chest none of us had ever seen open. he was only once crossed, and that was towards the end, when my poor father was far gone in a decline that took him off. dr. livesey came late one afternoon to see the patient, took a bit of dinner from my mother, and went into the parlour to smoke a pipe until his horse should come down from the hamlet, for we had no stabling at the old benbow. i followed him in, and i remember observing the contrast the neat, bright doctor, with his powder as white as snow and his bright, black eyes and pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all, with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting, far gone in rum, with his arms on the table. suddenly he--the captain, that is--began to pipe up his eternal song: "fifteen men on the dead man's chest- yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! drink and the devil had done for the rest- yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" at first i had supposed "the dead man's chest" to be that identical big box of his upstairs in the front room, and the thought had been mingled in my nightmares with that of the one-legged seafaring man. but by this time we had all long ceased to pay any particular notice to the song; it was new, that night, to nobody but dr. livesey, and on him i observed it did not produce an agreeable effect, for he looked up for a moment quite angrily before he went on with his talk to old taylor, the gardener, on a new cure for the rheumatics. in the meantime, the captain gradually brightened up at his own music, and at last flapped his hand upon the table before him in a way we all knew to mean silence. the voices stopped at once, all but dr. livesey's; he went on as before speaking clear and kind and drawing briskly at his pipe between every word or two. the captain glared at him for a while, flapped his hand again, glared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainous, low oath, "silence, there, between decks!" "were you addressing me, sir?" says the doctor; and when the ruffian had told him, with another oath, that this was so, "i have only one thing to say to you, sir," replies the doctor, "that if you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!" the old fellow's fury was awful. he sprang to his feet, drew and opened a sailor's clasp-knife, and balancing it open on the palm of his hand, threatened to pin the doctor to the wall. the doctor never so much as moved. he spoke to him as before, over his shoulder and in the same tone of voice, rather high, so that all the room might hear, but perfectly calm and steady: "if you do not put that knife this instant in your pocket, i promise, upon my honour, you shall hang at the next assizes." then followed a battle of looks between them, but the captain soon knuckled under, put up his weapon, and resumed his seat, grumbling like a beaten dog. "and now, sir," continued the doctor, "since i now know there's such a fellow in my district, you may count i'll have an eye upon you day and night. i'm not a doctor only; i'm a magistrate; and if i catch a breath of complaint against you, if it's only for a piece of incivility like tonight's, i'll take effectual means to have you hunted down and routed out of this. let that suffice." soon after, dr. livesey's horse came to the door and he rode away, but the captain held his peace that evening, and for many evenings to come. 2 black dog appears and disappears it was not very long after this that there occurred the first of the mysterious events that rid us at last of the captain, though not, as you will see, of his affairs. it was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard frosts and heavy gales; and it was plain from the first that my poor father was little likely to see the spring. he sank daily, and my mother and i had all the inn upon our hands, and were kept busy enough without paying much regard to our unpleasant guest. it was one january morning, very early--a pinching, frosty morning--the cove all grey with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones, the sun still low and only touching the hilltops and shining far to seaward. the captain had risen earlier than usual and set out down the beach, his cutlass swinging under the broad skirts of the old blue coat, his brass telescope under his arm, his hat tilted back upon his head. i remember his breath hanging like smoke in his wake as he strode off, and the last sound i heard of him as he turned the big rock was a loud snort of indignation, as though his mind was still running upon dr. livesey. well, mother was upstairs with father and i was laying the breakfast-table against the captain's return when the parlour door opened and a man stepped in on whom i had never set my eyes before. he was a pale, tallowy creature, wanting two fingers of the left hand, and though he wore a cutlass, he did not look much like a fighter. i had always my eye open for seafaring men, with one leg or two, and i remember this one puzzled me. he was not sailorly, and yet he had a smack of the sea about him too. i asked him what was for his service, and he said he would take rum; but as i was going out of the room to fetch it, he sat down upon a table and motioned me to draw near. i paused where i was, with my napkin in my hand. "come here, sonny," says he. "come nearer here." i took a step nearer. "is this here table for my mate bill?" he asked with a kind of leer. i told him i did not know his mate bill, and this was for a person who stayed in our house whom we called the captain. "well," said he, "my mate bill would be called the captain, as like as not. he has a cut on one cheek and a mighty pleasant way with him, particularly in drink, has my mate bill. we'll put it, for argument like, that your captain has a cut on one cheek--and we'll put it, if you like, that that cheek's the right one. ah, well! i told you. now, is my mate bill in this here house?" i told him he was out walking. "which way, sonny? which way is he gone?" and when i had pointed out the rock and told him how the captain was likely to return, and how soon, and answered a few other questions, "ah," said he, "this'll be as good as drink to my mate bill." the expression of his face as he said these words was not at all pleasant, and i had my own reasons for thinking that the stranger was mistaken, even supposing he meant what he said. but it was no affair of mine, i thought; and besides, it was difficult to know what to do. the stranger kept hanging about just inside the inn door, peering round the corner like a cat waiting for a mouse. once i stepped out myself into the road, but he immediately called me back, and as i did not obey quick enough for his fancy, a most horrible change came over his tallowy face, and he ordered me in with an oath that made me jump. as soon as i was back again he returned to his former manner, half fawning, half sneering, patted me on the shoulder, told me i was a good boy and he had taken quite a fancy to me. "i have a son of my own," said he, "as like you as two blocks, and he's all the pride of my 'art. but the great thing for boys is discipline, sonny--discipline. now, if you had sailed along of bill, you wouldn't have stood there to be spoke to twice--not you. that was never bill's way, nor the way of sich as sailed with him. and here, sure enough, is my mate bill, with a spy-glass under his arm, bless his old 'art, to be sure. you and me'll just go back into the parlour, sonny, and get behind the door, and we'll give bill a little surprise--bless his 'art, i say again. so saying, the stranger backed along with me into the parlour and put me behind him in the corner so that we were both hidden by the open door. i was very uneasy and alarmed, as you may fancy, and it rather added to my fears to observe that the stranger was certainly frightened himself. he cleared the hilt of his cutlass and loosened the blade in the sheath; and all the time we were waiting there he kept swallowing as if he felt what we used to call a lump in the throat. at last in strode the captain, slammed the door behind him, without looking to the right or left, and marched straight across the room to where his breakfast awaited him. "bill," said the stranger in a voice that i thought he had tried to make bold and big. the captain spun round on his heel and fronted us; all the brown had gone out of his face, and even his nose was blue; he had the look of a man who sees a ghost, or the evil one, or something worse, if anything can be; and upon my word, i felt sorry to see him all in a moment turn so old and sick. "come, bill, you know me; you know an old shipmate, bill, surely," said the stranger. the captain made a sort of gasp. "black dog!" said he. "and who else?" returned the other, getting more at his ease. "black dog as ever was, come for to see his old shipmate billy, at the admiral benbow inn. ah, bill, bill, we have seen a sight of times, us two, since i lost them two talons," holding up his mutilated hand. "now, look here," said the captain; "you've run me down; here i am; well, then, speak up; what is it?" "that's you, bill," returned black dog, "you're in the right of it, billy. i'll have a glass of rum from this dear child here, as i've took such a liking to; and we'll sit down, if you please, and talk square, like old shipmates." when i returned with the rum, they were already seated on either side of the captain's breakfast-table--black dog next to the door and sitting sideways so as to have one eye on his old shipmate and one, as i thought, on his retreat. he bade me go and leave the door wide open. "none of your keyholes for me, sonny," he said; and i left them together and retired into the bar. "for a long time, though i certainly did my best to listen, i could hear nothing but a low gattling; but at last the voices began to grow higher, and i could pick up a word or two, mostly oaths, from the captain. "no, no, no, no; and an end of it!" he cried once. and again, "if it comes to swinging, swing all, say i." then all of a sudden there was a tremendous explosion of oaths and other noises--the chair and table went over in a lump, a clash of steel followed, and then a cry of pain, and the next instant i saw black dog in full flight, and the captain hotly pursuing, both with drawn cutlasses, and the former streaming blood from the left shoulder. just at the door the captain aimed at the fugitive one last tremendous cut, which would certainly have split him to the chine had it not been intercepted by our big signboard of admiral benbow. you may see the notch on the lower side of the frame to this day. that blow was the last of the battle. once out upon the road, black dog, in spite of his wound, showed a wonderful clean pair of heels and disappeared over the edge of the hill in half a minute. the captain, for his part, stood staring at the signboard like a bewildered man. then he passed his hand over his eyes several times and at last turned back into the house. "jim," says he, "rum"; and as he spoke, he reeled a little, and caught himself with one hand against the wall. "are you hurt?" cried i. "rum," he repeated. "i must get away from here. rum! rum!" i ran to fetch it, but i was quite unsteadied by all that had fallen out, and i broke one glass and fouled the tap, and while i was still getting in my own way, i heard a loud fall in the parlour, and running in, beheld the captain lying full length upon the floor. at the same instant my mother, alarmed by the cries and fighting, came running downstairs to help me. between us we raised his head. he was breathing very loud and hard, but his eyes were closed and his face a horrible colour. "dear, deary me," cried my mother, "what a disgrace upon the house! and your poor father sick!" in the meantime, we had no idea what to do to help the captain, nor any other thought but that he had got his death-hurt in the scuffle with the stranger. i got the rum, to be sure, and tried to put it down his throat, but his teeth were tightly shut and his jaws as strong as iron. it was a happy relief for us when the door opened and doctor livesey came in, on his visit to my father. "oh, doctor," we cried, "what shall we do? where is he wounded?" "wounded? a fiddle-stick's end!" said the doctor. "no more wounded than you or i. the man has had a stroke, as i warned him. now, mrs. hawkins, just you run upstairs to your husband and tell him, if possible, nothing about it. for my part, i must do my best to save this fellow's trebly worthless life; jim, you get me a basin." when i got back with the basin, the doctor had already ripped up the captain's sleeve and exposed his great sinewy arm. it was tattooed in several places. "here's luck," "a fair wind," and "billy bones his fancy," were very neatly and clearly executed on the forearm; and up near the shoulder there was a sketch of a gallows and a man hanging from it--done, as i thought, with great spirit. "prophetic," said the doctor, touching this picture with his finger. "and now, master billy bones, if that be your name, we'll have a look at the colour of your blood. jim," he said, "are you afraid of blood?" "no, sir," said i. "well, then," said he, "you hold the basin"; and with that he took his lancet and opened a vein. a great deal of blood was taken before the captain opened his eyes and looked mistily about him. first he recognized the doctor with an unmistakable frown; then his glance fell upon me, and he looked relieved. but suddenly his colour changed, and he tried to raise himself, crying, "where's black dog?" "there is no black dog here," said the doctor, "except what you have on your own back. you have been drinking rum; you have had a stroke, precisely as i told you; and i have just, very much against my own will, dragged you headforemost out of the grave. now, mr. bones--" "that's not my name," he interrupted. "much i care," returned the doctor. "it's the name of a buccaneer of my acquaintance; and i call you by it for the sake of shortness, and what i have to say to you is this; one glass of rum won't kill you, but if you take one you'll take another and another, and i stake my wig if you don't break off short, you'll die-do you understand that?--die, and go to your own place, like the man in the bible. come, now, make an effort. i'll help you to your bed for once." between us, with much trouble, we managed to hoist him upstairs, and laid him on his bed, where his head fell back on the pillow as if he were almost fainting. "now, mind you," said the doctor, "i clear my conscience--the name of rum for you is death." and with that he went off to see my father, taking me with him by the arm. "this is nothing," he said as soon as he had closed the door. "i have drawn blood enough to keep him quiet awhile; he should lie for a week where he is--that is the best thing for him and you; but another stroke would settle him." 3 the black spot about noon i stopped at the captain's door with some cooling drinks and medicines. he was lying very much as we had left him, only a little higher, and he seemed both weak and excited. "jim," he said, "you're the only one here that's worth anything, and you know i've been always good to you. never a month but i've given you a silver fourpenny for yourself. and now you see, mate, i'm pretty low, and deserted by all; and jim, you'll bring me one noggin of rum, now, won't you, matey?" "the doctor--" i began. but he broke in cursing the doctor, in a feeble voice but heartily. "doctors is all swabs," he said; "and that doctor there, why, what do he know about seafaring men? i been in places hot as pitch, and mates dropping round with yellow jack, and the blessed land a-heaving like the sea with earthquakes--what to the doctor know of lands like that?--and i lived on rum, i tell you. it's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me; and if i'm not to have my rum now i'm a poor old hulk on a lee shore, my blood'll be on you, jim, and that doctor swab"; and he ran on again for a while with curses. "look, jim, how my fingers fidges," he continued in the pleading tone. "i can't keep 'em still, not i. i haven't had a drop this blessed day. that doctor's a fool, i tell you. if i don't have a drain o' rum, jim, i'll have the horrors; i seen some on 'em already. i seen old flint in the corner there, behind you; as plain as print, i seen him; and if i get the horrors, i'm a man that has lived rough, and i'll raise cain. your doctor hisself said one glass wouldn't hurt me. i'll give you a golden guinea for a noggin, jim." he was growing more and more excited, and this alarmed me for my father, who was very low that day and needed quiet; besides, i was reassured by the doctor's words, now quoted to me, and rather offended by the offer of a bribe. "i want none of your money," said i, "but what you owe my father. i'll get you one glass, and no more." when i brought it to him, he seized it greedily and drank it out. "aye, aye," said he, "that's some better, sure enough. and now, matey, did that doctor say how long i was to lie here in this old berth?" "a week at least," said i. "thunder!" he cried. "a week! i can't do that; they'd have the black spot on me by then. the lubbers is going about to get the wind of me this blessed moment; lubbers as couldn't keep what they got, and want to nail what is another's. is that seamanly behaviour, now, i want to know? but i'm a saving soul. i never wasted good money of mine, nor lost it neither; and i'll trick 'em again. i'm not afraid on 'em. i'll shake out another reef, matey, and daddle 'em again." as he was thus speaking, he had risen from bed with great difficulty, holding to my shoulder with a grip that almost made me cry out, and moving his legs like so much dead weight. his words, spirited as they were in meaning, contrasted sadly with the weakness of the voice in which they were uttered. he paused when he had got into a sitting position on the edge. "that doctor's done me," he murmured. "my ears is singing. lay me back." before i could do much to help him he had fallen back again to his former place, where he lay for a while silent. "jim," he said at length, "you saw that seafaring man today?" "black dog?" i asked. "ah! black dog," says he. "he's a bad un; but there's worse that put him on. now, if i can't get away nohow, and they tip me the black spot, mind you, it's my old sea-chest they're after; you get on a horse--you can, can't you? well, then, you get on a horse, and go to-well, yes, i will!--to that eternal doctor swab, and tell him to pipe all hands--magistrates and sich--and he'll lay 'em aboard at the admiral benbow--all old flint's crew, man and boy, all on 'em that's left. i was first mate, i was, old flint's first mate, and i'm the on'y one as knows the place. he gave it me at savannah, when he lay a-dying, like as if i was to now, you see. but you won't peach unless they get the black spot on me, or unless you see that black dog again or a seafaring man with one leg, jim--him above all." "but what is the black spot, captain?" i asked. "that's a summons, mate. i'll tell you if they get that. but you keep your weather-eye open, jim, and i'll share with you equals, upon my honour." he wandered a little longer, his voice growing weaker; but soon after i had given him his medicine, which he took like a child, with the remark, "if ever a seaman wanted drugs, it's me," he fell at last into a heavy, swoon-like sleep, in which i left him. what i should have done had all gone well i do not know. probably i should have told the whole story to the doctor, for i was in mortal fear lest the captain should repent of his confessions and make an end of me. but as things fell out, my poor father died quite suddenly that evening, which put all other matters on one side. our natural distress, the visits of the neighbours, the arranging of the funeral, and all the work of the inn to be carried on in the meanwhile kept me so busy that i had scarcely time to think of the captain, far less to be afraid of him. he got downstairs next morning, to be sure, and had his meals as usual, though he ate little and had more, i am afraid, than his usual supply of rum, for he helped himself out of the bar, scowling and blowing through his nose, and no one dared to cross him. on the night before the funeral he was as drunk as ever; and it was shocking, in that house of mourning, to hear him singing away at his ugly old sea-song; but weak as he was, we were all in the fear of death for him, and the doctor was suddenly taken up with a case many miles away and was never near the house after my father's death. i have said the captain was weak, and indeed he seemed rather to grow weaker than regain his strength. he clambered up and down stairs, and went from the parlour to the bar and back again, and sometimes put his nose out of doors to smell the sea, holding on to the walls as he went for support and breathing hard and fast like a man on a steep mountain. he never particularly addressed me, and it is my belief he had as good as forgotten his confidences; but his temper was more flighty, and allowing for his bodily weakness, more violent than ever. he had an alarming way now when he was drunk of drawing his cutlass and laying it bare before him on the table. but with all that, he minded people less and seemed shut up in his own thoughts and rather wandering. once, for instance, to our extreme wonder, he piped up to a different air, a king of country love-song that he must have learned in his youth before he had begun to follow the sea. so things passed until, the day after the funeral, and about three o'clock of a bitter, foggy, frosty afternoon, i was standing at the door for a moment, full of sad thoughts about my father, when i saw someone drawing slowly near along the road. he was plainly blind, for he tapped before him with a stick and wore a great green shade over his eyes and nose; and he was hunched, as if with age or weakness, and wore a huge old tattered sea-cloak with a hood that made him appear positively deformed. i never saw in my life a more dreadful-looking figure. he stopped a little from the inn, and raising his voice in an odd sing-song, addressed the air in front of him, "will any kind friend inform a poor blind man, who has lost the precious sight of his eyes in the gracious defence of his native country, england--and god bless king george!--where or in what part of this country he may now be?" "you are at the admiral benbow, black hill cove, my good man," said i. "i hear a voice," said he, "a young voice. will you give me your hand, my kind young friend, and lead me in?" i held out my hand, and the horrible, soft-spoken, eyeless creature gripped it in a moment like a vise. i was so much startled that i struggled to withdraw, but the blind man pulled me close up to him with a single action of his arm. "now, boy," he said, "take me in to the captain." "sir," said i, "upon my word i dare not." "oh," he sneered, "that's it! take me in straight or i'll break your arm." and he gave it, as he spoke, a wrench that made me cry out. "sir," said i, "it is for yourself i mean. the captain is not what he used to be. he sits with a drawn cutlass. another gentleman--" "come, now, march," interrupted he; and i never heard a voice so cruel, and cold, and ugly as that blind man's. it cowed me more than the pain, and i began to obey him at once, walking straight in at the door and towards the parlour, where our sick old buccaneer was sitting, dazed with rum. the blind man clung close to me, holding me in one iron fist and leaning almost more of his weight on me than i could carry. "lead me straight up to him, and when i'm in view, cry out, 'here's a friend for you, bill.' if you don't, i'll do this," and with that he gave me a twitch that i thought would have made me faint. between this and that, i was so utterly terrified of the blind beggar that i forgot my terror of the captain, and as i opened the parlour door, cried out the words he had ordered in a trembling voice. the poor captain raised his eyes, and at one look the rum went out of him and left him staring sober. the expression of his face was not so much of terror as of mortal sickness. he made a movement to rise, but i do not believe he had enough force left in his body. "now, bill, sit where you are," said the beggar. "if i can't see, i can hear a finger stirring. business is business. hold out your left hand. boy, take his left hand by the wrist and bring it near to my right." we both obeyed him to the letter, and i saw him pass something from the hollow of the hand that held his stick into the palm of the captain's, which closed upon it instantly. "and now that's done," said the blind man; and at the words he suddenly left hold of me, and with incredible accuracy and nimbleness, skipped out of the parlour and into the road, where, as i still stood motionless, i could hear his stick go tap-tap-tapping into the distance. it was some time before either i or the captain seemed to gather our senses, but at length, and about at the same moment, i released his wrist, which i was still holding, and he drew in his hand and looked sharply into the palm. "ten o'clock!" he cried. "six hours. we'll do them yet," and he sprang to his feet. even as he did so, he reeled, put his hand to his throat, stood swaying for a moment, and then, with a peculiar sound, fell from his whole height face foremost to the floor. i ran to him at once, calling to my mother. but haste was all in vain. the captain had been struck dead by thundering apoplexy. it is a curious thing to understand, for i had certainly never liked the man, though of late i had begun to pity him, but as soon as i saw that he was dead, i burst into a flood of tears. it was the second death i had known, and the sorrow of the first was still fresh in my heart. 4 the sea-chest i lost no time, of course, in telling my mother all that i knew, and perhaps should have told her long before, and we saw ourselves at once in a difficult and dangerous position. some of the man's money--if he had any--was certainly due to us, but it was not likely that our captain's shipmates, above all the two specimens seen by me, black dog and the blind beggar, would be inclined to give up their booty in payment of the dead man's debts. the captain's order to mount at once and ride for doctor livesey would have left my mother alone and unprotected, which was not to be thought of. indeed, it seemed impossible for either of us to remain much longer in the house; the fall of coals in the kitchen grate, the very ticking of the clock, filled us with alarms. the neighbourhood, to our ears, seemed haunted by approaching footsteps; and what between the dead body of the captain on the parlour floor and the thought of that detestable blind beggar hovering near at hand and ready to return, there were moments when, as the saying goes, i jumped in my skin for terror. something must speedily be resolved upon, and it occurred to us at last to go forth together and seek help in the neighbouring hamlet. no sooner said than done. bare-headed as we were, we ran out at once in the gathering evening and the frosty fog. the hamlet lay not many hundred yards away, though out of view, on the other side of the next cove; and what greatly encouraged me, it was in an opposite direction from that whence the blind man had made his appearance and whither he had presumably returned. we were not many minutes on the road, though we sometimes stopped to lay hold of each other and hearken. but there was no unusual sound--nothing but the low wash of the ripple and the croaking of the inmates of the wood. it was already candle-light when we reached the hamlet, and i shall never forget how much i was cheered to see the yellow shine in doors and windows; but that, as it proved, was the best of the help we were likely to get in that quarter. for--you would have thought men would have been ashamed of themselves--no soul would consent to return with us to the admiral benbow. the more we told of our troubles, the more--man, woman, and child-they clung to the shelter of their houses. the name of captain flint, though it was strange to me, was well enough known to some there and carried a great weight of terror. some of the men who had been to field-work on the far side of the admiral benbow remembered, besides, to have seen several strangers on the road, and taking them to be smugglers, to have bolted away; and one at least had seen a little lugger in what we called kitt's hole. for that matter, anyone who was a comrade of the captain's was enough to frighten them to death. and the short and the long of the matter was, that while we could get several who were willing enough to ride to dr. livesey's, which lay in another direction, not one would help us to defend the inn. they say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener; and so when each had said his say, my mother made them a speech. she would not, she declared, lose money that belonged to her fatherless boy; "if none of the rest of you dare," she said, "jim and i dare. back we will go, the way we came, and small thanks to you big, hulking, chickenhearted men. we'll have that chest open, if we die for it. and i'll thank you for that bag, mrs. crossley, to bring back our lawful money in." of course i said i would go with my mother, and of course they all cried out at our foolhardiness, but even then not a man would go along with us. all they would do was to give me a loaded pistol lest we were attacked, and to promise to have horses ready saddled in case we were pursued on our return, while one lad was to ride forward to the doctor's in search of armed assistance. my heart was beating finely when we two set forth in the cold night upon this dangerous venture. a full moon was beginning to rise and peered redly through the upper edges of the fog, and this increased our haste, for it was plain, before we came forth again, that all would be as bright as day, and our departure exposed to the eyes of any watchers. we slipped along the hedges, noiseless and swift, nor did we see or hear anything to increase our terrors, till, to our relief, the door of the admiral benbow had closed behind us. i slipped the bolt at once, and we stood and panted for a moment in the dark, alone in the house with the dead captain's body. then my mother got a candle in the bar, and holding each other's hands, we advanced into the parlour. he lay as we had left him, on his back, with his eyes open and one arm stretched out. "draw down the blind, jim," whispered my mother; "they might come and watch outside. and now," said she when i had done so, "we have to get the key off that; and who's to touch it, i should like to know!" and she gave a kind of sob as she said the words. i went down on my knees at once. on the floor close to his hand there was a little round of paper, blackened on the one side. i could not doubt that this was the black spot; and taking it up, i found written on the other side, in a very good, clear hand, this short message: "you have till ten tonight." "he had till ten, mother," said i; and just as i said it, our old clock began striking. this sudden noise startled us shockingly; but the news was good, for it was only six. "now, jim," she said, "that key." i felt in his pockets, one after another. a few small coins, a thimble, and some thread and big needles, a piece of pigtail tobacco bitten away at the end, his gully with the crooked handle, a pocket compass, and a tinder box were all that they contained, and i began to despair. "perhaps it's round his neck," suggested my mother. overcoming a strong repugnance, i tore open his shirt at the neck, and there, sure enough, hanging to a bit of tarry string, which i cut with his own gully, we found the key. at this triumph we were filled with hope and hurried upstairs without delay to the little room where he had slept so long and where his box had stood since the day of his arrival. it was like any other seaman's chest on the outside, the initial "b" burned on the top of it with a hot iron, and the corners somewhat smashed and broken as by long, rough usage. "give me the key," said my mother; and though the lock was very stiff, she had turned it and thrown back the lid in a twinkling. a strong smell of tobacco and tar rose from the interior, but nothing was to be seen on the top except a suit of very good clothes, carefully brushed and folded. they had never been worn, my mother said. under that, the miscellany began--a quadrant, a tin canikin, several sticks of tobacco, two brace of very handsome pistols, a piece of bar silver, an old spanish watch and some other trinkets of little value and mostly of foreign make, a pair of compasses mounted with brass, and five or six curious west indian shells. i have often wondered since why he should have carried about these shells with him in his wandering, guilty, and hunted life. in the meantime, we had found nothing of any value but the silver and the trinkets, and neither of these were in our way. underneath there was an old boat-cloak, whitened with sea-salt on many a harbour-bar. my mother pulled it up with impatience, and there lay before us, the last things in the chest, a bundle tied up in oilcloth, and looking like papers, and a canvas bag that gave forth, at a touch, the jingle of gold. "i'll show these rogues that i'm an honest woman," said my mother. "i'll have my dues, and not a farthing over. hold mrs. crossley's bag." and she began to count over the amount of the captain's score from the sailor's bag into the one that i was holding. it was a long, difficult business, for the coins were of all countries and sizes--doubloons, and louis d'ors, and guineas, and pieces of eight, and i know not what besides, all shaken together at random. the guineas, too, were about the scarcest, and it was with these only that my mother knew how to make her count. when we were about half-way through, i suddenly put my hand upon her arm, for i had heard in the silent frosty air a sound that brought my heart into my mouth--the tap-tapping of the blind man's stick upon the frozen road. it drew nearer and nearer, while we sat holding our breath. then it struck sharp on the inn door, and then we could hear the handle being turned and the bolt rattling as the wretched being tried to enter; and then there was a long time of silence both within and without. at last the tapping recommenced, and, to our indescribable joy and gratitude, died slowly away again until it ceased to be heard. "mother," said i, "take the whole and let's be going," for i was sure the bolted door must have seemed suspicious and would bring the whole hornet's nest about our ears, though how thankful i was that i had bolted it, none could tell who had never met that terrible blind man. but my mother, frightened as she was, would not consent to take a fraction more than was due to her and was obstinately unwilling to be content with less. it was not yet seven, she said, by a long way; she knew her rights and she would have them; and she was still arguing with me when a little low whistle sounded a good way off upon the hill. that was enough, and more than enough, for both of us. "i'll take what i have," she said, jumping to her feet. "and i'll take this to square the count," said i, picking up the oilskin packet. next moment we were both groping downstairs, leaving the candle by the empty chest; and the next we had opened the door and were in full retreat. we had not started a moment too soon. the fog was rapidly dispersing; already the moon shone quite clear on the high ground on either side; and it was only in the exact bottom of the dell and round the tavern door that a thin veil still hung unbroken to conceal the first steps of our escape. far less than half-way to the hamlet, very little beyond the bottom of the hill, we must come forth into the moonlight. nor was this all, for the sound of several footsteps running came already to our ears, and as we looked back in their direction, a light tossing to and fro and still rapidly advancing showed that one of the newcomers carried a lantern. "my dear," said my mother suddenly, "take the money and run on. i am going to faint." this was certainly the end for both of us, i thought. how i cursed the cowardice of the neighbours; how i blamed my poor mother for her honesty and her greed, for her past foolhardiness and present weakness! we were just at the little bridge, by good fortune; and i helped her, tottering as she was, to the edge of the bank, where, sure enough, she gave a sigh and fell on my shoulder. i do not know how i found the strength to do it at all, and i am afraid it was roughly done, but i managed to drag her down the bank and a little way under the arch. farther i could not move her, for the bridge was too low to let me do more than crawl below it. so there we had to stay--my mother almost entirely exposed and both of us within earshot of the inn. 5 the last of the blind man my curiosity, in a sense, was stronger than my fear, for i could not remain where i was, but crept back to the bank again, whence, sheltering my head behind a bush of broom, i might command the road before our door. i was scarcely in position ere my enemies began to arrive, seven or eight of them, running hard, their feet beating out of time along the road and the man with the lantern some paces in front. three men ran together, hand in hand; and i made out, even through the mist, that the middle man of this trio was the blind beggar. the next moment his voice showed me that i was right. "down with the door!" he cried. "aye, aye, sir!" answered two or three; and a rush was made upon the admiral benbow, the lantern-bearer following; and then i could see them pause, and hear speeches passed in a lower key, as if they were surprised to find the door open. but the pause was brief, for the blind man again issued his commands. his voice sounded louder and higher, as if he were afire with eagerness and rage. "in, in, in!" he shouted, and cursed them for their delay. four or five of them obeyed at once, two remaining on the road with the formidable beggar. there was a pause, then a cry of surprise, and then a voice shouting from the house, "bill's dead." but the blind man swore at them again for their delay. "search him, some of you shirking lubbers, and the rest of you aloft and get the chest," he cried. i could hear their feet rattling up our old stairs, so that the house must have shook with it. promptly afterwards, fresh sounds of astonishment arose; the window of the captain's room was thrown open with a slam and a jingle of broken glass, and a man leaned out into the moonlight, head and shoulders, and addressed the blind beggar on the road below him. "pew," he cried, "they've been before us. someone's turned the chest out alow and aloft." "is it there?" roared pew. "the money's there." the blind man cursed the money. "flint's fist, i mean," he cried. "we don't see it here nohow," returned the man. "here, you below there, is it on bill?" cried the blind man again. at that another fellow, probably him who had remained below to search the captain's body, came to the door of the inn. "bill's been overhauled a'ready," said he; "nothin' left." "it's these people of the inn--it's that boy. i wish i had put his eyes out!" cried the blind man, pew. "there were no time ago--they had the door bolted when i tried it. scatter, lads, and find 'em." "sure enough, they left their glim here," said the fellow from the window. "scatter and find 'em! rout the house out!" reiterated pew, striking with his stick upon the road. then there followed a great to-do through all our old inn, heavy feet pounding to and fro, furniture thrown over, doors kicked in, until the very rocks re-echoed and the men came out again, one after another, on the road and declared that we were nowhere to be found. and just the same whistle that had alarmed my mother and myself over the dead captain's money was once more clearly audible through the night, but this time twice repeated. i had thought it to be the blind man's trumpet, so to speak, summoning his crew to the assault, but i now found that it was a signal from the hillside towards the hamlet, and from its effect upon the buccaneers, a signal to warn them of approaching danger. "there's dirk again," said one. "twice! we'll have to budge, mates." "budge, you skulk!" cried pew. "dirk was a fool and a coward from the first--you wouldn't mind him. they must be close by; they can't be far; you have your hands on it. scatter and look for them, dogs! oh, shiver my soul," he cried, "if i had eyes!" this appeal seemed to produce some effect, for two of the fellows began to look here and there among the lumber, but half-heartedly, i thought, and with half an eye to their own danger all the time, while the rest stood irresolute on the road. "you have your hands on thousands, you fools, and you hang a leg! you'd be as rich as kings if you could find it, and you know it's here, and you stand there skulking. there wasn't one of you dared face bill, and i did it--a blind man! and i'm to lose my chance for you! i'm to be a poor, crawling beggar, sponging for rum, when i might be rolling in a coach! if you had the pluck of a weevil in a biscuit you would catch them still." "hang it, pew, we've got the doubloons!" grumbled one. "they might have hid the blessed thing," said another. "take the georges, pew, and don't stand here squalling." squalling was the word for it; pew's anger rose so high at these objections till at last, his passion completely taking the upper hand, he struck at them right and left in his blindness and his stick sounded heavily on more than one. these, in their turn, cursed back at the blind miscreant, threatened him in horrid terms, and tried in vain to catch the stick and wrest it from his grasp. this quarrel was the saving of us, for while it was still raging, another sound came from the top of the hill on the side of the hamlet--the tramp of horses galloping. almost at the same time a pistol-shot, flash and report, came from the hedge side. and that was plainly the last signal of danger, for the buccaneers turned at once and ran, separating in every direction, one seaward along the cove, one slant across the hill, and so on, so that in half a minute not a sign of them remained but pew. him they had deserted, whether in sheer panic or out of revenge for his ill words and blows i know not; but there he remained behind, tapping up and down the road in a frenzy, and groping and calling for his comrades. finally he took a wrong turn and ran a few steps past me, towards the hamlet, crying, "johnny, black dog, dirk," and other names, "you won't leave old pew, mates--not old pew!" just then the noise of horses topped the rise, and four or five riders came in sight in the moonlight and swept at full gallop down the slope. at this pew saw his error, turned with a scream, and ran straight for the ditch, into which he rolled. but he was on his feet again in a second and made another dash, now utterly bewildered, right under the nearest of the coming horses. the rider tried to save him, but in vain. down went pew with a cry that rang high into the night; and the four hoofs trampled and spurned him and passed by. he fell on his side, then gently collapsed upon his face and moved no more. i leaped to my feet and hailed the riders. they were pulling up, at any rate, horrified at the accident; and i soon saw what they were. one, tailing out behind the rest, was a lad that had gone from the hamlet to dr. livesey's; the rest were revenue officers, whom he had met by the way, and with whom he had had the intelligence to return at once. some news of the lugger in kitt's hole had found its way to supervisor dance and set him forth that night in our direction, and to that circumstance my mother and i owed our preservation from death. pew was dead, stone dead. as for my mother, when we had carried her up to the hamlet, a little cold water and salts and that soon brought her back again, and she was none the worse for her terror, though she still continued to deplore the balance of the money. in the meantime the supervisor rode on, as fast as he could, to kitt's hole; but his men had to dismount and grope down the dingle, leading, and sometimes supporting, their horses, and in continual fear of ambushes; so it was no great matter for surprise that when they got down to the hole the lugger was already under way, though still close in. he hailed her. a voice replied, telling him to keep out of the moonlight or he would get some lead in him, and at the same time a bullet whistled close by his arm. soon after, the lugger doubled the point and disappeared. mr. dance stood there, as he said, "like a fish out of water," and all he could do was to dispatch a man to b---to warn the cutter. "and that," said he, "is just about as good as nothing. they've got off clean, and there's an end. "only," he added, "i'm glad i trod on master pew's corns," for by this time he had heard my story. i went back with him to the admiral benbow, and you cannot imagine a house in such a state of smash; the very clock had been thrown down by these fellows in their furious hunt after my mother and myself; and though nothing had actually been taken away except the captain's money-bag and a little silver from the till, i could see at once that we were ruined. mr. dance could make nothing of the scene. "they got the money, you say? well, then, hawkins, what in fortune were they after? more money, i suppose?" "no, sir; not money, i think," replied i. "in fact, sir, i believe i have the thing in my breast pocket; and to tell you the truth, i should like to get it put in safety." "to be sure, boy; quite right," said he. "i'll take it, if you like." "i thought perhaps dr. livesey--" i began. "perfectly right," he interrupted very cheerily, "perfectly right--a gentleman and a magistrate. and, now i come to think of it, i might as well ride round there myself and report to him or squire. master pew's dead, when all's done; not that i regret it, but he's dead, you see, and people will make it out against an officer of his majesty's revenue, if make it out they can. now, i'll tell you, hawkins, if you like, i'll take you along." i thanked him heartily for the offer, and we walked back to the hamlet where the horses were. by the time i had told mother of my purpose they were all in the saddle. "dogger," said mr. dance, "you have a good horse; take up this lad behind you." as soon as i was mounted, holding on to dogger's belt, the supervisor gave the word, and the party struck out at a bouncing trot on the road to dr. livesey's house. 6 the captain's papers we rode hard all the way till we drew up before dr. livesey's door. the house was all dark to the front. mr. dance told me to jump down and knock, and dogger gave me a stirrup to descend by. the door was opened almost at once by the maid. "is dr. livesey in?" i asked. no, she said, he had come home in the afternoon but had gone up to the hall to dine and pass the evening with the squire. "so there we go, boys," said mr. dance. this time, as the distance was short, i did not mount, but ran with dogger's stirrup-leather to the lodge gates and up the long, leafless, moonlit avenue to where the white line of the hall buildings looked on either hand on great old gardens. here mr. dance dismounted, and taking me along with him, was admitted at a word into the house. the servant led us down a matted passage and showed us at the end into a great library, all lined with bookcases and busts upon the top of them, where the squire and dr. livesey sat, pipe in hand, on either side of a bright fire. i had never seen the squire so near at hand. he was a tall man, over six feet high, and broad in proportion, and he had a bluff, rough-and-ready face, all roughened and reddened and lined in his long travels. his eyebrows were very black, and moved readily, and this gave him a look of some temper, not bad, you would say, but quick and high. "come in, mr. dance," says he, very stately and condescending. "good evening, dance," says the doctor with a nod. "and good evening to you, friend jim. what good wind brings you here?" the supervisor stood up straight and stiff and told his story like a lesson; and you should have seen how the two gentlemen leaned forward and looked at each other, and forgot to smoke in their surprise and interest. when they heard how my mother went back to the inn, dr. livesey fairly slapped his thigh, and the squire cried "bravo!" and broke his long pipe against the grate. long before it was done, mr. trelawney (that, you will remember, was the squire's name) had got up from his seat and was striding about the room, and the doctor, as if to hear the better, had taken off his powdered wig and sat there looking very strange indeed with his own close-cropped black poll." at last mr. dance finished the story. "mr. dance," said the squire, "you are a very noble fellow. and as for riding down that black, atrocious miscreant, i regard it as an act of virtue, sir, like stamping on a cockroach. this lad hawkins is a trump, i perceive. hawkins, will you ring that bell? mr. dance must have some ale." "and so, jim," said the doctor, "you have the thing that they were after, have you?" "here it is, sir," said i, and gave him the oilskin packet. the doctor looked it all over, as if his fingers were itching to open it; but instead of doing that, he put it quietly in the pocket of his coat. "squire," said he, "when dance has had his ale he must, of course, be off on his majesty's service; but i mean to keep jim hawkins here to sleep at my house, and with your permission, i propose we should have up the cold pie and let him sup." "as you will, livesey," said the squire; "hawkins has earned better than cold pie." so a big pigeon pie was brought in and put on a sidetable, and i made a hearty supper, for i was as hungry as a hawk, while mr. dance was further complimented and at last dismissed. "and now, squire," said the doctor. "and now, livesey," said the squire in the same breath. "one at a time, one at a time," laughed dr. livesey. "you have heard of this flint, i suppose?" "heard of him!" cried the squire. "heard of him, you say! he was the bloodthirstiest buccaneer that sailed. blackbeard was a child to flint. the spaniards were so prodigiously afraid of him that, i tell you, sir, i was sometimes proud he was an englishman. i've seen his top-sails with these eyes, off trinidad, and the cowardly son of a rum-puncheon that i sailed with put back--put back, sir, into port of spain." "well, i've heard of him myself, in england," said the doctor. "but the point is, had he money?" "money!" cried the squire. "have you heard the story? what were these villains after but money? what do they care for but money? for what would they risk their rascal carcasses but money?" "that we shall soon know," replied the doctor. "but you are so confoundedly hot-headed and exclamatory that i cannot get a word in. what i want to know is this: supposing that i have here in my pocket some clue to where flint buried his treasure, will that treasure amount to much?" "amount, sir!" cried the squire. "it will amount to this: if we have the clue you talk about, i fit out a ship in bristol dock, and take you and hawkins here along, and i'll have that treasure if i search a year." "very well," said the doctor. "now, then, if jim is agreeable, we'll open the packet"; and he laid it before him on the table. the bundle was sewn together, and the doctor had to get out his instrument case and cut the stitches with his medical scissors. it contained two things--a book and a sealed paper. "first of all we'll try the book," observed the doctor. the squire and i were both peering over his shoulder as he opened it, for dr. livesey had kindly motioned me to come round from the side-table, where i had been eating, to enjoy the sport of the search. on the first page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a man with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or practice. one was the same as the tattoo mark, "billy bones his fancy"; then there was "mr. w. bones, mate," "no more rum," "off palm key he got itt," and some other snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible. i could not help wondering who it was that had "got itt," and what "itt" was that he got. a knife in his back as like as not. "not much instruction there," said dr. livesey as he passed on. the next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious series of entries. there was a date at one end of the line and at the other a sum of money, as in common account-books, but instead of explanatory writing, only a varying number of crosses between the two. on the 12th of june, 1745, for instance, a sum of seventy pounds had plainly become due to someone, and there was nothing but six crosses to explain the cause. in a few cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added, as "offe caraccas," or a mere entry of latitude and longitude, as "62o 17' 20", 19o 2' 40"." the record lasted over nearly twenty years, the amount of the separate entries growing larger as time went on, and at the end a grand total had been made out after five or six wrong additions, and these words appended, "bones, his pile." "i can't make head or tail of this," said dr. livesey. "the thing is as clear as noonday," cried the squire. "this is the black-hearted hound's account-book. these crosses stand for the names of ships or towns that they sank or plundered. the sums are the scoundrel's share, and where he feared an ambiguity, you see he added something clearer. 'offe caraccas,' now; you see, here was some unhappy vessel boarded off that coast. god help the poor souls that manned her--coral long ago." "right!" said the doctor. "see what it is to be a traveller. right! and the amounts increase, you see, as he rose in rank." there was little else in the volume but a few bearings of places noted in the blank leaves towards the end and a table for reducing french, english, and spanish moneys to a common value. "thrifty man!" cried the doctor. "he wasn't the one to be cheated." "and now," said the squire, "for the other." the paper had been sealed in several places with a thimble by way of seal; the very thimble, perhaps, that i had found in the captain's pocket. the doctor opened the seals with great care, and there fell out the map of an island, with latitude and longitude, soundings, names of hills and bays and inlets, and every particular that would be needed to bring a ship to a safe anchorage upon its shores. it was about nine miles long and five across, shaped, you might say, like a fat dragon standing up, and had two fine land-locked harbours, and a hill in the centre part marked "the spy-glass." there were several additions of a later date, but above all, three crosses of red ink--two on the north part of the island, one in the southwest--and beside this last, in the same red ink, and in a small, neat hand, very different from the captain's tottery characters, these words: "bulk of treasure here." over on the back the same hand had written this further information: tall tree, spy-glass shoulder, bearing a point to the n. of n.n.e. skeleton island e.s.e. and by e. ten feet. the bar silver is in the north cache; you can find it by the trend of the east hummock, ten fathoms south of the black crag with the face on it. the arms are easy found, in the sand-hill, n. point of north inlet cape, bearing e. and a quarter n. j.f. that was all; but brief as it was, and to me incomprehensible, it filled the squire and dr. livesey with delight. "livesey," said the squire, "you will give up this wretched practice at once. tomorrow i start for bristol. in three weeks' time--three weeks!--two weeks--ten days--we'll have the best ship, sir, and the choicest crew in england. hawkins shall come as cabinboy. you'll make a famous cabin-boy, hawkins. you, livesey, are ship's doctor; i am admiral. we'll take redruth, joyce, and hunter. we'll have favourable winds, a quick passage, and not the least difficulty in finding the spot, and money to eat, to roll in, to play duck and drake with ever after." "trelawney," said the doctor, "i'll go with you; and i'll go bail for it, so will jim, and be a credit to the undertaking. there's only one man i'm afraid of." "and who's that?" cried the squire. "name the dog, sir!" "you," replied the doctor; "for you cannot hold your tongue. we are not the only men who know of this paper. these fellows who attacked the inn tonight-bold, desperate blades, for sure--and the rest who stayed aboard that lugger, and more, i dare say, not far off, are, one and all, through thick and thin, bound that they'll get that money. we must none of us go alone till we get to sea. jim and i shall stick together in the meanwhile; you'll take joyce and hunter when you ride to bristol, and from first to last, not one of us must breathe a word of what we've found." "livesey," returned the squire, "you are always in the right of it. i'll be as silent as the grave." part two the sea-cook 7 i go to bristol it was longer than the squire imagined ere we were ready for the sea, and none of our first plans--not even dr. livesey's, of keeping me beside him--could be carried out as we intended. the doctor had to go to london for a physician to take charge of his practice; the squire was hard at work at bristol; and i lived on at the hall under the charge of old redruth, the gamekeeper, almost a prisoner, but full of sea-dreams and the most charming anticipations of strange islands and adventures. i brooded by the hour together over the map, all the details of which i well remembered. sitting by the fire in the housekeeper's room, i approached that island in my fancy from every possible direction; i explored every acre of its surface; i climbed a thousand times to that tall hill they call the spy-glass, and from the top enjoyed the most wonderful and changing prospects. sometimes the isle was thick with savages, with whom we fought, sometimes full of dangerous animals that hunted us, but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange and tragic as our actual adventures. so the weeks passed on, till one fine day there came a letter addressed to dr. livesey, with this addition, "to be opened, in the case of his absence, by tom redruth or young hawkins." obeying this order, we found, or rather i found--for the gamekeeper was a poor hand at reading anything but print--the following important news: old anchor inn, bristol, march 1, 17- dear livesey--as i do not know whether you are at the hall or still in london, i send this in double to both places. the ship is bought and fitted. she lies at anchor, ready for sea. you never imagined a sweeter schooner--a child might sail her--two hundred tons; name, hispaniola. i got her through my old friend, blandly, who has proved himself throughout the most surprising trump. the admirable fellow literally slaved in my interest, and so, i may say, did everyone in bristol, as soon as they got wind of the port we sailed for--treasure, i mean. "redruth," said i, interrupting the letter, "dr. livesey will not like that. the squire has been talking, after all." "well, who's a better right?" growled the gamekeeper. "a pretty rum go if squire ain't to talk for dr. livesey, i should think." at that i gave up all attempts at commentary and read straight on: blandly himself found the hispaniola, and by the most admirable management got her for the merest trifle. there is a class of men in bristol monstrously prejudiced against blandly. they go the length of declaring that this honest creature would do anything for money, that the hispaniola belonged to him, and that he sold it me absurdly high--the most transparent calumnies. none of them dare, however, to deny the merits of the ship. wo far there was not a hitch. the workpeople, to be sure--riggers and what not--were most annoyingly slow; but time cured that. it was the crew that troubled me. i wished a round score of men--in case of natives, buccaneers, or the odious french--and i had the worry of the deuce itself to find so much as half a dozen, till the most remarkable stroke of fortune brought me the very man that i required. i was standing on the dock, when, by the merest accident, i fell in talk with him. i found he was an old sailor, kept a public-house, knew all the seafaring men in bristol, had lost his health ashore, and wanted a good berth as cook to get to sea again. he had hobbled down there that morning, he said, to get a smell of the salt. i was monstrously touched--so would you have been--and, out of pure pity, i engaged him on the spot to be ship's cook. long john silver, he is called, and has lost a leg; but that i regarded as a recommendation, since he lost it in his country's service, under the immortal hawke. he has no pension, livesey. imagine the abominable age we live in! well, sir, i thought i had only found a cook, but it was a crew i had discovered. between silver and myself we got together in a few days a company of the toughest old salts imaginable--not pretty to look at, but fellows, by their faces, of the most indomitable spirit. i declare we could fight a frigate. long john even got rid of two out of the six or seven i had already engaged. he showed me in a moment that they were just the sort of fresh-water swabs we had to fear in an adventure of importance. i am in the most magnificent health and spirits, eating like a bull, sleeping like a tree, yet i shall not enjoy a moment till i hear my old tarpaulins tramping round the capstan. seaward, ho! hang the treasure! it's the glory of the sea that has turned my head. so now, livesey, come post; do not lose an hour, if you respect me. let young hawkins go at once to see his mother, with redruth for a guard; and then both come full speed to bristol. john trelawney postscript--i did not tell you that blandly, who, by the way, is to send a consort after us if we don't turn up by the end of august, had found an admirable fellow for sailing master--a stiff man, which i regret, but in all other respects a treasure. long john silver unearthed a very competent man for a mate, a man named arrow. i have a boatswain who pipes, livesey; so things shall go man-o'-war fashion on board the good ship hispaniola. i forgot to tell you that silver is a man of substance; i know of my own knowledge that he has a banker's account, which has never been overdrawn. he leaves his wife to manage the inn; and as she is a woman of colour, a pair of old bachelors like you and i may be excused for guessing that it is the wife, quite as much as the health, that sends him back to roving. j. t. p.p.s.--hawkins may stay one night with his mother. j. t. you can fancy the excitement into which that letter put me. i was half beside myself with glee; and if ever i despised a man, it was old tom redruth, who could do nothing but grumble and lament. any of the undergamekeepers would gladly have changed places with him; but such was not the squire's pleasure, and the squire's pleasure was like law among them all. nobody but old redruth would have dared so much as even to grumble. the next morning he and i set out on foot for the admiral benbow, and there i found my mother in good health and spirits. the captain, who had so long been a cause of so much discomfort, was gone where the wicked cease from troubling. the squire had had everything repaired, and the public rooms and the sign repainted, and had added some furniture--above all a beautiful armchair for mother in the bar. he had found her a boy as an apprentice also so that she should not want help while i was gone. it was on seeing that boy that i understood, for the first time, my situation. i had thought up to that moment of the adventures before me, not at all of the home that i was leaving; and now, at sight of this clumsy stranger, who was to stay here in my place beside my mother, i had my first attack of tears. i am afraid i led that boy a dog's life, for as he was new to the work, i had a hundred opportunities of setting him right and putting him down, and i was not slow to profit by them. the night passed, and the next day, after dinner, redruth and i were afoot again and on the road. i said good-bye to mother and the cove where i had lived since i was born, and the dear old admiral benbow--since he was repainted, no longer quite so dear. one of my last thoughts was of the captain, who had so often strode along the beach with his cocked hat, his sabre-cut cheek, and his old brass telescope. next moment we had turned the corner and my home was out of sight. the mail picked us up about dusk at the royal george on the heath. i was wedged in between redruth and a stout old gentleman, and in spite of the swift motion and the cold night air, i must have dozed a great deal from the very first, and then slept like a log up hill and down dale through stage after stage, for when i was awakened at last it was by a punch in the ribs, and i opened my eyes to find that we were standing still before a large building in a city street and that the day had already broken a long time. "where are we?" i asked. "bristol," said tom. "get down." mr. trelawney had taken up his residence at an inn far down the docks to superintend the work upon the schooner. thither we had now to walk, and our way, to my great delight, lay along the quays and beside the great multitude of ships of all sizes and rigs and nations. in one, sailors were singing at their work, in another there were men aloft, high over my head, hanging to threads that seemed no thicker than a spider's. though i had lived by the shore all my life, i seemed never to have been near the sea till then. the smell of tar and salt was something new. i saw the most wonderful figureheads, that had all been far over the ocean. i saw, besides, many old sailors, with rings in their ears, and whiskers curled in ringlets, and tarry pigtails, and their swaggering, clumsy seawalk; and if i had seen as many kings or archbishops i could not have been more delighted. and i was going to sea myself, to sea in a schooner, with a piping boatswain and pig-tailed singing seamen, to sea, bound for an unknown island, and to seek for buried treasure! while i was still in this delightful dream, we came suddenly in front of a large inn and met squire trelawney, all dressed out like a sea-officer, in stout blue cloth, coming out of the door with a smile on his face and a capital imitation of a sailor's walk. "here you are," he cried, "and the doctor came last night from london. bravo! the ship's company complete!" "oh, sir," cried i, "when do we sail?" "sail!" says he. "we sail tomorrow!" 8 at the sign of the spy-glass when i had done breakfasting the squire gave me a note addressed to john silver, at the sign of the spy-glass, and told me i should easily find the place by following the line of the docks and keeping a bright lookout for a little tavern with a large brass telescope for sign. i set off, overjoyed at this opportunity to see some more of the ships and seamen, and picked my way among a great crowd of people and carts and bales, for the dock was now at its busiest, until i found the tavern in question. it was a bright enough little place of entertainment. the sign was newly painted; the windows had neat red curtains; the floor was cleanly sanded. there was a street on each side and an open door on both, which made the large, low room pretty clear to see in, in spite of clouds of tobacco smoke. the customers were mostly seafaring men, and they talked so loudly that i hung at the door, almost afraid to enter. as i was waiting, a man came out of a side room, and at a glance i was sure he must be long john. his left leg was cut off close by the hip, and under the left shoulder he carried a crutch, which he managed with wonderful dexterity, hopping about upon it like a bird. he was very tall and strong, with a face as big as a ham--plain and pale, but intelligent and smiling. indeed, he seemed in the most cheerful spirits, whistling as he moved about among the tables, with a merry word or a slap on the shoulder for the more favoured of his guests. now, to tell you the truth, from the very first mention of long john in squire trelawney's letter i had taken a fear in my mind that he might prove to be the very onelegged sailor whom i had watched for so long at the old benbow. but one look at the man before me was enough. i had seen the captain, and black dog, and the blind man, pew, and i thought i knew what a buccaneer was like--a very different creature, according to me, from this clean and pleasant-tempered landlord. i plucked up courage at once, crossed the threshold, and walked right up to the man where he stood, propped on his crutch, talking to a customer. "mr. silver, sir?" i asked, holding out the note. "yes, my lad," said he; "such is my name, to be sure. and who may you be?" and then as he saw the squire's letter, he seemed to me to give something almost like a start. "oh!" said he, quite loud, and offering his hand. "i see. you are our new cabin-boy; pleased i am to see you." and he took my hand in his large firm grasp. just then one of the customers at the far side rose suddenly and made for the door. it was close by him, and he was out in the street in a moment. but his hurry had attracted my notice, and i recognized him at glance. it was the tallow-faced man, wanting two fingers, who had come first to the admiral benbow. "oh," i cried, "stop him! it's black dog!" "i don't care two coppers who he is," cried silver. "but he hasn't paid his score. harry, run and catch him." one of the others who was nearest the door leaped up and started in pursuit. "if he were admiral hawke he shall pay his score," cried silver; and then, relinquishing my hand, "who did you say he was?" he asked. "black what?" "dog, sir," said i. has mr. trelawney not told you of the buccaneers? he was one of them." "so?" cried silver. "in my house! ben, run and help harry. one of those swabs, was he? was that you drinking with him, morgan? step up here." the man whom he called morgan--an old, grey-haired, mahogany-faced sailor--came forward pretty sheepishly, rolling his quid. "now, morgan," said long john very sternly, "you never clapped your eyes on that black--black dog before, did you, now?" "not i, sir," said morgan with a salute. "you didn't know his name, did you?" "no, sir." "by the powers, tom morgan, it's as good for you!" exclaimed the landlord. "if you had been mixed up with the like of that, you would never have put another foot in my house, you may lay to that. and what was he saying to you?" "i don't rightly know, sir," answered morgan. "do you call that a head on your shoulders, or a blessed dead-eye?" cried long john. "don't rightly know, don't you! perhaps you don't happen to rightly know who you was speaking to, perhaps? come, now, what was he jawing--v'yages, cap'ns, ships? pipe up! what was it?" "we was a-talkin' of keel-hauling," answered morgan. "keel-hauling, was you? and a mighty suitable thing, too, and you may lay to that. get back to your place for a lubber, tom." and then, as morgan rolled back to his seat, silver added to me in a confidential whisper that was very flattering, as i thought, "he's quite an honest man, tom morgan, on'y stupid. and now," he ran on again, aloud, "let's see--black dog? no, i don't know the name, not i. yet i kind of think i've--yes, i've seen the swab. he used to come here with a blind beggar, he used." "that he did, you may be sure," said i. "i knew that blind man too. his name was pew." "it was!" cried silver, now quite excited. "pew! that were his name for certain. ah, he looked a shark, he did! if we run down this black dog, now, there'll be news for cap'n trelawney! ben's a good runner; few seamen run better than ben. he should run him down, hand over hand, by the powers! he talked o' keelhauling, did he? i'll keel-haul him!" all the time he was jerking out these phrases he was stumping up and down the tavern on his crutch, slapping tables with his hand, and giving such a show of excitement as would have convinced an old bailey judge or a bow street runner. my suspicions had been thoroughly reawakened on finding black dog at the spyglass, and i watched the cook narrowly. but he was too deep, and too ready, and too clever for me, and by the time the two men had come back out of breath and confessed that they had lost the track in a crowd, and been scolded like thieves, i would have gone bail for the innocence of long john silver. "see here, now, hawkins," said he, "here's a blessed hard thing on a man like me, now, ain't it? there's cap'n trelawney--what's he to think? here i have this confounded son of a dutchman sitting in my own house drinking of my own rum! here you comes and tells me of it plain; and here i let him give us all the slip before my blessed deadlights! now, hawkins, you do me justice with the cap'n. you're a lad, you are, but you're as smart as paint. i see that when you first come in. now, here it is: what could i do, with this old timber i hobble on? when i was an a b master mariner i'd have come up alongside of him, hand over hand, and broached him to in a brace of old shakes, i would; but now--" and then, all of a sudden, he stopped, and his jaw dropped as though he had remembered something. "the score!" he burst out. "three goes o' rum! why, shiver my timbers, if i hadn't forgotten my score!" and falling on a bench, he laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. i could not help joining, and we laughed together, peal after peal, until the tavern rang again. "why, what a precious old sea-calf i am!" he said at last, wiping his cheeks. "you and me should get on well, hawkins, for i'll take my davy i should be rated ship's boy. but come now, stand by to go about. this won't do. dooty is dooty, messmates. i'll put on my old cockerel hat, and step along of you to cap'n trelawney, and report this here affair. for mind you, it's serious, young hawkins; and neither you nor me's come out of it with what i should make so bold as to call credit. nor you neither, says you; not smart-none of the pair of us smart. but dash my buttons! that was a good un about my score." and he began to laugh again, and that so heartily, that though i did not see the joke as he did, i was again obliged to join him in his mirth. on our little walk along the quays, he made himself the most interesting companion, telling me about the different ships that we passed by, their rig, tonnage, and nationality, explaining the work that was going forward--how one was discharging, another taking in cargo, and a third making ready for sea--and every now and then telling me some little anecdote of ships or seamen or repeating a nautical phrase till i had learned it perfectly. i began to see that here was one of the best of possible shipmates. when we got to the inn, the squire and dr. livesey were seated together, finishing a quart of ale with a toast in it, before they should go aboard the schooner on a visit of inspection. long john told the story from first to last, with a great deal of spirit and the most perfect truth. "that was how it were, now, weren't it, hawkins?" he would say, now and again, and i could always bear him entirely out. the two gentlemen regretted that black dog had got away, but we all agreed there was nothing to be done, and after he had been complimented, long john took up his crutch and departed. "all hands aboard by four this afternoon," shouted the squire after him. "aye, aye, sir," cried the cook, in the passage. "well, squire," said dr. livesey, "i don't put much faith in your discoveries, as a general thing; but i will say this, john silver suits me." "the man's a perfect trump," declared the squire. "and now," added the doctor, "jim may come on board with us, may he not?" "to be sure he may," says squire. "take your hat, hawkins, and we'll see the ship." 9 powder and arms the hispaniola lay some way out, and we went under the figureheads and round the sterns of many other ships, and their cables sometimes grated underneath our keel, and sometimes swung above us. at last, however, we got alongside, and were met and saluted as we stepped aboard by the mate, mr. arrow, a brown old sailor with earrings in his ears and a squint. he and the squire were very thick and friendly, but i soon observed that things were not the same between mr. trelawney and the captain. this last was a sharp-looking man who seemed angry with everything on board and was soon to tell us why, for we had hardly got down into the cabin when a sailor followed us. "captain smollett, sir, axing to speak with you," said he. "i am always at the captain's orders. show him in," said the squire. the captain, who was close behind his messenger, entered at once and shut the door behind him. "well, captain smollett, what have you to say? all well, i hope; all shipshape and seaworthy?" "well, sir," said the captain, "better speak plain, i believe, even at the risk of offence. i don't like this cruise; i don't like the men; and i don't like my officer. that's short and sweet." "perhaps, sir, you don't like the ship?" inquired the squire, very angry, as i could see. "i can't speak as to that, sir, not having seen her tried," said the captain. "she seems a clever craft; more i can't say." "possibly, sir, you may not like your employer, either?" says the squire. but here dr. livesey cut in. "stay a bit," said he, "stay a bit. no use of such questions as that but to produce ill feeling. the captain has said too much or he has said too little, and i'm bound to say that i require an explanation of his words. you don't, you say, like this cruise. now, why?" "i was engaged, sir, on what we call sealed orders, to sail this ship for that gentleman where he should bid me," said the captain. "so far so good. but now i find that every man before the mast knows more than i do. i don't call that fair, now, do you?" "no," said dr. livesey, "i don't." "next," said the captain, "i learn we are going after treasure--hear it from my own hands, mind you. now, treasure is ticklish work; i don't like treasure voyages on any account, and i don't like them, above all, when they are secret and when (begging your pardon, mr. trelawney) the secret has been told to the parrot." "silver's parrot?" asked the squire. "it's a way of speaking," said the captain. "blabbed, i mean. it's my belief neither of you gentlemen know what you are about, but i'll tell you my way of it-life or death, and a close run." "that is all clear, and, i dare say, true enough," replied dr. livesey. "we take the risk, but we are not so ignorant as you believe us. next, you say you don't like the crew. are they not good seamen?" "i don't like them, sir," returned captain smollett. "and i think i should have had the choosing of my own hands, if you go to that." "perhaps you should," replied the doctor. "my friend should, perhaps, have taken you along with him; but the slight, if there be one, was unintentional. and you don't like mr. arrow?" "i don't, sir. i believe he's a good seaman, but he's too free with the crew to be a good officer. a mate should keep himself to himself--shouldn't drink with the men before the mast!" "do you mean he drinks?" cried the squire. "no, sir," replied the captain, "only that he's too familiar." "well, now, and the short and long of it, captain?" asked the doctor. "tell us what you want." "well, gentlemen, are you determined to go on this cruise?" "like iron," answered the squire. "very good," said the captain. "then, as you've heard me very patiently, saying things that i could not prove, hear me a few words more. they are putting the powder and the arms in the fore hold. now, you have a good place under the cabin; why not put them there?-first point. then, you are bringing four of your own people with you, and they tell me some of them are to be berthed forward. why not give them the berths here beside the cabin?--second point." "any more?" asked mr. trelawney. "one more," said the captain. "there's been too much blabbing already." "far too much," agreed the doctor. "i'll tell you what i've heard myself," continued captain smollett: "that you have a map of an island, that there's crosses on the map to show where treasure is, and that the island lies--" and then he named the latitude and longitude exactly. "i never told that," cried the squire, "to a soul!" "the hands know it, sir," returned the captain. "livesey, that must have been you or hawkins," cried the squire. "it doesn't much matter who it was," replied the doctor. and i could see that neither he nor the captain paid much regard to mr. trelawney's protestations. neither did i, to be sure, he was so loose a talker; yet in this case i believe he was really right and that nobody had told the situation of the island. "well, gentlemen," continued the captain, "i don't know who has this map; but i make it a point, it shall be kept secret even from me and mr. arrow. otherwise i would ask you to let me resign." "i see," said the doctor. "you wish us to keep this matter dark and to make a garrison of the stern part of the ship, manned with my friend's own people, and provided with all the arms and powder on board. in other words, you fear a mutiny." "sir," said captain smollett, "with no intention to take offence, i deny your right to put words into my mouth. no captain, sir, would be justified in going to sea at all if he had ground enough to say that. as for mr. arrow, i believe him thoroughly honest; some of the men are the same; all may be for what i know. but i am responsible for the ship's safety and the life of every man jack aboard of her. i see things going, as i think, not quite right. and i ask you to take certain precautions or let me resign my berth. and that's all." "captain smollett," began the doctor with a smile, "did ever you hear the fable of the mountain and the mouse? you'll excuse me, i dare say, but you remind me of that fable. when you came in here, i'll stake my wig, you meant more than this." "doctor," said the captain, "you are smart. when i came in here i meant to get discharged. i had no thought that mr. trelawney would hear a word." "no more i would," cried the squire. "had livesey not been here i should have seen you to the deuce. as it is, i have heard you. i will do as you desire, but i think the worse of you." "that's as you please, sir," said the captain. "you'll find i do my duty." and with that he took his leave. "trelawney," said the doctor, "contrary to all my notions, i believed you have managed to get two honest men on board with you--that man and john silver." "silver, if you like," cried the squire; "but as for that intolerable humbug, i declare i think his conduct unmanly, unsailorly, and downright un-english." "well," says the doctor, "we shall see." when we came on deck, the men had begun already to take out the arms and powder, yo-ho-ing at their work, while the captain and mr. arrow stood by superintending. the new arrangement was quite to my liking. the whole schooner had been overhauled; six berths had been made astern out of what had been the after-part of the main hold; and this set of cabins was only joined to the galley and forecastle by a sparred passage on the port side. it had been originally meant that the captain, mr. arrow, hunter, joyce, the doctor, and the squire were to occupy these six berths. now redruth and i were to get two of them and mr. arrow and the captain were to sleep on deck in the companion, which had been enlarged on each side till you might almost have called it a round-house. very low it was still, of course; but there was room to swing two hammocks, and even the mate seemed pleased with the arrangement. even he, perhaps, had been doubtful as to the crew, but that is only guess, for as you shall hear, we had not long the benefit of his opinion. we were all hard at work, changing the powder and the berths, when the last man or two, and long john along with them, came off in a shore-boat. the cook came up the side like a monkey for cleverness, and as soon as he saw what was doing, "so ho, mates!" says he. "what's this?" "we're a-changing of the powder, jack," answers one. "why, by the powers," cried long john, "if we do, we'll miss the morning tide!" "my orders!" said the captain shortly. "you may go below, my man. hands will want supper." "aye, aye, sir," answered the cook, and touching his forelock, he disappeared at once in the direction of his galley. "that's a good man, captain," said the doctor. "very likely, sir," replied captain smollett. "easy with that, men--easy," he ran on, to the fellows who were shifting the powder; and then suddenly observing me examining the swivel we carried amidships, a long brass nine, "here you, ship's boy," he cried, "out o' that! off with you to the cook and get some work." and then as i was hurrying off i heard him say, quite loudly, to the doctor, "i'll have no favourites on my ship." i assure you i was quite of the squire's way of thinking, and hated the captain deeply. 10 the voyage all that night we were in a great bustle getting things stowed in their place, and boatfuls of the squire's friends, mr. blandly and the like, coming off to wish him a good voyage and a safe return. we never had a night at the admiral benbow when i had half the work; and i was dog-tired when, a little before dawn, the boatswain sounded his pipe and the crew began to man the capstan-bars. i might have been twice as weary, yet i would not have left the deck, all was so new and interesting to me--the brief commands, the shrill note of the whistle, the men bustling to their places in the glimmer of the ship's lanterns. "now, barbecue, tip us a stave," cried one voice. "the old one," cried another. "aye, aye, mates," said long john, who was standing by, with his crutch under his arm, and at once broke out in the air and words i knew so well: "fifteen men on the dead man's chest--" and then the whole crew bore chorus:- "yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" and at the third "ho!" drove the bars before them with a will. even at that exciting moment it carried me back to the old admiral benbow in a second, and i seemed to hear the voice of the captain piping in the chorus. but soon the anchor was short up; soon it was hanging dripping at the bows; soon the sails began to draw, and the land and shipping to flit by on either side; and before i could lie down to snatch an hour of slumber the hispaniola had begun her voyage to the isle of treasure. i am not going to relate that voyage in detail. it was fairly prosperous. the ship proved to be a good ship, the crew were capable seamen, and the captain thoroughly understood his business. but before we came the length of treasure island, two or three things had happened which require to be known. mr. arrow, first of all, turned out even worse than the captain had feared. he had no command among the men, and people did what they pleased with him. but that was by no means the worst of it, for after a day or two at sea he began to appear on deck with hazy eye, red cheeks, stuttering tongue, and other marks of drunkenness. time after time he was ordered below in disgrace. sometimes he fell and cut himself; sometimes he lay all day long in his little bunk at one side of the companion; sometimes for a day or two he would be almost sober and attend to his work at least passably. in the meantime, we could never make out where he got the drink. that was the ship's mystery. watch him as we pleased, we could do nothing to solve it; and when we asked him to his face, he would only laugh if he were drunk, and if he were sober deny solemnly that he ever tasted anything but water. he was not only useless as an officer and a bad influence amongst the men, but it was plain that at this rate he must soon kill himself outright, so nobody was much surprised, nor very sorry, when one dark night, with a head sea, he disappeared entirely and was seen no more. "overboard!" said the captain. "well, gentlemen, that saves the trouble of putting him in irons." but there we were, without a mate; and it was necessary, of course, to advance one of the men. the boatswain, job anderson, was the likeliest man aboard, and though he kept his old title, he served in a way as mate. mr. trelawney had followed the sea, and his knowledge made him very useful, for he often took a watch himself in easy weather. and the coxswain, israel hands, was a careful, wily, old, experienced seaman who could be trusted at a pinch with almost anything. he was a great confidant of long john silver, and so the mention of his name leads me on to speak of our ship's cook, barbecue, as the men called him. aboard ship he carried his crutch by a lanyard round his neck, to have both hands as free as possible. it was something to see him wedge the foot of the crutch against a bulkhead, and propped against it, yielding to every movement of the ship, get on with his cooking like someone safe ashore. still more strange was it to see him in the heaviest of weather cross the deck. he had a line or two rigged up to help him across the widest spaces--long john's earrings, they were called; and he would hand himself from one place to another, now using the crutch, now trailing it alongside by the lanyard, as quickly as another man could walk. yet some of the men who had sailed with him before expressed their pity to see him so reduced. "he's no common man, barbecue," said the coxswain to me. "he had good schooling in his young days and can speak like a book when so minded; and brave--a lion's nothing alongside of long john! i seen him grapple four and knock their heads together--him unarmed." all the crew respected and even obeyed him. he had a way of talking to each and doing everybody some particular service. to me he was unweariedly kind, and always glad to see me in the galley, which he kept as clean as a new pin, the dishes hanging up burnished and his parrot in a cage in one corner. "come away, hawkins," he would say; "come and have a yarn with john. nobody more welcome than yourself, my son. sit you down and hear the news. here's cap'n flint--i calls my parrot cap'n flint, after the famous buccaneer--here's cap'n flint predicting success to our v'yage. wasn't you, cap'n?" and the parrot would say, with great rapidity, "pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight!" till you wondered that it was not out of breath, or till john threw his handkerchief over the cage. "now, that bird," he would say, "is, maybe, two hundred years old, hawkins--they live forever mostly; and if anybody's seen more wickedness, it must be the devil himself. she's sailed with england, the great cap'n england, the pirate. she's been at madagascar, and at malabar, and surinam, and providence, and portobello. she was at the fishing up of the wrecked plate ships. it's there she learned 'pieces of eight,' and little wonder; three hundred and fifty thousand of 'em, hawkins! she was at the boarding of the viceroy of the indies out of goa, she was; and to look at her you would think she was a babby. but you smelt powder-didn't you, cap'n?" "stand by to go about," the parrot would scream. "ah, she's a handsome craft, she is," the cook would say, and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness. "there," john would add, "you can't touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. here's this poor old innocent bird o' mine swearing blue fire, and none the wiser, you may lay to that. she would swear the same, in a manner of speaking, before chaplain." and john would touch his forelock with a solemn way he had that made me think he was the best of men. in the meantime, the squire and captain smollett were still on pretty distant terms with one another. the squire made no bones about the matter; he despised the captain. the captain, on his part, never spoke but when he was spoken to, and then sharp and short and dry, and not a word wasted. he owned, when driven into a corner, that he seemed to have been wrong about the crew, that some of them were as brisk as he wanted to see and all had behaved fairly well. as for the ship, he had taken a downright fancy to her. "she'll lie a point nearer the wind than a man has a right to expect of his own married wife, sir. but," he would add, "all i say is, we're not home again, and i don't like the cruise." the squire, at this, would turn away and march up and down the deck, chin in air. "a trifle more of that man," he would say, "and i shall explode." we had some heavy weather, which only proved the qualities of the hispaniola. every man on board seemed well content, and they must have been hard to please if they had been otherwise, for it is my belief there was never a ship's company so spoiled since noah put to sea. double grog was going on the least excuse; there was duff on odd days, as, for instance, if the squire heard it was any man's birthday, and always a barrel of apples standing broached in the waist for anyone to help himself that had a fancy. "never knew good come of it yet," the captain said to dr. livesey. "spoil forecastle hands, make devils. that's my belief." but good did come of the apple barrel, as you shall hear, for if it had not been for that, we should have had no note of warning and might all have perished by the hand of treachery. this was how it came about. we had run up the trades to get the wind of the island we were after--i am not allowed to be more plain--and now we were running down for it with a bright lookout day and night. it was about the last day of our outward voyage by the largest computation; some time that night, or at latest before noon of the morrow, we should sight the treasure island. we were heading s.s.w. and had a steady breeze abeam and a quiet sea. the hispaniola rolled steadily, dipping her bowsprit now and then with a whiff of spray. all was drawing alow and aloft; everyone was in the bravest spirits because we were now so near an end of the first part of our adventure. now, just after sundown, when all my work was over and i was on my way to my berth, it occurred to me that i should like an apple. i ran on deck. the watch was all forward looking out for the island. the man at the helm was watching the luff of the sail and whistling away gently to himself, and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea against the bows and around the sides of the ship. in i got bodily into the apple barrel, and found there was scarce an apple left; but sitting down there in the dark, what with the sound of the waters and the rocking movement of the ship, i had either fallen asleep or was on the point of doing so when a heavy man sat down with rather a clash close by. the barrel shook as he leaned his shoulders against it, and i was just about to jump up when the man began to speak. it was silver's voice, and before i had heard a dozen words, i would not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity, for from these dozen words i understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended upon me alone. 11 what i heard in the apple barrel "no, not i," said silver. "flint was cap'n; i was quartermaster, along of my timber leg. the same broadside i lost my leg, old pew lost his deadlights. it was a master surgeon, him that ampytated me--out of college and all--latin by the bucket, and what not; but he was hanged like a dog, and sun-dried like the rest, at corso castle. that was roberts' men, that was, and comed of changing names to their ships--royal fortune and so on. now, what a ship was christened, so let her stay, i says. so it was with the cassandra, as brought us all safe home from malabar, after england took the viceroy of the indies; so it was with the old walrus, flint's old ship, as i've seen amuck with the red blood and fit to sink with gold." "ah!" cried another voice, that of the youngest hand on board, and evidently full of admiration. "he was the flower of the flock, was flint!" "davis was a man too, by all accounts," said silver. "i never sailed along of him; first with england, then with flint, that's my story; and now here on my own account, in a manner of speaking. i laid by nine hundred safe, from england, and two thousand after flint. that ain't bad for a man before the mast--all safe in bank. 'tain't earning now, it's saving does it, you may lay to that. where's all england's men now? i dunno. where's flint's? why, most on 'em aboard here, and glad to get the duff--been begging before that, some on 'em. old pew, as had lost his sight, and might have thought shame, spends twelve hundred pound in a year, like a lord in parliament. where is he now? well, he's dead now and under hatches; but for two year before that, shiver my timbers, the man was starving! he begged, and he stole, and he cut throats, and starved at that, by the powers!" "well, it ain't much use, after all," said the young seaman. "'tain't much use for fools, you may lay to it--that, nor nothing," cried silver. "but now, you look here: you're young, you are, but you're as smart as paint. i see that when i set my eyes on you, and i'll talk to you like a man." you may imagine how i felt when i heard this abominable old rogue addressing another in the very same words of flattery as he had used to myself. i think, if i had been able, that i would have killed him through the barrel. meantime, he ran on, little supposing he was overheard. "here it is about gentlemen of fortune. they lives rough, and they risk swinging, but they eat and drink like fighting-cocks, and when a cruise is done, why, it's hundreds of pounds instead of hundreds of farthings in their pockets. now, the most goes for rum and a good fling, and to sea again in their shirts. but that's not the course i lay. i puts it all away, some here, some there, and none too much anywheres, by reason of suspicion. i'm fifty, mark you; once back from this cruise, i set up gentleman in earnest. time enough too, says you. ah, but i've lived easy in the meantime, never denied myself o' nothing heart desires, and slep' soft and ate dainty all my days but when at sea. and how did i begin? before the mast, like you!" "well," said the other, "but all the other money's gone now, ain't it? you daren't show face in bristol after this." "why, where might you suppose it was?" asked silver derisively. "at bristol, in banks and places," answered his companion. "it were," said the cook; "it were when we weighed anchor. but my old missis has it all by now. and the spy-glass is sold, lease and goodwill and rigging; and the old girl's off to meet me. i would tell you where, for i trust you, but it'd make jealousy among the mates." "and can you trust your missis?" asked the other. "gentlemen of fortune," returned the cook, "usually trusts little among themselves, and right they are, you may lay to it. but i have a way with me, i have. when a mate brings a slip on his cable--one as knows me, i mean--it won't be in the same world with old john. there was some that was feared of pew, and some that was feared of flint; but flint his own self was feared of me. feared he was, and proud. they was the roughest crew afloat, was flint's; the devil himself would have been feared to go to sea with them. well now, i tell you, i'm not a boasting man, and you seen yourself how easy i keep company, but when i was quartermaster, lambs wasn't the word for flint's old buccaneers. ah, you may be sure of yourself in old john's ship." "well, i tell you now," replied the lad, "i didn't half a quarter like the job till i had this talk with you, john; but there's my hand on it now." "and a brave lad you were, and smart too," answered silver, shaking hands so heartily that all the barrel shook, "and a finer figurehead for a gentleman of fortune i never clapped my eyes on." by this time i had begun to understand the meaning of their terms. by a "gentleman of fortune" they plainly meant neither more nor less than a common pirate, and the little scene that i had overheard was the last act in the corruption of one of the honest hands--perhaps of the last one left aboard. but on this point i was soon to be relieved, for silver giving a little whistle, a third man strolled up and sat down by the party. "dick's square," said silver. "oh, i know'd dick was square," returned the voice of the coxswain, israel hands. "he's no fool, is dick." and he turned his quid and spat. "but look here," he went on, "here's what i want to know, barbecue: how long are we a-going to stand off and on like a blessed bumboat? i've had a'most enough o' cap'n smollett; he's hazed me long enough, by thunder! i want to go into that cabin, i do. i want their pickles and wines, and that." "israel," said silver, "your head ain't much account, nor ever was. but you're able to hear, i reckon; leastways, your ears is big enough. now, here's what i say: you'll berth forward, and you'll live hard, and you'll speak soft, and you'll keep sober till i give the word; and you may lay to that, my son." "well, i don't say no, do i?" growled the coxswain. "what i say is, when? that's what i say." "when! by the powers!" cried silver. "well now, if you want to know, i'll tell you when. the last moment i can manage, and that's when. here's a first-rate seaman, cap'n smollett, sails the blessed ship for us. here's this squire and doctor with a map and such--i don't know where it is, do i? no more do you, says you. well then, i mean this squire and doctor shall find the stuff, and help us to get it aboard, by the powers. then we'll see. if i was sure of you all, sons of double dutchmen, i'd have cap'n smollett navigate us half-way back again before i struck." "why, we're all seamen aboard here, i should think," said the lad dick. "we're all forecastle hands, you mean," snapped silver. "we can steer a course, but who's to set one? that's what all you gentlemen split on, first and last. if i had my way, i'd have cap'n smollett work us back into the trades at least; then we'd have no blessed miscalculations and a spoonful of water a day. but i know the sort you are. i'll finish with 'em at the island, as soon's the blunt's on board, and a pity it is. but you're never happy till you're drunk. split my sides, i've a sick heart to sail with the likes of you!" "easy all, long john," cried israel. "who's a-crossin' of you?" "why, how many tall ships, think ye, now, have i seen laid aboard? and how many brisk lads drying in the sun at execution dock?" cried silver. "and all for this same hurry and hurry and hurry. you hear me? i seen a thing or two at sea, i have. if you would on'y lay your course, and a p'int to windward, you would ride in carriages, you would. but not you! i know you. you'll have your mouthful of rum tomorrow, and go hang." "everybody knowed you was a kind of a chapling, john; but there's others as could hand and steer as well as you," said israel. "they liked a bit o' fun, they did. they wasn't so high and dry, nohow, but took their fling, like jolly companions every one." "so?" says silver. "well, and where are they now? pew was that sort, and he died a beggar-man. flint was, and he died of rum at savannah. ah, they was a sweet crew, they was! on'y, where are they?" "but," asked dick, "when we do lay 'em athwart, what are we to do with 'em, anyhow?" "there's the man for me!" cried the cook admiringly. "that's what i call business. well, what would you think? put 'em ashore like maroons? that would have been england's way. or cut 'em down like that much pork? that would have been flint's, or billy bones's." "billy was the man for that," said israel. "'dead men don't bite,' says he. well, he's dead now hisself; he knows the long and short on it now; and if ever a rough hand come to port, it was billy." "right you are," said silver; "rough and ready. but mark you here, i'm an easy man--i'm quite the gentleman, says you; but this time it's serious. dooty is dooty, mates. i give my vote--death. when i'm in parlyment and riding in my coach, i don't want none of these sea-lawyers in the cabin a-coming home, unlooked for, like the devil at prayers. wait is what i say; but when the time comes, why, let her rip!" "john," cries the coxswain, "you're a man!" "you'll say so, israel when you see," said silver. "only one thing i claim--i claim trelawney. i'll wring his calf's head off his body with these hands, dick!" he added, breaking off. "you just jump up, like a sweet lad, and get me an apple, to wet my pipe like." you may fancy the terror i was in! i should have leaped out and run for it if i had found the strength, but my limbs and heart alike misgave me. i heard dick begin to rise, and then someone seemingly stopped him, and the voice of hands exclaimed, "oh, stow that! don't you get sucking of that bilge, john. let's have a go of the rum." "dick," said silver, "i trust you. i've a gauge on the keg, mind. there's the key; you fill a pannikin and bring it up." terrified as i was, i could not help thinking to myself that this must have been how mr. arrow got the strong waters that destroyed him. dick was gone but a little while, and during his absence israel spoke straight on in the cook's ear. it was but a word or two that i could catch, and yet i gathered some important news, for besides other scraps that tended to the same purpose, this whole clause was audible: "not another man of them'll jine." hence there were still faithful men on board. when dick returned, one after another of the trio took the pannikin and drank--one "to luck," another with a "here's to old flint," and silver himself saying, in a kind of song, "here's to ourselves, and hold your luff, plenty of prizes and plenty of duff." just then a sort of brightness fell upon me in the barrel, and looking up, i found the moon had risen and was silvering the mizzen-top and shining white on the luff of the fore-sail; and almost at the same time the voice of the lookout shouted, "land ho!" 12 council of war there was a great rush of feet across the deck. i could hear people tumbling up from the cabin and the forecastle, and slipping in an instant outside my barrel, i dived behind the fore-sail, made a double towards the stern, and came out upon the open deck in time to join hunter and dr. livesey in the rush for the weather bow. there all hands were already congregated. a belt of fog had lifted almost simultaneously with the appearance of the moon. away to the south-west of us we saw two low hills, about a couple of miles apart, and rising behind one of them a third and higher hill, whose peak was still buried in the fog. all three seemed sharp and conical in figure. so much i saw, almost in a dream, for i had not yet recovered from my horrid fear of a minute or two before. and then i heard the voice of captain smollett issuing orders. the hispaniola was laid a couple of points nearer the wind and now sailed a course that would just clear the island on the east. "and now, men," said the captain, when all was sheeted home, "has any one of you ever seen that land ahead?" "i have, sir," said silver. "i've watered there with a trader i was cook in." "the anchorage is on the south, behind an islet, i fancy?" asked the captain. "yes, sir; skeleton island they calls it. it were a main place for pirates once, and a hand we had on board knowed all their names for it. that hill to the nor'ard they calls the fore-mast hill; there are three hills in a row running south'ard--fore, main, and mizzen, sir. but the main--that's the big un, with the cloud on it--they usually calls the spy-glass, by reason of a lookout they kept when they was in the anchorage cleaning, for it's there they cleaned their ships, sir, asking your pardon." "i have a chart here," says captain smollett. "see if that's the place." long john's eyes burned in his head as he took the chart, but by the fresh look of the paper i knew he was doomed to disappointment. this was not the map we found in billy bones's chest, but an accurate copy, complete in all things--names and heights and soundings--with the single exception of the red crosses and the written notes. sharp as must have been his annoyance, silver had the strength of mind to hide it. "yes, sir," said he, "this is the spot, to be sure, and very prettily drawed out. who might have done that, i wonder? the pirates were too ignorant, i reckon. aye, here it is: 'capt. kidd's anchorage'--just the name my shipmate called it. there's a strong current runs along the south, and then away nor'ard up the west coast. right you was, sir," says he, "to haul your wind and keep the weather of the island. leastways, if such was your intention as to enter and careen, and there ain't no better place for that in these waters." "thank you, my man," says captain smollett. "i'll ask you later on to give us a help. you may go." i was surprised at the coolness with which john avowed his knowledge of the island, and i own i was halffrightened when i saw him drawing nearer to myself. he did not know, to be sure, that i had overheard his council from the apple barrel, and yet i had by this time taken such a horror of his cruelty, duplicity, and power that i could scarce conceal a shudder when he laid his hand upon my arm. "ah," says he, "this here is a sweet spot, this island-a sweet spot for a lad to get ashore on. you'll bathe, and you'll climb trees, and you'll hunt goats, you will; and you'll get aloft on them hills like a goat yourself. why, it makes me young again. i was going to forget my timber leg, i was. it's a pleasant thing to be young and have ten toes, and you may lay to that. when you want to go a bit of exploring, you just ask old john, and he'll put up a snack for you to take along." and clapping me in the friendliest way upon the shoulder, he hobbled off forward and went below. captain smollett, the squire, and dr. livesey were talking together on the quarter-deck, and anxious as i was to tell them my story, i durst not interrupt them openly. while i was still casting about in my thoughts to find some probable excuse, dr. livesey called me to his side. he had left his pipe below, and being a slave to tobacco, had meant that i should fetch it; but as soon as i was near enough to speak and not to be overheard, i broke immediately, "doctor, let me speak. get the captain and squire down to the cabin, and then make some pretence to send for me. i have terrible news." the doctor changed countenance a little, but next moment he was master of himself. "thank you, jim," said he quite loudly, "that was all i wanted to know," as if he had asked me a question. and with that he turned on his heel and rejoined the other two. they spoke together for a little, and though none of them started, or raised his voice, or so much as whistled, it was plain enough that dr. livesey had communicated my request, for the next thing that i heard was the captain giving an order to job anderson, and all hands were piped on deck. "my lads," said captain smollett, "i've a word to say to you. this land that we have sighted is the place we have been sailing for. mr. trelawney, being a very open-handed gentleman, as we all know, has just asked me a word or two, and as i was able to tell him that every man on board had done his duty, alow and aloft, as i never ask to see it done better, why, he and i and the doctor are going below to the cabin to drink your health and luck, and you'll have grog served out for you to drink our health and luck. i'll tell you what i think of this: i think it handsome. and if you think as i do, you'll give a good sea-cheer for the gentleman that does it." the cheer followed--that was a matter of course; but it rang out so full and hearty that i confess i could hardly believe these same men were plotting for our blood. "one more cheer for cap'n smollett," cried long john when the first had subsided. and this also was given with a will. on the top of that the three gentlemen went below, and not long after, word was sent forward that jim hawkins was wanted in the cabin. i found them all three seated round the table, a bottle of spanish wine and some raisins before them, and the doctor smoking away, with his wig on his lap, and that, i knew, was a sign that he was agitated. the stern window was open, for it was a warm night, and you could see the moon shining behind on the ship's wake. "now, hawkins," said the squire, "you have something to say. speak up." i did as i was bid, and as short as i could make it, told the whole details of silver's conversation. nobody interrupted me till i was done, nor did any one of the three of them make so much as a movement, but they kept their eyes upon my face from first to last. "jim," said dr. livesey, "take a seat." and they made me sit down at table beside them, poured me out a glass of wine, filled my hands with raisins, and all three, one after the other, and each with a bow, drank my good health, and their service to me, for my luck and courage. "now, captain," said the squire, "you were right, and i was wrong. i own myself an ass, and i await your orders." "no more an ass than i, sir," returned the captain. "i never heard of a crew that meant to mutiny but what showed signs before, for any man that had an eye in his head to see the mischief and take steps according. but this crew," he added, "beats me." "captain," said the doctor, "with your permission, that's silver. a very remarkable man." "he'd look remarkably well from a yard-arm, sir," returned the captain. "but this is talk; this don't lead to anything. i see three or four points, and with mr. trelawney's permission, i'll name them." "you, sir, are the captain. it is for you to speak," says mr. trelawney grandly. "first point," began mr. smollett. "we must go on, because we can't turn back. if i gave the word to go about, they would rise at once. second point, we have time before us--at least until this treasure's found. third point, there are faithful hands. now, sir, it's got to come to blows sooner or later, and what i propose is to take time by the forelock, as the saying is, and come to blows some fine day when they least expect it. we can count, i take it, on your own home servants, mr. trelawney?" "as upon myself," declared the squire. "three," reckoned the captain; "ourselves make seven, counting hawkins here. now, about the honest hands?" "most likely trelawney's own men," said the doctor; "those he had picked up for himself before he lit on silver." "nay," replied the squire. "hands was one of mine." "i did think i could have trusted hands," added the captain. "and to think that they're all englishmen!" broke out the squire. "sir, i could find it in my heart to blow the ship up." "well, gentlemen," said the captain, "the best that i can say is not much. we must lay to, if you please, and keep a bright lookout. it's trying on a man, i know. it would be pleasanter to come to blows. but there's no help for it till we know our men. lay to, and whistle for a wind, that's my view." "jim here," said the doctor, "can help us more than anyone. the men are not shy with him, and jim is a noticing lad." "hawkins, i put prodigious faith in you," added the squire. i began to feel pretty desperate at this, for i felt altogether helpless; and yet, by an odd train of circumstances, it was indeed through me that safety came. in the meantime, talk as we pleased, there were only seven out of the twenty-six on whom we knew we could rely; and out of these seven one was a boy, so that the grown men on our side were six to their nineteen. part three my shore adventure 13 how my shore adventure began the appearance of the island when i came on deck next morning was altogether changed. although the breeze had now utterly ceased, we had made a great deal of way during the night and were now lying becalmed about half a mile to the south-east of the low eastern coast. grey-coloured woods covered a large part of the surface. this even tint was indeed broken up by streaks of yellow sand-break in the lower lands, and by many tall trees of the pine family, out-topping the others--some singly, some in clumps; but the general colouring was uniform and sad. the hills ran up clear above the vegetation in spires of naked rock. all were strangely shaped, and the spy-glass, which was by three or four hundred feet the tallest on the island, was likewise the strangest in configuration, running up sheer from almost every side and then suddenly cut off at the top like a pedestal to put a statue on. the hispaniola was rolling scuppers under in the ocean swell. the booms were tearing at the blocks, the rudder was banging to and fro, and the whole ship creaking, groaning, and jumping like a manufactory. i had to cling tight to the backstay, and the world turned giddily before my eyes, for though i was a good enough sailor when there was way on, this standing still and being rolled about like a bottle was a thing i never learned to stand without a qualm or so, above all in the morning, on an empty stomach. perhaps it was this--perhaps it was the look of the island, with its grey, melancholy woods, and wild stone spires, and the surf that we could both see and hear foaming and thundering on the steep beach--at least, although the sun shone bright and hot, and the shore birds were fishing and crying all around us, and you would have thought anyone would have been glad to get to land after being so long at sea, my heart sank, as the saying is, into my boots; and from the first look onward, i hated the very thought of treasure island. we had a dreary morning's work before us, for there was no sign of any wind, and the boats had to be got out and manned, and the ship warped three or four miles round the corner of the island and up the narrow passage to the haven behind skeleton island. i volunteered for one of the boats, where i had, of course, no business. the heat was sweltering, and the men grumbled fiercely over their work. anderson was in command of my boat, and instead of keeping the crew in order, he grumbled as loud as the worst. "well," he said with an oath, "it's not forever." i thought this was a very bad sign, for up to that day the men had gone briskly and willingly about their business; but the very sight of the island had relaxed the cords of discipline. all the way in, long john stood by the steersman and conned the ship. he knew the passage like the palm of his hand, and though the man in the chains got everywhere more water than was down in the chart, john never hesitated once. "there's a strong scour with the ebb," he said, "and this here passage has been dug out, in a manner of speaking, with a spade." we brought up just where the anchor was in the chart, about a third of a mile from each shore, the mainland on one side and skeleton island on the other. the bottom was clean sand. the plunge of our anchor sent up clouds of birds wheeling and crying over the woods, but in less than a minute they were down again and all was once more silent. the place was entirely land-locked, buried in woods, the trees coming right down to high-water mark, the shores mostly flat, and the hilltops standing round at a distance in a sort of amphitheatre, one here, one there. two little rivers, or rather two swamps, emptied out into this pond, as you might call it; and the foliage round that part of the shore had a kind of poisonous brightness. from the ship we could see nothing of the house or stockade, for they were quite buried among trees; and if it had not been for the chart on the companion, we might have been the first that had ever anchored there since the island arose out of the seas. there was not a breath of air moving, nor a sound but that of the surf booming half a mile away along the beaches and against the rocks outside. a peculiar stagnant smell hung over the anchorage--a smell of sodden leaves and rotting tree trunks. i observed the doctor sniffing and sniffing, like someone tasting a bad egg. "i don't know about treasure," he said, "but i'll stake my wig there's fever here." if the conduct of the men had been alarming in the boat, it became truly threatening when they had come aboard. they lay about the deck growling together in talk. the slightest order was received with a black look and grudgingly and carelessly obeyed. even the honest hands must have caught the infection, for there was not one man aboard to mend another. mutiny, it was plain, hung over us like a thunder-cloud. and it was not only we of the cabin party who perceived the danger. long john was hard at work going from group to group, spending himself in good advice, and as for example no man could have shown a better. he fairly outstripped himself in willingness and civility; he was all smiles to everyone. if an order were given, john would be on his crutch in an instant, with the cheeriest "aye, aye, sir!" in the world; and when there was nothing else to do, he kept up one song after another, as if to conceal the discontent of the rest. of all the gloomy features of that gloomy afternoon, this obvious anxiety on the part of long john appeared the worst. we held a council in the cabin. "sir," said the captain, "if i risk another order, the whole ship'll come about our ears by the run. you see, sir, here it is. i get a rough answer, do i not? well, if i speak back, pikes will be going in two shakes; if i don't, silver will see there's something under that, and the game's up. now, we've only one man to rely on." "and who is that?" asked the squire. "silver, sir," returned the captain; "he's as anxious as you and i to smother things up. this is a tiff; he'd soon talk 'em out of it if he had the chance, and what i propose to do is to give him the chance. let's allow the men an afternoon ashore. if they all go, why we'll fight the ship. if they none of them go, well then, we hold the cabin, and god defend the right. if some go, you mark my words, sir, silver'll bring 'em aboard again as mild as lambs." it was so decided; loaded pistols were served out to all the sure men; hunter, joyce, and redruth were taken into our confidence and received the news with less surprise and a better spirit than we had looked for, and then the captain went on deck and addressed the crew. "my lads," said he, "we've had a hot day and are all tired and out of sorts. a turn ashore'll hurt nobody-the boats are still in the water; you can take the gigs, and as many as please may go ashore for the afternoon. i'll fire a gun half an hour before sundown." i believe the silly fellows must have thought they would break their shins over treasure as soon as they were landed, for they all came out of their sulks in a moment and gave a cheer that started the echo in a faraway hill and sent the birds once more flying and squalling round the anchorage. the captain was too bright to be in the way. he whipped out of sight in a moment, leaving silver to arrange the party, and i fancy it was as well he did so. had he been on deck, he could no longer so much as have pretended not to understand the situation. it was as plain as day. silver was the captain, and a mighty rebellious crew he had of it. the honest hands--and i was soon to see it proved that there were such on board--must have been very stupid fellows. or rather, i suppose the truth was this, that all hands were disaffected by the example of the ringleaders--only some more, some less; and a few, being good fellows in the main, could neither be led nor driven any further. it is one thing to be idle and skulk and quite another to take a ship and murder a number of innocent men. at last, however, the party was made up. six fellows were to stay on board, and the remaining thirteen, including silver, began to embark. then it was that there came into my head the first of the mad notions that contributed so much to save our lives. if six men were left by silver, it was plain our party could not take and fight the ship; and since only six were left, it was equally plain that the cabin party had no present need of my assistance. it occurred to me at once to go ashore. in a jiffy i had slipped over the side and curled up in the fore-sheets of the nearest boat, and almost at the same moment she shoved off. no one took notice of me, only the bow oar saying, "is that you, jim? keep your head down." but silver, from the other boat, looked sharply over and called out to know if that were me; and from that moment i began to regret what i had done. the crews raced for the beach, but the boat i was in, having some start and being at once the lighter and the better manned, shot far ahead of her consort, and the bow had struck among the shore-side trees and i had caught a branch and swung myself out and plunged into the nearest thicket while silver and the rest were still a hundred yards behind. "jim, jim!" i heard him shouting. but you may suppose i paid no heed; jumping, ducking, and breaking through, i ran straight before my nose till i could run no longer. 14 the first blow i was so pleased at having given the slip to long john that i began to enjoy myself and look around me with some interest on the strange land that i was in. i had crossed a marshy tract full of willows, bulrushes, and odd, outlandish, swampy trees; and i had now come out upon the skirts of an open piece of undulating, sandy country, about a mile long, dotted with a few pines and a great number of contorted trees, not unlike the oak in growth, but pale in the foliage, like willows. on the far side of the open stood one of the hills, with two quaint, craggy peaks shining vividly in the sun. i now felt for the first time the joy of exploration. the isle was uninhabited; my shipmates i had left behind, and nothing lived in front of me but dumb brutes and fowls. i turned hither and thither among the trees. here and there were flowering plants, unknown to me; here and there i saw snakes, and one raised his head from a ledge of rock and hissed at me with a noise not unlike the spinning of a top. little did i suppose that he was a deadly enemy and that the noise was the famous rattle. then i came to a long thicket of these oaklike trees-live, or evergreen, oaks, i heard afterwards they should be called--which grew low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch. the thicket stretched down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until it reached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. the marsh was steaming in the strong sun, and the outline of the spy-glass trembled through the haze. all at once there began to go a sort of bustle among the bulrushes; a wild duck flew up with a quack, another followed, and soon over the whole surface of the marsh a great cloud of birds hung screaming and circling in the air. i judged at once that some of my shipmates must be drawing near along the borders of the fen. nor was i deceived, for soon i heard the very distant and low tones of a human voice, which, as i continued to give ear, grew steadily louder and nearer. this put me in a great fear, and i crawled under cover of the nearest live-oak and squatted there, hearkening, as silent as a mouse. another voice answered, and then the first voice, which i now recognized to be silver's, once more took up the story and ran on for a long while in a stream, only now and again interrupted by the other. by the sound they must have been talking earnestly, and almost fiercely; but no distinct word came to my hearing. at last the speakers seemed to have paused and perhaps to have sat down, for not only did they cease to draw any nearer, but the birds themselves began to grow more quiet and to settle again to their places in the swamp. and now i began to feel that i was neglecting my business, that since i had been so foolhardy as to come ashore with these desperadoes, the least i could do was to overhear them at their councils, and that my plain and obvious duty was to draw as close as i could manage, under the favourable ambush of the crouching trees. i could tell the direction of the speakers pretty exactly, not only by the sound of their voices but by the behaviour of the few birds that still hung in alarm above the heads of the intruders. crawling on all fours, i made steadily but slowly towards them, till at last, raising my head to an aperture among the leaves, i could see clear down into a little green dell beside the marsh, and closely set about with trees, where long john silver and another of the crew stood face to face in conversation. the sun beat full upon them. silver had thrown his hat beside him on the ground, and his great, smooth, blond face, all shining with heat, was lifted to the other man's in a kind of appeal. "mate," he was saying, "it's because i thinks gold dust of you--gold dust, and you may lay to that! if i hadn't took to you like pitch, do you think i'd have been here a-warning of you? all's up--you can't make nor mend; it's to save your neck that i'm a-speaking, and if one of the wild uns knew it, where'd i be, tom-now, tell me, where'd i be?" "silver," said the other man--and i observed he was not only red in the face, but spoke as hoarse as a crow, and his voice shook too, like a taut rope--"silver," says he, "you're old, and you're honest, or has the name for it; and you've money too, which lots of poor sailors hasn't; and you're brave, or i'm mistook. and will you tell me you'll let yourself be led away with that kind of a mess of swabs? not you! as sure as god sees me, i'd sooner lose my hand. if i turn agin my dooty--" and then all of a sudden he was interrupted by a noise. i had found one of the honest hands--well, here, at that same moment, came news of another. far away out in the marsh there arose, all of a sudden, a sound like the cry of anger, then another on the back of it; and then one horrid, long-drawn scream. the rocks of the spy-glass re-echoed it a score of times; the whole troop of marsh-birds rose again, darkening heaven, with a simultaneous whirr; and long after that death yell was still ringing in my brain, silence had reestablished its empire, and only the rustle of the redescending birds and the boom of the distant surges disturbed the languor of the afternoon. tom had leaped at the sound, like a horse at the spur, but silver had not winked an eye. he stood where he was, resting lightly on his crutch, watching his companion like a snake about to spring. "john!" said the sailor, stretching out his hand. "hands off!" cried silver, leaping back a yard, as it seemed to me, with the speed and security of a trained gymnast. "hands off, if you like, john silver," said the other. "it's a black conscience that can make you feared of me. but in heaven's name, tell me, what was that?" "that?" returned silver, smiling away, but warier than ever, his eye a mere pin-point in his big face, but gleaming like a crumb of glass. "that?" oh, i reckon that'll be alan." and at this point tom flashed out like a hero. "alan!" he cried. "then rest his soul for a true seaman! and as for you, john silver, long you've been a mate of mine, but you're mate of mine no more. if i die like a dog, i'll die in my dooty. you've killed alan, have you? kill me too, if you can. but i defies you." and with that, this brave fellow turned his back directly on the cook and set off walking for the beach. but he was not destined to go far. with a cry john seized the branch of a tree, whipped the crutch out of his armpit, and sent that uncouth missile hurtling through the air. it struck poor tom, point foremost, and with stunning violence, right between the shoulders in the middle of his back. his hands flew up, he gave a sort of gasp, and fell. whether he were injured much or little, none could ever tell. like enough, to judge from the sound, his back was broken on the spot. but he had no time given him to recover. silver, agile as a monkey even without leg or crutch, was on the top of him next moment and had twice buried his knife up to the hilt in that defenceless body. from my place of ambush, i could hear him pant aloud as he struck the blows. i do not know what it rightly is to faint, but i do know that for the next little while the whole world swam away from before me in a whirling mist; silver and the birds, and the tall spy-glass hilltop, going round and round and topsy-turvy before my eyes, and all manner of bells ringing and distant voices shouting in my ear. when i came again to myself the monster had pulled himself together, his crutch under his arm, his hat upon his head. just before him tom lay motionless upon the sward; but the murderer minded him not a whit, cleansing his blood-stained knife the while upon a wisp of grass. everything else was unchanged, the sun still shining mercilessly on the steaming marsh and the tall pinnacle of the mountain, and i could scarce persuade myself that murder had been actually done and a human life cruelly cut short a moment since before my eyes. but now john put his hand into his pocket, brought out a whistle, and blew upon it several modulated blasts that rang far across the heated air. i could not tell, of course, the meaning of the signal, but it instantly awoke my fears. more men would be coming. i might be discovered. they had already slain two of the honest people; after tom and alan, might not i come next? instantly i began to extricate myself and crawl back again, with what speed and silence i could manage, to the more open portion of the wood. as i did so, i could hear hails coming and going between the old buccaneer and his comrades, and this sound of danger lent me wings. as soon as i was clear of the thicket, i ran as i never ran before, scarce minding the direction of my flight, so long as it led me from the murderers; and as i ran, fear grew and grew upon me until it turned into a kind of frenzy. indeed, could anyone be more entirely lost than i? when the gun fired, how should i dare to go down to the boats among those fiends, still smoking from their crime? would not the first of them who saw me wring my neck like a snipe's? would not my absence itself be an evidence to them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? it was all over, i thought. good-bye to the hispaniola; good-bye to the squire, the doctor, and the captain! there was nothing left for me but death by starvation or death by the hands of the mutineers. all this while, as i say, i was still running, and without taking any notice, i had drawn near to the foot of the little hill with the two peaks and had got into a part of the island where the live-oaks grew more widely apart and seemed more like forest trees in their bearing and dimensions. mingled with these were a few scattered pines, some fifty, some nearer seventy, feet high. the air too smelt more freshly than down beside the marsh. and here a fresh alarm brought me to a standstill with a thumping heart. 15 the man of the island from the side of the hill, which was here steep and stony, a spout of gravel was dislodged and fell rattling and bounding through the trees. my eyes turned instinctively in that direction, and i saw a figure leap with great rapidity behind the trunk of a pine. what it was, whether bear or man or monkey, i could in no wise tell. it seemed dark and shaggy; more i knew not. but the terror of this new apparition brought me to a stand. i was now, it seemed, cut off upon both sides; behind me the murderers, before me this lurking nondescript. and immediately i began to prefer the dangers that i knew to those i knew not. silver himself appeared less terrible in contrast with this creature of the woods, and i turned on my heel, and looking sharply behind me over my shoulder, began to retrace my steps in the direction of the boats. instantly the figure reappeared, and making a wide circuit, began to head me off. i was tired, at any rate; but had i been as fresh as when i rose, i could see it was in vain for me to contend in speed with such an adversary. from trunk to trunk the creature flitted like a deer, running manlike on two legs, but unlike any man that i had ever seen, stooping almost double as it ran. yet a man it was, i could no longer be in doubt about that. i began to recall what i had heard of cannibals. i was within an ace of calling for help. but the mere fact that he was a man, however wild, had somewhat reassured me, and my fear of silver began to revive in proportion. i stood still, therefore, and cast about for some method of escape; and as i was so thinking, the recollection of my pistol flashed into my mind. as soon as i remembered i was not defenceless, courage glowed again in my heart and i set my face resolutely for this man of the island and walked briskly towards him. he was concealed by this time behind another tree trunk; but he must have been watching me closely, for as soon as i began to move in his direction he reappeared and took a step to meet me. then he hesitated, drew back, came forward again, and at last, to my wonder and confusion, threw himself on his knees and held out his clasped hands in supplication. at that i once more stopped. "who are you?" i asked. "ben gunn," he answered, and his voice sounded hoarse and awkward, like a rusty lock. "i'm poor ben gunn, i am; and i haven't spoke with a christian these three years." i could now see that he was a white man like myself and that his features were even pleasing. his skin, wherever it was exposed, was burnt by the sun; even his lips were black, and his fair eyes looked quite startling in so dark a face. of all the beggar-men that i had seen or fancied, he was the chief for raggedness. he was clothed with tatters of old ship's canvas and old sea-cloth, and this extraordinary patchwork was all held together by a system of the most various and incongruous fastenings, brass buttons, bits of stick, and loops of tarry gaskin. about his waist he wore an old brass-buckled leather belt, which was the one thing solid in his whole accoutrement. "three years!" i cried. "were you shipwrecked?" "nay, mate," said he; "marooned." i had heard the word, and i knew it stood for a horrible kind of punishment common enough among the buccaneers, in which the offender is put ashore with a little powder and shot and left behind on some desolate and distant island. "marooned three years agone," he continued, "and lived on goats since then, and berries, and oysters. wherever a man is, says i, a man can do for himself. but, mate, my heart is sore for christian diet. you mightn't happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? no? well, many's the long night i've dreamed of cheese--toasted, mostly--and woke up again, and here i were." "if ever i can get aboard again," said i, "you shall have cheese by the stone." all this time he had been feeling the stuff of my jacket, smoothing my hands, looking at my boots, and generally, in the intervals of his speech, showing a childish pleasure in the presence of a fellow creature. but at my last words he perked up into a kind of startled slyness. "if ever you can get aboard again, says you?" he repeated. "why, now, who's to hinder you?" "not you, i know," was my reply. "and right you was," he cried. "now you--what do you call yourself, mate?" "jim," i told him. "jim, jim," says he, quite pleased apparently. "well, now, jim, i've lived that rough as you'd be ashamed to hear of. now, for instance, you wouldn't think i had had a pious mother--to look at me?" he asked. "why, no, not in particular," i answered. "ah, well," said he, "but i had--remarkable pious. and i was a civil, pious boy, and could rattle off my catechism that fast, as you couldn't tell one word from another. and here's what it come to, jim, and it begun with chuck-farthen on the blessed grave-stones! that's what it begun with, but it went further'n that; and so my mother told me, and predicked the whole, she did, the pious woman! but it were providence that put me here. i've thought it all out in this here lonely island, and i'm back on piety. you don't catch me tasting rum so much, but just a thimbleful for luck, of course, the first chance i have. i'm bound i'll be good, and i see the way to. and, jim"--looking all round him and lowering his voice to a whisper--"i'm rich." i now felt sure that the poor fellow had gone crazy in his solitude, and i suppose i must have shown the feeling in my face, for he repeated the statement hotly: "rich! rich! i says. and i'll tell you what: i'll make a man of you, jim. ah, jim, you'll bless your stars, you will, you was the first that found me!" and at this there came suddenly a lowering shadow over his face, and he tightened his grasp upon my hand and raised a forefinger threateningly before my eyes. "now, jim, you tell me true: that ain't flint's ship?" he asked. at this i had a happy inspiration. i began to believe that i had found an ally, and i answered him at once. "it's not flint's ship, and flint is dead; but i'll tell you true, as you ask me--there are some of flint's hands aboard; worse luck for the rest of us." "not a man--with one--leg?" he gasped. "silver?" i asked. "ah, silver!" says he. "that were his name." "he's the cook, and the ringleader too." he was still holding me by the wrist, and at that he give it quite a wring. "if you was sent by long john," he said, "i'm as good as pork, and i know it. but where was you, do you suppose?" i had made my mind up in a moment, and by way of answer told him the whole story of our voyage and the predicament in which we found ourselves. he heard me with the keenest interest, and when i had done he patted me on the head. "you're a good lad, jim," he said; "and you're all in a clove hitch, ain't you? well, you just put your trust in ben gunn--ben gunn's the man to do it. would you think it likely, now, that your squire would prove a liberal-minded one in case of help--him being in a clove hitch, as you remark?" i told him the squire was the most liberal of men. "aye, but you see," returned ben gunn, "i didn't mean giving me a gate to keep, and a suit of livery clothes, and such; that's not my mark, jim. what i mean is, would he be likely to come down to the toon of, say one thousand pounds out of money that's as good as a man's own already?" "i am sure he would," said i. "as it was, all hands were to share." "and a passage home?" he added with a look of great shrewdness. "why," i cried, "the squire's a gentleman. and besides, if we got rid of the others, we should want you to help work the vessel home." "ah," said he, "so you would." and he seemed very much relieved. "now, i'll tell you what," he went on. "so much i'll tell you, and no more. i were in flint's ship when he buried the treasure; he and six along--six strong seamen. they was ashore nigh on a week, and us standing off and on in the old walrus. one fine day up went the signal, and here come flint by himself in a little boat, and his head done up in a blue scarf. the sun was getting up, and mortal white he looked about the cutwater. but, there he was, you mind, and the six all dead--dead and buried. how he done it, not a man aboard us could make out. it was battle, murder, and sudden death, leastways--him against six. billy bones was the mate; long john, he was quartermaster; and they asked him where the treasure was. 'ah,' says he, 'you can go ashore, if you like, and stay,' he says; 'but as for the ship, she'll beat up for more, by thunder!' that's what he said. "well, i was in another ship three years back, and we sighted this island. 'boys,' said i, 'here's flint's treasure; let's land and find it.' the cap'n was displeased at that, but my messmates were all of a mind and landed. twelve days they looked for it, and every day they had the worse word for me, until one fine morning all hands went aboard. 'as for you, benjamin gunn,' says they, 'here's a musket,' they says, 'and a spade, and pick-axe. you can stay here and find flint's money for yourself,' they says. "well, jim, three years have i been here, and not a bite of christian diet from that day to this. but now, you look here; look at me. do i look like a man before the mast? no, says you. nor i weren't, neither, i says." and with that he winked and pinched me hard. "just you mention them words to your squire, jim," he went on. "nor he weren't, neither--that's the words. three years he were the man of this island, light and dark, fair and rain; and sometimes he would maybe think upon a prayer (says you), and sometimes he would maybe think of his old mother, so be as she's alive (you'll say); but the most part of gunn's time (this is what you'll say)--the most part of his time was took up with another matter. and then you'll give him a nip, like i do." and he pinched me again in the most confidential manner. "then," he continued, "then you'll up, and you'll say this: gunn is a good man (you'll say), and he puts a precious sight more confidence--a precious sight, mind that--in a gen'leman born than in these gen'leman of fortune, having been one hisself." "well," i said, "i don't understand one word that you've been saying. but that's neither here nor there; for how am i to get on board?" "ah," said he, "that's the hitch, for sure. well, there's my boat, that i made with my two hands. i keep her under the white rock. if the worst come to the worst, we might try that after dark. hi!" he broke out. "what's that?" for just then, although the sun had still an hour or two to run, all the echoes of the island awoke and bellowed to the thunder of a cannon. "they have begun to fight!" i cried. "follow me." and i began to run towards the anchorage, my terrors all forgotten, while close at my side the marooned man in his goatskins trotted easily and lightly. "left, left," says he; "keep to your left hand, mate jim! under the trees with you! theer's where i killed my first goat. they don't come down here now; they're all mastheaded on them mountings for the fear of benjamin gunn. ah! and there's the cetemery"-cemetery, he must have meant. "you see the mounds? i come here and prayed, nows and thens, when i thought maybe a sunday would be about doo. it weren't quite a chapel, but it seemed more solemn like; and then, says you, ben gunn was short-handed--no chapling, nor so much as a bible and a flag, you says." so he kept talking as i ran, neither expecting nor receiving any answer. the cannon-shot was followed after a considerable interval by a volley of small arms. another pause, and then, not a quarter of a mile in front of me, i beheld the union jack flutter in the air above a wood. part four the stockade 16 narrative continued by the doctor: how the ship was abandoned it was about half past one--three bells in the sea phrase--that the two boats went ashore from the hispaniola. the captain, the squire, and i were talking matters over in the cabin. had there been a breath of wind, we should have fallen on the six mutineers who were left aboard with us, slipped our cable, and away to sea. but the wind was wanting; and to complete our helplessness, down came hunter with the news that jim hawkins had slipped into a boat and was gone ashore with the rest. it never occurred to us to doubt jim hawkins, but we were alarmed for his safety. with the men in the temper they were in, it seemed an even chance if we should see the lad again. we ran on deck. the pitch was bubbling in the seams; the nasty stench of the place turned me sick; if ever a man smelt fever and dysentery, it was in that abominable anchorage. the six scoundrels were sitting grumbling under a sail in the forecastle; ashore we could see the gigs made fast and a man sitting in each, hard by where the river runs in. one of them was whistling "lillibullero." waiting was a strain, and it was decided that hunter and i should go ashore with the jolly-boat in quest of information. the gigs had leaned to their right, but hunter and i pulled straight in, in the direction of the stockade upon the chart. the two who were left guarding their boats seemed in a bustle at our appearance; "lillibullero" stopped off, and i could see the pair discussing what they ought to do. had they gone and told silver, all might have turned out differently; but they had their orders, i suppose, and decided to sit quietly where they were and hark back again to "lillibullero." there was a slight bend in the coast, and i steered so as to put it between us; even before we landed we had thus lost sight of the gigs. i jumped out and came as near running as i durst, with a big silk handkerchief under my hat for coolness' sake and a brace of pistols ready primed for safety. i had not gone a hundred yards when i reached the stockade. this was how it was: a spring of clear water rose almost at the top of a knoll. well, on the knoll, and enclosing the spring, they had clapped a stout loghouse fit to hold two score of people on a pinch and loopholed for musketry on either side. all round this they had cleared a wide space, and then the thing was completed by a paling six feet high, without door or opening, too strong to pull down without time and labour and too open to shelter the besiegers. the people in the log-house had them in every way; they stood quiet in shelter and shot the others like partridges. all they wanted was a good watch and food; for, short of a complete surprise, they might have held the place against a regiment. what particularly took my fancy was the spring. for though we had a good enough place of it in the cabin of the hispaniola, with plenty of arms and ammunition, and things to eat, and excellent wines, there had been one thing overlooked--we had no water. i was thinking this over when there came ringing over the island the cry of a man at the point of death. i was not new to violent death--i have served his royal highness the duke of cumberland, and got a wound myself at fontenoy-but i know my pulse went dot and carry one. "jim hawkins is gone," was my first thought. it is something to have been an old soldier, but more still to have been a doctor. there is no time to dilly-dally in our work. and so now i made up my mind instantly, and with no time lost returned to the shore and jumped on board the jolly-boat. by good fortune hunter pulled a good oar. we made the water fly, and the boat was soon alongside and i aboard the schooner. i found them all shaken, as was natural. the squire was sitting down, as white as a sheet, thinking of the harm he had led us to, the good soul! and one of the six forecastle hands was little better. "there's a man," says captain smollett, nodding towards him, "new to this work. he came nigh-hand fainting, doctor, when he heard the cry. another touch of the rudder and that man would join us." i told my plan to the captain, and between us we settled on the details of its accomplishment. we put old redruth in the gallery between the cabin and the forecastle, with three or four loaded muskets and a mattress for protection. hunter brought the boat round under the stern-port, and joyce and i set to work loading her with powder tins, muskets, bags of biscuits, kegs of pork, a cask of cognac, and my invaluable medicine chest. in the meantime, the squire and the captain stayed on deck, and the latter hailed the coxswain, who was the principal man aboard. "mr. hands," he said, "here are two of us with a brace of pistols each. if any one of you six make a signal of any description, that man's dead." they were a good deal taken aback, and after a little consultation one and all tumbled down the fore companion, thinking no doubt to take us on the rear. but when they saw redruth waiting for them in the sparred galley, they went about ship at once, and a head popped out again on deck. "down, dog!" cries the captain. and the head popped back again; and we heard no more, for the time, of these six very faint-hearted seamen. by this time, tumbling things in as they came, we had the jolly-boat loaded as much as we dared. joyce and i got out through the stern-port, and we made for shore again as fast as oars could take us. this second trip fairly aroused the watchers along shore. "lillibullero" was dropped again; and just before we lost sight of them behind the little point, one of them whipped ashore and disappeared. i had half a mind to change my plan and destroy their boats, but i feared that silver and the others might be close at hand, and all might very well be lost by trying for too much. we had soon touched land in the same place as before and set to provision the block house. all three made the first journey, heavily laden, and tossed our stores over the palisade. then, leaving joyce to guard them--one man, to be sure, but with half a dozen muskets-hunter and i returned to the jolly-boat and loaded ourselves once more. so we proceeded without pausing to take breath, till the whole cargo was bestowed, when the two servants took up their position in the block house, and i, with all my power, sculled back to the hispaniola. that we should have risked a second boat load seems more daring than it really was. they had the advantage of numbers, of course, but we had the advantage of arms. not one of the men ashore had a musket, and before they could get within range for pistol shooting, we flattered ourselves we should be able to give a good account of a half-dozen at least. the squire was waiting for me at the stern window, all his faintness gone from him. he caught the painter and made it fast, and we fell to loading the boat for our very lives. pork, powder, and biscuit was the cargo, with only a musket and a cutlass apiece for the squire and me and redruth and the captain. the rest of the arms and powder we dropped overboard in two fathoms and a half of water, so that we could see the bright steel shining far below us in the sun, on the clean, sandy bottom. by this time the tide was beginning to ebb, and the ship was swinging round to her anchor. voices were heard faintly halloaing in the direction of the two gigs; and though this reassured us for joyce and hunter, who were well to the eastward, it warned our party to be off. redruth retreated from his place in the gallery and dropped into the boat, which we then brought round to the ship's counter, to be handier for captain smollett. "now, men," said he, "do you hear me?" there was no answer from the forecastle. "it's to you, abraham gray--it's to you i am speaking." still no reply. "gray," resumed mr. smollett, a little louder, "i am leaving this ship, and i order you to follow your captain. i know you are a good man at bottom, and i dare say not one of the lot of you's as bad as he makes out. i have my watch here in my hand; i give you thirty seconds to join me in." there was a pause. "come, my fine fellow," continued the captain; "don't hang so long in stays. i'm risking my life and the lives of these good gentlemen every second." there was a sudden scuffle, a sound of blows, and out burst abraham gray with a knife cut on the side of the cheek, and came running to the captain like a dog to the whistle. "i'm with you, sir," said he. and the next moment he and the captain had dropped aboard of us, and we had shoved off and given way. we were clear out of the ship, but not yet ashore in our stockade. 17 narrative continued by the doctor: the jolly-boat's last trip this fifth trip was quite different from any of the others. in the first place, the little gallipot of a boat that we were in was gravely overloaded. five grown men, and three of them--trelawney, redruth, and the captain--over six feet high, was already more than she was meant to carry. add to that the powder, pork, and bread-bags. the gunwale was lipping astern. several times we shipped a little water, and my breeches and the tails of my coat were all soaking wet before we had gone a hundred yards. the captain made us trim the boat, and we got her to lie a little more evenly. all the same, we were afraid to breathe. in the second place, the ebb was now making--a strong rippling current running westward through the basin, and then south'ard and seaward down the straits by which we had entered in the morning. even the ripples were a danger to our overloaded craft, but the worst of it was that we were swept out of our true course and away from our proper landing-place behind the point. if we let the current have its way we should come ashore beside the gigs, where the pirates might appear at any moment. "i cannot keep her head for the stockade, sir," said i to the captain. i was steering, while he and redruth, two fresh men, were at the oars. "the tide keeps washing her down. could you pull a little stronger?" "not without swamping the boat," said he. "you must bear up, sir, if you please--bear up until you see you're gaining." i tried and found by experiment that the tide kept sweeping us westward until i had laid her head due east, or just about right angles to the way we ought to go. "we'll never get ashore at this rate," said i. "if it's the only course that we can lie, sir, we must even lie it," returned the captain. "we must keep upstream. you see, sir," he went on, "if once we dropped to leeward of the landing-place, it's hard to say where we should get ashore, besides the chance of being boarded by the gigs; whereas, the way we go the current must slacken, and then we can dodge back along the shore." "the current's less a'ready, sir," said the man gray, who was sitting in the fore-sheets; "you can ease her off a bit." "thank you, my man," said i, quite as if nothing had happened, for we had all quietly made up our minds to treat him like one of ourselves. suddenly the captain spoke up again, and i thought his voice was a little changed. "the gun!" said he. "i have thought of that," said i, for i made sure he was thinking of a bombardment of the fort. "they could never get the gun ashore, and if they did, they could never haul it through the woods." "look astern, doctor," replied the captain. we had entirely forgotten the long nine; and there, to our horror, were the five rogues busy about her, getting off her jacket, as they called the stout tarpaulin cover under which she sailed. not only that, but it flashed into my mind at the same moment that the round-shot and the powder for the gun had been left behind, and a stroke with an axe would put it all into the possession of the evil ones abroad. "israel was flint's gunner," said gray hoarsely. at any risk, we put the boat's head direct for the landing-place. by this time we had got so far out of the run of the current that we kept steerage way even at our necessarily gentle rate of rowing, and i could keep her steady for the goal. but the worst of it was that with the course i now held we turned our broadside instead of our stern to the hispaniola and offered a target like a barn door. i could hear as well as see that brandy-faced rascal israel hands plumping down a round-shot on the deck. "who's the best shot?" asked the captain. "mr. trelawney, out and away," said i. "mr. trelawney, will you please pick me off one of these men, sir? hands, if possible," said the captain. trelawney was as cool as steel. he looked to the priming of his gun. "now," cried the captain, "easy with that gun, sir, or you'll swamp the boat. all hands stand by to trim her when he aims." the squire raised his gun, the rowing ceased, and we leaned over to the other side to keep the balance, and all was so nicely contrived that we did not ship a drop. they had the gun, by this time, slewed round upon the swivel, and hands, who was at the muzzle with the rammer, was in consequence the most exposed. however, we had no luck, for just as trelawney fired, down he stooped, the ball whistled over him, and it was one of the other four who fell. the cry he gave was echoed not only by his companions on board but by a great number of voices from the shore, and looking in that direction i saw the other pirates trooping out from among the trees and tumbling into their places in the boats. "here come the gigs, sir," said i. "give way, then," cried the captain. "we mustn't mind if we swamp her now. if we can't get ashore, all's up." "only one of the gigs is being manned, sir," i added; "the crew of the other most likely going round by shore to cut us off." "they'll have a hot run, sir," returned the captain. "jack ashore, you know. it's not them i mind; it's the round-shot. carpet bowls! my lady's maid couldn't miss. tell us, squire, when you see the match, and we'll hold water." in the meanwhile we had been making headway at a good pace for a boat so overloaded, and we had shipped but little water in the process. we were now close in; thirty or forty strokes and we should beach her, for the ebb had already disclosed a narrow belt of sand below the clustering trees. the gig was no longer to be feared; the little point had already concealed it from our eyes. the ebb-tide, which had so cruelly delayed us, was now making reparation and delaying our assailants. the one source of danger was the gun. "if i durst," said the captain, "i'd stop and pick off another man." but it was plain that they meant nothing should delay their shot. they had never so much as looked at their fallen comrade, though he was not dead, and i could see him trying to crawl away. "ready!" cried the squire. "hold!" cried the captain, quick as an echo. and he and redruth backed with a great heave that sent her stern bodily under water. the report fell in at the same instant of time. this was the first that jim heard, the sound of the squire's shot not having reached him. where the ball passed, not one of us precisely knew, but i fancy it must have been over our heads and that the wind of it may have contributed to our disaster. at any rate, the boat sank by the stern, quite gently, in three feet of water, leaving the captain and myself, facing each other, on our feet. the other three took complete headers, and came up again drenched and bubbling. so far there was no great harm. no lives were lost, and we could wade ashore in safety. but there were all our stores at the bottom, and to make things worse, only two guns out of five remained in a state for service. mine i had snatched from my knees and held over my head, by a sort of instinct. as for the captain, he had carried his over his shoulder by a bandoleer, and like a wise man, lock uppermost. the other three had gone down with the boat. to add to our concern, we heard voices already drawing near us in the woods along shore, and we had not only the danger of being cut off from the stockade in our half-crippled state but the fear before us whether, if hunter and joyce were attacked by half a dozen, they would have the sense and conduct to stand firm. hunter was steady, that we knew; joyce was a doubtful case--a pleasant, polite man for a valet and to brush one's clothes, but not entirely fitted for a man of war. with all this in our minds, we waded ashore as fast as we could, leaving behind us the poor jolly-boat and a good half of all our powder and provisions. 18 narrative continued by the doctor: end of the first day's fighting we made our best speed across the strip of wood that now divided us from the stockade, and at every step we took the voices of the buccaneers rang nearer. soon we could hear their footfalls as they ran and the cracking of the branches as they breasted across a bit of thicket. i began to see we should have a brush for it in earnest and looked to my priming. "captain," said i, "trelawney is the dead shot. give him your gun; his own is useless." they exchanged guns, and trelawney, silent and cool as he had been since the beginning of the bustle, hung a moment on his heel to see that all was fit for service. at the same time, observing gray to be unarmed, i handed him my cutlass. it did all our hearts good to see him spit in his hand, knit his brows, and make the blade sing through the air. it was plain from every line of his body that our new hand was worth his salt. forty paces farther we came to the edge of the wood and saw the stockade in front of us. we struck the enclosure about the middle of the south side, and almost at the same time, seven mutineers--job anderson, the boatswain, at their head--appeared in full cry at the southwestern corner. they paused as if taken aback, and before they recovered, not only the squire and i, but hunter and joyce from the block house, had time to fire. the four shots came in rather a scattering volley, but they did the business: one of the enemy actually fell, and the rest, without hesitation, turned and plunged into the trees. after reloading, we walked down the outside of the palisade to see to the fallen enemy. he was stone dead--shot through the heart. we began to rejoice over our good success when just at that moment a pistol cracked in the bush, a ball whistled close past my ear, and poor tom redruth stumbled and fell his length on the ground. both the squire and i returned the shot, but as we had nothing to aim at, it is probable we only wasted powder. then we reloaded and turned our attention to poor tom. the captain and gray were already examining him, and i saw with half an eye that all was over. i believe the readiness of our return volley had scattered the mutineers once more, for we were suffered without further molestation to get the poor old gamekeeper hoisted over the stockade and carried, groaning and bleeding, into the log-house. poor old fellow, he had not uttered one word of surprise, complaint, fear, or even acquiescence from the very beginning of our troubles till now, when we had laid him down in the log-house to die. he had lain like a trojan behind his mattress in the gallery; he had followed every order silently, doggedly, and well; he was the oldest of our party by a score of years; and now, sullen, old, serviceable servant, it was he that was to die. the squire dropped down beside him on his knees and kissed his hand, crying like a child. "be i going, doctor?" he asked. "tom, my man," said i, "you're going home." "i wish i had had a lick at them with the gun first," he replied. "tom," said the squire, "say you forgive me, won't you?" "would that be respectful like, from me to you, squire?" was the answer. "howsoever, so be it, amen!" after a little while of silence, he said he thought somebody might read a prayer. "it's the custom, sir," he added apologetically. and not long after, without another word, he passed away. in the meantime the captain, whom i had observed to be wonderfully swollen about the chest and pockets, had turned out a great many various stores--the british colours, a bible, a coil of stoutish rope, pen, ink, the log-book, and pounds of tobacco. he had found a longish fir-tree lying felled and trimmed in the enclosure, and with the help of hunter he had set it up at the corner of the log-house where the trunks crossed and made an angle. then, climbing on the roof, he had with his own hand bent and run up the colours. this seemed mightily to relieve him. he re-entered the log-house and set about counting up the stores as if nothing else existed. but he had an eye on tom's passage for all that, and as soon as all was over, came forward with another flag and reverently spread it on the body. "don't you take on, sir," he said, shaking the squire's hand. "all's well with him; no fear for a hand that's been shot down in his duty to captain and owner. it mayn't be good divinity, but it's a fact." then he pulled me aside. "dr. livesey," he said, "in how many weeks do you and squire expect the consort?" i told him it was a question not of weeks but of months, that if we were not back by the end of august blandly was to send to find us, but neither sooner nor later. "you can calculate for yourself," i said. "why, yes," returned the captain, scratching his head; "and making a large allowance, sir, for all the gifts of providence, i should say we were pretty close hauled." "how do you mean?" i asked. "it's a pity, sir, we lost that second load. that's what i mean," replied the captain. "as for powder and shot, we'll do. but the rations are short, very short-so short, dr. livesey, that we're perhaps as well without that extra mouth." and he pointed to the dead body under the flag. just then, with a roar and a whistle, a round-shot passed high above the roof of the log-house and plumped far beyond us in the wood. "oho!" said the captain. "blaze away! you've little enough powder already, my lads." at the second trial, the aim was better, and the ball descended inside the stockade, scattering a cloud of sand but doing no further damage. "captain," said the squire, "the house is quite invisible from the ship. it must be the flag they are aiming at. would it not be wiser to take it in?" "strike my colours!" cried the captain. "no, sir, not i"; and as soon as he had said the words, i think we all agreed with him. for it was not only a piece of stout, seamanly, good feeling; it was good policy besides and showed our enemies that we despised their cannonade. all through the evening they kept thundering away. ball after ball flew over or fell short or kicked up the sand in the enclosure, but they had to fire so high that the shot fell dead and buried itself in the soft sand. we had no ricochet to fear, and though one popped in through the roof of the log-house and out again through the floor, we soon got used to that sort of horse-play and minded it no more than cricket. "there is one good thing about all this," observed the captain; "the wood in front of us is likely clear. the ebb has made a good while; our stores should be uncovered. volunteers to go and bring in pork. gray and hunter were the first to come forward. well armed, they stole out of the stockade, but it proved a useless mission. the mutineers were bolder than we fancied or they put more trust in israel's gunnery. for four or five of them were busy carrying off our stores and wading out with them to one of the gigs that lay close by, pulling an oar or so to hold her steady against the current. silver was in the stern-sheets in command; and every man of them was now provided with a musket from some secret magazine of their own. the captain sat down to his log, and here is the beginning of the entry: alexander smollett, master; david livesey, ship's doctor; abraham gray, carpenter's mate; john trelawney, owner; john hunter and richard joyce, owner's servants, landsmen--being all that is left faithful of the ship's company--with stores for ten days at short rations, came ashore this day and flew british colours on the log-house in treasure island. thomas redruth, owner's servant, landsman, shot by the mutineers; james hawkins, cabin-boy-and at the same time, i was wondering over poor jim hawkins' fate. a hail on the land side. "somebody hailing us," said hunter, who was on guard. "doctor! squire! captain! hullo, hunter, is that you?" came the cries. and i ran to the door in time to see jim hawkins, safe and sound, come climbing over the stockade. 19 narrative resumed by jim hawkins: the garrison in the stockade as soon as ben gunn saw the colours he came to a halt, stopped me by the arm, and sat down. "now," said he, "there's your friends, sure enough." "far more likely it's the mutineers," i answered. "that!" he cried. "why, in a place like this, where nobody puts in but gen'lemen of fortune, silver would fly the jolly roger, you don't make no doubt of that. no, that's your friends. there's been blows too, and i reckon your friends has had the best of it; and here they are ashore in the old stockade, as was made years and years ago by flint. ah, he was the man to have a headpiece, was flint! barring rum, his match were never seen. he were afraid of none, not he; on'y silver--silver was that genteel." "well," said i, "that may be so, and so be it; all the more reason that i should hurry on and join my friends." "nay, mate," returned ben, "not you. you're a good boy, or i'm mistook; but you're on'y a boy, all told. now, ben gunn is fly. rum wouldn't bring me there, where you're going--not rum wouldn't, till i see your born gen'leman and gets it on his word of honour. and you won't forget my words; 'a precious sight (that's what you'll say), a precious sight more confidence'-and then nips him. and he pinched me the third time with the same air of cleverness. "and when ben gunn is wanted, you know where to find him, jim. just wheer you found him today. and him that comes is to have a white thing in his hand, and he's to come alone. oh! and you'll say this: 'ben gunn,' says you, 'has reasons of his own.'" "well," said i, "i believe i understand. you have something to propose, and you wish to see the squire or the doctor, and you're to be found where i found you. is that all?" "and when? says you," he added. "why, from about noon observation to about six bells." "good," said i, "and now may i go?" "you won't forget?" he inquired anxiously. "precious sight, and reasons of his own, says you. reasons of his own; that's the mainstay; as between man and man. well, then"--still holding me--"i reckon you can go, jim. and, jim, if you was to see silver, you wouldn't go for to sell ben gunn? wild horses wouldn't draw it from you? no, says you. and if them pirates camp ashore, jim, what would you say but there'd be widders in the morning?" here he was interrupted by a loud report, and a cannonball came tearing through the trees and pitched in the sand not a hundred yards from where we two were talking. the next moment each of us had taken to his heels in a different direction. for a good hour to come frequent reports shook the island, and balls kept crashing through the woods. i moved from hiding-place to hiding-place, always pursued, or so it seemed to me, by these terrifying missiles. but towards the end of the bombardment, though still i durst not venture in the direction of the stockade, where the balls fell oftenest, i had begun, in a manner, to pluck up my heart again, and after a long detour to the east, crept down among the shore-side trees. the sun had just set, the sea breeze was rustling and tumbling in the woods and ruffling the grey surface of the anchorage; the tide, too, was far out, and great tracts of sand lay uncovered; the air, after the heat of the day, chilled me through my jacket. the hispaniola still lay where she had anchored; but, sure enough, there was the jolly roger--the black flag of piracy --flying from her peak. even as i looked, there came another red flash and another report that sent the echoes clattering, and one more round-shot whistled through the air. it was the last of the cannonade. i lay for some time watching the bustle which succeeded the attack. men were demolishing something with axes on the beach near the stockade--the poor jolly-boat, i afterwards discovered. away, near the mouth of the river, a great fire was glowing among the trees, and between that point and the ship one of the gigs kept coming and going, the men, whom i had seen so gloomy, shouting at the oars like children. but there was a sound in their voices which suggested rum. at length i thought i might return towards the stockade. i was pretty far down on the low, sandy spit that encloses the anchorage to the east, and is joined at half-water to skeleton island; and now, as i rose to my feet, i saw, some distance further down the spit and rising from among low bushes, an isolated rock, pretty high, and peculiarly white in colour. it occurred to me that this might be the white rock of which ben gunn had spoken and that some day or other a boat might be wanted and i should know where to look for one. then i skirted among the woods until i had regained the rear, or shoreward side, of the stockade, and was soon warmly welcomed by the faithful party. i had soon told my story and began to look about me. the log-house was made of unsquared trunks of pine-roof, walls, and floor. the latter stood in several places as much as a foot or a foot and a half above the surface of the sand. there was a porch at the door, and under this porch the little spring welled up into an artificial basin of a rather odd kind--no other than a great ship's kettle of iron, with the bottom knocked out, and sunk "to her bearings," as the captain said, among the sand. little had been left besides the framework of the house, but in one corner there was a stone slab laid down by way of hearth and an old rusty iron basket to contain the fire. the slopes of the knoll and all the inside of the stockade had been cleared of timber to build the house, and we could see by the stumps what a fine and lofty grove had been destroyed. most of the soil had been washed away or buried in drift after the removal of the trees; only where the streamlet ran down from the kettle a thick bed of moss and some ferns and little creeping bushes were still green among the sand. very close around the stockade--too close for defence, they said--the wood still flourished high and dense, all of fir on the land side, but towards the sea with a large admixture of live-oaks. the cold evening breeze, of which i have spoken, whistled through every chink of the rude building and sprinkled the floor with a continual rain of fine sand. there was sand in our eyes, sand in our teeth, sand in our suppers, sand dancing in the spring at the bottom of the kettle, for all the world like porridge beginning to boil. our chimney was a square hole in the roof; it was but a little part of the smoke that found its way out, and the rest eddied about the house and kept us coughing and piping the eye. add to this that gray, the new man, had his face tied up in a bandage for a cut he had got in breaking away from the mutineers and that poor old tom redruth, still unburied, lay along the wall, stiff and stark, under the union jack. if we had been allowed to sit idle, we should all have fallen in the blues, but captain smollett was never the man for that. all hands were called up before him, and he divided us into watches. the doctor and gray and i for one; the squire, hunter, and joyce upon the other. tired though we all were, two were sent out for firewood; two more were set to dig a grave for redruth; the doctor was named cook; i was put sentry at the door; and the captain himself went from one to another, keeping up our spirits and lending a hand wherever it was wanted. from time to time the doctor came to the door for a little air and to rest his eyes, which were almost smoked out of his head, and whenever he did so, he had a word for me. "that man smollett," he said once, "is a better man than i am. and when i say that it means a deal, jim." another time he came and was silent for a while. then he put his head on one side, and looked at me. "is this ben gunn a man?" he asked. "i do not know, sir," said i. "i am not very sure whether he's sane." "if there's any doubt about the matter, he is," returned the doctor. "a man who has been three years biting his nails on a desert island, jim, can't expect to appear as sane as you or me. it doesn't lie in human nature. was it cheese you said he had a fancy for?" "yes, sir, cheese," i answered. "well, jim," says he, "just see the good that comes of being dainty in your food. you've seen my snuff-box, haven't you? and you never saw me take snuff, the reason being that in my snuff-box i carry a piece of parmesan cheese--a cheese made in italy, very nutritious. well, that's for ben gunn!" before supper was eaten we buried old tom in the sand and stood round him for a while bare-headed in the breeze. a good deal of firewood had been got in, but not enough for the captain's fancy, and he shook his head over it and told us we "must get back to this tomorrow rather livelier." then, when we had eaten our pork and each had a good stiff glass of brandy grog, the three chiefs got together in a corner to discuss our prospects. it appears they were at their wits' end what to do, the stores being so low that we must have been starved into surrender long before help came. but our best hope, it was decided, was to kill off the buccaneers until they either hauled down their flag or ran away with the hispaniola. from nineteen they were already reduced to fifteen, two others were wounded, and one at least-the man shot beside the gun--severely wounded, if he were not dead. every time we had a crack at them, we were to take it, saving our own lives, with the extremest care. and besides that, we had two able allies--rum and the climate. as for the first, though we were about half a mile away, we could hear them roaring and singing late into the night; and as for the second, the doctor staked his wig that, camped where they were in the marsh and unprovided with remedies, the half of them would be on their backs before a week. "so," he added, "if we are not all shot down first they'll be glad to be packing in the schooner. it's always a ship, and they can get to buccaneering again, i suppose." "first ship that ever i lost," said captain smollett. i was dead tired, as you may fancy; and when i got to sleep, which was not till after a great deal of tossing, i slept like a log of wood. the rest had long been up and had already breakfasted and increased the pile of firewood by about half as much again when i was wakened by a bustle and the sound of voices. "flag of truce!" i heard someone say; and then, immediately after, with a cry of surprise, "silver himself!" and at that, up i jumped, and rubbing my eyes, ran to a loophole in the wall. 20 silver's embassy sure enough, there were two men just outside the stockade, one of them waving a white cloth, the other, no less a person than silver himself, standing placidly by. it was still quite early, and the coldest morning that i think i ever was abroad in--a chill that pierced into the marrow. the sky was bright and cloudless overhead, and the tops of the trees shone rosily in the sun. but where silver stood with his lieutenant, all was still in shadow, and they waded knee-deep in a low white vapour that had crawled during the night out of the morass. the chill and the vapour taken together told a poor tale of the island. it was plainly a damp, feverish, unhealthy spot. "keep indoors, men," said the captain. "ten to one this is a trick." then he hailed the buccaneer. "who goes? stand, or we fire." "flag of truce," cried silver. the captain was in the porch, keeping himself carefully out of the way of a treacherous shot, should any be intended. he turned and spoke to us, "doctor's watch on the lookout. dr. livesey take the north side, if you please; jim, the east; gray, west. the watch below, all hands to load muskets. lively, men, and careful." and then he turned again to the mutineers. "and what do you want with your flag of truce?" he cried. this time it was the other man who replied. "cap'n silver, sir, to come on board and make terms," he shouted. "cap'n silver! don't know him. who's he?" cried the captain. and we could hear him adding to himself, "cap'n, is it? my heart, and here's promotion!" long john answered for himself. "me, sir. these poor lads have chosen me cap'n, after your desertion, sir"-laying a particular emphasis upon the word "desertion." "we're willing to submit, if we can come to terms, and no bones about it. all i ask is your word, cap'n smollett, to let me safe and sound out of this here stockade, and one minute to get out o' shot before a gun is fired." "my man," said captain smollett, "i have not the slightest desire to talk to you. if you wish to talk to me, you can come, that's all. if there's any treachery, it'll be on your side, and the lord help you." "that's enough, cap'n," shouted long john cheerily. "a word from you's enough. i know a gentleman, and you may lay to that." we could see the man who carried the flag of truce attempting to hold silver back. nor was that wonderful, seeing how cavalier had been the captain's answer. but silver laughed at him aloud and slapped him on the back as if the idea of alarm had been absurd. then he advanced to the stockade, threw over his crutch, got a leg up, and with great vigour and skill succeeded in surmounting the fence and dropping safely to the other side. i will confess that i was far too much taken up with what was going on to be of the slightest use as sentry; indeed, i had already deserted my eastern loophole and crept up behind the captain, who had now seated himself on the threshold, with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and his eyes fixed on the water as it bubbled out of the old iron kettle in the sand. he was whistling "come, lasses and lads." silver had terrible hard work getting up the knoll. what with the steepness of the incline, the thick tree stumps, and the soft sand, he and his crutch were as helpless as a ship in stays. but he stuck to it like a man in silence, and at last arrived before the captain, whom he saluted in the handsomest style. he was tricked out in his best; an immense blue coat, thick with brass buttons, hung as low as to his knees, and a fine laced hat was set on the back of his head. "here you are, my man," said the captain, raising his head. "you had better sit down." "you ain't a-going to let me inside, cap'n?" complained long john. "it's a main cold morning, to be sure, sir, to sit outside upon the sand." "why, silver," said the captain, "if you had pleased to be an honest man, you might have been sitting in your galley. it's your own doing. you're either my ship's cook--and then you were treated handsome--or cap'n silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!" "well, well, cap'n," returned the sea-cook, sitting down as he was bidden on the sand, "you'll have to give me a hand up again, that's all. a sweet pretty place you have of it here. ah, there's jim! the top of the morning to you, jim. doctor, here's my service. why, there you all are together like a happy family, in a manner of speaking." "if you have anything to say, my man, better say it," said the captain. "right you were, cap'n smollett," replied silver. "dooty is dooty, to be sure. well now, you look here, that was a good lay of yours last night. i don't deny it was a good lay. some of you pretty handy with a handspike-end. and i'll not deny neither but what some of my people was shook--maybe all was shook; maybe i was shook myself; maybe that's why i'm here for terms. but you mark me, cap'n, it won't do twice, by thunder! we'll have to do sentry-go and ease off a point or so on the rum. maybe you think we were all a sheet in the wind's eye. but i'll tell you i was sober; i was on'y dog tired; and if i'd awoke a second sooner, i'd 'a caught you at the act, i would. he wasn't dead when i got round to him, not he." "well?" says captain smollett as cool as can be. all that silver said was a riddle to him, but you would never have guessed it from his tone. as for me, i began to have an inkling. ben gunn's last words came back to my mind. i began to suppose that he had paid the buccaneers a visit while they all lay drunk together round their fire, and i reckoned up with glee that we had only fourteen enemies to deal with. "well, here it is," said silver. "we want that treasure, and we'll have it--that's our point! you would just as soon save your lives, i reckon; and that's yours. you have a chart, haven't you?" "that's as may be," replied the captain. "oh, well, you have, i know that," returned long john. "you needn't be so husky with a man; there ain't a particle of service in that, and you may lay to it. what i mean is, we want your chart. now, i never meant you no harm, myself." "that won't do with me, my man," interrupted the captain. "we know exactly what you meant to do, and we don't care, for now, you see, you can't do it." and the captain looked at him calmly and proceeded to fill a pipe. "if abe gray--" silver broke out. "avast there!" cried mr. smollett. "gray told me nothing, and i asked him nothing; and what's more, i would see you and him and this whole island blown clean out of the water into blazes first. so there's my mind for you, my man, on that." this little whiff of temper seemed to cool silver down. he had been growing nettled before, but now he pulled himself together. "like enough," said he. "i would set no limits to what gentlemen might consider shipshape, or might not, as the case were. and seein' as how you are about to take a pipe, cap'n, i'll make so free as do likewise." and he filled a pipe and lighted it; and the two men sat silently smoking for quite a while, now looking each other in the face, now stopping their tobacco, now leaning forward to spit. it was as good as the play to see them. "now," resumed silver, "here it is. you give us the chart to get the treasure by, and drop shooting poor seamen and stoving of their heads in while asleep. you do that, and we'll offer you a choice. either you come aboard along of us, once the treasure shipped, and then i'll give you my affy-davy, upon my word of honour, to clap you somewhere safe ashore. or if that ain't to your fancy, some of my hands being rough and having old scores on account of hazing, then you can stay here, you can. we'll divide stores with you, man for man; and i'll give my affy-davy, as before to speak the first ship i sight, and send 'em here to pick you up. now, you'll own that's talking. handsomer you couldn't look to get, now you. and i hope"--raising his voice-"that all hands in this here block house will overhaul my words, for what is spoke to one is spoke to all." captain smollett rose from his seat and knocked out the ashes of his pipe in the palm of his left hand. "is that all?" he asked. "every last word, by thunder!" answered john. "refuse that, and you've seen the last of me but musket-balls." "very good," said the captain. "now you'll hear me. if you'll come up one by one, unarmed, i'll engage to clap you all in irons and take you home to a fair trial in england. if you won't, my name is alexander smollett, i've flown my sovereign's colours, and i'll see you all to davy jones. you can't find the treasure. you can't sail the ship--there's not a man among you fit to sail the ship. you can't fight us-gray, there, got away from five of you. your ship's in irons, master silver; you're on a lee shore, and so you'll find. i stand here and tell you so; and they're the last good words you'll get from me, for in the name of heaven, i'll put a bullet in your back when next i meet you. tramp, my lad. bundle out of this, please, hand over hand, and double quick." silver's face was a picture; his eyes started in his head with wrath. he shook the fire out of his pipe. "give me a hand up!" he cried. "not i," returned the captain. "who'll give me a hand up?" he roared. not a man among us moved. growling the foulest imprecations, he crawled along the sand till he got hold of the porch and could hoist himself again upon his crutch. then he spat into the spring. "there!" he cried. "that's what i think of ye. before an hour's out, i'll stove in your old block house like a rum puncheon. laugh, by thunder, laugh! before an hour's out, ye'll laugh upon the other side. them that die'll be the lucky ones." and with a dreadful oath he stumbled off, ploughed down the sand, was helped across the stockade, after four or five failures, by the man with the flag of truce, and disappeared in an instant afterwards among the trees. 21 the attack as soon as silver disappeared, the captain, who had been closely watching him, turned towards the interior of the house and found not a man of us at his post but gray. it was the first time we had ever seen him angry. "quarters!" he roared. and then, as we all slunk back to our places, "gray," he said, "i'll put your name in the log; you've stood by your duty like a seaman. mr. trelawney, i'm surprised at you, sir. doctor, i thought you had worn the king's coat! if that was how you served at fontenoy, sir, you'd have been better in your berth." the doctor's watch were all back at their loopholes, the rest were busy loading the spare muskets, and everyone with a red face, you may be certain, and a flea in his ear, as the saying is. the captain looked on for a while in silence. then he spoke. "my lads," said he, "i've given silver a broadside. i pitched it in red-hot on purpose; and before the hour's out, as he said, we shall be boarded. we're outnumbered, i needn't tell you that, but we fight in shelter; and a minute ago i should have said we fought with discipline. i've no manner of doubt that we can drub them, if you choose." then he went the rounds and saw, as he said, that all was clear. on the two short sides of the house, east and west, there were only two loopholes; on the south side where the porch was, two again; and on the north side, five. there was a round score of muskets for the seven of us; the firewood had been built into four piles--tables, you might say--one about the middle of each side, and on each of these tables some ammunition and four loaded muskets were laid ready to the hand of the defenders. in the middle, the cutlasses lay ranged. "toss out the fire," said the captain; "the chill is past, and we mustn't have smoke in our eyes." the iron fire-basket was carried bodily out by mr. trelawney, and the embers smothered among sand. "hawkins hasn't had his breakfast. hawkins, help yourself, and back to your post to eat it," continued captain smollett. "lively, now, my lad; you'll want it before you've done. hunter, serve out a round of brandy to all hands." and while this was going on, the captain completed, in his own mind, the plan of the defence. "doctor, you will take the door," he resumed. "see, and don't expose yourself; keep within, and fire through the porch. hunter, take the east side, there. joyce, you stand by the west, my man. mr. trelawney, you are the best shot--you and gray will take this long north side, with the five loopholes; it's there the danger is. if they can get up to it and fire in upon us through our own ports, things would begin to look dirty. hawkins, neither you nor i are much account at the shooting; we'll stand by to load and bear a hand." as the captain had said, the chill was past. as soon as the sun had climbed above our girdle of trees, it fell with all its force upon the clearing and drank up the vapours at a draught. soon the sane was baking and the resin melting in the logs of the block house. jackets and coats were flung aside, shirts thrown open at the neck and rolled up to the shoulders; and we stood there, each at his post, in a fever of heat and anxiety. an hour passed away. "hang them!" said the captain. "this is as dull as the doldrums. gray, whistle for a wind." and just at that moment came the first news of the attack. "if you please, sir," said joyce, "if i see anyone, am i to fire?" "i told you so!" cried the captain. "thank you, sir," returned joyce with the same quiet civility. nothing followed for a time, but the remark had set us all on the alert, straining ears and eyes--the musketeers with their pieces balanced in their hands, the captain out in the middle of the block house with his mouth very tight and a frown on his face. so some seconds passed, till suddenly joyce whipped up his musket and fired. the report had scarcely died away ere it was repeated and repeated from without in a scattering volley, shot behind shot, like a string of geese, from every side of the enclosure. several bullets struck the log-house, but not one entered; and as the smoke cleared away and vanished, the stockade and the woods around it looked as quiet and empty as before. not a bough waved, not the gleam of a musketbarrel betrayed the presence of our foes. "did you hit your man?" asked the captain. "no, sir," replied joyce. "i believe not, sir." "next best thing to tell the truth," muttered captain smollett. "load his gun, hawkins. how many should say there were on your side, doctor?" "i know precisely," said dr. livesey. "three shots were fired on this side. i saw the three flashes--two close together--one farther to the west." "three!" repeated the captain. "and how many on yours, mr. trelawney?" but this was not so easily answered. there had come many from the north--seven by the squire's computation, eight or nine according to gray. from the east and west only a single shot had been fired. it was plain, therefore, that the attack would be developed from the north and that on the other three sides we were only to be annoyed by a show of hostilities. but captain smollett made no change in his arrangements. if the mutineers succeeded in crossing the stockade, he argued, they would take possession of any unprotected loophole and shoot us down like rats in our own stronghold. nor had we much time left to us for thought. suddenly, with a loud huzza, a little cloud of pirates leaped from the woods on the north side and ran straight on the stockade. at the same moment, the fire was once more opened from the woods, and a rifle ball sang through the doorway and knocked the doctor's musket into bits. the boarders swarmed over the fence like monkeys. squire and gray fired again and yet again; three men fell, one forwards into the enclosure, two back on the outside. but of these, one was evidently more frightened than hurt, for he was on his feet again in a crack and instantly disappeared among the trees. two had bit the dust, one had fled, four had made good their footing inside our defences, while from the shelter of the woods seven or eight men, each evidently supplied with several muskets, kept up a hot though useless fire on the log-house. the four who had boarded made straight before them for the building, shouting as they ran, and the men among the trees shouted back to encourage them. several shots were fired, but such was the hurry of the marksmen that not one appears to have taken effect. in a moment, the four pirates had swarmed up the mound and were upon us. the head of job anderson, the boatswain, appeared at the middle loophole. "at 'em, all hands--all hands!" he roared in a voice of thunder. at the same moment, another pirate grasped hunter's musket by the muzzle, wrenched it from his hands, plucked it through the loophole, and with one stunning blow, laid the poor fellow senseless on the floor. meanwhile a third, running unharmed all around the house, appeared suddenly in the doorway and fell with his cutlass on the doctor. our position was utterly reversed. a moment since we were firing, under cover, at an exposed enemy; now it was we who lay uncovered and could not return a blow. the log-house was full of smoke, to which we owed our comparative safety. cries and confusion, the flashes and reports of pistol-shots, and one loud groan rang in my ears. "out, lads, out, and fight 'em in the open! cutlasses!" cried the captain. i snatched a cutlass from the pile, and someone, at the same time snatching another, gave me a cut across the knuckles which i hardly felt. i dashed out of the door into the clear sunlight. someone was close behind, i knew not whom. right in front, the doctor was pursuing his assailant down the hill, and just as my eyes fell upon him, beat down his guard and sent him sprawling on his back with a great slash across the face. "round the house, lads! round the house!" cried the captain; and even in the hurly-burly, i perceived a change in his voice. mechanically, i obeyed, turned eastwards, and with my cutlass raised, ran round the corner of the house. next moment i was face to face with anderson. he roared aloud, and his hanger went up above his head, flashing in the sunlight. i had not time to be afraid, but as the blow still hung impending, leaped in a trice upon one side, and missing my foot in the soft sand, rolled headlong down the slope. when i had first sallied from the door, the other mutineers had been already swarming up the palisade to make an end of us. one man, in a red night-cap, with his cutlass in his mouth, had even got upon the top and thrown a leg across. well, so short had been the interval that when i found my feet again all was in the same posture, the fellow with the red night-cap still half-way over, another still just showing his head above the top of the stockade. and yet, in this breath of time, the fight was over and the victory was ours. gray, following close behind me, had cut down the big boatswain ere he had time to recover from his last blow. another had been shot at a loophole in the very act of firing into the house and now lay in agony, the pistol still smoking in his hand. a third, as i had seen, the doctor had disposed of at a blow. of the four who had scaled the palisade, one only remained unaccounted for, and he, having left his cutlass on the field, was now clambering out again with the fear of death upon him. "fire--fire from the house!" cried the doctor. "and you, lads, back into cover." but his words were unheeded, no shot was fired, and the last boarder made good his escape and disappeared with the rest into the wood. in three seconds nothing remained of the attacking party but the five who had fallen, four on the inside and one on the outside of the palisade. the doctor and gray and i ran full speed for shelter. the survivors would soon be back where they had left their muskets, and at any moment the fire might recommence. the house was by this time somewhat cleared of smoke, and we saw at a glance the price we had paid for victory. hunter lay beside his loophole, stunned; joyce by his, shot through the head, never to move again; while right in the centre, the squire was supporting the captain, one as pale as the other. "the captain's wounded," said mr. trelawney. "have they run?" asked mr. smollett. "all that could, you may be bound," returned the doctor; "but there's five of them will never run again." "five!" cried the captain. "come, that's better. five against three leaves us four to nine. that's better odds than we had at starting. we were seven to nineteen then, or thought we were, and that's as bad to bear."* *the mutineers were soon only eight in number, for the man shot by mr. trelawney on board the schooner died that same evening of his wound. but this was, of course, not known till after by the faithful party. part five my sea adventure 22 how my sea adventure began there was no return of the mutineers--not so much as another shot out of the woods. they had "got their rations for that day," as the captain put it, and we had the place to ourselves and a quiet time to overhaul the wounded and get dinner. squire and i cooked outside in spite of the danger, and even outside we could hardly tell what we were at, for horror of the loud groans that reached us from the doctor's patients. out of the eight men who had fallen in the action, only three still breathed--that one of the pirates who had been shot at the loophole, hunter, and captain smollett; and of these, the first two were as good as dead; the mutineer indeed died under the doctor's knife, and hunter, do what we could, never recovered consciousness in this world. he lingered all day, breathing loudly like the old buccaneer at home in his apoplectic fit, but the bones of his chest had been crushed by the blow and his skull fractured in falling, and some time in the following night, without sign or sound, he went to his maker. as for the captain, his wounds were grievous indeed, but not dangerous. no organ was fatally injured. anderson's ball--for it was job that shot him first-had broken his shoulder-blade and touched the lung, not badly; the second had only torn and displaced some muscles in the calf. he was sure to recover, the doctor said, but in the meantime, and for weeks to come, he must not walk nor move his arm, nor so much as speak when he could help it. my own accidental cut across the knuckles was a fleabite. doctor livesey patched it up with plaster and pulled my ears for me into the bargain. after dinner the squire and the doctor sat by the captain's side awhile in consultation; and when they had talked to their hearts' content, it being then a little past noon, the doctor took up his hat and pistols, girt on a cutlass, put the chart in his pocket, and with a musket over his shoulder crossed the palisade on the north side and set off briskly through the trees. gray and i were sitting together at the far end of the block house, to be out of earshot of our officers consulting; and gray took his pipe out of his mouth and fairly forgot to put it back again, so thunder-struck he was at this occurrence. "why, in the name of davy jones," said he, "is dr. livesey mad?" "why no," says i. "he's about the last of this crew for that, i take it." "well, shipmate," said gray, "mad he may not be; but if he's not, you mark my words, i am." "i take it," replied i, "the doctor has his idea; and if i am right, he's going now to see ben gunn." i was right, as appeared later; but in the meantime, the house being stifling hot and the little patch of sand inside the palisade ablaze with midday sun, i began to get another thought into my head, which was not by any means so right. what i began to do was to envy the doctor walking in the cool shadow of the woods with the birds about him and the pleasant smell of the pines, while i sat grilling, with my clothes stuck to the hot resin, and so much blood about me and so many poor dead bodies lying all around that i took a disgust of the place that was almost as strong as fear. all the time i was washing out the block house, and then washing up the things from dinner, this disgust and envy kept growing stronger and stronger, till at last, being near a bread-bag, and no one then observing me, i took the first step towards my escapade and filled both pockets of my coat with biscuit. i was a fool, if you like, and certainly i was going to do a foolish, over-bold act; but i was determined to do it with all the precautions in my power. these biscuits, should anything befall me, would keep me, at least, from starving till far on in the next day. the next thing i laid hold of was a brace of pistols, and as i already had a powder-horn and bullets, i felt myself well supplied with arms. as for the scheme i had in my head, it was not a bad one in itself. i was to go down the sandy spit that divides the anchorage on the east from the open sea, find the white rock i had observed last evening, and ascertain whether it was there or not that ben gunn had hidden his boat, a thing quite worth doing, as i still believe. but as i was certain i should not be allowed to leave the enclosure, my only plan was to take french leave and slip out when nobody was watching, and that was so bad a way of doing it as made the thing itself wrong. but i was only a boy, and i had made my mind up. well, as things at last fell out, i found an admirable opportunity. the squire and gray were busy helping the captain with his bandages, the coast was clear, i made a bolt for it over the stockade and into the thickest of the trees, and before my absence was observed i was out of cry of my companions. this was my second folly, far worse than the first, as i left but two sound men to guard the house; but like the first, it was a help towards saving all of us. i took my way straight for the east coast of the island, for i was determined to go down the sea side of the spit to avoid all chance of observation from the anchorage. it was already late in the afternoon, although still warm and sunny. as i continued to thread the tall woods, i could hear from far before me not only the continuous thunder of the surf, but a certain tossing of foliage and grinding of boughs which showed me the sea breeze had set in higher than usual. soon cool draughts of air began to reach me, and a few steps farther i came forth into the open borders of the grove, and saw the sea lying blue and sunny to the horizon and the surf tumbling and tossing its foam along the beach. i have never seen the sea quiet round treasure island. the sun might blaze overhead, the air be without a breath, the surface smooth and blue, but still these great rollers would be running along all the external coast, thundering and thundering by day and night; and i scarce believe there is one spot in the island where a man would be out of earshot of their noise. i walked along beside the surf with great enjoyment, till, thinking i was now got far enough to the south, i took the cover of some thick bushes and crept warily up to the ridge of the spit. behind me was the sea, in front the anchorage. the sea breeze, as though it had the sooner blown itself out by its unusual violence, was already at an end; it had been succeeded by light, variable airs from the south and south-east, carrying great banks of fog; and the anchorage, under lee of skeleton island, lay still and leaden as when first we entered it. the hispaniola, in that unbroken mirror, was exactly portrayed from the truck to the waterline, the jolly roger hanging from her peak. alongside lay one of the gigs, silver in the sternsheets--him i could always recognize--while a couple of men were leaning over the stern bulwarks, one of them with a red cap--the very rogue that i had seen some hours before stride-legs upon the palisade. apparently they were talking and laughing, though at that distance--upwards of a mile--i could, of course, hear no word of what was said. all at once there began the most horrid, unearthly screaming, which at first startled me badly, though i had soon remembered the voice of captain flint and even thought i could make out the bird by her bright plumage as she sat perched upon her master's wrist. soon after, the jolly-boat shoved off and pulled for shore, and the man with the red cap and his comrade went below by the cabin companion. just about the same time, the sun had gone down behind the spy-glass, and as the fog was collecting rapidly, it began to grow dark in earnest. i saw i must lose no time if i were to find the boat that evening. the white rock, visible enough above the brush, was still some eighth of a mile further down the spit, and it took me a goodish while to get up with it, crawling, often on all fours, among the scrub. night had almost come when i laid my hand on its rough sides. right below it there was an exceedingly small hollow of green turf, hidden by banks and a thick underwood about kneedeep, that grew there very plentifully; and in the centre of the dell, sure enough, a little tent of goatskins, like what the gipsies carry about with them in england. i dropped into the hollow, lifted the side of the tent, and there was ben gunn's boat--home-made if ever anything was home-made; a rude, lop-sided framework of tough wood, and stretched upon that a covering of goatskin, with the hair inside. the thing was extremely small, even for me, and i can hardly imagine that it could have floated with a full-sized man. there was one thwart set as low as possible, a kind of stretcher in the bows, and a double paddle for propulsion. i had not then seen a coracle, such as the ancient britons made, but i have seen one since, and i can give you no fairer idea of ben gunn's boat than by saying it was like the first and the worst coracle ever made by man. but the great advantage of the coracle it certainly possessed, for it was exceedingly light and portable. well, now that i had found the boat, you would have thought i had had enough of truantry for once, but in the meantime i had taken another notion and become so obstinately fond of it that i would have carried it out, i believe, in the teeth of captain smollett himself. this was to slip out under cover of the night, cut the hispaniola adrift, and let her go ashore where she fancied. i had quite made up my mind that the mutineers, after their repulse of the morning, had nothing nearer their hearts than to up anchor and away to sea; this, i thought, it would be a fine thing to prevent, and now that i had seen how they left their watchmen unprovided with a boat, i thought it might be done with little risk. down i sat to wait for darkness, and made a hearty meal of biscuit. it was a night out of ten thousand for my purpose. the fog had now buried all heaven. as the last rays of daylight dwindled and disappeared, absolute blackness settled down on treasure island. and when, at last, i shouldered the coracle and groped my way stumblingly out of the hollow where i had supped, there were but two points visible on the whole anchorage. one was the great fire on shore, by which the defeated pirates lay carousing in the swamp. the other, a mere blur of light upon the darkness, indicated the position of the anchored ship. she had swung round to the ebb-her bow was now towards me--the only lights on board were in the cabin, and what i saw was merely a reflection on the fog of the strong rays that flowed from the stern window. the ebb had already run some time, and i had to wade through a long belt of swampy sand, where i sank several times above the ankle, before i came to the edge of the retreating water, and wading a little way in, with some strength and dexterity, set my coracle, keel downwards, on the surface. 23 the ebb-tide runs the coracle--as i had ample reason to know before i was done with her--was a very safe boat for a person of my height and weight, both buoyant and clever in a seaway; but she was the most cross-grained, lop-sided craft to manage. do as you pleased, she always made more leeway than anything else, and turning round and round was the manoeuvre she was best at. even ben gunn himself has admitted that she was "queer to handle till you knew her way." certainly i did not know her way. she turned in every direction but the one i was bound to go; the most part of the time we were broadside on, and i am very sure i never should have made the ship at all but for the tide. by good fortune, paddle as i pleased, the tide was still sweeping me down; and there lay the hispaniola right in the fairway, hardly to be missed. first she loomed before me like a blot of something yet blacker than darkness, then her spars and hull began to take shape, and the next moment, as it seemed (for, the farther i went, the brisker grew the current of the ebb), i was alongside of her hawser and had laid hold. the hawser was as taut as a bowstring, and the current so strong she pulled upon her anchor. all round the hull, in the blackness, the rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream. one cut with my sea-gully and the hispaniola would go humming down the tide. so far so good, but it next occurred to my recollection that a taut hawser, suddenly cut, is a thing as dangerous as a kicking horse. ten to one, if i were so foolhardy as to cut the hispaniola from her anchor, i and the coracle would be knocked clean out of the water. this brought me to a full stop, and if fortune had not again particularly favoured me, i should have had to abandon my design. but the light airs which had begun blowing from the south-east and south had hauled round after nightfall into the south-west. just while i was meditating, a puff came, caught the hispaniola, and forced her up into the current; and to my great joy, i felt the hawser slacken in my grasp, and the hand by which i held it dip for a second under water. with that i made my mind up, took out my gully, opened it with my teeth, and cut one strand after another, till the vessel swung only by two. then i lay quiet, waiting to sever these last when the strain should be once more lightened by a breath of wind. all this time i had heard the sound of loud voices from the cabin, but to say truth, my mind had been so entirely taken up with other thoughts that i had scarcely given ear. now, however, when i had nothing else to do, i began to pay more heed. one i recognized for the coxswain's, israel hands, that had been flint's gunner in former days. the other was, of course, my friend of the red night-cap. both men were plainly the worse of drink, and they were still drinking, for even while i was listening, one of them, with a drunken cry, opened the stern window and threw out something, which i divined to be an empty bottle. but they were not only tipsy; it was plain that they were furiously angry. oaths flew like hailstones, and every now and then there came forth such an explosion as i thought was sure to end in blows. but each time the quarrel passed off and the voices grumbled lower for a while, until the next crisis came and in its turn passed away without result. on shore, i could see the glow of the great camp-fire burning warmly through the shore-side trees. someone was singing, a dull, old, droning sailor's song, with a droop and a quaver at the end of every verse, and seemingly no end to it at all but the patience of the singer. i had heard it on the voyage more than once and remembered these words: "but one man of her crew alive, what put to sea with seventy-five." and i thought it was a ditty rather too dolefully appropriate for a company that had met such cruel losses in the morning. but, indeed, from what i saw, all these buccaneers were as callous as the sea they sailed on. at last the breeze came; the schooner sidled and drew nearer in the dark; i felt the hawser slacken once more, and with a good, tough effort, cut the last fibres through. the breeze had but little action on the coracle, and i was almost instantly swept against the bows of the hispaniola. at the same time, the schooner began to turn upon her heel, spinning slowly, end for end, across the current. i wrought like a fiend, for i expected every moment to be swamped; and since i found i could not push the coracle directly off, i now shoved straight astern. at length i was clear of my dangerous neighbour, and just as i gave the last impulsion, my hands came across a light cord that was trailing overboard across the stern bulwarks. instantly i grasped it. why i should have done so i can hardly say. it was at first mere instinct, but once i had it in my hands and found it fast, curiosity began to get the upper hand, and i determined i should have one look through the cabin window. i pulled in hand over hand on the cord, and when i judged myself near enough, rose at infinite risk to about half my height and thus commanded the roof and a slice of the interior of the cabin. by this time the schooner and her little consort were gliding pretty swiftly through the water; indeed, we had already fetched up level with the camp-fire. the ship was talking, as sailors say, loudly, treading the innumerable ripples with an incessant weltering splash; and until i got my eye above the window-sill i could not comprehend why the watchmen had taken no alarm. one glance, however, was sufficient; and it was only one glance that i durst take from that unsteady skiff. it showed me hands and his companion locked together in deadly wrestle, each with a hand upon the other's throat. i dropped upon the thwart again, none too soon, for i was near overboard. i could see nothing for the moment but these two furious, encrimsoned faces swaying together under the smoky lamp, and i shut my eyes to let them grow once more familiar with the darkness. the endless ballad had come to an end at last, and the whole diminished company about the camp-fire had broken into the chorus i had heard so often: "fifteen men on the dead man's chest- yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! drink and the devil had done for the rest- yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" i was just thinking how busy drink and the devil were at that very moment in the cabin of the hispaniola, when i was surprised by a sudden lurch of the coracle. at the same moment, she yawed sharply and seemed to change her course. the speed in the meantime had strangely increased. i opened my eyes at once. all round me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. the hispaniola herself, a few yards in whose wake i was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and i saw her spars toss a little against the blackness of the night; nay, as i looked longer, i made sure she also was wheeling to the southward. i glanced over my shoulder, and my heart jumped against my ribs. there, right behind me, was the glow of the camp-fire. the current had turned at right angles, sweeping round along with it the tall schooner and the little dancing coracle; ever quickening, ever bubbling higher, ever muttering louder, it went spinning through the narrows for the open sea. suddenly the schooner in front of me gave a violent yaw, turning, perhaps, through twenty degrees; and almost at the same moment one shout followed another from on board; i could hear feet pounding on the companion ladder and i knew that the two drunkards had at last been interrupted in their quarrel and awakened to a sense of their disaster. i lay down flat in the bottom of that wretched skiff and devoutly recommended my spirit to its maker. at the end of the straits, i made sure we must fall into some bar of raging breakers, where all my troubles would be ended speedily; and though i could, perhaps, bear to die, i could not bear to look upon my fate as it approached. so i must have lain for hours, continually beaten to and fro upon the billows, now and again wetted with flying sprays, and never ceasing to expect death at the next plunge. gradually weariness grew upon me; a numbness, an occasional stupor, fell upon my mind even in the midst of my terrors, until sleep at last supervened and in my sea-tossed coracle i lay and dreamed of home and the old admiral benbow. 24 the cruise of the coracle it was broad day when i awoke and found myself tossing at the south-west end of treasure island. the sun was up but was still hid from me behind the great bulk of the spy-glass, which on this side descended almost to the sea in formidable cliffs. haulbowline head and mizzen-mast hill were at my elbow, the hill bare and dark, the head bound with cliffs forty or fifty feet high and fringed with great masses of fallen rock. i was scarce a quarter of a mile to seaward, and it was my first thought to paddle in and land. that notion was soon given over. among the fallen rocks the breakers spouted and bellowed; loud reverberations, heavy sprays flying and falling, succeeded one another from second to second; and i saw myself, if i ventured nearer, dashed to death upon the rough shore or spending my strength in vain to scale the beetling crags. nor was that all, for crawling together on flat tables of rock or letting themselves drop into the sea with loud reports i beheld huge slimy monsters--soft snails, as it were, of incredible bigness--two or three score of them together, making the rocks to echo with their barkings. i have understood since that they were sea lions, and entirely harmless. but the look of them, added to the difficulty of the shore and the high running of the surf, was more than enough to disgust me of that landing-place. i felt willing rather to starve at sea than to confront such perils. in the meantime i had a better chance, as i supposed, before me. north of haulbowline head, the land runs in a long way, leaving at low tide a long stretch of yellow sand. to the north of that, again, there comes another cape--cape of the woods, as it was marked upon the chart--buried in tall green pines, which descended to the margin of the sea. i remembered what silver had said about the current that sets northward along the whole west coast of treasure island, and seeing from my position that i was already under its influence, i preferred to leave haulbowline head behind me and reserve my strength for an attempt to land upon the kindlier-looking cape of the woods. there was a great, smooth swell upon the sea. the wind blowing steady and gentle from the south, there was no contrariety between that and the current, and the billows rose and fell unbroken. had it been otherwise, i must long ago have perished; but as it was, it is surprising how easily and securely my little and light boat could ride. often, as i still lay at the bottom and kept no more than an eye above the gunwale, i would see a big blue summit heaving close above me; yet the coracle would but bounce a little, dance as if on springs, and subside on the other side into the trough as lightly as a bird. i began after a little to grow very bold and sat up to try my skill at paddling. but even a small change in the disposition of the weight will produce violent changes in the behaviour of a coracle. and i had hardly moved before the boat, giving up at once her gentle dancing movement, ran straight down a slope of water so steep that it made me giddy, and struck her nose, with a spout of spray, deep into the side of the next wave. i was drenched and terrified, and fell instantly back into my old position, whereupon the coracle seemed to find her head again and led me as softly as before among the billows. it was plain she was not to be interfered with, and at that rate, since i could in no way influence her course, what hope had i left of reaching land? i began to be horribly frightened, but i kept my head, for all that. first, moving with all care, i gradually baled out the coracle with my sea-cap; then, getting my eye once more above the gunwale, i set myself to study how it was she managed to slip so quietly through the rollers. i found each wave, instead of the big, smooth glossy mountain it looks from shore or from a vessel's deck, was for all the world like any range of hills on dry land, full of peaks and smooth places and valleys. the coracle, left to herself, turning from side to side, threaded, so to speak, her way through these lower parts and avoided the steep slopes and higher, toppling summits of the wave. "well, now," thought i to myself, "it is plain i must lie where i am and not disturb the balance; but it is plain also that i can put the paddle over the side and from time to time, in smooth places, give her a shove or two towards land." no sooner thought upon than done. there i lay on my elbows in the most trying attitude, and every now and again gave a weak stroke or two to turn her head to shore. it was very tiring and slow work, yet i did visibly gain ground; and as we drew near the cape of the woods, though i saw i must infallibly miss that point, i had still made some hundred yards of easting. i was, indeed, close in. i could see the cool green tree-tops swaying together in the breeze, and i felt sure i should make the next promontory without fail. it was high time, for i now began to be tortured with thirst. the glow of the sun from above, its thousandfold reflection from the waves, the sea-water that fell and dried upon me, caking my very lips with salt, combined to make my throat burn and my brain ache. the sight of the trees so near at hand had almost made me sick with longing, but the current had soon carried me past the point, and as the next reach of sea opened out, i beheld a sight that changed the nature of my thoughts. right in front of me, not half a mile away, i beheld the hispaniola under sail. i made sure, of course, that i should be taken; but i was so distressed for want of water that i scarce knew whether to be glad or sorry at the thought, and long before i had come to a conclusion, surprise had taken entire possession of my mind and i could do nothing but stare and wonder. the hispaniola was under her main-sail and two jibs, and the beautiful white canvas shone in the sun like snow or silver. when i first sighted her, all her sails were drawing; she was lying a course about northwest, and i presumed the men on board were going round the island on their way back to the anchorage. presently she began to fetch more and more to the westward, so that i thought they had sighted me and were going about in chase. at last, however, she fell right into the wind's eye, was taken dead aback, and stood there awhile helpless, with her sails shivering. "clumsy fellows," said i; "they must still be drunk as owls." and i thought how captain smollett would have set them skipping. meanwhile the schooner gradually fell off and filled again upon another tack, sailed swiftly for a minute or so, and brought up once more dead in the wind's eye. again and again was this repeated. to and fro, up and down, north, south, east, and west, the hispaniola sailed by swoops and dashes, and at each repetition ended as she had begun, with idly flapping canvas. it became plain to me that nobody was steering. and if so, where were the men? either they were dead drunk or had deserted her, i thought, and perhaps if i could get on board i might return the vessel to her captain. the current was bearing coracle and schooner southward at an equal rate. as for the latter's sailing, it was so wild and intermittent, and she hung each time so long in irons, that she certainly gained nothing, if she did not even lose. if only i dared to sit up and paddle, i made sure that i could overhaul her. the scheme had an air of adventure that inspired me, and the thought of the water breaker beside the fore companion doubled my growing courage. up i got, was welcomed almost instantly by another cloud of spray, but this time stuck to my purpose and set myself, with all my strength and caution, to paddle after the unsteered hispaniola. once i shipped a sea so heavy that i had to stop and bail, with my heart fluttering like a bird, but gradually i got into the way of the thing and guided my coracle among the waves, with only now and then a blow upon her bows and a dash of foam in my face. i was now gaining rapidly on the schooner; i could see the brass glisten on the tiller as it banged about, and still no soul appeared upon her decks. i could not choose but suppose she was deserted. if not, the men were lying drunk below, where i might batten them down, perhaps, and do what i chose with the ship. for some time she had been doing the worse thing possible for me--standing still. she headed nearly due south, yawing, of course, all the time. each time she fell off, her sails partly filled, and these brought her in a moment right to the wind again. i have said this was the worst thing possible for me, for helpless as she looked in this situation, with the canvas cracking like cannon and the blocks trundling and banging on the deck, she still continued to run away from me, not only with the speed of the current, but by the whole amount of her leeway, which was naturally great. but now, at last, i had my chance. the breeze fell for some seconds, very low, and the current gradually turning her, the hispaniola revolved slowly round her centre and at last presented me her stern, with the cabin window still gaping open and the lamp over the table still burning on into the day. the main-sail hung drooped like a banner. she was stock-still but for the current. for the last little while i had even lost, but now redoubling my efforts, i began once more to overhaul the chase. i was not a hundred yards from her when the wind came again in a clap; she filled on the port tack and was off again, stooping and skimming like a swallow. my first impulse was one of despair, but my second was towards joy. round she came, till she was broadside on to me--round still till she had covered a half and then two thirds and then three quarters of the distance that separated us. i could see the waves boiling white under her forefoot. immensely tall she looked to me from my low station in the coracle. and then, of a sudden, i began to comprehend. i had scarce time to think--scarce time to act and save myself. i was on the summit of one swell when the schooner came stooping over the next. the bowsprit was over my head. i sprang to my feet and leaped, stamping the coracle under water. with one hand i caught the jib-boom, while my foot was lodged between the stay and the brace; and as i still clung there panting, a dull blow told me that the schooner had charged down upon and struck the coracle and that i was left without retreat on the hispaniola. 25 i strike the jolly roger i had scarce gained a position on the bowsprit when the flying jib flapped and filled upon the other tack, with a report like a gun. the schooner trembled to her keel under the reverse, but next moment, the other sails still drawing, the jib flapped back again and hung idle. this had nearly tossed me off into the sea; and now i lost no time, crawled back along the bowsprit, and tumbled head foremost on the deck. i was on the lee side of the forecastle, and the mainsail, which was still drawing, concealed from me a certain portion of the after-deck. not a soul was to be seen. the planks, which had not been swabbed since the mutiny, bore the print of many feet, and an empty bottle, broken by the neck, tumbled to and fro like a live thing in the scuppers. suddenly the hispaniola came right into the wind. the jibs behind me cracked aloud, the rudder slammed to, the whole ship gave a sickening heave and shudder, and at the same moment the main-boom swung inboard, the sheet groaning in the blocks, and showed me the lee after-deck. there were the two watchmen, sure enough: red-cap on his back, as stiff as a handspike, with his arms stretched out like those of a crucifix and his teeth showing through his open lips; israel hands propped against the bulwarks, his chin on his chest, his hands lying open before him on the deck, his face as white, under its tan, as a tallow candle. for a while the ship kept bucking and sidling like a vicious horse, the sails filling, now on one tack, now on another, and the boom swinging to and fro till the mast groaned aloud under the strain. now and again too there would come a cloud of light sprays over the bulwark and a heavy blow of the ship's bows against the swell; so much heavier weather was made of it by this great rigged ship than by my home-made, lop-sided coracle, now gone to the bottom of the sea. at every jump of the schooner, red-cap slipped to and fro, but--what was ghastly to behold--neither his attitude nor his fixed teeth-disclosing grin was anyway disturbed by this rough usage. at every jump too, hands appeared still more to sink into himself and settle down upon the deck, his feet sliding ever the farther out, and the whole body canting towards the stern, so that his face became, little by little, hid from me; and at last i could see nothing beyond his ear and the frayed ringlet of one whisker. at the same time, i observed, around both of them, splashes of dark blood upon the planks and began to feel sure that they had killed each other in their drunken wrath. while i was thus looking and wondering, in a calm moment, when the ship was still, israel hands turned partly round and with a low moan writhed himself back to the position in which i had seen him first. the moan, which told of pain and deadly weakness, and the way in which his jaw hung open went right to my heart. but when i remembered the talk i had overheard from the apple barrel, all pity left me. i walked aft until i reached the main-mast. "come aboard, mr. hands," i said ironically. he rolled his eyes round heavily, but he was too far gone to express surprise. all he could do was to utter one word, "brandy." it occurred to me there was no time to lose, and dodging the boom as it once more lurched across the deck, i slipped aft and down the companion stairs into the cabin. it was such a scene of confusion as you can hardly fancy. all the lockfast places had been broken open in quest of the chart. the floor was thick with mud where ruffians had sat down to drink or consult after wading in the marshes round their camp. the bulkheads, all painted in clear white and beaded round with gilt, bore a pattern of dirty hands. dozens of empty bottles clinked together in corners to the rolling of the ship. one of the doctor's medical books lay open on the table, half of the leaves gutted out, i suppose, for pipelights. in the midst of all this the lamp still cast a smoky glow, obscure and brown as umber. i went into the cellar; all the barrels were gone, and of the bottles a most surprising number had been drunk out and thrown away. certainly, since the mutiny began, not a man of them could ever have been sober. foraging about, i found a bottle with some brandy left, for hands; and for myself i routed out some biscuit, some pickled fruits, a great bunch of raisins, and a piece of cheese. with these i came on deck, put down my own stock behind the rudder head and well out of the coxswain's reach, went forward to the water-breaker, and had a good deep drink of water, and then, and not till then, gave hands the brandy. he must have drunk a gill before he took the bottle from his mouth. "aye," said he, "by thunder, but i wanted some o' that!" i had sat down already in my own corner and begun to eat. "much hurt?" i asked him. he grunted, or rather, i might say, he barked. "if that doctor was aboard," he said, "i'd be right enough in a couple of turns, but i don't have no manner of luck, you see, and that's what's the matter with me. as for that swab, he's good and dead, he is," he added, indicating the man with the red cap. "he warn't no seaman anyhow. and where mought you have come from?" "well," said i, "i've come aboard to take possession of this ship, mr. hands; and you'll please regard me as your captain until further notice." he looked at me sourly enough but said nothing. some of the colour had come back into his cheeks, though he still looked very sick and still continued to slip out and settle down as the ship banged about. "by the by," i continued, "i can't have these colours, mr. hands; and by your leave, i'll strike 'em. better none than these." and again dodging the boom, i ran to the colour lines, handed down their cursed black flag, and chucked it overboard. "god save the king!" said i, waving my cap. "and there's an end to captain silver!" he watched me keenly and slyly, his chin all the while on his breast. "i reckon," he said at last, "i reckon, cap'n hawkins, you'll kind of want to get ashore now. s'pose we talks." "why, yes," says i, "with all my heart, mr. hands. say on." and i went back to my meal with a good appetite. "this man," he began, nodding feebly at the corpse "-o'brien were his name, a rank irelander--this man and me got the canvas on her, meaning for to sail her back. well, he's dead now, he is--as dead as bilge; and who's to sail this ship, i don't see. without i gives you a hint, you ain't that man, as far's i can tell. now, look here, you gives me food and drink and a old scarf or ankecher to tie my wound up, you do, and i'll tell you how to tail her, and that's about square all round, i take it." "i'll tell you one thing," says i: "i'm not going back to captain kidd's anchorage. i mean to get into north inlet and beach her quietly there." "to be sure you did," he cried. "why, i ain't sich an infernal lubber after all. i can see, can't i? i've tried my fling, i have, and i've lost, and it's you has the wind of me. north inlet? why, i haven't no ch'ice, not i! i'd help you sail her up to execution dock, by thunder! so i would." well, as it seemed to me, there was some sense in this. we struck our bargain on the spot. in three minutes i had the hispaniola sailing easily before the wind along the coast of treasure island, with good hopes of turning the northern point ere noon and beating down again as far as north inlet before high water, when we might beach her safely and wait till the subsiding tide permitted us to land. then i lashed the tiller and went below to my own chest, where i got a soft silk handkerchief of my mother's. with this, and with my aid, hands bound up the great bleeding stab he had received in the thigh, and after he had eaten a little and had a swallow or two more of the brandy, he began to pick up visibly, sat straighter up, spoke louder and clearer, and looked in every way another man. the breeze served us admirably. we skimmed before it like a bird, the coast of the island flashing by and the view changing every minute. soon we were past the high lands and bowling beside low, sandy country, sparsely dotted with dwarf pines, and soon we were beyond that again and had turned the corner of the rocky hill that ends the island on the north. i was greatly elated with my new command, and pleased with the bright, sunshiny weather and these different prospects of the coast. i had now plenty of water and good things to eat, and my conscience, which had smitten me hard for my desertion, was quieted by the great conquest i had made. i should, i think, have had nothing left me to desire but for the eyes of the coxswain as they followed me derisively about the deck and the odd smile that appeared continually on his face. it was a smile that had in it something both of pain and weakness--a haggard old man's smile; but there was, besides that, a grain of derision, a shadow of treachery, in his expression as he craftily watched, and watched, and watched me at my work. 26 israel hands the wind, serving us to a desire, now hauled into the west. we could run so much the easier from the north-east corner of the island to the mouth of the north inlet. only, as we had no power to anchor and dared not beach her till the tide had flowed a good deal farther, time hung on our hands. the coxswain told me how to lay the ship to; after a good many trials i succeeded, and we both sat in silence over another meal. "cap'n," said he at length with that same uncomfortable smile, "here's my old shipmate, o'brien; s'pose you was to heave him overboard. i ain't partic'lar as a rule, and i don't take no blame for settling his hash, but i don't reckon him ornamental now, do you?" "i'm not strong enough, and i don't like the job; and there he lies, for me," said i. "this here's an unlucky ship, this hispaniola, jim," he went on, blinking. "there's a power of men been killed in this hispaniola--a sight o' poor seamen dead and gone since you and me took ship to bristol. i never seen sich dirty luck, not i. there was this here o'brien now--he's dead, ain't he? well now, i'm no scholar, and you're a lad as can read and figure, and to put it straight, do you take it as a dead man is dead for good, or do he come alive again?" "you can kill the body, mr. hands, but not the spirit; you must know that already," i replied. "o'brien there is in another world, and may be watching us." "ah!" says he. "well, that's unfort'nate--appears as if killing parties was a waste of time. howsomever, sperrits don't reckon for much, by what i've seen. i'll chance it with the sperrits, jim. and now, you've spoke up free, and i'll take it kind if you'd step down into that there cabin and get me a--well, a--shiver my timbers! i can't hit the name on 't; well, you get me a bottle of wine, jim--this here brandy's too strong for my head." now, the coxswain's hesitation seemed to be unnatural, and as for the notion of his preferring wine to brandy, i entirely disbelieved it. the whole story was a pretext. he wanted me to leave the deck--so much was plain; but with what purpose i could in no way imagine. his eyes never met mine; they kept wandering to and fro, up and down, now with a look to the sky, now with a flitting glance upon the dead o'brien. all the time he kept smiling and putting his tongue out in the most guilty, embarrassed manner, so that a child could have told that he was bent on some deception. i was prompt with my answer, however, for i saw where my advantage lay and that with a fellow so densely stupid i could easily conceal my suspicions to the end. "some wine?" i said. "far better. will you have white or red?" "well, i reckon it's about the blessed same to me, shipmate," he replied; "so it's strong, and plenty of it, what's the odds?" "all right," i answered. "i'll bring you port, mr. hands. but i'll have to dig for it." with that i scuttled down the companion with all the noise i could, slipped off my shoes, ran quietly along the sparred gallery, mounted the forecastle ladder, and popped my head out of the fore companion. i knew he would not expect to see me there, yet i took every precaution possible, and certainly the worst of my suspicions proved too true. he had risen from his position to his hands and knees, and though his leg obviously hurt him pretty sharply when he moved--for i could hear him stifle a groan--yet it was at a good, rattling rate that he trailed himself across the deck. in half a minute he had reached the port scuppers and picked, out of a coil of rope, a long knife, or rather a short dirk, discoloured to the hilt with blood. he looked upon it for a moment, thrusting forth his under jaw, tried the point upon his hand, and then, hastily concealing it in the bosom of his jacket, trundled back again into his old place against the bulwark. this was all that i required to know. israel could move about, he was now armed, and if he had been at so much trouble to get rid of me, it was plain that i was meant to be the victim. what he would do afterwards-whether he would try to crawl right across the island from north inlet to the camp among the swamps or whether he would fire long tom, trusting that his own comrades might come first to help him--was, of course, more than i could say. yet i felt sure that i could trust him in one point, since in that our interests jumped together, and that was in the disposition of the schooner. we both desired to have her stranded safe enough, in a sheltered place, and so that, when the time came, she could be got off again with as little labour and danger as might be; and until that was done i considered that my life would certainly be spared. while i was thus turning the business over in my mind, i had not been idle with my body. i had stolen back to the cabin, slipped once more into my shoes, and laid my hand at random on a bottle of wine, and now, with this for an excuse, i made my reappearance on the deck. hands lay as i had left him, all fallen together in a bundle and with his eyelids lowered as though he were too weak to bear the light. he looked up, however, at my coming, knocked the neck off the bottle like a man who had done the same thing often, and took a good swig, with his favourite toast of "here's luck!" then he lay quiet for a little, and then, pulling out a stick of tobacco, begged me to cut him a quid. "cut me a junk o' that," says he, "for i haven't no knife and hardly strength enough, so be as i had. ah, jim, jim, i reckon i've missed stays! cut me a quid, as'll likely be the last, lad, for i'm for my long home, and no mistake." "well," said i, "i'll cut you some tobacco, but if i was you and thought myself so badly, i would go to my prayers like a christian man." "why?" said he. "now, you tell me why." "why?" i cried. "you were asking me just now about the dead. you've broken your trust; you've lived in sin and lies and blood; there's a man you killed lying at your feet this moment, and you ask me why! for god's mercy, mr. hands, that's why." i spoke with a little heat, thinking of the bloody dirk he had hidden in his pocket and designed, in his ill thoughts, to end me with. he, for his part, took a great draught of the wine and spoke with the most unusual solemnity. "for thirty years," he said, "i've sailed the seas and seen good and bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out, knives going, and what not. well, now i tell you, i never seen good come o' goodness yet. him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don't bite; them's my views--amen, so be it. and now, you look here," he added, suddenly changing his tone, "we've had about enough of this foolery. the tide's made good enough by now. you just take my orders, cap'n hawkins, and we'll sail slap in and be done with it." all told, we had scarce two miles to run; but the navigation was delicate, the entrance to this northern anchorage was not only narrow and shoal, but lay east and west, so that the schooner must be nicely handled to be got in. i think i was a good, prompt subaltern, and i am very sure that hands was an excellent pilot, for we went about and about and dodged in, shaving the banks, with a certainty and a neatness that were a pleasure to behold. scarcely had we passed the heads before the land closed around us. the shores of north inlet were as thickly wooded as those of the southern anchorage, but the space was longer and narrower and more like, what in truth it was, the estuary of a river. right before us, at the southern end, we saw the wreck of a ship in the last stages of dilapidation. it had been a great vessel of three masts but had lain so long exposed to the injuries of the weather that it was hung about with great webs of dripping seaweed, and on the deck of it shore bushes had taken root and now flourished thick with flowers. it was a sad sight, but it showed us that the anchorage was calm. "now," said hands, "look there; there's a pet bit for to beach a ship in. fine flat sand, never a cat's paw, trees all around of it, and flowers a-blowing like a garding on that old ship." "and once beached," i inquired, "how shall we get her off again?" "why, so," he replied: "you take a line ashore there on the other side at low water, take a turn about one of them big pines; bring it back, take a turn around the capstan, and lie to for the tide. come high water, all hands take a pull upon the line, and off she comes as sweet as natur'. and now, boy, you stand by. we're near the bit now, and she's too much way on her. starboard a little--so--steady--starboard--larboard a little--steady--steady!" so he issued his commands, which i breathlessly obeyed, till, all of a sudden, he cried, "now, my hearty, luff!" and i put the helm hard up, and the hispaniola swung round rapidly and ran stem on for the low, wooded shore. the excitement of these last manoeuvres had somewhat interfered with the watch i had kept hitherto, sharply enough, upon the coxswain. even then i was still so much interested, waiting for the ship to touch, that i had quite forgot the peril that hung over my head and stood craning over the starboard bulwarks and watching the ripples spreading wide before the bows. i might have fallen without a struggle for my life had not a sudden disquietude seized upon me and made me turn my head. perhaps i had heard a creak or seen his shadow moving with the tail of my eye; perhaps it was an instinct like a cat's; but, sure enough, when i looked round, there was hands, already half-way towards me, with the dirk in his right hand. we must both have cried out aloud when our eyes met, but while mine was the shrill cry of terror, his was a roar of fury like a charging bully's. at the same instant, he threw himself forward and i leapt sideways towards the bows. as i did so, i let go of the tiller, which sprang sharp to leeward, and i think this saved my life, for it struck hands across the chest and stopped him, for the moment, dead. before he could recover, i was safe out of the corner where he had me trapped, with all the deck to dodge about. just forward of the main-mast i stopped, drew a pistol from my pocket, took a cool aim, though he had already turned and was once more coming directly after me, and drew the trigger. the hammer fell, but there followed neither flash nor sound; the priming was useless with sea-water. i cursed myself for my neglect. why had not i, long before, reprimed and reloaded my only weapons? then i should not have been as now, a mere fleeing sheep before this butcher. wounded as he was, it was wonderful how fast he could move, his grizzled hair tumbling over his face, and his face itself as red as a red ensign with his haste and fury. i had no time to try my other pistol, nor indeed much inclination, for i was sure it would be useless. one thing i saw plainly: i must not simply retreat before him, or he would speedily hold me boxed into the bows, as a moment since he had so nearly boxed me in the stern. once so caught, and nine or ten inches of the blood-stained dirk would be my last experience on this side of eternity. i placed my palms against the main-mast, which was of a goodish bigness, and waited, every nerve upon the stretch. seeing that i meant to dodge, he also paused; and a moment or two passed in feints on his part and corresponding movements upon mine. it was such a game as i had often played at home about the rocks of black hill cove, but never before, you may be sure, with such a wildly beating heart as now. still, as i say, it was a boy's game, and i thought i could hold my own at it against an elderly seaman with a wounded thigh. indeed my courage had begun to rise so high that i allowed myself a few darting thoughts on what would be the end of the affair, and while i saw certainly that i could spin it out for long, i saw no hope of any ultimate escape. well, while things stood thus, suddenly the hispaniola struck, staggered, ground for an instant in the sand, and then, swift as a blow, canted over to the port side till the deck stood at an angle of forty-five degrees and about a puncheon of water splashed into the scupper holes and lay, in a pool, between the deck and bulwark. we were both of us capsized in a second, and both of us rolled, almost together, into the scuppers, the dead red-cap, with his arms still spread out, tumbling stiffly after us. so near were we, indeed, that my head came against the coxswain's foot with a crack that made my teeth rattle. blow and all, i was the first afoot again, for hands had got involved with the dead body. the sudden canting of the ship had made the deck no place for running on; i had to find some new way of escape, and that upon the instant, for my foe was almost touching me. quick as thought, i sprang into the mizzen shrouds, rattled up hand over hand, and did not draw a breath till i was seated on the cross-trees. i had been saved by being prompt; the dirk had struck not half a foot below me as i pursued my upward flight; and there stood israel hands with his mouth open and his face upturned to mine, a perfect statue of surprise and disappointment. now that i had a moment to myself, i lost no time in changing the priming of my pistol, and then, having one ready for service, and to make assurance doubly sure, i proceeded to draw the load of the other and recharge it afresh from the beginning. my new employment struck hands all of a heap; he began to see the dice going against him, and after an obvious hesitation, he also hauled himself heavily into the shrouds, and with the dirk in his teeth, began slowly and painfully to mount. it cost him no end of time and groans to haul his wounded leg behind him, and i had quietly finished my arrangements before he was much more than a third of the way up. then, with a pistol in either hand, i addressed him. "one more step, mr. hands," said i, "and i'll blow your brains out! dead men don't bite, you know," i added with a chuckle. he stopped instantly. i could see by the working of his face that he was trying to think, and the process was so slow and laborious that, in my new-found security, i laughed aloud. at last, with a swallow or two, he spoke, his face still wearing the same expression of extreme perplexity. in order to speak he had to take the dagger from his mouth, but in all else he remained unmoved. "jim," says he, "i reckon we're fouled, you and me, and we'll have to sign articles. i'd have had you but for that there lurch, but i don't have no luck, not i; and i reckon i'll have to strike, which comes hard, you see, for a master mariner to a ship's younker like you, jim." i was drinking in his words and smiling away, as conceited as a cock upon a wall, when, all in a breath, back went his right hand over his shoulder. something sang like an arrow through the air; i felt a blow and then a sharp pang, and there i was pinned by the shoulder to the mast. in the horrid pain and surprise of the moment--i scarce can say it was by my own volition, and i am sure it was without a conscious aim-both my pistols went off, and both escaped out of my hands. they did not fall alone; with a choked cry, the coxswain loosed his grasp upon the shrouds and plunged head first into the water. 27 "pieces of eight" owing to the cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water, and from my perch on the cross-trees i had nothing below me but the surface of the bay. hands, who was not so far up, was in consequence nearer to the ship and fell between me and the bulwarks. he rose once to the surface in a lather of foam and blood and then sank again for good. as the water settled, i could see him lying huddled together on the clean, bright sand in the shadow of the vessel's sides. a fish or two whipped past his body. sometimes, by the quivering of the water, he appeared to move a little, as if he were trying to rise. but he was dead enough, for all that, being both shot and drowned, and was food for fish in the very place where he had designed my slaughter. i was no sooner certain of this than i began to feel sick, faint, and terrified. the hot blood was running over my back and chest. the dirk, where it had pinned my shoulder to the mast, seemed to burn like a hot iron; yet it was not so much these real sufferings that distressed me, for these, it seemed to me, i could bear without a murmur; it was the horror i had upon my mind of falling from the cross-trees into that still green water, beside the body of the coxswain. i clung with both hands till my nails ached, and i shut my eyes as if to cover up the peril. gradually my mind came back again, my pulses quieted down to a more natural time, and i was once more in possession of myself. it was my first thought to pluck forth the dirk, but either it stuck too hard or my nerve failed me, and i desisted with a violent shudder. oddly enough, that very shudder did the business. the knife, in fact, had come the nearest in the world to missing me altogether; it held me by a mere pinch of skin, and this the shudder tore away. the blood ran down the faster, to be sure, but i was my own master again and only tacked to the mast by my coat and shirt. these last i broke through with a sudden jerk, and then regained the deck by the starboard shrouds. for nothing in the world would i have again ventured, shaken as i was, upon the overhanging port shrouds from which israel had so lately fallen. i went below and did what i could for my wound; it pained me a good deal and still bled freely, but it was neither deep nor dangerous, nor did it greatly gall me when i used my arm. then i looked around me, and as the ship was now, in a sense, my own, i began to think of clearing it from its last passenger--the dead man, o'brien. he had pitched, as i have said, against the bulwarks, where he lay like some horrible, ungainly sort of puppet, life-size, indeed, but how different from life's colour or life's comeliness! in that position i could easily have my way with him, and as the habit of tragical adventures had worn off almost all my terror for the dead, i took him by the waist as if he had been a sack of bran and with one good heave, tumbled him overboard. he went in with a sounding plunge; the red cap came off and remained floating on the surface; and as soon as the splash subsided, i could see him and israel lying side by side, both wavering with the tremulous movement of the water. o'brien, though still quite a young man, was very bald. there he lay, with that bald head across the knees of the man who had killed him and the quick fishes steering to and fro over both. i was now alone upon the ship; the tide had just turned. the sun was within so few degrees of setting that already the shadow of the pines upon the western shore began to reach right across the anchorage and fall in patterns on the deck. the evening breeze had sprung up, and though it was well warded off by the hill with the two peaks upon the east, the cordage had begun to sing a little softly to itself and the idle sails to rattle to and fro. i began to see a danger to the ship. the jibs i speedily doused and brought tumbling to the deck, but the main-sail was a harder matter. of course, when the schooner canted over, the boom had swung out-board, and the cap of it and a foot or two of sail hung even under water. i thought this made it still more dangerous; yet the strain was so heavy that i half feared to meddle. at last i got my knife and cut the halyards. the peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose canvas floated broad upon the water, and since, pull as i liked, i could not budge the downhall, that was the extent of what i could accomplish. for the rest, the hispaniola must trust to luck, like myself. by this time the whole anchorage had fallen into shadow--the last rays, i remember, falling through a glade of the wood and shining bright as jewels on the flowery mantle of the wreck. it began to be chill; the tide was rapidly fleeting seaward, the schooner settling more and more on her beam-ends. i scrambled forward and looked over. it seemed shallow enough, and holding the cut hawser in both hands for a last security, i let myself drop softly overboard. the water scarcely reached my waist; the sand was firm and covered with ripple marks, and i waded ashore in great spirits, leaving the hispaniola on her side, with her main-sail trailing wide upon the surface of the bay. about the same time, the sun went fairly down and the breeze whistled low in the dusk among the tossing pines. at least, and at last, i was off the sea, nor had i returned thence empty-handed. there lay the schooner, clear at last from buccaneers and ready for our own men to board and get to sea again. i had nothing nearer my fancy than to get home to the stockade and boast of my achievements. possibly i might be blamed a bit for my truantry, but the recapture of the hispaniola was a clenching answer, and i hoped that even captain smollett would confess i had not lost my time. so thinking, and in famous spirits, i began to set my face homeward for the block house and my companions. i remembered that the most easterly of the rivers which drain into captain kidd's anchorage ran from the two-peaked hill upon my left, and i bent my course in that direction that i might pass the stream while it was small. the wood was pretty open, and keeping along the lower spurs, i had soon turned the corner of that hill, and not long after waded to the mid-calf across the watercourse. this brought me near to where i had encountered ben gunn, the maroon; and i walked more circumspectly, keeping an eye on every side. the dusk had come nigh hand completely, and as i opened out the cleft between the two peaks, i became aware of a wavering glow against the sky, where, as i judged, the man of the island was cooking his supper before a roaring fire. and yet i wondered, in my heart, that he should show himself so careless. for if i could see this radiance, might it not reach the eyes of silver himself where he camped upon the shore among the marshes? gradually the night fell blacker; it was all i could do to guide myself even roughly towards my destination; the double hill behind me and the spy-glass on my right hand loomed faint and fainter; the stars were few and pale; and in the low ground where i wandered i kept tripping among bushes and rolling into sandy pits. suddenly a kind of brightness fell about me. i looked up; a pale glimmer of moonbeams had alighted on the summit of the spy-glass, and soon after i saw something broad and silvery moving low down behind the trees, and knew the moon had risen. with this to help me, i passed rapidly over what remained to me of my journey, and sometimes walking, sometimes running, impatiently drew near to the stockade. yet, as i began to thread the grove that lies before it, i was not so thoughtless but that i slacked my pace and went a trifle warily. it would have been a poor end of my adventures to get shot down by my own party in mistake. the moon was climbing higher and higher, its light began to fall here and there in masses through the more open districts of the wood, and right in front of me a glow of a different colour appeared among the trees. it was red and hot, and now and again it was a little darkened--as it were, the embers of a bonfire smouldering. for the life of me i could not think what it might be. at last i came right down upon the borders of the clearing. the western end was already steeped in moonshine; the rest, and the block house itself, still lay in a black shadow chequered with long silvery streaks of light. on the other side of the house an immense fire had burned itself into clear embers and shed a steady, red reverberation, contrasted strongly with the mellow paleness of the moon. there was not a soul stirring nor a sound beside the noises of the breeze. i stopped, with much wonder in my heart, and perhaps a little terror also. it had not been our way to build great fires; we were, indeed, by the captain's orders, somewhat niggardly of firewood, and i began to fear that something had gone wrong while i was absent. i stole round by the eastern end, keeping close in shadow, and at a convenient place, where the darkness was thickest, crossed the palisade. to make assurance surer, i got upon my hands and knees and crawled, without a sound, towards the corner of the house. as i drew nearer, my heart was suddenly and greatly lightened. it is not a pleasant noise in itself, and i have often complained of it at other times, but just then it was like music to hear my friends snoring together so loud and peaceful in their sleep. the sea-cry of the watch, that beautiful "all's well," never fell more reassuringly on my ear. in the meantime, there was no doubt of one thing; they kept an infamous bad watch. if it had been silver and his lads that were now creeping in on them, not a soul would have seen daybreak. that was what it was, thought i, to have the captain wounded; and again i blamed myself sharply for leaving them in that danger with so few to mount guard. by this time i had got to the door and stood up. all was dark within, so that i could distinguish nothing by the eye. as for sounds, there was the steady drone of the snorers and a small occasional noise, a flickering or pecking that i could in no way account for. with my arms before me i walked steadily in. i should lie down in my own place (i thought with a silent chuckle) and enjoy their faces when they found me in the morning. my foot struck something yielding--it was a sleeper's leg; and he turned and groaned, but without awaking. and then, all of a sudden, a shrill voice broke forth out of the darkness: "pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight! and so forth, without pause or change, like the clacking of a tiny mill. silver's green parrot, captain flint! it was she whom i had heard pecking at a piece of bark; it was she, keeping better watch than any human being, who thus announced my arrival with her wearisome refrain. i had no time left me to recover. at the sharp, clipping tone of the parrot, the sleepers awoke and sprang up; and with a mighty oath, the voice of silver cried, "who goes?" i turned to run, struck violently against one person, recoiled, and ran full into the arms of a second, who for his part closed upon and held me tight. "bring a torch, dick," said silver when my capture was thus assured. and one of the men left the log-house and presently returned with a lighted brand. part six captain silver 28 in the enemy's camp the red glare of the torch, lighting up the interior of the block house, showed me the worst of my apprehensions realized. the pirates were in possession of the house and stores: there was the cask of cognac, there were the pork and bread, as before, and what tenfold increased my horror, not a sign of any prisoner. i could only judge that all had perished, and my heart smote me sorely that i had not been there to perish with them. there were six of the buccaneers, all told; not another man was left alive. five of them were on their feet, flushed and swollen, suddenly called out of the first sleep of drunkenness. the sixth had only risen upon his elbow; he was deadly pale, and the blood-stained bandage round his head told that he had recently been wounded, and still more recently dressed. i remembered the man who had been shot and had run back among the woods in the great attack, and doubted not that this was he. the parrot sat, preening her plumage, on long john's shoulder. he himself, i thought, looked somewhat paler and more stern than i was used to. he still wore the fine broadcloth suit in which he had fulfilled his mission, but it was bitterly the worse for wear, daubed with clay and torn with the sharp briers of the wood. "so," said he, "here's jim hawkins, shiver my timbers! dropped in, like, eh? well, come, i take that friendly." and thereupon he sat down across the brandy cask and began to fill a pipe. "give me a loan of the link, dick," said he; and then, when he had a good light, "that'll do, lad," he added; "stick the glim in the wood heap; and you, gentlemen, bring yourselves to! you needn't stand up for mr. hawkins; he'll excuse you, you may lay to that. and so, jim"--stopping the tobacco--"here you were, and quite a pleasant surprise for poor old john. i see you were smart when first i set my eyes on you, but this here gets away from me clean, it do." to all this, as may be well supposed, i made no answer. they had set me with my back against the wall, and i stood there, looking silver in the face, pluckily enough, i hope, to all outward appearance, but with black despair in my heart. silver took a whiff or two of his pipe with great composure and then ran on again. "now, you see, jim, so be as you are here," says he, "i'll give you a piece of my mind. i've always liked you, i have, for a lad of spirit, and the picter of my own self when i was young and handsome. i always wanted you to jine and take your share, and die a gentleman, and now, my cock, you've got to. cap'n smollett's a fine seaman, as i'll own up to any day, but stiff on discipline. 'dooty is dooty,' says he, and right he is. just you keep clear of the cap'n. the doctor himself is gone dead again you--'ungrateful scamp' was what he said; and the short and the long of the whole story is about here: you can't go back to your own lot, for they won't have you; and without you start a third ship's company all by yourself, which might be lonely, you'll have to jine with cap'n silver." so far so good. my friends, then, were still alive, and though i partly believed the truth of silver's statement, that the cabin party were incensed at me for my desertion, i was more relieved than distressed by what i heard. "i don't say nothing as to your being in our hands," continued silver, "though there you are, and you may lay to it. i'm all for argyment; i never seen good come out o' threatening. if you like the service, well, you'll jine; and if you don't, jim, why, you're free to answer no--free and welcome, shipmate; and if fairer can be said by mortal seaman, shiver my sides!" "am i to answer, then?" i asked with a very tremulous voice. through all this sneering talk, i was made to feel the threat of death that overhung me, and my cheeks burned and my heart beat painfully in my breast. "lad," said silver, "no one's a-pressing of you. take your bearings. none of us won't hurry you, mate; time goes so pleasant in your company, you see." "well," says i, growing a bit bolder, "if i'm to choose, i declare i have a right to know what's what, and why you're here, and where my friends are." "wot's wot?" repeated one of the buccaneers in a deep growl. "ah, he'd be a lucky one as knowed that!" "you'll perhaps batten down your hatches till you're spoke to, my friend," cried silver truculently to this speaker. and then, in his first gracious tones, he replied to me, "yesterday morning, mr. hawkins," said he, "in the dog-watch, down came doctor livesey with a flag of truce. says he, 'cap'n silver, you're sold out. ship's gone.' well, maybe we'd been taking a glass, and a song to help it round. i won't say no. leastways, none of us had looked out. we looked out, and by thunder, the old ship was gone! i never seen a pack o' fools look fishier; and you may lay to that, if i tells you that looked the fishiest. 'well,' says the doctor, 'let's bargain.' we bargained, him and i, and here we are: stores, brandy, block house, the firewood you was thoughtful enough to cut, and in a manner of speaking, the whole blessed boat, from cross-trees to kelson. as for them, they've tramped; i don't know where's they are." he drew again quietly at his pipe. "and lest you should take it into that head of yours," he went on, "that you was included in the treaty, here's the last word that was said: 'how many are you,' says i, 'to leave?' 'four,' says he; 'four, and one of us wounded. as for that boy, i don't know where he is, confound him,' says he, 'nor i don't much care. we're about sick of him.' these was his words. "is that all?" i asked. "well, it's all that you're to hear, my son," returned silver. "and now i am to choose?" "and now you are to choose, and you may lay to that," said silver. "well," said i, "i am not such a fool but i know pretty well what i have to look for. let the worst come to the worst, it's little i care. i've seen too many die since i fell in with you. but there's a thing or two i have to tell you," i said, and by this time i was quite excited; "and the first is this: here you are, in a bad way--ship lost, treasure lost, men lost, your whole business gone to wreck; and if you want to know who did it--it was i! i was in the apple barrel the night we sighted land, and i heard you, john, and you, dick johnson, and hands, who is now at the bottom of the sea, and told every word you said before the hour was out. and as for the schooner, it was i who cut her cable, and it was i that killed the men you had aboard of her, and it was i who brought her where you'll never see her more, not one of you. the laugh's on my side; i've had the top of this business from the first; i no more fear you than i fear a fly. kill me, if you please, or spare me. but one thing i'll say, and no more; if you spare me, bygones are bygones, and when you fellows are in court for piracy, i'll save you all i can. it is for you to choose. kill another and do yourselves no good, or spare me and keep a witness to save you from the gallows." i stopped, for, i tell you, i was out of breath, and to my wonder, not a man of them moved, but all sat staring at me like as many sheep. and while they were still staring, i broke out again, "and now, mr. silver," i said, "i believe you're the best man here, and if things go to the worst, i'll take it kind of you to let the doctor know the way i took it." "i'll bear it in mind," said silver with an accent so curious that i could not, for the life of me, decide whether he were laughing at my request or had been favourably affected by my courage. "i'll put one to that," cried the old mahogany-faced seaman--morgan by name--whom i had seen in long john's public-house upon the quays of bristol. "it was him that knowed black dog." "well, and see here," added the sea-cook. "i'll put another again to that, by thunder! for it was this same boy that faked the chart from billy bones. first and last, we've split upon jim hawkins!" "then here goes!" said morgan with an oath. and he sprang up, drawing his knife as if he had been twenty. "avast, there!" cried silver. "who are you, tom morgan? maybe you thought you was cap'n here, perhaps. by the powers, but i'll teach you better! cross me, and you'll go where many a good man's gone before you, first and last, these thirty year back--some to the yard-arm, shiver my timbers, and some by the board, and all to feed the fishes. there's never a man looked me between the eyes and seen a good day a'terwards, tom morgan, you may lay to that." morgan paused, but a hoarse murmur rose from the others. "tom's right," said one. "i stood hazing long enough from one," added another. "i'll be hanged if i'll be hazed by you, john silver." "did any of you gentlemen want to have it out with me?" roared silver, bending far forward from his position on the keg, with his pipe still glowing in his right hand. "put a name on what you're at; you ain't dumb, i reckon. him that wants shall get it. have i lived this many years, and a son of a rum puncheon cock his hat athwart my hawse at the latter end of it? you know the way; you're all gentlemen o' fortune, by your account. well, i'm ready. take a cutlass, him that dares, and i'll see the colour of his inside, crutch and all, before that pipe's empty." not a man stirred; not a man answered. "that's your sort, is it?" he added, returning his pipe to his mouth. "well, you're a gay lot to look at, anyway. not much worth to fight, you ain't. p'r'aps you can understand king george's english. i'm cap'n here by 'lection. i'm cap'n here because i'm the best man by a long sea-mile. you won't fight, as gentlemen o' fortune should; then, by thunder, you'll obey, and you may lay to it! i like that boy, now; i never seen a better boy than that. he's more a man than any pair of rats of you in this here house, and what i say is this: let me see him that'll lay a hand on him--that's what i say, and you may lay to it." there was a long pause after this. i stood straight up against the wall, my heart still going like a sledgehammer, but with a ray of hope now shining in my bosom. silver leant back against the wall, his arms crossed, his pipe in the corner of his mouth, as calm as though he had been in church; yet his eye kept wandering furtively, and he kept the tail of it on his unruly followers. they, on their part, drew gradually together towards the far end of the block house, and the low hiss of their whispering sounded in my ear continuously, like a stream. one after another, they would look up, and the red light of the torch would fall for a second on their nervous faces; but it was not towards me, it was towards silver that they turned their eyes. "you seem to have a lot to say," remarked silver, spitting far into the air. "pipe up and let me hear it, or lay to." "ax your pardon, sir," returned one of the men; "you're pretty free with some of the rules; maybe you'll kindly keep an eye upon the rest. this crew's dissatisfied; this crew don't vally bullying a marlin-spike; this crew has its rights like other crews, i'll make so free as that; and by your own rules, i take it we can talk together. i ax your pardon, sir, acknowledging you for to be captaing at this present; but i claim my right, and steps outside for a council." and with an elaborate sea-salute, this fellow, a long, ill-looking, yellow-eyed man of five and thirty, stepped coolly towards the door and disappeared out of the house. one after another the rest followed his example, each making a salute as he passed, each adding some apology. "according to rules," said one. "forecastle council," said morgan. and so with one remark or another all marched out and left silver and me alone with the torch. the sea-cook instantly removed his pipe. "now, look you here, jim hawkins," he said in a steady whisper that was no more than audible, "you're within half a plank of death, and what's a long sight worse, of torture. they're going to throw me off. but, you mark, i stand by you through thick and thin. i didn't mean to; no, not till you spoke up. i was about desperate to lose that much blunt, and be hanged into the bargain. but i see you was the right sort. i says to myself, you stand by hawkins, john, and hawkins'll stand by you. you're his last card, and by the living thunder, john, he's yours! back to back, says i. you save your witness, and he'll save your neck!" i began dimly to understand. "you mean all's lost?" i asked. "aye, by gum, i do!" he answered. "ship gone, neck gone --that's the size of it. once i looked into that bay, jim hawkins, and seen no schooner--well, i'm tough, but i gave out. as for that lot and their council, mark me, they're outright fools and cowards. i'll save your life--if so be as i can--from them. but, see here, jim--tit for tat--you save long john from swinging." i was bewildered; it seemed a thing so hopeless he was asking--he, the old buccaneer, the ringleader throughout. "what i can do, that i'll do," i said. "it's a bargain!" cried long john. "you speak up plucky, and by thunder, i've a chance!" he hobbled to the torch, where it stood propped among the firewood, and took a fresh light to his pipe. "understand me, jim," he said, returning. "i've a head on my shoulders, i have. i'm on squire's side now. i know you've got that ship safe somewheres. how you done it, i don't know, but safe it is. i guess hands and o'brien turned soft. i never much believed in neither of them. now you mark me. i ask no questions, nor i won't let others. i know when a game's up, i do; and i know a lad that's staunch. ah, you that's young-you and me might have done a power of good together!" he drew some cognac from the cask into a tin cannikin. "will you taste, messmate?" he asked; and when i had refused: "well, i'll take a drain myself, jim," said he. "i need a caulker, for there's trouble on hand. and talking o' trouble, why did that doctor give me the chart, jim?" my face expressed a wonder so unaffected that he saw the needlessness of further questions. "ah, well, he did, though," said he. "and there's something under that, no doubt--something, surely, under that, jim--bad or good." and he took another swallow of the brandy, shaking his great fair head like a man who looks forward to the worst. 29 the black spot again the council of buccaneers had lasted some time, when one of them re-entered the house, and with a repetition of the same salute, which had in my eyes an ironical air, begged for a moment's loan of the torch. silver briefly agreed, and this emissary retired again, leaving us together in the dark. "there's a breeze coming, jim," said silver, who had by this time adopted quite a friendly and familiar tone. i turned to the loophole nearest me and looked out. the embers of the great fire had so far burned themselves out and now glowed so low and duskily that i understood why these conspirators desired a torch. about half-way down the slope to the stockade, they were collected in a group; one held the light, another was on his knees in their midst, and i saw the blade of an open knife shine in his hand with varying colours in the moon and torchlight. the rest were all somewhat stooping, as though watching the manoeuvres of this last. i could just make out that he had a book as well as a knife in his hand, and was still wondering how anything so incongruous had come in their possession when the kneeling figure rose once more to his feet and the whole party began to move together towards the house. "here they come," said i; and i returned to my former position, for it seemed beneath my dignity that they should find me watching them. "well, let 'em come, lad--let 'em come," said silver cheerily. "i've still a shot in my locker." the door opened, and the five men, standing huddled together just inside, pushed one of their number forward. in any other circumstances it would have been comical to see his slow advance, hesitating as he set down each foot, but holding his closed right hand in front of him. "step up, lad," cried silver. "i won't eat you. hand it over, lubber. i know the rules, i do; i won't hurt a depytation." thus encouraged, the buccaneer stepped forth more briskly, and having passed something to silver, from hand to hand, slipped yet more smartly back again to his companions. the sea-cook looked at what had been given him. "the black spot! i thought so," he observed. "where might you have got the paper? why, hillo! look here, now; this ain't lucky! you've gone and cut this out of a bible. what fool's cut a bible?" "ah, there!" said morgan. "there! wot did i say? no good'll come o' that, i said." "well, you've about fixed it now, among you," continued silver. "you'll all swing now, i reckon. what softheaded lubber had a bible?" "it was dick," said one. "dick, was it? then dick can get to prayers," said silver. "he's seen his slice of luck, has dick, and you may lay to that." but here the long man with the yellow eyes struck in. "belay that talk, john silver," he said. "this crew has tipped you the black spot in full council, as in dooty bound; just you turn it over, as in dooty bound, and see what's wrote there. then you can talk." "thanky, george," replied the sea-cook. "you always was brisk for business, and has the rules by heart, george, as i'm pleased to see. well, what is it, anyway? ah! 'deposed'--that's it, is it? very pretty wrote, to be sure; like print, i swear. your hand o' write, george? why, you was gettin' quite a leadin' man in this here crew. you'll be cap'n next, i shouldn't wonder. just oblige me with that torch again, will you? this pipe don't draw." "come, now," said george, "you don't fool this crew no more. you're a funny man, by your account; but you're over now, and you'll maybe step down off that barrel and help vote." "i thought you said you knowed the rules," returned silver contemptuously. "leastways, if you don't, i do; and i wait here--and i'm still your cap'n, mind--till you outs with your grievances and i reply; in the meantime, your black spot ain't worth a biscuit. after that, we'll see." "oh," replied george, "you don't be under no kind of apprehension; we're all square, we are. first, you've made a hash of this cruise--you'll be a bold man to say no to that. second, you let the enemy out o' this here trap for nothing. why did they want out? i dunno, but it's pretty plain they wanted it. third, you wouldn't let us go at them upon the march. oh, we see through you, john silver; you want to play booty, that's what's wrong with you. and then, fourth, there's this here boy." "is that all?" asked silver quietly. "enough, too," retorted george. "we'll all swing and sun-dry for your bungling." "well now, look here, i'll answer these four p'ints; one after another i'll answer 'em. i made a hash o' this cruise, did i? well now, you all know what i wanted, and you all know if that had been done that we'd 'a been aboard the hispaniola this night as ever was, every man of us alive, and fit, and full of good plum-duff, and the treasure in the hold of her, by thunder! well, who crossed me? who forced my hand, as was the lawful cap'n? who tipped me the black spot the day we landed and began this dance? ah, it's a fine dance--i'm with you there--and looks mighty like a hornpipe in a rope's end at execution dock by london town, it does. but who done it? why, it was anderson, and hands, and you, george merry! and you're the last above board of that same meddling crew; and you have the davy jones's insolence to up and stand for cap'n over me--you, that sank the lot of us! by the powers! but this tops the stiffest yarn to nothing." silver paused, and i could see by the faces of george and his late comrades that these words had not been said in vain. "that's for number one," cried the accused, wiping the sweat from his brow, for he had been talking with a vehemence that shook the house. "why, i give you my word, i'm sick to speak to you. you've neither sense nor memory, and i leave it to fancy where your mothers was that let you come to sea. sea! gentlemen o' fortune! i reckon tailors is your trade." "go on, john," said morgan. "speak up to the others." "ah, the others!" returned john. "they're a nice lot, ain't they? you say this cruise is bungled. ah! by gum, if you could understand how bad it's bungled, you would see! we're that near the gibbet that my neck's stiff with thinking on it. you've seen 'em, maybe, hanged in chains, birds about 'em, seamen p'inting 'em out as they go down with the tide. 'who's that?' says one. 'that! why, that's john silver. i knowed him well,' says another. and you can hear the chains ajangle as you go about and reach for the other buoy. now, that's about where we are, every mother's son of us, thanks to him, and hands, and anderson, and other ruination fools of you. and if you want to know about number four, and that boy, why, shiver my timbers, isn't he a hostage? are we a-going to waste a hostage? no, not us; he might be our last chance, and i shouldn't wonder. kill that boy? not me, mates! and number three? ah, well, there's a deal to say to number three. maybe you don't count it nothing to have a real college doctor to see you every day--you, john, with your head broke--or you, george merry, that had the ague shakes upon you not six hours agone, and has your eyes the colour of lemon peel to this same moment on the clock? and maybe, perhaps, you didn't know there was a consort coming either? but there is, and not so long till then; and we'll see who'll be glad to have a hostage when it comes to that. and as for number two, and why i made a bargain--well, you came crawling on your knees to me to make it--on your knees you came, you was that downhearted--and you'd have starved too if i hadn't--but that's a trifle! you look there--that's why!" and he cast down upon the floor a paper that i instantly recognized--none other than the chart on yellow paper, with the three red crosses, that i had found in the oilcloth at the bottom of the captain's chest. why the doctor had given it to him was more than i could fancy. but if it were inexplicable to me, the appearance of the chart was incredible to the surviving mutineers. they leaped upon it like cats upon a mouse. it went from hand to hand, one tearing it from another; and by the oaths and the cries and the childish laughter with which they accompanied their examination, you would have thought, not only they were fingering the very gold, but were at sea with it, besides, in safety. "yes," said one, "that's flint, sure enough. j. f., and a score below, with a clove hitch to it; so he done ever." "mighty pretty," said george. "but how are we to get away with it, and us no ship." silver suddenly sprang up, and supporting himself with a hand against the wall: "now i give you warning, george," he cried. "one more word of your sauce, and i'll call you down and fight you. how? why, how do i know? you had ought to tell me that--you and the rest, that lost me my schooner, with your interference, burn you! but not you, you can't; you hain't got the invention of a cockroach. but civil you can speak, and shall, george merry, you may lay to that." "that's fair enow," said the old man morgan. "fair! i reckon so," said the sea-cook. "you lost the ship; i found the treasure. who's the better man at that? and now i resign, by thunder! elect whom you please to be your cap'n now; i'm done with it." "silver!" they cried. "barbecue forever! barbecue for cap'n!" "so that's the toon, is it?" cried the cook. "george, i reckon you'll have to wait another turn, friend; and lucky for you as i'm not a revengeful man. but that was never my way. and now, shipmates, this black spot? 'tain't much good now, is it? dick's crossed his luck and spoiled his bible, and that's about all." "it'll do to kiss the book on still, won't it?" growled dick, who was evidently uneasy at the curse he had brought upon himself. "a bible with a bit cut out!" returned silver derisively. "not it. it don't bind no more'n a ballad-book." "don't it, though?" cried dick with a sort of joy. "well, i reckon that's worth having too." "here, jim--here's a cur'osity for you," said silver, and he tossed me the paper. it was around about the size of a crown piece. one side was blank, for it had been the last leaf; the other contained a verse or two of revelation--these words among the rest, which struck sharply home upon my mind: "without are dogs and murderers." the printed side had been blackened with wood ash, which already began to come off and soil my fingers; on the blank side had been written with the same material the one word "depposed." i have that curiosity beside me at this moment, but not a trace of writing now remains beyond a single scratch, such as a man might make with his thumb-nail. that was the end of the night's business. soon after, with a drink all round, we lay down to sleep, and the outside of silver's vengeance was to put george merry up for sentinel and threaten him with death if he should prove unfaithful. it was long ere i could close an eye, and heaven knows i had matter enough for thought in the man whom i had slain that afternoon, in my own most perilous position, and above all, in the remarkable game that i saw silver now engaged upon--keeping the mutineers together with one hand and grasping with the other after every means, possible and impossible, to make his peace and save his miserable life. he himself slept peacefully and snored aloud, yet my heart was sore for him, wicked as he was, to think on the dark perils that environed and the shameful gibbet that awaited him. 30 on parole i was wakened--indeed, we were all wakened, for i could see even the sentinel shake himself together from where he had fallen against the door-post--by a clear, hearty voice hailing us from the margin of the wood: "block house, ahoy!" it cried. "here's the doctor." and the doctor it was. although i was glad to hear the sound, yet my gladness was not without admixture. i remembered with confusion my insubordinate and stealthy conduct, and when i saw where it had brought me--among what companions and surrounded by what dangers--i felt ashamed to look him in the face. he must have risen in the dark, for the day had hardly come; and when i ran to a loophole and looked out, i saw him standing, like silver once before, up to the mid-leg in creeping vapour. "you, doctor! top o' the morning to you, sir!" cried silver, broad awake and beaming with good nature in a moment. "bright and early, to be sure; and it's the early bird, as the saying goes, that gets the rations. george, shake up your timbers, son, and help dr. livesey over the ship's side. all a-doin' well, your patients was--all well and merry." so he pattered on, standing on the hilltop with his crutch under his elbow and one hand upon the side of the log-house --quite the old john in voice, manner, and expression. "we've quite a surprise for you too, sir," he continued. "we've a little stranger here--he! he! a noo boarder and lodger, sir, and looking fit and taut as a fiddle; slep' like a supercargo, he did, right alongside of john--stem to stem we was, all night." dr. livesey was by this time across the stockade and pretty near the cook, and i could hear the alteration in his voice as he said, "not jim?" "the very same jim as ever was," says silver. the doctor stopped outright, although he did not speak, and it was some seconds before he seemed able to move on. "well, well," he said at last, "duty first and pleasure afterwards, as you might have said yourself, silver. let us overhaul these patients of yours." a moment afterwards he had entered the block house and with one grim nod to me proceeded with his work among the sick. he seemed under no apprehension, though he must have known that his life, among these treacherous demons, depended on a hair; and he rattled on to his patients as if he were paying an ordinary professional visit in a quiet english family. his manner, i suppose, reacted on the men, for they behaved to him as if nothing had occurred, as if he were still ship's doctor and they still faithful hands before the mast. "you're doing well, my friend," he said to the fellow with the bandaged head, "and if ever any person had a close shave, it was you; your head must be as hard as iron. well, george, how goes it? you're a pretty colour, certainly; why, your liver, man, is upside down. did you take that medicine? did he take that medicine, men?" "aye, aye, sir, he took it, sure enough," returned morgan. "because, you see, since i am mutineers' doctor, or prison doctor as i prefer to call it," says doctor livesey in his pleasantest way, "i make it a point of honour not to lose a man for king george (god bless him!) and the gallows." the rogues looked at each other but swallowed the homethrust in silence. "dick don't feel well, sir," said one. "don't he?" replied the doctor. "well, step up here, dick, and let me see your tongue. no, i should be surprised if he did! the man's tongue is fit to frighten the french. another fever." "ah, there," said morgan, "that comed of sp'iling bibles." "that comes--as you call it--of being arrant asses," retorted the doctor, "and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough. i think it most probable-though of course it's only an opinion--that you'll all have the deuce to pay before you get that malaria out of your systems. camp in a bog, would you? silver, i'm surprised at you. you're less of a fool than many, take you all round; but you don't appear to me to have the rudiments of a notion of the rules of health. "well," he added after he had dosed them round and they had taken his prescriptions, with really laughable humility, more like charity schoolchildren than blood-guilty mutineers and pirates--"well, that's done for today. and now i should wish to have a talk with that boy, please." and he nodded his head in my direction carelessly. george merry was at the door, spitting and spluttering over some bad-tasted medicine; but at the first word of the doctor's proposal he swung round with a deep flush and cried "no!" and swore. silver struck the barrel with his open hand. "si-lence!" he roared and looked about him positively like a lion. "doctor," he went on in his usual tones, "i was a-thinking of that, knowing as how you had a fancy for the boy. we're all humbly grateful for your kindness, and as you see, puts faith in you and takes the drugs down like that much grog. and i take it i've found a way as'll suit all. hawkins, will you give me your word of honour as a young gentleman--for a young gentleman you are, although poor born--your word of honour not to slip your cable?" i readily gave the pledge required. "then, doctor," said silver, "you just step outside o' that stockade, and once you're there i'll bring the boy down on the inside, and i reckon you can yarn through the spars. good day to you, sir, and all our dooties to the squire and cap'n smollett." the explosion of disapproval, which nothing but silver's black looks had restrained, broke out immediately the doctor had left the house. silver was roundly accused of playing double--of trying to make a separate peace for himself, of sacrificing the interests of his accomplices and victims, and, in one word, of the identical, exact thing that he was doing. it seemed to me so obvious, in this case, that i could not imagine how he was to turn their anger. but he was twice the man the rest were, and his last night's victory had given him a huge preponderance on their minds. he called them all the fools and dolts you can imagine, said it was necessary i should talk to the doctor, fluttered the chart in their faces, asked them if they could afford to break the treaty the very day they were bound a-treasure-hunting. "no, by thunder!" he cried. "it's us must break the treaty when the time comes; and till then i'll gammon that doctor, if i have to ile his boots with brandy." and then he bade them get the fire lit, and stalked out upon his crutch, with his hand on my shoulder, leaving them in a disarray, and silenced by his volubility rather than convinced. "slow, lad, slow," he said. "they might round upon us in a twinkle of an eye if we was seen to hurry." very deliberately, then, did we advance across the sand to where the doctor awaited us on the other side of the stockade, and as soon as we were within easy speaking distance silver stopped. "you'll make a note of this here also, doctor," says he, "and the boy'll tell you how i saved his life, and were deposed for it too, and you may lay to that. doctor, when a man's steering as near the wind as me-playing chuck-farthing with the last breath in his body, like--you wouldn't think it too much, mayhap, to give him one good word? you'll please bear in mind it's not my life only now--it's that boy's into the bargain; and you'll speak me fair, doctor, and give me a bit o' hope to go on, for the sake of mercy." silver was a changed man once he was out there and had his back to his friends and the block house; his cheeks seemed to have fallen in, his voice trembled; never was a soul more dead in earnest. "why, john, you're not afraid?" asked dr. livesey. "doctor, i'm no coward; no, not i--not so much!" and he snapped his fingers. "if i was i wouldn't say it. but i'll own up fairly, i've the shakes upon me for the gallows. you're a good man and a true; i never seen a better man! and you'll not forget what i done good, not any more than you'll forget the bad, i know. and i step aside--see here--and leave you and jim alone. and you'll put that down for me too, for it's a long stretch, is that!" so saying, he stepped back a little way, till he was out of earshot, and there sat down upon a tree-stump and began to whistle, spinning round now and again upon his seat so as to command a sight, sometimes of me and the doctor and sometimes of his unruly ruffians as they went to and fro in the sand between the fire--which they were busy rekindling--and the house, from which they brought forth pork and bread to make the breakfast. "so, jim," said the doctor sadly, "here you are. as you have brewed, so shall you drink, my boy. heaven knows, i cannot find it in my heart to blame you, but this much i will say, be it kind or unkind: when captain smollett was well, you dared not have gone off; and when he was ill and couldn't help it, by george, it was downright cowardly!" i will own that i here began to weep. "doctor," i said, "you might spare me. i have blamed myself enough; my life's forfeit anyway, and i should have been dead by now if silver hadn't stood for me; and doctor, believe this, i can die--and i dare say i deserve it--but what i fear is torture. if they come to torture me--" "jim," the doctor interrupted, and his voice was quite changed, "jim, i can't have this. whip over, and we'll run for it." "doctor," said i, "i passed my word." "i know, i know," he cried. "we can't help that, jim, now. i'll take it on my shoulders, holus bolus, blame and shame, my boy; but stay here, i cannot let you. jump! one jump, and you're out, and we'll run for it like antelopes." "no," i replied; "you know right well you wouldn't do the thing yourself--neither you nor squire nor captain; and no more will i. silver trusted me; i passed my word, and back i go. but, doctor, you did not let me finish. if they come to torture me, i might let slip a word of where the ship is, for i got the ship, part by luck and part by risking, and she lies in north inlet, on the southern beach, and just below high water. at half tide she must be high and dry." "the ship!" exclaimed the doctor. rapidly i described to him my adventures, and he heard me out in silence. "there is a kind of fate in this," he observed when i had done. "every step, it's you that saves our lives; and do you suppose by any chance that we are going to let you lose yours? that would be a poor return, my boy. you found out the plot; you found ben gunn--the best deed that ever you did, or will do, though you live to ninety. oh, by jupiter, and talking of ben gunn! why, this is the mischief in person. silver!" he cried. "silver! i'll give you a piece of advice," he continued as the cook drew near again; "don't you be in any great hurry after that treasure." "why, sir, i do my possible, which that ain't," said silver. "i can only, asking your pardon, save my life and the boy's by seeking for that treasure; and you may lay to that." "well, silver," replied the doctor, "if that is so, i'll go one step further: look out for squalls when you find it." "sir," said silver, "as between man and man, that's too much and too little. what you're after, why you left the block house, why you given me that there chart, i don't know, now, do i? and yet i done your bidding with my eyes shut and never a word of hope! but no, this here's too much. if you won't tell me what you mean plain out, just say so and i'll leave the helm." "no," said the doctor musingly; "i've no right to say more; it's not my secret, you see, silver, or, i give you my word, i'd tell it you. but i'll go as far with you as i dare go, and a step beyond, for i'll have my wig sorted by the captain or i'm mistaken! and first, i'll give you a bit of hope; silver, if we both get alive out of this wolf-trap, i'll do my best to save you, short of perjury." silver's face was radiant. "you couldn't say more, i'm sure, sir, not if you was my mother," he cried. "well, that's my first concession," added the doctor. "my second is a piece of advice: keep the boy close beside you, and when you need help, halloo. i'm off to seek it for you, and that itself will show you if i speak at random. good-bye, jim." and dr. livesey shook hands with me through the stockade, nodded to silver, and set off at a brisk pace into the wood. 31 the treasure-hunt--flint's pointer "jim," said silver when we were alone, "if i saved your life, you saved mine; and i'll not forget it. i seen the doctor waving you to run for it--with the tail of my eye, i did; and i seen you say no, as plain as hearing. jim, that's one to you. this is the first glint of hope i had since the attack failed, and i owe it you. and now, jim, we're to go in for this here treasure-hunting, with sealed orders too, and i don't like it; and you and me must stick close, back to back like, and we'll save our necks in spite o' fate and fortune." just then a man hailed us from the fire that breakfast was ready, and we were soon seated here and there about the sand over biscuit and fried junk. they had lit a fire fit to roast an ox, and it was now grown so hot that they could only approach it from the windward, and even there not without precaution. in the same wasteful spirit, they had cooked, i suppose, three times more than we could eat; and one of them, with an empty laugh, threw what was left into the fire, which blazed and roared again over this unusual fuel. i never in my life saw men so careless of the morrow; hand to mouth is the only word that can describe their way of doing; and what with wasted food and sleeping sentries, though they were bold enough for a brush and be done with it, i could see their entire unfitness for anything like a prolonged campaign. even silver, eating away, with captain flint upon his shoulder, had not a word of blame for their recklessness. and this the more surprised me, for i thought he had never shown himself so cunning as he did then. "aye, mates," said he, "it's lucky you have barbecue to think for you with this here head. i got what i wanted, i did. sure enough, they have the ship. where they have it, i don't know yet; but once we hit the treasure, we'll have to jump about and find out. and then, mates, us that has the boats, i reckon, has the upper hand." thus he kept running on, with his mouth full of the hot bacon; thus he restored their hope and confidence, and, i more than suspect, repaired his own at the same time. "as for hostage," he continued, "that's his last talk, i guess, with them he loves so dear. i've got my piece o' news, and thanky to him for that; but it's over and done. i'll take him in a line when we go treasurehunting, for we'll keep him like so much gold, in case of accidents, you mark, and in the meantime. once we got the ship and treasure both and off to sea like jolly companions, why then we'll talk mr. hawkins over, we will, and we'll give him his share, to be sure, for all his kindness." it was no wonder the men were in a good humour now. for my part, i was horribly cast down. should the scheme he had now sketched prove feasible, silver, already doubly a traitor, would not hesitate to adopt it. he had still a foot in either camp, and there was no doubt he would prefer wealth and freedom with the pirates to a bare escape from hanging, which was the best he had to hope on our side. nay, and even if things so fell out that he was forced to keep his faith with dr. livesey, even then what danger lay before us! what a moment that would be when the suspicions of his followers turned to certainty and he and i should have to fight for dear life--he a cripple and i a boy--against five strong and active seamen! add to this double apprehension the mystery that still hung over the behaviour of my friends, their unexplained desertion of the stockade, their inexplicable cession of the chart, or harder still to understand, the doctor's last warning to silver, "look out for squalls when you find it," and you will readily believe how little taste i found in my breakfast and with how uneasy a heart i set forth behind my captors on the quest for treasure. we made a curious figure, had anyone been there to see us--all in soiled sailor clothes and all but me armed to the teeth. silver had two guns slung about him--one before and one behind--besides the great cutlass at his waist and a pistol in each pocket of his square-tailed coat. to complete his strange appearance, captain flint sat perched upon his shoulder and gabbling odds and ends of purposeless sea-talk. i had a line about my waist and followed obediently after the sea-cook, who held the loose end of the rope, now in his free hand, now between his powerful teeth. for all the world, i was led like a dancing bear. the other men were variously burthened, some carrying picks and shovels--for that had been the very first necessary they brought ashore from the hispaniola-others laden with pork, bread, and brandy for the midday meal. all the stores, i observed, came from our stock, and i could see the truth of silver's words the night before. had he not struck a bargain with the doctor, he and his mutineers, deserted by the ship, must have been driven to subsist on clear water and the proceeds of their hunting. water would have been little to their taste; a sailor is not usually a good shot; and besides all that, when they were so short of eatables, it was not likely they would be very flush of powder. well, thus equipped, we all set out--even the fellow with the broken head, who should certainly have kept in shadow--and straggled, one after another, to the beach, where the two gigs awaited us. even these bore trace of the drunken folly of the pirates, one in a broken thwart, and both in their muddy and unbailed condition. both were to be carried along with us for the sake of safety; and so, with our numbers divided between them, we set forth upon the bosom of the anchorage. as we pulled over, there was some discussion on the chart. the red cross was, of course, far too large to be a guide; and the terms of the note on the back, as you will hear, admitted of some ambiguity. they ran, the reader may remember, thus: tall tree, spy-glass shoulder, bearing a point to the n. of n.n.e. skeleton island e.s.e. and by e. ten feet. a tall tree was thus the principal mark. now, right before us the anchorage was bounded by a plateau from two to three hundred feet high, adjoining on the north the sloping southern shoulder of the spy-glass and rising again towards the south into the rough, cliffy eminence called the mizzen-mast hill. the top of the plateau was dotted thickly with pine-trees of varying height. every here and there, one of a different species rose forty or fifty feet clear above its neighbours, and which of these was the particular "tall tree" of captain flint could only be decided on the spot, and by the readings of the compass. yet, although that was the case, every man on board the boats had picked a favourite of his own ere we were half-way over, long john alone shrugging his shoulders and bidding them wait till they were there. we pulled easily, by silver's directions, not to weary the hands prematurely, and after quite a long passage, landed at the mouth of the second river--that which runs down a woody cleft of the spy-glass. thence, bending to our left, we began to ascend the slope towards the plateau. at the first outset, heavy, miry ground and a matted, marish vegetation greatly delayed our progress; but by little and little the hill began to steepen and become stony under foot, and the wood to change its character and to grow in a more open order. it was, indeed, a most pleasant portion of the island that we were now approaching. a heavy-scented broom and many flowering shrubs had almost taken the place of grass. thickets of green nutmeg-trees were dotted here and there with the red columns and the broad shadow of the pines; and the first mingled their spice with the aroma of the others. the air, besides, was fresh and stirring, and this, under the sheer sunbeams, was a wonderful refreshment to our senses. the party spread itself abroad, in a fan shape, shouting and leaping to and fro. about the centre, and a good way behind the rest, silver and i followed--i tethered by my rope, he ploughing, with deep pants, among the sliding gravel. from time to time, indeed, i had to lend him a hand, or he must have missed his footing and fallen backward down the hill. we had thus proceeded for about half a mile and were approaching the brow of the plateau when the man upon the farthest left began to cry aloud, as if in terror. shout after shout came from him, and the others began to run in his direction. "he can't 'a found the treasure," said old morgan, hurrying past us from the right, "for that's clean a-top." indeed, as we found when we also reached the spot, it was something very different. at the foot of a pretty big pine and involved in a green creeper, which had even partly lifted some of the smaller bones, a human skeleton lay, with a few shreds of clothing, on the ground. i believe a chill struck for a moment to every heart. "he was a seaman," said george merry, who, bolder than the rest, had gone up close and was examining the rags of clothing. "leastways, this is good sea-cloth." "aye, aye," said silver; "like enough; you wouldn't look to find a bishop here, i reckon. but what sort of a way is that for bones to lie? 'tain't in natur'." indeed, on a second glance, it seemed impossible to fancy that the body was in a natural position. but for some disarray (the work, perhaps, of the birds that had fed upon him or of the slow-growing creeper that had gradually enveloped his remains) the man lay perfectly straight--his feet pointing in one direction, his hands, raised above his head like a diver's, pointing directly in the opposite. "i've taken a notion into my old numbskull," observed silver. "here's the compass; there's the tip-top p'int o' skeleton island, stickin' out like a tooth. just take a bearing, will you, along the line of them bones." it was done. the body pointed straight in the direction of the island, and the compass read duly e.s.e. and by e. "i thought so," cried the cook; "this here is a p'inter. right up there is our line for the pole star and the jolly dollars. but, by thunder! if it don't make me cold inside to think of flint. this is one of his jokes, and no mistake. him and these six was alone here; he killed 'em, every man; and this one he hauled here and laid down by compass, shiver my timbers! they're long bones, and the hair's been yellow. aye, that would be allardyce. you mind allardyce, tom morgan?" "aye, aye," returned morgan; "i mind him; he owed me money, he did, and took my knife ashore with him." "speaking of knives," said another, "why don't we find his'n lying round? flint warn't the man to pick a seaman's pocket; and the birds, i guess, would leave it be." "by the powers, and that's true!" cried silver. "there ain't a thing left here," said merry, still feeling round among the bones; "not a copper doit nor a baccy box. it don't look nat'ral to me." "no, by gum, it don't," agreed silver; "not nat'ral, nor not nice, says you. great guns! messmates, but if flint was living, this would be a hot spot for you and me. six they were, and six are we; and bones is what they are now." "i saw him dead with these here deadlights," said morgan. "billy took me in. there he laid, with pennypieces on his eyes." "dead--aye, sure enough he's dead and gone below," said the fellow with the bandage; "but if ever sperrit walked, it would be flint's. dear heart, but he died bad, did flint!" "aye, that he did," observed another; "now he raged, and now he hollered for the rum, and now he sang. 'fifteen men' were his only song, mates; and i tell you true, i never rightly liked to hear it since. it was main hot, and the windy was open, and i hear that old song comin' out as clear as clear--and the death-haul on the man already." "come, come," said silver; "stow this talk. he's dead, and he don't walk, that i know; leastways, he won't walk by day, and you may lay to that. care killed a cat. fetch ahead for the doubloons." we started, certainly; but in spite of the hot sun and the staring daylight, the pirates no longer ran separate and shouting through the wood, but kept side by side and spoke with bated breath. the terror of the dead buccaneer had fallen on their spirits. 32 the treasure-hunt--the voice among the trees partly from the damping influence of this alarm, partly to rest silver and the sick folk, the whole party sat down as soon as they had gained the brow of the ascent. the plateau being somewhat tilted towards the west, this spot on which we had paused commanded a wide prospect on either hand. before us, over the treetops, we beheld the cape of the woods fringed with surf; behind, we not only looked down upon the anchorage and skeleton island, but saw--clear across the spit and the eastern lowlands--a great field of open sea upon the east. sheer above us rose the spyglass, here dotted with single pines, there black with precipices. there was no sound but that of the distant breakers, mounting from all round, and the chirp of countless insects in the brush. not a man, not a sail, upon the sea; the very largeness of the view increased the sense of solitude. silver, as he sat, took certain bearings with his compass. "there are three 'tall trees'" said he, "about in the right line from skeleton island. 'spy-glass shoulder,' i take it, means that lower p'int there. it's child's play to find the stuff now. i've half a mind to dine first." "i don't feel sharp," growled morgan. "thinkin' o' flint--i think it were--as done me." "ah, well, my son, you praise your stars he's dead," said silver. "he were an ugly devil," cried a third pirate with a shudder; "that blue in the face too!" "that was how the rum took him," added merry. "blue! well, i reckon he was blue. that's a true word." ever since they had found the skeleton and got upon this train of thought, they had spoken lower and lower, and they had almost got to whispering by now, so that the sound of their talk hardly interrupted the silence of the wood. all of a sudden, out of the middle of the trees in front of us, a thin, high, trembling voice struck up the well-known air and words: "fifteen men on the dead man's chest- yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" i never have seen men more dreadfully affected than the pirates. the colour went from their six faces like enchantment; some leaped to their feet, some clawed hold of others; morgan grovelled on the ground. "it's flint, by ----!" cried merry. the song had stopped as suddenly as it began--broken off, you would have said, in the middle of a note, as though someone had laid his hand upon the singer's mouth. coming through the clear, sunny atmosphere among the green tree-tops, i thought it had sounded airily and sweetly; and the effect on my companions was the stranger. "come," said silver, struggling with his ashen lips to get the word out; "this won't do. stand by to go about. this is a rum start, and i can't name the voice, but it's someone skylarking--someone that's flesh and blood, and you may lay to that." his courage had come back as he spoke, and some of the colour to his face along with it. already the others had begun to lend an ear to this encouragement and were coming a little to themselves, when the same voice broke out again--not this time singing, but in a faint distant hail that echoed yet fainter among the clefts of the spy-glass. "darby m'graw," it wailed--for that is the word that best describes the sound--"darby m'graw! darby m'graw!" again and again and again; and then rising a little higher, and with an oath that i leave out: "fetch aft the rum, darby!" the buccaneers remained rooted to the ground, their eyes starting from their heads. long after the voice had died away they still stared in silence, dreadfully, before them. "that fixes it!" gasped one. "let's go." "they was his last words," moaned morgan, "his last words above board." dick had his bible out and was praying volubly. he had been well brought up, had dick, before he came to sea and fell among bad companions. still silver was unconquered. i could hear his teeth rattle in his head, but he had not yet surrendered. "nobody in this here island ever heard of darby," he muttered; "not one but us that's here." and then, making a great effort: "shipmates," he cried, "i'm here to get that stuff, and i'll not be beat by man or devil. i never was feared of flint in his life, and, by the powers, i'll face him dead. there's seven hundred thousand pound not a quarter of a mile from here. when did ever a gentleman o' fortune show his stern to that much dollars for a boozy old seaman with a blue mug--and him dead too?" but there was no sign of reawakening courage in his followers, rather, indeed, of growing terror at the irreverence of his words. "belay there, john!" said merry. "don't you cross a sperrit." and the rest were all too terrified to reply. they would have run away severally had they dared; but fear kept them together, and kept them close by john, as if his daring helped them. he, on his part, had pretty well fought his weakness down. "sperrit? well, maybe," he said. "but there's one thing not clear to me. there was an echo. now, no man ever seen a sperrit with a shadow; well then, what's he doing with an echo to him, i should like to know? that ain't in natur', surely?" this argument seemed weak enough to me. but you can never tell what will affect the superstitious, and to my wonder, george merry was greatly relieved. "well, that's so," he said. "you've a head upon your shoulders, john, and no mistake. 'bout ship, mates! this here crew is on a wrong tack, i do believe. and come to think on it, it was like flint's voice, i grant you, but not just so clear-away like it, after all. it was liker somebody else's voice now--it was liker--" "by the powers, ben gunn!" roared silver. "aye, and so it were," cried morgan, springing on his knees. "ben gunn it were!" "it don't make much odds, do it, now?" asked dick. "ben gunn's not here in the body any more'n flint." but the older hands greeted this remark with scorn. "why, nobody minds ben gunn," cried merry; "dead or alive, nobody minds him." it was extraordinary how their spirits had returned and how the natural colour had revived in their faces. soon they were chatting together, with intervals of listening; and not long after, hearing no further sound, they shouldered the tools and set forth again, merry walking first with silver's compass to keep them on the right line with skeleton island. he had said the truth: dead or alive, nobody minded ben gunn. dick alone still held his bible, and looked around him as he went, with fearful glances; but he found no sympathy, and silver even joked him on his precautions. "i told you," said he--"i told you you had sp'iled your bible. if it ain't no good to swear by, what do you suppose a sperrit would give for it? not that!" and he snapped his big fingers, halting a moment on his crutch. but dick was not to be comforted; indeed, it was soon plain to me that the lad was falling sick; hastened by heat, exhaustion, and the shock of his alarm, the fever, predicted by dr. livesey, was evidently growing swiftly higher. it was fine open walking here, upon the summit; our way lay a little downhill, for, as i have said, the plateau tilted towards the west. the pines, great and small, grew wide apart; and even between the clumps of nutmeg and azalea, wide open spaces baked in the hot sunshine. striking, as we did, pretty near north-west across the island, we drew, on the one hand, ever nearer under the shoulders of the spy-glass, and on the other, looked ever wider over that western bay where i had once tossed and trembled in the oracle. the first of the tall trees was reached, and by the bearings proved the wrong one. so with the second. the third rose nearly two hundred feet into the air above a clump of underwood--a giant of a vegetable, with a red column as big as a cottage, and a wide shadow around in which a company could have manoeuvred. it was conspicuous far to sea both on the east and west and might have been entered as a sailing mark upon the chart. but it was not its size that now impressed my companions; it was the knowledge that seven hundred thousand pounds in gold lay somewhere buried below its spreading shadow. the thought of the money, as they drew nearer, swallowed up their previous terrors. their eyes burned in their heads; their feet grew speedier and lighter; their whole soul was found up in that fortune, that whole lifetime of extravagance and pleasure, that lay waiting there for each of them. silver hobbled, grunting, on his crutch; his nostrils stood out and quivered; he cursed like a madman when the flies settled on his hot and shiny countenance; he plucked furiously at the line that held me to him and from time to time turned his eyes upon me with a deadly look. certainly he took no pains to hide his thoughts, and certainly i read them like print. in the immediate nearness of the gold, all else had been forgotten: his promise and the doctor's warning were both things of the past, and i could not doubt that he hoped to seize upon the treasure, find and board the hispaniola under cover of night, cut every honest throat about that island, and sail away as he had at first intended, laden with crimes and riches. shaken as i was with these alarms, it was hard for me to keep up with the rapid pace of the treasure-hunters. now and again i stumbled, and it was then that silver plucked so roughly at the rope and launched at me his murderous glances. dick, who had dropped behind us and now brought up the rear, was babbling to himself both prayers and curses as his fever kept rising. this also added to my wretchedness, and to crown all, i was haunted by the thought of the tragedy that had once been acted on that plateau, when that ungodly buccaneer with the blue face --he who died at savannah, singing and shouting for drink-had there, with his own hand, cut down his six accomplices. this grove that was now so peaceful must then have rung with cries, i thought; and even with the thought i could believe i heard it ringing still. we were now at the margin of the thicket. "huzza, mates, all together!" shouted merry; and the foremost broke into a run. and suddenly, not ten yards further, we beheld them stop. a low cry arose. silver doubled his pace, digging away with the foot of his crutch like one possessed; and next moment he and i had come also to a dead halt. before us was a great excavation, not very recent, for the sides had fallen in and grass had sprouted on the bottom. in this were the shaft of a pick broken in two and the boards of several packing-cases strewn around. on one of these boards i saw, branded with a hot iron, the name walrus--the name of flint's ship. all was clear to probation. the cache had been found and rifled; the seven hundred thousand pounds were gone! 33 the fall of a chieftain there never was such an overturn in this world. each of these six men was as though he had been struck. but with silver the blow passed almost instantly. every thought of his soul had been set full-stretch, like a racer, on that money; well, he was brought up, in a single second, dead; and he kept his head, found his temper, and changed his plan before the others had had time to realize the disappointment. "jim," he whispered, "take that, and stand by for trouble." and he passed me a double-barrelled pistol. at the same time, he began quietly moving northward, and in a few steps had put the hollow between us two and the other five. then he looked at me and nodded, as much as to say, "here is a narrow corner," as, indeed, i thought it was. his looks were not quite friendly, and i was so revolted at these constant changes that i could not forbear whispering, "so you've changed sides again." there was no time left for him to answer in. the buccaneers, with oaths and cries, began to leap, one after another, into the pit and to dig with their fingers, throwing the boards aside as they did so. morgan found a piece of gold. he held it up with a perfect spout of oaths. it was a two-guinea piece, and it went from hand to hand among them for a quarter of a minute. "two guineas!" roared merry, shaking it at silver. "that's your seven hundred thousand pounds, is it? you're the man for bargains, ain't you? you're him that never bungled nothing, you wooden-headed lubber!" "dig away, boys," said silver with the coolest insolence; "you'll find some pig-nuts and i shouldn't wonder." "pig-nuts!" repeated merry, in a scream. "mates, do you hear that? i tell you now, that man there knew it all along. look in the face of him and you'll see it wrote there." "ah, merry," remarked silver, "standing for cap'n again? you're a pushing lad, to be sure." but this time everyone was entirely in merry's favour. they began to scramble out of the excavation, darting furious glances behind them. one thing i observed, which looked well for us: they all got out upon the opposite side from silver. well, there we stood, two on one side, five on the other, the pit between us, and nobody screwed up high enough to offer the first blow. silver never moved; he watched them, very upright on his crutch, and looked as cool as ever i saw him. he was brave, and no mistake. at last merry seemed to think a speech might help matters. "mates," says he, "there's two of them alone there; one's the old cripple that brought us all here and blundered us down to this; the other's that cub that i mean to have the heart of. now, mates--" he was raising his arm and his voice, and plainly meant to lead a charge. but just then--crack! crack! crack!-three musket-shots flashed out of the thicket. merry tumbled head foremost into the excavation; the man with the bandage spun round like a teetotum and fell all his length upon his side, where he lay dead, but still twitching; and the other three turned and ran for it with all their might. before you could wink, long john had fired two barrels of a pistol into the struggling merry, and as the man rolled up his eyes at him in the last agony, "george," said he, "i reckon i settled you." at the same moment, the doctor, gray, and ben gunn joined us, with smoking muskets, from among the nutmeg-trees. "forward!" cried the doctor. "double quick, my lads. we must head 'em off the boats." and we set off at a great pace, sometimes plunging through the bushes to the chest. i tell you, but silver was anxious to keep up with us. the work that man went through, leaping on his crutch till the muscles of his chest were fit to burst, was work no sound man ever equalled; and so thinks the doctor. as it was, he was already thirty yards behind us and on the verge of strangling when we reached the brow of the slope. "doctor," he hailed, "see there! no hurry!" sure enough there was no hurry. in a more open part of the plateau, we could see the three survivors still running in the same direction as they had started, right for mizzenmast hill. we were already between them and the boats; and so we four sat down to breathe, while long john, mopping his face, came slowly up with us. "thank ye kindly, doctor," says he. "you came in in about the nick, i guess, for me and hawkins. and so it's you, ben gunn!" he added. "well, you're a nice one, to be sure." "i'm ben gunn, i am," replied the maroon, wriggling like an eel in his embarrassment. "and," he added, after a long pause, "how do, mr. silver? pretty well, i thank ye, says you." "ben, ben," murmured silver, "to think as you've done me!" the doctor sent back gray for one of the pick-axes deserted, in their flight, by the mutineers, and then as we proceeded leisurely downhill to where the boats were lying, related in a few words what had taken place. it was a story that profoundly interested silver; and ben gunn, the half-idiot maroon, was the hero from beginning to end. ben, in his long, lonely wanderings about the island, had found the skeleton--it was he that had rifled it; he had found the treasure; he had dug it up (it was the haft of his pick-axe that lay broken in the excavation); he had carried it on his back, in many weary journeys, from the foot of the tall pine to a cave he had on the two-pointed hill at the north-east angle of the island, and there it had lain stored in safety since two months before the arrival of the hispaniola. when the doctor had wormed this secret from him on the afternoon of the attack, and when next morning he saw the anchorage deserted, he had gone to silver, given him the chart, which was now useless--given him the stores, for ben gunn's cave was well supplied with goats' meat salted by himself--given anything and everything to get a chance of moving in safety from the stockade to the two-pointed hill, there to be clear of malaria and keep a guard upon the money. "as for you, jim," he said, "it went against my heart, but i did what i thought best for those who had stood by their duty; and if you were not one of these, whose fault was it?" that morning, finding that i was to be involved in the horrid disappointment he had prepared for the mutineers, he had run all the way to the cave, and leaving the squire to guard the captain, had taken gray and the maroon and started, making the diagonal across the island to be at hand beside the pine. soon, however, he saw that our party had the start of him; and ben gunn, being fleet of foot, had been dispatched in front to do his best alone. then it had occurred to him to work upon the superstitions of his former shipmates, and he was so far successful that gray and the doctor had come up and were already ambushed before the arrival of the treasure-hunters. "ah," said silver, "it were fortunate for me that i had hawkins here. you would have let old john be cut to bits, and never given it a thought, doctor." "not a thought," replied dr. livesey cheerily. and by this time we had reached the gigs. the doctor, with the pick-axe, demolished one of them, and then we all got aboard the other and set out to go round by sea for north inlet. this was a run of eight or nine miles. silver, though he was almost killed already with fatigue, was set to an oar, like the rest of us, and we were soon skimming swiftly over a smooth sea. soon we passed out of the straits and doubled the south-east corner of the island, round which, four days ago, we had towed the hispaniola. as we passed the two-pointed hill, we could see the black mouth of ben gunn's cave and a figure standing by it, leaning on a musket. it was the squire, and we waved a handkerchief and gave him three cheers, in which the voice of silver joined as heartily as any. three miles farther, just inside the mouth of north inlet, what should we meet but the hispaniola, cruising by herself? the last flood had lifted her, and had there been much wind or a strong tide current, as in the southern anchorage, we should never have found her more, or found her stranded beyond help. as it was, there was little amiss beyond the wreck of the main-sail. another anchor was got ready and dropped in a fathom and a half of water. we all pulled round again to rum cove, the nearest point for ben gunn's treasure-house; and then gray, single-handed, returned with the gig to the hispaniola, where he was to pass the night on guard. a gentle slope ran up from the beach to the entrance of the cave. at the top, the squire met us. to me he was cordial and kind, saying nothing of my escapade either in the way of blame or praise. at silver's polite salute he somewhat flushed. "john silver," he said, "you're a prodigious villain and imposter--a monstrous imposter, sir. i am told i am not to prosecute you. well, then, i will not. but the dead men, sir, hang about your neck like mill-stones." "thank you kindly, sir," replied long john, again saluting. "i dare you to thank me!" cried the squire. "it is a gross dereliction of my duty. stand back." and thereupon we all entered the cave. it was a large, airy place, with a little spring and a pool of clear water, overhung with ferns. the floor was sand. before a big fire lay captain smollett; and in a far corner, only duskily flickered over by the blaze, i beheld great heaps of coin and quadrilaterals built of bars of gold. that was flint's treasure that we had come so far to seek and that had cost already the lives of seventeen men from the hispaniola. how many it had cost in the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell. yet there were still three upon that island--silver, and old morgan, and ben gunn--who had each taken his share in these crimes, as each had hoped in vain to share in the reward. "come in, jim," said the captain. "you're a good boy in your line, jim, but i don't think you and me'll go to sea again. you're too much of the born favourite for me. is that you, john silver? what brings you here, man?" "come back to my dooty, sir," returned silver. "ah!" said the captain, and that was all he said. what a supper i had of it that night, with all my friends around me; and what a meal it was, with ben gunn's salted goat and some delicacies and a bottle of old wine from the hispaniola. never, i am sure, were people gayer or happier. and there was silver, sitting back almost out of the firelight, but eating heartily, prompt to spring forward when anything was wanted, even joining quietly in our laughter--the same bland, polite, obsequious seaman of the voyage out. 34 and last the next morning we fell early to work, for the transportation of this great mass of gold near a mile by land to the beach, and thence three miles by boat to the hispaniola, was a considerable task for so small a number of workmen. the three fellows still abroad upon the island did not greatly trouble us; a single sentry on the shoulder of the hill was sufficient to ensure us against any sudden onslaught, and we thought, besides, they had had more than enough of fighting. therefore the work was pushed on briskly. gray and ben gunn came and went with the boat, while the rest during their absences piled treasure on the beach. two of the bars, slung in a rope's end, made a good load for a grown man--one that he was glad to walk slowly with. for my part, as i was not much use at carrying, i was kept busy all day in the cave packing the minted money into bread-bags. it was a strange collection, like billy bones's hoard for the diversity of coinage, but so much larger and so much more varied that i think i never had more pleasure than in sorting them. english, french, spanish, portuguese, georges, and louises, doubloons and double guineas and moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of europe for the last hundred years, strange oriental pieces stamped with what looked like wisps of string or bits of spider's web, round pieces and square pieces, and pieces bored through the middle, as if to wear them round your neck--nearly every variety of money in the world must, i think, have found a place in that collection; and for number, i am sure they were like autumn leaves, so that my back ached with stooping and my fingers with sorting them out. day after day this work went on; by every evening a fortune had been stowed aboard, but there was another fortune waiting for the morrow; and all this time we heard nothing of the three surviving mutineers. at last--i think it was on the third night--the doctor and i were strolling on the shoulder of the hill where it overlooks the lowlands of the isle, when, from out the thick darkness below, the wind brought us a noise between shrieking and singing. it was only a snatch that reached our ears, followed by the former silence. "heaven forgive them," said the doctor; "'tis the mutineers!" "all drunk, sir," struck in the voice of silver from behind us. silver, i should say, was allowed his entire liberty, and in spite of daily rebuffs, seemed to regard himself once more as quite a privileged and friendly dependent. indeed, it was remarkable how well he bore these slights and with what unwearying politeness he kept on trying to ingratiate himself with all. yet, i think, none treated him better than a dog, unless it was ben gunn, who was still terribly afraid of his old quartermaster, or myself, who had really something to thank him for; although for that matter, i suppose, i had reason to think even worse of him than anybody else, for i had seen him meditating a fresh treachery upon the plateau. accordingly, it was pretty gruffly that the doctor answered him. "drunk or raving," said he. "right you were, sir," replied silver; "and precious little odds which, to you and me." "i suppose you would hardly ask me to call you a humane man," returned the doctor with a sneer, "and so my feelings may surprise you, master silver. but if i were sure they were raving--as i am morally certain one, at least, of them is down with fever--i should leave this camp, and at whatever risk to my own carcass, take them the assistance of my skill." "ask your pardon, sir, you would be very wrong," quoth silver. "you would lose your precious life, and you may lay to that. i'm on your side now, hand and glove; and i shouldn't wish for to see the party weakened, let alone yourself, seeing as i know what i owes you. but these men down there, they couldn't keep their word-no, not supposing they wished to; and what's more, they couldn't believe as you could." "no," said the doctor. "you're the man to keep your word, we know that." well, that was about the last news we had of the three pirates. only once we heard a gunshot a great way off and supposed them to be hunting. a council was held, and it was decided that we must desert them on the island --to the huge glee, i must say, of ben gunn, and with the strong approval of gray. we left a good stock of powder and shot, the bulk of the salt goat, a few medicines, and some other necessaries, tools, clothing, a spare sail, a fathom or two of rope, and by the particular desire of the doctor, a handsome present of tobacco. that was about our last doing on the island. before that, we had got the treasure stowed and had shipped enough water and the remainder of the goat meat in case of any distress; and at last, one fine morning, we weighed anchor, which was about all that we could manage, and stood out of north inlet, the same colours flying that the captain had flown and fought under at the palisade. the three fellows must have been watching us closer than we thought for, as we soon had proved. for coming through the narrows, we had to lie very near the southern point, and there we saw all three of them kneeling together on a spit of sand, with their arms raised in supplication. it went to all our hearts, i think, to leave them in that wretched state; but we could not risk another mutiny; and to take them home for the gibbet would have been a cruel sort of kindness. the doctor hailed them and told them of the stores we had left, and where they were to find them. but they continued to call us by name and appeal to us, for god's sake, to be merciful and not leave them to die in such a place. at last, seeing the ship still bore on her course and was now swiftly drawing out of earshot, one of them--i know not which it was--leapt to his feet with a hoarse cry, whipped his musket to his shoulder, and sent a shot whistling over silver's head and through the main-sail. after that, we kept under cover of the bulwarks, and when next i looked out they had disappeared from the spit, and the spit itself had almost melted out of sight in the growing distance. that was, at least, the end of that; and before noon, to my inexpressible joy, the highest rock of treasure island had sunk into the blue round of sea. we were so short of men that everyone on board had to bear a hand--only the captain lying on a mattress in the stern and giving his orders, for though greatly recovered he was still in want of quiet. we laid her head for the nearest port in spanish america, for we could not risk the voyage home without fresh hands; and as it was, what with baffling winds and a couple of fresh gales, we were all worn out before we reached it. it was just at sundown when we cast anchor in a most beautiful land-locked gulf, and were immediately surrounded by shore boats full of negroes and mexican indians and half-bloods selling fruits and vegetables and offering to dive for bits of money. the sight of so many good-humoured faces (especially the blacks), the taste of the tropical fruits, and above all the lights that began to shine in the town made a most charming contrast to our dark and bloody sojourn on the island; and the doctor and the squire, taking me along with them, went ashore to pass the early part of the night. here they met the captain of an english man-ofwar, fell in talk with him, went on board his ship, and, in short, had so agreeable a time that day was breaking when we came alongside the hispaniola. ben gunn was on deck alone, and as soon as we came on board he began, with wonderful contortions, to make us a confession. silver was gone. the maroon had connived at his escape in a shore boat some hours ago, and he now assured us he had only done so to preserve our lives, which would certainly have been forfeit if "that man with the one leg had stayed aboard." but this was not all. the sea-cook had not gone emptyhanded. he had cut through a bulkhead unobserved and had removed one of the sacks of coin, worth perhaps three or four hundred guineas, to help him on his further wanderings. i think we were all pleased to be so cheaply quit of him. well, to make a long story short, we got a few hands on board, made a good cruise home, and the hispaniola reached bristol just as mr. blandly was beginning to think of fitting out her consort. five men only of those who had sailed returned with her. "drink and the devil had done for the rest," with a vengeance, although, to be sure, we were not quite in so bad a case as that other ship they sang about: with one man of her crew alive, what put to sea with seventy-five. all of us had an ample share of the treasure and used it wisely or foolishly, according to our natures. captain smollett is now retired from the sea. gray not only saved his money, but being suddenly smit with the desire to rise, also studied his profession, and he is now mate and part owner of a fine full-rigged ship, married besides, and the father of a family. as for ben gunn, he got a thousand pounds, which he spent or lost in three weeks, or to be more exact, in nineteen days, for he was back begging on the twentieth. then he was given a lodge to keep, exactly as he had feared upon the island; and he still lives, a great favourite, though something of a butt, with the country boys, and a notable singer in church on sundays and saints' days. of silver we have heard no more. that formidable seafaring man with one leg has at last gone clean out of my life; but i dare say he met his old negress, and perhaps still lives in comfort with her and captain flint. it is to be hoped so, i suppose, for his chances of comfort in another world are very small. the bar silver and the arms still lie, for all that i know, where flint buried them; and certainly they shall lie there for me. oxen and wain-ropes would not bring me back again to that accursed island; and the worst dreams that ever i have are when i hear the surf booming about its coasts or start upright in bed with the sharp voice of captain flint still ringing in my ears: "pieces of eight! pieces of eight!" [end.] . 1847 ulalame by edgar allan poe ulalume the skies they were ashen and sober; the leaves they were crisped and sere the leaves they were withering and sere; it was night in the lonesome october of my most immemorial year; it was hard by the dim lake of auber, in the misty mid region of weir it was down by the dank tarn of auber, in the ghoul-haunted woodland of weir. here once, through an alley titanic, of cypress, i roamed with my soul of cypress, with psyche, my soul. there were days when my heart was volcanic as the scoriac rivers that roll as the lavas that restlessly roll their sulphurous currents down yaanek in the ultimate climes of the pole that groan as they roll down mount yaanek in the realms of the boreal pole. our talk had been serious and sober, but our thoughts they were palsied and sere our memories were treacherous and sere for we knew not the month was october, and we marked not the night of the year (ah, night of all nights in the year!) we noted not the dim lake of auber (though once we had journeyed down here), remembered not the dank tarn of auber, nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of weir. and now, as the night was senescent, and star-dials pointed to morn as the star-dials hinted of morn at the end of our path a liquescent and nebulous lustre was born, out of which a miraculous crescent arose with a duplicate horn astarte's bediamonded crescent distinct with its duplicate horn. and i said"she is warmer than dian: she rolls through an ether of sighs she revels in a region of sighs: she has seen that the tears are not dry on these cheeks, where the worm never dies, and has come past the stars of the lion, to point us the path to the skies to the lethean peace of the skies come up, in despite of the lion, to shine on us with her bright eyes come up through the lair of the lion, with love in her luminous eyes." but psyche, uplifting her finger, said"sadly this star i mistrust her pallor i strangely mistrust: oh, hasten!oh, let us not linger! oh, fly!let us fly!for we must." in terror she spoke, letting sink her wings until they trailed in the dust in agony sobbed, letting sink her plumes till they trailed in the dust till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. i replied"this is nothing but dreaming: let us on by this tremulous light! let us bathe in this crystalline light! its sybilic splendor is beaming with hope and in beauty to-night: see!it flickers up the sky through the night! ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, and be sure it will lead us aright we safely may trust to a gleaming that cannot but guide us aright, since it flickers up to heaven through the night." thus i pacified psyche and kissed her, and tempted her out of her gloom and conquered her scruples and gloom; and we passed to the end of the vista, but were stopped by the door of a tomb by the door of a legended tomb; and i said"what is written, sweet sister, on the door of this legended tomb?" she replied"ulalumeulalume 'tis the vault of thy lost ulalume!" then my heart it grew ashen and sober as the leaves that were crisped and sere as the leaves that were withering and sere and i cried"it was surely october on this very night of last year that i journeyedi journeyed down here that i brought a dread burden down here on this night of all nights in the year, ah, what demon has tempted me here? well i know, now, this dim lake of auber this misty mid region of weir well i know, now, this dank tarn of auber, this ghoul-haunted woodland of weir." -the end. [pg/etext94/beqst10.txt] the $30,000 bequest, by mark twain june, 1994 [etext #142] this text is in the public domain. the $30,000 bequest and other stories by mark twain (samuel l. clemens) the $30,000 bequest a dog's tale was it heaven? or hell? a cure for the blues the enemy conquered; or, love triumphant the californian's tale a helpless situation a telephonic conversation edward mills and george benton: a tale the five boons of life the first writing-machines italian without a master italian with grammar a burlesque biography how to tell a story general washington's negro body-servant wit inspirations of the "two-year-olds" an entertaining article a letter to the secretary of the treasury amended obituaries a momument to adam a humane word from satan introduction to "the new guide of the conversation in portuguese and english" advice to little girls post-mortem poetry the danger of lying in bed portrait of king william iii does the race of man love a lord? extracts from adam's diary eve's diary *** the $30,000 bequest chapter i lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants, and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the far west. it had church accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the far west and the south, where everybody is religious, and where each of the protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. rank was unknown in lakeside--unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere. saladin foster was book-keeper in the principal store, and the only high-salaried man of his profession in lakeside. he was thirty-five years old, now; he had served that store for fourteen years; he had begun in his marriage-week at four hundred dollars a year, and had climbed steadily up, a hundred dollars a year, for four years; from that time forth his wage had remained eight hundred--a handsome figure indeed, and everybody conceded that he was worth it. his wife, electra, was a capable helpmeet, although--like himself-a dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance. the first thing she did, after her marriage--child as she was, aged only nineteen-was to buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay down the cash for it--twenty-five dollars, all her fortune. saladin had less, by fifteen. she instituted a vegetable garden there, got it farmed on shares by the nearest neighbor, and made it pay her a hundred per cent. a year. out of saladin's first year's wage she put thirty dollars in the savings-bank, sixty out of his second, a hundred out of his third, a hundred and fifty out of his fourth. his wage went to eight hundred a year, then, and meantime two children had arrived and increased the expenses, but she banked two hundred a year from the salary, nevertheless, thenceforth. when she had been married seven years she built and furnished a pretty and comfortable two-thousand-dollar house in the midst of her garden-acre, paid half of the money down and moved her family in. seven years later she was out of debt and had several hundred dollars out earning its living. earning it by the rise in landed estate; for she had long ago bought another acre or two and sold the most of it at a profit to pleasant people who were willing to build, and would be good neighbors and furnish a general comradeship for herself and her growing family. she had an independent income from safe investments of about a hundred dollars a year; her children were growing in years and grace; and she was a pleased and happy woman. happy in her husband, happy in her children, and the husband and the children were happy in her. it is at this point that this history begins. the youngest girl, clytemnestra--called clytie for short-was eleven; her sister, gwendolen--called gwen for short-was thirteen; nice girls, and comely. the names betray the latent romance-tinge in the parental blood, the parents' names indicate that the tinge was an inheritance. it was an affectionate family, hence all four of its members had pet names, saladin's was a curious and unsexing one--sally; and so was electra's--aleck. all day long sally was a good and diligent book-keeper and salesman; all day long aleck was a good and faithful mother and housewife, and thoughtful and calculating business woman; but in the cozy living-room at night they put the plodding world away, and lived in another and a fairer, reading romances to each other, dreaming dreams, comrading with kings and princes and stately lords and ladies in the flash and stir and splendor of noble palaces and grim and ancient castles. chapter ii now came great news! stunning news--joyous news, in fact. it came from a neighboring state, where the family's only surviving relative lived. it was sally's relative--a sort of vague and indefinite uncle or second or third cousin by the name of tilbury foster, seventy and a bachelor, reputed well off and corresponding sour and crusty. sally had tried to make up to him once, by letter, in a bygone time, and had not made that mistake again. tilbury now wrote to sally, saying he should shortly die, and should leave him thirty thousand dollars, cash; not for love, but because money had given him most of his troubles and exasperations, and he wished to place it where there was good hope that it would continue its malignant work. the bequest would be found in his will, and would be paid over. provided, that sally should be able to prove to the executors that he had taken no notice of the gift by spoken word or by letter, had made no inquiries concerning the moribund's progress toward the everlasting tropics, and had not attended the funeral. as soon as aleck had partially recovered from the tremendous emotions created by the letter, she sent to the relative's habitat and subscribed for the local paper. man and wife entered into a solemn compact, now, to never mention the great news to any one while the relative lived, lest some ignorant person carry the fact to the death-bed and distort it and make it appear that they were disobediently thankful for the bequest, and just the same as confessing it and publishing it, right in the face of the prohibition. for the rest of the day sally made havoc and confusion with his books, and aleck could not keep her mind on her affairs, not even take up a flower-pot or book or a stick of wood without forgetting what she had intended to do with it. for both were dreaming. "thir-ty thousand dollars!" all day long the music of those inspiring words sang through those people's heads. from his marriage-day forth, aleck's grip had been upon the purse, and sally had seldom known what it was to be privileged to squander a dime on non-necessities. "thir-ty thousand dollars!" the song went on and on. a vast sum, an unthinkable sum! all day long aleck was absorbed in planning how to invest it, sally in planning how to spend it. there was no romance-reading that night. the children took themselves away early, for their parents were silent, distraught, and strangely unentertaining. the good-night kisses might as well have been impressed upon vacancy, for all the response they got; the parents were not aware of the kisses, and the children had been gone an hour before their absence was noticed. two pencils had been busy during that hour--note-making; in the way of plans. it was sally who broke the stillness at last. he said, with exultation: "ah, it'll be grand, aleck! out of the first thousand we'll have a horse and a buggy for summer, and a cutter and a skin lap-robe for winter." aleck responded with decision and composure-"out of the capital? nothing of the kind. not if it was a million!" sally was deeply disappointed; the glow went out of his face. "oh, aleck!" he said, reproachfully. "we've always worked so hard and been so scrimped: and now that we are rich, it does seem--" he did not finish, for he saw her eye soften; his supplication had touched her. she said, with gentle persuasiveness: "we must not spend the capital, dear, it would not be wise. out of the income from it--" "that will answer, that will answer, aleck! how dear and good you are! there will be a noble income and if we can spend that--" "not all of it, dear, not all of it, but you can spend a part of it. that is, a reasonable part. but the whole of the capital-every penny of it--must be put right to work, and kept at it. you see the reasonableness of that, don't you?" "why, ye-s. yes, of course. but we'll have to wait so long. six months before the first interest falls due." "yes--maybe longer." "longer, aleck? why? don't they pay half-yearly?" "that kind of an investment--yes; but i sha'n't invest in that way." "what way, then?" "for big returns." "big. that's good. go on, aleck. what is it?" "coal. the new mines. cannel. i mean to put in ten thousand. ground floor. when we organize, we'll get three shares for one." "by george, but it sounds good, aleck! then the shares will be worth-how much? and when?" "about a year. they'll pay ten per cent. half yearly, and be worth thirty thousand. i know all about it; the advertisement is in the cincinnati paper here." "land, thirty thousand for ten--in a year! let's jam in the whole capital and pull out ninety! i'll write and subscribe right now-tomorrow it maybe too late." he was flying to the writing-desk, but aleck stopped him and put him back in his chair. she said: "don't lose your head so. we mustn't subscribe till we've got the money; don't you know that?" sally's excitement went down a degree or two, but he was not wholly appeased. "why, aleck, we'll have it, you know--and so soon, too. he's probably out of his troubles before this; it's a hundred to nothing he's selecting his brimstone-shovel this very minute. now, i think--" aleck shuddered, and said: "how can you, sally! don't talk in that way, it is perfectly scandalous." "oh, well, make it a halo, if you like, _i_ don't care for his outfit, i was only just talking. can't you let a person talk?" "but why should you want to talk in that dreadful way? how would you like to have people talk so about you, and you not cold yet?" "not likely to be, for one while, i reckon, if my last act was giving away money for the sake of doing somebody a harm with it. but never mind about tilbury, aleck, let's talk about something worldly. it does seem to me that that mine is the place for the whole thirty. what's the objection?" "all the eggs in one basket--that's the objection." "all right, if you say so. what about the other twenty? what do you mean to do with that?" "there is no hurry; i am going to look around before i do anything with it." "all right, if your mind's made up," signed sally. he was deep in thought awhile, then he said: "there'll be twenty thousand profit coming from the ten a year from now. we can spend that, can we, aleck?" aleck shook her head. "no, dear," she said, "it won't sell high till we've had the first semi-annual dividend. you can spend part of that." "shucks, only that--and a whole year to wait! confound it, i--" "oh, do be patient! it might even be declared in three months-it's quite within the possibilities." "oh, jolly! oh, thanks!" and sally jumped up and kissed his wife in gratitude. "it'll be three thousand--three whole thousand! how much of it can we spend, aleck? make it liberal!--do, dear, that's a good fellow." aleck was pleased; so pleased that she yielded to the pressure and conceded a sum which her judgment told her was a foolish extravagance-a thousand dollars. sally kissed her half a dozen times and even in that way could not express all his joy and thankfulness. this new access of gratitude and affection carried aleck quite beyond the bounds of prudence, and before she could restrain herself she had made her darling another grant--a couple of thousand out of the fifty or sixty which she meant to clear within a year of the twenty which still remained of the bequest. the happy tears sprang to sally's eyes, and he said: "oh, i want to hug you!" and he did it. then he got his notes and sat down and began to check off, for first purchase, the luxuries which he should earliest wish to secure. "horse--buggy--cutter--lap-robe--patent-leathers--dog--plug-hat-church-pew--stem-winder--new teeth--say, aleck!" "well?" "ciphering away, aren't you? that's right. have you got the twenty thousand invested yet?" "no, there's no hurry about that; i must look around first, and think." "but you are ciphering; what's it about?" "why, i have to find work for the thirty thousand that comes out of the coal, haven't i?" "scott, what a head! i never thought of that. how are you getting along? where have you arrived?" "not very far--two years or three. i've turned it over twice; once in oil and once in wheat." "why, aleck, it's splendid! how does it aggregate?" "i think--well, to be on the safe side, about a hundred and eighty thousand clear, though it will probably be more." "my! isn't it wonderful? by gracious! luck has come our way at last, after all the hard sledding, aleck!" "well?" "i'm going to cash in a whole three hundred on the missionaries-what real right have we care for expenses!" "you couldn't do a nobler thing, dear; and it's just like your generous nature, you unselfish boy." the praise made sally poignantly happy, but he was fair and just enough to say it was rightfully due to aleck rather than to himself, since but for her he should never have had the money. then they went up to bed, and in their delirium of bliss they forgot and left the candle burning in the parlor. they did not remember until they were undressed; then sally was for letting it burn; he said they could afford it, if it was a thousand. but aleck went down and put it out. a good job, too; for on her way back she hit on a scheme that would turn the hundred and eighty thousand into half a million before it had had time to get cold. chapter iii the little newspaper which aleck had subscribed for was a thursday sheet; it would make the trip of five hundred miles from tilbury's village and arrive on saturday. tilbury's letter had started on friday, more than a day too late for the benefactor to die and get into that week's issue, but in plenty of time to make connection for the next output. thus the fosters had to wait almost a complete week to find out whether anything of a satisfactory nature had happened to him or not. it was a long, long week, and the strain was a heavy one. the pair could hardly have borne it if their minds had not had the relief of wholesome diversion. we have seen that they had that. the woman was piling up fortunes right along, the man was spending them-spending all his wife would give him a chance at, at any rate. at last the saturday came, and the weekly sagamore arrived. mrs. eversly bennett was present. she was the presbyterian parson's wife, and was working the fosters for a charity. talk now died a sudden death--on the foster side. mrs. bennett presently discovered that her hosts were not hearing a word she was saying; so she got up, wondering and indignant, and went away. the moment she was out of the house, aleck eagerly tore the wrapper from the paper, and her eyes and sally's swept the columns for the death-notices. disappointment! tilbury was not anywhere mentioned. aleck was a christian from the cradle, and duty and the force of habit required her to go through the motions. she pulled herself together and said, with a pious two-per-cent. trade joyousness: "let us be humbly thankful that he has been spared; and--" "damn his treacherous hide, i wish--" "sally! for shame!" "i don't care!" retorted the angry man. "it's the way you feel, and if you weren't so immorally pious you'd be honest and say so." aleck said, with wounded dignity: "i do not see how you can say such unkind and unjust things. there is no such thing as immoral piety." sally felt a pang, but tried to conceal it under a shuffling attempt to save his case by changing the form of it--as if changing the form while retaining the juice could deceive the expert he was trying to placate. he said: "i didn't mean so bad as that, aleck; i didn't really mean immoral piety, i only meant--meant--well, conventional piety, you know; er--shop piety; the--the--why, you know what i mean. aleck--the--well, where you put up that plated article and play it for solid, you know, without intending anything improper, but just out of trade habit, ancient policy, petrified custom, loyalty to--to--hang it, i can't find the right words, but you know what i mean, aleck, and that there isn't any harm in it. i'll try again. you see, it's this way. if a person--" "you have said quite enough," said aleck, coldly; "let the subject be dropped." "i'm willing," fervently responded sally, wiping the sweat from his forehead and looking the thankfulness he had no words for. then, musingly, he apologized to himself. "i certainly held threes-i know it--but i drew and didn't fill. that's where i'm so often weak in the game. if i had stood pat--but i didn't. i never do. i don't know enough." confessedly defeated, he was properly tame now and subdued. aleck forgave him with her eyes. the grand interest, the supreme interest, came instantly to the front again; nothing could keep it in the background many minutes on a stretch. the couple took up the puzzle of the absence of tilbury's death-notice. they discussed it every which way, more or less hopefully, but they had to finish where they began, and concede that the only really sane explanation of the absence of the notice must be--and without doubt was--that tilbury was not dead. there was something sad about it, something even a little unfair, maybe, but there it was, and had to be put up with. they were agreed as to that. to sally it seemed a strangely inscrutable dispensation; more inscrutable than usual, he thought; one of the most unnecessary inscrutable he could call to mind, in fact--and said so, with some feeling; but if he was hoping to draw aleck he failed; she reserved her opinion, if she had one; she had not the habit of taking injudicious risks in any market, worldly or other. the pair must wait for next week's paper--tilbury had evidently postponed. that was their thought and their decision. so they put the subject away and went about their affairs again with as good heart as they could. now, if they had but known it, they had been wronging tilbury all the time. tilbury had kept faith, kept it to the letter; he was dead, he had died to schedule. he was dead more than four days now and used to it; entirely dead, perfectly dead, as dead as any other new person in the cemetery; dead in abundant time to get into that week's sagamore, too, and only shut out by an accident; an accident which could not happen to a metropolitan journal, but which happens easily to a poor little village rag like the sagamore. on this occasion, just as the editorial page was being locked up, a gratis quart of strawberry ice-water arrived from hostetter's ladies and gents ice-cream parlors, and the stickful of rather chilly regret over tilbury's translation got crowded out to make room for the editor's frantic gratitude. on its way to the standing-galley tilbury's notice got pied. otherwise it would have gone into some future edition, for weekly sagamores do not waste "live" matter, and in their galleys "live" matter is immortal, unless a pi accident intervenes. but a thing that gets pied is dead, and for such there is no resurrection; its chance of seeing print is gone, forever and ever. and so, let tilbury like it or not, let him rave in his grave to his fill, no matter--no mention of his death would ever see the light in the weekly sagamore. chapter iv five weeks drifted tediously along. the sagamore arrived regularly on the saturdays, but never once contained a mention of tilbury foster. sally's patience broke down at this point, and he said, resentfully: "damn his livers, he's immortal!" aleck give him a very severe rebuke, and added with icy solemnity: "how would you feel if you were suddenly cut out just after such an awful remark had escaped out of you?" without sufficient reflection sally responded: "i'd feel i was lucky i hadn't got caught with it in me." pride had forced him to say something, and as he could not think of any rational thing to say he flung that out. then he stole a base-as he called it--that is, slipped from the presence, to keep from being brayed in his wife's discussion-mortar. six months came and went. the sagamore was still silent about tilbury. meantime, sally had several times thrown out a feeler--that is, a hint that he would like to know. aleck had ignored the hints. sally now resolved to brace up and risk a frontal attack. so he squarely proposed to disguise himself and go to tilbury's village and surreptitiously find out as to the prospects. aleck put her foot on the dangerous project with energy and decision. she said: "what can you be thinking of? you do keep my hands full! you have to be watched all the time, like a little child, to keep you from walking into the fire. you'll stay right where you are!" "why, aleck, i could do it and not be found out--i'm certain of it." "sally foster, don't you know you would have to inquire around?" "of course, but what of it? nobody would suspect who i was." "oh, listen to the man! some day you've got to prove to the executors that you never inquired. what then?" he had forgotten that detail. he didn't reply; there wasn't anything to say. aleck added: "now then, drop that notion out of your mind, and don't ever meddle with it again. tilbury set that trap for you. don't you know it's a trap? he is on the watch, and fully expecting you to blunder into it. well, he is going to be disappointed--at least while i am on deck. sally!" "well?" "as long as you live, if it's a hundred years, don't you ever make an inquiry. promise!" "all right," with a sigh and reluctantly. then aleck softened and said: "don't be impatient. we are prospering; we can wait; there is no hurry. our small dead-certain income increases all the time; and as to futures, i have not made a mistake yet--they are piling up by the thousands and tens of thousands. there is not another family in the state with such prospects as ours. already we are beginning to roll in eventual wealth. you know that, don't you?" "yes, aleck, it's certainly so." "then be grateful for what god is doing for us and stop worrying. you do not believe we could have achieved these prodigious results without his special help and guidance, do you?" hesitatingly, "n-no, i suppose not." then, with feeling and admiration, "and yet, when it comes to judiciousness in watering a stock or putting up a hand to skin wall street i don't give in that you need any outside amateur help, if i do wish i--" "oh, do shut up! i know you do not mean any harm or any irreverence, poor boy, but you can't seem to open your mouth without letting out things to make a person shudder. you keep me in constant dread. for you and for all of us. once i had no fear of the thunder, but now when i hear it i--" her voice broke, and she began to cry, and could not finish. the sight of this smote sally to the heart and he took her in his arms and petted her and comforted her and promised better conduct, and upbraided himself and remorsefully pleaded for forgiveness. and he was in earnest, and sorry for what he had done and ready for any sacrifice that could make up for it. and so, in privacy, he thought long and deeply over the matter, resolving to do what should seem best. it was easy to promise reform; indeed he had already promised it. but would that do any real good, any permanent good? no, it would be but temporary--he knew his weakness, and confessed it to himself with sorrow--he could not keep the promise. something surer and better must be devised; and he devised it. at cost of precious money which he had long been saving up, shilling by shilling, he put a lightning-rod on the house. at a subsequent time he relapsed. what miracles habit can do! and how quickly and how easily habits are acquired--both trifling habits and habits which profoundly change us. if by accident we wake at two in the morning a couple of nights in succession, we have need to be uneasy, for another repetition can turn the accident into a habit; and a month's dallying with whiskey-but we all know these commonplace facts. the castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit--how it grows! what a luxury it becomes; how we fly to its enchantments at every idle moment, how we revel in them, steep our souls in them, intoxicate ourselves with their beguiling fantasies--oh yes, and how soon and how easily our dram life and our material life become so intermingled and so fused together that we can't quite tell which is which, any more. by and by aleck subscribed to a chicago daily and for the wall street pointer. with an eye single to finance she studied these as diligently all the week as she studied her bible sundays. sally was lost in admiration, to note with what swift and sure strides her genius and judgment developed and expanded in the forecasting and handling of the securities of both the material and spiritual markets. he was proud of her nerve and daring in exploiting worldly stocks, and just as proud of her conservative caution in working her spiritual deals. he noted that she never lost her head in either case; that with a splendid courage she often went short on worldly futures, but heedfully drew the line there--she was always long on the others. her policy was quite sane and simple, as she explained it to him: what she put into earthly futures was for speculation, what she put into spiritual futures was for investment; she was willing to go into the one on a margin, and take chances, but in the case of the other, "margin her no margins"--she wanted to cash in a hundred cents per dollar's worth, and have the stock transferred on the books. it took but a very few months to educate aleck's imagination and sally's. each day's training added something to the spread and effectiveness of the two machines. as a consequence, aleck made imaginary money much faster than at first she had dreamed of making it, and sally's competency in spending the overflow of it kept pace with the strain put upon it, right along. in the beginning, aleck had given the coal speculation a twelvemonth in which to materialize, and had been loath to grant that this term might possibly be shortened by nine months. but that was the feeble work, the nursery work, of a financial fancy that had had no teaching, no experience, no practice. these aids soon came, then that nine months vanished, and the imaginary ten-thousand-dollar investment came marching home with three hundred per cent. profit on its back! it was a great day for the pair of fosters. they were speechless for joy. also speechless for another reason: after much watching of the market, aleck had lately, with fear and trembling, made her first flyer on a "margin," using the remaining twenty thousand of the bequest in this risk. in her mind's eye she had seen it climb, point by point--always with a chance that the market would break-until at last her anxieties were too great for further endurance-she being new to the margin business and unhardened, as yet--and she gave her imaginary broker an imaginary order by imaginary telegraph to sell. she said forty thousand dollars' profit was enough. the sale was made on the very day that the coal venture had returned with its rich freight. as i have said, the couple were speechless. they sat dazed and blissful that night, trying to realize that they were actually worth a hundred thousand dollars in clean, imaginary cash. yet so it was. it was the last time that ever aleck was afraid of a margin; at least afraid enough to let it break her sleep and pale her cheek to the extent that this first experience in that line had done. indeed it was a memorable night. gradually the realization that they were rich sank securely home into the souls of the pair, then they began to place the money. if we could have looked out through the eyes of these dreamers, we should have seen their tidy little wooden house disappear, and two-story brick with a cast-iron fence in front of it take its place; we should have seen a three-globed gas-chandelier grow down from the parlor ceiling; we should have seen the homely rag carpet turn to noble brussels, a dollar and a half a yard; we should have seen the plebeian fireplace vanish away and a recherch'e, big base-burner with isinglass windows take position and spread awe around. and we should have seen other things, too; among them the buggy, the lap-robe, the stove-pipe hat, and so on. from that time forth, although the daughters and the neighbors saw only the same old wooden house there, it was a two-story brick to aleck and sally and not a night went by that aleck did not worry about the imaginary gas-bills, and get for all comfort sally's reckless retort: "what of it? we can afford it." before the couple went to bed, that first night that they were rich, they had decided that they must celebrate. they must give a party-that was the idea. but how to explain it--to the daughters and the neighbors? they could not expose the fact that they were rich. sally was willing, even anxious, to do it; but aleck kept her head and would not allow it. she said that although the money was as good as in, it would be as well to wait until it was actually in. on that policy she took her stand, and would not budge. the great secret must be kept, she said--kept from the daughters and everybody else. the pair were puzzled. they must celebrate, they were determined to celebrate, but since the secret must be kept, what could they celebrate? no birthdays were due for three months. tilbury wasn't available, evidently he was going to live forever; what the nation could they celebrate? that was sally's way of putting it; and he was getting impatient, too, and harassed. but at last he hit it--just by sheer inspiration, as it seemed to him-and all their troubles were gone in a moment; they would celebrate the discovery of america. a splendid idea! aleck was almost too proud of sally for words--she said she never would have thought of it. but sally, although he was bursting with delight in the compliment and with wonder at himself, tried not to let on, and said it wasn't really anything, anybody could have done it. whereat aleck, with a prideful toss of her happy head, said: "oh, certainly! anybody could--oh, anybody! hosannah dilkins, for instance! or maybe adelbert peanut--oh, dear--yes! well, i'd like to see them try it, that's all. dear-me-suz, if they could think of the discovery of a forty-acre island it's more than _i_ believe they could; and as for the whole continent, why, sally foster, you know perfectly well it would strain the livers and lights out of them and then they couldn't!" the dear woman, she knew he had talent; and if affection made her over-estimate the size of it a little, surely it was a sweet and gentle crime, and forgivable for its source's sake. chapter v the celebration went off well. the friends were all present, both the young and the old. among the young were flossie and gracie peanut and their brother adelbert, who was a rising young journeyman tinner, also hosannah dilkins, jr., journeyman plasterer, just out of his apprenticeship. for many months adelbert and hosannah had been showing interest in gwendolen and clytemnestra foster, and the parents of the girls had noticed this with private satisfaction. but they suddenly realized now that that feeling had passed. they recognized that the changed financial conditions had raised up a social bar between their daughters and the young mechanics. the daughters could now look higher--and must. yes, must. they need marry nothing below the grade of lawyer or merchant; poppa and momma would take care of this; there must be no m'esalliances. however, these thinkings and projects of their were private, and did not show on the surface, and therefore threw no shadow upon the celebration. what showed upon the surface was a serene and lofty contentment and a dignity of carriage and gravity of deportment which compelled the admiration and likewise the wonder of the company. all noticed it and all commented upon it, but none was able to divine the secret of it. it was a marvel and a mystery. three several persons remarked, without suspecting what clever shots they were making: "it's as if they'd come into property." that was just it, indeed. most mothers would have taken hold of the matrimonial matter in the old regulation way; they would have given the girls a talking to, of a solemn sort and untactful--a lecture calculated to defeat its own purpose, by producing tears and secret rebellion; and the said mothers would have further damaged the business by requesting the young mechanics to discontinue their attentions. but this mother was different. she was practical. she said nothing to any of the young people concerned, nor to any one else except sally. he listened to her and understood; understood and admired. he said: "i get the idea. instead of finding fault with the samples on view, thus hurting feelings and obstructing trade without occasion, you merely offer a higher class of goods for the money, and leave nature to take her course. it's wisdom, aleck, solid wisdom, and sound as a nut. who's your fish? have you nominated him yet?" no, she hadn't. they must look the market over--which they did. to start with, they considered and discussed brandish, rising young lawyer, and fulton, rising young dentist. sally must invite them to dinner. but not right away; there was no hurry, aleck said. keep an eye on the pair, and wait; nothing would be lost by going slowly in so important a matter. it turned out that this was wisdom, too; for inside of three weeks aleck made a wonderful strike which swelled her imaginary hundred thousand to four hundred thousand of the same quality. she and sally were in the clouds that evening. for the first time they introduced champagne at dinner. not real champagne, but plenty real enough for the amount of imagination expended on it. it was sally that did it, and aleck weakly submitted. at bottom both were troubled and ashamed, for he was a high-up son of temperance, and at funerals wore an apron which no dog could look upon and retain his reason and his opinion; and she was a w. c. t. u., with all that that implies of boiler-iron virtue and unendurable holiness. but there is was; the pride of riches was beginning its disintegrating work. they had lived to prove, once more, a sad truth which had been proven many times before in the world: that whereas principle is a great and noble protection against showy and degrading vanities and vices, poverty is worth six of it. more than four hundred thousand dollars to the good. they took up the matrimonial matter again. neither the dentist nor the lawyer was mentioned; there was no occasion, they were out of the running. disqualified. they discussed the son of the pork-packer and the son of the village banker. but finally, as in the previous case, they concluded to wait and think, and go cautiously and sure. luck came their way again. aleck, ever watchful saw a great and risky chance, and took a daring flyer. a time of trembling, of doubt, of awful uneasiness followed, for non-success meant absolute ruin and nothing short of it. then came the result, and aleck, faint with joy, could hardly control her voice when she said: "the suspense is over, sally--and we are worth a cold million!" sally wept for gratitude, and said: "oh, electra, jewel of women, darling of my heart, we are free at last, we roll in wealth, we need never scrimp again. it's a case for veuve cliquot!" and he got out a pint of spruce-beer and made sacrifice, he saying "damn the expense," and she rebuking him gently with reproachful but humid and happy eyes. they shelved the pork-packer's son and the banker's son, and sat down to consider the governor's son and the son of the congressman. chapter vi it were a weariness to follow in detail the leaps and bounds the foster fictitious finances took from this time forth. it was marvelous, it was dizzying, it was dazzling. everything aleck touched turned to fairy gold, and heaped itself glittering toward the firmament. millions upon millions poured in, and still the mighty stream flowed thundering along, still its vast volume increased. five millions-ten millions--twenty--thirty--was there never to be an end? two years swept by in a splendid delirium, the intoxicated fosters scarcely noticing the flight of time. they were now worth three hundred million dollars; they were in every board of directors of every prodigious combine in the country; and still as time drifted along, the millions went on piling up, five at a time, ten at a time, as fast as they could tally them off, almost. the three hundred double itself--then doubled again--and yet again--and yet once more. twenty-four hundred millions! the business was getting a little confused. it was necessary to take an account of stock, and straighten it out. the fosters knew it, they felt it, they realized that it was imperative; but they also knew that to do it properly and perfectly the task must be carried to a finish without a break when once it was begun. a ten-hours' job; and where could they find ten leisure hours in a bunch? sally was selling pins and sugar and calico all day and every day; aleck was cooking and washing dishes and sweeping and making beds all day and every day, with none to help, for the daughters were being saved up for high society. the fosters knew there was one way to get the ten hours, and only one. both were ashamed to name it; each waited for the other to do it. finally sally said: "somebody's got to give in. it's up to me. consider that i've named it--never mind pronouncing it out aloud." aleck colored, but was grateful. without further remark, they fell. fell, and--broke the sabbath. for that was their only free ten-hour stretch. it was but another step in the downward path. others would follow. vast wealth has temptations which fatally and surely undermine the moral structure of persons not habituated to its possession. they pulled down the shades and broke the sabbath. with hard and patient labor they overhauled their holdings and listed them. and a long-drawn procession of formidable names it was! starting with the railway systems, steamer lines, standard oil, ocean cables, diluted telegraph, and all the rest, and winding up with klondike, de beers, tammany graft, and shady privileges in the post-office department. twenty-four hundred millions, and all safely planted in good things, gilt-edged and interest-bearing. income, $120,000,000 a year. aleck fetched a long purr of soft delight, and said: "is it enough?" "it is, aleck." "what shall we do?" "stand pat." "retire from business?" "that's it." "i am agreed. the good work is finished; we will take a long rest and enjoy the money." "good! aleck!" "yes, dear?" "how much of the income can we spend?" "the whole of it." it seemed to her husband that a ton of chains fell from his limbs. he did not say a word; he was happy beyond the power of speech. after that, they broke the sabbaths right along as fast as they turned up. it is the first wrong step that counts. every sunday they put in the whole day, after morning service, on inventions-inventions of ways to spend the money. they got to continuing this delicious dissipation until past midnight; and at every s'eance aleck lavished millions upon great charities and religious enterprises, and sally lavished like sums upon matters to which (at first) he gave definite names. only at first. later the names gradually lost sharpness of outline, and eventually faded into "sundries," thus becoming entirely--but safely--undescriptive. for sally was crumbling. the placing of these millions added seriously and most uncomfortably to the family expenses--in tallow candles. for a while aleck was worried. then, after a little, she ceased to worry, for the occasion of it was gone. she was pained, she was grieved, she was ashamed; but she said nothing, and so became an accessory. sally was taking candles; he was robbing the store. it is ever thus. vast wealth, to the person unaccustomed to it, is a bane; it eats into the flesh and bone of his morals. when the fosters were poor, they could have been trusted with untold candles. but now they--but let us not dwell upon it. from candles to apples is but a step: sally got to taking apples; then soap; then maple-sugar; then canned goods; then crockery. how easy it is to go from bad to worse, when once we have started upon a downward course! meantime, other effects had been milestoning the course of the fosters' splendid financial march. the fictitious brick dwelling had given place to an imaginary granite one with a checker-board mansard roof; in time this one disappeared and gave place to a still grander home--and so on and so on. mansion after mansion, made of air, rose, higher, broader, finer, and each in its turn vanished away; until now in these latter great days, our dreamers were in fancy housed, in a distant region, in a sumptuous vast palace which looked out from a leafy summit upon a noble prospect of vale and river and receding hills steeped in tinted mists-and all private, all the property of the dreamers; a palace swarming with liveried servants, and populous with guests of fame and power, hailing from all the world's capitals, foreign and domestic. this palace was far, far away toward the rising sun, immeasurably remote, astronomically remote, in newport, rhode island, holy land of high society, ineffable domain of the american aristocracy. as a rule they spent a part of every sabbath--after morning service-in this sumptuous home, the rest of it they spent in europe, or in dawdling around in their private yacht. six days of sordid and plodding fact life at home on the ragged edge of lakeside and straitened means, the seventh in fairlyand--such had been their program and their habit. in their sternly restricted fact life they remained as of old-plodding, diligent, careful, practical, economical. they stuck loyally to the little presbyterian church, and labored faithfully in its interests and stood by its high and tough doctrines with all their mental and spiritual energies. but in their dream life they obeyed the invitations of their fancies, whatever they might be, and howsoever the fancies might change. aleck's fancies were not very capricious, and not frequent, but sally's scattered a good deal. aleck, in her dream life, went over to the episcopal camp, on account of its large official titles; next she became high-church on account of the candles and shows; and next she naturally changed to rome, where there were cardinals and more candles. but these excursions were a nothing to sally's. his dream life was a glowing and continuous and persistent excitement, and he kept every part of it fresh and sparkling by frequent changes, the religious part along with the rest. he worked his religions hard, and changed them with his shirt. the liberal spendings of the fosters upon their fancies began early in their prosperities, and grew in prodigality step by step with their advancing fortunes. in time they became truly enormous. aleck built a university or two per sunday; also a hospital or two; also a rowton hotel or so; also a batch of churches; now and then a cathedral; and once, with untimely and ill-chosen playfulness, sally said, "it was a cold day when she didn't ship a cargo of missionaries to persuade unreflecting chinamen to trade off twenty-four carat confucianism for counterfeit christianity." this rude and unfeeling language hurt aleck to the heart, and she went from the presence crying. that spectacle went to his own heart, and in his pain and shame he would have given worlds to have those unkind words back. she had uttered no syllable of reproach-and that cut him. not one suggestion that he look at his own record-and she could have made, oh, so many, and such blistering ones! her generous silence brought a swift revenge, for it turned his thoughts upon himself, it summoned before him a spectral procession, a moving vision of his life as he had been leading it these past few years of limitless prosperity, and as he sat there reviewing it his cheeks burned and his soul was steeped in humiliation. look at her life--how fair it was, and tending ever upward; and look at his own--how frivolous, how charged with mean vanities, how selfish, how empty, how ignoble! and its trend--never upward, but downward, ever downward! he instituted comparisons between her record and his own. he had found fault with her--so he mused--he! and what could he say for himself? when she built her first church what was he doing? gathering other blas'e multimillionaires into a poker club; defiling his own palace with it; losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, and sillily vain of the admiring notoriety it made for him. when she was building her first university, what was he doing? polluting himself with a gay and dissipated secret life in the company of other fast bloods, multimillionaires in money and paupers in character. when she was building her first foundling asylum, what was he doing? alas! when she was projecting her noble society for the purifying of the sex, what was he doing? ah, what, indeed! when she and the w. c. t. u. and the woman with the hatchet, moving with resistless march, were sweeping the fatal bottle from the land, what was he doing? getting drunk three times a day. when she, builder of a hundred cathedrals, was being gratefully welcomed and blest in papal rome and decorated with the golden rose which she had so honorably earned, what was he doing? breaking the bank at monte carlo. he stopped. he could go no farther; he could not bear the rest. he rose up, with a great resolution upon his lips: this secret life should be revealing, and confessed; no longer would he live it clandestinely, he would go and tell her all. and that is what he did. he told her all; and wept upon her bosom; wept, and moaned, and begged for her forgiveness. it was a profound shock, and she staggered under the blow, but he was her own, the core of her heart, the blessing of her eyes, her all in all, she could deny him nothing, and she forgave him. she felt that he could never again be quite to her what he had been before; she knew that he could only repent, and not reform; yet all morally defaced and decayed as he was, was he not her own, her very own, the idol of her deathless worship? she said she was his serf, his slave, and she opened her yearning heart and took him in. chapter vii one sunday afternoon some time after this they were sailing the summer seas in their dream yacht, and reclining in lazy luxury under the awning of the after-deck. there was silence, for each was busy with his own thoughts. these seasons of silence had insensibly been growing more and more frequent of late; the old nearness and cordiality were waning. sally's terrible revelation had done its work; aleck had tried hard to drive the memory of it out of her mind, but it would not go, and the shame and bitterness of it were poisoning her gracious dream life. she could see now (on sundays) that her husband was becoming a bloated and repulsive thing. she could not close her eyes to this, and in these days she no longer looked at him, sundays, when she could help it. but she--was she herself without blemish? alas, she knew she was not. she was keeping a secret from him, she was acting dishonorably toward him, and many a pang it was costing her. she was breaking the compact, and concealing it from him. under strong temptation she had gone into business again; she had risked their whole fortune in a purchase of all the railway systems and coal and steel companies in the country on a margin, and she was now trembling, every sabbath hour, lest through some chance word of hers he find it out. in her misery and remorse for this treachery she could not keep her heart from going out to him in pity; she was filled with compunctions to see him lying there, drunk and contented, and ever suspecting. never suspecting--trusting her with a perfect and pathetic trust, and she holding over him by a thread a possible calamity of so devastating a-"say--aleck?" the interrupting words brought her suddenly to herself. she was grateful to have that persecuting subject from her thoughts, and she answered, with much of the old-time tenderness in her tone: "yes, dear." "do you know, aleck, i think we are making a mistake--that is, you are. i mean about the marriage business." he sat up, fat and froggy and benevolent, like a bronze buddha, and grew earnest. "consider--it's more than five years. you've continued the same policy from the start: with every rise, always holding on for five points higher. always when i think we are going to have some weddings, you see a bigger thing ahead, and i undergo another disappointment. _i_ think you are too hard to please. some day we'll get left. first, we turned down the dentist and the lawyer. that was all right-it was sound. next, we turned down the banker's son and the pork-butcher's heir--right again, and sound. next, we turned down the congressman's son and the governor's--right as a trivet, i confess it. next the senator's son and the son of the vice-president of the united states--perfectly right, there's no permanency about those little distinctions. then you went for the aristocracy; and i thought we had struck oil at last--yes. we would make a plunge at the four hundred, and pull in some ancient lineage, venerable, holy, ineffable, mellow with the antiquity of a hundred and fifty years, disinfected of the ancestral odors of salt-cod and pelts all of a century ago, and unsmirched by a day's work since, and then! why, then the marriages, of course. but no, along comes a pair a real aristocrats from europe, and straightway you throw over the half-breeds. it was awfully discouraging, aleck! since then, what a procession! you turned down the baronets for a pair of barons; you turned down the barons for a pair of viscounts; the viscounts for a pair of earls; the earls for a pair of marquises; the marquises for a brace of dukes. now, aleck, cash in!-you've played the limit. you've got a job lot of four dukes under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in the wind and limb and pedigree, all bankrupt and in debt up to the ears. they come high, but we can afford it. come, aleck, don't delay any longer, don't keep up the suspense: take the whole lay-out, and leave the girls to choose!" aleck had been smiling blandly and contentedly all through this arraignment of her marriage policy, a pleasant light, as of triumph with perhaps a nice surprise peeping out through it, rose in her eyes, and she said, as calmly as she could: "sally, what would you say to--royalty?" prodigious! poor man, it knocked him silly, and he fell over the garboard-strake and barked his shin on the cat-heads. he was dizzy for a moment, then he gathered himself up and limped over and sat down by his wife and beamed his old-time admiration and affection upon her in floods, out of his bleary eyes. "by george!" he said, fervently, "aleck, you are great--the greatest woman in the whole earth! i can't ever learn the whole size of you. i can't ever learn the immeasurable deeps of you. here i've been considering myself qualified to criticize your game. _i!_ why, if i had stopped to think, i'd have known you had a lone hand up your sleeve. now, dear heart, i'm all red-hot impatience--tell me about it!" the flattered and happy woman put her lips to his ear and whispered a princely name. it made him catch his breath, it lit his face with exultation. "land!" he said, "it's a stunning catch! he's got a gambling-hall, and a graveyard, and a bishop, and a cathedral--all his very own. and all gilt-edged five-hundred-per-cent. stock, every detail of it; the tidiest little property in europe. and that graveyard-it's the selectest in the world: none but suicides admitted; yes, sir, and the free-list suspended, too, all the time. there isn't much land in the principality, but there's enough: eight hundred acres in the graveyard and forty-two outside. it's a sovereignty--that's the main thing; land's nothing. there's plenty land, sahara's drugged with it." aleck glowed; she was profoundly happy. she said: "think of it, sally--it is a family that has never married outside the royal and imperial houses of europe: our grandchildren will sit upon thrones!" "true as you live, aleck--and bear scepters, too; and handle them as naturally and nonchantly as i handle a yardstick. it's a grand catch, aleck. he's corralled, is he? can't get away? you didn't take him on a margin?" "no. trust me for that. he's not a liability, he's an asset. so is the other one." "who is it, aleck?" "his royal highness sigismund-siegfriend-lauenfeld-dinkelspiel-schwartzenberg blutwurst, hereditary grant duke of katzenyammer." "no! you can't mean it!" "it's as true as i'm sitting here, i give you my word," she answered. his cup was full, and he hugged her to his heart with rapture, saying: "how wonderful it all seems, and how beautiful! it's one of the oldest and noblest of the three hundred and sixty-four ancient german principalities, and one of the few that was allowed to retain its royal estate when bismarck got done trimming them. i know that farm, i've been there. it's got a rope-walk and a candle-factory and an army. standing army. infantry and cavalry. three soldier and a horse. aleck, it's been a long wait, and full of heartbreak and hope deferred, but god knows i am happy now. happy, and grateful to you, my own, who have done it all. when is it to be?" "next sunday." "good. and we'll want to do these weddings up in the very regalest style that's going. it's properly due to the royal quality of the parties of the first part. now as i understand it, there is only one kind of marriage that is sacred to royalty, exclusive to royalty: it's the morganatic." "what do they call it that for, sally?" "i don't know; but anyway it's royal, and royal only." "then we will insist upon it. more--i will compel it. it is morganatic marriage or none." "that settles it!" said sally, rubbing his hands with delight. "and it will be the very first in america. aleck, it will make newport sick." then they fell silent, and drifted away upon their dream wings to the far regions of the earth to invite all the crowned heads and their families and provide gratis transportation to them. chapter viii during three days the couple walked upon air, with their heads in the clouds. they were but vaguely conscious of their surroundings; they saw all things dimly, as through a veil; they were steeped in dreams, often they did not hear when they were spoken to; they often did not understand when they heard; they answered confusedly or at random; sally sold molasses by weight, sugar by the yard, and furnished soap when asked for candles, and aleck put the cat in the wash and fed milk to the soiled linen. everybody was stunned and amazed, and went about muttering, "what can be the matter with the fosters?" three days. then came events! things had taken a happy turn, and for forty-eight hours aleck's imaginary corner had been booming. up--up--still up! cost point was passed. still up--and up-and up! cost point was passed. still up--and up--and up! five points above cost--then ten--fifteen--twenty! twenty points cold profit on the vast venture, now, and aleck's imaginary brokers were shouting frantically by imaginary long-distance, "sell! sell! for heaven's sake sell!" she broke the splendid news to sally, and he, too, said, "sell! sell--oh, don't make a blunder, now, you own the earth!-sell, sell!" but she set her iron will and lashed it amidships, and said she would hold on for five points more if she died for it. it was a fatal resolve. the very next day came the historic crash, the record crash, the devastating crash, when the bottom fell out of wall street, and the whole body of gilt-edged stocks dropped ninety-five points in five hours, and the multimillionaire was seen begging his bread in the bowery. aleck sternly held her grip and "put up" ass long as she could, but at last there came a call which she was powerless to meet, and her imaginary brokers sold her out. then, and not till then, the man in her was vanished, and the woman in her resumed sway. she put her arms about her husband's neck and wept, saying: "i am to blame, do not forgive me, i cannot bear it. we are paupers! paupers, and i am so miserable. the weddings will never come off; all that is past; we could not even buy the dentist, now." a bitter reproach was on sally's tongue: "i begged you to sell, but you--" he did not say it; he had not the heart to add a hurt to that broken and repentant spirit. a nobler thought came to him and he said: "bear up, my aleck, all is not lost! you really never invested a penny of my uncle's bequest, but only its unmaterialized future; what we have lost was only the incremented harvest from that future by your incomparable financial judgment and sagacity. cheer up, banish these griefs; we still have the thirty thousand untouched; and with the experience which you have acquired, think what you will be able to do with it in a couple years! the marriages are not off, they are only postponed." these are blessed words. aleck saw how true they were, and their influence was electric; her tears ceased to flow, and her great spirit rose to its full stature again. with flashing eye and grateful heart, and with hand uplifted in pledge and prophecy, she said: "now and here i proclaim--" but she was interrupted by a visitor. it was the editor and proprietor of the sagamore. he had happened into lakeside to pay a duty-call upon an obscure grandmother of his who was nearing the end of her pilgrimage, and with the idea of combining business with grief he had looked up the fosters, who had been so absorbed in other things for the past four years that they neglected to pay up their subscription. six dollars due. no visitor could have been more welcome. he would know all about uncle tilbury and what his chances might be getting to be, cemeterywards. they could, of course, ask no questions, for that would squelch the bequest, but they could nibble around on the edge of the subject and hope for results. the scheme did not work. the obtuse editor did not know he was being nibbled at; but at last, chance accomplished what art had failed in. in illustration of something under discussion which required the help of metaphor, the editor said: "land, it's a tough as tilbury foster!--as we say." it was sudden, and it made the fosters jump. the editor noticed, and said, apologetically: "no harm intended, i assure you. it's just a saying; just a joke, you know--nothing of it. relation of yours?" sally crowded his burning eagerness down, and answered with all the indifference he could assume: "i--well, not that i know of, but we've heard of him." the editor was thankful, and resumed his composure. sally added: "is he-is he--well?" "is he well? why, bless you he's in sheol these five years!" the fosters were trembling with grief, though it felt like joy. sally said, non-committally--and tentatively: "ah, well, such is life, and none can escape--not even the rich are spared." the editor laughed. "if you are including tilbury," said he, "it don't apply. he hadn't a cent; the town had to bury him." the fosters sat petrified for two minutes; petrified and cold. then, white-faced and weak-voiced, sally asked: "is it true? do you know it to be true?" "well, i should say! i was one of the executors. he hadn't anything to leave but a wheelbarrow, and he left that to me. it hadn't any wheel, and wasn't any good. still, it was something, and so, to square up, i scribbled off a sort of a little obituarial send-off for him, but it got crowded out." the fosters were not listening--their cup was full, it could contain no more. they sat with bowed heads, dead to all things but the ache at their hearts. an hour later. still they sat there, bowed, motionless, silent, the visitor long ago gone, they unaware. then they stirred, and lifted their heads wearily, and gazed at each other wistfully, dreamily, dazed; then presently began to twaddle to each other in a wandering and childish way. at intervals they lapsed into silences, leaving a sentence unfinished, seemingly either unaware of it or losing their way. sometimes, when they woke out of these silences they had a dim and transient consciousness that something had happened to their minds; then with a dumb and yearning solicitude they would softly caress each other's hands in mutual compassion and support, as if they would say: "i am near you, i will not forsake you, we will bear it together; somewhere there is release and forgetfulness, somewhere there is a grave and peace; be patient, it will not be long." they lived yet two years, in mental night, always brooding, steeped in vague regrets and melancholy dreams, never speaking; then release came to both on the same day. toward the end the darkness lifted from sally's ruined mind for a moment, and he said: "vast wealth, acquired by sudden and unwholesome means, is a snare. it did us no good, transient were its feverish pleasures; yet for its sake we threw away our sweet and simple and happy life-let others take warning by us." he lay silent awhile, with closed eyes; then as the chill of death crept upward toward his heart, and consciousness was fading from his brain, he muttered: "money had brought him misery, and he took his revenge upon us, who had done him no harm. he had his desire: with base and cunning calculation he left us but thirty thousand, knowing we would try to increase it, and ruin our life and break our hearts. without added expense he could have left us far above desire of increase, far above the temptation to speculate, and a kinder soul would have done it; but in him was no generous spirit, no pity, no--" *** a dog's tale chapter i my father was a st. bernard, my mother was a collie, but i am a presbyterian. this is what my mother told me, i do not know these nice distinctions myself. to me they are only fine large words meaning nothing. my mother had a fondness for such; she liked to say them, and see other dogs look surprised and envious, as wondering how she got so much education. but, indeed, it was not real education; it was only show: she got the words by listening in the dining-room and drawing-room when there was company, and by going with the children to sunday-school and listening there; and whenever she heard a large word she said it over to herself many times, and so was able to keep it until there was a dogmatic gathering in the neighborhood, then she would get it off, and surprise and distress them all, from pocket-pup to mastiff, which rewarded her for all her trouble. if there was a stranger he was nearly sure to be suspicious, and when he got his breath again he would ask her what it meant. and she always told him. he was never expecting this but thought he would catch her; so when she told him, he was the one that looked ashamed, whereas he had thought it was going to be she. the others were always waiting for this, and glad of it and proud of her, for they knew what was going to happen, because they had had experience. when she told the meaning of a big word they were all so taken up with admiration that it never occurred to any dog to doubt if it was the right one; and that was natural, because, for one thing, she answered up so promptly that it seemed like a dictionary speaking, and for another thing, where could they find out whether it was right or not? for she was the only cultivated dog there was. by and by, when i was older, she brought home the word unintellectual, one time, and worked it pretty hard all the week at different gatherings, making much unhappiness and despondency; and it was at this time that i noticed that during that week she was asked for the meaning at eight different assemblages, and flashed out a fresh definition every time, which showed me that she had more presence of mind than culture, though i said nothing, of course. she had one word which she always kept on hand, and ready, like a life-preserver, a kind of emergency word to strap on when she was likely to get washed overboard in a sudden way--that was the word synonymous. when she happened to fetch out a long word which had had its day weeks before and its prepared meanings gone to her dump-pile, if there was a stranger there of course it knocked him groggy for a couple of minutes, then he would come to, and by that time she would be away down wind on another tack, and not expecting anything; so when he'd hail and ask her to cash in, i (the only dog on the inside of her game) could see her canvas flicker a moment-but only just a moment--then it would belly out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, "it's synonymous with supererogation," or some godless long reptile of a word like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack, perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking profane and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor with their tails in unison and their faces transfigured with a holy joy. and it was the same with phrases. she would drag home a whole phrase, if it had a grand sound, and play it six nights and two matinees, and explain it a new way every time--which she had to, for all she cared for was the phrase; she wasn't interested in what it meant, and knew those dogs hadn't wit enough to catch her, anyway. yes, she was a daisy! she got so she wasn't afraid of anything, she had such confidence in the ignorance of those creatures. she even brought anecdotes that she had heard the family and the dinner-guests laugh and shout over; and as a rule she got the nub of one chestnut hitched onto another chestnut, where, of course, it didn't fit and hadn't any point; and when she delivered the nub she fell over and rolled on the floor and laughed and barked in the most insane way, while i could see that she was wondering to herself why it didn't seem as funny as it did when she first heard it. but no harm was done; the others rolled and barked too, privately ashamed of themselves for not seeing the point, and never suspecting that the fault was not with them and there wasn't any to see. you can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and frivolous character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up, i think. she had a kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored resentments for injuries done her, but put them easily out of her mind and forgot them; and she taught her children her kindly way, and from her we learned also to be brave and prompt in time of danger, and not to run away, but face the peril that threatened friend or stranger, and help him the best we could without stopping to think what the cost might be to us. and she taught us not by words only, but by example, and that is the best way and the surest and the most lasting. why, the brave things she did, the splendid things! she was just a soldier; and so modest about it--well, you couldn't help admiring her, and you couldn't help imitating her; not even a king charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her society. so, as you see, there was more to her than her education. chapter ii when i was well grown, at last, i was sold and taken away, and i never saw her again. she was broken-hearted, and so was i, and we cried; but she comforted me as well as she could, and said we were sent into this world for a wise and good purpose, and must do our duties without repining, take our life as we might find it, live it for the best good of others, and never mind about the results; they were not our affair. she said men who did like this would have a noble and beautiful reward by and by in another world, and although we animals would not go there, to do well and right without reward would give to our brief lives a worthiness and dignity which in itself would be a reward. she had gathered these things from time to time when she had gone to the sunday-school with the children, and had laid them up in her memory more carefully than she had done with those other words and phrases; and she had studied them deeply, for her good and ours. one may see by this that she had a wise and thoughtful head, for all there was so much lightness and vanity in it. so we said our farewells, and looked our last upon each other through our tears; and the last thing she said--keeping it for the last to make me remember it the better, i think--was, "in memory of me, when there is a time of danger to another do not think of yourself, think of your mother, and do as she would do." do you think i could forget that? no. chapter iii it was such a charming home!--my new one; a fine great house, with pictures, and delicate decorations, and rich furniture, and no gloom anywhere, but all the wilderness of dainty colors lit up with flooding sunshine; and the spacious grounds around it, and the great garden--oh, greensward, and noble trees, and flowers, no end! and i was the same as a member of the family; and they loved me, and petted me, and did not give me a new name, but called me by my old one that was dear to me because my mother had given it me-aileen mavoureen. she got it out of a song; and the grays knew that song, and said it was a beautiful name. mrs. gray was thirty, and so sweet and so lovely, you cannot imagine it; and sadie was ten, and just like her mother, just a darling slender little copy of her, with auburn tails down her back, and short frocks; and the baby was a year old, and plump and dimpled, and fond of me, and never could get enough of hauling on my tail, and hugging me, and laughing out its innocent happiness; and mr. gray was thirty-eight, and tall and slender and handsome, a little bald in front, alert, quick in his movements, business-like, prompt, decided, unsentimental, and with that kind of trim-chiseled face that just seems to glint and sparkle with frosty intellectuality! he was a renowned scientist. i do not know what the word means, but my mother would know how to use it and get effects. she would know how to depress a rat-terrier with it and make a lap-dog look sorry he came. but that is not the best one; the best one was laboratory. my mother could organize a trust on that one that would skin the tax-collars off the whole herd. the laboratory was not a book, or a picture, or a place to wash your hands in, as the college president's dog said--no, that is the lavatory; the laboratory is quite different, and is filled with jars, and bottles, and electrics, and wires, and strange machines; and every week other scientists came there and sat in the place, and used the machines, and discussed, and made what they called experiments and discoveries; and often i came, too, and stood around and listened, and tried to learn, for the sake of my mother, and in loving memory of her, although it was a pain to me, as realizing what she was losing out of her life and i gaining nothing at all; for try as i might, i was never able to make anything out of it at all. other times i lay on the floor in the mistress's work-room and slept, she gently using me for a foot-stool, knowing it pleased me, for it was a caress; other times i spent an hour in the nursery, and got well tousled and made happy; other times i watched by the crib there, when the baby was asleep and the nurse out for a few minutes on the baby's affairs; other times i romped and raced through the grounds and the garden with sadie till we were tired out, then slumbered on the grass in the shade of a tree while she read her book; other times i went visiting among the neighbor dogs-for there were some most pleasant ones not far away, and one very handsome and courteous and graceful one, a curly-haired irish setter by the name of robin adair, who was a presbyterian like me, and belonged to the scotch minister. the servants in our house were all kind to me and were fond of me, and so, as you see, mine was a pleasant life. there could not be a happier dog that i was, nor a gratefuler one. i will say this for myself, for it is only the truth: i tried in all ways to do well and right, and honor my mother's memory and her teachings, and earn the happiness that had come to me, as best i could. by and by came my little puppy, and then my cup was full, my happiness was perfect. it was the dearest little waddling thing, and so smooth and soft and velvety, and had such cunning little awkward paws, and such affectionate eyes, and such a sweet and innocent face; and it made me so proud to see how the children and their mother adored it, and fondled it, and exclaimed over every little wonderful thing it did. it did seem to me that life was just too lovely to-then came the winter. one day i was standing a watch in the nursery. that is to say, i was asleep on the bed. the baby was asleep in the crib, which was alongside the bed, on the side next the fireplace. it was the kind of crib that has a lofty tent over it made of gauzy stuff that you can see through. the nurse was out, and we two sleepers were alone. a spark from the wood-fire was shot out, and it lit on the slope of the tent. i suppose a quiet interval followed, then a scream from the baby awoke me, and there was that tent flaming up toward the ceiling! before i could think, i sprang to the floor in my fright, and in a second was half-way to the door; but in the next half-second my mother's farewell was sounding in my ears, and i was back on the bed again., i reached my head through the flames and dragged the baby out by the waist-band, and tugged it along, and we fell to the floor together in a cloud of smoke; i snatched a new hold, and dragged the screaming little creature along and out at the door and around the bend of the hall, and was still tugging away, all excited and happy and proud, when the master's voice shouted: "begone you cursed beast!" and i jumped to save myself; but he was furiously quick, and chased me up, striking furiously at me with his cane, i dodging this way and that, in terror, and at last a strong blow fell upon my left foreleg, which made me shriek and fall, for the moment, helpless; the came went up for another blow, but never descended, for the nurse's voice rang wildly out, "the nursery's on fire!" and the master rushed away in that direction, and my other bones were saved. the pain was cruel, but, no matter, i must not lose any time; he might come back at any moment; so i limped on three legs to the other end of the hall, where there was a dark little stairway leading up into a garret where old boxes and such things were kept, as i had heard say, and where people seldom went. i managed to climb up there, then i searched my way through the dark among the piles of things, and hid in the secretest place i could find. it was foolish to be afraid there, yet still i was; so afraid that i held in and hardly even whimpered, though it would have been such a comfort to whimper, because that eases the pain, you know. but i could lick my leg, and that did some good. for half an hour there was a commotion downstairs, and shoutings, and rushing footsteps, and then there was quiet again. quiet for some minutes, and that was grateful to my spirit, for then my fears began to go down; and fears are worse than pains--oh, much worse. then came a sound that froze me. they were calling me--calling me by name--hunting for me! it was muffled by distance, but that could not take the terror out of it, and it was the most dreadful sound to me that i had ever heard. it went all about, everywhere, down there: along the halls, through all the rooms, in both stories, and in the basement and the cellar; then outside, and farther and farther away--then back, and all about the house again, and i thought it would never, never stop. but at last it did, hours and hours after the vague twilight of the garret had long ago been blotted out by black darkness. then in that blessed stillness my terrors fell little by little away, and i was at peace and slept. it was a good rest i had, but i woke before the twilight had come again. i was feeling fairly comfortable, and i could think out a plan now. i made a very good one; which was, to creep down, all the way down the back stairs, and hide behind the cellar door, and slip out and escape when the iceman came at dawn, while he was inside filling the refrigerator; then i would hide all day, and start on my journey when night came; my journey to--well, anywhere where they would not know me and betray me to the master. i was feeling almost cheerful now; then suddenly i thought: why, what would life be without my puppy! that was despair. there was no plan for me; i saw that; i must say where i was; stay, and wait, and take what might come-it was not my affair; that was what life is--my mother had said it. then--well, then the calling began again! all my sorrows came back. i said to myself, the master will never forgive. i did not know what i had done to make him so bitter and so unforgiving, yet i judged it was something a dog could not understand, but which was clear to a man and dreadful. they called and called--days and nights, it seemed to me. so long that the hunger and thirst near drove me mad, and i recognized that i was getting very weak. when you are this way you sleep a great deal, and i did. once i woke in an awful fright-it seemed to me that the calling was right there in the garret! and so it was: it was sadie's voice, and she was crying; my name was falling from her lips all broken, poor thing, and i could not believe my ears for the joy of it when i heard her say: "come back to us--oh, come back to us, and forgive--it is all so sad without our--" i broke in with such a grateful little yelp, and the next moment sadie was plunging and stumbling through the darkness and the lumber and shouting for the family to hear, "she's found, she's found!" the days that followed--well, they were wonderful. the mother and sadie and the servants--why, they just seemed to worship me. they couldn't seem to make me a bed that was fine enough; and as for food, they couldn't be satisfied with anything but game and delicacies that were out of season; and every day the friends and neighbors flocked in to hear about my heroism--that was the name they called it by, and it means agriculture. i remember my mother pulling it on a kennel once, and explaining it in that way, but didn't say what agriculture was, except that it was synonymous with intramural incandescence; and a dozen times a day mrs. gray and sadie would tell the tale to new-comers, and say i risked my life to say the baby's, and both of us had burns to prove it, and then the company would pass me around and pet me and exclaim about me, and you could see the pride in the eyes of sadie and her mother; and when the people wanted to know what made me limp, they looked ashamed and changed the subject, and sometimes when people hunted them this way and that way with questions about it, it looked to me as if they were going to cry. and this was not all the glory; no, the master's friends came, a whole twenty of the most distinguished people, and had me in the laboratory, and discussed me as if i was a kind of discovery; and some of them said it was wonderful in a dumb beast, the finest exhibition of instinct they could call to mind; but the master said, with vehemence, "it's far above instinct; it's reason, and many a man, privileged to be saved and go with you and me to a better world by right of its possession, has less of it that this poor silly quadruped that's foreordained to perish"; and then he laughed, and said: "why, look at me--i'm a sarcasm! bless you, with all my grand intelligence, the only think i inferred was that the dog had gone mad and was destroying the child, whereas but for the beast's intelligence--it's reason, i tell you!--the child would have perished!" they disputed and disputed, and _i_ was the very center of subject of it all, and i wished my mother could know that this grand honor had come to me; it would have made her proud. then they discussed optics, as they called it, and whether a certain injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could not agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by and by; and next they discussed plants, and that interested me, because in the summer sadie and i had planted seeds--i helped her dig the holes, you know--and after days and days a little shrub or a flower came up there, and it was a wonder how that could happen; but it did, and i wished i could talk--i would have told those people about it and shown then how much i knew, and been all alive with the subject; but i didn't care for the optics; it was dull, and when the came back to it again it bored me, and i went to sleep. pretty soon it was spring, and sunny and pleasant and lovely, and the sweet mother and the children patted me and the puppy good-by, and went away on a journey and a visit to their kin, and the master wasn't any company for us, but we played together and had good times, and the servants were kind and friendly, so we got along quite happily and counted the days and waited for the family. and one day those men came again, and said, now for the test, and they took the puppy to the laboratory, and i limped three-leggedly along, too, feeling proud, for any attention shown to the puppy was a pleasure to me, of course. they discussed and experimented, and then suddenly the puppy shrieked, and they set him on the floor, and he went staggering around, with his head all bloody, and the master clapped his hands and shouted: "there, i've won--confess it! he's a blind as a bat!" and they all said: "it's so--you've proved your theory, and suffering humanity owes you a great debt from henceforth," and they crowded around him, and wrung his hand cordially and thankfully, and praised him. but i hardly saw or heard these things, for i ran at once to my little darling, and snuggled close to it where it lay, and licked the blood, and it put its head against mine, whimpering softly, and i knew in my heart it was a comfort to it in its pain and trouble to feel its mother's touch, though it could not see me. then it dropped down, presently, and its little velvet nose rested upon the floor, and it was still, and did not move any more. soon the master stopped discussing a moment, and rang in the footman, and said, "bury it in the far corner of the garden," and then went on with the discussion, and i trotted after the footman, very happy and grateful, for i knew the puppy was out of its pain now, because it was asleep. we went far down the garden to the farthest end, where the children and the nurse and the puppy and i used to play in the summer in the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and i saw he was going to plant the puppy, and i was glad, because it would grow and come up a fine handsome dog, like robin adair, and be a beautiful surprise for the family when they came home; so i tried to help him dig, but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to have two, or it is no use. when the footman had finished and covered little robin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and he said: "poor little doggie, you saved his child!" i have watched two whole weeks, and he doesn't come up! this last week a fright has been stealing upon me. i think there is something terrible about this. i do not know what it is, but the fear makes me sick, and i cannot eat, though the servants bring me the best of food; and they pet me so, and even come in the night, and cry, and say, "poor doggie--do give it up and come home; don't break our hearts!" and all this terrifies me the more, and makes me sure something has happened. and i am so weak; since yesterday i cannot stand on my feet anymore. and within this hour the servants, looking toward the sun where it was sinking out of sight and the night chill coming on, said things i could not understand, but they carried something cold to my heart. "those poor creatures! they do not suspect. they will come home in the morning, and eagerly ask for the little doggie that did the brave deed, and who of us will be strong enough to say the truth to them: 'the humble little friend is gone where go the beasts that perish.'" *** was it heaven? or hell? chapter i "you told a lie?" "you confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!" chapter ii the family consisted of four persons: margaret lester, widow, aged thirty six; helen lester, her daughter, aged sixteen; mrs. lester's maiden aunts, hannah and hester gray, twins, aged sixty-seven. waking and sleeping, the three women spent their days and night in adoring the young girl; in watching the movements of her sweet spirit in the mirror of her face; in refreshing their souls with the vision of her bloom and beauty; in listening to the music of her voice; in gratefully recognizing how rich and fair for them was the world with this presence in it; in shuddering to think how desolate it would be with this light gone out of it. by nature--and inside--the aged aunts were utterly dear and lovable and good, but in the matter of morals and conduct their training had been so uncompromisingly strict that it had made them exteriorly austere, not to say stern. their influence was effective in the house; so effective that the mother and the daughter conformed to its moral and religious requirements cheerfully, contentedly, happily, unquestionably. to do this was become second nature to them. and so in this peaceful heaven there were no clashings, no irritations, no fault-finding, no heart-burnings. in it a lie had no place. in it a lie was unthinkable. in it speech was restricted to absolute truth, iron-bound truth, implacable and uncompromising truth, let the resulting consequences be what they might. at last, one day, under stress of circumstances, the darling of the house sullied her lips with a lie--and confessed it, with tears and self-upbraidings. there are not any words that can paint the consternation of the aunts. it was as if the sky had crumpled up and collapsed and the earth had tumbled to ruin with a crash. they sat side by side, white and stern, gazing speechless upon the culprit, who was on her knees before them with her face buried first in one lap and then the other, moaning and sobbing, and appealing for sympathy and forgiveness and getting no response, humbly kissing the hand of the one, then of the other, only to see it withdrawn as suffering defilement by those soiled lips. twice, at intervals, aunt hester said, in frozen amazement: "you told a lie?" twice, at intervals, aunt hannah followed with the muttered and amazed ejaculation: "you confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!" it was all they could say. the situation was new, unheard of, incredible; they could not understand it, they did not know how to take hold of it, it approximately paralyzed speech. at length it was decided that the erring child must be taken to her mother, who was ill, and who ought to know what had happened. helen begged, besought, implored that she might be spared this further disgrace, and that her mother might be spared the grief and pain of it; but this could not be: duty required this sacrifice, duty takes precedence of all things, nothing can absolve one from a duty, with a duty no compromise is possible. helen still begged, and said the sin was her own, her mother had had no hand in it--why must she be made to suffer for it? but the aunts were obdurate in their righteousness, and said the law that visited the sins of the parent upon the child was by all right and reason reversible; and therefore it was but just that the innocent mother of a sinning child should suffer her rightful share of the grief and pain and shame which were the allotted wages of the sin. the three moved toward the sick-room. at this time the doctor was approaching the house. he was still a good distance away, however. he was a good doctor and a good man, and he had a good heart, but one had to know him a year to get over hating him, two years to learn to endure him, three to learn to like him, and four and five to learn to live him. it was a slow and trying education, but it paid. he was of great stature; he had a leonine head, a leonine face, a rough voice, and an eye which was sometimes a pirate's and sometimes a woman's, according to the mood. he knew nothing about etiquette, and cared nothing about it; in speech, manner, carriage, and conduct he was the reverse of conventional. he was frank, to the limit; he had opinions on all subjects; they were always on tap and ready for delivery, and he cared not a farthing whether his listener liked them or didn't. whom he loved he loved, and manifested it; whom he didn't live he hated, and published it from the housetops. in his young days he had been a sailor, and the salt-airs of all the seas blew from him yet. he was a sturdy and loyal christian, and believed he was the best one in the land, and the only one whose christianity was perfectly sound, healthy, full-charged with common sense, and had no decayed places in it. people who had an ax to grind, or people who for any reason wanted wanted to get on the soft side of him, called him the christian-a phrase whose delicate flattery was music to his ears, and whose capital t was such an enchanting and vivid object to him that he could see it when it fell out of a person's mouth even in the dark. many who were fond of him stood on their consciences with both feet and brazenly called him by that large title habitually, because it was a pleasure to them to do anything that would please him; and with eager and cordial malice his extensive and diligently cultivated crop of enemies gilded it, beflowered it, expanded it to "the only christian." of these two titles, the latter had the wider currency; the enemy, being greatly in the majority, attended to that. whatever the doctor believed, he believed with all his heart, and would fight for it whenever he got the chance; and if the intervals between chances grew to be irksomely wide, he would invent ways of shortening them himself. he was severely conscientious, according to his rather independent lights, and whatever he took to be a duty he performed, no matter whether the judgment of the professional moralists agreed with his own or not. at sea, in his young days, he had used profanity freely, but as soon as he was converted he made a rule, which he rigidly stuck to ever afterward, never to use it except on the rarest occasions, and then only when duty commanded. he had been a hard drinker at sea, but after his conversion he became a firm and outspoken teetotaler, in order to be an example to the young, and from that time forth he seldom drank; never, indeed, except when it seemed to him to be a duty-a condition which sometimes occurred a couple of times a year, but never as many as five times. necessarily, such a man is impressionable, impulsive, emotional. this one was, and had no gift at hiding his feelings; or if he had it he took no trouble to exercise it. he carried his soul's prevailing weather in his face, and when he entered a room the parasols or the umbrellas went up--figuratively speaking-according to the indications. when the soft light was in his eye it meant approval, and delivered a benediction; when he came with a frown he lowered the temperature ten degrees. he was a well-beloved man in the house of his friends, but sometimes a dreaded one. he had a deep affection for the lester household and its several members returned this feeling with interest. they mourned over his kind of christianity, and he frankly scoffed at theirs; but both parties went on loving each other just the same. he was approaching the house--out of the distance; the aunts and the culprit were moving toward the sick-chamber. chapter iii the three last named stood by the bed; the aunts austere, the transgressor softly sobbing. the mother turned her head on the pillow; her tired eyes flamed up instantly with sympathy and passionate mother-love when they fell upon her child, and she opened the refuge and shelter of her arms. "wait!" said aunt hannah, and put out her hand and stayed the girl from leaping into them. "helen," said the other aunt, impressively, "tell your mother all. purge your soul; leave nothing unconfessed." standing stricken and forlorn before her judges, the young girl mourned her sorrowful tale through the end, then in a passion of appeal cried out: "oh, mother, can't you forgive me? won't you forgive me?--i am so desolate!" "forgive you, my darling? oh, come to my arms!--there, lay your head upon my breast, and be at peace. if you had told a thousand lies--" there was a sound--a warning--the clearing of a throat. the aunts glanced up, and withered in their clothes--there stood the doctor, his face a thunder-cloud. mother and child knew nothing of his presence; they lay locked together, heart to heart, steeped in immeasurable content, dead to all things else. the physician stood many moments glaring and glooming upon the scene before him; studying it, analyzing it, searching out its genesis; then he put up his hand and beckoned to the aunts. they came trembling to him, and stood humbly before him and waited. he bent down and whispered: "didn't i tell you this patient must be protected from all excitement? what the hell have you been doing? clear out of the place?" they obeyed. half an hour later he appeared in the parlor, serene, cheery, clothed in sunshine, conducting helen, with his arm about her waist, petting her, and saying gentle and playful things to her; and she also was her sunny and happy self again. "now, then;" he said, "good-by, dear. go to your room, and keep away from your mother, and behave yourself. but wait--put out your tongue. there, that will do--you're as sound as a nut!" he patted her cheek and added, "run along now; i want to talk to these aunts." she went from the presence. his face clouded over again at once; and as he sat down he said: "you too have been doing a lot of damage--and maybe some good. some good, yes--such as it is. that woman's disease is typhoid! you've brought it to a show-up, i think, with your insanities, and that's a service--such as it is. i hadn't been able to determine what it was before." with one impulse the old ladies sprang to their feet, quaking with terror. "sit down! what are you proposing to do?" "do? we must fly to her. we--" "you'll do nothing of the kind; you've done enough harm for one day. do you want to squander all your capital of crimes and follies on a single deal? sit down, i tell you. i have arranged for her to sleep; she needs it; if you disturb her without my orders, i'll brain you-if you've got the materials for it. they sat down, distressed and indignant, but obedient, under compulsion. he proceeded: "now, then, i want this case explained. they wanted to explain it to me--as if there hadn't been emotion or excitement enough already. you knew my orders; how did you dare to go in there and get up that riot?" hester looked appealing at hannah; hannah returned a beseeching look at hester--neither wanted to dance to this unsympathetic orchestra. the doctor came to their help. he said: "begin, hester." fingering at the fringes of her shawl, and with lowered eyes, hester said, timidly: "we should not have disobeyed for any ordinary cause, but this was vital. this was a duty. with a duty one has no choice; one must put all lighter considerations aside and perform it. we were obliged to arraign her before her mother. she had told a lie." the doctor glowered upon the woman a moment, and seemed to be trying to work up in his mind an understand of a wholly incomprehensible proposition; then he stormed out: "she told a lie! did she? god bless my soul! i tell a million a day! and so does every doctor. and so does everybody--including you-for that matter. and that was the important thing that authorized you to venture to disobey my orders and imperil that woman's life! look here, hester gray, this is pure lunacy; that girl couldn't tell a lie that was intended to injure a person. the thing is impossible-absolutely impossible. you know it yourselves--both of you; you know it perfectly well." hannah came to her sister's rescue: "hester didn't mean that it was that kind of a lie, and it wasn't. but it was a lie." "well, upon my word, i never heard such nonsense! haven't you got sense enough to discriminate between lies! don't you know the difference between a lie that helps and a lie that hurts?" "all lies are sinful," said hannah, setting her lips together like a vise; "all lies are forbidden." the only christian fidgeted impatiently in his chair. he went to attack this proposition, but he did not quite know how or where to begin. finally he made a venture: "hester, wouldn't you tell a lie to shield a person from an undeserved injury or shame?" "no." "not even a friend?" "no." "not even your dearest friend?" "no. i would not." the doctor struggled in silence awhile with this situation; then he asked: "not even to save him from bitter pain and misery and grief?" "no. not even to save his life." another pause. then: "nor his soul?" there was a hush--a silence which endured a measurable interval-then hester answered, in a low voice, but with decision: "nor his soul?" no one spoke for a while; then the doctor said: "is it with you the same, hannah?" "yes," she answered. "i ask you both--why?" "because to tell such a lie, or any lie, is a sin, and could cost us the loss of our own souls--would, indeed, if we died without time to repent." "strange . . . strange . . . it is past belief." then he asked, roughly: "is such a soul as that worth saving?" he rose up, mumbling and grumbling, and started for the door, stumping vigorously along. at the threshold he turned and rasped out an admonition: "reform! drop this mean and sordid and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt up something to do that's got some dignity to it! risk your souls! risk them in good causes; then if you lose them, why should you care? reform!" the good old gentlewomen sat paralyzed, pulverized, outraged, insulted, and brooded in bitterness and indignation over these blasphemies. they were hurt to the heart, poor old ladies, and said they could never forgive these injuries. "reform!" they kept repeating that word resentfully. "reform--and learn to tell lies!" time slipped along, and in due course a change came over their spirits. they had completed the human being's first duty--which is to think about himself until he has exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition to take up minor interests and think of other people. this changes the complexion of his spirits--generally wholesomely. the minds of the two old ladies reverted to their beloved niece and the fearful disease which had smitten her; instantly they forgot the hurts their self-love had received, and a passionate desire rose in their hearts to go to the help of the sufferer and comfort her with their love, and minister to her, and labor for her the best they could with their weak hands, and joyfully and affectionately wear out their poor old bodies in her dear service if only they might have the privilege. "and we shall have it!" said hester, with the tears running down her face. "there are no nurses comparable to us, for there are no others that will stand their watch by that bed till they drop and die, and god knows we would do that." "amen," said hannah, smiling approval and endorsement through the mist of moisture that blurred her glasses. "the doctor knows us, and knows we will not disobey again; and he will call no others. he will not dare!" "dare?" said hester, with temper, and dashing the water from her eyes; "he will dare anything--that christian devil! but it will do no good for him to try it this time--but, laws! hannah! after all's said and done, he is gifted and wise and good, and he would not think of such a thing. . . . it is surely time for one of us to go to that room. what is keeping him? why doesn't he come and say so?" they caught the sound of his approaching step. he entered, sat down, and began to talk. "margaret is a sick woman," he said. "she is still sleeping, but she will wake presently; then one of you must go to her. she will be worse before she is better. pretty soon a night-and-day watch must be set. how much of it can you two undertake?" "all of it!" burst from both ladies at once. the doctor's eyes flashed, and he said, with energy: "you do ring true, you brave old relics! and you shall do all of the nursing you can, for there's none to match you in that divine office in this town; but you can't do all of it, and it would be a crime to let you." it was grand praise, golden praise, coming from such a source, and it took nearly all the resentment out of the aged twin's hearts. "your tilly and my old nancy shall do the rest--good nurses both, white souls with black skins, watchful, loving, tender--just perfect nurses!--and competent liars from the cradle. . . . look you! keep a little watch on helen; she is sick, and is going to be sicker." the ladies looked a little surprised, and not credulous; and hester said: "how is that? it isn't an hour since you said she was as sound as a nut." the doctor answered, tranquilly: "it was a lie." the ladies turned upon him indignantly, and hannah said: "how can you make an odious confession like that, in so indifferent a tone, when you know how we feel about all forms of--" "hush! you are as ignorant as cats, both of you, and you don't know what you are talking about. you are like all the rest of the moral moles; you lie from morning till night, but because you don't do it with your mouths, but only with your lying eyes, your lying inflections, your deceptively misplaced emphasis, and your misleading gestures, you turn up your complacent noses and parade before god and the world as saintly and unsmirched truth-speakers, in whose cold-storage souls a lie would freeze to death if it got there! why will you humbug yourselves with that foolish notion that no lie is a lie except a spoken one? what is the difference between lying with your eyes and lying with your mouth? there is none; and if you would reflect a moment you would see that it is so. there isn't a human being that doesn't tell a gross of lies every day of his life; and you--why, between you, you tell thirty thousand; yet you flare up here in a lurid hypocritical horror because i tell that child a benevolent and sinless lie to protect her from her imagination, which would get to work and warm up her blood to a fever in an hour, if i were disloyal enough to my duty to let it. which i should probably do if i were interested in saving my soul by such disreputable means. "come, let us reason together. let us examine details. when you two were in the sick-room raising that riot, what would you have done if you had known i was coming?" "well, what?" "you would have slipped out and carried helen with you--wouldn't you?" the ladies were silent. "what would be your object and intention?" "well, what?" "to keep me from finding out your guilt; to beguile me to infer that margaret's excitement proceeded from some cause not known to you. in a word, to tell me a lie--a silent lie. moreover, a possibly harmful one." the twins colored, but did not speak. "you not only tell myriads of silent lies, but you tell lies with your mouths--you two." "that is not so!" "it is so. but only harmless ones. you never dream of uttering a harmful one. do you know that that is a concession--and a confession?" "how do you mean?" "it is an unconscious concession that harmless lies are not criminal; it is a confession that you constantly make that discrimination. for instance, you declined old mrs. foster's invitation last week to meet those odious higbies at supper--in a polite note in which you expressed regret and said you were very sorry you could not go. it was a lie. it was as unmitigated a lie as was ever uttered. deny it, hester--with another lie." hester replied with a toss of her head. "that will not do. answer. was it a lie, or wasn't it?" the color stole into the cheeks of both women, and with a struggle and an effort they got out their confession: "it was a lie." "good--the reform is beginning; there is hope for you yet; you will not tell a lie to save your dearest friend's soul, but you will spew out one without a scruple to save yourself the discomfort of telling an unpleasant truth." he rose. hester, speaking for both, said; coldly: "we have lied; we perceive it; it will occur no more. to lie is a sin. we shall never tell another one of any kind whatsoever, even lies of courtesy or benevolence, to save any one a pang or a sorrow decreed for him by god." "ah, how soon you will fall! in fact, you have fallen already; for what you have just uttered is a lie. good-by. reform! one of you go to the sick-room now." chapter iv twelve days later. mother and child were lingering in the grip of the hideous disease. of hope for either there was little. the aged sisters looked white and worn, but they would not give up their posts. their hearts were breaking, poor old things, but their grit was steadfast and indestructible. all the twelve days the mother had pined for the child, and the child for the mother, but both knew that the prayer of these longings could not be granted. when the mother was told-on the first day--that her disease was typhoid, she was frightened, and asked if there was danger that helen could have contracted it the day before, when she was in the sick-chamber on that confession visit. hester told her the doctor had poo-pooed the idea. it troubled hester to say it, although it was true, for she had not believed the doctor; but when she saw the mother's joy in the news, the pain in her conscience lost something of its force--a result which made her ashamed of the constructive deception which she had practiced, though not ashamed enough to make her distinctly and definitely wish she had refrained from it. from that moment the sick woman understood that her daughter must remain away, and she said she would reconcile herself to the separation the best she could, for she would rather suffer death than have her child's health imperiled. that afternoon helen had to take to her bed, ill. she grew worse during the night. in the morning her mother asked after her: "is she well?" hester turned cold; she opened her lips, but the words refused to come. the mother lay languidly looking, musing, waiting; suddenly she turned white and gasped out: "oh, my god! what is it? is she sick?" then the poor aunt's tortured heart rose in rebellion, and words came: "no--be comforted; she is well." the sick woman put all her happy heart in her gratitude: "thank god for those dear words! kiss me. how i worship you for saying them!" hester told this incident to hannah, who received it with a rebuking look, and said, coldly: "sister, it was a lie." hester's lips trembled piteously; she choked down a sob, and said: "oh, hannah, it was a sin, but i could not help it. i could not endure the fright and the misery that were in her face." "no matter. it was a lie. god will hold you to account for it." "oh, i know it, i know it," cried hester, wringing her hands, "but even if it were now, i could not help it. i know i should do it again." "then take my place with helen in the morning. i will make the report myself." hester clung to her sister, begging and imploring. "don't, hannah, oh, don't--you will kill her." "i will at least speak the truth." in the morning she had a cruel report to bear to the mother, and she braced herself for the trial. when she returned from her mission, hester was waiting, pale and trembling, in the hall. she whispered: "oh, how did she take it--that poor, desolate mother?" hannah's eyes were swimming in tears. she said: "god forgive me, i told her the child was well!" hester gathered her to her heart, with a grateful "god bless you, hannah!" and poured out her thankfulness in an inundation of worshiping praises. after that, the two knew the limit of their strength, and accepted their fate. they surrendered humbly, and abandoned themselves to the hard requirements of the situation. daily they told the morning lie, and confessed their sin in prayer; not asking forgiveness, as not being worthy of it, but only wishing to make record that they realized their wickedness and were not desiring to hide it or excuse it. daily, as the fair young idol of the house sank lower and lower, the sorrowful old aunts painted her glowing bloom and her fresh young beauty to the wan mother, and winced under the stabs her ecstasies of joy and gratitude gave them. in the first days, while the child had strength to hold a pencil, she wrote fond little love-notes to her mother, in which she concealed her illness; and these the mother read and reread through happy eyes wet with thankful tears, and kissed them over and over again, and treasured them as precious things under her pillow. then came a day when the strength was gone from the hand, and the mind wandered, and the tongue babbled pathetic incoherences. this was a sore dilemma for the poor aunts. there were no love-notes for the mother. they did not know what to do. hester began a carefully studied and plausible explanation, but lost the track of it and grew confused; suspicion began to show in the mother's face, then alarm. hester saw it, recognized the imminence of the danger, and descended to the emergency, pulling herself resolutely together and plucking victor from the open jaws of defeat. in a placid and convincing voice she said: "i thought it might distress you to know it, but helen spent the night at the sloanes'. there was a little party there, and, although she did not want to go, and you so sick, we persuaded her, she being young and needing the innocent pastimes of youth, and we believing you would approve. be sure she will write the moment she comes." "how good you are, and how dear and thoughtful for us both! approve? why, i thank you with all my heart. my poor little exile! tell her i want her to have every pleasure she can--i would not rob her of one. only let her keep her health, that is all i ask. don't let that suffer; i could not bear it. how thankful i am that she escaped this infection--and what a narrow risk she ran, aunt hester! think of that lovely face all dulled and burned with fever. i can't bear the thought of it. keep her health. keep her bloom! i can see her now, the dainty creature--with the big, blue, earnest eyes; and sweet, oh, so sweet and gentle and winning! is she as beautiful as ever, dear aunt hester?" "oh, more beautiful and bright and charming than ever she was before, if such a thing can be"--and hester turned away and fumbled with the medicine-bottles, to hide her shame and grief. chapter v after a little, both aunts were laboring upon a difficult and baffling work in helen's chamber. patiently and earnestly, with their stiff old fingers, they were trying to forge the required note. they made failure after failure, but they improved little by little all the time. the pity of it all, the pathetic humor of it, there was none to see; they themselves were unconscious of it. often their tears fell upon the notes and spoiled them; sometimes a single misformed word made a note risky which could have been ventured but for that; but at last hannah produced one whose script was a good enough imitation of helen's to pass any but a suspicious eye, and bountifully enriched it with the petting phrases and loving nicknames that had been familiar on the child's lips from her nursery days. she carried it to the mother, who took it with avidity, and kissed it, and fondled it, reading its precious words over and over again, and dwelling with deep contentment upon its closing paragraph: "mousie darling, if i could only see you, and kiss your eyes, and feel your arms about me! i am so glad my practicing does not disturb you. get well soon. everybody is good to me, but i am so lonesome without you, dear mamma." "the poor child, i know just how she feels. she cannot be quite happy without me; and i--oh, i live in the light of her eyes! tell her she must practice all she pleases; and, aunt hannah-tell her i can't hear the piano this far, nor hear dear voice when she sings: god knows i wish i could. no one knows how sweet that voice is to me; and to think--some day it will be silent! what are you crying for? "only because--because--it was just a memory. when i came away she was singing, 'loch lomond.' the pathos of it! it always moves me so when she sings that." "and me, too. how heartbreakingly beautiful it is when some youthful sorrow is brooding in her breast and she sings it for the mystic healing it brings. . . . aunt hannah?" "dear margaret?" "i am very ill. sometimes it comes over me that i shall never hear that dear voice again." "oh, don't--don't, margaret! i can't bear it!" margaret was moved and distressed, and said, gently: "there--there--let me put my arms around you. don't cry. there--put your cheek to mine. be comforted. i wish to live. i will live if i can. ah, what could she do without me! . . . does she often speak of me?--but i know she does." "oh, all the time--all the time!" "my sweet child! she wrote the note the moment she came home?" "yes--the first moment. she would not wait to take off her things." "i knew it. it is her dear, impulsive, affectionate way. i knew it without asking, but i wanted to hear you say it. the petted wife knows she is loved, but she makes her husband tell her so every day, just for the joy of hearing it. . . . she used the pen this time. that is better; the pencil-marks could rub out, and i should grieve for that. did you suggest that she use the pen?" "y--no--she--it was her own idea. the mother looked her pleasure, and said: "i was hoping you would say that. there was never such a dear and thoughtful child! . . . aunt hannah?" "dear margaret?" "go and tell her i think of her all the time, and worship her. why--you are crying again. don't be so worried about me, dear; i think there is nothing to fear, yet." the grieving messenger carried her message, and piously delivered it to unheeding ears. the girl babbled on unaware; looking up at her with wondering and startled eyes flaming with fever, eyes in which was no light of recognition: "are you--no, you are not my mother. i want her--oh, i want her! she was here a minute ago--i did not see her go. will she come? will she come quickly? will she come now? . . . there are so many houses . . . and they oppress me so . . . and everything whirls and turns and whirls . . . oh, my head, my head!"--and so she wandered on and on, in her pain, flitting from one torturing fancy to another, and tossing her arms about in a weary and ceaseless persecution of unrest. poor old hannah wetted the parched lips and softly stroked the hot brow, murmuring endearing and pitying words, and thanking the father of all that the mother was happy and did not know. chapter vi daily the child sank lower and steadily lower towards the grave, and daily the sorrowing old watchers carried gilded tidings of her radiant health and loveliness to the happy mother, whose pilgrimage was also now nearing its end. and daily they forged loving and cheery notes in the child's hand, and stood by with remorseful consciences and bleeding hearts, and wept to see the grateful mother devour them and adore them and treasure them away as things beyond price, because of their sweet source, and sacred because her child's hand had touched them. at last came that kindly friend who brings healing and peace to all. the lights were burning low. in the solemn hush which precedes the dawn vague figures flitted soundless along the dim hall and gathered silent and awed in helen's chamber, and grouped themselves about her bed, for a warning had gone forth, and they knew. the dying girl lay with closed lids, and unconscious, the drapery upon her breast faintly rising and falling as her wasting life ebbed away. at intervals a sigh or a muffled sob broke upon the stillness. the same haunting thought was in all minds there: the pity of this death, the going out into the great darkness, and the mother not here to help and hearten and bless. helen stirred; her hands began to grope wistfully about as if they sought something--she had been blind some hours. the end was come; all knew it. with a great sob hester gathered her to her breast, crying, "oh, my child, my darling!" a rapturous light broke in the dying girl's face, for it was mercifully vouchsafed her to mistake those sheltering arms for another's; and she went to her rest murmuring, "oh, mamma, i am so happy--i longed for you--now i can die." two hours later hester made her report. the mother asked: "how is it with the child?" "she is well." chapter vii a sheaf of white crape and black was hung upon the door of the house, and there it swayed and rustled in the wind and whispered its tidings. at noon the preparation of the dead was finished, and in the coffin lay the fair young form, beautiful, and in the sweet face a great peace. two mourners sat by it, grieving and worshipping-hannah and the black woman tilly. hester came, and she was trembling, for a great trouble was upon her spirit. she said: "she asks for a note." hannah's face blanched. she had not thought of this; it had seemed that that pathetic service was ended. but she realized now that that could not be. for a little while the two women stood looking into each other's face, with vacant eyes; then hannah said: "there is no way out of it--she must have it; she will suspect, else." "and she would find out." "yes. it would break her heart." she looked at the dead face, and her eyes filled. "i will write it," she said. hester carried it. the closing line said: "darling mousie, dear sweet mother, we shall soon be together again. is not that good news? and it is true; they all say it is true." the mother mourned, saying: "poor child, how will she bear it when she knows? i shall never see her again in life. it is hard, so hard. she does not suspect? you guard her from that?" "she thinks you will soon be well." "how good you are, and careful, dear aunt hester! none goes near herr who could carry the infection?" "it would be a crime." "but you see her?" "with a distance between--yes." "that is so good. others one could not trust; but you two guardian angels--steel is not so true as you. others would be unfaithful; and many would deceive, and lie." hester's eyes fell, and her poor old lips trembled. "let me kiss you for her, aunt hester; and when i am gone, and the danger is past, place the kiss upon her dear lips some day, and say her mother sent it, and all her mother's broken heart is in it." within the hour, hester, raining tears upon the dead face, performed her pathetic mission. chapter viii another day dawned, and grew, and spread its sunshine in the earth. aunt hannah brought comforting news to the failing mother, and a happy note, which said again, "we have but a little time to wait, darling mother, then se shall be together." the deep note of a bell came moaning down the wind. "aunt hannah, it is tolling. some poor soul is at rest. as i shall be soon. you will not let her forget me?" "oh, god knows she never will!" "do not you hear strange noises, aunt hannah? it sounds like the shuffling of many feet." "we hoped you would not hear it, dear. it is a little company gathering, for--for helen's sake, poor little prisoner. there will be music--and she loves it so. we thought you would not mind." "mind? oh no, no--oh, give her everything her dear heart can desire. how good you two are to her, and how good to me! god bless you both always!" after a listening pause: "how lovely! it is her organ. is she playing it herself, do you think?" faint and rich and inspiring the chords floating to her ears on the still air. "yes, it is her touch, dear heart, i recognize it. they are singing. why--it is a hymn! and the sacredest of all, the most touching, the most consoling. . . . it seems to open the gates of paradise to me. . . . if i could die now. . . ." faint and far the words rose out of the stillness: nearer, my god, to thee, nearer to thee, e'en though it be a cross that raiseth me. with the closing of the hymn another soul passed to its rest, and they that had been one in life were not sundered in death. the sisters, mourning and rejoicing, said: "how blessed it was that she never knew!" chapter ix at midnight they sat together, grieving, and the angel of the lord appeared in the midst transfigured with a radiance not of earth; and speaking, said: "for liars a place is appointed. there they burn in the fires of hell from everlasting unto everlasting. repent!" the bereaved fell upon their knees before him and clasped their hands and bowed their gray heads, adoring. but their tongues clove to the roof of their mouths, and they were dumb. "speak! that i may bear the message to the chancery of heaven and bring again the decree from which there is no appeal." then they bowed their heads yet lower, and one said: "our sin is great, and we suffer shame; but only perfect and final repentance can make us whole; and we are poor creatures who have learned our human weakness, and we know that if we were in those hard straits again our hearts would fail again, and we should sin as before. the strong could prevail, and so be saved, but we are lost." they lifted their heads in supplication. the angel was gone. while they marveled and wept he came again; and bending low, he whispered the decree. chapter x was it heaven? or hell? *** a cure for the blues by courtesy of mr. cable i came into possession of a singular book eight or ten years ago. it is likely that mine is now the only copy in existence. its title-page, unabbreviated, reads as follows: "the enemy conquered; or, love triumphant. by g. ragsdale mcclintock, [1] author of 'an address,' etc., delivered at sunflower hill, south carolina, and member of the yale law school. new haven: published by t. h. pease, 83 chapel street, 1845." no one can take up this book and lay it down again unread. whoever reads one line of it is caught, is chained; he has become the contented slave of its fascinations; and he will read and read, devour and devour, and will not let it go out of his hand till it is finished to the last line, though the house be on fire over his head. and after a first reading he will not throw it aside, but will keep it by him, with his shakespeare and his homer, and will take it up many and many a time, when the world is dark and his spirits are low, and be straightway cheered and refreshed. yet this work has been allowed to lie wholly neglected, unmentioned, and apparently unregretted, for nearly half a century. the reader must not imagine that he is to find in it wisdom, brilliancy, fertility of invention, ingenuity of construction, excellence of form, purity of style, perfection of imagery, truth to nature, clearness of statement, humanly possible situations, humanly possible people, fluent narrative, connected sequence of events-or philosophy, or logic, or sense. no; the rich, deep, beguiling charm of the book lies in the total and miraculous absence from it of all these qualities--a charm which is completed and perfected by the evident fact that the author, whose naive innocence easily and surely wins our regard, and almost our worship, does not know that they are absent, does not even suspect that they are absent. when read by the light of these helps to an understanding of the situation, the book is delicious--profoundly and satisfyingly delicious. i call it a book because the author calls it a book, i call it a work because he calls it a work; but, in truth, it is merely a duodecimo pamphlet of thirty-one pages. it was written for fame and money, as the author very frankly--yes, and very hopefully, too, poor fellow-says in his preface. the money never came--no penny of it ever came; and how long, how pathetically long, the fame has been deferred-forty-seven years! he was young then, it would have been so much to him then; but will he care for it now? as time is measured in america, mcclintock's epoch is antiquity. in his long-vanished day the southern author had a passion for "eloquence"; it was his pet, his darling. he would be eloquent, or perish. and he recognized only one kind of eloquence--the lurid, the tempestuous, the volcanic. he liked words--big words, fine words, grand words, rumbling, thundering, reverberating words; with sense attaching if it could be got in without marring the sound, but not otherwise. he loved to stand up before a dazed world, and pour forth flame and smoke and lava and pumice-stone into the skies, and work his subterranean thunders, and shake himself with earthquakes, and stench himself with sulphur fumes. if he consumed his own fields and vineyards, that was a pity, yes; but he would have his eruption at any cost. mr. mcclintock's eloquence-and he is always eloquent, his crater is always spouting--is of the pattern common to his day, but he departs from the custom of the time in one respect: his brethren allowed sense to intrude when it did not mar the sound, but he does not allow it to intrude at all. for example, consider this figure, which he used in the village "address" referred to with such candid complacency in the title-page above quoted--"like the topmost topaz of an ancient tower." please read it again; contemplate it; measure it; walk around it; climb up it; try to get at an approximate realization of the size of it. is the fellow to that to be found in literature, ancient or modern, foreign or domestic, living or dead, drunk or sober? one notices how fine and grand it sounds. we know that if it was loftily uttered, it got a noble burst of applause from the villagers; yet there isn't a ray of sense in it, or meaning to it. mcclintock finished his education at yale in 1843, and came to hartford on a visit that same year. i have talked with men who at that time talked with him, and felt of him, and knew he was real. one needs to remember that fact and to keep fast hold of it; it is the only way to keep mcclintock's book from undermining one's faith in mcclintock's actuality. as to the book. the first four pages are devoted to an inflamed eulogy of woman--simply woman in general, or perhaps as an institution-wherein, among other compliments to her details, he pays a unique one to her voice. he says it "fills the breast with fond alarms, echoed by every rill." it sounds well enough, but it is not true. after the eulogy he takes up his real work and the novel begins. it begins in the woods, near the village of sunflower hill. brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the thick forest, to guide the hero whose bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish his name, and to win back the admiration of his long-tried friend. it seems a general remark, but it is not general; the hero mentioned is the to-be hero of the book; and in this abrupt fashion, and without name or description, he is shoveled into the tale. "with aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish his name" is merely a phrase flung in for the sake of the sound--let it not mislead the reader. no one is trying to tarnish this person; no one has thought of it. the rest of the sentence is also merely a phrase; the man has no friend as yet, and of course has had no chance to try him, or win back his admiration, or disturb him in any other way. the hero climbs up over "sawney's mountain," and down the other side, making for an old indian "castle"--which becomes "the red man's hut" in the next sentence; and when he gets there at last, he "surveys with wonder and astonishment" the invisible structure, "which time has buried in the dust, and thought to himself his happiness was not yet complete." one doesn't know why it wasn't, nor how near it came to being complete, nor what was still wanting to round it up and make it so. maybe it was the indian; but the book does not say. at this point we have an episode: beside the shore of the brook sat a young man, about eighteen or twenty, who seemed to be reading some favorite book, and who had a remarkably noble countenance--eyes which betrayed more than a common mind. this of course made the youth a welcome guest, and gained him friends in whatever condition of his life he might be placed. the traveler observed that he was a well-built figure which showed strength and grace in every movement. he accordingly addressed him in quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way to the village. after he had received the desired information, and was about taking his leave, the youth said, "are you not major elfonzo, the great musician [2]--the champion of a noble cause-the modern achilles, who gained so many victories in the florida war?" "i bear that name," said the major, "and those titles, trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if," continued the major, "you, sir, are the patronizer of noble deeds, i should like to make you my confidant and learn your address." the youth looked somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused for a moment, and began: "my name is roswell. i have been recently admitted to the bar, and can only give a faint outline of my future success in that honorable profession; but i trust, sir, like the eagle, i shall look down from the lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man, and shall ever be ready to give you any assistance in my official capacity, and whatever this muscular arm of mine can do, whenever it shall be called from its buried greatness." the major grasped him by the hand, and exclaimed: "o! thou exalted spirit of inspiration--thou flame of burning prosperity, may the heaven-directed blaze be the glare of thy soul, and battle down every rampart that seems to impede your progress!" there is a strange sort of originality about mcclintock; he imitates other people's styles, but nobody can imitate his, not even an idiot. other people can be windy, but mcclintock blows a gale; other people can blubber sentiment, but mcclintock spews it; other people can mishandle metaphors, but only mcclintock knows how to make a business of it. mcclintock is always mcclintock, he is always consistent, his style is always his own style. he does not make the mistake of being relevant on one page and irrelevant on another; he is irrelevant on all of them. he does not make the mistake of being lucid in one place and obscure in another; he is obscure all the time. he does not make the mistake of slipping in a name here and there that is out of character with his work; he always uses names that exactly and fantastically fit his lunatics. in the matter of undeviating consistency he stands alone in authorship. it is this that makes his style unique, and entitles it to a name of its own--mcclintockian. it is this that protects it from being mistaken for anybody else's. uncredited quotations from other writers often leave a reader in doubt as to their authorship, but mcclintock is safe from that accident; an uncredited quotation from him would always be recognizable. when a boy nineteen years old, who had just been admitted to the bar, says, "i trust, sir, like the eagle, i shall look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man," we know who is speaking through that boy; we should recognize that note anywhere. there be myriads of instruments in this world's literary orchestra, and a multitudinous confusion of sounds that they make, wherein fiddles are drowned, and guitars smothered, and one sort of drum mistaken for another sort; but whensoever the brazen note of the mcclintockian trombone breaks through that fog of music, that note is recognizable, and about it there can be no blur of doubt. the novel now arrives at the point where the major goes home to see his father. when mcclintock wrote this interview he probably believed it was pathetic. the road which led to the town presented many attractions elfonzo had bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was now wending his way to the dreaming spot of his fondness. the south winds whistled through the woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid fire in the pent furnace roars. this brought him to remember while alone, that he quietly left behind the hospitality of a father's house, and gladly entered the world, with higher hopes than are often realized. but as he journeyed onward, he was mindful of the advice of his father, who had often looked sadly on the ground, when tears of cruelly deceived hope moistened his eyes. elfonzo had been somewhat a dutiful son; yet fond of the amusements of life-had been in distant lands--had enjoyed the pleasure of the world, and had frequently returned to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life. in this condition, he would frequently say to his father, "have i offended you, that you look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon me with stinging looks? will you not favor me with the sound of your voice? if i have trampled upon your veneration, or have spread a humid veil of darkness around your expectations, send me back into the world, where no heart beats for me--where the foot of man had never yet trod; but give me at least one kind word--allow me to come into the presence sometimes of thy winter-worn locks." "forbid it, heaven, that i should be angry with thee," answered the father, "my son, and yet i send thee back to the children of the world--to the cold charity of the combat, and to a land of victory. i read another destiny in thy countenance--i learn thy inclinations from the flame that has already kindled in my soul a strange sensation. it will seek thee, my dear elfonzo, it will find thee--thou canst not escape that lighted torch, which shall blot out from the remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have foretold against thee. i once thought not so. once, i was blind; but now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet, elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation--take again in thy hand that chord of sweet sounds-struggle with the civilized world and with your own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground--let the night-owl send forth its screams from the stubborn oak--let the sea sport upon the beach, and the stars sing together; but learn of these, elfonzo, thy doom, and thy hiding-place. our most innocent as well as our most lawful desires must often be denied us, that we may learn to sacrifice them to a higher will." remembering such admonitions with gratitude, elfonzo was immediately urged by the recollection of his father's family to keep moving. mcclintock has a fine gift in the matter of surprises; but as a rule they are not pleasant ones, they jar upon the feelings. his closing sentence in the last quotation is of that sort. it brings one down out of the tinted clouds in too sudden and collapsed a fashion. it incenses one against the author for a moment. it makes the reader want to take him by this winter-worn locks, and trample on his veneration, and deliver him over to the cold charity of combat, and blot him out with his own lighted torch. but the feeling does not last. the master takes again in his hand that concord of sweet sounds of his, and one is reconciled, pacified. his steps became quicker and quicker--he hastened through the piny woods, dark as the forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the little village of repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry. his close attention to every important object--his modest questions about whatever was new to him--his reverence for wise old age, and his ardent desire to learn many of the fine arts, soon brought him into respectable notice. one mild winter day, as he walked along the streets toward the academy, which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth-some venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous-all seemed inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as well as for genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades. he entered its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners. the artfulness of this man! none knows so well as he how to pique the curiosity of the reader--and how to disappoint it. he raises the hope, here, that he is going to tell all about how one enters a classic wall in the usual mode of southern manners; but does he? no; he smiles in his sleeve, and turns aside to other matters. the principal of the institution begged him to be seated and listen to the recitations that were going on. he accordingly obeyed the request, and seemed to be much pleased. after the school was dismissed, and the young hearts regained their freedom, with the songs of the evening, laughing at the anticipated pleasures of a happy home, while others tittered at the actions of the past day, he addressed the teacher in a tone that indicated a resolution-with an undaunted mind. he said he had determined to become a student, if he could meet with his approbation. "sir," said he, "i have spent much time in the world. i have traveled among the uncivilized inhabitants of america. i have met with friends, and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my ambition, or decide what is to be my destiny. i see the learned world have an influence with the voice of the people themselves. the despoilers of the remotest kingdoms of the earth refer their differences to this class of persons. this the illiterate and inexperienced little dream of; and now if you will receive me as i am, with these deficiencies--with all my misguided opinions, i will give you my honor, sir, that i will never disgrace the institution, or those who have placed you in this honorable station." the instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew how to feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon the charities of an unfeeling community. he looked at him earnestly, and said: "be of good cheer--look forward, sir, to the high destination you may attain. remember, the more elevated the mark at which you aim, the more sure, the more glorious, the more magnificent the prize." from wonder to wonder, his encouragement led the impatient listener. a strange nature bloomed before him--giant streams promised him success--gardens of hidden treasures opened to his view. all this, so vividly described, seemed to gain a new witchery from his glowing fancy. it seems to me that this situation is new in romance. i feel sure it has not been attempted before. military celebrities have been disguised and set at lowly occupations for dramatic effect, but i think mcclintock is the first to send one of them to school. thus, in this book, you pass from wonder to wonder, through gardens of hidden treasure, where giant streams bloom before you, and behind you, and all around, and you feel as happy, and groggy, and satisfied with your quart of mixed metaphor aboard as you would if it had been mixed in a sample-room and delivered from a jug. now we come upon some more mcclintockian surprise--a sweetheart who is sprung upon us without any preparation, along with a name for her which is even a little more of a surprise than she herself is. in 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress in the english and latin departments. indeed, he continued advancing with such rapidity that he was like to become the first in his class, and made such unexpected progress, and was so studious, that he had almost forgotten the pictured saint of his affections. the fresh wreaths of the pine and cypress had waited anxiously to drop once more the dews of heaven upon the heads of those who had so often poured forth the tender emotions of their souls under its boughs. he was aware of the pleasure that he had seen there. so one evening ,as he was returning from his reading, he concluded he would pay a visit to this enchanting spot. little did he think of witnessing a shadow of his former happiness, though no doubt he wished it might be so. he continued sauntering by the roadside, meditating on the past. the nearer he approached the spot, the more anxious he became. at that moment a tall female figure flitted across his path, with a bunch of roses in her hand; her countenance showed uncommon vivacity, with a resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already appeared as she smiled beautifully, promenading--while her ringlets of hair dangled unconsciously around her snowy neck. nothing was wanting to complete her beauty. the tinge of the rose was in full bloom upon her cheek; the charms of sensibility and tenderness were always her associates. in ambulinia's bosom dwelt a noble soul--one that never faded-one that never was conquered. ambulinia! it can hardly be matched in fiction. the full name is ambulinia valeer. marriage will presently round it out and perfect it. then it will be mrs. ambulinia valeer elfonzo. it takes the chromo. her heart yielded to no feeling but the love of elfonzo, on whom she gazed with intense delight, and to whom she felt herself more closely bound, because he sought the hand of no other. elfonzo was roused from his apparent reverie. his books no longer were his inseparable companions--his thoughts arrayed themselves to encourage him to the field of victory. he endeavored to speak to his supposed ambulinia, but his speech appeared not in words. no, his effort was a stream of fire, that kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and carried his senses away captive. ambulinia had disappeared, to make him more mindful of his duty. as she walked speedily away through the piny woods, she calmly echoed: "o! elfonzo, thou wilt now look from thy sunbeams. thou shalt now walk in a new path--perhaps thy way leads through darkness; but fear not, the stars foretell happiness." to mcclintock that jingling jumble of fine words meant something, no doubt, or seemed to mean something; but it is useless for us to try to divine what it was. ambulinia comes--we don't know whence nor why; she mysteriously intimates--we don't know what; and then she goes echoing away--we don't know whither; and down comes the curtain. mcclintock's art is subtle; mcclintock's art is deep. not many days afterward, as surrounded by fragrant flowers she sat one evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool breeze that whispered notes of melody along the distant groves, the little birds perched on every side, as if to watch the movements of their new visitor. the bells were tolling, when elfonzo silently stole along by the wild wood flowers, holding in his hand his favorite instrument of music-his eye continually searching for ambulinia, who hardly seemed to perceive him, as she played carelessly with the songsters that hopped from branch to branch. nothing could be more striking than the difference between the two. nature seemed to have given the more tender soul to elfonzo, and the stronger and more courageous to ambulinia. a deep feeling spoke from the eyes of elfonzo-such a feeling as can only be expressed by those who are blessed as admirers, and by those who are able to return the same with sincerity of heart. he was a few years older than ambulinia: she had turned a little into her seventeenth. he had almost grown up in the cherokee country, with the same equal proportions as one of the natives. but little intimacy had existed between them until the year forty-one--because the youth felt that the character of such a lovely girl was too exalted to inspire any other feeling than that of quiet reverence. but as lovers will not always be insulted, at all times and under all circumstances, by the frowns and cold looks of crabbed old age, which should continually reflect dignity upon those around, and treat the unfortunate as well as the fortunate with a graceful mien, he continued to use diligence and perseverance. all this lighted a spark in his heart that changed his whole character, and like the unyielding deity that follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves for the first time to shake off his embarrassment and return where he had before only worshiped. at last we begin to get the major's measure. we are able to put this and that casual fact together, and build the man up before our eyes, and look at him. and after we have got him built, we find him worth the trouble. by the above comparison between his age and ambulinia's, we guess the war-worn veteran to be twenty-two; and the other facts stand thus: he had grown up in the cherokee country with the same equal proportions as one of the natives-how flowing and graceful the language, and yet how tantalizing as to meaning!--he had been turned adrift by his father, to whom he had been "somewhat of a dutiful son"; he wandered in distant lands; came back frequently "to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life," in order to get into the presence of his father's winter-worn locks, and spread a humid veil of darkness around his expectations; but he was always promptly sent back to the cold charity of the combat again; he learned to play the fiddle, and made a name for himself in that line; he had dwelt among the wild tribes; he had philosophized about the despoilers of the kingdoms of the earth, and found out--the cunning creature-that they refer their differences to the learned for settlement; he had achieved a vast fame as a military chieftain, the achilles of the florida campaigns, and then had got him a spelling-book and started to school; he had fallen in love with ambulinia valeer while she was teething, but had kept it to himself awhile, out of the reverential awe which he felt for the child; but now at last, like the unyielding deity who follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves to shake off his embarrassment, and to return where before he had only worshiped. the major, indeed, has made up his mind to rise up and shake his faculties together, and to see if he can't do that thing himself. this is not clear. but no matter about that: there stands the hero, compact and visible; and he is no mean structure, considering that his creator had never structure, considering that his creator had never created anything before, and hadn't anything but rags and wind to build with this time. it seems to me that no one can contemplate this odd creature, this quaint and curious blatherskite, without admiring mcclintock, or, at any rate, loving him and feeling grateful to him; for mcclintock made him, he gave him to us; without mcclintock we could not have had him, and would now be poor. but we must come to the feast again. here is a courtship scene, down there in the romantic glades among the raccoons, alligators, and things, that has merit, peculiar literary merit. see how achilles woos. dwell upon the second sentence (particularly the close of it) and the beginning of the third. never mind the new personage, leos, who is intruded upon us unheralded and unexplained. that is mcclintock's way; it is his habit; it is a part of his genius; he cannot help it; he never interrupts the rush of his narrative to make introductions. it could not escape ambulinia's penetrating eye that he sought an interview with her, which she as anxiously avoided, and assumed a more distant calmness than before, seemingly to destroy all hope. after many efforts and struggles with his own person, with timid steps the major approached the damsel, with the same caution as he would have done in a field of battle. "lady ambulinia," said he, trembling, "i have long desired a moment like this. i dare not let it escape. i fear the consequences; yet i hope your indulgence will at least hear my petition. can you not anticipate what i would say, and what i am about to express? will not you, like minerva, who sprung from the brain of jupiter, release me from thy winding chains or cure me--" "say no more, elfonzo," answered ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand as if she intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world; "another lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question in bitter coldness. i know not the little arts of my sex. i care but little for the vanity of those who would chide me, and am unwilling as well as ashamed to be guilty of anything that would lead you to think 'all is not gold that glitters'; so be no rash in your resolution. it is better to repent now, than to do it in a more solemn hour. yes, i know what you would say. i know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man can make-your heart! you should not offer it to one so unworthy. heaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house of solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say is more to be admired than big names and high-sounding titles. notwithstanding all this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart-allow me to say in the fullness of my hopes that i anticipate better days. the bird may stretch its wings toward the sun, which it can never reach; and flowers of the field appear to ascend in the same direction, because they cannot do otherwise; but man confides his complaints to the saints in whom he believes; for in their abodes of light they know no more sorrow. from your confession and indicative looks, i must be that person; if so deceive not yourself." elfonzo replied, "pardon me, my dear madam, for my frankness. i have loved you from my earliest days--everything grand and beautiful hath borne the image of ambulinia; while precipices on every hand surrounded me, your guardian angel stood and beckoned me away from the deep abyss. in every trial, in every misfortune, i have met with your helping hand; yet i never dreamed or dared to cherish thy love, till a voice impaired with age encouraged the cause, and declared they who acquired thy favor should win a victory. i saw how leos worshiped thee. i felt my own unworthiness. i began to know jealously, a strong guest--indeed, in my bosom,-yet i could see if i gained your admiration leos was to be my rival. i was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the wealth of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent and regular tranquillity; yet i have determined by your permission to beg an interest in your prayers--to ask you to animate my drooping spirits by your smiles and your winning looks; for if you but speak i shall be conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like olympus shakes. and though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer of the sun may forget his dashing steed, yet i am assured that it is only to arm me with divine weapons which will enable me to complete my long-tried intention." "return to yourself, elfonzo," said ambulinia, pleasantly: "a dream of vision has disturbed your intellect; you are above the atmosphere, dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is there that urges or hinders, nothing that brings discord into our present litigation. i entreat you to condescend a little, and be a man, and forget it all. when homer describes the battle of the gods and noble men fighting with giants and dragons, they represent under this image our struggles with the delusions of our passions. you have exalted me, an unhappy girl, to the skies; you have called me a saint, and portrayed in your imagination an angel in human form. let her remain such to you, let her continue to be as you have supposed, and be assured that she will consider a share in your esteem as her highest treasure. think not that i would allure you from the path in which your conscience leads you; for you know i respect the conscience of others, as i would die for my own. elfonzo, if i am worthy of thy love, let such conversation never again pass between us. go, seek a nobler theme! we will seek it in the stream of time, as the sun set in the tigris." as she spake these words she grasped the hand of elfonzo, saying at the same time--"peace and prosperity attend you, my hero; be up and doing!" closing her remarks with this expression, she walked slowly away, leaving elfonzo astonished and amazed. he ventured not to follow or detain her. here he stood alone, gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood. yes; there he stood. there seems to be no doubt about that. nearly half of this delirious story has now been delivered to the reader. it seems a pity to reduce the other half to a cold synopsis. pity! it is more than a pity, it is a crime; for to synopsize mcclintock is to reduce a sky-flushing conflagration to dull embers, it is to reduce barbaric splendor to ragged poverty. mcclintock never wrote a line that was not precious; he never wrote one that could be spared; he never framed one from which a word could be removed without damage. every sentence that this master has produced may be likened to a perfect set of teeth, white, uniform, beautiful. if you pull one, the charm is gone. still, it is now necessary to begin to pull, and to keep it up; for lack of space requires us to synopsize. we left elfonzo standing there amazed. at what, we do not know. not at the girl's speech. no; we ourselves should have been amazed at it, of course, for none of us has ever heard anything resembling it; but elfonzo was used to speeches made up of noise and vacancy, and could listen to them with undaunted mind like the "topmost topaz of an ancient tower"; he was used to making them himself; he--but let it go, it cannot be guessed out; we shall never know what it was that astonished him. he stood there awhile; then he said, "alas! am i now grief's disappointed son at last?" he did not stop to examine his mind, and to try to find out what he probably meant by that, because, for one reason, "a mixture of ambition and greatness of soul moved upon his young heart," and started him for the village. he resumed his bench in school, "and reasonably progressed in his education." his heart was heavy, but he went into society, and sought surcease of sorrow in its light distractions. he made himself popular with his violin, "which seemed to have a thousand chords--more symphonious than the muses of apollo, and more enchanting than the ghost of the hills." this is obscure, but let it go. during this interval leos did some unencouraged courting, but at last, "choked by his undertaking," he desisted. presently "elfonzo again wends his way to the stately walls and new-built village." he goes to the house of his beloved; she opens the door herself. to my surprise--for ambulinia's heart had still seemed free at the time of their last interview--love beamed from the girl's eyes. one sees that elfonzo was surprised, too; for when he caught that light, "a halloo of smothered shouts ran through every vein." a neat figure--a very neat figure, indeed! then he kissed her. "the scene was overwhelming." they went into the parlor. the girl said it was safe, for her parents were abed, and would never know. then we have this fine picture--flung upon the canvas with hardly an effort, as you will notice. advancing toward him, she gave a bright display of her rosy neck, and from her head the ambrosial locks breathed divine fragrance; her robe hung waving to his view, while she stood like a goddess confessed before him. there is nothing of interest in the couple's interview. now at this point the girl invites elfonzo to a village show, where jealousy is the motive of the play, for she wants to teach him a wholesome lesson, if he is a jealous person. but this is a sham, and pretty shallow. mcclintock merely wants a pretext to drag in a plagiarism of his upon a scene or two in "othello." the lovers went to the play. elfonzo was one of the fiddlers. he and ambulinia must not been seen together, lest trouble follow with the girl's malignant father; we are made to understand that clearly. so the two sit together in the orchestra, in the midst of the musicians. this does not seem to be good art. in the first place, the girl would be in the way, for orchestras are always packed closely together, and there is no room to spare for people's girls; in the next place, one cannot conceal a girl in an orchestra without everybody taking notice of it. there can be no doubt, it seems to me, that this is bad art. leos is present. of course, one of the first things that catches his eye is the maddening spectacle of ambulinia "leaning upon elfonzo's chair." this poor girl does not seem to understand even the rudiments of concealment. but she is "in her seventeenth," as the author phrases it, and that is her justification. leos meditates, constructs a plan--with personal violence as a basis, of course. it was their way down there. it is a good plain plan, without any imagination in it. he will go out and stand at the front door, and when these two come out he will "arrest ambulinia from the hands of the insolent elfonzo," and thus make for himself a "more prosperous field of immortality than ever was decreed by omnipotence, or ever pencil drew or artist imagined." but, dear me, while he is waiting there the couple climb out at the back window and scurry home! this is romantic enough, but there is a lack of dignity in the situation. at this point mcclintock puts in the whole of his curious play-which we skip. some correspondence follows now. the bitter father and the distressed lovers write the letters. elopements are attempted. they are idiotically planned, and they fail. then we have several pages of romantic powwow and confusion dignifying nothing. another elopement is planned; it is to take place on sunday, when everybody is at church. but the "hero" cannot keep the secret; he tells everybody. another author would have found another instrument when he decided to defeat this elopement; but that is not mcclintock's way. he uses the person that is nearest at hand. the evasion failed, of course. ambulinia, in her flight, takes refuge in a neighbor's house. her father drags her home. the villagers gather, attracted by the racket. elfonzo was moved at this sight. the people followed on to see what was going to become of ambulinia, while he, with downcast looks, kept at a distance, until he saw them enter the abode of the father, thrusting her, that was the sigh of his soul, out of his presence into a solitary apartment, when she exclaimed, "elfonzo! elfonzo! oh, elfonzo! where art thou, with all thy heroes? haste, oh! haste, come thou to my relief. ride on the wings of the wind! turn thy force loose like a tempest, and roll on thy army like a whirlwind, over this mountain of trouble and confusion. oh friends! if any pity me, let your last efforts throng upon the green hills, and come to the relief of ambulinia, who is guilty of nothing but innocent love." elfonzo called out with a loud voice, "my god, can i stand this! arouse up, i beseech you, and put an end to this tyranny. come, my brave boys," said he, "are you ready to go forth to your duty?" they stood around him. "who," said he, "will call us to arms? where are my thunderbolts of war? speak ye, the first who will meet the foe! who will go forward with me in this ocean of grievous temptation? if there is one who desires to go, let him come and shake hands upon the altar of devotion, and swear that he will be a hero; yes, a hector in a cause like this, which calls aloud for a speedy remedy." "mine be the deed," said a young lawyer, "and mine alone; venus alone shall quit her station before i will forsake one jot or tittle of my promise to you; what is death to me? what is all this warlike army, if it is not to win a victory? i love the sleep of the lover and the mighty; nor would i give it over till the blood of my enemies should wreak with that of my own. but god forbid that our fame should soar on the blood of the slumberer." mr. valeer stands at his door with the frown of a demon upon his brow, with his dangerous weapon [3] ready to strike the first man who should enter his door. "who will arise and go forward through blood and carnage to the rescue of my ambulinia?" said elfonzo. "all," exclaimed the multitude; and onward they went, with their implements of battle. others, of a more timid nature, stood among the distant hills to see the result of the contest. it will hardly be believed that after all this thunder and lightning not a drop of rain fell; but such is the fact. elfonzo and his gang stood up and black-guarded mr. valeer with vigor all night, getting their outlay back with interest; then in the early morning the army and its general retired from the field, leaving the victory with their solitary adversary and his crowbar. this is the first time this has happened in romantic literature. the invention is original. everything in this book is original; there is nothing hackneyed about it anywhere. always, in other romances, when you find the author leading up to a climax, you know what is going to happen. but in this book it is different; the thing which seems inevitable and unavoidable never happens; it is circumvented by the art of the author every time. another elopement was attempted. it failed. we have now arrived at the end. but it is not exciting. mcclintock thinks it is; but it isn't. one day elfonzo sent ambulinia another note--a note proposing elopement no. 16. this time the plan is admirable; admirable, sagacious, ingenious, imaginative, deep-oh, everything, and perfectly easy. one wonders why it was never thought of before. this is the scheme. ambulinia is to leave the breakfast-table, ostensibly to "attend to the placing of those flowers, which should have been done a week ago"--artificial ones, of course; the others wouldn't keep so long--and then, instead of fixing the flowers, she is to walk out to the grove, and go off with elfonzo. the invention of this plan overstrained the author that is plain, for he straightway shows failing powers. the details of the plan are not many or elaborate. the author shall state them himself-this good soul, whose intentions are always better than his english: "you walk carelessly toward the academy grove, where you will find me with a lightning steed, elegantly equipped to bear you off where we shall be joined in wedlock with the first connubial rights." last scene of all, which the author, now much enfeebled, tries to smarten up and make acceptable to his spectacular heart by introducing some new properties--silver bow, golden harp, olive branch--things that can all come good in an elopement, no doubt, yet are not to be compared to an umbrella for real handiness and reliability in an excursion of that kind. and away she ran to the sacred grove, surrounded with glittering pearls, that indicated her coming. elfonzo hails her with his silver bow and his golden harp. the meet--ambulinia's countenance brightens-elfonzo leads up the winged steed. "mount," said he, "ye true-hearted, ye fearless soul--the day is ours." she sprang upon the back of the young thunderbolt, a brilliant star sparkles upon her head, with one hand she grasps the reins, and with the other she holds an olive branch. "lend thy aid, ye strong winds," they exclaimed, "ye moon, ye sun, and all ye fair host of heaven, witness the enemy conquered." "hold," said elfonzo, "thy dashing steed." "ride on," said ambulinia, "the voice of thunder is behind us." and onward they went, with such rapidity that they very soon arrived at rural retreat, where they dismounted, and were united with all the solemnities that usually attended such divine operations. there is but one homer, there is but one shakespeare, there is but one mcclintock--and his immortal book is before you. homer could not have written this book, shakespeare could not have written it, i could not have done it myself. there is nothing just like it in the literature of any country or of any epoch. it stands alone; it is monumental. it adds g. ragsdale mcclintock's to the sum of the republic's imperishable names. 1. the name here given is a substitute for the one actually attached to the pamphlet. 2. further on it will be seen that he is a country expert on the fiddle, and has a three-township fame. 3. it is a crowbar. *** the curious book complete [the foregoing review of the great work of g. ragsdale mcclintock is liberally illuminated with sample extracts, but these cannot appease the appetite. only the complete book, unabridged, can do that. therefore it is here printed.--m.t.] the enemy conquered; or, love triumphant sweet girl, thy smiles are full of charms, thy voice is sweeter still, it fills the breast with fond alarms, echoed by every rill. i begin this little work with an eulogy upon woman, who has ever been distinguished for her perseverance, her constancy, and her devoted attention to those upon whom she has been pleased to place her affections. many have been the themes upon which writers and public speakers have dwelt with intense and increasing interest. among these delightful themes stands that of woman, the balm to all our sighs and disappointments, and the most pre-eminent of all other topics. here the poet and orator have stood and gazed with wonder and with admiration; they have dwelt upon her innocence, the ornament of all her virtues. first viewing her external charms, such as set forth in her form and benevolent countenance, and then passing to the deep hidden springs of loveliness and disinterested devotion. in every clime, and in every age, she has been the pride of her nation. her watchfulness is untiring; she who guarded the sepulcher was the first to approach it, and the last to depart from its awful yet sublime scene. even here, in this highly favored land, we look to her for the security of our institutions, and for our future greatness as a nation. but, strange as it may appear, woman's charms and virtues are but slightly appreciated by thousands. those who should raise the standard of female worth, and paint her value with her virtues, in living colors, upon the banners that are fanned by the zephyrs of heaven, and hand them down to posterity as emblematical of a rich inheritance, do not properly estimate them. man is not sensible, at all times, of the nature and the emotions which bear that name; he does not understand, he will not comprehend; his intelligence has not expanded to that degree of glory which drinks in the vast revolution of humanity, its end, its mighty destination, and the causes which operated, and are still operating, to produce a more elevated station, and the objects which energize and enliven its consummation. this he is a stranger to; he is not aware that woman is the recipient of celestial love, and that man is dependent upon her to perfect his character; that without her, philosophically and truly speaking, the brightest of his intelligence is but the coldness of a winter moon, whose beams can produce no fruit, whose solar light is not its own, but borrowed from the great dispenser of effulgent beauty. we have no disposition in the world to flatter the fair sex, we would raise them above those dastardly principles which only exist in little souls, contracted hearts, and a distracted brain. often does she unfold herself in all her fascinating loveliness, presenting the most captivating charms; yet we find man frequently treats such purity of purpose with indifference. why does he do it? why does he baffle that which is inevitably the source of his better days? is he so much of a stranger to those excellent qualities as not to appreciate woman, as not to have respect to her dignity? since her art and beauty first captivated man, she has been his delight and his comfort; she has shared alike in his misfortunes and in his prosperity. whenever the billows of adversity and the tumultuous waves of trouble beat high, her smiles subdue their fury. should the tear of sorrow and the mournful sigh of grief interrupt the peace of his mind, her voice removes them all, and she bends from her circle to encourage him onward. when darkness would obscure his mind, and a thick cloud of gloom would bewilder its operations, her intelligent eye darts a ray of streaming light into his heart. mighty and charming is that disinterested devotion which she is ever ready to exercise toward man, not waiting till the last moment of his danger, but seeks to relieve him in his early afflictions. it gushes forth from the expansive fullness of a tender and devoted heart, where the noblest, the purest, and the most elevated and refined feelings are matured and developed in those may kind offices which invariably make her character. in the room of sorrow and sickness, this unequaled characteristic may always been seen, in the performance of the most charitable acts; nothing that she can do to promote the happiness of him who she claims to be her protector will be omitted; all is invigorated by the animating sunbeams which awaken the heart to songs of gaiety. leaving this point, to notice another prominent consideration, which is generally one of great moment and of vital importance. invariably she is firm and steady in all her pursuits and aims. there is required a combination of forces and extreme opposition to drive her from her position; she takes her stand, not to be moved by the sound of apollo's lyre or the curved bow of pleasure. firm and true to what she undertakes, and that which she requires by her own aggrandizement, and regards as being within the strict rules of propriety, she will remain stable and unflinching to the last. a more genuine principle is not to be found in the most determined, resolute heart of man. for this she deserves to be held in the highest commendation, for this she deserves the purest of all other blessings, and for this she deserves the most laudable reward of all others. it is a noble characteristic and is worthy of imitation of any age. and when we look at it in one particular aspect, it is still magnified, and grows brighter and brighter the more we reflect upon its eternal duration. what will she not do, when her word as well as her affections and love are pledged to her lover? everything that is dear to her on earth, all the hospitalities of kind and loving parents, all the sincerity and loveliness of sisters, and the benevolent devotion of brothers, who have surrounded her with every comfort; she will forsake them all, quit the harmony and sweet sound of the lute and the harp, and throw herself upon the affections of some devoted admirer, in whom she fondly hopes to find more than she has left behind, which is not often realized by many. truth and virtue all combined! how deserving our admiration and love! ah cruel would it be in man, after she has thus manifested such an unshaken confidence in him, and said by her determination to abandon all the endearments and blandishments of home, to act a villainous part, and prove a traitor in the revolution of his mission, and then turn hector over the innocent victim whom he swore to protect, in the presence of heaven, recorded by the pen of an angel. striking as this train may unfold itself in her character, and as pre-eminent as it may stand among the fair display of her other qualities, yet there is another, which struggles into existence, and adds an additional luster to what she already possesses. i mean that disposition in woman which enables her, in sorrow, in grief, and in distress, to bear all with enduring patience. this she has done, and can and will do, amid the din of war and clash of arms. scenes and occurrences which, to every appearance, are calculated to rend the heart with the profoundest emotions of trouble, do not fetter that exalted principle imbued in her very nature. it is true, her tender and feeling heart may often be moved (as she is thus constituted), but she is not conquered, she has not given up to the harlequin of disappointments, her energies have not become clouded in the last movement of misfortune, but she is continually invigorated by the archetype of her affections. she may bury her face in her hands, and let the tear of anguish roll, she may promenade the delightful walks of some garden, decorated with all the flowers of nature, or she may steal out along some gently rippling stream, and there, as the silver waters uninterruptedly move forward, shed her silent tears; they mingle with the waves, and take a last farewell of their agitated home, to seek a peaceful dwelling among the rolling floods; yet there is a voice rushing from her breast, that proclaims victory along the whole line and battlement of her affections. that voice is the voice of patience and resignation; that voice is one that bears everything calmly and dispassionately, amid the most distressing scenes; when the fates are arrayed against her peace, and apparently plotting for her destruction, still she is resigned. woman's affections are deep, consequently her troubles may be made to sink deep. although you may not be able to mark the traces of her grief and the furrowings of her anguish upon her winning countenance, yet be assured they are nevertheless preying upon her inward person, sapping the very foundation of that heart which alone was made for the weal and not the woe of man. the deep recesses of the soul are fields for their operation. but they are not destined simply to take the regions of the heart for their dominion, they are not satisfied merely with interrupting her better feelings; but after a while you may see the blooming cheek beginning to droop and fade, her intelligent eye no longer sparkles with the starry light of heaven, her vibrating pulse long since changed its regular motion, and her palpitating bosom beats once more for the midday of her glory. anxiety and care ultimately throw her into the arms of the haggard and grim monster death. but, oh, how patient, under every pining influence! let us view the matter in bolder colors; see her when the dearest object of her affections recklessly seeks every bacchanalian pleasure, contents himself with the last rubbish of creation. with what solicitude she awaits his return! sleep fails to perform its office--she weeps while the nocturnal shades of the night triumph in the stillness. bending over some favorite book, whilst the author throws before her mind the most beautiful imagery, she startles at every sound. the midnight silence is broken by the solemn announcement of the return of another morning. he is still absent; she listens for that voice which has so often been greeted by the melodies of her own; but, alas! stern silence is all that she receives for her vigilance. mark her unwearied watchfulness, as the night passes away. at last, brutalized by the accursed thing, he staggers along with rage, and, shivering with cold, he makes his appearance. not a murmur is heard from her lips. on the contrary, she meets him with a smile--she caresses him with tender arms, with all the gentleness and softness of her sex. here, then, is seen her disposition, beautifully arrayed. woman, thou art more to be admired than the spicy gales of arabia, and more sought for than the gold of golconda. we believe that woman should associate freely with man, and we believe that it is for the preservation of her rights. she should become acquainted with the metaphysical designs of those who condescended to sing the siren song of flattery. this, we think, should be according to the unwritten law of decorum, which is stamped upon every innocent heart. the precepts of prudery are often steeped in the guilt of contamination, which blasts the expectations of better moments. truth, and beautiful dreams--loveliness, and delicacy of character, with cherished affections of the ideal woman-gentle hopes and aspirations, are enough to uphold her in the storms of darkness, without the transferred colorings of a stained sufferer. how often have we seen it in our public prints, that woman occupies a false station in the world! and some have gone so far as to say it was an unnatural one. so long has she been regarded a weak creature, by the rabble and illiterate--they have looked upon her as an insufficient actress on the great stage of human life--a mere puppet, to fill up the drama of human existence--a thoughtless, inactive being-that she has too often come to the same conclusion herself, and has sometimes forgotten her high destination, in the meridian of her glory. we have but little sympathy or patience for those who treat her as a mere rosy melindi--who are always fishing for pretty complements-who are satisfied by the gossamer of romance, and who can be allured by the verbosity of high-flown words, rich in language, but poor and barren in sentiment. beset, as she has been, by the intellectual vulgar, the selfish, the designing, the cunning, the hidden, and the artful--no wonder she has sometimes folded her wings in despair, and forgotten her heavenly mission in the delirium of imagination; no wonder she searches out some wild desert, to find a peaceful home. but this cannot always continue. a new era is moving gently onward, old things are rapidly passing away; old superstitions, old prejudices, and old notions are now bidding farewell to their old associates and companions, and giving way to one whose wings are plumed with the light of heaven and tinged by the dews of the morning. there is a remnant of blessedness that clings to her in spite of all evil influence, there is enough of the divine master left to accomplish the noblest work ever achieved under the canopy of the vaulted skies; and that time is fast approaching, when the picture of the true woman will shine from its frame of glory, to captivate, to win back, to restore, and to call into being once more, the object of her mission. star of the brave! thy glory shed, o'er all the earth, thy army led-bold meteor of immortal birth! why come from heaven to dwell on earth? mighty and glorious are the days of youth; happy the moments of the lover, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, and long to be remembered are the achievements which he gains with a palpitating heart and a trembling hand. a bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair and prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village of cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic scenery in the cherokee country. brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the the thick forest, to guide the hero whose bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish his name, and to win back the admiration of his long-tried friend. he endeavored to make his way through sawney's mountain, where many meet to catch the gales that are continually blowing for the refreshment of the stranger and the traveler. surrounded as he was by hills on every side, naked rocks dared the efforts of his energies. soon the sky became overcast, the sun buried itself in the clouds, and the fair day gave place to gloomy twilight, which lay heavily on the indian plains. he remembered an old indian castle, that once stood at the foot of the mountain. he thought if he could make his way to this, he would rest contented for a short time. the mountain air breathed fragrance--a rosy tinge rested on the glassy waters that murmured at its base. his resolution soon brought him to the remains of the red man's hut: he surveyed with wonder and astonishment the decayed building, which time had buried in the dust, and thought to himself, his happiness was not yet complete. beside the shore of the brook sat a young man, about eighteen or twenty, who seemed to be reading some favorite book, and who had a remarkably noble countenance--eyes which betrayed more than a common mind. this of course made the youth a welcome guest, and gained him friends in whatever condition of life he might be placed. the traveler observed that he was a well-built figure, which showed strength and grace in every movement. he accordingly addressed him in quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way to the village. after he had received the desired information, and was about taking his leave, the youth said, "are you not major elfonzo, the great musician--the champion of a noble cause-the modern achilles, who gained so many victories in the florida war?" "i bear that name," said the major, "and those titles, trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if," continued the major, "you, sir, are the patronizer of noble deeds, i should like to make you my confidant and learn your address." the youth looked somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused for a moment, and began: "my name is roswell. i have been recently admitted to the bar, and can only give a faint outline of my future success in that honorable profession; but i trust, sir, like the eagle, i shall look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man, and shall ever be ready to give you any assistance in my official capacity, and whatever this muscular arm of mine can do, whenever it shall be called from its buried greatness." the major grasped him by the hand, and exclaimed: "o! thou exalted spirit of inspiration--thou flame of burning prosperity, may the heaven-directed blaze be the glare of thy soul, and battle down every rampart that seems to impede your progress!" the road which led to the town presented many attractions. elfonzo had bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was not wending his way to the dreaming spot of his fondness. the south winds whistled through the woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid fire in the pent furnace roars. this brought him to remember while alone, that he quietly left behind the hospitality of a father's house, and gladly entered the world, with higher hopes than are often realized. but as he journeyed onward, he was mindful of the advice of his father, who had often looked sadly on the ground when tears of cruelly deceived hope moistened his eye. elfonzo had been somewhat of a dutiful son; yet fond of the amusements of life--had been in distant lands--had enjoyed the pleasure of the world and had frequently returned to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life. in this condition, he would frequently say to his father, "have i offended you, that you look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon me with stinging looks? will you not favor me with the sound of your voice? if i have trampled upon your veneration, or have spread a humid veil of darkness around your expectations, send me back into the world where no heart beats for me--where the foot of man has never yet trod; but give me at least one kind word--allow me to come into the presence sometimes of thy winter-worn locks." "forbid it, heaven, that i should be angry with thee," answered the father, "my son, and yet i send thee back to the children of the world-to the cold charity of the combat, and to a land of victory. i read another destiny in thy countenance--i learn thy inclinations from the flame that has already kindled in my soul a stranger sensation. it will seek thee, my dear elfonzo, it will find thee--thou canst not escape that lighted torch, which shall blot out from the remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have foretold against thee. i once thought not so. once, i was blind; but now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation--take again in thy hand that chord of sweet sounds--struggle with the civilized world, and with your own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground-let the night-owl send forth its screams from the stubborn oak-let the sea sport upon the beach, and the stars sing together; but learn of these, elfonzo, thy doom, and thy hiding-place. our most innocent as well as our most lawful desires must often be denied us, that we may learn to sacrifice them to a higher will." remembering such admonitions with gratitude, elfonzo was immediately urged by the recollection of his father's family to keep moving. his steps became quicker and quicker--he hastened through the piny woods, dark as the forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the little village or repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry. his close attention to every important object--his modest questions about whatever was new to him--his reverence for wise old age, and his ardent desire to learn many of the fine arts, soon brought him into respectable notice. one mild winter day as he walked along the streets toward the academy, which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth-some venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous-all seemed inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as well as for genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades. he entered its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners. the principal of the institution begged him to be seated and listen to the recitations that were going on. he accordingly obeyed the request, and seemed to be much pleased. after the school was dismissed, and the young hearts regained their freedom, with the songs of the evening, laughing at the anticipated pleasures of a happy home, while others tittered at the actions of the past day, he addressed the teacher in a tone that indicated a resolution-with an undaunted mind. he said he had determined to become a student, if he could meet with his approbation. "sir," said he, "i have spent much time in the world. i have traveled among the uncivilized inhabitants of america. i have met with friends, and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my ambition, or decide what is to be my destiny. i see the learned would have an influence with the voice of the people themselves. the despoilers of the remotest kingdoms of the earth refer their differences to this class of persons. this the illiterate and inexperienced little dream of; and now if you will receive me as i am, with these deficiencies--with all my misguided opinions, i will give you my honor, sir, that i will never disgrace the institution, or those who have placed you in this honorable station." the instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew how to feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon the charities of an unfeeling community. he looked at him earnestly, and said: "be of good cheer--look forward, sir, to the high destination you may attain. remember, the more elevated the mark at which you aim, the more sure, the more glorious, the more magnificent the prize." from wonder to wonder, his encouragement led the impatient listener. a stranger nature bloomed before him--giant streams promised him success--gardens of hidden treasures opened to his view. all this, so vividly described, seemed to gain a new witchery from his glowing fancy. in 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress in the english and latin departments. indeed, he continued advancing with such rapidity that he was like to become the first in his class, and made such unexpected progress, and was so studious, that he had almost forgotten the pictured saint of his affections. the fresh wreaths of the pine and cypress had waited anxiously to drop once more the dews of heavens upon the heads of those who had so often poured forth the tender emotions of their souls under its boughs. he was aware of the pleasure that he had seen there. so one evening, as he was returning from his reading, he concluded he would pay a visit to this enchanting spot. little did he think of witnessing a shadow of his former happiness, though no doubt he wished it might be so. he continued sauntering by the roadside, meditating on the past. the nearer he approached the spot, the more anxious he became. at the moment a tall female figure flitted across his path, with a bunch of roses in her hand; her countenance showed uncommon vivacity, with a resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already appeared as she smiled beautifully, promenading--while her ringlets of hair dangled unconsciously around her snowy neck. nothing was wanting to complete her beauty. the tinge of the rose was in full bloom upon her cheek; the charms of sensibility and tenderness were always her associates.. in ambulinia's bosom dwelt a noble soul--one that never faded-one that never was conquered. her heart yielded to no feeling but the love of elfonzo, on whom she gazed with intense delight, and to whom she felt herself more closely bound ,because he sought the hand of no other. elfonzo was roused from his apparent reverie. his books no longer were his inseparable companions--his thoughts arrayed themselves to encourage him in the field of victory. he endeavored to speak to his supposed ambulinia, but his speech appeared not in words. no, his effort was a stream of fire, that kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and carried his senses away captive. ambulinia had disappeared, to make him more mindful of his duty. as she walked speedily away through the piny woods she calmly echoed: "o! elfonzo, thou wilt now look from thy sunbeams. thou shalt now walk in a new path-perhaps thy way leads through darkness; but fear not, the stars foretell happiness." not many days afterward, as surrounded by fragrant flowers she sat one evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool breeze that whispered notes of melody along the distant groves, the little birds perched on every side, as if to watch the movements of their new visitor. the bells were tolling when elfonzo silently stole along by the wild wood flowers, holding in his hand his favorite instrument of music-his eye continually searching for ambulinia, who hardly seemed to perceive him, as she played carelessly with the songsters that hopped from branch to branch. nothing could be more striking than the difference between the two. nature seemed to have given the more tender soul to elfonzo, and the stronger and more courageous to ambulinia. a deep feeling spoke from the eyes of elfonzo-such a feeling as can only be expressed by those who are blessed as admirers, and by those who are able to return the same with sincerity of heart. he was a few years older than ambulinia: she had turned a little into her seventeenth. he had almost grown up in the cherokee country, with the same equal proportions as one of the natives. but little intimacy had existed between them until the year forty-one--because the youth felt that the character of such a lovely girl was too exalted to inspire any other feeling than that of quiet reverence. but as lovers will not always be insulted, at all times and under all circumstances, by the frowns and cold looks of crabbed old age, which should continually reflect dignity upon those around, and treat unfortunate as well as the fortunate with a graceful mien, he continued to use diligence and perseverance. all this lighted a spark in his heart that changed his whole character, and like the unyielding deity that follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves for the first time to shake off his embarrassment and return where he had before only worshiped. it could not escape ambulinia's penetrating eye that he sought an interview with her, which she as anxiously avoided, and assumed a more distant calmness than before, seemingly to destroy all hope. after many efforts and struggles with his own person, with timid steps the major approached the damsel, with the same caution as he would have done in a field of battle. "lady ambulinia," said he, trembling, "i have long desired a moment like this. i dare not let it escape. i fear the consequences; yet i hope your indulgence will at least hear my petition. can you not anticipate what i would say, and what i am about to express? will not you, like minerva, who sprung from the brain of jupiter, release me from thy winding chains or cure me--" "say no more, elfonzo," answered ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand as if she intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world; "another lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question in bitter coldness. i know not the little arts of my sex. i care but little for the vanity of those who would chide me, and am unwilling as well as shamed to be guilty of anything that would lead you to think 'all is not gold that glitters'; so be not rash in your resolution. it is better to repent now than to do it in a more solemn hour. yes, i know what you would say. i know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man can make-your heart! you should not offer it to one so unworthy. heaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house of solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say is more to be admired than big names and high-sounding titles. notwithstanding all this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart; allow me to say in the fullness of my hopes that i anticipate better days. the bird may stretch its wings toward the sun, which it can never reach; and flowers of the field appear to ascend in the same direction, because they cannot do otherwise; but man confides his complaints to the saints in whom he believes; for in their abodes of light they know no more sorrow. from your confession and indicative looks, i must be that person; if so, deceive not yourself." elfonzo replied, "pardon me, my dear madam, for my frankness. i have loved you from my earliest days; everything grand and beautiful hath borne the image of ambulinia; while precipices on every hand surrounded me, your guardian angel stood and beckoned me away from the deep abyss. in every trial, in every misfortune, i have met with your helping hand; yet i never dreamed or dared to cherish thy love till a voice impaired with age encouraged the cause, and declared they who acquired thy favor should win a victory. i saw how leos worshipped thee. i felt my own unworthiness. i began to know jealousy--a strong guest, indeed, in my bosom-yet i could see if i gained your admiration leos was to be my rival. i was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the wealth of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent and regular tranquillity; yet i have determined by your permission to beg an interest in your prayers--to ask you to animate my dropping spirits by your smiles and your winning looks; for if you but speak i shall be conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like olympus shakes. and though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer of the sun may forget his dashing steed, yet i am assured that it is only to arm me with divine weapons which will enable me to complete my long-tried intention." "return to your self, elfonzo," said ambulinia, pleasantly; "a dream of vision has disturbed your intellect; you are above the atmosphere, dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is there that urges or hinders, nothing that brings discord into our present litigation. i entreat you to condescend a little, and be a man, and forget it all. when homer describes the battle of the gods and noble men fighting with giants and dragons, they represent under this image our struggles with the delusions of our passions. you have exalted me, an unhappy girl, to the skies; you have called me a saint, and portrayed in your imagination an angel in human form. let her remain such to you, let her continue to be as you have supposed, and be assured that she will consider a share in your esteem as her highest treasure. think not that i would allure you from the path in which your conscience leads you; for you know i respect the conscience of others, as i would die for my own. elfonzo, if i am worthy of thy love, let such conversation never again pass between us. go, seek a nobler theme! we will seek it in the stream of time as the sun set in the tigris." as she spake these words she grasped the hand of elfonzo, saying at the same time, "peace and prosperity attend you, my hero: be up and doing!' closing her remarks with this expression, she walked slowly away, leaving elfonzo astonished and amazed. he ventured not to follow or detain her. here he stood alone, gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood. the rippling stream rolled on at his feet. twilight had already begun to draw her sable mantle over the earth, and now and then the fiery smoke would ascend from the little town which lay spread out before him. the citizens seemed to be full of life and good-humor; but poor elfonzo saw not a brilliant scene. no; his future life stood before him, stripped of the hopes that once adorned all his sanguine desires. "alas!" said he, "am i now grief's disappointed son at last." ambulinia's image rose before his fancy. a mixture of ambition and greatness of soul moved upon his young heart, and encouraged him to bear all his crosses with the patience of a job, notwithstanding he had to encounter with so many obstacles. he still endeavored to prosecute his studies, and reasonable progressed in his education. still, he was not content; there was something yet to be done before his happiness was complete. he would visit his friends and acquaintances. they would invite him to social parties, insisting that he should partake of the amusements that were going on. this he enjoyed tolerably well. the ladies and gentlemen were generally well pleased with the major; as he delighted all with his violin, which seemed to have a thousand chords-more symphonious than the muses of apollo and more enchanting than the ghost of the hills. he passed some days in the country. during that time leos had made many calls upon ambulinia, who was generally received with a great deal of courtesy by the family. they thought him to be a young man worthy of attention, though he had but little in his soul to attract the attention or even win the affections of her whose graceful manners had almost made him a slave to every bewitching look that fell from her eyes. leos made several attempts to tell her of his fair prospects-how much he loved her, and how much it would add to his bliss if he could but think she would be willing to share these blessings with him; but, choked by his undertaking, he made himself more like an inactive drone than he did like one who bowed at beauty's shrine. elfonzo again wends his way to the stately walls and new-built village. he now determines to see the end of the prophesy which had been foretold to him. the clouds burst from his sight; he believes if he can but see his ambulinia, he can open to her view the bloody altars that have been misrepresented to stigmatize his name. he knows that her breast is transfixed with the sword of reason, and ready at all times to detect the hidden villainy of her enemies. he resolves to see her in her own home, with the consoling theme: "'i can but perish if i go.' let the consequences be what they may," said he, "if i die, it shall be contending and struggling for my own rights." night had almost overtaken him when he arrived in town. colonel elder, a noble-hearted, high-minded, and independent man, met him at his door as usual, and seized him by the hand. "well, elfonzo," said the colonel, "how does the world use you in your efforts?" "i have no objection to the world," said elfonzo, "but the people are rather singular in some of their opinions." "aye, well," said the colonel, "you must remember that creation is made up of many mysteries; just take things by the right handle; be always sure you know which is the smooth side before you attempt your polish; be reconciled to your fate, be it what it may; and never find fault with your condition, unless your complaining will benefit it. perseverance is a principle that should be commendable in those who have judgment to govern it. i should never had been so successful in my hunting excursions had i waited till the deer, by some magic dream, had been drawn to the muzzle of the gun before i made an attempt to fire at the game that dared my boldness in the wild forest. the great mystery in hunting seems to be--a good marksman, a resolute mind, a fixed determination, and my world for it, you will never return home without sounding your horn with the breath of a new victory. and so with every other undertaking. be confident that your ammunition is of the right kind--always pull your trigger with a steady hand, and so soon as you perceive a calm, touch her off, and the spoils are yours." this filled him with redoubled vigor, and he set out with a stronger anxiety than ever to the home of ambulinia. a few short steps soon brought him to the door, half out of breath. he rapped gently. ambulinia, who sat in the parlor alone, suspecting elfonzo was near, ventured to the door, opened it, and beheld the hero, who stood in an humble attitude, bowed gracefully, and as they caught each other's looks the light of peace beamed from the eyes of ambulinia. elfonzo caught the expression; a halloo of smothered shouts ran through every vein, and for the first time he dared to impress a kiss upon her cheek. the scene was overwhelming; had the temptation been less animating, he would not have ventured to have acted so contrary to the desired wish of his ambulinia; but who could have withstood the irrestistable temptation! what society condemns the practice but a cold, heartless, uncivilized people that know nothing of the warm attachments of refined society? here the dead was raised to his long-cherished hopes, and the lost was found. here all doubt and danger were buried in the vortex of oblivion; sectional differences no longer disunited their opinions; like the freed bird from the cage, sportive claps its rustling wings, wheels about to heaven in a joyful strain, and raises its notes to the upper sky. ambulinia insisted upon elfonzo to be seated, and give her a history of his unnecessary absence; assuring him the family had retired, consequently they would ever remain ignorant of his visit. advancing toward him, she gave a bright display of her rosy neck, and from her head the ambrosial locks breathed divine fragrance; her robe hung waving to his view, while she stood like a goddess confessed before him. "it does seem to me, my dear sir," said ambulinia, "that you have been gone an age. oh, the restless hours i have spent since i last saw you, in yon beautiful grove. there is where i trifled with your feelings for the express purpose of trying your attachment for me. i now find you are devoted; but ah! i trust you live not unguarded by the powers of heaven. though oft did i refuse to join my hand with thine, and as oft did i cruelly mock thy entreaties with borrowed shapes: yes, i feared to answer thee by terms, in words sincere and undissembled. o! could i pursue, and you have leisure to hear the annals of my woes, the evening star would shut heaven's gates upon the impending day before my tale would be finished, and this night would find me soliciting your forgiveness." "dismiss thy fears and thy doubts," replied elfonzo. "look, o! look: that angelic look of thine--bathe not thy visage in tears; banish those floods that are gathering; let my confession and my presence being thee some relief." "then, indeed, i will be cheerful," said ambulinia, "and i think if we will go to the exhibition this evening, we certainly will see something worthy of our attention. one of the most tragical scenes is to be acted that has ever been witnessed, and one that every jealous-hearted person should learn a lesson from. it cannot fail to have a good effect, as it will be performed by those who are young and vigorous, and learned as well as enticing. you are aware, major elfonzo, who are to appear on the stage, and what the characters are to represent." "i am acquainted with the circumstances," replied elfonzo, "and as i am to be one of the musicians upon that interesting occasion, i should be much gratified if you would favor me with your company during the hours of the exercises." "what strange notions are in your mind?" inquired ambulinia. "now i know you have something in view, and i desire you to tell me why it is that you are so anxious that i should continue with you while the exercises are going on; though if you think i can add to your happiness and predilections, i have no particular objection to acquiesce in your request. oh, i think i foresee, now, what you anticipate." "and will you have the goodness to tell me what you think it will be?" inquired elfonzo. "by all means," answered ambulinia; "a rival, sir, you would fancy in your own mind; but let me say for you, fear not! fear not! i will be one of the last persons to disgrace my sex by thus encouraging every one who may feel disposed to visit me, who may honor me with their graceful bows and their choicest compliments. it is true that young men too often mistake civil politeness for the finer emotions of the heart, which is tantamount to courtship; but, ah! how often are they deceived, when they come to test the weight of sunbeams with those on whose strength hangs the future happiness of an untried life." the people were now rushing to the academy with impatient anxiety; the band of music was closely followed by the students; then the parents and guardians; nothing interrupted the glow of spirits which ran through every bosom, tinged with the songs of a virgil and the tide of a homer. elfonzo and ambulinia soon repaired to the scene, and fortunately for them both the house was so crowded that they took their seats together in the music department, which was not in view of the auditory. this fortuitous circumstances added more the bliss of the major than a thousand such exhibitions would have done. he forgot that he was man; music had lost its charms for him; whenever he attempted to carry his part, the string of the instrument would break, the bow became stubborn, and refused to obey the loud calls of the audience. here, he said, was the paradise of his home, the long-sought-for opportunity; he felt as though he could send a million supplications to the throne of heaven for such an exalted privilege. poor leos, who was somewhere in the crowd, looking as attentively as if he was searching for a needle in a haystack; here is stood, wondering to himself why ambulinia was not there. "where can she be? oh! if she was only here, how i could relish the scene! elfonzo is certainly not in town; but what if he is? i have got the wealth, if i have not the dignity, and i am sure that the squire and his lady have always been particular friends of mine, and i think with this assurance i shall be able to get upon the blind side of the rest of the family and make the heaven-born ambulinia the mistress of all i possess." then, again, he would drop his head, as if attempting to solve the most difficult problem in euclid. while he was thus conjecturing in his own mind, a very interesting part of the exhibition was going on, which called the attention of all present. the curtains of the stage waved continually by the repelled forces that were given to them, which caused leos to behold ambulinia leaning upon the chair of elfonzo. her lofty beauty, seen by the glimmering of the chandelier, filled his heart with rapture, he knew not how to contain himself; to go where they were would expose him to ridicule; to continue where he was, with such an object before him, without being allowed an explanation in that trying hour, would be to the great injury of his mental as well as of his physical powers; and, in the name of high heaven, what must he do? finally, he resolved to contain himself as well as he conveniently could, until the scene was over, and then he would plant himself at the door, to arrest ambulinia from the hands of the insolent elfonzo, and thus make for himself a more prosperous field of immortality than ever was decreed by omnipotence, or ever pencil drew or artist imagined. accordingly he made himself sentinel, immediately after the performance of the evening-retained his position apparently in defiance of all the world; he waited, he gazed at every lady, his whole frame trembled; here he stood, until everything like human shape had disappeared from the institution, and he had done nothing; he had failed to accomplish that which he so eagerly sought for. poor, unfortunate creature! he had not the eyes of an argus, or he might have seen his juno and elfonzo, assisted by his friend sigma, make their escape from the window, and, with the rapidity of a race-horse, hurry through the blast of the storm to the residence of her father, without being recognized. he did not tarry long, but assured ambulinia the endless chain of their existence was more closely connected than ever, since he had seen the virtuous, innocent, imploring, and the constant amelia murdered by the jealous-hearted farcillo, the accursed of the land. the following is the tragical scene, which is only introduced to show the subject-matter that enabled elfonzo to come to such a determinate resolution that nothing of the kind should ever dispossess him of his true character, should he be so fortunate as to succeed in his present undertaking. amelia was the wife of farcillo, and a virtuous woman; gracia, a young lady, was her particular friend and confidant. farcillo grew jealous of amelia, murders her, finds out that he was deceived, and stabs himself. amelia appears alone, talking to herself. a. hail, ye solitary ruins of antiquity, ye sacred tombs and silent walks! it is your aid i invoke; it is to you, my soul, wrapt in deep mediating, pours forth its prayer. here i wander upon the stage of mortality, since the world hath turned against me. those whom i believed to be my friends, alas! are now my enemies, planting thorns in all my paths, poisoning all my pleasures, and turning the past to pain. what a lingering catalogue of sighs and tears lies just before me, crowding my aching bosom with the fleeting dream of humanity, which must shortly terminate. and to what purpose will all this bustle of life, these agitations and emotions of the heart have conduced, if it leave behind it nothing of utility, if it leave no traces of improvement? can it be that i am deceived in my conclusions? no, i see that i have nothing to hope for, but everything for fear, which tends to drive me from the walks of time. oh! in this dead night, if loud winds arise, to lash the surge and bluster in the skies, may the west its furious rage display, toss me with storms in the watery way. (enter gracia.) g. oh, amelia, is it you, the object of grief, the daughter of opulence, of wisdom and philosophy, that thus complaineth? it cannot be you are the child of misfortune, speaking of the monuments of former ages, which were allotted not for the reflection of the distressed, but for the fearless and bold. a. not the child of poverty, gracia, or the heir of glory and peace, but of fate. remember, i have wealth more than wit can number; i have had power more than kings could emcompass; yet the world seems a desert; all nature appears an afflictive spectacle of warring passions. this blind fatality, that capriciously sports with the rules and lives of mortals, tells me that the mountains will never again send forth the water of their springs to my thirst. oh, that i might be freed and set at liberty from wretchedness! but i fear, i fear this will never be. g. why, amelia, this untimely grief? what has caused the sorrows that bespeak better and happier days, to those lavish out such heaps of misery? you are aware that your instructive lessons embellish the mind with holy truths, by wedding its attention to none but great and noble affections. a. this, of course, is some consolation. i will ever love my own species with feelings of a fond recollection, and while i am studying to advance the universal philanthropy, and the spotless name of my own sex, i will try to build my own upon the pleasing belief that i have accelerated the advancement of one who whispers of departed confidence. and i, like some poor peasant fated to reside remote from friends, in a forest wide. oh, see what woman's woes and human wants require, since that great day hath spread the seed of sinful fire. g. look up, thou poor disconsolate; you speak of quitting earthly enjoyments. unfold thy bosom to a friend, who would be willing to sacrifice every enjoyment for the restoration of the dignity and gentleness of mind which used to grace your walks, and which is so natural to yourself; not only that, but your paths were strewed with flowers of every hue and of every order. with verdant green the mountains glow, for thee, for thee, the lilies grow; far stretched beneath the tented hills, a fairer flower the valley fills. a. oh, would to heaven i could give you a short narrative of my former prospects for happiness, since you have acknowledged to be an unchangeable confidant--the richest of all other blessings. oh, ye names forever glorious, ye celebrated scenes, ye renowned spot of my hymeneal moments; how replete is your chart with sublime reflections! how many profound vows, decorated with immaculate deeds, are written upon the surface of that precious spot of earth where i yielded up my life of celibacy, bade youth with all its beauties a final adieu, took a last farewell of the laurels that had accompanied me up the hill of my juvenile career. it was then i began to descend toward the valley of disappointment and sorrow; it was then i cast my little bark upon a mysterious ocean of wedlock, with him who then smiled and caressed me, but, alas! now frowns with bitterness, and has grown jealous and cold toward me, because the ring he gave me is misplaced or lost. oh, bear me, ye flowers of memory, softly through the eventful history of past times; and ye places that have witnessed the progression of man in the circle of so many societies, and, of, aid my recollection, while i endeavor to trace the vicissitudes of a life devoted in endeavoring to comfort him that i claim as the object of my wishes. ah! ye mysterious men, of all the world, how few act just to heaven and to your promise true! but he who guides the stars with a watchful eye, the deeds of men lay open without disguise; oh, this alone will avenge the wrongs i bear, for all the oppressed are his peculiar care. (f. makes a slight noise.) a. who is there--farcillo? g. then i must gone. heaven protect you. oh, amelia, farewell, be of good cheer. may you stand like olympus' towers, against earth and all jealous powers! may you, with loud shouts ascend on high swift as an eagle in the upper sky. a. why so cold and distant tonight, farcillo? come, let us each other greet, and forget all the past, and give security for the future. f. security! talk to me about giving security for the future-what an insulting requisition! have you said your prayers tonight, madam amelia? a. farcillo, we sometimes forget our duty, particularly when we expect to be caressed by others. f. if you bethink yourself of any crime, or of any fault, that is yet concealed from the courts of heaven and the thrones of grace, i bid you ask and solicit forgiveness for it now. a. oh, be kind, farcillo, don't treat me so. what do you mean by all this? f. be kind, you say; you, madam, have forgot that kindness you owe to me, and bestowed it upon another; you shall suffer for your conduct when you make your peace with your god. i would not slay thy unprotected spirit. i call to heaven to be my guard and my watch-i would not kill thy soul, in which all once seemed just, right, and perfect; but i must be brief, woman. a. what, talk you of killing? oh, farcillo, farcillo, what is the matter? f. aye, i do, without doubt; mark what i say, amelia. a. then, o god, o heaven, and angels, be propitious, and have mercy upon me. f. amen to that, madam, with all my heart, and with all my soul. a. farcillo, listen to me one moment; i hope you will not kill me. f. kill you, aye, that i will; attest it, ye fair host of light, record it, ye dark imps of hell! a. oh, i fear you--you are fatal when darkness covers your brow; yet i know not why i should fear, since i never wronged you in all my life. i stand, sir, guiltless before you. f. you pretend to say you are guiltless! think of thy sins, amelia; think, oh, think, hidden woman. a. wherein have i not been true to you? that death is unkind, cruel, and unnatural, that kills for living. f. peace, and be still while i unfold to thee. a. i will, farcillo, and while i am thus silent, tell me the cause of such cruel coldness in an hour like this. f. that ring, oh, that ring i so loved, and gave thee as the ring of my heart; the allegiance you took to be faithful, when it was presented; the kisses and smiles with which you honored it. you became tired of the donor, despised it as a plague, and finally gave it to malos, the hidden, the vile traitor. a. no, upon my word and honor, i never did; i appeal to the most high to bear me out in this matter. send for malos, and ask him. f. send for malos, aye! malos you wish to see; i thought so. i knew you could not keep his name concealed. amelia, sweet amelia, take heed, take heed of perjury; you are on the stage of death, to suffer for your sins. a. what, not to die i hope, my farcillo, my ever beloved. f. yes, madam, to die a traitor's death. shortly your spirit shall take its exit; therefore confess freely thy sins, for to deny tends only to make me groan under the bitter cup thou hast made for me. thou art to die with the name of traitor on thy brow! a. then, o lord, have mercy upon me; give me courage, give me grace and fortitude to stand this hour of trial. f. amen, i say, with all my heart. a. and, oh, farcillo, will you have mercy, too? i never intentionally offended you in all my life, never loved malos, never gave him cause to think so, as the high court of justice will acquit me before its tribunal. f. oh, false, perjured woman, thou didst chill my blood, and makest me a demon like thyself. i saw the ring. a. he found it, then, or got it clandestinely; send for him, and let him confess the truth; let his confession be sifted. f. and you still with to see him! i tell you, madam, he hath already confessed, and thou knowest the darkness of thy heart. a. what, my deceived farcillo, that i gave him the ring, in which all my affections were concentrated? oh, surely not. f. aye, he did. ask thy conscience, and it will speak with a voice of thunder to thy soul. a. he will not say so, he dare not, he cannot. f. no, he will not say so now, because his mouth, i trust, is hushed in death, and his body stretched to the four winds of heaven, to be torn to pieces by carnivorous birds. a. what, he is dead, and gone to the world of spirits with that declaration in his mouth? oh, unhappy man! oh, insupportable hour! f. yes, and had all his sighs and looks and tears been lives, my great revenge could have slain them all, without the least condemnation. a. alas! he is ushered into eternity without testing the matter for which i am abused and sentenced and condemned to die. f. cursed, infernal woman! weepest thou for him to my face? he that hath robbed me of my peace, my energy, the whole love of my life? could i call the fabled hydra, i would have him live and perish, survive and die, until the sun itself would grow dim with age. i would make him have the thirst of a tantalus, and roll the wheel of an ixion, until the stars of heaven should quit their brilliant stations. a. oh, invincible god, save me! oh, unsupportable moment! oh, heavy hour! banish me,, farcillo--send me where no eye can ever see me, where no sound shall ever great my ear; but, oh, slay me not, farcillo; vent thy rage and thy spite upon this emaciated frame of mine, only spare my life. f. your petitions avail nothing, cruel amelia. a. oh, farcillo, perpetrate the dark deed tomorrow; let me live till then, for my past kindness to you, and it may be some kind angel will show to you that i am not only the object of innocence, but one who never loved another but your noble self. f. amelia, the decree has gone forth, it is to be done, and that quickly; thou art to die, madam. a. but half an hour allow me, to see my father and my only child, to tell her the treachery and vanity of this world. f. there is no alternative, there is no pause: my daughter shall not see its deceptive mother die; your father shall not know that his daughter fell disgraced, despised by all but her enchanting malos. a. oh, farcillo, put up thy threatening dagger into its scabbard; let it rest and be still, just while i say one prayer for thee and for my child. f. it is too late, thy doom is fixed, thou hast not confessed to heaven or to me, my child's protector--thou art to die. ye powers of earth and heaven, protect and defend me in this alone. (stabs her while imploring for mercy.) a. oh, farcillo, farcillo, a guiltless death i die. f. die! die! die! (gracia enters running, falls on her knees weeping, and kisses amelia.) g. oh, farcillo, farcillo! oh, farcillo! f. i am here, the genius of the age, and the avenger of my wrongs. g. oh, lady, speak once more; sweet amelia, on, speak again. gone, gone--yes, forever gone! farcillo, oh, cold-hearted farcillo, some evil fiend hath urged you to do this, farcillo. f. say not so again, or you shall receive the same fate. i did the glorious deed, madam--beware, then, how you talk. g. i fear not your implements of war; i will let you know you have not the power to do me harm. if you have a heart of triple brass, it shall be reached and melted, and thy blood shall chill thy veins and grow stiff in thy arteries. here is the ring of the virtuous and innocent murdered amelia; i obtained it from malos, who yet lives, in hopes that he will survive the wound given him, and says he got it clandestinely--declares amelia to be the princess of truth and virtue, invulnerable to anything like forgetting her first devotion to thee. the world has heard of your conduct and your jealousy, and with one universal voice declares her to be the best of all in piety; that she is the star of this great universe, and a more virtuous woman never lived since the wheels of time began. oh, had you waited till tomorrow, or until i had returned, some kind window would have been opened to her relief. but, alas! she is gone--yes, forever gone, to try the realities of an unknown world! (farcillo leaning over the body of amelia.) f. malos not dead, and here is my ring! oh, amelia! falsely murdered! oh, bloody deed! oh, wretch that i am! oh, angels forgive me! oh, god, withhold thy vengeance! oh, amelia! if heaven would make a thousand worlds like this, set with diamonds, and all of one perfect chrysolite, i would not have done this for them all, i would not have frowned and cursed as i did. oh, she was heavenly true, nursed in the very lap of bright angels! cursed slave that i am! jealousy, oh! thou infernal demon! lost, lost to every sense of honor! oh! amelia-heaven-born amelia--dead, dead! oh! oh! oh!--then let me die with thee. farewell! farewell! ye world that deceived me! (stabs himself.) soon after the excitement of this tragical scene was over, and the enlisted feeling for amelia had grown more buoyant with elfonzo and ambulinia, he determined to visit his retired home, and make the necessary improvements to enjoy a better day; consequently he conveyed the following lines to ambulinia: go tell the world that hope is glowing, go bid the rocks their silence break, go tell the stars that love is glowing, then bid the hero his lover take. in the region where scarcely the foot of man hath ever trod, where the woodman hath not found his way, lies a blooming grove, seen only by the sun when he mounts his lofty throne, visited only by the light of the stars, to whom are entrusted the guardianship of earth, before the sun sinks to rest in his rosy bed. high cliffs of rocks surround the romantic place, and in the small cavity of the rocky wall grows the daffodil clear and pure; and as the wind blows along the enchanting little mountain which surrounds the lonely spot, it nourishes the flowers with the dew-drops of heaven. here is the seat of elfonzo; darkness claims but little victory over this dominion, and in vain does she spread out her gloomy wings. here the waters flow perpetually, and the trees lash their tops together to bid the welcome visitor a happy muse. elfonzo, during his short stay in the country, had fully persuaded himself that it was his duty to bring this solemn matter to an issue. a duty that he individually owed, as a gentleman, to the parents of ambulinia, a duty in itself involving not only his own happiness and his own standing in society, but one that called aloud the act of the parties to make it perfect and complete. how he should communicate his intentions to get a favorable reply, he was at a loss to know; he knew not whether to address esq. valeer in prose or in poetry, in a jocular or an argumentative manner, or whether he should use moral suasion, legal injunction, or seizure and take by reprisal; if it was to do the latter, he would have no difficulty in deciding in his own mind, but his gentlemanly honor was at stake; so he concluded to address the following letter to the father and mother of ambulinia, as his address in person he knew would only aggravate the old gentleman, and perhaps his lady. cumming, ga., january 22, 1844 mr. and mrs. valeer-again i resume the pleasing task of addressing you, and once more beg an immediate answer to my many salutations. from every circumstance that has taken place, i feel in duty bound to comply with my obligations; to forfeit my word would be more than i dare do; to break my pledge, and my vows that have been witnessed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of an unseen deity, would be disgraceful on my part, as well as ruinous to ambulinia. i wish no longer to be kept in suspense about this matter. i wish to act gentlemanly in every particular. it is true, the promises i have made are unknown to any but ambulinia, and i think it unnecessary to here enumerate them, as they who promise the most generally perform the least. can you for a moment doubt my sincerity or my character? my only wish is, sir, that you may calmly and dispassionately look at the situation of the case, and if your better judgment should dictate otherwise, my obligations may induce me to pluck the flower that you so diametrically opposed. we have sword by the saints--by the gods of battle, and by that faith whereby just men are made perfect--to be united. i hope, my dear sir, you will find it convenient as well as agreeable to give me a favorable answer, with the signature of mrs. valeer, as well as yourself. with very great esteem, your humble servant, j. i. elfonzo. the moon and stars had grown pale when ambulinia had retired to rest. a crowd of unpleasant thoughts passed through her bosom. solitude dwelt in her chamber--no sound from the neighboring world penetrated its stillness; it appeared a temple of silence, of repose, and of mystery. at that moment she heard a still voice calling her father. in an instant, like the flash of lightning, a thought ran through her mind that it must be the bearer of elfonzo's communication. "it is not a dream!" she said, "no, i cannot read dreams. oh! i would to heaven i was near that glowing eloquence--that poetical language--it charms the mind in an inexpressible manner, and warms the coldest heart." while consoling herself with this strain, her father rushed into her room almost frantic with rage, exclaiming: "oh, ambulinia! ambulinia!! undutiful, ungrateful daughter! what does this mean? why does this letter bear such heart-rending intelligence? will you quit a father's house with this debased wretch, without a place to lay his distracted head; going up and down the country, with every novel object that many chance to wander through this region. he is a pretty man to make love known to his superiors, and you, ambulinia, have done but little credit to yourself by honoring his visits. oh, wretchedness! can it be that my hopes of happiness are forever blasted! will you not listen to a father's entreaties, and pay some regard to a mother's tears. i know, and i do pray that god will give me fortitude to bear with this sea of troubles, and rescue my daughter, my ambulinia, as a brand from the eternal burning." "forgive me, father, oh! forgive thy child," replied ambulinia. "my heart is ready to break, when i see you in this grieved state of agitation. oh! think not so meanly of me, as that i mourn for my own danger. father, i am only woman. mother, i am only the templement of thy youthful years, but will suffer courageously whatever punishment you think proper to inflict upon me, if you will but allow me to comply with my most sacred promises--if you will but give me my personal right and my personal liberty. oh, father! if your generosity will but give me these, i ask nothing more. when elfonzo offered me his heart, i gave him my hand, never to forsake him, and now may the mighty god banish me before i leave him in adversity. what a heart must i have to rejoice in prosperity with him whose offers i have accepted, and then, when poverty comes, haggard as it may be, for me to trifle with the oracles of heaven, and change with every fluctuation that may interrupt our happiness-like the politician who runs the political gantlet for office one day, and the next day, because the horizon is darkened a little, he is seen running for his life, for fear he might perish in its ruins. where is the philosophy, where is the consistency, where is the charity, in conduct like this? be happy then, my beloved father, and forget me; let the sorrow of parting break down the wall of separation and make us equal in our feeling; let me now say how ardently i love you; let me kiss that age-worn cheek, and should my tears bedew thy face, i will wipe them away. oh, i never can forget you; no, never, never!" "weep not," said the father, "ambulinia. i will forbid elfonzo my house, and desire that you may keep retired a few days. i will let him know that my friendship for my family is not linked together by cankered chains; and if he ever enters upon my premises again, i will send him to his long home." "oh, father! let me entreat you to be calm upon this occasion, and though elfonzo may be the sport of the clouds and winds, yet i feel assured that no fate will send him to the silent tomb until the god of the universe calls him hence with a triumphant voice." here the father turned away, exclaiming: "i will answer his letter in a very few words, and you, madam, will have the goodness to stay at home with your mother; and remember, i am determined to protect you from the consuming fire that looks so fair to your view." cumming, january 22, 1844. sir--in regard to your request, i am as i ever have been, utterly opposed to your marrying into my family; and if you have any regard for yourself, or any gentlemanly feeling, i hope you will mention it to me no more; but seek some other one who is not so far superior to you in standing. w. w. valeer. when elfonzo read the above letter, he became so much depressed in spirits that many of his friends thought it advisable to use other means to bring about the happy union. "strange," said he, "that the contents of this diminutive letter should cause me to have such depressed feelings; but there is a nobler theme than this. i know not why my military title is not as great as that of squire valeer. for my life i cannot see that my ancestors are inferior to those who are so bitterly opposed to my marriage with ambulinia. i know i have seen huge mountains before me, yet, when i think that i know gentlemen will insult me upon this delicate matter, should i become angry at fools and babblers, who pride themselves in their impudence and ignorance? no. my equals! i know not where to find them. my inferiors! i think it beneath me; and my superiors! i think it presumption; therefore, if this youthful heart is protected by any of the divine rights, i never will betray my trust." he was aware that ambulinia had a confidence that was, indeed, as firm and as resolute as she was beautiful and interesting. he hastened to the cottage of louisa, who received him in her usual mode of pleasantness, and informed him that ambulinia had just that moment left. "is it possible?" said elfonzo. "oh, murdered hours! why did she not remain and be the guardian of my secrets? but hasten and tell me how she has stood this trying scene, and what are her future determinations." "you know," said louisa, "major elfonzo, that you have ambulinia's first love, which is of no small consequence. she came here about twilight, and shed many precious tears in consequence of her own fate with yours. we walked silently in yon little valley you see, where we spent a momentary repose. she seemed to be quite as determined as ever, and before we left that beautiful spot she offered up a prayer to heaven for thee." "i will see her then," replied elfonzo, "though legions of enemies may oppose. she is mine by foreordination-she is mine by prophesy--she is mine by her own free will, and i will rescue her from the hands of her oppressors. will you not, miss louisa, assist me in my capture?" "i will certainly, by the aid of divine providence," answered louisa, "endeavor to break those slavish chains that bind the richest of prizes; though allow me, major, to entreat you to use no harsh means on this important occasion; take a decided stand, and write freely to ambulinia upon this subject, and i will see that no intervening cause hinders its passage to her. god alone will save a mourning people. now is the day and now is the hour to obey a command of such valuable worth." the major felt himself grow stronger after this short interview with louisa. he felt as if he could whip his weight in wildcats-he knew he was master of his own feelings, and could now write a letter that would bring this litigation to an issue. cumming, january 24, 1844. dear ambulinia-we have now reached the most trying moment of our lives; we are pledged not to forsake our trust; we have waited for a favorable hour to come, thinking your friends would settle the matter agreeably among themselves, and finally be reconciled to our marriage; but as i have waited in vain, and looked in vain, i have determined in my own mind to make a proposition to you, though you may think it not in accord with your station, or compatible with your rank; yet, "sub loc signo vinces." you know i cannot resume my visits, in consequence of the utter hostility that your father has to me; therefore the consummation of our union will have to be sought for in a more sublime sphere, at the residence of a respectable friend of this village. you cannot have an scruples upon this mode of proceeding, if you will but remember it emanates from one who loves you better than his own life--who is more than anxious to bid you welcome to a new and happy home. your warmest associates say come; the talented, the learned, the wise, and the experienced say come;--all these with their friends say, come. viewing these, with many other inducements, i flatter myself that you will come to the embraces of your elfonzo; for now is the time of your acceptance of the day of your liberation. you cannot be ignorant, ambulinia, that thou art the desire of my heart; its thoughts are too noble, and too pure, to conceal themselves from you. i shall wait for your answer to this impatiently, expecting that you will set the time to make your departure, and to be in readiness at a moment's warning to share the joys of a more preferable life. this will be handed to you by louisa, who will take a pleasure in communicating anything to you that may relieve your dejected spirits, and will assure you that i now stand ready, willing, and waiting to make good my vows. i am, dear ambulinia, your truly, and forever, j. i. elfonzo. louisa made it convenient to visit mr. valeer's, though they did not suspect her in the least the bearer of love epistles; consequently, she was invited in the room to console ambulinia, where they were left alone. ambulinia was seated by a small table-her head resting on her hand--her brilliant eyes were bathed in tears. louisa handed her the letter of elfonzo, when another spirit animated her features--the spirit of renewed confidence that never fails to strengthen the female character in an hour of grief and sorrow like this, and as she pronounced the last accent of his name, she exclaimed, "and does he love me yet! i never will forget your generosity, louisa. oh, unhappy and yet blessed louisa! may you never feel what i have felt--may you never know the pangs of love. had i never loved, i never would have been unhappy; but i turn to him who can save, and if his wisdom does not will my expected union, i know he will give me strength to bear my lot. amuse yourself with this little book, and take it as an apology for my silence," said ambulinia, "while i attempt to answer this volume of consolation." "thank you," said louisa, "you are excusable upon this occasion; but i pray you, ambulinia, to be expert upon this momentous subject, that there may be nothing mistrustful upon my part." "i will," said ambulinia, and immediately resumed her seat and addressed the following to elfonzo: cumming, ga., january 28, 1844. devoted elfonzo-i hail your letter as a welcome messenger of faith, and can now say truly and firmly that my feelings correspond with yours. nothing shall be wanting on my part to make my obedience your fidelity. courage and perseverance will accomplish success. receive this as my oath, that while i grasp your hand in my own imagination, we stand united before a higher tribunal than any on earth. all the powers of my life, soul, and body, i devote to thee. whatever dangers may threaten me, i fear not to encounter them. perhaps i have determined upon my own destruction, by leaving the house of the best of parents; be it so; i flee to you; i share your destiny, faithful to the end. the day that i have concluded upon for this task is sabbath next, when the family with the citizens are generally at church. for heaven's sake let not that day pass unimproved: trust not till tomorrow, it is the cheat of life-the future that never comes--the grave of many noble births-the cavern of ruined enterprise: which like the lightning's flash is born, and dies, and perishes, ere the voice of him who sees can cry, behold! behold!! you may trust to what i say, no power shall tempt me to betray confidence. suffer me to add one word more. i will soothe thee, in all thy grief, beside the gloomy river; and though thy love may yet be brief; mine is fixed forever. receive the deepest emotions of my heart for thy constant love, and may the power of inspiration by thy guide, thy portion, and thy all. in great haste, yours faithfully, ambulinia. "i now take my leave of you, sweet girl," said louisa, "sincerely wishing you success on sabbath next." when ambulinia's letter was handed to elfonzo, he perused it without doubting its contents. louisa charged him to make but few confidants; but like most young men who happened to win the heart of a beautiful girl, he was so elated with the idea that he felt as a commanding general on parade, who had confidence in all, consequently gave orders to all. the appointed sabbath, with a delicious breeze and cloudless sky, made its appearance. the people gathered in crowds to the church-the streets were filled with neighboring citizens, all marching to the house of worship. it is entirely useless for me to attempt to describe the feelings of elfonzo and ambulinia, who were silently watching the movements of the multitude, apparently counting them as then entered the house of god, looking for the last one to darken the door. the impatience and anxiety with which they waited, and the bliss they anticipated on the eventful day, is altogether indescribable. those that have been so fortunate as to embark in such a noble enterprise know all its realities; and those who have not had this inestimable privilege will have to taste its sweets before they can tell to others its joys, its comforts, and its heaven-born worth. immediately after ambulinia had assisted the family off to church, she took advantage of that opportunity to make good her promises. she left a home of enjoyment to be wedded to one whose love had been justifiable. a few short steps brought her to the presence of louisa, who urged her to make good use of her time, and not to delay a moment, but to go with her to her brother's house, where elfonzo would forever make her happy. with lively speed, and yet a graceful air, she entered the door and found herself protected by the champion of her confidence. the necessary arrangements were fast making to have the two lovers united-everything was in readiness except the parson; and as they are generally very sanctimonious on such occasions, the news got to the parents of ambulinia before the everlasting knot was tied, and they both came running, with uplifted hands and injured feelings, to arrest their daughter from an unguarded and hasty resolution. elfonzo desired to maintain his ground, but ambulinia thought it best for him to leave, to prepare for a greater contest. he accordingly obeyed, as it would have been a vain endeavor for him to have battled against a man who was armed with deadly weapons; and besides, he could not resist the request of such a pure heart. ambulinia concealed herself in the upper story of the house, fearing the rebuke of her father; the door was locked, and no chastisement was now expected. esquire valeer, whose pride was already touched, resolved to preserve the dignity of his family. he entered the house almost exhausted, looking wildly for ambulinia. "amazed and astonished indeed i am," said he, "at a people who call themselves civilized, to allow such behavior as this. ambulinia, ambulinia!" he cried, "come to the calls of your first, your best, and your only friend. i appeal to you, sir," turning to the gentleman of the house, "to know where ambulinia has gone, or where is she?" "do you mean to insult me, sir, in my own house?" inquired the gentleman. "i will burst," said mr. v., "asunder every door in your dwelling, in search of my daughter, if you do not speak quickly, and tell me where she is. i care nothing about that outcast rubbish of creation, that mean, low-lived elfonzo, if i can but obtain ambulinia. are you not going to open this door?" said he. "by the eternal that made heaven and earth! i will go about the work instantly, if this is not done!" the confused citizens gathered from all parts of the village, to know the cause of this commotion. some rushed into the house; the door that was locked flew open, and there stood ambulinia, weeping. "father, be still," said she, "and i will follow thee home." but the agitated man seized her, and bore her off through the gazing multitude. "father!" she exclaimed, "i humbly beg your pardon--i will be dutiful--i will obey thy commands. let the sixteen years i have lived in obedience to thee by my future security." "i don't like to be always giving credit, when the old score is not paid up, madam," said the father. the mother followed almost in a state of derangement, crying and imploring her to think beforehand, and ask advice from experienced persons, and they would tell her it was a rash undertaking. "oh!" said she, "ambulinia, my daughter, did you know what i have suffered-did you know how many nights i have whiled away in agony, in pain, and in fear, you would pity the sorrows of a heartbroken mother." "well, mother," replied ambulinia, "i know i have been disobedient; i am aware that what i have done might have been done much better; but oh! what shall i do with my honor? it is so dear to me; i am pledged to elfonzo. his high moral worth is certainly worth some attention; moreover, my vows, i have no doubt, are recorded in the book of life, and must i give these all up? must my fair hopes be forever blasted? forbid it, father; oh! forbid it, mother; forbid it, heaven." "i have seen so many beautiful skies overclouded," replied the mother, "so many blossoms nipped by the frost, that i am afraid to trust you to the care of those fair days, which may be interrupted by thundering and tempestuous nights. you no doubt think as i did--life's devious ways were strewn with sweet-scented flowers, but ah! how long they have lingered around me and took their flight in the vivid hope that laughs at the drooping victims it has murdered." elfonzo was moved at this sight. the people followed on to see what was going to become of ambulinia, while he, with downcast looks, kept at a distance, until he saw them enter the abode of the father, thrusting her, that was the sigh of his soul, out of his presence into a solitary apartment, when she exclaimed, "elfonzo! elfonzo! oh, elfonzo! where art thou, with all thy heroes? haste, oh! haste, come thou to my relief. ride on the wings of the wind! turn thy force loose like a tempest, and roll on thy army like a whirlwind, over this mountain of trouble and confusion. oh, friends! if any pity me, let your last efforts throng upon the green hills, and come to the relief of ambulinia, who is guilty of nothing but innocent love." elfonzo called out with a loud voice, "my god, can i stand this! arise up, i beseech you, and put an end to this tyranny. come, my brave boys," said he, "are you ready to go forth to your duty?" they stood around him. "who," said he, "will call us to arms? where are my thunderbolts of war? speak ye, the first who will meet the foe! who will go forward with me in this ocean of grievous temptation? if there is one who desires to go, let him come and shake hands upon the altar of devotion, and swear that he will be a hero; yes, a hector in a cause like this, which calls aloud for a speedy remedy." "mine be the deed," said a young lawyer, "and mine alone; venus alone shall quit her station before i will forsake one jot or tittle of my promise to you; what is death to me? what is all this warlike army, if it is not to win a victory? i love the sleep of the lover and the mighty; nor would i give it over till the blood of my enemies should wreak with that of my own. but god forbid that our fame should soar on the blood of the slumberer." mr. valeer stands at his door with the frown of a demon upon his brow, with his dangerous weapon ready to strike the first man who should enter his door. "who will arise and go forward through blood and carnage to the rescue of my ambulinia?" said elfonzo. "all," exclaimed the multitude; and onward they went, with their implements of battle. others, of a more timid nature, stood among the distant hills to see the result of the contest. elfonzo took the lead of his band. night arose in clouds; darkness concealed the heavens; but the blazing hopes that stimulated them gleamed in every bosom. all approached the anxious spot; they rushed to the front of the house and, with one exclamation, demanded ambulinia. "away, begone, and disturb my peace no more," said mr. valeer. "you are a set of base, insolent, and infernal rascals. go, the northern star points your path through the dim twilight of the night; go, and vent your spite upon the lonely hills; pour forth your love, you poor, weak-minded wretch, upon your idleness and upon your guitar, and your fiddle; they are fit subjects for your admiration, for let me assure you, though this sword and iron lever are cankered, yet they frown in sleep, and let one of you dare to enter my house this night and you shall have the contents and the weight of these instruments." "never yet did base dishonor blur my name," said elfonzo; "mine is a cause of renown; here are my warriors; fear and tremble, for this night, though hell itself should oppose, i will endeavor to avenge her whom thou hast banished in solitude. the voice of ambulinia shall be heard from that dark dungeon." at that moment ambulinia appeared at the window above, and with a tremulous voice said, "live, elfonzo! oh! live to raise my stone of moss! why should such language enter your heart? why should thy voice rend the air with such agitation? i bid thee live, once more remembering these tears of mine are shed alone for thee, in this dark and gloomy vault, and should i perish under this load of trouble, join the song of thrilling accents with the raven above my grave, and lay this tattered frame beside the banks of the chattahoochee or the stream of sawney's brook; sweet will be the song of death to your ambulinia. my ghost shall visit you in the smiles of paradise, and tell your high fame to the minds of that region, which is far more preferable than this lonely cell. my heart shall speak for thee till the latest hour; i know faint and broken are the sounds of sorrow, yet our souls, elfonzo, shall hear the peaceful songs together. one bright name shall be ours on high, if we are not permitted to be united here; bear in mind that i still cherish my old sentiments, and the poet will mingle the names of elfonzo and ambulinia in the tide of other days." "fly, elfonzo, " said the voices of his united band, "to the wounded heart of your beloved. all enemies shall fall beneath thy sword. fly through the clefts, and the dim spark shall sleep in death." elfonzo rushes forward and strikes his shield against the door, which was barricaded, to prevent any intercourse. his brave sons throng around him. the people pour along the streets, both male and female, to prevent or witness the melancholy scene. "to arms, to arms!" cried elfonzo; "here is a victory to be won, a prize to be gained that is more to me that the whole world beside." "it cannot be done tonight," said mr. valeer. "i bear the clang of death; my strength and armor shall prevail. my ambulinia shall rest in this hall until the break of another day, and if we fall, we fall together. if we die, we die clinging to our tattered rights, and our blood alone shall tell the mournful tale of a murdered daughter and a ruined father." sure enough, he kept watch all night, and was successful in defending his house and family. the bright morning gleamed upon the hills, night vanished away, the major and his associates felt somewhat ashamed that they had not been as fortunate as they expected to have been; however, they still leaned upon their arms in dispersed groups; some were walking the streets, others were talking in the major's behalf. many of the citizen suspended business, as the town presented nothing but consternation. a novelty that might end in the destruction of some worthy and respectable citizens. mr. valeer ventured in the streets, though not without being well armed. some of his friends congratulated him on the decided stand he had taken, and hoped he would settle the matter amicably with elfonzo, without any serious injury. "me," he replied, "what, me, condescend to fellowship with a coward, and a low-lived, lazy, undermining villain? no, gentlemen, this cannot be; i had rather be borne off, like the bubble upon the dark blue ocean, with ambulinia by my side, than to have him in the ascending or descending line of relationship. gentlemen," continued he, "if elfonzo is so much of a distinguished character, and is so learned in the fine arts, why do you not patronize such men? why not introduce him into your families, as a gentleman of taste and of unequaled magnanimity? why are you so very anxious that he should become a relative of mine? oh, gentlemen, i fear you yet are tainted with the curiosity of our first parents, who were beguiled by the poisonous kiss of an old ugly serpent, and who, for one apple, damned all mankind. i wish to divest myself, as far as possible, of that untutored custom. i have long since learned that the perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy, is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambition to our capacities; we will then be a happy and a virtuous people." ambulinia was sent off to prepare for a long and tedious journey. her new acquaintances had been instructed by her father how to treat her, and in what manner, and to keep the anticipated visit entirely secret. elfonzo was watching the movements of everybody; some friends had told him of the plot that was laid to carry off ambulinia. at night, he rallied some two or three of his forces, and went silently along to the stately mansion; a faint and glimmering light showed through the windows; lightly he steps to the door; there were many voices rallying fresh in fancy's eye; he tapped the shutter; it was opened instantly, and he beheld once more, seated beside several ladies, the hope of all his toils; he rushed toward her, she rose from her seat, rejoicing; he made one mighty grasp, when ambulinia exclaimed, "huzza for major elfonzo! i will defend myself and you, too, with this conquering instrument i hold in my hand; huzza, i say, i now invoke time's broad wing to shed around us some dewdrops of verdant spring." but the hour had not come for this joyous reunion; her friends struggled with elfonzo for some time, and finally succeeded in arresting her from his hands. he dared not injure them, because they were matrons whose courage needed no spur; she was snatched from the arms of elfonzo, with so much eagerness, and yet with such expressive signification, that he calmly withdrew from this lovely enterprise, with an ardent hope that he should be lulled to repose by the zephyrs which whispered peace to his soul. several long days and night passed unmolested, all seemed to have grounded their arms of rebellion, and no callidity appeared to be going on with any of the parties. other arrangements were made by ambulinia; she feigned herself to be entirely the votary of a mother's care, and she, by her graceful smiles, that manhood might claim his stern dominion in some other region, where such boisterous love was not so prevalent. this gave the parents a confidence that yielded some hours of sober joy; they believed that ambulinia would now cease to love elfonzo, and that her stolen affections would now expire with her misguided opinions. they therefore declined the idea of sending her to a distant land. but oh! they dreamed not of the rapture that dazzled the fancy of ambulinia, who would say, when alone, youth should not fly away on his rosy pinions, and leave her to grapple in the conflict with unknown admirers. no frowning age shall control the constant current of my soul, nor a tear from pity's eye shall check my sympathetic sigh. with this resolution fixed in her mind, one dark and dreary night, when the winds whistled and the tempest roared, she received intelligence that elfonzo was then waiting, and every preparation was then ready, at the residence of dr. tully, and for her to make a quick escape while the family was reposing. accordingly she gathered her books, went the wardrobe supplied with a variety of ornamental dressing, and ventured alone in the streets to make her way to elfonzo, who was near at hand, impatiently looking and watching her arrival. "what forms," said she, "are those rising before me? what is that dark spot on the clouds? i do wonder what frightful ghost that is, gleaming on the red tempest? oh, be merciful and tell me what region you are from. oh, tell me, ye strong spirits, or ye dark and fleeting clouds, that i yet have a friend." "a friend," said a low, whispering voice. "i am thy unchanging, thy aged, and thy disappointed mother. why brandish in that hand of thine a javelin of pointed steel? why suffer that lip i have kissed a thousand times to equivocate? my daughter, let these tears sink deep into thy soul, and no longer persist in that which may be your destruction and ruin. come, my dear child, retract your steps, and bear me company to your welcome home." without one retorting word, or frown from her brow, she yielded to the entreaties of her mother, and with all the mildness of her former character she went along with the silver lamp of age, to the home of candor and benevolence. her father received her cold and formal politeness--"where has ambulinia been, this blustering evening, mrs. valeer?" inquired he. "oh, she and i have been taking a solitary walk," said the mother; "all things, i presume, are now working for the best." elfonzo heard this news shortly after it happened. "what," said he, "has heaven and earth turned against me? i have been disappointed times without number. shall i despair?--must i give it over? heaven's decrees will not fade; i will write again--i will try again; and if it traverses a gory field, i pray forgiveness at the altar of justice." desolate hill, cumming, geo., 1844. unconquered and beloved ambulinia-i have only time to say to you, not to despair; thy fame shall not perish; my visions are brightening before me. the whirlwind's rage is past, and we now shall subdue our enemies without doubt. on monday morning, when your friends are at breakfast, they will not suspect your departure, or even mistrust me being in town, as it has been reported advantageously that i have left for the west. you walk carelessly toward the academy grove, where you will find me with a lightning steed, elegantly equipped to bear you off where we shall be joined in wedlock with the first connubial rights. fail not to do this--think not of the tedious relations of our wrongs-be invincible. you alone occupy all my ambition, and i alone will make you my happy spouse, with the same unimpeached veracity. i remain, forever, your devoted friend and admirer, j. l. elfonzo. the appointed day ushered in undisturbed by any clouds; nothing disturbed ambulinia's soft beauty. with serenity and loveliness she obeys the request of elfonzo. the moment the family seated themselves at the table--"excuse my absence for a short time," said she, "while i attend to the placing of those flowers, which should have been done a week ago." and away she ran to the sacred grove, surrounded with glittering pearls, that indicated her coming. elfonzo hails her with his silver bow and his golden harp. they meet-ambulinia's countenance brightens--elfonzo leads up his winged steed. "mount," said he, "ye true-hearted, ye fearless soul--the day is ours." she sprang upon the back of the young thunder bolt, a brilliant star sparkles upon her head, with one hand she grasps the reins, and with the other she holds an olive branch. "lend thy aid, ye strong winds," they exclaimed, "ye moon, ye sun, and all ye fair host of heaven, witness the enemy conquered." "hold," said elfonzo, "thy dashing steed." "ride on," said ambulinia, "the voice of thunder is behind us." and onward they went, with such rapidity that they very soon arrived at rural retreat, where they dismounted, and were united with all the solemnities that usually attend such divine operations. they passed the day in thanksgiving and great rejoicing, and on that evening they visited their uncle, where many of their friends and acquaintances had gathered to congratulate them in the field of untainted bliss. the kind old gentleman met them in the yard: "well," said he, "i wish i may die, elfonzo, if you and ambulinia haven't tied a knot with your tongue that you can't untie with your teeth. but come in, come in, never mind, all is right--the world still moves on, and no one has fallen in this great battle." happy now is there lot! unmoved by misfortune, they live among the fair beauties of the south. heaven spreads their peace and fame upon the arch of the rainbow, and smiles propitiously at their triumph, through the tears of the storm. *** the californian's tale thirty-five years ago i was out prospecting on the stanislaus, tramping all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful of dirt here and there, always expecting to make a rich strike, and never doing it. it was a lovely reason, woodsy, balmy, delicious, and had once been populous, long years before, but now the people had vanished and the charming paradise was a solitude. they went away when the surface diggings gave out. in one place, where a busy little city with banks and newspapers and fire companies and a mayor and aldermen had been, was nothing but a wide expanse of emerald turf, with not even the faintest sign that human life had ever been present there. this was down toward tuttletown. in the country neighborhood thereabouts, along the dusty roads, one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug and cozy, and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors and windows were wholly hidden from sight--sign that these were deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disappointed families who could neither sell them nor give them away. now and then, half an hour apart, one came across solitary log cabins of the earliest mining days, built by the first gold-miners, the predecessors of the cottage-builders. in some few cases these cabins were still occupied; and when this was so, you could depend upon it that the occupant was the very pioneer who had built the cabin; and you could depend on another thing, too--that he was there because he had once had his opportunity to go home to the states rich, and had not done it; had rather lost his wealth, and had then in his humiliation resolved to sever all communication with his home relatives and friends, and be to them thenceforth as one dead. round about california in that day were scattered a host of these living dead men-pride-smitten poor fellows, grizzled and old at forty, whose secret thoughts were made all of regrets and longings--regrets for their wasted lives, and longings to be out of the struggle and done with it all. it was a lonesome land! not a sound in all those peaceful expanses of grass and woods but the drowsy hum of insects; no glimpse of man or beast; nothing to keep up your spirits and make you glad to be alive. and so, at last, in the early part of the afternoon, when i caught sight of a human creature, i felt a most grateful uplift. this person was a man about forty-five years old, and he was standing at the gate of one of those cozy little rose-clad cottages of the sort already referred to. however, this one hadn't a deserted look; it had the look of being lived in and petted and cared for and looked after; and so had its front yard, which was a garden of flowers, abundant, gay, and flourishing. i was invited in, of course, and required to make myself at home-it was the custom of the country.. it was delightful to be in such a place, after long weeks of daily and nightly familiarity with miners' cabins--with all which this implies of dirt floor, never-made beds, tin plates and cups, bacon and beans and black coffee, and nothing of ornament but war pictures from the eastern illustrated papers tacked to the log walls. that was all hard, cheerless, materialistic desolation, but here was a nest which had aspects to rest the tired eye and refresh that something in one's nature which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted by the belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be, that it has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment. i could not have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so, and so content me; or that there could be such solace to the soul in wall-paper and framed lithographs, and bright-colored tidies and lamp-mats, and windsor chairs, and varnished what-nots, with sea-shells and books and china vases on them, and the score of little unclassifiable tricks and touches that a woman's hand distributes about a home, which one sees without knowing he sees them, yet would miss in a moment if they were taken away. the delight that was in my heart showed in my face, and the man saw it and was pleased; saw it so plainly that he answered it as if it had been spoken. "all her work," he said, caressingly; "she did it all herself-every bit," and he took the room in with a glance which was full of affectionate worship. one of those soft japanese fabrics with which women drape with careful negligence the upper part of a picture-frame was out of adjustment. he noticed it, and rearranged it with cautious pains, stepping back several times to gauge the effect before he got it to suit him. then he gave it a light finishing pat or two with his hand, and said: "she always does that. you can't tell just what it lacks, but it does lack something until you've done that--you can see it yourself after it's done, but that is all you know; you can't find out the law of it. it's like the finishing pats a mother gives the child's hair after she's got it combed and brushed, i reckon. i've seen her fix all these things so much that i can do them all just her way, though i don't know the law of any of them. but she knows the law. she knows the why and the how both; but i don't know the why; i only know the how." he took me into a bedroom so that i might wash my hands; such a bedroom as i had not seen for years: white counterpane, white pillows, carpeted floor, papered walls, pictures, dressing-table, with mirror and pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand, with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish, and on a rack more than a dozen towels--towels too clean and white for one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation. so my face spoke again, and he answered with gratified words: "all her work; she did it all herself--every bit. nothing here that hasn't felt the touch of her hand. now you would think-but i mustn't talk so much." by this time i was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail of the room's belongings, as one is apt to do when he is in a new place, where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit; and i became conscious, in one of those unaccountable ways, you know, that there was something there somewhere that the man wanted me to discover for myself. i knew it perfectly, and i knew he was trying to help me by furtive indications with his eye, so i tried hard to get on the right track, being eager to gratify him. i failed several times, as i could see out of the corner of my eye without being told; but at last i knew i must be looking straight at the thing--knew it from the pleasure issuing in invisible waves from him. he broke into a happy laugh, and rubbed his hands together, and cried out: "that's it! you've found it. i knew you would. it's her picture." i went to the little black-walnut bracket on the farther wall, and did find there what i had not yet noticed--a daguerreotype-case. it contained the sweetest girlish face, and the most beautiful, as it seemed to me, that i had ever seen. the man drank the admiration from my face, and was fully satisfied. "nineteen her last birthday," he said, as he put the picture back; "and that was the day we were married. when you see her--ah, just wait till you see her!" "where is she? when will she be in?" "oh, she's away now. she's gone to see her people. they live forty or fifty miles from here. she's been gone two weeks today." "when do you expect her back?" "this is wednesday. she'll be back saturday, in the evening-about nine o'clock, likely." i felt a sharp sense of disappointment. "i'm sorry, because i'll be gone then," i said, regretfully. "gone? no--why should you go? don't go. she'll be disappointed." she would be disappointed--that beautiful creature! if she had said the words herself they could hardly have blessed me more. i was feeling a deep, strong longing to see her--a longing so supplicating, so insistent, that it made me afraid. i said to myself: "i will go straight away from this place, for my peace of mind's sake." "you see, she likes to have people come and stop with us-people who know things, and can talk--people like you. she delights in it; for she knows--oh, she knows nearly everything herself, and can talk, oh, like a bird--and the books she reads, why, you would be astonished. don't go; it's only a little while, you know, and she'll be so disappointed." i heard the words, but hardly noticed them, i was so deep in my thinkings and strugglings. he left me, but i didn't know. presently he was back, with the picture case in his hand, and he held it open before me and said: "there, now, tell her to her face you could have stayed to see her, and you wouldn't." that second glimpse broke down my good resolution. i would stay and take the risk. that night we smoked the tranquil pipe, and talked till late about various things, but mainly about her; and certainly i had had no such pleasant and restful time for many a day. the thursday followed and slipped comfortably away. toward twilight a big miner from three miles away came--one of the grizzled, stranded pioneers--and gave us warm salutation, clothed in grave and sober speech. then he said: "i only just dropped over to ask about the little madam, and when is she coming home. any news from her?" "oh, yes, a letter. would you like to hear it, tom?" "well, i should think i would, if you don't mind, henry!" henry got the letter out of his wallet, and said he would skip some of the private phrases, if we were willing; then he went on and read the bulk of it--a loving, sedate, and altogether charming and gracious piece of handiwork, with a postscript full of affectionate regards and messages to tom, and joe, and charley, and other close friends and neighbors. as the reader finished, he glanced at tom, and cried out: "oho, you're at it again! take your hands away, and let me see your eyes. you always do that when i read a letter from her. i will write and tell her." "oh no, you mustn't, henry. i'm getting old, you know, and any little disappointment makes me want to cry. i thought she'd be here herself, and now you've got only a letter." "well, now, what put that in your head? i thought everybody knew she wasn't coming till saturday." "saturday! why, come to think, i did know it. i wonder what's the matter with me lately? certainly i knew it. ain't we all getting ready for her? well, i must be going now. but i'll be on hand when she comes, old man!" late friday afternoon another gray veteran tramped over from his cabin a mile or so away, and said the boys wanted to have a little gaiety and a good time saturday night, if henry thought she wouldn't be too tired after her journey to be kept up. "tired? she tired! oh, hear the man! joe, you know she'd sit up six weeks to please any one of you!" when joe heard that there was a letter, he asked to have it read, and the loving messages in it for him broke the old fellow all up; but he said he was such an old wreck that that would happen to him if she only just mentioned his name. "lord, we miss her so!" he said. saturday afternoon i found i was taking out my watch pretty often. henry noticed it, and said, with a startled look: "you don't think she ought to be here soon, do you?" i felt caught, and a little embarrassed; but i laughed, and said it was a habit of mine when i was in a state of expenctancy. but he didn't seem quite satisfied; and from that time on he began to show uneasiness. four times he walked me up the road to a point whence we could see a long distance; and there he would stand, shading his eyes with his hand, and looking. several times he said: "i'm getting worried, i'm getting right down worried. i know she's not due till about nine o'clock, and yet something seems to be trying to warn me that something's happened. you don't think anything has happened, do you?" i began to get pretty thoroughly ashamed of him for his childishness; and at last, when he repeated that imploring question still another time, i lost my patience for the moment, and spoke pretty brutally to him. it seemed to shrivel him up and cow him; and he looked so wounded and so humble after that, that i detested myself for having done the cruel and unnecessary thing. and so i was glad when charley, another veteran, arrived toward the edge of the evening, and nestled up to henry to hear the letter read, and talked over the preparations for the welcome. charley fetched out one hearty speech after another, and did his best to drive away his friend's bodings and apprehensions. "anything happened to her? henry, that's pure nonsense. there isn't anything going to happen to her; just make your mind easy as to that. what did the letter say? said she was well, didn't it? and said she'd be here by nine o'clock, didn't it? did you ever know her to fail of her word? why, you know you never did. well, then, don't you fret; she'll be here, and that's absolutely certain, and as sure as you are born. come, now, let's get to decorating-not much time left." pretty soon tom and joe arrived, and then all hands set about adoring the house with flowers. toward nine the three miners said that as they had brought their instruments they might as well tune up, for the boys and girls would soon be arriving now, and hungry for a good, old-fashioned break-down. a fiddle, a banjo, and a clarinet-these were the instruments. the trio took their places side by side, and began to play some rattling dance-music, and beat time with their big boots. it was getting very close to nine. henry was standing in the door with his eyes directed up the road, his body swaying to the torture of his mental distress. he had been made to drink his wife's health and safety several times, and now tom shouted: "all hands stand by! one more drink, and she's here!" joe brought the glasses on a waiter, and served the party. i reached for one of the two remaining glasses, but joe growled under his breath: "drop that! take the other." which i did. henry was served last. he had hardly swallowed his drink when the clock began to strike. he listened till it finished, his face growing pale and paler; then he said: "boys, i'm sick with fear. help me--i want to lie down!" they helped him to the sofa. he began to nestle and drowse, but presently spoke like one talking in his sleep, and said: "did i hear horses' feet? have they come?" one of the veterans answered, close to his ear: "it was jimmy parish come to say the party got delayed, but they're right up the road a piece, and coming along. her horse is lame, but she'll be here in half an hour." "oh, i'm so thankful nothing has happened!" he was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth. in a moment those handy men had his clothes off, and had tucked him into his bed in the chamber where i had washed my hands. they closed the door and came back. then they seemed preparing to leave; but i said: "please don't go, gentlemen. she won't know me; i am a stranger." they glanced at each other. then joe said: "she? poor thing, she's been dead nineteen years!" "dead?" "that or worse. she went to see her folks half a year after she was married, and on her way back, on a saturday evening, the indians captured her within five miles of this place, and she's never been heard of since." "and he lost his mind in consequence?" "never has been sane an hour since. but he only gets bad when that time of year comes round. then we begin to drop in here, three days before she's due, to encourage him up, and ask if he's heard from her, and saturday we all come and fix up the house with flowers, and get everything ready for a dance. we've done it every year for nineteen years. the first saturday there was twenty-seven of us, without counting the girls; there's only three of us now, and the girls are gone. we drug him to sleep, or he would go wild; then he's all right for another year--thinks she's with him till the last three or four days come round; then he begins to look for her, and gets out his poor old letter, and we come and ask him to read it to us. lord, she was a darling!" *** a helpless situation once or twice a year i get a letter of a certain pattern, a pattern that never materially changes, in form and substance, yet i cannot get used to that letter--it always astonishes me. it affects me as the locomotive always affects me: i saw to myself, "i have seen you a thousand times, you always look the same way, yet you are always a wonder, and you are always impossible; to contrive you is clearly beyond human genius--you can't exist, you don't exist, yet here you are!" i have a letter of that kind by me, a very old one. i yearn to print it, and where is the harm? the writer of it is dead years ago, no doubt, and if i conceal her name and address--her this-world address-i am sure her shade will not mind. and with it i wish to print the answer which i wrote at the time but probably did not send. if it went--which is not likely--it went in the form of a copy, for i find the original still here, pigeonholed with the said letter. to that kind of letters we all write answers which we do not send, fearing to hurt where we have no desire to hurt; i have done it many a time, and this is doubtless a case of the sort. the letter x------, california, june 3, 1879. mr. s. l. clemens, hartford, conn.: dear sir,--you will doubtless be surprised to know who has presumed to write and ask a favor of you. let your memory go back to your days in the humboldt mines--'62-'63. you will remember, you and clagett and oliver and the old blacksmith tillou lived in a lean-to which was half-way up the gulch, and there were six log cabins in the camp-strung pretty well separated up the gulch from its mouth at the desert to where the last claim was, at the divide. the lean-to you lived in was the one with a canvas roof that the cow fell down through one night, as told about by you in roughing it--my uncle simmons remembers it very well. he lived in the principal cabin, half-way up the divide, along with dixon and parker and smith. it had two rooms, one for kitchen and the other for bunks, and was the only one that had. you and your party were there on the great night, the time they had dried-apple-pie, uncle simmons often speaks of it. it seems curious that dried-apple-pie should have seemed such a great thing, but it was, and it shows how far humboldt was out of the world and difficult to get to, and how slim the regular bill of fare was. sixteen years ago--it is a long time. i was a little girl then, only fourteen. i never saw you, i lived in washoe. but uncle simmons ran across you every now and then, all during those weeks that you and party were there working your claim which was like the rest. the camp played out long and long ago, there wasn't silver enough in it to make a button. you never saw my husband, but he was there after you left, and lived in that very lean-to, a bachelor then but married to me now. he often wishes there had been a photographer there in those days, he would have taken the lean-to. he got hurt in the old hal clayton claim that was abandoned like the others, putting in a blast and not climbing out quick enough, though he scrambled the best he could. it landed him clear down on the train and hit a piute. for weeks they thought he would not get over it but he did, and is all right, now. has been ever since. this is a long introduction but it is the only way i can make myself known. the favor i ask i feel assured your generous heart will grant: give me some advice about a book i have written. i do not claim anything for it only it is mostly true and as interesting as most of the books of the times. i am unknown in the literary world and you know what that means unless one has some one of influence (like yourself) to help you by speaking a good word for you. i would like to place the book on royalty basis plan with any one you would suggest. this is a secret from my husband and family. i intend it as a surprise in case i get it published. feeling you will take an interest in this and if possible write me a letter to some publisher, or, better still, if you could see them for me and then let me hear. i appeal to you to grant me this favor. with deepest gratitude i think you for your attention. one knows, without inquiring, that the twin of that embarrassing letter is forever and ever flying in this and that and the other direction across the continent in the mails, daily, nightly, hourly, unceasingly, unrestingly. it goes to every well-known merchant, and railway official, and manufacturer, and capitalist, and mayor, and congressman, and governor, and editor, and publisher, and author, and broker, and banker--in a word, to every person who is supposed to have "influence." it always follows the one pattern: "you do not know me, but you once knew a relative of mine," etc., etc. we should all like to help the applicants, we should all be glad to do it, we should all like to return the sort of answer that is desired, but--well, there is not a thing we can do that would be a help, for not in any instance does that latter ever come from anyone who can be helped. the struggler whom you could help does his own helping; it would not occur to him to apply to you, stranger. he has talent and knows it, and he goes into his fight eagerly and with energy and determination--all alone, preferring to be alone. that pathetic letter which comes to you from the incapable, the unhelpable--how do you who are familiar with it answer it? what do you find to say? you do not want to inflict a wound; you hunt ways to avoid that. what do you find? how do you get out of your hard place with a contend conscience? do you try to explain? the old reply of mine to such a letter shows that i tried that once. was i satisfied with the result? possibly; and possibly not; probably not; almost certainly not. i have long ago forgotten all about it. but, anyway, i append my effort: the reply i know mr. h., and i will go to him, dear madam, if upon reflection you find you still desire it. there will be a conversation. i know the form it will take. it will be like this: mr. h. how do her books strike you? mr. clemens. i am not acquainted with them. h. who has been her publisher? c. i don't know. h. she has one, i suppose? c. i--i think not. h. ah. you think this is her first book? c. yes--i suppose so. i think so. h. what is it about? what is the character of it? c. i believe i do not know. h. have you seen it? c. well--no, i haven't. h. ah-h. how long have you known her? c. i don't know her. h. don't know her? c. no. h. ah-h. how did you come to be interested in her book, then? c. well, she--she wrote and asked me to find a publisher for her, and mentioned you. h. why should she apply to you instead of me? c. she wished me to use my influence. h. dear me, what has influence to do with such a matter? c. well, i think she thought you would be more likely to examine her book if you were influenced. h. why, what we are here for is to examine books--anybody's book that comes along. it's our business. why should we turn away a book unexamined because it's a stranger's? it would be foolish. no publisher does it. on what ground did she request your influence, since you do not know her? she must have thought you knew her literature and could speak for it. is that it? c. no; she knew i didn't. h. well, what then? she had a reason of some sort for believing you competent to recommend her literature, and also under obligations to do it? c. yes, i--i knew her uncle. h. knew her uncle? c. yes. h. upon my word! so, you knew her uncle; her uncle knows her literature; he endorses it to you; the chain is complete, nothing further needed; you are satisfied, and therefore-c. no, that isn't all, there are other ties. i know the cabin her uncle lived in, in the mines; i knew his partners, too; also i came near knowing her husband before she married him, and i did know the abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off and he went flying through the air and clear down to the trail and hit an indian in the back with almost fatal consequences. h. to him, or to the indian? c. she didn't say which it was. h. (with a sigh). it certainly beats the band! you don't know her, you don't know her literature, you don't know who got hurt when the blast went off, you don't know a single thing for us to build an estimate of her book upon, so far as i-c. i knew her uncle. you are forgetting her uncle. h. oh, what use is he? did you know him long? how long was it? c. well, i don't know that i really knew him, but i must have met him, anyway. i think it was that way; you can't tell about these things, you know, except when they are recent. h. recent? when was all this? c. sixteen years ago. h. what a basis to judge a book upon! as first you said you knew him, and not you don't know whether you did or not. c. oh yes, i know him; anyway, i think i thought i did; i'm perfectly certain of it. h. what makes you think you thought you knew him? c. why, she says i did, herself. h. she says so! c. yes, she does, and i did know him, too, though i don't remember it now. h. come--how can you know it when you don't remember it. c. _i_ don't know. that is, i don't know the process, but i do know lots of things that i don't remember, and remember lots of things that i don't know. it's so with every educated person. h. (after a pause). is your time valuable? c. no--well, not very. h. mine is. so i came away then, because he was looking tired. overwork, i reckon; i never do that; i have seen the evil effects of it. my mother was always afraid i work overwork myself, but i never did. dear madam, you see how it would happen if i went there. he would ask me those questions, and i would try to answer them to suit him, and he would hunt me here and there and yonder and get me embarrassed more and more all the time, and at last he would look tired on account of overwork, and there it would end and nothing done. i wish i could be useful to you, but, you see, they do not care for uncles or any of those things; it doesn't move them, it doesn't have the least effect, they don't care for anything but the literature itself, and they as good as despise influence. but they do care for books, and are eager to get them and examine them, no matter whence they come, nor from whose pen. if you will send yours to a publisher--any publisher--he will certainly examine it, i can assure you of that. *** a telephonic conversation consider that a conversation by telephone--when you are simply siting by and not taking any part in that conversation--is one of the solemnest curiosities of modern life. yesterday i was writing a deep article on a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was going on in the room. i notice that one can always write best when somebody is talking through a telephone close by. well, the thing began in this way. a member of our household came in and asked me to have our house put into communication with mr. bagley's downtown. i have observed, in many cities, that the sex always shrink from calling up the central office themselves. i don't know why, but they do. so i touched the bell, and this talk ensued: central office. (gruffy.) hello! i. is it the central office? c. o. of course it is. what do you want? i. will you switch me on to the bagleys, please? c. o. all right. just keep your ear to the telephone. then i heard k-look, k-look, k'look--klook-klook-klook-look-look! then a horrible "gritting" of teeth, and finally a piping female voice: y-e-s? (rising inflection.) did you wish to speak to me? without answering, i handed the telephone to the applicant, and sat down. then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world-a conversation with only one end of it. you hear questions asked; you don't hear the answer. you hear invitations given; you hear no thanks in return. you have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay. you can't make head or tail of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says. well, i heard the following remarkable series of observations, all from the one tongue, and all shouted-for you can't ever persuade the sex to speak gently into a telephone: yes? why, how did that happen? pause. what did you say? pause. oh no, i don't think it was. pause. no! oh no, i didn't mean that. i meant, put it in while it is still boiling--or just before it comes to a boil. pause. what? pause. i turned it over with a backstitch on the selvage edge. pause. yes, i like that way, too; but i think it's better to baste it on with valenciennes or bombazine, or something of that sort. it gives it such an air--and attracts so much noise. pause. it's forty-ninth deuteronomy, sixty-forth to ninety-seventh inclusive. i think we ought all to read it often. pause. perhaps so; i generally use a hair pin. pause. what did you say? (aside.) children, do be quiet! pause oh! b flat! dear me, i thought you said it was the cat! pause. since when? pause. why, _i_ never heard of it. pause. you astound me! it seems utterly impossible! pause. who did? pause. good-ness gracious! pause. well, what is this world coming to? was it right in church? pause. and was her mother there? pause. why, mrs. bagley, i should have died of humiliation! what did they do? long pause. i can't be perfectly sure, because i haven't the notes by me; but i think it goes something like this: te-rolly-loll-loll, loll lolly-loll-loll, o tolly-loll-loll-lee-ly-li-i-do! and then repeat, you know. pause. yes, i think it is very sweet--and very solemn and impressive, if you get the andantino and the pianissimo right. pause. oh, gum-drops, gum-drops! but i never allow them to eat striped candy. and of course they can't, till they get their teeth, anyway. pause. what? pause. oh, not in the least--go right on. he's here writing--it doesn't bother him. pause. very well, i'll come if i can. (aside.) dear me, how it does tire a person's arm to hold this thing up so long! i wish she'd-pause. oh no, not at all; i like to talk--but i'm afraid i'm keeping you from your affairs. pause. visitors? pause. no, we never use butter on them. pause. yes, that is a very good way; but all the cook-books say they are very unhealthy when they are out of season. and he doesn't like them, anyway--especially canned. pause. oh, i think that is too high for them; we have never paid over fifty cents a bunch. pause. must you go? well, good-by. pause. yes, i think so. good-by. pause. four o'clock, then--i'll be ready. good-by. pause. thank you ever so much. good-by. pause. oh, not at all!--just as fresh--which? oh, i'm glad to hear you say that. good-by. (hangs up the telephone and says, "oh, it does tire a person's arm so!") a man delivers a single brutal "good-by," and that is the end of it. not so with the gentle sex--i say it in their praise; they cannot abide abruptness. *** edward mills and george benton: a tale these two were distantly related to each other--seventh cousins, or something of that sort. while still babies they became orphans, and were adopted by the brants, a childless couple, who quickly grew very fond of them. the brants were always saying: "be pure, honest, sober, industrious, and considerate of others, and success in life is assured." the children heard this repeated some thousands of times before they understood it; they could repeat it themselves long before they could say the lord's prayer; it was painted over the nursery door, and was about the first thing they learned to read. it was destined to be the unswerving rule of edward mills's life. sometimes the brants changed the wording a little, and said: "be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never lack friends." baby mills was a comfort to everybody about him. when he wanted candy and could not have it, he listened to reason, and contented himself without it. when baby benton wanted candy, he cried for it until he got it. baby mills took care of his toys; baby benton always destroyed his in a very brief time, and then made himself to insistently disagreeable that, in order to have peace in the house, little edward was persuaded to yield up his play-things to him. when the children were a little older, georgie became a heavy expense in one respect: he took no care of his clothes; consequently, he shone frequently in new ones, with was not the case with eddie. the boys grew apace. eddie was an increasing comfort, georgie an increasing solicitude. it was always sufficient to say, in answer to eddie's petitions, "i would rather you would not do it"-meaning swimming, skating, picnicking, berrying, circusing, and all sorts of things which boys delight in. but no answer was sufficient for georgie; he had to be humored in his desires, or he would carry them with a high hand. naturally, no boy got more swimming skating, berrying, and so forth than he; no body ever had a better time. the good brants did not allow the boys to play out after nine in summer evenings; they were sent to bed at that hour; eddie honorably remained, but georgie usually slipped out of the window toward ten, and enjoyed himself until midnight. it seemed impossible to break georgie of this bad habit, but the brants managed it at last by hiring him, with apples and marbles, to stay in. the good brants gave all their time and attention to vain endeavors to regulate georgie; they said, with grateful tears in their eyes, that eddie needed no efforts of theirs, he was so good, so considerate, and in all ways so perfect. by and by the boys were big enough to work, so they were apprenticed to a trade: edward went voluntarily; george was coaxed and bribed. edward worked hard and faithfully, and ceased to be an expense to the good brants; they praised him, so did his master; but george ran away, and it cost mr. brant both money and trouble to hunt him up and get him back. by and by he ran away again--more money and more trouble. he ran away a third time--and stole a few things to carry with him. trouble and expense for mr. brant once more; and, besides, it was with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in persuading the master to let the youth go unprosecuted for the theft. edward worked steadily along, and in time became a full partner in his master's business. george did not improve; he kept the loving hearts of his aged benefactors full of trouble, and their hands full of inventive activities to protect him from ruin. edward, as a boy, had interested himself in sunday-schools, debating societies, penny missionary affairs, anti-tobacco organizations, anti-profanity associations, and all such things; as a man, he was a quiet but steady and reliable helper in the church, the temperance societies, and in all movements looking to the aiding and uplifting of men. this excited no remark, attracted no attention--for it was his "natural bent." finally, the old people died. the will testified their loving pride in edward, and left their little property to george-because he "needed it"; whereas, "owing to a bountiful providence," such was not the case with edward. the property was left to george conditionally: he must buy out edward's partner with it; else it must go to a benevolent organization called the prisoner's friend society. the old people left a letter, in which they begged their dear son edward to take their place and watch over george, and help and shield him as they had done. edward dutifully acquiesced, and george became his partner in the business. he was not a valuable partner: he had been meddling with drink before; he soon developed into a constant tippler now, and his flesh and eyes showed the fact unpleasantly. edward had been courting a sweet and kindly spirited girl for some time. they loved each other dearly, and--but about this period george began to haunt her tearfully and imploringly, and at last she went crying to edward, and said her high and holy duty was plain before her-she must not let her own selfish desires interfere with it: she must marry "poor george" and "reform him." it would break her heart, she knew it would, and so on; but duty was duty. so she married george, and edward's heart came very near breaking, as well as her own. however, edward recovered, and married another girl-a very excellent one she was, too. children came to both families. mary did her honest best to reform her husband, but the contract was too large. george went on drinking, and by and by he fell to misusing her and the little ones sadly. a great many good people strove with george--they were always at it, in fact--but he calmly took such efforts as his due and their duty, and did not mend his ways. he added a vice, presently--that of secret gambling. he got deeply in debt; he borrowed money on the firm's credit, as quietly as he could, and carried this system so far and so successfully that one morning the sheriff took possession of the establishment, and the two cousins found themselves penniless. times were hard, now, and they grew worse. edward moved his family into a garret, and walked the streets day and night, seeking work. he begged for it, but in was really not to be had. he was astonished to see how soon his face became unwelcome; he was astonished and hurt to see how quickly the ancient interest which people had had in him faded out and disappeared. still, he must get work; so he swallowed his chagrin, and toiled on in search of it. at last he got a job of carrying bricks up a ladder in a hod, and was a grateful man in consequence; but after that nobody knew him or cared anything about him. he was not able to keep up his dues in the various moral organizations to which he belonged, and had to endure the sharp pain of seeing himself brought under the disgrace of suspension. but the faster edward died out of public knowledge and interest, the faster george rose in them. he was found lying, ragged and drunk, in the gutter one morning. a member of the ladies' temperance refuge fished him out, took him in hand, got up a subscription for him, kept him sober a whole week, then got a situation for him. an account of it was published. general attention was thus drawn to the poor fellow, and a great many people came forward and helped him toward reform with their countenance and encouragement. he did not drink a drop for two months, and meantime was the pet of the good. then he fell--in the gutter; and there was general sorrow and lamentation. but the noble sisterhood rescued him again. they cleaned him up, they fed him, they listened to the mournful music of his repentances, they got him his situation again. an account of this, also, was published, and the town was drowned in happy tears over the re-restoration of the poor beast and struggling victim of the fatal bowl. a grand temperance revival was got up, and after some rousing speeches had been made the chairman said, impressively: "we are not about to call for signers; and i think there is a spectacle in store for you which not many in this house will be able to view with dry eyes." there was an eloquent pause, and then george benton, escorted by a red-sashed detachment of the ladies of the refuge, stepped forward upon the platform and signed the pledge. the air was rent with applause, and everybody cried for joy. everybody wrung the hand of the new convert when the meeting was over; his salary was enlarged next day; he was the talk of the town, and its hero. an account of it was published. george benton fell, regularly, every three months, but was faithfully rescued and wrought with, every time, and good situations were found for him. finally, he was taken around the country lecturing, as a reformed drunkard, and he had great houses and did an immense amount of good. he was so popular at home, and so trusted--during his sober intervals-that he was enabled to use the name of a principal citizen, and get a large sum of money at the bank. a mighty pressure was brought to bear to save him from the consequences of his forgery, and it was partially successful--he was "sent up" for only two years. when, at the end of a year, the tireless efforts of the benevolent were crowned with success, and he emerged from the penitentiary with a pardon in his pocket, the prisoner's friend society met him at the door with a situation and a comfortable salary, and all the other benevolent people came forward and gave him advice, encouragement and help. edward mills had once applied to the prisoner's friend society for a situation, when in dire need, but the question, "have you been a prisoner?" made brief work of his case. while all these things were going on, edward mills had been quietly making head against adversity. he was still poor, but was in receipt of a steady and sufficient salary, as the respected and trusted cashier of a bank. george benton never came near him, and was never heard to inquire about him. george got to indulging in long absences from the town; there were ill reports about him, but nothing definite. one winter's night some masked burglars forced their way into the bank, and found edward mills there alone. they commanded him to reveal the "combination," so that they could get into the safe. he refused. they threatened his life. he said his employers trusted him, and he could not be traitor to that trust. he could die, if he must, but while he lived he would be faithful; he would not yield up the "combination." the burglars killed him. the detectives hunted down the criminals; the chief one proved to be george benton. a wide sympathy was felt for the widow and orphans of the dead man, and all the newspapers in the land begged that all the banks in the land would testify their appreciation of the fidelity and heroism of the murdered cashier by coming forward with a generous contribution of money in aid of his family, now bereft of support. the result was a mass of solid cash amounting to upward of five hundred dollars--an average of nearly three-eights of a cent for each bank in the union. the cashier's own bank testified its gratitude by endeavoring to show (but humiliatingly failed in it) that the peerless servant's accounts were not square, and that he himself had knocked his brains out with a bludgeon to escape detection and punishment. george benton was arraigned for trial. then everybody seemed to forget the widow and orphans in their solicitude for poor george. everything that money and influence could do was done to save him, but it all failed; he was sentenced to death. straightway the governor was besieged with petitions for commutation or pardon; they were brought by tearful young girls; by sorrowful old maids; by deputations of pathetic widows; by shoals of impressive orphans. but no, the governor--for once--would not yield. now george benton experienced religion. the glad news flew all around. from that time forth his cell was always full of girls and women and fresh flowers; all the day long there was prayer, and hymn-singing, and thanksgiving, and homilies, and tears, with never an interruption, except an occasional five-minute intermission for refreshments. this sort of thing continued up to the very gallows, and george benton went proudly home, in the black cap, before a wailing audience of the sweetest and best that the region could produce. his grave had fresh flowers on it every day, for a while, and the head-stone bore these words, under a hand pointing aloft: "he has fought the good fight." the brave cashier's head-stone has this inscription: "be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never--" nobody knows who gave the order to leave it that way, but it was so given. the cashier's family are in stringent circumstances, now, it is said; but no matter; a lot of appreciative people, who were not willing that an act so brave and true as his should go unrewarded, have collected forty-two thousand dollars--and built a memorial church with it. *** the five boons of life chapter i in the morning of life came a good fairy with her basket, and said: "here are gifts. take one, leave the others. and be wary, chose wisely; oh, choose wisely! for only one of them is valuable." the gifts were five: fame, love, riches, pleasure, death. the youth said, eagerly: "there is no need to consider"; and he chose pleasure. he went out into the world and sought out the pleasures that youth delights in. but each in its turn was short-lived and disappointing, vain and empty; and each, departing, mocked him. in the end he said: "these years i have wasted. if i could but choose again, i would choose wisely. chapter ii the fairy appeared, and said: "four of the gifts remain. choose once more; and oh, remember-time is flying, and only one of them is precious." the man considered long, then chose love; and did not mark the tears that rose in the fairy's eyes. after many, many years the man sat by a coffin, in an empty home. and he communed with himself, saying: "one by one they have gone away and left me; and now she lies here, the dearest and the last. desolation after desolation has swept over me; for each hour of happiness the treacherous trader, love, as sold me i have paid a thousand hours of grief. out of my heart of hearts i curse him." chapter iii "choose again." it was the fairy speaking. "the years have taught you wisdom--surely it must be so. three gifts remain. only one of them has any worth--remember it, and choose warily." the man reflected long, then chose fame; and the fairy, sighing, went her way. years went by and she came again, and stood behind the man where he sat solitary in the fading day, thinking. and she knew his thought: "my name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue, and it seemed well with me for a little while. how little a while it was! then came envy; then detraction; then calumny; then hate; then persecution. then derision, which is the beginning of the end. and last of all came pity, which is the funeral of fame. oh, the bitterness and misery of renown! target for mud in its prime, for contempt and compassion in its decay." chapter iv "chose yet again." it was the fairy's voice. "two gifts remain. and do not despair. in the beginning there was but one that was precious, and it is still here." "wealth--which is power! how blind i was!" said the man. "now, at last, life will be worth the living. i will spend, squander, dazzle. these mockers and despisers will crawl in the dirt before me, and i will feed my hungry heart with their envy. i will have all luxuries, all joys, all enchantments of the spirit, all contentments of the body that man holds dear. i will buy, buy, buy! deference, respect, esteem, worship--every pinchbeck grace of life the market of a trivial world can furnish forth. i have lost much time, and chosen badly heretofore, but let that pass; i was ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so." three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering in a mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed, and clothed in rags; and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling: "curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies! and miscalled, every one. they are not gifts, but merely lendings. pleasure, love, fame, riches: they are but temporary disguises for lasting realities--pain, grief, shame, poverty. the fairy said true; in all her store there was but one gift which was precious, only one that was not valueless. how poor and cheap and mean i know those others now to be, compared with that inestimable one, that dear and sweet and kindly one, that steeps in dreamless and enduring sleep the pains that persecute the body, and the shames and griefs that eat the mind and heart. bring it! i am weary, i would rest." chapter v the fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but death was wanting. she said: "i gave it to a mother's pet, a little child. it was ignorant, but trusted me, asking me to choose for it. you did not ask me to choose." "oh, miserable me! what is left for me?" "what not even you have deserved: the wanton insult of old age." *** the first writing-machines from my unpublished autobiography some days ago a correspondent sent in an old typewritten sheet, faded by age, containing the following letter over the signature of mark twain: "hartford, march 10, 1875. "please do not use my name in any way. please do not even divulge that fact that i own a machine. i have entirely stopped using the typewriter, for the reason that i never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that i would not only describe the machine, but state what progress i had made in the use of it, etc., etc. i don't like to write letters, and so i don't want people to know i own this curiosity-breeding little joker." a note was sent to mr. clemens asking him if the letter was genuine and whether he really had a typewriter as long ago as that. mr. clemens replied that his best answer is the following chapter from his unpublished autobiography: 1904. villa quarto, florence, january. dictating autobiography to a typewriter is a new experience for me, but it goes very well, and is going to save time and "language"-the kind of language that soothes vexation. i have dictated to a typewriter before--but not autobiography. between that experience and the present one there lies a mighty gap-more than thirty years! it is sort of lifetime. in that wide interval much has happened--to the type-machine as well as to the rest of us. at the beginning of that interval a type-machine was a curiosity. the person who owned one was a curiosity, too. but now it is the other way about: the person who doesn't own one is a curiosity. i saw a type-machine for the first time in--what year? i suppose it was 1873--because nasby was with me at the time, and it was in boston. we must have been lecturing, or we could not have been in boston, i take it. i quitted the platform that season. but never mind about that, it is no matter. nasby and i saw the machine through a window, and went in to look at it. the salesman explained it to us, showed us samples of its work, and said it could do fifty-seven words a minute--a statement which we frankly confessed that we did not believe. so he put his type-girl to work, and we timed her by the watch. she actually did the fifty-seven in sixty seconds. we were partly convinced, but said it probably couldn't happen again. but it did. we timed the girl over and over again--with the same result always: she won out. she did her work on narrow slips of paper, and we pocketed them as fast as she turned them out, to show as curiosities. the price of the machine was one hundred and twenty-five dollars. i bought one, and we went away very much excited. at the hotel we got out our slips and were a little disappointed to find that they contained the same words. the girl had economized time and labor by using a formula which she knew by heart. however, we argued--safely enough--that the first type-girl must naturally take rank with the first billiard-player: neither of them could be expected to get out of the game any more than a third or a half of what was in it. if the machine survived--if it survived-experts would come to the front, by and by, who would double the girl's output without a doubt. they would do one hundred words a minute-my talking speed on the platform. that score has long ago been beaten. at home i played with the toy, repeated and repeating and repeated "the boy stood on the burning deck," until i could turn that boy's adventure out at the rate of twelve words a minute; then i resumed the pen, for business, and only worked the machine to astonish inquiring visitors. they carried off many reams of the boy and his burning deck. by and by i hired a young woman, and did my first dictating (letters, merely), and my last until now. the machine did not do both capitals and lower case (as now), but only capitals. gothic capitals they were, and sufficiently ugly. i remember the first letter i dictated. it was to edward bok, who was a boy then. i was not acquainted with him at that time. his present enterprising spirit is not new-he had it in that early day. he was accumulating autographs, and was not content with mere signatures, he wanted a whole autograph letter. i furnished it--in type-written capitals, signature and all. it was long; it was a sermon; it contained advice; also reproaches. i said writing was my trade, my bread-and-butter; i said it was not fair to ask a man to give away samples of his trade; would he ask the blacksmith for a horseshoe? would he ask the doctor for a corpse? now i come to an important matter--as i regard it. in the year '74 the young woman copied a considerable part of a book of mine on the machine. in a previous chapter of this autobiography i have claimed that i was the first person in the world that ever had a telephone in the house for practical purposes; i will now claim-until dispossess--that i was the first person in the world to apply the type-machine to literature. that book must have been the adventures of tom sawyer. i wrote the first half of it in '72, the rest of it in '74. my machinist type-copied a book for me in '74, so i concluded it was that one. that early machine was full of caprices, full of defects--devilish ones. it had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. after a year or two i found that it was degrading my character, so i thought i would give it to howells. he was reluctant, for he was suspicious of novelties and unfriendly toward them, and he remains so to this day. but i persuaded him. he had great confidence in me, and i got him to believe things about the machine that i did not believe myself. he took it home to boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered. he kept it six months, and then returned it to me. i gave it away twice after that, but it wouldn't stay; it came back. then i gave it to our coachman, patrick mcaleer, who was very grateful, because he did not know the animal, and thought i was trying to make him wiser and better. as soon as he got wiser and better he traded it to a heretic for a side-saddle which he could not use, and there my knowledge of its history ends. *** italian without a master it is almost a fortnight now that i am domiciled in a medieval villa in the country, a mile or two from florence. i cannot speak the language; i am too old not to learn how, also too busy when i am busy, and too indolent when i am not; wherefore some will imagine that i am having a dull time of it. but it is not so. the "help" are all natives; they talk italian to me, i answer in english; i do not understand them, they do not understand me, consequently no harm is done, and everybody is satisfied. in order to be just and fair, i throw in an italian word when i have one, and this has a good influence. i get the word out of the morning paper. i have to use it while it is fresh, for i find that italian words do not keep in this climate. they fade toward night, and next morning they are gone. but it is no matter; i get a new one out of the paper before breakfast, and thrill the domestics with it while it lasts. i have no dictionary, and i do not want one; i can select words by the sound, or by orthographic aspect. many of them have french or german or english look, and these are the ones i enslave for the day's service. that is, as a rule. not always. if i find a learnable phrase that has an imposing look and warbles musically along i do not care to know the meaning of it; i pay it out to the first applicant, knowing that if i pronounce it carefully he will understand it, and that's enough. yesterday's word was avanti. it sounds shakespearian, and probably means avaunt and quit my sight. today i have a whole phrase: sono dispiacentissimo. i do not know what it means, but it seems to fit in everywhere and give satisfaction. although as a rule my words and phrases are good for one day and train only, i have several that stay by me all the time, for some unknown reason, and these come very handy when i get into a long conversation and need things to fire up with in monotonous stretches. one of the best ones is dov' `e il gatto. it nearly always produces a pleasant surprise, therefore i save it up for places where i want to express applause or admiration. the fourth word has a french sound, and i think the phrase means "that takes the cake." during my first week in the deep and dreamy stillness of this woodsy and flowery place i was without news of the outside world, and was well content without it. it has been four weeks since i had seen a newspaper, and this lack seemed to give life a new charm and grace, and to saturate it with a feeling verging upon actual delight. then came a change that was to be expected: the appetite for news began to rise again, after this invigorating rest. i had to feed it, but i was not willing to let it make me its helpless slave again; i determined to put it on a diet, and a strict and limited one. so i examined an italian paper, with the idea of feeding it on that, and on that exclusively. on that exclusively, and without help of a dictionary. in this way i should surely be well protected against overloading and indigestion. a glance at the telegraphic page filled me with encouragement. there were no scare-heads. that was good--supremely good. but there were headings--one-liners and two-liners--and that was good too; for without these, one must do as one does with a german paper--pay our precious time in finding out what an article is about, only to discover, in many cases, that there is nothing in it of interest to you. the headline is a valuable thing. necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles, robberies, explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we knew the people, and when they are neighbors and friends, but when they are strangers we do not get any great pleasure out of them, as a rule. now the trouble with an american paper is that it has no discrimination; it rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage, and the result is that you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit. by habit you stow this muck every day, but you come by and by to take no vital interest in it--indeed, you almost get tired of it. as a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns strangers only-people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand miles, ten thousand miles from where you are. why, when you come to think of it, who cares what becomes of those people? i would not give the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre of those others. and, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole sodom and gomorrah of outlanders gone rotten. give me the home product every time. very well. i saw at a glance that the florentine paper would suit me: five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local; they were adventures of one's very neighbors, one might almost say one's friends. in the matter of world news there was not too much, but just about enough. i subscribed. i have had no occasion to regret it. every morning i get all the news i need for the day; sometimes from the headlines, sometimes from the text. i have never had to call for a dictionary yet. i read the paper with ease. often i do not quite understand, often some of the details escape me, but no matter, i get the idea. i will cut out a passage or two, then you see how limpid the language is: il ritorno dei beati d'italia elargizione del re all' ospedale italiano the first line means that the italian sovereigns are coming back-they have been to england. the second line seems to mean that they enlarged the king at the italian hospital. with a banquet, i suppose. an english banquet has that effect. further: il ritorno dei sovrani a roma roma, 24, ore 22,50.--i sovrani e le principessine reali si attendono a roma domani alle ore 15,51. return of the sovereigns to rome, you see. date of the telegram, rome, november 24, ten minutes before twenty-three o'clock. the telegram seems to say, "the sovereigns and the royal children expect themselves at rome tomorrow at fifty-one minutes after fifteen o'clock." i do not know about italian time, but i judge it begins at midnight and runs through the twenty-four hours without breaking bulk. in the following ad, the theaters open at half-past twenty. if these are not matinees, 20.30 must mean 8.30 p.m., by my reckoning. spettacolli del di 25 teatro della pergola--(ore 20,30)--opera. boh`eme. teatro alfieri.--compagnia drammatica drago--(ore 20,30)--la legge. alhambra--(ore 20,30)--spettacolo variato. sala edison-grandiosoo spettacolo cinematografico: quo vadis?--inaugurazione della chiesa russa--in coda al direttissimo--vedute di firenze con gran movimeno--america: transporto tronchi giganteschi--i ladri in casa del diavolo--scene comiche. cinematografo--via brunelleschi n. 4.--programma straordinario, don chisciotte--prezzi populari. the whole of that is intelligible to me--and sane and rational, too-except the remark about the inauguration of a russian chinese. that one oversizes my hand. give me five cards. this is a four-page paper; and as it is set in long primer leaded and has a page of advertisements, there is no room for the crimes, disasters, and general sweepings of the outside world--thanks be! today i find only a single importation of the off-color sort: una principessa che fugge con un cocchiere parigi, 24.--il matin ha da berlino che la principessa schovenbare-waldenbure scomparve il 9 novembre. sarebbe partita col suo cocchiere. la principassa ha 27 anni. twenty-seven years old, and scomparve--scampered--on the 9th november. you see by the added detail that she departed with her coachman. i hope sarebbe has not made a mistake, but i am afraid the chances are that she has. sono dispiacentissimo. there are several fires: also a couple of accidents. this is one of them: grave disgrazia sul ponte vecchio stammattina, circe le 7,30, mentre giuseppe sciatti, di anni 55, di casellina e torri, passava dal ponte vecchio, stando seduto sopra un barroccio carico di verdura, perse l' equilibrio e cadde al suolo, rimanendo con la gamba destra sotto una ruota del veicolo. lo sciatti fu subito raccolto da alcuni cittadini, che, per mezzo della pubblica vettura n. 365, lo transporto a san giovanni di dio. ivi il medico di guardia gli riscontro la frattura della gamba destra e alcune lievi escoriazioni giudicandolo guaribile in 50 giorni salvo complicazioni. what it seems to say is this: "serious disgrace on the old old bridge. this morning about 7.30, mr. joseph sciatti, aged 55, of casellina and torri, while standing up in a sitting posture on top of a carico barrow of vedure (foliage? hay? vegetables?), lost his equilibrium and fell on himself, arriving with his left leg under one of the wheels of the vehicle. "said sciatti was suddenly harvested (gathered in?) by several citizens, who by means of public cab no. 365 transported to st. john of god." paragraph no. 3 is a little obscure, but i think it says that the medico set the broken left leg--right enough, since there was nothing the matter with the other one--and that several are encouraged to hope that fifty days well fetch him around in quite giudicandolo-guaribile way, if no complications intervene. i am sure i hope so myself. there is a great and peculiar charm about reading news-scraps in a language which you are not acquainted with--the charm that always goes with the mysterious and the uncertain. you can never be absolutely sure of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances; you are chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the baffling turns and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt. a dictionary would spoil it. sometimes a single word of doubtful purport will cast a veil of dreamy and golden uncertainty over a whole paragraph of cold and practical certainties, and leave steeped in a haunting and adorable mystery an incident which had been vulgar and commonplace but for that benefaction. would you be wise to draw a dictionary on that gracious word? would you be properly grateful? after a couple of days' rest i now come back to my subject and seek a case in point. i find it without trouble, in the morning paper; a cablegram from chicago and indiana by way of paris. all the words save one are guessable by a person ignorant of italian: revolverate in teatro parigi, 27.--la patrie ha da chicago: il guardiano del teatro dell'opera di walace (indiana), avendo voluto espellare uno spettatore che continuava a fumare malgrado il diviety, questo spalleggiato dai suoi amici tir`o diversi colpi di rivoltella. il guardiano ripose. nacque una scarica generale. grande panico tra gli spettatori. nessun ferito. translation.--"revolveration in theater. paris, 27th. la patrie has from chicago: the cop of the theater of the opera of wallace, indiana, had willed to expel a spectator which continued to smoke in spite of the prohibition, who, spalleggiato by his friends, tir'o (fr. tir'e, anglice pulled) manifold revolver-shots; great panic among the spectators. nobody hurt." it is bettable that that harmless cataclysm in the theater of the opera of wallace, indiana, excited not a person in europe but me, and so came near to not being worth cabling to florence by way of france. but it does excite me. it excites me because i cannot make out, for sure, what it was that moved the spectator to resist the officer. i was gliding along smoothly and without obstruction or accident, until i came to that word "spalleggiato," then the bottom fell out. you notice what a rich gloom, what a somber and pervading mystery, that word sheds all over the whole wallachian tragedy. that is the charm of the thing, that is the delight of it. this is where you begin, this is where you revel. you can guess and guess, and have all the fun you like; you need not be afraid there will be an end to it; none is possible, for no amount of guessing will ever furnish you a meaning for that word that you can be sure is the right one. all the other words give you hints, by their form, their sound, or their spelling--this one doesn't, this one throws out no hints, this one keeps its secret. if there is even the slightest slight shadow of a hint anywhere, it lies in the very meagerly suggestive fact that "spalleggiato" carries our word "egg" in its stomach. well, make the most out of it, and then where are you at? you conjecture that the spectator which was smoking in spite of the prohibition and become reprohibited by the guardians, was "egged on" by his friends, and that was owing to that evil influence that he initiated the revolveration in theater that has galloped under the sea and come crashing through the european press without exciting anybody but me. but are you sure, are you dead sure, that that was the way of it? no. then the uncertainty remains, the mystery abides, and with it the charm. guess again. if i had a phrase-book of a really satisfactory sort i would study it, and not give all my free time to undictionarial readings, but there is no such work on the market. the existing phrase-books are inadequate. they are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say. *** italian with grammar i found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but i presently found that to such a parson a grammar could be of use at times. it is because, if he does not know the were's and the was's and the maybe's and the has-beens's apart, confusions and uncertainties can arise. he can get the idea that a thing is going to happen next week when the truth is that it has already happened week before last. even more previously, sometimes. examination and inquiry showed me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded and straightforward, and did not shuffle; it was the verb that mixed the hands, it was the verb that lacked stability, it was the verb that had no permanent opinion about anything, it was the verb that was always dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble. further examination, further inquiry, further reflection, confirmed this judgment, and established beyond peradventure the fact that the verb was the storm-center. this discovery made plain the right and wise course to pursue in order to acquire certainty and exactness in understanding the statements which the newspaper was daily endeavoring to convey to me: i must catch a verb and tame it. i must find out its ways, i must spot its eccentricities, i must penetrate its disguises, i must intelligently foresee and forecast at least the commoner of the dodges it was likely to try upon a stranger in given circumstances, i must get in on its main shifts and head them off, i must learn its game and play the limit. i had noticed, in other foreign languages, that verbs are bred in families, and that the members of each family have certain features or resemblances that are common to that family and distinguish it from the other families--the other kin, the cousins and what not. i had noticed that this family-mark is not usually the nose or the hair, so to speak, but the tail--the termination--and that these tails are quite definitely differentiated; insomuch that an expert can tell a pluperfect from a subjunctive by its tail as easily and as certainly as a cowboy can tell a cow from a horse by the like process, the result of observation and culture. i should explain that i am speaking of legitimate verbs, those verbs which in the slang of the grammar are called regular. there are other--i am not meaning to conceal this; others called irregulars, born out of wedlock, of unknown and uninteresting parentage, and naturally destitute of family resemblances, as regards to all features, tails included. but of these pathetic outcasts i have nothing to say. i do not approve of them, i do not encourage them; i am prudishly delicate and sensitive, and i do not allow them to be used in my presence. but, as i have said, i decided to catch one of the others and break it into harness. one is enough. once familiar with its assortment of tails, you are immune; after that, no regular verb can conceal its specialty from you and make you think it is working the past or the future or the conditional or the unconditional when it is engaged in some other line of business--its tail will give it away. i found out all these things by myself, without a teacher. i selected the verb amare, to love. not for any personal reason, for i am indifferent about verbs; i care no more for one verb than for another, and have little or no respect for any of them; but in foreign languages you always begin with that one. why, i don't know. it is merely habit, i suppose; the first teacher chose it, adam was satisfied, and there hasn't been a successor since with originality enough to start a fresh one. for they are a pretty limited lot, you will admit that? originality is not in their line; they can't think up anything new, anything to freshen up the old moss-grown dullness of the language lesson and put life and "go" into it, and charm and grace and picturesqueness. i knew i must look after those details myself; therefore i thought them out and wrote them down, and set for the facchino and explained them to him, and said he must arrange a proper plant, and get together a good stock company among the contadini, and design the costumes, and distribute the parts; and drill the troupe, and be ready in three days to begin on this verb in a shipshape and workman-like manner. i told him to put each grand division of it under a foreman, and each subdivision under a subordinate of the rank of sergeant or corporal or something like that, and to have a different uniform for each squad, so that i could tell a pluperfect from a compound future without looking at the book; the whole battery to be under his own special and particular command, with the rank of brigadier, and i to pay the freight. i then inquired into the character and possibilities of the selected verb, and was much disturbed to find that it was over my size, it being chambered for fifty-seven rounds--fifty-seven ways of saying i love without reloading; and yet none of them likely to convince a girl that was laying for a title, or a title that was laying for rocks. it seemed to me that with my inexperience it would be foolish to go into action with this mitrailleuse, so i ordered it to the rear and told the facchino to provide something a little more primitive to start with, something less elaborate, some gentle old-fashioned flint-lock, smooth-bore, double-barreled thing, calculated to cripple at two hundred yards and kill at forty--an arrangement suitable for a beginner who could be satisfied with moderate results on the offstart and did not wish to take the whole territory in the first campaign. but in vain. he was not able to mend the matter, all the verbs being of the same build, all gatlings, all of the same caliber and delivery, fifty-seven to the volley, and fatal at a mile and a half. but he said the auxiliary verb avere, to have, was a tidy thing, and easy to handle in a seaway, and less likely to miss stays in going about than some of the others; so, upon his recommendation i chose that one, and told him to take it along and scrape its bottom and break out its spinnaker and get it ready for business. i will explain that a facchino is a general-utility domestic. mine was a horse-doctor in his better days, and a very good one. at the end of three days the facchino-doctor-brigadier was ready. i was also ready, with a stenographer. we were in a room called the rope-walk. this is a formidably long room, as is indicated by its facetious name, and is a good place for reviews. at 9:30 the f.-d.-b. took his place near me and gave the word of command; the drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared at an upper door, and the "march-past" was on. down they filed, a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy in a uniform of its own and bearing a banner inscribed with its verbal rank and quality: first the present tense in mediterranean blue and old gold, then the past definite in scarlet and black, then the imperfect in green and yellow, then the indicative future in the stars and stripes, then the old red sandstone subjunctive in purple and silver-and so on and so on, fifty-seven privates and twenty commissioned and non-commissioned officers; certainly one of the most fiery and dazzling and eloquent sights i have ever beheld. i could not keep back the tears. presently: "halt!" commanded the brigadier. "front--face!" "right dress!" "stand at ease!" "one--two--three. in unison--recite!" it was fine. in one noble volume of sound of all the fifty-seven haves in the italian language burst forth in an exalting and splendid confusion. then came commands: "about--face! eyes--front! helm alee--hard aport! forward--march!" and the drums let go again. when the last termination had disappeared, the commander said the instruction drill would now begin, and asked for suggestions. i said: "they say i have, thou hast, he has, and so on, but they don't say what. it will be better, and more definite, if they have something to have; just an object, you know, a something--anything will do; anything that will give the listener a sort of personal as well as grammatical interest in their joys and complaints, you see." he said: "it is a good point. would a dog do?" i said i did not know, but we could try a dog and see. so he sent out an aide-de-camp to give the order to add the dog. the six privates of the present tense now filed in, in charge of sergeant avere (to have), and displaying their banner. they formed in line of battle, and recited, one at a time, thus: "io ho un cane, i have a dog." "tu hai un cane, thou hast a dog." "egli ha un cane, he has a dog." "noi abbiamo un cane, we have a dog." "voi avete un cane, you have a dog." "eglino hanno un cane, they have a dog." no comment followed. they returned to camp, and i reflected a while. the commander said: "i fear you are disappointed." "yes," i said; "they are too monotonous, too singsong, to dead-and-alive; they have no expression, no elocution. it isn't natural; it could never happen in real life. a person who had just acquired a dog is either blame' glad or blame' sorry. he is not on the fence. i never saw a case. what the nation do you suppose is the matter with these people?" he thought maybe the trouble was with the dog. he said: "these are contadini, you know, and they have a prejudice against dogs-that is, against marimane. marimana dogs stand guard over people's vines and olives, you know, and are very savage, and thereby a grief and an inconvenience to persons who want other people's things at night. in my judgment they have taken this dog for a marimana, and have soured on him." i saw that the dog was a mistake, and not functionable: we must try something else; something, if possible, that could evoke sentiment, interest, feeling. "what is cat, in italian?" i asked. "gatto." "is it a gentleman cat, or a lady?" "gentleman cat." "how are these people as regards that animal?" "we-ll, they--they--" "you hesitate: that is enough. how are they about chickens?" he tilted his eyes toward heaven in mute ecstasy. i understood. "what is chicken, in italian?" i asked. "pollo, podere." (podere is italian for master. it is a title of courtesy, and conveys reverence and admiration.) "pollo is one chicken by itself; when there are enough present to constitute a plural, it is polli." "very well, polli will do. which squad is detailed for duty next?" "the past definite." "send out and order it to the front--with chickens. and let them understand that we don't want any more of this cold indifference." he gave the order to an aide, adding, with a haunting tenderness in his tone and a watering mouth in his aspect: "convey to them the conception that these are unprotected chickens." he turned to me, saluting with his hand to his temple, and explained, "it will inflame their interest in the poultry, sire." a few minutes elapsed. then the squad marched in and formed up, their faces glowing with enthusiasm, and the file-leader shouted: "ebbi polli, i had chickens!" "good!" i said. "go on, the next." "avest polli, thou hadst chickens!" "fine! next!" "ebbe polli, he had chickens!" "moltimoltissimo! go on, the next!" "avemmo polli, we had chickens!" "basta-basta aspettatto avanti--last man--charge!" "ebbero polli, they had chickens!" then they formed in echelon, by columns of fours, refused the left, and retired in great style on the double-quick. i was enchanted, and said: "now, doctor, that is something like! chickens are the ticket, there is no doubt about it. what is the next squad?" "the imperfect." "how does it go?" "io avena, i had, tu avevi, thou hadst, egli avena, he had, noi av--" wait--we've just had the hads. what are you giving me?" "but this is another breed." "what do we want of another breed? isn't one breed enough? had is had, and your tricking it out in a fresh way of spelling isn't going to make it any hadder than it was before; now you know that yourself." "but there is a distinction--they are not just the same hads." "how do you make it out?" "well, you use that first had when you are referring to something that happened at a named and sharp and perfectly definite moment; you use the other when the thing happened at a vaguely defined time and in a more prolonged and indefinitely continuous way." 'why, doctor, it is pure nonsense; you know it yourself. look here: if i have had a had, or have wanted to have had a had, or was in a position right then and there to have had a had that hadn't had any chance to go out hadding on account of this foolish discrimination which lets one had go hadding in any kind of indefinite grammatical weather but restricts the other one to definite and datable meteoric convulsions, and keeps it pining around and watching the barometer all the time, and liable to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise, and all that sort of thing, why--why, the inhumanity of it is enough, let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing consumptive hospital-bird of a had taking up room and cumbering the place for nothing. these finical refinements revolt me; it is not right, it is not honorable; it is constructive nepotism to keep in office a had that is so delicate it can't come out when the wind's in the nor'west--i won't have this dude on the payroll. cancel his exequator; and look here--" "but you miss the point. it is like this. you see--" "never mind explaining, i don't care anything about it. six hads is enough for me; anybody that needs twelve, let him subscribe; i don't want any stock in a had trust. knock out the prolonged and indefinitely continuous; four-fifths of it is water, anyway." "but i beg you, podere! it is often quite indispensable in cases where--" "pipe the next squad to the assault!" but it was not to be; for at that moment the dull boom of the noon gun floated up out of far-off florence, followed by the usual softened jangle of church-bells, florentine and suburban, that bursts out in murmurous response; by labor-union law the colazione [1] must stop; stop promptly, stop instantly, stop definitely, like the chosen and best of the breed of hads. 1. colazione is italian for a collection, a meeting, a seance, a sitting.--m.t. *** a burlesque biography two or three persons having at different times intimated that if i would write an autobiography they would read it when they got leisure, i yield at last to this frenzied public demand and herewith tender my history. ours is a noble house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity. the earliest ancestor the twains have any record of was a friend of the family by the name of higgins. this was in the eleventh century, when our people were living in aberdeen, county of cork, england. why it is that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except when one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert foolishness), instead of higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever felt much desire to stir. it is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we leave it alone. all the old families do that way. arthour twain was a man of considerable note--a solicitor on the highway in william rufus's time. at about the age of thirty he went to one of those fine old english places of resort called newgate, to see about something, and never returned again. while there he died suddenly. augustus twain seems to have made something of a stir about the year 1160. he was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old saber and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night, and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump. he was a born humorist. but he got to going too far with it; and the first time he was found stripping one of these parties, the authorities removed one end of him, and put it up on a nice high place on temple bar, where it could contemplate the people and have a good time. he never liked any situation so much or stuck to it so long. then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows a succession of soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows, who always went into battle singing, right behind the army, and always went out a-whooping, right ahead of it. this is a scathing rebuke to old dead froissart's poor witticism that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer. early in the fifteenth century we have beau twain, called "the scholar." he wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. and he could imitate anybody's hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head off to see it. he had infinite sport with his talent. but by and by he took a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness of the work spoiled his hand. still, he enjoyed life all the time he was in the stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, was some forty-two years. in fact, he died in harness. during all those long years he gave such satisfaction that he never was through with one contract a week till the government gave him another. he was a perfect pet. and he was always a favorite with his fellow-artists, and was a conspicuous member of their benevolent secret society, called the chain gang. he always wore his hair short, had a preference for striped clothes, and died lamented by the government. he was a sore loss to his country. for he was so regular. some years later we have the illustrious john morgan twain. he came over to this country with columbus in 1492 as a passenger. he appears to have been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition. he complained of the food all the way over, and was always threatening to go ashore unless there was a change. he wanted fresh shad. hardly a day passed over his head that he did not go idling about the ship with his nose in the air, sneering about the commander, and saying he did not believe columbus knew where he was going to or had ever been there before. the memorable cry of "land ho!" thrilled every heart in the ship but his. he gazed awhile through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the distant water, and then said: "land be hanged--it's a raft!" when this questionable passenger came on board the ship, be brought nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief marked "b. g.," one cotton sock marked "l. w. c.," one woolen one marked "d. f.," and a night-shirt marked "o. m. r." and yet during the voyage he worried more about his "trunk," and gave himself more airs about it, than all the rest of the passengers put together. if the ship was "down by the head," and would not steer, he would go and move his "trunk" further aft, and then watch the effect. if the ship was "by the stern," he would suggest to columbus to detail some men to "shift that baggage." in storms he had to be gagged, because his wailings about his "trunk" made it impossible for the men to hear the orders. the man does not appear to have been openly charged with any gravely unbecoming thing, but it is noted in the ship's log as a "curious circumstance" that albeit he brought his baggage on board the ship in a newspaper, he took it ashore in four trunks, a queensware crate, and a couple of champagne baskets. but when he came back insinuating, in an insolent, swaggering way, that some of this things were missing, and was going to search the other passengers' baggage, it was too much, and they threw him overboard. they watched long and wonderingly for him to come up, but not even a bubble rose on the quietly ebbing tide. but while every one was most absorbed in gazing over the side, and the interest was momentarily increasing, it was observed with consternation that the vessel was adrift and the anchor-cable hanging limp from the bow. then in the ship's dimmed and ancient log we find this quaint note: "in time it was discouvered yt ye troblesome passenger hadde gone downe and got ye anchor, and toke ye same and solde it to ye dam sauvages from ye interior, saying yt he hadde founde it, ye sonne of a ghun!" yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with pride that we call to mind the fact that he was the first white person who ever interested himself in the work of elevating and civilizing our indians. he built a commodious jail and put up a gallows, and to his dying day he claimed with satisfaction that he had had a more restraining and elevating influence on the indians than any other reformer that ever labored among them. at this point the chronicle becomes less frank and chatty, and closes abruptly by saying that the old voyager went to see his gallows perform on the first white man ever hanged in america, and while there received injuries which terminated in his death. the great-grandson of the "reformer" flourished in sixteen hundred and something, and was known in our annals as "the old admiral," though in history he had other titles. he was long in command of fleets of swift vessels, well armed and manned, and did great service in hurrying up merchantmen. vessels which he followed and kept his eagle eye on, always made good fair time across the ocean. but if a ship still loitered in spite of all he could do, his indignation would grow till he could contain himself no longer-and then he would take that ship home where he lived and keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, but they never did. and he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating exercise and a bath. he called it "walking a plank." all the pupils liked it. at any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying it. when the owners were late coming for their ships, the admiral always burned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost. at last this fine old tar was cut down in the fullness of his years and honors. and to her dying day, his poor heart-broken widow believed that if he had been cut down fifteen minutes sooner he might have been resuscitated. charles henry twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenth century, and was a zealous and distinguished missionary. he converted sixteen thousand south sea islanders, and taught them that a dog-tooth necklace and a pair of spectacles was not enough clothing to come to divine service in. his poor flock loved him very, very dearly; and when his funeral was over, they got up in a body (and came out of the restaurant) with tears in their eyes, and saying, one to another, that he was a good tender missionary, and they wished they had some more of him. pah-go-to-wah-wah-pukketekeewis (mighty-hunter-with-a-hog-eye-twain) adorned the middle of the eighteenth century, and aided general braddock with all his heart to resist the oppressor washington. it was this ancestor who fired seventeen times at our washington from behind a tree. so far the beautiful romantic narrative in the moral story-books is correct; but when that narrative goes on to say that at the seventeenth round the awe-stricken savage said solemnly that that man was being reserved by the great spirit for some mighty mission, and he dared not lift his sacrilegious rifle against him again, the narrative seriously impairs the integrity of history. what he did say was: "it ain't no (hic) no use. 'at man's so drunk he can't stan' still long enough for a man to hit him. i (hic) i can't 'ford to fool away any more am'nition on him." that was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was a good, plain, matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itself to us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about it. i also enjoyed the story-book narrative, but i felt a marring misgiving that every indian at braddock's defeat who fired at a soldier a couple of times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century), and missed him, jumped to the conclusion that the great spirit was reserving that soldier for some grand mission; and so i somehow feared that the only reason why washington's case is remembered and the others forgotten is, that in his the prophecy came true, and in that of the others it didn't. there are not books enough on earth to contain the record of the prophecies indians and other unauthorized parties have made; but one may carry in his overcoat pockets the record of all the prophecies that have been fulfilled. i will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are so thoroughly well-known in history by their aliases, that i have not felt it to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention them in the order of their birth. among these may be mentioned richard brinsley twain, alias guy fawkes; john wentworth twain, alias sixteen-string jack; william hogarth twain, alias jack sheppard; ananias twain, alias baron munchausen; john george twain, alias captain kydd; and then there are george francis twain, tom pepper, nebuchadnezzar, and baalam's ass--they all belong to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat distinctly removed from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateral branch, whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in order to acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for, they have got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged. it is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry down too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely of your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which i now do. i was born without teeth--and there richard iii. had the advantage of me; but i was born without a humpback, likewise, and there i had the advantage of him. my parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest. but now a thought occurs to me. my own history would really seem so tame contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leave it unwritten until i am hanged. if some other biographies i have read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have been a felicitous thing for the reading public. how does it strike you? *** how to tell a story the humorous story an american development.--its difference from comic and witty stories i do not claim that i can tell a story as it ought to be told. i only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for i have been almost daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many years. there are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind-the humorous. i will talk mainly about that one. the humorous story is american, the comic story is english, the witty story is french. the humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter. the humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. the humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst. the humorous story is strictly a work of art--high and delicate art-and only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling the comic and the witty story; anybody can do it. the art of telling a humorous story--understand, i mean by word of mouth, not print-was created in america, and has remained at home. the humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it; but the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. and sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the "nub" of it and glance around from face to face, collecting applause, and then repeat it again. it is a pathetic thing to see. very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it. then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and indifferent way, with the pretense that he does not know it is a nub. artemus ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. dan setchell used it before him, nye and riley and others use it today. but the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at you--every time. and when he prints it, in england, france, germany, and italy, he italicizes it, puts some whopping exclamation-points after it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. all of which is very depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life. let me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote which has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen hundred years. the teller tells it in this way: the wounded soldier in the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the rear, informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained; whereupon the generous son of mars, shouldering the unfortunate, proceeded to carry out his desire. the bullets and cannon-balls were flying in all directions, and presently one of the latter took the wounded man's head off--without, however, his deliverer being aware of it. in no long time he was hailed by an officer, who said: "where are you going with that carcass?" "to the rear, sir--he's lost his leg!" "his leg, forsooth?" responded the astonished officer; "you mean his head, you booby." whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood looking down upon it in great perplexity. at length he said: "it is true, sir, just as you have said." then after a pause he added, "but he told me it was his leg!!!!!" here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gasping and shriekings and suffocatings. it takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form; and isn't worth the telling, after all. put into the humorous-story form it takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing i have ever listened to--as james whitcomb riley tells it. he tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has just heard it for the first time, thinks it is unspeakably funny, and is trying to repeat it to a neighbor. but he can't remember it; so he gets all mixed up and wanders helplessly round and round, putting in tedious details that don't belong in the tale and only retard it; taking them out conscientiously and putting in others that are just as useless; making minor mistakes now and then and stopping to correct them and explain how he came to make them; remembering things which he forgot to put in in their proper place and going back to put them in there; stopping his narrative a good while in order to try to recall the name of the soldier that was hurt, and finally remembering that the soldier's name was not mentioned, and remarking placidly that the name is of no real importance, anyway-better, of course, if one knew it, but not essential, after all-and so on, and so on, and so on. the teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself, and has to stop every little while to hold himself in and keep from laughing outright; and does hold in, but his body quakes in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles; and at the end of the ten minutes the audience have laughed until they are exhausted, and the tears are running down their faces. the simplicity and innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness of the old farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result is a performance which is thoroughly charming and delicious. this is art--and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it; but a machine could tell the other story. to string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the american art, if my position is correct. another feature is the slurring of the point. a third is the dropping of a studied remark apparently without knowing it, as if one where thinking aloud. the fourth and last is the pause. artemus ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal. he would begin to tell with great animation something which he seemed to think was wonderful; then lose confidence, and after an apparently absent-minded pause add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way; and that was the remark intended to explode the mine--and it did. for instance, he would say eagerly, excitedly, "i once knew a man in new zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head"--here his animation would die out; a silent, reflective pause would follow, then he would say dreamily, and as if to himself, "and yet that man could beat a drum better than any man i ever saw." the pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story, and a frequently recurring feature, too. it is a dainty thing, and delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous; for it must be exactly the right length--no more and no less--or it fails of its purpose and makes trouble. if the pause is too short the impressive point is passed, and the audience have had time to divine that a surprise is intended--and then you can't surprise them, of course. on the platform i used to tell a negro ghost story that had a pause in front of the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most important thing in the whole story. if i got it the right length precisely, i could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to make some impressible girl deliver a startled little yelp and jump out of her seat--and that was what i was after. this story was called "the golden arm," and was told in this fashion. you can practice with it yourself--and mind you look out for the pause and get it right. the golden arm once 'pon a time dey wuz a momsus mean man, en he live 'way out in de prairie all 'lone by hisself, 'cep'n he had a wife. en bimeby she died, en he tuck en toted her way out dah in de prairie en buried her. well, she had a golden arm--all solid gold, fum de shoulder down. he wuz pow'ful mean--pow'ful; en dat night he couldn't sleep, caze he want dat golden arm so bad. when it come midnight he couldn't stan' it no mo'; so he git up, he did, en tuck his lantern en shoved out thoo de storm en dug her up en got de golden arm; en he bent his head down 'gin de 'win, en plowed en plowed en plowed thoo de snow. den all on a sudden he stop (make a considerable pause here, and look startled, and take a listening attitude) en say: "my lan', what's dat?" en he listen--en listen--en de win' say (set your teeth together and imitate the wailing and wheezing singsong of the wind), "bzzz-z-zzz"--en den, way back yonder whah de grave is, he hear a voice!--he hear a voice all mix' up in de win'--can't hardly tell 'em 'part--"bzzz--zzz--w-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n arm?" (you must begin to shiver violently now.) en he begin to shiver en shake, en say, "oh, my! oh, my lan'!" en de win' blow de lantern out, en de snow en sleet blow in his face en mos' choke him, en he start a-plowin' knee-deep toward home mos' dead, he so sk'yerd--en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en (pause) it 'us comin after him! "bzzz--zzz--zzz w-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n--arm?" when he git to de pasture he hear it agin--closter now, en a-comin'!--a-comin' back dah in de dark en de storm--(repeat the wind and the voice). when he git to de house he rush upstairs en jump in de bed en kiver up, head and years, en lay da shiverin' en shakin'--en den way out dah he hear it agin!--en a-comin'! en bimeby he hear (pause--awed, listening attitude)--pat--pat--pat hit's a-comin' upstairs! den he hear de latch, en he know it's in de room! den pooty soon he know it's a-stannin' by de bed! (pause.) den-he know it's a-bendin' down over him--en he cain't skasely git his breath! den--den--he seem to feel someth'n' c-o-l-d, right down 'most agin his head! (pause.) den de voice say, right at his year--"w-h-o--g-o-t--m-y g-o-l-d-e-n arm?" (you must wail it out very plaintively and accusingly; then you stare steadily and impressively into the face of the farthest-gone auditor-a girl, preferably--and let that awe-inspiring pause begin to build itself in the deep hush. when it has reached exactly the right length, jump suddenly at that girl and yell, "you've got it!" if you've got the pause right, she'll fetch a dear little yelp and spring right out of her shoes. but you must get the pause right; and you will find it the most troublesome and aggravating and uncertain thing you ever undertook. *** general washington's negro body-servant a biographical sketch the stirring part of this celebrated colored man's life properly began with his death--that is to say, the notable features of his biography began with the first time he died. he had been little heard of up to that time, but since then we have never ceased to hear of him; we have never ceased to hear of him at stated, unfailing intervals. his was a most remarkable career, and i have thought that its history would make a valuable addition to our biographical literature. therefore, i have carefully collated the materials for such a work, from authentic sources, and here present them to the public. i have rigidly excluded from these pages everything of a doubtful character, with the object in view of introducing my work into the schools for the instruction of the youth of my country. the name of the famous body-servant of general washington was george. after serving his illustrious master faithfully for half a century, and enjoying throughout his long term his high regard and confidence, it became his sorrowful duty at last to lay that beloved master to rest in his peaceful grave by the potomac. ten years afterward-in 1809--full of years and honors, he died himself, mourned by all who knew him. the boston gazette of that date thus refers to the event: george, the favorite body-servant of the lamented washington, died in richmond, va., last tuesday, at the ripe age of 95 years. his intellect was unimpaired, and his memory tenacious, up to within a few minutes of his decease. he was present at the second installation of washington as president, and also at his funeral, and distinctly remembered all the prominent incidents connected with those noted events. from this period we hear no more of the favorite body-servant of general washington until may, 1825, at which time he died again. a philadelphia paper thus speaks of the sad occurrence: at macon, ga., last week, a colored man named george, who was the favorite body-servant of general washington, died at the advanced age of 95 years. up to within a few hours of his dissolution he was in full possession of all his faculties, and could distinctly recollect the second installation of washington, his death and burial, the surrender of cornwallis, the battle of trenton, the griefs and hardships of valley forge, etc. deceased was followed to the grave by the entire population of macon. on the fourth of july, 1830, and also of 1834 and 1836, the subject of this sketch was exhibited in great state upon the rostrum of the orator of the day, and in november of 1840 he died again. the st. louis republican of the 25th of that month spoke as follows: "another relic of the revolution gone. "george, once the favorite body-servant of general washington, died yesterday at the house of mr. john leavenworth in this city, at the venerable age of 95 years. he was in the full possession of his faculties up to the hour of his death, and distinctly recollected the first and second installations and death of president washington, the surrender of cornwallis, the battles of trenton and monmouth, the sufferings of the patriot army at valley forge, the proclamation of the declaration of independence, the speech of patrick henry in the virginia house of delegates, and many other old-time reminiscences of stirring interest. few white men die lamented as was this aged negro. the funeral was very largely attended." during the next ten or eleven years the subject of this sketch appeared at intervals at fourth-of-july celebrations in various parts of the country, and was exhibited upon the rostrum with flattering success. but in the fall of 1855 he died again. the california papers thus speak of the event: another old hero gone died, at dutch flat, on the 7th of march, george (once the confidential body-servant of general washington), at the great age of 95 years. his memory, which did not fail him till the last, was a wonderful storehouse of interesting reminiscences. he could distinctly recollect the first and second installations and death of president washington, the surrender of cornwallis, the battles of trenton and monmouth, and bunker hill, the proclamation of the declaration of independence, and braddock's defeat. george was greatly respected in dutch flat, and it is estimated that there were 10,000 people present at his funeral. the last time the subject of this sketch died was in june, 1864; and until we learn the contrary, it is just to presume that he died permanently this time. the michigan papers thus refer to the sorrowful event: another cherished remnant of the revolution gone george, a colored man, and once the favorite body-servant of george washington, died in detroit last week, at the patriarchal age of 95 years. to the moment of his death his intellect was unclouded, and he could distinctly remember the first and second installations and death of washington, the surrender of cornwallis, the battles of trenton and monmouth, and bunker hill, the proclamation of the declaration of independence, braddock's defeat, the throwing over of the tea in boston harbor, and the landing of the pilgrims. he died greatly respected, and was followed to the grave by a vast concourse of people. the faithful old servant is gone! we shall never see him more until he turns up again. he has closed his long and splendid career of dissolution, for the present, and sleeps peacefully, as only they sleep who have earned their rest. he was in all respects a remarkable man. he held his age better than any celebrity that has figured in history; and the longer he lived the stronger and longer his memory grew. if he lives to die again, he will distinctly recollect the discovery of america. the above r'esum'e of his biography i believe to be substantially correct, although it is possible that he may have died once or twice in obscure places where the event failed of newspaper notoriety. one fault i find in all the notices of his death i have quoted, and this ought to be correct. in them he uniformly and impartially died at the age of 95. this could not have been. he might have done that once, or maybe twice, but he could not have continued it indefinitely. allowing that when he first died, he died at the age of 95, he was 151 years old when he died last, in 1864. but his age did not keep pace with his recollections. when he died the last time, he distinctly remembered the landing of the pilgrims, which took place in 1620. he must have been about twenty years old when he witnessed that event, wherefore it is safe to assert that the body-servant of general washington was in the neighborhood of two hundred and sixty or seventy years old when he departed this life finally. having waited a proper length of time, to see if the subject of his sketch had gone from us reliably and irrevocably, i now publish his biography with confidence, and respectfully offer it to a mourning nation. p.s.--i see by the papers that this imfamous old fraud has just died again, in arkansas. this makes six times that he is known to have died, and always in a new place. the death of washington's body-servant has ceased to be a novelty; it's charm is gone; the people are tired of it; let it cease. this well-meaning but misguided negro has not put six different communities to the expense of burying him in state, and has swindled tens of thousands of people into following him to the grave under the delusion that a select and peculiar distinction was being conferred upon them. let him stay buried for good now; and let that newspaper suffer the severest censure that shall ever, in all the future time, publish to the world that general washington's favorite colored body-servant has died again. *** wit inspirations of the "two-year-olds" all infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion nowadays of saying "smart" things on most occasions that offer, and especially on occasions when they ought not to be saying anything at all. judging by the average published specimens of smart sayings, the rising generation of children are little better than idiots. and the parents must surely be but little better than the children, for in most cases they are the publishers of the sunbursts of infantile imbecility which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals. i may seem to speak with some heat, not to say a suspicion of personal spite; and i do admit that it nettles me to hear about so many gifted infants in these days, and remember that i seldom said anything smart when i was a child. i tried it once or twice, but it was not popular. the family were not expecting brilliant remarks from me, and so they snubbed me sometimes and spanked me the rest. but it makes my flesh creep and my blood run cold to think what might have happened to me if i had dared to utter some of the smart things of this generation's "four-year-olds" where my father could hear me. to have simply skinned me alive and considered his duty at an end would have seemed to him criminal leniency toward one so sinning. he was a stern, unsmiling man, and hated all forms of precocity. if i had said some of the things i have referred to, and said them in his hearing, he would have destroyed me. he would, indeed. he would, provided the opportunity remained with him. but it would not, for i would have had judgment enough to take some strychnine first and say my smart thing afterward. the fair record of my life has been tarnished by just one pun. my father overheard that, and he hunted me over four or five townships seeking to take my life. if i had been full-grown, of course he would have been right; but, child as i was, i could not know how wicked a thing i had done. i made one of those remarks ordinarily called "smart things" before that, but it was not a pun. still, it came near causing a serious rupture between my father and myself. my father and mother, my uncle ephraim and his wife, and one or two others were present, and the conversation turned on a name for me. i was lying there trying some india-rubber rings of various patterns, and endeavoring to make a selection, for i was tired of trying to cut my teeth on people's fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would enable me to hurry the thing through and get something else. did you ever notice what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on your nurse's finger, or how back-breaking and tiresome it was trying to cut them on your big toe? and did you never get out of patience and wish your teeth were in jerico long before you got them half cut? to me it seems as if these things happened yesterday. and they did, to some children. but i digress. i was lying there trying the india-rubber rings. i remember looking at the clock and noticing that in an hour and twenty-five minutes i would be two weeks old, and thinking how little i had done to merit the blessings that were so unsparingly lavished upon me. my father said: "abraham is a good name. my grandfather was named abraham." my mother said: "abraham is a good name. very well. let us have abraham for one of his names." i said: "abraham suits the subscriber." my father frowned, my mother looked pleased; my aunt said: "what a little darling it is!" my father said: "isaac is a good name, and jacob is a good name." my mother assented, and said: "no names are better. let us add isaac and jacob to his names." i said: "all right. isaac and jacob are good enough for yours truly. pass me that rattle, if you please. i can't chew india-rubber rings all day." not a soul made a memorandum of these sayings of mine, for publication. i saw that, and did it myself, else they would have been utterly lost. so far from meeting with a generous encouragement like other children when developing intellectually, i was now furiously scowled upon by my father; my mother looked grieved and anxious, and even my aunt had about her an expression of seeming to think that maybe i had gone too far. i took a vicious bite out of an india-rubber ring, and covertly broke the rattle over the kitten's head, but said nothing. presently my father said: "samuel is a very excellent name." i saw that trouble was coming. nothing could prevent it. i laid down my rattle; over the side of the cradle i dropped my uncle's silver watch, the clothes-brush, the toy dog, my tin soldier, the nutmeg-grater, and other matters which i was accustomed to examine, and meditate upon and make pleasant noises with, and bang and batter and break when i needed wholesome entertainment. then i put on my little frock and my little bonnet, and took my pygmy shoes in one hand and my licorice in the other, and climbed out on the floor. i said to myself, now, if the worse comes to worst, i am ready. then i said aloud, in a firm voice: "father, i cannot, cannot wear the name of samuel." "my son!" "father, i mean it. i cannot." "why?" "father, i have an invincible antipathy to that name." "my son, this is unreasonable. many great and good men have been named samuel." "sir, i have yet to hear of the first instance." "what! there was samuel the prophet. was not he great and good?" "not so very." "my son! with his own voice the lord called him." "yes, sir, and had to call him a couple times before he could come!" and then i sallied forth, and that stern old man sallied forth after me. he overtook me at noon the following day, and when the interview was over i had acquired the name of samuel, and a thrashing, and other useful information; and by means of this compromise my father's wrath was appeased and a misunderstanding bridged over which might have become a permanent rupture if i had chosen to be unreasonable. but just judging by this episode, what would my father have done to me if i had ever uttered in his hearing one of the flat, sickly things these "two-years-olds" say in print nowadays? in my opinion there would have been a case of infanticide in our family. *** an entertaining article i take the following paragraph from an article in the boston advertiser: an english critic on mark twain perhaps the most successful flights of humor of mark twain have been descriptions of the persons who did not appreciate his humor at all. we have become familiar with the californians who were thrilled with terror by his burlesque of a newspaper reporter's way of telling a story, and we have heard of the pennsylvania clergyman who sadly returned his innocents abroad to the book-agent with the remark that "the man who could shed tears over the tomb of adam must be an idiot." but mark twain may now add a much more glorious instance to his string of trophies. the saturday review, in its number of october 8th, reviews his book of travels, which has been republished in england, and reviews it seriously. we can imagine the delight of the humorist in reading this tribute to his power; and indeed it is so amusing in itself that he can hardly do better than reproduce the article in full in his next monthly memoranda. (publishing the above paragraph thus, gives me a sort of authority for reproducing the saturday review's article in full in these pages. i dearly wanted to do it, for i cannot write anything half so delicious myself. if i had a cast-iron dog that could read this english criticism and preserve his austerity, i would drive him off the door-step.) (from the london "saturday review.") reviews of new books the innocents abroad. a book of travels. by mark twain. london: hotten, publisher. 1870. lord macaulay died too soon. we never felt this so deeply as when we finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work. macaulay died too soon--for none but he could mete out complete and comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impertinence, the presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance of this author. to say that the innocents abroad is a curious book, would be to use the faintest language--would be to speak of the matterhorn as a neat elevation or of niagara as being "nice" or "pretty." "curious" is too tame a word wherewith to describe the imposing insanity of this work. there is no word that is large enough or long enough. let us, therefore, photograph a passing glimpse of book and author, and trust the rest to the reader. let the cultivated english student of human nature picture to himself this mark twain as a person capable of doing the following-described things--and not only doing them, but with incredible innocence printing them calmly and tranquilly in a book. for instance: he states that he entered a hair-dresser's in paris to get shaved, and the first "rake" the barber gave him with his razor it loosened his "hide" and lifted him out of the chair. this is unquestionably exaggerated. in florence he was so annoyed by beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a frantic spirit of revenge. there is, of course, no truth in this. he gives at full length a theatrical program seventeen or eighteen hundred years old, which he professes to have found in the ruins of the coliseum, among the dirt and mold and rubbish. it is a sufficient comment upon this statement to remark that even a cast-iron program would not have lasted so long under such circumstances. in greece he plainly betrays both fright and flight upon one occasion, but with frozen effrontery puts the latter in this falsely tamed form: "we sidled toward the piraeus." "sidled," indeed! he does not hesitate to intimate that at ephesus, when his mule strayed from the proper course, he got down, took him under his arm, carried him to the road again, pointed him right, remounted, and went to sleep contentedly till it was time to restore the beast to the path once more. he states that a growing youth among his ship's passengers was in the constant habit of appeasing his hunger with soap and oakum between meals. in palestine he tells of ants that came eleven miles to spend the summer in the desert and brought their provisions with them; yet he shows by his description of the country that the feat was an impossibility. he mentions, as if it were the most commonplace of matters, that he cut a moslem in two in broad daylight in jerusalem, with godfrey de bouillon's sword, and would have shed more blood if he had had a graveyard of his own. these statements are unworthy a moment's attention. mr. twain or any other foreigner who did such a thing in jerusalem would be mobbed, and would infallibly lose his life. but why go on? why repeat more of his audacious and exasperating falsehoods? let us close fittingly with this one: he affirms that "in the mosque of st. sophia at constantinople i got my feet so stuck up with a complication of gums, slime, and general impurity, that i wore out more than two thousand pair of bootjacks getting my boots off that night, and even then some christian hide peeled off with them." it is monstrous. such statements are simply lies--there is no other name for them. will the reader longer marvel at the brutal ignorance that pervades the american nation when we tell him that we are informed upon perfectly good authority that this extravagant compilation of falsehoods, this exhaustless mine of stupendous lies, this innocents abroad, has actually been adopted by the schools and colleges of several of the states as a text-book! but if his falsehoods are distressing, his innocence and his ignorance are enough to make one burn the book and despise the author. in one place he was so appalled at the sudden spectacle of a murdered man, unveiled by the moonlight, that he jumped out of the window, going through sash and all, and then remarks with the most childlike simplicity that he "was not scared, but was considerably agitated." it puts us out of patience to note that the simpleton is densely unconscious that lucrezia borgia ever existed off the stage. he is vulgarly ignorant of all foreign languages, but is frank enough to criticize, the italians' use of their own tongue. he says they spell the name of their great painter "vinci, but pronounce it vinchy"-and then adds with a na:ivet'e possible only to helpless ignorance, "foreigners always spell better than they pronounce." in another place he commits the bald absurdity of putting the phrase "tare an ouns" into an italian's mouth. in rome he unhesitatingly believes the legend that st. philip neri's heart was so inflamed with divine love that it burst his ribs--believes it wholly because an author with a learned list of university degrees strung after his name endorses it--"otherwise," says this gentle idiot, "i should have felt a curiosity to know what philip had for dinner." our author makes a long, fatiguing journey to the grotto del cane on purpose to test its poisoning powers on a dog--got elaborately ready for the experiment, and then discovered that he had no dog. a wiser person would have kept such a thing discreetly to himself, but with this harmless creature everything comes out. he hurts his foot in a rut two thousand years old in exhumed pompeii, and presently, when staring at one of the cinder-like corpses unearthed in the next square, conceives the idea that maybe it is the remains of the ancient street commissioner, and straightway his horror softens down to a sort of chirpy contentment with the condition of things. in damascus he visits the well of ananias, three thousand years old, and is as surprised and delighted as a child to find that the water is "as pure and fresh as if the well had been dug yesterday." in the holy land he gags desperately at the hard arabic and hebrew biblical names, and finally concludes to call them baldwinsville, williamsburgh, and so on, "for convenience of spelling." we have thus spoken freely of this man's stupefying simplicity and innocence, but we cannot deal similarly with his colossal ignorance. we do not know where to begin. and if we knew where to begin, we certainly would not know where to leave off. we will give one specimen, and one only. he did not know, until he got to rome, that michael angelo was dead! and then, instead of crawling away and hiding his shameful ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to express a pious, grateful sort of satisfaction that he is gone and out of his troubles! no, the reader may seek out the author's exhibition of his uncultivation for himself. the book is absolutely dangerous, considering the magnitude and variety of its misstatements, and the convincing confidence with which they are made. and yet it is a text-book in the schools of america. the poor blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the old masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in art-knowledge, which he has a groping sort of comprehension is a proper thing for a traveled man to be able to display. but what is the manner of his study? and what is the progress he achieves? to what extent does he familiarize himself with the great pictures of italy, and what degree of appreciation does he arrive at? read: "when we see a monk going about with a lion and looking up into heaven, we know that that is st. mark. when we see a monk with a book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to think of a word, we know that that is st. matthew. when we see a monk sitting on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him, and without other baggage, we know that that is st. jerome. because we know that he always went flying light in the matter of baggage. when we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, but having no trade-mark, we always ask who those parties are. we do this because we humbly wish to learn." he then enumerates the thousands and thousand of copies of these several pictures which he has seen, and adds with accustomed simplicity that he feels encouraged to believe that when he has seen "some more" of each, and had a larger experience, he will eventually "begin to take an absorbing interest in them"--the vulgar boor. that we have shown this to be a remarkable book, we think no one will deny. that is a pernicious book to place in the hands of the confiding and uniformed, we think we have also shown. that the book is a deliberate and wicked creation of a diseased mind, is apparent upon every page. having placed our judgment thus upon record, let us close with what charity we can, by remarking that even in this volume there is some good to be found; for whenever the author talks of his own country and lets europe alone, he never fails to make himself interesting, and not only interesting but instructive. no one can read without benefit his occasional chapters and paragraphs, about life in the gold and silver mines of california and nevada; about the indians of the plains and deserts of the west, and their cannibalism; about the raising of vegetables in kegs of gunpowder by the aid of two or three teaspoons of guano; about the moving of small arms from place to place at night in wheelbarrows to avoid taxes; and about a sort of cows and mules in the humboldt mines, that climb down chimneys and disturb the people at night. these matters are not only new, but are well worth knowing. it is a pity the author did not put in more of the same kind. his book is well written and is exceedingly entertaining, and so it just barely escaped being quite valuable also. (one month later) latterly i have received several letters, and see a number of newspaper paragraphs, all upon a certain subject, and all of about the same tenor. i here give honest specimens. one is from a new york paper, one is from a letter from an old friend, and one is from a letter from a new york publisher who is a stranger to me. i humbly endeavor to make these bits toothsome with the remark that the article they are praising (which appeared in the december galaxy, and pretended to be a criticism from the london saturday review on my innocents abroad) was written by myself, every line of it: the herald says the richest thing out is the "serious critique" in the london saturday review, on mark twain's innocents abroad. we thought before we read it that it must be "serious," as everybody said so, and were even ready to shed a few tears; but since perusing it, we are bound to confess that next to mark twain's "jumping frog" it's the finest bit of humor and sarcasm that we've come across in many a day. (i do not get a compliment like that every day.) i used to think that your writings were pretty good, but after reading the criticism in the galaxy from the london review, have discovered what an ass i must have been. if suggestions are in order, mine is, that you put that article in your next edition of the innocents, as an extra chapter, if you are not afraid to put your own humor in competition with it. it is as rich a thing as i ever read. (which is strong commendation from a book publisher.) the london reviewer, my friend, is not the stupid, "serious" creature he pretends to be, _i_ think; but, on the contrary, has a keep appreciation and enjoyment of your book. as i read his article in the galaxy, i could imagine him giving vent to many a hearty laugh. but he is writing for catholics and established church people, and high-toned, antiquated, conservative gentility, whom it is a delight to him to help you shock, while he pretends to shake his head with owlish density. he is a magnificent humorist himself. (now that is graceful and handsome. i take off my hat to my life-long friend and comrade, and with my feet together and my fingers spread over my heart, i say, in the language of alabama, "you do me proud.") i stand guilty of the authorship of the article, but i did not mean any harm. i saw by an item in the boston advertiser that a solemn, serious critique on the english edition of my book had appeared in the london saturday review, and the idea of such a literary breakfast by a stolid, ponderous british ogre of the quill was too much for a naturally weak virtue, and i went home and burlesqued it-reveled in it, i may say. i never saw a copy of the real saturday review criticism until after my burlesque was written and mailed to the printer. but when i did get hold of a copy, i found it to be vulgar, awkwardly written, ill-natured, and entirely serious and in earnest. the gentleman who wrote the newspaper paragraph above quoted had not been misled as to its character. if any man doubts my word now, i will kill him. no, i will not kill him; i will win his money. i will bet him twenty to one, and let any new york publisher hold the stakes, that the statements i have above made as to the authorship of the article in question are entirely true. perhaps i may get wealthy at this, for i am willing to take all the bets that offer; and if a man wants larger odds, i will give him all he requires. but he ought to find out whether i am betting on what is termed "a sure thing" or not before he ventures his money, and he can do that by going to a public library and examining the london saturday review of october 8th, which contains the real critique. bless me, some people thought that _i_ was the "sold" person! p.s.--i cannot resist the temptation to toss in this most savory thing of all--this easy, graceful, philosophical disquisition, with his happy, chirping confidence. it is from the cincinnati enquirer: nothing is more uncertain than the value of a fine cigar. nine smokers out of ten would prefer an ordinary domestic article, three for a quarter, to fifty-cent partaga, if kept in ignorance of the cost of the latter. the flavor of the partaga is too delicate for palates that have been accustomed to connecticut seed leaf. so it is with humor. the finer it is in quality, the more danger of its not being recognized at all. even mark twain has been taken in by an english review of his innocents abroad. mark twain is by no means a coarse humorist, but the englishman's humor is so much finer than his, that he mistakes it for solid earnest, and "lafts most consumedly." a man who cannot learn stands in his own light. hereafter, when i write an article which i know to be good, but which i may have reason to fear will not, in some quarters, be considered to amount to much, coming from an american, i will aver that an englishman wrote it and that it is copied from a london journal. and then i will occupy a back seat and enjoy the cordial applause. (still later) mark twain at last sees that the saturday review's criticism of his innocents abroad was not serious, and he is intensely mortified at the thought of having been so badly sold. he takes the only course left him, and in the last galaxy claims that he wrote the criticism himself, and published it in the galaxy to sell the public. this is ingenious, but unfortunately it is not true. if any of our readers will take the trouble to call at this office we sill show them the original article in the saturday review of october 8th, which, on comparison, will be found to be identical with the one published in the galaxy. the best thing for mark to do will be to admit that he was sold, and say no more about it. the above is from the cincinnati enquirer, and is a falsehood. come to the proof. if the enquirer people, through any agent, will produce at the galaxy office a london saturday review of october 8th, containing an "article which, on comparison, will be found to be identical with the one published in the galaxy, i will pay to that agent five hundred dollars cash. moreover, if at any specified time i fail to produce at the same place a copy of the london saturday review of october 8th, containing a lengthy criticism upon the innocents abroad, entirely different, in every paragraph and sentence, from the one i published in the galaxy, i will pay to the enquirer agent another five hundred dollars cash. i offer sheldon & co., publishers, 500 broadway, new york, as my "backers." any one in new york, authorized by the enquirer, will receive prompt attention. it is an easy and profitable way for the enquirer people to prove that they have not uttered a pitiful, deliberate falsehood in the above paragraphs. will they swallow that falsehood ignominiously, or will they send an agent to the galaxy office. i think the cincinnati enquirer must be edited by children. *** a letter to the secretary of the treasury riverdale-on-the-hudson, october 15, 1902. the hon. the secretary of the treasury, washington, d. c.: sir,--prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached an altitude which puts them out of the reach of literary persons in straitened circumstances, i desire to place with you the following order: forty-five tons best old dry government bonds, suitable for furnace, gold 7 per cents., 1864, preferred. twelve tons early greenbacks, range size, suitable for cooking. eight barrels seasoned 25 and 50 cent postal currency, vintage of 1866, eligible for kindlings. please deliver with all convenient despatch at my house in riverdale at lowest rates for spot cash, and send bill to your obliged servant, mark twain, who will be very grateful, and will vote right. *** amended obituaries to the editor: sir,--i am approaching seventy; it is in sight; it is only three years away. necessarily, i must go soon. it is but matter-of-course wisdom, then, that i should begin to set my worldly house in order now, so that it may be done calmly and with thoroughness, in place of waiting until the last day, when, as we have often seen, the attempt to set both houses in order at the same time has been marred by the necessity for haste and by the confusion and waste of time arising from the inability of the notary and the ecclesiastic to work together harmoniously, taking turn about and giving each other friendly assistance--not perhaps in fielding, which could hardly be expected, but at least in the minor offices of keeping game and umpiring; by consequence of which conflict of interests and absence of harmonious action a draw has frequently resulted where this ill-fortune could not have happened if the houses had been set in order one at a time and hurry avoided by beginning in season, and giving to each the amount of time fairly and justly proper to it. in setting my earthly house in order i find it of moment that i should attend in person to one or two matters which men in my position have long had the habit of leaving wholly to others, with consequences often most regrettable. i wish to speak of only one of these matters at this time: obituaries. of necessity, an obituary is a thing which cannot be so judiciously edited by any hand as by that of the subject of it. in such a work it is not the facts that are of chief importance, but the light which the obituarist shall throw upon them, the meaning which he shall dress them in, the conclusions which he shall draw from them, and the judgments which he shall deliver upon them. the verdicts, you understand: that is the danger-line. in considering this matter, in view of my approaching change, it has seemed to me wise to take such measures as may be feasible, to acquire, by courtesy of the press, access to my standing obituaries, with the privilege--if this is not asking too much--of editing, not their facts, but their verdicts. this, not for the present profit, further than as concerns my family, but as a favorable influence usable on the other side, where there are some who are not friendly to me. with this explanation of my motives, i will now ask you of your courtesy to make an appeal for me to the public press. it is my desire that such journals and periodicals as have obituaries of me lying in their pigeonholes, with a view to sudden use some day, will not wait longer, but will publish them now, and kindly send me a marked copy. my address is simply new york city--i have no other that is permanent and not transient. i will correct them--not the facts, but the verdicts--striking out such clauses as could have a deleterious influence on the other side, and replacing them with clauses of a more judicious character. i should, of course, expect to pay double rates for both the omissions and the substitutions; and i should also expect to pay quadruple rates for all obituaries which proved to be rightly and wisely worded in the originals, thus requiring no emendations at all. it is my desire to leave these amended obituaries neatly bound behind me as a perennial consolation and entertainment to my family, and as an heirloom which shall have a mournful but definite commercial value for my remote posterity. i beg, sir, that you will insert this advertisement (1t-eow, agate, inside), and send the bill to yours very respectfully. mark twain. p.s.--for the best obituary--one suitable for me to read in public, and calculated to inspire regret--i desire to offer a prize, consisting of a portrait of me done entirely by myself in pen and ink without previous instructions. the ink warranted to be the kind used by the very best artists. *** a monument to adam some one has revealed to the tribune that i once suggested to rev. thomas k. beecher, of elmira, new york, that we get up a monument to adam, and that mr. beecher favored the project. there is more to it than that. the matter started as a joke, but it came somewhat near to materializing. it is long ago--thirty years. mr. darwin's descent of man has been in print five or six years, and the storm of indignation raised by it was still raging in pulpits and periodicals. in tracing the genesis of the human race back to its sources, mr. darwin had left adam out altogether. we had monkeys, and "missing links," and plenty of other kinds of ancestors, but no adam. jesting with mr. beecher and other friends in elmira, i said there seemed to be a likelihood that the world would discard adam and accept the monkey, and that in the course of time adam's very name would be forgotten in the earth; therefore this calamity ought to be averted; a monument would accomplish this, and elmira ought not to waste this honorable opportunity to do adam a favor and herself a credit. then the unexpected happened. two bankers came forward and took hold of the matter--not for fun, not for sentiment, but because they saw in the monument certain commercial advantages for the town. the project had seemed gently humorous before--it was more than that now, with this stern business gravity injected into it. the bankers discussed the monument with me. we met several times. they proposed an indestructible memorial, to cost twenty-five thousand dollars. the insane oddity of a monument set up in a village to preserve a name that would outlast the hills and the rocks without any such help, would advertise elmira to the ends of the earth-and draw custom. it would be the only monument on the planet to adam, and in the matter of interest and impressiveness could never have a rival until somebody should set up a monument to the milky way. people would come from every corner of the globe and stop off to look at it, no tour of the world would be complete that left out adam's monument. elmira would be a mecca; there would be pilgrim ships at pilgrim rates, pilgrim specials on the continent's railways; libraries would be written about the monument, every tourist would kodak it, models of it would be for sale everywhere in the earth, its form would become as familiar as the figure of napoleon. one of the bankers subscribed five thousand dollars, and i think the other one subscribed half as much, but i do not remember with certainty now whether that was the figure or not. we got designs made-some of them came from paris. in the beginning--as a detail of the project when it was yet a joke-i had framed a humble and beseeching and perfervid petition to congress begging the government to built the monument, as a testimony of the great republic's gratitude to the father of the human race and as a token of her loyalty to him in this dark day of humiliation when his older children were doubting and deserting him. it seemed to me that this petition ought to be presented, now--it would be widely and feelingly abused and ridiculed and cursed, and would advertise our scheme and make our ground-floor stock go off briskly. so i sent it to general joseph r. hawley, who was then in the house, and he said he would present it. but he did not do it. i think he explained that when he came to read it he was afraid of it: it was too serious, to gushy, too sentimental--the house might take it for earnest. we ought to have carried out our monument scheme; we could have managed it without any great difficulty, and elmira would now be the most celebrated town in the universe. very recently i began to build a book in which one of the minor characters touches incidentally upon a project for a monument to adam, and now the tribune has come upon a trace of the forgotten jest of thirty years ago. apparently mental telegraphy is still in business. it is odd; but the freaks of mental telegraphy are usually odd. *** a humane word from satan [the following letter, signed by satan and purporting to come from him, we have reason to believe was not written by him, but by mark twain.-editor.] to the editor of harper's weekly: dear sir and kinsman,--let us have done with this frivolous talk. the american board accepts contributions from me every year: then why shouldn't it from mr. rockefeller? in all the ages, three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been conscience-money, as my books will show: then what becomes of the sting when that term is applied to mr. rockefeller's gift? the american board's trade is financed mainly from the graveyards. bequests, you understand. conscience-money. confession of an old crime and deliberate perpetration of a new one; for deceased's contribution is a robbery of his heirs. shall the board decline bequests because they stand for one of these offenses every time and generally for both? allow me to continue. the charge must persistently and resentfully and remorselessly dwelt upon is that mr. rockefeller's contribution is incurably tainted by perjury--perjury proved against him in the courts. it makes us smile--down in my place! because there isn't a rich man in your vast city who doesn't perjure himself every year before the tax board. they are all caked with perjury, many layers thick. iron-clad, so to speak. if there is one that isn't, i desire to acquire him for my museum, and will pay dinosaur rates. will you say it isn't infraction of the law, but only annual evasion of it? comfort yourselves with that nice distinction if you like-for the present. but by and by, when you arrive, i will show you something interesting: a whole hell-full of evaders! sometimes a frank law-breaker turns up elsewhere, but i get those others every time. to return to my muttons. i wish you to remember that my rich perjurers are contributing to the american board with frequency: it is money filched from the sworn-off personal tax; therefore it is the wages of sin; therefore it is my money; therefore it is _i_ that contribute it; and, finally, it is therefore as i have said: since the board daily accepts contributions from me, why should it decline them from mr. rockefeller, who is as good as i am, let the courts say what they may? satan. *** introduction to "the new guide of the conversation in portuguese and english" by pedro carolino in this world of uncertainties, there is, at any rate, one thing which may be pretty confidently set down as a certainty: and that is, that this celebrated little phrase-book will never die while the english language lasts. its delicious unconscious ridiculousness, and its enchanting na:ivet'e, as are supreme and unapproachable, in their way, as are shakespeare's sublimities. whatsoever is perfect in its kind, in literature, is imperishable: nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect, it must and will stand alone: its immortality is secure. it is one of the smallest books in the world, but few big books have received such wide attention, and been so much pondered by the grave and learned, and so much discussed and written about by the thoughtful, the thoughtless, the wise, and the foolish. long notices of it have appeared, from time to time, in the great english reviews, and in erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it has been laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly every newspaper and magazine in the english-speaking world. every scribbler, almost, has had his little fling at it, at one time or another; i had mine fifteen years ago. the book gets out of print, every now and then, and one ceases to hear of it for a season; but presently the nations and near and far colonies of our tongue and lineage call for it once more, and once more it issues from some london or continental or american press, and runs a new course around the globe, wafted on its way by the wind of a world's laughter. many persons have believed that this book's miraculous stupidities were studied and disingenuous; but no one can read the volume carefully through and keep that opinion. it was written in serious good faith and deep earnestness, by an honest and upright idiot who believed he knew something of the english language, and could impart his knowledge to others. the amplest proof of this crops out somewhere or other upon each and every page. there are sentences in the book which could have been manufactured by a man in his right mind, and with an intelligent and deliberate purposes to seem innocently ignorant; but there are other sentences, and paragraphs, which no mere pretended ignorance could ever achieve-nor yet even the most genuine and comprehensive ignorance, when unbacked by inspiration. it is not a fraud who speaks in the following paragraph of the author's preface, but a good man, an honest man, a man whose conscience is at rest, a man who believes he has done a high and worthy work for his nation and his generation, and is well pleased with his performance: we expect then, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him, and for her typographical correction) that may be worth the acceptation of the studious persons, and especially of the youth, at which we dedicate him particularly. one cannot open this book anywhere and not find richness. to prove that this is true, i will open it at random and copy the page i happen to stumble upon. here is the result: dialogue 16 for to see the town anothony, go to accompany they gentilsmen, do they see the town. we won't to see all that is it remarquable here. come with me, if you please. i shall not folget nothing what can to merit your attention. here we are near to cathedral; will you come in there? we will first to see him in oudside, after we shall go in there for to look the interior. admire this master piece gothic architecture's. the chasing of all they figures is astonishing' indeed. the cupola and the nave are not less curious to see. what is this palace how i see yonder? it is the town hall. and this tower here at this side? it is the observatory. the bridge is very fine, it have ten arches, and is constructed of free stone. the streets are very layed out by line and too paved. what is the circuit of this town? two leagues. there is it also hospitals here? it not fail them. what are then the edifices the worthest to have seen? it is the arsnehal, the spectacle's hall, the cusiomhouse, and the purse. we are going too see the others monuments such that the public pawnbroker's office, the plants garden's, the money office's, the library. that it shall be for another day; we are tired. dialogue 17 to inform one'self of a person how is that gentilman who you did speak by and by? is a german. i did think him englishman. he is of the saxony side. he speak the french very well. tough he is german, he speak so much well italyan, french, spanish and english, that among the italyans, they believe him italyan, he speak the frenche as the frenches himselves. the spanishesmen believe him spanishing, and the englishes, englishman. it is difficult to enjoy well so much several languages. the last remark contains a general truth; but it ceases to be a truth when one contracts it and apples it to an individual--provided that that individual is the author of this book, sehnor pedro carolino. i am sure i should not find it difficult "to enjoy well so much several languages"--or even a thousand of them--if he did the translating for me from the originals into his ostensible english. *** advice to little girls good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense. this retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances. if you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly china one, you should treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless. and you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able to do it. you ought never to take your little brother's "chewing-gum" away from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the river on a grindstone. in the artless simplicity natural to this time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. in all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster. if at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud--never, on any account, throw mud at him, because it will spoil his clothes. it is better to scald him a little, for then you obtain desirable results. you secure his immediate attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time your hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person, and possibly the skin, in spots. if your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won't. it is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment. you should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you are indebted for your food, and for the privilege of staying home from school when you let on that you are sick. therefore you ought to respect their little prejudices, and humor their little whims, and put up with their little foibles until they get to crowding you too much. good little girls always show marked deference for the aged. you ought never to "sass" old people unless they "sass" you first. *** post-mortem poetry [1] in philadelphia they have a custom which it would be pleasant to see adopted throughout the land. it is that of appending to published death-notices a little verse or two of comforting poetry. any one who is in the habit of reading the daily philadelphia ledger must frequently be touched by these plaintive tributes to extinguished worth. in philadelphia, the departure of a child is a circumstance which is not more surely followed by a burial than by the accustomed solacing poesy in the public ledger. in that city death loses half its terror because the knowledge of its presence comes thus disguised in the sweet drapery of verse. for instance, in a late ledger i find the following (i change the surname): died hawks.--on the 17th inst., clara, the daughter of ephraim and laura hawks, aged 21 months and 2 days. that merry shout no more i hear, no laughing child i see, no little arms are around my neck, no feet upon my knee; no kisses drop upon my cheek, these lips are sealed to me. dear lord, how could i give clara up to any but to thee? a child thus mourned could not die wholly discontented. from the ledger of the same date i make the following extract, merely changing the surname, as before: becket.--on sunday morning, 19th inst., john p., infant son of george and julia becket, aged 1 year, 6 months, and 15 days. that merry shout no more i hear, no laughing child i see, no little arms are round my neck, no feet upon my knee; no kisses drop upon my cheek; these lips are sealed to me. dear lord, how could i give johnnie up to any but to thee? the similarity of the emotions as produced in the mourners in these two instances is remarkably evidenced by the singular similarity of thought which they experienced, and the surprising coincidence of language used by them to give it expression. in the same journal, of the same date, i find the following (surname suppressed, as before): wagner.--on the 10th inst., ferguson g., the son of william l. and martha theresa wagner, aged 4 weeks and 1 day. that merry shout no more i hear, no laughing child i see, no little arms are round my neck, no feet upon my knee; no kisses drop upon my cheek, these lips are sealed to me. dear lord, how could i give ferguson up to any but to thee? it is strange what power the reiteration of an essentially poetical thought has upon one's feelings. when we take up the ledger and read the poetry about little clara, we feel an unaccountable depression of the spirits. when we drift further down the column and read the poetry about little johnnie, the depression and spirits acquires and added emphasis, and we experience tangible suffering. when we saunter along down the column further still and read the poetry about little ferguson, the word torture but vaguely suggests the anguish that rends us. in the ledger (same copy referred to above) i find the following (i alter surname, as usual): welch.--on the 5th inst., mary c. welch, wife of william b. welch, and daughter of catharine and george w. markland, in the 29th year of her age. a mother dear, a mother kind, has gone and left us all behind. cease to weep, for tears are vain, mother dear is out of pain. farewell, husband, children dear, serve thy god with filial fear, and meet me in the land above, where all is peace, and joy, and love. what could be sweeter than that? no collection of salient facts (without reduction to tabular form) could be more succinctly stated than is done in the first stanza by the surviving relatives, and no more concise and comprehensive program of farewells, post-mortuary general orders, etc., could be framed in any form than is done in verse by deceased in the last stanza. these things insensibly make us wiser and tenderer, and better. another extract: ball.--on the morning of the 15th inst., mary e., daughter of john and sarah f. ball. 'tis sweet to rest in lively hope that when my change shall come angels will hover round my bed, to waft my spirit home. the following is apparently the customary form for heads of families: burns.--on the 20th inst., michael burns, aged 40 years. dearest father, thou hast left us, hear thy loss we deeply feel; but 'tis god that has bereft us, he can all our sorrows heal. funeral at 2 o'clock sharp. there is something very simple and pleasant about the following, which, in philadelphia, seems to be the usual form for consumptives of long standing. (it deplores four distinct cases in the single copy of the ledger which lies on the memoranda editorial table): bromley.--on the 29th inst., of consumption, philip bromley, in the 50th year of his age. affliction sore long time he bore, physicians were in vain-till god at last did hear him mourn, and eased him of his pain. that friend whom death from us has torn, we did not think so soon to part; an anxious care now sinks the thorn still deeper in our bleeding heart. this beautiful creation loses nothing by repetition. on the contrary, the oftener one sees it in the ledger, the more grand and awe-inspiring it seems. with one more extract i will close: doble.--on the 4th inst., samuel pervil worthington doble, aged 4 days. our little sammy's gone, his tiny spirit's fled; our little boy we loved so dear lies sleeping with the dead. a tear within a father's eye, a mother's aching heart, can only tell the agony how hard it is to part. could anything be more plaintive than that, without requiring further concessions of grammar? could anything be likely to do more toward reconciling deceased to circumstances, and making him willing to go? perhaps not. the power of song can hardly be estimated. there is an element about some poetry which is able to make even physical suffering and death cheerful things to contemplate and consummations to be desired. this element is present in the mortuary poetry of philadelphia degree of development. the custom i have been treating of is one that should be adopted in all the cities of the land. it is said that once a man of small consequence died, and the rev. t. k. beecher was asked to preach the funeral sermon-a man who abhors the lauding of people, either dead or alive, except in dignified and simple language, and then only for merits which they actually possessed or possess, not merits which they merely ought to have possessed. the friends of the deceased got up a stately funeral. they must have had misgivings that the corpse might not be praised strongly enough, for they prepared some manuscript headings and notes in which nothing was left unsaid on that subject that a fervid imagination and an unabridged dictionary could compile, and these they handed to the minister as he entered the pulpit. they were merely intended as suggestions, and so the friends were filled with consternation when the minister stood in the pulpit and proceeded to read off the curious odds and ends in ghastly detail and in a loud voice! and their consternation solidified to petrification when he paused at the end, contemplated the multitude reflectively, and then said, impressively: "the man would be a fool who tried to add anything to that. let us pray!" and with the same strict adhesion to truth it can be said that the man would be a fool who tried to add anything to the following transcendent obituary poem. there is something so innocent, so guileless, so complacent, so unearthly serene and self-satisfied about this peerless "hog-wash," that the man must be made of stone who can read it without a dulcet ecstasy creeping along his backbone and quivering in his marrow. there is no need to say that this poem is genuine and in earnest, for its proofs are written all over its face. an ingenious scribbler might imitate it after a fashion, but shakespeare himself could not counterfeit it. it is noticeable that the country editor who published it did not know that it was a treasure and the most perfect thing of its kind that the storehouses and museums of literature could show. he did not dare to say no to the dread poet--for such a poet must have been something of an apparition--but he just shoveled it into his paper anywhere that came handy, and felt ashamed, and put that disgusted "published by request" over it, and hoped that his subscribers would overlook it or not feel an impulse to read it: (published by request lines composed on the death of samuel and catharine belknap's children by m. a. glaze friends and neighbors all draw near, and listen to what i have to say; and never leave your children dear when they are small, and go away. but always think of that sad fate, that happened in year of '63; four children with a house did burn, think of their awful agony. their mother she had gone away, and left them there alone to stay; the house took fire and down did burn; before their mother did return. their piteous cry the neighbors heard, and then the cry of fire was given; but, ah! before they could them reach, their little spirits had flown to heaven. their father he to war had gone, and on the battle-field was slain; but little did he think when he went away, but what on earth they would meet again. the neighbors often told his wife not to leave his children there, unless she got some one to stay, and of the little ones take care. the oldest he was years not six, and the youngest only eleven months old, but often she had left them there alone, as, by the neighbors, i have been told. how can she bear to see the place. where she so oft has left them there, without a single one to look to them, or of the little ones to take good care. oh, can she look upon the spot, whereunder their little burnt bones lay, but what she thinks she hears them say, ''twas god had pity, and took us on high.' and there may she kneel down and pray, and ask god her to forgive; and she may lead a different life while she on earth remains to live. her husband and her children too, god has took from pain and woe. may she reform and mend her ways, that she may also to them go. and when it is god's holy will, o, may she be prepared to meet her god and friends in peace, and leave this world of care. 1. written in 1870. *** the danger of lying in bed the man in the ticket-office said: "have an accident insurance ticket, also?" "no," i said, after studying the matter over a little. "no, i believe not; i am going to be traveling by rail all day today. however, tomorrow i don't travel. give me one for tomorrow." the man looked puzzled. he said: "but it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travel by rail--" "if i am going to travel by rail i sha'n't need it. lying at home in bed is the thing _i_ am afraid of." i had been looking into this matter. last year i traveled twenty thousand miles, almost entirely by rail; the year before, i traveled over twenty-five thousand miles, half by sea and half by rail; and the year before that i traveled in the neighborhood of ten thousand miles, exclusively by rail. i suppose if i put in all the little odd journeys here and there, i may say i have traveled sixty thousand miles during the three years i have mentioned. and never an accident. for a good while i said to myself every morning: "now i have escaped thus far, and so the chances are just that much increased that i shall catch it this time. i will be shrewd, and buy an accident ticket." and to a dead moral certainty i drew a blank, and went to bed that night without a joint started or a bone splintered. i got tired of that sort of daily bother, and fell to buying accident tickets that were good for a month. i said to myself, "a man can't buy thirty blanks in one bundle." but i was mistaken. there was never a prize in the the lot. i could read of railway accidents every day--the newspaper atmosphere was foggy with them; but somehow they never came my way. i found i had spent a good deal of money in the accident business, and had nothing to show for it. my suspicions were aroused, and i began to hunt around for somebody that had won in this lottery. i found plenty of people who had invested, but not an individual that had ever had an accident or made a cent. i stopped buying accident tickets and went to ciphering. the result was astounding. the peril lay not in traveling, but in staying at home. i hunted up statistics, and was amazed to find that after all the glaring newspaper headlines concerning railroad disasters, less than three hundred people had really lost their lives by those disasters in the preceding twelve months. the erie road was set down as the most murderous in the list. it had killed forty-six-or twenty-six, i do not exactly remember which, but i know the number was double that of any other road. but the fact straightway suggested itself that the erie was an immensely long road, and did more business than any other line in the country; so the double number of killed ceased to be matter for surprise. by further figuring, it appeared that between new york and rochester the erie ran eight passenger-trains each way every day--16 altogether; and carried a daily average of 6,000 persons. that is about a million in six months--the population of new york city. well, the erie kills from 13 to 23 persons of its million in six months; and in the same time 13,000 of new york's million die in their beds! my flesh crept, my hair stood on end. "this is appalling!" i said. "the danger isn't in traveling by rail, but in trusting to those deadly beds. i will never sleep in a bed again." i had figured on considerably less than one-half the length of the erie road. it was plain that the entire road must transport at least eleven or twelve thousand people every day. there are many short roads running out of boston that do fully half as much; a great many such roads. there are many roads scattered about the union that do a prodigious passenger business. therefore it was fair to presume that an average of 2,500 passengers a day for each road in the country would be almost correct. there are 846 railway lines in our country, and 846 times 2,500 are 2,115,000. so the railways of america move more than two millions of people every day; six hundred and fifty millions of people a year, without counting the sundays. they do that, too--there is no question about it; though where they get the raw material is clear beyond the jurisdiction of my arithmetic; for i have hunted the census through and through, and i find that there are not that many people in the united states, by a matter of six hundred and ten millions at the very least. they must use some of the same people over again, likely. san francisco is one-eighth as populous as new york; there are 60 deaths a week in the former and 500 a week in the latter--if they have luck. that is 3,120 deaths a year in san francisco, and eight times as many in new york--say about 25,000 or 26,000. the health of the two places is the same. so we will let it stand as a fair presumption that this will hold good all over the country, and that consequently 25,000 out of every million of people we have must die every year. that amounts to one-fortieth of our total population. one million of us, then, die annually. out of this million ten or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poisoned, or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular way, such as perishing by kerosene-lamp and hoop-skirt conflagrations, getting buried in coal-mines, falling off house-tops, breaking through church, or lecture-room floors, taking patent medicines, or committing suicide in other forms. the erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds! you will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. the railroads are good enough for me. and my advice to all people is, don't stay at home any more than you can help; but when you have got to stay at home a while, buy a package of those insurance tickets and sit up nights. you cannot be too cautious. [one can see now why i answered that ticket-agent in the manner recorded at the top of this sketch.] the moral of this composition is, that thoughtless people grumble more than is fair about railroad management in the united states. when we consider that every day and night of the year full fourteen thousand railway-trains of various kinds, freighted with life and armed with death, go thundering over the land, the marvel is, not that they kill three hundred human beings in a twelvemonth, but that they do not kill three hundred times three hundred! *** portrait of king william iii i never can look at those periodical portraits in the galaxy magazine without feeling a wild, tempestuous ambition to be an artist. i have seen thousands and thousands of pictures in my time-acres of them here and leagues of them in the galleries of europe-but never any that moved me as these portraits do. there is a portrait of monsignore capel in the november number, now could anything be sweeter than that? and there was bismarck's, in the october number; who can look at that without being purer and stronger and nobler for it? and thurlow and weed's picture in the september number; i would not have died without seeing that, no, not for anything this world can give. but looks back still further and recall my own likeness as printed in the august number; if i had been in my grave a thousand years when that appeared, i would have got up and visited the artist. i sleep with all these portraits under my pillow every night, so that i can go on studying them as soon as the day dawns in the morning. i know them all as thoroughly as if i had made them myself; i know every line and mark about them. sometimes when company are present i shuffle the portraits all up together, and then pick them out one by one and call their names, without referring to the printing on the bottom. i seldom make a mistake--never, when i am calm. i have had the portraits framed for a long time, waiting till my aunt gets everything ready for hanging them up in the parlor. but first one thing and then another interferes, and so the thing is delayed. once she said they would have more of the peculiar kind of light they needed in the attic. the old simpleton! it is as dark as a tomb up there. but she does not know anything about art, and so she has no reverence for it. when i showed her my "map of the fortifications of paris," she said it was rubbish. well, from nursing those portraits so long, i have come at last to have a perfect infatuation for art. i have a teacher now, and my enthusiasm continually and tumultuously grows, as i learn to use with more and more facility the pencil, brush, and graver. i am studying under de mellville, the house and portrait painter. [his name was smith when he lived in the west.] he does any kind of artist work a body wants, having a genius that is universal, like michael angelo. resembles that great artist, in fact. the back of his head is like this, and he wears his hat-brim tilted down on his nose to expose it. i have been studying under de mellville several months now. the first month i painted fences, and gave general satisfaction. the next month i white-washed a barn. the third, i was doing tin roofs; the forth, common signs; the fifth, statuary to stand before cigar shops. this present month is only the sixth, and i am already in portraits! the humble offering which accompanies these remarks [see figure]-the portrait of his majesty william iii., king of prussia-is my fifth attempt in portraits, and my greatest success. it has received unbounded praise from all classes of the community, but that which gratifies me most is the frequent and cordial verdict that it resembles the galaxy portraits. those were my first love, my earliest admiration, the original source and incentive of my art-ambition. whatever i am in art today, i owe to these portraits. i ask no credit for myself--i deserve none. and i never take any, either. many a stranger has come to my exhibition (for i have had my portrait of king william on exhibition at one dollar a ticket), and would have gone away blessing me, if i had let him, but i never did. i always stated where i got the idea. king william wears large bushy side-whiskers, and some critics have thought that this portrait would be more complete if they were added. but it was not possible. there was not room for side-whiskers and epaulets both, and so i let the whiskers go, and put in the epaulets, for the sake of style. that thing on his hat is an eagle. the prussian eagle--it is a national emblem. when i saw hat i mean helmet; but it seems impossible to make a picture of a helmet that a body can have confidence in. i wish kind friends everywhere would aid me in my endeavor to attract a little attention to the galaxy portraits. i feel persuaded it can be accomplished, if the course to be pursued be chosen with judgment. i write for that magazine all the time, and so do many abler men, and if i can get these portraits into universal favor, it is all i ask; the reading-matter will take care of itself. commendations of the portrait there is nothing like it in the vatican. pius ix. it has none of that vagueness, that dreamy spirituality about it, which many of the first critics of arkansas have objected to in the murillo school of art. ruskin. the expression is very interesting. j.w. titian. (keeps a macaroni store in venice, at the old family stand.) it is the neatest thing in still life i have seen for years. rosa bonheur. the smile may be almost called unique. bismarck. i never saw such character portrayed in a picture face before. de mellville. there is a benignant simplicity about the execution of this work which warms the heart toward it as much, full as much, as it fascinates the eye. landseer. one cannot see it without longing to contemplate the artist. frederick william. send me the entire edition--together with the plate and the original portrait--and name your own price. and--would you like to come over and stay awhile with napoleon at wilhelmsh:ohe? it shall not cost you a cent. william iii. *** does the race of man love a lord? often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period. the day after the arrival of prince henry i met an english friend, and he rubbed his hands and broke out with a remark that was charged to the brim with joy--joy that was evidently a pleasant salve to an old sore place: "many a time i've had to listen without retort to an old saying that is irritatingly true, and until now seemed to offer no chance for a return jibe: 'an englishman does dearly love a lord'; but after this i shall talk back, and say, 'how about the americans?'" it is a curious thing, the currency that an idiotic saying can get. the man that first says it thinks he has made a discovery. the man he says it to, thinks the same. it departs on its travels, is received everywhere with admiring acceptance, and not only as a piece of rare and acute observation, but as being exhaustively true and profoundly wise; and so it presently takes its place in the world's list of recognized and established wisdoms, and after that no one thinks of examining it to see whether it is really entitled to its high honors or not. i call to mind instances of this in two well-established proverbs, whose dullness is not surpassed by the one about the englishman and his love for a lord: one of them records the american's adoration of the almighty dollar, the other the american millionaire-girl's ambition to trade cash for a title, with a husband thrown in. it isn't merely the american that adores the almighty dollar, it is the human race. the human race has always adored the hatful of shells, or the bale of calico, or the half-bushel of brass rings, or the handful of steel fish-hooks, or the houseful of black wives, or the zareba full of cattle, or the two-score camels and asses, or the factory, or the farm, or the block of buildings, or the railroad bonds, or the bank stock, or the hoarded cash, or-anything that stands for wealth and consideration and independence, and can secure to the possessor that most precious of all things, another man's envy. it was a dull person that invented the idea that the american's devotion to the dollar is more strenuous than another's. rich american girls do buy titles, but they did not invent that idea; it had been worn threadbare several hundred centuries before america was discovered. european girls still exploit it as briskly as ever; and, when a title is not to be had for the money in hand, they buy the husband without it. they must put up the "dot," or there is no trade. the commercialization of brides is substantially universal, except in america. it exists with us, to some little extent, but in no degree approaching a custom. "the englishman dearly loves a lord." what is the soul and source of this love? i think the thing could be more correctly worded: "the human race dearly envies a lord." that is to say, it envies the lord's place. why? on two accounts, i think: its power and its conspicuousness. where conspicuousness carries with it a power which, by the light of our own observation and experience, we are able to measure and comprehend, i think our envy of the possessor is as deep and as passionate as is that of any other nation. no one can care less for a lord than the backwoodsman, who has had no personal contact with lords and has seldom heard them spoken of; but i will not allow that any englishman has a profounder envy of a lord than has the average american who has lived long years in a european capital and fully learned how immense is the position the lord occupies. of any ten thousand americans who eagerly gather, at vast inconvenience, to get a glimpse of prince henry, all but a couple of hundred will be there out of an immense curiosity; they are burning up with desire to see a personage who is so much talked about. they envy him; but it is conspicuousness they envy mainly, not the power that is lodged in his royal quality and position, for they have but a vague and spectral knowledge and appreciation of that; though their environment and associations they have been accustomed to regard such things lightly, and as not being very real; consequently, they are not able to value them enough to consumingly envy them. but, whenever an american (or other human being) is in the presence, for the first time, of a combination of great power and conspicuousness which he thoroughly understands and appreciates, his eager curiosity and pleasure will be well-sodden with that other passion--envy-whether he suspects it or not. at any time, on any day, in any part of america, you can confer a happiness upon any passing stranger by calling his attention to any other passing stranger and saying: "do you see that gentleman going along there? it is mr. rockefeller." watch his eye. it is a combination of power and conspicuousness which the man understands. when we understand rank, we always like to rub against it. when a man is conspicuous, we always want to see him. also, if he will pay us an attention we will manage to remember it. also, we will mention it now and then, casually; sometimes to a friend, or if a friend is not handy, we will make out with a stranger. well, then, what is rank, and what is conspicuousness? at once we think of kings and aristocracies, and of world-wide celebrities in soldierships, the arts, letters, etc., and we stop there. but that is a mistake. rank holds its court and receives its homage on every round of the ladder, from the emperor down to the rat-catcher; and distinction, also, exists on every round of the ladder, and commands its due of deference and envy. to worship rank and distinction is the dear and valued privilege of all the human race, and it is freely and joyfully exercised in democracies as well as in monarchies--and even, to some extent, among those creatures whom we impertinently call the lower animals. for even they have some poor little vanities and foibles, though in this matter they are paupers as compared to us. a chinese emperor has the worship of his four hundred millions of subjects, but the rest of the world is indifferent to him. a christian emperor has the worship of his subjects and of a large part of the christian world outside of his domains; but he is a matter of indifference to all china. a king, class a, has an extensive worship; a king, class b, has a less extensive worship; class c, class d, class e get a steadily diminishing share of worship; class l (sultan of zanzibar), class p (sultan of sulu), and class w (half-king of samoa), get no worship at all outside their own little patch of sovereignty. take the distinguished people along down. each has his group of homage-payers. in the navy, there are many groups; they start with the secretary and the admiral, and go down to the quartermaster-and below; for there will be groups among the sailors, and each of these groups will have a tar who is distinguished for his battles, or his strength, or his daring, or his profanity, and is admired and envied by his group. the same with the army; the same with the literary and journalistic craft; the publishing craft; the cod-fishery craft; standard oil; u. s. steel; the class a hotel-and the rest of the alphabet in that line; the class a prize-fighter-and the rest of the alphabet in his line--clear down to the lowest and obscurest six-boy gang of little gamins, with its one boy that can thrash the rest, and to whom he is king of samoa, bottom of the royal race, but looked up to with a most ardent admiration and envy. there is something pathetic, and funny, and pretty, about this human race's fondness for contact with power and distinction, and for the reflected glory it gets out of it. the king, class a, is happy in the state banquet and the military show which the emperor provides for him, and he goes home and gathers the queen and the princelings around him in the privacy of the spare room, and tells them all about it, and says: "his imperial majesty put his hand upon my shoulder in the most friendly way--just as friendly and familiar, oh, you can't imagine it!-and everybody seeing him do it; charming, perfectly charming!" the king, class g, is happy in the cold collation and the police parade provided for him by the king, class b, and goes home and tells the family all about it, and says: "and his majesty took me into his own private cabinet for a smoke and a chat, and there we sat just as sociable, and talking away and laughing and chatting, just the same as if we had been born in the same bunk; and all the servants in the anteroom could see us doing it! oh, it was too lovely for anything!" the king, class q, is happy in the modest entertainment furnished him by the king, class m, and goes home and tells the household about it, and is as grateful and joyful over it as were his predecessors in the gaudier attentions that had fallen to their larger lot. emperors, kings, artisans, peasants, big people, little people--at the bottom we are all alike and all the same; all just alike on the inside, and when our clothes are off, nobody can tell which of us is which. we are unanimous in the pride we take in good and genuine compliments paid us, and distinctions conferred upon us, in attentions shown. there is not one of us, from the emperor down,, but is made like that. do i mean attentions shown us by the guest? no, i mean simply flattering attentions, let them come whence they may. we despise no source that can pay us a pleasing attention--there is no source that is humble enough for that. you have heard a dear little girl say to a frowzy and disreputable dog: "he came right to me and let me pat him on the head, and he wouldn't let the others touch him!" and you have seen her eyes dance with pride in that high distinction. you have often seen that. if the child were a princess, would that random dog be able to confer the like glory upon her with his pretty compliment? yes; and even in her mature life and seated upon a throne, she would still remember it, still recall it, still speak of it with frank satisfaction. that charming and lovable german princess and poet, carmen sylva, queen of roumania, remembers yet that the flowers of the woods and fields "talked to her" when she was a girl, and she sets it down in her latest book; and that the squirrels conferred upon her and her father the valued compliment of not being afraid of them; and "once one of them, holding a nut between its sharp little teeth, ran right up against my father"--it has the very note of "he came right to me and let me pat him on the head"--"and when it saw itself reflected in his boot it was very much surprised, and stopped for a long time to contemplate itself in the polished leather"--then it went its way. and the birds! she still remembers with pride that "they came boldly into my room," when she had neglected her "duty" and put no food on the window-sill for them; she knew all the wild birds, and forgets the royal crown on her head to remember with pride that they knew her; also that the wasp and the bee were personal friends of hers, and never forgot that gracious relationship to her injury: "never have i been stung by a wasp or a bee." and here is that proud note again that sings in that little child's elation in being singled out, among all the company of children, for the random dog's honor-conferring attentions. "even in the very worst summer for wasps, when, in lunching out of doors, our table was covered with them and every one else was stung, they never hurt me." when a queen whose qualities of mind and heart and character are able to add distinction to so distinguished a place as a throne, remembers with grateful exultation, after thirty years, honors and distinctions conferred upon her by the humble, wild creatures of the forest, we are helped to realize that complimentary attentions, homage, distinctions, are of no caste, but are above all cast-that they are a nobility-conferring power apart. we all like these things. when the gate-guard at the railway-station passes me through unchallenged and examines other people's tickets, i feel as the king, class a, felt when the emperor put the imperial hand on his shoulder, "everybody seeing him do it"; and as the child felt when the random dog allowed her to pat his head and ostracized the others; and as the princess felt when the wasps spared her and stung the rest; and i felt just so, four years ago in vienna (and remember it yet), when the helmeted police shut me off, with fifty others, from a street which the emperor was to pass through, and the captain of the squad turned and saw the situation and said indignantly to that guard: "can't you see it is the herr mark twain? let him through!" it was four years ago; but it will be four hundred before i forget the wind of self-complacency that rose in me, and strained my buttons when i marked the deference for me evoked in the faces of my fellow-rabble, and noted, mingled with it, a puzzled and resentful expression which said, as plainly as speech could have worded it: "and who in the nation is the herr mark twain um gotteswillen?" how many times in your life have you heard this boastful remark: "i stood as close to him as i am to you; i could have put out my hand and touched him." we have all heard it many and many a time. it was a proud distinction to be able to say those words. it brought envy to the speaker, a kind of glory; and he basked in it and was happy through all his veins. and who was it he stood so close to? the answer would cover all the grades. sometimes it was a king; sometimes it was a renowned highwayman; sometimes it was an unknown man killed in an extraordinary way and made suddenly famous by it; always it was a person who was for the moment the subject of public interest of a village. "i was there, and i saw it myself." that is a common and envy-compelling remark. it can refer to a battle; to a handing; to a coronation; to the killing of jumbo by the railway-train; to the arrival of jenny lind at the battery; to the meeting of the president and prince henry; to the chase of a murderous maniac; to the disaster in the tunnel; to the explosion in the subway; to a remarkable dog-fight; to a village church struck by lightning. it will be said, more or less causally, by everybody in america who has seen prince henry do anything, or try to. the man who was absent and didn't see him to anything, will scoff. it is his privilege; and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem, even to himself, to be different from other americans, and better. as his opinion of his superior americanism grows, and swells, and concentrates and coagulates, he will go further and try to belittle the distinction of those that saw the prince do things, and will spoil their pleasure in it if he can. my life has been embittered by that kind of persons. if you are able to tell of a special distinction that has fallen to your lot, it gravels them; they cannot bear it; and they try to make believe that the thing you took for a special distinction was nothing of the kind and was meant in quite another way. once i was received in private audience by an emperor. last week i was telling a jealous person about it, and i could see him wince under it, see him bite, see him suffer. i revealed the whole episode to him with considerable elaboration and nice attention to detail. when i was through, he asked me what had impressed me most. i said: "his majesty's delicacy. they told me to be sure and back out from the presence, and find the door-knob as best i could; it was not allowable to face around. now the emperor knew it would be a difficult ordeal for me, because of lack of practice; and so, when it was time to part, he turned, with exceeding delicacy, and pretended to fumble with things on his desk, so i could get out in my own way, without his seeing me." it went home! it was vitriol! i saw the envy and disgruntlement rise in the man's face; he couldn't keep it down. i saw him try to fix up something in his mind to take the bloom off that distinction. i enjoyed that, for i judged that he had his work cut out for him. he struggled along inwardly for quite a while; then he said, with a manner of a person who has to say something and hasn't anything relevant to say: "you said he had a handful of special-brand cigars on the table?" "yes; _i_ never said anything to match them." i had him again. he had to fumble around in his mind as much as another minute before he could play; then he said in as mean a way as i ever heard a person say anything: "he could have been counting the cigars, you know." i cannot endure a man like that. it is nothing to him how unkind he is, so long as he takes the bloom off. it is all he cares for. "an englishman (or other human being) does dearly love a lord," (or other conspicuous person.) it includes us all. we love to be noticed by the conspicuous person; we love to be associated with such, or with a conspicuous event, even in a seventh-rate fashion, even in the forty-seventh, if we cannot do better. this accounts for some of our curious tastes in mementos. it accounts for the large private trade in the prince of wales's hair, which chambermaids were able to drive in that article of commerce when the prince made the tour of the world in the long ago--hair which probably did not always come from his brush, since enough of it was marketed to refurnish a bald comet; it accounts for the fact that the rope which lynches a negro in the presence of ten thousand christian spectators is salable five minutes later at two dollars and inch; it accounts for the mournful fact that a royal personage does not venture to wear buttons on his coat in public. we do love a lord--and by that term i mean any person whose situation is higher than our own. the lord of the group, for instance: a group of peers, a group of millionaires, a group of hoodlums, a group of sailors, a group of newsboys, a group of saloon politicians, a group of college girls. no royal person has ever been the object of a more delirious loyalty and slavish adoration than is paid by the vast tammany herd to its squalid idol in wantage. there is not a bifurcated animal in that menagerie that would not be proud to appear in a newspaper picture in his company. at the same time, there are some in that organization who would scoff at the people who have been daily pictured in company with prince henry, and would say vigorously that they would not consent to be photographed with him--a statement which would not be true in any instance. there are hundreds of people in america who would frankly say to you that they would not be proud to be photographed in a group with the prince, if invited; and some of these unthinking people would believe it when they said it; yet in no instance would it be true. we have a large population, but we have not a large enough one, by several millions, to furnish that man. he has not yet been begotten, and in fact he is not begettable. you may take any of the printed groups, and there isn't a person in the dim background who isn't visibly trying to be vivid; if it is a crowd of ten thousand--ten thousand proud, untamed democrats, horny-handed sons of toil and of politics, and fliers of the eagle-there isn't one who is trying to keep out of range, there isn't one who isn't plainly meditating a purchase of the paper in the morning, with the intention of hunting himself out in the picture and of framing and keeping it if he shall find so much of his person in it as his starboard ear. we all love to get some of the drippings of conspicuousness, and we will put up with a single, humble drip, if we can't get any more. we may pretend otherwise, in conversation; but we can't pretend it to ourselves privately--and we don't. we do confess in public that we are the noblest work of god, being moved to it by long habit, and teaching, and superstition; but deep down in the secret places of our souls we recognize that, if we are the noblest work, the less said about it the better. we of the north poke fun at the south for its fondness of titles-a fondness for titles pure and simple, regardless of whether they are genuine or pinchbeck. we forget that whatever a southerner likes the rest of the human race likes, and that there is no law of predilection lodged in one people that is absent from another people. there is no variety in the human race. we are all children, all children of the one adam, and we love toys. we can soon acquire that southern disease if some one will give it a start. it already has a start, in fact. i have been personally acquainted with over eighty-four thousand persons who, at one time or another in their lives, have served for a year or two on the staffs of our multitudinous governors, and through that fatality have been generals temporarily, and colonels temporarily, and judge-advocates temporarily; but i have known only nine among them who could be hired to let the title go when it ceased to be legitimate. i know thousands and thousands of governors who ceased to be governors away back in the last century; but i am acquainted with only three who would answer your letter if you failed to call them "governor" in it. i know acres and acres of men who have done time in a legislature in prehistoric days, but among them is not half an acre whose resentment you would not raise if you addressed them as "mr." instead of "hon." the first thing a legislature does is to convene in an impressive legislative attitude, and get itself photographed. each member frames his copy and takes it to the woods and hangs it up in the most aggressively conspicuous place in his house; and if you visit the house and fail to inquire what that accumulation is, the conversation will be brought around to it by that aforetime legislator, and he will show you a figure in it which in the course of years he has almost obliterated with the smut of his finger-marks, and say with a solemn joy, "it's me!" have you ever seen a country congressman enter the hotel breakfast-room in washington with his letters?--and sit at his table and let on to read them?--and wrinkle his brows and frown statesman-like?-keeping a furtive watch-out over his glasses all the while to see if he is being observed and admired?--those same old letters which he fetches in every morning? have you seen it? have you seen him show off? it is the sight of the national capital. except one; a pathetic one. that is the ex-congressman: the poor fellow whose life has been ruined by a two-year taste of glory and of fictitious consequence; who has been superseded, and ought to take his heartbreak home and hide it, but cannot tear himself away from the scene of his lost little grandeur; and so he lingers, and still lingers, year after year, unconsidered, sometimes snubbed, ashamed of his fallen estate, and valiantly trying to look otherwise; dreary and depressed, but counterfeiting breeziness and gaiety, hailing with chummy familiarity, which is not always welcomed, the more-fortunes who are still in place and were once his mates. have you seen him? he clings piteously to the one little shred that is left of his departed distinction--the "privilege of the floor"; and works it hard and gets what he can out of it. that is the saddest figure i know of. yes, we do so love our little distinctions! and then we loftily scoff at a prince for enjoying his larger ones; forgetting that if we only had his chance--ah! "senator" is not a legitimate title. a senator has no more right to be addressed by it than have you or i; but, in the several state capitals and in washington, there are five thousand senators who take very kindly to that fiction, and who purr gratefully when you call them by it-which you may do quite unrebuked. then those same senators smile at the self-constructed majors and generals and judges of the south! indeed, we do love our distinctions, get them how we may. and we work them for all they are worth. in prayer we call ourselves "worms of the dust," but it is only on a sort of tacit understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par. we-worms of the dust! oh, no, we are not that. except in fact; and we do not deal much in fact when we are contemplating ourselves. as a race, we do certainly love a lord--let him be croker, or a duke, or a prize-fighter, or whatever other personage shall chance to be the head of our group. many years ago, i saw a greasy youth in overalls standing by the herald office, with an expectant look in his face. soon a large man passed out, and gave him a pat on the shoulder. that was what the boy was waiting for--the large man's notice. the pat made him proud and happy, and the exultation inside of him shone out through his eyes; and his mates were there to see the pat and envy it and wish they could have that glory. the boy belonged down cellar in the press-room, the large man was king of the upper floors, foreman of the composing-room. the light in the boy's face was worship, the foreman was his lord, head of his group. the pat was an accolade. it was as precious to the boy as it would have been if he had been an aristocrat's son and the accolade had been delivered by his sovereign with a sword. the quintessence of the honor was all there; there was no difference in values; in truth there was no difference present except an artificial one-clothes. all the human race loves a lord--that is, loves to look upon or be noticed by the possessor of power or conspicuousness; and sometimes animals, born to better things and higher ideals, descend to man's level in this matter. in the jardin des plantes i have see a cat that was so vain of being the personal friend of an elephant that i was ashamed of her. *** extracts from adam's diary monday.--this new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. it is always hanging around and following me about. i don't like this; i am not used to company. i wish it would stay with the other animals. . . . cloudy today, wind in the east; think we shall have rain. . . . we? where did i get that word-the new creature uses it. tuesday.--been examining the great waterfall. it is the finest thing on the estate, i think. the new creature calls it niagara falls-why, i am sure i do not know. says it looks like niagara falls. that is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility. i get no chance to name anything myself. the new creature names everything that comes along, before i can get in a protest. and always that same pretext is offered--it looks like the thing. there is a dodo, for instance. says the moment one looks at it one sees at a glance that it "looks like a dodo." it will have to keep that name, no doubt. it wearies me to fret about it, and it does no good, anyway. dodo! it looks no more like a dodo than i do. wednesday.--built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to myself in peace. the new creature intruded. when i tried to put it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it away with the back of its paws, and made a noise such as some of the other animals make when they are in distress. i wish it would not talk; it is always talking. that sounds like a cheap fling at the poor creature, a slur; but i do not mean it so. i have never heard the human voice before, and any new and strange sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. and this new sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my ear, first on one side and then on the other, and i am used only to sounds that are more or less distant from me. friday. the naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything i can do. i had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty-garden of eden. privately, i continue to call it that, but not any longer publicly. the new creature says it is all woods and rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. says it looks like a park, and does not look like anything but a park. consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named niagara falls park. this is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me. and already there is a sign up: keep off the grass my life is not as happy as it was. saturday.--the new creature eats too much fruit. we are going to run short, most likely. "we" again--that is its word; mine, too, now, from hearing it so much. good deal of fog this morning. i do not go out in the fog myself. this new creature does. it goes out in all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet. and talks. it used to be so pleasant and quiet here. sunday.--pulled through. this day is getting to be more and more trying. it was selected and set apart last november as a day of rest. i had already six of them per week before. this morning found the new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree. monday.--the new creature says its name is eve. that is all right, i have no objections. says it is to call it by, when i want it to come. i said it was superfluous, then. the word evidently raised me in its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word and will bear repetition. it says it is not an it, it is a she. this is probably doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were nothing to me if she would but go by herself and not talk. tuesday.--she has littered the whole estate with execrable names and offensive signs: this way to the whirlpool this way to goat island cave of the winds this way she says this park would make a tidy summer resort if there was any custom for it. summer resort--another invention of hers-just words, without any meaning. what is a summer resort? but it is best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining. friday.--she has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the falls. what harm does it do? says it makes her shudder. i wonder why; i have always done it--always liked the plunge, and coolness. i supposed it was what the falls were for. they have no other use that i can see, and they must have been made for something. she says they were only made for scenery--like the rhinoceros and the mastodon. i went over the falls in a barrel--not satisfactory to her. went over in a tub--still not satisfactory. swam the whirlpool and the rapids in a fig-leaf suit. it got much damaged. hence, tedious complaints about my extravagance. i am too much hampered here. what i need is a change of scene. saturday.--i escaped last tuesday night, and traveled two days, and built me another shelter in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks as well as i could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast which she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with. i was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again when occasion offers. she engages herself in many foolish things; among others; to study out why the animals called lions and tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each other. this is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each other, and that would introduce what, as i understand, is called "death"; and death, as i have been told, has not yet entered the park. which is a pity, on some accounts. sunday.--pulled through. monday.--i believe i see what the week is for: it is to give time to rest up from the weariness of sunday. it seems a good idea. . . . she has been climbing that tree again. clodded her out of it. she said nobody was looking. seems to consider that a sufficient justification for chancing any dangerous thing. told her that. the word justification moved her admiration--and envy, too, i thought. it is a good word. tuesday.--she told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body. this is at least doubtful, if not more than that. i have not missed any rib. . . . she is in much trouble about the buzzard; says grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it; thinks it was intended to live on decayed flesh. the buzzard must get along the best it can with what is provided. we cannot overturn the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard. saturday.--she fell in the pond yesterday when she was looking at herself in it, which she is always doing. she nearly strangled, and said it was most uncomfortable. this made her sorry for the creatures which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues to fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come when they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence to her, she is such a numbskull, anyway; so she got a lot of them out and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep warm, but i have noticed them now and then all day and i don't see that they are any happier there then they were before, only quieter. when night comes i shall throw them outdoors. i will not sleep with them again, for i find them clammy and unpleasant to lie among when a person hasn't anything on. sunday.--pulled through. tuesday.--she has taken up with a snake now. the other animals are glad, for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them; and i am glad because the snake talks, and this enables me to get a rest. friday.--she says the snake advises her to try the fruit of the tree, and says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. i told her there would be another result, too--it would introduce death into the world. that was a mistake--it had been better to keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea--she could save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent lions and tigers. i advised her to keep away from the tree. she said she wouldn't. i foresee trouble. will emigrate. wednesday.--i have had a variegated time. i escaped last night, and rode a horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear of the park and hide in some other country before the trouble should begin; but it was not to be. about an hour after sun-up, as i was riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to their wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises, and in one moment the plain was a frantic commotion and every beast was destroying its neighbor. i knew what it meant-eve had eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world. . . . the tigers ate my house, paying no attention when i ordered them to desist, and they would have eaten me if i had stayed-which i didn't, but went away in much haste. . . . i found this place, outside the park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but she has found me out. found me out, and has named the place tonawanda-says it looks like that. in fact i was not sorry she came, for there are but meager pickings here, and she brought some of those apples. i was obliged to eat them, i was so hungry. it was against my principles, but i find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed. . . . she came curtained in boughs and bunches of leaves, and when i asked her what she meant by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she tittered and blushed. i had never seen a person titter and blush before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic. she said i would soon know how it was myself. this was correct. hungry as i was, i laid down the apple half-eaten--certainly the best one i ever saw, considering the lateness of the season-and arrayed myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her with some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not make a spectacle or herself. she did it, and after this we crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected some skins, and i made her patch together a couple of suits proper for public occasions. they are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish, and that is the main point about clothes. . . . i find she is a good deal of a companion. i see i should be lonesome and depressed without her, now that i have lost my property. another thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter. she will be useful. i will superintend. ten days later.--she accuses me of being the cause of our disaster! she says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the serpent assured her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. i said i was innocent, then, for i had not eaten any chestnuts. she said the serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative term meaning an aged and moldy joke. i turned pale at that, for i have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could have been of that sort, though i had honestly supposed that they were new when i made them. she asked me if i had made one just at the time of the catastrophe. i was obliged to admit that i had made one to myself, though not aloud. it was this. i was thinking about the falls, and i said to myself, "how wonderful it is to see that vast body of water tumble down there!" then in an instant a bright thought flashed into my head, and i let it fly, saying, "it would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble up there!"--and i was just about to kill myself with laughing at it when all nature broke loose in war and death and i had to flee for my life. "there," she said, with triumph, "that is just it; the serpent mentioned that very jest, and called it the first chestnut, and said it was coeval with the creation." alas, i am indeed to blame. would that i were not witty; oh, that i had never had that radiant thought! next year.--we have named it cain. she caught it while i was up country trapping on the north shore of the erie; caught it in the timber a couple of miles from our dug-out--or it might have been four, she isn't certain which. it resembles us in some ways, and may be a relation. that is what she thinks, but this is an error, in my judgment. the difference in size warrants the conclusion that it is a different and new kind of animal--a fish, perhaps, though when i put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the experiment to determine the matter. i still think it is a fish, but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have it to try. i do not understand this. the coming of the creature seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable about experiments. she thinks more of it than she does of any of the other animals, but is not able to explain why. her mind is disordered--everything shows it. sometimes she carries the fish in her arms half the night when it complains and wants to get to the water. at such times the water comes out of the places in her face that she looks out of, and she pats the fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her mouth to soothe it, and betrays sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways. i have never seen her do like this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly. she used to carry the young tigers around so, and play with them, before we lost our property, but it was only play; she never took on about them like this when their dinner disagreed with them. sunday.--she doesn't work, sundays, but lies around all tired out, and likes to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool noises to amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh. i have not seen a fish before that could laugh. this makes me doubt. . . . i have come to like sunday myself. superintending all the week tires a body so. there ought to be more sundays. in the old days they were tough, but now they come handy. wednesday.--it isn't a fish. i cannot quite make out what it is. it makes curious devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo" when it is. it is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop; it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; i feel sure it is not a fish, though i cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not. it merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up. i have not seen any other animal do that before. i said i believed it was an enigma; but she only admired the word without understanding it. in my judgment it is either an enigma or some king of a bug. if it dies, i will take it apart and see what its arrangements are. i never had a thing perplex me so. three months later.--the perplexity augments instead of diminishing. i sleep but little. it has ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs now. yet it differs from the other four legged animals, in that its front legs are unusually short, consequently this causes the main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air, and this is not attractive. it is built much as we are, but its method of traveling shows that it is not of our breed. the short front legs and long hind ones indicate that it is a of the kangaroo family, but it is a marked variation of that species, since the true kangaroo hops, whereas this one never does. still it is a curious and interesting variety, and has not been catalogued before. as i discovered it, i have felt justified in securing the credit of the discovery by attaching my name to it, and hence have called it kangaroorum adamiensis. . . . it must have been a young one when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since. it must be five times as big, now, as it was then, and when discontented it is able to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the noise it made at first. coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary effect. for this reason i discontinued the system. she reconciles it by persuasion, and by giving it things which she had previously told me she wouldn't give it. as already observed, i was not at home when it first came, and she told me she found it in the woods. it seems odd that it should be the only one, yet it must be so, for i have worn myself out these many weeks trying to find another one to add to my collection, and for this to play with; for surely then it would be quieter and we could tame it more easily. but i find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all, no tracks. it has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself; therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track? i have set a dozen traps, but they do no good. i catch all small animals except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out of curiosity, i think, to see what the milk is there for. they never drink it. three months later.--the kangaroo still continues to grow, which is very strange and perplexing. i never knew one to be so long getting its growth. it has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly like our hair except that it is much finer and softer, and instead of being black is red. i am like to lose my mind over the capricious and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak. if i could catch another one--but that is hopeless; it is a new variety, and the only sample; this is plain. but i caught a true kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome, would rather have that for company than have no kin at all, or any animal it could feel a nearness to or get sympathy from in its forlorn condition here among strangers who do not know its ways or habits, or what to do to make it feel that it is among friends; but it was a mistake--it went into such fits at the sight of the kangaroo that i was convinced it had never seen one before. i pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is nothing i can do to make it happy. if i could tame it--but that is out of the question; the more i try the worse i seem to make it. it grieves me to the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow and passion. i wanted to let it go, but she wouldn't hear of it. that seemed cruel and not like her; and yet she may be right. it might be lonelier than ever; for since i cannot find another one, how could it? five months later.--it is not a kangaroo. no, for it supports itself by holding to her finger, and thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and then falls down. it is probably some kind of a bear; and yet it has no tail--as yet--and no fur, except upon its head. it still keeps on growing--that is a curious circumstance, for bears get their growth earlier than this. bears are dangerous-since our catastrophe--and i shall not be satisfied to have this one prowling about the place much longer without a muzzle on. i have offered to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go, but it did no good--she is determined to run us into all sorts of foolish risks, i think. she was not like this before she lost her mind. a fortnight later.--i examined its mouth. there is no danger yet: it has only one tooth. it has no tail yet. it makes more noise now than it ever did before--and mainly at night. i have moved out. but i shall go over, mornings, to breakfast, and see if it has more teeth. if it gets a mouthful of teeth it will be time for it to go, tail or no tail, for a bear does not need a tail in order to be dangerous. four months later.--i have been off hunting and fishing a month, up in the region that she calls buffalo; i don't know why, unless it is because there are not any buffaloes there. meantime the bear has learned to paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, and says "poppa" and "momma." it is certainly a new species. this resemblance to words may be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose or meaning; but even in that case it is still extraordinary, and is a thing which no other bear can do. this imitation of speech, taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear. the further study of it will be exceedingly interesting. meantime i will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the north and make an exhaustive search. there must certainly be another one somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company of its own species. i will go straightway; but i will muzzle this one first. three months later.--it has been a weary, weary hunt, yet i have had no success. in the mean time, without stirring from the home estate, she has caught another one! i never saw such luck. i might have hunted these woods a hundred years, i never would have run across that thing. next day.--i have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it is perfectly plain that they are of the same breed. i was going to stuff one of them for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it for some reason or other; so i have relinquished the idea, though i think it is a mistake. it would be an irreparable loss to science if they should get away. the old one is tamer than it was and can laugh and talk like a parrot, having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty in a high developed degree. i shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot; and yet i ought not to be astonished, for it has already been everything else it could think of since those first days when it was a fish. the new one is as ugly as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. she calls it abel. ten years later.--they are boys; we found it out long ago. it was their coming in that small immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it. there are some girls now. abel is a good boy, but if cain had stayed a bear it would have improved him. after all these years, i see that i was mistaken about eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the garden with her than inside it without her. at first i thought she talked too much; but now i should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. blessed be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit! *** eve's diary translated from the original saturday.--i am almost a whole day old, now. i arrived yesterday. that is as it seems to me. and it must be so, for if there was a day-before-yesterday i was not there when it happened, or i should remember it. it could be, of course, that it did happen, and that i was not noticing. very well; i will be very watchful now, and if any day-before-yesterdays happen i will make a note of it. it will be best to start right and not let the record get confused, for some instinct tells me that these details are going to be important to the historian some day. for i feel like an experiment, i feel exactly like an experiment; it would be impossible for a person to feel more like an experiment than i do, and so i am coming to feel convinced that that is what i am--an experiment; just an experiment, and nothing more. then if i am an experiment, am i the whole of it? no, i think not; i think the rest of it is part of it. i am the main part of it, but i think the rest of it has its share in the matter. is my position assured, or do i have to watch it and take care of it? the latter, perhaps. some instinct tells me that eternal vigilance is the price of supremacy. [that is a good phrase, i think, for one so young.] everything looks better today than it did yesterday. in the rush of finishing up yesterday, the mountains were left in a ragged condition, and some of the plains were so cluttered with rubbish and remnants that the aspects were quite distressing. noble and beautiful works of art should not be subjected to haste; and this majestic new world is indeed a most noble and beautiful work. and certainly marvelously near to being perfect, notwithstanding the shortness of the time. there are too many stars in some places and not enough in others, but that can be remedied presently, no doubt. the moon got loose last night, and slid down and fell out of the scheme-a very great loss; it breaks my heart to think of it. there isn't another thing among the ornaments and decorations that is comparable to it for beauty and finish. it should have been fastened better. if we can only get it back again-but of course there is no telling where it went to. and besides, whoever gets it will hide it; i know it because i would do it myself. i believe i can be honest in all other matters, but i already begin to realize that the core and center of my nature is love of the beautiful, a passion for the beautiful, and that it would not be safe to trust me with a moon that belonged to another person and that person didn't know i had it. i could give up a moon that i found in the daytime, because i should be afraid some one was looking; but if i found it in the dark, i am sure i should find some kind of an excuse for not saying anything about it. for i do love moons, they are so pretty and so romantic. i wish we had five or six; i would never go to bed; i should never get tired lying on the moss-bank and looking up at them. stars are good, too. i wish i could get some to put in my hair. but i suppose i never can. you would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it. when they first showed, last night, i tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn't reach, which astonished me; then i tried clods till i was all tired out, but i never got one. it was because i am left-handed and cannot throw good. even when i aimed at the one i wasn't after i couldn't hit the other one, though i did make some close shots, for i saw the black blot of the clod sail right into the midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if i could have held out a little longer maybe i could have got one. so i cried a little, which was natural, i suppose, for one of my age, and after i was rested i got a basket and started for a place on the extreme rim of the circle, where the stars were close to the ground and i could get them with my hands, which would be better, anyway, because i could gather them tenderly then, and not break them. but it was farther than i thought, and at last i had go give it up; i was so tired i couldn't drag my feet another step; and besides, they were sore and hurt me very much. i couldn't get back home; it was too far and turning cold; but i found some tigers and nestled in among them and was most adorably comfortable, and their breath was sweet and pleasant, because they live on strawberries. i had never seen a tiger before, but i knew them in a minute by the stripes. if i could have one of those skins, it would make a lovely gown. today i am getting better ideas about distances. i was so eager to get hold of every pretty thing that i giddily grabbed for it, sometimes when it was too far off, and sometimes when it was but six inches away but seemed a foot--alas, with thorns between! i learned a lesson; also i made an axiom, all out of my own head-my very first one; the scratched experiment shuns the thorn. i think it is a very good one for one so young. i followed the other experiment around, yesterday afternoon, at a distance, to see what it might be for, if i could. but i was not able to make out. i think it is a man. i had never seen a man, but it looked like one, and i feel sure that that is what it is. i realize that i feel more curiosity about it than about any of the other reptiles. if it is a reptile, and i suppose it is; for it has frowzy hair and blue eyes, and looks like a reptile. it has no hips; it tapers like a carrot; when it stands, it spreads itself apart like a derrick; so i think it is a reptile, though it may be architecture. i was afraid of it at first, and started to run every time it turned around, for i thought it was going to chase me; but by and by i found it was only trying to get away, so after that i was not timid any more, but tracked it along, several hours, about twenty yards behind, which made it nervous and unhappy. at last it was a good deal worried, and climbed a tree. i waited a good while, then gave it up and went home. today the same thing over. i've got it up the tree again. sunday.--it is up there yet. resting, apparently. but that is a subterfuge: sunday isn't the day of rest; saturday is appointed for that. it looks to me like a creature that is more interested in resting than it anything else. it would tire me to rest so much. it tires me just to sit around and watch the tree. i do wonder what it is for; i never see it do anything. they returned the moon last night, and i was so happy! i think it is very honest of them. it slid down and fell off again, but i was not distressed; there is no need to worry when one has that kind of neighbors; they will fetch it back. i wish i could do something to show my appreciation. i would like to send them some stars, for we have more than we can use. i mean i, not we, for i can see that the reptile cares nothing for such things. it has low tastes, and is not kind. when i went there yesterday evening in the gloaming it had crept down and was trying to catch the little speckled fishes that play in the pool, and i had to clod it to make it go up the tree again and let them alone. i wonder if that is what it is for? hasn't it any heart? hasn't it any compassion for those little creature? can it be that it was designed and manufactured for such ungentle work? it has the look of it. one of the clods took it back of the ear, and it used language. it gave me a thrill, for it was the first time i had ever heard speech, except my own. i did not understand the words, but they seemed expressive. when i found it could talk i felt a new interest in it, for i love to talk; i talk, all day, and in my sleep, too, and i am very interesting, but if i had another to talk to i could be twice as interesting, and would never stop, if desired. if this reptile is a man, it isn't an it, is it? that wouldn't be grammatical, would it? i think it would be he. i think so. in that case one would parse it thus: nominative, he; dative, him; possessive, his'n. well, i will consider it a man and call it he until it turns out to be something else. this will be handier than having so many uncertainties. next week sunday.--all the week i tagged around after him and tried to get acquainted. i had to do the talking, because he was shy, but i didn't mind it. he seemed pleased to have me around, and i used the sociable "we" a good deal, because it seemed to flatter him to be included. wednesday.--we are getting along very well indeed, now, and getting better and better acquainted. he does not try to avoid me any more, which is a good sign, and shows that he likes to have me with him. that pleases me, and i study to be useful to him in every way i can, so as to increase his regard. during the last day or two i have taken all the work of naming things off his hands, and this has been a great relief to him, for he has no gift in that line, and is evidently very grateful. he can't think of a rational name to save him, but i do not let him see that i am aware of his defect. whenever a new creature comes along i name it before he has time to expose himself by an awkward silence. in this way i have saved him many embarrassments. i have no defect like this. the minute i set eyes on an animal i know what it is. i don't have to reflect a moment; the right name comes out instantly, just as if it were an inspiration, as no doubt it is, for i am sure it wasn't in me half a minute before. i seem to know just by the shape of the creature and the way it acts what animal it is. when the dodo came along he thought it was a wildcat--i saw it in his eye. but i saved him. and i was careful not to do it in a way that could hurt his pride. i just spoke up in a quite natural way of pleasing surprise, and not as if i was dreaming of conveying information, and said, "well, i do declare, if there isn't the dodo!" i explained--without seeming to be explaining-how i know it for a dodo, and although i thought maybe he was a little piqued that i knew the creature when he didn't, it was quite evident that he admired me. that was very agreeable, and i thought of it more than once with gratification before i slept. how little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it! thursday.--my first sorrow. yesterday he avoided me and seemed to wish i would not talk to him. i could not believe it, and thought there was some mistake, for i loved to be with him, and loved to hear him talk, and so how could it be that he could feel unkind toward me when i had not done anything? but at last it seemed true, so i went away and sat lonely in the place where i first saw him the morning that we were made and i did not know what he was and was indifferent about him; but now it was a mournful place, and every little think spoke of him, and my heart was very sore. i did not know why very clearly, for it was a new feeling; i had not experienced it before, and it was all a mystery, and i could not make it out. but when night came i could not bear the lonesomeness, and went to the new shelter which he has built, to ask him what i had done that was wrong and how i could mend it and get back his kindness again; but he put me out in the rain, and it was my first sorrow. sunday.--it is pleasant again, now, and i am happy; but those were heavy days; i do not think of them when i can help it. i tried to get him some of those apples, but i cannot learn to throw straight. i failed, but i think the good intention pleased him. they are forbidden, and he says i shall come to harm; but so i come to harm through pleasing him, why shall i care for that harm? monday.--this morning i told him my name, hoping it would interest him. but he did not care for it. it is strange. if he should tell me his name, i would care. i think it would be pleasanter in my ears than any other sound. he talks very little. perhaps it is because he is not bright, and is sensitive about it and wishes to conceal it. it is such a pity that he should feel so, for brightness is nothing; it is in the heart that the values lie. i wish i could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches, and riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty. although he talks so little, he has quite a considerable vocabulary. this morning he used a surprisingly good word. he evidently recognized, himself, that it was a good one, for he worked in in twice afterward, casually. it was good casual art, still it showed that he possesses a certain quality of perception. without a doubt that seed can be made to grow, if cultivated. where did he get that word? i do not think i have ever used it. no, he took no interest in my name. i tried to hide my disappointment, but i suppose i did not succeed. i went away and sat on the moss-bank with my feet in the water. it is where i go when i hunger for companionship, some one to look at, some one to talk to. it is not enough--that lovely white body painted there in the pool-but it is something, and something is better than utter loneliness. it talks when i talk; it is sad when i am sad; it comforts me with its sympathy; it says, "do not be downhearted, you poor friendless girl; i will be your friend." it is a good friend to me, and my only one; it is my sister. that first time that she forsook me! ah, i shall never forget that-never, never. my heart was lead in my body! i said, "she was all i had, and now she is gone!" in my despair i said, "break, my heart; i cannot bear my life any more!" and hid my face in my hands, and there was no solace for me. and when i took them away, after a little, there she was again, white and shining and beautiful, and i sprang into her arms! that was perfect happiness; i had known happiness before, but it was not like this, which was ecstasy. i never doubted her afterward. sometimes she stayed away--maybe an hour, maybe almost the whole day, but i waited and did not doubt; i said, "she is busy, or she is gone on a journey, but she will come." and it was so: she always did. at night she would not come if it was dark, for she was a timid little thing; but if there was a moon she would come. i am not afraid of the dark, but she is younger than i am; she was born after i was. many and many are the visits i have paid her; she is my comfort and my refuge when my life is hard--and it is mainly that. tuesday.--all the morning i was at work improving the estate; and i purposely kept away from him in the hope that he would get lonely and come. but he did not. at noon i stopped for the day and took my recreation by flitting all about with the bees and the butterflies and reveling in the flowers, those beautiful creatures that catch the smile of god out of the sky and preserve it! i gathered them, and made them into wreaths and garlands and clothed myself in them while i ate my luncheon-apples, of course; then i sat in the shade and wished and waited. but he did not come. but no matter. nothing would have come of it, for he does not care for flowers. he called them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that. he does not care for me, he does not care for flowers, he does not care for the painted sky at eventide--is there anything he does care for, except building shacks to coop himself up in from the good clean rain, and thumping the melons, and sampling the grapes, and fingering the fruit on the trees, to see how those properties are coming along? i laid a dry stick on the ground and tried to bore a hole in it with another one, in order to carry out a scheme that i had, and soon i got an awful fright. a thin, transparent bluish film rose out of the hole, and i dropped everything and ran! i thought it was a spirit, and i was so frightened! but i looked back, and it was not coming; so i leaned against a rock and rested and panted, and let my limps go on trembling until they got steady again; then i crept warily back, alert, watching, and ready to fly if there was occasion; and when i was come near, i parted the branches of a rose-bush and peeped through--wishing the man was about, i was looking so cunning and pretty--but the sprite was gone. i went there, and there was a pinch of delicate pink dust in the hole. i put my finger in, to feel it, and said ouch! and took it out again. it was a cruel pain. i put my finger in my mouth; and by standing first on one foot and then the other, and grunting, i presently eased my misery; then i was full of interest, and began to examine. i was curious to know what the pink dust was. suddenly the name of it occurred to me, though i had never heard of it before. it was fire! i was as certain of it as a person could be of anything in the world. so without hesitation i named it that--fire. i had created something that didn't exist before; i had added a new thing to the world's uncountable properties; i realized this, and was proud of my achievement, and was going to run and find him and tell him about it, thinking to raise myself in his esteem-but i reflected, and did not do it. no--he would not care for it. he would ask what it was good for, and what could i answer? for if it was not good for something, but only beautiful, merely beautiful-so i sighed, and did not go. for it wasn't good for anything; it could not build a shack, it could not improve melons, it could not hurry a fruit crop; it was useless, it was a foolishness and a vanity; he would despise it and say cutting words. but to me it was not despicable; i said, "oh, you fire, i love you, you dainty pink creature, for you are beautiful--and that is enough!" and was going to gather it to my breast. but refrained. then i made another maxim out of my head, though it was so nearly like the first one that i was afraid it was only a plagiarism: "the burnt experiment shuns the fire." i wrought again; and when i had made a good deal of fire-dust i emptied it into a handful of dry brown grass, intending to carry it home and keep it always and play with it; but the wind struck it and it sprayed up and spat out at me fiercely, and i dropped it and ran. when i looked back the blue spirit was towering up and stretching and rolling away like a cloud, and instantly i thought of the name of it--smoke!--though, upon my word, i had never heard of smoke before. soon brilliant yellow and red flares shot up through the smoke, and i named them in an instant--flames--and i was right, too, though these were the very first flames that had ever been in the world. they climbed the trees, then flashed splendidly in and out of the vast and increasing volume of tumbling smoke, and i had to clap my hands and laugh and dance in my rapture, it was so new and strange and so wonderful and so beautiful! he came running, and stopped and gazed, and said not a word for many minutes. then he asked what it was. ah, it was too bad that he should ask such a direct question. i had to answer it, of course, and i did. i said it was fire. if it annoyed him that i should know and he must ask; that was not my fault; i had no desire to annoy him. after a pause he asked: "how did it come?" another direct question, and it also had to have a direct answer. "i made it." the fire was traveling farther and farther off. he went to the edge of the burned place and stood looking down, and said: "what are these?" "fire-coals." he picked up one to examine it, but changed his mind and put it down again. then he went away. nothing interests him. but i was interested. there were ashes, gray and soft and delicate and pretty--i knew what they were at once. and the embers; i knew the embers, too. i found my apples, and raked them out, and was glad; for i am very young and my appetite is active. but i was disappointed; they were all burst open and spoiled. spoiled apparently; but it was not so; they were better than raw ones. fire is beautiful; some day it will be useful, i think. friday.--i saw him again, for a moment, last monday at nightfall, but only for a moment. i was hoping he would praise me for trying to improve the estate, for i had meant well and had worked hard. but he was not pleased, and turned away and left me. he was also displeased on another account: i tried once more to persuade him to stop going over the falls. that was because the fire had revealed to me a new passion--quite new, and distinctly different from love, grief, and those others which i had already discovered--fear. and it is horrible!--i wish i had never discovered it; it gives me dark moments, it spoils my happiness, it makes me shiver and tremble and shudder. but i could not persuade him, for he has not discovered fear yet, and so he could not understand me. extract from adam's diary perhaps i ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and make allowances. she is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. and she is color-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains, the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering in the wastes of space--none of them is of any practical value, so far as i can see, but because they have color and majesty, that is enough for her, and she loses her mind over them. if she could quiet down and keep still a couple minutes at a time, it would be a reposeful spectacle. in that case i think i could enjoy looking at her; indeed i am sure i could, for i am coming to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature-lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and once when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder, with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, watching the flight of a bird in the sky, i recognized that she was beautiful. monday noon.--if there is anything on the planet that she is not interested in it is not in my list. there are animals that i am indifferent to, but it is not so with her. she has no discrimination, she takes to all of them, she thinks they are all treasures, every new one is welcome. when the mighty brontosaurus came striding into camp, she regarded it as an acquisition, i considered it a calamity; that is a good sample of the lack of harmony that prevails in our views of things. she wanted to domesticate it, i wanted to make it a present of the homestead and move out. she believed it could be tamed by kind treatment and would be a good pet; i said a pet twenty-one feet high and eight-four feet long would be no proper thing to have about the place, because, even with the best intentions and without meaning any harm, it could sit down on the house and mash it, for any one could see by the look of its eye that it was absent-minded. still, her heart was set upon having that monster, and she couldn't give it up. she thought we could start a dairy with it, and wanted me to help milk it; but i wouldn't; it was too risky. the sex wasn't right, and we hadn't any ladder anyway. then she wanted to ride it, and look at the scenery. thirty or forty feet of its tail was lying on the ground, like a fallen tree, and she thought she could climb it, but she was mistaken; when she got to the steep place it was too slick and down she came, and would have hurt herself but for me. was she satisfied now? no. nothing ever satisfies her but demonstration; untested theories are not in her line, and she won't have them. it is the right spirit, i concede it; it attracts me; i feel the influence of it; if i were with her more i think i should take it up myself. well, she had one theory remaining about this colossus: she thought that if we could tame it and make him friendly we could stand in the river and use him for a bridge. it turned out that he was already plenty tame enough--at least as far as she was concerned-so she tried her theory, but it failed: every time she got him properly placed in the river and went ashore to cross over him, he came out and followed her around like a pet mountain. like the other animals. they all do that. friday.--tuesday--wednesday--thursday--and today: all without seeing him. it is a long time to be alone; still, it is better to be alone than unwelcome. i had to have company--i was made for it, i think--so i made friends with the animals. they are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose. i think they are perfect gentlemen. all these days we have had such good times, and it hasn't been lonesome for me, ever. lonesome! no, i should say not. why, there's always a swarm of them around-sometimes as much as four or five acres--you can't count them; and when you stand on a rock in the midst and look out over the furry expanse it is so mottled and splashed and gay with color and frisking sheen and sun-flash, and so rippled with stripes, that you might think it was a lake, only you know it isn't; and there's storms of sociable birds, and hurricanes of whirring wings; and when the sun strikes all that feathery commotion, you have a blazing up of all the colors you can think of, enough to put your eyes out. we have made long excursions, and i have see a great deal of the world; almost all of it, i think; and so i am the first traveler, and the only one. when we are on the march, it is an imposing sight-there's nothing like it anywhere. for comfort i ride a tiger or a leopard, because it is soft and has a round back that fits me, and because they are such pretty animals; but for long distance or for scenery i ride the elephant. he hoists me up with his trunk, but i can get off myself; when we are ready to camp, he sits and i slide down the back way. the birds and animals are all friendly to each other, and there are no disputes about anything. they all talk, and they all talk to me, but it must be a foreign language, for i cannot make out a word they say; yet they often understand me when i talk back, particularly the dog and the elephant. it makes me ashamed. it shows that they are brighter than i am, for i want to be the principal experiment myself--and i intend to be, too. i have learned a number of things, and am educated, now, but i wasn't at first. i was ignorant at first. at first it used to vex me because, with all my watching, i was never smart enough to be around when the water was running uphill; but now i do not mind it. i have experimented and experimented until now i know it never does run uphill, except in the dark. i know it does in the dark, because the pool never goes dry, which it would, of course, if the water didn't come back in the night. it is best to prove things by actual experiment; then you know; whereas if you depend on guessing and supposing and conjecturing, you never get educated. some things you can't find out; but you will never know you can't by guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can't find out. and it is delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting. if there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull. even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out, and i don't know but more so. the secret of the water was a treasure until i got it; then the excitement all went away, and i recognized a sense of loss. by experiment i know that wood swims, and dry leaves, and feathers, and plenty of other things; therefore by all that cumulative evidence you know that a rock will swim; but you have to put up with simply knowing it, for there isn't any way to prove it--up to now. but i shall find a way--then that excitement will go. such things make me sad; because by and by when i have found out everything there won't be any more excitements, and i do love excitements so! the other night i couldn't sleep for thinking about it. at first i couldn't make out what i was made for, but now i think it was to search out the secrets of this wonderful world and be happy and thank the giver of it all for devising it. i think there are many things to learn yet--i hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying too fast i think they will last weeks and weeks. i hope so. when you cast up a feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight; then you throw up a clod and it doesn't. it comes down, every time. i have tried it and tried it, and it is always so. i wonder why it is? of course it doesn't come down, but why should it seem to? i suppose it is an optical illusion. i mean, one of them is. i don't know which one. it may be the feather, it may be the clod; i can't prove which it is, i can only demonstrate that one or the other is a fake, and let a person take his choice. by watching, i know that the stars are not going to last. i have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky. since one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt, they can all melt the same night. that sorrow will come--i know it. i mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as i can keep awake; and i will impress those sparkling fields on my memory, so that by and by when they are taken away i can by my fancy restore those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again, and double them by the blur of my tears. after the fall when i look back, the garden is a dream to me. it was beautiful, surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost, and i shall not see it any more. the garden is lost, but i have found him, and am content. he loves me as well as he can; i love him with all the strength of my passionate nature, and this, i think, is proper to my youth and sex. if i ask myself why i love him, i find i do not know, and do not really much care to know; so i suppose that this kind of love is not a product of reasoning and statistics, like one's love for other reptiles and animals. i think that this must be so. i love certain birds because of their song; but i do not love adam on account of his singing--no, it is not that; the more he sings the more i do not get reconciled to it. yet i ask him to sing, because i wish to learn to like everything he is interested in. i am sure i can learn, because at first i could not stand it, but now i can. it sours the milk, but it doesn't matter; i can get used to that kind of milk. it is not on account of his brightness that i love him--no, it is not that. he is not to blame for his brightness, such as it is, for he did not make it himself; he is as god make him, and that is sufficient. there was a wise purpose in it, that i know. in time it will develop, though i think it will not be sudden; and besides, there is no hurry; he is well enough just as he is. it is not on account of his gracious and considerate ways and his delicacy that i love him. no, he has lacks in this regard, but he is well enough just so, and is improving. it is not on account of his industry that i love him--no, it is not that. i think he has it in him, and i do not know why he conceals it from me. it is my only pain. otherwise he is frank and open with me, now. i am sure he keeps nothing from me but this. it grieves me that he should have a secret from me, and sometimes it spoils my sleep, thinking of it, but i will put it out of my mind; it shall not trouble my happiness, which is otherwise full to overflowing. it is not on account of his education that i love him--no, it is not that. he is self-educated, and does really know a multitude of things, but they are not so. it is not on account of his chivalry that i love him--no, it is not that. he told on me, but i do not blame him; it is a peculiarity of sex, i think, and he did not make his sex. of course i would not have told on him, i would have perished first; but that is a peculiarity of sex, too, and i do not take credit for it, for i did not make my sex. then why is it that i love him? merely because he is masculine, i think. at bottom he is good, and i love him for that, but i could love him without it. if he should beat me and abuse me, i should go on loving him. i know it. it is a matter of sex, i think. he is strong and handsome, and i love him for that, and i admire him and am proud of him, but i could love him without those qualities. he he were plain, i should love him; if he were a wreck, i should love him; and i would work for him, and slave over him, and pray for him, and watch by his bedside until i died. yes, i think i love him merely because he is mine and is masculine. there is no other reason, i suppose. and so i think it is as i first said: that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. it just comes--none knows whence--and cannot explain itself. and doesn't need to. it is what i think. but i am only a girl, the first that has examined this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance and inexperience i have not got it right. forty years later it is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together--a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name. but if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be i; for he is strong, i am weak, i am not so necessary to him as he is to me--life without him would not be life; now could i endure it? this prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up while my race continues. i am the first wife; and in the last wife i shall be repeated. at eve's grave adam: wheresoever she was, there was eden. *** [end.] . [pg/etext93/wman10.txt] what is man by mark twain june, 1993 [etext #70] what is man? and other essays of mark twain (samuel langhorne clemens, 1835-1910) contents what is man? the death of jean the turning-point of my life how to make history dates stick the memorable assassination a scrap of curious history switzerland, the cradle of liberty at the shrine of st. wagner william dean howells english as she is taught a simplified alphabet as concerns interpreting the deity concerning tobacco taming the bicycle is shakespeare dead? ---------------------------------------------------------------- what is man? i a. man the machine. b. personal merit [the old man and the young man had been conversing. the old man had asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more. the young man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and furnish his reasons for his position.] old man. what are the materials of which a steam-engine is made? young man. iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on. o.m. where are these found? y.m. in the rocks. o.m. in a pure state? y.m. no--in ores. o.m. are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores? y.m. no--it is the patient work of countless ages. o.m. you could make the engine out of the rocks themselves? y.m. yes, a brittle one and not valuable. o.m. you would not require much, of such an engine as that? y.m. no--substantially nothing. o.m. to make a fine and capable engine, how would you proceed? y.m. drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore; crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of it through the bessemer process and make steel of it. mine and treat and combine several metals of which brass is made. o.m. then? y.m. out of the perfected result, build the fine engine. o.m. you would require much of this one? y.m. oh, indeed yes. o.m. it could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a word all the cunning machines of a great factory? y.m. it could. o.m. what could the stone engine do? y.m. drive a sewing-machine, possibly--nothing more, perhaps. o.m. men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it? y.m. yes. o.m. but not the stone one? y.m. no. o.m. the merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the stone one? y.m. of course. o.m. personal merits? y.m. personal merits? how do you mean? o.m. it would be personally entitled to the credit of its own performance? y.m. the engine? certainly not. o.m. why not? y.m. because its performance is not personal. it is the result of the law of construction. it is not a merit that it does the things which it is set to do--it can't help doing them. o.m. and it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does so little? y.m. certainly not. it does no more and no less than the law of its make permits and compels it to do. there is nothing personal about it; it cannot choose. in this process of "working up to the matter" is it your idea to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are about the same thing, and that there is no personal merit in the performance of either? o.m. yes--but do not be offended; i am meaning no offense. what makes the grand difference between the stone engine and the steel one? shall we call it training, education? shall we call the stone engine a savage and the steel one a civilized man? the original rock contained the stuff of which the steel one was built--but along with a lot of sulphur and stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from the old geologic ages--prejudices, let us call them. prejudices which nothing within the rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove. will you take note of that phrase? y.m. yes. i have written it down; "prejudices which nothing within the rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove." go on. o.m. prejudices must be removed by outside influences or not at all. put that down. y.m. very well; "must be removed by outside influences or not at all." go on. o.m. the iron's prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock. to make it more exact, the iron's absolute indifference as to whether the rock be removed or not. then comes the outside influence and grinds the rock to powder and sets the ore free. the iron in the ore is still captive. an outside influence smelts it free of the clogging ore. the iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further progress. an outside influence beguiles it into the bessemer furnace and refines it into steel of the first quality. it is educated, now --its training is complete. and it has reached its limit. by no possible process can it be educated into gold. will you set that down? y.m. yes. "everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be educated into gold." o.m. there are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and leaden mean, and steel men, and so on--and each has the limitations of his nature, his heredities, his training, and his environment. you can build engines out of each of these metals, and they will all perform, but you must not require the weak ones to do equal work with the strong ones. in each case, to get the best results, you must free the metal from its obstructing prejudicial ones by education--smelting, refining, and so forth. y.m. you have arrived at man, now? o.m. yes. man the machine--man the impersonal engine. whatsoever a man is, is due to his make, and to the influences brought to bear upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. he is moved, directed, commanded, by exterior influences--solely. he originates nothing, not even a thought. y.m. oh, come! where did i get my opinion that this which you are talking is all foolishness? o.m. it is a quite natural opinion--indeed an inevitable opinion--but you did not create the materials out of which it is formed. they are odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered unconsciously from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from streams of thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart and brain out of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors. personally you did not create even the smallest microscopic fragment of the materials out of which your opinion is made; and personally you cannot claim even the slender merit of putting the borrowed materials together. that was done automatically--by your mental machinery, in strict accordance with the law of that machinery's construction. and you not only did not make that machinery yourself, but you have not even any command over it. y.m. this is too much. you think i could have formed no opinion but that one? o.m. spontaneously? no. and you did not form that one; your machinery did it for you--automatically and instantly, without reflection or the need of it. y.m. suppose i had reflected? how then? o.m. suppose you try? y.m. (after a quarter of an hour.) i have reflected. o.m. you mean you have tried to change your opinion--as an experiment? y.m. yes. o.m. with success? y.m. no. it remains the same; it is impossible to change it. o.m. i am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is merely a machine, nothing more. you have no command over it, it has no command over itself--it is worked solely from the outside. that is the law of its make; it is the law of all machines. y.m. can't i ever change one of these automatic opinions? o.m. no. you can't yourself, but exterior influences can do it. y.m. and exterior ones only? o.m. yes--exterior ones only. y.m. that position is untenable--i may say ludicrously untenable. o.m. what makes you think so? y.m. i don't merely think it, i know it. suppose i resolve to enter upon a course of thought, and study, and reading, with the deliberate purpose of changing that opinion; and suppose i succeed. that is not the work of an exterior impulse, the whole of it is mine and personal; for i originated the project. o.m. not a shred of it. it grew out of this talk with me. but for that it would not have occurred to you. no man ever originates anything. all his thoughts, all his impulses, come from the outside. y.m. it's an exasperating subject. the first man had original thoughts, anyway; there was nobody to draw from. o.m. it is a mistake. adam's thoughts came to him from the outside. you have a fear of death. you did not invent that--you got it from outside, from talking and teaching. adam had no fear of death--none in the world. y.m. yes, he had. o.m. when he was created? y.m. no. o.m. when, then? y.m. when he was threatened with it. o.m. then it came from outside. adam is quite big enough; let us not try to make a god of him. none but gods have ever had a thought which did not come from the outside. adam probably had a good head, but it was of no sort of use to him until it was filled up from the outside. he was not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it. he had not a shadow of a notion of the difference between good and evil--he had to get the idea from the outside. neither he nor eve was able to originate the idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came in with the apple from the outside. a man's brain is so constructed that it can originate nothing whatsoever. it can only use material obtained outside. it is merely a machine; and it works automatically, not by will-power. it has no command over itself, its owner has no command over it. y.m. well, never mind adam: but certainly shakespeare's creations-o.m. no, you mean shakespeare's imitations. shakespeare created nothing. he correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. he exactly portrayed people whom god had created; but he created none himself. let us spare him the slander of charging him with trying. shakespeare could not create. he was a machine, and machines do not create. y.m. where was his excellence, then? o.m. in this. he was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was a gobelin loom. the threads and the colors came into him from the outside; outside influences, suggestions, experiences (reading, seeing plays, playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the patterns in his mind and started up his complex and admirable machinery, and it automatically turned out that pictured and gorgeous fabric which still compels the astonishment of the world. if shakespeare had been born and bred on a barren and unvisited rock in the ocean his mighty intellect would have had no outside material to work with, and could have invented none; and no outside influences, teachings, moldings, persuasions, inspirations, of a valuable sort, and could have invented none; and so shakespeare would have produced nothing. in turkey he would have produced something--something up to the highest limit of turkish influences, associations, and training. in france he would have produced something better--something up to the highest limit of the french influences and training. in england he rose to the highest limit attainable through the outside helps afforded by that land's ideals, influences, and training. you and i are but sewing-machines. we must turn out what we can; we must do our endeavor and care nothing at all when the unthinking reproach us for not turning out gobelins. y.m. and so we are mere machines! and machines may not boast, nor feel proud of their performance, nor claim personal merit for it, nor applause and praise. it is an infamous doctrine. o.m. it isn't a doctrine, it is merely a fact. y.m. i suppose, then, there is no more merit in being brave than in being a coward? o.m. personal merit? no. a brave man does not create his bravery. he is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. it is born to him. a baby born with a billion dollars--where is the personal merit in that? a baby born with nothing--where is the personal demerit in that? the one is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by sycophants, the other is neglected and despised-where is the sense in it? y.m. sometimes a timid man sets himself the task of conquering his cowardice and becoming brave--and succeeds. what do you say to that? o.m. that it shows the value of training in right directions over training in wrong ones. inestimably valuable is training, influence, education, in right directions--training one's self-approbation to elevate its ideals. y.m. but as to merit--the personal merit of the victorious coward's project and achievement? o.m. there isn't any. in the world's view he is a worthier man than he was before, but he didn't achieve the change--the merit of it is not his. y.m. whose, then? o.m. his make, and the influences which wrought upon it from the outside. y.m. his make? o.m. to start with, he was not utterly and completely a coward, or the influences would have had nothing to work upon. he was not afraid of a cow, though perhaps of a bull: not afraid of a woman, but afraid of a man. there was something to build upon. there was a seed. no seed, no plant. did he make that seed himself, or was it born in him? it was no merit of his that the seed was there. y.m. well, anyway, the idea of cultivating it, the resolution to cultivate it, was meritorious, and he originated that. o.m. he did nothing of the kind. it came whence all impulses, good or bad, come--from outside. if that timid man had lived all his life in a community of human rabbits, had never read of brave deeds, had never heard speak of them, had never heard any one praise them nor express envy of the heroes that had done them, he would have had no more idea of bravery than adam had of modesty, and it could never by any possibility have occurred to him to resolve to become brave. he could not originate the idea--it had to come to him from the outside. and so, when he heard bravery extolled and cowardice derided, it woke him up. he was ashamed. perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said, "i am told that you are a coward!" it was not he that turned over the new leaf--she did it for him. he must not strut around in the merit of it--it is not his. y.m. but, anyway, he reared the plant after she watered the seed. o.m. no. outside influences reared it. at the command-and trembling--he marched out into the field--with other soldiers and in the daytime, not alone and in the dark. he had the influence of example, he drew courage from his comrades' courage; he was afraid, and wanted to run, but he did not dare; he was afraid to run, with all those soldiers looking on. he was progressing, you see--the moral fear of shame had risen superior to the physical fear of harm. by the end of the campaign experience will have taught him that not all who go into battle get hurt--an outside influence which will be helpful to him; and he will also have learned how sweet it is to be praised for courage and be huzza'd at with tear-choked voices as the war-worn regiment marches past the worshiping multitude with flags flying and the drums beating. after that he will be as securely brave as any veteran in the army--and there will not be a shade nor suggestion of personal merit in it anywhere; it will all have come from the outside. the victoria cross breeds more heroes than-y.m. hang it, where is the sense in his becoming brave if he is to get no credit for it? o.m. your question will answer itself presently. it involves an important detail of man's make which we have not yet touched upon. y.m. what detail is that? o.m. the impulse which moves a person to do things--the only impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing. y.m. the only one! is there but one? o.m. that is all. there is only one. y.m. well, certainly that is a strange enough doctrine. what is the sole impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing? o.m. the impulse to content his own spirit--the necessity of contenting his own spirit and winning its approval. y.m. oh, come, that won't do! o.m. why won't it? y.m. because it puts him in the attitude of always looking out for his own comfort and advantage; whereas an unselfish man often does a thing solely for another person's good when it is a positive disadvantage to himself. o.m. it is a mistake. the act must do him good, first; otherwise he will not do it. he may think he is doing it solely for the other person's sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own spirit first--the other's person's benefit has to always take second place. y.m. what a fantastic idea! what becomes of selfsacrifice? please answer me that. o.m. what is self-sacrifice? y.m. the doing good to another person where no shadow nor suggestion of benefit to one's self can result from it. ii man's sole impulse--the securing of his own approval old man. there have been instances of it--you think? young man. instances? millions of them! o.m. you have not jumped to conclusions? you have examined them--critically? y.m. they don't need it: the acts themselves reveal the golden impulse back of them. o.m. for instance? y.m. well, then, for instance. take the case in the book here. the man lives three miles up-town. it is bitter cold, snowing hard, midnight. he is about to enter the horse-car when a gray and ragged old woman, a touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue from hunger and death. the man finds that he has a quarter in his pocket, but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home through the storm. there--it is noble, it is beautiful; its grace is marred by no fleck or blemish or suggestion of self-interest. o.m. what makes you think that? y.m. pray what else could i think? do you imagine that there is some other way of looking at it? o.m. can you put yourself in the man's place and tell me what he felt and what he thought? y.m. easily. the sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous heart with a sharp pain. he could not bear it. he could endure the three-mile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his conscience would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old creature to perish. he would not have been able to sleep, for thinking of it. o.m. what was his state of mind on his way home? y.m. it was a state of joy which only the self-sacrificer knows. his heart sang, he was unconscious of the storm. o.m. he felt well? y.m. one cannot doubt it. o.m. very well. now let us add up the details and see how much he got for his twenty-five cents. let us try to find out the real why of his making the investment. in the first place he couldn't bear the pain which the old suffering face gave him. so he was thinking of his pain--this good man. he must buy a salve for it. if he did not succor the old woman his conscience would torture him all the way home. thinking of his pain again. he must buy relief for that. if he didn't relieve the old woman he would not get any sleep. he must buy some sleep--still thinking of himself, you see. thus, to sum up, he bought himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free of the tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night's sleep--all for twenty-five cents! it should make wall street ashamed of itself. on his way home his heart was joyful, and it sang--profit on top of profit! the impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman was--first--to content his own spirit; secondly to relieve her sufferings. is it your opinion that men's acts proceed from one central and unchanging and inalterable impulse, or from a variety of impulses? y.m. from a variety, of course--some high and fine and noble, others not. what is your opinion? o.m. then there is but one law, one source. y.m. that both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that one source? o.m. yes. y.m. will you put that law into words? o.m. yes. this is the law, keep it in your mind. from his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object but one--to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for himself. y.m. come! he never does anything for any one else's comfort, spiritual or physical? o.m. no. except on those distinct terms--that it shall first secure his own spiritual comfort. otherwise he will not do it. y.m. it will be easy to expose the falsity of that proposition. o.m. for instance? y.m. take that noble passion, love of country, patriotism. a man who loves peace and dreads pain, leaves his pleasant home and his weeping family and marches out to manfully expose himself to hunger, cold, wounds, and death. is that seeking spiritual comfort? o.m. he loves peace and dreads pain? y.m. yes. o.m. then perhaps there is something that he loves more than he loves peace--the approval of his neighbors and the public. and perhaps there is something which he dreads more than he dreads pain--the disapproval of his neighbors and the public. if he is sensitive to shame he will go to the field--not because his spirit will be entirely comfortable there, but because it will be more comfortable there than it would be if he remained at home. he will always do the thing which will bring him the most mental comfort--for that is the sole law of his life. he leaves the weeping family behind; he is sorry to make them uncomfortable, but not sorry enough to sacrifice his own comfort to secure theirs. y.m. do you really believe that mere public opinion could force a timid and peaceful man to-o.m. go to war? yes--public opinion can force some men to do anything. y.m. anything? o.m. yes--anything. y.m. i don't believe that. can it force a right-principled man to do a wrong thing? o.m. yes. y.m. can it force a kind man to do a cruel thing? o.m. yes. y.m. give an instance. o.m. alexander hamilton was a conspicuously high-principled man. he regarded dueling as wrong, and as opposed to the teachings of religion--but in deference to public opinion he fought a duel. he deeply loved his family, but to buy public approval he treacherously deserted them and threw his life away, ungenerously leaving them to lifelong sorrow in order that he might stand well with a foolish world. in the then condition of the public standards of honor he could not have been comfortable with the stigma upon him of having refused to fight. the teachings of religion, his devotion to his family, his kindness of heart, his high principles, all went for nothing when they stood in the way of his spiritual comfort. a man will do anything, no matter what it is, to secure his spiritual comfort; and he can neither be forced nor persuaded to any act which has not that goal for its object. hamilton's act was compelled by the inborn necessity of contenting his own spirit; in this it was like all the other acts of his life, and like all the acts of all men's lives. do you see where the kernel of the matter lies? a man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. he will secure the largest share possible of that, at all costs, all sacrifices. y.m. a minute ago you said hamilton fought that duel to get public approval. o.m. i did. by refusing to fight the duel he would have secured his family's approval and a large share of his own; but the public approval was more valuable in his eyes than all other approvals put together--in the earth or above it; to secure that would furnish him the most comfort of mind, the most selfapproval; so he sacrificed all other values to get it. y.m. some noble souls have refused to fight duels, and have manfully braved the public contempt. o.m. they acted according to their make. they valued their principles and the approval of their families above the public approval. they took the thing they valued most and let the rest go. they took what would give them the largest share of personal contentment and approval--a man always does. public opinion cannot force that kind of men to go to the wars. when they go it is for other reasons. other spirit-contenting reasons. y.m. always spirit-contenting reasons? o.m. there are no others. y.m. when a man sacrifices his life to save a little child from a burning building, what do you call that? o.m. when he does it, it is the law of his make. he can't bear to see the child in that peril (a man of a different make could), and so he tries to save the child, and loses his life. but he has got what he was after--his own approval. y.m. what do you call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, magnanimity, forgiveness? o.m. different results of the one master impulse: the necessity of securing one's self approval. they wear diverse clothes and are subject to diverse moods, but in whatsoever ways they masquerade they are the same person all the time. to change the figure, the compulsion that moves a man--and there is but the one--is the necessity of securing the contentment of his own spirit. when it stops, the man is dead. y.m. that is foolishness. love-o.m. why, love is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising form. it will squander life and everything else on its object. not primarily for the object's sake, but for its own. when its object is happy it is happy--and that is what it is unconsciously after. y.m. you do not even except the lofty and gracious passion of mother-love? o.m. no, it is the absolute slave of that law. the mother will go naked to clothe her child; she will starve that it may have food; suffer torture to save it from pain; die that it may live. she takes a living pleasure in making these sacrifices. she does it for that reward--that self-approval, that contentment, that peace, that comfort. she would do it for your child if she could get the same pay. y.m. this is an infernal philosophy of yours. o.m. it isn't a philosophy, it is a fact. y.m. of course you must admit that there are some acts which-o.m. no. there is no act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs from any motive but the one--the necessity of appeasing and contenting one's own spirit. y.m. the world's philanthropists-o.m. i honor them, i uncover my head to them--from habit and training; and they could not know comfort or happiness or self-approval if they did not work and spend for the unfortunate. it makes them happy to see others happy; and so with money and labor they buy what they are after--happiness, self-approval. why don't miners do the same thing? because they can get a thousandfold more happiness by not doing it. there is no other reason. they follow the law of their make. y.m. what do you say of duty for duty's sake? o.m. that is does not exist. duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. a man performs but one duty--the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself. if he can most satisfyingly perform this sole and only duty by helping his neighbor, he will do it; if he can most satisfyingly perform it by swindling his neighbor, he will do it. but he always looks out for number one--first; the effects upon others are a secondary matter. men pretend to self-sacrifices, but this is a thing which, in the ordinary value of the phrase, does not exist and has not existed. a man often honestly thinks he is sacrificing himself merely and solely for some one else, but he is deceived; his bottom impulse is to content a requirement of his nature and training, and thus acquire peace for his soul. y.m. apparently, then, all men, both good and bad ones, devote their lives to contenting their consciences. o.m. yes. that is a good enough name for it: conscience-that independent sovereign, that insolent absolute monarch inside of a man who is the man's master. there are all kinds of consciences, because there are all kinds of men. you satisfy an assassin's conscience in one way, a philanthropist's in another, a miser's in another, a burglar's in still another. as a guide or incentive to any authoritatively prescribed line of morals or conduct (leaving training out of the account), a man's conscience is totally valueless. i know a kind-hearted kentuckian whose self-approval was lacking--whose conscience was troubling him, to phrase it with exactness--because he had neglected to kill a certain man--a man whom he had never seen. the stranger had killed this man's friend in a fight, this man's kentucky training made it a duty to kill the stranger for it. he neglected his duty--kept dodging it, shirking it, putting it off, and his unrelenting conscience kept persecuting him for this conduct. at last, to get ease of mind, comfort, self-approval, he hunted up the stranger and took his life. it was an immense act of selfsacrifice (as per the usual definition), for he did not want to do it, and he never would have done it if he could have bought a contented spirit and an unworried mind at smaller cost. but we are so made that we will pay anything for that contentment--even another man's life. y.m. you spoke a moment ago of trained consciences. you mean that we are not born with consciences competent to guide us aright? o.m. if we were, children and savages would know right from wrong, and not have to be taught it. y.m. but consciences can be trained? o.m. yes. y.m. of course by parents, teachers, the pulpit, and books. o.m. yes--they do their share; they do what they can. y.m. and the rest is done by-o.m. oh, a million unnoticed influences--for good or bad: influences which work without rest during every waking moment of a man's life, from cradle to grave. y.m. you have tabulated these? o.m. many of them--yes. y.m. will you read me the result? o.m. another time, yes. it would take an hour. y.m. a conscience can be trained to shun evil and prefer good? o.m. yes. y.m. but will it for spirit-contenting reasons only? o.m. it can't be trained to do a thing for any other reason. the thing is impossible. y.m. there must be a genuinely and utterly self-sacrificing act recorded in human history somewhere. o.m. you are young. you have many years before you. search one out. y.m. it does seem to me that when a man sees a fellow-being struggling in the water and jumps in at the risk of his life to save him-o.m. wait. describe the man. describe the fellow-being. state if there is an audience present; or if they are alone. y.m. what have these things to do with the splendid act? o.m. very much. shall we suppose, as a beginning, that the two are alone, in a solitary place, at midnight? y.m. if you choose. o.m. and that the fellow-being is the man's daughter? y.m. well, n-no--make it someone else. o.m. a filthy, drunken ruffian, then? y.m. i see. circumstances alter cases. i suppose that if there was no audience to observe the act, the man wouldn't perform it. o.m. but there is here and there a man who would. people, for instance, like the man who lost his life trying to save the child from the fire; and the man who gave the needy old woman his twenty-five cents and walked home in the storm--there are here and there men like that who would do it. and why? because they couldn't bear to see a fellow-being struggling in the water and not jump in and help. it would give them pain. they would save the fellow-being on that account. they wouldn't do it otherwise. they strictly obey the law which i have been insisting upon. you must remember and always distinguish the people who can't bear things from people who can. it will throw light upon a number of apparently "self-sacrificing" cases. y.m. oh, dear, it's all so disgusting. o.m. yes. and so true. y.m. come--take the good boy who does things he doesn't want to do, in order to gratify his mother. o.m. he does seven-tenths of the act because it gratifies him to gratify his mother. throw the bulk of advantage the other way and the good boy would not do the act. he must obey the iron law. none can escape it. y.m. well, take the case of a bad boy who-o.m. you needn't mention it, it is a waste of time. it is no matter about the bad boy's act. whatever it was, he had a spirit-contenting reason for it. otherwise you have been misinformed, and he didn't do it. y.m. it is very exasperating. a while ago you said that man's conscience is not a born judge of morals and conduct, but has to be taught and trained. now i think a conscience can get drowsy and lazy, but i don't think it can go wrong; if you wake it up-a little story o.m. i will tell you a little story: once upon a time an infidel was guest in the house of a christian widow whose little boy was ill and near to death. the infidel often watched by the bedside and entertained the boy with talk, and he used these opportunities to satisfy a strong longing in his nature--that desire which is in us all to better other people's condition by having them think as we think. he was successful. but the dying boy, in his last moments, reproached him and said: "i believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and my comfort. now i have nothing left, and i die miserable; for the things which you have told me do not take the place of that which i have lost." and the mother, also, reproached the infidel, and said: "my child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. how could you do this cruel thing? we have done you no harm, but only kindness; we made our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our reward." the heart of the infidel was filled with remorse for what he had done, and he said: "it was wrong--i see it now; but i was only trying to do him good. in my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth." then the mother said: "i had taught him, all his little life, what i believed to be the truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. now he is dead,--and lost; and i am miserable. our faith came down to us through centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to disturb it? where was your honor, where was your shame?" y.m. he was a miscreant, and deserved death! o.m. he thought so himself, and said so. y.m. ah--you see, his conscience was awakened1! o.m. yes, his self-disapproval was. it pained him to see the mother suffer. he was sorry he had done a thing which brought him pain. it did not occur to him to think of the mother when he was misteaching the boy, for he was absorbed in providing pleasure for himself, then. providing it by satisfying what he believed to be a call of duty. y.m. call it what you please, it is to me a case of awakened conscience. that awakened conscience could never get itself into that species of trouble again. a cure like that is a permanent cure. o.m. pardon--i had not finished the story. we are creatures of outside influences--we originate nothing within. whenever we take a new line of thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the impulse is always suggested from the outside. remorse so preyed upon the infidel that it dissolved his harshness toward the boy's religion and made him come to regard it with tolerance, next with kindness, for the boy's sake and the mother's. finally he found himself examining it. from that moment his progress in his new trend was steady and rapid. he became a believing christian. and now his remorse for having robbed the dying boy of his faith and his salvation was bitterer than ever. it gave him no rest, no peace. he must have rest and peace--it is the law of nature. there seemed but one way to get it; he must devote himself to saving imperiled souls. he became a missionary. he landed in a pagan country ill and helpless. a native widow took him into her humble home and nursed him back to convalescence. then her young boy was taken hopelessly ill, and the grateful missionary helped her tend him. here was his first opportunity to repair a part of the wrong done to the other boy by doing a precious service for this one by undermining his foolish faith in his false gods. he was successful. but the dying boy in his last moments reproached him and said: "i believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and my comfort. now i have nothing left, and i die miserable; for the things which you have told me do not take the place of that which i have lost." and the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said: "my child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. how could you do this cruel thing? we had done you no harm, but only kindness; we made our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our reward." the heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had done, and he said: "it was wrong--i see it now; but i was only trying to do him good. in my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth." then the mother said: "i had taught him, all his little life, what i believed to be the truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. now he is dead--and lost; and i am miserable. our faith came down to us through centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to disturb it? where was your honor, where was your shame?" the missionary's anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as bitter and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had been in the former case. the story is finished. what is your comment? y.m. the man's conscience is a fool! it was morbid. it didn't know right from wrong. o.m. i am not sorry to hear you say that. if you grant that one man's conscience doesn't know right from wrong, it is an admission that there are others like it. this single admission pulls down the whole doctrine of infallibility of judgment in consciences. meantime there is one thing which i ask you to notice. y.m. what is that? o.m. that in both cases the man's act gave him no spiritual discomfort, and that he was quite satisfied with it and got pleasure out of it. but afterward when it resulted in pain to him, he was sorry. sorry it had inflicted pain upon the others, but for no reason under the sun except that their pain gave him pain. our consciences take no notice of pain inflicted upon others until it reaches a point where it gives pain to us. in all cases without exception we are absolutely indifferent to another person's pain until his sufferings make us uncomfortable. many an infidel would not have been troubled by that christian mother's distress. don't you believe that? y.m. yes. you might almost say it of the average infidel, i think. o.m. and many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty, would not have been troubled by the pagan mother's distress--jesuit missionaries in canada in the early french times, for instance; see episodes quoted by parkman. y.m. well, let us adjourn. where have we arrived? o.m. at this. that we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves with a number of qualities to which we have given misleading names. love, hate, charity, compassion, avarice, benevolence, and so on. i mean we attach misleading meanings to the names. they are all forms of self-contentment, self-gratification, but the names so disguise them that they distract our attention from the fact. also we have smuggled a word into the dictionary which ought not to be there at all--self-sacrifice. it describes a thing which does not exist. but worst of all, we ignore and never mention the sole impulse which dictates and compels a man's every act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every emergency and at all costs. to it we owe all that we are. it is our breath, our heart, our blood. it is our only spur, our whip, our goad, our only impelling power; we have no other. without it we should be mere inert images, corpses; no one would do anything, there would be no progress, the world would stand still. we ought to stand reverently uncovered when the name of that stupendous power is uttered. y.m. i am not convinced. o.m. you will be when you think. iii instances in point old man. have you given thought to the gospel of selfapproval since we talked? young man. i have. o.m. it was i that moved you to it. that is to say an outside influence moved you to it--not one that originated in your head. will you try to keep that in mind and not forget it? y.m. yes. why? o.m. because by and by in one of our talks, i wish to further impress upon you that neither you, nor i, nor any man ever originates a thought in his own head. the utterer of a thought always utters a second-hand one. y.m. oh, now-o.m. wait. reserve your remark till we get to that part of our discussion--tomorrow or next day, say. now, then, have you been considering the proposition that no act is ever born of any but a self-contenting impulse--(primarily). you have sought. what have you found? y.m. i have not been very fortunate. i have examined many fine and apparently self-sacrificing deeds in romances and biographies, but-o.m. under searching analysis the ostensible self-sacrifice disappeared? it naturally would. y.m. but here in this novel is one which seems to promise. in the adirondack woods is a wage-earner and lay preacher in the lumber-camps who is of noble character and deeply religious. an earnest and practical laborer in the new york slums comes up there on vacation--he is leader of a section of the university settlement. holme, the lumberman, is fired with a desire to throw away his excellent worldly prospects and go down and save souls on the east side. he counts it happiness to make this sacrifice for the glory of god and for the cause of christ. he resigns his place, makes the sacrifice cheerfully, and goes to the east side and preaches christ and him crucified every day and every night to little groups of half-civilized foreign paupers who scoff at him. but he rejoices in the scoffings, since he is suffering them in the great cause of christ. you have so filled my mind with suspicions that i was constantly expecting to find a hidden questionable impulse back of all this, but i am thankful to say i have failed. this man saw his duty, and for duty's sake he sacrificed self and assumed the burden it imposed. o.m. is that as far as you have read? y.m. yes. o.m. let us read further, presently. meantime, in sacrificing himself--not for the glory of god, primarily, as he imagined, but first to content that exacting and inflexible master within him--did he sacrifice anybody else? y.m. how do you mean? o.m. he relinquished a lucrative post and got mere food and lodging in place of it. had he dependents? y.m. well--yes. o.m. in what way and to what extend did his self-sacrifice affect them? y.m. he was the support of a superannuated father. he had a young sister with a remarkable voice--he was giving her a musical education, so that her longing to be self-supporting might be gratified. he was furnishing the money to put a young brother through a polytechnic school and satisfy his desire to become a civil engineer. o.m. the old father's comforts were now curtailed? y.m. quite seriously. yes. o.m. the sister's music-lessens had to stop? y.m. yes. o.m. the young brother's education--well, an extinguishing blight fell upon that happy dream, and he had to go to sawing wood to support the old father, or something like that? y.m. it is about what happened. yes. o.m. what a handsome job of self-sacrificing he did do! it seems to me that he sacrificed everybody except himself. haven't i told you that no man ever sacrifices himself; that there is no instance of it upon record anywhere; and that when a man's interior monarch requires a thing of its slave for either its momentary or its permanent contentment, that thing must and will be furnished and that command obeyed, no matter who may stand in the way and suffer disaster by it? that man ruined his family to please and content his interior monarch-y.m. and help christ's cause. o.m. yes--secondly. not firstly. he thought it was firstly. y.m. very well, have it so, if you will. but it could be that he argued that if he saved a hundred souls in new york-o.m. the sacrifice of the family would be justified by that great profit upon the--the--what shall we call it? y.m. investment? o.m. hardly. how would speculation do? how would gamble do? not a solitary soul-capture was sure. he played for a possible thirty-three-hundred-per-cent profit. it was gambling-with his family for "chips." however let us see how the game came out. maybe we can get on the track of the secret original impulse, the real impulse, that moved him to so nobly selfsacrifice his family in the savior's cause under the superstition that he was sacrificing himself. i will read a chapter or so. . . . here we have it! it was bound to expose itself sooner or later. he preached to the east-side rabble a season, then went back to his old dull, obscure life in the lumber-camps "hurt to the heart, his pride humbled." why? were not his efforts acceptable to the savior, for whom alone they were made? dear me, that detail is lost sight of, is not even referred to, the fact that it started out as a motive is entirely forgotten! then what is the trouble? the authoress quite innocently and unconsciously gives the whole business away. the trouble was this: this man merely preached to the poor; that is not the university settlement's way; it deals in larger and better things than that, and it did not enthuse over that crude salvation-army eloquence. it was courteous to holme--but cool. it did not pet him, did not take him to its bosom. "perished were all his dreams of distinction, the praise and grateful approval--" of whom? the savior? no; the savior is not mentioned. of whom, then? of "his fellow-workers." why did he want that? because the master inside of him wanted it, and would not be content without it. that emphasized sentence quoted above, reveals the secret we have been seeking, the original impulse, the real impulse, which moved the obscure and unappreciated adirondack lumberman to sacrifice his family and go on that crusade to the east side--which said original impulse was this, to wit: without knowing it he went there to show a neglected world the large talent that was in him, and rise to distinction. as i have warned you before, no act springs from any but the one law, the one motive. but i pray you, do not accept this law upon my sayso; but diligently examine for yourself. whenever you read of a self-sacrificing act or hear of one, or of a duty done for duty's sake, take it to pieces and look for the real motive. it is always there. y.m. i do it every day. i cannot help it, now that i have gotten started upon the degrading and exasperating quest. for it is hatefully interesting!--in fact, fascinating is the word. as soon as i come across a golden deed in a book i have to stop and take it apart and examine it, i cannot help myself. o.m. have you ever found one that defeated the rule? y.m. no--at least, not yet. but take the case of servanttipping in europe. you pay the hotel for service; you owe the servants nothing, yet you pay them besides. doesn't that defeat it? o.m. in what way? y.m. you are not obliged to do it, therefore its source is compassion for their ill-paid condition, and-o.m. has that custom ever vexed you, annoyed you, irritated you? y.m. well, yes. o.m. still you succumbed to it? y.m. of course. o.m. why of course? y.m. well, custom is law, in a way, and laws must be submitted to--everybody recognizes it as a duty. o.m. then you pay for the irritating tax for duty's sake? y.m. i suppose it amounts to that. o.m. then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax is not all compassion, charity, benevolence? y.m. well--perhaps not. o.m. is any of it? y.m. i--perhaps i was too hasty in locating its source. o.m. perhaps so. in case you ignored the custom would you get prompt and effective service from the servants? y.m. oh, hear yourself talk! those european servants? why, you wouldn't get any of all, to speak of. o.m. couldn't that work as an impulse to move you to pay the tax? y.m. i am not denying it. o.m. apparently, then, it is a case of for-duty's-sake with a little self-interest added? y.m. yes, it has the look of it. but here is a point: we pay that tax knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we go away with a pain at the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing, and more than the right thing, the generous thing. i think it will be difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse. o.m. i wonder why you should think so. when you find service charged in the hotel bill does it annoy you? y.m. no. o.m. do you ever complain of the amount of it? y.m. no, it would not occur to me. o.m. the expense, then, is not the annoying detail. it is a fixed charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a murmur. when you came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men and maids had a fixed charge? y.m. like it? i should rejoice! o.m. even if the fixed tax were a shade more than you had been in the habit of paying in the form of tips? y.m. indeed, yes! o.m. very well, then. as i understand it, it isn't really compassion nor yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it isn't the amount of the tax that annoys you. yet something annoys you. what is it? y.m. well, the trouble is, you never know what to pay, the tax varies so, all over europe. o.m. so you have to guess? y.m. there is no other way. so you go on thinking and thinking, and calculating and guessing, and consulting with other people and getting their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught in the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you are only guessing and guessing and guessing all the time, and being worried and miserable. o.m. and all about a debt which you don't owe and don't have to pay unless you want to! strange. what is the purpose of the guessing? y.m. to guess out what is right to give them, and not be unfair to any of them. o.m. it has quite a noble look--taking so much pains and using up so much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant to whom you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid. y.m. i think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it it will be hard to find. o.m. how do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly? y.m. why, he is silent; does not thank you. sometimes he gives you a look that makes you ashamed. you are too proud to rectify your mistake there, with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and wishing you had done it. my, the shame and the pain of it! sometimes you see, by the signs, that you have it just right, and you go away mightily satisfied. sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that you know you have given him a good deal more than was necessary. o.m. necessary? necessary for what? y.m. to content him. o.m. how do you feel then? y.m. repentant. o.m. it is my belief that you have not been concerning yourself in guessing out his just dues, but only in ciphering out what would content him. and i think you have a self-deluding reason for that. y.m. what was it? o.m. if you fell short of what he was expecting and wanting, you would get a look which would shame you before folk. that would give you pain. you--for you are only working for yourself, not him. if you gave him too much you would be ashamed of yourself for it, and that would give you pain--another case of thinking of yourself, protecting yourself, saving yourself from discomfort. you never think of the servant once--except to guess out how to get his approval. if you get that, you get your own approval, and that is the sole and only thing you are after. the master inside of you is then satisfied, contented, comfortable; there was no other thing at stake, as a matter of first interest, anywhere in the transaction. further instances y.m. well, to think of it; self-sacrifice for others, the grandest thing in man, ruled out! non-existent! o.m. are you accusing me of saying that? y.m. why, certainly. o.m. i haven't said it. y.m. what did you say, then? o.m. that no man has ever sacrificed himself in the common meaning of that phrase--which is, self-sacrifice for another alone. men make daily sacrifices for others, but it is for their own sake first. the act must content their own spirit first. the other beneficiaries come second. y.m. and the same with duty for duty's sake? o.m. yes. no man performs a duty for mere duty's sake; the act must content his spirit first. he must feel better for doing the duty than he would for shirking it. otherwise he will not do it. y.m. take the case of the berkeley castle. o.m. it was a noble duty, greatly performed. take it to pieces and examine it, if you like. y.m. a british troop-ship crowded with soldiers and their wives and children. she struck a rock and began to sink. there was room in the boats for the women and children only. the colonel lined up his regiment on the deck and said "it is our duty to die, that they may be saved." there was no murmur, no protest. the boats carried away the women and children. when the death-moment was come, the colonel and his officers took their several posts, the men stood at shoulder-arms, and so, as on dress-parade, with their flag flying and the drums beating, they went down, a sacrifice to duty for duty's sake. can you view it as other than that? o.m. it was something as fine as that, as exalted as that. could you have remained in those ranks and gone down to your death in that unflinching way? y.m. could i? no, i could not. o.m. think. imagine yourself there, with that watery doom creeping higher and higher around you. y.m. i can imagine it. i feel all the horror of it. i could not have endured it, i could not have remained in my place. i know it. o.m. why? y.m. there is no why about it: i know myself, and i know i couldn't do it. o.m. but it would be your duty to do it. y.m. yes, i know--but i couldn't. o.m. it was more than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched. some of them must have been born with your temperament; if they could do that great duty for duty's sake, why not you? don't you know that you could go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics and put them on that deck and ask them to die for duty's sake, and not two dozen of them would stay in the ranks to the end? y.m. yes, i know that. o.m. but your train them, and put them through a campaign or two; then they would be soldiers; soldiers, with a soldier's pride, a soldier's self-respect, a soldier's ideals. they would have to content a soldier's spirit then, not a clerk's, not a mechanic's. they could not content that spirit by shirking a soldier's duty, could they? y.m. i suppose not. o.m. then they would do the duty not for the duty's sake, but for their own sake--primarily. the duty was just the same, and just as imperative, when they were clerks, mechanics, raw recruits, but they wouldn't perform it for that. as clerks and mechanics they had other ideals, another spirit to satisfy, and they satisfied it. they had to; it is the law. training is potent. training toward higher and higher, and ever higher ideals is worth any man's thought and labor and diligence. y.m. consider the man who stands by his duty and goes to the stake rather than be recreant to it. o.m. it is his make and his training. he has to content the spirit that is in him, though it cost him his life. another man, just as sincerely religious, but of different temperament, will fail of that duty, though recognizing it as a duty, and grieving to be unequal to it: but he must content the spirit that is in him--he cannot help it. he could not perform that duty for duty's sake, for that would not content his spirit, and the contenting of his spirit must be looked to first. it takes precedence of all other duties. y.m. take the case of a clergyman of stainless private morals who votes for a thief for public office, on his own party's ticket, and against an honest man on the other ticket. o.m. he has to content his spirit. he has no public morals; he has no private ones, where his party's prosperity is at stake. he will always be true to his make and training. iv training young man. you keep using that word--training. by it do you particularly mean-old man. study, instruction, lectures, sermons? that is a part of it--but not a large part. i mean all the outside influences. there are a million of them. from the cradle to the grave, during all his waking hours, the human being is under training. in the very first rank of his trainers stands association. it is his human environment which influences his mind and his feelings, furnishes him his ideals, and sets him on his road and keeps him in it. if he leave that road he will find himself shunned by the people whom he most loves and esteems, and whose approval he most values. he is a chameleon; by the law of his nature he takes the color of his place of resort. the influences about him create his preferences, his aversions, his politics, his tastes, his morals, his religion. he creates none of these things for himself. he thinks he does, but that is because he has not examined into the matter. you have seen presbyterians? y.m. many. o.m. how did they happen to be presbyterians and not congregationalists? and why were the congregationalists not baptists, and the baptists roman catholics, and the roman catholics buddhists, and the buddhists quakers, and the quakers episcopalians, and the episcopalians millerites and the millerites hindus, and the hindus atheists, and the atheists spiritualists, and the spiritualists agnostics, and the agnostics methodists, and the methodists confucians, and the confucians unitarians, and the unitarians mohammedans, and the mohammedans salvation warriors, and the salvation warriors zoroastrians, and the zoroastrians christian scientists, and the christian scientists mormons--and so on? y.m. you may answer your question yourself. o.m. that list of sects is not a record of studies, searchings, seekings after light; it mainly (and sarcastically) indicates what association can do. if you know a man's nationality you can come within a split hair of guessing the complexion of his religion: english--protestant; american-ditto; spaniard, frenchman, irishman, italian, south american-roman catholic; russian--greek catholic; turk--mohammedan; and so on. and when you know the man's religious complexion, you know what sort of religious books he reads when he wants some more light, and what sort of books he avoids, lest by accident he get more light than he wants. in america if you know which partycollar a voter wears, you know what his associations are, and how he came by his politics, and which breed of newspaper he reads to get light, and which breed he diligently avoids, and which breed of mass-meetings he attends in order to broaden his political knowledge, and which breed of mass-meetings he doesn't attend, except to refute its doctrines with brickbats. we are always hearing of people who are around seeking after truth. i have never seen a (permanent) specimen. i think he had never lived. but i have seen several entirely sincere people who thought they were (permanent) seekers after truth. they sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment--until they believed that without doubt or question they had found the truth. that was the end of the search. the man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his truth from the weather. if he was seeking after political truth he found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels which govern men in the earth; if he was seeking after the only true religion he found it in one or another of the three thousand that are on the market. in any case, when he found the truth he sought no further; but from that day forth, with his soldering-iron in one hand and his bludgeon in the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned with objectors. there have been innumerable temporary seekers of truth--have you ever heard of a permanent one? in the very nature of man such a person is impossible. however, to drop back to the text-training: all training is one from or another of outside influence, and association is the largest part of it. a man is never anything but what his outside influences have made him. they train him downward or they train him upward--but they train him; they are at work upon him all the time. y.m. then if he happen by the accidents of life to be evilly placed there is no help for him, according to your notions--he must train downward. o.m. no help for him? no help for this chameleon? it is a mistake. it is in his chameleonship that his greatest good fortune lies. he has only to change his habitat--his associations. but the impulse to do it must come from the outside--he cannot originate it himself, with that purpose in view. sometimes a very small and accidental thing can furnish him the initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a new idea. the chance remark of a sweetheart, "i hear that you are a coward," may water a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and ended in producing a surprising fruitage--in the fields of war. the history of man is full of such accidents. the accident of a broken leg brought a profane and ribald soldier under religious influences and furnished him a new ideal. from that accident sprang the order of the jesuits, and it has been shaking thrones, changing policies, and doing other tremendous work for two hundred years--and will go on. the chance reading of a book or of a paragraph in a newspaper can start a man on a new track and make him renounce his old associations and seek new ones that are in sympathy with his new ideal: and the result, for that man, can be an entire change of his way of life. y.m. are you hinting at a scheme of procedure? o.m. not a new one--an old one. one as mankind. y.m. what is it? o.m. merely the laying of traps for people. traps baited with initiatory impulses toward high ideals. it is what the tract-distributor does. it is what the missionary does. it is what governments ought to do. y.m. don't they? o.m. in one way they do, in another they don't. they separate the smallpox patients from the healthy people, but in dealing with crime they put the healthy into the pest-house along with the sick. that is to say, they put the beginners in with the confirmed criminals. this would be well if man were naturally inclined to good, but he isn't, and so association makes the beginners worse than they were when they went into captivity. it is putting a very severe punishment upon the comparatively innocent at times. they hang a man--which is a trifling punishment; this breaks the hearts of his family--which is a heavy one. they comfortably jail and feed a wife-beater, and leave his innocent wife and family to starve. y.m. do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped with an intuitive perception of good and evil? o.m. adam hadn't it. y.m. but has man acquired it since? o.m. no. i think he has no intuitions of any kind. he gets all his ideas, all his impressions, from the outside. i keep repeating this, in the hope that i may impress it upon you that you will be interested to observe and examine for yourself and see whether it is true or false. y.m. where did you get your own aggravating notions? o.m. from the outside. i did not invent them. they are gathered from a thousand unknown sources. mainly unconsciously gathered. y.m. don't you believe that god could make an inherently honest man? o.m. yes, i know he could. i also know that he never did make one. y.m. a wiser observer than you has recorded the fact that "an honest man's the noblest work of god." o.m. he didn't record a fact, he recorded a falsity. it is windy, and sounds well, but it is not true. god makes a man with honest and dishonest possibilities in him and stops there. the man's associations develop the possibilities--the one set or the other. the result is accordingly an honest man or a dishonest one. y.m. and the honest one is not entitled to-o.m. praise? no. how often must i tell you that? he is not the architect of his honesty. y.m. now then, i will ask you where there is any sense in training people to lead virtuous lives. what is gained by it? o.m. the man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the main thing--to him. he is not a peril to his neighbors, he is not a damage to them--and so they get an advantage out of his virtues. that is the main thing to them. it can make this life comparatively comfortable to the parties concerned; the neglect of this training can make this life a constant peril and distress to the parties concerned. y.m. you have said that training is everything; that training is the man himself, for it makes him what he is. o.m. i said training and another thing. let that other thing pass, for the moment. what were you going to say? y.m. we have an old servant. she has been with us twentytwo years. her service used to be faultless, but now she has become very forgetful. we are all fond of her; we all recognize that she cannot help the infirmity which age has brought her; the rest of the family do not scold her for her remissnesses, but at times i do--i can't seem to control myself. don't i try? i do try. now, then, when i was ready to dress, this morning, no clean clothes had been put out. i lost my temper; i lose it easiest and quickest in the early morning. i rang; and immediately began to warn myself not to show temper, and to be careful and speak gently. i safe-guarded myself most carefully. i even chose the very word i would use: "you've forgotten the clean clothes, jane." when she appeared in the door i opened my mouth to say that phrase--and out of it, moved by an instant surge of passion which i was not expecting and hadn't time to put under control, came the hot rebuke, "you've forgotten them again!" you say a man always does the thing which will best please his interior master. whence came the impulse to make careful preparation to save the girl the humiliation of a rebuke? did that come from the master, who is always primarily concerned about himself? o.m. unquestionably. there is no other source for any impulse. secondarily you made preparation to save the girl, but primarily its object was to save yourself, by contenting the master. y.m. how do you mean? o.m. has any member of the family ever implored you to watch your temper and not fly out at the girl? y.m. yes. my mother. o.m. you love her? y.m. oh, more than that! o.m. you would always do anything in your power to please her? y.m. it is a delight to me to do anything to please her! o.m. why? you would do it for pay, solely--for profit. what profit would you expect and certainly receive from the investment? y.m. personally? none. to please her is enough. o.m. it appears, then, that your object, primarily, wasn't to save the girl a humiliation, but to please your mother. it also appears that to please your mother gives you a strong pleasure. is not that the profit which you get out of the investment? isn't that the real profits and first profit? y.m. oh, well? go on. o.m. in all transactions, the interior master looks to it that you get the first profit. otherwise there is no transaction. y.m. well, then, if i was so anxious to get that profit and so intent upon it, why did i threw it away by losing my temper? o.m. in order to get another profit which suddenly superseded it in value. y.m. where was it? o.m. ambushed behind your born temperament, and waiting for a chance. your native warm temper suddenly jumped to the front, and for the moment its influence was more powerful than your mother's, and abolished it. in that instance you were eager to flash out a hot rebuke and enjoy it. you did enjoy it, didn't you? y.m. for--for a quarter of a second. yes--i did. o.m. very well, it is as i have said: the thing which will give you the most pleasure, the most satisfaction, in any moment or fraction of a moment, is the thing you will always do. you must content the master's latest whim, whatever it may be. y.m. but when the tears came into the old servant's eyes i could have cut my hand off for what i had done. o.m. right. you had humiliated yourself, you see, you had given yourself pain. nothing is of first importance to a man except results which damage him or profit him--all the rest is secondary. your master was displeased with you, although you had obeyed him. he required a prompt repentance; you obeyed again; you had to--there is never any escape from his commands. he is a hard master and fickle; he changes his mind in the fraction of a second, but you must be ready to obey, and you will obey, always. if he requires repentance, you content him, you will always furnish it. he must be nursed, petted, coddled, and kept contented, let the terms be what they may. y.m. training! oh, what's the use of it? didn't i, and didn't my mother try to train me up to where i would no longer fly out at that girl? o.m. have you never managed to keep back a scolding? y.m. oh, certainly--many times. o.m. more times this year than last? y.m. yes, a good many more. o.m. more times last year than the year before? y.m. yes. o.m. there is a large improvement, then, in the two years? y.m. yes, undoubtedly. o.m. then your question is answered. you see there is use in training. keep on. keeping faithfully on. you are doing well. y.m. will my reform reach perfection? o.m. it will. up to your limit. y.m. my limit? what do you mean by that? o.m. you remember that you said that i said training was everything. i corrected you, and said "training and another thing." that other thing is temperament--that is, the disposition you were born with. you can't eradicate your disposition nor any rag of it--you can only put a pressure on it and keep it down and quiet. you have a warm temper? y.m. yes. o.m. you will never get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it down nearly all the time. its presence is your limit. your reform will never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now and then, but you come near enough. you have made valuable progress and can make more. there is use in training. immense use. presently you will reach a new stage of development, then your progress will be easier; will proceed on a simpler basis, anyway. y.m. explain. o.m. you keep back your scoldings now, to please yourself by pleasing your mother; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will delight your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and satisfaction upon you than even the approbation of your mother confers upon you now. you will then labor for yourself directly and at first hand, not by the roundabout way through your mother. it simplifies the matter, and it also strengthens the impulse. y.m. ah, dear! but i sha'n't ever reach the point where i will spare the girl for her sake primarily, not mine? o.m. why--yes. in heaven. y.m. (after a reflective pause) temperament. well, i see one must allow for temperament. it is a large factor, sure enough. my mother is thoughtful, and not hot-tempered. when i was dressed i went to her room; she was not there; i called, she answered from the bathroom. i heard the water running. i inquired. she answered, without temper, that jane had forgotten her bath, and she was preparing it herself. i offered to ring, but she said, "no, don't do that; it would only distress her to be confronted with her lapse, and would be a rebuke; she doesn't deserve that--she is not to blame for the tricks her memory serves her." i say--has my mother an interior master?--and where was he? o.m. he was there. there, and looking out for his own peace and pleasure and contentment. the girl's distress would have pained your mother. otherwise the girl would have been rung up, distress and all. i know women who would have gotten a no. 1 pleasure out of ringing jane up--and so they would infallibly have pushed the button and obeyed the law of their make and training, which are the servants of their interior masters. it is quite likely that a part of your mother's forbearance came from training. the good kind of training--whose best and highest function is to see to it that every time it confers a satisfaction upon its pupil a benefit shall fall at second hand upon others. y.m. if you were going to condense into an admonition your plan for the general betterment of the race's condition, how would you word it? admonition o.m. diligently train your ideals upward and still upward toward a summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which, while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and the community. y.m. is that a new gospel? o.m. no. y.m. it has been taught before? o.m. for ten thousand years. y.m. by whom? o.m. all the great religions--all the great gospels. y.m. then there is nothing new about it? o.m. oh yes, there is. it is candidly stated, this time. that has not been done before. y.m. how do you mean? o.m. haven't i put you first, and your neighbor and the community afterward? y.m. well, yes, that is a difference, it is true. o.m. the difference between straight speaking and crooked; the difference between frankness and shuffling. y.m. explain. o.m. the others offer your a hundred bribes to be good, thus conceding that the master inside of you must be conciliated and contented first, and that you will do nothing at first hand but for his sake; then they turn square around and require you to do good for other's sake chiefly; and to do your duty for duty's sake, chiefly; and to do acts of self-sacrifice. thus at the outset we all stand upon the same ground--recognition of the supreme and absolute monarch that resides in man, and we all grovel before him and appeal to him; then those others dodge and shuffle, and face around and unfrankly and inconsistently and illogically change the form of their appeal and direct its persuasions to man's second-place powers and to powers which have no existence in him, thus advancing them to first place; whereas in my admonition i stick logically and consistently to the original position: i place the interior master's requirements first, and keep them there. y.m. if we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the other schemes aim at and produce the same result-right living--has yours an advantage over the others? o.m. one, yes--a large one. it has no concealments, no deceptions. when a man leads a right and valuable life under it he is not deceived as to the real chief motive which impels him to it--in those other cases he is. y.m. is that an advantage? is it an advantage to live a lofty life for a mean reason? in the other cases he lives the lofty life under the impression that he is living for a lofty reason. is not that an advantage? o.m. perhaps so. the same advantage he might get out of thinking himself a duke, and living a duke's life and parading in ducal fuss and feathers, when he wasn't a duke at all, and could find it out if he would only examine the herald's records. y.m. but anyway, he is obliged to do a duke's part; he puts his hand in his pocket and does his benevolences on as big a scale as he can stand, and that benefits the community. o.m. he could do that without being a duke. y.m. but would he? o.m. don't you see where you are arriving? y.m. where? o.m. at the standpoint of the other schemes: that it is good morals to let an ignorant duke do showy benevolences for his pride's sake, a pretty low motive, and go on doing them unwarned, lest if he were made acquainted with the actual motive which prompted them he might shut up his purse and cease to be good? y.m. but isn't it best to leave him in ignorance, as long as he thinks he is doing good for others' sake? o.m. perhaps so. it is the position of the other schemes. they think humbug is good enough morals when the dividend on it is good deeds and handsome conduct. y.m. it is my opinion that under your scheme of a man's doing a good deed for his own sake first-off, instead of first for the good deed's sake, no man would ever do one. o.m. have you committed a benevolence lately? y.m. yes. this morning. o.m. give the particulars. y.m. the cabin of the old negro woman who used to nurse me when i was a child and who saved my life once at the risk of her own, was burned last night, and she came mourning this morning, and pleading for money to build another one. o.m. you furnished it? y.m. certainly. o.m. you were glad you had the money? y.m. money? i hadn't. i sold my horse. o.m. you were glad you had the horse? y.m. of course i was; for if i hadn't had the horse i should have been incapable, and my mother would have captured the chance to set old sally up. o.m. you were cordially glad you were not caught out and incapable? y.m. oh, i just was! o.m. now, then-y.m. stop where you are! i know your whole catalog of questions, and i could answer every one of them without your wasting the time to ask them; but i will summarize the whole thing in a single remark: i did the charity knowing it was because the act would give me a splendid pleasure, and because old sally's moving gratitude and delight would give me another one; and because the reflection that she would be happy now and out of her trouble would fill me full of happiness. i did the whole thing with my eyes open and recognizing and realizing that i was looking out for my share of the profits first. now then, i have confessed. go on. o.m. i haven't anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground. can you have been any more strongly moved to help sally out of her trouble--could you have done the deed any more eagerly--if you had been under the delusion that you were doing it for her sake and profit only? y.m. no! nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved me more powerful, more masterful, more thoroughly irresistible. i played the limit! o.m. very well. you begin to suspect--and i claim to know --that when a man is a shade more strongly moved to do one of two things or of two dozen things than he is to do any one of the others, he will infallibly do that one thing, be it good or be it evil; and if it be good, not all the beguilements of all the casuistries can increase the strength of the impulse by a single shade or add a shade to the comfort and contentment he will get out of the act. y.m. then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in men's hearts would not be diminished by the removal of the delusion that good deeds are done primarily for the sake of no. 2 instead of for the sake of no. 1? o.m. that is what i fully believe. y.m. doesn't it somehow seem to take from the dignity of the deed? o.m. if there is dignity in falsity, it does. it removes that. y.m. what is left for the moralists to do? o.m. teach unreservedly what he already teaches with one side of his mouth and takes back with the other: do right for your own sake, and be happy in knowing that your neighbor will certainly share in the benefits resulting. y.m. repeat your admonition. o.m. diligently train your ideals upward and still upward toward a summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which, while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and the community. y.m. one's every act proceeds from exterior influences, you think? o.m. yes. y.m. if i conclude to rob a person, i am not the originator of the idea, but it comes in from the outside? i see him handling money--for instance--and that moves me to the crime? o.m. that, by itself? oh, certainly not. it is merely the latest outside influence of a procession of preparatory influences stretching back over a period of years. no single outside influence can make a man do a thing which is at war with his training. the most it can do is to start his mind on a new tract and open it to the reception of new influences--as in the case of ignatius loyola. in time these influences can train him to a point where it will be consonant with his new character to yield to the final influence and do that thing. i will put the case in a form which will make my theory clear to you, i think. here are two ingots of virgin gold. they shall represent a couple of characters which have been refined and perfected in the virtues by years of diligent right training. suppose you wanted to break down these strong and well-compacted characters--what influence would you bring to bear upon the ingots? y.m. work it out yourself. proceed. o.m. suppose i turn upon one of them a steam-jet during a long succession of hours. will there be a result? y.m. none that i know of. o.m. why? y.m. a steam-jet cannot break down such a substance. o.m. very well. the steam is an outside influence, but it is ineffective because the gold takes no interest in it. the ingot remains as it was. suppose we add to the steam some quicksilver in a vaporized condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an instantaneous result? y.m. no. o.m. the quicksilver is an outside influence which gold (by its peculiar nature--say temperament, disposition) cannot be indifferent to. it stirs up the interest of the gold, although we do not perceive it; but a single application of the influence works no damage. let us continue the application in a steady stream, and call each minute a year. by the end of ten or twenty minutes--ten or twenty years--the little ingot is sodden with quicksilver, its virtues are gone, its character is degraded. at last it is ready to yield to a temptation which it would have taken no notice of, ten or twenty years ago. we will apply that temptation in the form of a pressure of my finger. you note the result? y.m. yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand. i understand, now. it is not the single outside influence that does the work, but only the last one of a long and disintegrating accumulation of them. i see, now, how my single impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do it, but only the last one of a preparatory series. you might illustrate with a parable. a parable o.m. i will. there was once a pair of new england boys-twins. they were alike in good dispositions, feckless morals, and personal appearance. they were the models of the sundayschool. at fifteen george had the opportunity to go as cabin-boy in a whale-ship, and sailed away for the pacific. henry remained at home in the village. at eighteen george was a sailor before the mast, and henry was teacher of the advanced bible class. at twenty-two george, through fighting-habits and drinking-habits acquired at sea and in the sailor boarding-houses of the european and oriental ports, was a common rough in hong-kong, and out of a job; and henry was superintendent of the sunday-school. at twenty-six george was a wanderer, a tramp, and henry was pastor of the village church. then george came home, and was henry's guest. one evening a man passed by and turned down the lane, and henry said, with a pathetic smile, "without intending me a discomfort, that man is always keeping me reminded of my pinching poverty, for he carries heaps of money about him, and goes by here every evening of his life." that outside influence--that remark--was enough for george, but it was not the one that made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely represented the eleven years' accumulation of such influences, and gave birth to the act for which their long gestation had made preparation. it had never entered the head of henry to rob the man--his ingot had been subjected to clean steam only; but george's had been subjected to vaporized quicksilver. v more about the machine note.--when mrs. w. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to colleges and museums while one human being is destitute of bread, she has answered her question herself. her feeling for the poor shows that she has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the millionaire's privilege of having a standard; since she evidently requires him to adopt her standard, she is by that act requiring herself to adopt his. the human being always looks down when he is examining another person's standard; he never find one that he has to examine by looking up. the man-machine again young man. you really think man is a mere machine? old man. i do. y.m. and that his mind works automatically and is independent of his control--carries on thought on its own hook? o.m. yes. it is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every waking moment. have you never tossed about all night, imploring, beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to sleep?--you who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you tell it to stop. when it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it still for an instant. the brightest man would not be able to supply it with subjects if he had to hunt them up. if it needed the man's help it would wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning. y.m. maybe it does. o.m. no, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to give it a suggestion. he may go to sleep saying, "the moment i wake i will think upon such and such a subject," but he will fail. his mind will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough awake to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work upon another subject. make the experiment and see. y.m. at any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to. o.m. not if it find another that suits it better. as a rule it will listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. it refuses all persuasion. the dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. you cannot keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you. after an interval of days o.m. now, dreams--but we will examine that later. meantime, did you try commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any thinking on its own hook? y.m. yes, i commanded it to stand ready to take orders when i should wake in the morning. o.m. did it obey? y.m. no. it went to thinking of something of its own initiation, without waiting for me. also--as you suggested--at night i appointed a theme for it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on that one and no other. o.m. did it obey? y.m. no. o.m. how many times did you try the experiment? y.m. ten. o.m. how many successes did you score? y.m. not one. o.m. it is as i have said: the mind is independent of the man. he has no control over it; it does as it pleases. it will take up a subject in spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it aside in spite of him. it is entirely independent of him. y.m. go on. illustrate. o.m. do you know chess? y.m. i learned it a week ago. o.m. did your mind go on playing the game all night that first night? y.m. don't mention it! o.m. it was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you get some sleep? y.m. yes. it wouldn't listen; it played right along. it wore me out and i got up haggard and wretched in the morning. o.m. at some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous rhyme-jingle? y.m. indeed, yes! "i saw esau kissing kate, and she saw i saw esau; i saw esau, he saw kate, and she saw--" and so on. my mind went mad with joy over it. it repeated it all day and all night for a week in spite of all i could do to stop it, and it seemed to me that i must surely go crazy. o.m. and the new popular song? y.m. oh yes! "in the swee-eet by and by"; etc. yes, the new popular song with the taking melody sings through one's head day and night, asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. there is no getting the mind to let it alone. o.m. yes, asleep as well as awake. the mind is quite independent. it is master. you have nothing to do with it. it is so apart from you that it can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its complex and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. it has no use for your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either, whether you be asleep or awake. you have imagined that you could originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed you could do it. y.m. yes, i have had that idea. o.m. yet you can't originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and get it accepted? y.m. no. o.m. and you can't dictate its procedure after it has originated a dream-thought for itself? y.m. no. no one can do it. do you think the waking mind and the dream mind are the same machine? o.m. there is argument for it. we have wild and fantastic day-thoughts? things that are dream-like? y.m. yes--like mr. wells's man who invented a drug that made him invisible; and like the arabian tales of the thousand nights. o.m. and there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and unfantastic? y.m. yes. i have dreams that are like that. dreams that are just like real life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly differentiated characters--inventions of my mind and yet strangers to me: a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel person; a kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones. they talk in character, each preserves his own characteristics. there are vivid fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing is exactly like real life. o.m. your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably through--all without help or suggestion from you? y.m. yes. o.m. it is argument that it could do the like awake without help or suggestion from you--and i think it does. it is argument that it is the same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. i think the mind is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an automatic machine. have you tried the other experiment which i suggested to you? y.m. which one? o.m. the one which was to determine how much influence you have over your mind--if any. y.m. yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. i did as you ordered: i placed two texts before my eyes--one a dull one and barren of interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, white-hot with it. i commanded my mind to busy itself solely with the dull one. o.m. did it obey? y.m. well, no, it didn't. it busied itself with the other one. o.m. did you try hard to make it obey? y.m. yes, i did my honest best. o.m. what was the text which it refused to be interested in or think about? y.m. it was this question: if a owes b a dollar and a half, and b owes c two and three-quarter, and c owes a thirtyfive cents, and d and a together owe e and b three-sixteenths of --of--i don't remember the rest, now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and i could not force my mind to stick to it even half a minute at a time; it kept flying off to the other text. o.m. what was the other text? y.m. it is no matter about that. o.m. but what was it? y.m. a photograph. o.m. your own? y.m. no. it was hers. o.m. you really made an honest good test. did you make a second trial? y.m. yes. i commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper's report of the pork-market, and at the same time i reminded it of an experience of mine of sixteen years ago. it refused to consider the pork and gave its whole blazing interest to that ancient incident. o.m. what was the incident? y.m. an armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty spectators. it makes me wild and murderous every time i think of it. o.m. good tests, both; very good tests. did you try my other suggestion? y.m. the one which was to prove to me that if i would leave my mind to its own devices it would find things to think about without any of my help, and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine, set in motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it could be if it were in some one else's skull. is that the one? o.m. yes. y.m. i tried it. i was shaving. i had slept well, and my mind was very lively, even gay and frisky. it was reveling in a fantastic and joyful episode of my remote boyhood which had suddenly flashed up in my memory--moved to this by the spectacle of a yellow cat picking its way carefully along the top of the garden wall. the color of this cat brought the bygone cat before me, and i saw her walking along the side-step of the pulpit; saw her walk on to a large sheet of sticky fly-paper and get all her feet involved; saw her struggle and fall down, helpless and dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more unreconciled, more and more mutely profane; saw the silent congregation quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces. i saw it all. the sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far distant and a sadder scene--in terra del fuego--and with darwin's eyes i saw a naked great savage hurl his little boy against the rocks for a trifling fault; saw the poor mother gather up her dying child and hug it to her breast and weep, uttering no word. did my mind stop to mourn with that nude black sister of mine? no--it was far away from that scene in an instant, and was busying itself with an ever-recurring and disagreeable dream of mine. in this dream i always find myself, stripped to my shirt, cringing and dodging about in the midst of a great drawing-room throng of finely dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how i got there. and so on and so on, picture after picture, incident after incident, a drifting panorama of ever-changing, ever-dissolving views manufactured by my mind without any help from me--why, it would take me two hours to merely name the multitude of things my mind tallied off and photographed in fifteen minutes, let alone describe them to you. o.m. a man's mind, left free, has no use for his help. but there is one way whereby he can get its help when he desires it. y.m. what is that way? o.m. when your mind is racing along from subject to subject and strikes an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking upon that matter--or--take your pen and use that. it will interest your mind and concentrate it, and it will pursue the subject with satisfaction. it will take full charge, and furnish the words itself. y.m. but don't i tell it what to say? o.m. there are certainly occasions when you haven't time. the words leap out before you know what is coming. y.m. for instance? o.m. well, take a "flash of wit"--repartee. flash is the right word. it is out instantly. there is no time to arrange the words. there is no thinking, no reflecting. where there is a wit-mechanism it is automatic in its action and needs no help. where the whit-mechanism is lacking, no amount of study and reflection can manufacture the product. y.m. you really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing. the thinking-process o.m. i do. men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine the things perceived. that is all. y.m. the steam-engine? o.m. it takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. one meaning of invent is discover. i use the word in that sense. little by little they discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect engine. watt noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the lid of the teapot. he didn't create the idea, he merely discovered the fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times. from the teapot he evolved the cylinder--from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod. to attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a simple matter--crank and wheel. and so there was a working engine. [1] one by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes, not their creating powers--for they hadn't any--and now, after a hundred years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers stand compacted in the wonderful machine which drives the ocean liner. y.m. a shakespearean play? o.m. the process is the same. the first actor was a savage. he reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalpdances, and so on, incidents which he had seen in real life. a more advanced civilization produced more incidents, more episodes; the actor and the story-teller borrowed them. and so the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage. it is made up of the facts of life, not creations. it took centuries to develop the greek drama. it borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to the ages that came after. men observe and combine, that is all. so does a rat. y.m. how? o.m. he observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds. the astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet, seeks it and finds it. the rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble; infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no more. the astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud of his. yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit belongs to their maker. they are entitled to no honors, no praises, no monuments when they die, no remembrance. one is a complex and elaborate machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are alike in principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise than automatically, and neither of them may righteously claim a personal superiority or a personal dignity above the other. y.m. in earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit for what he does, it follows of necessity that he is on the same level as a rat? o.m. his brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me. neither of them being entitled to any personal merit for what he does, it follows of necessity that neither of them has a right to arrogate to himself (personally created) superiorities over his brother. y.m. are you determined to go on believing in these insanities? would you go on believing in them in the face of able arguments backed by collated facts and instances? o.m. i have been a humble, earnest, and sincere truth-seeker. y.m. very well? o.m. the humble, earnest, and sincere truth-seeker is always convertible by such means. y.m. i am thankful to god to hear you say this, for now i know that your conversion-o.m. wait. you misunderstand. i said i have been a truth-seeker. y.m. well? o.m. i am not that now. have your forgotten? i told you that there are none but temporary truth-seekers; that a permanent one is a human impossibility; that as soon as the seeker finds what he is thoroughly convinced is the truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk it and prop it with, and make it weather-proof and keep it from caving in on him. hence the presbyterian remains a presbyterian, the mohammedan a mohammedan, the spiritualist a spiritualist, the democrat a democrat, the republican a republican, the monarchist a monarchist; and if a humble, earnest, and sincere seeker after truth should find it in the proposition that the moon is made of green cheese nothing could ever budge him from that position; for he is nothing but an automatic machine, and must obey the laws of his construction. y.m. after so-o.m. having found the truth; perceiving that beyond question man has but one moving impulse--the contenting of his own spirit-and is merely a machine and entitled to no personal merit for anything he does, it is not humanly possible for me to seek further. the rest of my days will be spent in patching and painting and puttying and caulking my priceless possession and in looking the other way when an imploring argument or a damaging fact approaches. ----1. the marquess of worcester had done all of this more than a century earlier. vi instinct and thought young man. it is odious. those drunken theories of yours, advanced a while ago--concerning the rat and all that--strip man bare of all his dignities, grandeurs, sublimities. old man. he hasn't any to strip--they are shams, stolen clothes. he claims credits which belong solely to his maker. y.m. but you have no right to put him on a level with a rat. o.m. i don't--morally. that would not be fair to the rat. the rat is well above him, there. y.m. are you joking? o.m. no, i am not. y.m. then what do you mean? o.m. that comes under the head of the moral sense. it is a large question. let us finish with what we are about now, before we take it up. y.m. very well. you have seemed to concede that you place man and the rat on a level. what is it? the intellectual? o.m. in form--not a degree. y.m. explain. o.m. i think that the rat's mind and the man's mind are the same machine, but of unequal capacities--like yours and edison's; like the african pygmy's and homer's; like the bushman's and bismarck's. y.m. how are you going to make that out, when the lower animals have no mental quality but instinct, while man possesses reason? o.m. what is instinct? y.m. it is merely unthinking and mechanical exercise of inherited habit. o.m. what originated the habit? y.m. the first animal started it, its descendants have inherited it. o.m. how did the first one come to start it? y.m. i don't know; but it didn't think it out. o.m. how do you know it didn't? y.m. well--i have a right to suppose it didn't, anyway. o.m. i don't believe you have. what is thought? y.m. i know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting together of impressions received from outside, and drawing an inference from them. o.m. very good. now my idea of the meaningless term "instinct" is, that it is merely petrified thought; solidified and made inanimate by habit; thought which was once alive and awake, but it become unconscious--walks in its sleep, so to speak. y.m. illustrate it. o.m. take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture. their heads are all turned in one direction. they do that instinctively; they gain nothing by it, they have no reason for it, they don't know why they do it. it is an inherited habit which was originally thought--that is to say, observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable inference drawn from that observation and confirmed by experience. the original wild ox noticed that with the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in time to escape; then he inferred that it was worth while to keep his nose to the wind. that is the process which man calls reasoning. man's thought-machine works just like the other animals', but it is a better one and more edisonian. man, in the ox's place, would go further, reason wider: he would face part of the herd the other way and protect both front and rear. y.m. did you stay the term instinct is meaningless? o.m. i think it is a bastard word. i think it confuses us; for as a rule it applies itself to habits and impulses which had a far-off origin in thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself to habits which can hardly claim a thought-origin. y.m. give an instance. o.m. well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg first--never the other one. there is no advantage in that, and no sense in it. all men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of set purpose, i imagine. but it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt, and will continue to be transmitted. y.m. can you prove that the habit exists? o.m. you can prove it, if you doubt. if you will take a man to a clothing-store and watch him try on a dozen pairs of trousers, you will see. y.m. the cow illustration is not-o.m. sufficient to show that a dumb animal's mental machine is just the same as a man's and its reasoning processes the same? i will illustrate further. if you should hand mr. edison a box which you caused to fly open by some concealed device he would infer a spring, and would hunt for it and find it. now an uncle of mine had an old horse who used to get into the closed lot where the corn-crib was and dishonestly take the corn. i got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that i had heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin which kept the gate closed. these persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer the existence of a culprit, somewhere; so i hid myself and watched the gate. presently the horse came and pulled the pin out with his teeth and went in. nobody taught him that; he had observed--then thought it out for himself. his process did not differ from edison's; he put this and that together and drew an inference--and the peg, too; but i made him sweat for it. y.m. it has something of the seeming of thought about it. still it is not very elaborate. enlarge. o.m. suppose mr. edison has been enjoying some one's hospitalities. he comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. he infers that his host has moved. a while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire. here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. the scene is a scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated. this particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family; kept on doing this almost daily, thereafter. but, once the gull was away on a journey for a few days, and when it returned the house was vacant. its friends had removed to a village three miles distant. several months later it saw the head of the family on the street there, followed him home, entered the house without excuse or apology, and became a daily guest again. gulls do not rank high mentally, but this one had memory and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them edisonially. y.m. yet it was not an edison and couldn't be developed into one. o.m. perhaps not. could you? y.m. that is neither here nor there. go on. o.m. if edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and next day he got into the same difficulty again, he would infer the wise thing to do in case he knew the stranger's address. here is a case of a bird and a stranger as related by a naturalist. an englishman saw a bird flying around about his dog's head, down in the grounds, and uttering cries of distress. he went there to see about it. the dog had a young bird in his mouth--unhurt. the gentleman rescued it and put it on a bush and brought the dog away. early the next morning the mother bird came for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its maneuvers persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the grounds--flying a little way in front of him and waiting for him to catch up, and so on; and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of flying the near way across lots. the distance covered was four hundred yards. the same dog was the culprit; he had the young bird again, and once more he had to give it up. now the mother bird had reasoned it all out: since the stranger had helped her once, she inferred that he would do it again; she knew where to find him, and she went upon her errand with confidence. her mental processes were what edison's would have been. she put this and that together--and that is all that thought is--and out of them built her logical arrangement of inferences. edison couldn't have done it any better himself. y.m. do you believe that many of the dumb animals can think? o.m. yes--the elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. the elephant whose mate fell into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with the reasoning quality. i conceive that all animals that can learn things through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and put this and that together and draw an inference--the process of thinking. could you teach an idiot of manuals of arms, and to advance, retreat, and go through complex field maneuvers at the word of command? y.m. not if he were a thorough idiot. o.m. well, canary-birds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn all sorts of wonderful things. they must surely be able to notice, and to put things together, and say to themselves, "i get the idea, now: when i do so and so, as per order, i am praised and fed; when i do differently i am punished." fleas can be taught nearly anything that a congressman can. y.m. granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low plane, is there any that can think upon a high one? is there one that is well up toward man? o.m. yes. as a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized! y.m. oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which separates man and beast. o.m. i beg your pardon. one cannot abolish what does not exist. y.m. you are not in earnest, i hope. you cannot mean to seriously say there is no such frontier. o.m. i do say it seriously. the instances of the horse, the gull, the mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures put their this's and thats together just as edison would have done it and drew the same inferences that he would have drawn. their mental machinery was just like his, also its manner of working. their equipment was as inferior to the strasburg clock, but that is the only difference--there is no frontier. y.m. it looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive. it elevates the dumb beasts to--to-o.m. let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the unrevealed creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such thing as a dumb beast. y.m. on what grounds do you make that assertion? o.m. on quite simple ones. "dumb" beast suggests an animal that has no thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of communicating what is in its mind. we know that a hen has speech. we cannot understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her phrases. we know when she is saying, "i have laid an egg"; we know when she is saying to the chicks, "run here, dears, i've found a worm"; we know what she is saying when she voices a warning: "quick! hurry! gather yourselves under mamma, there's a hawk coming!" we understand the cat when she stretches herself out, purring with affection and contentment and lifts up a soft voice and says, "come, kitties, supper's ready"; we understand her when she goes mourning about and says, "where can they be? they are lost. won't you help me hunt for them?" and we understand the disreputable tom when he challenges at midnight from his shed, "you come over here, you product of immoral commerce, and i'll make your fur fly!" we understand a few of a dog's phrases and we learn to understand a few of the remarks and gestures of any bird or other animal that we domesticate and observe. the clearness and exactness of the few of the hen's speeches which we understand is argument that she can communicate to her kind a hundred things which we cannot comprehend--in a word, that she can converse. and this argument is also applicable in the case of others of the great army of the unrevealed. it is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. now as to the ant-y.m. yes, go back to the ant, the creature that--as you seem to think--sweeps away the last vestige of an intellectual frontier between man and the unrevealed. o.m. that is what she surely does. in all his history the aboriginal australian never thought out a house for himself and built it. the ant is an amazing architect. she is a wee little creature, but she builds a strong and enduring house eight feet high--a house which is as large in proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or cathedral in the world compared to man's size. no savage race has produced architects who could approach the air in genius or culture. no civilized race has produced architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed than can hers. her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for her young; granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and they and the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with them are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye for convenience and adaptability. y.m. that could be mere instinct. o.m. it would elevate the savage if he had it. but let us look further before we decide. the ant has soldiers--battalions, regiments, armies; and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them to battle. y.m. that could be instinct, too. o.m. we will look still further. the ant has a system of government; it is well planned, elaborate, and is well carried on. y.m. instinct again. o.m. she has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of forced labor. y.m. instinct. o.m. she has cows, and milks them. y.m. instinct, of course. o.m. in texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds it, cultivates it, gathers the crop and stores it away. y.m. instinct, all the same. o.m. the ant discriminates between friend and stranger. sir john lubbock took ants from two different nests, made them drunk with whiskey and laid them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some water. ants from the nest came and examined and discussed these disgraced creatures, then carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. sir john repeated the experiment a number of times. for a time the sober ants did as they had done at first--carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. but finally they lost patience, seeing that their reformatory efforts went for nothing, and threw both friends and strangers overboard. come--is this instinct, or is it thoughtful and intelligent discussion of a thing new-absolutely new--to their experience; with a verdict arrived at, sentence passed, and judgment executed? is it instinct?--thought petrified by ages of habit--or isn't it brand-new thought, inspired by the new occasion, the new circumstances? y.m. i have to concede it. it was not a result of habit; it has all the look of reflection, thought, putting this and that together, as you phrase it. i believe it was thought. o.m. i will give you another instance of thought. franklin had a cup of sugar on a table in his room. the ants got at it. he tried several preventives; and ants rose superior to them. finally he contrived one which shut off access--probably set the table's legs in pans of water, or drew a circle of tar around the cup, i don't remember. at any rate, he watched to see what they would do. they tried various schemes--failures, every one. the ants were badly puzzled. finally they held a consultation, discussed the problem, arrived at a decision--and this time they beat that great philosopher. they formed in procession, cross the floor, climbed the wall, marched across the ceiling to a point just over the cup, then one by one they let go and fell down into it! was that instinct--thought petrified by ages of inherited habit? y.m. no, i don't believe it was. i believe it was a newly reasoned scheme to meet a new emergency. o.m. very well. you have conceded the reasoning power in two instances. i come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is a long way the superior of any human being. sir john lubbock proved by many experiments that an ant knows a stranger ant of her own species in a moment, even when the stranger is disguised --with paint. also he proved that an ant knows every individual in her hive of five hundred thousand souls. also, after a year's absence one of the five hundred thousand she will straightway recognize the returned absentee and grace the recognition with a affectionate welcome. how are these recognitions made? not by color, for painted ants were recognized. not by smell, for ants that had been dipped in chloroform were recognized. not by speech and not by antennae signs nor contacts, for the drunken and motionless ants were recognized and the friend discriminated from the stranger. the ants were all of the same species, therefore the friends had to be recognized by form and feature-friends who formed part of a hive of five hundred thousand! has any man a memory for form and feature approaching that? y.m. certainly not. o.m. franklin's ants and lubbuck's ants show fine capacities of putting this and that together in new and untried emergencies and deducting smart conclusions from the combinations--a man's mental process exactly. with memory to help, man preserves his observations and reasonings, reflects upon them, adds to them, recombines, and so proceeds, stage by stage, to far results--from the teakettle to the ocean greyhound's complex engine; from personal labor to slave labor; from wigwam to palace; from the capricious chase to agriculture and stored food; from nomadic life to stable government and concentrated authority; from incoherent hordes to massed armies. the ant has observation, the reasoning faculty, and the preserving adjunct of a prodigious memory; she has duplicated man's development and the essential features of his civilization, and you call it all instinct! y.m. perhaps i lacked the reasoning faculty myself. o.m. well, don't tell anybody, and don't do it again. y.m. we have come a good way. as a result--as i understand it-i am required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier separating man and the unrevealed creatures? o.m. that is what you are required to concede. there is no such frontier--there is no way to get around that. man has a finer and more capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine and works in the same way. and neither he nor those others can command the machine--it is strictly automatic, independent of control, works when it pleases, and when it doesn't please, it can't be forced. y.m. then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental machinery, and there isn't any difference of any stupendous magnitude between them, except in quality, not in kind. o.m. that is about the state of it--intellectuality. there are pronounced limitations on both sides. we can't learn to understand much of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand a very great deal of ours. to that extent they are our superiors. on the other hand, they can't learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our fine and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them. y.m. very well, let them have what they've got, and welcome; there is still a wall, and a lofty one. they haven't got the moral sense; we have it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them. o.m. what makes you think that? y.m. now look here--let's call a halt. i have stood the other infamies and insanities and that is enough; i am not going to have man and the other animals put on the same level morally. o.m. i wasn't going to hoist man up to that. y.m. this is too much! i think it is not right to jest about such things. o.m. i am not jesting, i am merely reflecting a plain and simple truth--and without uncharitableness. the fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot. it is my belief that this position is not assailable. free will y.m. what is your opinion regarding free will? o.m. that there is no such thing. did the man possess it who gave the old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm? y.m. he had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her to suffer. isn't it so? o.m. yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. the body made a strong appeal, of course--the body would be quite sure to do that; the spirit made a counter appeal. a choice had to be made between the two appeals, and was made. who or what determined that choice? y.m. any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in doing it he exercised free will. o.m. we are constantly assured that every man is endowed with free will, and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice between good conduct and less-good conduct. yet we clearly saw that in that man's case he really had no free will: his temperament, his training, and the daily influences which had molded him and made him what he was, compelled him to rescue the old woman and thus save himself--save himself from spiritual pain, from unendurable wretchedness. he did not make the choice, it was made for him by forces which he could not control. free will has always existed in words, but it stops there, i think--stops short of fact. i would not use those words--free will--but others. y.m. what others? o.m. free choice. y.m. what is the difference? o.m. the one implies untrammeled power to act as you please, the other implies nothing beyond a mere mental process: the critical ability to determine which of two things is nearest right and just. y.m. make the difference clear, please. o.m. the mind can freely select, choose, point out the right and just one--its function stops there. it can go no further in the matter. it has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the wrong one discarded. that authority is in other hands. y.m. the man's? o.m. in the machine which stands for him. in his born disposition and the character which has been built around it by training and environment. y.m. it will act upon the right one of the two? o.m. it will do as it pleases in the matter. george washington's machine would act upon the right one; pizarro would act upon the wrong one. y.m. then as i understand it a bad man's mental machinery calmly and judicially points out which of two things is right and just-o.m. yes, and his moral machinery will freely act upon the other or the other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the mind's feeling concerning the matter--that is, would be, if the mind had any feelings; which it hasn't. it is merely a thermometer: it registers the heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either. y.m. then we must not claim that if a man knows which of two things is right he is absolutely bound to do that thing? o.m. his temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the mater. wasn't it right for david to go out and slay goliath? y.m. yes. o.m. then it would have been equally right for any one else to do it? y.m. certainly. o.m. then it would have been right for a born coward to attempt it? y.m. it would--yes. o.m. you know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don't you? y.m. yes. o.m. you know that a born coward's make and temperament would be an absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing, don't you? y.m. yes, i know it. o.m. he clearly perceives that it would be right to try it? y.m. yes. o.m. his mind has free choice in determining that it would be right to try it? y.m. yes. o.m. then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can not essay it, what becomes of his free will? where is his free will? why claim that he has free will when the plain facts show that he hasn't? why content that because he and david see the right alike, both must act alike? why impose the same laws upon goat and lion? y.m. there is really no such thing as free will? o.m. it is what i think. there is will. but it has nothing to do with intellectual perceptions of right and wrong, and is not under their command. david's temperament and training had will, and it was a compulsory force; david had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. the coward's temperament and training possess will, and it is compulsory; it commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no choice. but neither the davids nor the cowards possess free will--will that may do the right or do the wrong, as their mental verdict shall decide. not two values, but only one y.m. there is one thing which bothers me: i can't tell where you draw the line between material covetousness and spiritual covetousness. o.m. i don't draw any. y.m. how do you mean? o.m. there is no such thing as material covetousness. all covetousness is spiritual y.m. all longings, desires, ambitions spiritual, never material? o.m. yes. the master in you requires that in all cases you shall content his spirit--that alone. he never requires anything else, he never interests himself in any other matter. y.m. ah, come! when he covets somebody's money--isn't that rather distinctly material and gross? o.m. no. the money is merely a symbol--it represents in visible and concrete form a spiritual desire. any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment. y.m. please particularize. o.m. very well. maybe the thing longed for is a new hat. you get it and your vanity is pleased, your spirit contented. suppose your friends deride the hat, make fun of it: at once it loses its value; you are ashamed of it, you put it out of your sight, you never want to see it again. y.m. i think i see. go on. o.m. it is the same hat, isn't it? it is in no way altered. but it wasn't the hat you wanted, but only what it stood for--a something to please and content your spirit. when it failed of that, the whole of its value was gone. there are no material values; there are only spiritual ones. you will hunt in vain for a material value that is actual, real--there is no such thing. the only value it possesses, for even a moment, is the spiritual value back of it: remove that end and it is at once worthless--like the hat. y.m. can you extend that to money? o.m. yes. it is merely a symbol, it has no material value; you think you desire it for its own sake, but it is not so. you desire it for the spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that its value is gone. there is that pathetic tale of the man who labored like a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had accumulated a fortune, and was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single week a pestilence swept away all whom he held dear and left him desolate. his money's value was gone. he realized that his joy in it came not from the money itself, but from the spiritual contentment he got out of his family's enjoyment of the pleasures and delights it lavished upon them. money has no material value; if you remove its spiritual value nothing is left but dross. it is so with all things, little or big, majestic or trivial--there are no exceptions. crowns, scepters, pennies, paste jewels, village notoriety, world-wide fame--they are all the same, they have no material value: while they content the spirit they are precious, when this fails they are worthless. a difficult question y.m. you keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive terminology. sometimes you divide a man up into two or three separate personalities, each with authorities, jurisdictions, and responsibilities of its own, and when he is in that condition i can't grasp it. now when _i_ speak of a man, he is the whole thing in one, and easy to hold and contemplate. o.m. that is pleasant and convenient, if true. when you speak of "my body" who is the "my"? y.m. it is the "me." o.m. the body is a property then, and the me owns it. who is the me? y.m. the me is the whole thing; it is a common property; an undivided ownership, vested in the whole entity. o.m. if the me admires a rainbow, is it the whole me that admires it, including the hair, hands, heels, and all? y.m. certainly not. it is my mind that admires it. o.m. so you divide the me yourself. everybody does; everybody must. what, then, definitely, is the me? y.m. i think it must consist of just those two parts-the body and the mind. o.m. you think so? if you say "i believe the world is round," who is the "i" that is speaking? y.m. the mind. o.m. if you say "i grieve for the loss of my father," who is the "i"? y.m. the mind. o.m. is the mind exercising an intellectual function when it examines and accepts the evidence that the world is round? y.m. yes. o.m. is it exercising an intellectual function when it grieves for the loss of your father? y.m. that is not cerebration, brain-work, it is a matter of feeling. o.m. then its source is not in your mind, but in your moral territory? y.m. i have to grant it. o.m. is your mind a part of your physical equipment? y.m. no. it is independent of it; it is spiritual. o.m. being spiritual, it cannot be affected by physical influences? y.m. no. o.m. does the mind remain sober with the body is drunk? y.m. well--no. o.m. there is a physical effect present, then? y.m. it looks like it. o.m. a cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind. why should it happen if the mind is spiritual, and independent of physical influences? y.m. well--i don't know. o.m. when you have a pain in your foot, how do you know it? y.m. i feel it. o.m. but you do not feel it until a nerve reports the hurt to the brain. yet the brain is the seat of the mind, is it not? y.m. i think so. o.m. but isn't spiritual enough to learn what is happening in the outskirts without the help of the physical messenger? you perceive that the question of who or what the me is, is not a simple one at all. you say "i admire the rainbow," and "i believe the world is round," and in these cases we find that the me is not speaking, but only the mental part. you say, "i grieve," and again the me is not all speaking, but only the moral part. you say the mind is wholly spiritual; then you say "i have a pain" and find that this time the me is mental and spiritual combined. we all use the "i" in this indeterminate fashion, there is no help for it. we imagine a master and king over what you call the whole thing, and we speak of him as "i," but when we try to define him we find we cannot do it. the intellect and the feelings can act quite independently of each other; we recognize that, and we look around for a ruler who is master over both, and can serve as a definite and indisputable "i," and enable us to know what we mean and who or what we are talking about when we use that pronoun, but we have to give it up and confess that we cannot find him. to me, man is a machine, made up of many mechanisms, the moral and mental ones acting automatically in accordance with the impulses of an interior master who is built out of born-temperament and an accumulation of multitudinous outside influences and trainings; a machine whose one function is to secure the spiritual contentment of the master, be his desires good or be they evil; a machine whose will is absolute and must be obeyed, and always is obeyed. y.m. maybe the me is the soul? o.m. maybe it is. what is the soul? y.m. i don't know. o.m. neither does any one else. the master passion y.m. what is the master?--or, in common speech, the conscience? explain it. o.m. it is that mysterious autocrat, lodged in a man, which compels the man to content its desires. it may be called the master passion--the hunger for self-approval. y.m. where is its seat? o.m. in man's moral constitution. y.m. are its commands for the man's good? o.m. it is indifferent to the man's good; it never concerns itself about anything but the satisfying of its own desires. it can be trained to prefer things which will be for the man's good, but it will prefer them only because they will content it better than other things would. y.m. then even when it is trained to high ideals it is still looking out for its own contentment, and not for the man's good. o.m. true. trained or untrained, it cares nothing for the man's good, and never concerns itself about it. y.m. it seems to be an immoral force seated in the man's moral constitution. o.m. it is a colorless force seated in the man's moral constitution. let us call it an instinct--a blind, unreasoning instinct, which cannot and does not distinguish between good morals and bad ones, and cares nothing for results to the man provided its own contentment be secured; and it will always secure that. y.m. it seeks money, and it probably considers that that is an advantage for the man? o.m. it is not always seeking money, it is not always seeking power, nor office, nor any other material advantage. in all cases it seeks a spiritual contentment, let the means be what they may. its desires are determined by the man's temperament-and it is lord over that. temperament, conscience, susceptibility, spiritual appetite, are, in fact, the same thing. have you ever heard of a person who cared nothing for money? y.m. yes. a scholar who would not leave his garret and his books to take a place in a business house at a large salary. o.m. he had to satisfy his master--that is to say, his temperament, his spiritual appetite--and it preferred books to money. are there other cases? y.m. yes, the hermit. o.m. it is a good instance. the hermit endures solitude, hunger, cold, and manifold perils, to content his autocrat, who prefers these things, and prayer and contemplation, to money or to any show or luxury that money can buy. are there others? y.m. yes. the artist, the poet, the scientist. o.m. their autocrat prefers the deep pleasures of these occupations, either well paid or ill paid, to any others in the market, at any price. you realize that the master passion--the contentment of the spirit--concerns itself with many things besides so-called material advantage, material prosperity, cash, and all that? y.m. i think i must concede it. o.m. i believe you must. there are perhaps as many temperaments that would refuse the burdens and vexations and distinctions of public office as there are that hunger after them. the one set of temperaments seek the contentment of the spirit, and that alone; and this is exactly the case with the other set. neither set seeks anything but the contentment of the spirit. if the one is sordid, both are sordid; and equally so, since the end in view is precisely the same in both cases. and in both cases temperament decides the preference--and temperament is born, not made. conclusion o.m. you have been taking a holiday? y.m. yes; a mountain tramp covering a week. are you ready to talk? o.m. quite ready. what shall we begin with? y.m. well, lying abed resting up, two days and nights, i have thought over all these talks, and passed them carefully in review. with this result: that . . . that . . . are you intending to publish your notions about man some day? o.m. now and then, in these past twenty years, the master inside of me has half-intended to order me to set them to paper and publish them. do i have to tell you why the order has remained unissued, or can you explain so simply a thing without my help? y.m. by your doctrine, it is simplicity itself: outside influences moved your interior master to give the order; stronger outside influences deterred him. without the outside influences, neither of these impulses could ever have been born, since a person's brain is incapable or originating an idea within itself. o.m. correct. go on. y.m. the matter of publishing or withholding is still in your master's hands. if some day an outside influence shall determine him to publish, he will give the order, and it will be obeyed. o.m. that is correct. well? y.m. upon reflection i have arrived at the conviction that the publication of your doctrines would be harmful. do you pardon me? o.m. pardon you? you have done nothing. you are an instrument--a speaking-trumpet. speaking-trumpets are not responsible for what is said through them. outside influences-in the form of lifelong teachings, trainings, notions, prejudices, and other second-hand importations--have persuaded the master within you that the publication of these doctrines would be harmful. very well, this is quite natural, and was to be expected; in fact, was inevitable. go on; for the sake of ease and convenience, stick to habit: speak in the first person, and tell me what your master thinks about it. y.m. well, to begin: it is a desolating doctrine; it is not inspiring, enthusing, uplifting. it takes the glory out of man, it takes the pride out of him, it takes the heroism out of him, it denies him all personal credit, all applause; it not only degrades him to a machine, but allows him no control over the machine; makes a mere coffee-mill of him, and neither permits him to supply the coffee nor turn the crank, his sole and piteously humble function being to grind coarse or fine, according to his make, outside impulses doing the rest. o.m. it is correctly stated. tell me--what do men admire most in each other? y.m. intellect, courage, majesty of build, beauty of countenance, charity, benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness, heroism, and--and-o.m. i would not go any further. these are elementals. virtue, fortitude, holiness, truthfulness, loyalty, high ideals-these, and all the related qualities that are named in the dictionary, are made of the elementals, by blendings, combinations, and shadings of the elementals, just as one makes green by blending blue and yellow, and makes several shades and tints of red by modifying the elemental red. there are several elemental colors; they are all in the rainbow; out of them we manufacture and name fifty shades of them. you have named the elementals of the human rainbow, and also one blend--heroism, which is made out of courage and magnanimity. very well, then; which of these elements does the possessor of it manufacture for himself? is it intellect? y.m. no. o.m. why? y.m. he is born with it. o.m. is it courage? y.m. no. he is born with it. o.m. is it majesty of build, beauty of countenance? y.m. no. they are birthrights. o.m. take those others--the elemental moral qualities-charity, benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness; fruitful seeds, out of which spring, through cultivation by outside influences, all the manifold blends and combinations of virtues named in the dictionaries: does man manufacture any of those seeds, or are they all born in him? y.m. born in him. o.m. who manufactures them, then? y.m. god. o.m. where does the credit of it belong? y.m. to god. o.m. and the glory of which you spoke, and the applause? y.m. to god. o.m. then it is you who degrade man. you make him claim glory, praise, flattery, for every valuable thing he possesses-borrowed finery, the whole of it; no rag of it earned by himself, not a detail of it produced by his own labor. you make man a humbug; have i done worse by him? y.m. you have made a machine of him. o.m. who devised that cunning and beautiful mechanism, a man's hand? y.m. god. o.m. who devised the law by which it automatically hammers out of a piano an elaborate piece of music, without error, while the man is thinking about something else, or talking to a friend? y.m. god. o.m. who devised the blood? who devised the wonderful machinery which automatically drives its renewing and refreshing streams through the body, day and night, without assistance or advice from the man? who devised the man's mind, whose machinery works automatically, interests itself in what it pleases, regardless of its will or desire, labors all night when it likes, deaf to his appeals for mercy? god devised all these things. _i_ have not made man a machine, god made him a machine. i am merely calling attention to the fact, nothing more. is it wrong to call attention to the fact? is it a crime? y.m. i think it is wrong to expose a fact when harm can come of it. o.m. go on. y.m. look at the matter as it stands now. man has been taught that he is the supreme marvel of the creation; he believes it; in all the ages he has never doubted it, whether he was a naked savage, or clothed in purple and fine linen, and civilized. this has made his heart buoyant, his life cheery. his pride in himself, his sincere admiration of himself, his joy in what he supposed were his own and unassisted achievements, and his exultation over the praise and applause which they evoked--these have exalted him, enthused him, ambitioned him to higher and higher flights; in a word, made his life worth the living. but by your scheme, all this is abolished; he is degraded to a machine, he is a nobody, his noble prides wither to mere vanities; let him strive as he may, he can never be any better than his humblest and stupidest neighbor; he would never be cheerful again, his life would not be worth the living. o.m. you really think that? y.m. i certainly do. o.m. have you ever seen me uncheerful, unhappy. y.m. no. o.m. well, _i_ believe these things. why have they not made me unhappy? y.m. oh, well--temperament, of course! you never let that escape from your scheme. o.m. that is correct. if a man is born with an unhappy temperament, nothing can make him happy; if he is born with a happy temperament, nothing can make him unhappy. y.m. what--not even a degrading and heart-chilling system of beliefs? o.m. beliefs? mere beliefs? mere convictions? they are powerless. they strive in vain against inborn temperament. y.m. i can't believe that, and i don't. o.m. now you are speaking hastily. it shows that you have not studiously examined the facts. of all your intimates, which one is the happiest? isn't it burgess? y.m. easily. o.m. and which one is the unhappiest? henry adams? y.m. without a question! o.m. i know them well. they are extremes, abnormals; their temperaments are as opposite as the poles. their life-histories are about alike--but look at the results! their ages are about the same--about around fifty. burgess had always been buoyant, hopeful, happy; adams has always been cheerless, hopeless, despondent. as young fellows both tried country journalism--and failed. burgess didn't seem to mind it; adams couldn't smile, he could only mourn and groan over what had happened and torture himself with vain regrets for not having done so and so instead of so and so--then he would have succeeded. they tried the law-and failed. burgess remained happy--because he couldn't help it. adams was wretched--because he couldn't help it. from that day to this, those two men have gone on trying things and failing: burgess has come out happy and cheerful every time; adams the reverse. and we do absolutely know that these men's inborn temperaments have remained unchanged through all the vicissitudes of their material affairs. let us see how it is with their immaterials. both have been zealous democrats; both have been zealous republicans; both have been zealous mugwumps. burgess has always found happiness and adams unhappiness in these several political beliefs and in their migrations out of them. both of these men have been presbyterians, universalists, methodists, catholics--then presbyterians again, then methodists again. burgess has always found rest in these excursions, and adams unrest. they are trying christian science, now, with the customary result, the inevitable result. no political or religious belief can make burgess unhappy or the other man happy. i assure you it is purely a matter of temperament. beliefs are acquirements, temperaments are born; beliefs are subject to change, nothing whatever can change temperament. y.m. you have instanced extreme temperaments. o.m. yes, the half-dozen others are modifications of the extremes. but the law is the same. where the temperament is two-thirds happy, or two-thirds unhappy, no political or religious beliefs can change the proportions. the vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally balanced; the intensities are absent, and this enables a nation to learn to accommodate itself to its political and religious circumstances and like them, be satisfied with them, at last prefer them. nations do not think, they only feel. they get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. a nation can be brought-by force of circumstances, not argument--to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later, it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them. as instances, you have all history: the greeks, the romans, the persians, the egyptians, the russians, the germans, the french, the english, the spaniards, the americans, the south americans, the japanese, the chinese, the hindus, the turks--a thousand wild and tame religions, every kind of government that can be thought of, from tiger to house-cat, each nation knowing it has the only true religion and the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each an ass and not suspecting it, each proud of its fancied supremacy, each perfectly sure it is the pet of god, each without undoubting confidence summoning him to take command in time of war, each surprised when he goes over to the enemy, but by habit able to excuse it and resume compliments--in a word, the whole human race content, always content, persistently content, indestructibly content, happy, thankful, proud, no matter what its religion is, nor whether its master be tiger or house-cat. am i stating facts? you know i am. is the human race cheerful? you know it is. considering what it can stand, and be happy, you do me too much honor when you think that _i_ can place before it a system of plain cold facts that can take the cheerfulness out of it. nothing can do that. everything has been tried. without success. i beg you not to be troubled. ---------------------------------------------------------------- the death of jean the death of jean clemens occurred early in the morning of december 24, 1909. mr. clemens was in great stress of mind when i first saw him, but a few hours later i found him writing steadily. "i am setting it down," he said, "everything. it is a relief to me to write it. it furnishes me an excuse for thinking." at intervals during that day and the next i looked in, and usually found him writing. then on the evening of the 26th, when he knew that jean had been laid to rest in elmira, he came to my room with the manuscript in his hand. "i have finished it," he said; "read it. i can form no opinion of it myself. if you think it worthy, some day--at the proper time--it can end my autobiography. it is the final chapter." four months later--almost to the day--(april 21st) he was with jean. albert bigelow paine. stormfield, christmas eve, 11 a.m., 1909. jean is dead! has any one ever tried to put upon paper all the little happenings connected with a dear one--happenings of the twentyfour hours preceding the sudden and unexpected death of that dear one? would a book contain them? would two books contain them? i think not. they pour into the mind in a flood. they are little things that have been always happening every day, and were always so unimportant and easily forgettable before--but now! now, how different! how precious they are, now dear, how unforgettable, how pathetic, how sacred, how clothed with dignity! last night jean, all flushed with splendid health, and i the same, from the wholesome effects of my bermuda holiday, strolled hand in hand from the dinner-table and sat down in the library and chatted, and planned, and discussed, cheerily and happily (and how unsuspectingly!)--until nine--which is late for us--then went upstairs, jean's friendly german dog following. at my door jean said, "i can't kiss you good night, father: i have a cold, and you could catch it." i bent and kissed her hand. she was moved--i saw it in her eyes--and she impulsively kissed my hand in return. then with the usual gay "sleep well, dear!" from both, we parted. at half past seven this morning i woke, and heard voices outside my door. i said to myself, "jean is starting on her usual horseback flight to the station for the mail." then katy [1] entered, stood quaking and gasping at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue: "miss jean is dead!" possibly i know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through his heart. in her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon the floor and covered with a sheet. and looking so placid, so natural, and as if asleep. we knew what had happened. she was an epileptic: she had been seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath. the doctor had to come several miles. his efforts, like our previous ones, failed to bring her back to life. it is noon, now. how lovable she looks, how sweet and how tranquil! it is a noble face, and full of dignity; and that was a good heart that lies there so still. in england, thirteen years ago, my wife and i were stabbed to the heart with a cablegram which said, "susy was mercifully released today." i had to send a like shot to clara, in berlin, this morning. with the peremptory addition, "you must not come home." clara and her husband sailed from here on the 11th of this month. how will clara bear it? jean, from her babyhood, was a worshiper of clara. four days ago i came back from a month's holiday in bermuda in perfected health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive this. day before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from friends and strangers which indicated that i was supposed to be dangerously ill. yesterday jean begged me to explain my case through the associated press. i said it was not important enough; but she was distressed and said i must think of clara. clara would see the report in the german papers, and as she had been nursing her husband day and night for four months [2] and was worn out and feeble, the shock might be disastrous. there was reason in that; so i sent a humorous paragraph by telephone to the associated press denying the "charge" that i was "dying," and saying "i would not do such a thing at my time of life." jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter so lightly; but i said it was best to treat it so, for there was nothing serious about it. this morning i sent the sorrowful facts of this day's irremediable disaster to the associated press. will both appear in this evening's papers?-the one so blithe, the other so tragic? i lost susy thirteen years ago; i lost her mother--her incomparable mother!--five and a half years ago; clara has gone away to live in europe; and now i have lost jean. how poor i am, who was once so rich! seven months ago mr. roger died--one of the best friends i ever had, and the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, i have yet met among my race; within the last six weeks gilder has passed away, and laffan--old, old friends of mine. jean lies yonder, i sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was forever, we never suspecting it. she lies there, and i sit here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. how dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! it is like a mockery. seventy-four years ago twenty-four days ago. seventy-four years old yesterday. who can estimate my age today? i have looked upon her again. i wonder i can bear it. she looks just as her mother looked when she lay dead in that florentine villa so long ago. the sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep. i saw her mother buried. i said i would never endure that horror again; that i would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. i have kept to that. they will take jean from this house tomorrow, and bear her to elmira, new york, where lie those of us that have been released, but i shall not follow. jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. she was at the door, beaming a welcome, when i reached this house the next evening. we played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called "mark twain." we sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and she wouldn't let me look into the loggia, where she was making christmas preparations. she said she would finish them in the morning, and then her little french friend would arrive from new york--the surprise would follow; the surprise she had been working over for days. while she was out for a moment i disloyally stole a look. the loggia floor was clothed with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and the uncompleted surprise was there: in the form of a christmas tree that was drenched with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a table was prodigal profusion of bright things which she was going to hang upon it today. what desecrating hand will ever banish that eloquent unfinished surprise from that place? not mine, surely. all these little matters have happened in the last four days. "little." yes--then. but not now. nothing she said or thought or did is little now. and all the lavish humor!--what is become of it? it is pathos, now. pathos, and the thought of it brings tears. all these little things happened such a few hours ago--and now she lies yonder. lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more. strange--marvelous--incredible! i have had this experience before; but it would still be incredible if i had had it a thousand times. "miss jean is dead!" that is what katy said. when i heard the door open behind the bed's head without a preliminary knock, i supposed it was jean coming to kiss me good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering without formalities. and so-i have been to jean's parlor. such a turmoil of christmas presents for servants and friends! they are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the floor--everything is occupied, and overoccupied. it is many and many a year since i have seen the like. in that ancient day mrs. clemens and i used to slip softly into the nursery at midnight on christmas eve and look the array of presents over. the children were little then. and now here is jean's parlor looking just as that nursery used to look. the presents are not labeled--the hands are forever idle that would have labeled them today. jean's mother always worked herself down with her christmas preparations. jean did the same yesterday and the preceding days, and the fatigue has cost her her life. the fatigue caused the convulsion that attacked her this morning. she had had no attack for months. jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly is danger of overtaxing her strength. every morning she was in the saddle by half past seven, and off to the station for her mail. she examined the letters and i distributed them: some to her, some to mr. paine, the others to the stenographer and myself. she dispatched her share and then mounted her horse again and went around superintending her farm and her poultry the rest of the day. sometimes she played billiards with me after dinner, but she was usually too tired to play, and went early to bed. yesterday afternoon i told her about some plans i had been devising while absent in bermuda, to lighten her burdens. we would get a housekeeper; also we would put her share of the secretary-work into mr. paine's hands. no--she wasn't willing. she had been making plans herself. the matter ended in a compromise, i submitted. i always did. she wouldn't audit the bills and let paine fill out the checks-she would continue to attend to that herself. also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and let katy assist. also, she would continue to answer the letters of personal friends for me. such was the compromise. both of us called it by that name, though i was not able to see where my formidable change had been made. however, jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. she was proud of being my secretary, and i was never able to persuade her to give up any part of her share in that unlovely work. in the talk last night i said i found everything going so smoothly that if she were willing i would go back to bermuda in february and get blessedly out of the clash and turmoil again for another month. she was urgent that i should do it, and said that if i would put off the trip until march she would take katy and go with me. we struck hands upon that, and said it was settled. i had a mind to write to bermuda by tomorrow's ship and secure a furnished house and servants. i meant to write the letter this morning. but it will never be written, now. for she lies yonder, and before her is another journey than that. night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the sky-line of the hills. i have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and dearer to me every day. i was getting acquainted with jean in these last nine months. she had been long an exile from home when she came to us three-quarters of a year ago. she had been shut up in sanitariums, many miles from us. how eloquent glad and grateful she was to cross her father's threshold again! would i bring her back to life if i could do it? i would not. if a word would do it, i would beg for strength to withhold the word. and i would have the strength; i am sure of it. in her loss i am almost bankrupt, and my life is a bitterness, but i am content: for she has been enriched with the most precious of all gifts--that gift which makes all other gifts mean and poor-death. i have never wanted any released friend of mine restored to life since i reached manhood. i felt in this way when susy passed away; and later my wife, and later mr. rogers. when clara met me at the station in new york and told me mr. rogers had died suddenly that morning, my thought was, oh, favorite of fortune-fortunate all his long and lovely life--fortunate to his latest moment! the reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes. true--but they were for me, not for him. he had suffered no loss. all the fortunes he had ever made before were poverty compared with this one. why did i build this house, two years ago? to shelter this vast emptiness? how foolish i was! but i shall stay in it. the spirits of the dead hallow a house, for me. it was not so with other members of the family. susy died in the house we built in hartford. mrs. clemens would never enter it again. but it made the house dearer to me. i have entered it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn, but to me it was a holy place and beautiful. it seemed to me that the spirits of the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and welcome me if they could: livy, and susy, and george, and henry robinson, and charles dudley warner. how good and kind they were, and how lovable their lives! in fancy i could see them all again, i could call the children back and hear them romp again with george--that peerless black ex-slave and children's idol who came one day--a flitting stranger--to wash windows, and stayed eighteen years. until he died. clara and jean would never enter again the new york hotel which their mother had frequented in earlier days. they could not bear it. but i shall stay in this house. it is dearer to me tonight than ever it was before. jean's spirit will make it beautiful for me always. her lonely and tragic death--but i will not think of that now. jean's mother always devoted two or three weeks to christmas shopping, and was always physically exhausted when christmas eve came. jean was her very own child--she wore herself out presenthunting in new york these latter days. paine has just found on her desk a long list of names--fifty, he thinks--people to whom she sent presents last night. apparently she forgot no one. and katy found there a roll of bank-notes, for the servants. her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and forlorn. i have seen him from the windows. she got him from germany. he has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf. he was educated in germany, and knows no language but the german. jean gave him no orders save in that tongue. and so when the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is french and knows no german, tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. jean wrote me, to bermuda, about the incident. it was the last letter i was ever to receive from her bright head and her competent hand. the dog will not be neglected. there was never a kinder heart than jean's. from her childhood up she always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind or another. after she became secretary and had her income doubled she spent her money upon these things with a free hand. mine too, i am glad and grateful to say. she was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds, beasts, and everything--even snakes--an inheritance from me. she knew all the birds; she was high up in that lore. she became a member of various humane societies when she was still a little girl--both here and abroad--and she remained an active member to the last. she founded two or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in europe. she was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out of the waste-basket and answered the letters. she thought all letters deserved the courtesy of an answer. her mother brought her up in that kindly error. she could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. she had but an indifferent ear music, but her tongue took to languages with an easy facility. she never allowed her italian, french, and german to get rusty through neglect. the telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just as they did in italy five years and a half ago, when this child's mother laid down her blameless life. they cannot heal the hurt, but they take away some of the pain. when jean and i kissed hands and parted at my door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two hours the telegraph would be bringing words like these: "from the bottom of our hearts we send out sympathy, dearest of friends." for many and many a day to come, wherever i go in this house, remembrancers of jean will mutely speak to me of her. who can count the number of them? she was in exile two years with the hope of healing her malady--epilepsy. there are no words to express how grateful i am that she did not meet her fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving shelter of her own home. "miss jean is dead!" it is true. jean is dead. a month ago i was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines yet to appear, and now i am writing--this. christmas day. noon.--last night i went to jean's room at intervals, and turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in florence so long ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when i crept downstairs so many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like this one--jean's mother's face--and kissed a brow that was just like this one. and last night i saw again what i had seen then--that strange and lovely miracle--the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored by the gracious hand of death! when jean's mother lay dead, all trace of care, and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished out of the face, and i was looking again upon it as i had known and worshipped it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before. about three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep silences, as one dies in times like these, when there is a dumb sense that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must be sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, i came upon jean's dog in the hall downstairs, and noted that he did not spring to greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow and sorrowfully; also i remembered that he had not visited jean's apartment since the tragedy. poor fellow, did he know? i think so. always when jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when she was in the house he was with her, in the night as well as in the day. her parlor was his bedroom. whenever i happened upon him on the ground floor he always followed me about, and when i went upstairs he went too--in a tumultuous gallop. but now it was different: after patting him a little i went to the library--he remained behind; when i went upstairs he did not follow me, save with his wistful eyes. he has wonderful eyes--big, and kind, and eloquent. he can talk with them. he is a beautiful creature, and is of the breed of the new york police-dogs. i do not like dogs, because they bark when there is no occasion for it; but i have liked this one from the beginning, because he belonged to jean, and because he never barks except when there is occasion-which is not oftener than twice a week. in my wanderings i visited jean's parlor. on a shelf i found a pile of my books, and i knew what it meant. she was waiting for me to come home from bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away. if i only knew whom she intended them for! but i shall never know. i will keep them. her hand has touched them--it is an accolade--they are noble, now. and in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me--a thing i have often wished i owned: a noble big globe. i couldn't see it for the tears. she will never know the pride i take in it, and the pleasure. today the mails are full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old kind words she loved so well, "merry christmas to jean!" if she could only have lived one day longer! at last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. so she sent to one of those new york homes for poor girls all the clothes she could spare--and more, most likely. christmas night.--this afternoon they took her away from her room. as soon as i might, i went down to the library, and there she lay, in her coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at the other end of the same room on the 6th of october last, as clara's chief bridesmaid. her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it was the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of god upon it. they told me the first mourner to come was the dog. he came uninvited, and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the trestle, and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him, then went his way as silently as he had come. he knows. at mid-afternoon it began to snow. the pity of it--that jean could not see it! she so loved the snow. the snow continued to fall. at six o'clock the hearse drew up to the door to bear away its pathetic burden. as they lifted the casket, paine began playing on the orchestrelle schubert's "impromptu," which was jean's favorite. then he played the intermezzo; that was for susy; then he played the largo; that was for their mother. he did this at my request. elsewhere in my autobiography i have told how the intermezzo and the largo came to be associated in my heart with susy and livy in their last hours in this life. from my windows i saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently disappear. jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any more. jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies together--he and her beloved old katy--were conducting her to her distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once more, in the company of susy and langdon. december 26th. the dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning. he was very affectionate, poor orphan! my room will be his quarters hereafter. the storm raged all night. it has raged all the morning. the snow drives across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime--and jean not here to see. 2:30 p.m.--it is the time appointed. the funeral has begun. four hundred miles away, but i can see it all, just as if i were there. the scene is the library in the langdon homestead. jean's coffin stands where her mother and i stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where susy's coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother's stood five years and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time. five o'clock.--it is all over. when clara went away two weeks ago to live in europe, it was hard, but i could bear it, for i had jean left. i said we would be a family. we said we would be close comrades and happy--just we two. that fair dream was in my mind when jean met me at the steamer last monday; it was in my mind when she received me at the door last tuesday evening. we were together; we were a family! the dream had come true--oh, precisely true, contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days. and now? now jean is in her grave! in the grave--if i can believe it. god rest her sweet spirit! ----1. katy leary, who had been in the service of the clemens family for twenty-nine years. 2. mr. gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis. ----------------------------------------------------------------the turning-point of my life i if i understand the idea, the bazar invites several of us to write upon the above text. it means the change in my life's course which introduced what must be regarded by me as the most important condition of my career. but it also implies--without intention, perhaps--that that turning-point itself was the creator of the new condition. this gives it too much distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. it is only the last link in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned to produce the cardinal result; it is not any more important than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors. each of the ten thousand did its appointed share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all necessary; to have left out any one of them would have defeated the scheme and brought about some other result. it know we have a fashion of saying "such and such an event was the turning-point in my life," but we shouldn't say it. we should merely grant that its place as last link in the chain makes it the most conspicuous link; in real importance it has no advantage over any one of its predecessors. perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the crossing of the rubicon. suetonius says: coming up with his troops on the banks of the rubicon, he halted for a while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, "we may still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in arms." this was a stupendously important moment. and all the incidents, big and little, of caesar's previous life had been leading up to it, stage by stage, link by link. this was the last link--merely the last one, and no bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the inflating mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of neptune. you, the reader, have a personal interest in that link, and so have i; so has the rest of the human race. it was one of the links in your life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. we may wait, now, with baited breath, while caesar reflects. your fate and mine are involved in his decision. while he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. a person remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand, sitting and playing upon a pipe. when not only the shepherds, but a number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other side. upon this, caesar exclaimed: "let us go whither the omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call up. the die is cast." so he crossed--and changed the future of the whole human race, for all time. but that stranger was a link in caesar's life-chain, too; and a necessary one. we don't know his name, we never hear of him again; he was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he was there by compulsion of his life-chain, to blow the electrifying blast that was to make up caesar's mind for him, and thence go piping down the aisles of history forever. if the stranger hadn't been there! but he was. and caesar crossed. with such results! such vast events--each a link in the human race's life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next one, and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the empire; the breaking up of the empire; the rise of christianity upon its ruins; the spread of the religion to other lands--and so on; link by link took its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of america being one of them; our revolution another; the inflow of english and other immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestors among them) another; the settlement of certain of them in missouri, which resulted in me. for i was one of the unavoidable results of the crossing of the rubicon. if the stranger, with his trumpet blast, had stayed away (which he couldn't, for he was the appointed link) caesar would not have crossed. what would have happened, in that case, we can never guess. we only know that the things that did happen would not have happened. they might have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but their nature and results are beyond our guessing. but the matter that interests me personally is that i would not be here now, but somewhere else; and probably black--there is no telling. very well, i am glad he crossed. and very really and thankfully glad, too, though i never cared anything about it before. ii to me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. i have been professionally literary something more than forty years. there have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was the link in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary guild is the most conspicuous link in that chain. because it was the last one. it was not any more important than its predecessors. all the other links have an inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the rubicon; but as factors in making me literary they are all of the one size, the crossing of the rubicon included. i know how i came to be literary, and i will tell the steps that lead up to it and brought it about. the crossing of the rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even a recent one; i should have to go back ages before caesar's day to find the first one. to save space i will go back only a couple of generations and start with an incident of my boyhood. when i was twelve and a half years old, my father died. it was in the spring. the summer came, and brought with it an epidemic of measles. for a time a child died almost every day. the village was paralyzed with fright, distress, despair. children that were not smitten with the disease were imprisoned in their homes to save them from the infection. in the homes there were no cheerful faces, there was no music, there was no singing but of solemn hymns, no voice but of prayer, no romping was allowed, no noise, no laughter, the family moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a ghostly hush. i was a prisoner. my soul was steeped in this awful dreariness--and in fear. at some time or other every day and every night a sudden shiver shook me to the marrow, and i said to myself, "there, i've got it! and i shall die." life on these miserable terms was not worth living, and at last i made up my mind to get the disease and have it over, one way or the other. i escaped from the house and went to the house of a neighbor where a playmate of mine was very ill with the malady. when the chance offered i crept into his room and got into bed with him. i was discovered by his mother and sent back into captivity. but i had the disease; they could not take that from me. i came near to dying. the whole village was interested, and anxious, and sent for news of me every day; and not only once a day, but several times. everybody believed i would die; but on the fourteenth day a change came for the worse and they were disappointed. this was a turning-point of my life. (link number one.) for when i got well my mother closed my school career and apprenticed me to a printer. she was tired of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure of the measles decided her to put me into more masterful hands than hers. i became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the chain which was to lead me into the literary profession. a long road, but i could not know that; and as i did not know what its goal was, or even that it had one, i was indifferent. also contented. a young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work; and seeking again, when necessity commands. n. b. necessity is a circumstance; circumstance is man's master--and when circumstance commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter--that is his privilege, just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with the attraction of gravitation--but it won't do any good, he must obey. i wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of iowa, where i worked several months. among the books that interested me in those days was one about the amazon. the traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage up the great river from para to the sources of the madeira, through the heart of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in tropical wonders, a romantic land where all the birds and flowers and animals were of the museum varieties, and where the alligator and the crocodile and the monkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the zoo. also, he told an astonishing tale about coca, a vegetable product of miraculous powers, asserting that it was so nourishing and so strength-giving that the native of the mountains of the madeira region would tramp up hill and down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and require no other sustenance. i was fired with a longing to ascend the amazon. also with a longing to open up a trade in coca with all the world. during months i dreamed that dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to para and spring that splendid enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet. but all in vain. a person may plan as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until the magician circumstance steps in and takes the matter off his hands. at last circumstance came to my help. it was in this way. circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him lose a fifty-dollar bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me find it. i advertised the find, and left for the amazon the same day. this was another turning-point, another link. could circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to the amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fiftydollar basis and been obeyed? no, i was the only one. there were other fools there--shoals and shoals of them--but they were not of my kind. i was the only one of my kind. circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a partner. its partner is man's temperament--his natural disposition. his temperament is not his invention, it is born in him, and he has no authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. he cannot change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it--except temporarily. but it won't stay modified. it is permanent, like the color of the man's eyes and the shape of his ears. blue eyes are gray in certain unusual lights; but they resume their natural color when that stress is removed. a circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man of a different temperament. if circumstance had thrown the bank-note in caesar's way, his temperament would not have made him start for the amazon. his temperament would have compelled him to do something with the money, but not that. it might have made him advertise the note--and wait. we can't tell. also, it might have made him go to new york and buy into the government, with results that would leave tweed nothing to learn when it came his turn. very well, circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told me what to do with it. sometimes a temperament is an ass. when that is the case of the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one. training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him, improve him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they will be mistaken. artificially he is a mule, for the time being, but at bottom he is an ass yet, and will remain one. by temperament i was the kind of person that does things. does them, and reflects afterward. so i started for the amazon without reflecting and without asking any questions. that was more than fifty years ago. in all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade. i have been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to me; i still do the thing commanded by circumstance and temperament, and reflect afterward. always violently. when i am reflecting, on these occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think. i went by the way of cincinnati, and down the ohio and mississippi. my idea was to take ship, at new orleans, for para. in new orleans i inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for para. also, that there never had been one leaving for para. i reflected. a policeman came and asked me what i was doing, and i told him. he made me move on, and said if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would run me in. after a few days i was out of money. then circumstance arrived, with another turning-point of my life--a new link. on my way down, i had made the acquaintance of a pilot. i begged him to teach me the river, and he consented. i became a pilot. by and by circumstance came again--introducing the civil war, this time, in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary profession. the boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone. circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh link. my brother was appointed secretary to the new territory of nevada, and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office. i accepted. in nevada, circumstance furnished me the silver fever and i went into the mines to make a fortune, as i supposed; but that was not the idea. the idea was to advance me another step toward literature. for amusement i scribbled things for the virginia city enterprise. one isn't a printer ten years without setting up acres of good and bad literature, and learning--unconsciously at first, consciously later--to discriminate between the two, within his mental limitations; and meantime he is unconsciously acquiring what is called a "style." one of my efforts attracted attention, and the enterprise sent for me and put me on its staff. and so i became a journalist--another link. by and by circumstance and the sacramento union sent me to the sandwich islands for five or six months, to write up sugar. i did it; and threw in a good deal of extraneous matter that hadn't anything to do with sugar. but it was this extraneous matter that helped me to another link. it made me notorious, and san francisco invited me to lecture. which i did. and profitably. i had long had a desire to travel and see the world, and now circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me upon the platform and furnished me the means. so i joined the "quaker city excursion." when i returned to america, circumstance was waiting on the pier-with the last link--the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link: i was asked to write a book, and i did it, and called it the innocents abroad. thus i became at last a member of the literary guild. that was forty-two years ago, and i have been a member ever since. leaving the rubicon incident away back where it belongs, i can say with truth that the reason i am in the literary profession is because i had the measles when i was twelve years old. iii now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of them was planned by me, i was the author of none of them. circumstance, working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled them all. i often offered help, and with the best intentions, but it was rejected--as a rule, uncourteously. i could never plan a thing and get it to come out the way i planned it. it came out some other way--some way i had not counted upon. and so i do not admire the human being--as an intellectual marvel--as much as i did when i was young, and got him out of books, and did not know him personally. when i used to read that such and such a general did a certain brilliant thing, i believed it. whereas it was not so. circumstance did it by help of his temperament. the circumstances would have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might see the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or too quick or too doubtful. once general grant was asked a question about a matter which had been much debated by the public and the newspapers; he answered the question without any hesitancy. "general, who planned the the march through georgia?" "the enemy!" he added that the enemy usually makes your plans for you. he meant that the enemy by neglect or through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you, and you see your chance and take advantage of it. circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our temperaments. i see no great difference between a man and a watch, except that the man is conscious and the watch isn't, and the man tries to plan things and the watch doesn't. the watch doesn't wind itself and doesn't regulate itself--these things are done exteriorly. outside influences, outside circumstances, wind the man and regulate him. left to himself, he wouldn't get regulated at all, and the sort of time he would keep would not be valuable. some rare men are wonderful watches, with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some men are only simple and sweet and humble waterburys. i am a waterbury. a waterbury of that kind, some say. a nation is only an individual multiplied. it makes plans and circumstances comes and upsets them--or enlarges them. some patriots throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a bastille. the plans stop there; then circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and turns these modest riots into a revolution. and there was poor columbus. he elaborated a deep plan to find a new route to an old country. circumstance revised his plan for him, and he found a new world. and he gets the credit of it to this day. he hadn't anything to do with it. necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of yours) was the garden of eden. it was there that the first link was forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me into the literary guild. adam's temperament was the first command the deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. and it was the only command adam would never be able to disobey. it said, "be weak, be water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable." the latter command, to let the fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. not by adam himself, but by his temperament--which he did not create and had no authority over. for the temperament is the man; the thing tricked out with clothes and named man is merely its shadow, nothing more. the law of the tiger's temperament is, thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep's temperament is thou shalt not kill. to issue later commands requiring the tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbue its hands in the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands can't be obeyed. they would invite to violations of the law of temperament, which is supreme, and take precedence of all other authorities. i cannot help feeling disappointed in adam and eve. that is, in their temperaments. not in them, poor helpless young creatures-afflicted with temperaments made out of butter; which butter was commanded to get into contact with fire and be melted. what i cannot help wishing is, that adam had been postponed, and martin luther and joan of arc put in their place--that splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos. by neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could satan have beguiled them to eat the apple. there would have been results! indeed, yes. the apple would be intact today; there would be no human race; there would be no you; there would be no me. and the old, old creation-dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild would have been defeated. -----------------------------------------------------------------how to make history dates stick these chapters are for children, and i shall try to make the words large enough to command respect. in the hope that you are listening, and that you have confidence in me, i will proceed. dates are difficult things to acquire; and after they are acquired it is difficult to keep them in the head. but they are very valuable. they are like the cattle-pens of a ranch--they shut in the several brands of historical cattle, each within its own fence, and keep them from getting mixed together. dates are hard to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. pictures are the thing. pictures can make dates stick. they can make nearly anything stick--particularly if you make the pictures yourself. indeed, that is the great point--make the pictures yourself. i know about this from experience. thirty years ago i was delivering a memorized lecture every night, and every night i had to help myself with a page of notes to keep from getting myself mixed. the notes consisted of beginnings of sentences, and were eleven in number, and they ran something like this: "in that region the weather--" "at that time it was a custom--" "but in california one never heard--" eleven of them. they initialed the brief divisions of the lecture and protected me against skipping. but they all looked about alike on the page; they formed no picture; i had them by heart, but i could never with certainty remember the order of their succession; therefore i always had to keep those notes by me and look at them every little while. once i mislaid them; you will not be able to imagine the terrors of that evening. i now saw that i must invent some other protection. so i got ten of the initial letters by heart in their proper order--i, a, b, and so on--and i went on the platform the next night with these marked in ink on my ten finger-nails. but it didn't answer. i kept track of the figures for a while; then i lost it, and after that i was never quite sure which finger i had used last. i couldn't lick off a letter after using it, for while that would have made success certain it also would have provoked too much curiosity. there was curiosity enough without that. to the audience i seemed more interested in my fingernails than i was in my subject; one or two persons asked me afterward what was the matter with my hands. it was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then my troubles passed away. in two minutes i made six pictures with a pen, and they did the work of the eleven catch-sentences, and did it perfectly. i threw the pictures away as soon as they were made, for i was sure i could shut my eyes and see them any time. that was a quarter of a century ago; the lecture vanished out of my head more than twenty years ago, but i would rewrite it from the pictures--for they remain. here are three of them: (fig. 1). the first one is a haystack--below it a rattlesnake--and it told me where to begin to talk ranch-life in carson valley. the second one told me where to begin the talk about a strange and violent wind that used to burst upon carson city from the sierra nevadas every afternoon at two o'clock and try to blow the town away. the third picture, as you easily perceive, is lightning; its duty was to remind me when it was time to begin to talk about san francisco weather, where there is no lightning--nor thunder, either--and it never failed me. i will give you a valuable hint. when a man is making a speech and you are to follow him don't jot down notes to speak from, jot down pictures. it is awkward and embarrassing to have to keep referring to notes; and besides it breaks up your speech and makes it ragged and non-coherent; but you can tear up your pictures as soon as you have made them--they will stay fresh and strong in your memory in the order and sequence in which you scratched them down. and many will admire to see what a good memory you are furnished with, when perhaps your memory is not any better than mine. sixteen years ago when my children were little creatures the governess was trying to hammer some primer histories into their heads. part of this fun--if you like to call it that--consisted in the memorizing of the accession dates of the thirty-seven personages who had ruled england from the conqueror down. these little people found it a bitter, hard contract. it was all dates, and all looked alike, and they wouldn't stick. day after day of the summer vacation dribbled by, and still the kings held the fort; the children couldn't conquer any six of them. with my lecture experience in mind i was aware that i could invent some way out of the trouble with pictures, but i hoped a way could be found which would let them romp in the open air while they learned the kings. i found it, and they mastered all the monarchs in a day or two. the idea was to make them see the reigns with their eyes; that would be a large help. we were at the farm then. from the house-porch the grounds sloped gradually down to the lower fence and rose on the right to the high ground where my small work-den stood. a carriage-road wound through the grounds and up the hill. i staked it out with the english monarchs, beginning with the conqueror, and you could stand on the porch and clearly see every reign and its length, from the conquest down to victoria, then in the forty-sixth year of her reign--eight hundred and seventeen years of english history under your eye at once! english history was an unusually live topic in america just then. the world had suddenly realized that while it was not noticing the queen had passed henry viii., passed henry vi. and elizabeth, and gaining in length every day. her reign had entered the list of the long ones; everybody was interested now-it was watching a race. would she pass the long edward? there was a possibility of it. would she pass the long henry? doubtful, most people said. the long george? impossible! everybody said it. but we have lived to see her leave him two years behind. i measured off 817 feet of the roadway, a foot representing a year, and at the beginning and end of each reign i drove a three-foot white-pine stake in the turf by the roadside and wrote the name and dates on it. abreast the middle of the porch-front stood a great granite flower-vase overflowing with a cataract of bright-yellow flowers--i can't think of their name. the vase of william the conqueror. we put his name on it and his accession date, 1066. we started from that and measured off twenty-one feet of the road, and drove william rufus's state; then thirteen feet and drove the first henry's stake; then thirty-five feet and drove stephen's; then nineteen feet, which brought us just past the summer-house on the left; then we staked out thirty-five, ten, and seventeen for the second henry and richard and john; turned the curve and entered upon just what was needed for henry iii.--a level, straight stretch of fifty-six feet of road without a crinkle in it. and it lay exactly in front of the house, in the middle of the grounds. there couldn't have been a better place for that long reign; you could stand on the porch and see those two wide-apart stakes almost with your eyes shut. (fig. 2.) that isn't the shape of the road--i have bunched it up like that to save room. the road had some great curves in it, but their gradual sweep was such that they were no mar to history. no, in our road one could tell at a glance who was who by the size of the vacancy between stakes--with locality to help, of course. although i am away off here in a swedish village [1] and those stakes did not stand till the snow came, i can see them today as plainly as ever; and whenever i think of an english monarch his stakes rise before me of their own accord and i notice the large or small space which he takes up on our road. are your kings spaced off in your mind? when you think of richard iii. and of james ii. do the durations of their reigns seem about alike to you? it isn't so to me; i always notice that there's a foot's difference. when you think of henry iii. do you see a great long stretch of straight road? i do; and just at the end where it joins on to edward i. i always see a small pear-bush with its green fruit hanging down. when i think of the commonwealth i see a shady little group of these small saplings which we called the oak parlor; when i think of george iii. i see him stretching up the hill, part of him occupied by a flight of stone steps; and i can locate stephen to an inch when he comes into my mind, for he just filled the stretch which went by the summer-house. victoria's reign reached almost to my study door on the first little summit; there's sixteen feet to be added now; i believe that that would carry it to a big pine-tree that was shattered by some lightning one summer when it was trying to hit me. we got a good deal of fun out of the history road; and exercise, too. we trotted the course from the conqueror to the study, the children calling out the names, dates, and length of reigns as we passed the stakes, going a good gait along the long reigns, but slowing down when we came upon people like mary and edward vi., and the short stuart and plantagenet, to give time to get in the statistics. i offered prizes, too--apples. i threw one as far as i could send it, and the child that first shouted the reign it fell in got the apple. the children were encouraged to stop locating things as being "over by the arbor," or "in the oak parlor," or "up at the stone steps," and say instead that the things were in stephen, or in the commonwealth, or in george iii. they got the habit without trouble. to have the long road mapped out with such exactness was a great boon for me, for i had the habit of leaving books and other articles lying around everywhere, and had not previously been able to definitely name the place, and so had often been obliged to go to fetch them myself, to save time and failure; but now i could name the reign i left them in, and send the children. next i thought i would measure off the french reigns, and peg them alongside the english ones, so that we could always have contemporaneous french history under our eyes as we went our english rounds. we pegged them down to the hundred years' war, then threw the idea aside, i do not now remember why. after that we made the english pegs fence in european and american history as well as english, and that answered very well. english and alien poets, statesmen, artists, heroes, battles, plagues, cataclysms, revolutions--we shoveled them all into the english fences according to their dates. do you understand? we gave washington's birth to george ii.'s pegs and his death to george iii.'s; george ii. got the lisbon earthquake and george iii. the declaration of independence. goethe, shakespeare, napoleon, savonarola, joan of arc, the french revolution, the edict of nantes, clive, wellington, waterloo, plassey, patay, cowpens, saratoga, the battle of the boyne, the invention of the logarithms, the microscope, the steam-engine, the telegraph-anything and everything all over the world--we dumped it all in among the english pegs according to it date and regardless of its nationality. if the road-pegging scheme had not succeeded i should have lodged the kings in the children's heads by means of pictures-that is, i should have tried. it might have failed, for the pictures could only be effective when made by the pupil; not the master, for it is the work put upon the drawing that makes the drawing stay in the memory, and my children were too little to make drawings at that time. and, besides, they had no talent for art, which is strange, for in other ways they are like me. but i will develop the picture plan now, hoping that you will be able to use it. it will come good for indoors when the weather is bad and one cannot go outside and peg a road. let us imagine that the kings are a procession, and that they have come out of the ark and down ararat for exercise and are now starting back again up the zigzag road. this will bring several of them into view at once, and each zigzag will represent the length of a king's reign. and so on. you will have plenty of space, for by my project you will use the parlor wall. you do not mark on the wall; that would cause trouble. you only attach bits of paper to it with pins or thumb-tacks. these will leave no mark. take your pen now, and twenty-one pieces of white paper, each two inches square, and we will do the twenty-one years of the conqueror's reign. on each square draw a picture of a whale and write the dates and term of service. we choose the whale for several reasons: its name and william's begin with the same letter; it is the biggest fish that swims, and william is the most conspicuous figure in english history in the way of a landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to draw. by the time you have drawn twenty-one wales and written "william i.--1066-1087--twenty-one years" twenty-one times, those details will be your property; you cannot dislodge them from your memory with anything but dynamite. i will make a sample for you to copy: (fig. 3). i have got his chin up too high, but that is no matter; he is looking for harold. it may be that a whale hasn't that fin up there on his back, but i do not remember; and so, since there is a doubt, it is best to err on the safe side. he looks better, anyway, than he would without it. be very careful and attentive while you are drawing your first whale from my sample and writing the word and figures under it, so that you will not need to copy the sample any more. compare your copy with the sample; examine closely; if you find you have got everything right and can shut your eyes and see the picture and call the words and figures, then turn the sample and copy upside down and make the next copy from memory; and also the next and next, and so on, always drawing and writing from memory until you have finished the whole twenty-one. this will take you twenty minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will find that you can make a whale in less time than an unpracticed person can make a sardine; also, up to the time you die you will always be able to furnish william's dates to any ignorant person that inquires after them. you will now take thirteen pieces of blue paper, each two inches square, and do william ii. (fig. 4.) make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick look in the eye. otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other william, and that would be confusing and a damage. it is quite right to make him small; he was only about a no. 11 whale, or along there somewhere; there wasn't room in him for his father's great spirit. the barb of that harpoon ought not to show like that, because it is down inside the whale and ought to be out of sight, but it cannot be helped; if the barb were removed people would think some one had stuck a whip-stock into the whale. it is best to leave the barb the way it is, then every one will know it is a harpoon and attending to business. remember--draw from the copy only once; make your other twelve and the inscription from memory. now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture and its inscription once from my sample and two or three times from memory the details will stay with you and be hard to forget. after that, if you like, you may make merely the whale's head and water-spout for the conqueror till you end his reign, each time saying the inscription in place of writing it; and in the case of william ii. make the harpoon alone, and say over the inscription each time you do it. you see, it will take nearly twice as long to do the first set as it will to do the second, and that will give you a marked sense of the difference in length of the two reigns. next do henry i. on thirty-five squares of red paper. (fig. 5.) that is a hen, and suggests henry by furnishing the first syllable. when you have repeated the hen and the inscription until you are perfectly sure of them, draw merely the hen's head the rest of the thirty-five times, saying over the inscription each time. thus: (fig. 6). you begin to understand how how this procession is going to look when it is on the wall. first there will be the conqueror's twenty-one whales and water-spouts, the twenty-one white squares joined to one another and making a white stripe three and onehalf feet long; the thirteen blue squares of william ii. will be joined to that--a blue stripe two feet, two inches long, followed by henry's red stripe five feet, ten inches long, and so on. the colored divisions will smartly show to the eye the difference in the length of the reigns and impress the proportions on the memory and the understanding. (fig. 7.) stephen of blois comes next. he requires nineteen two-inch squares of yellow paper. (fig. 8.) that is a steer. the sound suggests the beginning of stephen's name. i choose it for that reason. i can make a better steer than that when i am not excited. but this one will do. it is a good-enough steer for history. the tail is defective, but it only wants straightening out. next comes henry ii. give him thirty-five squares of red paper. these hens must face west, like the former ones. (fig. 9.) this hen differs from the other one. he is on his way to inquire what has been happening in canterbury. how we arrive at richard i., called richard of the lionheart because he was a brave fighter and was never so contented as when he was leading crusades in palestine and neglecting his affairs at home. give him ten squares of white paper. (fig. 10). that is a lion. his office is to remind you of the lionhearted richard. there is something the matter with his legs, but i do not quite know what it is, they do not seem right. i think the hind ones are the most unsatisfactory; the front ones are well enough, though it would be better if they were rights and lefts. next comes king john, and he was a poor circumstance. he was called lackland. he gave his realm to the pope. let him have seventeen squares of yellow paper. (fig. 11.) that creature is a jamboree. it looks like a trademark, but that is only an accident and not intentional. it is prehistoric and extinct. it used to roam the earth in the old silurian times, and lay eggs and catch fish and climb trees and live on fossils; for it was of a mixed breed, which was the fashion then. it was very fierce, and the old silurians were afraid of it, but this is a tame one. physically it has no representative now, but its mind has been transmitted. first i drew it sitting down, but have turned it the other way now because i think it looks more attractive and spirited when one end of it is galloping. i love to think that in this attitude it gives us a pleasant idea of john coming all in a happy excitement to see what the barons have been arranging for him at runnymede, while the other one gives us an idea of him sitting down to wring his hands and grieve over it. we now come to henry iii.; red squares again, of course-fifty-six of them. we must make all the henrys the same color; it will make their long reigns show up handsomely on the wall. among all the eight henrys there were but two short ones. a lucky name, as far as longevity goes. the reigns of six of the henrys cover 227 years. it might have been well to name all the royal princes henry, but this was overlooked until it was too late. (fig. 12.) this is the best one yet. he is on his way (1265) to have a look at the first house of commons in english history. it was a monumental event, the situation in the house, and was the second great liberty landmark which the century had set up. i have made henry looking glad, but this was not intentional. edward i. comes next; light-brown paper, thirty-five squares. (fig. 13.) that is an editor. he is trying to think of a word. he props his feet on a chair, which is the editor's way; then he can think better. i do not care much for this one; his ears are not alike; still, editor suggests the sound of edward, and he will do. i could make him better if i had a model, but i made this one from memory. but is no particular matter; they all look alike, anyway. they are conceited and troublesome, and don't pay enough. edward was the first really english king that had yet occupied the throne. the editor in the picture probably looks just as edward looked when it was first borne in upon him that this was so. his whole attitude expressed gratification and pride mixed with stupefaction and astonishment. edward ii. now; twenty blue squares. (fig. 14.) another editor. that thing behind his ear is his pencil. whenever he finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with that. that does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he is doing in the picture. this one has just been striking out a smart thing, and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes, gloating. they are full of envy and malice, editors are. this picture will serve to remind you that edward ii. was the first english king who was deposed. upon demand, he signed his deposition himself. he had found kingship a most aggravating and disagreeable occupation, and you can see by the look of him that he is glad he resigned. he has put his blue pencil up for good now. he had struck out many a good thing with it in his time. edward iii. next; fifty red squares. (fig. 15.) this editor is a critic. he has pulled out his carvingknife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast. this one's arms are put on wrong. i did not notice it at first, but i see it now. somehow he has got his right arm on his left shoulder, and his left arm on his right shoulder, and this shows us the back of his hands in both instances. it makes him left-handed all around, which is a thing which has never happened before, except perhaps in a museum. that is the way with art, when it is not acquired but born to you: you start in to make some simple little thing, not suspecting that your genius is beginning to work and swell and strain in secret, and all of a sudden there is a convulsion and you fetch out something astonishing. this is called inspiration. it is an accident; you never know when it is coming. i might have tried as much as a year to think of such a strange thing as an all-around left-handed man and i could not have done it, for the more you try to think of an unthinkable thing the more it eludes you; but it can't elude inspiration; you have only to bait with inspiration and you will get it every time. look at botticelli's "spring." those snaky women were unthinkable, but inspiration secured them for us, thanks to goodness. it is too late to reorganize this editor-critic now; we will leave him as he is. he will serve to remind us. richard ii. next; twenty-two white squares. (fig. 16.) we use the lion again because this is another richard. like edward ii., he was deposed. he is taking a last sad look at his crown before they take it away. there was not room enough and i have made it too small; but it never fitted him, anyway. now we turn the corner of the century with a new line of monarchs--the lancastrian kings. henry iv.; fourteen squares of yellow paper. (fig. 17.) this hen has laid the egg of a new dynasty and realizes the magnitude of the event. she is giving notice in the usual way. you notice i am improving in the construction of hens. at first i made them too much like other animals, but this one is orthodox. i mention this to encourage you. you will find that the more you practice the more accurate you will become. i could always draw animals, but before i was educated i could not tell what kind they were when i got them done, but now i can. keep up your courage; it will be the same with you, although you may not think it. this henry died the year after joan of arc was born. henry v.; nine blue squares. (fig. 18) there you see him lost in meditation over the monument which records the amazing figures of the battle of agincourt. french history says 20,000 englishmen routed 80,000 frenchmen there; and english historians say that the french loss, in killed and wounded, was 60,000. henry vi.; thirty-nine red squares. (fig. 19) this is poor henry vi., who reigned long and scored many misfortunes and humiliations. also two great disasters: he lost france to joan of arc and he lost the throne and ended the dynasty which henry iv. had started in business with such good prospects. in the picture we see him sad and weary and downcast, with the scepter falling from his nerveless grasp. it is a pathetic quenching of a sun which had risen in such splendor. edward iv.; twenty-two light-brown squares. (fig. 20.) that is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear, so that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they are and get bribes for it and become wealthy. that flower which he is wearing in his buttonhole is a rose--a white rose, a york rose--and will serve to remind us of the war of the roses, and that the white one was the winning color when edward got the throne and dispossessed the lancastrian dynasty. edward v.; one-third of a black square. (fig. 21.) his uncle richard had him murdered in the tower. when you get the reigns displayed upon the wall this one will be conspicuous and easily remembered. it is the shortest one in english history except lady jane grey's, which was only nine days. she is never officially recognized as a monarch of england, but if you or i should ever occupy a throne we should like to have proper notice taken of it; and it would be only fair and right, too, particularly if we gained nothing by it and lost our lives besides. richard iii.; two white squares. (fig. 22.) that is not a very good lion, but richard was not a very good king. you would think that this lion has two heads, but that is not so; one is only a shadow. there would be shadows for the rest of him, but there was not light enough to go round, it being a dull day, with only fleeting sun-glimpses now and then. richard had a humped back and a hard heart, and fell at the battle of bosworth. i do not know the name of that flower in the pot, but we will use it as richard's trade-mark, for it is said that it grows in only one place in the world--bosworth field--and tradition says it never grew there until richard's royal blood warmed its hidden seed to life and made it grow. henry vii.; twenty-four blue squares. (fig. 23.) henry vii. had no liking for wars and turbulence; he preferred peace and quiet and the general prosperity which such conditions create. he liked to sit on that kind of eggs on his own private account as well as the nation's, and hatch them out and count up their result. when he died he left his heir 2,000,000 pounds, which was a most unusual fortune for a king to possess in those days. columbus's great achievement gave him the discovery-fever, and he sent sebastian cabot to the new world to search out some foreign territory for england. that is cabot's ship up there in the corner. this was the first time that england went far abroad to enlarge her estate--but not the last. henry viii.; thirty-eight red squares. (fig. 24.) that is henry viii. suppressing a monastery in his arrogant fashion. edward vi.; six squares of yellow paper. (fig. 25.) he is the last edward to date. it is indicated by that thing over his head, which is a last--shoemaker's last. mary; five squares of black paper. (fig. 26.) the picture represents a burning martyr. he is in back of the smoke. the first three letters of mary's name and the first three of the word martyr are the same. martyrdom was going out in her day and martyrs were becoming scarcer, but she made several. for this reason she is sometimes called bloody mary. this brings us to the reign of elizabeth, after passing through a period of nearly five hundred years of england's history--492 to be exact. i think you may now be trusted to go the rest of the way without further lessons in art or inspirations in the matter of ideas. you have the scheme now, and something in the ruler's name or career will suggest the pictorial symbol. the effort of inventing such things will not only help your memory, but will develop originality in art. see what it has done for me. if you do not find the parlor wall big enough for all of england's history, continue it into the diningroom and into other rooms. this will make the walls interesting and instructive and really worth something instead of being just flat things to hold the house together. ----1. summer of 1899. ----------------------------------------------------------------the memorable assassination note.--the assassination of the empress of austria at geneva, september 10, 1898, occurred during mark twain's austrian residence. the news came to him at kaltenleutgeben, a summer resort a little way out of vienna. to his friend, the rev. jos. h. twichell, he wrote: "that good and unoffending lady, the empress, is killed by a madman, and i am living in the midst of world-history again. the queen's jubilee last year, the invasion of the reichsrath by the police, and now this murder, which will still be talked of and described and painted a thousand a thousand years from now. to have a personal friend of the wearer of two crowns burst in at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening and say, in a voice broken with tears, 'my god! the empress is murdered,' and fly toward her home before we can utter a question--why, it brings the giant event home to you, makes you a part of it and personally interested; it is as if your neighbor, antony, should come flying and say, 'caesar is butchered--the head of the world is fallen!' "of course there is no talk but of this. the mourning is universal and genuine, the consternation is stupefying. the austrian empire is being draped with black. vienna will be a spectacle to see by next saturday, when the funeral cort`ege marches." he was strongly moved by the tragedy, impelled to write concerning it. he prepared the article which follows, but did not offer it for publication, perhaps feeling that his own close association with the court circles at the moment prohibited this personal utterance. there appears no such reason for withholding its publication now. a. b. p. the more one thinks of the assassination, the more imposing and tremendous the event becomes. the destruction of a city is a large event, but it is one which repeats itself several times in a thousand years; the destruction of a third part of a nation by plague and famine is a large event, but it has happened several times in history; the murder of a king is a large event, but it has been frequent. the murder of an empress is the largest of all events. one must go back about two thousand years to find an instance to put with this one. the oldest family of unchallenged descent in christendom lives in rome and traces its line back seventeen hundred years, but no member of it has been present in the earth when an empress was murdered, until now. many a time during these seventeen centuries members of that family have been startled with the news of extraordinary events--the destruction of cities, the fall of thrones, the murder of kings, the wreck of dynasties, the extinction of religions, the birth of new systems of government; and their descendants have been by to hear of it and talk about it when all these things were repeated once, twice, or a dozen times--but to even that family has come news at last which is not staled by use, has no duplicates in the long reach of its memory. it is an event which confers a curious distinction upon every individual now living in the world: he has stood alive and breathing in the presence of an event such as has not fallen within the experience of any traceable or untraceable ancestor of his for twenty centuries, and it is not likely to fall within the experience of any descendant of his for twenty more. time has made some great changes since the roman days. the murder of an empress then--even the assassination of caesar himself--could not electrify the world as this murder has electrified it. for one reason, there was then not much of a world to electrify; it was a small world, as to known bulk, and it had rather a thin population, besides; and for another reason, the news traveled so slowly that its tremendous initial thrill wasted away, week by week and month by month, on the journey, and by the time it reached the remoter regions there was but little of it left. it was no longer a fresh event, it was a thing of the far past; it was not properly news, it was history. but the world is enormous now, and prodigiously populated--that is one change; and another is the lightning swiftness of the flight of tidings, good and bad. "the empress is murdered!" when those amazing words struck upon my ear in this austrian village last saturday, three hours after the disaster, i knew that it was already old news in london, paris, berlin, new york, san francisco, japan, china, melbourne, cape town, bombay, madras, calcutta, and that the entire globe with a single voice, was cursing the perpetrator of it. since the telegraph first began to stretch itself wider and wider about the earth, larger and increasingly larger areas of the world have, as time went on, received simultaneously the shock of a great calamity; but this is the first time in history that the entire surface of the globe has been swept in a single instant with the thrill of so gigantic an event. and who is the miracle-worker who has furnished to the world this spectacle? all the ironies are compacted in the answer. he is at the bottom of the human ladder, as the accepted estimates of degree and value go: a soiled and patched young loafer, without gifts, without talents, without education, without morals, without character, without any born charm or any acquired one that wins or beguiles or attracts; without a single grace of mind or heart or hand that any tramp or prostitute could envy him; an unfaithful private in the ranks, an incompetent stonecutter, an inefficient lackey; in a word, a mangy, offensive, empty, unwashed, vulgar, gross, mephitic, timid, sneaking, human polecat. and it was within the privileges and powers of this sarcasm upon the human race to reach up--up--up--and strike from its far summit in the social skies the world's accepted ideal of glory and might and splendor and sacredness! it realizes to us what sorry shows and shadows we are. without our clothes and our pedestals we are poor things and much of a size; our dignities are not real, our pomps are shams. at our best and stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and believe, but only candles; and any bummer can blow us out. and now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often forget--or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in one way or another all men are mad. many are mad for money. when this madness is in a mild form it is harmless and the man passes for sane; but when it develops powerfully and takes possession of the man, it can make him cheat, rob, and kill; and when he has got his fortune and lost it again it can land him in the asylum or the suicide's coffin. love is a madness; if thwarted it develops fast; it can grow to a frenzy of despair and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, like rudolph, throw away the crown of an empire and snuff out his own life. all the whole list of desires, predilections, aversions, ambitions, passions, cares, griefs, regrets, remorses, are incipient madness, and ready to grow, spread, and consume, when the occasion comes. there are no healthy minds, and nothing saves any man but accident--the accident of not having his malady put to the supreme test. one of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the pleasure derived from being noticed. perhaps it is not merely common, but universal. in its mildest form it doubtless is universal. every child is pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in their whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the attention of visitors; boys are always "showing off"; apparently all men and women are glad and grateful when they find that they have done a thing which has lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused wondering talk. this common madness can develop, by nurture, into a hunger for notoriety in one, for fame in another. it is this madness for being noticed and talked about which has invented kingship and the thousand other dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy fineries; it has made kings pick one another's pockets, scramble for one another's crowns and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has raised up prize-fighters, and poets, and villages mayors, and little and big politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions, and banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and napoleons. anything to get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the township, or the city, or the state, or the nation, or the planet shouting, "look--there he goes--that is the man!" and in five minutes' time, at no cost of brain, or labor, or genius this mangy italian tramp has beaten them all, transcended them all, outstripped them all, for in time their names will perish; but by the friendly help of the insane newspapers and courts and kings and historians, his is safe and live and thunder in the world all down the ages as long as human speech shall endure! oh, if it were not so tragic how ludicrous it would be! she was so blameless, the empress; and so beautiful, in mind and heart, in person and spirit; and whether with a crown upon her head or without it and nameless, a grace to the human race, and almost a justification of its creation; would be, indeed, but that the animal that struck her down re-establishes the doubt. in her character was every quality that in woman invites and engages respect, esteem, affection, and homage. her tastes, her instincts, and her aspirations were all high and fine and all her life her heart and brain were busy with activities of a noble sort. she had had bitter griefs, but they did not sour her spirit, and she had had the highest honors in the world's gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. she knew all ranks, and won them all, and made them her friends. an english fisherman's wife said, "when a body was in trouble she didn't send her help, she brought it herself." crowns have adorned others, but she adorned her crowns. it was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. and it is marked by some curious contrasts. at noon last, saturday there was no one in the world who would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing worth claiming or mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an acquaintanceship; the humblest honest boot-black would not have valued the fact that he had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was sunk in abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom grades of officialdom. three hours later he was the one subject of conversation in the world, the gilded generals and admirals and governors were discussing him, all the kings and queens and emperors had put aside their other interests to talk about him. and wherever there was a man, at the summit of the world or the bottom of it, who by chance had at some time or other come across that creature, he remembered it with a secret satisfaction, and mentioned it--for it was a distinction, now! it brings human dignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is not quite realizable--but it is perfectly true. if there is a king who can remember, now, that he once saw that creature in a time past, he has let that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual and indifferent way, some dozens of times during the past week. for a king is merely human; the inside of him is exactly like the inside of any other person; and it is human to find satisfaction in being in a kind of personal way connected with amazing events. we are all privately vain of such a thing; we are all alike; a king is a king by accident; the reason the rest of us are not kings is merely due to another accident; we are all made out of the same clay, and it is a sufficient poor quality. below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; i know it well as if i were hearing them: the commander: "he was in my army." the general: "he was in my corps." the colonel: "he was in my regiment. a brute. i remember him well." the captain: "he was in my company. a troublesome scoundrel. i remember him well." the sergeant: "did i know him? as well as i know you. why, every morning i used to--" etc., etc.; a glad, long story, told to devouring ears. the landlady: "many's the time he boarded with me. i can show you his very room, and the very bed he slept in. and the charcoal mark there on the wall--he made that. my little johnny saw him do it with his own eyes. didn't you, johnny?" it is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate and the constables and the jailer treasure up the assassin's daily remarks and doings as precious things, and as wallowing this week in seas of blissful distinction. the interviewer, too; he tried to let on that he is not vain of his privilege of contact with this man whom few others are allowed to gaze upon, but he is human, like the rest, and can no more keep his vanity corked in than could you or i. some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against the criminal militarism which is impoverishing europe and driving the starving poor mad. that has many crimes to answer for, but not this one, i think. one may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs done the poor; one may not dignify him with a generous impulse of any kind. when he saw his photograph and said, "i shall be celebrated," he laid bare the impulse that prompted him. it was a mere hunger for notoriety. there is another confessed case of the kind which is as old as history--the burning of the temple of ephesus. among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must concede high rank to the many which have described it as a "peculiarly brutal crime" and then added that it was "ordained from above." i think this verdict will not be popular "above." if the deed was ordained from above, there is no rational way of making this prisoner even partially responsible for it, and the genevan court cannot condemn him without manifestly committing a crime. logic is logic, and by disregarding its laws even the most pious and showy theologian may be beguiled into preferring charges which should not be ventured upon except in the shelter of plenty of lightning-rods. i witnessed the funeral procession, in company with friends, from the windows of the krantz, vienna's sumptuous new hotel. we came into town in the middle of the forenoon, and i went on foot from the station. black flags hung down from all the houses; the aspects were sunday-like; the crowds on the sidewalks were quiet and moved slowly; very few people were smoking; many ladies wore deep mourning, gentlemen were in black as a rule; carriages were speeding in all directions, with footmen and coachmen in black clothes and wearing black cocked hats; the shops were closed; in many windows were pictures of the empress: as a beautiful young bride of seventeen; as a serene and majestic lady with added years; and finally in deep black and without ornaments--the costume she always wore after the tragic death of her son nine years ago, for her heart broke then, and life lost almost all its value for her. the people stood grouped before these pictures, and now and then one saw women and girls turn away wiping the tears from their eyes. in front of the krantz is an open square; over the way was the church where the funeral services would be held. it is small and old and severely plain, plastered outside and whitewashed or painted, and with no ornament but a statue of a monk in a niche over the door, and above that a small black flag. but in its crypt lie several of the great dead of the house of habsburg, among them maria theresa and napoleon's son, the duke of reichstadt. hereabouts was a roman camp, once, and in it the emperor marcus aurelius died a thousand years before the first habsburg ruled in vienna, which was six hundred years ago and more. the little church is packed in among great modern stores and houses, and the windows of them were full of people. behind the vast plate-glass windows of the upper floors of the house on the corner one glimpsed terraced masses of fine-clothed men and women, dim and shimmery, like people under water. under us the square was noiseless, but it was full of citizens; officials in fine uniforms were flitting about on errands, and in a doorstep sat a figure in the uttermost raggedness of poverty, the feet bare, the head bent humbly down; a youth of eighteen or twenty, he was, and through the field-glass one could see that he was tearing apart and munching riffraff that he had gathered somewhere. blazing uniforms flashed by him, making a sparkling contrast with his drooping ruin of moldy rags, but he took not notice; he was not there to grieve for a nation's disaster; he had his own cares, and deeper. from two directions two long files of infantry came plowing through the pack and press in silence; there was a low, crisp order and the crowd vanished, the square save the sidewalks was empty, the private mourner was gone. another order, the soldiers fell apart and enclosed the square in a double-ranked human fence. it was all so swift, noiseless, exact--like a beautifully ordered machine. it was noon, now. two hours of stillness and waiting followed. then carriages began to flow past and deliver the two and three hundred court personages and high nobilities privileged to enter the church. then the square filled up; not with civilians, but with army and navy officers in showy and beautiful uniforms. they filled it compactly, leaving only a narrow carriage path in front of the church, but there was no civilian among them. and it was better so; dull clothes would have marred the radiant spectacle. in the jam in front of the church, on its steps, and on the sidewalk was a bunch of uniforms which made a blazing splotch of color--intense red, gold, and white--which dimmed the brilliancies around them; and opposite them on the other side of the path was a bunch of cascaded bright-green plumes above pale-blue shoulders which made another splotch of splendor emphatic and conspicuous in its glowing surroundings. it was a sea of flashing color all about, but these two groups were the high notes. the green plumes were worn by forty or fifty austrian generals, the group opposite them were chiefly knights of malta and knights of a german order. the mass of heads in the square were covered by gilt helmets and by military caps roofed with a mirror-like gaze, and the movements of the wearers caused these things to catch the sun-rays, and the effect was fine to see--the square was like a garden of richly colored flowers with a multitude of blinding and flashing little suns distributed over it. think of it--it was by command of that italian loafer yonder on his imperial throne in the geneva prison that this splendid multitude was assembled there; and the kings and emperors that were entering the church from a side street were there by his will. it is so strange, so unrealizable. at three o'clock the carriages were still streaming by in single file. at three-five a cardinal arrives with his attendants; later some bishops; then a number of archdeacons--all in striking colors that add to the show. at three-ten a procession of priests passed along, with crucifix. another one, presently; after an interval, two more; at three-fifty another one--very long, with many crosses, gold-embroidered robes, and much white lace; also great pictured banners, at intervals, receding into the distance. a hum of tolling bells makes itself heard, but not sharply. at three-fifty-eight a waiting interval. presently a long procession of gentlemen in evening dress comes in sight and approaches until it is near to the square, then falls back against the wall of soldiers at the sidewalk, and the white shirt-fronts show like snowflakes and are very conspicuous where so much warm color is all about. a waiting pause. at four-twelve the head of the funeral procession comes into view at last. first, a body of cavalry, four abreast, to widen the path. next, a great body of lancers, in blue, with gilt helmets. next, three six-horse mourningcoaches; outriders and coachmen in black, with cocked hats and white wigs. next, troops in splendid uniforms, red, gold, and white, exceedingly showy. now the multitude uncover. the soldiers present arms; there is a low rumble of drums; the sumptuous great hearse approaches, drawn at a walk by eight black horses plumed with black bunches of nodding ostrich feathers; the coffin is borne into the church, the doors are closed. the multitude cover their heads, and the rest of the procession moves by; first the hungarian guard in their indescribably brilliant and picturesque and beautiful uniform, inherited from the ages of barbaric splendor, and after them other mounted forces, a long and showy array. then the shining crown in the square crumbled apart, a wrecked rainbow, and melted away in radiant streams, and in the turn of a wrist the three dirtiest and raggedest and cheerfulest little slum-girls in austria were capering about in the spacious vacancy. it was a day of contrasts. twice the empress entered vienna in state. the first time was in 1854, when she was a bride of seventeen, and then she rode in measureless pomp and with blare of music through a fluttering world of gay flags and decorations, down streets walled on both hands with a press of shouting and welcoming subjects; and the second time was last wednesday, when she entered the city in her coffin and moved down the same streets in the dead of the night under swaying black flags, between packed human walls again; but everywhere was a deep stillness, now--a stillness emphasized, rather than broken, by the muffled hoofbeats of the long cavalcade over pavements cushioned with sand, and the low sobbing of gray-headed women who had witnessed the first entry forty-four years before, when she and they were young--and unaware! a character in baron von berger's recent fairy drama "habsburg" tells about the first coming of the girlish empressqueen, and in his history draws a fine picture: i cannot make a close translation of it, but will try to convey the spirit of the verses: i saw the stately pageant pass: in her high place i saw the empress-queen: i could not take my eyes away from that fair vision, spirit-like and pure, that rose serene, sublime, and figured to my sense a noble alp far lighted in the blue, that in the flood of morning rends its veil of cloud and stands a dream of glory to the gaze of them that in the valley toil and plod. -----------------------------------------------------------------a scrap of curious history marion city, on the mississippi river, in the state of missouri--a village; time, 1845. la bourboule-les-bains, france --a village; time, the end of june, 1894. i was in the one village in that early time; i am in the other now. these times and places are sufficiently wide apart, yet today i have the strange sense of being thrust back into that missourian village and of reliving certain stirring days that i lived there so long ago. last saturday night the life of the president of the french republic was taken by an italian assassin. last night a mob surrounded our hotel, shouting, howling, singing the "marseillaise," and pelting our windows with sticks and stones; for we have italian waiters, and the mob demanded that they be turned out of the house instantly--to be drubbed, and then driven out of the village. everybody in the hotel remained up until far into the night, and experienced the several kinds of terror which one reads about in books which tell of nigh attacks by italians and by french mobs: the growing roar of the oncoming crowd; the arrival, with rain of stones and a crash of glass; the withdrawal to rearrange plans--followed by a silence ominous, threatening, and harder to bear than even the active siege and the noise. the landlord and the two village policemen stood their ground, and at last the mob was persuaded to go away and leave our italians in peace. today four of the ringleaders have been sentenced to heavy punishment of a public sort--and are become local heroes, by consequence. that is the very mistake which was at first made in the missourian village half a century ago. the mistake was repeated and repeated--just as france is doing in these later months. in our village we had our ravochals, our henrys, our vaillants; and in a humble way our cesario--i hope i have spelled this name wrong. fifty years ago we passed through, in all essentials, what france has been passing through during the past two or three years, in the matter of periodical frights, horrors, and shudderings. in several details the parallels are quaintly exact. in that day, for a man to speak out openly and proclaim himself an enemy of negro slavery was simply to proclaim himself a madman. for he was blaspheming against the holiest thing known to a missourian, and could not be in his right mind. for a man to proclaim himself an anarchist in france, three years ago, was to proclaim himself a madman--he could not be in his right mind. now the original first blasphemer against any institution profoundly venerated by a community is quite sure to be in earnest; his followers and imitators may be humbugs and selfseekers, but he himself is sincere--his heart is in his protest. robert hardy was our first abolitionist--awful name! he was a journeyman cooper, and worked in the big cooper-shop belonging to the great pork-packing establishment which was marion city's chief pride and sole source of prosperity. he was a newenglander, a stranger. and, being a stranger, he was of course regarded as an inferior person--for that has been human nature from adam down--and of course, also, he was made to feel unwelcome, for this is the ancient law with man and the other animals. hardy was thirty years old, and a bachelor; pale, given to reverie and reading. he was reserved, and seemed to prefer the isolation which had fallen to his lot. he was treated to many side remarks by his fellows, but as he did not resent them it was decided that he was a coward. all of a sudden he proclaimed himself an abolitionist-straight out and publicly! he said that negro slavery was a crime, an infamy. for a moment the town was paralyzed with astonishment; then it broke into a fury of rage and swarmed toward the cooper-shop to lynch hardy. but the methodist minister made a powerful speech to them and stayed their hands. he proved to them that hardy was insane and not responsible for his words; that no man could be sane and utter such words. so hardy was saved. being insane, he was allowed to go on talking. he was found to be good entertainment. several nights running he made abolition speeches in the open air, and all the town flocked to hear and laugh. he implored them to believe him sane and sincere, and have pity on the poor slaves, and take measurements for the restoration of their stolen rights, or in no long time blood would flow--blood, blood, rivers of blood! it was great fun. but all of a sudden the aspect of things changed. a slave came flying from palmyra, the county-seat, a few miles back, and was about to escape in a canoe to illinois and freedom in the dull twilight of the approaching dawn, when the town constable seized him. hardy happened along and tried to rescue the negro; there was a struggle, and the constable did not come out of it alive. hardly crossed the river with the negro, and then came back to give himself up. all this took time, for the mississippi is not a french brook, like the seine, the loire, and those other rivulets, but is a real river nearly a mile wide. the town was on hand in force by now, but the methodist preacher and the sheriff had already made arrangements in the interest of order; so hardy was surrounded by a strong guard and safely conveyed to the village calaboose in spite of all the effort of the mob to get hold of him. the reader will have begun to perceive that this methodist minister was a prompt man; a prompt man, with active hands and a good headpiece. williams was his name--damon williams; damon williams in public, damnation williams in private, because he was so powerful on that theme and so frequent. the excitement was prodigious. the constable was the first man who had ever been killed in the town. the event was by long odds the most imposing in the town's history. it lifted the humble village into sudden importance; its name was in everybody's mouth for twenty miles around. and so was the name of robert hardy--robert hardy, the stranger, the despised. in a day he was become the person of most consequence in the region, the only person talked about. as to those other coopers, they found their position curiously changed--they were important people, or unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or how small had been their intercourse with the new celebrity. the two or three who had really been on a sort of familiar footing with him found themselves objects of admiring interest with the public and of envy with their shopmates. the village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands. the new man was an enterprising fellow, and he made the most of the tragedy. he issued an extra. then he put up posters promising to devote his whole paper to matters connected with the great event--there would be a full and intensely interesting biography of the murderer, and even a portrait of him. he was as good as his word. he carved the portrait himself, on the back of a wooden type--and a terror it was to look at. it made a great commotion, for this was the first time the village paper had ever contained a picture. the village was very proud. the output of the paper was ten times as great as it had ever been before, yet every copy was sold. when the trial came on, people came from all the farms around, and from hannibal, and quincy, and even from keokuk; and the court-house could hold only a fraction of the crowd that applied for admission. the trial was published in the village paper, with fresh and still more trying pictures of the accused. hardy was convicted, and hanged--a mistake. people came from miles around to see the hanging; they brought cakes and cider, also the women and children, and made a picnic of the matter. it was the largest crowd the village had ever seen. the rope that hanged hardy was eagerly bought up, in inch samples, for everybody wanted a memento of the memorable event. martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations. within one week afterward four young lightweights in the village proclaimed themselves abolitionists! in life hardy had not been able to make a convert; everybody laughed at him; but nobody could laugh at his legacy. the four swaggered around with their slouch-hats pulled down over their faces, and hinted darkly at awful possibilities. the people were troubled and afraid, and showed it. and they were stunned, too; they could not understand it. "abolitionist" had always been a term of shame and horror; yet here were four young men who were not only not ashamed to bear that name, but were grimly proud of it. respectable young men they were, too--of good families, and brought up in the church. ed smith, the printer's apprentice, nineteen, had been the head sunday-school boy, and had once recited three thousand bible verses without making a break. dick savage, twenty, the baker's apprentice; will joyce, twenty-two, journeyman blacksmith; and henry taylor, twenty-four, tobacco-stemmer--were the other three. they were all of a sentimental cast; they were all romance-readers; they all wrote poetry, such as it was; they were all vain and foolish; but they had never before been suspected of having anything bad in them. they withdrew from society, and grew more and more mysterious and dreadful. they presently achieved the distinction of being denounced by names from the pulpit--which made an immense stir! this was grandeur, this was fame. they were envied by all the other young fellows now. this was natural. their company grew--grew alarmingly. they took a name. it was a secret name, and was divulged to no outsider; publicly they were simply the abolitionists. they had pass-words, grips, and signs; they had secret meetings; their initiations were conducted with gloomy pomps and ceremonies, at midnight. they always spoke of hardy as "the martyr," and every little while they moved through the principal street in procession--at midnight, black-robed, masked, to the measured tap of the solemn drum--on pilgrimage to the martyr's grave, where they went through with some majestic fooleries and swore vengeance upon his murderers. they gave previous notice of the pilgrimage by small posters, and warned everybody to keep indoors and darken all houses along the route, and leave the road empty. these warnings were obeyed, for there was a skull and crossbones at the top of the poster. when this kind of thing had been going on about eight weeks, a quite natural thing happened. a few men of character and grit woke up out of the nightmare of fear which had been stupefying their faculties, and began to discharge scorn and scoffings at themselves and the community for enduring this child's-play; and at the same time they proposed to end it straightway. everybody felt an uplift; life was breathed into their dead spirits; their courage rose and they began to feel like men again. this was on a saturday. all day the new feeling grew and strengthened; it grew with a rush; it brought inspiration and cheer with it. midnight saw a united community, full of zeal and pluck, and with a clearly defined and welcome piece of work in front of it. the best organizer and strongest and bitterest talker on that great saturday was the presbyterian clergyman who had denounced the original four from his pulpit--rev. hiram fletcher--and he promised to use his pulpit in the public interest again now. on the morrow he had revelations to make, he said--secrets of the dreadful society. but the revelations were never made. at half past two in the morning the dead silence of the village was broken by a crashing explosion, and the town patrol saw the preacher's house spring in a wreck of whirling fragments into the sky. the preacher was killed, together with a negro woman, his only slave and servant. the town was paralyzed again, and with reason. to struggle against a visible enemy is a thing worth while, and there is a plenty of men who stand always ready to undertake it; but to struggle against an invisible one--an invisible one who sneaks in and does his awful work in the dark and leaves no trace--that is another matter. that is a thing to make the bravest tremble and hold back. the cowed populace were afraid to go to the funeral. the man who was to have had a packed church to hear him expose and denounce the common enemy had but a handful to see him buried. the coroner's jury had brought in a verdict of "death by the visitation of god," for no witness came forward; if any existed they prudently kept out of the way. nobody seemed sorry. nobody wanted to see the terrible secret society provoked into the commission of further outrages. everybody wanted the tragedy hushed up, ignored, forgotten, if possible. and so there was a bitter surprise and an unwelcome one when will joyce, the blacksmith's journeyman, came out and proclaimed himself the assassin! plainly he was not minded to be robbed of his glory. he made his proclamation, and stuck to it. stuck to it, and insisted upon a trial. here was an ominous thing; here was a new and peculiarly formidable terror, for a motive was revealed here which society could not hope to deal with successfully--vanity, thirst for notoriety. if men were going to kill for notoriety's sake, and to win the glory of newspaper renown, a big trial, and a showy execution, what possible invention of man could discourage or deter them? the town was in a sort of panic; it did not know what to do. however, the grand jury had to take hold of the matter--it had no choice. it brought in a true bill, and presently the case went to the county court. the trial was a fine sensation. the prisoner was the principal witness for the prosecution. he gave a full account of the assassination; he furnished even the minutest particulars: how he deposited his keg of powder and laid his train--from the house to such-and-such a spot; how george ronalds and henry hart came along just then, smoking, and he borrowed hart's cigar and fired the train with it, shouting, "down with all slave-tyrants!" and how hart and ronalds made no effort to capture him, but ran away, and had never come forward to testify yet. but they had to testify now, and they did--and pitiful it was to see how reluctant they were, and how scared. the crowded house listened to joyce's fearful tale with a profound and breathless interest, and in a deep hush which was not broken till he broke it himself, in concluding, with a roaring repetition of his "death to all slave-tyrants!"--which came so unexpectedly and so startlingly that it made everyone present catch his breath and gasp. the trial was put in the paper, with biography and large portrait, with other slanderous and insane pictures, and the edition sold beyond imagination. the execution of joyce was a fine and picturesque thing. it drew a vast crowd. good places in trees and seats on rail fences sold for half a dollar apiece; lemonade and gingerbread-stands had great prosperity. joyce recited a furious and fantastic and denunciatory speech on the scaffold which had imposing passages of school-boy eloquence in it, and gave him a reputation on the spot as an orator, and his name, later, in the society's records, of the "martyr orator." he went to his death breathing slaughter and charging his society to "avenge his murder." if he knew anything of human nature he knew that to plenty of young fellows present in that great crowd he was a grand hero--and enviably situated. he was hanged. it was a mistake. within a month from his death the society which he had honored had twenty new members, some of them earnest, determined men. they did not court distinction in the same way, but they celebrated his martyrdom. the crime which had been obscure and despised had become lofty and glorified. such things were happening all over the country. wildbrained martyrdom was succeeded by uprising and organization. then, in natural order, followed riot, insurrection, and the wrack and restitutions of war. it was bound to come, and it would naturally come in that way. it has been the manner of reform since the beginning of the world. -----------------------------------------------------------------switzerland, the cradle of liberty interlaken, switzerland, 1891. it is a good many years since i was in switzerland last. in that remote time there was only one ladder railway in the country. that state of things is all changed. there isn't a mountain in switzerland now that hasn't a ladder railroad or two up its back like suspenders; indeed, some mountains are latticed with them, and two years hence all will be. in that day the peasant of the high altitudes will have to carry a lantern when he goes visiting in the night to keep from stumbling over railroads that have been built since his last round. and also in that day, if there shall remain a high-altitude peasant whose potato-patch hasn't a railroad through it, it would make him as conspicuous as william tell. however, there are only two best ways to travel through switzerland. the first best is afloat. the second best is by open two-horse carriage. one can come from lucerne to interlaken over the brunig by ladder railroad in an hour or so now, but you can glide smoothly in a carriage in ten, and have two hours for luncheon at noon--for luncheon, not for rest. there is no fatigue connected with the trip. one arrives fresh in spirit and in person in the evening--no fret in his heart, no grime on his face, no grit in his hair, not a cinder in his eye. this is the right condition of mind and body, the right and due preparation for the solemn event which closed the day--stepping with metaphorically uncovered head into the presence of the most impressive mountain mass that the globe can show--the jungfrau. the stranger's first feeling, when suddenly confronted by that towering and awful apparition wrapped in its shroud of snow, is breath-taking astonishment. it is as if heaven's gates had swung open and exposed the throne. it is peaceful here and pleasant at interlaken. nothing going on--at least nothing but brilliant life-giving sunshine. there are floods and floods of that. one may properly speak of it as "going on," for it is full of the suggestion of activity; the light pours down with energy, with visible enthusiasm. this is a good atmosphere to be in, morally as well as physically. after trying the political atmosphere of the neighboring monarchies, it is healing and refreshing to breathe air that has known no taint of slavery for six hundred years, and to come among a people whose political history is great and fine, and worthy to be taught in all schools and studied by all races and peoples. for the struggle here throughout the centuries has not been in the interest of any private family, or any church, but in the interest of the whole body of the nation, and for shelter and protection of all forms of belief. this fact is colossal. if one would realize how colossal it is, and of what dignity and majesty, let him contrast it with the purposes and objects of the crusades, the siege of york, the war of the roses, and other historic comedies of that sort and size. last week i was beating around the lake of four cantons, and i saw rutli and altorf. rutli is a remote little patch of meadow, but i do not know how any piece of ground could be holier or better worth crossing oceans and continents to see, since it was there that the great trinity of switzerland joined hands six centuries ago and swore the oath which set their enslaved and insulted country forever free; and altorf is also honorable ground and worshipful, since it was there that william, surnamed tell (which interpreted means "the foolish talker"--that is to say, the too-daring talker), refused to bow to gessler's hat. of late years the prying student of history has been delighting himself beyond measure over a wonderful find which he has made-to wit, that tell did not shoot the apple from his son's head. to hear the students jubilate, one would suppose that the question of whether tell shot the apple or didn't was an important matter; whereas it ranks in importance exactly with the question of whether washington chopped down the cherry-tree or didn't. the deeds of washington, the patriot, are the essential thing; the cherry-tree incident is of no consequence. to prove that tell did shoot the apple from his son's head would merely prove that he had better nerve than most men and was skillful with a bow as a million others who preceded and followed him, but not one whit more so. but tell was more and better than a mere marksman, more and better than a mere cool head; he was a type; he stands for swiss patriotism; in his person was represented a whole people; his spirit was their spirit--the spirit which would bow to none but god, the spirit which said this in words and confirmed it with deeds. there have always been tells in switzerland--people who would not bow. there was a sufficiency of them at rutli; there were plenty of them at murten; plenty at grandson; there are plenty today. and the first of them all--the very first, earliest banner-bearer of human freedom in this world--was not a man, but a woman--stauffacher's wife. there she looms dim and great, through the haze of the centuries, delivering into her husband's ear that gospel of revolt which was to bear fruit in the conspiracy of rutli and the birth of the first free government the world had ever seen. from this victoria hotel one looks straight across a flat of trifling width to a lofty mountain barrier, which has a gateway in it shaped like an inverted pyramid. beyond this gateway arises the vast bulk of the jungfrau, a spotless mass of gleaming snow, into the sky. the gateway, in the dark-colored barrier, makes a strong frame for the great picture. the somber frame and the glowing snow-pile are startlingly contrasted. it is this frame which concentrates and emphasizes the glory of the jungfrau and makes it the most engaging and beguiling and fascinating spectacle that exists on the earth. there are many mountains of snow that are as lofty as the jungfrau and as nobly proportioned, but they lack the fame. they stand at large; they are intruded upon and elbowed by neighboring domes and summits, and their grandeur is diminished and fails of effect. it is a good name, jungfrau--virgin. nothing could be whiter; nothing could be purer; nothing could be saintlier of aspect. at six yesterday evening the great intervening barrier seen through a faint bluish haze seemed made of air and substanceless, so soft and rich it was, so shimmering where the wandering lights touched it and so dim where the shadows lay. apparently it was a dream stuff, a work of the imagination, nothing real about it. the tint was green, slightly varying shades of it, but mainly very dark. the sun was down--as far as that barrier was concerned, but not for the jungfrau, towering into the heavens beyond the gateway. she was a roaring conflagration of blinding white. it is said the fridolin (the old fridolin), a new saint, but formerly a missionary, gave the mountain its gracious name. he was an irishman, son of an irish king--there were thirty thousand kings reigning in county cork alone in his time, fifteen hundred years ago. it got so that they could not make a living, there was so much competition and wages got cut so. some of them were out of work months at a time, with wife and little children to feed, and not a crust in the place. at last a particularly severe winter fell upon the country, and hundreds of them were reduced to mendicancy and were to be seen day after day in the bitterest weather, standing barefoot in the snow, holding out their crowns for alms. indeed, they would have been obliged to emigrate or starve but for a fortunate idea of prince fridolin's, who started a labor-union, the first one in history, and got the great bulk of them to join it. he thus won the general gratitude, and they wanted to make him emperor--emperor over them all--emperor of county cork, but he said, no, walking delegate was good enough for him. for behold! he was modest beyond his years, and keen as a whip. to this day in germany and switzerland, where st. fridolin is revered and honored, the peasantry speak of him affectionately as the first walking delegate. the first walk he took was into france and germany, missionarying--for missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. all you had to do was to cure the savage's sick daughter by a "miracle"--a miracle like the miracle of lourdes in our day, for instance--and immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes with a new convert's enthusiasm. you could sit down and make yourself easy, now. he would take an ax and convert the rest of the nation himself. charlemagne was that kind of a walking delegate. yes, there were great missionaries in those days, for the methods were sure and the rewards great. we have no such missionaries now, and no such methods. but to continue the history of the first walking delegate, if you are interested. i am interested myself because i have seen his relics in sackingen, and also the very spot where he worked his great miracle--the one which won him his sainthood in the papal court a few centuries later. to have seen these things makes me feel very near to him, almost like a member of the family, in fact. while wandering about the continent he arrived at the spot on the rhine which is now occupied by sackingen, and proposed to settle there, but the people warned him off. he appealed to the king of the franks, who made him a present of the whole region, people and all. he built a great cloister there for women and proceeded to teach in it and accumulate more land. there were two wealthy brothers in the neighborhood, urso and landulph. urso died and fridolin claimed his estates. landulph asked for documents and papers. fridolin had none to show. he said the bequest had been made to him by word of mouth. landulph suggested that he produce a witness and said it in a way which he thought was very witty, very sarcastic. this shows that he did not know the walking delegate. fridolin was not disturbed. he said: "appoint your court. i will bring a witness." the court thus created consisted of fifteen counts and barons. a day was appointed for the trial of the case. on that day the judges took their seats in state, and proclamation was made that the court was ready for business. five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and yet no fridolin appeared. landulph rose, and was in the act of claiming judgment by default when a strange clacking sound was heard coming up the stairs. in another moment fridolin entered at the door and came walking in a deep hush down the middle aisle, with a tall skeleton stalking in his rear. amazement and terror sat upon every countenance, for everybody suspected that the skeleton was urso's. it stopped before the chief judge and raised its bony arm aloft and began to speak, while all the assembled shuddered, for they could see the words leak out between its ribs. it said: "brother, why dost thou disturb my blessed rest and withhold by robbery the gift which i gave thee for the honor of god?" it seems a strange thing and most irregular, but the verdict was actually given against landulph on the testimony of this wandering rack-heap of unidentified bones. in our day a skeleton would not be allowed to testify at all, for a skeleton has no moral responsibility, and its word could not be believed on oath, and this was probably one of them. however, the incident is valuable as preserving to us a curious sample of the quaint laws of evidence of that remote time--a time so remote, so far back toward the beginning of original idiocy, that the difference between a bench of judges and a basket of vegetables was as yet so slight that we may say with all confidence that it didn't really exist. during several afternoons i have been engaged in an interesting, maybe useful, piece of work--that is to say, i have been trying to make the mighty jungfrau earn her living--earn it in a most humble sphere, but on a prodigious scale, on a prodigious scale of necessity, for she couldn't do anything in a small way with her size and style. i have been trying to make her do service on a stupendous dial and check off the hours as they glide along her pallid face up there against the sky, and tell the time of day to the populations lying within fifty miles of her and to the people in the moon, if they have a good telescope there. until late in the afternoon the jungfrau's aspect is that of a spotless desert of snow set upon edge against the sky. but by mid-afternoon some elevations which rise out of the western border of the desert, whose presence you perhaps had not detected or suspected up to that time, began to cast black shadows eastward across the gleaming surface. at first there is only one shadow; later there are two. toward 4 p.m. the other day i was gazing and worshiping as usual when i chanced to notice that shadow no. 1 was beginning to take itself something of the shape of the human profile. by four the back of the head was good, the military cap was pretty good, the nose was bold and strong, the upper lip sharp, but not pretty, and there was a great goatee that shot straight aggressively forward from the chin. at four-thirty the nose had changed its shape considerably, and the altered slant of the sun had revealed and made conspicuous a huge buttress or barrier of naked rock which was so located as to answer very well for a shoulder or coat-collar to this swarthy and indiscreet sweetheart who had stolen out there right before everybody to pillow his head on the virgin's white breast and whisper soft sentimentalities to her in the sensuous music of the crashing ice-domes and the boom and thunder of the passing avalanche--music very familiar to his ear, for he had heard it every afternoon at this hour since the day he first came courting this child of the earth, who lives in the sky, and that day is far, yes--for he was at this pleasant sport before the middle ages drifted by him in the valley; before the romans marched past, and before the antique and recordless barbarians fished and hunted here and wondered who he might be, and were probably afraid of him; and before primeval man himself, just emerged from his four-footed estate, stepped out upon this plain, first sample of his race, a thousand centuries ago, and cast a glad eye up there, judging he had found a brother human being and consequently something to kill; and before the big saurians wallowed here, still some eons earlier. oh yes, a day so far back that the eternal son was present to see that first visit; a day so far back that neither tradition nor history was born yet and a whole weary eternity must come and go before the restless little creature, of whose face this stupendous shadow face was the prophecy, would arrive in the earth and begin his shabby career and think of a big thing. oh, indeed yes; when you talk about your poor roman and egyptian day-before-yesterday antiquities, you should choose a time when the hoary shadow face of the jungfrau is not by. it antedates all antiquities known or imaginable; for it was here the world itself created the theater of future antiquities. and it is the only witness with a human face that was there to see the marvel, and remains to us a memorial of it. by 4:40 p.m. the nose of the shadow is perfect and is beautiful. it is black and is powerfully marked against the upright canvas of glowing snow, and covers hundreds of acres of that resplendent surface. meantime shadow no. 2 has been creeping out well to the rear of the face west of it--and at five o'clock has assumed a shape that has rather a poor and rude semblance of a shoe. meantime, also, the great shadow face has been gradually changing for twenty minutes, and now, 5 p.m., it is becoming a quite fair portrait of roscoe conkling. the likeness is there, and is unmistakable. the goatee is shortened, now, and has an end; formerly it hadn't any, but ran off eastward and arrived nowhere. by 6 p.m. the face has dissolved and gone, and the goatee has become what looks like the shadow of a tower with a pointed roof, and the shoe had turned into what the printers call a "fist" with a finger pointing. if i were now imprisoned on a mountain summit a hundred miles northward of this point, and was denied a timepiece, i could get along well enough from four till six on clear days, for i could keep trace of the time by the changing shapes of these mighty shadows of the virgin's front, the most stupendous dial i am acquainted with, the oldest clock in the world by a couple of million years. i suppose i should not have noticed the forms of the shadows if i hadn't the habit of hunting for faces in the clouds and in mountain crags--a sort of amusement which is very entertaining even when you don't find any, and brilliantly satisfying when you do. i have searched through several bushels of photographs of the jungfrau here, but found only one with the face in it, and in this case it was not strictly recognizable as a face, which was evidence that the picture was taken before four o'clock in the afternoon, and also evidence that all the photographers have persistently overlooked one of the most fascinating features of the jungfrau show. i say fascinating, because if you once detect a human face produced on a great plan by unconscious nature, you never get tired of watching it. at first you can't make another person see it at all, but after he has made it out once he can't see anything else afterward. the king of greece is a man who goes around quietly enough when off duty. one day this summer he was traveling in an ordinary first-class compartment, just in his other suit, the one which he works the realm in when he is at home, and so he was not looking like anybody in particular, but a good deal like everybody in general. by and by a hearty and healthy germanamerican got in and opened up a frank and interesting and sympathetic conversation with him, and asked him a couple of thousand questions about himself, which the king answered goodnaturedly, but in a more or less indefinite way as to private particulars. "where do you live when you are at home?" "in greece." "greece! well, now, that is just astonishing! born there?" "no." "do you speak greek?" "yes." "now, ain't that strange! i never expected to live to see that. what is your trade? i mean how do you get your living? what is your line of business?" "well, i hardly know how to answer. i am only a kind of foreman, on a salary; and the business--well, is a very general kind of business." "yes, i understand--general jobbing--little of everything-anything that there's money in." "that's about it, yes." "are you traveling for the house now?" "well, partly; but not entirely. of course i do a stroke of business if it falls in the way--" "good! i like that in you! that's me every time. go on." "i was only going to say i am off on my vacation now." "well that's all right. no harm in that. a man works all the better for a little let-up now and then. not that i've been used to having it myself; for i haven't. i reckon this is my first. i was born in germany, and when i was a couple of weeks old shipped to america, and i've been there ever since, and that's sixty-four years by the watch. i'm an american in principle and a german at heart, and it's the boss combination. well, how do you get along, as a rule--pretty fair?" "i've a rather large family--" "there, that's it--big family and trying to raise them on a salary. now, what did you go to do that for?" "well, i thought--" "of course you did. you were young and confident and thought you could branch out and make things go with a whirl, and here you are, you see! but never mind about that. i'm not trying to discourage you. dear me! i've been just where you are myself! you've got good grit; there's good stuff in you, i can see that. you got a wrong start, that's the whole trouble. but you hold your grip, and we'll see what can be done. your case ain't half as bad as it might be. you are going to come out all right--i'm bail for that. boys and girls?" "my family? yes, some of them are boys--" "and the rest girls. it's just as i expected. but that's all right, and it's better so, anyway. what are the boys doing-learning a trade?" "well, no--i thought--" "it's a big mistake. it's the biggest mistake you ever made. you see that in your own case. a man ought always to have a trade to fall back on. now, i was harness-maker at first. did that prevent me from becoming one of the biggest brewers in america? oh no. i always had the harness trick to fall back on in rough weather. now, if you had learned how to make harness-however, it's too late now; too late. but it's no good plan to cry over spilt milk. but as to the boys, you see--what's to become of them if anything happens to you?" "it has been my idea to let the eldest one succeed me--" "oh, come! suppose the firm don't want him?" "i hadn't thought of that, but--" "now, look here; you want to get right down to business and stop dreaming. you are capable of immense things--man. you can make a perfect success in life. all you want is somebody to steady you and boost you along on the right road. do you own anything in the business?" "no--not exactly; but if i continue to give satisfaction, i suppose i can keep my--" "keep your place--yes. well, don't you depend on anything of the kind. they'll bounce you the minute you get a little old and worked out; they'll do it sure. can't you manage somehow to get into the firm? that's the great thing, you know." "i think it is doubtful; very doubtful." "um--that's bad--yes, and unfair, too. do you suppose that if i should go there and have a talk with your people- look here--do you think you could run a brewery?" "i have never tried, but i think i could do it after a little familiarity with the business." the german was silent for some time. he did a good deal of thinking, and the king waited curiously to see what the result was going to be. finally the german said: "my mind's made up. you leave that crowd--you'll never amount to anything there. in these old countries they never give a fellow a show. yes, you come over to america--come to my place in rochester; bring the family along. you shall have a show in the business and the foremanship, besides. george--you said your name was george?--i'll make a man of you. i give you my word. you've never had a chance here, but that's all going to change. by gracious! i'll give you a lift that'll make your hair curl!" -----------------------------------------------------------------at the shrine of st. wagner bayreuth, aug. 2d, 1891 it was at nuremberg that we struck the inundation of musicmad strangers that was rolling down upon bayreuth. it had been long since we had seen such multitudes of excited and struggling people. it took a good half-hour to pack them and pair them into the train--and it was the longest train we have yet seen in europe. nuremberg had been witnessing this sort of experience a couple of times a day for about two weeks. it gives one an impressive sense of the magnitude of this biennial pilgrimage. for a pilgrimage is what it is. the devotees come from the very ends of the earth to worship their prophet in his own kaaba in his own mecca. if you are living in new york or san francisco or chicago or anywhere else in america, and you conclude, by the middle of may, that you would like to attend the bayreuth opera two months and a half later, you must use the cable and get about it immediately or you will get no seats, and you must cable for lodgings, too. then if you are lucky you will get seats in the last row and lodgings in the fringe of the town. if you stop to write you will get nothing. there were plenty of people in nuremberg when we passed through who had come on pilgrimage without first securing seats and lodgings. they had found neither in bayreuth; they had walked bayreuth streets a while in sorrow, then had gone to nuremberg and found neither beds nor standing room, and had walked those quaint streets all night, waiting for the hotels to open and empty their guests into trains, and so make room for these, their defeated brethren and sisters in the faith. they had endured from thirty to forty hours' railroading on the continent of europe--with all which that implies of worry, fatigue, and financial impoverishment--and all they had got and all they were to get for it was handiness and accuracy in kicking themselves, acquired by practice in the back streets of the two towns when other people were in bed; for back they must go over that unspeakable journey with their pious mission unfulfilled. these humiliated outcasts had the frowsy and unbrushed and apologetic look of wet cats, and their eyes were glazed with drowsiness, their bodies were adroop from crown to sole, and all kind-hearted people refrained from asking them if they had been to bayreuth and failed to connect, as knowing they would lie. we reached here (bayreuth) about mid-afternoon of a rainy saturday. we were of the wise, and had secured lodgings and opera seats months in advance. i am not a musical critic, and did not come here to write essays about the operas and deliver judgment upon their merits. the little children of bayreuth could do that with a finer sympathy and a broader intelligence than i. i only care to bring four or five pilgrims to the operas, pilgrims able to appreciate them and enjoy them. what i write about the performance to put in my odd time would be offered to the public as merely a cat's view of a king, and not of didactic value. next day, which was sunday, we left for the opera-house-that is to say, the wagner temple--a little after the middle of the afternoon. the great building stands all by itself, grand and lonely, on a high ground outside the town. we were warned that if we arrived after four o'clock we should be obliged to pay two dollars and a half extra by way of fine. we saved that; and it may be remarked here that this is the only opportunity that europe offers of saving money. there was a big crowd in the grounds about the building, and the ladies' dresses took the sun with fine effect. i do not mean to intimate that the ladies were in full dress, for that was not so. the dresses were pretty, but neither sex was in evening dress. the interior of the building is simple--severely so; but there is no occasion for color and decoration, since the people sit in the dark. the auditorium has the shape of a keystone, with the stage at the narrow end. there is an aisle on each side, but no aisle in the body of the house. each row of seats extends in an unbroken curve from one side of the house to the other. there are seven entrance doors on each side of the theater and four at the butt, eighteen doors to admit and emit 1,650 persons. the number of the particular door by which you are to enter the house or leave it is printed on your ticket, and you can use no door but that one. thus, crowding and confusion are impossible. not so many as a hundred people use any one door. this is better than having the usual (and useless) elaborate fireproof arrangements. it is the model theater of the world. it can be emptied while the second hand of a watch makes its circuit. it would be entirely safe, even if it were built of lucifer matches. if your seat is near the center of a row and you enter late you must work your way along a rank of about twenty-five ladies and gentlemen to get to it. yet this causes no trouble, for everybody stands up until all the seats are full, and the filling is accomplished in a very few minutes. then all sit down, and you have a solid mass of fifteen hundred heads, making a steep cellar-door slant from the rear of the house down to the stage. all the lights were turned low, so low that the congregation sat in a deep and solemn gloom. the funereal rustling of dresses and the low buzz of conversation began to die swiftly down, and presently not the ghost of a sound was left. this profound and increasingly impressive stillness endured for some time--the best preparation for music, spectacle, or speech conceivable. i should think our show people would have invented or imported that simple and impressive device for securing and solidifying the attention of an audience long ago; instead of which there continue to this day to open a performance against a deadly competition in the form of noise, confusion, and a scattered interest. finally, out of darkness and distance and mystery soft rich notes rose upon the stillness, and from his grave the dead magician began to weave his spells about his disciples and steep their souls in his enchantments. there was something strangely impressive in the fancy which kept intruding itself that the composer was conscious in his grave of what was going on here, and that these divine souls were the clothing of thoughts which were at this moment passing through his brain, and not recognized and familiar ones which had issued from it at some former time. the entire overture, long as it was, was played to a dark house with the curtain down. it was exquisite; it was delicious. but straightway thereafter, or course, came the singing, and it does seem to me that nothing can make a wagner opera absolutely perfect and satisfactory to the untutored but to leave out the vocal parts. i wish i could see a wagner opera done in pantomime once. then one would have the lovely orchestration unvexed to listen to and bathe his spirit in, and the bewildering beautiful scenery to intoxicate his eyes with, and the dumb acting couldn't mar these pleasures, because there isn't often anything in the wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting; as a rule all you would see would be a couple of silent people, one of them standing still, the other catching flies. of course i do not really mean that he would be catching flies; i only mean that the usual operatic gestures which consist in reaching first one hand out into the air and then the other might suggest the sport i speak of if the operator attended strictly to business and uttered no sound. this present opera was "parsifal." madame wagner does not permit its representation anywhere but in bayreuth. the first act of the three occupied two hours, and i enjoyed that in spite of the singing. i trust that i know as well as anybody that singing is one of the most entrancing and bewitching and moving and eloquent of all the vehicles invented by man for the conveying of feeling; but it seems to me that the chief virtue in song is melody, air, tune, rhythm, or what you please to call it, and that when this feature is absent what remains is a picture with the color left out. i was not able to detect in the vocal parts of "parsifal" anything that might with confidence be called rhythm or tune or melody; one person performed at a time--and a long time, too-often in a noble, and always in a high-toned, voice; but he only pulled out long notes, then some short ones, then another long one, then a sharp, quick, peremptory bark or two--and so on and so on; and when he was done you saw that the information which he had conveyed had not compensated for the disturbance. not always, but pretty often. if two of them would but put in a duet occasionally and blend the voices; but no, they don't do that. the great master, who knew so well how to make a hundred instruments rejoice in unison and pour out their souls in mingled and melodious tides of delicious sound, deals only in barren solos when he puts in the vocal parts. it may be that he was deep, and only added the singing to his operas for the sake of the contrast it would make with the music. singing! it does seem the wrong name to apply to it. strictly described, it is a practicing of difficult and unpleasant intervals, mainly. an ignorant person gets tired of listening to gymnastic intervals in the long run, no matter how pleasant they may be. in "parsifal" there is a hermit named gurnemanz who stands on the stage in one spot and practices by the hour, while first one and then another character of the cast endures what he can of it and then retires to die. during the evening there was an intermission of threequarters of an hour after the first act and one an hour long after the second. in both instances the theater was totally emptied. people who had previously engaged tables in the one sole eating-house were able to put in their time very satisfactorily; the other thousand went hungry. the opera was concluded at ten in the evening or a little later. when we reached home we had been gone more than seven hours. seven hours at five dollars a ticket is almost too much for the money. while browsing about the front yard among the crowd between the acts i encountered twelve or fifteen friends from different parts of america, and those of them who were most familiar with wagner said that "parsifal" seldom pleased at first, but that after one had heard it several times it was almost sure to become a favorite. it seemed impossible, but it was true, for the statement came from people whose word was not to be doubted. and i gathered some further information. on the ground i found part of a german musical magazine, and in it a letter written by uhlic thirty-three years ago, in which he defends the scorned and abused wagner against people like me, who found fault with the comprehensive absence of what our kind regards as singing. uhlic says wagner despised "jene plapperude music," and therefore "runs, trills, and schnorkel are discarded by him." i don't know what a schnorkel is, but now that i know it has been left out of these operas i never have missed so much in my life. and uhlic further says that wagner's song is true: that it is "simply emphasized intoned speech." that certainly describes it --in "parsifal" and some of the operas; and if i understand uhlic's elaborate german he apologizes for the beautiful airs in "tannh:auser." very well; now that wagner and i understand each other, perhaps we shall get along better, and i shall stop calling waggner, on the american plan, and thereafter call him waggner as per german custom, for i feel entirely friendly now. the minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless puctilios and pronounce his name right! of course i came home wondering why people should come from all corners of america to hear these operas, when we have lately had a season or two of them in new york with these same singers in the several parts, and possibly this same orchestra. i resolved to think that out at all hazards. tuesday.--yesterday they played the only operatic favorite i have ever had--an opera which has always driven me mad with ignorant delight whenever i have heard it--"tannh:auser." i heard it first when i was a youth; i heard it last in the last german season in new york. i was busy yesterday and i did not intend to go, knowing i should have another "tannh:auser" opportunity in a few days; but after five o'clock i found myself free and walked out to the opera-house and arrived about the beginning of the second act. my opera ticket admitted me to the grounds in front, past the policeman and the chain, and i thought i would take a rest on a bench for an hour and two and wait for the third act. in a moment or so the first bugles blew, and the multitude began to crumble apart and melt into the theater. i will explain that this bugle-call is one of the pretty features here. you see, the theater is empty, and hundreds of the audience are a good way off in the feeding-house; the first bugle-call is blown about a quarter of an hour before time for the curtain to rise. this company of buglers, in uniform, march out with military step and send out over the landscape a few bars of the theme of the approaching act, piercing the distances with the gracious notes; then they march to the other entrance and repeat. presently they do this over again. yesterday only about two hundred people were still left in front of the house when the second call was blown; in another half-minute they would have been in the house, but then a thing happened which delayed them--the only solitary thing in this world which could be relied on with certainty to accomplish it, i suppose--an imperial princess appeared in the balcony above them. they stopped dead in their tracks and began to gaze in a stupor of gratitude and satisfaction. the lady presently saw that she must disappear or the doors would be closed upon these worshipers, so she returned to her box. this daughter-in-law of an emperor was pretty; she had a kind face; she was without airs; she is known to be full of common human sympathies. there are many kinds of princesses, but this kind is the most harmful of all, for wherever they go they reconcile people to monarchy and set back the clock of progress. the valuable princes, the desirable princes, are the czars and their sort. by their mere dumb presence in the world they cover with derision every argument that can be invented in favor of royalty by the most ingenious casuist. in his time the husband of this princess was valuable. he led a degraded life, he ended it with his own hand in circumstances and surroundings of a hideous sort, and was buried like a god. in the opera-house there is a long loft back of the audience, a kind of open gallery, in which princes are displayed. it is sacred to them; it is the holy of holies. as soon as the filling of the house is about complete the standing multitude turn and fix their eyes upon the princely layout and gaze mutely and longingly and adoringly and regretfully like sinners looking into heaven. they become rapt, unconscious, steeped in worship. there is no spectacle anywhere that is more pathetic than this. it is worth crossing many oceans to see. it is somehow not the same gaze that people rivet upon a victor hugo, or niagara, or the bones of the mastodon, or the guillotine of the revolution, or the great pyramid, or distant vesuvius smoking in the sky, or any man long celebrated to you by his genius and achievements, or thing long celebrated to you by the praises of books and pictures--no, that gaze is only the gaze of intense curiosity, interest, wonder, engaged in drinking delicious deep draughts that taste good all the way down and appease and satisfy the thirst of a lifetime. satisfy it--that is the word. hugo and the mastodon will still have a degree of intense interest thereafter when encountered, but never anything approaching the ecstasy of that first view. the interest of a prince is different. it may be envy, it may be worship, doubtless it is a mixture of both--and it does not satisfy its thirst with one view, or even noticeably diminish it. perhaps the essence of the thing is the value which men attach to a valuable something which has come by luck and not been earned. a dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to you than the ninety-and-nine which you had to work for, and money won at faro or in stocks snuggles into your heart in the same way. a prince picks up grandeur, power, and a permanent holiday and gratis support by a pure accident, the accident of birth, and he stands always before the grieved eye of poverty and obscurity a monumental representative of luck. and then--supremest value of all-his is the only high fortune on the earth which is secure. the commercial millionaire may become a beggar; the illustrious statesman can make a vital mistake and be dropped and forgotten; the illustrious general can lose a decisive battle and with it the consideration of men; but once a prince always a prince--that is to say, an imitation god, and neither hard fortune nor an infamous character nor an addled brain nor the speech of an ass can undeify him. by common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved. it follows without doubt or question, then, that the most desirable position possible is that of a prince. and i think it also follows that the so-called usurpations with which history is littered are the most excusable misdemeanors which men have committed. to usurp a usurpation--that is all it amounts to, isn't it? a prince is not to us what he is to a european, of course. we have not been taught to regard him as a god, and so one good look at him is likely to so nearly appease our curiosity as to make him an object of no greater interest the next time. we want a fresh one. but it is not so with the european. i am quite sure of it. the same old one will answer; he never stales. eighteen years ago i was in london and i called at an englishman's house on a bleak and foggy and dismal december afternoon to visit his wife and married daughter by appointment. i waited half an hour and then they arrived, frozen. they explained that they had been delayed by an unlooked-for circumstance: while passing in the neighborhood of marlborough house they saw a crowd gathering and were told that the prince of wales was about to drive out, so they stopped to get a sight of him. they had waited half an hour on the sidewalk, freezing with the crowd, but were disappointed at last--the prince had changed his mind. i said, with a good deal of surprise, "is it possible that you two have lived in london all your lives and have never seen the prince of wales?" apparently it was their turn to be surprised, for they exclaimed: "what an idea! why, we have seen him hundreds of times." they had seem him hundreds of times, yet they had waited half an hour in the gloom and the bitter cold, in the midst of a jam of patients from the same asylum, on the chance of seeing him again. it was a stupefying statement, but one is obliged to believe the english, even when they say a thing like that. i fumbled around for a remark, and got out this one: "i can't understand it at all. if i had never seen general grant i doubt if i would do that even to get a sight of him." with a slight emphasis on the last word. their blank faces showed that they wondered where the parallel came in. then they said, blankly: "of course not. he is only a president." it is doubtless a fact that a prince is a permanent interest, an interest not subject to deterioration. the general who was never defeated, the general who never held a council of war, the only general who ever commanded a connected battle-front twelve hundred miles long, the smith who welded together the broken parts of a great republic and re-established it where it is quite likely to outlast all the monarchies present and to come, was really a person of no serious consequence to these people. to them, with their training, my general was only a man, after all, while their prince was clearly much more than that--a being of a wholly unsimilar construction and constitution, and being of no more blood and kinship with men than are the serene eternal lights of the firmament with the poor dull tallow candles of commerce that sputter and die and leave nothing behind but a pinch of ashes and a stink. i saw the last act of "tannh:auser." i sat in the gloom and the deep stillness, waiting--one minute, two minutes, i do not know exactly how long--then the soft music of the hidden orchestra began to breathe its rich, long sighs out from under the distant stage, and by and by the drop-curtain parted in the middle and was drawn softly aside, disclosing the twilighted wood and a wayside shrine, with a white-robed girl praying and a man standing near. presently that noble chorus of men's voices was heard approaching, and from that moment until the closing of the curtain it was music, just music--music to make one drunk with pleasure, music to make one take scrip and staff and beg his way round the globe to hear it. to such as are intending to come here in the wagner season next year i wish to say, bring your dinner-pail with you. if you do, you will never cease to be thankful. if you do not, you will find it a hard fight to save yourself from famishing in bayreuth. bayreuth is merely a large village, and has no very large hotels or eating-houses. the principal inns are the golden anchor and the sun. at either of these places you can get an excellent meal--no, i mean you can go there and see other people get it. there is no charge for this. the town is littered with restaurants, but they are small and bad, and they are overdriven with custom. you must secure a table hours beforehand, and often when you arrive you will find somebody occupying it. we have had this experience. we have had a daily scramble for life; and when i say we, i include shoals of people. i have the impression that the only people who do not have to scramble are the veterans--the disciples who have been here before and know the ropes. i think they arrive about a week before the first opera, and engage all the tables for the season. my tribe had tried all kinds of places--some outside of the town, a mile or two--and have captured only nibblings and odds and ends, never in any instance a complete and satisfying meal. digestible? no, the reverse. these odds and ends are going to serve as souvenirs of bayreuth, and in that regard their value is not to be overestimated. photographs fade, bric-a-brac gets lost, busts of wagner get broken, but once you absorb a bayreuth-restaurant meal it is your possession and your property until the time comes to embalm the rest of you. some of these pilgrims here become, in effect, cabinets; cabinets of souvenirs of bayreuth. it is believed among scientists that you could examine the crop of a dead bayreuth pilgrim anywhere in the earth and tell where he came from. but i like this ballast. i think a "hermitage" scrap-up at eight in the evening, when all the famine-breeders have been there and laid in their mementoes and gone, is the quietest thing you can lay on your keelson except gravel. thursday.--they keep two teams of singers in stock for the chief roles, and one of these is composed of the most renowned artists in the world, with materna and alvary in the lead. i suppose a double team is necessary; doubtless a single team would die of exhaustion in a week, for all the plays last from four in the afternoon till ten at night. nearly all the labor falls upon the half-dozen head singers, and apparently they are required to furnish all the noise they can for the money. if they feel a soft, whispery, mysterious feeling they are required to open out and let the public know it. operas are given only on sundays, mondays, wednesdays, and thursdays, with three days of ostensible rest per week, and two teams to do the four operas; but the ostensible rest is devoted largely to rehearsing. it is said that the off days are devoted to rehearsing from some time in the morning till ten at night. are there two orchestras also? it is quite likely, since there are one hundred and ten names in the orchestra list. yesterday the opera was "tristan and isolde." i have seen all sorts of audiences--at theaters, operas, concerts, lectures, sermons, funerals--but none which was twin to the wagner audience of bayreuth for fixed and reverential attention. absolute attention and petrified retention to the end of an act of the attitude assumed at the beginning of it. you detect no movement in the solid mass of heads and shoulders. you seem to sit with the dead in the gloom of a tomb. you know that they are being stirred to their profoundest depths; that there are times when they want to rise and wave handkerchiefs and shout their approbation, and times when tears are running down their faces, and it would be a relief to free their pent emotions in sobs or screams; yet you hear not one utterance till the curtain swings together and the closing strains have slowly faded out and died; then the dead rise with one impulse and shake the building with their applause. every seat is full in the first act; there is not a vacant one in the last. if a man would be conspicuous, let him come here and retire from the house in the midst of an act. it would make him celebrated. this audience reminds me of nothing i have ever seen and of nothing i have read about except the city in the arabian tale where all the inhabitants have been turned to brass and the traveler finds them after centuries mute, motionless, and still retaining the attitudes which they last knew in life. here the wagner audience dress as they please, and sit in the dark and worship in silence. at the metropolitan in new york they sit in a glare, and wear their showiest harness; they hum airs, they squeak fans, they titter, and they gabble all the time. in some of the boxes the conversation and laughter are so loud as to divide the attention of the house with the stage. in large measure the metropolitan is a show-case for rich fashionables who are not trained in wagnerian music and have no reverence for it, but who like to promote art and show their clothes. can that be an agreeable atmosphere to persons in whom this music produces a sort of divine ecstasy and to whom its creator is a very deity, his stage a temple, the works of his brain and hands consecrated things, and the partaking of them with eye and ear a sacred solemnity? manifestly, no. then, perhaps the temporary expatriation, the tedious traversing of seas and continents, the pilgrimage to bayreuth stands explained. these devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion. it is only here that they can find it without fleck or blemish or any worldly pollution. in this remote village there are no sights to see, there is no newspaper to intrude the worries of the distant world, there is nothing going on, it is always sunday. the pilgrim wends to his temple out of town, sits out his moving service, returns to his bed with his heart and soul and his body exhausted by long hours of tremendous emotion, and he is in no fit condition to do anything but to lie torpid and slowly gather back life and strength for the next service. this opera of "tristan and isolde" last night broke the hearts of all witnesses who were of the faith, and i know of some who have heard of many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. i feel strongly out of place here. sometimes i feel like the sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes i feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, i feel like a heretic in heaven. but by no means do i ever overlook or minify the fact that this is one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. i have never seen anything like this before. i have never seen anything so great and fine and real as this devotion. friday.--yesterday's opera was "parsifal" again. the others went and they show marked advance in appreciation; but i went hunting for relics and reminders of the margravine wilhelmina, she of the imperishable "memoirs." i am properly grateful to her for her (unconscious) satire upon monarchy and nobility, and therefore nothing which her hand touched or her eye looked upon is indifferent to me. i am her pilgrim; the rest of this multitude here are wagner's. tuesday.--i have seen my last two operas; my season is ended, and we cross over into bohemia this afternoon. i was supposing that my musical regeneration was accomplished and perfected, because i enjoyed both of these operas, singing and all, and, moreover, one of them was "parsifal," but the experts have disenchanted me. they say: "singing! that wasn't singing; that was the wailing, screeching of third-rate obscurities, palmed off on us in the interest of economy." well, i ought to have recognized the sign--the old, sure sign that has never failed me in matters of art. whenever i enjoy anything in art it means that it is mighty poor. the private knowledge of this fact has saved me from going to pieces with enthusiasm in front of many and many a chromo. however, my base instinct does bring me profit sometimes; i was the only man out of thirty-two hundred who got his money back on those two operas. william dean howells is it true that the sun of a man's mentality touches noon at forty and then begins to wane toward setting? doctor osler is charged with saying so. maybe he said it, maybe he didn't; i don't know which it is. but if he said it, i can point him to a case which proves his rule. proves it by being an exception to it. to this place i nominate mr. howells. i read his venetian days about forty years ago. i compare it with his paper on machiavelli in a late number of harper, and i cannot find that his english has suffered any impairment. for forty years his english has been to me a continual delight and astonishment. in the sustained exhibition of certain great qualities--clearness, compression, verbal exactness, and unforced and seemingly unconscious felicity of phrasing--he is, in my belief, without his peer in the english-writing world. sustained. i entrench myself behind that protecting word. there are others who exhibit those great qualities as greatly as he does, but only by intervaled distributions of rich moonlight, with stretches of veiled and dimmer landscape between; whereas howells's moon sails cloudless skies all night and all the nights. in the matter of verbal exactness mr. howells has no superior, i suppose. he seems to be almost always able to find that elusive and shifty grain of gold, the right word. others have to put up with approximations, more or less frequently; he has better luck. to me, the others are miners working with the gold-pan--of necessity some of the gold washes over and escapes; whereas, in my fancy, he is quicksilver raiding down a riffle--no grain of the metal stands much chance of eluding him. a powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain; a close approximation to it will answer, and much traveling is done in a well-enough fashion by its help, but we do not welcome it and applaud it and rejoice in it as we do when the right one blazes out on us. whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt: it tingles exquisitely around through the walls of the mouth and tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that creams the sumac-berry. one has no time to examine the word and vote upon its rank and standing, the automatic recognition of its supremacy is so immediate. there is a plenty of acceptable literature which deals largely in approximations, but it may be likened to a fine landscape seen through the rain; the right word would dismiss the rain, then you would see it better. it doesn't rain when howells is at work. and where does he get the easy and effortless flow of his speech? and its cadenced and undulating rhythm? and its architectural felicities of construction, its graces of expression, its pemmican quality of compression, and all that? born to him, no doubt. all in shining good order in the beginning, all extraordinary; and all just as shining, just as extraordinary today, after forty years of diligent wear and tear and use. he passed his fortieth year long and long ago; but i think his english of today--his perfect english, i wish to say -can throw down the glove before his english of that antique time and not be afraid. i will got back to the paper on machiavelli now, and ask the reader to examine this passage from it which i append. i do not mean examine it in a bird's-eye way; i mean search it, study it. and, of course, read it aloud. i may be wrong, still it is my conviction that one cannot get out of finely wrought literature all that is in it by reading it mutely: mr. dyer is rather of the opinion, first luminously suggested by macaulay, that machiavelli was in earnest, but must not be judged as a political moralist of our time and race would be judged. he thinks that machiavelli was in earnest, as none but an idealist can be, and he is the first to imagine him an idealist immersed in realities, who involuntarily transmutes the events under his eye into something like the visionary issues of reverie. the machiavelli whom he depicts does not cease to be politically a republican and socially a just man because he holds up an atrocious despot like caesar borgia as a mirror for rulers. what machiavelli beheld round him in italy was a civic disorder in which there was oppression without statecraft, and revolt without patriotism. when a miscreant like borgia appeared upon the scene and reduced both tyrants and rebels to an apparent quiescence, he might very well seem to such a dreamer the savior of society whom a certain sort of dreamers are always looking for. machiavelli was no less honest when he honored the diabolical force than carlyle was when at different times he extolled the strong man who destroys liberty in creating order. but carlyle has only just ceased to be mistaken for a reformer, while it is still machiavelli's hard fate to be so trammeled in his material that his name stands for whatever is most malevolent and perfidious in human nature. you see how easy and flowing it is; how unvexed by ruggednesses, clumsinesses, broken meters; how simple and--so far as you or i can make out--unstudied; how clear, how limpid, how understandable, how unconfused by cross-currents, eddies, undertows; how seemingly unadorned, yet is all adornment, like the lily-of-the-valley; and how compressed, how compact, without a complacency-signal hung out anywhere to call attention to it. there are twenty-three lines in the quoted passage. after reading it several times aloud, one perceives that a good deal of matter is crowded into that small space. i think it is a model of compactness. when i take its materials apart and work them over and put them together in my way, i find i cannot crowd the result back into the same hole, there not being room enough. i find it a case of a woman packing a man's trunk: he can get the things out, but he can't ever get them back again. the proffered paragraph is a just and fair sample; the rest of the article is as compact as it is; there are no waste words. the sample is just in other ways: limpid, fluent, graceful, and rhythmical as it is, it holds no superiority in these respects over the rest of the essay. also, the choice phrasing noticeable in the sample is not lonely; there is a plenty of its kin distributed through the other paragraphs. this is claiming much when that kin must face the challenge of a phrase like the one in the middle sentence: "an idealist immersed in realities who involuntarily transmutes the events under his eye into something like the visionary issues of reverie." with a hundred words to do it with, the literary artisan could catch that airy thought and tie it down and reduce it to a concrete condition, visible, substantial, understandable and all right, like a cabbage; but the artist does it with twenty, and the result is a flower. the quoted phrase, like a thousand others that have come from the same source, has the quality of certain scraps of verse which take hold of us and stay in our memories, we do not understand why, at first: all the words being the right words, none of them is conspicuous, and so they all seem inconspicuous, therefore we wonder what it is about them that makes their message take hold. the mossy marbles rest on the lips that he has prest in their bloom, and the names he loved to hear have been carved for many a year on the tomb. it is like a dreamy strain of moving music, with no sharp notes in it. the words are all "right" words, and all the same size. we do not notice it at first. we get the effect, it goes straight home to us, but we do not know why. it is when the right words are conspicuous that they thunder: the glory that was greece and the grandeur that was rome! when i got back from howells old to howells young i find him arranging and clustering english words well, but not any better than now. he is not more felicitous in concreting abstractions now than he was in translating, then, the visions of the eyes of flesh into words that reproduced their forms and colors: in venetian streets they give the fallen snow no rest. it is at once shoveled into the canals by hundreds of half-naked facchini; and now in st. mark's place the music of innumerable shovels smote upon my ear; and i saw the shivering legion of poverty as it engaged the elements in a struggle for the possession of the piazza. but the snow continued to fall, and through the twilight of the descending flakes all this toil and encountered looked like that weary kind of effort in dreams, when the most determined industry seems only to renew the task. the lofty crest of the bell-tower was hidden in the folds of falling snow, and i could no longer see the golden angel upon its summit. but looked at across the piazza, the beautiful outline of st. mark's church was perfectly penciled in the air, and the shifting threads of the snowfall were woven into a spell of novel enchantment around the structure that always seemed to me too exquisite in its fantastic loveliness to be anything but the creation of magic. the tender snow had compassionated the beautiful edifice for all the wrongs of time, and so hid the stains and ugliness of decay that it looked as if just from the hand of the builder--or, better said, just from the brain of the architect. there was marvelous freshness in the colors of the mosaics in the great arches of the facade, and all that gracious harmony into which the temple rises, or marble scrolls and leafy exuberance airily supporting the statues of the saints, was a hundred times etherealized by the purity and whiteness of the drifting flakes. the snow lay lightly on the golden gloves that tremble like peacocks-crests above the vast domes, and plumed them with softest white; it robed the saints in ermine; and it danced over all its works, as if exulting in its beauty--beauty which filled me with subtle, selfish yearning to keep such evanescent loveliness for the little-while-longer of my whole life, and with despair to think that even the poor lifeless shadow of it could never be fairly reflected in picture or poem. through the wavering snowfall, the saint theodore upon one of the granite pillars of the piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is, and the winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so gentle and mild he looked by the tender light of the storm. the towers of the island churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness; the sailors in the rigging of the ships that lay in the basin wrought like phantoms among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque distance more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence, almost palpable, lay upon the mutest city in the world. the spirit of venice is there: of a city where age and decay, fagged with distributing damage and repulsiveness among the other cities of the planet in accordance with the policy and business of their profession, come for rest and play between seasons, and treat themselves to the luxury and relaxation of sinking the shop and inventing and squandering charms all about, instead of abolishing such as they find, as it their habit when not on vacation. in the working season they do business in boston sometimes, and a character in the undiscovered country takes accurate note of pathetic effects wrought by them upon the aspects of a street of once dignified and elegant homes whose occupants have moved away and left them a prey to neglect and gradual ruin and progressive degradation; a descent which reaches bottom at last, when the street becomes a roost for humble professionals of the faith-cure and fortune-telling sort. what a queer, melancholy house, what a queer, melancholy street! i don't think i was ever in a street before when quite so many professional ladies, with english surnames, preferred madam to mrs. on their door-plates. and the poor old place has such a desperately conscious air of going to the deuce. every house seems to wince as you go by, and button itself up to the chin for fear you should find out it had no shirt on--so to speak. i don't know what's the reason, but these material tokens of a social decay afflict me terribly; a tipsy woman isn't dreadfuler than a haggard old house, that's once been a home, in a street like this. mr. howells's pictures are not mere stiff, hard, accurate photographs; they are photographs with feeling in them, and sentiment, photographs taken in a dream, one might say. as concerns his humor, i will not try to say anything, yet i would try, if i had the words that might approximately reach up to its high place. i do not think any one else can play with humorous fancies so gracefully and delicately and deliciously as he does, nor has so many to play with, nor can come so near making them look as if they were doing the playing themselves and he was not aware that they were at it. for they are unobtrusive, and quiet in their ways, and well conducted. his is a humor which flows softly all around about and over and through the mesh of the page, pervasive, refreshing, health-giving, and makes no more show and no more noise than does the circulation of the blood. there is another thing which is contentingly noticeable in mr. howells's books. that is his "stage directions"--those artifices which authors employ to throw a kind of human naturalness around a scene and a conversation, and help the reader to see the one and get at meanings in the other which might not be perceived if entrusted unexplained to the bare words of the talk. some authors overdo the stage directions, they elaborate them quite beyond necessity; they spend so much time and take up so much room in telling us how a person said a thing and how he looked and acted when he said it that we get tired and vexed and wish he hadn't said it all. other authors' directions are brief enough, but it is seldom that the brevity contains either wit or information. writers of this school go in rags, in the matter of state directions; the majority of them having nothing in stock but a cigar, a laugh, a blush, and a bursting into tears. in their poverty they work these sorry things to the bone. they say: ". . . replied alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar." (this explains nothing; it only wastes space.) ". . . responded richard, with a laugh." (there was nothing to laugh about; there never is. the writer puts it in from habit--automatically; he is paying no attention to his work; or he would see that there is nothing to laugh at; often, when a remark is unusually and poignantly flat and silly, he tries to deceive the reader by enlarging the stage direction and making richard break into "frenzies of uncontrollable laughter." this makes the reader sad.) ". . . murmured gladys, blushing." (this poor old shop-worn blush is a tiresome thing. we get so we would rather gladys would fall out of the book and break her neck than do it again. she is always doing it, and usually irrelevantly. whenever it is her turn to murmur she hangs out her blush; it is the only thing she's got. in a little while we hate her, just as we do richard.) ". . . repeated evelyn, bursting into tears." (this kind keep a book damp all the time. they can't say a thing without crying. they cry so much about nothing that by and by when they have something to cry about they have gone dry; they sob, and fetch nothing; we are not moved. we are only glad.) they gavel me, these stale and overworked stage directions, these carbon films that got burnt out long ago and cannot now carry any faintest thread of light. it would be well if they could be relieved from duty and flung out in the literary back yard to rot and disappear along with the discarded and forgotten "steeds" and "halidomes" and similar stage-properties once so dear to our grandfathers. but i am friendly to mr. howells's stage directions; more friendly to them than to any one else's, i think. they are done with a competent and discriminating art, and are faithful to the requirements of a state direction's proper and lawful office, which is to inform. sometimes they convey a scene and its conditions so well that i believe i could see the scene and get the spirit and meaning of the accompanying dialogue if some one would read merely the stage directions to me and leave out the talk. for instance, a scene like this, from the undiscovered country: ". . . and she laid her arms with a beseeching gesture on her father's shoulder." ". . . she answered, following his gesture with a glance." ". . . she said, laughing nervously." ". . . she asked, turning swiftly upon him that strange, searching glance." ". . . she answered, vaguely." ". . . she reluctantly admitted." ". . . but her voice died wearily away, and she stood looking into his face with puzzled entreaty." mr. howells does not repeat his forms, and does not need to; he can invent fresh ones without limit. it is mainly the repetition over and over again, by the third-rates, of worn and commonplace and juiceless forms that makes their novels such a weariness and vexation to us, i think. we do not mind one or two deliveries of their wares, but as we turn the pages over and keep on meeting them we presently get tired of them and wish they would do other things for a change. ". . . replied alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar." ". . . responded richard, with a laugh." ". . . murmured gladys, blushing." ". . . repeated evelyn, bursting into tears." ". . . replied the earl, flipping the ash from his cigar." ". . . responded the undertaker, with a laugh." ". . . murmured the chambermaid, blushing." ". . . repeated the burglar, bursting into tears." ". . . replied the conductor, flipping the ash from his cigar." ". . . responded arkwright, with a laugh." ". . . murmured the chief of police, blushing." ". . . repeated the house-cat, bursting into tears." and so on and so on; till at last it ceases to excite. i always notice stage directions, because they fret me and keep me trying to get out of their way, just as the automobiles do. at first; then by and by they become monotonous and i get run over. mr. howells has done much work, and the spirit of it is as beautiful as the make of it. i have held him in admiration and affection so many years that i know by the number of those years that he is old now; but his heart isn't, nor his pen; and years do not count. let him have plenty of them; there is profit in them for us. ------------------------------------------------------------------english as she is taught in the appendix to croker's boswell's johnson one finds this anecdote: cato's soliloquy.--one day mrs. gastrel set a little girl to repeat to him [dr. samuel johnson] cato's soliloquy, which she went through very correctly. the doctor, after a pause, asked the child: "what was to bring cato to an end?" she said it was a knife. "no, my dear, it was not so." "my aunt polly said it was a knife." "why, aunt polly's knife may do, but it was a dagger, my dear." he then asked her the meaning of "bane and antidote," which she was unable to give. mrs. gastrel said: "you cannot expect so young a child to know the meaning of such words." he then said: "my dear, how many pence are there in sixpence?" "i cannot tell, sir," was the half-terrified reply. on this, addressing himself to mrs. gastrel, he said: "now, my dear lady, can anything be more ridiculous than to teach a child cato's soliloquy, who does not know how many pence there are in a sixpence?" in a lecture before the royal geographical society professor ravenstein quoted the following list of frantic questions, and said that they had been asked in an examination: mention all names of places in the world derived from julius caesar or augustus caesar. where are the following rivers: pisuerga, sakaria, guadalete, jalon, mulde? all you know of the following: machacha, pilmo, schebulos, crivoscia, basces, mancikert, taxhem, citeaux, meloria, zutphen. the highest peaks of the karakorum range. the number of universities in prussia. why are the tops of mountains continually covered with snow [sic]? name the length and breadth of the streams of lava which issued from the skaptar jokul in the eruption of 1783. that list would oversize nearly anybody's geographical knowledge. isn't it reasonably possible that in our schools many of the questions in all studies are several miles ahead of where the pupil is?--that he is set to struggle with things that are ludicrously beyond his present reach, hopelessly beyond his present strength? this remark in passing, and by way of text; now i come to what i was going to say. i have just now fallen upon a darling literary curiosity. it is a little book, a manuscript compilation, and the compiler sent it to me with the request that i say whether i think it ought to be published or not. i said, yes; but as i slowly grow wise i briskly grow cautious; and so, now that the publication is imminent, it has seemed to me that i should feel more comfortable if i could divide up this responsibility with the public by adding them to the court. therefore i will print some extracts from the book, in the hope that they may make converts to my judgment that the volume has merit which entitles it to publication. as to its character. every one has sampled "english as she is spoke" and "english as she is wrote"; this little volume furnishes us an instructive array of examples of "english as she is taught"--in the public schools of--well, this country. the collection is made by a teacher in those schools, and all the examples in it are genuine; none of them have been tampered with, or doctored in any way. from time to time, during several years, whenever a pupil has delivered himself of anything peculiarly quaint or toothsome in the course of his recitations, this teacher and her associates have privately set that thing down in a memorandum-book; strictly following the original, as to grammar, construction, spelling, and all; and the result is this literary curiosity. the contents of the book consist mainly of answers given by the boys and girls to questions, said answers being given sometimes verbally, sometimes in writing. the subjects touched upon are fifteen in number: i. etymology; ii. grammar; iii. mathematics; iv. geography; v. "original"; vi. analysis; vii. history; viii. "intellectual"; ix. philosophy; x. physiology; xi. astronomy; xii. politics; xiii. music; xiv. oratory; xv. metaphysics. you perceive that the poor little young idea has taken a shot at a good many kinds of game in the course of the book. now as to results. here are some quaint definitions of words. it will be noticed that in all of these instances the sound of the word, or the look of it on paper, has misled the child: aborigines, a system of mountains. alias, a good man in the bible. amenable, anything that is mean. ammonia, the food of the gods. assiduity, state of being an acid. auriferous, pertaining to an orifice. capillary, a little caterpillar. corniferous, rocks in which fossil corn is found. emolument, a headstone to a grave. equestrian, one who asks questions. eucharist, one who plays euchre. franchise, anything belonging to the french. idolater, a very idle person. ipecac, a man who likes a good dinner. irrigate, to make fun of. mendacious, what can be mended. mercenary, one who feels for another. parasite, a kind of umbrella. parasite, the murder of an infant. publican, a man who does his prayers in public. tenacious, ten acres of land. here is one where the phrase "publicans and sinners" has got mixed up in the child's mind with politics, and the result is a definition which takes one in a sudden and unexpected way: republican, a sinner mentioned in the bible. also in democratic newspapers now and then. here are two where the mistake has resulted from sound assisted by remote fact: plagiarist, a writer of plays. demagogue, a vessel containing beer and other liquids. i cannot quite make out what it was that misled the pupil in the following instances; it would not seem to have been the sound of the word, nor the look of it in print: asphyxia, a grumbling, fussy temper. quarternions, a bird with a flat beak and no bill, living in new zealand. quarternions, the name given to a style of art practiced by the phoenicians. quarternions, a religious convention held every hundred years. sibilant, the state of being idiotic. crosier, a staff carried by the deity. in the following sentences the pupil's ear has been deceiving him again: the marriage was illegible. he was totally dismasted with the whole performance. he enjoys riding on a philosopher. she was very quick at repertoire. he prayed for the waters to subsidize. the leopard is watching his sheep. they had a strawberry vestibule. here is one which--well, now, how often we do slam right into the truth without ever suspecting it: the men employed by the gas company go around and speculate the meter. indeed they do, dear; and when you grow up, many and many's the time you will notice it in the gas bill. in the following sentences the little people have some information to convey, every time; but in my case they fail to connect: the light always went out on the keystone word: the coercion of some things is remarkable; as bread and molasses. her hat is contiguous because she wears it on one side. he preached to an egregious congregation. the captain eliminated a bullet through the man's heart. you should take caution and be precarious. the supercilious girl acted with vicissitude when the perennial time came. the last is a curiously plausible sentence; one seems to know what it means, and yet he knows all the time that he doesn't. here is an odd (but entirely proper) use of a word, and a most sudden descent from a lofty philosophical altitude to a very practical and homely illustration: we should endeavor to avoid extremes--like those of wasps and bees. and here--with "zoological" and "geological" in his mind, but not ready to his tongue--the small scholar has innocently gone and let out a couple of secrets which ought never to have been divulged in any circumstances: there are a good many donkeys in theological gardens. some of the best fossils are found in theological gardens. under the head of "grammar" the little scholars furnish the following information: gender is the distinguishing nouns without regard to sex. a verb is something to eat. adverbs should always be used as adjectives and adjectives as adverbs. every sentence and name of god must begin with a caterpillar. "caterpillar" is well enough, but capital letter would have been stricter. the following is a brave attempt at a solution, but it failed to liquify: when they are going to say some prose or poetry before they say the poetry or prose they must put a semicolon just after the introduction of the prose or poetry. the chapter on "mathematics" is full of fruit. from it i take a few samples--mainly in an unripe state: a straight line is any distance between two places. parallel lines are lines that can never meet until they run together. a circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle. things which are equal to each other are equal to anything else. to find the number of square feet in a room you multiply the room by the number of the feet. the product is the result. right you are. in the matter of geography this little book is unspeakably rich. the questions do not appear to have applied the microscope to the subject, as did those quoted by professor ravenstein; still, they proved plenty difficult enough without that. these pupils did not hunt with a microscope, they hunted with a shot-gun; this is shown by the crippled condition of the game they brought in: america is divided into the passiffic slope and the mississippi valey. north america is separated by spain. america consists from north to south about five hundred miles. the united states is quite a small country compared with some other countrys, but it about as industrious. the capital of the united states is long island. the five seaports of the u.s. are newfunlan and sanfrancisco. the principal products of the u.s. is earthquakes and volcanoes. the alaginnies are mountains in philadelphia. the rocky mountains are on the western side of philadelphia. cape hateras is a vast body of water surrounded by land and flowing into the gulf of mexico. mason and dixon's line is the equator. one of the leading industries of the united states is mollasses, book-covers, numbers, gas, teaching, lumber, manufacturers, paper-making, publishers, coal. in austria the principal occupation is gathering austrich feathers. gibraltar is an island built on a rock. russia is very cold and tyrannical. sicily is one of the sandwich islands. hindoostan flows through the ganges and empties into the mediterranean sea. ireland is called the emigrant isle because it is so beautiful and green. the width of the different zones europe lies in depend upon the surrounding country. the imports of a country are the things that are paid for, the exports are the things that are not. climate lasts all the time and weather only a few days. the two most famous volcanoes of europe are sodom and gomorrah. the chapter headed "analysis" shows us that the pupils in our public schools are not merely loaded up with those showy facts about geography, mathematics, and so on, and left in that incomplete state; no, there's machinery for clarifying and expanding their minds. they are required to take poems and analyze them, dig out their common sense, reduce them to statistics, and reproduce them in a luminous prose translation which shall tell you at a glance what the poet was trying to get at. one sample will do. here is a stanza from "the lady of the lake," followed by the pupil's impressive explanation of it: alone, but with unbated zeal, the horseman plied with scourge and steel; for jaded now and spent with toil, embossed with foam and dark with soil, while every gasp with sobs he drew, the laboring stag strained full in view. the man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made of steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with weariness, while every breath for labor he drew with cries full or sorrow, the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight. i see, now, that i never understood that poem before. i have had glimpses of its meaning, it moments when i was not as ignorant with weariness as usual, but this is the first time the whole spacious idea of it ever filtered in sight. if i were a public-school pupil i would put those other studies aside and stick to analysis; for, after all, it is the thing to spread your mind. we come now to historical matters, historical remains, one might say. as one turns the pages he is impressed with the depth to which one date has been driven into the american child's head --1492. the date is there, and it is there to stay. and it is always at hand, always deliverable at a moment's notice. but the fact that belongs with it? that is quite another matter. only the date itself is familiar and sure: its vast fact has failed of lodgment. it would appear that whenever you ask a publicschool pupil when a thing--anything, no matter what--happened, and he is in doubt, he always rips out his 1492. he applies it to everything, from the landing of the ark to the introduction of the horse-car. well, after all, it is our first date, and so it is right enough to honor it, and pay the public schools to teach our children to honor it: george washington was born in 1492. washington wrote the declaration of independence in 1492. st. bartholemew was massacred in 1492. the brittains were the saxons who entered england in 1492 under julius caesar. the earth is 1492 miles in circumference. to proceed with "history" christopher columbus was called the father of his country. queen isabella of spain sold her watch and chain and other millinery so that columbus could discover america. the indian wars were very desecrating to the country. the indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then scalping them. captain john smith has been styled the father of his country. his life was saved by his daughter pochahantas. the puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of america. the stamp act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should be null and void. washington died in spain almost broken-hearted. his remains were taken to the cathedral in havana. gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas. john brown was a very good insane man who tried to get fugitives slaves into virginia. he captured all the inhabitants, but was finally conquered and condemned to his death. the confederasy was formed by the fugitive slaves. alfred the great reigned 872 years. he was distinguished for letting some buckwheat cakes burn, and the lady scolded him. henry eight was famous for being a great widower haveing lost several wives. lady jane grey studied greek and latin and was beheaded after a few days. john bright is noted for an incurable disease. lord james gordon bennet instigated the gordon riots. the middle ages come in between antiquity and posterity. luther introduced christianity into england a good many thousand years ago. his birthday was november 1883. he was once a pope. he lived at the time of the rebellion of worms. julius caesar is noted for his famous telegram dispatch i came i saw i conquered. julius caesar was really a very great man. he was a very great soldier and wrote a book for beginners in the latin. cleopatra was caused by the death of an asp which she dissolved in a wine cup. the only form of government in greece was a limited monkey. the persian war lasted about 500 years. greece had only 7 wise men. socrates . . . destroyed some statues and had to drink shamrock. here is a fact correctly stated; and yet it is phrased with such ingenious infelicity that it can be depended upon to convey misinformation every time it is uncarefully unread: by the salic law no woman or descendant of a woman could occupy the throne. to show how far a child can travel in history with judicious and diligent boosting in the public school, we select the following mosaic: abraham lincoln was born in wales in 1599. in the chapter headed "intellectual" i find a great number of most interesting statements. a sample or two may be found not amiss: bracebridge hall was written by henry irving. show bound was written by peter cooper. the house of the seven gables was written by lord bryant. edgar a. poe was a very curdling writer. cotton mather was a writer who invented the cotten gin and wrote histories. beowulf wrote the scriptures. ben johnson survived shakspeare in some respects. in the canterbury tale it gives account of king alfred on his way to the shrine of thomas bucket. chaucer was the father of english pottery. chaucer was a bland verse writer of the third century. chaucer was succeeded by h. wads. longfellow an american writer. his writings were chiefly prose and nearly one hundred years elapsed. shakspere translated the scriptures and it was called st. james because he did it. in the middle of the chapter i find many pages of information concerning shakespeare's plays, milton's works, and those of bacon, addison, samuel johnson, fielding, richardson, sterne, smollett, de foe, locke, pope, swift, goldsmith, burns, cowper, wordsworth, gibbon, byron, coleridge, hood, scott, macaulay, george eliot, dickens, bulwer, thackeray, browning, mrs. browning, tennyson, and disraeli--a fact which shows that into the restricted stomach of the public-school pupil is shoveled every year the blood, bone, and viscera of a gigantic literature, and the same is there digested and disposed of in a most successful and characteristic and gratifying public-school way. i have space for but a trifling few of the results: lord byron was the son of an heiress and a drunken man. wm. wordsworth wrote the barefoot boy and imitations on immortality. gibbon wrote a history of his travels in italy. this was original. george eliot left a wife and children who mourned greatly for his genius. george eliot miss mary evans mrs. cross mrs. lewis was the greatest female poet unless george sands is made an exception of. bulwell is considered a good writer. sir walter scott charles bronte alfred the great and johnson were the first great novelists. thomas babington makorlay graduated at harvard and then studied law, he was raised to the peerage as baron in 1557 and died in 1776. here are two or three miscellaneous facts that may be of value, if taken in moderation: homer's writings are homer's essays virgil the aenid and paradise lost some people say that these poems were not written by homer but by another man of the same name. a sort of sadness kind of shone in bryant's poems. holmes is a very profligate and amusing writer. when the public-school pupil wrestles with the political features of the great republic, they throw him sometimes: a bill becomes a law when the president vetoes it. the three departments of the government is the president rules the world, the governor rules the state, the mayor rules the city. the first conscientious congress met in philadelphia. the constitution of the united states was established to ensure domestic hostility. truth crushed to earth will rise again. as follows: the constitution of the united states is that part of the book at the end which nobody reads. and here she rises once more and untimely. there should be a limit to public-school instruction; it cannot be wise or well to let the young find out everything: congress is divided into civilized half civilized and savage. here are some results of study in music and oratory: an interval in music is the distance on the keyboard from one piano to the next. a rest means you are not to sing it. emphasis is putting more distress on one word than another. the chapter on "physiology" contains much that ought not to be lost to science: physillogigy is to study about your bones stummick and vertebry. occupations which are injurious to health are cabolic acid gas which is impure blood. we have an upper and lower skin. the lower skin moves all the time and the upper skin moves when we do. the body is mostly composed of water and about one half is avaricious tissue. the stomach is a small pear-shaped bone situated in the body. the gastric juice keeps the bones from creaking. the chyle flows up the middle of the backbone and reaches the heart where it meets the oxygen and is purified. the salivary glands are used to salivate the body. in the stomach starch is changed to cane sugar and cane sugar to sugar cane. the olfactory nerve enters the cavity of the orbit and is developed into the special sense of hearing. the growth of a tooth begins in the back of the mouth and extends to the stomach. if we were on a railroad track and a train was coming the train would deafen our ears so that we couldn't see to get off the track. if, up to this point, none of my quotations have added flavor to the johnsonian anecdote at the head of this article, let us make another attempt: the theory that intuitive truths are discovered by the light of nature originated from st. john's interpretation of a passage in the gospel of plato. the weight of the earth is found by comparing a mass of known lead with that of a mass of unknown lead. to find the weight of the earth take the length of a degree on a meridian and multiply by 6 1/2 pounds. the spheres are to each other as the squares of their homologous sides. a body will go just as far in the first second as the body will go plus the force of gravity and that's equal to twice what the body will go. specific gravity is the weight to be compared weight of an equal volume of or that is the weight of a body compared with the weight of an equal volume. the law of fluid pressure divide the different forms of organized bodies by the form of attraction and the number increased will be the form. inertia is that property of bodies by virtue of which it cannot change its own condition of rest or motion. in other words it is the negative quality of passiveness either in recoverable latency or insipient latescence. if a laugh is fair here, not the struggling child, nor the unintelligent teacher--or rather the unintelligent boards, committees, and trustees--are the proper target for it. all through this little book one detects the signs of a certain probable fact--that a large part of the pupil's "instruction" consists in cramming him with obscure and wordy "rules" which he does not understand and has no time to understand. it would be as useful to cram him with brickbats; they would at least stay. in a town in the interior of new york, a few years ago, a gentleman set forth a mathematical problem and proposed to give a prize to every public-school pupil who should furnish the correct solution of it. twenty-two of the brightest boys in the public schools entered the contest. the problem was not a very difficult one for pupils of their mathematical rank and standing, yet they all failed--by a hair--through one trifling mistake or another. some searching questions were asked, when it turned out that these lads were as glib as parrots with the "rules," but could not reason out a single rule or explain the principle underlying it. their memories had been stocked, but not their understandings. it was a case of brickbat culture, pure and simple. there are several curious "compositions" in the little book, and we must make room for one. it is full of naivete, brutal truth, and unembarrassed directness, and is the funniest (genuine) boy's composition i think i have ever seen: on girls girls are very stuck up and dignefied in their maner and be have your. they think more of dress than anything and like to play with dowls and rags. they cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of guns. they stay at home all the time and go to church on sunday. they are al-ways sick. they are always funy and making fun of boy's hands and they say how dirty. they cant play marbels. i pity them poor things. they make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. i dont beleave they ever kiled a cat or anything. they look out every nite and say oh ant the moon lovely. thir is one thing i have not told and that is they al-ways now their lessons bettern boys. from mr. edward channing's recent article in science: the marked difference between the books now being produced by french, english, and american travelers, on the one hand, and german explorers, on the other, is too great to escape attention. that difference is due entirely to the fact that in school and university the german is taught, in the first place to see, and in the second place to understand what he does see. -----------------------------------------------------------------a simplified alphabet (this article, written during the autumn of 1899, was about the last writing done by mark twain on any impersonal subject.) i have had a kindly feeling, a friendly feeling, a cousinly feeling toward simplified spelling, from the beginning of the movement three years ago, but nothing more inflamed than that. it seemed to me to merely propose to substitute one inadequacy for another; a sort of patching and plugging poor old dental relics with cement and gold and porcelain paste; what was really needed was a new set of teeth. that is to say, a new alphabet. the heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. it doesn't know how to spell, and can't be taught. in this it is like all other alphabets except one--the phonographic. this is the only competent alphabet in the world. it can spell and correctly pronounce any word in our language. that admirable alphabet, that brilliant alphabet, that inspired alphabet, can be learned in an hour or two. in a week the student can learn to write it with some little facility, and to read it with considerable ease. i know, for i saw it tried in a public school in nevada forty-five years ago, and was so impressed by the incident that it has remained in my memory ever since. i wish we could adopt it in place of our present written (and printed) character. i mean simply the alphabet; simply the consonants and the vowels--i don't mean any reductions or abbreviations of them, such as the shorthand writer uses in order to get compression and speed. no, i would spell every word out. i will insert the alphabet here as i find it in burnz's phonic shorthand. [figure 1] it is arranged on the basis of isaac pitman's phonography. isaac pitman was the originator and father of scientific phonography. it is used throughout the globe. it was a memorable invention. he made it public seventythree years ago. the firm of isaac pitman & sons, new york, still exists, and they continue the master's work. what should we gain? first of all, we could spell definitely--and correctly--any word you please, just by the sound of it. we can't do that with our present alphabet. for instance, take a simple, every-day word phthisis. if we tried to spell it by the sound of it, we should make it tysis, and be laughed at by every educated person. secondly, we should gain in reduction of labor in writing. simplified spelling makes valuable reductions in the case of several hundred words, but the new spelling must be learned. you can't spell them by the sound; you must get them out of the book. but even if we knew the simplified form for every word in the language, the phonographic alphabet would still beat the simplified speller "hands down" in the important matter of economy of labor. i will illustrate: present form: through, laugh, highland. simplified form: thru, laff, hyland. phonographic form: [figure 2] to write the word "through," the pen has to make twenty-one strokes. to write the word "thru," then pen has to make twelve strokes-a good saving. to write that same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only three strokes. to write the word "laugh," the pen has to make fourteen strokes. to write "laff," the pen has to make the same number of strokes--no labor is saved to the penman. to write the same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only three strokes. to write the word "highland," the pen has to make twenty-two strokes. to write "hyland," the pen has to make eighteen strokes. to write that word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only five strokes. [figure 3] to write the words "phonographic alphabet," the pen has to make fifty-three strokes. to write "fonografic alfabet," the pen has to make fifty strokes. to the penman, the saving in labor is insignificant. to write that word (with vowels) with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only seventeen strokes. without the vowels, only thirteen strokes. [figure 4] the vowels are hardly necessary, this time. we make five pen-strokes in writing an m. thus: [figure 5] a stroke down; a stroke up; a second stroke down; a second stroke up; a final stroke down. total, five. the phonographic alphabet accomplishes the m with a single stroke--a curve, like a parenthesis that has come home drunk and has fallen face down right at the front door where everybody that goes along will see him and say, alas! when our written m is not the end of a word, but is otherwise located, it has to be connected with the next letter, and that requires another pen-stroke, making six in all, before you get rid of that m. but never mind about the connecting strokes--let them go. without counting them, the twenty-six letters of our alphabet consumed about eighty pen-strokes for their construction--about three pen-strokes per letter. it is three times the number required by the phonographic alphabet. it requires but one stroke for each letter. my writing-gait is--well, i don't know what it is, but i will time myself and see. result: it is twenty-four words per minute. i don't mean composing; i mean copying. there isn't any definite composing-gait. very well, my copying-gait is 1,440 words per hour--say 1,500. if i could use the phonographic character with facility i could do the 1,500 in twenty minutes. i could do nine hours' copying in three hours; i could do three years' copying in one year. also, if i had a typewriting machine with the phonographic alphabet on it--oh, the miracles i could do! i am not pretending to write that character well. i have never had a lesson, and i am copying the letters from the book. but i can accomplish my desire, at any rate, which is, to make the reader get a good and clear idea of the advantage it would be to us if we could discard our present alphabet and put this better one in its place--using it in books, newspapers, with the typewriter, and with the pen. [figure 6] --man dog horse. i think it is graceful and would look comely in print. and consider--once more, i beg--what a labor-saver it is! ten pen-strokes with the one system to convey those three words above, and thirty-three by the other! [figure 6] i mean, in some ways, not in all. i suppose i might go so far as to say in most ways, and be within the facts, but never mind; let it go at some. one of the ways in which it exercises this birthright is--as i think--continuing to use our laughable alphabet these seventy-three years while there was a rational one at hand, to be had for the taking. it has taken five hundred years to simplify some of chaucer's rotten spelling--if i may be allowed to use to frank a term as that--and it will take five hundred years more to get our exasperating new simplified corruptions accepted and running smoothly. and we sha'n't be any better off then than we are now; for in that day we shall still have the privilege the simplifiers are exercising now: anybody can change the spelling that wants to. but you can't change the phonographic spelling; there isn't any way. it will always follow the sound. if you want to change the spelling, you have to change the sound first. mind, i myself am a simplified speller; i belong to that unhappy guild that is patiently and hopefully trying to reform our drunken old alphabet by reducing his whiskey. well, it will improve him. when they get through and have reformed him all they can by their system he will be only half drunk. above that condition their system can never lift him. there is no competent, and lasting, and real reform for him but to take away his whiskey entirely, and fill up his jug with pitman's wholesome and undiseased alphabet. one great drawback to simplified spelling is, that in print a simplified word looks so like the very nation! and when you bunch a whole squadron of the simplified together the spectacle is very nearly unendurable. the da ma ov koars kum when the publik ma be expektd to get rekonsyled to the bezair asspekt of the simplified kombynashuns, but--if i may be allowed the expression--is it worth the wasted time? [figure 7] to see our letters put together in ways to which we are not accustomed offends the eye, and also takes the expression out of the words. la on, makduf, and damd be he hoo furst krys hold, enuf! it doesn't thrill you as it used to do. the simplifications have sucked the thrill all out of it. but a written character with which we are not acquainted does not offend us--greek, hebrew, russian, arabic, and the others--they have an interesting look, and we see beauty in them, too. and this is true of hieroglyphics, as well. there is something pleasant and engaging about the mathematical signs when we do not understand them. the mystery hidden in these things has a fascination for us: we can't come across a printed page of shorthand without being impressed by it and wishing we could read it. very well, what i am offering for acceptance and adopting is not shorthand, but longhand, written with the shorthand alphabet unreached. you can write three times as many words in a minute with it as you can write with our alphabet. and so, in a way, it is properly a shorthand. it has a pleasant look, too; a beguiling look, an inviting look. i will write something in it, in my rude and untaught way: [figure 8] even when _i_ do it it comes out prettier than it does in simplified spelling. yes, and in the simplified it costs one hundred and twenty-three pen-strokes to write it, whereas in the phonographic it costs only twenty-nine. [figure 9] is probably [figure 10]. let us hope so, anyway. as concerns interpreting the deity i this line of hieroglyphics was for fourteen years the despair of all the scholars who labored over the mysteries of the rosetta stone: [figure 1] after five years of study champollion translated it thus: therefore let the worship of epiphanes be maintained in all the temples, this upon pain of death. that was the twenty-forth translation that had been furnished by scholars. for a time it stood. but only for a time. then doubts began to assail it and undermine it, and the scholars resumed their labors. three years of patient work produced eleven new translations; among them, this, by gr:unfeldt, was received with considerable favor: the horse of epiphanes shall be maintained at the public expense; this upon pain of death. but the following rendering, by gospodin, was received by the learned world with yet greater favor: the priest shall explain the wisdom of epiphanes to all these people, and these shall listen with reverence, upon pain of death. seven years followed, in which twenty-one fresh and widely varying renderings were scored--none of them quite convincing. but now, at last, came rawlinson, the youngest of all the scholars, with a translation which was immediately and universally recognized as being the correct version, and his name became famous in a day. so famous, indeed, that even the children were familiar with it; and such a noise did the achievement itself make that not even the noise of the monumental political event of that same year--the flight from elba--was able to smother it to silence. rawlinson's version reads as follows: therefore, walk not away from the wisdom of epiphanes, but turn and follow it; so shall it conduct thee to the temple's peace, and soften for thee the sorrows of life and the pains of death. here is another difficult text: [figure 2] it is demotic--a style of egyptian writing and a phase of the language which has perished from the knowledge of all men twenty-five hundred years before the christian era. our red indians have left many records, in the form of pictures, upon our crags and boulders. it has taken our most gifted and painstaking students two centuries to get at the meanings hidden in these pictures; yet there are still two little lines of hieroglyphics among the figures grouped upon the dighton rocks which they have not succeeds in interpreting to their satisfaction. these: [figure 3] the suggested solutions are practically innumerable; they would fill a book. thus we have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only when we set out to discover the secret of god that our difficulties disappear. it was always so. in antique roman times it was the custom of the deity to try to conceal his intentions in the entrails of birds, and this was patiently and hopefully continued century after century, although the attempted concealment never succeeded, in a single recorded instance. the augurs could read entrails as easily as a modern child can read coarse print. roman history is full of the marvels of interpretation which these extraordinary men performed. these strange and wonderful achievements move our awe and compel our admiration. those men could pierce to the marrow of a mystery instantly. if the rosetta-stone idea had been introduced it would have defeated them, but entrails had no embarrassments for them. entrails have gone out, now--entrails and dreams. it was at last found out that as hiding-places for the divine intentions they were inadequate. a part of the wall of valletri in former times been struck with thunder, the response of the soothsayers was, that a native of that town would some time or other arrive at supreme power.-bohn's suetonius, p. 138. "some time or other." it looks indefinite, but no matter, it happened, all the same; one needed only to wait, and be patient, and keep watch, then he would find out that the thunderstroke had caesar augustus in mind, and had come to give notice. there were other advance-advertisements. one of them appeared just before caesar augustus was born, and was most poetic and touching and romantic in its feelings and aspects. it was a dream. it was dreamed by caesar augustus's mother, and interpreted at the usual rates: atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her bowels stretched to the stars and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven and earth.--suetonius, p. 139. that was in the augur's line, and furnished him no difficulties, but it would have taken rawlinson and champollion fourteen years to make sure of what it meant, because they would have been surprised and dizzy. it would have been too late to be valuable, then, and the bill for service would have been barred by the statute of limitation. in those old roman days a gentleman's education was not complete until he had taken a theological course at the seminary and learned how to translate entrails. caesar augustus's education received this final polish. all through his life, whenever he had poultry on the menu he saved the interiors and kept himself informed of the deity's plans by exercising upon those interiors the arts of augury. in his first consulship, while he was observing the auguries, twelve vultures presented themselves, as they had done to romulus. and when he offered sacrifice, the livers of all the victims were folded inward in the lower part; a circumstance which was regarded by those present who had skill in things of that nature, as an indubitable prognostic of great and wonderful fortune.--suetonius, p. 141. "indubitable" is a strong word, but no doubt it was justified, if the livers were really turned that way. in those days chicken livers were strangely and delicately sensitive to coming events, no matter how far off they might be; and they could never keep still, but would curl and squirm like that, particularly when vultures came and showed interest in that approaching great event and in breakfast. ii we may now skip eleven hundred and thirty or forty years, which brings us down to enlightened christian times and the troubled days of king stephen of england. the augur has had his day and has been long ago forgotten; the priest had fallen heir to his trade. king henry is dead; stephen, that bold and outrageous person, comes flying over from normandy to steal the throne from henry's daughter. he accomplished his crime, and henry of huntington, a priest of high degree, mourns over it in his chronicle. the archbishop of canterbury consecrated stephen: "wherefore the lord visited the archbishop with the same judgment which he had inflicted upon him who struck jeremiah the great priest: he died with a year." stephen's was the greater offense, but stephen could wait; not so the archbishop, apparently. the kingdom was a prey to intestine wars; slaughter, fire, and rapine spread ruin throughout the land; cries of distress, horror, and woe rose in every quarter. that was the result of stephen's crime. these unspeakable conditions continued during nineteen years. then stephen died as comfortably as any man ever did, and was honorably buried. it makes one pity the poor archbishop, and with that he, too, could have been let off as leniently. how did henry of huntington know that the archbishop was sent to his grave by judgment of god for consecrating stephen? he does not explain. neither does he explain why stephen was awarded a pleasanter death than he was entitled to, while the aged king henry, his predecessor, who had ruled england thirty-five years to the people's strongly worded satisfaction, was condemned to close his life in circumstances most distinctly unpleasant, inconvenient, and disagreeable. his was probably the most uninspiring funeral that is set down in history. there is not a detail about it that is attractive. it seems to have been just the funeral for stephen, and even at this far-distant day it is matter of just regret that by an indiscretion the wrong man got it. whenever god punishes a man, henry of huntington knows why it was done, and tells us; and his pen is eloquent with admiration; but when a man has earned punishment, and escapes, he does not explain. he is evidently puzzled, but he does not say anything. i think it is often apparent that he is pained by these discrepancies, but loyally tries his best not to show it. when he cannot praise, he delivers himself of a silence so marked that a suspicious person could mistake it for suppressed criticism. however, he has plenty of opportunities to feel contented with the way things go--his book is full of them. king david of scotland . . . under color of religion caused his followers to deal most barbarously with the english. they ripped open women, tossed children on the points of spears, butchered priests at the altars, and, cutting off the heads from the images on crucifixes, placed them on the bodies of the slain, while in exchange they fixed on the crucifixes the heads of their victims. wherever the scots came, there was the same scene of horror and cruelty: women shrieking, old men lamenting, amid the groans of the dying and the despair of the living. but the english got the victory. then the chief of the men of lothian fell, pierced by an arrow, and all his followers were put to flight. for the almighty was offended at them and their strength was rent like a cobweb. offended at them for what? for committing those fearful butcheries? no, for that was the common custom on both sides, and not open to criticism. then was it for doing the butcheries "under cover of religion"? no, that was not it; religious feeling was often expressed in that fervent way all through those old centuries. the truth is, he was not offended at "them" at all; he was only offended at their king, who had been false to an oath. then why did not he put the punishment upon the king instead of upon "them"? it is a difficult question. one can see by the chronicle that the "judgments" fell rather customarily upon the wrong person, but henry of huntington does not explain why. here is one that went true; the chronicler's satisfaction in it is not hidden: in the month of august, providence displayed its justice in a remarkable manner; for two of the nobles who had converted monasteries into fortifications, expelling the monks, their sin being the same, met with a similar punishment. robert marmion was one, godfrey de mandeville the other. robert marmion, issuing forth against the enemy, was slain under the walls of the monastery, being the only one who fell, though he was surrounded by his troops. dying excommunicated, he became subject to death everlasting. in like manner earl godfrey was singled out among his followers, and shot with an arrow by a common foot-soldier. he made light of the wound, but he died of it in a few days, under excommunication. see here the like judgment of god, memorable through all ages! the exaltation jars upon me; not because of the death of the men, for they deserved that, but because it is death eternal, in white-hot fire and flame. it makes my flesh crawl. i have not known more than three men, or perhaps four, in my whole lifetime, *whom i would rejoice to see writhing in those fires for even a year, let alone forever. i believe i would relent before the year was up, and get them out if i could. i think that in the long run, if a man's wife and babies, who had not harmed me, should come crying and pleading, i couldn't stand it; i know i should forgive him and let him go, even if he had violated a monastery. henry of huntington has been watching godfrey and marmion for nearly seven hundred and fifty years, now, but i couldn't do it, i know i couldn't. i am soft and gentle in my nature, and i should have forgiven them seventy-and-seven times, long ago. and i think god has; but this is only an opinion, and not authoritative, like henry of huntington's interpretations. i could learn to interpret, but i have never tried; i get so little time. all through his book henry exhibits his familiarity with the intentions of god, and with the reasons for his intentions. sometimes--very often, in fact--the act follows the intention after such a wide interval of time that one wonders how henry could fit one act out of a hundred to one intention out of a hundred and get the thing right every time when there was such abundant choice among acts and intentions. sometimes a man offends the deity with a crime, and is punished for it thirty years later; meantime he was committed a million other crimes: no matter, henry can pick out the one that brought the worms. worms were generally used in those days for the slaying of particularly wicked people. this has gone out, now, but in old times it was a favorite. it always indicated a case of "wrath." for instance: . . . the just god avenging robert fitzhilderbrand's perfidy, a worm grew in his vitals, which gradually gnawing its way through his intestines fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with excruciating sufferings and venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting punishment brought to his end. --(p. 400.) it was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell; we only know it was a particular breed, and only used to convey wrath. some authorities think it was an ichthyosaurus, but there is much doubt. however, one thing we do know; and that is that that worm had been due years and years. robert f. had violated a monastery once; he had committed unprintable crimes since, and they had been permitted--under disapproval--but the ravishment of the monastery had not been forgotten nor forgiven, and the worm came at last. why were these reforms put off in this strange way? what was to be gained by it? did henry of huntington really know his facts, or was he only guessing? sometimes i am half persuaded that he is only a guesser, and not a good one. the divine wisdom must surely be of the better quality than he makes it out to be. five hundred years before henry's time some forecasts of the lord's purposes were furnished by a pope, who perceived, by certain perfectly trustworthy signs furnished by the deity for the information of his familiars, that the end of the world was . . . about to come. but as this end of the world draws near many things are at hand which have not before happened, as changes in the air, terrible signs in the heavens, tempests out of the common order of the seasons, wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places; all which will not happen in our days, but after our days all will come to pass. still, the end was so near that these signs were "sent before that we may be careful for our souls and be found prepared to meet the impending judgment." that was thirteen hundred years ago. this is really no improvement on the work of the roman augurs. ------------------------------------------------------------------concerning tobacco as concerns tobacco, there are many superstitions. and the chiefest is this--that there is a standard governing the matter, whereas there is nothing of the kind. each man's own preference is the only standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command him. a congress of all the tobacco-lovers in the world could not elect a standard which would be binding upon you or me, or would even much influence us. the next superstition is that a man has a standard of his own. he hasn't. he thinks he has, but he hasn't. he thinks he can tell what he regards as a good cigar from what he regards as a bad one--but he can't. he goes by the brand, yet imagines he goes by the flavor. one may palm off the worst counterfeit upon him; if it bears his brand he will smoke it contentedly and never suspect. children of twenty-five, who have seven years experience, try to tell me what is a good cigar and what isn't. me, who never learned to smoke, but always smoked; me, who came into the world asking for a light. no one can tell me what is a good cigar--for me. i am the only judge. people who claim to know say that i smoke the worst cigars in the world. they bring their own cigars when they come to my house. they betray an unmanly terror when i offer them a cigar; they tell lies and hurry away to meet engagements which they have not made when they are threatened with the hospitalities of my box. now then, observe what superstition, assisted by a man's reputation, can do. i was to have twelve personal friends to supper one night. one of them was as notorious for costly and elegant cigars as i was for cheap and devilish ones. i called at his house and when no one was looking borrowed a double handful of his very choicest; cigars which cost him forty cents apiece and bore red-and-gold labels in sign of their nobility. i removed the labels and put the cigars into a box with my favorite brand on it--a brand which those people all knew, and which cowed them as men are cowed by an epidemic. they took these cigars when offered at the end of the supper, and lit them and sternly struggled with them--in dreary silence, for hilarity died when the fell brand came into view and started around--but their fortitude held for a short time only; then they made excuses and filed out, treading on one another's heels with indecent eagerness; and in the morning when i went out to observe results the cigars lay all between the front door and the gate. all except one--that one lay in the plate of the man from whom i had cabbaged the lot. one or two whiffs was all he could stand. he told me afterward that some day i would get shot for giving people that kind of cigars to smoke. am i certain of my own standard? perfectly; yes, absolutely --unless somebody fools me by putting my brand on some other kind of cigar; for no doubt i am like the rest, and know my cigar by the brand instead of by the flavor. however, my standard is a pretty wide one and covers a good deal of territory. to me, almost any cigar is good that nobody else will smoke, and to me almost all cigars are bad that other people consider good. nearly any cigar will do me, except a havana. people think they hurt my feelings when then come to my house with their life preservers on--i mean, with their own cigars in their pockets. it is an error; i take care of myself in a similar way. when i go into danger--that is, into rich people's houses, where, in the nature of things, they will have high-tariff cigars, red-and-gilt girded and nested in a rosewood box along with a damp sponge, cigars which develop a dismal black ash and burn down the side and smell, and will grow hot to the fingers, and will go on growing hotter and hotter, and go on smelling more and more infamously and unendurably the deeper the fire tunnels down inside below the thimbleful of honest tobacco that is in the front end, the furnisher of it praising it all the time and telling you how much the deadly thing cost--yes, when i go into that sort of peril i carry my own defense along; i carry my own brand--twenty-seven cents a barrel--and i live to see my family again. i may seem to light his red-gartered cigar, but that is only for courtesy's sake; i smuggle it into my pocket for the poor, of whom i know many, and light one of my own; and while he praises it i join in, but when he says it cost forty-five cents i say nothing, for i know better. however, to say true, my tastes are so catholic that i have never seen any cigars that i really could not smoke, except those that cost a dollar apiece. i have examined those and know that they are made of dog-hair, and not good dog-hair at that. i have a thoroughly satisfactory time in europe, for all over the continent one finds cigars which not even the most hardened newsboys in new york would smoke. i brought cigars with me, the last time; i will not do that any more. in italy, as in france, the government is the only cigar-peddler. italy has three or four domestic brands: the minghetti, the trabuco, the virginia, and a very coarse one which is a modification of the virginia. the minghettis are large and comely, and cost three dollars and sixty cents a hundred; i can smoke a hundred in seven days and enjoy every one of them. the trabucos suit me, too; i don't remember the price. but one has to learn to like the virginia, nobody is born friendly to it. it looks like a rattail file, but smokes better, some think. it has a straw through it; you pull this out, and it leaves a flue, otherwise there would be no draught, not even as much as there is to a nail. some prefer a nail at first. however, i like all the french, swiss, german, and italian domestic cigars, and have never cared to inquire what they are made of; and nobody would know, anyhow, perhaps. there is even a brand of european smoking-tobacco that i like. it is a brand used by the italian peasants. it is loose and dry and black, and looks like tea-grounds. when the fire is applied it expands, and climbs up and towers above the pipe, and presently tumbles off inside of one's vest. the tobacco itself is cheap, but it raises the insurance. it is as i remarked in the beginning--the taste for tobacco is a matter of superstition. there are no standards--no real standards. each man's preference is the only standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command him. -----------------------------------------------------------------the bee it was maeterlinck who introduced me to the bee. i mean, in the psychical and in the poetical way. i had had a business introduction earlier. it was when i was a boy. it is strange that i should remember a formality like that so long; it must be nearly sixty years. bee scientists always speak of the bee as she. it is because all the important bees are of that sex. in the hive there is one married bee, called the queen; she has fifty thousand children; of these, about one hundred are sons; the rest are daughters. some of the daughters are young maids, some are old maids, and all are virgins and remain so. every spring the queen comes out of the hive and flies away with one of her sons and marries him. the honeymoon lasts only an hour or two; then the queen divorces her husband and returns home competent to lay two million eggs. this will be enough to last the year, but not more than enough, because hundreds of bees are drowned every day, and other hundreds are eaten by birds, and it is the queen's business to keep the population up to standard --say, fifty thousand. she must always have that many children on hand and efficient during the busy season, which is summer, or winter would catch the community short of food. she lays from two thousand to three thousand eggs a day, according to the demand; and she must exercise judgment, and not lay more than are needed in a slim flower-harvest, nor fewer than are required in a prodigal one, or the board of directors will dethrone her and elect a queen that has more sense. there are always a few royal heirs in stock and ready to take her place--ready and more than anxious to do it, although she is their own mother. these girls are kept by themselves, and are regally fed and tended from birth. no other bees get such fine food as they get, or live such a high and luxurious life. by consequence they are larger and longer and sleeker than their working sisters. and they have a curved sting, shaped like a scimitar, while the others have a straight one. a common bee will sting any one or anybody, but a royalty stings royalties only. a common bee will sting and kill another common bee, for cause, but when it is necessary to kill the queen other ways are employed. when a queen has grown old and slack and does not lay eggs enough one of her royal daughters is allowed to come to attack her, the rest of the bees looking on at the duel and seeing fair play. it is a duel with the curved stings. if one of the fighters gets hard pressed and gives it up and runs, she is brought back and must try again--once, maybe twice; then, if she runs yet once more for her life, judicial death is her portion; her children pack themselves into a ball around her person and hold her in that compact grip two or three days, until she starves to death or is suffocated. meantime the victor bee is receiving royal honors and performing the one royal function--laying eggs. as regards the ethics of the judicial assassination of the queen, that is a matter of politics, and will be discussed later, in its proper place. during substantially the whole of her short life of five or six years the queen lives in egyptian darkness and stately seclusion of the royal apartments, with none about her but plebeian servants, who give her empty lip-affection in place of the love which her heart hungers for; who spy upon her in the interest of her waiting heirs, and report and exaggerate her defects and deficiencies to them; who fawn upon her and flatter her to her face and slander her behind her back; who grovel before her in the day of her power and forsake her in her age and weakness. there she sits, friendless, upon her throne through the long night of her life, cut off from the consoling sympathies and sweet companionship and loving endearments which she craves, by the gilded barriers of her awful rank; a forlorn exile in her own house and home, weary object of formal ceremonies and machine-made worship, winged child of the sun, native to the free air and the blue skies and the flowery fields, doomed by the splendid accident of her birth to trade this priceless heritage for a black captivity, a tinsel grandeur, and a loveless life, with shame and insult at the end and a cruel death--and condemned by the human instinct in her to hold the bargain valuable! huber, lubbock, maeterlinck--in fact, all the great authorities--are agreed in denying that the bee is a member of the human family. i do not know why they have done this, but i think it is from dishonest motives. why, the innumerable facts brought to light by their own painstaking and exhaustive experiments prove that if there is a master fool in the world, it is the bee. that seems to settle it. but that is the way of the scientist. he will spend thirty years in building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain theory; then he is so happy in his achievement that as a rule he overlooks the main chief fact of all--that his accumulation proves an entirely different thing. when you point out this miscarriage to him he does not answer your letters; when you call to convince him, the servant prevaricates and you do not get in. scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them. to be strictly fair, i will concede that now and then one of them will answer your letter, but when they do they avoid the issue--you cannot pin them down. when i discovered that the bee was human i wrote about it to all those scientists whom i have just mentioned. for evasions, i have seen nothing to equal the answers i got. after the queen, the personage next in importance in the hive is the virgin. the virgins are fifty thousand or one hundred thousand in number, and they are the workers, the laborers. no work is done, in the hive or out of it, save by them. the males do not work, the queen does no work, unless laying eggs is work, but it does not seem so to me. there are only two million of them, anyway, and all of five months to finish the contract in. the distribution of work in a hive is as cleverly and elaborately specialized as it is in a vast american machine-shop or factory. a bee that has been trained to one of the many and various industries of the concern doesn't know how to exercise any other, and would be offended if asked to take a hand in anything outside of her profession. she is as human as a cook; and if you should ask the cook to wait on the table, you know what will happen. cooks will play the piano if you like, but they draw the line there. in my time i have asked a cook to chop wood, and i know about these things. even the hired girl has her frontiers; true, they are vague, they are ill-defined, even flexible, but they are there. this is not conjecture; it is founded on the absolute. and then the butler. you ask the butler to wash the dog. it is just as i say; there is much to be learned in these ways, without going to books. books are very well, but books do not cover the whole domain of esthetic human culture. pride of profession is one of the boniest bones in existence, if not the boniest. without doubt it is so in the hive. taming the bicycle in the early eighties mark twain learned to ride one of the old high-wheel bicycles of that period. he wrote an account of his experience, but did not offer it for publication. the form of bicycle he rode long ago became antiquated, but in the humor of his pleasantry is a quality which does not grow old. a. b. p. i i thought the matter over, and concluded i could do it. so i went down a bought a barrel of pond's extract and a bicycle. the expert came home with me to instruct me. we chose the back yard, for the sake of privacy, and went to work. mine was not a full-grown bicycle, but only a colt--a fifty-inch, with the pedals shortened up to forty-eight--and skittish, like any other colt. the expert explained the thing's points briefly, then he got on its back and rode around a little, to show me how easy it was to do. he said that the dismounting was perhaps the hardest thing to learn, and so we would leave that to the last. but he was in error there. he found, to his surprise and joy, that all that he needed to do was to get me on to the machine and stand out of the way; i could get off, myself. although i was wholly inexperienced, i dismounted in the best time on record. he was on that side, shoving up the machine; we all came down with a crash, he at the bottom, i next, and the machine on top. we examined the machine, but it was not in the least injured. this was hardly believable. yet the expert assured me that it was true; in fact, the examination proved it. i was partly to realize, then, how admirably these things are constructed. we applied some pond's extract, and resumed. the expert got on the other side to shove up this time, but i dismounted on that side; so the result was as before. the machine was not hurt. we oiled ourselves again, and resumed. this time the expert took up a sheltered position behind, but somehow or other we landed on him again. he was full of admiration; said it was abnormal. she was all right, not a scratch on her, not a timber started anywhere. i said it was wonderful, while we were greasing up, but he said that when i came to know these steel spider-webs i would realize that nothing but dynamite could cripple them. then he limped out to position, and we resumed once more. this time the expert took up the position of short-stop, and got a man to shove up behind. we got up a handsome speed, and presently traversed a brick, and i went out over the top of the tiller and landed, head down, on the instructor's back, and saw the machine fluttering in the air between me and the sun. it was well it came down on us, for that broke the fall, and it was not injured. five days later i got out and was carried down to the hospital, and found the expert doing pretty fairly. in a few more days i was quite sound. i attribute this to my prudence in always dismounting on something soft. some recommend a feather bed, but i think an expert is better. the expert got out at last, brought four assistants with him. it was a good idea. these four held the graceful cobweb upright while i climbed into the saddle; then they formed in column and marched on either side of me while the expert pushed behind; all hands assisted at the dismount. the bicycle had what is called the "wabbles," and had them very badly. in order to keep my position, a good many things were required of me, and in every instance the thing required was against nature. that is to say, that whatever the needed thing might be, my nature, habit, and breeding moved me to attempt it in one way, while some immutable and unsuspected law of physics required that it be done in just the other way. i perceived by this how radically and grotesquely wrong had been the life-long education of my body and members. they were steeped in ignorance; they knew nothing--nothing which it could profit them to know. for instance, if i found myself falling to the right, i put the tiller hard down the other way, by a quite natural impulse, and so violated a law, and kept on going down. the law required the opposite thing--the big wheel must be turned in the direction in which you are falling. it is hard to believe this, when you are told it. and not merely hard to believe it, but impossible; it is opposed to all your notions. and it is just as hard to do it, after you do come to believe it. believing it, and knowing by the most convincing proof that it is true, does not help it: you can't any more do it than you could before; you can neither force nor persuade yourself to do it at first. the intellect has to come to the front, now. it has to teach the limbs to discard their old education and adopt the new. the steps of one's progress are distinctly marked. at the end of each lesson he knows he has acquired something, and he also knows what that something is, and likewise that it will stay with him. it is not like studying german, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. no--and i see now, plainly enough, that the great pity about the german language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. there is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business. but i also see, by what i have learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn german is by the bicycling method. that is to say, take a grip on one villainy of it at a time, leaving that one half learned. when you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your next task--how to mount it. you do it in this way: you hop along behind it on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and grasping the tiller with your hands. at the word, you rise on the peg, stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a general in indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but you fall off. you get up and do it again; and once more; and then several times. by this time you have learned to keep your balance; and also to steer without wrenching the tiller out by the roots (i say tiller because it is a tiller; "handle-bar" is a lamely descriptive phrase). so you steer along, straight ahead, a little while, then you rise forward, with a steady strain, bringing your right leg, and then your body, into the saddle, catch your breath, fetch a violent hitch this way and then that, and down you go again. but you have ceased to mind the going down by this time; you are getting to light on one foot or the other with considerable certainty. six more attempts and six more falls make you perfect. you land in the saddle comfortably, next time, and stay there--that is, if you can be content to let your legs dangle, and leave the pedals alone a while; but if you grab at once for the pedals, you are gone again. you soon learn to wait a little and perfect your balance before reaching for the pedals; then the mounting-art is acquired, is complete, and a little practice will make it simple and easy to you, though spectators ought to keep off a rod or two to one side, along at first, if you have nothing against them. and now you come to the voluntary dismount; you learned the other kind first of all. it is quite easy to tell one how to do the voluntary dismount; the words are few, the requirement simple, and apparently undifficult; let your left pedal go down till your left leg is nearly straight, turn your wheel to the left, and get off as you would from a horse. it certainly does sound exceedingly easy; but it isn't. i don't know why it isn't but it isn't. try as you may, you don't get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire. you make a spectacle of yourself every time. ii during the eight days i took a daily lesson an hour and a half. at the end of this twelve working-hours' appreticeship i was graduated--in the rough. i was pronounced competent to paddle my own bicycle without outside help. it seems incredible, this celerity of acquirement. it takes considerably longer than that to learn horseback-riding in the rough. now it is true that i could have learned without a teacher, but it would have been risky for me, because of my natural clumsiness. the self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done. there are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life--life's "experiences"--are in some way useful to us. i wish i could find out how. i never knew one of them to happen twice. they always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side. if personal experience can be worth anything as an education, it wouldn't seem likely that you could trip methuselah; and yet if that old person could come back here it is more that likely that one of the first things he would do would be to take hold of one of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot. now the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask somebody whether it was a good thing to take hold of. but that would not suit him; he would be one of the self-taught kind that go by experience; he would want to examine for himself. and he would find, for his instruction, that the coiled patriarch shuns the electric wire; and it would be useful to him, too, and would leave his education in quite a complete and rounded-out condition, till he should come again, some day, and go to bouncing a dynamite-can around to find out what was in it. but we wander from the point. however, get a teacher; it saves much time and pond's extract. before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my physical strength, and i was able to inform him that i hadn't any. he said that that was a defect which would make up-hill wheeling pretty difficult for me at first; but he also said the bicycle would soon remove it. the contrast between his muscles and mine was quite marked. he wanted to test mine, so i offered my biceps--which was my best. it almost made him smile. he said, "it is pulpy, and soft, and yielding, and rounded; it evades pressure, and glides from under the fingers; in the dark a body might think it was an oyster in a rag." perhaps this made me look grieved, for he added, briskly: "oh, that's all right, you needn't worry about that; in a little while you can't tell it from a petrified kidney. just go right along with your practice; you're all right." then he left me, and i started out alone to seek adventures. you don't really have to seek them--that is nothing but a phrase --they come to you. i chose a reposeful sabbath-day sort of a back street which was about thirty yards wide between the curbstones. i knew it was not wide enough; still, i thought that by keeping strict watch and wasting no space unnecessarily i could crowd through. of course i had trouble mounting the machine, entirely on my own responsibility, with no encouraging moral support from the outside, no sympathetic instructor to say, "good! now you're doing well--good again--don't hurry--there, now, you're all right --brace up, go ahead." in place of this i had some other support. this was a boy, who was perched on a gate-post munching a hunk of maple sugar. he was full of interest and comment. the first time i failed and went down he said that if he was me he would dress up in pillows, that's what he would do. the next time i went down he advised me to go and learn to ride a tricycle first. the third time i collapsed he said he didn't believe i could stay on a horse-car. but the next time i succeeded, and got clumsily under way in a weaving, tottering, uncertain fashion, and occupying pretty much all of the street. my slow and lumbering gait filled the boy to the chin with scorn, and he sung out, "my, but don't he rip along!" then he got down from his post and loafed along the sidewalk, still observing and occasionally commenting. presently he dropped into my wake and followed along behind. a little girl passed by, balancing a wash-board on her head, and giggled, and seemed about to make a remark, but the boy said, rebukingly, "let him alone, he's going to a funeral." i have been familiar with that street for years, and had always supposed it was a dead level; but it was not, as the bicycle now informed me, to my surprise. the bicycle, in the hands of a novice, is as alert and acute as a spirit-level in the detecting the delicate and vanishing shades of difference in these matters. it notices a rise where your untrained eye would not observe that one existed; it notices any decline which water will run down. i was toiling up a slight rise, but was not aware of it. it made me tug and pant and perspire; and still, labor as i might, the machine came almost to a standstill every little while. at such times the boy would say: "that's it! take a rest-there ain't no hurry. they can't hold the funeral without you." stones were a bother to me. even the smallest ones gave me a panic when i went over them. i could hit any kind of a stone, no matter how small, if i tried to miss it; and of course at first i couldn't help trying to do that. it is but natural. it is part of the ass that is put in us all, for some inscrutable reason. it was at the end of my course, at last, and it was necessary for me to round to. this is not a pleasant thing, when you undertake it for the first time on your own responsibility, and neither is it likely to succeed. your confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a watchful strain, you start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all full of electric anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a jerky and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, defying all prayers and all your powers to change its mind--your heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work, straight on you go, and there are but a couple of feet between you and the curb now. and now is the desperate moment, the last chance to save yourself; of course all your instructions fly out of your head, and you whirl your wheel away from the curb instead of toward it, and so you go sprawling on that granite-bound inhospitable shore. that was my luck; that was my experience. i dragged myself out from under the indestructible bicycle and sat down on the curb to examine. i started on the return trip. it was now that i saw a farmer's wagon poking along down toward me, loaded with cabbages. if i needed anything to perfect the precariousness of my steering, it was just that. the farmer was occupying the middle of the road with his wagon, leaving barely fourteen or fifteen yards of space on either side. i couldn't shout at him--a beginner can't shout; if he opens his mouth he is gone; he must keep all his attention on his business. but in this grisly emergency, the boy came to the rescue, and for once i had to be grateful to him. he kept a sharp lookout on the swiftly varying impulses and inspirations of my bicycle, and shouted to the man accordingly: "to the left! turn to the left, or this jackass 'll run over you!" the man started to do it. "no, to the right, to the right! hold on! that won't do!--to the left!--to the right!--to the left--right! left--ri- stay where you are, or you're a goner!" and just then i caught the off horse in the starboard and went down in a pile. i said, "hang it! couldn't you see i was coming?" "yes, i see you was coming, but i couldn't tell which way you was coming. nobody could--now, could they? you couldn't yourself--now, could you? so what could _i_ do? there was something in that, and so i had the magnanimity to say so. i said i was no doubt as much to blame as he was. within the next five days i achieved so much progress that the boy couldn't keep up with me. he had to go back to his gatepost, and content himself with watching me fall at long range. there was a row of low stepping-stones across one end of the street, a measured yard apart. even after i got so i could steer pretty fairly i was so afraid of those stones that i always hit them. they gave me the worst falls i ever got in that street, except those which i got from dogs. i have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. i think that that may be true: but i think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to. i did not try to run over any dog. but i ran over every dog that came along. i think it makes a great deal of difference. if you try to run over the dog he knows how to calculate, but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to calculate, and is liable to jump the wrong way every time. it was always so in my experience. even when i could not hit a wagon i could hit a dog that came to see me practice. they all liked to see me practice, and they all came, for there was very little going on in our neighborhood to entertain a dog. it took time to learn to miss a dog, but i achieved even that. i can steer as well as i want to, now, and i will catch that boy one of these days and run over him if he doesn't reform. get a bicycle. you will not regret it, if you live. is shakespeare dead? (from my autobiography) scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript which constitute this formidable autobiography and diary of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with "claimants"--claimants historically notorious: satan, claimant; the golden calf, claimant; the veiled prophet of khorassan, claimant; louis xvii., claimant; william shakespeare, claimant; arthur orton, claimant; mary baker g. eddy, claimant--and the rest of them. eminent claimants, successful claimants, defeated claimants, royal claimants, pleb claimants, showy claimants, shabby claimants, revered claimants, despised claimants, twinkle star-like here and there and yonder through the mists of history and legend and tradition--and, oh, all the darling tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with deep interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. it has always been so with the human race. there was never a claimant that couldn't get a hearing, nor one that couldn't accumulate a rapturous following, no matter how flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim might be. arthur orton's claim that he was the lost tichborne baronet come to life again was as flimsy as mrs. eddy's that she wrote science and health from the direct dictation of the deity; yet in england nearly forty years ago orton had a huge army of devotees and incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and today mrs. eddy's following is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and enthusiasm. orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents, mrs. eddy has had the like among hers from the beginning. her church is as well equipped in those particulars as is any other church. claimants can always count upon a following, it doesn't matter who they are, nor what they claim, nor whether they come with documents or without. it was always so. down out of the longvanished past, across the abyss of the ages, if you listen, you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for perkin warbeck and lambert simnel. a friend has sent me a new book, from england--the shakespeare problem restated--well restated and closely reasoned; and my fifty years' interest in that matter--asleep for the last three years--is excited once more. it is an interest which was born of delia bacon's book--away back in the ancient day--1857, or maybe 1856. about a year later my pilot-master, bixby, transferred me from his own steamboat to the pennsylvania, and placed me under the orders and instructions of george ealer--dead now, these many, many years. i steered for him a good many months--as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight watch and spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and correction of the master. he was a prime chess-player and an idolater of shakespeare. he would play chess with anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity something to do that. also--quite uninvited--he would read shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it was his watch and i was steering. he read well, but not profitably for me, because he constantly injected commands into the text. that broke it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up--to that degree, in fact, that if we were in a risky and difficult piece of river an ignorant person couldn't have told, sometimes, which observations were shakespeare's and which were ealer's. for instance: what man dare, _i_ dare! approach thou what are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, ease her off! rugged russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the there she goes! meet her, meet her! didn't you know she'd smell the reef if you crowded in like that? hyrcan tiger; take any ship but that and my firm nerves she'll be in the woods the first you know! stop he starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! back the starboard! . . . now then, you're all right; come ahead on the starboard; straighten up and go 'long, never tremble: or be alive again, and dare me to the desert damnation can't you keep away from that greasy water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling i inhabit then, lay in the leads!--no, only with the starboard one, leave the other alone, protest me the baby of a girl. hence horrible shadow! eight bells--that watchman's asleep again, i reckon, go down and call brown yourself, unreal mockery, hence! he certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and tragic, but it was a damage to me, because i have never since been able to read shakespeare in a calm and sane way. i cannot rid it of his explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant, "what in hell are you up to now! pull her down! more! more!--there now, steady as you go," and the other disorganizing interruptions that were always leaping from his mouth. when i read shakespeare now i can hear them as plainly as i did in that long-departed time--fifty-one years ago. i never regarded ealer's readings as educational. indeed, they were a detriment to me. his contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that detail he was a good reader; i can say that much for him. he did not use the book, and did not need to; he knew his shakespeare as well as euclid ever knew his multiplication table. did he have something to say--this shakespeare-adoring mississippi pilot--anent delia bacon's book? yes. and he said it; said it all the time, for months--in the morning watch, the middle watch, and dog watch; and probably kept it going in his sleep. he bought the literature of the dispute as fast as it appeared, and we discussed it all through thirteen hundred miles of river four times traversed in every thirty-five days--the time required by that swift boat to achieve two round trips. we discussed, and discussed, and discussed, and disputed and disputed and disputed; at any rate, he did, and i got in a word now and then when he slipped a cog and there was a vacancy. he did his arguing with heat, with energy, with violence; and i did mine with the reverse and moderation of a subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a pilot-house and is perched forty feet above the water. he was fiercely loyal to shakespeare and cordially scornful of bacon and of all the pretensions of the baconians. so was i--at first. and at first he was glad that that was my attitude. there were even indications that he admired it; indications dimmed, it is true, by the distance that lay between the lofty boss-pilotical altitude and my lowly one, yet perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a compliment--compliment coming down from about the snow-line and not well thawed in the transit, and not likely to set anything afire, not even a cub-pilot's selfconceit; still a detectable complement, and precious. naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to shakespeare-if possible--than i was before, and more prejudiced against bacon--if possible--that i was before. and so we discussed and discussed, both on the same side, and were happy. for a while. only for a while. only for a very little while, a very, very, very little while. then the atmosphere began to change; began to cool off. a brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier than i did, perhaps, but i saw it early enough for all practical purposes. you see, he was of an argumentative disposition. therefore it took him but a little time to get tired of arguing with a person who agreed with everything he said and consequently never furnished him a provocative to flare up and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard, rose-cut, hundred-faceted, diamond-flashing reasoning. that was his name for it. it has been applied since, with complacency, as many as several times, in the bacon-shakespeare scuffle. on the shakespeare side. then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me when principle and personal interest found themselves in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: i let principle go, and went over to the other side. not the entire way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the case. that is to say, i took this attitude--to wit, i only believed bacon wrote shakespeare, whereas i knew shakespeare didn't. ealer was satisfied with that, and the war broke loose. study, practice, experience in handling my end of the matter presently enabled me to take my new position almost seriously; a little bit later, utterly seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully, devotedly; finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. after that i was welded to my faith, i was theoretically ready to die for it, and i looked down with compassion not unmixed with scorn upon everybody else's faith that didn't tally with mine. that faith, imposed upon me by self-interest in that ancient day, remains my faith today, and in it i find comfort, solace, peace, and never-failing joy. you see how curiously theological it is. the "rice christian" of the orient goes through the very same steps, when he is after rice and the missionary is after him; he goes for rice, and remains to worship. ealer did a lot of our "reasoning"--not to say substantially all of it. the slaves of his cult have a passion for calling it by that large name. we others do not call our inductions and deductions and reductions by any name at all. they show for themselves what they are, and we can with tranquil confidence leave the world to ennoble them with a title of its own choosing. now and then when ealer had to stop to cough, i pulled my induction-talents together and hove the controversial lead myself: always getting eight feet, eight and a half, often nine, sometimes even quarter-less-twain--as _i_ believed; but always "no bottom," as he said. i got the best of him only once. i prepared myself. i wrote out a passage from shakespeare--it may have been the very one i quoted awhile ago, i don't remember--and riddled it with his wild steamboatful interlardings. when an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer day, when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled patch of crossings known as hell's half acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked the pennsylvania triumphantly through it without once scraping sand, and the a. t. lacey had followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was feeling good, i showed it to him. it amused him. i asked him to fire it off-read it; read it, i diplomatically added, as only he could read dramatic poetry. the compliment touched him where he lived. he did read it; read it with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it will never be read again; for he know how to put the right music into those thunderous interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make them sound as if they were bursting from shakespeare's own soul, each one of them a golden inspiration and not to be left out without damage to the massed and magnificent whole. i waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; waited until he brought up for reasonings and vituperation my pet position, my pet argument, the one which i was fondest of, the one which i prized far above all others in my ammunition-wagon-to wit, that shakespeare couldn't have written shakespeare's words, for the reason that the man who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the law-courts, and law-proceedings, and lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways--and if shakespeare was possessed of the infinitely divided star-dust that constituted this vast wealth, how did he get it, and where and when? "from books." from books! that was always the idea. i answered as my readings of the champions of my side of the great controversy had taught me to answer: that a man can't handle glibly and easily and comfortably and successfully the argot of a trade at which he has not personally served. he will make mistakes; he will not, and cannot, get the trade-phrasings precisely and exactly right; and the moment he departs, by even a shade, from a common tradeform, the reader who has served that trade will know the writer hasn't. ealer would not be convinced; he said a man could learn how to correctly handle the subtleties and mysteries and freemasonries of any trade by careful reading and studying. but when i got him to read again the passage from shakespeare with the interlardings, he perceived, himself, that books couldn't teach a student a bewildering multitude of pilot-phrases so thoroughly and perfectly that he could talk them off in book and play or conversation and make no mistake that a pilot would not immediately discover. it was a triumph for me. he was silent awhile, and i knew what was happening--he was losing his temper. and i knew he would presently close the session with the same old argument that was always his stay and his support in time of need; the same old argument, the one i couldn't answer, because i dasn't--the argument that i was an ass, and better shut up. he delivered it, and i obeyed. o dear, how long ago it was--how pathetically long ago! and here am i, old, forsaken, forlorn, and alone, arranging to get that argument out of somebody again. when a man has a passion for shakespeare, it goes without saying that he keeps company with other standard authors. ealer always had several high-class books in the pilot-house, and he read the same ones over and over again, and did not care to change to newer and fresher ones. he played well on the flute, and greatly enjoyed hearing himself play. so did i. he had a notion that a flute would keep its health better if you took it apart when it was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the compass-shelf under the breastboard. when the pennsylvania blew up and became a drifting rack-heap freighted with wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother henry among them), pilot brown had the watch below, and was probably asleep and never knew what killed him; but ealer escaped unhurt. he and his pilot-house were shot up into the air; then they fell, and ealer sank through the ragged cavern where the hurricane-deck and the boiler-deck had been, and landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scald and deadly steam. but not for long. he did not lose his head--long familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in any and all emergencies. he held his coat-lapels to his nose with one hand, to keep out the steam, and scrabbled around with the other till he found the joints of his flute, then he took measures to save himself alive, and was successful. i was not on board. i had been put ashore in new orleans by captain klinenfelter. the reason--however, i have told all about it in the book called old times on the mississippi, and it isn't important, anyway, it is so long ago. ii when i was a sunday-school scholar, something more than sixty years ago, i became interested in satan, and wanted to find out all i could about him. i began to ask questions, but my class-teacher, mr. barclay, the stone-mason, was reluctant about answering them, it seemed to me. i was anxious to be praised for turning my thoughts to serious subjects when there wasn't another boy in the village who could be hired to do such a thing. i was greatly interested in the incident of eve and the serpent, and thought eve's calmness was perfectly noble. i asked mr. barclay if he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by a serpeant, would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber. he did not answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my age and comprehension. i will say for mr. barclay that he was willing to tell me the facts of satan's history, but he stopped there: he wouldn't allow any discussion of them. in the course of time we exhausted the facts. there were only five or six of them; you could set them all down on a visiting-card. i was disappointed. i had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to find that there were no materials. i said as much, with the tears running down. mr. barclay's sympathy and compassion were aroused, for he was a most kind and gentle-spirited man, and he patted me on the head and cheered me up by saying there was a whole vast ocean of materials! i can still feel the happy thrill which these blessed words shot through me. then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement and joy. like this: it was "conjectured"--though not established--that satan was originally an angel in heaven; that he fell; that he rebelled, and brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition. also, "we have reason to believe" that later he did so and so; that "we are warranted in supposing" that at a subsequent time he traveled extensively, seeking whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries afterward, "as tradition instructs us," he took up the cruel trade of tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that by and by, "as the probabilities seem to indicate," he may have done certain things, he might have done certain other things, he must have done still other things. and so on and so on. we set down the five known facts by themselves on a piece of paper, and numbered it "page 1"; then on fifteen hundred other pieces of paper we set down the "conjectures," and "suppositions," and "maybes," and "perhapses," and "doubtlesses," and "rumors," and guesses," and "probabilities," and "likelihoods," and "we are permitted to thinks," and "we are warranted in believings," and "might have beens," and "could have beens," and "must have beens," and "unquestionablys," and "without a shadow of doubt"--and behold! materials? why, we had enough to build a biography of shakespeare! yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history of satan. why? because, as he said, he had suspicions--suspicions that my attitude in the matter was not reverent, and that a person must be reverent when writing about the sacred characters. he said any one who spoke flippantly of satan would be frowned upon by the religious world and also be brought to account. i assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly misconceived my attitude; that i had the highest respect for satan, and that my reverence for him equaled, and possibly even exceeded, that of any member of the church. i said it wounded me deeply to perceive by his words that he thought i would make fun of satan, and deride him, laugh at him, scoff at him; whereas in truth i had never thought of such a thing, but had only a warm desire to make fun of those others and laugh at them. "what others? "why, the supposers, the perhapsers, the might-have-beeners, the could-have-beeners, the must-have-beeners, the without-a-shadow-of-doubters, the we-are-warranted-in-believingers, and all that funny crop of solemn architects who have taken a good solid foundation of five indisputable and unimportant facts and built upon it a conjectural satan thirty miles high." what did mr. barclay do then? was he disarmed? was he silenced? no. he was shocked. he was so shocked that he visibly shuddered. he said the satanic traditioners and perhapsers and conjecturers were themselves sacred! as sacred as their work. so sacred that whoso ventured to mock them or make fun of their work, could not afterward enter any respectable house, even by the back door. how true were his words, and how wise! how fortunate it would have been for me if i had heeded them. but i was young, i was but seven years of age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. i wrote the biography, and have never been in a respectable house since. iii how curious and interesting is the parallel--as far as poverty of biographical details is concerned--between satan and shakespeare. it is wonderful, it is unique, it stands quite alone, there is nothing resembling it in history, nothing resembling it in romance, nothing approaching it even in tradition. how sublime is their position, and how over-topping, how sky-reaching, how supreme--the two great unknowns, the two illustrious conjecturabilities! they are the best-known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet. for the instruction of the ignorant i will make a list, now, of those details of shakespeare's history which are facts-verified facts, established facts, undisputed facts. facts he was born on the 23d of april, 1564. of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could not sign their names. at stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and unclean, and densely illiterate. of the nineteen important men charged with the government of the town, thirteen had to "make their mark" in attesting important documents, because they could not write their names. of the first eighteen years of his life nothing is known. they are a blank. on the 27th of november (1582) william shakespeare took out a license to marry anne whateley. next day william shakespeare took out a license to marry anne hathaway. she was eight years his senior. william shakespeare married anne hathaway. in a hurry. by grace of a reluctantly granted dispensation there was but one publication of the banns. within six months the first child was born. about two (blank) years followed, during which period nothing at all happened to shakespeare, so far as anybody knows. then came twins--1585. february. two blank years follow. then--1587--he makes a ten-year visit to london, leaving the family behind. five blank years follow. during this period nothing happened to him, as far as anybody actually knows. then--1592--there is mention of him as an actor. next year--1593--his name appears in the official list of players. next year--1594--he played before the queen. a detail of no consequence: other obscurities did it every year of the fortyfive of her reign. and remained obscure. three pretty full years follow. full of play-acting. then* in 1597 he bought new place, stratford. thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated money, and also reputation as actor and manager. meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated with a number of great plays and poems, as (ostensibly) author of the same. some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no protest. then--1610-11--he returned to stratford and settled down for good and all, and busied himself in lending money, trading in tithes, trading in land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, borrowed by his wife during his long desertion of his family; suing debtors for shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and coppers; and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of its rights in a certain common, and did not succeed. he lived five or six years--till 1616--in the joy of these elevated pursuits. then he made a will, and signed each of its three pages with his name. a thoroughgoing business man's will. it named in minute detail every item of property he owned in the world--houses, lands, sword, silver-gilt bowl, and so on--all the way down to his "second-best bed" and its furniture. it carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the members of his family, overlooking no individual of it. not even his wife: the wife he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by urgent grace of a special dispensation before he was nineteen; the wife whom he had left husbandless so many years; the wife who had had to borrow forty-one shillings in her need, and which the lender was never able to collect of the prosperous husband, but died at last with the money still lacking. no, even this wife was remembered in shakespeare's will. he left her that "second-best bed." and not another thing; not even a penny to bless her lucky widowhood with. it was eminently and conspicuously a business man's will, not a poet's. it mentioned not a single book. books were much more precious than swords and silver-gilt bowls and second-best beds in those days, and when a departing person owned one he gave it a high place in his will. the will mentioned not a play, not a poem, not an unfinished literary work, not a scrap of manuscript of any kind. many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that has died this poor; the others all left literary remains behind. also a book. maybe two. if shakespeare had owned a dog--but we not go into that: we know he would have mentioned it in his will. if a good dog, susanna would have got it; if an inferior one his wife would have got a downer interest in it. i wish he had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he would have divided that dog among the family, in his careful business way. he signed the will in three places. in earlier years he signed two other official documents. these five signatures still exist. there are no other specimens of his penmanship in existence. not a line. was he prejudiced against the art? his granddaughter, whom he loved, was eight years old when he died, yet she had had no teaching, he left no provision for her education, although he was rich, and in her mature womanhood she couldn't write and couldn't tell her husband's manuscript from anybody else's--she thought it was shakespeare's. when shakespeare died in stratford, it was not an event. it made no more stir in england than the death of any other forgotten theater-actor would have made. nobody came down from london; there were no lamenting poems, no eulogies, no national tears--there was merely silence, and nothing more. a striking contrast with what happened when ben jonson, and francis bacon, and spenser, and raleigh, and the other distinguished literary folk of shakespeare's time passed from life! no praiseful voice was lifted for the lost bard of avon; even ben jonson waited seven years before he lifted his. so far as anybody actually knows and can prove, shakespeare of stratford-on-avon never wrote a play in his life. so far as any one knows, he received only one letter during his life. so far as any one knows and can prove, shakespeare of stratford wrote only one poem during his life. this one is authentic. he did write that one--a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote the whole of it out of his own head. he commanded that this work of art be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. there it abides to this day. this is it: good friend for iesus sake forbeare to digg the dust encloased heare: blest be ye man yt spares thes stones and curst be he yt moves my bones. in the list as above set down will be found every positively known fact of shakespeare's life, lean and meager as the invoice is. beyond these details we know not a thing about him. all the rest of his vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures--an eiffel tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts. iv conjectures the historians "suppose" that shakespeare attended the free school in stratford from the time he was seven years old till he was thirteen. there is no evidence in existence that he ever went to school at all. the historians "infer" that he got his latin in that school --the school which they "suppose" he attended. they "suppose" his father's declining fortunes made it necessary for him to leave the school they supposed he attended, and get to work and help support his parents and their ten children. but there is no evidence that he ever entered or returned from the school they suppose he attended. they "suppose" he assisted his father in the butchering business; and that, being only a boy, he didn't have to do fullgrown butchering, but only slaughtering calves. also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a high-flown speech over it. this supposition rests upon the testimony of a man who wasn't there at the time; a man who got it from a man who could have been there, but did not say whether he was nor not; and neither of them thought to mention it for decades, and decades, and decades, and two more decades after shakespeare's death (until old age and mental decay had refreshed and vivified their memories). they hadn't two facts in stock about the long-dead distinguished citizen, but only just the one: he slaughtered calves and broke into oratory while he was at it. curious. they had only one fact, yet the distinguished citizen had spent twenty-six years in that little town--just half his lifetime. however, rightly viewed, it was the most important fact, indeed almost the only important fact, of shakespeare's life in stratford. rightly viewed. for experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes. rightly viewed, calf-butchering accounts for "titus andronicus," the only play--ain't it?--that the stratford shakespeare ever wrote; and yet it is the only one everybody tried to chouse him out of, the baconians included. the historians find themselves "justified in believing" that the young shakespeare poached upon sir thomas lucy's deer preserves and got haled before that magistrate for it. but there is no shred of respectworthy evidence that anything of the kind happened. the historians, having argued the thing that might have happened into the thing that did happen, found no trouble in turning sir thomas lucy into mr. justice shallow. they have long ago convinced the world--on surmise and without trustworthy evidence--that shallow is sir thomas. the next addition to the young shakespeare's stratford history comes easy. the historian builds it out of the surmised deer-steeling, and the surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised vengeance-prompted satire upon the magistrate in the play: result, the young shakespeare was a wild, wild, wild, oh, such a wild young scamp, and that gratuitous slander is established for all time! it is the very way professor osborn and i built the colossal skeleton brontosaur that stands fiftyseven feet long and sixteen feet high in the natural history museum, the awe and admiration of all the world, the stateliest skeleton that exists on the planet. we had nine bones, and we built the rest of him out of plaster of paris. we ran short of plaster of paris, or we'd have built a brontosaur that could sit down beside the stratford shakespeare and none but an expert could tell which was biggest or contained the most plaster. shakespeare pronounced "venus and adonis" "the first heir of his invention," apparently implying that it was his first effort at literary composition. he should not have said it. it has been an embarrassment to his historians these many, many years. they have to make him write that graceful and polished and flawless and beautiful poem before he escaped from stratford and his family--1586 or '87--age, twenty-two, or along there; because within the next five years he wrote five great plays, and could not have found time to write another line. it is sorely embarrassing. if he began to slaughter calves, and poach deer, and rollick around, and learn english, at the earliest likely moment--say at thirteen, when he was supposably wretched from that school where he was supposably storing up latin for future literary use--he had his youthful hands full, and much more than full. he must have had to put aside his warwickshire dialect, which wouldn't be understood in london, and study english very hard. very hard indeed; incredibly hard, almost, if the result of that labor was to be the smooth and rounded and flexible and letter-perfect english of the "venus and adonis" in the space of ten years; and at the same time learn great and fine and unsurpassable literary form. however, it is "conjectured" that he accomplished all this and more, much more: learned law and its intricacies; and the complex procedure of the law-courts; and all about soldiering, and sailoring, and the manners and customs and ways of royal courts and aristocratic society; and likewise accumulated in his one head every kind of knowledge the learned then possessed, and every kind of humble knowledge possessed by the lowly and the ignorant; and added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge of the world's great literatures, ancient and modern, than was possessed by any other man of his time--for he was going to make brilliant and easy and admiration-compelling use of these splendid treasures the moment he got to london. and according to the surmisers, that is what he did. yes, although there was no one in stratford able to teach him these things, and no library in the little village to dig them out of. his father could not read, and even the surmisers surmise that he did not keep a library. it is surmised by the biographers that the young shakespeare got his vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate acquaintance with the manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers through being for a time the clerk of a stratford court; just as a bright lad like me, reared in a village on the banks of the mississippi, might become perfect in knowledge of the bering strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the veteran exercises of that adventure-bristling trade through catching catfish with a "trot-line" sundays. but the surmise is damaged by the fact that there is no evidence--and not even tradition--that the young shakespeare was ever clerk of a law-court. it is further surmised that the young shakespeare accumulated his law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in london, through "amusing himself" by learning book-law in his garret and by picking up lawyer-talk and the rest of it through loitering about the law-courts and listening. but it is only surmise; there is no evidence that he ever did either of those things. they are merely a couple of chunks of plaster of paris. there is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in front of the london theaters, mornings and afternoons. maybe he did. if he did, it seriously shortened his law-study hours and his recreation-time in the courts. in those very days he was writing great plays, and needed all the time he could get. the horse-holding legend ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the historian's difficulty in accounting for the young shakespeare's erudition--an erudition which he was acquiring, hunk by hunk and chunk by chunk, every day in those strenuous times, and emptying each day's catch into next day's imperishable drama. he had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a knowledge of soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and talk; also a knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages: for he was daily emptying fluent streams of these various knowledges, too, into his dramas. how did he acquire these rich assets? in the usual way: by surmise. it is surmised that he traveled in italy and germany and around, and qualified himself to put their scenic and social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in french, italian, and spanish on the road; that he went in leicester's expedition to the low countries, as soldier or sutler or something, for several months or years--or whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his business--and thus became familiar with soldiership and soldier-ways and soldier-talk and generalship and general-ways and general-talk, and seamanship and sailor-ways and sailor-talk. maybe he did all these things, but i would like to know who held the horses in the mean time; and who studied the books in the garret; and who frolicked in the law-courts for recreation. also, who did the call-boying and the play-acting. for he became a call-boy; and as early as '93 he became a "vagabond"--the law's ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in '94 a "regular" and properly and officially listed member of that (in those days) lightly valued and not much respected profession. right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theaters, and manager of them. thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing business man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty years. then in a noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his one poem--his only poem, his darling--and laid him down and died: good friend for iesus sake forbeare to digg the dust encloased heare: blest be ye man yt spares thes stones and curst be he yt moves my bones. he was probably dead when he wrote it. still, this is only conjecture. we have only circumstantial evidence. internal evidence. shall i set down the rest of the conjectures which constitute the giant biography of william shakespeare? it would strain the unabridged dictionary to hold them. he is a brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of paris. v "we may assume" in the assuming trade three separate and independent cults are transacting business. two of these cults are known as the shakespearites and the baconians, and i am the other one--the brontosaurian. the shakespearite knows that shakespeare wrote shakespeare's works; the baconian knows that francis bacon wrote them; the brontosaurian doesn't really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and contentedly sure that shakespeare didn't, and strongly suspects that bacon did. we all have to do a good deal of assuming, but i am fairly certain that in every case i can call to mind the baconian assumers have come out ahead of the shakespearites. both parties handle the same materials, but the baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and rational and persuasive results out of them than is the case with the shakespearites. the shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite principle, an unchanging and immutable law: which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added together, make 165. i believe this to be an error. no matter, you cannot get a habit-sodden shakespearite to cipher-up his materials upon any other basis. with the baconian it is different. if you place before him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will never in any case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten he will get just the proper 31. let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the ignorant and unintelligent. we will suppose a case: take a lapbred, house-fed, uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old tom that's scarred from stem to rudder-post with the memorials of strenuous experience, and is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of him "all cat-knowledge is his province"; also, take a mouse. lock the three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless prison-cell. wait half an hour, then open the cell, introduce a shakespearite and a baconian, and let them cipher and assume. the mouse is missing: the question to be decided is, where is it? you can guess both verdicts beforehand. one verdict will say the kitten contains the mouse; the other will as certainly say the mouse is in the tom-cat. the shakespearite will reason like this--(that is not my word, it is his). he will say the kitten may have been attending school when nobody was noticing; therefore we are warranted in assuming that it did so; also, it could have been training in a court-clerk's office when no one was noticing; since that could have happened, we are justified in assuming that it did happen; it could have studied catology in a garret when no one was noticing--therefore it did; it could have attended cat-assizes on the shed-roof nights, for recreation, when no one was noticing, and have harvested a knowledge of cat court-forms and cat lawyertalk in that way: it could have done it, therefore without a doubt it did; it could have gone soldiering with a war-tribe when no one was noticing, and learned soldier-wiles and soldier-ways, and what to do with a mouse when opportunity offers; the plain inference, therefore, is that that is what it did. since all these manifold things could have occurred, we have every right to believe they did occur. these patiently and painstakingly accumulated vast acquirements and competences needed but one thing more--opportunity--to convert themselves into triumphal action. the opportunity came, we have the result; beyond shadow of question the mouse is in the kitten. it is proper to remark that when we of the three cults plant a "we think we may assume," we expect it, under careful watering and fertilizing and tending, to grow up into a strong and hardy and weather-defying "there isn't a shadow of a doubt" at last-and it usually happens. we know what the baconian's verdict would be: "there is not a rag of evidence that the kitten has had any training, any education, any experience qualifying it for the present occasion, or is indeed equipped for any achievement above lifting such unclaimed milk as comes its way; but there is abundant evidence-unassailable proof, in fact--that the other animal is equipped, to the last detail, with every qualification necessary for the event. without shadow of doubt the tom-cat contains the mouse." vi when shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed to him as author had been before the london world and in high favor for twenty-four years. yet his death was not an event. it made no stir, it attracted no attention. apparently his eminent literary contemporaries did not realize that a celebrated poet had passed from their midst. perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor rank had disappeared, but did not regard him as the author of his works. "we are justified in assuming" this. his death was not even an event in the little town of stratford. does this mean that in stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity of any kind? "we are privileged to assume"--no, we are indeed obliged to assume--that such was the case. he had spent the first twentytwo or twenty-three years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and was known by everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs and the cats and the horses. he had spent the last five or six years of his life there, diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in it; so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. but not as a celebrity? apparently not. for everybody soon forgot to remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. the dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known about him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in the same unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident connected with that period of his life they didn't tell about it. would the if they had been asked? it is most likely. were they asked? it is pretty apparent that they were not. why weren't they? it is a very plausible guess that nobody there or elsewhere was interested to know. for seven years after shakespeare's death nobody seems to have been interested in him. then the quarto was published, and ben jonson awoke out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and put it in the front of the book. then silence fell again. for sixty years. then inquiries into shakespeare's stratford life began to be made, of stratfordians. of stratfordians who had known shakespeare or had seen him? no. then of stratfordians who had seen people who had known or seen people who had seen shakespeare? no. apparently the inquires were only made of stratfordians who were not stratfordians of shakespeare's day, but later comers; and what they had learned had come to them from persons who had not seen shakespeare; and what they had learned was not claimed as fact, but only as legend-dim and fading and indefinite legend; legend of the calf-slaughtering rank, and not worth remembering either as history or fiction. has it ever happened before--or since--that a celebrated person who had spent exactly half of a fairly long life in the village where he was born and reared, was able to slip out of this world and leave that village voiceless and gossipless behind him--utterly voiceless., utterly gossipless? and permanently so? i don't believe it has happened in any case except shakespeare's. and couldn't and wouldn't have happened in his case if he had been regarded as a celebrity at the time of his death. when i examine my own case--but let us do that, and see if it will not be recognizable as exhibiting a condition of things quite likely to result, most likely to result, indeed substantially sure to result in the case of a celebrated person, a benefactor of the human race. like me. my parents brought me to the village of hannibal, missouri, on the banks of the mississippi, when i was two and a half years old. i entered school at five years of age, and drifted from one school to another in the village during nine and a half years. then my father died, leaving his family in exceedingly straitened circumstances; wherefore my book-education came to a standstill forever, and i became a printer's apprentice, on board and clothes, and when the clothes failed i got a hymn-book in place of them. this for summer wear, probably. i lived in hannibal fifteen and a half years, altogether, then ran away, according to the custom of persons who are intending to become celebrated. i never lived there afterward. four years later i became a "cub" on a mississippi steamboat in the st. louis and new orleans trade, and after a year and a half of hard study and hard work the u.s. inspectors rigorously examined me through a couple of long sittings and decided that i knew every inch of the mississippi--thirteen hundred miles--in the dark and in the day-as well as a baby knows the way to its mother's paps day or night. so they licensed me as a pilot--knighted me, so to speak --and i rose up clothed with authority, a responsible servant of the united states government. now then. shakespeare died young--he was only fifty-two. he had lived in his native village twenty-six years, or about that. he died celebrated (if you believe everything you read in the books). yet when he died nobody there or elsewhere took any notice of it; and for sixty years afterward no townsman remembered to say anything about him or about his life in stratford. when the inquirer came at last he got but one fact-no, legend--and got that one at second hand, from a person who had only heard it as a rumor and didn't claim copyright in it as a production of his own. he couldn't, very well, for its date antedated his own birth-date. but necessarily a number of persons were still alive in stratford who, in the days of their youth, had seen shakespeare nearly every day in the last five years of his life, and they would have been able to tell that inquirer some first-hand things about him if he had in those last days been a celebrity and therefore a person of interest to the villagers. why did not the inquirer hunt them up and interview them? wasn't it worth while? wasn't the matter of sufficient consequence? had the inquirer an engagement to see a dog-fight and couldn't spare the time? it all seems to mean that he never had any literary celebrity, there or elsewhere, and no considerable repute as actor and manager. now then, i am away along in life--my seventy-third year being already well behind me--yet sixteen of my hannibal schoolmates are still alive today, and can tell--and do tell-inquirers dozens and dozens of incidents of their young lives and mine together; things that happened to us in the morning of life, in the blossom of our youth, in the good days, the dear days, "the days when we went gipsying, a long time ago." most of them creditable to me, too. one child to whom i paid court when she was five years old and i eight still lives in hannibal, and she visited me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or twelve hundred miles of railroad without damage to her patience or to her old-young vigor. another little lassie to whom i paid attention in hannibal when she was nine years old and i the same, is still alive--in london--and hale and hearty, just as i am. and on the few surviving steamboats--those lingering ghosts and remembrancers of great fleets that plied the big river in the beginning of my water-career--which is exactly as long ago as the whole invoice of the life-years of shakespeare numbers--there are still findable two or three river-pilots who saw me do creditable things in those ancient days; and several white-headed engineers; and several roustabouts and mates; and several deck-hands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the still night the "six--feet--scant!" that made me shudder, and the "m-a-r-k-twain!" that took the shudder away, and presently the darling "by the d-e-e-p--four!" that lifted me to heaven for joy. [1] they know about me, and can tell. and so do printers, from st. louis to new york; and so do newspaper reporters, from nevada to san francisco. and so do the police. if shakespeare had really been celebrated, like me, stratford could have told things about him; and if my experience goes for anything, they'd have done it. -----1. four fathoms--twenty-four feet. vii if i had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide whether shakespeare wrote shakespeare or not, i believe i would place before the debaters only the one question, was shakespeare ever a practicing lawyer? and leave everything else out. it is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not only knew some thousands of things about human life in all its shades and grades, and about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and professions which men busy themselves in, but that he could talk about the men and their grades and trades accurately, making no mistakes. maybe it is so, but have the experts spoken, or is it only tom, dick, and harry? does the exhibit stand upon wide, and loose, and eloquent generalizing--which is not evidence, and not proof--or upon details, particulars, statistics, illustrations, demonstrations? experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as to only one of shakespeare's multifarious craftequipments, so far as my recollections of shakespeare-bacon talk abide with me--his law-equipment. i do not remember that wellington or napoleon ever examined shakespeare's battles and sieges and strategies, and then decided and established for good and all that they were militarily flawless; i do not remember that any nelson, or drake, or cook ever examined his seamanship and said it showed profound and accurate familiarity with that art; i don't remember that any king or prince or duke has ever testified that shakespeare was letter-perfect in his handling of royal court-manners and the talk and manners of aristocracies; i don't remember that any illustrious latinist or grecian or frenchman or spaniard or italian has proclaimed him a past-master in those languages; i don't remember--well, i don't remember that there is testimony--great testimony--imposing testimony-unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any of shakespeare's hundred specialties, except one--the law. other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back with certainty the changes that various trades and their processes and technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century or two and find out what their processes and technicalities were in those early days, but with the law it is different: it is mile-stoned and documented all the way back, and the master of that wonderful trade, that complex and intricate trade, that awe-compelling trade, has competent ways of knowing whether shakespeare-law is good law or not; and whether his law-court procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal shop-talk is the shop-talk of a veteran practitioner or only a machine-made counterfeit of it gathered from books and from occasional loiterings in westminster. richard h. dana served two years before the mast, and had every experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of our day. his sailor-talk flows from his pen with the sure touch and the ease and confidence of a person who has lived what he is talking about, not gathered it from books and random listenings. hear him: having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each sail fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at the word the whole canvas of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity possible everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and cat-headed, and the ship under headway. again: the royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and sky-sails set, and, as we had the wind free, the booms were run out, and all were aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, reeving the studding-sail gear; and sail after sail the captain piled upon her, until she was covered with canvas, her sails looking like a great white cloud resting upon a black speck. once more. a race in the pacific: our antagonist was in her best trim. being clear of the point, the breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts bent under our sails, but we would not take them in until we saw three boys spring into the rigging of the california; then they were all furled at once, but with orders to our boys to stay aloft at the top-gallant mast-heads and loose them again at the word. it was my duty to furl the fore-royal; and while standing by to loose it again, i had a fine view of the scene. from where i stood, the two vessels seemed nothing but spars and sails, while their narrow decks, far below, slanting over by the force of the wind aloft, appeared hardly capable of supporting the great fabrics raised upon them. the california was to windward of us, and had every advantage; yet, while the breeze was stiff we held our own. as soon as it began to slacken she ranged a little ahead, and the order was given to loose the royals. in an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. "sheet home the fore-royal!"-"weather sheet's home!"--"lee sheet's home!"--"hoist away, sir!" is bawled from aloft. "overhaul your clew-lines!" shouts the mate. "aye-aye, sir, all clear!"--"taut leech! belay! well the lee brace; haul taut to windward!" and the royals are set. what would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say to that? he would say, "the man that wrote that didn't learn his trade out of a book, he has been there!" but would this same captain be competent to sit in judgment upon shakespeare's seamanship--considering the changes in ships and ship-talk that have necessarily taken place, unrecorded, unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? it is my conviction that shakespeare's sailor-talk would be choctaw to him. for instance--from "the tempest": master. boatswain! boatswain. here, master; what cheer? master. good, speak to the mariners: fall to 't, yarely, or we run ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir! (enter mariners.) boatswain. heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! take in the topsail. tend to the master's whistle. . . . down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! bring her to try wi' the main course. . . . lay her a-hold, a-hold! set her two courses. off to sea again; lay her off. that will do, for the present; let us yare a little, now, for a change. if a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters say, "here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and the imposing-stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the frisket and let them jeff for takes and be quick about it," i should recognize a mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know that the writer was only a printer theoretically, not practically. i have been a quartz miner in the silver regions--a pretty hard life; i know all the palaver of that business: i know all about discovery claims and the subordinate claims; i know all about lodes, ledges, outcroppings, dips, spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, inclines, levels, tunnels, air-shafts, "horses," clay casings, granite casings; quartz mills and their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with quicksilver and sulphate of copper; and how to clean them up, and how to reduce the resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to cast the bullion into pigs; and finally i know how to screen tailings, and also how to hunt for something less robust to do, and find it. i know the argot and the quartz-mining and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever bret harte introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his miners opens his mouth i recognize from his phrasing that harte got the phrasing by listening--like shakespeare--i mean the stratford one--not by experience. no one can talk the quartz dialect correctly without learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse. i have been a surface miner--gold--and i know all its mysteries, and the dialects that belongs with them; and whenever harte introduces that industry into a story i know by the phrasing of his characters that neither he nor they have ever served that trade. i have been a "pocket" miner--a sort of gold mining not findable in any but one little spot in the world, so far as i know. i know how, with horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace it step by step and stage by stage up the mountain to its source, and find the compact little nest of yellow metal reposing in its secret home under the ground. i know the language of that trade, that capricious trade, that fascinating buried-treasure trade, and can catch any writer who tries to use it without having learned it by the sweat of his brow and the labor of his hands. i know several other trades and the argot that goes with them; and whenever a person tries to talk the talk peculiar to any of them without having learned it at its source i can trap him always before he gets far on his road. and so, as i have already remarked, if i were required to superintend a bacon-shakespeare controversy, i would narrow the matter down to a single question--the only one, so far as the previous controversies have informed me, concerning which illustrious experts of unimpeachable competency have testified: was the author of shakespeare's works a lawyer?--a lawyer deeply read and of limitless experience? i would put aside the guesses and surmises, and perhapes, and might-have-beens, and could-havebeens, and must-have-beens, and we-are-justified-in-presumings, and the rest of those vague specters and shadows and indefintenesses, and stand or fall, win or lose, by the verdict rendered by the jury upon that single question. if the verdict was yes, i should feel quite convinced that the stratford shakespeare, the actor, manager, and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so destitute of even village consequence, that sixty years afterward no fellow-citizen and friend of his later days remembered to tell anything about him, did not write the works. chapter xiii of the shakespeare problem restated bears the heading "shakespeare as a lawyer," and comprises some fifty pages of expert testimony, with comments thereon, and i will copy the first nine, as being sufficient all by themselves, as it seems to me, to settle the question which i have conceived to be the master-key to the shakespeare-bacon puzzle. viii shakespeare as a lawyer [1] the plays and poems of shakespeare supply ample evidence that their author not only had a very extensive and accurate knowledge of law, but that he was well acquainted with the manners and customs of members of the inns of court and with legal life generally. "while novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to the laws of marriage, of wills, of inheritance, to shakespeare's law, lavishly as he expounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of exceptions, nor writ of error." such was the testimony borne by one of the most distinguished lawyers of the nineteenth century who was raised to the high office of lord chief justice in 1850, and subsequently became lord chancellor. its weight will, doubtless, be more appreciated by lawyers than by laymen, for only lawyers know how impossible it is for those who have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid displaying their ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and to discuss legal doctrines. "there is nothing so dangerous," wrote lord campbell, "as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry." a layman is certain to betray himself by using some expression which a lawyer would never employ. mr. sidney lee himself supplies us with an example of this. he writes (p. 164): "on february 15, 1609, shakespeare . . . obtained judgment from a jury against addenbroke for the payment of no. 6, and no. 1, 5s. 0d. costs." now a lawyer would never have spoken of obtaining "judgment from a jury," for it is the function of a jury not to deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but to find a verdict on the facts. the error is, indeed, a venial one, but it is just one of those little things which at once enable a lawyer to know if the writer is a layman or "one of the craft." but when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he is naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence. "let a non-professional man, however acute," writes lord campbell again, "presume to talk law, or to draw illustrations from legal science in discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable absurdity." and what does the same high authority say about shakespeare? he had "a deep technical knowledge of the law," and an easy familiarity with "some of the most abstruse proceedings in english jurisprudence." and again: "whenever he indulges this propensity he uniformly lays down good law." of "henry iv.," part 2, he says: "if lord eldon could be supposed to have written the play, i do not see how he could be chargeable with having forgotten any of his law while writing it." charles and mary cowden clarke speak of "the marvelous intimacy which he displays with legal terms, his frequent adoption of them in illustration, and his curiously technical knowledge of their form and force." malone, himself a lawyer, wrote: "his knowledge of legal terms is not merely such as might be acquired by the casual observation of even his all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of technical skill." another lawyer and well-known shakespearean, richard grant white, says: "no dramatist of the time, not even beaumont, who was the younger son of a judge of the common pleas, and who after studying in the inns of court abandoned law for the drama, used legal phrases with shakespeare's readiness and exactness. and the significance of this fact is heightened by another, that is only to the language of the law that he exhibits this inclination. the phrases peculiar to other occupations serve him on rare occasions by way of description, comparison, or illustration, generally when something in the scene suggests them, but legal phrases flow from his pen as part of his vocabulary and parcel of his thought. take the word 'purchase' for instance, which, in ordinary use, means to acquire by giving value, but applies in law to all legal modes of obtaining property except by inheritance or descent, and in this peculiar sense the word occurs five times in shakespeare's thirty-four plays, and only in one single instance in the fifty-four plays of beaumont and fletcher. it has been suggested that it was in attendance upon the courts in london that he picked up his legal vocabulary. but this supposition not only fails to account for shakespeare's peculiar freedom and exactness in the use of that phraseology, it does not even place him in the way of learning those terms his use of which is most remarkable, which are not such as he would have heard at ordinary proceedings at nisi prius, but such as refer to the tenure or transfer of real property, 'fine and recovery,' 'statutes merchant,' 'purchase,' 'indenture,' 'tenure,' 'double voucher,' 'fee simple,' 'fee farm,' 'remainder,' 'reversion,' 'forfeiture,' etc. this conveyancer's jargon could not have been picked up by hanging round the courts of law in london two hundred and fifty years ago, when suits as to the title of real property were comparatively rare. and besides, shakespeare uses his law just as freely in his first plays, written in his first london years, as in those produced at a later period. just as exactly, too; for the correctness and propriety with which these terms are introduced have compelled the admiration of a chief justice and a lord chancellor." senator davis wrote: "we seem to have something more than a sciolist's temerity of indulgence in the terms of an unfamiliar art. no legal solecisms will be found. the abstrusest elements of the common law are impressed into a disciplined service. over and over again, where such knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law, shakespeare appears in perfect possession of it. in the law of real property, its rules of tenure and descents, its entails, its fines and recoveries, their vouchers and double vouchers, in the procedure of the courts, the method of bringing writs and arrests, the nature of actions, the rules of pleading, the law of escapes and of contempt of court, in the principles of evidence, both technical and philosophical, in the distinction between the temporal and spiritual tribunals, in the law of attainder and forfeiture, in the requisites of a valid marriage, in the presumption of legitimacy, in the learning of the law of prerogative, in the inalienable character of the crown, this mastership appears with surprising authority." to all this testimony (and there is much more which i have not cited) may now be added that of a great lawyer of our own times, viz.: sir james plaisted wilde, q.c. 1855, created a baron of the exchequer in 1860, promoted to the post of judgeordinary and judge of the courts of probate and divorce in 1863, and better known to the world as lord penzance, to which dignity he was raised in 1869. lord penzance, as all lawyers know, and as the late mr. inderwick, k.c., has testified, was one of the first legal authorities of his day, famous for his "remarkable grasp of legal principles," and "endowed by nature with a remarkable facility for marshaling facts, and for a clear expression of his views." lord penzance speaks of shakespeare's "perfect familiarity with not only the principles, axioms, and maxims, but the technicalities of english law, a knowledge so perfect and intimate that he was never incorrect and never at fault. . . . the mode in which this knowledge was pressed into service on all occasions to express his meaning and illustrate his thoughts was quite unexampled. he seems to have had a special pleasure in his complete and ready mastership of it in all its branches. as manifested in the plays, this legal knowledge and learning had therefore a special character which places it on a wholly different footing from the rest of the multifarious knowledge which is exhibited in page after page of the plays. at every turn and point at which the author required a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned first to the law. he seems almost to have thought in legal phrases, the commonest of legal expressions were ever at the end of his pen in description or illustration. that he should have descanted in lawyer language when he had a forensic subject in hand, such as shylock's bond, was to be expected, but the knowledge of law in 'shakespeare' was exhibited in a far different manner: it protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate or inappropriate, and mingled itself with strains of thought widely divergent from forensic subjects." again: "to acquire a perfect familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate and ready use of the technical terms and phrases not only of the conveyancer's office, but of the pleader's chambers and the courts at westminster, nothing short of employment in some career involving constant contact with legal questions and general legal work would be requisite. but a continuous employment involves the element of time, and time was just what the manager of two theaters had not at his disposal. in what portion of shakespeare's (i.e., shakspere's) career would it be possible to point out that time could be found for the interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or offices of practicing lawyers?" stratfordians, as is well known, casting about for some possible explanation of shakespeare's extraordinary knowledge of law, have made the suggestion that shakespeare might, conceivably, have been a clerk in an attorney's office before he came to london. mr. collier wrote to lord campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this being true. his answer was as follows: "you require us to believe implicitly a fact, of which, if true, positive and irrefragable evidence in his own handwriting might have been forthcoming to establish it. not having been actually enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court at stratford nor of the superior court at westminster would present his name as being concerned in any suit as an attorney, but it might reasonably have been expected that there would be deeds or wills witnessed by him still extant, and after a very diligent search none such can be discovered." upon this lord penzance commends: "it cannot be doubted that lord campbell was right in this. no young man could have been at work in an attorney's office without being called upon continually to act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of his work and name." there is not a single fact or incident in all that is known of shakespeare, even by rumor or tradition, which supports this notion of a clerkship. and after much argument and surmise which has been indulged in on this subject, we may, i think, safely put the notion on one side, for no less an authority than mr. grant white says finally that the idea of his having been clerk to an attorney has been "blown to pieces." it is altogether characteristic of mr. churton collins that he, nevertheless, adopts this exploded myth. "that shakespeare was in early life employed as a clerk in an attorney's office may be correct. at stratford there was by royal charter a court of record sitting every fortnight, with six attorneys, besides the town clerk, belonging to it, and it is certainly not straining probability to suppose that the young shakespeare may have had employment in one of them. there is, it is true, no tradition to this effect, but such traditions as we have about shakespeare's occupation between the time of leaving school and going to london are so loose and baseless that no confidence can be placed in them. it is, to say the least, more probable that he was in an attorney's office than that he was a butcher killing calves 'in a high style,' and making speeches over them." this is a charming specimen of stratfordian argument. there is, as we have seen, a very old tradition that shakespeare was a butcher's apprentice. john dowdall, who made a tour of warwickshire in 1693, testifies to it as coming from the old clerk who showed him over the church, and it is unhesitatingly accepted as true by mr. halliwell-phillipps. (vol. i, p. 11, and vol. ii, pp. 71, 72.) mr. sidney lee sees nothing improbable in it, and it is supported by aubrey, who must have written his account some time before 1680, when his manuscript was completed. of the attorney's clerk hypothesis, on the other hand, there is not the faintest vestige of a tradition. it has been evolved out of the fertile imaginations of embarrassed stratfordians, seeking for some explanation of the stratford rustic's marvelous acquaintance with law and legal terms and legal life. but mr. churton collins has not the least hesitation in throwing over the tradition which has the warrant of antiquity and setting up in its stead this ridiculous invention, for which not only is there no shred of positive evidence, but which, as lord campbell and lord penzance pointed out, is really put out of court by the negative evidence, since "no young man could have been at work in an attorney's office without being called upon continually to act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of his work and name." and as mr. edwards further points out, since the day when lord campbell's book was published (between forty and fifty years ago), "every old deed or will, to say nothing of other legal papers, dated during the period of william shakespeare's youth, has been scrutinized over half a dozen shires, and not one signature of the young man has been found." moreover, if shakespeare had served as clerk in an attorney's office it is clear that he must have served for a considerable period in order to have gained (if, indeed, it is credible that he could have so gained) his remarkable knowledge of the law. can we then for a moment believe that, if this had been so, tradition would have been absolutely silent on the matter? that dowdall's old clerk, over eighty years of age, should have never heard of it (though he was sure enough about the butcher's apprentice) and that all the other ancient witnesses should be in similar ignorance! but such are the methods of stratfordian controversy. tradition is to be scouted when it is found inconvenient, but cited as irrefragable truth when it suits the case. shakespeare of stratford was the author of the plays and poems, but the author of the plays and poems could not have been a butcher's apprentice. anyway, therefore, with tradition. but the author of the plays and poems must have had a very large and a very accurate knowledge of the law. therefore, shakespeare of stratford must have been an attorney's clerk! the method is simplicity itself. by similar reasoning shakespeare has been made a country schoolmaster, a soldier, a physician, a printer, and a good many other things besides, according to the inclination and the exigencies of the commentator. it would not be in the least surprising to find that he was studying latin as a schoolmaster and law in an attorney's office at the same time. however, we must do mr. collins the justice of saying that he has fully recognized, what is indeed tolerable obvious, that shakespeare must have had a sound legal training. "it may, of course, be urged," he writes, "that shakespeare's knowledge of medicine, and particularly that branch of it which related to morbid psychology, is equally remarkable, and that no one has ever contended that he was a physician. (here mr. collins is wrong; that contention also has been put forward.) it may be urged that his acquaintance with the technicalities of other crafts and callings, notably of marine and military affairs, was also extraordinary, and yet no one has suspected him of being a sailor or a soldier. (wrong again. why, even messrs. garnett and gosse "suspect" that he was a soldier!) this may be conceded, but the concession hardly furnishes an analogy. to these and all other subjects he recurs occasionally, and in season, but with reminiscences of the law his memory, as is abundantly clear, was simply saturated. in season and out of season now in manifest, now in recondite application, he presses it into the service of expression and illustration. at least a third of his myriad metaphors are derived from it. it would indeed be difficult to find a single act in any of his dramas, nay, in some of them, a single scene, the diction and imagery of which are not colored by it. much of his law may have been acquired from three books easily accessible to him--namely, tottell's precedents (1572), pulton's statutes (1578), and fraunce's lawier's logike (1588), works with which he certainly seems to have been familiar; but much of it could only have come from one who had an intimate acquaintance with legal proceedings. we quite agree with mr. castle that shakespeare's legal knowledge is not what could have been picked up in an attorney's office, but could only have been learned by an actual attendance at the courts, at a pleader's chambers, and on circuit, or by associating intimately with members of the bench and bar." this is excellent. but what is mr. collins's explanation? "perhaps the simplest solution of the problem is to accept the hypothesis that in early life he was in an attorney's office (!), that he there contracted a love for the law which never left him, that as a young man in london he continued to study or dabble in it for his amusement, to stroll in leisure hours into the courts, and to frequent the society of lawyers. on no other supposition is it possible to explain the attraction which the law evidently had for him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy in a subject where no layman who has indulged in such copious and ostentatious display of legal technicalities has ever yet succeeded in keeping himself from tripping." a lame conclusion. "no other supposition" indeed! yes, there is another, and a very obvious supposition--namely, that shakespeare was himself a lawyer, well versed in his trade, versed in all the ways of the courts, and living in close intimacy with judges and members of the inns of court. one is, of course, thankful that mr. collins has appreciated the fact that shakespeare must have had a sound legal training, but i may be forgiven if i do not attach quite so much importance to his pronouncements on this branch of the subject as to those of malone, lord campbell, judge holmes, mr. castle, k.c., lord penzance, mr. grant white, and other lawyers, who have expressed their opinion on the matter of shakespeare's legal acquirements. . . . here it may, perhaps, be worth while to quote again from lord penzance's book as to the suggestion that shakespeare had somehow or other managed "to acquire a perfect familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate and ready use of the technical terms and phrases, not only of the conveyancer's office, but of the pleader's chambers and the courts at westminster." this, as lord penzance points out, "would require nothing short of employment in some career involving constant contact with legal questions and general legal work." but "in what portion of shakespeare's career would it be possible to point out that time could be found for the interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or offices of practicing lawyers? . . . it is beyond doubt that at an early period he was called upon to abandon his attendance at school and assist his father, and was soon after, at the age of sixteen, bound apprentice to a trade. while under the obligation of this bond he could not have pursued any other employment. then he leaves stratford and comes to london. he has to provide himself with the means of a livelihood, and this he did in some capacity at the theater. no one doubt that. the holding of horses is scouted by many, and perhaps with justice, as being unlikely and certainly unproved; but whatever the nature of his employment was at the theater, there is hardly room for the belief that it could have been other than continuous, for his progress there was so rapid. ere long he had been taken into the company as an actor, and was soon spoken of as a "johannes factotum.' his rapid accumulation of wealth speaks volumes for the constancy and activity of his services. one fails to see when there could be a break in the current of his life at this period of it, giving room or opportunity for legal or indeed any other employment. 'in 1589,' says knight, 'we have undeniable evidence that he had not only a casual engagement, was not only a salaried servant, as may players were, but was a shareholder in the company of the queen's players with other shareholders below him on the list.' this (1589) would be within two years after his arrival in london, which is placed by white and halliwellphillipps about the year 1587. the difficulty in supposing that, starting with a state of ignorance in 1587, when he is supposed to have come to london, he was induced to enter upon a course of most extended study and mental culture, is almost insuperable. still it was physically possible, provided always that he could have had access to the needful books. but this legal training seems to me to stand on a different footing. it is not only unaccountable and incredible, but it is actually negatived by the known facts of his career." lord penzance then refers to the fact that "by 1592 (according to the best authority, mr. grant white) several of the plays had been written. 'the comedy of errors' in 1589, 'love's labour's lost' in 1589, 'two gentlemen of verona' in 1589 or 1590," and so forth, and then asks, "with this catalogue of dramatic work on hand . . . was it possible that he could have taken a leading part in the management and conduct of two theaters, and if mr. phillipps is to be relied upon, taken his share in the performances of the provincial tours of his company--and at the same time devoted himself to the study of the law in all its branches so efficiently as to make himself complete master of its principles and practice, and saturate his mind with all its most technical terms?" i have cited this passage from lord penzance's book, because it lay before me, and i had already quoted from it on the matter of shakespeare's legal knowledge; but other writers have still better set forth the insuperable difficulties, as they seem to me, which beset the idea that shakespeare might have found them in some unknown period of early life, amid multifarious other occupations, for the study of classics, literature, and law, to say nothing of languages and a few other matters. lord penzance further asks his readers: "did you ever meet with or hear of an instance in which a young man in this country gave himself up to legal studies and engaged in legal employments, which is the only way of becoming familiar with the technicalities of practice, unless with the view of practicing in that profession? i do not believe that it would be easy, or indeed possible, to produce an instance in which the law has been seriously studied in all its branches, except as a qualification for practice in the legal profession." this testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises, and maybe-so's, and might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and musthave-beens, and the rest of that ton of plaster of paris out of which the biographers have built the colossal brontosaur which goes by the stratford actor's name, that it quite convinces me that the man who wrote shakespeare's works knew all about law and lawyers. also, that that man could not have been the stratford shakespeare--and wasn't. who did write these works, then? i wish i knew. ----1. from chapter xiii of the shakespeare problem restated. by george g. greenwood, m.p. john lane company, publishers. ix did francis bacon write shakespeare's works? nobody knows. we cannot say we know a thing when that thing has not been proved. know is too strong a word to use when the evidence is not final and absolutely conclusive. we can infer, if we want to, like those slaves. . . . no, i will not write that word, it is not kind, it is not courteous. the upholders of the stratford-shakespeare superstition call us the hardest names they can think of, and they keep doing it all the time; very well, if they like to descend to that level, let them do it, but i will not so undignify myself as to follow them. i cannot call them harsh names; the most i can do is to indicate them by terms reflecting my disapproval; and this without malice, without venom. to resume. what i was about to say was, those thugs have built their entire superstition upon inferences, not upon known and established facts. it is a weak method, and poor, and i am glad to be able to say our side never resorts to it while there is anything else to resort to. but when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a place of that sort. . . . since the stratford shakespeare couldn't have written the works, we infer that somebody did. who was it, then? this requires some more inferring. ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent like a tidal wave whose roar and boom and thunder are made up of admiration, delight, and applause, a dozen obscure people rise up and claim the authorship. why a dozen, instead of only one or two? one reason is, because there are a dozen that are recognizably competent to do that poem. do you remember "beautiful snow"? do you remember "rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep"? do you remember "backward, turn, backward, o time, in thy flight! make me a child again just for tonight"? i remember them very well. their authorship was claimed by most of the grown-up people who were alive at the time, and every claimant had one plausible argument in his favor, at least--to wit, he could have done the authoring; he was competent. have the works been claimed by a dozen? they haven't. there was good reason. the world knows there was but one man on the planet at the time who was competent--not a dozen, and not two. a long time ago the dwellers in a far country used now and then to find a procession of prodigious footprints stretching across the plain--footprints that were three miles apart, each footprint a third of a mile long and a furlong deep, and with forests and villages mashed to mush in it. was there any doubt as to who made that mighty trail? were there a dozen claimants? where there two? no--the people knew who it was that had been along there: there was only one hercules. there has been only one shakespeare. there couldn't be two; certainly there couldn't be two at the same time. it takes ages to bring forth a shakespeare, and some more ages to match him. this one was not matched before his time; nor during his time; and hasn't been matched since. the prospect of matching him in our time is not bright. the baconians claim that the stratford shakespeare was not qualified to write the works, and that francis bacon was. they claim that bacon possessed the stupendous equipment--both natural and acquired--for the miracle; and that no other englishman of his day possessed the like; or, indeed, anything closely approaching it. macaulay, in his essay, has much to say about the splendor and horizonless magnitude of that equipment. also, he has synopsized bacon's history--a thing which cannot be done for the stratford shakespeare, for he hasn't any history to synopsize. bacon's history is open to the world, from his boyhood to his death in old age--a history consisting of known facts, displayed in minute and multitudinous detail; facts, not guesses and conjectures and might-have-beens. whereby it appears that he was born of a race of statesmen, and had a lord chancellor for his father, and a mother who was "distinguished both as a linguist and a theologian: she corresponded in greek with bishop jewell, and translated his apologia from the latin so correctly that neither he nor archbishop parker could suggest a single alteration." it is the atmosphere we are reared in that determines how our inclinations and aspirations shall tend. the atmosphere furnished by the parents to the son in this present case was an atmosphere saturated with learning; with thinkings and ponderings upon deep subjects; and with polite culture. it had its natural effect. shakespeare of stratford was reared in a house which had no use for books, since its owners, his parents, were without education. this may have had an effect upon the son, but we do not know, because we have no history of him of an informing sort. there were but few books anywhere, in that day, and only the well-to-do and highly educated possessed them, they being almost confined to the dead languages. "all the valuable books then extant in all the vernacular dialects of europe would hardly have filled a single shelf"--imagine it! the few existing books were in the latin tongue mainly. "a person who was ignorant of it was shut out from all acquaintance--not merely with cicero and virgil, but with the most interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time"--a literature necessary to the stratford lad, for his fictitious reputation's sake, since the writer of his works would begin to use it wholesale and in a most masterly way before the lad was hardly more than out of his teens and into his twenties. at fifteen bacon was sent to the university, and he spent three years there. thence he went to paris in the train of the english ambassador, and there he mingled daily with the wise, the cultured, the great, and the aristocracy of fashion, during another three years. a total of six years spent at the sources of knowledge; knowledge both of books and of men. the three spent at the university were coeval with the second and last three spent by the little stratford lad at stratford school supposedly, and perhapsedly, and maybe, and by inference--with nothing to infer from. the second three of the baconian six were "presumably" spent by the stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. that is, the thugs presume it--on no evidence of any kind. which is their way, when they want a historical fact. fact and presumption are, for business purposes, all the same to them. they know the difference, but they also know how to blink it. they know, too, that while in history-building a fact is better than a presumption, it doesn't take a presumption long to bloom into a fact when they have the handling of it. they know by old experience that when they get hold of a presumptiontadpole he is not going to stay tadpole in their history-tank; no, they know how to develop him into the giant four-legged bullfrog of fact, and make him sit up on his hams, and puff out his chin, and look important and insolent and come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity with a thundering bellow that will convince everybody because it is so loud. the thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning convinces but one. i wouldn't be a thug, not even if-but never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides. if i am better than a thug, is the merit mine? no, it is his. then to him be the praise. that is the right spirit. they "presume" the lad severed his "presumed" connection with the stratford school to become apprentice to a butcher. they also "presume" that the butcher was his father. they don't know. there is no written record of it, nor any other actual evidence. if it would have helped their case any, they would have apprenticed him to thirty butchers, to fifty butchers, to a wilderness of butchers--all by their patented method "presumption." if it will help their case they will do it yet; and if it will further help it, they will "presume" that all those butchers were his father. and the week after, they will say it. why, it is just like being the past tense of the compound reflexive adverbial incandescent hypodermic irregular accusative noun of multitude; which is father to the expression which the grammarians call verb. it is like a whole ancestry, with only one posterity. to resume. next, the young bacon took up the study of law, and mastered that abstruse science. from that day to the end of his life he was daily in close contact with lawyers and judges; not as a casual onlooker in intervals between holding horses in front of a theater, but as a practicing lawyer--a great and successful one, a renowned one, a launcelot of the bar, the most formidable lance in the high brotherhood of the legal table round; he lived in the law's atmosphere thenceforth, all his years, and by sheer ability forced his way up its difficult steeps to its supremest summit, the lord-chancellorship, leaving behind him no fellow-craftsman qualified to challenge his divine right to that majestic place. when we read the praises bestowed by lord penzance and the other illustrious experts upon the legal condition and legal aptnesses, brilliances, profundities, and felicities so prodigally displayed in the plays, and try to fit them to the historyless stratford stage-manager, they sound wild, strange, incredible, ludicrous; but when we put them in the mouth of bacon they do not sound strange, they seem in their natural and rightful place, they seem at home there. please turn back and read them again. attributed to shakespeare of stratford they are meaningless, they are inebriate extravagancies--intemperate admirations of the dark side of the moon, so to speak; attributed to bacon, they are admirations of the golden glories of the moon's front side, the moon at the full--and not intemperate, not overwrought, but sane and right, and justified. "at ever turn and point at which the author required a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned first to the law; he seems almost to have thought in legal phrases; the commonest legal phrases, the commonest of legal expressions, were ever at the end of his pen." that could happen to no one but a person whose trade was the law; it could not happen to a dabbler in it. veteran mariners fill their conversation with sailor-phrases and draw all their similes from the ship and the sea and the storm, but no mere passenger ever does it, be he of stratford or elsewhere; or could do it with anything resembling accuracy, if he were hardy enough to try. please read again what lord campbell and the other great authorities have said about bacon when they thought they were saying it about shakespeare of stratford. x the rest of the equipment the author of the plays was equipped, beyond every other man of his time, with wisdom, erudition, imagination, capaciousness of mind, grace, and majesty of expression. everyone one had said it, no one doubts it. also, he had humor, humor in rich abundance, and always wanting to break out. we have no evidence of any kind that shakespeare of stratford possessed any of these gifts or any of these acquirements. the only lines he ever wrote, so far as we know, are substantially barren of them-barren of all of them. good friend for iesus sake forbeare to digg the dust encloased heare: blest be ye man yt spares thes stones and curst be he yt moves my bones. ben jonson says of bacon, as orator: his language, where he could spare and pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. no man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. no member of his speech but consisted of his (its) own graces. . . . the fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end. from macaulay: he continued to distinguish himself in parliament, particularly by his exertions in favor of one excellent measure on which the king's heart was set--the union of england and scotland. it was not difficult for such an intellect to discover many irresistible arguments in favor of such a scheme. he conducted the great case of the post nati in the exchequer chamber; and the decision of the judges--a decision the legality of which may be questioned, but the beneficial effect of which must be acknowledged--was in a great measure attributed to his dexterous management. again: while actively engaged in the house of commons and in the courts of law, he still found leisure for letters and philosophy. the noble treatise on the advancement of learning, which at a later period was expanded into the de augmentis, appeared in 1605. the wisdom of the ancients, a work which, if it had proceeded from any other writer, would have been considered as a masterpiece of wit and learning, was printed in 1609. in the mean time the novum organum was slowly proceeding. several distinguished men of learning had been permitted to see portions of that extraordinary book, and they spoke with the greatest admiration of his genius. even sir thomas bodley, after perusing the cogitata et visa, one of the most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great oracular volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that "in all proposals and plots in that book, bacon showed himself a master workman"; and that "it could not be gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound with choice conceits of the present state of learning, and with worthy contemplations of the means to procure it." in 1612 a new edition of the essays appeared, with additions surpassing the original collection both in bulk and quality. nor did these pursuits distract bacon's attention from a work the most arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful that even his mighty powers could have achieved, "the reducing and recompiling," to use his own phrase, "of the laws of england." to serve the exacting and laborious offices of attorney-general and solicitor-general would have satisfied the appetite of any other man for hard work, but bacon had to add the vast literary industries just described, to satisfy his. he was a born worker. the service which he rendered to letters during the last five years of his life, amid ten thousand distractions and vexations, increase the regret with which we think on the many years which he had wasted, to use the words of sir thomas bodley, "on such study as was not worthy such a student." he commenced a digest of the laws of england, a history of england under the princes of the house of tudor, a body of national history, a philosophical romance. he made extensive and valuable additions to his essays. he published the inestimable treatise de augmentis scientiarum. did these labors of hercules fill up his time to his contentment, and quiet his appetite for work? not entirely: the trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and languor bore the mark of his mind. the best jest-book in the world is that which he dictated from memory, without referring to any book, on a day on which illness had rendered him incapable of serious study. here are some scattered remarks (from macaulay) which throw light upon bacon, and seem to indicate--and maybe demonstrate-that he was competent to write the plays and poems: with great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other human being. the essays contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden, or a court-masque, could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable of taking in the whole world of knowledge. his understanding resembled the tent which the fairy paribanou gave to prince ahmed: fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady; spread it, and the armies of the powerful sultans might repose beneath its shade. the knowledge in which bacon excelled all men was a knowledge of the mutual relations of all departments of knowledge. in a letter written when he was only thirty-one, to his uncle, lord burleigh, he said, "i have taken all knowledge to be my province." though bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of logic, he adorned her profusely with all the richest decorations of rhetoric. the practical faculty was powerful in bacon; but not, like his wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason and to tyrannize over the whole man. there are too many places in the plays where this happens. poor old dying john of gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name, is a pathetic instance of it. "we may assume" that it is bacon's fault, but the stratford shakespeare has to bear the blame. no imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated. it stopped at the first check from good sense. in truth, much of bacon's life was passed in a visionary world-amid things as strange as any that are described in the arabian tales . . . amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of aladdin, fountains more wonderful than the golden water of parizade, conveyances more rapid than the hippogryph of ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance of astolfo, remedies more effacious than the balsam of fierabras. yet in his magnificent day-dreams there was nothing wild--nothing but what sober reason sanctioned. bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the novum organum. . . . every part of it blazes with wit, but with wit which is employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. no book ever made so great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so may prejudices, introduced so many new opinions. but what we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect which, without effort, takes in at once all the domains of science--all the past, the present and the future, all the errors of two thousand years, all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of the coming age. he had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and rendering it portable. his eloquence would alone have entitled him to a high rank in literature. it is evident that he had each and every one of the mental gifts and each and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally displayed in the plays and poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any other man of his time or of any previous time. he was a genius without a mate, a prodigy not matable. there was only one of him; the planet could not produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. he could have written anything that is in the plays and poems. he could have written this: the cloud-cap'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and, like an insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. we are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. also, he could have written this, but he refrained: good friend for iesus sake forbeare to digg the dust encloased heare: blest be ye man yt spares thes stones and curst be he yt moves my bones. when a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap'd towers, he ought not to follow it immediately with good friend for iesus sake forbeare, because he will find the transition from great poetry to poor prose too violent for comfort. it will give him a shock. you never notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is until you bite into a layer of it in a pie. xi am i trying to convince anybody that shakespeare did not write shakespeare's works? ah, now, what do you take me for? would i be so soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for nearly seventy-four years? it would grieve me to know that any one could think so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so unadmiringly of me. no, no, i am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. i doubt if i could do it myself. we always get at second hand our notions about systems of government; and high tariff and low tariff; and prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and the glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and approval of the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs concerning the nature of cats; and our ideas as to whether the murder of helpless wild animals is base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of religious and political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the shakespeares and the author ortons and the mrs. eddys. we get them all at second hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves. it is the way we are made. it is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't change it. and whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have been taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion. in morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to wash. whenever we have been furnished with a tar baby ostensibly stuffed with jewels, and warned that it will be dishonorable and irreverent to disembowel it and test the jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off it. we submit, not reluctantly, but rather gladly, for we are privately afraid we should find, upon examination that the jewels are of the sort that are manufactured at north adams, mass. i haven't any idea that shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal this side of the year 2209. disbelief in him cannot come swiftly, disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known to disintegrate swiftly; it is a very slow process. it took several thousand years to convince our fine race--including every splendid intellect in it--that there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken several thousand years to convince the same fine race--including every splendid intellect in it--that there is no such person as satan; it has taken several centuries to remove perdition from the protestant church's program of post-mortem entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to persuade american presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their scotch brethren will still be burning babies in the everlasting fires when shakespeare comes down from his perch. we are the reasoning race. we can't prove it by the above examples, and we can't prove it by the miraculous "histories" built by those stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of sawdust, but there is a plenty of other things we can prove it by, if i could think of them. we are the reasoning race, and when we find a vague file of chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust of stratford village, we know by our reasoning bowers that hercules has been along there. i feel that our fetish is safe for three centuries yet. the bust, too--there in the stratford church. the precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust, the serene bust, the emotionless bust, with the dandy mustache, and the putty face, unseamed of care--that face which has looked passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years and will still look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder. xii irreverence one of the most trying defects which i find in these--these --what shall i call them? for i will not apply injurious epithets to them, the way they do to us, such violations of courtesy being repugnant to my nature and my dignity. the farthest i can go in that direction is to call them by names of limited reverence-names merely descriptive, never unkind, never offensive, never tainted by harsh feeling. if they would do like this, they would feel better in their hearts. very well, then--to proceed. one of the most trying defects which i find in these stratfordolaters, these shakesperiods, these thugs, these bangalores, these troglodytes, these herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these buccaneers, these bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. it is detectable in every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us. i am thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. when a thing is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. i cannot call to mind a single instance where i have ever been irreverent, except towards the things which were sacred to other people. am i in the right? i think so. but i ask no one to take my unsupported word; no, look at the dictionary; let the dictionary decide. here is the definition: irreverence. the quality or condition of irreverence toward god and sacred things. what does the hindu say? he says it is correct. he says irreverence is lack of respect for vishnu, and brahma, and chrishna, and his other gods, and for his sacred cattle, and for his temples and the things within them. he endorses the definition, you see; and there are 300,000,000 hindus or their equivalents back of him. the dictionary had the acute idea that by using the capital g it could restrict irreverence to lack of reverence for our deity and our sacred things, but that ingenious and rather sly idea miscarried: for by the simple process of spelling his deities with capitals the hindu confiscates the definition and restricts it to his own sects, thus making it clearly compulsory upon us to revere his gods and his sacred things, and nobody's else. we can't say a word, for he had our own dictionary at his back, and its decision is final. this law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. whatever is sacred to the christian must be held in reverence by everybody else; 2. whatever is sacred to the hindu must be held in reverence by everybody else; 3. therefore, by consequence, logically, and indisputably, whatever is sacred to me must be held in reverence by everybody else. now then, what aggravates me is that these troglodytes and muscovites and bandoleers and buccaneers are also trying to crowd in and share the benefit of the law, and compel everybody to revere their shakespeare and hold him sacred. we can't have that: there's enough of us already. if you go on widening and spreading and inflating the privilege, it will presently come to be conceded that each man's sacred things are the only ones, and the rest of the human race will have to be humbly reverent toward them or suffer for it. that can surely happen, and when it happens, the word irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless, and foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent, and dictatorial word in the language. and people will say, "whose business is it what gods i worship and what things hold sacred? who has the right to dictate to my conscience, and where did he get that right?" we cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. we must save the word from this destruction. there is but one way to do it, and that is to stop the spread of the privilege and strictly confine it to its present limits--that is, to all the christian sects, to all the hindu sects, and me. we do not need any more, the stock is watered enough, just as it is. it would be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. i think so because i am the only sect that knows how to employ it gently, kindly, charitably, dispassionately. the other sects lack the quality of self-restraint. the catholic church says the most irreverent things about matters which are sacred to the protestants, and the protestant church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which catholics hold sacred; then both of these irreverencers turn upon thomas paine and charge him with irreverence. this is all unfortunate, because it makes it difficult for students equipped with only a low grade of mentality to find out what irreverence really is. it will surely be much better all around if the privilege of regulating the irreverent and keeping them in order shall eventually be withdrawn from all the sects but me. then there will be no more quarreling, no more bandying of disrespectful epithets, no more heartburnings. there will then be nothing sacred involved in this baconshakespeare controversy except what is sacred to me. that will simplify the whole matter, and trouble will cease. there will be irreverence no longer, because i will not allow it. the first time those criminals charge me with irreverence for calling their stratford myth an arthur-orton-mary-baker-thompson-eddy-louisthe-seventeenth-veiled-prophet-of-khorassan will be the last. taught by the methods found effective in extinguishing earlier offenders by the inquisition, of holy memory, i shall know how to quiet them. xiii isn't it odd, when you think of it, that you may list all the celebrated englishmen, irishmen, and scotchmen of modern times, clear back to the first tudors--a list containing five hundred names, shall we say?--and you can go to the histories, biographies, and cyclopedias and learn the particulars of the lives of every one of them. every one of them except one--the most famous, the most renowned--by far the most illustrious of them all--shakespeare! you can get the details of the lives of all the celebrated ecclesiastics in the list; all the celebrated tragedians, comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets, dramatists, historians, biographers, editors, inventors, reformers, statesmen, generals, admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters, murderers, pirates, conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers, misers, swindlers, explorers, adventurers by land and sea, bankers, financiers, astronomers, naturalists, claimants, impostors, chemists, biologists, geologists, philologists, college presidents and professors, architects, engineers, painters, sculptors, politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists, patriots, demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars, highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeons--you can get the life-histories of all of them but one. just one--the most extraordinary and the most celebrated of them all-shakespeare! you may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished by the rest of christendom in the past four centuries, and you can find out the life-histories of all those people, too. you will then have listed fifteen hundred celebrities, and you can trace the authentic life-histories of the whole of them. save one--far and away the most colossal prodigy of the entire accumulation--shakespeare! about him you can find out nothing. nothing of even the slightest importance. nothing worth the trouble of stowing away in your memory. nothing that even remotely indicates that he was ever anything more than a distinctly commonplace person--a manager, an actor of inferior grade, a small trader in a small village that did not regard him as a person of any consequence, and had forgotten all about him before he was fairly cold in his grave. we can go to the records and find out the life-history of every renowned race-horse of modern times--but not shakespeare's! there are many reasons why, and they have been furnished in cart-loads (of guess and conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there is one that is worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is abundantly sufficient all by itself--he hadn't any history to record. there is no way of getting around that deadly fact. and no sane way has yet been discovered of getting around its formidable significance. its quite plain significance--to any but those thugs (i do not use the term unkindly) is, that shakespeare had no prominence while he lived, and none until he had been dead two or three generations. the plays enjoyed high fame from the beginning; and if he wrote them it seems a pity the world did not find it out. he ought to have explained that he was the author, and not merely a nom de plume for another man to hide behind. if he had been less intemperately solicitous about his bones, and more solicitous about his works, it would have been better for his good name, and a kindness to us. the bones were not important. they will moulder away, they will turn to dust, but the works will endure until the last sun goes down. mark twain. p.s. march 25. about two months ago i was illuminating this autobiography with some notions of mine concerning the bacon-shakespeare controversy, and i then took occasion to air the opinion that the stratford shakespeare was a person of no public consequence or celebrity during his lifetime, but was utterly obscure and unimportant. and not only in great london, but also in the little village where he was born, where he lived a quarter of a century, and where he died and was buried. i argued that if he had been a person of any note at all, aged villagers would have had much to tell about him many and many a year after his death, instead of being unable to furnish inquirers a single fact connected with him. i believed, and i still believe, that if he had been famous, his notoriety would have lasted as long as mine has lasted in my native village out in missouri. it is a good argument, a prodigiously strong one, and most formidable one for even the most gifted and ingenious and plausible stratfordolator to get around or explain away. today a hannibal courier-post of recent date has reached me, with an article in it which reinforces my contention that a really celebrated person cannot be forgotten in his village in the short space of sixty years. i will make an extract from it: hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for, but ingratitude is not one of them, or reverence for the great men she has produced, and as the years go by her greatest son, mark twain, or s. l. clemens as a few of the unlettered call him, grows in the estimation and regard of the residents of the town he made famous and the town that made him famous. his name is associated with every old building that is torn down to make way for the modern structures demanded by a rapidly growing city, and with every hill or cave over or through which he might by any possibility have roamed, while the many points of interest which he wove into his stories, such as holiday hill, jackson's island, or mark twain cave, are now monuments to his genius. hannibal is glad of any opportunity to do him honor as he had honored her. so it has happened that the "old timers" who went to school with mark or were with him on some of his usual escapades have been honored with large audiences whenever they were in a reminiscent mood and condescended to tell of their intimacy with the ordinary boy who came to be a very extraordinary humorist and whose every boyish act is now seen to have been indicative of what was to come. like aunt becky and mrs. clemens, they can now see that mark was hardly appreciated when he lived here and that the things he did as a boy and was whipped for doing were not all bad, after all. so they have been in no hesitancy about drawing out the bad things he did as well as the good in their efforts to get a "mark twain" story, all incidents being viewed in the light of his present fame, until the volume of "twainiana" is already considerable and growing in proportion as the "old timers" drop away and the stories are retold second and third hand by their descendants. with some seventy-three years and living in a villa instead of a house, he is a fair target, and let him incorporate, copyright, or patent himself as he will, there are some of his "works" that will go swooping up hannibal chimneys as long as graybeards gather about the fires and begin with, "i've heard father tell," or possibly, "once when i." the mrs. clemens referred to is my mother--was my mother. and here is another extract from a hannibal paper, of date twenty days ago: miss becca blankenship died at the home of william dickason, 408 rock street, at 2.30 o'clock yesterday afternoon, aged 72 years. the deceased was a sister of "huckleberry finn," one of the famous characters in mark twain's tom sawyer. she had been a member of the dickason family--the housekeeper--for nearly fortyfive years, and was a highly respected lady. for the past eight years she had been an invalid, but was as well cared for by mr. dickason and his family as if she had been a near relative. she was a member of the park methodist church and a christian woman. i remember her well. i have a picture of her in my mind which was graven there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-three years ago. she was at that time nine years old, and i was about eleven. i remember where she stood, and how she looked; and i can still see her bare feet, her bare head, her brown face, and her short tow-linen frock. she was crying. what it was about i have long ago forgotten. but it was the tears that preserved the picture for me, no doubt. she was a good child, i can say that for her. she knew me nearly seventy years ago. did she forget me, in the course of time? i think not. if she had lived in stratford in shakespeare's time, would she have forgotten him? yes. for he was never famous during his lifetime, he was utterly obscure in stratford, and there wouldn't be any occasion to remember him after he had been dead a week. "injun joe," "jimmy finn," and "general gaines" were prominent and very intemperate ne'er-do-weels in hannibal two generations ago. plenty of grayheads there remember them to this day, and can tell you about them. isn't it curious that two "town drunkards" and one half-breed loafer should leave behind them, in a remote missourian village, a fame a hundred times greater and several hundred times more particularized in the matter of definite facts than shakespeare left behind him in the village where he had lived the half of his lifetime? mark twain. [end.] . king lear dramatis personae lear king of britain (king lear:) king of france: duke of burgundy (burgundy:) duke of cornwall (cornwall:) duke of albany (albany:) earl of kent (kent:) earl of gloucester (gloucester:) edgar son to gloucester. edmund bastard son to gloucester. curan a courtier. old man tenant to gloucester. doctor: fool: oswald steward to goneril. a captain employed by edmund. (captain:) gentleman attendant on cordelia. (gentleman:) a herald. servants to cornwall. (first servant:) (second servant:) (third servant:) goneril | | regan | daughters to lear. | cordelia | knights of lear's train, captains, messengers, soldiers, and attendants (knight:) (captain:) (messenger:) scene britain. king lear act i scene i king lear's palace. [enter kent, gloucester, and edmund] kent i thought the king had more affected the duke of albany than cornwall. gloucester it did always seem so to us: but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most; for equalities are so weighed, that curiosity in neither can make choice of either's moiety. kent is not this your son, my lord? gloucester his breeding, sir, hath been at my charge: i have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now i am brazed to it. kent i cannot conceive you. gloucester sir, this young fellow's mother could: whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had, indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed. do you smell a fault? kent i cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper. gloucester but i have, sir, a son by order of law, some year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account: though this knave came something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged. do you know this noble gentleman, edmund? edmund no, my lord. gloucester my lord of kent: remember him hereafter as my honourable friend. edmund my services to your lordship. kent i must love you, and sue to know you better. edmund sir, i shall study deserving. gloucester he hath been out nine years, and away he shall again. the king is coming. [sennet. enter king lear, cornwall, albany, goneril, regan, cordelia, and attendants] king lear attend the lords of france and burgundy, gloucester. gloucester i shall, my liege. [exeunt gloucester and edmund] king lear meantime we shall express our darker purpose. give me the map there. know that we have divided in three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent to shake all cares and business from our age; conferring them on younger strengths, while we unburthen'd crawl toward death. our son of cornwall, and you, our no less loving son of albany, we have this hour a constant will to publish our daughters' several dowers, that future strife may be prevented now. the princes, france and burgundy, great rivals in our youngest daughter's love, long in our court have made their amorous sojourn, and here are to be answer'd. tell me, my daughters,- since now we will divest us both of rule, interest of territory, cares of state,- which of you shall we say doth love us most? that we our largest bounty may extend where nature doth with merit challenge. goneril, our eldest-born, speak first. goneril sir, i love you more than words can wield the matter; dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty; beyond what can be valued, rich or rare; no less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour; as much as child e'er loved, or father found; a love that makes breath poor, and speech unable; beyond all manner of so much i love you. cordelia [aside] what shall cordelia do? love, and be silent. lear of all these bounds, even from this line to this, with shadowy forests and with champains rich'd, with plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads, we make thee lady: to thine and albany's issue be this perpetual. what says our second daughter, our dearest regan, wife to cornwall? speak. regan sir, i am made of the self-same metal that my sister is, and prize me at her worth. in my true heart i find she names my very deed of love; only she comes too short: that i profess myself an enemy to all other joys, which the most precious square of sense possesses; and find i am alone felicitate in your dear highness' love. cordelia [aside] then poor cordelia! and yet not so; since, i am sure, my love's more richer than my tongue. king lear to thee and thine hereditary ever remain this ample third of our fair kingdom; no less in space, validity, and pleasure, than that conferr'd on goneril. now, our joy, although the last, not least; to whose young love the vines of france and milk of burgundy strive to be interess'd; what can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters? speak. cordelia nothing, my lord. king lear nothing! cordelia nothing. king lear nothing will come of nothing: speak again. cordelia unhappy that i am, i cannot heave my heart into my mouth: i love your majesty according to my bond; nor more nor less. king lear how, how, cordelia! mend your speech a little, lest it may mar your fortunes. cordelia good my lord, you have begot me, bred me, loved me: i return those duties back as are right fit, obey you, love you, and most honour you. why have my sisters husbands, if they say they love you all? haply, when i shall wed, that lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry half my love with him, half my care and duty: sure, i shall never marry like my sisters, to love my father all. king lear but goes thy heart with this? cordelia ay, good my lord. king lear so young, and so untender? cordelia so young, my lord, and true. king lear let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower: for, by the sacred radiance of the sun, the mysteries of hecate, and the night; by all the operation of the orbs from whom we do exist, and cease to be; here i disclaim all my paternal care, propinquity and property of blood, and as a stranger to my heart and me hold thee, from this, for ever. the barbarous scythian, or he that makes his generation messes to gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved, as thou my sometime daughter. kent good my liege,- king lear peace, kent! come not between the dragon and his wrath. i loved her most, and thought to set my rest on her kind nursery. hence, and avoid my sight! so be my grave my peace, as here i give her father's heart from her! call france; who stirs? call burgundy. cornwall and albany, with my two daughters' dowers digest this third: let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her. i do invest you jointly with my power, pre-eminence, and all the large effects that troop with majesty. ourself, by monthly course, with reservation of an hundred knights, by you to be sustain'd, shall our abode make with you by due turns. only we still retain the name, and all the additions to a king; the sway, revenue, execution of the rest, beloved sons, be yours: which to confirm, this coronet part betwixt you. [giving the crown] kent royal lear, whom i have ever honour'd as my king, loved as my father, as my master follow'd, as my great patron thought on in my prayers,- king lear the bow is bent and drawn, make from the shaft. kent let it fall rather, though the fork invade the region of my heart: be kent unmannerly, when lear is mad. what wilt thou do, old man? think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak, when power to flattery bows? to plainness honour's bound, when majesty stoops to folly. reverse thy doom; and, in thy best consideration, cheque this hideous rashness: answer my life my judgment, thy youngest daughter does not love thee least; nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound reverbs no hollowness. king lear kent, on thy life, no more. kent my life i never held but as a pawn to wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it, thy safety being the motive. king lear out of my sight! kent see better, lear; and let me still remain the true blank of thine eye. king lear now, by apollo,- kent now, by apollo, king, thou swear'st thy gods in vain. king lear o, vassal! miscreant! [laying his hand on his sword] albany | | dear sir, forbear. cornwall | kent do: kill thy physician, and the fee bestow upon thy foul disease. revoke thy doom; or, whilst i can vent clamour from my throat, i'll tell thee thou dost evil. king lear hear me, recreant! on thine allegiance, hear me! since thou hast sought to make us break our vow, which we durst never yet, and with strain'd pride to come between our sentence and our power, which nor our nature nor our place can bear, our potency made good, take thy reward. five days we do allot thee, for provision to shield thee from diseases of the world; and on the sixth to turn thy hated back upon our kingdom: if, on the tenth day following, thy banish'd trunk be found in our dominions, the moment is thy death. away! by jupiter, this shall not be revoked. kent fare thee well, king: sith thus thou wilt appear, freedom lives hence, and banishment is here. [to cordelia] the gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid, that justly think'st, and hast most rightly said! [to regan and goneril] and your large speeches may your deeds approve, that good effects may spring from words of love. thus kent, o princes, bids you all adieu; he'll shape his old course in a country new. [exit] [flourish. re-enter gloucester, with king of france, burgundy, and attendants] gloucester here's france and burgundy, my noble lord. king lear my lord of burgundy. we first address towards you, who with this king hath rivall'd for our daughter: what, in the least, will you require in present dower with her, or cease your quest of love? burgundy most royal majesty, i crave no more than what your highness offer'd, nor will you tender less. king lear right noble burgundy, when she was dear to us, we did hold her so; but now her price is fall'n. sir, there she stands: if aught within that little seeming substance, or all of it, with our displeasure pieced, and nothing more, may fitly like your grace, she's there, and she is yours. burgundy i know no answer. king lear will you, with those infirmities she owes, unfriended, new-adopted to our hate, dower'd with our curse, and stranger'd with our oath, take her, or leave her? burgundy pardon me, royal sir; election makes not up on such conditions. king lear then leave her, sir; for, by the power that made me, i tell you all her wealth. [to king of france] for you, great king, i would not from your love make such a stray, to match you where i hate; therefore beseech you to avert your liking a more worthier way than on a wretch whom nature is ashamed almost to acknowledge hers. king of france this is most strange, that she, that even but now was your best object, the argument of your praise, balm of your age, most best, most dearest, should in this trice of time commit a thing so monstrous, to dismantle so many folds of favour. sure, her offence must be of such unnatural degree, that monsters it, or your fore-vouch'd affection fall'n into taint: which to believe of her, must be a faith that reason without miracle could never plant in me. cordelia i yet beseech your majesty,- if for i want that glib and oily art, to speak and purpose not; since what i well intend, i'll do't before i speak,--that you make known it is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness, no unchaste action, or dishonour'd step, that hath deprived me of your grace and favour; but even for want of that for which i am richer, a still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue as i am glad i have not, though not to have it hath lost me in your liking. king lear better thou hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better. king of france is it but this,--a tardiness in nature which often leaves the history unspoke that it intends to do? my lord of burgundy, what say you to the lady? love's not love when it is mingled with regards that stand aloof from the entire point. will you have her? she is herself a dowry. burgundy royal lear, give but that portion which yourself proposed, and here i take cordelia by the hand, duchess of burgundy. king lear nothing: i have sworn; i am firm. burgundy i am sorry, then, you have so lost a father that you must lose a husband. cordelia peace be with burgundy! since that respects of fortune are his love, i shall not be his wife. king of france fairest cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised! thee and thy virtues here i seize upon: be it lawful i take up what's cast away. gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect my love should kindle to inflamed respect. thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance, is queen of us, of ours, and our fair france: not all the dukes of waterish burgundy can buy this unprized precious maid of me. bid them farewell, cordelia, though unkind: thou losest here, a better where to find. king lear thou hast her, france: let her be thine; for we have no such daughter, nor shall ever see that face of hers again. therefore be gone without our grace, our love, our benison. come, noble burgundy. [flourish. exeunt all but king of france, goneril, regan, and cordelia] king of france bid farewell to your sisters. cordelia the jewels of our father, with wash'd eyes cordelia leaves you: i know you what you are; and like a sister am most loath to call your faults as they are named. use well our father: to your professed bosoms i commit him but yet, alas, stood i within his grace, i would prefer him to a better place. so, farewell to you both. regan prescribe not us our duties. goneril let your study be to content your lord, who hath received you at fortune's alms. you have obedience scanted, and well are worth the want that you have wanted. cordelia time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides: who cover faults, at last shame them derides. well may you prosper! king of france come, my fair cordelia. [exeunt king of france and cordelia] goneril sister, it is not a little i have to say of what most nearly appertains to us both. i think our father will hence to-night. regan that's most certain, and with you; next month with us. goneril you see how full of changes his age is; the observation we have made of it hath not been little: he always loved our sister most; and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off appears too grossly. regan 'tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself. goneril the best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then must we look to receive from his age, not alone the imperfections of long-engraffed condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them. regan such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of kent's banishment. goneril there is further compliment of leavetaking between france and him. pray you, let's hit together: if our father carry authority with such dispositions as he bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us. regan we shall further think on't. goneril we must do something, and i' the heat. [exeunt] king lear act i scene ii the earl of gloucester's castle. [enter edmund, with a letter] edmund thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law my services are bound. wherefore should i stand in the plague of custom, and permit the curiosity of nations to deprive me, for that i am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines lag of a brother? why bastard? wherefore base? when my dimensions are as well compact, my mind as generous, and my shape as true, as honest madam's issue? why brand they us with base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take more composition and fierce quality than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, go to the creating a whole tribe of fops, got 'tween asleep and wake? well, then, legitimate edgar, i must have your land: our father's love is to the bastard edmund as to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate! well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, and my invention thrive, edmund the base shall top the legitimate. i grow; i prosper: now, gods, stand up for bastards! [enter gloucester] gloucester kent banish'd thus! and france in choler parted! and the king gone to-night! subscribed his power! confined to exhibition! all this done upon the gad! edmund, how now! what news? edmund so please your lordship, none. [putting up the letter] gloucester why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter? edmund i know no news, my lord. gloucester what paper were you reading? edmund nothing, my lord. gloucester no? what needed, then, that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? the quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself. let's see: come, if it be nothing, i shall not need spectacles. edmund i beseech you, sir, pardon me: it is a letter from my brother, that i have not all o'er-read; and for so much as i have perused, i find it not fit for your o'er-looking. gloucester give me the letter, sir. edmund i shall offend, either to detain or give it. the contents, as in part i understand them, are to blame. gloucester let's see, let's see. edmund i hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue. gloucester [reads] 'this policy and reverence of age makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them. i begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny; who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered. come to me, that of this i may speak more. if our father would sleep till i waked him, you should half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother, edgar.' hum--conspiracy!--'sleep till i waked him,--you should enjoy half his revenue,'--my son edgar! had he a hand to write this? a heart and brain to breed it in?--when came this to you? who brought it? edmund it was not brought me, my lord; there's the cunning of it; i found it thrown in at the casement of my closet. gloucester you know the character to be your brother's? edmund if the matter were good, my lord, i durst swear it were his; but, in respect of that, i would fain think it were not. gloucester it is his. edmund it is his hand, my lord; but i hope his heart is not in the contents. gloucester hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business? edmund never, my lord: but i have heard him oft maintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue. gloucester o villain, villain! his very opinion in the letter! abhorred villain! unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse than brutish! go, sirrah, seek him; i'll apprehend him: abominable villain! where is he? edmund i do not well know, my lord. if it shall please you to suspend your indignation against my brother till you can derive from him better testimony of his intent, you shall run a certain course; where, if you violently proceed against him, mistaking his purpose, it would make a great gap in your own honour, and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience. i dare pawn down my life for him, that he hath wrote this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no further pretence of danger. gloucester think you so? edmund if your honour judge it meet, i will place you where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular assurance have your satisfaction; and that without any further delay than this very evening. gloucester he cannot be such a monster- edmund nor is not, sure. gloucester to his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him. heaven and earth! edmund, seek him out: wind me into him, i pray you: frame the business after your own wisdom. i would unstate myself, to be in a due resolution. edmund i will seek him, sir, presently: convey the business as i shall find means and acquaint you withal. gloucester these late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father. this villain of mine comes under the prediction; there's son against father: the king falls from bias of nature; there's father against child. we have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves. find out this villain, edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully. and the noble and true-hearted kent banished! his offence, honesty! 'tis strange. [exit] edmund this is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeit of our own behavior,--we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! my father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail; and my nativity was under ursa major; so that it follows, i am rough and lecherous. tut, i should have been that i am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. edgar- [enter edgar] and pat he comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue is villanous melancholy, with a sigh like tom o' bedlam. o, these eclipses do portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi. edgar how now, brother edmund! what serious contemplation are you in? edmund i am thinking, brother, of a prediction i read this other day, what should follow these eclipses. edgar do you busy yourself about that? edmund i promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily; as of unnaturalness between the child and the parent; death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities; divisions in state, menaces and maledictions against king and nobles; needless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and i know not what. edgar how long have you been a sectary astronomical? edmund come, come; when saw you my father last? edgar why, the night gone by. edmund spake you with him? edgar ay, two hours together. edmund parted you in good terms? found you no displeasure in him by word or countenance? edgar none at all. edmund bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him: and at my entreaty forbear his presence till some little time hath qualified the heat of his displeasure; which at this instant so rageth in him, that with the mischief of your person it would scarcely allay. edgar some villain hath done me wrong. edmund that's my fear. i pray you, have a continent forbearance till the spied of his rage goes slower; and, as i say, retire with me to my lodging, from whence i will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak: pray ye, go; there's my key: if you do stir abroad, go armed. edgar armed, brother! edmund brother, i advise you to the best; go armed: i am no honest man if there be any good meaning towards you: i have told you what i have seen and heard; but faintly, nothing like the image and horror of it: pray you, away. edgar shall i hear from you anon? edmund i do serve you in this business. [exit edgar] a credulous father! and a brother noble, whose nature is so far from doing harms, that he suspects none: on whose foolish honesty my practises ride easy! i see the business. let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit: all with me's meet that i can fashion fit. [exit] king lear act i scene iii the duke of albany's palace. [enter goneril, and oswald, her steward] goneril did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool? oswald yes, madam. goneril by day and night he wrongs me; every hour he flashes into one gross crime or other, that sets us all at odds: i'll not endure it: his knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us on every trifle. when he returns from hunting, i will not speak with him; say i am sick: if you come slack of former services, you shall do well; the fault of it i'll answer. oswald he's coming, madam; i hear him. [horns within] goneril put on what weary negligence you please, you and your fellows; i'll have it come to question: if he dislike it, let him to our sister, whose mind and mine, i know, in that are one, not to be over-ruled. idle old man, that still would manage those authorities that he hath given away! now, by my life, old fools are babes again; and must be used with cheques as flatteries,--when they are seen abused. remember what i tell you. oswald well, madam. goneril and let his knights have colder looks among you; what grows of it, no matter; advise your fellows so: i would breed from hence occasions, and i shall, that i may speak: i'll write straight to my sister, to hold my very course. prepare for dinner. [exeunt] king lear act i scene iv a hall in the same. [enter kent, disguised] kent if but as well i other accents borrow, that can my speech defuse, my good intent may carry through itself to that full issue for which i razed my likeness. now, banish'd kent, if thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn'd, so may it come, thy master, whom thou lovest, shall find thee full of labours. [horns within. enter king lear, knights, and attendants] king lear let me not stay a jot for dinner; go get it ready. [exit an attendant] how now! what art thou? kent a man, sir. king lear what dost thou profess? what wouldst thou with us? kent i do profess to be no less than i seem; to serve him truly that will put me in trust: to love him that is honest; to converse with him that is wise, and says little; to fear judgment; to fight when i cannot choose; and to eat no fish. king lear what art thou? kent a very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the king. king lear if thou be as poor for a subject as he is for a king, thou art poor enough. what wouldst thou? kent service. king lear who wouldst thou serve? kent you. king lear dost thou know me, fellow? kent no, sir; but you have that in your countenance which i would fain call master. king lear what's that? kent authority. king lear what services canst thou do? kent i can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious tale in telling it, and deliver a plain message bluntly: that which ordinary men are fit for, i am qualified in; and the best of me is diligence. king lear how old art thou? kent not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing, nor so old to dote on her for any thing: i have years on my back forty eight. king lear follow me; thou shalt serve me: if i like thee no worse after dinner, i will not part from thee yet. dinner, ho, dinner! where's my knave? my fool? go you, and call my fool hither. [exit an attendant] [enter oswald] you, you, sirrah, where's my daughter? oswald so please you,- [exit] king lear what says the fellow there? call the clotpoll back. [exit a knight] where's my fool, ho? i think the world's asleep. [re-enter knight] how now! where's that mongrel? knight he says, my lord, your daughter is not well. king lear why came not the slave back to me when i called him. knight sir, he answered me in the roundest manner, he would not. king lear he would not! knight my lord, i know not what the matter is; but, to my judgment, your highness is not entertained with that ceremonious affection as you were wont; there's a great abatement of kindness appears as well in the general dependants as in the duke himself also and your daughter. king lear ha! sayest thou so? knight i beseech you, pardon me, my lord, if i be mistaken; for my duty cannot be silent when i think your highness wronged. king lear thou but rememberest me of mine own conception: i have perceived a most faint neglect of late; which i have rather blamed as mine own jealous curiosity than as a very pretence and purpose of unkindness: i will look further into't. but where's my fool? i have not seen him this two days. knight since my young lady's going into france, sir, the fool hath much pined away. king lear no more of that; i have noted it well. go you, and tell my daughter i would speak with her. [exit an attendant] go you, call hither my fool. [exit an attendant] [re-enter oswald] o, you sir, you, come you hither, sir: who am i, sir? oswald my lady's father. king lear 'my lady's father'! my lord's knave: your whoreson dog! you slave! you cur! oswald i am none of these, my lord; i beseech your pardon. king lear do you bandy looks with me, you rascal? [striking him] oswald i'll not be struck, my lord. kent nor tripped neither, you base football player. [tripping up his heels] king lear i thank thee, fellow; thou servest me, and i'll love thee. kent come, sir, arise, away! i'll teach you differences: away, away! if you will measure your lubber's length again, tarry: but away! go to; have you wisdom? so. [pushes oswald out] king lear now, my friendly knave, i thank thee: there's earnest of thy service. [giving kent money] [enter fool] fool let me hire him too: here's my coxcomb. [offering kent his cap] king lear how now, my pretty knave! how dost thou? fool sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb. kent why, fool? fool why, for taking one's part that's out of favour: nay, an thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou'lt catch cold shortly: there, take my coxcomb: why, this fellow has banished two on's daughters, and did the third a blessing against his will; if thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb. how now, nuncle! would i had two coxcombs and two daughters! king lear why, my boy? fool if i gave them all my living, i'ld keep my coxcombs myself. there's mine; beg another of thy daughters. king lear take heed, sirrah; the whip. fool truth's a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink. king lear a pestilent gall to me! fool sirrah, i'll teach thee a speech. king lear do. fool mark it, nuncle: have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest, lend less than thou owest, ride more than thou goest, learn more than thou trowest, set less than thou throwest; leave thy drink and thy whore, and keep in-a-door, and thou shalt have more than two tens to a score. kent this is nothing, fool. fool then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer; you gave me nothing for't. can you make no use of nothing, nuncle? king lear why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing. fool [to kent] prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool. king lear a bitter fool! fool dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet fool? king lear no, lad; teach me. fool that lord that counsell'd thee to give away thy land, come place him here by me, do thou for him stand: the sweet and bitter fool will presently appear; the one in motley here, the other found out there. king lear dost thou call me fool, boy? fool all thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with. kent this is not altogether fool, my lord. fool no, faith, lords and great men will not let me; if i had a monopoly out, they would have part on't: and ladies too, they will not let me have all fool to myself; they'll be snatching. give me an egg, nuncle, and i'll give thee two crowns. king lear what two crowns shall they be? fool why, after i have cut the egg i' the middle, and eat up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. when thou clovest thy crown i' the middle, and gavest away both parts, thou borest thy ass on thy back o'er the dirt: thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown, when thou gavest thy golden one away. if i speak like myself in this, let him be whipped that first finds it so. [singing] fools had ne'er less wit in a year; for wise men are grown foppish, they know not how their wits to wear, their manners are so apish. king lear when were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah? fool i have used it, nuncle, ever since thou madest thy daughters thy mothers: for when thou gavest them the rod, and put'st down thine own breeches, [singing] then they for sudden joy did weep, and i for sorrow sung, that such a king should play bo-peep, and go the fools among. prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie: i would fain learn to lie. king lear an you lie, sirrah, we'll have you whipped. fool i marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes i am whipped for holding my peace. i had rather be any kind o' thing than a fool: and yet i would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides, and left nothing i' the middle: here comes one o' the parings. [enter goneril] king lear how now, daughter! what makes that frontlet on? methinks you are too much of late i' the frown. fool thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning; now thou art an o without a figure: i am better than thou art now; i am a fool, thou art nothing. [to goneril] yes, forsooth, i will hold my tongue; so your face bids me, though you say nothing. mum, mum, he that keeps nor crust nor crum, weary of all, shall want some. [pointing to king lear] that's a shealed peascod. goneril not only, sir, this your all-licensed fool, but other of your insolent retinue do hourly carp and quarrel; breaking forth in rank and not-to-be endured riots. sir, i had thought, by making this well known unto you, to have found a safe redress; but now grow fearful, by what yourself too late have spoke and done. that you protect this course, and put it on by your allowance; which if you should, the fault would not 'scape censure, nor the redresses sleep, which, in the tender of a wholesome weal, might in their working do you that offence, which else were shame, that then necessity will call discreet proceeding. fool for, you trow, nuncle, the hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, that it's had it head bit off by it young. so, out went the candle, and we were left darkling. king lear are you our daughter? goneril come, sir, i would you would make use of that good wisdom, whereof i know you are fraught; and put away these dispositions, that of late transform you from what you rightly are. fool may not an ass know when the cart draws the horse? whoop, jug! i love thee. king lear doth any here know me? this is not lear: doth lear walk thus? speak thus? where are his eyes? either his notion weakens, his discernings are lethargied--ha! waking? 'tis not so. who is it that can tell me who i am? fool lear's shadow. king lear i would learn that; for, by the marks of sovereignty, knowledge, and reason, i should be false persuaded i had daughters. fool which they will make an obedient father. king lear your name, fair gentlewoman? goneril this admiration, sir, is much o' the savour of other your new pranks. i do beseech you to understand my purposes aright: as you are old and reverend, you should be wise. here do you keep a hundred knights and squires; men so disorder'd, so debosh'd and bold, that this our court, infected with their manners, shows like a riotous inn: epicurism and lust make it more like a tavern or a brothel than a graced palace. the shame itself doth speak for instant remedy: be then desired by her, that else will take the thing she begs, a little to disquantity your train; and the remainder, that shall still depend, to be such men as may besort your age, and know themselves and you. king lear darkness and devils! saddle my horses; call my train together: degenerate bastard! i'll not trouble thee. yet have i left a daughter. goneril you strike my people; and your disorder'd rabble make servants of their betters. [enter albany] king lear woe, that too late repents,- [to albany] o, sir, are you come? is it your will? speak, sir. prepare my horses. ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, more hideous when thou show'st thee in a child than the sea-monster! albany pray, sir, be patient. king lear [to goneril] detested kite! thou liest. my train are men of choice and rarest parts, that all particulars of duty know, and in the most exact regard support the worships of their name. o most small fault, how ugly didst thou in cordelia show! that, like an engine, wrench'd my frame of nature from the fix'd place; drew from heart all love, and added to the gall. o lear, lear, lear! beat at this gate, that let thy folly in, [striking his head] and thy dear judgment out! go, go, my people. albany my lord, i am guiltless, as i am ignorant of what hath moved you. king lear it may be so, my lord. hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear! suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend to make this creature fruitful! into her womb convey sterility! dry up in her the organs of increase; and from her derogate body never spring a babe to honour her! if she must teem, create her child of spleen; that it may live, and be a thwart disnatured torment to her! let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth; with cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks; turn all her mother's pains and benefits to laughter and contempt; that she may feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child! away, away! [exit] albany now, gods that we adore, whereof comes this? goneril never afflict yourself to know the cause; but let his disposition have that scope that dotage gives it. [re-enter king lear] king lear what, fifty of my followers at a clap! within a fortnight! albany what's the matter, sir? king lear i'll tell thee: [to goneril] life and death! i am ashamed that thou hast power to shake my manhood thus; that these hot tears, which break from me perforce, should make thee worth them. blasts and fogs upon thee! the untented woundings of a father's curse pierce every sense about thee! old fond eyes, beweep this cause again, i'll pluck ye out, and cast you, with the waters that you lose, to temper clay. yea, it is come to this? let is be so: yet have i left a daughter, who, i am sure, is kind and comfortable: when she shall hear this of thee, with her nails she'll flay thy wolvish visage. thou shalt find that i'll resume the shape which thou dost think i have cast off for ever: thou shalt, i warrant thee. [exeunt king lear, kent, and attendants] goneril do you mark that, my lord? albany i cannot be so partial, goneril, to the great love i bear you,- goneril pray you, content. what, oswald, ho! [to the fool] you, sir, more knave than fool, after your master. fool nuncle lear, nuncle lear, tarry and take the fool with thee. a fox, when one has caught her, and such a daughter, should sure to the slaughter, if my cap would buy a halter: so the fool follows after. [exit] goneril this man hath had good counsel:--a hundred knights! 'tis politic and safe to let him keep at point a hundred knights: yes, that, on every dream, each buzz, each fancy, each complaint, dislike, he may enguard his dotage with their powers, and hold our lives in mercy. oswald, i say! albany well, you may fear too far. goneril safer than trust too far: let me still take away the harms i fear, not fear still to be taken: i know his heart. what he hath utter'd i have writ my sister if she sustain him and his hundred knights when i have show'd the unfitness,- [re-enter oswald] how now, oswald! what, have you writ that letter to my sister? oswald yes, madam. goneril take you some company, and away to horse: inform her full of my particular fear; and thereto add such reasons of your own as may compact it more. get you gone; and hasten your return. [exit oswald] no, no, my lord, this milky gentleness and course of yours though i condemn not, yet, under pardon, you are much more attask'd for want of wisdom than praised for harmful mildness. albany how far your eyes may pierce i can not tell: striving to better, oft we mar what's well. goneril nay, then- albany well, well; the event. [exeunt] king lear act i scene v court before the same. [enter king lear, kent, and fool] king lear go you before to gloucester with these letters. acquaint my daughter no further with any thing you know than comes from her demand out of the letter. if your diligence be not speedy, i shall be there afore you. kent i will not sleep, my lord, till i have delivered your letter. [exit] fool if a man's brains were in's heels, were't not in danger of kibes? king lear ay, boy. fool then, i prithee, be merry; thy wit shall ne'er go slip-shod. king lear ha, ha, ha! fool shalt see thy other daughter will use thee kindly; for though she's as like this as a crab's like an apple, yet i can tell what i can tell. king lear why, what canst thou tell, my boy? fool she will taste as like this as a crab does to a crab. thou canst tell why one's nose stands i' the middle on's face? king lear no. fool why, to keep one's eyes of either side's nose; that what a man cannot smell out, he may spy into. king lear i did her wrong- fool canst tell how an oyster makes his shell? king lear no. fool nor i neither; but i can tell why a snail has a house. king lear why? fool why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case. king lear i will forget my nature. so kind a father! be my horses ready? fool thy asses are gone about 'em. the reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason. king lear because they are not eight? fool yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool. king lear to take 't again perforce! monster ingratitude! fool if thou wert my fool, nuncle, i'ld have thee beaten for being old before thy time. king lear how's that? fool thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise. king lear o, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven keep me in temper: i would not be mad! [enter gentleman] how now! are the horses ready? gentleman ready, my lord. king lear come, boy. fool she that's a maid now, and laughs at my departure, shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter. [exeunt] king lear act ii scene i gloucester's castle. [enter edmund, and curan meets him] edmund save thee, curan. curan and you, sir. i have been with your father, and given him notice that the duke of cornwall and regan his duchess will be here with him this night. edmund how comes that? curan nay, i know not. you have heard of the news abroad; i mean the whispered ones, for they are yet but ear-kissing arguments? edmund not i pray you, what are they? curan have you heard of no likely wars toward, 'twixt the dukes of cornwall and albany? edmund not a word. curan you may do, then, in time. fare you well, sir. [exit] edmund the duke be here to-night? the better! best! this weaves itself perforce into my business. my father hath set guard to take my brother; and i have one thing, of a queasy question, which i must act: briefness and fortune, work! brother, a word; descend: brother, i say! [enter edgar] my father watches: o sir, fly this place; intelligence is given where you are hid; you have now the good advantage of the night: have you not spoken 'gainst the duke of cornwall? he's coming hither: now, i' the night, i' the haste, and regan with him: have you nothing said upon his party 'gainst the duke of albany? advise yourself. edgar i am sure on't, not a word. edmund i hear my father coming: pardon me: in cunning i must draw my sword upon you draw; seem to defend yourself; now quit you well. yield: come before my father. light, ho, here! fly, brother. torches, torches! so, farewell. [exit edgar] some blood drawn on me would beget opinion. [wounds his arm] of my more fierce endeavour: i have seen drunkards do more than this in sport. father, father! stop, stop! no help? [enter gloucester, and servants with torches] gloucester now, edmund, where's the villain? edmund here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out, mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon to stand auspicious mistress,- gloucester but where is he? edmund look, sir, i bleed. gloucester where is the villain, edmund? edmund fled this way, sir. when by no means he could- gloucester pursue him, ho! go after. [exeunt some servants] by no means what? edmund persuade me to the murder of your lordship; but that i told him, the revenging gods 'gainst parricides did all their thunders bend; spoke, with how manifold and strong a bond the child was bound to the father; sir, in fine, seeing how loathly opposite i stood to his unnatural purpose, in fell motion, with his prepared sword, he charges home my unprovided body, lanced mine arm: but when he saw my best alarum'd spirits, bold in the quarrel's right, roused to the encounter, or whether gasted by the noise i made, full suddenly he fled. gloucester let him fly far: not in this land shall he remain uncaught; and found--dispatch. the noble duke my master, my worthy arch and patron, comes to-night: by his authority i will proclaim it, that he which finds him shall deserve our thanks, bringing the murderous coward to the stake; he that conceals him, death. edmund when i dissuaded him from his intent, and found him pight to do it, with curst speech i threaten'd to discover him: he replied, 'thou unpossessing bastard! dost thou think, if i would stand against thee, would the reposal of any trust, virtue, or worth in thee make thy words faith'd? no: what i should deny,- as this i would: ay, though thou didst produce my very character,--i'ld turn it all to thy suggestion, plot, and damned practise: and thou must make a dullard of the world, if they not thought the profits of my death were very pregnant and potential spurs to make thee seek it.' gloucester strong and fasten'd villain would he deny his letter? i never got him. [tucket within] hark, the duke's trumpets! i know not why he comes. all ports i'll bar; the villain shall not 'scape; the duke must grant me that: besides, his picture i will send far and near, that all the kingdom may have the due note of him; and of my land, loyal and natural boy, i'll work the means to make thee capable. [enter cornwall, regan, and attendants] cornwall how now, my noble friend! since i came hither, which i can call but now, i have heard strange news. regan if it be true, all vengeance comes too short which can pursue the offender. how dost, my lord? gloucester o, madam, my old heart is crack'd, it's crack'd! regan what, did my father's godson seek your life? he whom my father named? your edgar? gloucester o, lady, lady, shame would have it hid! regan was he not companion with the riotous knights that tend upon my father? gloucester i know not, madam: 'tis too bad, too bad. edmund yes, madam, he was of that consort. regan no marvel, then, though he were ill affected: 'tis they have put him on the old man's death, to have the expense and waste of his revenues. i have this present evening from my sister been well inform'd of them; and with such cautions, that if they come to sojourn at my house, i'll not be there. cornwall nor i, assure thee, regan. edmund, i hear that you have shown your father a child-like office. edmund 'twas my duty, sir. gloucester he did bewray his practise; and received this hurt you see, striving to apprehend him. cornwall is he pursued? gloucester ay, my good lord. cornwall if he be taken, he shall never more be fear'd of doing harm: make your own purpose, how in my strength you please. for you, edmund, whose virtue and obedience doth this instant so much commend itself, you shall be ours: natures of such deep trust we shall much need; you we first seize on. edmund i shall serve you, sir, truly, however else. gloucester for him i thank your grace. cornwall you know not why we came to visit you,- regan thus out of season, threading dark-eyed night: occasions, noble gloucester, of some poise, wherein we must have use of your advice: our father he hath writ, so hath our sister, of differences, which i least thought it fit to answer from our home; the several messengers from hence attend dispatch. our good old friend, lay comforts to your bosom; and bestow your needful counsel to our business, which craves the instant use. gloucester i serve you, madam: your graces are right welcome. [exeunt] king lear act ii scene ii before gloucester's castle. [enter kent and oswald, severally] oswald good dawning to thee, friend: art of this house? kent ay. oswald where may we set our horses? kent i' the mire. oswald prithee, if thou lovest me, tell me. kent i love thee not. oswald why, then, i care not for thee. kent if i had thee in lipsbury pinfold, i would make thee care for me. oswald why dost thou use me thus? i know thee not. kent fellow, i know thee. oswald what dost thou know me for? kent a knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom i will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition. oswald why, what a monstrous fellow art thou, thus to rail on one that is neither known of thee nor knows thee! kent what a brazen-faced varlet art thou, to deny thou knowest me! is it two days ago since i tripped up thy heels, and beat thee before the king? draw, you rogue: for, though it be night, yet the moon shines; i'll make a sop o' the moonshine of you: draw, you whoreson cullionly barber-monger, draw. [drawing his sword] oswald away! i have nothing to do with thee. kent draw, you rascal: you come with letters against the king; and take vanity the puppet's part against the royalty of her father: draw, you rogue, or i'll so carbonado your shanks: draw, you rascal; come your ways. oswald help, ho! murder! help! kent strike, you slave; stand, rogue, stand; you neat slave, strike. [beating him] oswald help, ho! murder! murder! [enter edmund, with his rapier drawn, cornwall, regan, gloucester, and servants] edmund how now! what's the matter? kent with you, goodman boy, an you please: come, i'll flesh ye; come on, young master. gloucester weapons! arms! what 's the matter here? cornwall keep peace, upon your lives: he dies that strikes again. what is the matter? regan the messengers from our sister and the king. cornwall what is your difference? speak. oswald i am scarce in breath, my lord. kent no marvel, you have so bestirred your valour. you cowardly rascal, nature disclaims in thee: a tailor made thee. cornwall thou art a strange fellow: a tailor make a man? kent ay, a tailor, sir: a stone-cutter or painter could not have made him so ill, though he had been but two hours at the trade. cornwall speak yet, how grew your quarrel? oswald this ancient ruffian, sir, whose life i have spared at suit of his gray beard,- kent thou whoreson zed! thou unnecessary letter! my lord, if you will give me leave, i will tread this unbolted villain into mortar, and daub the wall of a jakes with him. spare my gray beard, you wagtail? cornwall peace, sirrah! you beastly knave, know you no reverence? kent yes, sir; but anger hath a privilege. cornwall why art thou angry? kent that such a slave as this should wear a sword, who wears no honesty. such smiling rogues as these, like rats, oft bite the holy cords a-twain which are too intrinse t' unloose; smooth every passion that in the natures of their lords rebel; bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods; renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks with every gale and vary of their masters, knowing nought, like dogs, but following. a plague upon your epileptic visage! smile you my speeches, as i were a fool? goose, if i had you upon sarum plain, i'ld drive ye cackling home to camelot. cornwall why, art thou mad, old fellow? gloucester how fell you out? say that. kent no contraries hold more antipathy than i and such a knave. cornwall why dost thou call him a knave? what's his offence? kent his countenance likes me not. cornwall no more, perchance, does mine, nor his, nor hers. kent sir, 'tis my occupation to be plain: i have seen better faces in my time than stands on any shoulder that i see before me at this instant. cornwall this is some fellow, who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect a saucy roughness, and constrains the garb quite from his nature: he cannot flatter, he, an honest mind and plain, he must speak truth! an they will take it, so; if not, he's plain. these kind of knaves i know, which in this plainness harbour more craft and more corrupter ends than twenty silly ducking observants that stretch their duties nicely. kent sir, in good sooth, in sincere verity, under the allowance of your great aspect, whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire on flickering phoebus' front,- cornwall what mean'st by this? kent to go out of my dialect, which you discommend so much. i know, sir, i am no flatterer: he that beguiled you in a plain accent was a plain knave; which for my part i will not be, though i should win your displeasure to entreat me to 't. cornwall what was the offence you gave him? oswald i never gave him any: it pleased the king his master very late to strike at me, upon his misconstruction; when he, conjunct and flattering his displeasure, tripp'd me behind; being down, insulted, rail'd, and put upon him such a deal of man, that worthied him, got praises of the king for him attempting who was self-subdued; and, in the fleshment of this dread exploit, drew on me here again. kent none of these rogues and cowards but ajax is their fool. cornwall fetch forth the stocks! you stubborn ancient knave, you reverend braggart, we'll teach you- kent sir, i am too old to learn: call not your stocks for me: i serve the king; on whose employment i was sent to you: you shall do small respect, show too bold malice against the grace and person of my master, stocking his messenger. cornwall fetch forth the stocks! as i have life and honour, there shall he sit till noon. regan till noon! till night, my lord; and all night too. kent why, madam, if i were your father's dog, you should not use me so. regan sir, being his knave, i will. cornwall this is a fellow of the self-same colour our sister speaks of. come, bring away the stocks! [stocks brought out] gloucester let me beseech your grace not to do so: his fault is much, and the good king his master will cheque him for 't: your purposed low correction is such as basest and contemned'st wretches for pilferings and most common trespasses are punish'd with: the king must take it ill, that he's so slightly valued in his messenger, should have him thus restrain'd. cornwall i'll answer that. regan my sister may receive it much more worse, to have her gentleman abused, assaulted, for following her affairs. put in his legs. [kent is put in the stocks] come, my good lord, away. [exeunt all but gloucester and kent] gloucester i am sorry for thee, friend; 'tis the duke's pleasure, whose disposition, all the world well knows, will not be rubb'd nor stopp'd: i'll entreat for thee. kent pray, do not, sir: i have watched and travell'd hard; some time i shall sleep out, the rest i'll whistle. a good man's fortune may grow out at heels: give you good morrow! gloucester the duke's to blame in this; 'twill be ill taken. [exit] kent good king, that must approve the common saw, thou out of heaven's benediction comest to the warm sun! approach, thou beacon to this under globe, that by thy comfortable beams i may peruse this letter! nothing almost sees miracles but misery: i know 'tis from cordelia, who hath most fortunately been inform'd of my obscured course; and shall find time from this enormous state, seeking to give losses their remedies. all weary and o'erwatch'd, take vantage, heavy eyes, not to behold this shameful lodging. fortune, good night: smile once more: turn thy wheel! [sleeps] king lear act ii scene iii a wood. [enter edgar] edgar i heard myself proclaim'd; and by the happy hollow of a tree escaped the hunt. no port is free; no place, that guard, and most unusual vigilance, does not attend my taking. whiles i may 'scape, i will preserve myself: and am bethought to take the basest and most poorest shape that ever penury, in contempt of man, brought near to beast: my face i'll grime with filth; blanket my loins: elf all my hair in knots; and with presented nakedness out-face the winds and persecutions of the sky. the country gives me proof and precedent of bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary; and with this horrible object, from low farms, poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills, sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers, enforce their charity. poor turlygod! poor tom! that's something yet: edgar i nothing am. [exit] king lear act ii scene iv before gloucester's castle. kent in the stocks. [enter king lear, fool, and gentleman] king lear 'tis strange that they should so depart from home, and not send back my messenger. gentleman as i learn'd, the night before there was no purpose in them of this remove. kent hail to thee, noble master! king lear ha! makest thou this shame thy pastime? kent no, my lord. fool ha, ha! he wears cruel garters. horses are tied by the heads, dogs and bears by the neck, monkeys by the loins, and men by the legs: when a man's over-lusty at legs, then he wears wooden nether-stocks. king lear what's he that hath so much thy place mistook to set thee here? kent it is both he and she; your son and daughter. king lear no. kent yes. king lear no, i say. kent i say, yea. king lear no, no, they would not. kent yes, they have. king lear by jupiter, i swear, no. kent by juno, i swear, ay. king lear they durst not do 't; they could not, would not do 't; 'tis worse than murder, to do upon respect such violent outrage: resolve me, with all modest haste, which way thou mightst deserve, or they impose, this usage, coming from us. kent my lord, when at their home i did commend your highness' letters to them, ere i was risen from the place that show'd my duty kneeling, came there a reeking post, stew'd in his haste, half breathless, panting forth from goneril his mistress salutations; deliver'd letters, spite of intermission, which presently they read: on whose contents, they summon'd up their meiny, straight took horse; commanded me to follow, and attend the leisure of their answer; gave me cold looks: and meeting here the other messenger, whose welcome, i perceived, had poison'd mine,- being the very fellow that of late display'd so saucily against your highness,- having more man than wit about me, drew: he raised the house with loud and coward cries. your son and daughter found this trespass worth the shame which here it suffers. fool winter's not gone yet, if the wild-geese fly that way. fathers that wear rags do make their children blind; but fathers that bear bags shall see their children kind. fortune, that arrant whore, ne'er turns the key to the poor. but, for all this, thou shalt have as many dolours for thy daughters as thou canst tell in a year. king lear o, how this mother swells up toward my heart! hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow, thy element's below! where is this daughter? kent with the earl, sir, here within. king lear follow me not; stay here. [exit] gentleman made you no more offence but what you speak of? kent none. how chance the king comes with so small a train? fool and thou hadst been set i' the stocks for that question, thou hadst well deserved it. kent why, fool? fool we'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there's no labouring i' the winter. all that follow their noses are led by their eyes but blind men; and there's not a nose among twenty but can smell him that's stinking. let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it: but the great one that goes up the hill, let him draw thee after. when a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again: i would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it. that sir which serves and seeks for gain, and follows but for form, will pack when it begins to rain, and leave thee in the storm, but i will tarry; the fool will stay, and let the wise man fly: the knave turns fool that runs away; the fool no knave, perdy. kent where learned you this, fool? fool not i' the stocks, fool. [re-enter king lear with gloucester] king lear deny to speak with me? they are sick? they are weary? they have travell'd all the night? mere fetches; the images of revolt and flying off. fetch me a better answer. gloucester my dear lord, you know the fiery quality of the duke; how unremoveable and fix'd he is in his own course. king lear vengeance! plague! death! confusion! fiery? what quality? why, gloucester, gloucester, i'ld speak with the duke of cornwall and his wife. gloucester well, my good lord, i have inform'd them so. king lear inform'd them! dost thou understand me, man? gloucester ay, my good lord. king lear the king would speak with cornwall; the dear father would with his daughter speak, commands her service: are they inform'd of this? my breath and blood! fiery? the fiery duke? tell the hot duke that- no, but not yet: may be he is not well: infirmity doth still neglect all office whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves when nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind to suffer with the body: i'll forbear; and am fall'n out with my more headier will, to take the indisposed and sickly fit for the sound man. death on my state! wherefore [looking on kent] should he sit here? this act persuades me that this remotion of the duke and her is practise only. give me my servant forth. go tell the duke and 's wife i'ld speak with them, now, presently: bid them come forth and hear me, or at their chamber-door i'll beat the drum till it cry sleep to death. gloucester i would have all well betwixt you. [exit] king lear o me, my heart, my rising heart! but, down! fool cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put 'em i' the paste alive; she knapped 'em o' the coxcombs with a stick, and cried 'down, wantons, down!' 'twas her brother that, in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay. [enter cornwall, regan, gloucester, and servants] king lear good morrow to you both. cornwall hail to your grace! [kent is set at liberty] regan i am glad to see your highness. king lear regan, i think you are; i know what reason i have to think so: if thou shouldst not be glad, i would divorce me from thy mother's tomb, sepulchring an adultress. [to kent] o, are you free? some other time for that. beloved regan, thy sister's naught: o regan, she hath tied sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here: [points to his heart] i can scarce speak to thee; thou'lt not believe with how depraved a quality--o regan! regan i pray you, sir, take patience: i have hope. you less know how to value her desert than she to scant her duty. king lear say, how is that? regan i cannot think my sister in the least would fail her obligation: if, sir, perchance she have restrain'd the riots of your followers, 'tis on such ground, and to such wholesome end, as clears her from all blame. king lear my curses on her! regan o, sir, you are old. nature in you stands on the very verge of her confine: you should be ruled and led by some discretion, that discerns your state better than you yourself. therefore, i pray you, that to our sister you do make return; say you have wrong'd her, sir. king lear ask her forgiveness? do you but mark how this becomes the house: 'dear daughter, i confess that i am old; [kneeling] age is unnecessary: on my knees i beg that you'll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food.' regan good sir, no more; these are unsightly tricks: return you to my sister. king lear [rising] never, regan: she hath abated me of half my train; look'd black upon me; struck me with her tongue, most serpent-like, upon the very heart: all the stored vengeances of heaven fall on her ingrateful top! strike her young bones, you taking airs, with lameness! cornwall fie, sir, fie! king lear you nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames into her scornful eyes! infect her beauty, you fen-suck'd fogs, drawn by the powerful sun, to fall and blast her pride! regan o the blest gods! so will you wish on me, when the rash mood is on. king lear no, regan, thou shalt never have my curse: thy tender-hefted nature shall not give thee o'er to harshness: her eyes are fierce; but thine do comfort and not burn. 'tis not in thee to grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train, to bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes, and in conclusion to oppose the bolt against my coming in: thou better know'st the offices of nature, bond of childhood, effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude; thy half o' the kingdom hast thou not forgot, wherein i thee endow'd. regan good sir, to the purpose. king lear who put my man i' the stocks? [tucket within] cornwall what trumpet's that? regan i know't, my sister's: this approves her letter, that she would soon be here. [enter oswald] is your lady come? king lear this is a slave, whose easy-borrow'd pride dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows. out, varlet, from my sight! cornwall what means your grace? king lear who stock'd my servant? regan, i have good hope thou didst not know on't. who comes here? o heavens, [enter goneril] if you do love old men, if your sweet sway allow obedience, if yourselves are old, make it your cause; send down, and take my part! [to goneril] art not ashamed to look upon this beard? o regan, wilt thou take her by the hand? goneril why not by the hand, sir? how have i offended? all's not offence that indiscretion finds and dotage terms so. king lear o sides, you are too tough; will you yet hold? how came my man i' the stocks? cornwall i set him there, sir: but his own disorders deserved much less advancement. king lear you! did you? regan i pray you, father, being weak, seem so. if, till the expiration of your month, you will return and sojourn with my sister, dismissing half your train, come then to me: i am now from home, and out of that provision which shall be needful for your entertainment. king lear return to her, and fifty men dismiss'd? no, rather i abjure all roofs, and choose to wage against the enmity o' the air; to be a comrade with the wolf and owl,- necessity's sharp pinch! return with her? why, the hot-blooded france, that dowerless took our youngest born, i could as well be brought to knee his throne, and, squire-like; pension beg to keep base life afoot. return with her? persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter to this detested groom. [pointing at oswald] goneril at your choice, sir. king lear i prithee, daughter, do not make me mad: i will not trouble thee, my child; farewell: we'll no more meet, no more see one another: but yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter; or rather a disease that's in my flesh, which i must needs call mine: thou art a boil, a plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle, in my corrupted blood. but i'll not chide thee; let shame come when it will, i do not call it: i do not bid the thunder-bearer shoot, nor tell tales of thee to high-judging jove: mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure: i can be patient; i can stay with regan, i and my hundred knights. regan not altogether so: i look'd not for you yet, nor am provided for your fit welcome. give ear, sir, to my sister; for those that mingle reason with your passion must be content to think you old, and so- but she knows what she does. king lear is this well spoken? regan i dare avouch it, sir: what, fifty followers? is it not well? what should you need of more? yea, or so many, sith that both charge and danger speak 'gainst so great a number? how, in one house, should many people, under two commands, hold amity? 'tis hard; almost impossible. goneril why might not you, my lord, receive attendance from those that she calls servants or from mine? regan why not, my lord? if then they chanced to slack you, we could control them. if you will come to me,- for now i spy a danger,--i entreat you to bring but five and twenty: to no more will i give place or notice. king lear i gave you all- regan and in good time you gave it. king lear made you my guardians, my depositaries; but kept a reservation to be follow'd with such a number. what, must i come to you with five and twenty, regan? said you so? regan and speak't again, my lord; no more with me. king lear those wicked creatures yet do look well-favour'd, when others are more wicked: not being the worst stands in some rank of praise. [to goneril] i'll go with thee: thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty, and thou art twice her love. goneril hear me, my lord; what need you five and twenty, ten, or five, to follow in a house where twice so many have a command to tend you? regan what need one? king lear o, reason not the need: our basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous: allow not nature more than nature needs, man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady; if only to go warm were gorgeous, why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st, which scarcely keeps thee warm. but, for true need,- you heavens, give me that patience, patience i need! you see me here, you gods, a poor old man, as full of grief as age; wretched in both! if it be you that stir these daughters' hearts against their father, fool me not so much to bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, and let not women's weapons, water-drops, stain my man's cheeks! no, you unnatural hags, i will have such revenges on you both, that all the world shall--i will do such things,- what they are, yet i know not: but they shall be the terrors of the earth. you think i'll weep no, i'll not weep: i have full cause of weeping; but this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, or ere i'll weep. o fool, i shall go mad! [exeunt king lear, gloucester, kent, and fool] [storm and tempest] cornwall let us withdraw; 'twill be a storm. regan this house is little: the old man and his people cannot be well bestow'd. goneril 'tis his own blame; hath put himself from rest, and must needs taste his folly. regan for his particular, i'll receive him gladly, but not one follower. goneril so am i purposed. where is my lord of gloucester? cornwall follow'd the old man forth: he is return'd. [re-enter gloucester] gloucester the king is in high rage. cornwall whither is he going? gloucester he calls to horse; but will i know not whither. cornwall 'tis best to give him way; he leads himself. goneril my lord, entreat him by no means to stay. gloucester alack, the night comes on, and the bleak winds do sorely ruffle; for many miles about there's scarce a bush. regan o, sir, to wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters. shut up your doors: he is attended with a desperate train; and what they may incense him to, being apt to have his ear abused, wisdom bids fear. cornwall shut up your doors, my lord; 'tis a wild night: my regan counsels well; come out o' the storm. [exeunt] king lear act iii scene i a heath. [storm still. enter kent and a gentleman, meeting] kent who's there, besides foul weather? gentleman one minded like the weather, most unquietly. kent i know you. where's the king? gentleman contending with the fretful element: bids the winds blow the earth into the sea, or swell the curled water 'bove the main, that things might change or cease; tears his white hair, which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage, catch in their fury, and make nothing of; strives in his little world of man to out-scorn the to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain. this night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch, the lion and the belly-pinched wolf keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs, and bids what will take all. kent but who is with him? gentleman none but the fool; who labours to out-jest his heart-struck injuries. kent sir, i do know you; and dare, upon the warrant of my note, commend a dear thing to you. there is division, although as yet the face of it be cover'd with mutual cunning, 'twixt albany and cornwall; who have--as who have not, that their great stars throned and set high?--servants, who seem no less, which are to france the spies and speculations intelligent of our state; what hath been seen, either in snuffs and packings of the dukes, or the hard rein which both of them have borne against the old kind king; or something deeper, whereof perchance these are but furnishings; but, true it is, from france there comes a power into this scatter'd kingdom; who already, wise in our negligence, have secret feet in some of our best ports, and are at point to show their open banner. now to you: if on my credit you dare build so far to make your speed to dover, you shall find some that will thank you, making just report of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow the king hath cause to plain. i am a gentleman of blood and breeding; and, from some knowledge and assurance, offer this office to you. gentleman i will talk further with you. kent no, do not. for confirmation that i am much more than my out-wall, open this purse, and take what it contains. if you shall see cordelia,- as fear not but you shall,--show her this ring; and she will tell you who your fellow is that yet you do not know. fie on this storm! i will go seek the king. gentleman give me your hand: have you no more to say? kent few words, but, to effect, more than all yet; that, when we have found the king,--in which your pain that way, i'll this,--he that first lights on him holla the other. [exeunt severally] king lear act iii scene ii another part of the heath. storm still. [enter king lear and fool] king lear blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! you cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks! you sulphurous and thought-executing fires, vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head! and thou, all-shaking thunder, smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world! crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once, that make ingrateful man! fool o nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o' door. good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters' blessing: here's a night pities neither wise man nor fool. king lear rumble thy bellyful! spit, fire! spout, rain! nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters: i tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; i never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, you owe me no subscription: then let fall your horrible pleasure: here i stand, your slave, a poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man: but yet i call you servile ministers, that have with two pernicious daughters join'd your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head so old and white as this. o! o! 'tis foul! fool he that has a house to put's head in has a good head-piece. the cod-piece that will house before the head has any, the head and he shall louse; so beggars marry many. the man that makes his toe what he his heart should make shall of a corn cry woe, and turn his sleep to wake. for there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass. king lear no, i will be the pattern of all patience; i will say nothing. [enter kent] kent who's there? fool marry, here's grace and a cod-piece; that's a wise man and a fool. kent alas, sir, are you here? things that love night love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies gallow the very wanderers of the dark, and make them keep their caves: since i was man, such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, such groans of roaring wind and rain, i never remember to have heard: man's nature cannot carry the affliction nor the fear. king lear let the great gods, that keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, find out their enemies now. tremble, thou wretch, that hast within thee undivulged crimes, unwhipp'd of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand; thou perjured, and thou simular man of virtue that art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake, that under covert and convenient seeming hast practised on man's life: close pent-up guilts, rive your concealing continents, and cry these dreadful summoners grace. i am a man more sinn'd against than sinning. kent alack, bare-headed! gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel; some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest: repose you there; while i to this hard house- more harder than the stones whereof 'tis raised; which even but now, demanding after you, denied me to come in--return, and force their scanted courtesy. king lear my wits begin to turn. come on, my boy: how dost, my boy? art cold? i am cold myself. where is this straw, my fellow? the art of our necessities is strange, that can make vile things precious. come, your hovel. poor fool and knave, i have one part in my heart that's sorry yet for thee. fool [singing] he that has and a little tiny wit- with hey, ho, the wind and the rain,- must make content with his fortunes fit, for the rain it raineth every day. king lear true, my good boy. come, bring us to this hovel. [exeunt king lear and kent] fool this is a brave night to cool a courtezan. i'll speak a prophecy ere i go: when priests are more in word than matter; when brewers mar their malt with water; when nobles are their tailors' tutors; no heretics burn'd, but wenches' suitors; when every case in law is right; no squire in debt, nor no poor knight; when slanders do not live in tongues; nor cutpurses come not to throngs; when usurers tell their gold i' the field; and bawds and whores do churches build; then shall the realm of albion come to great confusion: then comes the time, who lives to see't, that going shall be used with feet. this prophecy merlin shall make; for i live before his time. [exit] king lear act iii scene iii gloucester's castle. [enter gloucester and edmund] gloucester alack, alack, edmund, i like not this unnatural dealing. when i desire their leave that i might pity him, they took from me the use of mine own house; charged me, on pain of their perpetual displeasure, neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any way sustain him. edmund most savage and unnatural! gloucester go to; say you nothing. there's a division betwixt the dukes; and a worse matter than that: i have received a letter this night; 'tis dangerous to be spoken; i have locked the letter in my closet: these injuries the king now bears will be revenged home; there's part of a power already footed: we must incline to the king. i will seek him, and privily relieve him: go you and maintain talk with the duke, that my charity be not of him perceived: if he ask for me. i am ill, and gone to bed. though i die for it, as no less is threatened me, the king my old master must be relieved. there is some strange thing toward, edmund; pray you, be careful. [exit] edmund this courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke instantly know; and of that letter too: this seems a fair deserving, and must draw me that which my father loses; no less than all: the younger rises when the old doth fall. [exit] king lear act iii scene iv the heath. before a hovel. [enter king lear, kent, and fool] kent here is the place, my lord; good my lord, enter: the tyranny of the open night's too rough for nature to endure. [storm still] king lear let me alone. kent good my lord, enter here. king lear wilt break my heart? kent i had rather break mine own. good my lord, enter. king lear thou think'st 'tis much that this contentious storm invades us to the skin: so 'tis to thee; but where the greater malady is fix'd, the lesser is scarce felt. thou'ldst shun a bear; but if thy flight lay toward the raging sea, thou'ldst meet the bear i' the mouth. when the mind's free, the body's delicate: the tempest in my mind doth from my senses take all feeling else save what beats there. filial ingratitude! is it not as this mouth should tear this hand for lifting food to't? but i will punish home: no, i will weep no more. in such a night to shut me out! pour on; i will endure. in such a night as this! o regan, goneril! your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,- o, that way madness lies; let me shun that; no more of that. kent good my lord, enter here. king lear prithee, go in thyself: seek thine own ease: this tempest will not give me leave to ponder on things would hurt me more. but i'll go in. [to the fool] in, boy; go first. you houseless poverty,- nay, get thee in. i'll pray, and then i'll sleep. [fool goes in] poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are, that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, how shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you from seasons such as these? o, i have ta'en too little care of this! take physic, pomp; expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, that thou mayst shake the superflux to them, and show the heavens more just. edgar [within] fathom and half, fathom and half! poor tom! [the fool runs out from the hovel] fool come not in here, nuncle, here's a spirit help me, help me! kent give me thy hand. who's there? fool a spirit, a spirit: he says his name's poor tom. kent what art thou that dost grumble there i' the straw? come forth. [enter edgar disguised as a mad man] edgar away! the foul fiend follows me! through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind. hum! go to thy cold bed, and warm thee. king lear hast thou given all to thy two daughters? and art thou come to this? edgar who gives any thing to poor tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and whirlipool e'er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge; made film proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting-horse over four-inched bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor. bless thy five wits! tom's a-cold,--o, do de, do de, do de. bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! do poor tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes: there could i have him now,--and there,--and there again, and there. [storm still] king lear what, have his daughters brought him to this pass? couldst thou save nothing? didst thou give them all? fool nay, he reserved a blanket, else we had been all shamed. king lear now, all the plagues that in the pendulous air hang fated o'er men's faults light on thy daughters! kent he hath no daughters, sir. king lear death, traitor! nothing could have subdued nature to such a lowness but his unkind daughters. is it the fashion, that discarded fathers should have thus little mercy on their flesh? judicious punishment! 'twas this flesh begot those pelican daughters. edgar pillicock sat on pillicock-hill: halloo, halloo, loo, loo! fool this cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen. edgar take heed o' the foul fiend: obey thy parents; keep thy word justly; swear not; commit not with man's sworn spouse; set not thy sweet heart on proud array. tom's a-cold. king lear what hast thou been? edgar a serving-man, proud in heart and mind; that curled my hair; wore gloves in my cap; served the lust of my mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with her; swore as many oaths as i spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven: one that slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it: wine loved i deeply, dice dearly: and in woman out-paramoured the turk: false of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey. let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray thy poor heart to woman: keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend. still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind: says suum, mun, ha, no, nonny. dolphin my boy, my boy, sessa! let him trot by. [storm still] king lear why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies. is man no more than this? consider him well. thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. ha! here's three on 's are sophisticated! thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, forked animal as thou art. off, off, you lendings! come unbutton here. [tearing off his clothes] fool prithee, nuncle, be contented; 'tis a naughty night to swim in. now a little fire in a wild field were like an old lecher's heart; a small spark, all the rest on's body cold. look, here comes a walking fire. [enter gloucester, with a torch] edgar this is the foul fiend flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth. s. withold footed thrice the old; he met the night-mare, and her nine-fold; bid her alight, and her troth plight, and, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee! kent how fares your grace? king lear what's he? kent who's there? what is't you seek? gloucester what are you there? your names? edgar poor tom; that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water; that in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets; swallows the old rat and the ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the standing pool; who is whipped from tithing to tithing, and stockpunished, and imprisoned; who hath had three suits to his back, six shirts to his body, horse to ride, and weapon to wear; but mice and rats, and such small deer, have been tom's food for seven long year. beware my follower. peace, smulkin; peace, thou fiend! gloucester what, hath your grace no better company? edgar the prince of darkness is a gentleman: modo he's call'd, and mahu. gloucester our flesh and blood is grown so vile, my lord, that it doth hate what gets it. edgar poor tom's a-cold. gloucester go in with me: my duty cannot suffer to obey in all your daughters' hard commands: though their injunction be to bar my doors, and let this tyrannous night take hold upon you, yet have i ventured to come seek you out, and bring you where both fire and food is ready. king lear first let me talk with this philosopher. what is the cause of thunder? kent good my lord, take his offer; go into the house. king lear i'll talk a word with this same learned theban. what is your study? edgar how to prevent the fiend, and to kill vermin. king lear let me ask you one word in private. kent importune him once more to go, my lord; his wits begin to unsettle. gloucester canst thou blame him? [storm still] his daughters seek his death: ah, that good kent! he said it would be thus, poor banish'd man! thou say'st the king grows mad; i'll tell thee, friend, i am almost mad myself: i had a son, now outlaw'd from my blood; he sought my life, but lately, very late: i loved him, friend; no father his son dearer: truth to tell thee, the grief hath crazed my wits. what a night's this! i do beseech your grace,- king lear o, cry your mercy, sir. noble philosopher, your company. edgar tom's a-cold. gloucester in, fellow, there, into the hovel: keep thee warm. king lear come let's in all. kent this way, my lord. king lear with him; i will keep still with my philosopher. kent good my lord, soothe him; let him take the fellow. gloucester take him you on. kent sirrah, come on; go along with us. king lear come, good athenian. gloucester no words, no words: hush. edgar child rowland to the dark tower came, his word was still,--fie, foh, and fum, i smell the blood of a british man. [exeunt] king lear act iii scene v gloucester's castle. [enter cornwall and edmund] cornwall i will have my revenge ere i depart his house. edmund how, my lord, i may be censured, that nature thus gives way to loyalty, something fears me to think of. cornwall i now perceive, it was not altogether your brother's evil disposition made him seek his death; but a provoking merit, set a-work by a reprovable badness in himself. edmund how malicious is my fortune, that i must repent to be just! this is the letter he spoke of, which approves him an intelligent party to the advantages of france: o heavens! that this treason were not, or not i the detector! cornwall o with me to the duchess. edmund if the matter of this paper be certain, you have mighty business in hand. cornwall true or false, it hath made thee earl of gloucester. seek out where thy father is, that he may be ready for our apprehension. edmund [aside] if i find him comforting the king, it will stuff his suspicion more fully.--i will persevere in my course of loyalty, though the conflict be sore between that and my blood. cornwall i will lay trust upon thee; and thou shalt find a dearer father in my love. [exeunt] king lear act iii scene vi a chamber in a farmhouse adjoining the castle. [enter gloucester, king lear, kent, fool, and edgar] gloucester here is better than the open air; take it thankfully. i will piece out the comfort with what addition i can: i will not be long from you. kent all the power of his wits have given way to his impatience: the gods reward your kindness! [exit gloucester] edgar frateretto calls me; and tells me nero is an angler in the lake of darkness. pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend. fool prithee, nuncle, tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeoman? king lear a king, a king! fool no, he's a yeoman that has a gentleman to his son; for he's a mad yeoman that sees his son a gentleman before him. king lear to have a thousand with red burning spits come hissing in upon 'em,- edgar the foul fiend bites my back. fool he's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath. king lear it shall be done; i will arraign them straight. [to edgar] come, sit thou here, most learned justicer; [to the fool] thou, sapient sir, sit here. now, you she foxes! edgar look, where he stands and glares! wantest thou eyes at trial, madam? come o'er the bourn, bessy, to me,- fool her boat hath a leak, and she must not speak why she dares not come over to thee. edgar the foul fiend haunts poor tom in the voice of a nightingale. hopdance cries in tom's belly for two white herring. croak not, black angel; i have no food for thee. kent how do you, sir? stand you not so amazed: will you lie down and rest upon the cushions? king lear i'll see their trial first. bring in the evidence. [to edgar] thou robed man of justice, take thy place; [to the fool] and thou, his yoke-fellow of equity, bench by his side: [to kent] you are o' the commission, sit you too. edgar let us deal justly. sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd? thy sheep be in the corn; and for one blast of thy minikin mouth, thy sheep shall take no harm. pur! the cat is gray. king lear arraign her first; 'tis goneril. i here take my oath before this honourable assembly, she kicked the poor king her father. fool come hither, mistress. is your name goneril? king lear she cannot deny it. fool cry you mercy, i took you for a joint-stool. king lear and here's another, whose warp'd looks proclaim what store her heart is made on. stop her there! arms, arms, sword, fire! corruption in the place! false justicer, why hast thou let her 'scape? edgar bless thy five wits! kent o pity! sir, where is the patience now, that thou so oft have boasted to retain? edgar [aside] my tears begin to take his part so much, they'll mar my counterfeiting. king lear the little dogs and all, tray, blanch, and sweet-heart, see, they bark at me. edgar tom will throw his head at them. avaunt, you curs! be thy mouth or black or white, tooth that poisons if it bite; mastiff, grey-hound, mongrel grim, hound or spaniel, brach or lym, or bobtail tike or trundle-tail, tom will make them weep and wail: for, with throwing thus my head, dogs leap the hatch, and all are fled. do de, de, de. sessa! come, march to wakes and fairs and market-towns. poor tom, thy horn is dry. king lear then let them anatomize regan; see what breeds about her heart. is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts? [to edgar] you, sir, i entertain for one of my hundred; only i do not like the fashion of your garments: you will say they are persian attire: but let them be changed. kent now, good my lord, lie here and rest awhile. king lear make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains: so, so, so. we'll go to supper i' he morning. so, so, so. fool and i'll go to bed at noon. [re-enter gloucester] gloucester come hither, friend: where is the king my master? kent here, sir; but trouble him not, his wits are gone. gloucester good friend, i prithee, take him in thy arms; i have o'erheard a plot of death upon him: there is a litter ready; lay him in 't, and drive towards dover, friend, where thou shalt meet both welcome and protection. take up thy master: if thou shouldst dally half an hour, his life, with thine, and all that offer to defend him, stand in assured loss: take up, take up; and follow me, that will to some provision give thee quick conduct. kent oppressed nature sleeps: this rest might yet have balm'd thy broken senses, which, if convenience will not allow, stand in hard cure. [to the fool] come, help to bear thy master; thou must not stay behind. gloucester come, come, away. [exeunt all but edgar] edgar when we our betters see bearing our woes, we scarcely think our miseries our foes. who alone suffers suffers most i' the mind, leaving free things and happy shows behind: but then the mind much sufferance doth o'er skip, when grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship. how light and portable my pain seems now, when that which makes me bend makes the king bow, he childed as i father'd! tom, away! mark the high noises; and thyself bewray, when false opinion, whose wrong thought defiles thee, in thy just proof, repeals and reconciles thee. what will hap more to-night, safe 'scape the king! lurk, lurk. [exit] king lear act iii scene vii gloucester's castle. [enter cornwall, regan, goneril, edmund, and servants] cornwall post speedily to my lord your husband; show him this letter: the army of france is landed. seek out the villain gloucester. [exeunt some of the servants] regan hang him instantly. goneril pluck out his eyes. cornwall leave him to my displeasure. edmund, keep you our sister company: the revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous father are not fit for your beholding. advise the duke, where you are going, to a most festinate preparation: we are bound to the like. our posts shall be swift and intelligent betwixt us. farewell, dear sister: farewell, my lord of gloucester. [enter oswald] how now! where's the king? oswald my lord of gloucester hath convey'd him hence: some five or six and thirty of his knights, hot questrists after him, met him at gate; who, with some other of the lords dependants, are gone with him towards dover; where they boast to have well-armed friends. cornwall get horses for your mistress. goneril farewell, sweet lord, and sister. cornwall edmund, farewell. [exeunt goneril, edmund, and oswald] go seek the traitor gloucester, pinion him like a thief, bring him before us. [exeunt other servants] though well we may not pass upon his life without the form of justice, yet our power shall do a courtesy to our wrath, which men may blame, but not control. who's there? the traitor? [enter gloucester, brought in by two or three] regan ingrateful fox! 'tis he. cornwall bind fast his corky arms. gloucester what mean your graces? good my friends, consider you are my guests: do me no foul play, friends. cornwall bind him, i say. [servants bind him] regan hard, hard. o filthy traitor! gloucester unmerciful lady as you are, i'm none. cornwall to this chair bind him. villain, thou shalt find- [regan plucks his beard] gloucester by the kind gods, 'tis most ignobly done to pluck me by the beard. regan so white, and such a traitor! gloucester naughty lady, these hairs, which thou dost ravish from my chin, will quicken, and accuse thee: i am your host: with robbers' hands my hospitable favours you should not ruffle thus. what will you do? cornwall come, sir, what letters had you late from france? regan be simple answerer, for we know the truth. cornwall and what confederacy have you with the traitors late footed in the kingdom? regan to whose hands have you sent the lunatic king? speak. gloucester i have a letter guessingly set down, which came from one that's of a neutral heart, and not from one opposed. cornwall cunning. regan and false. cornwall where hast thou sent the king? gloucester to dover. regan wherefore to dover? wast thou not charged at peril- cornwall wherefore to dover? let him first answer that. gloucester i am tied to the stake, and i must stand the course. regan wherefore to dover, sir? gloucester because i would not see thy cruel nails pluck out his poor old eyes; nor thy fierce sister in his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs. the sea, with such a storm as his bare head in hell-black night endured, would have buoy'd up, and quench'd the stelled fires: yet, poor old heart, he holp the heavens to rain. if wolves had at thy gate howl'd that stern time, thou shouldst have said 'good porter, turn the key,' all cruels else subscribed: but i shall see the winged vengeance overtake such children. cornwall see't shalt thou never. fellows, hold the chair. upon these eyes of thine i'll set my foot. gloucester he that will think to live till he be old, give me some help! o cruel! o you gods! regan one side will mock another; the other too. cornwall if you see vengeance,- first servant hold your hand, my lord: i have served you ever since i was a child; but better service have i never done you than now to bid you hold. regan how now, you dog! first servant if you did wear a beard upon your chin, i'd shake it on this quarrel. what do you mean? cornwall my villain! [they draw and fight] first servant nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger. regan give me thy sword. a peasant stand up thus! [takes a sword, and runs at him behind] first servant o, i am slain! my lord, you have one eye left to see some mischief on him. o! [dies] cornwall lest it see more, prevent it. out, vile jelly! where is thy lustre now? gloucester all dark and comfortless. where's my son edmund? edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature, to quit this horrid act. regan out, treacherous villain! thou call'st on him that hates thee: it was he that made the overture of thy treasons to us; who is too good to pity thee. gloucester o my follies! then edgar was abused. kind gods, forgive me that, and prosper him! regan go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell his way to dover. [exit one with gloucester] how is't, my lord? how look you? cornwall i have received a hurt: follow me, lady. turn out that eyeless villain; throw this slave upon the dunghill. regan, i bleed apace: untimely comes this hurt: give me your arm. [exit cornwall, led by regan] second servant i'll never care what wickedness i do, if this man come to good. third servant if she live long, and in the end meet the old course of death, women will all turn monsters. second servant let's follow the old earl, and get the bedlam to lead him where he would: his roguish madness allows itself to any thing. third servant go thou: i'll fetch some flax and whites of eggs to apply to his bleeding face. now, heaven help him! [exeunt severally] king lear act iv scene i the heath. [enter edgar] edgar yet better thus, and known to be contemn'd, than still contemn'd and flatter'd. to be worst, the lowest and most dejected thing of fortune, stands still in esperance, lives not in fear: the lamentable change is from the best; the worst returns to laughter. welcome, then, thou unsubstantial air that i embrace! the wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst owes nothing to thy blasts. but who comes here? [enter gloucester, led by an old man] my father, poorly led? world, world, o world! but that thy strange mutations make us hate thee, lie would not yield to age. old man o, my good lord, i have been your tenant, and your father's tenant, these fourscore years. gloucester away, get thee away; good friend, be gone: thy comforts can do me no good at all; thee they may hurt. old man alack, sir, you cannot see your way. gloucester i have no way, and therefore want no eyes; i stumbled when i saw: full oft 'tis seen, our means secure us, and our mere defects prove our commodities. o dear son edgar, the food of thy abused father's wrath! might i but live to see thee in my touch, i'ld say i had eyes again! old man how now! who's there? edgar [aside] o gods! who is't can say 'i am at the worst'? i am worse than e'er i was. old man 'tis poor mad tom. edgar [aside] and worse i may be yet: the worst is not so long as we can say 'this is the worst.' old man fellow, where goest? gloucester is it a beggar-man? old man madman and beggar too. gloucester he has some reason, else he could not beg. i' the last night's storm i such a fellow saw; which made me think a man a worm: my son came then into my mind; and yet my mind was then scarce friends with him: i have heard more since. as flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. they kill us for their sport. edgar [aside] how should this be? bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow, angering itself and others.--bless thee, master! gloucester is that the naked fellow? old man ay, my lord. gloucester then, prithee, get thee gone: if, for my sake, thou wilt o'ertake us, hence a mile or twain, i' the way toward dover, do it for ancient love; and bring some covering for this naked soul, who i'll entreat to lead me. old man alack, sir, he is mad. gloucester 'tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind. do as i bid thee, or rather do thy pleasure; above the rest, be gone. old man i'll bring him the best 'parel that i have, come on't what will. [exit] gloucester sirrah, naked fellow,- edgar poor tom's a-cold. [aside] i cannot daub it further. gloucester come hither, fellow. edgar [aside] and yet i must.--bless thy sweet eyes, they bleed. gloucester know'st thou the way to dover? edgar both stile and gate, horse-way and foot-path. poor tom hath been scared out of his good wits: bless thee, good man's son, from the foul fiend! five fiends have been in poor tom at once; of lust, as obidicut; hobbididence, prince of dumbness; mahu, of stealing; modo, of murder; flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing, who since possesses chambermaids and waiting-women. so, bless thee, master! gloucester here, take this purse, thou whom the heavens' plagues have humbled to all strokes: that i am wretched makes thee the happier: heavens, deal so still! let the superfluous and lust-dieted man, that slaves your ordinance, that will not see because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly; so distribution should undo excess, and each man have enough. dost thou know dover? edgar ay, master. gloucester there is a cliff, whose high and bending head looks fearfully in the confined deep: bring me but to the very brim of it, and i'll repair the misery thou dost bear with something rich about me: from that place i shall no leading need. edgar give me thy arm: poor tom shall lead thee. [exeunt] king lear act iv scene ii before albany's palace. [enter goneril and edmund] goneril welcome, my lord: i marvel our mild husband not met us on the way. [enter oswald] now, where's your master'? oswald madam, within; but never man so changed. i told him of the army that was landed; he smiled at it: i told him you were coming: his answer was 'the worse:' of gloucester's treachery, and of the loyal service of his son, when i inform'd him, then he call'd me sot, and told me i had turn'd the wrong side out: what most he should dislike seems pleasant to him; what like, offensive. goneril [to edmund] then shall you go no further. it is the cowish terror of his spirit, that dares not undertake: he'll not feel wrongs which tie him to an answer. our wishes on the way may prove effects. back, edmund, to my brother; hasten his musters and conduct his powers: i must change arms at home, and give the distaff into my husband's hands. this trusty servant shall pass between us: ere long you are like to hear, if you dare venture in your own behalf, a mistress's command. wear this; spare speech; [giving a favour] decline your head: this kiss, if it durst speak, would stretch thy spirits up into the air: conceive, and fare thee well. edmund yours in the ranks of death. goneril my most dear gloucester! [exit edmund] o, the difference of man and man! to thee a woman's services are due: my fool usurps my body. oswald madam, here comes my lord. [exit] [enter albany] goneril i have been worth the whistle. albany o goneril! you are not worth the dust which the rude wind blows in your face. i fear your disposition: that nature, which contemns its origin, cannot be border'd certain in itself; she that herself will sliver and disbranch from her material sap, perforce must wither and come to deadly use. goneril no more; the text is foolish. albany wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile: filths savour but themselves. what have you done? tigers, not daughters, what have you perform'd? a father, and a gracious aged man, whose reverence even the head-lugg'd bear would lick, most barbarous, most degenerate! have you madded. could my good brother suffer you to do it? a man, a prince, by him so benefited! if that the heavens do not their visible spirits send quickly down to tame these vile offences, it will come, humanity must perforce prey on itself, like monsters of the deep. goneril milk-liver'd man! that bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs; who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning thine honour from thy suffering; that not know'st fools do those villains pity who are punish'd ere they have done their mischief. where's thy drum? france spreads his banners in our noiseless land; with plumed helm thy slayer begins threats; whiles thou, a moral fool, sit'st still, and criest 'alack, why does he so?' albany see thyself, devil! proper deformity seems not in the fiend so horrid as in woman. goneril o vain fool! albany thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for shame, be-monster not thy feature. were't my fitness to let these hands obey my blood, they are apt enough to dislocate and tear thy flesh and bones: howe'er thou art a fiend, a woman's shape doth shield thee. goneril marry, your manhood now- [enter a messenger] albany what news? messenger o, my good lord, the duke of cornwall's dead: slain by his servant, going to put out the other eye of gloucester. albany gloucester's eye! messenger a servant that he bred, thrill'd with remorse, opposed against the act, bending his sword to his great master; who, thereat enraged, flew on him, and amongst them fell'd him dead; but not without that harmful stroke, which since hath pluck'd him after. albany this shows you are above, you justicers, that these our nether crimes so speedily can venge! but, o poor gloucester! lost he his other eye? messenger both, both, my lord. this letter, madam, craves a speedy answer; 'tis from your sister. goneril [aside] one way i like this well; but being widow, and my gloucester with her, may all the building in my fancy pluck upon my hateful life: another way, the news is not so tart.--i'll read, and answer. [exit] albany where was his son when they did take his eyes? messenger come with my lady hither. albany he is not here. messenger no, my good lord; i met him back again. albany knows he the wickedness? messenger ay, my good lord; 'twas he inform'd against him; and quit the house on purpose, that their punishment might have the freer course. albany gloucester, i live to thank thee for the love thou show'dst the king, and to revenge thine eyes. come hither, friend: tell me what more thou know'st. [exeunt] king lear act iv scene iii the french camp near dover. [enter kent and a gentleman] kent why the king of france is so suddenly gone back know you the reason? gentleman something he left imperfect in the state, which since his coming forth is thought of; which imports to the kingdom so much fear and danger, that his personal return was most required and necessary. kent who hath he left behind him general? gentleman the marshal of france, monsieur la far. kent did your letters pierce the queen to any demonstration of grief? gentleman ay, sir; she took them, read them in my presence; and now and then an ample tear trill'd down her delicate cheek: it seem'd she was a queen over her passion; who, most rebel-like, sought to be king o'er her. kent o, then it moved her. gentleman not to a rage: patience and sorrow strove who should express her goodliest. you have seen sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears were like a better way: those happy smilets, that play'd on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know what guests were in her eyes; which parted thence, as pearls from diamonds dropp'd. in brief, sorrow would be a rarity most beloved, if all could so become it. kent made she no verbal question? gentleman 'faith, once or twice she heaved the name of 'father' pantingly forth, as if it press'd her heart: cried 'sisters! sisters! shame of ladies! sisters! kent! father! sisters! what, i' the storm? i' the night? let pity not be believed!' there she shook the holy water from her heavenly eyes, and clamour moisten'd: then away she started to deal with grief alone. kent it is the stars, the stars above us, govern our conditions; else one self mate and mate could not beget such different issues. you spoke not with her since? gentleman no. kent was this before the king return'd? gentleman no, since. kent well, sir, the poor distressed lear's i' the town; who sometime, in his better tune, remembers what we are come about, and by no means will yield to see his daughter. gentleman why, good sir? kent a sovereign shame so elbows him: his own unkindness, that stripp'd her from his benediction, turn'd her to foreign casualties, gave her dear rights to his dog-hearted daughters, these things sting his mind so venomously, that burning shame detains him from cordelia. gentleman alack, poor gentleman! kent of albany's and cornwall's powers you heard not? gentleman 'tis so, they are afoot. kent well, sir, i'll bring you to our master lear, and leave you to attend him: some dear cause will in concealment wrap me up awhile; when i am known aright, you shall not grieve lending me this acquaintance. i pray you, go along with me. [exeunt] king lear act iv scene iv the same. a tent. [enter, with drum and colours, cordelia, doctor, and soldiers] cordelia alack, 'tis he: why, he was met even now as mad as the vex'd sea; singing aloud; crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds, with bur-docks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow in our sustaining corn. a century send forth; search every acre in the high-grown field, and bring him to our eye. [exit an officer] what can man's wisdom in the restoring his bereaved sense? he that helps him take all my outward worth. doctor there is means, madam: our foster-nurse of nature is repose, the which he lacks; that to provoke in him, are many simples operative, whose power will close the eye of anguish. cordelia all blest secrets, all you unpublish'd virtues of the earth, spring with my tears! be aidant and remediate in the good man's distress! seek, seek for him; lest his ungovern'd rage dissolve the life that wants the means to lead it. [enter a messenger] messenger news, madam; the british powers are marching hitherward. cordelia 'tis known before; our preparation stands in expectation of them. o dear father, it is thy business that i go about; therefore great france my mourning and important tears hath pitied. no blown ambition doth our arms incite, but love, dear love, and our aged father's right: soon may i hear and see him! [exeunt] king lear act iv scene v gloucester's castle. [enter regan and oswald] regan but are my brother's powers set forth? oswald ay, madam. regan himself in person there? oswald madam, with much ado: your sister is the better soldier. regan lord edmund spake not with your lord at home? oswald no, madam. regan what might import my sister's letter to him? oswald i know not, lady. regan 'faith, he is posted hence on serious matter. it was great ignorance, gloucester's eyes being out, to let him live: where he arrives he moves all hearts against us: edmund, i think, is gone, in pity of his misery, to dispatch his nighted life: moreover, to descry the strength o' the enemy. oswald i must needs after him, madam, with my letter. regan our troops set forth to-morrow: stay with us; the ways are dangerous. oswald i may not, madam: my lady charged my duty in this business. regan why should she write to edmund? might not you transport her purposes by word? belike, something--i know not what: i'll love thee much, let me unseal the letter. oswald madam, i had rather- regan i know your lady does not love her husband; i am sure of that: and at her late being here she gave strange oeillades and most speaking looks to noble edmund. i know you are of her bosom. oswald i, madam? regan i speak in understanding; you are; i know't: therefore i do advise you, take this note: my lord is dead; edmund and i have talk'd; and more convenient is he for my hand than for your lady's: you may gather more. if you do find him, pray you, give him this; and when your mistress hears thus much from you, i pray, desire her call her wisdom to her. so, fare you well. if you do chance to hear of that blind traitor, preferment falls on him that cuts him off. oswald would i could meet him, madam! i should show what party i do follow. regan fare thee well. [exeunt] king lear act iv scene vi fields near dover. [enter gloucester, and edgar dressed like a peasant] gloucester when shall we come to the top of that same hill? edgar you do climb up it now: look, how we labour. gloucester methinks the ground is even. edgar horrible steep. hark, do you hear the sea? gloucester no, truly. edgar why, then, your other senses grow imperfect by your eyes' anguish. gloucester so may it be, indeed: methinks thy voice is alter'd; and thou speak'st in better phrase and matter than thou didst. edgar you're much deceived: in nothing am i changed but in my garments. gloucester methinks you're better spoken. edgar come on, sir; here's the place: stand still. how fearful and dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low! the crows and choughs that wing the midway air show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! methinks he seems no bigger than his head: the fishermen, that walk upon the beach, appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark, diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge, that on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes, cannot be heard so high. i'll look no more; lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight topple down headlong. gloucester set me where you stand. edgar give me your hand: you are now within a foot of the extreme verge: for all beneath the moon would i not leap upright. gloucester let go my hand. here, friend, 's another purse; in it a jewel well worth a poor man's taking: fairies and gods prosper it with thee! go thou farther off; bid me farewell, and let me hear thee going. edgar now fare you well, good sir. gloucester with all my heart. edgar why i do trifle thus with his despair is done to cure it. gloucester [kneeling] o you mighty gods! this world i do renounce, and, in your sights, shake patiently my great affliction off: if i could bear it longer, and not fall to quarrel with your great opposeless wills, my snuff and loathed part of nature should burn itself out. if edgar live, o, bless him! now, fellow, fare thee well. [he falls forward] edgar gone, sir: farewell. and yet i know not how conceit may rob the treasury of life, when life itself yields to the theft: had he been where he thought, by this, had thought been past. alive or dead? ho, you sir! friend! hear you, sir! speak! thus might he pass indeed: yet he revives. what are you, sir? gloucester away, and let me die. edgar hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air, so many fathom down precipitating, thou'dst shiver'd like an egg: but thou dost breathe; hast heavy substance; bleed'st not; speak'st; art sound. ten masts at each make not the altitude which thou hast perpendicularly fell: thy life's a miracle. speak yet again. gloucester but have i fall'n, or no? edgar from the dread summit of this chalky bourn. look up a-height; the shrill-gorged lark so far cannot be seen or heard: do but look up. gloucester alack, i have no eyes. is wretchedness deprived that benefit, to end itself by death? 'twas yet some comfort, when misery could beguile the tyrant's rage, and frustrate his proud will. edgar give me your arm: up: so. how is 't? feel you your legs? you stand. gloucester too well, too well. edgar this is above all strangeness. upon the crown o' the cliff, what thing was that which parted from you? gloucester a poor unfortunate beggar. edgar as i stood here below, methought his eyes were two full moons; he had a thousand noses, horns whelk'd and waved like the enridged sea: it was some fiend; therefore, thou happy father, think that the clearest gods, who make them honours of men's impossibilities, have preserved thee. gloucester i do remember now: henceforth i'll bear affliction till it do cry out itself 'enough, enough,' and die. that thing you speak of, i took it for a man; often 'twould say 'the fiend, the fiend:' he led me to that place. edgar bear free and patient thoughts. but who comes here? [enter king lear, fantastically dressed with wild flowers] the safer sense will ne'er accommodate his master thus. king lear no, they cannot touch me for coining; i am the king himself. edgar o thou side-piercing sight! king lear nature's above art in that respect. there's your press-money. that fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper: draw me a clothier's yard. look, look, a mouse! peace, peace; this piece of toasted cheese will do 't. there's my gauntlet; i'll prove it on a giant. bring up the brown bills. o, well flown, bird! i' the clout, i' the clout: hewgh! give the word. edgar sweet marjoram. king lear pass. gloucester i know that voice. king lear ha! goneril, with a white beard! they flattered me like a dog; and told me i had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there. to say 'ay' and 'no' to every thing that i said!--'ay' and 'no' too was no good divinity. when the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there i found 'em, there i smelt 'em out. go to, they are not men o' their words: they told me i was every thing; 'tis a lie, i am not ague-proof. gloucester the trick of that voice i do well remember: is 't not the king? king lear ay, every inch a king: when i do stare, see how the subject quakes. i pardon that man's life. what was thy cause? adultery? thou shalt not die: die for adultery! no: the wren goes to 't, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight. let copulation thrive; for gloucester's bastard son was kinder to his father than my daughters got 'tween the lawful sheets. to 't, luxury, pell-mell! for i lack soldiers. behold yond simpering dame, whose face between her forks presages snow; that minces virtue, and does shake the head to hear of pleasure's name; the fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to 't with a more riotous appetite. down from the waist they are centaurs, though women all above: but to the girdle do the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiends'; there's hell, there's darkness, there's the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie! pah, pah! give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there's money for thee. gloucester o, let me kiss that hand! king lear let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality. gloucester o ruin'd piece of nature! this great world shall so wear out to nought. dost thou know me? king lear i remember thine eyes well enough. dost thou squiny at me? no, do thy worst, blind cupid! i'll not love. read thou this challenge; mark but the penning of it. gloucester were all the letters suns, i could not see one. edgar i would not take this from report; it is, and my heart breaks at it. king lear read. gloucester what, with the case of eyes? king lear o, ho, are you there with me? no eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse? your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light; yet you see how this world goes. gloucester i see it feelingly. king lear what, art mad? a man may see how this world goes with no eyes. look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? gloucester ay, sir. king lear and the creature run from the cur? there thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office. thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! why dost thou lash that whore? strip thine own back; thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind for which thou whipp'st her. the usurer hangs the cozener. through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; robes and furr'd gowns hide all. plate sin with gold, and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks: arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it. none does offend, none, i say, none; i'll able 'em: take that of me, my friend, who have the power to seal the accuser's lips. get thee glass eyes; and like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not. now, now, now, now: pull off my boots: harder, harder: so. edgar o, matter and impertinency mix'd! reason in madness! king lear if thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes. i know thee well enough; thy name is gloucester: thou must be patient; we came crying hither: thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air, we wawl and cry. i will preach to thee: mark. gloucester alack, alack the day! king lear when we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools: this a good block; it were a delicate stratagem, to shoe a troop of horse with felt: i'll put 't in proof; and when i have stol'n upon these sons-in-law, then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill! [enter a gentleman, with attendants] gentleman o, here he is: lay hand upon him. sir, your most dear daughter- king lear no rescue? what, a prisoner? i am even the natural fool of fortune. use me well; you shall have ransom. let me have surgeons; i am cut to the brains. gentleman you shall have any thing. king lear no seconds? all myself? why, this would make a man a man of salt, to use his eyes for garden water-pots, ay, and laying autumn's dust. gentleman good sir,- king lear i will die bravely, like a bridegroom. what! i will be jovial: come, come; i am a king, my masters, know you that. gentleman you are a royal one, and we obey you. king lear then there's life in't. nay, if you get it, you shall get it with running. sa, sa, sa, sa. [exit running; attendants follow] gentleman a sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch, past speaking of in a king! thou hast one daughter, who redeems nature from the general curse which twain have brought her to. edgar hail, gentle sir. gentleman sir, speed you: what's your will? edgar do you hear aught, sir, of a battle toward? gentleman most sure and vulgar: every one hears that, which can distinguish sound. edgar but, by your favour, how near's the other army? gentleman near and on speedy foot; the main descry stands on the hourly thought. edgar i thank you, sir: that's all. gentleman though that the queen on special cause is here, her army is moved on. edgar i thank you, sir. [exit gentleman] gloucester you ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me: let not my worser spirit tempt me again to die before you please! edgar well pray you, father. gloucester now, good sir, what are you? edgar a most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows; who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows, am pregnant to good pity. give me your hand, i'll lead you to some biding. gloucester hearty thanks: the bounty and the benison of heaven to boot, and boot! [enter oswald] oswald a proclaim'd prize! most happy! that eyeless head of thine was first framed flesh to raise my fortunes. thou old unhappy traitor, briefly thyself remember: the sword is out that must destroy thee. gloucester now let thy friendly hand put strength enough to't. [edgar interposes] oswald wherefore, bold peasant, darest thou support a publish'd traitor? hence; lest that the infection of his fortune take like hold on thee. let go his arm. edgar ch'ill not let go, zir, without vurther 'casion. oswald let go, slave, or thou diest! edgar good gentleman, go your gait, and let poor volk pass. an chud ha' bin zwaggered out of my life, 'twould not ha' bin zo long as 'tis by a vortnight. nay, come not near th' old man; keep out, che vor ye, or ise try whether your costard or my ballow be the harder: ch'ill be plain with you. oswald out, dunghill! edgar ch'ill pick your teeth, zir: come; no matter vor your foins. [they fight, and edgar knocks him down] oswald slave, thou hast slain me: villain, take my purse: if ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body; and give the letters which thou find'st about me to edmund earl of gloucester; seek him out upon the british party: o, untimely death! [dies] edgar i know thee well: a serviceable villain; as duteous to the vices of thy mistress as badness would desire. gloucester what, is he dead? edgar sit you down, father; rest you let's see these pockets: the letters that he speaks of may be my friends. he's dead; i am only sorry he had no other death's-man. let us see: leave, gentle wax; and, manners, blame us not: to know our enemies' minds, we'ld rip their hearts; their papers, is more lawful. [reads] 'let our reciprocal vows be remembered. you have many opportunities to cut him off: if your will want not, time and place will be fruitfully offered. there is nothing done, if he return the conqueror: then am i the prisoner, and his bed my goal; from the loathed warmth whereof deliver me, and supply the place for your labour. 'your--wife, so i would say- 'affectionate servant, 'goneril.' o undistinguish'd space of woman's will! a plot upon her virtuous husband's life; and the exchange my brother! here, in the sands, thee i'll rake up, the post unsanctified of murderous lechers: and in the mature time with this ungracious paper strike the sight of the death practised duke: for him 'tis well that of thy death and business i can tell. gloucester the king is mad: how stiff is my vile sense, that i stand up, and have ingenious feeling of my huge sorrows! better i were distract: so should my thoughts be sever'd from my griefs, and woes by wrong imaginations lose the knowledge of themselves. edgar give me your hand: [drum afar off] far off, methinks, i hear the beaten drum: come, father, i'll bestow you with a friend. [exeunt] king lear act iv scene vii a tent in the french camp. lear on a bed asleep, soft music playing; gentleman, and others attending. [enter cordelia, kent, and doctor] cordelia o thou good kent, how shall i live and work, to match thy goodness? my life will be too short, and every measure fail me. kent to be acknowledged, madam, is o'erpaid. all my reports go with the modest truth; nor more nor clipp'd, but so. cordelia be better suited: these weeds are memories of those worser hours: i prithee, put them off. kent pardon me, dear madam; yet to be known shortens my made intent: my boon i make it, that you know me not till time and i think meet. cordelia then be't so, my good lord. [to the doctor] how does the king? doctor madam, sleeps still. cordelia o you kind gods, cure this great breach in his abused nature! the untuned and jarring senses, o, wind up of this child-changed father! doctor so please your majesty that we may wake the king: he hath slept long. cordelia be govern'd by your knowledge, and proceed i' the sway of your own will. is he array'd? gentleman ay, madam; in the heaviness of his sleep we put fresh garments on him. doctor be by, good madam, when we do awake him; i doubt not of his temperance. cordelia very well. doctor please you, draw near. louder the music there! cordelia o my dear father! restoration hang thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss repair those violent harms that my two sisters have in thy reverence made! kent kind and dear princess! cordelia had you not been their father, these white flakes had challenged pity of them. was this a face to be opposed against the warring winds? to stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder? in the most terrible and nimble stroke of quick, cross lightning? to watch--poor perdu!- with this thin helm? mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me, should have stood that night against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father, to hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn, in short and musty straw? alack, alack! 'tis wonder that thy life and wits at once had not concluded all. he wakes; speak to him. doctor madam, do you; 'tis fittest. cordelia how does my royal lord? how fares your majesty? king lear you do me wrong to take me out o' the grave: thou art a soul in bliss; but i am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like moulten lead. cordelia sir, do you know me? king lear you are a spirit, i know: when did you die? cordelia still, still, far wide! doctor he's scarce awake: let him alone awhile. king lear where have i been? where am i? fair daylight? i am mightily abused. i should e'en die with pity, to see another thus. i know not what to say. i will not swear these are my hands: let's see; i feel this pin prick. would i were assured of my condition! cordelia o, look upon me, sir, and hold your hands in benediction o'er me: no, sir, you must not kneel. king lear pray, do not mock me: i am a very foolish fond old man, fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less; and, to deal plainly, i fear i am not in my perfect mind. methinks i should know you, and know this man; yet i am doubtful for i am mainly ignorant what place this is; and all the skill i have remembers not these garments; nor i know not where i did lodge last night. do not laugh at me; for, as i am a man, i think this lady to be my child cordelia. cordelia and so i am, i am. king lear be your tears wet? yes, 'faith. i pray, weep not: if you have poison for me, i will drink it. i know you do not love me; for your sisters have, as i do remember, done me wrong: you have some cause, they have not. cordelia no cause, no cause. king lear am i in france? kent in your own kingdom, sir. king lear do not abuse me. doctor be comforted, good madam: the great rage, you see, is kill'd in him: and yet it is danger to make him even o'er the time he has lost. desire him to go in; trouble him no more till further settling. cordelia will't please your highness walk? king lear you must bear with me: pray you now, forget and forgive: i am old and foolish. [exeunt all but kent and gentleman] gentleman holds it true, sir, that the duke of cornwall was so slain? kent most certain, sir. gentleman who is conductor of his people? kent as 'tis said, the bastard son of gloucester. gentleman they say edgar, his banished son, is with the earl of kent in germany. kent report is changeable. 'tis time to look about; the powers of the kingdom approach apace. gentleman the arbitrement is like to be bloody. fare you well, sir. [exit] kent my point and period will be throughly wrought, or well or ill, as this day's battle's fought. [exit] king lear act v scene i the british camp, near dover. [enter, with drum and colours, edmund, regan, gentlemen, and soldiers. edmund know of the duke if his last purpose hold, or whether since he is advised by aught to change the course: he's full of alteration and self-reproving: bring his constant pleasure. [to a gentleman, who goes out] regan our sister's man is certainly miscarried. edmund 'tis to be doubted, madam. regan now, sweet lord, you know the goodness i intend upon you: tell me--but truly--but then speak the truth, do you not love my sister? edmund in honour'd love. regan but have you never found my brother's way to the forfended place? edmund that thought abuses you. regan i am doubtful that you have been conjunct and bosom'd with her, as far as we call hers. edmund no, by mine honour, madam. regan i never shall endure her: dear my lord, be not familiar with her. edmund fear me not: she and the duke her husband! [enter, with drum and colours, albany, goneril, and soldiers] goneril [aside] i had rather lose the battle than that sister should loosen him and me. albany our very loving sister, well be-met. sir, this i hear; the king is come to his daughter, with others whom the rigor of our state forced to cry out. where i could not be honest, i never yet was valiant: for this business, it toucheth us, as france invades our land, not bolds the king, with others, whom, i fear, most just and heavy causes make oppose. edmund sir, you speak nobly. regan why is this reason'd? goneril combine together 'gainst the enemy; for these domestic and particular broils are not the question here. albany let's then determine with the ancient of war on our proceedings. edmund i shall attend you presently at your tent. regan sister, you'll go with us? goneril no. regan 'tis most convenient; pray you, go with us. goneril [aside] o, ho, i know the riddle.--i will go. [as they are going out, enter edgar disguised] edgar if e'er your grace had speech with man so poor, hear me one word. albany i'll overtake you. speak. [exeunt all but albany and edgar] edgar before you fight the battle, ope this letter. if you have victory, let the trumpet sound for him that brought it: wretched though i seem, i can produce a champion that will prove what is avouched there. if you miscarry, your business of the world hath so an end, and machination ceases. fortune love you. albany stay till i have read the letter. edgar i was forbid it. when time shall serve, let but the herald cry, and i'll appear again. albany why, fare thee well: i will o'erlook thy paper. [exit edgar] [re-enter edmund] edmund the enemy's in view; draw up your powers. here is the guess of their true strength and forces by diligent discovery; but your haste is now urged on you. albany we will greet the time. [exit] edmund to both these sisters have i sworn my love; each jealous of the other, as the stung are of the adder. which of them shall i take? both? one? or neither? neither can be enjoy'd, if both remain alive: to take the widow exasperates, makes mad her sister goneril; and hardly shall i carry out my side, her husband being alive. now then we'll use his countenance for the battle; which being done, let her who would be rid of him devise his speedy taking off. as for the mercy which he intends to lear and to cordelia, the battle done, and they within our power, shall never see his pardon; for my state stands on me to defend, not to debate. [exit] king lear act v scene ii a field between the two camps. [alarum within. enter, with drum and colours, king lear, cordelia, and soldiers, over the stage; and exeunt] [enter edgar and gloucester] edgar here, father, take the shadow of this tree for your good host; pray that the right may thrive: if ever i return to you again, i'll bring you comfort. gloucester grace go with you, sir! [exit edgar] [alarum and retreat within. re-enter edgar] edgar away, old man; give me thy hand; away! king lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en: give me thy hand; come on. gloucester no farther, sir; a man may rot even here. edgar what, in ill thoughts again? men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither; ripeness is all: come on. gloucester and that's true too. [exeunt] king lear act v scene iii the british camp near dover. [enter, in conquest, with drum and colours, edmund, king lear and cordelia, prisoners; captain, soldiers, &c] edmund some officers take them away: good guard, until their greater pleasures first be known that are to censure them. cordelia we are not the first who, with best meaning, have incurr'd the worst. for thee, oppressed king, am i cast down; myself could else out-frown false fortune's frown. shall we not see these daughters and these sisters? king lear no, no, no, no! come, let's away to prison: we two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: when thou dost ask me blessing, i'll kneel down, and ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out; and take upon's the mystery of things, as if we were god's spies: and we'll wear out, in a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, that ebb and flow by the moon. edmund take them away. king lear upon such sacrifices, my cordelia, the gods themselves throw incense. have i caught thee? he that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven, and fire us hence like foxes. wipe thine eyes; the good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell, ere they shall make us weep: we'll see 'em starve first. come. [exeunt king lear and cordelia, guarded] edmund come hither, captain; hark. take thou this note; [giving a paper] go follow them to prison: one step i have advanced thee; if thou dost as this instructs thee, thou dost make thy way to noble fortunes: know thou this, that men are as the time is: to be tender-minded does not become a sword: thy great employment will not bear question; either say thou'lt do 't, or thrive by other means. captain i'll do 't, my lord. edmund about it; and write happy when thou hast done. mark, i say, instantly; and carry it so as i have set it down. captain i cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats; if it be man's work, i'll do 't. [exit] [flourish. enter albany, goneril, regan, another captain, and soldiers] albany sir, you have shown to-day your valiant strain, and fortune led you well: you have the captives that were the opposites of this day's strife: we do require them of you, so to use them as we shall find their merits and our safety may equally determine. edmund sir, i thought it fit to send the old and miserable king to some retention and appointed guard; whose age has charms in it, whose title more, to pluck the common bosom on his side, an turn our impress'd lances in our eyes which do command them. with him i sent the queen; my reason all the same; and they are ready to-morrow, or at further space, to appear where you shall hold your session. at this time we sweat and bleed: the friend hath lost his friend; and the best quarrels, in the heat, are cursed by those that feel their sharpness: the question of cordelia and her father requires a fitter place. albany sir, by your patience, i hold you but a subject of this war, not as a brother. regan that's as we list to grace him. methinks our pleasure might have been demanded, ere you had spoke so far. he led our powers; bore the commission of my place and person; the which immediacy may well stand up, and call itself your brother. goneril not so hot: in his own grace he doth exalt himself, more than in your addition. regan in my rights, by me invested, he compeers the best. goneril that were the most, if he should husband you. regan jesters do oft prove prophets. goneril holla, holla! that eye that told you so look'd but a-squint. regan lady, i am not well; else i should answer from a full-flowing stomach. general, take thou my soldiers, prisoners, patrimony; dispose of them, of me; the walls are thine: witness the world, that i create thee here my lord and master. goneril mean you to enjoy him? albany the let-alone lies not in your good will. edmund nor in thine, lord. albany half-blooded fellow, yes. regan [to edmund] let the drum strike, and prove my title thine. albany stay yet; hear reason. edmund, i arrest thee on capital treason; and, in thine attaint, this gilded serpent [pointing to goneril] for your claim, fair sister, i bar it in the interest of my wife: 'tis she is sub-contracted to this lord, and i, her husband, contradict your bans. if you will marry, make your loves to me, my lady is bespoke. goneril an interlude! albany thou art arm'd, gloucester: let the trumpet sound: if none appear to prove upon thy head thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons, there is my pledge; [throwing down a glove] i'll prove it on thy heart, ere i taste bread, thou art in nothing less than i have here proclaim'd thee. regan sick, o, sick! goneril [aside] if not, i'll ne'er trust medicine. edmund there's my exchange: [throwing down a glove] what in the world he is that names me traitor, villain-like he lies: call by thy trumpet: he that dares approach, on him, on you, who not? i will maintain my truth and honour firmly. albany a herald, ho! edmund a herald, ho, a herald! albany trust to thy single virtue; for thy soldiers, all levied in my name, have in my name took their discharge. regan my sickness grows upon me. albany she is not well; convey her to my tent. [exit regan, led] [enter a herald] come hither, herald,--let the trumpet sound, and read out this. captain sound, trumpet! [a trumpet sounds] herald [reads] 'if any man of quality or degree within the lists of the army will maintain upon edmund, supposed earl of gloucester, that he is a manifold traitor, let him appear by the third sound of the trumpet: he is bold in his defence.' edmund sound! [first trumpet] herald again! [second trumpet] herald again! [third trumpet] [trumpet answers within] [enter edgar, at the third sound, armed, with a trumpet before him] albany ask him his purposes, why he appears upon this call o' the trumpet. herald what are you? your name, your quality? and why you answer this present summons? edgar know, my name is lost; by treason's tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit: yet am i noble as the adversary i come to cope. albany which is that adversary? edgar what's he that speaks for edmund earl of gloucester? edmund himself: what say'st thou to him? edgar draw thy sword, that, if my speech offend a noble heart, thy arm may do thee justice: here is mine. behold, it is the privilege of mine honours, my oath, and my profession: i protest, maugre thy strength, youth, place, and eminence, despite thy victor sword and fire-new fortune, thy valour and thy heart, thou art a traitor; false to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father; conspirant 'gainst this high-illustrious prince; and, from the extremest upward of thy head to the descent and dust below thy foot, a most toad-spotted traitor. say thou 'no,' this sword, this arm, and my best spirits, are bent to prove upon thy heart, whereto i speak, thou liest. edmund in wisdom i should ask thy name; but, since thy outside looks so fair and warlike, and that thy tongue some say of breeding breathes, what safe and nicely i might well delay by rule of knighthood, i disdain and spurn: back do i toss these treasons to thy head; with the hell-hated lie o'erwhelm thy heart; which, for they yet glance by and scarcely bruise, this sword of mine shall give them instant way, where they shall rest for ever. trumpets, speak! [alarums. they fight. edmund falls] albany save him, save him! goneril this is practise, gloucester: by the law of arms thou wast not bound to answer an unknown opposite; thou art not vanquish'd, but cozen'd and beguiled. albany shut your mouth, dame, or with this paper shall i stop it: hold, sir: thou worse than any name, read thine own evil: no tearing, lady: i perceive you know it. [gives the letter to edmund] goneril say, if i do, the laws are mine, not thine: who can arraign me for't. albany most monstrous! oh! know'st thou this paper? goneril ask me not what i know. [exit] albany go after her: she's desperate; govern her. edmund what you have charged me with, that have i done; and more, much more; the time will bring it out: 'tis past, and so am i. but what art thou that hast this fortune on me? if thou'rt noble, i do forgive thee. edgar let's exchange charity. i am no less in blood than thou art, edmund; if more, the more thou hast wrong'd me. my name is edgar, and thy father's son. the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us: the dark and vicious place where thee he got cost him his eyes. edmund thou hast spoken right, 'tis true; the wheel is come full circle: i am here. albany methought thy very gait did prophesy a royal nobleness: i must embrace thee: let sorrow split my heart, if ever i did hate thee or thy father! edgar worthy prince, i know't. albany where have you hid yourself? how have you known the miseries of your father? edgar by nursing them, my lord. list a brief tale; and when 'tis told, o, that my heart would burst! the bloody proclamation to escape, that follow'd me so near,--o, our lives' sweetness! that we the pain of death would hourly die rather than die at once!--taught me to shift into a madman's rags; to assume a semblance that very dogs disdain'd: and in this habit met i my father with his bleeding rings, their precious stones new lost: became his guide, led him, begg'd for him, saved him from despair; never,--o fault!--reveal'd myself unto him, until some half-hour past, when i was arm'd: not sure, though hoping, of this good success, i ask'd his blessing, and from first to last told him my pilgrimage: but his flaw'd heart, alack, too weak the conflict to support! 'twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, burst smilingly. edmund this speech of yours hath moved me, and shall perchance do good: but speak you on; you look as you had something more to say. albany if there be more, more woeful, hold it in; for i am almost ready to dissolve, hearing of this. edgar this would have seem'd a period to such as love not sorrow; but another, to amplify too much, would make much more, and top extremity. whilst i was big in clamour came there in a man, who, having seen me in my worst estate, shunn'd my abhorr'd society; but then, finding who 'twas that so endured, with his strong arms he fastened on my neck, and bellow'd out as he'ld burst heaven; threw him on my father; told the most piteous tale of lear and him that ever ear received: which in recounting his grief grew puissant and the strings of life began to crack: twice then the trumpets sounded, and there i left him tranced. albany but who was this? edgar kent, sir, the banish'd kent; who in disguise follow'd his enemy king, and did him service improper for a slave. [enter a gentleman, with a bloody knife] gentleman help, help, o, help! edgar what kind of help? albany speak, man. edgar what means that bloody knife? gentleman 'tis hot, it smokes; it came even from the heart of--o, she's dead! albany who dead? speak, man. gentleman your lady, sir, your lady: and her sister by her is poisoned; she hath confess'd it. edmund i was contracted to them both: all three now marry in an instant. edgar here comes kent. albany produce their bodies, be they alive or dead: this judgment of the heavens, that makes us tremble, touches us not with pity. [exit gentleman] [enter kent] o, is this he? the time will not allow the compliment which very manners urges. kent i am come to bid my king and master aye good night: is he not here? albany great thing of us forgot! speak, edmund, where's the king? and where's cordelia? see'st thou this object, kent? [the bodies of goneril and regan are brought in] kent alack, why thus? edmund yet edmund was beloved: the one the other poison'd for my sake, and after slew herself. albany even so. cover their faces. edmund i pant for life: some good i mean to do, despite of mine own nature. quickly send, be brief in it, to the castle; for my writ is on the life of lear and on cordelia: nay, send in time. albany run, run, o, run! edgar to who, my lord? who hath the office? send thy token of reprieve. edmund well thought on: take my sword, give it the captain. albany haste thee, for thy life. [exit edgar] edmund he hath commission from thy wife and me to hang cordelia in the prison, and to lay the blame upon her own despair, that she fordid herself. albany the gods defend her! bear him hence awhile. [edmund is borne off] [re-enter king lear, with cordelia dead in his arms; edgar, captain, and others following] king lear howl, howl, howl, howl! o, you are men of stones: had i your tongues and eyes, i'ld use them so that heaven's vault should crack. she's gone for ever! i know when one is dead, and when one lives; she's dead as earth. lend me a looking-glass; if that her breath will mist or stain the stone, why, then she lives. kent is this the promised end edgar or image of that horror? albany fall, and cease! king lear this feather stirs; she lives! if it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever i have felt. kent [kneeling] o my good master! king lear prithee, away. edgar 'tis noble kent, your friend. king lear a plague upon you, murderers, traitors all! i might have saved her; now she's gone for ever! cordelia, cordelia! stay a little. ha! what is't thou say'st? her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman. i kill'd the slave that was a-hanging thee. captain 'tis true, my lords, he did. king lear did i not, fellow? i have seen the day, with my good biting falchion i would have made them skip: i am old now, and these same crosses spoil me. who are you? mine eyes are not o' the best: i'll tell you straight. kent if fortune brag of two she loved and hated, one of them we behold. king lear this is a dull sight. are you not kent? kent the same, your servant kent: where is your servant caius? king lear he's a good fellow, i can tell you that; he'll strike, and quickly too: he's dead and rotten. kent no, my good lord; i am the very man,- king lear i'll see that straight. kent that, from your first of difference and decay, have follow'd your sad steps. king lear you are welcome hither. kent nor no man else: all's cheerless, dark, and deadly. your eldest daughters have fordone them selves, and desperately are dead. king lear ay, so i think. albany he knows not what he says: and vain it is that we present us to him. edgar very bootless. [enter a captain] captain edmund is dead, my lord. albany that's but a trifle here. you lords and noble friends, know our intent. what comfort to this great decay may come shall be applied: for us we will resign, during the life of this old majesty, to him our absolute power: [to edgar and kent] you, to your rights: with boot, and such addition as your honours have more than merited. all friends shall taste the wages of their virtue, and all foes the cup of their deservings. o, see, see! king lear and my poor fool is hang'd! no, no, no life! why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all? thou'lt come no more, never, never, never, never, never! pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir. do you see this? look on her, look, her lips, look there, look there! [dies] edgar he faints! my lord, my lord! kent break, heart; i prithee, break! edgar look up, my lord. kent vex not his ghost: o, let him pass! he hates him much that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer. edgar he is gone, indeed. kent the wonder is, he hath endured so long: he but usurp'd his life. albany bear them from hence. our present business is general woe. [to kent and edgar] friends of my soul, you twain rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain. kent i have a journey, sir, shortly to go; my master calls me, i must not say no. albany the weight of this sad time we must obey; speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. the oldest hath borne most: we that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long. [exeunt, with a dead march] travels into several remote nations of the world by lemuel gulliver, first a surgeon, then a captain of several ships. london: printed for benj. motte, at the middle temple-gate in fleet-street. m,dcc,xxvi. a letter from capt. gulliver, to his cousin sympson i hope you will be ready to own publickly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels; with direction to hire some young gentlemen of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin dampier did by my advice, in his book calleda voyage round the world. but i do not remember i gave you power to consent that any thing should be omitted, and much less that any thing should be inserted: therefore, as to the latter, i do here renounce every thing of that kind; particularly a paragraph about her majesty the late queen anne, of most pious and glorious memory; although i did reverence and esteem her more than any of human species. but you, or your interpolator, ought to have considered, that as it was not my inclination, so was it not decent to praise any animal of our composition before my master houyhnhnm: and besides the fact was altogether false; for to my knowledge, being in england during some part of her majesty's reign, she did govern by a chief minister; nay, even by two successively; the first whereof was the lord of godolphin, and the second the lord of oxford; so that you have made me say the thing that was not. likewise, in the account of the academy of projectors, and several passages of my discourse to my master houyhnhnm, you have either omitted some material circumstances, or minced or changed them in such a manner, that i do hardly know mine own work. when i formerly hinted to you something of this in a letter, you were pleased to answer that you were afraid of giving offense; that people in power were very watchful over the press, and apt not only to interpret, but to punish every thing which looked like an innuendo (as i think you called it.) but pray, how could that which i spoke so many years ago, and at about five thousand leagues distance, in another reign, be applied to any of the yahoos who now are said to govern the herd; especially at a time when i little thought on or feared the unhappiness of living under them. have not i the most reason to complain, when i see these very yahoos carried by houyhnhnms in a vehicle, as if these were brutes, and those the rational creatures? and indeed, to avoid so monstrous and detestable a sight was one principal motive of my retirement hither. thus much i thought proper to tell you in relation to yourself, and to the trust i reposed in you. i do in the next place complain of my own great want of judgement, in being prevailed upon by the intreaties and false reasonings of you and some others, very much against mine own opinion, to suffer my travels to be published. pray bring to your mind how often i desired you to consider, when you insisted on the motive of publick good; that the yahoos were a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precepts or examples: and so it hath proved; for instead of seeing a full stop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as i had reason to expect: behold, after above six months warning, i cannot learn that my book hath produced one single effect according to mine intentions: i desired you would let me know by a letter, when party and faction were extinguished; judges learned and upright; pleaders honest and modest, with some tincture of common sense; and smithfield blazing with pyramids of law-books; the young nobility's education entirely changed; the physicians banished; the female yahoos abounding in virtue, honour, truth and good sense; courts and levees of great ministers thoroughly weeded and swept; wit, merit and learning rewarded; all disgracers of the press in prose and verse condemned to eat nothing but their own cotten, and quench their thirst with their own ink. these, and a thousand other reformations, i firmly counted upon by your encouragement; as indeed they were plainly deducible from the precepts delivered in my book. and, it must be owned that seven months were a sufficient time to correct every vice and folly to which yahoos are subject, if their natures had been capable of the least disposition to virtue or wisdom: yet so far have you been from answering mine expectation in any of your letters; that on the contrary you are loading our carrier every week with libels, and keys, and reflections, and memoirs, and second parts; wherein i see myself accused of reflecting upon great states-folk, of degrading human nature (for so they have still the confidence to stile it), and of abusing the female sex. i find likewise that the writers of those bundles are not agreed among themselves; for some of them will not allow me to be author of my own travels; and others make me author of books to which i am wholly a stranger. i find likewise that your printer hath been so careless as to confound the times, and mistake the dates of my several voyages and returns; neither assigning the true year, or the true month, or day of the month: and i hear the original manuscript is all destroyed, since the publication of my book. neither have i any copy left; however, i have sent you some corrections, which you may insert, if ever there should be a second edition: and yet i cannot stand to them, but shall leave that matter to my judicious and candid readers, to adjust it as they please. i hear some of our sea-yahoos find fault with my sea-language, as not proper in many parts, nor now in use. i cannot help it. in my first voyages, while i was young, i was instructed by the oldest mariners, and learned to speak as they did. but i have since found that the sea-yahoos are apt, like the land ones, to become new fangled in their words, which the latter change every year, insomuch as i remember upon each return to mine own country their old dialect was so altered that i could hardly understand the new. and i observe, when any yahoo comes from london out of curiosity visit me at mine own house, we neither of us are able to deliver our conceptions in a manner intelligible to the other. if the censure of yahoos could any way affect me, i should have great reason to complain that some of them are so bold as to think my book of travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain; and have gone so far as to drop hints, that the houyhnhnms and yahoos have no more existence than the inhabitants of utopia. indeed i must confess, that as to the people of lilliput, brobdingrag (for so the word should have been spelt, and not erroneously brobdingnag), and laputa; i have never yet heard of any yahoo so presumptuous as to dispute their being, or the facts i have related concerning them; because the truth immediately strikes every reader with conviction. and is there less probability in my account of the houyhnhnms or yahoos, when it is manifest as to the latter, there are so many thousands even in this city, who only differ from their brother brutes in houyhnhnmland, because they use a sort of a jabber, and do not go naked? i wrote for their amendment, and not their approbation. the united praise of the whole race would be of less consequence to me than the neighing of those two degenerate houyhnhnms i keep in my stable; because from these, degenerate as they are, i still improve in some virtues, without any mixture of vice. do these miserable animals presume to think that i am so far degenerated as to defend my veracity? yahoo as i am, it is well known through all houyhnhnmland, that by the instructions and example of my illustrious master i was able in the compass of two years (although i confess with the utmost difficulty) to remove that infernal habit of lying, shuffling, deceiving, and equivocating, so deeply rooted in the very souls of all my species, especially the europeans. i have other complaints to make upon this vexatious occasion; but i forbear troubling myself or you any further. i must freely confess, that since my last return, some corruptions of my yahoo nature have revived in me by conversing with a few of your species, and particularly those of mine own family, by an unavoidable necessity; else i should never have attempted so absurd a project as that of reforming the yahoo race in this kingdom; but i have now done with all visionary schemes for ever. april 2, 1727. the publisher to the reader the author of these travels, mr. lemuel gulliver, is my antient and intimate friend; there is likewise some relation between us by the mother's side. about three years ago mr. gulliver, growing weary of the concourse of curious people coming to him at his house in redriff, made a small purchase of land, with a convenient house, near newark in nottinghamshire, his native country; where he now lives retired, yet in good esteem among his neighbors. although mr. gulliver was born in nottinghamshire, where his father dwelt, yet i have heard him say his family came from oxfordshire; to confirm which, i have observed in the church-yard at banbury, in that county, several tombs and monuments of the gullivers. before he quitted redriff, he left the custody of the following papers in my hands, with the liberty to dispose of them as i should think fit. i have carefully perused them three times. the style is very plain and simple; and the only fault i find is, that the author, after the manner of travelers, is a little too circumstantial. there is an air of truth apparent through the whole; and indeed the author was so distinguished for his veracity, that it became a sort of proverb among his neighbors at redriff, when any one affirmed a thing, to say it was as true as if mr. gulliver had spoke it. by the advice of several worthy persons, to whom, with the author's permission, i communicated these papers, i now venture to send them into the world, hoping they may be at least, for some time, a better entertainment to our young noblemen than the common scribbles of politicks and party. this volume would have been at least twice as large, if i had not made bold to strike out innumerable passages relating to the winds and tides, as well as to the variations and bearings in the several voyages; together with the minute descriptions of the management of the ship in storms, in the style of sailors. likewise the account of the longitudes and latitudes; wherein i have reason to apprehend that mr. gulliver may be a little dissatisfied. but i was resolved to fit the work as much as possible to the general capacity of readers. however, if my own ignorance in sea-affairs shall have led me to commit some mistakes, i alone am answerable for them. and if any traveller hath a curiosity to see the whole work at large, as it came from the hand of the author, i shall be ready to gratify him. as for any further particulars relating to the author, the reader will receive satisfaction from the first pages of the book. richard sympson. part i: a voyage to lilliput [plate 1: lilliput] chapter i. the author gives some account of himself and family: his first inducements to travel. he is shipwreck'd, and swims for his life: gets safe on shoar in the country of lilliput: is made a prisoner, and carry'd up the country. my father had a small estate in nottinghamshire; i was the third of five sons. he sent me to emanuel-college in cambridge, at fourteen years old, where i resided three years, and applyed my self close to my studies: but the charge of maintaining me (although i had a very scanty allowance) being too great for a narrow fortune; i was bound apprentice to mr. james bates, an eminent surgeon in london, with whom i continued four years; and my father now and then sending me small sums of money, i laid them out in learning navigation, and other parts of the mathematicks, useful to those who intend to travel, as i always believed it would be some time or other my fortune to do. when i left mr. bates, i went down to my father; where, by the assistance of him and my uncle john, and some other relations, i got forty pounds, and a promise of thirty pounds a year to maintain me at leyden: there i studied physick two years and seven months, knowing it would be useful in long voyages. soon after my return from leyden, i was recommended, by my good master mr. bates, to be surgeon to the swallow, captain abraham pannell commander; with whom i continued three years and a half, making a voyage or two into the levant, and some other parts. when i came back, i resolved to settle in london, to which mr. bates, my master, encouraged me, and by him i was recommended to several patients. i took part of a small house in the old jury; and being advised to alter my condition, i married mrs. mary burton, second daughter to mr. edmund burton, hosier, in newgate-street, with whom i received four hundred pounds for a portion. but, my good master bates dying in two years after, and i having few friends, my business began to fail; for my conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad practice of too many among my brethren. having therefore consulted with my wife, and some of my acquaintance, i determined to go again to sea. i was surgeon successively in two ships, and made several voyages, for six years, to the east and west-indies, by which i got some addition to my fortune. my hours of leisure i spent in reading the best authors, antient and modern, being always provided with a good number of books ; and when i was ashore, in observing the manners and dispositions of the people, well as learning their language, wherein i had a great facility by the strength of my memory. the last of these voyages not proving very fortunate, i grew weary of the sea, and intended to stay at home with my wife and family. i removed from the old jury to fetter-lane, and from thence to wapping hoping to get business among the sailors; but it would not turn to account. after three years expectation that things would mend, i accepted an advantageous offer from captain william prichard, master of the antelope, who was making a voyage to the south-sea. we set sail from bristol may 4th, 1699 and our voyage at first was very prosperous. it would not be proper, for some reasons, to trouble the reader with the particulars of our adventures in those seas: let it suffice to inform him, that in our passage from thence to the east-indies, we were driven by a violent storm to the north-west of van diemen's land. by an observation, we found ourselves in the latitude of 30 degrees 2 minutes south. twelve of our crew were dead by immoderate labour and ill food, the rest were in a very weak condition. on the fifth of november, which was the beginning of summer in those parts, the weather being very hazy, the seamen spied a rock, within half a cable's length of the ship; but the wind was so strong, that we were driven directly upon it, and immediately split. six of the crew, of whom i was one, having let down the boat into the sea, made a shift to get clear of the ship, and the rock. we rowed by my computation about three leagues, till we were able to work no longer, being already spent with labour while we were in the ship. we therefore trusted ourselves to the mercy of the waves, and in about half an hour the boat was overset by a sudden flurry from the north. what became of my companions in the boat, as well as of those who escaped on the rock, or were left in the vessel, i cannot tell; but conclude they were all lost. for my own part, i swam as fortune directed me, and was pushed forward by wind and tide. i often let my legs drop, and could feel no bottom: but when i was almost gone, and able to struggle no longer, i found myself within my depth; and by this time the storm was much abated. the declivity was so small, that i walked near a mile before i got to the shore, which i conjectur'd was about eight a-clock in the evening. i then advanced forward near half a mile, but could not discover any sign of houses or inhabitants; at least i was in so weak a condition, that i did not observe them. i was extremely tired, and with that, and the heat of the weather, and about half a pint of brandy that i drank as i left the ship, i found myself much inclined to sleep. i lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where i slept sounder than ever i remember to have done in my life, and, as i reckoned, above nine hours; for when i awakened, it was just day-light. i attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for as i happen'd to lye on my back, i found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same manner. i likewise felt several slender ligatures across my body, from my armpits to my thighs. i could only look upwards; the sun began to grow hot, and the light offended my eyes. i heard a confused noise about me, but in the posture i lay, could see nothing except the sky. in a little time i felt something alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when bending my eyes downwards as much as i could, i perceived it to be a human creature not six inches high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back. in the meantime, i felt at least forty more of the same kind (as i conjectured) following the first. i was in the utmost astonishment, and roared so loud, that they all ran back in a fright; and some of them, as i was afterwards told, were hurt with the falls they got by leaping from my sides upon the ground. however, they soon returned, and one of them, who ventured so far as to get a full sight of my face, lifting up his hands and eyes by way of admiration, cried out in a shrill but distinct voice, hekinah degul: the others repeated the same words several times, but i then knew not what they meant. i lay all this while, as the reader may believe, in great uneasiness; at length, struggling to get loose, i had the fortune to break the strings, and wrench out the pegs that fastened my left arm to the ground; for, by lifting it up to my face, i discovered the methods they had taken to bind me, and at the same time, with a violent pull, which gave me excessive pain, i a little loosened the strings that tied down my hair on the left side, so that i was just able to turn my head about two inches. but the creatures ran off a second time, before i could seize them; whereupon there was a great shout in a very shrill accent, and after it ceased, i heard one of them cry aloud, tolgo phonac; when in an instant i felt above a hundred arrows discharged on my left hand, which pricked me like so many needles; and besides they shot another flight into the air, as we do bombs in europe, whereof many, i suppose, fell on my body (though i felt them not) and some on my face, which i immediately covered with my left hand. when this shower of arrows was over, i fell a groaning with grief and pain, and then striving again to get loose, they discharged another volly larger than the first, and some of them attempted with spears to stick me in the sides; but, by good luck, i had on me a buff jerkin, which they could not pierce. i thought it the most prudent method to lie still, and my design was to continue so till night, when, my left hand being already loose, i could easily free myself: and as for the inhabitants, i had reason to believe i might be a match for the greatest armies they could bring against me, if they were all of the same size with him that i saw. but fortune disposed otherwise of me. when the people observed i was quiet, they discharged no more arrows: but, by the noise increasing, i knew their numbers were greater; and about four yards from me, over against my right ear, i heard a knocking for above an hour, like people at work; when turning my head that way, as well as the pegs and strings would permit me, i saw a stage erected about a foot and a half from the ground, capable of holding four of the inhabitants, with two or three ladders to mount it: from whence one of them, who seemed to be a person of quality, made me a long speech, whereof i understood not one syllable. but i should have mentioned, that before the principal person began his oration, he cryed out three times, langro dehul san: (these words and the former were afterwards repeated and explained to me). whereupon immediately about fifty of the inhabitants came, and cut the strings that fastened the left side of my head, which gave me the liberty of turning it to the right, and of observing the person and gesture of him that was to speak. he appeared to be of a middle age, and taller than any of the other three who attended him, whereof one was a page that held up his train, and seemed to be somewhat longer than my middle finger; the other two stood one on each side to support him. he acted every part of an orator, and i could observe many periods of threatnings, and others of promises, pity and kindness. i answered in a few words, but in the most submissive manner, lifting up my left hand and both my eyes to the sun, as calling him for a witness; and being almost famished with hunger, having not eaten a morsel for some hours before i left the ship, i found the demands of nature so strong upon me, that i could not forbear showing my impatience (perhaps against the strict rules of decency) by putting my finger frequently on my mouth, to signify that i wanted food. the hurgo (for so they call a great lord, as i afterwards learned) understood me very well: he descended from the stage, and commanded that several ladders should be applied to my sides, on which above a hundred of the inhabitants mounted, and walked towards my mouth, laden with baskets full of meat, which had been provided, and sent thither by the king's orders, upon the first intelligence he received of me. i observed there was the flesh of several animals, but could not distinguish them by the taste. there were shoulders, legs, and loins, shaped like those of mutton, and very well dressed, but smaller than the wings of a lark. i eat them by two or three at a mouthful, and took three loaves at a time, about the bigness of musket bullets. they supplied me as fast as they could, shewing a thousand marks of wonder and astonishment at my bulk and appetite. i then made another sign that i wanted drink. they found by my eating that a small quantity would not suffice me, and being a most ingenious people, they slung up with great dexterity one of their largest hogsheads, then rolled it toward my hand, and beat out the top; i drank it off at a draught, which i might well do, for it hardly held half a pint, and tasted like a small wine of burgundy, but much more delicious. they brought me a second hogshead, which i drank in the same manner, and made signs for more, but they had none to give me. when i had performed these wonders, they shouted for joy, and danced upon my breast, repeating several times as they did at first, hekinah degul. they made me a sign that i should throw down the two hogsheads, but first warning the people below to stand out of the way, crying aloud, borach mivola, and when they saw the vessels in the air, there was a universal shout of hekinah degul. i confess i was often tempted, while they were passing backwards and forwards on my body, to seize forty or fifty of the first that came in my reach, and dash them against the ground. but the remembrance of what i had felt, which probably might not be the worst they could do; and the promise of honour i made them, for so i interpreted my submissive behaviour, soon drove out these imaginations. besides, i now considered myself as bound by the laws of hospitality to a people who had treated me with so much expense and magnificence. however, in my thoughts i could not sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals, who dare venture to mount and walk upon my body, while one of my hands was at liberty, without trembling at the very sight of so prodigious a creature as i must appear to them. after some time, when they observed that i made no more demands for meat, there appeared before me a person of high rank from his imperial majesty. his excellency having mounted on the small of my right leg, advanced forwards up to my face, with about a dozen of his retinue; and producing his credentials under the signet royal, which he applied close to my eyes, spoke about ten minutes, without any signs of anger, but with a kind of determinate resolution; often pointing forwards, which, as i afterwards found, was towards the capital city, about half a mile distant, whither it was agreed by his majesty in council that i must be conveyed. i answered in few words, but to no purpose, and made a sign with my hand that was loose, putting it to the other (but over his excellency's head, for fear of hurting him or his train) and then to my own head and body, to signify that i desired my liberty. it appeared that he understood me well enough, for he shook his head by way of disapprobation , and held his hand in a posture to show that i must be carried as a prisoner. however, he made other signs to let me understand that i should have meat and drink enough, and very good treatment. whereupon i once more thought of attempting to break my bonds, but again, when i felt the smart of their arrows upon my face and hands, which were all in blisters, and many of the darts still sticking in them, and observing likewise that the number of my enemies encreased, i gave tokens to let them know that they might do with me what they pleased. upon this the hurgo and his train withdrew with much civility and chearful countenances. soon after i heard a general shout, with frequent repetitions of the words, peplom selan, and i felt great numbers of the people on my left side relaxing the cords to such a degree, that i was able to turn upon my right, and to ease myself with making water; which i very plentifully did, to the great astonishment of the people, who conjecturing by my motions what i was going to do, immediately opened to the right and left on that side, to avoid the torrent which fell with such noise and violence from me. but before this, they had daubed my face and both my hands with a sort of ointment very pleasant to the smell, which in a few minutes removed all the smart of their arrows. these circumstances, added to the refreshment i had received by their victuals and drink, which were very nourishing , disposed me to sleep. i slept about eight hours, as i was afterwards assured; and it was no wonder, for the physicians, by the emperor's order, had mingled a sleeping potion in the hogsheads of wine. it seems that upon the first moment i was discovered sleeping on the ground after my landing, the emperor had early notice of it by an express, and determined in council that i should be tyed in the manner i have related (which was done in the night while i slept), that plenty of meat and drink should be sent me, and a machine prepared to carry me to the capital city. this resolution perhaps may appear very bold and dangerous, and i am confident would not be imitated by any prince in europe on the like occasion; however, in my opinion, it was extremely prudent, as well as generous. for supposing these people had endeavored to kill me with their spears and arrows while i was asleep, i should certainly have awakened with the first sense of smart, which might so far have roused my rage and strength, as to have enabled me to break the strings wherewith i was tyed; after which, as they were not able to make resistance, so they could expect no mercy. these people are most excellent mathematicians, and arrived to great perfection in mechanicks by the countenance and encouragement of the emperor, who is a renowned patron of learning. this prince has several machines fixed on wheels for the carriage of trees and other great weights. he often builds his largest men of war, whereof some are nine foot long, in the woods where the timber grows, and has them carried on these engines three or four hundred yards to the sea. five hundred carpenters and engineers were immediately set at work to prepare the greatest engine they had. it was a frame of wood raised three inches from the ground, about seven foot long and four wide, moving upon twentytwo wheels. the shout i heard was upon the arrival of this engine, which it seems set out in four hours after my landing. it was brought parallel to me as i lay. but the principal difficulty was to raise and place me in this vehicle. eighty poles, each of one foot high, were erected for this purpose, and very strong cords of the bigness of pack thread were fastened by hooks to many bandages, which the workmen had girt round my neck, my hands, my body, and my legs. nine hundred of the strongest men were employed to draw up these cords by many pulleys fastned on the poles, and thus, in less than three hours, i was raised and slung into the engine, and there tyed fast. all this i was told, for while the whole operation was performing, i lay in a profound sleep, by the force of that soporiferous medicine infused into my liquor. fifteen hundred of the emperor's largest horses, each about four inches and a half high, were employed to draw me towards the metropolis, which, as i said, was half a mile distant. about four hours after we began our journey, i awaked by a very ridiculous accident; for the carriage being stopt a while to adjust something that was out of order, two or three of the young natives had the curiosity to see how i looked when i was asleep; they climbed up into the engine, and advancing very softly to my face, one of them, an officer in the guards, put the sharp end of his half-pike a good way up into my left nostril, which tickled my nose like a straw, and made me sneeze violently: whereupon they stole off unperceived, and it was three weeks before i knew the cause of my awaking so suddenly. we made a long march the remaining part of that day, and rested at night with five hundred guards on each side of me, half with torches, and half with bows and arrows, ready to shoot me if i should offer to stir. the next morning at sunrise we continued our march, and arrived within two hundred yards of the citygates about noon. the emperor, and all his court, came out to meet us; but his great officers would by no means suffer his majesty to endanger his person by mounting on my body. at the place where the carriage stopt, there stood an antient temple, esteemed to be the largest in the whole kingdom, which having been polluted some years before by an unnatural murder, was, according to the zeal of those people, looked on as prophane, and therefore had been applied to common use, and all the ornaments and furniture carried away. in this edifice it was determined i should lodge. the great gate fronting to the north was about four feet high, and almost two feet wide, through which i could easily creep. on each side of the gate was a small window not above six inches from the ground: into that on the left side, the king's smiths conveyed fourscore and eleven chains, like those that hang to a lady's watch in europe, and almost as large, which were locked to my left leg with six and thirty padlocks. over against this temple, on the other side of the great highway, at twenty foot distance, there was a turret at least five foot high. here the emperor ascended with many principal lords of his court, to have an opportunity of viewing me, as i was told, for i could not see them. it was reckoned that above a hundred thousand inhabitants came out of the town upon the same errand; and in spite of my guards, i believe there could not be fewer than ten thousand, at several times, who mounted upon my body by the help of ladders. but a proclamation was soon issued to forbid it upon pain of death. when the workmen found it was impossible for me to break loose, they cut all the strings that bound me; whereupon i rose up with as melancholy a disposition as ever i had in my life. but the noise and astonishment of the people at seeing me rise and walk, are not to be expressed. the chains that held my left leg were about two yards long, and gave me not only the liberty of walking backwards and forwards in a semicircle; but, being fixed within four inches of the gate, allowed me to creep in, and lie at my full length in the temple. chapter ii. the emperor of lilliput, attended by several of the nobility, comes to see the author in his confinement. the emperor's person and habit describ'd. learned men appointed to teach the author their language. he gains favour by his mild disposition. his pockets are searched, and his sword and pistols taken from him. when i found myself on my feet, i looked about me, and must confess i never beheld a more entertaining prospect. the country round appeared like a continued garden, and the inclosed fields, which were generally forty foot square, resembled so many beds of flowers. these fields were intermingled with woods of half a stang, and the tallest trees, as i could judge, appeared to be seven foot high. i viewed the town on my left hand, which looked like the painted scene of a city in a theatre. i had been for some hours extremely pressed by the necessities of nature; which was no wonder, it being almost two days since i had last disburthened myself. i was under great difficulties between urgency and shame. the best expedient i could think on, was to creep into my house, which i accordingly did; and shutting the gate after me, i went as far as the length of my chain would suffer, and discharged my body of that uneasy load. but this was the only time i was ever guilty of so uncleanly an action; for which i cannot but hope the candid reader will give some allowance, after he has maturely and impartially considered my case, and the distress i was in. from this time my constant practice was, as soon as i rose, to perform that business in open air, at the full extent of my chain, and due care was taken every morning before company came, that the offensive matter should be carried off in wheel-barrows, by two servants appointed for that purpose. i would not have dwelt so long upon a circumstance, that perhaps at first sight may appear not very momentous, if i had not thought it necessary to justify my character in point of cleanliness to the world; which i am told some of my maligners have been pleased, upon this and other occasions, to call in question. when this adventure was at an end, i came back out of my house, having occasion for fresh air. the emperor was already descended from the tower, and advancing on horse-back towards me, which had like to have cost him dear; for the beast, though very well trained, yet wholly unused to such a sight, which appeared as if a mountain moved before him, he reared up on his hinder feet: but that prince, who is an excellent horseman, kept his seat, till his attendants ran in, and held the bridle, while his majesty had time to dismount. when he alighted, he surveyed me round with great admiration, but kept without the length of my chain. he ordered his cooks and butlers, who were already prepared, to give me victuals and drink, which they pushed forward in a sort of vehicles upon wheels till i could reach them. i took these vehicles, and soon emptied them all; twenty of them were filled with meat, and ten with liquor; each of the former afforded me two or three good mouthfuls, and i emptied the liquor of ten vessels, which was contained in earthen vials, into one vehicle, drinking it off at a draught; and so i did with the rest. the empress, and young princes of the blood, of both sexes, attended by many ladies, sat at some distance in their chairs; but upon the accident that happened to the emperor's horse, they alighted, and came near his person, which i am now going to describe. he is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders. his features are strong and masculine, with an austrian lip and arched nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his motions graceful, and his deportment majestic. he was then past his prime, being twenty-eight years and three quarters old, of which he had reigned about seven, in great felicity, and generally victorious. for the better convenience of beholding him, i lay on my side, so that my face was parallel to his, and he stood but three yards off: however, i have had him since many times in my hand, and therefore cannot be deceived in the description. his dress was very plain and simple, and the fashion of it between the asiatick and the european; but he had on his head a light helmet of gold, adorned with jewels, and a plume on the crest. he held his sword drawn in his hand, to defend himself, if i should happen to break loose; it was almost three inches long, the hilt and scabbard were gold, enriched with diamonds. his voice was shrill, but very clear and articulate, and i could distinctly hear it when i stood up. the ladies and courtiers were all most magnificently clad, so that the spot they stood upon seemed to resemble a petticoat spread on the ground, embroidered with figures of gold and silver. his imperial majesty spoke often to me, and i returned answers, but neither of us could understand a syllable. there were several of his priests and lawyers present (as i conjectured by their habits) who were commanded to address themselves to me, and i spoke to them in as many languages as i had the least smattering of, which were high and low dutch, latin, french, spanish, italian, and lingua franca ; but all to no purpose. after about two hours the court retired, and i was left with a strong guard, to prevent the impertinence, and probably the malice of the rabble, who were very impatient to croud about me as near as they durst, and some of them had the impudence to shoot their arrows at me as i sate on the ground by the door of my house, whereof one very narrowly missed my left eye. but the colonel ordered six of the ringleaders to be seized, and thought no punishment so proper as to deliver them bound into my hands, which some of his soldiers accordingly did, pushing them forwards with the but-ends of their pikes into my reach; i took them all in my right hand, put five of them into my coat-pocket, and as to the sixth, i made a countenance as if i would eat him alive. the poor man squalled terribly, and the colonel and his officers were in much pain, especially when they saw me take out my penknife: but i soon put them out of fear; for, looking mildly and immediately cutting the strings he was bound with, i set him gently on the ground, and away he ran; i treated the rest in the same manner, taking them one by one out of my pocket, and i observed both the soldiers and people were highly obliged at this mark of my clemency, which was represented very much to my advantage at court. towards night i with some difficulty got into my house, where i lay on the ground, and continued to do so about a fortnight; during which time the emperor gave orders to have a bed prepared for me. six hundred beds of the common measure were brought in carriages, and worked up in my house; a hundred and fifty of their beds sewn together made up the breadth and length, and these were four double, which however kept me but very indifferently from the hardness of the floor, that was of smooth stone. by the same computation they provided me with sheets, blankets, and coverlets, tolerable enough for one who had been so long enured to hardships as i. as the news of my arrival spread through the kingdom, it brought prodigious numbers of rich, idle, and curious people to see me; so that the villages were almost emptied, and great neglect of tillage and household affairs must have ensued, if his imperial majesty had not provided, by several proclamations and orders of state, against this inconveniency. he directed that those who had already beheld me should return home, and not presume to come within fifty yards of my house without licence from court; whereby the secretarys of state got considerable fees. in the mean time, the emperor held frequent councils to debate what course should be taken with me; and i was afterwards assured by a particular friend, a person of great quality, who was looked upon to be as much in the secret as any, that the court was under many difficulties concerning me. they apprehended my breaking loose, that my diet would be very expensive, and might cause a famine. sometimes they determined to starve me, or at least to shoot me in the face and hands with poisoned arrows, which would soon dispatch me: but again they considered, that the stench of so large a carcass might produce a plague in the metropolis, and probably spread through the whole kingdom. in the midst of these consultations, several officers of the army went to the door of the great council chamber; and two of them being admitted, gave an account of my behavior to the six criminals above-mentioned, which made so favorable an impression in the breast of his majesty and the whole board in my behalf, that an imperial commission was issued out, obliging all the villages nine hundred yards round the city, to deliver in every morning six beeves, forty sheep, and other victuals for my sustenance; together with a proportionable quantity of bread, and wine, and other liquors: for the due payment of which, his majesty gave assignments upon his treasury. for this prince lives chiefly upon his own demesnes, seldom, except upon great occasions, raising any subsidies upon his subjects, who are bound to attend him in his wars at their own expense. an establishment was also made of six hundred persons to be my domesticks, who had board-wages allowed for their maintenance, and tents built for them very conveniently on each side of my door. it was likewise ordered, that three hundred taylors should make me a suit of cloaths after the fashion of the country: that six of his majesty's greatest scholars should be employ'd to instruct me in their language: and, lastly, that the emperor's horses, and those of the nobility, and troops of guards, should be frequently exercised in my sight, to accustom themselves to me. all these orders were duly put in execution, and in about three weeks i made a great progress in learning their language; during which time, the emperor frequently honored me with his visits, and was pleased to assist my masters in teaching me. we began already to converse together in some sort; and the first words i learnt were to express my desire that he would please give me my liberty, which i every day repeated on my knees. his answer, as i could apprehend it, was, that this must be a work of time, not to be thought on without the advice of council, and that first i must lumos kelmin pesso desmar lon emposo; that is, swear a peace with him and his kingdom. however, that i should be used with all kindness; and he advised me to acquire, by my patience and discreet behaviour, the good opinion of himself and his subjects. he desired i would not take it ill, if he gave orders to certain proper officers to search me; for probably i might carry about me several weapons, which must needs be dangerous things, if they answered the bulk of so prodigious a person. i said, his majesty should be satisfied, for i was ready to strip myself, and turn out my pockets before him. this i delivered part in words, and part in signs. he replied, that by the laws of the kingdom i must be searched by two of his officers; that he knew this could not be done without my consent and assistance; that he had so good an opinion of my generosity and justice, as to trust their persons in my hands: that whatever they took from me should be returned when i left the country, or paid for at the rate which i would set upon them. i took up the two officers in my hands, put them first into my coat-pockets, and then into every other pocket about me, except my two fobs, and another secret pocket i had no mind should be searched, wherein i had some little necessaries that were of no consequence to any but myself. in one of my fobs there was a silver watch, and in the other a small quantity of gold in a purse. these gentlemen, having pen ink, and paper about them, made an exact inventory of everything they saw; and when they had done, desired i would set them down, that they might deliver it to the emperor. this inventory i afterwards translated into english, and is word for word as follows. imprimis, in the right coat pocket of the great man mountain (for so i interpret the words quinbus flestrin) after the strictest search, we found only one great piece of coarse cloath, large enough to be a foot-cloth for your majesty's chief room of state. in the left pocket we saw a huge silver chest, with a cover of the same metal, which we the searchers were not able to lift. we desired it should be opened, and one of us stepping into it, found himself up to the mid leg in a sort of dust, some part whereof flying up to our faces, set us both sneezing for several times together. in his right waistcoat-pocket we found a prodigious bundle of white thin substances, folded one over another, about the bigness of three men, tied with a strong cable, and marked with black figures; which we humbly conceive to be writings, every letter almost half as large as the palm of our hands. in the left there was a sort of engine, from the back of which were extended twenty long poles, resembling the palisades before your majesty's court; wherewith we conjecture the man mountain combs his head, for we did not always trouble him with questions, because we found it a great difficulty to make him understand us. in the large pocket on the right side of his middle cover (so i translate the word ranfu-lo, by which they meant my breeches) we saw a hollow pillar of iron, about the length of a man, fastened to a strong piece of timber, larger than the pillar; and upon one side of the pillar were huge pieces of iron sticking out, cut into strange figures, which we know not what to make of. in the left pocket, another engine of the same kind. in the smaller pocket on the right side, were several round flat pieces of white and red metal, of different bulk; some of the white, which seemed to be silver, were so large and heavy, that my comrade and i could hardly lift them. in the left pocket were two black pillars irregularly shaped: we could not, without difficulty, reach the top of them as we stood at the bottom of his pocket. one of them was covered, and seemed all of a piece: but at the upper end of the other, there appeared a white round substance, about twice the bigness of our heads. within each of these was inclosed a prodigious plate of steel; which, by our orders, we obliged him to shew us, because we apprehended they might be dangerous engines. he took them out of their cases, and told us, that in his own country his practice was to shave his beard with one of these, and to cut his meat with the other. there were two pockets which we could not enter: these he called his fobs; they were two large slits cut into the top of his middle cover, but squeez'd close by the pressure of his belly. out of the right fob hung a great silver chain, with a wonderful kind of engine at the bottom. we directed him to draw out whatever was fastened to that chain; which appeared to be a globe, half silver, and half of some transparent metal: for on the transparent side we saw certain strange figures circularly drawn, and thought we could touch them, till we found our fingers stopped by that lucid substance. he put this engine to our ears, which made an incessant noise like that of a water-mill. and we conjecture it is either some unknown animal, or the god that he worships: but we are more inclined to the latter opinion, because he assured us (if we understood him right, for he expressed himself very imperfectly) that he seldom did anything without consulting it: he called it his oracle, and said it pointed out the time for every action of his life. from the left fob he took out a net almost large enough for a fisherman, but contrived to open and shut like a purse, and serve him for the same use: we found therein several massy pieces of yellow metal, which, if they be real gold, must be of immense value. having thus, in obedience to your majesty's commands, diligently searched all his pockets, we observed a girdle about his waist made of the hide of some prodigious animal; from which, on the left side, hung a sword of the length of five men; and on the right, a bag or pouch divided into two cells, each cell capable of holding three of your majesty's subjects. in one of these cells were several globes or balls of a most ponderous metal, about the bigness of our heads, and requiring a strong hand to lift them: the other cell contained a heap of certain black grains, but of no great bulk or weight, for we could hold above fifty of them in the palms of our hands. this is an exact inventory of what we found about the body of the man-mountain, who used us with great civility, and due respect to your majesty's commission. signed and sealed on the fourth day of the eighty ninth moon of your majesty's auspicious reign. clefren frelock, marsi frelock. when this inventory was read over to the emperor, he directed me, although in very gentle terms, to deliver up the several particulars. he first called for my scymiter, which i took out, scabbard and all. in the meantime he ordered three thousand of his choicest troops (who then attended him) to surround me at a distance, with their bows and arrows just ready to discharge: but i did not observe it, for mine eyes were wholly fixed upon his majesty. he then desired me to draw my scymiter, which, although it had got some rust by the sea-water, was in most parts exceeding bright. i did so, and immediately all the troops gave a shout between terror and surprise; for the sun shone clear, and the reflection dazzled their eyes as i waved the scymiter to and fro in my hand. his majesty, who is a most magnanimous prince, was less danted than i could expect; he ordered me to return it into the scabbard, and cast it on the ground as gently as i could, about six foot from the end of my chain. the next thing he demanded was one of the hollow iron pillars, by which he meant my pocket-pistols. i drew it out, and at his desire, as well as i could, expressed to him the use of it; and charging it only with powder, which by the closeness of my pouch happened to escape wetting in the sea (an inconvenience against which all prudent mariners take special care to provide) i first cautioned the emperor not to be afraid, and then i let it off in the air. the astonishment here was much greater than at the sight of my scymiter. hundreds fell down as if they had been struck dead; and even the emperor, although he stood his ground, could not recover himself in some time. i delivered up both my pistols in the same manner as i had done my scymiter, and then my pouch of powder and bullets; begging him that the former might be kept from the fire, for it would kindle with the smallest spark, and blow up his imperial palace into the air. i likewise delivered up my watch, which the emperor was very curious to see, and commanded two of his tallest yeomen of the guards to bear it on a pole upon their shoulders, as draymen in england do a barrel of ale. he was amazed at the continual noise it made, and the motion of the minute-hand, which he could easily discern; for their sight is much more acute than ours; and asked the opinions of his learned men about him, which were various and remote, as the reader may well imagine without my repeating; although indeed i could not very perfectly understand them. i then gave up my silver and copper money, my purse with nine large pieces of gold, and some smaller ones; my knife and razor, my comb and silver snuffbox, my handkerchief and journal book. my scymiter, pistols, and pouch, were conveyed in carriages to his majesty's stores; but the rest of my goods were returned me. i had, as i before observed, one private pocket which escaped their search, wherein there was a pair of spectacles (which i sometimes use for the weakness of mine eyes), a pocket perspective, and several other little conveniences; which, being of no consequence to the emperor, i did not think myself bound in honour to discover, and i apprehended they might be lost or spoiled if i ventured them out of my possession. chapter iii. the author diverts the emperor and his nobility of both sexes in a very uncommon manner. the diversions of the court of lilliput described. the author has his liberty granted him upon certain conditions. my gentleness and good behaviour had gained so far on the emperor and his court, and indeed upon the army and people in general, that i began to conceive hopes of getting my liberty in a short time. i took all possible methods to cultivate this favorable disposition. the natives came by degrees to be less apprehensive of any danger from me. i would sometimes lie down, and let five or six of them dance on my hand. and last the boys and girls would venture to come and play at hide and seek in my hair. i had now made good progress in understanding and speaking their language. the emperor had a mind one day to entertain me with several of the country shows, wherein they exceeded all nations i have known, both for dexterity and magnificence. i was diverted with none so much as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon a slender white thread, extended about two foot and twelve inches from the ground. upon which i shall desire liberty, with the reader's patience, to enlarge a little. this diversion is only practiced by those persons who are candidates for great employments, and high favour, at court. they are trained in this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth, or liberal education. when a great office is vacant either by death or disgrace (which often happens) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope, and whoever jumps the highest without falling, succeeds in the office. very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty. flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the strait rope, at least an inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire. i have seen him do the summerset several times together upon a trencher fixed on the rope, which is no thicker than a common packthread in england. my friend reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if i am not partial, the second after the treasurer; the rest of the great officers are much upon a par. these diversions are often attended with fatal accidents, whereof great numbers are on record. i my self have seen two or three candidates break a limb. but the danger is much greater when the ministers themselves are commanded to shew their dexterity; for by contending to excel themselves and their fellows, they strain so far, that there is hardly one of them who has not received a fall, and some of them two or three. i was assured that a year or two before my arrival, flimnap would have infallibly broken his neck, if one of the king's cushions, that accidentally lay on the ground, had not weakened the force of his fall. there is likewise another diversion, which is only shewn before the emperor and empress, and first minister, upon particular occasions. the emperor lays on the table three fine silken threads of six inches long. one is blue, the other red, and the third green. these threads are proposed as prizes for those persons whom the emperor has a mind to distinguish by a peculiar mark of his favor. the ceremony is performed in his majesty's great chamber of state, where the candidates are to undergo a tryal of dexterity very different from the former, and such as i have not observed the least resemblance of in any other country of the old or the new world. the emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates, advancing one by one, sometimes leap over the stick, sometimes creep under it backwards and forwards several times, according as the stick is advanced or depressed. sometimes the emperor holds one end of the stick, and his first minister the other; sometimes the minister has it entirely to himself. whoever performs his part with most agility, and holds out the longest in leaping and creeping, is rewarded with the blue-colored silk; the red is given to the next, and the green to the third, which they all wear girt twice round about the middle; and you see few great persons about this court who are not adorned with one of these girdles. the horses of the army, and those of the royal stables, having been daily led before me, were no longer shy, but would come up to my very feet without starting. the riders would leap them over my hand as i held it on the ground, and one of the emperor's huntsmen, upon a large courser, took my foot, shoe and all; which was indeed a prodigious leap. i had the good fortune to divert the emperor one day after a very extraordinary manner. i desired he would order several sticks of two foot high, and the thickness of an ordinary cane, to be brought me; whereupon his majesty commanded the master of his woods to give directions accordingly; and the next morning six wood-men arrived with as many carriages, drawn by eight horses to each. i took nine of these sticks, and fixing them firmly in the ground in a quadrangular figure, two foot and a half square, i took four other sticks, and tied them parallel at each corner, about two feet from the ground; then i fastened my handkerchief to the nine sticks that stood erect, and extended it on all sides till it was as tight as the top of a drum; and the four parallel sticks rising about five inches higher than the handkerchief served as ledges on each side. when i had finished my work, i desired the emperor to let a troop of his best horse, twenty four in number, come and exercise upon this plain. his majesty approved of the proposal, and i took them up one by one in my hands, ready mounted and armed, with the proper officers to exercise them. as soon as they got into order, they divided into two parties, performed mock skirmishes, discharged blunt arrows, drew their swords, fled and pursued, attacked and retired, and in short discovered the best military discipline i ever beheld. the parallel sticks secured them and their horses from falling over the stage; and the emperor was so much delighted, that he ordered this entertainment to be repeated several days, and once was pleased to be lifted up and give the word of command; and, with great difficulty, persuaded even the empress herself to let me hold her in her close chair within two yards of the stage, from whence she was able to take a full view of the whole performance. it was my good fortune that no ill accident happened in these entertainments, only once a fiery horse that belonged to one of the captains pawing with his hoof struck a hole in my handkerchief, and his foot slipping, he overthrew his rider and himself; but i immediately relieved them both, and covering the hole with one hand, i set down the troop with the other, in the same manner as i took them up. the horse that fell was strained in the left shoulder, but the rider got no hurt, and i repaired my handkerchief as well as i could: however i would not trust to the strength of it any more in such dangerous enterprizes. about two or three days before i was set at liberty, as i was entertaining the court with these kind of feats, there arrived an express to inform his majesty that some of his subjects riding near the place where i was first taken up, had seen a great black substance lying on the ground, very oddly shaped, extending its edges round as wide as his majesty's bedchamber, and rising up in the middle as high as a man; that it was no living creature, as they at first apprehended, for it lay on the grass without motion, and some of them had walked round it several tunes: that by mounting upon each other's shoulders, they had got to the top, which was flat and even, and stamping upon it they found it was hollow within; that they humbly conceived it might be something belonging to the man-mountain, and if his majesty pleased, they would undertake to bring it with only five horses. i presently knew what they meant, and was glad at heart to receive this intelligence. it seems upon my first reaching the shore after our shipwreck, i was in such confusion, that before i came to the place where i went to sleep, my hat, which i had fastned with a string to my head while i was rowing, and had stuck on all the time i was swimming, fell off after i came to land; the string, as i conjecture, breaking by some accident which i never observed, but thought my hat had been lost at sea. i entreated his imperial majesty to give orders it might be brought to me as soon as possible, describing to him the use and the nature of it: and the next day the waggoners arrived with it, but not in a very good condition; they had bored two holes in the brim, within an inch and a half of the edge, and fastened two hooks in the holes; these hooks were tyed by a long cord to the harness, and thus my hat was dragged along for above half an english mile: but the ground in that country being extremely smooth and level, it receiv'd less damage than i expected. two days after this adventure, the emperor having ordered that part of his army which quarters in and about his metropolis to be in a readiness, took a fancy of diverting himself in a very singular manner. he desired i would stand like a colossus, with my legs as far asunder as i conveniently could. he then commanded his general (who was an old experienced leader, and a great patron of mine) to draw up the troops in close order, and march them under me, the foot by twenty-four in a breast, and the horse by sixteen, with drums beating, colours flying, and pikes advanced. this body consisted of three thousand foot, and a thousand horse. his majesty gave orders, upon pain of death, that every soldier in his march should observe the strictest decency with regard to my person; which, however, could not prevent some of the younger officers from turning up their eyes as they passed under me. and, to confess the truth, my breeches were at that time in so ill a condition, that they afforded some opportunities for laughter and admiration. i had sent so many memorials and petitions for my liberty, that his majesty at length mentioned the matter, first in the cabinet, and then in a full council ; where it was opposed by none, except skyresh bolgolam, who was pleased, without any provocation, to be my mortal enemy. but it was carried against him by the whole board, and confirmed by the emperor. that minister was galbet, or admiral of the realm, very much in his master's confidence, and a person well versed in affairs, but of a morose and sour complection. however, he was at length persuaded to comply; but prevailed that the articles and conditions upon which i should be set free, and to which i must swear, should be drawn up by himself. these articles were brought to me by skyresh bolgolam in person, attended by two under-secretarys, and several persons of distinction. after they were read, i was demanded to swear to the performance of them; first in the manner of my own country, and afterwards in the method prescribed by their laws; which was to hold my right foot in my left hand, to place the middle finger of my right hand on the crown of my head, and my thumb on the tip of my right ear. but because the reader may perhaps be curious to have some idea of the style and manner of expression peculiar to that people, as well as to know the articles upon which i recovered my liberty, i have made a translation of the whole instrument word for word, as near as i was able, which i here offer to the publick. golbasto momaren evlame gurdilo shefin mully ully gue, most mighty emperor of lilliput, delight and terror of the universe, whose dominions extend five thousand blustrugs (about twelve miles in circumference) to the extremitys of the globe; monarch of all monarchs, taller than the sons of men; whose feet press down to the center, and whose head strikes against the sun: at whose nod the princes of the earth shake their knees; pleasant as the spring, comfortable as the summer, fruitful as autumn, dreadful as winter. his most sublime majesty proposeth to the man-mountain, lately arrived to our celestial dominions, the following articles, which by a solemn oath he shall be obliged to perform. first, the man-mountain shall not depart from our dominions, without our license under our great seal. 2nd, he shall not presume to come into our metropolis, without our express order; at which time the inhabitants shall have two hours warning to keep within their doors. 3rd, the said man-mountain shall confine his walks to our principal high roads, and not offer to walk or lie down in a meadow or field of corn. 4th, as he walks the said roads, he shall take the utmost care not to trample upon the bodies of any of our loving subjects, their horses, or carriages, nor take any of our said subjects into his hands, without their own consent. 5th, if an express requires extraordinary dispatch, the man-mountain shall be obliged to carry in his pocket the messenger and horse a six days journey once in every moon, and return the said messenger back (if so required) safe to our imperial presence. 6th, he shall be our ally against our enemies in the island of blefuscu, and do his utmost to destroy their fleet, which is now preparing to invade us. 7th, that the said man-mountain shall, at his times of leisure, be aiding and assisting to our workmen, in helping to raise certain great stones, towards covering the wall of the principal park, and other of our royal buildings. 8th, that the said man-mountain shall, in two moons time, deliver in an exact survey of the circumference of our dominions by a computation of his own paces round the coast. lastly, that upon his solemn oath to observe all the above articles, the said man-mountain shall have a daily allowance of meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1728 of our subjects, with free access to our royal person, and other marks of our favour. given at our palace at belfaborac the twelfth day of the ninety-first moon of our reign. i swore and subscribed to these articles with great chearfulness and content, although some of them were not so honorable as i could have wished; which proceeded wholly from the malice of skyresh bolgolam the high admiral: whereupon my chains were immediately unlocked, and i was at full liberty; the emperor himself in person did me the honour to be by at the whole ceremony. i made my acknowledgments by prostrating myself at his majesty's feet: but he commanded me to rise; and after many gracious expressions, which, to avoid the censure of vanity, i shall not repeat, he added, that he hoped i should prove a useful servant, and well deserve all the favours he had already conferred upon me, or might do for the future. the reader may please to observe, that in the last article for the recovery of my liberty the emperor stipulates to allow me a quantity of meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1728 lilliputians. some time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that determinate number; he told me that his majesty's mathematicians, having taken the height of my body by the help of a quadrant, and finding it to exceed theirs in the proportion of twelve to one, they concluded from the similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1728 of theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was necessary to support that number of lilliputians. by which the reader may conceive an idea of the ingenuity of that people, as well as the prudent and exact oeconomy of so great a prince. chapter iv. milendo, the metropolis of lilliput, described, together with the emperor's palace. a conversation between the author and a principal secretary, concerning the affairs of that empire: the author offers to serve the emperor in his wars. the first request i made after i had obtained my liberty, was, that i might have license to see mildendo, the metropolis, which the emperor easily granted me, but with a special charge to do no hurt either to the inhabitants or their houses. the people had notice by proclamation of my design to visit the town. the wall which encompassed it is two foot and a half high, and at least eleven inches broad, so that a coach and horses may be driven very safely round it; and it is flanked with strong towers at ten foot distance. i stept over the great western gate, and passed very gently, and sideling through the two principal streets, only in my short waistcoat, for fear of damaging the roofs and eaves of the houses with the skirts of my coat. i walked with the utmost circumspection, to avoid treading on any stragglers, that might remain in the streets, although the orders were very strict, that all people should keep in their houses at their own peril. the garret-windows and tops of houses were so crowded with spectators, that i thought in all my travels i had not seen a more populous place. the city is an exact square, each side of the wall being five hundred foot long. the two great streets, which run cross and divide it into four quarters, are five foot wide. the lanes and alleys, which i could not enter, but only viewed them as i passed, are from twelve to eighteen inches. the town is capable of holding five hundred thousand souls. the houses are from three to five stories. the shops and markets well provided. the emperor's palace is in the center of the city, where the two great streets meet. it is enclosed by a wall of two foot high, and twenty foot distant from the buildings. i had his majesty's permission to step over this wall; and the space being so wide between that and the palace, i could easily view it on every side. the outward court is a square of forty foot, and includes two other courts: in the inmost are the royal apartments, which i was very desirous to see, but found it extremely difficult; for the great gates, from one square into another, were but eighteen inches high and seven inches wide. now the buildings of the outer court were at least five foot high, and it was impossible for me to stride over them without infinite damage to the pile, though the walls were strongly built of hewn stone, and four inches thick. at the same time the emperor had a great desire that i should see the magnificence of his palace; but this i was not able to do till three days after, which i spent in cutting down with my knife some of the largest trees in the royal park, about an hundred yards distant from the city. of these trees i made two stools, each about three foot high, and strong enough to bear my weight. the people having received notice a second time, i went again through the city to the palace, with my two stools in my hands. when i came to the side of the outer court, i stood upon one stool, and took the other in my hand: this i lifted over the roof, and gently set it down on the space between the first and second court, which was eight foot wide. i then stept over the buildings very conveniently from one stool to the other, and drew up the first after me with a hooked stick. by this contrivance i got into the inmost court; and lying down upon my side, i applied my face to the windows of the middle stories, which were left open on purpose, and discovered the most splendid apartments that can be imagined. there i saw the empress and the young princes, in their several lodgings, with their chief attendants about them. her imperial majesty was pleased to smile very graciously upon me, and gave me out of the window her hand to kiss. but i shall not anticipate the reader with farther descriptions of this kind, because i reserve them for a greater work, which is now almost ready for the press, containing a general description of this empire, from its first erection, through a long series of princes, with a particular account of their wars and politicks, laws, learning, and religion: their plants and animals, their peculiar manners and customs, with other matters very curious and useful; my chief design at present being only to relate such events and transactions as happened to the publick, or to myself, during a residence of about nine months in that empire. one morning, about a fortnight after i had obtained my liberty, reldresal, principal secretary (as they style him) of private affairs, came to my house, attended only by one servant. he ordered his coach to wait at a distance, and desired i would give him an hour's audience; which i readily consented to, on account of his quality, and personal merits, as well as the many good offices he had done me during my sollicitations at court. i offered to lie down, that he might the more conveniently reach my ear; but he chose rather to let me hold him in my hand during our conversation. he began with compliments on my liberty; said he might pretend to some merit in it: but, however, added, that if it had not been for the present situation of things at court, perhaps i might not have obtained it so soon. for, said he, as flourishing a condition as we may appear to be in to foreigners, we labor under two mighty evils; a violent faction at home, and the danger of an invasion by a most potent enemy from abroad. as to the first, you are to understand, that for above seventy moons past there have been two struggling parties in this empire, under the names of tramecksan and slamecksan, from the high and low heels on their shoes, by which they distinguish themselves. it is alleged indeed, that the high heels are most agreeable to our ancient constitution: but however this be, his majesty has determined to make use of only low heels in the administration of the government, and all offices in the gift of the crown, as you cannot but observe; and particularly, that his majesty's imperial heels are lower at least by a drurr than any of his court; (drurr is a measure about the fourteenth part of an inch). the animositys between these two partiy run so high, that they will neither eat nor drink, nor talk with each other. we compute the tramecksan, or high-heels, to exceed us in number; but the power is wholly on our side. we apprehend his imperial highness, the heir to the crown, to have some tendency towards the high-heels; at least we can plainly discover one of his heels higher than the other, which gives him a hobble in his gait. now, in the midst of these intestine disquiets, we are threatened with an invasion from the island of blefuscu, which is the other great empire of the universe, almost as large and powerful as this of his majesty. for as to what we have heard you affirm, that there are other kingdoms and states in the world inhabited by human creatures as large as yourself, our philosophers are in much doubt, and would rather conjecture that you dropt from the moon, or one of the stars; because it is certain, that a hundred mortals of your bulk would, in a short time, destroy all the fruits and cattle of his majesty's dominions. besides, our historys of six thousand moons make no mention of any other regions, than the two great empires of lilliput and blefuscu. which two mighty powers have, as i was going to tell you, been engaged in a most obstinate war for six and thirty moons past. it began upon the following occasion. it is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs, before we eat them, was upon the larger end: but his present majesty's grand-father, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. whereupon the emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penaltys, to break the smaller end of their eggs. the people so highly resented this law, that our historys tell us there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one emperor lost his life, and another his crown. these civil commotions were constantly fomented by the monarchs of blefuscu; and when they were quelled, the exiles always fled for refuge to that empire. it is computed, that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end. many hundred large volumes have been published upon this controversy: but the books of the big-endians have been long forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding employments. during the course of these troubles, the emperors of blefuscu did frequently expostulate by their ambassadors, accusing us of making a schism in religion, by offending against a fundamental doctrine of our great prophet lustrog, in the fifty-fourth chapter of the blundecral (which is their alcoran.) this, however, is thought to be a meer strain upon the text: for the words are these: that all true believers shall break their eggs at the convenient end: and which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion, to be left to every man's conscience, or at least in the power of the chief magistrate to determine. now the big-endian exiles have found so much credit in the emperor of blefuscu's court, and so much private assistance and encouragement from their party here at home, that a bloody war has been carried on between the two empires for six and thirty moons with various success; during which time we have lost forty capital ships, and a much greater number of smaller vessels, together with thirty thousand of our best seamen and soldiers; and the damage received by the enemy is reckon'd to be somewhat greater than ours. however, they have now equipped a numerous fleet, and are just preparing to make a descent upon us; and his imperial majesty, placing great confidence in your valor and strength, has commanded me to lay this account of his affairs before you. i desired the secretary to present my humble duty to the emperor, and to let him know, that i thought it would not become me, who was a foreigner, to interfere with parties; but i was ready, with the hazard of my life, to defend his person and state against all invaders. chapter v. the author by an extraordinary stratagem prevents an invasion. a high title of honour is conferred upon him. embassadors arrive from the emperor of blefuscu, and sue for peace. the empress's apartment on fire by an accident; he author instrumental i saving the rest of the palace. the empire of blefuscu is an island situated to the north north-east side of lilliput, from whence it is parted only by a channel of eight hundred yards wide. i had not yet seen it, and upon this notice of an intended invasion, i avoided appearing on that side of the coast, for fear of being discovered by some of the enemy's ships, who had received no intelligence of me, all intercourse between the two empires having been strictly forbidden during the war, upon pain of death, and an embargo laid by our emperor upon all vessels whatsoever. i communicated to his majesty a project i had formed of seizing the enemy's whole fleet: which, as our scouts assured us, lay at anchor in the harbour ready to sail with the first fair wind. i consulted the most experienced seamen, upon the depth of the channel, which they had often plummed, who told me, that in the middle at high-water it was seventy glumgluffs deep, which is about six foot of european measure; and the rest of it fifty glumgluffs at most. i walked towards the north-east coast over against blefuscu; and lying down behind a hillock, took out my small pocket perspective-glass, and viewed the enemy's fleet at anchor, consisting of about fifty men of war, and a great number of transports; i then came back to my house, and gave order (for which i had a warrant) for a great quantity of the strongest cable and bars of iron. the cable was about as thick as packthread, and the bars of the length and size of a knitting-needle. i trebled the cable to make it stronger, and for the same reason i twisted three of the iron bars together, binding the extremitys into a hook. having thus fixed fifty hooks to as many cables, i went back to the northeast coast, and putting off my coat, shoes, and stockings, walked into the sea in my leathern jerkin, about half an hour before high water. i waded with what haste i could, and swam in the middle about thirty yards till i felt ground; i arrived at the fleet in less than half an hour. the enemy was so frighted when they saw me, that they leaped out of their ships, and swam to shore, where there could not be fewer than thirty thousand souls. i then took my tackling, and fastning a hook to a hole at the prow of each, i tyed all the cords together at the end. while i was thus employed, the enemy discharged several thousand arrows, many of which stuck in my hands and face; and besides the excessive smart, gave me much disturbance in my work. my greatest apprehension was for mine eyes, which i should have infallibly lost, if i had not suddenly thought of an expedient. i kept among other little necessarys a pair of spectacles in a private pocket, which, as i observed before, had scaped the emperor's searchers. these i took out and fastned as strongly as i could upon my nose, and thus armed went on boldly with my work, in spight of the enemy's arrows, many of which struck against the glasses of my spectacles, but without any other effect, further than a little to discompose them. i now fastned all the hooks, and taking the knot in my hand, began to pull; but not a ship would stir, for they were all too fast held by their anchors, so that the bold part of my enterprise remained. i therefore let go the cord, and leaving the hooks fixed to the ships, i resolutely cut with my knife the cables that fastned the anchors, receiving above two hundred shots in my face and hands; then i took up the knotted end of the cables to which my hooks were tyed, and with great ease drew fifty of the enemy's men-of-war after me. the blefuscudians, who had not the least imagination of what i intended, were at first confounded with astonishment. they had seen me cut the cables, and thought my design was only to let the ships run a-drift or fall foul on each other: but when they perceived the whole fleet moving in order, and saw me pulling at the end, they set up such a scream of grief and despair, that it is almost impossible to describe or conceive. when i had got out of danger, i stopt a while to pick out the arrows that stuck in my hands and face, and rubbed on some of the same ointment that was given me at my first arrival, as i have formerly mentioned. i then took off my spectacles, and waiting about an hour, till the tide was a little fallen, i waded through the middle with my cargo, and arrived safe at the royal port of lilliput the emperor and his whole court stood on the shore expecting the issue of this great adventure. they saw the ships move forward in a large halfmoon, but could not discern me, who was up to my breast in water. when i advanced to the middle of the channel, they were yet in more pain, because i was under water to my neck. the emperor concluded me to be drowned, and that the enemy's fleet was approaching in a hostile manner: but he was soon eased of his fears, for the channel growing shallower every step i made, i came in a short time within hearing, and holding up the end of the cable by which the fleet was fastned, i cryed in a loud voice, long live the most puissant emperor of lilliput! this great prince received me at my landing with all possible encomiums, and created me a nardac upon the spot, which is the highest title of honour among them. his majesty desired i would take some other opportunity of bringing all the rest of his enemy's ships into his ports. and so unmeasurable is the ambition of princes, that he seemed to think of nothing less than reducing the whole empire of blefuscu into a province, and governing it by a viceroy; of destroying the big-endian exiles, and compelling that people to break the smaller end of their eggs, by which he would remain the sole monarch of the whole world. but i endeavor'd to divert him from this design, by many arguments drawn from the topicks of policy as well as justice: and i plainly protested, that i would never be an instrument of bringing a free and brave people into slavery. and when the matter was debated in council , the wisest part of the ministry were of my opinion. this open bold declaration of mine was so opposite to the schemes and politicks of his imperial majesty, that he could never forgive it; he mentioned it in a very artful manner at council, where i was told that some of the wisest appeared, at least by their silence, to be of my opinion; but others, who were my secret enemies, could not forbear some expressions, which by a side-wind reflected on me. and from this time began an intrigue between his majesty and a junto of ministers maliciously bent against me, which broke out in less than two months, and had like to have ended in my utter destruction. of so little weight are the greatest services to princes, when put into the ballance with a refusal to gratify their passions. about three weeks after this exploit, there arrived a solemn embassy from blefuscu, with humble offers of a peace; which was soon concluded upon conditions very advantageous to our emperor, wherewith i shall not trouble the reader. there were six ambassadors, with a train of about five hundred persons, and their entry was very magnificent, suitable to the grandeur of their master, and the importance of their business. when their treaty was finished, wherein i did them several good offices by the credit i now had, or at least appeared to have at court, their excellencies, who were privately told how much i had been their friend, made me a visit in form. they began with many compliments upon my valor and generosity, invited me to that kingdom in the emperor their master's name, and desired me to show them some proofs of my prodigious strength, of which they had heard so many wonders; wherein i readily obliged them, but shall not trouble the reader with the particulars. when i had for some time entertained their excellencies, to their infinite satisfaction and surprize, i desired they would do me the honour to present my most humble respects to the emperor their master, the renown of whose virtues had so justly filled the whole world with admiration, and whose royal person i resolved to attend before i returned to my own country: accordingly, the next time i had the honour to see our emperor, i desired his general licence to wait on the blefuscudian monarch, which he was pleas'd to grant me, as i could plainly perceive, in a very cold manner; but could not guess the reason, till i had a whisper from a certain person, that flimnap and bolgolam had represented my intercourse with those ambassadors as a mark of disaffection, from which i am sure my heart was wholly free. and this was the first time i began to conceive some imperfect idea of courts and ministers. it is to be observed, that these ambassadors spoke to me by an interpreter, the languages of both empires differing as much from each other as any two in europe, and each nation priding itself upon the antiquity, beauty, and energy of their own tongues, with an avowed contempt for that of their neighbour; yet our emperor, standing upon the advantage he had got by the seizure of their fleet, obliged them to deliver their credentials, and make their speech in the lilliputian tongue. and it must be confessed, that from the great intercourse of trade and commerce between both realms, from the continual reception of exiles, which is mutual among them, and from the custom in each empire to send their young nobility and richer gentry to the other, in order to polish themselves by seeing the world and understanding men and manners; there are few persons of distinction, or merchants, or seamen, who dwell in the maritime parts, but what can hold conversation both tongues; as i found some weeks after, when i went to pay my respects to the emperor of blefuscu, which in the midst of great misfortunes, through the malice of my enemies, proved a very happy adventure to me, as i shall relate in its proper place. the reader may remember, that when i signed those articles upon which i recovered my liberty, there were some which i disliked upon account of their being too servile, neither could anything but an extreme necessity have forced me to submit. but being now a nardac, of the highest rank in that empire, such offices were looked upon as below my dignity, and the emperor (to do him justice) never once mentioned them to me. however, it was not long before i had an opportunity of doing his majesty, at least, as i then thought, a most signal service. i was alarmed at midnight with the cries of many hundred people at my door; by which being suddenly awaked, i was in some kind of terror. i heard the word burglum repeated incessantly: several of the emperor's court, making their way through the croud, intreated me to come immediately to the palace, where her imperial majesty's apartment was on fire, by the carelessness of a maid of honour, who fell asleep while she was reading a romance. i got up in an instant; and orders being given to clear the way before me, and it being likewise a moon-shine night, i made a shift to get to the palace without trampling on any of the people. i found they had already applied ladders to the walls of the apartment, and were well provided with buckets, but the water was at some distance. these buckets were about the size of a large thimble, and the poor people supplied me with them as fast as they could; but the flame was so violent that they did little good. i might easily have stifled it with my coat, which i unfortunately left behind me for haste, and came away only in my leathern jerkin. the case seemed wholly desperate and deplorable; and this magnificent palace would have infallibly been burnt down to the ground, if, by a presence of mind, unusual to me, i had not suddenly thought of an expedient. i had the evening before drunk plentifully of a most delicious wine, called glimigrim (the blefuscudians call it flunec, but ours is esteemed the better sort), which is very diuretick. by the luckiest chance in the world, i had not discharged myself of any part of it. the heat i had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate my urine; which i voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper places, that in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, preserved from destruction. it was now day-light, and i returned to my house, without waiting to congratulate with the emperor: because, although i had done a very eminent piece of service, yet i could not tell how his majesty might resent the manner by which i had performed it: for, by the fundamental laws of the realm, it is capital in any person, of what quality soever, to make water within the precincts of the palace. but i was a little comforted by a message from his majesty, that he would give orders to the grand justiciary for passing my pardon in form; which, however, i could not obtain. and i was privately assured, that the empress, conceiving the greatest abhorrence of what i had done, removed to the most distant side of the court, firmly resolved that those buildings should never be repaired for her use: and, in the presence of her chief confidents could not forbear vowing revenge. chapter vi. of the inhabitants of lilliput; their learning, laws, and customs, the manner of educating their children. the author's way of living in that country. his vindication of a great lady although i intend to leave the description of this empire to a particular treatise, yet in the mean time i am content to gratify the curious reader with some general ideas. as the common size of the natives is somewhat under six inches high, so there is an exact proportion in all other animals, as well as plants and trees: for instance, the tallest horses and oxen are between four and five inches in height, the sheep an inch and a half, more or less: their geese about the bigness of a sparrow, and so the several gradations downwards till you come to the smallest, which, to my sight, were almost invisible; but nature had adapted the eyes of the lilliputians to all objects proper for their view: they see with great exactness, but at no great distance. and to show the sharpness of their sight towards objects that are near, i have been much pleased with observing a cook pulling a lark, which was not so large as a common fly; and a young girl threading an invisible needle with invisible silk. their tallest trees are about seven foot high; i mean some of those in the great royal park, the tops whereof i could but just reach with my fist clenched. the other vegetables are in the same proportion; but this i leave to the reader's imagination. i shall say but little at present of their learning, which for many ages had flourished in all its branches among them; but their manner of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right, like the europeans; nor from the right to the left, like the arabians; nor from up to down, like the chinese; nor from down to up, like the cascagians; but aslant from one corner of the paper to the other, like ladies in england. they bury their dead with their heads directly downwards, because they hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again, in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection, be found ready standing on their feet. the learned among them confess the absurdity of this doctrine, but the practice still continues, in compliance to the vulgar. there are some laws and customs in this empire very peculiar; and if they were not so directly contrary to those of my own dear country, i should be tempted to say a little in their justification. it is only to be wished that they were as well executed. the first i shall mention relates to informers. all crimes against the state are punished here with the utmost severity; but if the person accused makes his innocence plainly to appear upon his tryal, the accuser is immediately put to an ignominious death; and out of his goods or lands, the innocent person is quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all the charges he had been at in making his defence. or, if that fund be deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown. the emperor does also confer on him some publick mark of his favour, and proclamation is made of his innocence through the whole city. they look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they alledge, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no fence against superior cunning; and since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage. i remember when i was once interceding with the king for a criminal who had wronged his master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order, and ran away with; and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it was only a breach of trust; the emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer, as a defence, the greatest aggravation of the crime: and truly i had little to say in return, farther than the common answer, that different nations had different customs; for, i confess, i was heartily ashamed. although we usually call reward and punishment the two hinges upon which all government turns, yet i could never observe this maxim to be put in practice by any nation except that of lilliput. whoever can there bring sufficient proof that he has strictly observed the laws of his country for seventy-three moons, has a claim to certain privileges, according to his quality and condition of life, with a proportionable sum of money out of a fund appropriated for that use: he likewise acquires the title of snilpall, or legal, which is added to his name, but does not descend to his posterity. and these people thought it a prodigious defect of policy among us, when i told them that our laws were enforced only by penalties without any mention of reward. it is upon this account that the image of justice, in their courts of judicature, is formed with six eyes, two before, as many behind, and on each side one, to signify circumspection; with a bag of gold open in her right hand, and a sword sheathed in her left, to shew she is more disposed to reward than to punish. in chusing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to mankind, they believe-that the common size of human understandings is fitted to some station or other, and that providence never intended to make the management of publick affairs a mystery, to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born in an age: but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like, to be in every man's power; the practice of which virtues, assisted by experience and a good intention, would qualify any man for the service of his country, except where a course of study is required. but they thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being supplied by superior endowments of the mind, that employments could never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualifi'd; and at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance in a virtuous disposition, would never be of such fatal consequence to the publick weal, as the practices of a man whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and had great abilities to manage, and multiply, and defend his corruptions. in like manner, the disbelief of a divine providence renders a man incapable of holding any publick station; for since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of providence, the lilliputians think nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown the authority under which he acts. in relating these and the following laws, i would only be understood to mean the original institutions, and not the most scandalous corruptions into which these people are fallen by the degenerate nature of man. for as to that infamous practice of acquiring great employments by dancing on the ropes, or badges of favour and distinction by leaping over sticks and creeping under them, the reader is to observe, that they were first introduced by the grand-father of the emperor now reigning, and grew to the present height by the gradual increase of party and faction. ingratitude is among them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries; for they reason thus, that whoever makes ill returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of mankind, from whom he has received no obligation, and therefore such a man is not fit to live. their notions relating to the duties of parents and children differ extremely from ours. for since the conjunction of male and female is founded upon the great law of nature, in order to propagate and continue the species, the lilliputians will needs have it, that men and women are joined together like other animals, by the motives of concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds from the like natural principle: for which reason they will never allow, that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or his mother for bringing him into the world; which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in it self, or intended so by his parents, whose thoughts in their love-encounters were otherwise employ'd. upon these, and the like reasonings, their opinion is, that parents are the last of all others to be trusted with the education of their own children: and therefore they have in every town publick nurseries, where all parents, except cottagers and labourers, are obliged to send their infants of both sexes to be reared and educated when they come to the age of twenty moons, at which time they are supposed to have some rudiments of docility. these schools are of several kinds, suited to different qualities, and to both sexes. they have certain professors well skilled in preparing children for such a condition of life as befits the rank of their parents, and their own capacities as well as inclinations. i shall say something of the male nurseries, and then of the female. the nurseries for males of noble or eminent birth are provided with grave and learned professors, and their several deputies. the clothes and food of the children are plain and simple. they are bred up in the principles of honour, justice, courage, modesty, clemency, religion, and love of their country; they are always employed in some business, except in the times of eating and sleeping, which are very short, and two hours for diversions, consisting of bodily exercises. they are dressed by men till four years of age, and then are obliged to dress themselves, although their quality be ever so great; and the women attendants, who are aged proportionably to ours at fifty, perform only the most menial offices. they are never suffered to converse with servants, but go together in small or greater numbers to take their diversions, and always in the presence of a professor, or one of his deputies; whereby they avoid those early bad impressions of folly and vice to which our children are subject. their parents are suffered to see them only twice a year; the visit is to last but an hour. they are allowed to kiss the child at meeting and parting; but a professor, who always stands by on those occasions, will not suffer them to whisper, or use any fondling expressions, or bring any presents of toys, sweet-meats, and the like. the pension from each family for the education and entertainment of a child, upon failure of due payment, is levyed by the emperor's officers. the nurseries for children of ordinary gentlemen, merchants, traders, and handicrafts, are managed proportionably after the same manner; only those designed for trades are put out apprentices at eleven years old, whereas those of persons of quality continue in their exercises till fifteen, which answers to one and twenty with us: but the confinement is gradually lessened for the last three years. in the female nurseries, the young girls of quality are educated much like the males, only they are dressed by orderly servants of their own sex; but always in the presence of a professor or deputy, till they come to dress themselves, which is at five years old. and if it be found that these nurses ever presume to entertain the girls with frightful or foolish stories, or the common follies practiced by chamber-maids among us, they are publickly whipped thrice about the city, imprisoned for a year and banished for life to the most desolate part of the country. thus the young ladies there are as much ashamed of being cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ornaments beyond decency and cleanliness: neither did i perceive any difference in their education, made by their difference of sex, only that the exercises of the females were not altogether so robust; and that some rules were given them relating to domestic life, and a smaller compass of learning was enjoined them: for their maxim is, that among people of quality a wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be young. when the girls are twelve years old, which among them is the marriageable age, their parents or guardians take them home, with great expressions of gratitude to the professors, and seldom without tears of the young lady and her companions. in the nurseries of females of the meaner sort, the children are instructed in all kinds of works proper for their sex, and their several degrees: those intended for apprentices, are dismissed at nine years old, the rest are kept to thirteen. the meaner families who have children at these nurseries, are obliged, besides their annual pension, which is as low as possible, to return to the steward of the nursery a small monthly share of their gettings, to be a portion for the child; and therefore all parents are limited in their expenses by the law. for the lilliputians think nothing can be more unjust, than for people, in subservience to their own appetites, to bring children into the world and leave the burthen of supporting them on the publick. as to persons of quality, they give security to appropriate a certain sum for each child, suitable to their condition; and these funds are always managed with good husbandry, and the most exact justice. the cottagers and labourers keep their children at home, their business being only to till and cultivate the earth, and therefore their education is of little consequence to the publick; but the old and diseased among them are supported by hospitals: for begging is a trade unknown in this kingdom. and here it may perhaps divert the curious reader to give some account of my domestick, and my manner of living in this country, during a residence of nine months and thirteen days. having a head mechanically turned, and being likewise forced by necessity, i had made for myself a table and chair convenient enough, out of the largest trees in the royal park. two hundred sempstresses were employed to make me shirts, and linnen for my bed and table, all of the strongest and coarsest kind they could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt together in several folds, for the thickest was some degrees finer than lawn. their linnen is usually three inches wide, and three foot make a piece. the sempstresses took my measure as i lay on the ground, one standing at my neck, and another at my mid-leg, with a strong cord extended, that each held by the end, while the third measured the length of the cord with a rule an inch long. then they measured my right thumb, and desired no more; for by a mathematical computation, that twice round the thumb is once round the wrist, and so on to the neck and the waist, and by the help of my old shirt, which i displayed on the ground before them for a pattern, they fitted me exactly. three hundred taylors were employed in the same manner to make me clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my measure. i kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck; upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plum-line from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat; but my waist and arms i measured myself. when my clothes finished, which was done in my house (for the largest of theirs would not have been able to hold them) they looked like the patch-work made by the ladies in england, only that mine were all of a colour. i had three hundred cooks to dress my victuals, in little convenient huts built about my house, where they and their families lived, and prepared me two dishes a-piece. i took up twenty waiters in my hand, and placed them on the table; an hundred more attended below on the ground, some with dishes of meat, and some with barrels of wine, and other liquors, slung on their shoulders; all which the waiters above drew up as i wanted, in a very ingenious manner, by certain cords, as we draw the bucket up a well in europe. a dish of their meat was a good mouthful, and a barrel of their liquor a reasonable draught. their mutton yields to ours, but their beef is excellent. i have had a sirloin so large, that i have been forced to make three bits of it; but this is rare. my servants were astonished to see me eat it bones and all, as in our country we do the leg of a lark. their geese and turkeys i usually eat at a mouthful, and i must confess they far exceed ours. of their smaller fowl i could take up twenty or thirty at the end of my knife. one day his imperial majesty, being informed of my way of living, desired that himself and his royal consort, with the young princes of the blood of both sexes, might have the happiness (as he was pleased to call it) of dining with me. they came accordingly, and i placed 'em upon chairs of state on my table, just over-against me, with their guards about them. flimnap the lord high treasurer, attended there likewise with his white staff; and i observed he often looked on me with a sour countenance, which i would not seem to regard, but ate more than usual, in honour to my dear country, as well as to fill the court with admiration. i have some private reasons to believe, that this visit from his majesty gave flimnap an opportunity of doing me ill offices to his master. that minister had always been my secret enemy, though he outwardly caressed me more than was usual to the moroseness of his nature. he represented to the emperor the low condition of his treasury; that he was forced to take up money at great discount; that exchequer bills would not circulate under nine per cent below par; that in short i had cost his majesty above a million and a half of sprugs (their greatest gold coin, about the bigness of a spangle) and upon the whole, that it would be advisable in the emperor to take the first fair occasion of dismissing me. i am here obliged to vindicate the reputation of an excellent lady, who was an innocent sufferer upon my account. the treasurer took a fancy to be jealous of his wife, from the malice of some evil tongues, who informed him that her grace had taken a violent affection for my person; and the court-scandal ran for some time, that she once came privately to my lodging. this i solemnly declare to be a most infamous falsehood, without any grounds, farther than that her grace was pleased to treat me with all innocent marks of freedom and friendship. i own she came often to my house, but always publickly, nor ever without three more in the coach, who were usually her sister and young daughter, and some particular acquaintance; but this was common to many other ladies of the court. and i still appeal to my servants round, whether they at any time saw a coach at my door without knowing what persons were in it. on those occasions, when a servant had given me notice, my custom was to go immediately to the door; and, after paying my respects, to take up the coach and two horses very carefully in my hands (for if there were six horses, the postillion always unharnessed four) and place them on a table, where i had fixed a moveable rim quite round, of five inches high, to prevent accidents. and i have often had four coaches and horses at once on my table full of company, while i sate in my chair, leaning my face towards them; and when i was engaged with one sett, the coachman would gently drive the others round my table. i have passed many an afternoon very agreeably in these conversations. but i defy the treasurer, or his two informers, (i will name them, and let 'em make their best of it) clustril and drunlo, to prove that any person ever came to me incognito, except the secretary reldresal, who was sent by express command of his imperial majesty, as i have before related. i should not have dwelt so long upon this particular, if it had not been a point wherein the reputation of a great lady is so nearly concerned, to say nothing of my own; though i then had the honour to be a nardac, which the treasurer himself is not; for all the world knows he is only a glumglum, a title inferior by one degree, as that of a marquiss is to a duke in england, although i allow he preceded me in right of his post. these false informations, which i afterwards came to the knowledge of, by an accident not proper to mention, made flimnap the treasurer shew his lady for some time an ill countenance, and me a worse; and although he were at last undeceived and reconciled to her, yet i lost all credit with him, and found my interest decline very fast with the emperor himself, who was indeed too much governed by that favourite. chapter vii. the author being informed of a design to accuse him of high-treason, makes his escape to blefuscu. his reception there. before i proceed to give an account of my leaving this kingdom, it may be proper to inform the reader of a private intrigue which had been for two months forming against me. i had been hitherto all my life a stranger to courts, for which i was unqualified by the meanness of my condition. i had indeed heard and read enough of the dispositions of great princes and ministers; but never expected to have found such terrible effects of them in so remote a country, governed, as i thought, by very different maxims from those in europe. when i was just preparing to pay my attendance on the emperor of blefuscu, a considerable person at court (to whom i had been very serviceable at a time when he lay under the highest displeasure of his imperial majesty) came to my house very privately at night in a close chair, and without sending his name, desired admittance. the chair-men were dismissed; i put the chair, with his lordship in it, into my coatpocket: and giving orders to a trusty servant to say i was indisposed and gone to sleep, i fastened the door of my house, placed the chair on the table, according to my usual custom, and sate down by it. after the common salutations were over, observing his lordship's countenance full of concern, and enquiring into the reason, he desired i would hear him with patience in a matter that highly concerned my honour and my life. his speech was to the following effect, for i took notes of it as soon as he left me. you are to know, said he, that several committees of council have been lately called in the most private manner on your account; and it is but two days since his majesty came to a full resolution. you are very sensible that skyresh bolgolam (galbet, or high admiral) has been your mortal enemy almost ever since your arrival: his original reasons i know not, but his hatred is much increased since your great success against blefuscu, by which his glory as admiral is obscur'd. this lord, in conjunction with flimnap the high treasurer, whose enmity against you is notorious on account of his lady, limtoc the general, lalcon the chamberlain, and balmuff the grand justiciary, have prepared articles of impeachment against you, for treason, and other capital crimes. this preface made me so impatient, being conscious of my own merits and innocence, that i was going to interrupt; when he entreated me to be silent, and thus proceeded. out of gratitude for the favours you have done me, i procured information of the whole proceedings, and a copy of the articles, wherein i venture my head for your service. articles of impeachment against quinbus flestrin (the man-mountain) article i whereas, by a statute made in the reign of his imperial majesty calin deffar plune, it is enacted, that whoever shall make water within the precincts of the royal palace, shall be liable to the pains and penalties of high treason; notwithstanding, the said quinbus flestrin, in open breach of the said law, under colour of extinguishing the fire kindled in the apartment of his majesty's most dear imperial consort, did maliciously, traitorously, and devilishly, by discharge of his urine, put out the said fire kindled in the said apartment, lying and being within the precincts of the said royal palace, against the statute in that case provided, etc., against the duty, etc. article ii. that the said quinbus flestrin having brought the imperial fleet of blefuscu into the royal port, and being afterwards commanded by his imperial majesty to seize all the other ships of the said empire of blefuscu, and reduce that empire to a province, to be governed by a vice-roy from hence, and to destroy and put to death not only all the big-endian exiles, but likewise all the people of that empire, who would not immediately forsake the big-endian heresy: he the said flestrin, like a false traitor against his most auspicious, serene, imperial majesty, did petition to be excused from the said service upon pretence of unwillingness to force the consciences, or destroy the liberties and lives of an innocent people. article iii. that, whereas certain embassadors from the court of blefuscu, to sue for peace in his majesty's court: he, the said flestrin, did, like a false traitor, aid, abet, comfort, and divert the said embassadors, although he knew them to be servants to a prince who was lately an open enemy to his imperial majesty, and in open war against his said majesty. article iv. that the said quinbus flestrin, contrary to the duty of a faithful subject, is now preparing to make a voyage to the court and empire of blefuscu, for which he had received only verbal licence from his imperial majesty; and under colour of the said licence, doth falsely and traitorously intend to take the said voyage, and hereby to aid, comfort, and abet the emperor of blefuscu, so late an enemy, and in open war with his imperial majesty aforesaid. there are some other articles, but these are the most important, of which i have read you an abstract. in the several debates upon this impeachment, it must be confessed that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity, often urging the services you had done him, and endeavoring to extenuate your crimes. the treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most painful and ignominious death, by setting fire on your house at night, and the general was to attend with twenty thousand men armed with poisoned arrows to shoot you on the face and hands. some of your servants were to have private orders to strew a poisonous juice on your shirts, which would soon make you tear your own flesh, and die in the utmost torture. the general came into the same opinion, so that for a long time there was a majority against you: but his majesty resolving, if possible, to spare your life, at last brought off the chamberlain. upon this incident, redresal, principal secretary for private affairs, who always approved himself your true friend, was commanded by the emperor to deliver his opinion, which he accordingly did; and therein justify'd the good thoughts you have of him. he allowed your crimes to be great, but that still there was room for mercy, the most commendable virtue in a prince, and for which his majesty was so justly celebrated. he said, the friendship between you and him was so well known to the world, that perhaps the most honourable board might think him partial: however, in obedience to the command he had received, he would freely offer his sentiments. that if his majesty, in consideration of your services, and pursuant to his own merciful disposition, would please to spare your life, and only give order to put out both your eyes, he humbly conceived that by this expedient, justice might in some measure be satisfied, and all the world would applaud the lenity of the emperor, as well as the fair and generous proceedings of those who have the honour to be his counsellors. that the loss of your eyes would be no impediment to your bodily strength, by which you might still be useful to his majesty. that blindness is an addition to courage, by concealing dangers from us; that the fear you had for your eyes was the greatest difficulty in bringing over the enemy's fleet, and it would be sufficient for you to see by the eyes of the ministers, since the greatest princes do no more. this proposal was received with the utmost disapprobation by the whole board. bolgolam, the admiral, could not preserve his temper, but rising up in fury said he wondered how the secretary dared presume to give his opinion for preserving the life of a traytor: that the services you had performed, were, by all true reasons of state, the great aggravation of your crimes; that you, who were able to extinguish the fire, by discharge of urine in her majesty's apartment (which he mentioned with horror), might at another time, raise an inundation by the same means, to drown the whole palace; and the same strength which enabled you to bring over the enemy's fleet, might serve, upon the first discontent, to carry it back: that he had good reasons to think you were a big-endian in your heart; and as treason begins in the heart, before it appears in overt-acts, so he accused you as a traytor on that account, and therefore insisted you should be put to death. the treasurer was of the same opinion; he shewed to what streights his majesty's revenue was reduced by the charge of maintaining you, which would soon grow insupportable: that the secretary's expedient of putting out your eyes was so far from being a remedy against this evil, it would probably increase it, as it is manifest from the common practice of blinding some kind of fowl, after which they fed the faster, and grew sooner fat: that his sacred majesty, and the council, who are your judges, were in their own consciences fully convinced of your guilt, which was a sufficient argument to condemn you to death, without the formal proofs required by the strict letter of the law. but his imperial majesty, fully determined against capital punishment, was graciously pleased to say, that since the council thought the loss of your eyes too easy a censure, some other may be inflicted hereafter. and your friend the secretary humbly desiring to be heard again, in answer to what the treasurer had objected concerning the great charge his majesty was at in maintaining you, said that his excellency, who had the sole disposal of the emperor's revenue, might easily provide against that evil, by gradually lessening your establishment; by which, for want of sufficient food, you would grow weak and faint, and lose your appetite, and consequently decay and consume in a few months; neither would the stench of your carcass be then so dangerous, when it should become more than half diminished; and immediately upon your death, five or six thousand of his majesty's subjects might, in two or three days, cut your flesh from your bones, take it away by cart-loads, and bury it in distant parts to prevent infection, leaving the skeleton as a monument of admiration to posterity. thus by the great friendship of the secretary, the whole affair was compromised. it was strictly enjoin'd, that the project of starving you by degrees should be kept a secret, but the sentence of putting out your eyes was entered on the books; none dissenting except bolgolam the admiral, who, being a creature of the empress, was perpetually instigated by her majesty to insist upon your death, she having borne perpetual malice against you, on account of that infamous and illegal method you took to extinguish the fire in her apartment. in three days your friend the secretary will be directed to come to your house, and read before you the articles of impeachment; and then to signify the great lenity and favour of his majesty and council, whereby you are only condemned to the loss of your eyes, which his majesty does not question you will gratefully and humbly submit to; and twenty of his majesty's surgeons will attend, in order to see the operation well performed, by discharging very sharp-pointed arrows into the balls of your eyes, as you lie on the ground. i leave to your prudence what measures you will take; and to avoid suspicion, i must immediately return in as private a manner as i came. his lordship did so, and i remained alone, under many doubts and perplexities of mind. it was a custom introduced by this prince and his ministry (very different, as i have been assured, from the practices of former times) that after the court had decreed any cruel execution, either to gratify the monarch's resentment, or the malice of a favourite, the emperor always made a speech to his whole council, expressing his great lenity and tenderness, as qualities known and confessed by all the world. this speech was immediately published through the kingdom; nor did anything terrify the people so much as those encomiums on his majesty's mercy; because it was observed, that the more these praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer more innocent. and as to myself, i must confess, having never been designed for a courtier either by my birth or education, i was so ill a judge of things, that i could not discover the lenity and favour of this sentence, but conceived it (perhaps erroneously) rather to be rigorous than gentle. i sometimes thought of standing my tryal, for although i could not deny the facts alledged in the several articles, yet i hoped they would admit of some extenuations. but having in my life perused many state-tryals, which i ever observed to terminate as the judges thought fit to direct, i durst not rely on so dangerous a decision, in so critical a juncture, and against such powerful enemies. once i was strongly bent upon resistance, for while i had liberty, the whole strength of that empire could hardly subdue me, and i might easily with stones pelt the metropolis to pieces; but i soon rejected that project with horror, by remembering the oath i had made to the emperor, the favours i received from him, and the high title of nardac he conferred upon me. neither had i so soon learned the gratitude of courtiers, to persuade myself that his majesty's present severities quitted me of all past obligations. at last i fixed upon a resolution, for which it is probable i may incur some censure, and not unjustly; for i confess i owe the preserving of my eyes, and consequently my liberty, to my own great rashness and want of experience: because if i had then known the nature of princes and ministers, which i have since observed in many other courts, and their methods of treating criminals less obnoxious than myself, i should with great alacrity and readiness have submitted to so easy a punishment. but hurry'd on by the precipitancy of youth, and having his imperial majesty's licence to pay my attendance upon the emperor of blefuscu, i took this opportunity, before the three days were elapsed, to send a letter to my friend the secretary, signifying my resolution of setting out that morning blefuscu pursuant to the leave i had got; and without waiting for an answer, i went to that side of the island where our fleet lay. i seized a large man of war, tyed a cable to the prow, and, lifting up the anchors, i stript myself, put my cloaths (together with my coverlet, which i brought under my arm) into the vessel, and drawing it after me between wading and swimming, arrived at the royal port of blefuscu, where the people had long expected me; they lent me two guides to direct me to the capital city, which is of the same name. i held them in my hands till i came within two hundred yards of the gate, and desired them to signify my arrival to one of the secretarys, and let him know, i there waited his majesty's command. i had an answer in about an hour, that his majesty, attended by the royal family, and great officers of the court, was coming out to receive me. i advanced a hundred yards. the emperor and his train alighted from their horses, the empress and ladies from their coaches, and i did not perceive they were in any fright or concern. i lay on the ground to kiss his majesty's and the empress's hand. i told his majesty that i had come according to my promise, and with the licence of the emperor my master, to have the honour of seeing so mighty a monarch, and to offer him any service in my power, consistent with my duty to my own prince; not mentioning a word of my disgrace, because i had hitherto no regular information of it, and might suppose myself wholly ignorant of any such design; neither could i reasonably conceive that the emperor would discover the secret while i was out of his power: wherein, however, it soon appeared i was deceived. i shall not trouble the reader with the particular account of my reception at this court, which was suitable to the generosity of so great a prince; nor of the difficulties i was in for want of a house and bed, being forced to lie on the ground, wrapt up in my coverlet. chapter viii. the author, by a lucky accident, finds means to leave blefuscu; and, after some difficulties, returns safe to his native country. three days after my arrival, walking out of curiosity to the northeast coast of the island, i observed, about half a league off, in the sea, something that looked like a boat overturned. i pulled off my shoes and stockings, and wading two or three hundred yards, i found the object to approach nearer by force of the tide; and then plainly saw it to be a real boat, which i supposed might, by some tempest, have been driven from a ship; whereupon i returned immediately towards the city, and desired his imperial majesty to lend me twenty of the tallest vessels he had left after the loss of his fleet, and three thousand seamen under the command of the vice-admiral. this fleet sailed round, while i went back the shortest way to the coast where i first discovered the boat; i found the tide had driven it still nearer. the seamen were all provided with cordage, which i had beforehand twisted to a sufficient strength. when the ships came up, i stript my self, and waded till i came within an hundred yards of the boat, after which i was forced to swim till i got up to it. the seamen threw me the end of the cord, which i fastened to a hole in the fore-part of the boat, and the other end to a man of war: but i found all my labour to little purpose; for being out of my depth, i was not able to work. in this necessity, i was forced to swim behind, and push the boat forwards as often as i could, with one of my hands; and the tide favouring me, i advanced so far, that i could just hold up my chin and feel the ground. i rested two or three minutes, and then gave the boat another shove, and so on till the sea was no higher than my arm-pits; and now the most laborious part being over, i took out my other cables, which were stowed in one of the ships, and fastening them first to the boat, and then to nine of the vessels which attended me; the wind being favourable, the sea-men towed, and i shoved till we arrived within forty yards of the shore; and waiting till the tide was out, i got dry to the boat, and by the assistance of two thousand men, with ropes and engines, i made a shift to turn it on its bottom, and found it was but little damaged. i shall not trouble the reader with the difficulties i was under by the help of certain paddles, which cost me ten days making, to get my boat to the royal port of blefuscu, where a mighty concourse of people appeared upon my arrival, full of wonder at the sight of so prodigious a vessel. i told the emperor that my good fortune had thrown this boat in my way, to carry me to some place from whence i might return into my native country, and begged his majesty's orders for getting materials to fit it up, together with his licence to depart; which, after some kind expostulations, he was pleased to grant. i did very much wonder, in all this time, not to have heard of any express relating to me from our emperor to the court of blefuscu. but i was afterwards given privately to understand, that his imperial majesty, never imagining i had the least notice of his designs, believed i was only gone to blefuscu in performance of my promise, according to the licence he had given me, which was well known at our court, and would return in a few days when that ceremony was ended. but he was at last in pain at my long absence; and after consulting with the treasurer, and the rest of that cabal, a person of quality was dispatched with the copy of the articles against me. this envoy had instructions to represent to the monarch of blefuscu the great lenity of his master, who was content to punish me no farther than with the loss of mine eyes; that i had fled from justice, and if i did not return in two hours, i should be deprived of my title of nardac, and declared a traitor. the envoy further added, that in order to maintain the peace and amity between both empires, his master expected, that his brother of blefuscu would give orders to have me sent back to lilliput, bound hand and foot, to be punished as a traitor. the emperor of blefuscu having taken three days to consult, returned an answer consisting of many civilities and excuses. he said, that as for sending me bound, his brother knew it was impossible; that although i had deprived him of his fleet, yet he owed great obligations to me for many good offices i had done him in making the peace. that however both their majesties would soon be made easy; for i had found a prodigious vessel on the shore, able to carry me on the sea, which he had given order to fit up with my own assistance and direction; and he hoped in a few weeks both empires would be freed from so insupportable an incumbrance. with this answer the envoy returned to lilliput, and the monarch of blefuscu related to me all that had past, offering me at the same time (but under the strictest confidence) his gracious protection, if i would continue in his service; wherein although i believed him sincere, yet i resolved never more to put any confidence in princes or ministers, where i could possibly avoid it; and therefore, with all due acknowledgments for his favourable intentions, i humbly begged to be excused. i told him, that since fortune, whether good or evil, had thrown a vessel in my way, i was resolved to venture myself in the ocean, rather than be an occasion of difference between two such mighty monarchs. neither did i find the emperor at all displeased; and i discover'd by a certain accident, that he was very glad of my resolution, and so were most of his ministers. these considerations moved me to hasten my departure somewhat sooner than i intended; to which the court, impatient to have me gone, very readily contributed. five hundred workmen were employed to make two sails to my boat, according to my directions, by quilting thirteen fold of their strongest linnen together. i was at the pains of making ropes and cables, by twisting ten, twenty or thirty of the thickest and strongest of theirs. a great stone that i happen'd to find, after a long search, by the sea-shore, served me for an anchor. i had the tallow of three hundred cows for greasing my boat, and other uses. i was at incredible pains in cutting down some of the largest timber-trees for oars and masts, wherein i was, however, much assisted by his majesty's ship-carpenters, who helped me in smoothing them, after i had done the rough work. in about a month, when all was prepared, i sent to receive his majesty's commands, and to take my leave. the emperor and royal family came out of the palace: i lay down on my face to kiss his hand, which he very graciously gave me; so did the empress and young princes of the blood. his majesty presented me with fifty purses of two hundred sprugs a-piece, together with his picture at full length, which i put immediately into one of my gloves, to keep it from being hurt. the ceremonies at my departure were too many to trouble the reader with at this time. i stored the boat with the carcases of an hundred oxen, and three hundred sheep, with bread and drink proportionable, and as much meat ready dressed as four hundred cooks could provide. i took with me six cows and two bulls alive, with as many ewes and rams, intending to carry them into my own country, and propagate the breed. and to feed them on board, i had a good bundle of hay, and a bag of corn. i would gladly have taken a dozen of the natives, but this was a thing the emperor would by no means permit; and besides a diligent search into my pockets, his majesty engaged my honour not to carry away any of his subjects, although with their own consent and desire. having thus prepared all things as well as i was able, i set sail on the twenty-fourth day of september 1701, at six in the morning; and when i had gone about four leagues to the northward, the wind being at southeast, at six in the evening, i descried a small island about half a league to the north-west. i advanced forward, and cast anchor on the lee-side of the island, which seemed to be uninhabited. i then took some refreshment, and went to my rest. i slept well, and i conjecture at least six hours, for i found the day broke in two hours after i awaked. it was a clear night. i eat my breakfast before the sun was up; and heaving anchor, the wind being favourable, i steered the same course that i had done the day before, wherein i was directed by my pocket-compass. my intention was to reach, if possible, one of those islands, which i had reason to believe lay to the north-east of van diemen's land. i discovered nothing all that day; but upon the next, about three in the afternoon, when i had by my computation made twenty-four leagues from blefuscu, i descryed a sail steering to the south-east; my course was due east. i hailed her, but could get no answer; yet i found i gained upon her, for the wind slackned. i made all the sail i could, and in half an hour she spyed me, then hung out her antient, and discharged a gun. it is not easy to express the joy i was in upon the unexpected hope of once more seeing my beloved country, and the dear pledges i had left in it. the ship slackned her sails, and i came up with her between five and six in the evening, september 26; but my heart leapt within me to see her english colours. i put my cows and sheep into my coat-pockets, and got on board with all my little cargo of provisions. the vessel was an english merchantman, returning from japan by the north and south-seas; the captain, mr. john biddle of deptford, a very civil man, and an excellent sailor. we were now in the latitude of 30 degrees south; there were about fifty men in the ship; and here i met an old comrade of mine, one peter williams, who gave me a good character to the captain. this gentleman treated me with kindness, and desired i would let know what place i came from last, and whither i was bound; which i did in few words, but he thought i was raving, and that the dangers i underwent had disturbed my head; whereupon i took my black cattle and sheep out of my pocket, which, after great astonishment, clearly convinced him of my veracity. i then shewed him the gold given me by the emperor of lilliput, together with his majesty's picture at full length, and some other rarities of that country. i gave him two purses of two hundred sprugs each, and promised, when we arrived in england, to make him a present of a cow and a sheep big with young. i shall not trouble the reader with a particular account of this voyage, which was very prosperous for the most part. we arrived in the downs on the 13th of april 1702. i had only one misfortune, that the rats on board carried away one of my sheep; i found her bones in a hole, picked clean from the flesh. the rest of my cattle i got safe on shore, and set them grazing in a bowling-green at greenwich, where the fineness of the grass made them feed very heartily, though i had always feared the contrary: neither could i possibly have preserved them in so long a voyage, if the captain had not allowed me some of his best bisket, which, rubbed to powder, and mingled with water, was their constant food. the short time i continued in england, i made considerable profit by shewing my cattle to many persons of quality, and others: and before i began my second voyage, i sold them for six hundred pounds. since my last return, i find the breed is considerably increased, especially the sheep; which i hope will prove much to the advantage of the woollen manufacture, by the fineness of the fleeces. i stayed but two months with my wife and family; for my insatiable desire of seeing foreign countries would suffer me to continue no longer. i left fifteen hundred pounds with my wife, and fixed her in a good house at redriff. my remaining stock i carried with me, part in money, and part in goods, in hopes to improve my fortunes. my eldest uncle john had left me an estate in land, near epping, of about thirty pounds a year; and i had a long lease of the black-bull in fetter-lane, which yielded me as much more; so that i was not in any danger of leaving my family upon the parish. my son johnny, named so after his uncle, was at the grammar school, and a towardly child. my daughter betty (who is now well married, and has children) was then at her needle-work. i took leave of my wife, and boy and girl, with tears on both sides, and went on board the adventure, a merchant-ship of three hundred tons, bound for surat, captain john nicholas of liverpool commander. but my account of this voyage must be referred to the second part of my travels. the end of the first part. part ii: a voyage to brobdingnag [plate 2: brobdingnag] chapter i. a great storm described, the long-boat sent to fetch water, the author goes with it to discover the country. he is left on shore, is seized by one of the natives, and carried to a farmer's house. his reception there, with several accidents that happened there. a description of the inhabitants. having been condemned by nature andfortune to an active and restless life, in two months after my return i again left my native country, and took shipping in the downs on the 20th day of june 1702, in the adventure, capt. john nicholas, a cornish man, commander, bound for surat. we had a very prosperous gale till we arrived at the cape of goodhope, where we landed for fresh water, but discovering a leak we unshipped our goods and winter'd there; for the captain falling sick of an ague, we could not leave the cape till the end of march. we then set sail, and had a good voyage till we passed the streights of madagascar; but having got northward of that island, and to about five degrees south latitude, the winds, which in those seas are observed to blow a constant equal gale between the north and west from the beginning of december to the beginning of may, on the 19th of april began to blow with much greater violence, and more westerly than usual, continuing so for twenty days together, during which time we were driven a little to the east of the molucca islands, and about three degrees northward of the line, as our captain found by an observation he took the 2d of may, at which time the wind ceased, and it was a perfect calm, whereat i was not a little rejoyced. but he, being a man well experienc'd in the navigation of those seas, bid us all prepare against a storm, which accordingly happened the day following: for a southern wind, called the southern monsoon, began to set in. finding it was likely to overblow, we took in our sprit-sail, and stood by to hand the fore-sail; but making foul weather, we look'd the guns were all fast, and handed the missen. the ship lay very broad off, so we thought it better spooning before the sea, than trying or hulling. we reeft the foresail and set him, we hawl'd aft the fore-sheet; the helm was hard a weather. the ship wore bravely. we belay'd the fore-down-hall; but the sail was split, and we hawl'd down the yard, and got the sail into the ship, and unbound all the things clear of it. it was a very fierce storm; the sea broke strange and dangerous. we hawl'd off upon the lanniard of the whip-staff, and helped the man at helm. we would not get down our topmast, but let all stand, because she scudded before the sea very well, and we knew that the top-mast being aloft, the ship was the wholesomer, and made better way thro' the sea, seeing we had sea-room. when the storm was over, we set fore-sail and main-sail, and brought the ship to. then we set the missen, maintop-sail, and the foretop-sail. our course was east north-east, the wind was at south-west. we got the star-board tacks aboard; we cast off our weather-braces and lifts; we set in the lee-braces, and hawl'd forward by the weather-bowlings, and hawl'd them tight, and belayed them, and hawl'd over the missen tack to windward, and kept her full and by as near as she could lye. during this storm, which was followed by a strong wind west south-west, we were carried by my computation about five hundred leagues to the east, so that the oldest sailor on board could not tell in what part of the world we were. our provisions held out well, our ship was staunch, and our crew all in good health; but we lay in the utmost distress for water. we thought it best to hold on the same course, rather than turn more northerly, which might have brought us to the north-west parts of great tartary, and into the frozen sea. on the 16th day of june 1703 a boy on the top-mast discovered land. on the 17th we came in full view of a great island or continent (for we knew not whether) on the south-side whereof was a small neck of land jutting out into the sea, and a creek too shallow to hold a ship of above one hundred tuns. we cast anchor within a league of this creek, and our captain sent a dozen of his men well armed in the long boat, with vessels for water if any could be found. i desired his leave to go with them, that i might see the country, and make what discoveries i could. when we came to land we saw no river or spring, nor any sign of inhabitants. our men therefore wander'd on the shore to find out some fresh water near the sea, and i walked alone about a mile on the other side, where i observed the country all barren and rocky. i now began to be weary, and seeing nothing to entertain my curiosity, i returned gently down towards the creek; and the sea being full in my view, i saw our men already got into the boat, and rowing for life to the ship. i was going to hollow after them, although it had been to little purpose, when i observed a huge creature walking after them in the sea, as fast as he could: he waded not much deeper than his knees, and took prodigious strides: but our men had the start of him half a league, and the sea thereabouts being full of sharp-pointed rocks, the monster was not able to overtake the boat. this i was afterwards told, for i durst not stay to see the issue of that adventure; but ran as fast as i could the way i first went; and then climbed up a steep hill, which gave me some prospect of the country. i found it fully cultivated; but that which first surprized me was the length of the grass, which in those grounds that seemed to be kept for hay, was above twenty foot high. i fell into a high road, for so i took it to be, though it served to the inhabitants only as a foot path through a field of barley. here i walked on for some time, but could see little on either side, it being now near harvest, and the corn rising at least forty foot. i was an hour walking to the end of this field, which was fenced in with a hedge of at least one hundred and twenty foot high, and the trees so lofty that i could make no computation of their altitude. there was a stile to pass from this field into the next. it had four steps, and a stone to cross over when you came to the uppermost. it was impossible for me to climb this stile, because every step was six foot high, and the upper stone above twenty. i was endeavouring to find some gap in the hedge, when i discovered one of the inhabitants in the next field, advancing towards the stile, of the same size with him whom i saw in the sea, pursuing our boat. he appeared as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as i could guess. i was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, from whence i saw him at the top of the style, looking back into the next field on the right hand, and heard him call in a voice many degrees louder than a speaking trumpet; but the noise was so high in the air, that at first i certainly thought it was thunder. whereupon, seven monsters like himself came towards him with reapinghooks in their hands, each hook about the size of six scythes. these people were not so well clad as the first, whose servants or labourers they seemed to be: for upon some words he spoke, they went to reap the corn in the field where i lay. i kept from them at as great a distance as i could, but was forced to move with extreme difficulty, for the stalks of the corn were sometimes not above a foot distant, so that i could hardly squeeze my body betwix them. however, i made a shift to go forward till i came to a part of the field where the corn had been laid by the rain and wind. here it was impossible for me to advance a step; for the stalks were so interwoven that i could not creep thorough, and the beards of the fallen ears so strong and pointed that they pierced through my cloaths into my flesh. at the same time i heard the reapers not above an hundred yards behind me. being quite dispirited with toil, and wholly overcome by grief and despair, i lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished i might there end my days. i bemoaned my desolate widow, and fatherless children. i lamented my own folly and wilfulness in attempting a second voyage against the advice of all my friends and relations. in this terrible agitation of mind i could not forbear thinking of lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where i was able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and perform those other actions which will be recorded forever in the chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, although attested by millions. i reflected what a mortification it must prove to me to appear as inconsiderable in this nation as one single lilliputian would be among us. but this i conceived was to be the least of my misfortunes: for as human creatures are observed to be more savage and cruel in proportion to their bulk, what could i expect but to be a morsel in the mouth of the first among these enormous barbarians that should happen to seize me? undoubtedly philosophers are in the right when they tell us, that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison. it might have pleased fortune to let the lilliputians find some nation, where the people were as diminutive with respect to them, as they were to me. and who knows but that even this prodigious race of mortals might be equally overmatched in some distant part of the world, whereof we have yet no discovery? scared and confounded as i was, i could not forbear going on with these reflections, when one of the reapers approaching within ten yards of the ridge where i lay, made me apprehend that with the next step i should be squashed to death under his foot, or cut in two with his reaping-hook. and therefore when he was again about to move, i screamed as loud as fear could make me. whereupon the huge creature trod short, and looking round about under him for some time, at last espied me as i lay on the ground. he considered a while with the caution of one who endeavors to lay hold on a small dangerous animal in such a manner that it shall not be able either to scratch or to bite him, as i myself have sometimes done with a weasel in england. at length he ventured to take me up behind by the middle between his fore finger and thumb, and brought me within three yards of his eyes, that he might behold my shape more perfectly. i guessed his meaning, and my good fortune gave me so much presence of mind, that i resolved not to struggle in the least as he held me in the air, about sixty foot from the ground, although he grievously pinched my sides, for fear i should slip through his fingers. all i ventured was to raise my eyes towards the sun, and place my hands together in a supplicating posture, and to speak some words in an humble melancholy tone, suitable to the condition i then was in. for i apprehended every moment that he would dash me against the ground, as we usually do any little hateful animal which we have a mind to destroy. but my good star would have it, that he appeared pleased with my voice and gestures, and began to look upon me as a curiosity, much wondering to hear me pronounce articulate words, although he could not understand them. in the mean time i was not able to forbear groaning and shedding tears, and turning my head towards my sides; letting him know, as well as i could, how cruelly i was hurt by the pressure of his thumb and finger. he seemed to apprehend my meaning; for, lifting up the lappet of his coat, he put me gently into it, and immediately ran along with me to his master, who was a substantial farmer, and the same person i had first seen in the field. the farmer having (as i supposed by their talk) received such an account of me as his servant could give him, took a piece of a small straw, about the size of a walking staff, and therewith lifted up the lappets of my coat; which it seems he thought to be some kind of covering that nature had given me. he blew my hairs aside to take a better view of my face. he called his hinds about him, and asked them (as i afterwards learned) whether they had ever seen in the fields any little creature that resembled me? he then placed me softly on the ground upon all four, but i got immediately up, and walked slowly backwards and forwards, to let those people see i had no intent to run away. they all sat down in a circle about me, the better to observe my motions. i pulled off my hat, and made a low bow towards the farmer. i fell on my knees, and lifted up my hands and eyes, and spoke several words as loud as i could: i took a purse of gold out of my pocket, and humbly presented it to him. he received it on the palm of his hand, then applied it close to his eye, to see what it was, and afterwards turned it several times with the point of a pin (which he took out of his sleeve), but could make nothing of it. whereupon i made a sign that he should place his hand on the ground. i took the purse, and opening it, poured all the gold into his palm. there were six spanish pieces of four pistoles each, beside twenty or thirty smaller coins. i saw him wet the tip of his little finger upon his tongue, and take up one of my largest pieces, and then another, but he seemed to be wholly ignorant what they were. he made me a sign to put them again into my purse, and the purse again into my pocket, which after offering to him several times, i thought it best to do. the farmer by this time was convinced i must be a rational creature. he spoke often to me, but the sound of his voice pierced my ears like that of a water-mill, yet his words were articulate enough. i answered as loud as i could, in several languages, and he often laid his ear within two yards of me, but all in vain, for we were wholly unintelligible to each other. he then sent his servants to their work, and taking his handkerchief out of his pocket, he doubled and spread it on his left hand, which he placed flat on the ground, with the palm upwards, making me a sign to step into it, as i could easily do, for it was not above a foot in thickness. i thought it my part to obey, and for fear of falling, laid myself at length upon the handkerchief, with the remainder of which he lapped me up to the head for further security, and in this manner carried me home to his house. there he called his wife, and shewed me to her; but she screamed and ran back, as women in england do at the sight of a toad or a spider. however, when she had a while seen my behaviour, and how well i observed the signs her husband made, she was soon reconciled, and by degrees grew extremely tender of me. it was about twelve at noon, and a servant brought in dinner. it was only one substantial dish of meat (fit for the plain condition of an husbandman) in a dish of about twenty-four foot diameter. the company were the farmer and his wife, three children, and an old grandmother: when they were sat down, the farmer placed me at some distance from him on the table, which was thirty foot high from the floor. i was in a terrible fright, and kept as far as i could from the edge for fear of falling. the wife minced a bit of meat, then crumbled some bread on a trencher, and placed it before me. i made her a low bow, took out my knife and fork, and fell to eating, which gave them exceeding delight. the mistress sent her maid for a small dram-cup, which held about three gallons, and filled it with drink; i took up the vessel with much difficulty in both hands, and in a most respectful manner drank to her ladyship's health, expressing the words as loud as i could in english, which made the company laugh so heartily, that i was almost deafned with the noise. this liquor tasted like a small cyder, and was not unpleasant. then the master made me a sign to come to his trencher-side; but as i walked on the table, being in great surprize all the time, as the indulgent reader will easily conceive and excuse, i happened to stumble against a crust, and fell flat on my face, but received no hurt. i got up immediately, and observing the good people to be in much concern, i took my hat (which i held under my arm out of good manners) and waving it over my head, made three huzza's, to shew i had got no mischief by my fall. but advancing forwards toward my master (as i shall henceforth call him), his youngest son who sate next him, an arch boy of about ten years old, took me up by the legs, and held me so high in the air, that i trembled every limb; but his father snatched me from him, and at the same time gave him such a box on the left ear, as would have felled an european troop of horse to the earth, ordering him to be taken from the table. but being afraid the boy might owe me a spight, and well remembring how mischievous all children among us naturally are to sparrows, rabbits, young kittens, and puppy dogs, i fell on my knees, and pointing to the boy, made my master to understand, as well as i could, that i desired his son might be pardoned. the father complied, and the lad took his seat again; whereupon i went to him and kissed his hand, which my master took, and made him stroke me gently with it. in the midst of dinner, my mistress's favourite cat leapt into her lap. i heard a noise behind me like that of a dozen stocking-weavers at work; and turning my head, i found it proceeded from the purring of this animal, who seemed to be three times larger than an ox, as i computed by the view of her head, and one of her paws, while her mistress was feeding and stroaking her. the fierceness of this creature's countenance altogether discomposed me; though i stood at the further end of the table, above fifty foot off, and altho' my mistress held her fast for fear she might give a spring, and seize me in her talons. but it happened there was no danger; for the cat took not the least notice of me when my master placed me within three yards of her. and as i have been always told, and found true by experience in my travels, that flying, or discovering fear before a fierce animal, is a certain way to make it pursue or attack you, so i resolved in this dangerous juncture to shew no manner of concern. i walked with intrepidity five or six times before the very head of the cat, and came within half a yard of her; whereupon she drew herself back, as if she were more afraid of me: i had less apprehension concerning the dogs, whereof three or four came into the room, as it is usual in farmers' houses; one of which was a mastiff, equal in bulk to four elephants, and a greyhound, somewhat taller than the mastiff, but not so large. when dinner was almost done, the nurse came in with a child of a year old in her arms, who immediately spied me, and began a squall that you might have heard from london-bridge to chelsea, after the usual oratory of infants, to get me for a play-thing. the mother out of pure indulgence took me up, and put me towards the child, who presently seized me by the middle, and got my head in his mouth, where i roared so loud that the urchin was frightened, and let me drop, and i should infallibly have broke my neck if the mother had not held her apron under me. the nurse to quiet her babe made use of a rattle, which was a kind of hollow vessel filled with great stones, and fastned by a cable to the child's wast: but all in vain, so that she was forced to apply the last remedy, by giving it suck. i must confess no object ever disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous breast, which i cannot tell what to compare with, so as to give the curious reader an idea of its bulk, shape and colour. it stood prominent six foot, and could not be less than sixteen in circumference. the nipple was about half the bigness of my head, and the hew both of that and the dug so varified with spots, pimples and freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous: for i had a near sight of her, she sitting down the more conveniently to give suck, and i standing on the table. this made me reflect upon the fair skins of our english ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size, and their defects not to be seen but through a magnifying-glass, where we find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough and coarse, and ill coloured. i remember when i was at lilliput, the complexion of those diminutive people appeared to me the fairest in the world; and talking upon this subject with a person of learning there, who was an intimate friend of mine, he said that my face appeared much fairer and smoother when he looked on me from the ground, than it did upon a nearer view when i took him up in my hand, and brought him close, which he confessed was at first a very shocking sight. he said he could discover great holes in my skin; that the stumps of my beard were ten times stronger than the bristles of a boar, and my complexion made up of several colours altogether disagreeable: although i must beg leave to say for my self, that i am as fair as most of my sex and country, and very little sun-burnt by all my travels. on the other side, discoursing of the ladies in that emperor's court, he used to tell me, one had freckles, another too wide a mouth, a third too large a nose, nothing of which i was able to distinguish. i confess this reflection was obvious enough; which however i could not forbear, lest the reader might think those vast creatures were actually deformed: for i must do them justice to say they are a comely race of people; and particularly the features of my master's countenance, although he were but a farmer, when i beheld him from the height of sixty foot, appeared very well proportioned. when dinner was done, my master went out to his labourers, and as i could discover by his voice and gesture, gave his wife a strict charge to take care of me. i was very much tired, and disposed to sleep, which my mistress perceiving, she put me on her own bed, and covered me with a clean white handkerchief, larger and coarser than the main-sail of a man of war. i slept about two hours, and dreamed i was at home with my wife and children, which aggravated my sorrows when i awakened and found myself alone in a vast room, between two and three hundred foot wide, and above two hundred high, lying in a bed twenty yards wide. my mistress was gone about her household affairs, and had locked me in. the bed was eight yards from the floor. some natural necessities required me to get down; i durst not presume to call, and if i had, it would have been in vain, with such a voice as mine, at so great a distance from the room where i lay to the kitchen where the family kept. while i was under these circumstances, two rats crept up the curtains, and ran smelling backwards and forwards on the bed. one of them came up almost to my face, whereupon i rose in a fright, and drew out my hanger to defend my self. these horrible animals had the boldness to attack me on both sides, and one of them held his fore-feet at my collar; but i had the good fortune to rip up his belly before he could do me any mischief. he fell down at my feet, and the other, seeing the fate of his comrade, made his escape, but not without one good wound on the back, which i gave him as he fled, and made the blood run trickling from him. after this exploit, i walked gently to and fro on the bed, to recover my breath and loss of spirits. these creatures were of the size of a large mastiff, but infinitely more nimble and fierce; so that if i had taken off my belt before i went to sleep, i must have infallibly been torn to pieces and devoured. i measured the tail of the dead rat, and found it to be two yards long, wanting an inch; but it went against my stomach to drag the carcass off the bed, where it lay still bleeding; i observed it had yet some life, but with a strong slash cross the neck, i thoroughly dispatched it. soon after my mistress came into the room, who seeing me all bloody, ran and took me up in her hand. i pointed to the dead rat, smiling and making other signs to shew i was not hurt, whereat she was extremely rejoyced, calling the maid to take up the dead rat with a pair of tongs, and throw it out of the window. then she set me on a table, where i shewed her my hanger all bloody, and wiping it on the lappet of my coat, returned it to the scabbard. i was pressed to do more than one thing, which another could not do for me, and therefore endeavored to make my mistress understand that i desired to be set down on the floor; which after she had done, my bashfulness would not suffer me to express myself farther than by pointing to the door, and bowing several times. the good woman with much difficulty at last perceived what i would be at, and taking me up again in her hand, walked into the garden, where she set me down. i went on one side about two hundred yards, and beckoning to her not to look or to follow me, i hid myself between two leaves of sorrel and there discharged the necessities of nature. i hope the gentle reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and the like particulars; which however insignificant they may appear to grovelling vulgar minds, yet will certainly help a philosopher to enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of publick as well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting this and other accounts of my travels to the world; wherein i have been chiefly studious of truth, without affecting any ornaments of learning or of style. but the whole scene of this voyage made so strong an impression on my mind, and is so deeply fixed in my memory, that in committing it to paper, i did not omit one material circumstance: however, upon a strict review, i blotted out several passages of less moment which were in my first copy, for fear of being censured as tedious and trifling, whereof travellers are often, perhaps not without justice, accused. chapter ii. a description of the farmer's daughter. the author carried to a markettown, and then to the metropolis. the particulars of his journey. my mistress had a daughter of nine years old, a child of towardly parts for her age, very dextrous at her needle, and skilful in dressing her baby. her mother and she contrived to fit up the baby's cradle for me against night: the cradle was put into a small drawer of a cabinet, and the drawer placed upon a hanging shelf for fear of the rats. this was my bed all the time i stayed with those people, though made more convenient by degrees, as i began to learn their language, and make my wants known. this young girl was so handy, that after i had once or twice pulled off my cloaths before her, she was able to dress and undress me, though i never gave her that trouble when she would let me do either my self. she made me seven shirts, and some other linnen, of as fine cloth as could be got, which indeed was coarser than sackcloth; and these she constantly washed for me with her own hands. she was likewise my school-mistress to teach me the language: when i pointed to any thing, she told me the name of it in her own tongue, so that in a few days i was able to call for whatever i had a mind to. she was very good natured, and not above forty foot high, being little for her age. she gave me the name of grildrig, which the family took up, and afterwards the whole kingdom. the word imports what the latins call nanunculus, the italians homunceletino, and the english mannikin. to her i chiefly owe my preservation in that country: we never parted while i was there; i called her my glumdalclitch, or little nurse: and i should be guilty of great ingratitute if i omitted this honourable mention of her care and affection towards me, which i heartily wish it lay in my power to requite as she deserves, instead of being the innocent but unhappy instrument of her disgrace, as i have too much reason to fear. it now began to be known and talked of in the neighbourhood, that my master had found a strange animal in the fields, about the bigness of a splacknuck, but exactly shaped in every part like a human creature; which it likewise imitated in all its actions; seemed to speak in a little language of its own, had already learned several words of theirs, went erect upon two legs, was tame and gentle, would come when it was called, do whatever it was bid, had the finest limbs in the world, and a complexion fairer than a nobleman's daughter of three years old. another farmer who lived hard by, and was a particular friend of my master, came on a visit on purpose to inquire into the truth of this story. i was immediately produced, and placed upon a table, where i walked as i was commanded, drew my hanger, put it up again, made my reverence to my master's guest, asked him in his own language how he did, and told him he was welcome, just as my little nurse had instructed me. this man, who was old and dimsighted, put on his spectacles to behold me better, at which i could not forbear laughing very heartily, for his eyes appeared like the fullmoon shining into a chamber at two windows. our people, who discovered the cause of my mirth, bore me company in laughing, at which the old fellow was fool enough to be angry and out of countenance. he had the character of a great miser; and to my misfortune he well deserved it by the cursed advice he gave my master to shew me as a sight upon a market-day in the next town, which was half an hour's riding, about two and twenty miles from our house. i guessed there was some mischief contriving, when i observed my master and his friend whispering long together, sometimes pointing at me; and my fears made me fancy that i overheard and understood some of their words. but the next morning glumdalclitch, my little nurse, told me the whole matter, which she had cunningly picked out from her mother. the poor girl laid me on her bosom, and fell a weeping with shame and grief. she apprehended some mischief would happen to me from rude vulgar folks, who might squeeze me to death, or break one of my limbs by taking me in their hands. she had also observed how modest i was in my nature, how nicely i regarded my honour, and what an indignity i should conceive it to be exposed for money as a publick spectacle to the meanest of the people. she said, her papa and mamma had promised that grildrig should be hers; but now she found they meant to serve her as they did last year, when they pretended to give her a lamb; and yet, as soon as it was fat, sold it to a butcher. for my own part, i may truly affirm that i was less concerned than my nurse. i had a strong hope, which never left me, that i should one day recover my liberty; and as to the ignominy of being carried about for a monster, i considered my self to be a perfect stranger in the country; and that such a misfortune could never be charged upon me as a reproach, if ever i should return to england; since the king of great britain himself, in my condition, must have undergone the same distress. my master, pursuant to the advice of his friend, carried me in a box the next market-day to the neighboring town; and took along with him his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion behind him. the box was close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a few gimlet-holes to let in air. the girl had been so careful to put the quilt of her baby's bed into it, for me to lye down on. however, i was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though it were but of half an hour. for the horse went about forty foot at every step, and trotted so high, that the agitation was equal to the rising and falling of a ship in a great storm, but much more frequent: our journey was somewhat further than from london to st. albans. my master alighted at an inn which he used to frequent; and after consulting a while with the inn-keeper, and making some necessary preparations, he hired the grultrud, or cryer, to give notice through the town of a strange creature to be seen at the sign of the green eagle, not so big as a splacknuck (an animal in that country very finely shaped, about six foot long) and in every part of the body resembling an human creature, could speak several words, and perform an hundred diverting tricks. i was placed upon a table in the largest room of the inn, which might be near three hundred foot square. my little nurse stood on a low stool close to the table, to take care of me, and direct what i should do. my master, to avoid a croud, would suffer only thirty people at a time to see me. i walked about on the table as the girl commanded; she asked me questions as far as she knew my understanding of the language reached, and i answered them as loud as i could. i turned about several times to the company, paid my humble respects, said they were welcome, and used some other speeches i had been taught. i took up a thimble filled with liquor, which glumdalclitch had given me for a cup, and drank their health. i drew out my hanger, and flourished it after the manner of fencers in england. my nurse gave me part of a straw, which i exercised as a pike, having learned the art in my youth. i was that day shewn to twelve sets of company; and as often forced to go over again with the same fopperies, till i was half dead with weariness and vexation. for those who had seen me made such wonderful reports, that the people were ready to break down the doors to come in. my master for his own interest would not suffer any one to touch me except my nurse; and, to prevent danger, benches were set around the table at such a distance, as put me out of every body's reach. however, an unlucky school-boy aimed a hazel-nut directly at my head, which very narrowly missed me; otherwise, it came with so much violence, that it would have infallibly knocked out my brains, for it was almost as large as a small pumpion: but i had the satisfaction to see the young rogue well beaten, and turned out of the room. my master gave publick notice that he would shew me again the next marketday: and in the mean time he prepared a more convenient vehicle for me, which he had reason enough to do; for i was so tired with my first journey, and with entertaining company for eight hours together, that i could hardly stand upon my legs, or speak a word. it was at least three days before i recovered my strength; and that i might have no rest at home, all the neighbouring gentlemen from an hundred miles round, hearing of my fame, came to see me at my master's own house. there could not be fewer than thirty persons with their wives and children; (for the country is very populous); and my master demanded the rate of a full room whenever he shewed me at home, although it were only to a single family. so that for some time i had but little ease every day of the week (except wednesday, which is their sabbath) although i were not carried to the town. my master, finding how profitable i was likely to be, resolved to carry me to the most considerable cities of the kingdom. having therefore provided himself with all things necessary for a long journey, and settled his affairs at home; he took leave of his wife, and upon the 17th of august 1703, about two months after my arrival, we set out for the metropolis, situated near the middle of that empire, and about three thousand miles distance from our house: my master made his daughter glumdalclitch ride behind him. she carried me on her lap in a box tied about her waist. the girl had lined it on all sides with the softest cloth she could get, well quilted underneath; furnished it with her baby's bed, provided me with linnen and other necessaries, and made everything as convenient as she could. we had no other company but a boy of the house, who rode after us with the luggage. my master's design was to shew me in all the towns by the way, and to step out of the road for fifty or an hundred miles, to any village or person of quality's house where he might expect custom. we made easy journies of not above seven or eight score miles a day: for glumdalclitch, on purpose to spare me, complained she was tired with the trotting of the horse. she often took me out of my box at my own desire, to give me air, and shew me the country; but always held me fast by leading-strings. we passed over five or six rivers many degrees broader and deeper than the nile or the ganges; and there was hardly a rivulet so small as the thames at london-bridge. we were ten weeks in our journey, and i was shewn in eighteen large towns besides many villages and private families. on the 26th day of october, we arrived at the metropolis, called in their language lorbrulgrud, or pride of the universe. my master took a lodging in the principal street of the city, not far from the royal palace, and put out bills in the usual form, containing an exact description of my person and parts. he hired a large room between three and four hundred foot wide. he provided a table sixty foot in diameter, upon which i was to act my part; and palisadoed it round three foot from the edge, and as many high, to prevent my falling over. i was shewn ten times a day to the wonder and satisfaction of all people. i could now speak the language tolerably well; and perfectly understood every word that was spoken to me. besides, i had learned their alphabet, and could make a shift to explain a sentence here and there; for glumdalclitch had been my instructer while we were at home, and at leisure hours during our journey. she carried a little book in her pocket, not much larger than a sanson's atlas; it was a common treatise for the use of young girls, giving a short account of their religion; out of this she taught me my letters, and interpreted the words. chapter iii. the author sent for to court. the queen buys him of his master the farmer, and presents him to the king. he disputes with his majesty's great scholars. an apartment at court provided for the author. he is in high favour with the queen. he stands up for the honour of his own country. his quarrels with the queen's dwarf. the frequent labours i underwent every day made in a few weeks a very considerable change in my health: the more my master got by me, the more unsatiable he grew. i had quite lost my stomach, and was almost reduced to a skeleton. the farmer observed it, and concluding i soon must dye, resolved to make as good a hand of me as he could. while he was thus reasoning and resolving with himself, a slardral, or gentleman usher came from court, commanding my master to carry me immediately thither for the diversion of the queen and her ladies. some of the latter had already been to see me, and reported strange things of my beauty, behaviour, and good sense. her majesty and those who attended her were beyond measure delighted with my demeanor. i fell on my knees, and begged the honour of kissing her imperial foot; but this gracious princess held out her little finger towards me (after i was set on a table) which i embraced in both my arms, and put the tip of it, with the utmost respect, to my lip. she made me some general questions about my country and my travels, which i answer'd as distinctly and in as few words as i could. she asked whether i would be content to live at court. i bowed down to the board of the table, and humbly answered, that i was my master's slave, but if i were at my own disposal, i should be proud to devote my life to her majesty's service. she then asked my master whether he were willing to sell me at a good price. he who apprehended i could not live a month, was ready enough to part with me, and demanded a thousand pieces of gold, which were ordered him on the spot, each piece being about the bigness of eight hundred moydores; but, allowing for the proportion of all things between that country and europe, and the high price of gold among them, was hardly so great a sum as a thousand guineas would be in england. i then said to the queen, since i was now her majesty's most humble creature and vassal, i must beg the favour, that glumdalclitch, who had always tended me with so much care and kindness, and understood to do it so well, might be admitted into her service, and continue to be my nurse and instructor. her majesty agreed to my petition, and easily got the farmer's consent, who was glad enough to have his daughter preferred at court: and the poor girl herself was not able to hide her joy: my late master withdrew, bidding me farewell, and saying he had left me in a good service; to which i replied not a word, only making him a slight bow. the queen observed my coldness, and when the farmer was gone out of the apartment, asked me the reason. i made bold to tell her majesty that i owed no other obligation to my late master, than his not dashing out the brains of a poor harmless creature found by chance in his field; which obligation was amply recompensed by the gain he had made in shewing me through half the kingdom, and the price he had now sold me for. that the life i had since led, was laborious enough to kill an animal of ten times my strength. that my health was much impaired by the continual drudgery of entertaining the rabble every hour of the day, and that if my master had not thought my life in danger, her majesty perhaps would not have got so cheap a bargain. but as i was out of all fear of being ill treated under the protection of so great and good an empress, the ornament of nature, the darling of the world, the delight of her subjects, the phoenix of the creation; so, i hoped my late master's apprehensions would appear to be groundless, for i already found my spirits to revive by the influence of her most august presence. this was the sum of my speech, delivered with great improprieties and hesitation; the latter part was altogether framed in the style peculiar to that people, whereof i learned some phrases from glumdalclitch, while she was carrying me to court. the queen giving great allowance for my defectiveness in speaking, was however surprised at so much wit and good sense in so diminutive an animal. she took me in her own hands, and carried me to the king, who was then retired to his cabinet. his majesty, a prince of much gravity, and austere countenance, not well observing my shape at first view, asked the queen after a cold manner, how long it was since she grew fond of a splacknuck; for such it seems he took me to be, as i lay upon my breast in her majesty's right hand. but this princess, who has an infinite deal of wit and humour, set me gently on my feet upon the scrutore, and commanded me to give his majesty an account of my self, which i did in a very few words; and glumdalclitch, who attended at the cabinet door, and could not endure i should be out of her sight, being admitted, confirmed all that had passed from my arrival at her father's house. the king, although he be as learned a person as any in his dominions, and had been educated in the study of philosophy, and particularly mathematicks; yet when he observed my shape exactly, and saw me walk erect, before i began to speak, conceived i might be a piece of clock-work, (which is in that country arrived to a very great perfection), contrived by some ingenious artist. but when he heard my voice, and found what i delivered to be regular and rational, he could not conceal his astonishment. he was by no means satisfied with the relation i gave him of the manner i came into his kingdom, but thought it a story concerted between glumdalclitch and her father, who had taught me a set of words to make me sell at a higher price. upon this imagination he put several other questions to me, and still received rational answers, no otherwise defective than by a foreign accent, and an imperfect knowledge in the language, with some rustick phrases which i had learned at the farmer's house, and did not suit the polite stile of a court. his majesty sent for three great scholars who were then in their weekly waiting (according to the custom in that country). these gentlemen, after they had a while examined my shape with much nicety, were of different opinions concerning me. they all agreed that i could not be produced according to the regular laws of nature, because i was not framed with a capacity of preserving my life, either by swiftness, or climbing of trees, or digging holes in the earth. they observed by my teeth, which they viewed with great exactness, that i was a carnivorous animal; yet most quadrupeds being an overmatch for me, and field-mice, with some others, too nimble, they could not imagine how i should be able to support my self, unless i fed upon snails and other insects, which they offered, by many learned arguments, to evince that i could not possibly do. one of these virtuosi seemed to think that i might be an embrio, or abortive birth. but this opinion was rejected by the other two, who observed my limbs to be perfect and finished, and that i had lived several years, as it was manifested from my beard, the stumps whereof they plainly discovered through a magnifying-glass. they would not allow me to be a dwarf, because my littleness was beyond all degrees of comparison; for the queen's favourite dwarf, the smallest ever known in that kingdom, was near thirty foot high. after much debate, they concluded unanimously that i was only relplum scalcath, which is interpreted literally, lusus natur¾; a determination exactly agreeable to the modern philosophy of europe, whose professors, disdaining the old evasion of occult causes, whereby the followers of artistotle endeavor in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this wonderful solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable advancement of human knowledge. after this decisive conclusion, i entreated to be heard a word or two. i applied my self to the king, and assured his majesty that i came from a country which abounded with several millions of both sexes, and of my own stature; where the animals, trees, and houses were all in proportion, and where by consequence i might be as able to defend my self, and to find sustenance, as any of his majesty's subjects could do here; which i took for a full answer to those gentlemens arguments. to this they only replied with a smile of contempt, saying that the farmer had instructed me very well in my lesson. the king, who had a much better understanding, dismissing his learned men, sent for the farmer, who by good fortune was not yet gone out of town. having therefore first examined him privately, and then confronted him with me and the young girl, his majesty began to think that what we told him might possibly be true. he desired the queen to order that a particular care should be taken of me, and was of opinion that glumdalclitch should still continue in her office of tending me, because he observed we had a great affection for each other. a convenient apartment was provided for her at court; she had a sort of governess appointed to take care of her education, a maid to dress her, and two other servants for menial offices; but the care of me was wholly appropriated to her self. the queen commanded her own cabinet-maker to contrive a box that might serve me for a bed-chamber, after the model that glumdalclitch and i should agree upon. this man was a most ingenious artist, and according to my directions, in three weeks finished for me a wooden chamber of sixteen foot square, and twelve high, with sash-windows, a door, and two closets, like a london bed-chamber. the board that made the cieling was to be lifted up and down by two hinges, to put in a bed ready furnished by her majesty's upholsterer, which glumdalclitch took out every day to air, made it with her own hands, and letting it down at night, locked up the roof over me. a nice workman, who was famous for little curiosities, undertook to make me two chairs, with backs and frames, of a substance not unlike ivory, and two tables, with a cabinet to put my things in. the room was quilted on all sides, as well as the floor and the cieling, to prevent any accident from the carelessness of those who carried me, and to break the force of a jolt when i went in a coach. i desired a lock for my door, to prevent rats and mice from coming in: the smith, after several attempts, made the smallest that ever was seen among them, for i have known a larger at the gate of a gentleman's house in england. i made a shift to keep the key in a pocket of my own, fearing glumdalclitch might lose it. the queen likewise ordered the thinnest silks that could be gotten, to make me cloaths, not much thicker than an english blanket, very cumbersome till i was accustomed to them. they were after the fashion of the kingdom, partly resembling the persian, and partly the chinese, and are a very grave and decent habit. the queen became so fond of my company, that she could not dine without me. i had a table placed upon the same at which her majesty eat, just at her left elbow, and a chair to sit on. glumdalclitch stood upon a stool on the floor, near my table, to assist and take care of me. i had an entire set of silver dishes and plates, and other necessaries, which in proportion to those of the queen, were not much bigger than what i have seen of the same kind in a london toys-shop, for the furniture of a babyhouse: these my little nurse kept in her pocket in a silver box, and gave me at meals as i wanted them, always cleaning them her self. no person dined with the queen but the two princesses royal, the elder sixteen years old, and the younger at that time thirteen and a month. her majesty used to put a bit of meat upon one of my dishes, out of which i carved for my self; and her diversion was to see me eat in miniature. for the queen (who had indeed but a weak stomach) took up at one mouthful as much as a dozen english farmers could eat at a meal, which to me was for some time a very nauseous sight. she would craunch the wing of a lark, bones and all, between her teeth, although it were nine times as large as that of a full grown turkey; and put a bit of bread into her mouth, as big as two twelve-penny loaves. she drank, out of a golden cup, above a hogshead at a draught. her knives were twice as long as a scythe, set strait upon the handle. the spoons, forks, and other instruments were all in the same proportion. i remember when glumdalclitch carried me out of curiosity to see some of the tables at court, where ten or a dozen of these enormous knives and forks were lifted up together, i thought i had never till then, beheld so terrible a sight. it is the custom that every wednesday (which, as i have before observed, was their sabbath) the king and queen, with the royal issue of both sexes, dine together in the apartment of his majesty, to whom i was now become a great favourite; and at these times my little chair and table were placed at his left hand, before one of the saltsellers. this prince took a pleasure in conversing with me, enquiring into the manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of europe; wherein i gave him the best account i was able. his apprehension was so clear, and his judgment so exact, that he made very wise reflexions and observations upon all i said. but, i confess, that after i had been a little too copious in talking of my own beloved country, of our trade, and wars by sea and land, of our schisms in religion, and parties in the state; the prejudices of his education prevailed so far, that he could not forbear taking me up in his right hand, and stroaking me gently with the other, after an hearty fit of laughing, asked me whether i were a whig or a tory. then turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the main-mast of the royal sovereign, he observed how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects as i: and yet, said he, i dare engage, these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour, they contrive little nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray. and thus he continued on, while my colour came and went several times with indignation to hear our noble country, the mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of france, the arbitress of europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour and truth, the pride and envy of the world, so contemptuously treated. but as i was not in a condition to resent injuries, so, upon mature thoughts, i began to doubt whether i was injured or no. for, after having been accustomed several months to the sight and converse of this people, and observed every object upon which i cast mine eyes to be of proportionable magnitude, the horror i had first conceived from their bulk and aspect was so far worn off, that if i had then beheld a company of english lords and ladies in their finery and birth-day cloaths, acting their several parts in the most courtly manner, of strutting, and bowing, and prating; to say the truth, i should have been strongly tempted to laugh as much at them as the king and his grandees did at me. neither indeed could i forbear smiling at my self, when the queen used to place me upon her hand towards a looking-glass, by which both our persons appeared before me in full view together; and there could nothing be more ridiculous than the comparison: so that i really began to imagine myself dwindled many degrees below my usual size. nothing angered and mortified me so much as the queen's dwarf, who being of the lowest stature that was ever that country (for i verily think he was not thirty foot high) became insolent at seeing a creature so much beneath him, that he would always affect to swagger and look big as he passed by me in the queen's antichamber, while i was standing on some table talking with the lords or ladies of the court, and he seldom failed of a small word or two upon my littleness; against which i could only revenge my self by calling him brother, challenging him to wrestle, and such repartees as are usual in the mouths of court pages. one day at dinner this malicious little cubb was so nettled with something i had said to him, that raising himself upon the frame of her majesty's chair, he took me up by the middle, as i was sitting down, not thinking any harm, and let me drop into a large silver bowl of cream, and then ran away as fast as he could. i fell over head and ears, and if i had not been a good swimmer, it might have gone very hard with me; for glumdalclitch in that instant happened to be at the other end of the room, and the queen was in such a fright that she wanted presence of mind to assist me. but my little nurse ran to my relief, and took me out, after i had swallowed above a quart of cream. i was put to bed; however, i received no other damage than the loss of a suit of cloaths, which was utterly spoiled. the dwarf was soundly whipped, and as a farther punishment, forced to drink up the bowl of cream, into which he had thrown me; neither was he ever restored to favour; for soon after the queen bestowed him to a lady of high quality, so that i saw him no more, to my very great satisfaction; for i could not tell to what extremity such a malicious urchin might have carried his resentment. he had before served me a scurvy trick, which set the queen a laughing, although at the same time she was heartily vexed, and would have immediately cashiered him, if i had not been so generous as to intercede. her majesty had taken a marrow-bone upon her plate, and after knocking out the marrow, placed the bone again in the dish erect as it stood before; the dwarf watching his opportunity, while glumdalclitch was gone to the sideboard, mounted upon the stool she stood on to take care of me at meals, took me up in both hands, and squeezing my legs together, wedged them into the marrow-bone above my wast, where i stuck for some time, and made a very ridiculous figure. i believe it was near a minute before any one knew what was become of me, for i thought it below me to cry out. but, as princes seldom get their meat hot, my legs were not scalded, only my stockings and breeches in a sad condition. the dwarf, at my entreaty, had no other punishment than a sound whipping. i was frequently rallied by the queen upon account of my fearfulness, and she used to ask me whether the people of my country were as great cowards as my self? the occasion was this. the kingdom is much pestered with flies in summer; and these odious insects, each of them as big as a dunstable lark, hardly gave me any rest while i sat at dinner, with their continual humming and buzzing about mine ears. they would sometimes alight upon my victuals, and leave their loathsome excrement or spawn behind, which to me was very visible, though not to the natives of that country, whose large opticks were not so acute as mine in viewing smaller objects. sometimes they would fix upon my nose or forehead, where they stung me to the quick, smelling very offensively, and i could easily trace that viscous matter, which our naturalists tell us enables those creatures to walk with their feet upwards upon a cieling. i had much ado to defend my self against these detestable animals, and could not forbear starting when they came on my face. it was the common practice of the dwarf to catch a number of these insects in his hand, as school-boys do among us, and let them out suddenly under my nose on purpose to frighten me, and divert the queen. my remedy was to cut them in pieces with my knife as they flew in the air, wherein my dexterity was much admired. i remember one morning when glumdalclitch had set me in my box upon a window, as she usually did in fair days to give me air (for i durst not venture to let the box be hung on a nail out of the window, as we do with cages in england) after i had lifted up one of my sashes, and sat down at my table to eat a piece of sweet cake for my breakfast, above twenty wasps, allured by the smell, came flying into the room, humming louder than the drones of as many bagpipes. some of them seized my cake, and carried it piece-meal away, others flew about my head and face, confounding me with the noise, and putting me in the utmost terror of their stings. however i had the courage to rise and draw my hanger, and attack them in the air. i dispatched four of them, but the rest got away, and i presently shut my window. these insects were as large as partridges; i took out their stings, found them an inch and a half long, and as sharp as needles. i carefully preserved them all, and having since shown them with some other curiosities in several parts of europe; upon my return to england i gave three of them to gresham college, and kept the fourth for my self. chapter iv. the country described. a proposal for correcting modern maps. the king's palace, and some account of the metropolis. the author's way of travelling. the chief temple described. i now intend to give the reader a short description of this country, as far as i travelled in it, which was not above two thousand miles round lorbrulgrud the metropolis. for, the queen, whom i always attended, never went further when she accompanied the king in his progresses, and there staid till his majesty returned from viewing his frontiers. the whole extent of this prince's dominions reacheth about six thousand miles in length, and from three to five in breadth. from whence i cannot but conclude that our geographers of europe are in a great error, by supposing nothing but sea between japan and california; for it was ever my opinion, that there must be a balance of earth to counterpoise the great continent of tartary; and therefore they ought to correct their maps and charts, by joining this vast tract of land to the north-west parts of america, wherein i shall be ready to lend them my assistance. the kingdom is a peninsula, terminated to the north-east by a ridge of mountains thirty miles high, which are altogether impassable by reason of the volcanoes upon the tops. neither do the most learned know what sort of mortals inhabit beyond those mountains, or whether they be inhabited at all. on the three other sides it is bounded by the ocean. there is not one sea-port in the whole kingdom, and those parts of the coasts into which the rivers issue, are so full of pointed rocks, and the sea generally so rough, that there is no venturing with the smallest of their boats; so that these people are wholly excluded from any commerce with the rest of the world. but the large rivers are full of vessels, and abound with excellent fish; for they seldom get any from the sea, because the sea-fish are of the same size with those in europe, and consequently not worth catching; whereby it is manifest, that nature in the production of plants and animals of so extraordinary a bulk, is wholly confined to this continent; of which i leave the reasons to be determined by philosophers. however, now and then they take a whale that happens to be dashed against the rocks, which the common people feed on heartily. these whales i have known so large that a man could hardly carry one upon his shoulders; and sometimes for curiosity they are brought in hampers to lorbrulgrud: i saw one of them in a dish at the king's table, which passed for a rarity, but i did not observe he was fond of it; for i think indeed the bigness disgusted him, although i have seen one somewhat larger in greenland. the country is well inhabited, for it contains fifty one cities, near an hundred walled towns, and a great number of villages. to satisfy my curious reader, it may be sufficient to describe lorbrulgrud. this city stands upon almost two equal parts on each side the river that passes through. it contains above eighty thousand houses, and about six hundred thousand inhabitants. it is in length three glonglungs (which make about fifty four english miles) and two and a half in breadth, as i measured it my self in the royal map made by the king's order, which was laid on the ground on purpose for me, and extended an hundred feet; i paced the diameter and circumference several times bare-foot, and computing by the scale, measured it pretty exactly. the king's palace is no regular edifice, but a heap of buildings about seven miles round: the chief rooms are generally two hundred and forty foot high, and broad and long in proportion. a coach was allowed to glumdalclitch and me, wherein her governess frequently took her out to see the town, or go among the shops; and i was always of the party, carried in my box; although the girl at my own desire would often take me out, and hold me in her hand, that i might more conveniently view the houses and the people, as we passed along the streets. i reckoned our coach to be about a square of westminster-hall, but not altogether so high; however, i cannot be very exact. one day the governess ordered our coachman to stop at several shops, where the beggars watching their opportunity, crouded to the sides of the coach, and gave me the most horrible spectacles that ever an english eye beheld. there was a woman with a cancer in her breast, swelled to a monstrous size, full of holes, in two or three of which i could have easily crept, and covered my whole body. there was a fellow with a wen in his neck, larger than five woolpacks; and another with a couple of wooden legs, each about twenty foot high. but the most hateful sight of all was the lice crawling on their cloaths: i could see distinctly the limbs of these vermin with my naked eye, much better than those of an european louse through a microscope, and their snouts with which they rooted like swine. they were the first i had ever beheld, and i should have been curious enough to dissect one of them, if i had proper instruments (which i unluckily left behind me in the ship) although indeed the sight was so nauseous, that it perfectly turned my stomach. besides the large box in which i was usually carried, the queen ordered a smaller one to be made for me, of about twelve foot square, and ten high, for the convenience of travelling; because the other was somewhat too large for glumdalclitch's lap, and cumbersom in the coach; it was made by the same artist, whom i directed in the whole contrivance. this travelling closet was an exact square with a window in the middle of three of the squares, and each window was latticed with iron wire on the outside, to prevent accidents in long journeys. on the fourth side, which had no window, two strong staples were fixed, through which the person that carried me, when i had a mind to be on horseback, put in a leathern belt, and buckled it about his waist. this was always the office of some grave trusty servant in whom i could confide, whether i attended the king and queen in their progresses, or were disposed to see the gardens, or pay a visit to some great lady or minister of state in the court, when glumdalclitch happened to be out of order: for i soon began to be known and esteemed among the greatest officers, i suppose more upon account of their majesties' favour, than any merit of my own. in journeys, when i was weary of the coach, a servant on horseback would buckle my box, and place it on a cushion before him; and there i had a full prospect of the country on three sides from my three windows. i had in this closet a field-bed and a hammock hung from the cieling, two chairs and a table, neatly screwed to the floor, to prevent being tossed about by the agitation of the horse or the coach. and having been long used to sea-voyages, those motions, although sometimes very violent, did not much discompose me. whenever i had a mind to see the town, it was always in my travellingcloset; which glumdalclitch held in her lap in a kind of open sedan, after the fashion of the country, borne by four men, and attended by two others in the queen's livery. the people who had often heard of me, were very curious to croud about the sedan, and the girl was complaisant enough to make the bearers stop, and to take me in her hand that i might be more conveniently seen. i was very desirous to see the chief temple, and particularly the tower belonging to it, which is reckoned the highest in the kingdom. accordingly, one day my nurse carried me thither, but i may truly say i came back disappointed; for, height is not above three thousand foot, reckoning from the ground to the highest pinnacle top; which allowing for the difference between the size of those people, and us in europe, is no great matter for admiration, nor at all equal in proportion, (if i rightly remember) to salisbury steeple. but, not to detract from a nation to which during my life i shall acknowledge myself extremely obliged; it must be allowed, that whatever this famous tower wants in height, is amply made up in beauty and strength. for the walls are near an hundred foot thick, built of hewn stone, whereof each is about forty foot square, and adorned on all sides with statues of gods and emperors cut in marble larger than the life, placed in their several niches. i measured a little finger which had fallen down from one of these statues, and lay unperceived among some rubbish; and found it exactly four foot and an inch in length. glumdalclitch wrapped it up in a handkerchief, and carried it home in her pocket to keep among other trinkets, of which the girl was very fond, as children at her age usually are. the king's kitchen is indeed a noble building, vaulted at top, and about six hundred foot high. the great oven is not so wide by ten paces as the cupola at st. paul's: for i measured the latter on purpose after my return. but if i should describe the kitchen-grate, the prodigious pots and kettles, the joints of meat turning on the spits, with many other particulars, perhaps i should be hardly believed; at least a severe critick would be apt to think i enlarged a little, as travellers are often suspected to do. to avoid which censure, i fear i have run too much into the other extreme; and that if this treatise should happen to be translated into the language of brobdingnag (which is the general name of that kingdom) and transmitted thither; the king and his people would have reason to complain; that i had done them an injury by a false and diminutive representation. his majesty seldom keeps above six hundred horses in his stables: they are generally from fifty four to sixty foot high. but, when he goes abroad on solemn days, he is attended for state by a militia guard of five hundred horse, which indeed i thought was the most splendid sight that could be ever beheld, till i saw part of his army in battalia, whereof i shall find another occasion to speak. chapter v. several adventured that happened to the author. the execution of a criminal. the author shews his skill in navigation. i should have lived happy enough in that country, if my littleness had not exposed me to several ridiculous and troublesome accidents : some of which i shall venture to relate. glumdalclitch often carried me into the gardens of the court in my smaller box, and would sometimes take me out of it and hold me in her hand, or set me down to walk. i remember, before the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one day into those gardens, and my nurse having set me down, he and i being close together, near some dwarf apple trees, i must needs shew my wit by a silly allusion between him and the trees, which happens to hold in their language as it does in ours. whereupon, the malicious rogue watching his opportunity, when i was walking under one of them, shook it directly over my head, by which a dozen apples, each of them near as large as a bristol barrel, came tumbling about my ears; one of them hit me on the back as i chanced to stoop, and knocked me down flat on my face, but i received no other hurt, and the dwarf was pardoned at my desire, because i had given the provocation. another day glumdalclitch left me on a smooth grass-plot to divert my self while she walked at some distance with her governess. in the meantime there suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail, that i was immediately by the force of it struck to the ground: and when i was down, the hail-stones gave me such cruel bangs all over the body, as if i had been pelted with tennis balls; however i made a shift to creep on all four, and shelter myself by lying flat on my face on the lee-side of a border of lemon thyme, but so bruised from head to foot that i could not go abroad in ten days. neither is this at all to be wondered at, because nature in that country observing the same proportion thro' all her operations, a hailstone is near eighteen hundred times as large as one in europe, which i can assert upon experience, having been so curious to weigh and measure them. but, a more dangerous accident happened to me in the same garden, when my little nurse believing she had put me in a secure place, which i often entreated her to do, that might enjoy my own thoughts, and having left my box at home to avoid the trouble of carrying it, went to another part of the garden with her governess and some ladies of her acquaintance. while she was absent and out of hearing, a small white spaniel belonging to one of the chief gardiners, having got by accident into the garden, happened to range near the place where i lay. the dog following the scent, came directly up, and taking me in his mouth, ran strait to his master, wagging his tail, and set me gently on the ground. by good fortune he had been so well taught, that i was carried between his teeth without the least hurt, or even tearing my cloaths. but, the poor gardiner, who knew me well, and had a great kindness for me, was in a terrible fright. he gently took me up in both his hands, and asked me how i did; but i was so amazed and out of breath, that i could not speak a word. in a few minutes i came to my self, and he carried me safe to my little nurse, who by this time had returned to the place where she left me, and was in cruel agonies when i did not appear, nor answer when she called; she severely reprimanded the gardener on account of his dog. but, the thing was hushed up, and never known at court; for the girl was afraid of the queen's anger; and truly as to my self, i thought it would not be for my reputation that such a story should go about. this accident absolutely determined glumdalclitch never to trust me abroad for the future out of her sight. i had been long afraid of this resolution; and therefore concealed from her some little unlucky adventures that happened in those times when i was left by my self. once a kite hovering over the garden, made a stoop at me, and if i had not resolutely drawn my hanger, and run under a thick espalier, he would have certainly carried me away in his talons. another time, walking to the top of a fresh mole-hill, i fell to my neck in the hole through which that animal had cast up the earth; and coined some lye, not worth remembering, to excuse my self for spoiling my cloaths. i likewise broke my right shin against the shell of a snail, which i happened to stumble over, as i was walking alone, and thinking on poor england. i cannot tell whether i were more pleased or mortified, to observe in those solitary walks, that the smaller birds did not appear to be at all afraid of me; but would hop about within a yard distance, looking for worms, and other food with as much indifference and security as if no creature at all were near them. i remember a thrush had the confidence to snatch out of my hand with his bill a piece of cake that glumdalclitch had just given me for my breakfast. when i attempted to catch any of these birds, they would boldly turn against me, endeavoring to pick my fingers, which i durst not venture within their reach; and then they would hop back unconcerned to hunt for worms or snails, as they did before. but, one day i took a thick cudgel, and threw it with all my strength so luckily at a linnet, that i knocked him down, and seizing him by the neck with both my hands, ran with him in triumph to my nurse. however, the bird, who had only been stunned, recovering himself, gave me so many boxes with his wings on both sides of my head and body, though i held him at arms length, and was out of the reach of his claws, that i was twenty times thinking to let him go. but i was soon relieved by one of our servants, who wrung off the bird's neck; and i had him next day for dinner, by the queen's command. this linnet, as near as i can remember, seemed to be somewhat larger than an english swan. the maids of honour often invited glumdalclitch to their apartments, and desired she would bring me along with her, on purpose to have the pleasure of seeing and touching me. they would often strip me naked from top to toe, and lay me at full length in their bosoms; wherewith i was much disgusted; because, to say the truth, a very offensive smell came from their skins; which i do not mention or intend to the disadvantage of those excellent ladies, for whom i have all manner of respect; but, i conceive that my sense was more acute in proportion to my littleness, and that those illustrious persons were no more disagreeable to their lovers, or to each other, than people of the same quality are with us in england. and, after all, i found their natural smell was much more supportable than when they used perfumes, under which i immediately swooned away. i cannot forget that an intimate friend of mine in lilliput took the freedom in a warm day, when i had used a good deal of exercise, to complain of a strong smell about me, although i am as little faulty that way as most of my sex: but i suppose his faculty of smelling was as nice with regard to me, as mine was to that of this people. upon this point, i cannot forbear doing justice to the queen my mistress, and glumdalclitch my nurse, whose persons were as sweet as those of any lady in england. that which gave me most uneasiness among these maids of honour, when my nurse carried me to visit them, was to see them use me without any manner of ceremony, like a creature who had no sort of consequence. for, they would strip themselves to the skin, and put on their smocks in my presence, while i was placed on their toylet directly before their naked bodies, which, i am sure, to me was very far from being a tempting sight, or from giving me any other emotions than those of horror and disgust. their skins appeared so coarse and uneven, so variously coloured, when i saw them near, with a mole here and there as broad as a trencher, and hairs hanging from it thicker than pack-threads, to say nothing further concerning the rest of their persons. neither did they at all scruple, while i was by to discharge what they had drunk, to the quantity of at least two hogsheads, in a vessel that held above three tuns. the handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant frolicksome girl of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her nipples, with many other tricks, wherein the reader will excuse me for not being over particular. but i was so much displeased, that i entreated glumdalclitch to contrive some excuse for not seeing that young lady any more. one day, a young gentleman, who was a nephew to my nurse's governess, came and pressed them both to see an execution. it was of a man who had murdered one of that gentleman's intimate acquaintance. glumdalclitch was prevailed on to be of the company, very much against her inclination, for she was naturally tender-hearted: and, as for my self, although i abhorred such kind of spectacles, yet my curiosity tempted me to see something that i thought must be extraordinary. the malefactor was fixed in a chair upon a scaffold erected for the purpose, and his head cut off at a blow with a sword of about forty foot long. the veins and arteries spouted up such a prodigious quantity of blood, and so high in the air, that the great jett d'eau at versailles was not equal, for the time it lasted; and the head, when it fell on the scaffold-floor, gave such a bounce, as made me start, although i were at least half an english mile distant. the queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-voyages, and took all occasions to divert me when i was melancholy, asked me whether i understood how to handle a sail, or an oar, and whether a little exercise of rowing might not be convenient for my health. i answered, that i understood both very well: for, although my proper employment had been to be surgeon or doctor to the ship, yet upon a pinch, i was forced to work like a common mariner. but i could not see how this could be done in their country, where the smallest wherry was equal to a first-rate man of war among us, and such a boat as i could manage would never live in any of their rivers. her majesty said, if i would contrive a boat, her own joiner should make it, and she would provide a place for me to sail in. the fellow was an ingenious workman, and, by my instructions, in ten days finished a pleasure-boat, with all its tackling, able conveniently to hold eight europeans. when it was finished, the queen was so delighted, that she ran with it in her lap to the king, who ordered it to be put in a cistern full of water, with me in it, by way of tryal; where i could not manage my two sculls, or little oars, for want of room. but the queen had before contrived another project. she ordered the joiner to make a wooden trough of three hundred foot long, fifty broad, and eight deep; which being well pitched to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor along the wall, in an outer room of the palace. it had a cock near the bottom to let out the water when it began to grow stale, and two servants could easily fill it in half an hour. here i often used to row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well entertained with my skill and agility. sometimes i would put up my sail, and then my business was only to steer, while the ladies gave me a gale with their fans; and when they were weary, some of the pages would blow my sail forward with their breath, while i showed my art steering starboard or larboard as i pleased. when i had done, glumdalclitch always carried my boat into her closet, and hung it on a nail to dry. in this exercise i once met an accident which had like to have cost me my life: for, one of the pages having put my boat into the trough, the governess, who attended glumdalclitch very officiously lifted me up to place me in the boat, but i happened to slip through her fingers, and should have infallibly fallen down forty foot upon the floor, if by the luckiest chance in the world, i had not been stopp'd by a corking-pin that stuck in the good gentlewoman's stomacher; the head of the pin passed between my shirt and the waistband of my breeches, and thus i was held by the middle in the air till glumdalclitch ran to my relief. another time, one of the servants, whose office it was to fill my trough every third day with fresh water, was so careless to let a huge frog (not perceiving it) slip out of his pail. the frog lay concealed till i was put into my boat, but then seeking a resting place, climbed up, and made it lean so much on one side, that i was forced to balance it with all my weight on the other, to prevent overturning. when the frog was got in, it hopped at once half the length of the boat, and then over my head, backwards and forwards, daubing my face and clothes with its odious slime. the largeness of its features made it appear the most deformed animal that can be conceived. however, i desired glumdalclitch to let me deal with it alone. i banged it a good while with one of my sculls, and at last forced it to leap out of the boat. but the greatest danger i ever underwent in that kingdom was from a monkey, who belonged to one of the clerks of the kitchen. glumdalclitch had locked me up in her closet, while she went somewhere upon business, or a visit. the weather being very warm, the closet-window was left open, as well as the windows and the door of my bigger box, in which i usually lived, because of its largeness and conveniency. as i sat quietly meditating at my table, i heard something bounce in at the closetwindow, and skip about from one side to the other; whereat, although i was much alarmed, yet i ventured to look out, but not stirring from my seat; and then i saw this frolicksome animal, frisking and leaping up and down, till at last he came to my box, which he seemed to view with great pleasure and curiosity, peeping in at the door and every window. i retreated to the farther corner of my room, or box, but the monkey looking in at every side, put me into such a fright, that i wanted presence of mind to conceal my self under the bed, as i might easily have done. after some time spent in peeping, grinning, and chattering, he at last espied me, and reaching one of his paws in at the door, as a cat does when she plays with a mouse, although i often shifted place to avoid him, he at length seized the lappet of my coat (which being made of that country cloth, was very thick and strong,) and dragged me out. he took me up in his right fore-foot, and held me as a nurse does a child she is going to suckle, just as i have seen the same sort of creature do with a kitten in europe: and when i offered to struggle, he squeezed me so hard, that i thought it more prudent to submit. i have good reason to believe that he took me for a young one of his own species, by his often stroaking my face very gently with his other paw. in these diversions he was interrupted by a noise at the closet door, as if some body were opening it; whereupon he suddenly leaped up to the window at which he had come in, and thence upon the leads and gutters, walking upon three legs, and holding me in the fourth, till he clamber'd up to a roof that was next to ours. i heard glumdalclitch give a shriek at the moment he was carrying me out. the poor girl was almost distracted: that quarter of the palace was all in an uproar; the servants ran for ladders; the monkey was seen by hundreds in the court, sitting upon the ridge of a building, holding me like a baby in one of his fore-paws, and feeding me with the other, by cramming into my mouth some victuals he had squeezed out of the bag on one side of his chaps, and patting me when i would not eat; whereat many of the rabble below could not forbear laughing; neither do i think they justly ought to be blamed, for without question the sight was ridiculous enough to every body but my self. some of the people threw up stones, hoping to drive the monkey down; but this was strictly forbidden, or else very probably my brains had been dashed out. the ladders were now applied, and mounted by several men, which the monkey observing, and finding himself almost encompassed: not being able to make speed enough with his three legs, let me drop on a ridge-tyle, and made his escape. here i sat for some time, three hundred yards from the ground, expecting every moment to be blown down by the wind, or to fall by my own giddiness, and come tumbling over and over from the ridge to the eves: but an honest lad, one of my nurse's footmen, climbed up, and putting me into his breeches pocket, brought me down safe. i was almost choaked with the filthy stuff the monkey had crammed down my throat: but my dear little nurse picked it out of my mouth with a small needle, and then i fell to vomiting, which gave me great relief. yet i was so weak, and bruised in the sides with the squeezes given me by this odious animal, that i was forced to keep my bed a fortnight. the king, queen, and all the court, sent every day to enquire after my health, and her majesty made me several visits during my sickness. the monkey was killed, and an order made that no such animal should be kept about the palace. when i attended the king after my recovery, to return him thanks for his favours, he was pleased to rally me a good deal upon this adventure. he asked me what my thoughts and speculations were while i lay in the monkey's paw; how i liked the victuals he gave me; his manner of feeding; and whether the fresh air on the roof had sharpen'd my stomack. he desired to know what i would have done upon such an occasion my own country. i told his majesty, that in europe we had no monkeys, except such as were brought for curiosities from other places, and so small that i could deal with a dozen of them together, if they presumed to attack me. and as for that monstrous animal with whom i was so lately engaged (it was indeed as large as an elephant,) if my fears had suffered me to think so far as to make use of my hanger, (looking fiercely and clapping my hand upon the hilt as i spoke,) when he poked his paw into my chamber, perhaps i should have given him such a wound, as would have made him glad to withdraw it, with more haste than he put it in. this i delivered in a firm tone, like a person who was jealous lest his honour should be called in question. however, my speech produced nothing else besides a loud laughter, which all the respect due to his majesty from those about him could not make them contain. this made me reflect how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor doing himself honour among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him. and yet i have seen the moral of my own behaviour very frequent in england since my return, where a little contemptible varlet, without the least title to birth, person, wit, or common sense, shall presume to look with importance, and put himself upon a foot with the greatest persons of the kingdom. i was every day furnishing the court with some ridiculous story; and glumdalclitch, although she loved me to excess, yet was arch enough to inform the queen, whenever i committed any folly that she thought would be diverting to her majesty. the girl who had been out of order, was carried by her governess to take the air about an hour's distance, or thirty miles from town. they alighted out of the coach near a small footpath in a field, and glumdalclitch setting down my travelling box, i went out of it to walk. there was a cow-dung in the path, and i must needs try my activity by attempting to leap over it. i took a run, but unfortunately jumped short, and found my self just in the middle up to my knees. i waded through with some difficulty, and one of the footmen wiped me as clean as he could with his handkerchief; for i was filthily bemired, and my nurse confined me to my box till we returned home; where the queen was soon informed of what had passed, and the footmen spread it about the court; so that all the mirth, for some days, was at my expense. chapter vi. several contrivances of the author to please the king and queen. he shews his skill in musick. the king enquires into the state of europe, which the author relates to him. the king's observations thereon. i used to attend the king's levee once or twice a week, and had often seen him under the barber's hand, which indeed was at first very terrible to behold: for the razor was almost twice as long as an ordinary scythe. his majesty, according to the custom of the country, was only shaved twice a week. i once prevailed on the barber to give me some of the suds or lather, out of which i picked forty or fifty of the strongest stumps of hair. i then took a piece of fine wood, and cut it like the back of a comb, making several holes in it at equal distance with as small a needle as i could get from glumdalclitch. i fixed in the stumps so artificially, scraping and sloping them with my knife toward the points, that i made a very tolerable comb; which was a seasonable supply, my own being so much broken in the teeth, that it was almost useless: neither did i know any artist in that country so nice and exact, as would undertake to make me another. and this puts me in mind of an amusement wherein i spent many of my leisure hours. i desired the queen's woman to save for me the combings of her majesty's hair, whereof in time i got a good quantity, and consulting with my friend the cabinet-maker, who had received general orders to do little jobbs for me, i directed him to make two chair-frames, no larger than those i had in my box, and then to bore little holes with a fine awl round those parts where i designed the backs and seats; through these holes i wove the strongest hairs i could pick out, just after the manner of cane-chairs in england. when they were finished, i made a present of them to her majesty, who kept them in her cabinet, and used to shew them for curiosities, as indeed they were the wonder of every one that beheld them. the queen would have had me sit upon one of these chairs, but i absolutely refused to obey her, protesting i would rather die a thousand deaths than place a dishonourable part of my body on those precious hairs that once adorned her majesty's head. of these hairs (as i had always a mechanical genius) i likewise made a neat little purse about five foot long, with her majesty's name decyphered in gold letters, which i gave to glumdalclitch, by the queen's consent. to say the truth, it was more for show than use, being not of strength to bear the weight of the larger coins, and therefore she kept nothing in it but some little toys that girls are fond of. the king, who delighted in musick, had frequent consorts at court, to which i was sometimes carried, and set in my box on a table to hear them: but, the noise was so great, that i could hardly distinguish the tunes. i am confident that all the drums and trumpets of a royal army, beating and sounding together just at your ears, could not equal it. my practice was to have my box removed from the places where the performers sat, as far as i could, then to shut the doors and windows of it, and draw the windowcurtains; after which i found their musick not disagreeable. i had learned in my youth to play a little upon the spinet glumdalclitch kept one in her chamber, and a master attended twice a week to teach her: i call it a spinet, because it somewhat resembled that instrument, and was play'd upon in the same manner. a fancy came into my head that i would entertain the king and queen with an english tune upon this instrument. but this appeared extremely difficult: for, the spinet was near sixty foot long, each key being almost a foot wide, so that, with my arms extended, i could not reach to above five keys, and to press them down required a good smart stroak with my fist, which would be too great a labour, and to no purpose. the method i contrived was this. i prepared two round sticks about the bigness of common cudgels; they were thicker at one end than the other, and i covered the thicker ends with a piece of a mouse's skin, that by rapping on them, i might neither damage the tops of the keys, nor interrupt the sound. before the spinet a bench was placed about four foot below the keys, and i was put upon the bench. i ran sideling upon it that way and this, as fast as i could, banging the proper keys with my two sticks, and made a shift to play a jigg, to the great satisfaction of both their majesties: but it was the most violent exercise i ever underwent, and yet i could not strike above sixteen keys, nor, consequently, play the bass and treble together, as other artists do; which was a great disadvantage to my performance. the king, who, as i before observed, was a prince of excellent understanding, would frequently order that i should be brought in my box, and set upon the table in his closet: he would then command me to bring one of my chairs out of the box, and sit down within three yards distance upon the top of the cabinet, which brought me almost to a level with his face. in this manner i had several conversations with him. i one day took the freedom to tell his majesty, that the contempt he discovered towards europe, and the rest of the world, did not seem answerable to those excellent qualities of the mind he was master of. that reason did not extend it self with the bulk of the body: on the contrary, we observed in our country, that the tallest persons were usually least provided with it. that among other animals, bees and ants had the reputation of more industry, art and sagacity, than many of the larger kinds; and that, as inconsiderable as he took me to be, i hoped i might live to do his majesty some signal service. the king heard me with attention, and began to conceive a much better opinion of me than he had ever before. he desired i would give him as exact an account of the government of england, as i possibly could; because, as fond as princes commonly are of their own customs (for so he conjectured of other monarchs, by my former discourses), he should be glad to hear of any thing that might deserve imitation. imagine with thy self, courteous reader, how often i then wished for the tongue of demosthenes or cicero, that might have enabled me to celebrate the praise of my own dear native country in a stile equal to its merits and felicity. i began my discourse by informing his majesty that our dominions consisted of two islands, which composed three mighty kingdoms under one sovereign, beside our plantations in america. i dwelt long upon the fertility of our soil, and the temperature of our climate. i then spoke at large upon the constitution of an english parliament, partly made up of an illustrious body called the house of peers, persons of the noblest blood, and of the most ancient and ample patrimonies. i described that extraordinary care always taken of their education in arts and arms, to qualify them for being counsellors born to the king and kingdom; to have a share in the legislature; to be members of the highest court of judicature, from whence there could be no appeal; and to be champions always ready for the defence of their prince and country, by their valour, conduct, and fidelity. that these were the ornament and bulwark of the kingdom, worthy followers of their most renowned ancestors, whose honour had been the reward of their virtue, from which their posterity were never once known to degenerate. to these we joined several holy persons, as part of that assembly, under the title of bishops, whose peculiar business it is to take care of religion, and of those who instruct the people therein. these were searched, and sought out, through the whole nation, by the prince and his wisest counsellors, among such of the priesthood as were most deservedly distinguished by the sanctity of their lives, and the depth of their erudition; who were indeed the spiritual fathers of the clergy and the people. that, the other part of the parliament consisted of an assembly called the house of commons, who were all principal gentlemen, freely picked and culled out by the people themselves, for their great abilities and love of their country, to represent the wisdom of the whole nation. and these two bodies make up the most august assembly in europe, to whom, in conjunction with the prince, the whole legislature is committed. i then descended to the courts of justice, over which the judges, those venerable sages and interpreters of the law presided, for determining the disputed rights and properties of men, as well as for the punishment of vice, and protection of innocence. i mentioned the prudent management of our treasury; the valour and atchievements of our forces by sea and land. i computed the number of our people, by reckoning how many millions there might be of each religious sect, or political party among us. i did not omit even our sports and pastimes, or any other particular which i thought might redound to the honour of my country. and i finished all with a brief historical account of affairs and events in england for about an hundred years past. this conversation was not ended under five audiences, each of several hours, and the king heard the whole with great attention, frequently taking notes of what i spoke, as well as memorandums of all questions he intended to ask me. when i had put an end to these long discourses, his majesty in a sixth audience consulting his notes, proposed many doubts, queries, and objections, upon every article. he asked what methods were used to cultivate the minds and bodies of our young nobility, and in what kind of business they commonly spent the first and teachable part of their lives. what course was taken to supply that assembly when any noble family became extinct. what qualifications were necessary in those who were to be created new lords: whether the humour of the prince, a sum of money to a court lady or a prime minister, or a design of strengthening a party opposite to the publick interest, ever happened to be motives in those advancements. what share of knowledge these lords had in the laws of their country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to decide the properties of their fellow-subjects in the last resort. whether they were always so free from avarice, partialities, or want, that a bribe, or some other sinister view, could have no place among them. whether those holy lords i spoke of were always promoted to that rank upon account of their knowledge in religious matters, and the sanctity of their lives, had never been compliers with the times while they were common priests, or slavish prostitute chaplains to some nobleman, whose opinions they continued servilely to follow after they were admitted into that assembly. he then desired to know what arts were practiced in electing those whom i called commoners: whether a stranger with a strong purse might not influence the vulgar voters to choose him before their own landlord, or the most considerable gentleman in the neighbourhood. how it came to pass, that people were so violently bent upon getting into this assembly, which i allowed to be a great trouble and expense, often to the ruin of their families, without any salary or pension: because this appeared such an exalted strain of virtue and publick spirit, that his majesty seemed to doubt it might possibly not be always sincere: and he desired to know whether such zealous gentlemen could have any views of refunding themselves for the charges and trouble they were at, by sacrificing the publick good to the designs of a weak and vicious prince in conjunction with a corrupted ministry. he multiplied his questions, and sifted me thoroughly upon every part of this head, proposing numberless enquiries and objections, which i think it not prudent or convenient to repeat. upon what i said in relation to our courts of justice, his majesty desired to be satisfied in several points: and this i was the better able to do, having been formerly almost ruined by a long suit in chancery, which was decreed for me with costs. he asked, what time was usually spent in determining between right and wrong, and what degree of expence. whether advocates and orators had liberty to plead in causes manifestly known to be unjust, vexatious, or oppressive. whether party in religion or politicks were observed to be of any weight in the scale of justice. whether those pleading orators were persons educated in the general knowledge of equity, or only in provincial, national, and other local customs. whether they or their judges had any part in penning those laws which they assumed the liberty of interpreting and glossing upon at their pleasure. whether they had ever at different times pleaded for and against the same cause, and cited precedents to prove contrary opinions. whether they were a rich or a poor corporation. whether they received any pecuniary reward for pleading or delivering their opinions. and particularly whether they were ever admitted as members in the lower senate. he fell next upon the management of our treasury; and said, he thought my memory had failed me, because i computed our taxes at about five or six millions a year, and when i came to mention the issues, he found they sometimes amounted to more than double; for the notes he had taken were very particular in this point, because he hoped, as he told me, that the knowledge of our conduct might be useful to him, and he could not be deceived in his calculations. but, if what i told him were true, he was still at a loss how a kingdom could run out of its estate like a private person. he asked me, who were our creditors; and where we should find money to pay them. he wonder'd to hear me talk of such chargeable and extensive wars; that certainly we must be a quarrelsome people, or live among very bad neighbours, and that our generals must needs be richer than our kings. he asked what business we had out of our own islands, unless upon the score of trade or treaty, or to defend the coasts with our fleet. above all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary standing army in the midst of peace, and among a free people. he said, if we were governed by our own consent in the persons of our representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against whom we were to fight; and would hear my opinion, whether a private man's house might not better be defended by himself, his children, and family, than by half a dozen rascals picked up at a venture in the streets, for small wages, who might get a hundred times more by cutting their throats. he laughed at my odd kind of arithmetick (as he was pleased to call it) in reckoning the numbers of our people by a computation drawn from the several sects among us in religion and politicks. he said, he knew no reason, why those who entertain opinions prejudicial to the publick, should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them. and as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second: for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials. he observed, that among the diversions of our nobility and gentry, i had mentioned gaming. he desired to know at what age this entertainment was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time it employed; whether it ever went so high as to affect their fortunes: whether mean vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might not arrive at great riches, and sometimes keep our very nobles in dependance, as well as habituate them to vile companions, wholly take them from the improvement of their minds, and force them, by the losses they have received, to learn and practice that infamous dexterity upon others. he was perfectly astonished with the historical account i gave him of our affairs during the last century, protesting it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, or ambition could produce. his majesty in another audience was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all i had spoken, compared the questions he made with the answers i had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroaking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which i shall never forget nor the manner he spoke them in: my little friend grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country: you have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice may be sometimes the only ingredients for qualifying a legislator: that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. i observe among you some lines of an institution, which in its original might have been tolerable, but these half erazed, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. it doth not appear from all you have said, how any one virtue is required towards the procurement of any one station among you, much less that men are ennobled on account of their virtue, that priests are advanced for their piety or learning, soldiers for their conduct or valour, judges for their integrity, senators for the love of their country, or counsellors for their wisdom. as for yourself, (continued the king,) who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, i am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. but by what i have gathered from your own relation, and the answers i have with much pain wringed and extorted from you, i cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. chapter vii. the author's love of his country. he makes a proposal of much advantage to the king, which is rejected. the king's great ignorance in politicks. the learning of the country very imperfect and confined. their laws and millitary affairs, and parties in the state. nothing but an extreme love of truth could have hinder'd me from concealing this part of my story. it was in vain to discover my resentments, which were always turned into ridicule; and i was forced to rest with patience while my noble and most beloved country was so injuriously treated. i am heartily sorry as any of my readers can possibly be, that such an occasion was given: but this prince happened to be so curious and inquisitive upon every particular, that it could not consist either with gratitude or good manners to refuse giving him what satisfaction i was able. yet thus much i may be allowed to say in my own vindication, that i artfully eluded many of his questions, and gave to every point a more favourable turn by many degrees than the strictness of truth would allow. for i have always borne that laudable partiality to my own country, which dionysius halicarnassensis with so much justice recommends to an historian : i would hide the frailties and deformities of my political mother, and place her virtues and beauties in the most advantageous light. this was my sincere endeavour in those many discourses i had with that mighty monarch, although it unfortunately failed of success. but great allowances should be given to a king who lives wholly secluded from the rest of the world, and must therefore be altogether unacquainted with the manners and customs that most prevail in other nations: the want of which knowledge will ever produce many prejudices, and a certain narrowness of thinking, from which we and the politer countries of europe are wholly exempted. and it would be hard, indeed, if so remote a prince's notions of virtue and vice were to be offered as a standard for all mankind. to confirm what i have now said, and further, to shew the miserable effects of a confined education, i shall here insert a passage which will hardly obtain belief. in hopes to ingratiate my self farther into his majesty's favour, i told him of an invention discovered between three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into a heap of which the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in a moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up in the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than thunder. that a proper quantity of this powder rammed into a hollow tube of brass or iron, according to its bigness, would drive a ball of iron or lead with such violence and speed, as nothing was able to sustain its force. that the largest balls thus discharged, would not only destroy whole ranks of an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the ground, sink down ships, with a thousand men in each, to the bottom of the sea; and, when linked together by a chain, would cut through masts and rigging, divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste before them. that we often put this powder into large hollow balls of iron, and discharged them by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing out the brains of all who came near. that i knew the ingredients very well, which were cheap, and common; i understood the manner of compounding them, and could direct his workmen how to make those tubes of a size proportionable to all other things in his majesty's kingdom, and the largest need not be above an hundred foot long; twenty or thirty of which tubes, charged with the proper quantity of powder and balls, would batter down the walls of the strongest town in his dominions in a few hours, or destroy the whole metropolis, if ever it should pretend to dispute his absolute commands. this i humbly offered to his majesty, as a small tribute of acknowledgment in return of so many marks that i had received of his royal favour and protection. the king was struck with horror at the description i had given of those terrible engines, and the proposal i had made. he was amazed how so impotent and grovelling an insect as i (these were his expressions) could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation, which i had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines, whereof he said some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver. as for himself, he protested that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet he would rather lose half his kingdom than be privy to such a secret, which he commanded me, as i valued my life, never to mention any more. a strange effect of narrow principles and short views! that a prince possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love, and esteem; of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endued with admirable talents for government, and almost adored by his subjects, should from a nice unnecessary scruple, whereof in europe we can have no conception, let slip an opportunity to put into his hands, that would have made him absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people. neither do i say this with the least intention to detract from the many virtues of that excellent king, whose character i am sensible will on this account be very much lessened in the opinion of an english reader: but i take this defect among them to have risen from their ignorance, they not having hitherto reduced politicks into a science, as the more acute wits of europe have done. for i remember very well, in a discourse one day with the king, when i happened to say there were several thousand books among us written upon the art of government, it gave him (directly contrary to my intention) a very mean opinion of our understandings. he professed both to abominate and despise all mystery, refinement, and intrigue, either in a prince or a minister. he could not tell what i meant by secrets of state, where an enemy or some rival nation were not in the case. he confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds; to common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal causes; with some other obvious topicks, which are not worth considering. and, he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together. the learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in morality, history, poetry, and mathematicks, wherein they must be allowed to excel. but, the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful in life, to the improvement of agriculture and all mechanical arts; so that among us it would be little esteemed. and as to ideas, entities, abstractions and transcendentals, i could never drive the least conception into their heads. no law of that country must exceed in words the number of letters in their alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty. but, indeed, few of them extend even to that length. they are expressed in the most plain and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial enough to discover above one interpretation: and to write a comment upon any law is a capital crime. as to the decision of civil causes, or proceedings against criminals, their precedents are so few, that they have little reason to boast of any extraordinary skill in either. they have had the art of printing, as well as the chinese, time out of mind: but their libraries are not very large; for that of the king's which is reckoned the biggest, doth not amount to above a thousand volumes, placed in a gallery twelve hundred foot long, from whence i had liberty to borrow what books i pleased. the queen's joiner had contrived in one of glumdalclitch's rooms a kind of wooden machine five and twenty foot high, formed like a standing ladder; the steps were each fifty foot long: it was indeed a moveable pair of stairs, the lowest end placed at ten foot distance from the wall of the chamber. the book i had a mind to read was put up leaning against the wall: i first mounted to the upper step of the ladder, and turning my face towards the book, began at the top of the page, and so walking to the right and left about eight or ten paces, according to the length of the lines, till i had gotten a little below the level of mine eyes, and then descending gradually till i came to the bottom: after which i mounted again, and began the other page in the same manner, and so turned over the leaf, which i could easily do with both my hands, for it was as thick and stiff as paste-board, and in the largest folio's not above eighteen or twenty foot long. their stile is clear, masculine, and smooth, but not florid, for they avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words, or using various expressions. i have perused many of their books, especially those in history and morality. among the rest i was much diverted with a little old treatise, which always lay in glumdalclitch's bed-chamber, and belonged to her governess, a grave elderly gentlewoman, who dealt in writings of morality and devotion. the book treats of the weakness of human kind, and is in little esteem, except among the women and the vulgar. however, i was curious to see what an author of that country could say upon such a subject. this writer went through all the usual topicks of european moralists, shewing how diminutive, contemptible, and helpless an animal was man in his own nature; how unable to defend himself from the inclemencies of the air, or the fury of wild beasts: how much he was excelled by one creature in strength, by another in speed, by a third in foresight, by a fourth in industry. he added, that nature was degenerated in these latter declining ages of the world, and could now produce only small abortive births in comparison of those in ancient times. he said, it was very reasonable to think, not only that the species of men were originally much larger, but also, that there must have been giants in former ages, which, as it is asserted by history and tradition, so it has been confirmed by huge bones and skulls casually dug up in several parts of the kingdom, far exceeding the common dwindled race of man in our days. he argued, that the very laws of nature absolutely required we should have been made in the beginning, of a size more large and robust, not so liable to destruction from every little accident of a tile falling from an house, or a stone cast from the hand of a boy, or of being drowned in a little brook. from this way of reasoning, the author drew several moral applications useful in the conduct of life, but needless here to repeat. for my own part, i could not avoid reflecting how universally this talent was spread, of drawing lectures in morality, or, indeed, rather matter of discontent and repining, from the quarrels we raise with nature. and, i believe, upon a strict enquiry, those quarrels might be shewn as ill-grounded among us, as they are among that people. as to their military affairs, they boast that the king's army consists of an hundred and seventy six thousand foot, and thirty two thousand horse: if that may be called an army which is made up of tradesmen in the several cities, and farmers in the country, whose commanders are only the nobility and gentry, without pay or reward. they are, indeed, perfect enough in their exercises, and under very good discipline, wherein i saw no great merit; for how should it be otherwise, where every farmer is under the command of his own landlord, and every citizen under that of the principal men in his own city, chosen after the manner of venice by ballot? i have often seen the militia of lorbrulgrud drawn out to exercise in a great field near the city, of twenty miles square. they were, in all, not above twenty five thousand foot, and six thousand horse; but it was impossible for me to compute their number, considering the space of ground they took up. a cavalier mounted on a large steed, might be about one hundred foot high. i have seen this whole body of horse, upon a word of command, draw their swords at once, and brandish them in the air. imagination can figure nothing so grand, so surprising, and so astonishing: it looked as if ten thousand flashes of lightning were darting at the same time from every quarter of the sky. i was curious to know how this prince, to whose dominions there is no access from any other country, came to think of armies, or to teach his people the practice of military discipline. but i was soon informed, both by conversation and reading their histories: for, in the course of many ages they have been troubled with the same disease, to which the whole race of mankind is subject; the nobility often contending for power, the people for liberty, and the king for absolute dominion. all which, however, happily tempered by the laws of the kingdom, have been sometimes violated by each of the three parties, and have once or more occasioned civil wars, the last whereof was happily put an end to by this prince's grandfather by a general composition; and the militia, then settled with common consent, has been ever since kept in the strictest duty. chapter viii. the king and queen make a progress to the frontiers. the author attends them. the manner in which he leaves the country very particularly related. he returns to england. i had always a strong impulse that i should some time recover my liberty, though it was impossible to conjecture by what means, or to form any project with the least hope of succeeding. the ship in which i sailed was the first ever known to be driven within sight of that coast, and the king had given strict orders, that if at any time another appeared, it should be taken ashore, and, with all its crew and passengers brought in a tumbril to lorbrulgrud. he was strongly bent to get me a woman of my own size, by whom i might propagate the breed: but, i think i should rather have died than undergone the disgrace of leaving a posterity to be kept in cages like tame canary birds, and perhaps, in time, sold about the kingdom to persons of quality for curiosities. i was, indeed, treated with much kindness: i was the favourite of a great king and queen, and the delight of the whole court, but it was upon such a foot as ill became the dignity of human kind. i could never forget those domestick pledges i had left behind me. i wanted to be among people with whom i could converse upon even terms, and walk about the streets and fields without fear of being trodden to death like a frog or a young puppy. but my deliverance came sooner than i expected, and, in a manner not very common: the whole story and circumstances of which, i shall faithfully relate. i had now been two years in this country; and, about the beginning of the third, glumdalclitch and i attended the king and queen in a progress to the south coast of the kingdom. i was carried, as usual, in my travellingbox, which, as i have already described, was a very convenient closet of twelve foot wide. and i had ordered a hammock to be fixed by silken ropes from the four corners at the top, to break the jolts, when a servant carried me before him on horseback, as i sometimes desired, and would often sleep in my hammock while we were upon the road. on the roof of my closet, not directly over the middle of the hammock, i ordered the joyner to cut out a hole a foot square, to give me air in hot weather, as i slept; which hole i shut, at pleasure, with a board that drew backwards and forwards through a groove. when we came to our journey's end, the king thought proper to pass a few days at a palace he hath near flanflasnic, a city within eighteen english miles of the sea-side. glumdalclitch and i were much fatigued; i had gotten a small cold, but the poor girl was so ill as to be confined to her chamber. i longed to see the ocean, which must be the only scene of my escape, if ever it should happen. i pretended to be worse than i really was, and desired leave to take the fresh air of the sea, with a page whom i was very fond of, and who had sometimes been trusted with me. i shall never forget with what unwillingness glumdalclitch consented, nor the strict charge she gave the page to be careful of me, bursting at the same time into a flood of tears, as if she had some foreboding of what was to happen. the boy took me out in my box about half an hours walk from the palace towards the rocks on the sea-shore. i ordered him to set me down, and lifting up one of my sashes, cast many a wistful melancholy look towards the sea. i found my self not very well, and told the page that i had a mind to take a nap in my hammock, which i hoped would do me good. i got in, and the boy shut the window close down to keep out the cold. i soon fell asleep, and all i can conjecture is, that while i slept, the page, thinking no danger could happen, went among the rocks to look for bird's eggs, having before observed him from my window searching about, and picking up one or two in the clefts. be that as it will, i found my self suddenly awaked with a violent pull upon the ring which was fastened at the top of my box for the conveniency of carriage. i felt my box raised very high in the air, and then born forward with prodigious speed. the first jolt had like to have shaken me out of my hammock, but afterwards the motion was easy enough. i called out several times as loud as i could raise my voice, but all to no purpose. i looked towards my windows, and could see nothing but the clouds and sky. i heard a noise just over my head like the clapping of wings, and then began to perceive the woful condition i was in, that some eagle had got the ring of my box in his beak, with an intent to let it fall on a rock like a tortoise in a shell, and then pick out my body, and devour it. for the sagacity and smell of this bird enable him to discover his quarry at a great distance, though better concealed than i could be within a two-inch board. in a little time i observed the noise of flutter of wings to increase very fast, and my box was tossed up and down, like a sign-post on a windy day. i heard several bangs or buffets, as i thought, given to the eagle, (for such i am certain it must have been that held the ring of my box in his beak,) and then all on a sudden felt my self falling perpendicularly down for above a minute, but with such incredible swiftness that i almost lost my breath. my fall was stopped by a terrible squash, that sounded louder to mine ears than the cataract of niagara; after which i was quite in the dark for another minute, and then my box began to rise so high that i could see light from the tops of my windows. i now perceived that i was fallen into the sea. my box, by the weight of my body, the goods that were in, and the broad plates of iron fixed for strength at the four corners of the top and bottom, floated about five foot deep in water. i did then, and do now, suppose that the eagle which flew away with my box was pursued by two or three others, and forced to let me drop while he was defending himself against the rest, who hoped to share in the prey. the plates of iron fasten'd at the bottom of the box (for those were the strongest) preserved the balance while it fell, and hinder'd it from being broken on the surface of the water. every joint of it was well grooved; and the door did not move on hinges, but up and down like a sash, which kept my closet so tight that very little water came in. i got with much difficulty out of my hammock, having first ventured to draw back the slip-board on the roof already mentioned, contrived on purpose to let in air, for want of which i found my self almost stifled. how often did i then wish my self with my dear glumdalclitch, from whom one single hour had so far divided me! and i may say, with truth, that in the midst of my own misfortunes i could not forbear lamenting my poor nurse, the grief she would suffer for my loss, the displeasure of the queen, and the ruin of her fortune. perhaps many travellers have not been under greater difficulties and distress than i was at this juncture, expecting every moment to see my box dashed in pieces, or at least overset by the first violent blast, or a rising wave. a breach in one single pane of glass would have been immediate death: nor could anything have preserved the windows, but the strong lettice-wires placed on the out-side against accidents in travelling. i saw the water ooze in at several crannies, although the leaks were not considerable, and i endeavoured to stop them as well as i could. i was not able to lift up the roof of my closet, which otherwise i certainly should have done, and sate on the top of it, where i might, at least, preserve my self some hours longer than by being shut up, as i may call it, in the hold. or if i escaped these dangers, for a day or two, what could i expect but a miserable death of cold and hunger! i was four hours under these circumstances, expecting, and indeed wishing, every moment to be my last. i have already told the reader, that there were two strong staples fixed upon that side of my box which had no window, and into which the servant who used to carry me on horseback would put a leathern belt, and buckle it about his waste. being in this disconsolate state, i heard, or at least thought, i heard some kind of grating noise on that side of my box where the staples were fixed, and soon after i began to fancy that the box was pulled, or towed along in the sea; for i now and then felt a sort of tugging, which made the waves rise near the tops of my windows, leaving me almost in the dark. this gave me some faint hopes of relief, although i was not able to imagine how it could be brought about. i ventured to unscrew one of my chairs, which were always fastned to the floor; and having made a hard shift to screw it down again directly under the slipping board that i had lately opened, i mounted on the chair, and, putting my mouth as near as i could to the hole, i called for help in a loud voice, and in all the languages i understood. i then fastned my handkerchief to a stick i usually carried, and thrusting it up the hole, waved it several times in the air, that if any boat or ship were near, the seamen might conjecture some unhappy mortal to be shut up in the box. i found no effect from all i could do, but plainly perceived my closet to be moved along; and in the space of an hour, or better, that side of the box where the staples were, and had no window, struck against something that was hard. i apprehended it to be a rock, and found my self tossed more than ever. i plainly heard a noise upon the cover of my closet, like that of a cable, and the grating of it as it passed through the ring. i then found my self hoisted up by degrees, at least three foot higher than i was before. whereupon, i again thrust up my stick and handkerchief, calling for help till i was almost hoarse. in return to which, i heard a great shout repeated three times, giving me such transports of joy, as are not to be conceived but by those who feel them. i now heard a trampling over my head, and somebody calling through the hole with a loud voice in the english tongue, if there be any body below, let them speak. i answered, i was an englishman, drawn by ill fortune into the greatest calamity that ever any creature underwent, and begged by all that was moving, to be delivered out of the dungeon i was in. the voice replied, i was safe, for my box was fasten'd to their ship; and the carpenter should immediately come and saw an hole in the cover, large enough to pull me out. i answered, that was needless, and would take up too much time, for there was no more to be done, but let one of the crew put his finger into the ring, and take the box out of the sea into the ship, and so into the captain's cabbin. some of them upon hearing me talk so wildly, thought i was mad; others laughed; for indeed it never came into my head that i was now among people of my own stature and strength. the carpenter came, and in a few minutes sawed a passage about four foot square, then let down a small ladder, upon which i mounted, and from thence was taken into the ship in a very weak condition. the sailors were all in amazement, and asked me a thousand questions, which i had no inclination to answer. i was equally confounded at the sight of so many pigmies, for such i took them to be, after having so long accustomed mine eyes to the monstrous objects i had left. but the captain, mr. thomas wilcocks, an honest worthy shropshire man, observing i was ready to faint, took me into his cabbin, gave me a cordial to comfort me, and made me turn in upon his own bed, advising me to take a little rest, of which i had great need. before i went to sleep i gave him to understand that i had some valuable furniture in my box too good to be lost; a fine hammock, an handsome field-bed, two chairs, a table, and a cabinet: that my closet was hung on all sides, or rather quilted with silk and cotton : that if he would let one of the crew bring my closet into his cabbin, i would open it there before him, and shew him my goods. the captain hearing me utter these absurdities, concluded i was raving: however, (i suppose to pacify me,) he promised to give order as i desired, and going upon deck sent some of his men down into my closet, from whence (as i afterwards found) they drew up all my goods, and stripped off the quilting; but the chairs, cabinet, and bed-sted, being screwed to the floor, were much damaged by the ignorance of the seamen, who tore them up by force. then they knocked off some of the boards for the use of the ship, and when they had got all they had a mind for, let the hulk drop into the sea, which by reason of many breaches made in the bottom and sides, sunk to rights. and indeed i was glad not to have been a spectator of the havock they made; because i am confident it would have sensibly touched me, by bringing former passages into my mind, which i had rather forget. i slept some hours, but perpetually disturbed with dreams of the place i had left, and the dangers i had escaped. however, upon waking i found my self much recovered. it was now about eight a-clock at night, and the captain ordered supper immediately, thinking i had already fasted too long. he entertained me with great kindness, observing me not to look wildly, or talk inconsistently; and when we were left alone, desired i would give him a relation of my travels, and by what accident i came to be set adrift in that monstrous wooden chest. he said, that about twelve a clock at noon, as he was looking through his glass, he spied it at a distance, and thought it was a sail, which he had a mind to make, being not much out of his course, in hopes of buying some biscuit, his own beginning to fall short. that upon coming nearer, and finding his error, he sent out his long-boat to discover what i was; that his men came back in a fright, swearing they had seen a swimming house. that he laughed at their folly, and went himself in the boat, ordering his men to take a strong cable along with them. that the weather being calm, he rowed round me several times, observed my windows, and the wire-lattices that defended them. that he discovered two staples upon one side, which was all of boards, without any passage for light. he then commanded his men to row up to that side, and fastening a cable to one of the staples, ordered them to tow my chest (as they called it) towards the ship. when it was there, he gave directions to fasten another cable to the ring fixed in the cover, and to raise up my chest with pullies, which all the sailors were not able to do above two or three foot. he said, they saw my stick and handkerchief thrust out of the hole, and concluded that some unhappy men must be shut up in the cavity. i asked whether he or the crew had seen any prodigious birds in the air about the time he first discovered me. to which he answered, that discoursing this matter with the sailors while i was asleep, one of them said he had observed three eagles flying towards the north, but remarked nothing of their being larger than the usual size, which i suppose must be imputed to the great height they were at; and he could not guess the reason of my question. i then asked the captain how far he reckoned we might be from land; he said, by the best computation he could make, we were at least an hundred leagues. i assured him, that he must be mistaken by almost half, for i had not left the country from where i came above two hours before i dropt into the sea. whereupon he began again to think that my brain was disturbed, of which he gave me a hint, and advised me to go to bed in a cabbin he had provided. i assured him i was well refreshed with his good entertainment and company, and as much in my senses as ever i was in my life. he then grew serious, and desired to ask me freely whether i were not troubled in mind by the consciousness of some enormous crime, for which i was punished at the command of some prince, by exposing me in that chest, as great criminals in other countries have been forced to sea in a leaky vessel without provisions: for although he should be sorry to have taken so ill a man into his ship, yet he would engage his word to set me safe on shore in the first port where we arrived. he added, that his suspicions were much increased by some very absurd speeches i had delivered at first to the sailors, and afterwards to himself, in relation to my closet or chest, as well as by my odd looks and behaviour while i was at supper. i begged his patience to hear me tell my story, which i faithfully did from the last time i left england to the moment he first discovered me. and as truth always forceth its way into rational minds, so this honest worthy gentleman, who had some tincture of learning, and very good sense, was immediately convinced of my candour and veractiy. but further to confirm all i had said, i entreated him to give order that my cabinet should be brought, of which i had the key in my pocket, (for he had already informed me how the seamen disposed of my closet.) i opened it in his own presence, and shewed him the small collection of rarities i made in the country from whence i had been so strangely delivered. there was a comb i had contrived out of the stumps of the king's beard, and another of the same materials, but fixed into a paring of her majesty's thumb-nail, which served for the back. there was a collection of needles and pins from a foot to half a yard long: four wasp stings, like joiners tacks: some combings of the queen's hair: a gold ring which one day she made me a present of in a most obliging manner, taking it from her little finger, and throwing it over my head like a collar. i desired the captain would please to accept this ring in return of his civilities, which he absolutely refused. i shewed him a corn that i had cut off with my own hand, from a maid of honour's toe, it was about the bigness of a kentish pippin, and grown so hard that when i returned to england, i got it hollowed into a cup, and set in silver. lastly, i desired him to see the breeches i had then on, which were made of a mouse's skin. i could force nothing on him but a footman's tooth, which i observed him to examine with great curiosity, and found he had a fancy for it. he received it with abundance of thanks, more than such a trifle could deserve. it was drawn by an unskillful surgeon in a mistake, from one of glumdalclitch's men, who was afflicted with the tooth-ach, but it was as sound as any in his head. i got it cleaned, and put it into my cabinet. it was about a foot long, and four inches in diameter. the captain was very well satisfied with this plain relation i had given him, and said, he hoped when we returned to england, i would oblige the world by putting it in paper, and making it publick. my answer was, that i thought we were already overstocked with books of travels: that nothing could now pass which was not extraordinary; wherein i doubted some authors less consulted truth than their own vanity, or interest, or the diversion of ignorant readers. that my story could contain little besides common events, without those ornamental descriptions of strange plants, trees, birds, and other animals, or of the barbarous customs and idolatry of savage people, with which most writers abound. however, i thanked him for his good opinion, and promised to take the matter into my thoughts. he said, he wondered at one thing very much, which was, to hear me speak so loud, asking me whether the king or queen of that country were thick of hearing. i told him, it was what i had been used to for above two years past; and that i admired as much at the voices of him and his men, who seemed to me only to whisper, and yet i could hear them well enough. but when i spoke in that country, it was like a man talking in the street to another looking out from the top of a flteeple, unless when i was placed on a table, or held in any person's hand, i told him, i had likewise observed another thing, that when i first got into the ship, and the sailors stood all about me, i thought they were the most little contemptible creatures i had ever beheld. for, indeed, while i was in that prince's country, i could never endure to look in a glass after mine eyes had been accustomed to such prodigious objects, because the comparison gave me so despicable a conceit of my self. the captain said, that while we were at supper, he observed me look at every thing with a sort of wonder, and that i often seemed hardly able to contain my laughter, which he knew not well how to take, but imputed it to some disorder in my brain. i answered, it was very true; and i wondered how i could forbear, when i saw his dishes of the size of a silver three-pence, a leg of pork hardly a mouthful, a cup not so big as a nutshell; and so i went on, describing the rest of his houshold-stuff and provisions after the same manner. for although the queen had ordered a little equipage of all things necessary for me while i was in her service, yet my ideas were wholly taken up with what i saw on every side of me, and i winked at my own littleness as people do at their own faults. the captain understood my raillery very well, and merrily replied with the old english proverb, that he doubted mine eyes were bigger than my belly, for he did not observe my stomach so good, although i had fasted all day; and continuing in his mirth, protested he would have gladly given an hundred pounds to have seen my closet in the eagle's bill, and afterwards in its fall from so great an height into the sea; which would certainly have been a most astonishing object, worthy to have the description of it transmitted to future ages: and the comparison of phaeton was so obvious, that he could not forbear applying it, although i did not much admire the conceit. the captain having been at tonquin was in his return to england driven north eastward to the latitude of 44 degrees, and of longitude 143. but meeting a trade wind two days after i came on board him, we sailed southward a long time, and coasting new-holland kept our course westsouth-west, and then south-south-west till we doubled the cape of goodhope. our voyage was very prosperous, but i shall not trouble the reader with a journal of it. the captain called in at one or two ports and sent in his long-boat for provisions and fresh water, but i never went out of the ship till we came into the downs, which was on the 3d. day of june 1706, about nine months after my escape. i offered to leave my goods in security for payment of my freight; but the captain protested he would not receive one farthing. we took kind leave of each other, and i made him promise he would come to see me at my house in redriff. i hired a horse and guide for five shillings, which i borrowed of the captain. as i was on the road, observing the littleness of the houses, the trees, the cattle and the people, i began to think my self in lilliput. i was afraid of trampling on every traveller i met, and often called aloud to have them stand out of the way, so that i had like to have gotten one or two broken heads for my impertinence. when i came to my own house, for which i was forced to enquire, one of the servants opening the door, i bent down to go in (like a gooss under a gate) for fear of striking my head. my wife ran out to embrace me, but i stooped lower than her knees, thinking she could otherwise never be able to reach my mouth. my daughter kneeled to ask me blessing, but i could not see her till she arose, having been so long used to stand with my head and eyes erect to above sixty foot; and then i went to take her up with one hand, by the waste. i looked down upon the servants, and one or two friends who were in the house, as if they had been pigmies, and i a giant. i told my wife, she had been too thrifty, for i found she had starved herself and her daughter to nothing. in short, i behaved my self so unaccountably, that they were all of the captain's opinion when he first saw me, and concluded i had lost my wits. this i mention as an instance of the great power of habit and prejudice. in a little time i and my family and friends came to a right understanding: but my wife protested i should never go to sea any more; although my evil destiny so ordered that she had not power to hinder me, as the reader may know hereafter. in the mean time i here conclude the second part of my unfortunate voyages. the end of the second part. part iii: a voyage to laputa, balnibarbi, luggnagg, glubbdubdrib, and japan [plate iii: laputa] chapter i. the author sets out on his third voyage; is taken by pyrates. the malice of a dutchman. his arrival at an island. he is received into laputa. i had not been at home above ten days, when captain william robinson, a cornish man, commander of the hope-well, a stout ship of three hundred tuns, came to my house. i had formerly been surgeon of another ship where he was master, and a fourth part owner, in a voyage to the levant. he had always treated me more like a brother than an inferior officer; and hearing of my arrival made me a visit, as i apprehended only out of friendship, for nothing passed more than what is usual after long absences. but repeating his visits often, expressing his joy to find me in good health, asking whether i were now settled for life, adding that he intended a voyage to the east-indies, in two months, at last he plainly invited me, though with some apololgies, to be surgeon of the ship. that i should have another surgeon under me, besides our two mates; that my salary should be double to the usual pay; and that having experienced my knowledge in sea-affairs to be at least equal to his, he would enter into any engagement to follow my advice, as much as if i had share in the command. he said so many other obliging things, and i knew him to be so honest a man, that i could not reject his proposal; the thirst i had of seeing the world, notwithstanding my past misfortunes, continuing as violent as ever. the only difficulty that remained, was to persuade my wife, whose consent however i at last obtained by the prospect of advantage she proposed to her children. we set out the 5th day of august, 1706, and arrived at fort st. george, the 11th of april 1707. we stayed there three weeks to refresh our crew, many of whom were sick. from thence we went to tonquin, where the captain resolved to continue some time; because many of the goods he intended to buy were not ready, nor could he expect to be dispatched in several months. therefore in hopes to defray some of the charges he must be at, he bought a sloop, loaded it with several sorts of goods, wherewith the tonquinese usually trade to the neighbouring islands; and putting fourteen men on board, whereof three were of the country, he appointed me master of the sloop, and gave me power to traffick, while he transacted his affairs at tonquin. we had not sailed above three days, when a great storm arising, we were driven five days to the north-north-east, and then to the east; after which we had fair weather, but still with a pretty strong gale from the west. upon the tenth day we were chased by two pyrates, who soon overtook us; for my sloop was so deep loaden, that she sailed very slow; neither were we in a condition to defend our selves. we were boarded about the same time by both the pyrates, who entered furiously at the head of their men; but finding us all prostrate upon our faces (for so i gave order,) they pinioned us with strong ropes, and setting a guard upon us, went to search the sloop. i observed among them a dutchman, who seemed to be of some authority, though he were not commander of either ship. he knew us by our countenances to be englishmen, and jabbering to us in his own language, swore we should be tyed back to back, and thrown into the sea. i spoke dutch tolerably well; i told him who we were, and begged him in consideration of our being christians and protestants, of neighbouring countries, in strict alliance, that he would move the captains to take some pity on us. this inflamed his rage; he repeated his threatnings, and turning to his companions, spoke with great vehemence, in the japanese language, as i suppose; often using the word christianos. the largest of the two pyrate ships was commanded by a japanese captain, who spoke a little dutch, but very imperfectly. he came up to me, and after several questions, which i answered in great humility, he said we should not die. i made the captain a very low bow, and then turning to the dutchman , said, i was sorry to find more mercy in a heathen, than in a brother christian. but i had soon reason to repent those foolish words; for that malicious reprobate, having often endeavoured in vain to persuade both the captains that i might be thrown into the sea (which they would not yield to after the promise made me, that i should not die), however prevailed so far as to have a punishment inflicted on me, worse in all human appearance than death it self. my men were sent by an equal division into both the pyrate-ships, and my sloop new manned. as to my self, it was determined that i should be set a-drift, in a small canoe, with paddles and a sail, and four days provisions; which last the japanese captain was so kind to double out of his own stores, and would permit no man to search me. i got down into the canoe, while the dutchman standing upon the deck, loaded me with all the curses and injurious terms his language could afford. about an hour before we saw the pyrates, i had taken an observation, and found we were in the latitude of 46 n. and of longitude 183. when i was at some distance from the pyrates, i discovered by my pocket-glass several islands to the south-east. i set up my sail, the wind being fair, with a design to reach the nearest of those islands, which i made a shift to do in about three hours. it was all rocky; however i got many birds eggs; and striking fire, i kindled some heath and dry sea weed, by which i roasted my eggs. i eat no other supper, being resolved to spare my provisions as much as i could. i passed the night under the shelter of a rock, strowing some heath under me, and slept pretty well. the next day i sailed to another island, and thence to a third and fourth, sometimes using my sail, and sometimes my paddles. but not to trouble the reader with a particular account of my distresses; let it suffice that on the 5th day, i arrived at the last island in my sight, which lay south-southeast to the former. this island was at a greater distance than i expected, and i did not reach it in less than five hours. i encompassed it almost round before i could find a convenient place to land in, which was a small creek, about three times the wideness of my canoe. i found the island to be all rocky, only a little intermingled with tufts of grass and sweet smelling herbs. i took out my small provisions, and after having refreshed myself, i secured the remainder in a cave, whereof there were great numbers. i gathered plenty of eggs upon the rocks, and got a quantity of dry seaweed and parched grass, which i designed to kindle the next day, and roast my eggs as well as i could. (for i had about me my flint, steel, match, and burning-glass.) i lay all night in the cave where i had lodged my provisions. my bed was the same dry grass and sea-weed which i intended for fewel. i slept very little; for the disquiets of my mind prevailed over my wearyness, and kept me awake. i considered how impossible it was to preserve my life, in so desolate a place; and how miserable my end must be. yet i found my self so listless and desponding that i had not the heart to rise; and before i could get spirits enough to creep out of my cave, the day was far advanced. i walked a while among the rocks, the sky was perfectly clear, and the sun so hot, that i was forced to turn my face from it: when all of a sudden it became obscured, as i thought, in a manner very different from what happens by the interposition of a cloud. i turned back, and perceived a vast opake body between me and the sun, moving forwards towards the island: it seemed to be about two miles high, and hid the sun six or seven minutes, but i did not observe the air to be much colder, or the sky more darkned, than if i had stood under the shade of a mountain. as it approached nearer over the place where i was, it appeared to be a firm substance, the bottom flat, smooth, and shining very bright from the reflexion of the sea below. i stood upon a height about two hundred yards from the shoar, and saw this vast body descending almost to a parallel with me, at less than an english mile distance. i took out my pocket-perspective, and could plainly discover numbers of people moving up and down the sides of it, which appeared to be sloping, but what those people were doing, i was not able to distinguish. the natural love of life gave me some inward motions of joy; and i was ready to entertain a hope, that this adventure might some way or other help to deliver me from the desolate place and condition i was in. but, at the same time, the reader can hardly conceive my astonishment, to behold an island in the air, inhabited by men, who were able (as it should seem) to raise or sink, or put it into a progressive motion, as they pleased. but not being, at that time, in a disposition to philosophise upon this phaenomenon, i rather chose to observe what course the island would take; because it seemed for a while to stand still. yet, soon after it advanced nearer; and i could see the sides of it, encompassed with several gradations of galleries and stairs, at certain intervals, to descend from one to the other. in the lowest gallery, i beheld some people fishing with long angling rods, and others looking on. i waved my cap, (for my hat was long since worn out,) and my handkerchief towards the island; and upon its nearer approach, i called and shouted with the utmost strength of my voice; and then looking circumspectly, i beheld a crowd gather to that side which was most in my view. i found by their pointing towards me and to each other, that they plainly discovered me, although they made no return to my shouting. but i could see four or five men running in great haste up the stairs to the top of the island, who then disappeared. i happened rightly to conjecture, that these were sent for orders to some person in authority upon this occasion. the number of people increased; and in less than half an hour the island was moved and raised in such a manner, that the lowest gallery appeared in a parallel of less than an hundred yards distance from the height where i stood. i then put my self into the most supplicating postures, and spoke in the humblest accent, but received no answer. those who stood nearest over against me, seemed to be persons of distinction, as i supposed by their habit. they conferred earnestly with each other, looking often upon me. at length one of them called out in a clear, polite, smooth dialect, not unlike in sound to the italian; and therefore i returned an answer in that language, hoping at least that the cadence might be more agreeable to his ears. although neither of us understood the other, yet my meaning was easily known, for the people saw the distress i was in. they made signs for me to come down from the rock, and go towards the shoar, which i accordingly did; and the flying island being raised to a convenient height, the verge directly over me, a chain was let down from the lowest gallery, with a seat fastned to the bottom, to which i fixed my self, and was drawn up by pullies. chapter ii. the humours and dispositions of the laputians described. an account of their learning. of the king and his court. the author's reception there. the inhabitants subject to fears and disquietudes. an account of the women. [a]t my alighting i was surrounded by a crowd of people, but those who stood nearest seemed to be of better quality. they beheld me with all the marks and circumstances of wonder; neither indeed was i much in their debt; having never till then seen a race of mortals so singular in their shapes, habits, and countenances. their heads were all reclined either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith. their outward garments were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars, interwoven with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guittars, harpsichords, and many more instruments of musick, unknown to us in europe. i observed here and there many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder fastned like a flail to the end of a short stick, which they carried in their hands. in each bladder was a small quantity of dried pease, or little pebbles, (as i was afterwards informed.) with these bladders they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practice i could not then conceive the meaning. it seems the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being rouzed by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is climenole) in their family, as one of their domesticks; nor ever walk abroad or make visits without him. and the business of this officer is, when two or more persons are in company, gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. this flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in the streets, of jostling others, or being jostled himself into the kennel. it was necessary to give the reader this information, without which he would be at the same loss with me, to understand the proceedings of these people, as they conducted me up the stairs, to the top of the island, and from thence to the royal palace. while we were ascending, they forgot several times what they were about, and left me to my self, till their memories were again rouzed by their flappers; for they appeared altogether unmoved by the sight of my foreign habit and countenance, and by the shouts of the vulgar, whose thoughts and minds were more disengaged. at last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber of presence; where i saw the king seated on his throne, attended on each side by persons of prime quality. before the throne, was a large table filled with globes and spheres, and mathematical instruments of all kinds. his majesty took not the least notice of us, although our entrance were not without sufficient noise, by the concourse of all persons belonging to the court. but he was then deep in a problem, and we attended at least an hour, before he could solve it. there stood by him on each side, a young page, with flaps in their hands; and when they saw he was at leisure, one of them gently struck his mouth, and the other his right ear; at which he started like one awakened on the sudden, and looking towards me and the company i was in, recollected the occasion of our coming, whereof he had been informed before. he spoke some words, whereupon immediately a young man with a flap came up to my side, and flapped me gently on the right ear; but i made signs, as well as i could, that i had no occasion for such an instrument; which, as i afterwards found, gave his majesty and the whole court a very mean opinion of my understanding. the king, as far as i could conjecture, asked me several questions, and i addressed my self to him in all the languages i had. when it was found, that i could neither understand nor be understood, i was conducted by the his order to an apartment in his palace, (this prince being distinguished above all his predecessors for his hospitality to strangers, ) where two servants were appointed to attend me. my dinner was brought, and four persons of quality, whom i remembered to have seen very near the king's person, did me the honour to dine with me. we had two courses, of three dishes each. in the first course, there was a shoulder of mutton, cut into an aequilateral triangle; a piece of beef into a rhomboides; and a pudding into a cycloid. the second course was two ducks, trussed up into the form of fiddles; sausages and puddings resembling flutes and haut-boys, and a breast of veal in the shape of a harp. the servants cut our bread into cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and several other mathematical figures. while we were at dinner, i made bold to ask the names of several things in their language; and those noble persons, by the assistance of their flappers, delighted to give me answers, hoping to raise my admiration of their great abilities, if i could be brought to converse with them. i was soon able to call for bread and drink, or whatever else i wanted. after dinner my company withdrew, and a person was sent to me by the king's order, attended by a flapper. he brought with him pen, ink, and paper, and three or four books; giving me to understand by signs, that he was sent to teach me the language. we sat together four hours, in which time i wrote down a great number of words in columns, with the translations over against them. i likewise made a shift to learn several short sentences. for my tutor would order one of my servants to fetch something, to turn about, to make a bow, to sit, or stand, or walk, and the like. then i took down the sentence in writing. he shewed me also in one of his books, the figures of the sun, moon, and stars, the zodiack, the tropics, and polar circles, together with the denominations of many figures of planes and solids. he gave me the names and descriptions of all the musical instruments, and the general terms of art in playing on each of them. after he had left me, i placed all my words with their interpretations in alphabetical order. and thus in a few days, by the help of a very faithful memory, i got some insight into their language. the word, which i interpret the flying or floating island, is in the original laputa; whereof i could never learn the true etymology. lap in the old obsolete language signifieth high, and untuh a governor; from which they say by corruption was derived laputa, from lapuntuh. but i do not approve of this derivation, which seems to be a little strained. i ventured to offer to the learned among them a conjecture of my own, that laputa was quasi lap outed; lap signifying properly the dancing of the sun beams in the sea; and outed a wing, which however i shall not obtrude, but submit to the judicious reader. those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill i was clad, ordered a taylor to come next morning, and take my measure for a suit of cloths. this operator did his office after a different manner from those of his trade in europe. he first took my altitude by a quadrant, and then with rule and compasses, described the dimensions and out-lines of my whole body; all which he entered upon paper, and in six days brought my cloths very ill made, and quite out of shape, by happening to mistake a figure in the calculation. but my comfort was, that i observed such accidents very frequent, and little regarded. during my confinement for want of cloaths, and by an indisposition that held me some days longer, i much enlarged my dictionary; and when i went next to court, was able to understand many things the king spoke, and to return him some kind of answers. his majesty had given orders that the island should move north-east and by east, to the vertical point over lagado, the metropolis of the whole kingdom, below upon the firm earth. it was about ninety leagues distant, and our voyage lasted four days and an half. i was not in the least sensible of the progressive motion made in the air by the island. on the second morning, about eleven o'clock, the king himself in person, attended by his nobility, courtiers, and officers, having prepared all their musical instruments, played on them for three hours without intermission; so that i was quite stunned with the noise; neither could i possibly guess the meaning, till my tutor informed me. he said, that the people of their island had their ears adapted to hear the musick of the spheres, which always played at certain periods; and the court was now prepared to bear their part in whatever instrument they most excelled. in our journey towards lagado the capital city, his majesty ordered that the island should stop over certain towns and villages, from whence he might receive the petitions of his subjects. and to this purpose, several packthreads were let down with small weights at the bottom. on these packthreads, the people strung their petitions, which mounted up directly like the scraps of paper fastned by school-boys at the end of the string that holds their kite. sometimes we received wine and victuals from below, which were drawn up by pullies. the knowledge i had in mathematicks gave me great assistance in acquiring their phraseology, which depended much upon that science and musick; and in the latter i was not unskilled. their ideas are perpetually conversant in lines and figures. if they would, for example, praise the beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they describe it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other geometrical terms; or by words of art drawn from musick, needless here to repeat. i observed in the king's kitchen all sorts of mathematical and musical instruments, after the figures of which they cut up the joynts that were served to his majesty's table. their houses are very ill built, the walls bevil without one right angle in any apartment; and this defect ariseth from the contempt they bear to practical geometry; which they despise as vulgar and mechanick, those instructions they give being too refined for the intellectuals of their workmen; which occasions perpetual mistakes. and although they are dexterous enough upon a piece of paper in the management of the rule, the pencil, and the divider, yet in the common actions and behaviour of life, i have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy people, nor so slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other subjects, except those of mathematicks and musick. they are very bad reasoners, and vehemently given to opposition, unless when they happen to be of the right opinion, which is seldom their case. imagination, fancy, and invention, they are wholly strangers to, nor have any words in their language by which those ideas can be expressed; the whole compass of their thoughts and mind, being shut up within the two forementioned sciences. most of them, and especially those who deal in the astronomical part, have great faith in judicial astrology, although they are ashamed to own it publickly. but, what i chiefly admired, and thought altogether unaccountable, was the strong disposition i observed in them towards news and politicks, perpetually enquiring into public affairs, giving their judgements in matters of state; and passionately disputing every inch of a party opinion. i have indeed observed the same disposition among most of the mathematicians i have known in europe; although i could never discover the least analogy between the two sciences; unless those people suppose, that because the smallest circle hath as many degrees as the largest, therefore the regulation and management of the world require no more abilities than the handling and turning of a globe. but, i rather take this quality to spring from a very common infirmity of human nature, inclining us to be more curious and conceited in matters where we have least concern, and for which we are least adapted either by study or nature. these people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a minute's peace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes which very little affect the rest of mortals. their apprehensions arise from several changes they dread in the celestial bodies. for instance; that the earth by the continual approaches of the sun towards it, must in course of time be absorbed or swallowed up. that the face of the sun will by degrees be encrusted with its own effluvia, and give no more light to the world. that, the earth very narrowly escaped a brush from the tail of the last comet, which would have infallibly reduced it to ashes; and that the next, which they have calculated for one and thirty years hence, will probably destroy us. for, if in its perihelion it should approach within a certain degree of the sun, (as by their calculations they have reason to dread) it will conceive a degree of heat ten thousand times more intense than that of red hot glowing iron; and in its absence from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand and fourteen miles long; through which if the earth should pass at the distance of one hundred thousand miles from the nucleus or main body of the comet, it must in its passage be set on fire, and reduced to ashes. that the sun daily spending its rays without any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed and annihilated; which must be attended with the destruction of this earth, and of all the planets that receive their light from it. they are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these and the like impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in their beds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures or amusements of life. when they meet an acquaintance in the morning, the first question is about the sun's health; how he looked at his setting and rising, and what hopes they have to avoid the stroak of the approaching comet. this conversation they are apt to run into with the same temper that boys discover, in delighting to hear terrible stories of sprites and hobgoblins, which they greedily listen to, and dare not go to bed for fear. the women of the island have abundance of vivacity: they contemn their husbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof there is always a considerable number from the continent below, attending at court, either upon affairs of the several towns and corporations, or their own particular occasions; but are much despised, because they want the same endowments. among these the ladies chuse their gallants: but the vexation is, that they act with too much ease and security; for the husband is always so rapt in speculation, that the mistress and lover may proceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he be but provided with paper and implements, and without his flapper at his side. the wives and daughters lament their confinement to the island, although i think it the most delicious spot of ground in the world; and although they live here in the greatest plenty and magnificence, and are allowed to do whatever they please: they long to see the world, and take the diversions of the metropolis, which they are not allowed to do without a particular license from the king; and this is not easy to obtain, because the people of quality have found by frequent experience, how hard it is to persuade their women to return from below. i was told, that a great court lady, who had several children, is married to the prime minister, the richest subject in the kingdom, a very graceful person, extremely fond of her, and lives in the finest palace of the island; went down to lagado, on the pretense of health, there hid herself for several months, till the king sent a warrant to search for her; and she was found in an obscure eatinghouse all in rags, having pawned her cloths to maintain an old deformed footman, who beat her every day, and in whose company she was taken much against her will. and although her husband received her with all possible kindness, and without the least reproach; she soon after contrived to steal down again with all her jewels, to the same gallant, and has not been heard of since. this may perhaps pass with the reader rather for an european or english story, than for one of a country so remote. but he may please to consider, that the caprices of womankind are not limited by any climate or nation; and that they are much more uniform than can be easily imagined. in about a month's time i had made a tolerable proficiency in their language, and was able to answer most of the king's questions, when i had the honour to attend him. his majesty discovered not the least curiosity to enquire into the laws, government, history, religion, or manners of the countries where i had been; but confined his questions to the state of mathematicks, and received the account i gave him with great contempt and indifference, though often rouzed by his flapper on each side. chapter iii. a ph¾nomenon solved by modern philosophy and astronomy. the laputias great improvements in the latter. the king's method of suppressing insurrections. i desired leave of this prince to see the curiosities of the island; which he was graciously pleased to grant, and ordered my tutor to attend me. i chiefly wanted to know to what cause in art or in nature, it owed its several motions; whereof i will now give a philosophical account to the reader. the flying or floating island is exactly circular; its diameter 7837 yards, or about four miles and an half, and consequently contains ten thousand acres. it is three hundred yards thick. the bottom or under surface, which appears to those who view it from below, is one even regular plate of adamant, shooting up to the height of about two hundred yards. above it lye the several minerals in their usual order; and over all is a coat of rich mould, ten or twelve foot deep. the declivity of the upper surface, from the circumference to the center, is the natural cause why all the dews and rains which fall upon the island, are conveyed in small rivulets toward the middle, where they are emptyed into four large basons, each of about half a mile in circuit, and two hundred yards distant from the center. from these basons the water is continually exhaled by the sun in the day-time, which effectually prevents their overflowing. besides, as it is in the power of the monarch to raise the island above the region of clouds and vapors, he can prevent the falling of dews and rains whenever he pleases. for the highest clouds cannot rise above two miles, as naturalists agree, at least they were never known to do so in that country. at the center of the island there is a chasm about fifty yards in diameter, from whence the astronomers descend into a large dome, which is therefore called flandona gagnole, or the astronomer's cave; situated at the depth of an hundred yards beneath the upper surface of the adamant. in this cave are twenty lamps continually burning, which from the reflection of the adamant cast a strong light into every part. the place is stored with great variety of sextants, quadrants, telescopes, astrolabes, and other astronomical instruments. but the greatest curiosity, upon which the fate of the island depends, is a loadstone of a prodigious size, in shape resembling a weaver's shuttle. it is in length six yards, and in the thickest part at least three yards over. this magnet is sustained by a very strong axle of adamant passing through its middle, upon which it plays, and is poized so exactly that the weakest hand can turn it. it is hooped round with a hollow cylinder of adamant, four foot deep, as many thick, and twelve yards in diameter, placed horizontally, and supported by eight adamantine feet, each six yards high. in the middle of the concave side there is a groove twelve inches deep, in which the extremities of the axle are lodged, and turned round as there is occasion. the stone cannot be moved from its place by any force, because the hoop and its feet are one continued piece with that body of adamant which constitutes the bottom of the island. by means of this load-stone, the island is made to rise and fall, and move from one place to another. for, with respect to that part of the earth over which the monarch presides, the stone is endued at one of its sides with an attractive power, and at the other with a repulsive. upon placing the magnet erect with its attracting end towards the earth, the island descends; but when the repelling extremity points downwards, the island mounts directly upwards. when the position of the stone is oblique, the motion of the island is so too. for in this magnet the forces always act in lines parallel to its direction. [plate 4: balnibarbi] by this oblique motion the island is conveyed to different parts of the monarch's dominions. to explain the manner of its progress, let a b represent a line drawn cross the dominions of balnibarbi; let the line c d represent the loadstone, of which let d be the repelling end, and c the attracting end, the island being over c; let the stone be placed in the position c d, with its repelling end downwards; then the island will be driven upwards obliquely towards d. when it is arrived at d, let the stone be turned upon its axle till its attracting end points towards e, and then the island will be carried obliquely towards e; where if the stone be again turned upon its axle till it stands in the position e f, with its repelling point downwards, the island will rise obliquely towards f, where by directing the attracting end towards g, the island may be carried to g, and from g to h, by turning the stone, so as to make its repelling extremity point directly downwards. and thus by changing the situation of the stone as often as there is occasion, the island is made to rise and fall by turns in an oblique direction; and by those alternate risings and fallings (the obliquity being not considerable), is conveyed from one part of the dominions to the other. but it must be observed, that this island cannot move beyond the extent of the dominions below; nor can it rise above the height of four miles. for which the astronomers (who have written large systems concerning the stone) assign the following reason: that the magnetick virtue does not extend beyond the distance of four miles, and that the mineral which acts upon the stone in the bowels of the earth, and in the sea about six leagues distant from the shoar, is not diffused through the whole globe, but terminated with the limits of the king's dominions: and it was easy from the great advantage of such a superior situation, for a prince to bring under his obedience whatever country lay within the attraction of that magnet. when the stone is put parallel to the plane of the horizon, the island standeth still; for in that case, the extremities of it being at equal distance from the earth, act with equal force, the one in drawing downwards, the other in pushing upwards; and consequently no motion can ensue. this load-stone is under the care of certain astronomers, who from time to time give it such positions as the monarch directs. they spend the greatest part of their lives in observing the celestial bodies, which they do by the assistance of glasses, far excelling ours in goodness. for, although their largest telescopes do not exceed three feet, they magnify much more than those of a hundred with us, and shew the stars with greater clearness. this advantage hath enabled them to extend their discoveries much farther than our astronomers in europe. they have made a catalogue of ten thousand fixed stars, whereas the largest of ours do not contain above one third part of that number. they have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about mars; whereof the innermost is distant from the center of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and an half; so that the squares of their periodical times, are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distance from the center of mars; which evidently shews them to be governed by the same law of gravitation, that influences the other heavenly bodies. they have observed ninety-three different comets, and settled their periods with great exactness. if this be true, (and they affirm it with great confidence) it is much to be wished that their observations were made publick, whereby the theory of comets, which at present is very lame and defective, might be brought to the same perfection with other parts of astronomy. the king would be the most absolute prince in the universe, if he could but prevail on a ministry to join with him, but these having their estates below on the continent, and considering that the office of a favourite hath a very uncertain tenure, would never consent to the enslaving their country. if any town should engage in rebellion or mutiny, fall into violent factions, or refuse to pay the usual tribute; the king hath two methods of reducing them to obedience. the first and the mildest course is by keeping the island hovering over such a town, and the lands about it; whereby he can deprive them of the benefit of the sun and the rain, and consequently afflict the inhabitants with dearth and diseases. and if the crime deserve it, they are at the same time pelted from above with great stones, against which they have no defence, but by creeping into cellars or caves, while the roofs of their houses are beaten to pieces. but if they still continue obstinate, or offer to raise insurrections, he proceeds to the last remedy, by letting the island drop directly upon their heads, which makes a universal destruction both of houses and men. however, this is an extremity to which the prince is seldom driven, neither indeed is he willing, to put it in execution; nor dare his ministers advise him to an action, which as it would render them odious to the people, so it would be a great damage to their own estates that lie all below; for the island is the king's demesne. but there is still indeed a more weighty reason, why the kings of this country have been always averse from executing so terrible an action, unless upon the utmost necessity. for if the town intended to be destroyed should have in it any tall rocks, as it generally falls out in the larger cities; a situation probably chosen at first with a view to prevent such a catastrophe:; or if it abound in high spires or pillars of stone, a sudden fall might endanger the bottom or under surface of the island, which, although it consists as i have said, of one entire adamant two hundred yards thick, might happen to crack by too great a choque, or burst by approaching too near the fires from the houses below; as the backs both of iron and stone will often do in our chimneys. of all this the people are well apprized, and understand how far to carry their obstinacy, where their liberty or property is concerned. and the king, when he is highest provoked, and most determined to press a city to rubbish, orders the island to descend with great gentleness, out of a pretence of tenderness to his people, but indeed for fear of breaking the adamantine bottom; in which case it is the opinion of all their philosophers, that the load-stone could no longer hold it up, and the whole mass would fall to the ground. [about three years before my arrival among them, while the king was in his progress over his dominions, there happened an extraordinary accident which had like to have put a period to the fate of that monarchy, at least as it is now instituted. lindalino the second city in the kingdom was the first his majesty visited in his progress. three days after his departure, the inhabitants, who had often complained of great oppressions, shut the town gates, seized on the governor, and with incredible speed and labour erected four large towers, one at every corner of the city (which is an exact square) equal in heigth to a strong pointed rock that stands directly in the center of the city. upon the top of each tower, as well as upon the rock, they fixed a great loadstone, and in case their design should fail, they had provided a vast quantity of the most combustible fewel, hoping to burst therewith the adamantine bottom of the island, if the loadstone project should miscarry. it was eight months before the king had perfect notice that the lindalinians were in rebellion. he then commanded that the island should be wafted over the city. the people were unanimous, and had laid in store of provisions, and a great river runs through the middle of the town. the king hovered over them several days to deprive them of the sun and the rain. he ordered many packthreads to be let down, yet not a person offered to send up a petition, but instead thereof, very bold demands, the redress of all their grievances, great immunitys, the choice of their own governor, and other like exorbitances. upon which his majesty commanded all the inhabitants of the island to cast great stones from the lower gallery into the town; but the citizens had provided against this mischief by conveying their persons and effects into the four towers, and other strong buildings, and vaults under ground. the king being now determined to reduce this proud people, ordered that the island should descend gently within fourty yards of the top of the towers and rock. this was accordingly done; but the officers employed in that work found the descent much speedier than usual, and by turning the loadstone could not without great difficulty keep it in a firm position, but found the island inclining to fall. they sent the king immediate intelligence of this astonishing event and begged his majesty's permission to raise the island higher; the king consented, a general council was called, and the officers of the loadstone ordered to attend. one of the oldest and expertest among them obtained leave to try an experiment. he took a strong line of an hundred yards, and the island being raised over the town above the attracting power they had felt, he fastened a piece of adamant to the end of his line, which had in it a mixture of iron mineral, of the same nature with that whereof the bottom or lower surface of the island is composed, and from the lower gallery let it down slowly towards the top of the towers. the adamant was not descended four yards, before the officer felt it drawn so strongly downward, that he could hardly pull it back. he then threw down several small pieces of adamant, and observed that they were all violently attracted by the top of the tower. the same experiment was made on the other three towers, and on the rock with the same effect. this incident broke entirely the king's measures and (to dwell no longer on other circumstances) he was forced to give the town their own conditions. i was assured by a great minister, that if the island had descended so near the town, as not to be able to raise it self, the citizens were determined to fix it for ever, to kill the king and all his servants, and entirely change the government.] by a fundamental law of this realm, neither the king, nor either of his two elder sons, are permitted to leave the island; nor the queen, till she is past child-bearing. chapter iv. the author leaves laputa, is conveyed to balnibarbi, arrives at the metropolis. a description of the metropolis and the country adjoining. the author hospitably received by a great lord. his conversation with that lord. although i cannot say that i was ill treated in this island, yet i must confess i thought my self too much neglected, not without some degree of contempt. for neither prince nor people appeared to be curious in any part of knowledge, except mathematicks and musick, wherein i was far their inferior, and upon that account very little regarded. on the other side, after having seen all the curiosities of the island, i was very desirous to leave it, being heartily weary of those people. they were indeed excellent in two sciences for which i have great esteem, and wherein i am not unversed; but at the same time so abstracted and involved in speculation, that i never met with such disagreeable companions. i conversed only with women, tradesmen, flappers, and court-pages, during two months of my abode there, by which at last i rendered my self extremely contemptible; yet these were the only people from whom i could ever receive a reasonable answer. i had obtained by hard study a good degree of knowledge in their language: i was weary of being confined to an island where i received so little countenance; and resolved to leave it with the first opportunity. there was a great lord at court, nearly related to the king, and for that reason alone used with respect. he was universally reckoned the most ignorant and stupid person among them. he had performed many eminent services for the crown, had great natural and acquired parts, adorned with integrity and honour, but so ill an ear for musick, that his detractors reported he had been often known to beat time in the wrong place; neither could his tutors without extreme difficulty teach him to demonstrate the most easy proposition in the mathematicks. he was pleased to shew me many marks of favour, often did me the honour of a visit, desired to be informed in the affairs of europe, the laws and customs, the manners and learning of the several countries where i had travelled. he listened to me with great attention, and made very wise observations on all i spoke. he had two flappers attending him for state, but never made use of them except at court, and in visits of ceremony; and would always command them to withdraw when we were alone together. i entreated this illustrious person to intercede in my behalf with his majesty for leave to depart; which he accordingly did, as he was pleased to tell me, with regret: for, indeed he had made me several offers very advantageous, which however i refused with expressions of the highest acknowledgment. on the 16th day of february, i took leave of his majesty and the court. the king made me a present to the value of about two hundred pounds english; and my protector his kinsman as much more, together with a letter of recommendation to a friend of his in lagado, the metropolis: the island being then hovering over a mountain about two miles from it, i was let down from the lowest gallery, in the same manner as i had been taken up. the continent, as far as it is subject to the monarch of the flying island, passeth under the general name of balnibarbi; and the metropolis, as i said before, is called lagado. i felt some little satisfaction in finding my self on firm ground. i walked to the city without any concern, being clad like one of the natives, and sufficiently instructed to converse with them. i soon found out the person's house to whom i was recommended; presented my letter from his friend the grandee in the island, and was received with much kindness. this great lord, whose name was munodi, ordered me an apartment in his own house, where i continued during my stay, and was entertained in a most hospitable manner. the next morning after my arrival, he took me in his chariot to see the town, which is about half the bigness of london, but the houses very strangely built, and most of them out of repair. the people in the streets walked fast, looked wild, their eyes fixed, and were generally in rags. we passed through one of the town gates, and went about three miles into the country, where i saw many labourers working with several sorts of tools in the ground, but he was not able to conjecture what they were about; neither did i observe any expectation either of corn or grass, although the soil appeared to be excellent. i could not forbear admiring at these odd appearances both in town and country; and i made bold to desire my conductor, that he would be pleased to explain to me what could be meant by so many busy heads, hands, and faces, both in the streets and the fields, because i did not discover any good effects they produced; but on the contrary, i never knew a soil so unhappily cultivated, houses so ill contrived and so ruinous, or a people whose countenances and habit expressed so much misery and want. this lord munodi was a person of the first rank, and had been some years governor of lagado; but by a cabal of ministers was discharged for insufficiency. however, the king treated him with tenderness, as a wellmeaning man, but of a low contemptible understanding. when i gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he made no further answer than by telling me, that i had not been long enough among them to form a judgement: and that the different nations of the world had different customs; with other common topicks to the same purpose. but when we returned to his palace, he asked me how i liked the building, what absurdities i observed, and what quarrel i had with the dress or looks of his domesticks. this he might safely do; because every thing about him was magnificent, regular, and polite. i answered, that his excellency's prudence, quality, and fortune, had exempted him from those defects which folly and beggary had produced in others. he said, if i would go with him to his country house, about twenty miles distant, where his estate lay, there would be more leisure for this kind of conversation. i told his excellency that i was entirely at his disposal; and accordingly we set out next morning. during our journey, he made me observe the several methods used by farmers in managing their lands; which to me were wholly unaccountable: for except in some very few places, i could not discover one ear of corn, or blade of grass. but, in three hours travelling, the scene was wholly altered; we came into a most beautiful country; farmers houses at small distances, neatly built, the fields enclosed, containing vineyards, corngrounds, and meadows. neither do i remember to have seen a more delightful prospect. his excellency observed my countenance to clear up; he told me with a sigh that there his estate began, and would continue the same till we should come to his house. that his countrymen ridiculed and despised him for managing his affairs no better, and for setting so ill an example to the kingdom; which however was followed by very few, such as were old, and wilful, and weak like himself. we came at length to the house, which was indeed a noble structure, built according to the best rules of ancient architecture. the fountains, gardens, walks, avenues, and groves were all disposed with exact judgement and taste. i gave due praises to every thing i saw, whereof his excellency took not the least notice till after supper; when, there being no third companion, he told me with a very melancholy air, that he doubted he must thrown down his houses in town and country, to rebuild them after the present mode; destroy all his plantations, and cast others into such a form as modern usage required; and give the same directions to all his tenants, unless he would submit to incur the censure of pride, singularity, affectation, ignorance, caprise; and perhaps increase his majesty's displeasure. that the admiration i appeared to be under, would cease or diminish when he had informed me of some particulars, which probably i never heard of at court, the people there being too much taken up in their own speculations, to have regard to what passed here below. the sum of his discourse was to this effect. that about forty years ago, certain persons went up to laputa, either upon business or diversion; and after five months continuance came back with a very little smattering in mathematicks, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region. that these persons upon their return, began to dislike the management of every thing below; and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanicks upon a new foot. to this end they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of projectors in lagado: and the humour prevailed so strongly among the people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom without such an academy. in these colleges, the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments and tools for all trades and manufactures, whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. all the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think fit to chuse, and increase an hundred fold more than they do at present; with innumerable other happy proposals. the only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or cloaths. by all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair: that, as for himself, being not of an enterprizing spirit, he was content to go on in the old forms; to live in the houses his ancestors had built, and act as they did in every part of life without innovation. that, some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same; but were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill will, as enemies to art, ignorant, and ill commonwealthmen, preferring their own ease and sloth before the general improvement of their country. his lordship added, that he would not by any further particulars prevent the pleasure i should certainly take in viewing the grand academy, whither he was resolved i should go. he only desired me to observe a ruined building upon the side of a mountain about three miles distant, of which he gave me this account. that he had a very convenient mill within half a mile of his house, turned by a current from a large river, and sufficient for his own family as well as a great number of his tenants. that, about seven years ago, a club of those projectors came to him with proposals to destroy this mill, and build another on the side of that mountain, on the long ridge whereof a long canal must be cut for a repository of water, to be conveyed up by pipes and engines to supply the mill: because the wind and air upon a height agitated the water, and thereby made it fitter for motion: and because the water descending down a declivity would turn the mill with half the current of a river whose course is more upon a level. he said, that being then not very well with the court, and pressed by many of his friends, he complyed with the proposal; and after employing an hundred men for two years, the work miscarryed, the projectors went off, laying the blame entirely upon him; railing at him ever since, and putting others upon the same experiment, with equal assurance of success, as well as equal disappointment. in a few days we came back to town; and his excellency, considering the bad character he had in the academy, would not go with me himself, but recommended me to a friend of his to bear me company thither. my lord was pleased to represent me as a great admirer of projects, and a person of much curiosity and easy belief; which indeed was not without truth, for i had my self been a sort of projector in my younger days. chapter v. the author permitted to see the grand academy of lagado. the academy largely described. the arts wherein the professors employ themselves. this academy is not an entire single building, but a continuation of several houses on both sides of a street; which growing waste, was purchased and applyed to that use. i was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the academy. every room hath in it one or more projectors; and i believe i could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms. the first man i saw was of a meager aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged and singed in several places. his cloathes, shirt, and skin were all of the same colour. he had been eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. he told me he did not doubt in eight years more he should be able to supply the governors gardens with sun-shine at a reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock was low, and intreated me to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers. i made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them. i went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost overcome with a horrible stink. my conductor pressed me forward, conjuring me in a whisper to give no offence, which would be highly resented; and therefore i durst not so much as stop my nose. the projector of this cell was the most ancient student of the academy. his face and beard were of a pale yellow; his hands and clothes daubed over with filth. when i was presented to him, he gave me a close embrace (a compliment i could well have excused.) his employment from his first coming into the academy, was an operation to reduce human excrement to its original food, by separating the several parts, removing the tincture which it receives from the gall, making the odour exhale, and scumming off the saliva. he had a weekly allowance from the society, of a vessel filled with human ordure about the bigness of a bristol barrel. i saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder; who likewise shewed me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which he intended to publish. there was a most ingenious architect who had contrived a new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downwards to the foundation; which he justified to me by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider. there was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own condition: their employment was to mix colours for painters, which their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. it was indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in their lessons; and the professor himself happened to be generally mistaken: this artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole fraternity. in another apartment i was highly pleased with a projector, who had found a device of plowing the ground with hogs, to save the charges of plows, cattle, and labour. the method in this: in an acre of ground you bury at six inches distance, and eight deep, a quantity of acorns, dates, chestnuts, and other maste or vegetables whereof these animals are fondest; then you drive six hundred or more of them into the field, where in a few days they will root up the whole ground in search of their food, and make it fit for sowing, at the same time manuring it with their dung. it is true, upon experiment they found the charge and trouble very great, and they had little or no crop. however, it is not doubted that this invention may be capable of great improvement. i went into another room, where the walls and ceiling were all hung round with cobwebs, except a narrow passage for the artist to go in and out. at my entrance he called aloud to me not to disturb his webs. he lamented the fatal mistake the world had been so long in of using silkworms, while we had such plenty of domestick insects, who infinitely excelled the former, because they understood how to weave as well as spin. and he proposed farther, that by employing spiders, the charge of dying silks should be wholly saved; whereof i was fully convinced when he shewed me a vast number of flies most beautifully coloured, wherewith he fed his spiders; assuring us, that the webs would take a tincture from them; and as he had them of all hues, he hoped to fit every body's fancy, as soon as he could find proper food for the flies, of certain gums, oyls, and other glutinous matter to give a strength and consistence to the threads. there was an astronomer who had undertaken to place a sun-dial upon the great weather-cock on the town-house, by adjusting the annual and diurnal motions of the earth and sun, so as to answer and coincide with all accidental turnings of the wind. i was complaining of a small fit of the cholick; upon which my conductor led me into a room, where a great physician resided, who was famous for curing that disease by contrary operations from the same instrument. he had a large pair of bellows with a long slender muzzle of ivory. this he conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder. but when the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows were full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient, then withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his thumb strongly against the orifice of the fundament; and this being repeated three or four times, the adventitious wind would rush out, bringing the noxious along with it (like water put into a pump), and the patient recover. i saw him try both experiments upon a dog, but could not discern any effect from the former. after the latter, the animal was ready to burst, and made so violent a discharge, as was very offensive to me and my companions. the dog died on the spot, and we left the doctor endeavouring to recover him by the same operation. i visited many other apartments, but shall not trouble my reader with all the curiosities i observed, being studious of brevity. i had hitherto seen only one side of the academy, the other being appropriated to the advancers of speculative learning, of which i shall say something when i have mentioned one illustrious person more, who is called among them the universal artist. he told us he had been thirty years employing his thoughts for the improvement of human life. he had two large rooms full of wonderful curiosities, and fifty men at work. some were condensing air into a dry tangible substance, by extracting the nitre, and letting the aqueous or fluid particles percolate; others softening marble for pillows and pincushions; others petrifying the hoofs of a living horse to preserve them from foundring. the artist himself was at that time busy upon two great designs; the first, to sow land with chaff, wherein he affirmed the true seminal virtue to be contained, as he demonstrated by several experiments which i was not skilful enough to comprehend. the other was, by a certain composition of gums, minerals, and vegetables outwardly applied, to prevent the growth of wool upon two young lambs; and he hoped in a reasonable time to propagate the breed of naked sheep all over the kingdom. we crossed a walk to the other part of the academy, where, as i have already said, the projectors in speculative learning resided. the first professor i saw was in a very large room, with forty pupils about him. after salutation, observing me to look earnestly upon a frame, which took up the greatest part of both the length and breadth of the room, he said perhaps i might wonder to see him employed in a project for improving speculative knowledge by practical and mechanical operations. but the world would soon be sensible of its usefulness, and he flattered himself that a more noble exalted thought never sprung in any other man's head. every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas by his contrivance, the most ignorant person at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, may write books in philosophy, poetry, politicks, law, mathematicks and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study. he then led me to the frame, about the sides whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. it was twenty foot square, placed in the middle of the room. the superficies was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a dye, but some larger than others. they were all linked together by slender wires. these bits of wood were covered on every square with paper pasted on them, and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions, but without any order. the professor then desired me to observe, for he was going to set his engine at work. the pupils at his command took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were fourty fixed round the edges of the frame, and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. he then commanded six and thirty of the lads to read the several lines softly as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys who were scribes. this work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn the engine was so contrived that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down. [plate 5: the literary engine] six hours a-day the young students were employed in this labour, and the professor shewed me several volumes in large folio already collected, of broken sentences, which he intended to piece together, and out of those rich materials to give the world a compleat body of all arts and sciences; which however might be still improved, and much expedited, if the publick would raise a fund for making and employing five hundred such frames in lagado, and oblige the managers to contribute in common their several collections. he assured me, that this invention had employed all his thoughts from his youth, that he had emptyed the whole vocabulary into his frame, and made the strictest computation of the general proportion there is in books between the numbers of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other parts of speech. i made my humblest acknowledgement to this illustrious person for his great communicativeness, and promised if ever i had the good fortune to return to my native country, that i would do him justice, as the sole inventer of this wonderful machine; the form and contrivance of which i desired leave to delineate upon paper, as in the figure here annexed. i told him, although it were the custom of our learned in europe to steal inventions from each other, who had thereby at least this advantage, that it became a controversy which was the right owner, yet i would take such caution, that he should have the honour entire without a rival. we next went to the school of languages, where three professors sate in consultation upon improving that of their own country. the first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because in reality all things imaginable are but nouns. the other, was a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health as well as brevity. for it is plain, that every word we speak is in some degree a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortning of our lives. an expedient was therefore offered, that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them, such things as were necessary to express the particular business they are to discourse on. and this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate had not threatned to raise a rebellion, unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after the manner of their ancestors; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people. however, many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing themselves by things, which hath only this inconvenience attending it, that if a man's business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged in proportion to carry a greater bundle of thingsupon his back, unless he can afford one or two strong servants to attend him. i have often beheld two of those sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like pedlars among us; who, when they met in the streets, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their burthens, and take their leave. but for short conversations a man may carry implements in his pockets and under his arms, enough to supply him, and in his house he cannot be at a loss: therefore the room where company meet who practise this art, is full of all things ready at hand, requisite to furnish matter for this kind of artificial converse. another great advantage proposed by this invention, was that it would serve as a universal language to be understood in all civilized nations, whose goods and utensils are generally of the same kind, or nearly resembling, so that their uses might easily be comprehended. and thus embassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign princes or ministers of state to whose tongues they were utter strangers. i was at the mathematical school, where the master taught his pupils after a method scarce imaginable to us in europe. the proposition and demonstration were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink composed of a cephalick tincture. this the student was to swallow upon a fasting stomach, and for three days following eat nothing but bread and water. as the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the proposition along with it. but the success hath not hitherto been answerable, partly by some error in the quantum or composition, and partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this bolus is so nauseous, that they generally steal aside, and discharge it upwards before it can operate, neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an abstinence as the prescription required. chapter vi. a further account of the academy. the author proposes some improvements which are honourably received. in the school of political projectors i was but ill entertained, the professors appearing in my judgement wholly out of their senses, which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. these unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to chuse favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the publick good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, eminent services; of instructing princes to know their true interest by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people: of chusing for employments persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimaeras, that never entred before into the heart of man to conceive, and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth. but, however i shall so far do justice to this part of the academy, as to acknowledge that all of them were not so visionary. there was a most ingenious doctor who seemed to be perfectly versed in the whole nature and system of government. this illustrious person had very usefully employed his studies in finding out effectual remedys for all diseases and corruptions, to which the several kinds of publick administration are subject by the vices or infirmities of those who govern, as well as by the licentiousness of those who are to obey. for instance; whereas all writers and reasoners have agreed, that there is a strict universal resemblance between the natural and the politcal body; can there be anything more evident, than that the health of both must be preserved, and the diseases cured by the same prescriptions? it is allowed that senates and great councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant humours, with many diseases of the head, and more of the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the right: with spleen, flatus, vertigos, and deliriums; with scrophulous tumours full of f¾tid purulent matter; with sower frothy ructations, with canine appetites and crudeness of digestion, besides many others needless to mention. this doctor therefore proposed, that upon the meeting of a senate, certain physicians should attend at the three first days of their sitting, and at the close of each day's debate, feel the pulses of every senator; after which having maturely considered, and consulted upon the nature of the several maladies, and the methods of cure, they should on the fourth day return to the senate house, attended by their apothecaries stored with proper medicines, and before the members sate, administer to each of them lenitives, aperitives, abstersives, currosives, restringents, palliatives, laxatives, cephalalgicks, ictericks, apophlegmaticks, acousticks, as their several cases required, and according as these medicines should operate, repeat, alter, or omit them at the next meeting. this project could not be of any great expense to the publick, and would in my poor opinion, be of much use for the dispatch of business in those countries where senates have any share in the legislative power; beget unanimity, shorten debates, open a few mouths which are now closed, and close many more which are now open; curb the petulancy of the young, and correct the positiveness of the old; rouze the stupid, and damp the pert. again, because it is a general complaint that the favourites of princes are troubled with short and weak memories; the same doctor proposed, that whoever attended a first minister, after having told his business with the utmost brevity, and in the plainest words; should at his departure give the said minister a tweak by the nose, or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by both ears, or run a pin into his breech, or pinch his arm black and blew, to prevent forgetfulness: and at every levee day repeat the same operation, till the business were done or absolutely refused. he likewise directed, that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the publick. when parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance to reconcile them. the method is this. you take an hundred leaders of each party, you dispose of them into couples of such whose heads are nearest of a size; then let two nice operators saw off the occiput of each couple at the same time, in such a manner that the brain may be equally divided. let the occiputs thus cut off be interchanged, applying each to the head of his opposite party-man. it seems indeed to be a work that requireth some exactness, but the professor assured us, that if it were dexterously performed, the cure would be infallible. for he argued thus; that the two half brains being left to debate the matter between themselves within the space of one scull, would soon come to a good understanding, and produce that moderation, as well as regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for in the heads of those who imagine they come into the world only to watch and govern its motion: and as to the difference of brains in quantity or quality, among those who are directors in faction; the doctor assured us from his own knowledge, that it was a perfect trifle. i heard a very warm debate between two professors, about the most commodious and effectual ways and means of raising money without grieving the subject. the first affirmed the justest method would be to lay a certain tax upon vices and folly, and the sum fixed upon every man, to be rated after the fairest manner by a jury of his neighbours. the second was of an opinion directly contrary, to tax those qualities of body and mind for which men chiefly value themselves, the rate to be more or less according to the degrees of excelling, the decision whereof should be left entirely to their own breast. the highest tax was upon men who are the greatest favourites of the other sex, and the assessments according to the number and natures of the favours they have received; for which they are allowed to be their own vouchers. wit, valour, and politeness were likewise proposed to be largely taxed and collected in the same manner, by every person's giving his own word for the qantum of what he possessed. but as to honour, justice, wisdom, and learning, they should not be taxed at all, because they are qualifications of so singular a kind, that no man will either allow them in his neighbour, or value them in himself. the women were proposed to be taxed according to their beauty and skill in dressing, wherein they had the same priviledge with the men, to be determined by their own judgement. but constancy, chastity, good sense, and good nature were not rated, because they would not bear the charge of collecting. to keep senators in the interest of the crown, it was proposed that the members should raffle for employments, every man first taking an oath, and giving security that he would vote for the court, whether he won or no, after which the losers had in their turn the liberty of raffling upon the next vacancy. thus hope and expectation would be kept alive, none would complain of broken promises, but impute their disappointments wholly to fortune, whose shoulders are broader and stronger than those of a ministry. another professor shewed me a large paper of instructions for discovering plots and conspiracies against the governments. he advised great statesmen to examine into the dyet of all suspected persons; their times of eating; upon which side they lay in bed; with which hand they wiped their posteriors; take a strict view of their excrements, and from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness, or maturity of digestion, form a judgement of their thoughts and designs. because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool, which he found by frequent experiment: for in such conjunctures, when he used meerly as a trial to consider which was the best way of murdering the king, his ordure would have a tincture of green, but quite different when he thought only of raising an insurrection or burning the metropolis. the whole discourse was written with great acuteness, containing many observations both curious and useful for politicians, but as i conceived not altogether compleat. this i ventured to tell the author, and offered if he pleased to supply him with some additions. he received my proposition with more compliance than is usual among writers, especially those of the projecting species, professing he would be glad to receive farther information. i told him, that in the kingdom of tribnia, by the natives called langden, where i had long sojourned, the bulk of the people consisted wholly of discoverers, witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers; together with their several subservient and subaltern instruments; all under the colours, the conduct, and pay of ministers, and their deputies. the plots in that kingdom are usually the workmanship of those persons who desire to raise their own characters of profound politicians; to restore new vigor to a crazy administration; to stifle or divert general discontents; to fill their coffers with forfeitures; and raise or sink the opinion of publick credit, as either shall best answer their private advantage. it is first agreed and settled among them, what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot: then, effectual care is taken to secure all their letters and other papers, and put the owners in chains. these papers are delivered to a set of artists, very dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words, syllables and letters. for instance, they can decypher a close-stool to signify a privy-council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a committee of grandees; a sieve, a court lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an employment; a bottomless pit, the treasury; a sink, a c---t; a cap and bells, a favourite; a broken reed, a court of justice; an empty tun, a general; a running sore, the administration. when this method fails, they have two others more effectual; which the learned among them call acrosticks and anagrams. first, they can decypher all initial letters into political meanings. thus, n, shall signify a plot; b, a regiment of horse; l,. a fleet at sea. or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet, in any suspected paper, they can discover the deepest designs of a discontented party. so for example, if i should say in a letter to a friend, our brother tom has just got the piles; a man of skill in this art would discover how the same letters which compose that sentence, may be analysed into the following words: resist, ----a plot is brought home ----the tour. and this is the anagrammatick method. the professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these observations, and promised to make honourable mention of me in his treatise. i saw nothing in this country that could invite me to a longer continuance; and began to think of returning home to england. chapter vii. the author leaves lagado, arrives at maldonada. no ship ready. he takes a short voyage to glubbdubdrib. his reception by the governor [t]he continent of which this kingdom is a part, extends itself, as i have reason to believe, eastward to that unknown tract of america, westward of california, and north to the pacifick ocean, which is not above an hundred and fifty miles from lagado; where there is a good port and much commerce with the great island of luggnagg, situated to the northwest about 29 degrees north latitude, and 140 longitude. this island of luggnagg stands south-eastwards of japan, about an hundred leagues distant. there is a strict alliance between the japanese emperor and the king of luggnagg, which affords frequent opportunities of sailing from one island to the other. i determined therefore to direct my course this way, in order to my return to europe. i hired two mules with a guide to shew me the way, and carry my small baggage. i took leave of my noble protector, who had shewn me so much favour, and made me a generous present at my departure. my journey was without any accident or adventure worth relating. when i arrived at the port of maldonada, (for so it is called) there was no ship in the harbour bound for luggnagg, nor like to be in some time. the town is about as large as portsmouth. i soon fell into some acquaintance, and was very hospitably received. a gentleman of distinction said to me that since the ships bound for luggnagg could not be ready in less than a month, it might be no disagreeable amusement for me to take a trip to the little island of glubbdubdrib, about five leagues off to the south-west. he offered himself and a friend to accompany me, and that i should be provided with a small convenient barque for the voyage. glubbdubdrib, as nearly as i can interpret the word, signifies the island of sorcerers or magicians. it is about one third as large as the isle of wight, and extremely fruitful: it is governed by the head of a certain tribe, who are all magicians. this tribe marries only among each other, and the eldest in succession is prince or governor. he hath a noble palace, and a park of about three thousand acres, surrounded by a wall of hewn stone twenty foot high. in this park are several small enclosures for cattle, corn, and gardening. the governor and his family are served and attended by domesticks of a kind somewhat unusual. by his skill in necromancy, he hath a power of calling whom he pleaseth from the dead, and commanding their service for twenty-four hours, but no longer; nor can he call the same persons up again in less than three months, except upon very extraordinary occasions. when we arrived at the island, which was about eleven in the morning, one of the gentlemen who accompanied me, went to the governour, and desired admittance for a stranger, who came on purpose to have the honour of attending on his highness. this was immediately granted, and we all three entered the gate of the palace between two rows of guards, armed and dressed after a very antick manner, and something in their countenances that made my flesh creep with a horror i cannot express. we passed through several apartments between servants of the same sort, ranked on each side as before, till we came to the chamber of presence, where after three profound obeysances, and a few general questions, we were permitted to sit on three stools near the lowest step of his highness's throne. he understood the language of balnibarbi, although it were different from that of his island. he desired me to give him some account of my travels; and to let me see that i should be treated without ceremony, he dismissed all his attendants with a turn of his finger, at which to my great astonishment they vanished in an instant, like visions in a dream, when we awake on a sudden. i could not recover my self in some time, till the governor assured me that i should receive no hurt; and observing my two companions to be under no concern, who had been often entertained in the same manner, i began to take courage; and related to his highness a short history of my several adventures, yet not without some hesitation, and frequently looking behind me to the place where i had seen those domestick spectres. i had the honour to dine with the governor, where a new set of ghosts served up the meat, and waited at table. i now observed myself to be less terrified than i had been in the morning. i stayed till sun-set, but humbly desired his highness to excuse me for not accepting his invitation of lodging in the palace. my two friends and i lay at a private house in the town adjoining, which is the capital of this little island; and the next morning we returned to pay our duty to the governor, as he was pleased to command us. after this manner we continued in the island for ten days, most part of every day with the governor, and at night in our lodging. i soon grew so familiarized to the sight of spirits, that after the third or fourth time they gave me no emotion at all; or if i had any apprehensions left, my curiosity prevailed over them. for his highness the governor ordered me to call up whatever persons i would choose to name, and in whatever numbers among all the dead from the beginning of the world to the present time, and command them to answer any questions i should think fit to ask; with this condition, that my questions must be confined within the compass of the times they lived in. and one thing i might depend upon, that they would certainly tell me truth, for lying was a talent of no use in the lower world. i made my humble acknowledgments to his highness for so great a favour. we were in a chamber, from whence there was a fair prospect into the park. and because my first inclination was to be entertained with scenes of pomp and magnificence, i desired to see alexander the great, at the head of his army just after the battle of arbela; which upon a motion of the governor's finger immediately appeared in a large field under the window, where we stood. alexander was called up into the room: iit was with great difficulty that i understood his greek, and had but little of my own. he assured me upon his honour that he was not poisoned, but died of a fever by excessive drinking. next i saw hannibal passing the alps, who told me he had not a drop of vinegar in his camp. i saw c&aeligsar and pompey at the head of their troops just ready to engage. i saw the former in his last great triumph. i desired that the senate of rome might appear before me in one large chamber, and an assembly of somewhat a latter age, in counterview in another. the first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demy-gods; the other a knot of pedlars, pickpockets, high-way-men, and bullies. the governor at my request gave the sign for c&aeligsar and brutus to advance towards us. i was struck with a profound veneration at the sight of brutus; and could easily discover the most consummate virtue, the greatest intrepidity and firmness of mind, the truest love of his country, and general benevolence for mankind in every lineament of his countenance. i observed with much pleasure, that these two persons were in good intelligence with each other, and c&aeligsar freely confessed to me that the greatest actions of his own life were not equal by many degrees to the glory of taking it away. i had the honour to have much conversation with brutus; and was told that his ancestor junius, socrates, epaminondas, cato the younger, sir thomas more and himself, were perpetually together: a sextumvirate to which all the ages of the world cannot add a seventh. it would be tedious to trouble the reader with relating what vast numbers of illustrious persons were called up, to gratify that insatiable desire i had to see the world in every period of antiquity placed before me. i chiefly fed mine eyes with beholding the destroyers of tyrants and usurpers, and the restorers of liberty to oppressed and injured nations. but it is impossible to express the satisfaction i received in my own mind, after such a manner as to make it a suitable entertainment to the reader. chapter viii. a further account of glubbdubdrib. antient and modern history corrected. having a desire to see those antients, who were most renowned for wit and learning, i set apart one day on purpose. i proposed that homer and aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators; but these were so numerous that some hundreds were forced to attend in the court and outward rooms of the palace. i knew and could distinguish those two heroes at first sight, not only from the croud, but from each other. homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and piercing i ever beheld. aristotle stooped much, and made use of a staff. his visage was meager, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow. i soon discovered that both of were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of them before. and i had a whisper from a ghost, who shall be nameless, that these commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from their principals in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of those authors to posterity. i introduced didymus and eustathius to homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they deserved; for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. but aristotle was out of all patience with the account i gave him of scotus and ramus, as i presented them to him; and he asked them whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as themselves. i then desired the governor to call up descartes and gassendi, with whom i prevailed to explain their systems to aristotle. this great philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy, because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do; and he found, that gassendi, who had made the doctrine of epicurus as palatable as he could, and the vortices of descartes were equally exploded. he predicted the same fate to attraction, whereof the present learned are such zealous asserters. he said, that new systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles, would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that was determined. i spent five days in conversing with many others of the antient learned. i saw most of the first roman emperors. i prevailed on the governor to call up eliogabalus's cooks to dress us a dinner, but they could not shew us much of their skill, for want of materials. a helot of agesilaus made us a dish of spartan broth, but i was not able to get down a second spoonful. the two gentlemen who conducted me to the island were pressed by their private affairs to return in three days, which i employed in seeing some of the modern dead, who had made the greatest figure for two or three hundred years past in our own and other countries of europe; and having been always a great admirer of old illustrious families, i desired the governor call up a dozen or two of kings with their ancestors in order for eight or nine generations. but my disappointment was grevious and unexpected. for instead of a long train with royal diadems, i saw in one family two fidlers, three spruce courtiers, and an italian prelate. in another a barber, an abbot, and two cardinals. i have too great a veneration for crowned heads to dwell any longer on so nice a subject. but as to counts, marquesses, dukes, earls, and the like i was not so scrupulous. and i confess it was not without some pleasure that i found my self able to trace the particular features, by which certain families are distinguished up to their originals. i could plainly discover from whence one family derives a long chin, why a second has abounded with knaves for two generations, and fools for two more; why a third happened to be crack-brained, and a fourth to be sharpers. whence it came what polydore virgil says of a certain great house, nec vir fortis, nec femina casta. how cruelty, falsehood, and cowardice grew to be characteristicks by which certain families are distinguished as much as by their coat of arms. who first brought the pox into a noble house, which has lineally descended in scrophulous tumours to their posterity. neither could i wonder at all this, when i saw such an interruption of lineages by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, captains and pickpockets. i was chiefly disgusted with modern history. for having strictly examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes for a hundred years past, i found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war to cowards, the wisest counsel to fools, sincerity to flatterers, roman virtue to betrayers of their country, piety to atheists, chastity to sodomites, truth to informers. how many innocent and excellent persons had been condemned to death or banishment, by the practising of great ministers upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of faction. how many villains had been exalted to the highest places of trust, power, dignity, and profit: how great a share in the motions and events of courts, councils, and senates might be challenged by bawds, whores, pimps, parasites, and buffoons: how low an opinion i had of human wisdom and integrity, when i was truly informed of the springs and motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the contemptible accidents to which they owed their success. here i discovered the roguery and ignorance of those who pretend to write anecdotes, or secret history, who send so many kings to their graves with a cup of poison; will repeat the discourse between a prince and chief minister, where no witness was by; unlock the thoughts and cabinets of embassadors and secretaries of state, and have the perpetual misfortune to be mistaken. here i discovered the secret causes of many great events that have surprized the world, how a whore can govern the back-stairs, the back-stairs a council, and the council a senate. a general confessed in my presence, that he got a victory purely by the force of cowardice and ill conduct: and an admiral that for want of proper intelligence, he beat the enemy to whom he intended to betray the fleet. three kings protested to me, that in their whole reigns they never did once prefer any person of merit, unless by mistake or treachery of some minister in whom they confided: neither would they do it if they were to live again; and they shewed with great strength of reason, that the royal throne could not be supported without corruption, because that positive, confident, restive temper, which virtue infused into man, was a perpetual clog to publick business. i had the curiosity to enquire in a particular manner, by what method great numbers had procured to themselves high titles of honour, and prodigious estates; and i confined my enquiry to a very modern period; however, without grating upon present times, because i would be sure to give no offence even to foreigners (for i hope the reader need not be told that i do not in the least intend my own country in what i say upon this occasion), a great number of persons concerned were called up, and upon a very slight examination, discovered such a scene of infamy, that i cannot reflect upon it without some seriousness. perjury, oppression, subornation, fraud, panderism, and the like infirmities, were amongst the most excusable arts they had to mention, and for these i gave, as it was reasonable, great allowance. but when some confessed they owed their greatness and wealth to sodomy or incest, others to the prostituting of their own wives and daughters; others to the betraying of their country or their prince; some to poisoning, more to the perverting of justice in order to destroy the innocent: i hope i may be pardoned if these discoveries inclined me little to abate of that profound veneration which i am naturally apt to pay to persons of high rank, who ought to be treated with the utmost respect due to their sublime dignity, by us their inferiors. i had often read of some great services done to princes and states, and desired to see the persons by whom those services were performed. upon enquiry i was told that their names were to be found on no record, except a few of them whom history has represented as the vilest rogues and traitors. as to the rest, i had never once heard of them. they all appeared with dejected looks, and in the meanest habit, most of them telling me they died in poverty and disgrace, and the rest on a scaffold or a gibbet. among the rest there was one person whose case appeared a little singular. he had a youth about eighteen years old standing by his side. he told me he had for many years been commander of a ship, and in the sea fight at actium had the good fortune to break through the enemy's great line of battle, sink three of their capital ships, and take a fourth, which was the sole cause of antony's flight, and of the victory that ensued; that the youth standing by him, his only son, was killed in action. he added, that upon the confidence of some merit, the war being at an end, he went to rome, and solicited at the court of augustus to be preferred to a greater ship, whose commander had been killed; but without any regard to his pretensions, it was given to a youth who had never seen the sea, the son of libertina, who waited on one of the emperor's mistresses. returning back to his own vessel, he was charged with neglect of duty, and the ship given to a favourite page of publicola, the vice-admiral; whereupon he retired to a poor farm, at a great distance from rome, and there ended his life. i was so curious to know the truth of this story, that i desired agrippa might be called, who was admiral in that fight. he appeared, and confirmed the whole account, but with much more advantage to the captain, whose modesty had extenuated or concealed a great part of his merit. i was surprized to find corruption grown so high and so quick in that empire, by the force of luxury so lately introduced, which made me less wonder at many parallel cases in other countries, where vices of all kinds have reigned so much longer, and where the whole praise as well as pillage has been engrossed by the chief commander, who perhaps had the least title to either. as every person called up made exactly the same appearance he had done in the world, it gave me melancholy reflections to observe how much the race of human kind was degenerate among us, within these hundred years past. how the pox under all its consequences and denominations had altered every lineament of an english countenance, shortned the size of bodies, unbraced the nerves, relaxed the sinews and muscles, introduced a sallow complexion, and rendered the flesh loose and rancid. i descended so low as to desire that some english yeomen of the old stamp might be summoned to appear, once so famous for the simplicity of their manners, dyet and dress, for justice in their dealings, for their true spirit of liberty, for their valour and love of their country. neither could i be wholly unmov'd after comparing the living with the dead, when i considered how all these pure native virtues were prostituted for a piece of money by their grand-children, who in selling their votes, and managing at elections have acquired every vice and corruption that can possibly be learned in a court. chapter ix. the author's return to maldonada. sails to the kingdom of luggnagg. the author confined. he is sent for to court. the manner of his admittance. the king's great lenity to his subjects. the day of our departure being come, i took leave of his highness the governor of glubbdubdrib, and returned with my two companions to maldonada, where after a fortnight's waiting, a ship was ready to sail for luggnagg. the two gentlemen and some others were so generous and kind as to furnish me with provisions, and see me on board. i was a month in this voyage. we had one violent storm and were under a necessity of steering westward to get into the trade-wind, which holds for above sixty leagues. on the 21st of april, 1711, we sailed into the river of clumegnig, which is a sea-port town, at the south-east point of luggnagg. we cast anchor within a league of the town, and made a signal for a pilot. two of them came on board in less than half an hour, by whom we were guided between certain shoals and rocks, which are very dangerous in the passage, to a large basin, where a fleet may ride in safety within a cable's length of the town wall. some of our sailors, whether out of treachery or inadvertence, had informed the pilots that i was a stranger and a traveller, whereof these gave notice to a custom-house officer, by whom i was examined very strictly upon my landing. this officer spoke to me in the language of balnibarbi, which by the force of much commerce is generally understood in that town, especially by seamen, and those employed in the customs. i gave him a short account of some particulars, and made my story as plausible and consistent as i could; but i thought it necessary to disguise my country, and call my self an hollander, because my intentions were for japan, and i knew the dutch were the only europeans permitted to enter into that kingdom. i therefore told the officer, that having been shipwrecked on the coast of balnibarbi, and cast on a rock, i was received up into laputa, or the flying island (of which he had often heard), and was now endeavouring to get to japan, from whence i might find a convenience of returning to my own country. the officer said i must be confined till he could receive orders from court, for which he would write immediately, and hoped to receive an answer in a fortnight. i was carried to a convenient lodging, with a centry placed at the door; however i had the liberty of a large garden, and was treated with humanity enough, being maintained all the time at the king's charge. i was visited by several persons, chiefly out of curiosity, because it was reported that i came from countries very remote of which they had never heard. i hired a young man who came in the same ship to be an interpreter; he was a native of luggnagg, but had lived some years at maldonada, and was a perfect master of both languages. by his assistance i was able to hold a conversation with those who came to visit me; but this consisted only of their questions, and my answers. the dispatch came from court about the time we expected. it contain'd a warrant for conducting me and my retinue to traldragdubb or trildrogdrib, for it is pronounced both ways as near as i can remember, by a party of ten horse. all my retinue was that poor lad for an interpreter, whom i persuaded into my service, and at my humble request, we had each of us a mule to ride on. a messenger was dispatch'd half a day's journey before us, to give the king notice of my approach, and to desire that his majesty would please appoint a day and hour, when it would be his gracious pleasure that i might have the honour to lick the dust before his footstool. this is the court style, and i found it to be more than matter of form: for upon my admittance two days after my arrival, i was commanded to crawl upon my belly, and lick the floor as i advanced; but on account of my being a stranger, care was taken to have it made so clean that the dust was not offensive. however, this was a peculiar grace, not allowed to any but persons of the highest rank, when they desire an admittance. nay, sometimes the floor is strewed with dust on purpose, when the person to be admitted happens to have powerful enemies at court. and i have seen a great lord with his mouth so crammed, that when he had crept to the proper distance from the throne, he was not able to speak a word. neither is there any remedy, because it is capital for those who receive an audience to spit or wipe their mouths in his majesty's presence. there is indeed another custom, which i cannot altogether approve of. when the king has a mind to put any of his nobles to death in a gentle indulgent manner; he commands to have the floor strowed with a certain brown powder, of a deadly composition, which being licked up infallibly kills him in twenty-four hours. but in justice to this prince's great clemency, and the care he hath of his subject's lives (wherein it were much to be wished that the monarchs of europe would imitate him) it must be mentioned for his honour, that strict orders are given to have the infected parts of the floor well washed after every such execution; which if his domesticks neglect, they are in danger of incurring his royal displeasure. i my self heard him give directions, that one of his pages should be whipt, whose turn it was to give notice about washing the floor after an execution, but maliciously had omitted it; by which neglect a young lord of great hopes coming to an audience, was unfortunately poisoned, although the king at that time had no design against his life. but this good prince was so gracious, as to forgive the poor page his whipping, upon promise that he would do so no more, without special orders. to return from this digression; when i had crept within four yards of the throne, i raised my self gently upon my knees, and then striking my forehead seven times on the ground, i pronounced the following words, as they had been taught me the night before, ickpling gloffthrobb squutserumm blhiop mlashnalt zwin tnodbalkguffh slhiophad gurdlubh asht. this is the compliment established by the laws of the land for all persons admitted to the king's presence. it may be rendered into english thus: may your celestial majesty out-live the sun, eleven moons and an half. to this the king returned some answer, which although i could not understand, yet i replied as i had been directed; fluft drin yalerick dwuldum prastrad mirplush, which properly signifies, my tongue is in the mouth of my friend; and by this expression was meant that i desired leave to bring my interpreter; whereupon the young man already mentioned was accordingly introduced, by whose intervention i answer'd as many questions as his majesty could put in above an hour. i spoke in the balnibarbian tongue, and my interpreter delivered my meaning in that of luggnagg. the king was much delighted with my company, and ordered his bliffmarklub or high chamberlain, to appoint a lodging in the court for me and my interpreter, with a daily allowance for my table, and a large purse of gold for my common expenses. i stayed three months in this country out of perfect obedience to his majesty, who was pleased highly to favour me, and made me very honourable offers. but, i thought it more consistent with prudence and justice to pass the remainder of my days with my wife and family. chapter x. the luggnuggians commended. a particular description of the struldbruggs, with many conversations between the author and some eminent persons upon that subject. the luggnuggians are a polite and generous people, and although they are not without some share of that pride which is peculiar to all eastern countries, yet they shew themselves courteous to strangers, especially such who are countenanced by the court. i had many acquaintance among persons of the best fashion, and being always attended by my interpreter, the conversation we had was not disagreeable. one day in much good company i was asked by a person of quality, whether i had seen any of their struldbruggs, or immortals. i said i had not, and desired he would explain to me what he meant by such an appellation applied to a mortal creature. he told me, that sometimes, though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family with a red circular spot in the forehead, directly over the left eyebrow, which was an infallible mark that it should never dye. the spot, as he described it, was about the compass of a silver threepence, but in the course of time grew larger, and changed its colour; for at twelve years old it became green, so continued till five and twenty, then turned to a deep blue; at five and forty it grew coal black, and as large as an english shilling, but never admitted any further alteration. he said these births were so rare, that he did not believe there could be above eleven hundred struldbruggs of both sexes in the whole kingdom, of which he computed about fifty in the metropolis, and among the rest a young girl born about three years ago. that these productions were not peculiar to any family, but a meer effect of chance; and the children of the struldbruggs themselves, were equally mortal with the rest of the people. i freely own my self to have been struck with inexpressible delight upon hearing this account: and the person who gave it me happening to understand the balnibarbian language, which i spoke very well, i could not forbear breaking out into expressions perhaps a little too extravagant. i cryed out as in a rapture; happy nation where every child hath at least a chance for being immortal! happy people who enjoy so many living examples of antient virtue, and have masters ready to instruct them in the wisdom of all former ages! but, happiest beyond all comparison are those excellent struldbruggs, who born exempt from that universal calamity of human nature, have their minds free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of spirits caused by the continual apprehension of death. i discovered my admiration that i had not observed any of these illustrious persons at court; the black spot on the fore-head being so remarkable a distinction, that i could not have easily overlooked it: and it was impossible that his majesty, a most judicious prince, should not provide himself with a good number of such wise and able counsellours. yet perhaps the virtue of those reverend sages was too strict for the corrupt and libertine manners of a court. and we often find by experience, that young men are too opinionative and volatile to be guided by the sober dictates of their seniors. however, since the king was pleased to allow me access to his royal person, i was resolved upon the very first occasion to deliver my opinion to him on this matter freely, and at large by the help of my interpreter; and whether he would please to take my advice or no, yet in one thing i was determined, that his majesty having frequently offered me an establishment in this country, i would with great thankfulness accept the favour, and pass my life here in the conversation of those superiour beings the struldbruggs, if they would please to admit me. the gentleman to whom i addressed my discourse, because (as i have already observed) he spoke the language of balnibarbi, said to me with a sort of a smile, which usually ariseth from pity to the ignorant, that he was glad of any occasion to keep me among them, and desired my permission to explain to the company what i had spoke. he did so, and they talked together for some time in their own language, whereof i understood not a syllable, neither could i observe by their countenances what impression my discourse had made on them. after a short silence, the same person told me that his friends and mine (so he thought fit to express himself) were very much pleased with the judicious remarks i had made on the great happiness and advantages of immortal life, and they were desirous to know in a particular manner, what scheme of living i should have formed to my self, if it had fallen to my lot to have been born a struldbrugg. i answered, it was easy to be eloquent on so copious and delightful a subject, especially to me who have been often apt to amuse my self with visions of what i should do if i were a king, a general, or a great lord: and upon this very case i had frequently run over the whole system how i should employ my self, and pass the time if i were sure to live for ever. that, if it had been my good fortune to come into the world a struldbrugg, as soon as i could discover my own happiness by understanding the difference between life and death, i would first resolve by all arts and methods whatsoever to procure my self riches. in the pursuit of which by thrift and management, i might reasonably expect, in about two hundred years to be the wealthiest man in the kingdom. in the second place, i would from my earliest youth apply my self to the study of arts and sciences, by which i should arrive in time to excel all others in learning. lastly i would carefully record every action and event of consequence that happened in the publick, impartially draw the characters of the several successions of princes, and great ministers of state, with my own observations on every point. i would exactly set down the several changes in customs, languages, fashions, dress, dyet and diversions. by all which acquirements, i should be a living treasury of knowledge and wisdom, and certainly become the oracle of the nation. i would never marry after threescore, but live in an hospitable manner, yet still on the saving side. i would entertain myself in forming and directing the minds of hopeful young men, by convincing them from my own remembrance, experience and observation, fortified by numerous examples, of the usefulness of virtue in publick and private life. but, my choice and constant companions should be a sett of my own immortal brother hood, among whom i would elect a dozen from the most ancient down to my own contemporaries. where any of these wanted fortunes, i would provide them with convenient lodges round my own estate, and have some of them always at my table, only mingling a few of the most valuable among you mortals, whom length of time would harden me to lose with little or no reluctance, and treat your posterity after the same manner; just as a man diverts himself with the annual succession of pinks and tulips in his garden, without regretting the loss of those which withered the preceding year. these struldbruggs and i would mutually communicate our observations and memorials through the course of time, remark the several gradations by which corruption steals into the world, and oppose it in every step, by giving perpetual warning and instruction to mankind; which, added to the strong influence of our own example, would probably prevent that continual degeneracy of human nature so justly complained of in all ages. add to all this the pleasure of seeing the various revolutions of states and empires, the changes in the lower and upper world, antient cities in ruins, and obscure villages become the seats of kings. famous rivers lessening into shallow brooks, the ocean leaving one coast dry, and overwhelming another: the discovery of many countries yet unknown. barbarity over-running the politest nations, and the most barbarous become civilized. i should then see the discovery of the longitude, the perpetual motion, the universal medicine, and many other great inventions brought to the utmost perfection. what wonderful discoveries should we make in astronomy, by outliving and confirming our own predictions, by observing the progress and returns of comets, with the changes of motion in the sun, moon, and stars. i enlarged upon many other topicks, which the natural desire of endless life and sublunary happiness could easily furnish me with. when i had ended, and the sum of my discourse had been interpreted as before, to the rest of the company, there was a good deal of talk among them the language of the country, not without some laughter at my expense. at last the same gentleman who had been my interpreter said, he was desired by the rest to set me right in a few mistakes, which i had fallen into through the common imbecility of human nature, and upon that allowance was less answerable for them. that this breed of struldbruggs was peculiar to their country, for there were no such people either in balnibarbi or japan, where he had the honour to be embassador from his majesty, and found the natives in both these kingdoms very hard to believe that the fact was possible, and it appeared from my astonishment when he first mentioned the matter to me, that i received it as a thing wholly new, and scarcely to be credited. that in the two kingdoms above mentioned, where during his residence he had conversed very much, he observed long life to be the universal desire and wish of mankind. that whoever had one foot in the grave, was sure to hold back the other as strongly as he could. that the eldest had still hopes of living one day longer, and looked on death as the greatest evil, from which nature always prompted him to retreat; only in this island of luggnagg, the appetite for living was not so eager, from the continual example of the struldbruggs before their eyes. that the system of living contrived by me was unreasonable and unjust, because it supposed a perpetuity of youth, health, and vigour, which no man could be so foolish to hope, however extravagant he may be in his wishes. that the question therefore was not whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health, but how he would pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it. for although few men will avow their desires of being immortal upon such hard conditions, yet in the two kingdoms before-mentioned of balnibarbi and japan, he observed that every man desired to put off death for sometime longer, let it approach ever so late, and he rarely heard of any man who died willingly, except he were incited by the extremity of grief or torture. and he appealed to me whether in those countries i had travelled as well as my own, i had not observed the same general disposition. after this preface he gave me a particular account of the struldbruggs among them. he said they commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty years old, after which by degrees they grew melancholy and dejected, encreasing in both till they came to four-score. this he learned from their own confession; for otherwise there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. when they came to four-score years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. they were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but uncapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grand-children. envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. but those objects against which their envy principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort, and the deaths of the old. by reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest, to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. they have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect. and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common traditions than upon their best recollections. the least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others. if a struldbrugg happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two come to be four-score. for the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence, that those who are condemned without any fault of their own to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife. as soon as they have compleated the term of eighty years, they are look'd on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates, only a small pittance is reserved for their support, and the poor ones are maintained at the publick charge. after that period they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit, they cannot purchase lands or take leases, neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and bounds. at ninety they lose their teeth and hair, they have at that age no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without relish or appetite. the diseases they were subject to still continuing without encreasing or diminishing. in talking they forgot the common appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and relations. for the same reason they never can amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable. the language of this country being always upon the flux, the struldbruggs of one age do not understand those of another, neither are they able after two hundred years to hold any conversation (farther than by a few general words) with their neighbours the mortals; and thus they lye under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country. this was the account given me of the struldbruggs, as near as i can remember. i afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest not above two hundred years old, who were brought me at several times by some of my friends; but although they were told that i was a great traveller, and had seen all the world, they had not the least curiosity to ask me a question; only desired i would give them slumskudask, or a token of remembrance, which is a modest way of begging, to avoid the law that strictly forbids it, because they are provided for by the publick, although indeed with a very scanty allowance. they are despised and hated by all sort of people; when one of them is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very particularly; so that you may know their age by consulting the registry, which however hath not been kept above a thousand years past, or at least hath been destroyed by time or publick disturbances. but the usual way of computing how old they are is by asking them what kings or great persons they can remember, and then consulting history, for infallibly the last prince, in their mind, did not begin his reign after they were four-score years old. they were the most mortifying sight i ever beheld, and the women more horrible than the men. besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness in proportion to their number of years, which is not to be described, and among half a dozen i soon distinguished which was the eldest, although there were not above a century or two between them. the reader will easily believe, that from what i had heard and seen, my keen appetite for perpetuity of life was much abated. i grew heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions i had formed, and thought no tyrant could invent a death into which i would not run with pleasure from such a life. the king heard of all that had passed between me and my friends upon this occasion, and rallied me very pleasantly, wishing i would send a couple of struldbruggs to my own country, to arm our people against the fear of death; but this it seems is forbidden by the fundamental laws of the kingdom, or else i should have been well content with the trouble and expense of transporting them. i could not but agree that the laws of this kingdom relating to the struldbruggs, were founded upon the strongest reasons, and such as any other country would be under the necessity of enacting in the like circumstances. otherwise, as avarice is the necessary consequent of old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the publick. chapter xi. the author leaves luggnagg, and sails to japan. from thence he returns in a dutch ship to amsterdam, and from amsterdam to england. i thought this account of the struldbruggs might be some entertainment to the reader, because it seems to be a little out of the common way, at least, i do not remember to have met the like in any book of travels that has come to my hands: and if i am deceived, my excuse must be, that it is necessary for travellers, who describe the same country, very often to agree in dwelling on the same particulars, without deserving the censure of having borrowed or transcribed from those who wrote before them. there is indeed a perpetual commerce between this kingdom and the great empire of japan, and it is very probable that the japaneseauthors may have given some account of the struldbruggs; but my stay in japan was so short, and i was so entirely a stranger to that language, that i was not qualified to make any enquiries. but i hope the dutch, upon this notice will be curious and able enough to supply my defects. his majesty having often pressed me to accept some employment in his court, and finding me absolutely determined to return to my native country, was pleased to give me his licence to depart, and honoured me with a letter of recommendation under his own hand to the emperor of japan. he likewise presented me with four hundred and forty four large pieces of gold (this nation delighting in even numbers) and a red diamond, which i sold in england for eleven hundred pounds. on the sixth day of may, 1709, i took a solemn leave of his majesty, and all my friends. this prince was so gracious, as to order a guard to conduct me glanguenstald, which is a royal port to the south-west part of the island. in six days i found a vessel ready to carry me to japan, and spent fifteen days in the voyage. we landed at a small port-town called xamoschi, situated on the south-east part of japan; the town lies on the western point, where there is a narrow streight, leading northward into a long arm of the sea, upon the north-west part of which yedo, the metropolis stands. at landing, i shewed the custom-house officers my letter from the king of luggnagg to his imperial majesty. they knew the seal perfectly well; it was as broad as the palm of my hand. the impression was, a king lifting up a lame beggar from the earth. the magistrates of the town hearing of my letter, received me as a publick minister; they provided me with carriages and servants, and bore my charges to yedo, where i was admitted to an audience, and delivered my letter, which was opened with great ceremony, and explained to the emperor by an interpreter, who then gave me notice by his majesty's order, that i should signify my request, and, whatever it were, it should be granted for the sake of his royal brother of luggnagg. this interpreter was a person employed to transact affairs with the hollanders; he soon conjectured by my countenance that i was a european, and therefore repeated his majesty's commands in low-dutch, which he spoke perfectly well. i answered, (as i had before determined,) that i was a dutch merchant, shipwrecked in a very remote country, from whence i travelled by sea and land to luggnagg, and then took shipping for japan, where i knew my countrymen often traded, and with some of these i hoped to get an opportunity of returning into europe: i therefore most humbly entreated his royal favour, to give order, that i should be conducted in safety to nangasac. to this i added another petition, that for the sake of my patron the king of luggnagg, his majesty would condescend to excuse my performing the ceremony imposed on my countrymen of trampling upon the crucifix, because i had been thrown into his kingdom by my misfortunes, without any intention of trading. when this latter petition was interpreted to the emperor, he seemed a little surprized, and said, he believed i was the first of my countrymen who ever made any scruple in this point, and that he began to doubt whether i was a real hollander, or no, but rather suspected i must be a christian. however, for the reasons i had offered, but chiefly to gratify the king of luggnagg, by an uncommon mark of his favour, he would comply with the singularity of my humour; but the affair must be managed with dexterity, and his officers should be commanded to let me pass, as it were, by forgetfulness. for he assured me, that if the secret should be discovered by my countrymen, the dutch, they would cut my throat in the voyage. i returned my thanks by the interpreter, for so unusual a favour, and some troops being at that time on their march to nangasac, the commanding officer had orders to convey me safe thither, with particular instructions about the business of the crucifix. on the 9th day of june, 1709, i arrived at nangasac, after a very long and troublesome journey. i soon fell into the company of some dutch sailors belonging to the amboyna of amsterdam, a stout ship of 450 tons. i had lived long in holland, pursuing my studies at leyden, and i spoke dutch well. the seamen soon knew from whence i came last: they were curious to enquire into my voyages and course of life. i made up a story as short and probable as i could, but concealed the greatest part. i knew many persons in holland; i was able to invent names for my parents, whom i pretended to be obscure people in the province of gelderland. i would have given the captain (one theodorus vangrult) what he pleased to ask for my voyage to holland; but understanding i was a surgeon, he was contented to take half the usual rate, on condition that i would serve him in the way of my calling. before we took shipping, i was often asked by some of the crew, whether i had performed the ceremony abovementioned: i evaded the question by general answers, that i had satisfied the emperor and court in all particulars. however, a malicious rogue of a skipper went to an officer, and pointing to me, told him i had not yet trampled on the crucifix: but the other, who had received instructions to let me pass, gave the rascal twenty strokes on the shoulders with a bamboo, after which i was no more troubled with such questions. nothing happened worth mentioning in this voyage. we sailed with a fair wind to the cape of good hope, where we stayed only to take in fresh water. on the 16th of april we arrived safe at amsterdam, having lost only three men by sickness in the voyage, and a fourth who fell from the fore-mast into the sea, not far from the coast of guinea. from amsterdam i soon after set sail for england, in a small vessel belonging to that city. on the 10th of april, 1710, we put in at the downs. i landed the next morning, and saw once more my native country, after an absence of five years and six months compleat. i went strait to redriff, where i arrived the same day at two in the afternoon, and found my wife and family in good health. the end of the third part. part iv. a voyage to the country of the houyhnhnms. [plate 4: houyhnhnms land] chapter i. the author sets out as a captain of a ship. his men conspire against him, confine him a long time to his cabbin, set him on shore in an unknown land. he travels up in the country. the yahoos a strange sort of animal described. the author meets two houyhnhnms. i continued at home with my wife and children about five months in a very happy condition, if i could have learned the lesson of knowing when i was well. i left my poor wife big with child, and accepted an advantagious offer made me to be captain of the adventure, a stout merchant-man of 350 tuns: for i understood navigation well, and being grown weary of a surgeon's employment at sea, which however i could exercise upon occasion, i took a skillful young man of that calling, one robert purefoy, into my ship. we set sail from portsmouth upon the second day of august, 1710; on the fourteenth, we met with captain pocock of bristol, at tenariff, who was going to the bay of campechy, to cut logwood. on the sixteenth, he was parted from us by a storm; i heard since my return that his ship foundered, and none escaped but one cabbinboy. he was an honest man, and a good sailor, but a little too positive in his own opinions, which was the cause of his destruction, as it has been of several others. for if he had followed my advice, he might have been safe at home with his family at this time, as well as myself. i had several men die in my ship of calentures, so that i was forced to get recruits out of barbadoes, and the leeward islands, where i touched by the direction of the merchants who employed me, which i had soon too much cause to repent; for i found afterwards that most of them had been buccaneers. i had fifty hands on board, and my orders were, that i should trade with the indians, in the south-sea, and make what discoveries i could. these rogues whom i had picked up debauched my other men, and they all formed a conspiracy to seize the ship and secure me; which they did one morning, rushing into my cabbin, and binding me hand and foot, threatening to throw me over-board, if i offered to stir. i told them, i was their prisoner, and would submit. this they made me swear to do, and then they unbound me, only fastening one of my legs with a chain near my bed, and placed a centry at my door, with his piece charged, who was commanded to shoot me dead, if i attempted my liberty. they sent me down victuals and drink, and took the government of the ship to themselves. their design was to turn pyrates, and plunder the spaniards, which they could not do, till they got more men. but first they resolved to sell the goods in the ship, and then go to madagascar for recruits, several among them having died since my confinement. they sailed many weeks, and traded with the indians, but i knew not what course they took, being kept a close prisoner in my cabbin, and expecting nothing less than to be murdered, as they often threatened me. upon the ninth day of may 1711, one james welch came down to my cabbin; and said he had orders from the captain to set me a-shore. i expostulated with him, but in vain; neither would he so much as tell me who their new captain was. they forced me into the long-boat, letting me put on my best suit of cloaths, which were as good as new, and a small bundle of linnen, but no arms except my hanger; and they were so civil as not to search my pockets, into which i conveyed what money i had, with some other little necessaries. they rowed about a league, and then set me down on a strand. i desired them to tell me what country it was. they all swore they knew no more than myself, but said, that the captain (as they called him) was resolved, after they had sold the lading, to get rid of me in the first place where they could discover land. they pushed off immediately, advising me to make haste, for fear of being overtaken by the tide, and so bade me farewell. in this desolate condition i advanced forward, and soon got upon ground, where i sate down on a bank to rest my self, and consider what i had best do. when i was a little refreshed i went up into the country, resolving to deliver my self to the first savages i should meet, and purchase my life from them by some bracelets, glass-rings, and other toys, which sailors usually provide themselves with in those voyages, and whereof i had some about me: the land was divided by long rows of trees, not regularly planted, but naturally growing; there was plenty of grass, and several fields of oats. i walked very circumspectly for fear of being surprized, or suddenly shot with an arrow from behind or on either side. i fell into a beaten road, where i saw many tracks of human feet, and some of cows, but most of horses. at last i beheld several animals in a field, and one or two of the same kind sitting in trees. their shape was very singular and deformed, which a little discomposed me, so that i lay down behind a thicket to observe them better. some of them coming forward near the place where i lay, gave me an opportunity of distinctly marking their form. their heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled and others lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs and the fore-parts of their legs and feet, but the rest of their bodies were bare, so that i might see their skins, which were of a brown buff colour. they had no tails, nor any hair at all on their buttocks, except about the anus; which, i presume, nature had placed there to defend them as they sate on the ground; for this posture they used, as well as lying down, and often stood on their hind feet. they climbed high trees, as nimbly as a squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind, terminating in sharp points, and hooked. they would often spring, and bound, and leap with prodigious agility. the females were not so large as the males, they had long lank hair on their heads, but none on their faces, nor any thing more than a sort of down on the rest of their bodies, except about the anus, and pudenda. their dugs hung between their fore-feet, and often reached almost to the ground as they walked. the hair of both sexes was of several colours, brown, red, black and yellow. upon the whole, i never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, nor one against which i naturally conceived so strong an antipathy. so that thinking i had seen enough, full of contempt and aversion, i got up and pursued the beaten road, hoping it might direct me to the cabbin of some indian. i had not got far when i met one of these creatures full in my way, and coming up directly to me. the ugly monster, when he saw me, distorted several ways every feature of his visage, and stared as at an object he had never seen before; then approaching nearer, lifted up his fore-paw, whether out of curiosity or mischief, i could not tell. but i drew my hanger, and gave him a good blow with the flat side of it, for i durst not strike him with the edge, fearing the inhabitants might be provoked against me, if they should come to know, that i had killed or maimed any of their cattle. when the beast felt the smart, he drew back, and roared so loud, that a herd of at least forty came flocking about me from the next field, houling and making odious faces; but i ran to the body of a tree, and leaning my back against it, kept them off, by waving my hanger. several of this cursed brood getting hold of the branches behind, leaped up in the tree, from whence they began to discharge their excrements on my head: however, i escaped pretty well, by sticking close to the stem of the tree, but was almost stifled with the filth, which fell about me on every side. in the midst of this distress, i observed them all to run away on a sudden as fast as they could, at which i ventured to leave the tree, and pursue the road, wondring what it was that could put them into this fright. but looking on my left-hand, i saw a horse walking softly in the field: which my persecutors having sooner discovered, was the cause of their flight. the horse started a little when he came near me, but soon recovering himself, looked full in my face with manifest tokens of wonder: he viewed my hands and feet, walking round me several times. i would have pursued my journey, but he placed himself directly in the way, yet looking with a very mild aspect, never offering the least violence. we stood gazing at each other for some time; at last i took the boldness, to reach my hand towards his neck, with a design to stroak it using the common style and whistle of jockies when they are going to handle a strange horse. but this animal seeming to receive my civilities with disdain, shook his head, and bent his brows, softly raising up his right fore-foot to remove my hand. then he neighed three or four times, but in so different a cadence, that i almost began to think he was speaking to himself in some language of his own. while he and i were thus employed, another horse came up; who applying himself to the first in a very formal manner, they gently struck each other's right hoof before, neighing several times by turns, and varying the sound, which seemed to be almost articulate. they went some paces off, as if it were to confer together, walking side by side, backward and forward, like persons deliberating upon some affair of weight, but often turning their eyes towards me, as it were to watch that i might not escape. i was amazed to see such actions and behaviours in brute beasts, and concluded with myself, that if the inhabitants of this country were endued with a proportionable degree of reason, they must needs be the wisest people upon earth. this thought gave me so much comfort, that i resolved to go forward until i could discover some house or village, or meet with any of the natives, leaving the two horses to discourse together as they pleased. but the first, who was a dapple-gray, observing me to steal off, neighed after me in so expressive a tone, that i fancied myself to understand what he meant; whereupon i turned back, and came near him, to expect his farther commands. but concealing my fear as much as i could, for i began to be in some pain, how this adventure might terminate; and the reader will easily believe i did not much like my present situation. the two horses came up close to me, looking with great earnestness upon my face and hands. the gray steed rubbed my hat all round with his right fore-hoof, and discomposed it so much, that i was forced to adjust it better, by taking it off, and settling it again; whereat both he and his companion (who was a brown bay) appeared to be much surprized, the latter felt the lappet of my coat, and finding it to hang loose about me, they both looked with new signs of wonder. he stroked my right-hand, seeming to admire the softness, and colour; but he squeezed it so hard between his hoof and his pastern, that i was forced to roar; after which they both touched me with all possible tenderness. they were under great perplexity about my shoes and stockings, which they felt very often, neighing to each other, and using various gestures, not unlike those of a philosopher, when he would attempt to solve some new and difficult ph¾nomenon. upon the whole, the behaviour of these animals was so orderly and rational, so acute and judicious, that i at last concluded, they must needs be magicians, who had thus metamorphosed themselves upon some design, and seeing a stranger in the way, were resolved to divert themselves with him; or perhaps were really amazed at the sight of a man so very different in habit, feature, and complection from those who might probably live so remote a climate. upon the strength of this reasoning, i ventured to address them in the following manner: gentlemen, if you be conjurers, as i have good cause to believe, you can understand any language; therefore i make bold to let your worships know that i am a poor distressed english man, driven by his misfortunes upon your coast, and i entreat one of you, to let me ride upon his back, as if he were a real horse, to some house or village, where i can be relieved. in return of which favour, i will make you a present of this knife and bracelet (taking them out of my pocket). the two creatures stood silent while i spoke, seeming to listen with great attention; and when i had ended, they neighed frequently towards each other, as if they were engaged in serious conversation. i plainly observed, that their language expressed the passions very well, and their words might with little pains be resolved into an alphabet more easily than the chinese. i could frequently distinguish the word yahoo, which was repeated by each of them several times; and altho' it was impossible for me to conjecture what it meant; yet while the two horses were busy in conversation, i endeavoured to practice this word upon my tongue; and as soon as they were silent, i boldly pronounced yahoo in a loud voice, imitating, at the same time, as near as i could, the neighing of a horse; at which they were both visibly surprized, and the gray repeated the same word twice, as if he meant to teach me the right accent, wherein i spoke after him as well as i could, and found myself perceivably to improve every time, though very far from any degree of perfection. then the bay tried me with a second word, much harder to be pronounced; but reducing it to the english orthography, may be spelt thus, houyhnhnm. i did not succeed in this so well as the former, but after two or three farther trials, i had better fortune; and they both appeared amazed at my capacity. after some further discourse; which i then conjectured might relate to me, the two friends took their leaves, with the same compliment of striking each other's hoof; and the gray made me signs that i should walk before him, wherein i thought it prudent to comply, till i could find a better director. when i offered to slacken my pace, he would cry hhuun, hhuun; i guessed his meaning, and gave him to understand as well as i could, that i was weary, and not able to walk faster; upon which he would stand a while to let me rest. chapter ii. the author conducted by a houyhnhnm to his house. the house described. the author's reception. the food of the houyhnhnms. the author in distress for want of meat, is at last relieved. his manner of feeding in this country. having traveled about three miles, we came to a long kind of building, made of timber, stuck in the ground, and wattled a-cross; the roof was low, and covered with straw. i now began to be a little comforted, and took out some toys, which travellers usually carry for presents to the savage indians of america and other parts, in hopes the people of the house would be thereby encouraged to receive me kindly. the horse made me a sign to go in first; it was a large room with a smooth clay floor, and a rack and manger extending the whole length on one side. there were three nags, and two mares, not eating, but some of them sitting down upon their hams, which i very much wondered at; but wondered more to see the rest employed in domestick business. these seemed but ordinary cattle, however this confirmed my first opinion, that a people who could so far civilize brute animals, must needs excel in wisdom all the nations of the world. the gray came in just after, and thereby prevented any ill treatment, which the others might have given me. he neighed to them several times in a style of authority, and received answers. beyond this room there were three others, reaching the length of the house, to which you passed through three doors, opposite to each other, in the manner of a vista; we went through the second room towards the third, here the gray walked in first, beckoning me to attend: i waited in the second room, and got ready my presents, for the master and mistress of the house: they were two knives, three bracelets of false pearl, a small looking-glass and a bead necklace. the horse neighed three or four times, and i waited to hear some answers in a human voice, but i heard no other returns, than in the same dialect, only one or two a little shriller than his. i began to think that this house must belong to some person of great note among them, because there appeared so much ceremony before i could gain admittance. but, that a man of quality should be served all by horses, was beyond my comprehension. i feared my brain was disturbed by my sufferings and misfortunes: i roused my self, and looked about me in the room where i was left alone; this was furnished like the first, only after a more elegant manner. i rubbed my eyes often, but the same objects still occurred. i pinched my arms and sides to awake myself, hoping i might be in a dream. i then absolutely concluded, that all these appearances could be nothing else but necromancy and magick. but i had no time to pursue these reflections; for the gray horse came to the door, and made me a sign to follow him into the third room, where i saw a very comely mare, together with a colt and fole, sitting on their haunches, upon matts of straw, not unartfully made, and perfectly neat and clean. the mare soon after my entrance, rose from her matt, and coming up close, after having nicely observed my hands and face, gave me a most contemptuous look; then turning to the horse, i heard the word yahoo often repeated betwixt them; the meaning of which word i could not then comprehend, although it were the first i had learned to pronounce; but i was soon better informed, to my everlasting mortification: for the horse beckoning to me with his head, and repeating the word hhuun, hhuun, as he did upon the road, which i understood was to attend him, led me out into a kind of court, where was another building at some distance from the house. here we enter'd, and i saw three of these detestable creatures, whom i first met after my landing, feeding upon roots, and the flesh of some animals, which i afterwards found to be that of asses and dogs, and now and then a cow dead by accident or disease. they were all tyed by the neck with strong wyths fastened to a beam; they held their food between the claws of their fore-feet, and tore it with their teeth. the master horse ordered a sorrel nag, one of his servants, to untie the largest of these animals, and take him into the yard. the beast and i were brought close together; and our countenances diligently compared, both by master and servant, who thereupon repeated several times the word yahoo. my horror and astonishment are not to be described, when i observed, in this abominable animal, a perfect human figure; the face of it indeed was flat and broad, the nose depressed, the lips large, and the mouth wide. but these differences are common to all savage nations, where the lineaments of the countenance are distorted by the natives suffering their infants to lie groveling on the earth, or by carrying them on their backs, nuzzling with their face against the mother's shoulders. the forefeet of the yahoo differed from my hands in nothing else, but the length of the nails, the coarseness and brownness of the palms, and the hairiness on the backs. there was the same resemblance between our feet, with the same differences, which i knew very well, tho' the horses did not, because of my shoes and stockings; the same in every part of our bodies, except as to hairiness and colour, which i have already described. the great difficulty that seemed to stick with the two horses, was, to see the rest of my body so very different from that of a yahoo, for which i was obliged to my cloaths whereof they had no conception: the sorrel nag offered me a root, which he held (after their manner, as we shall describe in its proper place) between his hoof and pastern; i took it in my hand, and having smelt it, returned it to him again as civilly as i could. he brought out of the yahoo's kennel a piece of ass's flesh, but it smelt so offensively that i turned from it with loathing; he then threw it to the yahoo, by whom it was greedily devoured. he afterwards shewed me a whisp of hay, and a fetlock full of oats; but i shook my head, to signify that neither of these were food for me. and indeed, i now apprehended, that i must absolutely starve, if i did not get to some of my own species: for as to those filthy yahoos, although there were few greater lovers of mankind, at that time, than myself; yet i confess i never saw any sensitive being so detestable on all accounts; and the more i came near them, the more hateful they grew, while i stayed in that country. this the master horse observed by my behaviour, and therefore sent the yahoo back to his kennel. he then put his forehoof to his mouth, at which i was much surprized, although he did it with ease, and with a motion that appeared perfectly natural, and made other signs to know what i would eat; but i could not return him such an answer as he was able to apprehend; and if he had understood me, i did not see how it was possible to contrive any way for finding my self nourishment. while we were thus engaged, i observed a cow passing by, whereupon i pointed to her, and expressed a desire to let me go and milk her. this had its effect; for he led me back into the house, and ordered a mare-servant to open a room, where a good store of milk lay in earthen and wooden vessels, after a very orderly and cleanly manner. she gave me a large bowl full, of which i drank very heartily, and found my self well refreshed. about noon i saw coming towards the house a kind of vehicle, drawn like a sledge by four yahoos. there was in it an old steed, who seemed to be of quality, he alighted with his hind-feet forward, having by accident got a hurt in his left fore-foot. he came to dine with our horse, who received him with great civility. they dined in the best room, and had oats boiled in milk for the second course, which the old horse ate warm, but the rest cold. their mangers were placed circular in the middle of the room, and divided into several partitions, round which they sate on their haunches upon bosses of straw. in the middle was a large rack with angles answering to every partition of the manger. so that each horse and mare eat their own hay, and their own mash of oats and milk, with much decency and regularity. the behaviour of the young colt and fole appeared very modest, and that of the master and mistress extremely cheerful and complaisant to their guest. the grey ordered me to stand by him, and much discourse passed between him and his friend concerning me, as i found by the stranger's often looking on me, and the frequent repetition of the word yahoo. i happened to wear my gloves, which the master-gray observing, seemed perplexed, discovering signs of wonder what i had done to my forefeet; he put his hoof three or four times to them, as if he would signify, that i should reduce them to their former shape, which i presently did, pulling off both my gloves, and putting them into my pocket. this occasioned farther talk, and i saw the company was pleased with my behaviour, whereof i soon found the good effects. i was ordered to speak the few words i understood, and while they were at dinner, the master taught me the names for oats, milk, fire, water, and some others; which i could readily pronounce after him, having from my youth a great facility in learning languages. when dinner was done, the master horse took me aside, and by signs and words made me understand the concern that he was in, that i had nothing to eat. oats in their tongue are called hlunnh. this word i pronounced two or three times; for although i had refused them at first, yet upon second thoughts i considered that i could contrive to make of them a kind of bread, which might be sufficient with milk to keep me alive, till i could make my escape to some other country, and to creatures of my own species. the horse immediately ordered a white mare-servant of his family to bring me a good quantity of oats in a sort of wooden tray. these i heated before the fire as well as i could, and rubbed them till the husks came off, which i made a shift to winnow from the grain; i ground and beat them between two stones, then took water, and made them into a paste or cake, which i toasted at the fire, and eat warm with milk. it was at first a very insipid diet, though common enough in many parts of europe, but grew tolerable by time; and having been often reduced to hard fare in my life, this was not the first experiment i had made how easily nature is satisfied. and i cannot but observe, that i never had one hour's sickness, while i staid in this island. 'tis true, i sometimes made a shift to catch a rabbet, or bird, by springes made of yahoos hair, and i often gathered wholesome herbs, which i boiled, or eat as salades with my bread, and now and then, for a rarity, i made a little butter, and drank the whey. i was at first at a great loss for salt; but custom soon reconciled the want of it; and i am confident that the frequent use of salt among us is an effect of luxury, and was first introduced only as a provocative to drink; except where it is necessary for preserving of flesh in long voyages, or in places remote from great markets. for we observe no animal to be fond of it but man: and as to myself, when i left this country, it was a great while before i could endure the taste of it in anything that i eat. this is enough to say upon the subject of my dyet, wherewith other travellers fill their books, as if the readers were personally concerned, whether we fared well or ill. however, it necessary to mention this matter, lest the world should think it impossible that i could find sustenance for three years in such a country, and among such inhabitants. when it grew towards evening, the master horse ordered a place for me to lodge in: it was but six yards from the house, and separated from the stable of the yahoos. here i got some straw, and covering myself with my own cloaths, slept very sound. but i was in a short time better accommodated, as the reader shall know hereafter, when i come to treat more particularly about my way of living. chapter iii. the author studious to learn the language, the houyhnhnm, his master assists in teaching him. the language described. several houyhnhnms of quality come out of curiosity to see the author. his gives his master a short account of his voyage. my principal endeavour was to learn the language, which my master (for so i shall henceforth call him) and his children, and every servant of his house, were desirous to teach me. for they looked upon it as a prodigy that a brute animal should discover such marks of a rational creature. i pointed to every thing and enquired the name of it, which i wrote down in my journal book when i was alone, and corrected my bad accent by desiring those of the family to pronounce it often. in this employment, a sorrel nag, one of the under servants, was ready to assist me. in speaking, they pronounce through the nose and throat, and their language approaches nearest to the high-dutch or german, of any i know in europe; but is much more graceful and significant. the emperor charles v. made almost the same observation, when he said, that if he were to speak to his horse, it should be in high dutch. the curiosity and impatience of my master were so great, that he spent many hours of his leisure to instruct me. he was convinced (as he afterwards told me) that i must be a yahoo, but my teachableness, civility, and cleanliness, astonished him; which were qualities altogether so opposite to those animals, he was most perplexed about my cloaths, reasoning sometimes with himself whether they were a part of my body; for i never pulled them off till the family were asleep, and got them on before they waked in the morning. my master was eager to learn from where i came, how i acquired those appearances of reason, which i discovered in all my actions, and to know my story from my own mouth, which he hoped he should soon do by the great proficiency i made in learning and pronouncing their words and sentences. to help my memory, i formed all i learned into the english alphabet, and wrote the words down with the translations. this last, after some time i ventured to do in my master's presence. it cost me much trouble to explain to him what i was doing; for the inhabitants have not the least idea of books or literature. in about ten weeks time i was able to understand most of his questions, and in three months could give him some tolerable answers. he was extremely curious to know from what part of the country i came, and how i was taught to imitate a rational creature; because the yahoos (whom he saw i exactly resembled in my head, hands, and face, that were only visible,) with some appearance of cunning, and the strongest disposition to mischief, were observed to be the most unteachable of all brutes. i answered, that i came over the sea from a far place, with many others of my own kind, in a great hollow vessel made of the bodies of trees. that my companions forced me to land on this coast, and then left me to shift for myself. it was with some difficulty, and by the help of many signs, that i brought him to understand me. he replied, that i must needs be mistaken, or that i said the thing which was not. for they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood. he knew it was impossible that there could be a country beyond the sea, or that a parcel of brutes could move a wooden vessel whither they pleased upon water. he was sure no houyhnhnm alive could make such a vessel, nor would trust yahoos to manage it. the word houyhnhnm, in their tongue, signifies a horse, and in its etymology, the perfection of nature. i told my master, that i was at a loss for expression, but would improve as fast as i could; and hoped in a short time i should be able to tell him wonders: he was pleased to direct his own mare, his colt and fole, and the servants of the family to take all opportunities of instructing me, and every day for two or three hours, he was at the same pains himself: several horses and mares of quality in the neighbourhood came often to our house upon the report spread of a wonderful yahoo, that could speak like a houyhnhnm, and seemed in his words and actions to discover some glimmerings of reason. these delighted to converse with me; they put many questions, and received such answers, as i was able to return. by all these advantages, i made so great a progress, that in five months from my arrival, i understood whatever was spoke, and could express myself tolerably well. the houyhnhnms who came to visit my master with the design of seeing and talking with me, could hardly believe me to be a right yahoo, because my body had a different covering from others of my kind. they were astonished to observe me without the usual hair or skin, except on my head, face, and hands; but i discovered that secret to my master, upon an accident, which happened about a fortnight before. i have already told the reader, that every night when the family were gone to bed it was my custom, to strip and cover my self with my cloaths: it happened one morning early, that my master sent for me, by the sorrel nag, who was his valet; when he came, i was fast asleep, my cloaths fallen off on one side, and my shirt above my waste. i awakened at the noise he made, and observed him to deliver his message in some disorder; after which he went to my master, and in a great fright gave him a very confused account of what he had seen: this i presently discovered; for going as soon as i was dressed, to pay my attendance upon his honour, he asked me the meaning of what his servant had reported, that i was not the same thing when i slept as i appeared to be at other times; that his valet assured him, some part of me was white, some yellow, at least not so white, and some brown. i had hitherto concealed the secret of my dress, in order to distinguish myself as much as i could from that cursed race of yahoos; but now i found it in vain to do so any longer. besides, i considered that my cloaths and shoes would soon wear out, which already were in a declining condition, and must be supplied by some contrivance from the hides of yahoos or other brutes; whereby the whole secret would be known. i therefore told my master, that in the country from whence i came, those of my kind always covered their bodies with the hairs of certain animals prepared by art, as well for decency, as to avoid the inclemencies of air both hot and cold; of which, as to my own person, i would give him immediate conviction, if he pleased to command me; only desiring his excuse, if i did not expose those parts, that nature taught us to conceal. he said my discourse was all very strange, but especially the last part; for he could not understand why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given. that neither himself nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies; but however i might do as i pleased. whereupon, i first unbuttoned my coat and pulled it off. i did the same with my waste-coat; i drew off my shoes, stockings, and breeches. i let my shirt down to my waste, and drew up the bottom, fastening it like a girdle about my middle to hide my nakedness. my master observed the whole performance with great signs of curiosity and admiration. he took up all my cloaths in his pastern, one piece after another, and examined them diligently; he then stroakd my body very gently, and looked round me several times, after which he said, it was plain i must be a perfect yahoo; but that i differed very much from the rest of my species, in the softness and whiteness and smoothness of my skin, my want of hair in several parts of my body, the shape and shortness of my claws behind and before, and my affectation of walking continually on my two hinder-feet. he desired to see no more, and gave me leave to put on my cloaths again, for i was shuddering with cold. i expressed my uneasiness at his giving me so often the appellation of yahoo, an odious animal, for which i had so utter an hatred and contempt. i begged he would forbear applying that word to me, and take the same order in his family, and among his friends whom he suffered to see me. i requested likewise, that the secret of my having a false covering to my body might be known to none but himself, at least as long as my present cloathing should last; for as to what the sorrel nag his valet had observed, his honour might command him to conceal it. all this my master very graciously consented to, and thus the secret was kept till my cloaths began to wear out, which i was forced to supply by several contrivances, that shall hereafter be mentioned. in the mean time, he desired i would go on with my utmost diligence to learn their language, because he was more astonished at my capacity for speech and reason, than at the figure of my body, whether it were covered or no; adding that he waited with some impatience to hear the wonders which i promised to tell him. from thenceforward he doubled the pains he had been at to instruct me; he brought me into all company, and made them treat me with civility, because, as he told them privately, this would put me into good humour, and make me more diverting. every day when i waited on him, beside the trouble he was at in teaching, he would ask me several questions concerning myself, which i answered as well as i could; and by these means he had already received some general ideas, though very imperfect. it would be tedious to relate the several steps, by which i advanced to a more regular conversation: but the first account i gave of myself in any order and length, was to this purpose: that i came from a very far country, as i already had attempted to tell him with about fifty more of my own species; that we travelled upon the seas, in a great hollow vessel made of wood, and larger than his honour's house. i described the ship to him in the best terms i could, and explained by the help of my handkerchief displayed, how it was driven forward by the wind. that upon a quarrel among us, i was set on shoar on this coast, where i walked forward without knowing whither, till he delivered me from the persecution of those execrable yahoos. he asked me, who made the ship, and how it was possible that thehouyhnhnms of my country would leave it to the management of brutes? my answer was, that i durst proceed no further in my relation, unless he would give me his word and honour that he would not be offended, and then i would tell him the wonders i had so often promised. he agreed; and i went on by assuring him, that the ship was made by creatures like myself, who in all the countries i had travelled, as well as in my own, were the only governing, rational animals; and that upon my arrival hither, i was as much astonished to see thehouyhnhnms act like rational beings, as he or his friends could be finding some marks of reason in a creature he was pleased to call a yahoo, to which i owned my resemblance in every part, but could not account for their degenerate and brutal nature. i said farther, that if good fortune ever restored me to my native country, to relate my travels hither, as i resolved to do, every body would believe that i said the thing which was not; that i invented the story out of my own head; and with all possible respect to himself, his family, and friends, and under his promise of not being offended, our countrymen would hardly think it probable, that a houyhnhnm should be the presiding creature of a nation, and a yahoo the brute. chapter iv. the houyhnhnm notion of truth and falsehood. the author's discourse disapproved by his master. the author gives a more particular account of himself, and the accidents of his voyage. my master heard me with great appearances of uneasiness in his countenance, because doubting, or not believing, are so little known in this country, that the inhabitants cannot tell how to behave themselves under such circumstances. and i remember in frequent discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood, in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying, and false representation, it was with much difficulty that he comprehended what i meant, although he had otherwise a most acute judgment. for he argued thus: that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now if anyone said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated; because i cannot properly be said to understand him; and i am so far from receiving information, that he leaves me worse than in ignorance, for i am led to believe a thing black when it is white, and short when it is long. and these were all the notions he had concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well understood among human creatures. to return from this digression; when i asserted that the yahoos were the only governing animals in my country, which my master said was altogether past his conception, he desired to know whether we had houyhnhnms among us, and what was their employment: i told him we had great numbers, that in summer they grazed in the fields, and in winter were kept in houses, with hay and oats, when yahoo-servants were employed to rub their skins smooth, comb their manes, pick their feet, serve them with food, and make their beds. i understand you well, said my master, it is now very plain, from all you have spoken, that whatever share of reason the yahoos pretend to, the houyhnhnms are your masters; i heartily wish our yahoos would be so tractable. i begged his honour would please to excuse me from proceeding any farther, because i was very certain that the account he expected from me would be highly displeasing. but he insisted in commanding me to let him know the best and the worst: i told him, he should be obeyed. i owned, that thehouyhnhnmsamong us, whom we called horses, were the most generous and comely animal we had, that they excelled in strength and swiftness; and when they belonged to persons of quality, employed in travelling, racing, or drawing chariots, they were treated with much kindness and care, till they fell into diseases or became foundred in the feet; and then they were sold, and used to all kind of drudgery till they died; after which their skins were stripped and sold for what they were worth, and their bodies left to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey. but the common race of horses had not so good fortune, being kept by farmers and carriers and other mean people, who put them to greater labor, and feed them worse. i described as well as i could, our way of riding, the shape and use of a bridle, a saddle, a spur, and a whip, of harness and wheels. i added, that we fastned plates of a certain hard substance called iron at the bottom of their feet, to preserve their hoofs from being broken by the stony ways on which we often travelled. my master, after some expressions of great indignation, wondered how we dared to venture upon a houyhnhnm's back, for he was sure, that the weakest servant in his house would be able to shake off the strongest yahoo, or by lying down, and rolling on his back, squeeze the brute to death. i answered, that our horses were trained up from three or four years old to the several uses we intended them for; that if any of them proved intolerably vicious, they were employed for carriages; that they were severely beaten while they were young, for any mischievous tricks: that the males, designed for common use of riding or draught, were generally castrated about two years after their birth, to take down their spirits, and make them more tame and gentle; that they were indeed sensible of rewards and punishments; but his honour would please to consider, that they had not the least tincture of reason any more than the yahoos in this country. it put me to the pains of many circumlocutions to give my master a right idea of what i spoke; for their language doth not abound in variety of words, because their wants and passions are fewer than among us. but it is impossible to repeat his noble resentment at our savage treatment of the houyhnhnm race, particularly after i had explained the manner and use of castrating horses among us, to hinder them from propagating their kind, and to render them more servile. he said. if it were possible there could be any country where yahoos alone were endued with reason, they certainly must be the governing animal, because reason will in time always prevail against brutal strength. but, considering the frame of our bodies, and especially of mine, he thought no creature of equal bulk was so ill contrived, for employing that reason in the common office of life; whereupon he desired to know whether those among whom i lived, resembled me or the yahoos of his country. i assured him, that i was as well shaped as most of my age; but the younger and the females were much more soft and tender, and the skins of the latter generally as white as milk. he said, i differed indeed from other yahoos, being much more cleanly, and not altogether so deformed, but in point of real advantage, he thought i differed for the worse. that my nails were of no use either to my fore or hinder-feet: as to my fore-feet he could not properly call them by that name, for he never observed me to walk upon them; that they were too soft to bear the ground; that i generally went with them uncovered, neither was the covering i sometimes wore on them, of the same shape, or so strong as that on my feet behind. that i could not walk with any security, for if either of my hinder-feet slipped, i must inevitably fall. he then began to find fault with other parts of my body, the flatness of my face, the prominence of my nose, my eyes placed directly in the front, so that i could not look on either side without turning my head: that i was not able to feed myself, without lifting one of my fore-feet to my mouth: and therefore nature had placed those joints to answer that necessity. he knew not what could be the use of those several clefts and divisions in my feet behind, that these were too soft to bear the hardness and sharpness of stones without a covering made from the skin of some other brute; that my whole body wanted a fence against heat cold, which i was forced to put on and off every day with tediousness and trouble. and lastly, that he observed every animal in this country naturally to abhor the yahoos, whom the weaker avoided, and the stronger drove from them. so that supposing us to have the gift of reason, he could not see how it were possible to cure that natural antipathy which every creature discovered against us; nor consequently, how we could tame and render them serviceable. however, he would (as he said) debate the matter no farther, because he was more desirous to know my own story, the country where i was born, and the several actions and events of my life before i came hither. i assured him how extremely desirous i was that he should be satisfied in every point; but i doubted much, whether it would be possible for me to explain myself on several subjects whereof his honour could have no conception, because i saw nothing in his country to which i could resemble them. that however, i would do my best, and strive to express myself by similitudes, humbly desiring his assistance when i wanted proper words; which he was pleased to promise me. i said, my birth was of honest parents in an island called england, which was remote from this country, as many days' journey as the strongest of his honour's servants could travel in the annual course of the sun. that i was bred a surgeon, whose trade it is to cure wounds and hurts in the body, got by accident or violence; that my country was governed by a female man, whom we called a queen. that i left it to get riches, whereby i might maintain myself and family when i should return. that in my last voyage i was commander of the ship, and had about fifty yahoos under me, many of which died at sea, and i was forced to supply them by others picked out from several nations. that our ship was twice in danger of being sunk; the first time by a great storm, and the second, by striking against a rock. here my master interposed, by asking me, how i could persuade strangers out of different countries to venture with me, after the losses i had sustained, and the hazards i had run. i said, they were fellows of desperate fortunes forced to fly from the places of their birth, on account of their poverty or their crimes. some were undone by lawsuits; others spent all they had in drinking, whoring, and gaming; others fled for treason; many for murder, theft, poysoning, robbery, perjury, forgery, coining false money, for committing rapes or sodomy, for flying from their colours, or deserting to the enemy, and most of them had broken prison; none of these durst return to their native countries for fear of being hanged, or of starving in a jail; and therefore were under a necessity of seeking a livelihood in other places. during this discourse, my master was pleased to interrupt me several times; i had made use of many circumlocutions in describing to him the nature of the several crimes, for which most of our crew had been forced to fly their country. this labour took up several days conversation before he was able to comprehend me. he was wholly at a loss to know what could be the use or necessity of practicing those vices. to clear up which i endeavoured to give some ideas of the desire of power and riches, of the terrible effects of lust, intemperance, malice and envy. all this i was forced to define and describe by putting of cases, and making of suppositions. after which, like one whose imagination was struck with something never seen or heard of before, he would lift up his eyes with amazement and indignation. power, government, war, law, punishment, and a thousand other things had no terms wherein that language could express them, which made the difficulty almost insuperable to give my master any conception of what i meant. but being of an excellent understanding, much improved by contemplation and converse, he at last arrived at a competent knowledge of what human nature in our parts of the world is capable to perform, and desired i would give him some particular account of that land, which we call europe, but especially of my own country. chapter v. the author at his master's commands informs him of the state of england. the causes of war among the princes of europe. the author begins to explain the english constitiution. the reader may please to observe, that the following extract of many conversations i had with my master, contains a summary of the most material points, which were discoursed at several times for above two years; his honour often desiring fuller satisfaction as i farther improved in the houyhnhnm tongue. i laid before him, as well as i could, the whole state of europe; i discoursed of trade and manufactures, of arts and sciences; and the answers i gave to all the questions he made, as they arose upon several subjects, were a fund of conversation not to be exhausted. but i shall here only set down the substance of what passed between us concerning my own country, reducing it into order as well as i can, without any regard to time or other circumstances, while i strictly adhere to truth. my only concern is, that i shall hardly be able to do justice to my master's arguments and expressions, which must needs suffer by my want of capacity, as well as by a translation into our barbarous english. in obedience therefore to his honour's commands, i related to him the revolution under the prince of orange; the long war with france entered into by the said prince, and renewed by his successor the present queen; wherein the greatest powers of christendom were engaged, and which still continued: i computed at his request, that about a million of yahoos might have been killed in the whole progress of it, and perhaps a hundred or more cities taken, and thrice as many ships burnt or sunk. he asked me what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another. i answered they were innumerable, but i should only mention a few of the chief. sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern: sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire; what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red, or gray; and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many more. neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent. sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to which of them shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretend to any right. sometimes one prince quarreleth with another, for fear the other should quarrel with him. sometimes a war is entered upon, because the enemy is too strong, and sometimes because he is too weak. sometimes our neighbours want the things which we have, or have the things which we want; and we both fight, till they take ours or give us theirs. it is a very justifiable cause of war to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves. it is justifiable to enter into war against our nearest ally, when one of his towns lies convenient for us, or a territory of land, that would render our dominions round and compleat. if a prince sends forces into a nation where the people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to death, and make slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their barbarous way of living. it is a very kingly, honourable, and frequent practice, when one prince desires the assistance of another to secure him against an invasion, that the assistant, when he hath driven out the invader, should seize on the dominions himself, and kill, imprison or banish the prince he came to relieve. alliance by blood or marriage, is a frequent cause of war between princes; and the nearer the kindred is, the greater is their disposition to quarrel: poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance. for those reasons, the trade of a soldier is held the most honourable of all others: because a soldier is a yahoo hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can. there is likewise a kind of beggarly princes in europe, not able to make war by themselves, who hire out their troops to richer nations, for so much a day to each man; of which they keep three fourths to themselves, and it is the best part of their maintenance; such are those in many northern parts of europe. what you have told me, (said my master) upon the subject of war, does indeed discover most admirably the effects of that reason you pretend to: however, it is happy that the shame is greater than the danger; and that nature has left you utterly uncapable of doing much mischief. for your mouths lying flat with your faces, you can hardly bite each other to any purpose, unless by consent. then as to the claws upon your feet before and behind, they are so short and tender that one of our yahoos would drive a dozen of yours before him. and therefore in recounting the numbers of those who have been killed in battle, i cannot but think that you have said the thing which is not. i could not forbear shaking my head and smiling a little at his ignorance. and being no stranger to the art of war, i gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea-fights; ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side; dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoak, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses feet; flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases left for food to dogs, and wolves, and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying. and to set forth the valor of my own dear countrymen, i assured him, that i had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies come down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators. i was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me silence. he said, whoever understood the nature of yahoos might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action i had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice. but as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind, to which he was wholly a stranger before. he thought his ears being used to such abominable words, might by degrees admit them with less detestation. that although he hated the yahoos of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities, than he did a gnnayh (a bird of prey) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. but when a creature pretending to reason, could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself. he seemed therefore confident, that instead of reason, we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an ill-shapen body, not only larger, but more distorted. he added, that he had heard too much upon the subject of war, both in this, and some former discourses. there was another point which a little perplexed him at present. i had informed him, that some of our crew left their country on account of being ruined by law; that i had already explained the meaning of the word; but he was at a loss how it should come to pass, that the law which was intended for every man's preservation, should be any man's ruin. therefore he desired to be further satisfied what i meant by law, and what sort of dispensers thereof it could be by whose practices the property of any person could be lost, instead of being preserved. he added, he saw not what great occasion there could for this thing called law, since all the intentions and purposes of it may be fully answered by following the dictates of nature and reason, which are sufficient guides for a reasonable animal, as we pretended to be, in shewing us what we ought to do, and what to avoid. i assured his honour, that law was a science wherein i had not much conversed, further than by employing advocates, in vain, upon some injustices that had been done me: however, i would give him all the satisfaction i was able. i said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the pleasure, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. to this society all the rest of the people are slaves. for example, if my neighbour hath a mind to my cow, he hires a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. i must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself. now in this case, i who am the right owner lie under two great disadvantages. first, my lawyer being practiced almost from his cradle in defending falshood; is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which as an office unnatural, he always attempts with great awkwardness if not with ill-will. the second disadvantage is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution: or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. and therefore i have but two methods to preserve my cow. the first is, to gain over my adversary's lawyer with a double fee; who will then betray his client by insinuating that he hath justice on his side. the second way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can; by the cow to belong to my adversary; and this, if it be skilfully done, will certainly bespeak the favour of the bench. now, your honour is to know that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the tryal of criminals; and picked out from the most dextrous lawyers who are grown old or lazy: and having been byassed all their lives against truth and equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression; that i have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office. it is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. these, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of decreeing accordingly. in pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the cause; but are loud, violent, and tedious in dwelling upon all circumstances which are not to the purpose. for instance, in the case already mentioned: they never desire to know what claim or title my adversary hath to my cow; but whether the said cow were red or black; her horns long or short; whether the field i graze her in be round or square; whether she was milked at home or abroad; what diseases she is subject to, and the like. after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years, come to an issue. it is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby they have gone near to confound the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it may take thirty years to decide whether the field, left me by my ancestors for six generations, belongs to me, or to a stranger three hundred miles off. in the tryal of persons accused for crimes against the state the method is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to sound the disposition of those in power; after which he can easily hang or save the criminal, strictly preserving all due forms of law. here my master interposing, said it was a pity that creatures endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind as these lawyers, by the description i gave of them, must certainly be, were not rather encouraged to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge. in answer to which, i assured his honour, that in all points out of their own trade, they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning; and equally to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse, as in that of their own profession. chapter vi. a continuation of the state of england. the character of a first minister. my master was yet wholly at a loss to understand what motives could incite this race of lawyers to perplex, disquiet, and weary themselves, and engage in a confederacy of injustice, merely for the sake of injuring their fellow-animals; neither could he comprehend what i meant in saying they did it for hire. whereupon i was at much pains to describe to him the use of money, the materials it was made of, and the value of the metals, that when a yahoo had got a great store of this precious substance, he was able to purchase whatever he had a mind to; the finest cloathing, the noblest houses, great tracts of land, the most costly meats and drinks, and have his choice of the most beautiful females. therefore since money alone, was able to perform all these feats, our yahoos thought, they could never have enough of it to spend or save, as they found themselves inclined from their natural bent either to profusion or avarice. that the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man's labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion to the former. that the bulk of our people were forced to live miserably, by labouring every day for small wages to make a few live plentifully. i enlarged myself much on these and many other particulars to the same purpose: but his honour was still to seek: for he went upon a supposition that all animals had a title to their share in the productions of the earth, and especially those who presided over the rest. therefore he desired i would let him know, what these costly meats were, and how any of us happened to want them. whereupon i enumerated as many sorts as came into my head, with the various methods of dressing them, which could not be done without sending vessels by sea to every part of the world, as well for liquors to drink, as for sauces, and innumerable other conveniences. i assured him, that this whole globe of earth must be at least three times gone round, before one of our better female yahoos could get her breakfast or a cup to put it in. he said, that must needs be a miserable country which cannot furnish food for its own inhabitants. but what he chiefly wondered at was how such vast tracts of grounds as i described should be wholly without fresh-water, and the people put to the necessity of sending over the sea for drink. i replied, that england (the dear place of my nativity) was computed to produce three times the quantity of food, more than its inhabitants are able to consume, as well as liquors extracted from grain, or pressed out of the fruit of certain trees, which made excellent drink, and the same proportion in every other convenience of life. but in order to feed the luxury and intemperance of the males, and the vanity of the females, we sent away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, from whence in return we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend among ourselves. hence it follows of necessity, that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, forswearing, flattering, suborning, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, stargazing, poysoning, whoring, canting, libelling, free-thinking, and the like occupations: every one of which terms, i was at much pains to make him understand. that wine was not imported among us from foreign countries, to supply the want of water or other drinks, but because it was a sort of liquid which made us merry, by putting us out of our senses; diverted all melancholy thoughts, begat wild extravagant imaginations in the brain, raised our hopes, and banished our fears, suspended every office of reason for a time, and deprived us of the use of our limbs, till we fell into a profound sleep; although it must be confessed, that we always awoke sick and dispirited, and that the use of this liquor filled us with diseases, which made our lives uncomfortable and short. but beside all this, the bulk of our people supported themselves by furnishing the necessities and conveniences of life to the rich, and to each other. for instance, when i am at home and dressed as i ought to be, i carry on my body the workmanship of an hundred tradesmen; the building and furniture of my house employ as many more, and five times the number to adorn my wife. i was going on to tell him of another sort of people, who get their livelihood by attending the sick, having upon some occasions informed his honour that many of my crew had died of diseases. but here it was with the utmost difficulty, that i brought him to apprehend what i meant. he could easily conceive, that a houyhnhnm grew weak and heavy a few days before his death, or by some accident might hurt a limb. but that nature, who works all things to perfection, should suffer any pains to breed in our bodies, he thought impossible, and desired to know the reason of so unaccountable an evil. i told him, we fed on a thousand things which operated contrary to each other; that we ate when we were not hungry, and drank without the provocation of thirst; that we sate whole nights drinking strong liquors without eating a bit, which disposed us to sloth, inflamed our bodies, and precipitated or prevented digestion. that prostitute female yahoos acquired a certain malady, which bred rottenness in the bones of those, who fell into their embraces; that this and many other diseases, were propagated from father to son, so that great numbers come into the world with complicated maladies upon them; that it would be endless to give him a catalogue of all diseases incident to human bodies; for they could not be fewer than five or six hundred, spread over every limb and joynt; in short, every part, external and intestine, having diseases appropriated to them. to remedy which, there was a sort of people bred up among us, in the profession or pretense of curing the sick. and because i had some skill in the faculty, i would in gratitude to his honour, let him know the whole mystery and method by which they proceed. their fundamental is, that all diseases arise from repletion, from which they conclude, that a great evacuation of the body is necessary, either through the natural passage, or upwards at the mouth. their next business is, from herbs, minerals, gums, oils, shells, salts, juices, seaweed, excrements, barks of trees, serpents, toads, frogs, spiders, dead men's flesh and bones, birds, beasts and fishes, to form a composition for smell and taste the most abominable, nauseous and detestable, they can possibly contrive, which the stomach immediately rejects with loathing; and this they call a vomit; or else from the same storehouse, with some other poysonous additions, they command us to take in at the orifice above or below, (just as the physician then happens to be disposed) a medicine equally annoying and disgustful to the bowels; which relaxing the belly, drives down all before it, and this they call a purge or a glyster. for nature (as the physicians alledge) having intended the superior anterior orifice only for the intromission of solids and liquids, and the inferior for ejection, these artists ingeniously considering that in all diseases nature is forced out of her seat; therefore to replace her in it, the body must be treated in a manner directly contrary, by interchanging the use of each orifice, forcing solids and liquids in at the anus, and making evacuations at the mouth. but, besides real diseases, we are subject to many that are only imaginary, for which the physicians have invented imaginary cures; these have their several names, and so have the drugs that are proper for them, and with these our female yahoos are always infested. one great excellency in this tribe is their skill at prognostics, wherein they seldom fail; their predictions in real diseases, when they rise to any degree of malignity, generally portending death, which is always in their power when recovery is not: and therefore, upon any unexpected signs of amendment, after they have pronounced their sentence, rather than be accused as false prophets, they know how to approve their sagacity to the world by a seasonable dose. they are likewise of special use to husbands and wives, who are grown weary of their mates, to eldest sons, to great ministers of state, and often to princes. i had formerly upon occasion discoursed with my master upon the nature of government in general, and particularly of our own excellent constitution, deservedly the wonder and envy of the whole world. but having here accidentally mentioned a minister of state; he commanded me some time after to inform him, what species of yahoo i particularly meant by that application. i told him, that a first or chief minister of state, whom i intended to describe, was a creature wholly exempt from joy and grief, love and hatred, pity and anger; at least made use of no other passions but a violent desire of wealth, power, and titles: that he applies his words to all uses, except to the indication of his mind; that he never tells a truth, but with an intent that you should take it for a lye; nor a lye, but with a design that you should take it for a truth; that those he speaks worst of behind their backs, are in the surest way of preferment; and whenever he begins to praise you to others or to your self, you are from that day forlorn. the worst mark you can receive is a promise, especially when it is confirmed with an oath; after which every wise man retires, and gives over all hopes. there are three methods by which a man may rise to be chief minister: the first is by knowing how with prudence to dispose of a wife, a daughter, or a sister: the second, by betraying or undermining his predecessor: and the third is, by a furious zeal in publick assemblies against the corruptions of the court. but a wise prince would rather chuse to employ those who practice the last of these methods; because such zealots prove always the most obsequious and subservient to the will and passions of their master. that, these ministers having all employments at their disposal, preserve themselves in power by bribing the majority of a senate or great council; and at last by an expedient called an act of indemnity (whereof i described the nature to him) they secure themselves from after-reckonings, and retire from the publick, laden with the spoils of the nation. the palace of a chief minister, is a seminary to breed up others in his own trade: the pages, lacquies, and porter, by imitating their master, become ministers of state in their several districts, and learn to excel in the three principal ingredients, of insolence, lying, and bribery. accordingly, they have a subaltern court paid to them by persons of the best rank; and sometimes by the force of dexterity and impudence, arrive through several gradations to be successors to their lord. he is usually governed by a decayed wench or favourite footman, who are the tunnels through which all graces are conveyed, and may properly be called, in the last resort, the governors of the kingdom. one day in discourse my master, having heard me mention the nobility of my country, was pleased to make me a compliment which i could not pretend to deserve: that he was sure, i must have been born of some noble family, because i far exceeded in shape, colour, and cleanliness, all the yahoos of his nation, although i seemed to fail in strength and agility, which must be imputed to my different way of living from those other brutes; and besides, i was not only endowed with the faculty of speech, but likewise with some rudiments of reason, to a degree that with all his acquaintance i passed for a prodigy. he made me observe, that among the houyhnhnms, the white, the sorrel, and the iron-grey were not so exactly shaped as the bay, the dapple-grey, and the black; nor born with equal talents of the mind, or a capacity to improve them; and therefore continued always in the condition of servants, without ever aspiring to match out of their own race, which in that country would be reckoned monstrous and unnatural. i made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me; but assured him at the same time, that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education: that nobility among us was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young noblemen are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury; that as soon as years will permit, they consume their vigour, and contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person, and unsound constitution, merely for the sake of money, whom they hate and despise. that the productions of such marriages are generally scrophulous, ricketty, or deformed children; by which means the family seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to provide a healthy father among her neighbours, or domesticks, in order to improve and continue the breed. that a weak diseased body, a meager countenance, and sallow complexion, are no uncommon marks of a great man; and a healthy robust appearance is so far disgraceful in a man of quality, that the world is apt to conclude his real father to have been one of the inferiors of the family, especially when it is seen that the imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his body; and are little else than a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride. chapter vii. the author's great love of his native country. his master's observations upon the constitution and administration of england, as described by the author, with parallel cases and comparisons. his master's observations upon human nature. the reader may be disposed to wonder how i could prevail on myself to give so free a representation of my own species, among a race of mortals who were already too apt to conceive the vilest opinion of human kind from that entire congruity betwixt me and their yahoos. but i must freely confess, that the many virtues of those excellent quadrupeds placed in opposite view to human corruptions, had so far opened my eyes and enlightened my understanding, that i began to view the actions and passions of man in a very different light, and to think the honour of my own kind not worth managing; which, besides, it was impossible for me to do before a person of so acute a judgment as my master, who daily convinced me of a thousand faults in myself, whereof i had not the least perception before, and which among us would never be numbered even among human infirmities, i had likewise learned from his example an utter detestation of all falsehood or disguise; and truth appeared so amiable to me, that i determined upon sacrificing every thing to it. let me deal so candidly with the reader, as to confess, that there was yet a much stronger motive for the freedom i took in my representation of things. i had not been a year in this country, before i contracted such a love and veneration for the inhabitants, that i entered on a firm resolution, never to return to human kind, but to pass the rest of my life among these admirablehouyhnhnmsin the contemplation and practice of every virtue; where i could have no example or incitement to vice. but it was decreed by fortune, my perpetual enemy, that so great a felicity should not fall to my share. however, it is now some comfort to reflect, that in what i said of my countrymen, i extenuated their faults as much as i durst before so strict an examiner, and upon every article, gave as favourable a turn as the matter would bear. for, indeed, who is there alive that will not be swayed by his byass and partiality to the place of his birth? i have related the substance of several conversations i had with my master, during the greatest part of the time i had the honour to be in his service, but have indeed for brevity sake omitted much more than is here set down. when i had answered all his questions, and his curiosity seemed to be fully satisfied; he sent for me one morning early, and commanded me to sit down at some distance, (an honour which he had never before conferred upon me) he said, he had been very seriously considering my whole story, as far as it related both to myself and my country: that he looked upon us as sort of animals to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use than by its assistance to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones which nature had not given us: that we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed, had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions. that as to myself, it was manifest i had neither the strength or agility of a common yahoo, that i walked infirmly on my hinder feet, had found out a contrivance to make my claws of no use or defence, and to remove the hair from my chin, which was intended as a shelter from the sun and the weather. lastly, that i could neither run with speed, nor climb trees like my brethren (as he called them) the yahoos in this country. that our institutions of government and law were plainly owing to our gross defects in reason, and by consequence, in vertue; because reason alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature; which was therefore a character we had no pretense to challenge, even from the account i had given of my own people, although he manifestly perceived, that in order to favour them, i had concealed many particulars, and often said the thing which was not. he was the more confirmed in this opinion, because he observed, that as i agreed in every feature of my body with other yahoos, except where it was to my real disadvantage in point of strength, speed and activity, the shortness of my claws, and some other particulars where nature had no part; so from the representation i had given him of our lives, our manners, and our actions, he found as near a resemblance in the disposition of our minds. he said the yahoos were known to hate one another more than they did any different species of animals; and the reason usually assigned, was the odiousness of their own shapes, which all could see in the rest, but not in themselves. he had therefore begun to think it not unwise in us to cover our bodies, and by that invention, conceal many of our own deformities from each other, which would else be hardly supportable. but, he now found he had been mistaken, and that the dissensions of those brutes in his country were owing to the same cause with ours, as i had described them. for, if (said he) you throw among five yahoos as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself; and therefore a servant was usually employed to stand by while they were feeding abroad, and those kept at home were tied at a distance from each other: that if a cow died of age or accident, before a houyhnhnm could secure it for his own yahoos, those in the neighbourhood would come in herds to seize it, and then would ensue such a battle as i had described, with terrible wounds made by their claws on both sides, although they seldom were able to kill one another, for want of such convenient instruments of death as we had invented. at other times the like battles have been fought between the yahoos of several neighbourhoods without any visible cause: those of one district watching all opportunities to surprize the next before they are prepared. but if they find their project hath miscarried, they return home, and for want of enemies, engage in what i call a civil war among themselves. that in some fields of his country there are certain shining stones of several colours, whereof the yahoos are violently fond, and when part of these stones is fixed in the earth, as it sometimes happeneth, they will dig with their claws for whole days to get them out, then carry them away, and hide them by heaps in their kennels; but still looking round with great caution, for fear their comrades should find out their treasure. my master said, he could never discover the reason of this unnatural appetite, or how these stones could be of any use to a yahoo; but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle of avarice which i had ascribed to mankind: that he had once, by way of experiment, privately removed a heap of these stones from the place where one of his yahoos had buried it: whereupon, the sordid animal missing his treasure, by his loud lamenting brought the whole herd to the place, there miserably howled, then fell to biting and tearing the rest, began to pine away, would neither eat, nor sleep, nor work, till he ordered a servant privately to convey the stones into the same hole, and hide them as before; which when his yahoo had found, he presently recovered his spirits and good humour, but took good care to remove them to a better hiding-place, and hath ever since been a very serviceable brute. my master farther assured me, which i also observed myself, that in the fields where the shining stones abound, the fiercest and most frequent battles are fought, occasioned by perpetual inroads of the neighbouring yahoos. he said, it was common when two yahoos discovered such a stone in a field, and were contending which of them should be the proprietor, a third would take the advantage, and carry it away from them both; which my master would needs contend to have some kind of resemblance with our suits at law; wherein i thought it for our credit not to undeceive him; since the decision he mentioned was much more equitable than many decrees among us: because the plaintiff and defendant there lost nothing beside the stone they contended for, whereas our courts of equity, would never have dismissed the cause while either of them had any thing left. my master, continuing his discourse, said, there was nothing that rendered the yahoos more odious, than their undistinguishing appetite to devour every thing that came in their way, whether herbs, roots, berries, the corrupted flesh of animals, or all mingled together: and it was peculiar in their temper, that they were fonder of what they could get by rapine or stealth at a greater distance, than much better food provided for them at home. if their prey held out, they would eat till they were ready to burst, after which nature had pointed out to them a certain root that gave them a general evacuation. there was also another kind of root very juicy, but somewhat rare and difficult to be found, which the yahoos sought for with much eagerness, and would suck it with great delight; and it produced in them the same effects that wine hath upon us. it would make them sometimes hug, sometimes tear one another, they would howl and grin, and chatter, and tumble, and then fall asleep in the dirt. i did indeed observe, that the yahoos were the only animals in this country subject to any diseases; which however, were much fewer than horses have among us, and contracted not by any ill treatment they meet with, but by the nastiness, and greediness of that sordid brute. neither has their language any more than a general appellation for those maladies, which is borrowed from the name of the beast, and called hnea-yahoo, or the yahoo's evil, and the cure prescribed is a mixture of their own dung and urine forcibly put down the yahoo's throat. this i have since often taken myself, and do freely recommend it to my countrymen, for the publick good, as an admirable specifick against all diseases produced by repletion. as to learning, government, arts, manufactures, and the like, my master confessed he could find little or no resemblance between the yahoos of that country and those in ours. for, he only meant to observe what parity there was in our natures. he had heard indeed some curious houyhnhnms observe, that in most herds there was a sort of ruling yahoo (as among us there is generally some leading or principal stag in a park), who was always more deformed in body and mischievous in disposition, than any of the rest. that this leader had usually a favourite as like himself as he could get, whose employment was to lick his master's feet and posteriors, and drive the female yahoos to his kennel; for which he was now and then rewarded with a piece of ass's flesh. this favourite is hated by the whole herd, and therefore to protect himself, keeps always near the person of his leader. he usually continues in office till worse can be found; but the very moment he is discarded, his successor at the head of all the yahoos in that district, young and old, male and female, come in a body, and discharge their excrements upon him from head to foot. but how far this might be applicable to our courts and favourites, and ministers of state, my master said i could best determine. i dared make no return to this malicious insinuation, which debased human understanding below the sagacity of a common hound, who has judgment enough to distinguish and follow the cry of the ablest dog in the pack, without being ever mistaken. my master told me, there were some qualities remarkable in the yahoos, which he had not observed me to mention, or at least very slightly, in the accounts i had given him of human kind; he said, those animals, like other brutes, had their females in common; but in this they differed, that the she-yahoo would admit the male, while she was pregnant; and that the hees would quarrel and fight with females as fiercely as with each other. both which practices were such degrees of brutality, that no other sensitive creature ever arrived at. another thing he wondered at in the yahoos, was their strange disposition to nastiness and dirt, whereas there appears to be a natural love of cleanliness in all other animals. as to the two former accusations, i was glad to let them pass without any reply, because i had not a word to offer upon it in defence of my species, which otherwise i certainly had done from my own inclinations. but i could have easily vindicated human kind from the imputation of singularity upon article, if there had been any swine in that country (as unluckily for me there were not) which although it may be a sweeter quadruped than a yahoo, cannot i humbly conceive in justice pretend to more cleanliness; and so his honour himself must have owned, if he had seen their filthy way of feeding, and their custom of wallowing and sleeping in the mud. my master likewise mentioned another quality which his servants had discovered in several yahoos, and to him was wholly unaccountable. he said, a fancy would sometimes take a yahoo, to retire into a corner, to lie down and howl, and groan, and spurn away all that came near him, although he were young and fat, wanted neither food nor water; nor could the servants imagine what could possibly ail him. and the only remedy they found was to set him to hard work, after which he would infallibly come to himself. to this i was silent out of partiality to my own kind; yet here i could plainly discover the true seeds of spleen, which only seize on the lazy, the luxurious, and the rich; who, if they were forced to undergo the same regimen, i would undertake for the cure. his honour had further observed, that a female-yahoo would often stand behind a bank or a bush, to gaze on the young males passing by, and then appear, and hide, using many antick gestures and grimaces, at which time it was observed, that she had a most offensive smell; and when any of the males advanced, would slowly retire, looking often back, and with a counterfeit shew of fear; run off into some convenient place where she knew the male would follow her. at other times if a female stranger came among them, three or four of her own sex would get about her, and stare and chatter, and grin, and smell her all over; and then turn off with gestures that seemed to express contempt and disdain. perhaps my master might refine a little in these speculations, which he had drawn from what he observed himself, or had been told him by others: however, i could not reflect without some amazement, and much sorrow, that the rudiments of lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal, should have place by instinct in womankind. i expected every moment that my master would accuse the yahoos of those unnatural appetites in both sexes, so common among us. but nature, it seems, has not been so expert a school-mistress; and these politer pleasures are entirely the productions of art and reason, on our side of the globe. chapter viii. the author relates several particulars of the yahoos. the great virtues of the houyhnhnms. the education and exercise of their youth. their general assembly. as i ought to have understood human nature much better than i supposed it possible for my master to do, so it was easy to apply the character he gave of the yahoos to myself and my countrymen, and i believed i could yet make farther discoveries from my own observation. i therefore often begged his favour to let me go among the herds of yahoos in the neighbourhood, to which he always very graciously consented, being perfectly convinced that the hatred i bore those brutes, would never suffer me to be corrupted by them; and his honour ordered one of his servants, a strong sorrel nag, very honest and good-natured, to be my guard, without whose protection i durst not undertake such adventures. for i have already told the reader how much i was pestered by those odious animals upon my first arrival. and i afterwards failed three or four times of very narrowly of falling into their clutches, when i happened to stray at any distance without my hanger. and i have reason to believe they had some imagination that i was of their own species, which i often assisted myself, by stripping up my sleeves, and shewing my naked arms, and breast in their sight, when my protector was with me. at which times they would approach as near as they durst, and imitate my actions, after the manner of monkeys, but ever with great signs of hatred; as a tame jackdaw with cap and stockings, is always persecuted by the wild ones, when he happens to get among them. they are prodigiously nimble from their infancy; however, i once caught a young male of three years old, and endeavoured by all marks of tenderness to make it quiet; but the little imp fell a squalling, and scratching, and biting with such violence, that i was forced to let it go; and it was high time, for a whole troop of old ones came about us at the noise, but finding the cub was safe, (for away it ran) and my sorrel nag being by, they durst not venture near us. i observed the young animal's flesh to smell very rank, and the stink was somewhat between a weasel and a fox, but much more disagreeable. i forgot another circumstance (and perhaps i might have the reader's pardon if it were wholly omitted), that while i held the odious vermin in my hands, it voided its filthy excrements of a yellow liquid substance, all over my cloaths; but by good fortune there was a small brook hard by, where i washed myself as clean as i could, although i durst not come into my master's presence, until i were sufficiently aired. by what i could discover, the yahoos appear to be the most unteachable of all animals, their capacities never reaching higher than to draw or carry burthens. yet i am of opinion this defect ariseth chiefly from a perverse, restive disposition. for they are cunning, malicious, treacherous and revengeful. they are strong and hardy, but of a cowardly spirit, and by consequence, insolent, abject, and cruel. it is observed that the red-haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom yet they much exceed in strength and activity. thehouyhnhnms keep the yahoos for present use in huts not far from the house; but the rest are sent abroad to certain fields, where they dig up roots, eat several kinds of herbs, and scratch about for carrion, or sometimes catch weasels and luhimuhs (a sort of wild rat) which they greedily devour. nature hath taught them to dig deep holes with their nails on the side of a rising ground, wherein they lie by themselves, only the kennels of the females are larger, sufficient to hold two or three cubs. they swim from their infancy like frogs, and are able to continue long under water, where they often take fish, which the females carry home to their young. and upon this occasion, i hope the reader will pardon my relating an odd adventure. being one day abroad with my protector, the sorrel nag, and the weather exceeding hot, i entreated him to let me bathe in a river that was near. he consented, and i immediately stripped myself stark naked, and went down softly into the stream. it happened that a young female yahoo standing behind a bank, saw the whole proceeding, and enflamed by desire, as the nag and i conjectured, came running with all speed, and leaped into the water, within five yards of the place where i bathed. i was never in my life so terribly frighted; the nag was grazing at some distance, not suspecting any harm. she embraced me after a most fulsome manner; i roared as loud as i could, and the nag came galloping towards me, whereupon she quitted her grasp, with the utmost reluctancy, and leaped upon the opposite bank, where she stood gazing and howling all the time i was putting on my cloaths. this was matter of diversion to my master and his family, as well as of mortification to myself. for now i could no longer deny, that i was a real yahoo, in every limb and feature, since the females had a natural prophensity to me as one of their own species. neither was the hair of this brute of a red colour (which might have been some excuse for an appetite a little irregular), but black as a sloe, and her countenance did not make an appearance altogether so hideous as the rest of the kind; for, i think, she could not be above eleven years old. having already lived three years in this country, the reader i suppose will expect that i should, like other travellers, give him some account of the manners and customs of its inhabitants, which it was indeed my principal study to learn. as these noble houyhnhnms are endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature, so their grand maxim is, to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it. neither is reason among them a point problematical as with us, where men can argue with plausibility on both sides of the question; but strikes you with immediate conviction; as it must needs do where it is not mingled, obscured, or discoloured by passion and interest. i remember it was with extreme difficulty that i could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain, and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either. so that controversies, wranglings, disputes, and positiveness in false or dubious propositions are evils unknown among the houyhnhnms. in the like manner when i used to explain to him our several systems of natural philosophy, he would laugh that a creature pretending to reason should value itself upon the knowledge of other peoples conjectures, and in things, where that knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no use. wherein he agreed entirely with the sentiments of socrates, as plato delivers them; which i mention as the highest honour i can do that prince of philosophers. i have often since reflected what destruction such a doctrine would make in the libraries of europe, and how many paths to fame would be then shut up in the learned world. friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among the houyhnhnms, and these not confined to particular objects, but universal to the whole race. for a stranger from the remotest part is equally treated with the nearest neighbour, and wherever he goes, looks upon himself as at home. they preserve decency and civility in the highest degrees, but are altogether ignorant of ceremony. they have no fondness for their colts or foles, but the care they take in educating them proceeds entirely from the dictates of reason. and i observed my master to shew the same affection to his neighbour's issue that he had for his own. they will have it that nature teaches them to love the whole species, and it is reason only that maketh a distinction of persons, where there is a superior degree of virtue. when the matronhouyhnhnms have produced one of each sex, they no longer accompany with their consorts, except they lose one of their issue by some casualty, which very seldom happens: but in such a case they meet again; or when the like accident befalls a person whose wife is past bearing, some other couple bestow on him one of their own colts, and then go together again till the mother is pregnant. this caution is necessary to prevent the country from being overburthened with numbers. but the race of inferiorhouyhnhnms bred up to be servants is not so strictly limited upon this article; these are allowed to produce three of each sex, to be domesticks in the noble families. in their marriages they are exactly careful to choose such colours as will not make any disagreeable mixture in the breed. strength is chiefly valued in the male, and comeliness in the female, not upon the account of love, but to preserve the race from degenerating; for where a female happens to excell in strength, a consort is chosen with regard to comeliness. courtship, love, presents, joyntures, settlements, have no place in their thoughts, or terms whereby to express them in their language. the young couple meet and are joyned, merely because it is the determination of their parents and friends: it is what they see done every day, and they look upon it as one of the necessary actions of a rational being. but the violation of marriage, or any other unchastity, was never heard of: and the married pair pass their lives with the same friendship, and mutual benevolence that they bear to all others of the same species, who come in their way; without jealousy, fondness, quarrelling, or discontent. in educating the youth of both sexes, their method is admirable, and highly deserves our imitation. these are not suffered to taste a grain of oats, except upon certain days, till eighteen years old; nor milk, but very rarely; and in summer they graze two hours in the morning, and as long in the evening, which their parents likewise observe, but the servants are not allowed above half that time, and a great part of their grass is brought home, which they eat at the most convenient hours, when they can be best spared from work. temperance, industry, exercise and cleanliness, are the lessons equally enjoyned to the young ones of both sexes: and my master thought it monstrous in us to give the females a different kind of education from the males, except in some articles of domestick management; whereby, as he truly observed, one half of our natives were good for nothing but bringing children into the world: and to trust the care of our children to such useless animals, he said, was yet a greater instance of brutality. but thehouyhnhnms train up their youth to strength, speed, and hardiness, by exercising them in running races up and down steep hills, and over hard and stony grounds, and when they are all in a sweat, they are ordered to leap over head and ears, into a pond or a river. four times a year the youth of a certain district meet to shew their proficiency in running, and leaping, and other feats of strength and agility; where the victor is rewarded, with a song made in his or her praise. on this festival the servants drive a herd of yahoos into the field, laden with hay, and oats, and milk, for a repast to the houyhnhnms; after which these brutes are immediately driven back again, for fear of being noisome to the assembly. every fourth year, at the vernal equinox, there is a representative council of the whole nation, which meets in a plain about twenty miles from our house, and continues about five or six days. here they enquire into the state and condition of the several districts, whether they abound or be deficient in hay or oats, or cows or yahoos? and wherever there is any want (which is seldom) it is immediately supplied by unanimous consent and contribution. here likewise the regulation of children is settled: as for instance, if a houyhnhnm hath two males, he changeth one of them with another that hath two females: and when a child hath been lost by any casualty, where the mother is past breeding, it is determined what family in the district shall breed another to supply the loss. chapter ix. a grand debate at the general assembly of the houyhnhnms, and how it was determined. the learning of the houyhnhnms. their buildings. their manner of burials. the defectiveness of their language. one of these grand assemblies was held in my time, about three months before my departure, whither my master went as the representative of our district. in this council was resumed their old debate, and indeed, the only debate which ever happened in that country; whereof my master after his return gave me a very particular account. the question to be debated was whether the yahoos should be exterminated from the face of the earth? one of the members for the affirmative offered several arguments of great strength, and weight, alledging that as the yahoos were the most filthy, noisome, and deformed animal which nature ever produced, so they were the most restive and indocile, mischievous and malicious: they would privately suck the teats of the houyhnhnms cows, kill and devour their cats, trample down their oats and grass, if they were not continually watched, and commit a thousand other extravagancies. he took notice of a general tradition, that yahoos had not been always in that country: but, that many ages ago, two of these brutes appeared together upon a mountain, whether produced by the heat of the sun upon corrupted mud and slime, or from the ooze or froth of the sea, was never known. that these yahoos engendered, and their brood in a short time grew so numerous as to over run and infest the whole nation. that thehouyhnhnms to get rid of this evil, made a general hunting, and at last enclosed the whole herd; and destroying the old ones, every houyhnhnm kept two young ones in a kennel, and brought them to such a degree of tameness, as an animal so savage by nature can be capable of acquiring; using them for draught and carriage. that there seemed to be much truth in this tradition, and that those creatures could not be ylnhniamshy (or aborigines of the land), because of the violent hatred the houyhnhnms, as well as all other animals, bore them; which although their evil disposition sufficiently deserved, could never have arrived at so high a degree, if they had been aborigines, or else they would have long since been rooted out. that the inhabitants taking a fancy to use the service of the yahoos, had very imprudently neglected to cultivate the breed of asses, which were a comely animal, easily kept, more tame and orderly, without any offensive smell, strong enough for labour, although they yield to the other in agility of body; and if their braying be no agreeable sound, it is far preferable to the horrible howlings of the yahoos. several others declared their sentiments to the same purpose, when my master proposed an expedient to the assembly, whereof he had indeed borrowed the hint from me. he approved of the tradition, mentioned by the honourable member, who spoke before, and affirmed, that the two yahoos said to be first seen among them had been driven thither over the sea; that coming to land, and being forsaken by their companions, they retired to the mountains, and degenerating by degrees, became in process of time, much more savage than those of their own species in the country from where these two originals came. the reason of his assertion was that he had now in his possession a certain wonderful yahoo, (meaning myself) which most of them had heard of, and many of them had seen. he then related to them, how he first found me; that my body was all covered with an artificial composure of the skins and hairs of other animals: that i had a language of my own, and had thoroughly learned theirs: that i had related to him the accidents which brought me thither: that when he saw me without my covering, i was an exact yahoo in every part, only of a whiter colour, less hairy, and with shorter claws. he added, how i had endeavoured to persuade him, that in my own and other countries, the yahoos acted as the governing, rational animal, and held thehouyhnhnms in servitude: that he observed in me all the qualities of a yahoo, only a little more civilized by some tincture of reason, which however was in a degree as far inferior to the houyhnhnm race, as the yahoos of their country were to me: that among other things, i mentioned a custom we had of castratinghouyhnhnms when they were young, in order to render them tame: that the operation was easy and safe; that it was no shame to learn wisdom from brutes, as industry is taught by the ant, and building by the swallow. (for so i translate the word lyhannh, although it be a much larger fowl.) that this invention might be practiced upon the younger yahoos here, which, besides rendering them tractable and fitter for use, would in an age put an end to the whole species without destroying life. that, in the mean time the houyhnhnms should be exhorted to cultivate the breed of asses, which as they are in all respects more valuable brutes, so they have this advantage, to be fit for service at five years old, which the others are not till twelve. this was all my master thought fit to tell me at that time, of what passed in the grand council. but he was pleased to conceal one particular, which related personally to myself, whereof i soon felt the unhappy effect, as the reader will know in its proper place, and from which i date all the succeeding misfortunes of my life. the houyhnhnms have no letters, and consequently their knowledge is all traditional. but there happening few events of any moment among a people so well united, naturally disposed to every virtue, wholly governed by reason, and cut off from all commerce with other nations, the historical part is easily preserved without burthening their memory. i have already observed, that they are subject to no diseases, and therefore can have no need of physicians. however, they have excellent medicines composed of herbs, to cure accidental bruises and cuts in the pastern or frog of the foot by sharp stones, as well as other maims and hurts in the several parts of the body. they calculate the year by the revolution of the sun and the moon, but use no subdivisions into weeks. they are well enough acquainted with the motions of those two luminaries, and understand the nature of eclipses; and this is the utmost progress of their astronomy. in poetry they must be allowed to excell all other mortals; wherein the justness of their similes, and the minuteness, as well as exactness of their descriptions, are indeed inimitable. their verses abound very much in both of these, and usually contain either some exalted notions of friendship and benevolence, or the praises of those who were victors in races, and other bodily exercises. their buildings, although very rude and simple, are not inconvenient, but well contrived to defend them from all injuries of cold and heat. they have a kind of tree which at forty years old loosens in the root, and falls with the first storm; they grow very strait, and being pointed like stakes with a sharp stone, (for thehouyhnhnms know not the use of iron) they stick them erect in the ground about ten inches asunder, and then weave in oat-straw, or sometimes wattles betwixt them. the roof is made after the same manner, and so are the doors. thehouyhnhnms use the hollow part between the pastern and the hoof of their fore-feet, as we do our hands, and this with greater dexterity, than i could at first imagine. i have seen a white mare of our family thread a needle (which i lent her on purpose) with that joynt. they milk their cows, reap their oats, and do all the work which requires hands, in the same manner. they have a kind of hard flints, which by grinding against other stones, they form into instruments, that serve instead of wedges, axes, and hammers. with tools made of these flints, they likewise cut their hay, and reap their oats, which there groweth naturally in several fields: the yahoos draw home the sheaves in carriages, and the servants tread them in several covered huts, to get out the grain, which is kept in stores. they make a rude kind of earthen and wooden vessels, and bake the former in the sun. if they can avoid casualties, they die only of old-age, and are buried in the obscurest places that can be found, their friends and relations expressing neither joy nor grief at their departure; nor does the dying person discover the least regret that he is leaving the world, any more than if he were upon returning home from a visit to one of his neighbours. i remember my master having once made an appointment with a friend and his family to come to his house upon some affair of importance, on the day fixed, the mistress and her two children came very late; she made two excuses, first for her husband, who, as she said, happened that very morning to shnuwnh. the word is strongly expressive in their language, but not easily rendered into english; it signifies, to retire to his first mother. her excuse for not coming sooner, was, that her husband dying late in the morning, she was a good while consulting her servants about a convenient place where his body should be laid; and i observed she behaved herself at our house, as chearfully as the rest, and died about three months after. they live generally to seventy or seventy-five years, very seldom to fourscore: some weeks before their death they feel a gradual decay, but without pain. during this time they are much visited by their friends, because they cannot go abroad, with their usual ease and satisfaction. however, about ten days before their death, which they seldom fail in computing, they return the visits that have been made them by those who are nearest in the neighbourhood, being carried in a convenient sledge drawn by yahoos, which vehicle they use, not only upon this occasion, but when they grow old upon long journeys, or when they are lamed by any accident. and therefore when the dying houyhnhnms return those visits, they take a solemn leave of their friends, as if they were going to some remote part of the country, where they designed to pass the rest of their lives. i know not whether it may be worth observing, that the houyhnhnms have no word in their language to express any thing that is evil, except what they borrow from the deformities or ill qualities of the yahoos. thus they denote the folly of a servant, an omission of a child, a stone that cut their feet, a continuance of foul or unseasonable weather, and the like, by adding to each the epithet of yahoo. for instance, hhnm yahoo, whnaholm yahoo, ynlhmndwihlma yahoo, and an ill-contrived house, ynholmhnmrohlnw yahoo. i could with great pleasure enlarge further upon the manners and virtues of this excellent people; but intending in a short time to publish a volume by itself expressly upon that subject, i refer the reader thither. and in the mean time, proceed to relate my own sad catastrophe. chapter x. the author's oeconomy and happy life among the houyhnhnms. his great improvement in virtue, by conversing with them. their conversations. the author has notice given him by his master that he must depart from the country. he falls into a swoon for grief, but submits. he contrives and finishes a canoo, by the help of a fellow-servant, and puts to sea at a venture. i had settled my little oeconomy to my own heart's content. my master had ordered a room to be made for me after their manner, about six yards from the house, the sides and floors of which i plastered with clay, and covered with rush-mats of my own contriving; i had beaten hemp, which there grows wild, and made of it a sort of ticking: this i filled with the feathers of several birds i had taken with springes made of yahoos hairs, and were excellent food. i had worked two chairs with my knife, the sorrel nag helping me in the grosser and more labourious part. when my cloaths were worn to rags, i made myself others with the skins of rabbets, and of a certain beautiful animal about the same size, called nnuhnoh, the skin of which is covered with a fine down. of these i likewise made very tolerable stockings. i soled my shoes with wood, which i cut from a tree, and fitted to the upper leather, and when this was worn out, i supplied it with the skins of yahoos dried in the sun. i often got honey out of hollow trees, which i mingled with water, or eat with my bread. no man could more verify the truth of these two maxims, that nature is very easily satisfied; and that necessity is the mother of invention. i enjoyed perfect health of body and tranquillity of mind; i did not feel the treachery or inconstancy of a friend, nor the injuries of a secret or open enemy. i had no occasion of bribing, flattering, or pimping, to procure the favour of any great man or of his minion. i wanted no fence against fraud or oppression; here was neither physician to destroy my body, nor lawyer to ruin my fortune; no informer to watch my words, and actions, or forge accusations against me for hire: here were no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pick-pockets, highwaymen, housebreakers, attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, spleneticks, tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers, virtuosos; no leaders or followers of party and faction: no encouragers to vice, by seducement or examples: no dungeon, axes, gibbets, whipping-posts, or pillories: no cheating shop-keepers or mechanicks: no pride, vanity: or affectation; no fops, bullies, drunkards, strolling whores, or poxes: no ranting, lewd, expensive wives: no stupid, proud pedants: no importunate, overbearing, quarrelsome, noisy, roaring, empty, conceited, swearing companions: no scoundrels, raised from the dust for the sake of their vices, or nobility thrown into it on account of their virtues: no lords, fidlers, judges, or dancing-masters. i had the favour of being admitted to several houyhnhnms, who came to visit or dine with my master; where his honour graciously suffered me to wait in the room, and listen to their discourse. both he and his company would often descend to ask me questions, and receive my answers. i had also sometimes the honour of attending my master in his visits to others. i never presumed to speak, except in answer to a question, and then i did it with inward regret, because it was a loss of so much time for improving myself: but i was infinitely delighted with the station of an humble auditor in such conversations, where nothing passed but what was useful, expressed in the fewest and most significant words; where the greatest decency was observed, without the least degree of ceremony; where no person spoke without being pleased himself, and pleasing his companions: where there was no interruption, tediousness, heat, or difference of sentiments. they have a notion, that when people are met together, a short silence doth much improve conversation: this i found to be true; for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their thoughts, which very much enlivened their discourse. their subjects are generally on friendship and benevolence, or order and oeconomy; sometimes upon the visible operations of nature, or ancient traditions, upon the bounds and limits of virtue, upon the unerring rules of reason, or upon some determinations, to be taken at the next great assembly; and often upon the various excellencies of poetry. i may add without vanity, that my presence often gave them sufficient matter for discourse, because it afforded my master an occasion of letting his friends into the history of me and my country, upon which they were all pleased to descant in a manner not very advantageous to human kind; and for that reason i shall not repeat what they said: only i may be allowed to observe, that his honour, to my great admiration, appeared to understand the nature of yahoos in all countries much better than myself. he went through all our vices and follies, and discovered many which i had never mentioned to him, by only supposing what qualities a yahoo of their country, with a small proportion of reason, might be capable of exerting; and concluded, with too much probability, how vile as well as miserable such a creature must be. i freely confess, that all the little knowledge i have of any value, was acquired by the lectures i received from my master, and from hearing the discourses of him and his friends; to which i should be prouder to listen, than to dictate to the greatest and wisest assembly in europe. i admired the strength, comeliness, and speed of the inhabitants; and such a constellation of virtues in such amiable persons produced in me the highest veneration. at first, indeed, i did not feel that natural awe which the yahoos and all other animals bear towards them, but it grew upon me by degrees, much sooner than i imagined, and was mingled with a respectful love and gratitude, that they would condescend to distinguish me from the rest of my species. when i thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or human race in general, i considered them as they really were, yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the gift of speech, but making no other use of reason, than to improve and multiply those vices whereof their brethren in this country had only the share that nature allotted them. when i happened to behold the reflection of my own form in a lake or fountain, i turned away my face in horror and detestation of myself, and could better endure the sight of a common yahoo, than of my own person. by conversing with the houyhnhnms, and looking upon them with delight, i fell to imitate their gait and gesture, which is now grown into an habit, and my friends often tell me in a blunt way, that i trot like a horse; which, however, i take for a great compliment: neither shall i disown, that in speaking i am apt to fall into the voice and manner of the houyhnhnms, and hear myself ridiculed on that account without the least mortification. in the midst of all this happiness, and when i looked upon myself to be fully settled for life, my master sent for me one morning a little earlier than his usual hour. i observed by his countenance that he was in some perplexity, and at a loss how to begin what he had to speak. after a short silence, he told me he did not know how i would take what he was going to say; that in the last general assembly, when the affair of the yahoos was entered upon, the representatives had taken offence at his keeping a yahoo (meaning myself) in his family more like a houyhnhnm, than a brute animal. that he was known frequently to converse with me, as if he could receive some advantage or pleasure in my company: that such a practice was not agreeable to reason or nature, nor a thing ever heard of before among them. the assembly did therefore exhort him, either to employ me like the rest of my species, or command me to swim back to the place from where i came. that the first of these expedients was utterly rejected by all thehouyhnhnms, who had ever seen me at his house or their own: for they alledged, that because i had some rudiments of reason, added to the natural pravity of those animals, it was to be feared, i might be able to seduce them into the woody and mountainous parts of the country, and bring them in troops by night to destroy the houyhnhnms cattle, as being naturally of the ravenous kind, and averse from labour. my master added, that he was daily pressed by thehouyhnhnms of the neighbourhood to have the assembly's exhortation executed, which he could not put off much longer. he doubted it would be impossible for me to swim to another country, and therefore wished i would contrive some sort of vehicle resembling those i had described to him, that might carry me on the sea; in which work i should have the assistance of his own servants, as well as those of his neighbours. he concluded, that for his own part he could have been content to keep me in his service as long as i lived, because he found i had cured myself of some bad habits and dispositions, by endeavouring, as far as my inferior nature was capable, to imitate the houyhnhnms. i should here observe to the reader, that a decree of the general assembly in this country, is expressed by the word hnhloayn, which signifies an exhortation; as near as i can render it: for they have no conception how a rational creature can be compelled, but only advised or exhorted, because no person can disobey reason, without giving up his claim to be a rational creature. i was struck with the utmost grief and despair at my master's discourse, and being unable to support the agonies i was under, i fell into a swoon at his feet; when i came to myself, he told me that he concluded i had been dead. (for these people are subject to no such imbecilities of nature). i answered, in a faint voice, that death would have been too great a happiness; that although i could not blame the assembly's exhortation, or the urgency of his friends; yet, in my weak and corrupt judgment, i thought it might consist with reason to have been less rigorous. that i could not swim a league, and probably the nearest land to theirs might be distant above an hundred: that many materials, necessary for making a small vessel to carry me off, were wholly wanting in this country, which, however, i would attempt in obedience and gratitude to his honour, although i concluded the thing to be impossible, and therefore looked on my self as already devoted to destruction. that the certain prospect of unnatural death, was the least of my evils: for, supposing i should escape with life by some strange adventure, how could i think with temper, of passing my days among yahoos, and relapsing into my old corruptions, for want of examples to lead and keep me within the paths of virtue. that i knew too well upon what solid reasons all the determinations of the wise houyhnhnms were founded, not to be shaken by arguments of mine, a miserable yahoo; and therefore after presenting him with my humble thanks for the offer of his servants assistance in making a vessel, and desiring a reasonable time for so difficult a work, i told him i would endeavour to preserve a wretched being; and if ever i returned to england, was not without hopes of being useful to my own species, by celebrating the praises of the renowned houyhnhnms, and proposing their virtues to the imitation of mankind. my master in a few words made me a very gracious reply, and allowed me the space of two months to finish my boat; and ordered the sorrel nag, my fellow-servant, (for so at this distance i may presume to call him) to follow my instructions, because i told my master that his help would be sufficient, and i knew he had a tenderness for me. in his company, my first business was to go to that part of the coast, where my rebellious crew had ordered me to be set on shore. i got upon a height, and looking on every side into the sea, fancied i saw a small island, towards the north-east: i took out my pocket-glass, and could then clearly distinguish it about five leagues off, as i computed; but it appeared to the sorrel nag to be only a blue cloud: for, as he had no conception of any country beside his own, so he could not be as expert in distinguishing remote objects at sea, as we who so much converse in that element. after i had discovered this island, i considered no farther; but resolved, it should, if possible, be the first place of my banishment, leaving the consequence to fortune. i returned home, and consulting with the sorrel nag, we went into a copse at some distance, where i with my knife, and he with a sharp flint fastened very artificially, after their manner, to a wooden handle, cut down several oak wattles about the thickness of a walking-staff, and some larger pieces. but i shall not trouble the reader with a particular description of my own mechanicks; let it suffice to say, that in six weeks time, with the help of the sorrel nag, who performed the parts that required most labour, i finished a sort of indian canoo, but much larger, covering it with the skins of yahoos well stitched together, with hempen threads of my own making. my sail was likewise composed of the skins of the same animal; but i made use of the youngest i could get, the older being too tough and thick, and i likewise provided myself with four paddles. i laid in a stock of boiled flesh, of rabbets and fowls, and took with me two vessels, one filled with milk and the other with water. i tried my canoo in a large pond near my master's house, and then corrected in it what was amiss; stopping all the chinks with yahoos tallow, till i found it stanch, and able to bear me, and my freight. and when it was as compleat as i could possibly make it, i had it drawn on a carriage very gently by yahoos, to the seaside, under the conduct of the sorrel nag, and another servant. when all was ready, and the day came for my departure, i took leave of my master and lady, and the whole family, mine eyes flowing with tears, and my heart quite sunk with grief. but his honour, out of curiosity, and perhaps (if i may speak it without vanity) partly out of kindness, was determined to see me in my canoo, and got several of his neighbouring friends to accompany him. i was forced to wait above an hour for the tide, and then observing the wind very fortunately bearing towards the island, to which i intended to steer my course, i took a second leave of my master: but as i was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth. i am not ignorant how much i have been censured for mentioning this last particular. for my detractors are pleased to think it improbable, that so illustrious a person should descend to give so great a mark of distinction to a creature so inferior as i. neither have i forgot, how apt some travellers are to boast of extraordinary favours they have received. but if these censurers were better acquainted with the noble and courteous disposition of the houyhnhnms, they would soon change their opinion. i paid my respects to the rest of thehouyhnhnms in his honour's company; then getting into my canoo, i pushed off from shore. chapter xi. the author's dangerous voyage. he arrives at hew-holland, hoping to settle there. is wounded with an arrow by one the natives. is seized by force into a portugueze ship. the great civilities of the captain. the author arrives at england. i began this desperate voyage on february 15, 1714/5, at 9 o'clock in the morning. the wind was very favourable; however, i made use at first only of my paddles; but considering i should soon be weary, and that the wind might chop about, i ventured set up my little sail; and thus with the help of the tide, i went at the rate of a league and a half an hour, as near as i could guess. my master and his friends continued on the shoar, till i was almost out of sight; and i often heard the sorrel nag (who always loved me) crying out, hnuy illa nyha majah yahoo, take care of thyself, gentle yahoo. my design was, if possible, to discover some small island uninhabited, yet sufficient by my labour to furnish me with the necessaries of life, which i would have thought a greater happiness than to be first minister in the politest court of europe; so horrible was the idea i conceived of returning to live in the society and under the government of yahoos. for in such a solitude as i desired, i could at least enjoy my own thoughts, and reflect with delight on the virtues of those inimitable houyhnhnms, without any opportunity of degenerating into the vices and corruptions of my own species. the reader may remember what i related when my crew conspired against me, and confined me to my cabbin. how i continued there several weeks, without knowing what course we took, and when i was put a shoar in the long-boat, how the sailors told me with oaths, whether true or false, that not in what part of the world we were. however, i did then believe us to be about ten degrees southward of the cape of good hope, or about 45 degrees southern latitude, as i gathered from some general words i over-heard among them, being i supposed to the south-east in their intended voyage to madagascar. and although this were but little better than conjecture, yet i resolved to steer my course eastward, hoping to reach the south-west coast of new holland, and perhaps some such island as i desired, lying westward of it. the wind was full west, and by six in the evening i computed i had gone eastward at least eighteen leagues, when i spied a very small island about half a league off, which i soon reached. it was nothing but a rock with one creek, naturally arched by the force of tempests. here i put in my canoo, and climbing up a part of the rock, i could plainly discover land to the east, extending from south to north. i lay all night in my canoo, and repeating my voyage early in the morning, i arrived in seven hours to the south east point of new holland. this confirmed me in the opinion i have long entertained, that the maps and charts place this country at least three degrees more to the east than it really is; which thought i communicated many years ago to my worthy friend mr. herman moll, and gave him my reasons for it, although he hath rather chosen to follow other authors. i saw no inhabitants in the place where i landed, and being unarmed, i was afraid of venturing far into the country. i found some shell-fish on the shore, and eat them raw, not daring to kindle a fire, for fear of being discovered by the natives. i continued three days feeding on oysters and limpits, to save my own provisions; and i fortunately found a brook of excellent water, which gave me great relief. on the fourth day, venturing out early a little too far, i saw twenty or thirty natives upon a height, not above five hundred yards from me. they were stark naked, men, women, and children round a fire, as i could discover by the smoak. one of them spied me, and gave notice to the rest; five of them advanced towards me leaving the women and children at the fire. i made what haste i could to the shore, and getting into my canoo, shoved off: the savages observing me retreat, ran after me; and before i could get far enough into the sea, discharged an arrow, which wounded me deeply on the inside of my left knee (i shall carry the mark to my grave). i apprehended the arrow might be poisoned, and paddling out of the reach of their darts (being a calm day) i made a shift to suck the wound, and dress it as well as i could. i was at a loss what to do, for i durst not return to the same landingplace, but stood to the north, and was forced to paddle; for the wind though very gentle, was against me, blowing north-west. as i was looking about for a secure landing-place, i saw a sail to the north-north-east, which appearing every minute more visible, i was in some doubt whether i should wait for them, or no; but at last my detestation of the yahoo race prevailed, and turning my canoo, i sailed and paddled together to the south, and got into the same creek from whence i set out in the morning, choosing rather to trust myself among these barbarians, than live with european yahoos. i drew up my canoo as close as i could to the shore, and hid myself behind a stone by the little brook, which, as i have already said, was excellent water. the ship came within half a league of this creek, and sent out her longboat with vessels to take in fresh water (for the place it seems was very well known) but i did not observe it till the boat was almost on shore, and it was too late to seek another hiding-place. the seamen at their landing observed my canoo, and rummaging it all over, easily conjectured that the owner could not be far off. four of them well-armed searched every cranny and lurking-hole, till at last they found me flat on my face behind the stone. they gazed a while in admiration at my strange uncouth dress, my coat made of skins, my wooden-soled shoes, and my furred stockings; from whence, however, they concluded i was not a native of the place, who all go naked. one of the seamen in portugueze bid me rise, and asked who i was. i understood that language very well, and getting upon my feet, said i was a poor yahoo, banished from the houyhnhnms, and desired they would please to let me depart. they admired to hear me answer them in their own tongue, and saw by my complextion i must be an european; but were at a loss to know what i meant by yahoos and houyhnhnms, and at the same time fell a laughing at my strange tone in speaking, which resembled the neighing of a horse. i trembled all the while betwixt fear and hatred: i again desired leave to depart, and was gently moving to my canoo; but they laid hold on me, desiring to know what country i was of? whence i came? with many other questions. i told them i was born in england, from whence i came about five years ago, and then their country and ours were at peace. i therefore hoped they would not treat me as an enemy, since i meant them no harm, but was a poor yahoo, seeking some desolate place where to pass the remainder of his unfortunate life. when they began to talk, i thought i never heard or saw any thing so unnatural; for it appeared to me as dog or a cow should speak in england, or a yahoo in houyhnhnm-land the honest portugueze were equally amazed at my strange dress, and the odd manner of delivering my words, which however they understood very well. they spoke to me with great humanity, and said they were sure the captain would carry me gratis to lisbon, from whence i might return to my own country; that two of the seamen would go back to the ship, inform the captain of what they had seen, and receive his orders; in the mean time, unless i would give my solemn oath not to fly, they would secure me by force. i thought it best to comply with their proposal. they were very curious to know my story, but i gave them very little satisfaction; and they all conjectured my misfortunes had impaired my reason. in two hours the boat, which went loaden with vessels of water, returned with the captain's command to fetch me on board. i fell on my knees to preserve my liberty; but all was in vain, and the men having tied me with cords, heaved me into the boat, from whence i was taken into the ship, and from thence into the captain's cabbin. his name was pedro de mendez, he was a very courteous and generous person; he entreated me to give some account of myself, and desired to know what i would eat or drink; said i should be used as well as himself, and spoke so many obliging things, that i wondered to find such civilities from a yahoo. however, i remained silent and sullen; i was ready to faint at the very smell of him and his men. at last i desired something to eat out of my own canoo; but he ordered me a chicken and some excellent wine, and then directed that i should be put to bed in a very clean cabbin. i would not undress myself, but lay on the bed-cloaths, and in half an hour stole out, when i thought the crew was at dinner, and getting to the side of the ship was going to leap into the sea, and swim for my life, rather than continue among yahoos. but one of the seamen prevented me, and having informed the captain, i was chained to my cabbin. after dinner don pedro came to me, and desired to know my reason for so desperate an attempt; assured me he only meant to do me all the service he was able, and spoke so very movingly, that at last i descended to treat him like an animal which had some little portion of reason. i gave him a very short relation of my voyage, of the conspiracy against me by own men, of the country where they set me on shore, and of my three years residence there. all which he looked upon as if it were a dream or a vision; whereat i took great offence; for i had quite forgotten the faculty of lying, so peculiar to yahoos in all countries where they preside, and, consequently the disposition of suspecting truth in others of their own species. i asked him, whether it were the custom in his country to say the thing that was not? i assured him i had almost forgotten what he meant by falsehood, and if i had lived a thousand years in houyhnhnm-land, i should never have heard a lye from the meanest servant; that i was altogether indifferent whether he believed me or no; but however, in return for his favours, i would give so much allowance to the corruption of his nature, as to answer any objection he would please to make, and then he might easily discover the truth. the captain, a wise man, after many endeavours to catch me tripping in some part of my story, at last began to have a better opinion of my veractiy, and the rather because he confessed, he met with a dutch skipper, who pretended to have landed with five others of his crew upon a certain island or continent south of new-holland, where they went for fresh water, and observed a horse driving before him several animals exactly resembling those i described under the name of yahoos, with some other particulars, which the captain said he had forgotten; because he then concluded them all to be lies. but he added, that since i professed so inviolable an attachment to truth, i must give him my word of honour to bear him company in this voyage, without attempting any thing against my life, or else he would continue me a prisoner till we arrived at lisbon. i gave him the promise he required; but at the same time protested that i would suffer the greatest hardships rather than return to live among yahoos. our voyage passed without any considerable accident. in gratitude to the captain i sometimes sate with him at his earnest request, and strove to conceal my antipathy to human kind, although it often broke out, which he suffered to pass without observation. but the greatest part of the day i confined myself to my cabbin, to avoid seeing any of the crew. the captain had often entreated me to strip myself of my savage dress, and offered to lend me the best suit of cloaths he had. this i would not be prevailed on to accept, abhorring to cover myself with any thing that had been on the back of a yahoo. i only desired he would lend me two clean shirts, which having been washed since he wore them, i believed would not so much defile me. these i changed every second day, and washed them myself. we arrived at lisbon, nov. 5, 1715. at our landing the captain forced me to cover myself with his cloak, to prevent the rabble from crouding about me. i was conveyed to his own house, and at my earnest request, he led me up to the highest room backwards. i conjured him to conceal from all persons what i had told him of the houyhnhnms, because the least hint of such a story would not only draw numbers of people to see me, but probably, put me in danger of being imprisoned, or burned by the inquisition. the captain persuaded me to accept a suit of cloaths newly made; but i would not suffer the taylor to take my measure; however, don pedro being almost of my size, they fitted me well enough. he accoutred me with other necessaries all new, which i aired for twenty-four hours before i would use them. the captain had no wife, nor above three servants, none of which were suffered to attend at meals, and his whole deportment was so obliging, added to very good human understanding, that i really began to tolerate his company. he gained so far upon me, that i ventured to look out of the back window. by degrees i was brought into another room, from whence i peeped into the street, but drew my head back in a fright. in a week's time he seduced me down to the door. i found my terror gradually lessened, but my hatred and contempt seemed to encrease. i was at last bold enough to walk the street in his company, but kept my nose well stopped with rue, or sometimes with tobacco. in ten days don pedro, to whom i had given some account of my domestick affairs, put it upon me as a matter of honour and conscience, that i ought to return to my native country, and live at home with my wife and children. he told me, there was an english ship in port just ready to sail, and he would furnish me with all things necessary. it would be tedious to repeat his arguments, and my contradictions. he said it was altogether impossible to find such a solitary island as i had desired to live in; but i might command in my own house, and pass my time in a manner as recluse as i pleased. i complied at last, finding i could not do better. i left lisbon the 24th day of november, in an english merchant-man, but who was the master i never enquired. don pedro accompanied me to the ship, and lent me twenty pounds. he took kind leave of me, and embraced me at parting, which i bore as well as i could. during the last voyage i had no commerce with the master or any of his men; but pretending i was sick, kept close in my cabbin. on the fifth of december, 1715, we cast anchor in the downs about nine in the morning, and at three in the afternoon i got safe to my house at rotherhith. my wife and family received me with great surprise and joy, because they concluded me certainly dead; but i must freely confess the sight of them filled me only with hatred, disgust, and contempt, and the more by reflecting on the near alliance i had to them. for, although since my unfortunate exile from the houyhnhnm country, i had compelled myself to tolerate the sight of yahoos, and to converse with don pedro de mendez; yet my memory and imagination were perpetually filled with the virtues and ideas of those exalted houyhnhnms. and when i began to consider, that by copulating with one of the yahoo species i had become a parent of more, it struck me with the utmost shame, confusion, and horror. as soon as i entered the house, my wife took me in her arms, and kissed me, at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal for so many years, i fell in a swoon for almost an hour. at the time i am writing it is five years since my last return to england: during the first year i could not endure my wife or children in my presence, the very smell of them was intolerable, much less could i suffer them to eat in the same room. to this hour they dare not presume to touch my bread, or drink out of the same cup, neither was i ever able to let one of them take me by the hand. the first money i laid out was to buy two young stonehorses, which i keep in a good stable, and next to them the groom is my greatest favourite; for i feel my spirits revived by the smell he contracts in the stable. my horses understand me tolerably well; i converse with them at least four hours every day. they are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me, and friendship to each other. chapter xii. the author's veracity. his design in publishing this work. his censure of those travellers who swerve from the truth. the author clears himself of any sinister ends in writing. an objection answered. the method of planting colonies. his native country commended. the right of the crown to those countries described by the author is justified. the difficulty of conquering them. the author takes his last leave of the reader: proposeth his manner of living for the future, gives good advice, and concludes. thus, gentle reader, i have given thee a faithful history of my travels for sixteen years, and above seven months; wherein i have not been so studious of ornament as truth. i could perhaps like others have astonished you with strange improbable tales; but i rather chose to relate plain matter of fact in the simplest manner and style, because my principal design was to inform, and not to amuse thee. it is easy for us who travel into remote countries, which are seldom visited by englishmen or other europeans, to form descriptions of wonderful animals both at sea and land. whereas a traveller's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places. i could heartily wish a law was enacted, that every traveller before he were permitted to publish his voyages, should be obliged to make oath before the lord high chancellor that all he intended to print was absolutely true to the best of his knowledge; for then the world would no longer be deceived as it usually is, while some writers, to make their works pass the better upon the publick, impose the grossest falsities on the unwary reader. i have perused several books of travels with great delight in my younger days; but having since gone over most parts of the globe, and been able to contradict many fabulous accounts from my own observation, it hath given me a great disgust against this part of reading, and some indignation to see the credulity of mankind so impudently abused. therefore since my acquaintances were pleased to think my poor endeavours might not be unacceptable to my country, i imposed on myself as a maxim, never to be swerved from, that i would strictly adhere to truth; neither indeed can i be ever under the least temptation to vary from it, while i retain in my mind the lectures and example of my noble master, and the other illustrious houyhnhnms, of whom i had so long the honour to be a humble bearer. ---nec si miserum fortuna sinonem finxit, vanum etiam, mendacemque improba finget. i know very well how little reputation is to be got by writings which require neither genius nor learning, nor indeed any other talent, except a good memory, or an exact journal. i know likewise, the writers of travels, like dictionary-makers, are sunk into oblivion by the weight and bulk of those who come after, and therefor lie uppermost. and it is highly probable, that such travellers who shall hereafter visit the countries described in this work of mine, may, by detecting my errors, (if there be any) and adding many new discoveries of their own, justle me out of vogue, and stand in my place, making the world forget that i was ever an author. this indeed would be too great a mortification if i wrote for fame: but, as my sole intention was the publick good, i cannot be altogether disappointed. for who can read of the virtues i have mentioned in the glorious houyhnhnms, without being ashamed of his own vices, when he considers himself as the reasoning, governing animal of his country? i shall say nothing of those remote nations where yahoos preside amongst which the least corrupted are the brobdingnagians, whose wise maxims in morality and government, it would be our happiness to observe. but i forbear descanting farther, and rather leave the judicious reader to his own remarks and applications. i am not a little pleased that this work of mine can possibly meet with no censurers: for what objections can be made against a writer who relates only plain facts that happened in such distant countries, where we have not the least interest with respect either to trade or negotiations? i have carefully avoided every fault with which common writers of travels are often too justly charged. besides, i meddle not with any party, but write without passion, prejudice, or ill-will against any man or number of men whatsoever. i write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind, over whom i may, without breach of modesty, pretend to some superiority from the advantages i received by conversing so long among the most accomplished houyhnhnms. i write without any view towards profit or praise. i never suffer a word to pass that may look like reflection, or possibly give the least offence even to those who are most ready to take it. so that i hope i may with justice pronounce myself an author perfectly blameless, against whom the tribes of answerers, considerers, observers, reflecters, detecters, remarkers will never be able to find matter for exercising their talents. i confess, it was whispered to me, that i was bound in duty as a subject of england, to have given in a memorial to a secretary of state at my first coming over; because whatever lands are discovered by a subject, belong to the crown. but i doubt whether our conquests in the countries i treat of, would be as easy as those of ferdinando cortez over the naked americans. the lilliputians i think are hardly worth the charge of a fleet and army to reduce them, and i question whether it might be prudent or safe to attempt the brobdingnagians. or whether an english army would be much at their ease with the flying island over their heads. the houyhnhnms, indeed, appear not to be so well prepared for war, a science to which they are perfect strangers, and especially against missive weapons. however, supposing myself to be a minister of state, i could never give my advice for invading them. their prudence, unanimity, unacquaintedness with fear, and their love of their country would amply supply all defects in the military art. imagine twenty thousand of them breaking into the midst of an european army, confounding the ranks, overturning the carriages, battering the warriors' faces into mummy, by terrible yerks from their hinder hoofs. for they would well deserve the character given to augustus; recalcitrat undique tutus. but instead of proposals for conquering that magnanimous nation, i rather wish they were in a capacity or disposition to send a sufficient number of their inhabitants for civilizing europe, by teaching us the first principles of honour, truth, temperance, publick spirit, fortitude, chastity, benevolence, and fidelity. the names of all which virtues are still retained among us in languages, and are to be met with in modern as well as ancient authors, which i am able to assert from my own small reading. but i had another reason which made me less forward to enlarge his majesty's dominions by my discovery. to say the truth, i had conceived a few scruples with relation to the distributive justice of princes upon those occasions. for instance, a crew of pyrates are driven by a storm they know not whither, at length a boy discovers land from the top-mast, they go on shore to rob and plunder; they see an harmless people, are entertained with kindness, they give the country a new name, they take formal possession of it for their king, they set up a rotten plank or a stone for a memorial, they murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more by force for a sample, return home, and get their pardon. here commences a new dominion acquired with a title by divine right. ships are sent with the first opportunity, the natives driven out or destroyed, their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free licence given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous people. but this description, i confess, doth by no means affect the british nation, who may be an example to the whole world for their wisdom, care, and justice in planting colonies; their liberal endowments for the advancement of religion and learning; their choice of devout and able pastors to propagate christianity, their caution in stocking their provinces with people of sober lives and conversations from this the mother kingdom; their strict regard to the distribution of justice in supplying the civil administration through all their colonies with officers of the greatest abilities, utter strangers to corruption; and to crown all, by sending the most vigilant and virtuous governors, who have no other views than the happiness of the people over whom they preside, and the honour of the king their master. but, as those countries which i have described do not appear to have any desire of being conquered, and enslaved, murdered or driven out by colonies, nor abound either in gold, silver, sugar, or tobacco; i did humbly conceive they were by no means proper objects of our zeal, our valour, or our interest. however, if those whom it may concern, think fit to be of another opinion, i am ready to depose, when i shall be lawfully called, that no european did ever visit these countries before me. i mean, if the inhabitants ought to be believed; unless a dispute may arise about the two yahoos, said to have been seen many ages ago on a mountain in houyhnhnm-land, from whence the opinion is, that the race of those brutes hath descended; and these, for anything i know, may have been english, which indeed i was apt to suspect from the lineaments of their posterity's countenances, although very much defaced. but, how far that will go to make out a title, i leave to the learned in colony-law. but as to the formality of taking possession in my sovereign's name, it never came once into my thoughts; and if it had, yet as my affairs then stood, i should perhaps in point of prudence and self-preservation have put it off to a better opportunity. having thus answered the only objection that can ever be raised against me as a traveller, i here take a final leave of all my courteous readers, and return to enjoy my own speculations in my little garden at redriff, to apply those excellent lessons of virtue which i learned among the houyhnhnms, to instruct the yahoos of my own family as far as i shall find them docile animals; to behold my figure often in a glass, and thus if possible habituate myself by time to tolerate the sight of a human creature: to lament the brutality of houyhnhnms in my own country, but always treat their persons with respect, for the sake of my noble master, his family, his friends, and the whole houyhnhnm race, whom these ours have the honour to resemble in all their lineaments, however their intellectuals came to degenerate. i began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the farthest end of a long table, and to answer (but with the utmost brevity) the few questions i ask'd her. yet the smell of a yahoo continuing very offensive, i always keep my nose well stopt with rue, lavender, or tobacco-leaves. and although it be hard for a man late in life to remove old habits, i am not altogether out of hopes in some time to suffer a neighbour yahoo in my company without the apprehensions i am yet under of his teeth or his claws. my reconcilement to the yahoo-kind in general might not be so difficult if they would be content with those vices and follies only, which nature has entitled them to. i am not in the least provoked at the sight of a lawyer, a pick-pocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a gamester, a politician, a whoremaster, a physician, an evidence, a suborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like: this is all according to the due course of things: but when i behold a lump of deformity, and diseases both in body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience; neither shall i be ever able to comprehend how such an animal and such a vice could tally together. the wise and virtuous houyhnhnms, who abound in all excellencies that can adorn a rational creature, have no name for this vice in their language, which has no terms to express anything that is evil, except those whereby they describe the detestable qualities of their yahoos, among which they were not able to distinguish this of pride, for want of thoroughly understanding human nature, as it sheweth itself in other countries, where that animal presides. but i, who had more experience, could plainly observe some rudiments of it among the wild yahoos. but the houyhnhnms, who live under the government of reason, are no more proud of the good qualities they possess, than i should be for not wanting a leg or an arm, which no man in his wits would boast of, although he must be miserable without them. i dwell the longer upon this subject from the desire i have to make the society of an english yahoo by any means not insupportable, and therefore i here entreat those who have any tincture of this absurd vice, that they will not presume to come in my sight. finis. 2 king henry iv dramatis personae rumour the presenter. king henry the fourth. (king henry iv:) prince henry | of wales (prince henry:) | afterwards king henry v. | | thomas, duke of | sons of king henry. clarence (clarence:) | | prince humphrey | of gloucester (gloucester:) | earl of warwick (warwick:) earl of westmoreland (westmoreland:) earl of surrey: gower: harcourt: blunt: lord chief-justice of the king's bench: (lord chief-justice:) a servant of the chief-justice. earl of northumberland (northumberland:) scroop, archbishop of york (archbishop of york:) lord mowbray (mowbray:) lord hastings (hastings:) lord bardolph: sir john colevile (colevile:) travers | | retainers of northumberland. morton | sir john falstaff (falstaff:) his page. (page:) bardolph: pistol: poins: peto: shallow | | country justices. silence | davy servant to shallow. mouldy | | shadow | | wart | recruits. | feeble | | bullcalf | fang | | sheriff's officers. snare | lady northumberland: lady percy: mistress quickly hostess of a tavern in eastcheap. doll tearsheet: lords and attendants; porter, drawers, beadles, grooms, &c. (first messenger:) (porter:) (first drawer:) (second drawer:) (first beadle:) (first groom:) (second groom:) a dancer, speaker of the epilogue. scene england. 2 king henry iv induction [warkworth. before the castle] [enter rumour, painted full of tongues] rumour open your ears; for which of you will stop the vent of hearing when loud rumour speaks? i, from the orient to the drooping west, making the wind my post-horse, still unfold the acts commenced on this ball of earth: upon my tongues continual slanders ride, the which in every language i pronounce, stuffing the ears of men with false reports. i speak of peace, while covert enmity under the smile of safety wounds the world: and who but rumour, who but only i, make fearful musters and prepared defence, whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief, is thought with child by the stern tyrant war, and no such matter? rumour is a pipe blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures and of so easy and so plain a stop that the blunt monster with uncounted heads, the still-discordant wavering multitude, can play upon it. but what need i thus my well-known body to anatomize among my household? why is rumour here? i run before king harry's victory; who in a bloody field by shrewsbury hath beaten down young hotspur and his troops, quenching the flame of bold rebellion even with the rebel's blood. but what mean i to speak so true at first? my office is to noise abroad that harry monmouth fell under the wrath of noble hotspur's sword, and that the king before the douglas' rage stoop'd his anointed head as low as death. this have i rumour'd through the peasant towns between that royal field of shrewsbury and this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone, where hotspur's father, old northumberland, lies crafty-sick: the posts come tiring on, and not a man of them brings other news than they have learn'd of me: from rumour's tongues they bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs. [exit] 2 king henry iv act i scene i the same. [enter lord bardolph] lord bardolph who keeps the gate here, ho? [the porter opens the gate] where is the earl? porter what shall i say you are? lord bardolph tell thou the earl that the lord bardolph doth attend him here. porter his lordship is walk'd forth into the orchard; please it your honour, knock but at the gate, and he himself wilt answer. [enter northumberland] lord bardolph here comes the earl. [exit porter] northumberland what news, lord bardolph? every minute now should be the father of some stratagem: the times are wild: contention, like a horse full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose and bears down all before him. lord bardolph noble earl, i bring you certain news from shrewsbury. northumberland good, an god will! lord bardolph as good as heart can wish: the king is almost wounded to the death; and, in the fortune of my lord your son, prince harry slain outright; and both the blunts kill'd by the hand of douglas; young prince john and westmoreland and stafford fled the field; and harry monmouth's brawn, the hulk sir john, is prisoner to your son: o, such a day, so fought, so follow'd and so fairly won, came not till now to dignify the times, since caesar's fortunes! northumberland how is this derived? saw you the field? came you from shrewsbury? lord bardolph i spake with one, my lord, that came from thence, a gentleman well bred and of good name, that freely render'd me these news for true. northumberland here comes my servant travers, whom i sent on tuesday last to listen after news. [enter travers] lord bardolph my lord, i over-rode him on the way; and he is furnish'd with no certainties more than he haply may retail from me. northumberland now, travers, what good tidings comes with you? travers my lord, sir john umfrevile turn'd me back with joyful tidings; and, being better horsed, out-rode me. after him came spurring hard a gentleman, almost forspent with speed, that stopp'd by me to breathe his bloodied horse. he ask'd the way to chester; and of him i did demand what news from shrewsbury: he told me that rebellion had bad luck and that young harry percy's spur was cold. with that, he gave his able horse the head, and bending forward struck his armed heels against the panting sides of his poor jade up to the rowel-head, and starting so he seem'd in running to devour the way, staying no longer question. northumberland ha! again: said he young harry percy's spur was cold? of hotspur coldspur? that rebellion had met ill luck? lord bardolph my lord, i'll tell you what; if my young lord your son have not the day, upon mine honour, for a silken point i'll give my barony: never talk of it. northumberland why should that gentleman that rode by travers give then such instances of loss? lord bardolph who, he? he was some hilding fellow that had stolen the horse he rode on, and, upon my life, spoke at a venture. look, here comes more news. [enter morton] northumberland yea, this man's brow, like to a title-leaf, foretells the nature of a tragic volume: so looks the strand whereon the imperious flood hath left a witness'd usurpation. say, morton, didst thou come from shrewsbury? morton i ran from shrewsbury, my noble lord; where hateful death put on his ugliest mask to fright our party. northumberland how doth my son and brother? thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand. even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, so dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, drew priam's curtain in the dead of night, and would have told him half his troy was burnt; but priam found the fire ere he his tongue, and i my percy's death ere thou report'st it. this thou wouldst say, 'your son did thus and thus; your brother thus: so fought the noble douglas:' stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds: but in the end, to stop my ear indeed, thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise, ending with 'brother, son, and all are dead.' morton douglas is living, and your brother, yet; but, for my lord your son- northumberland why, he is dead. see what a ready tongue suspicion hath! he that but fears the thing he would not know hath by instinct knowledge from others' eyes that what he fear'd is chanced. yet speak, morton; tell thou an earl his divination lies, and i will take it as a sweet disgrace and make thee rich for doing me such wrong. morton you are too great to be by me gainsaid: your spirit is too true, your fears too certain. northumberland yet, for all this, say not that percy's dead. i see a strange confession in thine eye: thou shakest thy head and hold'st it fear or sin to speak a truth. if he be slain, say so; the tongue offends not that reports his death: and he doth sin that doth belie the dead, not he which says the dead is not alive. yet the first bringer of unwelcome news hath but a losing office, and his tongue sounds ever after as a sullen bell, remember'd tolling a departing friend. lord bardolph i cannot think, my lord, your son is dead. morton i am sorry i should force you to believe that which i would to god i had not seen; but these mine eyes saw him in bloody state, rendering faint quittance, wearied and out-breathed, to harry monmouth; whose swift wrath beat down the never-daunted percy to the earth, from whence with life he never more sprung up. in few, his death, whose spirit lent a fire even to the dullest peasant in his camp, being bruited once, took fire and heat away from the best temper'd courage in his troops; for from his metal was his party steel'd; which once in him abated, all the rest turn'd on themselves, like dull and heavy lead: and as the thing that's heavy in itself, upon enforcement flies with greatest speed, so did our men, heavy in hotspur's loss, lend to this weight such lightness with their fear that arrows fled not swifter toward their aim than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety, fly from the field. then was the noble worcester too soon ta'en prisoner; and that furious scot, the bloody douglas, whose well-labouring sword had three times slain the appearance of the king, 'gan vail his stomach and did grace the shame of those that turn'd their backs, and in his flight, stumbling in fear, was took. the sum of all is that the king hath won, and hath sent out a speedy power to encounter you, my lord, under the conduct of young lancaster and westmoreland. this is the news at full. northumberland for this i shall have time enough to mourn. in poison there is physic; and these news, having been well, that would have made me sick, being sick, have in some measure made me well: and as the wretch, whose fever-weaken'd joints, like strengthless hinges, buckle under life, impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire out of his keeper's arms, even so my limbs, weaken'd with grief, being now enraged with grief, are thrice themselves. hence, therefore, thou nice crutch! a scaly gauntlet now with joints of steel must glove this hand: and hence, thou sickly quoif! thou art a guard too wanton for the head which princes, flesh'd with conquest, aim to hit. now bind my brows with iron; and approach the ragged'st hour that time and spite dare bring to frown upon the enraged northumberland! let heaven kiss earth! now let not nature's hand keep the wild flood confined! let order die! and let this world no longer be a stage to feed contention in a lingering act; but let one spirit of the first-born cain reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set on bloody courses, the rude scene may end, and darkness be the burier of the dead! travers this strained passion doth you wrong, my lord. lord bardolph sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour. morton the lives of all your loving complices lean on your health; the which, if you give o'er to stormy passion, must perforce decay. you cast the event of war, my noble lord, and summ'd the account of chance, before you said 'let us make head.' it was your presurmise, that, in the dole of blows, your son might drop: you knew he walk'd o'er perils, on an edge, more likely to fall in than to get o'er; you were advised his flesh was capable of wounds and scars and that his forward spirit would lift him where most trade of danger ranged: yet did you say 'go forth;' and none of this, though strongly apprehended, could restrain the stiff-borne action: what hath then befallen, or what hath this bold enterprise brought forth, more than that being which was like to be? lord bardolph we all that are engaged to this loss knew that we ventured on such dangerous seas that if we wrought our life 'twas ten to one; and yet we ventured, for the gain proposed choked the respect of likely peril fear'd; and since we are o'erset, venture again. come, we will all put forth, body and goods. morton 'tis more than time: and, my most noble lord, i hear for certain, and do speak the truth, the gentle archbishop of york is up with well-appointed powers: he is a man who with a double surety binds his followers. my lord your son had only but the corpse, but shadows and the shows of men, to fight; for that same word, rebellion, did divide the action of their bodies from their souls; and they did fight with queasiness, constrain'd, as men drink potions, that their weapons only seem'd on our side; but, for their spirits and souls, this word, rebellion, it had froze them up, as fish are in a pond. but now the bishop turns insurrection to religion: supposed sincere and holy in his thoughts, he's followed both with body and with mind; and doth enlarge his rising with the blood of fair king richard, scraped from pomfret stones; derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause; tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land, gasping for life under great bolingbroke; and more and less do flock to follow him. northumberland i knew of this before; but, to speak truth, this present grief had wiped it from my mind. go in with me; and counsel every man the aptest way for safety and revenge: get posts and letters, and make friends with speed: never so few, and never yet more need. [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act i scene ii london. a street. [enter falstaff, with his page bearing his sword and buckler] falstaff sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water? page he said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water; but, for the party that owed it, he might have more diseases than he knew for. falstaff men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: the brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that tends to laughter, more than i invent or is invented on me: i am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. i do here walk before thee like a sow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one. if the prince put thee into my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then i have no judgment. thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap than to wait at my heels. i was never manned with an agate till now: but i will inset you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master, for a jewel,- the juvenal, the prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledged. i will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand than he shall get one on his cheek; and yet he will not stick to say his face is a face-royal: god may finish it when he will, 'tis not a hair amiss yet: he may keep it still at a face-royal, for a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it; and yet he'll be crowing as if he had writ man ever since his father was a bachelor. he may keep his own grace, but he's almost out of mine, i can assure him. what said master dombledon about the satin for my short cloak and my slops? page he said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than bardolph: he would not take his band and yours; he liked not the security. falstaff let him be damned, like the glutton! pray god his tongue be hotter! a whoreson achitophel! a rascally yea-forsooth knave! to bear a gentleman in hand, and then stand upon security! the whoreson smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes, and bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is through with them in honest taking up, then they must stand upon security. i had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as offer to stop it with security. i looked a' should have sent me two and twenty yards of satin, as i am a true knight, and he sends me security. well, he may sleep in security; for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it: and yet cannot he see, though he have his own lanthorn to light him. where's bardolph? page he's gone into smithfield to buy your worship a horse. falstaff i bought him in paul's, and he'll buy me a horse in smithfield: an i could get me but a wife in the stews, i were manned, horsed, and wived. [enter the lord chief-justice and servant] page sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the prince for striking him about bardolph. falstaff wait, close; i will not see him. lord chief-justice what's he that goes there? servant falstaff, an't please your lordship. lord chief-justice he that was in question for the robbery? servant he, my lord: but he hath since done good service at shrewsbury; and, as i hear, is now going with some charge to the lord john of lancaster. lord chief-justice what, to york? call him back again. servant sir john falstaff! falstaff boy, tell him i am deaf. page you must speak louder; my master is deaf. lord chief-justice i am sure he is, to the hearing of any thing good. go, pluck him by the elbow; i must speak with him. servant sir john! falstaff what! a young knave, and begging! is there not wars? is there not employment? doth not the king lack subjects? do not the rebels need soldiers? though it be a shame to be on any side but one, it is worse shame to beg than to be on the worst side, were it worse than the name of rebellion can tell how to make it. servant you mistake me, sir. falstaff why, sir, did i say you were an honest man? setting my knighthood and my soldiership aside, i had lied in my throat, if i had said so. servant i pray you, sir, then set your knighthood and our soldiership aside; and give me leave to tell you, you lie in your throat, if you say i am any other than an honest man. falstaff i give thee leave to tell me so! i lay aside that which grows to me! if thou gettest any leave of me, hang me; if thou takest leave, thou wert better be hanged. you hunt counter: hence! avaunt! servant sir, my lord would speak with you. lord chief-justice sir john falstaff, a word with you. falstaff my good lord! god give your lordship good time of day. i am glad to see your lordship abroad: i heard say your lordship was sick: i hope your lordship goes abroad by advice. your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and i must humbly beseech your lordship to have a reverent care of your health. lord chief-justice sir john, i sent for you before your expedition to shrewsbury. falstaff an't please your lordship, i hear his majesty is returned with some discomfort from wales. lord chief-justice i talk not of his majesty: you would not come when i sent for you. falstaff and i hear, moreover, his highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy. lord chief-justice well, god mend him! i pray you, let me speak with you. falstaff this apoplexy is, as i take it, a kind of lethargy, an't please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling. lord chief-justice what tell you me of it? be it as it is. falstaff it hath its original from much grief, from study and perturbation of the brain: i have read the cause of his effects in galen: it is a kind of deafness. lord chief-justice i think you are fallen into the disease; for you hear not what i say to you. falstaff very well, my lord, very well: rather, an't please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that i am troubled withal. lord chief-justice to punish you by the heels would amend the attention of your ears; and i care not if i do become your physician. falstaff i am as poor as job, my lord, but not so patient: your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me in respect of poverty; but how should i be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or indeed a scruple itself. lord chief-justice i sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me. falstaff as i was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-service, i did not come. lord chief-justice well, the truth is, sir john, you live in great infamy. falstaff he that buckles him in my belt cannot live in less. lord chief-justice your means are very slender, and your waste is great. falstaff i would it were otherwise; i would my means were greater, and my waist slenderer. lord chief-justice you have misled the youthful prince. falstaff the young prince hath misled me: i am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog. lord chief-justice well, i am loath to gall a new-healed wound: your day's service at shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night's exploit on gad's-hill: you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o'er-posting that action. falstaff my lord? lord chief-justice but since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf. falstaff to wake a wolf is as bad as to smell a fox. lord chief-justice what! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out. falstaff a wassail candle, my lord, all tallow: if i did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth. lord chief-justice there is not a white hair on your face but should have his effect of gravity. falstaff his effect of gravy, gravy, gravy. lord chief-justice you follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel. falstaff not so, my lord; your ill angel is light; but i hope he that looks upon me will take me without weighing: and yet, in some respects, i grant, i cannot go: i cannot tell. virtue is of so little regard in these costermonger times that true valour is turned bear-herd: pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings: all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. you that are old consider not the capacities of us that are young; you do measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls: and we that are in the vaward of our youth, i must confess, are wags too. lord chief-justice do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? fie, fie, fie, sir john! falstaff my lord, i was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly. for my voice, i have lost it with halloing and singing of anthems. to approve my youth further, i will not: the truth is, i am only old in judgment and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him! for the box of the ear that the prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. i have chequed him for it, and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack. lord chief-justice well, god send the prince a better companion! falstaff god send the companion a better prince! i cannot rid my hands of him. lord chief-justice well, the king hath severed you and prince harry: i hear you are going with lord john of lancaster against the archbishop and the earl of northumberland. falstaff yea; i thank your pretty sweet wit for it. but look you pray, all you that kiss my lady peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day; for, by the lord, i take but two shirts out with me, and i mean not to sweat extraordinarily: if it be a hot day, and i brandish any thing but a bottle, i would i might never spit white again. there is not a dangerous action can peep out his head but i am thrust upon it: well, i cannot last ever: but it was alway yet the trick of our english nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. if ye will needs say i am an old man, you should give me rest. i would to god my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is: i were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion. lord chief-justice well, be honest, be honest; and god bless your expedition! falstaff will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me forth? lord chief-justice not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to bear crosses. fare you well: commend me to my cousin westmoreland. [exeunt chief-justice and servant] falstaff if i do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. a man can no more separate age and covetousness than a' can part young limbs and lechery: but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other; and so both the degrees prevent my curses. boy! page sir? falstaff what money is in my purse? page seven groats and two pence. falstaff i can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable. go bear this letter to my lord of lancaster; this to the prince; this to the earl of westmoreland; and this to old mistress ursula, whom i have weekly sworn to marry since i perceived the first white hair on my chin. about it: you know where to find me. [exit page] a pox of this gout! or, a gout of this pox! for the one or the other plays the rogue with my great toe. 'tis no matter if i do halt; i have the wars for my colour, and my pension shall seem the more reasonable. a good wit will make use of any thing: i will turn diseases to commodity. [exit] 2 king henry iv act i scene iii york. the archbishop's palace. [enter the archbishop of york, the lords hastings, mowbray, and bardolph] archbishop of york thus have you heard our cause and known our means; and, my most noble friends, i pray you all, speak plainly your opinions of our hopes: and first, lord marshal, what say you to it? mowbray i well allow the occasion of our arms; but gladly would be better satisfied how in our means we should advance ourselves to look with forehead bold and big enough upon the power and puissance of the king. hastings our present musters grow upon the file to five and twenty thousand men of choice; and our supplies live largely in the hope of great northumberland, whose bosom burns with an incensed fire of injuries. lord bardolph the question then, lord hastings, standeth thus; whether our present five and twenty thousand may hold up head without northumberland? hastings with him, we may. lord bardolph yea, marry, there's the point: but if without him we be thought too feeble, my judgment is, we should not step too far till we had his assistance by the hand; for in a theme so bloody-faced as this conjecture, expectation, and surmise of aids incertain should not be admitted. archbishop of york 'tis very true, lord bardolph; for indeed it was young hotspur's case at shrewsbury. lord bardolph it was, my lord; who lined himself with hope, eating the air on promise of supply, flattering himself in project of a power much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts: and so, with great imagination proper to madmen, led his powers to death and winking leap'd into destruction. hastings but, by your leave, it never yet did hurt to lay down likelihoods and forms of hope. lord bardolph yes, if this present quality of war, indeed the instant action: a cause on foot lives so in hope as in an early spring we see the appearing buds; which to prove fruit, hope gives not so much warrant as despair that frosts will bite them. when we mean to build, we first survey the plot, then draw the model; and when we see the figure of the house, then must we rate the cost of the erection; which if we find outweighs ability, what do we then but draw anew the model in fewer offices, or at last desist to build at all? much more, in this great work, which is almost to pluck a kingdom down and set another up, should we survey the plot of situation and the model, consent upon a sure foundation, question surveyors, know our own estate, how able such a work to undergo, to weigh against his opposite; or else we fortify in paper and in figures, using the names of men instead of men: like one that draws the model of a house beyond his power to build it; who, half through, gives o'er and leaves his part-created cost a naked subject to the weeping clouds and waste for churlish winter's tyranny. hastings grant that our hopes, yet likely of fair birth, should be still-born, and that we now possess'd the utmost man of expectation, i think we are a body strong enough, even as we are, to equal with the king. lord bardolph what, is the king but five and twenty thousand? hastings to us no more; nay, not so much, lord bardolph. for his divisions, as the times do brawl, are in three heads: one power against the french, and one against glendower; perforce a third must take up us: so is the unfirm king in three divided; and his coffers sound with hollow poverty and emptiness. archbishop of york that he should draw his several strengths together and come against us in full puissance, need not be dreaded. hastings if he should do so, he leaves his back unarm'd, the french and welsh baying him at the heels: never fear that. lord bardolph who is it like should lead his forces hither? hastings the duke of lancaster and westmoreland; against the welsh, himself and harry monmouth: but who is substituted 'gainst the french, i have no certain notice. archbishop of york let us on, and publish the occasion of our arms. the commonwealth is sick of their own choice; their over-greedy love hath surfeited: an habitation giddy and unsure hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart. o thou fond many, with what loud applause didst thou beat heaven with blessing bolingbroke, before he was what thou wouldst have him be! and being now trimm'd in thine own desires, thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him, that thou provokest thyself to cast him up. so, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge thy glutton bosom of the royal richard; and now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up, and howl'st to find it. what trust is in these times? they that, when richard lived, would have him die, are now become enamour'd on his grave: thou, that threw'st dust upon his goodly head when through proud london he came sighing on after the admired heels of bolingbroke, criest now 'o earth, yield us that king again, and take thou this!' o thoughts of men accursed! past and to come seems best; things present worst. mowbray shall we go draw our numbers and set on? hastings we are time's subjects, and time bids be gone. [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act ii scene i london. a street. [enter mistress quickly, fang and his boy with her, and snare following. mistress quickly master fang, have you entered the action? fang it is entered. mistress quickly where's your yeoman? is't a lusty yeoman? will a' stand to 't? fang sirrah, where's snare? mistress quickly o lord, ay! good master snare. snare here, here. fang snare, we must arrest sir john falstaff. mistress quickly yea, good master snare; i have entered him and all. snare it may chance cost some of us our lives, for he will stab. mistress quickly alas the day! take heed of him; he stabbed me in mine own house, and that most beastly: in good faith, he cares not what mischief he does. if his weapon be out: he will foin like any devil; he will spare neither man, woman, nor child. fang if i can close with him, i care not for his thrust. mistress quickly no, nor i neither: i'll be at your elbow. fang an i but fist him once; an a' come but within my vice,- mistress quickly i am undone by his going; i warrant you, he's an infinitive thing upon my score. good master fang, hold him sure: good master snare, let him not 'scape. a' comes continuantly to pie-corner--saving your manhoods--to buy a saddle; and he is indited to dinner to the lubber's-head in lumbert street, to master smooth's the silkman: i pray ye, since my exion is entered and my case so openly known to the world, let him be brought in to his answer. a hundred mark is a long one for a poor lone woman to bear: and i have borne, and borne, and borne, and have been fubbed off, and fubbed off, and fubbed off, from this day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on. there is no honesty in such dealing; unless a woman should be made an ass and a beast, to bear every knave's wrong. yonder he comes; and that errant malmsey-nose knave, bardolph, with him. do your offices, do your offices: master fang and master snare, do me, do me, do me your offices. [enter falstaff, page, and bardolph] falstaff how now! whose mare's dead? what's the matter? fang sir john, i arrest you at the suit of mistress quickly. falstaff away, varlets! draw, bardolph: cut me off the villain's head: throw the quean in the channel. mistress quickly throw me in the channel! i'll throw thee in the channel. wilt thou? wilt thou? thou bastardly rogue! murder, murder! ah, thou honeysuckle villain! wilt thou kill god's officers and the king's? ah, thou honey-seed rogue! thou art a honey-seed, a man-queller, and a woman-queller. falstaff keep them off, bardolph. fang a rescue! a rescue! mistress quickly good people, bring a rescue or two. thou wo't, wo't thou? thou wo't, wo't ta? do, do, thou rogue! do, thou hemp-seed! falstaff away, you scullion! you rampallion! you fustilarian! i'll tickle your catastrophe. [enter the lord chief-justice, and his men] lord chief-justice what is the matter? keep the peace here, ho! mistress quickly good my lord, be good to me. i beseech you, stand to me. lord chief-justice how now, sir john! what are you brawling here? doth this become your place, your time and business? you should have been well on your way to york. stand from him, fellow: wherefore hang'st upon him? mistress quickly o most worshipful lord, an't please your grace, i am a poor widow of eastcheap, and he is arrested at my suit. lord chief-justice for what sum? mistress quickly it is more than for some, my lord; it is for all, all i have. he hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his: but i will have some of it out again, or i will ride thee o' nights like the mare. falstaff i think i am as like to ride the mare, if i have any vantage of ground to get up. lord chief-justice how comes this, sir john? fie! what man of good temper would endure this tempest of exclamation? are you not ashamed to enforce a poor widow to so rough a course to come by her own? falstaff what is the gross sum that i owe thee? mistress quickly marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon wednesday in wheeson week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as i was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. canst thou deny it? did not goodwife keech, the butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some; whereby i told thee they were ill for a green wound? and didst thou not, when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such poor people; saying that ere long they should call me madam? and didst thou not kiss me and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? i put thee now to thy book-oath: deny it, if thou canst. falstaff my lord, this is a poor mad soul; and she says up and down the town that the eldest son is like you: she hath been in good case, and the truth is, poverty hath distracted her. but for these foolish officers, i beseech you i may have redress against them. lord chief-justice sir john, sir john, i am well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way. it is not a confident brow, nor the throng of words that come with such more than impudent sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level consideration: you have, as it appears to me, practised upon the easy-yielding spirit of this woman, and made her serve your uses both in purse and in person. mistress quickly yea, in truth, my lord. lord chief-justice pray thee, peace. pay her the debt you owe her, and unpay the villany you have done her: the one you may do with sterling money, and the other with current repentance. falstaff my lord, i will not undergo this sneap without reply. you call honourable boldness impudent sauciness: if a man will make courtesy and say nothing, he is virtuous: no, my lord, my humble duty remembered, i will not be your suitor. i say to you, i do desire deliverance from these officers, being upon hasty employment in the king's affairs. lord chief-justice you speak as having power to do wrong: but answer in the effect of your reputation, and satisfy this poor woman. falstaff come hither, hostess. [enter gower] lord chief-justice now, master gower, what news? gower the king, my lord, and harry prince of wales are near at hand: the rest the paper tells. falstaff as i am a gentleman. mistress quickly faith, you said so before. falstaff as i am a gentleman. come, no more words of it. mistress quickly by this heavenly ground i tread on, i must be fain to pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my dining-chambers. falstaff glasses, glasses is the only drinking: and for thy walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the prodigal, or the german hunting in water-work, is worth a thousand of these bed-hangings and these fly-bitten tapestries. let it be ten pound, if thou canst. come, an 'twere not for thy humours, there's not a better wench in england. go, wash thy face, and draw the action. come, thou must not be in this humour with me; dost not know me? come, come, i know thou wast set on to this. mistress quickly pray thee, sir john, let it be but twenty nobles: i' faith, i am loath to pawn my plate, so god save me, la! falstaff let it alone; i'll make other shift: you'll be a fool still. mistress quickly well, you shall have it, though i pawn my gown. i hope you'll come to supper. you'll pay me all together? falstaff will i live? [to bardolph] go, with her, with her; hook on, hook on. mistress quickly will you have doll tearsheet meet you at supper? falstaff no more words; let's have her. [exeunt mistress quickly, bardolph, officers and boy] lord chief-justice i have heard better news. falstaff what's the news, my lord? lord chief-justice where lay the king last night? gower at basingstoke, my lord. falstaff i hope, my lord, all's well: what is the news, my lord? lord chief-justice come all his forces back? gower no; fifteen hundred foot, five hundred horse, are marched up to my lord of lancaster, against northumberland and the archbishop. falstaff comes the king back from wales, my noble lord? lord chief-justice you shall have letters of me presently: come, go along with me, good master gower. falstaff my lord! lord chief-justice what's the matter? falstaff master gower, shall i entreat you with me to dinner? gower i must wait upon my good lord here; i thank you, good sir john. lord chief-justice sir john, you loiter here too long, being you are to take soldiers up in counties as you go. falstaff will you sup with me, master gower? lord chief-justice what foolish master taught you these manners, sir john? falstaff master gower, if they become me not, he was a fool that taught them me. this is the right fencing grace, my lord; tap for tap, and so part fair. lord chief-justice now the lord lighten thee! thou art a great fool. [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act ii scene ii london. another street. [enter prince henry and poins] prince henry before god, i am exceeding weary. poins is't come to that? i had thought weariness durst not have attached one of so high blood. prince henry faith, it does me; though it discolours the complexion of my greatness to acknowledge it. doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer? poins why, a prince should not be so loosely studied as to remember so weak a composition. prince henry belike then my appetite was not princely got; for, by my troth, i do now remember the poor creature, small beer. but, indeed, these humble considerations make me out of love with my greatness. what a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name! or to know thy face to-morrow! or to take note how many pair of silk stockings thou hast, viz. these, and those that were thy peach-coloured ones! or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as, one for superfluity, and another for use! but that the tennis-court-keeper knows better than i; for it is a low ebb of linen with thee when thou keepest not racket there; as thou hast not done a great while, because the rest of thy low countries have made a shift to eat up thy holland: and god knows, whether those that bawl out the ruins of thy linen shall inherit his kingdom: but the midwives say the children are not in the fault; whereupon the world increases, and kindreds are mightily strengthened. poins how ill it follows, after you have laboured so hard, you should talk so idly! tell me, how many good young princes would do so, their fathers being so sick as yours at this time is? prince henry shall i tell thee one thing, poins? poins yes, faith; and let it be an excellent good thing. prince henry it shall serve among wits of no higher breeding than thine. poins go to; i stand the push of your one thing that you will tell. prince henry marry, i tell thee, it is not meet that i should be sad, now my father is sick: albeit i could tell thee, as to one it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend, i could be sad, and sad indeed too. poins very hardly upon such a subject. prince henry by this hand thou thinkest me as far in the devil's book as thou and falstaff for obduracy and persistency: let the end try the man. but i tell thee, my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick: and keeping such vile company as thou art hath in reason taken from me all ostentation of sorrow. poins the reason? prince henry what wouldst thou think of me, if i should weep? poins i would think thee a most princely hypocrite. prince henry it would be every man's thought; and thou art a blessed fellow to think as every man thinks: never a man's thought in the world keeps the road-way better than thine: every man would think me an hypocrite indeed. and what accites your most worshipful thought to think so? poins why, because you have been so lewd and so much engraffed to falstaff. prince henry and to thee. poins by this light, i am well spoke on; i can hear it with my own ears: the worst that they can say of me is that i am a second brother and that i am a proper fellow of my hands; and those two things, i confess, i cannot help. by the mass, here comes bardolph. [enter bardolph and page] prince henry and the boy that i gave falstaff: a' had him from me christian; and look, if the fat villain have not transformed him ape. bardolph god save your grace! prince henry and yours, most noble bardolph! bardolph come, you virtuous ass, you bashful fool, must you be blushing? wherefore blush you now? what a maidenly man-at-arms are you become! is't such a matter to get a pottle-pot's maidenhead? page a' calls me e'en now, my lord, through a red lattice, and i could discern no part of his face from the window: at last i spied his eyes, and methought he had made two holes in the ale-wife's new petticoat and so peeped through. prince henry has not the boy profited? bardolph away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away! page away, you rascally althaea's dream, away! prince henry instruct us, boy; what dream, boy? page marry, my lord, althaea dreamed she was delivered of a fire-brand; and therefore i call him her dream. prince henry a crown's worth of good interpretation: there 'tis, boy. poins o, that this good blossom could be kept from cankers! well, there is sixpence to preserve thee. bardolph an you do not make him hanged among you, the gallows shall have wrong. prince henry and how doth thy master, bardolph? bardolph well, my lord. he heard of your grace's coming to town: there's a letter for you. poins delivered with good respect. and how doth the martlemas, your master? bardolph in bodily health, sir. poins marry, the immortal part needs a physician; but that moves not him: though that be sick, it dies not. prince henry i do allow this wen to be as familiar with me as my dog; and he holds his place; for look you how be writes. poins [reads] 'john falstaff, knight,'--every man must know that, as oft as he has occasion to name himself: even like those that are kin to the king; for they never prick their finger but they say, 'there's some of the king's blood spilt.' 'how comes that?' says he, that takes upon him not to conceive. the answer is as ready as a borrower's cap, 'i am the king's poor cousin, sir.' prince henry nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from japhet. but to the letter. poins [reads] 'sir john falstaff, knight, to the son of the king, nearest his father, harry prince of wales, greeting.' why, this is a certificate. prince henry peace! poins [reads] 'i will imitate the honourable romans in brevity:' he sure means brevity in breath, short-winded. 'i commend me to thee, i commend thee, and i leave thee. be not too familiar with poins; for he misuses thy favours so much, that he swears thou art to marry his sister nell. repent at idle times as thou mayest; and so, farewell. thine, by yea and no, which is as much as to say, as thou usest him, jack falstaff with my familiars, john with my brothers and sisters, and sir john with all europe.' my lord, i'll steep this letter in sack and make him eat it. prince henry that's to make him eat twenty of his words. but do you use me thus, ned? must i marry your sister? poins god send the wench no worse fortune! but i never said so. prince henry well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us. is your master here in london? bardolph yea, my lord. prince henry where sups he? doth the old boar feed in the old frank? bardolph at the old place, my lord, in eastcheap. prince henry what company? page ephesians, my lord, of the old church. prince henry sup any women with him? page none, my lord, but old mistress quickly and mistress doll tearsheet. prince henry what pagan may that be? page a proper gentlewoman, sir, and a kinswoman of my master's. prince henry even such kin as the parish heifers are to the town bull. shall we steal upon them, ned, at supper? poins i am your shadow, my lord; i'll follow you. prince henry sirrah, you boy, and bardolph, no word to your master that i am yet come to town: there's for your silence. bardolph i have no tongue, sir. page and for mine, sir, i will govern it. prince henry fare you well; go. [exeunt bardolph and page] this doll tearsheet should be some road. poins i warrant you, as common as the way between saint alban's and london. prince henry how might we see falstaff bestow himself to-night in his true colours, and not ourselves be seen? poins put on two leathern jerkins and aprons, and wait upon him at his table as drawers. prince henry from a god to a bull? a heavy decension! it was jove's case. from a prince to a prentice? a low transformation! that shall be mine; for in every thing the purpose must weigh with the folly. follow me, ned. [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act ii scene iii warkworth. before the castle. [enter northumberland, lady northumberland, and lady percy] northumberland i pray thee, loving wife, and gentle daughter, give even way unto my rough affairs: put not you on the visage of the times and be like them to percy troublesome. lady northumberland i have given over, i will speak no more: do what you will; your wisdom be your guide. northumberland alas, sweet wife, my honour is at pawn; and, but my going, nothing can redeem it. lady percy o yet, for god's sake, go not to these wars! the time was, father, that you broke your word, when you were more endeared to it than now; when your own percy, when my heart's dear harry, threw many a northward look to see his father bring up his powers; but he did long in vain. who then persuaded you to stay at home? there were two honours lost, yours and your son's. for yours, the god of heaven brighten it! for his, it stuck upon him as the sun in the grey vault of heaven, and by his light did all the chivalry of england move to do brave acts: he was indeed the glass wherein the noble youth did dress themselves: he had no legs that practised not his gait; and speaking thick, which nature made his blemish, became the accents of the valiant; for those that could speak low and tardily would turn their own perfection to abuse, to seem like him: so that in speech, in gait, in diet, in affections of delight, in military rules, humours of blood, he was the mark and glass, copy and book, that fashion'd others. and him, o wondrous him! o miracle of men! him did you leave, second to none, unseconded by you, to look upon the hideous god of war in disadvantage; to abide a field where nothing but the sound of hotspur's name did seem defensible: so you left him. never, o never, do his ghost the wrong to hold your honour more precise and nice with others than with him! let them alone: the marshal and the archbishop are strong: had my sweet harry had but half their numbers, to-day might i, hanging on hotspur's neck, have talk'd of monmouth's grave. northumberland beshrew your heart, fair daughter, you do draw my spirits from me with new lamenting ancient oversights. but i must go and meet with danger there, or it will seek me in another place and find me worse provided. lady northumberland o, fly to scotland, till that the nobles and the armed commons have of their puissance made a little taste. lady percy if they get ground and vantage of the king, then join you with them, like a rib of steel, to make strength stronger; but, for all our loves, first let them try themselves. so did your son; he was so suffer'd: so came i a widow; and never shall have length of life enough to rain upon remembrance with mine eyes, that it may grow and sprout as high as heaven, for recordation to my noble husband. northumberland come, come, go in with me. 'tis with my mind as with the tide swell'd up unto his height, that makes a still-stand, running neither way: fain would i go to meet the archbishop, but many thousand reasons hold me back. i will resolve for scotland: there am i, till time and vantage crave my company. [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act ii scene iv london. the boar's-head tavern in eastcheap. [enter two drawers] first drawer what the devil hast thou brought there? apple-johns? thou knowest sir john cannot endure an apple-john. second drawer mass, thou sayest true. the prince once set a dish of apple-johns before him, and told him there were five more sir johns, and, putting off his hat, said 'i will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old, withered knights.' it angered him to the heart: but he hath forgot that. first drawer why, then, cover, and set them down: and see if thou canst find out sneak's noise; mistress tearsheet would fain hear some music. dispatch: the room where they supped is too hot; they'll come in straight. second drawer sirrah, here will be the prince and master poins anon; and they will put on two of our jerkins and aprons; and sir john must not know of it: bardolph hath brought word. first drawer by the mass, here will be old utis: it will be an excellent stratagem. second drawer i'll see if i can find out sneak. [exit] [enter mistress quickly and doll tearsheet] mistress quickly i' faith, sweetheart, methinks now you are in an excellent good temperality: your pulsidge beats as extraordinarily as heart would desire; and your colour, i warrant you, is as red as any rose, in good truth, la! but, i' faith, you have drunk too much canaries; and that's a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood ere one can say 'what's this?' how do you now? doll tearsheet better than i was: hem! mistress quickly why, that's well said; a good heart's worth gold. lo, here comes sir john. [enter falstaff] falstaff [singing] 'when arthur first in court,' --empty the jordan. [exit first drawer] [singing] --'and was a worthy king.' how now, mistress doll! mistress quickly sick of a calm; yea, good faith. falstaff so is all her sect; an they be once in a calm, they are sick. doll tearsheet you muddy rascal, is that all the comfort you give me? falstaff you make fat rascals, mistress doll. doll tearsheet i make them! gluttony and diseases make them; i make them not. falstaff if the cook help to make the gluttony, you help to make the diseases, doll: we catch of you, doll, we catch of you; grant that, my poor virtue grant that. doll tearsheet yea, joy, our chains and our jewels. falstaff 'your broaches, pearls, and ouches:' for to serve bravely is to come halting off, you know: to come off the breach with his pike bent bravely, and to surgery bravely; to venture upon the charged chambers bravely,- doll tearsheet hang yourself, you muddy conger, hang yourself! mistress quickly by my troth, this is the old fashion; you two never meet but you fall to some discord: you are both, i' good truth, as rheumatic as two dry toasts; you cannot one bear with another's confirmities. what the good-year! one must bear, and that must be you: you are the weaker vessel, as they say, the emptier vessel. doll tearsheet can a weak empty vessel bear such a huge full hogshead? there's a whole merchant's venture of bourdeaux stuff in him; you have not seen a hulk better stuffed in the hold. come, i'll be friends with thee, jack: thou art going to the wars; and whether i shall ever see thee again or no, there is nobody cares. [re-enter first drawer] first drawer sir, ancient pistol's below, and would speak with you. doll tearsheet hang him, swaggering rascal! let him not come hither: it is the foul-mouthed'st rogue in england. mistress quickly if he swagger, let him not come here: no, by my faith; i must live among my neighbours: i'll no swaggerers: i am in good name and fame with the very best: shut the door; there comes no swaggerers here: i have not lived all this while, to have swaggering now: shut the door, i pray you. falstaff dost thou hear, hostess? mistress quickly pray ye, pacify yourself, sir john: there comes no swaggerers here. falstaff dost thou hear? it is mine ancient. mistress quickly tilly-fally, sir john, ne'er tell me: your ancient swaggerer comes not in my doors. i was before master tisick, the debuty, t'other day; and, as he said to me, 'twas no longer ago than wednesday last, 'i' good faith, neighbour quickly,' says he; master dumbe, our minister, was by then; 'neighbour quickly,' says he, 'receive those that are civil; for,' said he, 'you are in an ill name:' now a' said so, i can tell whereupon; 'for,' says he, 'you are an honest woman, and well thought on; therefore take heed what guests you receive: receive,' says he, 'no swaggering companions.' there comes none here: you would bless you to hear what he said: no, i'll no swaggerers. falstaff he's no swaggerer, hostess; a tame cheater, i' faith; you may stroke him as gently as a puppy greyhound: he'll not swagger with a barbary hen, if her feathers turn back in any show of resistance. call him up, drawer. [exit first drawer] mistress quickly cheater, call you him? i will bar no honest man my house, nor no cheater: but i do not love swaggering, by my troth; i am the worse, when one says swagger: feel, masters, how i shake; look you, i warrant you. doll tearsheet so you do, hostess. mistress quickly do i? yea, in very truth, do i, an 'twere an aspen leaf: i cannot abide swaggerers. [enter pistol, bardolph, and page] pistol god save you, sir john! falstaff welcome, ancient pistol. here, pistol, i charge you with a cup of sack: do you discharge upon mine hostess. pistol i will discharge upon her, sir john, with two bullets. falstaff she is pistol-proof, sir; you shall hardly offend her. mistress quickly come, i'll drink no proofs nor no bullets: i'll drink no more than will do me good, for no man's pleasure, i. pistol then to you, mistress dorothy; i will charge you. doll tearsheet charge me! i scorn you, scurvy companion. what! you poor, base, rascally, cheating, lack-linen mate! away, you mouldy rogue, away! i am meat for your master. pistol i know you, mistress dorothy. doll tearsheet away, you cut-purse rascal! you filthy bung, away! by this wine, i'll thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps, an you play the saucy cuttle with me. away, you bottle-ale rascal! you basket-hilt stale juggler, you! since when, i pray you, sir? god's light, with two points on your shoulder? much! pistol god let me not live, but i will murder your ruff for this. falstaff no more, pistol; i would not have you go off here: discharge yourself of our company, pistol. mistress quickly no, good captain pistol; not here, sweet captain. doll tearsheet captain! thou abominable damned cheater, art thou not ashamed to be called captain? an captains were of my mind, they would truncheon you out, for taking their names upon you before you have earned them. you a captain! you slave, for what? for tearing a poor whore's ruff in a bawdy-house? he a captain! hang him, rogue! he lives upon mouldy stewed prunes and dried cakes. a captain! god's light, these villains will make the word as odious as the word 'occupy;' which was an excellent good word before it was ill sorted: therefore captains had need look to 't. bardolph pray thee, go down, good ancient. falstaff hark thee hither, mistress doll. pistol not i i tell thee what, corporal bardolph, i could tear her: i'll be revenged of her. page pray thee, go down. pistol i'll see her damned first; to pluto's damned lake, by this hand, to the infernal deep, with erebus and tortures vile also. hold hook and line, say i. down, down, dogs! down, faitors! have we not hiren here? mistress quickly good captain peesel, be quiet; 'tis very late, i' faith: i beseek you now, aggravate your choler. pistol these be good humours, indeed! shall pack-horses and hollow pamper'd jades of asia, which cannot go but thirty mile a-day, compare with caesars, and with cannibals, and trojan greeks? nay, rather damn them with king cerberus; and let the welkin roar. shall we fall foul for toys? mistress quickly by my troth, captain, these are very bitter words. bardolph be gone, good ancient: this will grow to abrawl anon. pistol die men like dogs! give crowns like pins! have we not heren here? mistress quickly o' my word, captain, there's none such here. what the good-year! do you think i would deny her? for god's sake, be quiet. pistol then feed, and be fat, my fair calipolis. come, give's some sack. 'si fortune me tormente, sperato me contento.' fear we broadsides? no, let the fiend give fire: give me some sack: and, sweetheart, lie thou there. [laying down his sword] come we to full points here; and are etceteras nothing? falstaff pistol, i would be quiet. pistol sweet knight, i kiss thy neaf: what! we have seen the seven stars. doll tearsheet for god's sake, thrust him down stairs: i cannot endure such a fustian rascal. pistol thrust him down stairs! know we not galloway nags? falstaff quoit him down, bardolph, like a shove-groat shilling: nay, an a' do nothing but speak nothing, a' shall be nothing here. bardolph come, get you down stairs. pistol what! shall we have incision? shall we imbrue? [snatching up his sword] then death rock me asleep, abridge my doleful days! why, then, let grievous, ghastly, gaping wounds untwine the sisters three! come, atropos, i say! mistress quickly here's goodly stuff toward! falstaff give me my rapier, boy. doll tearsheet i pray thee, jack, i pray thee, do not draw. falstaff get you down stairs. [drawing, and driving pistol out] mistress quickly here's a goodly tumult! i'll forswear keeping house, afore i'll be in these tirrits and frights. so; murder, i warrant now. alas, alas! put up your naked weapons, put up your naked weapons. [exeunt pistol and bardolph] doll tearsheet i pray thee, jack, be quiet; the rascal's gone. ah, you whoreson little valiant villain, you! mistress quickly he you not hurt i' the groin? methought a' made a shrewd thrust at your belly. [re-enter bardolph] falstaff have you turned him out o' doors? bardolph yea, sir. the rascal's drunk: you have hurt him, sir, i' the shoulder. falstaff a rascal! to brave me! doll tearsheet ah, you sweet little rogue, you! alas, poor ape, how thou sweatest! come, let me wipe thy face; come on, you whoreson chops: ah, rogue! i'faith, i love thee: thou art as valorous as hector of troy, worth five of agamemnon, and ten times better than the nine worthies: ah, villain! falstaff a rascally slave! i will toss the rogue in a blanket. doll tearsheet do, an thou darest for thy heart: an thou dost, i'll canvass thee between a pair of sheets. [enter music] page the music is come, sir. falstaff let them play. play, sirs. sit on my knee, doll. a rascal bragging slave! the rogue fled from me like quicksilver. doll tearsheet i' faith, and thou followedst him like a church. thou whoreson little tidy bartholomew boar-pig, when wilt thou leave fighting o' days and foining o' nights, and begin to patch up thine old body for heaven? [enter, behind, prince henry and poins, disguised] falstaff peace, good doll! do not speak like a death's-head; do not bid me remember mine end. doll tearsheet sirrah, what humour's the prince of? falstaff a good shallow young fellow: a' would have made a good pantler, a' would ha' chipp'd bread well. doll tearsheet they say poins has a good wit. falstaff he a good wit? hang him, baboon! his wit's as thick as tewksbury mustard; there's no more conceit in him than is in a mallet. doll tearsheet why does the prince love him so, then? falstaff because their legs are both of a bigness, and a' plays at quoits well, and eats conger and fennel, and drinks off candles' ends for flap-dragons, and rides the wild-mare with the boys, and jumps upon joined-stools, and swears with a good grace, and wears his boots very smooth, like unto the sign of the leg, and breeds no bate with telling of discreet stories; and such other gambol faculties a' has, that show a weak mind and an able body, for the which the prince admits him: for the prince himself is such another; the weight of a hair will turn the scales between their avoirdupois. prince henry would not this nave of a wheel have his ears cut off? poins let's beat him before his whore. prince henry look, whether the withered elder hath not his poll clawed like a parrot. poins is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance? falstaff kiss me, doll. prince henry saturn and venus this year in conjunction! what says the almanac to that? poins and look, whether the fiery trigon, his man, be not lisping to his master's old tables, his note-book, his counsel-keeper. falstaff thou dost give me flattering busses. doll tearsheet by my troth, i kiss thee with a most constant heart. falstaff i am old, i am old. doll tearsheet i love thee better than i love e'er a scurvy young boy of them all. falstaff what stuff wilt have a kirtle of? i shall receive money o' thursday: shalt have a cap to-morrow. a merry song, come: it grows late; we'll to bed. thou'lt forget me when i am gone. doll tearsheet by my troth, thou'lt set me a-weeping, an thou sayest so: prove that ever i dress myself handsome till thy return: well, harken at the end. falstaff some sack, francis. prince henry | | anon, anon, sir. poins | [coming forward] falstaff ha! a bastard son of the king's? and art not thou poins his brother? prince henry why, thou globe of sinful continents! what a life dost thou lead! falstaff a better than thou: i am a gentleman; thou art a drawer. prince henry very true, sir; and i come to draw you out by the ears. mistress quickly o, the lord preserve thy good grace! by my troth, welcome to london. now, the lord bless that sweet face of thine! o, jesu, are you come from wales? falstaff thou whoreson mad compound of majesty, by this light flesh and corrupt blood, thou art welcome. doll tearsheet how, you fat fool! i scorn you. poins my lord, he will drive you out of your revenge and turn all to a merriment, if you take not the heat. prince henry you whoreson candle-mine, you, how vilely did you speak of me even now before this honest, virtuous, civil gentlewoman! mistress quickly god's blessing of your good heart! and so she is, by my troth. falstaff didst thou hear me? prince henry yea, and you knew me, as you did when you ran away by gad's-hill: you knew i was at your back, and spoke it on purpose to try my patience. falstaff no, no, no; not so; i did not think thou wast within hearing. prince henry i shall drive you then to confess the wilful abuse; and then i know how to handle you. falstaff no abuse, hal, o' mine honour, no abuse. prince henry not to dispraise me, and call me pantier and bread-chipper and i know not what? falstaff no abuse, hal. poins no abuse? falstaff no abuse, ned, i' the world; honest ned, none. i dispraised him before the wicked, that the wicked might not fall in love with him; in which doing, i have done the part of a careful friend and a true subject, and thy father is to give me thanks for it. no abuse, hal: none, ned, none: no, faith, boys, none. prince henry see now, whether pure fear and entire cowardice doth not make thee wrong this virtuous gentlewoman to close with us? is she of the wicked? is thine hostess here of the wicked? or is thy boy of the wicked? or honest bardolph, whose zeal burns in his nose, of the wicked? poins answer, thou dead elm, answer. falstaff the fiend hath pricked down bardolph irrecoverable; and his face is lucifer's privy-kitchen, where he doth nothing but roast malt-worms. for the boy, there is a good angel about him; but the devil outbids him too. prince henry for the women? falstaff for one of them, she is in hell already, and burns poor souls. for the other, i owe her money, and whether she be damned for that, i know not. mistress quickly no, i warrant you. falstaff no, i think thou art not; i think thou art quit for that. marry, there is another indictment upon thee, for suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law; for the which i think thou wilt howl. mistress quickly all victuallers do so; what's a joint of mutton or two in a whole lent? prince henry you, gentlewoman, doll tearsheet what says your grace? falstaff his grace says that which his flesh rebels against. [knocking within] mistress quickly who knocks so loud at door? look to the door there, francis. [enter peto] prince henry peto, how now! what news? peto the king your father is at westminster: and there are twenty weak and wearied posts come from the north: and, as i came along, i met and overtook a dozen captains, bare-headed, sweating, knocking at the taverns, and asking every one for sir john falstaff. prince henry by heaven, poins, i feel me much to blame, so idly to profane the precious time, when tempest of commotion, like the south borne with black vapour, doth begin to melt and drop upon our bare unarmed heads. give me my sword and cloak. falstaff, good night. [exeunt prince henry, poins, peto and bardolph] falstaff now comes in the sweetest morsel of the night, and we must hence and leave it unpicked. [knocking within] more knocking at the door! [re-enter bardolph] how now! what's the matter? bardolph you must away to court, sir, presently; a dozen captains stay at door for you. falstaff [to the page] pay the musicians, sirrah. farewell, hostess; farewell, doll. you see, my good wenches, how men of merit are sought after: the undeserver may sleep, when the man of action is called on. farewell good wenches: if i be not sent away post, i will see you again ere i go. doll tearsheet i cannot speak; if my heart be not read to burst,- well, sweet jack, have a care of thyself. falstaff farewell, farewell. [exeunt falstaff and bardolph] mistress quickly well, fare thee well: i have known thee these twenty-nine years, come peascod-time; but an honester and truer-hearted man,--well, fare thee well. bardolph [within] mistress tearsheet! mistress quickly what's the matter? bardolph [within] good mistress tearsheet, come to my master. mistress quickly o, run, doll, run; run, good doll: come. [she comes blubbered] yea, will you come, doll? [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act iii scene i westminster. the palace. [enter king henry iv in his nightgown, with a page] king henry iv go call the earls of surrey and of warwick; but, ere they come, bid them o'er-read these letters, and well consider of them; make good speed. [exit page] how many thousand of my poorest subjects are at this hour asleep! o sleep, o gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have i frighted thee, that thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down and steep my senses in forgetfulness? why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, upon uneasy pallets stretching thee and hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, than in the perfumed chambers of the great, under the canopies of costly state, and lull'd with sound of sweetest melody? o thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile in loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch a watch-case or a common 'larum-bell? wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains in cradle of the rude imperious surge and in the visitation of the winds, who take the ruffian billows by the top, curling their monstrous heads and hanging them with deafening clamour in the slippery clouds, that, with the hurly, death itself awakes? canst thou, o partial sleep, give thy repose to the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude, and in the calmest and most stillest night, with all appliances and means to boot, deny it to a king? then happy low, lie down! uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. [enter warwick and surrey] warwick many good morrows to your majesty! king henry iv is it good morrow, lords? warwick 'tis one o'clock, and past. king henry iv why, then, good morrow to you all, my lords. have you read o'er the letters that i sent you? warwick we have, my liege. king henry iv then you perceive the body of our kingdom how foul it is; what rank diseases grow and with what danger, near the heart of it. warwick it is but as a body yet distemper'd; which to his former strength may be restored with good advice and little medicine: my lord northumberland will soon be cool'd. king henry iv o god! that one might read the book of fate, and see the revolution of the times make mountains level, and the continent, weary of solid firmness, melt itself into the sea! and, other times, to see the beachy girdle of the ocean too wide for neptune's hips; how chances mock, and changes fill the cup of alteration with divers liquors! o, if this were seen, the happiest youth, viewing his progress through, what perils past, what crosses to ensue, would shut the book, and sit him down and die. 'tis not 'ten years gone since richard and northumberland, great friends, did feast together, and in two years after were they at wars: it is but eight years since this percy was the man nearest my soul, who like a brother toil'd in my affairs and laid his love and life under my foot, yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of richard gave him defiance. but which of you was by- you, cousin nevil, as i may remember- [to warwick] when richard, with his eye brimful of tears, then cheque'd and rated by northumberland, did speak these words, now proved a prophecy? 'northumberland, thou ladder by the which my cousin bolingbroke ascends my throne;' though then, god knows, i had no such intent, but that necessity so bow'd the state that i and greatness were compell'd to kiss: 'the time shall come,' thus did he follow it, 'the time will come, that foul sin, gathering head, shall break into corruption:' so went on, foretelling this same time's condition and the division of our amity. warwick there is a history in all men's lives, figuring the nature of the times deceased; the which observed, a man may prophesy, with a near aim, of the main chance of things as yet not come to life, which in their seeds and weak beginnings lie intreasured. such things become the hatch and brood of time; and by the necessary form of this king richard might create a perfect guess that great northumberland, then false to him, would of that seed grow to a greater falseness; which should not find a ground to root upon, unless on you. king henry iv are these things then necessities? then let us meet them like necessities: and that same word even now cries out on us: they say the bishop and northumberland are fifty thousand strong. warwick it cannot be, my lord; rumour doth double, like the voice and echo, the numbers of the fear'd. please it your grace to go to bed. upon my soul, my lord, the powers that you already have sent forth shall bring this prize in very easily. to comfort you the more, i have received a certain instance that glendower is dead. your majesty hath been this fortnight ill, and these unseason'd hours perforce must add unto your sickness. king henry iv i will take your counsel: and were these inward wars once out of hand, we would, dear lords, unto the holy land. [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act iii scene ii gloucestershire. before shallow's house. [enter shallow and silence, meeting; mouldy, shadow, wart, feeble, bullcalf, a servant or two with them] shallow come on, come on, come on, sir; give me your hand, sir, give me your hand, sir: an early stirrer, by the rood! and how doth my good cousin silence? silence good morrow, good cousin shallow. shallow and how doth my cousin, your bedfellow? and your fairest daughter and mine, my god-daughter ellen? silence alas, a black ousel, cousin shallow! shallow by yea and nay, sir, i dare say my cousin william is become a good scholar: he is at oxford still, is he not? silence indeed, sir, to my cost. shallow a' must, then, to the inns o' court shortly. i was once of clement's inn, where i think they will talk of mad shallow yet. silence you were called 'lusty shallow' then, cousin. shallow by the mass, i was called any thing; and i would have done any thing indeed too, and roundly too. there was i, and little john doit of staffordshire, and black george barnes, and francis pickbone, and will squele, a cotswold man; you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the inns o' court again: and i may say to you, we knew where the bona-robas were and had the best of them all at commandment. then was jack falstaff, now sir john, a boy, and page to thomas mowbray, duke of norfolk. silence this sir john, cousin, that comes hither anon about soldiers? shallow the same sir john, the very same. i see him break skogan's head at the court-gate, when a' was a crack not thus high: and the very same day did i fight with one sampson stockfish, a fruiterer, behind gray's inn. jesu, jesu, the mad days that i have spent! and to see how many of my old acquaintance are dead! silence we shall all follow, cousin. shadow certain, 'tis certain; very sure, very sure: death, as the psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. how a good yoke of bullocks at stamford fair? silence by my troth, i was not there. shallow death is certain. is old double of your town living yet? silence dead, sir. shallow jesu, jesu, dead! a' drew a good bow; and dead! a' shot a fine shoot: john a gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on his head. dead! a' would have clapped i' the clout at twelve score; and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man's heart good to see. how a score of ewes now? silence thereafter as they be: a score of good ewes may be worth ten pounds. shallow and is old double dead? silence here come two of sir john falstaff's men, as i think. [enter bardolph and one with him] bardolph good morrow, honest gentlemen: i beseech you, which is justice shallow? shallow i am robert shallow, sir; a poor esquire of this county, and one of the king's justices of the peace: what is your good pleasure with me? bardolph my captain, sir, commends him to you; my captain, sir john falstaff, a tall gentleman, by heaven, and a most gallant leader. shallow he greets me well, sir. i knew him a good backsword man. how doth the good knight? may i ask how my lady his wife doth? bardolph sir, pardon; a soldier is better accommodated than with a wife. shallow it is well said, in faith, sir; and it is well said indeed too. better accommodated! it is good; yea, indeed, is it: good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable. accommodated! it comes of 'accommodo' very good; a good phrase. bardolph pardon me, sir; i have heard the word. phrase call you it? by this good day, i know not the phrase; but i will maintain the word with my sword to be a soldier-like word, and a word of exceeding good command, by heaven. accommodated; that is, when a man is, as they say, accommodated; or when a man is, being, whereby a' may be thought to be accommodated; which is an excellent thing. shallow it is very just. [enter falstaff] look, here comes good sir john. give me your good hand, give me your worship's good hand: by my troth, you like well and bear your years very well: welcome, good sir john. falstaff i am glad to see you well, good master robert shallow: master surecard, as i think? shallow no, sir john; it is my cousin silence, in commission with me. falstaff good master silence, it well befits you should be of the peace. silence your good-worship is welcome. falstaff fie! this is hot weather, gentlemen. have you provided me here half a dozen sufficient men? shallow marry, have we, sir. will you sit? falstaff let me see them, i beseech you. shallow where's the roll? where's the roll? where's the roll? let me see, let me see, let me see. so, so: yea, marry, sir: ralph mouldy! let them appear as i call; let them do so, let them do so. let me see; where is mouldy? mouldy here, an't please you. shallow what think you, sir john? a good-limbed fellow; young, strong, and of good friends. falstaff is thy name mouldy? mouldy yea, an't please you. falstaff 'tis the more time thou wert used. shallow ha, ha, ha! most excellent, i' faith! things that are mouldy lack use: very singular good! in faith, well said, sir john, very well said. falstaff prick him. mouldy i was pricked well enough before, an you could have let me alone: my old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry and her drudgery: you need not to have pricked me; there are other men fitter to go out than i. falstaff go to: peace, mouldy; you shall go. mouldy, it is time you were spent. mouldy spent! shallow peace, fellow, peace; stand aside: know you where you are? for the other, sir john: let me see: simon shadow! falstaff yea, marry, let me have him to sit under: he's like to be a cold soldier. shallow where's shadow? shadow here, sir. falstaff shadow, whose son art thou? shadow my mother's son, sir. falstaff thy mother's son! like enough, and thy father's shadow: so the son of the female is the shadow of the male: it is often so, indeed; but much of the father's substance! shallow do you like him, sir john? falstaff shadow will serve for summer; prick him, for we have a number of shadows to fill up the muster-book. shallow thomas wart! falstaff where's he? wart here, sir. falstaff is thy name wart? wart yea, sir. falstaff thou art a very ragged wart. shallow shall i prick him down, sir john? falstaff it were superfluous; for his apparel is built upon his back and the whole frame stands upon pins: prick him no more. shallow ha, ha, ha! you can do it, sir; you can do it: i commend you well. francis feeble! feeble here, sir. falstaff what trade art thou, feeble? feeble a woman's tailor, sir. shallow shall i prick him, sir? falstaff you may: but if he had been a man's tailor, he'ld ha' pricked you. wilt thou make as many holes in an enemy's battle as thou hast done in a woman's petticoat? feeble i will do my good will, sir; you can have no more. falstaff well said, good woman's tailor! well said, courageous feeble! thou wilt be as valiant as the wrathful dove or most magnanimous mouse. prick the woman's tailor: well, master shallow; deep, master shallow. feeble i would wart might have gone, sir. falstaff i would thou wert a man's tailor, that thou mightst mend him and make him fit to go. i cannot put him to a private soldier that is the leader of so many thousands: let that suffice, most forcible feeble. feeble it shall suffice, sir. falstaff i am bound to thee, reverend feeble. who is next? shallow peter bullcalf o' the green! falstaff yea, marry, let's see bullcalf. bullcalf here, sir. falstaff 'fore god, a likely fellow! come, prick me bullcalf till he roar again. bullcalf o lord! good my lord captain,- falstaff what, dost thou roar before thou art pricked? bullcalf o lord, sir! i am a diseased man. falstaff what disease hast thou? bullcalf a whoreson cold, sir, a cough, sir, which i caught with ringing in the king's affairs upon his coronation-day, sir. falstaff come, thou shalt go to the wars in a gown; we wilt have away thy cold; and i will take such order that my friends shall ring for thee. is here all? shallow here is two more called than your number, you must have but four here, sir: and so, i pray you, go in with me to dinner. falstaff come, i will go drink with you, but i cannot tarry dinner. i am glad to see you, by my troth, master shallow. shallow o, sir john, do you remember since we lay all night in the windmill in saint george's field? falstaff no more of that, good master shallow, no more of that. shallow ha! 'twas a merry night. and is jane nightwork alive? falstaff she lives, master shallow. shallow she never could away with me. falstaff never, never; she would always say she could not abide master shallow. shallow by the mass, i could anger her to the heart. she was then a bona-roba. doth she hold her own well? falstaff old, old, master shallow. shallow nay, she must be old; she cannot choose but be old; certain she's old; and had robin nightwork by old nightwork before i came to clement's inn. silence that's fifty-five year ago. shallow ha, cousin silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight and i have seen! ha, sir john, said i well? falstaff we have heard the chimes at midnight, master shallow. shallow that we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, sir john, we have: our watch-word was 'hem boys!' come, let's to dinner; come, let's to dinner: jesus, the days that we have seen! come, come. [exeunt falstaff and justices] bullcalf good master corporate bardolph, stand my friend; and here's four harry ten shillings in french crowns for you. in very truth, sir, i had as lief be hanged, sir, as go: and yet, for mine own part, sir, i do not care; but rather, because i am unwilling, and, for mine own part, have a desire to stay with my friends; else, sir, i did not care, for mine own part, so much. bardolph go to; stand aside. mouldy and, good master corporal captain, for my old dame's sake, stand my friend: she has nobody to do any thing about her when i am gone; and she is old, and cannot help herself: you shall have forty, sir. bardolph go to; stand aside. feeble by my troth, i care not; a man can die but once: we owe god a death: i'll ne'er bear a base mind: an't be my destiny, so; an't be not, so: no man is too good to serve's prince; and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next. bardolph well said; thou'rt a good fellow. feeble faith, i'll bear no base mind. [re-enter falstaff and the justices] falstaff come, sir, which men shall i have? shallow four of which you please. bardolph sir, a word with you: i have three pound to free mouldy and bullcalf. falstaff go to; well. shallow come, sir john, which four will you have? falstaff do you choose for me. shallow marry, then, mouldy, bullcalf, feeble and shadow. falstaff mouldy and bullcalf: for you, mouldy, stay at home till you are past service: and for your part, bullcalf, grow till you come unto it: i will none of you. shallow sir john, sir john, do not yourself wrong: they are your likeliest men, and i would have you served with the best. falstaff will you tell me, master shallow, how to choose a man? care i for the limb, the thewes, the stature, bulk, and big assemblance of a man! give me the spirit, master shallow. here's wart; you see what a ragged appearance it is; a' shall charge you and discharge you with the motion of a pewterer's hammer, come off and on swifter than he that gibbets on the brewer's bucket. and this same half-faced fellow, shadow; give me this man: he presents no mark to the enemy; the foeman may with as great aim level at the edge of a penknife. and for a retreat; how swiftly will this feeble the woman's tailor run off! o, give me the spare men, and spare me the great ones. put me a caliver into wart's hand, bardolph. bardolph hold, wart, traverse; thus, thus, thus. falstaff come, manage me your caliver. so: very well: go to: very good, exceeding good. o, give me always a little, lean, old, chapt, bald shot. well said, i' faith, wart; thou'rt a good scab: hold, there's a tester for thee. shallow he is not his craft's master; he doth not do it right. i remember at mile-end green, when i lay at clement's inn--i was then sir dagonet in arthur's show,--there was a little quiver fellow, and a' would manage you his piece thus; and a' would about and about, and come you in and come you in: 'rah, tah, tah,' would a' say; 'bounce' would a' say; and away again would a' go, and again would a' come: i shall ne'er see such a fellow. falstaff these fellows will do well, master shallow. god keep you, master silence: i will not use many words with you. fare you well, gentlemen both: i thank you: i must a dozen mile to-night. bardolph, give the soldiers coats. shallow sir john, the lord bless you! god prosper your affairs! god send us peace! at your return visit our house; let our old acquaintance be renewed; peradventure i will with ye to the court. falstaff 'fore god, i would you would, master shallow. shallow go to; i have spoke at a word. god keep you. falstaff fare you well, gentle gentlemen. [exeunt justices] on, bardolph; lead the men away. [exeunt bardolph, recruits, &c] as i return, i will fetch off these justices: i do see the bottom of justice shallow. lord, lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying! this same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about turnbull street: and every third word a lie, duer paid to the hearer than the turk's tribute. i do remember him at clement's inn like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring: when a' was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife: a' was so forlorn, that his dimensions to any thick sight were invincible: a' was the very genius of famine; yet lecherous as a monkey, and the whores called him mandrake: a' came ever in the rearward of the fashion, and sung those tunes to the overscutched huswives that he heard the carmen whistle, and swear they were his fancies or his good-nights. and now is this vice's dagger become a squire, and talks as familiarly of john a gaunt as if he had been sworn brother to him; and i'll be sworn a' ne'er saw him but once in the tilt-yard; and then he burst his head for crowding among the marshal's men. i saw it, and told john a gaunt he beat his own name; for you might have thrust him and all his apparel into an eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court: and now has he land and beefs. well, i'll be acquainted with him, if i return; and it shall go hard but i will make him a philosopher's two stones to me: if the young dace be a bait for the old pike, i see no reason in the law of nature but i may snap at him. let time shape, and there an end. [exit] 2 king henry iv act iv scene i yorkshire. gaultree forest. [enter the archbishop of york, mowbray, lord hastings, and others] archbishop of york what is this forest call'd? hastings 'tis gaultree forest, an't shall please your grace. archbishop of york here stand, my lords; and send discoverers forth to know the numbers of our enemies. hastings we have sent forth already. archbishop of york 'tis well done. my friends and brethren in these great affairs, i must acquaint you that i have received new-dated letters from northumberland; their cold intent, tenor and substance, thus: here doth he wish his person, with such powers as might hold sortance with his quality, the which he could not levy; whereupon he is retired, to ripe his growing fortunes, to scotland: and concludes in hearty prayers that your attempts may overlive the hazard and fearful melting of their opposite. mowbray thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground and dash themselves to pieces. [enter a messenger] hastings now, what news? messenger west of this forest, scarcely off a mile, in goodly form comes on the enemy; and, by the ground they hide, i judge their number upon or near the rate of thirty thousand. mowbray the just proportion that we gave them out let us sway on and face them in the field. archbishop of york what well-appointed leader fronts us here? [enter westmoreland] mowbray i think it is my lord of westmoreland. westmoreland health and fair greeting from our general, the prince, lord john and duke of lancaster. archbishop of york say on, my lord of westmoreland, in peace: what doth concern your coming? westmoreland then, my lord, unto your grace do i in chief address the substance of my speech. if that rebellion came like itself, in base and abject routs, led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags, and countenanced by boys and beggary, i say, if damn'd commotion so appear'd, in his true, native and most proper shape, you, reverend father, and these noble lords had not been here, to dress the ugly form of base and bloody insurrection with your fair honours. you, lord archbishop, whose see is by a civil peace maintained, whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch'd, whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor'd, whose white investments figure innocence, the dove and very blessed spirit of peace, wherefore do you so ill translate ourself out of the speech of peace that bears such grace, into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war; turning your books to graves, your ink to blood, your pens to lances and your tongue divine to a trumpet and a point of war? archbishop of york wherefore do i this? so the question stands. briefly to this end: we are all diseased, and with our surfeiting and wanton hours have brought ourselves into a burning fever, and we must bleed for it; of which disease our late king, richard, being infected, died. but, my most noble lord of westmoreland, i take not on me here as a physician, nor do i as an enemy to peace troop in the throngs of military men; but rather show awhile like fearful war, to diet rank minds sick of happiness and purge the obstructions which begin to stop our very veins of life. hear me more plainly. i have in equal balance justly weigh'd what wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer, and find our griefs heavier than our offences. we see which way the stream of time doth run, and are enforced from our most quiet there by the rough torrent of occasion; and have the summary of all our griefs, when time shall serve, to show in articles; which long ere this we offer'd to the king, and might by no suit gain our audience: when we are wrong'd and would unfold our griefs, we are denied access unto his person even by those men that most have done us wrong. the dangers of the days but newly gone, whose memory is written on the earth with yet appearing blood, and the examples of every minute's instance, present now, hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms, not to break peace or any branch of it, but to establish here a peace indeed, concurring both in name and quality. westmoreland when ever yet was your appeal denied? wherein have you been galled by the king? what peer hath been suborn'd to grate on you, that you should seal this lawless bloody book of forged rebellion with a seal divine and consecrate commotion's bitter edge? archbishop of york my brother general, the commonwealth, to brother born an household cruelty, i make my quarrel in particular. westmoreland there is no need of any such redress; or if there were, it not belongs to you. mowbray why not to him in part, and to us all that feel the bruises of the days before, and suffer the condition of these times to lay a heavy and unequal hand upon our honours? westmoreland o, my good lord mowbray, construe the times to their necessities, and you shall say indeed, it is the time, and not the king, that doth you injuries. yet for your part, it not appears to me either from the king or in the present time that you should have an inch of any ground to build a grief on: were you not restored to all the duke of norfolk's signories, your noble and right well remember'd father's? mowbray what thing, in honour, had my father lost, that need to be revived and breathed in me? the king that loved him, as the state stood then, was force perforce compell'd to banish him: and then that harry bolingbroke and he, being mounted and both roused in their seats, their neighing coursers daring of the spur, their armed staves in charge, their beavers down, their eyes of fire sparking through sights of steel and the loud trumpet blowing them together, then, then, when there was nothing could have stay'd my father from the breast of bolingbroke, o when the king did throw his warder down, his own life hung upon the staff he threw; then threw he down himself and all their lives that by indictment and by dint of sword have since miscarried under bolingbroke. westmoreland you speak, lord mowbray, now you know not what. the earl of hereford was reputed then in england the most valiant gentlemen: who knows on whom fortune would then have smiled? but if your father had been victor there, he ne'er had borne it out of coventry: for all the country in a general voice cried hate upon him; and all their prayers and love were set on hereford, whom they doted on and bless'd and graced indeed, more than the king. but this is mere digression from my purpose. here come i from our princely general to know your griefs; to tell you from his grace that he will give you audience; and wherein it shall appear that your demands are just, you shall enjoy them, every thing set off that might so much as think you enemies. mowbray but he hath forced us to compel this offer; and it proceeds from policy, not love. westmoreland mowbray, you overween to take it so; this offer comes from mercy, not from fear: for, lo! within a ken our army lies, upon mine honour, all too confident to give admittance to a thought of fear. our battle is more full of names than yours, our men more perfect in the use of arms, our armour all as strong, our cause the best; then reason will our heart should be as good say you not then our offer is compell'd. mowbray well, by my will we shall admit no parley. westmoreland that argues but the shame of your offence: a rotten case abides no handling. hastings hath the prince john a full commission, in very ample virtue of his father, to hear and absolutely to determine of what conditions we shall stand upon? westmoreland that is intended in the general's name: i muse you make so slight a question. archbishop of york then take, my lord of westmoreland, this schedule, for this contains our general grievances: each several article herein redress'd, all members of our cause, both here and hence, that are insinew'd to this action, acquitted by a true substantial form and present execution of our wills to us and to our purposes confined, we come within our awful banks again and knit our powers to the arm of peace. westmoreland this will i show the general. please you, lords, in sight of both our battles we may meet; and either end in peace, which god so frame! or to the place of difference call the swords which must decide it. archbishop of york my lord, we will do so. [exit westmoreland] mowbray there is a thing within my bosom tells me that no conditions of our peace can stand. hastings fear you not that: if we can make our peace upon such large terms and so absolute as our conditions shall consist upon, our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains. mowbray yea, but our valuation shall be such that every slight and false-derived cause, yea, every idle, nice and wanton reason shall to the king taste of this action; that, were our royal faiths martyrs in love, we shall be winnow'd with so rough a wind that even our corn shall seem as light as chaff and good from bad find no partition. archbishop of york no, no, my lord. note this; the king is weary of dainty and such picking grievances: for he hath found to end one doubt by death revives two greater in the heirs of life, and therefore will he wipe his tables clean and keep no tell-tale to his memory that may repeat and history his loss to new remembrance; for full well he knows he cannot so precisely weed this land as his misdoubts present occasion: his foes are so enrooted with his friends that, plucking to unfix an enemy, he doth unfasten so and shake a friend: so that this land, like an offensive wife that hath enraged him on to offer strokes, as he is striking, holds his infant up and hangs resolved correction in the arm that was uprear'd to execution. hastings besides, the king hath wasted all his rods on late offenders, that he now doth lack the very instruments of chastisement: so that his power, like to a fangless lion, may offer, but not hold. archbishop of york 'tis very true: and therefore be assured, my good lord marshal, if we do now make our atonement well, our peace will, like a broken limb united, grow stronger for the breaking. mowbray be it so. here is return'd my lord of westmoreland. [re-enter westmoreland] westmoreland the prince is here at hand: pleaseth your lordship to meet his grace just distance 'tween our armies. mowbray your grace of york, in god's name then, set forward. archbishop of york before, and greet his grace: my lord, we come. [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act iv scene ii another part of the forest. [enter, from one side, mowbray, attended; afterwards the archbishop of york, hastings, and others: from the other side, prince john of lancaster, and westmoreland; officers, and others with them] lancaster you are well encounter'd here, my cousin mowbray: good day to you, gentle lord archbishop; and so to you, lord hastings, and to all. my lord of york, it better show'd with you when that your flock, assembled by the bell, encircled you to hear with reverence your exposition on the holy text than now to see you here an iron man, cheering a rout of rebels with your drum, turning the word to sword and life to death. that man that sits within a monarch's heart, and ripens in the sunshine of his favour, would he abuse the countenance of the king, alack, what mischiefs might he set abrooch in shadow of such greatness! with you, lord bishop, it is even so. who hath not heard it spoken how deep you were within the books of god? to us the speaker in his parliament; to us the imagined voice of god himself; the very opener and intelligencer between the grace, the sanctities of heaven and our dull workings. o, who shall believe but you misuse the reverence of your place, employ the countenance and grace of heaven, as a false favourite doth his prince's name, in deeds dishonourable? you have ta'en up, under the counterfeited zeal of god, the subjects of his substitute, my father, and both against the peace of heaven and him have here up-swarm'd them. archbishop of york good my lord of lancaster, i am not here against your father's peace; but, as i told my lord of westmoreland, the time misorder'd doth, in common sense, crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form, to hold our safety up. i sent your grace the parcels and particulars of our grief, the which hath been with scorn shoved from the court, whereon this hydra son of war is born; whose dangerous eyes may well be charm'd asleep with grant of our most just and right desires, and true obedience, of this madness cured, stoop tamely to the foot of majesty. mowbray if not, we ready are to try our fortunes to the last man. hastings and though we here fall down, we have supplies to second our attempt: if they miscarry, theirs shall second them; and so success of mischief shall be born and heir from heir shall hold this quarrel up whiles england shall have generation. lancaster you are too shallow, hastings, much too shallow, to sound the bottom of the after-times. westmoreland pleaseth your grace to answer them directly how far forth you do like their articles. lancaster i like them all, and do allow them well, and swear here, by the honour of my blood, my father's purposes have been mistook, and some about him have too lavishly wrested his meaning and authority. my lord, these griefs shall be with speed redress'd; upon my soul, they shall. if this may please you, discharge your powers unto their several counties, as we will ours: and here between the armies let's drink together friendly and embrace, that all their eyes may bear those tokens home of our restored love and amity. archbishop of york i take your princely word for these redresses. lancaster i give it you, and will maintain my word: and thereupon i drink unto your grace. hastings go, captain, and deliver to the army this news of peace: let them have pay, and part: i know it will well please them. hie thee, captain. [exit officer] archbishop of york to you, my noble lord of westmoreland. westmoreland i pledge your grace; and, if you knew what pains i have bestow'd to breed this present peace, you would drink freely: but my love to ye shall show itself more openly hereafter. archbishop of york i do not doubt you. westmoreland i am glad of it. health to my lord and gentle cousin, mowbray. mowbray you wish me health in very happy season; for i am, on the sudden, something ill. archbishop of york against ill chances men are ever merry; but heaviness foreruns the good event. westmoreland therefore be merry, coz; since sudden sorrow serves to say thus, 'some good thing comes to-morrow.' archbishop of york believe me, i am passing light in spirit. mowbray so much the worse, if your own rule be true. [shouts within] lancaster the word of peace is render'd: hark, how they shout! mowbray this had been cheerful after victory. archbishop of york a peace is of the nature of a conquest; for then both parties nobly are subdued, and neither party loser. lancaster go, my lord, and let our army be discharged too. [exit westmoreland] and, good my lord, so please you, let our trains march, by us, that we may peruse the men we should have coped withal. archbishop of york go, good lord hastings, and, ere they be dismissed, let them march by. [exit hastings] lancaster i trust, lords, we shall lie to-night together. [re-enter westmoreland] now, cousin, wherefore stands our army still? westmoreland the leaders, having charge from you to stand, will not go off until they hear you speak. lancaster they know their duties. [re-enter hastings] hastings my lord, our army is dispersed already; like youthful steers unyoked, they take their courses east, west, north, south; or, like a school broke up, each hurries toward his home and sporting-place. westmoreland good tidings, my lord hastings; for the which i do arrest thee, traitor, of high treason: and you, lord archbishop, and you, lord mowbray, of capitol treason i attach you both. mowbray is this proceeding just and honourable? westmoreland is your assembly so? archbishop of york will you thus break your faith? lancaster i pawn'd thee none: i promised you redress of these same grievances whereof you did complain; which, by mine honour, i will perform with a most christian care. but for you, rebels, look to taste the due meet for rebellion and such acts as yours. most shallowly did you these arms commence, fondly brought here and foolishly sent hence. strike up our drums, pursue the scatter'd stray: god, and not we, hath safely fought to-day. some guard these traitors to the block of death, treason's true bed and yielder up of breath. [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act iv scene iii another part of the forest. [alarum. excursions. enter falstaff and colevile, meeting] falstaff what's your name, sir? of what condition are you, and of what place, i pray? colevile i am a knight, sir, and my name is colevile of the dale. falstaff well, then, colevile is your name, a knight is your degree, and your place the dale: colevile shall be still your name, a traitor your degree, and the dungeon your place, a place deep enough; so shall you be still colevile of the dale. colevile are not you sir john falstaff? falstaff as good a man as he, sir, whoe'er i am. do ye yield, sir? or shall i sweat for you? if i do sweat, they are the drops of thy lovers, and they weep for thy death: therefore rouse up fear and trembling, and do observance to my mercy. colevile i think you are sir john falstaff, and in that thought yield me. falstaff i have a whole school of tongues in this belly of mine, and not a tongue of them all speaks any other word but my name. an i had but a belly of any indifference, i were simply the most active fellow in europe: my womb, my womb, my womb, undoes me. here comes our general. [enter prince john of lancaster, westmoreland, blunt, and others] lancaster the heat is past; follow no further now: call in the powers, good cousin westmoreland. [exit westmoreland] now, falstaff, where have you been all this while? when every thing is ended, then you come: these tardy tricks of yours will, on my life, one time or other break some gallows' back. falstaff i would be sorry, my lord, but it should be thus: i never knew yet but rebuke and cheque was the reward of valour. do you think me a swallow, an arrow, or a bullet? have i, in my poor and old motion, the expedition of thought? i have speeded hither with the very extremest inch of possibility; i have foundered nine score and odd posts: and here, travel-tainted as i am, have in my pure and immaculate valour, taken sir john colevile of the dale, a most furious knight and valorous enemy. but what of that? he saw me, and yielded; that i may justly say, with the hook-nosed fellow of rome, 'i came, saw, and overcame.' lancaster it was more of his courtesy than your deserving. falstaff i know not: here he is, and here i yield him: and i beseech your grace, let it be booked with the rest of this day's deeds; or, by the lord, i will have it in a particular ballad else, with mine own picture on the top on't, colevile kissing my foot: to the which course if i be enforced, if you do not all show like gilt twopences to me, and i in the clear sky of fame o'ershine you as much as the full moon doth the cinders of the element, which show like pins' heads to her, believe not the word of the noble: therefore let me have right, and let desert mount. lancaster thine's too heavy to mount. falstaff let it shine, then. lancaster thine's too thick to shine. falstaff let it do something, my good lord, that may do me good, and call it what you will. lancaster is thy name colevile? colevile it is, my lord. lancaster a famous rebel art thou, colevile. falstaff and a famous true subject took him. colevile i am, my lord, but as my betters are that led me hither: had they been ruled by me, you should have won them dearer than you have. falstaff i know not how they sold themselves: but thou, like a kind fellow, gavest thyself away gratis; and i thank thee for thee. [re-enter westmoreland] lancaster now, have you left pursuit? westmoreland retreat is made and execution stay'd. lancaster send colevile with his confederates to york, to present execution: blunt, lead him hence; and see you guard him sure. [exeunt blunt and others with colevile] and now dispatch we toward the court, my lords: i hear the king my father is sore sick: our news shall go before us to his majesty, which, cousin, you shall bear to comfort him, and we with sober speed will follow you. falstaff my lord, i beseech you, give me leave to go through gloucestershire: and, when you come to court, stand my good lord, pray, in your good report. lancaster fare you well, falstaff: i, in my condition, shall better speak of you than you deserve. [exeunt all but falstaff] falstaff i would you had but the wit: 'twere better than your dukedom. good faith, this same young sober blooded boy doth not love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh; but that's no marvel, he drinks no wine. there's never none of these demure boys come to any proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness; and then when they marry, they get wenches: they are generally fools and cowards; which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. a good sherris sack hath a two-fold operation in it. it ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and curdy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble fiery and delectable shapes, which, delivered o'er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. the second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extreme: it illumineth the face, which as a beacon gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart, who, great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this valour comes of sherris. so that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work; and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. hereof comes it that prince harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile and bare land, manured, husbanded and tilled with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. if i had a thousand sons, the first humane principle i would teach them should be, to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack. [enter bardolph] how now bardolph? bardolph the army is discharged all and gone. falstaff let them go. i'll through gloucestershire; and there will i visit master robert shallow, esquire: i have him already tempering between my finger and my thumb, and shortly will i seal with him. come away. [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act iv scene iv westminster. the jerusalem chamber. [enter king henry iv, the princes thomas of clarence and humphrey of gloucester, warwick, and others] king henry iv now, lords, if god doth give successful end to this debate that bleedeth at our doors, we will our youth lead on to higher fields and draw no swords but what are sanctified. our navy is address'd, our power collected, our substitutes in absence well invested, and every thing lies level to our wish: only, we want a little personal strength; and pause us, till these rebels, now afoot, come underneath the yoke of government. warwick both which we doubt not but your majesty shall soon enjoy. king henry iv humphrey, my son of gloucester, where is the prince your brother? gloucester i think he's gone to hunt, my lord, at windsor. king henry iv and how accompanied? gloucester i do not know, my lord. king henry iv is not his brother, thomas of clarence, with him? gloucester no, my good lord; he is in presence here. clarence what would my lord and father? king henry iv nothing but well to thee, thomas of clarence. how chance thou art not with the prince thy brother? he loves thee, and thou dost neglect him, thomas; thou hast a better place in his affection than all thy brothers: cherish it, my boy, and noble offices thou mayst effect of mediation, after i am dead, between his greatness and thy other brethren: therefore omit him not; blunt not his love, nor lose the good advantage of his grace by seeming cold or careless of his will; for he is gracious, if he be observed: he hath a tear for pity and a hand open as day for melting charity: yet notwithstanding, being incensed, he's flint, as humorous as winter and as sudden as flaws congealed in the spring of day. his temper, therefore, must be well observed: chide him for faults, and do it reverently, when thou perceive his blood inclined to mirth; but, being moody, give him line and scope, till that his passions, like a whale on ground, confound themselves with working. learn this, thomas, and thou shalt prove a shelter to thy friends, a hoop of gold to bind thy brothers in, that the united vessel of their blood, mingled with venom of suggestion- as, force perforce, the age will pour it in- shall never leak, though it do work as strong as aconitum or rash gunpowder. clarence i shall observe him with all care and love. king henry iv why art thou not at windsor with him, thomas? clarence he is not there to-day; he dines in london. king henry iv and how accompanied? canst thou tell that? clarence with poins, and other his continual followers. king henry iv most subject is the fattest soil to weeds; and he, the noble image of my youth, is overspread with them: therefore my grief stretches itself beyond the hour of death: the blood weeps from my heart when i do shape in forms imaginary the unguided days and rotten times that you shall look upon when i am sleeping with my ancestors. for when his headstrong riot hath no curb, when rage and hot blood are his counsellors, when means and lavish manners meet together, o, with what wings shall his affections fly towards fronting peril and opposed decay! warwick my gracious lord, you look beyond him quite: the prince but studies his companions like a strange tongue, wherein, to gain the language, 'tis needful that the most immodest word be look'd upon and learn'd; which once attain'd, your highness knows, comes to no further use but to be known and hated. so, like gross terms, the prince will in the perfectness of time cast off his followers; and their memory shall as a pattern or a measure live, by which his grace must mete the lives of others, turning past evils to advantages. king henry iv 'tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb in the dead carrion. [enter westmoreland] who's here? westmoreland? westmoreland health to my sovereign, and new happiness added to that that i am to deliver! prince john your son doth kiss your grace's hand: mowbray, the bishop scroop, hastings and all are brought to the correction of your law; there is not now a rebel's sword unsheath'd but peace puts forth her olive every where. the manner how this action hath been borne here at more leisure may your highness read, with every course in his particular. king henry iv o westmoreland, thou art a summer bird, which ever in the haunch of winter sings the lifting up of day. [enter harcourt] look, here's more news. harcourt from enemies heaven keep your majesty; and, when they stand against you, may they fall as those that i am come to tell you of! the earl northumberland and the lord bardolph, with a great power of english and of scots are by the sheriff of yorkshire overthrown: the manner and true order of the fight this packet, please it you, contains at large. king henry iv and wherefore should these good news make me sick? will fortune never come with both hands full, but write her fair words still in foulest letters? she either gives a stomach and no food; such are the poor, in health; or else a feast and takes away the stomach; such are the rich, that have abundance and enjoy it not. i should rejoice now at this happy news; and now my sight fails, and my brain is giddy: o me! come near me; now i am much ill. gloucester comfort, your majesty! clarence o my royal father! westmoreland my sovereign lord, cheer up yourself, look up. warwick be patient, princes; you do know, these fits are with his highness very ordinary. stand from him. give him air; he'll straight be well. clarence no, no, he cannot long hold out these pangs: the incessant care and labour of his mind hath wrought the mure that should confine it in so thin that life looks through and will break out. gloucester the people fear me; for they do observe unfather'd heirs and loathly births of nature: the seasons change their manners, as the year had found some months asleep and leap'd them over. clarence the river hath thrice flow'd, no ebb between; and the old folk, time's doting chronicles, say it did so a little time before that our great-grandsire, edward, sick'd and died. warwick speak lower, princes, for the king recovers. gloucester this apoplexy will certain be his end. king henry iv i pray you, take me up, and bear me hence into some other chamber: softly, pray. 2 king henry iv act iv scene v another chamber. [king henry iv lying on a bed: clarence, gloucester, warwick, and others in attendance] king henry iv let there be no noise made, my gentle friends; unless some dull and favourable hand will whisper music to my weary spirit. warwick call for the music in the other room. king henry iv set me the crown upon my pillow here. clarence his eye is hollow, and he changes much. warwick less noise, less noise! [enter prince henry] prince henry who saw the duke of clarence? clarence i am here, brother, full of heaviness. prince henry how now! rain within doors, and none abroad! how doth the king? gloucester exceeding ill. prince henry heard he the good news yet? tell it him. gloucester he alter'd much upon the hearing it. prince henry if he be sick with joy, he'll recover without physic. warwick not so much noise, my lords: sweet prince, speak low; the king your father is disposed to sleep. clarence let us withdraw into the other room. warwick will't please your grace to go along with us? prince henry no; i will sit and watch here by the king. [exeunt all but prince henry] why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow, being so troublesome a bedfellow? o polish'd perturbation! golden care! that keep'st the ports of slumber open wide to many a watchful night! sleep with it now! yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet as he whose brow with homely biggen bound snores out the watch of night. o majesty! when thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit like a rich armour worn in heat of day, that scalds with safety. by his gates of breath there lies a downy feather which stirs not: did he suspire, that light and weightless down perforce must move. my gracious lord! my father! this sleep is sound indeed, this is a sleep that from this golden rigol hath divorced so many english kings. thy due from me is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood, which nature, love, and filial tenderness, shall, o dear father, pay thee plenteously: my due from thee is this imperial crown, which, as immediate as thy place and blood, derives itself to me. lo, here it sits, which god shall guard: and put the world's whole strength into one giant arm, it shall not force this lineal honour from me: this from thee will i to mine leave, as 'tis left to me. [exit] king henry iv warwick! gloucester! clarence! [re-enter warwick, gloucester, clarence, and the rest] clarence doth the king call? warwick what would your majesty? how fares your grace? king henry iv why did you leave me here alone, my lords? clarence we left the prince my brother here, my liege, who undertook to sit and watch by you. king henry iv the prince of wales! where is he? let me see him: he is not here. warwick this door is open; he is gone this way. gloucester he came not through the chamber where we stay'd. king henry iv where is the crown? who took it from my pillow? warwick when we withdrew, my liege, we left it here. king henry iv the prince hath ta'en it hence: go, seek him out. is he so hasty that he doth suppose my sleep my death? find him, my lord of warwick; chide him hither. [exit warwick] this part of his conjoins with my disease, and helps to end me. see, sons, what things you are! how quickly nature falls into revolt when gold becomes her object! for this the foolish over-careful fathers have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains with care, their bones with industry; for this they have engrossed and piled up the canker'd heaps of strange-achieved gold; for this they have been thoughtful to invest their sons with arts and martial exercises: when, like the bee, culling from every flower the virtuous sweets, our thighs pack'd with wax, our mouths with honey, we bring it to the hive, and, like the bees, are murdered for our pains. this bitter taste yield his engrossments to the ending father. [re-enter warwick] now, where is he that will not stay so long till his friend sickness hath determined me? warwick my lord, i found the prince in the next room, washing with kindly tears his gentle cheeks, with such a deep demeanor in great sorrow that tyranny, which never quaff'd but blood, would, by beholding him, have wash'd his knife with gentle eye-drops. he is coming hither. king henry iv but wherefore did he take away the crown? [re-enter prince henry] lo, where he comes. come hither to me, harry. depart the chamber, leave us here alone. [exeunt warwick and the rest] prince henry i never thought to hear you speak again. king henry iv thy wish was father, harry, to that thought: i stay too long by thee, i weary thee. dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair that thou wilt needs invest thee with my honours before thy hour be ripe? o foolish youth! thou seek'st the greatness that will o'erwhelm thee. stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity is held from falling with so weak a wind that it will quickly drop: my day is dim. thou hast stolen that which after some few hours were thine without offence; and at my death thou hast seal'd up my expectation: thy life did manifest thou lovedst me not, and thou wilt have me die assured of it. thou hidest a thousand daggers in thy thoughts, which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart, to stab at half an hour of my life. what! canst thou not forbear me half an hour? then get thee gone and dig my grave thyself, and bid the merry bells ring to thine ear that thou art crowned, not that i am dead. let all the tears that should bedew my hearse be drops of balm to sanctify thy head: only compound me with forgotten dust give that which gave thee life unto the worms. pluck down my officers, break my decrees; for now a time is come to mock at form: harry the fifth is crown'd: up, vanity! down, royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence! and to the english court assemble now, from every region, apes of idleness! now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum: have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance, revel the night, rob, murder, and commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways? be happy, he will trouble you no more; england shall double gild his treble guilt, england shall give him office, honour, might; for the fifth harry from curb'd licence plucks the muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog shall flesh his tooth on every innocent. o my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows! when that my care could not withhold thy riots, what wilt thou do when riot is thy care? o, thou wilt be a wilderness again, peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants! prince henry o, pardon me, my liege! but for my tears, the moist impediments unto my speech, i had forestall'd this dear and deep rebuke ere you with grief had spoke and i had heard the course of it so far. there is your crown; and he that wears the crown immortally long guard it yours! if i affect it more than as your honour and as your renown, let me no more from this obedience rise, which my most inward true and duteous spirit teacheth, this prostrate and exterior bending. god witness with me, when i here came in, and found no course of breath within your majesty, how cold it struck my heart! if i do feign, o, let me in my present wildness die and never live to show the incredulous world the noble change that i have purposed! coming to look on you, thinking you dead, and dead almost, my liege, to think you were, i spake unto this crown as having sense, and thus upbraided it: 'the care on thee depending hath fed upon the body of my father; therefore, thou best of gold art worst of gold: other, less fine in carat, is more precious, preserving life in medicine potable; but thou, most fine, most honour'd: most renown'd, hast eat thy bearer up.' thus, my most royal liege, accusing it, i put it on my head, to try with it, as with an enemy that had before my face murder'd my father, the quarrel of a true inheritor. but if it did infect my blood with joy, or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride; if any rebel or vain spirit of mine did with the least affection of a welcome give entertainment to the might of it, let god for ever keep it from my head and make me as the poorest vassal is that doth with awe and terror kneel to it! king henry iv o my son, god put it in thy mind to take it hence, that thou mightst win the more thy father's love, pleading so wisely in excuse of it! come hither, harry, sit thou by my bed; and hear, i think, the very latest counsel that ever i shall breathe. god knows, my son, by what by-paths and indirect crook'd ways i met this crown; and i myself know well how troublesome it sat upon my head. to thee it shall descend with bitter quiet, better opinion, better confirmation; for all the soil of the achievement goes with me into the earth. it seem'd in me but as an honour snatch'd with boisterous hand, and i had many living to upbraid my gain of it by their assistances; which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed, wounding supposed peace: all these bold fears thou see'st with peril i have answered; for all my reign hath been but as a scene acting that argument: and now my death changes the mode; for what in me was purchased, falls upon thee in a more fairer sort; so thou the garland wear'st successively. yet, though thou stand'st more sure than i could do, thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green; and all my friends, which thou must make thy friends, have but their stings and teeth newly ta'en out; by whose fell working i was first advanced and by whose power i well might lodge a fear to be again displaced: which to avoid, i cut them off; and had a purpose now to lead out many to the holy land, lest rest and lying still might make them look too near unto my state. therefore, my harry, be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out, may waste the memory of the former days. more would i, but my lungs are wasted so that strength of speech is utterly denied me. how i came by the crown, o god forgive; and grant it may with thee in true peace live! prince henry my gracious liege, you won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me; then plain and right must my possession be: which i with more than with a common pain 'gainst all the world will rightfully maintain. [enter lord john of lancaster] king henry iv look, look, here comes my john of lancaster. lancaster health, peace, and happiness to my royal father! king henry iv thou bring'st me happiness and peace, son john; but health, alack, with youthful wings is flown from this bare wither'd trunk: upon thy sight my worldly business makes a period. where is my lord of warwick? prince henry my lord of warwick! [enter warwick, and others] king henry iv doth any name particular belong unto the lodging where i first did swoon? warwick 'tis call'd jerusalem, my noble lord. king henry iv laud be to god! even there my life must end. it hath been prophesied to me many years, i should not die but in jerusalem; which vainly i supposed the holy land: but bear me to that chamber; there i'll lie; in that jerusalem shall harry die. [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act v scene i gloucestershire. shallow's house. [enter shallow, falstaff, bardolph, and page] shallow by cock and pie, sir, you shall not away to-night. what, davy, i say! falstaff you must excuse me, master robert shallow. shallow i will not excuse you; you shall not be excused; excuses shall not be admitted; there is no excuse shall serve; you shall not be excused. why, davy! [enter davy] davy here, sir. shallow davy, davy, davy, davy, let me see, davy; let me see, davy; let me see: yea, marry, william cook, bid him come hither. sir john, you shall not be excused. davy marry, sir, thus; those precepts cannot be served: and, again, sir, shall we sow the headland with wheat? shallow with red wheat, davy. but for william cook: are there no young pigeons? davy yes, sir. here is now the smith's note for shoeing and plough-irons. shallow let it be cast and paid. sir john, you shall not be excused. davy now, sir, a new link to the bucket must need be had: and, sir, do you mean to stop any of william's wages, about the sack he lost the other day at hinckley fair? shallow a' shall answer it. some pigeons, davy, a couple of short-legged hens, a joint of mutton, and any pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell william cook. davy doth the man of war stay all night, sir? shallow yea, davy. i will use him well: a friend i' the court is better than a penny in purse. use his men well, davy; for they are arrant knaves, and will backbite. davy no worse than they are backbitten, sir; for they have marvellous foul linen. shallow well conceited, davy: about thy business, davy. davy i beseech you, sir, to countenance william visor of woncot against clement perkes of the hill. shallow there is many complaints, davy, against that visor: that visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge. davy i grant your worship that he is a knave, sir; but yet, god forbid, sir, but a knave should have some countenance at his friend's request. an honest man, sir, is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not. i have served your worship truly, sir, this eight years; and if i cannot once or twice in a quarter bear out a knave against an honest man, i have but a very little credit with your worship. the knave is mine honest friend, sir; therefore, i beseech your worship, let him be countenanced. shallow go to; i say he shall have no wrong. look about, davy. [exit davy] where are you, sir john? come, come, come, off with your boots. give me your hand, master bardolph. bardolph i am glad to see your worship. shallow i thank thee with all my heart, kind master bardolph: and welcome, my tall fellow. [to the page] come, sir john. falstaff i'll follow you, good master robert shallow. [exit shallow] bardolph, look to our horses. [exeunt bardolph and page] if i were sawed into quantities, i should make four dozen of such bearded hermits' staves as master shallow. it is a wonderful thing to see the semblable coherence of his men's spirits and his: they, by observing of him, do bear themselves like foolish justices; he, by conversing with them, is turned into a justice-like serving-man: their spirits are so married in conjunction with the participation of society that they flock together in consent, like so many wild-geese. if i had a suit to master shallow, i would humour his men with the imputation of being near their master: if to his men, i would curry with master shallow that no man could better command his servants. it is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another: therefore let men take heed of their company. i will devise matter enough out of this shallow to keep prince harry in continual laughter the wearing out of six fashions, which is four terms, or two actions, and a' shall laugh without intervallums. o, it is much that a lie with a slight oath and a jest with a sad brow will do with a fellow that never had the ache in his shoulders! o, you shall see him laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up! shallow [within] sir john! falstaff i come, master shallow; i come, master shallow. [exit] 2 king henry iv act v scene ii westminster. the palace. [enter warwick and the lord chief-justice, meeting] warwick how now, my lord chief-justice! whither away? lord chief-justice how doth the king? warwick exceeding well; his cares are now all ended. lord chief-justice i hope, not dead. warwick he's walk'd the way of nature; and to our purposes he lives no more. lord chief-justice i would his majesty had call'd me with him: the service that i truly did his life hath left me open to all injuries. warwick indeed i think the young king loves you not. lord chief-justice i know he doth not, and do arm myself to welcome the condition of the time, which cannot look more hideously upon me than i have drawn it in my fantasy. [enter lancaster, clarence, gloucester, westmoreland, and others] warwick here come the heavy issue of dead harry: o that the living harry had the temper of him, the worst of these three gentlemen! how many nobles then should hold their places that must strike sail to spirits of vile sort! lord chief-justice o god, i fear all will be overturn'd! lancaster good morrow, cousin warwick, good morrow. gloucester | | good morrow, cousin. clarence | lancaster we meet like men that had forgot to speak. warwick we do remember; but our argument is all too heavy to admit much talk. lancaster well, peace be with him that hath made us heavy. lord chief-justice peace be with us, lest we be heavier! gloucester o, good my lord, you have lost a friend indeed; and i dare swear you borrow not that face of seeming sorrow, it is sure your own. lancaster though no man be assured what grace to find, you stand in coldest expectation: i am the sorrier; would 'twere otherwise. clarence well, you must now speak sir john falstaff fair; which swims against your stream of quality. lord chief-justice sweet princes, what i did, i did in honour, led by the impartial conduct of my soul: and never shall you see that i will beg a ragged and forestall'd remission. if truth and upright innocency fail me, i'll to the king my master that is dead, and tell him who hath sent me after him. warwick here comes the prince. [enter king henry v, attended] lord chief-justice good morrow; and god save your majesty! king henry v this new and gorgeous garment, majesty, sits not so easy on me as you think. brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear: this is the english, not the turkish court; not amurath an amurath succeeds, but harry harry. yet be sad, good brothers, for, by my faith, it very well becomes you: sorrow so royally in you appears that i will deeply put the fashion on and wear it in my heart: why then, be sad; but entertain no more of it, good brothers, than a joint burden laid upon us all. for me, by heaven, i bid you be assured, i'll be your father and your brother too; let me but bear your love, i 'll bear your cares: yet weep that harry's dead; and so will i; but harry lives, that shall convert those tears by number into hours of happiness. princes we hope no other from your majesty. king henry v you all look strangely on me: and you most; you are, i think, assured i love you not. lord chief-justice i am assured, if i be measured rightly, your majesty hath no just cause to hate me. king henry v no! how might a prince of my great hopes forget so great indignities you laid upon me? what! rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison the immediate heir of england! was this easy? may this be wash'd in lethe, and forgotten? lord chief-justice i then did use the person of your father; the image of his power lay then in me: and, in the administration of his law, whiles i was busy for the commonwealth, your highness pleased to forget my place, the majesty and power of law and justice, the image of the king whom i presented, and struck me in my very seat of judgment; whereon, as an offender to your father, i gave bold way to my authority and did commit you. if the deed were ill, be you contented, wearing now the garland, to have a son set your decrees at nought, to pluck down justice from your awful bench, to trip the course of law and blunt the sword that guards the peace and safety of your person; nay, more, to spurn at your most royal image and mock your workings in a second body. question your royal thoughts, make the case yours; be now the father and propose a son, hear your own dignity so much profaned, see your most dreadful laws so loosely slighted, behold yourself so by a son disdain'd; and then imagine me taking your part and in your power soft silencing your son: after this cold considerance, sentence me; and, as you are a king, speak in your state what i have done that misbecame my place, my person, or my liege's sovereignty. king henry v you are right, justice, and you weigh this well; therefore still bear the balance and the sword: and i do wish your honours may increase, till you do live to see a son of mine offend you and obey you, as i did. so shall i live to speak my father's words: 'happy am i, that have a man so bold, that dares do justice on my proper son; and not less happy, having such a son, that would deliver up his greatness so into the hands of justice.' you did commit me: for which, i do commit into your hand the unstained sword that you have used to bear; with this remembrance, that you use the same with the like bold, just and impartial spirit as you have done 'gainst me. there is my hand. you shall be as a father to my youth: my voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear, and i will stoop and humble my intents to your well-practised wise directions. and, princes all, believe me, i beseech you; my father is gone wild into his grave, for in his tomb lie my affections; and with his spirit sadly i survive, to mock the expectation of the world, to frustrate prophecies and to raze out rotten opinion, who hath writ me down after my seeming. the tide of blood in me hath proudly flow'd in vanity till now: now doth it turn and ebb back to the sea, where it shall mingle with the state of floods and flow henceforth in formal majesty. now call we our high court of parliament: and let us choose such limbs of noble counsel, that the great body of our state may go in equal rank with the best govern'd nation; that war, or peace, or both at once, may be as things acquainted and familiar to us; in which you, father, shall have foremost hand. our coronation done, we will accite, as i before remember'd, all our state: and, god consigning to my good intents, no prince nor peer shall have just cause to say, god shorten harry's happy life one day! [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act v scene iii gloucestershire. shallow's orchard. [enter falstaff, shallow, silence, davy, bardolph, and the page] shallow nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour, we will eat a last year's pippin of my own graffing, with a dish of caraways, and so forth: come, cousin silence: and then to bed. falstaff 'fore god, you have here a goodly dwelling and a rich. shallow barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, sir john: marry, good air. spread, davy; spread, davy; well said, davy. falstaff this davy serves you for good uses; he is your serving-man and your husband. shallow a good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet, sir john: by the mass, i have drunk too much sack at supper: a good varlet. now sit down, now sit down: come, cousin. silence ah, sirrah! quoth-a, we shall do nothing but eat, and make good cheer, [singing] and praise god for the merry year; when flesh is cheap and females dear, and lusty lads roam here and there so merrily, and ever among so merrily. falstaff there's a merry heart! good master silence, i'll give you a health for that anon. shallow give master bardolph some wine, davy. davy sweet sir, sit; i'll be with you anon. most sweet sir, sit. master page, good master page, sit. proface! what you want in meat, we'll have in drink: but you must bear; the heart's all. [exit] shallow be merry, master bardolph; and, my little soldier there, be merry. silence be merry, be merry, my wife has all; [singing] for women are shrews, both short and tall: 'tis merry in hall when beards wag all, and welcome merry shrove-tide. be merry, be merry. falstaff i did not think master silence had been a man of this mettle. silence who, i? i have been merry twice and once ere now. [re-enter davy] davy there's a dish of leather-coats for you. [to bardolph] shallow davy! davy your worship! i'll be with you straight. [to bardolph] a cup of wine, sir? silence a cup of wine that's brisk and fine, [singing] and drink unto the leman mine; and a merry heart lives long-a. falstaff well said, master silence. silence an we shall be merry, now comes in the sweet o' the night. falstaff health and long life to you, master silence. silence fill the cup, and let it come; [singing] i'll pledge you a mile to the bottom. shallow honest bardolph, welcome: if thou wantest any thing, and wilt not call, beshrew thy heart. welcome, my little tiny thief. [to the page] and welcome indeed too. i'll drink to master bardolph, and to all the cavaleros about london. davy i hove to see london once ere i die. bardolph an i might see you there, davy,- shallow by the mass, you'll crack a quart together, ha! will you not, master bardolph? bardolph yea, sir, in a pottle-pot. shallow by god's liggens, i thank thee: the knave will stick by thee, i can assure thee that. a' will not out; he is true bred. bardolph and i'll stick by him, sir. shallow why, there spoke a king. lack nothing: be merry. [knocking within] look who's at door there, ho! who knocks? [exit davy] falstaff why, now you have done me right. [to silence, seeing him take off a bumper] silence [singing] do me right, and dub me knight: samingo. is't not so? falstaff 'tis so. silence is't so? why then, say an old man can do somewhat. [re-enter davy] davy an't please your worship, there's one pistol come from the court with news. falstaff from the court! let him come in. [enter pistol] how now, pistol! pistol sir john, god save you! falstaff what wind blew you hither, pistol? pistol not the ill wind which blows no man to good. sweet knight, thou art now one of the greatest men in this realm. silence by'r lady, i think a' be, but goodman puff of barson. pistol puff! puff in thy teeth, most recreant coward base! sir john, i am thy pistol and thy friend, and helter-skelter have i rode to thee, and tidings do i bring and lucky joys and golden times and happy news of price. falstaff i pray thee now, deliver them like a man of this world. pistol a foutre for the world and worldlings base! i speak of africa and golden joys. falstaff o base assyrian knight, what is thy news? let king cophetua know the truth thereof. silence and robin hood, scarlet, and john. [singing] pistol shall dunghill curs confront the helicons? and shall good news be baffled? then, pistol, lay thy head in furies' lap. silence honest gentleman, i know not your breeding. pistol why then, lament therefore. shallow give me pardon, sir: if, sir, you come with news from the court, i take it there's but two ways, either to utter them, or to conceal them. i am, sir, under the king, in some authority. pistol under which king, besonian? speak, or die. shallow under king harry. pistol harry the fourth? or fifth? shallow harry the fourth. pistol a foutre for thine office! sir john, thy tender lambkin now is king; harry the fifth's the man. i speak the truth: when pistol lies, do this; and fig me, like the bragging spaniard. falstaff what, is the old king dead? pistol as nail in door: the things i speak are just. falstaff away, bardolph! saddle my horse. master robert shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the land, 'tis thine. pistol, i will double-charge thee with dignities. bardolph o joyful day! i would not take a knighthood for my fortune. pistol what! i do bring good news. falstaff carry master silence to bed. master shallow, my lord shallow,--be what thou wilt; i am fortune's steward--get on thy boots: we'll ride all night. o sweet pistol! away, bardolph! [exit bardolph] come, pistol, utter more to me; and withal devise something to do thyself good. boot, boot, master shallow: i know the young king is sick for me. let us take any man's horses; the laws of england are at my commandment. blessed are they that have been my friends; and woe to my lord chief-justice! pistol let vultures vile seize on his lungs also! 'where is the life that late i led?' say they: why, here it is; welcome these pleasant days! [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act v scene iv london. a street. [enter beadles, dragging in hostess quickly and doll tearsheet] mistress quickly no, thou arrant knave; i would to god that i might die, that i might have thee hanged: thou hast drawn my shoulder out of joint. first beadle the constables have delivered her over to me; and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, i warrant her: there hath been a man or two lately killed about her. doll tearsheet nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie. come on; i 'll tell thee what, thou damned tripe-visaged rascal, an the child i now go with do miscarry, thou wert better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou paper-faced villain. mistress quickly o the lord, that sir john were come! he would make this a bloody day to somebody. but i pray god the fruit of her womb miscarry! first beadle if it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions again; you have but eleven now. come, i charge you both go with me; for the man is dead that you and pistol beat amongst you. doll tearsheet i'll tell you what, you thin man in a censer, i will have you as soundly swinged for this,--you blue-bottle rogue, you filthy famished correctioner, if you be not swinged, i'll forswear half-kirtles. first beadle come, come, you she knight-errant, come. mistress quickly o god, that right should thus overcome might! well, of sufferance comes ease. doll tearsheet come, you rogue, come; bring me to a justice. mistress quickly ay, come, you starved blood-hound. doll tearsheet goodman death, goodman bones! mistress quickly thou atomy, thou! doll tearsheet come, you thin thing; come you rascal. first beadle very well. [exeunt] 2 king henry iv act v scene v a public place near westminster abbey. [enter two grooms, strewing rushes] first groom more rushes, more rushes. second groom the trumpets have sounded twice. first groom 'twill be two o'clock ere they come from the coronation: dispatch, dispatch. [exeunt] [enter falstaff, shallow, pistol, bardolph, and page] falstaff stand here by me, master robert shallow; i will make the king do you grace: i will leer upon him as a' comes by; and do but mark the countenance that he will give me. pistol god bless thy lungs, good knight. falstaff come here, pistol; stand behind me. o, if i had had time to have made new liveries, i would have bestowed the thousand pound i borrowed of you. but 'tis no matter; this poor show doth better: this doth infer the zeal i had to see him. shallow it doth so. falstaff it shows my earnestness of affection,- shallow it doth so. falstaff my devotion,- shallow it doth, it doth, it doth. falstaff as it were, to ride day and night; and not to deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to shift me,- shallow it is best, certain. falstaff but to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him; thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him. pistol 'tis 'semper idem,' for 'obsque hoc nihil est:' 'tis all in every part. shallow 'tis so, indeed. pistol my knight, i will inflame thy noble liver, and make thee rage. thy doll, and helen of thy noble thoughts, is in base durance and contagious prison; haled thither by most mechanical and dirty hand: rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell alecto's snake, for doll is in. pistol speaks nought but truth. falstaff i will deliver her. [shouts within, and the trumpets sound] pistol there roar'd the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds. [enter king henry v and his train, the lord chief justice among them] falstaff god save thy grace, king hal! my royal hal! pistol the heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame! falstaff god save thee, my sweet boy! king henry iv my lord chief-justice, speak to that vain man. lord chief-justice have you your wits? know you what 'tis to speak? falstaff my king! my jove! i speak to thee, my heart! king henry iv i know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers; how ill white hairs become a fool and jester! i have long dream'd of such a kind of man, so surfeit-swell'd, so old and so profane; but, being awaked, i do despise my dream. make less thy body hence, and more thy grace; leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape for thee thrice wider than for other men. reply not to me with a fool-born jest: presume not that i am the thing i was; for god doth know, so shall the world perceive, that i have turn'd away my former self; so will i those that kept me company. when thou dost hear i am as i have been, approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast, the tutor and the feeder of my riots: till then, i banish thee, on pain of death, as i have done the rest of my misleaders, not to come near our person by ten mile. for competence of life i will allow you, that lack of means enforce you not to evil: and, as we hear you do reform yourselves, we will, according to your strengths and qualities, give you advancement. be it your charge, my lord, to see perform'd the tenor of our word. set on. [exeunt king henry v, &c] falstaff master shallow, i owe you a thousand pound. shallow yea, marry, sir john; which i beseech you to let me have home with me. falstaff that can hardly be, master shallow. do not you grieve at this; i shall be sent for in private to him: look you, he must seem thus to the world: fear not your advancements; i will be the man yet that shall make you great. shallow i cannot well perceive how, unless you should give me your doublet and stuff me out with straw. i beseech you, good sir john, let me have five hundred of my thousand. falstaff sir, i will be as good as my word: this that you heard was but a colour. shallow a colour that i fear you will die in, sir john. falstaff fear no colours: go with me to dinner: come, lieutenant pistol; come, bardolph: i shall be sent for soon at night. [re-enter prince john of lancaster, the lord chief-justice; officers with them] lord chief-justice go, carry sir john falstaff to the fleet: take all his company along with him. falstaff my lord, my lord,- lord chief-justice i cannot now speak: i will hear you soon. take them away. pistol si fortune me tormenta, spero contenta. [exeunt all but prince john and the lord chief-justice] lancaster i like this fair proceeding of the king's: he hath intent his wonted followers shall all be very well provided for; but all are banish'd till their conversations appear more wise and modest to the world. lord chief-justice and so they are. lancaster the king hath call'd his parliament, my lord. lord chief-justice he hath. lancaster i will lay odds that, ere this year expire, we bear our civil swords and native fire as far as france: i beard a bird so sing, whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king. come, will you hence? [exeunt] 2 king henry iv epilogue [spoken by a dancer] first my fear; then my courtesy; last my speech. my fear is, your displeasure; my courtesy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. if you look for a good speech now, you undo me: for what i have to say is of mine own making; and what indeed i should say will, i doubt, prove mine own marring. but to the purpose, and so to the venture. be it known to you, as it is very well, i was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it and to promise you a better. i meant indeed to pay you with this; which, if like an ill venture it come unluckily home, i break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. here i promised you i would be and here i commit my body to your mercies: bate me some and i will pay you some and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely. if my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. but a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so would i. all the gentlewomen here have forgiven me: if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly. one word more, i beseech you. if you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with sir john in it, and make you merry with fair katharine of france: where, for any thing i know, falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard opinions; for oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. my tongue is weary; when my legs are too, i will bid you good night: and so kneel down before you; but, indeed, to pray for the queen. sonnets to the only begetter of these insuing sonnets mr. w. h. all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth t. t. i. from fairest creatures we desire increase, that thereby beauty's rose might never die, but as the riper should by time decease, his tender heir might bear his memory: but thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel, making a famine where abundance lies, thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. thou that art now the world's fresh ornament and only herald to the gaudy spring, within thine own bud buriest thy content and, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding. pity the world, or else this glutton be, to eat the world's due, by the grave and thee. ii. when forty winters shall beseige thy brow, and dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held: then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies, where all the treasure of thy lusty days, to say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise. how much more praise deserved thy beauty's use, if thou couldst answer 'this fair child of mine shall sum my count and make my old excuse,' proving his beauty by succession thine! this were to be new made when thou art old, and see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold. iii. look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest now is the time that face should form another; whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. for where is she so fair whose unear'd womb disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? or who is he so fond will be the tomb of his self-love, to stop posterity? thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee calls back the lovely april of her prime: so thou through windows of thine age shall see despite of wrinkles this thy golden time. but if thou live, remember'd not to be, die single, and thine image dies with thee. iv. unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend upon thyself thy beauty's legacy? nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend, and being frank she lends to those are free. then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse the bounteous largess given thee to give? profitless usurer, why dost thou use so great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? for having traffic with thyself alone, thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive. then how, when nature calls thee to be gone, what acceptable audit canst thou leave? thy unused beauty must be tomb'd with thee, which, used, lives th' executor to be. v. those hours, that with gentle work did frame the lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, will play the tyrants to the very same and that unfair which fairly doth excel: for never-resting time leads summer on to hideous winter and confounds him there; sap cheque'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where: then, were not summer's distillation left, a liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, nor it nor no remembrance what it was: but flowers distill'd though they with winter meet, leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet. vi. then let not winter's ragged hand deface in thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd: make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place with beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd. that use is not forbidden usury, which happies those that pay the willing loan; that's for thyself to breed another thee, or ten times happier, be it ten for one; ten times thyself were happier than thou art, if ten of thine ten times refigured thee: then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart, leaving thee living in posterity? be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair to be death's conquest and make worms thine heir. vii. lo! in the orient when the gracious light lifts up his burning head, each under eye doth homage to his new-appearing sight, serving with looks his sacred majesty; and having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill, resembling strong youth in his middle age, yet mortal looks adore his beauty still, attending on his golden pilgrimage; but when from highmost pitch, with weary car, like feeble age, he reeleth from the day, the eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are from his low tract and look another way: so thou, thyself out-going in thy noon, unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son. viii. music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly? sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy. why lovest thou that which thou receivest not gladly, or else receivest with pleasure thine annoy? if the true concord of well-tuned sounds, by unions married, do offend thine ear, they do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds in singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear. mark how one string, sweet husband to another, strikes each in each by mutual ordering, resembling sire and child and happy mother who all in one, one pleasing note do sing: whose speechless song, being many, seeming one, sings this to thee: 'thou single wilt prove none.' ix. is it for fear to wet a widow's eye that thou consumest thyself in single life? ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die. the world will wail thee, like a makeless wife; the world will be thy widow and still weep that thou no form of thee hast left behind, when every private widow well may keep by children's eyes her husband's shape in mind. look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; but beauty's waste hath in the world an end, and kept unused, the user so destroys it. no love toward others in that bosom sits that on himself such murderous shame commits. x. for shame! deny that thou bear'st love to any, who for thyself art so unprovident. grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many, but that thou none lovest is most evident; for thou art so possess'd with murderous hate that 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire. seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate which to repair should be thy chief desire. o, change thy thought, that i may change my mind! shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love? be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind, or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove: make thee another self, for love of me, that beauty still may live in thine or thee. xi. as fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growest in one of thine, from that which thou departest; and that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowest thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest. herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase: without this, folly, age and cold decay: if all were minded so, the times should cease and threescore year would make the world away. let those whom nature hath not made for store, harsh featureless and rude, barrenly perish: look, whom she best endow'd she gave the more; which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish: she carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die. xii. when i do count the clock that tells the time, and see the brave day sunk in hideous night; when i behold the violet past prime, and sable curls all silver'd o'er with white; when lofty trees i see barren of leaves which erst from heat did canopy the herd, and summer's green all girded up in sheaves borne on the bier with white and bristly beard, then of thy beauty do i question make, that thou among the wastes of time must go, since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake and die as fast as they see others grow; and nothing 'gainst time's scythe can make defence save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence. xiii. o, that you were yourself! but, love, you are no longer yours than you yourself here live: against this coming end you should prepare, and your sweet semblance to some other give. so should that beauty which you hold in lease find no determination: then you were yourself again after yourself's decease, when your sweet issue your sweet form should bear. who lets so fair a house fall to decay, which husbandry in honour might uphold against the stormy gusts of winter's day and barren rage of death's eternal cold? o, none but unthrifts! dear my love, you know you had a father: let your son say so. xiv. not from the stars do i my judgment pluck; and yet methinks i have astronomy, but not to tell of good or evil luck, of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality; nor can i fortune to brief minutes tell, pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind, or say with princes if it shall go well, by oft predict that i in heaven find: but from thine eyes my knowledge i derive, and, constant stars, in them i read such art as truth and beauty shall together thrive, if from thyself to store thou wouldst convert; or else of thee this i prognosticate: thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date. xv. when i consider every thing that grows holds in perfection but a little moment, that this huge stage presenteth nought but shows whereon the stars in secret influence comment; when i perceive that men as plants increase, cheered and cheque'd even by the self-same sky, vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, and wear their brave state out of memory; then the conceit of this inconstant stay sets you most rich in youth before my sight, where wasteful time debateth with decay, to change your day of youth to sullied night; and all in war with time for love of you, as he takes from you, i engraft you new. xvi. but wherefore do not you a mightier way make war upon this bloody tyrant, time? and fortify yourself in your decay with means more blessed than my barren rhyme? now stand you on the top of happy hours, and many maiden gardens yet unset with virtuous wish would bear your living flowers, much liker than your painted counterfeit: so should the lines of life that life repair, which this, time's pencil, or my pupil pen, neither in inward worth nor outward fair, can make you live yourself in eyes of men. to give away yourself keeps yourself still, and you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill. xvii. who will believe my verse in time to come, if it were fill'd with your most high deserts? though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb which hides your life and shows not half your parts. if i could write the beauty of your eyes and in fresh numbers number all your graces, the age to come would say 'this poet lies: such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.' so should my papers yellow'd with their age be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue, and your true rights be term'd a poet's rage and stretched metre of an antique song: but were some child of yours alive that time, you should live twice; in it and in my rhyme. xviii. shall i compare thee to a summer's day? thou art more lovely and more temperate: rough winds do shake the darling buds of may, and summer's lease hath all too short a date: sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimm'd; and every fair from fair sometime declines, by chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; but thy eternal summer shall not fade nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, when in eternal lines to time thou growest: so long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this and this gives life to thee. xix. devouring time, blunt thou the lion's paws, and make the earth devour her own sweet brood; pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws, and burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood; make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, and do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed time, to the wide world and all her fading sweets; but i forbid thee one most heinous crime: o, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow, nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; him in thy course untainted do allow for beauty's pattern to succeeding men. yet, do thy worst, old time: despite thy wrong, my love shall in my verse ever live young. xx. a woman's face with nature's own hand painted hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; a woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted with shifting change, as is false women's fashion; an eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; a man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling, much steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth. and for a woman wert thou first created; till nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, and by addition me of thee defeated, by adding one thing to my purpose nothing. but since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure, mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure. xxi. so is it not with me as with that muse stirr'd by a painted beauty to his verse, who heaven itself for ornament doth use and every fair with his fair doth rehearse making a couplement of proud compare, with sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems, with april's first-born flowers, and all things rare that heaven's air in this huge rondure hems. o' let me, true in love, but truly write, and then believe me, my love is as fair as any mother's child, though not so bright as those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air: let them say more than like of hearsay well; i will not praise that purpose not to sell. xxii. my glass shall not persuade me i am old, so long as youth and thou are of one date; but when in thee time's furrows i behold, then look i death my days should expiate. for all that beauty that doth cover thee is but the seemly raiment of my heart, which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me: how can i then be elder than thou art? o, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary as i, not for myself, but for thee will; bearing thy heart, which i will keep so chary as tender nurse her babe from faring ill. presume not on thy heart when mine is slain; thou gavest me thine, not to give back again. xxiii. as an unperfect actor on the stage who with his fear is put besides his part, or some fierce thing replete with too much rage, whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart. so i, for fear of trust, forget to say the perfect ceremony of love's rite, and in mine own love's strength seem to decay, o'ercharged with burden of mine own love's might. o, let my books be then the eloquence and dumb presagers of my speaking breast, who plead for love and look for recompense more than that tongue that more hath more express'd. o, learn to read what silent love hath writ: to hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. xxiv. mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd thy beauty's form in table of my heart; my body is the frame wherein 'tis held, and perspective it is the painter's art. for through the painter must you see his skill, to find where your true image pictured lies; which in my bosom's shop is hanging still, that hath his windows glazed with thine eyes. now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done: mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me are windows to my breast, where-through the sun delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee; yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art; they draw but what they see, know not the heart. xxv. let those who are in favour with their stars of public honour and proud titles boast, whilst i, whom fortune of such triumph bars, unlook'd for joy in that i honour most. great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread but as the marigold at the sun's eye, and in themselves their pride lies buried, for at a frown they in their glory die. the painful warrior famoused for fight, after a thousand victories once foil'd, is from the book of honour razed quite, and all the rest forgot for which he toil'd: then happy i, that love and am beloved where i may not remove nor be removed. xxvi. lord of my love, to whom in vassalage thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, to thee i send this written embassage, to witness duty, not to show my wit: duty so great, which wit so poor as mine may make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, but that i hope some good conceit of thine in thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it; till whatsoever star that guides my moving points on me graciously with fair aspect and puts apparel on my tatter'd loving, to show me worthy of thy sweet respect: then may i dare to boast how i do love thee; till then not show my head where thou mayst prove me. xxvii. weary with toil, i haste me to my bed, the dear repose for limbs with travel tired; but then begins a journey in my head, to work my mind, when body's work's expired: for then my thoughts, from far where i abide, intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, and keep my drooping eyelids open wide, looking on darkness which the blind do see save that my soul's imaginary sight presents thy shadow to my sightless view, which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, makes black night beauteous and her old face new. lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, for thee and for myself no quiet find. xxviii. how can i then return in happy plight, that am debarr'd the benefit of rest? when day's oppression is not eased by night, but day by night, and night by day, oppress'd? and each, though enemies to either's reign, do in consent shake hands to torture me; the one by toil, the other to complain how far i toil, still farther off from thee. i tell the day, to please them thou art bright and dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven: so flatter i the swart-complexion'd night, when sparkling stars twire not thou gild'st the even. but day doth daily draw my sorrows longer and night doth nightly make grief's strength seem stronger. xxix. when, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, i all alone beweep my outcast state and trouble deal heaven with my bootless cries and look upon myself and curse my fate, wishing me like to one more rich in hope, featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, desiring this man's art and that man's scope, with what i most enjoy contented least; yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, haply i think on thee, and then my state, like to the lark at break of day arising from sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; for thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings that then i scorn to change my state with kings. xxx. when to the sessions of sweet silent thought i summon up remembrance of things past, i sigh the lack of many a thing i sought, and with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: then can i drown an eye, unused to flow, for precious friends hid in death's dateless night, and weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, and moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight: then can i grieve at grievances foregone, and heavily from woe to woe tell o'er the sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, which i new pay as if not paid before. but if the while i think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end. xxxi. thy bosom is endeared with all hearts, which i by lacking have supposed dead, and there reigns love and all love's loving parts, and all those friends which i thought buried. how many a holy and obsequious tear hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye as interest of the dead, which now appear but things removed that hidden in thee lie! thou art the grave where buried love doth live, hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, who all their parts of me to thee did give; that due of many now is thine alone: their images i loved i view in thee, and thou, all they, hast all the all of me. xxxii. if thou survive my well-contented day, when that churl death my bones with dust shall cover, and shalt by fortune once more re-survey these poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, compare them with the bettering of the time, and though they be outstripp'd by every pen, reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme, exceeded by the height of happier men. o, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought: 'had my friend's muse grown with this growing age, a dearer birth than this his love had brought, to march in ranks of better equipage: but since he died and poets better prove, theirs for their style i'll read, his for his love.' xxxiii. full many a glorious morning have i seen flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, kissing with golden face the meadows green, gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; anon permit the basest clouds to ride with ugly rack on his celestial face, and from the forlorn world his visage hide, stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: even so my sun one early morn did shine with all triumphant splendor on my brow; but out, alack! he was but one hour mine; the region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth. xxxiv. why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, and make me travel forth without my cloak, to let base clouds o'ertake me in my way, hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke? 'tis not enough that through the cloud thou break, to dry the rain on my storm-beaten face, for no man well of such a salve can speak that heals the wound and cures not the disgrace: nor can thy shame give physic to my grief; though thou repent, yet i have still the loss: the offender's sorrow lends but weak relief to him that bears the strong offence's cross. ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, and they are rich and ransom all ill deeds. xxxv. no more be grieved at that which thou hast done: roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, and loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. all men make faults, and even i in this, authorizing thy trespass with compare, myself corrupting, salving thy amiss, excusing thy sins more than thy sins are; for to thy sensual fault i bring in sense-thy adverse party is thy advocate-and 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence: such civil war is in my love and hate that i an accessary needs must be to that sweet thief which sourly robs from me. xxxvi. let me confess that we two must be twain, although our undivided loves are one: so shall those blots that do with me remain without thy help by me be borne alone. in our two loves there is but one respect, though in our lives a separable spite, which though it alter not love's sole effect, yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight. i may not evermore acknowledge thee, lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, nor thou with public kindness honour me, unless thou take that honour from thy name: but do not so; i love thee in such sort as, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. xxxvii. as a decrepit father takes delight to see his active child do deeds of youth, so i, made lame by fortune's dearest spite, take all my comfort of thy worth and truth. for whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, or any of these all, or all, or more, entitled in thy parts do crowned sit, i make my love engrafted to this store: so then i am not lame, poor, nor despised, whilst that this shadow doth such substance give that i in thy abundance am sufficed and by a part of all thy glory live. look, what is best, that best i wish in thee: this wish i have; then ten times happy me! xxxviii. how can my muse want subject to invent, while thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse thine own sweet argument, too excellent for every vulgar paper to rehearse? o, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me worthy perusal stand against thy sight; for who's so dumb that cannot write to thee, when thou thyself dost give invention light? be thou the tenth muse, ten times more in worth than those old nine which rhymers invocate; and he that calls on thee, let him bring forth eternal numbers to outlive long date. if my slight muse do please these curious days, the pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise. xxxix. o, how thy worth with manners may i sing, when thou art all the better part of me? what can mine own praise to mine own self bring? and what is 't but mine own when i praise thee? even for this let us divided live, and our dear love lose name of single one, that by this separation i may give that due to thee which thou deservest alone. o absence, what a torment wouldst thou prove, were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave to entertain the time with thoughts of love, which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive, and that thou teachest how to make one twain, by praising him here who doth hence remain! xl. take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all; what hast thou then more than thou hadst before? no love, my love, that thou mayst true love call; all mine was thine before thou hadst this more. then if for my love thou my love receivest, i cannot blame thee for my love thou usest; but yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest by wilful taste of what thyself refusest. i do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief, although thou steal thee all my poverty; and yet, love knows, it is a greater grief to bear love's wrong than hate's known injury. lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows, kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes. xli. those petty wrongs that liberty commits, when i am sometime absent from thy heart, thy beauty and thy years full well befits, for still temptation follows where thou art. gentle thou art and therefore to be won, beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed; and when a woman woos, what woman's son will sourly leave her till she have prevailed? ay me! but yet thou mightest my seat forbear, and chide try beauty and thy straying youth, who lead thee in their riot even there where thou art forced to break a twofold truth, hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee, thine, by thy beauty being false to me. xlii. that thou hast her, it is not all my grief, and yet it may be said i loved her dearly; that she hath thee, is of my wailing chief, a loss in love that touches me more nearly. loving offenders, thus i will excuse ye: thou dost love her, because thou knowst i love her; and for my sake even so doth she abuse me, suffering my friend for my sake to approve her. if i lose thee, my loss is my love's gain, and losing her, my friend hath found that loss; both find each other, and i lose both twain, and both for my sake lay on me this cross: but here's the joy; my friend and i are one; sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone. xliii. when most i wink, then do mine eyes best see, for all the day they view things unrespected; but when i sleep, in dreams they look on thee, and darkly bright are bright in dark directed. then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright, how would thy shadow's form form happy show to the clear day with thy much clearer light, when to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so! how would, i say, mine eyes be blessed made by looking on thee in the living day, when in dead night thy fair imperfect shade through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay! all days are nights to see till i see thee, and nights bright days when dreams do show thee me. xliv. if the dull substance of my flesh were thought, injurious distance should not stop my way; for then despite of space i would be brought, from limits far remote where thou dost stay. no matter then although my foot did stand upon the farthest earth removed from thee; for nimble thought can jump both sea and land as soon as think the place where he would be. but ah! thought kills me that i am not thought, to leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone, but that so much of earth and water wrought i must attend time's leisure with my moan, receiving nought by elements so slow but heavy tears, badges of either's woe. xlv. the other two, slight air and purging fire, are both with thee, wherever i abide; the first my thought, the other my desire, these present-absent with swift motion slide. for when these quicker elements are gone in tender embassy of love to thee, my life, being made of four, with two alone sinks down to death, oppress'd with melancholy; until life's composition be recured by those swift messengers return'd from thee, who even but now come back again, assured of thy fair health, recounting it to me: this told, i joy; but then no longer glad, i send them back again and straight grow sad. xlvi. mine eye and heart are at a mortal war how to divide the conquest of thy sight; mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar, my heart mine eye the freedom of that right. my heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie-a closet never pierced with crystal eyes-but the defendant doth that plea deny and says in him thy fair appearance lies. to 'cide this title is impanneled a quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart, and by their verdict is determined the clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part: as thus; mine eye's due is thy outward part, and my heart's right thy inward love of heart. xlvii. betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took, and each doth good turns now unto the other: when that mine eye is famish'd for a look, or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother, with my love's picture then my eye doth feast and to the painted banquet bids my heart; another time mine eye is my heart's guest and in his thoughts of love doth share a part: so, either by thy picture or my love, thyself away art resent still with me; for thou not farther than my thoughts canst move, and i am still with them and they with thee; or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight awakes my heart to heart's and eye's delight. xlviii. how careful was i, when i took my way, each trifle under truest bars to thrust, that to my use it might unused stay from hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust! but thou, to whom my jewels trifles are, most worthy of comfort, now my greatest grief, thou, best of dearest and mine only care, art left the prey of every vulgar thief. thee have i not lock'd up in any chest, save where thou art not, though i feel thou art, within the gentle closure of my breast, from whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part; and even thence thou wilt be stol'n, i fear, for truth proves thievish for a prize so dear. xlix. against that time, if ever that time come, when i shall see thee frown on my defects, when as thy love hath cast his utmost sum, call'd to that audit by advised respects; against that time when thou shalt strangely pass and scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye, when love, converted from the thing it was, shall reasons find of settled gravity,-against that time do i ensconce me here within the knowledge of mine own desert, and this my hand against myself uprear, to guard the lawful reasons on thy part: to leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws, since why to love i can allege no cause. l. how heavy do i journey on the way, when what i seek, my weary travel's end, doth teach that ease and that repose to say 'thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!' the beast that bears me, tired with my woe, plods dully on, to bear that weight in me, as if by some instinct the wretch did know his rider loved not speed, being made from thee: the bloody spur cannot provoke him on that sometimes anger thrusts into his hide; which heavily he answers with a groan, more sharp to me than spurring to his side; for that same groan doth put this in my mind; my grief lies onward and my joy behind. li. thus can my love excuse the slow offence of my dull bearer when from thee i speed: from where thou art why should i haste me thence? till i return, of posting is no need. o, what excuse will my poor beast then find, when swift extremity can seem but slow? then should i spur, though mounted on the wind; in winged speed no motion shall i know: then can no horse with my desire keep pace; therefore desire of perfect'st love being made, shall neigh--no dull flesh--in his fiery race; but love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade; since from thee going he went wilful-slow, towards thee i'll run, and give him leave to go. lii. so am i as the rich, whose blessed key can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure, the which he will not every hour survey, for blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure. therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare, since, seldom coming, in the long year set, like stones of worth they thinly placed are, or captain jewels in the carcanet. so is the time that keeps you as my chest, or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide, to make some special instant special blest, by new unfolding his imprison'd pride. blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope, being had, to triumph, being lack'd, to hope. liii. what is your substance, whereof are you made, that millions of strange shadows on you tend? since every one hath, every one, one shade, and you, but one, can every shadow lend. describe adonis, and the counterfeit is poorly imitated after you; on helen's cheek all art of beauty set, and you in grecian tires are painted new: speak of the spring and foison of the year; the one doth shadow of your beauty show, the other as your bounty doth appear; and you in every blessed shape we know. in all external grace you have some part, but you like none, none you, for constant heart. liv. o, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem by that sweet ornament which truth doth give! the rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem for that sweet odour which doth in it live. the canker-blooms have full as deep a dye as the perfumed tincture of the roses, hang on such thorns and play as wantonly when summer's breath their masked buds discloses: but, for their virtue only is their show, they live unwoo'd and unrespected fade, die to themselves. sweet roses do not so; of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made: and so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, when that shall fade, my verse distills your truth. lv. not marble, nor the gilded monuments of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; but you shall shine more bright in these contents than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time. when wasteful war shall statues overturn, and broils root out the work of masonry, nor mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn the living record of your memory. 'gainst death and all-oblivious enmity shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room even in the eyes of all posterity that wear this world out to the ending doom. so, till the judgment that yourself arise, you live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes. lvi. sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said thy edge should blunter be than appetite, which but to-day by feeding is allay'd, to-morrow sharpen'd in his former might: so, love, be thou; although to-day thou fill thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fullness, to-morrow see again, and do not kill the spirit of love with a perpetual dullness. let this sad interim like the ocean be which parts the shore, where two contracted new come daily to the banks, that, when they see return of love, more blest may be the view; else call it winter, which being full of care makes summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more rare. lvii. being your slave, what should i do but tend upon the hours and times of your desire? i have no precious time at all to spend, nor services to do, till you require. nor dare i chide the world-without-end hour whilst i, my sovereign, watch the clock for you, nor think the bitterness of absence sour when you have bid your servant once adieu; nor dare i question with my jealous thought where you may be, or your affairs suppose, but, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought save, where you are how happy you make those. so true a fool is love that in your will, though you do any thing, he thinks no ill. lviii. that god forbid that made me first your slave, i should in thought control your times of pleasure, or at your hand the account of hours to crave, being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure! o, let me suffer, being at your beck, the imprison'd absence of your liberty; and patience, tame to sufferance, bide each cheque, without accusing you of injury. be where you list, your charter is so strong that you yourself may privilege your time to what you will; to you it doth belong yourself to pardon of self-doing crime. i am to wait, though waiting so be hell; not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well. lix. if there be nothing new, but that which is hath been before, how are our brains beguiled, which, labouring for invention, bear amiss the second burden of a former child! o, that record could with a backward look, even of five hundred courses of the sun, show me your image in some antique book, since mind at first in character was done! that i might see what the old world could say to this composed wonder of your frame; whether we are mended, or whether better they, or whether revolution be the same. o, sure i am, the wits of former days to subjects worse have given admiring praise. lx. like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end; each changing place with that which goes before, in sequent toil all forwards do contend. nativity, once in the main of light, crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd, crooked elipses 'gainst his glory fight, and time that gave doth now his gift confound. time doth transfix the flourish set on youth and delves the parallels in beauty's brow, feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, and nothing stands but for his scythe to mow: and yet to times in hope my verse shall stand, praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand. lxi. is it thy will thy image should keep open my heavy eyelids to the weary night? dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken, while shadows like to thee do mock my sight? is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee so far from home into my deeds to pry, to find out shames and idle hours in me, the scope and tenor of thy jealousy? o, no! thy love, though much, is not so great: it is my love that keeps mine eye awake; mine own true love that doth my rest defeat, to play the watchman ever for thy sake: for thee watch i whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, from me far off, with others all too near. lxii. sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye and all my soul and all my every part; and for this sin there is no remedy, it is so grounded inward in my heart. methinks no face so gracious is as mine, no shape so true, no truth of such account; and for myself mine own worth do define, as i all other in all worths surmount. but when my glass shows me myself indeed, beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity, mine own self-love quite contrary i read; self so self-loving were iniquity. 'tis thee, myself, that for myself i praise, painting my age with beauty of thy days. lxiii. against my love shall be, as i am now, with time's injurious hand crush'd and o'er-worn; when hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow with lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn hath travell'd on to age's steepy night, and all those beauties whereof now he's king are vanishing or vanish'd out of sight, stealing away the treasure of his spring; for such a time do i now fortify against confounding age's cruel knife, that he shall never cut from memory my sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life: his beauty shall in these black lines be seen, and they shall live, and he in them still green. lxiv. when i have seen by time's fell hand defaced the rich proud cost of outworn buried age; when sometime lofty towers i see down-razed and brass eternal slave to mortal rage; when i have seen the hungry ocean gain advantage on the kingdom of the shore, and the firm soil win of the watery main, increasing store with loss and loss with store; when i have seen such interchange of state, or state itself confounded to decay; ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, that time will come and take my love away. this thought is as a death, which cannot choose but weep to have that which it fears to lose. lxv. since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, but sad mortality o'er-sways their power, how with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, whose action is no stronger than a flower? o, how shall summer's honey breath hold out against the wreckful siege of battering days, when rocks impregnable are not so stout, nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays? o fearful meditation! where, alack, shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid? or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? o, none, unless this miracle have might, that in black ink my love may still shine bright. lxvi. tired with all these, for restful death i cry, as, to behold desert a beggar born, and needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, and purest faith unhappily forsworn, and guilded honour shamefully misplaced, and maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, and right perfection wrongfully disgraced, and strength by limping sway disabled, and art made tongue-tied by authority, and folly doctor-like controlling skill, and simple truth miscall'd simplicity, and captive good attending captain ill: tired with all these, from these would i be gone, save that, to die, i leave my love alone. lxvii. ah! wherefore with infection should he live, and with his presence grace impiety, that sin by him advantage should achieve and lace itself with his society? why should false painting imitate his cheek and steal dead seeing of his living hue? why should poor beauty indirectly seek roses of shadow, since his rose is true? why should he live, now nature bankrupt is, beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins? for she hath no exchequer now but his, and, proud of many, lives upon his gains. o, him she stores, to show what wealth she had in days long since, before these last so bad. lxviii. thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, when beauty lived and died as flowers do now, before the bastard signs of fair were born, or durst inhabit on a living brow; before the golden tresses of the dead, the right of sepulchres, were shorn away, to live a second life on second head; ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay: in him those holy antique hours are seen, without all ornament, itself and true, making no summer of another's green, robbing no old to dress his beauty new; and him as for a map doth nature store, to show false art what beauty was of yore. lxix. those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend; all tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due, uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend. thy outward thus with outward praise is crown'd; but those same tongues that give thee so thine own in other accents do this praise confound by seeing farther than the eye hath shown. they look into the beauty of thy mind, and that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds; then, churls, their thoughts, although their eyes were kind, to thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds: but why thy odour matcheth not thy show, the solve is this, that thou dost common grow. lxx. that thou art blamed shall not be thy defect, for slander's mark was ever yet the fair; the ornament of beauty is suspect, a crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air. so thou be good, slander doth but approve thy worth the greater, being woo'd of time; for canker vice the sweetest buds doth love, and thou present'st a pure unstained prime. thou hast pass'd by the ambush of young days, either not assail'd or victor being charged; yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise, to tie up envy evermore enlarged: if some suspect of ill mask'd not thy show, then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe. lxxi. no longer mourn for me when i am dead then you shall hear the surly sullen bell give warning to the world that i am fled from this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell: nay, if you read this line, remember not the hand that writ it; for i love you so that i in your sweet thoughts would be forgot if thinking on me then should make you woe. o, if, i say, you look upon this verse when i perhaps compounded am with clay, do not so much as my poor name rehearse. but let your love even with my life decay, lest the wise world should look into your moan and mock you with me after i am gone. lxxii. o, lest the world should task you to recite what merit lived in me, that you should love after my death, dear love, forget me quite, for you in me can nothing worthy prove; unless you would devise some virtuous lie, to do more for me than mine own desert, and hang more praise upon deceased i than niggard truth would willingly impart: o, lest your true love may seem false in this, that you for love speak well of me untrue, my name be buried where my body is, and live no more to shame nor me nor you. for i am shamed by that which i bring forth, and so should you, to love things nothing worth. lxxiii. that time of year thou mayst in me behold when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold, bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. in me thou seest the twilight of such day as after sunset fadeth in the west, which by and by black night doth take away, death's second self, that seals up all in rest. in me thou see'st the glowing of such fire that on the ashes of his youth doth lie, as the death-bed whereon it must expire consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. this thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, to love that well which thou must leave ere long. lxxiv. but be contented: when that fell arrest without all bail shall carry me away, my life hath in this line some interest, which for memorial still with thee shall stay. when thou reviewest this, thou dost review the very part was consecrate to thee: the earth can have but earth, which is his due; my spirit is thine, the better part of me: so then thou hast but lost the dregs of life, the prey of worms, my body being dead, the coward conquest of a wretch's knife, too base of thee to be remembered. the worth of that is that which it contains, and that is this, and this with thee remains. lxxv. so are you to my thoughts as food to life, or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground; and for the peace of you i hold such strife as 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found; now proud as an enjoyer and anon doubting the filching age will steal his treasure, now counting best to be with you alone, then better'd that the world may see my pleasure; sometime all full with feasting on your sight and by and by clean starved for a look; possessing or pursuing no delight, save what is had or must from you be took. thus do i pine and surfeit day by day, or gluttoning on all, or all away. lxxvi. why is my verse so barren of new pride, so far from variation or quick change? why with the time do i not glance aside to new-found methods and to compounds strange? why write i still all one, ever the same, and keep invention in a noted weed, that every word doth almost tell my name, showing their birth and where they did proceed? o, know, sweet love, i always write of you, and you and love are still my argument; so all my best is dressing old words new, spending again what is already spent: for as the sun is daily new and old, so is my love still telling what is told. lxxvii. thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear, thy dial how thy precious minutes waste; the vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear, and of this book this learning mayst thou taste. the wrinkles which thy glass will truly show of mouthed graves will give thee memory; thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know time's thievish progress to eternity. look, what thy memory can not contain commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find those children nursed, deliver'd from thy brain, to take a new acquaintance of thy mind. these offices, so oft as thou wilt look, shall profit thee and much enrich thy book. lxxviii. so oft have i invoked thee for my muse and found such fair assistance in my verse as every alien pen hath got my use and under thee their poesy disperse. thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing and heavy ignorance aloft to fly have added feathers to the learned's wing and given grace a double majesty. yet be most proud of that which i compile, whose influence is thine and born of thee: in others' works thou dost but mend the style, and arts with thy sweet graces graced be; but thou art all my art and dost advance as high as learning my rude ignorance. lxxix. whilst i alone did call upon thy aid, my verse alone had all thy gentle grace, but now my gracious numbers are decay'd and my sick muse doth give another place. i grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument deserves the travail of a worthier pen, yet what of thee thy poet doth invent he robs thee of and pays it thee again. he lends thee virtue and he stole that word from thy behavior; beauty doth he give and found it in thy cheek; he can afford no praise to thee but what in thee doth live. then thank him not for that which he doth say, since what he owes thee thou thyself dost pay. lxxx. o, how i faint when i of you do write, knowing a better spirit doth use your name, and in the praise thereof spends all his might, to make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame! but since your worth, wide as the ocean is, the humble as the proudest sail doth bear, my saucy bark inferior far to his on your broad main doth wilfully appear. your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride; or being wreck'd, i am a worthless boat, he of tall building and of goodly pride: then if he thrive and i be cast away, the worst was this; my love was my decay. lxxxi. or i shall live your epitaph to make, or you survive when i in earth am rotten; from hence your memory death cannot take, although in me each part will be forgotten. your name from hence immortal life shall have, though i, once gone, to all the world must die: the earth can yield me but a common grave, when you entombed in men's eyes shall lie. your monument shall be my gentle verse, which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read, and tongues to be your being shall rehearse when all the breathers of this world are dead; you still shall live--such virtue hath my pen- where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men. lxxxii. i grant thou wert not married to my muse and therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook the dedicated words which writers use of their fair subject, blessing every book thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue, finding thy worth a limit past my praise, and therefore art enforced to seek anew some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days and do so, love; yet when they have devised what strained touches rhetoric can lend, thou truly fair wert truly sympathized in true plain words by thy true-telling friend; and their gross painting might be better used where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused. lxxxiii. i never saw that you did painting need and therefore to your fair no painting set; i found, or thought i found, you did exceed the barren tender of a poet's debt; and therefore have i slept in your report, that you yourself being extant well might show how far a modern quill doth come too short, speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow. this silence for my sin you did impute, which shall be most my glory, being dumb; for i impair not beauty being mute, when others would give life and bring a tomb. there lives more life in one of your fair eyes than both your poets can in praise devise. lxxxiv. who is it that says most? which can say more than this rich praise, that you alone are you? in whose confine immured is the store which should example where your equal grew. lean penury within that pen doth dwell that to his subject lends not some small glory; but he that writes of you, if he can tell that you are you, so dignifies his story, let him but copy what in you is writ, not making worse what nature made so clear, and such a counterpart shall fame his wit, making his style admired every where. you to your beauteous blessings add a curse, being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse. lxxxv. my tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still, while comments of your praise, richly compiled, reserve their character with golden quill and precious phrase by all the muses filed. i think good thoughts whilst other write good words, and like unletter'd clerk still cry 'amen' to every hymn that able spirit affords in polish'd form of well-refined pen. hearing you praised, i say ''tis so, 'tis true,' and to the most of praise add something more; but that is in my thought, whose love to you, though words come hindmost, holds his rank before. then others for the breath of words respect, me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect. lxxxvi. was it the proud full sail of his great verse, bound for the prize of all too precious you, that did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? no, neither he, nor his compeers by night giving him aid, my verse astonished. he, nor that affable familiar ghost which nightly gulls him with intelligence as victors of my silence cannot boast; i was not sick of any fear from thence: but when your countenance fill'd up his line, then lack'd i matter; that enfeebled mine. lxxxvii. farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, and like enough thou know'st thy estimate: the charter of thy worth gives thee releasing; my bonds in thee are all determinate. for how do i hold thee but by thy granting? and for that riches where is my deserving? the cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, and so my patent back again is swerving. thyself thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing, or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking; so thy great gift, upon misprision growing, comes home again, on better judgment making. thus have i had thee, as a dream doth flatter, in sleep a king, but waking no such matter. lxxxviii. when thou shalt be disposed to set me light, and place my merit in the eye of scorn, upon thy side against myself i'll fight, and prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn. with mine own weakness being best acquainted, upon thy part i can set down a story of faults conceal'd, wherein i am attainted, that thou in losing me shalt win much glory: and i by this will be a gainer too; for bending all my loving thoughts on thee, the injuries that to myself i do, doing thee vantage, double-vantage me. such is my love, to thee i so belong, that for thy right myself will bear all wrong. lxxxix. say that thou didst forsake me for some fault, and i will comment upon that offence; speak of my lameness, and i straight will halt, against thy reasons making no defence. thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill, to set a form upon desired change, as i'll myself disgrace: knowing thy will, i will acquaintance strangle and look strange, be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell, lest i, too much profane, should do it wrong and haply of our old acquaintance tell. for thee against myself i'll vow debate, for i must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate. xc. then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now; now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, and do not drop in for an after-loss: ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scoped this sorrow, come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe; give not a windy night a rainy morrow, to linger out a purposed overthrow. if thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, when other petty griefs have done their spite but in the onset come; so shall i taste at first the very worst of fortune's might, and other strains of woe, which now seem woe, compared with loss of thee will not seem so. xci. some glory in their birth, some in their skill, some in their wealth, some in their bodies' force, some in their garments, though new-fangled ill, some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse; and every humour hath his adjunct pleasure, wherein it finds a joy above the rest: but these particulars are not my measure; all these i better in one general best. thy love is better than high birth to me, richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost, of more delight than hawks or horses be; and having thee, of all men's pride i boast: wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take all this away and me most wretched make. xcii. but do thy worst to steal thyself away, for term of life thou art assured mine, and life no longer than thy love will stay, for it depends upon that love of thine. then need i not to fear the worst of wrongs, when in the least of them my life hath end. i see a better state to me belongs than that which on thy humour doth depend; thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind, since that my life on thy revolt doth lie. o, what a happy title do i find, happy to have thy love, happy to die! but what's so blessed-fair that fears no blot? thou mayst be false, and yet i know it not. xciii. so shall i live, supposing thou art true, like a deceived husband; so love's face may still seem love to me, though alter'd new; thy looks with me, thy heart in other place: for there can live no hatred in thine eye, therefore in that i cannot know thy change. in many's looks the false heart's history is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange, but heaven in thy creation did decree that in thy face sweet love should ever dwell; whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be, thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell. how like eve's apple doth thy beauty grow, if thy sweet virtue answer not thy show! xciv. they that have power to hurt and will do none, that do not do the thing they most do show, who, moving others, are themselves as stone, unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow, they rightly do inherit heaven's graces and husband nature's riches from expense; they are the lords and owners of their faces, others but stewards of their excellence. the summer's flower is to the summer sweet, though to itself it only live and die, but if that flower with base infection meet, the basest weed outbraves his dignity: for sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. xcv. how sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, doth spot the beauty of thy budding name! o, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose! that tongue that tells the story of thy days, making lascivious comments on thy sport, cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise; naming thy name blesses an ill report. o, what a mansion have those vices got which for their habitation chose out thee, where beauty's veil doth cover every blot, and all things turn to fair that eyes can see! take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege; the hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge. xcvi. some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness; some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport; both grace and faults are loved of more and less; thou makest faults graces that to thee resort. as on the finger of a throned queen the basest jewel will be well esteem'd, so are those errors that in thee are seen to truths translated and for true things deem'd. how many lambs might the stem wolf betray, if like a lamb he could his looks translate! how many gazers mightst thou lead away, if thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state! but do not so; i love thee in such sort as, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. xcvii. how like a winter hath my absence been from thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! what freezings have i felt, what dark days seen! what old december's bareness every where! and yet this time removed was summer's time, the teeming autumn, big with rich increase, bearing the wanton burden of the prime, like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease: yet this abundant issue seem'd to me but hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit; for summer and his pleasures wait on thee, and, thou away, the very birds are mute; or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer that leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near. xcviii. from you have i been absent in the spring, when proud-pied april dress'd in all his trim hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, that heavy saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him. yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell of different flowers in odour and in hue could make me any summer's story tell, or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew; nor did i wonder at the lily's white, nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; they were but sweet, but figures of delight, drawn after you, you pattern of all those. yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away, as with your shadow i with these did play: xcix. the forward violet thus did i chide: sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, if not from my love's breath? the purple pride which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells in my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed. the lily i condemned for thy hand, and buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair: the roses fearfully on thorns did stand, one blushing shame, another white despair; a third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both and to his robbery had annex'd thy breath; but, for his theft, in pride of all his growth a vengeful canker eat him up to death. more flowers i noted, yet i none could see but sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee. c. where art thou, muse, that thou forget'st so long to speak of that which gives thee all thy might? spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song, darkening thy power to lend base subjects light? return, forgetful muse, and straight redeem in gentle numbers time so idly spent; sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem and gives thy pen both skill and argument. rise, resty muse, my love's sweet face survey, if time have any wrinkle graven there; if any, be a satire to decay, and make time's spoils despised every where. give my love fame faster than time wastes life; so thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife. ci. o truant muse, what shall be thy amends for thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed? both truth and beauty on my love depends; so dost thou too, and therein dignified. make answer, muse: wilt thou not haply say 'truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd; beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay; but best is best, if never intermix'd?' because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb? excuse not silence so; for't lies in thee to make him much outlive a gilded tomb, and to be praised of ages yet to be. then do thy office, muse; i teach thee how to make him seem long hence as he shows now. cii. my love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming; i love not less, though less the show appear: that love is merchandized whose rich esteeming the owner's tongue doth publish every where. our love was new and then but in the spring when i was wont to greet it with my lays, as philomel in summer's front doth sing and stops her pipe in growth of riper days: not that the summer is less pleasant now than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, but that wild music burthens every bough and sweets grown common lose their dear delight. therefore like her i sometime hold my tongue, because i would not dull you with my song. ciii. alack, what poverty my muse brings forth, that having such a scope to show her pride, the argument all bare is of more worth than when it hath my added praise beside! o, blame me not, if i no more can write! look in your glass, and there appears a face that over-goes my blunt invention quite, dulling my lines and doing me disgrace. were it not sinful then, striving to mend, to mar the subject that before was well? for to no other pass my verses tend than of your graces and your gifts to tell; and more, much more, than in my verse can sit your own glass shows you when you look in it. civ. to me, fair friend, you never can be old, for as you were when first your eye i eyed, such seems your beauty still. three winters cold have from the forests shook three summers' pride, three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd in process of the seasons have i seen, three april perfumes in three hot junes burn'd, since first i saw you fresh, which yet are green. ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, steal from his figure and no pace perceived; so your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, hath motion and mine eye may be deceived: for fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred; ere you were born was beauty's summer dead. cv. let not my love be call'd idolatry, nor my beloved as an idol show, since all alike my songs and praises be to one, of one, still such, and ever so. kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, still constant in a wondrous excellence; therefore my verse to constancy confined, one thing expressing, leaves out difference. 'fair, kind and true' is all my argument, 'fair, kind, and true' varying to other words; and in this change is my invention spent, three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. 'fair, kind, and true,' have often lived alone, which three till now never kept seat in one. cvi. when in the chronicle of wasted time i see descriptions of the fairest wights, and beauty making beautiful old rhyme in praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, i see their antique pen would have express'd even such a beauty as you master now. so all their praises are but prophecies of this our time, all you prefiguring; and, for they look'd but with divining eyes, they had not skill enough your worth to sing: for we, which now behold these present days, had eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. cvii. not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come, can yet the lease of my true love control, supposed as forfeit to a confined doom. the mortal moon hath her eclipse endured and the sad augurs mock their own presage; incertainties now crown themselves assured and peace proclaims olives of endless age. now with the drops of this most balmy time my love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes, since, spite of him, i'll live in this poor rhyme, while he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes: and thou in this shalt find thy monument, when tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent. cviii. what's in the brain that ink may character which hath not figured to thee my true spirit? what's new to speak, what new to register, that may express my love or thy dear merit? nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine, i must, each day say o'er the very same, counting no old thing old, thou mine, i thine, even as when first i hallow'd thy fair name. so that eternal love in love's fresh case weighs not the dust and injury of age, nor gives to necessary wrinkles place, but makes antiquity for aye his page, finding the first conceit of love there bred where time and outward form would show it dead. cix. o, never say that i was false of heart, though absence seem'd my flame to qualify. as easy might i from myself depart as from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie: that is my home of love: if i have ranged, like him that travels i return again, just to the time, not with the time exchanged, so that myself bring water for my stain. never believe, though in my nature reign'd all frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, that it could so preposterously be stain'd, to leave for nothing all thy sum of good; for nothing this wide universe i call, save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all. cx. alas, 'tis true i have gone here and there and made myself a motley to the view, gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, made old offences of affections new; most true it is that i have look'd on truth askance and strangely: but, by all above, these blenches gave my heart another youth, and worse essays proved thee my best of love. now all is done, have what shall have no end: mine appetite i never more will grind on newer proof, to try an older friend, a god in love, to whom i am confined. then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, even to thy pure and most most loving breast. cxi. o, for my sake do you with fortune chide, the guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, that did not better for my life provide than public means which public manners breeds. thence comes it that my name receives a brand, and almost thence my nature is subdued to what it works in, like the dyer's hand: pity me then and wish i were renew'd; whilst, like a willing patient, i will drink potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection no bitterness that i will bitter think, nor double penance, to correct correction. pity me then, dear friend, and i assure ye even that your pity is enough to cure me. cxii. your love and pity doth the impression fill which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow; for what care i who calls me well or ill, so you o'er-green my bad, my good allow? you are my all the world, and i must strive to know my shames and praises from your tongue: none else to me, nor i to none alive, that my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong. in so profound abysm i throw all care of others' voices, that my adder's sense to critic and to flatterer stopped are. mark how with my neglect i do dispense: you are so strongly in my purpose bred that all the world besides methinks are dead. cxiii. since i left you, mine eye is in my mind; and that which governs me to go about doth part his function and is partly blind, seems seeing, but effectually is out; for it no form delivers to the heart of bird of flower, or shape, which it doth latch: of his quick objects hath the mind no part, nor his own vision holds what it doth catch: for if it see the rudest or gentlest sight, the most sweet favour or deformed'st creature, the mountain or the sea, the day or night, the crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature: incapable of more, replete with you, my most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue. cxiv. or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you, drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery? or whether shall i say, mine eye saith true, and that your love taught it this alchemy, to make of monsters and things indigest such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, creating every bad a perfect best, as fast as objects to his beams assemble? o,'tis the first; 'tis flattery in my seeing, and my great mind most kingly drinks it up: mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing, and to his palate doth prepare the cup: if it be poison'd, 'tis the lesser sin that mine eye loves it and doth first begin. cxv. those lines that i before have writ do lie, even those that said i could not love you dearer: yet then my judgment knew no reason why my most full flame should afterwards burn clearer. but reckoning time, whose million'd accidents creep in 'twixt vows and change decrees of kings, tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents, divert strong minds to the course of altering things; alas, why, fearing of time's tyranny, might i not then say 'now i love you best,' when i was certain o'er incertainty, crowning the present, doubting of the rest? love is a babe; then might i not say so, to give full growth to that which still doth grow? cxvi. let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: o no! it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark, whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come: love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. if this be error and upon me proved, i never writ, nor no man ever loved. cxvii. accuse me thus: that i have scanted all wherein i should your great deserts repay, forgot upon your dearest love to call, whereto all bonds do tie me day by day; that i have frequent been with unknown minds and given to time your own dear-purchased right that i have hoisted sail to all the winds which should transport me farthest from your sight. book both my wilfulness and errors down and on just proof surmise accumulate; bring me within the level of your frown, but shoot not at me in your waken'd hate; since my appeal says i did strive to prove the constancy and virtue of your love. cxviii. like as, to make our appetites more keen, with eager compounds we our palate urge, as, to prevent our maladies unseen, we sicken to shun sickness when we purge, even so, being tuff of your ne'er-cloying sweetness, to bitter sauces did i frame my feeding and, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness to be diseased ere that there was true needing. thus policy in love, to anticipate the ills that were not, grew to faults assured and brought to medicine a healthful state which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured: but thence i learn, and find the lesson true, drugs poison him that so fell sick of you. cxix. what potions have i drunk of siren tears, distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within, applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears, still losing when i saw myself to win! what wretched errors hath my heart committed, whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never! how have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted in the distraction of this madding fever! o benefit of ill! now i find true that better is by evil still made better; and ruin'd love, when it is built anew, grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. so i return rebuked to my content and gain by ill thrice more than i have spent. cxx. that you were once unkind befriends me now, and for that sorrow which i then did feel needs must i under my transgression bow, unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel. for if you were by my unkindness shaken as i by yours, you've pass'd a hell of time, and i, a tyrant, have no leisure taken to weigh how once i suffered in your crime. o, that our night of woe might have remember'd my deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits, and soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd the humble slave which wounded bosoms fits! but that your trespass now becomes a fee; mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me. cxxi. 'tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd, when not to be receives reproach of being, and the just pleasure lost which is so deem'd not by our feeling but by others' seeing: for why should others false adulterate eyes give salutation to my sportive blood? or on my frailties why are frailer spies, which in their wills count bad what i think good? no, i am that i am, and they that level at my abuses reckon up their own: i may be straight, though they themselves be bevel; by their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown; unless this general evil they maintain, all men are bad, and in their badness reign. cxxii. thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain full character'd with lasting memory, which shall above that idle rank remain beyond all date, even to eternity; or at the least, so long as brain and heart have faculty by nature to subsist; till each to razed oblivion yield his part of thee, thy record never can be miss'd. that poor retention could not so much hold, nor need i tallies thy dear love to score; therefore to give them from me was i bold, to trust those tables that receive thee more: to keep an adjunct to remember thee were to import forgetfulness in me. cxxiii. no, time, thou shalt not boast that i do change: thy pyramids built up with newer might to me are nothing novel, nothing strange; they are but dressings of a former sight. our dates are brief, and therefore we admire what thou dost foist upon us that is old, and rather make them born to our desire than think that we before have heard them told. thy registers and thee i both defy, not wondering at the present nor the past, for thy records and what we see doth lie, made more or less by thy continual haste. this i do vow and this shall ever be; i will be true, despite thy scythe and thee. cxxiv. if my dear love were but the child of state, it might for fortune's bastard be unfather'd' as subject to time's love or to time's hate, weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather'd. no, it was builded far from accident; it suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls under the blow of thralled discontent, whereto the inviting time our fashion calls: it fears not policy, that heretic, which works on leases of short-number'd hours, but all alone stands hugely politic, that it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers. to this i witness call the fools of time, which die for goodness, who have lived for crime. cxxv. were 't aught to me i bore the canopy, with my extern the outward honouring, or laid great bases for eternity, which prove more short than waste or ruining? have i not seen dwellers on form and favour lose all, and more, by paying too much rent, for compound sweet forgoing simple savour, pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent? no, let me be obsequious in thy heart, and take thou my oblation, poor but free, which is not mix'd with seconds, knows no art, but mutual render, only me for thee. hence, thou suborn'd informer! a true soul when most impeach'd stands least in thy control. cxxvi. o thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power dost hold time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour; who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st; if nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, as thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back, she keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill may time disgrace and wretched minutes kill. yet fear her, o thou minion of her pleasure! she may detain, but not still keep, her treasure: her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be, and her quietus is to render thee. cxxvii. in the old age black was not counted fair, or if it were, it bore not beauty's name; but now is black beauty's successive heir, and beauty slander'd with a bastard shame: for since each hand hath put on nature's power, fairing the foul with art's false borrow'd face, sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, but is profaned, if not lives in disgrace. therefore my mistress' brows are raven black, her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem at such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, slandering creation with a false esteem: yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe, that every tongue says beauty should look so. cxxviii. how oft, when thou, my music, music play'st, upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds with thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st the wiry concord that mine ear confounds, do i envy those jacks that nimble leap to kiss the tender inward of thy hand, whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, at the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand! to be so tickled, they would change their state and situation with those dancing chips, o'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, making dead wood more blest than living lips. since saucy jacks so happy are in this, give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss. cxxix. the expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action; and till action, lust is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight, past reason hunted, and no sooner had past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait on purpose laid to make the taker mad; mad in pursuit and in possession so; had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; a bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. all this the world well knows; yet none knows well to shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. cxxx. my mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; coral is far more red than her lips' red; if snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; if hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. i have seen roses damask'd, red and white, but no such roses see i in her cheeks; and in some perfumes is there more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. i love to hear her speak, yet well i know that music hath a far more pleasing sound; i grant i never saw a goddess go; my mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: and yet, by heaven, i think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare. cxxxi. thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art, as those whose beauties proudly make them cruel; for well thou know'st to my dear doting heart thou art the fairest and most precious jewel. yet, in good faith, some say that thee behold thy face hath not the power to make love groan: to say they err i dare not be so bold, although i swear it to myself alone. and, to be sure that is not false i swear, a thousand groans, but thinking on thy face, one on another's neck, do witness bear thy black is fairest in my judgment's place. in nothing art thou black save in thy deeds, and thence this slander, as i think, proceeds. cxxxii. thine eyes i love, and they, as pitying me, knowing thy heart torments me with disdain, have put on black and loving mourners be, looking with pretty ruth upon my pain. and truly not the morning sun of heaven better becomes the grey cheeks of the east, nor that full star that ushers in the even doth half that glory to the sober west, as those two mourning eyes become thy face: o, let it then as well beseem thy heart to mourn for me, since mourning doth thee grace, and suit thy pity like in every part. then will i swear beauty herself is black and all they foul that thy complexion lack. cxxxiii. beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan for that deep wound it gives my friend and me! is't not enough to torture me alone, but slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be? me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken, and my next self thou harder hast engross'd: of him, myself, and thee, i am forsaken; a torment thrice threefold thus to be cross'd. prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward, but then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail; whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard; thou canst not then use rigor in my gaol: and yet thou wilt; for i, being pent in thee, perforce am thine, and all that is in me. cxxxiv. so, now i have confess'd that he is thine, and i myself am mortgaged to thy will, myself i'll forfeit, so that other mine thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still: but thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, for thou art covetous and he is kind; he learn'd but surety-like to write for me under that bond that him as fast doth bind. the statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, thou usurer, that put'st forth all to use, and sue a friend came debtor for my sake; so him i lose through my unkind abuse. him have i lost; thou hast both him and me: he pays the whole, and yet am i not free. cxxxv. whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy 'will,' and 'will' to boot, and 'will' in overplus; more than enough am i that vex thee still, to thy sweet will making addition thus. wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious, not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine? shall will in others seem right gracious, and in my will no fair acceptance shine? the sea all water, yet receives rain still and in abundance addeth to his store; so thou, being rich in 'will,' add to thy 'will' one will of mine, to make thy large 'will' more. let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill; think all but one, and me in that one 'will.' cxxxvi. if thy soul cheque thee that i come so near, swear to thy blind soul that i was thy 'will,' and will, thy soul knows, is admitted there; thus far for love my love-suit, sweet, fulfil. 'will' will fulfil the treasure of thy love, ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one. in things of great receipt with ease we prove among a number one is reckon'd none: then in the number let me pass untold, though in thy stores' account i one must be; for nothing hold me, so it please thee hold that nothing me, a something sweet to thee: make but my name thy love, and love that still, and then thou lovest me, for my name is 'will.' cxxxvii. thou blind fool, love, what dost thou to mine eyes, that they behold, and see not what they see? they know what beauty is, see where it lies, yet what the best is take the worst to be. if eyes corrupt by over-partial looks be anchor'd in the bay where all men ride, why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forged hooks, whereto the judgment of my heart is tied? why should my heart think that a several plot which my heart knows the wide world's common place? or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not, to put fair truth upon so foul a face? in things right true my heart and eyes have erred, and to this false plague are they now transferr'd. cxxxviii. when my love swears that she is made of truth i do believe her, though i know she lies, that she might think me some untutor'd youth, unlearned in the world's false subtleties. thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, although she knows my days are past the best, simply i credit her false speaking tongue: on both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd. but wherefore says she not she is unjust? and wherefore say not i that i am old? o, love's best habit is in seeming trust, and age in love loves not to have years told: therefore i lie with her and she with me, and in our faults by lies we flatter'd be. cxxxix. o, call not me to justify the wrong that thy unkindness lays upon my heart; wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue; use power with power and slay me not by art. tell me thou lovest elsewhere, but in my sight, dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside: what need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might is more than my o'er-press'd defense can bide? let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows her pretty looks have been mine enemies, and therefore from my face she turns my foes, that they elsewhere might dart their injuries: yet do not so; but since i am near slain, kill me outright with looks and rid my pain. cxl. be wise as thou art cruel; do not press my tongue-tied patience with too much disdain; lest sorrow lend me words and words express the manner of my pity-wanting pain. if i might teach thee wit, better it were, though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so; as testy sick men, when their deaths be near, no news but health from their physicians know; for if i should despair, i should grow mad, and in my madness might speak ill of thee: now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, mad slanderers by mad ears believed be, that i may not be so, nor thou belied, bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide. cxli. in faith, i do not love thee with mine eyes, for they in thee a thousand errors note; but 'tis my heart that loves what they despise, who in despite of view is pleased to dote; nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted, nor tender feeling, to base touches prone, nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited to any sensual feast with thee alone: but my five wits nor my five senses can dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee, who leaves unsway'd the likeness of a man, thy proud hearts slave and vassal wretch to be: only my plague thus far i count my gain, that she that makes me sin awards me pain. cxlii. love is my sin and thy dear virtue hate, hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving: o, but with mine compare thou thine own state, and thou shalt find it merits not reproving; or, if it do, not from those lips of thine, that have profaned their scarlet ornaments and seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine, robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents. be it lawful i love thee, as thou lovest those whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee: root pity in thy heart, that when it grows thy pity may deserve to pitied be. if thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, by self-example mayst thou be denied! cxliii. lo! as a careful housewife runs to catch one of her feather'd creatures broke away, sets down her babe and makes an swift dispatch in pursuit of the thing she would have stay, whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, cries to catch her whose busy care is bent to follow that which flies before her face, not prizing her poor infant's discontent; so runn'st thou after that which flies from thee, whilst i thy babe chase thee afar behind; but if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me, and play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind: so will i pray that thou mayst have thy 'will,' if thou turn back, and my loud crying still. cxliv. two loves i have of comfort and despair, which like two spirits do suggest me still: the better angel is a man right fair, the worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. to win me soon to hell, my female evil tempteth my better angel from my side, and would corrupt my saint to be a devil, wooing his purity with her foul pride. and whether that my angel be turn'd fiend suspect i may, but not directly tell; but being both from me, both to each friend, i guess one angel in another's hell: yet this shall i ne'er know, but live in doubt, till my bad angel fire my good one out. cxlv. those lips that love's own hand did make breathed forth the sound that said 'i hate' to me that languish'd for her sake; but when she saw my woeful state, straight in her heart did mercy come, chiding that tongue that ever sweet was used in giving gentle doom, and taught it thus anew to greet: 'i hate' she alter'd with an end, that follow'd it as gentle day doth follow night, who like a fiend from heaven to hell is flown away; 'i hate' from hate away she threw, and saved my life, saying 'not you.' cxlvi. poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, [ ] these rebel powers that thee array; why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, painting thy outward walls so costly gay? why so large cost, having so short a lease, dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? shall worms, inheritors of this excess, eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end? then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, and let that pine to aggravate thy store; buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; within be fed, without be rich no more: so shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, and death once dead, there's no more dying then. cxlvii. my love is as a fever, longing still for that which longer nurseth the disease, feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, the uncertain sickly appetite to please. my reason, the physician to my love, angry that his prescriptions are not kept, hath left me, and i desperate now approve desire is death, which physic did except. past cure i am, now reason is past care, and frantic-mad with evermore unrest; my thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are, at random from the truth vainly express'd; for i have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night. cxlviii. o me, what eyes hath love put in my head, which have no correspondence with true sight! or, if they have, where is my judgment fled, that censures falsely what they see aright? if that be fair whereon my false eyes dote, what means the world to say it is not so? if it be not, then love doth well denote love's eye is not so true as all men's 'no.' how can it? o, how can love's eye be true, that is so vex'd with watching and with tears? no marvel then, though i mistake my view; the sun itself sees not till heaven clears. o cunning love! with tears thou keep'st me blind, lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find. cxlix. canst thou, o cruel! say i love thee not, when i against myself with thee partake? do i not think on thee, when i forgot am of myself, all tyrant, for thy sake? who hateth thee that i do call my friend? on whom frown'st thou that i do fawn upon? nay, if thou lour'st on me, do i not spend revenge upon myself with present moan? what merit do i in myself respect, that is so proud thy service to despise, when all my best doth worship thy defect, commanded by the motion of thine eyes? but, love, hate on, for now i know thy mind; those that can see thou lovest, and i am blind. cl. o, from what power hast thou this powerful might with insufficiency my heart to sway? to make me give the lie to my true sight, and swear that brightness doth not grace the day? whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, that in the very refuse of thy deeds there is such strength and warrantize of skill that, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds? who taught thee how to make me love thee more the more i hear and see just cause of hate? o, though i love what others do abhor, with others thou shouldst not abhor my state: if thy unworthiness raised love in me, more worthy i to be beloved of thee. cli. love is too young to know what conscience is; yet who knows not conscience is born of love? then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove: for, thou betraying me, i do betray my nobler part to my gross body's treason; my soul doth tell my body that he may triumph in love; flesh stays no father reason; but, rising at thy name, doth point out thee as his triumphant prize. proud of this pride, he is contented thy poor drudge to be, to stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. no want of conscience hold it that i call her 'love' for whose dear love i rise and fall. clii. in loving thee thou know'st i am forsworn, but thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing, in act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn, in vowing new hate after new love bearing. but why of two oaths' breach do i accuse thee, when i break twenty? i am perjured most; for all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee and all my honest faith in thee is lost, for i have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness, oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy, and, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness, or made them swear against the thing they see; for i have sworn thee fair; more perjured i, to swear against the truth so foul a lie! cliii. cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep: a maid of dian's this advantage found, and his love-kindling fire did quickly steep in a cold valley-fountain of that ground; which borrow'd from this holy fire of love a dateless lively heat, still to endure, and grew a seething bath, which yet men prove against strange maladies a sovereign cure. but at my mistress' eye love's brand new-fired, the boy for trial needs would touch my breast; i, sick withal, the help of bath desired, and thither hied, a sad distemper'd guest, but found no cure: the bath for my help lies where cupid got new fire--my mistress' eyes. cliv. the little love-god lying once asleep laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand, whilst many nymphs that vow'd chaste life to keep came tripping by; but in her maiden hand the fairest votary took up that fire which many legions of true hearts had warm'd; and so the general of hot desire was sleeping by a virgin hand disarm'd. this brand she quenched in a cool well by, which from love's fire took heat perpetual, growing a bath and healthful remedy for men diseased; but i, my mistress' thrall, came there for cure, and this by that i prove, love's fire heats water, water cools not love. 1885 the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain notice persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. by order of the author per g. g., chief ordnance explanatory in this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods south-western dialect; the ordinary "pike-county" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. the shadings have not been done in a hap-hazard fashion, or by guess-work; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. i make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding. the author chapter one you don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "the adventures of tom sawyer," but that ain't no matter. that book was made by mr. mark twain, and he told the truth, mainly. there was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. that is nothing. i never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was aunt polly, or the widow, or maybe mary. aunt pollytom's aunt polly, she isand mary, and the widow douglas, is all told about in that bookwhich is mostly a true book; with some stretchers, as i said before. now the way that the book winds up, is this: tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. we got six thousand dollars apieceall gold. it was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. well, judge thatcher, he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece, all the year roundmore than a body could tell what to do with. the widow douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when i couldn't stand it no longer, i lit out. i got into my old rags, and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. but tom sawyer, he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers and i might join if i would go back to the widow and be respectable. so i went back. the widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. she put me in them new clothes again, and i couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. well, then, the old thing commenced again. the widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. when you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there wasn't really anything the matter with them. that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. in a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better. after supper she got out her book and learned me about moses and the bulrushers; and i was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by-and-by she let it out that moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then i didn't care no more about him; because i don't take no stock in dead people. pretty soon i wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. but she wouldn't. she said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and i must try to not do it any more. that is just the way with some people. they get down on the thing when they don't know nothing about it. here she was a bothering about moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. and she took snuff too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself. her sister, miss watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now, with a spelling-book. she worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. i couldn't stood it much longer. then for an hour it was deadly dull, and i was fidgety. miss watson would say, "don't put your feet up there, huckleberry"; and "don't scrunch up like that, huckleberryset up straight"; and pretty soon she would say, "don't gap and stretch like that, huckleberrywhy don't you try to behave?" then she told me all about the bad place, and i said i wished i was there. she got mad, then, but i didn't mean no harm. all i wanted was to go somewheres; all i wanted was a change, i warn't particular. she said it was wicked to say what i said; said she wouldn't say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. well, i couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so i made up my mind i wouldn't try for it. but i never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn't do no good. now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. she said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. so i didn't think much of it. but i never said so. i asked her if she reckoned tom sawyer would go there, and, she said, not by a considerable sight. i was glad about that, because i wanted him and me to be together. miss watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. by-and-by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. i went up to my room with a piece of candle and put it on the table. then i set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. i felt so lonesome i most wished i was dead. the stars was shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and i heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me and i couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. then away out in the woods i heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave and has to go about that way every night grieving. i got so down-hearted and scared, i did wish i had some company. pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and i flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before i could budge it was all shriveled up. i didn't need anybody to tell me that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so i was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. i got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then i tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. but i hadn't no confidence. you do that when you've lost a horse-shoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but i hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you'd killed a spider. i set down again, a shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as death, now, and so the widow wouldn't know. well, after a long time i heard the clock away off in the town go boomboomboom-twelve licksand all still againstiller than ever. pretty soon i heard a twig snap, down in the dark amongst the treessomething was a stirring. i set still and listened. directly i could just barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow!" down there. that was good! says i, "me-yow! me-yow!" as soft as i could, and then i put out the light and scrambled out of the window onto the shed. then i slipped down to the ground and crawled in amongst the trees, and sure enough there was tom sawyer waiting for me. chapter two we went tip-toeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our heads. when we was passing by the kitchen i fell over a root and made a noise. we scrouched down and laid still. miss watson's big nigger, named jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. he got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. then he says: "who dah?" he listened some more; then he come tip-toeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close together. there was a place on my ankle that got to itching; but i dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. seemed like i'd die if i couldn't scratch. well, i've noticed that thing plenty of times since. if you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepyif you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. pretty soon jim says: "saywho is you? what is you? dog my cats ef i didn' hear sumf'n. well, i knows what i's gwyne to do. i's gwyne to set down here and listen tell i hears it agin." so he set down on the ground betwixt me and tom. he leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. my nose begun to itch. it itched till the tears come into my eyes. but i dasn't scratch. then it begun to itch on the inside. next i got to itching underneath. i didn't know how i was going to set still. this miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. i was itching in eleven different places now. i reckoned i couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer, but i set my teeth hard and got ready to try. just then jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snoreand then i was pretty soon comfortable again. tom he made a sign to mekind of a little noise with his mouthand we went creeping away on our hands and knees. when we was ten foot off, tom whispered to me and wanted to tie jim to the tree for fun; but i said no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out i warn't in. then tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more. i didn't want him to try. i said jim might wake up and come. but tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and tom laid five cents on the table for pay. then we got out, and i was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do tom but he must crawl to where jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him. i waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was so still and lonesome. as soon as tom was back, we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by-and-by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house. tom said he slipped jim's hat off of his head and hung it on the limb right over him, and jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. afterwards jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the state, and then set him under the trees again and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. and next time jim told it he said they rode him down to new orleans; and after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by-and-by he said they rode him over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. niggers would come miles to hear jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, jim would happen in and say, "hm! what you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. jim always kept that five-center piece around his neck with a string and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to, just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. niggers would come from all around there and give jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. jim was most ruined, for a servant, because he got so stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches. well, when tom and me got to the edge of the hill-top, we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, may be; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. we went down the hill and found jo harper, and ben rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. so we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore. we went to a clump of bushes, and tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. then we lit the candles and crawled in on our hands and knees. we went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. tom poked about amongst the passages and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole. we went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. tom says: "now we'll start this band of robbers and call it tom sawyer's gang. everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood." everybody was willing. so tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. it swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. and nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. and if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot, forever. everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked tom if he got it out of his own head. he said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate books, and robber books, and every gang that was high-toned had it. some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets. tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. then ben rogers says: "here's huck finn, he hain't got no familywhat you going to do 'bout him?" "well, hain't he got a father?" says tom sawyer. "yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him, these days. he used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen in these parts for a year or more." they talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be fair and square for the others. well, nobody could think of anything to doeverybody was stumped, and set still. i was most ready to cry; but all at once i thought of a way, and so i offered them miss watsonthey could kill her. everybody said: "oh, she'll do, she'll do. that's all right. huck can come in." then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and i made my mark on the paper. "now," says ben rogers, "what's the line of business of this gang?" "nothing only robbery and murder," tom said. "but who are we going to rob? housesor cattleor-" "stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery, it's burglary," says tom sawyer. "we ain't burglars. that ain't no sort of style. we are highwaymen. we stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money." "must we always kill the people?" "oh, certainly. it's best. some authorities think different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them. except some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till they're ransomed." "ransomed? what's that?" "i don't know. but that's what they do. i've seen it in books; and so of course that's what we've got to do." "but how can we do it if we don't know what it is?" "why blame it all, we've to do it. don't i tell you it's in the books? do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things all muddled up?" "oh, that's all very fine to say, tom sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? that's the thing i want to get at. now what do you reckon it is?" "well i don't know. but per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead." "now, that's something like. that'll answer. why couldn't you said that before? we'll keep them till they're ransomed to deathand a bothersome lot they'll be, too, eating up everything and always trying to get loose." "how you talk, ben rogers. how can they get loose when there's a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?" "a guard. well, that is good. so somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. i think that's foolishness. why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?" "because it ain't in the booksthat's why. now, ben rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don't you?that's the idea. don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? do you reckon you can learn 'em anything? not by a good deal. no, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way." "all right. i don't mind; but i say it's a fool way, anyhow. saydo we kill the women, too?" "well, ben rogers, if i was as ignorant as you i wouldn't let on. kill the women? nonobody ever saw anything in the books like that. you fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and by-and-by they fall in love with you and never want to go home any more." "well, if that's the way, i'm agreed, but i don't take no stock in it. mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that they won't be no place for the robbers. but go ahead, i ain't got nothing to say." little tommy barnes was asleep, now, and when they waked him up he was scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't want to be a robber any more. so they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. but tom give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week and rob somebody and kill some people. ben rogers said he couldn't get out much, only sundays, and so he wanted to begin next sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on sunday, and that settled the thing. they agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected tom sawyer first captain and jo harper second captain of the gang, and so started home. i clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking. my new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and i was dog-tired. chapter three well, i got a good going-over in the morning, from old miss watson, on account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay and looked so sorry that i thought i would behave a while if i could. then miss watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. she told me to pray every day, and whatever i asked for i would get it. but it warn't so. i tried it. once i got a fish-line, but no hooks. it warn't any good to me without hooks. i tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow i couldn't make it work. by-and-by, one day, i asked miss watson to try for me, but she said i was a fool. she never told me why, and i couldn't make it out no way. i set down, one time, back in the woods, and had a long think about it. i says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't deacon winn get back the money he lost on pork? why can't the widow get back her silver snuff-box that was stole? why can't miss watson fat up? no, says i to myself, there ain't nothing in it. i went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was "spiritual gifts." this was too many for me, but she told me what she meanti must help other people, and do everything i could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself. this was including miss watson, as i took it. i went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but i couldn't see no advantage about itexcept for the other peopleso at last i reckoned i wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go. sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about providence in a way to make a body's mouth water; but maybe next day miss watson would take hold and knock it all down again. i judged i could see that there was two providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's providence, but if miss watson's got him there warn't no help for him any more. i thought it all out, and reckoned i would belong to the widow's, if he wanted me, though i couldn't make out how he was agoing to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing i was so ignorant and so kind of low-down and ornery. pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me; i didn't want to see him no more. he used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though i used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. well, about this time he was found in the river drowned, about twelve miles above town, so people said. they judged it was him, anyway; said this drowned man was just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hairwhich was all like papbut they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all. they said he was floating on his back in the water. they took him and buried him on the bank. but i warn't comfortable long, because i happened to think of something. i knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on his back, but on his face. so i knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes. so i was uncomfortable again. i judged the old man would turn up again by-and-by, though i wished he wouldn't. we played robber now and then about a month, and then i resigned. all the boys did. we hadn't robbed nobody, we hadn't killed any people, but only just pretended. we used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog-drovers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but we never hived any of them. tom sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he called the turnips and stuff "julery" and we would go to the cave and pow-wow over what we had done and how many people we had killed and marked. but i couldn't see no profit in it. one time tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was the sign for the gang to get together), and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of spanish merchants and rich arabs was going to camp in cave hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. he said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. he never could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it; though they was only lath and broom-sticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. i didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of spaniards and a-rabs, but i wanted to see the camels and elephants, so i was on hand next day, saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word, we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. but there warn't no spaniards and arabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. it warn't anything but a sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at that. we busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though ben rogers got a rag doll, and jo harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in and made us drop everything and cut. i didn't see no di'monds, and i told tom sawyer so. he said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was arabs there, too, and elephants and things. i said, why couldn't we see them, then? he said if i warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called "don quixote," i would know without asking. he said it was all done by enchantment. he said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians, and they had turned the whole thing into an infant sunday school, just out of spite. i said, allright, then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. tom sawyer said i was a numskull. "why," says he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say jack robinson. they are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church." "well," i says, "s'pose we got some genies to help uscan't we lick the other crowd then?" "how you going to get them?" "i don't know. how do they get them?" "why they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. they don't think nothing of pulling a shot tower up by the roots, and belting a sunday-school superintendent over the head with itor any other man." "who makes them tear around so?" "why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. they belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. if he tells them to build a palace forty miles long, out of di'monds, and fill it full of chewing gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from china for you to marry, they've got to do itand they've got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. and more-they've got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand." "well," says i, "i think they are a pack of flatheads for not keeping the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. and what's moreif i was one of them i would see a man in jericho before i would drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp." "how you talk, huck finn. why, you'd have to come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not." "what, and i as high as a tree and as big as a church? all right, then; i would come; but i lay i'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country." "shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, huck finn. you don't seem to know anything, somehowperfect sap-head." i thought all this over for two or three days, and then i reckoned i would see if there was anything in it. i got an old tin lamp and an iron ring and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till i sweat like an injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no use, none of the genies come. so then i judged that all that stuff was only just one of tom sawyer's lies. i reckoned he believed in the a-rabs and the elephants, but as for me i think different. it had all the marks of a sunday school. chapter four well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter, now. i had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and i don't reckon i could ever get any further than that if i was to live forever. i don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway. at first i hated the school, but by-and-by i got so i could stand it. whenever i got uncommon tired i played hookey, and the hiding i got next day done me good and cheered me up. so the longer i went to school the easier it got to be. i was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they warn't so raspy on me. living in a house, and sleeping in a bed, pulled on me pretty tight, mostly, but before the cold weather i used to slide out and sleep in the woods, sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. i liked the old ways best, but i was getting so i liked the new ones, too, a little bit. the widow said i was coming along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. she said she warn't ashamed of me. one morning i happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. i reached for some of it as quick as i could, to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but miss watson was in ahead of me, and crossed me off. she says, "take your hands away, huckleberrywhat a mess you are always making." the widow put in a good word for me, but that warn't going to keep off the bad luck, i knowed that well enough. i started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be. there is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them kind; so i never tried to do anything, but just poked along low-spirited and on the watch-out. i went down the front garden and clumb over the stile, where you go through the high board fence. there was an inch of new snow on the ground, and i seen somebody's tracks. they had come up from the quarry and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden fence. it was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so. i couldn't make it out. it was very curious, somehow. i was going to follow around, but i stooped down to look at the tracks first. i didn't notice anything at first, but next i did. there was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil. i was up in a second and shinning down the hill. i looked over my shoulder every now and then, but i didn't see nobody. i was at judge thatcher's as quick as i could get there. he said: "why, my boy, you are all out of breath. did you come for your interest?" "no sir," i says; "is there some for me?" "oh, yes, a half-yearly is in, last night. over a hundred and fifty dollars. quite a fortune for you. you better let me invest it along with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it." "no sir," i says, "i don't want to spend it. i don't want it at allnor the six thousand, nuther. i want you to take it; i want to give it to youthe six thousand and all." he looked surprised. he couldn't seem to make it out. he says: "why, what can you mean, my boy?" i says, "don't you ask me no questions about it, please. you'll take itwon't you?" he says: "well i'm puzzled. i's something the matter?" "please take it," says i, "and don't ask me nothingthen i won't have to tell no lies." he studied a while, and then he says: "oho-o. i think i see. you want to sell all your property to menot give it. that's the correct idea." then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says: "thereyou see it says 'for a consideration.' that means i have bought it of you and paid you for it. here's a dollar for you. now, you sign it." so i signed it, and left. miss watson's nigger, jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. he said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything. so i went to him that night and told him pap was here again, for i found his tracks in the snow. what i wanted to know, was, what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? jim got out his hair-ball, and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. it fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. jim got down on his knees and put his ear against it and listened. but it warn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk. he said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money. i told him i had an old slick counterfeit quarter that warn't no good because the brass showed through the silver a little, and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass didn't show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it every time. (i reckoned i wouldn't say nothing about the dollar i got from the judge.) i said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn't know the difference. jim smelt it, and bit it, and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. he said he would split open a raw irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all night, and next morning you couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball. well, i knowed a potato would do that, but i had forgot it. jim put the quarter under the hair-ball and got down and listened again. this time he said the hair-ball was all right. he said it would tell my whole fortune if i wanted it to. i says, go on. so the hair-ball talked to jim, and jim told it to me. he says: "yo'ole father doan' know, yit, what he's a-gwyne to do. sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay. de bes' way is to res' easy en let de ole man take his own way. dey's two angels hoverin' roun' 'bout him. one uv 'em is white en shiny, en 'tother one is black. de white one gits him to go right, a little while, den de black one sail in en bust it all up. a body can't tell, yit, which one gwyne to fetch him at de las'. but you is all right. you gwyne to have considable trouble in yo' life, en considable joy. sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin. dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life. one uv 'em's light en 'tother one is dark. one is rich en 'tother is po'. you's gwyne to marry de po' one fust en de rich one by-en-by. you wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung." when i lit my candle and went up to my room that night, there set pap, his own self! chapter five i had shut the door to. then i turned around, and there he was. i used to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. i reckoned i was scared now, too; but in a minute i see i was mistaken. that is, after the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitchedhe being so unexpected; but right away after, i see i warn't scared of him worth bothering about. he was most fifty, and he looked it. his hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. it was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers. there warn't no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawla tree-toad white, a fish-belly white. as for his clothesjust rags, that was all. he had one ankle resting on 'tother knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. his hat was laying on the floor; an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid. i stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair tilted back a little. i set the candle down. i noticed the window was up; so he had clumb in by the shed. he kept a-looking me all over. by-and-by he says: "starchy clothesvery. you think you're a good deal of a big-bug, don't you?" "maybe i am, maybe i ain't," i says. "don't you give me none o' your lip," says he. "you've put on considerble many frills since i been away. i'll take you down a peg before i get done with you. you're educated, too, they say; can read and write. you think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't? i'll take it out of you. who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?who told you you could?" "the widow. she told me." "the widow, hey?and who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain't none of her business?" "nobody never told her." "well, i'll learn her how to meddle. and looky hereyou drop that school, you hear? i'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better'n what he is. you lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? your mother couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died. none of the family couldn't, before they died. i can't; and here you're a-swelling yourself up like this. i ain't the man to stand ityou hear? saylemme hear you read." i took up a book and begun something about general washington and the wars. when i'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house. he says: "it's so. you can do it. i had my doubts when you told me. now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. i won't have it. i'll lay for you, my smarty; and if i catch you about that school i'll tan you good. first you know you'll get religion, too. i never see such a son." he took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and says: "what's this?" "it's something they give me for learning my lessons good." he tore it up, and says "i'll give you something betteri'll give you a cowhide." he set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says "ain't you a sweet-scented dandy, though? a bed; and bedclothes; and a look'n-glass; and a piece of carpet on the floorand your own father got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. i never see such a son. i bet i'll take some o' these frills out o' you before i'm done with you. why there ain't no end to your airsthey say you're rich. hey?how's that?" "they liethat's how." "looky heremind how you talk to me; i'm a-standing about all i can stand, nowso don't gimme no sass. i've been in town two days, and i hain't heard nothing but about you bein' rich. i heard about it away down the river, too. that's why i come. you git me that money to-morrowi want it." "i hain't got no money." "it's a lie. judge thatcher's got it. you git it. i want it." "i hain't got no money, i tell you. you ask judge thatcher; he'll tell you the same." "all right. i'll ask him; and i'll make him pungle, too, or i'll know the reason why. sayhow much you got in your pocket? i want it." "i hain't got only a dollar, and i want that to-" "it don't make no difference what you want it foryou just shell it out." he took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day. when he had got out on the shed, he put his head in again, and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when i reckoned he was gone, he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if i didn't drop that. next day he was drunk, and he went to judge thatcher's and bullyragged him and tried to make him give up the money, but he couldn't, and then he swore he'd make the law force him. the judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther not take a child away from its father. so judge thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business. that pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. he said he'd cowhide me till i was black and blue if i didn't raise some money for him. i borrowed three dollars from judge thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week. but he said he was satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for him. when he got out the new judge said he was agoing to make a man of him. so he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. and after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was agoing to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. the judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. the old man said that what a man wanted that was down, was sympathy; and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. and when it was bedtime, the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says: "look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take ahold of it; shake it. there's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and 'll die before he'll go back. you mark them wordsdon't forget i said them. it's a clean hand now; shake itdon't be afeard." so they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. the judge's wife she kissed it. then the old man he signed a pledgemade his mark. the judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night sometime he got powerful thirsty and clumb out onto the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. and when they come to look at that spare room, they had to take soundings before they could navigate it. the judge he felt kind of sore. he said he reckoned a body could reform the ole man with a shot-gun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way. chapter six well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for judge thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he went for me, too, for not stopping school. he catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but i went to school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him most of the time. i didn't want to go to school much, before, but i reckoned i'd go now to spite pap. that law trial was a slow business; appeared like they warn't ever going to get started on it; so every now and then i'd borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised cain around town; and every time he raised cain he got jailed. he was just suitedthis kind of thing was right in his line. he got to hanging around the widow's too much, and so she told him at last, that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him. well, wasn't he mad? he said he would show who was huck finn's boss. so he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me up the river about three miles, in a skiff, and crossed over to the illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was. he kept me with him all the time, and i never got a chance to run off. we lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head, nights. he had a gun which he had stole, i reckon, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me. the widow she found out where i was, by-and-by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me, but pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn't long after that till i was used to being where i was, and liked it, all but the cowhide part. it was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and i didn't see how i'd ever got to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book and have old miss watson pecking at you all the time. i didn't want to go back no more. i had stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it; but now i took to it again because pap hadn't no objections. it was pretty good times up in the woods there take it all around. but by-and-by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and i couldn't stand it. i was all over welts. he got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. once he locked me in and was gone three days. it was dreadful lonesome. i judged he had got drowned and i wasn't ever going to get out any more. i was scared. i made up my mind i would fix up some way to leave there. i had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but i couldn't find no way. there warn't a window to it big enought for a dog to get through. i couldn't get up the chimbly, it was too narrow. the door was thick solid oak slabs. pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; i reckon i had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, i was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. but this time i found something at last; i found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. i greased it up and went to work. there was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. i got under the table and raised the blanket and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out, big enough to let me through. well, it was a good long job, but i was getting towards the end of it when i heard pap's gun in the woods. i got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap came in. pap warn't in a good humorso he was his natural self. he said he was down to town, and everything was going wrong. his lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money, if they ever got started on the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and judge thatcher knowed how to do it. and he said people allowed there'd be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win, this time. this shook me up considerable, because i didn't want to go back to the widow's any more and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. then the old man got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names of, and so called them what's-his-name, when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing. he said he would like to see the widow get me. he said he would watch out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place six or seven mile off, to stow me in, where they might hunt till they dropped and they couldn't find me. that made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute; i reckoned i wouldn't stay on hand till he got that chance. the old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. there was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. i toted up a load, and went back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. i thought it all over, and i reckoned i would walk off with the gun and some lines, and take to the woods when i run away. i guessed i wouldn't stay in one place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor the widow couldn't ever find me any more. i judged i would saw out and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and i reckoned he would. i got so full of it i didn't notice how long i was staying, till the old man hollered and asked me whether i was asleep or drownded. i got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. while i was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again. he had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. a body would a thought he was adam, he was just all mud. whenever his liquor begun to work, he most always went for the govment. this time he says: "call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like. here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from hima man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. and they call that govment! that ain't all, nuther. the law backs that old judge thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. here's what the law does. the law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and upards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. they call that govment! a man can't get his rights in a govment like this. sometimes i've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. yes, and i told 'em so; i told old thatcher so to his face. lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what i said. says i, for two cents i'd leave the blamed country and never come anear it agin. them's the very words. i says, look at my hatif you call it a hatbut the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. look at it, says isuch a hat for me to wearone of the wealthiest men in this town, if i could git my rights. "oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. why, looky here. there was a free nigger there, from ohio; a mulatter, most as white as a white man. he had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed canethe awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the state. and what do you think? they said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. and that ain't the wust. they said he could vote, when he was at home. well, that let me out. thinks i, what is the country a-coming to? it was 'lection day, and i was just about to go and vote, myself, if i warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a state in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, i drawed out. i says i'll never vote agin. them's the very words i said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all mei'll never vote agin as long as i live. and to see the cool way of that niggerwhy, he wouldn't a give me the road if i hadn't shoved him out o' the way. i says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and soldthat's what i want to know. and what do you reckon they said? why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the state six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. there, nowthat's a specimen. they call that a govment that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the state six months. here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take ahold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted nigger, and-" pap was agoing on so, he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork, and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of languagemostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there. he hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. but it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. he said so his own self, afterwards. he had heard old sowberry hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but i reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe. after supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens. that was always his word. i judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then i would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or 'tother. he drank, and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets, by-and-by; but luck didn't run my way. he didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy. he groaned, and moaned, and thrashed around this way and that, for a long time. at last i got so sleepy i couldn't keep my eyes open, all i could do, and so before i knowed what i was about i was sound asleep, and the candle burning. i don't know how long i was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and i was up. there was pap, looking wild and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes. he said they was crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the cheekbut i couldn't see no snakes. he started and run round and round the cabin, hollering "take him off! take him off! he's biting me on the neck!" i never see a man look so wild in the eyes. pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over, wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming, and saying there was devils ahold of him. he wore out, by-and-by, and laid still a while, moaning. then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound. i could hear the owls and the wolves, away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. he was laying over by the corner. by-and-by he raised up, part way, and listened, with his head to one side. he says very low: "tramptramptramp; that's the dead; tramptramptramp; they're coming after me; but i won't gooh, they're here! don't touch medon't! hands offthey're cold; let gooh, let a poor devil alone!" then he went down on all fours and crawled off begging them to let him alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying. i could hear him through the blanket. by-and-by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see me and went for me. he chased me round and round the place, with a clasp-knife, calling me the angel of death and saying he would kill me and then i couldn't come for him no more. i begged, and told him i was only huck, but he laughed such a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up. once when i turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and i thought i was gone; but i slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself. pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. he put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who. so he dozed off, pretty soon. by-and-by i got the old splitbottom chair and clumb up, as easy as i could, not to make any noise, and got down the gun. i slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, and then i laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down behind it to wait for him to stir. and how slow and still the time did drag along. chapter seven git up! what you 'bout!" i opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where i was. it was after sun-up, and i had been sound asleep. pap was standing over me, looking sourand sick, too. he says "what you doin' with this gun?" i judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so i says: "somebody tried to get in, so i was laying for him." "why didn't you roust me out?" "well i tried to, but i couldn't; i couldn't budge you." "well, all right. don't stand there palavering all day, but out with you and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. i'll be along in a minute." he unlocked the door and i cleared out, up the river bank. i noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of bark; so i knowed the river had begun to rise. i reckoned i would have great times now, if i was over at the town. the june rise used to be always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins, here comes cord-wood floating down, and pieces of log raftssometimes a dozen logs together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood yards and the sawmill. i went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and 'tother one out for what the rise might fetch along. well, all at once, here comes a canoe; just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck. i shot head first off of the bank, like a frog, clothes and all on, and struck out for the canoe. i just expected there'd be somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd raise up and laugh at him. but it warn't so this time. it was a drift-canoe, sure enough, and i clumb in and paddled her ashore. thinks i, the old man will be glad when he sees thisshe's worth ten dollars. but when i got to shore pap wasn't in sight yet, and as i was running her into a little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, i struck another idea; i judged i'd hide her good, and then, stead of taking to the woods when i run off, i'd go down the river about fifty mile and camp in one place for good, and not have such a rough time tramping on foot. it was pretty close to the shanty, and i thought i heard the old man coming, all the time; but i got her hid; and then i out and looked around a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just drawing a bead on a bird with his gun. so he hadn't seen anything. when he got along, i was hard at it taking up a "trot" line. he abused me a little for being so slow, but i told him i fell in the river and that was what made me so long. i knowed he would see i was wet, and then he would be asking questions. we got five cat-fish off of the lines and went home. while we laid off, after breakfast, to sleep up, both of us being about wore out, i got to thinking that if i could fix up some way to keep pap and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me; you see, all kinds of things might happen. well, i didn't see no way for a while, but by-and-by pap raised up a minute, to drink another barrel of water, and he says: "another time a man comes a-prowling round here, you roust me out, you hear? that man warn't here for no good. i'd a shot him. next time, you roust me out, you hear?" then he dropped down and went to sleep againbut what he had been saying give me the very idea i wanted. i says to myself, i can fix it now so nobody won't think of following me. about twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank. the river was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise. by-and-by, along comes part of a log raftnine logs fast together. we went out with the skiff and towed it ashore. then we had dinner. anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch more stuff; but that warn't pap's style. nine logs was enough for one time; he must shove right over to town and sell. so he locked me in and took the skiff and started off towing the raft about half-past three. i judged he wouldn't come back that night. i waited till i reckoned he had got a good start, then i out with my saw and went to work on that log again. before he was side of the river i was out of the hole; him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder. i took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then i done the same with the side of bacon; then the whisky jug; i took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition; i took the wadding; i took the bucket and gourd, i took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot. i took fish-lines and matches and other thingseverything that was worth a cent. i cleaned out the place. i wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only the one out at the wood pile, and i knowed why i was going to leave that. i fetched out the gun, and now i was done. i had wore the ground a good deal, crawling out of the hole and dragging out so many things. so i fixed that as good as i could from the outside by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the sawdust. then i fixed the piece of log back in its place, and put two rocks under it and one against it to hold it there,for it was bent up at that place, and didn't quite touch ground. if you stood four or five foot away and didn't know it was sawed, you wouldn't ever notice it; and besides, this was the back of the cabin and it warn't likely anybody would go fooling around there. it was all grass clear to the canoe; so i hadn't left a track. i followed around to see. i stood on the bank and looked out over the river. all safe. so i took the gun and went up a piece into the woods and was hunting around for some birds, when i see a wild pig; hogs soon went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms. i shot this fellow and took him into camp. i took the axe and smashed in the doori beat it and hacked it considerable, a-doing it. i fetched the pig in and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe, and laid him down on the ground to bleedi say ground, because it was groundhard packed, and no boards. well, next i took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks in it,all i could dragand i started it from the pig and dragged it to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and down it sunk, out of sight. you could easy see that something had been dragged over the ground. i did wish tom sawyer was there, i knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy touches. nobody could spread himself like tom sawyer in such a thing as that. well, last i pulled out some of my hair, and bloodied the axe good, and stuck it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner. then i took the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn't drip) till i got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the river. now i thought of something else. so i went and got the bag of meal and my old saw out of the canoe and fetched them to the house. i took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw, for there warn't no knives and forks on the placepap done everything with his clasp-knife, about the cooking. then i carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and full of rushesand ducks too, you might say, in the season. there was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side, that went miles away, i don't know where, but it didn't go to the river. the meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake. i dropped pap's whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. then i tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it wouldn't leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again. it was about dark, now; so i dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. i made fast to a willow; then i took a bite to eat, and by-and-by laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. i says to myself, they'll follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me. and they'll follow that meal track to the lake and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers that killed me and took the things. they won't ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. they'll soon get tired of that, and won't bother no more about me. all right; i can stop anywhere i want to. jackson's island is good enough for me; i know that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. and then i can paddle over to town, nights, and slink around and pick up things i want. jackson's island's the place. i was pretty tired, and the first thing i knowed, i was asleep. when i woke up i didn't know where i was, for a minute. i set up and looked around, a little scared. then i remembered. the river looked miles and miles across. the moon was so bright i could a counted the drift logs that went a slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and smelt late. you know what i meani don't know the words to put it in. i took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start, when i heard a sound away over the water. pretty soon i made it out. it was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night. i peeped out through the willow branches, and there it wasa skiff, away across the water. i couldn't tell how many was in it. it kept a-coming, and when it was abreast of me i see there warn't but one man in it. thinks i, maybe it's pap, though i warn't expecting him. he dropped below me, with the current, and by-and-by he come a-swinging up shore in the easy water, and he went by so close i could a reached out the gun and touched him. well, it was pap, sure enoughand sober, too, by the way he laid to his oars. i didn't lose no time. the next minute i was a-spinning down stream soft but quick in the shade of the bank. i made two mile and a half, and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, because soon i would be passing the ferry landing and people might see me and hail me. i got out amongst the drift-wood and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. i laid there and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky, not a cloud in it. the sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; i never knowed it before. and how far a body can hear on the water such nights! i heard people talking at the ferry landing. i heard what they said, too, every word of it. one man said it was getting towards the long days and the short nights, now. 'tother one said this warn't one of the short ones, he reckonedand then they laughed, and he said it over again and they laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn't laugh; he ripped out something brisk and said let him alone. the first fellow said he 'lowed to tell it to his old womanshe would think it was pretty good; but he said that warn't nothing to some things he had said in his tune. i heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than about a week longer. after that, the talk got further and further away, and i couldn't make out the words any more, but i could hear the mumble; and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off. i was away below the ferry now. i rose up and there was jackson's island, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy-timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat without any lights. there warn't any signs of the bar at the headit was all under water, now. it didn't take me long to get there. i shot past the head at a ripping rate, the current was so swift, and then i got into dead water and landed on the side towards the illinois shore. i run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that i knowed about; i had to part the willow branches to get in; and when i made fast nobody could a seen the canoe from the outside. i went up and set down on a log at the head of the island and looked out on the big river and the black driftwood, and away over to the town, three mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling. a monstrous big lumber raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down, with a lantern in the middle of it. i watched it come creeping down, and when it was most abreast of where i stood i heard a man say, "stern oars, there! heave her head to stabboard!" i heard that just as plain as if the man was by my side. there was a little gray in the sky, now; so i stepped into the woods and laid down for a nap before breakfast. chapter eight the sun was up so high when i waked, that i judged it was after eight o'clock. i laid there in the grass and the cool shade, thinking about things and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. i could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there amongst them. there was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there. a couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly. i was powerful lazy and comfortabledidn't want to get up and cook breakfast. well, i was dozing off again, when i think i hears a deep sound of "boom!" away up the river. i rouses up and rests my elbow and listens; pretty soon i hears it again. i hopped up and went and looked out a hole in the leaves, and i see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways upabout abreast the ferry. and there was the ferryboat full of people, floating along down. i knowed what was the matter, now. "boom!" i see the white smoke squirt out of the ferry-boat's side. you see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my carcass come to the top. i was pretty hungry, but it warn't going to do for me to start a fire, because they might see the smoke. so i set there and watched the cannon-smoke and listened to the boom. the river was a mile wide, there, and it always looks pretty on a summer morningso i was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders, if i only had a bite to eat. well, then i happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off because they always go right to the drownded carcass and stop there. so says i, i'll keep a lookout, and if any of them's floating around after me, i'll give them a show. i changed to the illinois edge of the island to see what luck i could have, and i warn't disappointed. a big double loaf come along, and i most got it, with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out further. of course i was where the current set in the closest to the shorei knowed enough for that. but by-and-by along comes another one, and this time i won. i took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver, and set my teeth in. it was "baker's bread"what the quality eatnone of your low-down corn-pone. i got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching the bread and watching the ferry-boat, and very well satisfied. and then something struck me. i says, now i reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done it. so there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing. that is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and i reckon it don't work for only just the right kind. i lit a pipe and had a good long smoke and went on watching. the ferry-boat was floating with the current, and i allowed i'd have a chance to see who was aboard when she come along, because she would come in close, where the bread did. when she'd got pretty well along down towards me, i put out my pipe and went to where i fished out the bread, and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place. where the log forked i could peep through. by-and-by she come along, and she drifted in so close that they could a run out a plank and walked ashore. most everybody was on the boat. pap, and judge thatcher, and bessie thatcher, and jo harper, and tom sawyer, and his old aunt polly, and sid and mary, and plenty more. everybody was talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and says: "look sharp, now; the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he's washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge. i hope so, anyway." i didn't hope so. they all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might. i could see them first-rate, but they couldn't see me. then the captain sung out: "stand away!" and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that it made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke, and i judged i was gone. if they'd a had some bullets in, i reckon they'd a got the corpse they was after. well, i see i warn't hurt, thanks to goodness. the boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder of the island. i could hear the booming, now and then, further and further off, and by-and-by after an hour, i didn't hear it no more. the island was three mile long. i judged they had got to the foot, and was giving it up. but they didn't yet a while. they turned around the foot of the island and started up the channel on the missouri side, under steam, and booming once in a while as they went. i crossed over to that side and watched them. when they got abreast of the head of the island they quit shooting and dropped over to the missouri shore and went home to the town. i knowed i was all right now. nobody else would come a-hunting after me. i got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. i made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn't get at them. i catched a cat-fish and haggled him open with my saw, and towards sundown i started my camp fire and had supper. then i set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast. when it was dark i set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty satisfied; but by-and-by it got sort of lonesome, and so i went and set on the bank and listened to the currents washing along, and counted the stars and drift-logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can't stay so, you soon get over it. and so for three days and nights. no differencejust the same thing. but the next day i went exploring around down through the island. i was boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and i wanted to know all about it; but mainly i wanted to put in the time. i found plenty strawberries, ripe and prime; and green summer-grapes, and green razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. they would all come handy by-and-by, i judged. well, i went fooling along in the deep woods till i judged i warn't far from the foot of the island. i had my gun along, but i hadn't shot nothing, it was for protection; thought i would kill some game nigh home. about this time i mighty near stepped on a good sized snake, and it went sliding off through the grass and flowers, and i after it, trying to get a shot at it. i clipped along, and all of a sudden i bounded right on to the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking. my heart jumped up amongst my lungs. i never waited for to look further, but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tip-toes as fast as ever i could. every now and then i stopped a second, amongst the thick leaves, and listened; but my breath come so hard i couldn't hear nothing else. i slunk along another piece further, then listened again; and so on, and so on; if i see a stump, i took it for a man; if i trod on a stick and broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two and i only got half, and the short half, too. when i got to camp i warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand in my craw; but i says, this ain't no time to be fooling around. so i got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and i put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last year's camp, and then clumb a tree. i reckon i was up in the tree two hours; but i didn't see nothing, i didn't hear nothingi only thought i heard and seen as much as a thousand things. well, i couldn't stay up there forever; so at last i got down, but i kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time. all i could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast. by the time it was night i was pretty hungry. so when it was good and dark, i slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the illinois bankabout a quarter of a mile. i went out in the woods and cooked a supper, and i had about made up my mind i would stay there all night, when i hear a plunkety-plunk, plunkety-plunk, and says to myself, horses coming; and next i hear people's voices. i got everything into the canoe as quick as i could, and then went creeping through the woods to see what i could find out. i hadn't got far when i hear a man say: "we better camp here, if we can find a good place; the horses is about beat out. let's look around." i didn't wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy. i tied up in the old place, and reckoned i would sleep in the canoe. i didn't sleep much. i couldn't, somehow, for thinking. and every time i waked up i thought somebody had me by the neck. so the sleep didn't do me no good. by-and-by i says to myself, i can't live this way; i'm agoing to find out who it is that's here on the island with me; i'll find it out or bust. well, i felt better, right off. so i took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows. the moon was shining, and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day. i poked along well onto an hour, everything still as rocks and sound asleep. well by this time i was most down to the foot of the island. a little ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying the night was about done. i give her a turn with the paddle and brung her nose to shore; then i got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the woods. i set down there on a log and looked out through the leaves. i see the moon go off watch and the darkness begin to blanket the river. but in a little while i see a pale streak over the tree-tops, and knowed the day was coming. so i took my gun and slipped off towards where i had run across that camp fire, stopping every minute or two to listen. but i hadn't no luck, somehow; i couldn't seem to find the place. but by-and-by, sure enough, i catched a glimpse of fire, away through the trees. i went for it, cautious and slow. by-and-by i was close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground. it most give me the fan-tods. he had a blanket around his head, and his head was nearly in the fire. i set there behind a clump of bushes, in about six foot of him, and kept my eyes on him steady. it was getting gray daylight, now. pretty soon he gapped, and stretched himself, and hove off the blanket, and it was miss watson's jim! i bet i was glad to see him. i says: "hello, jim!" and skipped out. he bounced up and stared at me wild. then he drops down on his knees, and puts his hands together and says: "doan' hurt medon't! i hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'. i awluz liked dead people, en done all i could for 'em. you go en git in de river agin, whah you b'longs, en doan' do nuffn to ole jim, 'at 'uz awluz yo' fren'." well, i warn't long making him understand i warn't dead. i was ever so glad to see jim. i warn't lonesome, now. i told him i warn't afraid of him telling the people where i was. i talked along, but he only set there and looked at me; never said nothing. then i says: "it's good daylight. le's get breakfast. make up your camp fire good." "what's de use er makin' up de camp fire to cook strawbries en sich truck? but you got a gun, hain't you? den we kin git sumfn better den strawbries." "strawberries and such truck," i says. "is that what you live on?" "i couldn' git nuffn else," he says. "why, how long you been on the island, jim?" "i come heah de night arter you's killed." "yesindeedy." "what, all that time?" "and ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?" "no, sahnuffn else." "well, you must be most starved, ain't you?" "i reckon i could eat a hoss. i think i could. how long you ben on de islan'?" "since the night i got killed." "no! w'y, what has you lived on? but you got a gun. oh, yes, you got a gun. dat's good. now you kill sumfn en i'll make up de fire." so we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a fire in a grassy open place amongst the trees, i fetched meal and bacon and coffee, and coffee-pot and frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the nigger was set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done with witchcraft. i catched a good big cat-fish, too, and jim cleaned him with his knife, and fried him. when breakfast was ready, we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot. jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved. then when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied. by-and-by jim says: "but looky here, huck, who wuz it dat 'uz killed in dat shanty, ef it warn't you?" then i told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart. he said tom sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what i had. then i says: "how do you come to be here, jim, and how'd you get here?" he looked pretty uneasy, and didn't say nothing for a minute. then he says: "maybe i better not tell." "why, jim?" "well, dey's reasons. but you wouldn' tell on me ef i 'uz to tell you, would you, huck?" "blamed if i would, jim." "well, i b'lieve you, huck. ii run off." "but mind, you said you wouldn't tellyou know you said you wouldn't tell, huck." "well, i did. i said i wouldn't, and i'll stick to it. honest injun i will. people would call me a low down abolitionist and despise me for keeping mumbut that don't make no difference. i ain't agoing to tell, and i ain't agoing back there anyways. so now, le's know all about it." "well, you see, it' uz dis way. ole missusdat's miss watsonshe pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she wouldn' sell me down to orleans. but i noticed dey wuz a nigger trader roun' de place considable, lately, en i begin to git oneasy. well, one night i creeps to de do', pooty late, en de do' warn't quite shet, en i hear ole missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to orleans, but she didn' want to, but she could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it 'uz sich a big stack of money she couldn' resis'. de widder she try to git her to say she wouldn' do it, but i never waited to hear de res'. i lit out mighty quick, i tell you. "i tuck out en shin down de hill en 'spec to steal a skit 'long de sho' som'ers 'bove de town, but dey wuz people a-stirrin' yit, so i hid in de ole tumble-down cooper shop on de bank to wait for everybody to go 'way. well, i wuz dah all night. dey wuz somebody roun' all de time. 'long 'bout six in de mawnin', skifts begin to go by, en 'bout eight er nine every skit dat went 'long wuz talkin' 'bout how yo' pap come over to de town en say you's killed. dese las' skifts wuz full o' ladies en genlmen agoin' over for to see de place. sometimes dey'd pull up at de sho' en take a res' b'fo' dey started acrost, so by de talk i got to know all 'bout de killin'. i 'uz powerful sorry you's killed, huck, but i ain't no mo, now. "i laid dah under de shavins all day. i 'uz hungry, but i warn't afeared; bekase i knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin' to start to de camp meetn' right arter breakfas' en be gone all day, en dey knows i goes off wid de cattle 'bout daylight, so dey wouldn' 'spec to see me roun' de place, en so dey wouldn' miss me tell arter dark in de evenin'. de yuther servants wouldn' miss me, kase dey'd shin out en take holiday, soon as de ole folks 'uz out'n de way. "well, when it come dark i tuck out up de river road, en went 'bout two mile er more to whah dey warn't no houses. i'd made up my mine 'bout what i's agwyne to do. you see ef i kep' on tryin' to git away afoot, de dogs 'ud track me; ef i stole a skift to cross over, dey'd miss dat skift, you see, en dey'd know 'bout whah i'd lan' on de yuther side en whah to pick up my track. so i says, a raff is what i's arter; it doan' make no track. "i see a light a-comin'roun'de p'int, bymeby, so i wade' in en shove' a log ahead o' me, en swum more'n half-way acrost de river, en got in 'mongst de drift-wood, en kep' my head down low, en kinder swum agin de current tell de raff come along. den i swum to de stern uv it, en tuck aholt. it clouded up en 'uz pooty dark for a little while. so i clumb up en laid down on de planks. de men 'uz all 'way yonder in de middle, whah de lantern wuz. de river wuz arisin' en dey wuz a good current; so i reck'n'd 'at by fo' in de mawnin' i'd be twenty-five mile down de river, en den i'd slip in, jis' b'fo' daylight, en swim asho' en take to de woods on de illinoi side. "but i didn'have no luck. when we 'uz mos' down to de head er de islan', a man begin to come aft wid de lantern. i see it warn't no use fer to wait, so i slid overboard, en struck out fer de islan'. well, i had a notion i could lan' mos' anywheres, but i couldn'tbank too bluff. i 'uz mos' to de foot er de islan' b'fo' i foun' a good place. i went into de woods en jedged i wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo', long as dey move de lantern roun' so. i had my pipe en a plug er dog-leg, en some matches in my cap, en dey warn't wet, so i 'uz all right." "and so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time? why didn't you get mud-turkles?" "how you gwyne to git'm? you can't slip up on um en grab um; en how's a body gwyne to hit um wid a rock? how could a body do it in de night? en i warn't gwyne to show mysef on de bank in de daytime." "well, that's so. you've had to keep in the woods all the time, of course. did you hear 'em shooting the cannon?" "oh, yes. i knowed dey was arter you. i see um go by heah; watched um thoo de bushes." some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and lighting. jim said it was a sign it was going to rain. he said it was a sign when young chickens flew that way, and so he reckoned it was the same way when young birds done it. i was going to catch some of them, but jim wouldn't let me. he said it was death. he said his father laid mighty sick once, and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny said his father would die, and he did. and jim said you musn't count the things you are going to cook for dinner, because that would bring bad luck. the same if you shook the table-cloth after sundown. and he said if a man owned a bee-hive, and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but i didn't believe that, because i had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me. i had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them. jim knowed all kinds of signs. he said he knowed most everything. i said it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so i asked him if there warn't any goodluck signs. he says: "mighty fewan' dey ain' no use to a body. what you want to know when good luck's a-comin' for? want to keep it off?" and he said: "ef you's got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's agwyne to be rich. well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur ahead. you see, maybe you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so you might git discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f you didn'know by de sign dat you gwyne be rich bymeby." "have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, jim?" "what's de use to ax dat question? don' see i has?" "well, are you rich?" "no, but i ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich agin. wunst i had foteen dollars, but i tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out." "what did you speculate in, jim?" "well, fust i tackled stock." "what kind of stock?" "why, live stock. cattle, you know. i put ten dollars in a cow. but i ain't gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock. de cow up 'n' died on my han's." "so you lost the ten dollars." "no, i didn'lose it all. i on'y los' 'bout nine of it. i sole de hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents." "you had five dollars and ten cents left. did you speculate any more?" "yes. you know dat one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old misto bradish? well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo' dollars mo' at de en' er de year. well, all de niggers went in, but dey didn'have much. i wuz de on'y one dat had much. so i stuck out for mo' dan fo' dollars, en i said 'f i didn' git it i'd start a bank mysef. well o' course dat nigger want' keep me out er de business, bekase he say dey warn't business 'nough for two banks, so he say i could put in my five dollars en he pay me thirty-five at de en' er de year. "so i done it. den i reck'n'd i'd inves' de thirty-five dollars right off en keep things a-movin'. dey wuz a nigger name' bob, dat had ketched a wood-flat, en his marster didn'know it; en i bought it off'n him en told him to take de thirty-five dollars when de en' er de year come; but somebody stole de wood-flat dat night, en nex' day de one-laigged nigger say de bank's busted. so dey didn' none uv us git no money." "what did you do with the ten cents, jim?" "well, i 'uz gwyne to spen' it, but i had a dream, en de dream tole me to give it to a nigger name' balumbalum's ass dey call him for short, he's one er dem chuckle-heads, you know. but he's lucky, dey say, en i see i warn't lucky. de dream say let balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a raise for me. well, balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to de lord, en boun' to git his money back a hund'd times. so balum he tuck en give de ten cents to de po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it." "well, what did come of it, jim?" "nuffn' never come of it. i couldn' manage to k'leck dat money no way; en balum he couldn'. i ain'gwyne to len' no mo' money 'dout i see de security. boun' to get yo' money back a hund'd times, de preacher says! ef i could git de ten cents back, i'd call it squah, en be glad er de chanst." "well, it's all right, anyway, jim, long as you're going to be rich again some time or other." "yesen i's rich now, come to look at it. i owns mysef, en i's wuth eight hundred dollars. i wisht i had de money, i wouldn' want no mo'." chapter nine i wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island, that i'd found when i was exploring; so we started, and soon got to it, because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide. this place was a tolerable long steep hill or ridge, about forty foot high. we had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and the bushes so thick. we tramped and clumb around all over it, and by-and-by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side towards illinois. the cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together, and jim could stand up straight in it. it was cool in there. jim was for putting our traps in there, right away, but i said we didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time. jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island, and they would never find us without dogs. and besides, he said them little birds had said it was going to rain, and did i want the things to get wet? so we went back and got the canoe and paddled up abreast the cavern, and lugged all the traps up there. then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. we took some fish off of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner. the door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit and was flat and a good place to build a fire on. so we built it there and cooked dinner. we spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. we put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. pretty soon it darkened up and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and i never see the wind blow so. it was one of these regular summer storms. it would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackestfst! it was as bright as glory and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about, away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs, where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know. "jim, this is nice," i says. "i wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here. pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread." "well, you wouldn't a ben here, 'f it hadn't a ben for jim. you'd a ben down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too, dat you would, honey. chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do de birds, chile." the river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at last it was over the banks. the water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low places and on the illinois bottom. on that side it was a good many miles wide; but on the missouri side it was the same old distance acrossa half a milebecause the missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs. daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe. it was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods even if the sun was blazing outside. we went winding in and out amongst the trees; and sometimes the vines hung so thick we had to back away and go some other way. well, on every old broken-down tree, you could see rabbits, and snakes, and such things; and when the island had been overflowed a day or two, they got so tame, on account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtlesthey would slide off in the water. the ridge our cavern was in, was full of them. we could a had pets enough if we'd wanted them. one night we catched a little section of a lumber raftnice pine planks. it was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the top stood above water six or seven inches, a solid level floor. we could see saw-logs go by in the daylight, sometimes, but we let them go; we didn't show ourselves in daylight. another night, when we was up at the head of the island, just before daylight, here comes a frame house down, on the west side. she was a two-story, and tilted over, considerable. we paddled out and got aboardclumb in at an up-stairs window. but it was too dark to see yet, so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight. the light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. then we looked in at the window. we could make out a bed, and a table, and two old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor; and there was clothes hanging against the wall. there was something laying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man. so jim says: "hello, you!" but it didn't budge. so i hollered again, and then jim says: "de man ain't asleephe's dead. you hold stilli'll go en see." he went and bent down and looked, and says: "it's a dead man. yes, indeedy; naked, too. he's shot in de back. i reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. come in, huck, but doan' look at his face-it's too gashly." i didn't look at him at all. jim throwed some old rags over him, but he needn't done it; i didn't want to see him. there was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures, made with charcoal. there was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some women's under-clothes, hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing, too. we put the lot into the canoe; it might come good. there was a boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor; i took that too. and there was a bottle that had milk in it; and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. we would a took the bottle, but it was broke. there was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke. they stood open, but there warn't nothing left in them that was any account. the way things was scattered about, we reckoned the people left in a hurry and warn't fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff. we got an old tin lantern, and a butcher knife without any handle, and a bran-new barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bed-quilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a fish-line as thick as my little finger, with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar, and a horse-shoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on them; and just as we was leaving i found a tolerable good curry-comb, and jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. the straps was broke off of it, but barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it was too long for me and not long enough for jim, and we couldn't find the other one, though we hunted all around. and so, take it all around, we made a good haul. when we was ready to shove off, we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty broad day; so i made jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt, because if he set up, people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off. i paddled over to the illinois shore, and drifted down most a half a mile doing it. i crept up the dead water under the bank, and hadn't no accidents and didn't see nobody. we got home all safe. chapter ten after breakfast i wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed, but jim didn't want to. he said it would fetch bad luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha'nt us; he said a man that warn't buried was more likely to go a-ha'nting around than one that was planted and comfortable. that sounded pretty reasonable, so i didn't say no more; but i couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing i knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for. we rummaged the clothes we'd got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat. jim said he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat, because if they'd a knowed the money was there they wouldn't a left it. i said i reckoned they killed him, too; but jim didn't want to talk about that. i says: "now you think it's bad luck; but what did you say when i fetched in the snake-skin that i found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday? you said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin with my hands. well, here's your bad luck! we've raked in all this truck and eight dollars besides. i wish we could have some bad luck like this every day, jim." "never you mind, honey, never you mind. don't you git too peart. it's a-comin'. mind i tell you, it's a-comin'." it did come, too. it was a tuesday that we had that talk. well, after dinner friday, we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the ridge, and got out of tobacco. i went to the cavern to get some, and found a rattlesnake in there. i killed him, and curled him up on the foot of jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'd be some fun when jim found him there. well, by night i forgot all about the snake, and when jim flung himself down on the blanket while i struck a light, the snake's mate was there, and bit him. he jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the varmit curled up and ready for another spring. i laid him out in a second with a stick, and jim grabbed pap's whisky jug and begun to pour it down. he was barefooted, and the snake bit him on the heel. that all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes and curls around it. jim told me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away, and then skin the body and roast a piece of it. i done it, and he eat it and said it would help cure him. he made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, too. he said that would help. then i slid out quiet and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for i warn't going to let jim find out it was all my fault, not if i could help it. jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again. his foot swelled up pretty big, and so did his leg; but by-and-by the drunk begun to come, and so i judged he was all right; but i'd druther been bit with a snake than pap's whisky. jim was laid up for four days and nights. then the swelling was all gone and he was around again. i made up my mind i wouldn't ever take aholt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that i see what had come of it. jim said he reckoned i would believe him next time. and he said that handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to the end of it yet. he said he druther see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake-skin in his hand. well, i was getting to feel that way myself, though i've always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. old hank bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot tower and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but i didn't see it. pap told me. but anyway, it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool. well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a cat-fish that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds. we couldn't handle him, of course; he would a flung us into illinois. we just set there and watched him rip and tear around till he drownded. we found a brass button in his stomach, and a round ball, and lots of rubbage. we split the ball open with the hatchet, and there was a spool in it. jim said he'd had it there a long time, to coat it over so and make a ball of it. it was as big a fish as was ever catched in the mississippi, i reckon. jim said he hadn't ever seen a bigger one. he would a been worth a good deal over at the village. they peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market house there; everybody buys some of him; his meat's as white as snow and makes a good fry. next morning i said it was getting slow and dull, and i wanted to get a stirring up, some way. i said i reckoned i would slip over the river and find out what was going on. jim liked that notion; but he said i must go in the dark and look sharp. then he studied it over and said, couldn't i put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? that was a good notion, too. so we shortened up one of the calico gowns and i turned up my trowser-legs to my knees and got into it. jim hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit. i put on the sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stove-pipe. jim said nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly. i practiced around all day to get the hang of the things, and by-and-by i could do pretty well in them, only jim said i didn't walk like a girl; and he said i must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britches pocket. i took notice, and done better. i started up the illinois shore in the canoe just after dark. i started across to the town from a little below the ferry landing, and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. i tied up and started along the bank. there was a light burning in a little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and i wondered who had took up quarters there. i slipped up and peeped in at the window. there was a woman about forty year old in there, knitting by a candle that was on a pine table. i didn't know her face; she was a stranger, for you couldn't start a face in that town that i didn't know. now this was lucky, because i was weakening; i was getting afraid i had come; people might know my voice and find me out. but if this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me all i wanted to know; so i knocked at the door, and made up my mind i wouldn't forget i was a girl. chapter eleven "come in," says the woman, and i did. she says: "take a cheer." i done it. she looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says: "what might your name be?" "sarah williams." "where 'bouts do you live? in this neighborhood?" "no'm. in hookerville, seven mile below. i've walked all the way and i'm all tired out." "hungry, too, i reckon. i'll find you something." "no'm, i ain't hungry. i was so hungry i had to stop two mile below here at a farm; so i ain't hungry no more. it's what makes me so late. my mother's down sick, and out of money and everything, and i come to tell my uncle abner moore. he lives at the upper end of the town, she says. i hain't ever been here before. do you know him?" "no; but i don't know everybody yet. i haven't lived here quite two weeks. it's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. you better stay here all night. take off your bonnet." "no," i says, "i'll rest a while, i reckon, and go on. i ain't afeard of the dark." she said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in by-and-by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send him along with me. then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better off they used to was, and how they didn't know but they'd made a mistake coming to our town, instead of letting well aloneand so on and so on, till i was afeard i had made a mistake coming to her to find out what was going on in this town; but by-and-by she dropped onto pap and the murder, and then i was pretty willing to let her clatter right along. she told about me and tom sawyer finding the six thousand dollars (only she got it ten) and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot i was, and at last she got down to where i was murdered. i says: "who done it? we've heard considerable about these goings on, down in hookerville, but we don't know who 'twas that killed huck finn." "well, i reckon there's a right smart chance of people here that'd like to know who killed him. some thinks old finn done it himself." "nois that so?" "most everybody thought it at first. he'll never know how nigh he come to getting lynched. but before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named jim." "why he-" i stopped. i reckoned i better keep still. she run on, and never noticed i had put in at all. "the nigger run off the very night huck finn was killed. so there's a reward out for himthree hundred dollars. and there's a reward out for old finn tootwo hundred dollars. you see, he come to town the morning after the murder, and told about it, and was out with 'em on the ferry-boat hunt, and right away after he up and left. before night they wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see. well, next day they found out the nigger was gone; they found out he hadn't ben seen sence ten o'clock the night the murder was done. so then they put it on him, you see, and while they was full of it, next day back comes old finn and went boo-hooing to judge thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all over illinois with. the judge give him some, and that evening he got drunk and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard looking strangers, and then went off with them. well, he hain't come back sence, and they ain't looking for him back till this thing blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and fixed things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he'd get huck's money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit. people do say he warn't any too good to do it. oh, he's sly, i reckon. if he don't come back for a year, he'll be all right. you can't prove anything on him, you know; everything will be quieted down then, and he'll walk into huck's money as easy as nothing." "yes, i reckon so, 'm. i don't see nothing in the way of it. has everybody quit thinking the nigger done it?" "oh, no, not everybody. a good many thinks he done it. but they'll get the nigger pretty soon, now, and maybe they can scare it out of him." "why, are they after him yet?" "well, you're innocent, ain't you! does three hundred dollars lay round every day for people to pick up? some folks thinks the nigger ain't far from here. i'm one of thembut i hain't talked it around. a few days ago i was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log shanty, and they happened to say hardly anybody ever goes to that island over yonder that they call jackson's island. don't anybody live there? says i. no, nobody, says they. i didn't say any more, but i done some thinking. i was pretty near certain i'd seen smoke over there, about the head of the island, a day or two before that, so i says to myself, like as not that nigger's hiding over there; anyway, says i, it's worth the trouble to give the place a hunt. i hain't seen any smoke sence, so i reckon maybe he's gone, if it was him; but my husband's going over to seehim and another man. he was gone up the river; but he got back to-day and i told him as soon as he got here two hours ago." i had got so uneasy i couldn't set still. i had to do something with my hands; so i took up a needle off of the table and went to threading it. my hands shook, and i was making a bad job of it. when the woman stopped talking, i looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious, and smiling a little. i put down the needle and thread and let on to be interestedand i was, tooand says: "three hundred dollars is a power of money. i wish my mother could get it. is your husband going over there to-night?" "oh, yes. he went up town with the man i was telling you of, to get a boat and see if they could borrow another gun. they'll go over after midnight." "couldn't they see better if they was to wait till daytime?" "yes. and couldn't the nigger see better, too? after midnight he'll likely be asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up his camp fire all the better for the dark, if he's got one." "i didn't think of that." the woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and i didn't feel a bit comfortable. pretty soon she says: "what did you say your name was, honey?" "mmary williams." somehow it didn't seem to me that i said it was mary before, so i didn't look up; seemed to me i said it was sarah; so i felt sort of cornered, and was afeard maybe i was looking it, too. i wished the woman would say something more; the longer she set still, the uneasier i was. but now she says: "honey, i thought you said it was sarah when you first come in?" "oh, yes'm, i did. sarah mary williams. sarah's my first name. some calls me sarah, some calls me mary." "oh, that's the way of it?" "yes'm." i was feeling better, then, but i wished i was out of there, anyway. i couldn't look up yet. well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the place, and so forth, and so on, and then i got easy again. she was right about the rats. you'd see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner every little while. she said she had to have things handy to throw at them when she was alone, or they wouldn't give her no peace. she showed me a bar of lead, twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot with it generly, but she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn't know whether she could throw true, now. but she watched for a chance, and directly she banged away at a rat, but she missed him wide, and said "ouch!" it hurt her arm so. then she told me to try for the next one. i wanted to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course i didn't let on. i got the thing, and the first rat that showed his nose i let drive, and if he'd a stayed where he was he'd a been a tolerable sick rat. she said that was first-rate, and she reckoned i would hive the next one. she went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back and brought along a hank of yarn, which she wanted me to help her with. i held up my two hands and she put the hank over them and went on talking about her and her husband's matters. but she broke off to say: "keep your eye on the rats. you better have the lead in your lap, handy." so she dropped the lump into my lap, just at that moment, and i clapped my legs together on it and she went on talking. but only about a minute. then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face, but very pleasant, and says: "come, nowwhat's your real name?" "whwhat, mum?" "what's your real name? is it bill, or tom, or bob?or what is it?" i reckon i shook like a leaf, and i didn't know hardly what to do. but i says: "please to don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum. if i'm in the way, here, i'll-" "no, you won't. set down and stay where you are. i ain't going to hurt you, and i ain't going to tell on you, nuther. you just tell me your secret, and trust me. i'll keep it; and what's more, i'll help you. so'll my old man, if you want him to. you see, you're a runaway 'prenticethat's all. it ain't anything. there ain't any harm in it. you've been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut. bless you, child, i wouldn't tell on you. tell me all about it, nowthat's a good boy." so i said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer, and i would just make a clean breast and tell her everything, but she mustn't go back on her promise. then i told her my father and mother was dead, and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty mile back from the river, and he treated me so bad i couldn't stand it no longer; he went away to be gone a couple of days, and so i took my chance and stole some of his daughter's old clothes, and cleared out, and i had been three nights coming the thirty miles; i traveled nights, and hid day-times and slept, and the bag of bread and meat i carried from home lasted me all the way and i had a plenty. i said i believed my uncle abner moore would take care of me, and so that was why i struck out for this town of goshen. "goshen, child? this ain't goshen. this is st. petersburg. goshen's ten mile further up the river. who told you this was goshen?" "why, a man i met at day-break this morning, just as i was going to turn into the woods for my regular sleep. he told me when the roads forked i must take the right hand, and five mile would fetch me to goshen." "he was drunk i reckon. he told you just exactly wrong." "well, he did act like he was drunk, but it ain't no matter now. i got to be moving along. i'll fetch goshen before day-light." "hold on a minute. i'll put you up a snack to eat. you might want it." so she put me up a snack, and says: "saywhen a cow's laying down, which end of her gets up first? answer up prompt, nowdon't stop to study over it. which end gets up first?" "the hind end, mum." "well, then, a horse?" "the for'rard end, mum." "which side of a tree does the most moss grow on?" "north side." "if fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with their heads pointed the same direction?" "the whole fifteen, mum." "well, i reckon you have lived in the country. i thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again. what's your real name now?" "george peters, mum." "well, try to remember it, george. don't forget and tell me it's elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it's george-elexander when i catch you. and don't go about women in that old calico. you do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle, don't hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at itthat's the way a woman most always does; but a man always does 'tother way. and when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tip-toe, and fetch your hand up over your head as awkard as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. throw stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn onlike a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side like a boy. and mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap, she throws her knees apart; she don't clap them together, the way you did when you catched the lump of lead. why, i spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and i contrived the other things just to make certain. now trot along to your uncle, sarah mary williams george elexander peters, and if you get into trouble you send word to mrs. judith lotus, which is me, and i'll do what i can to get you out of it. keep the river road, all the way, and next time you tramp, take shoes and socks with you. the river road's a rocky one, and your feet 'll be in a condition when you get to goshen, i reckon." i went up the bank about fifty yards, and then i doubled on my tracks and slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house. i jumped in and was off in a hurry. i went up stream far enough to make the head of the island, and then started across. i took off the sun-bonnet, for i didn't want no blinders on, then. when i was about the middle, i hear the clock begin to strike; so i stops and listens; the sound come faint over the water, but cleareleven. when i struck the head of the island i never waited to blow, though i was most winded, but i shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started a good fire there on a high-and-dry spot. then i jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place a mile and a half below, as hard as i could go. i landed, and slopped through the timber and up the ridge and into the cavern. there jim laid, sound asleep on the ground. i roused him out and says: "git up and hump yourself, jim! there ain't a minute to lose. they're after us!" jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. by that time everything we had in the world was on our raft and she was ready to be shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid. we put out the camp fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn't show a candle outside after that. i took the canoe out from shore a little piece and took a look, but if there was a boat around i couldn't see it, for stars and shadows ain't good to see by. then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still, never saying a word. chapter twelve it must a been close onto one o'clock when we got below the island at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. if a boat was to come along, we was going to take to the canoe and break for the illinois shore; and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to put the gun into the canoe, or a fishing-line or anything to eat. we was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things. it warn't good judgment to put everything on the raft. if the men went to the island, i just expect they found the camp fire i built, and watched it all night for jim to come. anyways, they stayed away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't no fault of mine. i played it as low-down on them as i could. when the first streak of day begun to show, we tied up to a tow-head in a big bend on the illinois side, and hacked off cotton-wood branches with the hatchet and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there. a tow-head is a sand-bar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth. we had mountains on the missouri shore and heavy timber on the illinois side, and the channel was down the missouri shore at that place, so we warn't afraid of anybody running across us. we laid there all day and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the missouri shore, and upbound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. i told jim all about the time i had jabbering with that woman; and jim said she was a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set down and watch a camp fireno, sir, she'd fetch a dog. well, then, i said, why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog? jim said he bet she did think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he believed they must a gone up town to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or else we wouldn't be here on a tow-head sixteen or seventeen mile below the villageno, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. so i said i didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us, as long as they didn't. when it was beginning to come on dark, we poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket and looked up, and down, and across; nothing in sight; so jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry. jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of the reach of steamboat waves. right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it to its place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly; the wigwam would keep it from being seen. we made an extra steering oar, too, because one of the others might get broke, on a snag or something. we fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern on; because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming down stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn't have to light it for upstream boats unless we see we was in what they call a "crossing"; for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still a little under water; so up-bound boats didn't always run the channel, but hunted easy water. this second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour. we catched fish, and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. it was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed, only a little kind of a low chuckle. we had mighty good weather, as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next. every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, nothing but just a shiny bed of lights, not a house could you see. the fifth night we passed st. louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. in st. petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in st. louis, but i never believed it till i see that wonderful spread of lights at two o'clock that still night. there warn't a sound there; everybody was asleep. every night, now, i used to slip ashore, towards ten o'clock, at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and sometimes i lifted a chicken that warn't roosting comfortable, and took him along. pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. i never see pap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway. mornings, before daylight, i slipped into corn fields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them back, sometime; but the widow said it warn't anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them any morethen he reckoned it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others. so we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. but towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p'simmons. we warn't feeling just right, before that, but it was all comfortable now. i was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain't ever good, and the p'simmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet. we shot a water-fowl, now and then, that got up too early in the morning or didn't go to bed early enough in the evening. take it all around, we lived pretty high. the fifth night below st. louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. we stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. when the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high rocky bluffs on both sides. by-and-by says i, "hel-lo jim, looky yonder!" it was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. we was drifting straight down for her. the lightning showed her very distinct. she was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it when the flashes come. well, it being away in the night, and stormy, and all so mysterious-like, i felt just the way any other boy would a felt when i see that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. i wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what there was there. so i says: "le's land on her, jim." but jim was dead against it, at first. he says: "i doan' want to go fool'n 'long er no wrack. we's doin' blame' well, en we better let blame' well alone, as de good book says. like as not dey's a watchman on dat wrack." "watchman your grandmother," i says; "there ain't nothing to watch but the texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybody's going to resk his life for a texas and a pilothouse such a night as this, when it's likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?" jim couldn't say nothing to that, so he didn't try. "and besides," i says, "we might borrow something worth having, out of the captain's stateroom. seegars, i bet youand cost five cents apiece, solid cash. steamboat captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and they don't care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. stick a candle in your pocket; i can't rest, jim, till we give her a rummaging. do you reckon tom sawyer would ever go by this thing? not for pie, he wouldn't. he'd call it an adventurethat's what he'd call it; and he'd land on that wreck if it was his last act. and wouldn't he throw style into it?wouldn't he spread himself, nor nothing? why, you'd think it was christopher c'lumbus discovering kingdom-come. i wish tom sawyer was here." jim he grumbled a little, but give in. he said we mustn't talk any more than we could help, and then talk mighty low. the lightning showed us the wreck again, just in time, and we fetched the starboard derrick, and made fast there. the deck was high out, here. we went sneaking down the slope of it to labboard, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with our feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so dark we couldn't see no sign of them. pretty soon we struck the forward end of the skylight, and clumb onto it; and the next step fetched us in front of the captain's door, which was open, and by jimminy, away down through the texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we seem to hear low voices in yonder! jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come along. i says, all right; and was going to start for the raft; but just then i heard a voice wail out and say: "oh, please don't, boys; i swear i won't ever tell!" another voice said, pretty loud: "it's a lie, jim turner. you've acted this way before. you always want more'n your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because you've swor't if you didn't you'd tell. but this time you've said it jest one time too many. you're the meanest, treacherousest hound in this country." by this time jim was gone for the raft. i was just a-biling with curiosity; and i says to myself, tom sawyer wouldn't back out now, and so i won't either; i'm agoing to see what's going on here. so i dropped on my hands and knees, in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark, till there warn't but about one stateroom betwixt me and the cross-hall of the texas. then, in there i see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. this one kept pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor and saying "i'd like to! and i orter, too, a mean skunk!" the man on the floor would shrivel up, and say: "oh, please don't, billi hain't ever goin' to tell." and every time he said that, the man with the lantern would laugh, and say: "'deed you ain't! you never said no truer thing 'n that, you bet you." and once he said: "hear him beg! and yit if we hadn't got the best of him and tied him, he'd a killed us both. and what for? jist for noth'n. jist because we stood on our rightsthat's what for. but i lay you ain't agoin'to threaten nobody any more, jim turner. put up that pistol, bill." bill says: "i don't want to, jake packard. i'm for killin' himand din't he kill old hatfield jist the same wayand don't he deserve it?" "but i don't want him killed, and i've got my reasons for it." "bless yo' heart for them words, jake packard! i'll never forgit you, long's i live!" says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering. packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a nail, and started towards where i was, there in the dark, and motioned bill to come. i crawfished as fast as i could, about two yards, but the boat slanted so that i couldn't make very good tune; so to keep from getting run over and catched i crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. the man come a-pawing along in the dark, and when packard got to my stateroom, he says: "herecome in here." and in he come, and bill after him. but before they got in, i was up in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry i come. then they stood there, with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. i couldn't see them, but i could tell where they was, by the whisky they'd been having. i was glad i didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn't made much difference, anyway, because most of the time they couldn't a treed me because i didn't breathe. i was too scared. and besides, a body couldn't breathe, and hear such talk. they talked low and earnest. bill wanted to kill turner. he says: "he's said he'll tell, and he will. if we was to give both our shares to him now, it wouldn't make no difference after the row, and the way we've served him. shore's you're born, he'll turn state's evidence; now you hear me. i'm for putting him out of his troubles." "so'm i," says packard, very quiet. "blame it, i'd sorter begun to think you wasn't. well, then, that's all right. le's go and do it." "hold on a minute; i hain't had my say yit. you listen to me. shooting's good, but there's quieter ways if the thing's gotto be done. but what i say, is this; it ain't good sense to go court'n around after a halter, if you can git at what you're up to in some way that's jist as good and at the same time don't bring you into no resks. ain't that so?" "you bet it is. but how you goin'to manage it this time?" "well, my idea is this: we'll rustle around and gether up whatever pickins we've overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide the truck. then we'll wait. now i say it ain't agoin' to be more 'n two hours befo' this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. see? he'll be drownded, and won't have nobody to blame for it but his own self. i reckon that's a considerble sight better'n killin' of him. i'm unfavorable to killin'a man as long as you can git around it; it ain't good sense, it ain't good morals. ain't i right?" "yesi reck'n you are. but s'pose she don't break up and wash off?" "well, we can wait the two hours, anyway, and see, can't we?" "all right, then; come along." so they started, and i lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled forward. it was dark as pitch there; but i said in a kind of a coarse whisper, "jim!" and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a moan, and i says: "quick, jim, it ain't no time for fooling around and moaning; there's a gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat and set her drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from the wreck, there's one of 'em going to be in a bad fix. but if we find their boat we can put all of 'em in a bad fixfor the sheriff'll get 'em. quickhurry! i'll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. you start at the raft, and-" "oh, my lordy, lordy! raf dey ain' no raf' no mo', she done broke loose en gone!'en here we is!" chapter thirteen well, i catched my breath and most fainted. shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that! but it warn't no time to be sentimentering. we'd got to find that boat, nowhad to have it for ourselves. so we went a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, tooseemed a week before we got to the stern. no sign of a boat. jim said he didn't believe he could go any furtherso scared he hadn't hardly any strength left, he said. but i said come on, if we get left on this wreck, we are in a fix, sure. so on we prowled, again. we struck for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight was in the water. when we got pretty close to the cross-hall door, there was the skiff, sure enough! i could just barely see her. i felt ever so thankful. in another second i would a been aboard of her; but just then the door opened. one of the men stuck his head out, only about a couple of foot from me, and i thought i was gone; but he jerked it in again, and says: "heave that blame lantern out o' sight, bill!" he flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself, and set down. it was packard. then bill he come out and got in. packard says, in a low voice: "all readyshove off!" i couldn't hardly hang onto the shutters, i was so weak. but bill says: "hold on'd you go through him?" "no. didn't you?" "no. so he's got his share o' the cash, yet." "well, then, come alongno use to take truck and leave money." "saywon't he suspicion what we're up to?" "maybe he won't. but we got to have it anyway. come along." so they got out and went in. the door slammed to, because it was on the careened side; and in a half second i was in the boat, and jim come a tumbling after me. i out with my knife and cut the rope, and away we went! we didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor whisper, nor hardly even breathe. we went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the paddlebox, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it. when we was three or four hundred yards down stream, we see the lantern show like a little spark at the texas door, for a second, and we knowed by that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to understand that they was in just as much trouble, now, as jim turner was. then jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft. now was the first time i begun to worry about the meni reckon i hadn't had time to before. i begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix. i says to myself, there ain't no telling but i might come to be a murderer myself, yet, and then how would i like it? so says i to jim: "the first light we see, we'll land a hundred yards below it or above it, in a place where it's a good hiding-place for you and the skiff, and then i'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their time comes." but that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again, and this time worse than ever. the rain poured down, and never a light showed; everybody in bed, i reckon. we boomed along down the river, watching for lights and watching for our raft. after a long time the rain let up, but the clouds staid, and the lightning kept whimpering, and by-and-by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we made for it. it was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. we seen a light, now, away down to the right, on shore. so i said i would go for it. the skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole, there on the wreck. we hustled it onto the raft in a pile, and i told jim to float along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone about two mile, and keep it burning till i come; then i manned my oars and shoved for the light. as i got down towards it, three or four more showedup on a hillside. it was a village. i closed in above the shore-light, and laid on my oars and floated. as i went by, i see it was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferry-boat. i skimmed around for the watchman, a-wondering whereabouts he slept; and by-and-by i found him roosting on the bitts, forward, with his head down between his knees. i give his shoulder two or three little shoves, and begun to cry. he stirred up, in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only me, he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says: "hello, what's up? don't cry, bub. what's the trouble?" i says: "pap, and mam, and sis, and-" then i broke down. he says: "oh, dang it, now, don't take on so, we all has to have our troubles and this'n 'll come out all right. what's the matter with 'em?" "they'rethey'reare you the watchman of the boat?" "yes," he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like. "i'm the captain and the owner, and the mate, and the pilot, and watchman, and head deck-hand; and sometimes i'm the freight and passengers. i ain't as rich as old jim hornback, and i can't be so blame' generous and good to tom, dick and harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he does; but i've told him a many a time 't i wouldn't trade places with him; for, says i, a sailor's life's the life for me, and i'm derned if i'd live two mile out o' town, where there ain't nothing ever goin'on, not for all his spondulicks and as much more on top of it. says i-" i broke in and says: "they're in an awful peck of trouble, and-" "who is?" "why, pap, and mam, and sis, and miss hooker; and if you'd take your ferry-boat and go up there-" "up where? where are they?" "on the wreck." "what wreck?" "why, there ain't but one." "what, you don't mean the walter scott?" "yes." "good land! what are they doin' there, for gracious sakes?" "well, they didn't go there a-purpose." "i bet they didn't! why, great goodness, there ain't no chance for 'em if they don't git off mighty quick! why, how in the nation did they ever git into such a scrape?" "easy enough. miss hooker was a-visiting, up there to the town-" "yes, booth's landinggo on." "she was a-visiting, there at booth's landing, and just in the edge of the evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horse-ferry, to stay all night at her friend's house, miss what-you-may-call-her, i disremember her name, and they lost their steering-oar, and swung around and went afloating down, stern-first, about two mile, and saddle-baggsed on the wreck, and the ferry man and the nigger woman and the horses was all lost, but miss hooker she made a grab and got aboard the wreck. well, about an hour after dark, we come along down in our trading-scow, and it was so dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it; and so we saddle-baggsed; but all of us was saved but bill whippleand oh, he was the best cretur!i most wish't it had been me, i do." "my george! it's the beatenest thing i ever struck. and then what did you all do?" "well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide there, we couldn't make nobody hear. so pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help somehow. i was the only one that could swim, so i made a dash for it, and miss hooker she said if i didn't strike help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle, and he'd fix the thing. i made the land about a mile below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do something, but they said, 'what, in such a night and such a current? there ain't no sense in it; go for the steam-ferry.' now if you'll go, and-" "by jackson, i'd like to, and blame it i don't know but i will; but who in the dingnation's agoin' to pay for it? do you reckon your pap-" "why that's all right. miss hooker she told me, particular, that her uncle hornback-" "great guns! is he her uncle? looky here, you break for that light over yonder-way, and turn out west when you git there, and about a quarter of a mile out you'll come to the tavern; tell 'em to dart you out to jim hornback's and he'll foot the bill. and don't you fool around any, because he'll want to know the news. tell him i'll have his niece all safe before he can get to town. hump yourself, now; i'm agoing up around the corner here, to roust out my engineer." i struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner i went back and got into my skiff and bailed her out and then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among some woodboats; for i couldn't rest easy till i could see the ferry-boat start. but take it all around, i was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would a done it. i wished the widow knowed about it. i judged she would be proud of me for helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in. well, before long, here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along down! a kind of cold shiver went through me, and then i struck out for her. she was very deep, and i see in a minute there warn't much chance for anybody being alive in her. i pulled all around her and hollered a little, but there wasn't any answer; all dead still. i felt a little bit heavyhearted about the gang, but not much, for i reckoned if they could stand it, i could. then here comes the ferry-boat; so i shoved for the middle of the river on a long down-stream slant; and when i judged i was out of eye-reach, i laid on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for miss hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her uncle horseback would want them; and then pretty soon the ferryboat give it up and went for shore, and i laid into my work and went a-booming down the river. it did seem a powerful long time before jim's light showed up; and when it did show, it looked like it was a thousand mile off. by the time i got there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east; so we struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned in and slept like dead people. chapter fourteen by-and-by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole off the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three boxes of seegars. we hadn't ever been this rich before, in neither of our lives. the seegars was prime. we laid off all the afternoon in the woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good time. i told jim all about what happened inside the wreck, and at the ferry-boat; and i said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said he didn't want no more adventures. he said that when i went in the texas and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone, he nearly died; because he judged it was all up with him, anyway it could be fixed; for if he didn't get saved he would get drownded; and if he did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and then miss watson would sell him south, sure. well, he was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head, for a nigger. i read considerable to jim about kings, and dukes, and earls, and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, 'stead of mister; and jim's eyes bugged out, and he was interested. he says: "i didn' know dey was so many un um. i hain't hearn 'bout none un um, skasely, but old king sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat's in a pack er k'yards. how much do a king git?" "get?" i says; "why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it; they can have just as much as they want; everything belongs to them." "ain't dat gay? en what dey got to do, huck?" "they don't do nothing! why how you talk. they just set around." "nois dat so?" "of course it is. they just set around. except maybe when there's a war; then they go to the war. but other times they just lazy around; or go hawkingjust hawking and spsh!d'you hear a noise?" we skipped out and looked; but it warn't nothing but the flutter of a steamboat's wheel, away down coming around the point; so we come back. "yes," says i, "and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the parlyment; and if everybody don't go just so he whacks their heads off. but mostly they hang round the harem." "roun' de which?" "what's de harem?" "the place where he keep his wives. don't you know about the harem? solomon had one; he had about a million wives." "why, yes, dat's so; ii'd done forgot it. a harem's a bo'd'n-house, i reck'on. mos' likely dey has rackety times in de nussery. en i reck'n de wives quarrels considable; en dat 'crease de racket. yit dey say sollermun de wises' man dat ever live'. i doan' take no stock in dat. bekase why would a wise man want to live in de mids'er sich a blimblammin' all de time? no'deed he wouldn't. a wise man 'ud take en buil' a biler-factry; en den he could shet down de biler-factry when he want to res'." "well, but he was the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told me so, her own self." "i doan k'yer what de widder say, he warn't no wise man, nuther. he had some er de dad-fetchedes' ways i ever see. does you know 'bout dat chile dat he 'uz gwyne to chop in two?" "yes, the widow told me all about it." "well, den! warn't dat de beatenes' notion in de worl'? you jes' take en look at it a minute. dah's de stump, dahdat's one er de women; heah's youdat's de yuther one; i's sollermun; en dish-yer dollar bill's de chile. bofe un you claims it. what does i do? does i shin aroun' mongs' de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill do b'long to, en han' it over to de right one, all safe en soun', de way dat anybody dat had any gumption would? noi take en whack de bill in two, en give half un it to you, en de yuther half to de yuther woman. dat's de way sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile. now i want to ast you: what's de use er dat half a bill?can't buy noth'n wid it. en what use is a half a chile? i would'n give a dern for a million un um." "but hang it, jim, you've clean missed the pointblame it, you've missed it a thousand mile." "who? me? go 'long. doan' talk to me 'bout yo' pints. i reck'n i knows sense when i sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as dat. de 'spute warn't 'bout a half a chile, de 'spute was 'bout a whole chile; en de man dat think he kin settle a 'spute 'bout a whole chile wid a half a chile, doan' know enough to come in out'n de rain. doan'talk to me 'bout sollermun, huck, i knows him by de back." "but i tell you don't get the point." "blame de pint! i reck'n i knows what i knows. en mine you, de real pint is down furderit's down deeper. it lays in de way sollermun was raised. you take a man dat's got on'y one er two chillen; is dat man gwyne to be waseful o' chillen? no, he ain't; he can't'ford it. he know how to value 'em. but you take a man dat's got 'bout five million chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt. he as soon chop a chile in two as a cat. dey's plenty mo'. a chile er two, mo'er less, warn't no consekens to sollermun, dad fetch him!" i never see such a nigger. if he got a notion in his head once, there warn't no getting it out again. he was the most down on solomon of any nigger i ever see. so i went to talking about other kings, and let solomon slide. i told about louis sixteenth that got his head cut off in france long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would a been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there. "po' little chap." "but some says he got out and got away, and come to america." "dat's good! but he'll be ooty lonesomedey ain' no kings here, is dey, huck?" "no." "den he cain't git no situation. what he gwyne to do?" "well, i don't know. some of them gets on the police, and some of them learns people how to talk french." "why, huck, doan' de french people talk de same way we does?" "no, jim; you couldn't understand a word they saidnot a single word." "well, now, i be ding-busted! how do dat come?" "i don't know; but it's so. i got some of their jabber out of a book. spose a man was to come to you and say 'polly-voo-franzy'what would you think?" "i wouldn't think nuff'n; i'd take en bust him over de head. dat is, if he warn't white. i wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat." "shucks, it ain't calling you anything. it's only saying do you know how to talk french." "well, den, why couldn't he say it?" "why, he is a-saying it. that's a frenchman's way of saying it." "well, it's a blame' ridicklous way, en i doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout it. dey ain' no sense in it." "looky here, jim; does a cat talk like we do?" "no, a cat don't." "well, does a cow?" "no, a cow don't, nuther." "does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?" "no, dey don't." "it's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't it?" "course." "and ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us?" "why, mos' sholy it is." "well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a frenchman to talk different from us? you answer me that." "is a cat a man, huck?" "no." "well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. is a cow a man?er is a cow a cat?" "no, she ain't either of them." "well, den, she ain' got no business to talk like either one or the yuther of 'em. is a frenchman a man?" "well, den! dad blame it, why doan' he talk like a man? you answer me dat!" i see it warn't no use wasting wordsyou can't learn a nigger to argue. so i quit. chapter fifteen we judged that three nights more would fetch us to cairo, at the bottom of illinois, where the ohio river comes in, and that was what we was after. we would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the ohio amongst the free states, and then be out of trouble. well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a tow-head to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in fog; but when i paddled ahead in the canoe, with the line, to make fast, there warn't anything but little saplings to tie to. i passed the line around one of them right on the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current, and the raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she went. i see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared i couldn't budge for most a half a minute it seemed to meand then there warn't no raft in sight; you couldn't see twenty yards. i jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern and grabbed the paddle and set her back a stroke. but she didn't come. i was in such a hurry i hadn't untied her. i got up and tried to untie her, but i was so excited my hands shook so i couldn't hardly do anything with them. as soon as i got started i took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right down to the tow-head. that was all right as far as it went, but the tow-head warn't sixty yards long, and the minute i flew by the foot of it i shot out into the solid white fog, and hadn't no more idea which way i was going than a dead man. thinks i, it won't do to paddle; first i know i'll run into the bank or a tow-head or something; i got to set still and float, and yet it's mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time. i whooped and listened. away down there, somewheres, i hears a small whoop, and up comes my spirits. i went tearing after it, listening sharp to hear it again. the next time it come, i see i warn't heading for it but heading away to the right of it. and the next time, i was heading away to the left of itand not gaining on it much, either, for i was flying around, this way and that and 'tother, but it was going straight ahead all the time. i did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops that was making the trouble for me. well, i fought along, and directly i hears the whoop behind me. i was tangled good, now. that was somebody else's whoop, or else i was turned around. i throwed the paddle down. i heard the whoop again; it was behind me yet, but in a different place; it kept coming and kept changing its place, and i kept answering, till by-and-by it was in front of me again and i knowed the current had swung the canoe's head down stream and i was all right, if that was jim and not some other raftsman hollering. i couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, for nothing don't look natural nor sound natural in a fog. the whooping went on, and in about a minute i come a booming down on a cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed me off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared, the current was tearing by them so swift. in another second or two it was solid white and still again. i set perfectly still, then, listening to my heart thump, and i reckon i didn't draw a breath while it thumped a hundred. i just give up, then. i knowed what the matter was. that cut bank was an island, and jim had gone down 'tother side of it. it warn't no tow-head, that you could float by in ten minutes. it had the big timber of a regular island; it might be five or six mile long and more than a half a mile wide. i kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, i reckon. i was floating along, of course, four or five mile an hour; but you don't ever think of that. no, you feel like you are laying dead still on the water; and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by, you don't think to yourself how fast you're going, but you catch your breath and think, my! how that snag's tearing along. if you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way, by yourself, in the night, you try it onceyou'll see. next, for about a half an hour, i whoops now and then; at last i hears the answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but i couldn't do it, and directly i judged i'd got into a nest of tow-heads, for i had little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me, sometimes just a narrow channel between; and some that i couldn't see, i knowed was there, because i'd hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. well, i warn't long losing the whoops, down amongst the tow-heads; and i only tried to chase them a little while, anyway, because it was worse than chasing a jack-o-lantern. you never knowed a sound dodge around so, and swap places so quick and so much. i had to claw away from the bank pretty lively, four or five times, to keep from knocking the islands out of the river; and so i judged the raft must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it would get further ahead and clear out of hearingit was floating a little faster than what i was. well, i seemed to be in the open river again, by-and-by, but i couldn't hear no sign of a whoop nowheres. i reckoned jim had fetched up on a snag, maybe, and it was all up with him. i was good and tired, so i laid down in the canoe and said i wouldn't bother no more. i didn't want to go to sleep, of course; but i was so sleepy i couldn't help it; so i thought i would take just one little cat-nap. but i reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when i waked up the stars was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and i was spinning down a big bend stern first. first i didn't know where i was; i thought i was dreaming; and when things begun to come back to me, they seemed to come up dim out of last week. it was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest kind of timber on both banks; just a solid wall, as well as i could see, by the stars. i looked away down stream, and seen a black speck on the water. i took out after it; but when i got to it warn't nothing but a couple of saw-logs made fast together. then i see another speck, and chased that; then another, and this time i was right. it was the raft. when i got to it jim was setting there with his head down between his knees, asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering oar. the other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and dirt. so she'd had a rough time. i made fast and laid down under jim's nose on the raft, and begun to gap, and stretch my fists out against jim, and says: "hello, jim, have i been asleep? why didn't you stir me up?" "goodness gracious, is dat you, huck? en you ain' deadyou ain'drowndedyou's back again? it's too good for true, honey, it's too good for true. lemme look at you, chile, lemme feel o' you. no, you ain' dead! you's back again, 'live en soun', jis de same ole huckde same ole huck, thanks to goodness!" "what's the matter with you, jim? you been a drinking?" "drinkin'? has i ben a drinkin'? has i had a chance to be a drinkin'?" "well, then, what makes you talk so wild?" "how does i talk wild?" "how? why, hain't you been talking about my coming back, and all that stuff, as if i'd been gone away?" "huckhuck finn, you look me in de eye; look me in de eye. hain't you ben gone away?" "gone away? why, what in the nation do you mean? i hain't been gone anywheres. where would i go to?" "well, looky here, boss, dey's sumf'n wrong, dey is. is i me, or who is i? is i heah, or whah is i? now dat's what i wants to know?" "well, i think you're here, plain enough, but i think you're a tangle-headed old fool, jim." "i is, is i? well you answer me dis. didn't you tote out de line in de canoe, fer to make fas' to de tow-head?" "no, i didn't. what tow-head? i hain't seen no tow-head." "you hain't seen no tow-head? looky heredidn't de line pull loose en de raf' go a hummin' down de river, en leave you en de canoe behine in de fog?" "what fog?" "why de fog. de fog dat's ben aroun' all night. en didn't you whoop, en didn't i whoop, tell we got mix' up in de islands en one un us got los' en 'tother one was jis' as good as los', 'kase he didn' know whah he wuz? en didn't i bust up again a lot er dem islands en have a turrible time en mos' git drownded? now ain'dat so, bossain't it so? you answer me dat." "well, this is too many for me, jim. i hain't seen no fog, nor no islands nor no troubles, nor nothing. i been setting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and i reckon i done the same. you couldn't a got drunk in that time, so of course you've been dreaming." "dad fetch it, how is i gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?" "well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it happen." "but huck, it's all jis' as plain to me as-" "it don't make no difference how plain it is, there ain't nothing in it. i know, because i've been here all the time." jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying over it. then he says: "well, den, i reck'n i did dream it, huck; but dog my cats ef it ain't de powerfullest dream i ever see. en i hain't ever had no dream b'fo' dat's tired me like dis one." "oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like everything, sometimes. but this one was a staving dreamtell me all about it, jim." so jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it happened, only he painted it up considerable. then he said he must start in and "'terpret" it, because it was sent for a warning. he said the first tow-head stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another man that would get us away from him. the whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't try hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad luck, 'stead of keeping us out of it. the lot of tow-heads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, which was the free states, and wouldn't have no more trouble. it had clouded up pretty dark just after i got onto the raft, but it was clearing up again, now. "oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough, as far as it goes, jim," i says; "but what does these things stand for?" it was the leaves and rubbish on the raft, and the smashed oar. you could see them first rate, now. jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. he had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again, right away. but when he did get the thing straightened around, he looked at me steady, without ever smiling, and says: "what do dey stan' for? i's gwyne to tell you. when i got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en i didn' k'yer no mo' what become er me en de raf'. en when i wake up en fine you back agin', all safe en soun', de tears come en i could a got down on my knees en kiss' yo' foot i's so thankful. en all you wuz thinkin 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole jim wid a lie. dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed." then he got up slow, and walked to the wigwam, and went in there, without saying anything but that. but that was enough. it made me feel so mean i could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back. it was fifteen minutes before i could work myself up to go and humble myself to a niggerbut i done it, and i warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. i didn't do him no more mean tricks, and i wouldn't done that one if i'd a knowed it would make him feel that way. chapter sixteen we slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession. she had four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty men, likely. she had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end. there was a power of style about her. it amounted to something being a raftsman on such a craft as that. we went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got hot. the river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on both sides; you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or a light. we talked about cairo, and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. i said likely we wouldn't, because i had heard say there warn't but about a dozen houses there, and if they didn't happen to have them lit up, how was we going to know we was passing a town? jim said if the two big rivers joined together there, that would show. but i said maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old river again. that disturbed jimand me too. so the question was, what to do? i said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed, and tell them pap was behind, coming along with a trading-scow, and was a green hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to cairo. jim thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited. there warn't nothing to do, now, but to look out sharp for the town, and not pass it without seeing it. he said he'd be mighty sure to see it, because he'd be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it he'd be in the slave country again and no more show for freedom. every little while he jumps up and says: "dah she is!" but it warn't. it was jack-o-lanterns, or lightning-bugs; so he set down again, and went to watching, same as before. jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. well, i can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because i begun to get it through my head that he was most freeand who was to blame for it? why, me. i couldn't get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. it got to troubling me so i couldn't rest; i couldn't stay still in one place. it hadn't ever come home to me before, what this thing was that i was doing. but now it did; and it staid with me, and scorched me more and more. i tried to make out to myself that i warn't to blame, because i didn't run jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every time, "but you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody." that was soi couldn't get around that, no way. that was where it pinched. conscience says to me, "what had poor miss watson done to you, that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? what did that poor old woman do to you, that you could treat her so mean? why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. that's what she done." i got to feeling so mean and so miserable i most wished i was dead. i fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and jim was fidgeting up and down past me. we neither of us could keep still. every time he danced around and says, "dah's cairo!" it went through me like a shot, and i thought if it was cairo i reckoned i would die of miserableness. jim talked out loud all the time while i was talking to myself. he was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free state he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where miss watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an ab'litionist to go and steal them. it most froze me to hear such talk. he wouldn't ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. it was according to the old saying, "give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell." thinks i, this is what comes of my not thinking. here was this nigger which i had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his childrenchildren that belonged to a man i didn't even know; a man that hadn't ever done me no harm. i was sorry to hear jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. my conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last i says to it, "let up on meit ain't too late, yeti'll paddle ashore at the first light and tell." i felt easy, and happy, and light as a feather, right off. all my troubles was gone. i went to looking out sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself. by-and-by one showed. jim sings out: "we's safe, huck, we's safe! jump up and crack yo' heels, dat's de good ole cairo at las', i jis knows it!" i says: "i'll take the canoe and go see, jim. it mightn't be, you know." he jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as i shoved off, he says: "pooty soon i'll be a-shout'n for joy, en i'll say, it's all on accounts o' huck; i's a free man, en i couldn't ever ben free ef it hadn't ben for huck; huck done it. jim won't ever forgit you, huck; you's de bes' fren' jim's ever had; en you's de only fren' ole jim's got now." i was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. i went along slow then, and i warn't right down certain whether i was glad i started or whether i warn't. when i was fifty yards off, jim says: "dah you goes, de ole true huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole jim." well, i just felt sick. but i says, i got to do iti can't get out of it. right then, along comes a skiff with two men in it, with guns, and they stopped and i stopped. one of them says: "what's that, yonder?" "a piece of a raft," i says. "so you belong on it?" "yes, sir." "any men on it?" "only one, sir." "well, there's five niggers run off to-night, up yonder above the head of the bend. is your man white or black?" i didn't answer up prompt. i tried to, but the words wouldn't come. i tried, for a second or two, to brace up and out with it, but i warn't man enoughhadn't the spunk of a rabbit. i see i was weakening; so i just give up trying, and up and says "he's white." "i reckon we'll go and see for ourselves." "i wish you would," says i, "because it's pap that's there, and maybe you'd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is. he's sickand so is mam and mary ann." "oh, the devil! we're in a hurry, boy. but i s'pose we've got to. comebuckle to your paddle, and let's get along." i buckled to my paddle and they laid to their oars. when we had made a stroke or two, i says: "pap'll be mighty much obleeged to you, i can tell you. everybody goes away when i want them to help me tow the raft ashore, and i can't do it by myself." "well, that's infernal mean. odd, too. say, boy, what's the matter with your father?" "it's theathewell, it ain't anything, much." they stopped pulling. it warn't but a mighty little waysto the raft, now. one says: "boy, that's a lie. what is the matter with your pap? answer up square, now, and it'll be the better for you." "i will, sir, i will, honestbut don't leave us, please. it's thethegentlemen, if you'll only pull ahead, and let me heave you the head-line, you won't have to come a-near the raftplease do." "set her back, john, set her back!" says one. they backed water. "keep away, boykeep to looard. confound it, i just expect the wind has blowed it to us. your pap's got the smallpox, and you know it precious well. why didn't you come out and say so? do you want to spread it all over?" "well," says i, a-blubbering, "i've told everybody before, and then they just went away and left us." "poor devil, there's something in that. we are right down sorry for you, but wewell, hang it, we don't want the smallpox, you see. look here, i'll tell you what to do. don't you try to land by yourself, and you'll smash everything to pieces. you float along down about twenty miles and you'll come to a town on the left-hand side of the river. it will be long after sun-up, then, and when you ask for help, you tell them your folks are all down with chills and fever. don't be a fool again, and let people guess what is the matter. now we're trying to do you a kindness; so you just put twenty miles between us, that's a good boy. it wouldn't do any good to land yonder where the light isit's only a wood-yard. sayi reckon your father's poor, and i'm bound to say he's in pretty hard luck. herei'll put a twenty dollar gold piece on this board, and you get it when it floats by. i feel mighty mean to leave you, but my kingdom! it won't do to fool with smallpox, don't you see?" "hold on, parker," says the other man, "here's a twenty to put on the board for me. good-bye, boy, you do as mr. parker told you, and you'll be all right." "that's so, my boygood-bye, good-bye. if you see any runaway niggers, you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it." "good-bye, sir," says i, "i won't let no runaway niggers get by me if i can help it." they went off, and i got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because i knowed very well i had done wrong, and i see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's little, ain't got no showwhen the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. then i thought a minute, and says to myself, hold ons'pose you'd a done right and give jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? no, says i, i'd feel badi'd feel just the same way i do now. well, then, says i, what's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? i was stuck. i couldn't answer that. so i reckoned i wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever comes handiest at the time. i went into the wigwam; jim warn't there. i looked all around; he warn't anywhere. i says: "jim!" "here i is, huck. is dey out o' sight yit? don't talk loud." he was in the river, under the stern oar, with just his nose out. i told him they was out of sight, so he come aboard. he says: "i was a-listenin' to all de talk, en i slips into de river en was gwyne to shove for sho' if dey come aboard. den i was gwyne to swim to de raf' agin when dey was gone. but lawsy, how you did fool 'em, huck! dat wuz de smartes' dodge! tell you, chile, i 'speck it save' ole jimole jim ain' gwyne to forgit you for dat, honey." then we talked about the money. it was a pretty good raise, twenty dollars apiece. jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat now, and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free states. he said twenty mile more warn't far for the raft to go, but he wished we was already there. towards daybreak we tied up, and jim was mighty particular about hiding the raft good. then he worked all day fixing things in bundles, and getting all ready to quit rafting. that night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town away down in a left-hand bend. i went off in the canoe, to ask about it. pretty soon i found a man out in the aver with a skiff, setting a trot-line. i ranged up and says: "mister, is that town cairo?" "cairo? no. you must be a blame' fool." "what town is it, mister?" "if you want to know, go and find out. if you stay here botherin' around me for about a half minute longer, you'll get something you won't want." i paddled to the raft. jim was awful disappointed, but i said never mind, cairo would be the next place, i reckoned. we passed another town before daylight, and i was going out again; but it was high ground, so i didn't go. no high ground about cairo, jim said. i had forgot it. we laid up for the day, on a tow-head tolerable close to the left-hand bank. i begun to suspicion something. so did jim. i says: "maybe we went by cairo in the fog that night." he says: "doan' less' talk about it, huck. po' niggers can't have no luck. i awluz 'spected dat rattle-snake skin warn't done wid its work." "i wish i'd never seen that snake-skin, jimi do wish i'd never laid eyes on it." "it ain't yo' fault, huck; you didn' know. don't you blame yo'self 'bout it." when it was daylight, here was the clear ohio water in shore, sure enough, and outside was the old regular muddy! so it was all up with cairo. we talked it all over. it wouldn't do to take to the shore; we couldn't take the raft up the stream, of course. there warn't no way but to wait for dark, and start back in the canoe and take the chances. so we slept all day amongst the cotton-wood thicket, so as to be fresh for the work, and when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone! we didn't say a word for a good while. there warn't anything to say. we both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattle-snake skin; so what was the use to talk about it? it would only look like we was finding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more bad luckand keep on fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to keep still. by-and-by we talked about what we better do, and found there warn't no way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy a canoe to go back in. we warn't going to borrow it when there warn't anybody around, the way pap would do, for that might set people after us. so we shoved out, after dark, on the raft. anybody that don't believe yet, that it's foolishness to handle a snake-skin, after all that snake-skin done for us, will believe it now, if they read on and see what more it done for us. the place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying at shore. but we didn't see no rafts laying up; so we went along during three hours and more. well, the night got gray, and ruther thick, which is the next meanest thing to fog. you can't tell the shape of the river, and you can't see no distance. it got to be very late and still, and then along comes a steamboat up the river. we lit the lantern, and judged she would see it. up-stream boats didn't generly come close to us; they go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs; but nights like this they bull right up the channel against the whole river. we could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she was close. she aimed right for us. often they do that and try to see how close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites off a sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks he's mighty smart. well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try to shave us; but she didn't seem to be sheering off a bit. she was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black cloud with rows of glow-worms around it; but all of a sudden she laughed out, big and scary, with a long row of wide-open furnace doors shining like red-hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us. there was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a pow-wow of cussing, and whistling of steamand as jim went overboard on one side and i on the other, she come smashing straight through the raft. i divedand i aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirty-foot wheel had got to go over me, and i wanted it to have plenty of room. i could always stay under water a minute; this time i reckon i staid under water a minute and a half. then i bounced for the top in a hurry, for i was nearly busting. i popped out to my arm-pits and blowed the water out of my nose, and puffed a bit. of course there was a booming current; and of course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she stopped them, for they never cared much for raftsmen; so now she was churning along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, though i could hear her. i sung out for jim about a dozen times, but i didn't get any answer; so i grabbed a plank that touched me while i was "treading water," and struck out for shore, shoving it ahead of me. but i made out to see that the drift of the current was towards the left-hand shore, which meant that i was in a crossing; so i changed off and went that way. it was one of these long, slanting, two-mile crossings; so i was a good long time in getting over. i made a safe landing, and clum up the bank. i couldn't see but a little ways, but i went poking along over rough ground for a quarter of a mile or more, and then i run across a big old-fashioned double log house before i noticed it. i was going to rush by and get away, but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to howling and barking at me, and i knowed better than to move another peg. chapter seventeen in about half a minute somebody spoke out of a window, without putting his head out, and says: "be done, boys! who's there?" i says: "it's me." "who's me?" "george jackson, sir." "what do you want?" "i don't want nothing, sir. i only want to go along by, but the dogs won't let me." "what are you prowling around here this time of night, forhey?" "i warn't prowling around, sir; i fell overboard off of the steamboat." "oh, you did, did you? strike a light there, somebody. what did you say your name was?" "george jackson, sir. i'm only a boy." "look here; if you're telling the truth, you needn't be afraidnobody'll hurt you. but don't try to budge; stand right where you are. rouse out bob and tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. george jackson, is there anybody with you?" "no, sir, nobody." i heard the people stirring around in the house, now, and see a light. the man sung out: "snatch that light away, betsy, you old foolain't you got any sense? put it on the floor behind the front door. bob, if you and tom are ready, take your places." "all ready." "now, george jackson, do you know the shepherdsons?" "no, siri never heard of them." "well, that may be so, and it mayn't. now, all ready. step forward, george jackson. and mind, don't you hurrycome mighty slow. if there's anybody with you, let him keep backif he shows himself he'll be shot. come along, now. come slow; push the door open, yourselfjust enough to squeeze in, d' you hear?" i didn't hurry, i couldn't if i'd a wanted to. i took one slow step at a time, and there warn't a sound, only i thought i could hear my heart. the dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind me. when i got to the three log door-steps, i heard them unlocking and unbarring and unbolting. i put my hand on the door and pushed it a little and a little more, till somebody said, "there, that's enoughput your head in." i done it, but i judged they would take it off. the candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me, and me at them, for about a quarter of a minute. three big men with guns pointed at me, which made me wince, i tell you; the oldest, gray and about sixty, the other two thirty or moreall of them fine and handsomeand the sweetest old gray-headed lady, and back of her two young women which i couldn't see right well. the old gentleman says: "therei reckon it's all right. come in." as soon as i was in, the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor, and got together in a corner that was out of range of the front windowsthere warn't none on the side. they held the candle, and took a good look at me, and all said, "why he ain't a shepherdsonno, there ain't any shepherdson about him." then the old man said he hoped i wouldn't mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by itit was only to make sure. so he didn't pry into my pockets, but only felt outside with his hands, and said it was all right. he told me to make myself easy and at home, and tell all about myself; but the old lady says: "why bless you, saul, the poor thing's as wet as he can be; and don't you reckon it may be he's hungry?" "true for you, racheli forgot." so the old lady says: "betsy" (this was a nigger woman), "you fly around and get him something to eat, as quick as you can, poor thing; and one of you girls go and wake up buck and tell himoh, here he is himself. buck, take this little stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some of yours that's dry." buck looked about as old as methirteen or fourteen or along there, though he was a little bigger than me. he hadn't on anything but a shirt, and he was very frowsy-headed. he come in gaping and digging one fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one. he says: "ain't they no shepherdsons around?" they said, no, 'twas a false alarm. "well," he says, "if they'd a ben some, i reckon i'd a got one." they all laughed, and bob says: "why, buck, they might have scalped us all, you've been so slow in coming." "well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right. i'm always kep' down; i don't get no show." "never mind, buck, my boy," says the old man, "you'll have show enough, all in good time, don't you fret about that. go 'long with you now, and do as your mother told you." when we got up stairs to his room, he got me a coarse shirt and a roundabout and pants of his, and i put them on. while i was at it he asked me what my name was, but before i could tell him, he started to telling me about a blue jay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day before yesterday, and he asked me where moses was when the candle went out. i said i didn't know; i hadn't heard about it before, no way. "well, guess," he says. "how'm i going to guess," says i, "when i never heard tell about it before?" "but you can guess, can't you? it's just as easy." "which candle?" i says. "why, any candle," he says. "i don't know where he was," says i; "where was he?" "why, he was in the dark! that's where he was!" "well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?" "why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see? say, how long are you going to stay here? you got to stay always. we can just have booming timesthey don't have no school now. do you own a dog? i've got a dogand he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in. do you like to comb up, sundays, and all that kind of foolishness? you bet i don't, but ma she makes me. confound these ole britches, i reckon i'd better put'em on, but i'd ruther not, it's so warm. are you all ready? all rightcome along, old hoss." cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilkthat is what they had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever i've come across yet. buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes, except the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women. they all smoked and talked, and i eat and talked. the young women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs. they all asked me questions, and i told them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of arkansaw, and my sister mary ann run off and got married and never was heard of no more, and bill went to hunt them and he warn't heard of no more, and tom and mort died, and then there warn't nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his troubles; so when he died i took what there was left, because the farm didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard; and that was how i come to be here. so they said i could have a home there as long as i wanted it. then it was most daylight, and everybody went to bed, and i went to bed with buck, and when i waked up in the morning, drat it all, i had forgot what my name was. so i laid there about an hour trying to think, and when buck waked up, i says: "can you spell, buck?" "yes," he says. "i bet you can't spell my name," says i. "i bet you what you dare i can," says he. "all right," says i, "go ahead." "g-o-r-g-e j-a-x-o-nthere now," he says. "well," says i, "you done it, but i didn't think you could. it ain't no slouch of a name to spellright off without studying." i set it down, private, because somebody might want me to spell it, next, and so i wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like i was used to it. it was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. i hadn't seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style. it didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, and the same as houses in a town. there warn't no bed in the parlor, not a sign of a bed; but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them. there was a big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another brick; sometimes they washed them over with red water-paint that they called spanish-brown, same as they do in town. they had big brass dog-irons that could hold up a saw-log. there was a clock on the middle of the mantel-piece, with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swing behind it. it was beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got tuckered out. they wouldn't took any money for her. well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. by one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other; and when you pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouths nor look different nor interested. they squeaked through underneath. there was a couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out behind those things. on a table in the middle of the room was a kind of lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but they warn't real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk or whatever it was, underneath. this table had a cover made out of beautiful oil-cloth, with a red and blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. it come all the way from philadelphia, they said. there was some books too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. one was a big family bible, full of pictures. one was "pilgrim's progress," about a man that left his family it didn't say why. i read considerable in it now and then. the statements was interesting, but tough. another was "friendship's offering," full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but i didn't read the poetry. another was henry clay's speeches, and another was dr. gunn's family medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. there was a hymn book, and a lot of other books. and there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, toonot bagged down in the middle and busted, like an old basket. they had pictures hung on the wallsmainly washingtons and lafayettes, and battles, and highland marys, and one called "signing the declaration." there was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. they was different from any pictures i ever see before; blacker, mostly, than is common. one was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the arm-pits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said "shall i never see thee more alas." another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "i shall never hear thy sweet chirrup more alas." there was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing-wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "and art thou gone yes thou art gone alas." these was all nice pictures, i reckon, but i didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever i was down a little, they always give me the fan-tods. everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. but i reckoned, that with her disposition, she was having a better time in the graveyard. she was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. it was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moonand the idea was, to see which pair would look best and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as i was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it. other times it was hid with a little curtain. the young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me. this young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the presbyterian observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head. it was very good poetry. this is what she wrote about a boy by the name of stephen dowling bots that fell down a well and was drownded: ode to stephen dowling bots, dec'd. and did young stephen sicken, and did young stephen die? and did the sad hearts thicken, and did the mourners cry? no; such was not the fate of young stephen dowling bots; though sad hearts round him thickened, 'twas not from sickness'shots. no whooping-cough did rack his frame, nor measles drear, with spots; not these impaired the sacred name of stephen dowling bots. despised love struck not with woe that head of curly knots. nor stomach troubles laid him low, young stephen dowling bots. o no. then list with tearful eye, whilst i his fate do tell. his soul did from this cold world fly, by falling down a well. they got him out and emptied him; alas it was too late; his spirit was gone for to sport aloft in the realms of the good and great. if emmeline grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could a done by-and-by. buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. she didn't ever have to stop to think. he said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't find anything to rhyme with it she would just scratch it out and slap down another one, and go ahead. she warn't particular, she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about, just so it was sadful. every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her "tribute" before he was cold. she called them tributes. the neighbors said it was the doctor first, then emmeline, then the undertakerthe undertaker never got in ahead of emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme the dead person's name, which was whistler. she warn't ever the same, after that; she never complained, but she kind of pined away and did not live long. poor thing, many's the time i made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrapbook and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and i had soured on her a little. i liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between us. poor emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some about her, now she was gone; so i tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but i couldn't seem to make it go, somehow. they kept emmeline's room trim and nice and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. the old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a good deal and read her bible there, mostly. well, as i was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on the windows: white, with pictures painted on them, of castles with vines all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. there was a little old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, i reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing, "the last link is broken" and play "the battle of prague" on it. the walls of all the rooms was plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside. it was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day, and it was a cool, comfortable place. nothing couldn't be better. and warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too! chapter eighteen col. grangerford was a gentleman, you see. he was a gentleman all over; and so was his family. he was well born, as the saying is, and that's worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the widow douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn't no more quality than a mudcat, himself. col. grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean-shaved every morning, all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. his forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight, and hung to his shoulders. his hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with brass buttons on it. he carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it. there warn't no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn't ever loud. he was as kind as he could beyou could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards. he didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their mannerseverybody was always good mannered where he was. everybody loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine most alwaysi mean he made it seem like good weather. when he turned into a cloud-bank it was awful dark for a half a minute and that was enough; there wouldn't nothing go wrong again for a week. when him and the old lady come down in the morning, all the family got up out of their chairs and give them good-day, and didn't set down again till they had set down. then tom and bob went to the sideboard where the decanters was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and he held it in his hand and waited till tom's and bob's was mixed, and then they bowed and said "our duty to you, sir, and madam;" and they bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank, all three, and bob and tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give it to me and buck, and we drank to the old people too. bob was the oldest, and tom next. tall, beautiful men with very broad shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. they dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and wore broad panama hats. then there was miss charlotte, she was twenty-five, and tall and proud and grand, but as good as she could be, when she warn't stirred up; but when she was, she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks, like her father. she was beautiful. so was her sister, miss sophia, but it was a different kind. she was gentle and sweet, like a dove, and she was only twenty. each person had their own nigger to wait on thembuck, too. my nigger had a monstrous easy time, because i warn't used to having anybody do anything for me, but buck's was on the jump most of the time. this was all there was of the family, now; but there used to be morethree sons, they got killed; and emmeline that died. the old gentleman owned a lot of farms, and over a hundred niggers. sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junketings round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods, day-times, and balls at the house, nights. these people was mostly kinfolks of the family. the men brought their guns with them. it was a handsome lot of quality, i tell you. there was another clan of aristocracy around therefive or six familiesmostly of the name of shepherdson. they was as high-toned, and well born, and rich and grand, as the tribe of grangerfords. the shepherdsons and the grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was about two mile above our house; so sometimes when i went up there with a lot of our folks i used to see a lot of the shepherdsons there, on their fine horses. one day buck and me was away out in the woods, hunting, and heard a horse coming. we was crossing the road. buck says: "quick! jump for the woods!" we done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. pretty soon a splendid young man came galloping down the road, setting his horse easy and looking like a soldier. he had his gun across his pommel. i had seen him before. it was young harney shepherdson. i heard buck's gun go off at my ear, and harney's hat tumbled off from his head. he grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. but we didn't wait. we started through the woods on a run. the woods warn't thick, so i looked over my shoulder, to dodge the bullet, and twice i seen harney cover buck with his gun; and then he rode away the way he cometo get his hat, i reckon, but i couldn't see. we never stopped running till we got home. the old gentleman's eyes blazed a minute'twas pleasure, mainly, i judgedthen his face sort of smoothed down and he says, kind of gentle: "i don't like that shooting from behind a bush. why didn't you step into the road, my boy?" "the shepherdsons don't, father. they always take advantage." miss charlotte she held her head up like a queen while buck was telling his tale and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. the two young men looked dark, but never said nothing. miss sophia she turned pale, but the color came back when she found the man warn't hurt. soon as i could get buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by ourselves, i says: "did you want to kill him, buck?" "well, i bet i did." "what did he do to you?" "him? he never done nothing to me." "well, then, what did you want to kill him for?" "why, nothingonly it's on account of the feud." "what's a feud?" "why, where was you raised? don't you know what a feud is?" "never heard of it beforetell me about it." "well," says buck, "a feud is this way. a man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip inand by-and-by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. but it's kind of slow, and takes a long time." "has this one been going on long, buck?" "well i should reckon! it started thirty year ago, or som'ers along there. there was trouble 'bout something and then a lawsuit to settle it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suitwhich he would naturally do, of course. anybody would." "what was the trouble about, buck?land?" "i reckon maybei don't know." "well, who done the shooting?was it a grangerford or a shepherdson?" "laws, how do i know? it was so long ago." "don't anybody know?" "oh, yes, pa knows, i reckon, and some of the other old folks; but they don't know, now, what the row was about in the first place." "has there been many killed, buck?" "yesright smart chance of funerals. but they don't always kill. pa's got a few buck-shot in him; but he don't mind it 'cuz he don't weigh much anyway. bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and tom's been hurt once or twice." "has anybody been killed this year, buck?" "yes, we got one and they got one. 'bout three months ago, my cousin bud, fourteen years old, was riding through the woods, on t'other side of the river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame' foolishness, and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming behind him, and sees old baldy shepherdson a-linkin' after him with his gun in his hand and his white hair a-flying in the wind; and 'stead of jumping off and taking to the brush, bud 'lowed he could outrun him; so they had it, nip and tuck, for five mile and more, the old man againing all the time; so at last bud seen it warn't any use, so he stopped and faced around so as to have the bullet holes in front, you know, and the old man he rode up and shot him down. but he didn't git much chance to enjoy his luck, for inside of a week our folks laid him out." "i reckon that old man was a coward, buck." "i reckon he warn't a coward. not by a blame' sight. there ain't a coward amongst them shepherdsonsnot a one. and there ain't no cowards amongst the grangerfords, either. why, that old man kep' up his end in a fight one day, for a half an hour, against three grangerfords, and come out winner. they was all a-horseback; he lit off of his horse and got behind a little wood-pile, and kep' his horse before him to stop the bullets; but the grangerfords staid on their horses and capered around the old man, and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them. him and his horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the grangerfords had to be fetched homeand one of 'em was dead, and another died the next day. no, sir, if a body's out hunting for cowards, he don't want to fool away any time against shepherdsons, becuz they don't breed any of that kind." next sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horseback. the men took their guns along, so did buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. the shepherdsons done the same. it was pretty ornery preachingall about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith, and good works, and free grace, and preforeordestination, and i don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest sundays i had run across yet. about an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, some in their chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. buck and a dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun, sound asleep. i went up to our room, and judged i would take a nap myself. i found that sweet miss sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took me in her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if i liked her, and i said i did; and she asked me if i would do something for her and not tell anybody, and i said i would. then she said she'd forgot her testament, and left it in the seat at church, between two other books and would i slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say nothing to nobody. i said i would. so i slid out and slipped off up the road, and there warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. if you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different. says i to myself something's upit ain't natural for a girl to be in such a sweat about a testament; so i give it a shake, and out drops a little piece of paper with "half-past two" wrote on it with a pencil. i ransacked it, but couldn't find anything else. i couldn't make anything out of that, so i put the paper in the book again, and when i got home and up stairs, there was miss sophia in her door waiting for me. she pulled me in and shut the door; then she looked in the testament till she found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad; and before a body could think, she grabbed me and give me a squeeze, and said i was the best boy in the world, and not to tell anybody. she was mighty red in the face, for a minute, and her eyes lighted up and it made her powerful pretty. i was a good deal astonished, but when i got my breath i asked what the paper was about, and she asked me if i had read it, and i said no, and she asked me if i could read writing and i told her "no, only coarse-hand," and then she said the paper warn't anything but a book-mark to keep her place, and i might go and play now. i went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty soon i noticed that my nigger was following along behind. when we was out of sight of the house, he looked back and around a second, and then comes a-running, and says: "mars jawge, if you'll come down into de swamp, i'll show you a whole stack o' water-moccasins." thinks i, that's mighty curious; he said that yesterday. he oughter know a body don't love water moccasins enough to go around hunting for them. what is he up to anyway? so i says "all right, trot ahead." i followed a half a mile, then he struck out over the swamp and waded ankle deep as much as another half mile. we come to a little flat piece of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines, and he says "you shove right in dah, jist a few steps, mars jawge, dah's whah dey is. i's seed 'm befo', i don't k'yer to see 'em no mo'." then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid him. i poked into the place a-ways, and come to a little open patch as big as a bedroom, all hung around with vines, and found a man laying there asleepand by jings it was my old jim! i waked him up, and i reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to him to see me again, but it warn't. he nearly cried, he was so glad, but he warn't surprised. said he swum along behind me, that night, and heard me yell every time, but dasn't answer, because he didn't want nobody to pick him up, and take him into slavery again. says he "i got hurt a little, en couldn't swim fas', so i wuz a considable ways behine you, towards de las'; when you landed i reckoned i could ketch up wid you on de lan' 'dout havin' to shout at you, but when i see dat house i begin to go slow. i off too fur to hear what dey say to youi wuz 'fraid o' de dogsbut when it 'uz all quiet agin, i knowed you's in de house, so i struck out for de woods to wait for day. early in de mawnin' some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields, en dey tuck me en showed me dis place, whah de dogs can't track me on accounts o' de water, en dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how you's a gitt'n along." "why didn't you tell my jack to fetch me here sooner, jim?" "well,'twarn't no use to 'sturb you, huck, tell we could do sumfnbut we's all right, now. i ben a-buyin' pots en pans en vittles, as i get a chanst, en a patchin' up de raf', nights, when-" "what raft, jim?" "our ole raf'." "you mean to say our old raft warn't smashed all to flinders?" "no, she warn't. she was tore up a good dealone en' of her wasbut dey warn't no great harm done, on'y our traps was mos' all los'. ef we hadn' dive' so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn' ben so dark, en we warn't so sk'yerd, en ben sich punkin-heads, as de sayin' is, we'd a seed de raf'. but it's jis' as well we didn't, 'kase now she's all fixed up agin mos' as good as new, en we's got a new lot o' stuff, too, in de place o' what 'uz los'." "why, how did you get hold of the raft again, jimdid you catch her?" "how i gwyne to ketch her, en i out in de woods? no, some er de niggers foun' her ketched on a snag, along heah in de ben', en dey hid her in a crick, 'mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin' 'bout which un 'um she b'long to de mos', dat i come to heah 'bout it pooty soon, so i ups en settles de trouble by tellin' 'um she don't b'long to none uv um, but to you en me; en i ast'm if dey gwyne to grab a young white genlman's propaty, en git a hid'n for it? den i gin 'm ten cents apiece, en dey 'uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some mo' raf's 'ud come along en make 'm rich agin. dey's mighty good to me, dese niggers is, en whatever i wants 'm to do fur me, i doan' have to ast 'm twice, honey. dat jack's a good nigger, en pooty smart." "yes, he is. he ain't ever told me you was here; told me to come, and he'd show me a lot of water-moccasins. if anything happens, he ain't mixed up in it. he can say he never seen us together, and it'll be the truth." i don't want to talk much about the next day. i reckon i'll cut it pretty short. i waked up about dawn, and was agoing to turn over and go to sleep again, when i noticed how still it wasdidn't seem to be anybody stirring. that warn't usual. next i noticed that buck was up and gone. well, i gets up, a-wondering, and goes down stairsnobody around; everything as still as a mouse. just the same outside; thinks i, what does it mean? down by the wood-pile i comes across my jack, and says: "what's it all about?" says he: "don't you know, mars jawge?" "no," says i, "i don't." "well, den, miss sophia's run off! 'deed she has. she run off in de night, sometimenobody don't know jis' whenrun off to git married to dat young harney shepherdson, you knowleastways, so dey 'spec. de fambly foun' it out, 'bout half an hour agomaybe a little mo'en' i tell you dey warn't no time los'. sich another hurryin' up guns en hosses you never see! de women folks has gone for to stir up the relations, en ole mars saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de river road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him 'fo' he kin git acrost de river wid miss sophia. i reck'n dey's gwyne to be mighty rough times." "buck went off 'thout waking me up." "well i reck'n he did! dey warn't gwyne to mix you up in it. mars buck he loaded up his gun en 'lowed he's gwyne to fetch home a shepherdson or bust. well, dey'll be plenty un 'm dah, i reck'n, en you bet you he'll fetch one ef he gits a chanst." i took up the river road as hard as i could put. by-and-by i begin to hear guns a good ways off. when i come in sight of the log store and the wood-pile where the steamboats lands, i worked along under the trees and brush till i got to a good place, and then i clumb up into the forks of a cotton-wood that was out of reach, and watched. there was a wood-rank four foot high, a little ways in front of the tree, and first i was going to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier i didn't. there was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at a couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside of the steamboat landingbut they couldn't come it. every time one of them showed himself on the river side of the wood-pile he got shot at. the two boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch both ways. by-and-by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling. they started riding towards the store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady bead over the wood-rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle. all the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started to carry him to the store; and that minute the two boys started on the run. they got half-way to the tree i was in before the men noticed. then the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after them. they gained on the boys, but it didn't do no good, the boys had too good a start; they got to the wood-pile that was in front of my tree, and slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge on the men again. one of the boys was buck, and the other was a slim young chap about nineteen years old. the men ripped around awhile, and then rode away. as soon as they was out of sight, i sung out to buck and told him. he didn't know what to make of my voice coming out of the tree, at first. he was awful surprised. he told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men come in sight again; said they was up to some devilment or otherwouldn't be gone long. i wished i was out of that tree, but i dasn't come down. buck begun to cry and rip, and 'lowed that him and his cousin joe (that was the other young chap) would make up for this day, yet. he said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two or three of the enemy. said the shepherdsons laid for them, in ambush. buck said his father and brothers ought to waited for their relationsthe shepherdsons was too strong for them. i asked him what was become of young harney and miss sophia. he said they'd got across the river and was safe. i was glad of that; but the way buck did take on because he didn't manage to kill harney that day he shot at himi hain't ever heard anything like it. all of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four gunsthe men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses! the boys jumped for the riverboth of them hurtand as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing out, "kill them, kill them!" it made me so sick i most fell out of the tree. i ain't agoing to tell all that happenedit would make me sick again if i was to do that. i ain't ever going to get shut of themlots of times i dream about them. i staid in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down. sometimes i heard guns. away off in the woods; and twice i seen little gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns; so i reckoned the trouble was still agoing on. i was mighty down-hearted; so i made up my mind i wouldn't ever go anear that house again, because i reckoned i was to blame, somehow. i judged that piece of paper meant that miss sophia was to meet harney somewheres at halfpast two and run off; and i judged i ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way she acted, and then maybe he would a locked her up and this awful mess wouldn't ever happened. when i got down out of the tree, i crept along down the river bank a piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and tugged at them till i got them ashore; then i covered up their faces, and got away as quick as i could. i cried a little when i was covering up buck's face, for he was mighty good to me. it was just dark, now. i never went near the house, but struck through the woods and made for the swamp. jim warn't on his island, so i tramped off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows, red-hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful countrythe raft was gone! my souls, but i was scared! i couldn't get my breath for most a minute. then i raised a yell. a voice not twenty-five foot from me, says "good lan'! is dat you, honey? doan' make no noise." it was jim's voicenothing ever sounded so good before. i run along the bank a piece and got aboard, and jim he grabbed me and hugged me, he was so glad to see me. he says "laws bless you, chile, i 'uz right down sho' you's dead agin. jack's been heah, he say he reck'n you's ben shot, kase you didn' come home no mo'; so i's jes' dis minute a startin' de raf' down towards de mouf er de crick, so's to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as jack comes agin en tells me for certain you is dead. lawsy, i's mighty glad to git you back agin, honey." i says "all rightthat's mighty good; they won't find me, and they'll think i've been killed, and floated down the riverthere's something up there that'll help them to think soso don't you lose no time, jim, but just shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can." i never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the middle of the mississippi. then we hung up our signal lantern, and judged that we was free and safe once more. i hadn't had a bite to eat since yesterday; so jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage, and greensthere ain't nothing in the world so good, when it's cooked rightand whilst i eat my supper we talked, and had a good time. i was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was jim to get away from the swamp. we said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. you feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. chapter nineteen two or three days and nights went by; i reckon i might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. here is the way we put in the time. it was a monstrous big river down theresometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid day-times; soon as night was most gone, we stopped navigating and tied upnearly always in the dead water under a tow-head; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows and hid the raft with them. then we set out the lines. next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight come. not a sound, anywheresperfactly stilljust like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bull-frogs a-cluttering, maybe. the first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull linethat was the woods on t'other sideyou couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness, spreading around; then the river softened up, away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along, ever so far away-trading scows, and such things; and long black streaksrafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by-and-by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a wood-yard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze blows up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell, on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish laying around, gars, and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it! a little smoke couldn't be noticed, now, so we would take some fish off of the lines, and cook up a hot breakfast. and afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by-and-by lazy off to sleep. wake up, by-and-by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see a steamboat, coughing along up stream, so far off towards the other side you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor nothing to seejust solid lonesomeness. next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they're most always doing it on a raft; you'd see the ax flash, and come downyou don't hear nothing; you see that ax go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head, then you hear the k'chunk!it had took all that time to come over the water. so we would put in the day, lazying around, listening to the stillness. once there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them. a scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughingheard them plain; but we couldn't see no sign of them; it made you feel crawly, it was like spirits carrying on that way in the air. jim said he believed it was spirits; but i says: "no, spirits wouldn't say, 'dern the dern fog.'" soon as it was night, out we shoved; when we got her out to about the middle, we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water and talked about all kinds of thingswe was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let usthe new clothes buck's folks made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides i didn't go much on clothes, nohow. sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a sparkwhich was a candle in a cabin windowand sometimes on the water you could see a spark or twoon a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. it's lovely to live on a raft. we had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happenedjim he allowed they was made, but i allowed they happened; i judged it would have took too long to make so many. jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so i didn't say nothing against it, because i've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. we used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest. once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her pow-wow shut off and leave the river still again; and by-and-by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't tell how long, except maybe frogs or something. after midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three hours the shores was blackno more sparks in the cabin windows. these sparks was our clockthe first one that showed again meant morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up, right away. one morning about day-break, i found a canoe and crossed over a chute to the main shoreit was only two hundred yardsand paddled about a mile up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if i couldn't get some berries. just as i was passing a place where a kind of a cow-path crossed the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as they could foot it. i thought i was a goner, for whenever anybody was after anybody i judged it was meor maybe jim. i was about to dig out from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and sung out and begged me to save their livessaid they hadn't been doing nothing, and was being chased for itsaid there was men and dogs a-coming. they wanted to jump right in, but i says "don't you do it. i don't hear the dogs and horses yet; you've got time to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways; then you take to the water and wade down to me and get inthat'll throw the dogs off the scent." they done it, and as soon as they was aboard i lit out for our tow-head, and in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off, shouting. we heard them come along towards the crick, but couldn't see them; they seemed to stop and fool around a while; then, as we got further and further away all the time, we couldn't hardly hear them at all; by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the river, everything was quiet, and we paddled over to the tow-head and hid in the cottonwoods and was safe. one of these fellows was about seventy, or upwards, and had a bald head and very gray whiskers. he had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a greasy blue woolen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed into his boot tops, and home-knit gallusesno, he only had one. he had an old longtailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons, flung over his arm, and both of them had big fat ratty-looking carpet-bags. the other fellow was about thirty and dressed about as ornery. after breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come out was that these chaps didn't know one another. "what got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap. "well, i'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teethand it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel with itbut i staid about one night longer than i ought to, and was just in the act of sliding out when i ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. so i told you i was expecting trouble myself and would scatter with you. that's the whole yarnwhat's yourn?" "well, i'd been a-runnin'a little temperance revival thar, 'bout a week, and was the pet of the women-folks, big and little, for i was makin' it mighty warm for the rummies, i tell you, and takin' as much as five or six dollars a nightten cents a head, children and niggers freeand business a growin' all the time; when somehow or another a little report got around, last night, that i had a way of puttin'in my time with a private jug, on the sly. a nigger rousted me out this mornin', and told me the people was getherin' on the quiet, with their dogs and horses, and they'd be along pretty soon and give me 'bout half an hour's start, and then run me down, if they could; and if they got me they'd tar and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure. i didn't wait for no breakfasti warn't hungry." "old man," says the young one, "i reckon we might double-team it together; what do you think?" "i ain't undisposed. what's your linemainly?" "jour printer, by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theatre-actortragedy, you know; take a turn at mesmerism and phrenology when there's a chance; teach singing-geography school for a change; sling a lecture, sometimesoh, i do lots of thingsmost anything that comes handy, so it ain't work. what's your lay?" "i've done considerble in the doctoring way in my time. layin' on o' hands is my best holtfor cancer, and paralysis, and sich things; and i k'n tell a fortune pretty good, when i've got somebody along to find out the facts for me. preachin's my line, too; and workin' camp-meetin's; and missionaryin' around." nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh and says "alas!" "what're you alassin' about?" says the baldhead. "to think i should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded down into such company." and he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with a rag. "dern your skin, ain't the company good enough for you?" says the baldhead, pretty pert and uppish. "yes, it is good enough for me; it's as good as i deserve; for who fetched me so low, when i was so high? i did myself. i don't blame you, gentlemenfar from it; i don't blame anybody. i deserve it all. let the cold world do its worst; one thing i knowthere's a grave somewhere for me. the world may go on just as it's always done, and take everything from meloved ones, property, everythingbut it can't take that. some day i'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest." he went on a-wiping. "drot your pore broken heart," says the baldhead; "what are you heaving your pore broken heart at us f'r? we hain't done nothing." "no, i know you haven't. i ain't blaming you, gentlemen. i brought myself downyes, i did it myself. it's right i should sufferperfectly righti don't make any moan." "brought you down from whar? whar was you brought down from?" "ah, you would not believe me; the world never believeslet it pass'tis no matter. the secret of my birth-" "the secret of your birth? do you mean to say-" "gentlemen," says the young man, very solemn, "i will reveal it to you, for i feel i may have confidence in you. by rights i am a duke!" jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that; and i reckon mine did, too. then the baldhead says: "no! you can't mean it?" "yes. my great-grandfather, eldest son of the duke of bridgewater, fled to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time. the second son of the late duke seized the title and estatesthe infant real duke was ignored. i am the lineal descendant of that infanti am the rightful duke of bridgewater; and here am i, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heart-broken, and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft!" jim pitied him ever so much, and so did i. we tried to comfort him, but he said it warn't much use, he couldn't be much comforted; said if we was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. he said we ought to bow, when we spoke to him, and say "your grace," or "my lord," or "your lordship"and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain "bridgewater," which he said was a title, anyway, and not a name; and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for him he wanted done. well, that was all easy, so we done it. all through dinner jim stood around and waited on him, and says, "will yo' grace have some o'dis, or some o'dat?" and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him. but the old man got pretty silent, by-and-bydidn't have much to say, and didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on around that duke. he seemed to have something on his mind. so, along in the afternoon, he says: "looky here, bilgewater," he says, "i'm nation sorry for you, but you ain't the only person that's had troubles like that." "no?" "no, you ain't. you ain't the only person that's ben snaked down wrongfully out'n a high place." "alas!" "no, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth." and by jings, he begins to cry. "hold! what do you mean?" "bilgewater, kin i trust you?" says the old man, still sort of sobbing. "to the bitter death!" he took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, and says, "the secret of your being: speak!" "bilgewater, i am the late dauphin!" you bet you jim and me stared, this time. then the duke says: "you are what?" "yes, my friend, it is too trueyour eyes is lookin' at this very moment on the pore disappeared dauphin, looy the seventeen, son of looy the sixteen and marry antonette." "you! at your age! no! you mean you're the late charlemagne; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least." "trouble has done it, bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude. yes, gentlemen, you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin' exiled, trampled-on and sufferin' rightful king of france." well, he cried and took on so, that me and jim didn't know hardly what to do, we was so sorryand so glad and proud we'd got him with us, too. so we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort him. but he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him "your majesty," and waited on him first at meals, and didn't set down in his presence till he asked them. so jim and me set to majestying him, and doing this and that and t'other for him, and standing up till he told us we might set down. this done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable. but the duke kind of soured on him, and didn't look a bit satisfied with the way things was going; still, the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the duke's great-grandfather and all the other dukes of bilgewater was a good deal thought of by his father and was allowed to come to the palace considerable; but the duke staid hurry a good while, till by-and-by the king says: "like as not we got to be together a blamed long time, on this h-yer raft, bilgewater, and so what's the use o' your bein' sour? it'll only make things oncomfortable. it ain't my fault i warn't born a duke, it ain't your fault you warn't born a kingso what's the use to worry? make the best o' things the way you find 'em, says ithat's my motto. this ain't no bad thing that we've struck hereplenty grub and an easy lifecome, give us your hand, duke, and less all be friends." the duke done it, and jim and me was pretty glad to see it. it took away all the uncomfortableness, and we felt mighty good over it, because it would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others. it didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes, at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. but i never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. if they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, i hadn't no objections, 'long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell jim, so i didn't tell him. if i never learnt nothing else out of pap, i learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way. chapter twenty they asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we covered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the day-time instead of runningwas jim a runaway nigger? says i "goodness sakes, would a runaway nigger run south?" no, they allowed he wouldn't. i had to account for things some way, so i says: "my folks was living in pike county, in missouri, where i was born, and they all died off but me and pa and my brother ike. pa, he 'lowed he'd break up and go down and live with uncle ben, who's got a little one-horse place on the river, forty-four mile below orleans. pa was pretty poor, and had some debts; so when he'd squared up there warn't nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, jim. that warn't enough to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other way. well, when the river rose, pa had a streak of luck one day; he ketched this piece of a raft; so we reckoned we'd go down to orleans on it. pa's luck didn't hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard corner of the raft, one night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel; jim and me come up, all right, but pa was drunk, and ike was only four years old, so they never come up no more. well, for the next day or two we had considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in skiffs and trying to take jim away from me, saying they believed he was a runaway nigger. we don't run day-times no more, now; nights they don't bother us." the duke says "leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the day-time if we want to. i'll think the thing overi'll invent a plan that'll fix it. we'll let it alone for to-day, because of course we don't want to go by that town yonder in daylightit mightn't be healthy." towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat lightning was squirting around, low down in the sky, and the leaves was beginning to shiverit was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see that. so the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see what the beds was like. my bed was a straw tickbetter than jim's, which was a corn-shuck tick; there's always cobs around about in a shuck tick, and they poke into you and hurt; and when you roll over, the dry shucks sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves; it makes such a rustling that you wake up. well, the duke allowed he would take my bed; but the king allowed he wouldn't. he says "i should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that a corn-shuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on. your grace'll take the shuck bed yourself." jim and me was in a sweat again, for a minute, being afraid there was going to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when the duke says "'tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of oppression. misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; i yield, i submit; 'tis my fate. i am alone in the worldlet me suffer; i can bear it." we got away as soon as it was good and dark. the king told us to stand well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we got a long ways below the town. we come in sight of the little bunch of lights by-and-bythat was the town, you knowand slid by, about a half a mile out, all right. when we was three-quarters of a mile below, we hoisted up our signal lantern; and about ten o'clock it come on to rain and blow and thunder and lighten like everything; so the king told us to both stay on watch till the weather got better; then him and the duke crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night. it was my watch below, till twelve, but i wouldn't a turned in, anyway, if i'd had a bed; because a body don't see such a storm as that every night in the week, not by a long sight. my souls, how the wind did scream along! and every second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain, and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a h-wack!bum! bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bumand the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away, and quitand then rip comes another flash and another sockdolager. the waves most washed me off the raft, sometimes, but i hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind. we didn't have no trouble about snags; the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them. i had the middle watch, you know, but i was pretty sleepy by that time, so jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he was always mighty good, that way, jim was. i crawled into the wigwam, but the king and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warn't no show for me; so i laid outsidei didn't mind the rain, because it was warm, and the waves warn't running so high, now. about two they come up again, though, and jim was going to call me, but he changed his mind because he reckoned they warn't high enough yet to do any harm; but he was mistaken about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper, and washed me overboard. it most killed jim a-laughing. he was the easiest nigger to laugh that ever was, anyway. i took the watch, and jim he laid down and snored away; and by-and-by the storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin-light that showed, i rousted him out and we slid the raft into hiding-quarters for the day. the king got out an old ratty deck of cards, after breakfast, and him and the duke played seven-up a while, five cents a game. then they got tired of it, and allowed they would "lay out a campaign," as they called it. the duke went down into his carpet-bag and fetched up a lot of little printed bills, and read them out loud. one bill said "the celebrated dr. armand de montalban of paris," would "lecture on the science of phrenology" at such and such a place, on the blank day of blank, at ten cents admission, and "furnish charts of character at twenty-five cents apiece." the duke said that was him. in another bill he was the "world renowned shaksperean tragedian, garrick the younger, of drury lane, london." in other bills he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things, like finding water and gold with a "divining rod," "dissipating witch-spells," and so on. by-and-by he says "but the histrionic muse is the darling. have you ever trod the boards, royalty?" "no," says the king. "you shall, then, before you're three days older, fallen grandeur," says the duke. "the first good town we come to, we'll hire a hall and do the sword-fight in richard iii. and the balcony scene in romeo and juliet. how does that strike you?" "i'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, bilgewater, but you see i don't know nothing about play-actn', and hain't ever seen much of it. i was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace. do you reckon you can learn me?" "easy!" "all right. i'm jist a-freezn' for something fresh, anyway. less commence, right away." so the duke he told him all about who romeo was, and who juliet was, and said he was used to being romeo, so the king could be juliet. "but if juliet's such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white whiskers is goin' to look oncommon odd on her, maybe." "no, don't you worrythese country jakes won't ever think of that. besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the difference in the world; juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed, and she's got on her night-gown and her ruffled night-cap. here are the costumes for the parts." he got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was meedyevil armor for richard iii. and t'other chap, and a long white cotton night-shirt and a ruffled night-cap to match. the king was satisfied; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the king and told him to get his part by heart. there was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run in daylight without it being dangersome for jim; so he allowed he would go down to the town and fix that thing. the king allowed he would go too, and see if he couldn't strike something. we was out of coffee, so jim said i better go along with them in the canoe and get some. when we got there, there warn't nobody stirring; streets empty, and perfectly dead and still, like sunday. we found a sick nigger sunning himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn't too young or too sick or too old, was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in the woods. the king got the directions, and allowed he'd go and work that camp-meeting for all it was worth, and i might go, too. the duke said what he was after was a printing office. we found it; a little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shopcarpenters and printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. it was a dirty, littered-up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. the duke shed his coat and said he was all right, now. so me and the king lit out for the camp-meeting. we got there in about a half an hour, fairly dripping, for it was a most awful hot day. there was as much as a thousand people there, from twenty mile around. the woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched everywheres, feeding out of the wagon troughs and stomping to keep off the flies. there was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of watermelons and green corn and such-like truck. the preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was bigger and held crowds of people. the benches was made out of outside slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into for legs. they didn't have no backs. the preachers had high platforms to stand on, at one end of the sheds. the women had on sunbonnets; and some had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones had on calico. some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the children didn't have on any clothes but just a tow-linen shirt. some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on the sly. the first shed we come to, the preacher was lining out a hymn. he lined out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he lined out two more for them to singand so on. the people woke up more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end, some begun to groan, and some begun to shout. then the preacher begun to preach; and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other, and then a leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, "it's the brazen serpent in the wilderness! look upon it and live!" and people would shout out, "glory!a-a-men!" and so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen: "oh, come to the mourners' bench! come, black with sin! (amen!) come, sick and sore! (amen!) come, lame and halt, and blind! (amen!) come, pore and needy, sunk in shame! (amen!) come all that's worn, and soiled, and suffering!come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door of heaven stands openoh, enter in and be at rest!" (a-a-men! glory, glory hallelujah!) and so on. you couldn't make out what the preacher said, any more, on account of the shouting and crying. folks got up, everywheres in the crowd, and worked their way, just by main strength, to the mourners' bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung, and shouted, and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild. well, the first i knowed, the king got agoing; and you could hear him over everybody; he went a-charging up on to the platform and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. he told them he was a piratebeen a pirate for thirty years, out in the indian ocean, and his crew was thinned out considerable, last spring, in a fight, and he was home now, to take out some fresh men, and thanks to goodness he'd been robbed last night, and put ashore off of a steamboat without a cent, and he was glad of it, it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the first time in his life; and poor as he was, he was going to start right off and work his way back to the indian ocean and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all the pirate crews in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there, without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him, "don't you thank me, don't you give me no credit, it all belongs to them dear people in pokeville camp-meeting, natural brothers and benefactors of the raceand that dear preacher there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!" and then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. then somebody sings out, "take up a collection for him, take up a collection!" well, a half dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, "let him pass the hat around!" then everybody said it, the preacher too. so the king went all through the crowd with his hat, swabbing his eyes, and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him, for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six timesand he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to live in their houses, and said they'd think it was an honor; but he said as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn't do no good, and besides he was in a sweat to get to the indian ocean right off and go to work on the pirates. when we got back to the raft and he come to count up, he found he had collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. and then he had fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a wagon when we was starting home through the woods. the king said, take it all around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in the missionarying line. he said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't amount to shucks, alongside of pirates, to work a camp-meeting with. the duke was thinking he'd been doing pretty well, till the king come to show up, but after that he didn't think so much. he had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers, in that printing officehorse billsand took the money, four dollars. and he had got in ten dollars worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advanceso they done it. the price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in advance; they were going to pay in cord-wood and onions, as usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it, and was going as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash. he set up a little piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of his own headthree verseskind of sweet and saddishthe name of it was, "yes, crush, cold world, this breaking heart"and he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper and didn't charge nothing for it. well, he took in nine dollars and a half, and said he'd done a pretty square day's work for it. then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged for, because it was for us. it had a picture of a runaway nigger, with a bundle on a stick, over his shoulder, and "$200 reward" under it. the reading was all about jim, and just described him to a dot. it said he run away from st. jacques' plantation, forty mile below new orleans, last winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him back, he could have the reward and expenses. "now," says the duke, "after to-night we can run in the daytime if we want to. whenever we see anybody coming, we can tie jim hand and foot with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to get the reward. handcuffs and chains would look still better on jim, but it wouldn't go well with the story of us being so poor. too much like jewelry. ropes are the correct thingwe must preserve the unities, as we say on the boards." we all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no trouble about running daytimes. we judged we could make miles enough that night to get out of the reach of the pow-wow we reckoned the duke's work in the printing office was going to make in that little townthen we could boom right along, if we wanted to. we laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten o'clock; then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't hoist our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it. when jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says "huck, does you reck'n we gwyne to run acrost any mo' kings on dis trip?" "no," i says, "i reckon not." "well," says he, "dat's all right, den. i doan' mine one er two kings, but dat's enough. dis one's powerful drunk, en de duke ain' much better." i found jim had been trying to get him to talk french, so he could hear what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so long, and had so much trouble, he'd forgot it. chapter twenty-one it was after sun-up, now, but we went right on, and didn't tie up. the king and the duke turned out, by-and-by, looking pretty rusty; but after they'd jumped overboard and took a swim, it chippered them up a good deal. after breakfast the king he took a seat on a corner of the raft, and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went to getting his romeo and juliet by heart. when he had got it pretty good, him and the duke begun to practice it together. the duke had to learn him over and over again, how to say every speech; and he made him sigh, and put his hand on his heart, and after while he said he done it pretty well; "only," he says, "you mustn't bellow out romeo! that way, like a bullyou must say it soft, and sick, and languishy, sor-o-o-meo! that is the idea; for juliet's a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you know, and she don't bray like a jackass." well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out of oak laths, and begun to practice the swordfightthe duke called himself richard iii.; and the way they laid on, and pranced around the raft was grand to see. but by-and-by the king tripped and fell overboard, and after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures they'd had in other times along the river. after dinner, the duke says: "well, capet, we'll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so i guess we'll add a little more to it. we want a little something to answer encores with, anyway." "what's onkores, bilgewater?" the duke told him, and then says: "i'll answer by doing the highland fling or the sailor's hornpipe; and youwell, let me seeoh, i've got ityou can do hamlet's soliloquy." "hamlet's which?" "hamlet's soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in shakespeare. ah, it's sublime, sublime! always fetches the house. i haven't got it in the booki've only got one volumebut i reckon i can piece it out from memory. i'll just walk up and down a minute, and see if i can call it back from recollection's vaults." so he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible every now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next he would sigh, and next he'd let on to drop a tear. it was beautiful to see him. by-and-by he got it. he told us to give attention. then he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky; and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that, all through his speech he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever i see before. this is the speechi learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king: to be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin that makes calamity of so long life; for who would fardels bear, till birnam wood do come to dunsinane, but that the fear of something after death murders the innocent sleep, great nature's second course, and makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune than fly to others that we know not of. there's the respect must give us pause: wake duncan with thy knocking! i would thou couldst; for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the law's delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, in the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn in customary suits of solemn black, but that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, breathes forth contagion on the world, and thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage, is sicklied o'er with care, and all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops, with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action. 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. but soft you, the fair ophelia: ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, but get thee to a nunnerygo! well, the old man he liked that speech, and he mighty soon got it so he could do it first rate. it seemed like he was just born for it; and when he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it off. the first chance we got, the duke he had some show bills printed; and after that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a most uncommon lively place, for there warn't nothing but sword-fighting and rehearsingas the duke called itgoing on all the time. one morning, when we was pretty well down the state of arkansaw, we come in sight of a little one-horse town in a big bend; so we tied up about three-quarters of a mile above it, in the mouth of a crick which was shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but jim took the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our show. we struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that afternoon, and the country people was already beginning to come in, in all kinds of old shackly wagons, and on horses. the circus would leave before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. the duke he hired the court house, and we went around and stuck up our bills. they read like this: shaksperean revival!!! wonderful attraction! for one night only! the world renowned tragedians, david garrick the younger, of drury lane theatre, london, and edmund kean the elder, of the royal haymarket theatre, whitechapel, pudding lane, piccadilly, london, and the royal continental theatres, in their sublime shaksperean spectacle entitled the balcony scene in romeo and juliet!!! romeo............................................... mr. garrick. juliet.............................................. mr. kean. also: the thrilling, masterly, and blood-curdling broad-sword conflict in richard iii.!!! assisted by the whole strength of the company! new costumes, new scenery, new appointments! richard iii........................................ mr. garrick. richmond........................................... mr. kean. also (by special request,) hamlet's immortal soliloquy!! by the illustrious kean! done by him 300 consecutive nights in paris! for one night only, on account of imperative european engagements! admission 25 cents; children and servants, 10 cents. then we went loafing around the town. the stores and houses was most all old shackly dried-up frame concerns that hadn't ever been painted; they was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts, so as to be out of reach of the water when the river was overflowed. the houses had little gardens around them, but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in them but jimpson weeds, and sunflowers, and ash-piles, and old curled-up boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles, and rags, and played-out tin-ware. the fences was made of different kinds of boards, nailed on at different times; and they leaned every which-way, and had gates that didn't generly have but one hingea leather one. some of the fences had been whitewashed, some time or another, but the duke said it was in clumbus's time, like enough. there was generly hogs in the garden, and people driving them out. all the stores was along one street. they had white-domestic awnings in front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awning-posts. there was empty dry-goods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their barlow knives; and chawing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretchinga mighty ornery lot. they generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella, but didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats; they called one another bill, and buck, and hank, and joe, and andy, and talked lazy and drawly, and used considerable many cuss-words. there was as many as one loafer leaning up against every awning-post, and he most always had his hands in his britches pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw of tobacco or scratch. what a body was hearing amongst them, all the time was "gimme a chaw'v tobacker, hank." "cain'ti hain't got but one chaw left. ask bill." maybe bill he gives him a chaw; maybe he lies and says he ain't got none. some of them kinds of loafers never has a cent in the world, nor a chaw of tobacco of their own. they get all their chawing by borrowingthey say to a fellow, "i wisht you'd len' me a chaw, jack, i jist this minute give ben thompson the last chaw i had"which is a lie, pretty much every time; it don't fool nobody but a stranger; but jack ain't no stranger, so he says "you give him a chaw, did you? so did your sister's cat's grandmother. you pay me back the chaws you've awready borry'd off'n me, lafe buckner, then i'll loan you one or two ton of it, and won't charge you no back intrust, nuther." "well, i did pay you back some of it wunst." "yes, you did'bout six chaws. you borry'd store tobacker and paid back nigger-head." store tobacco is flat black plug, but these fellows mostly chaws the natural leaf twisted. when they borrow a chaw, they don't generly cut it off with a knife, but they set the plug in between their teeth, and gnaw with their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in twothen sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when it's handed back, and says, sarcastic "here, gimme the chaw, and you take the plug." all the streets and lanes was just mud, they warn't nothing else but mudmud as black as tar, and nigh about a foot deep in some places; and two or three inches deep in all the places. the hogs loafed and grunted around, everywheres. you'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way, where folks had to walk around her, and she'd stretch out, and shut her eyes, and wave her ears, whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as happy as if she was on salary. and pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out, "hi! so boy! sick him, tige!" and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible, with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more a-coming; and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight, and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. then they'd settle back again till there was a dog-fight. there couldn't anything wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog-fightunless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a tin to his tail and see him run himself to death. on the river front some of the houses was sticking out over the bank, and they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in. the people had moved out of them. the bank was caved away under one corner of some others, and that corner was hanging over. people lived in them yet, but it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house caves in at a time. sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river in one summer. such a town as that has to be always moving back, and back, and back, because the river's always gnawing at it. the nearer it got to noon that day, the thicker and thicker was the wagons and horses in the streets, and more coming all the time. families fetched their dinners with them, from the country, and eat them in the wagons. there was considerable whiskey drinking going on, and i seen three fights. by-and-by somebody sings out "here comes old boggs!in from the country for his little old monthly drunkhere he comes, boys!" all the loafers looked gladi reckoned they was used to having fun out of boggs. one of them says "wonder who he's a gwyne to chaw up this time. if he'd a chawed up all the men he's ben a gwyne to chaw up in the last twenty year, he'd have considerable ruputation, now." another one says, "i wisht old boggs'd threaten me, 'cuz then i'd know i warn't gwyne to die for a thousan' year." boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whopping and yelling like an injun, and singing out "cler the track, thar. i'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is a gwyne to raise." he was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year old, and had a very red face. everybody yelled at him, and laughed at him, and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now, because he'd come to town to kill old colonel sherburn, and his motto was, "meat first, and spoon vittles to top off on." he see me, and rode up and says "whar'd you come f'm, boy? you prepared to die?" then he rode on. i was scared; but a man says"he don't mean nothing; he's always a carryin'on like that, when he's drunk. he's the best-naturedest old fool in arkansawnever hurt nobody, drunk nor sober." boggs rode up before the biggest store in town and bent his head down so he could see under the curtain of the awning, and yells" come out here, sherburn! come out and meet the man you've swindled. you're the houn' i'm after, and i'm a gwyne to have you, too!" and so he went on, calling sherburn everything he could lay his tongue to, and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and going on. by-and-by a proudlooking man about fifty-fiveand he was a heap the best dressed man in that town, toosteps out of the store, and the crowd drops back on each side to let him come. he says to boggs, mighty ca'm and slowhe says: "i'm tired of this; but i'll endure it till one o'clock. till one o'clock, mindno longer. if you open your mouth against me only once, after that time, you can't travel so far but i will find you." then he turns and goes in. the crowd looked mighty sober; nobody stirred, and there warn't no more laughing. boggs rode off blackguarding sherburn as loud as he could yell, all down the street; and pretty soon back he comes and stops before the store, still keeping it up. some men crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up, but he wouldn't; they told him it would be one o'clock in about fifteen minutes, and so he must go homehe must go right away. but it didn't do no good. he cussed away, with all his might, and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode over it, and pretty soon away he went a-raging down the street again, with his gray hair a-flying. everybody that could get a chance at him tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up and get him sober; but it warn't no useup the street he would tear again, and give sherburn another cussing. by-and-by somebody says "go for his daughter!quick, go for his daughter; sometimes he'll listen to her. if anybody can persuade him, she can." so somebody started on a run. i walked down street a ways, and stopped. in about five or ten minutes, here comes boggs againbut not on his horse. he was a-reeling across the street towards me, bareheaded, with a friend on both sides of him aholt of his arms and hurrying him along. he was quiet, and looked uneasy; and he warn't hanging back any, but was doing some of the hurrying himself. somebody sings out "boggs!" i looked over to see who said it, and it was that colonel sherburn. he was standing perfectly still, in the street, and had a pistol raised in his right handnot aiming it, but holding it out with the barrel tilted up towards the sky. the same second i see a young girl coming on the run, and two men with her. boggs and the men turned round, to see who called him, and when they see the pistol the men jumped to one side, and the pistol barrel come down slow and steady to a level-both barrels cocked. boggs throws up both of his hands, and says, "o lord, don't shoot!" bang! goes the first shot, and he staggers back clawing at the airbang! goes the second one, and he tumbles backwards onto the ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread out. that young girl screamed out, and comes rushing, and down she throws herself on her father, crying, and saying, "oh, he's killed him, he's killed him!" the crowd closed up around them, and shouldered and jammed one another, with their necks stretched, trying to see, and people on the inside trying to shove them back, and shouting, "back, back! give him air, give him air!" colonel sherburn he tossed his pistol onto the ground, and turned around on his heels and walked off. they took boggs to a little drug store, the crowd pressing around, just the same, and the whole town following, and i rushed and got a good place at the window, where i was close to him and could see in. they laid him on the floor, and put one large bible under his head, and opened another one and spread it on his breastbut they tore open his shirt first, and i seen where one of the bullets went in. he made about a dozen long gasps, his breast lifting the bible up when he drawed in his breath, and letting it down again when he breathed it outand after that he laid still; he was dead. then they pulled his daughter away from him, screaming and crying, and took her off. she was about sixteen, and very sweet and gentle-looking, but awful pale and scared. well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirming and scrouging and pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look, but people that had the places wouldn't give them up, and folks behind them was saying all the time, "say, now, you've looked enough, you fellows; 'taint right and 'taint fair, for you to stay thar all the time, and never give nobody a chance; other folks has their rights as well as you. there was considerable jawing back, so i slid out, thinking maybe there was going to be trouble. the streets was full, and everybody was excited. everybody that seen the shooting was telling how it happened, and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows, stretching their necks and listening. one long lanky man, with long hair and a big white fur stove-pipe hat on the back of his head, and a crooked-handled cane, marked out the places on the ground where boggs stood, and where sherburn stood, and the people following him around from one place to t'other and watching everything he done, and bobbing their heads to show they understood, and stopping a little and resting their hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with his cane; and then he stood up straight and stiff where sherburn had stood, frowning and having his hatbrim down over his eyes, and sung out, "boggs!" and then fetched his cane down slow to a level, and says "bang!" staggered backwards, says "bang!" again, and fell down flat on his back. the people that had seen the thing said he done it perfect; said it was just exactly the way it all happened. then as much as a dozen people got out their bottles and treated him. well, by-and-by somebody said sherburn ought to be lynched. in about a minute everybody was saying it; so away they went, mad and yelling, and snatching down every clothes-line they come to, to do the hanging with. chapter twenty-two they swarmed up the street towards sherburn's house, a-whooping and yelling and raging like injuns, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped to mush, and it was awful to see. children was heeling it ahead of the mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way; and every window along the road was full of women's heads, and there was nigger boys in every tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence; and as soon as the mob would get nearly to them they would break and skaddle back out of reach. lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared most to death. they swarmed in front of sherburn's palings as thick as they could jam together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise. it was a little twenty-foot yard. some sung out "tear down the fence! tear down the fence!" then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing, and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like a wave. just then sherburn steps out of the roof of his little front porch, with a double-barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly ca'm and deliberate, not saying a word. the racket stopped, and the wave sucked back. sherburn never said a wordjust stood there, looking down. the stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. sherburn run his eye slow along the crowd; and wherever it struck, the people tried a little to outgaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. then pretty soon sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's got sand in it. then he says, slow and scornful: "the idea of you lynching anybody! it's amusing. the idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? why, a man's safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kindas long as it's day-time and you're not behind him. "do i know you? i know you clear through. i was born and raised in the south, and i've lived in the north; so i know the average all around. the average man's a coward. in the north he lets anybody walk over him that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. in the south one man, all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men, in the day-time, and robbed the lot. your newspapers call you brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other peoplewhereas you're just as brave, and no braver. why don't your juries hang murderers? because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in the back, in the darkand it's just what they would do. "so they always acquit; and then a man goes in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back, and lynches the rascal. your mistake is, that you didn't bring a man with you; that's one mistake, and the other is that you didn't come in the dark, and fetch your masks. you brought part of a manbuck harkness, thereand if you hadn't had him to start you, you'd a taken it out in blowing. "you didn't want to come. the average man don't like trouble and danger. you don't like trouble and danger. but if only half a manlike buck harkness, thereshouts 'lynch him, lynch him!' you're afraid to back downafraid you'll be found out to be what you arecowardsand so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves onto that half-a-man's coat tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you're going to do. the pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army isa mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. but a mob without any man at the head of it, is beneath pitifulness. now the thing for you to do, is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. if any real lynching's going to be done, it will be done in the dark, southern fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a man along. now leaveand take your half-a-man with you"tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it, when he says this. the crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart and went tearing off every which way, and buck harkness he heeled it after them, looking tolerable cheap. i could a staid, if i'd a wanted to, but i didn't want to. i went to the circus, and loafed around the back side till the watchman went by, and then dived in under the tent. i had a twenty-dollar gold piece and some other money, but i reckoned i better save, because there ain't no telling how soon you are going to need it, away from home and amongst strangers, that way. you can't be too careful. i ain't opposed to spending money on circuses, when there ain't no other way, but there ain't no use in wasting it on them. it was a real bully circus. it was the splendidest sight that ever was, when they all come riding two and two, a gentleman and lady, side by side, the men just in their drawers and under-shirts, and no shoes nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs, easy and comfortablethere must a' been twenty of themand every lady with a lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang of real sure-enough queens, and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars, and just littered with diamonds. it was a powerful fine sight; i never see anything so lovely. and then one by one they got up and stood, and went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight, and their heads bobbing and skimming along, away up there under the tentroof, and every lady's rose-leafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips, and she looking like the most loveliest parasol. and then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, first one foot stuck out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and more, and the ring-master going round and round the centre-pole, cracking his whip and shouting "hi!hi!" and the clown cracking jokes behind him; and by-and-by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her knuckles on her hips and every gentleman folded his arms, and then how the horses did lean over and hump themselves! and so, one after the other they all skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow i ever see, and then scampered out, and everybody clapped their hands and went just about wild. well, all through the circus they done the most astonishing things; and all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people. the ring-master couldn't ever say a word to him but he was back at him quick as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said; and how he ever could think of so many of them, and so sudden and so pat, was what i couldn't noway understand. why, i couldn't a thought of them in a year. and by-and-by a drunk man tried to get into the ringsaid he wanted to ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. they argued and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show come to a standstill. then the people begun to holler at him and make fun of him, and that made him mad, and he begun to rip and tear; so that stirred up the people, and a lot of men begun to pile down off of the benches and swarm towards the ring, saying, "knock him down! throw him out!" and one or two women begun to scream. so, then, the ring-master he made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble, he would let him ride, if he thought he could stay on the horse. so everybody laughed and said all right, and the man got on. the minute he was on, the horse begun to rip and tear and jump and cavort around, with two circus men hanging onto his bridle trying to hold him, and the drunk man hanging onto his neck, and his heels flying in the air every jump, and the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing till the tears rolled down. and at last sure enough, all the circus men could do, the horse broke loose, and away he went like the very nation, round and round the ring, with that sot laying down on him and hanging to his neck with first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side, and then t'other one on t'other side, and the people just crazy. it warn't funny to me, though; i was all of a tremble to see his danger. but pretty soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling this way and that; and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood! and the horse agoing like a house afire too. he just stood up there, a-sailing around as easy and comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his lifeand then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. he shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed seventeen suits. and then, there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly humand finally skipped off, and made his bow and danced off to the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling with pleasure and astonishment. then the ring-master he see how he had been fooled, and he was the sickest ring-master you ever see, i reckon. why, it was one of his own men! he had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to nobody. well, i felt sheepish enough, to be took in so, but i wouldn't a been in that ringmaster's place, not for a thousand dollars. i don't know; there may be bullier circuses than what that one was, but i never struck them yet. anyways it was plenty good enough for me; and wherever i run across it, it can have all of my custom, every time. well, that night we had our show; but there warn't only about twelve people there; just enough to pay expenses. and they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over, but one boy which was asleep. so the duke said these arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to shakspeare; what they wanted was low comedyand may be something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned. he said he could size their style. so next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping-paper and some black paint, and drawed off some handbills and stuck them up all over the village. the bills said: at the court house! for 3 nights only! the world-renowned tragedians david garrick the younger! and edmund kean the elder! of the london and continental theatres, in their thrilling tragedy of the king's camelopard or the royal nonesuch!!! admission 50 cents. then at the bottom was the biggest line of all-which said: ladies and children not admitted "there," says he, "if that line don't fetch them, i don't know arkansaw!" chapter twenty-three well, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage, and a curtain, and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was jam full of men in no time. when the place couldn't hold no more, the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come onto the stage and stood up before the curtain, and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy and about edmund kean the elder, which was to play the main principal part in it; and at last when he'd got everybody's expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing out on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over, ring-streaked-and-striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow. andbut never mind the rest of his outfit, it was just wild, but it was awful funny. the people most killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done capering, and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done it over agin; and after that, they made him do it another time. well, it would a made a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut. then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and says the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of pressing london engagements, where the seats is all sold aready for it in drury lane; and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come and see it. twenty people sings out: "what, is it over? is that all?" the duke says yes. then there was a fine time. everybody sings out "sold," and rose up mad, and was agoing for that stage and them tragedians. but a big fine-looking man jumps up on a bench, and shouts: "hold on! just a word, gentlemen." they stopped to listen. "we are soldmighty badly sold. but we don't want to hear the last of this thing as long as we live. no. what we be the laughing-stock of this whole town, i reckon, and never want, is to go out here quiet, and talk this show up, and sell the rest of the town! then we'll all be in the same boat. ain't that sensible?" ("you bet it is!the jedge is right!" everybody sings out.) "all right, thennot a word about any sell. go along home, and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy." next day you couldn't hear nothing around that town but how splendid that show was. house was jammed again, that night, and we sold this crowd the same way. when me and the king and the duke got home to the raft, we all had a supper; and by-and-by, about midnight, they made jim and me back her out and float her down the middle of the river and fetch her in and hide her about two mile below the town. the third night the house was crammed againand they warn't new-comers, this time, but people that was at the show the other two nights. i stood by the duke at the door, and i see that every man that went in had his pockets bulging or something muffled up under his coatand i see it warn't no perfumery neither, not by a long sight. i smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if i know the signs of a dead cat being around, and i bet i do, there was sixty-four of them went in. i shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various for me, i couldn't stand it. well, when the place couldn't hold no more people, the duke he give a fellow a quarter and told him to tend door for him a minute, and then he started around for the stage door, i after him; but the minute we turned the corner and was in the dark, he says: "walk fast, now, till you get away from the houses, and then shin for the raft like the dickens was after you!" i done it, and he done the same. we struck the raft at the same time, and in less than two seconds we was gliding down stream, all dark and still, and edging towards the middle of the river, nobody saying a word. i reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience; but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam, and says: "well, how'd the old thing pan out this time, duke?" he hadn't been up town at all. we never showed a light till we was about ten mile below that village. then we lit up and had a supper, and the king and the duke fairly laughed their bones loose over the way they'd served them people. the duke says: "greenhorns, flatheads! i knew the first house would keep mum and let the rest of the town get roped in; and i knew they'd lay for us the third night, and consider it was their turn now. well, it is their turn, and i'd give something to know how much they'd take for it. i would just like to know how they're putting in their opportunity. they can turn it into a picnic, if they want tothey brought plenty provisions." them rapscallions took in four hundred and sixty-five dollars in that three nights. i never see money hauled in by the wagon-load like that, before. by-and-by, when they was asleep and snoring, jim says: "don't it 'sprise you, de way dem kings carries on, huck?" "no," i says, "it don't." "why don't it, huck?" "well, it don't, because it's in the breed. i reckon they're all alike." "but, huck, dese kings o' ourn is regular rapscallions; dat's jist what dey is; dey's reglar rapscallions." "well, that's what i'm a-saying; all kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as i can make out." "is dat so?" "you read about them onceyou'll see. look at henry the eight; this'n's a sunday-school superintendent to him. and look at charles second, and louis fourteen, and louis fifteen, and james second, and edward second, and richard third, and forty more; besides all them saxon heptarchies that used to rip around so in old times and raise cain. my, you ought to seen old henry the eight when he was in bloom. he was a blossom. he used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. and he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. 'fetch up nell gwynn,' he says. they fetch her up. next morning, 'chop off her head!' and they chop it off. 'fetch up jane shore,' he says; and up she comes. next morning 'chop off her head'and they chop it off. 'ring up fair rosamun.' fair rosamun answers the bell. next morning, 'chop off her head.' he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it domesday bookwhich was a good name and stated the case. you don't know kings, jim, but i know them; and this old rip of ourn is one of the cleanest i've struck in history. well, henry he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. how does he go at itgive notice?give the country a show? no. all of a sudden he heaves all the tea in boston harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on. that was his stylehe never give anybody a chance. he had suspicions of his father, the duke of wellington. well, what did he do?ask him to show up? nodrownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. spose people left money laying around where he waswhat did he do? he collared it. spose he contracted to do a thing; and you paid him, and didn't set down there and see that he done itwhat did he do? he always done the other thing. spose he opened his mouthwhat then? if he didn't shut it up powerful quick, he'd lose a lie, every time. that's the kind of a bug henry was; and if we'd a had him along 'stead of our kings, he'd a fooled that town a heap worse than ourn done. i don't say that ourn is lambs because they ain't, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they ain't nothing to that old ram, anyway. all i say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. it's the way they're raised." "but dis one do smell so like de nation, huck." "well, they all do, jim. we can't help the way a king smells; history don't tell no way." "now de duke, he's a tolerble likely man, in some ways." "yes, a duke's different. but not very different. this one's a middling hard lot, for a duke. when he's drunk, there ain't no near-sighted man could tell him from a king." "well, anyways, i doan' hanker for no mo' un um, huck. dese is all i kin stan'." "it's the way i feel, too, jim. but we've got them on our hands, and we got to remember what they are, and make allowances. sometimes i wish we could hear of a country that's out of kings." what was the use to tell jim these warn't real kings and dukes? it wouldn't a done no good; and besides, it was just as i said; you couldn't tell them from the real kind. i went to sleep, and jim didn't call me when it was my turn. he often done that. when i waked up, just at daybreak, he was setting there with his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. i didn't take notice, nor let on. i knowed what it was about. he was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his life; and i do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their'n. it don't seem natural, but i reckon it's so. he was often moaning and mourning that way, nights, when he judged i was asleep, and saying, "po' little 'lizabeth! po' little johnny! its mighty hard; i spec' i ain't ever gwyne to see you no mo', no mo'!" he was a mighty good nigger, jim was. but this time i somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones; and by-and-by he says: "what makes me feel so bad dis time, 'uz bekase i hear sumpn over yonder on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time i treat my little 'lizabeth so ornery. she warn't on'y 'bout fo' year ole, en she tuck de sk'yarlet-fever, en had a powful rough spell; but she got well, en one day she was a-stannin' aroun', en i says to her, i says: "'shet de do'.' "she never done it; jis'stood dah, kiner smilin' up at me. it make me mad; en i says agin, mighty loud, i says: "'doan' you hear me?shet de do'!' "she jis' stood de same way, kiner smilin'up. i was a-bilin'! i says: "'i lay i make you mine!' "en wid dat i fetch' her a slap side de head dat sont her a-sprawlin'. den i went into de yuther room, en 'uz gone 'bout ten minutes; en when i come back, dah was dat do' a-stannin' open yit, en dat chile stannin' mos' right in it, a-lookin' down and mournin', en de tears runnin' down. my, but i wuz mad, i was agwyne for de chile, but jis' denit was a do' dat open innerdsjis' den 'long come de wind en slam it to, behine de chile, ker-blam!en my lan', de chile never move'! my breff mos' hop outer me; en i feel sosoi doan' know how i feel. i crope out, all a-tremblin', en crope aroun' en open de do' easy en slow, en poke my head in behine de chile, sof' en still, en all uv a sudden, i says pow! jis' as loud as i could yell. she never budge! oh, huck, i bust out a-cryin' en grab her up in my arms, en say, 'oh, de po' little thing! de lord god amighty fogive po' ole jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long's he live!' oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, huck, plumb deef en dumben i'd ben a-treat'n her so!" chapter twenty-four next day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow tow-head out in the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the duke and the king begun to lay out a plan for working them towns. jim he spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn't take but a few hours, because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all day in the wigwam tied with the rope. you see, when we left him all alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on him all by himself and not tied, it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway nigger, you know. so the duke said it was kind of hard to have to lay roped all day, and he'd cipher out some way to get around it. he was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it. he dressed jim up in king lear's outfitit was a long curtain-calico gown, and a white horse-hair wig and whiskers; and then he took his theatre-paint and painted jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead dull solid blue, like a man that's been drownded nine days. blamed if he warn't the horriblest looking outrage i ever see. then the duke took and wrote out a sign on a shingle so sick arabbut harmless when not out of his head and he nailed the shingle to a lath, and stood the lath up four or five foot in front of the wigwam. jim was satisfied. he said it was a sight better than laying tied a couple of years every day and trembling all over every time there was a sound. the duke told him to make himself free and easy, and if anybody ever come meddling around he must hop out of the wigwam, and carry on a little, and fetch a howl or two like a wild beast, and he reckoned they would light out and leave him alone. which was sound enough judgment; but you take the average man, and he wouldn't wait for him to howl. why, he didn't only look like he was dead, he looked considerable more than that. these rapscallions wanted to try the nonesuch again, because there was so much money in it, but they judged it wouldn't be safe, because maybe the news might a worked along down by this time. they couldn't hit no project that suited, exactly; so at last the duke said he reckoned he'd lay off and work his brains an hour or two and see if he couldn't put up something on the arkansaw village; and the king he allowed he would drop over to t'other village, without any plan, but just trust in providence to lead him the profitable waymeaning the devil, i reckon. we had all bought store clothes where we stopped last; and now the king put his'n on, and he told me to put mine on. i done it, of course. the king's duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy. i never knowed how clothes could change a body before. why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he'd take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old leviticus himself. jim cleaned up the canoe, and i got my paddle ready. there was a big steamboat laying at the shore away up under the point, about three mile above townbeen there a couple of hours, taking on freight. says the king: "seein' how i'm dressed, i reckon maybe i better arrive down from st. louis or cincinnati, or some other big place. go for the steamboat, huckleberry; we'll come down to the village on her." i didn't have to be ordered twice, to go and take a steamboat ride. i fetched the shore a half a mile above the village, and then went scooting along the bluff bank in the easy water. pretty soon we come to a nice innocent-looking young country jake setting on a log swabbing the sweat off of his face, for it was powerful warm weather; and he had a couple of big carpet-bags by him. "run her nose in shore," says the king. i done it. "wher' you bound for, young man?" "for the steamboat; going to orleans." "git aboard," says the king. "hold on a minute, my servant'll he'p you with them bags. jump out and he'p the gentleman, adolphus"meaning me, i see. i done so, and then we all three started on again. the young chap was mighty thankful; said it was tough work toting his baggage in such weather. he asked the king where he was going, and the king told him he'd come down the river and landed at the other village this morning, and now he was going up a few mile to see an old friend on a farm up there. the young fellow says: "when i first see you, i says to myself, 'it's mr. wilks, sure, and he come mighty near getting here in time.' but then i says again, 'no, i reckon it ain't him, or else he wouldn't be paddling up the river.' you ain't him, are you?" "no, my name's blodgettelexander blodgettreverend elexander blodgett, i spose i must say, as i'm one o' the lord's poor servants. but still i'm jist as able to be sorry for mr. wilks for not arriving in time, all the same, if he's missed anything by itwhich i hope he hasn't." "well, he don't miss any property by it, because he'll get that all right; but he's missed seeing his brother peter diewhich he mayn't mind, nobody can tell as to thatbut his brother would a give anything in this world to see him before he died; never talked about nothing else all these three weeks; hadn't seen him since they was boys togetherand hadn't ever seen his brother william at allthat's the deef and dumb onewilliam ain't more than thirty or thirty-five. peter and george was the only ones that come out here; george was the married brother; him and his wife both died last year. harvey and william's the only ones that's left now; and, as i was saying, they haven't got here in time." "did anybody send' em word?" "oh, yes; a month or two ago, when peter was first took; because peter said then that he sorter felt like he warn't going to get well this time. you see, he was pretty old, and george's g'yirls was too young to be much company for him, except mary jane the red-headed one; and so he was kinder lonesome after george and his wife died, and didn't seem to care much to live. he most desperately wanted to see harveyand william too, for that matterbecause he was one of them kind that can't bear to make a will. he left a letter behind for harvey, and said he'd told in it where his money was hid, and how he wanted the rest of the property divided up so george's g'yirls would be all rightfor george didn't leave nothing. and that letter was all they could get him to put a pen to." "why do you reckon harvey don't come? wher' does he live?" "oh, he lives in englandsheffieldpreaches therehasn't ever been in this country. he hasn't had any too much timeand besides he mightn't a got the letter at all, you know." "too bad, too bad he couldn't a lived to see his brothers, poor soul. you going to orleans, you say?" "yes, but that ain't only a part of it. i'm going in a ship, next wednesday, for ryo janeero, where my uncle lives." "it's a pretty long journey. but it'll be lovely; i wisht i was agoing. is mary jane the oldest? how old is the others?" "mary jane's nineteen, susan's fifteen, and joanna's about fourteenthat's the one that gives herself to good works and has a hare-lip." "poor things! to be left alone in the cold world so." "well, they could be worse off. old peter had friends, and they ain't going to let them come to no harm. there's hobson, the babtis' preacher; and deacon lot hovey, and ben rucker, and abner shackleford, and levi bell, the lawyer; and dr. robinson, and their wives, and the widow bartley, andwell, there's a lot of them; but these are the ones that peter was thickest with, and used to write about sometimes, when he wrote home; so harvey'll know where to look for friends when he gets here." well, the old man he went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied that young fellow. blamed if he didn't inquire about everybody and everything in that blessed town, and all about the wilkses; and about peter's businesswhich was a tanner; and about george'swhich was a carpenter; and about harvey'swhich was a dissentering minister; and so on, and so on. then he says: "what did you want to walk all the way up to the steamboat for?" "because she's a big orleans boat, and i was afeard she mightn't stop there. when they're deep they won't stop for a hail. a cincinnati boat will, but this is a st. louis one." "was peter wilks well off?" "oh, yes, pretty well off. he had houses and land, and it's reckoned he left three or four thousand in cash hid up som'ers." "when did you say he died?" "i didn't say, but it was last night." "funeral to-morrow, likely?" "yes, 'bout the middle of the day." "well, it's all terrible sad; but we've all got to go, one time or another. so what we want to do is to be prepared; then we're all right." "yes, sir, it's the best way. ma used to always say that." when we struck the boat, she was about done loading, and pretty soon she got off. the king never said nothing about going aboard, so i lost my ride, after all. when the boat was gone, the king made me paddle up another mile to a lonesome place, and then he got ashore, and says: "now hustle back, right off, and fetch the duke up here, and the new carpet-bags. and if he's gone over to t'other side, go over there and git him. and tell him to git himself up regardless. shove along, now." i see what he was up to; but i never said nothing, of course. when i got back with the duke, we hid the canoe and then they set down on a log, and the king told him everything, just like the young fellow had said itevery last word of it. and all the time he was a doing it, he tried to talk like an englishman; and he done it pretty well too, for a slouch. i can't imitate him, and so i ain't agoing to try to; but he really done it pretty good. then he says: "how are you on the deef and dumb, bilgewater?" the duke said, leave him alone for that; said he had played a deef and dumb person on the histrionic boards. so then they waited for a steamboat. about the middle of the afternoon a couple of little boats come along, but they didn't come from high enough up the river; but at last there was a big one, and they hailed her. she sent out her yawl, and we went aboard, and she was from cincinnati; and when they found we only wanted to go four or five mile, they was booming mad, and give us a cussing, and said they wouldn't land us. but the king was ca'm. he says: "if gentlemen kin afford to pay a dollar a mile apiece, to be took on and put off in a yawl, a steamboat kin afford to carry 'em, can't it?" so they softened down and said it was all right; and when we got to the village, they yawled us ashore. about two dozen men flocked down, when they see the yawl a coming; and when the king says "kin any of you gentlemen tell me where mr. peter wilks lives?" they give a glance at one another, and nodded their heads, as much as to say, "what d' i tell you?" then one of them says, kind of soft and gentle: "i'm sorry, sir, but the best we can do is to tell you where he did live yesterday evening." sudden as winking, the ornery old cretur went all to smash, and fell up against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his back, and says: "alas, alas, our poor brothergone, and we never got to see him; oh, it's too, too hard!" then he turns around, blubbering, and making a lot of idiotic signs to the duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn't drop a carpet-bag and bust out a-crying. if they warn't the beatenest lot, them two frauds, that ever i struck. well, the men gethered around, and sympathized with them, and said all sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill for them, and let them lean on them and cry, and told the king all about his brother's last moments, and the king he told it all over again on his hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tanner like they'd lost the twelve disciples. well, if ever i struck anything like it, i'm a nigger. it was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race. chapter twenty-five the news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people tearing down on the run, from every which way, some of them putting on their coats as they come. pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier-march. the windows and door-yards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence: "is it them?" and somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say, "you bet it is." when we got to the house, the street in front of it was packed, and the three girls was standing in the door. mary jane was red-headed, but that don't make no difference, she was most awful beautiful, and her face and her eyes was all lit up like glory, she was so glad her uncles was come. the king he spread his arms, and mary jane she jumped for them, and the hare-lip jumped for the duke, and there they had it! everybody most, leastways women, cried for joy to see them meet again at last and have such good times. then the king he hunched the duke, privatei see him do itand then he looked around and see the coffin, over in the corner on two chairs; so then, him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and t'other hand to their eyes, walked slow and solemn over there, everybody dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping, people saying "sh!" and all the men taking their hats off and dropping their heads, so you could a heard a pin fall. and when they got there, they bent over and looked in the coffin, and took one sight, and then they bust out a crying so you could a heard them to orleans, most; and then they put their arms around each other's neck, and hung their chins over each other's shoulders; and then for three minutes, or maybe four, i never see two men leak the way they done. and mind you, everybody was doing the same; and the place was that damp i never see anything like it. then one of them got on one side of the coffin, and t'other on t'other side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and let on to pray all to theirselves. well, when it come to that, it worked the crowd like you never see anything like it, and so everybody broke down and went to sobbing right out loudthe poor girls, too; and every woman, nearly, went up to the girls, without saying a word, and kissed them, solemn, on the forehead, and then put their hand on their head, and looked up towards the sky, with the tears running down, and then busted out and went off sobbing and swabbing, and give the next woman a show. i never see anything so disgusting. well, by-and-by the king he gets up and comes forward a little, and works himself up and slobbers out a speech, all full of tears and flapdoodle about its being a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the diseased, and to miss seeing diseased alive, after the long journey of four thousand mile, but it's a trial that's sweetened and sanctified to us by this dear sympathy and these holy tears, and so he thanks them out of his heart and out of his brother's heart, because out of their mouths they can't, words being too weak and cold, and all that kind of rot and slush, till it was just sickening; and then he blubbers out a pious goody-goody amen, and turns hirnself loose and goes to crying fit to bust. and the minute the words was out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd struck up the doxolojer, and everybody joined in with all their might, and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting out. music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash, i never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully. then the king begins to work his jaw again, and says how him and his nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family would take supper here with them this evening, and help set up with the ashes of the diseased; and says if his poor brother laying yonder could speak, he knows who he would name, for they was names that was very dear to him, and mentioned often in his letters; and so he will name the same, to-wit, as follows, vizz:rev. mr. hobson, and deacon lot hovey, and mr. ben rucker, and abner shackleford, and levi bell, and dr. robinson, and their wives, and the widow bartley. rev. hobson and dr. robinson was down to the end of the town, a-hunting together; that is, i mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to t'other world, and the preacher was pinting him right. lawyer bell was away up to louisville on some business. but the rest was on hand, so they all come and shook hands with the king and thanked him and talked to him; and then they shook hands with the duke, and didn't say nothing but just kept a-smiling and bobbing their heads like a passel of sapheads whilst he made all sorts of signs with his hands and said "goo-googoo-goo-goo," all the time, like a baby that can't talk. so the king he blatted along, and managed to inquire about pretty much everybody and dog in town, by his name, and mentioned all sorts of little things that happened one time or another in the town, or to george's family, or to peter; and he always let on that peter wrote him the things, but that was a lie, he got every blessed one of them out of that young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat. then mary jane she fetched the letter her father left behind, and the king he read it out loud and cried over it. it give the dwelling-house and three thousand dollars, gold, to the girls; and it give the tanyard (which was doing a good business), along with some other houses and land (worth about seven thousand), and three thousand dollars in gold to harvey and william, and told where the six thousand cash was hid, down cellar. so these two frauds said they'd go and fetch it up, and have everything square and above-board; and told me to come with a candle. we shut the cellar door behind us, and when they found the bag they spilt it out on the floor and it was a lovely sight, all them yaller-boys. my, the way the king's eyes did shine! he slaps the duke on the shoulder, and says: "oh, this ain't bully, nor noth'n! oh, no, i reckon not! why, biljy, it beats the nonesuch, don't it!" the duke allowed it did. they pawed the yaller-boys, and sifted them through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor; and the king says: "it ain't no use talkin'; bein' brothers to a rich dead man, and representatives of furrin heirs that's got left, is the line for you and me, bilge. thish-yer comes of trust'n to providence. it's the best way, in the long run. i've tried 'em all, and ther' ain't no better way." most everybody would a been satisfied with the pile, and took it on trust; but no, they must count it. so they counts it, and it comes out four hundred and fifteen dollars short. says the king: "dern him, i wonder what he done with that four hundred and fifteen dollars?" they worried over that a while, and ransacked all around for it. then the duke says: "well, he was a pretty sick man, and likely he made a mistakei reckon that's the way of it. the best way's to let it go, and keep still about it. we can spare it." "oh, shucks, yes, we can spare it. i don't k'yer noth'n 'bout thatit's the count i'm thinkin'about. we want to be awful square and open and aboveboard, here, you know. we want to lug this h-yer money up stairs and count it before everybodythen ther' ain't noth'n suspicious. but when the dead man says ther's six thous'n dollars, you know, we don't want to-" "hold on," says the duke. "less make up the deffisit"and he begun to haul out yaller-boys out of his pocket. "it's a most amaz'n' good idea, dukeyou have got a rattlin' clever head on you," says the king. "blest if the old none-such ain't a heppin' us out agin"and he begun to haul out yaller-jackets and stack them up. it most busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear. "say," says the duke, "i got another idea. le's go up stairs and count this money, and then take and give it to the girls." "good land, duke, lemme hug you! it's the most dazzling idea 'at ever a man struck. you have cert'nly got the most astonishin' head i ever see. oh, this is the boss dodge, ther' ain't no mistake 'bout it. let 'em fetch along their suspicions now, if they want tothis'll lay 'em out." when we got up stairs, everybody gethered around the table, and the king he counted it and stacked it up, three hundred dollars in a piletwenty elegant little piles. everybody looked hungry at it, and licked their chops. then they raked it into the bag agin, and i see the king begin to swell himself up for another speech. he says: "friends all, my poor brother that lays yonder, has done generous by them that's left behind in the vale of sorrers. he has done generous by these-yer poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered, and that's left fatherless and motherless. yes, and we that knowed him, knows that he would a done more generous by 'em if he hadn't ben afeard o' woundin' his dear william and me. now, wouldn't he? ther' ain't no question 'bout it, in my mind. well, thenwhat kind o' brothers would it be, that'd stand in his way at sech a time? and what kind o' uncles would it be that'd robyes, robsech poor sweet lambs as these 'at he loved so, at sech a time? if i know williamand i think i dohewell, i'll jest ask him." he turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to the duke with hands; and the duke he looks at him stupid and leather-headed a while, then all of a sudden he seems to catch his meaning, and jumps for the king, goo-gooing with all his might for joy, and hugs him about fifteen times before he lets up. then the king says, "i knowed it; i reckon that'll convince anybody the way he feels about it. here, mary jane, susan, joanner, take the moneytake it all. it's the gift of him that lays yonder, cold but joyful." mary jane she went for him, susan and the hare-lip went for the duke, and then such another hugging and kissing i never see yet. and everybody crowded up with the tears in their eyes, and most shook the hands off of them frauds, saying all the time: "you dear good souls!how lovely!how could you!" well, then, pretty soon all hands got to talking about the diseased again, and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that; and before long a big iron-jawed man worked himself in there from outside, and stood a listening and looking, and not saying anything; and nobody saying anything to him either, because the king was talking and they was all busy listening. the king was sayingin the middle of something he'd started in on "-they bein' partickler friends o' the diseased. that's why they're invited here this evenin'; but to-morrow we want all to comeeverybody; for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fitten that his funeral orgies sh'd be public." and so he went a-mooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the duke he couldn't stand it no more; so he writes on a little scrap of paper, "obsequies, you old fool," and folds it up and goes to goo-gooing and reaching it over people's heads to him. the king he reads it, and puts it in his pocket, and says: "poor william, afflicted as he is, his heart's aluz right. asks me to invite everybody to come to the funeralwants me to make 'em all welcome. but he needn't a worriedit was jest what i was at." then he weaves along again, perfectly ca'm, and goes to dropping in his funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he done before. and when he done it the third time he says: "i say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it ain'tobsequies bein' the common termbut because orgies is the right term. obsequies ain't used in england no more, nowit's gone out. we say orgies now, in england. orgies is better, because it means the thing you're after, more exact. it's a word that's made up outin the greek orgo, outside, open, abroad; and the hebrew jeesum, to plant, cover up; hence inter. so, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public funeral." he was the worst i ever struck. well, the iron-jawed man he laughed right in his face. everybody was shocked. everybody says, "why doctor!" and abner shackleford says: "why, robinson, hain't you heard the news? this is harvey wilks." the king he smiled eager, and shoved out his flapper, and says: "is it my poor brother's dear good friend and physician? i-" "keep your hands off of me!" says the doctor. "you talk like an englishmandon't you? it's the worst imitation i ever heard. you peter wilks's brother. you're a fraud, that's what you are!" well, how they all took on! they crowded around the doctor, and tried to quiet him down, and tried to explain to him, and tell him how harvey'd showed in forty ways that he was harvey, and knowed everybody by name, and the names of the very dogs, and begged and begged him not to hurt harvey's feelings and the poor girls' feelings, and all that; but it warn't no use, he stormed right along, and said any man that pretended to be an englishman and couldn't imitate the lingo no better than what he did, was a fraud and a liar. the poor girls was hanging to the king and crying; and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on them. he says: "i was your father's friend, and i'm your friend; and i warn you as a friend, and an honest one, that wants to protect you and keep you out of harm and trouble, to turn your backs on that scoundrel, and have nothing to do with him, the ignorant tramp, with his idiotic greek and hebrew as he calls it. he is the thinnest kind of an imposterhas come here with a lot of empty names and facts which he has picked up somewheres, and you take them for proofs, and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish friends here, who ought to know better. mary jane wilks, you know me for your friend, and for your unselfish friend, too. now listen to me; turn this pitiful rascal outi beg you to do it. will you?" mary jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome! she says: "here is my answer." she hove up the bag of money and put it in the king's hands, and says, "take this six thousand dollars, and invest it for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don't give us no receipt for it." then she put her arm around the king on one side, and susan and the hare-lip done the same on the other. everybody clapped their hands and stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his hand and smiled proud. the doctor says: "all right, i wash my hands of the matter. but i warn you all that a time's coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this day"and away he went. "all right, doctor," says the king, kinder mocking him, "we'll try and get 'em to send for you"which made them all laugh, and they said it was a prime good hit. chapter twenty-six well when they was all gone, the king he asks mary jane how they was off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for uncle william, and she'd give her own room to uncle harvey, which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it. the king said the cubby would do for his valleymeaning me. so mary jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain but nice. she said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps took out of her room if they was in uncle harvey's way, but he said they warn't. the frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. there was an old hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar box in another, and all sorts of little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room with. the king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for these fixings, and so don't disturb them. the duke's room was pretty small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby. that night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there, and i stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them, and the niggers waited on the rest. mary jane she set at the head of the table, with susan along side of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens wasand all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tip-top, and said sosaid "how do you get biscuits to brown so nice?" and "where, for the land's sake did you get these amaz'n pickles?" and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you know. and when it was all done, me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up the things. the hare-lip she got to pumping me about england, and blest if i didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin, sometimes. she says: "did you ever see the king?" "who? william fourth? well, i bet i havehe goes to our church." i knowed he was dead years ago, but i never let on. so when i says he goes to our church, she says: "whatregular?" "yesregular. his pew's right over opposite ournon t'other side the pulpit." "i thought he lived in london?" "well, he does. where would he live?" "but i thought you lived in sheffield?" i see i was up a stump. i had to let on to get choked with a chicken bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again. then i says: "i mean he goes to our church regular when he's in sheffield. that's only in the summer-time, when he comes there to take the sea baths." "why, how you talksheffield ain't on the sea." "well, who said it was?" "why, you did." "i didn't, nuther." "you did!" "i didn't." "you did." "i never said nothing of the kind." "well, what did you say, then?" "said he come to take the sea bathsthat's what i said." "well, then! how's he going to take the sea baths if it ain't on the sea?" "looky here," i says; "did you ever see any congress-water?" "yes." "well, did you have to go to congress to get it?" "why, no." "well, neither does william fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea bath." "how does he get it, then?" "gets it the way people down here gets congress-waterin barrels. there in the palace at sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water hot. they can't bile that amount of water away off there at the sea. they haven't got no conveniences for it." "oh, i see, now. you might a said that in the first place and saved time." when she said that, i see i was out of the woods again, and so i was comfortable and glad. next, she says: "do you go to church, too?" "yesregular." "where do you set?" "why, in our pew." "whose pew?" "why, ournyour uncle harvey's." "his'n? what does he want with a pew?" "wants it to set in. what did you reckon he wanted with it?" "why, i thought he'd be in the pulpit." rot him, i forgot he was a preacher. i see i was up a stump again, so i played another chicken bone and got another think. then i says: "blame it, do you suppose there ain't but one preacher to a church?" "why, what do they want with more?" "what!to preach before a king? i never see such a girl as you. they don't have no less than seventeen." "seventeen! my land! why, i wouldn't set out such a string as that, not if i never got to glory. it must take 'em a week." "shucks, they don't all of 'em preach the same dayonly one of 'em." "well, then, what does the rest of 'em do?" "oh, nothing much. loll around, pass the plateand one thing or another. but mainly they don't do nothing." "well, then, what are they for?" "why, they're for style. don't you know nothing?" "well, i don't want to know no such foolishness as that. how is servants treated in england? do they treat 'em better 'n we treat our niggers?" "no! a servant ain't nobody there. they treat them worse than dogs." "don't they give 'em holidays, the way we do, christmas and new year's week, and fourth of july?" "oh, just listen! a body could tell you hain't ever been to england, by that. why, hare-lwhy, joanna, they never see a holiday from year's end to year's end; never go to the circus, nor theatre, nor nigger shows, nor nowheres." "nor church?" "nor church." "but you always went to church." well, i was gone up again. i forgot i was the old man's servant. but next minute i whirled in on a kind of an explanation how a valley was different from a common servant, and had to go to church whether he wanted to or not, and set with the family, on account of it's being the law. but i didn't do it pretty good, and when i got done i see she warn't satisfied. she says: "honest injun, now, hain't you been telling me a lot of lies?" "honest injun," says i. "none of it at all?" "none of it at all. not a lie in it," says i. "lay your hand on this book and say it." i see it warn't nothing but a dictionary, so i laid my hand on it and said it. so then she looked a little better satisfied, and says: "well, then, i'll believe some of it; but i hope to gracious if i'll believe the rest." "what is it you won't believe, joe?" says mary jane, stepping in with susan behind her. "it ain't right nor kind for you to talk so to him, and him a stranger and so far from his people. how would you like to be treated so?" "that's always your way, maimalways sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. i hain't done nothing to him. he's told some stretchers, i reckon; and i said i wouldn't swallow it all; and that's every bit and grain i did say. i reckon he can stand a little thing like that, can't he?" "i don't care whether 'twas little or whether 'twas big, he's here in our house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it. if you was in his place, it would make you feel ashamed; and so you oughtn't to say a thing to another person that will make them feel ashamed." "why, maim, he said-" "it don't make no difference what he saidthat ain't the thing. the thing is for you to treat him kind, and not be saying things to make him remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks." i says to myself, this is a girl that i'm letting that old reptle rob her of her money! then susan she waltzed in; and if you'll believe me, she did give hare-lip hark from the tomb! says i to myself, and this is another one that i'm letting him rob her of her money! then mary jane she took another inning, and went in sweet and lovely againwhich was her waybut when she got done there warn't hardly anything left o' poor hare-lip. so she hollered. "all right, then," says the other girls, "you just ask his pardon." she done it, too. and she done it beautiful. she done it so beautiful it was good to hear; and i wished i could tell her a thousand lies, so she could do it again. i says to myself, this is another one that i'm letting him rob her of her money. and when she got through, they all jest laid theirselves out to make me feel at home and know i was amongst friends. i felt so ornery and low down and mean, that i says to myself, my mind's made up; i'll hive that money for them or bust. so then i lit outfor bed, i said, meaning some time or another. when i got by myself, i went to thinking the thing over. i says to myself, shall i go to that doctor, private, and blow on these frauds? nothat won't do. he might tell who told him; then the king and the duke would make it warm for me. shall i go, private, and tell mary jane? noi dasn't do it. her face would give them a hint, sure; they've got the money, and they'd slide right out and get away with it. if she was to fetch in help, i'd get mixed up in the business, before it was done with, i judge. no, there ain't no good way but one. i got to steal that money, somehow; and i got to steal it some way that they won't suspicion that i done it. they've got a good thing, here; and they ain't agoing to leave till they've played this family and this town for all they're worth, so i'll find a chance time enough. i'll steal it, and hide it; and by-and-by, when i'm away down the river, i'll write a letter and tell mary jane where it's hid. but i better hive it to-night, if i can, because the doctor maybe hasn't let up as much as he lets on he has; he might scare them out of here, yet. so, thinks i, i'll go and search them rooms. up stairs the hall was dark, but i found the duke's room, and started to paw around it with my hands; but i recollected it wouldn't be much like the king to let anybody else take care of that money but his own self; so then i went to his room and begun to paw around there. but i see i couldn't do nothing without a candle, and i dasn't light one, of course. so i judged i'd got to do the other thinglay for them and eavesdrop. about that time, i hears their footsteps coming and was going to skip under the bed; i reached for it, but it wasn't where i thought it would be; but i touched the curtain that hid mary jane's frocks, so i jumped in behind that and snuggled in amongst the gowns, and stood there perfectly still. they come in and shut the door; and the first thing the duke done was to get down and look under the bed. then i was glad i hadn't found the bed when i wanted it. and yet, you know, it's kind of natural to hide under the bed when you are up to anything private. they sets down, then, and the king says: "well, what is it? and cut it middlin' short, because it's better for us to be down there a whoopin'-up the mournin', than up here givin' 'em a chance to talk us over." "well, this is it, capet. i ain't easy; i ain't comfortable. that doctor lays on my mind. i wanted to know your plans. i've got a notion, and i think it's a sound one." "what is it, duke?" "that we better glide out of this, before three in the morning, and clip it down the river with what we've got. specially, seeing we got it so easygiven back to us, flung at our heads, as you may say, when of course we allowed to have to steal it back. i'm for knocking off and lighting out." that made me feel pretty bad. about an hour or two ago, it would a been a little different, but now it made me feel bad and disappointed. the king rips out and says: "what! and not sell out the rest o' the property? march off like a passel o' fools and leave eight or nine thous'n' dollars' worth o' property layin' around jest sufferin' to be scooped in?and all good salable stuff, too." the duke he grumbled; said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn't want to go no deeperdidn't want to rob a lot of orphans of everything they had. "why, how you talk!" says the king. "we shan't rob 'em of nothing at all but jest this money. the people that buys the property is the suff'rers; because as soon's it's found out 'at we didn't own itwhich won't be long after we've slidthe sale won't be valid, and it'll all go back to the estate. these-yer orphans'll git their house back agin, and that's enough for them; they're young and spry, and k'n easy earn a livin'. they ain't agoing to suffer. why, jest thinkthere's thous'n's and thous'n's that ain't nigh so well off. bless you, they ain't got noth'n to complain of." well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all right, but said he believed it was blame foolishness to stay, and that doctor hanging over them. but the king says: "cuss the doctor! what do we k'yer for him? hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? and ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" so they got ready to go down stairs again. the duke says: "i don't think we put that money in a good place." that cheered me up. i'd begun to think i warn't going to get a hint of no kind to help me. the king says: "because mary jane'll be in mourning from this out; and first you know the nigger that does up the rooms will get an order to box these duds up and put 'em away; and do you reckon a nigger can run across money and not borrow some of it?" "your head's level, agin, duke," says the king; and he come a fumbling under the curtain two or three foot from where i was. i stuck tight to the wall, and kept mighty still, though quivery; and i wondered what them fellows would say to me if they catched me; and i tried to think what i'd better do if they did catch me. but the king he got the bag before i could think more than about a half a thought, and he never suspicioned i was around. they took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw tick that was under the feather bed, and crammed it in a foot or two amongst the straw and said it was all right, now, because a nigger only makes up the feather bed, and don't turn over the straw tick only about twice a year, and so it warn't in no danger of getting stole, now. but i knowed better. i had it out of there before they was half-way down stairs. i groped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till i could get a chance to do better. i judged i better hide it outside of the house somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the house a good ransacking. i knowed that very well. then i turned in, with my clothes all on; but i couldn't a gone to sleep, if i'd a wanted to, i was in such a sweat to get through with the business. by-and-by i heard the king and the duke come up; so i rolled off my pallet and laid with my chin at the top of my ladder and waited to see if anything was going to happen. but nothing did. so i held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't begun, yet; and then i slipped down the ladder. chapter twenty-seven i crept to their doors and listened; they was snoring, so i tip-toed along, and got down stairs all right. there warn't a sound anywheres. i peeped through a crack of the diningroom door, and see the men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. the door was open into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in both rooms. i passed along, and the parlor door was open; but i see there warn't nobody in there but the remainders of peter; so i shoved on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there. just then i heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me. i run in the parlor, and took a swift look around, and the only place i see to hide the bag was in the coffin. the lid was shoved along about a foot, showing the dead man's face down in there, with a wet cloth over it, and his shroud on. i tucked the money-bag in under the lid, just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so cold, and then i run back across the room and in behind the door. the person coming was mary jane. she went to the coffin, very soft, and kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief and i see she begun to cry, though i couldn't hear her, and her back was to me. i slid out, and as i passed the dining room i thought i'd make sure them watchers hadn't seen me; so i looked through the crack and everything was all right. they hadn't stirred. i slipped up to bed, feeling rather blue, on accounts of the thing playing out that way after i had took so much trouble and run so much resk about it. says i, if it could stay where it is, all right; because when we get down the river a hundred mile or two, i could write back to mary jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that ain't the thing that's going to happen; the thing that's going to happen is, the money'll be found when they come to screw on the lid. then the king'll get it again, and it'll be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to smouch it from him. of course i wanted to slide down and get it out of there, but i dasn't try it. every minute it was getting earlier, now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir, and i might get catchedcatched with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn't hired me to take care of. i don't wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, i says to myself. when i got down stairs in the morning, the parlor was shut up, and the watchers was gone. there warn't nobody around but the family and the widow bartley and our tribe. i watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but i couldn't tell. towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full. i see the coffin lid was the way it was before, but i dasn't go to look in under it, with folks around. then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little. there warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor, and blowing nosesbecause people always blow them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church. when the place was packed full, the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. he never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passage-ways, and done it all with nods, and signs with his hands. then he took his place over against the wall. he was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man i ever see; and there warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham. they had borrowed a melodeuma sick one; and when everything was ready, a young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion. then the reverend hobson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up, right along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and waityou couldn't hear yourself think. it was right down awkward, and nobody didn't seem to know what to do. but pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, "don't you worryjust depend on me." then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads. so he glided along, and the pow-wow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar. then, in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off. in a minute or two here comes this undertaker's back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided, and glided, around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "he had a rat!" then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. you could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know. a little thing like that don't cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. there warn't no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was. well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome; and then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the coffin with his screw-driver. i was in a sweat then, and watched him pretty keen. but he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along, as soft as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. so there i was! i didn't know whether the money was in there, or not. so, says i, spose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly?now how do i know whether to write to mary jane or not? spose she dug him up and didn't find nothingwhat would she think of me? blame it, i says, i might get hunted up and jailed; i'd better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all; the thing's awful mixed, now; trying to better it, i've worsened it a hundred times, and i wish to goodness i'd just let it alone, dad fetch the whole business! they buried him, and we come back home, and i went to watching faces againi couldn't help it, and i couldn't rest easy. but nothing come of it; the faces didn't tell me nothing. the king he visited around, in the evening, and sweetened everybody up, and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his congregation over in england would be in a sweat about him, so he must hurry and settle up the estate right away, and leave for home. he was very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done. and he said of course him and william would take the girls home with them; and that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed, and amongst their own relations; and it pleased the girls, tootickled them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world; and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready. them poor things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so, but i didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune. well, blamed if the king didn't bill the house and the niggers and all the property for auction straight offsale two days after the funeral; but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to. so the next day after the funeral, along about noontime, the girls' joy got the first jolt; a couple of nigger traders come along, and the king sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts as they called it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to memphis, and their mother down the river to orleans. i thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each other, and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. the girls said they hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town. i can't ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks and crying; and i reckon i couldn't a stood it all but would a had to bust out and tell on our gang if i hadn't known the sale warn't no account and the niggers would be back home in a week or two. the thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way. it injured the frauds some; but the old fool he bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and i tell you the duke was powerful uneasy. next day was auction day. about broad-day in the morning, the king and the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and i see by their look that there was trouble. the king says: "was you in my room night before last?" "no, your majesty"which was the way i always called him when nobody but our gang warn't around. "was you in there yesterday er last night?" "no, your majesty." "honor bright, nowno lies." "honor bright, your majesty, i'm telling you the truth. i hain't been anear your room since miss mary jane took you and the duke and showed it to you." the duke says: "have you seen anybody else go in there?" "no, your grace, not as i remember, i believe." "stop and think." i studied a while, and see my chance, then i says: "well, i see the niggers go in there several times." both of them give a little jump; and looked like they hadn't ever expected it, and then like they had. then the duke says: "what, all of them?" "noleastways not all at once. that is, i don't think i ever see them all come out at once but just one time." "hellowhen was that?" "it was the day we had the funeral. in the morning. it warn't early, because i overslept. i was just starting down the ladder, and i see them." "well, go on, go onwhat did they do? how'd they act?" "they didn't do anything. and they didn't act anyway, much, as fur as i see. they tip-toed away; so i seen, easy enough, that they'd shoved in there to do up your majesty's room, or something, sposing you was up; and found you warn't up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn't already waked you up." "great guns, this is a go!" says the king; and both of them looked pretty sick, and tolerable silly. they stood there a thinking and scratching their heads, a minute, and then the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle, and says: "it does beat all, how neat the niggers played their hand. they let on to be sorry they was going out of this region! and i believed they was sorry. and so did you, and so did everybody. don't ever tell me any more that a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent. why, the way they played that thing, it would fool anybody. in my opinion there's a fortune in 'em. if i had capital and a theatre, i wouldn't want a better lay out than thatand here we've gone and sold 'em for a song. yes, and ain't privileged to sing the song, yet. say, where is that song?that draft." "in the bank for to be collected. where would it be?" "well, that's all right then, thank goodness." says i, kind of timid-like: "is something gone wrong?" the king whirls on me and rips out: "none o' your business! you keep your head shet, and mind y'r own affairsif you got any. long as you're in this town, don't you forgit that, you hear?" then he says to the duke, "we got to jest swaller it, and say noth'n: mum's the word for us." as they was starting down the ladder, the duke he chuckles again, and says: "quick sales and small profits! it's a good businessyes." the king snarls around on him and says, "i was trying to do for the best, in sellin' 'm out so quick. if the profits has turned out to be none, lackin' considable, and none to carry, is it my fault any more'n it's yourn?" "well, they'd be in this house yet, and we wouldn't if i could a got my advice listened to." the king sassed back, as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around and lit into me again. he give me down the banks for not coming and telling him i see the niggers come out of his room acting that waysaid any fool would a knowed something was up. and then waltzed in and cussed himself a while; and said it all come of him not laying late and taking his natural rest that morning, and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it again. so they went off a jawing; and i felt dreadful glad i'd worked it all off onto the niggers and yet hadn't done the niggers no harm by it. chapter twenty-eight by-and-by it was getting-up time; so i come down the ladder and started for down stairs, but as i come to the girls' room, the door was open, and i see mary jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she'd been packing things in itgetting ready to go to england. but she had stopped now, with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying. i felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would. i went in there, and says: "miss mary jane, you can't abear to see people in trouble, and i can'tmost always. tell me about it." so she done it. and it was the niggersi just expected it. she said the beautiful trip to england was most about spoiled for her; she didn't know how she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children warn't ever going to see each other no moreand then busted out bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says: "oh, dear, to think they ain't ever going to see each other any more!" "but they willand inside of two weeksand i know it!" says i. laws, it was out before i could think!and before i could budge, she throws her arms around my neck, and told me to say it again, say it again, say it again! i see i had spoke too sudden, and said too much, and was in a close place. i asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and excited, and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person that's had a tooth pulled out. so i went to studying it out. i says to myself, i reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place, is taking considerable many resks, though i ain't had no experience, and can't say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here's a case where i'm blest if it don't look to me like the truth is better, and actuly safer, than a lie. i must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it's so kind of strange and unregular. i never see nothing like it. well, i says to myself at last, i'm agoing to chance it; i'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to. then i says: "miss mary jane, is there any place out of town a little ways, where you could go and stay three or four days?" "yesmr. lathrop's. why?" "never mind why, yet. if i tell you how i know the niggers will see each other againinside of two weekshere in this houseand prove how i know itwill you go to mr. lathrop's and stay four days?" "four days!" she says; "i'll stay a year!" "all right," i says, "i don't want nothing more out of you than just your wordi druther have it than another man's kiss-the-bible." she smiled, and reddened up very sweet, and i says, "if you don't mind it, i'll shut the doorand bolt it." then i come back and set down again, and says: "don't you holler. just set still, and take it like a man. i got to tell the truth, and you want to brace up, miss mary, because it's a bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for it. these uncles of yourn ain't no uncles at allthey're a couple of fraudsregular dead-beats. there, now we're over the worst of ityou can stand the rest middling easy." it holted her up like everything, of course; but i was over the shoal water now, so i went right along, her eyes a blazing higher and higher all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she flung herself onto the king's breast at the front door and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen timesand then up she jumps, with her face afire like sunset, and says: "the brute! comedon't waste a minutenot a secondwe'll have them tarred and feathered, and flung in the river! says i: "cert'nly. but do you mean, before you go to mr. lathrop's, or-" "oh," she says, "what am i thinking about!" she says, and set right down again. "don't mind what i saidplease don'tyou won't, now, will you?" laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that i said i would die first. "i never thought, i was so stirred up," she says; "now go on, and i won't do so any more. you tell me what to do, and whatever you say, i'll do it." "well," i says, "it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and i'm fixed so i got to travel with them a while longer, whether i want to or noti druther not tell you whyand if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws, and i'd be all right, but there'd be another person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble. well, we got to save him, hain't we? of course. well, then, we won't blow on them." saying them words put a good idea in my head. i see how maybe i could get me and jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave. but i didn't want to run the raft in day-time, without anybody aboard to answer questions but me; so i didn't want the plan to begin working till pretty late to-night. i says: "miss mary jane, i'll tell you what we'll doand you won't have to stay at mr. lathrop's so long, nuther. how fur is it?" "a little short of four milesright out in the country, back here." "well, that'll answer. now you go along out there, and lay low till nine or half-past, to-night, and then get them to fetch you home againtell them you've thought of something. if you get here before eleven, put a candle in this window, and if i don't turn up, wait till eleven, and then if i don't turn up it means i'm gone, and out of the way, and safe. then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats jailed." "good," she says, "i'll do it." "and if it just happens so that i don't get away, but get took up along with them, you must up and say i told you the whole thing beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can." "stand by you, indeed i will. they shan't touch a hair of your head!" she says, and i see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it, too. "if i get away, i shan't be here," i says, "to prove these rapscallions ain't your uncles, and i couldn't do it if i was here. i could swear they was beats and bummers, that's all; though that's worth something. well, there's others can do that better than what i canand they're people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as i'd be. i'll tell you how to find them. gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. there'royal nonesuch, bricksville.' put it away, and don't lose it. when the court wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to bricksville and say they've got the men that oldyed the royal nonesuch, and ask for some witnesseswhy, you'll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink, miss mary. and they'll come a-biling, too." i judged we had got everything fixed about right, now. so i says: "just let the auction go right along, and don't worry. nobody don't have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction, on accounts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till they get that moneyand the way we've fixed it the sale ain't going to count, and they ain't going to get no money. it's just like the way it was with the niggersit warn't no sale, and the niggers will be back before long. why, they can't collect the money for the niggers, yetthey're in the worst kind of a fix, miss mary." "well," she says, "i'll run down to breakfast now, and then i'll start straight for mr. lathrop's." "deed, that ain't the ticket, miss mary jane," i says, "by no manner of means; go before breakfast." "why?" "what did you reckon i wanted you to go at all for, miss mary?" "well, i never thoughtand come to think, i don't know. what was it?" "why, it's because you ain't one of these leather-face people. i don't want no better book than what your face is. a body can set down and read it off like coarse print. do you reckon you can go and face your uncles, when they come to kiss you good-morning, and never-" "there, there, don't! yes, i'll go before breakfasti'll be glad to. and leave my sisters with them?" "yesnever mind about them. they've got to stand it yet a while. they might suspicion something if all of you was to go. i don't want you to see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this townif a neighbor was to ask how is your uncles this morning, your face would tell something. no, you go right along, miss mary jane, and i'll fix it with all of them. i'll tell miss susan to give your love to your uncles and say you've went away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change, or to see a friend, and you'll be back to-night or early in the morning." "gone to see a friend is all right, but i won't have my love given to them." "well, then, it shan't be." it was well enough to tell her sono harm in it. it was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it's the little things that smoothes people's roads the most, down here below; it would make mary jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing. then i says: "there's one more thingthat bag of money." "well, they've got that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think how they got it." "no, you're out, there. they hain't got it." "why, who's got it?" "i wish i knowed, but i don't. i had it, because i stole it from them: and i stole it to give to you; and i know where i hid it, but i'm afraid it ain't there no more. i'm awful sorry, miss mary jane, i'm just as sorry as i can be; but i done the best i could; i did, honest. i come nigh getting caught, and i had to shove it into the first place i come to, and runand it warn't a good place." "oh, stop blaming yourselfit's too bad to do it, and i won't allow ityou couldn't help it; it wasn't your fault. where did you hide it?" i didn't want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and i couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. so for a minute i didn't say nothingthen i says: "i'd ruther not tell you where i put it, miss mary jane, if you don't mind letting me off; but i'll write it for you on a piece of paper, and you can read it along the road to mr. lathrop's, if you want to. do you reckon that'll do?" "oh, yes." so i wrote: "i put it in the coffin. it was in there when you was crying there, away in the night. i was behind the door, and i was mighty sorry for you, miss mary jane." it made my eyes water a little, to remember her crying there all by herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when i folded it up and give it to her, i see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the hand, hard, and says: "good-byei'm going to do everything just as you've told me; and if i don't ever see you again, i shan't ever forget you, and i'll think of you a many and a many a time, and i'll pray for you, too!"and she was gone. pray for me! i reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more nearer her size. but i bet she done it, just the sameshe was just that kind. she had the grit to pray for judus if she took the notionthere warn't no backdown to her, i judge. you may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl i ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand. it sounds like flattery, but it ain't no flattery. and when it comes to beautyand goodness tooshe lays over them all. i hain't ever seen her since, but i reckon i've thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever i'd a thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if i wouldn't a done it or bust. well, mary jane she lit out the back way, i reckon; because nobody see her go. when i struck susan and the harelip, i says: "what's the name of them people over on t'other side of the river that you all goes to see sometimes?" they says: "there's several; but it's the proctors, mainly." "that's the name," i says; "i most forgot it. well, miss mary jane she told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurryone of them's sick." "which one?" "i don't know; leastways i kinder forget; but i think it's-" "sakes alive, i hope it ain't hanner?" "i'm sorry to say it," i says, "but hanner's the very one." "my goodnessand she so well only last week! is she took bad?" "it ain't no name for it. they set up with her all night, miss mary jane said, and they don't think she'll last many hours." "only think of that, now! what's the matter with her!" i couldn't think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so i says: "mumps." "mumps your granny! they don't set up with people that's got the mumps." "they don't, don't they? you better bet they do with these mumps. these mumps is different. it's a new kind, miss mary jane said." "how's it a new kind?" "because it's mixed up with other things." "what other things?" "well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and yeller janders, and brain fever, and i don't know what all." "my land! and they call it the mumps?" "that's what miss mary jane said." "well, what in the nation do they call it the mumps for?" "why, because it is the mumps. that's what it starts with." "well, ther' ain't no sense in it. a body might stump his toe, and take pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull up and say, 'why, he stumped his toe.' would ther' be any sense in that? no. and ther' ain't no sense in this, nuther. is it ketching?" "is it ketching? why, how you talk. is a harrow catching?in the dark? if you don't hitch onto one tooth, you're bound to on another, ain't you? and you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you? well, these kind of mumps is a kind of harrow, as you may sayand it ain't no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to get it hitched on good." "well, it's awful, i think," says the hare-lip. "i'll go to uncle harvey and-" "oh, yes," i says, "i would. of course i would. i wouldn't lose no time." "well, why wouldn't you?" "just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. hain't your uncles obleeged to get along home to england as fast as they can? and do you reckon they'd be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by yourselves? you know they'll wait for you. so fur, so good. your uncle harvey's a preacher, ain't he? very well, then; is a preacher going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive a ship clerk?so as to get them to let miss mary jane go aboard? now you know he ain't. what will he do, then? why, he'll say, 'it's a great pity, but my church matters has got to get along the best way they can; for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum mumps, and so it's my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she's got it.' but never mind, if you think it's best to tell your uncle harvey-" "shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in england whilst we was waiting to find out whether mary jane's got it or not? why, you talk like a muggins." "well, anyway, maybe you better tell some of the neighbors." "listen at that, now. you do beat all, for natural stupidness. can't you see that they'd go and tell? ther' ain't no way but just not to tell anybody at all." "well, maybe you're rightyes, i judge you are right." "but i reckon we ought to tell uncle harvey she's gone out a while, anyway, so he won't be uneasy about her?" "yes, miss mary jane she wanted you to do that. she says, 'tell them to give uncle harvey and william my love and a kiss, and say i've run over the river to see mr.mr.what is the name of that rich family your uncle peter used to think so much of?i mean the one that-"' "why, you must mean the apthorps, ain't it?" "of course; bother them kind of names, a body can't ever seem to remember them, half the time, somehow. yes, she said, say she has run over for to ask the apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house, because she allowed her uncle peter would ruther they had it than anybody else; and she's going to stick to them till they say they'll come, and then, if she ain't too tired, she's coming home; and if she is, she'll be home in the morning anyway. she said, don't say nothing about the proctors, but only about the apthorpswhich'll be perfectly true, because she is going there to speak about their buying the house; i know it, because she told me so, herself." "all right," they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message. everything was all right now. the girls wouldn't say nothing because they wanted to go to england; and the king and the duke would ruther mary jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of doctor robinson. i felt very good; i judged i had done it pretty neati reckoned tom sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself. of course he would a throwed more style into it, but i can't do that very handy, not being brung up to it. well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man he was on hand and looking his level piousest, up there longside of the auctioneer, and chipping in a little scripture, now and then, or a little goody-goody saying, of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly. but by-and-by the thing dragged through, and everything was sold. everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. so they'd got to work that offi never see such a girafft as the king was for wanting to swallow everything. well, whilst they was at it, a steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a whooping and yelling and laughing and carrying on, and singing out: "here's your opposition line! here's your two sets o' heirs to old peter wilksand you pays your money and you takes your choice!" chapter twenty-nine they was fetching a very nice looking old gentleman along, and a nice looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. and my souls, how the people yelled, and laughed, and kept it up. but i didn't see no joke about it, and i judged it would strain the duke and the king some to see any. i reckoned they'd turn pale. but no, nary a pale did they turn. the duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that's googling out buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful on them newcomers like it give him the stomach-ache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. oh, he done it admirable. lots of the principal people gethered around the king, to let him see they was on his side. that old gentleman that had just come looked all puzzled to death. pretty soon he begun to speak, and i see, straight off, he pronounced like an englishman, not the king's way, though the king's was pretty good, for an imitation. i can't give the old gent's words, nor i can't imitate him; but he turned around to the crowd, and says, about like this: "this is a surprise to me which i wasn't looking for; and i'll acknowledge, candid and frank, i ain't very well fixed to meet it and answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes, he's broke his arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here, last night in the night by a mistake. i am peter wilks's brother harvey, and this is his brother william, which can't hear nor speakand can't even make signs to amount to much, now't he's only got one hand to work them with. we are who we say we are; and in a day or two, when i get the baggage, i can prove it. but, up till then, i won't say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait." so him and the new dummy started off; and the king he laughs, and blethers out: "broke his armvery likely ain't it?and very convenient, too, for a fraud that's got to make signs, and hain't learnt how. lost their baggage! that's mighty good!and mighty ingeniousunder the circumstances!" so he laughed again; and so did everybody else, except three or four, or maybe half a dozen. one of these was that doctor; another one was a sharp looking gentleman, with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind made out of carpet-stuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then and nodding their headsit was levi bell, the lawyer that was gone up to louisville; and another one was a big rough husky that come along and listened to all the old gentleman said, and was listening to the king now. and when the king got done, this husky up and says: "say, looky here; if you are harvey wilks, when'd you come to this town?" "the day before the funeral, friend," says the king. "but what time o' day?" "in the evenin''bout an hour er two before sundown." "how'd you come?" "i come down on the susan powell, from cincinnati." "well, then, how'd you come to be up at the pint in the mornin'in a canoe?" "i warn't up at the pint "it's a lie." several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher. "preacher be hanged, he's a fraud and a liar. he was up at the pint that mornin'. i live up there, don't i? well, i was up there, and he was up there. i see him there. he come in a canoe, along with tim collins and a boy." the doctor he up and says: "would you know the boy again if you was to see him, hines?" "i reckon i would, but i don't know. why, yonder he is, now. i know him perfectly easy." it was me he pointed at. the doctor says: "neighbors, i don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not; but if these two ain't frauds, i am an idiot, that's all. i think it's our duty to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into this thing. come along, hines; come along, the rest of you. we'll take these fellows to the tavern and affront them with t'other couple, and i reckon we'll find out something before we get through." it was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king's friends; so we all started. it was about sundown. the doctor he led me along by the hand, and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand. we all got in a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles, and fetched in the new couple. first, the doctor says: "i don't wish to be too hard on these two men, but i think they're frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about. if they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold peter wilks left? it ain't unlikely. if these men ain't frauds, they won't object to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they're all rightain't that so?" everybody agreed to that. so i judged they had our gang in a pretty tight place, right at the outstart. but the king he only looked sorrowful, and says: "gentlemen, i wish the money was there, for i ain't got no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation o' this misable business; but alas, the money ain't there; you k'n send and see, if you want to." "where is it, then?" "well, when my niece give it to me to keep for her, i took and hid it inside o' the straw tick o' my bed, not wishin' to bank it for the few days we'd be here, and considerin' the bed a safe place, we not bein' used to niggers, and suppos'n' em honest, like servants in england. the niggers stole it the very next mornin' after i had went down stairs; and when i sold 'em, i hadn't missed the money yit, so they got clean away with it. my servant here k'n tell you 'bout it, gentlemen." the doctor and several said "shucks!" and i see nobody didn't altogether believe him. one man asked me if i see the niggers steal it. i said no, but i see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and i never thought nothing, only i reckoned they was afraid they had waked up my master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them. that was all they asked me. then the doctor whirls on me and says: "are you english too?" i says yes; and him and some others laughed, and said, "stuff!" well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about supper, nor ever seemed to think about itand so they kept it up, and kept it up; and it was the worst mixed-up thing you ever see. they made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his'n; and anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would a seen that the old gentleman was spinning truth and t'other one lies. and by-and-by they had me up to tell what i knowed. the king he give me a left-handed look out of the corner of his eye, and so i knowed enough to talk on the right side. i begun to tell about sheffield, and how we lived there, and all about the english wilkses, and so on; but i didn't get pretty fur till the doctor begun to laugh; and levi bell, the lawyer, says: "set down, my boy, i wouldn't strain myself, if i was you. i reckon you ain't used to lying, it don't seem to come handy; what you want is practice. you do it pretty awkward." i didn't care nothing for the compliment, but i was glad to be let off, anyway. the doctor he started to say something, and turns and says: "if you'd been in town at first, levi bell-" the king broke in and reached out his hand, and says: "why, is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often about?" the lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased, and they talked right along a while, and then got to one side and talked low; and at last the lawyer speaks up and says: "that'll fix it. i'll take the order and send it, along with your brother's, and then they'll know it's all right." so they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted his head to one side, and chawed his tongue, and scrawled off something; and then they give the pen to the dukeand then for the first time, the duke looked sick. but he took the pen and wrote. so then the lawyer turns to the new old gentleman and says: "you and your brother please write a line or two and sign your names." the old gentleman wrote, but nobody couldn't read it. the lawyer looked powerful astonished, and says: "well, it beats me"and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket, and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then them again; and then says: "these old letters is from harvey wilks; and here's these two's handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't write them" (the king and the duke looked sold and foolish, i tell you, to see how the lawyer had took them in), "and here's this old gentleman's handwriting, and anybody can tell, easy enough, he didn't write themfact is, the scratches he makes ain't properly writing, at all. now here's some letters from-" the new old gentleman says: "if you please, let me explain. nobody can read my hand but my brother thereso he copies for me. it's his hand you've got there, not mine." "well!" says the lawyer, "this is a state of things. i've got some of william's letters too; so if you'll get him to write a line or so we can com-" "he can't write with his left hand," says the old gentleman. "if he could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters and mine too. look at both, pleasethey're by the same hand." the lawyer done it, and says: "i believe it's soand if it ain't so, there's a heap stronger resemblance than i'd noticed before, anyway. well, well, well! i thought we was right on the track of a slution, but it's gone to grass, partly. but anyway, one thing is provedthese two ain't either of 'em wilkses"and he wagged his head towards the king and the duke. well, what do you think?that muleheaded old fool wouldn't give in then! indeed he wouldn't. said it warn't no fair test. said his brother william was the cussedest joker in the world, and hadn't tried to writehe see william was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the pen to paper. and so he warmed up and went warbling and warbling right along, till he was actuly beginning to believe what he was saying, himselfbut pretty soon the new old gentleman broke in, and says: "i've thought of something. is there anybody here that helped to lay out my brhelped to lay out the late peter wilks for burying?" "yes," says somebody, "me and ab turner done it. we're both here." then the old man turns towards the king, and says: "perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tatooed on his breast?" blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick, or he'd a squshed down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took him so suddenand mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make most anybody sqush to get fetched such a solid one as that without any noticebecause how was he going to know what was tatooed on the man? he whitened a little; he couldn't help it; and it was mighty still in there, and everybody bending a little forwards and gazing at him. says i to myself, now he'll throw up the spongethere ain't no more use. well, did he? a body can't hardly believe it, but he didn't. i reckon he thought he'd keep the thing up till he tired them people out, so they'd thin out, and him and the duke could break loose and get away. anyway, he set there, and pretty soon he begun to smile, and says: "mf! it's a very tough question, ain't it! yes, sir, i k'n tell you what's tatooed on his breast. it's jest a small, thin, blue arrowthat's what it is; and if you don't look clost, you can't see it. now what do you sayhey?" well, i never see anything like that old blister for clean out-and-out cheek. the new old gentleman turns brisk towards ab turner and his pard, and his eye lights up like he judged he'd got the king this time, and says: "thereyou've heard what he said! was there any such mark on peter wilks's breast?" both of them spoke up and says: "we didn't see no such mark." "good!" says the old gentleman. "now, what you did see on his breast was a small dim p, and a b (which is an initial he dropped when he was young), and a w, with dashes between them, so: p-b-w"-and he marked them that way on a piece of paper. "comeain't that what you saw?" both of them spoke up again, and says: "no, we didn't. we never seen any marks at all." well, everybody was in a state of mind, now; and they sings out: "the whole bilin' of' m's frauds! le's duck 'em! le's drown 'em! le's ride'em on a rail!" and everybody was whooping at once, and there was a rattling pow-wow. but the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and says: "gentlemengentlemen! hear me just a wordjust a single wordif you please! there's one way yetlet's go and dig up the corpse and look." that took them. "hooray!" they all shouted, and was starting right off; but the lawyer and the doctor sung out: "hold on, hold on! collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch them along, too!" "we'll do it!" they all shouted: "and if we don't find them marks we'll lynch the whole gang!" i was scared, now, i tell you. but there warn't no getting away, you know. they gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole town at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the evening. as we went by our house i wished i hadn't sent mary jane out of town; because now if i could tip her the wink, she'd light out and save me, and blow on our dead-beats. well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like wild-cats; and to make it more scary, the sky was darking up, and the lightning beginning to wink and flitter, and the wind to shiver amongst the leaves. this was the most awful trouble and most dangersome i ever was in; and i was kinder stunned; everything was going so different from what i had allowed for; stead of being fixed so i could take my own time, if i wanted to, and see all the fun, and have mary jane at my back to save me and set me free when the close-fit come, here was nothing in the world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tatoo-marks. if they didn't find them i couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, i couldn't think about nothing else. it got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful time to give the crowd the slip; but that big husky had me by the wristhinesand a body might as well try to give goliar the slip. he dragged me right along, he was so excited; and i had to run to keep up. when they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it like an overflow. and when they got to the grave, they found they had about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't thought to fetch a lantern. but they sailed into digging, anyway, by the flicker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house a half a mile off, to borrow one. so they dug and dug, like everything; and it got awful dark, and the rain started, and the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed; but them people never took no notice of it, they was so full of this business; and one minute you could see everything and every face in that big crowd, and the shovelfuls of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped it all out, and you couldn't see nothing at all. at last they got out the coffin, and begun to unscrew the lid, and then such another crowding, and shouldering, and shoving as there was, to scrouge in and get a sight, you never see; and in the dark, that way, it was awful. hines he hurt my wrist dreadful, pulling and tugging so, and i reckon he clean forgot i was in the world, he was so excited and panting. all of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare, and somebody sings out: "by the living jingo, here's the bag of gold on his breast!" hines let out a whoop, like everybody else, and dropped my wrist and give a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and the way i lit out and shinned for the road in the dark, there ain't nobody can tell. i had the road all to myself, and i fairly flewleastways i had it all to myself, except the solid dark, and the now-and-then glares, and the buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of the thunder; and sure as you are born i did clip it along! when i struck the town, i see there warn't nobody out in the storm, so i never hunted for no back streets, but humped it straight through the main one; and when i begun to get towards our house i aimed my eye and set it. no light there; the house all darkwhich made me feel sorry and disappointed, i didn't know why. but at last, just as i was sailing by, flash comes the light in mary jane's window! and my heart swelled up sudden, like to bust; and the same second the house and all was behind me in the dark, and wasn't ever going to be before me no more in this world. she was the best girl i ever see, and had the most sand. the minute i was far enough above the town to see i could make the tow-head, i begun to look sharp for a boat to borrow; and the first time the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained, i snatched it and shoved. it was a canoe, and warn't fastened with nothing but a rope. the tow-head was a rattling big distance off, away out there in the middle of the river, but i didn't lose no time; and when i struck the raft at last, i was so fagged i would a just laid down to blow and gasp if i could afforded it. but i didn't. as i sprung aboard i sung out: "out with you jim, and set her loose! glory be to goodness, we're shut of them!" jim lit out, and was a coming for me with both arms spread, he was so full of joy; but when i glimpsed him in the lightning, my heart shot up in my mouth, and i went overboard backwards; for i forgot he was old king lear and a drowned a-rab all in one, and it most scared the livers and lights out of me. but jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and bless me, and so on, he was so glad i was back and we was shut of the king and the duke, but i says: "not nowhave it for breakfast, have it for breakfast! cut loose and let her slide!" so, in two seconds, away we went, a sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river and nobody to bother us. i had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack my heels a few times, i couldn't help it; but about the third crack, i noticed a sound that i knowed mighty welland held my breath and listened and waitedand sure enough, when the next flash busted out over the water, here they come!and just a laying to their oars and making their skiff hum! it was the king and the duke. so i wilted right down onto the planks, then, and give up; and it was all i could do to keep from crying. chapter thirty when they got aboard, the king went for me, and shook me by the collar, and says: "tryin' to give us the slip, was ye, you pup! tired of our companyhey?" i says: "no, your majesty, we warn'tplease don't, your majesty!" "quick, then, and tell us what was your idea, or i'll shake the insides out o' you!" "honest, i'll tell you everything, just as it happened, your majesty. the man that had aholt of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous fix; and when they was all took by surprise by finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go of me and whispers, 'heel it, now, or they'll hang ye, sure!' and i lit out. it didn't seem no good for me to stayi couldn't do nothing, and i didn't want to be hung if i could get away. so i never stopped running till i found the canoe; and when i got there i told jim to hurry, or they'd catch me and hang me yet, and said i was afeard you and the duke wasn't alive, now, and i was awful sorry, and so was jim, and was awful glad when we see you coming, you may ask jim if i didn't." jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, "oh, yes, it's mighty likely!" and shook me up again, and said he reckoned he'd drowned me. but the duke says: "leggo the boy, you old idiot! would you a done any different? did you inquire around for him, when you got loose? i don't remember it." so the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in it. but the duke says: "you better a blame sight give yourself a good cussing, for you're the one that's entitled to it most. you hain't done a thing, from the start, that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky with that imaginary blue-arrow mark. that was brightit was right down bully; and it was the thing that saved us. for if it hadn't been for that, they'd a jailed us till them englishmen's baggage comeand thenthe penitentiary, you bet! but that trick took 'em to the graveyard, and the gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the excited fools hadn't let go all holts and made that rush to get a look, we'd a slept in our cravats to-nightcravats warranted to wear, toolonger than we'd need 'em." they was still a minutethinkingthen the king says, kind of absent-minded like: "mf! and we reckoned the niggers stole it!" that made me squirm! "yes," says the duke, kinder slow, and deliberate, and sarcastic, "we did." after about a half a minute, the king drawls out: "leastwaysi did." the duke says, the same way: "on the contraryi did." the king kind of ruffles up, and says: "looky here, bilgewater, what'r you referrin' to?" the duke says, pretty brisk: "when it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask, what was you referring to?" "shucks!" says the king, very sarcastic; "but i don't knowmaybe you was asleep, and didn't know what you was about." the duke bristles right up, now, and says: "oh, let up on this cussed nonsensedo you take me for a blame' fool? don't you reckon i know who hid that money in that coffin?" "yes, sir! i know you do knowbecause you done it yourself!" "it's a lie!"and the duke went for him. the king sings out: "take y'r hands off!leggo my throat!i take it all back!" the duke says: "well, you just own up, first, that you did hide that money there, intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it up, and have it all to yourself." "wait jest a minute, dukeanswer me this one question, honest and fair; if you didn't put that money there, say it, and i'll b'lieve you, and take back everything i said." "you old scoundrel, i didn't, and you know i didn't. there, now!" "well, then, i b'lieve you. but answer me only jest this one morenow don't git mad; didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide it?" the duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says: "welli don't care if i did, i didn't do it, anyway. but you not only had it in mind to do it, but you done it." "i wisht i may never die if i done it, duke, and that's honest. i won't say i warn't goin' to do it, because i was; but youi mean somebodygot in ahead o' me." "it's a lie! you done it, and you got to say you done it, or-" the king begun to gurgle, and then he gasps out: "'nough!i own up!" i was very glad to hear him say that, it made me feel much more easier than what i was feeling before. so the duke took his hands off, and says: "if you ever deny it again, i'll drown you. it's well for you to set there and blubber like a babyit's fitten for you, after the way you've acted. i never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everythingand i a trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. you ought to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled onto a lot of poor niggers and you never say a word for 'em. it makes me feel ridiculous to think i was soft enough to believe that rubbage. cuss you, i can see, now, why you was so anxious to make up the deffesityou wanted to get what money i'd got out of the nonesuch and one thing or another, and scoop it all!" the king says, timid, and still a snuffling: "why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffersit, it warn't me." "dry up! i don't want to hear no more out of you!" says the duke. "and now you see what you got by it. they've got all their own money back, and all of ourn but a shekel or two, besides. g'long to bedand don't you deffersit me no more deffersits, long's you live!" so the king sneaked into the wigwam, and took to his bottle for comfort; and before long the duke tackled his bottle; and so in about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got, the lovinger they got; and went off a snoring in each other's arms. they both got powerful mellow, but i noticed the king didn't get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag again. that made me feel easy and satisfied. of course when they got to snoring, we had a long gabble, and i told jim everything. chapter thirty-one we dasn't stop again at any town, for days and days; kept right along down the river. we was down south in the warm weather, now, and a mighty long ways from home. we begun to come to trees with spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long gray beards. it was the first i ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. so now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work the villages again. first they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on. then in another village they started a dancing school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does; so the first prance they made, the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. another time they tried a go at yellocution; but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing and made them skip out. they tackled missionarying, and mesmerizering, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything; but they couldn't seem to have no luck. so at last they got just about dead broke, and laid around the raft, as she floated along, thinking, and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and desperate. and at last they took a change, and begun to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time. jim and me got uneasy. we didn't like the look of it. we judged they was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. we turned it over and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money business, or something. so then we was pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake, and clear out and leave them behind. well, early one morning we hid the raft in a good safe place about two mile below a little bit of a shabby village, named pikesville, and the king he went ashore, and told us all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind of the royal nonesuch there yet. ("house to rob, you mean," says i to myself; "and when you get through robbing it you'll come back here and wonder what's become of me and jim and the raftand you'll have to take it out in wondering.") and he said if he warn't back by midday, the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come along. so we staid where we was. the duke he fretted and sweated around, and was in a mighty sour way. he scolded us for everything, and we couldn't seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing. something was abrewing, sure. i was good and glad when midday come and no king; we could have a change, anywayand maybe a chance for the change, on top of it. so me and the duke went up to the village, and hunted around there for the king, and by-and-by we found him in the back room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers bullyragging him for sport, and he a cussing and threatening with all his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to them. the duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun to sass back; and the minute they was fairly at it, i lit out, and shook the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deerfor i see our chance; and i made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and jim again. i got down there all out of breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out "set her loose, jim, we're all right, now!" but there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. jim was gone! i set up a shoutand then another one; and run this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't no useold jim was gone. then i set down and cried; i couldn't help it. but i couldn't set still long. pretty soon i went out on the road, trying to think what i better do, and i run across a boy walking, and asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says: "yes." "whereabouts?" says i. "down to silas phelps's place, two miles below here. he's a runaway nigger, and they've got him. was you looking for him?" "you bet i ain't! i run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago, and he said if i hollered he'd cut my livers outand told me to lay down and stay where i was; and i done it. been there ever since; afeard to come out." "well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him. he run f'm down south, som'ers." "it's a good job they got him." "well, i reckon! there two hundred dollars reward on him. it's like picking up money out'n the road." "yes, it isand i could a had it if i'd been big enough; i see him first. who nailed him?" "it was an old fellowa strangerand he sold out his chance in him for forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait. think o' that, now! you bet i'd wait, if it was seven year." "that's me, every time," says i. "but maybe his chance ain't worth no more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. maybe there's something ain't straight about it." "but it is, thoughstraight as a string. i see the handbill myself. it tells all about him, to a dotpaints him like a picture, and tells the plantation he's frum, below newrleans. no-siree-bob, they ain't no trouble 'bout that speculation, you bet you. say, gimme a chaw tobacker, won't ye?" i didn't have none, so he left. i went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think. but i couldn't come to nothing. i thought till i wore my head sore, but i couldn't see no way out of the trouble. after all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here was it all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars. once i said to myself it would be a thousand times better for jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he's got to be a slave, and so i'd better write a letter to tom sawyer and tell him to tell miss watson where he was. but i soon give up that notion, for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd make jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. and then think of me! it would get all around, that huck finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if i was to ever see anybody from that town again, i'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. that's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace. that was my fix exactly. the more i studied about this, the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery i got to feeling. and at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst i was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's one that's always on the lookout, and ain't agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, i most dropped in my tracks i was so scared. well, i tried the best i could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself, by saying i was brung up wicked, and so i warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "there was the sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there, that people that acts as i'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire." it made me shiver. and i about made up my mind to pray; and see if i couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy i was, and be better. so i kneeled down. but the words wouldn't come. why wouldn't they? it warn't no use to try and hide it from him. nor from me, neither. i knowed very well why they wouldn't come. it was because my heart warn't right; it was because i warn't square; it was because i was playing double. i was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me i was holding on to the biggest one of all. i was trying to make my mouth say i would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me i knowed it was a lie-and he knowed it. you can't pray a liei found that out. so i was full of trouble, full as i could be; and didn't know what to do. at last i had an idea; and i says, i'll go and write the letterand then see if i can pray. why, it was astonishing, the way i felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. so i got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote: miss watson your runaway nigger jim is down here two mile below pikesville and mr. phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. huck finn i felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time i had ever felt so in my life, and i knowed i could pray now. but i didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinkingthinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near i come to being lost and going to hell. and went on thinking. and got to thinking over our trip down the river; and i see jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. but somehow i couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. i'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so i could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when i come back out of the fog; and when i come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last i struck the time i saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said i was the best friend old jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then i happened to look around, and see that paper. it was a close place. i took it up, and held it in my hand. i was a trembling, because i'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and i knowed it. i studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: "all right, then, i'll go to hell"and tore it up. it was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. and i let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. i shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said i would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. and for a starter, i would go to work and steal jim out of slavery again; and if i could think up anything worse, i would do that, too; because as long as i was in, and in for good, i might as well go the whole hog. then i set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over considerable many ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that suited me. so then i took the bearings of a woody island that was down the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark i crept out with my raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. i slept the night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or another in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore. i landed below where i judged was phelps's place, and hid my bundle in the woods, and then filled up the canoe with water, loaded rocks into her and sunk her where i could find her again when i wanted her, about a quarter of a mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank. then i struck up the road, and when i passed the mill i see a sign on it, "phelps's sawmill," and when i come to the farm-houses, two or three hundred yards further along, i kept my eyes peeled, but didn't see nobody around, though it was good daylight, now. but i didn't mind, because i didn't want to see nobody just yeti only wanted to get the lay of the land. according to my plan, i was going to turn up there from the village, not from below. so i just took a look, and shoved along, straight for town. well, the very first man i see, when i got there, was the duke. he was sticking up a bill for the royal nonesuchthree-night performancelike the other time. they had the cheek, them frauds! i was right on him, before i could shirk. he looked astonished and says: "hel-lo! where'd you come from?" then he says, kind of glad and eager, "where's the raft?got her in a good place?" i says: "why, that's just what i was agoing to ask your grace." then he didn't look so joyfuland says: "what was your idea for asking me?" he says. "well," i says, "when i see the king in that doggery yesterday, i says to myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer; so i went a loafing around town to put in the time, and wait. a man up and offered me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a sheep, and so i went along; but when we was dragging him to the boat, the man left me aholt of the rope and went behind him to shove him along, he was too strong for me, and jerked loose and run, and we after him. we didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the country till we tired him out. we never got him till dark, then we fetched him over, and i started down for the raft. when i got there and see it was gone, i says to myself, 'they've got into trouble and had to leave; and they've took my nigger, which is the only nigger i've got in the world, and now i'm in a strange country, and ain't got no property no more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living'; so i set down and cried. i slept in the woods all night. but what did become of the raft then?and jim, poor jim!" "blamed if i knowthat is, what's become of the raft. that old fool had made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery the loafers had matched half dollars with him and got every cent but what he'd spent for whisky; and when i got him home late last night and found the raft gone, we said, 'that little rascal has stole our raft and shook us, and run off down the river.'" "i wouldn't shake my nigger, would i?the only nigger i had in the world, and the only property." "we never thought of that. fact is, i reckon we'd come to consider him our nigger; yes, we did consider him sogoodness knows we had trouble enough for him. so when we see the raft was gone, and we flat broke, there warn't anything for it but to try the royal nonesuch another shake. and i've pegged along ever since, dry as a powderhorn. where's that ten cents? give it here." i had considerable money, so i give him ten cents, but begged him to spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the money i had, and i hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday. the next minute he whirls on me and says: "do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? we'd skin him if he done that!" "how can he blow? hain't he run off.?" "no! that old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money's gone." "sold him?" i says, and begun to cry; "why, he was my nigger, and that was my money. where is he?i want my nigger." "well, you can't get your nigger, that's allso dry up your blubbering. looky heredo you think you'd venture to blow on us? blamed if i think i'd trust you. why, if you was to blow on us-" he stopped, but i never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before. i went on a-whimpering, and says: "i don't want to blow on nobody; and i ain't got no time to blow, nohow. i got to turn out and find my nigger." he looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead. at last he says: "i'll tell you something. we got to be here three days. if you'll promise you won't blow, and won't let the nigger blow, i'll tell you where to find him." so i promised, and he says: "a farmer by the name of silas ph-" and then he stopped. you see he started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped, that way, and begun to study and think agin, i reckoned he was changing his mind. and so he was. he wouldn't trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out of the way the whole three days. so pretty soon he says: "the man that bought him is named abram fosterabram g. fosterand he lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to lafayette." "all right," i says, "i can walk it in three days. and i'll start this very afternoon." "no, you won't, you'll start now; and don't lose any time about it, neither, nor do any gabbling by the way. just keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along, and then you won't get into trouble with us, d'ye hear?" that was the order i wanted, and that was the one i played for. i wanted to be left free to work my plans. "so clear out," he says; "and can tell mr. foster whatever you want to. maybe you can get him to believe that jim is your niggersome idiots don't require documentsleastways i've heard there's such down south here. and when you tell him the handbill and the reward's bogus, maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting 'em out. go 'long, now, and tell him anything you want to; but mind you don't work your jaw any between here and there." so i left, and struck for the back country. i didn't look around, but i kinder felt like he was watching me. but i knowed i could tire him out at that. i went straight out in the country as much as a mile, before i stopped; then i doubled back through the woods towards phelps's. i reckoned i better start in on my plan straight off, without fooling around, because i wanted to stop jim's mouth till these fellows could get away. i didn't want no trouble with their kind. i'd seen all i wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them. chapter thirty-two when i got there it was all still and sunday-like, and hot and sunshinythe hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering-spirits that's been dead ever so many yearsand you always think they're talking about you. as a general thing it makes a body wish he was dead, too, and done with it all. phelps's was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations; and they all look alike. a rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile, made out of logs sawed off and up-ended, in steps, like barrels of a different length, to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are going to jump onto a horse; some sickly grass-patches in the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed off; big double log house for the white folkshewed logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud-stripes been whitewashed some time or another; round-log kitchen, with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log smoke-house back of the kitchen; three little log nigger-cabins in a row t'other side the smokehouse; one little hut all by itself away down against the back fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side; ash-hopper, and big kettle to bile soap in, by the little hut; bench by the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there, in the sun; more hounds asleep, round about; about three shade-trees away off in a corner; some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a water-melon patch; then the cotton fields begins; and after the fields, the woods. i went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and started for the kitchen. when i got a little ways, i heard the dim hum of a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again; and then i knowed for certain i wished i was deadfor that is the lonesomest sound in the whole world. i went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for i'd noticed that providence always did put the right words in my mouth, if i left it alone. when i got half-way, first one hound and then another got up and went for me, and of course i stopped and faced them, and kept still. and such another pow-wow as they made! in a quarter of a minute i was a kind of a hub of a wheel, as you may sayspokes made out of dogscircle of fifteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses stretched up towards me, a barking and howling; and more a coming; you could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres. a nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her hand, singing out, "begone! you tige! you spot! begone, sah!" and she fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent him howling, and then the rest followed; and the next second, half of them come back, wagging their tails around me and making friends with me. there ain't no harm in a hound, nohow. and behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger boys, without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung onto their mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way they always do. and here comes the white woman running from the house, about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinningstick in her hand; and behind her comes her little white children, acting the same way the little niggers was doing. she was smiling all over so she could hardly standand says: "it's you, at last!ain't it?" i out with a "yes'm," before i thought. she grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over; and she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, "you don't look as much like your mother as i reckoned you would, but law sakes, i don't care for that, i'm so glad to see you! dear, dear, it does seem like i could eat you up! children, it's your cousin tom!tell him howdy." but they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and hid behind her. so she run on: "lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast, right awayor did you get your breakfast on the boat?" i said i had got it on the boat. so then she started for the house, leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. when we got there, she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down on a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says: "now i can have a good look at you: and laws-a-me, i've been hungry for it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's come at last! we been expecting you a couple of days and more. what's kep' you?boat get aground?" "don't say yes'msay aunt sally. where'd she get aground?" i didn't rightly know what to say, because i didn't know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down. but i go a good deal on instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming upfrom down towards orleans. that didn't help me much, though; for i didn't know the names of bars down that way. i see i'd got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got aground onornow i struck an idea, and fetched it out: "it warn't the groundingthat didn't keep us back but a little. we blowed out a cylinder-head." "good gracious! anybody hurt?" "no'm. killed a nigger." "well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. two years ago last christmas, your uncle silas was coming up from newrleans on the old lally rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man. and i think he died afterwards. he was a babtist. your uncle silas knowed a family in baton rouge that knowed his people very well. yes, i remember, now he did die. mortification set in, and they had to amputate him. but it didn't save him. yes, it was mortificationthat was it. he turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection. they say he was a sight to look at. your uncle's been up to the town every day to fetch you. and he's gone again, not more'n an hour ago; he'll be back any minute, now. you must a met him on the road, didn't you?oldish man, with a-" "no, i didn't see nobody, aunt sally. the boat landed just at daylight, and i left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking around the town and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too soon; and so i come down the back way." "who'd you give the baggage to?" "nobody." "why, child, it'll be stole!" "not where i hid it i reckon it won't," i says. "how'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?" it was kinder thin ice, but i says: "the captain see me standing around, and told me i better have something to eat before i went ashore; so he took me in the texas to the officers' lunch, and give me all i wanted." i was getting so uneasy i couldn't listen good. i had my mind on the children all the time; i wanted to get them out to one side, and pump them a little, and find out who i was. but i couldn't get no show, mrs. phelps kept it up and run on so. pretty soon she made the cold chills streak all down my back, because she says: "but here we're a running on this way, and you hain't told me a word about sis, nor any of them. now i'll rest my works a little, and you start up yourn; just tell me everythingtell me all about 'm allevery one of 'm; and how they are, and what they're doing, and what they told you to tell me; and every last thing you can think of." well, i see i was up a stumpand up it good. providence had stood by me this fur, all right, but i was hard and tight aground, now, i see it warn't a bit of use to try to go aheadi'd got to throw up my hand. so i says to myself, here's another place where i got to resk the truth. i opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the bed, and says: "here he comes! stick your head down lowerthere, that'll do; you can't be seen, now. don't you let on you're here. i'll play a joke on him. children, don't you say a word." i see i was in a fix, now. but it warn't no use to worry; there warn't nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from under when the lightning struck. i had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in, then the bed hid him. mrs. phelps she jumps for him and says: "has he come?" "no," says her husband. "good-ness gracious!" she says, "what in the world can have become of him?" "i can't imagine," says the old gentleman; "and i must say, it makes me dreadful uneasy." "uneasy!" she says, "i'm ready to go distracted! he must a come; and you've missed him along the road. i know it's sosomething tells me so." "why sally, i couldn't miss him along the roadyou know that." "but oh, dear, dear, what will sis say! he must a come! you must a missed him. he-" "oh, don't distress me any more'n i'm already distressed. i don't know what in the world to make of it. i'm at my wit's end, and i don't mind acknowledging't i'm right down scared. but there's no hope that he's come; for he couldn't come and me miss him. sally, it's terriblejust terriblesomething's happened to the boat, sure!" "why, silas! look yonder!up the road!ain't that somebody coming?" he sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that gave mrs. phelps the chance she wanted. she stooped down quick, at the foot of the bed, and give me a pull, and out i come; and when he turned back from the window, there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house afire, and i standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside. the old gentleman stared, and says: "why, who's that?" "who do you reckon 't is?" "i haint no idea. who is it?" "it's tom sawyer!" by jings, i most slumped through the floor. but there warn't no time to swap knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on shaking; and all the time, how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about sid, and mary, and the rest of the tribe. but if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what i was; for it was like being born again, i was so glad to find out who i was. well, they froze to me for two hours; and at last when my chin was so tired it couldn't hardly go, any more, i had told them more about my familyi mean the sawyer familythan ever happened to any six sawyer families. and i explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the mouth of white river and it took us three days to fix it. which was all right, and worked first rate; because they didn't know but what it would take three days to fix it. if i'd a called it a bolt-head it would a done just as well. now i was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty uncomfortable all up the other. being tom sawyer was easy and comfortable; and it stayed easy and comfortable till by-and-by i hear a steamboat coughing along down the riverthen i says to myself, spose tom sawyer come down on that boat?and spose he steps in here, any minute, and sings out my name before i can throw him a wink to keep quiet? well, i couldn't have it that wayit wouldn't do at all. i must go up the road and waylay him. so i told the folks i reckoned i would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage. the old gentleman was for going along with me, but i said no, i could drive the horse myself, and i druther he wouldn't take no trouble about me. chapter thirty-three so i started for town, in the wagon, and when i was half-way i see a wagon coming, and sure enough it was tom sawyer, and i stopped and waited till he come along. i says "hold on!" and it stopped alongside, and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and staid so; and he swallowed two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says: "i hain't ever done you no harm. you know that. so then, what you want to come back and ha'nt me for?" i says: "i hain't come backi hain't been gone." when he heard my voice, it righted him up some, but he warn't quite satisfied yet. he says: "don't you play nothing on me, because i wouldn't on you. honest injun, now, you ain't a ghost?" "honest injun, i ain't," i says. "welliiwell, that ought to settle it, of course; but i can't somehow seem to understand it, no way. looky here, warn't you ever murdered at all?" "no. i warn't ever murdered at alli played it on them. you come in here and feel of me if you don't believe me." so he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me again, he didn't know what to do. and he wanted to know all about it right off; because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where he lived. but i said, leave it alone till by-and-by; and told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and i told him the kind of a fix i was in, and what did he reckon we better do? he said, let him alone a minute, and don't disturb him. so he thought and thought, and pretty soon he says: "it's all right, i've got it. take my trunk in your wagon, and let on it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the house about the time you ought to; and i'll go towards town a piece, and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you; and you needn't let on to know me, at first." i says: "all right; but wait a minute. there's one more thinga thing that nobody don't know but me. and that is, there's a nigger here that i'm a trying to steal out of slaveryand his name is jimold miss watson's jim." he says: "what! why jim is-" he stopped and went to studying. i says: "i know what you'll say. you'll say it's dirty low-down business; but what if it is?i'm low down; and i'm agoing to steal him, and i want you to keep mum and not let on. will you?" his eye lit up, and he says: "i'll help you steal him!" well, i let go all holts then, like i was shot. it was the most astonishing speech i ever heardand i'm bound to say tom sawyer fell, considerable, in my estimation. only i couldn't believe it. tom sawyer a nigger stealer! "oh, shucks," i says, "you're joking." "i ain't joking, either." "well, then," i says, "joking or no joking, if you hear anything said about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that you don't know nothing about him, and i don't know nothing about him." then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon and he drove off his way, and i drove mine. but of course i forgot all about driving slow, on accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so i got home a heap too quick for that length of a trip. the old gentleman was at the door, and he says: "why, this is wonderful. who ever would a thought it was in that mare to do it. i wish we'd a timed her. and she hain't sweated a hairnot a hair. it's wonderful. why, i wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that horse now; i wouldn't, honest; and yet i'd a sold her for fifteen before, and thought 'twas all she was worth." that's all he said. he was the innocentest, best old soul i ever see. but it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church and school-house, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too. there was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and done the same way, down south. in about half an hour tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and aunt sally she see it through the window because it was only about fifty yards, and says: "why, there's somebody come! i wonder who 'tis? why, i do believe it's a stranger. jimmy" (that's one of the children), "run and tell lize to put on another plate for dinner." everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger don't come every year, and so he lays over the yaller fever, for interest, when he does come. tom was over the stile and starting for the house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all bunched in the front door. tom had his store clothes on, and an audienceand that was always nuts for tom sawyer. in them circumstances it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was suitable. he warn't a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no, he come ca'm and important, like the ram. when he got afront of us, he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them, and says: "mr. archibald nichols, i presume?" "no, my boy," says the old gentleman, "i'm sorry to say't your driver has deceived you; nichols's place is down a matter of three mile more. come in, come in." tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, "too latehe's out of sight." "yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with us; and then we'll hitch up and take you down to nichols's." "oh, i can't make you so much trouble; i couldn't think of it. i'll walki don't mind the distance." "but we won't let you walkit wouldn't be southern hospitality to do it. come right in." "oh, do," says aunt sally; "it ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a bit in the world. you must stay. it's a long, dusty three mile, and we can't let you walk. and besides, i've already told 'em to put on another plate, when i see you coming; so you mustn't disappoint us. come right in, and make yourself at home." so tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be persuaded, and come in; and when he was in, he said he was a stranger from hicksville, ohio, and his name was william thompsonand he made another bow. well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about hicksville and everybody in it he could invent, and i was getting a little nervous, and wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape; and at last, still talking along, he reached over and kissed aunt sally right on the mouth, and then settled back again in his chair, comfortable, and was going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her hand, and says: "you owdacious puppy!" he looked kind of hurt, and says: "i'm surprised at you, m'am." "you're s'rpwhy, what do you reckon i am? i've a good notion to take andsay, what do you mean by kissing me?" he looked kind of humble, and says: "i didn't mean nothing, m'am. i didn't mean no harm. iithought you'd like it." "why, you born fool!" she took up the spinning-stick, and it looked like it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it. "what made you think i'd like it?" "well, i don't know. only, theytheytold me you would." "they told you i would. whoever told you's another lunatic. i never heard the beat of it. who's they?" "whyeverybody. they all said so, m'am." it was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her fingers worked like she wanted to scratch him; and she says: "who's 'everybody?' out with their namesor ther'll be an idiot short." he got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says: "i'm sorry, and i warn't expecting it. they told me to. they all told me to. they all said kiss her; and said she'll like it. they all said itevery one of them. but i'm sorry, m'am, and i won't do it no morei won't honest." "you won't, won't you? well, i sh'd reckon you won't!" "no'm, i'm honest about it; i won't ever do it again. till you ask me." "till i ask you! well, i never see the beat of it in my born days! i lay you'll be the methusalem-numskull of creation before ever i ask youor the likes of you." "well," he says, "it does surprise me so. i can't make it out, somehow. they said you would, and i thought you would. but-" he stopped and looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye, somewhere's; and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, "didn't you think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?" "why, no, iiwell, no, i b'lieve i didn't." then he looks on around, the same way, to meand says: "tom, didn't you think aunt sally'd open out her arms and say, 'sid sawyer-'" "my land!" she says, breaking in and jumping for him, "you impudent young rascal, to fool a body so-" and was going to hug him, but he fended her off, and says: "no, not till you've asked me, first." so she didn't lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed him, over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took what was left. and after they got a little quiet again, she says: "why, dear me, i never see such a surprise. we warn't looking for you, at all, but only tom. sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him." "it's because it warn't intended for any of us to come but tom," he says; "but i begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come, too; so, coming down the river, me and tom thought it would be a first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to by-and-by tag along and drop in and let on to be a stranger. but it was a mistake, aunt sally. this ain't no healthy place for a stranger to come." "nonot impudent whelps, sid. you ought to had your jaws boxed; i hain't been so put out since i don't know when. but i don't care, i don't mind the termsi'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you here. well, to think of that performance! i don't deny it, i was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack." we had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven familiesand all hot, too; none of your flabby tough meat that's laid in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold cannibal in the morning. uncle silas he asked a pretty long blessing over it, but it was worth it; and it didn't cool it a bit, neither, the way i've seen them kind of interruptions do, lots of times. there was a considerable good deal of talk, all the afternoon, and me and tom was on the lookout all the time, but it warn't no use, they didn't happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was afraid to try to work up to it. but at supper, at night, one of the little boys says: "pa, mayn't tom and sid and me go to the show?" "no," says the old man, "i reckon there ain't going to be any; and you couldn't go if there was; because the runaway nigger told burton and me all about that scandalous show, and burton said he would tell the people; so i reckon they've drove the owdacious loafers out of town before this time." so there it was!but i couldn't help it. tom and me was to sleep in the same room and bed; so, being tired, we bid goodnight and went up to bed, right after supper, and clumb out of the window and down the lightning-rod, and shoved for the town; for i didn't believe anybody was going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so, if i didn't hurry up and give them one they'd get into trouble sure. on the road tom he told me all about how it was reckoned i was murdered, and how pap disappeared, pretty soon, and didn't come back no more, and what a stir there was when jim run away; and i told tom all about our royal nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the raft-voyage as i had time to; and as we struck into the town and up through the middle of itit was as much as half-after eight, thenhere comes a raging rush of people, with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by, i see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a railthat is, i knowed it was the king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the world that was humanjust looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes. well, it made me sick to see it; and i was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like i couldn't ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. it was a dreadful thing to see. human beings can be awful cruel to one another. we see we was too latecouldn't do no good. we asked some stragglers about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent; and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house rose up and went for them. so we poked along back home, and i warn't feeling so brash as i was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehowthough i hadn't done nothing. but that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. if i had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does, i would pison him. it takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow. tom sawyer he says the same. chapter thirty-four we stopped talking, and got to thinking. by-and-by tom says: "looky here, huck, what fools we are, to not think of it before! i bet i know where jim is." "no! where?" "in that hut down by the ash-hopper. why, looky here. when we was at dinner, didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?" "what did you think the vittles was for?" "for a dog." "so'd i. well, it wasn't for a dog." "because part of it was watermelon." "so it wasi noticed it. well, it does beat all, that i never thought about a dog not eating watermelon. it shows how a body can see and don't see at the same time." "well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he locked it again when he come out. he fetched uncle a key, about the time we got up from tablesame key, i bet. watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner; and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation, and where the people's all so kind and good. jim's the prisoner. all righti'm glad we found it out detective fashion; i wouldn't give shucks for any other way. now you work your mind and study out a plan to steal jim, and i will study out one, too; and we'll take the one we like the best." what a head for just a boy to have! if i had tom sawyer's head, i wouldn't trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown in a circus, nor nothing i can think of. i went to thinking out a plan, but only just to be doing something; i knowed very well where the right plan was going to come from. pretty soon, tom says: "ready?" "yes," i says. "all rightbring it out." "my plan is this," i says. "we can easy find out if it's jim in there. then get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my raft over from the island. then the first dark night that comes, steal the key out of the old man's britches, after he goes to bed, and shove off down the river on the raft, with jim, hiding daytimes and running nights, the way me and jim used to do before. wouldn't that plan work?" "work? why cert'nly, it would work, like rats a fighting. but it's too blame' simple; there ain't nothing to it. what's the good of a plan that ain't no more trouble than that? it's as mild as goose-milk. why, huck, it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory." i never said nothing, because i warn't expecting nothing different; but i knowed mighty well that whenever he got his plan ready it wouldn't have none of them objections to it. and it didn't. he told me what it was, and i see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine, for style, and would make jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. so i was satisfied, and said we would waltz in on it. i needn't tell what it was, here, because i knowed it wouldn't stay the way it was. i knowed he would be changing it around, every which way, as we went along, and heaving in new bullinesses wherever he got a chance. and that is what he done. well, one thing was dead sure; and that was, that tom sawyer was in earnest and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of slavery. that was the thing that was too many for me. here was a boy that was respectable, and well brung up and had a character to lose; and folks at home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before everybody. i couldn't understand it, no way at all. it was outrageous, and i knowed i ought to just up and tell him so; and so be his true friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was, and save himself. and i did start to tell him; but he shut me up, and says: "don't you reckon i know what i'm about? don't i generly know what i'm about?" "yes." "didn't i say i was going to help steal the nigger?" "yes." "well then." that's all he said, and that's all i said. it warn't no use to say any more; because when he said he'd do a thing, he always done it. but i couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing; so i just let it go, and never bothered no more about it. if he was bound to have it so, i couldn't help it. when we got home, the house was all dark and still; so we went on down to the hut by the ash-hopper, for to examine it. we went through the yard, so as to see what the hounds would do. they knowed us, and didn't make no more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by in the night. when we got to the cabin, we took a look at the front and the two sides; and on the side i warn't acquainted withwhich was the north sidewe found a square window-hole, up tolerable high, with just one stout board nailed across it. i says: "here's the ticket. this hole's big enough for jim to get through, if we wrench off the board." tom says: "it's as simple as tit-tat-toe, three-in-a-row, and as easy as playing hooky. i should hope we can find a way that's a little more complicated than that, huck finn." "well then," i says, "how'll it do to saw him out, the way i done before i was murdered, that time?" "that's more like," he says. "it's real mysterious, and troublesome, and good," he says; "but i bet we can find a way that's twice as long. there ain't no hurry; le's keep on looking around." betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to, that joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank. it was as long as the hut, but narrowonly about six foot wide. the door to it was at the south end, and was padlocked. tom he went to the soap kettle, and searched around and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with; so he took it and prized out one of the staples. the chain fell down, and we opened the door and went in, and shut it, and struck a match, and see the shed was only built against the cabin and hadn't no connection with it; and there warn't no floor to the shed, nor nothing in it but some rusty played-out hoes, and spades, and packs, and a crippled plow. the match went out, and so did we, and shoved in the staple again, and the door was locked as good as ever. tom was joyful. he says: "now we're all right. we'll dig him out. it'll take about a week!" then we started for the house, and i went in the back dooryou only have to pull a buckskin latch-string, they don't fasten the doorsbut that warn't romantical enough for tom sawyer: no way would do him but he must climb up the lightning-rod. but after he got up half-way about three times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last time most busted his brains out, he thought he'd got to give it up; but after he was rested, he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this time he made the trip. in the morning we was up at break of day, and down to the nigger cabins to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed jimif it was jim that was being fed. the niggers was just getting through breakfast and starting for the fields; and jim's nigger was piling up a tin pan with bread and meat and things; and whilst the others was leaving, the key come from the house. this nigger had a good-natured, chuckle-headed face, and his wool was all tied up in little bunches with thread. that was to keep witches off. he said the witches was pestering him awful, these nights, and making him see all kinds of strange things, and hear all kinds of strange words and noises, and he didn't believe he was ever witched so long, before, in his life. he got so worked up, and got to running on so about his troubles, he forgot all about what he'd been going to do. so tom says: "what's the vittles for? going to feed the dogs?" the nigger kind of smiled around graduly over his face, like when you heave a brickbat in a mud puddle, and he says: "yes, mars sid, a dog. cur'us dog, too. does you want to go en look at 'im?" "yes." i hunched tom, and whispers: "you going, right here in the day-break? that warn't the plan." "no, it warn'tbut it's the plan now." so, drat him, we went along, but i didn't like it much. when we got in, we couldn't hardly see anything, it was so dark; but jim was there, sure enough, and could see us; and he sings out: "why, huck! en good lan'! ain'dat misto tom?" i just knowed how it would be; i just expected it. i didn't know nothing to do; and if i had, i couldn't a done it; because that nigger busted in and says: "why, de gracious sakes! do he know you genlmen?" we could see pretty well, now. tom he looked at the nigger, steady and kind of wondering, and says: "does who know us?" "why, dish-yer runaway nigger." "i don't reckon he does; but what put that into your head?" "what put it dar? didn' he jis' dis minute sing out like he knowed you?" tom says, in a puzzled-up kind of way: "well, that's mighty curious. who sung out? when did he sing out? what did he sing out?" and turns to me, perfectly c'am, and says, "did you hear anybody sing out?" of course there warn't nothing to be said but the one thing; so i says: "no; i ain't heard nobody say nothing." then he turns to jim, and looks him over like he never see him before; and says: "did you sing out?" "no, sah," says jim; "i hain't said nothing, sah." "not a word?" "no, sah; not as i knows on." so tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed, and says, kind of severe: "what do you reckon's the matter with you, anyway? what made you think somebody sung out?" "oh, it's de dad-blame' witches, sah, en i wisht i was dead, i do. dey's awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey sk'yers me so. please to don't tell nobody 'bout it sah, er ole mars silas he'll scole me; 'kase he say dey ain't no witches. i jis' wish to goodness he was heah nowden what would he say! i jis' bet he couldn't fine no way to git around it dis time. but it's awluz jis' so; people dat's sot, stays sot; dey won't look into nothin' en fine it out f'r deyselves, en when you fine it out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan' b'lieve you." tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn't tell nobody; and told him to buy some more thread to tie up his wool with; and then looks at jim, and says: "i wonder if uncle silas is going to hang this nigger. if i was to catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, i wouldn't give him up, i'd hang him." and whilst the nigger stepped to the door to look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good, he whispers to jim, and says: "don't ever let on to know us. and if you hear any digging going on nights, it's us: we're going to set you free." jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it, then the nigger come back, and we said we'd come again some time if the nigger wanted us to; and he said he would, more particular if it was dark, because the witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to have folks around then. chapter thirty-five it would be most an hour, yet, till breakfast, so we left, and struck down into the woods; because tom said we got to have some light to see how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble; what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox-fire and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place. we fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down to rest, and tom says, kind of dissatisfied: "blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be. and so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan. there ain't no watchman to be druggednow there ought to be a watchman. there ain't even a dog to get a sleeping-mixture to. and there's jim chained by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of his bed: why, all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. and uncle silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to the punkinheaded nigger, and don't send nobody to watch the nigger. jim could a got out of that window hole before this, only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel with a ten-foot chain on his leg. why, drat it, huck, it's the stupidest arrangement i ever see. you got to invent all the difficulties. well, we can't help it, we got to do the best we can with the materials we've got. anyhow, there's one thingthere's more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers, where there warn't one of them furnished to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them, and you had to contrive them all out of your own head. now look at just that one thing of the lantern. when you come down to the cold facts, we simply got to let on that a lantern's resky. why, we could work with a torchlight procession if we wanted to, i believe. now, whilst i think of it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of, the first chance we get." "what do we want of a saw?" "what do we want of it? hain't we got to saw the leg of jim's bed off, so as to get the chain loose?" "why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off." "well, if that ain't just like you, huck finn. you can get up the infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing. why, hain't you ever read any books at all?baron trenck, nor casanova, nor benvenuto chelleeny, nor henri iv., nor none of them heroes? whoever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? no; the way all the best authorities does, is to saw the bed-leg in two, and leave it just so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can't be found, and put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal can't see no sign of its being sawed, and thinks the bed-leg is perfectly sound. then, the night you're ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip off your chain, and there you are. nothing to do but hitch your rope-ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moatbecause a rope-ladder is nineteen foot too short, you knowand there's your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle and away you go, to your native langudoc, or navarre, or wherever it is. it's gaudy, huck. i wish there was a moat to this cabin. if we get time, the night of the escape, we'll dig one." i says: "what do we want of a moat, when we're going to snake him out from under the cabin?" but he never heard me. he had forgot me and everything else. he had his chin in his hand, thinking. pretty soon, he sighs, and shakes his head; then sighs again, and says: "no, it wouldn't dothere ain't necessity enough for it." "for what?" i says. "why, to saw jim's leg off," he says. "good land!" i says, "why, there ain't no necessity for it. and what you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?" "well, some of the best authorities has done it. they couldn't get the chain off, so they just cut their hand off, and shoved. and a leg would be better still. but we got to let that go. there ain't necessity enough in this case; and besides, jim's a nigger and wouldn't understand the reasons for it, and how it's the custom in europe; so we'll let it go. but there's one thinghe can have a rope-ladder; we can tear up our sheets and make him a rope-ladder easy enough. and we can send it to him in a pie; it's mostly done that way. and i've et worse pies." "why, tom sawyer, how you talk," i says; "jim ain't got no use for a rope-ladder." "he has got use for it. how you talk, you better say; you don't know nothing about it. he's got to have a rope ladder; they all do." "what in the nation can he do with it?" "do with it? he can hide it in his bed, can't he? that's what they all do; and he's got to, too. huck, you don't ever seem to want to do anything that's regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the time. spose he don't do nothing with it? ain't it there in his bed, for a clew, after he's gone? and don't you reckon they'll want clews? of course they will. and you wouldn't leave them any? that would be a pretty howdydo, wouldn't it! i never heard of such a thing." "well," i says, "if it's in the regulations, and he's got to have it, all right, let him have it; because i don't wish to go back on no regulations; but there's one thing, tom sawyerif we go to tearing up our sheets to make jim a rope-ladder, we're going to get into trouble with aunt sally, just as sure as you're born. now, the way i look at it, a hickry-bark ladder don't cost nothing, and don't waste nothing, and is just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick, as any rag ladder you can start; and as for jim, he ain't had no experience, and so he don't care what kind of a-" "oh, shucks, huck finn, if i was as ignorant as you, i'd keep stillthat's what i'd do. who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a hickry-bark ladder? why, it's perfectly ridiculous." "well, all right, tom, fix it your own way; but if you'll take my advice, you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothes-line." he said that would do. and that give him another idea, and he says: "borrow a shirt, too." "what do we want of a shirt, tom?" "want it for jim to keep a journal on." "journal your grannyjim can't write." "spose he can't writehe can make marks on the shirt, can't he, if we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel-hoop?" "why, tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better one; and quicker, too." "prisoners don't have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull pens out of, you muggins. they always make their pens out of the hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks and weeks, and months and months to file it out, too, because they've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall. they wouldn't use a goosequill if they had it. it ain't regular." "well, then, what'll we make him the ink out of?" "many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that's the common sort and women; the best authorities uses their own blood. jim can do that; and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to let the world know where he's captivated, he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window. the iron mask always done that, and it's a blame' good way, too." "jim ain't got no tin plates. they feed him in a pan." "that ain't anything; we can get him some." "can't nobody read his plates." "that ain't got nothing to do with it, huck finn. all he's got to do is to write on the plate and throw it out. you don't have to be able to read it. why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on a plate, or anywhere else." "well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?" "why, blame it all, it ain't the prisoner's plates." "but it's somebody's plates, ain't it?" "well, spos'n it is? what does the prisoner care whose-" he broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing. so we cleared out for the house. along during that morning i borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothes-line; and i found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. i called it borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but tom said it warn't borrowing, it was stealing. he said we was representing prisoners; and prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody don't blame them for it, either. it ain't no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, tom said; it's his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for, to get ourselves out of prison with. he said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean ornery person would steal when he warn't a prisoner. so we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy. and yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when i stole a watermelon out of the nigger patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime, without telling them what it was for. tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we needed. well, i says, i needed the watermelon. but he said i didn't need it to get out of prison with, there's where the difference was. he said if i'd a wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to jim to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right. so i let it go at that, though i couldn't see no advantage in representing a prisoner, if i got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that, every time i see a chance to hog a watermelon. well, as i was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then tom he carried the sack into the leanto whilst i stood off a piece to keep watch. by-and-by he come out, and we went and set down on the wood-pile, to talk. he says: "everything's all right, now, except tools; and that's easy fixed." "tools?" i says. "tools for what?" "why, to dig with. we ain't going to gnaw him out, are we?" "ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a nigger out with?" i says. he turns on me looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says: "huck finn, did you ever hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels, and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with? now i want to ask youif you got any reasonableness in you at allwhat kind of a show would that give him to be a hero? why, they might as well lend him the key, and done with it. picks and shovelswhy they wouldn't furnish 'em to a king." "well, then," i says, "if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do we want?" "a couple of case-knives." "to dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?" "yes." "confound it, it's foolish, tom." "it don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the right wayand it's the regular way. and there ain't no other way, that ever i heard of, and i've read all the books that gives any information about these things. they always dig out with a case-knifeand not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through solid rock. and it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and ever. why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the castle deef, in the harbor of marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was he at it, you reckon?" "i don't know." "well, guess." "i don't know. a month and a half?" "thirty-seven yearand he come out in china. that's the kind. i wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock." "jim don't know nobody in china." "what's that got to do with it? neither did our fellow. but you're always a-wandering off on a side issue. why can't you stick to the main point?" "all righti don't care where he comes out, so he comes out; and jim don't, either, i reckon. but there's one thing, anywayjim's too old to be dug out with a case-knife. he won't last." "yes he will last, too. you don't reckon it's going to take thirty-seven years to dig out through a dirt foundation, do you?" "how long will it take, tom?" "well, we can't resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn't take very long for uncle silas to hear from down there by new orleans. he'll hear jim ain't from there. then his next move will be to advertise jim, or something like that. so we can't resk being as long digging him out as we ought to. by rights i reckon we ought to be a couple of years; but we can't. things being so uncertain, what i recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quick as we can; and after that, we can let on, to ourselves, that we was at it thirty-seven years. then we can snatch him out and rush him away the first time there's an alarm. yes, i reckon that'll be the best way." "now, there's sense in that," i says. "letting on don't cost nothing; letting on ain't no trouble; and if it's any object, i don't mind letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year. it wouldn't strain me none, after i got my hand in. so i'll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of case-knives." "smouch three," he says; "we want one to make a saw out of." "tom, if it ain't unregular and irreligious to sejest it," i says, "there's an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the weatherboarding behind the smoke-house." he looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says: "it ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, huck. run along and smouch the knivesthree of them." so i done it. chapter thirty-six as soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep, that night, we went down the lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile of fox-fire, and went to work. we cleared everything out of the way, about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. tom said he was right behind jim's bed now, and we'd dig it under it, and when we got through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there, because jim's counterpin hung down most to the ground, and you'd have to raise it up and look under to see the hole. so we dug and dug, with the caseknives, till most midnight; and then we was dog tired, and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything, hardly. at last i says: "this ain't no thirty-seven year job, this is a thirty-eight year job, tom sawyer." he never said nothing. but he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped digging, and then for a good little while i knowed he was thinking. then he says: "it ain't no use, huck, it ain't agoing to work. if we was prisoners it would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted, and no hurry; and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while they was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get blistered, and we could keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right, and the way it ought to be done. but we can't fool along, we got to rush; we ain't got no time to spare. if we was to put in another night this way, we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get wellcouldn't touch a case-knife with them sooner." "well, then, what we going to do, tom?" "i'll tell you. it ain't right, and it ain't moral, and i wouldn't like it to get outbut there ain't only just the one way; we got to dig him out with the picks, and let on it's case-knives." "now you're talking!" i says; "your head gets leveler and leveler all the time, tom sawyer," i says. "picks is the thing, moral or no moral; and as for me, i don't care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. when i start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a sunday-school book, i ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done. what i want is my nigger; or what i want is my watermelon; or what i want is my sunday-school book; and if a pick's the handiest thing, that's the thing i'm agoing to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that sunday-school book out with; and i don't give a dead rat what the authorities think about it nuther." "well," he says, "there's excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like this; if it warn't so, i wouldn't approve of it, nor i wouldn't stand by and see the rules brokebecause right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better. it might answer for you to dig jim out with a pick, without any letting-on, because you don't know no better; but it wouldn't for me, because i do know better. gimme a case-knife." he had his own by him, but i handed him mine. he flung it down, and says: "gimme a case-knife." i didn't know just what to dobut then i thought. i scratched around amongst the old tools, and got a pick-ax and give it to him, and he took it and went to work, and never said a word. he was always just that particular. full of principle. so then i got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and made the fur fly. we stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it. when i got up stairs, i looked out at the window and see tom doing his level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn't come it, his hands was so sore. at last he says: "it ain't no use, it can't be done. what you reckon i better do? can't you think up no way?" "yes," i says, "but i reckon it ain't regular. come up the stairs, and let on it's a lightning-rod." so he done it. next day tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house, for to make some pens for jim out of, and six tallow candles; and i hung around the nigger cabins, and laid for a chance, and stole three tin plates. tom said it wasn't enough; but i said nobody wouldn't ever see the plates that jim throwed out, because they'd fall in the dog-fennel and jimpson weeds under the window-holethen we could tote them back and he could use them over again. so tom was satisfied. then he says: "now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to jim." "take them in through the hole," i says, "when we get it done." he only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. by-and-by he said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no need to decide on any of them yet. said we'd got to post jim first. that night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him. then we whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half the job was done. we crept in under jim's bed and into the cabin, and pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over jim a while, and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle and gradual. he was so glad to see us he most cried; and called us honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for having us hunt up a cold chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with, right away, and clearing out without losing any time. but tom he showed him how unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our plans, and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm; and not be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, sure. so jim he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old times a while, and then tom asked a lot of questions, and when jim told him uncle silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and aunt sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and both of them was kind as they could be, tom says: "now i know how to fix it. we'll send you some things by them." i said, "don't do nothing of the kind; it's one of the most jackass ideas i ever struck;" but he never paid no attention to me; went right on. it was his way when he'd got his plans set. so he told jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie, and other large things, by nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the lookout, and not be surprised, and not let nat see him open them; and we would put small things in uncle's coat pockets and he must steal them out; and we would tie things to aunt's apron strings or put them in her apron pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would be and what they was for. and told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood, and all that. he told him everything. jim he couldn't see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just as tom said. jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed, with hands that looked like they'd been chawed. tom was in high spirits. he said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the most intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave jim to our children to get out; for he believed jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it. he said that in that way it could be strung out to as much as eighty year, and would be the best time on record. and he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it. in the morning we went out to the wood-pile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes, and tom put them and the pewter spoon in his pocket. then we went to the nigger cabins, and while i got nat's notice off, tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a corn-pone that was in jim's pan, and we went along with nat to see how it would work, and it just worked noble; when jim bit into it most mashed all his teeth out; and there warn't ever anything could a worked better. tom said so himself. jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread, you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places, first. and whilst we was a standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in, from under jim's bed; and they kept on piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn't hardly room in there to get your breath. by jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to door. the nigger nat he only just hollered "witches!" once, and keeled over onto the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was dying. tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of jim's meat, and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door, and i knowed he'd fixed the other door too. then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again. he raised up, and blinked his eyes around, and says: "mars sid, you'll say i's a fool, but if i didn't b'lieve i see most a million dogs, er devils, er some'n, i wisht i may die right heah in dese tracks. i did, mos' sholy. mars sid, i felt umi felt um, sah; dey was all over me. dad fetch it, i jis' wisht i could git my han's on one er dem witches jis' wunston'y jis' wunstit's all i'd ast. but mos'ly i wisht dey'd lemme 'lone, i does." tom says: "well, i tell you what i think. what makes them come here just at this runaway nigger's breakfast-time? it's because they're hungry; that's the reason. you make them a witch pie; that's the thing for you to do." "but my lan', mars sid, how's i gwyne to make make 'm a witch pie? i doan' know how to make it. i hain't ever hearn er sich a thing b'fo'." "well, then, i'll have to make it myself" "will you do it, honey?will you? i'll wusshup de groun' und' yo' foot, i will!" "all right, i'll do it, seeing it's you, and you've been good to us and showed us the runaway nigger. but you got to be mighty careful. when we come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we've put in the pan, don't you let on you see it at all. and don't you look, when jim unloads the pansomething might happen, i don't know what. and above all, don't you handle the witch-things." "hannel 'm mars sid? what is you a talkin' 'bout? i wouldn' lay de weight er my finger on um, not f'r ten hund'd thous'n' billion dollars, i wouldn't." chapter thirty-seven that was all fixed. so then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile in the back yard where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched around and found an old tin washpan and stopped up the holes as well as we could, to bake the pie in and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour, and started for breakfast and found a couple of shingle-nails that tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in aunt sally's apron pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t'other we stuck in the band of uncle silas's hat, which was on the bureau, because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and tom dropped the pewter spoon in uncle silas's coat pocket, and aunt sally wasn't come yet, so we had to wait a little while. and when she come she was hot, and red, and cross, and couldn't hardly wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other, and says: "i've hunted high, and i've hunted low, and it does beat all, what has become of your other shirt." my heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough and was shot across the table and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry out of him the size of a war-whoop, and tom he turned kinder blue around the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and i would a sold out for half price if there was a bidder. but after that we was all right againit was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold. uncle silas he says: "it's most uncommon curious, i can't understand it. i know perfectly well i took it off, because-" "because you hain't got but one on. just listen at the man! i know you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory, too, because it was on the clo'esline yesterdayi see it there myself. but it's gonethat's the long and the short of it, and you'll just have to change to a red flann'l one till i can get time to make a new one. and it'll be the third i've made in two years; it just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to do with 'm all, is more'n i can make out. a body'd think you would learn to take some sort of care of 'em, at your time of life." "i know it, sally, and i do try all i can. but it oughtn't to be altogether my fault, because you know i don't see them nor have nothing to do with them except when they're on me; and i don't believe i've ever lost one of them off of me." "well, it ain't your fault if you haven't, silasyou'd a done it if you could, i reckon. and the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther. ther's a spoon gone; and that ain't all. there was ten, and now there's only nine. the calf got the shirt i reckon, but the calf never took the spoon, that's certain." "why, what else is gone, sally?" "ther's six candles gonethat's what. the rats could a got the candles, and i reckon they did; i wonder they don't walk off with the whole place, the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, silasyou'd never find it out; but you can't lay the spoon on the rats, and that i know." "well, sally, i'm in fault, and i acknowledge it; i've been remiss; but i won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes." "oh, i wouldn't hurry, next year'll do. matilda angelina araminta phelps!" whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar-bowl without fooling around any. just then, the nigger woman steps onto the passage, and says: "missus, dey's a sheet gone." "a sheet gone! well, for the land's sake!" "i'll stop up them holes to-day," says uncle silas, looking sorrowful. "oh, do shet up!spose the rats took the sheet? where's it gone, lize?" "clah to goodness i hain't no notion, miss sally. she wuz on de clo's-line yistiddy, but she done gone; she ain' dah no mo', now." "i reckon the world is coming to an end. i never see the beat of it, in all my born days. a shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can-" "missus," comes a young yaller wench, "dey's a brass cannelstick missin." "cler out from here, you hussy, er i'll take a skillet to ye!" well, she was just a biling. i begun to lay for a chance; i reckoned i would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. she kept a raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last uncle silas, looking kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. she stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, i wished i was in jeruslem or somewheres. but not long; because she says: "it's just as i expected. so you had it in your pocket all the time; and like as not you've got the other things there, too. how'd it get there?" "i reely don't know, sally," he says, kind of apologizing, "or you know i would tell. i was a-studying over my text in acts seventeen, before breakfast, and i reckon i put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put my testament in, and it must be so, because my testament ain't in, but i'll go and see, and if that testament is where i had it, i'll know i didn't put it in, and that will show that i laid the testament down and took up the spoon, and-" "oh, for the land's sake! give a body a rest! go 'long now, the whole kit and biling of ye; and don't come nigh me again till i've got back my peace of mind." i'd a heard her, if she'd a said it to herself, let alone speaking it out; and i'd a got up and obeyed her, if i'd a been dead. as we was passing through the setting-room, the old man he took up his hat, and the shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out. tom see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says: "well, it ain't no use to send things by him no more, he ain't reliable." then he says: "but he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway, without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without him knowing itstop up his rat-holes." there was a noble good lot of them, down cellar, and it took us a whole hour, but we done the job tight and good, and ship-shape. then we heard steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light, and hid; and here comes the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t'other, looking as absent-minded as year before last. he went a mooning around, first to one rat-hole and then another, till he'd been to them all. then he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle and thinking. then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying: "well, for the life of me i can't remember when i done it. i could show her now that i warn't to blame on account of the rats. but never mindlet it go. i reckon it wouldn't do no good." and so he went on a mumbling up stairs, and then we left. he was a mighty nice old man. and always is. tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said we'd got to have it; so he took a think. when he ciphered it out, he told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the spoon-basket till we see aunt sally coming, and then tom went to counting the spoons and laying them out to one side, and i slid one of them up my sleeve, and tom says: "why, aunt sally, there ain't but nine spoons, yet." she says: "go 'long to your play, and don't bother me. i know better, i counted 'm myself." "well, i've counted them twice, aunty, and i can't make but nine." she looked out of all patience, but of course she come to countanybody would. "i declare to gracious ther' ain't but nine!" she says. "why, what in the worldplague take the things, i'll count 'm again." so i slipped back the one i had, and when she got done counting, she says: "hang the troublesome rubbage, ther's ten, now!" and she looked hurry and bothered both. but tom says: "why, aunty, i don't think there's ten." "you numskull, didn't you see me count 'm?" "i know, but-" "well, i'll count 'm again." so i smouched one, and they come out nine same as the other time. well, she was in a tearing wayjust trembling all over, she was so mad. but she counted and counted, till she got that addled she'd start to count-in the basket for a spoon, sometimes; and so, three times they come out right and three times they come out wrong. then she grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley-west; and she said cle'r out and let her have some peace, and if we come bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner, she'd skin us. so we had the odd spoon; and dropped it in her apron pocket whilst she was a giving us our sailing-orders, and jim got it all right, along with her shingle-nail, before noon. we was very well satisfied with this business, and tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took, because he said now she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life; and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right, if she did; and said that after she'd about counted her head off, for the next three days, he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them any more. so we put the sheet back on the line, that night, and stole one out of her closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again, for a couple of days till she didn't know how many sheets she had, any more, and said she didn't care, and warn't agoing to bullyrag the rest of her soul out about it, and wouldn't count them again not to save her life, she druther die first. so we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn't no consequence, it would blow over by-and-by. but that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie. we fixed it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it done at last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and we had to use up three washpans full of flour, before we got through, and we got burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with the smoke; because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust, and we couldn't prop it up right, and she would always cave in. but of course we thought of the right way at last; which was to cook the ladder, too, in the pie. so then we laid in with jim, the second night, and tore up the sheet all in little strings, and twisted them together, and long before daylight we had a lovely rope, that you could a hung a person with. we let on it took nine months to make it. and in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go in the pie. being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough for forty pies, if we'd a wanted them, and plenty left over for soup, or sausage, or anything you choose. we could a had a whole dinner. but we didn't need it. all we needed was just enough for the pie, and so we throwed the rest away. we didn't cook none of the pies in the washpan, afraid the solder would melt; but uncle silas he had a noble brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from england with william the conqueror in the mayflower or one of them early ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things that was valuable, not on account of being any account because they warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked her out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first pies, because we didn't know how, but she come up smiling on the last one. we took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and loaded her up with rag-rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the lid, and put hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long handle, cool and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a satisfaction to look at. but the person that et it would want to fetch a couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if the rope-ladder wouldn't cramp him down to business, i don't know nothing what i'm talking about, and lay him enough stomach-ache to last him till next time, too. nat didn't look, when we put the witch-pie in jim's pan; and we put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so jim got everything all right, and so soon as he was by himself he busted into the pie and hid the rope-ladder inside of his straw tick, and scratched some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the window-hole. chapter thirty-eight making them pens was a distressid-tough job, and so was the saw; and jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. that's the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. but we had to have it; tom said we'd got to; there warn't no case of a state priosner not scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms. "look at lady jane grey," he says; "look at gilford dudley; look at old northumberland! why, huck, spose it is considerable trouble?what you going to do?how you going to get around it? jim's got to do his inscription and coat of arms. they all do." jim says: "why, mars tom, i hain't got no coat o' arms; i hain't got nuffn but dish-yer ole shirt, en you knows i got to keep de journal on dat." "oh, you don't understand, jim; a coat of arms is very different." "well," i says, "jim's right, anyway, when he says he hain't got no coat of arms, because he hain't." "i reckon i knowed that," tom says, "but you bet he'll have one before he goes out of thisbecause he's going out right, and there ain't going to be no flaws in his record." so whilst me and jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, jim a making his'n out of the brass and i making mine out of the spoon, tom set to work to think out the coat of arms. by-and-by he said he'd struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but there was one which he reckoned he'd decide on. he says: "on the scutcheon we'll have a bend or in the dexter base, a saltire murrey in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron vert in a chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field azure, with the nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger, sable, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister: and a couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, maggiore fretta, minore atto. got it out of a book-means, the more haste, the less speed." "geewhillikins," i says, "but what does the rest of it mean?" "we ain't got no time to bother over that," he says, "we got to dig in like all git-out." "well, anyway," i says, "what's some of it? what's a fess?" "a fessa fess isyou don't need to know what a fess is. i'll show him how to make it when he gets to it." "shucks, tom," i says, "i think you might tell a person. what's a bar sinister?" "oh, i don't know. but he's got to have it. all the nobility does." that was just his way. if it didn't suit him to explain a thing to you, he wouldn't do it. you might pump at him a week, it wouldn't make no difference. he'd got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a mournful inscriptionsaid jim got to have one, like they all done. he made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so: 1. here a captive heart busted. 2. here a poor prisoner, forsook by the world and friends, fretted out his sorrowful life. 3. here a lonely heart broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirty-seven years of solitary captivity. 4. here, homeless and friendless, after thirty-seven years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger, natural son of louis xiv. tom's voice trembled, whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down. when he got done, he couldn't no way make up his mind which one for jim to scrabble onto the wall, they was all so good; but at last he allowed he would let him scrabble them all on. jim said it would take him a year to scrabble such a lot of truck onto the logs with a nail, and he didn't know how to make letters, besides; but tom said he would block them out for him, and then he wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the lines. then pretty soon he says: "come to think, the logs ain't agoing to do; they don't have log walls in a dungeon: we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock. we'll fetch a rock." jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said it would take him such a pison long time to dig them into a rock, he wouldn't ever get out. but tom said he would let me help him do it. then he took a look to see how me and jim was getting along with the pens. it was most pesky tedious hard work and slow, and didn't give my hands no show to get well of the sores, and we didn't seem to make no headway, hardly. so tom says: "i know how to fix it. we got to have a rock for the coat of arms and mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock. there's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smouch it, and carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the saw on it, too." it warn't no slouch of an idea; and it warn't no slouch of a grindstone nuther; but we allowed we'd tackle it. it warn't quite midnight, yet, so we cleared out for the mill, leaving jim at work. we smouched the grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a most nation tough job. sometimes, do what we could, we couldn't keep her from falling over, and she come mighty near mashing us, every time. tom said she was going to get one of us, sure, before we got through. we got her half way; and then we was plumb played out, and most drownded with sweat. we see it warn't no use, we got to go and fetch jim. so he raised up his bed and slid the chain off of the bed-leg, and wrapt it round and round his neck, and we crawled out through our hole and down there, and jim and me laid into the grindstone and walked her along like nothing; and tom superintended. he could out-superintend any boy i ever see. he knowed how to do everything. our hole was pretty big, but it warn't big enough to get the grindstone through; but jim he took the pick and soon make it big enough. then tom marked out them things on it with the nail, and set jim to work on them, with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbage in the lean-to for a hammer, and told him to work till the rest of his candle quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the grindstone under his straw tick and sleep on it. then we helped him fix his chain back on the bed-leg, and was ready for bed ourselves. but tom thought of something, and says: "you got any spiders in here, jim?" "no, sah, thanks to goodness i hain't, mars tom." "all right, we'll get you some." "but bless you, honey, i doan' want none. i's afeard un um. i jis' 's soon have rattlesnakes aroun'." tom thought a minute or two, and says: "it's a good idea. and i reckon it's been done. it must a been done; it stands to reason. yes, it's a prime good idea. where could you keep it?" "keep what, mars tom?" "why, a rattlesnake." "de goodness gracious alive, mars tom! why, if dey was a rattlesnake to come in heah, i'd take en bust right out thoo dat log wall, i would, wid my head." "why, jim, you wouldn't be afraid of it, after a little. you could tame it." "tame it!" "yeseasy enough. every animal is grateful for kindness and petting, and they wouldn't think of hurting a person that pets them. any book will tell you that. you trythat's all i ask; just try for two or three days. why, you can get him so, in a little while, that he'll love you; and sleep with you; and won't stay away from you a minute; and will let you wrap him round your neck and put his head in your mouth." "please, mars tomdoan' talk so! i can't stan' it! he'd let me shove his head in my mouffer a favor, hain't it? i lay he'd wait a pow'ful long time 'fo' i ast him. en mo' en dat, i doan' want him to sleep wid me." "jim, don't act so foolish. a prisoner's got to have some kind of a dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain't ever been tried, why, there's more glory to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other way you could ever think of to save your life." "why, mars tom, i doan' want no sich glory. snake take 'n bite jim's chin off, den whah is de glory? no, sah, i doan' want no sich doin's." "blame it, can't you try? i only want you to tryyou needn't keep it up if it don't work." "but de trouble all done, ef de snake bite me while i's a tryin' him. mars tom, i's willin' to tackle mos'anything' at ain't onreasonable, but ef you en huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, i's gwyne to leave, dat's shore." "well, then, let it go, let it go, if you're so bullheaded about it. we can get you some garter-snakes and you can tie some buttons on their tails, and let on they're rattlesnakes, and i reckon that'll have to do." "i k'n stan' dem, mars tom, but blame' 'f i couldn' get along widout um, i tell you dat. i never knowed b'fo', 't was so much bother and trouble to be a prisoner." "well, it always is, when it's done right. you got any rats around here?" "no, sah, i hain't seed none." "well, we'll get you some rats." "why, mars tom, i doan' want no rats. dey's de dadblamedest creturs to sturb a body, en rustle roun' over 'im, en bite his feet, when he's trying to sleep, i ever see. no, sah, gimme g'yarter-snakes, 'f i's got to have 'm, but doan' gimme no rats, i ain' got no use f'r um, skasely." "but jim, you got to have 'emthey all do. so don't make no more fuss about it. prisoners ain't ever without rats. there ain't no instance of it. and they train them, and pet them, and learn them tricks, and they get to be as sociable as flies. but you got to play music to them. you got anything to play music on?" "i ain' got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o' paper, en a juice-harp; but i reck'n dey wouldn' take no stock in a juice-harp." "yes they would. they don't care what kind of music 'tis. a jews-harp's plenty good enough for a rat. all animals likes musicin a prison they dote on it. specially, painful music; and you can't get no other kind out of a jews-harp. it always interests them; they come out to see what's the matter with you. yes, you're all right; you're fixed very well. you want to set on your bed, nights, before you go to sleep, and early in the mornings, and play your jews-harp; play the last link is brokenthat's the thing that'll scoop a rat, quicker'n anything else: and when you've played about two minutes, you'll see all the rats, and the snakes, and spiders, and things begin to feel worried about you, and come. and they'll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good time." "yes, dey will, i reck'n, mars tom, but what kine er time is jim havin'? blest if i kin see de pint. but i'll do it ef i got to. i reck'n i better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in de house." tom waited to think over, and see if there wasn't nothing else; and pretty soon he says: "ohthere's one thing i forgot. could you raise a flower here, do you reckon?" "i doan' know but maybe i could, mars tom; but it's tolerable dark in heah, en i ain' got no use f'r no flower, nohow, en she'd be a pow'ful sight o' trouble." "well, you try it anyway. some other prisoners has done it." "one er dem big cat-tail-lookin' mullen-stalks would grow in heah, mars tom, i reck'n, but she wouldn' be wuth half de trouble she'd coss." "don't you believe it. we'll fetch you a little one, and you plant it in the corner, over there, and raise it. and don't call it mullen, call it pitchiolathat's its right name, when it's in a prison. and you want to water it with your tears." "why, i got plenty spring water, mars tom." "you don't want spring water; you want to water it with your tears. it's the way they always do." "why, mars tom, i lay i kin raise one er dem mullen-stalks twyste wid spring water whiles another man's a start'n one wid tears." "that ain't the idea. you got to do it with tears." "she'll die on my han's, mars tom, she sholy will; kase i doan' skasely ever cry." so tom was stumped. but he studied it over, and then said jim would have to worry along the best he could with an onion. he promised he would go to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in jim's coffee-pot, in the morning. jim said he would "jis' 's soon have tobacker in his coffee;" and found so much fault with it, and with the work and bother of raising the mullen, and jews-harping the rats, and petting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do on pens, and inscriptions, and journals, and things, which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook, that tom most lost all patience with him; and said he was just loadened down with more gaudier chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn't know enough to appreciate them, and they was just about wasted on him. so jim he was sorry, and said he wouldn't behave so no more, and then me and tom shoved for bed. chapter thirty-nine in the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under aunt sally's bed. but while we was gone for spiders, little thomas franklin benjamin jefferson elexander phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and aunt sally she come in, and when we got back she was a standing on top of the bed raising cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. so she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. i never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was. we got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we liketo got a hornet's nest, but we didn't. the family was at home. we didn't give it right up, but staid with them as long as we could; because we allowed we'd tire them out or they'd got to tire us out, and they done it. then we got allycumpain and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right again, but couldn't set down convenient. and so we went for the snakes, and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and housesnakes, and put them in a bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper time, and a rattling good honest day's work; and hungry?oh, no, i reckon not! and there warn't a blessed snake up there, when we went backwe didn't half tie the sack, and they worked out, somehow, and left. but it didn't matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres. so we judged we could get some of them again. no, there warn't no real scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. you'd see them dripping from the rafters and places, every now and then; and they generly landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of the time where you didn't want them. well, they was handsome, and striped, and there warn't no harm in a million of them; but that never made no difference to aunt sally, she despised snakes, be the breed what they might, and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it; and every time one of them flopped down on her, it didn't make no difference what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. i never see such a woman. and you could hear her whoop to jericho. you couldn't get her to take aholt of one of them with the tongs. and if she turned over and found one in bed, she would scramble out and lift a howl that you would think the house was afire. she disturbed the old man so, that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes created. why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week, aunt sally warn't over it yet; she warn't near over it; when she was setting thinking about something, you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right out of her stockings. it was very curious. but tom said all women was just so. he said they was made that way; for some reason or other. we got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way; and she allowed these lickings warn't nothing to what she would do if we ever loaded up the place again with them. i didn't mind the lickings, because they didn't amount to nothing; but i minded the trouble we had, to lay in another lot. but we got them laid in, and all the other things; and you never see a cabin as blithesome as jim's was when they'd all swarm out for music and go for him. jim didn't like the spiders, and the spiders didn't like jim; and so they'd lay for him and make it mighty warm for him. and he said that between the rats, and the snakes, and the grindstone, there warn't no room in bed for him, skasely; and when there was, a body couldn't sleep, it was so lively, and it was always lively, he said, because they never all slept at one time, but took turn about, so when the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his way, and t'other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt a new place, the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over. he said if he ever got out, this time, he wouldn't ever be a prisoner again, not for a salary. well, by the end of three weeks, everything was in pretty good shape. the shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit jim he would get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh; the pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the grindstone; the bed-leg was sawed in two, and we had et up the sawdust, and it give us a most amazing stomach-ache. we reckoned we was all going to die, but didn't. it was the most undigestible sawdust i ever see; and tom said the same. but as i was saying, we'd got all the work done, now, at last; and we was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly jim. the old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below orleans to come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer, because there warn't no such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise jim in the st. louis and new orleans papers; and when he mentioned the st. louis ones, it give me the cold shivers, and i see we hadn't no time to lose. so tom said, now for the nonnamous letters. "what's them?" i says. "warnings to the people that something is up. sometimes it's done one way, sometimes another. but there's always somebody spying around, that gives notice to the governor of the castle. when louis xvi was going to light out of the tooleries, a servant girl done it. it's a very good way, and so is the nonnamous letters. we'll use them both. and it's usual for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in, and he slides out in her clothes. we'll do that too." "but looky here, tom, what do we want to warn anybody for, that something's up? let them find it out for themselvesit's their lookout." "yes, i know; but you can't depend on them. it's the way they've acted from the very startleft us to do everything. they're so confiding and mullet-headed they don't take notice of nothing at all. so if we don't give them notice, there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us, and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape'll go off perfectly flat: won't amount to nothingwon't be nothing to it." "well, as for me, tom, that's the way i'd like." "shucks," he says, and looked disgusted. so i says: "but i ain't going to make no complaint. any way that suits you suits me. what you going to do about the servant-girl?" "you'll be her. you slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that yaller girl's frock." "why, tom, that'll make trouble next morning; because of course she prob'bly hain't got any but that one." "i know; but you don't want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door." "all right, then, i'll do it; but i could carry it just as handy in my own togs." "you wouldn't look like a servant-girl then, would you?" "no, but there won't be nobody to see what i look like, anyway." "that ain't got nothing to do with it. the thing for us to do, is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not. hain't you got no principle at all?" "all right, i ain't saying nothing; i'm the servant-girl. who's jim's mother?" "i'm his mother. i'll hook a gown from aunt sally." "well, then, you'll have to stay in the cabin when me and jim leaves." "not much. i'll stuff jim's clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed to represent his mother in disguise, and jim'll take aunt sally's gown off of me and wear it, and we'll all evade together. when a prisoner of style escapes, it's called an evasion. it's always called so when a king escapes, frinstance. and the same with a king's son; it don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one." so tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and i smouched the yaller wench's frock, that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the front door, the way tom told me to. it said: beware, trouble is brewing. keep a sharp lookout. unknown friend next night, we stuck a picture which tom drawed in blood, of a skull and crossbones, on the front door; and next night another one of a coffin, on the back door. i never see a family in such a sweat. they couldn't a been worse scared if the place had a been full of ghosts laying for them behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air. if a door banged, aunt sally she jumped, and said "ouch!" if anything fell, she jumped and said "ouch!" if you happened to touch her, when she warn't noticing, she done the same; she couldn't face noway and be satisfied, because she allowed there was something behind her every time-so she was always a whirling around, sudden, and saying "ouch," and before she'd get two-thirds around, she'd whirl back again, and say it again; and she was afraid to go to bed, but she dasn't set up. so the thing was working very well, tom said; he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory. he said it showed it was done right. so he said, now for the grand bulge! so the very next morning at the streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and was wondering what we better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going to have a nigger on watch at both doors all night. tom he went down the lightning-rod to spy around; and the nigger at the back door was asleep, and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back. this letter said: don't betray me, i wish to be your friend. there is a desprate gang of cutthroats from over in the ingean territory going to steal your runaway nigger to-night, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will stay in the house and not bother them. i am one of the gang, but have got religgion and wish to quit it and lead a honest life again, and will betray the helish design. they will sneak down from northards, along the fence, at midnight exact, with a false key, and go in the nigger's cabin to get him. i am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if i see any danger; but stead of that, i will ba like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow at all; then whilst they are getting his chains loose, you slip there and lock them in, and can kill them at your leasure. don't do anything but just the way i am telling you, if you do they will suspicion something and raise whoopjamboreehoo. i do not wish any reward but to know i have done the right thing. unknown friend chapter forty we was feeling pretty good, after breakfast, and took my canoe and went over the river a fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end they was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper, and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a word about the new letter, but didn't need to, because we knowed as much about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half up stairs and her back was turned, we slid for the cellar cubboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about half-past eleven, and tom put on aunt sally's dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch, but says: "where's the butter?" "i laid out a hunk of it," i says, "on a piece of corn-pone." "well, you left it laid out, thenit ain't here." "we can get along without it," i says. "we can get along with it, too," he says; "just you slide down cellar and fetch it. and then mosey right down the lightning-rod and come along. i'll go and stuff the straw into jim's clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to ba like a sheep and shove soon as you get there." so out he went, and down cellar went i. the hunk of butter, big as a person's fist, was where i had left it, so i took up the slab of corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up stairs, very stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes aunt sally with a candle, and i clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she says: "you been down cellar?" "yes'm." "what you been doing down there?" "noth'n." "noth'n!" "no'm." "well, then, what possessed you to go down there, this time of night?" "i don't know'm." "you don't know? don't answer me that way, tom, i want to know what you been doing down there." "i hain't been doing a single thing, aunt sally, i hope to gracious if i have." i reckoned she'd let me go, now, and as a generl thing she would; but i spose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat about every little thing that warn't yard-stick straight; so she says, very decided: "you just march into that setting-room and stay there till i come. you been up to something you no business to, and i lay i'll find out what it is before i'm done with you." so she went away as i opened the door and walked into the setting-room. my, but there was a crowd there! fifteen farmers, and every one of them had a gun. i was most powerful sick, and slunk to a chair and set down. they was setting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice, and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn't; but i knowed they was, because they was always taking off their hats, and putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their seats, and fumbling with their buttons. i warn't easy myself, but i didn't take my hat off, all the same. i did wish aunt sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me, if she wanted to, and let me get away and tell tom how we'd overdone this thing, and what a thundering hornet's nest we'd got ourselves into, so we could stop fooling around, straight off, and clear out with jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us. at last she come, and begun to ask me questions, but i couldn't answer them straight, i didn't know which end of me was up; because these men was in such a fidget now, that some was wanting to start right now and lay for them desperadoes, and saying it warn't but a few minutes to midnight; and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep-signal; and here was aunty pegging away at the questions, and me a shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks i was that scared; and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears; and pretty soon, when one of them says, "i'm for going and getting in the cabin first, and right now, and catching them when they come," i most dropped; and a streak of butter come a trickling down my forehead, and aunt sally she see it, and turns white as a sheet, and says: "for the land's sake what is the matter with the child!he's got the brain fever as shore as you're born, and they're oozing out!" and everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the bread, and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, and says: "oh, what a turn you give me! and how glad and grateful i am it ain't no worse; for luck's against us, and it never rains but it pours, and when i see that truck i thought we'd lost you, for i knowed by the color and all, it was just like your brains would be ifdear, dear, whyd'nt you tell me that was what you'd been down there for, i wouldn't a cared. now cler out to bed, and don't lemme see no more of you till morning!" i was up stairs in a second, and down the lightning-rod in another one, and shinning through the dark for the lean-to. i couldn't hardly get my words out, i was so anxious; but i told tom as quick as i could, we must jump for it, now, and not a minute to losethe house full of men, yonder, with guns! his eyes just blazed; and he says: "no!is that so? ain't it bully! why, huck, if it was to do over again, i bet i could fetch two hundred! if we could put it off till-" "hurry! hurry!" i says. "where's jim?" "right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him. he's dressed, and everything's ready. now we'll slide out and give the sheep-signal." but then we heard the tramp of men, coming to the door, and heard them begin to fumble with the padlock; and heard a man say: "i told you we'd be too soon; they haven't comethe door is locked. here, i'll lock some of you into the cabin and you lay for in the dark and kill when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece, and listen if you can hear 'em coming." so in they come, but couldn't see us in the dark, and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. but we got under all right, and out through the hole, swift but softjim first, me next, and tom last, which was according to tom's orders. now we was in the lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside. so we crept to the door, and tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn't make out nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us jim must glide out first, and him last. so he set his ear to the crack and listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps a scraping around, out there, all the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence, in injun file, and got to it, all right, and me and jim over it; but tom's britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he heard the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started, somebody sings out: "who's that? answer, or i'll shoot!" but we didn't answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved. then there was a rush, and a bang, bang, bang! and the bullets fairly whizzed around us! we heard them sing out: "here they are! they've broke for the river! after 'em, boys! and turn loose the dogs!" so here they come, full tilt. we could hear them, because they wore boots, and yelled, but we didn't wear no boots, and didn't yell. we was in the path to the mill; and when they got pretty close onto us, we dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. they'd had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn't scare off the robbers; but by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, making pow-wow enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up; and when they see it warn't nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering; and then we up steam again and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn't make no more noise than we was obleeged to. then we struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out. and when we stepped onto the raft, i says: "now, old jim, you're a free man again, and i bet you won't ever be a slave no more." "en a mighty good job it wuz, too, huck. it 'uz planned beautiful, en it 'uz done beautiful; en dey ain't nobody kin git up a plan dat's mo' mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz." we was all as glad as we could be, but tom was the gladdest of all, because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg. when me and jim heard that, we didn't feel so brash as what we did before. it was hurting him considerble, and bleeding; so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke's shirts for to bandage him, but he says: "gimme the rags, i can do it myself. don't stop, now; don't fool around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set her loose! boys, we done it elegant!'deed we did. i wish we'd a had the handling of louis xvi, there wouldn't a been no 'son of saint louis, ascend to heaven!' wrote down in his biography: no, sir, we'd a whooped him over the border-that's what we'd a done with himand done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. man the sweepsman the sweeps!" but me and jim was consultingand thinking. and after we'd thought a minute, i says: "say it, jim." so he says: "well, den, dis is de way it look to me, huck. ef it wuz him dat 'uz bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'go on en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one? is dat like mars tom sawyer? would he say dat? you bet he wouldn't! well, den, is jim gwyne to say it? no, sahi doan' budge a step out'n dis place, 'dout a doctor; not if it's forty year!" i knowed he was white inside, and i reckoned he'd say what he did sayso it was all right, now, and i told tom i was agoing for a doctor. he raised considerble row about it, but me and jim stuck to it and wouldn't budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself; but we wouldn't let him. then he give us a piece of his mindbut it didn't do no good. so when he see me getting the canoe ready, he says: "well, then, if you're bound to go, i'll tell you the way to do, when you get to the village. shut the door, and blindfold the doctor tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywheres, in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his chalk away from him, and don't give it back to him till you get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again. it's the way they all do." so i said i would, and left, and jim was to hide in the woods when he see the doctor coming, till he was gone again. chapter forty-one the doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man, when i got him up. i told him me and my brother was over on spanish island hunting, yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about midnight he must a kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we wanted to come home this evening, and surprise the folks. "who is your folks?" he says. "the phelpses, down yonder." "oh," he says. and after a minute, he says: "how'd you say he got shot?" "he had a dream," i says, "and it shot him." "singular dream," he says. so he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags, and we started. but when he see the canoe, he didn't like the look of hersaid she was big enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two. i says: "oh, you needn't be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us, easy enough." "what three?" "why me and sid, andandthe guns; that's what i mean." "oh," he says. but he put his foot on the gunnel, and rocked her; and shook his head, and said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one. but they was all locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for me to wait till he come back, or i could hunt around further, or maybe i better go down home and get them ready for the surprise, if i wanted to. but i said i didn't; so i told him just how to find the raft, and then he started. i struck an idea, pretty soon. i says to myself, spos'n he can't fix that leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is? spos'n it takes him three or four days? what are we going to do?lay around there till he lets the cat out of the bag? no, sir, i know what i'll do. i'll wait, and when he comes back, if he says he's got to go any more, i'll get down there, too, if i swim; and we'll take and tie him, and keep him, and shove out down the river; and when tom's done with him, we'll give him what it's worth, or all we got, and then let him get shore. so then i crept into a lumber pile to get some sleep; and next time i waked up the sun was away up over my head! i shot out and went for the doctor's house, but they told me he'd gone away in the night, some time or other, and warn't back yet. well, thinks i, that looks powerful bad for tom, and i'll dig out for the island, right off. so away i shoved, and turned the corner, and nearly rammed my head into uncle silas's stomach! he says: "why, tom! where you been, all this time, you rascal?" "i hain't been nowheres," i says, "only just hunting for the runaway niggerme and sid." "why, where ever did you go?" he says. "your aunt's been mighty uneasy." "she needn't," i says, "because we was all right. we followed the men and the dogs, but they out-run us, and we lost them; but we thought we heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them, and crossed over but couldn't find nothing of them; so we cruised along up-shore till we got kind of tired and beat out; and tied up the canoe and went to sleep, and never waked up till about an hour ago, then we paddled over here to hear the news, and sid's at the post-office to see what he can hear, and i'm a branching out to get something to eat for us, and then we're going home." so then we went to the post-office to get "sid"; but just as i suspicioned, he warn't there; so the old man he got a letter out of the office, and we waited a while longer but sid didn't come; so the old man said come along, let sid foot it home, or canoe-it, when he got done fooling aroundbut we would ride. i couldn't get him to let me stay and wait for sid; and he said there warn't no use in it, and i must come along, and let aunt sally see we was all right. when we got home, aunt sally was that glad to see me she laughed and cried both, and hugged me, and give me one of them lickings of hern that don't amount to shucks, and said she'd serve sid the same when he come. and the place was plumb full of farmers and farmers' wives, to dinner; and such another clack a body never heard. old mrs. hotchkiss was the worst; her tongue was agoing all the time. she says: "well, sister phelps, i've ransacked that-air cabin over an' i b'lieve the nigger was crazy. i says so to sister damrelldidn't i, sister damrells'i, he's crazy, s'ithem's the very words i said. you all hearn me: he's crazy, s'i; everything shows it, s'i. look at that-air grindstone, s'i; want to tell me't any cretur 'ts in his right mind's agoin' to scrabble all them crazy things onto a grindstone, s'i? here sich'n sich a person busted his heart; 'n' here so 'n' so pegged along for thirty-seven year, 'n' all thatnatcherl son o' louis somebody, 'n' sich everlast'n rubbage. he's plumb crazy, s'i; it's what i says in the fust place, it's what i says in the middle, 'n' it's what i says last 'n' all the timethe nigger's crazycrazy's nebokoodneezer, s'i." "an' look at that-air ladder made out'n rags, sister hotchkiss," says old mrs. damrell, "what in the name o' goodness could he ever want of-" "the very words i was a-sayin' no longer ago th'n this minute to sister utterback, 'n' she'll tell you so herself. sh-she, look at that-air rag ladder, sh-she; 'n' s'i, yes, look at it, s'iwhat could he a wanted of it, s'i. sh-she, sister hotchkiss, sh-she-" "but how in the nation'd they ever git that grindstone in there, anyway? 'n' who dug that-air hole? 'n' who-" "my very words, brer penrod! i was a-sayin'pass that air sasser o' m'lasses, won't ye?i was a-sayin' to sister dunlap, jist this minute, how did they git that grindstone in there, s'i. without help, mind you'thout help! thar's wher' 'tis. don't tell me, s'i; there wuz help, s'i; 'n' ther' wuz a plenty help, too, s'i; ther's ben a dozen a-helpin' that nigger, 'n' i lay i'd skin every last nigger on this place, but i'd find out who done it, s'i; 'n' moreover, s'i-" "a dozen says you!forty couldn't a done everything that's been done. look at them case-knife saws and things, how tedious they've been made; look at that bed-leg sawed off with 'm, a week's work for six men; look at that nigger made out'n straw on the bed; and look at-" "you may well say it, brer hightower! it's jist as i was a-sayin' to brer phelps, his own self. s'e, what do you think of it, sister hotchkiss, s'e? think o' what, brer phelps, s'i? think o' that bed-leg sawed off that a way, s'e? think of it, s'i? i lay it never sawed itself off, s'isomebody sawed it, s'i; that's my opinion, take it or leave it, it mayn't be no'count, s'i, but sich as 't is, it's my opinion, s'i, 'n' if anybody k'n start a better one, s'i, let him do it, s'i, that's all. i says to sister dunlap, s'i-" "why, dog my cats, they must a ben a house-full o' niggers in there every night for four weeks, to a done all that work, sister phelps. look at that shirtevery last inch of it kivered over with secret africa writ'n done with blood! must a ben a raft uv 'm at it right along, all the time, amost. why, i'd give two dollars to have it read to me; 'n' as for the niggers that wrote it, i 'low i'd take 'n' lash 'm t'll-" "people to help him, brother marples! well, i reckon you'd think so, if you'd a been in this house for a while back. why, they've stole everything they could lay their hands onand we a watching, all the time, mind you. they stole that shirt right off o' the line! and as for that sheet they made the rag ladder out of ther' ain't no telling how many times they didn't steal that; and flour, and candles, and candlesticks, and spoons, and the old warming-pan, and most a thousand things that i disremember, now, and my new calico dress; and me, and silas, and my sid and tom on the constant watch day and night, as i was a telling you, and not a one of us could catch hide nor hair, nor sight nor sound of them; and here at the last minute, lo and behold you, they slides right in under our noses, and fools us, and not only fools us but the injun territory robbers too, and actuly gets away with that nigger, safe and sound, and that with sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right on their very heels at that very time! i tell you, it just bangs anything i ever heard of. why, sperits couldn't a done better, and been no smarter. and i reckon they must a been speritsbecause, you know our dogs, and ther' ain't no better; well, them dogs never even got on the track of 'm once! you explain that to me, if you can!any of you!" "well, it does beat-" "laws alive, i never-" "so help me, i wouldn't a be-" "house thieves as well as-" "goodnessgracioussakes, i'd a ben afeard to live in sich a-" "'fraid to live!why, i was that scared i dasn't hardly go to bed, or get up, or lay down, or set down, sister ridgeway. why, they'd steal the verywhy, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster i was in by the time midnight come, last night. i hope to gracious if i warn't afraid they'd steal some o' the family! i was just to that pass, i didn't have no reasoning faculties no more. it looks foolish enough, now, in the day-time; but i says to myself, there's my two poor boys asleep, 'way up stairs in that lonesome room, and i declare to goodness i was that uneasy 't i crep' up there and locked 'em in! i did. and anybody would. because, you know, when you get scared, that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and worse, all the time, and your wits get to addling, and you get to doing all sorts o' wild things, and by-and-by you think to yourself, spos'n i was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't locked, and you-" she stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she turned her head around slow, and when her eye lit on mei got up and took a walk. says i to myself, i can explain better how we come to not be in that room this morning, if i go out to one side and study over it a little. so i done it. but i dasn't go fur, or she'd a sent for me. and when it was late in the day, the people all went, and then i come in and told her the noise and shooting waked up me and "sid," and the door was locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning-rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn't never want to try that no more. and then i went on and told her all what i told uncle silas before; and then she said she'd forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway, and about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty harum-scarum lot, as fur as she could see; and so, as long as no harm hadn't come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well and she had us still, stead of fretting over what was past and done. so then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of brown study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says: "why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and sid not come yet! what has become of that boy?" i see my chance; so i skips up and says: "i'll run right up to town and get him," i says. "no you won't," she says. "you'll stay right wher'you are; one's enough to be lost at a time. if he ain't here to supper, your uncle'll go." well, he warn't there to supper; so right after supper uncle went. he come back about ten, a little bit uneasy; hadn't run across tom's track. aunt sally was a good deal uneasy; but uncle silas he said there warn't no occasion to beboys will be boys, he said, and you'll see this one turn up in the morning, all sound and right. so she had to be satisfied. but she said she'd set up for him a while, anyway, and keep a light burning, so he could see it. and then when i went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good i felt mean, and like i couldn't look her in the face; and she set down on the bed and talked with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy sid was, and didn't seem to want to ever stop talking about him; and kept asking me every now and then, if i reckoned he could a got lost, or hurt, or maybe drownded, and might be laying at this minute, somewheres, suffering or dead, and she not by him to help him, and so the tears would drip down, silent, and i would tell her that sid was all right, and would be home in the morning, sure; and she would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say it again, and keep on saying it, because it done her good, and she was in so much trouble. and when she was going away, she looked down in my eyes, so steady and gentle, and says: "the door ain't going to be locked, tom; and there's the window and the rod; but you'll be good, won't you? and you won't go? for my sake." laws knows i wanted to go, bad enough, to see about tom, and was all intending to go; but after that, i wouldn't a went, not for kingdoms. but she was on my mind, and tom was on my mind; so i slept very restless. and twice i went down the rod, away in the night, and slipped around front, and see her setting there by her candle in the window with her eyes towards the road and the tears in them; and i wished i could do something for her, but i couldn't, only to swear that i wouldn't never do nothing to grieve her any more. and the third time, i waked up at dawn, and slid down, and she was there yet, and her candle was most out, and her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep. chapter forty-two the old man was up town again, before breakfast, but couldn't get no track of tom; and both of them set at the table, thinking, and not saying nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not eating anything. and by-and-by the old man says: "did i give you the letter?" "what letter?" "the one i got yesterday out of the post-office." "no, you didn't give me no letter." "well, i must a forgot it." so he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he had laid it down, and fetched it, and give it to her. she says: "why, it's from st. petersburg-it's from sis." i allowed another walk would do me good; but i couldn't stir. but before she could break it open, she dropped it and runfor she see something. and so did i. it was tom sawyer on a mattress; and that old doctor; and jim, in her calico dress, with his hands tied behind him; and a lot of people. i hid the letter behind the first thing that come handy, and rushed. she flung herself at tom, crying, and says: "oh, he's dead, he's dead, i know he's dead!" and tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other, which showed he warn't in his right mind; then she flung up her hands, and says: "he's alive, thank god! and that's enough!" and she snatched a kiss of him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering orders right and left at the niggers and everybody else, as fast as her tongue could go, every jump of the way. i followed the men to see what they was going to do with jim; and the old doctor and uncle silas followed after tom into the house. the men was very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang jim, for an example to all the other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run away, like jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family scared most to death for days and nights. but the others said, don't do it, it wouldn't answer at all, he ain't our nigger, and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure. so that cooled them down a little, because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a nigger that hain't done just right, is always the very ones that ain't the most anxious to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of him. they cussed jim considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two, side the head, once in a while, but jim never said nothing, and he never let on to know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes on him, and chained him again, and not to no bed-leg, this time, but to a big staple drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and both legs, and said he warn't to have nothing but bread and water to eat, after this, till his owner come or he was sold at auction, because he didn't come in a certain length of time, and filled up our hole, and said a couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the cabin every night, and a bull-dog tied to the door in the day-time; and about this time they was through with the job and was tapering off with a kind of generl good-bye cussing, and then the old doctor comes and takes a look, and says: "don't be no rougher on him than you're obleeged to, because he ain't a bad nigger. when i got to where i found the boy, i see i couldn't cut the bullet out without some help, and he warn't in no condition for me to leave, to go and get help; and he got a little worse and a little worse, and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn't let me come anigh him, any more, and said if i chalked his raft he'd kill me, and no end of wild foolishness like that, and i see i couldn't do anything at all with him; so i says, i got to have help, somehow; and the minute i says it, out crawls this nigger from somewheres, and says he'll help, and he done it, too, and done it very well. of course i judged he must be a runaway nigger, and there i was! and there i had to stick, right straight along all the rest of the day, and all night. it was a fix, i tell you! i had a couple of patients with the chills, and of course, i'd of liked to run up to town and see them, but i dasn't, because the nigger might get away, and then i'd be to blame; and yet never a skiff come close enough for me to hail. so there i had to stick, plumb till daylight this morning; and i never see a nigger that was a better nuss or faithfuller, and yet he was resking his freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too, and i see plain enough he'd been worked main hard, lately. i liked the nigger for that; i tell you, gentlemen, a nigger like that is worth a thousand dollarsand kind treatment, too. i had everything i needed, and the boy was doing as well there as he would a done at homebetter, maybe, because it was so quiet; but there i was, with both of 'm on my hands; and there i had to stick, till about dawn this morning; then some men in a skiff come by, and as good luck would have it, the nigger was setting by the pallet with his head propped on his knees, sound asleep; so i motioned them in, quiet, and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no trouble. and the boy being in a kind of a flighty sleep, too, we muffled the oars and hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nice and quiet, and the nigger never made the least row nor said a word, from the start. he ain't no bad nigger, gentlemen; that's what i think about him." somebody says: "well, it sounds very good, doctor, i'm obleeged to say." then the others softened up a little, too, and i was mighty thankful to that old doctor for doing jim that good turn; and i was glad it was according to my judgment of him, too; because i thought he had a good heart in him and was a good man, the first time i see him. then they all agreed that jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some notice took of it, and reward. so every one of them promised, right out and hearty, that they wouldn't cuss him no more. then they come out and locked him up. i hoped they was going to say he could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was rotten heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water, but they didn't think of it, and i reckoned it warn't best for me to mix in, but i judged i'd get the doctor's yarn to aunt sally, somehow or other, as soon as i'd got through the breakers that was laying just ahead of me. explanations, i mean, of how i forgot to mention about sid being shot, when i was telling how him and me put in that dratted night paddling around hunting the runaway nigger. but i had plenty time. aunt sally she stuck to the sickroom all day and all night; and every time i see uncle silas mooning around, i dodged him. next morning i heard tom was a good deal better, and they said aunt sally was gone to get a nap. so i slips to the sick-room, and if i found him awake i reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash. but he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful, too; and pale, not fire-faced the way he was when he come. so i set down and laid for him to wake. in about a half an hour, aunt sally comes gliding in, and there i was, up a stump again! she motioned me to be still, and set down by me, and begun to whisper, and said we could all be joyful now, because all the symptoms was first rate, and he'd been sleeping like that for ever so long, and looking better and peacefuller all the time, and ten to one he'd wake up in his right mind. so we set there watching, and by-and-by he stirs a bit, and opened his eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says: "hello, why i'm at home! how's that? where's the raft?" "it's all right," i says. "and jim?" "the same," i says, but couldn't say it pretty brash. but he never noticed, but says: "good! splendid! now we're all right and safe! did you tell aunty?" i was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says: "about what, sid?" "why, about the way the whole thing was done." "what whole thing?" "why, the whole thing. there ain't but one; how we set the runaway nigger freeme and tom." "good land! set the runwhat is the child talking about! dear, dear, out of his head again!" "no, i ain't out of my head; i know all what i'm talking about. we did set him freeme and tom. we laid out to do it, and we done it. and we done it elegant, too." he'd got a start, and she never checked him up, just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and i see it warn't no use for me to put in. "why, aunty, it cost us a power of workweeks of ithours and hours, every night, whilst you was all asleep. and we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case-knives, and the warming-pan, and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can't think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and one thing or another, and you can't think half the fun it was. and we had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters from the robbers, and get up and down the lightningrod, and dig the hole into the cabin, and make the rope-ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie, and send in spoons and things to work with, in your apron pocket-" "mercy sakes!" -and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company for jim; and then you kept tom here so long with the butter in his hat that you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive at us, and i got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in us, but went for the most noise, and we got our canoe, and made our raft, and was all safe, and jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and wasn't it bully, aunty!" "well, i never heard the likes of it in all my born days! so it was you, you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble, and turned everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. i've as good a notion as ever i had in my life, to take it out o' you this very minute. to think, here i've been, night after night, ayou just get well once, you young scamp, and i lay i'll tan the old harry out o' both o' ye!" but tom, he was so proud and joyful, he just couldn't hold in, and his tongue just went itshe a-chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat-convention; and she says: "well, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it now, for mind i tell you if i catch you meddling with him again-" "meddling with who?" tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised. "with who? why, the runaway nigger, of course. who'd you reckon?" tom looks at me very grave, and says: "tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? hasn't he got away?" "him?" says aunt sally; "the runaway nigger? 'deed he hasn't. they've got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold!" tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills, and sings out to me: "they hain't no right to shut him up! shove!and don't you lose a minute. turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur that walks this earth!" "what does the child mean?" "i mean every word i say, aunt sally, and if somebody don't go, i'll go. i've knowed him all his life, and so has tom, there. old miss watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and said so; and she set him free in her will." "then what on earth did you want to set him free for, seeing he was already free?" "well that is a question, i must say; and just like women! why, i wanted the adventure of it; and i'd a waded neckdeep in blood togoodness alive, aunt polly!" if she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as sweet and contented as an angel half-full of pie, i wish i may never! aunt sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried over her, and i found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. and i peeped out, and in a little while tom's aunt polly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at tom over her spectacleskind of grinding him into the earth, you know. and then she says: "yes, you better turn y'r head awayi would if i was you, tom." "oh, deary me!" says aunt sally; "is he changed so? why, that ain't tom, it's sid; tom'stom'swhy, where is tom? he was here a minute ago." "you mean where's huck finnthat's what you mean! i reckon i hain't raised such a scamp as my tom all these years, not to know him when i see him. that would be a pretty howdy-do. come out from under that bed, huck finn." so i done it. but not feeling brash. aunt sally she was one of the mixed-upest looking persons i ever see; except one, and that was uncle silas, when he come in, and they told it all to him. it kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting sermon that night that give him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn't a understood it. so tom's aunt polly, she told all about who i was, and what; and i had to up and trill how i was in such a tight place when mrs. phelps took me for tom sawyershe chipped in and says, "oh, go on and call me aunt sally, i'm used to it, now, and 'taint no need to change"that when aunt sally took me for tom sawyer, i had to stand itthere warn't no other way, and i knowed he wouldn't mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an adventure out of it and be perfectly satisfied. and so it turned out, and he let on to be sid, and made things as soft as he could for me. and his aunt polly she said tom was right about old miss watson setting jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, tom sawyer had gone and took all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and i couldn't ever understand, before, until that minute and that talk, how he could help a body set a nigger free, with his bringing-up. well, aunt polly she said that when aunt sally wrote to her that tom and sid had come, all right and safe, she says to herself: "look at that, now! i might have expected it, letting him go off that way without anybody to watch him. so now i got to go and trapse all the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creetur's up to, this time; as long as i couldn't seem to get any answer out of you about it." "why, i never heard nothing from you," says aunt sally. "well, i wonder! why, i wrote to you twice, to ask you what you could mean by sid being here." "well, i never got 'em, sis." aunt polly, she turns around slow and severe, and says: "you, tom!" "wellwhat?" he says, kind of pettish. "don't you what me, you impudent thinghand out them letters." "what letters?" "them letters. i be bound, if i have to take aholt of you i'll-" "they're in the trunk. there, now. and they're just the same as they was when i got them out of the office. i hain't looked into them, i hain't touched them. but i knowed they'd make trouble, and i thought if you warn't in no hurry, i'd-" "well, you do need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it. and i wrote another one to tell you i was coming; and i spose he-" "no, it come yesterday; i hain't read it yet, but it's all right, i've got that one." i wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but i reckoned maybe it was just as safe to not to. so i never said nothing. chapter the last the first time i catched tom, private, i asked him what was his idea, time of the evasion?what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before? and he said, what he had planned in his head, from the start, if we got jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river, on the raft, and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight procession and a brass band, and then he would be a hero, and so would we. but i reckened it was about as well the way it was. we had jim out of the chains in no time, and when aunt polly and uncle silas and aunt sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse tom, they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and give him all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. and we had him up to the sick-room; and had a high talk; and tom give jim forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good, and jim was pleased most to death, and busted out, and says: "dah, now, huck, what i tell you?what i tell you up dah on jackson islan'? i tole you i got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en i tole you i ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich agin; en it's come true; en heah she is! dab, now! doan' talk to mesigns is signs, mine i tell you; en i knowed jis' 's well 'at i 'uz gwineter be rich agin as i's a stannin heah dis minute!" and then tom he talked along, and talked along, and says, le's all three slide out of here, one of these nights, and get an outfit, and go for howling adventures amongst the injuns, over in the territory, for a couple of weeks or two; and i says, all right, that suits me, but i ain't got no money for to buy the outfit, and i reckon i couldn't get none from home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and got it all away from judge thatcher and drunk it up. "no, he hain't," tom says; "it's all there, yetsix thousand dollars and more; and your pap hain't ever been back since. hadn't when i come away, anyhow." jim says, kind of solemn: "he ain't a comin' back no mo', huck." i says: "why, jim?" "nemmine why, huckbut he ain't comin' back no mo'." but i kept at him; so at last he says: "doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey wuz a man in dah, kivered up, en i went in en unkivered him and didn't let you come in? well, den, you k'n git yo' money when you wants it; kase dat wuz him." tom's most well, now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and i am rotten glad of it, because if i'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book i wouldn't a tackled it and ain't agoing to no more. but i reckon i got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because aunt sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and i can't stand it. i been there before. the end. yours truly, huck finn . the tempest dramatis personae alonso king of naples. sebastian his brother. prospero the right duke of milan. antonio his brother, the usurping duke of milan. ferdinand son to the king of naples. gonzalo an honest old counsellor. adrian | | lords. francisco | caliban a savage and deformed slave. trinculo a jester. stephano a drunken butler. master of a ship. (master:) boatswain. (boatswain:) mariners. (mariners:) miranda daughter to prospero. ariel an airy spirit. iris | | ceres | | juno | presented by spirits. | nymphs | | reapers | other spirits attending on prospero. scene a ship at sea: an island. the tempest act i scene i on a ship at sea: a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard. [enter a master and a boatswain] master boatswain! boatswain here, master: what cheer? master good, speak to the mariners: fall to't, yarely, or we run ourselves aground: bestir, bestir. [exit] [enter mariners] boatswain heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! take in the topsail. tend to the master's whistle. blow, till thou burst thy wind, if room enough! [enter alonso, sebastian, antonio, ferdinand, gonzalo, and others] alonso good boatswain, have care. where's the master? play the men. boatswain i pray now, keep below. antonio where is the master, boatswain? boatswain do you not hear him? you mar our labour: keep your cabins: you do assist the storm. gonzalo nay, good, be patient. boatswain when the sea is. hence! what cares these roarers for the name of king? to cabin: silence! trouble us not. gonzalo good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard. boatswain none that i more love than myself. you are a counsellor; if you can command these elements to silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more; use your authority: if you cannot, give thanks you have lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap. cheerly, good hearts! out of our way, i say. [exit] gonzalo i have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. stand fast, good fate, to his hanging: make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage. if he be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable. [exeunt] [re-enter boatswain] boatswain down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! bring her to try with main-course. [a cry within] a plague upon this howling! they are louder than the weather or our office. [re-enter sebastian, antonio, and gonzalo] yet again! what do you here? shall we give o'er and drown? have you a mind to sink? sebastian a pox o' your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog! boatswain work you then. antonio hang, cur! hang, you whoreson, insolent noisemaker! we are less afraid to be drowned than thou art. gonzalo i'll warrant him for drowning; though the ship were no stronger than a nutshell and as leaky as an unstanched wench. boatswain lay her a-hold, a-hold! set her two courses off to sea again; lay her off. [enter mariners wet] mariners all lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost! boatswain what, must our mouths be cold? gonzalo the king and prince at prayers! let's assist them, for our case is as theirs. sebastian i'm out of patience. antonio we are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards: this wide-chapp'd rascal--would thou mightst lie drowning the washing of ten tides! gonzalo he'll be hang'd yet, though every drop of water swear against it and gape at widest to glut him. [a confused noise within: 'mercy on us!'- 'we split, we split!'--'farewell, my wife and children!'- 'farewell, brother!'--'we split, we split, we split!'] antonio let's all sink with the king. sebastian let's take leave of him. [exeunt antonio and sebastian] gonzalo now would i give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, any thing. the wills above be done! but i would fain die a dry death. [exeunt] the tempest act i scene ii the island. before prospero's cell. [enter prospero and miranda] miranda if by your art, my dearest father, you have put the wild waters in this roar, allay them. the sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch, but that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek, dashes the fire out. o, i have suffered with those that i saw suffer: a brave vessel, who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her, dash'd all to pieces. o, the cry did knock against my very heart. poor souls, they perish'd. had i been any god of power, i would have sunk the sea within the earth or ere it should the good ship so have swallow'd and the fraughting souls within her. prospero be collected: no more amazement: tell your piteous heart there's no harm done. miranda o, woe the day! prospero no harm. i have done nothing but in care of thee, of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing of whence i am, nor that i am more better than prospero, master of a full poor cell, and thy no greater father. miranda more to know did never meddle with my thoughts. prospero 'tis time i should inform thee farther. lend thy hand, and pluck my magic garment from me. so: [lays down his mantle] lie there, my art. wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort. the direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch'd the very virtue of compassion in thee, i have with such provision in mine art so safely ordered that there is no soul- no, not so much perdition as an hair betid to any creature in the vessel which thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st sink. sit down; for thou must now know farther. miranda you have often begun to tell me what i am, but stopp'd and left me to a bootless inquisition, concluding 'stay: not yet.' prospero the hour's now come; the very minute bids thee ope thine ear; obey and be attentive. canst thou remember a time before we came unto this cell? i do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not out three years old. miranda certainly, sir, i can. prospero by what? by any other house or person? of any thing the image tell me that hath kept with thy remembrance. miranda 'tis far off and rather like a dream than an assurance that my remembrance warrants. had i not four or five women once that tended me? prospero thou hadst, and more, miranda. but how is it that this lives in thy mind? what seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time? if thou remember'st aught ere thou camest here, how thou camest here thou mayst. miranda but that i do not. prospero twelve year since, miranda, twelve year since, thy father was the duke of milan and a prince of power. miranda sir, are not you my father? prospero thy mother was a piece of virtue, and she said thou wast my daughter; and thy father was duke of milan; and thou his only heir and princess no worse issued. miranda o the heavens! what foul play had we, that we came from thence? or blessed was't we did? prospero both, both, my girl: by foul play, as thou say'st, were we heaved thence, but blessedly holp hither. miranda o, my heart bleeds to think o' the teen that i have turn'd you to, which is from my remembrance! please you, farther. prospero my brother and thy uncle, call'd antonio- i pray thee, mark me--that a brother should be so perfidious!--he whom next thyself of all the world i loved and to him put the manage of my state; as at that time through all the signories it was the first and prospero the prime duke, being so reputed in dignity, and for the liberal arts without a parallel; those being all my study, the government i cast upon my brother and to my state grew stranger, being transported and rapt in secret studies. thy false uncle- dost thou attend me? miranda sir, most heedfully. prospero being once perfected how to grant suits, how to deny them, who to advance and who to trash for over-topping, new created the creatures that were mine, i say, or changed 'em, or else new form'd 'em; having both the key of officer and office, set all hearts i' the state to what tune pleased his ear; that now he was the ivy which had hid my princely trunk, and suck'd my verdure out on't. thou attend'st not. miranda o, good sir, i do. prospero i pray thee, mark me. i, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated to closeness and the bettering of my mind with that which, but by being so retired, o'er-prized all popular rate, in my false brother awaked an evil nature; and my trust, like a good parent, did beget of him a falsehood in its contrary as great as my trust was; which had indeed no limit, a confidence sans bound. he being thus lorded, not only with what my revenue yielded, but what my power might else exact, like one who having into truth, by telling of it, made such a sinner of his memory, to credit his own lie, he did believe he was indeed the duke; out o' the substitution and executing the outward face of royalty, with all prerogative: hence his ambition growing- dost thou hear? miranda your tale, sir, would cure deafness. prospero to have no screen between this part he play'd and him he play'd it for, he needs will be absolute milan. me, poor man, my library was dukedom large enough: of temporal royalties he thinks me now incapable; confederates- so dry he was for sway--wi' the king of naples to give him annual tribute, do him homage, subject his coronet to his crown and bend the dukedom yet unbow'd--alas, poor milan!- to most ignoble stooping. miranda o the heavens! prospero mark his condition and the event; then tell me if this might be a brother. miranda i should sin to think but nobly of my grandmother: good wombs have borne bad sons. prospero now the condition. the king of naples, being an enemy to me inveterate, hearkens my brother's suit; which was, that he, in lieu o' the premises of homage and i know not how much tribute, should presently extirpate me and mine out of the dukedom and confer fair milan with all the honours on my brother: whereon, a treacherous army levied, one midnight fated to the purpose did antonio open the gates of milan, and, i' the dead of darkness, the ministers for the purpose hurried thence me and thy crying self. miranda alack, for pity! i, not remembering how i cried out then, will cry it o'er again: it is a hint that wrings mine eyes to't. prospero hear a little further and then i'll bring thee to the present business which now's upon's; without the which this story were most impertinent. miranda wherefore did they not that hour destroy us? prospero well demanded, wench: my tale provokes that question. dear, they durst not, so dear the love my people bore me, nor set a mark so bloody on the business, but with colours fairer painted their foul ends. in few, they hurried us aboard a bark, bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared a rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd, nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats instinctively had quit it: there they hoist us, to cry to the sea that roar'd to us, to sigh to the winds whose pity, sighing back again, did us but loving wrong. miranda alack, what trouble was i then to you! prospero o, a cherubim thou wast that did preserve me. thou didst smile. infused with a fortitude from heaven, when i have deck'd the sea with drops full salt, under my burthen groan'd; which raised in me an undergoing stomach, to bear up against what should ensue. miranda how came we ashore? prospero by providence divine. some food we had and some fresh water that a noble neapolitan, gonzalo, out of his charity, being then appointed master of this design, did give us, with rich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries, which since have steaded much; so, of his gentleness, knowing i loved my books, he furnish'd me from mine own library with volumes that i prize above my dukedom. miranda would i might but ever see that man! prospero now i arise: [resumes his mantle] sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow. here in this island we arrived; and here have i, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit than other princesses can that have more time for vainer hours and tutors not so careful. miranda heavens thank you for't! and now, i pray you, sir, for still 'tis beating in my mind, your reason for raising this sea-storm? prospero know thus far forth. by accident most strange, bountiful fortune, now my dear lady, hath mine enemies brought to this shore; and by my prescience i find my zenith doth depend upon a most auspicious star, whose influence if now i court not but omit, my fortunes will ever after droop. here cease more questions: thou art inclined to sleep; 'tis a good dulness, and give it way: i know thou canst not choose. [miranda sleeps] come away, servant, come. i am ready now. approach, my ariel, come. [enter ariel] ariel all hail, great master! grave sir, hail! i come to answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task ariel and all his quality. prospero hast thou, spirit, perform'd to point the tempest that i bade thee? ariel to every article. i boarded the king's ship; now on the beak, now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, i flamed amazement: sometime i'ld divide, and burn in many places; on the topmast, the yards and bowsprit, would i flame distinctly, then meet and join. jove's lightnings, the precursors o' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary and sight-outrunning were not; the fire and cracks of sulphurous roaring the most mighty neptune seem to besiege and make his bold waves tremble, yea, his dread trident shake. prospero my brave spirit! who was so firm, so constant, that this coil would not infect his reason? ariel not a soul but felt a fever of the mad and play'd some tricks of desperation. all but mariners plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel, then all afire with me: the king's son, ferdinand, with hair up-staring,--then like reeds, not hair,- was the first man that leap'd; cried, 'hell is empty and all the devils are here.' prospero why that's my spirit! but was not this nigh shore? ariel close by, my master. prospero but are they, ariel, safe? ariel not a hair perish'd; on their sustaining garments not a blemish, but fresher than before: and, as thou badest me, in troops i have dispersed them 'bout the isle. the king's son have i landed by himself; whom i left cooling of the air with sighs in an odd angle of the isle and sitting, his arms in this sad knot. prospero of the king's ship the mariners say how thou hast disposed and all the rest o' the fleet. ariel safely in harbour is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew from the still-vex'd bermoothes, there she's hid: the mariners all under hatches stow'd; who, with a charm join'd to their suffer'd labour, i have left asleep; and for the rest o' the fleet which i dispersed, they all have met again and are upon the mediterranean flote, bound sadly home for naples, supposing that they saw the king's ship wreck'd and his great person perish. prospero ariel, thy charge exactly is perform'd: but there's more work. what is the time o' the day? ariel past the mid season. prospero at least two glasses. the time 'twixt six and now must by us both be spent most preciously. ariel is there more toil? since thou dost give me pains, let me remember thee what thou hast promised, which is not yet perform'd me. prospero how now? moody? what is't thou canst demand? ariel my liberty. prospero before the time be out? no more! ariel i prithee, remember i have done thee worthy service; told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise to bate me a full year. prospero dost thou forget from what a torment i did free thee? ariel no. prospero thou dost, and think'st it much to tread the ooze of the salt deep, to run upon the sharp wind of the north, to do me business in the veins o' the earth when it is baked with frost. ariel i do not, sir. prospero thou liest, malignant thing! hast thou forgot the foul witch sycorax, who with age and envy was grown into a hoop? hast thou forgot her? ariel no, sir. prospero thou hast. where was she born? speak; tell me. ariel sir, in argier. prospero o, was she so? i must once in a month recount what thou hast been, which thou forget'st. this damn'd witch sycorax, for mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible to enter human hearing, from argier, thou know'st, was banish'd: for one thing she did they would not take her life. is not this true? ariel ay, sir. prospero this blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child and here was left by the sailors. thou, my slave, as thou report'st thyself, wast then her servant; and, for thou wast a spirit too delicate to act her earthy and abhorr'd commands, refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee, by help of her more potent ministers and in her most unmitigable rage, into a cloven pine; within which rift imprison'd thou didst painfully remain a dozen years; within which space she died and left thee there; where thou didst vent thy groans as fast as mill-wheels strike. then was this island- save for the son that she did litter here, a freckled whelp hag-born--not honour'd with a human shape. ariel yes, caliban her son. prospero dull thing, i say so; he, that caliban whom now i keep in service. thou best know'st what torment i did find thee in; thy groans did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts of ever angry bears: it was a torment to lay upon the damn'd, which sycorax could not again undo: it was mine art, when i arrived and heard thee, that made gape the pine and let thee out. ariel i thank thee, master. prospero if thou more murmur'st, i will rend an oak and peg thee in his knotty entrails till thou hast howl'd away twelve winters. ariel pardon, master; i will be correspondent to command and do my spiriting gently. prospero do so, and after two days i will discharge thee. ariel that's my noble master! what shall i do? say what; what shall i do? prospero go make thyself like a nymph o' the sea: be subject to no sight but thine and mine, invisible to every eyeball else. go take this shape and hither come in't: go, hence with diligence! [exit ariel] awake, dear heart, awake! thou hast slept well; awake! miranda the strangeness of your story put heaviness in me. prospero shake it off. come on; we'll visit caliban my slave, who never yields us kind answer. miranda 'tis a villain, sir, i do not love to look on. prospero but, as 'tis, we cannot miss him: he does make our fire, fetch in our wood and serves in offices that profit us. what, ho! slave! caliban! thou earth, thou! speak. caliban [within] there's wood enough within. prospero come forth, i say! there's other business for thee: come, thou tortoise! when? [re-enter ariel like a water-nymph] fine apparition! my quaint ariel, hark in thine ear. ariel my lord it shall be done. [exit] prospero thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself upon thy wicked dam, come forth! [enter caliban] caliban as wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd with raven's feather from unwholesome fen drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye and blister you all o'er! prospero for this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps, side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins shall, for that vast of night that they may work, all exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch'd as thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging than bees that made 'em. caliban i must eat my dinner. this island's mine, by sycorax my mother, which thou takest from me. when thou camest first, thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me water with berries in't, and teach me how to name the bigger light, and how the less, that burn by day and night: and then i loved thee and show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle, the fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile: cursed be i that did so! all the charms of sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you! for i am all the subjects that you have, which first was mine own king: and here you sty me in this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me the rest o' the island. prospero thou most lying slave, whom stripes may move, not kindness! i have used thee, filth as thou art, with human care, and lodged thee in mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate the honour of my child. caliban o ho, o ho! would't had been done! thou didst prevent me; i had peopled else this isle with calibans. prospero abhorred slave, which any print of goodness wilt not take, being capable of all ill! i pitied thee, took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour one thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like a thing most brutish, i endow'd thy purposes with words that made them known. but thy vile race, though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou deservedly confined into this rock, who hadst deserved more than a prison. caliban you taught me language; and my profit on't is, i know how to curse. the red plague rid you for learning me your language! prospero hag-seed, hence! fetch us in fuel; and be quick, thou'rt best, to answer other business. shrug'st thou, malice? if thou neglect'st or dost unwillingly what i command, i'll rack thee with old cramps, fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar that beasts shall tremble at thy din. caliban no, pray thee. [aside] i must obey: his art is of such power, it would control my dam's god, setebos, and make a vassal of him. prospero so, slave; hence! [exit caliban] [re-enter ariel, invisible, playing and singing; ferdinand following] ariel's song. come unto these yellow sands, and then take hands: courtsied when you have and kiss'd the wild waves whist, foot it featly here and there; and, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. hark, hark! [burthen [dispersedly, within] bow-wow] the watch-dogs bark! [burthen bow-wow] hark, hark! i hear the strain of strutting chanticleer cry, cock-a-diddle-dow. ferdinand where should this music be? i' the air or the earth? it sounds no more: and sure, it waits upon some god o' the island. sitting on a bank, weeping again the king my father's wreck, this music crept by me upon the waters, allaying both their fury and my passion with its sweet air: thence i have follow'd it, or it hath drawn me rather. but 'tis gone. no, it begins again. [ariel sings] full fathom five thy father lies; of his bones are coral made; those are pearls that were his eyes: nothing of him that doth fade but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange. sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell [burthen ding-dong] hark! now i hear them,--ding-dong, bell. ferdinand the ditty does remember my drown'd father. this is no mortal business, nor no sound that the earth owes. i hear it now above me. prospero the fringed curtains of thine eye advance and say what thou seest yond. miranda what is't? a spirit? lord, how it looks about! believe me, sir, it carries a brave form. but 'tis a spirit. prospero no, wench; it eats and sleeps and hath such senses as we have, such. this gallant which thou seest was in the wreck; and, but he's something stain'd with grief that's beauty's canker, thou mightst call him a goodly person: he hath lost his fellows and strays about to find 'em. miranda i might call him a thing divine, for nothing natural i ever saw so noble. prospero [aside] it goes on, i see, as my soul prompts it. spirit, fine spirit! i'll free thee within two days for this. ferdinand most sure, the goddess on whom these airs attend! vouchsafe my prayer may know if you remain upon this island; and that you will some good instruction give how i may bear me here: my prime request, which i do last pronounce, is, o you wonder! if you be maid or no? miranda no wonder, sir; but certainly a maid. ferdinand my language! heavens! i am the best of them that speak this speech, were i but where 'tis spoken. prospero how? the best? what wert thou, if the king of naples heard thee? ferdinand a single thing, as i am now, that wonders to hear thee speak of naples. he does hear me; and that he does i weep: myself am naples, who with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld the king my father wreck'd. miranda alack, for mercy! ferdinand yes, faith, and all his lords; the duke of milan and his brave son being twain. prospero [aside] the duke of milan and his more braver daughter could control thee, if now 'twere fit to do't. at the first sight they have changed eyes. delicate ariel, i'll set thee free for this. [to ferdinand] a word, good sir; i fear you have done yourself some wrong: a word. miranda why speaks my father so ungently? this is the third man that e'er i saw, the first that e'er i sigh'd for: pity move my father to be inclined my way! ferdinand o, if a virgin, and your affection not gone forth, i'll make you the queen of naples. prospero soft, sir! one word more. [aside] they are both in either's powers; but this swift business i must uneasy make, lest too light winning make the prize light. [to ferdinand] one word more; i charge thee that thou attend me: thou dost here usurp the name thou owest not; and hast put thyself upon this island as a spy, to win it from me, the lord on't. ferdinand no, as i am a man. miranda there's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple: if the ill spirit have so fair a house, good things will strive to dwell with't. prospero follow me. speak not you for him; he's a traitor. come; i'll manacle thy neck and feet together: sea-water shalt thou drink; thy food shall be the fresh-brook muscles, wither'd roots and husks wherein the acorn cradled. follow. ferdinand no; i will resist such entertainment till mine enemy has more power. [draws, and is charmed from moving] miranda o dear father, make not too rash a trial of him, for he's gentle and not fearful. prospero what? i say, my foot my tutor? put thy sword up, traitor; who makest a show but darest not strike, thy conscience is so possess'd with guilt: come from thy ward, for i can here disarm thee with this stick and make thy weapon drop. miranda beseech you, father. prospero hence! hang not on my garments. miranda sir, have pity; i'll be his surety. prospero silence! one word more shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. what! an advocate for an imposter! hush! thou think'st there is no more such shapes as he, having seen but him and caliban: foolish wench! to the most of men this is a caliban and they to him are angels. miranda my affections are then most humble; i have no ambition to see a goodlier man. prospero come on; obey: thy nerves are in their infancy again and have no vigour in them. ferdinand so they are; my spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up. my father's loss, the weakness which i feel, the wreck of all my friends, nor this man's threats, to whom i am subdued, are but light to me, might i but through my prison once a day behold this maid: all corners else o' the earth let liberty make use of; space enough have i in such a prison. prospero [aside] it works. [to ferdinand] come on. thou hast done well, fine ariel! [to ferdinand] follow me. [to ariel] hark what thou else shalt do me. miranda be of comfort; my father's of a better nature, sir, than he appears by speech: this is unwonted which now came from him. prospero thou shalt be free as mountain winds: but then exactly do all points of my command. ariel to the syllable. prospero come, follow. speak not for him. [exeunt] the tempest act ii scene i another part of the island. [enter alonso, sebastian, antonio, gonzalo, adrian, francisco, and others] gonzalo beseech you, sir, be merry; you have cause, so have we all, of joy; for our escape is much beyond our loss. our hint of woe is common; every day some sailor's wife, the masters of some merchant and the merchant have just our theme of woe; but for the miracle, i mean our preservation, few in millions can speak like us: then wisely, good sir, weigh our sorrow with our comfort. alonso prithee, peace. sebastian he receives comfort like cold porridge. antonio the visitor will not give him o'er so. sebastian look he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike. gonzalo sir,- sebastian one: tell. gonzalo when every grief is entertain'd that's offer'd, comes to the entertainer- sebastian a dollar. gonzalo dolour comes to him, indeed: you have spoken truer than you purposed. sebastian you have taken it wiselier than i meant you should. gonzalo therefore, my lord,- antonio fie, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue! alonso i prithee, spare. gonzalo well, i have done: but yet,- sebastian he will be talking. antonio which, of he or adrian, for a good wager, first begins to crow? sebastian the old cock. antonio the cockerel. sebastian done. the wager? antonio a laughter. sebastian a match! adrian though this island seem to be desert,- sebastian ha, ha, ha! so, you're paid. adrian uninhabitable and almost inaccessible,- sebastian yet,- adrian yet,- antonio he could not miss't. adrian it must needs be of subtle, tender and delicate temperance. antonio temperance was a delicate wench. sebastian ay, and a subtle; as he most learnedly delivered. adrian the air breathes upon us here most sweetly. sebastian as if it had lungs and rotten ones. antonio or as 'twere perfumed by a fen. gonzalo here is everything advantageous to life. antonio true; save means to live. sebastian of that there's none, or little. gonzalo how lush and lusty the grass looks! how green! antonio the ground indeed is tawny. sebastian with an eye of green in't. antonio he misses not much. sebastian no; he doth but mistake the truth totally. gonzalo but the rarity of it is,--which is indeed almost beyond credit,- sebastian as many vouched rarities are. gonzalo that our garments, being, as they were, drenched in the sea, hold notwithstanding their freshness and glosses, being rather new-dyed than stained with salt water. antonio if but one of his pockets could speak, would it not say he lies? sebastian ay, or very falsely pocket up his report gonzalo methinks our garments are now as fresh as when we put them on first in afric, at the marriage of the king's fair daughter claribel to the king of tunis. sebastian 'twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in our return. adrian tunis was never graced before with such a paragon to their queen. gonzalo not since widow dido's time. antonio widow! a pox o' that! how came that widow in? widow dido! sebastian what if he had said 'widower aeneas' too? good lord, how you take it! adrian 'widow dido' said you? you make me study of that: she was of carthage, not of tunis. gonzalo this tunis, sir, was carthage. adrian carthage? gonzalo i assure you, carthage. sebastian his word is more than the miraculous harp; he hath raised the wall and houses too. antonio what impossible matter will he make easy next? sebastian i think he will carry this island home in his pocket and give it his son for an apple. antonio and, sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring forth more islands. gonzalo ay. antonio why, in good time. gonzalo sir, we were talking that our garments seem now as fresh as when we were at tunis at the marriage of your daughter, who is now queen. antonio and the rarest that e'er came there. sebastian bate, i beseech you, widow dido. antonio o, widow dido! ay, widow dido. gonzalo is not, sir, my doublet as fresh as the first day i wore it? i mean, in a sort. antonio that sort was well fished for. gonzalo when i wore it at your daughter's marriage? alonso you cram these words into mine ears against the stomach of my sense. would i had never married my daughter there! for, coming thence, my son is lost and, in my rate, she too, who is so far from italy removed i ne'er again shall see her. o thou mine heir of naples and of milan, what strange fish hath made his meal on thee? francisco sir, he may live: i saw him beat the surges under him, and ride upon their backs; he trod the water, whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted the surge most swoln that met him; his bold head 'bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar'd himself with his good arms in lusty stroke to the shore, that o'er his wave-worn basis bow'd, as stooping to relieve him: i not doubt he came alive to land. alonso no, no, he's gone. sebastian sir, you may thank yourself for this great loss, that would not bless our europe with your daughter, but rather lose her to an african; where she at least is banish'd from your eye, who hath cause to wet the grief on't. alonso prithee, peace. sebastian you were kneel'd to and importuned otherwise by all of us, and the fair soul herself weigh'd between loathness and obedience, at which end o' the beam should bow. we have lost your son, i fear, for ever: milan and naples have more widows in them of this business' making than we bring men to comfort them: the fault's your own. alonso so is the dear'st o' the loss. gonzalo my lord sebastian, the truth you speak doth lack some gentleness and time to speak it in: you rub the sore, when you should bring the plaster. sebastian very well. antonio and most chirurgeonly. gonzalo it is foul weather in us all, good sir, when you are cloudy. sebastian foul weather? antonio very foul. gonzalo had i plantation of this isle, my lord,- antonio he'ld sow't with nettle-seed. sebastian or docks, or mallows. gonzalo and were the king on't, what would i do? sebastian 'scape being drunk for want of wine. gonzalo i' the commonwealth i would by contraries execute all things; for no kind of traffic would i admit; no name of magistrate; letters should not be known; riches, poverty, and use of service, none; contract, succession, bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; no use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; no occupation; all men idle, all; and women too, but innocent and pure; no sovereignty;- sebastian yet he would be king on't. antonio the latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning. gonzalo all things in common nature should produce without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony, sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine, would i not have; but nature should bring forth, of its own kind, all foison, all abundance, to feed my innocent people. sebastian no marrying 'mong his subjects? antonio none, man; all idle: whores and knaves. gonzalo i would with such perfection govern, sir, to excel the golden age. sebastian god save his majesty! antonio long live gonzalo! gonzalo and,--do you mark me, sir? alonso prithee, no more: thou dost talk nothing to me. gonzalo i do well believe your highness; and did it to minister occasion to these gentlemen, who are of such sensible and nimble lungs that they always use to laugh at nothing. antonio 'twas you we laughed at. gonzalo who in this kind of merry fooling am nothing to you: so you may continue and laugh at nothing still. antonio what a blow was there given! sebastian an it had not fallen flat-long. gonzalo you are gentlemen of brave metal; you would lift the moon out of her sphere, if she would continue in it five weeks without changing. [enter ariel, invisible, playing solemn music] sebastian we would so, and then go a bat-fowling. antonio nay, good my lord, be not angry. gonzalo no, i warrant you; i will not adventure my discretion so weakly. will you laugh me asleep, for i am very heavy? antonio go sleep, and hear us. [all sleep except alonso, sebastian, and antonio] alonso what, all so soon asleep! i wish mine eyes would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts: i find they are inclined to do so. sebastian please you, sir, do not omit the heavy offer of it: it seldom visits sorrow; when it doth, it is a comforter. antonio we two, my lord, will guard your person while you take your rest, and watch your safety. alonso thank you. wondrous heavy. [alonso sleeps. exit ariel] sebastian what a strange drowsiness possesses them! antonio it is the quality o' the climate. sebastian why doth it not then our eyelids sink? i find not myself disposed to sleep. antonio nor i; my spirits are nimble. they fell together all, as by consent; they dropp'd, as by a thunder-stroke. what might, worthy sebastian? o, what might?--no more:- and yet me thinks i see it in thy face, what thou shouldst be: the occasion speaks thee, and my strong imagination sees a crown dropping upon thy head. sebastian what, art thou waking? antonio do you not hear me speak? sebastian i do; and surely it is a sleepy language and thou speak'st out of thy sleep. what is it thou didst say? this is a strange repose, to be asleep with eyes wide open; standing, speaking, moving, and yet so fast asleep. antonio noble sebastian, thou let'st thy fortune sleep--die, rather; wink'st whiles thou art waking. sebastian thou dost snore distinctly; there's meaning in thy snores. antonio i am more serious than my custom: you must be so too, if heed me; which to do trebles thee o'er. sebastian well, i am standing water. antonio i'll teach you how to flow. sebastian do so: to ebb hereditary sloth instructs me. antonio o, if you but knew how you the purpose cherish whiles thus you mock it! how, in stripping it, you more invest it! ebbing men, indeed, most often do so near the bottom run by their own fear or sloth. sebastian prithee, say on: the setting of thine eye and cheek proclaim a matter from thee, and a birth indeed which throes thee much to yield. antonio thus, sir: although this lord of weak remembrance, this, who shall be of as little memory when he is earth'd, hath here almost persuade,- for he's a spirit of persuasion, only professes to persuade,--the king his son's alive, 'tis as impossible that he's undrown'd and he that sleeps here swims. sebastian i have no hope that he's undrown'd. antonio o, out of that 'no hope' what great hope have you! no hope that way is another way so high a hope that even ambition cannot pierce a wink beyond, but doubt discovery there. will you grant with me that ferdinand is drown'd? sebastian he's gone. antonio then, tell me, who's the next heir of naples? sebastian claribel. antonio she that is queen of tunis; she that dwells ten leagues beyond man's life; she that from naples can have no note, unless the sun were post- the man i' the moon's too slow--till new-born chins be rough and razorable; she that--from whom? we all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again, and by that destiny to perform an act whereof what's past is prologue, what to come in yours and my discharge. sebastian what stuff is this! how say you? 'tis true, my brother's daughter's queen of tunis; so is she heir of naples; 'twixt which regions there is some space. antonio a space whose every cubit seems to cry out, 'how shall that claribel measure us back to naples? keep in tunis, and let sebastian wake.' say, this were death that now hath seized them; why, they were no worse than now they are. there be that can rule naples as well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate as amply and unnecessarily as this gonzalo; i myself could make a chough of as deep chat. o, that you bore the mind that i do! what a sleep were this for your advancement! do you understand me? sebastian methinks i do. antonio and how does your content tender your own good fortune? sebastian i remember you did supplant your brother prospero. antonio true: and look how well my garments sit upon me; much feater than before: my brother's servants were then my fellows; now they are my men. sebastian but, for your conscience? antonio ay, sir; where lies that? if 'twere a kibe, 'twould put me to my slipper: but i feel not this deity in my bosom: twenty consciences, that stand 'twixt me and milan, candied be they and melt ere they molest! here lies your brother, no better than the earth he lies upon, if he were that which now he's like, that's dead; whom i, with this obedient steel, three inches of it, can lay to bed for ever; whiles you, doing thus, to the perpetual wink for aye might put this ancient morsel, this sir prudence, who should not upbraid our course. for all the rest, they'll take suggestion as a cat laps milk; they'll tell the clock to any business that we say befits the hour. sebastian thy case, dear friend, shall be my precedent; as thou got'st milan, i'll come by naples. draw thy sword: one stroke shall free thee from the tribute which thou payest; and i the king shall love thee. antonio draw together; and when i rear my hand, do you the like, to fall it on gonzalo. sebastian o, but one word. [they talk apart] [re-enter ariel, invisible] ariel my master through his art foresees the danger that you, his friend, are in; and sends me forth- for else his project dies--to keep them living. [sings in gonzalo's ear] while you here do snoring lie, open-eyed conspiracy his time doth take. if of life you keep a care, shake off slumber, and beware: awake, awake! antonio then let us both be sudden. gonzalo now, good angels preserve the king. [they wake] alonso why, how now? ho, awake! why are you drawn? wherefore this ghastly looking? gonzalo what's the matter? sebastian whiles we stood here securing your repose, even now, we heard a hollow burst of bellowing like bulls, or rather lions: did't not wake you? it struck mine ear most terribly. alonso i heard nothing. antonio o, 'twas a din to fright a monster's ear, to make an earthquake! sure, it was the roar of a whole herd of lions. alonso heard you this, gonzalo? gonzalo upon mine honour, sir, i heard a humming, and that a strange one too, which did awake me: i shaked you, sir, and cried: as mine eyes open'd, i saw their weapons drawn: there was a noise, that's verily. 'tis best we stand upon our guard, or that we quit this place; let's draw our weapons. alonso lead off this ground; and let's make further search for my poor son. gonzalo heavens keep him from these beasts! for he is, sure, i' the island. alonso lead away. ariel prospero my lord shall know what i have done: so, king, go safely on to seek thy son. [exeunt] the tempest act ii scene ii another part of the island. [enter caliban with a burden of wood. a noise of thunder heard] caliban all the infections that the sun sucks up from bogs, fens, flats, on prosper fall and make him by inch-meal a disease! his spirits hear me and yet i needs must curse. but they'll nor pinch, fright me with urchin--shows, pitch me i' the mire, nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark out of my way, unless he bid 'em; but for every trifle are they set upon me; sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me and after bite me, then like hedgehogs which lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount their pricks at my footfall; sometime am i all wound with adders who with cloven tongues do hiss me into madness. [enter trinculo] lo, now, lo! here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me for bringing wood in slowly. i'll fall flat; perchance he will not mind me. trinculo here's neither bush nor shrub, to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing; i hear it sing i' the wind: yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. if it should thunder as it did before, i know not where to hide my head: yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls. what have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? a fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fish like smell; a kind of not of the newest poor john. a strange fish! were i in england now, as once i was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lazy out ten to see a dead indian. legged like a man and his fins like arms! warm o' my troth! i do now let loose my opinion; hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt. [thunder] alas, the storm is come again! my best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabouts: misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows. i will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past. [enter stephano, singing: a bottle in his hand] stephano i shall no more to sea, to sea, here shall i die ashore- this is a very scurvy tune to sing at a man's funeral: well, here's my comfort. [drinks] [sings] the master, the swabber, the boatswain and i, the gunner and his mate loved mall, meg and marian and margery, but none of us cared for kate; for she had a tongue with a tang, would cry to a sailor, go hang! she loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch, yet a tailor might scratch her where'er she did itch: then to sea, boys, and let her go hang! this is a scurvy tune too: but here's my comfort. [drinks] caliban do not torment me: oh! stephano what's the matter? have we devils here? do you put tricks upon's with savages and men of ind, ha? i have not scaped drowning to be afeard now of your four legs; for it hath been said, as proper a man as ever went on four legs cannot make him give ground; and it shall be said so again while stephano breathes at's nostrils. caliban the spirit torments me; oh! stephano this is some monster of the isle with four legs, who hath got, as i take it, an ague. where the devil should he learn our language? i will give him some relief, if it be but for that. if i can recover him and keep him tame and get to naples with him, he's a present for any emperor that ever trod on neat's leather. caliban do not torment me, prithee; i'll bring my wood home faster. stephano he's in his fit now and does not talk after the wisest. he shall taste of my bottle: if he have never drunk wine afore will go near to remove his fit. if i can recover him and keep him tame, i will not take too much for him; he shall pay for him that hath him, and that soundly. caliban thou dost me yet but little hurt; thou wilt anon, i know it by thy trembling: now prosper works upon thee. stephano come on your ways; open your mouth; here is that which will give language to you, cat: open your mouth; this will shake your shaking, i can tell you, and that soundly: you cannot tell who's your friend: open your chaps again. trinculo i should know that voice: it should be--but he is drowned; and these are devils: o defend me! stephano four legs and two voices: a most delicate monster! his forward voice now is to speak well of his friend; his backward voice is to utter foul speeches and to detract. if all the wine in my bottle will recover him, i will help his ague. come. amen! i will pour some in thy other mouth. trinculo stephano! stephano doth thy other mouth call me? mercy, mercy! this is a devil, and no monster: i will leave him; i have no long spoon. trinculo stephano! if thou beest stephano, touch me and speak to me: for i am trinculo--be not afeard--thy good friend trinculo. stephano if thou beest trinculo, come forth: i'll pull thee by the lesser legs: if any be trinculo's legs, these are they. thou art very trinculo indeed! how camest thou to be the siege of this moon-calf? can he vent trinculos? trinculo i took him to be killed with a thunder-stroke. but art thou not drowned, stephano? i hope now thou art not drowned. is the storm overblown? i hid me under the dead moon-calf's gaberdine for fear of the storm. and art thou living, stephano? o stephano, two neapolitans 'scaped! stephano prithee, do not turn me about; my stomach is not constant. caliban [aside] these be fine things, an if they be not sprites. that's a brave god and bears celestial liquor. i will kneel to him. stephano how didst thou 'scape? how camest thou hither? swear by this bottle how thou camest hither. i escaped upon a butt of sack which the sailors heaved o'erboard, by this bottle; which i made of the bark of a tree with mine own hands since i was cast ashore. caliban i'll swear upon that bottle to be thy true subject; for the liquor is not earthly. stephano here; swear then how thou escapedst. trinculo swum ashore. man, like a duck: i can swim like a duck, i'll be sworn. stephano here, kiss the book. though thou canst swim like a duck, thou art made like a goose. trinculo o stephano. hast any more of this? stephano the whole butt, man: my cellar is in a rock by the sea-side where my wine is hid. how now, moon-calf! how does thine ague? caliban hast thou not dropp'd from heaven? stephano out o' the moon, i do assure thee: i was the man i' the moon when time was. caliban i have seen thee in her and i do adore thee: my mistress show'd me thee and thy dog and thy bush. stephano come, swear to that; kiss the book: i will furnish it anon with new contents swear. trinculo by this good light, this is a very shallow monster! i afeard of him! a very weak monster! the man i' the moon! a most poor credulous monster! well drawn, monster, in good sooth! caliban i'll show thee every fertile inch o' th' island; and i will kiss thy foot: i prithee, be my god. trinculo by this light, a most perfidious and drunken monster! when 's god's asleep, he'll rob his bottle. caliban i'll kiss thy foot; i'll swear myself thy subject. stephano come on then; down, and swear. trinculo i shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed monster. a most scurvy monster! i could find in my heart to beat him,- stephano come, kiss. trinculo but that the poor monster's in drink: an abominable monster! caliban i'll show thee the best springs; i'll pluck thee berries; i'll fish for thee and get thee wood enough. a plague upon the tyrant that i serve! i'll bear him no more sticks, but follow thee, thou wondrous man. trinculo a most ridiculous monster, to make a wonder of a poor drunkard! caliban i prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow; and i with my long nails will dig thee pignuts; show thee a jay's nest and instruct thee how to snare the nimble marmoset; i'll bring thee to clustering filberts and sometimes i'll get thee young scamels from the rock. wilt thou go with me? stephano i prithee now, lead the way without any more talking. trinculo, the king and all our company else being drowned, we will inherit here: here; bear my bottle: fellow trinculo, we'll fill him by and by again. caliban [sings drunkenly] farewell master; farewell, farewell! trinculo a howling monster: a drunken monster! caliban no more dams i'll make for fish nor fetch in firing at requiring; nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish 'ban, 'ban, cacaliban has a new master: get a new man. freedom, hey-day! hey-day, freedom! freedom, hey-day, freedom! stephano o brave monster! lead the way. [exeunt] the tempest act iii scene i before prospero's cell. [enter ferdinand, bearing a log] ferdinand there be some sports are painful, and their labour delight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone and most poor matters point to rich ends. this my mean task would be as heavy to me as odious, but the mistress which i serve quickens what's dead and makes my labours pleasures: o, she is ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed, and he's composed of harshness. i must remove some thousands of these logs and pile them up, upon a sore injunction: my sweet mistress weeps when she sees me work, and says, such baseness had never like executor. i forget: but these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours, most busy lest, when i do it. [enter miranda; and prospero at a distance, unseen] miranda alas, now, pray you, work not so hard: i would the lightning had burnt up those logs that you are enjoin'd to pile! pray, set it down and rest you: when this burns, 'twill weep for having wearied you. my father is hard at study; pray now, rest yourself; he's safe for these three hours. ferdinand o most dear mistress, the sun will set before i shall discharge what i must strive to do. miranda if you'll sit down, i'll bear your logs the while: pray, give me that; i'll carry it to the pile. ferdinand no, precious creature; i had rather crack my sinews, break my back, than you should such dishonour undergo, while i sit lazy by. miranda it would become me as well as it does you: and i should do it with much more ease; for my good will is to it, and yours it is against. prospero poor worm, thou art infected! this visitation shows it. miranda you look wearily. ferdinand no, noble mistress;'tis fresh morning with me when you are by at night. i do beseech you- chiefly that i might set it in my prayers- what is your name? miranda miranda.--o my father, i have broke your hest to say so! ferdinand admired miranda! indeed the top of admiration! worth what's dearest to the world! full many a lady i have eyed with best regard and many a time the harmony of their tongues hath into bondage brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues have i liked several women; never any with so fun soul, but some defect in her did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed and put it to the foil: but you, o you, so perfect and so peerless, are created of every creature's best! miranda i do not know one of my sex; no woman's face remember, save, from my glass, mine own; nor have i seen more that i may call men than you, good friend, and my dear father: how features are abroad, i am skilless of; but, by my modesty, the jewel in my dower, i would not wish any companion in the world but you, nor can imagination form a shape, besides yourself, to like of. but i prattle something too wildly and my father's precepts i therein do forget. ferdinand i am in my condition a prince, miranda; i do think, a king; i would, not so!--and would no more endure this wooden slavery than to suffer the flesh-fly blow my mouth. hear my soul speak: the very instant that i saw you, did my heart fly to your service; there resides, to make me slave to it; and for your sake am i this patient log--man. miranda do you love me? ferdinand o heaven, o earth, bear witness to this sound and crown what i profess with kind event if i speak true! if hollowly, invert what best is boded me to mischief! i beyond all limit of what else i' the world do love, prize, honour you. miranda i am a fool to weep at what i am glad of. prospero fair encounter of two most rare affections! heavens rain grace on that which breeds between 'em! ferdinand wherefore weep you? miranda at mine unworthiness that dare not offer what i desire to give, and much less take what i shall die to want. but this is trifling; and all the more it seeks to hide itself, the bigger bulk it shows. hence, bashful cunning! and prompt me, plain and holy innocence! i am your wife, it you will marry me; if not, i'll die your maid: to be your fellow you may deny me; but i'll be your servant, whether you will or no. ferdinand my mistress, dearest; and i thus humble ever. miranda my husband, then? ferdinand ay, with a heart as willing as bondage e'er of freedom: here's my hand. miranda and mine, with my heart in't; and now farewell till half an hour hence. ferdinand a thousand thousand! [exeunt ferdinand and miranda severally] prospero so glad of this as they i cannot be, who are surprised withal; but my rejoicing at nothing can be more. i'll to my book, for yet ere supper-time must i perform much business appertaining. [exit] the tempest act iii scene ii another part of the island. [enter caliban, stephano, and trinculo] stephano tell not me; when the butt is out, we will drink water; not a drop before: therefore bear up, and board 'em. servant-monster, drink to me. trinculo servant-monster! the folly of this island! they say there's but five upon this isle: we are three of them; if th' other two be brained like us, the state totters. stephano drink, servant-monster, when i bid thee: thy eyes are almost set in thy head. trinculo where should they be set else? he were a brave monster indeed, if they were set in his tail. stephano my man-monster hath drown'd his tongue in sack: for my part, the sea cannot drown me; i swam, ere i could recover the shore, five and thirty leagues off and on. by this light, thou shalt be my lieutenant, monster, or my standard. trinculo your lieutenant, if you list; he's no standard. stephano we'll not run, monsieur monster. trinculo nor go neither; but you'll lie like dogs and yet say nothing neither. stephano moon-calf, speak once in thy life, if thou beest a good moon-calf. caliban how does thy honour? let me lick thy shoe. i'll not serve him; he's not valiant. trinculo thou liest, most ignorant monster: i am in case to justle a constable. why, thou deboshed fish thou, was there ever man a coward that hath drunk so much sack as i to-day? wilt thou tell a monstrous lie, being but half a fish and half a monster? caliban lo, how he mocks me! wilt thou let him, my lord? trinculo 'lord' quoth he! that a monster should be such a natural! caliban lo, lo, again! bite him to death, i prithee. stephano trinculo, keep a good tongue in your head: if you prove a mutineer,--the next tree! the poor monster's my subject and he shall not suffer indignity. caliban i thank my noble lord. wilt thou be pleased to hearken once again to the suit i made to thee? stephano marry, will i kneel and repeat it; i will stand, and so shall trinculo. [enter ariel, invisible] caliban as i told thee before, i am subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island. ariel thou liest. caliban thou liest, thou jesting monkey, thou: i would my valiant master would destroy thee! i do not lie. stephano trinculo, if you trouble him any more in's tale, by this hand, i will supplant some of your teeth. trinculo why, i said nothing. stephano mum, then, and no more. proceed. caliban i say, by sorcery he got this isle; from me he got it. if thy greatness will revenge it on him,--for i know thou darest, but this thing dare not,- stephano that's most certain. caliban thou shalt be lord of it and i'll serve thee. stephano how now shall this be compassed? canst thou bring me to the party? caliban yea, yea, my lord: i'll yield him thee asleep, where thou mayst knock a nail into his bead. ariel thou liest; thou canst not. caliban what a pied ninny's this! thou scurvy patch! i do beseech thy greatness, give him blows and take his bottle from him: when that's gone he shall drink nought but brine; for i'll not show him where the quick freshes are. stephano trinculo, run into no further danger: interrupt the monster one word further, and, by this hand, i'll turn my mercy out o' doors and make a stock-fish of thee. trinculo why, what did i? i did nothing. i'll go farther off. stephano didst thou not say he lied? ariel thou liest. stephano do i so? take thou that. [beats trinculo] as you like this, give me the lie another time. trinculo i did not give the lie. out o' your wits and bearing too? a pox o' your bottle! this can sack and drinking do. a murrain on your monster, and the devil take your fingers! caliban ha, ha, ha! stephano now, forward with your tale. prithee, stand farther off. caliban beat him enough: after a little time i'll beat him too. stephano stand farther. come, proceed. caliban why, as i told thee, 'tis a custom with him, i' th' afternoon to sleep: there thou mayst brain him, having first seized his books, or with a log batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake, or cut his wezand with thy knife. remember first to possess his books; for without them he's but a sot, as i am, nor hath not one spirit to command: they all do hate him as rootedly as i. burn but his books. he has brave utensils,--for so he calls them- which when he has a house, he'll deck withal and that most deeply to consider is the beauty of his daughter; he himself calls her a nonpareil: i never saw a woman, but only sycorax my dam and she; but she as far surpasseth sycorax as great'st does least. stephano is it so brave a lass? caliban ay, lord; she will become thy bed, i warrant. and bring thee forth brave brood. stephano monster, i will kill this man: his daughter and i will be king and queen--save our graces!--and trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys. dost thou like the plot, trinculo? trinculo excellent. stephano give me thy hand: i am sorry i beat thee; but, while thou livest, keep a good tongue in thy head. caliban within this half hour will he be asleep: wilt thou destroy him then? stephano ay, on mine honour. ariel this will i tell my master. caliban thou makest me merry; i am full of pleasure: let us be jocund: will you troll the catch you taught me but while-ere? stephano at thy request, monster, i will do reason, any reason. come on, trinculo, let us sing. [sings] flout 'em and scout 'em and scout 'em and flout 'em thought is free. caliban that's not the tune. [ariel plays the tune on a tabour and pipe] stephano what is this same? trinculo this is the tune of our catch, played by the picture of nobody. stephano if thou beest a man, show thyself in thy likeness: if thou beest a devil, take't as thou list. trinculo o, forgive me my sins! stephano he that dies pays all debts: i defy thee. mercy upon us! caliban art thou afeard? stephano no, monster, not i. caliban be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices that, if i then had waked after long sleep, will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming, the clouds methought would open and show riches ready to drop upon me that, when i waked, i cried to dream again. stephano this will prove a brave kingdom to me, where i shall have my music for nothing. caliban when prospero is destroyed. stephano that shall be by and by: i remember the story. trinculo the sound is going away; let's follow it, and after do our work. stephano lead, monster; we'll follow. i would i could see this tabourer; he lays it on. trinculo wilt come? i'll follow, stephano. [exeunt] the tempest act iii scene iii another part of the island. [enter alonso, sebastian, antonio, gonzalo, adrian, francisco, and others] gonzalo by'r lakin, i can go no further, sir; my old bones ache: here's a maze trod indeed through forth-rights and meanders! by your patience, i needs must rest me. alonso old lord, i cannot blame thee, who am myself attach'd with weariness, to the dulling of my spirits: sit down, and rest. even here i will put off my hope and keep it no longer for my flatterer: he is drown'd whom thus we stray to find, and the sea mocks our frustrate search on land. well, let him go. antonio [aside to sebastian] i am right glad that he's so out of hope. do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose that you resolved to effect. sebastian [aside to antonio] the next advantage will we take throughly. antonio [aside to sebastian] let it be to-night; for, now they are oppress'd with travel, they will not, nor cannot, use such vigilance as when they are fresh. sebastian [aside to antonio] i say, to-night: no more. [solemn and strange music] alonso what harmony is this? my good friends, hark! gonzalo marvellous sweet music! [enter prospero above, invisible. enter several strange shapes, bringing in a banquet; they dance about it with gentle actions of salutation; and, inviting the king, &c. to eat, they depart] alonso give us kind keepers, heavens! what were these? sebastian a living drollery. now i will believe that there are unicorns, that in arabia there is one tree, the phoenix' throne, one phoenix at this hour reigning there. antonio i'll believe both; and what does else want credit, come to me, and i'll be sworn 'tis true: travellers ne'er did lie, though fools at home condemn 'em. gonzalo if in naples i should report this now, would they believe me? if i should say, i saw such islanders- for, certes, these are people of the island- who, though they are of monstrous shape, yet, note, their manners are more gentle-kind than of our human generation you shall find many, nay, almost any. prospero [aside] honest lord, thou hast said well; for some of you there present are worse than devils. alonso i cannot too much muse such shapes, such gesture and such sound, expressing, although they want the use of tongue, a kind of excellent dumb discourse. prospero [aside] praise in departing. francisco they vanish'd strangely. sebastian no matter, since they have left their viands behind; for we have stomachs. will't please you taste of what is here? alonso not i. gonzalo faith, sir, you need not fear. when we were boys, who would believe that there were mountaineers dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em wallets of flesh? or that there were such men whose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find each putter-out of five for one will bring us good warrant of. alonso i will stand to and feed, although my last: no matter, since i feel the best is past. brother, my lord the duke, stand to and do as we. [thunder and lightning. enter ariel, like a harpy; claps his wings upon the table; and, with a quaint device, the banquet vanishes] ariel you are three men of sin, whom destiny, that hath to instrument this lower world and what is in't, the never-surfeited sea hath caused to belch up you; and on this island where man doth not inhabit; you 'mongst men being most unfit to live. i have made you mad; and even with such-like valour men hang and drown their proper selves. [alonso, sebastian &c. draw their swords] you fools! i and my fellows are ministers of fate: the elements, of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at stabs kill the still-closing waters, as diminish one dowle that's in my plume: my fellow-ministers are like invulnerable. if you could hurt, your swords are now too massy for your strengths and will not be uplifted. but remember- for that's my business to you--that you three from milan did supplant good prospero; exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it, him and his innocent child: for which foul deed the powers, delaying, not forgetting, have incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures, against your peace. thee of thy son, alonso, they have bereft; and do pronounce by me: lingering perdition, worse than any death can be at once, shall step by step attend you and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from- which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls upon your heads--is nothing but heart-sorrow and a clear life ensuing. [he vanishes in thunder; then, to soft music enter the shapes again, and dance, with mocks and mows, and carrying out the table] prospero bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou perform'd, my ariel; a grace it had, devouring: of my instruction hast thou nothing bated in what thou hadst to say: so, with good life and observation strange, my meaner ministers their several kinds have done. my high charms work and these mine enemies are all knit up in their distractions; they now are in my power; and in these fits i leave them, while i visit young ferdinand, whom they suppose is drown'd, and his and mine loved darling. [exit above] gonzalo i' the name of something holy, sir, why stand you in this strange stare? alonso o, it is monstrous, monstrous: methought the billows spoke and told me of it; the winds did sing it to me, and the thunder, that deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced the name of prosper: it did bass my trespass. therefore my son i' the ooze is bedded, and i'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded and with him there lie mudded. [exit] sebastian but one fiend at a time, i'll fight their legions o'er. antonio i'll be thy second. [exeunt sebastian, and antonio] gonzalo all three of them are desperate: their great guilt, like poison given to work a great time after, now 'gins to bite the spirits. i do beseech you that are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly and hinder them from what this ecstasy may now provoke them to. adrian follow, i pray you. [exeunt] the tempest act iv scene i before prospero's cell. [enter prospero, ferdinand, and miranda] prospero if i have too austerely punish'd you, your compensation makes amends, for i have given you here a third of mine own life, or that for which i live; who once again i tender to thy hand: all thy vexations were but my trials of thy love and thou hast strangely stood the test here, afore heaven, i ratify this my rich gift. o ferdinand, do not smile at me that i boast her off, for thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise and make it halt behind her. ferdinand i do believe it against an oracle. prospero then, as my gift and thine own acquisition worthily purchased take my daughter: but if thou dost break her virgin-knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite be minister'd, no sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall to make this contract grow: but barren hate, sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew the union of your bed with weeds so loathly that you shall hate it both: therefore take heed, as hymen's lamps shall light you. ferdinand as i hope for quiet days, fair issue and long life, with such love as 'tis now, the murkiest den, the most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion. our worser genius can, shall never melt mine honour into lust, to take away the edge of that day's celebration when i shall think: or phoebus' steeds are founder'd, or night kept chain'd below. prospero fairly spoke. sit then and talk with her; she is thine own. what, ariel! my industrious servant, ariel! [enter ariel] ariel what would my potent master? here i am. prospero thou and thy meaner fellows your last service did worthily perform; and i must use you in such another trick. go bring the rabble, o'er whom i give thee power, here to this place: incite them to quick motion; for i must bestow upon the eyes of this young couple some vanity of mine art: it is my promise, and they expect it from me. ariel presently? prospero ay, with a twink. ariel before you can say 'come' and 'go,' and breathe twice and cry 'so, so,' each one, tripping on his toe, will be here with mop and mow. do you love me, master? no? prospero dearly my delicate ariel. do not approach till thou dost hear me call. ariel well, i conceive. [exit] prospero look thou be true; do not give dalliance too much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw to the fire i' the blood: be more abstemious, or else, good night your vow! ferdinand i warrant you sir; the white cold virgin snow upon my heart abates the ardour of my liver. prospero well. now come, my ariel! bring a corollary, rather than want a spirit: appear and pertly! no tongue! all eyes! be silent. [soft music] [enter iris] iris ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats and pease; thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, and flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep; thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, which spongy april at thy hest betrims, to make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom -groves, whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, being lass-lorn: thy pole-clipt vineyard; and thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard, where thou thyself dost air;--the queen o' the sky, whose watery arch and messenger am i, bids thee leave these, and with her sovereign grace, here on this grass-plot, in this very place, to come and sport: her peacocks fly amain: approach, rich ceres, her to entertain. [enter ceres] ceres hail, many-colour'd messenger, that ne'er dost disobey the wife of jupiter; who with thy saffron wings upon my flowers diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers, and with each end of thy blue bow dost crown my bosky acres and my unshrubb'd down, rich scarf to my proud earth; why hath thy queen summon'd me hither, to this short-grass'd green? iris a contract of true love to celebrate; and some donation freely to estate on the blest lovers. ceres tell me, heavenly bow, if venus or her son, as thou dost know, do now attend the queen? since they did plot the means that dusky dis my daughter got, her and her blind boy's scandal'd company i have forsworn. iris of her society be not afraid: i met her deity cutting the clouds towards paphos and her son dove-drawn with her. here thought they to have done some wanton charm upon this man and maid, whose vows are, that no bed-right shall be paid till hymen's torch be lighted: but vain; mars's hot minion is returned again; her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows, swears he will shoot no more but play with sparrows and be a boy right out. ceres high'st queen of state, great juno, comes; i know her by her gait. [enter juno] juno how does my bounteous sister? go with me to bless this twain, that they may prosperous be and honour'd in their issue. [they sing:] juno honour, riches, marriage-blessing, long continuance, and increasing, hourly joys be still upon you! juno sings her blessings upon you. ceres earth's increase, foison plenty, barns and garners never empty, vines and clustering bunches growing, plants with goodly burthen bowing; spring come to you at the farthest in the very end of harvest! scarcity and want shall shun you; ceres' blessing so is on you. ferdinand this is a most majestic vision, and harmoniously charmingly. may i be bold to think these spirits? prospero spirits, which by mine art i have from their confines call'd to enact my present fancies. ferdinand let me live here ever; so rare a wonder'd father and a wife makes this place paradise. [juno and ceres whisper, and send iris on employment] prospero sweet, now, silence! juno and ceres whisper seriously; there's something else to do: hush, and be mute, or else our spell is marr'd. iris you nymphs, call'd naiads, of the windring brooks, with your sedged crowns and ever-harmless looks, leave your crisp channels and on this green land answer your summons; juno does command: come, temperate nymphs, and help to celebrate a contract of true love; be not too late. [enter certain nymphs] you sunburnt sicklemen, of august weary, come hither from the furrow and be merry: make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on and these fresh nymphs encounter every one in country footing. [enter certain reapers, properly habited: they join with the nymphs in a graceful dance; towards the end whereof prospero starts suddenly, and speaks; after which, to a strange, hollow, and confused noise, they heavily vanish] prospero [aside] i had forgot that foul conspiracy of the beast caliban and his confederates against my life: the minute of their plot is almost come. [to the spirits] well done! avoid; no more! ferdinand this is strange: your father's in some passion that works him strongly. miranda never till this day saw i him touch'd with anger so distemper'd. prospero you do look, my son, in a moved sort, as if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir. our revels now are ended. these our actors, as i foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air: and, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. sir, i am vex'd; bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled: be not disturb'd with my infirmity: if you be pleased, retire into my cell and there repose: a turn or two i'll walk, to still my beating mind. ferdinand | | we wish your peace. miranda | [exeunt] prospero come with a thought i thank thee, ariel: come. [enter ariel] ariel thy thoughts i cleave to. what's thy pleasure? prospero spirit, we must prepare to meet with caliban. ariel ay, my commander: when i presented ceres, i thought to have told thee of it, but i fear'd lest i might anger thee. prospero say again, where didst thou leave these varlets? ariel i told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking; so fun of valour that they smote the air for breathing in their faces; beat the ground for kissing of their feet; yet always bending towards their project. then i beat my tabour; at which, like unback'd colts, they prick'd their ears, advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses as they smelt music: so i charm'd their ears that calf-like they my lowing follow'd through tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns, which entered their frail shins: at last i left them i' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell, there dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake o'erstunk their feet. prospero this was well done, my bird. thy shape invisible retain thou still: the trumpery in my house, go bring it hither, for stale to catch these thieves. ariel i go, i go. [exit] prospero a devil, a born devil, on whose nature nurture can never stick; on whom my pains, humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost; and as with age his body uglier grows, so his mind cankers. i will plague them all, even to roaring. [re-enter ariel, loaden with glistering apparel, &c] come, hang them on this line. [prospero and ariel remain invisible. enter caliban, stephano, and trinculo, all wet] caliban pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not hear a foot fall: we now are near his cell. stephano monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless fairy, has done little better than played the jack with us. trinculo monster, i do smell all horse-piss; at which my nose is in great indignation. stephano so is mine. do you hear, monster? if i should take a displeasure against you, look you,- trinculo thou wert but a lost monster. caliban good my lord, give me thy favour still. be patient, for the prize i'll bring thee to shall hoodwink this mischance: therefore speak softly. all's hush'd as midnight yet. trinculo ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool,- stephano there is not only disgrace and dishonour in that, monster, but an infinite loss. trinculo that's more to me than my wetting: yet this is your harmless fairy, monster. stephano i will fetch off my bottle, though i be o'er ears for my labour. caliban prithee, my king, be quiet. seest thou here, this is the mouth o' the cell: no noise, and enter. do that good mischief which may make this island thine own for ever, and i, thy caliban, for aye thy foot-licker. stephano give me thy hand. i do begin to have bloody thoughts. trinculo o king stephano! o peer! o worthy stephano! look what a wardrobe here is for thee! caliban let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash. trinculo o, ho, monster! we know what belongs to a frippery. o king stephano! stephano put off that gown, trinculo; by this hand, i'll have that gown. trinculo thy grace shall have it. caliban the dropsy drown this fool i what do you mean to dote thus on such luggage? let's alone and do the murder first: if he awake, from toe to crown he'll fill our skins with pinches, make us strange stuff. stephano be you quiet, monster. mistress line, is not this my jerkin? now is the jerkin under the line: now, jerkin, you are like to lose your hair and prove a bald jerkin. trinculo do, do: we steal by line and level, an't like your grace. stephano i thank thee for that jest; here's a garment for't: wit shall not go unrewarded while i am king of this country. 'steal by line and level' is an excellent pass of pate; there's another garment for't. trinculo monster, come, put some lime upon your fingers, and away with the rest. caliban i will have none on't: we shall lose our time, and all be turn'd to barnacles, or to apes with foreheads villanous low. stephano monster, lay-to your fingers: help to bear this away where my hogshead of wine is, or i'll turn you out of my kingdom: go to, carry this. trinculo and this. stephano ay, and this. [a noise of hunters heard. enter divers spirits, in shape of dogs and hounds, and hunt them about, prospero and ariel setting them on] prospero hey, mountain, hey! ariel silver i there it goes, silver! prospero fury, fury! there, tyrant, there! hark! hark! [caliban, stephano, and trinculo, are driven out] go charge my goblins that they grind their joints with dry convulsions, shorten up their sinews with aged cramps, and more pinch-spotted make them than pard or cat o' mountain. ariel hark, they roar! prospero let them be hunted soundly. at this hour lie at my mercy all mine enemies: shortly shall all my labours end, and thou shalt have the air at freedom: for a little follow, and do me service. [exeunt] the tempest act v scene i before prospero's cell. [enter prospero in his magic robes, and ariel] prospero now does my project gather to a head: my charms crack not; my spirits obey; and time goes upright with his carriage. how's the day? ariel on the sixth hour; at which time, my lord, you said our work should cease. prospero i did say so, when first i raised the tempest. say, my spirit, how fares the king and's followers? ariel confined together in the same fashion as you gave in charge, just as you left them; all prisoners, sir, in the line-grove which weather-fends your cell; they cannot budge till your release. the king, his brother and yours, abide all three distracted and the remainder mourning over them, brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly him that you term'd, sir, 'the good old lord gonzalo;' his tears run down his beard, like winter's drops from eaves of reeds. your charm so strongly works 'em that if you now beheld them, your affections would become tender. prospero dost thou think so, spirit? ariel mine would, sir, were i human. prospero and mine shall. hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling of their afflictions, and shall not myself, one of their kind, that relish all as sharply, passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art? though with their high wrongs i am struck to the quick, yet with my nobler reason 'gaitist my fury do i take part: the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, the sole drift of my purpose doth extend not a frown further. go release them, ariel: my charms i'll break, their senses i'll restore, and they shall be themselves. ariel i'll fetch them, sir. [exit] prospero ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, and ye that on the sands with printless foot do chase the ebbing neptune and do fly him when he comes back; you demi-puppets that by moonshine do the green sour ringlets make, whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice to hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid, weak masters though ye be, i have bedimm'd the noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, and 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder have i given fire and rifted jove's stout oak with his own bolt; the strong-based promontory have i made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up the pine and cedar: graves at my command have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth by my so potent art. but this rough magic i here abjure, and, when i have required some heavenly music, which even now i do, to work mine end upon their senses that this airy charm is for, i'll break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound i'll drown my book. [solemn music] [re-enter ariel before: then alonso, with a frantic gesture, attended by gonzalo; sebastian and antonio in like manner, attended by adrian and francisco they all enter the circle which prospero had made, and there stand charmed; which prospero observing, speaks:] a solemn air and the best comforter to an unsettled fancy cure thy brains, now useless, boil'd within thy skull! there stand, for you are spell-stopp'd. holy gonzalo, honourable man, mine eyes, even sociable to the show of thine, fall fellowly drops. the charm dissolves apace, and as the morning steals upon the night, melting the darkness, so their rising senses begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle their clearer reason. o good gonzalo, my true preserver, and a loyal sir to him you follow'st! i will pay thy graces home both in word and deed. most cruelly didst thou, alonso, use me and my daughter: thy brother was a furtherer in the act. thou art pinch'd fort now, sebastian. flesh and blood, you, brother mine, that entertain'd ambition, expell'd remorse and nature; who, with sebastian, whose inward pinches therefore are most strong, would here have kill'd your king; i do forgive thee, unnatural though thou art. their understanding begins to swell, and the approaching tide will shortly fill the reasonable shore that now lies foul and muddy. not one of them that yet looks on me, or would know me ariel, fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell: i will discase me, and myself present as i was sometime milan: quickly, spirit; thou shalt ere long be free. [ariel sings and helps to attire him] where the bee sucks. there suck i: in a cowslip's bell i lie; there i couch when owls do cry. on the bat's back i do fly after summer merrily. merrily, merrily shall i live now under the blossom that hangs on the bough. prospero why, that's my dainty ariel! i shall miss thee: but yet thou shalt have freedom: so, so, so. to the king's ship, invisible as thou art: there shalt thou find the mariners asleep under the hatches; the master and the boatswain being awake, enforce them to this place, and presently, i prithee. ariel i drink the air before me, and return or ere your pulse twice beat. [exit] gonzalo all torment, trouble, wonder and amazement inhabits here: some heavenly power guide us out of this fearful country! prospero behold, sir king, the wronged duke of milan, prospero: for more assurance that a living prince does now speak to thee, i embrace thy body; and to thee and thy company i bid a hearty welcome. alonso whether thou best he or no, or some enchanted trifle to abuse me, as late i have been, i not know: thy pulse beats as of flesh and blood; and, since i saw thee, the affliction of my mind amends, with which, i fear, a madness held me: this must crave, an if this be at all, a most strange story. thy dukedom i resign and do entreat thou pardon me my wrongs. but how should prospero be living and be here? prospero first, noble friend, let me embrace thine age, whose honour cannot be measured or confined. gonzalo whether this be or be not, i'll not swear. prospero you do yet taste some subtilties o' the isle, that will not let you believe things certain. welcome, my friends all! [aside to sebastian and antonio] but you, my brace of lords, were i so minded, i here could pluck his highness' frown upon you and justify you traitors: at this time i will tell no tales. sebastian [aside] the devil speaks in him. prospero no. for you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother would even infect my mouth, i do forgive thy rankest fault; all of them; and require my dukedom of thee, which perforce, i know, thou must restore. alonso if thou be'st prospero, give us particulars of thy preservation; how thou hast met us here, who three hours since were wreck'd upon this shore; where i have lost- how sharp the point of this remembrance is!- my dear son ferdinand. prospero i am woe for't, sir. alonso irreparable is the loss, and patience says it is past her cure. prospero i rather think you have not sought her help, of whose soft grace for the like loss i have her sovereign aid and rest myself content. alonso you the like loss! prospero as great to me as late; and, supportable to make the dear loss, have i means much weaker than you may call to comfort you, for i have lost my daughter. alonso a daughter? o heavens, that they were living both in naples, the king and queen there! that they were, i wish myself were mudded in that oozy bed where my son lies. when did you lose your daughter? prospero in this last tempest. i perceive these lords at this encounter do so much admire that they devour their reason and scarce think their eyes do offices of truth, their words are natural breath: but, howsoe'er you have been justled from your senses, know for certain that i am prospero and that very duke which was thrust forth of milan, who most strangely upon this shore, where you were wreck'd, was landed, to be the lord on't. no more yet of this; for 'tis a chronicle of day by day, not a relation for a breakfast nor befitting this first meeting. welcome, sir; this cell's my court: here have i few attendants and subjects none abroad: pray you, look in. my dukedom since you have given me again, i will requite you with as good a thing; at least bring forth a wonder, to content ye as much as me my dukedom. [here prospero discovers ferdinand and miranda playing at chess] miranda sweet lord, you play me false. ferdinand no, my dear'st love, i would not for the world. miranda yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, and i would call it, fair play. alonso if this prove a vision of the island, one dear son shall i twice lose. sebastian a most high miracle! ferdinand though the seas threaten, they are merciful; i have cursed them without cause. [kneels] alonso now all the blessings of a glad father compass thee about! arise, and say how thou camest here. miranda o, wonder! how many goodly creatures are there here! how beauteous mankind is! o brave new world, that has such people in't! prospero 'tis new to thee. alonso what is this maid with whom thou wast at play? your eld'st acquaintance cannot be three hours: is she the goddess that hath sever'd us, and brought us thus together? ferdinand sir, she is mortal; but by immortal providence she's mine: i chose her when i could not ask my father for his advice, nor thought i had one. she is daughter to this famous duke of milan, of whom so often i have heard renown, but never saw before; of whom i have received a second life; and second father this lady makes him to me. alonso i am hers: but, o, how oddly will it sound that i must ask my child forgiveness! prospero there, sir, stop: let us not burthen our remembrance with a heaviness that's gone. gonzalo i have inly wept, or should have spoke ere this. look down, you god, and on this couple drop a blessed crown! for it is you that have chalk'd forth the way which brought us hither. alonso i say, amen, gonzalo! gonzalo was milan thrust from milan, that his issue should become kings of naples? o, rejoice beyond a common joy, and set it down with gold on lasting pillars: in one voyage did claribel her husband find at tunis, and ferdinand, her brother, found a wife where he himself was lost, prospero his dukedom in a poor isle and all of us ourselves when no man was his own. alonso [to ferdinand and miranda] give me your hands: let grief and sorrow still embrace his heart that doth not wish you joy! gonzalo be it so! amen! [re-enter ariel, with the master and boatswain amazedly following] o, look, sir, look, sir! here is more of us: i prophesied, if a gallows were on land, this fellow could not drown. now, blasphemy, that swear'st grace o'erboard, not an oath on shore? hast thou no mouth by land? what is the news? boatswain the best news is, that we have safely found our king and company; the next, our ship- which, but three glasses since, we gave out split- is tight and yare and bravely rigg'd as when we first put out to sea. ariel [aside to prospero] sir, all this service have i done since i went. prospero [aside to ariel] my tricksy spirit! alonso these are not natural events; they strengthen from strange to stranger. say, how came you hither? boatswain if i did think, sir, i were well awake, i'ld strive to tell you. we were dead of sleep, and--how we know not--all clapp'd under hatches; where but even now with strange and several noises of roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains, and more diversity of sounds, all horrible, we were awaked; straightway, at liberty; where we, in all her trim, freshly beheld our royal, good and gallant ship, our master capering to eye her: on a trice, so please you, even in a dream, were we divided from them and were brought moping hither. ariel [aside to prospero] was't well done? prospero [aside to ariel] bravely, my diligence. thou shalt be free. alonso this is as strange a maze as e'er men trod and there is in this business more than nature was ever conduct of: some oracle must rectify our knowledge. prospero sir, my liege, do not infest your mind with beating on the strangeness of this business; at pick'd leisure which shall be shortly, single i'll resolve you, which to you shall seem probable, of every these happen'd accidents; till when, be cheerful and think of each thing well. [aside to ariel] come hither, spirit: set caliban and his companions free; untie the spell. [exit ariel] how fares my gracious sir? there are yet missing of your company some few odd lads that you remember not. [re-enter ariel, driving in caliban, stephano and trinculo, in their stolen apparel] stephano every man shift for all the rest, and let no man take care for himself; for all is but fortune. coragio, bully-monster, coragio! trinculo if these be true spies which i wear in my head, here's a goodly sight. caliban o setebos, these be brave spirits indeed! how fine my master is! i am afraid he will chastise me. sebastian ha, ha! what things are these, my lord antonio? will money buy 'em? antonio very like; one of them is a plain fish, and, no doubt, marketable. prospero mark but the badges of these men, my lords, then say if they be true. this mis-shapen knave, his mother was a witch, and one so strong that could control the moon, make flows and ebbs, and deal in her command without her power. these three have robb'd me; and this demi-devil- for he's a bastard one--had plotted with them to take my life. two of these fellows you must know and own; this thing of darkness! acknowledge mine. caliban i shall be pinch'd to death. alonso is not this stephano, my drunken butler? sebastian he is drunk now: where had he wine? alonso and trinculo is reeling ripe: where should they find this grand liquor that hath gilded 'em? how camest thou in this pickle? trinculo i have been in such a pickle since i saw you last that, i fear me, will never out of my bones: i shall not fear fly-blowing. sebastian why, how now, stephano! stephano o, touch me not; i am not stephano, but a cramp. prospero you'ld be king o' the isle, sirrah? stephano i should have been a sore one then. alonso this is a strange thing as e'er i look'd on. [pointing to caliban] prospero he is as disproportion'd in his manners as in his shape. go, sirrah, to my cell; take with you your companions; as you look to have my pardon, trim it handsomely. caliban ay, that i will; and i'll be wise hereafter and seek for grace. what a thrice-double ass was i, to take this drunkard for a god and worship this dull fool! prospero go to; away! alonso hence, and bestow your luggage where you found it. sebastian or stole it, rather. [exeunt caliban, stephano, and trinculo] prospero sir, i invite your highness and your train to my poor cell, where you shall take your rest for this one night; which, part of it, i'll waste with such discourse as, i not doubt, shall make it go quick away; the story of my life and the particular accidents gone by since i came to this isle: and in the morn i'll bring you to your ship and so to naples, where i have hope to see the nuptial of these our dear-beloved solemnized; and thence retire me to my milan, where every third thought shall be my grave. alonso i long to hear the story of your life, which must take the ear strangely. prospero i'll deliver all; and promise you calm seas, auspicious gales and sail so expeditious that shall catch your royal fleet far off. [aside to ariel] my ariel, chick, that is thy charge: then to the elements be free, and fare thou well! please you, draw near. [exeunt] the tempest epilogue spoken by prospero now my charms are all o'erthrown, and what strength i have's mine own, which is most faint: now, 'tis true, i must be here confined by you, or sent to naples. let me not, since i have my dukedom got and pardon'd the deceiver, dwell in this bare island by your spell; but release me from my bands with the help of your good hands: gentle breath of yours my sails must fill, or else my project fails, which was to please. now i want spirits to enforce, art to enchant, and my ending is despair, unless i be relieved by prayer, which pierces so that it assaults mercy itself and frees all faults. as you from crimes would pardon'd be, let your indulgence set me free. the comedy of errors dramatis personae solinus duke of ephesus. (duke solinus:) aegeon a merchant of syracuse. antipholus | of ephesus | | twin brothers, and sons to aegeon and aemilia. antipholus | of syracuse | dromio of ephesus | | twin brothers, and attendants on the two antipholuses. dromio of syracuse | balthazar a merchant angelo a goldsmith. first merchant friend to antipholus of syracuse. second merchant to whom angelo is a debtor. pinch a schoolmaster. aemilia wife to aegeon, an abbess at ephesus. adriana wife to antipholus of ephesus. luciana her sister. luce servant to adriana. a courtezan. gaoler, officers, and other attendants (gaoler:) (officer:) (servant:) scene ephesus. the comedy of errors act i scene i a hall in duke solinus's palace. [enter duke solinus, aegeon, gaoler, officers, and other attendants] aegeon proceed, solinus, to procure my fall and by the doom of death end woes and all. duke solinus merchant of syracuse, plead no more; i am not partial to infringe our laws: the enmity and discord which of late sprung from the rancorous outrage of your duke to merchants, our well-dealing countrymen, who wanting guilders to redeem their lives have seal'd his rigorous statutes with their bloods, excludes all pity from our threatening looks. for, since the mortal and intestine jars 'twixt thy seditious countrymen and us, it hath in solemn synods been decreed both by the syracusians and ourselves, to admit no traffic to our adverse towns nay, more, if any born at ephesus be seen at any syracusian marts and fairs; again: if any syracusian born come to the bay of ephesus, he dies, his goods confiscate to the duke's dispose, unless a thousand marks be levied, to quit the penalty and to ransom him. thy substance, valued at the highest rate, cannot amount unto a hundred marks; therefore by law thou art condemned to die. aegeon yet this my comfort: when your words are done, my woes end likewise with the evening sun. duke solinus well, syracusian, say in brief the cause why thou departed'st from thy native home and for what cause thou camest to ephesus. aegeon a heavier task could not have been imposed than i to speak my griefs unspeakable: yet, that the world may witness that my end was wrought by nature, not by vile offence, i'll utter what my sorrows give me leave. in syracusa was i born, and wed unto a woman, happy but for me, and by me, had not our hap been bad. with her i lived in joy; our wealth increased by prosperous voyages i often made to epidamnum; till my factor's death and the great care of goods at random left drew me from kind embracements of my spouse: from whom my absence was not six months old before herself, almost at fainting under the pleasing punishment that women bear, had made provision for her following me and soon and safe arrived where i was. there had she not been long, but she became a joyful mother of two goodly sons; and, which was strange, the one so like the other, as could not be distinguish'd but by names. that very hour, and in the self-same inn, a meaner woman was delivered of such a burden, male twins, both alike: those,--for their parents were exceeding poor,- i bought and brought up to attend my sons. my wife, not meanly proud of two such boys, made daily motions for our home return: unwilling i agreed. alas! too soon, we came aboard. a league from epidamnum had we sail'd, before the always wind-obeying deep gave any tragic instance of our harm: but longer did we not retain much hope; for what obscured light the heavens did grant did but convey unto our fearful minds a doubtful warrant of immediate death; which though myself would gladly have embraced, yet the incessant weepings of my wife, weeping before for what she saw must come, and piteous plainings of the pretty babes, that mourn'd for fashion, ignorant what to fear, forced me to seek delays for them and me. and this it was, for other means was none: the sailors sought for safety by our boat, and left the ship, then sinking-ripe, to us: my wife, more careful for the latter-born, had fasten'd him unto a small spare mast, such as seafaring men provide for storms; to him one of the other twins was bound, whilst i had been like heedful of the other: the children thus disposed, my wife and i, fixing our eyes on whom our care was fix'd, fasten'd ourselves at either end the mast; and floating straight, obedient to the stream, was carried towards corinth, as we thought. at length the sun, gazing upon the earth, dispersed those vapours that offended us; and by the benefit of his wished light, the seas wax'd calm, and we discovered two ships from far making amain to us, of corinth that, of epidaurus this: but ere they came,--o, let me say no more! gather the sequel by that went before. duke solinus nay, forward, old man; do not break off so; for we may pity, though not pardon thee. aegeon o, had the gods done so, i had not now worthily term'd them merciless to us! for, ere the ships could meet by twice five leagues, we were encounterd by a mighty rock; which being violently borne upon, our helpful ship was splitted in the midst; so that, in this unjust divorce of us, fortune had left to both of us alike what to delight in, what to sorrow for. her part, poor soul! seeming as burdened with lesser weight but not with lesser woe, was carried with more speed before the wind; and in our sight they three were taken up by fishermen of corinth, as we thought. at length, another ship had seized on us; and, knowing whom it was their hap to save, gave healthful welcome to their shipwreck'd guests; and would have reft the fishers of their prey, had not their bark been very slow of sail; and therefore homeward did they bend their course. thus have you heard me sever'd from my bliss; that by misfortunes was my life prolong'd, to tell sad stories of my own mishaps. duke solinus and for the sake of them thou sorrowest for, do me the favour to dilate at full what hath befall'n of them and thee till now. aegeon my youngest boy, and yet my eldest care, at eighteen years became inquisitive after his brother: and importuned me that his attendant--so his case was like, reft of his brother, but retain'd his name- might bear him company in the quest of him: whom whilst i labour'd of a love to see, i hazarded the loss of whom i loved. five summers have i spent in furthest greece, roaming clean through the bounds of asia, and, coasting homeward, came to ephesus; hopeless to find, yet loath to leave unsought or that or any place that harbours men. but here must end the story of my life; and happy were i in my timely death, could all my travels warrant me they live. duke solinus hapless aegeon, whom the fates have mark'd to bear the extremity of dire mishap! now, trust me, were it not against our laws, against my crown, my oath, my dignity, which princes, would they, may not disannul, my soul would sue as advocate for thee. but, though thou art adjudged to the death and passed sentence may not be recall'd but to our honour's great disparagement, yet i will favour thee in what i can. therefore, merchant, i'll limit thee this day to seek thy life by beneficial help: try all the friends thou hast in ephesus; beg thou, or borrow, to make up the sum, and live; if no, then thou art doom'd to die. gaoler, take him to thy custody. gaoler i will, my lord. aegeon hopeless and helpless doth aegeon wend, but to procrastinate his lifeless end. [exeunt] the comedy of errors act i scene ii the mart. [enter antipholus of syracuse, dromio of syracuse, and first merchant] first merchant therefore give out you are of epidamnum, lest that your goods too soon be confiscate. this very day a syracusian merchant is apprehended for arrival here; and not being able to buy out his life according to the statute of the town, dies ere the weary sun set in the west. there is your money that i had to keep. antipholus of syracuse go bear it to the centaur, where we host, and stay there, dromio, till i come to thee. within this hour it will be dinner-time: till that, i'll view the manners of the town, peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings, and then return and sleep within mine inn, for with long travel i am stiff and weary. get thee away. dromio of syracuse many a man would take you at your word, and go indeed, having so good a mean. [exit] antipholus of syracuse a trusty villain, sir, that very oft, when i am dull with care and melancholy, lightens my humour with his merry jests. what, will you walk with me about the town, and then go to my inn and dine with me? first merchant i am invited, sir, to certain merchants, of whom i hope to make much benefit; i crave your pardon. soon at five o'clock, please you, i'll meet with you upon the mart and afterward consort you till bed-time: my present business calls me from you now. antipholus of syracuse farewell till then: i will go lose myself and wander up and down to view the city. first merchant sir, i commend you to your own content. [exit] antipholus of syracuse he that commends me to mine own content commends me to the thing i cannot get. i to the world am like a drop of water that in the ocean seeks another drop, who, falling there to find his fellow forth, unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself: so i, to find a mother and a brother, in quest of them, unhappy, lose myself. [enter dromio of ephesus] here comes the almanac of my true date. what now? how chance thou art return'd so soon? dromio of ephesus return'd so soon! rather approach'd too late: the capon burns, the pig falls from the spit, the clock hath strucken twelve upon the bell; my mistress made it one upon my cheek: she is so hot because the meat is cold; the meat is cold because you come not home; you come not home because you have no stomach; you have no stomach having broke your fast; but we that know what 'tis to fast and pray are penitent for your default to-day. antipholus of syracuse stop in your wind, sir: tell me this, i pray: where have you left the money that i gave you? dromio of ephesus o,--sixpence, that i had o' wednesday last to pay the saddler for my mistress' crupper? the saddler had it, sir; i kept it not. antipholus of syracuse i am not in a sportive humour now: tell me, and dally not, where is the money? we being strangers here, how darest thou trust so great a charge from thine own custody? dromio of ephesus i pray you, air, as you sit at dinner: i from my mistress come to you in post; if i return, i shall be post indeed, for she will score your fault upon my pate. methinks your maw, like mine, should be your clock, and strike you home without a messenger. antipholus of syracuse come, dromio, come, these jests are out of season; reserve them till a merrier hour than this. where is the gold i gave in charge to thee? dromio of ephesus to me, sir? why, you gave no gold to me. antipholus of syracuse come on, sir knave, have done your foolishness, and tell me how thou hast disposed thy charge. dromio of ephesus my charge was but to fetch you from the mart home to your house, the phoenix, sir, to dinner: my mistress and her sister stays for you. antipholus of syracuse in what safe place you have bestow'd my money, or i shall break that merry sconce of yours that stands on tricks when i am undisposed: where is the thousand marks thou hadst of me? dromio of ephesus i have some marks of yours upon my pate, some of my mistress' marks upon my shoulders, but not a thousand marks between you both. if i should pay your worship those again, perchance you will not bear them patiently. antipholus of syracuse thy mistress' marks? what mistress, slave, hast thou? dromio of ephesus your worship's wife, my mistress at the phoenix; she that doth fast till you come home to dinner, and prays that you will hie you home to dinner. antipholus of syracuse what, wilt thou flout me thus unto my face, being forbid? there, take you that, sir knave. dromio of ephesus what mean you, sir? for god's sake, hold your hands! nay, and you will not, sir, i'll take my heels. [exit] antipholus of syracuse upon my life, by some device or other the villain is o'er-raught of all my money. they say this town is full of cozenage, as, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye, dark-working sorcerers that change the mind, soul-killing witches that deform the body, disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks, and many such-like liberties of sin: if it prove so, i will be gone the sooner. i'll to the centaur, to go seek this slave: i greatly fear my money is not safe. [exit] the comedy of errors act ii scene i the house of antipholus of ephesus. [enter adriana and luciana] adriana neither my husband nor the slave return'd, that in such haste i sent to seek his master! sure, luciana, it is two o'clock. luciana perhaps some merchant hath invited him, and from the mart he's somewhere gone to dinner. good sister, let us dine and never fret: a man is master of his liberty: time is their master, and, when they see time, they'll go or come: if so, be patient, sister. adriana why should their liberty than ours be more? luciana because their business still lies out o' door. adriana look, when i serve him so, he takes it ill. luciana o, know he is the bridle of your will. adriana there's none but asses will be bridled so. luciana why, headstrong liberty is lash'd with woe. there's nothing situate under heaven's eye but hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky: the beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls, are their males' subjects and at their controls: men, more divine, the masters of all these, lords of the wide world and wild watery seas, indued with intellectual sense and souls, of more preeminence than fish and fowls, are masters to their females, and their lords: then let your will attend on their accords. adriana this servitude makes you to keep unwed. luciana not this, but troubles of the marriage-bed. adriana but, were you wedded, you would bear some sway. luciana ere i learn love, i'll practise to obey. adriana how if your husband start some other where? luciana till he come home again, i would forbear. adriana patience unmoved! no marvel though she pause; they can be meek that have no other cause. a wretched soul, bruised with adversity, we bid be quiet when we hear it cry; but were we burdened with like weight of pain, as much or more would we ourselves complain: so thou, that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee, with urging helpless patience wouldst relieve me, but, if thou live to see like right bereft, this fool-begg'd patience in thee will be left. luciana well, i will marry one day, but to try. here comes your man; now is your husband nigh. [enter dromio of ephesus] adriana say, is your tardy master now at hand? dromio of ephesus nay, he's at two hands with me, and that my two ears can witness. adriana say, didst thou speak with him? know'st thou his mind? dromio of ephesus ay, ay, he told his mind upon mine ear: beshrew his hand, i scarce could understand it. luciana spake he so doubtfully, thou couldst not feel his meaning? dromio of ephesus nay, he struck so plainly, i could too well feel his blows; and withal so doubtfully that i could scarce understand them. adriana but say, i prithee, is he coming home? it seems he hath great care to please his wife. dromio of ephesus why, mistress, sure my master is horn-mad. adriana horn-mad, thou villain! dromio of ephesus i mean not cuckold-mad; but, sure, he is stark mad. when i desired him to come home to dinner, he ask'd me for a thousand marks in gold: ''tis dinner-time,' quoth i; 'my gold!' quoth he; 'your meat doth burn,' quoth i; 'my gold!' quoth he: 'will you come home?' quoth i; 'my gold!' quoth he. 'where is the thousand marks i gave thee, villain?' 'the pig,' quoth i, 'is burn'd;' 'my gold!' quoth he: 'my mistress, sir' quoth i; 'hang up thy mistress! i know not thy mistress; out on thy mistress!' luciana quoth who? dromio of ephesus quoth my master: 'i know,' quoth he, 'no house, no wife, no mistress.' so that my errand, due unto my tongue, i thank him, i bare home upon my shoulders; for, in conclusion, he did beat me there. adriana go back again, thou slave, and fetch him home. dromio of ephesus go back again, and be new beaten home? for god's sake, send some other messenger. adriana back, slave, or i will break thy pate across. dromio of ephesus and he will bless that cross with other beating: between you i shall have a holy head. adriana hence, prating peasant! fetch thy master home. dromio of ephesus am i so round with you as you with me, that like a football you do spurn me thus? you spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither: if i last in this service, you must case me in leather. [exit] luciana fie, how impatience loureth in your face! adriana his company must do his minions grace, whilst i at home starve for a merry look. hath homely age the alluring beauty took from my poor cheek? then he hath wasted it: are my discourses dull? barren my wit? if voluble and sharp discourse be marr'd, unkindness blunts it more than marble hard: do their gay vestments his affections bait? that's not my fault: he's master of my state: what ruins are in me that can be found, by him not ruin'd? then is he the ground of my defeatures. my decayed fair a sunny look of his would soon repair but, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale and feeds from home; poor i am but his stale. luciana self-harming jealousy! fie, beat it hence! adriana unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense. i know his eye doth homage otherwhere, or else what lets it but he would be here? sister, you know he promised me a chain; would that alone, alone he would detain, so he would keep fair quarter with his bed! i see the jewel best enamelled will lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still, that others touch, and often touching will wear gold: and no man that hath a name, by falsehood and corruption doth it shame. since that my beauty cannot please his eye, i'll weep what's left away, and weeping die. luciana how many fond fools serve mad jealousy! [exeunt] the comedy of errors act ii scene ii a public place. [enter antipholus of syracuse] antipholus of syracuse the gold i gave to dromio is laid up safe at the centaur; and the heedful slave is wander'd forth, in care to seek me out by computation and mine host's report. i could not speak with dromio since at first i sent him from the mart. see, here he comes. [enter dromio of syracuse] how now sir! is your merry humour alter'd? as you love strokes, so jest with me again. you know no centaur? you received no gold? your mistress sent to have me home to dinner? my house was at the phoenix? wast thou mad, that thus so madly thou didst answer me? dromio of syracuse what answer, sir? when spake i such a word? antipholus of syracuse even now, even here, not half an hour since. dromio of syracuse i did not see you since you sent me hence, home to the centaur, with the gold you gave me. antipholus of syracuse villain, thou didst deny the gold's receipt, and told'st me of a mistress and a dinner; for which, i hope, thou felt'st i was displeased. dromio of syracuse i am glad to see you in this merry vein: what means this jest? i pray you, master, tell me. antipholus of syracuse yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth? think'st thou i jest? hold, take thou that, and that. [beating him] dromio of syracuse hold, sir, for god's sake! now your jest is earnest: upon what bargain do you give it me? antipholus of syracuse because that i familiarly sometimes do use you for my fool and chat with you, your sauciness will jest upon my love and make a common of my serious hours. when the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport, but creep in crannies when he hides his beams. if you will jest with me, know my aspect, and fashion your demeanor to my looks, or i will beat this method in your sconce. dromio of syracuse sconce call you it? so you would leave battering, i had rather have it a head: an you use these blows long, i must get a sconce for my head and ensconce it too; or else i shall seek my wit in my shoulders. but, i pray, sir why am i beaten? antipholus of syracuse dost thou not know? dromio of syracuse nothing, sir, but that i am beaten. antipholus of syracuse shall i tell you why? dromio of syracuse ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath a wherefore. antipholus of syracuse why, first,--for flouting me; and then, wherefore- for urging it the second time to me. dromio of syracuse was there ever any man thus beaten out of season, when in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason? well, sir, i thank you. antipholus of syracuse thank me, sir, for what? dromio of syracuse marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing. antipholus of syracuse i'll make you amends next, to give you nothing for something. but say, sir, is it dinner-time? dromio of syracuse no, sir; i think the meat wants that i have. antipholus of syracuse in good time, sir; what's that? dromio of syracuse basting. antipholus of syracuse well, sir, then 'twill be dry. dromio of syracuse if it be, sir, i pray you, eat none of it. antipholus of syracuse your reason? dromio of syracuse lest it make you choleric and purchase me another dry basting. antipholus of syracuse well, sir, learn to jest in good time: there's a time for all things. dromio of syracuse i durst have denied that, before you were so choleric. antipholus of syracuse by what rule, sir? dromio of syracuse marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of father time himself. antipholus of syracuse let's hear it. dromio of syracuse there's no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature. antipholus of syracuse may he not do it by fine and recovery? dromio of syracuse yes, to pay a fine for a periwig and recover the lost hair of another man. antipholus of syracuse why is time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement? dromio of syracuse because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts; and what he hath scanted men in hair he hath given them in wit. antipholus of syracuse why, but there's many a man hath more hair than wit. dromio of syracuse not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair. antipholus of syracuse why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit. dromio of syracuse the plainer dealer, the sooner lost: yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity. antipholus of syracuse for what reason? dromio of syracuse for two; and sound ones too. antipholus of syracuse nay, not sound, i pray you. dromio of syracuse sure ones, then. antipholus of syracuse nay, not sure, in a thing falsing. dromio of syracuse certain ones then. antipholus of syracuse name them. dromio of syracuse the one, to save the money that he spends in trimming; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge. antipholus of syracuse you would all this time have proved there is no time for all things. dromio of syracuse marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover hair lost by nature. antipholus of syracuse but your reason was not substantial, why there is no time to recover. dromio of syracuse thus i mend it: time himself is bald and therefore to the world's end will have bald followers. antipholus of syracuse i knew 'twould be a bald conclusion: but, soft! who wafts us yonder? [enter adriana and luciana] adriana ay, ay, antipholus, look strange and frown: some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects; i am not adriana nor thy wife. the time was once when thou unurged wouldst vow that never words were music to thine ear, that never object pleasing in thine eye, that never touch well welcome to thy hand, that never meat sweet-savor'd in thy taste, unless i spake, or look'd, or touch'd, or carved to thee. how comes it now, my husband, o, how comes it, that thou art thus estranged from thyself? thyself i call it, being strange to me, that, undividable, incorporate, am better than thy dear self's better part. ah, do not tear away thyself from me! for know, my love, as easy mayest thou fall a drop of water in the breaking gulf, and take unmingled that same drop again, without addition or diminishing, as take from me thyself and not me too. how dearly would it touch me to the quick, shouldst thou but hear i were licentious and that this body, consecrate to thee, by ruffian lust should be contaminate! wouldst thou not spit at me and spurn at me and hurl the name of husband in my face and tear the stain'd skin off my harlot-brow and from my false hand cut the wedding-ring and break it with a deep-divorcing vow? i know thou canst; and therefore see thou do it. i am possess'd with an adulterate blot; my blood is mingled with the crime of lust: for if we too be one and thou play false, i do digest the poison of thy flesh, being strumpeted by thy contagion. keep then far league and truce with thy true bed; i live unstain'd, thou undishonoured. antipholus of syracuse plead you to me, fair dame? i know you not: in ephesus i am but two hours old, as strange unto your town as to your talk; who, every word by all my wit being scann'd, want wit in all one word to understand. luciana fie, brother! how the world is changed with you! when were you wont to use my sister thus? she sent for you by dromio home to dinner. antipholus of syracuse by dromio? dromio of syracuse by me? adriana by thee; and this thou didst return from him, that he did buffet thee, and, in his blows, denied my house for his, me for his wife. antipholus of syracuse did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman? what is the course and drift of your compact? dromio of syracuse i, sir? i never saw her till this time. antipholus of syracuse villain, thou liest; for even her very words didst thou deliver to me on the mart. dromio of syracuse i never spake with her in all my life. antipholus of syracuse how can she thus then call us by our names, unless it be by inspiration. adriana how ill agrees it with your gravity to counterfeit thus grossly with your slave, abetting him to thwart me in my mood! be it my wrong you are from me exempt, but wrong not that wrong with a more contempt. come, i will fasten on this sleeve of thine: thou art an elm, my husband, i a vine, whose weakness, married to thy stronger state, makes me with thy strength to communicate: if aught possess thee from me, it is dross, usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss; who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion infect thy sap and live on thy confusion. antipholus of syracuse to me she speaks; she moves me for her theme: what, was i married to her in my dream? or sleep i now and think i hear all this? what error drives our eyes and ears amiss? until i know this sure uncertainty, i'll entertain the offer'd fallacy. luciana dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner. dromio of syracuse o, for my beads! i cross me for a sinner. this is the fairy land: o spite of spites! we talk with goblins, owls and sprites: if we obey them not, this will ensue, they'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue. luciana why pratest thou to thyself and answer'st not? dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot! dromio of syracuse i am transformed, master, am i not? antipholus of syracuse i think thou art in mind, and so am i. dromio of syracuse nay, master, both in mind and in my shape. antipholus of syracuse thou hast thine own form. dromio of syracuse no, i am an ape. luciana if thou art changed to aught, 'tis to an ass. dromio of syracuse 'tis true; she rides me and i long for grass. 'tis so, i am an ass; else it could never be but i should know her as well as she knows me. adriana come, come, no longer will i be a fool, to put the finger in the eye and weep, whilst man and master laugh my woes to scorn. come, sir, to dinner. dromio, keep the gate. husband, i'll dine above with you to-day and shrive you of a thousand idle pranks. sirrah, if any ask you for your master, say he dines forth, and let no creature enter. come, sister. dromio, play the porter well. antipholus of syracuse am i in earth, in heaven, or in hell? sleeping or waking? mad or well-advised? known unto these, and to myself disguised! i'll say as they say and persever so, and in this mist at all adventures go. dromio of syracuse master, shall i be porter at the gate? adriana ay; and let none enter, lest i break your pate. luciana come, come, antipholus, we dine too late. [exeunt] the comedy of errors act iii scene i before the house of antipholus of ephesus. [enter antipholus of ephesus, dromio of ephesus, angelo, and balthazar] antipholus of ephesus good signior angelo, you must excuse us all; my wife is shrewish when i keep not hours: say that i linger'd with you at your shop to see the making of her carcanet, and that to-morrow you will bring it home. but here's a villain that would face me down he met me on the mart, and that i beat him, and charged him with a thousand marks in gold, and that i did deny my wife and house. thou drunkard, thou, what didst thou mean by this? dromio of ephesus say what you will, sir, but i know what i know; that you beat me at the mart, i have your hand to show: if the skin were parchment, and the blows you gave were ink, your own handwriting would tell you what i think. antipholus of ephesus i think thou art an ass. dromio of ephesus marry, so it doth appear by the wrongs i suffer and the blows i bear. i should kick, being kick'd; and, being at that pass, you would keep from my heels and beware of an ass. antipholus of ephesus you're sad, signior balthazar: pray god our cheer may answer my good will and your good welcome here. balthazar i hold your dainties cheap, sir, and your welcome dear. antipholus of ephesus o, signior balthazar, either at flesh or fish, a table full of welcome make scarce one dainty dish. balthazar good meat, sir, is common; that every churl affords. antipholus of ephesus and welcome more common; for that's nothing but words. balthazar small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast. antipholus of ephesus ay, to a niggardly host, and more sparing guest: but though my cates be mean, take them in good part; better cheer may you have, but not with better heart. but, soft! my door is lock'd. go bid them let us in. dromio of ephesus maud, bridget, marian, cicel, gillian, ginn! dromio of syracuse [within] mome, malt-horse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch! either get thee from the door, or sit down at the hatch. dost thou conjure for wenches, that thou call'st for such store, when one is one too many? go, get thee from the door. dromio of ephesus what patch is made our porter? my master stays in the street. dromio of syracuse [within] let him walk from whence he came, lest he catch cold on's feet. antipholus of ephesus who talks within there? ho, open the door! dromio of syracuse [within] right, sir; i'll tell you when, an you tell me wherefore. antipholus of ephesus wherefore? for my dinner: i have not dined to-day. dromio of syracuse [within] nor to-day here you must not; come again when you may. antipholus of ephesus what art thou that keepest me out from the house i owe? dromio of syracuse [within] the porter for this time, sir, and my name is dromio. dromio of ephesus o villain! thou hast stolen both mine office and my name. the one ne'er got me credit, the other mickle blame. if thou hadst been dromio to-day in my place, thou wouldst have changed thy face for a name or thy name for an ass. luce [within] what a coil is there, dromio? who are those at the gate? dromio of ephesus let my master in, luce. luce [within] faith, no; he comes too late; and so tell your master. dromio of ephesus o lord, i must laugh! have at you with a proverb--shall i set in my staff? luce [within] have at you with another; that's--when? can you tell? dromio of syracuse [within] if thy name be call'd luce--luce, thou hast answered him well. antipholus do you hear, you minion? you'll let us in, i hope? of ephesus luce [within] i thought to have asked you. dromio of syracuse [within] and you said no. dromio of ephesus so, come, help: well struck! there was blow for blow. antipholus of ephesus thou baggage, let me in. luce [within] can you tell for whose sake? dromio of ephesus master, knock the door hard. luce [within] let him knock till it ache. antipholus of ephesus you'll cry for this, minion, if i beat the door down. luce [within] what needs all that, and a pair of stocks in the town? adriana [within] who is that at the door that keeps all this noise? dromio of syracuse [within] by my troth, your town is troubled with unruly boys. antipholus of ephesus are you there, wife? you might have come before. adriana [within] your wife, sir knave! go get you from the door. dromio of ephesus if you went in pain, master, this 'knave' would go sore. angelo here is neither cheer, sir, nor welcome: we would fain have either. balthazar in debating which was best, we shall part with neither. dromio of ephesus they stand at the door, master; bid them welcome hither. antipholus of ephesus there is something in the wind, that we cannot get in. dromio of ephesus you would say so, master, if your garments were thin. your cake there is warm within; you stand here in the cold: it would make a man mad as a buck, to be so bought and sold. antipholus of ephesus go fetch me something: i'll break ope the gate. dromio of syracuse [within] break any breaking here, and i'll break your knave's pate. dromio of ephesus a man may break a word with you, sir, and words are but wind, ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind. dromio of syracuse [within] it seems thou want'st breaking: out upon thee, hind! dromio of ephesus here's too much 'out upon thee!' i pray thee, let me in. dromio of syracuse [within] ay, when fowls have no feathers and fish have no fin. antipholus of ephesus well, i'll break in: go borrow me a crow. dromio of ephesus a crow without feather? master, mean you so? for a fish without a fin, there's a fowl without a feather; if a crow help us in, sirrah, we'll pluck a crow together. antipholus of ephesus go get thee gone; fetch me an iron crow. balthazar have patience, sir; o, let it not be so! herein you war against your reputation and draw within the compass of suspect the unviolated honour of your wife. once this,--your long experience of her wisdom, her sober virtue, years and modesty, plead on her part some cause to you unknown: and doubt not, sir, but she will well excuse why at this time the doors are made against you. be ruled by me: depart in patience, and let us to the tiger all to dinner, and about evening come yourself alone to know the reason of this strange restraint. if by strong hand you offer to break in now in the stirring passage of the day, a vulgar comment will be made of it, and that supposed by the common rout against your yet ungalled estimation that may with foul intrusion enter in and dwell upon your grave when you are dead; for slander lives upon succession, for ever housed where it gets possession. antipholus of ephesus you have prevailed: i will depart in quiet, and, in despite of mirth, mean to be merry. i know a wench of excellent discourse, pretty and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle: there will we dine. this woman that i mean, my wife--but, i protest, without desert- hath oftentimes upbraided me withal: to her will we to dinner. [to angelo] get you home and fetch the chain; by this i know 'tis made: bring it, i pray you, to the porpentine; for there's the house: that chain will i bestow- be it for nothing but to spite my wife- upon mine hostess there: good sir, make haste. since mine own doors refuse to entertain me, i'll knock elsewhere, to see if they'll disdain me. angelo i'll meet you at that place some hour hence. antipholus of ephesus do so. this jest shall cost me some expense. [exeunt] the comedy of errors act iii scene ii the same. [enter luciana and antipholus of syracuse] luciana and may it be that you have quite forgot a husband's office? shall, antipholus. even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot? shall love, in building, grow so ruinous? if you did wed my sister for her wealth, then for her wealth's sake use her with more kindness: or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth; muffle your false love with some show of blindness: let not my sister read it in your eye; be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator; look sweet, be fair, become disloyalty; apparel vice like virtue's harbinger; bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted; teach sin the carriage of a holy saint; be secret-false: what need she be acquainted? what simple thief brags of his own attaint? 'tis double wrong, to truant with your bed and let her read it in thy looks at board: shame hath a bastard fame, well managed; ill deeds are doubled with an evil word. alas, poor women! make us but believe, being compact of credit, that you love us; though others have the arm, show us the sleeve; we in your motion turn and you may move us. then, gentle brother, get you in again; comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife: 'tis holy sport to be a little vain, when the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife. antipholus of syracuse sweet mistress--what your name is else, i know not, nor by what wonder you do hit of mine,- less in your knowledge and your grace you show not than our earth's wonder, more than earth divine. teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; lay open to my earthy-gross conceit, smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak, the folded meaning of your words' deceit. against my soul's pure truth why labour you to make it wander in an unknown field? are you a god? would you create me new? transform me then, and to your power i'll yield. but if that i am i, then well i know your weeping sister is no wife of mine, nor to her bed no homage do i owe far more, far more to you do i decline. o, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, to drown me in thy sister's flood of tears: sing, siren, for thyself and i will dote: spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs, and as a bed i'll take them and there lie, and in that glorious supposition think he gains by death that hath such means to die: let love, being light, be drowned if she sink! luciana what, are you mad, that you do reason so? antipholus of syracuse not mad, but mated; how, i do not know. luciana it is a fault that springeth from your eye. antipholus of syracuse for gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by. luciana gaze where you should, and that will clear your sight. antipholus of syracuse as good to wink, sweet love, as look on night. luciana why call you me love? call my sister so. antipholus of syracuse thy sister's sister. luciana that's my sister. antipholus of syracuse no; it is thyself, mine own self's better part, mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart, my food, my fortune and my sweet hope's aim, my sole earth's heaven and my heaven's claim. luciana all this my sister is, or else should be. antipholus of syracuse call thyself sister, sweet, for i am thee. thee will i love and with thee lead my life: thou hast no husband yet nor i no wife. give me thy hand. luciana o, soft, air! hold you still: i'll fetch my sister, to get her good will. [exit] [enter dromio of syracuse] antipholus of syracuse why, how now, dromio! where runn'st thou so fast? dromio of syracuse do you know me, sir? am i dromio? am i your man? am i myself? antipholus of syracuse thou art dromio, thou art my man, thou art thyself. dromio of syracuse i am an ass, i am a woman's man and besides myself. antipholus what woman's man? and how besides thyself? besides thyself? dromio of syracuse marry, sir, besides myself, i am due to a woman; one that claims me, one that haunts me, one that will have me. antipholus of syracuse what claim lays she to thee? dromio of syracuse marry sir, such claim as you would lay to your horse; and she would have me as a beast: not that, i being a beast, she would have me; but that she, being a very beastly creature, lays claim to me. antipholus of syracuse what is she? dromio of syracuse a very reverent body; ay, such a one as a man may not speak of without he say 'sir-reverence.' i have but lean luck in the match, and yet is she a wondrous fat marriage. antipholus of syracuse how dost thou mean a fat marriage? dromio of syracuse marry, sir, she's the kitchen wench and all grease; and i know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light. i warrant, her rags and the tallow in them will burn a poland winter: if she lives till doomsday, she'll burn a week longer than the whole world. antipholus of syracuse what complexion is she of? dromio of syracuse swart, like my shoe, but her face nothing half so clean kept: for why, she sweats; a man may go over shoes in the grime of it. antipholus of syracuse that's a fault that water will mend. dromio of syracuse no, sir, 'tis in grain; noah's flood could not do it. antipholus of syracuse what's her name? dromio of syracuse nell, sir; but her name and three quarters, that's an ell and three quarters, will not measure her from hip to hip. antipholus of syracuse then she bears some breadth? dromio of syracuse no longer from head to foot than from hip to hip: she is spherical, like a globe; i could find out countries in her. antipholus of syracuse in what part of her body stands ireland? dromio of syracuse marry, in her buttocks: i found it out by the bogs. antipholus of syracuse where scotland? dromio of syracuse i found it by the barrenness; hard in the palm of the hand. antipholus of syracuse where france? dromio of syracuse in her forehead; armed and reverted, making war against her heir. antipholus of syracuse where england? dromio of syracuse i looked for the chalky cliffs, but i could find no whiteness in them; but i guess it stood in her chin, by the salt rheum that ran between france and it. antipholus of syracuse where spain? dromio of syracuse faith, i saw it not; but i felt it hot in her breath. antipholus of syracuse where america, the indies? dromio of syracuse oh, sir, upon her nose all o'er embellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the hot breath of spain; who sent whole armadoes of caracks to be ballast at her nose. antipholus of syracuse where stood belgia, the netherlands? dromio of syracuse oh, sir, i did not look so low. to conclude, this drudge, or diviner, laid claim to me, call'd me dromio; swore i was assured to her; told me what privy marks i had about me, as, the mark of my shoulder, the mole in my neck, the great wart on my left arm, that i amazed ran from her as a witch: and, i think, if my breast had not been made of faith and my heart of steel, she had transform'd me to a curtal dog and made me turn i' the wheel. antipholus of syracuse go hie thee presently, post to the road: an if the wind blow any way from shore, i will not harbour in this town to-night: if any bark put forth, come to the mart, where i will walk till thou return to me. if every one knows us and we know none, 'tis time, i think, to trudge, pack and be gone. dromio of syracuse as from a bear a man would run for life, so fly i from her that would be my wife. [exit] antipholus of syracuse there's none but witches do inhabit here; and therefore 'tis high time that i were hence. she that doth call me husband, even my soul doth for a wife abhor. but her fair sister, possess'd with such a gentle sovereign grace, of such enchanting presence and discourse, hath almost made me traitor to myself: but, lest myself be guilty to self-wrong, i'll stop mine ears against the mermaid's song. [enter angelo with the chain] angelo master antipholus,- antipholus of syracuse ay, that's my name. angelo i know it well, sir, lo, here is the chain. i thought to have ta'en you at the porpentine: the chain unfinish'd made me stay thus long. antipholus of syracuse what is your will that i shall do with this? angelo what please yourself, sir: i have made it for you. antipholus of syracuse made it for me, sir! i bespoke it not. angelo not once, nor twice, but twenty times you have. go home with it and please your wife withal; and soon at supper-time i'll visit you and then receive my money for the chain. antipholus of syracuse i pray you, sir, receive the money now, for fear you ne'er see chain nor money more. angelo you are a merry man, sir: fare you well. [exit] antipholus of syracuse what i should think of this, i cannot tell: but this i think, there's no man is so vain that would refuse so fair an offer'd chain. i see a man here needs not live by shifts, when in the streets he meets such golden gifts. i'll to the mart, and there for dromio stay if any ship put out, then straight away. [exit] the comedy of errors act iv scene i a public place. [enter second merchant, angelo, and an officer] second merchant you know since pentecost the sum is due, and since i have not much importuned you; nor now i had not, but that i am bound to persia, and want guilders for my voyage: therefore make present satisfaction, or i'll attach you by this officer. angelo even just the sum that i do owe to you is growing to me by antipholus, and in the instant that i met with you he had of me a chain: at five o'clock i shall receive the money for the same. pleaseth you walk with me down to his house, i will discharge my bond and thank you too. [enter antipholus of ephesus and dromio of ephesus from the courtezan's] officer that labour may you save: see where he comes. antipholus of ephesus while i go to the goldsmith's house, go thou and buy a rope's end: that will i bestow among my wife and her confederates, for locking me out of my doors by day. but, soft! i see the goldsmith. get thee gone; buy thou a rope and bring it home to me. dromio of ephesus i buy a thousand pound a year: i buy a rope. [exit] antipholus of ephesus a man is well holp up that trusts to you: i promised your presence and the chain; but neither chain nor goldsmith came to me. belike you thought our love would last too long, if it were chain'd together, and therefore came not. angelo saving your merry humour, here's the note how much your chain weighs to the utmost carat, the fineness of the gold and chargeful fashion. which doth amount to three odd ducats more than i stand debted to this gentleman: i pray you, see him presently discharged, for he is bound to sea and stays but for it. antipholus of ephesus i am not furnish'd with the present money; besides, i have some business in the town. good signior, take the stranger to my house and with you take the chain and bid my wife disburse the sum on the receipt thereof: perchance i will be there as soon as you. angelo then you will bring the chain to her yourself? antipholus of ephesus no; bear it with you, lest i come not time enough. angelo well, sir, i will. have you the chain about you? antipholus of ephesus an if i have not, sir, i hope you have; or else you may return without your money. angelo nay, come, i pray you, sir, give me the chain: both wind and tide stays for this gentleman, and i, to blame, have held him here too long. antipholus of ephesus good lord! you use this dalliance to excuse your breach of promise to the porpentine. i should have chid you for not bringing it, but, like a shrew, you first begin to brawl. second merchant the hour steals on; i pray you, sir, dispatch. angelo you hear how he importunes me;--the chain! antipholus of ephesus why, give it to my wife and fetch your money. angelo come, come, you know i gave it you even now. either send the chain or send me by some token. antipholus of ephesus fie, now you run this humour out of breath, where's the chain? i pray you, let me see it. second merchant my business cannot brook this dalliance. good sir, say whether you'll answer me or no: if not, i'll leave him to the officer. antipholus of ephesus i answer you! what should i answer you? angelo the money that you owe me for the chain. antipholus of ephesus i owe you none till i receive the chain. angelo you know i gave it you half an hour since. antipholus of ephesus you gave me none: you wrong me much to say so. angelo you wrong me more, sir, in denying it: consider how it stands upon my credit. second merchant well, officer, arrest him at my suit. officer i do; and charge you in the duke's name to obey me. angelo this touches me in reputation. either consent to pay this sum for me or i attach you by this officer. antipholus of ephesus consent to pay thee that i never had! arrest me, foolish fellow, if thou darest. angelo here is thy fee; arrest him, officer, i would not spare my brother in this case, if he should scorn me so apparently. officer i do arrest you, sir: you hear the suit. antipholus of ephesus i do obey thee till i give thee bail. but, sirrah, you shall buy this sport as dear as all the metal in your shop will answer. angelo sir, sir, i will have law in ephesus, to your notorious shame; i doubt it not. [enter dromio of syracuse, from the bay] dromio of syracuse master, there is a bark of epidamnum that stays but till her owner comes aboard, and then, sir, she bears away. our fraughtage, sir, i have convey'd aboard; and i have bought the oil, the balsamum and aqua-vitae. the ship is in her trim; the merry wind blows fair from land: they stay for nought at all but for their owner, master, and yourself. antipholus of ephesus how now! a madman! why, thou peevish sheep, what ship of epidamnum stays for me? dromio of syracuse a ship you sent me to, to hire waftage. antipholus of ephesus thou drunken slave, i sent thee for a rope; and told thee to what purpose and what end. dromio of syracuse you sent me for a rope's end as soon: you sent me to the bay, sir, for a bark. antipholus of ephesus i will debate this matter at more leisure and teach your ears to list me with more heed. to adriana, villain, hie thee straight: give her this key, and tell her, in the desk that's cover'd o'er with turkish tapestry, there is a purse of ducats; let her send it: tell her i am arrested in the street and that shall bail me; hie thee, slave, be gone! on, officer, to prison till it come. [exeunt second merchant, angelo, officer, and antipholus of ephesus] dromio of syracuse to adriana! that is where we dined, where dowsabel did claim me for her husband: she is too big, i hope, for me to compass. thither i must, although against my will, for servants must their masters' minds fulfil. [exit] the comedy of errors act iv scene ii the house of antipholus of ephesus. [enter adriana and luciana] adriana ah, luciana, did he tempt thee so? mightst thou perceive austerely in his eye that he did plead in earnest? yea or no? look'd he or red or pale, or sad or merrily? what observation madest thou in this case of his heart's meteors tilting in his face? luciana first he denied you had in him no right. adriana he meant he did me none; the more my spite. luciana then swore he that he was a stranger here. adriana and true he swore, though yet forsworn he were. luciana then pleaded i for you. adriana and what said he? luciana that love i begg'd for you he begg'd of me. adriana with what persuasion did he tempt thy love? luciana with words that in an honest suit might move. first he did praise my beauty, then my speech. adriana didst speak him fair? luciana have patience, i beseech. adriana i cannot, nor i will not, hold me still; my tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will. he is deformed, crooked, old and sere, ill-faced, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere; vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind; stigmatical in making, worse in mind. luciana who would be jealous then of such a one? no evil lost is wail'd when it is gone. adriana ah, but i think him better than i say, and yet would herein others' eyes were worse. far from her nest the lapwing cries away: my heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse. [enter dromio of syracuse] dromio of syracuse here! go; the desk, the purse! sweet, now, make haste. luciana how hast thou lost thy breath? dromio of syracuse by running fast. adriana where is thy master, dromio? is he well? dromio of syracuse no, he's in tartar limbo, worse than hell. a devil in an everlasting garment hath him; one whose hard heart is button'd up with steel; a fiend, a fury, pitiless and rough; a wolf, nay, worse, a fellow all in buff; a back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands the passages of alleys, creeks and narrow lands; a hound that runs counter and yet draws dryfoot well; one that before the judgement carries poor souls to hell. adriana why, man, what is the matter? dromio of syracuse i do not know the matter: he is 'rested on the case. adriana what, is he arrested? tell me at whose suit. dromio of syracuse i know not at whose suit he is arrested well; but he's in a suit of buff which 'rested him, that can i tell. will you send him, mistress, redemption, the money in his desk? adriana go fetch it, sister. [exit luciana] this i wonder at, that he, unknown to me, should be in debt. tell me, was he arrested on a band? dromio of syracuse not on a band, but on a stronger thing; a chain, a chain! do you not hear it ring? adriana what, the chain? dromio of syracuse no, no, the bell: 'tis time that i were gone: it was two ere i left him, and now the clock strikes one. adriana the hours come back! that did i never hear. dromio of syracuse o, yes; if any hour meet a sergeant, a' turns back for very fear. adriana as if time were in debt! how fondly dost thou reason! dromio of syracuse time is a very bankrupt, and owes more than he's worth, to season. nay, he's a thief too: have you not heard men say that time comes stealing on by night and day? if time be in debt and theft, and a sergeant in the way, hath he not reason to turn back an hour in a day? [re-enter luciana with a purse] adriana go, dromio; there's the money, bear it straight; and bring thy master home immediately. come, sister: i am press'd down with conceit- conceit, my comfort and my injury. [exeunt] the comedy of errors act iv scene iii a public place. [enter antipholus of syracuse] antipholus of syracuse there's not a man i meet but doth salute me as if i were their well-acquainted friend; and every one doth call me by my name. some tender money to me; some invite me; some other give me thanks for kindnesses; some offer me commodities to buy: even now a tailor call'd me in his shop and show'd me silks that he had bought for me, and therewithal took measure of my body. sure, these are but imaginary wiles and lapland sorcerers inhabit here. [enter dromio of syracuse] dromio of syracuse master, here's the gold you sent me for. what, have you got the picture of old adam new-apparelled? antipholus of syracuse what gold is this? what adam dost thou mean? dromio of syracuse not that adam that kept the paradise but that adam that keeps the prison: he that goes in the calf's skin that was killed for the prodigal; he that came behind you, sir, like an evil angel, and bid you forsake your liberty. antipholus of syracuse i understand thee not. dromio of syracuse no? why, 'tis a plain case: he that went, like a bass-viol, in a case of leather; the man, sir, that, when gentlemen are tired, gives them a sob and 'rests them; he, sir, that takes pity on decayed men and gives them suits of durance; he that sets up his rest to do more exploits with his mace than a morris-pike. antipholus of syracuse what, thou meanest an officer? dromio of syracuse ay, sir, the sergeant of the band, he that brings any man to answer it that breaks his band; one that thinks a man always going to bed, and says, 'god give you good rest!' antipholus of syracuse well, sir, there rest in your foolery. is there any dromio of syracuse why, sir, i brought you word an hour since that the bark expedition put forth to-night; and then were you hindered by the sergeant, to tarry for the hoy delay. here are the angels that you sent for to deliver you. antipholus of syracuse the fellow is distract, and so am i; and here we wander in illusions: some blessed power deliver us from hence! [enter a courtezan] courtezan well met, well met, master antipholus. i see, sir, you have found the goldsmith now: is that the chain you promised me to-day? antipholus of syracuse satan, avoid! i charge thee, tempt me not. dromio of syracuse master, is this mistress satan? antipholus of syracuse it is the devil. dromio of syracuse nay, she is worse, she is the devil's dam; and here she comes in the habit of a light wench: and thereof comes that the wenches say 'god damn me;' that's as much to say 'god make me a light wench.' it is written, they appear to men like angels of light: light is an effect of fire, and fire will burn; ergo, light wenches will burn. come not near her. courtezan your man and you are marvellous merry, sir. will you go with me? we'll mend our dinner here? dromio of syracuse master, if you do, expect spoon-meat; or bespeak a long spoon. antipholus of syracuse why, dromio? dromio of syracuse marry, he must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil. antipholus of syracuse avoid then, fiend! what tell'st thou me of supping? thou art, as you are all, a sorceress: i conjure thee to leave me and be gone. courtezan give me the ring of mine you had at dinner, or, for my diamond, the chain you promised, and i'll be gone, sir, and not trouble you. dromio of syracuse some devils ask but the parings of one's nail, a rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin, a nut, a cherry-stone; but she, more covetous, would have a chain. master, be wise: an if you give it her, the devil will shake her chain and fright us with it. courtezan i pray you, sir, my ring, or else the chain: i hope you do not mean to cheat me so. antipholus of syracuse avaunt, thou witch! come, dromio, let us go. dromio of syracuse 'fly pride,' says the peacock: mistress, that you know. [exeunt antipholus of syracuse and dromio of syracuse] courtezan now, out of doubt antipholus is mad, else would he never so demean himself. a ring he hath of mine worth forty ducats, and for the same he promised me a chain: both one and other he denies me now. the reason that i gather he is mad, besides this present instance of his rage, is a mad tale he told to-day at dinner, of his own doors being shut against his entrance. belike his wife, acquainted with his fits, on purpose shut the doors against his way. my way is now to hie home to his house, and tell his wife that, being lunatic, he rush'd into my house and took perforce my ring away. this course i fittest choose; for forty ducats is too much to lose. [exit] the comedy of errors act iv scene iv a street. [enter antipholus of ephesus and the officer] antipholus of ephesus fear me not, man; i will not break away: i'll give thee, ere i leave thee, so much money, to warrant thee, as i am 'rested for. my wife is in a wayward mood to-day, and will not lightly trust the messenger that i should be attach'd in ephesus, i tell you, 'twill sound harshly in her ears. [enter dromio of ephesus with a rope's-end] here comes my man; i think he brings the money. how now, sir! have you that i sent you for? dromio of ephesus here's that, i warrant you, will pay them all. antipholus of ephesus but where's the money? dromio of ephesus why, sir, i gave the money for the rope. antipholus of ephesus five hundred ducats, villain, for a rope? dromio of ephesus i'll serve you, sir, five hundred at the rate. antipholus of ephesus to what end did i bid thee hie thee home? dromio of ephesus to a rope's-end, sir; and to that end am i returned. antipholus of ephesus and to that end, sir, i will welcome you. [beating him] officer good sir, be patient. dromio of ephesus nay, 'tis for me to be patient; i am in adversity. officer good, now, hold thy tongue. dromio of ephesus nay, rather persuade him to hold his hands. antipholus of ephesus thou whoreson, senseless villain! dromio of ephesus i would i were senseless, sir, that i might not feel your blows. antipholus thou art sensible in nothing but blows, and so is an ass. dromio of ephesus i am an ass, indeed; you may prove it by my long ears. i have served him from the hour of my nativity to this instant, and have nothing at his hands for my service but blows. when i am cold, he heats me with beating; when i am warm, he cools me with beating; i am waked with it when i sleep; raised with it when i sit; driven out of doors with it when i go from home; welcomed home with it when i return; nay, i bear it on my shoulders, as a beggar wont her brat; and, i think when he hath lamed me, i shall beg with it from door to door. antipholus of ephesus come, go along; my wife is coming yonder. [enter adriana, luciana, the courtezan, and pinch] dromio of ephesus mistress, 'respice finem,' respect your end; or rather, the prophecy like the parrot, 'beware the rope's-end.' antipholus of ephesus wilt thou still talk? [beating him] courtezan how say you now? is not your husband mad? adriana his incivility confirms no less. good doctor pinch, you are a conjurer; establish him in his true sense again, and i will please you what you will demand. luciana alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks! courtezan mark how he trembles in his ecstasy! pinch give me your hand and let me feel your pulse. antipholus of ephesus there is my hand, and let it feel your ear. [striking him] pinch i charge thee, satan, housed within this man, to yield possession to my holy prayers and to thy state of darkness hie thee straight: i conjure thee by all the saints in heaven! antipholus of ephesus peace, doting wizard, peace! i am not mad. adriana o, that thou wert not, poor distressed soul! antipholus of ephesus you minion, you, are these your customers? did this companion with the saffron face revel and feast it at my house to-day, whilst upon me the guilty doors were shut and i denied to enter in my house? adriana o husband, god doth know you dined at home; where would you had remain'd until this time, free from these slanders and this open shame! antipholus of ephesus dined at home! thou villain, what sayest thou? dromio of ephesus sir, sooth to say, you did not dine at home. antipholus of ephesus were not my doors lock'd up and i shut out? dromio of ephesus perdie, your doors were lock'd and you shut out. antipholus of ephesus and did not she herself revile me there? dromio of ephesus sans fable, she herself reviled you there. antipholus of ephesus did not her kitchen-maid rail, taunt, and scorn me? dromio of ephesus certes, she did; the kitchen-vestal scorn'd you. antipholus of ephesus and did not i in rage depart from thence? dromio of ephesus in verity you did; my bones bear witness, that since have felt the vigour of his rage. adriana is't good to soothe him in these contraries? pinch it is no shame: the fellow finds his vein, and yielding to him humours well his frenzy. antipholus of ephesus thou hast suborn'd the goldsmith to arrest me. adriana alas, i sent you money to redeem you, by dromio here, who came in haste for it. dromio of ephesus money by me! heart and goodwill you might; but surely master, not a rag of money. antipholus of ephesus went'st not thou to her for a purse of ducats? adriana he came to me and i deliver'd it. luciana and i am witness with her that she did. dromio of ephesus god and the rope-maker bear me witness that i was sent for nothing but a rope! pinch mistress, both man and master is possess'd; i know it by their pale and deadly looks: they must be bound and laid in some dark room. antipholus of ephesus say, wherefore didst thou lock me forth to-day? and why dost thou deny the bag of gold? adriana i did not, gentle husband, lock thee forth. dromio of ephesus and, gentle master, i received no gold; but i confess, sir, that we were lock'd out. adriana dissembling villain, thou speak'st false in both. antipholus of ephesus dissembling harlot, thou art false in all; and art confederate with a damned pack to make a loathsome abject scorn of me: but with these nails i'll pluck out these false eyes that would behold in me this shameful sport. [enter three or four, and offer to bind him. he strives] adriana o, bind him, bind him! let him not come near me. pinch more company! the fiend is strong within him. luciana ay me, poor man, how pale and wan he looks! antipholus of ephesus what, will you murder me? thou gaoler, thou, i am thy prisoner: wilt thou suffer them to make a rescue? officer masters, let him go he is my prisoner, and you shall not have him. pinch go bind this man, for he is frantic too. [they offer to bind dromio of ephesus] adriana what wilt thou do, thou peevish officer? hast thou delight to see a wretched man do outrage and displeasure to himself? officer he is my prisoner: if i let him go, the debt he owes will be required of me. adriana i will discharge thee ere i go from thee: bear me forthwith unto his creditor, and, knowing how the debt grows, i will pay it. good master doctor, see him safe convey'd home to my house. o most unhappy day! antipholus of ephesus o most unhappy strumpet! dromio of ephesus master, i am here entered in bond for you. antipholus of ephesus out on thee, villain! wherefore dost thou mad me? dromio of ephesus will you be bound for nothing? be mad, good master: cry 'the devil!' luciana god help, poor souls, how idly do they talk! adriana go bear him hence. sister, go you with me. [exeunt all but adriana, luciana, officer and courtezan] say now, whose suit is he arrested at? officer one angelo, a goldsmith: do you know him? adriana i know the man. what is the sum he owes? officer two hundred ducats. adriana say, how grows it due? officer due for a chain your husband had of him. adriana he did bespeak a chain for me, but had it not. courtezan when as your husband all in rage to-day came to my house and took away my ring- the ring i saw upon his finger now- straight after did i meet him with a chain. adriana it may be so, but i did never see it. come, gaoler, bring me where the goldsmith is: i long to know the truth hereof at large. [enter antipholus of syracuse with his rapier drawn, and dromio of syracuse] luciana god, for thy mercy! they are loose again. adriana and come with naked swords. let's call more help to have them bound again. officer away! they'll kill us. [exeunt all but antipholus of syracuse and dromio of syracuse] antipholus of syracuse i see these witches are afraid of swords. dromio of syracuse she that would be your wife now ran from you. antipholus of syracuse come to the centaur; fetch our stuff from thence: i long that we were safe and sound aboard. dromio of syracuse faith, stay here this night; they will surely do us no harm: you saw they speak us fair, give us gold: methinks they are such a gentle nation that, but for the mountain of mad flesh that claims marriage of me, i could find in my heart to stay here still and turn witch. antipholus of syracuse i will not stay to-night for all the town; therefore away, to get our stuff aboard. [exeunt] the comedy of errors act v scene i a street before a priory. [enter second merchant and angelo] angelo i am sorry, sir, that i have hinder'd you; but, i protest, he had the chain of me, though most dishonestly he doth deny it. second merchant how is the man esteemed here in the city? angelo of very reverend reputation, sir, of credit infinite, highly beloved, second to none that lives here in the city: his word might bear my wealth at any time. second merchant speak softly; yonder, as i think, he walks. [enter antipholus of syracuse and dromio of syracuse] angelo 'tis so; and that self chain about his neck which he forswore most monstrously to have. good sir, draw near to me, i'll speak to him. signior antipholus, i wonder much that you would put me to this shame and trouble; and, not without some scandal to yourself, with circumstance and oaths so to deny this chain which now you wear so openly: beside the charge, the shame, imprisonment, you have done wrong to this my honest friend, who, but for staying on our controversy, had hoisted sail and put to sea to-day: this chain you had of me; can you deny it? antipholus of syracuse i think i had; i never did deny it. second merchant yes, that you did, sir, and forswore it too. antipholus of syracuse who heard me to deny it or forswear it? second merchant these ears of mine, thou know'st did hear thee. fie on thee, wretch! 'tis pity that thou livest to walk where any honest man resort. antipholus of syracuse thou art a villain to impeach me thus: i'll prove mine honour and mine honesty against thee presently, if thou darest stand. second merchant i dare, and do defy thee for a villain. [they draw] [enter adriana, luciana, the courtezan, and others] adriana hold, hurt him not, for god's sake! he is mad. some get within him, take his sword away: bind dromio too, and bear them to my house. dromio of syracuse run, master, run; for god's sake, take a house! this is some priory. in, or we are spoil'd! [exeunt antipholus of syracuse and dromio of syracuse to the priory] [enter the lady abbess, aemilia] aemelia be quiet, people. wherefore throng you hither? adriana to fetch my poor distracted husband hence. let us come in, that we may bind him fast and bear him home for his recovery. angelo i knew he was not in his perfect wits. second merchant i am sorry now that i did draw on him. aemelia how long hath this possession held the man? adriana this week he hath been heavy, sour, sad, and much different from the man he was; but till this afternoon his passion ne'er brake into extremity of rage. aemelia hath he not lost much wealth by wreck of sea? buried some dear friend? hath not else his eye stray'd his affection in unlawful love? a sin prevailing much in youthful men, who give their eyes the liberty of gazing. which of these sorrows is he subject to? adriana to none of these, except it be the last; namely, some love that drew him oft from home. aemelia you should for that have reprehended him. adriana why, so i did. aemelia ay, but not rough enough. adriana as roughly as my modesty would let me. aemelia haply, in private. adriana and in assemblies too. aemelia ay, but not enough. adriana it was the copy of our conference: in bed he slept not for my urging it; at board he fed not for my urging it; alone, it was the subject of my theme; in company i often glanced it; still did i tell him it was vile and bad. aemelia and thereof came it that the man was mad. the venom clamours of a jealous woman poisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth. it seems his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing, and therefore comes it that his head is light. thou say'st his meat was sauced with thy upbraidings: unquiet meals make ill digestions; thereof the raging fire of fever bred; and what's a fever but a fit of madness? thou say'st his sports were hinderd by thy brawls: sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue but moody and dull melancholy, kinsman to grim and comfortless despair, and at her heels a huge infectious troop of pale distemperatures and foes to life? in food, in sport and life-preserving rest to be disturb'd, would mad or man or beast: the consequence is then thy jealous fits have scared thy husband from the use of wits. luciana she never reprehended him but mildly, when he demean'd himself rough, rude and wildly. why bear you these rebukes and answer not? adriana she did betray me to my own reproof. good people enter and lay hold on him. aemelia no, not a creature enters in my house. adriana then let your servants bring my husband forth. aemelia neither: he took this place for sanctuary, and it shall privilege him from your hands till i have brought him to his wits again, or lose my labour in assaying it. adriana i will attend my husband, be his nurse, diet his sickness, for it is my office, and will have no attorney but myself; and therefore let me have him home with me. aemelia be patient; for i will not let him stir till i have used the approved means i have, with wholesome syrups, drugs and holy prayers, to make of him a formal man again: it is a branch and parcel of mine oath, a charitable duty of my order. therefore depart and leave him here with me. adriana i will not hence and leave my husband here: and ill it doth beseem your holiness to separate the husband and the wife. aemelia be quiet and depart: thou shalt not have him. [exit] luciana complain unto the duke of this indignity. adriana come, go: i will fall prostrate at his feet and never rise until my tears and prayers have won his grace to come in person hither and take perforce my husband from the abbess. second merchant by this, i think, the dial points at five: anon, i'm sure, the duke himself in person comes this way to the melancholy vale, the place of death and sorry execution, behind the ditches of the abbey here. angelo upon what cause? second merchant to see a reverend syracusian merchant, who put unluckily into this bay against the laws and statutes of this town, beheaded publicly for his offence. angelo see where they come: we will behold his death. luciana kneel to the duke before he pass the abbey. [enter duke solinus, attended; aegeon bareheaded; with the headsman and other officers] duke solinus yet once again proclaim it publicly, if any friend will pay the sum for him, he shall not die; so much we tender him. adriana justice, most sacred duke, against the abbess! duke solinus she is a virtuous and a reverend lady: it cannot be that she hath done thee wrong. adriana may it please your grace, antipholus, my husband, whom i made lord of me and all i had, at your important letters,--this ill day a most outrageous fit of madness took him; that desperately he hurried through the street, with him his bondman, all as mad as he- doing displeasure to the citizens by rushing in their houses, bearing thence rings, jewels, any thing his rage did like. once did i get him bound and sent him home, whilst to take order for the wrongs i went, that here and there his fury had committed. anon, i wot not by what strong escape, he broke from those that had the guard of him; and with his mad attendant and himself, each one with ireful passion, with drawn swords, met us again and madly bent on us, chased us away; till, raising of more aid, we came again to bind them. then they fled into this abbey, whither we pursued them: and here the abbess shuts the gates on us and will not suffer us to fetch him out, nor send him forth that we may bear him hence. therefore, most gracious duke, with thy command let him be brought forth and borne hence for help. duke solinus long since thy husband served me in my wars, and i to thee engaged a prince's word, when thou didst make him master of thy bed, to do him all the grace and good i could. go, some of you, knock at the abbey-gate and bid the lady abbess come to me. i will determine this before i stir. [enter a servant] servant o mistress, mistress, shift and save yourself! my master and his man are both broke loose, beaten the maids a-row and bound the doctor whose beard they have singed off with brands of fire; and ever, as it blazed, they threw on him great pails of puddled mire to quench the hair: my master preaches patience to him and the while his man with scissors nicks him like a fool, and sure, unless you send some present help, between them they will kill the conjurer. adriana peace, fool! thy master and his man are here, and that is false thou dost report to us. servant mistress, upon my life, i tell you true; i have not breathed almost since i did see it. he cries for you, and vows, if he can take you, to scorch your face and to disfigure you. [cry within] hark, hark! i hear him, mistress. fly, be gone! duke solinus come, stand by me; fear nothing. guard with halberds! adriana ay me, it is my husband! witness you, that he is borne about invisible: even now we housed him in the abbey here; and now he's there, past thought of human reason. [enter antipholus of ephesus and dromio of ephesus] antipholus of ephesus justice, most gracious duke, o, grant me justice! even for the service that long since i did thee, when i bestrid thee in the wars and took deep scars to save thy life; even for the blood that then i lost for thee, now grant me justice. aegeon unless the fear of death doth make me dote, i see my son antipholus and dromio. antipholus of ephesus justice, sweet prince, against that woman there! she whom thou gavest to me to be my wife, that hath abused and dishonour'd me even in the strength and height of injury! beyond imagination is the wrong that she this day hath shameless thrown on me. duke solinus discover how, and thou shalt find me just. antipholus of ephesus this day, great duke, she shut the doors upon me, while she with harlots feasted in my house. duke solinus a grievous fault! say, woman, didst thou so? adriana no, my good lord: myself, he and my sister to-day did dine together. so befall my soul as this is false he burdens me withal! luciana ne'er may i look on day, nor sleep on night, but she tells to your highness simple truth! angelo o perjured woman! they are both forsworn: in this the madman justly chargeth them. antipholus of ephesus my liege, i am advised what i say, neither disturbed with the effect of wine, nor heady-rash, provoked with raging ire, albeit my wrongs might make one wiser mad. this woman lock'd me out this day from dinner: that goldsmith there, were he not pack'd with her, could witness it, for he was with me then; who parted with me to go fetch a chain, promising to bring it to the porpentine, where balthazar and i did dine together. our dinner done, and he not coming thither, i went to seek him: in the street i met him and in his company that gentleman. there did this perjured goldsmith swear me down that i this day of him received the chain, which, god he knows, i saw not: for the which he did arrest me with an officer. i did obey, and sent my peasant home for certain ducats: he with none return'd then fairly i bespoke the officer to go in person with me to my house. by the way we met my wife, her sister, and a rabble more of vile confederates. along with them they brought one pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain, a mere anatomy, a mountebank, a threadbare juggler and a fortune-teller, a needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch, a dead-looking man: this pernicious slave, forsooth, took on him as a conjurer, and, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse, and with no face, as 'twere, outfacing me, cries out, i was possess'd. then all together they fell upon me, bound me, bore me thence and in a dark and dankish vault at home there left me and my man, both bound together; till, gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder, i gain'd my freedom, and immediately ran hither to your grace; whom i beseech to give me ample satisfaction for these deep shames and great indignities. angelo my lord, in truth, thus far i witness with him, that he dined not at home, but was lock'd out. duke solinus but had he such a chain of thee or no? angelo he had, my lord: and when he ran in here, these people saw the chain about his neck. second merchant besides, i will be sworn these ears of mine heard you confess you had the chain of him after you first forswore it on the mart: and thereupon i drew my sword on you; and then you fled into this abbey here, from whence, i think, you are come by miracle. antipholus of ephesus i never came within these abbey-walls, nor ever didst thou draw thy sword on me: i never saw the chain, so help me heaven! and this is false you burden me withal. duke solinus why, what an intricate impeach is this! i think you all have drunk of circe's cup. if here you housed him, here he would have been; if he were mad, he would not plead so coldly: you say he dined at home; the goldsmith here denies that saying. sirrah, what say you? dromio of ephesus sir, he dined with her there, at the porpentine. courtezan he did, and from my finger snatch'd that ring. antipholus of ephesus 'tis true, my liege; this ring i had of her. duke solinus saw'st thou him enter at the abbey here? courtezan as sure, my liege, as i do see your grace. duke solinus why, this is strange. go call the abbess hither. i think you are all mated or stark mad. [exit one to abbess] aegeon most mighty duke, vouchsafe me speak a word: haply i see a friend will save my life and pay the sum that may deliver me. duke solinus speak freely, syracusian, what thou wilt. aegeon is not your name, sir, call'd antipholus? and is not that your bondman, dromio? dromio of ephesus within this hour i was his bondman sir, but he, i thank him, gnaw'd in two my cords: now am i dromio and his man unbound. aegeon i am sure you both of you remember me. dromio of ephesus ourselves we do remember, sir, by you; for lately we were bound, as you are now you are not pinch's patient, are you, sir? aegeon why look you strange on me? you know me well. antipholus i never saw you in my life till now. aegeon o, grief hath changed me since you saw me last, and careful hours with time's deformed hand have written strange defeatures in my face: but tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice? antipholus of ephesus neither. aegeon dromio, nor thou? dromio of ephesus no, trust me, sir, nor i. aegeon i am sure thou dost. dromio of ephesus ay, sir, but i am sure i do not; and whatsoever a man denies, you are now bound to believe him. aegeon not know my voice! o time's extremity, hast thou so crack'd and splitted my poor tongue in seven short years, that here my only son knows not my feeble key of untuned cares? though now this grained face of mine be hid in sap-consuming winter's drizzled snow, and all the conduits of my blood froze up, yet hath my night of life some memory, my wasting lamps some fading glimmer left, my dull deaf ears a little use to hear: all these old witnesses--i cannot err- tell me thou art my son antipholus. antipholus of ephesus i never saw my father in my life. aegeon but seven years since, in syracusa, boy, thou know'st we parted: but perhaps, my son, thou shamest to acknowledge me in misery. antipholus of ephesus the duke and all that know me in the city can witness with me that it is not so i ne'er saw syracusa in my life. duke solinus i tell thee, syracusian, twenty years have i been patron to antipholus, during which time he ne'er saw syracusa: i see thy age and dangers make thee dote. [re-enter aemilia, with antipholus of syracuse and dromio of syracuse] aemelia most mighty duke, behold a man much wrong'd. [all gather to see them] adriana i see two husbands, or mine eyes deceive me. duke solinus one of these men is genius to the other; and so of these. which is the natural man, and which the spirit? who deciphers them? dromio of syracuse i, sir, am dromio; command him away. dromio of ephesus i, sir, am dromio; pray, let me stay. antipholus of syracuse aegeon art thou not? or else his ghost? dromio of syracuse o, my old master! who hath bound him here? aemelia whoever bound him, i will loose his bonds and gain a husband by his liberty. speak, old aegeon, if thou be'st the man that hadst a wife once call'd aemilia that bore thee at a burden two fair sons: o, if thou be'st the same aegeon, speak, and speak unto the same aemilia! aegeon if i dream not, thou art aemilia: if thou art she, tell me where is that son that floated with thee on the fatal raft? aemelia by men of epidamnum he and i and the twin dromio all were taken up; but by and by rude fishermen of corinth by force took dromio and my son from them and me they left with those of epidamnum. what then became of them i cannot tell i to this fortune that you see me in. duke solinus why, here begins his morning story right; these two antipholuses, these two so like, and these two dromios, one in semblance,- besides her urging of her wreck at sea,- these are the parents to these children, which accidentally are met together. antipholus, thou camest from corinth first? antipholus of syracuse no, sir, not i; i came from syracuse. duke solinus stay, stand apart; i know not which is which. antipholus of ephesus i came from corinth, my most gracious lord,- dromio of ephesus and i with him. antipholus of ephesus brought to this town by that most famous warrior, duke menaphon, your most renowned uncle. adriana which of you two did dine with me to-day? antipholus of syracuse i, gentle mistress. adriana and are not you my husband? antipholus of ephesus no; i say nay to that. antipholus of syracuse and so do i; yet did she call me so: and this fair gentlewoman, her sister here, did call me brother. [to luciana] what i told you then, i hope i shall have leisure to make good; if this be not a dream i see and hear. angelo that is the chain, sir, which you had of me. antipholus of syracuse i think it be, sir; i deny it not. antipholus of ephesus and you, sir, for this chain arrested me. angelo i think i did, sir; i deny it not. adriana i sent you money, sir, to be your bail, by dromio; but i think he brought it not. dromio of ephesus no, none by me. antipholus of syracuse this purse of ducats i received from you, and dromio, my man, did bring them me. i see we still did meet each other's man, and i was ta'en for him, and he for me, and thereupon these errors are arose. antipholus of ephesus these ducats pawn i for my father here. duke solinus it shall not need; thy father hath his life. courtezan sir, i must have that diamond from you. antipholus of ephesus there, take it; and much thanks for my good cheer. aemelia renowned duke, vouchsafe to take the pains to go with us into the abbey here and hear at large discoursed all our fortunes: and all that are assembled in this place, that by this sympathized one day's error have suffer'd wrong, go keep us company, and we shall make full satisfaction. thirty-three years have i but gone in travail of you, my sons; and till this present hour my heavy burden ne'er delivered. the duke, my husband and my children both, and you the calendars of their nativity, go to a gossips' feast and go with me; after so long grief, such festivity! duke solinus with all my heart, i'll gossip at this feast. [exeunt all but antipholus of syracuse, antipholus of ephesus, dromio of syracuse and dromio of ephesus] dromio of syracuse master, shall i fetch your stuff from shipboard? antipholus of ephesus dromio, what stuff of mine hast thou embark'd? dromio of syracuse your goods that lay at host, sir, in the centaur. antipholus of syracuse he speaks to me. i am your master, dromio: come, go with us; we'll look to that anon: embrace thy brother there; rejoice with him. [exeunt antipholus of syracuse and antipholus of ephesus] dromio of syracuse there is a fat friend at your master's house, that kitchen'd me for you to-day at dinner: she now shall be my sister, not my wife. dromio of ephesus methinks you are my glass, and not my brother: i see by you i am a sweet-faced youth. will you walk in to see their gossiping? dromio of syracuse not i, sir; you are my elder. dromio of ephesus that's a question: how shall we try it? dromio of syracuse we'll draw cuts for the senior: till then lead thou first. dromio of ephesus nay, then, thus: we came into the world like brother and brother; and now let's go hand in hand, not one before another. [exeunt] king richard ii dramatis personae king richard the second. (king richard ii:) john of gaunt duke of lancaster | | uncles to the king. edmund of langley duke of york (duke of york:) | henry, surnamed bolingbroke (henry bolingbroke:) duke of hereford, son to john of gaunt; afterwards king henry iv. duke of aumerle son to the duke of york. thomas mowbray duke of norfolk. duke of surrey: earl of salisbury: lord berkeley: bushy | | bagot | servants to king richard. | green | earl of northumberland (northumberland:) henry percy, surnamed hotspur his son. (henry percy:) lord ross: lord willoughby: lord fitzwater: bishop of carlisle: abbot of westminster (abbot:) lord marshal (lord marshal:) sir stephen scroop: sir pierce of exton (exton:) captain of a band of welshmen. (captain:) queen to king richard (queen:) duchess of york (duchess of york:) duchess of gloucester (duchess:) lady attending on the queen. (lady:) lords, heralds, officers, soldiers, two gardeners, keeper, messenger, groom, and other attendants. (lord:) (first herald:) (second herald:) (gardener:) (keeper:) (groom:) (servant:) scene england and wales. king richard ii act i scene i london. king richard ii's palace. [enter king richard ii, john of gaunt, with other nobles and attendants] king richard ii old john of gaunt, time-honour'd lancaster, hast thou, according to thy oath and band, brought hither henry hereford thy bold son, here to make good the boisterous late appeal, which then our leisure would not let us hear, against the duke of norfolk, thomas mowbray? john of gaunt i have, my liege. king richard ii tell me, moreover, hast thou sounded him, if he appeal the duke on ancient malice; or worthily, as a good subject should, on some known ground of treachery in him? john of gaunt as near as i could sift him on that argument, on some apparent danger seen in him aim'd at your highness, no inveterate malice. king richard ii then call them to our presence; face to face, and frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear the accuser and the accused freely speak: high-stomach'd are they both, and full of ire, in rage deaf as the sea, hasty as fire. [enter henry bolingbroke and thomas mowbray] henry bolingbroke many years of happy days befal my gracious sovereign, my most loving liege! thomas mowbray each day still better other's happiness; until the heavens, envying earth's good hap, add an immortal title to your crown! king richard ii we thank you both: yet one but flatters us, as well appeareth by the cause you come; namely to appeal each other of high treason. cousin of hereford, what dost thou object against the duke of norfolk, thomas mowbray? henry bolingbroke first, heaven be the record to my speech! in the devotion of a subject's love, tendering the precious safety of my prince, and free from other misbegotten hate, come i appellant to this princely presence. now, thomas mowbray, do i turn to thee, and mark my greeting well; for what i speak my body shall make good upon this earth, or my divine soul answer it in heaven. thou art a traitor and a miscreant, too good to be so and too bad to live, since the more fair and crystal is the sky, the uglier seem the clouds that in it fly. once more, the more to aggravate the note, with a foul traitor's name stuff i thy throat; and wish, so please my sovereign, ere i move, what my tongue speaks my right drawn sword may prove. thomas mowbray let not my cold words here accuse my zeal: 'tis not the trial of a woman's war, the bitter clamour of two eager tongues, can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain; the blood is hot that must be cool'd for this: yet can i not of such tame patience boast as to be hush'd and nought at all to say: first, the fair reverence of your highness curbs me from giving reins and spurs to my free speech; which else would post until it had return'd these terms of treason doubled down his throat. setting aside his high blood's royalty, and let him be no kinsman to my liege, i do defy him, and i spit at him; call him a slanderous coward and a villain: which to maintain i would allow him odds, and meet him, were i tied to run afoot even to the frozen ridges of the alps, or any other ground inhabitable, where ever englishman durst set his foot. mean time let this defend my loyalty, by all my hopes, most falsely doth he lie. henry bolingbroke pale trembling coward, there i throw my gage, disclaiming here the kindred of the king, and lay aside my high blood's royalty, which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except. if guilty dread have left thee so much strength as to take up mine honour's pawn, then stoop: by that and all the rites of knighthood else, will i make good against thee, arm to arm, what i have spoke, or thou canst worse devise. thomas mowbray i take it up; and by that sword i swear which gently laid my knighthood on my shoulder, i'll answer thee in any fair degree, or chivalrous design of knightly trial: and when i mount, alive may i not light, if i be traitor or unjustly fight! king richard ii what doth our cousin lay to mowbray's charge? it must be great that can inherit us so much as of a thought of ill in him. henry bolingbroke look, what i speak, my life shall prove it true; that mowbray hath received eight thousand nobles in name of lendings for your highness' soldiers, the which he hath detain'd for lewd employments, like a false traitor and injurious villain. besides i say and will in battle prove, or here or elsewhere to the furthest verge that ever was survey'd by english eye, that all the treasons for these eighteen years complotted and contrived in this land fetch from false mowbray their first head and spring. further i say and further will maintain upon his bad life to make all this good, that he did plot the duke of gloucester's death, suggest his soon-believing adversaries, and consequently, like a traitor coward, sluiced out his innocent soul through streams of blood: which blood, like sacrificing abel's, cries, even from the tongueless caverns of the earth, to me for justice and rough chastisement; and, by the glorious worth of my descent, this arm shall do it, or this life be spent. king richard ii how high a pitch his resolution soars! thomas of norfolk, what say'st thou to this? thomas mowbray o, let my sovereign turn away his face and bid his ears a little while be deaf, till i have told this slander of his blood, how god and good men hate so foul a liar. king richard ii mowbray, impartial are our eyes and ears: were he my brother, nay, my kingdom's heir, as he is but my father's brother's son, now, by my sceptre's awe, i make a vow, such neighbour nearness to our sacred blood should nothing privilege him, nor partialize the unstooping firmness of my upright soul: he is our subject, mowbray; so art thou: free speech and fearless i to thee allow. thomas mowbray then, bolingbroke, as low as to thy heart, through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest. three parts of that receipt i had for calais disbursed i duly to his highness' soldiers; the other part reserved i by consent, for that my sovereign liege was in my debt upon remainder of a dear account, since last i went to france to fetch his queen: now swallow down that lie. for gloucester's death, i slew him not; but to my own disgrace neglected my sworn duty in that case. for you, my noble lord of lancaster, the honourable father to my foe once did i lay an ambush for your life, a trespass that doth vex my grieved soul but ere i last received the sacrament i did confess it, and exactly begg'd your grace's pardon, and i hope i had it. this is my fault: as for the rest appeall'd, it issues from the rancour of a villain, a recreant and most degenerate traitor which in myself i boldly will defend; and interchangeably hurl down my gage upon this overweening traitor's foot, to prove myself a loyal gentleman even in the best blood chamber'd in his bosom. in haste whereof, most heartily i pray your highness to assign our trial day. king richard ii wrath-kindled gentlemen, be ruled by me; let's purge this choler without letting blood: this we prescribe, though no physician; deep malice makes too deep incision; forget, forgive; conclude and be agreed; our doctors say this is no month to bleed. good uncle, let this end where it begun; we'll calm the duke of norfolk, you your son. john of gaunt to be a make-peace shall become my age: throw down, my son, the duke of norfolk's gage. king richard ii and, norfolk, throw down his. john of gaunt when, harry, when? obedience bids i should not bid again. king richard ii norfolk, throw down, we bid; there is no boot. thomas mowbray myself i throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot. my life thou shalt command, but not my shame: the one my duty owes; but my fair name, despite of death that lives upon my grave, to dark dishonour's use thou shalt not have. i am disgraced, impeach'd and baffled here, pierced to the soul with slander's venom'd spear, the which no balm can cure but his heart-blood which breathed this poison. king richard ii rage must be withstood: give me his gage: lions make leopards tame. thomas mowbray yea, but not change his spots: take but my shame. and i resign my gage. my dear dear lord, the purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation: that away, men are but gilded loam or painted clay. a jewel in a ten-times-barr'd-up chest is a bold spirit in a loyal breast. mine honour is my life; both grow in one: take honour from me, and my life is done: then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try; in that i live and for that will i die. king richard ii cousin, throw up your gage; do you begin. henry bolingbroke o, god defend my soul from such deep sin! shall i seem crest-fall'n in my father's sight? or with pale beggar-fear impeach my height before this out-dared dastard? ere my tongue shall wound my honour with such feeble wrong, or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear the slavish motive of recanting fear, and spit it bleeding in his high disgrace, where shame doth harbour, even in mowbray's face. [exit john of gaunt] king richard ii we were not born to sue, but to command; which since we cannot do to make you friends, be ready, as your lives shall answer it, at coventry, upon saint lambert's day: there shall your swords and lances arbitrate the swelling difference of your settled hate: since we can not atone you, we shall see justice design the victor's chivalry. lord marshal, command our officers at arms be ready to direct these home alarms. [exeunt] king richard ii act i scene ii the duke of lancaster's palace. [enter john of gaunt with duchess] john of gaunt alas, the part i had in woodstock's blood doth more solicit me than your exclaims, to stir against the butchers of his life! but since correction lieth in those hands which made the fault that we cannot correct, put we our quarrel to the will of heaven; who, when they see the hours ripe on earth, will rain hot vengeance on offenders' heads. duchess finds brotherhood in thee no sharper spur? hath love in thy old blood no living fire? edward's seven sons, whereof thyself art one, were as seven vials of his sacred blood, or seven fair branches springing from one root: some of those seven are dried by nature's course, some of those branches by the destinies cut; but thomas, my dear lord, my life, my gloucester, one vial full of edward's sacred blood, one flourishing branch of his most royal root, is crack'd, and all the precious liquor spilt, is hack'd down, and his summer leaves all faded, by envy's hand and murder's bloody axe. ah, gaunt, his blood was thine! that bed, that womb, that metal, that self-mould, that fashion'd thee made him a man; and though thou livest and breathest, yet art thou slain in him: thou dost consent in some large measure to thy father's death, in that thou seest thy wretched brother die, who was the model of thy father's life. call it not patience, gaunt; it is despair: in suffering thus thy brother to be slaughter'd, thou showest the naked pathway to thy life, teaching stern murder how to butcher thee: that which in mean men we intitle patience is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts. what shall i say? to safeguard thine own life, the best way is to venge my gloucester's death. john of gaunt god's is the quarrel; for god's substitute, his deputy anointed in his sight, hath caused his death: the which if wrongfully, let heaven revenge; for i may never lift an angry arm against his minister. duchess where then, alas, may i complain myself? john of gaunt to god, the widow's champion and defence. duchess why, then, i will. farewell, old gaunt. thou goest to coventry, there to behold our cousin hereford and fell mowbray fight: o, sit my husband's wrongs on hereford's spear, that it may enter butcher mowbray's breast! or, if misfortune miss the first career, be mowbray's sins so heavy in his bosom, they may break his foaming courser's back, and throw the rider headlong in the lists, a caitiff recreant to my cousin hereford! farewell, old gaunt: thy sometimes brother's wife with her companion grief must end her life. john of gaunt sister, farewell; i must to coventry: as much good stay with thee as go with me! duchess yet one word more: grief boundeth where it falls, not with the empty hollowness, but weight: i take my leave before i have begun, for sorrow ends not when it seemeth done. commend me to thy brother, edmund york. lo, this is all:--nay, yet depart not so; though this be all, do not so quickly go; i shall remember more. bid him--ah, what?- with all good speed at plashy visit me. alack, and what shall good old york there see but empty lodgings and unfurnish'd walls, unpeopled offices, untrodden stones? and what hear there for welcome but my groans? therefore commend me; let him not come there, to seek out sorrow that dwells every where. desolate, desolate, will i hence and die: the last leave of thee takes my weeping eye. [exeunt] king richard ii act i scene iii the lists at coventry. [enter the lord marshal and the duke of aumerle] lord marshal my lord aumerle, is harry hereford arm'd? duke of aumerle yea, at all points; and longs to enter in. lord marshal the duke of norfolk, sprightfully and bold, stays but the summons of the appellant's trumpet. duke of aumerle why, then, the champions are prepared, and stay for nothing but his majesty's approach. [the trumpets sound, and king richard enters with his nobles, john of gaunt, bushy, bagot, green, and others. when they are set, enter thomas mowbray in arms, defendant, with a herald] king richard ii marshal, demand of yonder champion the cause of his arrival here in arms: ask him his name and orderly proceed to swear him in the justice of his cause. lord marshal in god's name and the king's, say who thou art and why thou comest thus knightly clad in arms, against what man thou comest, and what thy quarrel: speak truly, on thy knighthood and thy oath; as so defend thee heaven and thy valour! thomas mowbray my name is thomas mowbray, duke of norfolk; who hither come engaged by my oath- which god defend a knight should violate!- both to defend my loyalty and truth to god, my king and my succeeding issue, against the duke of hereford that appeals me and, by the grace of god and this mine arm, to prove him, in defending of myself, a traitor to my god, my king, and me: and as i truly fight, defend me heaven! [the trumpets sound. enter henry bolingbroke, appellant, in armour, with a herald] king richard ii marshal, ask yonder knight in arms, both who he is and why he cometh hither thus plated in habiliments of war, and formally, according to our law, depose him in the justice of his cause. lord marshal what is thy name? and wherefore comest thou hither, before king richard in his royal lists? against whom comest thou? and what's thy quarrel? speak like a true knight, so defend thee heaven! henry bolingbroke harry of hereford, lancaster and derby am i; who ready here do stand in arms, to prove, by god's grace and my body's valour, in lists, on thomas mowbray, duke of norfolk, that he is a traitor, foul and dangerous, to god of heaven, king richard and to me; and as i truly fight, defend me heaven! lord marshal on pain of death, no person be so bold or daring-hardy as to touch the lists, except the marshal and such officers appointed to direct these fair designs. henry bolingbroke lord marshal, let me kiss my sovereign's hand, and bow my knee before his majesty: for mowbray and myself are like two men that vow a long and weary pilgrimage; then let us take a ceremonious leave and loving farewell of our several friends. lord marshal the appellant in all duty greets your highness, and craves to kiss your hand and take his leave. king richard ii we will descend and fold him in our arms. cousin of hereford, as thy cause is right, so be thy fortune in this royal fight! farewell, my blood; which if to-day thou shed, lament we may, but not revenge thee dead. henry bolingbroke o let no noble eye profane a tear for me, if i be gored with mowbray's spear: as confident as is the falcon's flight against a bird, do i with mowbray fight. my loving lord, i take my leave of you; of you, my noble cousin, lord aumerle; not sick, although i have to do with death, but lusty, young, and cheerly drawing breath. lo, as at english feasts, so i regreet the daintiest last, to make the end most sweet: o thou, the earthly author of my blood, whose youthful spirit, in me regenerate, doth with a twofold vigour lift me up to reach at victory above my head, add proof unto mine armour with thy prayers; and with thy blessings steel my lance's point, that it may enter mowbray's waxen coat, and furbish new the name of john a gaunt, even in the lusty havior of his son. john of gaunt god in thy good cause make thee prosperous! be swift like lightning in the execution; and let thy blows, doubly redoubled, fall like amazing thunder on the casque of thy adverse pernicious enemy: rouse up thy youthful blood, be valiant and live. henry bolingbroke mine innocency and saint george to thrive! thomas mowbray however god or fortune cast my lot, there lives or dies, true to king richard's throne, a loyal, just and upright gentleman: never did captive with a freer heart cast off his chains of bondage and embrace his golden uncontroll'd enfranchisement, more than my dancing soul doth celebrate this feast of battle with mine adversary. most mighty liege, and my companion peers, take from my mouth the wish of happy years: as gentle and as jocund as to jest go i to fight: truth hath a quiet breast. king richard ii farewell, my lord: securely i espy virtue with valour couched in thine eye. order the trial, marshal, and begin. lord marshal harry of hereford, lancaster and derby, receive thy lance; and god defend the right! henry bolingbroke strong as a tower in hope, i cry amen. lord marshal go bear this lance to thomas, duke of norfolk. first herald harry of hereford, lancaster and derby, stands here for god, his sovereign and himself, on pain to be found false and recreant, to prove the duke of norfolk, thomas mowbray, a traitor to his god, his king and him; and dares him to set forward to the fight. second herald here standeth thomas mowbray, duke of norfolk, on pain to be found false and recreant, both to defend himself and to approve henry of hereford, lancaster, and derby, to god, his sovereign and to him disloyal; courageously and with a free desire attending but the signal to begin. lord marshal sound, trumpets; and set forward, combatants. [a charge sounded] stay, the king hath thrown his warder down. king richard ii let them lay by their helmets and their spears, and both return back to their chairs again: withdraw with us: and let the trumpets sound while we return these dukes what we decree. [a long flourish] draw near, and list what with our council we have done. for that our kingdom's earth should not be soil'd with that dear blood which it hath fostered; and for our eyes do hate the dire aspect of civil wounds plough'd up with neighbours' sword; and for we think the eagle-winged pride of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts, with rival-hating envy, set on you to wake our peace, which in our country's cradle draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep; which so roused up with boisterous untuned drums, with harsh resounding trumpets' dreadful bray, and grating shock of wrathful iron arms, might from our quiet confines fright fair peace and make us wade even in our kindred's blood, therefore, we banish you our territories: you, cousin hereford, upon pain of life, till twice five summers have enrich'd our fields shall not regreet our fair dominions, but tread the stranger paths of banishment. henry bolingbroke your will be done: this must my comfort be, sun that warms you here shall shine on me; and those his golden beams to you here lent shall point on me and gild my banishment. king richard ii norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom, which i with some unwillingness pronounce: the sly slow hours shall not determinate the dateless limit of thy dear exile; the hopeless word of 'never to return' breathe i against thee, upon pain of life. thomas mowbray a heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege, and all unlook'd for from your highness' mouth: a dearer merit, not so deep a maim as to be cast forth in the common air, have i deserved at your highness' hands. the language i have learn'd these forty years, my native english, now i must forego: and now my tongue's use is to me no more than an unstringed viol or a harp, or like a cunning instrument cased up, or, being open, put into his hands that knows no touch to tune the harmony: within my mouth you have engaol'd my tongue, doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips; and dull unfeeling barren ignorance is made my gaoler to attend on me. i am too old to fawn upon a nurse, too far in years to be a pupil now: what is thy sentence then but speechless death, which robs my tongue from breathing native breath? king richard ii it boots thee not to be compassionate: after our sentence plaining comes too late. thomas mowbray then thus i turn me from my country's light, to dwell in solemn shades of endless night. king richard ii return again, and take an oath with thee. lay on our royal sword your banish'd hands; swear by the duty that you owe to god- our part therein we banish with yourselves- to keep the oath that we administer: you never shall, so help you truth and god! embrace each other's love in banishment; nor never look upon each other's face; nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile this louring tempest of your home-bred hate; nor never by advised purpose meet to plot, contrive, or complot any ill 'gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land. henry bolingbroke i swear. thomas mowbray and i, to keep all this. henry bolingbroke norfolk, so far as to mine enemy:- by this time, had the king permitted us, one of our souls had wander'd in the air. banish'd this frail sepulchre of our flesh, as now our flesh is banish'd from this land: confess thy treasons ere thou fly the realm; since thou hast far to go, bear not along the clogging burthen of a guilty soul. thomas mowbray no, bolingbroke: if ever i were traitor, my name be blotted from the book of life, and i from heaven banish'd as from hence! but what thou art, god, thou, and i do know; and all too soon, i fear, the king shall rue. farewell, my liege. now no way can i stray; save back to england, all the world's my way. [exit] king richard ii uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes i see thy grieved heart: thy sad aspect hath from the number of his banish'd years pluck'd four away. [to henry bolingbroke] six frozen winter spent, return with welcome home from banishment. henry bolingbroke how long a time lies in one little word! four lagging winters and four wanton springs end in a word: such is the breath of kings. john of gaunt i thank my liege, that in regard of me he shortens four years of my son's exile: but little vantage shall i reap thereby; for, ere the six years that he hath to spend can change their moons and bring their times about my oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light shall be extinct with age and endless night; my inch of taper will be burnt and done, and blindfold death not let me see my son. king richard ii why uncle, thou hast many years to live. john of gaunt but not a minute, king, that thou canst give: shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow, and pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow; thou canst help time to furrow me with age, but stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage; thy word is current with him for my death, but dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath. king richard ii thy son is banish'd upon good advice, whereto thy tongue a party-verdict gave: why at our justice seem'st thou then to lour? john of gaunt things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour. you urged me as a judge; but i had rather you would have bid me argue like a father. o, had it been a stranger, not my child, to smooth his fault i should have been more mild: a partial slander sought i to avoid, and in the sentence my own life destroy'd. alas, i look'd when some of you should say, i was too strict to make mine own away; but you gave leave to my unwilling tongue against my will to do myself this wrong. king richard ii cousin, farewell; and, uncle, bid him so: six years we banish him, and he shall go. [flourish. exeunt king richard ii and train] duke of aumerle cousin, farewell: what presence must not know, from where you do remain let paper show. lord marshal my lord, no leave take i; for i will ride, as far as land will let me, by your side. john of gaunt o, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words, that thou return'st no greeting to thy friends? henry bolingbroke i have too few to take my leave of you, when the tongue's office should be prodigal to breathe the abundant dolour of the heart. john of gaunt thy grief is but thy absence for a time. henry bolingbroke joy absent, grief is present for that time. john of gaunt what is six winters? they are quickly gone. henry bolingbroke to men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten. john of gaunt call it a travel that thou takest for pleasure. henry bolingbroke my heart will sigh when i miscall it so, which finds it an inforced pilgrimage. john of gaunt the sullen passage of thy weary steps esteem as foil wherein thou art to set the precious jewel of thy home return. henry bolingbroke nay, rather, every tedious stride i make will but remember me what a deal of world i wander from the jewels that i love. must i not serve a long apprenticehood to foreign passages, and in the end, having my freedom, boast of nothing else but that i was a journeyman to grief? john of gaunt all places that the eye of heaven visits are to a wise man ports and happy havens. teach thy necessity to reason thus; there is no virtue like necessity. think not the king did banish thee, but thou the king. woe doth the heavier sit, where it perceives it is but faintly borne. go, say i sent thee forth to purchase honour and not the king exiled thee; or suppose devouring pestilence hangs in our air and thou art flying to a fresher clime: look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it to lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou comest: suppose the singing birds musicians, the grass whereon thou tread'st the presence strew'd, the flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more than a delightful measure or a dance; for gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite the man that mocks at it and sets it light. henry bolingbroke o, who can hold a fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty caucasus? or cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast? or wallow naked in december snow by thinking on fantastic summer's heat? o, no! the apprehension of the good gives but the greater feeling to the worse: fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore. john of gaunt come, come, my son, i'll bring thee on thy way: had i thy youth and cause, i would not stay. henry bolingbroke then, england's ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu; my mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet! where'er i wander, boast of this i can, though banish'd, yet a trueborn englishman. [exeunt] king richard ii act i scene iv the court. [enter king richard ii, with bagot and green at one door; and the duke of aumerle at another] king richard ii we did observe. cousin aumerle, how far brought you high hereford on his way? duke of aumerle i brought high hereford, if you call him so, but to the next highway, and there i left him. king richard ii and say, what store of parting tears were shed? duke of aumerle faith, none for me; except the north-east wind, which then blew bitterly against our faces, awaked the sleeping rheum, and so by chance did grace our hollow parting with a tear. king richard ii what said our cousin when you parted with him? duke of aumerle 'farewell:' and, for my heart disdained that my tongue should so profane the word, that taught me craft to counterfeit oppression of such grief that words seem'd buried in my sorrow's grave. marry, would the word 'farewell' have lengthen'd hours and added years to his short banishment, he should have had a volume of farewells; but since it would not, he had none of me. king richard ii he is our cousin, cousin; but 'tis doubt, when time shall call him home from banishment, whether our kinsman come to see his friends. ourself and bushy, bagot here and green observed his courtship to the common people; how he did seem to dive into their hearts with humble and familiar courtesy, what reverence he did throw away on slaves, wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles and patient underbearing of his fortune, as 'twere to banish their affects with him. off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench; a brace of draymen bid god speed him well and had the tribute of his supple knee, with 'thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends;' as were our england in reversion his, and he our subjects' next degree in hope. green well, he is gone; and with him go these thoughts. now for the rebels which stand out in ireland, expedient manage must be made, my liege, ere further leisure yield them further means for their advantage and your highness' loss. king richard ii we will ourself in person to this war: and, for our coffers, with too great a court and liberal largess, are grown somewhat light, we are inforced to farm our royal realm; the revenue whereof shall furnish us for our affairs in hand: if that come short, our substitutes at home shall have blank charters; whereto, when they shall know what men are rich, they shall subscribe them for large sums of gold and send them after to supply our wants; for we will make for ireland presently. [enter bushy] bushy, what news? bushy old john of gaunt is grievous sick, my lord, suddenly taken; and hath sent post haste to entreat your majesty to visit him. king richard ii where lies he? bushy at ely house. king richard ii now put it, god, in the physician's mind to help him to his grave immediately! the lining of his coffers shall make coats to deck our soldiers for these irish wars. come, gentlemen, let's all go visit him: pray god we may make haste, and come too late! all amen. [exeunt] king richard ii act ii scene i ely house. [enter john of gaunt sick, with the duke of york, &c] john of gaunt will the king come, that i may breathe my last in wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth? duke of york vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath; for all in vain comes counsel to his ear. john of gaunt o, but they say the tongues of dying men enforce attention like deep harmony: where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain, for they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. he that no more must say is listen'd more than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose; more are men's ends mark'd than their lives before: the setting sun, and music at the close, as the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last, writ in remembrance more than things long past: though richard my life's counsel would not hear, my death's sad tale may yet undeaf his ear. duke of york no; it is stopp'd with other flattering sounds, as praises, of whose taste the wise are fond, lascivious metres, to whose venom sound the open ear of youth doth always listen; report of fashions in proud italy, whose manners still our tardy apish nation limps after in base imitation. where doth the world thrust forth a vanity- so it be new, there's no respect how vile- that is not quickly buzzed into his ears? then all too late comes counsel to be heard, where will doth mutiny with wit's regard. direct not him whose way himself will choose: 'tis breath thou lack'st, and that breath wilt thou lose. john of gaunt methinks i am a prophet new inspired and thus expiring do foretell of him: his rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, for violent fires soon burn out themselves; small showers last long, but sudden storms are short; he tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes; with eager feeding food doth choke the feeder: light vanity, insatiate cormorant, consuming means, soon preys upon itself. this royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of mars, this other eden, demi-paradise, this fortress built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of war, this happy breed of men, this little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea, which serves it in the office of a wall, or as a moat defensive to a house, against the envy of less happier lands, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this england, this nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth, renowned for their deeds as far from home, for christian service and true chivalry, as is the sepulchre in stubborn jewry, of the world's ransom, blessed mary's son, this land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, dear for her reputation through the world, is now leased out, i die pronouncing it, like to a tenement or pelting farm: england, bound in with the triumphant sea whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege of watery neptune, is now bound in with shame, with inky blots and rotten parchment bonds: that england, that was wont to conquer others, hath made a shameful conquest of itself. ah, would the scandal vanish with my life, how happy then were my ensuing death! [enter king richard ii and queen, duke of aumerle, bushy, green, bagot, lord ross, and lord willoughby] duke of york the king is come: deal mildly with his youth; for young hot colts being raged do rage the more. queen how fares our noble uncle, lancaster? king richard ii what comfort, man? how is't with aged gaunt? john of gaunt o how that name befits my composition! old gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old: within me grief hath kept a tedious fast; and who abstains from meat that is not gaunt? for sleeping england long time have i watch'd; watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt: the pleasure that some fathers feed upon, is my strict fast; i mean, my children's looks; and therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt: gaunt am i for the grave, gaunt as a grave, whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones. king richard ii can sick men play so nicely with their names? john of gaunt no, misery makes sport to mock itself: since thou dost seek to kill my name in me, i mock my name, great king, to flatter thee. king richard ii should dying men flatter with those that live? john of gaunt no, no, men living flatter those that die. king richard ii thou, now a-dying, say'st thou flatterest me. john of gaunt o, no! thou diest, though i the sicker be. king richard ii i am in health, i breathe, and see thee ill. john of gaunt now he that made me knows i see thee ill; ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill. thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land wherein thou liest in reputation sick; and thou, too careless patient as thou art, commit'st thy anointed body to the cure of those physicians that first wounded thee: a thousand flatterers sit within thy crown, whose compass is no bigger than thy head; and yet, incaged in so small a verge, the waste is no whit lesser than thy land. o, had thy grandsire with a prophet's eye seen how his son's son should destroy his sons, from forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame, deposing thee before thou wert possess'd, which art possess'd now to depose thyself. why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world, it were a shame to let this land by lease; but for thy world enjoying but this land, is it not more than shame to shame it so? landlord of england art thou now, not king: thy state of law is bondslave to the law; and thou- king richard ii a lunatic lean-witted fool, presuming on an ague's privilege, darest with thy frozen admonition make pale our cheek, chasing the royal blood with fury from his native residence. now, by my seat's right royal majesty, wert thou not brother to great edward's son, this tongue that runs so roundly in thy head should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders. john of gaunt o, spare me not, my brother edward's son, for that i was his father edward's son; that blood already, like the pelican, hast thou tapp'd out and drunkenly caroused: my brother gloucester, plain well-meaning soul, whom fair befal in heaven 'mongst happy souls! may be a precedent and witness good that thou respect'st not spilling edward's blood: join with the present sickness that i have; and thy unkindness be like crooked age, to crop at once a too long wither'd flower. live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee! these words hereafter thy tormentors be! convey me to my bed, then to my grave: love they to live that love and honour have. [exit, borne off by his attendants] king richard ii and let them die that age and sullens have; for both hast thou, and both become the grave. duke of york i do beseech your majesty, impute his words to wayward sickliness and age in him: he loves you, on my life, and holds you dear as harry duke of hereford, were he here. king richard ii right, you say true: as hereford's love, so his; as theirs, so mine; and all be as it is. [enter northumberland] northumberland my liege, old gaunt commends him to your majesty. king richard ii what says he? northumberland nay, nothing; all is said his tongue is now a stringless instrument; words, life and all, old lancaster hath spent. duke of york be york the next that must be bankrupt so! though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe. king richard ii the ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he; his time is spent, our pilgrimage must be. so much for that. now for our irish wars: we must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns, which live like venom where no venom else but only they have privilege to live. and for these great affairs do ask some charge, towards our assistance we do seize to us the plate, corn, revenues and moveables, whereof our uncle gaunt did stand possess'd. duke of york how long shall i be patient? ah, how long shall tender duty make me suffer wrong? not gloucester's death, nor hereford's banishment not gaunt's rebukes, nor england's private wrongs, nor the prevention of poor bolingbroke about his marriage, nor my own disgrace, have ever made me sour my patient cheek, or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign's face. i am the last of noble edward's sons, of whom thy father, prince of wales, was first: in war was never lion raged more fierce, in peace was never gentle lamb more mild, than was that young and princely gentleman. his face thou hast, for even so look'd he, accomplish'd with the number of thy hours; but when he frown'd, it was against the french and not against his friends; his noble hand did will what he did spend and spent not that which his triumphant father's hand had won; his hands were guilty of no kindred blood, but bloody with the enemies of his kin. o richard! york is too far gone with grief, or else he never would compare between. king richard ii why, uncle, what's the matter? duke of york o my liege, pardon me, if you please; if not, i, pleased not to be pardon'd, am content withal. seek you to seize and gripe into your hands the royalties and rights of banish'd hereford? is not gaunt dead, and doth not hereford live? was not gaunt just, and is not harry true? did not the one deserve to have an heir? is not his heir a well-deserving son? take hereford's rights away, and take from time his charters and his customary rights; let not to-morrow then ensue to-day; be not thyself; for how art thou a king but by fair sequence and succession? now, afore god--god forbid i say true!- if you do wrongfully seize hereford's rights, call in the letters patent that he hath by his attorneys-general to sue his livery, and deny his offer'd homage, you pluck a thousand dangers on your head, you lose a thousand well-disposed hearts and prick my tender patience, to those thoughts which honour and allegiance cannot think. king richard ii think what you will, we seize into our hands his plate, his goods, his money and his lands. duke of york i'll not be by the while: my liege, farewell: what will ensue hereof, there's none can tell; but by bad courses may be understood that their events can never fall out good. [exit] king richard ii go, bushy, to the earl of wiltshire straight: bid him repair to us to ely house to see this business. to-morrow next we will for ireland; and 'tis time, i trow: and we create, in absence of ourself, our uncle york lord governor of england; for he is just and always loved us well. come on, our queen: to-morrow must we part; be merry, for our time of stay is short [flourish. exeunt king richard ii, queen, duke of aumerle, bushy, green, and bagot] northumberland well, lords, the duke of lancaster is dead. lord ross and living too; for now his son is duke. lord willoughby barely in title, not in revenue. northumberland richly in both, if justice had her right. lord ross my heart is great; but it must break with silence, ere't be disburden'd with a liberal tongue. northumberland nay, speak thy mind; and let him ne'er speak more that speaks thy words again to do thee harm! lord willoughby tends that thou wouldst speak to the duke of hereford? if it be so, out with it boldly, man; quick is mine ear to hear of good towards him. lord ross no good at all that i can do for him; unless you call it good to pity him, bereft and gelded of his patrimony. northumberland now, afore god, 'tis shame such wrongs are borne in him, a royal prince, and many moe of noble blood in this declining land. the king is not himself, but basely led by flatterers; and what they will inform, merely in hate, 'gainst any of us all, that will the king severely prosecute 'gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs. lord ross the commons hath he pill'd with grievous taxes, and quite lost their hearts: the nobles hath he fined for ancient quarrels, and quite lost their hearts. lord willoughby and daily new exactions are devised, as blanks, benevolences, and i wot not what: but what, o' god's name, doth become of this? northumberland wars have not wasted it, for warr'd he hath not, but basely yielded upon compromise that which his noble ancestors achieved with blows: more hath he spent in peace than they in wars. lord ross the earl of wiltshire hath the realm in farm. lord willoughby the king's grown bankrupt, like a broken man. northumberland reproach and dissolution hangeth over him. lord ross he hath not money for these irish wars, his burthenous taxations notwithstanding, but by the robbing of the banish'd duke. northumberland his noble kinsman: most degenerate king! but, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing, yet see no shelter to avoid the storm; we see the wind sit sore upon our sails, and yet we strike not, but securely perish. lord ross we see the very wreck that we must suffer; and unavoided is the danger now, for suffering so the causes of our wreck. northumberland not so; even through the hollow eyes of death i spy life peering; but i dare not say how near the tidings of our comfort is. lord willoughby nay, let us share thy thoughts, as thou dost ours. lord ross be confident to speak, northumberland: we three are but thyself; and, speaking so, thy words are but as thoughts; therefore, be bold. northumberland then thus: i have from port le blanc, a bay in brittany, received intelligence that harry duke of hereford, rainold lord cobham, [ ] that late broke from the duke of exeter, his brother, archbishop late of canterbury, sir thomas erpingham, sir john ramston, sir john norbery, sir robert waterton and francis quoint, all these well furnish'd by the duke of bretagne with eight tall ships, three thousand men of war, are making hither with all due expedience and shortly mean to touch our northern shore: perhaps they had ere this, but that they stay the first departing of the king for ireland. if then we shall shake off our slavish yoke, imp out our drooping country's broken wing, redeem from broking pawn the blemish'd crown, wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre's gilt and make high majesty look like itself, away with me in post to ravenspurgh; but if you faint, as fearing to do so, stay and be secret, and myself will go. lord ross to horse, to horse! urge doubts to them that fear. lord willoughby hold out my horse, and i will first be there. [exeunt] king richard ii act ii scene ii the palace. [enter queen, bushy, and bagot] bushy madam, your majesty is too much sad: you promised, when you parted with the king, to lay aside life-harming heaviness and entertain a cheerful disposition. queen to please the king i did; to please myself i cannot do it; yet i know no cause why i should welcome such a guest as grief, save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest as my sweet richard: yet again, methinks, some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb, is coming towards me, and my inward soul with nothing trembles: at some thing it grieves, more than with parting from my lord the king. bushy each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows, which shows like grief itself, but is not so; for sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears, divides one thing entire to many objects; like perspectives, which rightly gazed upon show nothing but confusion, eyed awry distinguish form: so your sweet majesty, looking awry upon your lord's departure, find shapes of grief, more than himself, to wail; which, look'd on as it is, is nought but shadows of what it is not. then, thrice-gracious queen, more than your lord's departure weep not: more's not seen; or if it be, 'tis with false sorrow's eye, which for things true weeps things imaginary. queen it may be so; but yet my inward soul persuades me it is otherwise: howe'er it be, i cannot but be sad; so heavy sad as, though on thinking on no thought i think, makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink. bushy 'tis nothing but conceit, my gracious lady. queen 'tis nothing less: conceit is still derived from some forefather grief; mine is not so, for nothing had begot my something grief; or something hath the nothing that i grieve: 'tis in reversion that i do possess; but what it is, that is not yet known; what i cannot name; 'tis nameless woe, i wot. [enter green] green god save your majesty! and well met, gentlemen: i hope the king is not yet shipp'd for ireland. queen why hopest thou so? 'tis better hope he is; for his designs crave haste, his haste good hope: then wherefore dost thou hope he is not shipp'd? green that he, our hope, might have retired his power, and driven into despair an enemy's hope, who strongly hath set footing in this land: the banish'd bolingbroke repeals himself, and with uplifted arms is safe arrived at ravenspurgh. queen now god in heaven forbid! green ah, madam, 'tis too true: and that is worse, the lord northumberland, his son young henry percy, the lords of ross, beaumond, and willoughby, with all their powerful friends, are fled to him. bushy why have you not proclaim'd northumberland and all the rest revolted faction traitors? green we have: whereupon the earl of worcester hath broke his staff, resign'd his stewardship, and all the household servants fled with him to bolingbroke. queen so, green, thou art the midwife to my woe, and bolingbroke my sorrow's dismal heir: now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy, and i, a gasping new-deliver'd mother, have woe to woe, sorrow to sorrow join'd. bushy despair not, madam. queen who shall hinder me? i will despair, and be at enmity with cozening hope: he is a flatterer, a parasite, a keeper back of death, who gently would dissolve the bands of life, which false hope lingers in extremity. [enter duke of york] green here comes the duke of york. queen with signs of war about his aged neck: o, full of careful business are his looks! uncle, for god's sake, speak comfortable words. duke of york should i do so, i should belie my thoughts: comfort's in heaven; and we are on the earth, where nothing lives but crosses, cares and grief. your husband, he is gone to save far off, whilst others come to make him lose at home: here am i left to underprop his land, who, weak with age, cannot support myself: now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made; now shall he try his friends that flatter'd him. [enter a servant] servant my lord, your son was gone before i came. duke of york he was? why, so! go all which way it will! the nobles they are fled, the commons they are cold, and will, i fear, revolt on hereford's side. sirrah, get thee to plashy, to my sister gloucester; bid her send me presently a thousand pound: hold, take my ring. servant my lord, i had forgot to tell your lordship, to-day, as i came by, i called there; but i shall grieve you to report the rest. duke of york what is't, knave? servant an hour before i came, the duchess died. duke of york god for his mercy! what a tide of woes comes rushing on this woeful land at once! i know not what to do: i would to god, so my untruth had not provoked him to it, the king had cut off my head with my brother's. what, are there no posts dispatch'd for ireland? how shall we do for money for these wars? come, sister,--cousin, i would say--pray, pardon me. go, fellow, get thee home, provide some carts and bring away the armour that is there. [exit servant] gentlemen, will you go muster men? if i know how or which way to order these affairs thus thrust disorderly into my hands, never believe me. both are my kinsmen: the one is my sovereign, whom both my oath and duty bids defend; the other again is my kinsman, whom the king hath wrong'd, whom conscience and my kindred bids to right. well, somewhat we must do. come, cousin, i'll dispose of you. gentlemen, go, muster up your men, and meet me presently at berkeley. i should to plashy too; but time will not permit: all is uneven, and every thing is left at six and seven. [exeunt duke of york and queen] bushy the wind sits fair for news to go to ireland, but none returns. for us to levy power proportionable to the enemy is all unpossible. green besides, our nearness to the king in love is near the hate of those love not the king. bagot and that's the wavering commons: for their love lies in their purses, and whoso empties them by so much fills their hearts with deadly hate. bushy wherein the king stands generally condemn'd. bagot if judgement lie in them, then so do we, because we ever have been near the king. green well, i will for refuge straight to bristol castle: the earl of wiltshire is already there. bushy thither will i with you; for little office the hateful commons will perform for us, except like curs to tear us all to pieces. will you go along with us? bagot no; i will to ireland to his majesty. farewell: if heart's presages be not vain, we three here art that ne'er shall meet again. bushy that's as york thrives to beat back bolingbroke. green alas, poor duke! the task he undertakes is numbering sands and drinking oceans dry: where one on his side fights, thousands will fly. farewell at once, for once, for all, and ever. bushy well, we may meet again. bagot i fear me, never. [exeunt] king richard ii act ii scene iii wilds in gloucestershire. [enter henry bolingbroke and northumberland, with forces] henry bolingbroke how far is it, my lord, to berkeley now? northumberland believe me, noble lord, i am a stranger here in gloucestershire: these high wild hills and rough uneven ways draws out our miles, and makes them wearisome, and yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar, making the hard way sweet and delectable. but i bethink me what a weary way from ravenspurgh to cotswold will be found in ross and willoughby, wanting your company, which, i protest, hath very much beguiled the tediousness and process of my travel: but theirs is sweetened with the hope to have the present benefit which i possess; and hope to joy is little less in joy than hope enjoy'd: by this the weary lords shall make their way seem short, as mine hath done by sight of what i have, your noble company. henry bolingbroke of much less value is my company than your good words. but who comes here? [enter henry percy] northumberland it is my son, young harry percy, sent from my brother worcester, whencesoever. harry, how fares your uncle? henry percy i had thought, my lord, to have learn'd his health of you. northumberland why, is he not with the queen? henry percy no, my good lord; he hath forsook the court, broken his staff of office and dispersed the household of the king. northumberland what was his reason? he was not so resolved when last we spake together. henry percy because your lordship was proclaimed traitor. but he, my lord, is gone to ravenspurgh, to offer service to the duke of hereford, and sent me over by berkeley, to discover what power the duke of york had levied there; then with directions to repair to ravenspurgh. northumberland have you forgot the duke of hereford, boy? henry percy no, my good lord, for that is not forgot which ne'er i did remember: to my knowledge, i never in my life did look on him. northumberland then learn to know him now; this is the duke. henry percy my gracious lord, i tender you my service, such as it is, being tender, raw and young: which elder days shall ripen and confirm to more approved service and desert. henry bolingbroke i thank thee, gentle percy; and be sure i count myself in nothing else so happy as in a soul remembering my good friends; and, as my fortune ripens with thy love, it shall be still thy true love's recompense: my heart this covenant makes, my hand thus seals it. northumberland how far is it to berkeley? and what stir keeps good old york there with his men of war? henry percy there stands the castle, by yon tuft of trees, mann'd with three hundred men, as i have heard; and in it are the lords of york, berkeley, and seymour; none else of name and noble estimate. [enter lord ross and lord willoughby] northumberland here come the lords of ross and willoughby, bloody with spurring, fiery-red with haste. henry bolingbroke welcome, my lords. i wot your love pursues a banish'd traitor: all my treasury is yet but unfelt thanks, which more enrich'd shall be your love and labour's recompense. lord ross your presence makes us rich, most noble lord. lord willoughby and far surmounts our labour to attain it. henry bolingbroke evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor; which, till my infant fortune comes to years, stands for my bounty. but who comes here? [enter lord berkeley] northumberland it is my lord of berkeley, as i guess. lord berkeley my lord of hereford, my message is to you. henry bolingbroke my lord, my answer is--to lancaster; and i am come to seek that name in england; and i must find that title in your tongue, before i make reply to aught you say. lord berkeley mistake me not, my lord; 'tis not my meaning to raze one title of your honour out: to you, my lord, i come, what lord you will, from the most gracious regent of this land, the duke of york, to know what pricks you on to take advantage of the absent time and fright our native peace with self-born arms. [enter duke of york attended] henry bolingbroke i shall not need transport my words by you; here comes his grace in person. my noble uncle! [kneels] duke of york show me thy humble heart, and not thy knee, whose duty is deceiveable and false. henry bolingbroke my gracious uncle- duke of york tut, tut! grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle: i am no traitor's uncle; and that word 'grace.' in an ungracious mouth is but profane. why have those banish'd and forbidden legs dared once to touch a dust of england's ground? but then more 'why?' why have they dared to march so many miles upon her peaceful bosom, frighting her pale-faced villages with war and ostentation of despised arms? comest thou because the anointed king is hence? why, foolish boy, the king is left behind, and in my loyal bosom lies his power. were i but now the lord of such hot youth as when brave gaunt, thy father, and myself rescued the black prince, that young mars of men, from forth the ranks of many thousand french, o, then how quickly should this arm of mine. now prisoner to the palsy, chastise thee and minister correction to thy fault! henry bolingbroke my gracious uncle, let me know my fault: on what condition stands it and wherein? duke of york even in condition of the worst degree, in gross rebellion and detested treason: thou art a banish'd man, and here art come before the expiration of thy time, in braving arms against thy sovereign. henry bolingbroke as i was banish'd, i was banish'd hereford; but as i come, i come for lancaster. and, noble uncle, i beseech your grace look on my wrongs with an indifferent eye: you are my father, for methinks in you i see old gaunt alive; o, then, my father, will you permit that i shall stand condemn'd a wandering vagabond; my rights and royalties pluck'd from my arms perforce and given away to upstart unthrifts? wherefore was i born? if that my cousin king be king of england, it must be granted i am duke of lancaster. you have a son, aumerle, my noble cousin; had you first died, and he been thus trod down, he should have found his uncle gaunt a father, to rouse his wrongs and chase them to the bay. i am denied to sue my livery here, and yet my letters-patents give me leave: my father's goods are all distrain'd and sold, and these and all are all amiss employ'd. what would you have me do? i am a subject, and i challenge law: attorneys are denied me; and therefore, personally i lay my claim to my inheritance of free descent. northumberland the noble duke hath been too much abused. lord ross it stands your grace upon to do him right. lord willoughby base men by his endowments are made great. duke of york my lords of england, let me tell you this: i have had feeling of my cousin's wrongs and laboured all i could to do him right; but in this kind to come, in braving arms, be his own carver and cut out his way, to find out right with wrong, it may not be; and you that do abet him in this kind cherish rebellion and are rebels all. northumberland the noble duke hath sworn his coming is but for his own; and for the right of that we all have strongly sworn to give him aid; and let him ne'er see joy that breaks that oath! duke of york well, well, i see the issue of these arms: i cannot mend it, i must needs confess, because my power is weak and all ill left: but if i could, by him that gave me life, i would attach you all and make you stoop unto the sovereign mercy of the king; but since i cannot, be it known to you i do remain as neuter. so, fare you well; unless you please to enter in the castle and there repose you for this night. henry bolingbroke an offer, uncle, that we will accept: but we must win your grace to go with us to bristol castle, which they say is held by bushy, bagot and their complices, the caterpillars of the commonwealth, which i have sworn to weed and pluck away. duke of york it may be i will go with you: but yet i'll pause; for i am loath to break our country's laws. nor friends nor foes, to me welcome you are: things past redress are now with me past care. [exeunt] king richard ii act ii scene iv a camp in wales. [enter earl of salisbury and a welsh captain] captain my lord of salisbury, we have stay'd ten days, and hardly kept our countrymen together, and yet we hear no tidings from the king; therefore we will disperse ourselves: farewell. earl of salisbury stay yet another day, thou trusty welshman: the king reposeth all his confidence in thee. captain 'tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay. the bay-trees in our country are all wither'd and meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; the pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth and lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change; rich men look sad and ruffians dance and leap, the one in fear to lose what they enjoy, the other to enjoy by rage and war: these signs forerun the death or fall of kings. farewell: our countrymen are gone and fled, as well assured richard their king is dead. [exit] earl of salisbury ah, richard, with the eyes of heavy mind i see thy glory like a shooting star fall to the base earth from the firmament. thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west, witnessing storms to come, woe and unrest: thy friends are fled to wait upon thy foes, and crossly to thy good all fortune goes. [exit] king richard ii act iii scene i bristol. before the castle. [enter henry bolingbroke, duke of york, northumberland, lord ross, henry percy, lord willoughby, with bushy and green, prisoners] henry bolingbroke bring forth these men. bushy and green, i will not vex your souls- since presently your souls must part your bodies- with too much urging your pernicious lives, for 'twere no charity; yet, to wash your blood from off my hands, here in the view of men i will unfold some causes of your deaths. you have misled a prince, a royal king, a happy gentleman in blood and lineaments, by you unhappied and disfigured clean: you have in manner with your sinful hours made a divorce betwixt his queen and him, broke the possession of a royal bed and stain'd the beauty of a fair queen's cheeks with tears drawn from her eyes by your foul wrongs. myself, a prince by fortune of my birth, near to the king in blood, and near in love till you did make him misinterpret me, have stoop'd my neck under your injuries, and sigh'd my english breath in foreign clouds, eating the bitter bread of banishment; whilst you have fed upon my signories, dispark'd my parks and fell'd my forest woods, from my own windows torn my household coat, razed out my imprese, leaving me no sign, save men's opinions and my living blood, to show the world i am a gentleman. this and much more, much more than twice all this, condemns you to the death. see them deliver'd over to execution and the hand of death. bushy more welcome is the stroke of death to me than bolingbroke to england. lords, farewell. green my comfort is that heaven will take our souls and plague injustice with the pains of hell. henry bolingbroke my lord northumberland, see them dispatch'd. [exeunt northumberland and others, with the prisoners] uncle, you say the queen is at your house; for god's sake, fairly let her be entreated: tell her i send to her my kind commends; take special care my greetings be deliver'd. duke of york a gentleman of mine i have dispatch'd with letters of your love to her at large. henry bolingbroke thank, gentle uncle. come, lords, away. to fight with glendower and his complices: awhile to work, and after holiday. [exeunt] king richard ii act iii scene ii the coast of wales. a castle in view. [drums; flourish and colours. enter king richard ii, the bishop of carlisle, duke of aumerle, and soldiers] king richard ii barkloughly castle call they this at hand? duke of aumerle yea, my lord. how brooks your grace the air, after your late tossing on the breaking seas? king richard ii needs must i like it well: i weep for joy to stand upon my kingdom once again. dear earth, i do salute thee with my hand, though rebels wound thee with their horses' hoofs: as a long-parted mother with her child plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting, so, weeping, smiling, greet i thee, my earth, and do thee favours with my royal hands. feed not thy sovereign's foe, my gentle earth, nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense; but let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom, and heavy-gaited toads lie in their way, doing annoyance to the treacherous feet which with usurping steps do trample thee: yield stinging nettles to mine enemies; and when they from thy bosom pluck a flower, guard it, i pray thee, with a lurking adder whose double tongue may with a mortal touch throw death upon thy sovereign's enemies. mock not my senseless conjuration, lords: this earth shall have a feeling and these stones prove armed soldiers, ere her native king shall falter under foul rebellion's arms. bishop of carlisle fear not, my lord: that power that made you king hath power to keep you king in spite of all. the means that heaven yields must be embraced, and not neglected; else, if heaven would, and we will not, heaven's offer we refuse, the proffer'd means of succor and redress. duke of aumerle he means, my lord, that we are too remiss; whilst bolingbroke, through our security, grows strong and great in substance and in power. king richard ii discomfortable cousin! know'st thou not that when the searching eye of heaven is hid, behind the globe, that lights the lower world, then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen in murders and in outrage, boldly here; but when from under this terrestrial ball he fires the proud tops of the eastern pines and darts his light through every guilty hole, then murders, treasons and detested sins, the cloak of night being pluck'd from off their backs, stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves? so when this thief, this traitor, bolingbroke, who all this while hath revell'd in the night whilst we were wandering with the antipodes, shall see us rising in our throne, the east, his treasons will sit blushing in his face, not able to endure the sight of day, but self-affrighted tremble at his sin. not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm off from an anointed king; the breath of worldly men cannot depose the deputy elected by the lord: for every man that bolingbroke hath press'd to lift shrewd steel against our golden crown, god for his richard hath in heavenly pay a glorious angel: then, if angels fight, weak men must fall, for heaven still guards the right. [enter earl of salisbury] welcome, my lord how far off lies your power? earl of salisbury nor near nor farther off, my gracious lord, than this weak arm: discomfort guides my tongue and bids me speak of nothing but despair. one day too late, i fear me, noble lord, hath clouded all thy happy days on earth: o, call back yesterday, bid time return, and thou shalt have twelve thousand fighting men! to-day, to-day, unhappy day, too late, o'erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune and thy state: for all the welshmen, hearing thou wert dead. are gone to bolingbroke, dispersed and fled. duke of aumerle comfort, my liege; why looks your grace so pale? king richard ii but now the blood of twenty thousand men did triumph in my face, and they are fled; and, till so much blood thither come again, have i not reason to look pale and dead? all souls that will be safe fly from my side, for time hath set a blot upon my pride. duke of aumerle comfort, my liege; remember who you are. king richard ii i had forgot myself; am i not king? awake, thou coward majesty! thou sleepest. is not the king's name twenty thousand names? arm, arm, my name! a puny subject strikes at thy great glory. look not to the ground, ye favourites of a king: are we not high? high be our thoughts: i know my uncle york hath power enough to serve our turn. but who comes here? [enter sir stephen scroop] sir stephen scroop more health and happiness betide my liege than can my care-tuned tongue deliver him! king richard ii mine ear is open and my heart prepared; the worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold. say, is my kingdom lost? why, 'twas my care and what loss is it to be rid of care? strives bolingbroke to be as great as we? greater he shall not be; if he serve god, we'll serve him too and be his fellow so: revolt our subjects? that we cannot mend; they break their faith to god as well as us: cry woe, destruction, ruin and decay: the worst is death, and death will have his day. sir stephen scroop glad am i that your highness is so arm'd to bear the tidings of calamity. like an unseasonable stormy day, which makes the silver rivers drown their shores, as if the world were all dissolved to tears, so high above his limits swells the rage of bolingbroke, covering your fearful land with hard bright steel and hearts harder than steel. white-beards have arm'd their thin and hairless scalps against thy majesty; boys, with women's voices, strive to speak big and clap their female joints in stiff unwieldy arms against thy crown: the very beadsmen learn to bend their bows of double-fatal yew against thy state; yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills against thy seat: both young and old rebel, and all goes worse than i have power to tell. king richard ii too well, too well thou tell'st a tale so ill. where is the earl of wiltshire? where is bagot? what is become of bushy? where is green? that they have let the dangerous enemy measure our confines with such peaceful steps? if we prevail, their heads shall pay for it: i warrant they have made peace with bolingbroke. sir stephen scroop peace have they made with him indeed, my lord. king richard ii o villains, vipers, damn'd without redemption! dogs, easily won to fawn on any man! snakes, in my heart-blood warm'd, that sting my heart! three judases, each one thrice worse than judas! would they make peace? terrible hell make war upon their spotted souls for this offence! sir stephen scroop sweet love, i see, changing his property, turns to the sourest and most deadly hate: again uncurse their souls; their peace is made with heads, and not with hands; those whom you curse have felt the worst of death's destroying wound and lie full low, graved in the hollow ground. duke of aumerle is bushy, green, and the earl of wiltshire dead? sir stephen scroop ay, all of them at bristol lost their heads. duke of aumerle where is the duke my father with his power? king richard ii no matter where; of comfort no man speak: let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; make dust our paper and with rainy eyes write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, let's choose executors and talk of wills: and yet not so, for what can we bequeath save our deposed bodies to the ground? our lands, our lives and all are bolingbroke's, and nothing can we call our own but death and that small model of the barren earth which serves as paste and cover to our bones. for god's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings; how some have been deposed; some slain in war, some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd; all murder'd: for within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps death his court and there the antic sits, scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, allowing him a breath, a little scene, to monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks, infusing him with self and vain conceit, as if this flesh which walls about our life, were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus comes at the last and with a little pin bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood with solemn reverence: throw away respect, tradition, form and ceremonious duty, for you have but mistook me all this while: i live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, need friends: subjected thus, how can you say to me, i am a king? bishop of carlisle my lord, wise men ne'er sit and wail their woes, but presently prevent the ways to wail. to fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength, gives in your weakness strength unto your foe, and so your follies fight against yourself. fear and be slain; no worse can come to fight: and fight and die is death destroying death; where fearing dying pays death servile breath. duke of aumerle my father hath a power; inquire of him and learn to make a body of a limb. king richard ii thou chidest me well: proud bolingbroke, i come to change blows with thee for our day of doom. this ague fit of fear is over-blown; an easy task it is to win our own. say, scroop, where lies our uncle with his power? speak sweetly, man, although thy looks be sour. sir stephen scroop men judge by the complexion of the sky the state and inclination of the day: so may you by my dull and heavy eye, my tongue hath but a heavier tale to say. i play the torturer, by small and small to lengthen out the worst that must be spoken: your uncle york is join'd with bolingbroke, and all your northern castles yielded up, and all your southern gentlemen in arms upon his party. king richard ii thou hast said enough. beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth [to duke of aumerle] of that sweet way i was in to despair! what say you now? what comfort have we now? by heaven, i'll hate him everlastingly that bids me be of comfort any more. go to flint castle: there i'll pine away; a king, woe's slave, shall kingly woe obey. that power i have, discharge; and let them go to ear the land that hath some hope to grow, for i have none: let no man speak again to alter this, for counsel is but vain. duke of aumerle my liege, one word. king richard ii he does me double wrong that wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue. discharge my followers: let them hence away, from richard's night to bolingbroke's fair day. [exeunt] king richard ii act iii scene iii wales. before flint castle. [enter, with drum and colours, henry bolingbroke, duke of york, northumberland, attendants, and forces] henry bolingbroke so that by this intelligence we learn the welshmen are dispersed, and salisbury is gone to meet the king, who lately landed with some few private friends upon this coast. northumberland the news is very fair and good, my lord: richard not far from hence hath hid his head. duke of york it would beseem the lord northumberland to say 'king richard:' alack the heavy day when such a sacred king should hide his head. northumberland your grace mistakes; only to be brief left i his title out. duke of york the time hath been, would you have been so brief with him, he would have been so brief with you, to shorten you, for taking so the head, your whole head's length. henry bolingbroke mistake not, uncle, further than you should. duke of york take not, good cousin, further than you should. lest you mistake the heavens are o'er our heads. henry bolingbroke i know it, uncle, and oppose not myself against their will. but who comes here? [enter henry percy] welcome, harry: what, will not this castle yield? henry percy the castle royally is mann'd, my lord, against thy entrance. henry bolingbroke royally! why, it contains no king? henry percy yes, my good lord, it doth contain a king; king richard lies within the limits of yon lime and stone: and with him are the lord aumerle, lord salisbury, sir stephen scroop, besides a clergyman of holy reverence; who, i cannot learn. northumberland o, belike it is the bishop of carlisle. henry bolingbroke noble lords, go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle; through brazen trumpet send the breath of parley into his ruin'd ears, and thus deliver: henry bolingbroke on both his knees doth kiss king richard's hand and sends allegiance and true faith of heart to his most royal person, hither come even at his feet to lay my arms and power, provided that my banishment repeal'd and lands restored again be freely granted: if not, i'll use the advantage of my power and lay the summer's dust with showers of blood rain'd from the wounds of slaughter'd englishmen: the which, how far off from the mind of bolingbroke it is, such crimson tempest should bedrench the fresh green lap of fair king richard's land, my stooping duty tenderly shall show. go, signify as much, while here we march upon the grassy carpet of this plain. let's march without the noise of threatening drum, that from this castle's tatter'd battlements our fair appointments may be well perused. methinks king richard and myself should meet with no less terror than the elements of fire and water, when their thundering shock at meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven. be he the fire, i'll be the yielding water: the rage be his, whilst on the earth i rain my waters; on the earth, and not on him. march on, and mark king richard how he looks. [parle without, and answer within. then a flourish. enter on the walls, king richard ii, the bishop of carlisle, duke of aumerle, sir stephen scroop, and earl of salisbury] see, see, king richard doth himself appear, as doth the blushing discontented sun from out the fiery portal of the east, when he perceives the envious clouds are bent to dim his glory and to stain the track of his bright passage to the occident. duke of york yet looks he like a king: behold, his eye, as bright as is the eagle's, lightens forth controlling majesty: alack, alack, for woe, that any harm should stain so fair a show! king richard ii we are amazed; and thus long have we stood to watch the fearful bending of thy knee, [to northumberland] because we thought ourself thy lawful king: and if we be, how dare thy joints forget to pay their awful duty to our presence? if we be not, show us the hand of god that hath dismissed us from our stewardship; for well we know, no hand of blood and bone can gripe the sacred handle of our sceptre, unless he do profane, steal, or usurp. and though you think that all, as you have done, have torn their souls by turning them from us, and we are barren and bereft of friends; yet know, my master, god omnipotent, is mustering in his clouds on our behalf armies of pestilence; and they shall strike your children yet unborn and unbegot, that lift your vassal hands against my head and threat the glory of my precious crown. tell bolingbroke--for yond methinks he stands- that every stride he makes upon my land is dangerous treason: he is come to open the purple testament of bleeding war; but ere the crown he looks for live in peace, ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers' sons shall ill become the flower of england's face, change the complexion of her maid-pale peace to scarlet indignation and bedew her pastures' grass with faithful english blood. northumberland the king of heaven forbid our lord the king should so with civil and uncivil arms be rush'd upon! thy thrice noble cousin harry bolingbroke doth humbly kiss thy hand; and by the honourable tomb he swears, that stands upon your royal grandsire's bones, and by the royalties of both your bloods, currents that spring from one most gracious head, and by the buried hand of warlike gaunt, and by the worth and honour of himself, comprising all that may be sworn or said, his coming hither hath no further scope than for his lineal royalties and to beg enfranchisement immediate on his knees: which on thy royal party granted once, his glittering arms he will commend to rust, his barbed steeds to stables, and his heart to faithful service of your majesty. this swears he, as he is a prince, is just; and, as i am a gentleman, i credit him. king richard ii northumberland, say thus the king returns: his noble cousin is right welcome hither; and all the number of his fair demands shall be accomplish'd without contradiction: with all the gracious utterance thou hast speak to his gentle hearing kind commends. we do debase ourselves, cousin, do we not, [to duke of aumerle] to look so poorly and to speak so fair? shall we call back northumberland, and send defiance to the traitor, and so die? duke of aumerle no, good my lord; let's fight with gentle words till time lend friends and friends their helpful swords. king richard ii o god, o god! that e'er this tongue of mine, that laid the sentence of dread banishment on yon proud man, should take it off again with words of sooth! o that i were as great as is my grief, or lesser than my name! or that i could forget what i have been, or not remember what i must be now! swell'st thou, proud heart? i'll give thee scope to beat, since foes have scope to beat both thee and me. duke of aumerle northumberland comes back from bolingbroke. king richard ii what must the king do now? must he submit? the king shall do it: must he be deposed? the king shall be contented: must he lose the name of king? o' god's name, let it go: i'll give my jewels for a set of beads, my gorgeous palace for a hermitage, my gay apparel for an almsman's gown, my figured goblets for a dish of wood, my sceptre for a palmer's walking staff, my subjects for a pair of carved saints and my large kingdom for a little grave, a little little grave, an obscure grave; or i'll be buried in the king's highway, some way of common trade, where subjects' feet may hourly trample on their sovereign's head; for on my heart they tread now whilst i live; and buried once, why not upon my head? aumerle, thou weep'st, my tender-hearted cousin! we'll make foul weather with despised tears; our sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn, and make a dearth in this revolting land. or shall we play the wantons with our woes, and make some pretty match with shedding tears? as thus, to drop them still upon one place, till they have fretted us a pair of graves within the earth; and, therein laid,--there lies two kinsmen digg'd their graves with weeping eyes. would not this ill do well? well, well, i see i talk but idly, and you laugh at me. most mighty prince, my lord northumberland, what says king bolingbroke? will his majesty give richard leave to live till richard die? you make a leg, and bolingbroke says ay. northumberland my lord, in the base court he doth attend to speak with you; may it please you to come down. king richard ii down, down i come; like glistering phaethon, wanting the manage of unruly jades. in the base court? base court, where kings grow base, to come at traitors' calls and do them grace. in the base court? come down? down, court! down, king! for night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing. [exeunt from above] henry bolingbroke what says his majesty? northumberland sorrow and grief of heart makes him speak fondly, like a frantic man yet he is come. [enter king richard and his attendants below] henry bolingbroke stand all apart, and show fair duty to his majesty. [he kneels down] my gracious lord,- king richard ii fair cousin, you debase your princely knee to make the base earth proud with kissing it: me rather had my heart might feel your love than my unpleased eye see your courtesy. up, cousin, up; your heart is up, i know, thus high at least, although your knee be low. henry bolingbroke my gracious lord, i come but for mine own. king richard ii your own is yours, and i am yours, and all. henry bolingbroke so far be mine, my most redoubted lord, as my true service shall deserve your love. king richard ii well you deserve: they well deserve to have, that know the strong'st and surest way to get. uncle, give me your hands: nay, dry your eyes; tears show their love, but want their remedies. cousin, i am too young to be your father, though you are old enough to be my heir. what you will have, i'll give, and willing too; for do we must what force will have us do. set on towards london, cousin, is it so? henry bolingbroke yea, my good lord. king richard ii then i must not say no. [flourish. exeunt] king richard ii act iii scene iv langley. the duke of york's garden. [enter the queen and two ladies] queen what sport shall we devise here in this garden, to drive away the heavy thought of care? lady madam, we'll play at bowls. queen 'twill make me think the world is full of rubs, and that my fortune rubs against the bias. lady madam, we'll dance. queen my legs can keep no measure in delight, when my poor heart no measure keeps in grief: therefore, no dancing, girl; some other sport. lady madam, we'll tell tales. queen of sorrow or of joy? lady of either, madam. queen of neither, girl: for of joy, being altogether wanting, it doth remember me the more of sorrow; or if of grief, being altogether had, it adds more sorrow to my want of joy: for what i have i need not to repeat; and what i want it boots not to complain. lady madam, i'll sing. queen 'tis well that thou hast cause but thou shouldst please me better, wouldst thou weep. lady i could weep, madam, would it do you good. queen and i could sing, would weeping do me good, and never borrow any tear of thee. [enter a gardener, and two servants] but stay, here come the gardeners: let's step into the shadow of these trees. my wretchedness unto a row of pins, they'll talk of state; for every one doth so against a change; woe is forerun with woe. [queen and ladies retire] gardener go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks, which, like unruly children, make their sire stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight: give some supportance to the bending twigs. go thou, and like an executioner, cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays, that look too lofty in our commonwealth: all must be even in our government. you thus employ'd, i will go root away the noisome weeds, which without profit suck the soil's fertility from wholesome flowers. servant why should we in the compass of a pale keep law and form and due proportion, showing, as in a model, our firm estate, when our sea-walled garden, the whole land, is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up, her fruit-trees all upturned, her hedges ruin'd, her knots disorder'd and her wholesome herbs swarming with caterpillars? gardener hold thy peace: he that hath suffer'd this disorder'd spring hath now himself met with the fall of leaf: the weeds which his broad-spreading leaves did shelter, that seem'd in eating him to hold him up, are pluck'd up root and all by bolingbroke, i mean the earl of wiltshire, bushy, green. servant what, are they dead? gardener they are; and bolingbroke hath seized the wasteful king. o, what pity is it that he had not so trimm'd and dress'd his land as we this garden! we at time of year do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees, lest, being over-proud in sap and blood, with too much riches it confound itself: had he done so to great and growing men, they might have lived to bear and he to taste their fruits of duty: superfluous branches we lop away, that bearing boughs may live: had he done so, himself had borne the crown, which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down. servant what, think you then the king shall be deposed? gardener depress'd he is already, and deposed 'tis doubt he will be: letters came last night to a dear friend of the good duke of york's, that tell black tidings. queen o, i am press'd to death through want of speaking! [coming forward] thou, old adam's likeness, set to dress this garden, how dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news? what eve, what serpent, hath suggested thee to make a second fall of cursed man? why dost thou say king richard is deposed? darest thou, thou little better thing than earth, divine his downfall? say, where, when, and how, camest thou by this ill tidings? speak, thou wretch. gardener pardon me, madam: little joy have i to breathe this news; yet what i say is true. king richard, he is in the mighty hold of bolingbroke: their fortunes both are weigh'd: in your lord's scale is nothing but himself, and some few vanities that make him light; but in the balance of great bolingbroke, besides himself, are all the english peers, and with that odds he weighs king richard down. post you to london, and you will find it so; i speak no more than every one doth know. queen nimble mischance, that art so light of foot, doth not thy embassage belong to me, and am i last that knows it? o, thou think'st to serve me last, that i may longest keep thy sorrow in my breast. come, ladies, go, to meet at london london's king in woe. what, was i born to this, that my sad look should grace the triumph of great bolingbroke? gardener, for telling me these news of woe, pray god the plants thou graft'st may never grow. [exeunt queen and ladies] gardener poor queen! so that thy state might be no worse, i would my skill were subject to thy curse. here did she fall a tear; here in this place i'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace: rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen, in the remembrance of a weeping queen. [exeunt] king richard ii act iv scene i westminster hall. [enter, as to the parliament, henry bolingbroke, duke of aumerle, northumberland, henry percy, lord fitzwater, duke of surrey, the bishop of carlisle, the abbot of westminster, and another lord, herald, officers, and bagot] henry bolingbroke call forth bagot. now, bagot, freely speak thy mind; what thou dost know of noble gloucester's death, who wrought it with the king, and who perform'd the bloody office of his timeless end. bagot then set before my face the lord aumerle. henry bolingbroke cousin, stand forth, and look upon that man. bagot my lord aumerle, i know your daring tongue scorns to unsay what once it hath deliver'd. in that dead time when gloucester's death was plotted, i heard you say, 'is not my arm of length, that reacheth from the restful english court as far as calais, to mine uncle's head?' amongst much other talk, that very time, i heard you say that you had rather refuse the offer of an hundred thousand crowns than bolingbroke's return to england; adding withal how blest this land would be in this your cousin's death. duke of aumerle princes and noble lords, what answer shall i make to this base man? shall i so much dishonour my fair stars, on equal terms to give him chastisement? either i must, or have mine honour soil'd with the attainder of his slanderous lips. there is my gage, the manual seal of death, that marks thee out for hell: i say, thou liest, and will maintain what thou hast said is false in thy heart-blood, though being all too base to stain the temper of my knightly sword. henry bolingbroke bagot, forbear; thou shalt not take it up. duke of aumerle excepting one, i would he were the best in all this presence that hath moved me so. lord fitzwater if that thy valour stand on sympathy, there is my gage, aumerle, in gage to thine: by that fair sun which shows me where thou stand'st, i heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spakest it that thou wert cause of noble gloucester's death. if thou deny'st it twenty times, thou liest; and i will turn thy falsehood to thy heart, where it was forged, with my rapier's point. duke of aumerle thou darest not, coward, live to see that day. lord fitzwater now by my soul, i would it were this hour. duke of aumerle fitzwater, thou art damn'd to hell for this. henry percy aumerle, thou liest; his honour is as true in this appeal as thou art all unjust; and that thou art so, there i throw my gage, to prove it on thee to the extremest point of mortal breathing: seize it, if thou darest. duke of aumerle an if i do not, may my hands rot off and never brandish more revengeful steel over the glittering helmet of my foe! lord i task the earth to the like, forsworn aumerle; and spur thee on with full as many lies as may be holloa'd in thy treacherous ear from sun to sun: there is my honour's pawn; engage it to the trial, if thou darest. duke of aumerle who sets me else? by heaven, i'll throw at all: i have a thousand spirits in one breast, to answer twenty thousand such as you. duke of surrey my lord fitzwater, i do remember well the very time aumerle and you did talk. lord fitzwater 'tis very true: you were in presence then; and you can witness with me this is true. duke of surrey as false, by heaven, as heaven itself is true. lord fitzwater surrey, thou liest. duke of surrey dishonourable boy! that lie shall lie so heavy on my sword, that it shall render vengeance and revenge till thou the lie-giver and that lie do lie in earth as quiet as thy father's skull: in proof whereof, there is my honour's pawn; engage it to the trial, if thou darest. lord fitzwater how fondly dost thou spur a forward horse! if i dare eat, or drink, or breathe, or live, i dare meet surrey in a wilderness, and spit upon him, whilst i say he lies, and lies, and lies: there is my bond of faith, to tie thee to my strong correction. as i intend to thrive in this new world, aumerle is guilty of my true appeal: besides, i heard the banish'd norfolk say that thou, aumerle, didst send two of thy men to execute the noble duke at calais. duke of aumerle some honest christian trust me with a gage that norfolk lies: here do i throw down this, if he may be repeal'd, to try his honour. henry bolingbroke these differences shall all rest under gage till norfolk be repeal'd: repeal'd he shall be, and, though mine enemy, restored again to all his lands and signories: when he's return'd, against aumerle we will enforce his trial. bishop of carlisle that honourable day shall ne'er be seen. many a time hath banish'd norfolk fought for jesu christ in glorious christian field, streaming the ensign of the christian cross against black pagans, turks, and saracens: and toil'd with works of war, retired himself to italy; and there at venice gave his body to that pleasant country's earth, and his pure soul unto his captain christ, under whose colours he had fought so long. henry bolingbroke why, bishop, is norfolk dead? bishop of carlisle as surely as i live, my lord. henry bolingbroke sweet peace conduct his sweet soul to the bosom of good old abraham! lords appellants, your differences shall all rest under gage till we assign you to your days of trial. [enter duke of york, attended] duke of york great duke of lancaster, i come to thee from plume-pluck'd richard; who with willing soul adopts thee heir, and his high sceptre yields to the possession of thy royal hand: ascend his throne, descending now from him; and long live henry, fourth of that name! henry bolingbroke in god's name, i'll ascend the regal throne. bishop of carlisle marry. god forbid! worst in this royal presence may i speak, yet best beseeming me to speak the truth. would god that any in this noble presence were enough noble to be upright judge of noble richard! then true noblesse would learn him forbearance from so foul a wrong. what subject can give sentence on his king? and who sits here that is not richard's subject? thieves are not judged but they are by to hear, although apparent guilt be seen in them; and shall the figure of god's majesty, his captain, steward, deputy-elect, anointed, crowned, planted many years, be judged by subject and inferior breath, and he himself not present? o, forfend it, god, that in a christian climate souls refined should show so heinous, black, obscene a deed! i speak to subjects, and a subject speaks, stirr'd up by god, thus boldly for his king: my lord of hereford here, whom you call king, is a foul traitor to proud hereford's king: and if you crown him, let me prophesy: the blood of english shall manure the ground, and future ages groan for this foul act; peace shall go sleep with turks and infidels, and in this seat of peace tumultuous wars shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound; disorder, horror, fear and mutiny shall here inhabit, and this land be call'd the field of golgotha and dead men's skulls. o, if you raise this house against this house, it will the woefullest division prove that ever fell upon this cursed earth. prevent it, resist it, let it not be so, lest child, child's children, cry against you woe! northumberland well have you argued, sir; and, for your pains, of capital treason we arrest you here. my lord of westminster, be it your charge to keep him safely till his day of trial. may it please you, lords, to grant the commons' suit. henry bolingbroke fetch hither richard, that in common view he may surrender; so we shall proceed without suspicion. duke of york i will be his conduct. [exit] henry bolingbroke lords, you that here are under our arrest, procure your sureties for your days of answer. little are we beholding to your love, and little look'd for at your helping hands. [re-enter duke of york, with king richard ii, and officers bearing the regalia] king richard ii alack, why am i sent for to a king, before i have shook off the regal thoughts wherewith i reign'd? i hardly yet have learn'd to insinuate, flatter, bow, and bend my limbs: give sorrow leave awhile to tutor me to this submission. yet i well remember the favours of these men: were they not mine? did they not sometime cry, 'all hail!' to me? so judas did to christ: but he, in twelve, found truth in all but one: i, in twelve thousand, none. god save the king! will no man say amen? am i both priest and clerk? well then, amen. god save the king! although i be not he; and yet, amen, if heaven do think him me. to do what service am i sent for hither? duke of york to do that office of thine own good will which tired majesty did make thee offer, the resignation of thy state and crown to henry bolingbroke. king richard ii give me the crown. here, cousin, seize the crown; here cousin: on this side my hand, and on that side yours. now is this golden crown like a deep well that owes two buckets, filling one another, the emptier ever dancing in the air, the other down, unseen and full of water: that bucket down and full of tears am i, drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high. henry bolingbroke i thought you had been willing to resign. king richard ii my crown i am; but still my griefs are mine: you may my glories and my state depose, but not my griefs; still am i king of those. henry bolingbroke part of your cares you give me with your crown. king richard ii your cares set up do not pluck my cares down. my care is loss of care, by old care done; your care is gain of care, by new care won: the cares i give i have, though given away; they tend the crown, yet still with me they stay. henry bolingbroke are you contented to resign the crown? king richard ii ay, no; no, ay; for i must nothing be; therefore no no, for i resign to thee. now mark me, how i will undo myself; i give this heavy weight from off my head and this unwieldy sceptre from my hand, the pride of kingly sway from out my heart; with mine own tears i wash away my balm, with mine own hands i give away my crown, with mine own tongue deny my sacred state, with mine own breath release all duty's rites: all pomp and majesty i do forswear; my manors, rents, revenues i forego; my acts, decrees, and statutes i deny: god pardon all oaths that are broke to me! god keep all vows unbroke that swear to thee! make me, that nothing have, with nothing grieved, and thou with all pleased, that hast all achieved! long mayst thou live in richard's seat to sit, and soon lie richard in an earthly pit! god save king harry, unking'd richard says, and send him many years of sunshine days! what more remains? northumberland no more, but that you read these accusations and these grievous crimes committed by your person and your followers against the state and profit of this land; that, by confessing them, the souls of men may deem that you are worthily deposed. king richard ii must i do so? and must i ravel out my weaved-up folly? gentle northumberland, if thy offences were upon record, would it not shame thee in so fair a troop to read a lecture of them? if thou wouldst, there shouldst thou find one heinous article, containing the deposing of a king and cracking the strong warrant of an oath, mark'd with a blot, damn'd in the book of heaven: nay, all of you that stand and look upon, whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself, though some of you with pilate wash your hands showing an outward pity; yet you pilates have here deliver'd me to my sour cross, and water cannot wash away your sin. northumberland my lord, dispatch; read o'er these articles. king richard ii mine eyes are full of tears, i cannot see: and yet salt water blinds them not so much but they can see a sort of traitors here. nay, if i turn mine eyes upon myself, i find myself a traitor with the rest; for i have given here my soul's consent to undeck the pompous body of a king; made glory base and sovereignty a slave, proud majesty a subject, state a peasant. northumberland my lord,- king richard ii no lord of thine, thou haught insulting man, nor no man's lord; i have no name, no title, no, not that name was given me at the font, but 'tis usurp'd: alack the heavy day, that i have worn so many winters out, and know not now what name to call myself! o that i were a mockery king of snow, standing before the sun of bolingbroke, to melt myself away in water-drops! good king, great king, and yet not greatly good, an if my word be sterling yet in england, let it command a mirror hither straight, that it may show me what a face i have, since it is bankrupt of his majesty. henry bolingbroke go some of you and fetch a looking-glass. [exit an attendant] northumberland read o'er this paper while the glass doth come. king richard ii fiend, thou torment'st me ere i come to hell! henry bolingbroke urge it no more, my lord northumberland. northumberland the commons will not then be satisfied. king richard ii they shall be satisfied: i'll read enough, when i do see the very book indeed where all my sins are writ, and that's myself. [re-enter attendant, with a glass] give me the glass, and therein will i read. no deeper wrinkles yet? hath sorrow struck so many blows upon this face of mine, and made no deeper wounds? o flattering glass, like to my followers in prosperity, thou dost beguile me! was this face the face that every day under his household roof did keep ten thousand men? was this the face that, like the sun, did make beholders wink? was this the face that faced so many follies, and was at last out-faced by bolingbroke? a brittle glory shineth in this face: as brittle as the glory is the face; [dashes the glass against the ground] for there it is, crack'd in a hundred shivers. mark, silent king, the moral of this sport, how soon my sorrow hath destroy'd my face. henry bolingbroke the shadow of your sorrow hath destroy'd the shadow or your face. king richard ii say that again. the shadow of my sorrow! ha! let's see: 'tis very true, my grief lies all within; and these external manners of laments are merely shadows to the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul; there lies the substance: and i thank thee, king, for thy great bounty, that not only givest me cause to wail but teachest me the way how to lament the cause. i'll beg one boon, and then be gone and trouble you no more. shall i obtain it? henry bolingbroke name it, fair cousin. king richard ii 'fair cousin'? i am greater than a king: for when i was a king, my flatterers were then but subjects; being now a subject, i have a king here to my flatterer. being so great, i have no need to beg. henry bolingbroke yet ask. king richard ii and shall i have? henry bolingbroke you shall. king richard ii then give me leave to go. henry bolingbroke whither? king richard ii whither you will, so i were from your sights. henry bolingbroke go, some of you convey him to the tower. king richard ii o, good! convey? conveyers are you all, that rise thus nimbly by a true king's fall. [exeunt king richard ii, some lords, and a guard] henry bolingbroke on wednesday next we solemnly set down our coronation: lords, prepare yourselves. [exeunt all except the bishop of carlisle, the abbot of westminster, and duke of aumerle] abbot a woeful pageant have we here beheld. bishop of carlisle the woe's to come; the children yet unborn. shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn. duke of aumerle you holy clergymen, is there no plot to rid the realm of this pernicious blot? abbot my lord, before i freely speak my mind herein, you shall not only take the sacrament to bury mine intents, but also to effect whatever i shall happen to devise. i see your brows are full of discontent, your hearts of sorrow and your eyes of tears: come home with me to supper; and i'll lay a plot shall show us all a merry day. [exeunt] king richard ii act v scene i london. a street leading to the tower. [enter queen and ladies] queen this way the king will come; this is the way to julius caesar's ill-erected tower, to whose flint bosom my condemned lord is doom'd a prisoner by proud bolingbroke: here let us rest, if this rebellious earth have any resting for her true king's queen. [enter king richard ii and guard] but soft, but see, or rather do not see, my fair rose wither: yet look up, behold, that you in pity may dissolve to dew, and wash him fresh again with true-love tears. ah, thou, the model where old troy did stand, thou map of honour, thou king richard's tomb, and not king richard; thou most beauteous inn, why should hard-favour'd grief be lodged in thee, when triumph is become an alehouse guest? king richard ii join not with grief, fair woman, do not so, to make my end too sudden: learn, good soul, to think our former state a happy dream; from which awaked, the truth of what we are shows us but this: i am sworn brother, sweet, to grim necessity, and he and i will keep a league till death. hie thee to france and cloister thee in some religious house: our holy lives must win a new world's crown, which our profane hours here have stricken down. queen what, is my richard both in shape and mind transform'd and weaken'd? hath bolingbroke deposed thine intellect? hath he been in thy heart? the lion dying thrusteth forth his paw, and wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage to be o'erpower'd; and wilt thou, pupil-like, take thy correction mildly, kiss the rod, and fawn on rage with base humility, which art a lion and a king of beasts? king richard ii a king of beasts, indeed; if aught but beasts, i had been still a happy king of men. good sometime queen, prepare thee hence for france: think i am dead and that even here thou takest, as from my death-bed, thy last living leave. in winter's tedious nights sit by the fire with good old folks and let them tell thee tales of woeful ages long ago betid; and ere thou bid good night, to quit their griefs, tell thou the lamentable tale of me and send the hearers weeping to their beds: for why, the senseless brands will sympathize the heavy accent of thy moving tongue and in compassion weep the fire out; and some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black, for the deposing of a rightful king. [enter northumberland and others] northumberland my lord, the mind of bolingbroke is changed: you must to pomfret, not unto the tower. and, madam, there is order ta'en for you; with all swift speed you must away to france. king richard ii northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal the mounting bolingbroke ascends my throne, the time shall not be many hours of age more than it is ere foul sin gathering head shalt break into corruption: thou shalt think, though he divide the realm and give thee half, it is too little, helping him to all; and he shall think that thou, which know'st the way to plant unrightful kings, wilt know again, being ne'er so little urged, another way to pluck him headlong from the usurped throne. the love of wicked men converts to fear; that fear to hate, and hate turns one or both to worthy danger and deserved death. northumberland my guilt be on my head, and there an end. take leave and part; for you must part forthwith. king richard ii doubly divorced! bad men, you violate a twofold marriage, 'twixt my crown and me, and then betwixt me and my married wife. let me unkiss the oath 'twixt thee and me; and yet not so, for with a kiss 'twas made. part us, northumberland; i toward the north, where shivering cold and sickness pines the clime; my wife to france: from whence, set forth in pomp, she came adorned hither like sweet may, sent back like hallowmas or short'st of day. queen and must we be divided? must we part? king richard ii ay, hand from hand, my love, and heart from heart. queen banish us both and send the king with me. northumberland that were some love but little policy. queen then whither he goes, thither let me go. king richard ii so two, together weeping, make one woe. weep thou for me in france, i for thee here; better far off than near, be ne'er the near. go, count thy way with sighs; i mine with groans. queen so longest way shall have the longest moans. king richard ii twice for one step i'll groan, the way being short, and piece the way out with a heavy heart. come, come, in wooing sorrow let's be brief, since, wedding it, there is such length in grief; one kiss shall stop our mouths, and dumbly part; thus give i mine, and thus take i thy heart. queen give me mine own again; 'twere no good part to take on me to keep and kill thy heart. so, now i have mine own again, be gone, that i might strive to kill it with a groan. king richard ii we make woe wanton with this fond delay: once more, adieu; the rest let sorrow say. [exeunt] king richard ii act v scene ii the duke of york's palace. [enter duke of york and duchess of york] duchess of york my lord, you told me you would tell the rest, when weeping made you break the story off, of our two cousins coming into london. duke of york where did i leave? duchess of york at that sad stop, my lord, where rude misgovern'd hands from windows' tops threw dust and rubbish on king richard's head. duke of york then, as i said, the duke, great bolingbroke, mounted upon a hot and fiery steed which his aspiring rider seem'd to know, with slow but stately pace kept on his course, whilst all tongues cried 'god save thee, bolingbroke!' you would have thought the very windows spake, so many greedy looks of young and old through casements darted their desiring eyes upon his visage, and that all the walls with painted imagery had said at once 'jesu preserve thee! welcome, bolingbroke!' whilst he, from the one side to the other turning, bareheaded, lower than his proud steed's neck, bespake them thus: 'i thank you, countrymen:' and thus still doing, thus he pass'd along. duchess of york alack, poor richard! where rode he the whilst? duke of york as in a theatre, the eyes of men, after a well-graced actor leaves the stage, are idly bent on him that enters next, thinking his prattle to be tedious; even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes did scowl on gentle richard; no man cried 'god save him!' no joyful tongue gave him his welcome home: but dust was thrown upon his sacred head: which with such gentle sorrow he shook off, his face still combating with tears and smiles, the badges of his grief and patience, that had not god, for some strong purpose, steel'd the hearts of men, they must perforce have melted and barbarism itself have pitied him. but heaven hath a hand in these events, to whose high will we bound our calm contents. to bolingbroke are we sworn subjects now, whose state and honour i for aye allow. duchess of york here comes my son aumerle. duke of york aumerle that was; but that is lost for being richard's friend, and, madam, you must call him rutland now: i am in parliament pledge for his truth and lasting fealty to the new-made king. [enter duke of aumerle] duchess of york welcome, my son: who are the violets now that strew the green lap of the new come spring? duke of aumerle madam, i know not, nor i greatly care not: god knows i had as lief be none as one. duke of york well, bear you well in this new spring of time, lest you be cropp'd before you come to prime. what news from oxford? hold those justs and triumphs? duke of aumerle for aught i know, my lord, they do. duke of york you will be there, i know. duke of aumerle if god prevent not, i purpose so. duke of york what seal is that, that hangs without thy bosom? yea, look'st thou pale? let me see the writing. duke of aumerle my lord, 'tis nothing. duke of york no matter, then, who see it; i will be satisfied; let me see the writing. duke of aumerle i do beseech your grace to pardon me: it is a matter of small consequence, which for some reasons i would not have seen. duke of york which for some reasons, sir, i mean to see. i fear, i fear,- duchess of york what should you fear? 'tis nothing but some bond, that he is enter'd into for gay apparel 'gainst the triumph day. duke of york bound to himself! what doth he with a bond that he is bound to? wife, thou art a fool. boy, let me see the writing. duke of aumerle i do beseech you, pardon me; i may not show it. duke of york i will be satisfied; let me see it, i say. [he plucks it out of his bosom and reads it] treason! foul treason! villain! traitor! slave! duchess of york what is the matter, my lord? duke of york ho! who is within there? [enter a servant] saddle my horse. god for his mercy, what treachery is here! duchess of york why, what is it, my lord? duke of york give me my boots, i say; saddle my horse. now, by mine honour, by my life, by my troth, i will appeach the villain. duchess of york what is the matter? duke of york peace, foolish woman. duchess of york i will not peace. what is the matter, aumerle. duke of aumerle good mother, be content; it is no more than my poor life must answer. duchess of york thy life answer! duke of york bring me my boots: i will unto the king. [re-enter servant with boots] duchess of york strike him, aumerle. poor boy, thou art amazed. hence, villain! never more come in my sight. duke of york give me my boots, i say. duchess of york why, york, what wilt thou do? wilt thou not hide the trespass of thine own? have we more sons? or are we like to have? is not my teeming date drunk up with time? and wilt thou pluck my fair son from mine age, and rob me of a happy mother's name? is he not like thee? is he not thine own? duke of york thou fond mad woman, wilt thou conceal this dark conspiracy? a dozen of them here have ta'en the sacrament, and interchangeably set down their hands, to kill the king at oxford. duchess of york he shall be none; we'll keep him here: then what is that to him? duke of york away, fond woman! were he twenty times my son, i would appeach him. duchess of york hadst thou groan'd for him as i have done, thou wouldst be more pitiful. but now i know thy mind; thou dost suspect that i have been disloyal to thy bed, and that he is a bastard, not thy son: sweet york, sweet husband, be not of that mind: he is as like thee as a man may be, not like to me, or any of my kin, and yet i love him. duke of york make way, unruly woman! [exit] duchess of york after, aumerle! mount thee upon his horse; spur post, and get before him to the king, and beg thy pardon ere he do accuse thee. i'll not be long behind; though i be old, i doubt not but to ride as fast as york: and never will i rise up from the ground till bolingbroke have pardon'd thee. away, be gone! [exeunt] king richard ii act v scene iii a royal palace. [enter henry bolingbroke, henry percy, and other lords] henry bolingbroke can no man tell me of my unthrifty son? 'tis full three months since i did see him last; if any plague hang over us, 'tis he. i would to god, my lords, he might be found: inquire at london, 'mongst the taverns there, for there, they say, he daily doth frequent, with unrestrained loose companions, even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes, and beat our watch, and rob our passengers; which he, young wanton and effeminate boy, takes on the point of honour to support so dissolute a crew. henry percy my lord, some two days since i saw the prince, and told him of those triumphs held at oxford. henry bolingbroke and what said the gallant? henry percy his answer was, he would unto the stews, and from the common'st creature pluck a glove, and wear it as a favour; and with that he would unhorse the lustiest challenger. henry bolingbroke as dissolute as desperate; yet through both i see some sparks of better hope, which elder years may happily bring forth. but who comes here? [enter duke of aumerle] duke of aumerle where is the king? henry bolingbroke what means our cousin, that he stares and looks so wildly? duke of aumerle god save your grace! i do beseech your majesty, to have some conference with your grace alone. henry bolingbroke withdraw yourselves, and leave us here alone. [exeunt henry percy and lords] what is the matter with our cousin now? duke of aumerle for ever may my knees grow to the earth, my tongue cleave to my roof within my mouth unless a pardon ere i rise or speak. henry bolingbroke intended or committed was this fault? if on the first, how heinous e'er it be, to win thy after-love i pardon thee. duke of aumerle then give me leave that i may turn the key, that no man enter till my tale be done. henry bolingbroke have thy desire. duke of york [within] my liege, beware; look to thyself; thou hast a traitor in thy presence there. henry bolingbroke villain, i'll make thee safe. [drawing] duke of aumerle stay thy revengeful hand; thou hast no cause to fear. duke of york [within] open the door, secure, foolhardy king: shall i for love speak treason to thy face? open the door, or i will break it open. [enter duke of york] henry bolingbroke what is the matter, uncle? speak; recover breath; tell us how near is danger, that we may arm us to encounter it. duke of york peruse this writing here, and thou shalt know the treason that my haste forbids me show. duke of aumerle remember, as thou read'st, thy promise pass'd: i do repent me; read not my name there my heart is not confederate with my hand. duke of york it was, villain, ere thy hand did set it down. i tore it from the traitor's bosom, king; fear, and not love, begets his penitence: forget to pity him, lest thy pity prove a serpent that will sting thee to the heart. henry bolingbroke o heinous, strong and bold conspiracy! o loyal father of a treacherous son! thou sheer, immaculate and silver fountain, from when this stream through muddy passages hath held his current and defiled himself! thy overflow of good converts to bad, and thy abundant goodness shall excuse this deadly blot in thy digressing son. duke of york so shall my virtue be his vice's bawd; and he shall spend mine honour with his shame, as thriftless sons their scraping fathers' gold. mine honour lives when his dishonour dies, or my shamed life in his dishonour lies: thou kill'st me in his life; giving him breath, the traitor lives, the true man's put to death. duchess of york [within] what ho, my liege! for god's sake, let me in. henry bolingbroke what shrill-voiced suppliant makes this eager cry? duchess of york a woman, and thy aunt, great king; 'tis i. speak with me, pity me, open the door. a beggar begs that never begg'd before. henry bolingbroke our scene is alter'd from a serious thing, and now changed to 'the beggar and the king.' my dangerous cousin, let your mother in: i know she is come to pray for your foul sin. duke of york if thou do pardon, whosoever pray, more sins for this forgiveness prosper may. this fester'd joint cut off, the rest rest sound; this let alone will all the rest confound. [enter duchess of york] duchess of york o king, believe not this hard-hearted man! love loving not itself none other can. duke of york thou frantic woman, what dost thou make here? shall thy old dugs once more a traitor rear? duchess of york sweet york, be patient. hear me, gentle liege. [kneels] henry bolingbroke rise up, good aunt. duchess of york not yet, i thee beseech: for ever will i walk upon my knees, and never see day that the happy sees, till thou give joy; until thou bid me joy, by pardoning rutland, my transgressing boy. duke of aumerle unto my mother's prayers i bend my knee. duke of york against them both my true joints bended be. ill mayst thou thrive, if thou grant any grace! duchess of york pleads he in earnest? look upon his face; his eyes do drop no tears, his prayers are in jest; his words come from his mouth, ours from our breast: he prays but faintly and would be denied; we pray with heart and soul and all beside: his weary joints would gladly rise, i know; our knees shall kneel till to the ground they grow: his prayers are full of false hypocrisy; ours of true zeal and deep integrity. our prayers do out-pray his; then let them have that mercy which true prayer ought to have. henry bolingbroke good aunt, stand up. duchess of york nay, do not say, 'stand up;' say, 'pardon' first, and afterwards 'stand up.' and if i were thy nurse, thy tongue to teach, 'pardon' should be the first word of thy speech. i never long'd to hear a word till now; say 'pardon,' king; let pity teach thee how: the word is short, but not so short as sweet; no word like 'pardon' for kings' mouths so meet. duke of york speak it in french, king; say, 'pardonne moi.' duchess of york dost thou teach pardon pardon to destroy? ah, my sour husband, my hard-hearted lord, that set'st the word itself against the word! speak 'pardon' as 'tis current in our land; the chopping french we do not understand. thine eye begins to speak; set thy tongue there; or in thy piteous heart plant thou thine ear; that hearing how our plaints and prayers do pierce, pity may move thee 'pardon' to rehearse. henry bolingbroke good aunt, stand up. duchess of york i do not sue to stand; pardon is all the suit i have in hand. henry bolingbroke i pardon him, as god shall pardon me. duchess of york o happy vantage of a kneeling knee! yet am i sick for fear: speak it again; twice saying 'pardon' doth not pardon twain, but makes one pardon strong. henry bolingbroke with all my heart i pardon him. duchess of york a god on earth thou art. henry bolingbroke but for our trusty brother-in-law and the abbot, with all the rest of that consorted crew, destruction straight shall dog them at the heels. good uncle, help to order several powers to oxford, or where'er these traitors are: they shall not live within this world, i swear, but i will have them, if i once know where. uncle, farewell: and, cousin too, adieu: your mother well hath pray'd, and prove you true. duchess of york come, my old son: i pray god make thee new. [exeunt] king richard ii act v scene iv the same. [enter exton and servant] exton didst thou not mark the king, what words he spake, 'have i no friend will rid me of this living fear?' was it not so? servant these were his very words. exton 'have i no friend?' quoth he: he spake it twice, and urged it twice together, did he not? servant he did. exton and speaking it, he wistly look'd on me, and who should say, 'i would thou wert the man' that would divorce this terror from my heart;' meaning the king at pomfret. come, let's go: i am the king's friend, and will rid his foe. [exeunt] king richard ii act v scene v pomfret castle. [enter king richard] king richard ii i have been studying how i may compare this prison where i live unto the world: and for because the world is populous and here is not a creature but myself, i cannot do it; yet i'll hammer it out. my brain i'll prove the female to my soul, my soul the father; and these two beget a generation of still-breeding thoughts, and these same thoughts people this little world, in humours like the people of this world, for no thought is contented. the better sort, as thoughts of things divine, are intermix'd with scruples and do set the word itself against the word: as thus, 'come, little ones,' and then again, 'it is as hard to come as for a camel to thread the postern of a small needle's eye.' thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails may tear a passage through the flinty ribs of this hard world, my ragged prison walls, and, for they cannot, die in their own pride. thoughts tending to content flatter themselves that they are not the first of fortune's slaves, nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame, that many have and others must sit there; and in this thought they find a kind of ease, bearing their own misfortunes on the back of such as have before endured the like. thus play i in one person many people, and none contented: sometimes am i king; then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, and so i am: then crushing penury persuades me i was better when a king; then am i king'd again: and by and by think that i am unking'd by bolingbroke, and straight am nothing: but whate'er i be, nor i nor any man that but man is with nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased with being nothing. music do i hear? [music] ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is, when time is broke and no proportion kept! so is it in the music of men's lives. and here have i the daintiness of ear to cheque time broke in a disorder'd string; but for the concord of my state and time had not an ear to hear my true time broke. i wasted time, and now doth time waste me; for now hath time made me his numbering clock: my thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch, whereto my finger, like a dial's point, is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart, which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans show minutes, times, and hours: but my time runs posting on in bolingbroke's proud joy, while i stand fooling here, his jack o' the clock. this music mads me; let it sound no more; for though it have holp madmen to their wits, in me it seems it will make wise men mad. yet blessing on his heart that gives it me! for 'tis a sign of love; and love to richard is a strange brooch in this all-hating world. [enter a groom of the stable] groom hail, royal prince! king richard ii thanks, noble peer; the cheapest of us is ten groats too dear. what art thou? and how comest thou hither, where no man never comes but that sad dog that brings me food to make misfortune live? groom i was a poor groom of thy stable, king, when thou wert king; who, travelling towards york, with much ado at length have gotten leave to look upon my sometimes royal master's face. o, how it yearn'd my heart when i beheld in london streets, that coronation-day, when bolingbroke rode on roan barbary, that horse that thou so often hast bestrid, that horse that i so carefully have dress'd! king richard ii rode he on barbary? tell me, gentle friend, how went he under him? groom so proudly as if he disdain'd the ground. king richard ii so proud that bolingbroke was on his back! that jade hath eat bread from my royal hand; this hand hath made him proud with clapping him. would he not stumble? would he not fall down, since pride must have a fall, and break the neck of that proud man that did usurp his back? forgiveness, horse! why do i rail on thee, since thou, created to be awed by man, wast born to bear? i was not made a horse; and yet i bear a burthen like an ass, spurr'd, gall'd and tired by jouncing bolingbroke. [enter keeper, with a dish] keeper fellow, give place; here is no longer stay. king richard ii if thou love me, 'tis time thou wert away. groom what my tongue dares not, that my heart shall say. [exit] keeper my lord, will't please you to fall to? king richard ii taste of it first, as thou art wont to do. keeper my lord, i dare not: sir pierce of exton, who lately came from the king, commands the contrary. king richard ii the devil take henry of lancaster and thee! patience is stale, and i am weary of it. [beats the keeper] keeper help, help, help! [enter exton and servants, armed] king richard ii how now! what means death in this rude assault? villain, thy own hand yields thy death's instrument. [snatching an axe from a servant and killing him] go thou, and fill another room in hell. [he kills another. then exton strikes him down] that hand shall burn in never-quenching fire that staggers thus my person. exton, thy fierce hand hath with the king's blood stain'd the king's own land. mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high; whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die. [dies] exton as full of valour as of royal blood: both have i spill'd; o would the deed were good! for now the devil, that told me i did well, says that this deed is chronicled in hell. this dead king to the living king i'll bear take hence the rest, and give them burial here. [exeunt] king richard ii act v scene vi windsor castle. [flourish. enter henry bolingbroke, duke of york, with other lords, and attendants] henry bolingbroke kind uncle york, the latest news we hear is that the rebels have consumed with fire our town of cicester in gloucestershire; but whether they be ta'en or slain we hear not. [enter northumberland] welcome, my lord what is the news? northumberland first, to thy sacred state wish i all happiness. the next news is, i have to london sent the heads of oxford, salisbury, blunt, and kent: the manner of their taking may appear at large discoursed in this paper here. henry bolingbroke we thank thee, gentle percy, for thy pains; and to thy worth will add right worthy gains. [enter lord fitzwater] lord fitzwater my lord, i have from oxford sent to london the heads of brocas and sir bennet seely, two of the dangerous consorted traitors that sought at oxford thy dire overthrow. henry bolingbroke thy pains, fitzwater, shall not be forgot; right noble is thy merit, well i wot. [enter henry percy, and the bishop of carlisle] henry percy the grand conspirator, abbot of westminster, with clog of conscience and sour melancholy hath yielded up his body to the grave; but here is carlisle living, to abide thy kingly doom and sentence of his pride. henry bolingbroke carlisle, this is your doom: choose out some secret place, some reverend room, more than thou hast, and with it joy thy life; so as thou livest in peace, die free from strife: for though mine enemy thou hast ever been, high sparks of honour in thee have i seen. [enter exton, with persons bearing a coffin] exton great king, within this coffin i present thy buried fear: herein all breathless lies the mightiest of thy greatest enemies, richard of bordeaux, by me hither brought. henry bolingbroke exton, i thank thee not; for thou hast wrought a deed of slander with thy fatal hand upon my head and all this famous land. exton from your own mouth, my lord, did i this deed. henry bolingbroke they love not poison that do poison need, nor do i thee: though i did wish him dead, i hate the murderer, love him murdered. the guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour, but neither my good word nor princely favour: with cain go wander through shades of night, and never show thy head by day nor light. lords, i protest, my soul is full of woe, that blood should sprinkle me to make me grow: come, mourn with me for that i do lament, and put on sullen black incontinent: i'll make a voyage to the holy land, to wash this blood off from my guilty hand: march sadly after; grace my mournings here; in weeping after this untimely bier. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre dramatis personae antiochus king of antioch. pericles prince of tyre. helicanus | | two lords of tyre. escanes | simonides king of pentapolis. cleon governor of tarsus. lysimachus governor of mytilene. cerimon a lord of ephesus. thaliard a lord of antioch. philemon servant to cerimon. leonine servant to dionyza. marshal. (marshal:) a pandar. (pandar:) boult his servant. the daughter of antiochus. (daughter:) dionyza wife to cleon. thaisa daughter to simonides. marina daughter to pericles and thaisa. lychorida nurse to marina. a bawd. (bawd:) lords, knights, gentlemen, sailors, pirates, fishermen, and messengers. (lord:) (first lord:) (second lord:) (third lord:) (first knight:) (second knight:) (third knight:) (first gentleman:) (second gentleman:) (first sailor:) (second sailor:) (first pirate:) (second pirate:) (third pirate:) (first fisherman:) (second fisherman:) (third fisherman:) (messenger:) diana: gower as chorus. scene dispersedly in various countries. pericles, prince of tyre act i [enter gower] [before the palace of antioch] to sing a song that old was sung, from ashes ancient gower is come; assuming man's infirmities, to glad your ear, and please your eyes. it hath been sung at festivals, on ember-eves and holy-ales; and lords and ladies in their lives have read it for restoratives: the purchase is to make men glorious; et bonum quo antiquius, eo melius. if you, born in these latter times, when wit's more ripe, accept my rhymes. and that to hear an old man sing may to your wishes pleasure bring i life would wish, and that i might waste it for you, like taper-light. this antioch, then, antiochus the great built up, this city, for his chiefest seat: the fairest in all syria, i tell you what mine authors say: this king unto him took a fere, who died and left a female heir, so buxom, blithe, and full of face, as heaven had lent her all his grace; with whom the father liking took, and her to incest did provoke: bad child; worse father! to entice his own to evil should be done by none: but custom what they did begin was with long use account no sin. the beauty of this sinful dame made many princes thither frame, to seek her as a bed-fellow, in marriage-pleasures play-fellow: which to prevent he made a law, to keep her still, and men in awe, that whoso ask'd her for his wife, his riddle told not, lost his life: so for her many a wight did die, as yon grim looks do testify. what now ensues, to the judgment of your eye i give, my cause who best can justify. [exit] pericles, prince of tyre act i scene i antioch. a room in the palace. [enter antiochus, prince pericles, and followers] antiochus young prince of tyre, you have at large received the danger of the task you undertake. pericles i have, antiochus, and, with a soul embolden'd with the glory of her praise, think death no hazard in this enterprise. antiochus bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride, for the embracements even of jove himself; at whose conception, till lucina reign'd, nature this dowry gave, to glad her presence, the senate-house of planets all did sit, to knit in her their best perfections. [music. enter the daughter of antiochus] pericles see where she comes, apparell'd like the spring, graces her subjects, and her thoughts the king of every virtue gives renown to men! her face the book of praises, where is read nothing but curious pleasures, as from thence sorrow were ever razed and testy wrath could never be her mild companion. you gods that made me man, and sway in love, that have inflamed desire in my breast to taste the fruit of yon celestial tree, or die in the adventure, be my helps, as i am son and servant to your will, to compass such a boundless happiness! antiochus prince pericles,- pericles that would be son to great antiochus. antiochus before thee stands this fair hesperides, with golden fruit, but dangerous to be touch'd; for death-like dragons here affright thee hard: her face, like heaven, enticeth thee to view her countless glory, which desert must gain; and which, without desert, because thine eye presumes to reach, all thy whole heap must die. yon sometimes famous princes, like thyself, drawn by report, adventurous by desire, tell thee, with speechless tongues and semblance pale, that without covering, save yon field of stars, here they stand martyrs, slain in cupid's wars; and with dead cheeks advise thee to desist for going on death's net, whom none resist. pericles antiochus, i thank thee, who hath taught my frail mortality to know itself, and by those fearful objects to prepare this body, like to them, to what i must; for death remember'd should be like a mirror, who tells us life's but breath, to trust it error. i'll make my will then, and, as sick men do who know the world, see heaven, but, feeling woe, gripe not at earthly joys as erst they did; so i bequeath a happy peace to you and all good men, as every prince should do; my riches to the earth from whence they came; but my unspotted fire of love to you. [to the daughter of antiochus] thus ready for the way of life or death, i wait the sharpest blow, antiochus. antiochus scorning advice, read the conclusion then: which read and not expounded, 'tis decreed, as these before thee thou thyself shalt bleed. daughter of all say'd yet, mayst thou prove prosperous! of all say'd yet, i wish thee happiness! pericles like a bold champion, i assume the lists, nor ask advice of any other thought but faithfulness and courage. [he reads the riddle] i am no viper, yet i feed on mother's flesh which did me breed. i sought a husband, in which labour i found that kindness in a father: he's father, son, and husband mild; i mother, wife, and yet his child. how they may be, and yet in two, as you will live, resolve it you. sharp physic is the last: but, o you powers that give heaven countless eyes to view men's acts, why cloud they not their sights perpetually, if this be true, which makes me pale to read it? fair glass of light, i loved you, and could still, [takes hold of the hand of the daughter of antiochus] were not this glorious casket stored with ill: but i must tell you, now my thoughts revolt for he's no man on whom perfections wait that, knowing sin within, will touch the gate. you are a fair viol, and your sense the strings; who, finger'd to make man his lawful music, would draw heaven down, and all the gods, to hearken: but being play'd upon before your time, hell only danceth at so harsh a chime. good sooth, i care not for you. antiochus prince pericles, touch not, upon thy life. for that's an article within our law, as dangerous as the rest. your time's expired: either expound now, or receive your sentence. pericles great king, few love to hear the sins they love to act; 'twould braid yourself too near for me to tell it. who has a book of all that monarchs do, he's more secure to keep it shut than shown: for vice repeated is like the wandering wind. blows dust in other's eyes, to spread itself; and yet the end of all is bought thus dear, the breath is gone, and the sore eyes see clear: to stop the air would hurt them. the blind mole casts copp'd hills towards heaven, to tell the earth is throng'd by man's oppression; and the poor worm doth die for't. kings are earth's gods; in vice their law's their will; and if jove stray, who dares say jove doth ill? it is enough you know; and it is fit, what being more known grows worse, to smother it. all love the womb that their first being bred, then give my tongue like leave to love my head. antiochus [aside] heaven, that i had thy head! he has found the meaning: but i will gloze with him.--young prince of tyre, though by the tenor of our strict edict, your exposition misinterpreting, we might proceed to cancel of your days; yet hope, succeeding from so fair a tree as your fair self, doth tune us otherwise: forty days longer we do respite you; if by which time our secret be undone, this mercy shows we'll joy in such a son: and until then your entertain shall be as doth befit our honour and your worth. [exeunt all but pericles] pericles how courtesy would seem to cover sin, when what is done is like an hypocrite, the which is good in nothing but in sight! if it be true that i interpret false, then were it certain you were not so bad as with foul incest to abuse your soul; where now you're both a father and a son, by your untimely claspings with your child, which pleasure fits an husband, not a father; and she an eater of her mother's flesh, by the defiling of her parent's bed; and both like serpents are, who though they feed on sweetest flowers, yet they poison breed. antioch, farewell! for wisdom sees, those men blush not in actions blacker than the night, will shun no course to keep them from the light. one sin, i know, another doth provoke; murder's as near to lust as flame to smoke: poison and treason are the hands of sin, ay, and the targets, to put off the shame: then, lest my lie be cropp'd to keep you clear, by flight i'll shun the danger which i fear. [exit] [re-enter antiochus] antiochus he hath found the meaning, for which we mean to have his head. he must not live to trumpet forth my infamy, nor tell the world antiochus doth sin in such a loathed manner; and therefore instantly this prince must die: for by his fall my honour must keep high. who attends us there? [enter thaliard] thaliard doth your highness call? antiochus thaliard, you are of our chamber, and our mind partakes her private actions to your secrecy; and for your faithfulness we will advance you. thaliard, behold, here's poison, and here's gold; we hate the prince of tyre, and thou must kill him: it fits thee not to ask the reason why, because we bid it. say, is it done? thaliard my lord, 'tis done. antiochus enough. [enter a messenger] let your breath cool yourself, telling your haste. messenger my lord, prince pericles is fled. [exit] antiochus as thou wilt live, fly after: and like an arrow shot from a well-experienced archer hits the mark his eye doth level at, so thou ne'er return unless thou say 'prince pericles is dead.' thaliard my lord, if i can get him within my pistol's length, i'll make him sure enough: so, farewell to your highness. antiochus thaliard, adieu! [exit thaliard] till pericles be dead, my heart can lend no succor to my head. [exit] pericles, prince of tyre act i scene ii tyre. a room in the palace. [enter pericles] pericles [to lords without] let none disturb us.--why should this change of thoughts, the sad companion, dull-eyed melancholy, be my so used a guest as not an hour, in the day's glorious walk, or peaceful night, the tomb where grief should sleep, can breed me quiet? here pleasures court mine eyes, and mine eyes shun them, and danger, which i fear'd, is at antioch, whose aim seems far too short to hit me here: yet neither pleasure's art can joy my spirits, nor yet the other's distance comfort me. then it is thus: the passions of the mind, that have their first conception by mis-dread, have after-nourishment and life by care; and what was first but fear what might be done, grows elder now and cares it be not done. and so with me: the great antiochus, 'gainst whom i am too little to contend, since he's so great can make his will his act, will think me speaking, though i swear to silence; nor boots it me to say i honour him. if he suspect i may dishonour him: and what may make him blush in being known, he'll stop the course by which it might be known; with hostile forces he'll o'erspread the land, and with the ostent of war will look so huge, amazement shall drive courage from the state; our men be vanquish'd ere they do resist, and subjects punish'd that ne'er thought offence: which care of them, not pity of myself, who am no more but as the tops of trees, which fence the roots they grow by and defend them, makes both my body pine and soul to languish, and punish that before that he would punish. [enter helicanus, with other lords] first lord joy and all comfort in your sacred breast! second lord and keep your mind, till you return to us, peaceful and comfortable! helicanus peace, peace, and give experience tongue. they do abuse the king that flatter him: for flattery is the bellows blows up sin; the thing which is flatter'd, but a spark, to which that blast gives heat and stronger glowing; whereas reproof, obedient and in order, fits kings, as they are men, for they may err. when signior sooth here does proclaim a peace, he flatters you, makes war upon your life. prince, pardon me, or strike me, if you please; i cannot be much lower than my knees. pericles all leave us else; but let your cares o'erlook what shipping and what lading's in our haven, and then return to us. [exeunt lords] helicanus, thou hast moved us: what seest thou in our looks? helicanus an angry brow, dread lord. pericles if there be such a dart in princes' frowns, how durst thy tongue move anger to our face? helicanus how dare the plants look up to heaven, from whence they have their nourishment? pericles thou know'st i have power to take thy life from thee. helicanus [kneeling] i have ground the axe myself; do you but strike the blow. pericles rise, prithee, rise. sit down: thou art no flatterer: i thank thee for it; and heaven forbid that kings should let their ears hear their faults hid! fit counsellor and servant for a prince, who by thy wisdom makest a prince thy servant, what wouldst thou have me do? helicanus to bear with patience such griefs as you yourself do lay upon yourself. pericles thou speak'st like a physician, helicanus, that minister'st a potion unto me that thou wouldst tremble to receive thyself. attend me, then: i went to antioch, where as thou know'st, against the face of death, i sought the purchase of a glorious beauty. from whence an issue i might propagate, are arms to princes, and bring joys to subjects. her face was to mine eye beyond all wonder; the rest--hark in thine ear--as black as incest: which by my knowledge found, the sinful father seem'd not to strike, but smooth: but thou know'st this, 'tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss. such fear so grew in me, i hither fled, under the covering of a careful night, who seem'd my good protector; and, being here, bethought me what was past, what might succeed. i knew him tyrannous; and tyrants' fears decrease not, but grow faster than the years: and should he doubt it, as no doubt he doth, that i should open to the listening air how many worthy princes' bloods were shed, to keep his bed of blackness unlaid ope, to lop that doubt, he'll fill this land with arms, and make pretence of wrong that i have done him: when all, for mine, if i may call offence, must feel war's blow, who spares not innocence: which love to all, of which thyself art one, who now reprovest me for it,- helicanus alas, sir! pericles drew sleep out of mine eyes, blood from my cheeks, musings into my mind, with thousand doubts how i might stop this tempest ere it came; and finding little comfort to relieve them, i thought it princely charity to grieve them. helicanus well, my lord, since you have given me leave to speak. freely will i speak. antiochus you fear, and justly too, i think, you fear the tyrant, who either by public war or private treason will take away your life. therefore, my lord, go travel for a while, till that his rage and anger be forgot, or till the destinies do cut his thread of life. your rule direct to any; if to me. day serves not light more faithful than i'll be. pericles i do not doubt thy faith; but should he wrong my liberties in my absence? helicanus we'll mingle our bloods together in the earth, from whence we had our being and our birth. pericles tyre, i now look from thee then, and to tarsus intend my travel, where i'll hear from thee; and by whose letters i'll dispose myself. the care i had and have of subjects' good on thee i lay whose wisdom's strength can bear it. i'll take thy word for faith, not ask thine oath: who shuns not to break one will sure crack both: but in our orbs we'll live so round and safe, that time of both this truth shall ne'er convince, thou show'dst a subject's shine, i a true prince. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act i scene iii tyre. an ante-chamber in the palace. [enter thaliard] thaliard so, this is tyre, and this the court. here must i kill king pericles; and if i do it not, i am sure to be hanged at home: 'tis dangerous. well, i perceive he was a wise fellow, and had good discretion, that, being bid to ask what he would of the king, desired he might know none of his secrets: now do i see he had some reason for't; for if a king bid a man be a villain, he's bound by the indenture of his oath to be one! hush! here come the lords of tyre. [enter helicanus and escanes, with other lords of tyre] helicanus you shall not need, my fellow peers of tyre, further to question me of your king's departure: his seal'd commission, left in trust with me, doth speak sufficiently he's gone to travel. thaliard [aside] how! the king gone! helicanus if further yet you will be satisfied, why, as it were unlicensed of your loves, he would depart, i'll give some light unto you. being at antioch- thaliard [aside] what from antioch? helicanus royal antiochus--on what cause i know not- took some displeasure at him; at least he judged so: and doubting lest that he had err'd or sinn'd, to show his sorrow, he'ld correct himself; so puts himself unto the shipman's toil, with whom each minute threatens life or death. thaliard [aside] well, i perceive i shall not be hang'd now, although i would; but since he's gone, the king's seas must please: he 'scaped the land, to perish at the sea. i'll present myself. peace to the lords of tyre! helicanus lord thaliard from antiochus is welcome. thaliard from him i come with message unto princely pericles; but since my landing i have understood your lord has betook himself to unknown travels, my message must return from whence it came. helicanus we have no reason to desire it, commended to our master, not to us: yet, ere you shall depart, this we desire, as friends to antioch, we may feast in tyre. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act i scene iv tarsus. a room in the governor's house. [enter cleon, the governor of tarsus, with dionyza, and others] cleon my dionyza, shall we rest us here, and by relating tales of others' griefs, see if 'twill teach us to forget our own? dionyza that were to blow at fire in hope to quench it; for who digs hills because they do aspire throws down one mountain to cast up a higher. o my distressed lord, even such our griefs are; here they're but felt, and seen with mischief's eyes, but like to groves, being topp'd, they higher rise. cleon o dionyza, who wanteth food, and will not say he wants it, or can conceal his hunger till he famish? our tongues and sorrows do sound deep our woes into the air; our eyes do weep, till tongues fetch breath that may proclaim them louder; that, if heaven slumber while their creatures want, they may awake their helps to comfort them. i'll then discourse our woes, felt several years, and wanting breath to speak help me with tears. dionyza i'll do my best, sir. cleon this tarsus, o'er which i have the government, a city on whom plenty held full hand, for riches strew'd herself even in the streets; whose towers bore heads so high they kiss'd the clouds, and strangers ne'er beheld but wondered at; whose men and dames so jetted and adorn'd, like one another's glass to trim them by: their tables were stored full, to glad the sight, and not so much to feed on as delight; all poverty was scorn'd, and pride so great, the name of help grew odious to repeat. dionyza o, 'tis too true. cleon but see what heaven can do! by this our change, these mouths, who but of late, earth, sea, and air, were all too little to content and please, although they gave their creatures in abundance, as houses are defiled for want of use, they are now starved for want of exercise: those palates who, not yet two summers younger, must have inventions to delight the taste, would now be glad of bread, and beg for it: those mothers who, to nousle up their babes, thought nought too curious, are ready now to eat those little darlings whom they loved. so sharp are hunger's teeth, that man and wife draw lots who first shall die to lengthen life: here stands a lord, and there a lady weeping; here many sink, yet those which see them fall have scarce strength left to give them burial. is not this true? dionyza our cheeks and hollow eyes do witness it. cleon o, let those cities that of plenty's cup and her prosperities so largely taste, with their superfluous riots, hear these tears! the misery of tarsus may be theirs. [enter a lord] lord where's the lord governor? cleon here. speak out thy sorrows which thou bring'st in haste, for comfort is too far for us to expect. lord we have descried, upon our neighbouring shore, a portly sail of ships make hitherward. cleon i thought as much. one sorrow never comes but brings an heir, that may succeed as his inheritor; and so in ours: some neighbouring nation, taking advantage of our misery, hath stuff'd these hollow vessels with their power, to beat us down, the which are down already; and make a conquest of unhappy me, whereas no glory's got to overcome. lord that's the least fear; for, by the semblance of their white flags display'd, they bring us peace, and come to us as favourers, not as foes. cleon thou speak'st like him's untutor'd to repeat: who makes the fairest show means most deceit. but bring they what they will and what they can, what need we fear? the ground's the lowest, and we are half way there. go tell their general we attend him here, to know for what he comes, and whence he comes, and what he craves. lord i go, my lord. [exit] cleon welcome is peace, if he on peace consist; if wars, we are unable to resist. [enter pericles with attendants] pericles lord governor, for so we hear you are, let not our ships and number of our men be like a beacon fired to amaze your eyes. we have heard your miseries as far as tyre, and seen the desolation of your streets: nor come we to add sorrow to your tears, but to relieve them of their heavy load; and these our ships, you happily may think are like the trojan horse was stuff'd within with bloody veins, expecting overthrow, are stored with corn to make your needy bread, and give them life whom hunger starved half dead. all the gods of greece protect you! and we'll pray for you. pericles arise, i pray you, rise: we do not look for reverence, but to love, and harbourage for ourself, our ships, and men. cleon the which when any shall not gratify, or pay you with unthankfulness in thought, be it our wives, our children, or ourselves, the curse of heaven and men succeed their evils! till when,--the which i hope shall ne'er be seen,- your grace is welcome to our town and us. pericles which welcome we'll accept; feast here awhile, until our stars that frown lend us a smile. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act ii [enter gower] gower here have you seen a mighty king his child, i wis, to incest bring; a better prince and benign lord, that will prove awful both in deed and word. be quiet then as men should be, till he hath pass'd necessity. i'll show you those in troubles reign, losing a mite, a mountain gain. the good in conversation, to whom i give my benison, is still at tarsus, where each man thinks all is writ he speken can; and, to remember what he does, build his statue to make him glorious: but tidings to the contrary are brought your eyes; what need speak i? dumb show. [enter at one door pericles talking with cleon; all the train with them. enter at another door a gentleman, with a letter to pericles; pericles shows the letter to cleon; gives the messenger a reward, and knights him. exit pericles at one door, and cleon at another] good helicane, that stay'd at home, not to eat honey like a drone from others' labours; for though he strive to killen bad, keep good alive; and to fulfil his prince' desire, sends word of all that haps in tyre: how thaliard came full bent with sin and had intent to murder him; and that in tarsus was not best longer for him to make his rest. he, doing so, put forth to seas, where when men been, there's seldom ease; for now the wind begins to blow; thunder above and deeps below make such unquiet, that the ship should house him safe is wreck'd and split; and he, good prince, having all lost, by waves from coast to coast is tost: all perishen of man, of pelf, ne aught escapen but himself; till fortune, tired with doing bad, threw him ashore, to give him glad: and here he comes. what shall be next, pardon old gower,--this longs the text. [exit] pericles, prince of tyre act ii scene i pentapolis. an open place by the sea-side. [enter pericles, wet] pericles yet cease your ire, you angry stars of heaven! wind, rain, and thunder, remember, earthly man is but a substance that must yield to you; and i, as fits my nature, do obey you: alas, the sea hath cast me on the rocks, wash'd me from shore to shore, and left me breath nothing to think on but ensuing death: let it suffice the greatness of your powers to have bereft a prince of all his fortunes; and having thrown him from your watery grave, here to have death in peace is all he'll crave. [enter three fishermen] first fisherman what, ho, pilch! second fisherman ha, come and bring away the nets! first fisherman what, patch-breech, i say! third fisherman what say you, master? first fisherman look how thou stirrest now! come away, or i'll fetch thee with a wanion. third fisherman faith, master, i am thinking of the poor men that were cast away before us even now. first fisherman alas, poor souls, it grieved my heart to hear what pitiful cries they made to us to help them, when, well-a-day, we could scarce help ourselves. third fisherman nay, master, said not i as much when i saw the porpus how he bounced and tumbled? they say they're half fish, half flesh: a plague on them, they ne'er come but i look to be washed. master, i marvel how the fishes live in the sea. first fisherman why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones: i can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale; a' plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at a mouthful: such whales have i heard on o' the land, who never leave gaping till they've swallowed the whole parish, church, steeple, bells, and all. pericles [aside] a pretty moral. third fisherman but, master, if i had been the sexton, i would have been that day in the belfry. second fisherman why, man? third fisherman because he should have swallowed me too: and when i had been in his belly, i would have kept such a jangling of the bells, that he should never have left, till he cast bells, steeple, church, and parish up again. but if the good king simonides were of my mind,- pericles [aside] simonides! third fisherman we would purge the land of these drones, that rob the bee of her honey. pericles [aside] how from the finny subject of the sea these fishers tell the infirmities of men; and from their watery empire recollect all that may men approve or men detect! peace be at your labour, honest fishermen. second fisherman honest! good fellow, what's that? if it be a day fits you, search out of the calendar, and nobody look after it. pericles may see the sea hath cast upon your coast. second fisherman what a drunken knave was the sea to cast thee in our way! pericles a man whom both the waters and the wind, in that vast tennis-court, have made the ball for them to play upon, entreats you pity him: he asks of you, that never used to beg. first fisherman no, friend, cannot you beg? here's them in our country greece gets more with begging than we can do with working. second fisherman canst thou catch any fishes, then? pericles i never practised it. second fisherman nay, then thou wilt starve, sure; for here's nothing to be got now-a-days, unless thou canst fish for't. pericles what i have been i have forgot to know; but what i am, want teaches me to think on: a man throng'd up with cold: my veins are chill, and have no more of life than may suffice to give my tongue that heat to ask your help; which if you shall refuse, when i am dead, for that i am a man, pray see me buried. first fisherman die quoth-a? now gods forbid! i have a gown here; come, put it on; keep thee warm. now, afore me, a handsome fellow! come, thou shalt go home, and we'll have flesh for holidays, fish for fasting-days, and moreo'er puddings and flap-jacks, and thou shalt be welcome. pericles i thank you, sir. second fisherman hark you, my friend; you said you could not beg. pericles i did but crave. second fisherman but crave! then i'll turn craver too, and so i shall 'scape whipping. pericles why, are all your beggars whipped, then? second fisherman o, not all, my friend, not all; for if all your beggars were whipped, i would wish no better office than to be beadle. but, master, i'll go draw up the net. [exit with third fisherman] pericles [aside] how well this honest mirth becomes their labour! first fisherman hark you, sir, do you know where ye are? pericles not well. first fisherman why, i'll tell you: this is called pentapolis, and our king the good simonides. pericles the good king simonides, do you call him. first fisherman ay, sir; and he deserves so to be called for his peaceable reign and good government. pericles he is a happy king, since he gains from his subjects the name of good by his government. how far is his court distant from this shore? first fisherman marry, sir, half a day's journey: and i'll tell you, he hath a fair daughter, and to-morrow is her birth-day; and there are princes and knights come from all parts of the world to just and tourney for her love. pericles were my fortunes equal to my desires, i could wish to make one there. first fisherman o, sir, things must be as they may; and what a man cannot get, he may lawfully deal for--his wife's soul. [re-enter second and third fishermen, drawing up a net] second fisherman help, master, help! here's a fish hangs in the net, like a poor man's right in the law; 'twill hardly come out. ha! bots on't, 'tis come at last, and 'tis turned to a rusty armour. pericles an armour, friends! i pray you, let me see it. thanks, fortune, yet, that, after all my crosses, thou givest me somewhat to repair myself; and though it was mine own, part of my heritage, which my dead father did bequeath to me. with this strict charge, even as he left his life, 'keep it, my pericles; it hath been a shield twixt me and death;'--and pointed to this brace;- 'for that it saved me, keep it; in like necessity- the which the gods protect thee from!--may defend thee.' it kept where i kept, i so dearly loved it; till the rough seas, that spare not any man, took it in rage, though calm'd have given't again: i thank thee for't: my shipwreck now's no ill, since i have here my father's gift in's will. first fisherman what mean you, sir? pericles to beg of you, kind friends, this coat of worth, for it was sometime target to a king; i know it by this mark. he loved me dearly, and for his sake i wish the having of it; and that you'ld guide me to your sovereign's court, where with it i may appear a gentleman; and if that ever my low fortune's better, i'll pay your bounties; till then rest your debtor. first fisherman why, wilt thou tourney for the lady? pericles i'll show the virtue i have borne in arms. first fisherman why, do 'e take it, and the gods give thee good on't! second fisherman ay, but hark you, my friend; 'twas we that made up this garment through the rough seams of the waters: there are certain condolements, certain vails. i hope, sir, if you thrive, you'll remember from whence you had it. pericles believe 't, i will. by your furtherance i am clothed in steel; and, spite of all the rapture of the sea, this jewel holds his building on my arm: unto thy value i will mount myself upon a courser, whose delightful steps shall make the gazer joy to see him tread. only, my friend, i yet am unprovided of a pair of bases. second fisherman we'll sure provide: thou shalt have my best gown to make thee a pair; and i'll bring thee to the court myself. pericles then honour be but a goal to my will, this day i'll rise, or else add ill to ill. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act ii scene ii the same. a public way or platform leading to the lists. a pavilion by the side of it for the reception of king, princess, lords, &c. [enter simonides, thaisa, lords, and attendants] simonides are the knights ready to begin the triumph? first lord they are, my liege; and stay your coming to present themselves. simonides return them, we are ready; and our daughter, in honour of whose birth these triumphs are, sits here, like beauty's child, whom nature gat for men to see, and seeing wonder at. [exit a lord] thaisa it pleaseth you, my royal father, to express my commendations great, whose merit's less. simonides it's fit it should be so; for princes are a model which heaven makes like to itself: as jewels lose their glory if neglected, so princes their renowns if not respected. 'tis now your honour, daughter, to explain the labour of each knight in his device. thaisa which, to preserve mine honour, i'll perform. [enter a knight; he passes over, and his squire presents his shield to the princess] simonides who is the first that doth prefer himself? thaisa a knight of sparta, my renowned father; and the device he bears upon his shield is a black ethiope reaching at the sun the word, 'lux tua vita mihi.' simonides he loves you well that holds his life of you. [the second knight passes over] who is the second that presents himself? thaisa a prince of macedon, my royal father; and the device he bears upon his shield is an arm'd knight that's conquer'd by a lady; the motto thus, in spanish, 'piu por dulzura que por fuerza.' [the third knight passes over] simonides and what's the third? thaisa the third of antioch; and his device, a wreath of chivalry; the word, 'me pompae provexit apex.' [the fourth knight passes over] simonides what is the fourth? thaisa a burning torch that's turned upside down; the word, 'quod me alit, me extinguit.' simonides which shows that beauty hath his power and will, which can as well inflame as it can kill. [the fifth knight passes over] thaisa the fifth, an hand environed with clouds, holding out gold that's by the touchstone tried; the motto thus, 'sic spectanda fides.' [the sixth knight, pericles, passes over] simonides and what's the sixth and last, the which the knight himself with such a graceful courtesy deliver'd? thaisa he seems to be a stranger; but his present is a wither'd branch, that's only green at top; the motto, 'in hac spe vivo.' simonides a pretty moral; from the dejected state wherein he is, he hopes by you his fortunes yet may flourish. first lord he had need mean better than his outward show can any way speak in his just commend; for by his rusty outside he appears to have practised more the whipstock than the lance. second lord he well may be a stranger, for he comes to an honour'd triumph strangely furnished. third lord and on set purpose let his armour rust until this day, to scour it in the dust. simonides opinion's but a fool, that makes us scan the outward habit by the inward man. but stay, the knights are coming: we will withdraw into the gallery. [exeunt] [great shouts within and all cry 'the mean knight!'] pericles, prince of tyre act ii scene iii the same. a hall of state: a banquet prepared. [enter simonides, thaisa, lords, attendants, and knights, from tilting] simonides knights, to say you're welcome were superfluous. to place upon the volume of your deeds, as in a title-page, your worth in arms, were more than you expect, or more than's fit, since every worth in show commends itself. prepare for mirth, for mirth becomes a feast: you are princes and my guests. thaisa but you, my knight and guest; to whom this wreath of victory i give, and crown you king of this day's happiness. pericles 'tis more by fortune, lady, than by merit. simonides call it by what you will, the day is yours; and here, i hope, is none that envies it. in framing an artist, art hath thus decreed, to make some good, but others to exceed; and you are her labour'd scholar. come, queen o' the feast,- for, daughter, so you are,--here take your place: marshal the rest, as they deserve their grace. knights we are honour'd much by good simonides. simonides your presence glads our days: honour we love; for who hates honour hates the gods above. marshal sir, yonder is your place. pericles some other is more fit. first knight contend not, sir; for we are gentlemen that neither in our hearts nor outward eyes envy the great nor do the low despise. pericles you are right courteous knights. simonides sit, sir, sit. pericles by jove, i wonder, that is king of thoughts, these cates resist me, she but thought upon. thaisa by juno, that is queen of marriage, all viands that i eat do seem unsavoury. wishing him my meat. sure, he's a gallant gentleman. simonides he's but a country gentleman; has done no more than other knights have done; has broken a staff or so; so let it pass. thaisa to me he seems like diamond to glass. pericles yon king's to me like to my father's picture, which tells me in that glory once he was; had princes sit, like stars, about his throne, and he the sun, for them to reverence; none that beheld him, but, like lesser lights, did vail their crowns to his supremacy: where now his son's like a glow-worm in the night, the which hath fire in darkness, none in light: whereby i see that time's the king of men, he's both their parent, and he is their grave, and gives them what he will, not what they crave. simonides what, are you merry, knights? knights who can be other in this royal presence? simonides here, with a cup that's stored unto the brim,- as you do love, fill to your mistress' lips,- we drink this health to you. knights we thank your grace. simonides yet pause awhile: yon knight doth sit too melancholy, as if the entertainment in our court had not a show might countervail his worth. note it not you, thaisa? thaisa what is it to me, my father? simonides o, attend, my daughter: princes in this should live like gods above, who freely give to every one that comes to honour them: and princes not doing so are like to gnats, which make a sound, but kill'd are wonder'd at. therefore to make his entrance more sweet, here, say we drink this standing-bowl of wine to him. thaisa alas, my father, it befits not me unto a stranger knight to be so bold: he may my proffer take for an offence, since men take women's gifts for impudence. simonides how! do as i bid you, or you'll move me else. thaisa [aside] now, by the gods, he could not please me better. simonides and furthermore tell him, we desire to know of him, of whence he is, his name and parentage. thaisa the king my father, sir, has drunk to you. pericles i thank him. thaisa wishing it so much blood unto your life. pericles i thank both him and you, and pledge him freely. thaisa and further he desires to know of you, of whence you are, your name and parentage. pericles a gentleman of tyre; my name, pericles; my education been in arts and arms; who, looking for adventures in the world, was by the rough seas reft of ships and men, and after shipwreck driven upon this shore. thaisa he thanks your grace; names himself pericles, a gentleman of tyre, who only by misfortune of the seas bereft of ships and men, cast on this shore. simonides now, by the gods, i pity his misfortune, and will awake him from his melancholy. come, gentlemen, we sit too long on trifles, and waste the time, which looks for other revels. even in your armours, as you are address'd, will very well become a soldier's dance. i will not have excuse, with saying this loud music is too harsh for ladies' heads, since they love men in arms as well as beds. [the knights dance] so, this was well ask'd,'twas so well perform'd. come, sir; here is a lady that wants breathing too: and i have heard, you knights of tyre are excellent in making ladies trip; and that their measures are as excellent. pericles in those that practise them they are, my lord. simonides o, that's as much as you would be denied of your fair courtesy. [the knights and ladies dance] unclasp, unclasp: thanks, gentlemen, to all; all have done well. [to pericles] but you the best. pages and lights, to conduct these knights unto their several lodgings! [to pericles] yours, sir, we have given order to be next our own. pericles i am at your grace's pleasure. simonides princes, it is too late to talk of love; and that's the mark i know you level at: therefore each one betake him to his rest; to-morrow all for speeding do their best. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act ii scene iv tyre. a room in the governor's house. [enter helicanus and escanes] helicanus no, escanes, know this of me, antiochus from incest lived not free: for which, the most high gods not minding longer to withhold the vengeance that they had in store, due to this heinous capital offence, even in the height and pride of all his glory, when he was seated in a chariot of an inestimable value, and his daughter with him, a fire from heaven came and shrivell'd up their bodies, even to loathing; for they so stunk, that all those eyes adored them ere their fall scorn now their hand should give them burial. escanes 'twas very strange. helicanus and yet but justice; for though this king were great, his greatness was no guard to bar heaven's shaft, but sin had his reward. escanes 'tis very true. [enter two or three lords] first lord see, not a man in private conference or council has respect with him but he. second lord it shall no longer grieve without reproof. third lord and cursed be he that will not second it. first lord follow me, then. lord helicane, a word. helicanus with me? and welcome: happy day, my lords. first lord know that our griefs are risen to the top, and now at length they overflow their banks. helicanus your griefs! for what? wrong not your prince you love. first lord wrong not yourself, then, noble helicane; but if the prince do live, let us salute him, or know what ground's made happy by his breath. if in the world he live, we'll seek him out; if in his grave he rest, we'll find him there; and be resolved he lives to govern us, or dead, give's cause to mourn his funeral, and leave us to our free election. second lord whose death indeed's the strongest in our censure: and knowing this kingdom is without a head,- like goodly buildings left without a roof soon fall to ruin,--your noble self, that best know how to rule and how to reign, we thus submit unto,--our sovereign. all live, noble helicane! helicanus for honour's cause, forbear your suffrages: if that you love prince pericles, forbear. take i your wish, i leap into the seas, where's hourly trouble for a minute's ease. a twelvemonth longer, let me entreat you to forbear the absence of your king: if in which time expired, he not return, i shall with aged patience bear your yoke. but if i cannot win you to this love, go search like nobles, like noble subjects, and in your search spend your adventurous worth; whom if you find, and win unto return, you shall like diamonds sit about his crown. first lord to wisdom he's a fool that will not yield; and since lord helicane enjoineth us, we with our travels will endeavour us. helicanus then you love us, we you, and we'll clasp hands: when peers thus knit, a kingdom ever stands. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act ii scene v pentapolis. a room in the palace. [enter simonides, reading a letter, at one door: the knights meet him] first knight good morrow to the good simonides. simonides knights, from my daughter this i let you know, that for this twelvemonth she'll not undertake a married life. her reason to herself is only known, which yet from her by no means can i get. second knight may we not get access to her, my lord? simonides 'faith, by no means; she has so strictly tied her to her chamber, that 'tis impossible. one twelve moons more she'll wear diana's livery; this by the eye of cynthia hath she vow'd and on her virgin honour will not break it. third knight loath to bid farewell, we take our leaves. [exeunt knights] simonides so, they are well dispatch'd; now to my daughter's letter: she tells me here, she'd wed the stranger knight, or never more to view nor day nor light. 'tis well, mistress; your choice agrees with mine; i like that well: nay, how absolute she's in't, not minding whether i dislike or no! well, i do commend her choice; and will no longer have it be delay'd. soft! here he comes: i must dissemble it. [enter pericles] pericles all fortune to the good simonides! simonides to you as much, sir! i am beholding to you for your sweet music this last night: i do protest my ears were never better fed with such delightful pleasing harmony. pericles it is your grace's pleasure to commend; not my desert. simonides sir, you are music's master. pericles the worst of all her scholars, my good lord. simonides let me ask you one thing: what do you think of my daughter, sir? pericles a most virtuous princess. simonides and she is fair too, is she not? pericles as a fair day in summer, wondrous fair. simonides sir, my daughter thinks very well of you; ay, so well, that you must be her master, and she will be your scholar: therefore look to it. pericles i am unworthy for her schoolmaster. simonides she thinks not so; peruse this writing else. pericles [aside] what's here? a letter, that she loves the knight of tyre! 'tis the king's subtlety to have my life. o, seek not to entrap me, gracious lord, a stranger and distressed gentleman, that never aim'd so high to love your daughter, but bent all offices to honour her. simonides thou hast bewitch'd my daughter, and thou art a villain. pericles by the gods, i have not: never did thought of mine levy offence; nor never did my actions yet commence a deed might gain her love or your displeasure. simonides traitor, thou liest. pericles traitor! simonides ay, traitor. pericles even in his throat--unless it be the king- that calls me traitor, i return the lie. simonides [aside] now, by the gods, i do applaud his courage. pericles my actions are as noble as my thoughts, that never relish'd of a base descent. i came unto your court for honour's cause, and not to be a rebel to her state; and he that otherwise accounts of me, this sword shall prove he's honour's enemy. simonides no? here comes my daughter, she can witness it. [enter thaisa] pericles then, as you are as virtuous as fair, resolve your angry father, if my tongue did ere solicit, or my hand subscribe to any syllable that made love to you. thaisa why, sir, say if you had, who takes offence at that would make me glad? simonides yea, mistress, are you so peremptory? [aside] i am glad on't with all my heart.- i'll tame you; i'll bring you in subjection. will you, not having my consent, bestow your love and your affections upon a stranger? [aside] who, for aught i know, may be, nor can i think the contrary, as great in blood as i myself.- therefore hear you, mistress; either frame your will to mine,--and you, sir, hear you, either be ruled by me, or i will make you- man and wife: nay, come, your hands and lips must seal it too: and being join'd, i'll thus your hopes destroy; and for a further grief,--god give you joy!- what, are you both pleased? thaisa yes, if you love me, sir. pericles even as my life, or blood that fosters it. simonides what, are you both agreed? both yes, if it please your majesty. simonides it pleaseth me so well, that i will see you wed; and then with what haste you can get you to bed. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act iii [enter gower] gower now sleep y-slaked hath the rout; no din but snores the house about, made louder by the o'er-fed breast of this most pompous marriage-feast. the cat, with eyne of burning coal, now crouches fore the mouse's hole; and crickets sing at the oven's mouth, e'er the blither for their drouth. hymen hath brought the bride to bed. where, by the loss of maidenhead, a babe is moulded. be attent, and time that is so briefly spent with your fine fancies quaintly eche: what's dumb in show i'll plain with speech. dumb show. [enter, pericles and simonides at one door, with attendants; a messenger meets them, kneels, and gives pericles a letter: pericles shows it simonides; the lords kneel to him. then enter thaisa with child, with lychorida a nurse. the king shows her the letter; she rejoices: she and pericles takes leave of her father, and depart with lychorida and their attendants. then exeunt simonides and the rest] by many a dern and painful perch of pericles the careful search, by the four opposing coigns which the world together joins, is made with all due diligence that horse and sail and high expense can stead the quest. at last from tyre, fame answering the most strange inquire, to the court of king simonides are letters brought, the tenor these: antiochus and his daughter dead; the men of tyrus on the head of helicanus would set on the crown of tyre, but he will none: the mutiny he there hastes t' oppress; says to 'em, if king pericles come not home in twice six moons, he, obedient to their dooms, will take the crown. the sum of this, brought hither to pentapolis, y-ravished the regions round, and every one with claps can sound, 'our heir-apparent is a king! who dream'd, who thought of such a thing?' brief, he must hence depart to tyre: his queen with child makes her desire- which who shall cross?--along to go: omit we all their dole and woe: lychorida, her nurse, she takes, and so to sea. their vessel shakes on neptune's billow; half the flood hath their keel cut: but fortune's mood varies again; the grisly north disgorges such a tempest forth, that, as a duck for life that dives, so up and down the poor ship drives: the lady shrieks, and well-a-near does fall in travail with her fear: and what ensues in this fell storm shall for itself itself perform. i nill relate, action may conveniently the rest convey; which might not what by me is told. in your imagination hold this stage the ship, upon whose deck the sea-tost pericles appears to speak. [exit] pericles, prince of tyre act iii scene i: [enter pericles, on shipboard] pericles thou god of this great vast, rebuke these surges, which wash both heaven and hell; and thou, that hast upon the winds command, bind them in brass, having call'd them from the deep! o, still thy deafening, dreadful thunders; gently quench thy nimble, sulphurous flashes! o, how, lychorida, how does my queen? thou stormest venomously; wilt thou spit all thyself? the seaman's whistle is as a whisper in the ears of death, unheard. lychorida!--lucina, o divinest patroness, and midwife gentle to those that cry by night, convey thy deity aboard our dancing boat; make swift the pangs of my queen's travails! [enter lychorida, with an infant] now, lychorida! lychorida here is a thing too young for such a place, who, if it had conceit, would die, as i am like to do: take in your arms this piece of your dead queen. pericles how, how, lychorida! lychorida patience, good sir; do not assist the storm. here's all that is left living of your queen, a little daughter: for the sake of it, be manly, and take comfort. pericles o you gods! why do you make us love your goodly gifts, and snatch them straight away? we here below recall not what we give, and therein may use honour with you. lychorida patience, good sir, even for this charge. pericles now, mild may be thy life! for a more blustrous birth had never babe: quiet and gentle thy conditions! for thou art the rudeliest welcome to this world that ever was prince's child. happy what follows! thou hast as chiding a nativity as fire, air, water, earth, and heaven can make, to herald thee from the womb: even at the first thy loss is more than can thy portage quit, with all thou canst find here. now, the good gods throw their best eyes upon't! [enter two sailors] first sailor what courage, sir? god save you! pericles courage enough: i do not fear the flaw; it hath done to me the worst. yet, for the love of this poor infant, this fresh-new sea-farer, i would it would be quiet. first sailor slack the bolins there! thou wilt not, wilt thou? blow, and split thyself. second sailor but sea-room, an the brine and cloudy billow kiss the moon, i care not. first sailor sir, your queen must overboard: the sea works high, the wind is loud, and will not lie till the ship be cleared of the dead. pericles that's your superstition. first sailor pardon us, sir; with us at sea it hath been still observed: and we are strong in custom. therefore briefly yield her; for she must overboard straight. pericles as you think meet. most wretched queen! lychorida here she lies, sir. pericles a terrible childbed hast thou had, my dear; no light, no fire: the unfriendly elements forgot thee utterly: nor have i time to give thee hallow'd to thy grave, but straight must cast thee, scarcely coffin'd, in the ooze; where, for a monument upon thy bones, and e'er-remaining lamps, the belching whale and humming water must o'erwhelm thy corpse, lying with simple shells. o lychorida, bid nestor bring me spices, ink and paper, my casket and my jewels; and bid nicander bring me the satin coffer: lay the babe upon the pillow: hie thee, whiles i say a priestly farewell to her: suddenly, woman. [exit lychorida] second sailor sir, we have a chest beneath the hatches, caulked and bitumed ready. pericles i thank thee. mariner, say what coast is this? second sailor we are near tarsus. pericles thither, gentle mariner. alter thy course for tyre. when canst thou reach it? second sailor by break of day, if the wind cease. pericles o, make for tarsus! there will i visit cleon, for the babe cannot hold out to tyrus: there i'll leave it at careful nursing. go thy ways, good mariner: i'll bring the body presently. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act iii scene ii ephesus. a room in cerimon's house. [enter cerimon, with a servant, and some persons who have been shipwrecked] cerimon philemon, ho! [enter philemon] philemon doth my lord call? cerimon get fire and meat for these poor men: 't has been a turbulent and stormy night. servant i have been in many; but such a night as this, till now, i ne'er endured. cerimon your master will be dead ere you return; there's nothing can be minister'd to nature that can recover him. [to philemon] give this to the 'pothecary, and tell me how it works. [exeunt all but cerimon] [enter two gentlemen] first gentleman good morrow. second gentleman good morrow to your lordship. cerimon gentlemen, why do you stir so early? first gentleman sir, our lodgings, standing bleak upon the sea, shook as the earth did quake; the very principals did seem to rend, and all-to topple: pure surprise and fear made me to quit the house. second gentleman that is the cause we trouble you so early; 'tis not our husbandry. cerimon o, you say well. first gentleman but i much marvel that your lordship, having rich tire about you, should at these early hours shake off the golden slumber of repose. 'tis most strange, nature should be so conversant with pain, being thereto not compell'd. cerimon i hold it ever, virtue and cunning were endowments greater than nobleness and riches: careless heirs may the two latter darken and expend; but immortality attends the former. making a man a god. 'tis known, i ever have studied physic, through which secret art, by turning o'er authorities, i have, together with my practise, made familiar to me and to my aid the blest infusions that dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones; and i can speak of the disturbances that nature works, and of her cures; which doth give me a more content in course of true delight than to be thirsty after tottering honour, or tie my treasure up in silken bags, to please the fool and death. second gentleman your honour has through ephesus pour'd forth your charity, and hundreds call themselves your creatures, who by you have been restored: and not your knowledge, your personal pain, but even your purse, still open, hath built lord cerimon such strong renown as time shall ne'er decay. [enter two or three servants with a chest] first servant so; lift there. cerimon what is that? first servant sir, even now did the sea toss upon our shore this chest: 'tis of some wreck. cerimon set 't down, let's look upon't. second gentleman 'tis like a coffin, sir. cerimon whate'er it be, 'tis wondrous heavy. wrench it open straight: if the sea's stomach be o'ercharged with gold, 'tis a good constraint of fortune it belches upon us. second gentleman 'tis so, my lord. cerimon how close 'tis caulk'd and bitumed! did the sea cast it up? first servant i never saw so huge a billow, sir, as toss'd it upon shore. cerimon wrench it open; soft! it smells most sweetly in my sense. second gentleman a delicate odour. cerimon as ever hit my nostril. so, up with it. o you most potent gods! what's here? a corse! first gentleman most strange! cerimon shrouded in cloth of state; balm'd and entreasured with full bags of spices! a passport too! apollo, perfect me in the characters! [reads from a scroll] 'here i give to understand, if e'er this coffin drive a-land, i, king pericles, have lost this queen, worth all our mundane cost. who finds her, give her burying; she was the daughter of a king: besides this treasure for a fee, the gods requite his charity!' if thou livest, pericles, thou hast a heart that even cracks for woe! this chanced tonight. second gentleman most likely, sir. cerimon nay, certainly to-night; for look how fresh she looks! they were too rough that threw her in the sea. make a fire within: fetch hither all my boxes in my closet. [exit a servant] death may usurp on nature many hours, and yet the fire of life kindle again the o'erpress'd spirits. i heard of an egyptian that had nine hours lien dead, who was by good appliance recovered. [re-enter a servant, with boxes, napkins, and fire] well said, well said; the fire and cloths. the rough and woeful music that we have, cause it to sound, beseech you. the viol once more: how thou stirr'st, thou block! the music there!--i pray you, give her air. gentlemen. this queen will live: nature awakes; a warmth breathes out of her: she hath not been entranced above five hours: see how she gins to blow into life's flower again! first gentleman the heavens, through you, increase our wonder and set up your fame forever. cerimon she is alive; behold, her eyelids, cases to those heavenly jewels which pericles hath lost, begin to part their fringes of bright gold; the diamonds of a most praised water do appear, to make the world twice rich. live, and make us weep to hear your fate, fair creature, rare as you seem to be. [she moves] thaisa o dear diana, where am i? where's my lord? what world is this? second gentleman is not this strange? first gentleman most rare. cerimon hush, my gentle neighbours! lend me your hands; to the next chamber bear her. get linen: now this matter must be look'd to, for her relapse is mortal. come, come; and aesculapius guide us! [exeunt, carrying her away] pericles, prince of tyre act iii scene iii tarsus. a room in cleon's house. [enter pericles, cleon, dionyza, and lychorida with marina in her arms] pericles most honour'd cleon, i must needs be gone; my twelve months are expired, and tyrus stands in a litigious peace. you, and your lady, take from my heart all thankfulness! the gods make up the rest upon you! cleon your shafts of fortune, though they hurt you mortally, yet glance full wanderingly on us. dionyza o your sweet queen! that the strict fates had pleased you had brought her hither, to have bless'd mine eyes with her! pericles we cannot but obey the powers above us. could i rage and roar as doth the sea she lies in, yet the end must be as 'tis. my gentle babe marina, whom, for she was born at sea, i have named so, here i charge your charity withal, leaving her the infant of your care; beseeching you to give her princely training, that she may be manner'd as she is born. cleon fear not, my lord, but think your grace, that fed my country with your corn, for which the people's prayers still fall upon you, must in your child be thought on. if neglection should therein make me vile, the common body, by you relieved, would force me to my duty: but if to that my nature need a spur, the gods revenge it upon me and mine, to the end of generation! pericles i believe you; your honour and your goodness teach me to't, without your vows. till she be married, madam, by bright diana, whom we honour, all unscissor'd shall this hair of mine remain, though i show ill in't. so i take my leave. good madam, make me blessed in your care in bringing up my child. dionyza i have one myself, who shall not be more dear to my respect than yours, my lord. pericles madam, my thanks and prayers. cleon we'll bring your grace e'en to the edge o' the shore, then give you up to the mask'd neptune and the gentlest winds of heaven. pericles i will embrace your offer. come, dearest madam. o, no tears, lychorida, no tears: look to your little mistress, on whose grace you may depend hereafter. come, my lord. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act iii scene iv ephesus. a room in cerimon's house. [enter cerimon and thaisa] cerimon madam, this letter, and some certain jewels, lay with you in your coffer: which are now at your command. know you the character? thaisa it is my lord's. that i was shipp'd at sea, i well remember, even on my eaning time; but whether there deliver'd, by the holy gods, i cannot rightly say. but since king pericles, my wedded lord, i ne'er shall see again, a vestal livery will i take me to, and never more have joy. cerimon madam, if this you purpose as ye speak, diana's temple is not distant far, where you may abide till your date expire. moreover, if you please, a niece of mine shall there attend you. thaisa my recompense is thanks, that's all; yet my good will is great, though the gift small. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act iv [enter gower] gower imagine pericles arrived at tyre, welcomed and settled to his own desire. his woeful queen we leave at ephesus, unto diana there a votaress. now to marina bend your mind, whom our fast-growing scene must find at tarsus, and by cleon train'd in music, letters; who hath gain'd of education all the grace, which makes her both the heart and place of general wonder. but, alack, that monster envy, oft the wrack of earned praise, marina's life seeks to take off by treason's knife. and in this kind hath our cleon one daughter, and a wench full grown, even ripe for marriage-rite; this maid hight philoten: and it is said for certain in our story, she would ever with marina be: be't when she weaved the sleided silk with fingers long, small, white as milk; or when she would with sharp needle wound the cambric, which she made more sound by hurting it; or when to the lute she sung, and made the night-bird mute, that still records with moan; or when she would with rich and constant pen vail to her mistress dian; still this philoten contends in skill with absolute marina: so with the dove of paphos might the crow vie feathers white. marina gets all praises, which are paid as debts, and not as given. this so darks in philoten all graceful marks, that cleon's wife, with envy rare, a present murderer does prepare for good marina, that her daughter might stand peerless by this slaughter. the sooner her vile thoughts to stead, lychorida, our nurse, is dead: and cursed dionyza hath the pregnant instrument of wrath prest for this blow. the unborn event i do commend to your content: only i carry winged time post on the lame feet of my rhyme; which never could i so convey, unless your thoughts went on my way. dionyza does appear, with leonine, a murderer. [exit] pericles, prince of tyre act iv scene i tarsus. an open place near the sea-shore. [enter dionyza and leonine] dionyza thy oath remember; thou hast sworn to do't: 'tis but a blow, which never shall be known. thou canst not do a thing in the world so soon, to yield thee so much profit. let not conscience, which is but cold, inflaming love i' thy bosom, inflame too nicely; nor let pity, which even women have cast off, melt thee, but be a soldier to thy purpose. leonine i will do't; but yet she is a goodly creature. dionyza the fitter, then, the gods should have her. here she comes weeping for her only mistress' death. thou art resolved? leonine i am resolved. [enter marina, with a basket of flowers] marina no, i will rob tellus of her weed, to strew thy green with flowers: the yellows, blues, the purple violets, and marigolds, shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave, while summer-days do last. ay me! poor maid, born in a tempest, when my mother died, this world to me is like a lasting storm, whirring me from my friends. dionyza how now, marina! why do you keep alone? how chance my daughter is not with you? do not consume your blood with sorrowing: you have a nurse of me. lord, how your favour's changed with this unprofitable woe! come, give me your flowers, ere the sea mar it. walk with leonine; the air is quick there, and it pierces and sharpens the stomach. come, leonine, take her by the arm, walk with her. marina no, i pray you; i'll not bereave you of your servant. dionyza come, come; i love the king your father, and yourself, with more than foreign heart. we every day expect him here: when he shall come and find our paragon to all reports thus blasted, he will repent the breadth of his great voyage; blame both my lord and me, that we have taken no care to your best courses. go, i pray you, walk, and be cheerful once again; reserve that excellent complexion, which did steal the eyes of young and old. care not for me i can go home alone. marina well, i will go; but yet i have no desire to it. dionyza come, come, i know 'tis good for you. walk half an hour, leonine, at the least: remember what i have said. leonine i warrant you, madam. dionyza i'll leave you, my sweet lady, for a while: pray, walk softly, do not heat your blood: what! i must have a care of you. marina my thanks, sweet madam. [exit dionyza] is this wind westerly that blows? leonine south-west. marina when i was born, the wind was north. leonine was't so? marina my father, as nurse said, did never fear, but cried 'good seaman!' to the sailors, galling his kingly hands, haling ropes; and, clasping to the mast, endured a sea that almost burst the deck. leonine when was this? marina when i was born: never was waves nor wind more violent; and from the ladder-tackle washes off a canvas-climber. 'ha!' says one, 'wilt out?' and with a dropping industry they skip from stem to stern: the boatswain whistles, and the master calls, and trebles their confusion. leonine come, say your prayers. marina what mean you? leonine if you require a little space for prayer, i grant it: pray; but be not tedious, for the gods are quick of ear, and i am sworn to do my work with haste. marina why will you kill me? leonine to satisfy my lady. marina why would she have me kill'd? now, as i can remember, by my troth, i never did her hurt in all my life: i never spake bad word, nor did ill turn to any living creature: believe me, la, i never kill'd a mouse, nor hurt a fly: i trod upon a worm against my will, but i wept for it. how have i offended, wherein my death might yield her any profit, or my life imply her any danger? leonine my commission is not to reason of the deed, but do it. marina you will not do't for all the world, i hope. you are well favour'd, and your looks foreshow you have a gentle heart. i saw you lately, when you caught hurt in parting two that fought: good sooth, it show'd well in you: do so now: your lady seeks my life; come you between, and save poor me, the weaker. leonine i am sworn, and will dispatch. [he seizes her] [enter pirates] first pirate hold, villain! [leonine runs away] second pirate a prize! a prize! third pirate half-part, mates, half-part. come, let's have her aboard suddenly. [exeunt pirates with marina] [re-enter leonine] leonine these roguing thieves serve the great pirate valdes; and they have seized marina. let her go: there's no hope she will return. i'll swear she's dead, and thrown into the sea. but i'll see further: perhaps they will but please themselves upon her, not carry her aboard. if she remain, whom they have ravish'd must by me be slain. [exit] pericles, prince of tyre act iv scene ii mytilene. a room in a brothel. [enter pandar, bawd, and boult] pandar boult! boult sir? pandar search the market narrowly; mytilene is full of gallants. we lost too much money this mart by being too wenchless. bawd we were never so much out of creatures. we have but poor three, and they can do no more than they can do; and they with continual action are even as good as rotten. pandar therefore let's have fresh ones, whate'er we pay for them. if there be not a conscience to be used in every trade, we shall never prosper. bawd thou sayest true: 'tis not our bringing up of poor bastards,--as, i think, i have brought up some eleven- boult ay, to eleven; and brought them down again. but shall i search the market? bawd what else, man? the stuff we have, a strong wind will blow it to pieces, they are so pitifully sodden. pandar thou sayest true; they're too unwholesome, o' conscience. the poor transylvanian is dead, that lay with the little baggage. boult ay, she quickly pooped him; she made him roast-meat for worms. but i'll go search the market. [exit] pandar three or four thousand chequins were as pretty a proportion to live quietly, and so give over. bawd why to give over, i pray you? is it a shame to get when we are old? pandar o, our credit comes not in like the commodity, nor the commodity wages not with the danger: therefore, if in our youths we could pick up some pretty estate, 'twere not amiss to keep our door hatched. besides, the sore terms we stand upon with the gods will be strong with us for giving over. bawd come, other sorts offend as well as we. pandar as well as we! ay, and better too; we offend worse. neither is our profession any trade; it's no calling. but here comes boult. [re-enter boult, with the pirates and marina] boult [to marina] come your ways. my masters, you say she's a virgin? first pirate o, sir, we doubt it not. boult master, i have gone through for this piece, you see: if you like her, so; if not, i have lost my earnest. bawd boult, has she any qualities? boult she has a good face, speaks well, and has excellent good clothes: there's no further necessity of qualities can make her be refused. bawd what's her price, boult? boult i cannot be bated one doit of a thousand pieces. pandar well, follow me, my masters, you shall have your money presently. wife, take her in; instruct her what she has to do, that she may not be raw in her entertainment. [exeunt pandar and pirates] bawd boult, take you the marks of her, the colour of her hair, complexion, height, age, with warrant of her virginity; and cry 'he that will give most shall have her first.' such a maidenhead were no cheap thing, if men were as they have been. get this done as i command you. boult performance shall follow. [exit] marina alack that leonine was so slack, so slow! he should have struck, not spoke; or that these pirates, not enough barbarous, had not o'erboard thrown me for to seek my mother! bawd why lament you, pretty one? marina that i am pretty. bawd come, the gods have done their part in you. marina i accuse them not. bawd you are light into my hands, where you are like to live. marina the more my fault to scape his hands where i was like to die. bawd ay, and you shall live in pleasure. marina no. bawd yes, indeed shall you, and taste gentlemen of all fashions: you shall fare well; you shall have the difference of all complexions. what! do you stop your ears? marina are you a woman? bawd what would you have me be, an i be not a woman? marina an honest woman, or not a woman. bawd marry, whip thee, gosling: i think i shall have something to do with you. come, you're a young foolish sapling, and must be bowed as i would have you. marina the gods defend me! bawd if it please the gods to defend you by men, then men must comfort you, men must feed you, men must stir you up. boult's returned. [re-enter boult] now, sir, hast thou cried her through the market? boult i have cried her almost to the number of her hairs; i have drawn her picture with my voice. bawd and i prithee tell me, how dost thou find the inclination of the people, especially of the younger sort? boult 'faith, they listened to me as they would have hearkened to their father's testament. there was a spaniard's mouth so watered, that he went to bed to her very description. bawd we shall have him here to-morrow with his best ruff on. boult to-night, to-night. but, mistress, do you know the french knight that cowers i' the hams? bawd who, monsieur veroles? boult ay, he: he offered to cut a caper at the proclamation; but he made a groan at it, and swore he would see her to-morrow. bawd well, well; as for him, he brought his disease hither: here he does but repair it. i know he will come in our shadow, to scatter his crowns in the sun. boult well, if we had of every nation a traveller, we should lodge them with this sign. bawd [to marina] pray you, come hither awhile. you have fortunes coming upon you. mark me: you must seem to do that fearfully which you commit willingly, despise profit where you have most gain. to weep that you live as ye do makes pity in your lovers: seldom but that pity begets you a good opinion, and that opinion a mere profit. marina i understand you not. boult o, take her home, mistress, take her home: these blushes of hers must be quenched with some present practise. bawd thou sayest true, i' faith, so they must; for your bride goes to that with shame which is her way to go with warrant. boult 'faith, some do, and some do not. but, mistress, if i have bargained for the joint,- bawd thou mayst cut a morsel off the spit. boult i may so. bawd who should deny it? come, young one, i like the manner of your garments well. boult ay, by my faith, they shall not be changed yet. bawd boult, spend thou that in the town: report what a sojourner we have; you'll lose nothing by custom. when nature flamed this piece, she meant thee a good turn; therefore say what a paragon she is, and thou hast the harvest out of thine own report. boult i warrant you, mistress, thunder shall not so awake the beds of eels as my giving out her beauty stir up the lewdly-inclined. i'll bring home some to-night. bawd come your ways; follow me. marina if fires be hot, knives sharp, or waters deep, untied i still my virgin knot will keep. diana, aid my purpose! bawd what have we to do with diana? pray you, will you go with us? [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act iv scene iii tarsus. a room in cleon's house. [enter cleon and dionyza] dionyza why, are you foolish? can it be undone? cleon o dionyza, such a piece of slaughter the sun and moon ne'er look'd upon! dionyza i think you'll turn a child again. cleon were i chief lord of all this spacious world, i'ld give it to undo the deed. o lady, much less in blood than virtue, yet a princess to equal any single crown o' the earth i' the justice of compare! o villain leonine! whom thou hast poison'd too: if thou hadst drunk to him, 't had been a kindness becoming well thy fact: what canst thou say when noble pericles shall demand his child? dionyza that she is dead. nurses are not the fates, to foster it, nor ever to preserve. she died at night; i'll say so. who can cross it? unless you play the pious innocent, and for an honest attribute cry out 'she died by foul play.' cleon o, go to. well, well, of all the faults beneath the heavens, the gods do like this worst. dionyza be one of those that think the petty wrens of tarsus will fly hence, and open this to pericles. i do shame to think of what a noble strain you are, and of how coward a spirit. cleon to such proceeding who ever but his approbation added, though not his prime consent, he did not flow from honourable sources. dionyza be it so, then: yet none does know, but you, how she came dead, nor none can know, leonine being gone. she did disdain my child, and stood between her and her fortunes: none would look on her, but cast their gazes on marina's face; whilst ours was blurted at and held a malkin not worth the time of day. it pierced me through; and though you call my course unnatural, you not your child well loving, yet i find it greets me as an enterprise of kindness perform'd to your sole daughter. cleon heavens forgive it! dionyza and as for pericles, what should he say? we wept after her hearse, and yet we mourn: her monument is almost finish'd, and her epitaphs in glittering golden characters express a general praise to her, and care in us at whose expense 'tis done. cleon thou art like the harpy, which, to betray, dost, with thine angel's face, seize with thine eagle's talons. dionyza you are like one that superstitiously doth swear to the gods that winter kills the flies: but yet i know you'll do as i advise. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act iv scene iv: [enter gower, before the monument of marina at tarsus] gower thus time we waste, and longest leagues make short; sail seas in cockles, have an wish but for't; making, to take your imagination, from bourn to bourn, region to region. by you being pardon'd, we commit no crime to use one language in each several clime where our scenes seem to live. i do beseech you to learn of me, who stand i' the gaps to teach you, the stages of our story. pericles is now again thwarting the wayward seas, attended on by many a lord and knight. to see his daughter, all his life's delight. old escanes, whom helicanus late advanced in time to great and high estate, is left to govern. bear you it in mind, old helicanus goes along behind. well-sailing ships and bounteous winds have brought this king to tarsus,--think his pilot thought; so with his steerage shall your thoughts grow on,- to fetch his daughter home, who first is gone. like motes and shadows see them move awhile; your ears unto your eyes i'll reconcile. dumb show. [enter pericles, at one door, with all his train; cleon and dionyza, at the other. cleon shows pericles the tomb; whereat pericles makes lamentation, puts on sackcloth, and in a mighty passion departs. then exeunt cleon and dionyza] see how belief may suffer by foul show! this borrow'd passion stands for true old woe; and pericles, in sorrow all devour'd, with sighs shot through, and biggest tears o'ershower'd, leaves tarsus and again embarks. he swears never to wash his face, nor cut his hairs: he puts on sackcloth, and to sea. he bears a tempest, which his mortal vessel tears, and yet he rides it out. now please you wit. the epitaph is for marina writ by wicked dionyza. [reads the inscription on marina's monument] 'the fairest, sweet'st, and best lies here, who wither'd in her spring of year. she was of tyrus the king's daughter, on whom foul death hath made this slaughter; marina was she call'd; and at her birth, thetis, being proud, swallow'd some part o' the earth: therefore the earth, fearing to be o'erflow'd, hath thetis' birth-child on the heavens bestow'd: wherefore she does, and swears she'll never stint, make raging battery upon shores of flint.' no visor does become black villany so well as soft and tender flattery. let pericles believe his daughter's dead, and bear his courses to be ordered by lady fortune; while our scene must play his daughter's woe and heavy well-a-day in her unholy service. patience, then, and think you now are all in mytilene. [exit] pericles, prince of tyre act iv scene v mytilene. a street before the brothel. [enter, from the brothel, two gentlemen] first gentleman did you ever hear the like? second gentleman no, nor never shall do in such a place as this, she being once gone. first gentleman but to have divinity preached there! did you ever dream of such a thing? second gentleman no, no. come, i am for no more bawdy-houses: shall's go hear the vestals sing? first gentleman i'll do any thing now that is virtuous; but i am out of the road of rutting for ever. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act iv scene vi the same. a room in the brothel. [enter pandar, bawd, and boult] pandar well, i had rather than twice the worth of her she had ne'er come here. bawd fie, fie upon her! she's able to freeze the god priapus, and undo a whole generation. we must either get her ravished, or be rid of her. when she should do for clients her fitment, and do me the kindness of our profession, she has me her quirks, her reasons, her master reasons, her prayers, her knees; that she would make a puritan of the devil, if he should cheapen a kiss of her. boult 'faith, i must ravish her, or she'll disfurnish us of all our cavaliers, and make our swearers priests. pandar now, the pox upon her green-sickness for me! bawd 'faith, there's no way to be rid on't but by the way to the pox. here comes the lord lysimachus disguised. boult we should have both lord and lown, if the peevish baggage would but give way to customers. [enter lysimachus] lysimachus how now! how a dozen of virginities? bawd now, the gods to-bless your honour! boult i am glad to see your honour in good health. lysimachus you may so; 'tis the better for you that your resorters stand upon sound legs. how now! wholesome iniquity have you that a man may deal withal, and defy the surgeon? bawd we have here one, sir, if she would--but there never came her like in mytilene. lysimachus if she'ld do the deed of darkness, thou wouldst say. bawd your honour knows what 'tis to say well enough. lysimachus well, call forth, call forth. boult for flesh and blood, sir, white and red, you shall see a rose; and she were a rose indeed, if she had but- lysimachus what, prithee? boult o, sir, i can be modest. lysimachus that dignifies the renown of a bawd, no less than it gives a good report to a number to be chaste. [exit boult] bawd here comes that which grows to the stalk; never plucked yet, i can assure you. [re-enter boult with marina] is she not a fair creature? lysimachus 'faith, she would serve after a long voyage at sea. well, there's for you: leave us. bawd i beseech your honour, give me leave: a word, and i'll have done presently. lysimachus i beseech you, do. bawd [to marina] first, i would have you note, this is an honourable man. marina i desire to find him so, that i may worthily note him. bawd next, he's the governor of this country, and a man whom i am bound to. marina if he govern the country, you are bound to him indeed; but how honourable he is in that, i know not. bawd pray you, without any more virginal fencing, will you use him kindly? he will line your apron with gold. marina what he will do graciously, i will thankfully receive. lysimachus ha' you done? bawd my lord, she's not paced yet: you must take some pains to work her to your manage. come, we will leave his honour and her together. go thy ways. [exeunt bawd, pandar, and boult] lysimachus now, pretty one, how long have you been at this trade? marina what trade, sir? lysimachus why, i cannot name't but i shall offend. marina i cannot be offended with my trade. please you to name it. lysimachus how long have you been of this profession? marina e'er since i can remember. lysimachus did you go to 't so young? were you a gamester at five or at seven? marina earlier too, sir, if now i be one. lysimachus why, the house you dwell in proclaims you to be a creature of sale. marina do you know this house to be a place of such resort, and will come into 't? i hear say you are of honourable parts, and are the governor of this place. lysimachus why, hath your principal made known unto you who i am? marina who is my principal? lysimachus why, your herb-woman; she that sets seeds and roots of shame and iniquity. o, you have heard something of my power, and so stand aloof for more serious wooing. but i protest to thee, pretty one, my authority shall not see thee, or else look friendly upon thee. come, bring me to some private place: come, come. marina if you were born to honour, show it now; if put upon you, make the judgment good that thought you worthy of it. lysimachus how's this? how's this? some more; be sage. marina for me, that am a maid, though most ungentle fortune have placed me in this sty, where, since i came, diseases have been sold dearer than physic, o, that the gods would set me free from this unhallow'd place, though they did change me to the meanest bird that flies i' the purer air! lysimachus i did not think thou couldst have spoke so well; ne'er dream'd thou couldst. had i brought hither a corrupted mind, thy speech had alter'd it. hold, here's gold for thee: persever in that clear way thou goest, and the gods strengthen thee! marina the good gods preserve you! lysimachus for me, be you thoughten that i came with no ill intent; for to me the very doors and windows savour vilely. fare thee well. thou art a piece of virtue, and i doubt not but thy training hath been noble. hold, here's more gold for thee. a curse upon him, die he like a thief, that robs thee of thy goodness! if thou dost hear from me, it shall be for thy good. [re-enter boult] boult i beseech your honour, one piece for me. lysimachus avaunt, thou damned door-keeper! your house, but for this virgin that doth prop it, would sink and overwhelm you. away! [exit] boult how's this? we must take another course with you. if your peevish chastity, which is not worth a breakfast in the cheapest country under the cope, shall undo a whole household, let me be gelded like a spaniel. come your ways. marina whither would you have me? boult i must have your maidenhead taken off, or the common hangman shall execute it. come your ways. we'll have no more gentlemen driven away. come your ways, i say. [re-enter bawd] bawd how now! what's the matter? boult worse and worse, mistress; she has here spoken holy words to the lord lysimachus. bawd o abominable! boult she makes our profession as it were to stink afore the face of the gods. bawd marry, hang her up for ever! boult the nobleman would have dealt with her like a nobleman, and she sent him away as cold as a snowball; saying his prayers too. bawd boult, take her away; use her at thy pleasure: crack the glass of her virginity, and make the rest malleable. boult an if she were a thornier piece of ground than she is, she shall be ploughed. marina hark, hark, you gods! bawd she conjures: away with her! would she had never come within my doors! marry, hang you! she's born to undo us. will you not go the way of women-kind? marry, come up, my dish of chastity with rosemary and bays! [exit] boult come, mistress; come your ways with me. marina whither wilt thou have me? boult to take from you the jewel you hold so dear. marina prithee, tell me one thing first. boult come now, your one thing. marina what canst thou wish thine enemy to be? boult why, i could wish him to be my master, or rather, my mistress. marina neither of these are so bad as thou art, since they do better thee in their command. thou hold'st a place, for which the pained'st fiend of hell would not in reputation change: thou art the damned doorkeeper to every coistrel that comes inquiring for his tib; to the choleric fisting of every rogue thy ear is liable; thy food is such as hath been belch'd on by infected lungs. boult what would you have me do? go to the wars, would you? where a man may serve seven years for the loss of a leg, and have not money enough in the end to buy him a wooden one? marina do any thing but this thou doest. empty old receptacles, or common shores, of filth; serve by indenture to the common hangman: any of these ways are yet better than this; for what thou professest, a baboon, could he speak, would own a name too dear. o, that the gods would safely deliver me from this place! here, here's gold for thee. if that thy master would gain by thee, proclaim that i can sing, weave, sew, and dance, with other virtues, which i'll keep from boast: and i will undertake all these to teach. i doubt not but this populous city will yield many scholars. boult but can you teach all this you speak of? marina prove that i cannot, take me home again, and prostitute me to the basest groom that doth frequent your house. boult well, i will see what i can do for thee: if i can place thee, i will. marina but amongst honest women. boult 'faith, my acquaintance lies little amongst them. but since my master and mistress have bought you, there's no going but by their consent: therefore i will make them acquainted with your purpose, and i doubt not but i shall find them tractable enough. come, i'll do for thee what i can; come your ways. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act v [enter gower] gower marina thus the brothel 'scapes, and chances into an honest house, our story says. she sings like one immortal, and she dances as goddess-like to her admired lays; deep clerks she dumbs; and with her needle composes nature's own shape, of bud, bird, branch, or berry, that even her art sisters the natural roses; her inkle, silk, twin with the rubied cherry: that pupils lacks she none of noble race, who pour their bounty on her; and her gain she gives the cursed bawd. here we her place; and to her father turn our thoughts again, where we left him, on the sea. we there him lost; whence, driven before the winds, he is arrived here where his daughter dwells; and on this coast suppose him now at anchor. the city strived god neptune's annual feast to keep: from whence lysimachus our tyrian ship espies, his banners sable, trimm'd with rich expense; and to him in his barge with fervor hies. in your supposing once more put your sight of heavy pericles; think this his bark: where what is done in action, more, if might, shall be discover'd; please you, sit and hark. [exit] pericles, prince of tyre act v scene i on board pericles' ship, off mytilene. a close pavilion on deck, with a curtain before it; pericles within it, reclined on a couch. a barge lying beside the tyrian vessel. [enter two sailors, one belonging to the tyrian vessel, the other to the barge; to them helicanus] tyrian sailor [to the sailor of mytilene] where is lord helicanus? he can resolve you. o, here he is. sir, there's a barge put off from mytilene, and in it is lysimachus the governor, who craves to come aboard. what is your will? helicanus that he have his. call up some gentlemen. tyrian sailor ho, gentlemen! my lord calls. [enter two or three gentlemen] first gentleman doth your lordship call? helicanus gentlemen, there's some of worth would come aboard; i pray ye, greet them fairly. [the gentlemen and the two sailors descend, and go on board the barge] [enter, from thence, lysimachus and lords; with the gentlemen and the two sailors] tyrian sailor sir, this is the man that can, in aught you would, resolve you. lysimachus hail, reverend sir! the gods preserve you! helicanus and you, sir, to outlive the age i am, and die as i would do. lysimachus you wish me well. being on shore, honouring of neptune's triumphs, seeing this goodly vessel ride before us, i made to it, to know of whence you are. helicanus first, what is your place? lysimachus i am the governor of this place you lie before. helicanus sir, our vessel is of tyre, in it the king; a man who for this three months hath not spoken to any one, nor taken sustenance but to prorogue his grief. lysimachus upon what ground is his distemperature? helicanus 'twould be too tedious to repeat; but the main grief springs from the loss of a beloved daughter and a wife. lysimachus may we not see him? helicanus you may; but bootless is your sight: he will not speak to any. lysimachus yet let me obtain my wish. helicanus behold him. [pericles discovered] this was a goodly person, till the disaster that, one mortal night, drove him to this. lysimachus sir king, all hail! the gods preserve you! hail, royal sir! helicanus it is in vain; he will not speak to you. first lord sir, we have a maid in mytilene, i durst wager, would win some words of him. lysimachus 'tis well bethought. she questionless with her sweet harmony and other chosen attractions, would allure, and make a battery through his deafen'd parts, which now are midway stopp'd: she is all happy as the fairest of all, and, with her fellow maids is now upon the leafy shelter that abuts against the island's side. [whispers a lord, who goes off in the barge of lysimachus] helicanus sure, all's effectless; yet nothing we'll omit that bears recovery's name. but, since your kindness we have stretch'd thus far, let us beseech you that for our gold we may provision have, wherein we are not destitute for want, but weary for the staleness. lysimachus o, sir, a courtesy which if we should deny, the most just gods for every graff would send a caterpillar, and so afflict our province. yet once more let me entreat to know at large the cause of your king's sorrow. helicanus sit, sir, i will recount it to you: but, see, i am prevented. [re-enter, from the barge, lord, with marina, and a young lady] lysimachus o, here is the lady that i sent for. welcome, fair one! is't not a goodly presence? helicanus she's a gallant lady. lysimachus she's such a one, that, were i well assured came of a gentle kind and noble stock, i'ld wish no better choice, and think me rarely wed. fair one, all goodness that consists in bounty expect even here, where is a kingly patient: if that thy prosperous and artificial feat can draw him but to answer thee in aught, thy sacred physic shall receive such pay as thy desires can wish. marina sir, i will use my utmost skill in his recovery, provided that none but i and my companion maid be suffer'd to come near him. lysimachus come, let us leave her; and the gods make her prosperous! [marina sings] lysimachus mark'd he your music? marina no, nor look'd on us. lysimachus see, she will speak to him. marina hail, sir! my lord, lend ear. pericles hum, ha! marina i am a maid, my lord, that ne'er before invited eyes, but have been gazed on like a comet: she speaks, my lord, that, may be, hath endured a grief might equal yours, if both were justly weigh'd. though wayward fortune did malign my state, my derivation was from ancestors who stood equivalent with mighty kings: but time hath rooted out my parentage, and to the world and awkward casualties bound me in servitude. [aside] i will desist; but there is something glows upon my cheek, and whispers in mine ear, 'go not till he speak.' pericles my fortunes--parentage--good parentage- to equal mine!--was it not thus? what say you? marina i said, my lord, if you did know my parentage, you would not do me violence. pericles i do think so. pray you, turn your eyes upon me. you are like something that--what country-woman? here of these shores? marina no, nor of any shores: yet i was mortally brought forth, and am no other than i appear. pericles i am great with woe, and shall deliver weeping. my dearest wife was like this maid, and such a one my daughter might have been: my queen's square brows; her stature to an inch; as wand-like straight; as silver-voiced; her eyes as jewel-like and cased as richly; in pace another juno; who starves the ears she feeds, and makes them hungry, the more she gives them speech. where do you live? marina where i am but a stranger: from the deck you may discern the place. pericles where were you bred? and how achieved you these endowments, which you make more rich to owe? marina if i should tell my history, it would seem like lies disdain'd in the reporting. pericles prithee, speak: falseness cannot come from thee; for thou look'st modest as justice, and thou seem'st a palace for the crown'd truth to dwell in: i will believe thee, and make my senses credit thy relation to points that seem impossible; for thou look'st like one i loved indeed. what were thy friends? didst thou not say, when i did push thee back- which was when i perceived thee--that thou camest from good descending? marina so indeed i did. pericles report thy parentage. i think thou said'st thou hadst been toss'd from wrong to injury, and that thou thought'st thy griefs might equal mine, if both were open'd. marina some such thing i said, and said no more but what my thoughts did warrant me was likely. pericles tell thy story; if thine consider'd prove the thousandth part of my endurance, thou art a man, and i have suffer'd like a girl: yet thou dost look like patience gazing on kings' graves, and smiling extremity out of act. what were thy friends? how lost thou them? thy name, my most kind virgin? recount, i do beseech thee: come, sit by me. marina my name is marina. pericles o, i am mock'd, and thou by some incensed god sent hither to make the world to laugh at me. marina patience, good sir, or here i'll cease. pericles nay, i'll be patient. thou little know'st how thou dost startle me, to call thyself marina. marina the name was given me by one that had some power, my father, and a king. pericles how! a king's daughter? and call'd marina? marina you said you would believe me; but, not to be a troubler of your peace, i will end here. pericles but are you flesh and blood? have you a working pulse? and are no fairy? motion! well; speak on. where were you born? and wherefore call'd marina? marina call'd marina for i was born at sea. pericles at sea! what mother? marina my mother was the daughter of a king; who died the minute i was born, as my good nurse lychorida hath oft deliver'd weeping. pericles o, stop there a little! [aside] this is the rarest dream that e'er dull sleep did mock sad fools withal: this cannot be: my daughter's buried. well: where were you bred? i'll hear you more, to the bottom of your story, and never interrupt you. marina you scorn: believe me, 'twere best i did give o'er. pericles i will believe you by the syllable of what you shall deliver. yet, give me leave: how came you in these parts? where were you bred? marina the king my father did in tarsus leave me; till cruel cleon, with his wicked wife, did seek to murder me: and having woo'd a villain to attempt it, who having drawn to do't, a crew of pirates came and rescued me; brought me to mytilene. but, good sir, whither will you have me? why do you weep? it may be, you think me an impostor: no, good faith; i am the daughter to king pericles, if good king pericles be. pericles ho, helicanus! helicanus calls my lord? pericles thou art a grave and noble counsellor, most wise in general: tell me, if thou canst, what this maid is, or what is like to be, that thus hath made me weep? helicanus i know not; but here is the regent, sir, of mytilene speaks nobly of her. lysimachus she would never tell her parentage; being demanded that, she would sit still and weep. pericles o helicanus, strike me, honour'd sir; give me a gash, put me to present pain; lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me o'erbear the shores of my mortality, and drown me with their sweetness. o, come hither, thou that beget'st him that did thee beget; thou that wast born at sea, buried at tarsus, and found at sea again! o helicanus, down on thy knees, thank the holy gods as loud as thunder threatens us: this is marina. what was thy mother's name? tell me but that, for truth can never be confirm'd enough, though doubts did ever sleep. marina first, sir, i pray, what is your title? pericles i am pericles of tyre: but tell me now my drown'd queen's name, as in the rest you said thou hast been godlike perfect, the heir of kingdoms and another like to pericles thy father. marina is it no more to be your daughter than to say my mother's name was thaisa? thaisa was my mother, who did end the minute i began. pericles now, blessing on thee! rise; thou art my child. give me fresh garments. mine own, helicanus; she is not dead at tarsus, as she should have been, by savage cleon: she shall tell thee all; when thou shalt kneel, and justify in knowledge she is thy very princess. who is this? helicanus sir, 'tis the governor of mytilene, who, hearing of your melancholy state, did come to see you. pericles i embrace you. give me my robes. i am wild in my beholding. o heavens bless my girl! but, hark, what music? tell helicanus, my marina, tell him o'er, point by point, for yet he seems to doubt, how sure you are my daughter. but, what music? helicanus my lord, i hear none. pericles none! the music of the spheres! list, my marina. lysimachus it is not good to cross him; give him way. pericles rarest sounds! do ye not hear? lysimachus my lord, i hear. [music] pericles most heavenly music! it nips me unto listening, and thick slumber hangs upon mine eyes: let me rest. [sleeps] lysimachus a pillow for his head: so, leave him all. well, my companion friends, if this but answer to my just belief, i'll well remember you. [exeunt all but pericles] [diana appears to pericles as in a vision] diana my temple stands in ephesus: hie thee thither, and do upon mine altar sacrifice. there, when my maiden priests are met together, before the people all, reveal how thou at sea didst lose thy wife: to mourn thy crosses, with thy daughter's, call and give them repetition to the life. or perform my bidding, or thou livest in woe; do it, and happy; by my silver bow! awake, and tell thy dream. [disappears] pericles celestial dian, goddess argentine, i will obey thee. helicanus! [re-enter helicanus, lysimachus, and marina] helicanus sir? pericles my purpose was for tarsus, there to strike the inhospitable cleon; but i am for other service first: toward ephesus turn our blown sails; eftsoons i'll tell thee why. [to lysimachus] shall we refresh us, sir, upon your shore, and give you gold for such provision as our intents will need? lysimachus sir, with all my heart; and, when you come ashore, i have another suit. pericles you shall prevail, were it to woo my daughter; for it seems you have been noble towards her. lysimachus sir, lend me your arm. pericles come, my marina. [exeunt] pericles, prince of tyre act v scene ii: [enter gower, before the temple of diana at ephesus] gower now our sands are almost run; more a little, and then dumb. this, my last boon, give me, for such kindness must relieve me, that you aptly will suppose what pageantry, what feats, what shows, what minstrelsy, and pretty din, the regent made in mytilene to greet the king. so he thrived, that he is promised to be wived to fair marina; but in no wise till he had done his sacrifice, as dian bade: whereto being bound, the interim, pray you, all confound. in feather'd briefness sails are fill'd, and wishes fall out as they're will'd. at ephesus, the temple see, our king and all his company. that he can hither come so soon, is by your fancy's thankful doom. [exit] pericles, prince of tyre act v scene iii the temple of diana at ephesus; thaisa standing near the altar, as high priestess; a number of virgins on each side; cerimon and other inhabitants of ephesus attending. [enter pericles, with his train; lysimachus, helicanus, marina, and a lady] pericles hail, dian! to perform thy just command, i here confess myself the king of tyre; who, frighted from my country, did wed at pentapolis the fair thaisa. at sea in childbed died she, but brought forth a maid-child call'd marina; who, o goddess, wears yet thy silver livery. she at tarsus was nursed with cleon; who at fourteen years he sought to murder: but her better stars brought her to mytilene; 'gainst whose shore riding, her fortunes brought the maid aboard us, where, by her own most clear remembrance, she made known herself my daughter. thaisa voice and favour! you are, you are--o royal pericles! [faints] pericles what means the nun? she dies! help, gentlemen! cerimon noble sir, if you have told diana's altar true, this is your wife. pericles reverend appearer, no; i threw her overboard with these very arms. cerimon upon this coast, i warrant you. pericles 'tis most certain. cerimon look to the lady; o, she's but o'erjoy'd. early in blustering morn this lady was thrown upon this shore. i oped the coffin, found there rich jewels; recover'd her, and placed her here in diana's temple. pericles may we see them? cerimon great sir, they shall be brought you to my house, whither i invite you. look, thaisa is recovered. thaisa o, let me look! if he be none of mine, my sanctity will to my sense bend no licentious ear, but curb it, spite of seeing. o, my lord, are you not pericles? like him you spake, like him you are: did you not name a tempest, a birth, and death? pericles the voice of dead thaisa! thaisa that thaisa am i, supposed dead and drown'd. pericles immortal dian! thaisa now i know you better. when we with tears parted pentapolis, the king my father gave you such a ring. [shows a ring] pericles this, this: no more, you gods! your present kindness makes my past miseries sports: you shall do well, that on the touching of her lips i may melt and no more be seen. o, come, be buried a second time within these arms. marina my heart leaps to be gone into my mother's bosom. [kneels to thaisa] pericles look, who kneels here! flesh of thy flesh, thaisa; thy burden at the sea, and call'd marina for she was yielded there. thaisa blest, and mine own! helicanus hail, madam, and my queen! thaisa i know you not. pericles you have heard me say, when i did fly from tyre, i left behind an ancient substitute: can you remember what i call'd the man? i have named him oft. thaisa 'twas helicanus then. pericles still confirmation: embrace him, dear thaisa; this is he. now do i long to hear how you were found; how possibly preserved; and who to thank, besides the gods, for this great miracle. thaisa lord cerimon, my lord; this man, through whom the gods have shown their power; that can from first to last resolve you. pericles reverend sir, the gods can have no mortal officer more like a god than you. will you deliver how this dead queen re-lives? cerimon i will, my lord. beseech you, first go with me to my house, where shall be shown you all was found with her; how she came placed here in the temple; no needful thing omitted. pericles pure dian, bless thee for thy vision! i will offer night-oblations to thee. thaisa, this prince, the fair-betrothed of your daughter, shall marry her at pentapolis. and now, this ornament makes me look dismal will i clip to form; and what this fourteen years no razor touch'd, to grace thy marriage-day, i'll beautify. thaisa lord cerimon hath letters of good credit, sir, my father's dead. pericles heavens make a star of him! yet there, my queen, we'll celebrate their nuptials, and ourselves will in that kingdom spend our following days: our son and daughter shall in tyrus reign. lord cerimon, we do our longing stay to hear the rest untold: sir, lead's the way. [exeunt] [enter gower] gower in antiochus and his daughter you have heard of monstrous lust the due and just reward: in pericles, his queen and daughter, seen, although assail'd with fortune fierce and keen, virtue preserved from fell destruction's blast, led on by heaven, and crown'd with joy at last: in helicanus may you well descry a figure of truth, of faith, of loyalty: in reverend cerimon there well appears the worth that learned charity aye wears: for wicked cleon and his wife, when fame had spread their cursed deed, and honour'd name of pericles, to rage the city turn, that him and his they in his palace burn; the gods for murder seemed so content to punish them; although not done, but meant. so, on your patience evermore attending, new joy wait on you! here our play has ending. [exit] walter scott: the keepsake stories ================================== a machine-readable transcription [for archival on the internet wiretap, the three stories have been concatenated. no other changes have been made.] version 1.0: 1993-02-06 1.1: 1993-03-06 several transcription errors fixed, mainly in the mirror the text of the three stories is taken from waverley novels, vol. xli: 'the highland widow', published by archibald constable and co, westminster, 1896. the order of the stories in the original is: aunt margaret's mirror the tapestried chamber the laird's jock each story is placed in a separate file, and each file contains the author's introduction to the story. the lines of the files follow that of the text, except that end-of-line hyphenations have been removed. three misprints have been removed: p. ???: extraneous period (mrs. swinton) (mr and mrs is set without periods in the text) p. 328: a double (re|| remain) p. 344: a missing inner quote (how then shall i ask it?'') all of which where found in the mirror. special markup: _ _ indicates italics in the original text --indicates an em-dash <oe> indicates the oe ligature <c,> indicates the c-cedilla <e'> indicates e acute small capitals have been replaced with lower-case letters. notes: the sequence `l.20' which appears in the introduction to the `mirror' is so printed in the text. the centenary edition of the waverley novels uses a pound sterling sign instead of the `l.'. the transcription and proof-reading were done by anders thulin, rydsvagen 288, s-583 30 linkoping, sweden. email: ath@linkoping.trab.se i'd be grateful to learn of any errors you find in the text. [1. my aunt margaret's mirror] introduction. the species of publication which has come to be generally known by the title of _annual_, being a miscellany of prose and verse, equipped with numerous engravings, and put forth every year about christmas, had flourished for a long while in germany, before it was imitated in this country by an enterprising bookseller, a german by birth, mr ackermann. the rapid success of his work, as is the custom of the time, gave birth to a host of rivals, and, among others, to an annual styled the keepsake, the first volume of which appeared in 1828, and attracted much notice, chiefly in consequence of the very uncommon splendour of its illustrative accompaniments. the expenditure which the spirited proprietors lavished on this magnificent volume, is understood to have been not less than from ten to twelve thousand pounds sterling! various gentlemen of such literary reputation that any one might think it an honour to be associated with them, had been announced as contributors to this annual, before application was made to me to assist in it; and i accordingly placed with much pleasure at the editor's disposal a few fragments, originally designed to have been worked into the chronicles of the canongate, besides a ms. drama, the long-neglected performance of my youthful days---the house of aspen. the keepsake for 1828 included, however, only three of these little prose tales---of which the first in order was that entitled ``my aunt margaret's mirror.'' by way of _introduction_ to this, when now included in a general collection of my lucubrations, i have only to say, that it is a mere transcript, or at least with very little embellishment, of a story that i remembered being struck with in my childhood, when told at the fireside by a lady of eminent virtues, and no inconsiderable share of talent, one of the ancient and honourable house of swinton. she was a kind relation of my own, and met her death in a manner so shocking, being killed in a fit of insanity by a female attendant who had been attached to her person for half a lifetime, that i cannot now recall her memory, child as i was when the catastrophe occurred, without a painful re-awakening of perhaps the first images of horror that the scenes of real life stamped on my mind. this good spinster had in her composition a strong vein of the superstitious, and was pleased, among other fancies, to read alone in her chamber by a taper fixed in a candlestick which she had had formed out of a human skull. one night this strange piece of furniture acquired suddenly the power of locomotion, and, after performing some odd circles on her chimney-piece, fairly leaped on the floor, and continued to roll about the apartment. mrs swinton calmly proceeded to the adjoining room for another light, and had the satisfaction to penetrate the mystery on the spot. rats abounded in the ancient building she inhabited, and one of these had managed to ensconce itself within her favourite _memento mori_. though thus endowed with a more than feminine share of nerve, she entertained largely that belief in supernaturals, which in those times was not considered as sitting ungracefully on the grave and aged of her condition; and the story of the magic mirror was one for which she vouched with particular confidence, alleging indeed that one of her own family had been an eye-witness of the incidents recorded in it. ``i tell the tale as it was told to me.'' stories enow of much the same cast will present themselves to the recollection of such of my readers as have ever dabbled in a species of lore to which i certainly gave more hours, at one period of my life, than i should gain any credit by confessing. _august_, 1831. my aunt margaret's mirror. ``there are times when fancy plays her gambols, in despite even of our watchful senses, when in sooth substance seems shadow, shadow substance seems, when the broad, palpable, and mark'd partition, 'twixt that which is and is not, seems dissolved, as if the mental eye gain'd power to gaze beyond the limits of the existing world. such hours of shadowy dreams i better love than all the gross realities of life.'' anonymous. my aunt margaret was one of that respected sisterhood, upon whom devolve all the trouble and solicitude incidental to the possession of children, excepting only that which attends their entrance into the world. we were a large family, of very different dispositions and constitutions. some were dull and peevish---they were sent to aunt margaret to be amused; some were rude, romping, and boisterous---they were sent to aunt margaret to be kept quiet, or rather, that their noise might be removed out of hearing: those who were indisposed were sent with the prospect of being nursed--those who were stubborn, with the hope of their being subdued by the kindness of aunt margaret's discipline; in short, she had all the various duties of a mother, without the credit and dignity of the maternal character. the busy scene of her various cares is now over---of the invalids and the robust, the kind and the rough, the peevish and pleased children, who thronged her little parlour from morning to night, not one now remains alive but myself; who, afflicted by early infirmity, was one of the most delicate of her nurselings, yet, nevertheless, have outlived them all. it is still my custom, and shall be so while i have the use of my limbs, to visit my respected relation at least three times a-week. her abode is about half a mile from the suburbs of the town in which i reside; and is accessible, not only by the high-road, from which it stands at some distance, but by means of a greensward footpath, leading through some pretty meadows. i have so little left to torment me in life, that it is one of my greatest vexations to know that several of these sequestered fields have been devoted as sites for building. in that which is nearest the town, wheelbarrows have been at work for several weeks in such numbers, that, i verily believe, its whole surface, to the depth of at least eighteen inches, was mounted in these monotrochs at the same moment, and in the act of being transported from one place to another. huge triangular piles of planks are also reared in different parts of the devoted messuage; and a little group of trees, that still grace the eastern end, which rises in a gentle ascent, have just received warning to quit, expressed by a daub of white paint, and are to give place to a curious grove of chimneys. it would, perhaps, hurt others in my situation to reflect that this little range of pasturage once belonged to my father, (whose family was of some consideration in the world,) and was sold by patches to remedy distresses in which be involved himself in an attempt by commercial adventure to redeem his diminished fortune. while the building scheme was in full operation, this circumstance was often pointed out to me by the class of friends who are anxious that no part of your misfortunes should escape your observation. ``such pasture-ground! ---lying at the very town's end---in turnips and potatoes, the parks would bring l.20 per acre, and if leased for building---o, it was a gold mine!---and all sold for an old song out of the ancient possessor's hands!'' my comforters cannot bring me to repine much on this subject. if i could be allowed to look back on the past without interruption, i could willingly give up the enjoyment of present income, and the hope of future profit, to those who have purchased what my father sold. i regret the alteration of the ground only because it destroys associations, and i would more willingly (i think) see the earl's closes in the hands of strangers, retaining their silvan appearance, than know them for my own, if torn up by agriculture, or covered with buildings. mine are the sensations of poor logan: ``the horrid slough has rased the green where yet a child i stray'd; the axe has fell'd the hawthorn screen, the schoolboy's summer shade.'' i hope, however, the threatened devastation will not be consummated in my day. although the adventurous spirit of times short while since passed gave rise to the undertaking, i have been encouraged to think, that the subsequent changes have so far damped the spirit of speculation, that the rest of the woodland footpath leading to aunt margaret's retreat will be left undisturbed for her time and mine. i am interested in this, for every step of the way, after i have passed through the green already mentioned, has for me something of early remembrance:---there is the stile at which i can recollect a cross child's-maid upbraiding me with my infirmity, as she lifted me coarsely and carelessly over the flinty steps, which my brothers traversed with shout and bound. i remember the suppressed bitterness of the moment, and, conscious of my own inferiority, the feeling of envy with which i regarded the easy movements and elastic steps of my more happily formed brethren. alas! these goodly barks have all perished on life's wide ocean, and only that which seemed so little seaworthy, as the naval phrase goes, has reached the port when the tempest is over. then there is the pool, where, man<oe>uvring our little navy, constructed out of the broad water-flags, my elder brother fell in, and was scarce saved from the watery element to die under nelson's banner. there is the hazel copse also, in which my brother henry used to gather nuts, thinking little that he was to die in an indian jungle in quest of rupees. there is so much more of remembrance about the little walk, that---as i stop, rest on my crutch-headed cane, and look round with that species of comparison between the thing i was and that which i now am---it almost induces me to doubt my own identity; until i found myself in face of the honeysuckle porch of aunt margaret's dwelling, with its irregularity of front, and its odd projecting latticed windows; where the workmen seem to have made a study that no one of them should resemble another, in form, size, or in the old-fashioned stone entablature and labels which adorn them. this tenement, once the manor-house of earl's closes, we still retain a slight hold upon; for, in some family arrangements, it had been settled upon aunt margaret during the term of her life. upon this frail tenure depends, in a great measure, the last shadow of the family of bothwell of earl's closes, and their last slight connexion with their paternal inheritance. the only representative will then be an infirm old man, moving not unwillingly to the grave, which has devoured all that were dear to his affections. when i have indulged such thoughts for a minute or two, i enter the mansion, which is said to have been the gatehouse only of the original building, and find one being on whom time seems to have made little impression; for the aunt margaret of to-day bears the same proportional age to the aunt margaret of my early youth, that the boy of ten years old does to the man of (by'r lady!) some fifty-six years. the old lady's invariable costume has doubtless some share in confirming one in the opinion, that time has stood still with aunt margaret. the brown or chocolate-coloured silk gown, with ruffles of the same stuff at the elbow, within which are others of mechlin lace---the black silk gloves, or mitts, the white hair combed back upon a roll, and the cap of spotless cambric, which closes around the venerable countenance, as they were not the costume of 1780, so neither were they that of 1826; they are altogether a style peculiar to the individual aunt margaret. there she still sits, as she sat thirty years since, with her wheel or the stocking, which she works by the fire in winter, and by the window in summer, or, perhaps, venturing as far as the porch in an unusually fine summer evening. her frame, like some well-constructed piece of mechanics, still performs the operations for which it had seemed destined; going its round with an activity which is gradually diminished, yet indicating no probability that it will soon come to a period. the solicitude and affection which had made aunt margaret the willing slave to the inflictions of a whole nursery, have now for their object the health and comfort of one old and infirm man; the last remaining relative of her family, and the only one who can still find interest in the traditional stores which she hoards; as some miser hides the gold which he desires that no one should enjoy after his death. my conversation with aunt margaret generally relates little either to the present or to the future: for the passing day we possess as much as we require, and we neither of us wish for more; and for that which is to follow we have on this side of the grave neither hopes, nor fears, nor anxiety. we therefore naturally look back to the past; and forget the present fallen fortunes and declined importance of our family, in recalling the hours when it was wealthy and prosperous. with this slight introduction, the reader will know as much of aunt margaret and her nephew as is necessary to comprehend the following conversation and narrative. last week, when, late in a summer evening, i went to call on the old lady to whom my reader is now introduced, i was received by her with all her usual affection and benignity; while, at the same time, she seemed abstracted and disposed to silence. i asked her the reason. ``they have been clearing out the old chapel,'' she said; ``john clayhudgeons having, it seems, discovered that the stuff within---being, i suppose, the remains of our ancestors--was excellent for top-dressing the meadows.''' here i started up with more alacrity than i have displayed for some years; but sat down while my aunt added, laying her hand upon my sleeve, ``the chapel has been long considered as common ground, my dear, and used for a penfold, and what objection can we have to the man for employing what is his own, to his own profit? besides, i did speak to him, and he very readily and civilly promised, that if he found bones or monuments, they should be carefully respected and reinstated; and what more could i ask? so, the first stone they found bore the name of margaret bothwell, 1585, and i have caused it to be laid carefully aside, as i think it betokens death; and having served my namesake two hundred years, it has just been cast up in time to do me the same good turn. my house has been long put in order, as far as the small earthly concerns require it, but who shall say that their account with heaven is sufficiently revised!'' ``after what you have said, aunt,'' i replied, ``perhaps i ought to take my hat and go away, and so i should, but that there is on this occasion a little alloy mingled with your devotion. to think of death at all times is a duty---to suppose it nearer, from the finding an old gravestone, is superstition; and you, with your strong useful common sense, which was so long the prop of a fallen family, are the last person whom i should have suspected of such weakness.'' ``neither would i deserve your suspicions, kinsman,'' answered aunt margaret, ``if we were speaking of any incident occurring in the actual business of human life. but for all this, i have a sense of superstition about me, which i do not wish to part with. it is a feeling which separates me from this age, and links me with that to which i am hastening; and even when it seems, as now, to lead me to the brink of the grave, and bids me gaze on it, i do not love that it should be dispelled. it soothes my imagination, without influencing my reason or conduct.'' ``i profess, my good lady,'' replied i, ``that had any one but you made such a declaration, i should have thought it as capricious as that of the clergyman, who, without vindicating his false reading, preferred, from habit's sake, his old mumpsimus to the modern sumpsimus.'' ``well,'' answered my aunt, ``i must explain my inconsistency in this particular, by comparing it to another. i am, as you know, a piece of that old-fashioned thing called a jacobite; but i am so in sentiment and feeling only; for a more loyal subject never joined in prayers for the health and wealth of george the fourth, whom god long preserve! but i dare say that kind-hearted sovereign would not deem that an old woman did him much injury, if she leaned back in her arm-chair, just in such a twilight as this, and thought of the high-mettled men, whose sense of duty called them to arms against his grandfather; and how, in a cause which they deemed that of their rightful prince and country, `they fought till their hand to the broadsword was glued, they fought against fortune with hearts unsubdued.' do not come at such a moment, when my head is fall of plaids, pibrochs, and claymores, and ask my reason to admit what, i am afraid, it cannot deny--i mean, that the public advantage peremptorily demanded that these things should cease to exist. i cannot, indeed, refuse to allow the justice of your reasoning; but yet, being convinced against my will, you will gain little by your motion. you might as well read to an infatuated lover the catalogue of his mistress's imperfections; for, when he has been compelled to listen to the summary, you will only get for answer, that, `he lo'es her a' the better.' '' i was not sorry to have changed the gloomy train of aunt margaret's thoughts, and replied in the same tone, ``well, i can't help being persuaded that our good king is the more sure of mrs bothwell's loyal affection, that he has the stuart right of birth, as well as the act of succession in his favour.'' ``perhaps my attachment, were it source of consequence, might be found warmer for the union of the rights you mention,'' said aunt margaret; ``but, upon my word, it would be as sincere if the king's right were founded only on the will of the nation, as declared at the revolution. i am none of your _jure divino_ folks.'' ``and a jacobite notwithstanding.'' ``and a jacobite notwithstanding; or rather, i will give you leave to call me one of the party, which, in queen anne's time, were called whimsicals; because they were sometimes operated upon by feelings, sometimes by principle. after all, it is very hard that you will not allow an old woman to be as inconsistent in her political sentiments, as mankind in general show themselves in all the various courses of life; since you cannot point out one of them, in which the passions and prejudice of those who pursue it are not perpetually carrying us away from the path which our reason points out.'' ``true, aunt; but you are a wilful wanderer, who should be forced back into the right path.'' ``spare me, i entreat you,'' replied aunt margaret. ``you remember the gaelic song, though i dare say i mispronounce the words-- 'hatil mohatil, na dowski mi.' 'i am asleep, do not waken me.' i tell you, kinsman, that the sort of waking dreams which my imagination spins out, in what your favourite wordsworth calls `moods of my own mind,' are worth all the rest of my more active days. then, instead of looking forwards, as i did in youth, and forming for myself fairy palaces, upon the verge of the grave, i turn my eyes backward upon the days and manners of my better time; and the sad, yet soothing recollections come so close and interesting, that i almost think it sacrilege to be wiser or more rational, or less prejudiced, than those to whom i looked up in my younger years.'' ``i think i now understand what you mean,'' i answered, ``and can comprehend why you should occasionally prefer the twilight of illusion to the steady light of reason.'' ``where there is no task,'' she rejoined, ``to be performed, we may sit in the dark if we like it--if we go to work, we must ring for candles.'' ``and amidst such shadowy and doubtful light,'' continued i, ``imagination frames her enchanted and enchanting visions, and sometimes passes them upon the senses for reality.'' ``yes,'' said aunt margaret, who is a well-read woman, ``to those who resemble the translator of tasso, `prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind believed the magic wonders which he sung.' it is not required for this purpose, that you should be sensible of the painful horrors which an actual belief in such prodigies inflicts---such a belief, now-a-days, belongs only to fools and children. it is not necessary that your ears should tingle, and your complexion change, like that of theodore, at the approach of the spectral huntsman. all that is indispensable for the enjoyment of the milder feeling of supernatural awe is, that you should be susceptible of the slight shuddering which creeps over you when you hear a tale of terror---that well-vouched tale which the narrator, having first expressed his general disbelief of all such legendary lore, selects and produces, as having something in it which he has been always obliged to give up as inexplicable. another symptom is, a momentary hesitation to look round you, when the interest of the narrative is at the highest; and the third, a desire to avoid looking into a mirror, when you are alone, in your chamber, for the evening. i mean such are signs which indicate the crisis, when a female imagination is in due temperature to enjoy a ghost story. i do not pretend to describe those which express the same disposition in a gentleman.'' ``that last symptom, dear aunt, of shunning the mirror, seems likely to be a rare occurrence amongst the fair sex.'' ``you are a novice in toilet fashions, my dear cousin. all women consult the looking-glass with anxiety before they go into company; but when they return home, the mirror has not the same charm. the die has been cast---the party has been successful or unsuccessful, in the impression which she desired to make. but, without going deeper into the mysteries of the dressing-table, i will tell you that i myself, like many other honest folks, do not like to see the blank black front of a large mirror in a room dimly lighted, and where the reflection of the candle seems rather to lose itself in the deep obscurity of the glass, than to be reflected back again into the apartment. that space of inky darkness seems to be a field for fancy to play her revels in. she may call up other features to meet us, instead of the reflection of our own; or, as in the spells of halloween, which we learned in childhood, some unknown form may be seen peeping over our shoulder. in short, when i am in a ghost-seeing humour, i make my handmaiden draw the green curtains over the mirror, before i go into the room, so that she may have the first shock of the apparition, if there be any to be seen. but, to tell you the truth, the dislike to look into a mirror in particular times and places, has, i believe, its original foundation from my grandmother, who was a part concerned in the scene of which i will now tell you.'' the mirror. chapter 1. you are fond (said my aunt) of sketches of the society which has passed away. i wish i could describe to you sir philip forester, the ``chartered libertine'' of scottish good company, about the end of the last century. i never saw him indeed; but my mother's traditions were full of his wit, gallantry, and dissipation. this gay knight flourished about the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century. he was the sir charles easy and the lovelace of his day and country: renowned for the number of duels he had fought, and the successful intrigues which he had carried on. the supremacy which he had attained in the fashionable world was absolute; and when we combine it with one or two anecdotes, for which, ``if laws were made for every degree,'' he ought certainly to have been hanged, the popularity of such a person really serves to show, either, that the present times are much more decent, if not more virtuous, than they formerly were; or, that high breeding then was of more difficult attainment than that which is now so called; and, consequently, entitled the successful professor to a proportional degree of plenary indulgences and privileges. no beau of this day could have borne out so ugly a story as that of pretty peggy grindstone, the miller's daughter at sillermills---it had well-nigh made work for the lord advocate. but it hurt sir philip forester no more than the hail hurts the hearthstone. he was as well received in society as ever, and dined with the duke of a-----the day the poor girl was buried. she died of heartbreak. but that has nothing to do with my story. now, you must listen to a single word upon kith, kin, and ally; i promise you i will not be prolix. but it is necessary to the authenticity of my legend, that you should know that sir philip forester, with his handsome person, elegant accomplishments, and fashionable manners, married the younger miss falconer of king's-copland. the elder sister of this lady had previously become the wife of my grandfather, sir geoffrey bothwell, and brought into our family a good fortune. miss jemima, or miss jemmie falconer, as she was usually called, had also about ten thousand pounds sterling---then thought a very handsome portion indeed. the two sisters were extremely different, though each had their admirers while they remained single. lady bothwell had some touch of the old king's-copland blood about her. she was bold, though not to the degree of audacity: ambitious, and desirous to raise her house and family; and was, as has been said, a considerable spur to my grandfather, who was otherwise an indolent man; but whom unless he has been slandered, his lady's influence involved in some political matters which had been more wisely let alone. she was a woman of high principle, however, and masculine good sense, as some of her letters testify, which are still in my wainscot cabinet. jemmie falconer was the reverse of her sister in every respect. her understanding did not reach above the ordinary pitch, if, indeed, she could be said to have attained it. her beauty, while it lasted, consisted, in a great measure, of delicacy of complexion and regularity of features, without any peculiar force of expression. even these charms faded under the sufferings attendant on an ill-sorted match. she was passionately attached to her husband, by whom she was treated with a callous, yet polite indifference; which, to one whose heart was as tender as her judgment was weak, was more painful perhaps than absolute ill usage. sir philip was a voluptuary, that is, a completely selfish egotist: whose disposition and character resembled the rapier he wore, polished, keen, and brilliant, but inflexible and unpitying. as he observed carefully all the usual forms towards his lady, he had the art to deprive her even of the compassion of the world; and useless and unavailing as that may be while actually possessed by the sufferer, it is, to a mind like lady forester's, most painful to know she has it not. the tattle of society did its best to place the peccant husband above the suffering wife. some called her a poor spiritless thing, and declared, that, with a little of her sister's spirit, she might have brought to reason any sir philip whatsoever, were it the termagant falconbridge himself. but the greater part of their acquaintance affected candour, and saw faults on both sides; though, in fact, there only existed the oppressor and the oppressed. the tone of such critics was---``to be sure, no one will justify sir philip forester, but then we all know sir philip, and jemmie falconer might have known what she had to expect from the beginning.---what made her set her cap at sir philip?---he would never have looked at her if she had not thrown herself at his head, with her poor ten thousand pounds. i am sure, if it is money he wanted, she spoiled his market. i know where sir philip could have done much better.---and then, if she _would_ have the man, could not she try to make him more comfortable at home, and have his friends oftener, and not plague him with the squalling children, and take care all was handsome and in good style about the house? i declare i think sir philip would have made a very domestic man, with a woman who knew how to manage him.'' now these fair critics, in raising their profound edifice of domestic felicity, did not recollect that the corner-stone was wanting; and that to receive good company with good cheer, the means of the banquet ought to have been furnished by sir philip; whose income (dilapidated as it was) was not equal to the display of the hospitality required, and, at the same time, to the supply of the good knight's _menus plaisirs_. so, in spite of all that was so sanely suggested by female friends, sir philip carried his good humour every where abroad, and left at home a solitary mansion and a pining spouse. at length, inconvenienced in his money affairs, and tired even of the short time which he spent in his own dull house, sir philip forester determined to take a trip to the continent, in the capacity of a volunteer. it was then common for men of fashion to do so; and our knight perhaps was of opinion that a touch of the military character, just enough to exalt, but not render pedantic, his qualities as a _beau gar<c,>on_ was necessary to maintain possession of the elevated situation which he held in the ranks of fashion. sir philip's resolution threw his wife into agonies of terror; by which the worthy baronet was so much annoyed, that, contrary to his wont, he took some trouble to soothe her apprehensions; and once more brought her to shed tears, in which sorrow was not altogether unmingled with pleasure. lady bothwell asked, as a favour, sir philip's permission to receive her sister and her family into her own house during his absence on the continent. sir philip readily assented to a proposition which saved expense, silenced the foolish people who might have talked of a deserted wife and family, and gratified lady bothwell; for whom he felt some respect, as for one who often spoke to him, always with freedom, and sometimes with severity, without being deterred either by his raillery, or the _prestige_ of his reputation. a day or two before sir philip's departure, lady bothwell took the liberty of asking him, in her sister's presence, the direct question, which his timid wife had often desired, but never ventured, to put to him. ``pray, sir philip, what route do you take when you reach the continent?'' ``i go from leith to helvoet by a packet with advices.'' ``that i comprehend perfectly,'' said lady bothwell dryly; ``but you do not mean to remain long at helvoet, i presume, and i should like to know what is your next object?'' ``you ask me, my dear lady,'' answered sir philip, ``a question which i have not dared to ask myself. the answer depends on the fate of war. i shall, of course, go to head-quarters, wherever they may happen to be for the time; deliver my letters of introduction; learn as much of the noble art of war as may suffice a poor interloping amateur; and then take a glance at the sort of thing of which we read so much in the gazette.'' ``and i trust, sir philip,'' said lady bothwell, ``that you will remember that you are a husband and a father; and that though you think fit to indulge this military fancy, you will not let it hurry you into dangers which it is certainly unnecessary for any save professional persons to encounter?'' ``lady bothwell does me too much honour,'' replied the adventurous knight, ``in regarding such a circumstance with the slightest interest. but to soothe your flattering anxiety, i trust your ladyship will recollect, that i cannot expose to hazard the venerable and paternal character which you so obligingly recommend to my protection, without putting in some peril an honest fellow, called philip forester, with whom i have kept company for thirty years, and with whom, though some folks consider him a coxcomb, i have not the least desire to part.'' ``well, sir philip, you are the best judge of your own affairs; i have little right to interfere--you are not my husband.'' ``god forbid!''---said sir philip hastily; instantly adding, however, ``god forbid that i should deprive my friend sir geoffrey of so inestimable a treasure.'' ``but you are my sister's husband,'' replied the lady; ``and i suppose you are aware of her present distress of mind------'' ``if hearing of nothing else from morning to night can make me aware of it,'' said sir philip, ``i should know something of the matter.'' ``i do not pretend to reply to your wit, sir philip,'' answered lady bothwell; ``but you must be sensible that all this distress is on account of apprehensions for your personal safety.'' ``in that case, i am surprised that lady bothwell, at least, should give herself so much trouble upon so insignificant a subject.'' ``my sister's interest may account for my being anxious to learn something of sir philip forester's motions; about which otherwise, i know, he would not wish me to concern myself: i have a brother's safety too to be anxious for.'' ``you mean major falconer, your brother by the mother's side:---what can he possibly have to do with our present agreeable conversation?'' ``you have had words together, sir philip,'' said lady bothwell. ``naturally; we are connexions,'' replied sir philip, ``and as such have always had the usual intercourse.'' ``that is an evasion of the subject,'' answered the lady. ``by words, i mean angry words, on the subject of your usage of your wife.'' ``if,'' replied sir philip forester, ``you suppose major falconer simple enough to intrude his advice upon me, lady bothwell, in my domestic matters, you are indeed warranted in believing that i might possibly be so far displeased with the interference, as to request him to reserve his advice till it was asked.'' ``and being on these terms, you are going to join the very army in which my brother falconer is now serving?'' ``no man knows the path of honour better than major falconer,'' said sir philip. ``an aspirant after fame, like me, cannot choose a better guide than his footsteps.'' lady bothwell rose and went to the window, the tears gushing from her eyes. ``and this heartless raillery,'' she said, ``is all the consideration that is to be given to our apprehensions of a quarrel which may bring on the most terrible consequences? good god! of what can men's hearts be made, who can thus dally with the agony of others?'' sir philip forester was moved; he laid aside the mocking tone in which he had hitherto spoken. ``dear lady bothwell,'' he said, taking her reluctant hand, ``we are both wrong:---you are too deeply serious; i, perhaps, too little so. the dispute i had with major falconer was of no earthly consequence. had any thing occurred betwixt us that ought to have been settled _par voie du fait_, as we say in france, neither of us are persons that are likely to postpone such a meeting. permit me to say, that were it generally known that you or my lady forester are apprehensive of such a catastrophe, it might be the very means of bringing about what would not otherwise be likely to happen. i know your good sense, lady bothwell, and that you will understand me when i say, that really my affairs require my absence for some months;---this jemima cannot understand; it is a perpetual recurrence of questions, why can you not do this, or that, or the third thing; and, when you have proved to her that her expedients are totally ineffectual, you have just to begin the whole round again. now, do you tell her, dear lady bothwell that _you_ are satisfied. she is, you must confess, one of those persons with whom authority goes farther than reasoning. do but repose a little confidence in me, and you shall see how amply i will repay it.'' lady bothwell shook her head, as one but half satisfied. ``how difficult it is to extend confidence, when the basis on which it ought to rest has been so much shaken! but i will do my best to make jemima easy; and farther, i can only say, that for keeping your present purpose i hold you responsible both to god and man.'' ``do not fear that i will deceive you,'' said sir philip; ``the safest conveyance to me will be through the general post-office, helvoetsluys, where i will take care to leave orders for forwarding my letters. as for falconer, our only encounter will be over a bottle of burgundy; so make yourself perfectly easy on his score.'' lady bothwell could _not_ make herself easy; yet she was sensible that her sister hurt her own cause by _taking on_, as the maid-servants call it, too vehemently; and by showing before every stranger, by manner, and sometimes by words also, a dissatisfaction with her husband's journey, that was sure to come to his ears, and equally certain to displease him. but there was no help for this domestic dissension, which ended only with the day of separation. i am sorry i cannot tell, with precision, the year in which sir philip forester went over to flanders; but it was one of those in which the campaign opened with extraordinary fury; and many bloody, though indecisive, skirmishes were fought between the french on the one side, and the allies on the other. in all our modern improvements, there are none, perhaps, greater than in the accuracy and speed with which intelligence is transmitted from any scene of action to those in this country whom it may concern. during marlborough's campaigns, the sufferings of the many who had relations in, or along with, the army, were greatly augmented by the suspense in which they were detained for weeks, after they had heard of bloody battles, in which, in all probability, those for whom their bosoms throbbed with anxiety had been personally engaged. amongst those who were most agonized by this state of uncertainty was the---i had almost said deserted---wife of the gay sir philip forester. a single letter had informed her of his arrival on the continent---no others were received. one notice occurred in the newspapers, in which volunteer sir philip forester was mentioned as having been intrusted with a dangerous reconnoissance, which he had executed with the greatest courage, dexterity, and intelligence, and received the thanks of the commanding officer. the sense of his having acquired distinction brought a momentary glow into the lady's pale cheek; but it was instantly lost in ashen whiteness at the recollection of his danger. after this, they had no news whatever, neither from sir philip, nor even from their brother falconer. the case of lady forester was not indeed different from that of hundreds in the same situation; but a feeble mind is necessarily an irritable one, and the suspense which some bear with constitutional indifference or philosophical resignation, and some with a disposition to believe and hope the best, was intolerable to lady forester, at once solitary and sensitive, low-spirited, and devoid of strength of mind, whether natural or acquired. chapter ii. as she received no further news of sir philip, whether directly or indirectly, his unfortunate lady began now to feel a sort of consolation, even in those careless habits which had so often given her pain. ``he is so thoughtless,'' she repeated a hundred times a-day to her sister, ``he never writes when things are going on smoothly; it is his way: had any thing happened he would have informed us.'' lady bothwell listened to her sister without attempting to console her. probably she might be of opinion, that even the worst intelligence which could be received from flanders might not be without some touch of consolation; and that the dowager lady forester, if so she was doomed to be called, might have a source of happiness unknown to the wife of the gayest and finest gentleman in scotland. this conviction became stronger as they learned from enquiries made at head-quarters, that sir philip was no longer with the army; though whether he had been taken or slain in some of those skirmishes which were perpetually occurring, and in which he loved to distinguish himself, or whether he had, for some unknown reason or capricious change of mind, voluntarily left the service, none of his countrymen in the camp of the allies could form even a conjecture. meantime his creditors at home became clamorous, entered into possession of his property, and threatened his person, should he be rash enough to return to scotland. these additional disadvantages aggravated lady bothwell's displeasure against the fugitive husband; while her sister saw nothing in any of them, save what tended to increase her grief for the absence of him whom her imagination now represented,---as it had before marriage,---gallant, gay, and affectionate. about this period there appeared in edinburgh a man of singular appearance and pretensions. he was commonly called the paduan doctor, from having received his education at that famous university. he was supposed to possess some rare receipts in medicine, with which, it was affirmed, he had wrought remarkable cures. but though, on the one hand, the physicians of edinburgh termed him an empiric, there were many persons, and among them some of the clergy, who, while they admitted the truth of the cures and the force of his remedies, alleged that doctor baptista damiotti made use of charms and unlawful arts in order to obtain success in his practice. the resorting to him was even solemnly preached against, as a seeking of health from idols, and a trusting to the help which was to come from egypt. but the protection which the paduan doctor received from some friends of interest and consequence, enabled him to set these imputations at defiance, and to assume, even in the city of edinburgh, famed as it was for abhorrence of witches and necromancers, the dangerous character of an expounder of futurity. it was at length rumoured, that, for a certain gratification, which of course was not an inconsiderable one, doctor baptista damiotti could tell the fate of the absent, and even show his visitors the personal form of their absent friends, and the action in which they were engaged at the moment. this rumour came to the ears of lady forester, who had reached that pitch of mental agony in which the sufferer will do any thing, or endure any thing, that suspense may be converted into certainty. gentle and timid in most cases, her state of mind made her equally obstinate and reckless, and it was with no small surprise and alarm that her sister, lady bothwell, heard her express a resolution to visit this man of art, and learn from him the fate of her husband. lady bothwell remonstrated on the improbability that such pretensions as those of this foreigner could be founded in any thing but imposture. ``i care not,'' said the deserted wife, ``what degree of ridicule i may incur; if there be any one chance out of a hundred that i may obtain some certainty of my husband's fate, i would not miss that chance for whatever else the world can offer me.'' lady bothwell next urged the unlawfulness of resorting to such sources of forbidden knowledge. ``sister,'' replied the sufferer, ``he who is dying of thirst cannot refrain from drinking even poisoned water. she who suffers under suspense must seek information, even were the powers which offer it unhallowed and infernal. i go to learn my fate alone; and this very evening will i know it: the sun that rises to-morrow shall find me, if not more happy, at least more resigned.'' ``sister,'' said lady bothwell, ``if you are determined upon this wild step, you shall not go alone. if this man be an impostor, you may be too much agitated by your feelings to detect his villainy. if, which i cannot believe, there be any truth in what he pretends, you shall not be exposed alone to a communication of so extraordinary a nature. i will go with you, if indeed you determine to go. but yet reconsider your project, and renounce enquiries which cannot be prosecuted without guilt, and perhaps without danger.'' lady forester threw herself into her sister's arms, and, clasping her to her bosom, thanked her a hundred times for the offer of her company; while she declined with a melancholy gesture the friendly advice with which it was accompanied. when the hour of twilight arrived,---which was the period when the paduan doctor was understood to receive the visits of those who came to consult with him,---the two ladies left their apartments in the canongate of edinburgh, having their dress arranged like that of women of an inferior description, and their plaids disposed around their faces as they were worn by the same class; for, in those days of aristocracy, the quality of the wearer was generally indicated by the manner in which her plaid was disposed, as well as by the fineness of its texture. it was lady bothwell who had suggested this species of disguise, partly to avoid observation as they should go to the conjurer's house, and partly in order to make trial of his penetration, by appearing before him in a feigned character. lady forester's servant, of tried fidelity, had been employed by her to propitiate the doctor by a suitable fee, and a story intimating that a soldier's wife desired to know the fate of her husband: a subject upon which, in all probability, the sage was very frequently consulted. to the last moment, when the palace clock struck eight, lady bothwell earnestly watched her sister in hopes that she might retreat from her rash undertaking; but as mildness, and even timidity, is capable at times of vehement and fixed purposes, she found lady forester resolutely unmoved and determined when the moment of departure arrived. ill satisfied with the expedition, but determined not to leave her sister at such a crisis, lady bothwell accompanied lady forester through more than one obscure street and lane, the servant walking before, and acting as their guide. at length he suddenly turned into a narrow court, and knocked at an arched door which seemed to belong to a building of some antiquity. it opened, though no one appeared to act as porter; and the servant stepping aside from the entrance, motioned the ladies to enter. they had no sooner done so, than it shut, and excluded their guide. the two ladies found themselves in a small vestibule, illuminated by a dim lamp, and having, when the door was closed, no communication with the external light or air. the door of an inner apartment, partly open, was at the further side of the vestibule. ``we must not hesitate now, jemima,'' said lady bothwell, and walked forwards into the inner room, where, surrounded by books, maps, philosophical utensils, and other implements of peculiar shape and appearance, they found the man of art. there was nothing very peculiar in the italian's appearance. he had the dark complexion and marked features of his country, seemed about fifty years old, and was handsomely, but plainly, dressed in a full suit of black clothes, which was then the universal costume of the medical profession. large wax-lights, in silver sconces, illuminated the apartment, which was reasonably furnished. he rose as the ladies entered; and, notwithstanding the inferiority of their dress, received them with the marked respect due to their quality, and which foreigners are usually punctilious in rendering to those to whom such honours are due. lady bothwell endeavoured to maintain her proposed incognito; and, as the doctor ushered them to the upper end of the room, made a motion declining his courtesy, as unfitted for their condition. ``we are poor people, sir,'' she said; ``only my sister's distress has brought us to consult your worship whether---'' he smiled as he interrupted her---``i am aware, madam, of your sister's distress, and its cause; i am aware, also, that i am honoured with a visit from two ladies of the highest consideration--lady bothwell and lady forester. if i could not distinguish them from the class of society which their present dress would indicate, there would be small possibility of my being able to gratify them by giving the information which they come to seek.'' ``i can easily understand,'' said lady bothwell----- ``pardon my boldness to interrupt you, milady,'' cried the italian; ``your ladyship was about to say, that you could easily understand that i had got possession of your names by means of your domestic. but in thinking so, you do injustice to the fidelity of your servant, and, i may add, to the skill of one who is also not less your humble servant--baptista damiotti.'' ``i have no intention to do either, sir,'' said lady bothwell, maintaining a tone of composure, though somewhat surprised, ``but the situation is something new to me. if you know who we are, you also know, sir, what brought us here.'' ``curiosity to know the fate of a scottish gentleman of rank, now, or lately, upon the continent,'' answered the seer; ``his name is il cavaliero philippo forester; a gentleman who has the honour to be husband to this lady, and, with your ladyship's permission for using plain language, the misfortune not to value as it deserves that inestimable advantage.'' lady forester sighed deeply, and lady bothwell replied-- ``since you know our object without our telling it, the only question that remains is, whether you have the power to relieve my sister's anxiety?'' ``i have, madam,'' answered the paduan scholar; ``but there is still a previous enquiry. have you the courage to behold with your own eyes what the cavaliero philippo forester is now doing? or will you take it on my report?'' ``that question my sister must answer for herself,'' said lady bothwell. ``with my own eyes will i endure to see whatever you have power to show me,'' said lady forester, with the same determined spirit which had stimulated her since her resolution was taken upon this subject. ``there may be danger in it.'' ``if gold can compensate the risk,'' said lady forester, taking out her purse. ``i do not such things for the purpose of gain,'' answered the foreigner. ``i dare not turn my art to such a purpose. if i take the gold of the wealthy, it is but to bestow it on the poor; nor do i ever accept more than the sum i have already received from your servant. put up your purse, madam; an adept needs not your gold.'' lady bothwell, considering this rejection of her sister's offer as a mere trick of an empiric, to induce her to press a larger sum upon him, and willing that the scene should be commenced and ended, offered some gold in turn, observing that it was only to enlarge the sphere of his charity. ``let lady bothwell enlarge the sphere of her own charity,'' said the paduan, ``not merely in giving of alms, in which i know she is not deficient, but in judging the character of others; and let her oblige baptista damiotti by believing him honest, till she shall discover him to be a knave. do not be surprised, madam, if i speak in answer to your thoughts rather than your expressions, and tell me once more whether you have courage to look on what i am prepared to show?'' ``i own, sir,'' said lady bothwell, ``that your words strike me with some sense of fear; but whatever my sister desires to witness, i will not shrink from witnessing along with her.'' ``nay, the danger only consists in the risk of your resolution failing you. the sight can only last for the space of seven minutes; and should you interrupt the vision by speaking a single word, not only would the charm be broken, but some danger might result to the spectators. but if you can remain steadily silent for the seven minutes, your curiosity will be gratified without the slightest risk; and for this i will engage my honour.'' internally lady bothwell thought the security was but an indifferent one; but she suppressed the suspicion, as if she had believed that the adept, whose dark features wore a half-formed smile, could in reality read even her most secret reflections. a solemn pause then ensued, until lady forester gathered courage enough to reply to the physician, as he termed himself, that she would abide with firmness and silence the sight which he had promised to exhibit to them. upon this, he made them a low obeisance, and saying he went to prepare matters to meet their wish, left the apartment. the two sisters, hand in hand, as if seeking by that close union to divert any danger which might threaten them, sat down on two seats in immediate contact with each other: jemima seeking support in the manly and habitual courage of lady bothwell; and she, on the other hand, more agitated than she had expected, endeavouring to fortify herself by the desperate resolution which circumstances had forced her sister to assume. the one perhaps said to herself, that her sister never feared any thing; and the other might reflect, that what so feeble a minded woman as jemima did not fear, could not properly be a subject of apprehension to a person of firmness and resolution like her own. in a few moments the thoughts of both were diverted from their own situation, by a strain of music so singularly sweet and solemn, that, while it seemed calculated to avert or dispel any feeling unconnected with its harmony, increased, at the same time, the solemn excitation which the preceding interview was calculated to produce. the music was that of some instrument with which they were unacquainted; but circumstances afterwards led my ancestress to believe that it was that of the harmonica, which she heard at a much later period in life. when these heaven-born sounds had ceased, a door opened in the upper end of the apartment, and they saw damiotti, standing at the head of two or three steps, sign to them to advance. his dress was so different from that which he had worn a few minutes before, that they could hardly recognise him; and the deadly paleness of his countenance, and a certain stern rigidity of muscles, like that of one whose mind is made up to some strange and daring action, had totally changed the somewhat sarcastic expression with which he had previously regarded them both, and particularly lady bothwell. he was barefooted, excepting a species of sandals in the antique fashion; his legs were naked beneath the knees; above them he wore hose, and a doublet of dark crimson silk close to his body; and over that a flowing loose robe, something resembling a surplice, of snow-white linen: his throat and neck were uncovered, and his long, straight, black hair was carefully combed down at full length. as the ladies approached at his bidding, he showed no gesture of that ceremonious courtesy of which be had been formerly lavish. on the contrary, he made the signal of advance with an air of command; and when, arm in arm, and with insecure steps, the sisters approached the spot where he stood, it was with a warning frown that be pressed his finger to his lips, as if reiterating his condition of absolute silence, while, stalking before them, he led the way into the next apartment. this was a large room, hung with black, as if for a funeral. at the upper end was a table, or rather a species of altar, covered with the same lugubrious colour, on which lay divers objects resembling the usual implements of sorcery. these objects were not indeed visible as they advanced into the apartment; for the light which displayed them, being only that of two expiring lamps, was extremely faint. the master---to use the italian phrase for persons of this description---approached the upper end of the room, with a genuflexion like that of a catholic to the crucifix, and at the same time crossed himself. the ladies followed in silence, and arm in arm. two or three low broad steps led to a platform in front of the altar, or what resembled such. here the sage took his stand, and placed the ladies beside him, once more earnestly repeating by signs his injunctions of silence. the italian then, extending his bare arm from under his linen vestment, pointed with his forefinger to five large flambeaux, or torches, placed on each side of the altar. they took fire successively at the approach of his hand, or rather of his finger, and spread a strong light through the room. by this the visitors could discern that, on the seeming altar, were disposed two naked swords laid crosswise; a large open book, which they conceived to be a copy of the holy scriptures, but in a language to them unknown; and beside this mysterious volume was placed a human skull. but what struck the sisters most was a very tall and broad mirror, which occupied all the space behind the altar, and, illumined by the lighted torches, reflected the mysterious articles which were laid upon it. the master then placed himself between the two ladies, and, pointing to the mirror, took each by the hand, but without speaking a syllable. they gazed intently on the polished and sable space to which he had directed their attention. suddenly the surface assumed a new and singular appearance. it no longer simply reflected the objects placed before it, but, as if it had self-contained scenery of its own, objects began to appear within it, at first in a disorderly, indistinct, and miscellaneous manner, like form arranging itself out of chaos; at length, in distinct and defined shape and symmetry. it was thus that, after some shifting of light and darkness over the face of the wonderful glass, a long perspective of arches and columns began to arrange itself on its sides, and a vaulted roof on the upper part of it; till, after many oscillations, the whole vision gained a fixed and stationary appearance, representing the interior of a foreign church. the pillars were stately, and hung with scutcheons; the arches were lofty and magnificent; the floor was lettered with funeral inscriptions. but there were no separate shrines, no images, no display of chalice or crucifix on the altar. it was, therefore, a protestant church upon the continent. a clergyman dressed in the geneva gown and band stood by the communion-table, and, with the bible opened before him, and his clerk awaiting in the background, seemed prepared to perform some service of the church to which he belonged. at length, there entered the middle aisle of the building a numerous party, which appeared to be a bridal one, as a lady and gentleman walked first, hand in hand, followed by a large concourse of persons of both sexes, gaily, nay richly, attired. the bride, whose features they could distinctly see, seemed not more than sixteen years old, and extremely beautiful. the bridegroom, for some seconds, moved rather with his shoulder towards them, and his face averted; but his elegance of form and step struck the sisters at once with the same apprehension. as he turned his face suddenly, it was frightfully realized, and they saw, in the gay bridegroom before them, sir philip forester. his wife uttered an imperfect exclamation, at the sound of which the whole scene stirred and seemed to separate. ``i could compare it to nothing,'' said lady bothwell, while recounting the wonderful tale, ``but to the dispersion of the reflection offered by a deep and calm pool, when a stone is suddenly cast into it, and the shadows become dissipated and broken.'' the master pressed both the ladies' hands severely, as if to remind them of their promise, and of the danger which they incurred. the exclamation died away on lady forester's tongue, without attaining perfect utterance, and the scene in the glass, after the fluctuation of a minute, again resumed to the eye its former appearance of a real scene, existing within the mirror, as if represented in a picture, save that the figures were movable instead of being stationary. the representation of sir philip forester, now distinctly visible in form and feature, was seen to lead on towards the clergyman that beautiful girl, who advanced at once with diffidence, and with a species of affectionate pride. in the meantime, and just as the clergyman had arranged the bridal company before him, and seemed about to commence the service, another group of persons, of whom two or three were officers, entered the church. they moved, at first, forward, as though they came to witness the bridal ceremony, but suddenly one of the officers, whose back was towards the spectators, detached himself from his companions, and rushed hastily towards the marriage party, when the whole of them turned towards him, as if attracted by some exclamation which had accompanied his advance. suddenly the intruder drew his sword; the bridegroom unsheathed his own, and made towards him; swords were also drawn by other individuals, both of the marriage party, and of those who had last entered. they fell into a sort of confusion, the clergyman, and some elder and graver persons, labouring apparently to keep the peace, while the hotter spirits on both sides brandished their weapons. but now, the period of the brief space during which the soothsayer, as he pretended, was permitted to exhibit his art, was arrived. the fumes again mixed together, and dissolved gradually from observation; the vaults and columns of the church rolled asunder, and disappeared; and the front of the mirror reflected nothing save the blazing torches, and the melancholy apparatus placed on the altar or table before it. the doctor led the ladies, who greatly required his support, into the apartment from whence they came; where wine, essences, and other means of restoring suspended animation, had been provided during his absence. he motioned them to chairs, which they occupied in silence; lady forester, in particular, wringing her hands, and casting her eyes up to heaven, but without speaking a word, as if the spell had been still before her eyes. ``and what we have seen is even now acting?'' said lady bothwell, collecting herself with difficulty. ``that,' answered baptista damiotti, ``i cannot justly, or with certainty, say. but it is either now acting, or has been acted, during a short space before this. it is the last remarkable transaction in which the cavalier forester has been engaged.'' lady bothwell then expressed anxiety concerning her sister, whose altered countenance, and apparent unconsciousness of what passed around her, excited her apprehensions how it might be possible to convey her home. ``i have prepared for that,'' answered the adept; ``i have directed the servant to bring your equipage as near to this place as the narrowness of the street will permit. fear not for your sister; but give her, when you return home, this composing draught, and she will be better to-morrow morning. few,'' he added, in a melancholy tone, ``leave this house as well in health as they entered it. such being the consequence of seeking knowledge by mysterious means, i leave you to judge the condition of those who have the power of gratifying such irregular curiosity. farewell, and forget not the potion.'' ``i will give her nothing that comes from you,'' said lady bothwell; ``i have seen enough of your art already. perhaps you would poison us both to conceal your own necromancy. but we are persons who want neither the means of making our wrongs known, nor the assistance of friends to right them.'' ``you have had no wrongs from me, madam,'' said the adept. ``you sought one who is little grateful for such honour. he seeks no one, and only gives responses to those who invite and call upon him. after all, you have but learned a little sooner the evil which you must still be doomed to endure. i hear your servant's step at the door, and will detain your ladyship and lady forester no longer. the next packet from the continent will explain what you have already partly witnessed. let it not, if i may advise, pass too suddenly into your sister's hands.'' so saying, he bid lady bothwell good-night. she went, lighted by the adept, to the vestibule, where he hastily threw a black cloak over his singular dress, and opening the door, intrusted his visitors to the care of the servant. it was with difficulty that lady bothwell sustained her sister to the carriage, though it was only twenty steps distant. when they arrived at home, lady forester required medical assistance. the physician of the family attended, and shook his head on feeling her pulse. ``here has been,'' he said, ``a violent and sudden shock on the nerves. i must know how it has happened.'' lady bothwell admitted they had visited the conjurer, and that lady forester had received some bad news respecting her husband, sir philip. ``that rascally quack would make my fortune; were he to stay in edinburgh,'' said the graduate; ``his is the seventh nervous case i have heard of his making for me, and all by effect of terror.'' he next examined the composing draught which lady bothwell had unconsciously brought in her hand, tasted it, and pronounced it very germain to the matter, and what would save an application to the apothecary. he then paused, and looking at lady bothwell very significantly, at length added, ``i suppose i must not ask your ladyship any thing about this italian warlock's proceedings?'' ``indeed, doctor,'' answered lady bothwell, ``i consider what passed as confidential; and though the man may be a rogue, yet, as we were fools enough to consult him, we should, i think, be honest enough to keep his counsel.'' ``_may_ be a knave---come,'' said the doctor, ``i am glad to hear your ladyship allows such a possibility in any thing that comes from italy.'' ``what comes from italy may be as good as what comes from hanover, doctor. but you and i will remain good friends, and that it may be so, we will say nothing of whig and tory.'' ``not i,'' said the doctor, receiving his fee, and taking his hat; ``a carolus serves my purpose as well as a willielmus. but i should like to know why old lady saint ringan's, and all that set, go about wasting their decayed lungs in puffing this foreign fellow.'' ``ay---you had best set him down a jesuit, as scrub says.'' on these terms they parted. the poor patient---whose nerves, from an extraordinary state of tension, had at length become relaxed in as extraordinary a degree---continued to struggle with a sort of imbecility, the growth of superstitious terror, when the shocking tidings were brought from holland, which fulfilled even her worst expectations. they were sent by the celebrated earl of stair, and contained the melancholy event of a duel betwixt sir philip forester, and his wife's half-brother, captain falconer, of the scotch-dutch, as they were then called, in which the latter had been killed. the cause of quarrel rendered the incident still more shocking. it seemed that sir philip had left the army suddenly, in consequence of being unable to pay a very considerable sum, which he had lost to another volunteer at play. he had changed his name, and taken up his residence at rotterdam, where he had insinuated himself into the good graces of an ancient and rich burgomaster, and, by his handsome person and graceful manners, captivated the affections of his only child, a very young person, of great beauty, and the heiress of much wealth. delighted with the specious attractions of his proposed son-in-law, the wealthy merchant---whose idea of the british character was too high to admit of his taking any precaution to acquire evidence of his condition and circumstances---gave his consent to the marriage. it was about to be celebrated in the principal church of the city, when it was interrupted by a singular occurrence. captain falconer having been detached to rotterdam to bring up a part of the brigade of scottish auxiliaries, who were in quarters there, a person of consideration in the town, to whom he had been formerly known, proposed to him for amusement to go to the high church, to see a countryman of his own married to the daughter of a wealthy burgomaster. captain falconer went accordingly, accompanied by his dutch acquaintance, with a party of his friends, and two or three officers of the scotch brigade. his astonishment may be conceived when he saw his own brother-in-law, a married man, on the point of leading to the altar the innocent and beautiful creature, upon whom he was about to practise a base and unmanly deceit. he proclaimed his villainy on the spot, and the marriage was interrupted of course. but against the opinion of more thinking men, who considered sir philip forester as having thrown himself out of the rank of men of honour, captain falconer admitted him to the privilege of such, accepted a challenge from him, and in the rencounter received a mortal wound. such are the ways of heaven, mysterious in our eyes. lady forester never recovered the shock of this dismal intelligence. ------ ``and did this tragedy,'' said i, ``take place exactly at the time when the scene in the mirror was exhibited?'' ``it is hard to be obliged to maim one's story,'' answered my aunt; ``but, to speak the truth, it happened some days sooner than the apparition was exhibited.'' ``and so there remained a possibility,'' said i, ``that by some secret and speedy communication the artist might have received early intelligence of that incident.'' ``the incredulous pretended so,'' replied my aunt. ``what became of the adept?'' demanded i. ``why, a warrant came down shortly afterwards to arrest him for high-treason, as an agent of the chevalier st george; and lady bothwell, recollecting the hints which had escaped the doctor, an ardent friend of the protestant succession, did then call to remembrance, that this man was chiefly _pron<e'>_ among the ancient matrons of her own political persuasion. it certainly seemed probable that intelligence from the continent, which could easily have been transmitted by an active and powerful agent, might have enabled him to prepare such a scene of phantasmagoria as she had herself witnessed. yet there were so many difficulties in assigning a natural explanation, that, to the day of her death, she remained in great doubt on the subject, and much disposed to cut the gordian knot, by admitting the existence of supernatural agency.'' ``but, my dear aunt,'' said i, ``what became of the man of skill?'' ``oh, he was too good a fortune-teller not to be able to foresee that his own destiny would be tragical if he waited the arrival of the man with the silver greyhound upon his sleeve. he made, as we say, a moonlight flitting, and was nowhere to be seen or heard of. some noise there was about papers or letters found in the house, but it died away, and doctor baptista damiotti was soon as little talked of as galen or hippocrates.'' ``and sir philip forester,'' said i, ``did he too vanish for ever from the public scene?'' ``no,'' replied my kind informer. ``he was heard of once more, and it was upon a remarkable occasion. it is said that we scots, when there was such a nation in existence, have, among our full peck of virtues, one or two little barleycorns of vice. in particular, it is alleged that we rarely forgive, and never forget, any injuries received; that we used to make an idol of our resentment, as poor lady constance did of her grief; and are addicted, as burns says, to `nursing our wrath to keep it warm.' lady bothwell was not without this feeling; and, i believe, nothing whatever, scarce the restoration of the stewart line, could have happened so delicious to her feelings as an opportunity of being revenged on sir philip forester for the deep and double injury which had deprived her of a sister and of a brother. but nothing of him was heard or known till many a year had passed away.'' at length---it was on a fastern's e'en (shrovetide) assembly, at which the whole fashion of edinburgh attended, full and frequent, and when lady bothwell had a seat amongst the lady patronesses, that one of the attendants on the company whispered into her ear, that a gentleman wished to speak with her in private. ``in private? and in an assembly room?---he must be mad---tell him to call upon me to-morrow morning.'' ``i said so, my lady,'' answered the man, ``but he desired me to give you this paper.'' she undid the billet, which was curiously folded and sealed. it only bore the words, ``_on business of life and death_,'' written in a hand which she had never seen before. suddenly it occurred to her that it might concern the safety of some of her political friends; she therefore followed the messenger to a small apartment where the refreshments were prepared, and from which the general company was excluded. she found an old man, who at her approach rose up and bowed profoundly. his appearance indicated a broken constitution, and his dress, though sedulously rendered conforming to the etiquette of a ball-room, was worn and tarnished, and hung in folds about his emaciated person. lady bothwell was about to feel for her purse, expecting to get rid of the supplicant at the expense of a little money, but some fear of a mistake arrested her purpose. she therefore gave the man leisure to explain himself. ``i have the honour to speak with the lady bothwell?'' ``i am lady bothwell; allow me to say that this is no time or place for long explanations.---what are your commands with me?'' ``your ladyship,'' said the old man, ``had once a sister.'' ``true; whom i loved as my own soul.'' ``and a brother.'' ``the bravest, the kindest, the most affectionate!''--said lady bothwell. ``both these beloved relatives you lost by the fault of an unfortunate man,'' continued the stranger. ``by the crime of an unnatural, bloody-minded murderer,'' said the lady. ``i am answered,'' replied the old man, bowing, as if to withdraw. ``stop, sir, i command you,'' said lady bothwell.--``who are you, that, at such a place and time, come to recall these horrible recollections? i insist upon knowing.'' ``i am one who intends lady bothwell no injury; but, on the contrary, to offer her the means of doing a deed of christian charity, which the world would wonder at, and which heaven would reward; but i find her in no temper for such a sacrifice as i was prepared to ask.'' ``speak out, sir; what is your meaning?'' said lady bothwell. ``the wretch that has wronged you so deeply,'' rejoined the stranger, ``is now on his death-bed. his days have been days of misery, his nights have been sleepless hours of anguish---yet he cannot die without your forgiveness. his life has been an unremitting penance---yet he dares not part from his burden while your curses load his soul.'' ``tell him,'' said lady bothwell sternly, ``to ask pardon of that being whom he has so greatly offended; not of an erring mortal like himself what could my forgiveness avail him?'' ``much,'' answered the old man. ``it will be an earnest of that which he may then venture to ask from his creator, lady, and from yours. remember, lady bothwell, you too have a death-bed to look forward to; your soul may, all human souls must, feel the awe of facing the judgment-seat, with the wounds of an untented conscience, raw, and rankling---what thought would it be then that should whisper, `i have given no mercy, how then shall i ask it?' '' ``man, whosoever thou mayst be,'' replied lady bothwell, ``urge me not so cruelly. it would be but blasphemous hypocrisy to utter with my lips the words which every throb of my heart protests against. they would open the earth and give to light the wasted form of my sister---the bloody form of my murdered brother---forgive him?--never, never!'' ``great god!'' cried the old man, holding up his hands, ``is it thus the worms which thou hast called out of dust obey the commands of their maker? farewell, proud and unforgiving woman. exult that thou hast added to a death in want and pain the agonies of religious despair; but never again mock heaven by petitioning for the pardon which thou hast refused to grant.'' he was turning from her. ``stop,'' she exclaimed; ``i will try; yes, i will try to pardon him.'' ``gracious lady,'' said the old man, ``you will relieve the over-burdened soul which dare not sever itself from its sinful companion of earth without being at peace with you. what do i know--your forgiveness may perhaps preserve for penitence the dregs of a wretched life.'' ``ha!'' said the lady, as a sudden light broke on her, ``it is the villain himself!'' and grasping sir philip forester---for it was he, and no other--by the collar, she raised a cry of ``murder, murder! seize the murderer!'' at an exclamation so singular, in such a place, the company thronged into the apartment, but sir philip forester was no longer there. he had forcibly extricated himself from lady bothwell's hold, and had run out of the apartment which opened on the landing-place of the stair. there seemed no escape in that direction, for there were several persons coming up the steps, and others descending. but the unfortunate man was desperate. he threw himself over the balustrade, and alighted safely in the lobby, though a leap of fifteen feet at least, then dashed into the street, and was lost in darkness. some of the bothwell family made pursuit, and had they come up with the fugitive they might have perhaps slain him; for in those days men's blood ran warm in their veins. but the police did not interfere; the matter most criminal having happened long since, and in a foreign land. indeed it was always thought that this extraordinary scene originated in a hypocritical experiment, by which sir philip desired to ascertain whether he might return to his native country in safety from the resentment of a family which he had injured so deeply. as the result fell out so contrary to his wishes, he is believed to have returned to the continent, and there died in exile. so closed the tale of the mysterious mirror. [2. the tapestried chamber] introduction. this is another little story, from the keepsake of 1828. it was told to me many years ago, by the late miss anna seward, who, among other accomplishments that rendered her an amusing inmate in a country house, had that of recounting narratives of this sort with very considerable effect; much greater, indeed, than any one would be apt to guess from the style of her written performances. there are hours and moods when most people are not displeased to listen to such things; and i have heard some of the greatest and wisest of my contemporaries take their share in telling them. _august_, 1831. the tapestried chamber; or, the lady in the sacque. the following narrative is given from the pen, so far as memory permits, in the same character in which it was presented to the author's ear; nor has he claim to further praise, or to be more deeply censured, than in proportion to the good or bad judgment which he has employed in selecting his materials, as he has studiously avoided any attempt at ornament which might interfere with the simplicity of the tale. at the same time it must be admitted, that the particular class of stories which turns on the marvellous, possesses a stronger influence when told, than when committed to print. the volume taken up at noonday, though rehearsing the same incidents, conveyed a much more feeble impression, than is achieved by the voice of the speaker on a circle of fireside auditors, who hang upon the narrative as the narrator details the minute incidents which serve to give it authenticity, and lowers his voice with an affectation of mystery while he approaches the fearful and wonderful part. it was with such advantages that the present writer heard the following events related, more than twenty years since, by the celebrated miss seward, of litchfield, who, to her numerous accomplishments, added, in a remarkable degree, the power of narrative in private conversation. in its present form the tale must necessarily lose all the interest which was attached to it, by the flexible voice and intelligent features of the gifted narrator. yet still, read aloud, to an undoubting audience by the doubtful light of the closing evening, or, in silence, by a decaying taper, and amidst the solitude of a half-lighted apartment, it may redeem its character as a good ghost-story. miss seward always affirmed that she had derived her information from an authentic source, although she suppressed the names of the two persons chiefly concerned. i will not avail myself of any particulars i may have since received concerning the localities of the detail, but suffer them to rest under the same general description in which they were first related to me; and, for the same reason, i will not add to, or diminish the narrative, by any circumstance, whether more or less material, but simply rehearse, as i heard it, a story of supernatural terror. about the end of the american war, when the officers of lord cornwallis's army, which surrendered at york-town, and others, who had been made prisoners during the impolitic and ill-fated controversy, were returning to their own country, to relate their adventures, and repose themselves after their fatigues; there was amongst them a general officer, to whom miss s. gave the name of browne, but merely, as i understood, to save the inconvenience of introducing a nameless agent in the narrative. he was an officer of merit, as well as a gentleman of high consideration for family and attainments. some business had carried general browne upon a tour through the western counties, when, in the conclusion of a morning stage, he found himself in the vicinity of a small country town, which presented a scene of uncommon beauty, and of a character peculiarly english. the little town, with its stately old church, whose tower bore testimony to the devotion of ages long past, lay amidst pastures and corn-fields of small extent, but bounded and divided with hedgerow timber of great age and size. there were few marks of modern improvement. the environs of the place intimated neither the solitude of decay, nor the bustle of novelty; the houses were old, but in good repair; and the beautiful little river murmured freely on its way to the left of the town, neither restrained by a dam, nor bordered by a towing-path. upon a gentle eminence, nearly a mile to the southward of the town, were seen, amongst many venerable oaks and tangled thickets, the turrets of a castle, as old as the walls of york and lancaster, but which seemed to have received important alterations during the age of elizabeth and her successor. it had not been a place of great size; but whatever accommodation it formerly afforded, was, it must be supposed, still to be obtained within its walls; at least, such was the inference which general browne drew from observing the smoke arise merrily from several of the ancient wreathed and carved chimney-stalks. the wall of the park ran alongside of the highway for two or three hundred yards; and through the different points by which the eye found glimpses into the woodland scenery, it seemed to be well stocked. other points of view opened in succession; now a full one, of the front of the old castle, and now a side glimpse at its particular towers; the former rich in all the bizarrerie of the elizabethan school, while the simple and solid strength of other parts of the building seemed to show that they had been raised more for defence than ostentation. delighted with the partial glimpses which he obtained of the castle through the woods and glades by which this ancient feudal fortress was surrounded, our military traveller was determined to enquire whether it might not deserve a nearer view, and whether it contained family pictures or other objects of curiosity worthy of a stranger's visit; when, leaving the vicinity of the park, he rolled through a clean and well-paved street, and stopped at the door of a well-frequented inn. before ordering horses to proceed on his journey, general browne made enquiries concerning the proprietor of the chateau which had so attracted his admiration; and was equally surprised and pleased at hearing in reply a nobleman named, whom we shall call lord woodville. how fortunate! much of browne's early recollections, both at school and at college, had been connected with young woodville, whom, by a few questions, he now ascertained to be the same with the owner of this fair domain. he had been raised to the peerage by the decease of his father a few months before, and, as the general learned from the landlord, the term of mourning being ended, was now taking possession of his paternal estate, in the jovial season of merry autumn, accompanied by a select party of friends to enjoy the sports of a country famous for game. this was delightful news to our traveller. frank woodville had been richard browne's fag at eton, and his chosen intimate at christ church; their pleasures and their tasks had been the same; and the honest soldier's heart warmed to find his early friend in possession of so delightful a residence, and of an estate, as the landlord assured him with a nod and a wink, fully adequate to maintain and add to his dignity. nothing was more natural than that the traveller should suspend a journey, which there was nothing to render hurried, to pay a visit to an old friend under such agreeable circumstances. the fresh horses, therefore, had only the brief task of conveying the general's travelling carriage to woodville castle. a porter admitted them at a modern gothic lodge, built in that style to correspond with the castle itself, and at the same time rang a bell to give warning of the approach of visitors. apparently the sound of the bell had suspended the separation of the company, bent on the various amusements of the morning; for, on entering the court of the chateau, several young men were lounging about in their sporting dresses, looking at, and criticising, the dogs which the keepers held in readiness to attend their pastime. as general browne alighted, the young lord came to the gate of the hall, and for an instant gazed, as at a stranger, upon the countenance of his friend, on which war, with its fatigues and its wounds, had made a great alteration. but the uncertainty lasted no longer than till the visitor had spoken, and the hearty greeting which followed was such as can only be exchanged betwixt those who have passed together the merry days of careless boyhood or early youth. ``if i could have formed a wish, my dear browne,'' said lord woodville, ``it would have been to have you here, of all men, upon this occasion, which my friends are good enough to hold as a sort of holiday. do not think you have been unwatched during the years you have been absent from us. i have traced you through your dangers, your triumphs, your misfortunes, and was delighted to see that, whether in victory or defeat, the name of my old friend was always distinguished with applause.'' the general made a suitable reply, and congratulated his friend on his new dignities, and the possession of a place and domain so beautiful. ``nay, you have seen nothing of it as yet,'' said lord woodville, ``and i trust you do not mean to leave us till you are better acquainted with it. it is true, i confess, that my present party is pretty large, and the old house, like other places of the kind, does not possess so much accommodation as the extent of the outward walls appears to promise. but we can give you a comfortable old-fashioned room, and i venture to suppose that your campaigns have taught you to be glad of worse quarters.'' the general shrugged his shoulders, and laughed. ``i presume,'' he said, ``the worst apartment in your chateau is considerably superior to the old tobacco-cask, in which i was fain to take up my night's lodging when i was in the bush, as the virginians call it, with the light corps. there i lay, like diogenes himself, so delighted with my covering from the elements, that i made a vain attempt to have it rolled on to my next quarters; but my commander for the time would give way to no such luxurious provision, and i took farewell of my beloved cask with tears in my eyes.'' ``well, then, since you do not fear your quarters,'' said lord woodville, ``you will stay with me a week at least. of guns, dogs, fishing-rods, flies, and means of sport by sea and land, we have enough and to spare: you cannot pitch on an amusement but we will find the means of pursuing it. but if you prefer the gun and pointers, i will go with you myself, and see whether you have mended your shooting since you have been amongst the indians of the back settlements.'' the general gladly accepted his friendly host's proposal in all its points. after a morning of manly exercise, the company met at dinner, where it was the delight of lord woodville to conduce to the display of the high properties of his recovered friend, so as to recommend him to his guests, most of whom were persons of distinction. he led general browne to speak of the scenes he had witnessed; and as every word marked alike the brave officer and the sensible man, who retained possession of his cool judgment under the most imminent dangers, the company looked upon the soldier with general respect, as on one who had proved himself possessed of an uncommon portion of personal courage; that attribute, of all others, of which every body desires to be thought possessed. the day at woodville castle ended as usual in such mansions. the hospitality stopped within the limits of good order; music, in which the young lord was a proficient, succeeded to the circulation of the bottle: cards and billiards, for those who preferred such amusements, were in readiness: but the exercise of the morning required early hours, and not long after eleven o'clock the guests began to retire to their several apartments. the young lord himself conducted his friend, general browne, to the chamber destined for him, which answered the description he had given of it, being comfortable, but old-fashioned. the bed was of the massive form used in the end of the seventeenth century, and the curtains of faded silk, heavily trimmed with tarnished gold. but then the sheets, pillows, and blankets looked delightful to the campaigner, when he thought of his ``mansion, the cask.'' there was an air of gloom in the tapestry hangings, which, with their worn-out graces, curtained the walls of the little chamber, and gently undulated as the autumnal breeze found its way through the ancient lattice-window, which pattered and whistled as the air gained entrance. the toilet too, with its mirror, turbaned after the manner of the beginning of the century, with a coiffure of murrey-coloured silk, and its hundred strange-shaped boxes, providing for arrangements which had been obsolete for more than fifty years, had an antique, and in so far a melancholy, aspect. but nothing could blaze more brightly and cheerfully than the two large wax candles; or if aught could rival them, it was the flaming bickering fagots in the chimney, that sent at once their gleam and their warmth through the snug apartment; which, notwithstanding the general antiquity of its appearance, was not wanting in the least convenience, that modern habits rendered either necessary or desirable. ``this is an old-fashioned sleeping apartment, general,'' said the young lord; ``but i hope you find nothing that makes you envy your old tobacco-cask.'' ``i am not particular respecting my lodgings,'' replied the general; ``yet were i to make any choice, i would prefer this chamber by many degrees, to the gayer and more modern rooms of your family mansion. believe me, that when i unite its modern air of comfort with its venerable antiquity, and recollect that it is your lordship's property, i shall feel in better quarters here, than if i were in the best hotel london could afford.'' ``i trust---i have no doubt---that you will find yourself as comfortable as i wish you, my dear general,'' said the young nobleman; and once more bidding his guest good-night, he shook him by the hand, and withdrew. the general once more looked round him, and internally congratulating himself on his return to peaceful life, the comforts of which were endeared by the recollection of the hardships and dangers he had lately sustained, undressed himself, and prepared for a luxurious night's rest. here, contrary to the custom of this species of tale, we leave the general in possession of his apartment until the next morning. the company assembled for breakfast at an early hour, but without the appearance of general browne, who seemed the guest that lord woodville was desirous of honouring above all whom his hospitality had assembled around him. he more than once expressed surprise at the general's absence, and at length sent a servant to make enquiry after him. the man brought back information that general browne had been walking abroad since an early hour of the morning, in defiance of the weather, which was misty and ungenial. ``the custom of a soldier,''---said the young nobleman to his friends; ``many of them acquire habitual vigilance, and cannot sleep after the early hour at which their duty usually commands them to be alert.'' yet the explanation which lord woodville thus offered to the company seemed hardly satisfactory to his own mind, and it was in a fit of silence and abstraction that he waited the return of the general. it took place near an hour after the breakfast bell had rung. he looked fatigued and feverish. his hair, the powdering and arrangement of which was at this time one of the most important occupations of a man's whole day, and marked his fashion as much as, in the present time, the tying of a cravat, or the want of one, was dishevelled, uncurled, void of powder, and dank with dew. his clothes were huddled on with a careless negligence, remarkable in a military man, whose real or supposed duties are usually held to include some attention to the toilet; and his looks were haggard and ghastly in a peculiar degree. ``so you have stolen a march upon us this morning, my dear general,'' said lord woodville; ``or you have not found your bed so much to your mind as i had hoped and you seemed to expect. how did you rest last night?'' ``oh, excellently well! remarkably well! never better in my life''---said general browne rapidly, and yet with an air of embarrassment which was obvious to his friend. he then hastily swallowed a cup of tea, and, neglecting or refusing whatever else was offered, seemed to fall into a fit of abstraction. ``you will take the gun to-day, general?'' said his friend and host, but had to repeat the question twice ere he received the abrupt answer, ``no, my lord; i am sorry i cannot have the honour of spending another day with your lordship; my post horses are ordered, and will be here directly.'' all who were present showed surprise, and lord woodville immediately replied, ``post horses, my good friend! what can you possibly want with them, when you promised to stay with me quietly for at least a week?'' ``i believe,'' said the general, obviously much embarrassed, ``that i might, in the pleasure of my first meeting with your lordship, have said something about stopping here a few days; but i have since found it altogether impossible.'' ``that is very extraordinary,'' answered the young nobleman. ``you seemed quite disengaged yesterday, and you cannot have had a summons to-day; for our post has not come up from the town, and therefore you cannot have received any letters.'' general browne, without giving any further explanation, muttered something of indispensable business, and insisted on the absolute necessity of his departure in a manner which silenced all opposition on the part of his host, who saw that his resolution was taken, and forbore all further importunity. ``at least, however,'' he said, ``permit me, my dear browne, since go you will or must, to show you the view from the terrace, which the mist, that is now rising, will soon display.'' he threw open a sash-window, and stepped down upon the terrace as he spoke. the general followed him mechanically, but seemed little to attend to what his host was saying, as, looking across an extended and rich prospect, he pointed out the different objects worthy of observation. thus they moved on till lord woodville had attained his purpose of drawing his guest entirely apart from the rest of the company, when, turning round upon him with an air of great solemnity, he addressed him thus: ``richard browne, my old and very dear friend, we are now alone. let me conjure you to answer me upon the word of a friend, and the honour of a soldier. how did you in reality rest during last night?'' ``most wretchedly indeed, my lord,'' answered the general, in the same tone of solemnity;---``so miserably, that i would not run the risk of such a second night, not only for all the lands belonging to this castle, but for all the country which i see from this elevated point of view.'' ``this is most extraordinary,'' said the young lord, as if speaking to himself; ``then there must be something in the reports concerning that apartment.'' again turning to the general, he said, ``for god's sake, my dear friend, be candid with me, and let me know the disagreeable particulars which have befallen you under a roof, where, with consent of the owner, you should have met nothing save comfort.'' the general seemed distressed by this appeal, and paused a moment before he replied. ``my dear lord,'' he at length said, ``what happened to me last night is of a nature so peculiar and so unpleasant, that i could hardly bring myself to detail it even to your lordship, were it not that, independent of my wish to gratify any request of yours, i think that sincerity on my part may lead to some explanation about a circumstance equally painful and mysterious. to others, the communication i am about to make, might place me in the light of a weak-minded, superstitious fool, who suffered his own imagination to delude and bewilder him; but you have known me in childhood and youth, and will not suspect me of having adopted in manhood the feelings and frailties from which my early years were free.'' here he paused, and his friend replied: ``do not doubt my perfect confidence in the truth of your communication, however strange it may be,'' replied lord woodville; ``i know your firmness of disposition too well, to suspect you could be made the object of imposition, and am aware that your honour and your friendship will equally deter you from exaggerating whatever you may have witnessed.'' ``well then,'' said the general, ``i will proceed with my story as well as i can, relying upon your candour; and yet distinctly feeling that i would rather face a battery than recall to my mind the odious recollections of last night.'' he paused a second time, and then perceiving that lord woodville remained silent and in an attitude of attention, he commenced, though not without obvious reluctance, the history of his night adventures in the tapestried chamber. ``i undressed and went to bed, so soon as your lordship left me yesterday evening; but the wood in the chimney, which nearly fronted my bed, blazed brightly and cheerfully, and, aided by a hundred exciting recollections of my childhood and youth, which had been recalled by the unexpected pleasure of meeting your lordship, prevented me from falling immediately asleep. i ought, however, to say, that these reflections were all of a pleasant and agreeable kind, grounded on a sense of having for a time exchanged the labour, fatigues, and dangers of my profession, for the enjoyments of a peaceful life, and the reunion of those friendly and affectionate ties, which i had torn asunder at the rude summons of war. ``while such pleasing reflections were stealing over my mind, and gradually lulling me to slumber, i was suddenly aroused by a sound like that of the rustling of a silken gown, and the tapping of a pair of high-heeled shoes, as if a woman were walking in the apartment. ere i could draw the curtain to see what the matter was, the figure of a little woman passed between the bed and the fire. the back of this form was turned to me, and i could observe, from the shoulders and neck, it was that of an old woman, whose dress was an old-fashioned gown, which, i think, ladies call a sacque; that is, a sort of robe completely loose in the body, but gathered into broad plaits upon the neck and shoulders, which fall down to the ground, and terminate in a species of train. ``i thought the intrusion singular enough, but never harboured for a moment the idea that what i saw was any thing more than the mortal form of some old woman about the establishment, who had a fancy to dress like her grandmother, and who, having perhaps (as your lordship mentioned that you were rather straitened for room) been dislodged from her chamber for my accommodation, had forgotten the circumstance, and returned by twelve to her old haunt. under this persuasion i moved myself in bed and coughed a little, to make the intruder sensible of my being in possession of the premises.---she turned slowly round, but, gracious heaven! my lord, what a countenance did she display to me! there was no longer any question what she was, or any thought of her being a living being. upon a face which wore the fixed features of a corpse, were imprinted the traces of the vilest and most hideous passions which had animated her while she lived. the body of some atrocious criminal seemed to have been given up from the grave, and the soul restored from the penal fire, in order to form, for a space, an union with the ancient accomplice of its guilt. i started up in bed, and sat upright, supporting myself on my palms, as i gazed on this horrible spectre. the hag made, as it seemed, a single and swift stride to the bed where i lay, and squatted herself down upon it, in precisely the same attitude which i had assumed in the extremity of horror, advancing her diabolical countenance within half a yard of mine, with a grin which seemed to intimate the malice and the derision of an incarnate fiend.'' here general browne stopped, and wiped from his brow the cold perspiration with which the recollection of his horrible vision had covered it. ``my lord,'' he said, ``i am no coward. i have been in all the mortal dangers incidental to my profession, and i may truly boast, that no man ever knew richard browne dishonour the sword he wears; but in these horrible circumstances, under the eyes, and, as it seemed, almost in the grasp of an incarnation of an evil spirit, all firmness forsook me, all manhood melted from me like wax in the furnace, and i felt my hair individually bristle. the current of my life-blood ceased to flow, and i sank back in a swoon, as very a victim to panic terror as ever was a village girl, or a child of ten years old. how long i lay in this condition i cannot pretend to guess. ``but i was roused by the castle clock striking one, so loud that it seemed as if it were in the very room. it was some time before i dared open my eyes, lest they should again encounter the horrible spectacle. when, however, i summoned courage to look up, she was no longer visible. my first idea was to pull my bell, wake the servants, and remove to a garret or a hay-loft, to be ensured against a second visitation. nay, i will confess the truth, that my resolution was altered, not by the shame of exposing myself, but by the fear that, as the bell-cord hung by the chimney, i might in making my way to it, be again crossed by the fiendish hag, who, i figured to myself, might be still lurking about some corner of the apartment. ``i will not pretend to describe what hot and cold fever-fits tormented me for the rest of the night, through broken sleep, weary vigils, and that dubious state which forms the neutral ground between them. an hundred terrible objects appeared to haunt me; but there was the great difference betwixt the vision which i have described, and those which followed, that i knew the last to be deceptions of my own fancy and over-excited nerves. ``day at last appeared, and i rose from my bed ill in health, and humiliated in mind. i was ashamed of myself as a man and a soldier, and still more so, at feeling my own extreme desire to escape from the haunted apartment, which, however, conquered all other considerations; so that, huddling on my clothes with the most careless haste, i made my escape from your lordship's mansion, to seek in the open air some relief to my nervous system, shaken as it was by this horrible rencounter with a visitant, for such i must believe her, from the other world. your lordship has now heard the cause of my discomposure, and of my sudden desire to leave your hospitable castle. in other places i trust we may often meet; but god protect me from ever spending a second night under that roof!'' strange as the general's tale was, he spoke with such a deep air of conviction, that it cut short all the usual commentaries which are made on such stories. lord woodville never once asked him if he was sure he did not dream of the apparition, or suggested any of the possibilities by which it is fashionable to explain supernatural appearances, as wild vagaries of the fancy, or deceptions of the optic nerves. on the contrary, he seemed deeply impressed with the truth and reality of what he had heard; and, after a considerable pause, regretted, with much appearance of sincerity, that his early friend should in his house have suffered so severely. ``i am the more sorry for your pain, my dear browne,'' he continued, ``that it is the unhappy, though most unexpected, result of an experiment of my own. you must know, that for my father and grandfather's time, at least, the apartment which was assigned to you last night, had been shut on account of reports that it was disturbed by supernatural sights and noises. when i came, a few weeks since, into possession of the estate, i thought the accommodation, which the castle afforded for my friends, was not extensive enough to permit the inhabitants of the invisible world to retain possession of a comfortable sleeping apartment. i therefore caused the tapestried chamber, as we call it, to be opened; and, without destroying its air of antiquity, i had such new articles of furniture placed in it as became the modern times. yet as the opinion that the room was haunted very strongly prevailed among the domestics, and was also known in the neighbourhood and to many of my friends, i feared some prejudice might be entertained by the first occupant of the tapestried chamber, which might tend to revive the evil report which it had laboured under, and so disappoint my purpose of rendering it an useful part of the house. i must confess, my dear browne, that your arrival yesterday, agreeable to me for a thousand reasons besides, seemed the most favourable opportunity of removing the unpleasant rumours which attached to the room, since your courage was indubitable, and your mind free of any pre-occupation on the subject. i could not, therefore, have chosen a more fitting subject for my experiment.'' ``upon my life,'' said general browne, somewhat hastily, ``i am infinitely obliged to your lordship---very particularly indebted indeed. i am likely to remember for some time the consequences of the experiment, as your lordship is pleased to call it.'' ``nay, now you are unjust, my dear friend,'' said lord woodville. ``you have only to reflect for a single moment, in order to be convinced that i could not augur the possibility of the pain to which you have been so unhappily exposed. i was yesterday morning a complete sceptic on the subject of supernatural appearances. nay, i am sure that had i told you what was said about that room, those very reports would have induced you, by your own choice, to select it for your accommodation. it was my misfortune, perhaps my error, but really cannot be termed my fault, that you have been afflicted so strangely.'' ``strangely indeed!'' said the general, resuming his good temper; ``and i acknowledge that i have no right to be offended with your lordship for treating me like what i used to think myself---a man of some firmness and courage.---but i see my post horses are arrived, and i must not detain your lordship from your amusement.'' ``nay, my old friend,'' said lord woodville, since you cannot stay with us another day, which, indeed, i can no longer urge, give me at least half an hour more. you used to love pictures, and i have a gallery of portraits, some of them by vandyke, representing ancestry to whom this property and castle formerly belonged. i think that several of them will strike you as possessing merit.'' general browne accepted the invitation, though somewhat unwillingly. it was evident he was not to breathe freely or at ease till he left woodville castle far behind him. he could not refuse his friend's invitation, however; and the less so, that he was a little ashamed of the peevishness which he had displayed towards his well-meaning entertainer. the general, therefore, followed lord woodville through several rooms, into a long gallery hung with pictures, which the latter pointed out to his guest, telling the names, and giving some account of the personages whose portraits presented themselves in progression. general browne was but little interested in the details which these accounts conveyed to him. they were, indeed, of the kind which are usually found in an old family gallery. here, was a cavalier who had ruined the estate in the royal cause; there, a fine lady who had reinstated it by contracting a match with a wealthy roundhead. there, hung a gallant who had been in danger for corresponding with the exiled court at saint germain's; here, one who had taken arms for william at the revolution; and there, a third that had thrown his weight alternately into the scale of whig and tory. while lord woodville was cramming these words into his guest's car, ``against the stomach of his sense,'' they gained the middle of the gallery, when he beheld general browne suddenly start, and assume an attitude of the utmost, surprise, not unmixed with fear, as his eyes were caught and suddenly riveted by a portrait of an old lady in a sacque, the fashionable dress of the end of the seventeenth century. ``there she is!'' he exclaimed; ``there she is in form and features, though inferior in demoniac expression to the accursed hag who visited me last night!'' ``if that be the case,'' said the young nobleman, there can remain no longer any doubt of the horrible reality of your apparition. that is the picture of a wretched ancestress of mine, of whose crimes a black and fearful catalogue is recorded in a family history in my charter-chest. the recital of them would be too horrible; it is enough to say, that in yon fatal apartment incest and unnatural murder were committed. i will restore it to the solitude to which the better judgment of those who preceded me had consigned it; and never shall any one, so long as i can prevent it, be exposed to a repetition of the supernatural horrors which could shake such courage as yours.'' thus the friends, who had met with such glee, parted in a very different mood; lord woodville to command the tapestried chamber to be unmantled, and the door built up; and general browne to seek in some less beautiful country, and with some less dignified friend, forgetfulness of the painful night which he had passed in woodville castle. [3. death of the laird's jock] death of the laird's jock. [the manner in which this trifle was introduced at the time to mr. f. m. reynolds, editor of the keepsake of 1828, leaves no occasion for a preface.] _august_, 1831. -------- to the editor of the keepsake. you have asked me, sir, to point out a subject for the pencil, and i feel the difficulty of complying with your request; although i am not certainly unaccustomed to literary composition, or a total stranger to the stores of history and tradition, which afford the best copies for the painter's art. but although _sicut pictura poesis_ is an ancient and undisputed axiom---although poetry and painting both address themselves to the same object of exciting the human imagination, by presenting to it pleasing or sublime images of ideal scenes; yet the one conveying itself through the ears to the understanding, and the other applying itself only to the eyes, the subjects which are best suited to the bard or tale-teller are often totally unfit for painting, where the artist must present in a single glance all that his art has power to tell us. the artist can neither recapitulate the past nor intimate the future. the single _now_ is all which he can present; and hence, unquestionably, many subjects which delight us in poetry or in narrative, whether real or fictitious, cannot with advantage be transferred to the canvass. being in some degree aware of these difficulties, though doubtless unacquainted both with their extent, and the means by which they may be modified or surmounted, i have, nevertheless, ventured to draw up the following traditional narrative as a story in which, when the general details are known, the interest is so much concentrated in one strong moment of agonizing passion, that it can be understood, and sympathized with, at a single glance. i therefore presume that it may be acceptable as a hint to some one among the numerous artists, who have of late years distinguished themselves as rearing up and supporting the british school. enough has been said and sung about the well contested ground, the warlike border-land--to render the habits of the tribes who inhabited them before the union of england and scotland familiar to most of your readers. the rougher and sterner features of their character were softened by their attachment to the fine arts, from which has arisen the saying that, on the frontiers, every dale had its battle, and every river its song. a rude species of chivalry was in constant use, and single combats were practised as the amusement of the few intervals of truce which suspended the exercise of war. the inveteracy of this custom may be inferred from the following incident. bernard gilpin, the apostle of the north, the first who undertook to preach the protestant doctrines to the border dalesmen, was surprised, on entering one of their churches, to see a gauntlet or mail-glove hanging above the altar. upon enquiring the meaning of a symbol so indecorous being displayed in that sacred place, he was informed by the clerk that the glove was that of a famous swordsman, who hung it there as an emblem of a general challenge and gage of battle, to any who should dare to take the fatal token down. ``reach it to me,'' said the reverend churchman. the clerk and sexton equally declined the perilous office, and the good bernard gilpin was obliged to remove the glove with his own hands, desiring those who were present to inform the champion that he, and no other, had possessed himself of the gage of defiance. but the champion was as much ashamed to face bernard gilpin as the officials of the church had been to displace his pledge of combat. the date of the following story is about the latter years of queen elizabeth's reign; and the events took place in liddesdale, a hilly and pastoral district of roxburghshire, which, on a part of its boundary, is divided from england only by a small river. during the good old times of _rugging and riving_, (that is, tugging and tearing,) under which term the disorderly doings of the warlike age are affectionately remembered, this valley was principally cultivated by the sept or clan of the armstrongs. the chief of this warlike race was the laird of mangerton. at the period of which i speak, the estate of mangerton, with the power and dignity of chief, was possessed by john armstrong, a man of great size, strength, and courage. while his father was alive, he was distinguished from others of his clan who bore the same name, by the epithet of the _laird's jock_, that is to say, the laird's son jock, or jack. this name he distinguished by so many bold and desperate achievements, that he retained it even after his father's death, and is mentioned under it both in authentic records and in tradition. some of his feats are recorded in the minstrelsy of the scottish border, and others mentioned in contemporary chronicles. at the species of singular combat which we have described, the laird's jock was unrivalled, and no champion of cumberland, westmoreland, or northumberland, could endure the sway of the huge two-handed sword which he wielded, and which few others could even lift. this ``awful sword,'' as the common people term it, was as dear to him as durindana or fushberta to their respective masters, and was nearly as formidable to his enemies as those renowned falchions proved to the foes of christendom. the weapon had been bequeathed to him by a celebrated english outlaw named hobbie noble, who, having committed some deed for which he was in danger from justice fled to liddesdale, and became a follower, or rather a brother-in-arms, to the renowned laird's jock; till, venturing into england with a small escort, a faithless guide, and with a light single-handed sword instead of his ponderous brand, hobbie noble, attacked by superior numbers, was made prisoner and executed. with this weapon, and by means of his own strength and address, the laird's jock maintained the reputation of the best swordsman on the border side, and defeated or slew many who ventured to dispute with him the formidable title. but years pass on with the strong and the brave as with the feeble and the timid. in process of, time, the laird's jock grew incapable of wielding his weapons, and finally of all active exertion, even of the most ordinary kind. the disabled champion became at length totally bed-ridden, and entirely dependent for his comfort on the pious duties of an only daughter, his perpetual attendant and companion. besides this dutiful child, the laird's jock had an only son, upon whom devolved the perilous task of leading the clan to battle, and maintaining the warlike renown of his native country, which was now disputed by the english upon many occasions. the young armstrong was active, brave, and strong, and brought home from dangerous adventures many tokens of decided success. still the ancient chief conceived, as it would seem, that his son was scarce yet entitled by age and experience to be intrusted with the two-handed sword, by the use of which he had himself been so dreadfully distinguished. at length, an english champion, one of the name of foster, (if i rightly recollect,) had the audacity to send a challenge to the best swordsman in liddesdale; and young armstrong, burning for chivalrous distinction, accepted the challenge. the heart of the disabled old man swelled with joy, when he heard that the challenge was passed and accepted, and the meeting fixed at a neutral spot, used as the place of rencontre upon such occasions, and which he himself had distinguished by numerous victories. he exulted so much in the conquest which he anticipated, that, to nerve his son to still bolder exertions, he conferred upon him, as champion of his clan and province, the celebrated weapon which he had hitherto retained in his own custody. this was not all. when the day of combat arrived, the laird's jock, in spite of his daughter's affectionate remonstrances, determined, though he had not left his bed for two years' to be a personal witness of the duel. his will was still a law to his people, who bore him on their shoulders, wrapt in plaids and blankets, to the spot where the combat was to take place, and seated him on a fragment of rock, which is still called the laird's jock's stone. there he remained with eyes fixed on the lists or barrier, within which the champions were about to meet. his daughter, having done all she could for his accommodation, stood motionless beside him, divided between anxiety for his health, and for the event of the combat to her beloved brother. ere yet the fight began, the old men gazed on their chief, now seen for the first time after several years, and sadly compared his altered features and wasted frame, with the paragon of strength and manly beauty which they once remembered. the young men gazed on his large form and powerful make, as upon some antediluvian giant who had survived the destruction of the flood. but the sound of the trumpets on both sides recalled the attention of every one to the lists, surrounded as they were by numbers of both nations eager to witness the event of the day. the combatants met in the lists. it is needless to describe the struggle: the scottish champion fell. foster, placing his foot on his antagonist, seized on the redoubted sword, so precious in the eyes of its aged owner, and brandished it over his head as a trophy of his conquest. the english shouted in triumph. but the despairing cry of the aged champion, who saw his country dishonoured, and his sword, long the terror of their race, in possession of an englishman, was heard high above the acclamations of victory. he seemed, for an instant, animated by all his wonted power; for he started from the rock on which he sat, and while the garments with which he had been invested fell from his wasted frame, and showed the ruins of his strength, he tossed his arms wildly to heaven, and uttered a cry of indignation, horror, and despair, which, tradition says, was heard to a preternatural distance and resembled the cry of a dying lion more than a human sound. his friends received him in their arms as he sank utterly exhausted by the effort, and bore him back to his castle in mute sorrow; while his daughter at once wept for her brother, and endeavoured to mitigate and soothe the despair of her father. but this was impossible; the old man's only tie to life was rent rudely asunder, and his heart had broken with it. the death of his son had no part in his sorrow: if he thought of him at all, it was as the degenerate boy, through whom the honour of his country and clan had been lost, and he died in the course of three days, never even mentioning his name, but pouring out unintermitted lamentations for the loss of his noble sword. i conceive, that the moment when the disabled chief was roused into a last exertion by the agony of the moment is favourable to the object of a painter. he might obtain the full advantage of contrasting the form of the rugged old man, in the extremity of furious despair, with the softness and beauty of the female form. the fatal field might be thrown into perspective, so as to give full effect to these two principal figures, and with the single explanation, that the piece represented a soldier beholding his son slain, and the honour of his country lost, the picture would be sufficiently intelligible at the first glance. if it was thought necessary to show more clearly the nature of the conflict, it might be indicated by the pennon of saint george being displayed at one end of the lists, and that of saint andrew at the other. i remain, sir, your obedient servant, the author of waverley. [end of the keepsake stories] troilus and cressida dramatis personae priam king of troy. hector | | troilus | | paris | his sons. | deiphobus | | helenus | margarelon a bastard son of priam. aeneas | | trojan commanders. antenor | calchas a trojan priest, taking part with the greeks. pandarus uncle to cressida. agamemnon the grecian general. menelaus his brother. achilles | | ajax | | ulysses | | grecian princes. nestor | | diomedes | | patroclus | thersites a deformed and scurrilous grecian. alexander servant to cressida. servant to troilus. (boy:) servant to paris. servant to diomedes. (servant:) helen wife to menelaus. andromache wife to hector. cassandra daughter to priam, a prophetess. cressida daughter to calchas. trojan and greek soldiers, and attendants. scene troy, and the grecian camp before it. troilus and cressida prologue in troy, there lies the scene. from isles of greece the princes orgulous, their high blood chafed, have to the port of athens sent their ships, fraught with the ministers and instruments of cruel war: sixty and nine, that wore their crownets regal, from the athenian bay put forth toward phrygia; and their vow is made to ransack troy, within whose strong immures the ravish'd helen, menelaus' queen, with wanton paris sleeps; and that's the quarrel. to tenedos they come; and the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge their warlike fraughtage: now on dardan plains the fresh and yet unbruised greeks do pitch their brave pavilions: priam's six-gated city, dardan, and tymbria, helias, chetas, troien, and antenorides, with massy staples and corresponsive and fulfilling bolts, sperr up the sons of troy. now expectation, tickling skittish spirits, on one and other side, trojan and greek, sets all on hazard: and hither am i come a prologue arm'd, but not in confidence of author's pen or actor's voice, but suited in like conditions as our argument, to tell you, fair beholders, that our play leaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils, beginning in the middle, starting thence away to what may be digested in a play. like or find fault; do as your pleasures are: now good or bad, 'tis but the chance of war. troilus and cressida act i scene i troy. before priam's palace. [enter troilus armed, and pandarus] troilus call here my varlet; i'll unarm again: why should i war without the walls of troy, that find such cruel battle here within? each trojan that is master of his heart, let him to field; troilus, alas! hath none. pandarus will this gear ne'er be mended? troilus the greeks are strong and skilful to their strength, fierce to their skill and to their fierceness valiant; but i am weaker than a woman's tear, tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance, less valiant than the virgin in the night and skilless as unpractised infancy. pandarus well, i have told you enough of this: for my part, i'll not meddle nor make no further. he that will have a cake out of the wheat must needs tarry the grinding. troilus have i not tarried? pandarus ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting. troilus have i not tarried? pandarus ay, the bolting, but you must tarry the leavening. troilus still have i tarried. pandarus ay, to the leavening; but here's yet in the word 'hereafter' the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven and the baking; nay, you must stay the cooling too, or you may chance to burn your lips. troilus patience herself, what goddess e'er she be, doth lesser blench at sufferance than i do. at priam's royal table do i sit; and when fair cressid comes into my thoughts,- so, traitor! 'when she comes!' when is she thence? pandarus well, she looked yesternight fairer than ever i saw her look, or any woman else. troilus i was about to tell thee:--when my heart, as wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain, lest hector or my father should perceive me, i have, as when the sun doth light a storm, buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile: but sorrow, that is couch'd in seeming gladness, is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness. pandarus an her hair were not somewhat darker than helen's- well, go to--there were no more comparison between the women: but, for my part, she is my kinswoman; i would not, as they term it, praise her: but i would somebody had heard her talk yesterday, as i did. i will not dispraise your sister cassandra's wit, but- troilus o pandarus! i tell thee, pandarus,- when i do tell thee, there my hopes lie drown'd, reply not in how many fathoms deep they lie indrench'd. i tell thee i am mad in cressid's love: thou answer'st 'she is fair;' pour'st in the open ulcer of my heart her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice, handlest in thy discourse, o, that her hand, in whose comparison all whites are ink, writing their own reproach, to whose soft seizure the cygnet's down is harsh and spirit of sense hard as the palm of ploughman: this thou tell'st me, as true thou tell'st me, when i say i love her; but, saying thus, instead of oil and balm, thou lay'st in every gash that love hath given me the knife that made it. pandarus i speak no more than truth. troilus thou dost not speak so much. pandarus faith, i'll not meddle in't. let her be as she is: if she be fair, 'tis the better for her; an she be not, she has the mends in her own hands. troilus good pandarus, how now, pandarus! pandarus i have had my labour for my travail; ill-thought on of her and ill-thought on of you; gone between and between, but small thanks for my labour. troilus what, art thou angry, pandarus? what, with me? pandarus because she's kin to me, therefore she's not so fair as helen: an she were not kin to me, she would be as fair on friday as helen is on sunday. but what care i? i care not an she were a black-a-moor; 'tis all one to me. troilus say i she is not fair? pandarus i do not care whether you do or no. she's a fool to stay behind her father; let her to the greeks; and so i'll tell her the next time i see her: for my part, i'll meddle nor make no more i' the matter. troilus pandarus,- pandarus not i. troilus sweet pandarus,- pandarus pray you, speak no more to me: i will leave all as i found it, and there an end. [exit pandarus. an alarum] troilus peace, you ungracious clamours! peace, rude sounds! fools on both sides! helen must needs be fair, when with your blood you daily paint her thus. i cannot fight upon this argument; it is too starved a subject for my sword. but pandarus,--o gods, how do you plague me! i cannot come to cressid but by pandar; and he's as tetchy to be woo'd to woo. as she is stubborn-chaste against all suit. tell me, apollo, for thy daphne's love, what cressid is, what pandar, and what we? her bed is india; there she lies, a pearl: between our ilium and where she resides, let it be call'd the wild and wandering flood, ourself the merchant, and this sailing pandar our doubtful hope, our convoy and our bark. [alarum. enter aeneas] aeneas how now, prince troilus! wherefore not afield? troilus because not there: this woman's answer sorts, for womanish it is to be from thence. what news, aeneas, from the field to-day? aeneas that paris is returned home and hurt. troilus by whom, aeneas? aeneas troilus, by menelaus. troilus let paris bleed; 'tis but a scar to scorn; paris is gored with menelaus' horn. [alarum] aeneas hark, what good sport is out of town to-day! troilus better at home, if 'would i might' were 'may.' but to the sport abroad: are you bound thither? aeneas in all swift haste. troilus come, go we then together. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act i scene ii the same. a street. [enter cressida and alexander] cressida who were those went by? alexander queen hecuba and helen. cressida and whither go they? alexander up to the eastern tower, whose height commands as subject all the vale, to see the battle. hector, whose patience is, as a virtue, fix'd, to-day was moved: he chid andromache and struck his armourer, and, like as there were husbandry in war, before the sun rose he was harness'd light, and to the field goes he; where every flower did, as a prophet, weep what it foresaw in hector's wrath. cressida what was his cause of anger? alexander the noise goes, this: there is among the greeks a lord of trojan blood, nephew to hector; they call him ajax. cressida good; and what of him? alexander they say he is a very man per se, and stands alone. cressida so do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs. alexander this man, lady, hath robbed many beasts of their particular additions; he is as valiant as the lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant: a man into whom nature hath so crowded humours that his valour is crushed into folly, his folly sauced with discretion: there is no man hath a virtue that he hath not a glimpse of, nor any man an attaint but he carries some stain of it: he is melancholy without cause, and merry against the hair: he hath the joints of every thing, but everything so out of joint that he is a gouty briareus, many hands and no use, or purblind argus, all eyes and no sight. cressida but how should this man, that makes me smile, make hector angry? alexander they say he yesterday coped hector in the battle and struck him down, the disdain and shame whereof hath ever since kept hector fasting and waking. cressida who comes here? alexander madam, your uncle pandarus. [enter pandarus] cressida hector's a gallant man. alexander as may be in the world, lady. pandarus what's that? what's that? cressida good morrow, uncle pandarus. pandarus good morrow, cousin cressid: what do you talk of? good morrow, alexander. how do you, cousin? when were you at ilium? cressida this morning, uncle. pandarus what were you talking of when i came? was hector armed and gone ere ye came to ilium? helen was not up, was she? cressida hector was gone, but helen was not up. pandarus even so: hector was stirring early. cressida that were we talking of, and of his anger. pandarus was he angry? cressida so he says here. pandarus true, he was so: i know the cause too: he'll lay about him to-day, i can tell them that: and there's troilus will not come far behind him: let them take heed of troilus, i can tell them that too. cressida what, is he angry too? pandarus who, troilus? troilus is the better man of the two. cressida o jupiter! there's no comparison. pandarus what, not between troilus and hector? do you know a man if you see him? cressida ay, if i ever saw him before and knew him. pandarus well, i say troilus is troilus. cressida then you say as i say; for, i am sure, he is not hector. pandarus no, nor hector is not troilus in some degrees. cressida 'tis just to each of them; he is himself. pandarus himself! alas, poor troilus! i would he were. cressida so he is. pandarus condition, i had gone barefoot to india. cressida he is not hector. pandarus himself! no, he's not himself: would a' were himself! well, the gods are above; time must friend or end: well, troilus, well: i would my heart were in her body. no, hector is not a better man than troilus. cressida excuse me. pandarus he is elder. cressida pardon me, pardon me. pandarus th' other's not come to't; you shall tell me another tale, when th' other's come to't. hector shall not have his wit this year. cressida he shall not need it, if he have his own. pandarus nor his qualities. cressida no matter. pandarus nor his beauty. cressida 'twould not become him; his own's better. pandarus you have no judgment, niece: helen herself swore th' other day, that troilus, for a brown favour--for so 'tis, i must confess,- not brown neither,- cressida no, but brown. pandarus 'faith, to say truth, brown and not brown. cressida to say the truth, true and not true. pandarus she praised his complexion above paris. cressida why, paris hath colour enough. pandarus so he has. cressida then troilus should have too much: if she praised him above, his complexion is higher than his; he having colour enough, and the other higher, is too flaming a praise for a good complexion. i had as lief helen's golden tongue had commended troilus for a copper nose. pandarus i swear to you. i think helen loves him better than paris. cressida then she's a merry greek indeed. pandarus nay, i am sure she does. she came to him th' other day into the compassed window,--and, you know, he has not past three or four hairs on his chin,- cressida indeed, a tapster's arithmetic may soon bring his particulars therein to a total. pandarus why, he is very young: and yet will he, within three pound, lift as much as his brother hector. cressida is he so young a man and so old a lifter? pandarus but to prove to you that helen loves him: she came and puts me her white hand to his cloven chin- cressida juno have mercy! how came it cloven? pandarus why, you know 'tis dimpled: i think his smiling becomes him better than any man in all phrygia. cressida o, he smiles valiantly. pandarus does he not? cressida o yes, an 'twere a cloud in autumn. pandarus why, go to, then: but to prove to you that helen loves troilus,- cressida troilus will stand to the proof, if you'll prove it so. pandarus troilus! why, he esteems her no more than i esteem an addle egg. cressida if you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle head, you would eat chickens i' the shell. pandarus i cannot choose but laugh, to think how she tickled his chin: indeed, she has a marvellous white hand, i must needs confess,- cressida without the rack. pandarus and she takes upon her to spy a white hair on his chin. cressida alas, poor chin! many a wart is richer. pandarus but there was such laughing! queen hecuba laughed that her eyes ran o'er. cressida with mill-stones. pandarus and cassandra laughed. cressida but there was more temperate fire under the pot of her eyes: did her eyes run o'er too? pandarus and hector laughed. cressida at what was all this laughing? pandarus marry, at the white hair that helen spied on troilus' chin. cressida an't had been a green hair, i should have laughed too. pandarus they laughed not so much at the hair as at his pretty answer. cressida what was his answer? pandarus quoth she, 'here's but two and fifty hairs on your chin, and one of them is white. cressida this is her question. pandarus that's true; make no question of that. 'two and fifty hairs' quoth he, 'and one white: that white hair is my father, and all the rest are his sons.' 'jupiter!' quoth she, 'which of these hairs is paris, my husband? 'the forked one,' quoth he, 'pluck't out, and give it him.' but there was such laughing! and helen so blushed, an paris so chafed, and all the rest so laughed, that it passed. cressida so let it now; for it has been while going by. pandarus well, cousin. i told you a thing yesterday; think on't. cressida so i do. pandarus i'll be sworn 'tis true; he will weep you, an 'twere a man born in april. cressida and i'll spring up in his tears, an 'twere a nettle against may. [a retreat sounded] pandarus hark! they are coming from the field: shall we stand up here, and see them as they pass toward ilium? good niece, do, sweet niece cressida. cressida at your pleasure. pandarus here, here, here's an excellent place; here we may see most bravely: i'll tell you them all by their names as they pass by; but mark troilus above the rest. cressida speak not so loud. [aeneas passes] pandarus that's aeneas: is not that a brave man? he's one of the flowers of troy, i can tell you: but mark troilus; you shall see anon. [antenor passes] cressida who's that? pandarus that's antenor: he has a shrewd wit, i can tell you; and he's a man good enough, he's one o' the soundest judgments in whosoever, and a proper man of person. when comes troilus? i'll show you troilus anon: if he see me, you shall see him nod at me. cressida will he give you the nod? pandarus you shall see. cressida if he do, the rich shall have more. [hector passes] pandarus that's hector, that, that, look you, that; there's a fellow! go thy way, hector! there's a brave man, niece. o brave hector! look how he looks! there's a countenance! is't not a brave man? cressida o, a brave man! pandarus is a' not? it does a man's heart good. look you what hacks are on his helmet! look you yonder, do you see? look you there: there's no jesting; there's laying on, take't off who will, as they say: there be hacks! cressida be those with swords? pandarus swords! any thing, he cares not; an the devil come to him, it's all one: by god's lid, it does one's heart good. yonder comes paris, yonder comes paris. [paris passes] look ye yonder, niece; is't not a gallant man too, is't not? why, this is brave now. who said he came hurt home to-day? he's not hurt: why, this will do helen's heart good now, ha! would i could see troilus now! you shall see troilus anon. [helenus passes] cressida who's that? pandarus that's helenus. i marvel where troilus is. that's helenus. i think he went not forth to-day. that's helenus. cressida can helenus fight, uncle? pandarus helenus? no. yes, he'll fight indifferent well. i marvel where troilus is. hark! do you not hear the people cry 'troilus'? helenus is a priest. cressida what sneaking fellow comes yonder? [troilus passes] pandarus where? yonder? that's deiphobus. 'tis troilus! there's a man, niece! hem! brave troilus! the prince of chivalry! cressida peace, for shame, peace! pandarus mark him; note him. o brave troilus! look well upon him, niece: look you how his sword is bloodied, and his helm more hacked than hector's, and how he looks, and how he goes! o admirable youth! he ne'er saw three and twenty. go thy way, troilus, go thy way! had i a sister were a grace, or a daughter a goddess, he should take his choice. o admirable man! paris? paris is dirt to him; and, i warrant, helen, to change, would give an eye to boot. cressida here come more. [forces pass] pandarus asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran, chaff and bran! porridge after meat! i could live and die i' the eyes of troilus. ne'er look, ne'er look: the eagles are gone: crows and daws, crows and daws! i had rather be such a man as troilus than agamemnon and all greece. cressida there is among the greeks achilles, a better man than troilus. pandarus achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel. cressida well, well. pandarus 'well, well!' why, have you any discretion? have you any eyes? do you know what a man is? is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man? cressida ay, a minced man: and then to be baked with no date in the pie, for then the man's date's out. pandarus you are such a woman! one knows not at what ward you lie. cressida upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty; and you, to defend all these: and at all these wards i lie, at a thousand watches. pandarus say one of your watches. cressida nay, i'll watch you for that; and that's one of the chiefest of them too: if i cannot ward what i would not have hit, i can watch you for telling how i took the blow; unless it swell past hiding, and then it's past watching. pandarus you are such another! [enter troilus's boy] boy sir, my lord would instantly speak with you. pandarus where? boy at your own house; there he unarms him. pandarus good boy, tell him i come. [exit boy] i doubt he be hurt. fare ye well, good niece. cressida adieu, uncle. pandarus i'll be with you, niece, by and by. cressida to bring, uncle? pandarus ay, a token from troilus. cressida by the same token, you are a bawd. [exit pandarus] words, vows, gifts, tears, and love's full sacrifice, he offers in another's enterprise; but more in troilus thousand fold i see than in the glass of pandar's praise may be; yet hold i off. women are angels, wooing: things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing. that she beloved knows nought that knows not this: men prize the thing ungain'd more than it is: that she was never yet that ever knew love got so sweet as when desire did sue. therefore this maxim out of love i teach: achievement is command; ungain'd, beseech: then though my heart's content firm love doth bear, nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act i scene iii the grecian camp. before agamemnon's tent. [sennet. enter agamemnon, nestor, ulysses, menelaus, and others] agamemnon princes, what grief hath set the jaundice on your cheeks? the ample proposition that hope makes in all designs begun on earth below fails in the promised largeness: cheques and disasters grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd, as knots, by the conflux of meeting sap, infect the sound pine and divert his grain tortive and errant from his course of growth. nor, princes, is it matter new to us that we come short of our suppose so far that after seven years' siege yet troy walls stand; sith every action that hath gone before, whereof we have record, trial did draw bias and thwart, not answering the aim, and that unbodied figure of the thought that gave't surmised shape. why then, you princes, do you with cheeks abash'd behold our works, and call them shames? which are indeed nought else but the protractive trials of great jove to find persistive constancy in men: the fineness of which metal is not found in fortune's love; for then the bold and coward, the wise and fool, the artist and unread, the hard and soft seem all affined and kin: but, in the wind and tempest of her frown, distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, puffing at all, winnows the light away; and what hath mass or matter, by itself lies rich in virtue and unmingled. nestor with due observance of thy godlike seat, great agamemnon, nestor shall apply thy latest words. in the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth, how many shallow bauble boats dare sail upon her patient breast, making their way with those of nobler bulk! but let the ruffian boreas once enrage the gentle thetis, and anon behold the strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut, bounding between the two moist elements, like perseus' horse: where's then the saucy boat whose weak untimber'd sides but even now co-rivall'd greatness? either to harbour fled, or made a toast for neptune. even so doth valour's show and valour's worth divide in storms of fortune; for in her ray and brightness the herd hath more annoyance by the breeze than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, and flies fled under shade, why, then the thing of courage as roused with rage with rage doth sympathize, and with an accent tuned in selfsame key retorts to chiding fortune. ulysses agamemnon, thou great commander, nerve and bone of greece, heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit. in whom the tempers and the minds of all should be shut up, hear what ulysses speaks. besides the applause and approbation to which, [to agamemnon] most mighty for thy place and sway, [to nestor] and thou most reverend for thy stretch'd-out life i give to both your speeches, which were such as agamemnon and the hand of greece should hold up high in brass, and such again as venerable nestor, hatch'd in silver, should with a bond of air, strong as the axle-tree on which heaven rides, knit all the greekish ears to his experienced tongue, yet let it please both, thou great, and wise, to hear ulysses speak. agamemnon speak, prince of ithaca; and be't of less expect that matter needless, of importless burden, divide thy lips, than we are confident, when rank thersites opes his mastic jaws, we shall hear music, wit and oracle. ulysses troy, yet upon his basis, had been down, and the great hector's sword had lack'd a master, but for these instances. the specialty of rule hath been neglected: and, look, how many grecian tents do stand hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions. when that the general is not like the hive to whom the foragers shall all repair, what honey is expected? degree being vizarded, the unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. the heavens themselves, the planets and this centre observe degree, priority and place, insisture, course, proportion, season, form, office and custom, in all line of order; and therefore is the glorious planet sol in noble eminence enthroned and sphered amidst the other; whose medicinable eye corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, and posts, like the commandment of a king, sans cheque to good and bad: but when the planets in evil mixture to disorder wander, what plagues and what portents! what mutiny! what raging of the sea! shaking of earth! commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors, divert and crack, rend and deracinate the unity and married calm of states quite from their fixure! o, when degree is shaked, which is the ladder to all high designs, then enterprise is sick! how could communities, degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities, peaceful commerce from dividable shores, the primogenitive and due of birth, prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, but by degree, stand in authentic place? take but degree away, untune that string, and, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets in mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters should lift their bosoms higher than the shores and make a sop of all this solid globe: strength should be lord of imbecility, and the rude son should strike his father dead: force should be right; or rather, right and wrong, between whose endless jar justice resides, should lose their names, and so should justice too. then every thing includes itself in power, power into will, will into appetite; and appetite, an universal wolf, so doubly seconded with will and power, must make perforce an universal prey, and last eat up himself. great agamemnon, this chaos, when degree is suffocate, follows the choking. and this neglection of degree it is that by a pace goes backward, with a purpose it hath to climb. the general's disdain'd by him one step below, he by the next, that next by him beneath; so every step, exampled by the first pace that is sick of his superior, grows to an envious fever of pale and bloodless emulation: and 'tis this fever that keeps troy on foot, not her own sinews. to end a tale of length, troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength. nestor most wisely hath ulysses here discover'd the fever whereof all our power is sick. agamemnon the nature of the sickness found, ulysses, what is the remedy? ulysses the great achilles, whom opinion crowns the sinew and the forehand of our host, having his ear full of his airy fame, grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent lies mocking our designs: with him patroclus upon a lazy bed the livelong day breaks scurril jests; and with ridiculous and awkward action, which, slanderer, he imitation calls, he pageants us. sometime, great agamemnon, thy topless deputation he puts on, and, like a strutting player, whose conceit lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich to hear the wooden dialogue and sound 'twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,- such to-be-pitied and o'er-wrested seeming he acts thy greatness in: and when he speaks, 'tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquared, which, from the tongue of roaring typhon dropp'd would seem hyperboles. at this fusty stuff the large achilles, on his press'd bed lolling, from his deep chest laughs out a loud applause; cries 'excellent! 'tis agamemnon just. now play me nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard, as he being drest to some oration.' that's done, as near as the extremest ends of parallels, as like as vulcan and his wife: yet god achilles still cries 'excellent! 'tis nestor right. now play him me, patroclus, arming to answer in a night alarm.' and then, forsooth, the faint defects of age must be the scene of mirth; to cough and spit, and, with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget, shake in and out the rivet: and at this sport sir valour dies; cries 'o, enough, patroclus; or give me ribs of steel! i shall split all in pleasure of my spleen.' and in this fashion, all our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes, severals and generals of grace exact, achievements, plots, orders, preventions, excitements to the field, or speech for truce, success or loss, what is or is not, serves as stuff for these two to make paradoxes. nestor and in the imitation of these twain- who, as ulysses says, opinion crowns with an imperial voice--many are infect. ajax is grown self-will'd, and bears his head in such a rein, in full as proud a place as broad achilles; keeps his tent like him; makes factious feasts; rails on our state of war, bold as an oracle, and sets thersites, a slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint, to match us in comparisons with dirt, to weaken and discredit our exposure, how rank soever rounded in with danger. ulysses they tax our policy, and call it cowardice, count wisdom as no member of the war, forestall prescience, and esteem no act but that of hand: the still and mental parts, that do contrive how many hands shall strike, when fitness calls them on, and know by measure of their observant toil the enemies' weight,- why, this hath not a finger's dignity: they call this bed-work, mappery, closet-war; so that the ram that batters down the wall, for the great swing and rudeness of his poise, they place before his hand that made the engine, or those that with the fineness of their souls by reason guide his execution. nestor let this be granted, and achilles' horse makes many thetis' sons. [a tucket] agamemnon what trumpet? look, menelaus. menelaus from troy. [enter aeneas] agamemnon what would you 'fore our tent? aeneas is this great agamemnon's tent, i pray you? agamemnon even this. aeneas may one, that is a herald and a prince, do a fair message to his kingly ears? agamemnon with surety stronger than achilles' arm 'fore all the greekish heads, which with one voice call agamemnon head and general. aeneas fair leave and large security. how may a stranger to those most imperial looks know them from eyes of other mortals? agamemnon how! aeneas ay; i ask, that i might waken reverence, and bid the cheek be ready with a blush modest as morning when she coldly eyes the youthful phoebus: which is that god in office, guiding men? which is the high and mighty agamemnon? agamemnon this trojan scorns us; or the men of troy are ceremonious courtiers. aeneas courtiers as free, as debonair, unarm'd, as bending angels; that's their fame in peace: but when they would seem soldiers, they have galls, good arms, strong joints, true swords; and, jove's accord, nothing so full of heart. but peace, aeneas, peace, trojan; lay thy finger on thy lips! the worthiness of praise distains his worth, if that the praised himself bring the praise forth: but what the repining enemy commends, that breath fame blows; that praise, sole sure, transcends. agamemnon sir, you of troy, call you yourself aeneas? aeneas ay, greek, that is my name. agamemnon what's your affair i pray you? aeneas sir, pardon; 'tis for agamemnon's ears. agamemnon he hears naught privately that comes from troy. aeneas nor i from troy come not to whisper him: i bring a trumpet to awake his ear, to set his sense on the attentive bent, and then to speak. agamemnon speak frankly as the wind; it is not agamemnon's sleeping hour: that thou shalt know. trojan, he is awake, he tells thee so himself. aeneas trumpet, blow loud, send thy brass voice through all these lazy tents; and every greek of mettle, let him know, what troy means fairly shall be spoke aloud. [trumpet sounds] we have, great agamemnon, here in troy a prince call'd hector,--priam is his father,- who in this dull and long-continued truce is rusty grown: he bade me take a trumpet, and to this purpose speak. kings, princes, lords! if there be one among the fair'st of greece that holds his honour higher than his ease, that seeks his praise more than he fears his peril, that knows his valour, and knows not his fear, that loves his mistress more than in confession, with truant vows to her own lips he loves, and dare avow her beauty and her worth in other arms than hers,--to him this challenge. hector, in view of trojans and of greeks, shall make it good, or do his best to do it, he hath a lady, wiser, fairer, truer, than ever greek did compass in his arms, and will to-morrow with his trumpet call midway between your tents and walls of troy, to rouse a grecian that is true in love: if any come, hector shall honour him; if none, he'll say in troy when he retires, the grecian dames are sunburnt and not worth the splinter of a lance. even so much. agamemnon this shall be told our lovers, lord aeneas; if none of them have soul in such a kind, we left them all at home: but we are soldiers; and may that soldier a mere recreant prove, that means not, hath not, or is not in love! if then one is, or hath, or means to be, that one meets hector; if none else, i am he. nestor tell him of nestor, one that was a man when hector's grandsire suck'd: he is old now; but if there be not in our grecian host one noble man that hath one spark of fire, to answer for his love, tell him from me i'll hide my silver beard in a gold beaver and in my vantbrace put this wither'd brawn, and meeting him will tell him that my lady was fairer than his grandam and as chaste as may be in the world: his youth in flood, i'll prove this truth with my three drops of blood. aeneas now heavens forbid such scarcity of youth! ulysses amen. agamemnon fair lord aeneas, let me touch your hand; to our pavilion shall i lead you, sir. achilles shall have word of this intent; so shall each lord of greece, from tent to tent: yourself shall feast with us before you go and find the welcome of a noble foe. [exeunt all but ulysses and nestor] ulysses nestor! nestor what says ulysses? ulysses i have a young conception in my brain; be you my time to bring it to some shape. nestor what is't? ulysses this 'tis: blunt wedges rive hard knots: the seeded pride that hath to this maturity blown up in rank achilles must or now be cropp'd, or, shedding, breed a nursery of like evil, to overbulk us all. nestor well, and how? ulysses this challenge that the gallant hector sends, however it is spread in general name, relates in purpose only to achilles. nestor the purpose is perspicuous even as substance, whose grossness little characters sum up: and, in the publication, make no strain, but that achilles, were his brain as barren as banks of libya,--though, apollo knows, 'tis dry enough,--will, with great speed of judgment, ay, with celerity, find hector's purpose pointing on him. ulysses and wake him to the answer, think you? nestor yes, 'tis most meet: whom may you else oppose, that can from hector bring his honour off, if not achilles? though't be a sportful combat, yet in the trial much opinion dwells; for here the trojans taste our dear'st repute with their finest palate: and trust to me, ulysses, our imputation shall be oddly poised in this wild action; for the success, although particular, shall give a scantling of good or bad unto the general; and in such indexes, although small pricks to their subsequent volumes, there is seen the baby figure of the giant mass of things to come at large. it is supposed he that meets hector issues from our choice and choice, being mutual act of all our souls, makes merit her election, and doth boil, as 'twere from us all, a man distill'd out of our virtues; who miscarrying, what heart receives from hence the conquering part, to steel a strong opinion to themselves? which entertain'd, limbs are his instruments, in no less working than are swords and bows directive by the limbs. ulysses give pardon to my speech: therefore 'tis meet achilles meet not hector. let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares, and think, perchance, they'll sell; if not, the lustre of the better yet to show, shall show the better. do not consent that ever hector and achilles meet; for both our honour and our shame in this are dogg'd with two strange followers. nestor i see them not with my old eyes: what are they? ulysses what glory our achilles shares from hector, were he not proud, we all should share with him: but he already is too insolent; and we were better parch in afric sun than in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes, should he 'scape hector fair: if he were foil'd, why then, we did our main opinion crush in taint of our best man. no, make a lottery; and, by device, let blockish ajax draw the sort to fight with hector: among ourselves give him allowance for the better man; for that will physic the great myrmidon who broils in loud applause, and make him fall his crest that prouder than blue iris bends. if the dull brainless ajax come safe off, we'll dress him up in voices: if he fail, yet go we under our opinion still that we have better men. but, hit or miss, our project's life this shape of sense assumes: ajax employ'd plucks down achilles' plumes. nestor ulysses, now i begin to relish thy advice; and i will give a taste of it forthwith to agamemnon: go we to him straight. two curs shall tame each other: pride alone must tarre the mastiffs on, as 'twere their bone. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act ii scene i a part of the grecian camp. [enter ajax and thersites] ajax thersites! thersites agamemnon, how if he had boils? full, all over, generally? ajax thersites! thersites and those boils did run? say so: did not the general run then? were not that a botchy core? ajax dog! thersites then would come some matter from him; i see none now. ajax thou bitch-wolf's son, canst thou not hear? [beating him] feel, then. thersites the plague of greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord! ajax speak then, thou vinewedst leaven, speak: i will beat thee into handsomeness. thersites i shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness: but, i think, thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a prayer without book. thou canst strike, canst thou? a red murrain o' thy jade's tricks! ajax toadstool, learn me the proclamation. thersites dost thou think i have no sense, thou strikest me thus? ajax the proclamation! thersites thou art proclaimed a fool, i think. ajax do not, porpentine, do not: my fingers itch. thersites i would thou didst itch from head to foot and i had the scratching of thee; i would make thee the loathsomest scab in greece. when thou art forth in the incursions, thou strikest as slow as another. ajax i say, the proclamation! thersites thou grumblest and railest every hour on achilles, and thou art as full of envy at his greatness as cerberus is at proserpine's beauty, ay, that thou barkest at him. ajax mistress thersites! thersites thou shouldest strike him. ajax cobloaf! thersites he would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a sailor breaks a biscuit. ajax [beating him] you whoreson cur! thersites do, do. ajax thou stool for a witch! thersites ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no more brain than i have in mine elbows; an assinego may tutor thee: thou scurvy-valiant ass! thou art here but to thrash trojans; and thou art bought and sold among those of any wit, like a barbarian slave. if thou use to beat me, i will begin at thy heel, and tell what thou art by inches, thou thing of no bowels, thou! ajax you dog! thersites you scurvy lord! ajax [beating him] you cur! thersites mars his idiot! do, rudeness; do, camel; do, do. [enter achilles and patroclus] achilles why, how now, ajax! wherefore do you thus? how now, thersites! what's the matter, man? thersites you see him there, do you? achilles ay; what's the matter? thersites nay, look upon him. achilles so i do: what's the matter? thersites nay, but regard him well. achilles 'well!' why, i do so. thersites but yet you look not well upon him; for whosoever you take him to be, he is ajax. achilles i know that, fool. thersites ay, but that fool knows not himself. ajax therefore i beat thee. thersites lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! his evasions have ears thus long. i have bobbed his brain more than he has beat my bones: i will buy nine sparrows for a penny, and his pia mater is not worth the nineth part of a sparrow. this lord, achilles, ajax, who wears his wit in his belly and his guts in his head, i'll tell you what i say of him. achilles what? thersites i say, this ajax- [ajax offers to beat him] achilles nay, good ajax. thersites has not so much wit- achilles nay, i must hold you. thersites as will stop the eye of helen's needle, for whom he comes to fight. achilles peace, fool! thersites i would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not: he there: that he: look you there. ajax o thou damned cur! i shall- achilles will you set your wit to a fool's? thersites no, i warrant you; for a fools will shame it. patroclus good words, thersites. achilles what's the quarrel? ajax i bade the vile owl go learn me the tenor of the proclamation, and he rails upon me. thersites i serve thee not. ajax well, go to, go to. thersites i serve here voluntarily. achilles your last service was sufferance, 'twas not voluntary: no man is beaten voluntary: ajax was here the voluntary, and you as under an impress. thersites e'en so; a great deal of your wit, too, lies in your sinews, or else there be liars. hector have a great catch, if he knock out either of your brains: a' were as good crack a fusty nut with no kernel. achilles what, with me too, thersites? thersites there's ulysses and old nestor, whose wit was mouldy ere your grandsires had nails on their toes, yoke you like draught-oxen and make you plough up the wars. achilles what, what? thersites yes, good sooth: to, achilles! to, ajax! to! ajax i shall cut out your tongue. thersites 'tis no matter! i shall speak as much as thou afterwards. patroclus no more words, thersites; peace! thersites i will hold my peace when achilles' brach bids me, shall i? achilles there's for you, patroclus. thersites i will see you hanged, like clotpoles, ere i come any more to your tents: i will keep where there is wit stirring and leave the faction of fools. [exit] patroclus a good riddance. achilles marry, this, sir, is proclaim'd through all our host: that hector, by the fifth hour of the sun, will with a trumpet 'twixt our tents and troy to-morrow morning call some knight to arms that hath a stomach; and such a one that dare maintain--i know not what: 'tis trash. farewell. ajax farewell. who shall answer him? achilles i know not: 'tis put to lottery; otherwise he knew his man. ajax o, meaning you. i will go learn more of it. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act ii scene ii troy. a room in priam's palace. [enter priam, hector, troilus, paris, and helenus] priam after so many hours, lives, speeches spent, thus once again says nestor from the greeks: 'deliver helen, and all damage else- as honour, loss of time, travail, expense, wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consumed in hot digestion of this cormorant war- shall be struck off.' hector, what say you to't? hector though no man lesser fears the greeks than i as far as toucheth my particular, yet, dread priam, there is no lady of more softer bowels, more spongy to suck in the sense of fear, more ready to cry out 'who knows what follows?' than hector is: the wound of peace is surety, surety secure; but modest doubt is call'd the beacon of the wise, the tent that searches to the bottom of the worst. let helen go: since the first sword was drawn about this question, every tithe soul, 'mongst many thousand dismes, hath been as dear as helen; i mean, of ours: if we have lost so many tenths of ours, to guard a thing not ours nor worth to us, had it our name, the value of one ten, what merit's in that reason which denies the yielding of her up? troilus fie, fie, my brother! weigh you the worth and honour of a king so great as our dread father in a scale of common ounces? will you with counters sum the past proportion of his infinite? and buckle in a waist most fathomless with spans and inches so diminutive as fears and reasons? fie, for godly shame! helenus no marvel, though you bite so sharp at reasons, you are so empty of them. should not our father bear the great sway of his affairs with reasons, because your speech hath none that tells him so? troilus you are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest; you fur your gloves with reason. here are your reasons: you know an enemy intends you harm; you know a sword employ'd is perilous, and reason flies the object of all harm: who marvels then, when helenus beholds a grecian and his sword, if he do set the very wings of reason to his heels and fly like chidden mercury from jove, or like a star disorb'd? nay, if we talk of reason, let's shut our gates and sleep: manhood and honour should have hare-hearts, would they but fat their thoughts with this cramm'd reason: reason and respect make livers pale and lustihood deject. hector brother, she is not worth what she doth cost the holding. troilus what is aught, but as 'tis valued? hector but value dwells not in particular will; it holds his estimate and dignity as well wherein 'tis precious of itself as in the prizer: 'tis mad idolatry to make the service greater than the god and the will dotes that is attributive to what infectiously itself affects, without some image of the affected merit. troilus i take to-day a wife, and my election is led on in the conduct of my will; my will enkindled by mine eyes and ears, two traded pilots 'twixt the dangerous shores of will and judgment: how may i avoid, although my will distaste what it elected, the wife i chose? there can be no evasion to blench from this and to stand firm by honour: we turn not back the silks upon the merchant, when we have soil'd them, nor the remainder viands we do not throw in unrespective sieve, because we now are full. it was thought meet paris should do some vengeance on the greeks: your breath of full consent bellied his sails; the seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce and did him service: he touch'd the ports desired, and for an old aunt whom the greeks held captive, he brought a grecian queen, whose youth and freshness wrinkles apollo's, and makes stale the morning. why keep we her? the grecians keep our aunt: is she worth keeping? why, she is a pearl, whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships, and turn'd crown'd kings to merchants. if you'll avouch 'twas wisdom paris went- as you must needs, for you all cried 'go, go,'- if you'll confess he brought home noble prize- as you must needs, for you all clapp'd your hands and cried 'inestimable!'--why do you now the issue of your proper wisdoms rate, and do a deed that fortune never did, beggar the estimation which you prized richer than sea and land? o, theft most base, that we have stol'n what we do fear to keep! but, thieves, unworthy of a thing so stol'n, that in their country did them that disgrace, we fear to warrant in our native place! cassandra [within] cry, trojans, cry! priam what noise? what shriek is this? troilus 'tis our mad sister, i do know her voice. cassandra [within] cry, trojans! hector it is cassandra. [enter cassandra, raving] cassandra cry, trojans, cry! lend me ten thousand eyes, and i will fill them with prophetic tears. hector peace, sister, peace! cassandra virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled eld, soft infancy, that nothing canst but cry, add to my clamours! let us pay betimes a moiety of that mass of moan to come. cry, trojans, cry! practise your eyes with tears! troy must not be, nor goodly ilion stand; our firebrand brother, paris, burns us all. cry, trojans, cry! a helen and a woe: cry, cry! troy burns, or else let helen go. [exit] hector now, youthful troilus, do not these high strains of divination in our sister work some touches of remorse? or is your blood so madly hot that no discourse of reason, nor fear of bad success in a bad cause, can qualify the same? troilus why, brother hector, we may not think the justness of each act such and no other than event doth form it, nor once deject the courage of our minds, because cassandra's mad: her brain-sick raptures cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel which hath our several honours all engaged to make it gracious. for my private part, i am no more touch'd than all priam's sons: and jove forbid there should be done amongst us such things as might offend the weakest spleen to fight for and maintain! paris else might the world convince of levity as well my undertakings as your counsels: but i attest the gods, your full consent gave wings to my propension and cut off all fears attending on so dire a project. for what, alas, can these my single arms? what propugnation is in one man's valour, to stand the push and enmity of those this quarrel would excite? yet, i protest, were i alone to pass the difficulties and had as ample power as i have will, paris should ne'er retract what he hath done, nor faint in the pursuit. priam paris, you speak like one besotted on your sweet delights: you have the honey still, but these the gall; so to be valiant is no praise at all. paris sir, i propose not merely to myself the pleasures such a beauty brings with it; but i would have the soil of her fair rape wiped off, in honourable keeping her. what treason were it to the ransack'd queen, disgrace to your great worths and shame to me, now to deliver her possession up on terms of base compulsion! can it be that so degenerate a strain as this should once set footing in your generous bosoms? there's not the meanest spirit on our party without a heart to dare or sword to draw when helen is defended, nor none so noble whose life were ill bestow'd or death unfamed where helen is the subject; then, i say, well may we fight for her whom, we know well, the world's large spaces cannot parallel. hector paris and troilus, you have both said well, and on the cause and question now in hand have glozed, but superficially: not much unlike young men, whom aristotle thought unfit to hear moral philosophy: the reasons you allege do more conduce to the hot passion of distemper'd blood than to make up a free determination 'twixt right and wrong, for pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision. nature craves all dues be render'd to their owners: now, what nearer debt in all humanity than wife is to the husband? if this law of nature be corrupted through affection, and that great minds, of partial indulgence to their benumbed wills, resist the same, there is a law in each well-order'd nation to curb those raging appetites that are most disobedient and refractory. if helen then be wife to sparta's king, as it is known she is, these moral laws of nature and of nations speak aloud to have her back return'd: thus to persist in doing wrong extenuates not wrong, but makes it much more heavy. hector's opinion is this in way of truth; yet ne'ertheless, my spritely brethren, i propend to you in resolution to keep helen still, for 'tis a cause that hath no mean dependance upon our joint and several dignities. troilus why, there you touch'd the life of our design: were it not glory that we more affected than the performance of our heaving spleens, i would not wish a drop of trojan blood spent more in her defence. but, worthy hector, she is a theme of honour and renown, a spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds, whose present courage may beat down our foes, and fame in time to come canonize us; for, i presume, brave hector would not lose so rich advantage of a promised glory as smiles upon the forehead of this action for the wide world's revenue. hector i am yours, you valiant offspring of great priamus. i have a roisting challenge sent amongst the dun and factious nobles of the greeks will strike amazement to their drowsy spirits: i was advertised their great general slept, whilst emulation in the army crept: this, i presume, will wake him. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act ii scene iii the grecian camp. before achilles' tent. [enter thersites, solus] thersites how now, thersites! what lost in the labyrinth of thy fury! shall the elephant ajax carry it thus? he beats me, and i rail at him: o, worthy satisfaction! would it were otherwise; that i could beat him, whilst he railed at me. 'sfoot, i'll learn to conjure and raise devils, but i'll see some issue of my spiteful execrations. then there's achilles, a rare enginer! if troy be not taken till these two undermine it, the walls will stand till they fall of themselves. o thou great thunder-darter of olympus, forget that thou art jove, the king of gods and, mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus, if ye take not that little, little less than little wit from them that they have! which short-armed ignorance itself knows is so abundant scarce, it will not in circumvention deliver a fly from a spider, without drawing their massy irons and cutting the web. after this, the vengeance on the whole camp! or rather, the bone-ache! for that, methinks, is the curse dependent on those that war for a placket. i have said my prayers and devil envy say amen. what ho! my lord achilles! [enter patroclus] patroclus who's there? thersites! good thersites, come in and rail. thersites if i could have remembered a gilt counterfeit, thou wouldst not have slipped out of my contemplation: but it is no matter; thyself upon thyself! the common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue! heaven bless thee from a tutor, and discipline come not near thee! let thy blood be thy direction till thy death! then if she that lays thee out says thou art a fair corse, i'll be sworn and sworn upon't she never shrouded any but lazars. amen. where's achilles? patroclus what, art thou devout? wast thou in prayer? thersites ay: the heavens hear me! [enter achilles] achilles who's there? patroclus thersites, my lord. achilles where, where? art thou come? why, my cheese, my digestion, why hast thou not served thyself in to my table so many meals? come, what's agamemnon? thersites thy commander, achilles. then tell me, patroclus, what's achilles? patroclus thy lord, thersites: then tell me, i pray thee, what's thyself? thersites thy knower, patroclus: then tell me, patroclus, what art thou? patroclus thou mayst tell that knowest. achilles o, tell, tell. thersites i'll decline the whole question. agamemnon commands achilles; achilles is my lord; i am patroclus' knower, and patroclus is a fool. patroclus you rascal! thersites peace, fool! i have not done. achilles he is a privileged man. proceed, thersites. thersites agamemnon is a fool; achilles is a fool; thersites is a fool, and, as aforesaid, patroclus is a fool. achilles derive this; come. thersites agamemnon is a fool to offer to command achilles; achilles is a fool to be commanded of agamemnon; thersites is a fool to serve such a fool, and patroclus is a fool positive. patroclus why am i a fool? thersites make that demand of the prover. it suffices me thou art. look you, who comes here? achilles patroclus, i'll speak with nobody. come in with me, thersites. [exit] thersites here is such patchery, such juggling and such knavery! all the argument is a cuckold and a whore; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon. now, the dry serpigo on the subject! and war and lechery confound all! [exit] [enter agamemnon, ulysses, nestor, diomedes, and ajax] agamemnon where is achilles? patroclus within his tent; but ill disposed, my lord. agamemnon let it be known to him that we are here. he shent our messengers; and we lay by our appertainments, visiting of him: let him be told so; lest perchance he think we dare not move the question of our place, or know not what we are. patroclus i shall say so to him. [exit] ulysses we saw him at the opening of his tent: he is not sick. ajax yes, lion-sick, sick of proud heart: you may call it melancholy, if you will favour the man; but, by my head, 'tis pride: but why, why? let him show us the cause. a word, my lord. [takes agamemnon aside] nestor what moves ajax thus to bay at him? ulysses achilles hath inveigled his fool from him. nestor who, thersites? ulysses he. nestor then will ajax lack matter, if he have lost his argument. ulysses no, you see, he is his argument that has his argument, achilles. nestor all the better; their fraction is more our wish than their faction: but it was a strong composure a fool could disunite. ulysses the amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie. here comes patroclus. [re-enter patroclus] nestor no achilles with him. ulysses the elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy: his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure. patroclus achilles bids me say, he is much sorry, if any thing more than your sport and pleasure did move your greatness and this noble state to call upon him; he hopes it is no other but for your health and your digestion sake, and after-dinner's breath. agamemnon hear you, patroclus: we are too well acquainted with these answers: but his evasion, wing'd thus swift with scorn, cannot outfly our apprehensions. much attribute he hath, and much the reason why we ascribe it to him; yet all his virtues, not virtuously on his own part beheld, do in our eyes begin to lose their gloss, yea, like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish, are like to rot untasted. go and tell him, we come to speak with him; and you shall not sin, if you do say we think him over-proud and under-honest, in self-assumption greater than in the note of judgment; and worthier than himself here tend the savage strangeness he puts on, disguise the holy strength of their command, and underwrite in an observing kind his humorous predominance; yea, watch his pettish lunes, his ebbs, his flows, as if the passage and whole carriage of this action rode on his tide. go tell him this, and add, that if he overhold his price so much, we'll none of him; but let him, like an engine not portable, lie under this report: 'bring action hither, this cannot go to war: a stirring dwarf we do allowance give before a sleeping giant.' tell him so. patroclus i shall; and bring his answer presently. [exit] agamemnon in second voice we'll not be satisfied; we come to speak with him. ulysses, enter you. [exit ulysses] ajax what is he more than another? agamemnon no more than what he thinks he is. ajax is he so much? do you not think he thinks himself a better man than i am? agamemnon no question. ajax will you subscribe his thought, and say he is? agamemnon no, noble ajax; you are as strong, as valiant, as wise, no less noble, much more gentle, and altogether more tractable. ajax why should a man be proud? how doth pride grow? i know not what pride is. agamemnon your mind is the clearer, ajax, and your virtues the fairer. he that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise. ajax i do hate a proud man, as i hate the engendering of toads. nestor yet he loves himself: is't not strange? [aside] [re-enter ulysses] ulysses achilles will not to the field to-morrow. agamemnon what's his excuse? ulysses he doth rely on none, but carries on the stream of his dispose without observance or respect of any, in will peculiar and in self-admission. agamemnon why will he not upon our fair request untent his person and share the air with us? ulysses things small as nothing, for request's sake only, he makes important: possess'd he is with greatness, and speaks not to himself but with a pride that quarrels at self-breath: imagined worth holds in his blood such swoln and hot discourse that 'twixt his mental and his active parts kingdom'd achilles in commotion rages and batters down himself: what should i say? he is so plaguy proud that the death-tokens of it cry 'no recovery.' agamemnon let ajax go to him. dear lord, go you and greet him in his tent: 'tis said he holds you well, and will be led at your request a little from himself. ulysses o agamemnon, let it not be so! we'll consecrate the steps that ajax makes when they go from achilles: shall the proud lord that bastes his arrogance with his own seam and never suffers matter of the world enter his thoughts, save such as do revolve and ruminate himself, shall he be worshipp'd of that we hold an idol more than he? no, this thrice worthy and right valiant lord must not so stale his palm, nobly acquired; nor, by my will, assubjugate his merit, as amply titled as achilles is, by going to achilles: that were to enlard his fat already pride and add more coals to cancer when he burns with entertaining great hyperion. this lord go to him! jupiter forbid, and say in thunder 'achilles go to him.' nestor [aside to diomedes] o, this is well; he rubs the vein of him. diomedes [aside to nestor] and how his silence drinks up this applause! ajax if i go to him, with my armed fist i'll pash him o'er the face. agamemnon o, no, you shall not go. ajax an a' be proud with me, i'll pheeze his pride: let me go to him. ulysses not for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel. ajax a paltry, insolent fellow! nestor how he describes himself! ajax can he not be sociable? ulysses the raven chides blackness. ajax i'll let his humours blood. agamemnon he will be the physician that should be the patient. ajax an all men were o' my mind,- ulysses wit would be out of fashion. ajax a' should not bear it so, a' should eat swords first: shall pride carry it? nestor an 'twould, you'ld carry half. ulysses a' would have ten shares. ajax i will knead him; i'll make him supple. nestor he's not yet through warm: force him with praises: pour in, pour in; his ambition is dry. ulysses [to agamemnon] my lord, you feed too much on this dislike. nestor our noble general, do not do so. diomedes you must prepare to fight without achilles. ulysses why, 'tis this naming of him does him harm. here is a man--but 'tis before his face; i will be silent. nestor wherefore should you so? he is not emulous, as achilles is. ulysses know the whole world, he is as valiant. ajax a whoreson dog, that shall pelter thus with us! would he were a trojan! nestor what a vice were it in ajax now,- ulysses if he were proud,- diomedes or covetous of praise,- ulysses ay, or surly borne,- diomedes or strange, or self-affected! ulysses thank the heavens, lord, thou art of sweet composure; praise him that got thee, she that gave thee suck: famed be thy tutor, and thy parts of nature thrice famed, beyond all erudition: but he that disciplined thy arms to fight, let mars divide eternity in twain, and give him half: and, for thy vigour, bull-bearing milo his addition yield to sinewy ajax. i will not praise thy wisdom, which, like a bourn, a pale, a shore, confines thy spacious and dilated parts: here's nestor; instructed by the antiquary times, he must, he is, he cannot but be wise: put pardon, father nestor, were your days as green as ajax' and your brain so temper'd, you should not have the eminence of him, but be as ajax. ajax shall i call you father? nestor ay, my good son. diomedes be ruled by him, lord ajax. ulysses there is no tarrying here; the hart achilles keeps thicket. please it our great general to call together all his state of war; fresh kings are come to troy: to-morrow we must with all our main of power stand fast: and here's a lord,--come knights from east to west, and cull their flower, ajax shall cope the best. agamemnon go we to council. let achilles sleep: light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act iii scene i troy. priam's palace. [enter a servant and pandarus] pandarus friend, you! pray you, a word: do not you follow the young lord paris? servant ay, sir, when he goes before me. pandarus you depend upon him, i mean? servant sir, i do depend upon the lord. pandarus you depend upon a noble gentleman; i must needs praise him. servant the lord be praised! pandarus you know me, do you not? servant faith, sir, superficially. pandarus friend, know me better; i am the lord pandarus. servant i hope i shall know your honour better. pandarus i do desire it. servant you are in the state of grace. pandarus grace! not so, friend: honour and lordship are my titles. [music within] what music is this? servant i do but partly know, sir: it is music in parts. pandarus know you the musicians? servant wholly, sir. pandarus who play they to? servant to the hearers, sir. pandarus at whose pleasure, friend servant at mine, sir, and theirs that love music. pandarus command, i mean, friend. servant who shall i command, sir? pandarus friend, we understand not one another: i am too courtly and thou art too cunning. at whose request do these men play? servant that's to 't indeed, sir: marry, sir, at the request of paris my lord, who's there in person; with him, the mortal venus, the heart-blood of beauty, love's invisible soul,- pandarus who, my cousin cressida? servant no, sir, helen: could you not find out that by her attributes? pandarus it should seem, fellow, that thou hast not seen the lady cressida. i come to speak with paris from the prince troilus: i will make a complimental assault upon him, for my business seethes. servant sodden business! there's a stewed phrase indeed! [enter paris and helen, attended] pandarus fair be to you, my lord, and to all this fair company! fair desires, in all fair measure, fairly guide them! especially to you, fair queen! fair thoughts be your fair pillow! helen dear lord, you are full of fair words. pandarus you speak your fair pleasure, sweet queen. fair prince, here is good broken music. paris you have broke it, cousin: and, by my life, you shall make it whole again; you shall piece it out with a piece of your performance. nell, he is full of harmony. pandarus truly, lady, no. helen o, sir,- pandarus rude, in sooth; in good sooth, very rude. paris well said, my lord! well, you say so in fits. pandarus i have business to my lord, dear queen. my lord, will you vouchsafe me a word? helen nay, this shall not hedge us out: we'll hear you sing, certainly. pandarus well, sweet queen. you are pleasant with me. but, marry, thus, my lord: my dear lord and most esteemed friend, your brother troilus,- helen my lord pandarus; honey-sweet lord,- pandarus go to, sweet queen, to go:--commends himself most affectionately to you,- helen you shall not bob us out of our melody: if you do, our melancholy upon your head! pandarus sweet queen, sweet queen! that's a sweet queen, i' faith. helen and to make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence. pandarus nay, that shall not serve your turn; that shall not, in truth, la. nay, i care not for such words; no, no. and, my lord, he desires you, that if the king call for him at supper, you will make his excuse. helen my lord pandarus,- pandarus what says my sweet queen, my very very sweet queen? paris what exploit's in hand? where sups he to-night? helen nay, but, my lord,- pandarus what says my sweet queen? my cousin will fall out with you. you must not know where he sups. paris i'll lay my life, with my disposer cressida. pandarus no, no, no such matter; you are wide: come, your disposer is sick. paris well, i'll make excuse. pandarus ay, good my lord. why should you say cressida? no, your poor disposer's sick. paris i spy. pandarus you spy! what do you spy? come, give me an instrument. now, sweet queen. helen why, this is kindly done. pandarus my niece is horribly in love with a thing you have, sweet queen. helen she shall have it, my lord, if it be not my lord paris. pandarus he! no, she'll none of him; they two are twain. helen falling in, after falling out, may make them three. pandarus come, come, i'll hear no more of this; i'll sing you a song now. helen ay, ay, prithee now. by my troth, sweet lord, thou hast a fine forehead. pandarus ay, you may, you may. helen let thy song be love: this love will undo us all. o cupid, cupid, cupid! pandarus love! ay, that it shall, i' faith. paris ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love. pandarus in good troth, it begins so. [sings] love, love, nothing but love, still more! for, o, love's bow shoots buck and doe: the shaft confounds, not that it wounds, but tickles still the sore. these lovers cry oh! oh! they die! yet that which seems the wound to kill, doth turn oh! oh! to ha! ha! he! so dying love lives still: oh! oh! a while, but ha! ha! ha! oh! oh! groans out for ha! ha! ha! heigh-ho! helen in love, i' faith, to the very tip of the nose. paris he eats nothing but doves, love, and that breeds hot blood, and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love. pandarus is this the generation of love? hot blood, hot thoughts, and hot deeds? why, they are vipers: is love a generation of vipers? sweet lord, who's a-field to-day? paris hector, deiphobus, helenus, antenor, and all the gallantry of troy: i would fain have armed to-day, but my nell would not have it so. how chance my brother troilus went not? helen he hangs the lip at something: you know all, lord pandarus. pandarus not i, honey-sweet queen. i long to hear how they sped to-day. you'll remember your brother's excuse? paris to a hair. pandarus farewell, sweet queen. helen commend me to your niece. pandarus i will, sweet queen. [exit] [a retreat sounded] paris they're come from field: let us to priam's hall, to greet the warriors. sweet helen, i must woo you to help unarm our hector: his stubborn buckles, with these your white enchanting fingers touch'd, shall more obey than to the edge of steel or force of greekish sinews; you shall do more than all the island kings,--disarm great hector. helen 'twill make us proud to be his servant, paris; yea, what he shall receive of us in duty gives us more palm in beauty than we have, yea, overshines ourself. paris sweet, above thought i love thee. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act iii scene ii the same. pandarus' orchard. [enter pandarus and troilus's boy, meeting] pandarus how now! where's thy master? at my cousin cressida's? boy no, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither. pandarus o, here he comes. [enter troilus] how now, how now! troilus sirrah, walk off. [exit boy] pandarus have you seen my cousin? troilus no, pandarus: i stalk about her door, like a strange soul upon the stygian banks staying for waftage. o, be thou my charon, and give me swift transportance to those fields where i may wallow in the lily-beds proposed for the deserver! o gentle pandarus, from cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings and fly with me to cressid! pandarus walk here i' the orchard, i'll bring her straight. [exit] troilus i am giddy; expectation whirls me round. the imaginary relish is so sweet that it enchants my sense: what will it be, when that the watery palate tastes indeed love's thrice repured nectar? death, i fear me, swooning destruction, or some joy too fine, too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness, for the capacity of my ruder powers: i fear it much; and i do fear besides, that i shall lose distinction in my joys; as doth a battle, when they charge on heaps the enemy flying. [re-enter pandarus] pandarus she's making her ready, she'll come straight: you must be witty now. she does so blush, and fetches her wind so short, as if she were frayed with a sprite: i'll fetch her. it is the prettiest villain: she fetches her breath as short as a new-ta'en sparrow. [exit] troilus even such a passion doth embrace my bosom: my heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse; and all my powers do their bestowing lose, like vassalage at unawares encountering the eye of majesty. [re-enter pandarus with cressida] pandarus come, come, what need you blush? shame's a baby. here she is now: swear the oaths now to her that you have sworn to me. what, are you gone again? you must be watched ere you be made tame, must you? come your ways, come your ways; an you draw backward, we'll put you i' the fills. why do you not speak to her? come, draw this curtain, and let's see your picture. alas the day, how loath you are to offend daylight! an 'twere dark, you'ld close sooner. so, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress. how now! a kiss in fee-farm! build there, carpenter; the air is sweet. nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere i part you. the falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i' the river: go to, go to. troilus you have bereft me of all words, lady. pandarus words pay no debts, give her deeds: but she'll bereave you o' the deeds too, if she call your activity in question. what, billing again? here's 'in witness whereof the parties interchangeably'- come in, come in: i'll go get a fire. [exit] cressida will you walk in, my lord? troilus o cressida, how often have i wished me thus! cressida wished, my lord! the gods grant,--o my lord! troilus what should they grant? what makes this pretty abruption? what too curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our love? cressida more dregs than water, if my fears have eyes. troilus fears make devils of cherubims; they never see truly. cressida blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing than blind reason stumbling without fear: to fear the worst oft cures the worse. troilus o, let my lady apprehend no fear: in all cupid's pageant there is presented no monster. cressida nor nothing monstrous neither? troilus nothing, but our undertakings; when we vow to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers; thinking it harder for our mistress to devise imposition enough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed. this is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite and the execution confined, that the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit. cressida they say all lovers swear more performance than they are able and yet reserve an ability that they never perform, vowing more than the perfection of ten and discharging less than the tenth part of one. they that have the voice of lions and the act of hares, are they not monsters? troilus are there such? such are not we: praise us as we are tasted, allow us as we prove; our head shall go bare till merit crown it: no perfection in reversion shall have a praise in present: we will not name desert before his birth, and, being born, his addition shall be humble. few words to fair faith: troilus shall be such to cressid as what envy can say worst shall be a mock for his truth, and what truth can speak truest not truer than troilus. cressida will you walk in, my lord? [re-enter pandarus] pandarus what, blushing still? have you not done talking yet? cressida well, uncle, what folly i commit, i dedicate to you. pandarus i thank you for that: if my lord get a boy of you, you'll give him me. be true to my lord: if he flinch, chide me for it. troilus you know now your hostages; your uncle's word and my firm faith. pandarus nay, i'll give my word for her too: our kindred, though they be long ere they are wooed, they are constant being won: they are burs, i can tell you; they'll stick where they are thrown. cressida boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart. prince troilus, i have loved you night and day for many weary months. troilus why was my cressid then so hard to win? cressida hard to seem won: but i was won, my lord, with the first glance that ever--pardon me- if i confess much, you will play the tyrant. i love you now; but not, till now, so much but i might master it: in faith, i lie; my thoughts were like unbridled children, grown too headstrong for their mother. see, we fools! why have i blabb'd? who shall be true to us, when we are so unsecret to ourselves? but, though i loved you well, i woo'd you not; and yet, good faith, i wish'd myself a man, or that we women had men's privilege of speaking first. sweet, bid me hold my tongue, for in this rapture i shall surely speak the thing i shall repent. see, see, your silence, cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws my very soul of counsel! stop my mouth. troilus and shall, albeit sweet music issues thence. pandarus pretty, i' faith. cressida my lord, i do beseech you, pardon me; 'twas not my purpose, thus to beg a kiss: i am ashamed. o heavens! what have i done? for this time will i take my leave, my lord. troilus your leave, sweet cressid! pandarus leave! an you take leave till to-morrow morning,- cressida pray you, content you. troilus what offends you, lady? cressida sir, mine own company. troilus you cannot shun yourself. cressida let me go and try: i have a kind of self resides with you; but an unkind self, that itself will leave, to be another's fool. i would be gone: where is my wit? i know not what i speak. troilus well know they what they speak that speak so wisely. cressida perchance, my lord, i show more craft than love; and fell so roundly to a large confession, to angle for your thoughts: but you are wise, or else you love not, for to be wise and love exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above. troilus o that i thought it could be in a woman- as, if it can, i will presume in you- to feed for aye her ramp and flames of love; to keep her constancy in plight and youth, outliving beauty's outward, with a mind that doth renew swifter than blood decays! or that persuasion could but thus convince me, that my integrity and truth to you might be affronted with the match and weight of such a winnow'd purity in love; how were i then uplifted! but, alas! i am as true as truth's simplicity and simpler than the infancy of truth. cressida in that i'll war with you. troilus o virtuous fight, when right with right wars who shall be most right! true swains in love shall in the world to come approve their truths by troilus: when their rhymes, full of protest, of oath and big compare, want similes, truth tired with iteration, as true as steel, as plantage to the moon, as sun to day, as turtle to her mate, as iron to adamant, as earth to the centre, yet, after all comparisons of truth, as truth's authentic author to be cited, 'as true as troilus' shall crown up the verse, and sanctify the numbers. cressida prophet may you be! if i be false, or swerve a hair from truth, when time is old and hath forgot itself, when waterdrops have worn the stones of troy, and blind oblivion swallow'd cities up, and mighty states characterless are grated to dusty nothing, yet let memory, from false to false, among false maids in love, upbraid my falsehood! when they've said 'as false as air, as water, wind, or sandy earth, as fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer's calf, pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son,' 'yea,' let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood, 'as false as cressid.' pandarus go to, a bargain made: seal it, seal it; i'll be the witness. here i hold your hand, here my cousin's. if ever you prove false one to another, since i have taken such pains to bring you together, let all pitiful goers-between be called to the world's end after my name; call them all pandars; let all constant men be troiluses, all false women cressids, and all brokers-between pandars! say, amen. troilus amen. cressida amen. pandarus amen. whereupon i will show you a chamber with a bed; which bed, because it shall not speak of your pretty encounters, press it to death: away! and cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here bed, chamber, pandar to provide this gear! [exeunt] troilus and cressida act iii scene iii the grecian camp. before achilles' tent. [enter agamemnon, ulysses, diomedes, nestor, ajax, menelaus, and calchas] calchas now, princes, for the service i have done you, the advantage of the time prompts me aloud to call for recompense. appear it to your mind that, through the sight i bear in things to love, i have abandon'd troy, left my possession, incurr'd a traitor's name; exposed myself, from certain and possess'd conveniences, to doubtful fortunes; sequestering from me all that time, acquaintance, custom and condition made tame and most familiar to my nature, and here, to do you service, am become as new into the world, strange, unacquainted: i do beseech you, as in way of taste, to give me now a little benefit, out of those many register'd in promise, which, you say, live to come in my behalf. agamemnon what wouldst thou of us, trojan? make demand. calchas you have a trojan prisoner, call'd antenor, yesterday took: troy holds him very dear. oft have you--often have you thanks therefore- desired my cressid in right great exchange, whom troy hath still denied: but this antenor, i know, is such a wrest in their affairs that their negotiations all must slack, wanting his manage; and they will almost give us a prince of blood, a son of priam, in change of him: let him be sent, great princes, and he shall buy my daughter; and her presence shall quite strike off all service i have done, in most accepted pain. agamemnon let diomedes bear him, and bring us cressid hither: calchas shall have what he requests of us. good diomed, furnish you fairly for this interchange: withal bring word if hector will to-morrow be answer'd in his challenge: ajax is ready. diomedes this shall i undertake; and 'tis a burden which i am proud to bear. [exeunt diomedes and calchas] [enter achilles and patroclus, before their tent] ulysses achilles stands i' the entrance of his tent: please it our general to pass strangely by him, as if he were forgot; and, princes all, lay negligent and loose regard upon him: i will come last. 'tis like he'll question me why such unplausive eyes are bent on him: if so, i have derision medicinable, to use between your strangeness and his pride, which his own will shall have desire to drink: it may be good: pride hath no other glass to show itself but pride, for supple knees feed arrogance and are the proud man's fees. agamemnon we'll execute your purpose, and put on a form of strangeness as we pass along: so do each lord, and either greet him not, or else disdainfully, which shall shake him more than if not look'd on. i will lead the way. achilles what, comes the general to speak with me? you know my mind, i'll fight no more 'gainst troy. agamemnon what says achilles? would he aught with us? nestor would you, my lord, aught with the general? achilles no. nestor nothing, my lord. agamemnon the better. [exeunt agamemnon and nestor] achilles good day, good day. menelaus how do you? how do you? [exit] achilles what, does the cuckold scorn me? ajax how now, patroclus! achilles good morrow, ajax. ajax ha? achilles good morrow. ajax ay, and good next day too. [exit] achilles what mean these fellows? know they not achilles? patroclus they pass by strangely: they were used to bend to send their smiles before them to achilles; to come as humbly as they used to creep to holy altars. achilles what, am i poor of late? 'tis certain, greatness, once fall'n out with fortune, must fall out with men too: what the declined is he shall as soon read in the eyes of others as feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies, show not their mealy wings but to the summer, and not a man, for being simply man, hath any honour, but honour for those honours that are without him, as place, riches, favour, prizes of accident as oft as merit: which when they fall, as being slippery standers, the love that lean'd on them as slippery too, do one pluck down another and together die in the fall. but 'tis not so with me: fortune and i are friends: i do enjoy at ample point all that i did possess, save these men's looks; who do, methinks, find out something not worth in me such rich beholding as they have often given. here is ulysses; i'll interrupt his reading. how now ulysses! ulysses now, great thetis' son! achilles what are you reading? ulysses a strange fellow here writes me: 'that man, how dearly ever parted, how much in having, or without or in, cannot make boast to have that which he hath, nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection; as when his virtues shining upon others heat them and they retort that heat again to the first giver.' achilles this is not strange, ulysses. the beauty that is borne here in the face the bearer knows not, but commends itself to others' eyes; nor doth the eye itself, that most pure spirit of sense, behold itself, not going from itself; but eye to eye opposed salutes each other with each other's form; for speculation turns not to itself, till it hath travell'd and is mirror'd there where it may see itself. this is not strange at all. ulysses i do not strain at the position,- it is familiar,--but at the author's drift; who, in his circumstance, expressly proves that no man is the lord of any thing, though in and of him there be much consisting, till he communicate his parts to others: nor doth he of himself know them for aught till he behold them form'd in the applause where they're extended; who, like an arch, reverberates the voice again, or, like a gate of steel fronting the sun, receives and renders back his figure and his heat. i was much wrapt in this; and apprehended here immediately the unknown ajax. heavens, what a man is there! a very horse, that has he knows not what. nature, what things there are most abject in regard and dear in use! what things again most dear in the esteem and poor in worth! now shall we see to-morrow- an act that very chance doth throw upon him- ajax renown'd. o heavens, what some men do, while some men leave to do! how some men creep in skittish fortune's hall, whiles others play the idiots in her eyes! how one man eats into another's pride, while pride is fasting in his wantonness! to see these grecian lords!--why, even already they clap the lubber ajax on the shoulder, as if his foot were on brave hector's breast and great troy shrieking. achilles i do believe it; for they pass'd by me as misers do by beggars, neither gave to me good word nor look: what, are my deeds forgot? ulysses time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, wherein he puts alms for oblivion, a great-sized monster of ingratitudes: those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd as fast as they are made, forgot as soon as done: perseverance, dear my lord, keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail in monumental mockery. take the instant way; for honour travels in a strait so narrow, where one but goes abreast: keep then the path; for emulation hath a thousand sons that one by one pursue: if you give way, or hedge aside from the direct forthright, like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by and leave you hindmost; or like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank, lie there for pavement to the abject rear, o'er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present, though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours; for time is like a fashionable host that slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, and with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly, grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, and farewell goes out sighing. o, let not virtue seek remuneration for the thing it was; for beauty, wit, high birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, love, friendship, charity, are subjects all to envious and calumniating time. one touch of nature makes the whole world kin, that all with one consent praise new-born gawds, though they are made and moulded of things past, and give to dust that is a little gilt more laud than gilt o'er-dusted. the present eye praises the present object. then marvel not, thou great and complete man, that all the greeks begin to worship ajax; since things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs. the cry went once on thee, and still it might, and yet it may again, if thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive and case thy reputation in thy tent; whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late, made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves and drave great mars to faction. achilles of this my privacy i have strong reasons. ulysses but 'gainst your privacy the reasons are more potent and heroical: 'tis known, achilles, that you are in love with one of priam's daughters. achilles ha! known! ulysses is that a wonder? the providence that's in a watchful state knows almost every grain of plutus' gold, finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps, keeps place with thought and almost, like the gods, does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles. there is a mystery--with whom relation durst never meddle--in the soul of state; which hath an operation more divine than breath or pen can give expressure to: all the commerce that you have had with troy as perfectly is ours as yours, my lord; and better would it fit achilles much to throw down hector than polyxena: but it must grieve young pyrrhus now at home, when fame shall in our islands sound her trump, and all the greekish girls shall tripping sing, 'great hector's sister did achilles win, but our great ajax bravely beat down him.' farewell, my lord: i as your lover speak; the fool slides o'er the ice that you should break. [exit] patroclus to this effect, achilles, have i moved you: a woman impudent and mannish grown is not more loathed than an effeminate man in time of action. i stand condemn'd for this; they think my little stomach to the war and your great love to me restrains you thus: sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton cupid shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, and, like a dew-drop from the lion's mane, be shook to air. achilles shall ajax fight with hector? patroclus ay, and perhaps receive much honour by him. achilles i see my reputation is at stake my fame is shrewdly gored. patroclus o, then, beware; those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves: omission to do what is necessary seals a commission to a blank of danger; and danger, like an ague, subtly taints even then when we sit idly in the sun. achilles go call thersites hither, sweet patroclus: i'll send the fool to ajax and desire him to invite the trojan lords after the combat to see us here unarm'd: i have a woman's longing, an appetite that i am sick withal, to see great hector in his weeds of peace, to talk with him and to behold his visage, even to my full of view. [enter thersites] a labour saved! thersites a wonder! achilles what? thersites ajax goes up and down the field, asking for himself. achilles how so? thersites he must fight singly to-morrow with hector, and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling that he raves in saying nothing. achilles how can that be? thersites why, he stalks up and down like a peacock,--a stride and a stand: ruminates like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning: bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should say 'there were wit in this head, an 'twould out;' and so there is, but it lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking. the man's undone forever; for if hector break not his neck i' the combat, he'll break 't himself in vain-glory. he knows not me: i said 'good morrow, ajax;' and he replies 'thanks, agamemnon.' what think you of this man that takes me for the general? he's grown a very land-fish, language-less, a monster. a plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin. achilles thou must be my ambassador to him, thersites. thersites who, i? why, he'll answer nobody; he professes not answering: speaking is for beggars; he wears his tongue in's arms. i will put on his presence: let patroclus make demands to me, you shall see the pageant of ajax. achilles to him, patroclus; tell him i humbly desire the valiant ajax to invite the most valorous hector to come unarmed to my tent, and to procure safe-conduct for his person of the magnanimous and most illustrious six-or-seven-times-honoured captain-general of the grecian army, agamemnon, et cetera. do this. patroclus jove bless great ajax! thersites hum! patroclus i come from the worthy achilles,- thersites ha! patroclus who most humbly desires you to invite hector to his tent,- thersites hum! patroclus and to procure safe-conduct from agamemnon. thersites agamemnon! patroclus ay, my lord. thersites ha! patroclus what say you to't? thersites god b' wi' you, with all my heart. patroclus your answer, sir. thersites if to-morrow be a fair day, by eleven o'clock it will go one way or other: howsoever, he shall pay for me ere he has me. patroclus your answer, sir. thersites fare you well, with all my heart. achilles why, but he is not in this tune, is he? thersites no, but he's out o' tune thus. what music will be in him when hector has knocked out his brains, i know not; but, i am sure, none, unless the fiddler apollo get his sinews to make catlings on. achilles come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight. thersites let me bear another to his horse; for that's the more capable creature. achilles my mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd; and i myself see not the bottom of it. [exeunt achilles and patroclus] thersites would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that i might water an ass at it! i had rather be a tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance. [exit] troilus and cressida act iv scene i troy. a street. [enter, from one side, aeneas, and servant with a torch; from the other, paris, deiphobus, antenor, diomedes, and others, with torches] paris see, ho! who is that there? deiphobus it is the lord aeneas. aeneas is the prince there in person? had i so good occasion to lie long as you, prince paris, nothing but heavenly business should rob my bed-mate of my company. diomedes that's my mind too. good morrow, lord aeneas. paris a valiant greek, aeneas,--take his hand,- witness the process of your speech, wherein you told how diomed, a whole week by days, did haunt you in the field. aeneas health to you, valiant sir, during all question of the gentle truce; but when i meet you arm'd, as black defiance as heart can think or courage execute. diomedes the one and other diomed embraces. our bloods are now in calm; and, so long, health! but when contention and occasion meet, by jove, i'll play the hunter for thy life with all my force, pursuit and policy. aeneas and thou shalt hunt a lion, that will fly with his face backward. in humane gentleness, welcome to troy! now, by anchises' life, welcome, indeed! by venus' hand i swear, no man alive can love in such a sort the thing he means to kill more excellently. diomedes we sympathize: jove, let aeneas live, if to my sword his fate be not the glory, a thousand complete courses of the sun! but, in mine emulous honour, let him die, with every joint a wound, and that to-morrow! aeneas we know each other well. diomedes we do; and long to know each other worse. paris this is the most despiteful gentle greeting, the noblest hateful love, that e'er i heard of. what business, lord, so early? aeneas i was sent for to the king; but why, i know not. paris his purpose meets you: 'twas to bring this greek to calchas' house, and there to render him, for the enfreed antenor, the fair cressid: let's have your company, or, if you please, haste there before us: i constantly do think- or rather, call my thought a certain knowledge- my brother troilus lodges there to-night: rouse him and give him note of our approach. with the whole quality wherefore: i fear we shall be much unwelcome. aeneas that i assure you: troilus had rather troy were borne to greece than cressid borne from troy. paris there is no help; the bitter disposition of the time will have it so. on, lord; we'll follow you. aeneas good morrow, all. [exit with servant] paris and tell me, noble diomed, faith, tell me true, even in the soul of sound good-fellowship, who, in your thoughts, merits fair helen best, myself or menelaus? diomedes both alike: he merits well to have her, that doth seek her, not making any scruple of her soilure, with such a hell of pain and world of charge, and you as well to keep her, that defend her, not palating the taste of her dishonour, with such a costly loss of wealth and friends: he, like a puling cuckold, would drink up the lees and dregs of a flat tamed piece; you, like a lecher, out of whorish loins are pleased to breed out your inheritors: both merits poised, each weighs nor less nor more; but he as he, the heavier for a whore. paris you are too bitter to your countrywoman. diomedes she's bitter to her country: hear me, paris: for every false drop in her bawdy veins a grecian's life hath sunk; for every scruple of her contaminated carrion weight, a trojan hath been slain: since she could speak, she hath not given so many good words breath as for her greeks and trojans suffer'd death. paris fair diomed, you do as chapmen do, dispraise the thing that you desire to buy: but we in silence hold this virtue well, we'll but commend what we intend to sell. here lies our way. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act iv scene ii the same. court of pandarus' house. [enter troilus and cressida] troilus dear, trouble not yourself: the morn is cold. cressida then, sweet my lord, i'll call mine uncle down; he shall unbolt the gates. troilus trouble him not; to bed, to bed: sleep kill those pretty eyes, and give as soft attachment to thy senses as infants' empty of all thought! cressida good morrow, then. troilus i prithee now, to bed. cressida are you a-weary of me? troilus o cressida! but that the busy day, waked by the lark, hath roused the ribald crows, and dreaming night will hide our joys no longer, i would not from thee. cressida night hath been too brief. troilus beshrew the witch! with venomous wights she stays as tediously as hell, but flies the grasps of love with wings more momentary-swift than thought. you will catch cold, and curse me. cressida prithee, tarry: you men will never tarry. o foolish cressid! i might have still held off, and then you would have tarried. hark! there's one up. pandarus [within] what, 's all the doors open here? troilus it is your uncle. cressida a pestilence on him! now will he be mocking: i shall have such a life! [enter pandarus] pandarus how now, how now! how go maidenheads? here, you maid! where's my cousin cressid? cressida go hang yourself, you naughty mocking uncle! you bring me to do, and then you flout me too. pandarus to do what? to do what? let her say what: what have i brought you to do? cressida come, come, beshrew your heart! you'll ne'er be good, nor suffer others. pandarus ha! ha! alas, poor wretch! ah, poor capocchia! hast not slept to-night? would he not, a naughty man, let it sleep? a bugbear take him! cressida did not i tell you? would he were knock'd i' the head! [knocking within] who's that at door? good uncle, go and see. my lord, come you again into my chamber: you smile and mock me, as if i meant naughtily. troilus ha, ha! cressida come, you are deceived, i think of no such thing. [knocking within] how earnestly they knock! pray you, come in: i would not for half troy have you seen here. [exeunt troilus and cressida] pandarus who's there? what's the matter? will you beat down the door? how now! what's the matter? [enter aeneas] aeneas good morrow, lord, good morrow. pandarus who's there? my lord aeneas! by my troth, i knew you not: what news with you so early? aeneas is not prince troilus here? pandarus here! what should he do here? aeneas come, he is here, my lord; do not deny him: it doth import him much to speak with me. pandarus is he here, say you? 'tis more than i know, i'll be sworn: for my own part, i came in late. what should he do here? aeneas who!--nay, then: come, come, you'll do him wrong ere you're ware: you'll be so true to him, to be false to him: do not you know of him, but yet go fetch him hither; go. [re-enter troilus] troilus how now! what's the matter? aeneas my lord, i scarce have leisure to salute you, my matter is so rash: there is at hand paris your brother, and deiphobus, the grecian diomed, and our antenor deliver'd to us; and for him forthwith, ere the first sacrifice, within this hour, we must give up to diomedes' hand the lady cressida. troilus is it so concluded? aeneas by priam and the general state of troy: they are at hand and ready to effect it. troilus how my achievements mock me! i will go meet them: and, my lord aeneas, we met by chance; you did not find me here. aeneas good, good, my lord; the secrets of nature have not more gift in taciturnity. [exeunt troilus and aeneas] pandarus is't possible? no sooner got but lost? the devil take antenor! the young prince will go mad: a plague upon antenor! i would they had broke 's neck! [re-enter cressida] cressida how now! what's the matter? who was here? pandarus ah, ah! cressida why sigh you so profoundly? where's my lord? gone! tell me, sweet uncle, what's the matter? pandarus would i were as deep under the earth as i am above! cressida o the gods! what's the matter? pandarus prithee, get thee in: would thou hadst ne'er been born! i knew thou wouldst be his death. o, poor gentleman! a plague upon antenor! cressida good uncle, i beseech you, on my knees! beseech you, what's the matter? pandarus thou must be gone, wench, thou must be gone; thou art changed for antenor: thou must to thy father, and be gone from troilus: 'twill be his death; 'twill be his bane; he cannot bear it. cressida o you immortal gods! i will not go. pandarus thou must. cressida i will not, uncle: i have forgot my father; i know no touch of consanguinity; no kin no love, no blood, no soul so near me as the sweet troilus. o you gods divine! make cressid's name the very crown of falsehood, if ever she leave troilus! time, force, and death, do to this body what extremes you can; but the strong base and building of my love is as the very centre of the earth, drawing all things to it. i'll go in and weep,- pandarus do, do. cressida tear my bright hair and scratch my praised cheeks, crack my clear voice with sobs and break my heart with sounding troilus. i will not go from troy. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act iv scene iii the same. street before pandarus' house. [enter paris, troilus, aeneas, deiphobus, antenor, and diomedes] paris it is great morning, and the hour prefix'd of her delivery to this valiant greek comes fast upon. good my brother troilus, tell you the lady what she is to do, and haste her to the purpose. troilus walk into her house; i'll bring her to the grecian presently: and to his hand when i deliver her, think it an altar, and thy brother troilus a priest there offering to it his own heart. [exit] paris i know what 'tis to love; and would, as i shall pity, i could help! please you walk in, my lords. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act iv scene iv the same. pandarus' house. [enter pandarus and cressida] pandarus be moderate, be moderate. cressida why tell you me of moderation? the grief is fine, full, perfect, that i taste, and violenteth in a sense as strong as that which causeth it: how can i moderate it? if i could temporize with my affection, or brew it to a weak and colder palate, the like allayment could i give my grief. my love admits no qualifying dross; no more my grief, in such a precious loss. pandarus here, here, here he comes. [enter troilus] ah, sweet ducks! cressida o troilus! troilus! [embracing him] pandarus what a pair of spectacles is here! let me embrace too. 'o heart,' as the goodly saying is, '--o heart, heavy heart, why sigh'st thou without breaking? where he answers again, 'because thou canst not ease thy smart by friendship nor by speaking.' there was never a truer rhyme. let us cast away nothing, for we may live to have need of such a verse: we see it, we see it. how now, lambs? troilus cressid, i love thee in so strain'd a purity, that the bless'd gods, as angry with my fancy, more bright in zeal than the devotion which cold lips blow to their deities, take thee from me. cressida have the gods envy? pandarus ay, ay, ay, ay; 'tis too plain a case. cressida and is it true that i must go from troy? troilus a hateful truth. cressida what, and from troilus too? troilus from troy and troilus. cressida is it possible? troilus and suddenly; where injury of chance puts back leave-taking, justles roughly by all time of pause, rudely beguiles our lips of all rejoindure, forcibly prevents our lock'd embrasures, strangles our dear vows even in the birth of our own labouring breath: we two, that with so many thousand sighs did buy each other, must poorly sell ourselves with the rude brevity and discharge of one. injurious time now with a robber's haste crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how: as many farewells as be stars in heaven, with distinct breath and consign'd kisses to them, he fumbles up into a lose adieu, and scants us with a single famish'd kiss, distasted with the salt of broken tears. aeneas [within] my lord, is the lady ready? troilus hark! you are call'd: some say the genius so cries 'come' to him that instantly must die. bid them have patience; she shall come anon. pandarus where are my tears? rain, to lay this wind, or my heart will be blown up by the root. [exit] cressida i must then to the grecians? troilus no remedy. cressida a woful cressid 'mongst the merry greeks! when shall we see again? troilus hear me, my love: be thou but true of heart,- cressida i true! how now! what wicked deem is this? troilus nay, we must use expostulation kindly, for it is parting from us: i speak not 'be thou true,' as fearing thee, for i will throw my glove to death himself, that there's no maculation in thy heart: but 'be thou true,' say i, to fashion in my sequent protestation; be thou true, and i will see thee. cressida o, you shall be exposed, my lord, to dangers as infinite as imminent! but i'll be true. troilus and i'll grow friend with danger. wear this sleeve. cressida and you this glove. when shall i see you? troilus i will corrupt the grecian sentinels, to give thee nightly visitation. but yet be true. cressida o heavens! 'be true' again! troilus hear while i speak it, love: the grecian youths are full of quality; they're loving, well composed with gifts of nature, flowing and swelling o'er with arts and exercise: how novelty may move, and parts with person, alas, a kind of godly jealousy- which, i beseech you, call a virtuous sin- makes me afeard. cressida o heavens! you love me not. troilus die i a villain, then! in this i do not call your faith in question so mainly as my merit: i cannot sing, nor heel the high lavolt, nor sweeten talk, nor play at subtle games; fair virtues all, to which the grecians are most prompt and pregnant: but i can tell that in each grace of these there lurks a still and dumb-discoursive devil that tempts most cunningly: but be not tempted. cressida do you think i will? troilus no. but something may be done that we will not: and sometimes we are devils to ourselves, when we will tempt the frailty of our powers, presuming on their changeful potency. aeneas [within] nay, good my lord,- troilus come, kiss; and let us part. paris [within] brother troilus! troilus good brother, come you hither; and bring aeneas and the grecian with you. cressida my lord, will you be true? troilus who, i? alas, it is my vice, my fault: whiles others fish with craft for great opinion, i with great truth catch mere simplicity; whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns, with truth and plainness i do wear mine bare. fear not my truth: the moral of my wit is 'plain and true;' there's all the reach of it. [enter aeneas, paris, antenor, deiphobus, and diomedes] welcome, sir diomed! here is the lady which for antenor we deliver you: at the port, lord, i'll give her to thy hand, and by the way possess thee what she is. entreat her fair; and, by my soul, fair greek, if e'er thou stand at mercy of my sword, name cressida and thy life shall be as safe as priam is in ilion. diomedes fair lady cressid, so please you, save the thanks this prince expects: the lustre in your eye, heaven in your cheek, pleads your fair usage; and to diomed you shall be mistress, and command him wholly. troilus grecian, thou dost not use me courteously, to shame the zeal of my petition to thee in praising her: i tell thee, lord of greece, she is as far high-soaring o'er thy praises as thou unworthy to be call'd her servant. i charge thee use her well, even for my charge; for, by the dreadful pluto, if thou dost not, though the great bulk achilles be thy guard, i'll cut thy throat. diomedes o, be not moved, prince troilus: let me be privileged by my place and message, to be a speaker free; when i am hence i'll answer to my lust: and know you, lord, i'll nothing do on charge: to her own worth she shall be prized; but that you say 'be't so,' i'll speak it in my spirit and honour, 'no.' troilus come, to the port. i'll tell thee, diomed, this brave shall oft make thee to hide thy head. lady, give me your hand, and, as we walk, to our own selves bend we our needful talk. [exeunt troilus, cressida, and diomedes] [trumpet within] paris hark! hector's trumpet. aeneas how have we spent this morning! the prince must think me tardy and remiss, that sore to ride before him to the field. paris 'tis troilus' fault: come, come, to field with him. deiphobus let us make ready straight. aeneas yea, with a bridegroom's fresh alacrity, let us address to tend on hector's heels: the glory of our troy doth this day lie on his fair worth and single chivalry. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act iv scene v the grecian camp. lists set out. [enter ajax, armed; agamemnon, achilles, patroclus, menelaus, ulysses, nestor, and others] agamemnon here art thou in appointment fresh and fair, anticipating time with starting courage. give with thy trumpet a loud note to troy, thou dreadful ajax; that the appalled air may pierce the head of the great combatant and hale him hither. ajax thou, trumpet, there's my purse. now crack thy lungs, and split thy brazen pipe: blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek outswell the colic of puff'd aquilon: come, stretch thy chest and let thy eyes spout blood; thou blow'st for hector. [trumpet sounds] ulysses no trumpet answers. achilles 'tis but early days. agamemnon is not yond diomed, with calchas' daughter? ulysses 'tis he, i ken the manner of his gait; he rises on the toe: that spirit of his in aspiration lifts him from the earth. [enter diomedes, with cressida] agamemnon is this the lady cressid? diomedes even she. agamemnon most dearly welcome to the greeks, sweet lady. nestor our general doth salute you with a kiss. ulysses yet is the kindness but particular; 'twere better she were kiss'd in general. nestor and very courtly counsel: i'll begin. so much for nestor. achilles i'll take what winter from your lips, fair lady: achilles bids you welcome. menelaus i had good argument for kissing once. patroclus but that's no argument for kissing now; for this popp'd paris in his hardiment, and parted thus you and your argument. ulysses o deadly gall, and theme of all our scorns! for which we lose our heads to gild his horns. patroclus the first was menelaus' kiss; this, mine: patroclus kisses you. menelaus o, this is trim! patroclus paris and i kiss evermore for him. menelaus i'll have my kiss, sir. lady, by your leave. cressida in kissing, do you render or receive? patroclus both take and give. cressida i'll make my match to live, the kiss you take is better than you give; therefore no kiss. menelaus i'll give you boot, i'll give you three for one. cressida you're an odd man; give even or give none. menelaus an odd man, lady! every man is odd. cressida no, paris is not; for you know 'tis true, that you are odd, and he is even with you. menelaus you fillip me o' the head. cressida no, i'll be sworn. ulysses it were no match, your nail against his horn. may i, sweet lady, beg a kiss of you? cressida you may. ulysses i do desire it. cressida why, beg, then. ulysses why then for venus' sake, give me a kiss, when helen is a maid again, and his. cressida i am your debtor, claim it when 'tis due. ulysses never's my day, and then a kiss of you. diomedes lady, a word: i'll bring you to your father. [exit with cressida] nestor a woman of quick sense. ulysses fie, fie upon her! there's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out at every joint and motive of her body. o, these encounterers, so glib of tongue, that give accosting welcome ere it comes, and wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts to every ticklish reader! set them down for sluttish spoils of opportunity and daughters of the game. [trumpet within] all the trojans' trumpet. agamemnon yonder comes the troop. [enter hector, armed; aeneas, troilus, and other trojans, with attendants] aeneas hail, all you state of greece! what shall be done to him that victory commands? or do you purpose a victor shall be known? will you the knights shall to the edge of all extremity pursue each other, or shall be divided by any voice or order of the field? hector bade ask. agamemnon which way would hector have it? aeneas he cares not; he'll obey conditions. achilles 'tis done like hector; but securely done, a little proudly, and great deal misprizing the knight opposed. aeneas if not achilles, sir, what is your name? achilles if not achilles, nothing. aeneas therefore achilles: but, whate'er, know this: in the extremity of great and little, valour and pride excel themselves in hector; the one almost as infinite as all, the other blank as nothing. weigh him well, and that which looks like pride is courtesy. this ajax is half made of hector's blood: in love whereof, half hector stays at home; half heart, half hand, half hector comes to seek this blended knight, half trojan and half greek. achilles a maiden battle, then? o, i perceive you. [re-enter diomedes] agamemnon here is sir diomed. go, gentle knight, stand by our ajax: as you and lord aeneas consent upon the order of their fight, so be it; either to the uttermost, or else a breath: the combatants being kin half stints their strife before their strokes begin. [ajax and hector enter the lists] ulysses they are opposed already. agamemnon what trojan is that same that looks so heavy? ulysses the youngest son of priam, a true knight, not yet mature, yet matchless, firm of word, speaking in deeds and deedless in his tongue; not soon provoked nor being provoked soon calm'd: his heart and hand both open and both free; for what he has he gives, what thinks he shows; yet gives he not till judgment guide his bounty, nor dignifies an impure thought with breath; manly as hector, but more dangerous; for hector in his blaze of wrath subscribes to tender objects, but he in heat of action is more vindicative than jealous love: they call him troilus, and on him erect a second hope, as fairly built as hector. thus says aeneas; one that knows the youth even to his inches, and with private soul did in great ilion thus translate him to me. [alarum. hector and ajax fight] agamemnon they are in action. nestor now, ajax, hold thine own! troilus hector, thou sleep'st; awake thee! agamemnon his blows are well disposed: there, ajax! diomedes you must no more. [trumpets cease] aeneas princes, enough, so please you. ajax i am not warm yet; let us fight again. diomedes as hector pleases. hector why, then will i no more: thou art, great lord, my father's sister's son, a cousin-german to great priam's seed; the obligation of our blood forbids a gory emulation 'twixt us twain: were thy commixtion greek and trojan so that thou couldst say 'this hand is grecian all, and this is trojan; the sinews of this leg all greek, and this all troy; my mother's blood runs on the dexter cheek, and this sinister bounds in my father's;' by jove multipotent, thou shouldst not bear from me a greekish member wherein my sword had not impressure made of our rank feud: but the just gods gainsay that any drop thou borrow'dst from thy mother, my sacred aunt, should by my mortal sword be drain'd! let me embrace thee, ajax: by him that thunders, thou hast lusty arms; hector would have them fall upon him thus: cousin, all honour to thee! ajax i thank thee, hector thou art too gentle and too free a man: i came to kill thee, cousin, and bear hence a great addition earned in thy death. hector not neoptolemus so mirable, on whose bright crest fame with her loud'st oyes cries 'this is he,' could promise to himself a thought of added honour torn from hector. aeneas there is expectance here from both the sides, what further you will do. hector we'll answer it; the issue is embracement: ajax, farewell. ajax if i might in entreaties find success- as seld i have the chance--i would desire my famous cousin to our grecian tents. diomedes 'tis agamemnon's wish, and great achilles doth long to see unarm'd the valiant hector. hector aeneas, call my brother troilus to me, and signify this loving interview to the expecters of our trojan part; desire them home. give me thy hand, my cousin; i will go eat with thee and see your knights. ajax great agamemnon comes to meet us here. hector the worthiest of them tell me name by name; but for achilles, mine own searching eyes shall find him by his large and portly size. agamemnon worthy of arms! as welcome as to one that would be rid of such an enemy; but that's no welcome: understand more clear, what's past and what's to come is strew'd with husks and formless ruin of oblivion; but in this extant moment, faith and troth, strain'd purely from all hollow bias-drawing, bids thee, with most divine integrity, from heart of very heart, great hector, welcome. hector i thank thee, most imperious agamemnon. agamemnon [to troilus] my well-famed lord of troy, no less to you. menelaus let me confirm my princely brother's greeting: you brace of warlike brothers, welcome hither. hector who must we answer? aeneas the noble menelaus. hector o, you, my lord? by mars his gauntlet, thanks! mock not, that i affect the untraded oath; your quondam wife swears still by venus' glove: she's well, but bade me not commend her to you. menelaus name her not now, sir; she's a deadly theme. hector o, pardon; i offend. nestor i have, thou gallant trojan, seen thee oft labouring for destiny make cruel way through ranks of greekish youth, and i have seen thee, as hot as perseus, spur thy phrygian steed, despising many forfeits and subduements, when thou hast hung thy advanced sword i' the air, not letting it decline on the declined, that i have said to some my standers by 'lo, jupiter is yonder, dealing life!' and i have seen thee pause and take thy breath, when that a ring of greeks have hemm'd thee in, like an olympian wrestling: this have i seen; but this thy countenance, still lock'd in steel, i never saw till now. i knew thy grandsire, and once fought with him: he was a soldier good; but, by great mars, the captain of us all, never saw like thee. let an old man embrace thee; and, worthy warrior, welcome to our tents. aeneas 'tis the old nestor. hector let me embrace thee, good old chronicle, that hast so long walk'd hand in hand with time: most reverend nestor, i am glad to clasp thee. nestor i would my arms could match thee in contention, as they contend with thee in courtesy. hector i would they could. nestor ha! by this white beard, i'ld fight with thee to-morrow. well, welcome, welcome! i have seen the time. ulysses i wonder now how yonder city stands when we have here her base and pillar by us. hector i know your favour, lord ulysses, well. ah, sir, there's many a greek and trojan dead, since first i saw yourself and diomed in ilion, on your greekish embassy. ulysses sir, i foretold you then what would ensue: my prophecy is but half his journey yet; for yonder walls, that pertly front your town, yond towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds, must kiss their own feet. hector i must not believe you: there they stand yet, and modestly i think, the fall of every phrygian stone will cost a drop of grecian blood: the end crowns all, and that old common arbitrator, time, will one day end it. ulysses so to him we leave it. most gentle and most valiant hector, welcome: after the general, i beseech you next to feast with me and see me at my tent. achilles i shall forestall thee, lord ulysses, thou! now, hector, i have fed mine eyes on thee; i have with exact view perused thee, hector, and quoted joint by joint. hector is this achilles? achilles i am achilles. hector stand fair, i pray thee: let me look on thee. achilles behold thy fill. hector nay, i have done already. achilles thou art too brief: i will the second time, as i would buy thee, view thee limb by limb. hector o, like a book of sport thou'lt read me o'er; but there's more in me than thou understand'st. why dost thou so oppress me with thine eye? achilles tell me, you heavens, in which part of his body shall i destroy him? whether there, or there, or there? that i may give the local wound a name and make distinct the very breach whereout hector's great spirit flew: answer me, heavens! hector it would discredit the blest gods, proud man, to answer such a question: stand again: think'st thou to catch my life so pleasantly as to prenominate in nice conjecture where thou wilt hit me dead? achilles i tell thee, yea. hector wert thou an oracle to tell me so, i'd not believe thee. henceforth guard thee well; for i'll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there; but, by the forge that stithied mars his helm, i'll kill thee every where, yea, o'er and o'er. you wisest grecians, pardon me this brag; his insolence draws folly from my lips; but i'll endeavour deeds to match these words, or may i never- ajax do not chafe thee, cousin: and you, achilles, let these threats alone, till accident or purpose bring you to't: you may have every day enough of hector if you have stomach; the general state, i fear, can scarce entreat you to be odd with him. hector i pray you, let us see you in the field: we have had pelting wars, since you refused the grecians' cause. achilles dost thou entreat me, hector? to-morrow do i meet thee, fell as death; to-night all friends. hector thy hand upon that match. agamemnon first, all you peers of greece, go to my tent; there in the full convive we: afterwards, as hector's leisure and your bounties shall concur together, severally entreat him. beat loud the tabourines, let the trumpets blow, that this great soldier may his welcome know. [exeunt all except troilus and ulysses] troilus my lord ulysses, tell me, i beseech you, in what place of the field doth calchas keep? ulysses at menelaus' tent, most princely troilus: there diomed doth feast with him to-night; who neither looks upon the heaven nor earth, but gives all gaze and bent of amorous view on the fair cressid. troilus shall sweet lord, be bound to you so much, after we part from agamemnon's tent, to bring me thither? ulysses you shall command me, sir. as gentle tell me, of what honour was this cressida in troy? had she no lover there that wails her absence? troilus o, sir, to such as boasting show their scars a mock is due. will you walk on, my lord? she was beloved, she loved; she is, and doth: but still sweet love is food for fortune's tooth. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act v scene i the grecian camp. before achilles' tent. [enter achilles and patroclus] achilles i'll heat his blood with greekish wine to-night, which with my scimitar i'll cool to-morrow. patroclus, let us feast him to the height. patroclus here comes thersites. [enter thersites] achilles how now, thou core of envy! thou crusty batch of nature, what's the news? thersites why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol of idiot worshippers, here's a letter for thee. achilles from whence, fragment? thersites why, thou full dish of fool, from troy. patroclus who keeps the tent now? thersites the surgeon's box, or the patient's wound. patroclus well said, adversity! and what need these tricks? thersites prithee, be silent, boy; i profit not by thy talk: thou art thought to be achilles' male varlet. patroclus male varlet, you rogue! what's that? thersites why, his masculine whore. now, the rotten diseases of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs, loads o' gravel i' the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas, limekilns i' the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take again such preposterous discoveries! patroclus why thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meanest thou to curse thus? thersites do i curse thee? patroclus why no, you ruinous butt, you whoreson indistinguishable cur, no. thersites no! why art thou then exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal's purse, thou? ah, how the poor world is pestered with such waterflies, diminutives of nature! patroclus out, gall! thersites finch-egg! achilles my sweet patroclus, i am thwarted quite from my great purpose in to-morrow's battle. here is a letter from queen hecuba, a token from her daughter, my fair love, both taxing me and gaging me to keep an oath that i have sworn. i will not break it: fall greeks; fail fame; honour or go or stay; my major vow lies here, this i'll obey. come, come, thersites, help to trim my tent: this night in banqueting must all be spent. away, patroclus! [exeunt achilles and patroclus] thersites with too much blood and too little brain, these two may run mad; but, if with too much brain and too little blood they do, i'll be a curer of madmen. here's agamemnon, an honest fellow enough and one that loves quails; but he has not so much brain as earwax: and the goodly transformation of jupiter there, his brother, the bull,--the primitive statue, and oblique memorial of cuckolds; a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's leg,--to what form but that he is, should wit larded with malice and malice forced with wit turn him to? to an ass, were nothing; he is both ass and ox: to an ox, were nothing; he is both ox and ass. to be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, i would not care; but to be menelaus, i would conspire against destiny. ask me not, what i would be, if i were not thersites; for i care not to be the louse of a lazar, so i were not menelaus! hey-day! spirits and fires! [enter hector, troilus, ajax, agamemnon, ulysses, nestor, menelaus, and diomedes, with lights] agamemnon we go wrong, we go wrong. ajax no, yonder 'tis; there, where we see the lights. hector i trouble you. ajax no, not a whit. ulysses here comes himself to guide you. [re-enter achilles] achilles welcome, brave hector; welcome, princes all. agamemnon so now, fair prince of troy, i bid good night. ajax commands the guard to tend on you. hector thanks and good night to the greeks' general. menelaus good night, my lord. hector good night, sweet lord menelaus. thersites sweet draught: 'sweet' quoth 'a! sweet sink, sweet sewer. achilles good night and welcome, both at once, to those that go or tarry. agamemnon good night. [exeunt agamemnon and menelaus] achilles old nestor tarries; and you too, diomed, keep hector company an hour or two. diomedes i cannot, lord; i have important business, the tide whereof is now. good night, great hector. hector give me your hand. ulysses [aside to troilus] follow his torch; he goes to calchas' tent: i'll keep you company. troilus sweet sir, you honour me. hector and so, good night. [exit diomedes; ulysses and troilus following] achilles come, come, enter my tent. [exeunt achilles, hector, ajax, and nestor] thersites that same diomed's a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust knave; i will no more trust him when he leers than i will a serpent when he hisses: he will spend his mouth, and promise, like brabbler the hound: but when he performs, astronomers foretell it; it is prodigious, there will come some change; the sun borrows of the moon, when diomed keeps his word. i will rather leave to see hector, than not to dog him: they say he keeps a trojan drab, and uses the traitor calchas' tent: i'll after. nothing but lechery! all incontinent varlets! [exit] troilus and cressida act v scene ii the same. before calchas' tent. [enter diomedes] diomedes what, are you up here, ho? speak. calchas [within] who calls? diomedes calchas, i think. where's your daughter? calchas [within] she comes to you. [enter troilus and ulysses, at a distance; after them, thersites] ulysses stand where the torch may not discover us. [enter cressida] troilus cressid comes forth to him. diomedes how now, my charge! cressida now, my sweet guardian! hark, a word with you. [whispers] troilus yea, so familiar! ulysses she will sing any man at first sight. thersites and any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff; she's noted. diomedes will you remember? cressida remember! yes. diomedes nay, but do, then; and let your mind be coupled with your words. troilus what should she remember? ulysses list. cressida sweet honey greek, tempt me no more to folly. thersites roguery! diomedes nay, then,- cressida i'll tell you what,- diomedes foh, foh! come, tell a pin: you are forsworn. cressida in faith, i cannot: what would you have me do? thersites a juggling trick,--to be secretly open. diomedes what did you swear you would bestow on me? cressida i prithee, do not hold me to mine oath; bid me do any thing but that, sweet greek. diomedes good night. troilus hold, patience! ulysses how now, trojan! cressida diomed,- diomedes no, no, good night: i'll be your fool no more. troilus thy better must. cressida hark, one word in your ear. troilus o plague and madness! ulysses you are moved, prince; let us depart, i pray you, lest your displeasure should enlarge itself to wrathful terms: this place is dangerous; the time right deadly; i beseech you, go. troilus behold, i pray you! ulysses nay, good my lord, go off: you flow to great distraction; come, my lord. troilus i pray thee, stay. ulysses you have not patience; come. troilus i pray you, stay; by hell and all hell's torments i will not speak a word! diomedes and so, good night. cressida nay, but you part in anger. troilus doth that grieve thee? o wither'd truth! ulysses why, how now, lord! troilus by jove, i will be patient. cressida guardian!--why, greek! diomedes foh, foh! adieu; you palter. cressida in faith, i do not: come hither once again. ulysses you shake, my lord, at something: will you go? you will break out. troilus she strokes his cheek! ulysses come, come. troilus nay, stay; by jove, i will not speak a word: there is between my will and all offences a guard of patience: stay a little while. thersites how the devil luxury, with his fat rump and potato-finger, tickles these together! fry, lechery, fry! diomedes but will you, then? cressida in faith, i will, la; never trust me else. diomedes give me some token for the surety of it. cressida i'll fetch you one. [exit] ulysses you have sworn patience. troilus fear me not, sweet lord; i will not be myself, nor have cognition of what i feel: i am all patience. [re-enter cressida] thersites now the pledge; now, now, now! cressida here, diomed, keep this sleeve. troilus o beauty! where is thy faith? ulysses my lord,- troilus i will be patient; outwardly i will. cressida you look upon that sleeve; behold it well. he loved me--o false wench!--give't me again. diomedes whose was't? cressida it is no matter, now i have't again. i will not meet with you to-morrow night: i prithee, diomed, visit me no more. thersites now she sharpens: well said, whetstone! diomedes i shall have it. cressida what, this? diomedes ay, that. cressida o, all you gods! o pretty, pretty pledge! thy master now lies thinking in his bed of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove, and gives memorial dainty kisses to it, as i kiss thee. nay, do not snatch it from me; he that takes that doth take my heart withal. diomedes i had your heart before, this follows it. troilus i did swear patience. cressida you shall not have it, diomed; faith, you shall not; i'll give you something else. diomedes i will have this: whose was it? cressida it is no matter. diomedes come, tell me whose it was. cressida 'twas one's that loved me better than you will. but, now you have it, take it. diomedes whose was it? cressida by all diana's waiting-women yond, and by herself, i will not tell you whose. diomedes to-morrow will i wear it on my helm, and grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it. troilus wert thou the devil, and worest it on thy horn, it should be challenged. cressida well, well, 'tis done, 'tis past: and yet it is not; i will not keep my word. diomedes why, then, farewell; thou never shalt mock diomed again. cressida you shall not go: one cannot speak a word, but it straight starts you. diomedes i do not like this fooling. thersites nor i, by pluto: but that that likes not you pleases me best. diomedes what, shall i come? the hour? cressida ay, come:--o jove!--do come:--i shall be plagued. diomedes farewell till then. cressida good night: i prithee, come. [exit diomedes] troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee but with my heart the other eye doth see. ah, poor our sex! this fault in us i find, the error of our eye directs our mind: what error leads must err; o, then conclude minds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude. [exit] thersites a proof of strength she could not publish more, unless she said ' my mind is now turn'd whore.' ulysses all's done, my lord. troilus it is. ulysses why stay we, then? troilus to make a recordation to my soul of every syllable that here was spoke. but if i tell how these two did co-act, shall i not lie in publishing a truth? sith yet there is a credence in my heart, an esperance so obstinately strong, that doth invert the attest of eyes and ears, as if those organs had deceptious functions, created only to calumniate. was cressid here? ulysses i cannot conjure, trojan. troilus she was not, sure. ulysses most sure she was. troilus why, my negation hath no taste of madness. ulysses nor mine, my lord: cressid was here but now. troilus let it not be believed for womanhood! think, we had mothers; do not give advantage to stubborn critics, apt, without a theme, for depravation, to square the general sex by cressid's rule: rather think this not cressid. ulysses what hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers? troilus nothing at all, unless that this were she. thersites will he swagger himself out on's own eyes? troilus this she? no, this is diomed's cressida: if beauty have a soul, this is not she; if souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies, if sanctimony be the gods' delight, if there be rule in unity itself, this is not she. o madness of discourse, that cause sets up with and against itself! bi-fold authority! where reason can revolt without perdition, and loss assume all reason without revolt: this is, and is not, cressid. within my soul there doth conduce a fight of this strange nature that a thing inseparate divides more wider than the sky and earth, and yet the spacious breadth of this division admits no orifex for a point as subtle as ariachne's broken woof to enter. instance, o instance! strong as pluto's gates; cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven: instance, o instance! strong as heaven itself; the bonds of heaven are slipp'd, dissolved, and loosed; and with another knot, five-finger-tied, the fractions of her faith, orts of her love, the fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to diomed. ulysses may worthy troilus be half attach'd with that which here his passion doth express? troilus ay, greek; and that shall be divulged well in characters as red as mars his heart inflamed with venus: never did young man fancy with so eternal and so fix'd a soul. hark, greek: as much as i do cressid love, so much by weight hate i her diomed: that sleeve is mine that he'll bear on his helm; were it a casque composed by vulcan's skill, my sword should bite it: not the dreadful spout which shipmen do the hurricano call, constringed in mass by the almighty sun, shall dizzy with more clamour neptune's ear in his descent than shall my prompted sword falling on diomed. thersites he'll tickle it for his concupy. troilus o cressid! o false cressid! false, false, false! let all untruths stand by thy stained name, and they'll seem glorious. ulysses o, contain yourself your passion draws ears hither. [enter aeneas] aeneas i have been seeking you this hour, my lord: hector, by this, is arming him in troy; ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home. troilus have with you, prince. my courteous lord, adieu. farewell, revolted fair! and, diomed, stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head! ulysses i'll bring you to the gates. troilus accept distracted thanks. [exeunt troilus, aeneas, and ulysses] thersites would i could meet that rogue diomed! i would croak like a raven; i would bode, i would bode. patroclus will give me any thing for the intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion: a burning devil take them! [exit] troilus and cressida act v scene iii troy. before priam's palace. [enter hector and andromache] andromache when was my lord so much ungently temper'd, to stop his ears against admonishment? unarm, unarm, and do not fight to-day. hector you train me to offend you; get you in: by all the everlasting gods, i'll go! andromache my dreams will, sure, prove ominous to the day. hector no more, i say. [enter cassandra] cassandra where is my brother hector? andromache here, sister; arm'd, and bloody in intent. consort with me in loud and dear petition, pursue we him on knees; for i have dream'd of bloody turbulence, and this whole night hath nothing been but shapes and forms of slaughter. cassandra o, 'tis true. hector ho! bid my trumpet sound! cassandra no notes of sally, for the heavens, sweet brother. hector be gone, i say: the gods have heard me swear. cassandra the gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows: they are polluted offerings, more abhorr'd than spotted livers in the sacrifice. andromache o, be persuaded! do not count it holy to hurt by being just: it is as lawful, for we would give much, to use violent thefts, and rob in the behalf of charity. cassandra it is the purpose that makes strong the vow; but vows to every purpose must not hold: unarm, sweet hector. hector hold you still, i say; mine honour keeps the weather of my fate: lie every man holds dear; but the brave man holds honour far more precious-dear than life. [enter troilus] how now, young man! mean'st thou to fight to-day? andromache cassandra, call my father to persuade. [exit cassandra] hector no, faith, young troilus; doff thy harness, youth; i am to-day i' the vein of chivalry: let grow thy sinews till their knots be strong, and tempt not yet the brushes of the war. unarm thee, go, and doubt thou not, brave boy, i'll stand to-day for thee and me and troy. troilus brother, you have a vice of mercy in you, which better fits a lion than a man. hector what vice is that, good troilus? chide me for it. troilus when many times the captive grecian falls, even in the fan and wind of your fair sword, you bid them rise, and live. hector o,'tis fair play. troilus fool's play, by heaven, hector. hector how now! how now! troilus for the love of all the gods, let's leave the hermit pity with our mothers, and when we have our armours buckled on, the venom'd vengeance ride upon our swords, spur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth. hector fie, savage, fie! troilus hector, then 'tis wars. hector troilus, i would not have you fight to-day. troilus who should withhold me? not fate, obedience, nor the hand of mars beckoning with fiery truncheon my retire; not priamus and hecuba on knees, their eyes o'ergalled with recourse of tears; not you, my brother, with your true sword drawn, opposed to hinder me, should stop my way, but by my ruin. [re-enter cassandra, with priam] cassandra lay hold upon him, priam, hold him fast: he is thy crutch; now if thou lose thy stay, thou on him leaning, and all troy on thee, fall all together. priam come, hector, come, go back: thy wife hath dream'd; thy mother hath had visions; cassandra doth foresee; and i myself am like a prophet suddenly enrapt to tell thee that this day is ominous: therefore, come back. hector aeneas is a-field; and i do stand engaged to many greeks, even in the faith of valour, to appear this morning to them. priam ay, but thou shalt not go. hector i must not break my faith. you know me dutiful; therefore, dear sir, let me not shame respect; but give me leave to take that course by your consent and voice, which you do here forbid me, royal priam. cassandra o priam, yield not to him! andromache do not, dear father. hector andromache, i am offended with you: upon the love you bear me, get you in. [exit andromache] troilus this foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl makes all these bodements. cassandra o, farewell, dear hector! look, how thou diest! look, how thy eye turns pale! look, how thy wounds do bleed at many vents! hark, how troy roars! how hecuba cries out! how poor andromache shrills her dolours forth! behold, distraction, frenzy and amazement, like witless antics, one another meet, and all cry, hector! hector's dead! o hector! troilus away! away! cassandra farewell: yet, soft! hector! take my leave: thou dost thyself and all our troy deceive. [exit] hector you are amazed, my liege, at her exclaim: go in and cheer the town: we'll forth and fight, do deeds worth praise and tell you them at night. priam farewell: the gods with safety stand about thee! [exeunt severally priam and hector. alarums] troilus they are at it, hark! proud diomed, believe, i come to lose my arm, or win my sleeve. [enter pandarus] pandarus do you hear, my lord? do you hear? troilus what now? pandarus here's a letter come from yond poor girl. troilus let me read. pandarus a whoreson tisick, a whoreson rascally tisick so troubles me, and the foolish fortune of this girl; and what one thing, what another, that i shall leave you one o' these days: and i have a rheum in mine eyes too, and such an ache in my bones that, unless a man were cursed, i cannot tell what to think on't. what says she there? troilus words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart: the effect doth operate another way. [tearing the letter] go, wind, to wind, there turn and change together. my love with words and errors still she feeds; but edifies another with her deeds. [exeunt severally] troilus and cressida act v scene iv plains between troy and the grecian camp. [alarums: excursions. enter thersites] thersites now they are clapper-clawing one another; i'll go look on. that dissembling abominable varlets diomed, has got that same scurvy doting foolish young knave's sleeve of troy there in his helm: i would fain see them meet; that that same young trojan ass, that loves the whore there, might send that greekish whore-masterly villain, with the sleeve, back to the dissembling luxurious drab, of a sleeveless errand. o' the t'other side, the policy of those crafty swearing rascals, that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, nestor, and that same dog-fox, ulysses, is not proved worthy a blackberry: they set me up, in policy, that mongrel cur, ajax, against that dog of as bad a kind, achilles: and now is the cur ajax prouder than the cur achilles, and will not arm to-day; whereupon the grecians begin to proclaim barbarism, and policy grows into an ill opinion. soft! here comes sleeve, and t'other. [enter diomedes, troilus following] troilus fly not; for shouldst thou take the river styx, i would swim after. diomedes thou dost miscall retire: i do not fly, but advantageous care withdrew me from the odds of multitude: have at thee! thersites hold thy whore, grecian!--now for thy whore, trojan!--now the sleeve, now the sleeve! [exeunt troilus and diomedes, fighting] [enter hector] hector what art thou, greek? art thou for hector's match? art thou of blood and honour? thersites no, no, i am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave: a very filthy rogue. hector i do believe thee: live. [exit] thersites god-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me; but a plague break thy neck for frightening me! what's become of the wenching rogues? i think they have swallowed one another: i would laugh at that miracle: yet, in a sort, lechery eats itself. i'll seek them. [exit] troilus and cressida act v scene v another part of the plains. [enter diomedes and a servant] diomedes go, go, my servant, take thou troilus' horse; present the fair steed to my lady cressid: fellow, commend my service to her beauty; tell her i have chastised the amorous trojan, and am her knight by proof. servant i go, my lord. [exit] [enter agamemnon] agamemnon renew, renew! the fierce polydamas hath beat down menon: bastard margarelon hath doreus prisoner, and stands colossus-wise, waving his beam, upon the pashed corses of the kings epistrophus and cedius: polyxenes is slain, amphimachus and thoas deadly hurt, patroclus ta'en or slain, and palamedes sore hurt and bruised: the dreadful sagittary appals our numbers: haste we, diomed, to reinforcement, or we perish all. [enter nestor] nestor go, bear patroclus' body to achilles; and bid the snail-paced ajax arm for shame. there is a thousand hectors in the field: now here he fights on galathe his horse, and there lacks work; anon he's there afoot, and there they fly or die, like scaled sculls before the belching whale; then is he yonder, and there the strawy greeks, ripe for his edge, fall down before him, like the mower's swath: here, there, and every where, he leaves and takes, dexterity so obeying appetite that what he will he does, and does so much that proof is call'd impossibility. [enter ulysses] ulysses o, courage, courage, princes! great achilles is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance: patroclus' wounds have roused his drowsy blood, together with his mangled myrmidons, that noseless, handless, hack'd and chipp'd, come to him, crying on hector. ajax hath lost a friend and foams at mouth, and he is arm'd and at it, roaring for troilus, who hath done to-day mad and fantastic execution, engaging and redeeming of himself with such a careless force and forceless care as if that luck, in very spite of cunning, bade him win all. [enter ajax] ajax troilus! thou coward troilus! [exit] diomedes ay, there, there. nestor so, so, we draw together. [enter achilles] achilles where is this hector? come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face; know what it is to meet achilles angry: hector? where's hector? i will none but hector. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act v scene vi another part of the plains. [enter ajax] ajax troilus, thou coward troilus, show thy head! [enter diomedes] diomedes troilus, i say! where's troilus? ajax what wouldst thou? diomedes i would correct him. ajax were i the general, thou shouldst have my office ere that correction. troilus, i say! what, troilus! [enter troilus] troilus o traitor diomed! turn thy false face, thou traitor, and pay thy life thou owest me for my horse! diomedes ha, art thou there? ajax i'll fight with him alone: stand, diomed. diomedes he is my prize; i will not look upon. troilus come, both you cogging greeks; have at you both! [exeunt, fighting] [enter hector] hector yea, troilus? o, well fought, my youngest brother! [enter achilles] achilles now do i see thee, ha! have at thee, hector! hector pause, if thou wilt. achilles i do disdain thy courtesy, proud trojan: be happy that my arms are out of use: my rest and negligence befriends thee now, but thou anon shalt hear of me again; till when, go seek thy fortune. [exit] hector fare thee well: i would have been much more a fresher man, had i expected thee. how now, my brother! [re-enter troilus] troilus ajax hath ta'en aeneas: shall it be? no, by the flame of yonder glorious heaven, he shall not carry him: i'll be ta'en too, or bring him off: fate, hear me what i say! i reck not though i end my life to-day. [exit] [enter one in sumptuous armour] hector stand, stand, thou greek; thou art a goodly mark: no? wilt thou not? i like thy armour well; i'll frush it and unlock the rivets all, but i'll be master of it: wilt thou not, beast, abide? why, then fly on, i'll hunt thee for thy hide. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act v scene vii another part of the plains. [enter achilles, with myrmidons] achilles come here about me, you my myrmidons; mark what i say. attend me where i wheel: strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath: and when i have the bloody hector found, empale him with your weapons round about; in fellest manner execute your aims. follow me, sirs, and my proceedings eye: it is decreed hector the great must die. [exeunt] [enter menelaus and paris, fighting: then thersites] thersites the cuckold and the cuckold-maker are at it. now, bull! now, dog! 'loo, paris, 'loo! now my double henned sparrow! 'loo, paris, 'loo! the bull has the game: ware horns, ho! [exeunt paris and menelaus] [enter margarelon] margarelon turn, slave, and fight. thersites what art thou? margarelon a bastard son of priam's. thersites i am a bastard too; i love bastards: i am a bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in every thing illegitimate. one bear will not bite another, and wherefore should one bastard? take heed, the quarrel's most ominous to us: if the son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts judgment: farewell, bastard. [exit] margarelon the devil take thee, coward! [exit] troilus and cressida act v scene viii another part of the plains. [enter hector] hector most putrefied core, so fair without, thy goodly armour thus hath cost thy life. now is my day's work done; i'll take good breath: rest, sword; thou hast thy fill of blood and death. [puts off his helmet and hangs his shield behind him] [enter achilles and myrmidons] achilles look, hector, how the sun begins to set; how ugly night comes breathing at his heels: even with the vail and darking of the sun, to close the day up, hector's life is done. hector i am unarm'd; forego this vantage, greek. achilles strike, fellows, strike; this is the man i seek. [hector falls] so, ilion, fall thou next! now, troy, sink down! here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone. on, myrmidons, and cry you all amain, 'achilles hath the mighty hector slain.' [a retreat sounded] hark! a retire upon our grecian part. myrmidons the trojan trumpets sound the like, my lord. achilles the dragon wing of night o'erspreads the earth, and, stickler-like, the armies separates. my half-supp'd sword, that frankly would have fed, pleased with this dainty bait, thus goes to bed. [sheathes his sword] come, tie his body to my horse's tail; along the field i will the trojan trail. [exeunt] troilus and cressida act v scene ix another part of the plains. [enter agamemnon, ajax, menelaus, nestor, diomedes, and others, marching. shouts within] agamemnon hark! hark! what shout is that? nestor peace, drums! [within] achilles! achilles! hector's slain! achilles. diomedes the bruit is, hector's slain, and by achilles. ajax if it be so, yet bragless let it be; great hector was a man as good as he. agamemnon march patiently along: let one be sent to pray achilles see us at our tent. if in his death the gods have us befriended, great troy is ours, and our sharp wars are ended. [exeunt, marching] troilus and cressida act v scene x another part of the plains. [enter aeneas and trojans] aeneas stand, ho! yet are we masters of the field: never go home; here starve we out the night. [enter troilus] troilus hector is slain. all hector! the gods forbid! troilus he's dead; and at the murderer's horse's tail, in beastly sort, dragg'd through the shameful field. frown on, you heavens, effect your rage with speed! sit, gods, upon your thrones, and smile at troy! i say, at once let your brief plagues be mercy, and linger not our sure destructions on! aeneas my lord, you do discomfort all the host! troilus you understand me not that tell me so: i do not speak of flight, of fear, of death, but dare all imminence that gods and men address their dangers in. hector is gone: who shall tell priam so, or hecuba? let him that will a screech-owl aye be call'd, go in to troy, and say there, hector's dead: there is a word will priam turn to stone; make wells and niobes of the maids and wives, cold statues of the youth, and, in a word, scare troy out of itself. but, march away: hector is dead; there is no more to say. stay yet. you vile abominable tents, thus proudly pight upon our phrygian plains, let titan rise as early as he dare, i'll through and through you! and, thou great-sized coward, no space of earth shall sunder our two hates: i'll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still, that mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy's thoughts. strike a free march to troy! with comfort go: hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe. [exeunt aeneas and trojans] [as troilus is going out, enter, from the other side, pandarus] pandarus but hear you, hear you! troilus hence, broker-lackey! ignomy and shame pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name! [exit] pandarus a goodly medicine for my aching bones! o world! world! world! thus is the poor agent despised! o traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill requited! why should our endeavour be so loved and the performance so loathed? what verse for it? what instance for it? let me see: full merrily the humble-bee doth sing, till he hath lost his honey and his sting; and being once subdued in armed tail, sweet honey and sweet notes together fail. good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted cloths. as many as be here of pander's hall, your eyes, half out, weep out at pandar's fall; or if you cannot weep, yet give some groans, though not for me, yet for your aching bones. brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade, some two months hence my will shall here be made: it should be now, but that my fear is this, some galled goose of winchester would hiss: till then i'll sweat and seek about for eases, and at that time bequeathe you my diseases. [exit] 1849 to my mother by edgar allan poe because i feel that, in the heavens above, the angels, whispering to one another, can find, among their burning terms of love, none so devotional as that of "mother," therefore by that dear name i long have called you you who are more than mother unto me, and fill my heart of hearts, where death installed you in setting my virginia's spirit free. my mothermy own mother, who died early, was but the mother of myself; but you are mother to the one i loved so dearly, and thus are dearer than the mother i knew by that infinity with which my wife was dearer to my soul than its soul-life. -the end. the internet wiretap electronic edition of new arabian nights by robert louis stevenson edinburgh edition 1895 prepared by john hamm <john_hamm@mindlink.bc.ca> this text is in the public domain, released november 1993 scanned with omnipage professional ocr software donated by caere corporation. to robert alan mowbray stevenson in grateful remembrance of their youth and their already old affection new arabian nights originally published, 'london,' june 8 to october 26, 1878. first collected edition: chatto and windus, london, 1882. the suicide club story of the young man with the cream tarts during his residence in london, the accomplished prince florizel of bohemia gained the affection of all classes by the seduction of his manner and by a well-considered generosity. he was a remarkable man even by what was known of him; and that was but a small part of what he actually did. although of a placid temper in ordinary circumstances, and accustomed to take the world with as much philosophy as any ploughman, the prince of bohemia was not without a taste for ways of life more adventurous and eccentric than that to which he was destined by his birth. now and then, when he fell into a low humour, when there was no laughable play to witness in any of the london theatres, and when the season of the year was unsuitable to those field sports in which he excelled all competitors, he would summon his confidant and master of the horse, colonel geraldine, and bid him prepare himself against an evening ramble. the master of the horse was a young officer of a brave and even temerarious disposition. he greeted the news with delight, and hastened to make ready. long practice and a varied acquaintance of life had given him a singular facility in disguise; he could adapt, not only his face and bearing, but his voice and almost his thoughts, to those of any rank, character, or nation; and in this way he diverted attention from the prince, and sometimes gained admission for the pair into strange societies. the civil authorities were never taken into the secret of these adventures; the imperturbable courage of the one and the ready invention and chivalrous devotion of the other had brought them through a score of dangerous passes; and they grew in confidence as time went on. one evening in march they were driven by a sharp fall of sleet into an oyster bar in the immediate neighbourhood of leicester square. colonel geraldine was dressed and painted to represent a person connected with the press in reduced circumstances; while the prince had, as usual, travestied his appearance by the addition of false whiskers and a pair of large adhesive eyebrows. these lent him a shaggy and weather-beaten air, which, for one of his urbanity, formed the most impenetrable disguise. thus equipped, the commander and his satellite sipped their brandy and soda in security. the bar was full of guests, male and female; but though more than one of these offered to fall into talk with our adventurers, none of them promised to grow interesting upon a nearer acquaintance. there was nothing present but the lees of london and the commonplace of disrespectability; and the prince had already fallen to yawning, and was beginning to grow weary of the whole excursion, when the swing-doors were pushed violently open, and a young man, followed by a couple of commissionaires, entered the bar. each of the commissionaires carried a large dish of cream tarts under a cover, which they at once removed; and the young man made the round of the company, and pressed these confections upon every one's acceptance with an exaggerated courtesy. sometimes his offer was laughingly accepted; sometimes it was firmly, or even harshly, rejected. in these latter cases the newcomer always ate the tart himself, with some more or less humorous commentary. at last he accosted prince florizel. "sir," said he, with a profound obeisance, proffering the tart at the same time between his thumb and forefinger," will you so far honour an entire stranger? i can answer for the quality of the pastry, having eaten two dozen and three of them myself since five o'clock." "i am in the habit," replied the prince, "of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered." "the spirit, sir," returned the young man, with another bow, "is one of mockery." "mockery!" repeated florizel. "and whom do you propose to mock?" "i am not here to expound my philosophy," replied the other, "but to distribute these cream tarts. if i mention that i heartily include myself in the ridicule of the transaction, i hope you will consider honour satisfied and condescend. if not, you will constrain me to eat my twenty-eighth, and i own to being weary of the exercise." "you touch me," said the prince, "and i have all the will in the world to rescue you from this dilemma, but upon one condition. if my friend and i eat your cakes-for which we have neither of us any natural inclination--we shall expect you to join us at supper by way of recompence." the young man seemed to reflect. "i have still several dozen upon hand," he said at last; "and that will make it necessary for me to visit several more bars before my great affair is concluded. this will take some time; and if you are hungry----" the prince interrupted him with a polite gesture. "my friend and i will accompany you," he said; "for we have already a deep interest in your very agreeable mode of passing an evening. and now that the preliminaries of peace are settled, allow me to sign the treaty for both." and the prince swallowed the tart with the best grace imaginable. "it is delicious," said he. "i perceive you are a connoisseur," replied the young man. colonel geraldine likewise did honour to the pastry; and every one in that bar having now either accepted or refused his delicacies, the young man with the cream tarts led the way to another and similar establishment. the two commissionaires, who seemed to have grown accustomed to their absurd employment, followed immediately after; and the prince and the colonel brought up the rear, arm in arm, and smiling to each other as they went. in this order the company visited two other taverns, where scenes were enacted of a like nature to that already described--some refusing, some accepting, the favours of this vagabond hospitality, and the young man himself eating each rejected tart. on leaving the third saloon the young man counted his store. there were but nine remaining, three in one tray and six in the other. "gentlemen," said he, addressing himself to his two new followers, "i am unwilling to delay your supper. i am positively sure you must be hungry. i feel that i owe you a special consideration. and on this great day for me, when i am closing a career of folly by my most conspicuously silly action, i wish to behave handsomely to all who give me countenance. gentlemen, you shall wait no longer. although my constitution is shattered by previous excesses, at the risk of my life i liquidate the suspensory condition." with these words he crushed the nine remaining tarts into his mouth, and swallowed them at a single movement each. then, turning to the commissionaires, he gave them a couple of sovereigns. "i have to thank you," said he, "for your extraordinary patience." and he dismissed them with a bow apiece. for some seconds he stood looking at the purse from which he had just paid his assistants, then, with a laugh, he tossed it into the middle of the street, and signified his readiness for supper. in a small french restaurant in soho, which had enjoyed an exaggerated reputation for some little while, but had already begun to be forgotten, and in a private room up two pair of stairs, the three companions made a very elegant supper, and drank three or four bottles of champagne, talking the while upon indifferent subjects. the young man was fluent and gay, but he laughed louder than was natural in a person of polite breeding; his hands trembled violently, and his voice took sudden and surprising inflections, which seemed to be independent of his will. the dessert had been cleared away, and all three had lighted their cigars, when the prince addressed him in these words:-"you will, i am sure, pardon my curiosity. what i have seen of you has greatly pleased but even more puzzled me. and though i should be loth to seem indiscreet, i must tell you that my friend and i are persons very well worthy to be intrusted with a secret. we have many of our own, which we are continually revealing to improper ears. and if, as i suppose, your story is a silly one, you need have no delicacy with us, who are two of the silliest men in england. my name is godall, theophilus godall; my friend is major alfred hammersmith--or at least such is the name by which he chooses to be known. we pass our lives entirely in the search for extravagant adventures; and there is no extravagance with which we are not capable of sympathy." "i like you, mr. godall," returned the young man; "you inspire me with a natural confidence; and i have not the slightest objection to your friend the major, whom i take to be a nobleman in masquerade. at least, i am sure he is no soldier." the colonel smiled at this compliment to the perfection of his art; and the young man went on in a more animated manner. "there is every reason why i should not tell you my story. perhaps that is just the reason why i am going to do so. at least, you seem so well prepared to hear a tale of silliness that i cannot find it in my heart to disappoint you. my name, in spite of your example, i shall keep to myself. my age is not essential to the narrative. i am descended from my ancestors by ordinary generation, and from them i inherited the very eligible human tenement which i still occupy and a fortune of three hundred pounds a year. i suppose they also handed on to me a hare-brain humour, which it has been my chief delight to indulge. i received a good education. i can play the violin nearly well enough to earn money in the orchestra of a penny gaff, but not quite. the same remark applies to the flute and the french horn. i learned enough of whist to lose about a hundred a year at that scientific game. my acquaintance with french was sufficient to enable me to squander money in paris with almost the same facility as in london. in short, i am a person full of manly accomplishments. i have had every sort of adventure, including a duel about nothing. only two months ago i met a young lady exactly suited to my taste in mind and body; i found my heart melt; i saw that i had come upon my fate at last, and was in the way to fall in love. but when i came to reckon up what remained to me of my capital, i found it amounted to something less than four hundred pounds! i ask you fairly--can a man who respects himself fall in love on four hundred pounds? i concluded, certainly not; left the presence of my charmer, and slightly accelerating my usual rate of expenditure, came this morning to my last eighty pounds. this i divided into two equal parts; forty i reserved for a particular purpose; the remaining forty i was to dissipate before the night. i have passed a very entertaining day, and played many farces besides that of the cream tarts which procured me the advantage of your acquaintance; for i was determined, as i told you, to bring a foolish career to a still more foolish conclusion; and when you saw me throw my purse into the street the forty pounds were at an end. now you know me as well as i know myself: a fool, but consistent in his folly; and, as i will ask you to believe, neither a whimperer nor a coward." from the whole tone of the young man's statement it was plain that he harboured very bitter and contemptuous thoughts about himself. his auditors were led to imagine that his love-affair was nearer his heart than he admitted, and that he had a design on his own life. the farce of the cream tarts began to have very much the air of a tragedy in disguise. "why, is this not odd, broke out geraldine, giving a look to prince florizel," that we three fellows should have met by the merest accident in so large a wilderness as london, and should be so nearly in the same condition?" "how?" cried the young man. "are you, too, ruined? is this supper a folly like my cream tarts? has the devil brought three of his own together for a last carouse?" "the devil, depend upon it, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing," returned prince florizel; "and i am so much touched by this coincidence, that, although we are not entirely in the same case, i am going to put an end to the disparity. let your heroic treatment of the last cream tarts be my example." so saying, the prince drew out his purse and took from it a small bundle of bank-notes. "you see, i was a week or so behind you, but i mean to catch you up and come neck-and-neck into the winningpost," he continued. "this," laying one of the notes upon the table, "will suffice for the bill. as for the rest----" he tossed them into the fire, and they went up the chimney in a single blaze. the young man tried to catch his arm, but as the table was between them his interference came too late. "unhappy man," he cried, "you should not have burned them all! you should have kept forty pounds." "forty pounds!" repeated the prince. "why, in heaven's name, forty pounds?" "why not eighty?" cried the colonel; "for to my certain knowledge there must have been a hundred in the bundle." "it was only forty pounds he needed," said the young man gloomily. "but without them there is no admission. the rule is strict. forty pounds for each. accursed life, where a man cannot even die without money!" the prince and the colonel exchanged glances. "explain yourself," said the latter. "i have still a pocket-book tolerably well lined, and i need not say how readily i should share my wealth with godall. but i must know to what end: you must certainly tell us what you mean." the young man seemed to awaken: he looked uneasily from one to the other, and his face flushed deeply. "you are not fooling me?" he asked. "you are indeed ruined men like me?" "indeed, i am for my part," replied the colonel. "and for mine," said the prince, "i have given you proof. who but a ruined man would throw his notes into the fire? the action speaks for itself." "a ruined man--yes," returned the other suspiciously, "or else a millionaire." "enough, sir," said the prince; "i have said so, and i am not accustomed to have my word remain in doubt." "ruined?" said the young man. "are you ruined, like me? are you, after a life of indulgence, come to such a pass that you can only indulge yourself in one thing more? are you"--he kept lowering his voice as he went on--"are you going to give yourself that last indulgence? are you going to avoid the consequences of your folly by the one infallible and easy path? are you going to give the slip to the sheriff's officers of conscience by the one open door?" suddenly he broke off and attempted to laugh. "here is your health!" he cried, emptying his glass, "and good-night to you, my merry ruined men." colonel geraldine caught him by the arm as he was about to rise. "you lack confidence in us," he said, "and you are wrong. to all your questions i make answer in the affirmative. but i am not so timid, and can speak the queen's english plainly. we too, like yourself, have had enough of life, and are determined to die. sooner or later, alone or together, we meant to seek out death and beard him where he lies ready. since we have met you, and your case is more pressing, let it be tonight--and at once--and, if you will, all three together. such a penniless trio," he cried, "should go arm in arm into the halls of pluto, and give each other some countenance among the shades!" geraldine had hit exactly on the manners and intonations that became the part he was playing. the prince himself was disturbed, and looked over at his confidant with a shade of doubt. as for the young man, the flush came back darkly into his cheek, and his eyes threw out a spark of light. "you are the men for me!" he cried, with an almost terrible gaiety. "shake hands upon the bargain!" (his hand was cold and wet). "you little know in what a company you will begin the march! you little know in what a happy moment for yourselves you partook of my cream tarts! i am only a unit, but i am a unit in an army. i know death's private door. i am one of his familiars, and can show you into eternity without ceremony and yet without scandal." they called upon him eagerly to explain his meaning. "can you muster eighty pounds between you?" he demanded. geraldine ostentatiously consulted his pocket-book, and replied in the affirmative. "fortunate beings!" cried the young man. "forty pounds is the entry-money of the suicide club." "the suicide club," said the prince, "why, what the devil is that?" "listen," said the young man; "this is the age of conveniences, and i have to tell you of the last perfection of the sort. we have affairs in different places; and hence railways were invented. railways separated us infallibly from our friends; and so telegraphs were made that we might communicate speedily at great distances. even in hotels we have lifts to spare us a climb of some hundred steps. now, we know that life is only a stage to play the fool upon as long as the part amuses us. there was one more convenience lacking to modern comfort: a decent, easy way to quit that stage; the back stairs to liberty; or, as i said this moment, death's private door. this, my two fellowrebels, is supplied by the suicide club. do not suppose that you and i are alone, or even exceptional, in the highly reasonable desire that we profess. a large number of our fellow-men, who have grown heartily sick of the performance in which they are expected to join daily, and all their lives long, are only kept from flight by one or two considerations. some have families who would be shocked, or even blamed, if the matter became public; others have a weakness at heart and recoil from the circumstances of death. that is, to some extent, my own experience. i cannot put a pistol to my head and draw the trigger; for something stronger than myself withholds the act; and although i loathe life, i have not strength enough in my body to take hold of death and be done with it. for such as i, and for all who desire to be out of the coil without posthumous scandal, the suicide club has been inaugurated. how this has been managed, what is its history, or what may be its ramifications in other lands, i am myself uninformed; and what i know of its constitution, i am not at liberty to communicate to you. to this extent, however, i am at your service. if you are truly tired of life, i will introduce you to-night to a meeting; and if not to-night, at least some time within the week, you will be easily relieved of your existences. it is now (consulting his watch) eleven; by half-past, at latest, we must leave this place; so that you have half an hour before you to consider my proposal. it is more serious than a cream tart," he added, with a smile; "and i suspect more palatable." "more serious, certainly," returned colonel geraldine; "and as it is so much more so, will you allow me five minutes' speech in private with my friend mr. godall?" "it is only fair," answered the young man. "if you will permit, i will retire." "you will be very obliging," said the colonel. as soon as the two were alone--"what," said prince florizel, "is the use of this confabulation, geraldine? i see you are flurried, whereas my mind is very tranquilly made up. i will see the end of this." "your highness," said the colonel, turning pale; "let me ask you to consider the importance of your life, not only to your friends, but to the public interest. 'if not to-night,' said this madman; but supposing that to-night some irreparable disaster were to overtake your highness's person, what, let me ask you, what would be my despair, and what the concern and disaster of a great nation?" "i will see the end of this," repeated the prince in his most deliberate tones; "and have the kindness, colonel geraldine, to remember and respect your word of honour as a gentleman. under no circumstances, recollect, nor without my special authority, are you to betray the incognito under which i choose to go abroad. these were my commands, which i now reiterate. and now," he added, "let me ask you to call for the bill." colonel geraldine bowed in submission; but he had a very white face as he summoned the young man of the cream tarts, and issued his directions to the waiter. the prince preserved his undisturbed demeanour, and described a palais-royal farce to the young suicide with great humour and gusto. he avoided the colonel's appealing looks without ostentation, and selected another cheroot with more than usual care. indeed, he was now the only man of the party who kept any command over his nerves. the bill was discharged, the prince giving the whole change of the note to the astonished waiter; and the three drove off in a four-wheeler. they were not long upon the way before the cab stopped at the entrance to a rather dark court. here all descended. after geraldine had paid the fare, the young man turned, and addressed prince florizel as follows:-"it is still time, mr. godall, to make good your escape into thraldom. and for you too, major hammersmith. reflect well before you take another step; and if your hearts say no--here are the crossroads." "lead on, sir," said the prince. "i am not the man to go back from a thing once said." "your coolness does me good," replied their guide. "i have never seen any one so unmoved at this conjuncture; and yet you are not the first whom i have escorted to this door. more than one of my friends has preceded me, where i knew i must shortly follow. but this is of no interest to you. wait me here for only a few moments; i shall return as soon as i have arranged the preliminaries of your introduction." and with that the young man, waving his hand to his companions, turned into the court, entered a doorway and disappeared. "of all our follies," said colonel geraldine in a low voice, "this is the wildest and most dangerous." "i perfectly believe so," returned the prince. "we have still," pursued the colonel, "a moment to ourselves. let me beseech your highness to profit by the opportunity and retire. the consequences of this step are so dark, and may be so grave, that i feel myself justified in pushing a little further than usual the liberty which your highness is so condescending as to allow me in private." "am i to understand that colonel geraldine is afraid?" asked his highness, taking his cheroot from his lips, and looking keenly into the other's face. "my fear is certainly not personal," replied the other proudly; "of that your highness may rest well assured." "i had supposed as much," returned the prince, with undisturbed good-humour; "but i was unwilling to remind you of the difference in our stations. no more--no more," he added, seeing geraldine about to apologise; "you stand excused." and he smoked placidly, leaning against a railing, until the young man returned. "well," he asked, "has our reception been arranged?" "follow me," was the reply. "the president will see you in the cabinet. and let me warn you to be frank in your answers. i have stood your guarantee; but the club requires a searching inquiry before admission; for the indiscretion of a single member would lead to the dispersion of the whole society for ever." the prince and geraldine put their heads together for a moment. "bear me out in this," said the one, and "bear me out in that," said the other; and by boldly taking up the characters of men with whom both were acquainted, they had come to an agreement in a twinkling, and were ready to follow their guide into the president's cabinet. there were no formidable obstacles to pass. the outer door stood open; the door of the cabinet was ajar; and there, in a small but very high apartment, the young man left them once more. "he will be here immediately," he said with a nod, as he disappeared. voices were audible in the cabinet through the foldingdoors which formed one end; and now and then the noise of a champagne cork, followed by a burst of laughter, intervened among the sounds of conversation. a single tall window looked out upon the river and the embankment; and by the disposition of the lights they judged themselves not far from charing cross station. the furniture was scanty, and the coverings worn to the thread; and there was nothing moveable except a handbell in the centre of a round table, and the hats and coats of a considerable party hung round the wall on pegs. "what sort of a den is this?" said geraldine. "that is what i have come to see," replied the prince. "if they keep live devils on the premises, the thing may grow amusing." just then the folding-door was opened no more than was necessary for the passage of a human body; and there entered at the same moment a louder buzz of talk, and the redoubtable president of the suicide club. the president was a man of fifty or upwards; large and rambling in his gait, with shaggy side-whiskers, a bald top to his head, and a veiled grey eye, which now and then emitted a twinkle. his mouth, which embraced a large cigar, he kept continually screwing round and round and from side to side, as he looked sagaciously and coldly at the strangers. he was dressed in light tweeds, with his neck very open in a striped shirtcollar; and carried a minute-book under one arm. "good-evening," said he, after he had closed the door behind him. "i am told you wish to speak with me." "we have a desire, sir, to join the suicide club," replied the colonel. the president rolled his cigar about in his mouth. "what is that?" he said abruptly. "pardon me," returned the colonel, "but i believe you are the person best qualified to give us information on that point." "i?" cried the president. "a suicide club? come, come! this is a frolic for all fools' day. i can make allowances for gentlemen who get merry in their liquor; but let there be an end to this." "call your club what you will," said the colonel; "you have some company behind these doors, and we insist on joining it." "sir," returned the president curtly, "you have made a mistake. this is a private house, and you must leave it instantly." the prince had remained quietly in his seat throughout this little colloquy; but now, when the colonel looked over to him, as much as to say, "take your answer and come away, for god's sake!" he drew his cheroot from his mouth, and spoke-"i have come here," said he, "upon the invitation of a friend of yours. he has doubtless informed you of my intention in thus intruding on your party. let me remind you that a person in my circumstances has exceedingly little to bind him, and is not at all likely to tolerate much rudeness. i am a very quiet man, as a usual thing; but, my dear sir, you are either going to oblige me in the little matter of which you are aware, or you shall very bitterly repent that you ever admitted me to your ante-chamber." the president laughed aloud. "that is the way to speak," said he. "you are a man who is a man. you know the way to my heart, and can do what you like with me. will you," he continued, addressing geraldine, "will you step aside for a few minutes? i shall finish first with your companion, and some of the club's formalities require to be fulfilled in private." with these words he opened the door of a small closet, into which he shut the colonel. "i believe in you," he said to florizel, as soon as they were alone; "but are you sure of your friend?" "not so sure as i am of myself, though he has more cogent reasons," answered florizel, "but sure enough to bring him here without alarm. he has had enough to cure the most tenacious man of life. he was cashiered the other day for cheating at cards." "a good reason, i daresay," replied the president; "at least we have another in the same case, and i feel sure of him. have you also been in the service, may i ask?" "i have," was the reply; "but i was too lazy--i left it early." "what is your reason for being tired of life?" pursued the president. "the same, as near as i can make out," answered the prince: "unadulterated laziness." the president started. "d--n it," said he, "you must have something better than that." "i have no more money," added florizel. "that is also a vexation, without doubt. it brings my sense of idleness to an acute point." the president rolled his cigar round in his mouth for some seconds, directing his gaze straight into the eyes of this unusual neophyte; but the prince supported his scrutiny with unabashed good temper. "if i had not a deal of experience," said the president at last, "i should turn you off. but i know the world; and this much any way, that the most frivolous excuses for a suicide are often the toughest to stand by. and when i downright like a man, as i do you, sir, i would rather strain the regulation than deny him." the prince and the colonel, one after the other, were subjected to a long and particular interrogatory: the prince alone; but geraldine in the presence of the prince, so that the president might observe the countenance of the one while the other was being warmly cross-examined. the result was satisfactory; and the president, after having booked a few details of each case, produced a form of oath to be accepted. nothing could be conceived more passive than the obedience promised, or more stringent than the terms by which the juror bound himself. the man who forfeited a pledge so awful could scarcely have a rag of honour or any of the consolations of religion left to him. florizel signed the document, but not without a shudder; the colonel followed his example with an air of great depression. then the president received the entry-money; and without more ado introduced the two friends into the smoking-room of the suicide club. the smoking-room of the suicide club was the same height as the cabinet into which it opened, but much larger, and papered from top to bottom with an imitation of oak wainscot. a large and cheerful fire and a number of gasjets illuminated the company. the prince and his follower made the number up to eighteen. most of the party were smoking, and drinking champagne; a feverish hilarity reigned, with sudden and rather ghastly pauses. "is this a full meeting?" asked the prince. "middling," said the president.--" by the way," he added, "if you have any money, it is usual to offer some champagne. it keeps up a good spirit, and is one of my own little perquisites." "hammersmith," said florizel, "i may leave the champagne to you." and with that he turned away and began to go round among the guests. accustomed to play the host in the highest circles, he charmed and dominated all whom he approached; there was something at once winning and authoritative in his address; and his extraordinary coolness gave him yet another distinction in this halfmaniacal society. as he went from one to another he kept both his eyes and ears open, and soon began to gain a general idea of the people among whom he found himself. as in all other places of resort, one type predominated: people in the prime of youth, with every show of intelligence and sensibility in their appearance, but with little promise of strength or the quality that makes success. few were much above thirty, and not a few were still in their teens. they stood, leaning on tables and shifting on their feet; sometimes they smoked extraordinarily fast, and sometimes they let their cigars go out; some talked well, but the conversation of others was plainly the result of nervous tension, and was equally without wit or purport. as each new bottle of champagne was opened, there was a manifest improvement in gaiety. only two were seated--one in a chair in the recess of the window, with his head hanging and his hands plunged deep into his trousers pockets, pale, visibly moist with perspiration, saying never a word, a very wreck of soul and body; the other sat on the divan close by the chimney, and attracted notice by a trenchant dissimilarity from all the rest. he was probably upwards of forty, but he looked fully ten years older; and florizel thought he had never seen a man more naturally hideous, nor one more ravaged by disease and ruinous excitements. he was no more than skin and bone, was partly paralysed, and wore spectacles of such unusual power that his eyes appeared through the glasses greatly magnified and distorted in shape. except the prince and the president, he was the only person in the room who preserved the composure of ordinary life. there was little decency among the members of the club. some boasted of the disgraceful actions, the consequences of which had reduced them to seek refuge in death; and the others listened without disapproval. there was a tacit understanding against moral judgments; and whoever passed the club doors enjoyed already some of the immunities of the tomb. they drank to each other's memories, and to those of notable suicides in the past. they compared and developed their different views of death--some declaring that it was no more than blackness and cessation; others full of a hope that that very night they should be scaling the stars and commercing with the mighty dead. "to the eternal memory of baron trenck, the type of suicides!" cried one. "he went out of a small cell into a smaller, that he might come forth again to freedom." "for my part," said a second, "i wish no more than a bandage for my eyes and cotton for my ears. only they have no cotton thick enough in this world." a third was for reading the mysteries of life in a future state; and a fourth professed that he would never have joined the club if he had not been induced to believe in mr. darwin. "i could not bear," said this remarkable suicide, "to be descended from an ape." altogether, the prince was disappointed by the bearing and conversation of the members. "it does not seem to me," he thought, "a matter for so much disturbance. if a man has made up his mind to kill himself, let him do it, in god's name, like a gentleman. this flutter and big talk is out of place." in the meanwhile colonel geraldine was a prey to the blackest apprehensions; the club and its rules were still a mystery, and he looked round the room for some one who should be able to set his mind at rest. in this survey his eye lighted on the paralytic person with the strong spectacles; and seeing him so exceedingly tranquil, he besought the president, who was going in and out of the room under a pressure of business, to present him to the gentleman on the divan. the functionary explained the needlessness of all such formalities within the club, but nevertheless presented mr. hammersmith to mr. malthus. mr. malthus looked at the colonel curiously, and then requested him to take a seat upon his right. "you are a newcomer," he said, "and wish information. you have come to the proper source. it is two years since i first visited this charming club." the colonel breathed again. if mr. malthus had frequented the place for two years there could be little danger for the prince in a single evening. but geraldine was none the less astonished, and began to suspect a mystification. "what?" cried he, "two years! i thought--but indeed i see i have been made the subject of a pleasantry." "by no means," replied mr. malthus mildly. "my case is peculiar. i am not, properly speaking, a suicide at all; but, as it were, an honorary member. i rarely visit the club twice in two months. my infirmity and the kindness of the president have procured me these little immunities, for which besides i pay at an advanced rate. even as it is, my luck has been extraordinary." "i am afraid," said the colonel, "that i must ask you to be more explicit. you must remember that i am still most imperfectly acquainted with the rules of the club." "an ordinary member who comes here in search of death, like yourself," replied the paralytic, "returns every evening until fortune favours him. he can even, if he is penniless, get board and lodging from the president: very fair, i believe, and clean, although, of course, not luxurious; that could hardly be, considering the exiguity (if i may so express myself) of the subscription. and then the president's company is a delicacy in itself." "indeed!" cried geraldine, "he had not greatly prepossessed me." "ah!" said mr. malthus, "you do not know the man: the drollest fellow! what stories! what cynicism! he knows life to admiration, and, between ourselves, is probably the most corrupt rogue in christendom." "and he also," asked the colonel, "is a permanency-like yourself, if i may say so without offence?" "indeed, he is a permanency in a very different sense from me," replied mr. malthus. "i have been graciously spared, but i must go at last. now he never plays. he shuffles and deals for the club, and makes the necessary arrangements. that man, my dear mr. hammersmith, is the very soul of ingenuity. for three years he has pursued in london his useful and, i think i may add, his artistic calling; and not so much as a whisper of suspicion has been once aroused. i believe him myself to be inspired. you doubtless remember the celebrated case, six months ago, of the gentleman who was accidentally poisoned in a chemist's shop? that was one of the least rich, one of the least racy, of his notions; but then, how simple! and how safe!" "you astound me," said the colonel. "was that unfortunate gentleman one of the----" he was about to say "victims"; but bethinking himself in time, he substituted--"members of the club?" in the same flash of thought it occurred to him that mr. malthus himself had not at all spoken in the tone of one who is in love with death; and he added hurriedly-"but i perceive i am still in the dark. you speak of shuffling and dealing; pray, for what end? and since you seem rather unwilling to die than otherwise, i must own that i cannot conceive what brings you here at all." "you say truly that you are in the dark," replied mr. malthus with more animation. "why, my dear sir, this club is the temple of intoxication. if my enfeebled health could support the excitement more often, you may depend upon it i should be more often here. it requires all the sense of duty engendered by a long habit of ill-health and careful regimen, to keep me from excess in this, which is, i may say, my last dissipation. i have tried them all, sir," he went on, laying his hand on geraldine's arm, "all, without exception, and i declare to you, upon my honour, there is not one of them that has not been grossly and untruthfully overrated. people trifle with love. now, i deny that love is a strong passion. fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living. envy me--envy me, sir," he added with a chuckle; "i am a coward!" geraldine could scarcely repress a movement of repulsion for this deplorable wretch; but he commanded himself with an effort, and continued his inquiries. "how, sir," he asked, "is the excitement so artfully prolonged? and where is there any element of uncertainty?" "i must tell you how the victim for every evening is selected," returned mr. malthus; "and not only the victim, but another member, who is to be the instrument in the club's hands, and death's high priest for that occasion." "good god!" said the colonel, "do they then kill each other?" "the trouble of suicide is removed in that way," returned malthus with a nod. "merciful heavens!" ejaculated the colonel, "and may you--may i--may the--my friend, i mean--may any of us be pitched upon this evening as the slayer of another man's body and immortal spirit? can such things be possible among men born of women? o infamy of infamies!" he was about to rise in his horror, when he caught the prince's eye. it was fixed upon him from across the room with a frowning and angry stare. and in a moment geraldine recovered his composure. "after all," he added, "why not? and since you say the game is interesting, _vogue la galere,_ i follow the club!" mr. malthus had keenly enjoyed the colonel's amazement and disgust. he had the vanity of wickedness; and it pleased him to see another man give way to a generous movement, while he felt himself, in his entire corruption, superior to such emotions. "you now, after your first moment of surprise," said he, "are in a position to appreciate the delights of our society. you can see how it combines the excitement of a gaming-table, a duel, and a roman amphitheatre. the pagans did well enough; i cordially admire the refinement of their minds; but it has been reserved for a christian country to attain this extreme, this quintessence, this absolute of poignancy. you will understand how vapid are all amusements to a man who has acquired a taste for this one. the game we play," he continued, "is one of extreme simplicity. a full pack--but i perceive you are about to see the thing in progress. will you lend me the help of your arm? i am unfortunately paralysed." indeed, just as mr. malthus was beginning his description, another pair of folding-doors was thrown open, and the whole club began to pass, not without some hurry, into the adjoining room. it was similar in every respect to the one from which it was entered, but somewhat differently furnished. the centre was occupied by a long green table, at which the president sat shuffling a pack of cards with great particularity. even with the stick and the colonel's arm, mr. malthus walked with so much difficulty that every one was seated before this pair and the prince, who had waited for them, entered the apartment; and, in consequence, the three took seats close together at the lower end of the board. "it is a pack of fifty-two," whispered mr. malthus. "watch for the ace of spades, which is the sign of death, and the ace of clubs, which designates the official of the night. happy, happy young men!" he added. "you have good eyes, and can follow the game. alas! i cannot tell an ace from a deuce across the table." and he proceeded to equip himself with a second pair of spectacles. "i must at least watch the faces," he explained. the colonel rapidly informed his friend of all that he had learned from the honorary member, and of the horrible alternative that lay before them. the prince was conscious of a deadly chill and a contraction about his heart; he swallowed with difficulty, and looked from side to side like a man in a maze. "one bold stroke," whispered the colonel, "and we may still escape." but the suggestion recalled the prince's spirits. "silence!" said he. "let me see that you can play like a gentleman for any stake, however serious." and he looked about him, once more to all appearance at his ease, although his heart beat thickly, and he was conscious of an unpleasant heat in his bosom. the members were all very quiet and intent; every one was pale, but none so pale as mr. malthus. his eyes protruded; his head kept nodding involuntarily upon his spine; his hands found their way, one after the other, to his mouth, where they made clutches at his tremulous and ashen lips. it was plain that the honorary member enjoyed his membership on very startling terms. "attention, gentlemen!" said the president. and he began slowly dealing the cards about the table in the reverse direction, pausing until each man had shown his card. nearly every one hesitated; and sometimes you would see a player's fingers stumble more than once before he could turn over the momentous slip of pasteboard. as the prince's turn grew nearer, he was conscious of a growing and almost suffocating excitement; but he had somewhat of the gambler's nature, and recognised almost with astonishment that there was a degree of pleasure in his sensations. the nine of clubs fell to his lot; the three of spades was dealt to geraldine; and the queen of hearts to mr. malthus, who was unable to suppress a sob of relief. the young man of the cream tarts almost immediately afterwards turned over the ace of clubs, and remained frozen with horror, the card still resting on his finger; he had not come there to kill, but to be killed; and the prince in his generous sympathy with his position almost forgot the peril that still hung over himself and his friend. the deal was coming round again, and still death's card had not come out. the players held their respiration, and only breathed by gasps. the prince received another club; geraldine had a diamond; but when mr. malthus turned up his card a horrible noise, like that of something breaking, issued from his mouth; and he rose from his seat and sat down again, with no sign of his paralysis. it was the ace of spades. the honorary member had trifled once too often with his terrors. conversation broke out again almost at once. the players relaxed their rigid attitudes, and began to rise from the table and stroll back by twos and threes into the smoking-room. the president stretched his arms and yawned, like a man who has finished his day's work. but mr. malthus sat in his place, with his head in his hands, and his hands upon the table, drunk and motionless--a thing stricken down. the prince and geraldine made their escape at once. in the cold night air their horror of what they had witnessed was redoubled. "alas!" cried the prince, "to be bound by an oath in such a matter! to allow this wholesale trade in murder to be continued with profit and impunity! if i but dared to forfeit my pledge!" "that is impossible for your highness," replied the colonel, "whose honour is the honour of bohemia. but i dare, and may with propriety, forfeit mine." "geraldine," said the prince, "if your honour suffers in any of the adventures into which you follow me, not only will i never pardon you, but--what i believe will much more sensibly affect you--i should never forgive myself." "i receive your highness's commands," replied the colonel. "shall we go from this accursed spot?" "yes," said the prince. "call a cab in heaven's name, and let me try to forget in slumber the memory of this night's disgrace." but it was notable that he carefully read the name of the court before he left it. the next morning, as soon as the prince was stirring, colonel geraldine brought him a daily newspaper, with the following paragraph marked:-"melancholy accident.--this morning, about two o'clock, mr. bartholomew malthus, of 16 chepstow place, westbourne grove, on his way home from a party at a friend's house, fell over the upper parapet in trafalgar square, fracturing his skull and breaking a leg and an arm. death was instantaneous. mr. malthus, accompanied by a friend, was engaged in looking for a cab at the time of the unfortunate occurrence. as mr. malthus was paralytic, it is thought that his fall may have been occasioned by another seizure. the unhappy gentleman was well known in the most respectable circles, and his loss will be widely and deeply deplored." "if ever a soul went straight to hell," said geraldine solemnly, "it was that paralytic man's." the prince buried his face in his hands, and remained silent. "i am almost rejoiced," continued the colonel, "to know that he is dead. but for our young man of the cream tarts i confess my heart bleeds." "geraldine," said the prince, raising his face, "that unhappy lad was last night as innocent as you and i; and this morning the guilt of blood is on his soul. when i think of the president, my heart grows sick within me. i do not know how it shall be done, but i shall have that scoundrel at my mercy as there is a god in heaven. what an experience, what a lesson, was that game of cards!" "one," said the colonel, "never to be repeated." the prince remained so long without replying that geraldine grew alarmed. "you cannot mean to return," he said. "you have suffered too much and seen too much horror already. the duties of your high position forbid the repetition of the hazard." "there is much in what you say," replied prince florizel, "and i am not altogether pleased with my own determination. alas! in the clothes of the greatest potentate what is there but a man? i never felt my weakness more acutely than now, geraldine, but it is stronger than i. can i cease to interest myself in the fortunes of the unhappy young man who supped with us some hours ago? can i leave the president to follow his nefarious career unwatched? can i begin an adventure so entrancing, and not follow it to an end? no, geraldine, you ask of the prince more than the man is able to perform. to-night, once more, we take our places at the table of the suicide club." colonel geraldine fell upon his knees. "will your highness take my life?" he cried. "it is his--his freely; but do not, o do not! let him ask me to countenance so terrible a risk." "colonel geraldine," replied the prince, with some haughtiness of manner, "your life is absolutely your own. i only looked for obedience; and when that is unwillingly rendered i shall look for that no longer. i add one word: your importunity in this affair has been sufficient." the master of the horse regained his feet at once. "your highness," he said, "may i be excused in my attendance this afternoon? i dare not, as an honourable man, venture a second time into that fatal house until i have perfectly ordered my affairs. your highness shall meet, i promise him, with no more opposition from the most devoted and grateful of his servants." "my dear geraldine," returned prince florizel, "i always regret when you oblige me to remember my rank. dispose of your day as you think fit, but be here before eleven in the same disguise." the club, on this second evening, was not so fully attended; and when geraldine and the prince arrived there were not above half a dozen persons in the smoking-room. his highness took the president aside and congratulated him warmly on the demise of mr. malthus. "i like," he said, "to meet with capacity, and certainly find much of it in you. your profession is of a very delicate nature, but i see you are well qualified to conduct it with success and secrecy." the president was somewhat affected by these compliments from one of his highness's superior bearing. he acknowledged them almost with humility. "poor malthy!" he added, "i shall hardly know the club without him. the most of my patrons are boys, sir, and poetical boys, who are not much company for me. not but what malthy had some poetry too; but it was of a kind that i could understand." "i can readily imagine you should find yourself in sympathy with mr. malthus," returned the prince. "he struck me as a man of a very original disposition." the young man of the cream tarts was in the room, but painfully depressed and silent. his late companions sought in vain to lead him into conversation. "how bitterly i wish," he cried, "that i had never brought you to this infamous abode! begone, while you are clean-handed. if you could have heard the old man scream as he fell, and the noise of his bones upon the pavement! wish me, if you have any kindness to so fallen a being--wish the ace of spades for me to-night!" a few more members dropped in as the evening went on, but the club did not muster more than the devil's dozen when they took their places at the table. the prince was again conscious of a certain joy in his alarms; but he was astonished to see geraldine so much more selfpossessed than on the night before. "it is extraordinary," thought the prince, "that a will, made or unmade, should so greatly influence a young man's spirit." "attention, gentlemen!" said the president, and he began to deal. three times the cards went all round the table, and neither of the marked cards had yet fallen from his hand. the excitement as he began the fourth distribution was overwhelming. there were just cards enough to go once more entirely round. the prince, who sat second from the dealer's left, would receive, in the reverse mode of dealing practised at the club, the second last card. the third player turned up a black ace--it was the ace of clubs. the next received a diamond, the next a heart, and so on, but the ace of spades was still undelivered. at last geraldine, who sat upon the prince's left, turned his card; it was an ace, but the ace of hearts. when prince florizel saw his fate upon the table in front of him, his heart stood still. he was a brave man, but the sweat poured off his face. there were exactly fifty chances out of a hundred that he was doomed. he reversed the card; it was the ace of spades. a loud roaring filled his brain, and the table swam before his eyes. he heard the player on his right break into a fit of laughter that sounded between mirth and disappointment; he saw the company rapidly dispersing, but his mind was full of other thoughts. he recognised how foolish, how criminal, had been his conduct. in perfect health, in the prime of his years, the heir to a throne, he had gambled away his future and that of a brave and loyal country. "god," he cried, "god forgive me!" and with that the confusion of his senses passed away, and he regained his self-possession in a moment. to his surprise geraldine had disappeared. there was no one in the card-room but his destined butcher consulting with the president, and the young man of the cream tarts, who slipped up to the prince and whispered in his ear-"i would give a million, if i had it, for your luck." his highness could not help reflecting, as the young man departed, that he would have sold his opportunity for a much more moderate sum. the whispered conference now came to an end. the holder of the ace of clubs left the room with a look of intelligence, and the president, approaching the unfortunate prince, proffered him his hand. "i am pleased to have met you, sir," said he, "and pleased to have been in a position to do you this trifling service. at least you cannot complain of delay. on the second evening--what a stroke of luck!" the prince endeavoured in vain to articulate something in response, but his mouth was dry and his tongue seemed paralysed. "you feel a little sickish?" asked the president, with some show of solicitude. "most gentlemen do. will you take a little brandy?" the prince signified in the affirmative, and the other immediately filled some of the spirit into a tumbler. "poor old malthy!" ejaculated the president, as the prince drained the glass. "he drank near upon a pint, and little enough good it seemed to do him!" "i am more amenable to treatment," said the prince, a good deal revived. "i am my own man again at once, as you perceive. and so let me ask you, what are my directions?" "you will proceed along the strand in the direction of the city, and on the left-hand pavement, until you meet the gentleman who has just left the room. he will continue your instructions, and him you will have the kindness to obey; the authority of the club is vested in his person for the night. and now," added the president, "i wish you a pleasant walk." florizel acknowledged the salutation rather awkwardly, and took his leave. he passed through the smoking-room, where the bulk of the players were still consuming champagne, some of which he had himself ordered and paid for; and he was surprised to find himself cursing them in his heart. he put on his hat and greatcoat in the cabinet, and selected his umbrella from a corner. the familiarity of these acts, and the thought that he was about them for the last time, betrayed him into a fit of laughter which sounded unpleasantly in his own ears. he conceived a reluctance to leave the cabinet, and turned instead to the window. the sight of the lamps and the darkness recalled him to himself. "come, come, i must be a man," he thought, "and tear myself away." at the corner of box court three men fell upon prince florizel, and he was unceremoniously thrust into a carriage, which at once drove rapidly away. there was already an occupant. "will your highness pardon my zeal?" said a well-known voice. the prince threw himself upon the colonel's neck in a passion of relief. "how can i ever thank you?" he cried. "and how was this effected?" although he had been willing to march upon his doom, he was overjoyed to yield to friendly violence and return once more to life and hope. "you can thank me effectually enough," replied the colonel, "by avoiding all such dangers in the future. and as for your second question, all has been managed by the simplest means. i arranged this afternoon with a celebrated detective. secrecy has been promised and paid for. your own servants have been principally engaged in the affair. the house in box court has been surrounded since nightfall, and this, which is one of your own carriages, has been awaiting you for nearly an hour." "and the miserable creature who was to have slain me-what of him?" inquired the prince. "he was pinioned as he left the club," replied the colonel, "and now awaits your sentence at the palace, where he will soon be joined by his accomplices." "geraldine," said the prince, "you have saved me against my explicit orders, and you have done well. i owe you not only my life, but a lesson; and i should be unworthy of my rank if i did not show myself grateful to my teacher. let it be yours to choose the manner." there was a pause, during which the carriage continued to speed through the streets, and the two men were each buried in his own reflections. the silence was broken by colonel geraldine-"your highness," said he, "has by this time a considerable body of prisoners. there is at least one criminal among the number to whom justice should be dealt. our oath forbids us all recourse of law; and discretion would forbid it equally if the oath were loosened. may i inquire your highness's intention?" "it is decided," answered florizel; "the president must fall in duel. it only remains to choose his adversary." "your highness has permitted me to name my own recompence," said the colonel. "will he permit me to ask the appointment of my brother? it is an honourable post, but i dare assure your highness that the lad will acquit himself with credit." "you ask me an ungracious favour," said the prince, "but i must refuse you nothing." the colonel kissed his hand with the greatest affection, and at that moment the carriage rolled under the archway of the prince's splendid residence. an hour after, florizel in his official robes, and covered with all the orders of bohemia, received the members of the suicide club. "foolish and wicked men," said he, "as many of you as have been driven into this strait by the lack of fortune shall receive employment and remuneration from my officers. those who suffer under a sense of guilt must have recourse to a higher and more generous potentate than i. i feel pity for all of you, deeper than you can imagine; to-morrow you shall tell me your stories; and as you answer more frankly, i shall be the more able to remedy your misfortunes.--as for you," he added, turning to the president, "i should only offend a person of your parts by any offer of assistance; but i have instead a piece of diversion to propose to you. here," laying his hand on the shoulder of colonel geraldine's young brother, "is an officer of mine who desires to make a little tour upon the continent; and i ask you, as a favour, to accompany him on this excursion. do you," he went on, changing his tone, "do you shoot well with the pistol? because you may have need of that accomplishment. when two men go travelling together, it is best to be prepared for all. let me add that, if by any chance you should lose young mr. geraldine upon the way, i shall always have another member of my household to place at your disposal; and i am known, mr. president, to have long eyesight and as long an arm." with these words, said with much sternness, the prince concluded his address. next morning the members of the club were suitably provided for by his munificence, and the president set forth upon his travels, under the supervision of mr. geraldine, and a pair of faithful and adroit lackeys, well trained in the prince's household. not content with this, discreet agents were put in possession of the house in box court, and all letters or visitors for the suicide club or its officials were to be examined by prince florizel in person. here (says my arabian author) ends the story of the young man with the cream tarts, who is now a comfortable householder in wigmore street, cavendish square. the number, for obvious reasons, i suppress. those who care to pursue the adventures of prince florizel and the president of the suicide club may read the story of the physician and the saratoga trunk. mr. silas q. scuddamore was a young american of a simple and harmless disposition, which was the more to his credit as he came from new england--a quarter of the new world not precisely famous for those qualities. although he was exceedingly rich, he kept a note of all his expenses in a little paper pocket-book; and he had chosen to study the attractions of paris from the seventh story of what is called a furnished hotel in the latin quarter. there was a great deal of habit in his penuriousness; and his virtue, which was very remarkable among his associates, was principally founded upon diffidence and youth. the next room to his was inhabited by a lady, very attractive in her air and very elegant in toilette, whom, on his first arrival, he had taken for a countess. in course of time he had learned that she was known by the name of madame zephyrine, and that whatever station she occupied in life it was not that of a person of title. madame zephyrine, probably in the hope of enchanting the young american, used to flaunt by him on the stairs with a civil inclination, a word of course, and a knock-down look out of her black eyes, and disappear in a rustle of silk, and with the revelation of an admirable foot and ankle. but these advances, so far from encouraging mr. scuddamore, plunged him into the depths of depression and bashfulness. she had come to him several times for a light, or to apologise for the imaginary depredations of her poodle; but his mouth was closed in the presence of so superior a being, his french promptly left him, and he could only stare and stammer until she was gone. the slenderness of their intercourse did not prevent him from throwing out insinuations of a very glorious order when he was safely alone with a few males. the room on the other side of the american's--for there were three rooms on a floor in the hotel---was tenanted by an old english physician of rather doubtful reputation. dr. noel, for that was his name, had been forced to leave london, where he enjoyed a large and increasing practice; and it was hinted that the police had been the instigators of this change of scene. at least he, who had made something of a figure in earlier life, now dwelt in the latin quarter in great simplicity and solitude, and devoted much of his time to study. mr. scuddamore had made his acquaintance, and the pair would now and then dine together frugally in a restaurant across the street. silas q. scuddamore had many little vices of the more respectable order, and was not restrained by delicacy from indulging them in many rather doubtful ways. chief among his foibles stood curiosity. he was a born gossip; and life, and especially those parts of it in which he had no experience, interested him to the degree of passion. he was a pert, invincible questioner, pushing his inquiries with equal pertinacity and indiscretion; he had been observed, when he took a letter to the post, to weigh it in his hand, to turn it over and over, and to study the address with care; and when he found a flaw in the partition between his room and madame zephyrine's, instead of filling it up, he enlarged and improved the opening, and made use of it as a spy-hole on his neighbour's affairs. one day, in the end of march, his curiosity growing as it was indulged, he enlarged the hole a little further, so that he might command another corner of the room. that evening, when he went as usual to inspect madame zephyrine's movements, he was astonished to find the aperture obscured in an odd manner on the other side, and still more abashed when the obstacle was suddenly withdrawn and a titter of laughter reached his ears. some of the plaster had evidently betrayed the secret of his spy-hole, and his neighbour had been returning the compliment in kind. mr. scuddamore was moved to a very acute feeling of annoyance; he condemned madame zephyrine unmercifully: he even blamed himself; but when he found, next day, that she had taken no means to baulk him of his favourite pastime, he continued to profit by her carelessness, and gratify his idle curiosity. that next day madame zephyrine received a long visit from a tall, loosely-built man of fifty or upwards, whom silas had not hitherto seen. his tweed suit and coloured shirt, no less than his shaggy side-whiskers, identified him as a britisher, and his dull grey eye affected silas with a sense of cold. he kept screwing his mouth from side to side and round and round during the whole colloquy, which was carried on in whispers. more than once it seemed to the young new-englander as if their gestures indicated his own apartment; but the only thing definite he could gather by the most scrupulous attention was this remark, made by the englishman in a somewhat higher key, as if in answer to some reluctance or opposition-"i have studied his taste to a nicety, and i tell you again and again you are the only woman of the sort that i can lay my hands on." in answer to this, madame zephyrine sighed, and appeared by a gesture to resign herself, like one yielding to unqualified authority. that afternoon the observatory was finally blinded, a wardrobe having been drawn in front of it upon the other side; and while silas was still lamenting over his misfortune, which he attributed to the britisher's malign suggestion, the _concierge_ brought him up a letter in a female handwriting. it was conceived in french of no very rigorous orthography, bore no signature, and in the most encouraging terms invited the young american to be present in a certain part of the bullier ball at eleven o'clock that night. curiosity and timidity fought a long battle in his heart; sometimes he was all virtue, sometimes all fire and daring; and the result of it was that, long before ten, mr. silas q. scuddamore presented himself in unimpeachable attire at the door of the bullier ball rooms, and paid his entry-money with a sense of reckless devilry that was not without its charm. it was carnival time, and the ball was very full and noisy. the lights and the crowd at first rather abashed our young adventurer, and then, mounting to his brain with a sort of intoxication, put him in possession of more than his own share of manhood. he felt ready to face the devil, and strutted in the ball-room with the swagger of a cavalier. while he was thus parading, he became aware of madame zephyrine and her britisher in conference behind a pillar. the cat-like spirit of eavesdropping overcame him at once. he stole nearer and nearer on the couple from behind, until he was within earshot. "that is the man," the britisher was saying; "there with the long blond hair--speaking to a girl in green." silas identified a very handsome young fellow of small stature, who was plainly the object of this designation. "it is well," said madame zephyrine. "i shall do my utmost. but, remember, the best of us may fail in such a matter." "tut!" returned her companion; "i answer for the result. have i not chosen you from thirty? go; but be wary of the prince. i cannot think what cursed accident has brought him here to-night. as if there were not a dozen balls in paris better worth his notice than this riot of students and counter-jumpers! see him where he sits, more like a reigning emperor at home than a prince upon his holidays!" silas was again lucky. he observed a person of rather a full build, strikingly handsome, and of a very stately and courteous demeanour, seated at table with another handsome young man, several years his junior, who addressed him with conspicuous deference. the name of prince struck gratefully on silas's republican hearing, and the aspect of the person to whom that name was applied exercised its usual charm upon his mind. he left madame zephyrine and her englishman to take care of each other, and threading his way through the assembly, approached the table which the prince and his confidant had honoured with their choice. "i tell you, geraldine," the former was saying, "the action is madness. yourself (i am glad to remember it) chose your brother for this perilous service, and you are bound in duty to have a guard upon his conduct. he has consented to delay so many days in paris; that was already an imprudence, considering the character of the man he has to deal with; but now, when he is within eight-and-forty hours of his departure, when he is within two or three days of the decisive trial, i ask you, is this a place for him to spend his time? he should be in a gallery at practice; he should be sleeping long hours and taking moderate exercise on foot; he should be on a rigorous diet, without white wines or brandy. does the dog imagine we are all playing comedy? the thing is deadly earnest, geraldine." "i know the lad too well to interfere," replied colonel geraldine, "and well enough not to be alarmed. he is more cautious than you fancy, and of an indomitable spirit. if it had been a woman i should not say so much, but i trust the president to him and the two valets without an instant's apprehension." "i am gratified to hear you say so," replied the prince; "but my mind is not at rest. these servants are well-trained spies, and already has not this miscreant succeeded three times in eluding their observation and spending several hours on end in private, and most likely dangerous, affairs? an amateur might have lost him by accident, but if rudolph and jerome were thrown off the scent, it must have been done on purpose, and by a man who had a cogent reason and exceptional resources." "i believe the question is now one between my brother and myself," replied geraldine, with a shade of offence in his tone. "i permit it to be so, colonel geraldine," returned prince florizel. "perhaps, for that very reason, you should be all the more ready to accept my counsels. but enough. that girl in yellow dances well." and the talk veered into the ordinary topics of a paris ball-room in the carnival. silas remembered where he was, and that the hour was already near at hand when he ought to be upon the scene of his assignation. the more he reflected the less he liked the prospect, and as at that moment an eddy in the crowd began to draw him in the direction of the door, he suffered it to carry him away without resistance. the eddy stranded him in a corner under the gallery, where his ear was immediately struck with the voice of madame zephyrine. she was speaking in french with the young man of the blond locks who had been pointed out by the strange britisher not half an hour before. "i have a character at stake," she said, "or i would put no other condition than my heart recommends. but you have only to say so much to the porter, and he will let you go by without a word." "but why this talk of debt?" objected her companion. "heavens!" said she, "do you think i do not understand my own hotel?" and she went by, clinging affectionately to her companion's arm. this put silas in mind of his billet. "ten minutes hence," thought he, "and i may be walking with as beautiful a woman as that, and even better dressed--perhaps a real lady, possibly a woman of title." and then he remembered the spelling, and was a little downcast. "but it may have been written by her maid," he imagined. the clock was only a few minutes from the hour, and this immediate proximity set his heart beating at a curious and rather disagreeable speed. he reflected with relief that he was in no way bound to put in an appearance. virtue and cowardice were together, and he made once more for the door, but this time of his own accord, and battling against the stream of people which was now moving in a contrary direction. perhaps this prolonged resistance wearied him, or perhaps he was in that frame of mind when merely to continue in the same determination for a certain number of minutes produces a reaction and a different purpose. certainly, at least, he wheeled about for a third time, and did not stop until he had found a place of concealment within a few yards of the appointed place. here he went through an agony of spirit, in which he several times prayed to god for help, for silas had been devoutly educated. he had now not the least inclination for the meeting; nothing kept him from flight but a silly fear lest he should be thought unmanly; but this was so powerful that it kept head against all other motives; and although it could not decide him to advance, prevented him from definitely running away. at last the clock indicated ten minutes past the hour. young scuddamore's spirit began to rise; he peered round the corner and saw no one at the place of meeting; doubtless his unknown correspondent had wearied and gone away. he became as bold as he had formerly been timid. it seemed to him that if he came at all to the appointment, however late, he was clear from the charge of cowardice. nay, now he began to suspect a hoax, and actually complimented himself on his shrewdness in having suspected and out-manoeuvred his mystifiers. so very idle a thing is a boy's mind! armed with these reflections, he advanced boldly from his corner; but he had not taken above a couple of steps before a hand was laid upon his arm. he turned and beheld a lady cast in a very large mould and with somewhat stately features, but bearing no mark of severity in her looks. "i see that you are a very self-confident lady-killer," said she; "for you make yourself expected. but i was determined to meet you. when a woman has once so far forgotten herself as to make the first advance, she has long ago left behind her all considerations of petty pride." silas was overwhelmed by the size and attractions of his correspondent and the suddenness with which she had fallen upon him. but she soon set him at his ease. she was very towardly and lenient in her behaviour; she led him on to make pleasantries, and then applauded him to the echo; and in a very short time, between blandishments and a liberal exhibition of warm brandy, she had not only induced him to fancy himself in love, but to declare his passion with the greatest vehemence. "alas!" she said; "i do not know whether i ought not to deplore this moment, great as is the pleasure you give me by your words. hitherto i was alone to suffer; now, poor boy, there will be two. i am not my own mistress. i dare not ask you to visit me at my own house, for i am watched by jealous eyes. let me see," she added; "i am older than you, although so much weaker; and while i trust in your courage and determination, i must employ my own knowledge of the world for our mutual benefit. where do you live?" he told her that he lodged in a furnished hotel, and named the street and number. she seemed to reflect for some minutes, with an effort of mind. "i see," she said at last. "you will be faithful and obedient, will you not?" silas assured her eagerly of his fidelity. "to-morrow night, then," she continued, with an encouraging smile, "you must remain at home all the evening; and if any friends should visit you, dismiss them at once on any pretext that most readily presents itself. your door is probably shut by ten?" she asked. "by eleven," answered silas. "at a quarter past eleven," pursued the lady, "leave the house. merely cry for the door to be opened, and be sure you fall into no talk with the porter, as that might ruin everything. go straight to the corner where the luxembourg gardens join the boulevard; there you will find me waiting you. i trust you to follow my advice from point to point: and remember, if you fail me in only one particular, you will bring the sharpest trouble on a woman whose only fault is to have seen and loved you." "i cannot see the use of all these instructions," said silas. "i believe you are already beginning to treat me as a master," she cried, tapping him with her fan upon the arm. "patience, patience! that should come in time. a woman loves to be obeyed at first, although afterwards she finds her pleasure in obeying. do as i ask you, for heaven's sake, or i will answer for nothing. indeed, now i think of it," she added with the manner of one who has just seen further into a difficulty, "i find a better plan of keeping importunate visitors away. tell the porter to admit no one for you, except a person who may come that night to claim a debt; and speak with some feeling, as though you feared the interview, so that he may take your words in earnest." "i think you may trust me to protect myself against intruders," he said, not without a little pique. "that is how i should prefer the thing arranged," she answered coldly. "i know you men; you think nothing of a woman's reputation." silas blushed and somewhat hung his head; for the scheme he had in view had involved a little vainglorying before his acquaintances. "above all," she added, "do not speak to the porter as you come out." "and why?" said he. "of all your instructions, that seems to me the least important." "you at first doubted the wisdom of some of the others, which you now see to be very necessary," she replied. "believe me, this also has its uses; in time you will see them; and what am i to think of your affection, if you refuse me such trifles at our first interview?" silas confounded himself in explanations and apologies; in the middle of these she looked up at the clock and clapped her hands together with a suppressed scream. "heavens!" she cried, "is it so late? i have not an instant to lose. alas, we poor women, what slaves we are! what have i not risked for you already?" and after repeating her directions, which she artfully combined with caresses and the most abandoned looks, she bade him farewell and disappeared among the crowd. the whole of the next day silas was filled with a sense of great importance; he was now sure she was a countess; and when evening came he minutely obeyed her orders and was at the corner of the luxembourg gardens by the hour appointed. no one was there. he waited nearly half an hour, looking in the face of every one who passed or loitered near the spot; he even visited the neighbouring corners of the boulevard and made a complete circuit of the garden railings; but there was no beautiful countess to throw herself into his arms. at last, and most reluctantly, he began to retrace his steps towards his hotel. on the way he remembered the words he had heard pass between madame zephyrine and the blond young man, and they gave him an indefinite uneasiness. "it appears," he reflected, "that every one has to tell lies to our porter." he rang the bell, the door opened before him, and the porter in his bed-clothes came to offer him a light. "has he gone?" inquired the porter. "he? whom do you mean?" asked silas, somewhat sharply, for he was irritated by his disappointment. "i did not notice him go out," continued the porter, "but i trust you paid him. we do not care, in this house, to have lodgers who cannot meet their liabilities." "what the devil do you mean?" demanded silas rudely. "i cannot understand a word of this farrago." "the short, blond young man who came for his debt," returned the other. "him it is i mean. who else should it be, when i had your orders to admit no one else?" "why, good god! of course he never came," retorted silas. "i believe what i believe," returned the porter, putting his tongue into his cheek with a most roguish air. "you are an insolent scoundrel," cried silas, and, feeling that he had made a ridiculous exhibition of asperity, and at the same time bewildered by a dozen alarms, he turned and began to run upstairs. "do you not want a light, then?" cried the porter. but silas only hurried the faster, and did not pause until he had reached the seventh landing and stood in front of his own door. there he waited a moment to recover his breath, assailed by the worst forebodings, and almost dreading to enter the room. when at last he did so he was relieved to find it dark, and to all appearance untenanted. he drew a long breath. here he was, home again in safety, and this should be his last folly as certainly as it had been his first. the matches stood on a little table by the bed, and he began to grope his way in that direction. as he moved, his apprehensions grew upon him once more, and he was pleased, when his foot encountered an obstacle, to find it nothing more alarming than a chair. at last he touched curtains. from the position of the window, which was faintly visible, he knew he must be at the foot of the bed, and had only to feel his way along it in order to reach the table in question. he lowered his hand, but what it touched was not simply a counterpane--it was a counterpane with something underneath it like the outline of a human leg. silas withdrew his arm and stood a moment petrified. "what, what," he thought, "can this betoken?" he listened intently, but there was no sound of breathing. once more, with a great effort, he reached out the end of his finger to the spot he had already touched; but this time he leaped back half a yard, and stood shivering and fixed with terror. there was something in his bed. what it was he knew not, but there was something there. it was some seconds before he could move. then, guided by an instinct, he fell straight upon the matches, and, keeping his back towards the bed, lighted a candle. as soon as the flame had kindled, he turned slowly round and looked for what he feared to see. sure enough, there was the worst of his imaginations realised. the coverlid was drawn carefully up over the pillow, but it moulded the outline of a human body lying motionless; and when he dashed forward and flung aside the sheets, he beheld the blond young man whom he had seen in the bullier ball the night before, his eyes open and without speculation, his face swollen and blackened, and a thin stream of blood trickling from his nostrils. silas uttered a long, tremulous wail, dropped the candle, and fell on his knees beside the bed. silas was awakened from the stupor into which his terrible discovery had plunged him, by a prolonged but discreet tapping at the door. it took him some seconds to remember his position; and when he hastened to prevent any one from entering it was already too late. dr. noel, in a tall nightcap, carrying a lamp which lighted up his long white countenance, sidling in his gait, and peering and cocking his head like some sort of bird, pushed the door slowly open, and advanced into the middle of the room. "i thought i heard a cry," began the doctor, "and fearing you might be unwell i did not hesitate to offer this intrusion." silas, with a flushed face and a fearful beating heart, kept between the doctor and the bed; but he found no voice to answer. "you are in the dark," pursued the doctor; "and yet you have not even begun to prepare for rest. you will not easily persuade me against my own eyesight; and your face declares most eloquently that you require either a friend or a physician--which is it to be? let me feel your pulse, for that is often a just reporter of the heart." he advanced to silas, who still retreated before him backwards, and sought to take him by the wrist; but the strain on the young american's nerves had become too great for endurance. he avoided the doctor with a febrile movement, and, throwing himself upon the floor, burst into a flood of weeping. as soon as dr. noel perceived the dead man in the bed his face darkened; and hurrying back to the door, which he had left ajar, he hastily closed and double-locked it. "up!" he cried, addressing silas in strident tones; "this is no time for weeping. what have you done? how came this body in your room? speak freely to one who may be helpful. do you imagine i would ruin you? do you think this piece of dead flesh on your pillow can alter in any degree the sympathy with which you have inspired me? credulous youth, the horror with which blind and unjust law regards an action never attaches to the doer in the eyes of those who love him; and if i saw the friend of my heart return to me out of seas of blood he would be in no way changed in my affection. raise yourself," he said; "good and ill are a chimera; there is nought in life except destiny, and however you may be circumstanced there is one at your side who will help you to the last." thus encouraged, silas gathered himself together, and in a broken voice, and helped out by the doctor's interrogations, contrived at last to put him in possession of the facts. but the conversation between the prince and geraldine he altogether omitted, as he had understood little of its purport, and had no idea that it was in any way related to his own misadventure. "alas!" cried dr. noel, "i am much abused, or you have fallen innocently into the most dangerous hands in europe. poor boy, what a pit has been dug for your simplicity! into what a deadly peril have your unwary feet been conducted! this man," he said, "this englishman, whom you twice saw, and whom i suspect to be the soul of the contrivance, can you describe him? was he young or old? tall or short?" but silas, who, for all his curiosity, had not a seeing eye in his head, was able to supply nothing but meagre generalities, which it was impossible to recognise. "i would have it a piece of education in all schools!" cried the doctor angrily. "where is the use of eyesight and articulate speech if a man cannot observe and recollect the features of his enemy? i, who know all the gangs of europe, might have identified him, and gained new weapons for your defence. cultivate this art in future, my poor boy; you may find it of momentous service." "the future!" repeated silas. "what future is there left for me except the gallows?" "youth is but a cowardly season," returned the doctor; "and a man's own troubles look blacker than they are. i am old, and yet i never despair." "can i tell such a story to the police?" demanded silas. "assuredly not," replied the doctor. "from what i see already of the machination in which you have been involved, your case is desperate upon that side; and for the narrow eye of the authorities you are infallibly the guilty person. and remember that we only know a portion of the plot; and the same infamous contrivers have doubtless arranged many other circumstances which would be elicited by a police inquiry, and help to fix the guilt more certainly upon your innocence." "i am then lost, indeed!" cried silas. "i have not said so," answered dr. noel, "for i am a cautious man. "but look at this!" objected silas, pointing to the body. "here is this object in my bed: not to be explained, not to be disposed of, not to be regarded without horror." "horror?" replied the doctor. "no. when this sort of clock has run down, it is no more to me than an ingenious piece of mechanism, to be investigated with the bistoury. when blood is once cold and stagnant it is no longer human blood; when flesh is once dead it is no longer that flesh which we desire in our lovers and respect in our friends. the grace, the attraction, the terror, have all gone from it with the animating spirit. accustom yourself to look upon it with composure; for if my scheme is practicable you will have to live some days in constant proximity to that which now so greatly horrifies you." "your scheme?" cried silas; "what is that? tell me speedily, doctor; for i have scarcely courage enough to continue to exist." without replying, dr. noel turned towards the bed, and proceeded to examine the corpse. "quite dead," he murmured. "yes, as i had supposed, the pockets empty. yes, and the name cut off the shirt. their work has been done thoroughly and well. fortunately, he is of small stature." silas followed these words with an extreme anxiety. at last the doctor, his autopsy completed, took a chair and addressed the young american with a smile. "since i came into your room," said he, "although my ears and my tongue have been so busy, i have not suffered my eyes to remain idle. i noted a little while ago that you have there, in the corner, one of those monstrous constructions which your fellow-countrymen carry with them into all quarters of the globe--in a word, a saratoga trunk. until this moment i have never been able to conceive the utility of these erections; but then i began to have a glimmer. whether it was for convenience in the slave-trade, or to obviate the results of too ready an employment of the bowie-knife, i cannot bring myself to decide. but one thing i see plainly--the object of such a box is to contain a human body." "surely," cried silas, "surely this is not a time for jesting." "although i may express myself with some degree of pleasantry," replied the doctor, "the purport of my words is entirely serious. and the first thing we have to do, my young friend, is to empty your coffer of all that it contains." silas, obeying the authority of dr. noel, put himself at his disposition. the saratoga trunk was soon gutted of its contents, which made a considerable litter on the floor; and then--silas taking the heels and the doctor supporting the shoulders--the body of the murdered man was carried from the bed, and, after some difficulty, doubled up and inserted whole into the empty box. with an effort on the part of both, the lid was forced down upon this unusual baggage, and the trunk was locked and corded by the doctor's own hand, while silas disposed of what had been taken out between the closet and a chest of drawers. "now," said the doctor, "the first step has been taken on the way to your deliverance. to-morrow, or rather to-day, it must be your task to allay the suspicions of your porter, paying him all that you owe; while you may trust me to make the arrangements necessary to a safe conclusion. meantime, follow me to my room, where i shall give you a safe and powerful opiate, for, whatever you do, you must have rest." the next day was the longest in silas's memory; it seemed as if it would never be done. he denied himself to his friends, and sat in a corner with his eyes fixed upon the saratoga trunk in dismal contemplation. his own former indiscretions were now returned upon him in kind; for the observatory had been once more opened, and he was conscious of an almost continual study from madame zephyrine's apartment. so distressing did this become that he was at last obliged to block up the spyhole from his own side; and when he was thus secured from observation he spent a considerable portion of his time in contrite tears and prayer. late in the evening dr. noel entered the room carrying in his hand a pair of sealed envelopes without address, one somewhat bulky, and the other so slim as to seem without enclosure. "silas," he said, seating himself at the table, "the time has now come for me to explain my plan for your salvation. to-morrow morning, at an early hour, prince florizel of bohemia returns to london, after having diverted himself for a few days with the parisian carnival. it was my fortune, a good while ago, to do colonel geraldine, his master of the horse, one of those services, so common in my profession, which are never forgotten upon either side. i have no need to explain to you the nature of the obligation under which he was laid; suffice it to say that i knew him ready to serve me in any practicable manner. now, it was necessary for you to gain london with your trunk unopened. to this the custom house seemed to oppose a fatal difficulty; but i bethought me that the baggage of so considerable a person as the prince, is, as a matter of courtesy, passed without examination by the officers of custom. i applied to colonel geraldine, and succeeded in obtaining a favourable answer. to-morrow, if you go before six to the hotel where the prince lodges, your baggage will be passed over as a part of his, and you yourself will make the journey as a member of his suite." "it seems to me, as you speak, that i have already seen both the prince and colonel geraldine; i even overheard some of their conversation the other evening at the bullier ball." "it is probable enough; for the prince loves to mix with all societies," replied the doctor. "once arrived in london," he pursued, your task is nearly ended. in this more bulky envelope i have given you a letter which i dare not address; but in the other you will find the designation of the house to which you must carry it along with your box, which will there be taken from you and not trouble you any more." "alas!" said silas, "i have every wish to believe you; but how is it possible? you open up to me a bright prospect, but, i ask you, is my mind capable of receiving so unlikely a solution? be more generous, and let me further understand your meaning." the doctor seemed painfully impressed. "boy," he answered, "you do not know how hard a thing you ask of me. but be it so. i am now inured to humiliation; and it would be strange if i refused you this, after having granted you so much. know, then, that although i now make so quiet an appearance-frugal, solitary, addicted to study--when i was younger, my name was once a rallying-cry among the most astute and dangerous spirits of london; and while i was outwardly an object for respect and consideration, my true power resided in the most secret, terrible, and criminal relations. it is to one of the persons who then obeyed me that i now address myself to deliver you from your burden. they were men of many different nations and dexterities, all bound together by a formidable oath, and working to the same purposes; the trade of the association was in murder; and i who speak to you, innocent as i appear, was the chieftain of this redoubtable crew." "what?" cried silas. "a murderer? and one with whom murder was a trade? can i take your hand? ought i so much as to accept your services? dark and criminal old man, would you make an accomplice of my youth and my distress?" the doctor bitterly laughed. "you are difficult to please, mr. scuddamore," said he, "but i now offer you your choice of company between the murdered man and the murderer. if your conscience is too nice to accept my aid, say so, and i will immediately leave you. thenceforward you can deal with your trunk and its belongings as best suits your upright conscience." "i own myself wrong," replied silas. "i should have remembered how generously you offered to shield me, even before i had convinced you of my innocence, and i continue to listen to your counsels with gratitude." "that is well," returned the doctor; "and i perceive you are beginning to learn some of the lessons of experience." "at the same time," resumed the new-englander, "as you confess yourself accustomed to this tragical business, and the people to whom you recommend me are your own former associates and friends, could you not yourself undertake the transport of the box, and rid me at once of its detested presence?" "upon my word," replied the doctor, "i admire you cordially. if you do not think i have already meddled sufficiently in your concerns, believe me, from my heart i think the contrary. take or leave my services as i offer them; and trouble me with no more words of gratitude, for i value your consideration even more lightly than i do your intellect. a time will come, if you should be spared to see a number of years in health of mind, when you will think differently of all this, and blush for your to-night's behaviour." so saying, the doctor arose from his chair, repeated his directions briefly and clearly, and departed from the room without permitting silas any time to answer. the next morning silas presented himself at the hotel, where he was politely received by colonel geraldine, and relieved, from that moment, of all immediate alarm about his trunk and its grisly contents. the journey passed over without much incident, although the young man was horrified to overhear the sailors and railway porters complaining among themselves about the unusual weight of the prince's baggage. silas travelled in a carriage with the valets, for prince florizel chose to be alone with his master of the horse. on board the steamer, however, silas attracted his highness's attention by the melancholy of his air and attitude as he stood gazing at the pile of baggage; for he was still full of disquietude about the future. "there is a young man," observed the prince, "who must have some cause for sorrow." "that," replied geraldine, "is the american for whom i obtained permission to travel with your suite." "you remind me that i have been remiss in courtesy," said prince florizel, and advancing to silas, he addressed him with the most exquisite condescension in these words:-"i was charmed, young sir, to be able to gratify the desire you made known to me through colonel geraldine. remember, if you please, that i shall be glad at any future time to lay you under a more serious obligation." and then he put some questions as to the political condition of america, which silas answered with sense and propriety. "you are still a young man," said the prince; "but i observe you to be very serious for your years. perhaps you allow your attention to be too much occupied with grave studies. but perhaps, on the other hand, i am myself indiscreet and touch upon a painful subject." "i have certainly cause to be the most miserable of men," said silas; "never has a more innocent person been more dismally abused." "i will not ask you for your confidence," returned prince florizel. "but do not forget that colonel geraldine's recommendation is an unfailing passport; and that i am not only willing, but possibly more able than many others, to do you a service." silas was delighted with the amiability of this great personage; but his mind soon returned upon its gloomy preoccupations; for not even the favour of a prince to a republican can discharge a brooding spirit of its cares. the train arrived at charing cross, where the officers of the revenue respected the baggage of prince florizel in the usual manner. the most elegant equipages were in waiting; and silas was driven, along with the rest, to the prince's residence. there colonel geraldine sought him out, and expressed himself pleased to have been of any service to a friend of the physician's, for whom he professed a great consideration. "i hope," he added, "that you will find none of your porcelain injured. special orders were given along the line to deal tenderly with the prince's effects." and then, directing the servants to place one of the carriages at the young gentleman's disposal, and at once to charge the saratoga trunk upon the dickey, the colonel shook hands and excused himself on account of his occupations in the princely household. silas now broke the seal of the envelope containing the address, and directed the stately footman to drive him to box court, opening off the strand. it seemed as if the place were not at all unknown to the man, for he looked startled and begged a repetition of the order. it was with a heart full of alarms that silas mounted into the luxurious vehicle, and was driven to his destination. the entrance to box court was too narrow for the passage of a coach; it was a mere footway between railings, with a post at either end. on one of these posts was seated a man, who at once jumped down and exchanged a friendly sign with the driver, while the footman opened the door and inquired of silas whether he should take down the saratoga trunk, and to what number it should be carried. "if you please," said silas. "to number three." the footman and the man who had been sitting on the post, even with the aid of silas himself, had hard work to carry in the trunk; and before it was deposited at the door of the house in question, the young american was horrified to find a score of loiterers looking on. but he knocked with as good a countenance as he could muster up, and presented the other envelope to him who opened. "he is not at home," said he, "but if you will leave your letter and return to-morrow early, i shall be able to inform you whether and when he can receive your visit. would you like to leave your box?" he added. "dearly," cried silas; and the next moment he repented his precipitation, and declared, with equal emphasis, that he would rather carry the box along with him to the hotel. the crowd jeered at his indecision, and followed him to the carriage with insulting remarks; and silas, covered with shame and terror, implored the servants to conduct him to some quiet and comfortable house of entertainment in the immediate neighbourhood. the prince's equipage deposited silas at the craven hotel in craven street, and immediately drove away, leaving him alone with the servants of the inn. the only vacant room, it appeared, was a little den up four pairs of stairs, and looking towards the back. to this hermitage, with infinite trouble and complaint, a pair of stout porters carried the saratoga trunk. it is needless to mention that silas kept closely at their heels throughout the ascent, and had his heart in his mouth at every corner. a single false step, he reflected, and the box might go over the banisters and land its fatal contents, plainly discovered, on the pavement of the hall. arrived in the room, he sat down on the edge of his bed to recover from the agony that he had just endured; but he had hardly taken his position when he was recalled to a sense of his peril by the action of the boots, who had knelt beside the trunk, and was proceeding officiously to undo its elaborate fastenings. "let it be!" cried silas. "i shall want nothing from it while i stay here." "you might have let it lie in the hall, then," growled the man; "a thing as big and heavy as a church. what you have inside i cannot fancy. if it is all money, you are a richer man than me." "money?" repeated silas, in a sudden perturbation. "what do you mean by money? i have no money, and you are speaking like a fool." "all right, captain," retorted the boots with a wink. "there's nobody will touch your lordship's money. i'm as safe as the bank," he added; "but as the box is heavy, i shouldn't mind drinking something to your lordship's health." silas pressed two napoleons upon his acceptance, apologising, at the same time, for being obliged to trouble him with foreign money, and pleading his recent arrival for excuse. and the man, grumbling with even greater fervour, and looking contemptuously from the money in his hand to the saratoga trunk, and back again from the one to the other, at last consented to withdraw. for nearly two days the dead body had been packed into silas's box; and as soon as he was alone the unfortunate new-englander nosed all the cracks and openings with the most passionate attention. but the weather was cool, and the trunk still managed to contain his shocking secret. he took a chair beside it, and buried his face in his hands, and his mind in the most profound reflection. if he were not speedily relieved, no question but he must be speedily discovered. alone in a strange city, without friends or accomplices, if the doctor's introduction failed him, he was indubitably a lost new-englander. he reflected pathetically over his ambitious designs for the future; he should not now become the hero and spokesman of his native place of bangor, maine; he should not, as he had fondly anticipated, move on from office to office, from honour to honour; he might as well divest himself at once of all hope of being acclaimed president of the united states, and leaving behind him a statue, in the worst possible style of art, to adorn the capitol at washington. here he was, chained to a dead englishman doubled up inside a saratoga trunk; whom he must get rid of, or perish from the rolls of national glory! i should be afraid to chronicle the language employed by this young man to the doctor, to the murdered man, to madame zephyrine, to the boots of the hotel, to the prince's servants, and, in a word, to all who had been ever so remotely connected with his horrible misfortune. he slunk down to dinner about seven at night; but the yellow coffee-room appalled him, the eyes of the other diners seemed to rest on his with suspicion, and his mind remained upstairs with the saratoga trunk. when the waiter came to offer him cheese, his nerves were already so much on edge that he leaped half-way out of his chair and upset the remainder of a pint of ale upon the table-cloth. the fellow offered to show him to the smoking-room when he had done; and although he would have much preferred to return at once to his perilous treasure, he had not the courage to refuse, and was shown downstairs to the black, gas-lit cellar, which formed, and possibly still forms, the divan of the craven hotel. two very sad betting men were playing billiards, attended by a moist, consumptive marker; and for the moment silas imagined that these were the only occupants of the apartment. but at the next glance his eye fell upon a person smoking in the farthest corner, with lowered eyes and a most respectable and modest aspect. he knew at once that he had seen the face before; and, in spite of the entire change of clothes, recognised the man whom he had found seated on a post at the entrance to box court, and who had helped him to carry the trunk to and from the carriage. the newenglander simply turned and ran, nor did he pause until he had locked and bolted himself into his bedroom. there, all night long, a prey to the most terrible imaginations, he watched beside the fatal boxful of dead flesh. the suggestion of the boots that his trunk was full of gold inspired him with all manner of new terrors, if he so much as dared to close an eye; and the presence in the smoking-room, and under an obvious disguise, of the loiterer from box court convinced him that he was once more the centre of obscure machinations. midnight had sounded some time, when, impelled by uneasy suspicions, silas opened his bedroom door and peered into the passage. it was dimly illuminated by a single jet of gas; and some distance off he perceived a man sleeping on the floor in the costume of an hotel under-servant. silas drew near the man on tiptoe. he lay partly on his back, partly on his side, and his right fore-arm concealed his face from recognition. suddenly, while the american was still bending over him, the sleeper removed his arm and opened his eyes, and silas found himself once more face to face with the loiterer of box court. "good-night, sir," said the man pleasantly. but silas was too profoundly moved to find an answer, and regained his room in silence. towards morning, worn out by apprehension, he fell asleep on his chair, with his head forward on the trunk. in spite of so constrained an attitude and such a grisly pillow, his slumber was sound and prolonged, and he was only awakened at a late hour and by a sharp tapping at the door. he hurried to open, and found the boots without. "you are the gentleman who called yesterday at box court?" he asked. silas, with a quaver, admitted that he had done so. "then this note is for you," added the servant, proffering a sealed envelope. silas tore it open, and found inside the words: "twelve o'clock." he was punctual to the hour; the trunk was carried before him by several stout servants; and he was himself ushered into a room, where a man sat warming himself before the fire with his back towards the door. the sound of so many persons entering and leaving, and the scraping of the trunk as it was deposited upon the bare boards, were alike unable to attract the notice of the occupant; and silas stood waiting, in an agony of fear, until he should deign to recognise his presence. perhaps five minutes had elapsed before the man turned leisurely about, and disclosed the features of prince florizel of bohemia. "so, sir," he said, with great severity, "this is the manner in which you abuse my politeness. you join yourself to persons of condition, i perceive, for no other purpose than to escape the consequences of your crimes; and i can readily understand your embarrassment when i addressed myself to you yesterday." "indeed," cried silas, "i am innocent of everything except misfortune." and in a hurried voice, and with the greatest ingenuousness, he recounted to the prince the whole history of his calamity. "i see i have been mistaken," said his highness, when he had heard him to an end. "you are no other than a victim, and since i am not to punish you may be sure i shall do my utmost to help.--and now," he continued, "to business. open your box at once, and let me see what it contains." silas changed colour. "i almost fear to look upon it," he exclaimed. "nay," replied the prince, "have you not looked at it already? this is a form of sentimentality to be resisted. the sight of a sick man, whom we can still help, should appeal more directly to the feelings than that of a dead man who is equally beyond help or harm, love or hatred. nerve yourself, mr. scuddamore,"--and then, seeing that silas still hesitated, "i do not desire to give another name to my request," he added. the young american awoke as if out of a dream, and with a shiver of repugnance addressed himself to loose the straps and open the lock of the saratoga trunk. the prince stood by, watching with a composed countenance and his hands behind his back. the body was quite stiff, and it cost silas a great effort, both moral and physical, to dislodge it from its position, and discover the face. prince florizel started back with an exclamation of painful surprise. "alas!" he cried, "you little know, mr. scuddamore, what a cruel gift you have brought me. this is a young man of my own suite, the brother of my trusted friend; and it was upon matters of my own service that he has thus perished at the hands of violent and treacherous men. poor geraldine," he went on, as if to himself, "in what words am i to tell you of your brother's fate? how can i excuse myself in your eyes, or in the eyes of god, for the presumptuous schemes that led him to this bloody and unnatural death? ah, florizel! florizel! when will you learn the discretion that suits mortal life, and be no longer dazzled with the image of power at your disposal? power!" he cried; "who is more powerless? i look upon this young man whom i have sacrificed, mr. scuddamore, and feel how small a thing it is to be a prince." silas was moved at the sight of his emotion. he tried to murmur some consolatory words, and burst into tears. the prince, touched by his obvious intention, came up to him and took him by the hand. "command yourself," said he. "we have both much to learn, and we shall both be better men for to-day's meeting." silas thanked him in silence with an affectionate look. "write me the address of doctor noel on this piece of paper," continued the prince, leading him towards the table; "and let me recommend you, when you are again in paris, to avoid the society of that dangerous man. he has acted in this matter on a generous inspiration; that i must believe; had he been privy to young geraldine's death he would never have despatched the body to the care of the actual criminal." "the actual criminal!" repeated silas in astonishment. "even so," returned the prince. "this letter, which the disposition of almighty providence has so strangely delivered into my hands, was addressed to no less a person than the criminal himself, the infamous president of the suicide club. seek to pry no further in these perilous affairs, but content yourself with your own miraculous escape, and leave this house at once. i have pressing affairs, and must arrange at once about this poor clay, which was so lately a gallant and handsome youth." silas took a grateful and submissive leave of prince florizel, but he lingered in box court until he saw him depart in a splendid carriage on a visit to colonel henderson of the police. republican as he was, the young american took off his hat with almost a sentiment of devotion to the retreating carriage. and the same night he started by rail on his return to paris. here (observes my arabian author) is the end of the history of the physician and the saratoga trunk. omitting some reflections on the power of providence, highly pertinent in the original, but little suited to our occidental taste, i shall only add that mr. scuddamore has already begun to mount the ladder of political fame, and by last advices was the sheriff of his native town. the adventure of the hansom cabs lieutenant brackenbury rich had greatly distinguished himself in one of the lesser indian hill wars. he it was who took the chieftain prisoner with his own hand; his gallantry was universally applauded; and when he came home, prostrated by an ugly sabre-cut and a protracted jungle-fever, society was prepared to welcome the lieutenant as a celebrity of minor lustre. but his was a character remarkable for unaffected modesty; adventure was dear to his heart, but he cared little for adulation; and he waited at foreign watering-places and in algiers until the fame of his exploits had run through its nine days' vitality and begun to be forgotten. he arrived in london at last, in the early season, with as little observation as he could desire; and as he was an orphan and had none but distant relatives who lived in the provinces, it was almost as a foreigner that he installed himself in the capital of the country for which he had shed his blood. on the day following his arrival he dined alone at a military club. he shook hands with a few old comrades, and received their warm congratulations; but as one and all had some engagement for the evening he found himself left entirely to his own resources. he was in dress, for he had entertained the notion of visiting a theatre. but the great city was new to him; he had gone from a provincial school to a military college, and thence direct to the eastern empire; and he promised himself a variety of delights in this world for exploration. swinging his cane, he took his way westward. it was a mild evening, already dark, and now and then threatening rain. the succession of faces in the lamplight stirred the lieutenant's imagination; and it seemed to him as if he could walk for ever in that stimulating city atmosphere and surrounded by the mystery of four million private lives. he glanced at the houses, and marvelled what was passing behind those warmly-lighted windows; he looked into face after face, and saw them each intent upon some unknown interest, criminal or kindly. "they talk of war," he thought, "but this is the great battle-field of mankind." and then he began to wonder that he should walk so long in this complicated scene, and not chance upon so much as the shadow of an adventure for himself "all in good time," he reflected. "i am still a stranger, and perhaps wear a strange air. but i must be drawn into the eddy before long." the night was already well advanced when a plump of cold rain fell suddenly out of the darkness. brackenbury paused under some trees, and as he did so he caught sight of a hansom cabman making him a sign that he was disengaged. the circumstance fell in so happily to the occasion that he at once raised his cane in answer, and had soon ensconced himself in the london gondola. "where to, sir?" asked the driver. "where you please," said brackenbury. and immediately, at a pace of surprising swiftness, the hansom drove off through the rain into a maze of villas. one villa was so like another, each with its front garden, and there was so little to distinguish the deserted lamp-lit streets and crescents through which the flying hansom took its way, that brackenbury soon lost all idea of direction. he would have been tempted to believe that the cab-man was amusing himself by driving him round and round and in and out about a small quarter, but there was something business-like in the speed which convinced him of the contrary. the man had an object in view, he was hastening towards a definite end; and brackenbury was at once astonished at the fellow's skill in picking a way through such a labyrinth, and a little concerned to imagine what was the occasion of his hurry. he had heard tales of strangers falling ill in london. did the driver belong to some bloody and treacherous association? and was he himself being whirled to a murderous death? the thought had scarcely presented itself, when the cab swung sharply round a corner and pulled up before the garden gate of a villa in a long and wide road. the house was brilliantly lighted up. another hansom had just driven away, and brackenbury could see a gentleman being admitted at the front door and received by several liveried servants. he was surprised that the cabman should have stopped so immediately in front of a house where a reception was being held; but he did not doubt it was the result of accident, and sat placidly smoking where he was, until he heard the trap thrown open over his head. "here we are, sir," said the driver. "here!" repeated brackenbury. "where?" "you told me to take you where i pleased, sir," returned the man with a chuckle, "and here we are." it struck brackenbury that the voice was wonderfully smooth and courteous for a man in so inferior a position; he remembered the speed at which he had been driven; and now it occurred to him that the hansom was more luxuriously appointed than the common run of public conveyances. "i must ask you to explain," said he. "do you mean to turn me out into the rain? my good man, i suspect the choice is mine." "the choice is certainly yours," replied the driver; "but when i tell you all, i believe i know how a gentleman of your figure will decide. there is a gentleman's party in this house. i do not know whether the master be a stranger to london and without acquaintances of his own; or whether he is a man of odd notions. but certainly i was hired to kidnap single gentlemen in evening dress, as many as i pleased, but military officers by preference. you have simply to go in and say that mr. morris invited you." "are you mr. morris?" inquired the lieutenant. "oh no," replied the cabman. "mr. morris is the person of the house." "it is not a common way of collecting guests," said brackenbury:" but an eccentric man might very well indulge the whim without any intention to offend. and suppose that i refuse mr. morris's invitation," he went on, "what then?" "my orders are to drive you back where i took you from," replied the man, "and set out to look for others up to midnight. those who have no fancy for such an adventure, mr. morris said, were not the guests for him." these words decided the lieutenant on the spot. "after all," he reflected, as he descended from the hansom, "i have not had long to wait for my adventure." he had hardly found footing on the sidewalk, and was still feeling in his pocket for the fare, when the cab swung about and drove off by the way it came at the former break-neck velocity. brackenbury shouted after the man, who paid no heed, and continued to drive away; but the sound of his voice was overheard in the house, the door was again thrown open, emitting a flood of light upon the garden, and a servant ran down to meet him holding an umbrella. "the cabman has been paid," observed the servant in a very civil tone; and he proceeded to escort brackenbury along the path and up the steps. in the hall several other attendants relieved him of his hat, cane, and paletot, gave him a ticket with a number in return, and politely hurried him up a stair adorned with tropical flowers, to the door of an apartment on the first story. here a grave butler inquired his name, and announcing, "lieutenant brackenbury rich," ushered him into the drawing-room of the house. a young man, slender and singularly handsome, came forward and greeted him with an air at once courtly and affectionate. hundreds of candles, of the finest wax, lit up a room that was perfumed, like the staircase, with a profusion of rare and beautiful flowering shrubs. a side-table was loaded with tempting viands. several servants went to and fro with fruits and goblets of champagne. the company was perhaps sixteen in number, all men, few beyond the prime of life, and, with hardly an exception, of a dashing and capable exterior. they were divided into two groups, one about a roulette-board, and the other surrounding a table at which one of their number held a bank of baccarat. "i see," thought brackenbury, "i am in a private gambling saloon, and the cabman was a tout." his eye had embraced the details, and his mind formed the conclusion, while his host was still holding him by the hand; and to him his looks returned from this rapid survey. at a second view mr. morris surprised him still more than on the first. the easy elegance of his manners, the distinction, amiability, and courage that appeared upon his features, fitted very ill with the lieutenant's preconceptions on the subject of the proprietor of a hell; and the tone of his conversation seemed to mark him out for a man of position and merit. brackenbury found he had an instinctive liking for his entertainer; and though he chid himself for the weakness, he was unable to resist a sort of friendly attraction for mr. morris's person and character. "i have heard of you, lieutenant rich," said mr. morris, lowering his tone; "and believe me i am gratified to make your acquaintance. your looks accord with the reputation that has preceded you from india. and if you will forget for a while the irregularity of your presentation in my house, i shall feel it not only an honour, but a genuine pleasure besides. a man who makes a mouthful of barbarian cavaliers," he added, with a laugh, "should not be appalled by a breach of etiquette, however serious." and he led him towards the sideboard and pressed him to partake of some refreshment. "upon my word," the lieutenant reflected, "this is one of the pleasantest fellows and, i do not doubt, one of the most agreeable societies in london." he partook of some champagne, which he found excellent; and observing that many of the company were already smoking, he lit one of his own manillas, and strolled up to the roulette board, where he sometimes made a stake and sometimes looked on smilingly on the fortune of others. it was while he was thus idling that he became aware of a sharp scrutiny to which the whole of the guests were subjected. mr. morris went here and there, ostensibly busied on hospitable concerns; but he had ever a shrewd glance at disposal; not a man of the party escaped his sudden, searching looks; he took stock of the bearing of heavy losers, he valued the amount of the stakes, he paused behind couples who were deep in conversation; and, in a word, there was hardly a characteristic of any one present but he seemed to catch and make a note of it. brackenbury began to wonder if this were indeed a gambling-hell: it had so much the air of a private inquisition. he followed mr. morris in all his movements; and although the man had a ready smile, he seemed to perceive, as it were under a mask, a haggard, care-worn, and preoccupied spirit. the fellows around him laughed and made their game; but brackenbury had lost interest in the guests. "this morris," thought he, "is no idler in the room. some deep purpose inspires him; let it be mine to fathom it." now and then mr. morris would call one of his visitors aside; and after a brief colloquy in an anteroom he would return alone, and the visitors in question reappeared no more. after a certain number of repetitions, this performance excited brackenbury's curiosity to a high degree. he determined to be at the bottom of this minor mystery at once; and strolling into the anteroom, found a deep window recess concealed by curtains of the fashionable green. here he hurriedly ensconced himself; nor had he to wait long before the sound of steps and voices drew near him from the principal apartment. peering through the division, he saw mr. morris escorting a fat and ruddy personage, with somewhat the look of a commercial traveller, whom brackenbury had already remarked for his coarse laugh and underbred behaviour at the table. the pair halted immediately before the window, so that brackenbury lost not a word of the following discourse:-"i beg you a thousand pardons!" began mr. morris, with the most conciliatory manner; "and, if i appear rude, i am sure you will readily forgive me. in a place so great as london accidents must continually happen; and the best that we can hope is to remedy them with as small delay as possible. i will not deny that i fear you have made a mistake and honoured my poor house by inadvertence; for, to speak openly, i cannot at all remember your appearance. let me put the question without unnecessary circumlocution--between gentlemen of honour a word will suffice--under whose roof do you suppose yourself to be?" "that of mr. morris," replied the other, with a prodigious display of confusion, which had been visibly growing upon him throughout the last few words. "mr. john or mr. james morris?" inquired the host. "i really cannot tell you," returned the unfortunate guest. "i am not personally acquainted with the gentleman, any more than i am with yourself." "i see," said mr. morris. "there is another person of the same name farther down the street; and i have no doubt the policeman will be able to supply you with his number. believe me, i felicitate myself on the misunderstanding which has procured me the pleasure of your company for so long; and let me express a hope that we may meet again upon a more regular footing. meantime, i would not for the world detain you longer from your friends.--john," he added, raising his voice, "will you see that this gentleman finds his greatcoat?" and with the most agreeable air mr. morris escorted his visitor as far as the anteroom door, where he left him under conduct of the butler. as he passed the window, on his return to the drawing-room, brackenbury could hear him utter a profound sigh, as though his mind was loaded with a great anxiety, and his nerves already fatigued with the task on which he was engaged. for perhaps an hour the hansoms kept arriving with such frequency that mr. morris had to receive a new guest for every old one that he sent away, and the company preserved its number undiminished. but towards the end of that time the arrivals grew few and far between, and at length ceased entirely, while the process of elimination was continued with unimpaired activity. the drawing-room began to look empty: the baccarat was discontinued for lack of a banker; more than one person said good-night of his own accord, and was suffered to depart without expostulation; and in the meanwhile mr. morris redoubled in agreeable attentions to those who stayed behind. he went from group to group and from person to person with looks of the readiest sympathy and the most pertinent and pleasing talk; he was not so much like a host as like a hostess, and there was a feminine coquetry and condescension in his manner which charmed the hearts of all. as the guests grew thinner, lieutenant rich strolled for a moment out of the drawing-room into the hall in quest of fresher air. but he had no sooner passed the threshold of the antechamber than he was brought to a dead halt by a discovery of the most surprising nature. the flowering shrubs had disappeared from the staircase; three large furniture-waggons stood before the garden gate; the servants were busy dismantling the house upon all sides; and some of them had already donned their great-coats and were preparing to depart. it was like the end of a country ball, where everything has been supplied by contract. brackenbury had indeed some matter for reflection. first, the guests, who were no real guests after all, had been dismissed; and now the servants, who could hardly be genuine servants, were actively dispersing. "was the whole establishment a sham?" he asked himself, "the mushroom of a single night which should disappear before morning?" watching a favourable opportunity, brackenbury dashed upstairs to the higher regions of the house. it was as he had expected. he ran from room to room, and saw not a stick of furniture nor so much as a picture on the walls. although the house had been painted and papered, it was not only uninhabited at present, but plainly had never been inhabited at all. the young officer remembered with astonishment its specious, settled, and hospitable air on his arrival. it was only at a prodigious cost that the imposture could have been carried out upon so great a scale. who, then, was mr. morris? what was his intention in thus playing the householder for a single night in the remote west of london? and why did he collect his visitors at hazard from the streets? brackenbury remembered that he had already delayed too long, and hastened to join the company. many had left during his absence; and, counting the lieutenant and his host, there were not more than five persons in the drawing-room--recently so thronged. mr. morris greeted him, as he re-entered the apartment, with a smile, and immediately rose to his feet. "it is now time, gentlemen," said he, "to explain my purpose in decoying you from your amusements. i trust you did not find the evening hang very dully on your hands; but my object, i will confess it, was not to entertain your leisure, but to help myself in an unfortunate necessity. you are all gentlemen," he continued, "your appearance does you that much justice, and i ask for no better security. hence, i speak it without concealment, i ask you to render me a dangerous and delicate service; dangerous because you may run the hazard of your lives, and delicate because i must ask an absolute discretion upon all that you shall see or hear. from an utter stranger the request is almost comically extravagant; i am well aware of this; and i would add at once if there be any one present who has heard enough, if there be one among the party who recoils from a dangerous confidence and a piece of quixotic devotion to he knows not whom--here is my hand ready, and i shall wish him good-night and god-speed with all the sincerity in the world." a very tall, black man, with a heavy stoop, immediately responded to this appeal. "i commend your frankness, sir," said he; "and, for my part, i go. i make no reflections; but i cannot deny that you fill me with suspicious thoughts. i go myself, as i say; and perhaps you will think i have no right to add words to my example." "on the contrary," replied mr. morris, "i am obliged to you for all you say. it would be impossible to exaggerate the gravity of my proposal." "well, gentlemen, what do you say?" said the tall man, addressing the others. "we have had our evening's frolic; shall we all go homeward peaceably in a body? you will think well of my suggestion in the morning, when you see the sun again in innocence and safety." the speaker pronounced the last words with an intonation which added to their force; and his face wore a singular expression, full of gravity and significance. another of the company rose hastily, and with some appearance of alarm prepared to take his leave. there were only two who held their ground, brackenbury and an old red-nosed cavalry major; but these two preserved a nonchalant demeanour, and, beyond a look of intelligence which they rapidly exchanged, appeared entirely foreign to the discussion that had just been terminated. mr. morris conducted the deserters as far as the door, which he closed upon their heels; then he turned round, disclosing a countenance of mingled relief and animation, and addressed the two officers as follows. "i have chosen my men like joshua in the bible," said mr. morris, "and i now believe i have the pick of london. your appearance pleased my hansom cabmen; then it delighted me; i have watched your behaviour in a strange company, and under the most unusual circumstances: i have studied how you played and how you bore your losses; lastly, i have put you to the test of a staggering announcement, and you received it like an invitation to dinner. it is not for nothing," he cried, "that i have been for years the companion and the pupil of the bravest and wisest potentate in europe." "at the affair of bunderchang," observed the major, "i asked for twelve volunteers, and every trooper in the ranks replied to my appeal. but a gaming party is not the same thing as a regiment under fire. you may be pleased, i suppose, to have found two, and two who will not fail you at a push. as for the pair who ran away, i count them among the most pitiful hounds i ever met with.--lieutenant rich," he added, addressing brackenbury, "i have heard much of you of late; and i cannot doubt but you have also heard of me. i am major o'rooke." and the veteran tendered his hand, which was red and tremulous, to the young lieutenant "who has not?" answered brackenbury. "when this little matter is settled," said mr. morris, "you will think i have sufficiently rewarded you; for i could offer neither a more valuable service than to make him acquainted with the other." "and now," said major o'rooke, "is it a duel?" "a duel after a fashion," replied mr. morris, "a duel with unknown and dangerous enemies, and, as i gravely fear, a duel to the death. i must ask you," he continued, "to call me morris no longer; call me, if you please, hammersmith; my real name, as well as that of another person to whom i hope to present you before long, you will gratify me by not asking, and not seeking to discover for yourselves. three days ago the person of whom i speak disappeared suddenly from home; and, until this morning, i received no hint of his situation. you will fancy my alarm when i tell you that he is engaged upon a work of private justice. bound by an unhappy oath, too lightly sworn, he finds it necessary, without the help of law, to rid the earth of an insidious and bloody villain. already two of our friends, and one of them my own born brother, have perished in the enterprise. he himself, or i am much deceived, is taken in the same fatal toils. but at least he still lives and still hopes, as this billet sufficiently proves." and the speaker, no other than colonel geraldine, proffered a letter, thus conceived:-"major hammersmith,--on wednesday at 3 a.m., you will be admitted by the small door to the gardens of rochester house, regent's park, by a man who is entirely in my interest. i must request you not to fail me by a second. pray bring my case of swords, and, if you can find them, one or two gentlemen of conduct and discretion to whom my person is unknown. my name must not be used in this affair. "t. godall." "from his wisdom alone, if he had no other title," pursued colonel geraldine, when the others had each satisfied his curiosity, "my friend is a man whose directions should implicitly be followed. i need not tell you, therefore, that i have not so much as visited the neighbourhood of rochester house; and that i am still as wholly in the dark as either of yourselves as to the nature of my friend's dilemma. i betook myself, as soon as i had received this order, to a furnishing contractor, and, in a few hours, the house in which we now are had assumed its late air of festival. my scheme was at least original; and i am far from regretting an action which has procured me the services of major o'rooke and lieutenant brackenbury rich. but the servants in the street will have a strange awakening. the house which this evening was full of lights and visitors they will find uninhabited and for sale tomorrow morning. thus even the most serious concerns," added the colonel, "have a merry side." "and let us add a merry ending," said brackenbury. the colonel consulted his watch. "it is now hard on two," he said. "we have an hour before us, and a swift cab is at the door. tell me if i may count upon your help." "during a long life," replied major o'rooke, "i never took back my hand from anything, nor so much as hedged a bet." brackenbury signified his readiness in the most becoming terms; and after they had drunk a glass or two of wine, the colonel gave each of them a loaded revolver, and the three mounted into the cab and drove off for the address in question. rochester house was a magnificent residence on the banks of the canal. the large extent of the garden isolated it in an unusual degree from the annoyances of neighbourhood. it seemed the _parc aux cerfs_ of some great nobleman or millionaire. as far as could be seen from the street, there was not a glimmer of light in any of the numerous windows of the mansion; and the place had a look of neglect, as though the master had been long from home. the cab was discharged, and the three gentlemen were not long in discovering the small door, which was a sort of postern in a lane between two garden walls. it still wanted ten or fifteen minutes of the appointed time; the rain fell heavily, and the adventurers sheltered themselves below some pendent ivy, and spoke in low tones of the approaching trial. suddenly geraldine raised his finger to command silence, and all three bent their hearing to the utmost through the continuous noise of the rain, the steps and voices of two men became audible from the other side of the wall; and, as they drew nearer, brackenbury, whose sense of hearing was remarkably acute, could even distinguish some fragments of their talk. "is the grave dug?" asked one. "it is," replied the other; "behind the laurel hedge. when the job is done, we can cover it with a pile of stakes." the first speaker laughed, and the sound of his merriment was shocking to the listeners on the other side. "in an hour from now," he said. and by the sound of the steps it was obvious that the pair had separated, and were proceeding in contrary directions. almost immediately after the postern door was cautiously opened, a white face was protruded into the lane, and a hand was seen beckoning to the watchers. in dead silence the three passed the door, which was immediately locked behind them, and followed their guide through several garden alleys to the kitchen entrance of the house. a single candle burned in the great paved kitchen, which was destitute of the customary furniture; and as the party proceeded to ascend from thence by a flight of winding stairs, a prodigious noise of rats testified still more plainly to the dilapidation of the house. their conductor preceded them, carrying the candle. he was a lean man, much bent, but still agile; and he turned from time to time and admonished silence and caution by his gestures. colonel geraldine followed on his heels, the case of swords under one arm, and a pistol ready in the other. brackenbury's heart beat thickly. he perceived that they were still in time; but he judged from the alacrity of the old man that the hour of action must be near at hand; and the circumstances of this adventure were so obscure and menacing, the place seemed so well chosen for the darkest acts, that an older man than brackenbury might have been pardoned a measure of emotion as he closed the procession up the winding stair. at the top the guide threw open a door and ushered the three officers before him into a small apartment, lighted by a smoky lamp and the glow of a modest fire. at the chimney corner sat a man in the early prime of life, and of a stout but courtly and commanding appearance. his attitude and expression were those of the most unmoved composure; he was smoking a cheroot with much enjoyment and deliberation, and on a table by his elbow stood a long glass of some effervescing beverage which diffused an agreeable odour through the room. "welcome," said he, extending his hand to colonel geraldine. "i knew i might count on your exactitude." "on my devotion," replied the colonel, with a bow. "present me to your friends," continued the first; and, when that ceremony had been performed, "i wish, gentlemen," he added, with the most exquisite affability, "that i could offer you a more cheerful programme; it is ungracious to inaugurate an acquaintance upon serious affairs; but the compulsion of events is stronger than the obligations of goodfellowship. i hope and believe you will be able to forgive me this unpleasant evening; and for men of your stamp it will be enough to know that you are conferring a considerable favour." "your highness," said the major, "must pardon my bluntness. i am unable to hide what i know. for some time back i have suspected major hammersmith, but mr. godall is unmistakable. to seek two men in london unacquainted with prince florizel of bohemia was to ask too much at fortune's hands." "prince florizel!" cried brackenbury in amazement. and he gazed with the deepest interest on the features of the celebrated personage before him. "i shall not lament the loss of my incognito," remarked the prince, "for it enables me to thank you with the more authority. you would have done as much for mr. godall, i feel sure, as for the prince of bohemia; but the latter can perhaps do more for you. the gain is mine," he added, with a courteous gesture. and the next moment he was conversing with the two officers about the indian army and the native troops, a subject on which, as on all others, he had a remarkable fund of information and the soundest views. there was something so striking in this man's attitude at a moment of deadly peril that brackenbury was overcome with respectful admiration; nor was he less sensible to the charm of his conversation or the surprising amenity of his address. every gesture, every intonation, was not only noble in itself, but seemed to ennoble the fortunate mortal for whom it was intended; and brackenbury confessed to himself with enthusiasm that this was a sovereign for whom a brave man might thankfully lay down his life. many minutes had thus passed, when the person who had introduced them into the house, and who had sat ever since in a corner, and with his watch in his hand, arose and whispered a word into the prince's ear. "it is well, doctor noel," replied florizel aloud; and then addressing the others, "you will excuse me, gentlemen," he added, "if i have to leave you in the dark. the moment now approaches." dr. noel extinguished the lamp. a faint, grey light, premonitory of the dawn, illuminated the window, but was not sufficient to illuminate the room; and when the prince rose to his feet, it was impossible to distinguish his features or to make a guess at the nature of the emotion which obviously affected him as he spoke. he moved towards the door, and placed himself at one side of it in an attitude of the wariest attention. "you will have the kindness," he said, "to maintain the strictest silence, and to conceal yourselves in the densest of the shadow." the three officers and the physician hastened to obey, and for nearly ten minutes the only sound in rochester house was occasioned by the excursions of the rats behind the woodwork. at the end of that period, a loud creak of a hinge broke in with surprising distinctness on the silence; and shortly after, the watchers could distinguish a slow and cautious tread approaching up the kitchen stair. at every second step the intruder seemed to pause and lend an ear, and during these intervals, which seemed of an incalculable duration, a profound disquiet possessed the spirit of the listeners. dr. noel, accustomed as he was to dangerous emotions, suffered an almost pitiful physical prostration; his breath whistled in his lungs, his teeth grated one upon another, and his joints cracked aloud as he nervously shifted his position. at last a hand was laid upon the door, and the bolt shot back with a slight report. there followed another pause, during which brackenbury could see the prince draw himself together noiselessly as if for some unusual exertion. then the door opened, letting in a little more of the light of the morning; and the figure of a man appeared upon the threshold and stood motionless. he was tall, and carried a knife in his hand. even in the twilight they could see his upper teeth bare and glistening, for his mouth was open like that of a hound about to leap. the man had evidently been over the head in water but a minute or two before; and even while he stood there the drops kept falling from his wet clothes and pattered on the floor. the next moment he crossed the threshold. there was a leap, a stifled cry, an instantaneous struggle; and before colonel geraldine could spring to his aid, the prince held the man, disarmed and helpless, by the shoulders. "doctor noel," he said, "you will be so good as to relight the lamp." and relinquishing the charge of his prisoner to geraldine and brackenbury, he crossed the room and set his back against the chimney-piece. as soon as the lamp had kindled, the party beheld an unaccustomed sternness on the prince's features. it was no longer florizel, the careless gentleman; it was the prince of bohemia, justly incensed and full of deadly purpose, who now raised his head and addressed the captive president of the suicide club. "president," he said, "you have laid your last snare, and your own feet are taken in it. the day is beginning; it is your last morning. you have just swum the regent's canal; it is your last bathe in this world. your old accomplice, doctor noel, so far from betraying me, has delivered you into my hands for judgment. and the grave you had dug for me this afternoon shall serve, in god's almighty providence, to hide your own just doom from the curiosity of mankind. kneel and pray, sir, if you have a mind that way; for your time is short, and god is weary of your iniquities." the president made no answer either by word or sign; but continued to hang his head and gaze sullenly on the floor, as though he were conscious of the prince's prolonged and unsparing regard. "gentlemen," continued florizel, resuming the ordinary tone of his conversation, "this is a fellow who has long eluded me, but whom, thanks to doctor noel, i now have tightly by the heels. to tell the story of his misdeeds would occupy more time than we can now afford; but if the canal had contained nothing but the blood of his victims, i believe the wretch would have been no drier than you see him. even in an affair of this sort i desire to preserve the forms of honour. but i make you the judges, gentlemen--this is more an execution than a duel; and to give the rogue his choice of weapons would be to push too far a point of etiquette. i cannot afford to lose my life in such a business," he continued, unlocking the case of swords; "and as a pistol-bullet travels so often on the wings of chance, and skill and courage may fall by the most trembling marksman, i have decided, and i feel sure you will approve my determination, to put this question to the touch of swords." when brackenbury and major o'rooke, to whom these remarks were particularly addressed, had each intimated his approval, "quick, sir," added prince florizel to the president, "choose a blade and do not keep me waiting; i have an impatience to be done with you for ever." for the first time since he was captured and disarmed the president raised his head, and it was plain that he began instantly to pluck up courage. "is it to be stand up?" he asked eagerly, "and between you and me?" "i mean so far to honour you," replied the prince. "oh, come!" cried the president. "with a fair field, who knows how things may happen? i must add that i consider it handsome behaviour on your highness's part; and if the worst comes to the worst i shall die by one of the most gallant gentlemen in europe." and the president, liberated by those who had detained him, stepped up to the table and began, with minute attention, to select a sword. he was highly elated, and seemed to feel no doubt that he should issue victorious from the contest. the spectators grew alarmed in the face of so entire a confidence, and adjured prince florizel to reconsider his intention. "it is but a farce," he answered; "and i think i can promise you, gentlemen, that it will not be long aplaying." "your highness will be careful not to overreach," said colonel geraldine. "geraldine," returned the prince, "did you ever know me fail in a debt of honour? i owe you this man's death, and you shall have it." the president at last satisfied himself with one of the rapiers, and signified his readiness by a gesture that was not devoid of a rude nobility. the nearness of peril, and the sense of courage, even to this obnoxious villain, lent an air of manhood and a certain grace. the prince helped himself at random to a sword. "colonel geraldine and doctor noel," he said, "will have the goodness to await me in this room. i wish no personal friend of mine to be involved in this transaction. major o'rooke, you are a man of some years and a settled reputation--let me recommend the president to your good graces. lieutenant rich will be so good as lend me his attentions: a young man cannot have too much experience in such affairs." "your highness," replied brackenbury, "it is an honour i shall prize extremely." "it is well," returned prince florizel; "i shall hope to stand your friend in more important circumstances." and so saying he led the way out of the apartment and down the kitchen stairs. the two men who were thus left alone threw open the window and leaned out, straining every sense to catch an indication of the tragical events that were about to follow. the rain was now over; day had almost come, and the birds were piping in the shrubbery and on the forest-trees of the garden. the prince and his companions were visible for a moment as they followed an alley between two flowering thickets; but at the first corner a clump of foliage intervened, and they were again concealed from view. this was all that the colonel and the physician had an opportunity to see, and the garden was so vast, and the place of combat evidently so remote from the house, that not even the noise of sword-play reached their ears. "he has taken him towards the grave," said dr. noel, with a shudder. "god," cried the colonel, "god defend the right!" and they awaited the event in silence, the doctor shaking with fear, the colonel in an agony of sweat. many minutes must have elapsed, the day was sensibly broader, and the birds were singing more heartily in the garden before a sound of returning footsteps recalled their glances towards the door. it was the prince and the two indian officers who entered. god had defended the right. "i am ashamed of my emotion," said prince florizel; "i feel it is a weakness unworthy of my station, but the continued existence of that hound of hell had begun to prey upon me like a disease, and his death has more refreshed me than a night of slumber. look, geraldine," he continued, throwing his sword upon the floor, "there is the blood of the man who killed your brother. it should be a welcome sight. and yet," he added, "see how strangely we men are made! my revenge is not yet five minutes old, and already i am beginning to ask myself if even revenge be attainable on this precarious stage of life. the ill he did, who can undo it? the career in which he amassed a huge fortune (for the house itself in which we stand belonged to him)--that career is now a part of the destiny of mankind for ever; and i might weary myself making thrusts in carte until the crack of judgment, and geraldine's brother would be none the less dead, and a thousand other innocent persons would be none the less dishonoured and debauched! the existence of a man is so small a thing to take, so mighty a thing to employ! alas!" he cried, "is there anything in life so disenchanting as attainment?" "god's justice has been done," replied the doctor. "so much i behold. the lesson, your highness, has been a cruel one for me; and i await my own turn with deadly apprehension." "what was i saying?" cried the prince. "i have punished, and here is the man beside us who can help me to undo. ah, doctor noel! you and i have before us many a day of hard and honourable toil; and perhaps, before we have done, you may have more than redeemed your early errors." "and in the meantime," said the doctor, "let me go and bury my oldest friend." and this (observes the erudite arabian) is the fortunate conclusion of the tale. the prince, it is superfluous to mention, forgot none of those who served him in this great exploit; and to this day his authority and influence help them forward in their public career, while his condescending friendship adds a charm to their private life. to collect, continues my author, all the strange events in which this prince has played the part of providence were to fill the habitable globe with books. but the stories which relate to the fortunes of the rajah's diamond are of too entertaining a description, says he, to be omitted. following prudently in the footsteps of this oriental, we shall now begin the series to which he refers with the story of the bandbox. the rajah's diamond story of the bandbox up to the age of sixteen, at a private school, and afterwards at one of those great institutions for which england is justly famous, mr. harry hartley had received the ordinary education of a gentleman. at that period he manifested a remarkable distaste for study; and his only surviving parent being both weak and ignorant, he was permitted thenceforward to spend his time in the attainment of petty and purely elegant accomplishments. two years later, he was left an orphan, and almost a beggar. for all active and industrious pursuits, harry was unfitted alike by nature and training. he could sing romantic ditties, and accompany himself with discretion on the piano; he was a graceful although a timid cavalier; he had a pronounced taste for chess; and nature had sent him into the world with one of the most engaging exteriors that can well be fancied. blond and pink, with dove's eyes and a gentle smile, he had an air of agreeable tenderness and melancholy, and the most submissive and caressing manners. but when all is said, he was not the man to lead armaments of war or direct the councils of a state. a fortunate chance and some influence obtained for harry, at the time of his bereavement, the position of private secretary to major-general sir thomas vandeleur, c.b. sir thomas was a man of sixty, loudspoken, boisterous, and domineering. for some reason, some service the nature of which had been often whispered and repeatedly denied, the rajah of kashgar had presented this officer with the sixth known diamond of the world. the gift transformed general vandeleur from a poor into a wealthy man, from an obscure and unpopular soldier into one of the lions of london society; the possessor of the rajah's diamond was welcome in the most exclusive circles; and he had found a lady, young, beautiful, and well-born, who was willing to call the diamond hers even at the price of marriage with sir thomas vandeleur. it was commonly said at the time that, as like draws to like, one jewel had attracted another; certainly lady vandeleur was not only a gem of the finest water in her own person, but she showed her self to the world in a very costly setting; and she was considered by many respectable authorities as one among the three or four best-dressed women in england. harry's duty as secretary was not particularly onerous; but he had a dislike for all prolonged work; it gave him pain to ink his fingers; and the charms of lady vandeleur and her toilettes drew him often from the library to the boudoir. he had the prettiest ways among women, could talk fashions with enjoyment, and was never more happy than when criticising a shade of ribbon or running on an errand to the milliner's. in short, sir thomas's correspondence fell into pitiful arrears, and my lady had another lady's-maid. at last the general, who was one of the least patient of military commanders, arose from his place in a violent access of passion, and indicated to his secretary that he had no further need for his services, with one of those explanatory gestures which are most rarely employed between gentlemen. the door being unfortunately open, mr. hartley fell downstairs headforemost. he arose somewhat hurt and very deeply aggrieved. the life in the general's house precisely suited him; he moved, on a more or less doubtful footing, in very genteel company, he did little, he ate of the best, and he had a lukewarm satisfaction in the presence of lady vandeleur, which, in his own heart, he dubbed by a more emphatic name. immediately after he had been outraged by the military foot, he hurried to the boudoir and recounted his sorrows. "you know very well, my dear harry," replied lady vandeleur, for she called him by name like a child or a domestic servant, "that you never by any chance do what the general tells you. no more do i, you may say. but that is different. a woman can earn her pardon for a good year of disobedience by a single adroit submission; and, besides, no one is married to his private secretary. i shall be sorry to lose you; but since you cannot stay longer in a house where you have been insulted, l shall wish you good-bye, and i promise you to make the general smart for his behaviour." harry's countenance fell; tears came into his eyes, and he gazed on lady vandeleur with a tender reproach. "my lady," said he, "what is an insult? i should think little indeed of any one who could not forgive them by the score. but to leave one's friends; to tear up the bonds of affection--" he was unable to continue, for his emotion choked him, and he began to weep. lady vandeleur looked at him with a curious expression. "this little fool," she thought, "imagines himself to be in love with me. why should he not become my servant instead of the general's? he is good-natured, obliging, and understands dress; and besides, it will keep him out of mischief. he is positively too pretty to be unattached." that night she talked over the general, who was already somewhat ashamed of his vivacity; and harry was transferred to the feminine department, where his life was little short of heavenly. he was always dressed with uncommon nicety, wore delicate flowers in his button-hole, and could entertain a visitor with tact and pleasantry. he took a pride in servility to a beautiful woman; received lady vandeleur's commands as so many marks of favour; and was pleased to exhibit himself before other men, who derided and despised him, in his character of male lady's-maid and man-milliner. nor could he think enough of his existence from a moral point of view. wickedness seemed to him an essentially male attribute, and to pass one's days with a delicate woman, and principally occupied about trimmings, was to inhabit an enchanted isle among the storms of life. one fine morning he came into the drawing-room and began to arrange some music on the top of the piano. lady vandeleur, at the other end of the apartment, was speaking somewhat eagerly with her brother, charlie pendragon, an elderly young man, much broken with dissipation, and very lame of one foot. the private secretary, to whose entrance they paid no regard, could not avoid overhearing a part of their conversation. "to-day or never," said the lady. "once and for all, it shall be done to-day." "to-day, if it must be," replied the brother, with a sigh. "but it is a false step, a ruinous step, clara; and we shall live to repent it dismally." lady vandeleur looked her brother steadily and somewhat strangely in the face. "you forget," she said; "the man must die at last." "upon my word, clara," said pendragon, "i believe you are the most heartless rascal in england." "you men," she returned, "are so coarsely built, that you can never appreciate a shade of meaning. you are yourselves rapacious, violent, immodest, careless of distinction; and yet the least thought for the future shocks you in a woman. i have no patience with such stuff. you would despise in a common banker the imbecility that you expect to find in us." "you are very likely right," replied her brother; "you were always cleverer than i. and, anyway, you know my motto: the family before all." "yes, charlie," she returned, taking his hand in hers, "i know your motto better than you know it yourself "and clara before the family!" is not that the second part of it? indeed, you are the best of brothers, and i love you dearly." mr. pendragon got up, looking a little confused by these family endearments. "i had better not be seen," said he. "i understand my part to a miracle, and i'll keep an eye on the tame cat." "do," she replied. "he is an abject creature, and might ruin all." she kissed the tips of her fingers to him daintily; and the brother withdrew by the boudoir and the back stair. "harry," said lady vandeleur, turning towards the secretary as soon as they were alone, "i have a commission for you this morning. but you shall take a cab; i cannot have my secretary freckled." she spoke the last words with emphasis and a look of half motherly pride that caused great contentment to poor harry; and he professed himself charmed to find an opportunity of serving her. "it is another of our great secrets," she went on archly, "and no one must know of it but my secretary and me. sir thomas would make the saddest disturbance; and if you only knew how weary i am of these scenes! o harry, harry, can you explain to me what makes you men so violent and unjust? but, indeed, i know you cannot; you are the only man in the world who knows nothing of these shameful passions; you are so good, harry, and so kind; you, at least, can be a woman's friend; and, do you know? i think you make the others more ugly by comparison." "it is you," said harry gallantly, "who are so kind to me. you treat me like----" "like a mother," interposed lady vandeleur; "i try to be a mother to you. or at least," she corrected herself with a smile, "almost a mother. i am afraid i am too young to be your mother really. let us say a friend--a dear friend." she paused long enough to let her words take effect in harry's sentimental quarters, but not long enough to allow him a reply. "but all this is beside our purpose," she resumed. "you will find a bandbox in the left-hand side of the oak wardrobe; it is underneath the pink slip that i wore on wednesday with my mechlin. you will take it immediately to this address," and she gave him a paper, "but do not, on any account, let it out of your hands until you have received a receipt written by myself. do you understand? answer, if you please--answer! this is extremely important, and i must ask you to pay some attention." harry pacified her by repeating her instructions perfectly; and she was just going to tell him more when general vandeleur flung into the apartment, scarlet with anger, and holding a long and elaborate milliner's bill in his hand. "will you look at this, madam?" cried he. "will you have the goodness to look at this document? i know well enough you married me for my money, and i hope i can make as great allowances as any other man in the service; but, as sure as god made me, i mean to put a period to this disreputable prodigality." "mr. hartley," said lady vandeleur, "i think you understand what you have to do. may i ask you to see to it at once?" "stop," said the general, addressing harry, "one word before you go." and then, turning again to lady vandeleur, "what is this precious fellow's errand?" he demanded. "i trust him no further than i do yourself, let me tell you. if he had as much as the rudiments of honesty he would scorn to stay in this house; and what he does for his wages is a mystery to all the world. what is his errand, madam? and why are you hurrying him away?" "i supposed you had something to say to me in private," replied the lady. "you spoke about an errand," insisted the general. "do not attempt to deceive me in my present state of temper. you certainly spoke about an errand." "if you insist on making your servants privy to our humiliating dissensions," replied lady vandeleur, "perhaps i had better ask mr. hartley to sit down. no?" she continued; "then you may go, mr. hartley. i trust you may remember all that you have heard in this room; it may be useful to you." harry at once made his escape from the drawing room; and as he ran upstairs he could hear the general's voice upraised in declamation, and the thin tones of lady vandeleur planting icy repartees at every opening. how cordially he admired the wife! how skilfully she could evade an awkward question! with what secure effrontery she repeated her instructions under the very guns of the enemy! and on the other hand, how he detested the husband! there had been nothing unfamiliar in the morning's events, for he was continually in the habit of serving lady vandeleur on secret missions, principally connected with millinery. there was a skeleton in the house, as he well knew. the bottomless extravagance and the unknown liabilities of the wife had long since swallowed her own fortune, and threatened day by day to engulf that of the husband. once or twice in every year exposure and ruin seemed imminent, and harry kept trotting round to all sorts of furnishers' shops, telling small fibs, and paying small advances on the gross amount, until another term was tided over, and the lady and her faithful secretary breathed again. for harry, in a double capacity, was heart and soul upon that side of the war; not only did he adore lady vandeleur and fear and dislike her husband, but he naturally sympathised with the love of finery, and his own single extravagance was at the tailor's. he found the bandbox where it had been described, arranged his toilette with care, and left the house. the sun shone brightly; the distance he had to travel was considerable, and he remembered with dismay that the general's sudden irruption had prevented lady vandeleur from giving him money for a cab. on this sultry day there was every chance that his complexion would suffer severely; and to walk through so much of london with a bandbox on his arm was a humiliation almost insupportable to a youth of his character. he paused, and took counsel with himself. the vandeleurs lived in eaton place; his destination was near noffing hill; plainly, he might cross the park by keeping well in the open and avoiding populous alleys; and he thanked his stars when he reflected that it was still comparatively early in the day. anxious to be rid of his incubus, he walked somewhat faster than his ordinary, and he was already some way through kensington gardens when, in a solitary spot among trees, he found himself confronted by the general. "i beg your pardon, sir thomas," observed harry, politely falling on one side; for the other stood directly in his path. "where are you going, sir?" asked the general. "i am taking a little walk among the trees," replied the lad. the general struck the bandbox with his cane. "with that thing?" he cried; "you lie, sir, and you know you lie!" "indeed, sir thomas," returned harry, "i am not accustomed to be questioned in so high a key." "you do not understand your position," said the general. "you are my servant, and a servant of whom i have conceived the most serious suspicions. how do i know but that your box is full of teaspoons?" "it contains a silk hat belonging to a friend," said harry. "very well," replied general vandeleur. "then i want to see your friend's silk hat. i have," he added grimly, "a singular curiosity for hats; and i believe you know me to be somewhat positive." "i beg your pardon, sir thomas; i am exceedingly grieved," harry apologised; "but indeed this is a private affair." the general caught him roughly by the shoulder with one hand, while he raised his cane in the most menacing manner with the other. harry gave himself up for lost; but at the same moment heaven vouchsafed him an unexpected defender in the person of charlie pendragon, who now strode forward from behind the trees. "come, come, general, hold your hand," said he; "this is neither courteous nor manly." "aha!" cried the general, wheeling round upon his new antagonist, "mr. pendragon! and do you suppose, mr. pendragon, that because i have had the misfortune to marry your sister, i shall suffer myself to be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine like you? my acquaintance with lady vandeleur, sir, has taken away all my appetite for the other members of her family." "and do you fancy, general vandeleur," retorted charlie, "that because my sister has had the misfortune to marry you, she there and then forfeited her rights and privileges as a lady? i own, sir, that by that action she did as much as anybody could to derogate from her position; but to me she is still a pendragon. i make it my business to protect her from ungentlemanly outrage, and if you were ten times her husband i would not permit her liberty to be restrained, nor her private messengers to be violently arrested." "how is that, mr. hartley?" interrogated the general. "mr. pendragon is of my opinion, it appears. he too suspects that lady vandeleur has something to do with your friend's silk hat." charlie saw that he had committed an unpardonable blunder, which he hastened to repair. "how, sir?" he cried; "i suspect, do you say? suspect nothing. only where i find strength abused and a man brutalising his inferiors, i take the liberty to interfere." as he said these words he made a sign to harry, which the latter was too dull or too much troubled to understand. "in what way am i to construe your attitude, sir?" demanded vandeleur. "why, sir, as you please," returned pendragon. the general once more raised his cane, and made a cut for charlie's head; but the latter, lame foot and all, evaded the blow with his umbrella, ran in, and immediately closed with his formidable adversary. "run, harry, run!" he cried; "run, you dolt!" harry stood petrified for a moment, watching the two men sway together in this fierce embrace; then he turned and took to his heels. when he cast a glance over his shoulder he saw the general prostrate under charlie's knee, but still making desperate efforts to reverse the situation; and the gardens seemed to have filled with people, who were running from all directions towards the scene of fight. this spectacle lent the secretary wings; and he did not relax his pace until he had gained the bayswater road, and plunged at random into an unfrequented by-street. to see two gentlemen of his acquaintance thus brutally mauling each other was deeply shocking to harry. he desired to forget the sight; he desired, above all, to put as great a distance as possible between himself and general vandeleur; and in his eagerness for this he forgot everything about his destination, and hurried before him headlong and trembling. when he remembered that lady vandeleur was the wife of one and the sister of the other of these gladiators, his heart was touched with sympathy for a woman so distressingly misplaced in life. even his own situation in the general's household looked hardly so pleasing as usual in the light of these violent transactions. he had walked some little distance, busied with these meditations, before a slight collision with another passenger reminded him of the bandbox on his arm. "heavens!" cried he, "where was my head? and whither have i wandered?" thereupon he consulted the envelope which lady vandeleur had given him. the address was there, but without a name. harry was simply directed to ask for "the gentleman who expected a parcel from lady vandeleur," and if he were not at home to await his return. the gentleman, added the note, should present a receipt in the handwriting of the lady herself. all this seemed mightily mysterious, and harry was above all astonished at the omission of the name and the formality of the receipt. he had thought little of this last when he heard it dropped in conversation; but reading it in cold blood, and taking it in connection with the other strange particulars, he became convinced that he was engaged in perilous affairs. for half a moment he had a doubt of lady vandeleur herself; for he found these obscure proceedings somewhat unworthy of so high a lady, and became more critical when her secrets were preserved against himself. but her empire over his spirit was too complete, he dismissed his suspicions, and blamed himself roundly for having so much as entertained them. in one thing, however, his duty and interest, his generosity and his terrors, coincided--to get rid of the bandbox with the greatest possible despatch. he accosted the first policeman and courteously inquired his way. it turned out that he was already not far from his destination, and a walk of a few minutes brought him to a small house in a lane, freshly painted, and kept with the most scrupulous attention. the knocker and bell-pull were highly polished: flowering pot-herbs garnished the sills of the different windows; and curtains of some rich material concealed the interior from the eyes of curious passengers. the place had an air of repose and secrecy; and harry was so far caught with this spirit that he knocked with more than usual discretion, and was more than usually careful to remove all impurity from his boots. a servant-maid of some personal attractions immediately opened the door, and seemed to regard the secretary with no unkind eyes. "this is the parcel from lady vandeleur," said harry. "i know," replied the maid, with a nod. "but the gentleman is from home. will you leave it with me?" "i cannot," answered harry. "i am directed not to part with it but upon a certain condition, and i must ask you, i am afraid, to let me wait." "well," said she, "i suppose i may let you wait. i am lonely enough, i can tell you, and you do not look as though you would eat a girl. but be sure and do not ask the gentleman's name, for that i am not to tell you." "do you say so?" cried harry. "why, how strange! but indeed for some time back i walk among surprises. one question i think i may surely ask without indiscretion: is he the master of this house?" "he is a lodger, and not eight days old at that," returned the maid. "and now a question for a question: do you know lady vandeleur?" "i am her private secretary," replied harry, with a glow of modest pride. "she is pretty, is she not?" pursued the servant. "oh, beautiful!" cried harry; "wonderfully lovely, and not less good and kind!" "you look kind enough yourself," she retorted; "and i wager you are worth a dozen lady vandeleurs." harry was properly scandalised. "i!" he cried. "i am only a secretary!" "do you mean that for me?" said the girl. "because i am only a housemaid, if you please." and then, relenting at the sight of harry's obvious confusion, "i know you mean nothing of the sort," she added; "and i like your looks; but i think nothing of your lady vandeleur. o these mistresses!" she cried. "to send out a real gentleman like you--with a bandbox--in broad day!" during this talk they had remained in their original positions--she on the doorstep, he on the sidewalk, bare-headed for the sake of coolness, and with the bandbox on his arm. but upon this last speech, harry, who was unable to support such point-blank compliments to his appearance, nor the encouraging look with which they were accompanied, began to change his attitude, and glance from left to right in perturbation. in so doing he turned his face towards the lower end of the lane, and there, to his indescribable dismay, his eyes encountered those of general vandeleur. the general, in a prodigious fluster of heat, hurry, and indignation, had been scouring the streets in chase of his brotherin-law; but so soon as he caught a glimpse of the delinquent secretary, his purpose changed, his anger flowed into a new channel, and he turned on his heel and came tearing up the lane with truculent gestures and vociferations. harry made but one bolt of it into the house, driving the maid before him; and the door was slammed in his pursuer's countenance. "is there a bar? will it lock?" asked harry, while a salvo on the knocker made the house echo from wall to wall. "why, what is wrong with you?" asked the maid. "is it this old gentleman?" "if he gets hold of me," whispered harry, "i am as good as dead. he has been pursuing me all day, carries a sword-stick, and is an indian military officer." "these are fine manners," cried the maid. "and what, if you please, may be his name?" "it is the general, my master," answered harry. "he is after this bandbox." "did not i tell you?" cried the maid in triumph. "i told you i thought worse than nothing of your lady vandeleur, and if you had an eye in your head you might see what she is for yourself. an ungrateful minx, i will be bound for that!" the general renewed his attack upon the knocker, and his passion growing with delay, began to kick and beat upon the panels of the door. "it is lucky," observed the girl, "that i am alone in the house: your general may hammer until he is weary, and there is none to open for him. follow me!" so saying she led harry into the kitchen, where she made him sit down, and stood by him herself in an affectionate attitude, with a hand upon his shoulder. the din at the door, so far from abating, continued to increase in volume, and at each blow the unhappy secretary was shaken to the heart. "what is your name?" asked the girl. "harry hartley," he replied. "mine," she went on, "is prudence. do you like it?" "very much," said harry. "but hear for a moment how the general beats upon the door. he will certainly break it in, and then, in heaven's name, what have i to look for but death?" "you put yourself very much about with no occasion," answered prudence. "let your general knock, he will do no more than blister his hands. do you think i would keep you here if i were not sure to save you? oh no, i am a good friend to those that please me! and we have a back door upon another lane. but," she added, checking him, for he had got upon his feet immediately on this welcome news, "but i will not show where it is unless you kiss me. will you, harry?" "that i will," he cried, remembering his gallantry, "not for your back door, but because you are good and pretty." and he administered two or three cordial salutes, which were returned to him in kind. then prudence led him to the back gate, and put her hand upon the key. "will you come and see me?" she asked. "i will indeed," said harry. "do not i owe you my life?" "and now," she added, opening the door, "run as hard as you can, for i shall let in the general." harry scarcely required this advice; fear had him by the forelock; and he addressed himself diligently to flight. a few steps, and he believed he would escape from his trials, and return to lady vandeleur in honour and safety. but these few steps had not been taken before he heard a man's voice hailing him by name with many execrations, and, looking over his shoulder, he beheld charlie pendragon waving him with both arms to return. the shock of this new incident was so sudden and profound, and harry was already worked into so high a state of nervous tension, that he could think of nothing better than to accelerate his pace and continue running. he should certainly have remembered the scene in kensington gardens; he should certainly have concluded that, where the general was his enemy, charlie pendragon could be no other than a friend. but such was the fever and perturbation of his mind that he was struck by none of these considerations, and only continued to run the faster up the lane. charlie, by the sound of his voice and the vile terms that he hurled after the secretary, was obviously beside himself with rage. he, too, ran his very best; but, try as he might, the physical advantages were not upon his side, and his outcries and the fall of his lame foot on the macadam began to fall farther and farther into the wake. harry's hopes began once more to arise. the lane was both steep and narrow, but it was exceedingly solitary, bordered on either hand by garden walls, overhung with foliage; and, for as far as the fugitive could see in front of him, there was neither a creature moving nor an open door. providence, weary of persecution, was now offering him an open field for his escape. alas! as he came abreast of a garden door under a tuft of chestnuts, it was suddenly drawn back, and he could see inside, upon a garden path, the figure of a butcher's boy with his tray upon his arm. he had hardly recognised the fact before he was some steps beyond upon the other side. but the fellow had had time to observe him; he was evidently much surprised to see a gentleman go by at so unusual a pace; and he came out into the lane and began to call after harry with shouts of ironical encouragement. his appearance gave a new idea to charlie pendragon, who, although he was now sadly out of breath, once more upraised his voice. "stop, thief!" he cried. and immediately the butcher's boy had taken up the cry and joined in the pursuit. this was a bitter moment for the hunted secretary. it is true that his terror enabled him once more to improve his pace, and gain with every step on his pursuers; but he was well aware that he was near the end of his resources, and should he meet any one coming the other way, his predicament in the narrow lane would be desperate indeed. "i must find a place of concealment," he thought, "and that within the next few seconds, or all is over with me in this world." scarcely had the thought crossed his mind than the lane took a sudden turning, and he found himself hidden from his enemies. there are circumstances in which even the least energetic of mankind learn to behave with vigour and decision, and the most cautious forget their prudence and embrace foolhardy resolutions. this was one of those occasions for harry hartley; and those who knew him best would have been the most astonished at the lad's audacity. he stopped dead, flung the bandbox over a garden wall, and leaping upward with incredible agility, and seizing the copestone with his hands, he tumbled headlong after it into the garden. he came to himself a moment afterwards, seated in a border of small rose-bushes. his hands and knees were cut and bleeding, for the wall had been protected against such an escalade by a liberal provision of old bottles; and he was conscious of a general dislocation and a painful swimming in the head. facing him across the garden, which was in admirable order, and set with flowers of the most delicious perfume, he beheld the back of a house. it was of considerable extent, and plainly habitable; but, in odd contrast to the grounds, it was crazy, ill-kept, and of a mean appearance. on all other sides the circuit of the garden wall appeared unbroken. he took in these features of the scene with mechanical glances, but his mind was still unable to piece together or draw a rational conclusion from what he saw. and when he heard footsteps advancing on the gravel, although he turned his eyes in that direction, it was with no thought either for defence or flight. the newcomer was a large, coarse, and very sordid personage, in gardening clothes, and with a wateringpot in his left hand. one less confused would have been affected with some alarm at the sight of this man's huge proportions and black and lowering eyes. but harry was too gravely shaken by his fall to be so much as terrified; and if he was unable to divert his glances from the gardener, he remained absolutely passive, and suffered him to draw near, to take him by the shoulder, and to plant him roughly on his feet, without a motion of resistance. for a moment the two stared into each other's eyes, harry fascinated, the man filled with wrath and a cruel, sneering humour. "who are you?" he demanded at last. "who are you to come flying over my wall and break my gloire de dijons? what is your name?" he added, shaking him; "and what may be your business here?" harry could not as much as proffer a word in explanation. but just at that moment pendragon and the butcher's boy went clumping past, and the sound of their feet and their hoarse cries echoed loudly in the narrow lane. the gardener had received his answer; and he looked down into harry's face with an obnoxious smile. "a thief!" he said. "upon my word, and a very good thing you must make of it; for i see you dressed like a gentleman from top to toe. are you not ashamed to go about the world in such a trim, with honest folk, i daresay, glad to buy your cast-off finery second-hand? speak up, you dog," the man went on; "you can understand english, i suppose; and i mean to have a bit of talk with you before i march you to the station." "indeed, sir," said harry, "this is all a dreadful misconception; and if you will go with me to sir thomas vandeleur's in eaton place, i can promise that all will be made plain. the most upright person, as i now perceive, can be led into suspicious positions." "my little man," replied the gardener, "i will go with you no farther than the station-house in the next street. the inspector, no doubt, will be glad to take a stroll with you as far as eaton place, and have a bit of afternoon tea with your great acquaintances. or would you prefer to go direct to the home secretary? sir thomas vandeleur, indeed! perhaps you think i don't know a gentleman when i see one, from a common run-thehedge like you? clothes or no clothes, i can read you like a book. here is a shirt that maybe cost as much as my sunday hat; and that coat, i take it, has never seen the inside of rag-fair, and then your boots----" the man, whose eyes had fallen upon the ground, stopped short in his insulting commentary, and remained for a moment looking intently upon something at his feet. when he spoke his voice was strangely altered. "what, in god's name," said he, "is all this?" harry, following the direction of the man's eyes, beheld a spectacle that struck him dumb with terror and amazement. in his fall he had descended vertically upon the bandbox, and burst it open from end to end; thence a great treasure of diamonds had poured forth, and now lay abroad, part trodden in the soil, part scattered on the surface in regal and glittering profusion. there was a magnificent coronet which he had often admired on lady vandeleur; there were rings and brooches, eardrops and bracelets, and even unset brilliants rolling here and there among the rose-bushes like drops of morning dew. a princely fortune lay between the two men upon the ground--a fortune in the most inviting, solid, and durable form, capable of being carried in an apron, beautiful in itself, and scattering the sunlight in a million rain-bow flashes. "good god!" said harry, "i am lost!" his mind raced backwards into the past with the incalculable velocity of thought, and he began to comprehend his day's adventures, to conceive them as a whole, and to recognise the sad imbroglio in which his own character and fortunes had become involved. he looked round him as if for help, but he was alone in the garden, with his scattered diamonds and his redoubtable interlocutor; and when he gave ear, there was no sound but the rustle of the leaves and the hurried pulsation of his heart. it was little wonder if the young man felt himself deserted by his spirits, and with a broken voice repeated his last ejaculation-"i am lost!" the gardener peered in all directions with an air of guilt; but there was no face at any of the windows, and he seemed to breathe again. "pick up a heart," he said, "you fool! the worst of it is done. why could you not say at first there was enough for two? two?" he repeated, "ay, and for two hundred! but come away from here, where we may be observed; and, for the love of wisdom, straighten out your hat and brush your clothes. you could not travel two steps the figure of fun you look just now." while harry mechanically adopted these suggestions, the gardener, getting upon his knees, hastily drew together the scattered jewels and returned them to the bandbox. the touch of these costly crystals sent a shiver of emotion through the man's stalwart frame; his face was transfigured, and his eyes shone with concupiscence; indeed, it seemed as if he luxuriously prolonged his occupation, and dallied with every diamond that he handled. at last, however, it was done; and concealing the bandbox in his smock, the gardener beckoned to harry and preceded him in the direction of the house. near the door they were met by a young man, evidently in holy orders, dark and strikingly handsome, with a look of mingled weakness and resolution, and very neatly attired after the manner of his caste. the gardener was plainly annoyed by this encounter; but he put as good a face upon it as he could, and accosted the clergyman with an obsequious and smiling air. "here is a fine afternoon, mr. rolles," said he: "a fine afternoon, as sure as god made it! and here is a young friend of mine who had a fancy to look at my roses. i took the liberty to bring him in, for i thought none of the lodgers would object." "speaking for myself," replied the reverend mr. rolles, "i do not; nor do i fancy any of the rest of us would be more difficult upon so small a matter. the garden is your own, mr. raeburn; we must none of us forget that; and because you give us liberty to walk there we should be indeed ungracious if we so far presumed upon your politeness as to interfere with the convenience of your friends. but, on second thoughts," he added, "i believe that this gentleman and i have met before. mr. hartley, i think. i regret to observe that you have had a fall." and he offered his hand. a sort of maiden dignity, and a desire to delay as long as possible the necessity for explanation, moved harry to refuse this chance of help, and to deny his own identity. he chose the tender mercies of the gardener, who was at least unknown to him, rather than the curiosity and perhaps the doubts of an acquaintance. "i fear there is some mistake," said he. "my name is thomlinson, and i am a friend of mr. raeburn's." "indeed?" said mr. rolles. "the likeness is amazing." mr. raeburn, who had been upon thorns throughout this colloquy, now felt it high time to bring it to a period. "i wish you a pleasant saunter, sir," said he. and with that he dragged harry after him into the house, and then into a chamber on the garden. his first care was to draw down the blind, for mr. rolles still remained where they had left him, in an attitude of perplexity and thought. then he emptied the broken bandbox on the table, and stood before the treasure, thus fully displayed, with an expression of rapturous greed, and rubbing his hands upon his thighs. for harry, the sight of the man's face under the influence of this base emotion added another pang to those he was already suffering. it seemed incredible that, from his life of pure and delicate trifling, he should be plunged in a breath among sordid and criminal relations. he could reproach his conscience with no sinful act; and yet he was now suffering the punishment of sin in its most acute and cruel forms--the dread of punishment? the suspicions of the good, and the companionship and contamination of vile and brutal natures. he felt he could lay his life down with gladness to escape from the room and the society of mr. raeburn. "and now," said the latter, after he had separated the jewels into two nearly equal parts, and drawn one of them nearer to himself; "and now," said he, "everything in this world has to be paid for, and some things sweetly. you must know, mr. hartley, if such be your name, that i am a man of a very easy temper, and goodnature has been my stumbling-block from first to last. i could pocket the whole of these pretty pebbles, if i chose, and i should like to see you dare to say a word; but i think i must have taken a liking to you; for i declare i have not the heart to shave you so close. so, do you see, in pure kind feeling, i propose that we divide; and these," indicating the two heaps, "are the proportions that seem to me just and friendly. do you see any objection, mr. hartley, may i ask? i am not the man to stick upon a brooch." "but, sir," cried harry, "what you propose to me is impossible. the jewels are not mine, and i cannot share what is another's, no matter with whom, nor in what proportions." "they are not yours, are they not?" returned raeburn. "and you could not share them with anybody, couldn't you? well now, that is what i call a pity; for here am i obliged to take you to the station. the police--think of that," he continued; "think of the disgrace for your respectable parents; think," he went on, taking harry by the wrist; "think of the colonies and the day of judgment." "i cannot help it," wailed harry. "it is not my fault. you will not come with me to eaton place?" "no," replied the man; "i will not, that is certain. and i mean to divide these playthings with you here." and so saying he applied a sudden and severe torsion to the lad's wrist. harry could not suppress a scream, and the perspiration burst forth upon his face. perhaps pain and terror quickened his intelligence, but certainly at that moment the whole business flashed across him in another light; and he saw that there was nothing for it but to accede to the ruffian's proposal, and trust to find the house and force him to disgorge, under more favourable circumstances, and when he himself was clear from all suspicion. "i agree," he said. "there is a lamb," sneered the gardener. "i thought you would recognise your interests at last. this bandbox," he continued, "i shall burn with my rubbish; it is a thing that curious folk might recognise; and as for you, scrape up your gaieties and put them in your pocket." harry proceeded to obey, raeburn watching him, and every now and again, his greed, rekindled by some bright scintillation, abstracting another jewel from the secretary's share, and adding it to his own. when this was finished, both proceeded to the front door, which raeburn cautiously opened to observe the street. this was apparently clear of passengers; for he suddenly seized harry by the nape of the neck, and holding his face downward so that he could see nothing but the roadway and the doorsteps of the houses, pushed him violently before him down one street and up another for the space of perhaps a minute and a half. harry had counted three corners before the bully relaxed his grasp, and crying, "now be off with you!" sent the lad flying head-foremost with a well-directed and athletic kick. when harry gathered himself up, half-stunned and bleeding freely at the nose, mr. raeburn had entirely disappeared. for the first time, anger and pain so completely overcame the lad's spirits that he burst into a fit of tears and remained sobbing in the middle of the road. after he had thus somewhat assuaged his emotion, he began to look about him and read the names of the streets at whose intersection he had been deserted by the gardener. he was still in an unfrequented portion of west london, among villas and large gardens; but he could see some persons at a window who had evidently witnessed his misfortune; and almost immediately after a servant came running from the house and offered him a glass of water. at the same time, a dirty rogue, who had been slouching somewhere in the neighbourhood, drew near him from the other side. "poor fellow," said the maid, "how vilely you have been handled, to be sure! why, your knees are all cut, and your clothes ruined! do you know the wretch who used you so?" "that i do!" cried harry, who was somewhat refreshed by the water; "and shall run him home in spite of his precautions. he shall pay dearly for this day's work, i promise you." "you had better come into the house and have yourself washed and brushed," continued the maid. "my mistress will make you welcome, never fear. and see, i will pick up your hat. why, love of mercy!" she screamed, "if you have not dropped diamonds all over the street!" such was the case; a good half of what remained to him after the depredations of mr. raeburn had been shaken out of his pockets by the summersault, and once more lay glittering on the ground. he blessed his fortune that the maid had been so quick of eye; "there is nothing so bad but it might be worse," thought he; and the recovery of these few seemed to him almost as great an affair as the loss of all the rest. but, alas! as he stooped to pick up his treasures, the loiterer made a rapid onslaught, over-set both harry and the maid with a movement of his arms, swept up a double-handful of the diamonds, and made off along the street with an amazing swiftness. harry, as soon as he could get upon his feet, gave chase to the miscreant with many cries, but the latter was too fleet of foot, and probably too well acquainted with the locality; for turn where the pursuer would he could find no traces of the fugitive. in the deepest despondency harry revisited the scene of his mishap, where the maid, who was still waiting, very honestly returned him his hat and the remainder of the fallen diamonds. harry thanked her from his heart, and being now in no humour for economy, made his way to the nearest cabstand and set off for eaton place by coach. the house, on his arrival, seemed in some confusion, as if a catastrophe had happened in the family; and the servants clustered together in the hall, and were unable, or perhaps not altogether anxious, to suppress their merriment at the tatter-demalion figure of the secretary. he passed them with as good an air of dignity as he could assume, and made directly for the boudoir. when he opened the door an astonishing and even menacing spectacle presented itself to his eyes; for he beheld the general and his wife, and, of all people, charlie pendragon, closeted together and speaking with earnestness and gravity on some important subject. harry saw at once that there was little left for him to explain--plenary confession had plainly been made to the general of the intended fraud upon his pocket, and the unfortunate miscarriage of the scheme; and they had all made common cause against a common danger. "thank heaven!" cried lady vandeleur, "here he is! the bandbox, harry--the bandbox!" but harry stood before them silent and downcast. "speak!" she cried. "speak! where is the bandbox?" and the men, with threatening gestures, repeated the demand. harry drew a handful of jewels from his pocket. he was very white. "this is all that remains," said he. "i declare before heaven it was through no fault of mine; and if you will have patience, although some are lost, i am afraid, for ever, others, i am sure, may be still recovered." "alas!" cried lady vandeleur, "all our diamonds are gone, and i owe ninety thousand pounds for dress!" "madam," said the general, "you might have paved the gutter with your own trash; you might have made debts to fifty times the sum you mention; you might have robbed me of my mother's coronet and ring; and nature might have still so far prevailed that i could have forgiven you at last. but, madam, you have taken the rajah's diamond--the eye of light, as the orientals poetically termed it--the pride of kashgar! you have taken from me the rajah's diamond," he cried, raising his hands, "and all, madam, all is at an end between us!" "believe me, general vandeleur," she replied, "that is one of the most agreeable speeches that ever i heard from your lips; and since we are to be ruined, i could almost welcome the change, if it delivers me from you. you have told me often enough that i married you for your money; let me tell you now that i always bitterly repented the bargain; and if you were still marriageable, and had a diamond bigger than your head, i should counsel even my maid against a union so uninviting and disastrous.--as for you, mr. hartley," she continued, turning on the secretary, "you have sufficiently exhibited your valuable qualities in this house; we are now persuaded that you equally lack manhood, sense, and self-respect; and i can see only one course open for you--to withdraw instanter, and, if possible, return no more. for your wages you may rank as a creditor in my late husband's bankruptcy." harry had scarcely comprehended this insulting address before the general was down upon him with another. "and in the meantime," said that personage, "follow me before the nearest inspector of police. you may impose upon a simple-minded soldier, sir, but the eye of the law will read your disreputable secret. if i must spend my old age in poverty through your underhand intriguing with my wife, i mean at least that you shall not remain unpunished for your pains; and god, sir, will deny me a very considerable satisfaction if you do not pick oakum from now until your dying day." with that the general dragged harry from the apartment, and hurried him downstairs and along the street to the police station of the district. here (says my arabian author) ended this deplorable business of the bandbox. but to the unfortunate secretary the whole affair was the beginning of a new and manlier life. the police were easily persuaded of his innocence; and, after he had given what help he could in the subsequent investigations, he was even complimented by one of the chiefs of the detective department on the probity and simplicity of his behaviour. several persons interested themselves in one so unfortunate; and soon after he inherited a sum of money from a maiden aunt in worcestershire. with this he married prudence, and set sail for bendigo, or, according to another account, for trincomalee, exceedingly content, and with the best of prospects. story of the young man in holy orders the reverend mr. simon rolles had distinguished himself in the moral sciences, and was more than usually proficient in the study of divinity. his essay "on the christian doctrine of the social obligations" obtained for him, at the moment of its production, a certain celebrity in the university of oxford; and it was understood in clerical and learned circles that young mr. rolles had in contemplation a considerable work--a folio, it was said--on the authority of the fathers of the church. these attainments, these ambitious designs, however, were far from helping him to any preferment; and he was still in quest of his first curacy when a chance ramble in that part of london, the peaceful and rich aspect of the garden, a desire for solitude and study, and the cheapness of the lodging, led him to take up his abode with mr. raeburn, the nurseryman of stockdove lane. it was his habit every afternoon, after he had worked seven or eight hours on st. ambrose or st. chrysostom, to walk for a while in meditation among the roses. and this was usually one of the most productive moments of his day. but even a sincere appetite for thought, and the excitement of grave problems awaiting solution, are not always sufficient to preserve the mind of the philosopher against the petty shocks and contacts of the world. and when mr. rolles found general vandeleur's secretary, ragged and bleeding, in the company of his landlord; when he saw both change colour and seek to avoid his questions; and, above all, when the former denied his own identity with the most unmoved assurance, he speedily forgot the saints and fathers in the vulgar interest of curiosity. "i cannot be mistaken," thought he. "that is mr. hartley beyond a doubt. how comes he in such a pickle? why does he deny his name? and what can be his business with that black-looking ruffian, my landlord?" as he was thus reflecting, another peculiar circumstance attracted his attention. the face of mr. raeburn appeared at a low window next the door; and, as chance directed, his eyes met those of mr. rolles. the nurseryman seemed disconcerted, and even alarmed; and immediately after the blind of the apartment was pulled sharply down. "this may all be very well," reflected mr. rolles; "it may be all excellently well; but i confess freely that i do not think so. suspicious, underhand, untruthful, fearful of observation--i believe upon my soul," he thought, "the pair are plotting some disgraceful action." the detective that there is in all of us awoke and became clamant in the bosom of mr. rolles; and with a brisk, eager step, that bore no resemblance to his usual gait, he proceeded to make the circuit of the garden. when he came to the scene of harry's escalade, his eye was at once arrested by a broken rose-bush and marks of trampling on the mould. he looked up and saw scratches on the brick, and a rag of trouser floating from a broken bottle. this, then, was the mode of entrance chosen by mr. raeburn's particular friend! it was thus that general vandeleur's secretary came to admire a flower-garden! the young clergyman whistled softly to himself as he stooped to examine the ground. he could make out where harry had landed from his perilous leap; he recognised the flat foot of mr. raeburn where it had sunk deeply in the soil as he pulled up the secretary by the collar; nay, on a closer inspection he seemed to distinguish the marks of groping fingers, as though something had been spilt abroad and eagerly collected. "upon my word," he thought, "the thing grows vastly interesting." and just then he caught sight of something almost entirely buried in the earth. in an instant he had disinterred a dainty morocco case, ornamented and clasped in gilt. it had been trodden heavily underfoot, and thus escaped the hurried search of mr. raeburn. mr. rolles opened the case, and drew a long breath of almost horrified astonishment; for there lay before him, in a cradle of green velvet, a diamond of prodigious magnitude and of the finest water. it was of the bigness of a duck's egg; beautifully shaped, and without a flaw; and as the sun shone upon it, it gave forth a lustre like that of electricity, and seemed to burn in his hand with a thousand internal fires. he knew little of precious stones; but the rajah's diamond was a wonder that explained itself; a village child, if he found it, would run screaming for the nearest cottage; and a savage would prostrate himself in adoration before so imposing a fetich. the beauty of the stone flattered the young clergyman's eyes; the thought of its incalculable value overpowered his intellect. he knew that what he held in his hand was worth more than many years' purchase of an archiepiscopal see; that it would build cathedrals more stately than ely or cologne; that he who possessed it was set free for ever from the primal curse, and might follow his own inclinations without concern or hurry, without let or hindrance. and as he suddenly turned it, the rays leaped forth again with renewed brilliancy, and seemed to pierce his very heart. decisive actions are often taken in a moment and without any conscious deliverance from the rational parts of man. so it was now with mr. rolles. he glanced hurriedly round; beheld, like mr. raeburn before him, nothing but the sunlit flower-garden, the tall treetops, and the house with blinded windows; and in a trice he had shut the case, thrust it into his pocket, and was hastening to his study with the speed of guilt. the reverend simon rolles had stolen the rajah's diamond. early in the afternoon the police arrived with harry hartley. the nurseryman, who was beside himself with terror, readily discovered his hoard; and the jewels were identified and inventoried in the presence of the secretary. as for mr. rolles, he showed himself in a most obliging temper, communicated what he knew with freedom, and professed regret that he could do no more to help the officers in their duty. "still," he added, "i suppose your business is nearly at an end." "by no means," replied the man from scotland yard; and he narrated the second robbery of which harry had been the immediate victim, and gave the young clergyman a description of the more important jewels that were still not found, dilating particularly on the rajah's diamond. "it must be worth a fortune," observed mr. rolles. "ten fortunes--twenty fortunes," cried the officer. "the more it is worth," remarked simon shrewdly, "the more difficult it must be to sell. such a thing has a physiognomy not to be disguised, and i should fancy a man might as easily negotiate st. paul's cathedral." "oh, truly!" said the officer; "but if the thief be a man of any intelligence, he will cut it into three or four, and there will be still enough to make him rich." "thank you," said the clergyman. "you cannot imagine how much your conversation interests me." whereupon the functionary admitted that they knew many strange things in his profession, and immediately after took his leave. mr. rolles regained his apartment. it seemed smaller and barer than usual; the materials for his great work had never presented so little interest; and he looked upon his library with the eye of scorn. he took down, volume by volume, several fathers of the church, and glanced them through; but they contained nothing to his purpose. "these old gentlemen," thought he, "are no doubt very valuable writers, but they seem to me conspicuously ignorant of life. here am i, with learning enough to be a bishop, and i positively do not know how to dispose of a stolen diamond. i glean a hint from a common policeman, and with all my folios i cannot so much as put it into execution. this inspires me with very low ideas of university training." herewith he kicked over his book-shelf, and, putting on his hat, hastened from the house to the club of which he was a member. in such a place of mundane resort he hoped to find some man of good counsel and a shrewd experience in life. in the reading-room he saw many of the country clergy and an archdeacon; there were three journalists and a writer upon the higher metaphysic, playing pool; and at dinner only the raff of ordinary club frequenters showed their commonplace and obliterated countenances. none of these, thought mr. rolles, would know more on dangerous topics than he knew himself; none of them were fit to give him guidance in his present strait. at length, in the smoking-room, up many weary stairs, he hit upon a gentleman of somewhat portly build and dressed with conspicuous plainness. he was smoking a cigar and reading the _fortnightly review;_ his face was singularly free from all sign of preoccupation or fatigue; and there was something in his air which seemed to invite confidence and to expect submission. the more the young clergyman scrutinised his features, the more he was convinced that he had fallen on one capable of giving pertinent advice. "sir," said he, "you will excuse my abruptness; but i judge you from your appearance to be preeminently a man of the world." "i have indeed considerable claims to that distinction," replied the stranger, laying aside his magazine with a look of mingled amusement and surprise. "i, sir," continued the curate, "am a recluse, a student, a creature of ink-bottles and patristic folios. a recent event has brought my folly vividly before my eyes, and i desire to instruct myself in life. by life," he added, "i do not mean thackeray's novels; but the crimes and secret possibilities of our society, and the principles of wise conduct among exceptional events. i am a patient reader; can the thing be learnt in books?" "you put me in a difficulty," said the stranger. "i confess i have no great notion of the use of books, except to amuse a railway journey; although, i believe, there are some very exact treatises on astronomy, the use of the globes, agriculture, and the art of making paper flowers. upon the less apparent provinces of life i fear you will find nothing truthful. yet stay," he added, "have you read gaboriau?" mr. rolles admitted he had never even heard the name. "you may gather some notions from gaboriau," resumed the stranger. "he is at least suggestive; and as he is an author much studied by prince bismarck, you will, at the worst, lose your time in good society." "sir," said the curate, "i am infinitely obliged by your politeness." "you have already more than repaid me," returned the other. "how?" inquired simon. "by the novelty of your request," replied the gentleman; and with a polite gesture, as though to ask permission, he resumed the study of the _fortnightly review._ on his way home mr. rolles purchased a work on precious stones and several of gaboriau's novels. these last he eagerly skimmed until an advanced hour in the morning; but although they introduced him to many new ideas, he could nowhere discover what to do with a stolen diamond. he was annoyed, moreover, to find the information scattered amongst romantic story-telling, instead of soberly set forth after the manner of a manual; and he concluded that, even if the writer had thought much upon these subjects, he was totally lacking in educational method. for the character and attainments of lecoq, however, he was unable to contain his admiration. "he was truly a great creature," ruminated mr. rolles. "he knew the world as i know paley's evidences. there was nothing that he could not carry to a termination with his own hand, and against the largest odds. heavens!" he broke out suddenly, "is not this the lesson? must i not learn to cut diamonds for myself?" it seemed to him as if he had sailed at once out of his perplexities; he remembered that he knew a jeweller, one b. macculloch, in edinburgh, who would be glad to put him in the way of the necessary training; a few months, perhaps a few years, of sordid toil, and he would be sufficiently expert to divide and sufficiently cunning to dispose with advantage of the rajah's diamond. that done, he might return to pursue his researches at leisure, a wealthy and luxurious student, envied and respected by all. golden visions attended him through his slumber, and he awoke refreshed and light-hearted with the morning sun. mr. raeburn's house was on that day to be closed by the police, and this afforded a pretext for his departure. he cheerfully prepared his baggage, transported it to king's cross, where he left it in the cloak-room, and returned to the club to while away the afternoon and dine. "if you dine here to-day, rolles," observed an acquaintance, "you may see two of the most remarkable men in england--prince florizel of bohemia and old jack vandeleur." "i have heard of the prince," replied mr. rolles; "and general vandeleur i have even met in society." "general vandeleur is an ass!" returned the other. "this is his brother john, the biggest adventurer, the best judge of precious stones, and one of the most acute diplomatists in europe. have you never heard of his duel with the duc de val d'orge? of his exploits and atrocities when he was dictator of paraguay? of his dexterity in recovering sir samuel levi's jewellery? nor of his services in the indian mutiny--services by which the government profited, but which the government dared not recognise? you make me wonder what we mean by fame, or even by infamy; for jack vandeleur has prodigious claims to both. run downstairs," he continued, "take a table near them, and keep your ears open. you will hear some strange talk, or i am much misled." "but how shall i know them?" inquired the clergyman. "know them!" cried his friend; "why, the prince is the finest gentleman in europe, the only living creature who looks like a king; and as for jack vandeleur, if you can imagine ulysses at seventy years of age, and with a sabre-cut across his face, you have the man before you! know them indeed! why, you could pick either of them out of a derby day!" rolles eagerly hurried to the dining-room. it was as his friend had asserted; it was impossible to mistake the pair in question. old john vandeleur was of a remarkable force of body, and obviously broken to the most difficult exercises. he had neither the carriage of a swordsman, nor of a sailor, nor yet of one much inured to the saddle; but something made up of all these, and the result and expression of many different habits and dexterities. his features were bold and aquiline; his expression arrogant and predatory; his whole appearance that of a swift, violent, unscrupulous man of action; and his copious white hair and the deep sabre-cut that traversed his nose and temple added a note of savagery to a head already remarkable and menacing in itself in his companion, the prince of bohemia, mr. rolles was astonished to recognise the gentleman who had recommended him the study of gaboriau. doubtless prince florizel, who rarely visited the club, of which, as of most others, he was an honorary member, had been waiting for john vandeleur when simon accosted him on the previous evening. the other diners had modestly retired into the angles of the room, and left the distinguished pair in a certain isolation, but the young clergyman was unrestrained by any sentiment of awe, and, marching boldly up, took his place at the nearest table. the conversation was, indeed, new to the student's ears. the ex-dictator of paraguay stated many extraordinary experiences in different quarters of the world; and the prince supplied a commentary which, to a man of thought, was even more interesting than the events themselves. two forms of experience were thus brought together and laid before the young clergyman; and he did not know which to admire the most--the desperate actor or the skilled expert in life; the man who spoke boldly of his own deeds and perils, or the man who seemed, like a god, to know all things and to have suffered nothing. the manner of each aptly fitted with his part in the discourse. the dictator indulged in brutalities alike of speech and gesture; his hand opened and shut and fell roughly on the table; and his voice was loud and heady. the prince, on the other hand, seemed the very type of urbane docility and quiet; the least movement, the least inflection, had with him a weightier significance than all the shouts and pantomime of his companion; and if ever, as must frequently have been the case, he described some experience personal to himself, it was so aptly dissimulated as to pass unnoticed with the rest. at length the talk wandered on to the late robberies and the rajah's diamond. "that diamond would be better in the sea," observed prince florizel. "as a vandeleur," replied the dictator, "your highness may imagine my dissent." "i speak on grounds of public policy," pursued the prince. "jewels so valuable should be reserved for the collection of a prince or the treasury of a great nation. to hand them about among the common sort of men is to set a price on virtue's head; and if the rajah of kashgar--a prince, i understand, of great enlightenment--desired vengeance upon the men of europe, he could hardly have gone more efficaciously about his purpose than by sending us this apple of discord. there is no honesty too robust for such a trial. i myself, who have many duties and many privileges of my own--i myself, mr. vandeleur, could scarce handle the intoxicating crystal and be safe. as for you, who are a diamond-hunter by taste and profession, i do not believe there is a crime in the calendar you would not perpetrate--i do not believe you have a friend in the world whom you would not eagerly betray--i do not know if you have a family, but if you have i declare you would sacrifice your children--and all this for what? not to be richer, nor to have more comforts or more respect, but simply to call this diamond yours for a year or two until you die, and now and again to open a safe and look at it as one looks at a picture." "it is true," replied vandeleur. "i have hunted most things, from men and women down to mosquitos; i have dived for coral; i have followed both whales and tigers; and a diamond is the tallest quarry of the lot. it has beauty and worth; it alone can properly reward the ardours of the chase. at this moment, as your highness may fancy, i am upon the trail; i have a sure knack, a wide experience; i know every stone of price in my brother's collection as a shepherd knows his sheep; and i wish i may die if i do not recover them every one!" "sir thomas vandeleur will have great cause to thank you," said the prince. "i am not so sure," returned the dictator, with a laugh. "one of the vandeleurs will. thomas or john-peter or paul--we are all apostles." "i did not catch your observation," said the prince, with some disgust. and at the same moment the waiter informed mr. vandeleur that his cab was at the door. mr. rolles glanced at the clock, and saw that he also must be moving; and the coincidence struck him sharply and unpleasantly, for he desired to see no more of the diamond-hunter. much study having somewhat shaken the young man's nerves, he was in the habit of travelling in the most luxurious manner; and for the present journey he had taken a sofa in the sleeping carriage. "you will be very comfortable," said the guard; "there is no one in your compartment, and only one old gentleman in the other end." it was close upon the hour, and the tickets were being examined, when mr. rolles beheld this other fellowpassenger ushered by several porters into his place; certainly, there was not another man in the world whom he would not have preferred--for it was old john vandeleur, the ex-dictator. the sleeping carriages on the great northern line were divided into three compartments--one at each end for travellers, and one in the centre fitted with the conveniences of a lavatory. a door running in grooves separated each of the others from the lavatory; but as there were neither bolts nor locks, the whole suite was practically common ground. when mr. rolles had studied his position, he perceived himself without defence. if the dictator chose to pay him a visit in the course of the night, he could do no less than receive it; he had no means of fortification, and lay open to attack as if he had been lying in the fields. this situation caused him some agony of mind. he recalled with alarm the boastful statements of his fellow-traveller across the dining-table, and the professions of immorality which he had heard him offering to the disgusted prince. some persons, he remembered to have read, are endowed with a singular quickness of perception for the neighbourhood of precious metals; through walls and even at considerable distances they are said to divine the presence of gold. might it not be the same with diamonds? he wondered; and if so, who was more likely to enjoy this transcendental sense than the person who gloried in the appellation of the diamond hunter? from such a man he recognised that he had everything to fear, and longed eagerly for the arrival of the day. in the meantime he neglected no precaution, concealed his diamond in the most internal pocket of a system of greatcoats, and devoutly recommended himself to the care of providence. the train pursued its usual even and rapid course; and nearly half the journey had been accomplished before slumber began to triumph over uneasiness in the breast of mr. rolles. for some time he resisted its influence; but it grew upon him more and more, and a little before york he was fain to stretch himself upon one of the couches and suffer his eyes to close; and almost at the same instant consciousness deserted the young clergyman. his last thought was of his terrifying neighbour. when he awoke it was still pitch dark, except for the flicker of the veiled lamp; and the continual roaring and oscillation testified to the unrelaxed velocity of the train. he sat upright in a panic, for he had been tormented by the most uneasy dreams; it was some seconds before he recovered his self-command; and even after he had resumed a recumbent attitude sleep continued to flee him, and he lay awake with his brain in a state of violent agitation, and his eyes fixed upon the lavatory door. he pulled his clerical felt hat over his brow still further to shield him from the light; and he adopted the usual expedients, such as counting a thousand or banishing thought, by which experienced invalids are accustomed to woo the approach of sleep. in the case of mr. rolles they proved one and all vain; he was harassed by a dozen different anxieties--the old man in the other end of the carriage haunted him in the most alarming shapes; and in whatever attitude he chose to lie, the diamond in his pocket occasioned him a sensible physical distress. it burned, it was too large, it bruised his ribs; and there were infinitesimal fractions of a second in which he had half a mind to throw it from the window. while he was thus lying, a strange incident took place. the sliding-door into the lavatory stirred a little, and then a little more, and was finally drawn back for the space of about twenty inches. the lamp in the lavatory was unshaded, and in the lighted aperture thus disclosed mr. rolles could see the head of mr. vandeleur in an attitude of deep attention. he was conscious that the gaze of the dictator rested intently on his own face; and the instinct of self-preservation moved him to hold his breath, to refrain from the least movement, and, keeping his eyes lowered, to watch his visitor from underneath the lashes. after about a moment, the head was withdrawn and the door of the lavatory replaced. the dictator had not come to attack, but to observe; his action was not that of a man threatening another, but that of a man who was himself threatened; if mr. rolles was afraid of him, it appeared that he, in his turn, was not quite easy on the score of mr. rolles. he had come, it would seem, to make sure that his only fellow-traveller was asleep; and, when satisfied on that point, he had at once withdrawn. the clergyman leaped to his feet. the extreme of terror had given place to a reaction of foolhardy daring. he reflected that the rattle of the flying train concealed all other sounds, and determined, come what might, to return the visit he had just received. divesting himself of his cloak, which might have interfered with the freedom of his action, he entered the lavatory and paused to listen. as he had expected, there was nothing to be heard above the roar of the train's progress; and laying his hand on the door at the farther side, he proceeded cautiously to draw it back for about six inches. then he stopped, and could not contain an ejaculation of surprise. john vandeleur wore a fur travelling-cap with lappets to protect his ears; and this may have combined with the sound of the express to keep him in ignorance of what was going forward. it is certain, at least, that he did not raise his head, but continued without interruption to pursue his strange employment. between his feet stood an open hat-box; in one hand he held the sleeve of his sealskin greatcoat; in the other a formidable knife, with which he had just slit up the lining of the sleeve. mr. rolles had read of persons carrying money in a belt; and as he had no acquaintance with any but cricket-belts, he had never been able rightly to conceive how this was managed. but here was a stranger thing before his eyes; for john vandeleur, it appeared, carried diamonds in the lining of his sleeve; and even as the young clergyman gazed, he could see one glittering brilliant drop after another into the hat-box. he stood riveted to the spot, following this unusual business with his eyes. the diamonds were, for the most part, small, and not easily distinguishable either in shape or fire. suddenly the dictator appeared to find a difficulty; he employed both hands and stooped over his task; but it was not until after considerable manoeuvring that he extricated a large tiara of diamonds from the lining, and held it up for some seconds' examination before he placed it with the others in the hat-box. the tiara was a ray of light to mr. rolles; he immediately recognised it for a part of the treasure stolen from harry hartley by the loiterer. there was no room for mistake; it was exactly as the detective had described it; there were the ruby stars, with a great emerald in the centre; there were the interlacing crescents; and there were the pear-shaped pendants, each a single stone, which gave a special value to lady vandeleur's tiara. mr. rolles was hugely relieved. the dictator was as deeply in the affair as he was; neither could tell tales upon the other. in the first glow of happiness, the clergyman suffered a deep sigh to escape him; and as his bosom had become choked and his throat dry during his previous suspense, the sigh was followed by a cough. mr. vandeleur looked up; his face contracted with the blackest and most deadly passion; his eyes opened widely, and his under jaw dropped in an astonishment that was upon the brink of fury. by an instinctive movement he had covered the hat-box with the coat for half a minute the two men stared upon each other in silence. it was not a long interval, but it sufficed for mr. rolles; he was one of those who think swiftly on dangerous occasions; he decided on a course of action of a singularly daring nature; and although he felt he was setting his life upon the hazard, he was the first to break silence. "i beg your pardon," said he. the dictator shivered slightly, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse. "what do you want here?" he asked. "i take a particular interest in diamonds," replied mr. rolles, with an air of perfect self-possession. "two connoisseurs should be acquainted. i have here a trifle of my own which may perhaps serve for an introduction." and so saying, he quietly took the case from his pocket, showed the rajah's diamond to the dictator for an instant, and replaced it in security. "it was once your brother's," he added. john vandeleur continued to regard him with a look of almost painful amazement; but he neither spoke nor moved. "i was pleased to observe," resumed the young man, "that we have gems from the same collection." the dictator's surprise overpowered him. "i beg your pardon," he said; "i begin to perceive that i am growing old! i am positively not prepared for little incidents like this. but set my mind at rest upon one point: do my eyes deceive me, or are you indeed a parson?" "i am in holy orders," answered mr. rolles. "well," cried the other, "as long as i live i will never hear another word against the cloth!" "you flatter me," said mr. rolles. "pardon me," replied vandeleur; "pardon me, young man. you are no coward, but it still remains to be seen whether you are not the worst of fools. perhaps," he continued, leaning back upon his seat, "perhaps you would oblige me with a few particulars. i must suppose you had some object in the stupefying impudence of your proceedings, and i confess i have a curiosity to know it." "it is very simple," replied the clergyman; "it proceeds from my great inexperience of life." "i shall be glad to be persuaded," answered vandeleur. whereupon mr. rolles told him the whole story of his connection with the rajah's diamond, from the time he found it in raeburn's garden to the time when he left london in the flying scotchman. he added a brief sketch of his feelings and thoughts during the journey, and concluded in these words:-"when i recognised the tiara i knew we were in the same attitude towards society, and this inspired me with a hope, which i trust you will say was not ill-founded, that you might become in some sense my partner in the difficulties and, of course, the profits of my situation. to one of your special knowledge and obviously great experience the negotiation of the diamond would give but little trouble, while to me it was a matter of impossibility. on the other part, i judged that i might lose nearly as much by cutting the diamond, and that not improbably with an unskilful hand, as might enable me to pay you with proper generosity for your assistance. the subject was a delicate one to broach; and perhaps i fell short in delicacy. but i must ask you to remember that for me the situation was a new one, and i was entirely unacquainted with the etiquette in use. i believe without vanity that i could have married or baptized you in a very acceptable manner; but every man has his own aptitudes, and this sort of bargain was not among the list of my accomplishments." "i do not wish to flatter you," replied vandeleur; "but upon my word you have an unusual disposition for a life of crime. you have more accomplishments than you imagine; and though i have encountered a number of rogues in different quarters of the world, i never met with one so unblushing as yourself. cheer up, mr. rolles, you are in the right profession at last! as for helping you, you may command me as you will. i have only a day's business in edinburgh on a little matter for my brother; and once that is concluded, i return to paris, where i usually reside. if you please, you may accompany me thither. and before the end of a month i believe i shall have brought your little business to a satisfactory conclusion." at this point, contrary to all the canons of his art, our arabian author breaks of the story of the young man in holy orders. i regret and condemn such practices; but i must follow my original, and refer the reader for the conclusion of mr. rolles' adventures to the next number of the cycle, the story of the house with the green blinds francis scrymgeour, a clerk in the bank of scotland at edinburgh, had attained the age of twenty-five in a sphere of quiet, creditable, and domestic life. his mother died while he was young; but his father, a man of sense and probity, had given him an excellent education at school, and brought him up at home to orderly and frugal habits. francis, who was of a docile and affectionate disposition, profited by these advantages with zeal, and devoted himself heart and soul to his employment. a walk upon saturday afternoon, an occasional dinner with members of his family, and a yearly tour of a fortnight in the highlands, or even on the continent of europe, were his principal distractions, and he grew rapidly in favour with his superiors, and enjoyed already a salary of nearly two hundred pounds a year, with the prospect of an ultimate advance to almost double that amount. few young men were more contented, few more willing and laborious, than francis scrymgeour. sometimes at night, when he had read the daily paper, he would play upon the flute to amuse his father, for whose qualities he entertained a great respect. one day he received a note from a well-known firm of writers to the signet, requesting the favour of an immediate interview with him. the letter was marked "private and confidential," and had been addressed to him at the bank, instead of at home--two unusual circumstances which made him obey the summons with the more alacrity. the senior member of the firm, a man of much austerity of manner, made him gravely welcome, requested him to take a seat, and proceeded to explain the matter in hand in the picked expressions of a veteran man of business. a person, who must remain nameless, but of whom the lawyer had every reason to think well--a man, in short, of some station in the country,--desired to make francis an annual allowance of five hundred pounds. the capital was to be placed under the control of the lawyer's firm and two trustees who must also remain anonymous. there were conditions annexed to this liberality, but he was of opinion that his new client would find nothing either excessive or dishonourable in the terms; and he repeated these two words with emphasis, as though he desired to commit himself to nothing more. francis asked their nature. "the conditions," said the writer to the signet, "are, as i have twice remarked, neither dishonourable nor excessive. at the same time i cannot conceal from you that they are most unusual. indeed, the whole case is very much out of our way; and i should certainly have refused it had it not been for the reputation of the gentleman who intrusted it to my care, and, let me add, mr. scrymgeour, the interest i have been led to take in yourself by many complimentary and, i have no doubt, well-deserved reports." francis entreated him to be more specific. "you cannot picture my uneasiness as to these conditions," he said. "they are two," replied the lawyer, "only two, and the sum, as you will remember, is five hundred a year--and unburdened, i forgot to add, unburdened." and the lawyer raised his eyebrows at him with solemn gusto. "the first," he resumed, "is of remarkable simplicity. you must be in paris by the afternoon of sunday, the 15th, there you will find, at the box-office of the comedie francaise, a ticket for admission taken in your name and waiting you. you are requested to sit out the whole performance in the seat provided, and that is all." "i should certainly have preferred a week-day," replied francis. "but, after all, once in a way----" "and in paris, my dear sir," added the lawyer soothingly. "i believe i am something of a precisian myself, but upon such a consideration, and in paris, i should not hesitate an instant." and the pair laughed pleasantly together. "the other is of more importance," continued the writer to the signet. "it regards your marriage. my client, taking a deep interest in your welfare, desires to advise you absolutely in the choice of a wife. absolutely, you understand," he repeated. "let us be more explicit, if you please," returned francis. "am i to marry any one, maid or widow, black or white, whom this invisible person chooses to propose?" "i was to assure you that suitability of age and position should be a principle with your benefactor," replied the lawyer. "as to race, i confess the difficulty had not occurred to me, and i failed to inquire; but if you like i will make a note of it at once, and advise you on the earliest opportunity." "sir," said francis, "it remains to be seen whether this whole affair is not a most unworthy fraud. the circumstances are inexplicable--i had almost said incredible; and until i see a little more daylight, and some plausible motive, i confess i should be very sorry to put a hand to the transaction. i appeal to you in this difficulty for information. i must learn what is at the bottom of it all. if you do not know, cannot guess, or are not at liberty to tell me, i shall take my hat and go back to my bank as i came." "i do not know," answered the lawyer, "but i have an excellent guess. your father, and no one else, is at the root of this apparently unnatural business." "my father!" cried francis, in extreme disdain. "worthy man, i know every thought of his mind, every penny of his fortune!" "you misinterpret my words," said the lawyer. "i do not refer to mr. scrymgeour senior; for he is not your father. when he and his wife came to edinburgh, you were already nearly one year old, and you had not yet been three months in their care. the secret has been well kept; but such is the fact. your father is unknown, and i say again that i believe him to be the original of the offers i am charged at present to transmit to you." it would be impossible to exaggerate the astonishment of francis scrymgeour at this unexpected information. he pled this confusion to the lawyer. "sir," said he, "after a piece of news so startling, you must grant me some hours for thought. you shall know this evening what conclusion i have reached." the lawyer commended his prudence; and francis, excusing himself upon some pretext at the bank, took a long walk into the country, and fully considered the different steps and aspects of the case. a pleasant sense of his own importance rendered him the more deliberate: but the issue was from the first not doubtful. his whole carnal man leaned irresistibly towards the five hundred a year, and the strange conditions with which it was burdened; he discovered in his heart an invincible repugnance to the name of scrymgeour, which he had never hitherto disliked; he began to despise the narrow and unromantic interests of his former life; and when once his mind was fairly made up, he walked with a new feeling of strength and freedom, and nourished himself with the gayest anticipations. he said but a word to the lawyer, and immediately received a cheque for two quarters' arrears; for the allowance was antedated from the 1st of january. with this in his pocket, he walked home. the flat in scotland street looked mean in his eyes; his nostrils, for the first time, rebelled against the odour of broth; and he observed little defects of manner in his adoptive father which filled him with surprise, and almost with disgust. the next day, he determined, should see him on his way to paris. in that city, where he arrived long before the appointed date, he put up at a modest hotel frequented by english and italians, and devoted himself to improvement in the french tongue. for this purpose he had a master twice a week, entered into conversation with loiterers in the champs elysees, and nightly frequented the theatre. he had his whole toilette fashionably renewed; and was shaved and had his hair dressed every morning by a barber in a neighbouring street. this gave him something of a foreign air, and seemed to wipe off the reproach of his past years. at length, on the saturday afternoon, he betook himself to the box-office of the theatre in the rue richelieu. no sooner had he mentioned his name than the clerk produced the order in an envelope of which the address was scarcely dry. "it has been taken this moment," said the clerk. "indeed!" said francis. "may i ask what the gentleman was like?" "your friend is easy to describe," replied the official. "he is old and strong and beautiful, with white hair and a sabre-cut across his face. you cannot fail to recognise so marked a person." "no, indeed," returned francis; "and i thank you for your politeness." "he cannot yet be far distant," added the clerk. "if you make haste you might still overtake him." francis did not wait to be twice told; he ran precipitately from the theatre into the middle of the street and looked in all directions. more than one white-haired man was within sight; but though he overtook each of them in succession, all wanted the sabre-cut. for nearly half an hour he tried one street after another in the neighbourhood, until at length, recognising the folly of continued search, he started on a walk to compose his agitated feelings; for this proximity of an encounter with him to whom he could not doubt he owed the day had profoundly moved the young man. it chanced that his way lay up the rue drouot and thence up the rue des martyrs; and chance, in this case, served him better than all the forethought in the world. for on the outer boulevard he saw two men in earnest colloquy upon a seat. one was dark, young, and handsome, secularly dressed, but with an indelible clerical stamp; the other answered in every particular to the description given him by the clerk. francis felt his heart beat high in his bosom; he knew he was now about to hear the voice of his father; and making a wide circuit, he noiselessly took his place behind the couple in question, who were too much interested in their talk to observe much else. as francis had expected, the conversation was conducted in the english language. "your suspicions begin to annoy me, rolles," said the older man. i tell you i am doing my utmost; a man cannot lay his hand on millions in a moment. have i not taken you up, a mere stranger, out of pure goodwill? are you not living largely on my bounty?" "on your advances, mr. vandeleur," corrected the other. "advances, if you choose; and interest instead of goodwill, if you prefer it," returned vandeleur angrily. "i am not here to pick expressions. business is business; and your business, let me remind you, is too muddy for such airs. trust me, or leave me alone and find some one else; but let us have an end, for god's sake, of your jeremiads." "i am beginning to learn the world," replied the other, "and i see that you have every reason to play me false, and not one to deal honestly. i am not here to pick expressions either; you wish the diamond for yourself; you know you do--you dare not deny it. have you not already forged my name, and searched my lodging in my absence? i understand the cause of your delays; you are lying in wait ; you are the diamond-hunter, forsooth; and sooner or later, by fair means or foul you'll lay your hands upon it. i tell you, it must stop; push me much further and i promise you a surprise." "it does not become you to use threats," returned vandeleur. "two can play at that. my brother is here in paris; the police are on the alert; and if you persist in wearying me with your caterwauling, i will arrange a little astonishment for you, mr. rolles. but mine shall be once and for all. do you understand, or would you prefer me to tell it you in hebrew? there is an end to all things, and you have come to the end of my patience. tuesday, at seven; not a day, not an hour sooner, not the least part of a second, if it were to save your life. and if you do not choose to wait, you may go to the bottomless pit for me, and welcome." and so saying, the dictator arose from the bench, and marched off in the direction of montmartre, shaking his head and swinging his cane with a most furious air; while his companion remained where he was, in an attitude of great dejection. francis was at the pitch of surprise and horror; his sentiments had been shocked to the last degree; the hopeful tenderness with which he had taken his place upon the bench was transformed into repulsion and despair; old mr. scrymgeour, he reflected, was a far more kindly and creditable parent than this dangerous and violent intriguer; but he retained his presence of mind, and suffered not a moment to elapse before he was on the trail of the dictator. that gentleman's fury carried him forward at a brisk pace, and he was so completely occupied in his angry thoughts that he never so much as cast a look behind him till he reached his own door. his house stood high up in the rue lepic, commanding a view of all paris, and enjoying the pure air of the heights. it was two stories high, with green blinds and shutters; and all the windows looking on the street were hermetically closed. tops of trees showed over the high garden wall, and the wall was protected by _chevaux-de-frise._ the dictator paused a moment while he searched his pocket for a key; and then, opening a gate, disappeared within the enclosure. francis looked about him; the neighbourhood was very lonely; the house isolated in its garden. it seemed as if his observation must here come to an abrupt end. a second glance, however, showed him a tall house next door presenting a gable to the garden, and in this gable a single window. he passed to the front and saw a ticket offering unfurnished lodgings by the month; and, on inquiry, the room which commanded the dictator's garden proved to be one of those to let. francis did not hesitate a moment; he took the room, paid an advance upon the rent, and returned to his hotel to seek his baggage. the old man with the sabre-cut might or might not be his father; he might or he might not be upon the true scent; but he was certainly on the edge of an exciting mystery, and he promised himself that he would not relax his observation until he had got to the bottom of the secret. from the window of his new apartment francis scrymgeour commanded a complete view into the garden of the house with the green blinds. immediately below him a very comely chestnut with wide boughs sheltered a pair of rustic tables where people might dine in the height of summer. on all sides save one a dense vegetation concealed the soil; but there, between the tables and the house, he saw a patch of gravel walk leading from the verandah to the garden gate. studying the place from between the boards of the venetian shutters, which he durst not open for fear of attracting attention, francis observed but little to indicate the manners of the inhabitants, and that little argued no more than a close reserve and a taste for solitude. the garden was conventual, the house had the air of a prison. the green blinds were all drawn down upon the outside; the door into the verandah was closed; the garden, as far as he could see it, was left entirely to itself in the evening sunshine. a modest curl of smoke from a single chimney alone testified to the presence of living people. in order that he might not be entirely idle, and to give a certain colour to his way of life, francis had purchased euclid's geometry in french, which he set himself to copy and translate on the top of his portmanteau and seated on the floor against the wall; for he was equally without chair or table. from time to time he would rise and cast a glance into the enclosure of the house with the green blinds; but the windows remained obstinately closed and the garden empty. only late in the evening did anything occur to reward his continued attention. between nine and ten the sharp tinkle of a bell aroused him from a fit of dozing; and he sprang to his observatory in time to hear an important noise of locks being opened and bars removed, and to see mr. vandeleur, carrying a lantern and clothed in a flowing robe of black velvet with a skullcap to match, issue from under the verandah and proceed leisurely towards the garden gate. the sound of bolts and bars was then repeated; and a moment after, francis perceived the dictator escorting into the house, in the mobile light of the lantern, an individual of the lowest and most despicable appearance. half an hour afterwards the visitor was reconducted to the street; and mr. vandeleur, setting his light upon one of the rustic tables, finished a cigar with great deliberation under the foliage of the chestnut. francis, peering through a clear space among the leaves, was able to follow his gestures as he threw away the ash or enjoyed a copious inhalation; and beheld a cloud upon the old man's brow and a forcible action of the lips, which testified to some deep and probably painful train of thought. the cigar was already almost at an end, when the voice of a young girl was heard suddenly crying the hour from the interior of the house. "in a moment," replied john vandeleur. and with that he threw away the stump, and, taking up the lantern, sailed away under the verandah for the night. as soon as the door was closed, absolute darkness fell upon the house; francis might try his eyesight as much as he pleased, he could not detect so much as a single chink of light below a blind; and he concluded, with great good sense, that the bed-chambers were all upon the other side. early the next morning (for he was early awake after an uncomfortable night upon the floor) he saw cause to adopt a different explanation. the blinds rose, one after another, by means of a spring in the interior, and disclosed steel shutters such as we see on the front of shops; these in their turn were rolled up by a similar contrivance; and for the space of about an hour the chambers were left open to the morning air. at the end of that time mr. vandeleur, with his own hand, once more closed the shutters and replaced the blinds from within. while francis was still marvelling at these precautions, the door opened and a young girl came forth to look about her in the garden. it was not two minutes before she reentered the house, but even in that short time he saw enough to convince him that she possessed the most unusual attractions. his curiosity was not only highly excited by this incident, but his spirits were improved to a still more notable degree. the alarming manners and more than equivocal life of his father ceased from that moment to prey upon his mind; from that moment he embraced his new family with ardour; and whether the young lady should prove his sister or his wife, he felt convinced she was an angel in disguise. so much was this the case that he was seized with a sudden horror when he reflected how little he really knew, and how possible it was that he had followed the wrong person when he followed mr. vandeleur. the porter, whom he consulted, could afford him little information; but, such as it was, it had a mysterious and questionable sound. the person next door was an english gentleman of extraordinary wealth, and proportionately eccentric in his tastes and habits. he possessed great collections, which he kept in the house beside him; and it was to protect these that he had fitted the place with steel shutters, elaborate fastenings, and _chevaux-de-frise_ along the garden wall. he lived much alone, in spite of some strange visitors, with whom, it seemed, he had business to transact; and there was no one else in the house, except mademoiselle and an old woman servant. "is mademoiselle his daughter?" inquired francis. "certainly," replied the porter. "mademoiselle is the daughter of the house; and strange it is to see how she is made to work. for all his riches, it is she who goes to market; and every day in the week you may see her going by with a basket on her arm." "and the collections?" asked the other. "sir," said the man, "they are immensely valuable. more i cannot tell you. since m. de vandeleur's arrival no one in the quarter has so much as passed the door." "suppose not," returned francis, "you must surely have some notion what these famous galleries contain. is it pictures, silks, statues, jewels, or what?" "my faith, sir," said the fellow, with a shrug, "it might be carrots, and still i could not tell you. how should i know? the house is kept like a garrison, as you perceive. and then as francis was returning disappointed to his room, the porter called him back. "i have just remembered, sir," said he. "m. de vandeleur has been in all parts of the world, and i once heard the old woman declare that he had brought many diamonds back with him. if that be the truth, there must be a fine show behind those shutters." by an early hour on sunday francis was in his place at the theatre. the seat which had been taken for him was only two or three numbers from the left-hand side, and directly opposite one of the lower boxes. as the seat had been specially chosen there was doubtless something to be learned from its position; and he judged by an instinct that the box upon his right was, in some way or other, to be connected with the drama in which he ignorantly played a part. indeed, it was so situated that its occupants could safely observe him from beginning to end of the piece, if they were so minded; while, profiting by the depth, they could screen themselves sufficiently well from any counterexamination on his side. he promised himself not to leave it for a moment out of sight; and whilst he scanned the rest of the theatre, or made a show of attending to the business of the stage, he always kept a corner of an eye upon the empty box. the second act had been some time in progress, and was even drawing towards a close, when the door opened and two persons entered and ensconced themselves in the darkest of the shade. francis could hardly control his emotion. it was mr. vandeleur and his daughter. the blood came and went in his arteries and veins with stunning activity; his ears sang; his head turned. he dared not look lest he should awake suspicion; his playbill, which he kept reading from end to end, and over and over again, turned from white to red before his eyes; and when he cast a glance upon the stage, it seemed incalculably far away, and he found the voices and gestures of the actors to the last degree impertinent and absurd. from time to time he risked a momentary look in the direction which principally interested him; and once at least he felt certain that his eyes encountered those of the young girl. a shock passed over his body, and he saw all the colours of the rainbow. what would he not have given to overhear what passed between the vandeleurs? what would he not have given for the courage to take up his opera-glass and steadily inspect their attitude and expression? there, for aught he knew, his whole life was being decided--and he not able to interfere, not able even to follow the debate, but condemned to sit and suffer where he was, in impotent anxiety. at last the act came to an end. the curtain fell, and the people around him began to leave their places for the interval. it was only natural that he should follow their example; and if he did so, it was not only natural but necessary that he should pass immediately in front of the box in question. summoning all his courage, but keeping his eyes lowered, francis drew near the spot. his progress was slow, for the old gentleman before him moved with incredible deliberation, wheezing as he went. what was he to do? should he address the vandeleurs by name as he went by? should he take the flower from his button-hole and throw it into the box? should he raise his face and direct one long and affectionate look upon the lady who was either his sister or his betrothed? as he found himself thus struggling among so many alternatives, he had a vision of his old equable existence in the bank, and was assailed by a thought of regret for the past. by this time he had arrived directly opposite the box; and although he was still undetermined what to do or whether to do anything, he turned his head and lifted his eyes. no sooner had he done so than he uttered a cry of disappointment and remained rooted to the spot the box was empty. during his slow advance mr. vandeleur and his daughter had quietly slipped away. a polite person in his rear reminded him that he was stopping the path; and he moved on again with mechanical footsteps, and suffered the crowd to carry him unresisting out of the theatre. once in the street, the pressure ceasing, he came to a halt, and the cool night-air speedily restored him to the possession of his faculties. he was surprised to find that his head ached violently, and that he remembered not one word of the two acts which he had witnessed. as the excitement wore away, it was succeeded by an overmastering appetite for sleep, and he hailed a cab and drove to his lodging in a state of extreme exhaustion and some disgust of life. next morning he lay in wait for miss vandeleur on her road to market, and by eight o'clock beheld her stepping down a lane. she was simply, and even poorly, attired; but in the carriage of her head and body there was something flexible and noble that would have lent distinction to the meanest toilette. even her basket, so aptly did she carry it, became her like an ornament. it seemed to francis, as he slipped into a doorway, that the sunshine followed and the shadows fled before her as she walked; and he was conscious, for the first time, of a bird singing in a cage above the lane. he suffered her to pass the doorway, and then, coming forth once more, addressed her by name from behind. "miss vandeleur," said he. she turned and, when she saw who he was, became deadly pale. "pardon me," he continued; "heaven knows i had no will to startle you; and, indeed, there should be nothing startling in the presence of one who wishes you so well as i do. and, believe me, i am acting rather from necessity than choice. we have many things in common, and i am sadly in the dark. there is much that i should be doing, and my hands are tied. i do not know even what to feel, nor who are my friends and enemies." she found her voice with an effort. "i do not know who you are," she said. "ah, yes! miss vandeleur, you do," returned francis; "better than i do myself. indeed, it is on that, above all, that i seek light. tell me what you know," he pleaded. "tell me who i am, who you are, and how our destinies are intermixed. give me a little help with my life, miss vandeleur--only a word or two to guide me, only the name of my father, if you will--and i shall be grateful and content." "i will not attempt to deceive you," she replied. "i know who you are, but i am not at liberty to say." "tell me, at least, that you have forgiven my presumption, and i shall wait with all the patience i have," he said. "if i am not to know, i must do without. it is cruel, but i can bear more upon a push. only do not add to my troubles the thought that i have made an enemy of you." "you did only what was natural," she said, "and i have nothing to forgive you. farewell." "is it to be _farwell?_" he asked. "nay, that i do not know myself," she answered. "farewell for the present, if you like." and with these words she was gone. francis returned to his lodging in a state of considerable commotion of mind. he made the most trifling progress with his euclid for that forenoon, and was more often at the window than at his improvised writing-table. but beyond seeing the return of miss vandeleur, and the meeting between her and her father, who was smoking a trichinopoli cigar in the verandah, there was nothing notable in the neighbourhood of the house with the green blinds before the time of the midday meal. the young man hastily allayed his appetite in a neighbouring restaurant, and returned with the speed of unallayed curiosity to the house in the rue lepic. a mounted servant was leading a saddle-horse to and fro before the garden wall; and the porter of francis's lodging was smoking a pipe against the door-post, absorbed in contemplation of the livery and the steeds. "look!" he cried to the young man, "what fine cattle! what an elegant costume! they belong to the brother of m. de vandeleur, who is now within upon a visit. he is a great man, a general, in your country; and you doubtless know him well by reputation." "i confess," returned francis, "that i have never heard of general vandeleur before. we have many officers of that grade, and my pursuits have been exclusively civil." "it is he," replied the porter, "who lost the great diamond of the indies. of that at least you must have read often in the papers." as soon as francis could disengage himself from the porter he ran upstairs and hurried to the window. immediately below the clear space in the chestnut leaves, the two gentlemen were seated in conversation over a cigar. the general, a red, military-looking man, offered some traces of a family resemblance to his brother; he had something of the same features, something, although very little, of the same free and powerful carriage; but he was older, smaller, and more common in air; his likeness was that of a caricature, and he seemed altogether a poor and debile being by the side of the dictator. they spoke in tones so low, leaning over the table with every appearance of interest, that francis could catch no more than a word or two on an occasion. for as little as he heard, he was convinced that the conversation turned upon himself and his own career; several times the name of scrymgeour reached his ear, for it was easy to distinguish, and still more frequently he fancied he could distinguish the name francis. at length the general, as if in a hot anger, broke forth into several violent exclamations. "francis vandeleur!" he cried, accentuating the last word. "francis vandeleur, i tell you." the dictator made a movement of his whole body, half affirmative, half contemptuous, but his answer was inaudible to the young man. was he the francis vandeleur in question? he wondered. were they discussing the name under which he was to be married? or was the whole affair a dream and a delusion of his own conceit and self-absorption? after another interval of inaudible talk, dissension seemed again to rise between the couple underneath the chestnut, and again the general raised his voice angrily so as to be audible to francis. "my wife?" he cried. "i have done with my wife for good. i will not hear her name. i am sick of her very name." and he swore aloud and beat the table with his fist. the dictator appeared, by his gestures, to pacify him after a paternal fashion; and a little after he conducted him to the garden gate. the pair shook hands affectionately enough; but as soon as the door had closed behind his visitor, john vandeleur fell into a fit of laughter which sounded unkindly and even devilish in the ears of francis scrymgeour. so another day had passed, and little more learnt. but the young man remembered that the morrow was tuesday, and promised himself some curious discoveries; all might be well, or all might be ill; he was sure, at least, to glean some curious information, and perhaps, by good luck, get at the heart of the mystery which surrounded his father and his family. as the hour of the dinner drew near many preparations were made in the garden of the house with the green blinds. that table, which was partly visible to francis through the chestnut leaves, was destined to serve as a sideboard, and carried relays of plates and the materials for salad: the other, which was almost entirely concealed, had been set apart for the diners, and francis could catch glimpses of white cloth and silver plate. mr. rolles arrived, punctual to the minute; he looked like a man upon his guard, and spoke low and sparingly. the dictator, on the other hand, appeared to enjoy an unusual flow of spirits; his laugh, which was youthful and pleasant to hear, sounded frequently from the garden; by the modulation and the changes of his voice it was obvious that he told many droll stories and imitated the accents of a variety of different nations; and before he and the young clergyman had finished their vermouth all feeling of distrust was at an end, and they were talking together like a pair of schoolcompanions. at length miss vandeleur made her appearance, carrying the soup-tureen. mr. rolles ran to offer her assistance, which she laughingly refused; and there was an interchange of pleasantries among the trio which seemed to have reference to this primitive manner of waiting by one of the company. "one is more at one's ease," mr. vandeleur was heard to declare. next moment they were all three in their places, and francis could see as little as he could hear of what passed. but the dinner seemed to go merrily; there was a perpetual babble of voices and sound of knives and forks below the chestnut; and francis, who had no more than a roll to gnaw, was affected with envy by the comfort and deliberation of the meal. the party lingered over one dish after another, and then over a delicate dessert, with a bottle of old wine, carefully uncorked by the hand of the dictator himself. as it began to grow dark a lamp was set upon the table and a couple of candles on the sideboard; for the night was perfectly pure, starry, and windless. light overflowed besides from the door and window in the verandah, so that the garden was fairly illuminated and the leaves twinkled in the darkness. for perhaps the tenth time miss vandeleur entered the house; and on this occasion she returned with the coffee-tray, which she placed upon the sideboard. at the same moment her father rose from his seat. "the coffee is my province," francis heard him say. and next moment he saw his supposed father standing by the sideboard in the light of the candles. talking over his shoulder all the while, mr. vandeleur poured out two cups of the brown stimulant, and then, by a rapid act of prestidigitation, emptied the contents of a tiny phial into the smaller of the two. the thing was so swiftly done that even francis, who looked straight into his face, had hardly time to perceive the movement before it was completed. and next instant, and still laughing, mr. vandeleur had turned again towards the table with a cup in either hand. "ere we have done with this," said he, "we may expect our famous hebrew." it would be impossible to depict the confusion and distress of francis scrymgeour. he saw foul play going forward before his eyes, and he felt bound to interfere, but knew not how. it might be a mere pleasantry, and then how should he look if he were to offer an unnecessary warning? or again, if it were serious, the criminal might be his own father, and then how should he not lament if he were to bring ruin on the author of his days? for the first time he became conscious of his own position as a spy. to wait inactive at such a juncture and with such a conflict of sentiments in his bosom was to suffer the most acute torture; he clung to the bars of the shutters, his heart beat fast and with irregularity, and he felt a strong sweat break forth upon his body. several minutes passed. he seemed to perceive the conversation die away and grow less and less in vivacity and volume; but still no sign of any alarming or even notable event. suddenly the ring of a glass breaking was followed by a faint and dull sound, as of a person who should have fallen forward with his head upon the table. at the same moment a piercing scream rose from the garden. "what have you done?" cried miss vandeleur. "he is dead!" the dictator replied in a violent whisper, so strong and sibilant that every word was audible to the watcher at the window. "silence!" said mr. vandeleur; "the man is as well as i am. take him by the heels whilst i carry him by the shoulders." francis heard miss vandeleur break forth into a passion of tears. "do you hear what i say?" resumed the dictator, in the same tones. "or do you wish to quarrel with me? i give you your choice, miss vandeleur." there was another pause, and the dictator spoke again. "take that man by the heels," he said. "i must have him brought into the house. if i were a little younger, i could help myself against the world. but now that years and dangers are upon me, and my hands are weakened, i must turn to you for aid." "it is a crime," replied the girl. "i am your father," said mr. vandeleur. this appeal seemed to produce its effect. a scuffling noise followed upon the gravel, a chair was overset, and then francis saw the father and daughter stagger across the walk and disappear under the verandah, bearing the inanimate body of mr. rolles embraced about the knees and shoulders. the young clergyman was limp and pallid, and his head rolled upon his shoulders at every step. was he alive or dead? francis, in spite of the dictator's declaration, inclined to the latter view. a great crime had been committed; a great calamity had fallen upon the inhabitants of the house with the green blinds. to his surprise, francis found all horror for the deed swallowed up in sorrow for a girl and an old man whom he judged to be in the height of peril. a tide of generous feeling swept into his heart; he, too, would help his father against man and mankind, against fate and justice; and casting open the shutters he closed his eyes and threw himself with outstretched arms into the foliage of the chestnut. branch after branch slipped from his grasp or broke under his weight; then he caught a stalwart bough under his arm-pit, and hung suspended for a second; and then he let himself drop and fell heavily against the table. a cry of alarm from the house warned him that his entrance had not been effected unobserved. he recovered himself with a stagger, and in three bounds crossed the intervening space and stood before the door in the verandah. in a small apartment, carpeted with matting and surrounded by glazed cabinets full of rare and costly curios, mr. vandeleur was stooping over the body of mr. rolles. he raised himself as francis entered, and there was an instantaneous passage of hands. it was the business of a second; as fast as an eye can wink the thing was done; the young man had not the time to be sure, but it seemed to him as if the dictator had taken something from the curate's breast, looked at it for the least fraction of time as it lay in his hand, and then suddenly and swiftly passed it to his daughter. all this was over while francis had still one foot upon the threshold, and the other raised in air. the next instant he was on his knees to mr. vandeleur. "father!" he cried. "let me too help you. i will do what you wish and ask no questions; i will obey you with my life; treat me as a son, and you will find i have a son's devotion." a deplorable explosion of oaths was the dictator's first reply. "son and father?" he cried. "father and son? what d----d unnatural comedy is all this? how do you come in my garden? what do you want? and who, in god's name, are you?" francis, with a stunned and shamefaced aspect, got upon his feet again, and stood in silence. then a light seemed to break upon mr. vandeleur, and he laughed aloud. "i see," cried he. "it is the scrymgeour. very well, mr. scrymgeour. let me tell you in a few words how you stand. you have entered my private residence by force, or perhaps by fraud, but certainly with no encouragement from me; and you come at a moment of some annoyance, a guest having fainted at my table, to besiege me with your protestations. you are no son of mine. you are my brother's bastard by a fishwife, if you want to know. i regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion; and from what i now see of your conduct, i judge your mind to be exactly suitable to your exterior. i recommend you these mortifying reflections for your leisure; and, in the meantime, let me beseech you to rid us of your presence. if i were not occupied," added the dictator with a terrifying oath, "i should give you the unholiest drubbing ere you went!" francis listened in profound humiliation. he would have fled had it been possible; but as he had no means of leaving the residence into which he had so unfortunately penetrated, he could do no more than stand foolishly where he was. it was miss vandeleur who broke the silence. "father," she said, "you speak in anger. mr. scrymgeour may have been mistaken, but he meant well and kindly." "thank you for speaking," returned the dictator. "you remind me of some other observations which i hold it a point of honour to make to mr. scrymgeour. my brother," he continued, addressing the young man, "has been foolish enough to give you an allowance; he was foolish enough and presumptuous enough to propose a match between you and this young lady. you were exhibited to her two nights ago; and i rejoice to tell you that she rejected the idea with disgust. let me add that i have considerable influence with your father; and it shall not be my fault if you are not beggared of your allowance and sent back to your scrivening ere the week be out." the tones of the old man's voice were, if possible, more wounding than his language; francis felt himself exposed to the most cruel, blighting, and unbearable contempt; his head turned, and he covered his face with his hands, uttering at the same time a tearless sob of agony. but miss vandeleur once again interfered in his behalf. "mr. scrymgeour," she said, speaking in clear and even tones, "you must not be concerned at my father's harsh expressions. i felt no disgust for you; on the contrary, i asked an opportunity to make your better acquaintance. as for what has passed to-night, believe me it has filled my mind with both pity and esteem." just then mr. rolles made a convulsive movement with his arm, which convinced francis that he was only drugged, and was beginning to throw off the influence of the opiate. mr. vandeleur stooped over him and examined his face for an instant. "come, come!" cried he, raising his head. "let there be an end of this. and since you are so pleased with his conduct, miss vandeleur, take a candle and show the bastard out." the young lady hastened to obey. "thank you," said francis, as soon as he was alone with her in the garden. "i thank you from my soul. this has been the bitterest evening of my life, but it will have always one pleasant recollection." "i spoke as i felt," she replied, "and in justice to you. it made my heart sorry that you should be so unkindly used." by this time they had reached the garden gate; and miss vandeleur, having set the candle on the ground, was already unfastening the bolts. "one word more," said francis. "this is not for the last time--i shall see you again, shall i not?" "alas!" she answered. "you have heard my father. what can i do but obey?" "tell me at least that it is not with your consent," returned francis; "tell me that you have no wish to see the last of me." "indeed," replied she, "i have none. you seem to me both brave and honest." "then," said francis, "give me a keepsake." she paused for a moment, with her hand upon the key; for the various bars and bolts were all undone, and there was nothing left but to open the lock. "if i agree," she said, "will you promise to do as i tell you from point to point?" "can you ask?" replied francis. "i would do so willingly on your bare word." she turned the key and threw open the door. "be it so," said she. "you do not know what you ask, but be it so. whatever you hear," she continued, "whatever happens, do not return to this house; hurry fast until you reach the lighted and populous quarters of the city; even there be upon your guard. you are in a greater danger than you fancy. promise me you will not so much as look at my keepsake until you are in a place of safety." "i promise," replied francis. she put something loosely wrapped in a handkerchief into the young man's hand; and at the same time, with more strength than he could have anticipated, she pushed him into the street. "now, run!" she cried. he heard the door close behind him, and the noise of the bolts being replaced. "my faith," said he, "since i have promised!" and he took to his heels down the lane that leads into the rue ravignan. he was not fifty paces from the house with the green blinds when the most diabolical outcry suddenly arose out of the stillness of the night. mechanically he stood still; another passenger followed his example; in the neighbouring floors he saw people crowding to the windows; a conflagration could not have produced more disturbance in this empty quarter. and yet it seemed to be all the work of a single man, roaring between grief and rage, like a lioness robbed of her whelps; and francis was surprised and alarmed to hear his own name shouted with english imprecations to the wind. his first movement was to return to the house; his second, as he remembered miss vandeleur's advice, to continue his flight with greater expedition than before; and he was in the act of turning to put his thought in action, when the dictator, bareheaded, bawling aloud, his white hair blowing about his head, shot past him like a ball out of the cannon's mouth, and went careering down the street. "that was a close shave," thought francis to himself "what he wants with me, and why he should be so disturbed, i cannot think; but he is plainly not good company for the moment, and i cannot do better than follow miss vandeleur's advice." so saying, he turned to retrace his steps, thinking to double and descend by the rue lepic itself while his pursuer should continue to follow after him on the other line of street. the plan was ill-devised: as a matter of fact, he should have taken his seat in the nearest cafe, and waited there until the first heat of the pursuit was over. but besides that francis had no experience and little natural aptitude for the small war of private life, he was so unconscious of any evil on his part, that he saw nothing to fear beyond a disagreeable interview. and to disagreeable interviews he felt he had already served his apprenticeship that evening; nor could he suppose that miss vandeleur had left anything unsaid. indeed, the young man was sore both in body and mind--the one was all bruised, the other was full of smarting arrows; and he owned to himself that mr. vandeleur was master of a very deadly tongue. the thought of his bruises reminded him that he had not only come without a hat, but that his clothes had considerably suffered in his descent through the chestnut. at the first magazine he purchased a cheap wideawake, and had the disorder of his toilet summarily repaired. the keepsake, still rolled in the handkerchief, he thrust in the meanwhile into his trousers pocket. not many steps beyond the shop he was conscious of a sudden shock, a hand upon his throat, an infuriated face close to his own, and an open mouth bawling curses in his ear. the dictator, having found no trace of his quarry, was returning by the other way. francis was a stalwart young fellow; but he was no match for his adversary, whether in strength or skill; and after a few ineffectual struggles he resigned himself entirely to his captor. "what do you want with me?" said he. "we will talk of that at home," returned the dictator grimly. and he continued to march the young man up hill in the direction of the house with the green blinds. but francis, although he no longer struggled, was only waiting an opportunity to make a bold push for freedom. with a sudden jerk he left the collar of his coat in the hands of mr. vandeleur, and once more made off at his best speed in the direction of the boulevards. the tables were now turned. if the dictator was the stronger, francis, in the top of his youth, was the more fleet of foot, and he had soon effected his escape among the crowds. relieved for a moment, but with a growing sentiment of alarm and wonder in his mind, he walked briskly until he debouched upon the place de l'opera, lit up like day with electric lamps. "this, at least," thought he, "should satisfy miss vandeleur." and turning to his right along the boulevards, he entered the cafe americain and ordered some beer. it was both late and early for the majority of the frequenters of the establishment. only two or three persons, all men, were dotted here and there at separate tables in the hall; and francis was too much occupied by his own thoughts to observe their presence. he drew the handkerchief from his pocket. the object wrapped in it proved to be a morocco case, clasped and ornamented in gilt, which opened by means of a spring, and disclosed to the horrified young man a diamond of monstrous bigness and extraordinary brilliancy. the circumstance was so inexplicable, the value of the stone was plainly so enormous, that francis sat staring into the open casket without movement, without conscious thought, like a man stricken suddenly with idiocy. a hand was laid upon his shoulder, lightly but firmly, and a quiet voice, which yet had in it the ring of command, uttered these words in his ear-"close the casket, and compose your face." looking up, he beheld a man, still young, of an urbane and tranquil presence, and dressed with rich simplicity. this personage had risen from a neighbouring table, and, bringing his glass with him, had taken a seat beside francis. "close the casket," repeated the stranger, "and put it quietly back into your pocket, where i feel persuaded it should never have been. try, if you please, to throw off your bewildered air, and act as though i were one of your acquaintances whom you had met by chance. so! touch glasses with me. that is better. i fear, sir, you must be an amateur." and the stranger pronounced these last words with a smile of peculiar meaning, leaned back in his seat and enjoyed a deep inhalation of tobacco. "for god's sake," said francis, "tell me who you are and what this means. why i should obey your most unusual suggestions i am sure i know not; but the truth is, i have fallen this evening into so many perplexing adventures, and all i meet conduct themselves so strangely, that i think i must either have gone mad or wandered into another planet. your face inspires me with confidence; you seem wise, good, and experienced; tell me, for heaven's sake, why you accost me in so odd a fashion." "all in due time," replied the stranger. "but i have the first hand, and you must begin by telling me how the rajah's diamond is in your possession." "the rajah's diamond!" echoed francis. "i would not speak so loud, if i were you," returned the other. "but most certainly you have the rajah's diamond in your pocket. i have seen and handled it a score of times in sir thomas vandeleur's collection." "sir thomas vandeleur! the general! my father!" cried francis. "your father?" repeated the stranger. "i was not aware the general had any family." "i am illegitimate, sir," replied francis, with a flush. the other bowed with gravity. it was a respectful bow, as of a man silently apologising to his equal; and francis felt relieved and comforted, he scarce knew why. the society of this person did him good; he seemed to touch firm ground; a strong feeling of respect grew up in his bosom, and mechanically he removed his wideawake as though in the presence of a superior. "i perceive," said the stranger, "that your adventures have not all been peaceful. your collar is torn, your face is scratched, you have a cut upon your temple; you will, perhaps, pardon my curiosity when i ask you to explain how you came by these injuries, and how you happen to have stolen property to an enormous value in your pocket." "i must differ from you!" returned francis hotly. "i possess no stolen property. and if you refer to the diamond, it was given to me not an hour ago by miss vandeleur in the rue lepic." "by miss vandeleur in the rue lepic!" repeated the other. "you interest me more than you suppose. pray continue." "heavens!" cried francis. his memory had made a sudden bound. he had seen mr. vandeleur take an article from the breast of his drugged visitor, and that article, he was now persuaded, was a morocco case. "you have a light?" inquired the stranger. "listen," replied francis. "i know not who you are, but i believe you to be worthy of confidence and helpful; i find myself in strange waters; i must have counsel and support, and since you invite me i shall tell you all." and he briefly recounted his experiences since the day when he was summoned from the bank by his lawyer. "yours is indeed a remarkable history," said the stranger, after the young man had made an end of his narrative; "and your position is full of difficulty and peril. many would counsel you to seek out your father, and give the diamond to him; but i have other views.-waiter!" he cried. the waiter drew near. "will you ask the manager to speak with me a moment?" said he; and francis observed once more, both in his tone and manner, the evidence of a habit of command. the waiter withdrew, and returned in a moment with the manager, who bowed with obsequious respect. "what," said he, "can i do to serve you?" "have the goodness," replied the stranger, indicating francis, "to tell this gentleman my name." "you have the honour, sir," said the functionary, addressing young scrymgeour, "to occupy the same table with his highness prince florizel of bohemia." francis rose with precipitation, and made a grateful reverence to the prince, who bade him resume his seat. "i thank you," said florizel, once more addressing the functionary; "i am sorry to have deranged you for so small a matter." and he dismissed him with a movement of his hand. "and now," added the prince, turning to francis, "give me the diamond." without a word the casket was handed over. "you have done right," said florizel; "your sentiments have properly inspired you, and you will live to be grateful for the misfortunes of to-night. a man, mr. scrymgeour, may fall into a thousand perplexities, but if his heart be upright and his intelligence unclouded, he will issue from them all without dishonour. let your mind be at rest; your affairs are in my hand; and with the aid of heaven i am strong enough to bring them to a good end. follow me, if you please, to my carriage." so saying the prince arose, and, having left a piece of gold for the waiter, conducted the young man from the cafe and along the boulevard to where an unpretentious brougham and a couple of servants out of livery awaited his arrival. "this carriage," said he, "is at your disposal; collect your baggage as rapidly as you can make it convenient, and my servants will conduct you to a villa in the neighbourhood of paris where you can wait in some degree of comfort until i have had time to arrange your situation. you will find there a pleasant garden, a library of good authors, a cook, a cellar, and some good cigars, which i recommend to your attention. jerome," he added, turning to one of the servants, "you have heard what i say; i leave mr. scrymgeour in your charge; you will, i know, be careful of my friend." francis uttered some broken phrases of gratitude. "it will be time enough to thank me," said the prince, "when you are acknowledged by your father and married to miss vandeleur." and with that the prince turned away and strolled leisurely in the direction of montmartre. he hailed the first passing cab, gave an address, and a quarter of an hour afterwards, having discharged the driver some distance lower, he was knocking at mr. vandeleur's garden gate. it was opened with singular precautions by the dictator in person. "who are you?" he demanded. "you must pardon me this late visit, mr. vandeleur," replied the prince. "your highness is always welcome," returned mr. vandeleur, stepping back. the prince profited by the open space, and without waiting for his host walked right into the house and opened the door of the _salon._ two people were seated there; one was miss vandeleur, who bore the marks of weeping about her eyes, and was still shaken from time to time by a sob; in the other the prince recognised the young man who had consulted him on literary matters about a month before, in a club smoking-room. "good-evening, miss vandeleur," said florizel; "you look fatigued. mr. rolles, i believe? i hope you have profited by the study of gaboriau, mr. rolles." but the young clergyman's temper was too much embittered for speech; and he contented himself with bowing stiffly, and continued to gnaw his lip. "to what good wind," said mr. vandeleur, following his guest, "am i to attribute the honour of your highness's presence?" "i am come on business," returned the prince; "on business with you; as soon as that is settled i shall request mr. rolles to accompany me for a walk.--mr. rolles," he added, with severity, "let me remind you that i have not yet sat down." the clergyman sprang to his feet with an apology; whereupon the prince took an arm-chair beside the table, handed his hat to mr. vandeleur, his cane to mr. rolles, and, leaving them standing and thus menially employed upon his service, spoke as follows:-"i have come here, as i said, upon business; but, had i come looking for pleasure, i could not have been more displeased with my reception nor more dissatisfied with my company. you, sir," addressing mr. rolles, "you have treated your superior in station with discourtesy; you, vandeleur, receive me with a smile, but you know right well that your hands are not yet cleansed from misconduct.--i do not desire to be interrupted, sir," he added imperiously; "i am here to speak, and not to listen; and i have to ask you to hear me with respect, and to obey punctiliously. at the earliest possible date your daughter shall be married at the embassy to my friend, francis scrymgeour, your brother's acknowledged son. you will oblige me by offering not less than ten thousand pounds dowry. for yourself, i will indicate to you in writing a mission of some importance in siam which i destine to your care. and now, sir, you will answer me in two words whether or not you agree to these conditions." "your highness will pardon me," said mr. vandeleur, "and permit me, with all respect, to submit to him two queries?" "the permission is granted," replied the prince. "your highness," resumed the dictator, "has called mr. scrymgeour his friend. believe me, had i known he was thus honoured, i should have treated him with proportional respect." "you interrogate adroitly," said the prince; "but it will not serve your turn. you have my commands; if i had never seen that gentleman before to-night, it would not render them less absolute." "your highness interprets my meaning with his usual subtlety," returned vandeleur. "once more: i have, unfortunately, put the police upon the track of mr. scrymgeour on a charge of theft; am i to withdraw or to uphold the accusation?" "you will please yourself," replied florizel. "the question is one between your conscience and the laws of this land. give me my hat; and you, mr. rolles, give me my cane and follow me. miss vandeleur, i wish you goodevening. i judge," he added to vandeleur, "that your silence means unqualified assent." "if i can do no better," replied the old man, "i shall submit; but i warn you openly it shall not be without a struggle." "you are old," said the prince; "but years are disgraceful to the wicked. your age is more unwise than the youth of others. do not provoke me, or you may find me harder than you dream. this is the first time that i have fallen across your path in anger; take care that it be the last." with these words, motioning the clergyman to follow, florizel left the apartment and directed his steps towards the garden gate; and the dictator, following with a candle, gave them light, and once more undid the elaborate fastenings with which he sought to protect himself from intrusion. "your daughter is no longer present," said the prince, turning on the threshold. "let me tell you that i understand your threats; and you have only to lift your hand to bring upon yourself sudden and irremediable ruin." the dictator made no reply; but as the prince turned his back upon him in the lamplight he made a gesture full of menace and insane fury; and the next moment, slipping round a corner, he was running at full speed for the nearest cab-stand. here (says my arabian) the thread of events is finally diverted from the house with the green blinds. one more adventure, he adds, and we have done with the rajah's diamond. that last link in the chain is known among the inhabitants of bagdad by the name of the adventure of prince florizel and a detective prince florizel walked with mr. rolles to the door of a small hotel where the latter resided. they spoke much together, and the clergyman was more than once affected to tears by the mingled severity and tenderness of florizel's reproaches. "i have made ruin of my life," he said at last. "help me; tell me what i am to do; i have, alas! neither the virtues of a priest nor the dexterity of a rogue." "now that you are humbled," said the prince, "i command no longer; the repentant have to do with god, and not with princes. but if you will let me advise you, go to australia as a colonist, seek menial labour in the open air, and try to forget that you have ever been a clergyman, or that you ever set eyes on that accursed stone." "accurst indeed!" replied mr. rolles. "where is it now? what further hurt is it not working for mankind?" "it will do no more evil," returned the prince. "it is here in my pocket and this," he added kindly, "will show that i place some faith in your penitence, young as it is." "suffer me to touch your hand," pleaded mr. rolles. "no," replied prince florizel, "not yet." the tone in which he uttered these last words was eloquent in the ears of the young clergyman; and for some minutes after the prince had turned away he stood on the threshold following with his eyes the retreating figure and invoking the blessing of heaven upon a man so excellent in counsel. for several hours the prince walked alone in unfrequented streets. his mind was full of concern; what to do with the diamond, whether to return it to its owner, whom he judged unworthy of this rare possession, or to take some sweeping and courageous measure and put it out of the reach of all mankind at once and for ever, was a problem too grave to be decided in a moment. the manner in which it had come into his hands appeared manifestly providential; and as he took out the jewel and looked at it under the street lamps, its size and surprising brilliancy inclined him more and more to think of it as of an unmixed and dangerous evil for the world. "god help me!" he thought; "if i look at it much oftener i shall begin to grow covetous myself" at last, though still uncertain in his mind, he turned his steps towards the small but elegant mansion on the river-side which had belonged for centuries to his royal family. the arms of bohemia are deeply graved over the door and upon the tall chimneys; passengers have a look into a green court set with the most costly flowers; and a stork, the only one in paris, perches on the gable all day long and keeps a crowd before the house. grave servants are seen passing to and fro within; and from time to time the great gate is thrown open and a carriage rolls below the arch. for many reasons this residence was especially dear to the heart of prince florizel; he never drew near to it without enjoying that sentiment of home-coming so rare in the lives of the great; and on the present evening he beheld its tall roof and mildly illuminated windows with unfeigned relief and satisfaction. as he was approaching the postern door by which he always entered when alone, a man stepped forth from the shadow and presented himself with an obeisance in the prince's path. "i have the honour of addressing prince florizel of bohemia?" said he. "such is my title," replied the prince. "what do you want with me?" "i am," said the man, "a detective, and i have to present your highness with this billet from the prefect of police." the prince took the letter and glanced it through by the light of the street lamp. it was highly apologetic, but requested him to follow the bearer to the prefecture without delay. "in short," said florizel, "i am arrested." "your highness," replied the officer, "nothing, i am certain, could be further from the intention of the prefect. you will observe that he has not granted a warrant. it is mere formality, or call it, if you prefer, an obligation that your highness lays on the authorities." "at the same time," asked the prince, "if i were to refuse to follow you?" "i will not conceal from your highness that a considerable discretion has been granted me," replied the detective, with a bow. "upon my word," cried florizel, "your effrontery astounds me! yourself, as an agent, i must pardon; but your superiors shall dearly smart for their misconduct. what, have you any idea, is the cause of this impolitic and unconstitutional act? you will observe that i have as yet neither refused nor consented, and much may depend on your prompt and ingenuous answer. let me remind you, officer, that this is an affair of some gravity." "your highness," said the detective humbly, "general vandeleur and his brother have had the incredible presumption to accuse you of theft. the famous diamond, they declare, is in your hands. a word from you in denial will most amply satisfy the prefect; nay, i go further: if your highness would so far honour a subaltern as to declare his ignorance of the matter even to myself, i should ask permission to retire upon the spot." florizel, up to the last moment, had regarded his adventure in the light of a trifle, only serious upon international considerations. at the name of vandeleur the horrible truth broke upon him in a moment; he was not only arrested, but he was guilty. this was not only an annoying incident--it was a peril to his honour. what was he to say? what was he to do? the rajah's diamond was indeed an accursed stone; and it seemed as if he were to be the last victim to its influence. one thing was certain. he could not give the required assurance to the detective. he must gain time. his hesitation had not lasted a second. "be it so," said he, "let us walk together to the prefecture." the man once more bowed, and proceeded to follow florizel at a respectful distance in the rear. "approach," said the prince. "i am in a humour to talk, and, if i mistake not, now i look at you again, this is not the first time that we have met." "i count it an honour," replied the officer, "that your highness should recollect my face. it is eight years since i had the pleasure of an interview." "to remember faces," returned florizel, "is as much a part of my profession as it is of yours. indeed, rightly looked upon, a prince and a detective serve in the same corps. we are both combatants against crime; only mine is the more lucrative and yours the more dangerous rank, and there is a sense in which both may be made equally honourable to a good man. i had rather, strange as you may think it, be a detective of character and parts than a weak and ignoble sovereign." the officer was overwhelmed. "your highness returns good for evil," said he. "to an act of presumption he replies by the most amiable condescension." "how do you know," replied florizel, "that i am not seeking to corrupt you?" "heaven preserve me from the temptation!" cried the detective. "i applaud your answer," returned the prince. "it is that of a wise and honest man. the world is a great place, and stocked with wealth and beauty, and there is no limit to the rewards that may be offered. such an one who would refuse a million of money may sell his honour for an empire or the love of a woman; and i myself, who speak to you, have seen occasions so tempting, provocations so irresistible to the strength of human virtue, that i have been glad to tread in your steps and recommend myself to the grace of god. it is thus, thanks to that modest and becoming habit alone," he added, "that you and i can walk this town together with untarnished hearts." "i had always heard that you were brave," replied the officer, "but i was not aware that you were wise and pious. you speak the truth, and you speak it with an accent that moves me to the heart. this world is indeed a place of trial." "we are now," said florizel, "in the middle of the bridge. lean your elbows on the parapet and look over. as the water rushing below, so the passions and complications of life carry away the honesty of weak men. let me tell you a story." "i receive your highness's commands," replied the man. and, imitating the prince, he leaned against the parapet, and disposed himself to listen. the city was already sunk in slumber; had it not been for the infinity of lights and the outline of buildings on the starry sky, they might have been alone beside some country river. "an officer," began prince florizel, "a man of courage and conduct, who had already risen by merit to an eminent rank, and won not only admiration but respect, visited, in an unfortunate hour for his peace of mind, the collections of an indian prince. here he beheld a diamond so extraordinary for size and beauty that from that instant he had only one desire in life: honour, reputation, friendship, the love of country--he was ready to sacrifice all for this lump of sparkling crystal. for three years he served this semi-barbarian potentate as jacob served laban; he falsified frontiers, he connived at murders, he unjustly condemned and executed a brother officer who had the misfortune to displease the rajah by some honest freedoms; lastly, at a time of great danger to his native land, he betrayed a body of his fellow-soldiers, and suffered them to be defeated and massacred by thousands. in the end he had amassed a magnificent fortune, and brought home with him the coveted diamond. "years passed," continued the prince, "and at length the diamond is accidentally lost. it falls into the hands of a simple and laborious youth, a student, a minister of god, just entering on a career of usefulness and even distinction. upon him also the spell is cast; he deserts everything, his holy calling, his studies, and flees with the gem into a foreign country. the officer has a brother, an astute, daring, unscrupulous man, who learns the clergyman's secret. what does he do? tell his brother, inform the police? no; upon this man also the satanic charm has fallen; he must have the stone for himself. at the risk of murder, he drugs the young priest and seizes the prey. and now, by an accident which is not important to my moral, the jewel passes out of his custody into that of another, who, terrified at what he sees, gives it into the keeping of a man in high station and above reproach. "the officer's name is thomas vandeleur," continued florizel. "the stone is called the rajah's diamond. and"--suddenly opening his hand--"you behold it here before your eyes." the officer started back with a cry. "we have spoken of corruption," said the prince. "to me this nugget of bright crystal is as loathsome as though it were crawling with the worms of death; it is as shocking as though it were compacted out of innocent blood. i see it here in my hand, and i know it is shining with hell-fire. i have told you but a hundredth part of its story; what passed in former ages, to what crimes and treacheries it incited men of yore, the imagination trembles to conceive; for years and years it has faithfully served the powers of hell; enough, i say, of blood, enough of disgrace, enough of broken lives and friendships; all things come to an end, the evil like the good; pestilence as well as beautiful music; and as for this diamond, god forgive me if i do wrong, but its empire ends to-night." the prince made a sudden movement with his hand, and the jewel, describing an arc of light, dived with a splash into the flowing river. "amen," said florizel, with gravity. "i have slain a cockatrice!" "god pardon me!" cried the detective "what have you done? i am a ruined man." "i think," returned the prince, with a smile, "that many well-to-do people in this city might envy you your ruin." "alas! your highness!" said the officer, "and you corrupt me after all?" "it seems there was no help for it," replied florizel.--" and now let us go forward to the prefecture." not long after, the marriage of francis scrymgeour and miss vandeleur was celebrated in great privacy; and the prince acted on that occasion as groom's-man. the two vandeleurs surprised some rumour of what had happened to the diamond; and their vast diving operations on the river seine are the wonder and amusement of the idle. it is true that through some miscalculation they have chosen the wrong branch of the river. as for the prince, that sublime person, having now served his turn, may go, along with the _arabian author,_ topsy-turvy into space. but if the reader insists on more specific information, i am happy to say that a recent revolution hurled him from the throne of bohemia, in consequence of his continued absence and edifying neglect of public business; and that his highness now keeps a cigar-store in rupert street, much frequented by other foreign refugees. i go there from time to time to smoke and have a chat, and find him as great a creature as in the days of his prosperity; he has an olympian air behind the counter; and although a sedentary life is beginning to tell upon his waistcoat, he is probably, take him for all in all, the handsomest tobacconist in london. the pavilion on the links originally published, "cornhill magazine," september and october 1880. reprinted in "new arabian nights": chatto and windus, london, 1882. chapter i tells how i camped in graden sea-wood, and beheld a light in the pavilion i was a great solitary when i was young. i made it my pride to keep aloof and suffice for my own entertainment; and i may say that i had neither friends nor acquaintances until i met that friend who became my wife and the mother of my children. with one man only was i on private terms; this was r. northmour, esquire, of graden-easter, in scotland. we had met at college; and though there was not much liking between us, nor even much intimacy, we were so nearly of a humour that we could associate with ease to both. misanthropes we believed ourselves to be; but i have thought since that we were only sulky fellows. it was scarcely a companionship, but a co-existence in unsociability. northmour's exceptional violence of temper made it no easy affair for him to keep the peace with any one but me; and as he respected my silent ways, and let me come and go as i pleased, i could tolerate his presence without concern. i think we called each other friends. when northmour took his degree and i decided to leave the university without one, he invited me on a long visit to graden-easter; and it was thus that i first became acquainted with the scene of my adventures. the mansion-house of graden stood in a bleak stretch of country some three miles from the shore of the german ocean. it was as large as a barrack; and as it had been built of a soft stone, liable to consume in the eager air of the seaside, it was damp and draughty within and half-ruinous without. it was impossible for two young men to lodge with comfort in such a dwelling. but there stood in the northern part of the estate, in a wilderness of links and blowing sand-hills, and between a plantation and the sea, a small pavilion or belvidere, of modern design, which was exactly suited to our wants; and in this hermitage, speaking little, reading much, and rarely associating except at meals, northmour and i spent four tempestuous winter months. i might have stayed longer; but one march night there sprang up between us a dispute, which rendered my departure necessary. northmour spoke hotly, i remember, and i suppose i must have made some tart rejoinder. he leaped from his chair and grappled me; i had to fight, without exaggeration, for my life; and it was only with a great effort that i mastered him, for he was near as strong in body as myself, and seemed filled with the devil. the next morning we met on our usual terms; but i judged it more delicate to withdraw; nor did he attempt to dissuade me. it was nine years before i revisited the neighbourhood. i travelled at that time with a tilt-cart, a tent, and a cooking-stove, tramping all day beside the waggon, and at night, whenever it was possible, gipsying in a cove of the hills, or by the side of a wood. i believe i visited in this manner most of the wild and desolate regions both in england and scotland; and, as i had neither friends nor relations, i was troubled with no correspondence, and had nothing in the nature of headquarters, unless it was the office of my solicitors, from whom i drew my income twice a year. it was a life in which i delighted; and i fully thought to have grown old upon the march, and at last died in a ditch. it was my whole business to find desolate corners, where i could camp without the fear of interruption; and hence, being in another part of the same shire, i bethought me suddenly of the pavilion on the links. no thoroughfare passed within three miles of it. the nearest town, and that was but a fisher village, was at a distance of six or seven. for ten miles of length, and from a depth varying from three miles to half a mile, this belt of barren country lay along the sea. the beach, which was the natural approach, was full of quicksands. indeed, i may say there is hardly a better place of concealment in the united kingdom. i determined to pass a week in the sea-wood of gradeneaster, and making a long stage, reached it about sundown on a wild september day. the country, i have said, was mixed sand-hill and links; _links_ being a scottish name for sand which has ceased drifting and become more or less solidly covered with turf. the pavilion stood on an even space; a little behind it, the wood began in a hedge of elders huddled together by the wind; in front, a few tumbled sand-hills stood between it and the sea. an outcropping of rock had formed a bastion for the sand, so that there was here a promontory in the coast-line between two shallow bays; and just beyond the tides, the rock again cropped out and formed an islet of small dimensions but strikingly designed. the quicksands were of great extent at low water, and had an infamous reputation in the country. close inshore, between the islet and the promontory, it was said they would swallow a man in four minutes and a half; but there may have been little ground for this precision. the district was alive with rabbits, and haunted by gulls which made a continual piping about the pavilion. on summer days the outlook was bright, and even gladsome; but at sundown in september, with a high wind, and a heavy surf rolling in close along the links, the place told of nothing but dead mariners and sea disaster. a ship beating to windward on the horizon, and a huge truncheon of wreck half-buried in the sands at my feet, completed the innuendo of the scene. the pavilion--it had been built by the last proprietor, northmour's uncle, a silly and prodigal virtuoso-presented little signs of age. it was two stories in height, italian in design, surrounded by a patch of garden in which nothing had prospered but a few coarse flowers, and looked, with its shuttered windows, not like a house that had been deserted, but like one that had never been tenanted by man. northmour was plainly from home; whether, as usual, sulking in the cabin of his yacht, or in one of his fitful and extravagant appearances in the world of society, i had of course no means of guessing. the place had an air of solitude that daunted even a solitary like myself, the wind cried in the chimneys with a strange and wailing note; and it was with a sense of escape, as if i were going indoors, that i turned away and, driving my cart before me, entered the skirts of the wood. the sea-wood of graden had been planted to shelter the cultivated fields behind, and check the encroachments of the blowing sand. as you advanced into it from coastward, elders were succeeded, by other hardy shrubs; but the timber was all stunted and bushy; it led a life of conflict; the trees were accustomed to swing there all night long in fierce winter tempests; and even in early spring the leaves were already flying, and autumn was beginning, in this exposed plantation. inland the ground rose into a little hill, which, along with the islet, served as a sailing mark for seamen. when the hill was open of the islet to the north, vessels must bear well to the eastward to clear graden ness and the graden bullers. in the lower ground, a streamlet ran among the trees, and, being dammed with dead leaves and clay of its own carrying, spread out every here and there, and lay in stagnant pools. one or two ruined cottages were dotted about the wood; and, according to northmour, these were ecclesiastical foundations, and in their time had sheltered pious hermits. i found a den, or small hollow, where there was a spring of pure water; and there, clearing away the brambles, i pitched the tent, and made a fire to cook my supper. my horse i picketed farther in the wood, where there was a patch of sward. the banks of the den not only concealed the light of my fire, but sheltered me from the wind, which was cold as well as high. the life i was leading made me both hardy and frugal. i never drank but water, and rarely ate anything more costly than oatmeal; and i required so little sleep that, although i rose with the peep of day, i would often lie long awake in the dark or starry watches of the night. thus in graden sea-wood, although i fell thankfully asleep by eight in the evening, i was awake again before eleven with a full possession of my faculties, and no sense of drowsiness or fatigue. i rose and sat by the fire, watching the trees and clouds tumultuously tossing and fleeing overhead, and hearkening to the wind and the rollers along the shore; till at length, growing weary of inaction, i quitted the den, and strolled towards the borders of the wood. a young moon, buried in mist, gave a faint illumination to my steps; and the light grew brighter as i walked forth into the links. at the same moment, the wind, smelling salt of the open ocean, and carrying particles of sand, struck me with its full force, so that i had to bow my head. when i raised it again to look about me, i was aware of a light in the pavilion. it was not stationary; but passed from one window to another as though some one were reviewing the different apartments with a lamp or candle. i watched it for some seconds in great surprise. when i had arrived in the afternoon the house had been plainly deserted; now it was as plainly occupied. it was my first idea that a gang of thieves might have broken in and be now ransacking northmour's cupboards, which were many and not ill supplied. but what should bring thieves to graden-easter? and again, all the shutters had been thrown open, and it would have been more in the character of such gentry to close them. i dismissed the notion, and fell back upon another: northmour himself must have arrived, and was now airing and inspecting the pavilion. i have said that there was no real affection between this man and me; but, had i loved him like a brother, i was then so much more in love with solitude that i should none the less have shunned his company. as it was, i turned and ran for it; and it was with genuine satisfaction that i found myself safely back beside the fire. i had escaped an acquaintance; i should have one more night in comfort. in the morning i might either slip away before northmour was abroad, or pay him as short a visit as i chose. but when morning came i thought the situation so diverting that i forgot my shyness. northmour was at my mercy; i arranged a good practical jest, though i knew well that my neighbour was not the man to jest with in security; and, chuckling before-hand over its success, took my place among the elders at the edge of the wood, whence i could command the door of the pavilion. the shutters were all once more closed, which i remember thinking odd; and the house, with its white walls and green venetians, looked spruce and habitable in the morning light. hour after hour passed, and still no sign of northmour. i knew him for a sluggard in the morning, but as it drew on towards noon i lost my patience. to say the truth, i had promised myself to break my fast in the pavilion, and hunger began to prick me sharply. it was a pity to let the opportunity go by without some cause for mirth; but the grosser appetite prevailed, and i relinquished my jest with regret and sallied from the wood. the appearance of the house affected me, as i drew near, with disquietude. it seemed unchanged since last evening; and i had expected it, i scarce knew why, to wear some external signs of habitation. but no: the windows were all closely shuttered, the chimneys breathed no smoke, and the front door itself was closely padlocked. northmour therefore had entered by the back; this was the natural, and indeed the necessary, conclusion; and you may judge of my surprise when, on turning the house, i found the back-door similarly secured. my mind at once reverted to the original theory of thieves; and i blamed myself sharply for my last night's inaction. i examined all the windows on the lower story, but none of them had been tampered with; i tried the padlocks, but they were both secure. it thus became a problem how the thieves, if thieves they were, had managed to enter the house. they must have got, i reasoned, upon the roof of the outhouse where northmour used to keep his photographic battery; and from thence, either by the window of the study or that of my old bedroom, completed their burglarious entry. i followed what i supposed was their example; and, getting on the roof, tried the shutters of each room. both were secure; but i was not to be beaten; and, with a little force, one of them flew open, grazing, as it did so, the back of my hand. i remember i put the wound to my mouth and stood for perhaps half a minute licking it like a dog, and mechanically gazing behind me over the waste links and the sea; and in that space of time my eye made note of a large schooner yacht some miles to the north-east. then i threw up the window and climbed in. i went over the house, and nothing can express my mystification. there was no sign of disorder, but, on the contrary, the rooms were unusually clean and pleasant. i found fires laid ready for lighting; three bedrooms prepared with a luxury quite foreign to northmour's habits, and with water in the ewers and the beds turned down; a table set for three in the diningroom; and an ample supply of cold meats, game, and vegetables on the pantry shelves. there were guests expected, that was plain; but why guests when northmour hated society? and, above all, why was the house thus stealthily prepared at dead of night? and why were the shutters closed and the doors padlocked? i effaced all traces of my visit, and came forth from the window feeling sobered and concerned. the schooner yacht was still in the same place; and it flashed for a moment through my mind that this might be the _red earl_ bringing the owner of the pavilion and his guests. but the vessel's head was set the other way. chapter ii tells of the nocturnal landing from the yacht i returned to the den to cook myself a meal, of which i stood in great need, as well as to care for my horse, which i had somewhat neglected in the morning. from time to time i went down to the edge of the wood; but there was no change in the pavilion, and not a human creature was seen all day upon the links. the schooner in the offing was the one touch of life within my range of vision. she, apparently with no set object, stood off and on or lay to, hour after hour; but as the evening deepened she drew steadily nearer. i became more convinced that she carried northmour and his friends, and that they would probably come ashore after dark; not only because that was of a piece with the secrecy of the preparations, but because the tide would not have flowed sufficiently before eleven to cover graden floe and the other sea-quags that fortified the shore against invaders. all day the wind had been going down, and the sea along with it; but there was a return towards sunset of the heavy weather of the day before. the night set in pitch dark. the wind came off the sea in squalls, like the firing of a battery of cannon; now and then there was a flaw of rain, and the surf rolled heavier with the rising tide. i was down at my observatory among the elders, when a light was run up to the mast-head of the schooner, and showed she was closer in than when i had last seen her by the dying daylight. i concluded that this must be a signal to northmour's associates on shore; and, stepping forth into the links, looked around me for something in response. a small footpath ran along the margin of the wood, and formed the most direct communication between the pavilion and the mansion-house; and as i cast my eyes to that side i saw a spark of light, not a quarter of a mile away, and rapidly approaching. from its uneven course it appeared to be the light of a lantern carried by a person who followed the windings of the path, and was often staggered and taken aback by the more violent squalls. i concealed myself once more among the elders, and waited eagerly for the newcomer's advance. it proved to be a woman; and as she passed within half a rod of my ambush i was able to recognise the features. the deaf and silent old dame who had nursed northmour in his childhood was his associate in this underhand affair. i followed her at a little distance, taking advantage of the innumerable heights and hollows, concealed by the darkness, and favoured not only by the nurse's deafness, but by the uproar of the wind and surf. she entered the pavilion, and, going at once to the upper story, opened and set a light in one of the windows that looked towards the sea. immediately afterwards the light at the schooner's mast-head was run down and extinguished. its purpose had been attained, and those on board were sure that they were expected. the old woman resumed her preparations; although the other shutters remained closed, i could see a glimmer going to and fro about the house; and a gush of sparks from one chimney after another soon told me that the fires were being kindled. northmour and his guests, i was now persuaded, would come ashore as soon as there was water on the floe. it was a wild night for boat service; and i felt some alarm mingle with my curiosity as i reflected on the danger of the landing. my old acquaintance, it was true, was the most eccentric of men; but the present eccentricity was both disquieting and lugubrious to consider. a variety of feelings thus led me towards the beach, where i lay flat on my face in a hollow within six feet of the track that led to the pavilion. thence i should have the satisfaction of recognising the arrivals, and, if they should prove to be acquaintances, greeting them as soon as they had landed. some time before eleven, while the tide was still dangerously low, a boat's lantern appeared close inshore; and, my attention being thus awakened, i could perceive another still far to seaward, violently tossed, and sometimes hidden by the billows. the weather, which was getting dirtier as the night went on, and the perilous situation of the yacht upon a leeshore, had probably driven them to attempt a landing at the earliest possible moment. a little afterwards, four yachtsmen carrying a very heavy chest, and guided by a fifth with a lantern, passed close in front of me as i lay, and were admitted to the pavilion by the nurse. they returned to the beach, and passed me a second time with another chest, larger but apparently not so heavy as the first. a third time they made the transit; and on this occasion one of the yachtsmen carried a leather portmanteau, and the others a lady's trunk and carriage bag. my curiosity was sharply excited. if a woman were among the guests of northmour, it would show a change in his habits and an apostasy from his pet theories of life, well calculated to fill me with surprise. when he and i dwelt there together, the pavilion had been a temple of misogyny. and now, one of the detested sex was to be installed under its roof. i remembered one or two particulars, a few notes of daintiness and almost of coquetry which had struck me the day before as i surveyed the preparations in the house; their purpose was now clear, and i thought myself dull not to have perceived it from the first. while i was thus reflecting, a second lantern drew near me from the beach. it was carried by a yachtsman whom i had not yet seen, and who was conducting two other persons to the pavilion. these two persons were unquestionably the guests for whom the house was made ready; and, straining eye and ear, i set myself to watch them as they passed. one was an unusually tall man, in a travelling hat slouched over his eyes, and a highland cape closely buttoned and turned up so as to conceal his face. you could make out no more of him than that he was, as i have said, unusually tall, and walked feebly with a heavy stoop. by his side, and either clinging to him or giving him support--i could not make out which--was a young, tall, and slender figure of a woman. she was extremely pale; but in the light of the lantern her face was so marred by strong and changing shadows that she might equally well have been as ugly as sin or as beautiful as i afterwards found her to be. when they were just abreast of me, the girl made some remark which was drowned by the noise of the wind. "hush!" said her companion; and there was something in the tone with which the word was uttered that thrilled and rather shook my spirits. it seemed to breathe from a bosom labouring under the deadliest terror; i have never heard another syllable so expressive; and i still hear it again when i am feverish at night, and my mind runs upon old times. the man turned towards the girl as he spoke; i had a glimpse of much red beard and a nose which seemed to have been broken in youth; and his light eyes seemed shining in his face with some strong and unpleasant emotion. but these two passed on and were admitted in their turn to the pavilion. one by one, or in groups, the seamen returned to the beach. the wind brought me the sound of a rough voice crying, "shove off!" then, after a pause, another lantern drew near. it was northmour alone. my wife and i, a man and a woman, have often agreed to wonder how a person could be, at the same time, so handsome and so repulsive as northmour. he had the appearance of a finished gentleman; his face bore every mark of intelligence and courage; but you had only to look at him, even in his most amiable moment, to see that he had the temper of a slaver captain. i never knew a character that was both explosive and revengeful to the same degree; he combined the vivacity of the south with the sustained and deadly hatreds of the north; and both traits were plainly written on his face, which was a sort of danger-signal. in person he was tall, strong, and active; his hair and complexion very dark; his features handsomely designed, but spoiled by a menacing expression. at that moment he was somewhat paler than by nature; he wore a heavy frown; and his lips worked, and he looked sharply round him as he walked, like a man besieged with apprehensions. and yet i thought he had a look of triumph underlying all, as though he had already done much, and was near the end of an achievement. partly from a scruple of delicacy--which i daresay came too late--partly from the pleasure of startling an acquaintance, i desired to make my presence known to him without delay. i got suddenly to my feet and stepped forward. "northmour!" said i. i have never had so shocking a surprise in all my days. he leaped on me without a word; something shone in his hand; and he struck for my heart with a dagger. at the same moment i knocked him head over heels. whether it was my quickness, or his own uncertainty, i know not; but the blade only grazed my shoulder, while the hilt and his fist struck me violently on the mouth. i fled, but not far. i had often and often observed the capabilities of the sand-hills for protracted ambush or stealthy advances and retreats; and, not ten yards from the scene of the scuffle, plumped down again upon the grass. the lantern had fallen and gone out. but what was my astonishment to see northmour slip at a bound into the pavilion, and hear him bar the door behind him with a clang of iron! he had not pursued me. he had run away. northmour, whom i knew for the most implacable and daring of men, had run away! i could scarce believe my reason; and yet in this strange business, where all was incredible, there was nothing to make a work about an incredibility more or less. for why was the pavilion secretly prepared? why had northmour landed with his guests at dead of night, in half a gale of wind, and with the floe scarce covered? why had he sought to kill me? had he not recognised my voice? i wondered. and, above all, how had he come to have a dagger ready in his hand? a dagger, or even a sharp knife, seemed out of keeping with the age in which we lived; and a gentleman landing from his yacht on the shore of his own estate, even although it was at night and with some mysterious circumstances, does not usually, as a matter of fact, walk thus prepared for deadly onslaught. the more i reflected, the further i felt at sea. i recapitulated the elements of mystery, counting them on my fingers: the pavilion secretly prepared for guests; the guests landed at the risk of their lives and to the imminent peril of the yacht; the guests, or at least one of them, in undisguised and seemingly causeless terror; northmour with a naked weapon; northmour stabbing his most intimate acquaintance at a word; last, and not least strange, northmour fleeing from the man whom he had sought to murder, and barricading himself, like a hunted creature, behind the door of the pavilion. here were at least six separate causes for extreme surprise; each part and parcel with the others, and forming all together one consistent story. i felt almost ashamed to believe my own senses. as i thus stood, transfixed with wonder, i began to grow painfully conscious of the injuries i had received in the scuffle; skulked round among the sand-hills; and, by a devious path, regained the shelter of the wood. on the way, the old nurse passed again within several yards of me, still carrying her lantern, on the return journey to the mansion-house of graden. this made a seventh suspicious feature in the case. northmour and his guest, it appeared, were to cook and do the cleaning for themselves, while the old woman continued to inhabit the big empty barrack among the policies. there must surely be great cause for secrecy when so many inconveniences were confronted to preserve it. so thinking, i made my way to the den. for greater security i trod out the embers of the fire, and lit my lantern to examine the wound upon my shoulder. it was a trifling hurt, although it bled somewhat freely, and i dressed it as well as i could (for its position made it difficult to reach) with some rag and cold water from the spring. while i was thus busied i mentally declared war against northmour and his mystery. i am not an angry man by nature, and i believe there was more curiosity than resentment in my heart. but war i certainly declared; and, by way of preparation, i got out my revolver, and, having drawn the charges, cleaned and reloaded it with scrupulous care. next i became preoccupied about my horse. it might break loose, or fall to neighing, and so betray my camp in the seawood. i determined to rid myself of its neighbourhood; and long before dawn i was leading it over the links in the direction of the fisher village. chapter iii tells how i became acquainted with my wife for two days i skulked round the pavilion, profiting by the uneven surface of the links. i became an adept in the necessary tactics. these low hillocks and shallow dells, running one into another, became a kind of cloak of darkness for my enthralling, but perhaps dishonourable, pursuit. yet, in spite of this advantage, i could learn but little of northmour or his guests. fresh provisions were brought under cover of darkness by the old woman from the mansion-house. northmour and the young lady, sometimes together, but more often singly, would walk for an hour or two at a time on the beach beside the quicksand. i could not but conclude that this promenade was chosen with an eye to secrecy; for the spot was open only to the seaward. but it suited me not less excellently; the highest and most accidented of the sand-hills immediately adjoined; and from these, lying flat in a hollow, i could overlook northmour or the young lady as they walked. the tall man seemed to have disappeared. not only did he never cross the threshold, but he never so much as showed face at a window; or, at least, not so far as i could see; for i dared not creep forward beyond a certain distance in the day, since the upper floor commanded the bottoms of the links; and at night, when i could venture farther, the lower windows were barricaded as if to stand a siege. sometimes i thought the tall man must be confined to bed, for i remembered the feebleness of his gait; and sometimes i thought he must have gone clear away, and that northmour and the young lady remained alone together in the pavilion. the idea, even then, displeased me. whether or not this pair were man and wife, i had seen abundant reason to doubt the friendliness of their relation. although i could hear nothing of what they said, and rarely so much as glean a decided expression on the face of either, there was a distance, almost a stiffness, in their bearing which showed them to be either unfamiliar or at enmity. the girl walked faster when she was with northmour than when she was alone; and i conceived that any inclination between a man and a woman would rather delay than accelerate the step. moreover, she kept a good yard free of him, and trailed her umbrella, as if it were a barrier, on the side between them. northmour kept sidling closer; and, as the girl retired from his advance, their course lay at a sort of diagonal across the beach, and would have landed them in the surf had it been long enough continued. but when this was imminent, the girl would unostentatiously change sides and put northmour between her and the sea. i watched these manoeuvres, for my part, with high enjoyment and approval, and chuckled to myself at every move. on the morning of the third day she walked alone for some time, and i perceived, to my great concern, that she was more than once in tears. you will see that my heart was already interested more than i supposed. she had a firm yet airy motion of the body, and carried her head with unimaginable grace; every step was a thing to look at, and she seemed in my eyes to breathe sweetness and distinction. the day was so agreeable, being calm and sun-shiny, with a tranquil sea, and yet with a healthful piquancy and vigour in the air, that, contrary to custom, she was tempted forth a second time to walk. on this occasion she was accompanied by northmour, and they had been but a short while on the beach, when i saw him take forcible possession of her hand. she struggled, and uttered a cry that was almost a scream. i sprang to my feet, unmindful of my strange position; but, ere i had taken a step, i saw northmour bareheaded and bowing very low, as if to apologise; and dropped again at once into my ambush. a few words were interchanged; and then, with another bow, he left the beach to return to the pavilion. he passed not far from me, and i could see him, flushed and lowering, and cutting savagely with his cane among the grass. it was not without satisfaction that i recognised my own handiwork in a great cut under his right eye, and a considerable discoloration round the socket. for some time the girl remained where he had left her, looking out past the islet and over the bright sea. then with a start, as one who throws off pre-occupation and puts energy again upon its mettle, she broke into a rapid and decisive walk. she also was much incensed by what had passed. she had forgotten where she was. and i beheld her walk straight into the borders of the quicksand where it is most abrupt and dangerous. two or three steps farther and her life would have been in serious jeopardy, when i slid down the face of the sand-hill, which is there precipitous, and, running half-way forward, called to her to stop. she did so, and turned round. there was not a tremor of fear in her behaviour, and she marched directly up to me like a queen. i was barefoot, and clad like a common sailor, save for an egyptian scarf round my waist; and she probably took me at first for some one from the fisher village, straying after bait. as for her, when i thus saw her face to face, her eyes set steadily and imperiously upon mine, i was filled with admiration and astonishment, and thought her even more beautiful than i had looked to find her. nor could i think enough of one who, acting with so much boldness, yet preserved a maidenly air that was both quaint and engaging; for my wife kept an old-fashioned precision of manner through all her admirable life--an excellent thing in woman, since it sets another value on her sweet familiarities. "what does this mean?" she asked. "you were walking," i told her, "directly into graden floe." "you do not belong to these parts," she said again. "you speak like an educated man." "i believe i have right to that name," said i, "although in this disguise." but her woman's eye had already detected the sash. "oh!" she said; "your sash betrays you." "you have said the word _betray,_" i resumed. "may i ask you not to betray me? i was obliged to disclose myself in your interest; but if northmour learned my presence it might be worse than disagreeable for me." "do you know," she asked, "to whom you are speaking?" "not to mr. northmour's wife?" i asked, by way of answer. she shook her head. all this while she was studying my face with an embarrassing intentness. then she broke out-"you have an honest face. be honest like your face, sir, and tell me what you want and what you are afraid of. do you think i could hurt you? i believe you have far more power to injure me! and yet you do not look unkind. what do you mean--you, a gentleman--by skulking like a spy about this desolate place? tell me," she said, "who is it you hate?" "i hate no one," i answered; "and i fear no one face to face. my name is cassilis--frank cassilis. i lead the life of a vagabond for my own good pleasure. i am one of northmour's oldest friends; and three nights ago, when i addressed him on these links, he stabbed me in the shoulder with a knife." "it was you!" she said. "why he did so," i continued, disregarding the interruption, "is more than i can guess, and more than i care to know. i have not many friends, nor am i very susceptible to friendship; but no man shall drive me from a place by terror. i had camped in graden sea-wood ere he came; i camp in it still. if you think i mean harm to you or yours, madam, the remedy is in your hand. tell him that my camp is in the hemlock den, and to-night he can stab me in safety while i sleep." with this i doffed my cap to her, and scrambled up once more among the sand-hills. i do not know why, but i felt a prodigious sense of injustice, and felt like a hero and a martyr; while, as a matter of fact, i had not a word to say in my defence, nor so much as one plausible reason to offer for my conduct. i had stayed at graden out of a curiosity natural enough, but undignified; and though there was another motive growing in along with the first, it was not one which, at that period, i could have properly explained to the lady of my heart. certainly, that night, i thought of no one else; and, though her whole conduct and position seemed suspicious, i could not find it in my heart to entertain a doubt of her integrity. i could have staked my life that she was clear of blame, and, though all was dark at the present, that the explanation of the mystery would show her part in these events to be both right and needful. it was true, let me cudgel my imagination as i pleased, that i could invent no theory of her relations to northmour; but i felt none the less sure of my conclusion because it was founded on instinct in place of reason, and, as i may say, went to sleep that night with the thought of her under my pillow. next day she came out about the same hour alone, and, as soon as the sand-hills concealed her from the pavilion, drew nearer to the edge, and called me by name in guarded tones. i was astonished to observe that she was deadly pale, and seemingly under the influence of strong emotion. "mr. cassilis!" she cried; "mr. cassilis!" i appeared at once, and leaped down upon the beach. a remarkable air of relief overspread her countenance as soon as she saw me. "oh!" she cried, with a hoarse sound, like one whose bosom has been lightened of a weight. and then, "thank god you are still safe!" she added; "i knew, if you were, you would be here." (was not this strange? so swiftly and wisely does nature prepare our hearts for these great life-long intimacies, that both my wife and i had been given a presentiment on this the second day of our acquaintance. i had even then hoped that she would seek me; she had felt sure that she would find me.) "do not," she went on swiftly, "do not stay in this place. promise me that you will sleep no longer in that wood. you do not know how i suffer; all last night i could not sleep for thinking of your peril." "peril?" i repeated. "peril from whom? from northmour?" "not so," she said. "did you think i would tell him after what you said?" "not from northmour?" i repeated. "then how? from whom? i see none to be afraid of" "you must not ask me," was her reply, "for i am not free to tell you. only believe me, and go hence-believe me, and go away quickly, quickly, for your life!" an appeal to his alarm is never a good plan to rid oneself of a spirited young man. my obstinacy was but increased by what she said, and i made it a point of honour to remain. and her solicitude for my safety still more confirmed me in the resolve. "you must not think me inquisitive, madam," i replied; "but, if graden is so dangerous a place, you yourself perhaps remain here at some risk." she only looked at me reproachfully. "you and your father " i resumed; but she interrupted me almost with a gasp. "my father! how do you know that?" she cried. "i saw you together when you landed," was my answer; and i do not know why, but it seemed satisfactory to both of us, as indeed it was the truth. "but," i continued, "you need have no fear from me. i see you have some reason to be secret, and, you may believe me, your secret is as safe with me as if i were in graden floe. i have scarce spoken to any one for years; my horse is my only companion, and even he, poor beast, is not beside me. you see, then, you may count on me for silence. so tell me the truth, my dear young lady, are you not in danger?" "mr. northmour says you are an honourable man," she returned, "and i believe it when i see you. i will tell you so much; you are right; we are in dreadful, dreadful danger, and you share it by remaining where you are." "ah!" said i; "you have heard of me from northmour? and he gives me a good character?" "i asked him about you last night," was her reply. "i pretended," she hesitated, "i pretended to have met you long ago, and spoken to you of him. it was not true; but i could not help myself without betraying you, and you had put me in a difficulty. he praised you highly." "and--you may permit me one question--does this danger come from northmour?" i asked. "from mr. northmour?" she cried. "oh no; he stays with us to share it." "while you propose that i should run away?" i said. "you do not rate me very high." "why should you stay?" she asked. "you are no friend of ours." i know not what came over me, for i had not been conscious of a similar weakness since i was a child, but i was so mortified by this retort that my eyes pricked and filled with tears, as i continued to gaze upon her face. "no, no," she said, in a changed voice; "i did not mean the words unkindly." "it was i who offended," i said; and i held out my hand with a look of appeal that somehow touched her, for she gave me hers at once, and even eagerly. i held it for a while in mine, and gazed into her eyes. it was she who first tore her hand away, and, forgetting all about her request and the promise she had sought to extort, ran at the top of her speed, and without turning, till she was out of sight. and then i knew that i loved her, and thought in my glad heart that she--she herself--was not indifferent to my suit. many a time she has denied it in after days, but it was with a smiling and not a serious denial. for my part, i am sure our hands would not have lain so closely in each other if she had not begun to melt to me already. and, when all is said, it is no great contention, since, by her own avowal, she began to love me on the morrow. and yet on the morrow very little took place. she came and called me down as on the day before, upbraided me for lingering at graden, and, when she found i was still obdurate, began to ask me more particularly as to my arrival. i told her by what series of accidents i had come to witness their disembarkation, and how i had determined to remain, partly from the interest which had been wakened in me by northmour's guests, and partly because of his own murderous attack. as to the former, i fear i was disingenuous, and led her to regard herself as having been an attraction to me from the first moment that i saw her on the links. it relieves my heart to make this confession even now, when my wife is with god, and already knows all things, and the honesty of my purpose even in this; for while she lived, although it often pricked my conscience, i had never the hardihood to undeceive her. even a little secret, in such a married life as ours, is like the rose-leaf which kept the princess from her sleep. from this the talk branched into other subjects, and i told her much about my lonely and wandering existence; she, for her part, giving ear and saying little. although we spoke very naturally, and latterly on topics that might seem indifferent, we were both sweetly agitated. too soon it was time for her to go; and we separated, as if by mutual consent, without shaking hands, for both knew that, between us, it was no idle ceremony. the next, and that was the fourth day of our acquaintance, we met in the same spot, but early in the morning, with much familiarity and yet much timidity on either side. when she had once more spoken about my danger--and that, i understood, was her excuse for coming--i, who had prepared a great deal of talk during the night, began to tell her how highly i valued her kind interest, and how no one had ever cared to hear about my life, nor had i ever cared to relate it, before yesterday. suddenly she interrupted me, saying with vehemence-"and yet, if you knew who i was, you would not so much as speak to me!" i told her such a thought was madness, and, little as we had met, i counted her already a dear friend; but my protestations seemed only to make her more desperate. "my father is in hiding!" she cried. "my dear," i said, forgetting for the first time to add "young lady," "what do i care? if he were in hiding twenty times over, would it make one thought of change in you?" "ah, but the cause!" she cried, "the cause! it is----" she faltered for a second--"it is disgraceful to us!" chapter iv tells in what a startling manner i learned that i was not alone in graden sea-wood this was my wife's story, as i drew it from her among tears and sobs. her name was clara huddlestone: it sounded very beautiful in my ears; but not so beautiful as that other name of clara cassilis, which she wore during the longer, and i thank god the happier, portion of her life. her father, bernard huddlestone, had been a private banker in a very large way of business. many years before, his affairs becoming disordered, he had been led to try dangerous, and at last criminal, expedients to retrieve himself from ruin. all was in vain; he became more and more cruelly involved, and found his honour lost at the same moment with his fortune. about this period northmour had been courting his daughter with great assiduity, though with small encouragement; and to him, knowing him thus disposed in his favour, bernard huddlestone turned for help in his extremity. it was not merely ruin and dishonour, nor merely a legal condemnation, that the unhappy man had brought upon his head. it seems he could have gone to prison with a light heart. what he feared, what kept him awake at night or recalled him from slumber into frenzy, was some secret, sudden, and unlawful attempt upon his life. hence he desired to bury his existence and escape to one of the islands in the south pacific, and it was in northmour's yacht, the _red earl,_ that he designed to go. the yacht picked them up clandestinely upon the coast of wales, and had once more deposited them at graden, till she could be refitted and provisioned for the longer voyage. nor could clara doubt that her hand had been stipulated as the price of passage. for, although northmour was neither unkind nor even discourteous, he had shown himself in several instances somewhat over-bold in speech and manner. i listened, i need not say, with fixed attention, and put many questions as to the more mysterious part. it was in vain. she had no clear idea of what the blow was, nor of how it was expected to fall. her father's alarm was unfeigned and physically prostrating, and he had thought more than once of making an unconditional surrender to the police. but the scheme was finally abandoned, for he was convinced that not even the strength of our english prisons could shelter him from his pursuers. he had had many affairs with italy, and with italians resident in london, in the later years of his business; and these last, as clara fancied, were somehow connected with the doom that threatened him. he had shown great terror at the presence of an italian seaman on board the _red earl,_ and had bitterly and repeatedly accused northmour in consequence. the latter had protested that beppo (that was the seaman's name) was a capital fellow, and could be trusted to the death; but mr. huddlestone had continued ever since to declare that all was lost, that it was only a question of days, and that beppo would be the ruin of him yet. i regarded the whole story as the hallucination of a mind shaken by calamity. he had suffered heavy loss by his italian transactions; and hence the sight of an italian was hateful to him, and the principal part in his nightmare would naturally enough be played by one of that nation. "what your father wants," i said, "is a good doctor and some calming medicine." "but mr. northmour?" objected your mother. "he is untroubled by losses, and yet he shares in this terror." i could not help laughing at what i considered her simplicity. "my dear," said i, "you have told me yourself what reward he has to look for. all is fair in love, you must remember; and if northmour foments your father's terrors, it is not at all because he is afraid of any italian man, but simply because he is infatuated with a charming english woman." she reminded me of his attack upon myself on the night of the disembarkation, and this i was unable to explain. in short, and from one thing to another, it was agreed between us that i should set out at once for the fisher village, graden-wester, as it was called, look up all the newspapers i could find, and see for myself if there seemed any basis of fact for these continued alarms. the next morning, at the same hour and place, i was to make my report to clara. she said no more on that occasion about my departure; nor, indeed, did she make it a secret that she clung to the thought of my proximity as something helpful and pleasant; and, for my part, i could not have left her, if she had gone upon her knees to ask it. i reached graden-wester before ten in the fore-noon; for in those days i was an excellent pedestrian, and the distance, as i think i have said, was little over seven miles; fine walking all the way upon the springy turf. the village is one of the bleakest on that coast, which is saying much: there is a church in a hollow; a miserable haven in the rocks, where many boats have been lost as they returned from fishing; two or three score of stone houses arranged along the beach and in two streets, one leading from the harbour, and another striking out from it at right angles; and, at the corner of these two, a very dark and cheerless tavern, by way of principal hotel. i had dressed myself somewhat more suitably to my station in life, and at once called upon the minister in his little manse beside the graveyard. he knew me, although it was more than nine years since we had met; and when i told him that i had been long upon a walking tour, and was behind with the news, readily lent me an armful of newspapers, dating from a month back to the day before. with these i sought the tavern, and, ordering some breakfast, sat down to study the "huddlestone failure." it had been, it appeared, a very flagrant case. thousands of persons were reduced to poverty; and one in particular had blown out his brains as soon as payment was suspended. it was strange to myself that, while i read these details, i continued rather to sympathise with mr. huddlestone than with his victims; so complete already was the empire of my love for my wife. a price was naturally set upon the banker's head; and, as the case was inexcusable and the public indignation thoroughly aroused, the unusual figure of 750 pounds was offered for his capture. he was reported to have large sums of money in his possession. one day he had been heard of in spain; the next, there was sure intelligence that he was still lurking between manchester and liverpool, or along the border of wales; and the day after, a telegram would announce his arrival in cuba or yucatan. but in all this there was no word of an italian, nor any sign of mystery. in the very last paper, however, there was one item not so clear. the accountants who were charged to verify the failure had, it seemed, come upon the traces of a very large number of thousands, which figured for some time in the transactions of the house of huddlestone; but which came from nowhere, and disappeared in the same mysterious fashion. it was only once referred to by name, and then under the initials "x. x."; but it had plainly been floated for the first time into the business at a period of great depression some six years ago. the name of a distinguished royal personage had been mentioned by rumour in connection with this sum. "the cowardly desperado"--such, i remember, was the editorial expression--was supposed to have escaped with a large part of this mysterious fund still in his possession. i was still brooding over the fact, and trying to torture it into some connection with mr. huddlestone's danger, when a man entered the tavern and asked for some bread and cheese with a decided foreign accent. "_siete italiano?_" said i. "_si, signor,_" was his reply. i said it was unusually far north to find one of his compatriots; at which he shrugged his shoulders, and replied that a man would go anywhere to find work. what work he could hope to find at graden-wester i was totally unable to conceive; and the incident struck so unpleasantly upon my mind that i asked the landlord, while he was counting me some change, whether he had ever before seen an italian in the village. he said he had once seen some norwegians, who had been shipwrecked on the other side of graden ness and rescued by the lifeboat from cauldhaven. "no!" said i; "but an italian, like the man who has just had bread and cheese?" "what?" cried he, "yon blackavised fellow wi' the teeth? was he an i-talian? weel, yon's the first that ever i saw, an' i daresay he's like to be the last." even as he was speaking, i raised my eyes, and, casting a glance into the street, beheld three men in earnest conversation together, and not thirty yards away. one of them was my recent companion in the tavern parlour; the other two, by their handsome, sallow features and soft hats, should evidently belong to the same race. a crowd of village children stood around them, gesticulating and talking gibberish in imitation. the trio looked singularly foreign to the bleak dirty street in which they were standing, and the dark grey heaven that overspread them; and i confess my incredulity received at that moment a shock from which it never recovered. i might reason with myself as i pleased, but i could not argue down the effect of what i had seen, and i began to share in the italian terror. it was already drawing towards the close of the day before i had returned the newspapers at the manse, and got well forward on to the links on my way home. i shall never forget that walk. it grew very cold and boisterous; the wind sang in the short grass about my feet; thin rain showers came running on the gusts; and an immense mountain range of clouds began to arise out of the bosom of the sea. it would be hard to imagine a more dismal evening; and whether it was from these external influences, or because my nerves were already affected by what i had heard and seen, my thoughts were as gloomy as the weather. the upper windows of the pavilion commanded a considerable spread of links in the direction of graden-wester. to avoid observation it was necessary to hug the beach until i had gained cover from the higher sand-hills on the little headland, when i might strike across, through the hollows, for the margin of the wood. the sun was about setting; the tide was low, and all the quicksands uncovered; and i was moving along, lost in unpleasant thought, when i was suddenly thunder-struck to perceive the prints of human feet. they ran parallel to my own course, but low down upon the beach instead of along the border of the turf, and, when i examined them, i saw at once, by the size and coarseness of the impression, that it was a stranger to me and to those in the pavilion who had recently passed that way. not only so; but from the recklessness of the course which he had followed, steering near to the most formidable portions of the sand, he was as evidently a stranger to the country and to the ill-repute of graden beach. step by step i followed the prints; until, a quarter of a mile farther, i beheld them die away into the southeastern boundary of graden floe. there, whoever he was, the miserable man had perished. one or two gulls, who had, perhaps, seen him disappear, wheeled over his sepulchre with their usual melancholy piping. the sun had broken through the clouds by a last effort, and coloured the wide level of quicksands with a dusky purple. i stood for some time gazing at the spot, chilled and disheartened by my own reflections, and with a strong and commanding consciousness of death. i remember wondering how long the tragedy had taken, and whether his screams had been audible at the pavilion. and then, making a strong resolution, i was about to tear myself away, when a gust fiercer than usual fell upon this quarter of the beach, and i saw, now whirling high in air, now skimming lightly across the surface of the sands, a soft, black, felt hat, somewhat conical in shape, such as i had remarked already on the heads of the italians. i believe, but i am not sure, that i uttered a cry. the wind was driving the hat shoreward, and i ran round the border of the floe to be ready against its arrival. the gust fell, dropping the hat for a while upon the quicksand, and then, once more freshening, landed it a few yards from where i stood. i seized it with the interest you may imagine. it had seen some service; indeed, it was rustier than either of those i had seen that day upon the street. the lining was red, stamped with the name of the maker, which i have forgotten, and that of the place of manufacture, _venedig._ this (it is not yet forgotten) was the name given by the austrians to the beautiful city of venice, then, and for long after, a part of their dominions. the shock was complete. i saw imaginary italians upon every side; and for the first, and, i may say, for the last time in my experience, became overpowered by what is called a panic terror. i knew nothing, that is, to be afraid of, and yet i admit that i was heartily afraid; and it was with a sensible reluctance that i returned to my exposed and solitary camp in the seawood. there i ate some cold porridge which had been left over from the night before, for i was disinclined to make a fire; and feeling strengthened and reassured, dismissed all these fanciful terrors from my mind, and lay down to sleep with composure. how long i may have slept it is impossible for me to guess; but i was awakened at last by a sudden, blinding flash of light into my face. it woke me like a blow. in an instant i was upon my knees. but the light had gone as suddenly as it came. the darkness was intense. and, as it was blowing great guns from the sea and pouring with rain, the noises of the storm effectually concealed all others. it was, i daresay, half a minute before i regained my self-possession. but for two circumstances, i should have thought i had been awakened by some new and vivid form of nightmare. first, the flap of my tent, which i had shut carefully when i retired, was now unfastened; and, second, i could still perceive, with a sharpness that excluded any theory of hallucination, the smell of hot metal and of burning oil. the conclusion was obvious. i had been wakened by some one flashing a bull's-eye lantern in my face. it had been but a flash, and away. he had seen my face, and then gone. i asked myself the object of so strange a proceeding, and the answer came pat. the man, whoever he was, had thought to recognise me, and he had not. there was yet another question unresolved: and to this, i may say, i feared to give an answer; if he had recognised me, what would he have done? my fears were immediately diverted from myself, for i saw that i had been visited in a mistake; and i became persuaded that some dreadful danger threatened the pavilion. it required some nerve to issue forth into the black and intricate thicket which surrounded and overhung the den; but i groped my way to the links, drenched with rain, beaten upon and deafened by the gusts, and fearing at every step to lay my hand upon some lurking adversary. the darkness was so complete that i might have been surrounded by an army and yet none the wiser, and the uproar of the gale so loud that my hearing was as useless as my sight. for the rest of that night, which seemed interminably long, i patrolled the vicinity of the pavilion, without seeing a living creature or hearing any noise but the concert of the wind, the sea, and the rain. a light in the upper story filtered through a cranny of the shutter, and kept me company till the approach of dawn. chapter v tells of an interview between northmour, clara, and myself with the first peep of day i retired from the open to my old lair among the sand-hills, there to await the coming of my wife. the morning was grey, wild, and melancholy; the wind moderated before sunrise, and then went about, and blew in puffs from the shore; the sea began to go down, but the rain still fell without mercy. over all the wilderness of links there was not a creature to be seen. yet i felt sure the neighbourhood was alive with skulking foes. the light had been so suddenly and surprisingly flashed upon my face as i lay sleeping, and the hat that had been blown ashore by the wind from over graden floe, were two speaking signals of the peril that environed clara and the party in the pavilion. it was perhaps half-past seven, or nearer eight, before i saw the door open, and that dear figure come towards me in the rain. i was waiting for her on the beach before she had crossed the sand-hills. "i have had such trouble to come!" she cried. "they did not wish me to go walking in the rain." "clara," i said, "you are not frightened?" "no," said she, with a simplicity that filled my heart with confidence. for my wife was the bravest as well as the best of women; in my experience i have not found the two go always together, but with her they did; and she combined the extreme of fortitude with the most endearing and beautiful virtues. i told her what had happened; and though her cheek grew visibly paler, she retained perfect control over her senses. "you see now that i am safe," said i, in conclusion. "they do not mean to harm me; for, had they chosen, i was a dead man last night." she laid her hand upon my arm. "and i had no presentiment!" she cried. her accent thrilled me with delight. i put my arm about her, and strained her to my side; and before either of us was aware, her hands were on my shoulders and my lips upon her mouth. yet up to that moment no word of love had passed between us. to this day i remember the touch of her cheek, which was wet and cold with the rain; and many a time since, when she has been washing her face, i have kissed it again for the sake of that morning on the beach. now that she is taken from me, and i finish my pilgrimage alone, i recall our old loving-kindnesses and the deep honesty and affection which united us, and my present loss seems but a trifle in comparison. we may have thus stood for some seconds--for time passes quickly with lovers--before we were startled by a peal of laughter close at hand. it was not natural mirth, but seemed to be affected in order to conceal an angrier feeling. we both turned, though i still kept my left arm about clara's waist; nor did she seek to withdraw herself; and there, a few paces off upon the beach, stood northmour, his head lowered, his hands behind his back, his nostrils white with passion. "ah! cassilis!" he said, as i disclosed my face. "that same," said i; for i was not at all put about. "and so, miss huddlestone," he continued slowly but savagely, "this is how you keep your faith to your father and to me? this is the value you set upon your father's life? and you are so infatuated with this young gentleman that you must brave ruin, and decency, and common human caution----" "miss huddlestone" i was beginning to interrupt him, when he, in his turn, cut in brutally-"you hold your tongue," said he; "i am speaking to that girl." "that girl, as you call her, is my wife," said i; and my wife only leaned a little nearer, so that i knew she had affirmed my words. "your what?" he cried. "you lie!" "northmour," i said, "we all know you have a bad temper, and i am the last man to be irritated by words. for all that, i propose that you speak lower, for i am convinced that we are not alone." he looked round him, and it was plain my remark had in some degree sobered his passion. "what do you mean?" he asked. i only said one word: "italians." he swore a round oath, and looked at us, from one to the other. "mr. cassilis knows all that i know," said my wife. "what i want to know," he broke out, "is where the devil mr. cassilis comes from, and what the devil mr. cassilis is doing here. you say you are married; that i do not believe. if you were, graden floe would soon divorce you; four minutes and a half, cassilis. i keep my private cemetery for my friends." "it took somewhat longer," said i, "for that italian." he looked at me for a moment half-daunted, and then, almost civilly, asked me to tell my story. "you have too much the advantage of me, cassilis," he added. i complied, of course; and he listened, with several ejaculations, while i told him how i had come to graden: that it was i whom he had tried to murder on the night of landing; and what i had subsequently seen and heard of the italians. "well," said he, when i had done, "it is here at last; there is no mistake about that. and what, may i ask, do you propose to do?" "i propose to stay with you and lend a hand," said i. "you are a brave man," he returned, with a peculiar intonation. "i am not afraid," said i. "and so," he continued, "i am to understand that you two are married? and you stand up to it before my face, miss huddlestone?" "we are not yet married," said clara; "but we shall be as soon as we can." "bravo!" cried northmour. "and the bargain? d--n it, you're not a fool, young woman; i may call a spade a spade with you. how about the bargain? you know as well as i do what your father's life depends upon. i have only to put my hands under my coat-tails and walk away, and his throat would be cut before the evening." "yes, mr. northmour," returned clara, with great spirit; "but that is what you will never do. you made a bargain that was unworthy of a gentleman; but you are gentleman for all that, and you will never desert a man whom you have begun to help." "aha!" said he. "you think i will give my yacht for nothing? you think i will risk my life and liberty for love of the old gentleman; and then, i suppose, be best-man at the wedding, to wind up? well," he added, with an odd smile, "perhaps you are not altogether wrong. but ask cassilis here. _he_ knows me. am i a man to trust? am i safe and scrupulous? am i kind?" "i know you talk a great deal, and sometimes, i think, very foolishly," replied clara, "but i know you are a gentleman, and i am not the least afraid." he looked at her with a peculiar approval and admiration; then, turning to me, "do you think i would give her up without a struggle, frank?" said he. "i tell you plainly, you look out. the next time we come to blows----" "will make the third," i interrupted, smiling. "ay, true; so it will," he said. "i had forgotten. well, the third time's lucky." "the third time, you mean, you will have the crew of the _red earl_ to help," i said. "do you hear him?" he asked, turning to my wife. "i hear two men speaking like cowards," said she. "i should despise myself either to think or speak like that. and neither of you believe one word that you are saying, which makes it the more wicked and silly." "she's a trump!" cried northmour. "but she's not yet mrs. cassilis. i say no more. the present is not for me." then my wife surprised me. "i leave you here," she said suddenly. "my father has been too long alone. but remember this: you are to be friends, for you are both good friends to me." she has since told me her reason for this step. as long as she remained, she declares that we two would have continued to quarrel; and i suppose that she was right, for when she was gone we fell at once into a sort of confidentiality. northmour stared after her as she went away over the sand-hill. "she is the only woman in the world!" he exclaimed, with an oath. "look at her action." i, for my part, leaped at this opportunity for a little further light. "see here, northmour," said i; "we are all in a tight place, are we not?" "i believe you, my boy," he answered, looking me in the eyes, and with great emphasis. "we have all hell upon us, that's the truth. you may believe me or not, but i'm afraid of my life." "tell me one thing," said i. "what are they after, these italians? what do they want with mr. huddlestone?" "don't you know?" he cried. "the black old scamp had _carbonaro_ funds on a deposit--two hundred and eighty thousand; and of course he gambled it away on stocks. there was to have been a revolution in the tridentino, or parma; but the revolution is off, and the whole wasps' nest is after huddlestone. we shall all be lucky if we can save our skins." "the _carbonari!_" i exclaimed; "god help him indeed!" "amen!" said northmour. "and now, look here: i have said that we are in a fix; and, frankly, i shall be glad of your help. if i can't save huddlestone, i want at least to save the girl. come and stay in the pavilion; and there's my hand on it, i shall act as your friend until the old man is either clear or dead. but," he added, "once that is settled, you become my rival once again, and i warn you--mind yourself." "done!" said i; and we shook hands. "and now let us go directly to the fort," said northmour; and he began to lead the way through the rain. chapter vi tells of my introduction to the tall man we were admitted to the pavilion by clara, and i was surprised by the completeness and security of the defences. a barricade of great strength, and yet easy to displace, supported the door against any violence from without; and the shutters of the dining-room, into which i was led directly, and which was feebly illuminated by a lamp, were even more elaborately fortified. the panels were strengthened by bars and cross-bars; and these, in their turn, were kept in position by a system of braces and struts, some abutting on the floor, some on the roof, and others, in fine, against the opposite wall of the apartment. it was at once a solid and well-designed piece of carpentry; and i did not seek to conceal my admiration. "i am the engineer," said northmour. "you remember the planks in the garden? behold them!" "i did not know you had so many talents," said i. "are you armed?" he continued, pointing to an array of guns and pistols, all in admirable order, which stood in line against the wall or were displayed upon the sideboard. "thank you," i returned; "i have gone armed since our last encounter. but, to tell you the truth, i have had nothing to eat since early yesterday evening." northmour produced some cold meat, to which i eagerly set myself, and a bottle of good burgundy, by which, wet as i was, i did not scruple to profit. i have always been an extreme temperance man on principle; but it is useless to push principle to excess, and on this occasion i believe that i finished three-quarters of the bottle. as i ate, i still continued to admire the preparations for defence. "we could stand a siege," i said at length. "ye--es," drawled northmour; "a very little one, per-haps. it is not so much the strength of the pavilion i misdoubt; it is the double danger that kills me. if we get to shooting, wild as the country is, some one is sure to hear it, and then--why, then it's the same thing, only different, as they say: caged by law, or killed by _carbonari._ there's the choice. it is a devilish bad thing to have the law against you in this world, and so i tell the old gentleman upstairs. he is quite of my way of thinking." "speaking of that," said i, "what kind of person is he?" "oh, he!" cried the other; "he's a rancid fellow, as far as he goes. i should like to have his neck wrung to-morrow by all the devils in italy. i am not in this affair for him. you take me? i made a bargain for missy's hand, and i mean to have it too." "that by the way," said i. "i understand. but how will mr. huddlestone take my intrusion?" "leave that to clara," returned northmour. i could have struck him in the face for this coarse familiarity; but i respected the truce, as, i am bound to say, did northmour, and so long as the danger continued not a cloud arose in our relation. i bear him this testimony with the most unfeigned satisfaction; nor am i without pride when i look back upon my own behaviour. for surely no two men were ever left in a position so invidious and irritating. as soon as i had done eating, we proceeded to inspect the lower floor. window by window we tried the different supports, now and then making an inconsiderable change; and the strokes of the hammer sounded with startling loudness through the house. i proposed, i remember, to make loopholes; but he told me they were already made in the windows of the upper story. it was an anxious business, this inspection, and left me down-hearted. there were two doors and five windows to protect, and, counting clara, only four of us to defend them against an unknown number of foes. i communicated my doubts to northmour, who assured me, with unmoved composure, that he entirely shared them. "before morning," said he, "we shall all be butchered and buried in graden floe. for me, that is written." i could not help shuddering at the mention of the quicksand, but reminded northmour that our enemies had spared me in the wood. "do not flatter yourself," said he. "then you were not in the same boat with the old gentleman; now you are. it's the floe for all of us, mark my words." i trembled for clara; and just then her dear voice was heard calling us to come upstairs. northmour showed me the way, and, when he had reached the landing, knocked at the door of what used to be called _my uncle's bedroom,_ as the founder of the pavilion had designed it especially for himself. "come in, northmour; come in, dear mr. cassilis," said a voice from within. pushing open the door, northmour admitted me before him into the apartment. as i came in i could see the daughter slipping out by the side-door into the study, which had been prepared as her bedroom. in the bed, which was drawn back against the wall, instead of standing, as i had last seen it, boldly across the window, sat bernard huddlestone, the defaulting banker. little as i had seen of him by the shifting light of the lantern on the links, i had no difficulty in recognising him for the same. he had a long and sallow countenance, surrounded by a long red beard and sidewhiskers. his broken nose and high cheek-bones gave him somewhat the air of a kalmuck, and his light eyes shone with the excitement of a high fever. he wore a skullcap of black silk; a huge bible lay open before him on the bed, with a pair of gold spectacles in the place, and a pile of other books lay on the stand by his side. the green curtains lent a cadaverous shade to his cheek; and, as he sat propped on pillows, his great stature was painfully hunched, and his head protruded till it overhung his knees. i believe if he had not died otherwise, he must have fallen a victim to consumption in the course of but a very few weeks. he held out to me a hand, long, thin, and disagreeably hairy. "come in, come in, mr. cassilis," said he. "another protector--ahem!--another protector. always welcome as a friend of my daughter's, mr. cassilis. how they have rallied about me, my daughter's friends! may god in heaven bless and reward them for it!" i gave him my hand, of course, because i could not help it; but the sympathy i had been prepared to feel for clara's father was immediately soured by his appearance, and the wheedling, unreal tones in which he spoke. "cassilis is a good man," said northmour; "worth ten." "so i hear," cried mr. huddlestone eagerly; "so my girl tells me. ah, mr. cassilis, my sin has found me out, you see! i am very low, very low; but i hope equally penitent. we must all come to the throne of grace at last, mr. cassilis. for my part, i come late indeed; but with unfeigned humility, i trust." "fiddle-de-dee!" said northmour roughly. "no, no, dear northmour!" cried the banker. "you must not say that; you must not try to shake me. you forget, my dear, good boy, you forget i may be called this very night before my maker." his excitement was pitiful to behold; and i felt myself grow indignant with northmour, whose infidel opinions i well knew, and heartily derided, as he continued to taunt the poor sinner out of his humour of repentance. "pooh, my dear huddlestone!" said he. "you do yourself injustice. you are a man of the world, inside and out, and were up to all kinds of mischief before i was born. your conscience is tanned like south american leather-only you forgot to tan your liver, and that, if you will believe me, is the seat of the annoyance." "rogue, rogue! bad boy!" said mr. huddlestone, shaking his finger. "i am no precisian, if you come to that; i always hated a precisian; but i never lost hold of something better through it all. i have been a bad boy, mr. cassilis; i do not seek to deny that; but it was after my wife's death, and you know, with a widower, it's a different thing: sinful--i won't say no; but there is a gradation, we shall hope. and talking of that---hark!" he broke out suddenly, his hand raised, his fingers spread, his face racked with interest and terror. "only the rain, bless god!" he added, after a pause, and with indescribable relief. for some seconds he lay back among the pillows like a man near to fainting; then he gathered himself together, and, in somewhat tremulous tones, began once more to thank me for the share i was prepared to take in his defence. "one question, sir," said i, when he had paused. "is it true that you have money with you?" he seemed annoyed by the question, but admitted with reluctance that he had a little. "well," i continued, "it is their money they are after, is it not? why not give it up to them?" "ah!" replied he, shaking his head, "i have tried that already, mr. cassilis; and alas that it should be so! but it is blood they want." "huddlestone, that's a little less than fair," said northmour. "you should mention that what you offered them was upwards of two hundred thousand short. the deficit is worth a reference; it is for what they call a cool sum, frank. then, you see, the fellows reason in their clear italian way; and it seems to them, as indeed it seems to me, that they may just as well have both while they're about it--money and blood together, by george, and no more trouble for the extra pleasure." "is it in the pavilion?" i asked. "it is; and i wish it were in the bottom of the sea instead," said northmour: and then suddenly--"what are you making faces at me for?" he cried to mr. huddlestone, on whom i had unconsciously turned my back. "do you think cassilis would sell you?" mr. huddlestone protested that nothing had been further from his mind. "it is a good thing," retorted northmour in his ugliest manner. "you might end by wearying us.--what were you going to say?" he added, turning to me. "i was going to propose an occupation for the afternoon," said i. "let us carry that money out, piece by piece, and lay it down before the pavilion door. if the _carbonari_ come, why, it's theirs at any rate." "no, no," cried mr. huddlestone; "it does not, it cannot belong to them! it should be distributed _pro rata_ among all my creditors." "come now, huddlestone," said northmour, "none of that." "well, but my daughter," moaned the wretched man. "your daughter will do well enough. here are two suitors, cassilis and i, neither of us beggars, between whom she has to choose. and as for yourself, to make an end of arguments, you have no right to a farthing, and, unless i'm much mistaken, you are going to die." it was certainly very cruelly said; but mr. huddlestone was a man who attracted little sympathy; and, although i saw him wince and shudder, i mentally indorsed the rebuke; nay, i added a contribution of my own. "northmour and i," i said, "are willing enough to help you to save your life, but not to escape with stolen property." he struggled for a while with himself, as though he were on the point of giving way to anger, but prudence had the best of the controversy. "my dear boys," he said, "do with me or my money what you will. i leave all in your hands. let me compose myself" and so we left him, gladly enough i am sure. the last that i saw, he had once more taken up his great bible, and with tremulous hands was adjusting his spectacles to read. chapter vii tells how a word was cried through the pavilion window the recollection of that afternoon will always be graven on my mind. northmour and i were persuaded that an attack was imminent; and if it had been in our power to alter in any way the order of events, that power would have been used to precipitate rather than delay the critical moment. the worst was to be anticipated; yet we could conceive no extremity so miserable as the suspense we were now suffering. i have never been an eager, though always a great, reader; but i never knew books so insipid as those which i took up and cast aside that afternoon in the pavilion. even talk became impossible as the hours went on. one or other was always listening for some sound, or peering from an upstairs window over the links. and yet not a sign indicated the presence of our foes. we debated over and over again my proposal with regard to the money; and had we been in complete possession of our faculties, i am sure we should have condemned it as unwise; but we were flustered with alarm, grasped at a straw, and determined, although it was as much as advertising mr. huddlestone's presence in the pavilion, to carry my proposal into effect. the sum was part in specie, part in bank-paper, and part in circular notes payable to the name of james gregory. we took it out, counted it, enclosed it once more in a despatch-box belonging to northmour, and prepared a letter in italian which he tied to the handle. lt was signed by both of us under oath, and declared that this was all the money which had escaped the failure of the house of huddlestone. this was, perhaps, the maddest action ever perpetrated by two persons professing to be sane. had the despatch-box fallen into other hands than those for which it was intended, we stood criminally convicted on our own written testimony; but, as i have said, we were neither of us in a condition to judge soberly, and had a thirst for action that drove us to do something, right or wrong, rather than endure the agony of waiting. moreover, as we were both convinced that the hollows of the links were alive with hidden spies upon our movements, we hoped that our appearance with the box might lead to a parley, and perhaps a compromise. it was nearly three when we issued from the pavilion. the rain had taken off, the sun shone quite cheerfully. i have never seen the gulls fly so close about the house or approach so fearlessly to human beings. on the very doorstep one flapped heavily past our heads, and uttered its wild cry in my very ear. "there is an omen for you," said northmour, who, like all freethinkers, was much under the influence of superstition. "they think we are already dead." i made some light rejoinder, but it was with half my heart; for the circumstance had impressed me. a yard or two before the gate, on a patch of smooth turf, we set down the despatch-box; and northmour waved a white handkerchief over his head. nothing replied. we raised our voices, and cried aloud in italian that we were there as ambassadors to arrange the quarrel; but the stillness remained unbroken save by the sea-gulls and the surf. i had a weight at my heart when we desisted; and i saw that even northmour was unusually pale. he looked over his shoulder nervously, as though he feared that some one had crept between him and the pavilion door. "by god," he said in a whisper, "this is too much for me!" i replied in the same key: " suppose there should be none, after all!" "look there," he returned, nodding with his head, as though he had been afraid to point. i glanced in the direction indicated; and there, from the northern quarter of the sea-wood, beheld a thin column of smoke rising steadily against the now cloudless sky. "northmour," i said (we still continued to talk in whispers), "it is not possible to endure this suspense. i prefer death fifty times over. stay you here to watch the pavilion; i will go forward and make sure, if i have to walk right into their camp." he looked once again all round him with puckered eyes, and then nodded assentingly to my proposal. my heart beat like a sledge-hammer as i set out walking rapidly in the direction of the smoke; and, though up to that moment i had felt chill and shivering, i was suddenly conscious of a glow of heat over all my body. the ground in this direction was very uneven; a hundred men might have lain hidden in as many square yards about my path. but i had not practised the business in vain, chose such routes as cut at the very root of concealment, and, by keeping along the most convenient ridges, commanded several hollows at a time. it was not long before i was rewarded for my caution. coming suddenly on to a mound somewhat more elevated than the surrounding hummocks, i saw, not thirty yards away, a man bent almost double, and running as fast as his attitude permitted along the bottom of a gully. i had dislodged one of the spies from his ambush. as soon as i sighted him, i called loudly both in english and italian; and he, seeing concealment was no longer possible, straightened himself out, leaped from the gully, and made off as straight as an arrow for the borders of the wood. it was none of my business to pursue; i had learned what i wanted--that we were beleaguered and watched in the pavilion; and i returned at once, and walking as nearly as possible in my old footsteps, to where northmour awaited me beside the despatch-box. he was even paler than when i had left him, and his voice shook a little. "could you see what he was like?" he asked. "he kept his back turned," i replied. "let us get into the house, frank. i don't think i'm a coward, but i can stand no more of this," he whispered. all was still and sunshiny about the pavilion as we turned to reenter it; even the gulls had flown in a wider circuit, and were seen flickering along the beach and sand-hills; and this loneliness terrified me more than a regiment under arms. it was not until the door was barricaded that i could draw a full inspiration and relieve the weight that lay upon my bosom. northmour and i exchanged a steady glance; and i suppose each made his own reflections on the white and startled aspect of the other. "you were right," i said. "all is over. shake hands, old man, for the last time." "yes," replied he, "i will shake hands; for, as sure as i am here, i bear no malice. but remember, if, by some impossible accident, we should give the slip to these blackguards, i'll take the upper hand of you by fair or foul." "oh," said i, "you weary me!" he seemed hurt, and walked away in silence to the foot of the stairs, where he paused. "you do not understand," said he. "i am not a swindler, and i guard myself; that is all. it may weary you or not, mr. cassilis, i do not care a rush; i speak for my own satisfaction, and not for your amusement. you had better go upstairs and court the girl; for my part, i stay here." "and i stay with you," i returned. "do you think i would steal a march, even with your permission?" "frank," he said, smiling, "it's a pity you are an ass, for you have the makings of a man. i think i must be _fey_ to-day; you cannot irritate me even when you try. do you know," he continued softly, "i think we are the two most miserable men in england, you and i? we have got on to thirty without wife or child, or so much as a shop to look after--poor, pitiful, lost devils, both! and now we clash about a girl! as if there were not several millions in the united kingdom! ah, frank, frank, the one who loses this throw, be it you or me, he has my pity! it were better for him--how does the bible say?--that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the depth of the sea. let us take a drink," he concluded suddenly, but without any levity of tone. i was touched by his words, and consented. he sat down on the table in the dining-room, and held up the glass of sherry to his eye. "if you beat me, frank," he said, "i shall take to drink. what will you do if it goes the other way?" "god knows," i returned. "well," said he, "here is a toast in the meantime: _'italia irredenta!'_" the remainder of the day was passed in the same dreadful tedium and suspense. i laid the table for dinner, while northmour and clara prepared the meal together in the kitchen. i could hear their talk as i went to and fro, and was surprised to find it ran all the time upon myself. northmour again bracketed us together, and rallied clara on a choice of husbands; but he continued to speak of me with some feeling, and uttered nothing to my prejudice unless he included himself in the condemnation. this awakened a sense of gratitude in my heart, which combined with the immediateness of our peril to fill my eyes with tears. after all, i thought--and perhaps the thought was laughably vain--we were here three very noble human beings to perish in defence of a thieving banker. before we sat down to table i looked forth from an upstairs window. the day was beginning to decline; the links were utterly deserted; the despatch-box still lay untouched where we had left it hours before. mr. huddlestone, in a long yellow dressing-gown, took one end of the table, clara the other; while northmour and i faced each other from the sides. the lamp was brightly trimmed; the wine was good; the viands, although mostly cold, excellent of their sort. we seemed to have agreed tacitly; all reference to the impending catastrophe was carefully avoided; and, considering our tragic circumstances, we made a merrier party than could have been expected. from time to time, it is true, northmour or i would rise from table and make a round of the defences; and, on each of these occasions, mr. huddlestone was recalled to a sense of his tragic predicament, glanced up with ghastly eyes, and bore for an instant on his countenance the stamp of terror. but he hastened to empty his glass, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and joined again in the conversation. i was astonished at the wit and information he displayed. mr. huddlestone's was certainly no ordinary character; he had read and observed for himself; his gifts were sound; and, though i could never have learned to love the man, i began to understand his success in business, and the great respect in which he had been held before his failure. he had, above all, the talent of society; and though i never heard him speak but on this one and most unfavourable occasion, i set him down among the most brilliant conversationalists i ever met. he was relating with great gusto, and seemingly no feeling of shame, the manoeuvres of a scoundrelly commission merchant whom he had known and studied in his youth, and we were all listening with an odd mixture of mirth and embarrassment, when our little party was brought abruptly to an end in the most startling manner. a noise like that of a wet finger on the window-pane interrupted mr. huddlestone's tale; and in an instant we were all four as white as paper, and sat tongue-tied and motionless round the table. "a snail," i said at last; for i had heard that these animals make a noise somewhat similar in character. "snail be d--d!" said northmour. "hush!" the same sound was repeated twice at regular intervals; and then a formidable voice shouted through the shutters the italian word _"traditore!"_ mr. huddlestone threw his head in the air; his eyelids quivered; next moment he fell insensible below the table. northmour and i had each run to the armoury and seized a gun. clara was on her feet with her hand at her throat. so we stood waiting, for we thought the hour of attack was certainly come; but second passed after second, and all but the surf remained silent in the neighbourhood of the pavilion. "quick," said northmour; "upstairs with him before they come." chapter viii tells the last of the tall man somehow or other, by hook and crook, and between the three of us, we got bernard huddlestone bundled upstairs and laid upon the bed in _my uncle's room._ during the whole process, which was rough enough, he gave no sign of consciousness, and he remained, as we had thrown him, without changing the position of a finger. his daughter opened his shirt and began to wet his head and bosom; while northmour and i ran to the window. the weather continued clear; the moon, which was now about full, had risen and shed a very clear light upon the links; yet, strain our eyes as we might, we could distinguish nothing moving. a few dark spots, more or less, on the uneven expanse, were not to be identified; they might be crouching men, they might be shadows; it was impossible to be sure. "thank god," said northmour, "aggie is not coming tonight." aggie was the name of the old nurse; he had not thought of her till now; but that he should think of her at all was a trait that surprised me in the man. we were again reduced to waiting. northmour went to the fireplace and spread his hands before the red embers, as if he were cold. i followed him mechanically with my eyes, and in so doing turned my back upon the window. at that moment a very faint report was audible from without, and a ball shivered a pane of glass, and buried itself in the shutter two inches from my head. i heard clara scream; and though i whipped instantly out of range and into a corner, she was there, so to speak, before me, beseeching to know if i were hurt. i felt that i could stand to be shot at every day and all day long, with such marks of solicitude for a reward; and i continued to reassure her, with the tenderest caresses and in complete forgetfulness of our situation, till the voice of northmour recalled me to myself. "an air-gun," he said. "they wish to make no noise." i put clara aside, and looked at him. he was standing with his back to the fire and his hands clasped behind him; and i knew by the black look on his face that passion was boiling within. i had seen just such a look before he attacked me, that march night, in the adjoining chamber; and, though i could make every allowance for his anger, i confess i trembled for the consequences. he gazed straight before him; but he could see us with the tail of his eye, and his temper kept rising like a gale of wind. with regular battle awaiting us outside, this prospect of an internecine strife within the walls began to daunt me. suddenly, as i was thus closely watching his expression and prepared against the worst, i saw a change, a flash, a look of relief, upon his face. he took up the lamp which stood beside him on the table, and turned to us with an air of some excitement. "there is one point that we must know," said he. "are they going to butcher the lot of us, or only huddlestone? did they take you for him, or fire at you for your own _beaux yeux?_" "they took me for him, for certain," i replied. "i am near as tall, and my head is fair." "i am going to make sure," returned northmour; and he stepped up to the window, holding the lamp above his head, and stood there, quietly affronting death, for half a minute. clara sought to rush forward and pull him from the place of danger; but i had the pardonable selfishness to hold her back by force. "yes," said northmour, turning coolly from the window; "it's only huddlestone they want." "oh, mr. northmour!" cried clara; but found no more to add; the temerity she had just witnessed seeming beyond the reach of words. he, on his part, looked at me, cocking his head, with a fire of triumph in his eyes; and i understood at once that he had thus hazarded his life, merely to attract clara's notice, and depose me from my position as the hero of the hour. he snapped his fingers. "the fire is only beginning," said he. "when they warm up to their work they won't be so particular." a voice was now heard hailing us from the entrance. from the window we could see the figure of a man in the moonlight; he stood motionless, his face uplifted to ours, and a rag of something white on his extended arm; and as we looked right down upon him, though he was a good many yards distant on the links, we could see the moonlight glitter on his eyes. he opened his lips again, and spoke for some minutes on end, in a key so loud that he might have been heard in every corner of the pavilion, and as far away as the borders of the wood. it was the same voice that had already shouted "_traditore!_" through the shutters of the dining-room; this time it made a complete and clear statement. if the traitor "oddlestone" were given up, all others should be spared; if not, no one should escape to tell the tale. "well, huddlestone, what do you say to that?" asked northmour, turning to the bed. up to that moment the banker had given no sign of life, and i, at least, had supposed him to be still lying in a faint; but he replied at once, and in such tones as i have never heard elsewhere, save from a delirious patient, adjured and besought us not to desert him. it was the most hideous and abject performance that my imagination can conceive. "enough," cried northmour; and then he threw open the window, leaned out into the night, and in a tone of exultation, and with a total forgetfulness of what was due to the presence of a lady, poured out upon the ambassador a string of the most abominable raillery both in english and italian, and bade him be gone where he had come from. i believe that nothing so delighted northmour at that moment as the thought that we must all infallibly perish before the night was out. meantime the italian put his flag of truce into his pocket, and disappeared, at a leisurely pace, among the sand-hills. "they make honourable war," said northmour. "they are all gentlemen and soldiers. for the credit of the thing, i wish we could change sides--you and i, frank, and you too, missy my darling--and leave that being on the bed to some one else. tut! don't look shocked! we are all going post to what they call eternity, and may as well be above-board while there's time. as far as i'm concerned, if i could first strangle huddlestone and then get clara in my arms, i could die with some pride and satisfaction. and as it is, by god, i'll have a kiss!" before i could do anything to interfere, he had rudely embraced and repeatedly kissed the resisting girl. next moment i had pulled him away with fury, and flung him heavily against the wall. he laughed loud and long, and i feared his wits had given way under the strain; for even in the best of days he had been a sparing and a quiet laugher. "now, frank," said he, when his mirth was some-what appeased, "it's your turn. here's my hand. good bye; farewell!" then, seeing me stand rigid and indignant, and holding clara to my side--"man!" he broke out, "are you angry? did you think we were going to die with all the airs and graces of society? i took a kiss; i'm glad i had it; and now you can take another if you like, and square accounts." i turned from him with a feeling of contempt which i did not seek to dissemble. "as you please," said he. "you've been a prig in life; a prig you'll die." and with that he sat down in a chair, a rifle over his knee, and amused himself with snapping the lock; but i could see that his ebullition of light spirits (the only one i ever knew him to display) had already come to an end, and was succeeded by a sullen, scowling humour. all this time our assailants might have been entering the house, and we been none the wiser; we had in truth almost forgotten the danger that so imminently overhung our days. but just then mr. huddlestone uttered a cry, and leaped from the bed. i asked him what was wrong. "fire!" he cried. "they have set the house on fire!" northmour was on his feet in an instant, and he and i ran through the door of communication with the study. the room was illuminated by a red and angry light. almost at the moment of our entrance a tower of flame arose in front of the window, and, with a tingling report, a pane fell inwards on the carpet. they had set fire to the lean-to outhouse, where northmour used to nurse his negatives. "hot work," said northmour. "let us try in your old room." we ran thither in a breath, threw up the casement, and looked forth. along the whole back wall of the pavilion piles of fuel had been arranged and kindled; and it is probable they had been drenched with mineral oil, for, in spite of the morning's rain, they all burned bravely. the fire had taken a firm hold already on the outhouse, which blazed higher and higher every moment; the back-door was in the centre of a red-hot bonfire; the eaves, we could see, as we looked upward, were already smouldering, for the roof overhung, and was supported by considerable beams of wood. at the same time, hot, pungent, and choking volumes of smoke began to fill the house. there was not a human being to be seen to right or left. "ah, well!" said northmour, "here's the end, thank god." and we returned to _my uncle's room._ mr. huddlestone was putting on his boots, still violently trembling, but with an air of determination such as i had not hitherto observed. clara stood close by him, with her cloak in both hands ready to throw about her shoulders, and a strange look in her eyes, as if she were halfhopeful, half-doubtful of her father. "well, boys and girls," said northmour, "how about a sally? the oven is heating; it is not good to stay here and be baked; and, for my part, i want to come to my hands with them, and be done." "there is nothing else left," i replied. and both clara and mr. huddlestone, though with a very different intonation, added, "nothing." as we went downstairs the heat was excessive, and the roaring of the fire filled our ears; and we had scarce reached the passage before the stairs window fell in, a branch of flame shot brandishing through the aperture, and the interior of the pavilion became lit up with that dreadful and fluctuating glare. at the same moment we heard the fall of something heavy and inelastic in the upper story. the whole pavilion, it was plain, had gone alight like a box of matches, and now not only flamed sky-high to land and sea, but threatened with every moment to crumble and fall in about our ears. northmour and i cocked our revolvers. mr. huddlestone, who had already refused a fire-arm, put us behind him with a manner of command. "let clara open the door," said he. "so, if they fire a volley, she will be protected. and in the meantime stand behind me. i am the scapegoat; my sins have found me out." i heard him, as i stood breathless by his shoulder, with my pistol ready, pattering off prayers in a tremulous, rapid whisper; and i confess, horrid as the thought may seem, i despised him for thinking of supplications in a moment so critical and thrilling. in the meantime, clara, who was dead white, but still possessed her faculties, had displaced the barricade from the front door. another moment, and she had pulled it open. firelight and moonlight illuminated the links with confused and changeful lustre, and far away against the sky we could see a long trail of glowing smoke. mr. huddlestone, filled for the moment with a strength greater than his own, struck northmour and myself a back-hander in the chest; and while we were thus for the moment incapacitated from action, lifting his arms above his head like one about to dive, he ran straight forward out of the pavilion. "here am i!" he cried--"huddlestone! kill me, and spare the others!" his sudden appearance daunted, i suppose, our hidden enemies; for northmour and i had time to recover, to seize clara between us, one by each arm, and to rush forth to his assistance, ere anything further had taken place. but scarce had we passed the threshold when there came near a dozen reports and flashes from every direction among the hollows of the links. mr. huddlestone staggered, uttered a weird and freezing cry, threw up his arms over his head, and fell backward on the turf. "_traditore! traditore!_" cried the invisible avengers. and just then a part of the roof of the pavilion fell in, so rapid was the progress of the fire. a loud, vague, and horrible noise accompanied the collapse, and a vast volume of flame went soaring up to heaven. it must have been visible at that moment from twenty miles out at sea, from the shore at graden-wester, and far inland from the peak of graystiel, the most eastern summit of the caulder hills. bernard huddlestone, although god knows what were his obsequies, had a fine pyre at the moment of his death. chapter ix tells how northmour carried out his threat i should have the greatest difficulty to tell you what followed next after this tragic circumstance. it is all to me, as i look back upon it, mixed, strenuous, and ineffectual, like the struggles of a sleeper in a nightmare. clara, i remember, uttered a broken sigh and would have fallen forward to earth, had not northmour and i supported her insensible body. i do not think we were attacked; i do not remember even to have seen an assailant; and i believe we deserted mr. huddlestone without a glance. i only remember running like a man in a panic, now carrying clara altogether in my own arms, now sharing her weight with northmour, now scuffling confusedly for the possession of that dear burden. why we should have made for my camp in the hemlock den, or how we reached it, are points lost for ever to my recollection. the first moment at which i became definitely sure, clara had been suffered to fall against the outside of my little tent, northmour and i were tumbling together on the ground, and he, with contained ferocity, was striking for my head with the butt of his revolver. he had already twice wounded me on the scalp; and it is to the consequent loss of blood that i am tempted to attribute the sudden clearness of my mind. i caught him by the wrist. "northmour," i remember saying, "you can kill me afterwards. let us first attend to clara." he was at that moment uppermost. scarcely had the words passed my lips, when he had leaped to his feet and ran towards the tent; and the next moment he was straining clara to his heart and covering her unconscious hands and face with his caresses. "shame!" i cried. "shame to you, northmour!" and, giddy though i still was, i struck him repeatedly upon the head and shoulders. he relinquished his grasp, and faced me in the broken moonlight. "i had you under, and i let you go," said he; "and now you strike me! coward!" "you are the coward," i retorted. "did she wish your kisses while she was still sensible of what she wanted? not she! and now she may be dying; and you waste this precious time, and abuse her helplessness. stand aside, and let me help her." he confronted me for a moment, white and menacing; then suddenly he stepped aside. "help her then," said he. i threw myself on my knees beside her, and loosened, as well as i was able, her dress and corset; but while i was thus engaged, a grasp descended on my shoulder. "keep your hands off her," said northmour fiercely. "do you think i have no blood in my veins?" "northmour," i cried, "if you will neither help her yourself, nor let me do so, do you know that i shall have to kill you?" "that is better!" he cried. "let her die also--where's the harm? step aside from that girl, and stand up to fight!" "you will observe," said i, half-rising, "that i have not kissed her yet." "i dare you to," he cried. i do not know what possessed me; it was one of the things i am most ashamed of in my life, though, as my wife used to say, i knew that my kisses would be always welcome were she dead or living; down i fell again upon my knees, parted the hair from her forehead, and, with the dearest respect, laid my lips for a moment on that cold brow. it was such a caress as a father might have given; it was such a one as was not unbecoming from a man soon to die to a woman already dead. "and now," said i, "i am at your service, mr. northmour." but i saw, to my surprise, that he had turned his back upon me. "do you hear?" i asked. "yes," said he, "i do. if you wish to fight, i am ready. if not, go on and save clara. all is one to me." i did not wait to be twice bidden; but, stooping again over clara, continued my efforts to revive her. she still lay white and lifeless; i began to fear that her sweet spirit had indeed fled beyond recall, and horror and a sense of utter desolation seized upon my heart. i called her by name with the most endearing inflections; i chafed and beat her hands; now i laid her head low, now supported it against my knee; but all seemed to be in vain, and the lids still lay heavy on her eyes. "northmour," i said, "there is my hat. for god's sake bring some water from the spring." almost in a moment he was by my side with the water. "i have brought it in my own," he said. "you do not grudge me the privilege?" "northmour," i was beginning to say, as i laved her head and breast; but he interrupted me savagely. "oh, you hush up!" he said. "the best thing you can do is to say nothing." i had certainly no desire to talk, my mind being swallowed up in concern for my dear love and her condition; so i continued in silence to do my best towards her recovery, and, when the hat was empty, returned it to him, with one word--"more." he had, perhaps, gone several times upon this errand, when clara reopened her eyes. "now," said he, "since she is better, you can spare me, can you not? i wish you a good night, mr. cassilis." and with that he was gone among the thicket. i made a fire, for i had now no fear of the italians, who had even spared all the little possessions left in my encampment; and, broken as she was by the excitement and the hideous catastrophe of the evening, i managed, in one way or another--by persuasion, encouragement, warmth, and such simple remedies as i could lay my hand on--to bring her back to some composure of mind and strength of body. day had already come, when a sharp "hist!" sounded from the thicket. i started from the ground; but the voice of northmour was heard adding, in the most tranquil tones: "come here, cassilis, and alone; i want to show you something." i consulted clara with my eyes, and, receiving her tacit permission, left her alone, and clambered out of the den. at some distance off i saw northmour leaning against an elder; and, as soon as he perceived me, he began walking seaward. i had almost overtaken him as he reached the outskirts of the wood. "look," said he, pausing. a couple of steps more brought me out of the foliage. the light of the morning lay cold and clear over that well-known scene. the pavilion was but a blackened wreck; the roof had fallen in, one of the gables had fallen out; and, far and near, the face of the links was cicatrised with little patches of burnt furze. thick smoke still went straight upwards in the windless air of the morning, and a great pile of ardent cinders filled the bare walls of the house, like coals in an open grate. close by the islet a schooner yacht lay-to, and a well-manned boat was pulling vigorously for the shore. "the _red earl!_" i cried. "the _red earl_ twelve hours too late!" "feel in your pocket, frank. asked northmour. are you armed?" i obeyed him, and i think i must have become deadly pale. my revolver had been taken from me. "you see i have you in my power," he continued. "i disarmed you last night while you were nursing clara; but this morning--here--take your pistol. no thanks!" he cried, holding up his hand. "i do not like them; that is the only way you can annoy me now." he began to walk forward across the links to meet the boat, and i followed a step or two behind. in front of the pavilion i paused to see where mr. huddlestone had fallen; but there was no sign of him, nor so much as a trace of blood. "graden floe," said northmour. he continued to advance till we had come to the head of the beach. "no farther, please," said he. "would you like to take her to graden house?" "thank you," replied i; "i shall try to get her to the minister's at graden-wester." the prow of the boat here grated on the beach, and a sailor jumped ashore with a line in his hand. "wait a minute, lads!" cried northmour; and then, lower, and to my private ear: "you had better say nothing of all this to her," he added. "on the contrary!" i broke out, "she shall know everything that i can tell." "you do not understand," he returned, with an air of great dignity. "it will be nothing to her; she expects it of me. good-bye!" he added, with a nod. i offered him my hand. "excuse me," said he. "it's small, i know; but i can't push things quite so far as that. i don't wish any sentimental business, to sit by your hearth a whitehaired wanderer, and all that. quite the contrary: i hope to god i shall never again clap eyes on either one of you." "well, god bless you, northmour!" i said heartily. "oh yes," he returned. he walked down the beach; and the man who was ashore gave him an arm on board, and then shoved off and leaped into the bows himself. northmour took the tiller; the boat rose to the waves, and the oars between the thole-pins sounded crisp and measured in the morning air. they were not yet half-way to the _red earl,_ and i was still watching their progress, when the sun rose out of the sea. one word more, and my story is done. years after, northmour was killed fighting under the colours of garibaldi for the liberation of the tyrol. a lodging for the night a story of francis villon originally published: "temple bar," october, 1877. reprinted in "new arabian nights": chatto and windus, london, 1882. it was late in november 1456. the snow fell over paris with rigorous, relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a sally and scattered it in flying vortices; sometimes there was a lull, and flake after flake descended out of the black night air, silent, circuitous, interminable. to poor people, looking up under moist eyebrows, it seemed a wonder where it all came from. master francis villon had propounded an alternative that afternoon at a tavern window: was it only pagan jupiter plucking geese upon olympus? or were the holy angels moulting? he was only a poor master of arts, he went on; and as the question somewhat touched upon divinity he durst not venture to conclude. a silly old priest from montargis, who was among the company, treated the young rascal to a bottle of wine in honour of the jest and the grimaces with which it was accompanied, and swore on his own white beard that he had been just such another irreverent dog when he was villon's age. the air was raw and pointed, but not far below freezing; and the flakes were large, damp, and adhesive. the whole city was sheeted up. an army might have marched from end to end and not a footfall given the alarm. if there were any belated birds in heaven, they saw the island like a large white patch, and the bridges like slim white spars, on the black ground of the river. high up overhead the snow settled among the tracery of the cathedral towers. many a niche was drifted full; many a statue wore a long white bonnet on its grotesque or sainted head. the gargoyles had been transformed into great false noses, drooping towards the point. the crockets were like upright pillows swollen on one side. in the intervals of the wind there was a dull sound of dripping about the precincts of the church. the cemetery of st. john had taken its own share of the snow. all the graves were decently covered; tall white housetops stood around in grave array; worthy burghers were long ago in bed, be-night-capped like their domiciles; there was no light in all the neighbourhood but a little peep from a lamp that hung swinging in the church choir, and tossed the shadows to and fro in time to its oscillations. the clock was hard on ten when the patrol went by with halberds and a lantern, beating their hands; and they saw nothing suspicious about the cemetery of st. john. yet there was a small house, backed up against the cemetery wall, which was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that snoring district. there was not much to betray it from without; only a stream of warm vapour from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow melted on the roof, and a few half-obliterated footprints at the door. but within, behind the shuttered windows, master francis villon the poet, and some of the thievish crew with whom he consorted, were keeping the night alive and passing round the bottle. a great pile of living embers diffused a strong and ruddy glow from the arched chimney. before this straddled dom nicolas, the picardy monk, with his skirts picked up and his fat legs bared to the comfortable warmth. his dilated shadow cut the room in half; and the firelight only escaped on either side of his broad person, and in a little pool between his outspread feet. his face had the beery, bruised appearance of the continual drinker's; it was covered with a network of congested veins, purple in ordinary circumstances, but now pale violet, for even with his back to the fire the cold pinched him on the other side. his cowl had half-fallen back, and made a strange excrescence on either side of his bull-neck. so he straddled, grumbling, and cut the room in half with the shadow of his portly frame. on the right, villon and guy tabary were huddled together over a scrap of parchment; villon making a ballade which he was to call the "ballade of roast fish," and tabary spluttering admiration at his shoulder. the poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean, with hollow cheeks and thin black locks. he carried his four-and-twenty years with feverish animation. greed had made folds about his eyes, evil smiles had puckered his mouth. the wolf and pig struggled together in his face. it was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. his hands were small and prehensile, with fingers knotted like a cord; and they were continually flickering in front of him in violent and expressive pantomime. as for tabary, a broad, complacent, admiring imbecility breathed from his squash nose and slobbering lips: he had become a thief, just as he might have become the most decent of burgesses, by the imperious chance that rules the lives of human geese and human donkeys. at the monk's other hand, montigny and thevenin pensete played a game of chance. about the first there clung some flavour of good birth and training, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something aquiline and darkling in the face. thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather: he had done a good stroke of knavery that afternoon in the faubourg st. jacques, and all night he had been gaining from montigny. a flat smile illuminated his face; his bald head shone rosily in a garland of red curls; his little protuberant stomach shook with silent chucklings as he swept in his gains. "doubles or quits?" said thevenin. montigny nodded grimly. "_some may prefer to dine in state,_" wrote villon, "_on bread and cheese on silver plate._ or--or--help me out, guido!" tabary giggled. "_or parsley on a golden dish,_" scribbled the poet. the wind was freshening without; it drove the snow before it, and sometimes raised its voice in a victorious whoop, and made sepulchral grumblings in the chimney. the cold was growing sharper as the night went on. villon, protruding his lips, imitated the gust with something between a whistle and a groan. it was an eerie, uncomfortable talent of the poet's, much detested by the picardy monk. "can't you hear it rattle in the gibbet?" said villon. "they are all dancing the devil's jig on nothing, up there. you may dance, my gallants, you'll be none the warmer! whew! what a gust! down went somebody just now! a medlar the fewer on the three-legged medlar-tree!--i say, dom nicolas, it'll be cold to-night on the st. denis road?" he asked. dom nicolas winked both his big eyes, and seemed to choke upon his adam's apple. montfaucon, the great grisly paris gibbet, stood hard by the st. denis road, and the pleasantry touched him on the raw. as for tabary, he laughed immoderately over the medlars; he had never heard anything more light-hearted; and he held his sides and crowed. villon fetched him a fillip on the nose, which turned his mirth into an attack of coughing. "oh, stop that row," said villon, "and think of rhymes to 'fish.'" "doubles or quits?" said montigny doggedly. "with all my heart," quoth thevenin. "is there any more in that bottle?" asked the monk. "open another," said villon. "how do you ever hope to fill that big hogshead, your body, with little things like bottles? and how do you expect to get to heaven? how many angels, do you fancy, can be spared to carry up a single monk from picardy? or do you think yourself another elias--and they'll send the coach for you?" "_hominibus impossibile,_" replied the monk, as he filled his glass. tabary was in ecstasies. villon filliped his nose again. "laugh at my jokes, if you like," he said. "it was very good," objected tabary. villon made a face at him. "think of rhymes to 'fish,'" he said. "what have you to do with latin? you'll wish you knew none of it at the great assizes, when the devil calls for guido tabary, clericus--the devil with the hump-back and red-hot finger-nails. talking of the devil," he added in a whisper, "look at montigny!" all three peered covertly at the gamester. he did not seem to be enjoying his luck. his mouth was a little to a side; one nostril nearly shut, and the other much inflated. the black dog was on his back, as people say, in terrifying nursery metaphor; and he breathed hard under the gruesome burden. "he looks as if he could knife him," whispered tabary, with round eyes. the monk shuddered, and turned his face and spread his open hands to the red embers. it was the cold that thus affected dom nicolas, and not any excess of moral sensibility. "come now," said villon--"about this ballade. how does it run so far?" and beating time with his hand, he read it aloud to tabary. they were interrupted at the fourth rhyme by a brief and fatal movement among the gamesters. the round was completed, and thevenin was just opening his mouth to claim another victory, when montigny leaped up, swift as an adder, and stabbed him to the heart. the blow took effect before he had time to utter a cry, before he had time to move. a tremor or two convulsed his frame; his hands opened and shut, his heels rattled on the floor; then his head rolled backward over one shoulder with the eyes wide open; and thevenin pensete's spirit had returned to him who made it. every one sprang to his feet; but the business was over in two twos. the four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer. "my god!" said tabary; and he began to pray in latin. villon broke out into hysterical laughter. he came a step forward and ducked a ridiculous bow at thevenin, and laughed still louder. then he sat down suddenly, all of a heap, upon a stool, and continued laughing bitterly as though he would shake himself to pieces. montigny recovered his composure first. "let's see what he has about him," he remarked; and he picked the dead man's pockets with a practised hand, and divided the money into four equal portions on the table. "there's for you," he said. the monk received his share with a deep sigh, and a single stealthy glance at the dead thevenin, who was beginning to sink into himself and topple sideways off the chair. "we're all in for it," cried villon, swallowing his mirth. "it's a hanging job for every man jack of us that's here--not to speak of those who aren't." he made a shocking gesture in the air with his raised right hand, and put out his tongue and threw his head on one side, so as to counterfeit the appearance of one who has been hanged. then he pocketed his share of the spoil, and executed a shuffle with his feet as if to restore the circulation. tabary was the last to help himself; he made a dash at the money, and retired to the other end of the apartment. montigny stuck thevenin upright in the chair, and drew out the dagger, which was followed by a jet of blood. "you fellows had better be moving," he said, as he wiped the blade on his victim's doublet. "i think we had," returned villon, with a gulp. "damn his fat head!" he broke out. "it sticks in my throat like phlegm. what right has a man to have red hair when he is dead?" and he fell all of a heap again upon the stool, and fairly covered his face with his hands. montigny and dom nicolas laughed aloud, even tabary feebly chiming in. "cry baby," said the monk. "i always said he was a woman," added montigny with a sneer. "sit up, can't you?" he went on, giving another shake to the murdered body. "tread out that fire, nick!" but nick was better employed; he was quietly taking villon's purse, as the poet sat, limp and trembling, on the stool where he had been making a ballade not three minutes before. montigny and tabary dumbly demanded a share of the booty, which the monk silently promised as he passed the little bag into the bosom of his gown. in many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for practical existence. no sooner had the theft been accomplished than villon shook himself, jumped to his feet, and began helping to scatter and extinguish the embers. meanwhile montigny opened the door and cautiously peered into the street. the coast was clear; there was no meddlesome patrol in sight. still it was judged wiser to slip out severally, and as villon was himself in a hurry to escape from the neighbourhood of the dead thevenin, and the rest were in a still greater hurry to get rid of him before he should discover the loss of his money, he was the first by general consent to issue forth into the street. the wind had triumphed and swept all the clouds from heaven. only a few vapours, as thin as moonlight, fleeted rapidly across the stars. it was bitter cold; and by a common optical effect, things seemed almost more definite than in the broadest daylight. the sleeping city was absolutely still: a company of white hoods, a field full of little alps, below the twinkling stars. villon cursed his fortune. would it were still snowing! now, wherever he went, he left an indelible trail behind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went he was still tethered to the house by the cemetery of st. john; wherever he went he must weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to the crime and would bind him to the gallows. the leer of the dead man came back to him with a new significance. he snapped his fingers as if to pluck up his own spirits, and choosing a street at random, stepped boldly forward in the snow. two things pre-occupied him as he went: the aspect of the gallows at montfaucon in this bright windy phase of the night's existence, for one; and for another, the look of the dead man with his bald head and garland of red curls. both struck cold upon his heart, and he kept quickening his pace as if he could escape from unpleasant thoughts by mere fleetness of foot. sometimes he looked back over his shoulder with a sudden nervous jerk; but he was the only moving thing in the white streets, except when the wind swooped round a corner and threw up the snow, which was beginning to freeze, in spouts of glittering dust. suddenly he saw, a long way before him, a black clump and a couple of lanterns. the clump was in motion, and the lanterns swung as though carried by men walking. it was a patrol. and though it was merely crossing his line of march, he judged it wiser to get out of eyeshot as speedily as he could. he was not in the humour to be challenged, and he was conscious of making a very conspicuous mark upon the snow. just on his left hand there stood a great hotel, with some turrets and a large porch before the door; it was half-ruinous, he remembered, and had long stood empty; and so he made three steps of it and jumped into the shelter of the porch. it was pretty dark inside, after the glimmer of the snowy streets, and he was groping forward with outspread hands, when he stumbled over some substance which offered an indescribable mixture of resistances, hard and soft, firm and loose. his heart gave a leap, and he sprang two steps back and stared dreadfully at the obstacle. then he gave a little laugh of relief. it was only a woman, and she dead. he knelt beside her to make sure upon this latter point. she was freezing cold, and rigid like a stick. a little ragged finery fluttered in the wind about her hair, and her cheeks had been heavily rouged that same afternoon. her pockets were quite empty; but in her stocking, underneath the garter, villon found two of the small coins that went by the name of whites. it was little enough; but it was always something; and the poet was moved with a deep sense of pathos that she should have died before she had spent her money. that seemed to him a dark and pitiable mystery; and he looked from the coins in his hand to the dead woman, and back again to the coins, shaking his head over the riddle of man's life. henry v. of england, dying at vincennes just after he had conquered france, and this poor jade cut off by a cold draught in a great man's doorway, before she had time to spend her couple of whites--it seemed a cruel way to carry on the world. two whites would have taken such a little while to squander; and yet it would have been one more good taste in the mouth, one more smack of the lips, before the devil got the soul, and the body was left to birds and vermin. he would like to use all his tallow before the light was blown out and the lantern broken. while these thoughts were passing through his mind, he was feeling, half mechanically, for his purse. suddenly his heart stopped beating; a feeling of cold scales passed up the back of his legs, and a cold blow seemed to fall upon his scalp. he stood petrified for a moment; then he felt again with one feverish movement; and then his loss burst upon him, and he was covered at once with perspiration. to spendthrifts money is so living and actual--it is such a thin veil between them and their pleasures! there is only one limit to their fortune--that of time; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns is the emperor of rome until they are spent. for such a person to lose his money is to suffer the most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to hell, from all to nothing, in a breath. and all the more if he has put his head in the halter for it; if he may be hanged to-morrow for that same purse so dearly earned, so foolishly departed! villon stood and cursed; he threw the two whites into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he stamped, and was not horrified to find himself trampling the poor corpse. then he began rapidly to retrace his steps towards the house beside the cemetery. he had forgotten all fear of the patrol, which was long gone by at any rate, and had no idea but that of his lost purse. it was in vain that he looked right and left upon the snow: nothing was to be seen. he had not dropped it in the streets. had it fallen in the house? he would have liked dearly to go in and see; but the idea of the grisly occupant unmanned him. and he saw besides, as he drew near, that their efforts to put out the fire had been unsuccessful; on the contrary, it had broken into a blaze, and a changeful light played in the chinks of door and window, and revived his terror for the authorities and paris gibbet. he returned to the hotel with the porch, and groped about upon the snow for the money he had thrown away in his childish passion. but he could only find one white; the other had probably struck sideways and sunk deeply in. with a single white in his pocket, all his projects for a rousing night in some wild tavern vanished utterly away. and it was not only pleasure that fled laughing from his grasp; positive discomfort, positive pain, attacked him as he stood ruefully before the porch. his perspiration had dried upon him; and though the wind had now fallen, a binding frost was setting in stronger with every hour, and he felt benumbed and sick at heart. what was to be done? late as was the hour, improbable as was success, he would try the house of his adopted father, the chaplain of st. benoit. he ran there all the way, and knocked timidly. there was no answer. he knocked again and again, taking heart with every stroke; and at last steps were heard approaching from within. a barred wicket fell open in the iron-studded door, and emitted a gush of yellow light. "hold up your face to the wicket," said the chaplain from within. "it's only me," whimpered villon. "oh, it's only you, is it?" returned the chaplain; and he cursed him with foul unpriestly oaths for disturbing him at such an hour, and bade him be off to hell, where he came from. "my hands are blue to the wrist," pleaded villon; "my feet are dead and full of twinges: my nose aches with the sharp air; the cold lies at my heart. i may be dead before morning. only this once, father, and before god i will never ask again!" "you should have come earlier," said the ecclesiastic coolly. "young men require a lesson now and then." he shut the wicket and retired deliberately into the interior of the house. villon was beside himself; he beat upon the door with his hands and feet, and shouted hoarsely after the chaplain. "wormy old fox!" he cried. "if i had my hand under your twist, i would send you flying headlong into the bottomless pit." a door shut in the interior, faintly audible to the poet down long passages. he passed his hand over his mouth with an oath. and then the humour of the situation struck him, and he laughed and looked lightly up to heaven, where the stars seemed to be winking over his discomfiture. what was to be done? it looked very like a night in the frosty streets. the idea of the dead woman popped into his imagination, and gave him a hearty fright; what had happened to her in the early night might very well happen to him before morning. and he so young! and with such immense possibilities of disorderly amusement before him! he felt quite pathetic over the notion of his own fate, as if it had been some one else's, and made a little imaginative vignette of the scene in the morning when they should find his body. he passed all his chances under review, turning the white between his thumb and forefinger. unfortunately he was on bad terms with some old friends who would once have taken pity on him in such a plight. he had lampooned them in verses, he had beaten and cheated them; and yet now, when he was in so close a pinch, he thought there was at least one who might perhaps relent. it was a chance. it was worth trying at least, and he would go and see. on the way, two little accidents happened to him which coloured his musings in a very different manner. for, first, he fell in with the track of a patrol, and walked in it for some hundred yards, although it lay out of his direction. and this spirited him up; at least he had confused his trail; for he was still possessed with the idea of people tracking him all about paris over the snow, and collaring him next morning before he was awake. the other matter affected him very differently. he passed a street corner, where, not so long before, a woman and her child had been devoured by wolves. this was just the kind of weather, he reflected, when wolves might take it into their heads to enter paris again; and a lone man in these deserted streets would run the chance of something worse than a mere scare. he stopped and looked upon the place with an unpleasant interest--it was a centre where several lanes intersected each other; and he looked down them all one after another, and held his breath to listen, lest he should detect some galloping black things on the snow, or hear the sound of howling between him and the river. he remembered his mother telling him the story and pointing out the spot, while he was yet a child. his mother! if he only knew where she lived, he might make sure at least of shelter. he determined he would inquire upon the morrow; nay, he would go and see her too, poor old girl! so thinking, he arrived at his destination--his last hope for the night. the house was quite dark, like its neighbours; and yet after a few taps he heard a movement overhead, a door opening, and a cautious voice asking who was there. the poet named himself in a loud whisper, and waited, not without some trepidation, the result. nor had he to wait long. a window was suddenly opened, and a pailful of slops splashed down upon the doorstep. villon had not been unprepared for something of the sort, and had put himself as much in shelter as the nature of the porch admitted; but for all that, he was deplorably drenched below the waist. his hose began to freeze almost at once. death from cold and exposure stared him in the face; he remembered he was of phthisical tendency, and began coughing tentatively. but the gravity of the danger steadied his nerves. he stopped a few hundred yards from the door where he had been so rudely used, and reflected with his finger to his nose. he could only see one way of getting a lodging, and that was to take it. he had noticed a house not far away, which looked as if it might be easily broken into, and thither he betook himself promptly, entertaining himself on the way with the idea of a room still hot, with a table still loaded with the remains of supper, where he might pass the rest of the black hours, and whence he should issue on the morrow with an armful of valuable plate. he even considered on what viands and what wines he should prefer; and as he was calling the roll of his favourite dainties, roast fish presented itself to his mind with an odd mixture of amusement and horror. "i shall never finish that ballade," he thought to himself; and then, with another shudder at the recollection, "oh, damn his fat head!" he repeated fervently, and spat upon the snow. the house in question looked dark at first sight; but as villon made a preliminary inspection in search of the handiest point of attack, a little twinkle of light caught his eye from behind a curtained window. "the devil!" he thought. "people awake! some student or some saint--confound the crew! can't they get drunk and lie in bed snoring like their neighbours! what's the good of curfew, and poor devils of bell-ringers jumping at a rope's-end in bell-towers? what's the use of day, if people sit up all night? the gripes to them!" he grinned as he saw where his logic was leading him. "every man to his business, after all," added he, "and if they're awake, by the lord, i may come by a supper honestly for this once, and cheat the devil." he went boldly to the door and knocked with an assured hand. on both previous occasions he had knocked timidly, and with some dread of attracting notice; but now, when he had just discarded the thought of a burglarious entry, knocking at a door seemed a mighty simple and innocent proceeding. the sound of his blows echoed through the house with thin, phantasmal reverberations, as though it were quite empty; but these had scarcely died away before a measured tread drew near, a couple of bolts were withdrawn, and one wing was opened broadly, as though no guile or fear of guile were known to those within. a tall figure of a man, muscular and spare, but a little bent, confronted villon. the head was massive in bulk, but finely sculptured; the nose blunt at the bottom, but refining upward to where it joined a pair of strong and honest eye-brows; the mouth and eyes surrounded with delicate markings, and the whole face based upon a thick white beard, boldly and squarely trimmed. seen as it was by the light of a flickering hand-lamp, it looked perhaps nobler than it had a right to do; but it was a fine face, honourable rather than intelligent, strong, simple, and righteous. "you knock late, sir," said the old man in resonant, courteous tones. villon cringed, and brought up many servile words of apology; at a crisis of this sort the beggar was uppermost in him, and the man of genius hid his head with confusion. "you are cold," repeated the old man, "and hungry? well, step in." and he ordered him into the house with a noble enough gesture. "some great seigneur," thought villon, as his host, setting down the lamp on the flagged pavement of the entry, shot the bolts once more into their places. "you will pardon me if i go in front," he said, when this was done; and he preceded the poet up-stairs into a large apartment, warmed with a pan of charcoal and lit by a great lamp hanging from the roof. it was very bare of furniture: only some gold plate on a sideboard; some folios; and a stand of armour between the windows. some smart tapestry hung upon the walls, representing the crucifixion of our lord in one piece, and in another a scene of shepherds and shepherdesses by a running stream. over the chimney was a shield of arms. "will you seat yourself," said the old man, "and forgive me if i leave you? i am alone in my house to-night, and if you are to eat i must forage for you myself" no sooner was his host gone than villon leaped from the chair on which he had just seated himself, and began examining the room, with the stealth and passion of a cat. he weighed the gold flagons in his hand, opened all the folios, and investigated the arms upon the shield, and the stuff with which the seats were lined. he raised the window curtains, and saw that the windows were set with rich stained glass in figures, so far as he could see, of martial import. then he stood in the middle of the room, drew a long breath, and retaining it with puffed cheeks, looked round and round him, turning on his heels, as if to impress every feature of the apartment on his memory. "seven pieces of plate," he said. "if there had been ten, i would have risked it. a fine house, and a fine old master, so help me all the saints!" and just then, hearing the old man's tread returning along the corridor, he stole back to his chair, and began humbly toasting his wet legs before the charcoal pan. his entertainer had a plate of meat in one hand and a jug of wine in the other. he set down the plate upon the table, motioning villon to draw in his chair, and going to the sideboard, brought back two goblets, which he filled. "i drink to your better fortune," he said, gravely touching villon's cup with his own. "to our better acquaintance," said the poet, growing bold. a mere man of the people would have been awed by the courtesy of the old seigneur, but villon was hardened in that matter; he had made mirth for great lords before now, and found them as black rascals as himself. and so he devoted himself to the viands with a ravenous gusto, while the old man, leaning backward, watched him with steady, curious eyes. "you have blood on your shoulder, my man," he said. montigny must have laid his wet right hand upon him as he left the house. he cursed montigny in his heart. "it was none of my shedding," he stammered. "i had not supposed so," returned his host quietly. "a brawl?" "well, something of that sort," villon admitted with a quaver. "perhaps a fellow murdered?" "oh no--not murdered," said the poet, more and more confused. "it was all fair play--murdered by accident. i had no hand in it, god strike me dead!" he added fervently. "one rogue the fewer, i daresay," observed the master of the house. "you may dare to say that," agreed villon, infinitely relieved. "as big a rogue as there is between here and jerusalem. he turned up his toes like a lamb. but it was a nasty thing to look at. i daresay you've seen dead men in your time, my lord?" he added, glancing at the armour. "many," said the old man. "i have followed the wars, as you imagine." villon laid down his knife and fork, which he had just taken up again. "were any of them bald?" he asked. "oh yes, and with hair as white as mine." "i don't think i should mind the white so much," said villon. "his was red." and he had a return of his shuddering and tendency to laughter, which he drowned with a great draught of wine. "i'm a little put out when i think of it," he went on. "i knew him--damn him! and then the cold gives a man fancies--or the fancies give a man cold, i don't know which." "have you any money?" asked the old man. "i have one white," returned the poet, laughing. "i got it out of a dead jade's stocking in a porch. she was as dead as caesar, poor wench, and as cold as a church, with bits of ribbon sticking in her hair. this is a hard world in winter for wolves and wenches and poor rogues like me." "i," said the old man, "am enguerrand de la feuillee, seigneur de brisetout, bailly du patatrac. who and what may you be?" villon rose and made a suitable reverence. "i am called francis villon," he said, "a poor master of arts of this university. i know some latin, and a deal of vice. i can make chansons, ballades, lais, virelais, and roundels, and i am very fond of wine. i was born in a garret, and i shall not improbably die upon the gallows. i may add, my lord, that from this night forward i am your lordship's very obsequious servant to command." "no servant of mine," said the knight; "my guest for this evening, and no more." "a very grateful guest," said villon politely; and he drank in dumb show to his entertainer. "you are shrewd," began the old man, tapping his forehead, "very shrewd; you have learning; you are a clerk; and yet you take a small piece of money off a dead woman in the street. is it not a kind of theft?" "it is a kind of theft much practised in the wars, my lord." "the wars are the field of honour," returned the old man proudly. "there a man plays his life upon the cast; he fights in the name of his lord the king, his lord god, and all their lordships the holy saints and angels." "put it," said villon, "that i were really a thief, should i not play my life also, and against heavier odds?" "for gain, but not for honour." "gain?" repeated villon, with a shrug. "gain! the poor fellow wants supper, and takes it. so does the soldier in a campaign. why, what are all these requisitions we hear so much about? if they are not gain to those who take them, they are loss enough to the others. the menat-arms drink by a good fire, while the burgher bites his nails to buy them wine and wood. i have seen a good many ploughmen swinging on trees about the country; ay, i have seen thirty on one elm, and a very poor figure they made; and when i asked some one how all these came to be hanged, i was told it was because they could not scrape together enough crowns to satisfy the men-atarms." "these things are a necessity of war, which the lowborn must endure with constancy. it is true that some captains drive over-hard; there are spirits in every rank not easily moved by pity; and indeed many follow arms who are no better than brigands." "you see," said the poet, "you cannot separate the soldier from the brigand; and what is a thief but an isolated brigand with circumspect manners? i steal a couple of mutton-chops, without so much as disturbing people's sleep; the farmer grumbles a bit, but sups none the less wholesomely on what remains. you come up blowing gloriously on a trumpet, take away the whole sheep, and beat the farmer pitifully into the bargain. i have no trumpet; i am only tom, dick, or harry; i am a rogue and a dog, and hanging's too good for me--with all my heart; but just you ask the farmer which of us he prefers, just find out which of us he lies awake to curse on cold nights." "look at us two," said his lordship. "i am old, strong, and honoured. if i were turned from my house to-morrow, hundreds would be proud to shelter me. poor people would go out and pass the night in the streets with their children if i merely hinted that i wished to be alone. and i find you up, wandering homeless, and picking farthings off dead women by the wayside! i fear no man and nothing; i have seen you tremble and lose countenance at a word. i wait god's summons contentedly in my own house, or, if it please the king to call me out again, upon the field of battle. you look for the gallows; a rough, swift death, without hope or honour. is there no difference between these two?" "as far as to the moon," villon acquiesced. "but if i had been born lord of brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar francis, would the difference have been any the less? should not i have been warming my knees at this charcoal pan, and would not you have been groping for farthings in the snow? should not i have been the soldier, and you the thief?" "a thief!" cried the old man. "i a thief! if you understood your words, you would repent them." villon turned out his hands with a gesture of inimitable impudence. "if your lordship had done me the honour to follow my argument!" he said. "i do you too much honour in submitting to your presence," said the knight. "learn to curb your tongue when you speak with old and honourable men, or some one hastier than i may reprove you in a sharper fashion." and he rose and paced the lower end of the apartment, struggling with anger and antipathy. villon surreptitiously refilled his cup, and settled himself more comfortably in the chair, crossing his knees and leaning his head upon one hand and the elbow against the back of the chair. he was now replete and warm; and he was in nowise frightened for his host, having gauged him as justly as was possible between two such different characters. the night was far spent, and in a very comfortable fashion after all; and he felt morally certain of a safe departure on the morrow. "tell me one thing," said the old man, pausing in his walk. "are you really a thief?" "i claim the sacred rights of hospitality," returned the poet. "my lord, i am." "you are very young," the knight continued. "i should never have been so old," replied villon, showing his fingers, "if i had not helped myself with these ten talents. they have been my nursing-mothers and my nursing-fathers." "you may still repent the change." "i repent daily," said the poet. "there are few people more given to repentance than poor francis. as for change, let somebody change my circumstances. a man must continue to eat, if it were only that he may continue to repent." "the change must begin in the heart," returned the old man solemnly. "my dear lord," answered villon, "do you really fancy that i steal for pleasure? i hate stealing, like any other piece of work or of danger. my teeth chatter when i see a gallows. but i must eat, i must drink, i must mix in society of some sort. what the devil! man is not a solitary animal--_cui deus foeminam tradit._ make me king's pantler--make me abbot of st. denis; make me bailly of the patatrac; and then i shall be changed indeed. but as long as you leave me the poor scholar francis villon, without a farthing, why, of course, i remain the same." "the grace of god is all-powerful." "i should be a heretic to question it," said francis. "it has made you lord of brisetout and bailly of the patatrac; it has given me nothing but the quick wits under my hat and these ten toes upon my hands. may i help myself to wine? i thank you respectfully. by god's grace, you have a very superior vintage." the lord of brisetout walked to and fro with his hands behind his back. perhaps he was not yet quite settled in his mind about the parallel between thieves and soldiers; perhaps villon had interested him by some cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps his wits were simply muddled by so much unfamiliar reasoning; but whatever the cause, he somehow yearned to convert the young man to a better way of thinking, and could not make up his mind to drive him forth again into the street. "there is something more than i can understand in this," he said at length. "your mouth is full of subtleties, and the devil has led you very far astray; but the devil is only a very weak spirit before god's truth, and all his subtleties vanish at a word of true honour, like darkness at morning. listen to me once more. i learned long ago that a gentleman should live chivalrously and lovingly to god, and the king, and his lady; and though i have seen many strange things done, i have still striven to command my ways upon that rule. it is not only written in all noble histories, but in every man's heart, if he will take care to read. you speak of food and wine, and i know very well that hunger is a difficult trial to endure; but you do not speak of other wants; you say nothing of honour, of faith to god and other men, of courtesy, of love without reproach. it may be that i am not very wise-and yet i think i am--but you seem to me like one who has lost his way and made a great error in life. you are attending to the little wants, and you have totally forgotten the great and only real ones, like a man who should be doctoring a tooth-ache on the judgment day. for such things as honour and love and faith are not only nobler than food and drink, but indeed i think that we desire them more, and suffer more sharply for their absence. i speak to you as i think you will most easily understand me. are you not, while careful to fill your belly, disregarding another appetite in your heart, which spoils the pleasure of your life and keeps you continually wretched?" villon was sensibly nettled under all this sermonising. "you think i have no sense of honour!" he cried. "i'm poor enough, god knows! it's hard to see rich people with their gloves, and you blowing in your hands. an empty belly is a bitter thing, although you speak so lightly of it. if you had had as many as i, perhaps you would change your tune. any way i'm a thief--make the most of that--but i'm not a devil from hell, god strike me dead! i would have you to know i've an honour of my own, as good as yours, though i don't prate about it all day long, as if it was a god's miracle to have any. it seems quite natural to me; i keep it in its box till it's wanted. why now, look you here, how long have i been in this room with you? did you not tell me you were alone in the house? look at your gold plate! you're strong, if you like, but you're old and unarmed, and i have my knife. what did i want but a jerk of the elbow and here would have been you with the cold steel in your bowels, and there would have been me, linking in the streets, with an armful of gold cups! did you suppose i hadn't wit enough to see that? and i scorned the action. there are your damned goblets, as safe as in a church; there are you, with your heart ticking as good as new; and here am i, ready to go out again as poor as i came in, with my one white that you threw in my teeth! and you think i have no sense of honour--god strike me dead!" the old man stretched out his right arm. "i will tell you what you are," he said. "you are a rogue, my man, an impudent and a black-hearted rogue and vagabond. i have passed an hour with you. oh! believe me, i feel myself disgraced! and you have eaten and drunk at my table. but now i am sick at your presence; the day has come, and the night-bird should be off to his roost. will you go before, or after?" "which you please," returned the poet, rising. "i believe you to be strictly honourable." he thoughtfully emptied his cup. "i wish i could add you were intelligent," he went on, knocking on his head with his knuckles. "age, age! the brains stiff and rheumatic." the old man preceded him from a point of self-respect; villon followed, whistling, with his thumbs in his girdle. "god pity you!" said the lord of brisetout at the door. "good-bye, papa," returned villon, with a yawn. "many thanks for the cold mutton." the door closed behind him. the dawn was breaking over the white roofs. a chill, uncomfortable morning ushered in the day. villon stood and heartily stretched himself in the middle of the road. "a very dull old gentleman," he thought. "i wonder what his goblets may be worth." the sire de maletroit's door originally published: "temple bar," january, 1878. reprinted in "new arabian nights": chatto and windus, london, 1882. denis de beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. lads were early formed in that rough, war-faring epoch; and when one has been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an honourable fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a certain swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. he had put up his horse with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then, in a very agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the grey of the evening. it was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's part. he would have done better to remain beside the fire or go decently to bed. for the town was full of the troops of burgundy and england under a mixed command; and though denis was there on safe-conduct, his safe-conduct was like to serve him little on a chance encounter. it was september 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty piping wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the dead leaves ran riot along the streets. here and there a window was already lighted up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper within came forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the wind. the night fell swiftly; the flag of england, fluttering on the spire-top, grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds--a black speck like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky. as the night fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and roar amid the treetops in the valley below the town. denis de beaulieu walked fast, and was soon knocking at his friend's door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while and make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found so much to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before he said good-bye upon the threshold. the wind had fallen again in the meanwhile; the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor a glimmer of moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. denis was ill acquainted with the intricate lanes of chateau landon; even by daylight he had found some trouble in picking his way; and in this absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. he was certain of one thing only--to keep mounting the hill; for his friend's house lay at the lower end, or tail, of chateau landon, while the inn was up at the head, under the great church spire. with this clue to go upon he stumbled and groped forward, now breathing more freely in open places where there was a good slice of sky overhead, now feeling along the wall in stifling closes. it is an eerie and mysterious position to be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. the silence is terrifying in its possibilities. the touch of cold window-bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances, as if to lead him farther from his way. for denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there was real danger as well as mere discomfort in the walk; and he went warily and boldly at once, and at every corner paused to make an observation. he had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could touch a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go sharply downward. plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his inn; but the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to reconnoitre. the lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan wall, which gave an outlook between high houses, as out of an embrasure, into the valley lying dark and formless several hundred feet below. denis looked down, and could discern a few tree-tops waving and a single speck of brightness where the river ran across a weir. the weather was clearing up, and the sky had lightened, so as to show the outline of the heavier clouds and the dark margin of the hills. by the uncertain glimmer, the house on his left hand should be a place of some pretensions; it was surmounted by several pinnacles and turret-tops; the round stern of a chapel, with a fringe of flying buttresses, projected boldly from the main block; and the door was sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures and overhung by two long gargoyles. the windows of the chapel gleamed through their intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and threw out the buttresses and the peaked roof in a more intense blackness against the sky. it was plainly the hotel of some great family of the neighbourhood; and as it reminded denis of a town-house of his own at bourges, he stood for some time gazing up at it and mentally gauging the skill of the architects and the consideration of the two families. there seemed to be no issue to the terrace but the lane by which he had reached it; he could only retrace his steps, but he had gained some notion of his whereabouts, and hoped by this means to hit the main thoroughfare and speedily regain the inn. he was reckoning without that chapter of accidents which was to make this night memorable above all others in his career; for he had not gone back above a hundred yards before he saw a light coming to meet him, and heard loud voices speaking together in the echoing narrows of the lane. it was a party of men-at-arms going the night-round with torches. denis assured himself that they had all been making free with the wine-bowl, and were in no mood to be particular about safe-conducts or the niceties of chivalrous war. it was as like as not that they would kill him like a dog and leave him where he fell. the situation was inspiriting, but nervous. their own torches would conceal him from sight, he reflected; and he hoped that they would drown the noise of his footsteps with their own empty voices. if he were but fleet and silent, he might evade their notice altogether. unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon a pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his sword rang loudly on the stones. two or three voices demanded who went there--some in french, some in english; but denis made no reply, and ran the faster down the lane. once upon the terrace, he paused to look back. they still kept calling after him, and just then began to double the pace in pursuit, with a considerable clank of armour, and great tossing of the torchlight to and fro in the narrow jaws of the passage. denis cast a look around and darted into the porch. there he might escape observation, or--if that were too much to expect--was in a capital posture whether for parley or defence. so thinking, he drew his sword and tried to set his back against the door. to his surprise, it yielded behind his weight; and though he turned in a moment, continued to swing back on oiled and noiseless hinges, until it stood wide open on a black interior. when things fall out opportunely for the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary things; and so denis, without a moment's hesitation, stepped within and partly closed the door behind him to conceal his place of refuge. nothing was further from his thoughts than to close it altogether; but for some inexplicable reason--perhaps by a spring or a weight-the ponderous mass of oak whipped itself out of his fingers and clanked-to, with a formidable rumble and a noise like the falling of an automatic bar. the round, at that very moment, debouched upon the terrace, and proceeded to summon him with shouts and curses. he heard them ferreting in the dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled along the outer surface of the door behind which he stood; but these gentlemen were in too high a humour to be long delayed, and soon made off down a corkscrew pathway which had escaped denis's observation, and passed out of sight and hearing along the battlements of the town. denis breathed again. he gave them a few minutes' grace for fear of accidents, and then groped about for some means of opening the door and slipping forth again. the inner surface was quite smooth--not a handle, not a moulding, not a projection of any sort. he got his finger-nails round the edges and pulled, but the mass was immovable. he shook it; it was as firm as a rock. denis de beaulieu frowned and gave vent to a little noiseless whistle. what ailed the door? he wondered. why was it open? how came it to shut so easily and so effectually after him? there was something obscure and underhand about all this that was little to the young man's fancy. it looked like a snare; and yet who could suppose a snare in such a quiet by-street and in a house of so prosperous and even noble an exterior? and yet--snare or no snare, intentionally or unintentionally--here he was, prettily trapped; and for the life of him he could see no way out of it again. the darkness began to weigh upon him. he gave ear; all was silent without, but within and close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a faint sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creak--as though many persons were at his side, holding themselves quite still, and governing even their respiration with the extreme of slyness. the idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. then, for the first time, he became aware of a light about the level of his eyes, and at some distance in the interior of the house--a vertical thread of light, widening towards the bottom, such as might escape between two wings of arras over a doorway. to see anything was a relief to denis; it was like a piece of solid ground to a man labouring in a morass; his mind seized upon it with avidity; and he stood staring at it and trying to piece together some logical conception of his surroundings. plainly there was a flight of steps ascending from his own level to that of this illuminated doorway; and indeed he thought he could make out another thread of light, as fine as a needle, and as faint as phosphorescence, which might very well be reflected along the polished wood of a handrail. since he had begun to suspect that he was not alone, his heart had continued to beat with smothering violence, and an intolerable desire for action of any sort had possessed itself of his spirit. he was in deadly peril, he believed. what could be more natural than to mount the staircase, lift the curtain, and confront his difficulty at once? at least he would be dealing with something tangible; at least he would be no longer in the dark. he stepped slowly forward with outstretched hands, until his foot struck the bottom step; then he rapidly scaled the stairs, stood for a moment to compose his expression, lifted the arras, and went in. he found himself in a large apartment of polished stone. there were three doors; one on each of three sides; all similarly curtained with tapestry. the fourth side was occupied by two large windows and a great stone chimney-piece, carved with the arms of the maletroits. denis recognised the bearings, and was gratified to find himself in such good hands. the room was strongly illuminated; but it contained little furniture except a heavy table and a chair or two, the hearth was innocent of fire, and the pavement was but sparsely strewn with rushes clearly many days old. on a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing denis as he entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet. he sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by his elbow on a bracket on the wall. his countenance had a strongly masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull, the goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling, something greedy, brutal, and dangerous. the upper lip was inordinately full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the peaked eye-brows, and the small, strong eyes, were quaintly and almost comically evil in expression. beautiful white hair hung straight all round his head, like a saint's, and fell in a single curl upon the tippet. his beard and moustache were the pink of venerable sweetness. age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the maletroit hand was famous. it would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of leonardo's women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. it rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable, that a man with hands like these should keep them devoutly folded in his lap like a virgin martyr--that a man with so intense and startling an expression of face should sit patiently on his seat and contemplate people with an unwinking stare, like a god, or a god's statue. his quiescence seemed ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with his looks. such was alain, sire de maletroit. denis and he looked silently at each other for a second or two. "pray step in," said the sire de maletroit. "i have been expecting you all the evening." he had not risen, but he accompanied his words with a smile and a slight but courteous inclination of the head. partly from the smile, partly from the strange musical murmur with which the sire prefaced his observation, denis felt a strong shudder of disgust go through his marrow. and what with disgust and honest confusion of mind, he could scarcely get words together in reply. "i fear," he said, "that this is a double accident. i am not the person you suppose me. it seems you were looking for a visit; but for my part, nothing was further from my thoughts--nothing could be more contrary to my wishes--than this intrusion." "well, well," replied the old gentleman indulgently, "here you are, which is the main point. seat yourself, my friend, and put yourself entirely at your ease. we shall arrange our little affairs presently." denis perceived that the matter was still complicated with some misconception, and he hastened to continue his explanations. "your door----" he began. "about my door?" asked the other, raising his peaked eyebrows. "a little piece of ingenuity." and he shrugged his shoulders. "a hospitable fancy! by your own account, you were not desirous of making my acquaintance. we old people look for such reluctance now and then; and when it touches our honour, we cast about until we find some way of overcoming it. you arrive uninvited, but believe me, very welcome." "you persist in, error, sir," said denis. "there can be no question between you and me. i am a stranger in this countryside. my name is denis, damoiseau de beaulieu. if you see me in your house, it is only----" "my young friend," interrupted the other, "you will permit me to have my own ideas on that subject. they probably differ from yours at the present moment," he added, with a leer, "but time will show which of us is in the right." denis was convinced he had to do with a lunatic. he seated himself with a shrug, content to wait the upshot; and a pause ensued, during which he thought he could distinguish a hurried gabbling as of prayer from behind the arras immediately opposite him. sometimes there seemed to be but one person engaged, sometimes two; and the vehemence of the voice, low as it was, seemed to indicate either great haste or an agony of spirit. it occurred to him that this piece of tapestry covered the entrance to the chapel he had noticed from without. the old gentleman meanwhile surveyed denis from head to foot with a smile, and from time to time emitted little noises like a bird or a mouse, which seemed to indicate a high degree of satisfaction. this state of matters became rapidly insupportable; and denis, to put an end to it, remarked politely that the wind had gone down. the old gentleman fell into a fit of silent laughter so prolonged and violent that he became quite red in the face. denis got upon his feet at once, and put on his hat with a flourish. "sir," he said, "if you are in your wits, you have affronted me grossly. if you are out of them, i flatter myself i can find better employment for my brains than to talk with lunatics. my conscience is clear; you have made a fool of me from the first moment; you have refused to hear my explanations, and now there is no power under god will make me stay here any longer; and if i cannot make my way out in a more decent fashion, i will hack your door in pieces with my sword." the sire de maletroit raised his right hand and wagged it at denis with the fore and little fingers extended. "my dear nephew," he said, "sit down." "nephew!" retorted denis, "you lie in your throat;" and he snapped his fingers in his face. "sit down, you rogue!" cried the old gentleman, in a sudden, harsh voice, like the barking of a dog. "do you fancy," he went on, "that when i had made my little contrivance for the door i had stopped short with that? if you prefer to be bound hand and foot till your bones ache, rise and try to go away. if you choose to remain a free young buck, agreeably conversing with an old gentleman--why, sit where you are in peace, and god be with you." "do you mean i am a prisoner?" demanded denis. "i state the facts," replied the other. "i would rather leave the conclusion to yourself." denis sat down again. externally he managed to keep pretty calm; but within, he was now boiling with anger, now chilled with apprehension. he no longer felt convinced that he was dealing with a madman. and if the old gentleman was sane, what, in god's name, had he to look for? what absurd or tragical adventure had befallen him? what countenance was he to assume? while he was thus unpleasantly reflecting, the arras that overhung the chapel door was raised, and a tall priest in his robes came forth, and, giving a long, keen stare at denis, said something in an undertone to sire de maletroit. "she is in a better frame of spirit?" asked the latter. "she is more resigned, messire," replied the priest. "now the lord help her, she is hard to please!" sneered the old gentleman. "a likely stripling--not ill-born-and of her own choosing too? why, what more would the jade have?" "the situation is not usual for a young damsel," said the other, "and somewhat trying to her blushes." "she should have thought of that before she began the dance! it was none of my choosing, god knows that: but since she is in it, by our lady, she shall carry it to the end." and then addressing denis, "monsieur de beaulieu," he asked, "may i present you to my niece? she has been waiting your arrival, i may say, with even greater impatience than myself." denis had resigned himself with a good grace--all he desired was to know the worst of it as speedily as possible; so he rose at once, and bowed in acquiescence. the sire de maletroit followed his example, and limped, with the assistance of the chaplain's arm, towards the chapel door. the priest pulled aside the arras, and all three entered. the building had considerable architectural pretensions. a light groining sprang from six stout columns, and hung down in two rich pendants from the centre of the vault. the place terminated behind the altar in a round end, embossed and honeycombed with a superfluity of ornament in relief, and pierced by many little windows shaped like stars, trefoils, or wheels. these windows were imperfectly glazed, so that the night-air circulated freely in the chapel. the tapers, of which there must have been half a hundred burning on the altar, were unmercifully blown about; and the light went through many different phases of brilliancy and semi-eclipse. on the steps in front of the altar knelt a young girl richly attired as a bride. a chill settled over denis as he observed her costume; he fought with desperate energy against the conclusion that was being thrust upon his mind; it could not--it should not--be as he feared. "blanche," said the sire, in his most flute-like tones, "i have brought a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him your pretty hand. it is good to be devout; but it is necessary to be polite, my niece." the girl rose to her feet and turned towards the newcomers. she moved all of a piece; and shame and exhaustion were expressed in every line of her fresh young body; and she held her head down and kept her eyes upon the pavement, as she came slowly forward. in the course of her advance, her eyes fell upon denis de beaulieu's feet--feet of which he was justly vain, be it remarked, and wore in the most elegant accoutrement even while travelling. she paused--started, as if his yellow boots had conveyed some shocking meaning--and glanced suddenly up into the wearer's countenance. their eyes met; shame gave place to horror and terror in her looks; the blood left her lips; with a piercing scream she covered her face with her hands and sank upon the chapel floor. "that is not the man!" she cried. "my uncle, that is not the man!" the sire de maletroit chirped agreeably. "of course not," he said, "i expected as much. it was so unfortunate you could not remember his name." "indeed," she cried, "indeed, i have never seen this person till this moment--i have never so much as set eyes upon him--i never wish to see him again. sir," she said, turning to denis, "if you are a gentleman, you will bear me out. have i ever seen you--have you ever seen me--before this accursed hour?" "to speak for myself, i have never had that pleasure," answered the young man. "this is the first time, messire, that i have met with your engaging niece." the old gentleman shrugged his shoulders. "i am distressed to hear it," he said. "but it is never too late to begin. i had little more acquaintance with my own late lady ere i married her; which proves," he added with a grimace, "that these impromptu marriages may often produce an excellent understanding in the long-run. as the bridegroom is to have a voice in the matter, i will give him two hours to make up for lost time before we proceed with the ceremony." and he turned towards the door, followed by the clergyman. the girl was on her feet in a moment. "my uncle, you cannot be in earnest," she said. "i declare before god i will stab myself rather than be forced on that young man. the heart rises at it; god forbids such marriages; you dishonour your white hair. o my uncle, pity me! there is not a woman in all the world but would prefer death to such a nuptial. is it possible," she added, faltering--"is it possible that you do not believe me-that you still think this"--and she pointed at denis with a tremor of anger and contempt--"that you still think this to be the man?" "frankly," said the old gentleman, pausing on the threshold, "i do. but let me explain to you once for all, blanche de maletroit, my way of thinking about this affair. when you took it into your head to dishonour my family and the name that i have borne, in peace and war, for more than threescore years, you forfeited, not only the right to question my designs, but that of looking me in the face. if your father had been alive, he would have spat on you and turned you out of doors. his was the hand of iron. you may bless your god you have only to deal with the hand of velvet, mademoiselle. it was my duty to get you married without delay. out of pure goodwill, i have tried to find your own gallant for you. and i believe i have succeeded. but before god and all the holy angels, blanche de maletroit, if i have not, i care not one jack-straw. so let me recommend you to be polite to our young friend; for upon my word, your next groom may be less appetising." and with that he went out, with the chaplain at his heels; and the arras fell behind the pair. the girl turned upon denis with flashing eyes. "and what, sir," she demanded, "may be the meaning of all this?" "god knows," returned denis gloomily. "i am a prisoner in this house, which seems full of mad people. more i know not, and nothing do i understand." "and pray how came you here?" she asked. he told her as briefly as he could. "for the rest," he added, "perhaps you will follow my example, and tell me the answer to all these riddles, and what, in god's name, is like to be the end of it." she stood silent for a little, and he could see her lips tremble and her tearless eyes burn with a feverish lustre. then she pressed her forehead in both hands. "alas, how my head aches!" she said wearily--" to say nothing of my poor heart! but it is due to you to know my story, unmaidenly as it must seem. i am called blanche de maletroit; i have been without father or mother for--oh! for as long as i can recollect, and indeed i have been most unhappy all my life. three months ago a young captain began to stand near me every day in church. i could see that i pleased him; i am much to blame, but i was so glad that any one should love me; and when he passed me a letter, i took it home with me and read it with great pleasure. since that time he has written many. he was so anxious to speak with me, poor fellow! and kept asking me to leave the door open some evening that we might have two words upon the stair. for he knew how much my uncle trusted me." she gave something like a sob at that, and it was a moment before she could go on. "my uncle is a hard man, but he is very shrewd," she said at last. "he has performed many feats in war, and was a great person at court, and much trusted by queen isabeau in old days. how he came to suspect me i cannot tell; but it is hard to keep anything from his knowledge; and this morning, as we came from mass, he took my hand in his, forced it open, and read my little billet, walking by my side all the while. when he had finished, he gave it back to me with great politeness. it contained another request to have the door left open; and this has been the ruin of us all. my uncle kept me strictly in my room until evening, and then ordered me to dress myself as you see me--a hard mockery for a young girl, do you not think so? i suppose, when he could not prevail with me to tell him the young captain's name, he must have laid a trap for him: into which, alas! you have fallen in the anger of god. i looked for much confusion; for how could i tell whether he was willing to take me for his wife on these sharp terms? he might have been trifling with me from the first; or i might have made myself too cheap in his eyes. but truly i had not looked for such a shameful punishment as this! i could not think that god would let a girl be so disgraced before a young man. and now i have told you all; and i can scarcely hope that you will not despise me." denis made her a respectful inclination. "madam," he said, "you have honoured me by your confidence. it remains for me to prove that i am not unworthy of the honour. is messire de maletroit at hand?" "i believe he is writing in the salle without," she answered. "may i lead you thither, madam?" asked denis, offering his hand with his most courtly bearing. she accepted it; and the pair passed out of the chapel, blanche in a very drooping and shamefast condition, but denis strutting and ruffling in the consciousness of a mission, and the boyish certainty of accomplishing it with honour. the sire de maletroit rose to meet them with an ironical obeisance. "sir," said denis, with the grandest possible air, "i believe i am to have some say in the matter of this marriage; and let me tell you at once, i will be no party to forcing the inclination of this young lady. had it been freely offered to me, i should have been proud to accept her hand, for i perceive she is as good as she is beautiful; but as things are, i have now the honour, messire, of refusing." blanche looked at him with gratitude in her eyes; but the old gentleman only smiled and smiled, until his smile grew positively sickening to denis. "i am afraid," he said, "monsieur de beaulieu, that you do not perfectly understand the choice i have to offer you. follow me, i beseech you, to this window." and he led the way to one of the large windows which stood open on the night "you observe," he went on, "there is an iron ring in the upper masonry, and reeved through that a very efficacious rope. now, mark my words: if you should find your disinclination to my niece's person insurmountable, i shall have you hanged out of this window before sunrise. i shall only proceed to such an extremity with the greatest regret, you may believe me. for it is not at all your death that i desire, but my niece's establishment in life. at the same time, it must come to that if you prove obstinate. your family, monsieur de beaulieu, is very well in its way; but if you sprang from charlemagne, you should not refuse the hand of a maletroit with impunity--not if she had been as common as the paris road--not if she were as hideous as the gargoyle over my door. neither my niece nor you, nor my own private feelings, move me at all in this matter. the honour of my house has been compromised; i believe you to be the guilty person; at least you are now in the secret; and you can hardly wonder if i request you to wipe out the stain. if you will not, your blood be on your own head! it will be no great satisfaction to me to have your interesting relics kicking their heels in the breeze below my windows; but half a loaf is better than no bread, and if i cannot cure the dishonour, i shall at least stop the scandal." there was a pause. "i believe there are other ways of settling such imbroglios among gentlemen," said denis. "you wear a sword, and i hear you have used it with distinction." the sire de maletroit made a signal to the chaplain, who crossed the room with long, silent strides and raised the arras over the third of the three doors. it was only a moment before he let it fall again; but denis had time to see a dusky passage full of armed men. "when i was a little younger, i should have been delighted to honour you, monsieur de beaulieu," said sire alain; "but i am now too old. faithful retainers are the sinews of age, and i must employ the strength i have. this is one of the hardest things to swallow as a man grows up in years; but with a little patience, even this becomes habitual. you and the lady seem to prefer the salle for what remains of your two hours; and as i have no desire to cross your preference, i shall resign it to your use with all the pleasure in the world. no haste!" he added, holding up his hand, as he saw a dangerous look come into denis de beaulieu's face. "if your mind revolts against hanging, it will be time enough two hours hence to throw yourself out of the window or upon the pikes of my retainers. two hours of life are always two hours. a great many things may turn up in even as little a while as that. and, besides, if i understand her appearance, my niece has still something to say to you. you will not disfigure your last hours by a want of politeness to a lady?" denis looked at blanche, and she made him an imploring gesture. it is likely that the old gentleman was hugely pleased at this symptom of an understanding; for he smiled on both, and added sweetly: "if you will give me your word of honour, monsieur de beaulieu, to await my return at the end of the two hours before attempting anything desperate, i shall withdraw my retainers, and let you speak in greater privacy with mademoiselle." denis again glanced at the girl, who seemed to beseech him to agree. "i give you my word of honour," he said. messire de maletroit bowed, and proceeded to limp about the apartment, clearing his throat the while with that odd musical chirp which had already grown so irritating in the ears of denis de beaulieu. he first possessed himself of some papers which lay upon the table; then he went to the mouth of the passage and appeared to give an order to the men behind the arras; and lastly he hobbled out through the door by which denis had come in, turning upon the threshold to address a last smiling bow to the young couple, and followed by the chaplain with a hand-lamp. no sooner were they alone than blanche advanced towards denis with her hands extended. her face was flushed and excited, and her eyes shone with tears. "you shall not die!" she cried; "you shall marry me after all." "you seem to think, madam," replied denis, "that i stand much in fear of death." "oh no, no," she said; "i see you are no poltroon. it is for my own sake--i could not bear to have you slain for such a scruple." "i am afraid," returned denis, "that you underrate the difficulty, madam. what you may be too generous to refuse, i may be too proud to accept. in a moment of noble feeling towards me, you forgot what you perhaps owe to others." he had the decency to keep his eyes upon the floor as he said this, and after he had finished, so as not to spy upon her confusion. she stood silent for a moment, then walked suddenly away, and falling on her uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. denis was in the acme of embarrassment he looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. there he sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in france. his eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to arrest them. there were such wide spaces between the furniture, the light fell so baldly and cheerlessly over all, the dark outside air looked in so coldly through the windows, that he thought he had never seen a church so vast nor a tomb so melancholy. the regular sobs of blanche de maletroit measured out the time like the ticking of a clock. he read the device upon the shield over and over again, until his eyes became obscured; he stared into shadowy corners until he imagined they were swarming with horrible animals; and every now and again he awoke with a start, to remember that his last two hours were running, and death was on the march. oftener and oftener, as the time went on, did his glance settle on the girl herself. her face was bowed forward and covered with her hands, and she was shaken at intervals by the convulsive hiccup of grief. even thus she was not an unpleasant object to dwell upon, so plump and yet so fine, with a warm brown skin, and the most beautiful hair, denis thought, in the whole world of womankind. her hands were like her uncle's; but they were more in place at the end of her young arms, and looked infinitely soft and caressing. he remembered how her blue eyes had shone upon him full of anger, pity, and innocence. and the more he dwelt on her perfections, the uglier death looked, and the more deeply was he smitten with penitence at her continued tears. now he felt that no man could have the courage to leave a world which contained so beautiful a creature; and now he would have given forty minutes of his last hour to have unsaid his cruel speech. suddenly a hoarse and ragged peal of cockcrow rose to their ears from the dark valley below the windows. and this shattering noise in the silence of all around was like a light in a dark place, and shook them both out of their reflections. "alas, can i do nothing to help you?" she said, looking up. "madam," replied denis, with a fine irrelevancy, "if i have said anything to wound you, believe me it was for your own sake and not for mine." she thanked him with a tearful look. "i feel your position cruelly," he went on. "the world has been bitter hard on you. your uncle is a disgrace to mankind. believe me, madam, there is no young gentleman in all france but would be glad of my opportunity, to die in doing you a momentary service. "i know already that you can be very brave and generous," she answered. "what i _want_ to know is whether i can serve you--now or afterwards," she added, with a quaver. "most certainly," he answered, with a smile. "let me sit beside you as if i were a friend, instead of a foolish intruder; try to forget how awkwardly we are placed to one another; make my last moments go pleasantly; and you will do me the chief service possible." "you are very gallant," she added, with a yet deeper sadness; "very gallant and it somehow pains me. but draw nearer, if you please; and if you find anything to say to me, you will at least make certain of a very friendly listener. ah! monsieur de beaulieu," she broke forth--"ah! monsieur de beaulieu, how can i look you in the face?" and she fell to weeping again with a renewed effusion. "madam," said denis, taking her hand in both of his, "reflect on the little time i have before me, and the great bitterness into which i am cast by the sight of your distress. spare me, in my last moments, the spectacle of what i cannot cure even with the sacrifice of my life." "i am very selfish," answered blanche. "i will be braver, monsieur de beaulieu, for your sake. but think if i can do you no kindness in the future--if you have no friends to whom i could carry your adieux. charge me as heavily as you can: every burden will lighten, by so little, the invaluable gratitude i owe you. put it in my power to do something more for you than weep." "my mother is married again, and has a young family to care for. my brother guichard will inherit my fiefs: and if i am not in error, that will content him amply for my death. life is a little vapour that passeth away, as we are told by those in holy orders. when a man is in a fair way and sees all life open in front of him, he seems to himself to make a very important figure in the world. his horse whinnies to him; the trumpets blow and the girls look out of window as he rides into town before his company; he receives many assurances of trust and regard--sometimes by express in a letter--sometimes face to face, with persons of great consequence falling on his neck. it is not wonderful if his head is turned for a time. but once he is dead, were he as brave as hercules or as wise as solomon, he is soon forgotten. it is not ten years since my father fell, with many other knights around him, in a very fierce encounter, and i do not think that any one of them, nor so much as the name of the fight, is now remembered. no, no, madam, the nearer you come to it, you see that death is a dark and dusty corner, where a man gets into his tomb and has the door shut after him till the judgment-day. i have few friends just now, and once i am dead i shall have none." "ah, monsieur de beaulieu!" she exclaimed, "you forget blanche de maletroit." "you have a sweet nature, madam, and you are pleased to estimate a little service far beyond its worth." "it is not that," she answered. "you mistake me if you think i am so easily touched by my own concerns. i say so, because you are the noblest man i have ever met; because i recognise in you a spirit that would have made even a common person famous in the land." "and yet here i die in a mouse-trap--with no more noise about it than my own squeaking," answered he. a look of pain crossed her face, and she was silent for a little while. then a light came into her eyes, and with a smile she spoke again. "i cannot have my champion think meanly of himself. any one who gives his life for another will be met in paradise by all the heralds and angels of the lord god. and you have no such cause to hang your head. for---pray, do you think me beautiful?" she asked, with a deep flush. "indeed, madam, i do," he said. "i am glad of that," she answered heartily. "do you think there are many men in france who have been asked in marriage by a beautiful maiden--with her own lips-and who have refused her to her face? i know you men would half-despise such a triumph; but believe me, we women know more of what is precious in love. there is nothing that should set a person higher in his own esteem; and we women would prize nothing more dearly." "you are very good," he said; "but you cannot make me forget that i was asked in pity and not for love." "i am not so sure of that," she replied, holding down her head. "hear me to an end, monsieur de beaulieu. i know how you must despise me; i feel you are right to do so; i am too poor a creature to occupy one thought of your mind, although, alas! you must die for me this morning. but when i asked you to marry me, indeed, and indeed, it was because i respected and admired you, and loved you with my whole soul, from the very moment that you took my part against my uncle. if you had seen yourself, and how noble you looked, you would pity rather than despise me. and now," she went on, hurriedly checking him with her hand, "although i have laid aside all reserve, and told you so much, remember that i know your sentiments towards me already. i would not, believe me, being nobly born, weary you with importunities into consent i too have a pride of my own: and i declare before the holy mother of god, if you should now go back from your word already given, i would no more marry you than i would marry my uncle's groom. denis smiled a little bitterly. "it is a small love," he said, "that shies at a little pride." she made no answer, although she probably had her own thoughts. "come hither to the window," he said, with a sigh. "here is the dawn." and indeed the dawn was already beginning. the hollow of the sky was full of essential daylight, colourless and clean; and the valley underneath was flooded with a grey reflection. a few thin vapours clung in the coves of the forest or lay along the winding course of the river. the scene disengaged a surprising effect of stillness, which was hardly interrupted when the cocks began once more to crow among the steadings. perhaps the same fellow who had made so horrid a clangour in the darkness not half an hour before now sent up the merriest cheer to greet the coming day. a little wind went bustling and eddying among the tree-tops underneath the windows. and still the daylight kept flooding insensibly out of the east, which was soon to grow incandescent and cast up that red-hot cannon-ball, the rising sun. denis looked out over all this with a bit of a shiver. he had taken her hand, and retained it in his almost unconsciously. "has the day begun already?" she said; and then, illogically enough: "the night has been so long! alas! what shall we say to my uncle when he returns?" "what you will," said denis, and he pressed her fingers in his. she was silent. "blanche," he said, with a swift, uncertain, passionate utterance, "you have seen whether i fear death. you must know well enough that i would as gladly leap out of that window into the empty air as lay a finger on you without your free and full consent. but if you care for me at all do not let me lose my life in a misapprehension; for i love you better than the whole world; and though i will die for you blithely, it would be like all the joys of paradise to live on and spend my life in your service." as he stopped speaking, a bell began to ring loudly in the interior of the house; and a clatter of armour in the corridor showed that the retainers were returning to their post, and the two hours were at an end. "after all that you have heard?" she whispered, leaning towards him with her lips and eyes. "i have heard nothing," he replied. "the captain's name was florimond de champdivers," she said in his ear. "i did not hear it," he answered, taking her supple body in his arms, and covered her wet face with kisses. a melodious chirping was audible behind, followed by a beautiful chuckle, and the voice of messire de maletroit wished his new nephew a good morning. providence and the guitar originally published: "london," november 2 to 23, 1878. reprinted in "new arabian nights": chatto and windus, london, 1882. chapter i monsieur leon berthelini had a great care of his appearance, and sedulously suited his deportment to the costume of the hour. he affected something spanish in his air, and something of the bandit, with a flavour of rembrandt at home. in person he was decidedly small, and inclined to be stout; his face was the picture of good-humour; his dark eyes, which were very expressive, told of a kind heart, a brisk, merry nature, and the most indefatigable spirits. if he had worn the clothes of the period you would have set him down for a hitherto undiscovered hybrid between the barber, the innkeeper, and the affable dispensing chemist. but in the outrageous bravery of velvet jacket and flapped hat, with trousers that were more accurately described as fleshings, a white handkerchief cavalierly knotted at his neck, a shock of olympian curls upon his brow, and his feet shod through all weathers in the slenderest of moliere shoes--you had but to look at him and you knew you were in the presence of a great creature. when he wore an overcoat he scorned to pass the sleeves; a single button held it round his shoulders; it was tossed backwards after the manner of a cloak, and carried with the gait and presence of an almaviva. i am of opinion that m. berthelini was nearing forty. but he had a boy's heart, gloried in his finery, and walked through life like a child in a perpetual dramatic performance. if he were not almaviva after all, it was not for lack of making believe. and he enjoyed the artist's compensation. if he were not really almaviva, he was sometimes just as happy as though he were. i have seen him, at moments when he has fancied himself alone with his maker, adopt so gay and chivalrous a bearing, and represent his own part with so much warmth and conscience, that the illusion became catching, and i believed implicitly in the great creature's pose. but, alas! life cannot be entirely conducted on these principles; man cannot live by almavivary alone; and the great creature, having failed upon several theatres, was obliged to step down every evening from his heights, and sing from half a dozen to a dozen comic songs, twang a guitar, keep a country audience in good humour, and preside finally over the mysteries of a tombola. madame berthelini, who was art and part with him in these undignified labours, had perhaps a higher position in the scale of beings, and enjoyed a natural dignity of her own. but her heart was not any more rightly placed, for that would have been impossible; and she had acquired a little air of melancholy, attractive enough in its way, but not good to see like the wholesome, sky-scraping, boyish spirits of her lord. he, indeed, swam like a kite on a fair wind, high above earthly troubles. detonations of temper were not unfrequent in the zones he travelled; but sulky fogs and tearful depressions were there alike unknown. a well-delivered blow upon a table, or a noble attitude, imitated from melingue or frederic, relieved his irritation like a vengeance. though the heaven had fallen, if he had played his part with propriety, berthelini had been content! and the man's atmosphere, if not his example, reacted on his wife; for the couple doated on each other, and although you would have thought they walked in different worlds, yet continued to walk hand in hand. it chanced one day that monsieur and madame berthelini descended with two boxes and a guitar in a fat case at the station of the little town of castel-le-gachis, and the omnibus carried them with their effects to the hotel of the black head. this was a dismal, conventual building in a narrow street, capable of standing siege when once the gates were shut, and smelling strangely in the interior of straw and chocolate and old feminine apparel. berthelini paused upon the threshold with a painful premonition. in some former state, it seemed to him, he had visited a hostelry that smelt not otherwise, and been ill received. the landlord, a tragic person in a large felt hat, rose from a business-table under the key-rack, and came forward, removing his hat with both hands as he did so. "sir, i salute you. may i inquire what is your charge for artists?" inquired berthelini, with a courtesy at once splendid and insinuating. "for artists?" said the landlord. his countenance fell and the smile of welcome disappeared. "oh, artists!" he added brutally; "four francs a day." and he turned his back upon these inconsiderable customers. a commercial traveller is received, he also, upon a reduction--yet is he welcome, yet can he command the fatted calf; but an artist, had he the manners of an almaviva, were he dressed like solomon in all his glory, is received like a dog and served like a timid lady travelling alone. accustomed as he was to the rubs of his profession, berthelini was unpleasantly affected by the landlord's manner. "elvira," said he to his wife, "mark my words: castelle-gachis is a tragic folly." "wait till we see what we take," replied elvira. "we shall take nothing," replied berthelini; "we shall feed upon insults. i have an eye, elvira; i have a spirit of divination; and this place is accursed. the landlord has been discourteous, the commissary will be brutal, the audience will be sordid and uproarious, and you will take a cold upon your throat. we have been besotted enough to come; the die is cast--it will be a second sedan." sedan was a town hateful to the berthelinis, not only from patriotism (for they were french, and answered after the flesh to the somewhat homely name of duval), but because it had been the scene of their most sad reverses. in that place they had lain three weeks in pawn for their hotel bill, and had it not been for a surprising stroke of fortune they might have been lying there in pawn until this day. to mention the name of sedan was for the berthelinis to dip the brush in earthquake and eclipse. count almaviva slouched his hat with a gesture expressive of despair, and even elvira felt as if ill-fortune had been personally invoked. "let us ask for breakfast," said she, with a woman's tact. the commissary of police of castel-le-gachis was a large red commissary, pimpled, and subject to a strong cutaneous transpiration. i have repeated the name of his office because he was so very much more a commissary than a man. the spirit of his dignity had entered into him. he carried his corporation as if it were something official. whenever he insulted a common citizen it seemed to him as if he were adroitly flattering the government by a side-wind; in default of dignity he was brutal from an overweening sense of duty. his office was a den, whence passers-by could hear rude accents laying down, not the law, but the good pleasure of the commissary. six several times in the course of the day did m. berthelini hurry thither in quest of the requisite permission for his evening's entertainment; six several times he found the official was abroad. leon berthelini began to grow quite a familiar figure in the streets of castel-le-gachis; he became a local celebrity, and was pointed out as "the man who was looking for the commissary." idle children attached themselves to his footsteps, and trotted after him back and forward between the hotel and the office leon might try as he liked; he might roll cigarettes, he might straddle, he might cock his hat at a dozen different jaunty inclinations--the part of almaviva was, under the circumstances, difficult to play. as he passed the market-place upon the seventh excursion the commissary was pointed out to him, where he stood, with his waistcoat unbuttoned and his hands behind his back, to superintend the sale and measurement of butter. berthelini threaded his way through the market-stalls and baskets, and accosted the dignitary with a bow which was a triumph of the histrionic art. "i have the honour," he asked, "of meeting m. le commissaire?" the commissary was affected by the nobility of his address. he excelled leon in the depth if not in the airy grace of his salutation. "the honour," said he, "is mine!" "i am," continued the strolling player, "i am, sir, an artist, and i have permitted myself to interrupt you on an affair of business. to-night i give a trifling musical entertainment at the cafe of the triumphs of the plough--permit me to offer you this little programme--and i have come to ask you for the necessary authorisation." at the word "artist," the commissary had replaced his hat with the air of a person who, having condescended too far, should suddenly remember the duties of his rank. "go, go," said he, "i am busy; i am measuring butter." "heathen jew!" thought leon. "permit me, sir," he resumed, aloud. "i have gone six times already----" "put up your bills if you choose," interrupted the commissary. "in an hour or so i will examine your papers at the office. but now go; i am busy." "measuring butter!" thought berthelini. "o france, and it is for this that we made "93!" the preparations were soon made; the bills posted, programmes laid on the dinner-table of every hotel in the town, and a stage erected at one end of the cafe of the triumphs of the plough; but when leon returned to the office the commissary was once more abroad. "he is like madame benoiton," thought leon: "fichu commissaire!" and just then he met the man face to face. "here, sir," said he, "are my papers. will you be pleased to verify?" but the commissary was now intent upon dinner. "no use," he replied, "no use; i am busy; i am quite satisfied. give your entertainment." and he hurried on. "fichu commissaire!" thought leon. chapter ii the audience was pretty large; and the proprietor of the cafe made a good thing of it in beer. but the berthelinis exerted themselves in vain. leon was radiant in velveteen; he had a rakish way of smoking a cigarette between his songs that was worth money in itself; he underlined his comic points so that the dullest numskull in castel-le-gachis had a notion when to laugh; and he handled his guitar in a manner worthy of himself. indeed, his play with that instrument was as good as a whole romantic drama; it was so dashing, so florid, and so cavalier. elvira, on the other hand, sang her patriotic and romantic songs with more than usual expression; her voice had charm and plangency; and as leon looked at her, in her low-bodied maroon dress, with her arms bare to the shoulder, and a red flower set provocatively in her corset, he repeated to himself for the many hundredth time that she was one of the loveliest creatures in the world of women. alas! when she went round with the tambourine, the golden youth of castel-le-gachis turned from her coldly. here and there a single halfpenny was forthcoming; the net result of a collection never exceeded half a franc; and the maire himself, after seven different applications, had contributed exactly twopence. a certain chill began to settle upon the artists themselves; it seemed as if they were singing to slugs; apollo himself might have lost heart with such an audience. the berthelinis struggled against the impression; they put their back into their work, they sang loud and louder, the guitar twanged like a living thing; and at last leon arose in his might, and burst with inimitable conviction into his great song, "y a des honnetes gens partout!" never had he given more proof of his artistic mastery; it was his intimate, indefeasible conviction that castel-le-gachis formed an exception to the law he was now lyrically proclaiming, and was peopled exclusively by thieves and bullies; and yet, as i say, he flung it down like a challenge, he trolled it forth like an article of faith; and his face so beamed the while that you would have thought he must make converts of the benches. he was at the top of his register, with his head thrown back and his mouth open, when the door was thrown violently open, and a pair of new-comers marched noisily into the cafe. it was the commissary, followed by the garde champetre. the undaunted berthelini still continued to proclaim, "y a des honnetes gens partout!" but now the sentiment produced an audible titter among the audience. berthelini wondered why; he did not know the antecedents of the garde champetre; he had never heard of a little story about postage-stamps. but the public knew all about the postage-stamps and enjoyed the coincidence hugely. the commissary planted himself upon a vacant chair with somewhat the air of cromwell visiting the rump, and spoke in occasional whispers to the garde champetre, who remained respectfully standing at his back. the eyes of both were directed upon berthelini, who persisted in his statement. "y a des honnetes gens partout," he was just chanting for the twentieth time; when up got the commissary upon his feet and waved brutally to the singer with his cane. "is it me you want?" inquired leon, stopping in his song. "it is you," replied the potentate. "fichu commissaire!" thought leon, and he descended from the stage and made his way to the functionary. "how does it happen, sir," said the commissary, swelling in person, "that i find you mountebanking in a public cafe without my permission?" "without?" cried the indignant leon. "permit me to remind you----" "come, come, sir!" said the commissary, "i desire no explanations." "i care nothing about what you desire," returned the singer. "i choose to give them, and i will not be gagged. i am an artist, sir, a distinction that you cannot comprehend. i received your permission and stand here upon the strength of it; interfere with me who dare." "you have not got my signature, i tell you," cried the commissary. "show me my signature! where is my signature?" that was just the question; where was his signature? leon recognised that he was in a hole; but his spirit rose with the occasion, and he blustered nobly, tossing back his curls. the commissary played up to him in the character of tyrant; and as the one leaned farther forward, the other leaned farther back--majesty confronting fury. the audience had transferred their attention to this new performance, and listened with that silent gravity common to all frenchmen in the neighbourhood of the police. elvira had sat down, she was used to these distractions, and it was rather melancholy than fear that now oppressed her. "another word," cried the commissary, "and i arrest you." "arrest me?" shouted leon. "i defy you!" "i am the commissary of police," said the official. leon commanded his feelings, and replied, with great delicacy of innuendo-"so it would appear." the point was too refined for castel-le-gachis; it did not raise a smile; and as for the commissary, he simply bade the singer follow him to his office, and directed his proud footsteps towards the door. there was nothing for it but to obey. leon did so with a proper pantomime of indifference, but it was a leek to eat, and there was no denying it. the maire had slipped out and was already waiting at the commissary's door. now the maire, in france, is the refuge of the oppressed. he stands between his people and the boisterous rigours of the police. he can sometimes understand what is said to him; he is not always puffed up beyond measure by his dignity. 'tis a thing worth the knowledge of travellers. when all seems over, and a man has made up his mind to injustice, he has still, like the heroes of romance, a little bugle at his belt whereon to blow; and the maire, a comfortable _deus ex machina,_ may still descend to deliver him from the minions of the law. the maire of castel-le-gachis, although inaccessible to the charms of music as retailed by the berthelinis, had no hesitation whatever as to the rights of the matter. he instantly fell foul of the commissary in very high terms, and the commissary, pricked by this humiliation, accepted battle on the point of fact. the argument lasted some little while with varying success, until at length victory inclined so plainly to the commissary's side that the maire was fain to reassert himself by an exercise of authority. he had been out-argued, but he was still the maire. and so, turning from his interlocutor, he briefly but kindly recommended leon to get back _instanter_ to his concert. "it is already growing late," he added. leon did not wait to be told twice. he returned to the cafe of the triumphs of the plough with all expedition. alas! the audience had melted away during his absence; elvira was sitting in a very disconsolate attitude on the guitar-box; she had watched the company dispersing by twos and threes, and the prolonged spectacle had somewhat overwhelmed her spirits. each man, she reflected, retired with a certain proportion of her earnings in his pocket, and she saw to-night's board and to-morrow's railway expenses, and finally even tomorrow's dinner, walk one after another out of the cafe-door and disappear into the night. "what was it?" she asked languidly. but leon did not answer. he was looking round him on the scene of defeat. scarce a score of listeners remained, and these of the least promising sort. the minute-hand of the clock was already climbing upward towards eleven. "it's a lost battle," said he, and then taking up the money-box, he turned it out. "three francs seventyfive!" he cried, "as against four of board and six of railway fares; and no time for the tombola! elvira, this is waterloo." and he sat down and passed both hands desperately among his curls. "o fichu commissaire!" he cried, "fichu commissaire!" "let us get the things together and be off," returned elvira. "we might try another song, but there is not six halfpence in the room." "six halfpence?" cried leon, "six hundred thousand devils! there is not a human creature in the town-nothing but pigs and dogs and commissaries! pray heaven we get safe to bed." "don't imagine things!" exclaimed elvira, with a shudder. and with that they set to work on their preparations. the tobacco-jar, the cigarette-holder, the three papers of shirt-studs, which were to have been the prizes of the tombola had the tombola come off, were made into a bundle with the music; the guitar was stowed into the fat guitar-case; and elvira having thrown a thin shawl about her neck and shoulders, the pair issued from the cafe and set off for the black head. as they crossed the market-place the church bell rang out eleven. it was a dark, mild night, and there was no one in the streets. "it is all very fine," said leon: "but i have a presentiment. the night is not yet done." chapter iii the "black head" presented not a single chink of light upon the street, and the carriage gate was closed. "this is unprecedented," observed leon. "an inn closed by five minutes after eleven! and there were several commercial travellers in the cafe up to a late hour. elvira, my heart misgives me. let us ring the bell." the bell had a potent note; and being swung under the arch it filled the house from top to bottom with surly, clanging reverberations. the sound accentuated the conventual appearance of the building; a wintry sentiment, a thought of prayer and mortification, took hold upon elvira's mind; and, as for leon, he seemed to be reading the stage directions for a lugubrious fifth act. "this is your fault," said elvira; "this is what comes of fancying things!" again leon pulled the bell-rope; again the solemn tocsin awoke the echoes of the inn; and ere they had died away, a light glimmered in the carriage entrance, and a powerful voice was heard upraised and tremulous with wrath. "what's all this?" cried the tragic host through the spars of the gate. "hard upon twelve, and you come clamouring like prussians at the door of a respectable hotel? oh!" he cried, "i know you now! common singers! people in trouble with the police! and you present yourselves at midnight like lords and ladies? be off with you!" "you will permit me to remind you," replied leon, in thrilling tones, "that i am a guest in your house, that i am properly inscribed, and that i have deposited baggage to the value of four hundred francs." "you cannot get in at this hour," returned the man. "this is no thieves' tavern, for mohocks and nightrakes and organ-grinders." "brute!" cried elvira, for the organ-grinders touched her home. "then i demand my baggage," said leon, with unabated dignity. "i know nothing of your baggage," replied the landlord. "you detain my baggage? you dare to detain my baggage?" cried the singer. "who are you?" returned the landlord. "it is dark--i cannot recognise you." "very well, then--you detain my baggage," concluded leon. "you shall smart for this. i will weary out your life with persecutions; i will drag you from court to court; if there is justice to be had in france, it shall be rendered between you and me. and i will make you a by-word--i will put you in a song--a scurrilous song--an indecent song--a popular song--which the boys shall sing to you in the street, and come and howl through these spars at midnight!" he had gone on raising his voice at every phrase, for all the while the landlord was very placidly retiring; and now, when the last glimmer of light had vanished from the arch, and the last footstep died away in the interior, leon turned to his wife with a heroic countenance. "elvira," said he, "i have now a duty in life. i shall destroy that man as eugene sue destroyed the concierge. let us come at once to the gendarmerie and begin our vengeance." he picked up the guitar-case, which had been propped against the wall, and they set forth through the silent and ill-lighted town with burning hearts. the gendarmerie was concealed beside the telegraphoffice at the bottom of a vast court, which was partly laid out in gardens; and here all the shepherds of the public lay locked in grateful sleep. it took a deal of knocking to waken one; and he, when he came at last to the door, could find no other remark but that "it was none of his business." leon reasoned with him, threatened him, besought him; "here," he said, "was madame berthelini in evening dress--a delicate woman-in an interesting condition"--the last was thrown in, i fancy, for effect; and to all this the man-at-arms made the same answer-"it is none of my business," said he. "very well," said leon, "then we shall go to the commissary." thither they went; the office was closed and dark; but the house was close by, and leon was soon swinging the bell like a madman. the commissary's wife appeared at a window. she was a thread-paper creature, and informed them that the commissary had not yet come home. "is he at the maire's?" demanded leon. she thought that was not unlikely. "where is the maire's house?" he asked. and she gave him some rather vague information on that point. "stay you here, elvira," said leon, "lest i should miss him by the way. if, when i return, i find you here no longer, i shall follow at once to the black head." and he set out to find the maire's. it took him some ten minutes' wandering among blind lanes, and when he arrived it was already half an hour past midnight. a long white garden wall overhung by some thick chestnuts, a door with a letter-box, and an iron bellpull,--that was all that could be seen of the maire's domicile. leon took the bell-pull in both hands, and danced furiously upon the side-walk. the bell itself was just upon the other side of the wall; it responded to his activity, and scattered an alarming clangour far and wide into the night. a window was thrown open in a house across the street, and a voice inquired the cause of this untimely uproar. "i wish the maire," said leon. "he has been in bed this hour," returned the voice. "he must get up again," retorted leon, and he was for tackling the bell-pull once more. "you will never make him hear," responded the voice. "the garden is of great extent, the house is at the farther end, and both the maire and his housekeeper are deaf" "aha!" said leon, pausing. "the maire is deaf, is he? that explains." and he thought of the evening's concert with a momentary feeling of relief "ah!" he continued, "and so the maire is deaf, and the garden vast, and the house at the far end?" "and you might ring all night," added the voice, "and be none the better for it. you would only keep me awake." "thank you, neighbour," replied the singer. "you shall sleep." and he made off again at his best pace for the commissary's. elvira was still walking to and fro before the door. "he has not come?" asked leon. "not he," she replied. "good," returned leon. "i am sure our man's inside. let me see the guitar-case. i shall lay this siege in form, elvira; i am angry, i am indignant: i am truculently inclined; but i thank my maker i have still a sense of fun. the unjust judge shall be importuned in a serenade, elvira. set him up--and set him up." he had the case opened by this time, struck a few chords, and fell into an attitude which was irresistibly spanish. "now," he continued, "feel your voice. are you ready? follow me!" the guitar twanged, and the two voices upraised, in harmony and with a startling loudness, the chorus of a song of old beranger's:- commissaire! commissaire! colin bat sa menagere." the stones of castel-le-gachis thrilled at this audacious innovation. hitherto had the night been sacred to repose and night-caps; and now what was this? window after window was opened; matches scratched, and candles began to flicker; swollen, sleepy faces peered forth into the star-light. there were the two figures before the commissary's house, each bolt upright, with head thrown back and eyes interrogating the starry heavens; the guitar wailed, shouted, and reverberated like half an orchestra, and the voices, with a crisp and spirited delivery, hurled the appropriate burden at the commissary's window. all the echoes repeated the functionary's name. it was more like an entr'acte in a farce of moliere's than a passage of real life in castel-le-gachis. the commissary, if he was not the first, was not the last of the neighbours to yield to the influence of music, and furiously threw open the window of his bedroom. he was beside himself with rage. he leaned far over the window-sill, raving and gesticulating; the tassel of his white night-cap danced like a thing of life: he opened his mouth to dimensions hitherto unprecedented, and yet his voice, instead of escaping from it in a roar, came forth shrill and choked and tottering. a little more serenading, and it was clear he would be better acquainted with the apoplexy. i scorn to reproduce his language; he touched upon too many serious topics by the way for a quiet storyteller. although he was known for a man who was prompt with his tongue, and had a power of strong expression at command, he excelled himself so remarkably this night that one maiden lady, who had got out of bed like the rest to hear the serenade, was obliged to shut her window at the second clause. even what she had heard disquieted her conscience; and next day she said she scarcely reckoned as a maiden lady any longer. leon tried to explain his predicament, but he received nothing but threats of arrest by way of answer. "if i come down to you!" cried the commissary. "ay," said leon, "do!" "i will not!" cried the commissary. "you dare not!" answered leon. at that the commissary closed his window. "all is over," said the singer. "the serenade was perhaps ill-judged. these boors have no sense of humour." "let us get away from here," said elvira, with a shiver. "all these people looking--it is so rude and so brutal." and then giving way once more to passion-"brutes!" she cried aloud to the candle-lit spectators-"brutes! brutes! brutes!" "_sauve qui peut,_" said leon. "you have done it now!" and taking the guitar in one hand and the case in the other, he led the way with something too precipitate to be merely called precipitation from the scene of this absurd adventure. chapter iv to the west of castel-le-gachis four rows of venerable lime-trees formed, in this starry night, a twilit avenue with two side aisles of pitch darkness. here and there stone benches were disposed between the trunks. there was not a breath of wind; a heavy atmosphere of perfume hung about the alleys; and every leaf stood stock-still upon its twig. hither, after vainly knocking at an inn or two, the berthelinis came at length to pass the night. after an amiable contention, leon insisted on giving his coat to elvira, and they sat down together on the first bench in silence. leon made a cigarette, which he smoked to an end, looking up into the trees, and beyond them at the constellations, of which he tried vainly to recall the names. the silence was broken by the church bell; it rang the four quarters on a light and tinkling measure; then followed a single deep stroke that died slowly away with a thrill; and stillness resumed its empire. "one," said leon. "four hours till daylight. it is warm; it is starry; i have matches and tobacco. do not let us exaggerate, elvira--the experience is positively charming. i feel a glow within me; i am born again. this is the poetry of life. think of cooper's novels, my dear." "leon," she said fiercely, "how can you talk such wicked, infamous nonsense? to pass all night out of doors--it is like a nightmare! we shall die!" "you suffer yourself to be led away," he replied soothingly. "it is not unpleasant here; only you brood. come now, let us repeat a scene. shall we try alceste and celimene? no? or a passage from the "two orphans"? come now, it will occupy your mind; i will play up to you as i never have played before; i feel art moving in my bones." "hold your tongue," she cried, "or you will drive me mad! will nothing solemnise you--not even this hideous situation?" "oh, hideous!" objected leon. "hideous is not the word. why, where would you be? _'dites, la jeune belle, ou voulez-vous aller?'_" he carolled. "well, now," he went on, opening the guitar-case, "there's another idea for you--sing. sing _'dites, la jeune belle'_! it will compose your spirits, elvira, i am sure." and without waiting an answer he began to strum the symphony. the first chords awoke a young man who was lying asleep upon a neighbouring bench. "hullo!" cried the young man, "who are you?" "under which king, bezonian?" declaimed the artist. "speak or die!" or if it was not exactly that, it was something to much the same purpose from a french tragedy. the young man drew near in the twilight. he was a tall, powerful, gentlemanly fellow, with a somewhat puffy face, dressed in a grey tweed suit, with a deer-stalker hat of the same material; and as he now came forward he carried a knapsack slung upon one arm. "are you camping out here too?" he asked, with a strong english accent. "i'm not sorry for company." leon explained their misadventure; and the other told them that he was a cambridge undergraduate on a walking tour, that he had run short of money, could no longer pay for his night's lodging, had already been camping out for two nights, and feared he should require to continue the same manoeuvre for at least two nights more. "luckily, it's jolly weather," he concluded. "you hear that, elvira?" said leon.--"madame berthelini," he went on, "is ridiculously affected by this trifling occurrence. for my part, i find it romantic and far from uncomfortable; or at least," he added, shifting on the stone bench, "not quite so uncomfortable as might have been expected. but pray be seated." "yes," returned the undergraduate, sitting down, "it's rather nice than otherwise when once you're used to it; only it's devilish difficult to get washed. i like the fresh air and these stars and things." "aha!" said leon, "monsieur is an artist." "an artist?" returned the other, with a blank stare. "not if i know it!" "pardon me," said the actor. "what you said this moment about the orbs of heaven----" "oh, nonsense!" cried the englishman. "a fellow may admire the stars and be anything he likes." "you have an artist's nature, however, mr.---i beg your pardon; may i, without indiscretion, inquire your name?" asked leon. "my name is stubbs," replied the englishman. "i thank you," returned leon. "mine is berthelini--leon berthelini, ex-artist of the theatres of montrouge, belleville, and montmartre. humble as you see me, i have created with applause more than one important _role._ the press were unanimous in praise of my howling devil of the mountains, in the piece of the same name. madame, whom i now present to you, is herself an artist, and i must not omit to state, a better artist than her husband. she also is a creator; she created nearly twenty successful songs at one of the principal parisian music-halls. but to continue: i was saying you had an artist's nature, monsieur stubbs, and you must permit me to be a judge in such a question. i trust you will not falsify your instincts; let me beseech you to follow the career of an artist." "thank you," returned stubbs, with a chuckle. "i'm going to be a banker." "no," said leon, "do not say so. not that. a man with such a nature as yours should not derogate so far. what are a few privations here and there, so long as you are working for a high and noble goal?" "this fellow's mad," thought stubbs: "but the woman's rather pretty, and he's not bad fun himself, if you come to that." what he said was different: "i thought you said you were an actor?" "i certainly did so," replied leon. "i am one, or, alas! i was." "and so you want me to be an actor, do you?" continued the undergraduate. "why, man, i could never so much as learn the stuff; my memory's like a sieve; and as for acting, i've no more idea than a cat." "the stage is not the only course," said leon. "be a sculptor, be a dancer, be a poet or a novelist; follow your heart, in short, and do some thorough work before you die." "and do you call all these things art?" inquired stubbs. "why, certainly!" returned leon. "are they not all branches?" "oh! i didn't know," replied the englishman. "i thought an artist meant a fellow who painted." the singer stared at him in some surprise. "it is the difference of language," he said at last. "this tower of babel, when shall we have paid for it? if i could speak english you would follow me more readily." "between you and me, i don't believe i should," replied the other. "you seem to have thought a devil of a lot about this business. for my part, i admire the stars, and like to have them shining--it's so cheery--but hang me if i had an idea it had anything to do with art! it's not in my line, you see. i'm not intellectual; i have no end of trouble to scrape through my exams, i can tell you! but i'm not a bad sort at bottom," he added, seeing his interlocutor looked distressed even in the dim star-shine, "and i rather like the play, and music, and guitars, and things." leon had a perception that the understanding was incomplete. he changed the subject. "and so you travel on foot?" he continued. "how romantic! how courageous! and how are you pleased with my land? how does the scenery affect you among these wild hills of ours?" "well, the fact is," began stubbs--he was about to say that he didn't care for scenery, which was not at all true, being, on the contrary, only an athletic undergraduate pretension; but he had begun to suspect that berthelini liked a different sort of meat, and substituted something else: "the fact is, i think it jolly. they told me it was no good up here; even the guide-book said so; but i don't know what they meant. i think it is deuced pretty--upon my word, i do." at this moment, in the most unexpected manner, elvira burst into tears. "my voice!" she cried. "leon, if i stay here longer i shall lose my voice!" "you shall not stay another moment," cried the actor. "if i have to beat in a door, if i have to burn the town, i shall find you shelter." with that he replaced the guitar, and, comforting her with some caresses, drew her arm through his. "monsieur stubbs," said he, taking off his hat, "the reception i offer you is rather problematical; but let me beseech you to give us the pleasure of your society. you are a little embarrassed for the moment; you must, indeed, permit me to advance what may be necessary. i ask it as a favour; we must not part so soon after having met so strangely." "oh, come, you know," said stubbs, "i can't let a fellow like you" and there he paused, feeling somehow or other on a wrong tack. "i do not wish to employ menaces," continued leon, with a smile; "but if you refuse, indeed i shall not take it kindly." "i don't quite see my way out of it," thought the undergraduate; and then, after a pause, he said, aloud and ungraciously enough, "all right. i--i'm very much obliged, of course." and he proceeded to follow them, thinking in his heart, "but it's bad form, all the same, to force an obligation on a fellow." chapter v leon strode ahead as if he knew exactly where he was going; the sobs of madame were still faintly audible, and no one uttered a word. a dog barked furiously in a courtyard as they went by; then the church clock struck two, and many domestic clocks followed or preceded it in piping tones. and just then berthelini spied a light. it burned in a small house on the outskirts of the town, and thither the party now directed their steps. "it is always a chance," said leon. the house in question stood back from the street behind an open space, part garden, part turnip-field; and several outhouses stood forward from either wing at right angles to the front. one of these had recently undergone some change. an enormous window, looking towards the north, had been effected in the wall and roof, and leon began to hope it was a studio. "if it's only a painter," he said, with a chuckle, "ten to one we get as good a welcome as we want." "i thought painters were principally poor," said stubbs. "ah!" cried leon, "you do not know the world as i do. the poorer the better for us!" and the trio advanced into the turnip-field. the light was in the ground floor; as one window was brightly illuminated and two others more faintly, it might be supposed that there was a single lamp in one corner of a large apartment; and a certain tremulousness and temporary dwindling showed that a live fire contributed to the effect. the sound of a voice now became audible; and the trespassers paused to listen. it was pitched in a high, angry key, but had still a good, full, and masculine note in it. the utterance was voluble, too voluble even to be quite distinct; a stream of words, rising and falling, with ever and again a phrase thrown out by itself, as if the speaker reckoned on its virtue. suddenly another voice joined in. this time it was a woman's; and if the man were angry, the woman was incensed to the degree of fury. there was that absolutely blank composure known to suffering males; that colourless unnatural speech which shows a spirit accurately balanced between homicide and hysterics; the tone in which the best of women sometimes utter words worse than death to those most dear to them. if abstract bones-and-sepulchre were to be endowed with the gift of speech, thus, and not otherwise, would it discourse. leon was a brave man, and i fear he was somewhat sceptically given (he had been educated in a papistical country), but the habit of childhood prevailed, and he crossed himself devoutly. he had met several women in his career. it was obvious that his instinct had not deceived him, for the male voice broke forth instantly in a towering passion. the undergraduate, who had not understood the significance of the woman's contribution, pricked up his ears at the change upon the man. "there's going to be a free fight," he opined. there was another retort from the woman, still calm, but a little higher. "hysterics?" asked leon of his wife. "is that the stage direction?" "how should i know?" returned elvira, somewhat tartly. "oh, woman, woman!" said leon, beginning to open the guitar-case. "it is one of the burdens of my life, monsieur stubbs; they support each other; they always pretend there is no system; they say it's nature. even madame berthelini, who is a dramatic artist!" "you are heartless, leon," said elvira; "that woman is in trouble." "and the man, my angel?" inquired berthelini passing the ribbon of his guitar. "and the man, _m'amour?_" "he is a man," she answered. "you hear that?" said leon to stubbs. "it is not too late for you. mark the intonation. and now," he continued, "what are we to give them?" "are you going to sing?" asked stubbs. "i am a troubadour," replied leon. "i claim a welcome by and for my art. if i were a banker, could i do as much?" "well, you wouldn't need, you know," answered the undergraduate. "egad," said leon, "but that's true. elvira, that is true." "of course it is," she replied. "did you not know it?" "my dear," answered leon impressively, "i know nothing but what is agreeable. even my knowledge of life is a work of art superiorly composed. but what are we to give them? it should be something appropriate." visions of "let dogs delight" passed through the undergraduate's mind; but it occurred to him that the poetry was english and that he did not know the air. hence he contributed no suggestion. "something about our houselessness," said elvira "i have it," cried leon. and he broke forth into a song of pierre dupont's:- "savez-vous ou gite mai, ce joli mois?" elvira joined in; so did stubbs, with a good ear and voice, but an imperfect acquaintance with the music. leon and the guitar were equal to the situation. the actor dispensed his throat-notes with prodigality and enthusiasm; and, as he looked up to heaven in his heroic way, tossing the black ringlets, it seemed to him that the very stars contributed a dumb applause to his efforts, and the universe lent him its silence for a chorus. that is one of the best features of the heavenly bodies, that they belong to everybody in particular; and a man like leon, a chronic endymion who managed to get along without encouragement, is always the world's centre for himself. he alone--and it is to be noted, he was the worst singer of the three--took the music seriously to heart, and judged the serenade from a high artistic point of view. elvira, on the other hand, was preoccupied about their reception; and as for stubbs, he considered the whole affair in the light of a broad joke. "know you the lair of may, the lovely month?" went the three voices in the turnip-field. the inhabitants were plainly fluttered; the light moved to and fro, strengthening in one window, paling in another; and then the door was thrown open, and a man in a blouse appeared on the thresh-old carrying a lamp. he was a powerful young fellow, with bewildered hair and beard, wearing his neck open; his blouse was stained with oil-colours in a harlequinesque disorder; and there was something rural in the droop and bagginess of his belted trousers. from immediately behind him, and indeed over his shoulder, a woman's face looked out into the darkness; it was pale and a little weary, although still young; it wore a dwindling, disappearing prettiness, soon to be quite gone, and the expression was both gentle and sour, and reminded one faintly of the taste of certain drugs. for all that, it was not a face to dislike; when the prettiness had vanished, it seemed as if a certain pale beauty might step in to take its place; and as both the mildness and the asperity were characters of youth, it might be hoped that, with years, both would merge into a constant, brave, and not unkindly temper. "what is all this?" cried the man. chapter vi leon had his hat in his hand at once. he came forward with his customary grace; it was a moment which would have earned him a round of cheering on the stage. elvira and stubbs advanced behind him, like a couple of admetus's sheep following the god apollo. "sir," said leon, "the hour is unpardonably late, and our little serenade has the air of an impertinence. believe me, sir, it is an appeal. monsieur is an artist, i perceive. we are here three artists benighted and without shelter, one a woman--a delicate woman--in evening dress--in an interesting situation. this will not fail to touch the woman's heart of madame, whom i perceive indistinctly behind monsieur her husband, and whose face speaks eloquently of a well-regulated mind. ah! monsieur, madame--one generous movement, and you make three people happy! two or three hours beside your fire--i ask it of monsieur in the name of art--i ask it of madame by the sanctity of woman-hood." the two, as by a tacit consent, drew back from the door. "come in," said the man. "_entrez,_ madame," said the woman. the door opened directly upon the kitchen of the house, which was to all appearance the only sitting-room. the furniture was both plain and scanty; but there were one or two landscapes on the wall, handsomely framed, as if they had already visited the committee-rooms of an exhibition and been thence extruded. leon walked up to the pictures and represented the part of a connoisseur before each in turn, with his usual dramatic insight and force. the master of the house, as if irresistibly attracted, followed him from canvas to canvas with the lamp. elvira was led directly to the fire, where she proceeded to warm herself, while stubbs stood in the middle of the floor and followed the proceedings of leon with mild astonishment in his eyes. "you should see them by daylight," said the artist. "i promise myself that pleasure," said leon. "you possess, sir, if you will permit me an observation, the art of composition to a t." "you are very good," returned the other. "but should you not draw nearer to the fire?" "with all my heart," said leon. and the whole party was soon gathered at the table over a hasty and not an elegant cold supper, washed down with the least of small wines. nobody liked the meal, but nobody complained; they put a good face upon it, one and all, and made a great clattering of knives and forks. to see leon eating a single cold sausage was to see a triumph; by the time he had done he had gone through as much pantomime as would have sufficed for a baron of beef, and he had the relaxed expression of the over-eaten. as elvira had naturally taken a place by the side of leon, and stubbs as naturally, although i believe unconsciously, by the side of elvira, the host and hostess were left together. yet it was to be noted that they never addressed a word to each other, nor so much as suffered their eyes to meet. the interrupted skirmish still survived in ill-feeling; and the instant the guests departed it would break forth again as bitterly as ever. the talk wandered from this to that subject--for with one accord the party had declared it was too late to go to bed; but those two never relaxed towards each other; goneril and regan in a sisterly tiff were not more bent on enmity. it chanced that elvira was so much tired by all the little excitements of the night, that for once she laid aside her company manners, which were both easy and correct, and in the most natural manner in the world leaned her head on leon's shoulder. at the same time, fatigue suggesting tenderness, she locked the fingers of her right hand into those of her husband's left; and, half-closing her eyes, dozed off into a golden borderland between sleep and waking. but all the time she was not unaware of what was passing, and saw the painter's wife studying her with looks between contempt and envy. it occurred to leon that his constitution demanded the use of some tobacco; and he undid his fingers from elvira's in order to roll a cigarette. it was gently done, and he took care that his indulgence should in no other way disturb his wife's position. but it seemed to catch the eye of the painter's wife with a special significancy. she looked straight before her for an instant, and then, with a swift and stealthy movement, took hold of her husband's hand below the table. alas! she might have spared herself the dexterity. for the poor fellow was so overcome by this caress that he stopped with his mouth open in the middle of a word, and by the expression of his face plainly declared to all the company that his thoughts had been diverted into softer channels. if it had not been rather amiable, it would have been absurdly droll. his wife at once withdrew her touch; but it was plain she had to exert some force. thereupon the young man coloured and looked for a moment beautiful. leon and elvira both observed the by-play, and a shock passed from one to the other; for they were inveterate match-makers, especially between those who were already married. "i beg your pardon," said leon suddenly. "i see no use in pretending. before we came in here we heard sounds indicating--if i may so express myself--an imperfect harmony." "sir----" began the man. but the woman was beforehand. "it is quite true," she said. "i see no cause to be ashamed. if my husband is mad i shall at least do my utmost to prevent the consequences. picture to yourself, monsieur and madame," she went on, for she passed stubbs over, "that this wretched person--a dauber, an incompetent, not fit to be a sign-painter-receives this morning an admirable offer from an uncle-an uncle of my own, my mother's brother, and tenderly beloved--of a clerkship with nearly a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and that he--picture to yourself!--he refuses it! why? for the sake of art, he says. look at his art, i say--look at it! is it fit to be seen? ask him--is it fit to be sold? and it is for this, monsieur and madame, that he condemns me to the most deplorable existence, without luxuries, without comforts, in a vile suburb of a country town. _o non!_" she cried, "_non--je ne me tairai pas--c'est plus fort que moi!_ i take these gentlemen and this lady for judges--is this kind? is it decent? is it manly? do i not deserve better at his hands after having married him and"--(a visible hitch)--"done everything in the world to please him?" i doubt if there were ever a more embarrassed company at a table; every one looked like a fool; and the husband like the biggest. "the art of monsieur, however," said elvira, breaking the silence, "is not wanting in distinction." "it has this distinction," said the wife, "that nobody will buy it." "i should have supposed a clerkship----" began stubbs. "art is art," swept in leon. "i salute art. it is the beautiful, the divine; it is the spirit of the world and the pride of life. but----" and the actor paused. "a clerkship " began stubbs. "i'll tell you what it is," said the painter. "i am an artist, and as this gentleman says, art is this and the other; but of course, if my wife is going to make my life a piece of perdition all day long, i prefer to go and drown myself out of hand." "go!" said his wife. "i should like to see you!" "i was going to say," resumed stubbs, "that a fellow may be a clerk and paint almost as much as he likes. i know a fellow in a bank who makes capital water-colour sketches; he even sold one for seven-and-six." to both the women this seemed a plank of safety; each hopefully interrogated the countenance of her lord; even elvira, an artist herself!--but indeed there must be something permanently mercantile in the female nature. the two men exchanged a glance; it was tragic; not otherwise might two philosophers salute, as at the end of a laborious life each recognised that he was still a mystery to his disciples. leon arose. "art is art," he repeated sadly. "it is not watercolour sketches, nor practising on a piano. it is a life to be lived." "and in the meantime people starve!" observed the woman of the house. "if that's a life, it is not one for me." "i'll tell you what," burst forth leon; "you, madame, go into another room and talk it over with my wife; and i'll stay here and talk it over with your husband. it may come to nothing, but let's try." "i am very willing," replied the young woman; and she proceeded to light a candle. "this way, if you please." and she led elvira upstairs into a bed-room. "the fact is," said she, sitting down, "that my husband cannot paint" "no more can mine act," replied elvira. "i should have thought he could," returned the other; "he seems clever." "he is so, and the best of men besides," said elvira; "but he cannot act." "at least he is not a sheer humbug like mine; he can at least sing." "you mistake leon." returned his wife warmly. "he does not even pretend to sing; he has too fine a taste; he does so for a living. and, believe me, neither of the men are humbugs. they are people with a mission--which they cannot carry out." "humbug or not," replied the other, "you came very near passing the night in the fields; and, for my part, i live in terror of starvation. i should think it was a man's mission to think twice about his wife. but it appears not. nothing is their mission but to play the fool. oh!" she broke out, "is it not something dreary to think of that man of mine? if he could only do it, who would care? but no--not he--no more than i can!" "have you any children?" asked elvira. "no; but then i may." "children change so much," said elvira, with a sigh. and just then from the room below there flew up a sudden snapping chord on the guitar; one followed after another; then the voice of leon joined in; and there was an air being played and sung that stopped the speech of the two women. the wife of the painter stood like a person transfixed; elvira, looking into her eyes, could see all manner of beautiful memories and kind thoughts that were passing in and out of her soul with every note; it was a piece of her youth that went before her; a green french plain, the smell of appleflowers, the far and shining ringlets of a river, and the words and presence of love. "leon has hit the nail," thought elvira to herself "i wonder how." the how was plain enough. leon had asked the painter if there were no air connected with courtship and pleasant times; and having learned what he wished, and allowed an interval to pass, he had soared forth into "o mon amante, o mon desir, sachons cueillir l'heure charmante!" "pardon me, madame," said the painter's wife, "your husband sings admirably well." "he sings that with some feeling," replied elvira critically, although she was a little moved herself, for the song cut both ways in the upper chamber; "but it is as an actor and not as a musician." "life is very sad," said the other; "it so wastes away under one's fingers." "i have not found it so," replied elvira. "i think the good parts of it last and grow greater every day." "frankly, how would you advise me?" "frankly, i would let my husband do what he wished. he is obviously a very loving painter; you have not yet tried him as a clerk. and you know--if it were only as the possible father of your children--it is as well to keep him at his best." "he is an excellent fellow," said the wife. they kept it up till sunrise with music and all manner of good-fellowship; and at sunrise, while the sky was still temperate and clear, they separated on the threshold with a thousand excellent wishes for each other's welfare. castel-le-gachis was beginning to send up its smoke against the golden east; and the church bell was ringing six. "my guitar is a familiar spirit," said leon, as he and elvira took the nearest way towards the inn; "it resuscitated a commissary, created an english tourist, and reconciled a man and wife." stubbs, on his part, went off into the morning with reflections of his own. "they are all mad," thought he, "all mad--but wonderfully decent" [end] . the song of the cardinal, by gene stratton-porter. digitized by cardinalis etext press, c.e.k. posted to wiretap in july 1993, as cardinal.gsp. italics are indicated as _italics_. this text is in the public domain. the song of the cardinal gene stratton-porter grosset & dunlap new york copyright 1903, 1906, 1915 by doubleday, page & company printed in the united states of america in loving tribute to the memory of my father mark stratton "for him every work of god manifested a new and heretofore unappreciated loveliness." chapter 1 "good cheer! good cheer!" exulted the cardinal he darted through the orange orchard searching for slugs for his breakfast, and between whiles he rocked on the branches and rang over his message of encouragement to men. the song of the cardinal was overflowing with joy, for this was his holiday, his playtime. the southern world was filled with brilliant sunshine, gaudy flowers, an abundance of fruit, myriads of insects, and never a thing to do except to bathe, feast, and be happy. no wonder his song was a prophecy of good cheer for the future, for happiness made up the whole of his past. the cardinal was only a yearling, yet his crest flared high, his beard was crisp and black, and he was a very prodigy in size and colouring. fathers of his family that had accomplished many migrations appeared small beside him, and coats that had been shed season after season seemed dull compared with his. it was as if a pulsing heart of flame passed by when he came winging through the orchard. last season the cardinal had pipped his shell, away to the north, in that paradise of the birds, the limberlost. there thousands of acres of black marsh-muck stretch under summers' sun and winters' snows. there are darksome pools of murky water, bits of swale, and high morass. giants of the forest reach skyward, or, coated with velvet slime, lie decaying in sun-flecked pools, while the underbrush is almost impenetrable. the swamp resembles a big dining-table for the birds. wild grape-vines clamber to the tops of the highest trees, spreading umbrella-wise over the branches, and their festooned floating trailers wave as silken fringe in the play of the wind. the birds loll in the shade, peel bark, gather dried curlers for nest material, and feast on the pungent fruit. they chatter in swarms over the wild-cherry trees, and overload their crops with red haws, wild plums, papaws, blackberries and mandrake. the alders around the edge draw flocks in search of berries, and the marsh grasses and weeds are weighted with seed hunters. the muck is alive with worms; and the whole swamp ablaze with flowers, whose colours and perfumes attract myriads of insects and butterflies. wild creepers flaunt their red and gold from the treetops, and the bumblebees and humming-birds make common cause in rifling the honey-laden trumpets. the air around the wild-plum and redhaw trees is vibrant with the beating wings of millions of wild bees, and the bee-birds feast to gluttony. the fetid odours of the swamp draw insects in swarms, and fly-catchers tumble and twist in air in pursuit of them. every hollow tree homes its colony of bats. snakes sun on the bushes. the water folk leave trails of shining ripples in their wake as they cross the lagoons. turtles waddle clumsily from the logs. frogs take graceful leaps from pool to pool. everything native to that section of the country-underground, creeping, or a-wing--can be found in the limberlost; but above all the birds. dainty green warblers nest in its tree-tops, and red-eyed vireos choose a location below. it is the home of bell-birds, finches, and thrushes. there are flocks of blackbirds, grackles, and crows. jays and catbirds quarrel constantly, and marsh-wrens keep up never-ending chatter. orioles swing their pendent purses from the branches, and with the tanagers picnic on mulberries and insects. in the evening, night-hawks dart on silent wing; whippoorwills set up a plaintive cry that they continue far into the night; and owls revel in moonlight and rich hunting. at dawn, robins wake the echoes of each new day with the admonition, "cheer up! cheer up!" and a little later big black vultures go wheeling through cloudland or hang there, like frozen splashes, searching the limberlost and the surrounding country for food. the boom of the bittern resounds all day, and above it the rasping scream of the blue heron, as he strikes terror to the hearts of frogdom; while the occasional cries of a lost loon, strayed from its flock in northern migration, fill the swamp with sounds of wailing. flashing through the tree-tops of the limberlost there are birds whose colour is more brilliant than that of the gaudiest flower lifting its face to light and air. the lilies of the mire are not so white as the white herons that fish among them. the ripest spray of goldenrod is not so highly coloured as the burnished gold on the breast of the oriole that rocks on it. the jays are bluer than the calamus bed they wrangle above with throaty chatter. the finches are a finer purple than the ironwort. for every clump of foxfire flaming in the limberlost, there is a cardinal glowing redder on a bush above it. these may not be more numerous than other birds, but their brilliant colouring and the fearless disposition make them seem so. the cardinal was hatched in a thicket of sweetbrier and blackberry. his father was a tough old widower of many experiences and variable temper. he was the biggest, most aggressive redbird in the limberlost, and easily reigned king of his kind. catbirds, king-birds, and shrikes gave him a wide berth, and not even the ever-quarrelsome jays plucked up enough courage to antagonize him. a few days after his latest bereavement, he saw a fine, plump young female; and she so filled his eye that he gave her no rest until she permitted his caresses, and carried the first twig to the wild rose. she was very proud to mate with the king of the limberlost; and if deep in her heart she felt transient fears of her lordly master, she gave no sign, for she was a bird of goodly proportion and fine feather herself. she chose her location with the eye of an artist, and the judgment of a nest builder of more experience. it would be difficult for snakes and squirrels to penetrate that briery thicket. the white berry blossoms scarcely had ceased to attract a swarm of insects before the sweets of the roses recalled them; by the time they had faded, luscious big berries ripened within reach and drew food hunters. she built with far more than ordinary care. it was a beautiful nest, not nearly so carelessly made as those of her kindred all through the swamp. there was a distinct attempt at a cup shape, and it really was neatly lined with dried blades of sweet marsh grass. but it was in the laying of her first egg that the queen cardinal forever distinguished herself. she was a fine healthy bird, full of love and happiness over her first venture in nest-building, and she so far surpassed herself on that occasion she had difficulty in convincing any one that she was responsible for the result. indeed, she was compelled to lift beak and wing against her mate in defense of this egg, for it was so unusually large that he could not be persuaded short of force that some sneak of the feathered tribe had not slipped in and deposited it in her absence. the king felt sure there was something wrong with the egg, and wanted to roll it from the nest; but the queen knew her own, and stoutly battled for its protection. she further increased their prospects by laying three others. after that the king made up his mind that she was a most remarkable bird, and went away pleasure-seeking; but the queen settled to brooding, a picture of joyous faith and contentment. through all the long days, when the heat became intense, and the king was none too thoughtful of her appetite or comfort, she nestled those four eggs against her breast and patiently waited. the big egg was her treasure. she gave it constant care. many times in a day she turned it; and always against her breast there was the individual pressure that distinguished it from the others. it was the first to hatch, of course, and the queen felt that she had enough if all the others failed her; for this egg pipped with a resounding pip, and before the silky down was really dry on the big terracotta body, the young cardinal arose and lustily demanded food. the king came to see him and at once acknowledged subjugation. he was the father of many promising cardinals, yet he never had seen one like this. he set the limberlost echoes rolling with his jubilant rejoicing. he unceasingly hunted for the ripest berries and seed. he stuffed that baby from morning until night, and never came with food that he did not find him standing a-top the others calling for more. the queen was just as proud of him and quite as foolish in her idolatry, but she kept tally and gave the remainder every other worm in turn. they were unusually fine babies, but what chance has merely a fine baby in a family that possesses a prodigy? the cardinal was as large as any two of the other nestlings, and so red the very down on him seemed tinged with crimson; his skin and even his feet were red. he was the first to climb to the edge of the nest and the first to hop on a limb. he surprised his parents by finding a slug, and winged his first flight to such a distance that his adoring mother almost went into spasms lest his strength might fail, and he would fall into the swamp and become the victim of a hungry old turtle. he returned safely, however; and the king was so pleased he hunted him an unusually ripe berry, and perching before him, gave him his first language lesson. of course, the cardinal knew how to cry "pee" and "chee" when he burst his shell; but the king taught him to chip with accuracy and expression, and he learned that very day that male birds of the cardinal family always call "chip," and the females "chook." in fact, he learned so rapidly and was generally so observant, that before the king thought it wise to give the next lesson, he found him on a limb, his beak closed, his throat swelling, practising his own rendering of the tribal calls, "wheat! wheat! wheat!" "here! here! here!" and "cheer! cheer! cheer!" this so delighted the king that he whistled them over and over and helped the youngster all he could. he was so proud of him that this same night he gave him his first lesson in tucking his head properly and going to sleep alone. in a few more days, when he was sure of his wing strength, he gave him instructions in flying. he taught him how to spread his wings and slowly sail from tree to tree; how to fly in short broken curves, to avoid the aim of a hunter; how to turn abruptly in air and make a quick dash after a bug or an enemy. he taught him the proper angle at which to breast a stiff wind, and that he always should meet a storm head first, so that the water would run as the plumage lay. his first bathing lesson was a pronounced success. the cardinal enjoyed water like a duck. he bathed, splashed, and romped until his mother was almost crazy for fear he would attract a watersnake or turtle; but the element of fear was not a part of his disposition. he learned to dry, dress, and plume his feathers, and showed such remarkable pride in keeping himself immaculate, that although only a youngster, he was already a bird of such great promise, that many of the feathered inhabitants of the limberlost came to pay him a call. next, the king took him on a long trip around the swamp, and taught him to select the proper places to hunt for worms; how to search under leaves for plant-lice and slugs for meat; which berries were good and safe, and the kind of weeds that bore the most and best seeds. he showed him how to find tiny pebbles to grind his food, and how to sharpen and polish his beak. then he took up the real music lessons, and taught him how to whistle and how to warble and trill. "good cheer! good cheer!" intoned the king. "coo cher! coo cher!" imitated the cardinal. these songs were only studied repetitions, but there was a depth and volume in his voice that gave promise of future greatness, when age should have developed him, and experience awakened his emotions. he was an excellent musician for a youngster. he soon did so well in caring for himself, in finding food and in flight, and grew so big and independent, that he made numerous excursions alone through the limberlost; and so impressive were his proportions, and so aggressive his manner, that he suffered no molestation. in fact, the reign of the king promised to end speedily; but if he feared it he made no sign, and his pride in his wonderful offspring was always manifest. after the cardinal had explored the swamp thoroughly, a longing for a wider range grew upon him; and day after day he lingered around the borders, looking across the wide cultivated fields, almost aching to test his wings in one long, high, wild stretch of flight. a day came when the heat of the late summer set the marsh steaming, and the cardinal, flying close to the borders, caught the breeze from the upland; and the vision of broad fields stretching toward the north so enticed him that he spread his wings, and following the line of trees and fences as much as possible, he made his first journey from home. that day was so delightful it decided his fortunes. it would seem that the swamp, so appreciated by his kindred, should have been sufficient for the cardinal, but it was not. with every mile he winged his flight, came a greater sense of power and strength, and a keener love for the broad sweep of field and forest. his heart bounded with the zest of rocking on the wind, racing through the sunshine, and sailing over the endless panorama of waving corn fields, and woodlands. the heat and closeness of the limberlost seemed a prison well escaped, as on and on he flew in straight untiring flight. crossing a field of half-ripened corn that sloped to the river, the cardinal saw many birds feeding there, so he alighted on a tall tree to watch them. soon he decided that he would like to try this new food. he found a place where a crow had left an ear nicely laid open, and clinging to the husk, as he saw the others do, he stretched to his full height and drove his strong sharp beak into the creamy grain. after the stifling swamp hunting, after the long exciting flight, to rock on this swaying corn and drink the rich milk of the grain, was to the cardinal his first taste of nectar and ambrosia. he lifted his head when he came to the golden kernel, and chipping it in tiny specks, he tasted and approved with all the delight of an epicure in a delicious new dish. perhaps there were other treats in the next field. he decided to fly even farther. but he had gone only a short distance when he changed his course and turned to the south, for below him was a long, shining, creeping thing, fringed with willows, while towering above them were giant sycamore, maple, tulip, and elm trees that caught and rocked with the wind; and the cardinal did not know what it was. filled with wonder he dropped lower and lower. birds were everywhere, many flying over and dipping into it; but its clear creeping silver was a mystery to the cardinal. the beautiful river of poetry and song that the indians first discovered, and later with the french, named ouabache; the winding shining river that logan and me-shin-go-me-sia loved; the only river that could tempt wa-ca-co-nah from the salamonie and mississinewa; the river beneath whose silver sycamores and giant maples chief godfrey pitched his campfires, was never more beautiful than on that perfect autumn day. with his feathers pressed closely, the cardinal alighted on a willow, and leaned to look, quivering with excitement and uttering explosive "chips"; for there he was, face to face with a big redbird that appeared neither peaceful nor timid. he uttered an impudent "chip" of challenge, which, as it left his beak, was flung back to him. the cardinal flared his crest and half lifted his wings, stiffening them at the butt; the bird he was facing did the same. in his surprise he arose to his full height with a dexterous little side step, and the other bird straightened and side-stepped exactly with him. this was too insulting for the cardinal. straining every muscle, he made a dash at the impudent stranger. he struck the water with such force that it splashed above the willows, and a kingfisher, stationed on a stump opposite him, watching the shoals for minnows, saw it. he spread his beak and rolled forth rattling laughter, until his voice reechoed from point to point down the river. the cardinal scarcely knew how he got out, but he had learned a new lesson. that beautiful, shining, creeping thing was water; not thick, tepid, black marsh water, but pure, cool, silver water. he shook his plumage, feeling a degree redder from shame, but he would not be laughed into leaving. he found it too delightful. in a short time he ventured down and took a sip, and it was the first real drink of his life. oh, but it was good! when thirst from the heat and his long flight was quenched, he ventured in for a bath, and that was a new and delightful experience. how he splashed and splashed, and sent the silver drops flying! how he ducked and soaked and cooled in that rippling water, in which he might remain as long as he pleased and splash his fill; for he could see the bottom for a long distance all around, and easily could avoid anything attempting to harm him. he was so wet when his bath was finished he scarcely could reach a bush to dry and dress his plumage. once again in perfect feather, he remembered the bird of the water, and returned to the willow. there in the depths of the shining river the cardinal discovered himself, and his heart swelled big with just pride. was that broad full breast his? where had he seen any other cardinal with a crest so high it waved in the wind? how big and black his eyes were, and his beard was almost as long and crisp as his father's. he spread his wings and gloated on their sweep, and twisted and flirted his tail. he went over his toilet again and dressed every feather on him. he scoured the back of his neck with the butt of his wings, and tucking his head under them, slowly drew it out time after time to polish his crest. he turned and twisted. he rocked and paraded, and every glimpse he caught of his size and beauty filled him with pride. he strutted like a peacock and chattered like a jay. when he could find no further points to admire, something else caught his attention. when he "chipped" there was an answering "chip" across the river; certainly there was no cardinal there, so it must be that he was hearing his own voice as well as seeing himself. selecting a conspicuous perch he sent an incisive "chip!" across the water, and in kind it came back to him. then he "chipped" softly and tenderly, as he did in the limberlost to a favourite little sister who often came and perched beside him in the maple where he slept, and softly and tenderly came the answer. then the cardinal understood. "wheat! wheat! wheat!" he whistled it high, and he whistled it low. "cheer! cheer! cheer!" he whistled it tenderly and sharply and imperiously. "here! here! here!" at this ringing command, every bird, as far as the river carried his voice, came to investigate and remained to admire. over and over he rang every change he could invent. he made a gallant effort at warbling and trilling, and then, with the gladdest heart he ever had known, he burst into ringing song: "good cheer! good cheer! good cheer!" as evening came on he grew restless and uneasy, so he slowly winged his way back to the limberlost; but that day forever spoiled him for a swamp bird. in the night he restlessly ruffled his feathers, and sniffed for the breeze of the meadows. he tasted the corn and the clear water again. he admired his image in the river, and longed for the sound of his voice, until he began murmuring, "wheat! wheat! wheat!" in his sleep. in the earliest dawn a robin awoke him singing, "cheer up! cheer up!" and he answered with a sleepy "cheer! cheer! cheer!" later the robin sang again with exquisite softness and tenderness: "cheer up, dearie! cheer up, dearie! cheer up! cheer up! cheer!" the cardinal, now fully awakened, shouted lustily, "good cheer! good cheer!" and after that it was only a short time until he was on his way toward the shining river. it was better than before, and every following day found him feasting in the corn field and bathing in the shining water; but he always returned to his family at nightfall. when black frosts began to strip the limberlost, and food was almost reduced to dry seed, there came a day on which the king marshalled his followers and gave the magic signal. with dusk he led them southward, mile after mile, until their breath fell short, and their wings ached with unaccustomed flight; but because of the trips to the river, the cardinal was stronger than the others, and he easily kept abreast of the king. in the early morning, even before the robins were awake, the king settled in the everglades. but the cardinal had lost all liking for swamp life, so he stubbornly set out alone, and in a short time he had found another river. it was not quite so delightful as the shining river; but still it was beautiful, and on its gently sloping bank was an orange orchard. there the cardinal rested, and found a winter home after his heart's desire. the following morning, a golden-haired little girl and an old man with snowy locks came hand in hand through the orchard. the child saw the redbird and immediately claimed him, and that same day the edict went forth that a very dreadful time was in store for any one who harmed or even frightened the cardinal. so in security began a series of days that were pure delight. the orchard was alive with insects, attracted by the heavy odours, and slugs infested the bark. feasting was almost as good as in the limberlost, and always there was the river to drink from and to splash in at will. in those days the child and the old man lingered for hours in the orchard, watching the bird that every day seemed to grow bigger and brighter. what a picture his coat, now a bright cardinal red, made against the waxy green leaves! how big and brilliant he seemed as he raced and darted in play among the creamy blossoms! how the little girl stood with clasped hands worshipping him, as with swelling throat he rocked on the highest spray and sang his inspiring chorus over and over: "good cheer! good cheer!" every day they came to watch and listen. they scattered crumbs; and the cardinal grew so friendly that he greeted their coming with a quick "chip! chip!" while the delighted child tried to repeat it after him. soon they became such friends that when he saw them approaching he would call softly "chip! chip!" and then with beady eyes and tilted head await her reply. sometimes a member of his family from the everglades found his way into the orchard, and the cardinal, having grown to feel a sense of proprietorship, resented the intrusion and pursued him like a streak of flame. whenever any straggler had this experience, he returned to the swamp realizing that the cardinal of the orange orchard was almost twice his size and strength, and so startlingly red as to be a wonder. one day a gentle breeze from the north sprang up and stirred the orange branches, wafting the heavy perfume across the land and out to sea, and spread in its stead a cool, delicate, pungent odour. the cardinal lifted his head and whistled an inquiring note. he was not certain, and went on searching for slugs, and predicting happiness in full round notes: "good cheer! good cheer!" again the odour swept the orchard, so strong that this time there was no mistaking it. the cardinal darted to the topmost branch, his crest flaring, his tail twitching nervously. "chip! chip!" he cried with excited insistence, "chip! chip!" the breeze was coming stiffly and steadily now, unlike anything the cardinal ever had known, for its cool breath told of ice-bound fields breaking up under the sun. its damp touch was from the spring showers washing the face of the northland. its subtle odour was the commingling of myriads of unfolding leaves and crisp plants, upspringing; its pungent perfume was the pollen of catkins. up in the land of the limberlost, old mother nature, with strident muttering, had set about her annual house cleaning. with her efficient broom, the march wind, she was sweeping every nook and cranny clean. with her scrub-bucket overflowing with april showers, she was washing the face of all creation, and if these measures failed to produce cleanliness to her satisfaction, she gave a final polish with storms of hail. the shining river was filled to overflowing; breaking up the ice and carrying a load of refuse, it went rolling to the sea. the ice and snow had not altogether gone; but the long-pregnant earth was mothering her children. she cringed at every step, for the ground was teeming with life. bug and worm were working to light and warmth. thrusting aside the mold and leaves above them, spring beauties, hepaticas, and violets lifted tender golden-green heads. the sap was flowing, and leafless trees were covered with swelling buds. delicate mosses were creeping over every stick of decaying timber. the lichens on stone and fence were freshly painted in unending shades of gray and green. myriads of flowers and vines were springing up to cover last year's decaying leaves. "the beautiful uncut hair of graves" was creeping over meadow, spreading beside roadways, and blanketing every naked spot. the limberlost was waking to life even ahead of the fields and the river. through the winter it had been the barest and dreariest of places; but now the earliest signs of returning spring were in its martial music, for when the green hyla pipes, and the bullfrog drums, the bird voices soon join them. the catkins bloomed first; and then, in an incredibly short time, flags, rushes, and vines were like a sea of waving green, and swelling buds were ready to burst. in the upland the smoke was curling over sugar-camp and clearing; in the forests animals were rousing from their long sleep; the shad were starting anew their never-ending journey up the shining river; peeps of green were mantling hilltop and valley; and the northland was ready for its dearest springtime treasures to come home again. from overhead were ringing those first glad notes, caught nearer the throne than those of any other bird, "spring o' year! spring o' year!"; while stilt-legged little killdeers were scudding around the limberlost and beside the river, flinging from cloudland their "kill deer! kill deer!" call. the robins in the orchards were pulling the long dried blades of last year's grass from beneath the snow to line their mud-walled cups; and the bluebirds were at the hollow apple tree. flat on the top rail, the doves were gathering their few coarse sticks and twigs together. it was such a splendid place to set their cradle. the weatherbeaten, rotting old rails were the very colour of the busy dove mother. her red-rimmed eye fitted into the background like a tiny scarlet lichen cup. surely no one would ever see. her! the limberlost and shining river, the fields and forests, the wayside bushes and fences, the stumps, logs, hollow trees, even the bare brown breast of mother earth, were all waiting to cradle their own again; and by one of the untold miracles each would return to its place. there was intoxication in the air. the subtle, pungent, ravishing odours on the wind, of unfolding leaves, ice-water washed plants, and catkin pollen, were an elixir to humanity. the cattle of the field were fairly drunk with it, and herds, dry-fed during the winter, were coming to their first grazing with heads thrown high, romping, bellowing, and racing like wild things. the north wind, sweeping from icy fastnesses, caught this odour of spring, and carried it to the orange orchards and everglades; and at a breath of it, crazed with excitement, the cardinal went flaming through the orchard, for with no one to teach him, he knew what it meant. the call had come. holidays were over. it was time to go home, time to riot in crisp freshness, time to go courting, time to make love, time to possess his own, time for mating and nest-building. all that day he flashed around, nervous with dread of the unknown, and palpitant with delightful expectation; but with the coming of dusk he began his journey northward. when he passed the everglades, he winged his way slowly, and repeatedly sent down a challenging "chip," but there was no answer. then the cardinal knew that the north wind had carried a true message, for the king and his followers were ahead of him on their way to the limberlost. mile after mile, a thing of pulsing fire, he breasted the blue-black night, and it was not so very long until he could discern a flickering patch of darkness sweeping the sky before him. the cardinal flew steadily in a straight sweep, until with a throb of triumph in his heart, he arose in his course, and from far overhead, flung down a boastful challenge to the king and his followers, as he sailed above them and was lost from sight. it was still dusky with the darkness of night when he crossed the limberlost, dropping low enough to see its branches laid bare, to catch a gleam of green in its swelling buds, and to hear the wavering chorus of its frogs. but there was no hesitation in his flight. straight and sure he winged his way toward the shining river; and it was only a few more miles until the rolling waters of its springtime flood caught his eye. dropping precipitately, he plunged his burning beak into the loved water; then he flew into a fine old stag sumac and tucked his head under his wing for a short rest. he had made the long flight in one unbroken sweep, and he was sleepy. in utter content he ruffled his feathers and closed his eyes, for he was beside the shining river; and it would be another season before the orange orchard would ring again with his "good cheer! good cheer!" chapter 2 "wet year! wet year!" prophesied the cardinal the sumac seemed to fill his idea of a perfect location from the very first. he perched on a limb, and between dressing his plumage and pecking at last year's sour dried berries, he sent abroad his prediction. old mother nature verified his wisdom by sending a dashing shower, but he cared not at all for a wetting. he knew how to turn his crimson suit into the most perfect of water-proof coats; so he flattened his crest, sleeked his feathers, and breasting the april downpour, kept on calling for rain. he knew he would appear brighter when it was past, and he seemed to know, too, that every day of sunshine and shower would bring nearer his heart's desire. he was a very beau brummel while he waited. from morning until night he bathed, dressed his feathers, sunned himself, fluffed and flirted. he strutted and "chipped" incessantly. he claimed that sumac for his very own, and stoutly battled for possession with many intruders. it grew on a densely wooded slope, and the shining river went singing between grassy banks, whitened with spring beauties, below it. crowded around it were thickets of papaw, wild grape-vines, thorn, dogwood, and red haw, that attracted bug and insect; and just across the old snake fence was a field of mellow mould sloping to the river, that soon would be plowed for corn, turning out numberless big fat grubs. he was compelled almost hourly to wage battles for his location, for there was something fine about the old stag sumac that attracted homestead seekers. a sober pair of robins began laying their foundations there the morning the cardinal arrived, and a couple of blackbirds tried to take possession before the day had passed. he had little trouble with the robins. they were easily conquered, and with small protest settled a rod up the bank in a wild-plum tree; but the air was thick with "chips," chatter, and red and black feathers, before the blackbirds acknowledged defeat. they were old-timers, and knew about the grubs and the young corn; but they also knew when they were beaten, so they moved down stream to a scrub oak, trying to assure each other that it was the place they really had wanted from the first. the cardinal was left boasting and strutting in the sumac, but in his heart he found it lonesome business. being the son of a king, he was much too dignified to beg for a mate, and besides, it took all his time to guard the sumac; but his eyes were wide open to all that went on around him, and he envied the blackbird his glossy, devoted little sweetheart, with all his might. he almost strained his voice trying to rival the love-song of a skylark that hung among the clouds above a meadow across the river, and poured down to his mate a story of adoring love and sympathy. he screamed a "chip" of such savage jealousy at a pair of killdeer lovers that he sent them scampering down the river bank without knowing that the crime of which they stood convicted was that of being mated when he was not. as for the doves that were already brooding on the line fence beneath the maples, the cardinal was torn between two opinions. he was alone, he was love-sick, and he was holding the finest building location beside the shining river for his mate, and her slowness in coming made their devotion difficult to endure when he coveted a true love; but it seemed to the cardinal that he never could so forget himself as to emulate the example of that dove lover. the dove had no dignity; he was so effusive he was a nuisance. he kept his dignified quaker mate stuffed to discomfort; he clung to the side of the nest trying to help brood until he almost crowded her from the eggs. he pestered her with caresses and cooed over his love-song until every chipmunk on the line fence was familiar with his story. the cardinal's temper was worn to such a fine edge that he darted at the dove one day and pulled a big tuft of feathers from his back. when he had returned to the sumac, he was compelled to admit that his anger lay quite as much in that he had no one to love as because the dove was disgustingly devoted. every morning brought new arrivals--trim young females fresh from their long holiday, and big boastful males appearing their brightest and bravest, each singer almost splitting his throat in the effort to captivate the mate he coveted. they came flashing down the river bank, like rockets of scarlet, gold, blue, and black; rocking on the willows, splashing in the water, bursting into jets of melody, making every possible display of their beauty and music; and at times fighting fiercely when they discovered that the females they were wooing favoured their rivals and desired only to be friendly with them. the heart of the cardinal sank as he watched. there was not a member of his immediate family among them. he pitied himself as he wondered if fate had in store for him the trials he saw others suffering. those dreadful feathered females! how they coquetted! how they flirted! how they sleeked and flattened their plumage, and with half-open beaks and sparkling eyes, hopped closer and closer as if charmed. the eager singers, with swelling throats, sang and sang in a very frenzy of extravagant pleading, but just when they felt sure their little loves were on the point of surrender, a rod distant above the bushes would go streaks of feathers, and there was nothing left but to endure the bitter disappointment, follow them, and begin all over. for the last three days the cardinal had been watching his cousin, rose-breasted grosbeak, make violent love to the most exquisite little female, who apparently encouraged his advances, only to see him left sitting as blue and disconsolate as any human lover, when he discovers that the maid who has coquetted with him for a season belongs to another man. the cardinal flew to the very top of the highest sycamore and looked across country toward the limberlost. should he go there seeking a swamp mate among his kindred? it was not an endurable thought. to be sure, matters were becoming serious. no bird beside the shining river had plumed, paraded, or made more music than he. was it all to be wasted? by this time he confidently had expected results. only that morning he had swelled with pride as he heard mrs. jay tell her quarrelsome husband that she wished she could exchange him for the cardinal. did not the gentle dove pause by the sumac, when she left brooding to take her morning dip in the dust, and gaze at him with unconcealed admiration? no doubt she devoutly wished her plain pudgy husband wore a scarlet coat. but it is praise from one's own sex that is praise indeed, and only an hour ago the lark had reported that from his lookout above cloud he saw no other singer anywhere so splendid as the cardinal of the sumac. because of these things he held fast to his conviction that he was a prince indeed; and he decided to remain in his chosen location and with his physical and vocal attractions compel the finest little cardinal in the fields to seek him. he planned it all very carefully: how she would hear his splendid music and come to take a peep at him; how she would be captivated by his size and beauty; how she would come timidly, but come, of course, for his approval; how he would condescend to accept her if she pleased him in all particulars; how she would be devoted to him; and how she would approve his choice of a home, for the sumac was in a lovely spot for scenery, as well as nest-building. for several days he had boasted, he had bantered, he had challenged, he had on this last day almost condescended to coaxing, but not one little bright-eyed cardinal female had come to offer herself. the performance of a brown thrush drove him wild with envy. the thrush came gliding up the river bank, a rusty-coated, sneaking thing of the underbrush, and taking possession of a thorn bush just opposite the sumac, he sang for an hour in the open. there was no way to improve that music. it was woven fresh from the warp and woof of his fancy. it was a song so filled with the joy and gladness of spring, notes so thrilled with love's pleading and passion's tender pulsing pain, that at its close there were a half-dozen admiring thrush females gathered around. with care and deliberation the brown thrush selected the most attractive, and she followed him to the thicket as if charmed. it was the cardinal's dream materialized for another before his very eyes, and it filled him with envy. if that plain brown bird that slinked as if he had a theft to account for, could, by showing himself and singing for an hour, win a mate, why should not he, the most gorgeous bird of the woods, openly flaunting his charms and discoursing his music, have at least equal success? should he, the proudest, most magnificent of cardinals, be compelled to go seeking a mate like any common bird? perish the thought! he went to the river to bathe. after finding a spot where the water flowed crystal-clear over a bed of white limestone, he washed until he felt that he could be no cleaner. then the cardinal went to his favourite sun-parlour, and stretching on a limb, he stood his feathers on end, and sunned, fluffed and prinked until he was immaculate. on the tip-top antler of the old stag sumac, he perched and strained until his jetty whiskers appeared stubby. he poured out a tumultuous cry vibrant with every passion raging in him. he caught up his own rolling echoes and changed and varied them. he improvised, and set the shining river ringing, "wet year! wet year!" he whistled and whistled until all birdland and even mankind heard, for the farmer paused at his kitchen door, with his pails of foaming milk, and called to his wife: "hear that, maria! jest hear it! i swanny, if that bird doesn't stop predictin' wet weather, i'll get so scared i won't durst put in my corn afore june. they's some birds like killdeers an' bobwhites 'at can make things pretty plain, but i never heard a bird 'at could jest speak words out clear an' distinct like that fellow. seems to come from the river bottom. b'lieve i'll jest step down that way an' see if the lower field is ready for the plow yet." "abram johnson," said his wife, "bein's you set up for an honest man, if you want to trapse through slush an' drizzle a half-mile to see a bird, why say so, but don't for land's sake lay it on to plowin' 'at you know in all conscience won't be ready for a week yet 'thout pretendin' to look." abram grinned sheepishly. "i'm willin' to call it the bird if you are, maria. i've been hearin' him from the barn all day, an' there's somethin' kind o' human in his notes 'at takes me jest a little diffrunt from any other bird i ever noticed. i'm really curious to set eyes on him. seemed to me from his singin' out to the barn, it 'ud be mighty near like meetin' folks." "bosh!" exclaimed maria. "i don't s'pose he sings a mite better 'an any other bird. it's jest the old wabash rollin' up the echoes. a bird singin' beside the river always sounds twicet as fine as one on the hills. i've knowed that for forty year. chances are 'at he'll be gone 'fore you get there." as abram opened the door, "wet year! wet year!" pealed the flaming prophet. he went out, closing the door softly, and with an utter disregard for the corn field, made a bee line for the musician. "i don't know as this is the best for twinges o' rheumatiz," he muttered, as he turned up his collar and drew his old hat lower to keep the splashing drops from his face. "i don't jest rightly s'pose i should go; but i'm free to admit i'd as lief be dead as not to answer when i get a call, an' the fact is, i'm _called_ down beside the river." "wet year! wet year!" rolled the cardinal's prediction. "thanky, old fellow! glad to hear you! didn't jest need the information, but i got my bearin's rightly from it! i can about pick out your bush, an' it's well along towards evenin', too, an' must be mighty near your bedtime. looks as if you might be stayin' round these parts! i'd like it powerful well if you'd settle right here, say 'bout where you are. an' where are you, anyway?" abram went peering and dodging beside the fence, peeping into the bushes, searching for the bird. suddenly there was a whir of wings and a streak of crimson. "scared you into the next county, i s'pose," he muttered. but it came nearer being a scared man than a frightened bird, for the cardinal flashed straight toward him until only a few yards away, and then, swaying on a bush, it chipped, cheered, peeked, whistled broken notes, and manifested perfect delight at the sight of the white-haired old man. abram stared in astonishment. "lord a'mighty!" he gasped. "big as a blackbird, red as a live coal, an' a-comin' right at me. you are somebody's pet, that's what you are! an' no, you ain't either. settin' on a sawed stick in a little wire house takes all the ginger out of any bird, an' their feathers are always mussy. inside o' a cage never saw you, for they ain't a feather out o' place on you. you are finer'n a piece o' red satin. an' you got that way o' swingin' an' dancin' an' high-steppin' right out in god a'mighty's big woods, a teeterin' in the wind, an' a dartin' 'crost the water. cage never touched you! but you are somebody's pet jest the same. an' i look like the man, an' you are tryin' to tell me so, by gum!" leaning toward abram, the cardinal turned his head from side to side, and peered, "chipped," and waited for an answering "chip" from a little golden-haired child, but there was no way for the man to know that. "it's jest as sure as fate," he said. "you think you know me, an' you are tryin' to tell me somethin'. wish to land i knowed what you want! are you tryin' to tell me `howdy'? well, i don't 'low nobody to be politer 'an i am, so far as i know." abram lifted his old hat, and the raindrops glistened on his white hair. he squared his shoulders and stood very erect. "howdy, mr. redbird! how d'ye find yerself this evenin'? i don't jest riccolict ever seein' you before, but i'll never meet you agin 'thout knowin' you. when d'you arrive? come through by the special midnight flyer, did you? well, you never was more welcome any place in your life. i'd give a right smart sum this minnit if you'd say you came to settle on this river bank. how do you like it? to my mind it's jest as near paradise as you'll strike on earth. "old wabash is a twister for curvin' and windin' round, an' it's limestone bed half the way, an' the water's as pretty an' clear as in maria's springhouse. an' as for trimmin', why say, mr. redbird, i'll jest leave it to you if she ain't all trimmed up like a woman's spring bunnit. look at the grass a-creepin' right down till it's a trailin' in the water! did you ever see jest quite such fine fringy willers? an' you wait a little, an' the flowerin' mallows 'at grows long the shinin' old river are fine as garden hollyhocks. maria says 'at they'd be purtier 'an hers if they were only double; but, lord, mr. redbird, they are! see 'em once on the bank, an' agin in the water! an' back a little an' there's jest thickets of papaw, an' thorns, an' wild grape-vines, an' crab, an' red an' black haw, an' dogwood, an' sumac, an' spicebush, an' trees! lord! mr. redbird, the sycamores, an' maples, an' tulip, an' ash, an' elm trees are so bustin' fine 'long the old wabash they put 'em into poetry books an' sing songs about 'em. what do you think o' that? jest back o' you a little there's a sycamore split into five trunks, any one o' them a famous big tree, tops up 'mong the clouds, an' roots diggin' under the old river; an' over a little farther's a maple 'at's eight big trees in one. most anything you can name, you can find it 'long this ole wabash, if you only know where to hunt for it. "they's mighty few white men takes the trouble to look, but the indians used to know. they'd come canoein' an' fishin' down the river an' camp under these very trees, an' ma 'ud git so mad at the old squaws. settlers wasn't so thick then, an' you had to be mighty careful not to rile 'em, an' they'd come a-trapesin' with their wild berries. woods full o' berries! anybody could get 'em by the bushel for the pickin', an' we hadn't got on to raisin' much wheat, an' had to carry it on horses over into ohio to get it milled. took pa five days to make the trip; an' then the blame old squaws 'ud come, an' ma 'ud be compelled to hand over to 'em her big white loaves. jest about set her plumb crazy. used to get up in the night, an' fix her yeast, an' bake, an' let the oven cool, an' hide the bread out in the wheat bin, an' get the smell of it all out o' the house by good daylight, so's 'at she could say there wasn't a loaf in the cabin. oh! if it's good pickin' you're after, they's berries for all creation 'long the river yet; an' jest wait a few days till old april gets done showerin' an' i plow this corn field!" abram set a foot on the third rail and leaned his elbows on the top. the cardinal chipped delightedly and hopped and tilted closer. "i hadn't jest 'lowed all winter i'd tackle this field again. i've turned it every spring for forty year. bought it when i was a young fellow, jest married to maria. shouldered a big debt on it; but i always loved these slopin' fields, an' my share of this old wabash hasn't been for sale nor tradin' any time this past forty year. i've hung on to it like grim death, for it's jest that much o' paradise i'm plumb sure of. first time i plowed this field, mr. redbird, i only hit the high places. jest married maria, an' i didn't touch earth any too frequent all that summer. i've plowed it every year since, an' i've been 'lowin' all this winter, when the rheumatiz was gettin' in its work, 'at i'd give it up this spring an' turn it to medder; but i don't know. once i got started, b'lieve i could go it all right an' not feel it so much, if you'd stay to cheer me up a little an' post me on the weather. hate the doggondest to own i'm worsted, an' if you say it's stay, b'lieve i'll try it. very sight o' you kinder warms the cockles o' my heart all up, an' every skip you take sets me a-wantin' to be jumpin', too. "what on earth are you lookin' for? man! i b'lieve it's grub! somebody's been feedin' you! an' you want me to keep it up? well, you struck it all right, mr. redbird. feed you? you bet i will! you needn't even 'rastle for grubs if you don't want to. like as not you're feelin' hungry right now, pickin' bein' so slim these airly days. land's sake! i hope you don't feel you've come too soon. i'll fetch you everything on the place it's likely a redbird ever teched, airly in the mornin' if you'll say you'll stay an' wave your torch 'long my river bank this summer. i haven't a scrap about me now. yes, i have, too! here's a handful o' corn i was takin' to the banty rooster; but shucks! he's fat as a young shoat now. corn's a leetle big an' hard for you. mebby i can split it up a mite." abram took out his jack-knife, and dotting a row of grains along the top rail, he split and shaved them down as fine as possible; and as he reached one end of the rail, the cardinal, with a spasmodic "chip!" dashed down and snatched a particle from the other, and flashed back to the bush, tested, approved, and chipped his thanks. "pshaw now!" said abram, staring wide-eyed. "doesn't that beat you? so you really are a pet? best kind of a pet in the whole world, too! makin' everybody, at sees you happy, an' havin' some chance to be happy yourself. an' i look like your friend? well! well! i'm monstrous willin' to adopt you if you'll take me; an', as for feedin', from to-morrow on i'll find time to set your little table 'long this same rail every day. i s'pose maria 'ull say 'at i'm gone plumb crazy; but, for that matter, if i ever get her down to see you jest once, the trick's done with her, too, for you're the prettiest thing god ever made in the shape of a bird, 'at i ever saw. look at that topknot a wavin' in the wind! maybe praise to the face is open disgrace; but i'll take your share an' mine, too, an' tell you right here an' now 'at you're the blamedest prettiest thing 'at i ever saw. "but lord! you ortn't be so careless! don't you know you ain't nothin' but jest a target? why don't you keep out o' sight a little? you come a-shinneyin' up to nine out o' ten men 'long the river like this, an' your purty, coaxin', palaverin' way won't save a feather on you. you'll get the little red heart shot plumb outen your little red body, an' that's what you'll get. it's a dratted shame! an' there's law to protect you, too. they's a good big fine for killin' such as you, but nobody seems to push it. every fool wants to test his aim, an' you're the brightest thing on the river bank for a mark. "well, if you'll stay right where you are, it 'ull be a sorry day for any cuss 'at teches you; 'at i'll promise you, mr. redbird. this land's mine, an' if you locate on it, you're mine till time to go back to that other old fellow 'at looks like me. wonder if he's any willinger to feed you an' stand up for you 'an i am?" "here! here! here!" whistled the cardinal. "well, i'm mighty glad if you're sayin' you'll stay! guess it will be all right if you don't meet some o' them limberlost hens an' tole off to the swamp. lord! the limberlost ain't to be compared with the river, mr. redbird. you're foolish if you go! talkin' 'bout goin', i must be goin' myself, or maria will be comin' down the line fence with the lantern; an', come to think of it, i'm a little moist, not to say downright damp. but then you _warned_ me, didn't you, old fellow? well, i told maria seein' you 'ud be like meetin' folks, an' it has been. good deal more'n i counted on, an' i've talked more'n i have in a whole year. hardly think now 'at i've the reputation o' being a mighty quiet fellow, would you?" abram straightened and touched his hat brim in a trim half military salute. "well, good-bye, mr. redbird. never had more pleasure meetin' anybody in my life 'cept first time i met maria. you think about the plowin', an', if you say `stay,' it's a go! good-bye; an' do be a little more careful o' yourself. see you in the mornin', right after breakfast, no count taken o' the weather." "wet year! wet year!" called the cardinal after his retreating figure. abram turned and gravely saluted the second time. the cardinal went to the top rail and feasted on the sweet grains of corn until his craw was full, and then nestled in the sumac and went to sleep. early next morning he was abroad and in fine toilet, and with a full voice from the top of the sumac greeted the day--"wet year! wet year!" far down the river echoed his voice until it so closely resembled some member of his family replying that he followed, searching the banks mile after mile on either side, until finally he heard voices of his kind. he located them, but it was only several staid old couples, a long time mated, and busy with their nest-building. the cardinal returned to the sumac, feeling a degree lonelier than ever. he decided to prospect in the opposite direction, and taking wing, he started up the river. following the channel, he winged his flight for miles over the cool sparkling water, between the tangle of foliage bordering the banks. when he came to the long cumbrous structures of wood with which men had bridged the river, where the shuffling feet of tired farm horses raised clouds of dust and set the echoes rolling with their thunderous hoof beats, he was afraid; and rising high, he sailed over them in short broken curves of flight. but where giant maple and ash, leaning, locked branches across the channel in one of old mother nature's bridges for the squirrels, he knew no fear, and dipped so low beneath them that his image trailed a wavering shadow on the silver path he followed. he rounded curve after curve, and frequently stopping on a conspicuous perch, flung a ringing challenge in the face of the morning. with every mile the way he followed grew more beautiful. the river bed was limestone, and the swiftly flowing water, clear and limpid. the banks were precipitate in some places, gently sloping in others, and always crowded with a tangle of foliage. at an abrupt curve in the river he mounted to the summit of a big ash and made boastful prophecy, "wet year! wet year!" and on all sides there sprang up the voices of his kind. startled, the cardinal took wing. he followed the river in a circling flight until he remembered that here might be the opportunity to win the coveted river mate, and going slower to select the highest branch on which to display his charms, he discovered that he was only a few yards from the ash from which he had made his prediction. the cardinal flew over the narrow neck and sent another call, then without awaiting a reply, again he flashed up the river and circled horseshoe bend. when he came to the same ash for the third time, he understood. the river circled in one great curve. the cardinal mounted to the tip-top limb of the ash and looked around him. there was never a fairer sight for the eye of man or bird. the mist and shimmer of early spring were in the air. the wabash rounded horseshoe bend in a silver circle, rimmed by a tangle of foliage bordering both its banks; and inside lay a low open space covered with waving marsh grass and the blue bloom of sweet calamus. scattered around were mighty trees, but conspicuous above any, in the very center, was a giant sycamore, split at its base into three large trees, whose waving branches seemed to sweep the face of heaven, and whose roots, like miserly fingers, clutched deep into the black muck of rainbow bottom. it was in this lovely spot that the rainbow at last materialized, and at its base, free to all humanity who cared to seek, the great alchemist had left his rarest treasures--the gold of sunshine, diamond water-drops, emerald foliage, and sapphire sky. for good measure, there were added seeds, berries, and insects for the birds; and wild flowers, fruit, and nuts for the children. above all, the sycamore waved its majestic head. it made a throne that seemed suitable for the son of the king; and mounting to its topmost branch, for miles the river carried his challenge: "ho, cardinals! look this way! behold me! have you seen any other of so great size? have you any to equal my grace? who can whistle so loud, so clear, so compelling a note? who will fly to me for protection? who will come and be my mate?" he flared his crest high, swelled his throat with rolling notes, and appeared so big and brilliant that among the many cardinals that had gathered to hear, there was not one to compare with him. black envy filled their hearts. who was this flaming dashing stranger, flaunting himself in the faces of their females? there were many unmated cardinals in rainbow bottom, and many jealous males. a second time the cardinal, rocking and flashing, proclaimed himself; and there was a note of feminine approval so strong that he caught it. tilting on a twig, his crest flared to full height, his throat swelled to bursting, his heart too big for his body, the cardinal shouted his challenge for the third time; when clear and sharp arose a cry in answer, "here! here! here!" it came from a female that had accepted the caresses of the brightest cardinal in rainbow bottom only the day before, and had spent the morning carrying twigs to a thicket of red haws. the cardinal, with a royal flourish, sprang in air to seek her; but her outraged mate was ahead of him, and with a scream she fled, leaving a tuft of feathers in her mate's beak. in turn the cardinal struck him like a flashing rocket, and then red war waged in rainbow bottom. the females scattered for cover with all their might. the cardinal worked in a kiss on one poor little bird, too frightened to escape him; then the males closed in, and serious business began. the cardinal would have enjoyed a fight vastly with two or three opponents; but a half-dozen made discretion better than valour. he darted among them, scattering them right and left, and made for the sycamore. with all his remaining breath, he insolently repeated his challenge; and then headed down stream for the sumac with what grace he could command. there was an hour of angry recrimination before sweet peace brooded again in rainbow bottom. the newly mated pair finally made up; the females speedily resumed their coquetting, and forgot the captivating stranger--all save the poor little one that had been kissed by accident. she never had been kissed before, and never had expected that she would be, for she was a creature of many misfortunes of every nature. she had been hatched from a fifth egg to begin with; and every one knows the disadvantage of beginning life with four sturdy older birds on top of one. it was a meager egg, and a feeble baby that pipped its shell. the remainder of the family stood and took nearly all the food so that she almost starved in the nest, and she never really knew the luxury of a hearty meal until her elders had flown. that lasted only a few days; for the others went then, and their parents followed them so far afield that the poor little soul, clamouring alone in the nest, almost perished. hunger-driven, she climbed to the edge and exercised her wings until she managed some sort of flight to a neighbouring bush. she missed the twig and fell to the ground, where she lay cold and shivering. she cried pitifully, and was almost dead when a brown-faced, barefoot boy, with a fishing-pole on his shoulder, passed and heard her. "poor little thing, you are almost dead," he said. "i know what i'll do with you. i'll take you over and set you in the bushes where i heard those other redbirds, and then your ma will feed you." the boy turned back and carefully set her on a limb close to one of her brothers, and there she got just enough food to keep her alive. so her troubles continued. once a squirrel chased her, and she saved herself by crowding into a hole so small her pursuer could not follow. the only reason she escaped a big blue racer when she went to take her first bath, was that a hawk had his eye on the snake and snapped it up at just the proper moment to save the poor, quivering little bird. she was left so badly frightened that she could not move for a long time. all the tribulations of birdland fell to her lot. she was so frail and weak she lost her family in migration, and followed with some strangers that were none too kind. life in the south had been full of trouble. once a bullet grazed her so closely she lost two of her wing quills, and that made her more timid than ever. coming north, she had given out again and finally had wandered into rainbow bottom, lost and alone. she was such a shy, fearsome little body, the females all flouted her; and the males never seemed to notice that there was material in her for a very fine mate. every other female cardinal in rainbow bottom had several males courting her, but this poor, frightened, lonely one had never a suitor; and she needed love so badly! now she had been kissed by this magnificent stranger! of course, she knew it really was not her kiss. he had intended it for the bold creature that had answered his challenge, but since it came to her, it was hers, in a way, after all. she hid in the underbrush for the remainder of the day, and was never so frightened in all her life. she brooded over it constantly, and morning found her at the down curve of the horseshoe, straining her ears for the rarest note she ever had heard. all day she hid and waited, and the following days were filled with longing, but he never came again. so one morning, possessed with courage she did not understand, and filled with longing that drove her against her will, she started down the river. for miles she sneaked through the underbrush, and watched and listened; until at last night came, and she returned to rainbow bottom. the next morning she set out early and flew to the spot from which she had turned back the night before. from there she glided through the bushes and underbrush, trembling and quaking, yet pushing stoutly onward, straining her ears for some note of the brilliant stranger's. it was mid-forenoon when she reached the region of the sumac, and as she hopped warily along, only a short distance from her, full and splendid, there burst the voice of the singer for whom she was searching. she sprang into air, and fled a mile before she realized that she was flying. then she stopped and listened, and rolling with the river, she heard those bold true tones. close to earth, she went back again, to see if, unobserved, she could find a spot where she might watch the stranger that had kissed her. when at last she reached a place where she could see him plainly, his beauty was so bewildering, and his song so enticing that she gradually hopped closer and closer without knowing she was moving. high in the sumac the cardinal had sung until his throat was parched, and the fountain of hope was almost dry. there was nothing save defeat from overwhelming numbers in rainbow bottom. he had paraded, and made all the music he ever had been taught, and improvised much more. yet no one had come to seek him. was it of necessity to be the limberlost then? this one day more he would retain his dignity and his location. he tipped, tilted, and flirted. he whistled, and sang, and trilled. over the lowland and up and down the shining river, ringing in every change he could invent, he sent for the last time his prophetic message, "wet year! wet year!" chapter 3 "come here! come here!" entreated the cardinal he felt that his music was not reaching his standard as he burst into this new song. he was almost discouraged. no way seemed open to him but flight to the limberlost, and he so disdained the swamp that love-making would lose something of its greatest charm if he were driven there for a mate. the time seemed ripe for stringent measures, and the cardinal was ready to take them; but how could he stringently urge a little mate that would not come on his imploring invitations? he listlessly pecked at the berries and flung abroad an inquiring "chip!" with just an atom of hope, he frequently mounted to his choir-loft and issued an order that savoured far more of a plea, "come here! come here!" and then, leaning, he listened intently to the voice of the river, lest he fail to catch the faintest responsive "chook!" it might bear. he could hear the sniffling of carp wallowing beside the bank. a big pickerel slashed around, breakfasting on minnows. opposite the sumac, the black bass, with gamy spring, snapped up, before it struck the water, every luckless, honey-laden insect that fell from the feast of sweets in a blossom-whitened wild crab. the sharp bark of the red squirrel and the low of cattle, lazily chewing their cuds among the willows, came to him. the hammering of a woodpecker on a dead sycamore, a little above him, rolled to his straining ears like a drum beat. the cardinal hated the woodpecker more than he disliked the dove. it was only foolishly effusive, but the woodpecker was a veritable bluebeard. the cardinal longed to pull the feathers from his back until it was as red as his head, for the woodpecker had dressed his suit in finest style, and with dulcet tones and melting tenderness had gone acourting. sweet as the dove's had been his wooing, and one more pang the lonely cardinal had suffered at being forced to witness his felicity; yet scarcely had his plump, amiable little mate consented to his caresses and approved the sycamore, before he turned on her, pecked her severely, and pulled a tuft of plumage from her breast. there was not the least excuse for this tyrannical action; and the sight filled the cardinal with rage. he fully expected to see madam woodpecker divorce herself and flee her new home, and he most earnestly hoped that she would; but she did no such thing. she meekly flattened her feathers, hurried work in a lively manner, and tried in every way to anticipate and avert her mate's displeasure. under this treatment he grew more abusive, and now madam woodpecker dodged every time she came within his reach. it made the cardinal feel so vengeful that he longed to go up and drum the sycamore with the woodpecker's head until he taught him how to treat his mate properly. there was plently of lark music rolling with the river, and that morning brought the first liquid golden notes of the orioles. they had arrived at dawn, and were overjoyed with their homecoming, for they were darting from bank to bank singing exquisitely on wing. there seemed no end to the bird voices that floated with the river, and yet there was no beginning to the one voice for which the cardinal waited with passionate longing. the oriole's singing was so inspiring that it tempted the cardinal to another effort, and perching where he gleamed crimson and black against the april sky, he tested his voice, and when sure of his tones, he entreatingly called: "come here! come here!" just then he saw her! she came daintily over the earth, soft as down before the wind, a rosy flush suffusing her plumage, a coral beak, her very feet pink--the shyest, most timid little thing alive. her bright eyes were popping with fear, and down there among the ferns, anemones and last year's dried leaves, she tilted her sleek crested head and peered at him with frightened wonder and silent helplessness. it was for this the cardinal had waited, hoped, and planned for many days. he had rehearsed what he conceived to be every point of the situation, and yet he was not prepared for the thing that suddenly happened to him. he had expected to reject many applicants before he selected one to match his charms; but instantly this shy little creature, slipping along near earth, taking a surreptitious peep at him, made him feel a very small bird, and he certainly never before had felt small. the crushing possibility that somewhere there might be a cardinal that was larger, brighter, and a finer musician than he, staggered him; and worst of all, his voice broke suddenly to his complete embarrassment. half screened by the flowers, she seemed so little, so shy, so delightfully sweet. he "chipped" carefully once or twice to steady himself and clear his throat, for unaccountably it had grown dry and husky; and then he tenderly tried again. "come here! come here!" implored the cardinal. he forgot all about his dignity. he knew that his voice was trembling with eagerness and hoarse with fear. he was afraid to attempt approaching her, but he leaned toward her, begging and pleading. he teased and insisted, and he did not care a particle if he did. it suddenly seemed an honour to coax her. he rocked on the limb. he side-stepped and hopped and gyrated gracefully. he fluffed and flirted and showed himself to every advantage. it never occurred to him that the dove and the woodpecker might be watching, though he would not have cared in the least if they had been; and as for any other cardinal, he would have attacked the combined forces of the limberlost and rainbow bottom. he sang and sang. every impulse of passion in his big, crimson, palpitating body was thrown into those notes; but she only turned her head from side to side, peering at him, seeming sufficiently frightened to flee at a breath, and answered not even the faintest little "chook!" of encouragement. the cardinal rested a second before he tried again. that steadied him and gave him better command of himself. he could tell that his notes were clearing and growing sweeter. he was improving. perhaps she was interested. there was some encouragement in the fact that she was still there. the cardinal felt that his time had come. "come here! come here!" he was on his mettle now. surely no cardinal could sing fuller, clearer, sweeter notes! he began at the very first, and rollicked through a story of adventure, colouring it with every wild, dashing, catchy note he could improvise. he followed that with a rippling song of the joy and fulness of spring, in notes as light and airy as the wind-blown soul of melody, and with swaying body kept time to his rhythmic measures. then he glided into a song of love, and tenderly, pleadingly, passionately, told the story as only a courting bird can tell it. then he sang a song of ravishment; a song quavering with fear and the pain tugging at his heart. he almost had run the gamut, and she really appeared as if she intended to flee rather than to come to him. he was afraid to take even one timid little hop toward her. in a fit of desperation the cardinal burst into the passion song. he arose to his full height, leaned toward her with outspread quivering wings, and crest flared to the utmost, and rocking from side to side in the intensity of his fervour, he poured out a perfect torrent of palpitant song. his cardinal body swayed to the rolling flood of his ecstatic tones, until he appeared like a flaming pulsing note of materialized music, as he entreated, coaxed, commanded, and pled. from sheer exhaustion, he threw up his head to round off the last note he could utter, and breathlessly glancing down to see if she were coming, caught sight of a faint streak of gray in the distance. he had planned so to subdue the little female he courted that she would come to him; he was in hot pursuit a half day's journey away before he remembered it. no other cardinal ever endured such a chase as she led him in the following days. through fear and timidity she had kept most of her life in the underbrush. the cardinal was a bird of the open fields and tree-tops. he loved to rock with the wind, and speed arrow-like in great plunges of flight. this darting and twisting over logs, among leaves, and through tangled thickets, tired, tried, and exasperated him more than hundreds of miles of open flight. sometimes he drove her from cover, and then she wildly dashed up-hill and down-dale, seeking another thicket; but wherever she went, the cardinal was only a breath behind her, and with every passing mile his passion for her grew. there was no time to eat, bathe, or sing; only mile after mile of unceasing pursuit. it seemed that the little creature could not stop if she would, and as for the cardinal, he was in that chase to remain until his last heart-beat. it was a question how the frightened bird kept in advance. she was visibly the worse for this ardent courtship. two tail feathers were gone, and there was a broken one beating from her wing. once she had flown too low, striking her head against a rail until a drop of blood came, and she cried pitifully. several times the cardinal had cornered her, and tried to hold her by a bunch of feathers, and compel her by force to listen to reason; but she only broke from his hold and dashed away a stricken thing, leaving him half dead with longing and remorse. but no matter how baffled she grew, or where she fled in her headlong flight, the one thing she always remembered, was not to lead the cardinal into the punishment that awaited him in rainbow bottom. panting for breath, quivering with fear, longing for well-concealed retreats, worn and half blinded by the disasters of flight through strange country, the tired bird beat her aimless way; but she would have been torn to pieces before she would have led her magnificent pursuer into the wrath of his enemies. poor little feathered creature! she had been fleeing some kind of danger all her life. she could not realize that love and protection had come in this splendid guise, and she fled on and on. once the cardinal, aching with passion and love, fell behind that she might rest, and before he realized that another bird was close, an impudent big relative of his, straying from the limberlost, entered the race and pursued her so hotly that with a note of utter panic she wheeled and darted back to the cardinal for protection. when to the rush of rage that possessed him at the sight of a rival was added the knowledge that she was seeking him in her extremity, such a mighty wave of anger swept the cardinal that he appeared twice his real size. like a flaming brand of vengeance he struck that limberlost upstart, and sent him rolling to earth, a mass of battered feathers. with beak and claw he made his attack, and when he so utterly demolished his rival that he hopped away trembling, with dishevelled plumage stained with his own blood, the cardinal remembered his little love and hastened back, confidently hoping for his reward. she was so securely hidden, that although he went searching, calling, pleading, he found no trace of her the remainder of that day. the cardinal almost went distracted; and his tender imploring cries would have moved any except a panic-stricken bird. he did not even know in what direction to pursue her. night closed down, and found him in a fever of love-sick fear, but it brought rest and wisdom. she could not have gone very far. she was too worn. he would not proclaim his presence. soon she would suffer past enduring for food and water. he hid in the willows close where he had lost her, and waited with what patience he could; and it was a wise plan. shortly after dawn, moving stilly as the break of day, trembling with fear, she came slipping to the river for a drink. it was almost brutal cruelty, but her fear must be overcome someway; and with a cry of triumph the cardinal, in a plunge of flight, was beside her. she gave him one stricken look, and dashed away. the chase began once more and continued until she was visibly breaking. there was no room for a rival that morning. the cardinal flew abreast of her and gave her a caress or attempted a kiss whenever he found the slightest chance. she was almost worn out, her flights were wavering and growing shorter. the cardinal did his utmost. if she paused to rest, he crept close as he dared, and piteously begged: "come here! come here!" when she took wing, he so dexterously intercepted her course that several time she found refuge in his sumac without realizing where she was. when she did that, he perched just as closely as he dared; and while they both rested, he sang to her a soft little whispered love song, deep in his throat; and with every note he gently edged nearer. she turned her head from him, and although she was panting for breath and palpitant with fear, the cardinal knew that he dared not go closer, or she would dash away like the wild thing she was. the next time she took wing, she found him so persistently in her course that she turned sharply and fled panting to the sumac. when this had happened so often that she seemed to recognize the sumac as a place of refuge, the cardinal slipped aside and spent all his remaining breath in an exultant whistle of triumph, for now he was beginning to see his way. he dashed into mid-air, and with a gyration that would have done credit to a flycatcher, he snapped up a gadfly that should have been more alert. with a tender "chip!" from branch to branch, slowly, cautiously, he came with it. because he was half starved himself, he knew that she must be almost famished. holding it where she could see, he hopped toward her, eagerly, carefully, the gadfly in his beak, his heart in his mouth. he stretched his neck and legs to the limit as he reached the fly toward her. what matter that she took it with a snap, and plunged a quarter of a mile before eating it? she had taken food from him! that was the beginning. cautiously he impelled her toward the sumac, and with untiring patience kept her there the remainder of the day. he carried her every choice morsel he could find in the immediate vicinity of the sumac, and occasionally she took a bit from his beak, though oftenest he was compelled to lay it on a limb beside her. at dusk she repeatedly dashed toward the underbrush; but the cardinal, with endless patience and tenderness, maneuvered her to the sumac, until she gave up, and beneath the shelter of a neighbouring grapevine, perched on a limb that was the cardinal's own chosen resting-place, tucked her tired head beneath her wing, and went to rest. when she was soundly sleeping, the cardinal crept as closely as he dared, and with one eye on his little gray love, and the other roving for any possible danger, he spent a night of watching for any danger that might approach. he was almost worn out; but this was infinitely better than the previous night, at any rate, for now he not only knew where she was, but she was fast asleep in his own favourite place. huddled on the limb, the cardinal gloated over her. he found her beauty perfect. to be sure, she was dishevelled; but she could make her toilet. there were a few feathers gone; but they would grow speedily. she made a heart-satisfying picture, on which the cardinal feasted his love-sick soul, by the light of every straying moonbeam that slid around the edges of the grape leaves. wave after wave of tender passion shook him. in his throat half the night he kept softly calling to her: "come here! come here!" next morning, when the robins announced day beside the shining river, she awoke with a start; but before she could decide in which direction to fly, she discovered a nice fresh grub laid on the limb close to her, and very sensibly remained for breakfast. then the cardinal went to the river and bathed. he made such delightful play of it, and the splash of the water sounded so refreshing to the tired draggled bird, that she could not resist venturing for a few dips. when she was wet she could not fly well, and he improved the opportunity to pull her broken quills, help her dress herself, and bestow a few extra caresses. he guided her to his favourite place for a sun bath; and followed the farmer's plow in the corn field until he found a big sweet beetle. he snapped off its head, peeled the stiff wing shields, and daintily offered it to her. he was so delighted when she took it from his beak, and remained in the sumac to eat it, that he established himself on an adjoining thorn-bush, where the snowy blossoms of a wild morning-glory made a fine background for his scarlet coat. he sang the old pleading song as he never had sung it before, for now there was a tinge of hope battling with the fear in his heart. over and over he sang, rounding, fulling, swelling every note, leaning toward her in coaxing tenderness, flashing his brilliant beauty as he swayed and rocked, for her approval; and all that he had suffered and all that he hoped for was in his song. just when his heart was growing sick within him, his straining ear caught the faintest, most timid call a lover ever answered. only one imploring, gentle "chook!" from the sumac! his song broke in a suffocating burst of exultation. cautiously he hopped from twig to twig toward her. with tender throaty murmurings he slowly edged nearer, and wonder of wonders! with tired eyes and quivering wings, she reached him her beak for a kiss. at dinner that day, the farmer said to his wife: "maria, if you want to hear the prettiest singin', an' see the cutest sight you ever saw, jest come down along the line fence an' watch the antics o' that redbird we been hearin'" "i don't know as redbirds are so scarce 'at i've any call to wade through slush a half-mile to see one," answered maria. "footin's pretty good along the line fence," said abram, "an' you never saw a redbird like this fellow. he's as big as any two common ones. he's so red every bush he lights on looks like it was afire. it's past all question, he's been somebody's pet, an' he's taken me for the man. i can get in six feet of him easy. he's the finest bird i ever set eyes on; an' as for singin', he's dropped the weather, an' he's askin' folks to his housewarmin' to-day. he's been there alone for a week, an' his singin's been first-class; but to-day he's picked up a mate, an' he's as tickled as ever i was. i am really consarned for fear he'll burst himself." maria sniffed. "course, don't come if you're tired, honey," said the farmer. "i thought maybe you'd enjoy it. he's a-doin' me a power o' good. my joints are limbered up till i catch myself pretty near runnin', on the up furrow, an' then, down towards the fence, i go slow so's to stay near him as long as i can." maria stared. "abram johnson, have you gone daft?" she demanded. abram chuckled. "not a mite dafter'n you'll be, honey, once you set eyes on the fellow. better come, if you can. you're invited. he's askin' the whole endurin' country to come." maria said nothing more; but she mentally decided she had no time to fool with a bird, when there were housekeeping and spring sewing to do. as she recalled abram's enthusiastic praise of the singer, and had a whiff of the odour-laden air as she passed from kitchen to spring-house, she was compelled to admit that it was a temptation to go; but she finished her noon work and resolutely sat down with her needle. she stitched industriously, her thread straightening with a quick nervous sweep, learned through years of experience; and if her eyes wandered riverward, and if she paused frequently with arrested hand and listened intently, she did not realize it. by two o'clock, a spirit of unrest that demanded recognition had taken possession of her. setting her lips firmly, a scowl clouding her brow, she stitched on. by half past two her hands dropped in her lap, abram's new hickory shirt slid to the floor, and she hesitatingly arose and crossed the room to the closet, from which she took her overshoes, and set them by the kitchen fire, to have them ready in case she wanted them. "pshaw!" she muttered, "i got this shirt to finish this afternoon. there's butter an' bakin' in the mornin', an' mary jane simms is comin' for a visit in the afternoon." she returned to the window and took up the shirt, sewing with unusual swiftness for the next half-hour; but by three she dropped it, and opening the kitchen door, gazed toward the river. every intoxicating delight of early spring was in the air. the breeze that fanned her cheek was laden with subtle perfume of pollen and the crisp fresh odour of unfolding leaves. curling skyward, like a beckoning finger, went a spiral of violet and gray smoke from the log heap abram was burning; and scattered over spaces of a mile were half a dozen others, telling a story of the activity of his neighbours. like the low murmur of distant music came the beating wings of hundreds of her bees, rimming the water trough, insane with thirst. on the wood-pile the guinea cock clattered incessantly: "phut rack! phut rack!" across the dooryard came the old turkey-gobbler with fan tail and a rasping scrape of wing, evincing his delight in spring and mating time by a series of explosive snorts. on the barnyard gate the old shanghai was lustily challenging to mortal combat one of his kind three miles across country. from the river the river{sic} arose the strident scream of her blue gander jealously guarding his harem. in the poultry-yard the hens made a noisy cackling party, and the stable lot was filled with cattle bellowing for the freedom of the meadow pasture, as yet scarcely ready for grazing. it seemed to the little woman, hesitating in the doorway, as if all nature had entered into a conspiracy to lure her from her work, and just then, clear and imperious, arose the demand of the cardinal: "come here! come here!" blank amazement filled her face. "as i'm a livin' woman!" she gasped. "he's changed his song! that's what abram meant by me bein' invited. he's askin' folks to see his mate. i'm goin'." the dull red of excitement sprang into her cheeks. she hurried on her overshoes, and drew an old shawl over her head. she crossed the dooryard, followed the path through the orchard, and came to the lane. below the barn she turned back and attempted to cross. the mud was deep and thick, and she lost an overshoe; but with the help of a stick she pried it out, and replaced it. "joke on me if i'd a-tumbled over in this mud," she muttered. she entered the barn, and came out a minute later, carefully closing and buttoning the door, and started down the line fence toward the river. half-way across the field abram saw her coming. no need to recount how often he had looked in that direction during the afternoon. he slapped the lines on the old gray's back and came tearing down the slope, his eyes flashing, his cheeks red, his hands firmly gripping the plow that rolled up a line of black mould as he passed. maria, staring at his flushed face and shining eyes, recognized that his whole being proclaimed an inward exultation. "abram johnson," she solemnly demanded, "have you got the power?" "yes," cried abram, pulling off his old felt hat, and gazing into the crown as if for inspiration. "you've said it, honey! i got the power! got it of a little red bird! power o' spring! power o' song! power o' love! if that poor little red target for some ornery cuss's bullet can get all he's getting out o' life to-day, there's no cause why a reasonin' thinkin' man shouldn't realize some o' his blessings. you hit it, maria; i got the power. it's the power o' god, but i learned how to lay hold of it from that little red bird. come here, maria!" abram wrapped the lines around the plow handle, and cautiously led his wife to the fence. he found a piece of thick bark for her to stand on, and placed her where she would be screened by a big oak. then he stood behind her and pointed out the sumac and the female bird. "jest you keep still a minute, an' you'll feel paid for comin' all right, honey," he whispered, "but don't make any sudden movement." "i don't know as i ever saw a worse-lookin' specimen 'an she is," answered maria. "she looks first-class to him. there's no kick comin' on his part, i can tell you," replied abram. the bride hopped shyly through the sumac. she pecked at the dried berries, and frequently tried to improve her plumage, which certainly had been badly draggled; and there was a drop of blood dried at the base of her beak. she plainly showed the effects of her rough experience, and yet she was a most attractive bird; for the dimples in her plump body showed through the feathers, and instead of the usual wickedly black eyes of the cardinal family, hers were a soft tender brown touched by a love-light there was no mistaking. she was a beautiful bird, and she was doing all in her power to make herself dainty again. her movements clearly indicated how timid she was, and yet she remained in the sumac as if she feared to leave it; and frequently peered expectantly among the tree-tops. there was a burst of exultation down the river. the little bird gave her plumage a fluff, and watched anxiously. on came the cardinal like a flaming rocket, calling to her on wing. he alighted beside her, dropped into her beak a morsel of food, gave her a kiss to aid digestion, caressingly ran his beak the length of her wing quills, and flew to the dogwood. mrs. cardinal enjoyed the meal. it struck her palate exactly right. she liked the kiss and caress, cared, in fact, for all that he did for her, and with the appreciation of his tenderness came repentance for the dreadful chase she had led him in her foolish fright, and an impulse to repay. she took a dainty hop toward the dogwood, and the invitation she sent him was exquisite. with a shrill whistle of exultant triumph the cardinal answered at a headlong rush. the farmer's grip tightened on his wife's shoulder, but maria turned toward him with blazing, tear-filled eyes. "an' you call yourself a decent man, abram johnson?" "decent?" quavered the astonished abram. "decent? i believe i am." "i believe you ain't," hotly retorted his wife. "you don't know what decency is, if you go peekin' at them. they ain't birds! they're folks!" "maria," pled abram, "maria, honey." "i am plumb ashamed of you," broke in maria. "how d'you s'pose she'd feel if she knew there was a man here peekin' at her? ain't she got a right to be lovin' and tender? ain't she got a right to pay him best she knows? they're jest common human bein's, an' i don't know where you got privilege to spy on a female when she's doin' the best she knows." maria broke from his grasp and started down the line fence. in a few strides abram had her in his arms, his withered cheek with its springtime bloom pressed against her equally withered, tear-stained one. "maria," he whispered, waveringly, "maria, honey, i wasn't meanin' any disrespect to the sex." maria wiped her eyes on the corner of her shawl. "i don't s'pose you was, abram," she admitted; "but you're jest like all the rest o' the men. you never think! now you go on with your plowin' an' let that little female alone." she unclasped his arms and turned homeward. "honey," called abram softly, "since you brought 'em that pocketful o' wheat, you might as well let me have it." "landy!" exclaimed maria, blushing; "i plumb forgot my wheat! i thought maybe, bein' so early, pickin' was scarce, an' if you'd put out a little wheat an' a few crumbs, they'd stay an' nest in the sumac, as you're so fond o' them." "jest what i'm fairly prayin' they'll do, an' i been carryin' stuff an' pettin' him up best i knowed for a week," said abram, as he knelt, and cupped his shrunken hands, while maria guided the wheat from her apron into them. "i'll scatter it along the top rail, an' they'll be after it in fifteen minutes. thank you, maria. 't was good o' you to think of it." maria watched him steadily. how dear he was! how dear he always had been! how happy they were together! "abram," she asked, hesitatingly, "is there anything else i could do for--your birds?" they were creatures of habitual repression, and the inner glimpses they had taken of each other that day were surprises they scarcely knew how to meet. abram said nothing, because he could not. he slowly shook his head, and turned to the plow, his eyes misty. maria started toward the line fence, but she paused repeatedly to listen; and it was no wonder, for all the redbirds from miles down the river had gathered around the sumac to see if there were a battle in birdland; but it was only the cardinal, turning somersaults in the air, and screaming with bursting exuberance: "come here! come here!" chapter 4 "so dear! so dear!" crooned the cardinal she had taken possession of the sumac. the location was her selection and he loudly applauded her choice. she placed the first twig, and after examining it carefully, he spent the day carrying her others just as much alike as possible. if she used a dried grass blade, he carried grass blades until she began dropping them on the ground. if she worked in a bit of wild grape-vine bark, he peeled grape-vines until she would have no more. it never occurred to him that he was the largest cardinal in the woods, in those days, and he had forgotten that he wore a red coat. she was not a skilled architect. her nest certainly was a loose ramshackle affair; but she had built it, and had allowed him to help her. it was hers; and he improvised a paean in its praise. every morning he perched on the edge of the nest and gazed in songless wonder at each beautiful new egg; and whenever she came to brood she sat as if entranced, eyeing her treasures in an ecstasy of proud possession. then she nestled them against her warm breast, and turned adoring eyes toward the cardinal. if he sang from the dogwood, she faced that way. if he rocked on the wild grape-vine, she turned in her nest. if he went to the corn field for grubs, she stood astride her eggs and peered down, watching his every movement with unconcealed anxiety. the cardinal forgot to be vain of his beauty; she delighted in it every hour of the day. shy and timid beyond belief she had been during her courtship; but she made reparation by being an incomparably generous and devoted mate. and the cardinal! he was astonished to find himself capable of so much and such varied feeling. it was not enough that he brooded while she went to bathe and exercise. the daintiest of every morsel he found was carried to her. when she refused to swallow another particle, he perched on a twig close by the nest many times in a day; and with sleek feathers and lowered crest, gazed at her in silent worshipful adoration. up and down the river bank he flamed and rioted. in the sumac he uttered not the faintest "chip!" that might attract attention. he was so anxious to be inconspicuous that he appeared only half his real size. always on leaving he gave her a tender little peck and ran his beak the length of her wing--a characteristic caress that he delighted to bestow on her. if he felt that he was disturbing her too often, he perched on the dogwood and sang for life, and love, and happiness. his music was in a minor key now. the high, exultant, ringing notes of passion were mellowed and subdued. he was improvising cradle songs and lullabies. he was telling her how he loved her, how he would fight for her, how he was watching over her, how he would signal if any danger were approaching, how proud he was of her, what a perfect nest she had built, how beautiful he thought her eggs, what magnificent babies they would produce. full of tenderness, melting with love, liquid with sweetness, the cardinal sang to his patient little brooding mate: "so dear! so dear!" the farmer leaned on his corn-planter and listened to him intently. "i swanny! if he hasn't changed his song again, an' this time i'm blest if i can tell what he's saying!" every time the cardinal lifted his voice, the clip of the corn-planter ceased, and abram hung on the notes and studied them over. one night he said to his wife: "maria, have you been noticin' the redbird of late? he's changed to a new tune, an' this time i'm completely stalled. i can't for the life of me make out what he's saying. s'pose you step down to-morrow an' see if you can catch it for me. i'd give a pretty to know!" maria felt flattered. she always had believed that she had a musical ear. here was an opportunity to test it and please abram at the same time. she hastened her work the following morning, and very early slipped along the line fence. hiding behind the oak, with straining ear and throbbing heart, she eagerly listened. "clip, clip," came the sound of the planter, as abram's dear old figure trudged up the hill. "chip! chip!" came the warning of the cardinal, as he flew to his mate. he gave her some food, stroked her wing, and flying to the dogwood, sang of the love that encompassed him. as he trilled forth his tender caressing strain, the heart of the listening woman translated as did that of the brooding bird. with shining eyes and flushed cheeks, she sped down the fence. panting and palpitating with excitement, she met abram half-way on his return trip. forgetful of her habitual reserve, she threw her arms around his neck, and drawing his face to hers, she cried: "oh, abram! i got it! i got it! i know what he's saying! oh, abram, my love! my own! to me so dear! so dear!" "so dear! so dear!" echoed the cardinal. the bewilderment in abram's face melted into comprehension. he swept maria from her feet as he lifted his head. "on my soul! you have got it, honey! that's what he's saying, plain as gospel! i can tell it plainer'n anything he's sung yet, now i sense it." he gathered maria in his arms, pressed her head against his breast with a trembling old hand, while the face he turned to the morning was beautiful. "i wish to god," he said quaveringly, "'at every creature on earth was as well fixed as me an' the redbird!" clasping each other, they listened with rapt faces, as, mellowing across the corn field, came the notes of the cardinal: "so dear! so dear!" after that abram's devotion to his bird family became a mild mania. he carried food to the top rail of the line fence every day, rain or shine, with the same regularity that he curried and fed nancy in the barn. from caring for and so loving the cardinal, there grew in his tender old heart a welling flood of sympathy for every bird that homed on his farm. he drove a stake to mark the spot where the killdeer hen brooded in the corn field, so that he would not drive nancy over the nest. when he closed the bars at the end of the lane, he always was careful to leave the third one down, for there was a chippy brooding in the opening where it fitted when closed. alders and sweetbriers grew in his fence corners undisturbed that spring if he discovered that they sheltered an anxious-eyed little mother. he left a square yard of clover unmowed, because it seemed to him that the lark, singing nearer the throne than any other bird, was picking up stray notes dropped by the invisible choir, and with unequalled purity and tenderness, sending them ringing down to his brooding mate, whose home and happiness would be despoiled by the reaping of that spot of green. he delayed burning the brush-heap from the spring pruning, back of the orchard, until fall, when he found it housed a pair of fine thrushes; for the song of the thrush delighted him almost as much as that of the lark. he left a hollow limb on the old red pearmain apple-tree, because when he came to cut it there was a pair of bluebirds twittering around, frantic with anxiety. his pockets were bulgy with wheat and crumbs, and his heart was big with happiness. it was the golden springtime of his later life. the sky never had seemed so blue, or the earth so beautiful. the cardinal had opened the fountains of his soul; life took on a new colour and joy; while every work of god manifested a fresh and heretofore unappreciated loveliness. his very muscles seemed to relax, and new strength arose to meet the demands of his uplifted spirit. he had not finished his day's work with such ease and pleasure in years; and he could see the influence of his rejuvenation in maria. she was flitting around her house with broken snatches of song, even sweeter to abram's ears than the notes of the birds; and in recent days he had noticed that she dressed particularly for her afternoon's sewing, putting on her sunday lace collar and a white apron. he immediately went to town and bought her a finer collar than she ever had owned in her life. then he hunted a sign painter, and came home bearing a number of pine boards on which gleamed in big, shiny black letters: ----------------------- | no hunting allowed | | on this farm | -----------------------he seemed slightly embarrassed when he showed them to maria. "i feel a little mite onfriendly, putting up signs like that 'fore my neighbours," he admitted, "but the fact is, it ain't the neighbours so much as it's boys that need raising, an' them town creatures who call themselves sportsmen, an' kill a hummin'-bird to see if they can hit it. time was when trees an' underbrush were full o' birds an' squirrels, any amount o' rabbits, an' the fish fairly crowdin' in the river. i used to kill all the quail an' wild turkeys about here a body needed to make an appetizing change, it was always my plan to take a little an' leave a little. but jest look at it now. surprise o' my life if i get a two-pound bass. wild turkey gobblin' would scare me most out of my senses, an', as for the birds, there are jest about a fourth what there used to be, an' the crops eaten to pay for it. i'd do all i'm tryin' to for any bird, because of its song an' colour, an' pretty teeterin' ways, but i ain't so slow but i see i'm paid in what they do for me. up go these signs, an' it won't be a happy day for anybody i catch trespassin' on my birds." maria studied the signs meditatively. "you shouldn't be forced to put 'em up," she said conclusively. "if it's been decided 'at it's good for 'em to be here, an' laws made to protect 'em, people ought to act with some sense, an' leave them alone. i never was so int'rested in the birds in all my life; an' i'll jest do a little lookin' out myself. if you hear a spang o' the dinner bell when you're out in the field, you'll know it means there's some one sneakin' 'round with a gun." abram caught maria, and planted a resounding smack on her cheek, where the roses of girlhood yet bloomed for him. then he filled his pockets with crumbs and grain, and strolled to the river to set the cardinal's table. he could hear the sharp incisive "chip!" and the tender mellow love-notes as he left the barn; and all the way to the sumac they rang in his ears. the cardinal met him at the corner of the field, and hopped over bushes and the fence only a few yards from him. when abram had scattered his store on the rail, the bird came tipping and tilting, daintily caught up a crumb, and carried it to the sumac. his mate was pleased to take it; and he carried her one morsel after another until she refused to open her beak for more. he made a light supper himself; and then swinging on the grape-vine, he closed the day with an hour of music. he repeatedly turned a bright questioning eye toward abram, but he never for a moment lost sight of the nest and the plump gray figure of his little mate. as she brooded over her eggs, he brooded over her; and that she might realize the depth and constancy of his devotion, he told her repeatedly, with every tender inflection he could throw into his tones, that she was "so dear! so dear!" the cardinal had not known that the coming of the mate he so coveted would fill his life with such unceasing gladness, and yet, on the very day that happiness seemed at fullest measure, there was trouble in the sumac. he had overstayed his time, chasing a fat moth he particularly wanted for his mate, and she, growing thirsty past endurance, left the nest and went to the river. seeing her there, he made all possible haste to take his turn at brooding, so he arrived just in time to see a pilfering red squirrel starting away with an egg. with a vicious scream the cardinal struck him full force. his rush of rage cost the squirrel an eye; but it lost the father a birdling, for the squirrel dropped the egg outside the nest. the cardinal mournfully carried away the tell-tale bits of shell, so that any one seeing them would not look up and discover his treasures. that left three eggs; and the brooding bird mourned over the lost one so pitifully that the cardinal perched close to the nest the remainder of the day, and whispered over and over for her comfort that she was "so dear! so dear!" chapter 5 "see here! see here!" demanded the cardinal the mandate repeatedly rang from the topmost twig of the thorn tree, and yet the cardinal was not in earnest. he was beside himself with a new and delightful excitement, and he found it impossible to refrain from giving vent to his feelings. he was commanding the farmer and every furred and feathered denizen of the river bottom to see; then he fought like a wild thing if any of them ventured close, for great things were happening in the sumac. in past days the cardinal had brooded an hour every morning while his mate went to take her exercise, bathe, and fluff in the sun parlour. he had gone to her that morning as usual, and she looked at him with anxious eyes and refused to move. he had hopped to the very edge of the nest and repeatedly urged her to go. she only ruffled her feathers, and nestled the eggs she was brooding to turn them, but did not offer to leave. the cardinal reached over and gently nudged her with his beak, to remind her that it was his time to brood; but she looked at him almost savagely, and gave him a sharp peck; so he knew she was not to be bothered. he carried her every dainty he could find and hovered near her, tense with anxiety. it was late in the afternoon before she went after the drink for which she was half famished. she scarcely had reached a willow and bent over the water before the cardinal was on the edge of the nest. he examined it closely, but he could see no change. he leaned to give the eggs careful scrutiny, and from somewhere there came to him the faintest little "chip!" he ever had heard. up went the cardinal's crest, and he dashed to the willow. there was no danger in sight; and his mate was greedily dipping her rosy beak in the water. he went back to the cradle and listened intently, and again that feeble cry came to him. under the nest, around it, and all through the sumac he searched, until at last, completely baffled, he came back to the edge. the sound was so much plainer there, that he suddenly leaned, caressing the eggs with his beak; then the cardinal knew! he had heard the first faint cries of his shell-incased babies! with a wild scream he made a flying leap through the air. his heart was beating to suffocation. he started in a race down the river. if he alighted on a bush he took only one swing, and springing from it flamed on in headlong flight. he flashed to the top of the tallest tulip tree, and cried cloudward to the lark: "see here! see here!" he dashed to the river bank and told the killdeers, and then visited the underbrush and informed the thrushes and wood robins. father-tender, he grew so delirious with joy that he forgot his habitual aloofness, and fraternized with every bird beside the shining river. he even laid aside his customary caution, went chipping into the sumac, and caressed his mate so boisterously she gazed at him severely and gave his wing a savage pull to recall him to his sober senses. that night the cardinal slept in the sumac, very close to his mate, and he shut only one eye at a time. early in the morning, when he carried her the first food, he found that she was on the edge of the nest, dropping bits of shell outside; and creeping to peep, he saw the tiniest coral baby, with closed eyes, and little patches of soft silky down. its beak was wide open, and though his heart was even fuller than on the previous day, the cardinal knew what that meant; and instead of indulging in another celebration, he assumed the duties of paternity, and began searching for food, for now there were two empty crops in his family. on the following day there were four. then he really worked. how eagerly he searched, and how gladly he flew to the sumac with every rare morsel! the babies were too small for the mother to leave; and for the first few days the cardinal was constantly on wing. if he could not find sufficiently dainty food for them in the trees and bushes, or among the offerings of the farmer, he descended to earth and searched like a wood robin. he forgot he needed a bath or owned a sun parlour; but everywhere he went, from his full heart there constantly burst the cry: "see here! see here!" his mate made never a sound. her eyes were bigger and softer than ever, and in them glowed a steady lovelight. she hovered over those three red mites of nestlings so tenderly! she was so absorbed in feeding, stroking, and coddling them she neglected herself until she became quite lean. when the cardinal came every few minutes with food, she was a picture of love and gratitude for his devoted attention, and once she reached over and softly kissed his wing. "see here! see here!" shrilled the cardinal; and in his ecstasy he again forgot himself and sang in the sumac. then he carried food with greater activity than ever to cover his lapse. the farmer knew that it lacked an hour of noon, but he was so anxious to tell maria the news that he could not endure the suspense another minute. there was a new song from the sumac. he had heard it as he turned the first corner with the shovel plow. he had listened eagerly, and had caught the meaning almost at once--" see here! see here!" he tied the old gray mare to the fence to prevent her eating the young corn, and went immediately. by leaning a rail against the thorn tree he was able to peer into the sumac, and take a good look at the nest of handsome birdlings, now well screened with the umbrella-like foliage. it seemed to abram that he never could wait until noon. he critically examined the harness, in the hope that he would find a buckle missing, and tried to discover a flaw in the plow that would send him to the barn for a file; but he could not invent an excuse for going. so, when he had waited until an hour of noon, he could endure it no longer. "got news for you, maria," he called from the well, where he was making a pretense of thirst. "oh i don't know," answered maria, with a superior smile. "if it's about the redbirds, he's been up to the garden three times this morning yellin', 'see here!' fit to split; an' i jest figured that their little ones had hatched. is that your news?" "well i be durned!" gasped the astonished abram. mid-afternoon abram turned nancy and started the plow down a row that led straight to the sumac. he intended to stop there, tie to the fence, and go to the river bank, in the shade, for a visit with the cardinal. it was very warm, and he was feeling the heat so much, that in his heart he knew he would be glad to reach the end of the row and the rest he had promised himself. the quick nervous strokes of the dinner bell, "clang! clang!" came cutting the air clearly and sharply. abram stopped nancy with a jerk. it was the warning maria had promised to send him if she saw prowlers with guns. he shaded his eyes with his hand and scanned the points of the compass through narrowed lids with concentrated vision. he first caught a gleam of light playing on a gun-barrel, and then he could discern the figure of a man clad in hunter's outfit leisurely walking down the lane, toward the river. abram hastily hitched nancy to the fence. by making the best time he could, he reached the opposite corner, and was nibbling the midrib of a young corn blade and placidly viewing the landscape when the hunter passed. "howdy!" he said in an even cordial voice. the hunter walked on without lifting his eyes or making audible reply. to abram's friendly oldfashioned heart this seemed the rankest discourtesy; and there was a flash in his eye and a certain quality in his voice he lifted a hand for parley. "hold a minute, my friend," he said. "since you are on my premises, might i be privileged to ask if you have seen a few signs 'at i have posted pertainin' to the use of a gun?" "i am not blind," replied the hunter; "and my education has been looked after to the extent that i can make out your notices. from the number and size of them, i think i could do it, old man, if i had no eyes." the scarcely suppressed sneer, and the "old man" grated on abram's nerves amazingly, for a man of sixty years of peace. the gleam in his eyes grew stronger, and there was a perceptible lift of his shoulders as he answered: "i meant 'em to be read an' understood! from the main road passin' that cabin up there on the bank, straight to the river, an' from the furthermost line o' this field to the same, is my premises, an' on every foot of 'em the signs are in full force. they're in a little fuller force in june, when half the bushes an' tufts o' grass are housin' a young bird family, 'an at any other time. they're sort o' upholdin' the legislature's act, providing for the protection o' game an' singin' birds; an' maybe it 'ud be well for you to notice 'at i'm not so old but i'm able to stand up for my right to any livin' man." there certainly was an added tinge of respect in the hunter's tones as he asked: "would you consider it trespass if a man simply crossed your land, following the line of the fences to reach the farm of a friend?" "certainly not!" cried abram, cordial in his relief. "to be sure not! glad to have you convenience yourself. i only wanted to jest call to your notice 'at the _birds_ are protected on this farm." "i have no intention of interfering with your precious birds, i assure you," replied the hunter. "and if you require an explanation of the gun in june, i confess i did hope to be able to pick off a squirrel for a very sick friend. but i suppose for even such cause it would not be allowed on your premises." "oh pshaw now!" said abram. "man alive! i'm not onreasonable. o' course in case o' sickness i'd be glad if you could run across a squirrel. all i wanted was to have a clear understandin' about the birds. good luck, an' good day to you!" abram started across the field to nancy, but he repeatedly turned to watch the gleam of the gun-barrel, as the hunter rounded the corner and started down the river bank. he saw him leave the line of the fence and disappear in the thicket. "goin' straight for the sumac," muttered abram. "it's likely i'm a fool for not stayin' right beside him past that point. an' yet--i made it fair an' plain, an' he passed his word 'at he wouldn't touch the birds." he untied nancy, and for the second time started toward the sumac. he had been plowing carefully, his attention divided between the mare and the corn; but he uprooted half that row, for his eyes wandered to the cardinal's home as if he were fascinated, and his hands were shaking with undue excitement as he gripped the plow handles. at last he stopped nancy, and stood gazing eagerly toward the river. "must be jest about the sumac," he whispered. "lord! but i'll be glad to see the old gun-barrel gleamin' safe t'other side o' it." there was a thin puff of smoke, and a screaming echo went rolling and reverberating down the wabash. abram's eyes widened, and a curious whiteness settled on his lips. he stood as if incapable of moving. "clang! clang!" came maria's second warning. the trembling slid from him, and his muscles hardened. there was no trace of rheumatic stiffness in his movements. with a bound he struck the chain-traces from the singletree at nancy's heels. he caught the hames, leaped on her back, and digging his heels into her sides, he stretched along her neck like an indian and raced across the corn field. nancy's twenty years slipped from her as her master's sixty had from him. without understanding the emergency, she knew that he required all the speed there was in her; and with trace-chains rattling and beating on her heels, she stretched out until she fairly swept the young corn, as she raced for the sumac. once abram straightened, and slipping a hand into his pocket, drew out a formidable jack-knife, opening it as he rode. when he reached the fence, he almost flew over nancy's head. he went into a fence corner, and with a few slashes severed a stout hickory withe, stripping the leaves and topping it as he leaped the fence. he grasped this ugly weapon, his eyes dark with anger as he appeared before the hunter, who supposed him at the other side of the field. "did you shoot at that redbird?" he roared. as his gun was at the sportman's shoulder, and he was still peering among the bushes, denial seemed useless. "yes, i did," he replied, and made a pretense of turning to the sumac again. there was a forward impulse of abram's body. "hit 'im?" he demanded with awful calm. "thought i had, but i guess i only winged him." abram's fingers closed around his club. at the sound of his friend's voice, the cardinal came darting through the bushes a wavering flame, and swept so closely to him for protection that a wing almost brushed his cheek. "see here! see here!" shrilled the bird in deadly panic. there was not a cut feather on him. abram's relief was so great he seemed to shrink an inch in height. "young man, you better thank your god you missed that bird," he said solemnly, "for if you'd killed him, i'd a-mauled this stick to ribbons on you, an' i'm most afraid i wouldn't a-knowed when to quit." he advanced a step in his eagerness, and the hunter, mistaking his motive, levelled his gun. "drop that!" shouted abram, as he broke through the bushes that clung to him, tore the clothing from his shoulders, and held him back. "drop that! don't you dare point a weapon at me; on my own premises, an' after you passed your word. "your word!" repeated abram, with withering scorn, his white, quivering old face terrible to see. "young man, i got a couple o' things to say to you. you'r' shaped like a man, an' you'r' dressed like a man, an' yet the smartest person livin' would never take you for anything but an egg-suckin' dog, this minute. all the time god ever spent on you was wasted, an' your mother's had the same luck. i s'pose god's used to having creatures 'at he's made go wrong, but i pity your mother. goodness knows a woman suffers an' works enough over her children, an' then to fetch a boy to man's estate an' have him, of his own free will an' accord, be a liar! young man, truth is the cornerstone o' the temple o' character. nobody can put up a good buildin' without a solid foundation; an' you can't do solid character buildin' with a lie at the base. man 'at's a liar ain't fit for anything! can't trust him in no sphere or relation o' life; or in any way, shape, or manner. you passed out your word like a man, an' like a man i took it an' went off trustin' you, an' you failed me. like as not that squirrel story was a lie, too! have you got a sick friend who is needin' squirrel broth?" the hunter shook his head. "no? that wasn't true either? i'll own you make me curious. 'ud you mind tellin' me what was your idy in cookin' up that squirrel story?" the hunter spoke with an effort. "i suppose i wanted to do something to make you feel small," he admitted, in a husky voice. "you wanted to make me feel small," repeated abram, wonderingly. "lord! lord! young man, did you ever hear o' a boomerang? it's a kind o' weapon used in borneo, er australy, er some o' them furrin parts, an' it's so made 'at the heathens can pitch it, an' it cuts a circle an' comes back to the fellow, at throwed. i can't see myself, an' i don't know how small i'm lookin'; but i'd rather lose ten year o' my life 'an to have anybody catch me lookin' as little as you do right now. i guess we look about the way we feel in this world. i'm feelin' near the size o' goliath at present; but your size is such 'at it hustles me to see any _man_ in you at all. an' you wanted to make me feel small! my, oh, my! an' you so young yet, too! "an' if it hadn't a-compassed a matter o' breakin' your word, what 'ud you want to kill the redbird for, anyhow? who give you rights to go 'round takin' such beauty an' joy out of the world? who do you think made this world an' the things 'at's in it? maybe it's your notion 'at somebody about your size whittled it from a block o' wood, scattered a little sand for earth, stuck a few seeds for trees, an' started the oceans with a waterin' pot! i don't know what paved streets an' stall feedin' do for a man, but any one 'at's lived sixty year on the ground knows 'at this whole old earth is jest teemin' with work 'at's too big for anything but a god, an' a mighty _big_ god at that! "you don't never need bother none 'bout the diskivries o' science, for if science could prove 'at the earth was a red hot slag broken from the sun, 'at balled an' cooled flyin' through space until the force o' gravity caught an' held it, it doesn't prove what the sun broke from, or why it balled an' didn't cool. sky over your head, earth under foot, trees around you, an' river there--all full o' life 'at you ain't no mortal right to touch, 'cos god made it, an' it's his! course, i know 'at he said distinct 'at man was to have `dominion over the beasts o' the field, an' the fowls o' the air' an' that means 'at you're free to smash a copperhead instead of letting it sting you. means 'at you better shoot a wolf than to let it carry off your lambs. means, at it's right to kill a hawk an' save your chickens; but god knows 'at shootin' a redbird just to see the feathers fly isn't having dominion over anything; it's jest makin' a plumb beast o' _yerself_. passes me, how you can face up to the almighty, an' draw a bead on a thing like that! takes more gall'n i got! "god never made anything prettier 'an that bird, an' he must a-been mighty proud o' the job. jest cast your eyes on it there! ever see anything so runnin' over with dainty, pretty, coaxin' ways? little red creatures, full o' hist'ry, too! ever think o' that? last year's bird, hatched hereabout, like as not. went south for winter, an' made friends 'at's been feedin', an' teachin' it to _trust_ mankind. back this spring in a night, an' struck that sumac over a month ago. broke me all up first time i ever set eyes on it. "biggest reddest redbird i ever saw; an' jest a master hand at king's english! talk plain as you can! don't know what he said down south, but you can bank on it, it was sumpin' pretty fine. when he settled here, he was discoursin' on the weather, an' he talked it out about proper. he'd say, `wet year! wet year!' jest like that! he got the `wet' jest as good as i can, an', if he drawed the `ye-ar' out a little, still any blockhead could a-told what he was sayin', an' in a voice pretty an' clear as a bell. then he got love-sick, an' begged for comp'ny until he broke me all up. an' if i'd a-been a hen redbird i wouldn't a-been so long comin'. had me pulverized in less'n no time! then a little hen comes 'long, an' stops with him; an' 'twas like an organ playin' prayers to hear him tell her how he loved her. now they've got a nest full o' the cunningest little topknot babies, an' he's splittin' the echoes, calling for the whole neighbourhood to come see 'em, he's so mortal proud. "stake my life he's never been fired on afore! he's pretty near wild with narvousness, but he's got too much spunk to leave his fam'ly, an' go off an' hide from creatures like you. they's no caution in him. look at him tearin' 'round to give you another chance! "i felt most too rheumaticky to tackle field work this spring until he come 'long, an' the fire o' his coat an' song got me warmed up as i ain't been in years. work's gone like it was greased, an' my soul's been singin' for joy o' life an' happiness ev'ry minute o' the time since he come. been carryin' him grub to that top rail once an' twice a day for the last month, an' i can go in three feet o' him. my wife comes to see him, an' brings him stuff; an' we about worship him. who are you, to come 'long an' wipe out his joy in life, an' our joy in him, for jest nothin'? you'd a left him to rot on the ground, if you'd a hit him; an' me an' maria's loved him so! "d'you ever stop to think how full this world is o' things to love, if your heart's jest big enough to let 'em in? we love to live for the beauty o' the things surroundin' us, an' the joy we take in bein' among 'em. an' it's my belief 'at the way to make folks love us, is for us to be able to 'preciate what they can do. if a man's puttin' his heart an' soul, an' blood, an' beef-steak, an' bones into paintin' picters, you can talk farmin' to him all day, an' he's dumb; but jest show him 'at you see what he's a-drivin' at in his work, an' he'll love you like a brother. whatever anybody succeeds in, it's success 'cos they so love it 'at they put the best o' theirselves into it; an' so, lovin' what they do, is lovin' them. "it 'ud 'bout kill a painter-man to put the best o' himself into his picture, an' then have some fellow like you come 'long an' pour turpentine on it jest to see the paint run; an' i think it must pretty well use god up, to figure out how to make an' colour a thing like that bird, an' then have you walk up an' shoot the little red heart out of it, jest to prove 'at you can! he's the very life o' this river bank. i'd as soon see you dig up the underbrush, an' dry up the river, an' spoil the picture they make against the sky, as to hev' you drop the redbird. he's the red life o' the whole thing! god must a-made him when his heart was pulsin' hot with love an' the lust o' creatin' in-com-_par_-able things; an' he jest saw how pretty it 'ud be to dip his featherin' into the blood he was puttin' in his veins. "to my mind, ain't no better way to love an' worship god, 'an to protect an' 'preciate these fine gifts he's given for our joy an' use. worshipin' that bird's a kind o' religion with me. getting the beauty from the sky, an' the trees, an' the grass, an' the water 'at god made, is nothin' but doin' him homage. whole earth's a sanctuary. you can worship from sky above to grass under foot. "course, each man has his particular altar. mine's in that cabin up at the bend o' the river. maria lives there. god never did cleaner work, 'an when he made maria. lovin, her's sacrament. she's so clean, an' pure, an' honest, an' big-hearted! in forty year i've never jest durst brace right up to maria an' try to put in words what she means to me. never saw nothin' else as beautiful, or as good. no flower's as fragrant an' smelly as her hair on her pillow. never tapped a bee tree with honey sweet as her lips a-twitchin' with a love quiver. ain't a bird 'long the ol' wabash with a voice up to hers. love o' god ain't broader'n her kindness. when she's been home to see her folks, i've been so hungry for her 'at i've gone to her closet an' kissed the hem o' her skirts more'n once. i've never yet dared kiss her feet, but i've always wanted to. i've laid out 'at if she dies first, i'll do it then. an' maria 'ud cry her eyes out if you'd a-hit the redbird. your trappin's look like you could shoot. i guess 'twas god made that shot fly the mark. i guess--" "if you can stop, for the love of mercy do it!" cried the hunter. his face was a sickly white, his temples wet with sweat, and his body trembling. "i can't endure any more. i don't suppose you think i've any human instincts at all; but i have a few, and i see the way to arouse more. you probably won't believe me, but i'll never kill another innocent harmless thing; and i will never lie again so long as i live." he leaned his gun against the thorn tree, and dropped the remainder of his hunter's outfit beside it on the ground. "i don't seem a fit subject to `have dominion,'" he said. "i'll leave those thing for you; and thank you for what you have done for me." there was a crash through the bushes, a leap over the fence, and abram and the cardinal were alone. the old man sat down suddenly on a fallen limb of the sycamore. he was almost dazed with astonishment. he held up his shaking hands, and watched them wonderingly, and then cupped one over each trembling knee to steady himself. he outlined his dry lips with the tip of his tongue, and breathed in heavy gusts. he glanced toward the thorn tree. "left his gun," he hoarsely whispered, "an' it's fine as a fiddle. lock, stock, an' barrel just a-shinin'. an' all that heap o' leather fixin's. must a-cost a lot o' money. said he wasn't fit to use 'em! lept the fence like a panther, an' cut dirt across the corn field. an' left me the gun! well! well! well! wonder what i said? i must a-been almost _fierce_." "see here! see here!" shrilled the cardinal. abram looked him over carefully. he was quivering with fear, but in no way injured. "my! but that was a close call, ol' fellow" said, abram. "minute later, an' our fun 'ud a-been over, an' the summer jest spoiled. wonder if you knew what it meant, an' if you'll be gun-shy after this. land knows, i hope so; for a few more such doses 'ull jest lay me up." he gathered himself together at last, set the gun over the fence, and climbing after it, caught nancy, who had feasted to plethora on young corn. he fastened up the trace-chains, and climbing to her back, laid the gun across his lap and rode to the barn. he attended the mare with particular solicitude, and bathed his face and hands in the water trough to make himself a little more presentable to maria. he started to the house, but had only gone a short way when he stopped, and after standing in thought for a time, turned back to the barn and gave nancy another ear of corn. "after all, it was all you, ol' girl," he said, patting her shoulder, "i never on earth could a-made it on time afoot." he was so tired he leaned for support against her, for the unusual exertion and intense excitement were telling on him sorely, and as he rested he confided to her: "i don't know as i ever in my life was so riled, nancy. i'm afraid i was a little mite fierce." he exhibited the gun, and told the story very soberly at supper time; and maria was so filled with solicitude for him and the bird, and so indignant at the act of the hunter, that she never said a word about abram's torn clothing and the hours of patching that would ensue. she sat looking at the gun and thinking intently for a long time; and then she said pityingly: "i don't know jest what you could a-said 'at 'ud make a man go off an' leave a gun like that. poor fellow! i do hope, abram, you didn't come down on him too awful strong. maybe he lost his mother when he was jest a little tyke, an' he hasn't had much teachin'." abram was completely worn out, and went early to bed. far in the night maria felt him fumbling around her face in an effort to learn if she were covered; and as he drew the sheet over her shoulder he muttered in worn and sleepy tones: "i'm afraid they's no use denyin' it, maria, _i was jest mortal fierce_." in the sumac the frightened little mother cardinal was pressing her precious babies close against her breast; and all through the night she kept calling to her mate, "chook! chook!" and was satisfied only when an answering "chip!" came. as for the cardinal, he had learned a new lesson. he had not been under fire before. never again would he trust any one carrying a shining thing that belched fire and smoke. he had seen the hunter coming, and had raced home to defend his mate and babies, thus making a brilliant mark of himself; and as he would not have deserted them, only the arrival of the farmer had averted a tragedy in the sumac. he did not learn to use caution for himself; but after that, if a gun came down the shining river, he sent a warning "chip!" to his mate, telling her to crouch low in her nest and keep very quiet, and then, in broken waves of flight, and with chirp and flutter, he exposed himself until he had lured danger from his beloved ones. when the babies grew large enough for their mother to leave them a short time, she assisted in food hunting, and the cardinal was not so busy. he then could find time frequently to mount to the top of the dogwood, and cry to the world, "see here! see here!" for the cardinal babies were splendid. but his music was broken intermittent vocalizing now, often uttered past a beakful of food, and interspersed with spasmodic "chips" if danger threatened his mate and nestlings. despite all their care, it was not so very long until trouble came to the sumac; and it was all because the first-born was plainly greedy; much more so than either his little brother or his sister, and he was one day ahead of them in strength. he always pushed himself forward, cried the loudest and longest, and so took the greater part of the food carried to the nest; and one day, while he was still quite awkward and uncertain, he climbed to the edge and reached so far that he fell. he rolled down the river bank, splash! into the water; and a hungry old pickerel, sunning in the weeds, finished him at a snap. he made a morsel so fat, sweet, and juicy that the pickerel lingered close for a week, waiting to see if there would be any more accidents. the cardinal, hunting grubs in the corn field, heard the frightened cries of his mate, and dashed to the sumac in time to see the poor little ball of brightly tinted feathers disappear in the water and to hear the splash of the fish. he called in helpless panic and fluttered over the spot. he watched and waited until there was no hope of the nestling coming up, then he went to the sumac to try to comfort his mate. she could not be convinced that her young one was gone, and for the remainder of the day filled the air with alarm cries and notes of wailing. the two that remained were surely the envy of birdland. the male baby was a perfect copy of his big crimson father, only his little coat was gray; but it was so highly tinged with red that it was brilliant, and his beak and feet were really red; and how his crest did flare, and how proud and important he felt, when he found he could raise and lower it at will. his sister was not nearly so bright as he, and she was almost as greedy as the lost brother. with his father's chivalry he allowed her to crowd in and take the most of the seeds and berries, so that she continually appeared as if she could swallow no more, yet she was constantly calling for food. she took the first flight, being so greedy she forgot to be afraid, and actually flew to a neighbouring thorn tree to meet the cardinal, coming with food, before she realized what she had done. for once gluttony had its proper reward. she not only missed the bite, but she got her little self mightily well scared. with popping eyes and fear-flattened crest, she clung to the thorn limb, shivering at the depths below; and it was the greatest comfort when her brother plucked up courage and came sailing across to her. but, of course, she could not be expected to admit that. when she saw how easily he did it, she flared her crest, turned her head indifferently, and inquired if he did not find flying a very easy matter, once he mustered courage to try it; and she made him very much ashamed indeed because he had allowed her to be the first to leave the nest. from the thorn tree they worked their way to the dead sycamore; but there the lack of foliage made them so conspicuous that their mother almost went into spasms from fright, and she literally drove them back to the sumac. the cardinal was so inordinately proud, and made such a brave showing of teaching them to fly, bathe, and all the other things necessary for young birds to know, that it was a great mercy they escaped with their lives. he had mastered many lessons, but he never could be taught how to be quiet and conceal himself. with explosive "chips" flaming and flashing, he met dangers that sent all the other birds beside the shining river racing to cover. concealment he scorned; and repose he never knew. it was a summer full of rich experience for the cardinal. after these first babies were raised and had flown, two more nests were built, and two other broods flew around the sumac. by fall the cardinal was the father of a small flock, and they were each one neat, trim, beautiful river birds. he had lived through spring with its perfumed air, pale flowers, and burning heart hunger. he had known summer in its golden mood, with forests pungent with spicebush and sassafras; festooned with wild grape, woodbine, and bittersweet; carpeted with velvet moss and starry mandrake peeping from beneath green shades; the never-ending murmur of the shining river; and the rich fulfilment of love's fruition. now it was fall, and all the promises of spring were accomplished. the woods were glorious in autumnal tints. there were ripened red haws, black haws, and wild grapes only waiting for severe frosts, nuts rattling down, scurrying squirrels, and the rabbits' flash of gray and brown. the waysides were bright with the glory of goldenrod, and royal with the purple of asters and ironwort. there was the rustle of falling leaves, the flitting of velvety butterflies, the whir of wings trained southward, and the call of the king crow gathering his followers. then to the cardinal came the intuition that it was time to lead his family to the orange orchard. one day they flamed and rioted up and down the shining river, raced over the corn field, and tilted on the sumac. the next, a black frost had stripped its antlered limbs. stark and deserted it stood, a picture of loneliness. o bird of wonderful plumage and human-like song! what a precious thought of divinity to create such beauty and music for our pleasure! brave songster of the flaming coat, too proud to hide your flashing beauty, too fearless to be cautious of the many dangers that beset you, from the top of the morning we greet you, and hail you king of birdland, at your imperious command: "see here! see here!" [end.] . 1827 the lake. to - by edgar allan poe in spring of youth it was my lot to haunt of the wide world a spot the which i could not love the less so lovely was the loneliness of a wild lake, with black rock bound, and the tall pines that towered around. but when the night had thrown her pall upon that spot, as upon all, and the mystic wind went by murmuring in melody thenah then i would awake to the terror of the lone lake. yet that terror was not fright, but a tremulous delight a feeling not the jewelled mine could teach or bribe me to define nor lovealthough the love were thine. death was in that poisonous wave, and in its gulf a fitting grave for him who thence could solace bring to his lone imagining whose solitary soul could make an eden of that dim lake. -the end. 3 king henry vi dramatis personae king henry the sixth. edward, prince of wales his son. (prince edward:) king lewis xi king of france. (king lewis xi:) duke of somerset (somerset:) duke of exeter (exeter:) earl of oxford (oxford:) earl of northumberland (northumberland:) earl of westmoreland (westmoreland:) lord clifford (clifford:) richard plantagenet duke of york. (york:) edward (edward:) earl of march, | afterwards king edward iv. | (king edward iv:) | | edmund earl of rutland, (rutland:) | | his sons. george (george:) afterwards duke of | clarence (clarence:) | | richard (richard:) afterwards duke of | gloucester, (gloucester:) | duke of norfolk (norfolk:) marquess of montague (montague:) earl of warwick (warwick:) earl of pembroke (pembroke:) lord hastings (hastings:) lord stafford (stafford:) sir john mortimer (john mortimer:) | | uncles to the duke of york. sir hugh mortimer (hugh mortimer:) | henry earl of richmond, a youth (henry of richmond:). lord rivers brother to lady grey. (rivers:) sir william stanley (stanley:) sir john montgomery (montgomery:) sir john somerville (somerville:) tutor to rutland. (tutor:) mayor of york. (mayor:) lieutenant of the tower. (lieutenant:) a nobleman. (nobleman:) two keepers. (first keeper:) (second keeper:) a huntsman. (huntsman:) a son that has killed his father. (son:) a father that has killed his son. (father:) queen margaret: lady grey afterwards queen to edward iv. (queen elizabeth:) bona sister to the french queen. soldiers, attendants, messengers, watchmen, &c. (soldier:) (post:) (messenger:) (first messenger:) (second messenger:) (first watchman:) (second watchman:) (third watchman:) scene england and france. act i scene i london. the parliament-house. [alarum. enter york, edward, richard, norfolk, montague, warwick, and soldiers] warwick i wonder how the king escaped our hands. york while we pursued the horsemen of the north, he slily stole away and left his men: whereat the great lord of northumberland, whose warlike ears could never brook retreat, cheer'd up the drooping army; and himself, lord clifford and lord stafford, all abreast, charged our main battle's front, and breaking in were by the swords of common soldiers slain. edward lord stafford's father, duke of buckingham, is either slain or wounded dangerously; i cleft his beaver with a downright blow: that this is true, father, behold his blood. montague and, brother, here's the earl of wiltshire's blood, whom i encounter'd as the battles join'd. richard speak thou for me and tell them what i did. [throwing down somerset's head] york richard hath best deserved of all my sons. but is your grace dead, my lord of somerset? norfolk such hope have all the line of john of gaunt! richard thus do i hope to shake king henry's head. warwick and so do i. victorious prince of york, before i see thee seated in that throne which now the house of lancaster usurps, i vow by heaven these eyes shall never close. this is the palace of the fearful king, and this the regal seat: possess it, york; for this is thine and not king henry's heirs' york assist me, then, sweet warwick, and i will; for hither we have broken in by force. norfolk we'll all assist you; he that flies shall die. york thanks, gentle norfolk: stay by me, my lords; and, soldiers, stay and lodge by me this night. [they go up] warwick and when the king comes, offer no violence, unless he seek to thrust you out perforce. york the queen this day here holds her parliament, but little thinks we shall be of her council: by words or blows here let us win our right. richard arm'd as we are, let's stay within this house. warwick the bloody parliament shall this be call'd, unless plantagenet, duke of york, be king, and bashful henry deposed, whose cowardice hath made us by-words to our enemies. york then leave me not, my lords; be resolute; i mean to take possession of my right. warwick neither the king, nor he that loves him best, the proudest he that holds up lancaster, dares stir a wing, if warwick shake his bells. i'll plant plantagenet, root him up who dares: resolve thee, richard; claim the english crown. [flourish. enter king henry vi, clifford, northumberland, westmoreland, exeter, and the rest] king henry vi my lords, look where the sturdy rebel sits, even in the chair of state: belike he means, back'd by the power of warwick, that false peer, to aspire unto the crown and reign as king. earl of northumberland, he slew thy father. and thine, lord clifford; and you both have vow'd revenge on him, his sons, his favourites and his friends. northumberland if i be not, heavens be revenged on me! clifford the hope thereof makes clifford mourn in steel. westmoreland what, shall we suffer this? let's pluck him down: my heart for anger burns; i cannot brook it. king henry vi be patient, gentle earl of westmoreland. clifford patience is for poltroons, such as he: he durst not sit there, had your father lived. my gracious lord, here in the parliament let us assail the family of york. northumberland well hast thou spoken, cousin: be it so. king henry vi ah, know you not the city favours them, and they have troops of soldiers at their beck? exeter but when the duke is slain, they'll quickly fly. king henry vi far be the thought of this from henry's heart, to make a shambles of the parliament-house! cousin of exeter, frowns, words and threats shall be the war that henry means to use. thou factious duke of york, descend my throne, and kneel for grace and mercy at my feet; i am thy sovereign. york i am thine. exeter for shame, come down: he made thee duke of york. york 'twas my inheritance, as the earldom was. exeter thy father was a traitor to the crown. warwick exeter, thou art a traitor to the crown in following this usurping henry. clifford whom should he follow but his natural king? warwick true, clifford; and that's richard duke of york. king henry vi and shall i stand, and thou sit in my throne? york it must and shall be so: content thyself. warwick be duke of lancaster; let him be king. westmoreland he is both king and duke of lancaster; and that the lord of westmoreland shall maintain. warwick and warwick shall disprove it. you forget that we are those which chased you from the field and slew your fathers, and with colours spread march'd through the city to the palace gates. northumberland yes, warwick, i remember it to my grief; and, by his soul, thou and thy house shall rue it. westmoreland plantagenet, of thee and these thy sons, thy kinsman and thy friends, i'll have more lives than drops of blood were in my father's veins. clifford urge it no more; lest that, instead of words, i send thee, warwick, such a messenger as shall revenge his death before i stir. warwick poor clifford! how i scorn his worthless threats! york will you we show our title to the crown? if not, our swords shall plead it in the field. king henry vi what title hast thou, traitor, to the crown? thy father was, as thou art, duke of york; thy grandfather, roger mortimer, earl of march: i am the son of henry the fifth, who made the dauphin and the french to stoop and seized upon their towns and provinces. warwick talk not of france, sith thou hast lost it all. king henry vi the lord protector lost it, and not i: when i was crown'd i was but nine months old. richard you are old enough now, and yet, methinks, you lose. father, tear the crown from the usurper's head. edward sweet father, do so; set it on your head. montague good brother, as thou lovest and honourest arms, let's fight it out and not stand cavilling thus. richard sound drums and trumpets, and the king will fly. york sons, peace! king henry vi peace, thou! and give king henry leave to speak. warwick plantagenet shall speak first: hear him, lords; and be you silent and attentive too, for he that interrupts him shall not live. king henry vi think'st thou that i will leave my kingly throne, wherein my grandsire and my father sat? no: first shall war unpeople this my realm; ay, and their colours, often borne in france, and now in england to our heart's great sorrow, shall be my winding-sheet. why faint you, lords? my title's good, and better far than his. warwick prove it, henry, and thou shalt be king. king henry vi henry the fourth by conquest got the crown. york 'twas by rebellion against his king. king henry vi [aside] i know not what to say; my title's weak.- tell me, may not a king adopt an heir? york what then? king henry vi an if he may, then am i lawful king; for richard, in the view of many lords, resign'd the crown to henry the fourth, whose heir my father was, and i am his. york he rose against him, being his sovereign, and made him to resign his crown perforce. warwick suppose, my lords, he did it unconstrain'd, think you 'twere prejudicial to his crown? exeter no; for he could not so resign his crown but that the next heir should succeed and reign. king henry vi art thou against us, duke of exeter? exeter his is the right, and therefore pardon me. york why whisper you, my lords, and answer not? exeter my conscience tells me he is lawful king. king henry vi [aside] all will revolt from me, and turn to him. northumberland plantagenet, for all the claim thou lay'st, think not that henry shall be so deposed. warwick deposed he shall be, in despite of all. northumberland thou art deceived: 'tis not thy southern power, of essex, norfolk, suffolk, nor of kent, which makes thee thus presumptuous and proud, can set the duke up in despite of me. clifford king henry, be thy title right or wrong, lord clifford vows to fight in thy defence: may that ground gape and swallow me alive, where i shall kneel to him that slew my father! king henry vi o clifford, how thy words revive my heart! york henry of lancaster, resign thy crown. what mutter you, or what conspire you, lords? warwick do right unto this princely duke of york, or i will fill the house with armed men, and over the chair of state, where now he sits, write up his title with usurping blood. [he stamps with his foot and the soldiers show themselves] king henry vi my lord of warwick, hear me but one word: let me for this my life-time reign as king. york confirm the crown to me and to mine heirs, and thou shalt reign in quiet while thou livest. king henry vi i am content: richard plantagenet, enjoy the kingdom after my decease. clifford what wrong is this unto the prince your son! warwick what good is this to england and himself! westmoreland base, fearful and despairing henry! clifford how hast thou injured both thyself and us! westmoreland i cannot stay to hear these articles. northumberland nor i. clifford come, cousin, let us tell the queen these news. westmoreland farewell, faint-hearted and degenerate king, in whose cold blood no spark of honour bides. northumberland be thou a prey unto the house of york, and die in bands for this unmanly deed! clifford in dreadful war mayst thou be overcome, or live in peace abandon'd and despised! [exeunt northumberland, clifford, and westmoreland] warwick turn this way, henry, and regard them not. exeter they seek revenge and therefore will not yield. king henry vi ah, exeter! warwick why should you sigh, my lord? king henry vi not for myself, lord warwick, but my son, whom i unnaturally shall disinherit. but be it as it may: i here entail the crown to thee and to thine heirs for ever; conditionally, that here thou take an oath to cease this civil war, and, whilst i live, to honour me as thy king and sovereign, and neither by treason nor hostility to seek to put me down and reign thyself. york this oath i willingly take and will perform. warwick long live king henry! plantagenet embrace him. king henry vi and long live thou and these thy forward sons! york now york and lancaster are reconciled. exeter accursed be he that seeks to make them foes! [sennet. here they come down] york farewell, my gracious lord; i'll to my castle. warwick and i'll keep london with my soldiers. norfolk and i to norfolk with my followers. montague and i unto the sea from whence i came. [exeunt york, edward, edmund, george, richard, warwick, norfolk, montague, their soldiers, and attendants] king henry vi and i, with grief and sorrow, to the court. [enter queen margaret and prince edward] exeter here comes the queen, whose looks bewray her anger: i'll steal away. king henry vi exeter, so will i. queen margaret nay, go not from me; i will follow thee. king henry vi be patient, gentle queen, and i will stay. queen margaret who can be patient in such extremes? ah, wretched man! would i had died a maid and never seen thee, never borne thee son, seeing thou hast proved so unnatural a father hath he deserved to lose his birthright thus? hadst thou but loved him half so well as i, or felt that pain which i did for him once, or nourish'd him as i did with my blood, thou wouldst have left thy dearest heart-blood there, rather than have that savage duke thine heir and disinherited thine only son. prince edward father, you cannot disinherit me: if you be king, why should not i succeed? king henry vi pardon me, margaret; pardon me, sweet son: the earl of warwick and the duke enforced me. queen margaret enforced thee! art thou king, and wilt be forced? i shame to hear thee speak. ah, timorous wretch! thou hast undone thyself, thy son and me; and given unto the house of york such head as thou shalt reign but by their sufferance. to entail him and his heirs unto the crown, what is it, but to make thy sepulchre and creep into it far before thy time? warwick is chancellor and the lord of calais; stern falconbridge commands the narrow seas; the duke is made protector of the realm; and yet shalt thou be safe? such safety finds the trembling lamb environed with wolves. had i been there, which am a silly woman, the soldiers should have toss'd me on their pikes before i would have granted to that act. but thou preferr'st thy life before thine honour: and seeing thou dost, i here divorce myself both from thy table, henry, and thy bed, until that act of parliament be repeal'd whereby my son is disinherited. the northern lords that have forsworn thy colours will follow mine, if once they see them spread; and spread they shall be, to thy foul disgrace and utter ruin of the house of york. thus do i leave thee. come, son, let's away; our army is ready; come, we'll after them. king henry vi stay, gentle margaret, and hear me speak. queen margaret thou hast spoke too much already: get thee gone. king henry vi gentle son edward, thou wilt stay with me? queen margaret ay, to be murder'd by his enemies. prince edward when i return with victory from the field i'll see your grace: till then i'll follow her. queen margaret come, son, away; we may not linger thus. [exeunt queen margaret and prince edward] king henry vi poor queen! how love to me and to her son hath made her break out into terms of rage! revenged may she be on that hateful duke, whose haughty spirit, winged with desire, will cost my crown, and like an empty eagle tire on the flesh of me and of my son! the loss of those three lords torments my heart: i'll write unto them and entreat them fair. come, cousin you shall be the messenger. exeter and i, i hope, shall reconcile them all. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act i scene ii sandal castle. [enter richard, edward, and montague] richard brother, though i be youngest, give me leave. edward no, i can better play the orator. montague but i have reasons strong and forcible. [enter york] york why, how now, sons and brother! at a strife? what is your quarrel? how began it first? edward no quarrel, but a slight contention. york about what? richard about that which concerns your grace and us; the crown of england, father, which is yours. york mine boy? not till king henry be dead. richard your right depends not on his life or death. edward now you are heir, therefore enjoy it now: by giving the house of lancaster leave to breathe, it will outrun you, father, in the end. york i took an oath that he should quietly reign. edward but for a kingdom any oath may be broken: i would break a thousand oaths to reign one year. richard no; god forbid your grace should be forsworn. york i shall be, if i claim by open war. richard i'll prove the contrary, if you'll hear me speak. york thou canst not, son; it is impossible. richard an oath is of no moment, being not took before a true and lawful magistrate, that hath authority over him that swears: henry had none, but did usurp the place; then, seeing 'twas he that made you to depose, your oath, my lord, is vain and frivolous. therefore, to arms! and, father, do but think how sweet a thing it is to wear a crown; within whose circuit is elysium and all that poets feign of bliss and joy. why do we finger thus? i cannot rest until the white rose that i wear be dyed even in the lukewarm blood of henry's heart. york richard, enough; i will be king, or die. brother, thou shalt to london presently, and whet on warwick to this enterprise. thou, richard, shalt to the duke of norfolk, and tell him privily of our intent. you edward, shall unto my lord cobham, with whom the kentishmen will willingly rise: in them i trust; for they are soldiers, witty, courteous, liberal, full of spirit. while you are thus employ'd, what resteth more, but that i seek occasion how to rise, and yet the king not privy to my drift, nor any of the house of lancaster? [enter a messenger] but, stay: what news? why comest thou in such post? messenger the queen with all the northern earls and lords intend here to besiege you in your castle: she is hard by with twenty thousand men; and therefore fortify your hold, my lord. york ay, with my sword. what! think'st thou that we fear them? edward and richard, you shall stay with me; my brother montague shall post to london: let noble warwick, cobham, and the rest, whom we have left protectors of the king, with powerful policy strengthen themselves, and trust not simple henry nor his oaths. montague brother, i go; i'll win them, fear it not: and thus most humbly i do take my leave. [exit] [enter john mortimer and hugh mortimer] sir john and sir hugh mortimer, mine uncles, you are come to sandal in a happy hour; the army of the queen mean to besiege us. john mortimer she shall not need; we'll meet her in the field. york what, with five thousand men? richard ay, with five hundred, father, for a need: a woman's general; what should we fear? [a march afar off] edward i hear their drums: let's set our men in order, and issue forth and bid them battle straight. york five men to twenty! though the odds be great, i doubt not, uncle, of our victory. many a battle have i won in france, when as the enemy hath been ten to one: why should i not now have the like success? [alarum. exeunt] 3 king henry vi act i scene iii field of battle betwixt sandal castle and wakefield. [alarums. enter rutland and his tutor] rutland ah, whither shall i fly to 'scape their hands? ah, tutor, look where bloody clifford comes! [enter clifford and soldiers] clifford chaplain, away! thy priesthood saves thy life. as for the brat of this accursed duke, whose father slew my father, he shall die. tutor and i, my lord, will bear him company. clifford soldiers, away with him! tutor ah, clifford, murder not this innocent child, lest thou be hated both of god and man! [exit, dragged off by soldiers] clifford how now! is he dead already? or is it fear that makes him close his eyes? i'll open them. rutland so looks the pent-up lion o'er the wretch that trembles under his devouring paws; and so he walks, insulting o'er his prey, and so he comes, to rend his limbs asunder. ah, gentle clifford, kill me with thy sword, and not with such a cruel threatening look. sweet clifford, hear me speak before i die. i am too mean a subject for thy wrath: be thou revenged on men, and let me live. clifford in vain thou speak'st, poor boy; my father's blood hath stopp'd the passage where thy words should enter. rutland then let my father's blood open it again: he is a man, and, clifford, cope with him. clifford had thy brethren here, their lives and thine were not revenge sufficient for me; no, if i digg'd up thy forefathers' graves and hung their rotten coffins up in chains, it could not slake mine ire, nor ease my heart. the sight of any of the house of york is as a fury to torment my soul; and till i root out their accursed line and leave not one alive, i live in hell. therefore- [lifting his hand] rutland o, let me pray before i take my death! to thee i pray; sweet clifford, pity me! clifford such pity as my rapier's point affords. rutland i never did thee harm: why wilt thou slay me? clifford thy father hath. rutland but 'twas ere i was born. thou hast one son; for his sake pity me, lest in revenge thereof, sith god is just, he be as miserably slain as i. ah, let me live in prison all my days; and when i give occasion of offence, then let me die, for now thou hast no cause. clifford no cause! thy father slew my father; therefore, die. [stabs him] rutland di faciant laudis summa sit ista tuae! [dies] clifford plantagenet! i come, plantagenet! and this thy son's blood cleaving to my blade shall rust upon my weapon, till thy blood, congeal'd with this, do make me wipe off both. [exit] 3 king henry vi act i scene iv another part of the field. [alarum. enter york] york the army of the queen hath got the field: my uncles both are slain in rescuing me; and all my followers to the eager foe turn back and fly, like ships before the wind or lambs pursued by hunger-starved wolves. my sons, god knows what hath bechanced them: but this i know, they have demean'd themselves like men born to renown by life or death. three times did richard make a lane to me. and thrice cried 'courage, father! fight it out!' and full as oft came edward to my side, with purple falchion, painted to the hilt in blood of those that had encounter'd him: and when the hardiest warriors did retire, richard cried 'charge! and give no foot of ground!' and cried 'a crown, or else a glorious tomb! a sceptre, or an earthly sepulchre!' with this, we charged again: but, out, alas! we bodged again; as i have seen a swan with bootless labour swim against the tide and spend her strength with over-matching waves. [a short alarum within] ah, hark! the fatal followers do pursue; and i am faint and cannot fly their fury: and were i strong, i would not shun their fury: the sands are number'd that make up my life; here must i stay, and here my life must end. [enter queen margaret, clifford, northumberland, prince edward, and soldiers] come, bloody clifford, rough northumberland, i dare your quenchless fury to more rage: i am your butt, and i abide your shot. northumberland yield to our mercy, proud plantagenet. clifford ay, to such mercy as his ruthless arm, with downright payment, show'd unto my father. now phaethon hath tumbled from his car, and made an evening at the noontide prick. york my ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth a bird that will revenge upon you all: and in that hope i throw mine eyes to heaven, scorning whate'er you can afflict me with. why come you not? what! multitudes, and fear? clifford so cowards fight when they can fly no further; so doves do peck the falcon's piercing talons; so desperate thieves, all hopeless of their lives, breathe out invectives 'gainst the officers. york o clifford, but bethink thee once again, and in thy thought o'er-run my former time; and, if though canst for blushing, view this face, and bite thy tongue, that slanders him with cowardice whose frown hath made thee faint and fly ere this! clifford i will not bandy with thee word for word, but buckle with thee blows, twice two for one. queen margaret hold, valiant clifford! for a thousand causes i would prolong awhile the traitor's life. wrath makes him deaf: speak thou, northumberland. northumberland hold, clifford! do not honour him so much to prick thy finger, though to wound his heart: what valour were it, when a cur doth grin, for one to thrust his hand between his teeth, when he might spurn him with his foot away? it is war's prize to take all vantages; and ten to one is no impeach of valour. [they lay hands on york, who struggles] clifford ay, ay, so strives the woodcock with the gin. northumberland so doth the cony struggle in the net. york so triumph thieves upon their conquer'd booty; so true men yield, with robbers so o'ermatch'd. northumberland what would your grace have done unto him now? queen margaret brave warriors, clifford and northumberland, come, make him stand upon this molehill here, that raught at mountains with outstretched arms, yet parted but the shadow with his hand. what! was it you that would be england's king? was't you that revell'd in our parliament, and made a preachment of your high descent? where are your mess of sons to back you now? the wanton edward, and the lusty george? and where's that valiant crook-back prodigy, dicky your boy, that with his grumbling voice was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies? or, with the rest, where is your darling rutland? look, york: i stain'd this napkin with the blood that valiant clifford, with his rapier's point, made issue from the bosom of the boy; and if thine eyes can water for his death, i give thee this to dry thy cheeks withal. alas poor york! but that i hate thee deadly, i should lament thy miserable state. i prithee, grieve, to make me merry, york. what, hath thy fiery heart so parch'd thine entrails that not a tear can fall for rutland's death? why art thou patient, man? thou shouldst be mad; and i, to make thee mad, do mock thee thus. stamp, rave, and fret, that i may sing and dance. thou wouldst be fee'd, i see, to make me sport: york cannot speak, unless he wear a crown. a crown for york! and, lords, bow low to him: hold you his hands, whilst i do set it on. [putting a paper crown on his head] ay, marry, sir, now looks he like a king! ay, this is he that took king henry's chair, and this is he was his adopted heir. but how is it that great plantagenet is crown'd so soon, and broke his solemn oath? as i bethink me, you should not be king till our king henry had shook hands with death. and will you pale your head in henry's glory, and rob his temples of the diadem, now in his life, against your holy oath? o, 'tis a fault too too unpardonable! off with the crown, and with the crown his head; and, whilst we breathe, take time to do him dead. clifford that is my office, for my father's sake. queen margaret nay, stay; lets hear the orisons he makes. york she-wolf of france, but worse than wolves of france, whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth! how ill-beseeming is it in thy sex to triumph, like an amazonian trull, upon their woes whom fortune captivates! but that thy face is, vizard-like, unchanging, made impudent with use of evil deeds, i would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush. to tell thee whence thou camest, of whom derived, were shame enough to shame thee, wert thou not shameless. thy father bears the type of king of naples, of both the sicils and jerusalem, yet not so wealthy as an english yeoman. hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult? it needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen, unless the adage must be verified, that beggars mounted run their horse to death. 'tis beauty that doth oft make women proud; but, god he knows, thy share thereof is small: 'tis virtue that doth make them most admired; the contrary doth make thee wonder'd at: 'tis government that makes them seem divine; the want thereof makes thee abominable: thou art as opposite to every good as the antipodes are unto us, or as the south to the septentrion. o tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide! how couldst thou drain the life-blood of the child, to bid the father wipe his eyes withal, and yet be seen to bear a woman's face? women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible; thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless. bids't thou me rage? why, now thou hast thy wish: wouldst have me weep? why, now thou hast thy will: for raging wind blows up incessant showers, and when the rage allays, the rain begins. these tears are my sweet rutland's obsequies: and every drop cries vengeance for his death, 'gainst thee, fell clifford, and thee, false frenchwoman. northumberland beshrew me, but his passion moves me so that hardly can i cheque my eyes from tears. york that face of his the hungry cannibals would not have touch'd, would not have stain'd with blood: but you are more inhuman, more inexorable, o, ten times more, than tigers of hyrcania. see, ruthless queen, a hapless father's tears: this cloth thou dip'dst in blood of my sweet boy, and i with tears do wash the blood away. keep thou the napkin, and go boast of this: and if thou tell'st the heavy story right, upon my soul, the hearers will shed tears; yea even my foes will shed fast-falling tears, and say 'alas, it was a piteous deed!' there, take the crown, and, with the crown, my curse; and in thy need such comfort come to thee as now i reap at thy too cruel hand! hard-hearted clifford, take me from the world: my soul to heaven, my blood upon your heads! northumberland had he been slaughter-man to all my kin, i should not for my life but weep with him. to see how inly sorrow gripes his soul. queen margaret what, weeping-ripe, my lord northumberland? think but upon the wrong he did us all, and that will quickly dry thy melting tears. clifford here's for my oath, here's for my father's death. [stabbing him] queen margaret and here's to right our gentle-hearted king. [stabbing him] york open thy gate of mercy, gracious god! my soul flies through these wounds to seek out thee. [dies] queen margaret off with his head, and set it on york gates; so york may overlook the town of york. [flourish. exeunt] 3 king henry vi act ii scene i a plain near mortimer's cross in herefordshire. [a march. enter edward, richard, and their power] edward i wonder how our princely father 'scaped, or whether he be 'scaped away or no from clifford's and northumberland's pursuit: had he been ta'en, we should have heard the news; had he been slain, we should have heard the news; or had he 'scaped, methinks we should have heard the happy tidings of his good escape. how fares my brother? why is he so sad? richard i cannot joy, until i be resolved where our right valiant father is become. i saw him in the battle range about; and watch'd him how he singled clifford forth. methought he bore him in the thickest troop as doth a lion in a herd of neat; or as a bear, encompass'd round with dogs, who having pinch'd a few and made them cry, the rest stand all aloof, and bark at him. so fared our father with his enemies; so fled his enemies my warlike father: methinks, 'tis prize enough to be his son. see how the morning opes her golden gates, and takes her farewell of the glorious sun! how well resembles it the prime of youth, trimm'd like a younker prancing to his love! edward dazzle mine eyes, or do i see three suns? richard three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun; not separated with the racking clouds, but sever'd in a pale clear-shining sky. see, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss, as if they vow'd some league inviolable: now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun. in this the heaven figures some event. edward 'tis wondrous strange, the like yet never heard of. i think it cites us, brother, to the field, that we, the sons of brave plantagenet, each one already blazing by our meeds, should notwithstanding join our lights together and over-shine the earth as this the world. whate'er it bodes, henceforward will i bear upon my target three fair-shining suns. richard nay, bear three daughters: by your leave i speak it, you love the breeder better than the male. [enter a messenger] but what art thou, whose heavy looks foretell some dreadful story hanging on thy tongue? messenger ah, one that was a woful looker-on when as the noble duke of york was slain, your princely father and my loving lord! edward o, speak no more, for i have heard too much. richard say how he died, for i will hear it all. messenger environed he was with many foes, and stood against them, as the hope of troy against the greeks that would have enter'd troy. but hercules himself must yield to odds; and many strokes, though with a little axe, hew down and fell the hardest-timber'd oak. by many hands your father was subdued; but only slaughter'd by the ireful arm of unrelenting clifford and the queen, who crown'd the gracious duke in high despite, laugh'd in his face; and when with grief he wept, the ruthless queen gave him to dry his cheeks a napkin steeped in the harmless blood of sweet young rutland, by rough clifford slain: and after many scorns, many foul taunts, they took his head, and on the gates of york they set the same; and there it doth remain, the saddest spectacle that e'er i view'd. edward sweet duke of york, our prop to lean upon, now thou art gone, we have no staff, no stay. o clifford, boisterous clifford! thou hast slain the flower of europe for his chivalry; and treacherously hast thou vanquish'd him, for hand to hand he would have vanquish'd thee. now my soul's palace is become a prison: ah, would she break from hence, that this my body might in the ground be closed up in rest! for never henceforth shall i joy again, never, o never shall i see more joy! richard i cannot weep; for all my body's moisture scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart: nor can my tongue unload my heart's great burthen; for selfsame wind that i should speak withal is kindling coals that fires all my breast, and burns me up with flames that tears would quench. to weep is to make less the depth of grief: tears then for babes; blows and revenge for me richard, i bear thy name; i'll venge thy death, or die renowned by attempting it. edward his name that valiant duke hath left with thee; his dukedom and his chair with me is left. richard nay, if thou be that princely eagle's bird, show thy descent by gazing 'gainst the sun: for chair and dukedom, throne and kingdom say; either that is thine, or else thou wert not his. [march. enter warwick, montague, and their army] warwick how now, fair lords! what fare? what news abroad? richard great lord of warwick, if we should recount our baleful news, and at each word's deliverance stab poniards in our flesh till all were told, the words would add more anguish than the wounds. o valiant lord, the duke of york is slain! edward o warwick, warwick! that plantagenet, which held three dearly as his soul's redemption, is by the stern lord clifford done to death. warwick ten days ago i drown'd these news in tears; and now, to add more measure to your woes, i come to tell you things sith then befall'n. after the bloody fray at wakefield fought, where your brave father breathed his latest gasp, tidings, as swiftly as the posts could run, were brought me of your loss and his depart. i, then in london keeper of the king, muster'd my soldiers, gather'd flocks of friends, and very well appointed, as i thought, march'd toward saint alban's to intercept the queen, bearing the king in my behalf along; for by my scouts i was advertised that she was coming with a full intent to dash our late decree in parliament touching king henry's oath and your succession. short tale to make, we at saint alban's met our battles join'd, and both sides fiercely fought: but whether 'twas the coldness of the king, who look'd full gently on his warlike queen, that robb'd my soldiers of their heated spleen; or whether 'twas report of her success; or more than common fear of clifford's rigour, who thunders to his captives blood and death, i cannot judge: but to conclude with truth, their weapons like to lightning came and went; our soldiers', like the night-owl's lazy flight, or like an idle thresher with a flail, fell gently down, as if they struck their friends. i cheer'd them up with justice of our cause, with promise of high pay and great rewards: but all in vain; they had no heart to fight, and we in them no hope to win the day; so that we fled; the king unto the queen; lord george your brother, norfolk and myself, in haste, post-haste, are come to join with you: for in the marches here we heard you were, making another head to fight again. edward where is the duke of norfolk, gentle warwick? and when came george from burgundy to england? warwick some six miles off the duke is with the soldiers; and for your brother, he was lately sent from your kind aunt, duchess of burgundy, with aid of soldiers to this needful war. richard 'twas odds, belike, when valiant warwick fled: oft have i heard his praises in pursuit, but ne'er till now his scandal of retire. warwick nor now my scandal, richard, dost thou hear; for thou shalt know this strong right hand of mine can pluck the diadem from faint henry's head, and wring the awful sceptre from his fist, were he as famous and as bold in war as he is famed for mildness, peace, and prayer. richard i know it well, lord warwick; blame me not: 'tis love i bear thy glories makes me speak. but in this troublous time what's to be done? shall we go throw away our coats of steel, and wrap our bodies in black mourning gowns, numbering our ave-maries with our beads? or shall we on the helmets of our foes tell our devotion with revengeful arms? if for the last, say ay, and to it, lords. warwick why, therefore warwick came to seek you out; and therefore comes my brother montague. attend me, lords. the proud insulting queen, with clifford and the haught northumberland, and of their feather many more proud birds, have wrought the easy-melting king like wax. he swore consent to your succession, his oath enrolled in the parliament; and now to london all the crew are gone, to frustrate both his oath and what beside may make against the house of lancaster. their power, i think, is thirty thousand strong: now, if the help of norfolk and myself, with all the friends that thou, brave earl of march, amongst the loving welshmen canst procure, will but amount to five and twenty thousand, why, via! to london will we march amain, and once again bestride our foaming steeds, and once again cry 'charge upon our foes!' but never once again turn back and fly. richard ay, now methinks i hear great warwick speak: ne'er may he live to see a sunshine day, that cries 'retire,' if warwick bid him stay. edward lord warwick, on thy shoulder will i lean; and when thou fail'st--as god forbid the hour!- must edward fall, which peril heaven forfend! warwick no longer earl of march, but duke of york: the next degree is england's royal throne; for king of england shalt thou be proclaim'd in every borough as we pass along; and he that throws not up his cap for joy shall for the fault make forfeit of his head. king edward, valiant richard, montague, stay we no longer, dreaming of renown, but sound the trumpets, and about our task. richard then, clifford, were thy heart as hard as steel, as thou hast shown it flinty by thy deeds, i come to pierce it, or to give thee mine. edward then strike up drums: god and saint george for us! [enter a messenger] warwick how now! what news? messenger the duke of norfolk sends you word by me, the queen is coming with a puissant host; and craves your company for speedy counsel. warwick why then it sorts, brave warriors, let's away. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act ii scene ii before york. [flourish. enter king henry vi, queen margaret, prince edward, clifford, and northumberland, with drum and trumpets] queen margaret welcome, my lord, to this brave town of york. yonder's the head of that arch-enemy that sought to be encompass'd with your crown: doth not the object cheer your heart, my lord? king henry vi ay, as the rocks cheer them that fear their wreck: to see this sight, it irks my very soul. withhold revenge, dear god! 'tis not my fault, nor wittingly have i infringed my vow. clifford my gracious liege, this too much lenity and harmful pity must be laid aside. to whom do lions cast their gentle looks? not to the beast that would usurp their den. whose hand is that the forest bear doth lick? not his that spoils her young before her face. who 'scapes the lurking serpent's mortal sting? not he that sets his foot upon her back. the smallest worm will turn being trodden on, and doves will peck in safeguard of their brood. ambitious york doth level at thy crown, thou smiling while he knit his angry brows: he, but a duke, would have his son a king, and raise his issue, like a loving sire; thou, being a king, blest with a goodly son, didst yield consent to disinherit him, which argued thee a most unloving father. unreasonable creatures feed their young; and though man's face be fearful to their eyes, yet, in protection of their tender ones, who hath not seen them, even with those wings which sometime they have used with fearful flight, make war with him that climb'd unto their nest, offer their own lives in their young's defence? for shame, my liege, make them your precedent! were it not pity that this goodly boy should lose his birthright by his father's fault, and long hereafter say unto his child, 'what my great-grandfather and his grandsire got my careless father fondly gave away'? ah, what a shame were this! look on the boy; and let his manly face, which promiseth successful fortune, steel thy melting heart to hold thine own and leave thine own with him. king henry vi full well hath clifford play'd the orator, inferring arguments of mighty force. but, clifford, tell me, didst thou never hear that things ill-got had ever bad success? and happy always was it for that son whose father for his hoarding went to hell? i'll leave my son my virtuous deeds behind; and would my father had left me no more! for all the rest is held at such a rate as brings a thousand-fold more care to keep than in possession and jot of pleasure. ah, cousin york! would thy best friends did know how it doth grieve me that thy head is here! queen margaret my lord, cheer up your spirits: our foes are nigh, and this soft courage makes your followers faint. you promised knighthood to our forward son: unsheathe your sword, and dub him presently. edward, kneel down. king henry vi edward plantagenet, arise a knight; and learn this lesson, draw thy sword in right. prince my gracious father, by your kingly leave, i'll draw it as apparent to the crown, and in that quarrel use it to the death. clifford why, that is spoken like a toward prince. [enter a messenger] messenger royal commanders, be in readiness: for with a band of thirty thousand men comes warwick, backing of the duke of york; and in the towns, as they do march along, proclaims him king, and many fly to him: darraign your battle, for they are at hand. clifford i would your highness would depart the field: the queen hath best success when you are absent. queen margaret ay, good my lord, and leave us to our fortune. king henry vi why, that's my fortune too; therefore i'll stay. northumberland be it with resolution then to fight. prince edward my royal father, cheer these noble lords and hearten those that fight in your defence: unsheathe your sword, good father; cry 'saint george!' [march. enter edward, george, richard, warwick, norfolk, montague, and soldiers] edward now, perjured henry! wilt thou kneel for grace, and set thy diadem upon my head; or bide the mortal fortune of the field? queen margaret go, rate thy minions, proud insulting boy! becomes it thee to be thus bold in terms before thy sovereign and thy lawful king? edward i am his king, and he should bow his knee; i was adopted heir by his consent: since when, his oath is broke; for, as i hear, you, that are king, though he do wear the crown, have caused him, by new act of parliament, to blot out me, and put his own son in. clifford and reason too: who should succeed the father but the son? richard are you there, butcher? o, i cannot speak! clifford ay, crook-back, here i stand to answer thee, or any he the proudest of thy sort. richard 'twas you that kill'd young rutland, was it not? clifford ay, and old york, and yet not satisfied. richard for god's sake, lords, give signal to the fight. warwick what say'st thou, henry, wilt thou yield the crown? queen margaret why, how now, long-tongued warwick! dare you speak? when you and i met at saint alban's last, your legs did better service than your hands. warwick then 'twas my turn to fly, and now 'tis thine. clifford you said so much before, and yet you fled. warwick 'twas not your valour, clifford, drove me thence. northumberland no, nor your manhood that durst make you stay. richard northumberland, i hold thee reverently. break off the parley; for scarce i can refrain the execution of my big-swoln heart upon that clifford, that cruel child-killer. clifford i slew thy father, call'st thou him a child? richard ay, like a dastard and a treacherous coward, as thou didst kill our tender brother rutland; but ere sunset i'll make thee curse the deed. king henry vi have done with words, my lords, and hear me speak. queen margaret defy them then, or else hold close thy lips. king henry vi i prithee, give no limits to my tongue: i am a king, and privileged to speak. clifford my liege, the wound that bred this meeting here cannot be cured by words; therefore be still. richard then, executioner, unsheathe thy sword: by him that made us all, i am resolved that clifford's manhood lies upon his tongue. edward say, henry, shall i have my right, or no? a thousand men have broke their fasts to-day, that ne'er shall dine unless thou yield the crown. warwick if thou deny, their blood upon thy head; for york in justice puts his armour on. prince edward if that be right which warwick says is right, there is no wrong, but every thing is right. richard whoever got thee, there thy mother stands; for, well i wot, thou hast thy mother's tongue. queen margaret but thou art neither like thy sire nor dam; but like a foul mis-shapen stigmatic, mark'd by the destinies to be avoided, as venom toads, or lizards' dreadful stings. richard iron of naples hid with english gilt, whose father bears the title of a king,- as if a channel should be call'd the sea,- shamest thou not, knowing whence thou art extraught, to let thy tongue detect thy base-born heart? edward a wisp of straw were worth a thousand crowns, to make this shameless callet know herself. helen of greece was fairer far than thou, although thy husband may be menelaus; and ne'er was agamemnon's brother wrong'd by that false woman, as this king by thee. his father revell'd in the heart of france, and tamed the king, and made the dauphin stoop; and had he match'd according to his state, he might have kept that glory to this day; but when he took a beggar to his bed, and graced thy poor sire with his bridal-day, even then that sunshine brew'd a shower for him, that wash'd his father's fortunes forth of france, and heap'd sedition on his crown at home. for what hath broach'd this tumult but thy pride? hadst thou been meek, our title still had slept; and we, in pity of the gentle king, had slipp'd our claim until another age. george but when we saw our sunshine made thy spring, and that thy summer bred us no increase, we set the axe to thy usurping root; and though the edge hath something hit ourselves, yet, know thou, since we have begun to strike, we'll never leave till we have hewn thee down, or bathed thy growing with our heated bloods. edward and, in this resolution, i defy thee; not willing any longer conference, since thou deniest the gentle king to speak. sound trumpets! let our bloody colours wave! and either victory, or else a grave. queen margaret stay, edward. edward no, wrangling woman, we'll no longer stay: these words will cost ten thousand lives this day. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act ii scene iii a field of battle between towton and saxton, in yorkshire. [alarum. excursions. enter warwick] warwick forspent with toil, as runners with a race, i lay me down a little while to breathe; for strokes received, and many blows repaid, have robb'd my strong-knit sinews of their strength, and spite of spite needs must i rest awhile. [enter edward, running] edward smile, gentle heaven! or strike, ungentle death! for this world frowns, and edward's sun is clouded. warwick how now, my lord! what hap? what hope of good? [enter george] george our hap is loss, our hope but sad despair; our ranks are broke, and ruin follows us: what counsel give you? whither shall we fly? edward bootless is flight, they follow us with wings; and weak we are and cannot shun pursuit. [enter richard] richard ah, warwick, why hast thou withdrawn thyself? thy brother's blood the thirsty earth hath drunk, broach'd with the steely point of clifford's lance; and in the very pangs of death he cried, like to a dismal clangour heard from far, 'warwick, revenge! brother, revenge my death!' so, underneath the belly of their steeds, that stain'd their fetlocks in his smoking blood, the noble gentleman gave up the ghost. warwick then let the earth be drunken with our blood: i'll kill my horse, because i will not fly. why stand we like soft-hearted women here, wailing our losses, whiles the foe doth rage; and look upon, as if the tragedy were play'd in jest by counterfeiting actors? here on my knee i vow to god above, i'll never pause again, never stand still, till either death hath closed these eyes of mine or fortune given me measure of revenge. edward o warwick, i do bend my knee with thine; and in this vow do chain my soul to thine! and, ere my knee rise from the earth's cold face, i throw my hands, mine eyes, my heart to thee, thou setter up and plucker down of kings, beseeching thee, if with they will it stands that to my foes this body must be prey, yet that thy brazen gates of heaven may ope, and give sweet passage to my sinful soul! now, lords, take leave until we meet again, where'er it be, in heaven or in earth. richard brother, give me thy hand; and, gentle warwick, let me embrace thee in my weary arms: i, that did never weep, now melt with woe that winter should cut off our spring-time so. warwick away, away! once more, sweet lords farewell. george yet let us all together to our troops, and give them leave to fly that will not stay; and call them pillars that will stand to us; and, if we thrive, promise them such rewards as victors wear at the olympian games: this may plant courage in their quailing breasts; for yet is hope of life and victory. forslow no longer, make we hence amain. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act ii scene iv another part of the field. [excursions. enter richard and clifford] richard now, clifford, i have singled thee alone: suppose this arm is for the duke of york, and this for rutland; both bound to revenge, wert thou environ'd with a brazen wall. clifford now, richard, i am with thee here alone: this is the hand that stabb'd thy father york; and this the hand that slew thy brother rutland; and here's the heart that triumphs in their death and cheers these hands that slew thy sire and brother to execute the like upon thyself; and so, have at thee! [they fight. warwick comes; clifford flies] richard nay warwick, single out some other chase; for i myself will hunt this wolf to death. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act ii scene v another part of the field. [alarum. enter king henry vi alone] king henry vi this battle fares like to the morning's war, when dying clouds contend with growing light, what time the shepherd, blowing of his nails, can neither call it perfect day nor night. now sways it this way, like a mighty sea forced by the tide to combat with the wind; now sways it that way, like the selfsame sea forced to retire by fury of the wind: sometime the flood prevails, and then the wind; now one the better, then another best; both tugging to be victors, breast to breast, yet neither conqueror nor conquered: so is the equal of this fell war. here on this molehill will i sit me down. to whom god will, there be the victory! for margaret my queen, and clifford too, have chid me from the battle; swearing both they prosper best of all when i am thence. would i were dead! if god's good will were so; for what is in this world but grief and woe? o god! methinks it were a happy life, to be no better than a homely swain; to sit upon a hill, as i do now, to carve out dials quaintly, point by point, thereby to see the minutes how they run, how many make the hour full complete; how many hours bring about the day; how many days will finish up the year; how many years a mortal man may live. when this is known, then to divide the times: so many hours must i tend my flock; so many hours must i take my rest; so many hours must i contemplate; so many hours must i sport myself; so many days my ewes have been with young; so many weeks ere the poor fools will ean: so many years ere i shall shear the fleece: so minutes, hours, days, months, and years, pass'd over to the end they were created, would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely! gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade to shepherds looking on their silly sheep, than doth a rich embroider'd canopy to kings that fear their subjects' treachery? o, yes, it doth; a thousand-fold it doth. and to conclude, the shepherd's homely curds, his cold thin drink out of his leather bottle. his wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade, all which secure and sweetly he enjoys, is far beyond a prince's delicates, his viands sparkling in a golden cup, his body couched in a curious bed, when care, mistrust, and treason waits on him. [alarum. enter a son that has killed his father, dragging in the dead body] son ill blows the wind that profits nobody. this man, whom hand to hand i slew in fight, may be possessed with some store of crowns; and i, that haply take them from him now, may yet ere night yield both my life and them to some man else, as this dead man doth me. who's this? o god! it is my father's face, whom in this conflict i unwares have kill'd. o heavy times, begetting such events! from london by the king was i press'd forth; my father, being the earl of warwick's man, came on the part of york, press'd by his master; and i, who at his hands received my life, him have by my hands of life bereaved him. pardon me, god, i knew not what i did! and pardon, father, for i knew not thee! my tears shall wipe away these bloody marks; and no more words till they have flow'd their fill. king henry vi o piteous spectacle! o bloody times! whiles lions war and battle for their dens, poor harmless lambs abide their enmity. weep, wretched man, i'll aid thee tear for tear; and let our hearts and eyes, like civil war, be blind with tears, and break o'ercharged with grief. [enter a father that has killed his son, bringing in the body] father thou that so stoutly hast resisted me, give me thy gold, if thou hast any gold: for i have bought it with an hundred blows. but let me see: is this our foeman's face? ah, no, no, no, it is mine only son! ah, boy, if any life be left in thee, throw up thine eye! see, see what showers arise, blown with the windy tempest of my heart, upon thy words, that kill mine eye and heart! o, pity, god, this miserable age! what stratagems, how fell, how butcherly, erroneous, mutinous and unnatural, this deadly quarrel daily doth beget! o boy, thy father gave thee life too soon, and hath bereft thee of thy life too late! king henry vi woe above woe! grief more than common grief! o that my death would stay these ruthful deeds! o pity, pity, gentle heaven, pity! the red rose and the white are on his face, the fatal colours of our striving houses: the one his purple blood right well resembles; the other his pale cheeks, methinks, presenteth: wither one rose, and let the other flourish; if you contend, a thousand lives must wither. son how will my mother for a father's death take on with me and ne'er be satisfied! father how will my wife for slaughter of my son shed seas of tears and ne'er be satisfied! king henry vi how will the country for these woful chances misthink the king and not be satisfied! son was ever son so rued a father's death? father was ever father so bemoan'd his son? king henry vi was ever king so grieved for subjects' woe? much is your sorrow; mine ten times so much. son i'll bear thee hence, where i may weep my fill. [exit with the body] father these arms of mine shall be thy winding-sheet; my heart, sweet boy, shall be thy sepulchre, for from my heart thine image ne'er shall go; my sighing breast shall be thy funeral bell; and so obsequious will thy father be, even for the loss of thee, having no more, as priam was for all his valiant sons. i'll bear thee hence; and let them fight that will, for i have murdered where i should not kill. [exit with the body] king henry vi sad-hearted men, much overgone with care, here sits a king more woful than you are. [alarums: excursions. enter queen margaret, prince edward, and exeter] prince edward fly, father, fly! for all your friends are fled, and warwick rages like a chafed bull: away! for death doth hold us in pursuit. queen margaret mount you, my lord; towards berwick post amain: edward and richard, like a brace of greyhounds having the fearful flying hare in sight, with fiery eyes sparkling for very wrath, and bloody steel grasp'd in their ireful hands, are at our backs; and therefore hence amain. exeter away! for vengeance comes along with them: nay, stay not to expostulate, make speed; or else come after: i'll away before. king henry vi nay, take me with thee, good sweet exeter: not that i fear to stay, but love to go whither the queen intends. forward; away! [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act ii scene vi another part of the field. [a loud alarum. enter clifford, wounded] clifford here burns my candle out; ay, here it dies, which, whiles it lasted, gave king henry light. o lancaster, i fear thy overthrow more than my body's parting with my soul! my love and fear glued many friends to thee; and, now i fall, thy tough commixture melts. impairing henry, strengthening misproud york, the common people swarm like summer flies; and whither fly the gnats but to the sun? and who shines now but henry's enemies? o phoebus, hadst thou never given consent that phaethon should cheque thy fiery steeds, thy burning car never had scorch'd the earth! and, henry, hadst thou sway'd as kings should do, or as thy father and his father did, giving no ground unto the house of york, they never then had sprung like summer flies; i and ten thousand in this luckless realm had left no mourning widows for our death; and thou this day hadst kept thy chair in peace. for what doth cherish weeds but gentle air? and what makes robbers bold but too much lenity? bootless are plaints, and cureless are my wounds; no way to fly, nor strength to hold out flight: the foe is merciless, and will not pity; for at their hands i have deserved no pity. the air hath got into my deadly wounds, and much effuse of blood doth make me faint. come, york and richard, warwick and the rest; i stabb'd your fathers' bosoms, split my breast. [he faints] [alarum and retreat. enter edward, george, richard, montague, warwick, and soldiers] edward now breathe we, lords: good fortune bids us pause, and smooth the frowns of war with peaceful looks. some troops pursue the bloody-minded queen, that led calm henry, though he were a king, as doth a sail, fill'd with a fretting gust, command an argosy to stem the waves. but think you, lords, that clifford fled with them? warwick no, 'tis impossible he should escape, for, though before his face i speak the words your brother richard mark'd him for the grave: and wheresoe'er he is, he's surely dead. [clifford groans, and dies] edward whose soul is that which takes her heavy leave? richard a deadly groan, like life and death's departing. edward see who it is: and, now the battle's ended, if friend or foe, let him be gently used. richard revoke that doom of mercy, for 'tis clifford; who not contented that he lopp'd the branch in hewing rutland when his leaves put forth, but set his murdering knife unto the root from whence that tender spray did sweetly spring, i mean our princely father, duke of york. warwick from off the gates of york fetch down the head, your father's head, which clifford placed there; instead whereof let this supply the room: measure for measure must be answered. edward bring forth that fatal screech-owl to our house, that nothing sung but death to us and ours: now death shall stop his dismal threatening sound, and his ill-boding tongue no more shall speak. warwick i think his understanding is bereft. speak, clifford, dost thou know who speaks to thee? dark cloudy death o'ershades his beams of life, and he nor sees nor hears us what we say. richard o, would he did! and so perhaps he doth: 'tis but his policy to counterfeit, because he would avoid such bitter taunts which in the time of death he gave our father. george if so thou think'st, vex him with eager words. richard clifford, ask mercy and obtain no grace. edward clifford, repent in bootless penitence. warwick clifford, devise excuses for thy faults. george while we devise fell tortures for thy faults. richard thou didst love york, and i am son to york. edward thou pitied'st rutland; i will pity thee. george where's captain margaret, to fence you now? warwick they mock thee, clifford: swear as thou wast wont. richard what, not an oath? nay, then the world goes hard when clifford cannot spare his friends an oath. i know by that he's dead; and, by my soul, if this right hand would buy two hour's life, that i in all despite might rail at him, this hand should chop it off, and with the issuing blood stifle the villain whose unstanched thirst york and young rutland could not satisfy. warwick ay, but he's dead: off with the traitor's head, and rear it in the place your father's stands. and now to london with triumphant march, there to be crowned england's royal king: from whence shall warwick cut the sea to france, and ask the lady bona for thy queen: so shalt thou sinew both these lands together; and, having france thy friend, thou shalt not dread the scatter'd foe that hopes to rise again; for though they cannot greatly sting to hurt, yet look to have them buzz to offend thine ears. first will i see the coronation; and then to brittany i'll cross the sea, to effect this marriage, so it please my lord. edward even as thou wilt, sweet warwick, let it be; for in thy shoulder do i build my seat, and never will i undertake the thing wherein thy counsel and consent is wanting. richard, i will create thee duke of gloucester, and george, of clarence: warwick, as ourself, shall do and undo as him pleaseth best. richard let me be duke of clarence, george of gloucester; for gloucester's dukedom is too ominous. warwick tut, that's a foolish observation: richard, be duke of gloucester. now to london, to see these honours in possession. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act iii scene i a forest in the north of england. [enter two keepers, with cross-bows in their hands] first keeper under this thick-grown brake we'll shroud ourselves; for through this laund anon the deer will come; and in this covert will we make our stand, culling the principal of all the deer. second keeper i'll stay above the hill, so both may shoot. first keeper that cannot be; the noise of thy cross-bow will scare the herd, and so my shoot is lost. here stand we both, and aim we at the best: and, for the time shall not seem tedious, i'll tell thee what befell me on a day in this self-place where now we mean to stand. second keeper here comes a man; let's stay till he be past. [enter king henry vi, disguised, with a prayerbook] king henry vi from scotland am i stol'n, even of pure love, to greet mine own land with my wishful sight. no, harry, harry, 'tis no land of thine; thy place is fill'd, thy sceptre wrung from thee, thy balm wash'd off wherewith thou wast anointed: no bending knee will call thee caesar now, no humble suitors press to speak for right, no, not a man comes for redress of thee; for how can i help them, and not myself? first keeper ay, here's a deer whose skin's a keeper's fee: this is the quondam king; let's seize upon him. king henry vi let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course. second keeper why linger we? let us lay hands upon him. first keeper forbear awhile; we'll hear a little more. king henry vi my queen and son are gone to france for aid; and, as i hear, the great commanding warwick is thither gone, to crave the french king's sister to wife for edward: if this news be true, poor queen and son, your labour is but lost; for warwick is a subtle orator, and lewis a prince soon won with moving words. by this account then margaret may win him; for she's a woman to be pitied much: her sighs will make a battery in his breast; her tears will pierce into a marble heart; the tiger will be mild whiles she doth mourn; and nero will be tainted with remorse, to hear and see her plaints, her brinish tears. ay, but she's come to beg, warwick to give; she, on his left side, craving aid for henry, he, on his right, asking a wife for edward. she weeps, and says her henry is deposed; he smiles, and says his edward is install'd; that she, poor wretch, for grief can speak no more; whiles warwick tells his title, smooths the wrong, inferreth arguments of mighty strength, and in conclusion wins the king from her, with promise of his sister, and what else, to strengthen and support king edward's place. o margaret, thus 'twill be; and thou, poor soul, art then forsaken, as thou went'st forlorn! second keeper say, what art thou that talk'st of kings and queens? king henry vi more than i seem, and less than i was born to: a man at least, for less i should not be; and men may talk of kings, and why not i? second keeper ay, but thou talk'st as if thou wert a king. king henry vi why, so i am, in mind; and that's enough. second keeper but, if thou be a king, where is thy crown? king henry vi my crown is in my heart, not on my head; not decked with diamonds and indian stones, nor to be seen: my crown is called content: a crown it is that seldom kings enjoy. second keeper well, if you be a king crown'd with content, your crown content and you must be contented to go along with us; for as we think, you are the king king edward hath deposed; and we his subjects sworn in all allegiance will apprehend you as his enemy. king henry vi but did you never swear, and break an oath? second keeper no, never such an oath; nor will not now. king henry vi where did you dwell when i was king of england? second keeper here in this country, where we now remain. king henry vi i was anointed king at nine months old; my father and my grandfather were kings, and you were sworn true subjects unto me: and tell me, then, have you not broke your oaths? first keeper no; for we were subjects but while you were king. king henry vi why, am i dead? do i not breathe a man? ah, simple men, you know not what you swear! look, as i blow this feather from my face, and as the air blows it to me again, obeying with my wind when i do blow, and yielding to another when it blows, commanded always by the greater gust; such is the lightness of you common men. but do not break your oaths; for of that sin my mild entreaty shall not make you guilty. go where you will, the king shall be commanded; and be you kings, command, and i'll obey. first keeper we are true subjects to the king, king edward. king henry vi so would you be again to henry, if he were seated as king edward is. first keeper we charge you, in god's name, and the king's, to go with us unto the officers. king henry vi in god's name, lead; your king's name be obey'd: and what god will, that let your king perform; and what he will, i humbly yield unto. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act iii scene ii london. the palace. [enter king edward iv, gloucester, clarence, and lady grey] king edward iv brother of gloucester, at saint alban's field this lady's husband, sir richard grey, was slain, his lands then seized on by the conqueror: her suit is now to repossess those lands; which we in justice cannot well deny, because in quarrel of the house of york the worthy gentleman did lose his life. gloucester your highness shall do well to grant her suit; it were dishonour to deny it her. king edward iv it were no less; but yet i'll make a pause. gloucester [aside to clarence] yea, is it so? i see the lady hath a thing to grant, before the king will grant her humble suit. clarence [aside to gloucester] he knows the game: how true he keeps the wind! gloucester [aside to clarence] silence! king edward iv widow, we will consider of your suit; and come some other time to know our mind. lady grey right gracious lord, i cannot brook delay: may it please your highness to resolve me now; and what your pleasure is, shall satisfy me. gloucester [aside to clarence] ay, widow? then i'll warrant you all your lands, an if what pleases him shall pleasure you. fight closer, or, good faith, you'll catch a blow. clarence [aside to gloucester] i fear her not, unless she chance to fall. gloucester [aside to clarence] god forbid that! for he'll take vantages. king edward iv how many children hast thou, widow? tell me. clarence [aside to gloucester] i think he means to beg a child of her. gloucester [aside to clarence] nay, whip me then: he'll rather give her two. lady grey three, my most gracious lord. gloucester [aside to clarence] you shall have four, if you'll be ruled by him. king edward iv 'twere pity they should lose their father's lands. lady grey be pitiful, dread lord, and grant it then. king edward iv lords, give us leave: i'll try this widow's wit. gloucester [aside to clarence] ay, good leave have you; for you will have leave, till youth take leave and leave you to the crutch. [gloucester and clarence retire] king edward iv now tell me, madam, do you love your children? lady grey ay, full as dearly as i love myself. king edward iv and would you not do much to do them good? lady grey to do them good, i would sustain some harm. king edward iv then get your husband's lands, to do them good. lady grey therefore i came unto your majesty. king edward iv i'll tell you how these lands are to be got. lady grey so shall you bind me to your highness' service. king edward iv what service wilt thou do me, if i give them? lady grey what you command, that rests in me to do. king edward iv but you will take exceptions to my boon. lady grey no, gracious lord, except i cannot do it. king edward iv ay, but thou canst do what i mean to ask. lady grey why, then i will do what your grace commands. gloucester [aside to clarence] he plies her hard; and much rain wears the marble. clarence [aside to gloucester] as red as fire! nay, then her wax must melt. lady grey why stops my lord, shall i not hear my task? king edward iv an easy task; 'tis but to love a king. lady grey that's soon perform'd, because i am a subject. king edward iv why, then, thy husband's lands i freely give thee. lady grey i take my leave with many thousand thanks. gloucester [aside to clarence] the match is made; she seals it with a curtsy. king edward iv but stay thee, 'tis the fruits of love i mean. lady grey the fruits of love i mean, my loving liege. king edward iv ay, but, i fear me, in another sense. what love, think'st thou, i sue so much to get? lady grey my love till death, my humble thanks, my prayers; that love which virtue begs and virtue grants. king edward iv no, by my troth, i did not mean such love. lady grey why, then you mean not as i thought you did. king edward iv but now you partly may perceive my mind. lady grey my mind will never grant what i perceive your highness aims at, if i aim aright. king edward iv to tell thee plain, i aim to lie with thee. lady grey to tell you plain, i had rather lie in prison. king edward iv why, then thou shalt not have thy husband's lands. lady grey why, then mine honesty shall be my dower; for by that loss i will not purchase them. king edward iv therein thou wrong'st thy children mightily. lady grey herein your highness wrongs both them and me. but, mighty lord, this merry inclination accords not with the sadness of my suit: please you dismiss me either with 'ay' or 'no.' king edward iv ay, if thou wilt say 'ay' to my request; no if thou dost say 'no' to my demand. lady grey then, no, my lord. my suit is at an end. gloucester [aside to clarence] the widow likes him not, she knits her brows. clarence [aside to gloucester] he is the bluntest wooer in christendom. king edward iv [aside] her looks do argue her replete with modesty; her words do show her wit incomparable; all her perfections challenge sovereignty: one way or other, she is for a king; and she shall be my love, or else my queen.- say that king edward take thee for his queen? lady grey 'tis better said than done, my gracious lord: i am a subject fit to jest withal, but far unfit to be a sovereign. king edward iv sweet widow, by my state i swear to thee i speak no more than what my soul intends; and that is, to enjoy thee for my love. lady grey and that is more than i will yield unto: i know i am too mean to be your queen, and yet too good to be your concubine. king edward iv you cavil, widow: i did mean, my queen. lady grey 'twill grieve your grace my sons should call you father. king edward iv no more than when my daughters call thee mother. thou art a widow, and thou hast some children; and, by god's mother, i, being but a bachelor, have other some: why, 'tis a happy thing to be the father unto many sons. answer no more, for thou shalt be my queen. gloucester [aside to clarence] the ghostly father now hath done his shrift. clarence [aside to gloucester] when he was made a shriver, 'twas for shift. king edward iv brothers, you muse what chat we two have had. gloucester the widow likes it not, for she looks very sad. king edward iv you'll think it strange if i should marry her. clarence to whom, my lord? king edward iv why, clarence, to myself. gloucester that would be ten days' wonder at the least. clarence that's a day longer than a wonder lasts. gloucester by so much is the wonder in extremes. king edward iv well, jest on, brothers: i can tell you both her suit is granted for her husband's lands. [enter a nobleman] nobleman my gracious lord, henry your foe is taken, and brought your prisoner to your palace gate. king edward iv see that he be convey'd unto the tower: and go we, brothers, to the man that took him, to question of his apprehension. widow, go you along. lords, use her honourably. [exeunt all but gloucester] gloucester ay, edward will use women honourably. would he were wasted, marrow, bones and all, that from his loins no hopeful branch may spring, to cross me from the golden time i look for! and yet, between my soul's desire and me- the lustful edward's title buried- is clarence, henry, and his son young edward, and all the unlook'd for issue of their bodies, to take their rooms, ere i can place myself: a cold premeditation for my purpose! why, then, i do but dream on sovereignty; like one that stands upon a promontory, and spies a far-off shore where he would tread, wishing his foot were equal with his eye, and chides the sea that sunders him from thence, saying, he'll lade it dry to have his way: so do i wish the crown, being so far off; and so i chide the means that keeps me from it; and so i say, i'll cut the causes off, flattering me with impossibilities. my eye's too quick, my heart o'erweens too much, unless my hand and strength could equal them. well, say there is no kingdom then for richard; what other pleasure can the world afford? i'll make my heaven in a lady's lap, and deck my body in gay ornaments, and witch sweet ladies with my words and looks. o miserable thought! and more unlikely than to accomplish twenty golden crowns! why, love forswore me in my mother's womb: and, for i should not deal in her soft laws, she did corrupt frail nature with some bribe, to shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub; to make an envious mountain on my back, where sits deformity to mock my body; to shape my legs of an unequal size; to disproportion me in every part, like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp that carries no impression like the dam. and am i then a man to be beloved? o monstrous fault, to harbour such a thought! then, since this earth affords no joy to me, but to command, to cheque, to o'erbear such as are of better person than myself, i'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown, and, whiles i live, to account this world but hell, until my mis-shaped trunk that bears this head be round impaled with a glorious crown. and yet i know not how to get the crown, for many lives stand between me and home: and i,--like one lost in a thorny wood, that rends the thorns and is rent with the thorns, seeking a way and straying from the way; not knowing how to find the open air, but toiling desperately to find it out,- torment myself to catch the english crown: and from that torment i will free myself, or hew my way out with a bloody axe. why, i can smile, and murder whiles i smile, and cry 'content' to that which grieves my heart, and wet my cheeks with artificial tears, and frame my face to all occasions. i'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall; i'll slay more gazers than the basilisk; i'll play the orator as well as nestor, deceive more slily than ulysses could, and, like a sinon, take another troy. i can add colours to the chameleon, change shapes with proteus for advantages, and set the murderous machiavel to school. can i do this, and cannot get a crown? tut, were it farther off, i'll pluck it down. [exit] 3 king henry vi act iii scene iii france. king lewis xi's palace. [flourish. enter king lewis xi, his sister bona, his admiral, called bourbon, prince edward, queen margaret, and oxford. king lewis xi sits, and riseth up again] king lewis xi fair queen of england, worthy margaret, sit down with us: it ill befits thy state and birth, that thou shouldst stand while lewis doth sit. queen margaret no, mighty king of france: now margaret must strike her sail and learn awhile to serve where kings command. i was, i must confess, great albion's queen in former golden days: but now mischance hath trod my title down, and with dishonour laid me on the ground; where i must take like seat unto my fortune, and to my humble seat conform myself. king lewis xi why, say, fair queen, whence springs this deep despair? queen margaret from such a cause as fills mine eyes with tears and stops my tongue, while heart is drown'd in cares. king lewis xi whate'er it be, be thou still like thyself, and sit thee by our side: [seats her by him] yield not thy neck to fortune's yoke, but let thy dauntless mind still ride in triumph over all mischance. be plain, queen margaret, and tell thy grief; it shall be eased, if france can yield relief. queen margaret those gracious words revive my drooping thoughts and give my tongue-tied sorrows leave to speak. now, therefore, be it known to noble lewis, that henry, sole possessor of my love, is of a king become a banish'd man, and forced to live in scotland a forlorn; while proud ambitious edward duke of york usurps the regal title and the seat of england's true-anointed lawful king. this is the cause that i, poor margaret, with this my son, prince edward, henry's heir, am come to crave thy just and lawful aid; and if thou fail us, all our hope is done: scotland hath will to help, but cannot help; our people and our peers are both misled, our treasures seized, our soldiers put to flight, and, as thou seest, ourselves in heavy plight. king lewis xi renowned queen, with patience calm the storm, while we bethink a means to break it off. queen margaret the more we stay, the stronger grows our foe. king lewis xi the more i stay, the more i'll succor thee. queen margaret o, but impatience waiteth on true sorrow. and see where comes the breeder of my sorrow! [enter warwick] king lewis xi what's he approacheth boldly to our presence? queen margaret our earl of warwick, edward's greatest friend. king lewis xi welcome, brave warwick! what brings thee to france? [he descends. she ariseth] queen margaret ay, now begins a second storm to rise; for this is he that moves both wind and tide. warwick from worthy edward, king of albion, my lord and sovereign, and thy vowed friend, i come, in kindness and unfeigned love, first, to do greetings to thy royal person; and then to crave a league of amity; and lastly, to confirm that amity with a nuptial knot, if thou vouchsafe to grant that virtuous lady bona, thy fair sister, to england's king in lawful marriage. queen margaret [aside] if that go forward, henry's hope is done. warwick [to bona] and, gracious madam, in our king's behalf, i am commanded, with your leave and favour, humbly to kiss your hand, and with my tongue to tell the passion of my sovereign's heart; where fame, late entering at his heedful ears, hath placed thy beauty's image and thy virtue. queen margaret king lewis and lady bona, hear me speak, before you answer warwick. his demand springs not from edward's well-meant honest love, but from deceit bred by necessity; for how can tyrants safely govern home, unless abroad they purchase great alliance? to prove him tyrant this reason may suffice, that henry liveth still: but were he dead, yet here prince edward stands, king henry's son. look, therefore, lewis, that by this league and marriage thou draw not on thy danger and dishonour; for though usurpers sway the rule awhile, yet heavens are just, and time suppresseth wrongs. warwick injurious margaret! prince edward and why not queen? warwick because thy father henry did usurp; and thou no more are prince than she is queen. oxford then warwick disannuls great john of gaunt, which did subdue the greatest part of spain; and, after john of gaunt, henry the fourth, whose wisdom was a mirror to the wisest; and, after that wise prince, henry the fifth, who by his prowess conquered all france: from these our henry lineally descends. warwick oxford, how haps it, in this smooth discourse, you told not how henry the sixth hath lost all that which henry fifth had gotten? methinks these peers of france should smile at that. but for the rest, you tell a pedigree of threescore and two years; a silly time to make prescription for a kingdom's worth. oxford why, warwick, canst thou speak against thy liege, whom thou obeyed'st thirty and six years, and not bewray thy treason with a blush? warwick can oxford, that did ever fence the right, now buckler falsehood with a pedigree? for shame! leave henry, and call edward king. oxford call him my king by whose injurious doom my elder brother, the lord aubrey vere, was done to death? and more than so, my father, even in the downfall of his mellow'd years, when nature brought him to the door of death? no, warwick, no; while life upholds this arm, this arm upholds the house of lancaster. warwick and i the house of york. king lewis xi queen margaret, prince edward, and oxford, vouchsafe, at our request, to stand aside, while i use further conference with warwick. [they stand aloof] queen margaret heavens grant that warwick's words bewitch him not! king lewis xi now warwick, tell me, even upon thy conscience, is edward your true king? for i were loath to link with him that were not lawful chosen. warwick thereon i pawn my credit and mine honour. king lewis xi but is he gracious in the people's eye? warwick the more that henry was unfortunate. king lewis xi then further, all dissembling set aside, tell me for truth the measure of his love unto our sister bona. warwick such it seems as may beseem a monarch like himself. myself have often heard him say and swear that this his love was an eternal plant, whereof the root was fix'd in virtue's ground, the leaves and fruit maintain'd with beauty's sun, exempt from envy, but not from disdain, unless the lady bona quit his pain. king lewis xi now, sister, let us hear your firm resolve. bona your grant, or your denial, shall be mine: [to warwick] yet i confess that often ere this day, when i have heard your king's desert recounted, mine ear hath tempted judgment to desire. king lewis xi then, warwick, thus: our sister shall be edward's; and now forthwith shall articles be drawn touching the jointure that your king must make, which with her dowry shall be counterpoised. draw near, queen margaret, and be a witness that bona shall be wife to the english king. prince edward to edward, but not to the english king. queen margaret deceitful warwick! it was thy device by this alliance to make void my suit: before thy coming lewis was henry's friend. king lewis xi and still is friend to him and margaret: but if your title to the crown be weak, as may appear by edward's good success, then 'tis but reason that i be released from giving aid which late i promised. yet shall you have all kindness at my hand that your estate requires and mine can yield. warwick henry now lives in scotland at his ease, where having nothing, nothing can he lose. and as for you yourself, our quondam queen, you have a father able to maintain you; and better 'twere you troubled him than france. queen margaret peace, impudent and shameless warwick, peace, proud setter up and puller down of kings! i will not hence, till, with my talk and tears, both full of truth, i make king lewis behold thy sly conveyance and thy lord's false love; for both of you are birds of selfsame feather. [post blows a horn within] king lewis xi warwick, this is some post to us or thee. [enter a post] post [to warwick] my lord ambassador, these letters are for you, sent from your brother, marquess montague: [to king lewis xi] these from our king unto your majesty: [to queen margaret] and, madam, these for you; from whom i know not. [they all read their letters] oxford i like it well that our fair queen and mistress smiles at her news, while warwick frowns at his. prince edward nay, mark how lewis stamps, as he were nettled: i hope all's for the best. king lewis xi warwick, what are thy news? and yours, fair queen? queen margaret mine, such as fill my heart with unhoped joys. warwick mine, full of sorrow and heart's discontent. king lewis xi what! has your king married the lady grey! and now, to soothe your forgery and his, sends me a paper to persuade me patience? is this the alliance that he seeks with france? dare he presume to scorn us in this manner? queen margaret i told your majesty as much before: this proveth edward's love and warwick's honesty. warwick king lewis, i here protest, in sight of heaven, and by the hope i have of heavenly bliss, that i am clear from this misdeed of edward's, no more my king, for he dishonours me, but most himself, if he could see his shame. did i forget that by the house of york my father came untimely to his death? did i let pass the abuse done to my niece? did i impale him with the regal crown? did i put henry from his native right? and am i guerdon'd at the last with shame? shame on himself! for my desert is honour: and to repair my honour lost for him, i here renounce him and return to henry. my noble queen, let former grudges pass, and henceforth i am thy true servitor: i will revenge his wrong to lady bona, and replant henry in his former state. queen margaret warwick, these words have turn'd my hate to love; and i forgive and quite forget old faults, and joy that thou becomest king henry's friend. warwick so much his friend, ay, his unfeigned friend, that, if king lewis vouchsafe to furnish us with some few bands of chosen soldiers, i'll undertake to land them on our coast and force the tyrant from his seat by war. 'tis not his new-made bride shall succor him: and as for clarence, as my letters tell me, he's very likely now to fall from him, for matching more for wanton lust than honour, or than for strength and safety of our country. bona dear brother, how shall bona be revenged but by thy help to this distressed queen? queen margaret renowned prince, how shall poor henry live, unless thou rescue him from foul despair? bona my quarrel and this english queen's are one. warwick and mine, fair lady bona, joins with yours. king lewis xi and mine with hers, and thine, and margaret's. therefore at last i firmly am resolved you shall have aid. queen margaret let me give humble thanks for all at once. king lewis xi then, england's messenger, return in post, and tell false edward, thy supposed king, that lewis of france is sending over masquers to revel it with him and his new bride: thou seest what's past, go fear thy king withal. bona tell him, in hope he'll prove a widower shortly, i'll wear the willow garland for his sake. queen margaret tell him, my mourning weeds are laid aside, and i am ready to put armour on. warwick tell him from me that he hath done me wrong, and therefore i'll uncrown him ere't be long. there's thy reward: be gone. [exit post] king lewis xi but, warwick, thou and oxford, with five thousand men, shall cross the seas, and bid false edward battle; and, as occasion serves, this noble queen and prince shall follow with a fresh supply. yet, ere thou go, but answer me one doubt, what pledge have we of thy firm loyalty? warwick this shall assure my constant loyalty, that if our queen and this young prince agree, i'll join mine eldest daughter and my joy to him forthwith in holy wedlock bands. queen margaret yes, i agree, and thank you for your motion. son edward, she is fair and virtuous, therefore delay not, give thy hand to warwick; and, with thy hand, thy faith irrevocable, that only warwick's daughter shall be thine. prince edward yes, i accept her, for she well deserves it; and here, to pledge my vow, i give my hand. [he gives his hand to warwick] king lewis xi why stay we now? these soldiers shall be levied, and thou, lord bourbon, our high admiral, shalt waft them over with our royal fleet. i long till edward fall by war's mischance, for mocking marriage with a dame of france. [exeunt all but warwick] warwick i came from edward as ambassador, but i return his sworn and mortal foe: matter of marriage was the charge he gave me, but dreadful war shall answer his demand. had he none else to make a stale but me? then none but i shall turn his jest to sorrow. i was the chief that raised him to the crown, and i'll be chief to bring him down again: not that i pity henry's misery, but seek revenge on edward's mockery. [exit] 3 king henry vi act iv scene i london. the palace. [enter gloucester, clarence, somerset, and montague] gloucester now tell me, brother clarence, what think you of this new marriage with the lady grey? hath not our brother made a worthy choice? clarence alas, you know, 'tis far from hence to france; how could he stay till warwick made return? somerset my lords, forbear this talk; here comes the king. gloucester and his well-chosen bride. clarence i mind to tell him plainly what i think. [flourish. enter king edward iv, attended; queen elizabeth, pembroke, stafford, hastings, and others] king edward iv now, brother of clarence, how like you our choice, that you stand pensive, as half malcontent? clarence as well as lewis of france, or the earl of warwick, which are so weak of courage and in judgment that they'll take no offence at our abuse. king edward iv suppose they take offence without a cause, they are but lewis and warwick: i am edward, your king and warwick's, and must have my will. gloucester and shall have your will, because our king: yet hasty marriage seldom proveth well. king edward iv yea, brother richard, are you offended too? gloucester not i: no, god forbid that i should wish them sever'd whom god hath join'd together; ay, and 'twere pity to sunder them that yoke so well together. king edward iv setting your scorns and your mislike aside, tell me some reason why the lady grey should not become my wife and england's queen. and you too, somerset and montague, speak freely what you think. clarence then this is mine opinion: that king lewis becomes your enemy, for mocking him about the marriage of the lady bona. gloucester and warwick, doing what you gave in charge, is now dishonoured by this new marriage. king edward iv what if both lewis and warwick be appeased by such invention as i can devise? montague yet, to have join'd with france in such alliance would more have strengthen'd this our commonwealth 'gainst foreign storms than any home-bred marriage. hastings why, knows not montague that of itself england is safe, if true within itself? montague but the safer when 'tis back'd with france. hastings 'tis better using france than trusting france: let us be back'd with god and with the seas which he hath given for fence impregnable, and with their helps only defend ourselves; in them and in ourselves our safety lies. clarence for this one speech lord hastings well deserves to have the heir of the lord hungerford. king edward iv ay, what of that? it was my will and grant; and for this once my will shall stand for law. gloucester and yet methinks your grace hath not done well, to give the heir and daughter of lord scales unto the brother of your loving bride; she better would have fitted me or clarence: but in your bride you bury brotherhood. clarence or else you would not have bestow'd the heir of the lord bonville on your new wife's son, and leave your brothers to go speed elsewhere. king edward iv alas, poor clarence! is it for a wife that thou art malcontent? i will provide thee. clarence in choosing for yourself, you show'd your judgment, which being shallow, you give me leave to play the broker in mine own behalf; and to that end i shortly mind to leave you. king edward iv leave me, or tarry, edward will be king, and not be tied unto his brother's will. queen elizabeth my lords, before it pleased his majesty to raise my state to title of a queen, do me but right, and you must all confess that i was not ignoble of descent; and meaner than myself have had like fortune. but as this title honours me and mine, so your dislike, to whom i would be pleasing, doth cloud my joys with danger and with sorrow. king edward iv my love, forbear to fawn upon their frowns: what danger or what sorrow can befall thee, so long as edward is thy constant friend, and their true sovereign, whom they must obey? nay, whom they shall obey, and love thee too, unless they seek for hatred at my hands; which if they do, yet will i keep thee safe, and they shall feel the vengeance of my wrath. gloucester [aside] i hear, yet say not much, but think the more. [enter a post] king edward iv now, messenger, what letters or what news from france? post my sovereign liege, no letters; and few words, but such as i, without your special pardon, dare not relate. king edward iv go to, we pardon thee: therefore, in brief, tell me their words as near as thou canst guess them. what answer makes king lewis unto our letters? post at my depart, these were his very words: 'go tell false edward, thy supposed king, that lewis of france is sending over masquers to revel it with him and his new bride.' king edward iv is lewis so brave? belike he thinks me henry. but what said lady bona to my marriage? post these were her words, utter'd with mad disdain: 'tell him, in hope he'll prove a widower shortly, i'll wear the willow garland for his sake.' king edward iv i blame not her, she could say little less; she had the wrong. but what said henry's queen? for i have heard that she was there in place. post 'tell him,' quoth she, 'my mourning weeds are done, and i am ready to put armour on.' king edward iv belike she minds to play the amazon. but what said warwick to these injuries? post he, more incensed against your majesty than all the rest, discharged me with these words: 'tell him from me that he hath done me wrong, and therefore i'll uncrown him ere't be long.' king edward iv ha! durst the traitor breathe out so proud words? well i will arm me, being thus forewarn'd: they shall have wars and pay for their presumption. but say, is warwick friends with margaret? post ay, gracious sovereign; they are so link'd in friendship that young prince edward marries warwick's daughter. clarence belike the elder; clarence will have the younger. now, brother king, farewell, and sit you fast, for i will hence to warwick's other daughter; that, though i want a kingdom, yet in marriage i may not prove inferior to yourself. you that love me and warwick, follow me. [exit clarence, and somerset follows] gloucester [aside] not i: my thoughts aim at a further matter; i stay not for the love of edward, but the crown. king edward iv clarence and somerset both gone to warwick! yet am i arm'd against the worst can happen; and haste is needful in this desperate case. pembroke and stafford, you in our behalf go levy men, and make prepare for war; they are already, or quickly will be landed: myself in person will straight follow you. [exeunt pembroke and stafford] but, ere i go, hastings and montague, resolve my doubt. you twain, of all the rest, are near to warwick by blood and by alliance: tell me if you love warwick more than me? if it be so, then both depart to him; i rather wish you foes than hollow friends: but if you mind to hold your true obedience, give me assurance with some friendly vow, that i may never have you in suspect. montague so god help montague as he proves true! hastings and hastings as he favours edward's cause! king edward iv now, brother richard, will you stand by us? gloucester ay, in despite of all that shall withstand you. king edward iv why, so! then am i sure of victory. now therefore let us hence; and lose no hour, till we meet warwick with his foreign power. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act iv scene ii a plain in warwickshire. [enter warwick and oxford, with french soldiers] warwick trust me, my lord, all hitherto goes well; the common people by numbers swarm to us. [enter clarence and somerset] but see where somerset and clarence come! speak suddenly, my lords, are we all friends? clarence fear not that, my lord. warwick then, gentle clarence, welcome unto warwick; and welcome, somerset: i hold it cowardice to rest mistrustful where a noble heart hath pawn'd an open hand in sign of love; else might i think that clarence, edward's brother, were but a feigned friend to our proceedings: but welcome, sweet clarence; my daughter shall be thine. and now what rests but, in night's coverture, thy brother being carelessly encamp'd, his soldiers lurking in the towns about, and but attended by a simple guard, we may surprise and take him at our pleasure? our scouts have found the adventure very easy: that as ulysses and stout diomede with sleight and manhood stole to rhesus' tents, and brought from thence the thracian fatal steeds, so we, well cover'd with the night's black mantle, at unawares may beat down edward's guard and seize himself; i say not, slaughter him, for i intend but only to surprise him. you that will follow me to this attempt, applaud the name of henry with your leader. [they all cry, 'henry!'] why, then, let's on our way in silent sort: for warwick and his friends, god and saint george! [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act iv scene iii edward's camp, near warwick. [enter three watchmen, to guard king edward iv's tent] first watchman come on, my masters, each man take his stand: the king by this is set him down to sleep. second watchman what, will he not to bed? first watchman why, no; for he hath made a solemn vow never to lie and take his natural rest till warwick or himself be quite suppress'd. second watchman to-morrow then belike shall be the day, if warwick be so near as men report. third watchman but say, i pray, what nobleman is that that with the king here resteth in his tent? first watchman 'tis the lord hastings, the king's chiefest friend. third watchman o, is it so? but why commands the king that his chief followers lodge in towns about him, while he himself keeps in the cold field? second watchman 'tis the more honour, because more dangerous. third watchman ay, but give me worship and quietness; i like it better than a dangerous honour. if warwick knew in what estate he stands, 'tis to be doubted he would waken him. first watchman unless our halberds did shut up his passage. second watchman ay, wherefore else guard we his royal tent, but to defend his person from night-foes? [enter warwick, clarence, oxford, somerset, and french soldiers, silent all] warwick this is his tent; and see where stand his guard. courage, my masters! honour now or never! but follow me, and edward shall be ours. first watchman who goes there? second watchman stay, or thou diest! [warwick and the rest cry all, 'warwick! warwick!' and set upon the guard, who fly, crying, 'arm! arm!' warwick and the rest following them] [the drum playing and trumpet sounding, reenter warwick, somerset, and the rest, bringing king edward iv out in his gown, sitting in a chair. richard and hastings fly over the stage] somerset what are they that fly there? warwick richard and hastings: let them go; here is the duke. king edward iv the duke! why, warwick, when we parted, thou call'dst me king. warwick ay, but the case is alter'd: when you disgraced me in my embassade, then i degraded you from being king, and come now to create you duke of york. alas! how should you govern any kingdom, that know not how to use ambassadors, nor how to be contented with one wife, nor how to use your brothers brotherly, nor how to study for the people's welfare, nor how to shroud yourself from enemies? king edward iv yea, brother of clarence, are thou here too? nay, then i see that edward needs must down. yet, warwick, in despite of all mischance, of thee thyself and all thy complices, edward will always bear himself as king: though fortune's malice overthrow my state, my mind exceeds the compass of her wheel. warwick then, for his mind, be edward england's king: [takes off his crown] but henry now shall wear the english crown, and be true king indeed, thou but the shadow. my lord of somerset, at my request, see that forthwith duke edward be convey'd unto my brother, archbishop of york. when i have fought with pembroke and his fellows, i'll follow you, and tell what answer lewis and the lady bona send to him. now, for a while farewell, good duke of york. [they lead him out forcibly] king edward iv what fates impose, that men must needs abide; it boots not to resist both wind and tide. [exit, guarded] oxford what now remains, my lords, for us to do but march to london with our soldiers? warwick ay, that's the first thing that we have to do; to free king henry from imprisonment and see him seated in the regal throne. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act iv scene iv london. the palace. [enter queen elizabeth and rivers] rivers madam, what makes you in this sudden change? queen elizabeth why brother rivers, are you yet to learn what late misfortune is befall'n king edward? rivers what! loss of some pitch'd battle against warwick? queen elizabeth no, but the loss of his own royal person. rivers then is my sovereign slain? queen elizabeth ay, almost slain, for he is taken prisoner, either betray'd by falsehood of his guard or by his foe surprised at unawares: and, as i further have to understand, is new committed to the bishop of york, fell warwick's brother and by that our foe. rivers these news i must confess are full of grief; yet, gracious madam, bear it as you may: warwick may lose, that now hath won the day. queen elizabeth till then fair hope must hinder life's decay. and i the rather wean me from despair for love of edward's offspring in my womb: this is it that makes me bridle passion and bear with mildness my misfortune's cross; ay, ay, for this i draw in many a tear and stop the rising of blood-sucking sighs, lest with my sighs or tears i blast or drown king edward's fruit, true heir to the english crown. rivers but, madam, where is warwick then become? queen elizabeth i am inform'd that he comes towards london, to set the crown once more on henry's head: guess thou the rest; king edward's friends must down, but, to prevent the tyrant's violence,- for trust not him that hath once broken faith,- i'll hence forthwith unto the sanctuary, to save at least the heir of edward's right: there shall i rest secure from force and fraud. come, therefore, let us fly while we may fly: if warwick take us we are sure to die. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act iv scene v a park near middleham castle in yorkshire. [enter gloucester, hastings, and stanley] gloucester now, my lord hastings and sir william stanley, leave off to wonder why i drew you hither, into this chiefest thicket of the park. thus stands the case: you know our king, my brother, is prisoner to the bishop here, at whose hands he hath good usage and great liberty, and, often but attended with weak guard, comes hunting this way to disport himself. i have advertised him by secret means that if about this hour he make his way under the colour of his usual game, he shall here find his friends with horse and men to set him free from his captivity. [enter king edward iv and a huntsman with him] huntsman this way, my lord; for this way lies the game. king edward iv nay, this way, man: see where the huntsmen stand. now, brother of gloucester, lord hastings, and the rest, stand you thus close, to steal the bishop's deer? gloucester brother, the time and case requireth haste: your horse stands ready at the park-corner. king edward iv but whither shall we then? hastings to lynn, my lord, and ship from thence to flanders. gloucester well guess'd, believe me; for that was my meaning. king edward iv stanley, i will requite thy forwardness. gloucester but wherefore stay we? 'tis no time to talk. king edward iv huntsman, what say'st thou? wilt thou go along? huntsman better do so than tarry and be hang'd. gloucester come then, away; let's ha' no more ado. king edward iv bishop, farewell: shield thee from warwick's frown; and pray that i may repossess the crown. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act iv scene vi london. the tower. [flourish. enter king henry vi, clarence, warwick, somerset, henry of richmond, oxford, montague, and lieutenant of the tower] king henry vi master lieutenant, now that god and friends have shaken edward from the regal seat, and turn'd my captive state to liberty, my fear to hope, my sorrows unto joys, at our enlargement what are thy due fees? lieutenant subjects may challenge nothing of their sovereigns; but if an humble prayer may prevail, i then crave pardon of your majesty. king henry vi for what, lieutenant? for well using me? nay, be thou sure i'll well requite thy kindness, for that it made my imprisonment a pleasure; ay, such a pleasure as incaged birds conceive when after many moody thoughts at last by notes of household harmony they quite forget their loss of liberty. but, warwick, after god, thou set'st me free, and chiefly therefore i thank god and thee; he was the author, thou the instrument. therefore, that i may conquer fortune's spite by living low, where fortune cannot hurt me, and that the people of this blessed land may not be punish'd with my thwarting stars, warwick, although my head still wear the crown, i here resign my government to thee, for thou art fortunate in all thy deeds. warwick your grace hath still been famed for virtuous; and now may seem as wise as virtuous, by spying and avoiding fortune's malice, for few men rightly temper with the stars: yet in this one thing let me blame your grace, for choosing me when clarence is in place. clarence no, warwick, thou art worthy of the sway, to whom the heavens in thy nativity adjudged an olive branch and laurel crown, as likely to be blest in peace and war; and therefore i yield thee my free consent. warwick and i choose clarence only for protector. king henry vi warwick and clarence give me both your hands: now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts, that no dissension hinder government: i make you both protectors of this land, while i myself will lead a private life and in devotion spend my latter days, to sin's rebuke and my creator's praise. warwick what answers clarence to his sovereign's will? clarence that he consents, if warwick yield consent; for on thy fortune i repose myself. warwick why, then, though loath, yet must i be content: we'll yoke together, like a double shadow to henry's body, and supply his place; i mean, in bearing weight of government, while he enjoys the honour and his ease. and, clarence, now then it is more than needful forthwith that edward be pronounced a traitor, and all his lands and goods be confiscate. clarence what else? and that succession be determined. warwick ay, therein clarence shall not want his part. king henry vi but, with the first of all your chief affairs, let me entreat, for i command no more, that margaret your queen and my son edward be sent for, to return from france with speed; for, till i see them here, by doubtful fear my joy of liberty is half eclipsed. clarence it shall be done, my sovereign, with all speed. king henry vi my lord of somerset, what youth is that, of whom you seem to have so tender care? somerset my liege, it is young henry, earl of richmond. king henry vi come hither, england's hope. [lays his hand on his head] if secret powers suggest but truth to my divining thoughts, this pretty lad will prove our country's bliss. his looks are full of peaceful majesty, his head by nature framed to wear a crown, his hand to wield a sceptre, and himself likely in time to bless a regal throne. make much of him, my lords, for this is he must help you more than you are hurt by me. [enter a post] warwick what news, my friend? post that edward is escaped from your brother, and fled, as he hears since, to burgundy. warwick unsavoury news! but how made he escape? post he was convey'd by richard duke of gloucester and the lord hastings, who attended him in secret ambush on the forest side and from the bishop's huntsmen rescued him; for hunting was his daily exercise. warwick my brother was too careless of his charge. but let us hence, my sovereign, to provide a salve for any sore that may betide. [exeunt all but somerset, henry of richmond, and oxford] somerset my lord, i like not of this flight of edward's; for doubtless burgundy will yield him help, and we shall have more wars before 't be long. as henry's late presaging prophecy did glad my heart with hope of this young richmond, so doth my heart misgive me, in these conflicts what may befall him, to his harm and ours: therefore, lord oxford, to prevent the worst, forthwith we'll send him hence to brittany, till storms be past of civil enmity. oxford ay, for if edward repossess the crown, 'tis like that richmond with the rest shall down. somerset it shall be so; he shall to brittany. come, therefore, let's about it speedily. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act iv scene vii before york. [flourish. enter king edward iv, gloucester, hastings, and soldiers] king edward iv now, brother richard, lord hastings, and the rest, yet thus far fortune maketh us amends, and says that once more i shall interchange my waned state for henry's regal crown. well have we pass'd and now repass'd the seas and brought desired help from burgundy: what then remains, we being thus arrived from ravenspurgh haven before the gates of york, but that we enter, as into our dukedom? gloucester the gates made fast! brother, i like not this; for many men that stumble at the threshold are well foretold that danger lurks within. king edward iv tush, man, abodements must not now affright us: by fair or foul means we must enter in, for hither will our friends repair to us. hastings my liege, i'll knock once more to summon them. [enter, on the walls, the mayor of york, and his brethren] mayor my lords, we were forewarned of your coming, and shut the gates for safety of ourselves; for now we owe allegiance unto henry. king edward iv but, master mayor, if henry be your king, yet edward at the least is duke of york. mayor true, my good lord; i know you for no less. king edward iv why, and i challenge nothing but my dukedom, as being well content with that alone. gloucester [aside] but when the fox hath once got in his nose, he'll soon find means to make the body follow. hastings why, master mayor, why stand you in a doubt? open the gates; we are king henry's friends. mayor ay, say you so? the gates shall then be open'd. [they descend] gloucester a wise stout captain, and soon persuaded! hastings the good old man would fain that all were well, so 'twere not 'long of him; but being enter'd, i doubt not, i, but we shall soon persuade both him and all his brothers unto reason. [enter the mayor and two aldermen, below] king edward iv so, master mayor: these gates must not be shut but in the night or in the time of war. what! fear not, man, but yield me up the keys; [takes his keys] for edward will defend the town and thee, and all those friends that deign to follow me. [march. enter montgomery, with drum and soldiers] gloucester brother, this is sir john montgomery, our trusty friend, unless i be deceived. king edward iv welcome, sir john! but why come you in arms? montague to help king edward in his time of storm, as every loyal subject ought to do. king edward iv thanks, good montgomery; but we now forget our title to the crown and only claim our dukedom till god please to send the rest. montague then fare you well, for i will hence again: i came to serve a king and not a duke. drummer, strike up, and let us march away. [the drum begins to march] king edward iv nay, stay, sir john, awhile, and we'll debate by what safe means the crown may be recover'd. montague what talk you of debating? in few words, if you'll not here proclaim yourself our king, i'll leave you to your fortune and be gone to keep them back that come to succor you: why shall we fight, if you pretend no title? gloucester why, brother, wherefore stand you on nice points? king edward iv when we grow stronger, then we'll make our claim: till then, 'tis wisdom to conceal our meaning. hastings away with scrupulous wit! now arms must rule. gloucester and fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns. brother, we will proclaim you out of hand: the bruit thereof will bring you many friends. king edward iv then be it as you will; for 'tis my right, and henry but usurps the diadem. montague ay, now my sovereign speaketh like himself; and now will i be edward's champion. hastings sound trumpet; edward shall be here proclaim'd: come, fellow-soldier, make thou proclamation. [flourish] soldier edward the fourth, by the grace of god, king of england and france, and lord of ireland, &c. montague and whosoe'er gainsays king edward's right, by this i challenge him to single fight. [throws down his gauntlet] all long live edward the fourth! king edward iv thanks, brave montgomery; and thanks unto you all: if fortune serve me, i'll requite this kindness. now, for this night, let's harbour here in york; and when the morning sun shall raise his car above the border of this horizon, we'll forward towards warwick and his mates; for well i wot that henry is no soldier. ah, froward clarence! how evil it beseems thee to flatter henry and forsake thy brother! yet, as we may, we'll meet both thee and warwick. come on, brave soldiers: doubt not of the day, and, that once gotten, doubt not of large pay. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act iv scene viii london. the palace. [flourish. enter king henry vi, warwick, montague, clarence, exeter, and oxford] warwick what counsel, lords? edward from belgia, with hasty germans and blunt hollanders, hath pass'd in safety through the narrow seas, and with his troops doth march amain to london; and many giddy people flock to him. king henry vi let's levy men, and beat him back again. clarence a little fire is quickly trodden out; which, being suffer'd, rivers cannot quench. warwick in warwickshire i have true-hearted friends, not mutinous in peace, yet bold in war; those will i muster up: and thou, son clarence, shalt stir up in suffolk, norfolk, and in kent, the knights and gentlemen to come with thee: thou, brother montague, in buckingham, northampton and in leicestershire, shalt find men well inclined to hear what thou command'st: and thou, brave oxford, wondrous well beloved, in oxfordshire shalt muster up thy friends. my sovereign, with the loving citizens, like to his island girt in with the ocean, or modest dian circled with her nymphs, shall rest in london till we come to him. fair lords, take leave and stand not to reply. farewell, my sovereign. king henry vi farewell, my hector, and my troy's true hope. clarence in sign of truth, i kiss your highness' hand. king henry vi well-minded clarence, be thou fortunate! montague comfort, my lord; and so i take my leave. oxford and thus i seal my truth, and bid adieu. king henry vi sweet oxford, and my loving montague, and all at once, once more a happy farewell. warwick farewell, sweet lords: let's meet at coventry. [exeunt all but king henry vi and exeter] king henry vi here at the palace i will rest awhile. cousin of exeter, what thinks your lordship? methinks the power that edward hath in field should not be able to encounter mine. exeter the doubt is that he will seduce the rest. king henry vi that's not my fear; my meed hath got me fame: i have not stopp'd mine ears to their demands, nor posted off their suits with slow delays; my pity hath been balm to heal their wounds, my mildness hath allay'd their swelling griefs, my mercy dried their water-flowing tears; i have not been desirous of their wealth, nor much oppress'd them with great subsidies. nor forward of revenge, though they much err'd: then why should they love edward more than me? no, exeter, these graces challenge grace: and when the lion fawns upon the lamb, the lamb will never cease to follow him. [shout within. 'a lancaster! a lancaster!'] exeter hark, hark, my lord! what shouts are these? [enter king edward iv, gloucester, and soldiers] king edward iv seize on the shame-faced henry, bear him hence; and once again proclaim us king of england. you are the fount that makes small brooks to flow: now stops thy spring; my sea sha$l suck them dry, and swell so much the higher by their ebb. hence with him to the tower; let him not speak. [exeunt some with king henry vi] and, lords, towards coventry bend we our course where peremptory warwick now remains: the sun shines hot; and, if we use delay, cold biting winter mars our hoped-for hay. gloucester away betimes, before his forces join, and take the great-grown traitor unawares: brave warriors, march amain towards coventry. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act v scene i coventry. [enter warwick, the mayor of coventry, two messengers, and others upon the walls] warwick where is the post that came from valiant oxford? how far hence is thy lord, mine honest fellow? first messenger by this at dunsmore, marching hitherward. warwick how far off is our brother montague? where is the post that came from montague? second messenger by this at daintry, with a puissant troop. [enter sir john somerville] warwick say, somerville, what says my loving son? and, by thy guess, how nigh is clarence now? somerset at southam i did leave him with his forces, and do expect him here some two hours hence. [drum heard] warwick then clarence is at hand, i hear his drum. somerset it is not his, my lord; here southam lies: the drum your honour hears marcheth from warwick. warwick who should that be? belike, unlook'd-for friends. somerset they are at hand, and you shall quickly know. [march: flourish. enter king edward iv, gloucester, and soldiers] king edward iv go, trumpet, to the walls, and sound a parle. gloucester see how the surly warwick mans the wall! warwick o unbid spite! is sportful edward come? where slept our scouts, or how are they seduced, that we could hear no news of his repair? king edward iv now, warwick, wilt thou ope the city gates, speak gentle words and humbly bend thy knee, call edward king and at his hands beg mercy? and he shall pardon thee these outrages. warwick nay, rather, wilt thou draw thy forces hence, confess who set thee up and pluck'd thee own, call warwick patron and be penitent? and thou shalt still remain the duke of york. gloucester i thought, at least, he would have said the king; or did he make the jest against his will? warwick is not a dukedom, sir, a goodly gift? gloucester ay, by my faith, for a poor earl to give: i'll do thee service for so good a gift. warwick 'twas i that gave the kingdom to thy brother. king edward iv why then 'tis mine, if but by warwick's gift. warwick thou art no atlas for so great a weight: and weakling, warwick takes his gift again; and henry is my king, warwick his subject. king edward iv but warwick's king is edward's prisoner: and, gallant warwick, do but answer this: what is the body when the head is off? gloucester alas, that warwick had no more forecast, but, whiles he thought to steal the single ten, the king was slily finger'd from the deck! you left poor henry at the bishop's palace, and, ten to one, you'll meet him in the tower. edward 'tis even so; yet you are warwick still. gloucester come, warwick, take the time; kneel down, kneel down: nay, when? strike now, or else the iron cools. warwick i had rather chop this hand off at a blow, and with the other fling it at thy face, than bear so low a sail, to strike to thee. king edward iv sail how thou canst, have wind and tide thy friend, this hand, fast wound about thy coal-black hair shall, whiles thy head is warm and new cut off, write in the dust this sentence with thy blood, 'wind-changing warwick now can change no more.' [enter oxford, with drum and colours] warwick o cheerful colours! see where oxford comes! oxford oxford, oxford, for lancaster! [he and his forces enter the city] gloucester the gates are open, let us enter too. king edward iv so other foes may set upon our backs. stand we in good array; for they no doubt will issue out again and bid us battle: if not, the city being but of small defence, we'll quickly rouse the traitors in the same. warwick o, welcome, oxford! for we want thy help. [enter montague with drum and colours] montague montague, montague, for lancaster! [he and his forces enter the city] gloucester thou and thy brother both shall buy this treason even with the dearest blood your bodies bear. king edward iv the harder match'd, the greater victory: my mind presageth happy gain and conquest. [enter somerset, with drum and colours] somerset somerset, somerset, for lancaster! [he and his forces enter the city] gloucester two of thy name, both dukes of somerset, have sold their lives unto the house of york; and thou shalt be the third if this sword hold. [enter clarence, with drum and colours] warwick and lo, where george of clarence sweeps along, of force enough to bid his brother battle; with whom an upright zeal to right prevails more than the nature of a brother's love! come, clarence, come; thou wilt, if warwick call. clarence father of warwick, know you what this means? [taking his red rose out of his hat] look here, i throw my infamy at thee i will not ruinate my father's house, who gave his blood to lime the stones together, and set up lancaster. why, trow'st thou, warwick, that clarence is so harsh, so blunt, unnatural, to bend the fatal instruments of war against his brother and his lawful king? perhaps thou wilt object my holy oath: to keep that oath were more impiety than jephthah's, when he sacrificed his daughter. i am so sorry for my trespass made that, to deserve well at my brother's hands, i here proclaim myself thy mortal foe, with resolution, wheresoe'er i meet thee- as i will meet thee, if thou stir abroad- to plague thee for thy foul misleading me. and so, proud-hearted warwick, i defy thee, and to my brother turn my blushing cheeks. pardon me, edward, i will make amends: and, richard, do not frown upon my faults, for i will henceforth be no more unconstant. king edward iv now welcome more, and ten times more beloved, than if thou never hadst deserved our hate. gloucester welcome, good clarence; this is brotherlike. warwick o passing traitor, perjured and unjust! king edward iv what, warwick, wilt thou leave the town and fight? or shall we beat the stones about thine ears? warwick alas, i am not coop'd here for defence! i will away towards barnet presently, and bid thee battle, edward, if thou darest. king edward iv yes, warwick, edward dares, and leads the way. lords, to the field; saint george and victory! [exeunt king edward and his company. march. warwick and his company follow] 3 king henry vi act v scene ii a field of battle near barnet. [alarum and excursions. enter king edward iv, bringing forth warwick wounded] king edward iv so, lie thou there: die thou, and die our fear; for warwick was a bug that fear'd us all. now, montague, sit fast; i seek for thee, that warwick's bones may keep thine company. [exit] warwick ah, who is nigh? come to me, friend or foe, and tell me who is victor, york or warwick? why ask i that? my mangled body shows, my blood, my want of strength, my sick heart shows. that i must yield my body to the earth and, by my fall, the conquest to my foe. thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge, whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle, under whose shade the ramping lion slept, whose top-branch overpeer'd jove's spreading tree and kept low shrubs from winter's powerful wind. these eyes, that now are dimm'd with death's black veil, have been as piercing as the mid-day sun, to search the secret treasons of the world: the wrinkles in my brows, now filled with blood, were liken'd oft to kingly sepulchres; for who lived king, but i could dig his grave? and who durst mine when warwick bent his brow? lo, now my glory smear'd in dust and blood! my parks, my walks, my manors that i had. even now forsake me, and of all my lands is nothing left me but my body's length. why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust? and, live we how we can, yet die we must. [enter oxford and somerset] somerset ah, warwick, warwick! wert thou as we are. we might recover all our loss again; the queen from france hath brought a puissant power: even now we heard the news: ah, could'st thou fly! warwick why, then i would not fly. ah, montague, if thou be there, sweet brother, take my hand. and with thy lips keep in my soul awhile! thou lovest me not; for, brother, if thou didst, thy tears would wash this cold congealed blood that glues my lips and will not let me speak. come quickly, montague, or i am dead. somerset ah, warwick! montague hath breathed his last; and to the latest gasp cried out for warwick, and said 'commend me to my valiant brother.' and more he would have said, and more he spoke, which sounded like a clamour in a vault, that mought not be distinguished; but at last i well might hear, delivered with a groan, 'o, farewell, warwick!' warwick sweet rest his soul! fly, lords, and save yourselves; for warwick bids you all farewell to meet in heaven. [dies] oxford away, away, to meet the queen's great power! [here they bear away his body. exeunt] 3 king henry vi act v scene iii another part of the field. [flourish. enter king edward iv in triumph; with gloucester, clarence, and the rest] king edward iv thus far our fortune keeps an upward course, and we are graced with wreaths of victory. but, in the midst of this bright-shining day, i spy a black, suspicious, threatening cloud, that will encounter with our glorious sun, ere he attain his easeful western bed: i mean, my lords, those powers that the queen hath raised in gallia have arrived our coast and, as we hear, march on to fight with us. clarence a little gale will soon disperse that cloud and blow it to the source from whence it came: the very beams will dry those vapours up, for every cloud engenders not a storm. gloucester the queen is valued thirty thousand strong, and somerset, with oxford fled to her: if she have time to breathe be well assured her faction will be full as strong as ours. king edward iv we are advertised by our loving friends that they do hold their course toward tewksbury: we, having now the best at barnet field, will thither straight, for willingness rids way; and, as we march, our strength will be augmented in every county as we go along. strike up the drum; cry 'courage!' and away. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act v scene iv plains near tewksbury. [march. enter queen margaret, prince edward, somerset, oxford, and soldiers] queen margaret great lords, wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss, but cheerly seek how to redress their harms. what though the mast be now blown overboard, the cable broke, the holding-anchor lost, and half our sailors swallow'd in the flood? yet lives our pilot still. is't meet that he should leave the helm and like a fearful lad with tearful eyes add water to the sea and give more strength to that which hath too much, whiles, in his moan, the ship splits on the rock, which industry and courage might have saved? ah, what a shame! ah, what a fault were this! say warwick was our anchor; what of that? and montague our topmost; what of him? our slaughter'd friends the tackles; what of these? why, is not oxford here another anchor? and somerset another goodly mast? the friends of france our shrouds and tacklings? and, though unskilful, why not ned and i for once allow'd the skilful pilot's charge? we will not from the helm to sit and weep, but keep our course, though the rough wind say no, from shelves and rocks that threaten us with wreck. as good to chide the waves as speak them fair. and what is edward but ruthless sea? what clarence but a quicksand of deceit? and richard but a ragged fatal rock? all these the enemies to our poor bark. say you can swim; alas, 'tis but a while! tread on the sand; why, there you quickly sink: bestride the rock; the tide will wash you off, or else you famish; that's a threefold death. this speak i, lords, to let you understand, if case some one of you would fly from us, that there's no hoped-for mercy with the brothers more than with ruthless waves, with sands and rocks. why, courage then! what cannot be avoided 'twere childish weakness to lament or fear. prince edward methinks a woman of this valiant spirit should, if a coward heard her speak these words, infuse his breast with magnanimity and make him, naked, foil a man at arms. i speak not this as doubting any here for did i but suspect a fearful man he should have leave to go away betimes, lest in our need he might infect another and make him of like spirit to himself. if any such be here--as god forbid!- let him depart before we need his help. oxford women and children of so high a courage, and warriors faint! why, 'twere perpetual shame. o brave young prince! thy famous grandfather doth live again in thee: long mayst thou live to bear his image and renew his glories! somerset and he that will not fight for such a hope. go home to bed, and like the owl by day, if he arise, be mock'd and wonder'd at. queen margaret thanks, gentle somerset; sweet oxford, thanks. prince edward and take his thanks that yet hath nothing else. [enter a messenger] messenger prepare you, lords, for edward is at hand. ready to fight; therefore be resolute. oxford i thought no less: it is his policy to haste thus fast, to find us unprovided. somerset but he's deceived; we are in readiness. queen margaret this cheers my heart, to see your forwardness. oxford here pitch our battle; hence we will not budge. [flourish and march. enter king edward iv, gloucester, clarence, and soldiers] king edward iv brave followers, yonder stands the thorny wood, which, by the heavens' assistance and your strength, must by the roots be hewn up yet ere night. i need not add more fuel to your fire, for well i wot ye blaze to burn them out give signal to the fight, and to it, lords! queen margaret lords, knights, and gentlemen, what i should say my tears gainsay; for every word i speak, ye see, i drink the water of mine eyes. therefore, no more but this: henry, your sovereign, is prisoner to the foe; his state usurp'd, his realm a slaughter-house, his subjects slain, his statutes cancell'd and his treasure spent; and yonder is the wolf that makes this spoil. you fight in justice: then, in god's name, lords, be valiant and give signal to the fight. [alarum. retreat. excursions. exeunt] 3 king henry vi act v scene v another part of the field. [flourish. enter king edward iv, gloucester, clarence, and soldiers; with queen margaret, oxford, and somerset, prisoners] king edward iv now here a period of tumultuous broils. away with oxford to hames castle straight: for somerset, off with his guilty head. go, bear them hence; i will not hear them speak. oxford for my part, i'll not trouble thee with words. somerset nor i, but stoop with patience to my fortune. [exeunt oxford and somerset, guarded] queen margaret so part we sadly in this troublous world, to meet with joy in sweet jerusalem. king edward iv is proclamation made, that who finds edward shall have a high reward, and he his life? gloucester it is: and lo, where youthful edward comes! [enter soldiers, with prince edward] king edward iv bring forth the gallant, let us hear him speak. what! can so young a thorn begin to prick? edward, what satisfaction canst thou make for bearing arms, for stirring up my subjects, and all the trouble thou hast turn'd me to? prince edward speak like a subject, proud ambitious york! suppose that i am now my father's mouth; resign thy chair, and where i stand kneel thou, whilst i propose the selfsame words to thee, which traitor, thou wouldst have me answer to. queen margaret ah, that thy father had been so resolved! gloucester that you might still have worn the petticoat, and ne'er have stol'n the breech from lancaster. prince edward let aesop fable in a winter's night; his currish riddles sort not with this place. gloucester by heaven, brat, i'll plague ye for that word. queen margaret ay, thou wast born to be a plague to men. gloucester for god's sake, take away this captive scold. prince edward nay, take away this scolding crookback rather. king edward iv peace, wilful boy, or i will charm your tongue. clarence untutor'd lad, thou art too malapert. prince edward i know my duty; you are all undutiful: lascivious edward, and thou perjured george, and thou mis-shapen dick, i tell ye all i am your better, traitors as ye are: and thou usurp'st my father's right and mine. king edward iv take that, thou likeness of this railer here. [stabs him] gloucester sprawl'st thou? take that, to end thy agony. [stabs him] clarence and there's for twitting me with perjury. [stabs him] queen margaret o, kill me too! gloucester marry, and shall. [offers to kill her] king edward iv hold, richard, hold; for we have done too much. gloucester why should she live, to fill the world with words? king edward iv what, doth she swoon? use means for her recovery. gloucester clarence, excuse me to the king my brother; i'll hence to london on a serious matter: ere ye come there, be sure to hear some news. clarence what? what? gloucester the tower, the tower. [exit] queen margaret o ned, sweet ned! speak to thy mother, boy! canst thou not speak? o traitors! murderers! they that stabb'd caesar shed no blood at all, did not offend, nor were not worthy blame, if this foul deed were by to equal it: he was a man; this, in respect, a child: and men ne'er spend their fury on a child. what's worse than murderer, that i may name it? no, no, my heart will burst, and if i speak: and i will speak, that so my heart may burst. butchers and villains! bloody cannibals! how sweet a plant have you untimely cropp'd! you have no children, butchers! if you had, the thought of them would have stirr'd up remorse: but if you ever chance to have a child, look in his youth to have him so cut off as, deathmen, you have rid this sweet young prince! king edward iv away with her; go, bear her hence perforce. queen margaret nay, never bear me hence, dispatch me here, here sheathe thy sword, i'll pardon thee my death: what, wilt thou not? then, clarence, do it thou. clarence by heaven, i will not do thee so much ease. queen margaret good clarence, do; sweet clarence, do thou do it. clarence didst thou not hear me swear i would not do it? queen margaret ay, but thou usest to forswear thyself: 'twas sin before, but now 'tis charity. what, wilt thou not? where is that devil's butcher, hard-favour'd richard? richard, where art thou? thou art not here: murder is thy alms-deed; petitioners for blood thou ne'er put'st back. king edward iv away, i say; i charge ye, bear her hence. queen margaret so come to you and yours, as to this prince! [exit, led out forcibly] king edward iv where's richard gone? clarence to london, all in post; and, as i guess, to make a bloody supper in the tower. king edward iv he's sudden, if a thing comes in his head. now march we hence: discharge the common sort with pay and thanks, and let's away to london and see our gentle queen how well she fares: by this, i hope, she hath a son for me. [exeunt] 3 king henry vi act v scene vi london. the tower. [enter king henry vi and gloucester, with the lieutenant, on the walls] gloucester good day, my lord. what, at your book so hard? king henry vi ay, my good lord:--my lord, i should say rather; 'tis sin to flatter; 'good' was little better: 'good gloucester' and 'good devil' were alike, and both preposterous; therefore, not 'good lord.' gloucester sirrah, leave us to ourselves: we must confer. [exit lieutenant] king henry vi so flies the reckless shepherd from the wolf; so first the harmless sheep doth yield his fleece and next his throat unto the butcher's knife. what scene of death hath roscius now to act? gloucester suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; the thief doth fear each bush an officer. king henry vi the bird that hath been limed in a bush, with trembling wings misdoubteth every bush; and i, the hapless male to one sweet bird, have now the fatal object in my eye where my poor young was limed, was caught and kill'd. gloucester why, what a peevish fool was that of crete, that taught his son the office of a fowl! an yet, for all his wings, the fool was drown'd. king henry vi i, daedalus; my poor boy, icarus; thy father, minos, that denied our course; the sun that sear'd the wings of my sweet boy thy brother edward, and thyself the sea whose envious gulf did swallow up his life. ah, kill me with thy weapon, not with words! my breast can better brook thy dagger's point than can my ears that tragic history. but wherefore dost thou come? is't for my life? gloucester think'st thou i am an executioner? king henry vi a persecutor, i am sure, thou art: if murdering innocents be executing, why, then thou art an executioner. gloucester thy son i kill'd for his presumption. king henry vi hadst thou been kill'd when first thou didst presume, thou hadst not lived to kill a son of mine. and thus i prophesy, that many a thousand, which now mistrust no parcel of my fear, and many an old man's sigh and many a widow's, and many an orphan's water-standing eye- men for their sons, wives for their husbands, and orphans for their parents timeless death- shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born. the owl shriek'd at thy birth,--an evil sign; the night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; dogs howl'd, and hideous tempest shook down trees; the raven rook'd her on the chimney's top, and chattering pies in dismal discords sung. thy mother felt more than a mother's pain, and, yet brought forth less than a mother's hope, to wit, an indigested and deformed lump, not like the fruit of such a goodly tree. teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born, to signify thou camest to bite the world: and, if the rest be true which i have heard, thou camest- gloucester i'll hear no more: die, prophet in thy speech: [stabs him] for this amongst the rest, was i ordain'd. king henry vi ay, and for much more slaughter after this. god forgive my sins, and pardon thee! [dies] gloucester what, will the aspiring blood of lancaster sink in the ground? i thought it would have mounted. see how my sword weeps for the poor king's death! o, may such purple tears be alway shed from those that wish the downfall of our house! if any spark of life be yet remaining, down, down to hell; and say i sent thee thither: [stabs him again] i, that have neither pity, love, nor fear. indeed, 'tis true that henry told me of; for i have often heard my mother say i came into the world with my legs forward: had i not reason, think ye, to make haste, and seek their ruin that usurp'd our right? the midwife wonder'd and the women cried 'o, jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!' and so i was; which plainly signified that i should snarl and bite and play the dog. then, since the heavens have shaped my body so, let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it. i have no brother, i am like no brother; and this word 'love,' which graybeards call divine, be resident in men like one another and not in me: i am myself alone. clarence, beware; thou keep'st me from the light: but i will sort a pitchy day for thee; for i will buz abroad such prophecies that edward shall be fearful of his life, and then, to purge his fear, i'll be thy death. king henry and the prince his son are gone: clarence, thy turn is next, and then the rest, counting myself but bad till i be best. i'll throw thy body in another room and triumph, henry, in thy day of doom. [exit, with the body] 3 king henry vi act v scene vii london. the palace. [flourish. enter king edward iv, queen elizabeth, clarence, gloucester, hastings, a nurse with the young prince, and attendants] king edward iv once more we sit in england's royal throne, re-purchased with the blood of enemies. what valiant foemen, like to autumn's corn, have we mow'd down, in tops of all their pride! three dukes of somerset, threefold renown'd for hardy and undoubted champions; two cliffords, as the father and the son, and two northumberlands; two braver men ne'er spurr'd their coursers at the trumpet's sound; with them, the two brave bears, warwick and montague, that in their chains fetter'd the kingly lion and made the forest tremble when they roar'd. thus have we swept suspicion from our seat and made our footstool of security. come hither, bess, and let me kiss my boy. young ned, for thee, thine uncles and myself have in our armours watch'd the winter's night, went all afoot in summer's scalding heat, that thou mightst repossess the crown in peace; and of our labours thou shalt reap the gain. gloucester [aside] i'll blast his harvest, if your head were laid; for yet i am not look'd on in the world. this shoulder was ordain'd so thick to heave; and heave it shall some weight, or break my back: work thou the way,--and thou shalt execute. king edward iv clarence and gloucester, love my lovely queen; and kiss your princely nephew, brothers both. clarence the duty that i owe unto your majesty i seal upon the lips of this sweet babe. queen elizabeth thanks, noble clarence; worthy brother, thanks. gloucester and, that i love the tree from whence thou sprang'st, witness the loving kiss i give the fruit. [aside] to say the truth, so judas kiss'd his master, and cried 'all hail!' when as he meant all harm. king edward iv now am i seated as my soul delights, having my country's peace and brothers' loves. clarence what will your grace have done with margaret? reignier, her father, to the king of france hath pawn'd the sicils and jerusalem, and hither have they sent it for her ransom. king edward iv away with her, and waft her hence to france. and now what rests but that we spend the time with stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows, such as befits the pleasure of the court? sound drums and trumpets! farewell sour annoy! for here, i hope, begins our lasting joy. [exeunt] 1850 the spectacles by edgar allen poe spectacles many years ago, it was the fashion to ridicule the idea of "love at first sight;" but those who think, not less than those who feel deeply, have always advocated its existence. modern discoveries, indeed, in what may be termed ethical magnetism or magnetoesthetics, render it probable that the most natural, and, consequently, the truest and most intense of the human affections are those which arise in the heart as if by electric sympathyin a word, that the brightest and most enduring of the psychal fetters are those which are riveted by a glance. the confession i am about to make will add another to the already almost innumerable instances of the truth of the position. my story requires that i should be somewhat minute. i am still a very young mannot yet twenty-two years of age. my name, at present, is a very usual and rather plebeian onesimpson. i say "at present;" for it is only lately that i have been so calledhaving legislatively adopted this surname within the last year in order to receive a large inheritance left me by a distant male relative, adolphus simpson, esq. the bequest was conditioned upon my taking the name of the testator,the family, not the christian name; my christian name is napoleon bonaparteor, more properly, these are my first and middle appellations. i assumed the name, simpson, with some reluctance, as in my true patronym, froissart, i felt a very pardonable pridebelieving that i could trace a descent from the immortal author of the "chronicles." while on the subject of names, by the bye, i may mention a singular coincidence of sound attending the names of some of my immediate predecessors. my father was a monsieur froissart, of paris. his wifemy mother, whom he married at fifteenwas a mademoiselle croissart, eldest daughter of croissart the banker, whose wife, again, being only sixteen when married, was the eldest daughter of one victor voissart. monsieur voissart, very singularly, had married a lady of similar namea mademoiselle moissart. she, too, was quite a child when married; and her mother, also, madame moissart, was only fourteen when led to the altar. these early marriages are usual in france. here, however, are moissart, voissart, croissart, and froissart, all in the direct line of descent. my own name, though, as i say, became simpson, by act of legislature, and with so much repugnance on my part, that, at one period, i actually hesitated about accepting the legacy with the useless and annoying proviso attached. as to personal endowments, i am by no means deficient. on the contrary, i believe that i am well made, and possess what nine tenths of the world would call a handsome face. in height i am five feet eleven. my hair is black and curling. my nose is sufficiently good. my eyes are large and gray; and although, in fact they are weak a very inconvenient degree, still no defect in this regard would be suspected from their appearance. the weakness itself, however, has always much annoyed me, and i have resorted to every remedyshort of wearing glasses. being youthful and good-looking, i naturally dislike these, and have resolutely refused to employ them. i know nothing, indeed, which so disfigures the countenance of a young person, or so impresses every feature with an air of demureness, if not altogether of sanctimoniousness and of age. an eyeglass, on the other hand, has a savor of downright foppery and affectation. i have hitherto managed as well as i could without either. but something too much of these merely personal details, which, after all, are of little importance. i will content myself with saying, in addition, that my temperament is sanguine, rash, ardent, enthusiasticand that all my life i have been a devoted admirer of the women. one night last winter i entered a box at the p-theatre, in company with a friend, mr. talbot. it was an opera night, and the bills presented a very rare attraction, so that the house was excessively crowded. we were in time, however, to obtain the front seats which had been reserved for us, and into which, with some little difficulty, we elbowed our way. for two hours my companion, who was a musical fanatico, gave his undivided attention to the stage; and, in the meantime, i amused myself by observing the audience, which consisted, in chief part, of the very elite of the city. having satisfied myself upon this point, i was about turning my eyes to the prima donna, when they were arrested and riveted by a figure in one of the private boxes which had escaped my observation. if i live a thousand years, i can never forget the intense emotion with which i regarded this figure. it was that of a female, the most exquisite i had ever beheld. the face was so far turned toward the stage that, for some minutes, i could not obtain a view of itbut the form was divine; no other word can sufficiently express its magnificent proportionand even the term "divine" seems ridiculously feeble as i write it. the magic of a lovely form in womanthe necromancy of female gracefulnesswas always a power which i had found it impossible to resist, but here was grace personified, incarnate, the beau ideal of my wildest and most enthusiastic visions. the figure, almost all of which the construction of the box permitted to be seen, was somewhat above the medium height, and nearly approached, without positively reaching, the majestic. its perfect fullness and tournure were delicious. the head of which only the back was visible, rivalled in outline that of the greek psyche, and was rather displayed than concealed by an elegant cap of gaze aerienne, which put me in mind of the ventum textilem of apuleius. the right arm hung over the balustrade of the box, and thrilled every nerve of my frame with its exquisite symmetry. its upper portion was draperied by one of the loose open sleeves now in fashion. this extended but little below the elbow. beneath it was worn an under one of some frail material, close-fitting, and terminated by a cuff of rich lace, which fell gracefully over the top of the hand, revealing only the delicate fingers, upon one of which sparkled a diamond ring, which i at once saw was of extraordinary value. the admirable roundness of the wrist was well set off by a bracelet which encircled it, and which also was ornamented and clasped by a magnificent aigrette of jewels-telling, in words that could not be mistaken, at once of the wealth and fastidious taste of the wearer. i gazed at this queenly apparition for at least half an hour, as if i had been suddenly converted to stone; and, during this period, i felt the full force and truth of all that has been said or sung concerning "love at first sight." my feelings were totally different from any which i had hitherto experienced, in the presence of even the most celebrated specimens of female loveliness. an unaccountable, and what i am compelled to consider a magnetic, sympathy of soul for soul, seemed to rivet, not only my vision, but my whole powers of thought and feeling, upon the admirable object before me. i sawi felti knew that i was deeply, madly, irrevocably in loveand this even before seeing the face of the person beloved. so intense, indeed, was the passion that consumed me, that i really believe it would have received little if any abatement had the features, yet unseen, proved of merely ordinary character, so anomalous is the nature of the only true loveof the love at first sightand so little really dependent is it upon the external conditions which only seem to create and control it. while i was thus wrapped in admiration of this lovely vision, a sudden disturbance among the audience caused her to turn her head partially toward me, so that i beheld the entire profile of the face. its beauty even exceeded my anticipationsand yet there was something about it which disappointed me without my being able to tell exactly what it was. i said "disappointed," but this is not altogether the word. my sentiments were at once quieted and exalted. they partook less of transport and more of calm enthusiasm of enthusiastic repose. this state of feeling arose, perhaps, from the madonna-like and matronly air of the face; and yet i at once understood that it could not have arisen entirely from this. there was something elsesome mystery which i could not developesome expression about the countenance which slightly disturbed me while it greatly heightened my interest. in fact, i was just in that condition of mind which prepares a young and susceptible man for any act of extravagance. had the lady been alone, i should undoubtedly have entered her box and accosted her at all hazards; but, fortunately, she was attended by two companionsa gentleman, and a strikingly beautiful woman, to all appearance a few years younger than herself. i revolved in my mind a thousand schemes by which i might obtain, hereafter, an introduction to the elder lady, or, for the present, at all events, a more distinct view of her beauty. i would have removed my position to one nearer her own, but the crowded state of the theatre rendered this impossible; and the stern decrees of fashion had, of late, imperatively prohibited the use of the opera-glass in a case such as this, even had i been so fortunate as to have one with mebut i had notand was thus in despair. at length i bethought me of applying to my companion. "talbot," i said, "you have an opera-glass. let me have it." "an operaglass!no!what do you suppose i would be doing with an opera-glass?" here he turned impatiently toward the stage. "but, talbot," i continued, pulling him by the shoulder, "listen to me will you? do you see the stagebox?there!no, the next.did you ever behold as lovely a woman?" "she is very beautiful, no doubt," he said. "i wonder who she can be?" "why, in the name of all that is angelic, don't you know who she is? 'not to know her argues yourself unknown.' she is the celebrated madame lalandethe beauty of the day par excellence, and the talk of the whole town. immensely wealthy tooa widow, and a great matchhas just arrived from paris." "do you know her?" "yes; i have the honor." "will you introduce me?" "assuredly, with the greatest pleasure; when shall it be?" "to-morrow, at one, i will call upon you at b--'s. "very good; and now do hold your tongue, if you can." in this latter respect i was forced to take talbot's advice; for he remained obstinately deaf to every further question or suggestion, and occupied himself exclusively for the rest of the evening with what was transacting upon the stage. in the meantime i kept my eyes riveted on madame lalande, and at length had the good fortune to obtain a full front view of her face. it was exquisitely lovelythis, of course, my heart had told me before, even had not talbot fully satisfied me upon the pointbut still the unintelligible something disturbed me. i finally concluded that my senses were impressed by a certain air of gravity, sadness, or, still more properly, of weariness, which took something from the youth and freshness of the countenance, only to endow it with a seraphic tenderness and majesty, and thus, of course, to my enthusiastic and romantic temperment, with an interest tenfold. while i thus feasted my eyes, i perceived, at last, to my great trepidation, by an almost imperceptible start on the part of the lady, that she had become suddenly aware of the intensity of my gaze. still, i was absolutely fascinated, and could not withdraw it, even for an instant. she turned aside her face, and again i saw only the chiselled contour of the back portion of the head. after some minutes, as if urged by curiosity to see if i was still looking, she gradually brought her face again around and again encountered my burning gaze. her large dark eyes fell instantly, and a deep blush mantled her cheek. but what was my astonishment at perceiving that she not only did not a second time avert her head, but that she actually took from her girdle a double eyeglasselevated itadjusted itand then regarded me through it, intently and deliberately, for the space of several minutes. had a thunderbolt fallen at my feet i could not have been more thoroughly astoundedastounded onlynot offended or disgusted in the slightest degree; although an action so bold in any other woman would have been likely to offend or disgust. but the whole thing was done with so much quietudeso much nonchalanceso much reposewith so evident an air of the highest breeding, in shortthat nothing of mere effrontery was perceptible, and my sole sentiments were those of admiration and surprise. i observed that, upon her first elevation of the glass, she had seemed satisfied with a momentary inspection of my person, and was withdrawing the instrument, when, as if struck by a second thought, she resumed it, and so continued to regard me with fixed attention for the space of several minutesfor five minutes, at the very least, i am sure. this action, so remarkable in an american theatre, attracted very general observation, and gave rise to an indefinite movement, or buzz, among the audience, which for a moment filled me with confusion, but produced no visible effect upon the countenance of madame lalande. having satisfied her curiosityif such it wasshe dropped the glass, and quietly gave her attention again to the stage; her profile now being turned toward myself, as before. i continued to watch her unremittingly, although i was fully conscious of my rudeness in so doing. presently i saw the head slowly and slightly change its position; and soon i became convinced that the lady, while pretending to look at the stage was, in fact, attentively regarding myself. it is needless to say what effect this conduct, on the part of so fascinating a woman, had upon my excitable mind. having thus scrutinized me for perhaps a quarter of an hour, the fair object of my passion addressed the gentleman who attended her, and while she spoke, i saw distinctly, by the glances of both, that the conversation had reference to myself. upon its conclusion, madame lalande again turned toward the stage, and, for a few minutes, seemed absorbed in the performance. at the expiration of this period, however, i was thrown into an extremity of agitation by seeing her unfold, for the second time, the eye-glass which hung at her side, fully confront me as before, and, disregarding the renewed buzz of the audience, survey me, from head to foot, with the same miraculous composure which had previously so delighted and confounded my soul. this extraordinary behavior, by throwing me into a perfect fever of excitementinto an absolute delirium of love-served rather to embolden than to disconcert me. in the mad intensity of my devotion, i forgot everything but the presence and the majestic loveliness of the vision which confronted my gaze. watching my opportunity, when i thought the audience were fully engaged with the opera, i at length caught the eyes of madame lalande, and, upon the instant, made a slight but unmistakable bow. she blushed very deeplythen averted her eyesthen slowly and cautiously looked around, apparently to see if my rash action had been noticedthen leaned over toward the gentleman who sat by her side. i now felt a burning sense of the impropriety i had committed, and expected nothing less than instant exposure; while a vision of pistols upon the morrow floated rapidly and uncomfortably through my brain. i was greatly and immediately relieved, however, when i saw the lady merely hand the gentleman a play-bill, without speaking, but the reader may form some feeble conception of my astonishmentof my profound amazementmy delirious bewilderment of heart and soulwhen, instantly afterward, having again glanced furtively around, she allowed her bright eyes to set fully and steadily upon my own, and then, with a faint smile, disclosing a bright line of her pearly teeth, made two distinct, pointed, and unequivocal affirmative inclinations of the head. it is useless, of course, to dwell upon my joyupon my transportupon my illimitable ecstasy of heart. if ever man was mad with excess of happiness, it was myself at that moment. i loved. this was my first loveso i felt it to be. it was love supreme-indescribable. it was "love at first sight;" and at first sight, too, it had been appreciated and returned. yes, returned. how and why should i doubt it for an instant. what other construction could i possibly put upon such conduct, on the part of a lady so beautifulso wealthyevidently so accomplishedof so high breedingof so lofty a position in societyin every regard so entirely respectable as i felt assured was madame lalande? yes, she loved meshe returned the enthusiasm of my love, with an enthusiasm as blindas uncompromisingas uncalculatingas abandonedand as utterly unbounded as my own! these delicious fancies and reflections, however, were now interrupted by the falling of the drop-curtain. the audience arose; and the usual tumult immediately supervened. quitting talbot abruptly, i made every effort to force my way into closer proximity with madame lalande. having failed in this, on account of the crowd, i at length gave up the chase, and bent my steps homeward; consoling myself for my disappointment in not having been able to touch even the hem of her robe, by the reflection that i should be introduced by talbot, in due form, upon the morrow. this morrow at last came, that is to say, a day finally dawned upon a long and weary night of impatience; and then the hours until "one" were snail-paced, dreary, and innumerable. but even stamboul, it is said, shall have an end, and there came an end to this long delay. the clock struck. as the last echo ceased, i stepped into b--'s and inquired for talbot. "out," said the footmantalbot's own. "out!" i replied, staggering back half a dozen paces"let me tell you, my fine fellow, that this thing is thoroughly impossible and impracticable; mr. talbot is not out. what do you mean?" "nothing, sir; only mr. talbot is not in, that's all. he rode over to s--, immediately after breakfast, and left word that he would not be in town again for a week." i stood petrified with horror and rage. i endeavored to reply, but my tongue refused its office. at length i turned on my heel, livid with wrath, and inwardly consigning the whole tribe of the talbots to the innermost regions of erebus. it was evident that my considerate friend, il fanatico, had quite forgotten his appointment with myselfhad forgotten it as soon as it was made. at no time was he a very scrupulous man of his word. there was no help for it; so smothering my vexation as well as i could, i strolled moodily up the street, propounding futile inquiries about madame lalande to every male acquaintance i met. by report she was known, i found, to allto many by sightbut she had been in town only a few weeks, and there were very few, therefore, who claimed her personal acquaintance. these few, being still comparatively strangers, could not, or would not, take the liberty of introducing me through the formality of a morning call. while i stood thus in despair, conversing with a trio of friends upon the all absorbing subject of my heart, it so happened that the subject itself passed by. "as i live, there she is!" cried one. "surprisingly beautiful!" exclaimed a second. "an angel upon earth!" ejaculated a third. i looked; and in an open carriage which approached us, passing slowly down the street, sat the enchanting vision of the opera, accompanied by the younger lady who had occupied a portion of her box. "her companion also wears remarkably well," said the one of my trio who had spoken first. "astonishingly," said the second; "still quite a brilliant air, but art will do wonders. upon my word, she looks better than she did at paris five years ago. a beautiful woman still;don't you think so, froissart?simpson, i mean." "still!" said i, "and why shouldn't she be? but compared with her friend she is as a rushlight to the evening stara glowworm to antares. "ha! ha! ha!why, simpson, you have an astonishing tact at making discoveriesoriginal ones, i mean." and here we separated, while one of the trio began humming a gay vaudeville, of which i caught only the lines ninon, ninon, ninon a bas a bas ninon de l'enclos! during this little scene, however, one thing had served greatly to console me, although it fed the passion by which i was consumed. as the carriage of madame lalande rolled by our group, i had observed that she recognized me; and more than this, she had blessed me, by the most seraphic of all imaginable smiles, with no equivocal mark of the recognition. as for an introduction, i was obliged to abandon all hope of it until such time as talbot should think proper to return from the country. in the meantime i perseveringly frequented every reputable place of public amusement; and, at length, at the theatre, where i first saw her, i had the supreme bliss of meeting her, and of exchanging glances with her once again. this did not occur, however, until the lapse of a fortnight. every day, in the interim, i had inquired for talbot at his hotel, and every day had been thrown into a spasm of wrath by the everlasting "not come home yet" of his footman. upon the evening in question, therefore, i was in a condition little short of madness. madame lalande, i had been told, was a parisianhad lately arrived from parismight she not suddenly return?return before talbot came backand might she not be thus lost to me forever? the thought was too terrible to bear. since my future happiness was at issue, i resolved to act with a manly decision. in a word, upon the breaking up of the play, i traced the lady to her residence, noted the address, and the next morning sent her a full and elaborate letter, in which i poured out my whole heart. i spoke boldly, freelyin a word, i spoke with passion. i concealed nothingnothing even of my weakness. i alluded to the romantic circumstances of our first meetingeven to the glances which had passed between us. i went so far as to say that i felt assured of her love; while i offered this assurance, and my own intensity of devotion, as two excuses for my otherwise unpardonable conduct. as a third, i spoke of my fear that she might quit the city before i could have the opportunity of a formal introduction. i concluded the most wildly enthusiastic epistle ever penned, with a frank declaration of my worldly circumstancesof my affluenceand with an offer of my heart and of my hand. in an agony of expectation i awaited the reply. after what seemed the lapse of a century it came. yes, actually came. romantic as all this may appear, i really received a letter from madame lalandethe beautiful, the wealthy, the idolized madame lalande. her eyesher magnificent eyes, had not belied her noble heart. like a true frenchwoman as she was she had obeyed the frank dictates of her reasonthe generous impulses of her naturedespising the conventional pruderies of the world. she had not scorned my proposals. she had not sheltered herself in silence. she had not returned my letter unopened. she had even sent me, in reply, one penned by her own exquisite fingers. it ran thus: "monsieur simpson vill pardonne me for not compose de butefulle tong of his contree so vell as might. it is only de late dat i am arrive, and not yet ave do opportunite for tol'etudier. "vid dis apologie for the maniere, i vill now say dat, helas!monsieur simpson ave guess but de too true. need i say de more? helas! am i not ready speak de too moshe? "eugenie laland." this noblespirited note i kissed a million times, and committed, no doubt, on its account, a thousand other extravagances that have now escaped my memory. still talbot would not return. alas! could he have formed even the vaguest idea of the suffering his absence had occasioned his friend, would not his sympathizing nature have flown immediately to my relief? still, however, he came not. i wrote. he replied. he was detained by urgent businessbut would shortly return. he begged me not to be impatientto moderate my transportsto read soothing booksto drink nothing stronger than hockand to bring the consolations of philosophy to my aid. the fool! if he could not come himself, why, in the name of every thing rational, could he not have enclosed me a letter of presentation? i wrote him again, entreating him to forward one forthwith. my letter was returned by that footman, with the following endorsement in pencil. the scoundrel had joined his master in the country: "left s-yesterday, for parts unknowndid not say whereor when be backso thought best to return letter, knowing your handwriting, and as how you is always, more or less, in a hurry. "yours sincerely, "stubbs." after this, it is needless to say, that i devoted to the infernal deities both master and valet:but there was little use in anger, and no consolation at all in complaint. but i had yet a resource left, in my constitutional audacity. hitherto it had served me well, and i now resolved to make it avail me to the end. besides, after the correspondence which had passed between us, what act of mere informality could i commit, within bounds, that ought to be regarded as indecorous by madame lalande? since the affair of the letter, i had been in the habit of watching her house, and thus discovered that, about twilight, it was her custom to promenade, attended only by a negro in livery, in a public square overlooked by her windows. here, amid the luxuriant and shadowing groves, in the gray gloom of a sweet midsummer evening, i observed my opportunity and accosted her. the better to deceive the servant in attendance, i did this with the assured air of an old and familiar acquaintance. with a presence of mind truly parisian, she took the cue at once, and, to greet me, held out the most bewitchingly little of hands. the valet at once fell into the rear, and now, with hearts full to overflowing, we discoursed long and unreservedly of our love. as madame lalande spoke english even less fluently than she wrote it, our conversation was necessarily in french. in this sweet tongue, so adapted to passion, i gave loose to the impetuous enthusiasm of my nature, and, with all the eloquence i could command, besought her to consent to an immediate marriage. at this impatience she smiled. she urged the old story of decorumthat bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by. i had most imprudently made it known among my friends, she observed, that i desired her acquaintancethus that i did not possess itthus, again, there was no possibility of concealing the date of our first knowledge of each other. and then she adverted, with a blush, to the extreme recency of this date. to wed immediately would be improperwould be indecorouswould be outre. all this she said with a charming air of naivete which enraptured while it grieved and convinced me. she went even so far as to accuse me, laughingly, of rashnessof imprudence. she bade me remember that i really even know not who she waswhat were her prospects, her connections, her standing in society. she begged me, but with a sigh, to reconsider my proposal, and termed my love an infatuationa will o' the wispa fancy or fantasy of the momenta baseless and unstable creation rather of the imagination than of the heart. these things she uttered as the shadows of the sweet twilight gathered darkly and more darkly around usand then, with a gentle pressure of her fairy-like hand, overthrew, in a single sweet instant, all the argumentative fabric she had reared. i replied as best i couldas only a true lover can. i spoke at length, and perseveringly of my devotion, of my passionof her exceeding beauty, and of my own enthusiastic admiration. in conclusion, i dwelt, with a convincing energy, upon the perils that encompass the course of lovethat course of true love that never did run smoothand thus deduced the manifest danger of rendering that course unnecessarily long. this latter argument seemed finally to soften the rigor of her determination. she relented; but there was yet an obstacle, she said, which she felt assured i had not properly considered. this was a delicate pointfor a woman to urge, especially so; in mentioning it, she saw that she must make a sacrifice of her feelings; still, for me, every sacrifice should be made. she alluded to the topic of age. was i awarewas i fully aware of the discrepancy between us? that the age of the husband, should surpass by a few yearseven by fifteen or twentythe age of the wife, was regarded by the world as admissible, and, indeed, as even proper, but she had always entertained the belief that the years of the wife should never exceed in number those of the husband. a discrepancy of this unnatural kind gave rise, too frequently, alas! to a life of unhappiness. now she was aware that my own age did not exceed two and twenty; and i, on the contrary, perhaps, was not aware that the years of my eugenie extended very considerably beyond that sum. about all this there was a nobility of soula dignity of candorwhich delightedwhich enchanted mewhich eternally riveted my chains. i could scarcely restrain the excessive transport which possessed me. "my sweetest eugenie," i cried, "what is all this about which you are discoursing? your years surpass in some measure my own. but what then? the customs of the world are so many conventional follies. to those who love as ourselves, in what respect differs a year from an hour? i am twenty-two, you say, granted: indeed, you may as well call me, at once, twenty-three. now you yourself, my dearest eugenie, can have numbered no more thancan have numbered no more thanno more thanthanthanthan-" here i paused for an instant, in the expectation that madame lalande would interrupt me by supplying her true age. but a frenchwoman is seldom direct, and has always, by way of answer to an embarrassing query, some little practical reply of her own. in the present instance, eugenie, who for a few moments past had seemed to be searching for something in her bosom, at length let fall upon the grass a miniature, which i immediately picked up and presented to her. "keep it!" she said, with one of her most ravishing smiles. "keep it for my sakefor the sake of her whom it too flatteringly represents. besides, upon the back of the trinket you may discover, perhaps, the very information you seem to desire. it is now, to be sure, growing rather darkbut you can examine it at your leisure in the morning. in the meantime, you shall be my escort home to-night. my friends are about holding a little musical levee. i can promise you, too, some good singing. we french are not nearly so punctilious as you americans, and i shall have no difficulty in smuggling you in, in the character of an old acquaintance." with this, she took my arm, and i attended her home. the mansion was quite a fine one, and, i believe, furnished in good taste. of this latter point, however, i am scarcely qualified to judge; for it was just dark as we arrived; and in american mansions of the better sort lights seldom, during the heat of summer, make their appearance at this, the most pleasant period of the day. in about an hour after my arrival, to be sure, a single shaded solar lamp was lit in the principal drawing-room; and this apartment, i could thus see, was arranged with unusual good taste and even splendor; but two other rooms of the suite, and in which the company chiefly assembled, remained, during the whole evening, in a very agreeable shadow. this is a well-conceived custom, giving the party at least a choice of light or shade, and one which our friends over the water could not do better than immediately adopt. the evening thus spent was unquestionably the most delicious of my life. madame lalande had not overrated the musical abilities of her friends; and the singing i here heard i had never heard excelled in any private circle out of vienna. the instrumental performers were many and of superior talents. the vocalists were chiefly ladies, and no individual sang less than well. at length, upon a peremptory call for "madame lalande," she arose at once, without affectation or demur, from the chaise longue upon which she had sat by my side, and, accompanied by one or two gentlemen and her female friend of the opera, repaired to the piano in the main drawing-room. i would have escorted her myself, but felt that, under the circumstances of my introduction to the house, i had better remain unobserved where i was. i was thus deprived of the pleasure of seeing, although not of hearing, her sing. the impression she produced upon the company seemed electrical but the effect upon myself was something even more. i know not how adequately to describe it. it arose in part, no doubt, from the sentiment of love with which i was imbued; but chiefly from my conviction of the extreme sensibility of the singer. it is beyond the reach of art to endow either air or recitative with more impassioned expression than was hers. her utterance of the romance in otellothe tone with which she gave the words "sul mio sasso," in the capulettiis ringing in my memory yet. her lower tones were absolutely miraculous. her voice embraced three complete octaves, extending from the contralto d to the d upper soprano, and, though sufficiently powerful to have filled the san carlos, executed, with the minutest precision, every difficulty of vocal composition-ascending and descending scales, cadences, or fiorituri. in the final of the somnambula, she brought about a most remarkable effect at the words: ah! non guinge uman pensiero al contento ond 'io son piena. here, in imitation of malibran, she modified the original phrase of bellini, so as to let her voice descend to the tenor g, when, by a rapid transition, she struck the g above the treble stave, springing over an interval of two octaves. upon rising from the piano after these miracles of vocal execution, she resumed her seat by my side; when i expressed to her, in terms of the deepest enthusiasm, my delight at her performance. of my surprise i said nothing, and yet was i most unfeignedly surprised; for a certain feebleness, or rather a certain tremulous indecision of voice in ordinary conversation, had prepared me to anticipate that, in singing, she would not acquit herself with any remarkable ability. our conversation was now long, earnest, uninterrupted, and totally unreserved. she made me relate many of the earlier passages of my life, and listened with breathless attention to every word of the narrative. i concealed nothingfelt that i had a right to conceal nothingfrom her confiding affection. encouraged by her candor upon the delicate point of her age, i entered, with perfect frankness, not only into a detail of my many minor vices, but made full confession of those moral and even of those physical infirmities, the disclosure of which, in demanding so much higher a degree of courage, is so much surer an evidence of love. i touched upon my college indiscretionsupon my extravagancesupon my carousalsupon my debtsupon my flirtations. i even went so far as to speak of a slightly hectic cough with which, at one time, i had been troubledof a chronic rheumatismof a twinge of hereditary goutand, in conclusion, of the disagreeable and inconvenient, but hitherto carefully concealed, weakness of my eyes. "upon this latter point," said madame lalande, laughingly, "you have been surely injudicious in coming to confession; for, without the confession, i take it for granted that no one would have accused you of the crime. by the by," she continued, "have you any recollection-" and here i fancied that a blush, even through the gloom of the apartment, became distinctly visible upon her cheek"have you any recollection, mon cher ami of this little ocular assistant, which now depends from my neck?" as she spoke she twirled in her fingers the identical double eye-glass which had so overwhelmed me with confusion at the opera. "full wellalas! do i remember it," i exclaimed, pressing passionately the delicate hand which offered the glasses for my inspection. they formed a complex and magnificent toy, richly chased and filigreed, and gleaming with jewels, which, even in the deficient light, i could not help perceiving were of high value. "eh bien! mon ami" she resumed with a certain empressment of manner that rather surprised me"eh bien! mon ami, you have earnestly besought of me a favor which you have been pleased to denominate priceless. you have demanded of me my hand upon the morrow. should i yield to your entreatiesand, i may add, to the pleadings of my own bosomwould i not be entitled to demand of you a verya very little boon in return?" "name it!" i exclaimed with an energy that had nearly drawn upon us the observation of the company, and restrained by their presence alone from throwing myself impetuously at her feet. "name it, my beloved, my eugenie, my own!name it!but, alas! it is already yielded ere named." "you shall conquer, then, mon ami," said she, "for the sake of the eugenie whom you love, this little weakness which you have at last confessedthis weakness more moral than physicaland which, let me assure you, is so unbecoming the nobility of your real natureso inconsistent with the candor of your usual characterand which, if permitted further control, will assuredly involve you, sooner or later, in some very disagreeable scrape. you shall conquer, for my sake, this affectation which leads you, as you yourself acknowledge, to the tacit or implied denial of your infirmity of vision. for, this infirmity you virtually deny, in refusing to employ the customary means for its relief. you will understand me to say, then, that i wish you to wear spectacles;ah, hush!you have already consented to wear them, for my sake. you shall accept the little toy which i now hold in my hand, and which, though admirable as an aid to vision, is really of no very immense value as a gem. you perceive that, by a trifling modification thusor thusit can be adapted to the eyes in the form of spectacles, or worn in the waistcoat pocket as an eye-glass. it is in the former mode, however, and habitually, that you have already consented to wear it for my sake." this requestmust i confess it?confused me in no little degree. but the condition with which it was coupled rendered hesitation, of course, a matter altogether out of the question. "it is done!" i cried, with all the enthusiasm that i could muster at the moment. "it is doneit is most cheerfully agreed. i sacrifice every feeling for your sake. to-night i wear this dear eye-glass, as an eye-glass, and upon my heart; but with the earliest dawn of that morning which gives me the pleasure of calling you wife, i will place it upon myupon my nose,and there wear it ever afterward, in the less romantic, and less fashionable, but certainly in the more serviceable, form which you desire." our conversation now turned upon the details of our arrangements for the morrow. talbot, i learned from my betrothed, had just arrived in town. i was to see him at once, and procure a carriage. the soiree would scarcely break up before two; and by this hour the vehicle was to be at the door, when, in the confusion occasioned by the departure of the company, madame l. could easily enter it unobserved. we were then to call at the house of a clergyman who would be in waiting; there be married, drop talbot, and proceed on a short tour to the east, leaving the fashionable world at home to make whatever comments upon the matter it thought best. having planned all this, i immediately took leave, and went in search of talbot, but, on the way, i could not refrain from stepping into a hotel, for the purpose of inspecting the miniature; and this i did by the powerful aid of the glasses. the countenance was a surpassingly beautiful one! those large luminous eyes!that proud grecian nose!those dark luxuriant curls!"ah!" said i, exultingly to myself, "this is indeed the speaking image of my beloved!" i turned the reverse, and discovered the words"eugenie lalandeaged twenty-seven years and seven months." i found talbot at home, and proceeded at once to acquaint him with my good fortune. he professed excessive astonishment, of course, but congratulated me most cordially, and proffered every assistance in his power. in a word, we carried out our arrangement to the letter, and, at two in the morning, just ten minutes after the ceremony, i found myself in a close carriage with madame lalandewith mrs. simpson, i should sayand driving at a great rate out of town, in a direction northeast by north, half-north. it had been determined for us by talbot, that, as we were to be up all night, we should make our first stop at c--, a village about twenty miles from the city, and there get an early breakfast and some repose, before proceeding upon our route. at four precisely, therefore, the carriage drew up at the door of the principal inn. i handed my adored wife out, and ordered breakfast forthwith. in the meantime we were shown into a small parlor, and sat down. it was now nearly if not altogether daylight; and, as i gazed, enraptured, at the angel by my side, the singular idea came, all at once, into my head, that this was really the very first moment since my acquaintance with the celebrated loveliness of madame lalande, that i had enjoyed a near inspection of that loveliness by daylight at all. "and now, mon ami," said she, taking my hand, and so interrupting this train of reflection, "and now, mon cher ami, since we are indissolubly onesince i have yielded to your passionate entreaties, and performed my portion of our agreementi presume you have not forgotten that you also have a little favor to bestowa little promise which it is your intention to keep. ah! let me see! let me remember! yes; full easily do i call to mind the precise words of the dear promise you made to eugenie last night. listen! you spoke thus: 'it is done!it is most cheerfully agreed! i sacrifice every feeling for your sake. to-night i wear this dear eye-glass as an eye-glass, and upon my heart; but with the earliest dawn of that morning which gives me the privilege of calling you wife, i will place it upon myupon my nose,and there wear it ever afterward, in the less romantic, and less fashionable, but certainly in the more serviceable, form which you desire.' these were the exact words, my beloved husband, were they not?" "they were," i said; "you have an excellent memory; and assuredly, my beautiful eugenie, there is no disposition on my part to evade the performance of the trivial promise they imply. see! behold! they are becomingratherare they not?" and here, having arranged the glasses in the ordinary form of spectacles, i applied them gingerly in their proper position; while madame simpson, adjusting her cap, and folding her arms, sat bolt upright in her chair, in a somewhat stiff and prim, and indeed, in a somewhat undignified position. "goodness gracious me!" i exclaimed, almost at the very instant that the rim of the spectacles had settled upon my nose"my goodness gracious me!why, what can be the matter with these glasses?" and taking them quickly off, i wiped them carefully with a silk handkerchief, and adjusted them again. but if, in the first instance, there had occurred something which occasioned me surprise, in the second, this surprise became elevated into astonishment; and this astonishment was profoundwas extremeindeed i may say it was horrific. what, in the name of everything hideous, did this mean? could i believe my eyes?could i?that was the question. was thatwas thatwas that rouge? and were thoseand were thosewere those wrinkles, upon the visage of eugenie lalande? and oh! jupiter, and every one of the gods and goddesses, little and big! whatwhatwhatwhat had become of her teeth? i dashed the spectacles violently to the ground, and, leaping to my feet, stood erect in the middle of the floor, confronting mrs. simpson, with my arms set a-kimbo, and grinning and foaming, but, at the same time, utterly speechless with terror and with rage. now i have already said that madame eugenie lalandethat is to say, simpsonspoke the english language but very little better than she wrote it, and for this reason she very properly never attempted to speak it upon ordinary occasions. but rage will carry a lady to any extreme; and in the present care it carried mrs. simpson to the very extraordinary extreme of attempting to hold a conversation in a tongue that she did not altogether understand. "vell, monsieur," said she, after surveying me, in great apparent astonishment, for some moments"vell, monsieur?and vat den?vat de matter now? is it de dance of de saint itusse dat you ave? if not like me, vat for vy buy de pig in the poke?" "you wretch!" said i, catching my breath"youyouyou villainous old hag!" "ag?ole?me not so ver ole, after all! me not one single day more dan de eighty-doo." "eighty-two!" i ejaculated, staggering to the wall"eighty-two hundred thousand baboons! the miniature said twenty-seven years and seven months!" "to be sure!dat is so!ver true! but den de portraite has been take for dese fifty-five year. ven i go marry my segonde usbande, monsieur lalande, at dat time i had de portraite take for my daughter by my first usbande, monsieur moissart!" "moissart!" said i. "yes, moissart," said she, mimicking my pronunciation, which, to speak the truth, was none of the best,"and vat den? vat you know about de moissart?" "nothing, you old fright!i know nothing about him at all; only i had an ancestor of that name, once upon a time." "dat name! and vat you ave for say to dat name? 'tis ver goot name; and so is voissartdat is ver goot name too. my daughter, mademoiselle moissart, she marry von monsieur voissart,and de name is bot ver respectaable name." "moissart?" i exclaimed, "and voissart! why, what is it you mean?" "vat i mean?i mean moissart and voissart; and for de matter of dat, i mean croissart and froisart, too, if i only tink proper to mean it. my daughter's daughter, mademoiselle voissart, she marry von monsieur croissart, and den again, my daughter's grande daughter, mademoiselle croissart, she marry von monsieur froissart; and i suppose you say dat dat is not von ver respectaable name.-" "froissart!" said i, beginning to faint, "why, surely you don't say moissart, and voissart, and croissart, and froissart?" "yes," she replied, leaning fully back in her chair, and stretching out her lower limbs at great length; "yes, moissart, and voissart, and croissart, and froissart. but monsieur froissart, he vas von ver big vat you call foolhe vas von ver great big donce like yourselffor he lef la belle france for come to dis stupide ameriqueand ven he get here he went and ave von ver stupide, von ver, ver stupide sonn, so i hear, dough i not yet av ad de plaisir to meet vid himneither me nor my companion, de madame stephanie lalande. he is name de napoleon bonaparte froissart, and i suppose you say dat dat, too, is not von ver respectable name." either the length or the nature of this speech, had the effect of working up mrs. simpson into a very extraordinary passion indeed; and as she made an end of it, with great labor, she lumped up from her chair like somebody bewitched, dropping upon the floor an entire universe of bustle as she lumped. once upon her feet, she gnashed her gums, brandished her arms, rolled up her sleeves, shook her fist in my face, and concluded the performance by tearing the cap from her head, and with it an immense wig of the most valuable and beautiful black hair, the whole of which she dashed upon the ground with a yell, and there trammpled and danced a fandango upon it, in an absolute ecstasy and agony of rage. meantime i sank aghast into the chair which she had vacated. "moissart and voissart!" i repeated, thoughtfully, as she cut one of her pigeon-wings, and "croissart and froissart!" as she completed another"moissart and voissart and croissart and napoleon bonaparte froissart!why, you ineffable old serpent, that's methat's med'ye hear? that's me"here i screamed at the top of my voice"that's me-e-e! i am napoleon bonaparte froissart! and if i havn't married my great, great, grandmother, i wish i may be everlastingly confounded!" madame eugenie lalande, quasi simpsonformerly moissartwas, in sober fact, my great, great, grandmother. in her youth she had been beautiful, and even at eighty-two, retained the majestic height, the sculptural contour of head, the fine eyes and the grecian nose of her girlhood. by the aid of these, of pearl-powder, of rouge, of false hair, false teeth, and false tournure, as well as of the most skilful modistes of paris, she contrived to hold a respectable footing among the beauties en peu passees of the french metropolis. in this respect, indeed, she might have been regarded as little less than the equal of the celebrated ninon de l'enclos. she was immensely wealthy, and being left, for the second time, a widow without children, she bethought herself of my existence in america, and for the purpose of making me her heir, paid a visit to the united states, in company with a distant and exceedingly lovely relative of her second husband'sa madame stephanie lalande. at the opera, my great, great, grandmother's attention was arrested by my notice; and, upon surveying me through her eye-glass, she was struck with a certain family resemblance to herself. thus interested, and knowing that the heir she sought was actually in the city, she made inquiries of her party respecting me. the gentleman who attended her knew my person, and told her who i was. the information thus obtained induced her to renew her scrutiny; and this scrutiny it was which so emboldened me that i behaved in the absurd manner already detailed. she returned my bow, however, under the impression that, by some odd accident, i had discovered her identity. when, deceived by my weakness of vision, and the arts of the toilet, in respect to the age and charms of the strange lady, i demanded so enthusiastically of talbot who she was, he concluded that i meant the younger beauty, as a matter of course, and so informed me, with perfect truth, that she was "the celebrated widow, madame lalande." in the street, next morning, my great, great, grandmother encountered talbot, an old parisian acquaintance; and the conversation, very naturally turned upon myself. my deficiencies of vision were then explained; for these were notorious, although i was entirely ignorant of their notoriety, and my good old relative discovered, much to her chagrin, that she had been deceived in supposing me aware of her identity, and that i had been merely making a fool of myself in making open love, in a theatre, to an old woman unknown. by way of punishing me for this imprudence, she concocted with talbot a plot. he purposely kept out of my way to avoid giving me the introduction. my street inquiries about "the lovely widow, madame lalande," were supposed to refer to the younger lady, of course, and thus the conversation with the three gentlemen whom i encountered shortly after leaving talbot's hotel will be easily explained, as also their allusion to ninon de l'enclos. i had no opportunity of seeing madame lalande closely during daylight; and, at her musical soiree, my silly weakness in refusing the aid of glasses effectually prevented me from making a discovery of her age. when "madame lalande" was called upon to sing, the younger lady was intended; and it was she who arose to obey the call; my great, great, grandmother, to further the deception, arising at the same moment and accompanying her to the piano in the main drawing-room. had i decided upon escorting her thither, it had been her design to suggest the propriety of my remaining where i was; but my own prudential views rendered this unnecessary. the songs which i so much admired, and which so confirmed my impression of the youth of my mistress, were executed by madame stephanie lalande. the eyeglass was presented by way of adding a reproof to the hoaxa sting to the epigram of the deception. its presentation afforded an opportunity for the lecture upon affectation with which i was so especially edified. it is almost superfluous to add that the glasses of the instrument, as worn by the old lady, had been exchanged by her for a pair better adapted to my years. they suited me, in fact, to a t. the clergyman, who merely pretended to tie the fatal knot, was a boon companion of talbot's, and no priest. he was an excellent "whip," however; and having doffed his cassock to put on a great-coat, he drove the hack which conveyed the "happy couple" out of town. talbot took a seat at his side. the two scoundrels were thus "in at the death," and through a half-open window of the back parlor of the inn, amused themselves in grinning at the denouement of the drama. i believe i shall be forced to call them both out. nevertheless, i am not the husband of my great, great, grandmother; and this is a reflection which affords me infinite relief,but i am the husband of madame lalandeof madame stephanie lalande with whom my good old relative, besides making me her sole heir when she diesif she ever doeshas been at the trouble of concocting me a match. in conclusion: i am done forever with billets doux and am never to be met without spectacles. the end . [pg/etext94/limbr10.txt] a girl of the limberlost, by gene stratton porter april, 1994 [etext #125] this etext was created by judith boss, omaha, nebraska. the equipment: an ibm-compatible 486/50, a hewlett-packard scanjet iic flatbed scanner; and a copy of calera recognition systems' m/600 series professional ocr software and risc accelerator board donated by: calera recognition systems 475 potrero sunnyvale, ca 94086 1-408-720-8300 mikel@calera.com mike lynch this text is in the public domain. a girl of the limberlost by gene stratton porter to all girls of the limberlost in general and one jeanette helen porter in particular characters elnora, who collects moths to pay for her education, and lives the golden rule. philip ammon, who assists in moth hunting, and gains a new conception of love. mrs. comstock, who lost a delusion and found a treasure. wesley sinton, who always did his best. margaret sinton, who "mothers" elnora. billy, a boy from real life. edith carr, who discovers herself. hart henderson, to whom love means all things. polly ammon, who pays an old score. tom levering, engaged to polly. terence o'more, freckles grown tall. mrs. o'more, who remained the angel. terence, alice and little brother, the o'more children. a girl of the limberlost chapter i wherein elnora goes to high school and learns many lessons not found in her books elnora comstock, have you lost your senses?" demanded the angry voice of katharine comstock while she glared at her daughter. "why mother!" faltered the girl. "don't you `why mother' me!" cried mrs. comstock. "you know very well what i mean. you've given me no peace until you've had your way about this going to school business; i've fixed you good enough, and you're ready to start. but no child of mine walks the streets of onabasha looking like a play-actress woman. you wet your hair and comb it down modest and decent and then be off, or you'll have no time to find where you belong." elnora gave one despairing glance at the white face, framed in a most becoming riot of reddish-brown hair, which she saw in the little kitchen mirror. then she untied the narrow black ribbon, wet the comb and plastered the waving curls close to her head, bound them fast, pinned on the skimpy black hat and opened the back door. "you've gone so plumb daffy you are forgetting your dinner," jeered her mother. "i don't want anything to eat," replied elnora. "you'll take your dinner or you'll not go one step. are you crazy? walk almost three miles and no food from six in the morning until six at night. a pretty figure you'd cut if you had your way! and after i've gone and bought you this nice new pail and filled it especial to start on!" elnora came back with a face still whiter and picked up the lunch. "thank you, mother! good-bye!" she said. mrs. comstock did not reply. she watched the girl follow the long walk to the gate and go from sight on the road, in the bright sunshine of the first monday of september. "i bet a dollar she gets enough of it by night!" commented mrs. comstock. elnora walked by instinct, for her eyes were blinded with tears. she left the road where it turned south, at the corner of the limberlost, climbed a snake fence and entered a path worn by her own feet. dodging under willow and scrub oak branches she came at last to the faint outline of an old trail made in the days when the precious timber of the swamp was guarded by armed men. this path she followed until she reached a thick clump of bushes. from the debris in the end of a hollow log she took a key that unlocked the padlock of a large weatherbeaten old box, inside of which lay several books, a butterfly apparatus, and a small cracked mirror. the walls were lined thickly with gaudy butterflies, dragonflies, and moths. she set up the mirror and once more pulling the ribbon from her hair, she shook the bright mass over her shoulders, tossing it dry in the sunshine. then she straightened it, bound it loosely, and replaced her hat. she tugged vainly at the low brown calico collar and gazed despairingly at the generous length of the narrow skirt. she lifted it as she would have cut it if possible. that disclosed the heavy high leather shoes, at sight of which she seemed positively ill, and hastily dropped the skirt. she opened the pail, removed the lunch, wrapped it in the napkin, and placed it in a small pasteboard box. locking the case again she hid the key and hurried down the trail. she followed it around the north end of the swamp and then entered a footpath crossing a farm leading in the direction of the spires of the city to the northeast. again she climbed a fence and was on the open road. for an instant she leaned against the fence staring before her, then turned and looked back. behind her lay the land on which she had been born to drudgery and a mother who made no pretence of loving her; before her lay the city through whose schools she hoped to find means of escape and the way to reach the things for which she cared. when she thought of how she appeared she leaned more heavily against the fence and groaned; when she thought of turning back and wearing such clothing in ignorance all the days of her life she set her teeth firmly and went hastily toward onabasha. on the bridge crossing a deep culvert at the suburbs she glanced around, and then kneeling she thrust the lunch box between the foundation and the flooring. this left her empty-handed as she approached the big stone high school building. she entered bravely and inquired her way to the office of the superintendent. there she learned that she should have come the previous week and arranged about her classes. there were many things incident to the opening of school, and one man unable to cope with all of them. "where have you been attending school?" he asked, while he advised the teacher of domestic science not to telephone for groceries until she knew how many she would have in her classes; wrote an order for chemicals for the students of science; and advised the leader of the orchestra to hire a professional to take the place of the bass violist, reported suddenly ill. "i finished last spring at brushwood school, district number nine," said elnora. "i have been studying all summer. i am quite sure i can do the first year work, if i have a few days to get started." "of course, of course," assented the superintendent. "almost invariably country pupils do good work. you may enter first year, and if it is too difficult, we will find it out speedily. your teachers will tell you the list of books you must have, and if you will come with me i will show you the way to the auditorium. it is now time for opening exercises. take any seat you find vacant." elnora stood before the entrance and stared into the largest room she ever had seen. the floor sloped to a yawning stage on which a band of musicians, grouped around a grand piano, were tuning their instruments. she had two fleeting impressions. that it was all a mistake; this was no school, but a grand display of enormous ribbon bows; and the second, that she was sinking, and had forgotten how to walk. then a burst from the orchestra nerved her while a bevy of daintily clad, sweetsmelling things that might have been birds, or flowers, or possibly gaily dressed, happy young girls, pushed her forward. she found herself plodding across the back of the auditorium, praying for guidance, to an empty seat. as the girls passed her, vacancies seemed to open to meet them. their friends were moving over, beckoning and whispering invitations. every one else was seated, but no one paid any attention to the white-faced girl stumbling half-blindly down the aisle next the farthest wall. so she went on to the very end facing the stage. no one moved, and she could not summon courage to crowd past others to several empty seats she saw. at the end of the aisle she paused in desperation, while she stared back at the whole forest of faces most of which were now turned upon her. in a flash came the full realization of her scanty dress, her pitiful little hat and ribbon, her big, heavy shoes, her ignorance of where to go or what to do; and from a sickening wave which crept over her, she felt she was going to become very ill. then out of the mass she saw a pair of big, brown boy eyes, three seats from her, and there was a message in them. without moving his body he reached forward and with a pencil touched the back of the seat before him. instantly elnora took another step which brought her to a row of vacant front seats. she heard laughter behind her; the knowledge that she wore the only hat in the room burned her; every matter of moment, and some of none at all, cut and stung. she had no books. where should she go when this was over? what would she give to be on the trail going home! she was shaking with a nervous chill when the music ceased, and the superintendent arose, and coming down to the front of the flower-decked platform, opened a bible and began to read. elnora did not know what he was reading, and she felt that she did not care. wildly she was racking her brain to decide whether she should sit still when the others left the room or follow, and ask some one where the freshmen went first. in the midst of the struggle one sentence fell on her ear. "hide me under the shadow of thy wings." elnora began to pray frantically. "hide me, o god, hide me, under the shadow of thy wings." again and again she implored that prayer, and before she realized what was coming, every one had arisen and the room was emptying rapidly. elnora hurried after the nearest girl and in the press at the door touched her sleeve timidly. "will you please tell me where the freshmen go?" she asked huskily. the girl gave her one surprised glance, and drew away. "same place as the fresh women," she answered, and those nearest her laughed. elnora stopped praying suddenly and the colour crept into her face. "i'll wager you are the first person i meet when i find it," she said and stopped short. "not that! oh, i must not do that!" she thought in dismay. "make an enemy the first thing i do. oh, not that!" she followed with her eyes as the young people separated in the hall, some climbing stairs, some disappearing down side halls, some entering adjoining doors. she saw the girl overtake the brown-eyed boy and speak to him. he glanced back at elnora with a scowl on his face. then she stood alone in the hall. presently a door opened and a young woman came out and entered another room. elnora waited until she returned, and hurried to her. "would you tell me where the freshmen are?" she panted. "straight down the hall, three doors to your left," was the answer, as the girl passed. "one minute please, oh please," begged elnora: "should i knock or just open the door?" "go in and take a seat," replied the teacher. "what if there aren't any seats?" gasped elnora. "classrooms are never half-filled, there will be plenty," was the answer. elnora removed her hat. there was no place to put it, so she carried it in her hand. she looked infinitely better without it. after several efforts she at last opened the door and stepping inside faced a smaller and more concentrated battery of eyes. "the superintendent sent me. he thinks i belong here," she said to the professor in charge of the class, but she never before heard the voice with which she spoke. as she stood waiting, the girl of the hall passed on her way to the blackboard, and suppressed laughter told elnora that her thrust had been repeated. "be seated," said the professor, and then because he saw elnora was desperately embarrassed he proceeded to lend her a book and to ask her if she had studied algebra. she said she had a little, but not the same book they were using. he asked her if she felt that she could do the work they were beginning, and she said she did. that was how it happened, that three minutes after entering the room she was told to take her place beside the girl who had gone last to the board, and whose flushed face and angry eyes avoided meeting elnora's. being compelled to concentrate on her proposition she forgot herself. when the professor asked that all pupils sign their work she firmly wrote "elnora comstock" under her demonstration. then she took her seat and waited with white lips and trembling limbs, as one after another professor called the names on the board, while their owners arose and explained their propositions, or "flunked" if they had not found a correct solution. she was so eager to catch their forms of expression and prepare herself for her recitation, that she never looked from the work on the board, until clearly and distinctly, "elnora comstock," called the professor. the dazed girl stared at the board. one tiny curl added to the top of the first curve of the m in her name, had transformed it from a good old english patronymic that any girl might bear proudly, to cornstock. elnora sat speechless. when and how did it happen? she could feel the wave of smothered laughter in the air around her. a rush of anger turned her face scarlet and her soul sick. the voice of the professor addressed her directly. "this proposition seems to be beautifully demonstrated, miss cornstalk," he said. "surely, you can tell us how you did it." that word of praise saved her. she could do good work. they might wear their pretty clothes, have their friends and make life a greater misery than it ever before had been for her, but not one of them should do better work or be more womanly. that lay with her. she was tall, straight, and handsome as she arose. "of course i can explain my work," she said in natural tones. "what i can't explain is how i happened to be so stupid as to make a mistake in writing my own name. i must have been a little nervous. please excuse me." she went to the board, swept off the signature with one stroke,then rewrote it plainly. "my name is comstock," she said distinctly. she returned to her seat and following the formula used by the others made her first high school recitation. as elnora resumed her seat professor henley looked at her steadily. "it puzzles me," he said deliberately, how you can write as beautiful a demonstration, and explain it as clearly as ever has been done in any of my classes and still be so disturbed as to make a mistake in your own name. are you very sure you did that yourself, miss comstock?" "it is impossible that any one else should have done it," answered elnora. "i am very glad you think so," said the professor. "being freshmen, all of you are strangers to me. i should dislike to begin the year with you feeling there was one among you small enough to do a trick like that. the next proposition, please." when the hour had gone the class filed back to the study room and elnora followed in desperation, because she did not know where else to go. she could not study as she had no books, and when the class again left the room to go to another professor for the next recitation, she went also. at least they could put her out if she did not belong there. noon came at last, and she kept with the others until they dispersed on the sidewalk. she was so abnormally selfconscious she fancied all the hundreds of that laughing, throng saw and jested at her. when she passed the brown-eyed boy walking with the girl of her encounter, she knew, for she heard him say: "did you really let that gawky piece of calico get ahead of you?" the answer was indistinct. elnora hurried from the city. she intended to get her lunch, eat it in the shade of the first tree, and then decide whether she would go back or go home. she knelt on the bridge and reached for her box, but it was so very light that she was prepared for the fact that it was empty, before opening it. there was one thing for which to be thankful. the boy or tramp who had seen her hide it, had left the napkin. she would not have to face her mother and account for its loss. she put it in her pocket, and threw the box into the ditch. then she sat on the bridge and tried to think, but her brain was confused. "perhaps the worst is over," she said at last. "i will go back. what would mother say to me if i came home now?" so she returned to the high school, followed some other pupils to the coat room, hung her hat, and found her way to the study where she had been in the morning. twice that afternoon, with aching head and empty stomach, she faced strange professors, in different branches. once she escaped notice; the second time the worst happened. she was asked a question she could not answer. "have you not decided on your course, and secured your books?" inquired the professor. "i have decided on my course," replied elnora, "i do not know where to ask for my books." "ask?" the professor was bewildered. "i understood the books were furnished," faltered elnora. "only to those bringing an order from the township trustee," replied the professor. "no! oh no!" cried elnora. "i will have them tomorrow," and gripped her desk for support for she knew that was not true. four books, ranging perhaps at a dollar and a half apiece; would her mother buy them? of course she would not--could not. did not elnora know the story of old. there was enough land, but no one to do clearing and farm. tax on all those acres, recently the new gravel road tax added, the expense of living and only the work of two women to meet all of it. she was insane to think she could come to the city to school. her mother had been right. the girl decided that if only she lived to reach home, she would stay there and lead any sort of life to avoid more of this torture. bad as what she wished to escape had been, it was nothing like this. she never could live down the movement that went through the class when she inadvertently revealed the fact that she had expected books to be furnished. her mother would not secure them; that settled the question. but the end of misery is never in a hurry to come; before the day was over the superintendent entered the room and explained that pupils from the country were charged a tuition of twenty dollars a year. that really was the end. previously elnora had canvassed a dozen methods for securing the money for books, ranging all the way from offering to wash the superintendent's dishes to breaking into the bank. this additional expense made her plans so wildly impossible, there was nothing to do but hold up her head until she was from sight. down the long corridor alone among hundreds, down the long street alone among thousands, out into the country she came at last. across the fence and field, along the old trail once trodden by a boy's bitter agony, now stumbled a white-faced girl, sick at heart. she sat on a log and began to sob in spite of her efforts at self-control. at first it wasphysical breakdown, later, thought came crowding. oh the shame, the mortification! why had she not known of the tuition? how did she happen to think that in the city books were furnished? perhaps it was because she had read they were in several states. but why did she not know? why did not her mother go with her? other mothers-but when had her mother ever been or done anything at all like other mothers? because she never had been it was useless to blame her now. elnora realized she should have gone to town the week before, called on some one and learned all these things herself. she should have remembered how her clothing would look, before she wore it in public places. now she knew, and her dreams were over. she must go home to feed chickens, calves, and pigs, wear calico and coarse shoes, and with averted head, pass a library all her life. she sobbed again. "for pity's sake, honey, what's the matter?" asked the voice of the nearest neighbour, wesley sinton, as he seated himself beside elnora. "there, there," he continued, smearing tears all over her face in an effort to dry them. "was it as bad as that, now? maggie has been just wild over you all day. she's got nervouser every minute. she said we were foolish to let you go. she said your clothes were not right, you ought not to carry that tin pail, and that they would laugh at you. by gum, i see they did!" "oh, uncle wesley," sobbed the girl, "why didn't she tell me? " "well, you see, elnora, she didn't like to. you got such a way of holding up your head, and going through with things. she thought some way that you'd make it, till you got started, and then she begun to see a hundred things we should have done. i reckon you hadn't reached that building before she remembered that your skirt should have been pleated instead of gathered, your shoes been low, and lighter for hot september weather, and a new hat. were your clothes right, elnora?" the girl broke into hysterical laughter. "right!" she cried. "right! uncle wesley, you should have seen me among them! i was a picture! they'll never forget me. no, they won't get the chance, for they'll see me again to-morrow! "now that is what i call spunk, elnora! downright grit," said wesley sinton. "don't you let them laugh you out. you've helped margaret and me for years at harvest and busy times, what you've earned must amount to quite a sum. you can get yourself a good many clothes with it." "don't mention clothes, uncle wesley," sobbed elnora, "i don't care now how i look. if i don't go back all of them will know it's because i am so poor i can't buy my books." "oh, i don't know as you are so dratted poor," said sinton meditatively. "there are three hundred acres of good land, with fine timber as ever grew on it." "it takes all we can earn to pay the tax, and mother wouldn't cut a tree for her life." "well then, maybe, i'll be compelled to cut one for her," suggested sinton. "anyway, stop tearing yourself to pieces and tell me. if it isn't clothes, what is it?" "it's books and tuition. over twenty dollars in all." "humph! first time i ever knew you to be stumped by twenty dollars, elnora," said sinton, patting her hand. "it's the first time you ever knew me to want money," answered elnora. "this is different from anything that ever happened to me. oh, how can i get it, uncle wesley?" "drive to town with me in the morning and i'll draw it from the bank for you. i owe you every cent of it." "you know you don't owe me a penny, and i wouldn't touch one from you, unless i really could earn it. for anything that's past i owe you and aunt margaret for all the home life and love i've ever known. i know how you work, and i'll not take your money." "just a loan, elnora, just a loan for a little while until you can earn it. you can be proud with all the rest of the world, but there are no secrets between us, are there, elnora?" "no," said elnora, "there are none. you and aunt margaret have given me all the love there has been in my life. that is the one reason above all others why you shall not give me charity. hand me money because you find me crying for it! this isn't the first time this old trail has known tears and heartache. all of us know that story. freckles stuck to what he undertook and won out. i stick, too. when duncan moved away he gave me all freckles left in the swamp, and as i have inherited his property maybe his luck will come with it. i won't touch your money, but i'll win some way. first, i'm going home and try mother. it's just possible i could find second-hand books, and perhaps all the tuition need not be paid at once. maybe they would accept it quarterly. but oh, uncle wesley, you and aunt margaret keep on loving me! i'm so lonely, and no one else cares!" wesley sinton's jaws met with a click. he swallowed hard on bitter words and changed what he would have liked to say three times before it became articulate. "elnora," he said at last, "if it hadn't been for one thing i'd have tried to take legal steps to make you ours when you were three years old. maggie said then it wasn't any use, but i've always held on. you see, i was the first man there, honey, and there are things you see, that you can't ever make anybody else understand. she loved him elnora, she just made an idol of him. there was that oozy green hole, with the thick scum broke, and two or three big bubbles slowly rising that were the breath of his body. there she was in spasms of agony, and beside her the great heavy log she'd tried to throw him. i can't ever forgive her for turning against you, and spoiling your childhood as she has, but i couldn't forgive anybody else for abusing her. maggie has got no mercy on her, but maggie didn't see what i did, and i've never tried to make it very clear to her. it's been a little too plain for me ever since. whenever i look at your mother's face, i see what she saw, so i hold my tongue and say, in my heart, `give her a mite more time.' some day it will come. she does love you, elnora. everybody does, honey. it's just that she's feeling so much, she can't express herself. you be a patient girl and wait a little longer. after all, she's your mother, and you're all she's got, but a memory, and it might do her good to let her know that she was fooled in that." "it would kill her!" cried the girl swiftly. "uncle wesley, it would kill her! what do you mean?" "nothing," said wesley sinton soothingly. "nothing, honey. that was just one of them fool things a man says, when he is trying his best to be wise. you see, she loved him mightily, and they'd been married only a year, and what she was loving was what she thought he was. she hadn't really got acquainted with the man yet. if it had been even one more year, she could have borne it, and you'd have got justice. having been a teacher she was better educated and smarter than the rest of us, and so she was more sensitive like. she can't understand she was loving a dream. so i say it might do her good if somebody that knew, could tell her, but i swear to gracious, i never could. i've heard her out at the edge of that quagmire calling in them wild spells of hers off and on for the last sixteen years, and imploring the swamp to give him back to her, and i've got out of bed when i was pretty tired, and come down to see she didn't go in herself, or harm you. what she feels is too deep for me. i've got to respectin' her grief, and i can't get over it. go home and tell your ma, honey, and ask her nice and kind to help you. if she won't, then you got to swallow that little lump of pride in your neck, and come to aunt maggie, like you been a-coming all your life." "i'll ask mother, but i can't take your money, uncle wesley, indeed i can't. i'll wait a year, and earn some, and enter next year." "there's one thing you don't consider, elnora," said the man earnestly. "and that's what you are to maggie. she's a little like your ma. she hasn't given up to it, and she's struggling on brave, but when we buried our second little girl the light went out of maggie's eyes, and it's not come back. the only time i ever see a hint of it is when she thinks she's done something that makes you happy, elnora. now, you go easy about refusing her anything she wants to do for you. there's times in this world when it's our bounden duty to forget ourselves, and think what will help other people. young woman, you owe me and maggie all the comfort we can get out of you. there's the two of our own we can't ever do anything for. don't you get the idea into your head that a fool thing you call pride is going to cut us out of all the pleasure we have in life beside ourselves." "uncle wesley, you are a dear," said elnora. "just a dear! if i can't possibly get that money any way else on earth, i'll come and borrow it of you, and then i'll pay it back if i must dig ferns from the swamp and sell them from door to door in the city. i'll even plant them, so that they will be sure to come up in the spring. i have been sort of panic stricken all day and couldn't think. i can gather nuts and sell them. freckles sold moths and butterflies, and i've a lot collected. of course, i am going back to-morrow! i can find a way to get the books. don't you worry about me. i am all right! "now, what do you think of that?" inquired wesley sinton of the swamp in general. "here's our elnora come back to stay. head high and right as a trivet! you've named three ways in three minutes that you could earn ten dollars, which i figure would be enough, to start you. let's go to supper and stop worrying!" elnora unlocked the case, took out the pail, put the napkin in it, pulled the ribbon from her hair, binding it down tightly again and followed to the road. from afar she could see her mother in the doorway. she blinked her eyes, and tried to smile as she answered wesley sinton, and indeed she did feel better. she knew now what she had to expect, where to go, and what to do. get the books she must; when she had them, she would show those city girls and boys how to prepare and recite lessons, how to walk with a brave heart; and they could show her how to wear pretty clothes and have good times. as she neared the door her mother reached for the pail. "i forgot to tell you to bring home your scraps for the chickens," she said. elnora entered. "there weren't any scraps, and i'm hungry again as i ever was in my life." "i thought likely you would be," said mrs. comstock, "and so i got supper ready. we can eat first, and do the work afterward. what kept you so? i expected you an hour ago." elnora looked into her mother's face and smiled. it was a queer sort of a little smile, and would have reached the depths with any normal mother. "i see you've been bawling," said mrs. comstock. "i thought you'd get your fill in a hurry. that's why i wouldn't go to any expense. if we keep out of the poorhouse we have to cut the corners close. it's likely this brushwood road tax will eat up all we've saved in years. where the land tax is to come from i don't know. it gets bigger every year. if they are going to dredge the swamp ditch again they'll just have to take the land to pay for it. i can't, that's all! we'll get up early in the morning and gather and hull the beans for winter, and put in the rest of the day hoeing the turnips." elnora again smiled that pitiful smile. "do you think i didn't know that i was funny and would be laughed at?" she asked. "funny?" cried mrs. comstock hotly. "yes, funny! a regular caricature," answered elnora. "no one else wore calico, not even one other. no one else wore high heavy shoes, not even one. no one else had such a funny little old hat; my hair was not right, my ribbon invisible compared with the others, i did not know where to go, or what to do, and i had no books. what a spectacle i made for them!" elnora laughed nervously at her own picture. "but there are always two sides! the professor said in the algebra class that he never had a better solution and explanation than mine of the proposition he gave me, which scored one for me in spite of my clothes." "well, i wouldn't brag on myself!" "that was poor taste," admitted elnora. "but, you see, it is a case of whistling to keep up my courage. i honestly could see that i would have looked just as well as the rest of them if i had been dressed as they were. we can't afford that, so i have to find something else to brace me. it was rather bad, mother!" "well, i'm glad you got enough of it!" "oh, but i haven't" hurried in elnora. "i just got a start. the hardest is over. to-morrow they won't be surprised. they will know what to expect. i am sorry to hear about the dredge. is it really going through?" "yes. i got my notification today. the tax will be something enormous. i don't know as i can spare you, even if you are willing to be a laughing-stock for the town." with every bite elnora's courage returned, for she was a healthy young thing. "you've heard about doing evil that good might come from it," she said. "well, mother mine, it's something like that with me. i'm willing to bear the hard part to pay for what i'll learn. already i have selected the ward building in which i shall teach in about four years. i am going to ask for a room with a south exposure so that the flowers and moths i take in from the swamp to show the children will do well." "you little idiot!" said mrs. comstock. "how are you going to pay your expenses?" "now that is just what i was going to ask you!" said elnora. "you see, i have had two startling pieces of news to-day. i did not know i would need any money. i thought the city furnished the books, and there is an out-of-town tuition, also. i need ten dollars in the morning. will you please let me have it?" "ten dollars!" cried mrs. comstock. "ten dollars! why don't you say a hundred and be done with it! i could get one as easy as the other. i told you! i told you i couldn't raise a cent. every year expenses grow bigger and bigger. i told you not to ask for money!" "i never meant to," replied elnora. "i thought clothes were all i needed and i could bear them. i never knew about buying books and tuition." "well, i did!" said mrs. comstock. "i knew what you would run into! but you are so bull-dog stubborn, and so set in your way, i thought i would just let you try the world a little and see how you liked it!" elnora pushed back her chair and looked at her mother. "do you mean to say," she demanded, "that you knew, when you let me go into a city classroom and reveal the fact before all of them that i expected to have my books handed out to me; do you mean to say that you knew i had to pay for them?" mrs. comstock evaded the direct question. "anybody but an idiot mooning over a book or wasting time prowling the woods would have known you had to pay. everybody has to pay for everything. life is made up of pay, pay, pay! it's always and forever pay! if you don't pay one way you do another! of course, i knew you had to pay. of course, i knew you would come home blubbering! but you don't get a penny! i haven't one cent, and can't get one! have your way if you are determined, but i think you will find the road somewhat rocky." "swampy, you mean, mother," corrected elnora. she arose white and trembling. "perhaps some day god will teach me how to understand you. he knows i do not now. you can't possibly realize just what you let me go through to-day, or how you let me go, but i'll tell you this: you understand enough that if you had the money, and would offer it to me, i wouldn't touch it now. and i'll tell you this much more. i'll get it myself. i'll raise it, and do it some honest way. i am going back to-morrow, the next day, and the next. you need not come out, i'll do the night work, and hoe the turnips." it was ten o'clock when the chickens, pigs, and cattle were fed, the turnips hoed, and a heap of bean vines was stacked beside the back door. chapter ii wherein wesley and margaret go shopping, and elnora's wardrobe is replenished wesley sinton walked down the road half a mile and turned at the lane leading to his home. his heart was hot and filled with indignation. he had told elnora he did not blame her mother, but he did. his wife met him at the door. "did you see anything of elnora?" she questioned. "most too much, maggie," he answered. "what do you say to going to town? there's a few things has to be got right away." "where did you see her, wesley?" "along the old limberlost trail, my girl, torn to pieces sobbing. her courage always has been fine, but the thing she met to-day was too much for her. we ought to have known better than to let her go that way. it wasn't only clothes; there were books, and entrance fees for out-oftown people, that she didn't know about; while there must have been jeers, whispers, and laughing. maggie, i feel as if i'd been a traitor to those girls of ours. i ought to have gone in and seen about this school business. don't cry, maggie. get me some supper, and i'll hitch up and see what we can do now." "what can we do, wesley? "i don't just know. but we've got to do something. kate comstock will be a handful, while elnora will be two, but between us we must see that the girl is not too hard pressed about money, and that she is dressed so she is not ridiculous. she's saved us the wages of a woman many a day, can't you make her some decent dresses?" "well, i'm not just what you call expert, but i could beat kate comstock all to pieces. i know that skirts should be pleated to the band instead of gathered, and full enough to sit in, and short enough to walk in. i could try. there are patterns for sale. let's go right away, wesley." "set me a bit of supper, while i hitch up." margaret built a fire, made coffee, and fried ham and eggs. she set out pie and cake and had enough for a hungry man by the time the carriage was at the door, but she had no appetite. she dressed while wesley ate, put away the food while he dressed, and then they drove toward the city through the beautiful september evening, and as they went they planned for elnora. the trouble was, not whether they were generous enough to buy what she needed, but whether she would accept their purchases, and what her mother would say. they went to a drygoods store and when a clerk asked what they wanted to see neither of them knew, so they stepped aside and held a whispered consultation. "what had we better get, wesley?" "dresses," said wesley promptly, "but how many dresses, and what kind?" "blest if i know!" exclaimed wesley. "i thought you would manage that. i know about some things i'm going to get." at that instant several high school girls came into the store and approached them. "there!" exclaimed wesley breathlessly. "there, maggie! like them! that's what she needs! buy like they have!" margaret stared. what did they wear? they were rapidly passing; they seemed to have so much, and she could not decide so quickly. before she knew it she was among them. "i beg your pardon, but won't you wait one minute?" she asked. the girls stopped with wondering faces. "it's your clothes," explained mrs. sinton. "you look just beautiful to me. you look exactly as i should have wanted to see my girls. they both died of diphtheria when they were little, but they had yellow hair, dark eyes and pink cheeks, and everybody thought they were lovely. if they had lived, they'd been near your age now, and i'd want them to look like you." there was sympathy on every girl face. "why thank you!" said one of them. "we are very sorry for you." "of course you are," said margaret. "everybody always has been. and because i can't ever have the joy of a mother in thinking for my girls and buying pretty things for them, there is nothing left for me, but to do what i can for some one who has no mother to care for her. i know a girl, who would be just as pretty as any of you, if she had the clothes, but her mother does not think about her, so i mother her some myself." "she must be a lucky girl," said another. "oh, she loves me," said margaret, "and i love her. i want her to look just like you do. please tell me about your clothes. are these the dresses and hats you wear to school? what kind of goods are they, and where do you buy them?" the girls began to laugh and cluster around margaret. wesley strode down the store with his head high through pride in her, but his heart was sore over the memory of two little faces under brushwood sod. he inquired his way to the shoe department. "why, every one of us have on gingham or linen dresses," they said, "and they are our school clothes." for a few moments there was a babel of laughing voices explaining to the delighted margaret that school dresses should be bright and pretty, but simple and plain, and until cold weather they should wash. "i'll tell you," said ellen brownlee, "my father owns this store, i know all the clerks. i'll take you to miss hartley. you tell her just how much you want to spend, and what you want to buy, and she will know how to get the most for your money. i've heard papa say she was the best clerk in the store for people who didn't know precisely what they wanted." "that's the very thing," agreed margaret. "but before you go, tell me about your hair. elnora's hair is bright and wavy, but yours is silky as hackled flax. how do you do it?" "elnora?" asked four girls in concert. "yes, elnora is the name of the girl i want these things for." "did she come to the high school to-day?" questioned one of them. "was she in your classes?" demanded margaret without reply. four girls stood silent and thought fast. had there been a strange girl among them, and had she been overlooked and passed by with indifference, because she was so very shabby? if she had appeared as much better than they, as she had looked worse, would her reception have been the same? "there was a strange girl from the country in the freshman class to-day," said ellen brownlee, "and her name was elnora." "that was the girl," said margaret. "are her people so very poor?" questioned ellen. "no, not poor at all, come to think of it," answered margaret. "it's a peculiar case. mrs. comstock had a great trouble and she let it change her whole life and make a different woman of her. she used to be lovely; now she is forever saving and scared to death for fear they will go to the poorhouse; but there is a big farm, covered with lots of good timber. the taxes are high for women who can't manage to clear and work the land. there ought to be enough to keep two of them in good shape all their lives, if they only knew how to do it. but no one ever told kate comstock anything, and never will, for she won't listen. all she does is droop all day, and walk the edge of the swamp half the night, and neglect elnora. if you girls would make life just a little easier for her it would be the finest thing you ever did." all of them promised they would. "now tell me about your hair," persisted margaret sinton. so they took her to a toilet counter, and she bought the proper hair soap, also a nail file, and cold cream, for use after windy days. then they left her with the experienced clerk, and when at last wesley found her she was loaded with bundles and the light of other days was in her beautiful eyes. wesley also carried some packages. "did you get any stockings?" he whispered. "no, i didn't," she said. "i was so interested in dresses and hair ribbons and a--a hat----" she hesitated and glanced at wesley. "of course, a hat!" prompted wesley. "that i forgot all about those horrible shoes. she's got to have decent shoes, wesley." "sure!" said wesley. "she's got decent shoes. but the man said some brown stockings ought to go with them. take a peep, will you!" wesley opened a box and displayed a pair of thicksoled, beautifully shaped brown walking shoes of low cut. margaret cried out with pleasure. "but do you suppose they are the right size, wesley? what did you get?" "i just said for a girl of sixteen with a slender foot." "well, that's about as near as i could come. if they don't fit when she tries them, we will drive straight in and change them. come on now, let's get home." all the way they discussed how they should give elnora their purchases and what mrs. comstock would say. "i am afraid she will be awful mad," said margaret. "she'll just rip!" replied wesley graphically. "but if she wants to leave the raising of her girl to the neighbours, she needn't get fractious if they take some pride in doing a good job. from now on i calculate elnora shall go to school; and she shall have all the clothes and books she needs, if i go around on the back of kate comstock's land and cut a tree, or drive off a calf to pay for them. why i know one tree she owns that would put elnora in heaven for a year. just think of it, margaret! it's not fair. one-third of what is there belongs to elnora by law, and if kate comstock raises a row i'll tell her so, and see that the girl gets it. you go to see kate in the morning, and i'll go with you. tell her you want elnora's pattern, that you are going to make her a dress, for helping us. and sort of hint at a few more things. if kate balks, i'll take a hand and settle her. i'll go to law for elnora's share of that land and sell enough to educate her." "why, wesley sinton, you're perfectly wild." "i'm not! did you ever stop to think that such cases are so frequent there have been laws made to provide for them? i can bring it up in court and force kate to educate elnora, and board and clothe her till she's of age, and then she can take her share." "wesley, kate would go crazy!" "she's crazy now. the idea of any mother living with as sweet a girl as elnora. and letting her suffer till i find her crying like a funeral. it makes me fighting mad. all uncalled for. not a grain of sense in it. i've offered and offered to oversee clearing her land and working her fields. let her sell a good tree, or a few acres. something is going to be done, right now. elnora's been fairly happy up to this, but to spoil the school life she's planned, is to ruin all her life. i won't have it! if elnora won't take these things, so help me, i'll tell her what she is worth, and loan her the money and she can pay me back when she comes of age. i am going to have it out with kate comstock in the morning. here we are! you open up what you got while i put away the horses, and then i'll show you." when wesley came from the barn margaret had four pieces of crisp gingham, a pale blue, a pink, a gray with green stripes and a rich brown and blue plaid. on each of them lay a yard and a half of wide ribbon to match. there were handkerchiefs and a brown leather belt. in her hands she held a wide-brimmed tan straw hat, having a high crown banded with velvet strips each of which fastened with a tiny gold buckle. "it looks kind of bare now," she explained. "it had three quills on it here." "did you have them taken off?" asked wesley. "yes, i did. the price was two and a half for the hat, and those things were a dollar and a half apiece. i couldn't pay that." "it does seem considerable," admitted wesley, "but will it look right without them?" "no, it won't!" said margaret. "it's going to have quills on it. do you remember those beautiful peacock wing feathers that phoebe simms gave me? three of them go on just where those came off, and nobody will ever know the difference. they match the hat to a moral, and they are just a little longer and richer than the ones that i had taken off. i was wondering whether i better sew them on to-night while i remember how they set, or wait till morning." "don't risk it!" exclaimed wesley anxiously. "don't you risk it! sew them on right now!" "open your bundles, while i get the thread," said margaret. wesley unwrapped the shoes. margaret took them up and pinched the leather and stroked them. "my, but they are fine!" she cried. wesley picked up one and slowly turned it in his big hands. he glanced at his foot and back to the shoe. "it's a little bit of a thing, margaret," he said softly. "like as not i'll have to take it back. it seems as if it couldn't fit." "it seems as if it didn't dare do anything else," said margaret. "that's a happy little shoe to get the chance to carry as fine a girl as elnora to high school. now what's in the other box?" wesley looked at margaret doubtfully. "why," he said, "you know there's going to be rainy days, and those things she has now ain't fit for anything but to drive up the cows----" "wesley, did you get high shoes, too?" "well, she ought to have them! the man said he would make them cheaper if i took both pairs at once." margaret laughed aloud. "those will do her past christmas," she exulted. "what else did you buy?" "well sir," said wesley, "i saw something to-day. you told me about kate getting that tin pail for elnora to carry to high school and you said you told her it was a shame. i guess elnora was ashamed all right, for to-night she stopped at the old case duncan gave her, and took out that pail, where it had been all day, and put a napkin inside it. coming home she confessed she was half starved because she hid her dinner under a culvert, and a tramp took it. she hadn't had a bite to eat the whole day. but she never complained at all, she was pleased that she hadn't lost the napkin. so i just inquired around till i found this, and i think it's about the ticket." wesley opened the package and laid a brown leather lunch box on the table. "might be a couple of books, or drawing tools or most anything that's neat and genteel. you see, it opens this way." it did open, and inside was a space for sandwiches, a little porcelain box for cold meat or fried chicken, another for salad, a glass with a lid which screwed on, held by a ring in a corner, for custard or jelly, a flask for tea or milk, a beautiful little knife, fork, and spoon fastened in holders, and a place for a napkin. margaret was almost crying over it. "how i'd love to fill it!" she exclaimed. "do it the first time, just to show kate comstock what love is!" said wesley. "get up early in the morning and make one of those dresses to-morrow. can't you make a plain gingham dress in a day? i'll pick a chicken, and you fry it and fix a little custard for the cup, and do it up brown. go on, maggie, you do it!" "i never can," said margaret. "i am slow as the itch about sewing, and these are not going to be plain dresses when it comes to making them. there are going to be edgings of plain green, pink, and brown to the bias strips, and tucks and pleats around the hips, fancy belts and collars, and all of it takes time." "then kate comstock's got to help," said wesley. "can the two of you make one, and get that lunch to-morrow?" "easy, but she'll never do it!" "you see if she doesn't!" said wesley. "you get up and cut it out, and soon as elnora is gone i'll go after kate myself. she'll take what i'll say better alone. but she'll come, and she'll help make the dress. these other things are our christmas gifts to elnora. she'll no doubt need them more now than she will then, and we can give them just as well. that's yours, and this is mine, or whichever way you choose." wesley untied a good brown umbrella and shook out the folds of a long, brown raincoat. margaret dropped the hat, arose and took the coat. she tried it on, felt it, cooed over it and matched it with the umbrella. "did it look anything like rain to-night?" she inquired so anxiously that wesley laughed. "and this last bundle?" she said, dropping back in her chair, the coat still over her shoulders. "i couldn't buy this much stuff for any other woman and nothing for my own," said wesley. "it's christmas for you, too, margaret!" he shook out fold after fold of soft gray satiny goods that would look lovely against margaret's pink cheeks and whitening hair. "oh, you old darling!" she exclaimed, and fled sobbing into his arms. but she soon dried her eyes, raked together the coals in the cooking stove and boiled one of the dress patterns in salt water for half an hour. wesley held the lamp while she hung the goods on the line to dry. then she set the irons on the stove so they would be hot the first thing in the morning. chapter iii wherein elnora visits the bird woman, and opens a bank account four o'clock the following morning elnora was shelling beans. at six she fed the chickens and pigs, swept two of the rooms of the cabin, built a fire, and put on the kettle for breakfast. then she climbed the narrow stairs to the attic she had occupied since a very small child, and dressed in the hated shoes and brown calico, plastered down her crisp curls, ate what breakfast she could, and pinning on her hat started for town. "there is no sense in your going for an hour yet," said her mother. "i must try to discover some way to earn those books," replied elnora. "i am perfectly positive i shall not find them lying beside the road wrapped in tissue paper, and tagged with my name." she went toward the city as on yesterday. her perplexity as to where tuition and books were to come from was worse but she did not feel quite so badly. she never again would have to face all of it for the first time. there had been times yesterday when she had prayed to be hidden, or to drop dead, and neither had happened. "i believe the best way to get an answer to prayer is to work for it," muttered elnora grimly. again she followed the trail to the swamp, rearranged her hair and left the tin pail. this time she folded a couple of sandwiches in the napkin, and tied them in a neat light paper parcel which she carried in her hand. then she hurried along the road to onabasha and found a book-store. there she asked the prices of the list of books that she needed, and learned that six dollars would not quite supply them. she anxiously inquired for second-hand books, but was told that the only way to secure them was from the last year's freshmen. just then elnora felt that she positively could not approach any of those she supposed to be sophomores and ask to buy their old books. the only balm the girl could see for the humiliation of yesterday was to appear that day with a set of new books. "do you wish these?" asked the clerk hurriedly, for the store was rapidly filling with school children wanting anything from a dictionary to a pen. "yes," gasped elnora, "oh, yes! but i cannot pay for them just now. please let me take them, and i will pay for them on friday, or return them as perfect as they are. please trust me for them a few days." "i'll ask the proprietor," he said. when he came back elnora knew the answer before he spoke. "i'm sorry," he said, "but mr. hann doesn't recognize your name. you are not a customer of ours, and he feels that he can't take the risk." elnora clumped out of the store, the thump of her heavy, shoes beating as a hammer on her brain. she tried two other dealers with the same result, and then in sick despair came into the street. what could she do? she was too frightened to think. should she stay from school that day and canvass the homes appearing to belong to the wealthy, and try to sell beds of wild ferns, as she had suggested to wesley sinton? what would she dare ask for bringing in and planting a clump of ferns? how could she carry them? would people buy them? she slowly moved past the hotel and then glanced around to see if there were a clock anywhere, for she felt sure the young people passing her constantly were on their way to school. there it stood in a bank window in big black letters staring straight at her: wanted: caterpillars, cocoons, chrysalides, pupae cases, butterflies, moths, indian relics of all kinds. highest scale of prices paid in cash elnora caught the wicket at the cashier's desk with both hands to brace herself against disappointment. "who is it wants to buy cocoons, butterflies, and moths?" she panted. "the bird woman," answered the cashier. "have you some for sale?" "i have some, i do not know if they are what she would want." "well, you had better see her," said the cashier. "do you know where she lives?" "yes," said elnora. "would you tell me the time?" "twenty-one after eight," was the answer. she had nine minutes to reach the auditorium or be late. should she go to school, or to the bird woman? several girls passed her walking swiftly and she remembered their faces. they were hurrying to school. elnora caught the infection. she would see the bird woman at noon. algebra came first, and that professor was kind. perhaps she could slip to the superintendent and ask him for a book for the next lesson, and at noon--"oh, dear lord make it come true," prayed elnora, at noon possibly she could sell some of those wonderful shining-winged things she had been collecting all her life around the outskirts of the limberlost. as she went down the long hall she noticed the professor of mathematics standing in the door of his recitation room. when she passed him he smiled and spoke to her. "i have been watching for you," he said, and elnora stopped bewildered. "for me?" she questioned. "yes," said professor henley. "step inside." elnora followed him into the room and closed the door behind them. "at teachers' meeting last evening, one of the professors mentioned that a pupil had betrayed in class that she had expected her books to be furnished by the city. i thought possibly it was you. was it?" "yes," breathed elnora. "that being the case," said professor henley, "it just occurred to me as you had expected that, you might require a little time to secure them, and you are too fine a mathematician to fall behind for want of supplies. so i telephoned one of our sophomores to bring her last year's books this morning. i am sorry to say they are somewhat abused, but the text is all here. you can have them for two dollars, and pay when you are ready. would you care to take them?" elnora sat suddenly, because she could not stand another instant. she reached both hands for the books, and said never a word. the professor was silent also. at last eleanor arose, hugging those books to her heart as a mother clasps a baby. "one thing more," said the professor. "you may pay your tuition quarterly. you need not bother about the first instalment this month. any time in october will do." it seemed as if elnora's gasp of relief must have reached the soles of her brogans. "did any one ever tell you how beautiful you are!" she cried. as the professor was lank, tow-haired and so nearsighted, that he peered at his pupils through spectacles, no one ever had. "no," said professor henley, "i've waited some time for that; for which reason i shall appreciate it all the more. come now, or we shall be late for opening exercises." so elnora entered the auditorium a second time. her face was like the brightest dawn that ever broke over the limberlost. no matter about the lumbering shoes and skimpy dress. no matter about anything, she had the books. she could take them home. in her garret she could commit them to memory, if need be. she could prove that clothes were not all. if the bird woman did not want any of the many different kinds of specimens she had collected, she was quite sure now she could sell ferns, nuts, and a great many things. then, too, a girl made a place for her that morning, and several smiled and bowed. elnora forgot everything save her books, and that she was where she could use them intelligently--everything except one little thing away back in her head. her mother had known about the books and the tuition, and had not told her when she agreed to her coming. at noon elnora took her little parcel of lunch and started to the home of the bird woman. she must know about the specimens first and then she would walk to the suburbs somewhere and eat a few bites. she dropped the heavy iron knocker on the door of a big red log cabin, and her heart thumped at the resounding stroke. "is the bird woman at home?" she asked of the maid. "she is at lunch," was the answer. "please ask her if she will see a girl from the limberlost about some moths?" inquired elnora. "i never need ask, if it's moths," laughed the girl. "orders are to bring any one with specimens right in. come this way." elnora followed down the hall and entered a long room with high panelled wainscoting, old english fireplace with an overmantel and closets of peculiar china filling the corners. at a bare table of oak, yellow as gold, sat a woman elnora often had watched and followed covertly around the limberlost. the bird woman was holding out a hand of welcome. i heard!" she laughed. "a little pasteboard box, or just the mere word `specimen,' passes you at my door. if it is moths i hope you have hundreds. i've been very busy all summer and unable to collect, and i need so many. sit down and lunch with me, while we talk it over. from the limberlost, did you say?" "i live near the swamp," replied elnora. "since it's so cleared i dare go around the edge in daytime, though we are all afraid at night." "what have you collected?" asked the bird woman, as she helped elnora to sandwiches unlike any she ever before had tasted, salad that seemed to be made of many familiar things, and a cup of hot chocolate that would have delighted any hungry schoolgirl. "i am afraid i am bothering you for nothing, and imposing on you," she said. "that 'collected' frightens me. i've only gathered. i always loved everything outdoors, so i made friends and playmates of them. when i learned that the moths die so soon, i saved them especially, because there seemed no wickedness in it." "i have thought the same thing," said the bird woman encouragingly. then because the girl could not eat until she learned about the moths, the bird woman asked elnora if she knew what kinds she had. "not all of them," answered elnora. "before mr. duncan moved away he often saw me near the edge of the swamp and he showed me the box he had fixed for freckles, and gave me the key. there were some books and things, so from that time on i studied and tried to take moths right, but i am afraid they are not what you want." "are they the big ones that fly mostly in june nights?" asked the bird woman. "yes," said elnora. "big gray ones with reddish markings, pale blue-green, yellow with lavender, and red and yellow." "what do you mean by `red and yellow?'" asked the bird woman so quickly that the girl almost jumped "not exactly red," explained elnora, with tremulous voice. "a reddish, yellowish brown, with canary-coloured spots and gray lines on their wings." "how many of them?" it was the same quick question. "i had over two hundred eggs," said elnora, "but some of them didn't hatch, and some of the caterpillars died, but there must be at least a hundred perfect ones." "perfect! how perfect?" cried the bird woman. "i mean whole wings, no down gone, and all their legs and antennae," faltered elnora. "young woman, that's the rarest moth in america," said the bird woman solemnly. "if you have a hundred of them, they are worth a hundred dollars according to my list. i can use all that are not damaged." "what if they are not pinned right," quavered elnora. "if they are perfect, that does not make the slightest difference. i know how to soften them so that i can put them into any shape i choose. where are they? when may i see them?" "they are in freckles's old case in the limberlost," said elnora. "i couldn't carry many for fear of breaking them, but i could bring a few after school." "you come here at four," said the bird woman, "and we will drive out with some specimen boxes, and a price list, and see what you have to sell. are they your very own? are you free to part with them?" "they are mine," said elnora. "no one but god knows i have them. mr. duncan gave me the books and the box. he told freckles about me, and freckles told him to give me all he left. he said for me to stick to the swamp and be brave, and my hour would come, and it has! i know most of them are all right, and oh, i do need the money!" "could you tell me?" asked the bird woman softly. "you see the swamp and all the fields around it are so full," explained elnora. "every day i felt smaller and smaller, and i wanted to know more and more, and pretty soon i grew desperate, just as freckles did. but i am better off than he was, for i have his books, and i have a mother; even if she doesn't care for me as other girls' mothers do for them, it's better than no one." the bird woman's glance fell, for the girl was not conscious of how much she was revealing. her eyes were fixed on a black pitcher filled with goldenrod in the centre of the table and she was saying what she thought. "as long as i could go to the brushwood school i was happy, but i couldn't go further just when things were the most interesting, so i was determined i'd come to high school and mother wouldn't consent. you see there's plenty of land, but father was drowned when i was a baby, and mother and i can't make money as men do. the taxes are higher every year, and she said it was too expensive. i wouldn't give her any rest, until at last she bought me this dress, and these shoes and i came. it was awful!" "do you live in that beautiful cabin at the northwest end of the swamp?" asked the bird woman. "yes," said elnora. "i remember the place and a story about it, now. you entered the high school yesterday?" "yes." "it was rather bad?" "rather bad!" echoed elnora. the bird woman laughed. "you can't tell me anything about that," she said. "i once entered a city school straight from the country. my dress was brown calico, and my shoes were heavy." the tears began to roll down elnora's cheeks. "did they----?" she faltered. "they did!" said the bird woman. "all of it. i am sure they did not miss one least little thing." then she wiped away some tears that began coursing her cheeks, and laughed at the same time. "where are they now?" asked elnora suddenly. "they are widely scattered, but none of them have attained heights out of range. some of the rich are poor, and some of the poor are rich. some of the brightest died insane, and some of the dullest worked out high positions; some of the very worst to bear have gone out, and i frequently hear from others. now i am here, able to remember it, and mingle laughter with what used to be all tears; for every day i have my beautiful work, and almost every day god sends some one like you to help me. what is your name, my girl?" "elnora comstock," answered elnora. "yesterday on the board it changed to cornstock, and for a minute i thought i'd die, but i can laugh over that already." the bird woman arose and kissed her. "finish your lunch," she said, "and i will bring my price lists, and make a memorandum of what you think you have, so i will know how many boxes to prepare. and remember this: what you are lies with you. if you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. if you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose, among the only ones who live beyond the grave in this world, the people who write books that help, make exquisite music, carve statues, paint pictures, and work for others. never mind the calico dress, and the coarse shoes. work at your books, and before long you will hear yesterday's tormentors boasting that they were once classmates of yours. `i could a tale unfold'----!" she laughingly left the room and elnora sat thinking, until she remembered how hungry she was, so she ate the food, drank the hot chocolate and began to feel better. then the bird woman came back and showed elnora a long printed slip giving a list of graduated prices for moths, butterflies, and dragonflies. "oh, do you want them!" exulted elnora. "i have a few and i can get more by the thousand, with every colour in the world on their wings." "yes," said the bird woman, "i will buy them, also the big moth caterpillars that are creeping everywhere now, and the cocoons that they will spin just about this time. i have a sneaking impression that the mystery, wonder, and the urge of their pure beauty, are going to force me to picture and paint our moths and put them into a book for all the world to see and know. we limberlost people must not be selfish with the wonders god has given to us. we must share with those poor cooped-up city people the best we can. to send them a beautiful book, that is the way, is it not, little new friend of mine?" "yes, oh yes!" cried elnora. "and please god they find a way to earn the money to buy the books, as i have those i need so badly." "i will pay good prices for all the moths you can find," said the bird woman, "because you see i exchange them with foreign collectors. i want a complete series of the moths of america to trade with a german scientist, another with a man in india, and another in brazil. others i can exchange with home collectors for those of california and canada, so you see i can use all you can raise, or find. the banker will buy stone axes, arrow points, and indian pipes. there was a teacher from the city grade schools here to-day for specimens. there is a fund to supply the ward buildings. i'll help you get in touch with that. they want leaves of different trees, flowers, grasses, moths, insects, birds' nests and anything about birds." elnora's eyes were blazing. "had i better go back to school or open a bank account and begin being a millionaire? uncle wesley and i have a bushel of arrow points gathered, a stack of axes, pipes, skin-dressing tools, tubes and mortars. i don't know how i ever shall wait three hours." "you must go, or you will be late," said the bird woman. "i will be ready at four." after school closed elnora, seated beside the bird woman, drove to freckles's room in the limberlost. one at a time the beautiful big moths were taken from the interior of the old black case. not a fourth of them could be moved that night and it was almost dark when the last box was closed, the list figured, and into elnora's trembling fingers were paid fifty-nine dollars and sixteen cents. elnora clasped the money closely. "oh you beautiful stuff!" she cried. "you are going to buy the books, pay the tuition, and take me to high school." then because she was a woman, she sat on a log and looked at her shoes. long after the bird woman drove away elnora remained. she had her problem, and it was a big one. if she told her mother, would she take the money to pay the taxes? if she did not tell her, how could she account for the books, and things for which she would spend it. at last she counted out what she needed for the next day, placed the remainder in the farthest corner of the case, and locked the door. she then filled the front of her skirt from a heap of arrow points beneath the case and started home. chapter iv wherein the sintons are disappointed, and mrs. comstock learns that she can laugh with the first streak of red above the limberlost margaret sinton was busy with the gingham and the intricate paper pattern she had purchased. wesley cooked the breakfast and worked until he thought elnora would be gone, then he started to bring her mother. "now you be mighty careful," cautioned margaret. "i don't know how she will take it." "i don't either," said wesley philosophically, "but she's got to take it some way. that dress has to be finished by school time in the morning." wesley had not slept well that night. he had been so busy framing diplomatic speeches to make to mrs. comstock that sleep had little chance with him. every step nearer to her he approached his position seemed less enviable. by the time he reached the front gate and started down the walk between the rows of asters and lady slippers he was perspiring, and every plausible and convincing speech had fled his brain. mrs. comstock helped him. she met him at the door. "good morning," she said. "did margaret send you for something?" "yes," said wesley. "she's got a job that's too big for her, and she wants you to help." "of course i will," said mrs. comstock. it was no one's affair how lonely the previous day had been, or how the endless hours of the present would drag. "what is she doing in such a rush?" now was his chance. "she's making a dress for elnora," answered, wesley. he saw mrs. comstock's form straighten, and her face harden, so he continued hastily. "you see elnora has been helping us at harvest time, butchering, and with unexpected visitors for years. we've made out that she's saved us a considerable sum, and as she wouldn't ever touch any pay for anything, we just went to town and got a few clothes we thought would fix her up a little for the high school. we want to get a dress done to-day mighty bad, but margaret is slow about sewing, and she never can finish alone, so i came after you." "and it's such a simple little matter, so dead easy; and all so between old friends like, that you can't look above your boots while you explain it," sneered mrs. comstock. "wesley sinton, what put the idea into your head that elnora would take things bought with money, when she wouldn't take the money? then sinton's eyes came up straightly. "finding her on the trail last night sobbing as hard as i ever saw any one at a funeral. she wasn't complaining at all, but she's come to me all her life with her little hurts, and she couldn't hide how she'd been laughed at, twitted, and run face to face against the fact that there were books and tuition, unexpected, and nothing will ever make me believe you didn't know that, kate comstock." "if any doubts are troubling you on that subject, sure i knew it! she was so anxious to try the world, i thought i'd just let her take a few knocks and see how she liked them." "as if she'd ever taken anything but knocks all her life!" cried wesley sinton. "kate comstock, you are a heartless, selfish woman. you've never shown elnora any real love in her life. if ever she finds out that thing you'll lose her, and it will serve you right." "she knows it now," said mrs. comstock icily, "and she'll be home to-night just as usual." "well, you are a brave woman if you dared put a girl of elnora's make through what she suffered yesterday, and will suffer again to-day, and let her know you did it on purpose. i admire your nerve. but i've watched this since elnora was born, and i got enough. things have come to a pass where they go better for her, or i interfere." "as if you'd ever done anything but interfere all her life! think i haven't watched you? think i, with my heart raw in my breast, and too numb to resent it openly, haven't seen you and mag sinton trying to turn elnora against me day after day? when did you ever tell her what her father meant to me? when did you ever try to make her see the wreck of my life, and what i've suffered? no indeed! always it's been poor little abused elnora, and cakes, kissing, extra clothes, and encouraging her to run to you with a pitiful mouth every time i tried to make a woman of her." "kate comstock, that's unjust," cried sinton. "only last night i tried to show her the picture i saw the day she was born. i begged her to come to you and tell you pleasant what she needed, and ask you for what i happen to know you can well afford to give her." "i can't!" cried mrs. comstock. "you know i can't!" "then get so you can!" said wesley sinton. "any day you say the word you can sell six thousand worth of rare timber off this place easy. i'll see to clearing and working the fields cheap as dirt, for elnora's sake. i'll buy you more cattle to fatten. all you've got to do is sign a lease, to pull thousands from the ground in oil, as the rest of us are doing all around you!" "cut down robert's trees!" shrieked mrs. comstock. "tear up his land! cover everything with horrid, greasy oil! i'll die first." "you mean you'll let elnora go like a beggar, and hurt and mortify her past bearing. i've got to the place where i tell you plain what i am going to do. maggie and i went to town last night, and we bought what things elnora needs most urgent to make her look a little like the rest of the high school girls. now here it is in plain english. you can help get these things ready, and let us give them to her as we want----" "she won't touch them!" cried mrs. comstock. "then you can pay us, and she can take them as her right----" "i won't!" "then i will tell elnora just what you are worth, what you can afford, and how much of this she owns. i'll loan her the money to buy books and decent clothes, and when she is of age she can sell her share and pay me." mrs. comstock gripped a chair-back and opened her lips, but no words came. "and," sinton continued, "if she is so much like you that she won't do that, i'll go to the county seat and lay complaint against you as her guardian before the judge. i'll swear to what you are worth, and how you are raising her, and have you discharged, or have the judge appoint some man who will see that she is comfortable, educated, and decent looking!" "you--you wouldn't!" gasped kate comstock. "i won't need to, kate!" said sinton, his heart softening the instant the hard words were said. "you won't show it, but you do love elnora! you can't help it! you must see how she needs things; come help us fix them, and be friends. maggie and i couldn't live without her, and you couldn't either. you've got to love such a fine girl as she is; let it show a little!" "you can hardly expect me to love her," said mrs. comstock coldly. "but for her a man would stand back of me now, who would beat the breath out of your sneaking body for the cowardly thing with which you threaten me. after all i've suffered you'd drag me to court and compel me to tear up robert's property. if i ever go they carry me. if they touch one tree, or put down one greasy old oil well, it will be over all i can shoot, before they begin. now, see how quick you can clear out of here!" "you won't come and help maggie with the dress?" for answer mrs. comstock looked around swiftly for some object on which to lay her hands. knowing her temper, wesley sinton left with all the haste consistent with dignity. but he did not go home. he crossed a field, and in an hour brought another neighbour who was skilful with her needle. with sinking heart margaret saw them coming. "kate is too busy to help to-day, she can't sew before to-morrow," said wesley cheerfully as they entered. that quieted margaret's apprehension a little, though she had some doubts. wesley prepared the lunch, and by four o'clock the dress was finished as far as it possibly could be until it was fitted on elnora. if that did not entail too much work, it could be completed in two hours. then margaret packed their purchases into the big market basket. wesley took the hat, umbrella, and raincoat, and they went to mrs. comstock's. as they reached the step, margaret spoke pleasantly to mrs. comstock, who sat reading just inside the door, but she did not answer and deliberately turned a leaf without looking up. wesley sinton opened the door and went in followed by margaret. "kate," he said, "you needn't take out your mad over our little racket on maggie. i ain't told her a word i said to you, or you said to me. she's not so very strong, and she's sewed since four o'clock this morning to get this dress ready for to-morrow. it's done and we came down to try it on elnora." "is that the truth, mag sinton?" demanded mrs. comstock. "you heard wesley say so," proudly affirmed mrs. sinton. "i want to make you a proposition," said wesley. "wait till elnora comes. then we'll show her the things and see what she says." "how would it do to see what she says without bribing her," sneered mrs. comstock. "if she can stand what she did yesterday, and will today, she can bear 'most anything," said wesley. "put away the clothes if you want to, till we tell her." "well, you don't take this waist i'm working on," said margaret, "for i have to baste in the sleeves and set the collar. put the rest out of sight if you like." mrs. comstock picked up the basket and bundles, placed them inside her room and closed the door. margaret threaded her needle and began to sew. mrs. comstock returned to her book, while wesley fidgeted and raged inwardly. he could see that margaret was nervous and almost in tears, but the lines in mrs. comstock's impassive face were set and cold. so they sat while the clock ticked off the time--one hour, two, dusk, and no elnora. just when margaret and wesley were discussing whether he had not better go to town to meet elnora, they heard her coming up the walk. wesley dropped his tilted chair and squared himself. margaret gripped her sewing, and turned pleading eyes toward the door. mrs. comstock closed her book and grimly smiled. "mother, please open the door," called elnora. mrs. comstock arose, and swung back the screen. elnora stepped in beside her, bent half double, the whole front of her dress gathered into a sort of bag filled with a heavy load, and one arm stacked high with books. in the dim light she did not see the sintons. "please hand me the empty bucket in the kitchen, mother," she said. "i just had to bring these arrow points home, but i'm scared for fear i've spoiled my dress and will have to wash it. i'm to clean them, and take them to the banker in the morning, and oh, mother, i've sold enough stuff to pay for my books, my tuition, and maybe a dress and some lighter shoes besides. oh, mother i'm so happy! take the books and bring the bucket!" then she saw margaret and wesley. "oh, glory!" she exulted. "i was just wondering how i'd ever wait to tell you, and here you are! it's too perfectly splendid to be true!" "tell us, elnora," said sinton. "well sir," said elnora, doubling down on the floor and spreading out her skirt, "set the bucket here, mother. these points are brittle, and should be put in one at a time. if they are chipped i can't sell them. well sir! i've had a time! you know i just had to have books. i tried three stores, and they wouldn't trust me, not even three days, i didn't know what in this world i could do quickly enough. just when i was almost frantic i saw a sign in a bank window asking for caterpillars, cocoons, butterflies, arrow points, and everything. i went in, and it was this bird woman who wants the insects, and the banker wants the stones. i had to go to school then, but, if you'll believe it"--elnora beamed on all of them in turn as she talked and slipped the arrow points from her dress to the pail--"if you'll believe it--but you won't, hardly, until you look at the books--there was the mathematics teacher, waiting at his door, and he had a set of books for me that he had telephoned a sophomore to bring." "how did he happen to do that, elnora?" interrupted sinton. elnora blushed. "it was a fool mistake i made yesterday in thinking books were just handed out to one. there was a teachers' meeting last night and the history teacher told about that. professor henley thought of me. you know i told you what he said about my algebra, mother. ain't i glad i studied out some of it myself this summer! so he telephoned and a girl brought the books. because they are marked and abused some i get the whole outfit for two dollars. i can erase most of the marks, paste down the covers, and fix them so they look better. but i must hurry to the joy part. i didn't stop to eat, at noon, i just ran to the bird woman's, and i had lunch with her. it was salad, hot chocolate, and lovely things, and she wants to buy most every old scrap i ever gathered. she wants dragonflies, moths, butterflies, and he--the banker, i mean--wants everything indian. this very night she came to the swamp with me and took away enough stuff to pay for the books and tuition, and to-morrow she is going to buy some more." elnora laid the last arrow point in the pail and arose, shaking leaves and bits of baked earth from her dress. she reached into her pocket, produced her money and waved it before their wondering eyes. "and that's the joy part!" she exulted. "put it up in the clock till morning, mother. that pays for the books and tuition and--" elnora hesitated, for she saw the nervous grasp with which her mother's fingers closed on the bills. then she continued, but more slowly and thinking before she spoke. "what i get to-morrow pays for more books and tuition, and maybe a few, just a few, things to wear. these shoes are so dreadfully heavy and hot, and they make such a noise on the floor. there isn't another calico dress in the whole building, not among hundreds of us. why, what is that? aunt margaret, what are you hiding in your lap?" she snatched the waist and shook it out, and her face was beaming. "have you taken to waists all fancy and buttoned in the back? i bet you this is mine!" "i bet you so too," said margaret sinton. "you undress right away and try it on, and if it fits, it will be done for morning. there are some low shoes, too!" elnora began to dance. "oh, you dear people!" she cried. "i can pay for them to-morrow night! isn't it too splendid! i was just thinking on the way home that i certainly would be compelled to have cooler shoes until later, and i was wondering what i'd do when the fall rains begin." "i meant to get you some heavy dress skirts and a coat then," said mrs. comstock. "i know you said so!" cried elnora. "but you needn't, now! i can buy every single stitch i need myself. next summer i can gather up a lot more stuff, and all winter on the way to school. i am sure i can sell ferns, i know i can nuts, and the bird woman says the grade rooms want leaves, grasses, birds' nests, and cocoons. oh, isn't this world lovely! i'll be helping with the tax, next, mother!" elnora waved the waist and started for the bedroom. when she opened the door she gave a little cry. "what have you people been doing?" she demanded. "i never saw so many interesting bundles in all my life. i'm `skeered' to death for fear i can't pay for them, and will have to give up something." "wouldn't you take them, if you could not pay for them, elnora?" asked her mother instantly. "why, not unless you did," answered elnora. "people have no right to wear things they can't afford, have they?" "but from such old friends as maggie and wesley!" mrs. comstock's voice was oily with triumph. "from them least of all," cried elnora stoutly. "from a stranger sooner than from them, to whom i owe so much more than i ever can pay now." "well, you don't have to," said mrs. comstock. "maggie just selected these things, because she is more in touch with the world, and has got such good taste. you can pay as long as your money holds out, and if there's more necessary, maybe i can sell the butcher a calf, or if things are too costly for us, of course, they can take them back. put on the waist now, and then you can look over the rest and see if they are suitable, and what you want." elnora stepped into the adjoining room and closed the door. mrs. comstock picked up the bucket and started for the well with it. at the bedroom she paused. "elnora, were you going to wash these arrow points?" "yes. the bird woman says they sell better if they are clean, so it can be seen that there are no defects in them." "of course," said mrs. comstock. "some of them seem quite baked. shall i put them to soak? do you want to take them in the morning?" "yes, i do," answered elnora. "if you would just fill the pail with water." mrs. comstock left the room. wesley sinton sat with his back to the window in the west end of the cabin which overlooked the well. a suppressed sound behind him caused him to turn quickly. then he arose and leaned over margaret. "she's out there laughing like a blamed monkey!" he whispered indignantly. "well, she can't help it!" exclaimed margaret. "i'm going home!" said wesley. "oh no, you are not!" retorted margaret. "you are missing the point. the point is not how you look, or feel. it is to get these things in elnora's possession past dispute. you go now, and to-morrow elnora will wear calico, and kate comstock will return these goods. right here i stay until everything we bought is elnora's." "what are you going to do?" asked wesley. "i don't know yet, myself," said margaret. then she arose and peered from the window. at the well curb stood katharine comstock. the strain of the day was finding reaction. her chin was in the air, she was heaving, shaking and strangling to suppress any sound. the word that slipped between margaret sinton's lips shocked wesley until he dropped on his chair, and recalled her to her senses. she was fairly composed as she turned to elnora, and began the fitting. when she had pinched, pulled, and patted she called, "come see if you think this fits, kate." mrs. comstock had gone around to the back door and answered from the kitchen. "you know more about it than i do. go ahead! i'm getting supper. don't forget to allow for what it will shrink in washing!" "i set the colours and washed the goods last night; it can be made to fit right now," answered margaret. when she could find nothing more to alter she told elnora to heat some water. after she had done that the girl began opening packages. the hat came first. "mother!" cried elnora. "mother, of course, you have seen this, but you haven't seen it on me. i must try it on." "don't you dare put that on your head until your hair is washed and properly combed," said margaret. "oh!" cried elnora. "is that water to wash my hair? i thought it was to set the colour in another dress." "well, you thought wrong," said margaret simply. "your hair is going to be washed and brushed until it shines like copper. while it dries you can eat your supper, and this dress will be finished. then you can put on your new ribbon, and your hat. you can try your shoes now, and if they don't fit, you and wesley can drive to town and change them. that little round bundle on the top of the basket is your stockings." margaret sat down and began sewing swiftly, and a little later opened the machine, and ran several long seams. elnora returned in a few minutes holding up her skirts and stepping daintily in the new shoes. "don't soil them, honey, else you're sure they fit," cautioned wesley. "they seem just a trifle large, maybe," said elnora dubiously, and wesley knelt to feel. he and margaret thought them a fit, and then elnora appealed to her mother. mrs. comstock appeared wiping her hands on her apron. she examined the shoes critically. "they seem to fit," she said, "but they are away too fine to walk country roads." "i think so, too," said elnora instantly. "we had better take these back and get a cheaper pair." "oh, let them go for this time," said mrs. comstock. "they are so pretty, i hate to part with them. you can get cheaper ones after this." wesley and margaret scarcely breathed for a long time. when wesley went to do the feeding. elnora set the table. when the water was hot, margaret pinned a big towel around elnora's shoulders and washed and dried the lovely hair according to the instructions she had been given the previous night. as the hair began to dry it billowed out in a sparkling sheen that caught the light and gleamed and flashed. "now, the idea is to let it stand naturally, just as the curl will make it. don't you do any of that nasty, untidy snarling, elnora," cautioned margaret. "wash it this way every two weeks while you are in school, shake it out, and dry it. then part it in the middle and turn a front quarter on each side from your face. you tie the back at your neck with a string--so, and the ribbon goes in a big, loose bow. i'll show you." one after another margaret sinton tied the ribbons, creasing each of them so they could not be returned, as she explained that she was trying to find the colour most becoming. then she produced the raincoat which carried elnora into transports. mrs. comstock objected. "that won't be warm enough for cold weather, and you can't afford it and a coat, too." "i'll tell you what i thought," said elnora. "i was planning on the way home. these coats are fine because they keep you dry. i thought i would get one, and a warm sweater to wear under it cold days. then i always would be dry, and warm. the sweater only costs three dollars, so i could get it and the raincoat both for half the price of a heavy cloth coat." "you are right about that," said mrs. comstock. "you can change more with the weather, too. keep the raincoat, elnora." "wear it until you try the hat," said margaret. "it will have to do until the dress is finished." elnora picked up the hat dubiously. "mother, may i wear my hair as it is now?" she asked. "let me take a good look," said katharine comstock. heaven only knows what she saw. to wesley and to margaret the bright young face of elnora, with its pink tints, its heavy dark brows, its bright blue-gray eyes, and its frame of curling reddish-brown hair was the sweetest sight on earth, and at that instant elnora was radiant. "so long as it's your own hair, and combed back as plain as it will go, i don't suppose it cuts much ice whether it's tied a little tighter or looser," conceded mrs. comstock. "if you stop right there, you may let it go at that." elnora set the hat on her head. it was only a wide tan straw with three exquisite peacock quills at one side. margaret sinton cried out, wesley slapped his knee and sighed deeply while mrs. comstock stood speechless for a second. "i wish you had asked the price before you put that on," she said impatiently. "we never can afford it." "it's not so much as you think," said margaret. "don't you see what i did? i had them take off the quills, and put on some of those phoebe simms gave me from her peacocks. the hat will only cost you a dollar and a half." she avoided wesley's eyes, and looked straight at mrs. comstock. elnora removed the hat to examine it. "why, they are those reddish-tan quills of yours!" she cried. "mother, look how beautifully they are set on! i'd much rather have them than those from the store." "so would i," said mrs. comstock. "if margaret wants to spare them, that will make you a beautiful hat; dirt cheap, too! you must go past mrs. simms and show her. she would be pleased to see them." elnora sank into a chair and contemplated her toe. "landy, ain't i a queen?" she murmured. "what else have i got?" "just a belt, some handkerchiefs, and a pair of top shoes for rainy days and colder weather," said margaret. "about those high shoes, that was my idea," said wesley. "soon as it rains, low shoes won't do, and by taking two pairs at once i could get them some cheaper. the low ones are two and the high ones two fifty, together three seventy-five. ain't that cheap?" "that's a real bargain," said mrs. comstock, "if they are good shoes, and they look it." "this" said wesley, producing the last package, "is your christmas present from your aunt maggie. i got mine, too, but it's at the house. i'll bring it up in the morning." he handed margaret the umbrella, and she passed it over to elnora who opened it and sat laughing under its shelter. then she kissed both of them. she brought a pencil and a slip of paper to set down the prices they gave her of everything they had brought except the umbrella, added the sum, and said laughingly: "will you please wait till to-morrow for the money? i will have it then, sure." "elnora," said wesley sinton. "wouldn't you----" "elnora, hustle here a minute!" called mrs. comstock from the kitchen. "i need you!" "one second, mother," answered elnora, throwing off the coat and hat, and closing the umbrella as she ran. there were several errands to do in a hurry, and then supper. elnora chattered incessantly, wesley and margaret talked all they could, while mrs. comstock said a word now and then, which was all she ever did. but wesley sinton was watching her, and time and again he saw a peculiar little twist around her mouth. he knew that for the first time in sixteen years she really was laughing over something. she had all she could do to preserve her usually sober face. wesley knew what she was thinking. after supper the dress was finished, the pattern for the next one discussed, and then the sintons went home. elnora gathered her treasures. when she started upstairs she stopped. "may i kiss you good-night, mother?" she asked lightly. "never mind any slobbering," said mrs. comstock. "i should think you'd lived with me long enough to know that i don't care for it." "well, i'd love to show you in some way how happy i am, and how i thank you." "i wonder what for?" said mrs. comstock. "mag sinton chose that stuff and brought it here and you pay for it." "yes, but you seemed willing for me to have it, and you said you would help me if i couldn't pay all." "maybe i did," said mrs. comstock. "maybe i did. i meant to get you some heavy dress skirts about thanksgiving, and i still can get them. go to bed, and for any sake don't begin mooning before a mirror, and make a dunce of yourself." mrs. comstock picked up several papers and blew out the kitchen light. she stood in the middle of the sittingroom floor for a time and then went into her room and closed the door. sitting on the edge of the bed she thought for a few minutes and then suddenly buried her face in the pillow and again heaved with laughter. down the road plodded margaret and wesley sinton. neither of them had words to utter their united thought. "done!" hissed wesley at last. "done brown! did you ever feel like a bloomin', confounded donkey? how did the woman do it?" "she didn't do it!" gulped margaret through her tears. "she didn't do anything. she trusted to elnora's great big soul to bring her out right, and really she was right, and so it had to bring her. she's a darling, wesley! but she's got a time before her. did you see kate comstock grab that money? before six months she'll be out combing the limberlost for bugs and arrow points to help pay the tax. i know her." "well, i don't!" exclaimed sinton, "she's too many for me. but there is a laugh left in her yet! i didn't s'pose there was. bet you a dollar, if we could see her this minute, she'd be chuckling over the way we got left." both of them stopped in the road and looked back. "there's elnora's light in her room," said margaret. "the poor child will feel those clothes, and pore over her books till morning, but she'll look decent to go to school, anyway. nothing is too big a price to pay for that." "yes, if kate lets her wear them. ten to one, she makes her finish the week with that old stuff!" "no, she won't," said margaret. "she'll hardly dare. kate made some concessions, all right; big ones for her-if she did get her way in the main. she bent some, and if elnora proves that she can walk out barehanded in the morning and come back with that much money in her pocket, an armful of books, and buy a turnout like that, she proves that she is of some consideration, and kate's smart enough. she'll think twice before she'll do that. elnora won't wear a calico dress to high school again. you watch and see if she does. she may have the best clothes she'll get for a time, for the least money, but she won't know it until she tries to buy goods herself at the same rates. wesley, what about those prices? didn't they shrink considerable?" "you began it," said wesley. "those prices were all right. we didn't say what the goods cost us, we said what they would cost her. surely, she's mistaken about being able to pay all that. can she pick up stuff of that value around the limberlost? didn't the bird woman see her trouble, and just give her the money?" "i don't think so," said margaret. "seems to me i've heard of her paying, or offering to pay those who would take the money, for bugs and butterflies, and i've known people who sold that banker indian stuff. once i heard that his pipe collection beat that of the government at the philadelphia centennial. those things have come to have a value." "well, there's about a bushel of that kind of valuables piled up in the woodshed, that belongs to elnora. at least, i picked them up because she said she wanted them. ain't it queer that she'd take to stones, bugs, and butterflies, and save them. now they are going to bring her the very thing she wants the worst. lord, but this is a funny world when you get to studying! looks like things didn't all come by accident. looks as if there was a plan back of it, and somebody driving that knows the road, and how to handle the lines. anyhow, elnora's in the wagon, and when i get out in the night and the dark closes around me, and i see the stars, i don't feel so cheap. maggie, how the nation did kate comstock do that?" "you will keep on harping, wesley. i told you she didn't do it. elnora did it! she walked in and took things right out of our hands. all kate had to do was to enjoy having it go her way, and she was cute enough to put in a few questions that sort of guided elnora. but i don't know, wesley. this thing makes me think, too. s'pose we'd taken elnora when she was a baby, and we'd heaped on her all the love we can't on our own, and we'd coddled, petted, and shielded her, would she have made the woman that living alone, learning to think for herself, and taking all the knocks kate comstock could give, have made of her?" "you bet your life!" cried wesley, warmly. "loving anybody don't hurt them. we wouldn't have done anything but love her. you can't hurt a child loving it. she'd have learned to work, to study, and grown into a woman with us, without suffering like a poor homeless dog." "but you don't see the point, wesley. she would have grown into a fine woman with us; but as we would have raised her, would her heart ever have known the world as it does now? where's the anguish, wesley, that child can't comprehend? seeing what she's seen of her mother hasn't hardened her. she can understand any mother's sorrow. living life from the rough side has only broadened her. where's the girl or boy burning with shame, or struggling to find a way, that will cross elnora's path and not get a lift from her? she's had the knocks, but there'll never be any of the thing you call `false pride' in her. i guess we better keep out. maybe kate comstock knows what she's doing. sure as you live, elnora has grown bigger on knocks than she would on love." "i don't s'pose there ever was a very fine point to anything but i missed it," said wesley, "because i am blunt, rough, and have no book learning to speak of. since you put it into words i see what you mean, but it's dinged hard on elnora, just the same. and i don't keep out. i keep watching closer than ever. i got my slap in the face, but if i don't miss my guess, kate comstock learned her lesson, same as i did. she learned that i was in earnest, that i would haul her to court if she didn't loosen up a bit, and she'll loosen. you see if she doesn't. it may come hard, and the hinges creak, but she'll fix elnora decent after this, if elnora doesn't prove that she can fix herself. as for me, i found out that what i was doing was as much for myself as for elnora. i wanted her to take those things from us, and love us for giving them. it didn't work, and but for you, i'd messed the whole thing and stuck like a pig in crossing a bridge. but you helped me out; elnora's got the clothes, and by morning, maybe i won't grudge kate the only laugh she's had in sixteen years. you been showing me the way quite a spell now, ain't you, maggie?" in her attic elnora lighted two candles, set them on her little table, stacked the books, and put away the precious clothes. how lovingly she hung the hat and umbrella, folded the raincoat, and spread the new dress over a chair. she fingered the ribbons, and tried to smooth the creases from them. she put away the hose neatly folded, touched the handkerchiefs, and tried the belt. then she slipped into her white nightdress, shook down her hair that it might become thoroughly dry, set a chair before the table, and reverently opened one of the books. a stiff draught swept the attic, for it stretched the length of the cabin, and had a window in each end. elnora arose and going to the east window closed it. she stood for a minute looking at the stars, the sky, and the dark outline of the straggling trees of the rapidly dismantling limberlost. in the region of her case a tiny point of light flashed and disappeared. elnora straightened and wondered. was it wise to leave her precious money there? the light flashed once more, wavered a few seconds, and died out. the girl waited. she did not see it again, so she turned to her books. in the limberlost the hulking figure of a man sneaked down the trail. "the bird woman was at freckles's room this evening," he muttered. "wonder what for?" he left the trail, entered the enclosure still distinctly outlined, and approached the case. the first point of light flashed from the tiny electric lamp on his vest. he took a duplicate key from his pocket, felt for the padlock and opened it. the door swung wide. the light flashed the second time. swiftly his glance swept the interior. "'bout a fourth of her moths gone. elnora must have been with the bird woman and given them to her." then he stood tense. his keen eyes discovered the roll of bills hastily thrust back in the bottom of the case. he snatched them up, shut off the light, relocked the case by touch, and swiftly went down the trail. every few seconds he paused and listened intently. just as he reached the road, a second figure approached him. "is it you, pete?" came the whispered question. "yes," said the first man. "i was coming down to take a peep, when i saw your flash," he said. "i heard the bird woman had been at the case to-day. anything doing?" "not a thing," said pete. "she just took away about a fourth of the moths. probably had the comstock girl getting them for her. heard they were together. likely she'll get the rest to-morrow. ain't picking gettin' bare these days?" "well, i should say so," said the second man, turning back in disgust. "coming home, now?" "no, i am going down this way," answered pete, for his eyes caught the gleam from the window of the comstock cabin, and he had a desire to learn why elnora's attic was lighted at that hour. he slouched down the road, occasionally feeling the size of the roll he had not taken time to count. the attic was too long, the light too near the other end, and the cabin stood much too far back from the road. he could see nothing although he climbed the fence and walked back opposite the window. he knew mrs. comstock was probably awake, and that she sometimes went to the swamp behind her home at night. at times a cry went up from that locality that paralyzed any one near, or sent them fleeing as if for life. he did not care to cross behind the cabin. he returned to the road, passed, and again climbed the fence. opposite the west window he could see elnora. she sat before a small table reading from a book between two candles. her hair fell in a bright sheen around her, and with one hand she lightly shook, and tossed it as she studied. the man stood out in the night and watched. for a long time a leaf turned at intervals and the hair-drying went on. the man drew nearer. the picture grew more beautiful as he approached. he could not see so well as he desired, for the screen was of white mosquito netting, and it angered him. he cautiously crept closer. the elevation shut off his view. then he remembered the large willow tree shading the well and branching across the window fit the west end of the cabin. from childhood elnora had stepped from the sill to a limb and slid down the slanting trunk of the tree. he reached it and noiselessly swung himself up. three steps out on the big limb the man shuddered. he was within a few feet of the girl. he could see the throb of her breast under its thin covering and smell the fragrance of the tossing hair. he could see the narrow bed with its pieced calico cover, the whitewashed walls with gay lithographs, and every crevice stuck full of twigs with dangling cocoons. there were pegs for the few clothes, the old chest, the little table, the two chairs, the uneven floor covered with rag rugs and braided corn husk. but nothing was worth a glance except the perfect face and form within reach by one spring through the rotten mosquito bar. he gripped the limb above that on which he stood, licked his lips, and breathed through his throat to be sure he was making no sound. elnora closed the book and laid it aside. she picked up a towel, and turning the gathered ends of her hair rubbed them across it, and dropping the towel on her lap, tossed the hair again. then she sat in deep thought. by and by words began to come softly. near as he was the man could not hear at first. he bent closer and listened intently. "--ever could be so happy," murmured the soft voice. "the dress is so pretty, such shoes, the coat, and everything. i won't have to be ashamed again, not ever again, for the limberlost is full of precious moths, and i always can collect them. the bird woman will buy more to-morrow, and the next day, and the next. when they are all gone, i can spend every minute gathering cocoons, and hunting other things i can sell. oh, thank god, for my precious, precious money. why, i didn't pray in vain after all! i thought when i asked the lord to hide me, there in that big hall, that he wasn't doing it, because i wasn't covered from sight that instant. but i'm hidden now, i feel that." elnora lifted her eyes to the beams above her. "i don't know much about praying properly," she muttered, "but i do thank you, lord, for hiding me in your own time and way." her face was so bright that it shone with a white radiance. two big tears welled from her eyes, and rolled down her smiling cheeks. "oh, i do feel that you have hidden me," she breathed. then she blew out the lights, and the little wooden bed creaked under her weight. pete corson dropped from the limb and found his way to the road. he stood still a long time, then started back to the limberlost. a tiny point of light flashed in the region of the case. he stopped with an oath. "another hound trying to steal from a girl," he exclaimed. "but it's likely he thinks if he gets anything it will be from a woman who can afford it, as i did." he went on, but beside the fences, and very cautiously. "swamp seems to be alive to-night," he muttered. "that's three of us out." he entered a deep place at the northwest corner, sat on the ground and taking a pencil from his pocket, he tore a leaf from a little notebook, and laboriously wrote a few lines by the light he carried. then he went back to the region of the case and waited. before his eyes swept the vision of the slender white creature with tossing hair. he smiled, and worshipped it, until a distant rooster faintly announced dawn. then he unlocked the case again, and replaced the money, laid the note upon it, and went back to concealment, where he remained until elnora came down the trail in the morning, appearing very lovely in her new dress and hat. chapter v wherein elnora receives a warning, and billy appears on the scene it would be difficult to describe how happy elnora was that morning as she hurried through her work, bathed and put on the neat, dainty gingham dress, and the tan shoes. she had a struggle with her hair. it crinkled, billowed, and shone, and she could not avoid seeing the becoming frame it made around her face. but in deference to her mother's feelings the girl set her teeth, and bound her hair closely to her head with a shoe-string. "not to be changed at the case," she told herself. that her mother was watching she was unaware. just as she picked up the beautiful brown ribbon mrs. comstock spoke. "you had better let me tie that. you can't reach behind yourself and do it right." elnora gave a little gasp. her mother never before had proposed to do anything for the girl that by any possibility she could do herself. her heart quaked at the thought of how her mother would arrange that bow, but elnora dared not refuse. the offer was too precious. it might never be made again. "oh thank you!" said the girl, and sitting down she held out the ribbon. her mother stood back and looked at her critically. "you haven't got that like mag sinton had it last night," she announced. "you little idiot! you've tried to plaster it down to suit me, and you missed it. i liked it away better as mag fixed it, after i saw it. you didn't look so peeled." "oh mother, mother!" laughed elnora, with a half sob in her voice. "hold still, will you?" cried mrs. comstock. "you'll be late, and i haven't packed your dinner yet." she untied the string and shook out the hair. it rose with electricity and clung to her fingers and hands. mrs. comstock jumped back as if bitten. she knew that touch. her face grew white, and her eyes angry. "tie it yourself," she said shortly, "and then i'll put on the ribbon. but roll it back loose like mag did. it looked so pretty that way." almost fainting elnora stood before the glass, divided off the front parts of her hair, and rolled them as mrs. sinton had done; tied it at the nape of her neck, then sat while her mother arranged the ribbon. "if i pull it down till it comes tight in these creases where she had it, it will be just right, won't it?" queried mrs. comstock, and the amazed elnora stammered "yes." when she looked in the glass the bow was perfectly tied, and how the gold tone of the brown did match the lustre of the shining hair! "that's pretty," commented mrs. comstock's soul, but her stiff lips had said all that could be forced from them for once. just then wesley sinton came to the door. "good morning," he cried heartily. "elnora, you look a picture! my, but you're sweet! if any of the city boys get sassy you tell your uncle wesley, and he'll horsewhip them. here's your christmas present from me." he handed elnora the leather lunch box, with her name carved across the strap in artistic lettering. "oh uncle wesley!" was all elnora could say. "your aunt maggie filled it for me for a starter," he said. "now, if you are ready, i'm going to drive past your way and you can ride almost to onabasha with me, and save the new shoes that much." elnora was staring at the box. "oh i hope it isn't impolite to open it before you," she said. "i just feel as if i must see inside." "don't you stand on formality with the neighbours," laughed sinton. "look in your box if you want to!" elnora slipped the strap and turned back the lid. this disclosed the knife, fork, napkin, and spoon, the milk flask, and the interior packed with dainty sandwiches wrapped in tissue paper, and the little compartments for meat, salad, and the custard cup. "oh mother!" cried elnora. "oh mother, isn't it fine? what made you think of it, uncle wesley? how will i ever thank you? no one will have a finer lunch box than i. oh i do thank you! that's the nicest gift i ever had. how i love christmas in september!" "it's a mighty handy thing," assented mrs. comstock, taking in every detail with sharp eyes. "i guess you are glad now you went and helped mag and wesley when you could, elnora?" "deedy, yes," laughed elnora, "and i'm going again first time they have a big day if i stay from school to do it." "you'll do no such thing!" said the delighted sinton. "come now, if you're going!" "if i ride, can you spare me time to run into the swamp to my box a minute?" asked elnora. the light she had seen the previous night troubled her. "sure," said wesley largely. so they drove away and left a white-faced woman watching them from the door, her heart a little sorer than usual. "i'd give a pretty to hear what he'll say to her!" she commented bitterly. "always sticking in, always doing things i can't ever afford. where on earth did he get that thing and what did it cost?" then she entered the cabin and began the day's work, but mingled with the brooding bitterness of her soul was the vision of a sweet young face, glad with a gladness never before seen on it, and over and over she repeated: "i wonder what he'll say to her!" what he said was that she looked as fresh and sweet as a posy, and to be careful not to step in the mud or scratch her shoes when she went to the case. elnora found her key and opened the door. not where she had placed it, but conspicuously in front lay her little heap of bills, and a crude scrawl of writing beside it. elnora picked up the note in astonishment. dere elnory, the lord amighty is hiding you all right done you ever dout it this money of yourn was took for some time las nite but it is returned with intres for god sake done ever come to the swamp at nite or late evnin or mornin or far in any time sompin worse an you know could git you a frend. elnora began to tremble. she hastily glanced around. the damp earth before the case had been trodden by large, roughly shod feet. she caught up the money and the note, thrust them into her guimpe, locked the case, and ran to the road. she was so breathless and her face so white sinton noticed it. "what in the world's the matter, elnora?" he asked. "i am half afraid!" she panted. "tut, tut, child!" said wesley sinton. "nothing in the world to be afraid of. what happened?" "uncle wesley," said elnora, "i had more money than i brought home last night, and i put it in my case. some one has been there. the ground is all trampled, and they left this note." "and took your money, i'll wager," said sinton angrily. "no," answered elnora. "read the note, and oh uncle wesley, tell me what it means!" sinton's face was a study. "i don't know what it means," he said. "only one thing is clear. it means some beast who doesn't really want to harm you has got his eye on you, and he is telling you plain as he can, not to give him a chance. you got to keep along the roads, in the open, and not let the biggest moth that ever flew toll you out of hearing of us, or your mother. it means that, plain and distinct." "just when i can sell them! just when everything is so lovely on account of them! i can't! i can't stay away from the swamp. the limberlost is going to buy the books, the clothes, pay the tuition, and even start a college fund. i just can't!" "you've got to," said sinton. "this is plain enough. you go far in the swamp at your own risk, even in daytime." "uncle wesley," said the girl, "last night before i went to bed, i was so happy i tried to pray, and i thanked god for hiding me `under the shadow of his wing.' but how in the world could any one know it?" wesley sinton's heart leaped in his breast. his face was whiter than the girl's now. "were you praying out loud, honey?" he almost whispered. "i might have said words," answered elnora. "i know i do sometimes. i've never had any one to talk with, and i've played with and talked to myself all my life. you've caught me at it often, but it always makes mother angry when she does. she says it's silly. i forget and do it, when i'm alone. but uncle wesley, if i said anything last night, you know it was the merest whisper, because i'd have been so afraid of waking mother. don't you see? i sat up late, and studied two lessons." sinton was steadying himself "i'll stop and examine the case as i come back," he said. "maybe i can find some clue. that other--that was just accidental. it's a common expression. all the preachers use it. if i tried to pray, that would be the very first thing i'd say." the colour returned to elnora's face. "did you tell your mother about this money, elnora?" he asked. "no, i didn't," said elnora. "it's dreadful not to, but i was afraid. you see they are clearing the swamp so fast. every year it grows more difficult to find things, and indian stuff becomes scarcer. i want to graduate, and that's four years unless i can double on the course. that means twenty dollars tuition each year, and new books, and clothes. there won't ever be so much at one time again, that i know. i just got to hang to my money. i was afraid to tell her, for fear she would want it for taxes, and she really must sell a tree or some cattle for that, mustn't she, uncle wesley?" "on your life, she must!" said wesley. "you put your little wad in the bank all safe, and never mention it to a living soul. it doesn't seem right, but your case is peculiar. every word you say is a true word. each year you will find less in the swamp, and things everywhere will be scarcer. if you ever get a few dollars ahead, that can start your college fund. you know you are going to college, elnora!" "of course i am," said elnora. "i settled that as soon as i knew what a college was. i will put all my money in the bank, except what i owe you. i'll pay that now." "if your arrows are heavy," said wesley, "i'll drive on to onabasha with you." "but they are not. half of them were nicked, and this little box held all the good ones. it's so surprising how many are spoiled when you wash them." "what does he pay?" "ten cents for any common perfect one, fifty for revolvers, a dollar for obsidian, and whatever is right for enormous big ones." "well, that sounds fair," said sinton. "you can come down saturday and wash the stuff at our house, and i'll take it in when we go marketing in the afternoon." elnora jumped from the carriage. she soon found that with her books, her lunch box, and the points she had a heavy load. she had almost reached the bridge crossing the culvert when she heard distressed screams of a child. across an orchard of the suburbs came a small boy, after him a big dog, urged by a man in the background. elnora's heart was with the small fleeing figure in any event whatever. she dropped her load on the bridge, and with practised hand flung a stone at the dog. the beast curled double with a howl. the boy reached the fence, and elnora was there to help him over. as he touched the top she swung him to the ground, but he clung to her, clasping her tightly, sobbing with fear. elnora helped him to the bridge, and sat with him in her arms. for a time his replies to her questions were indistinct, but at last he became quieter and she could understand. he was a mite of a boy, nothing but skin-covered bones, his burned, freckled face in a mortar of tears and dust, his clothing unspeakably dirty, one great toe in a festering mass from a broken nail, and sores all over the visible portions of the small body. "you won't let the mean old thing make his dog get me!" he wailed. "indeed no," said elnora, holding him closely. "you wouldn't set a dog on a boy for just taking a few old apples when you fed 'em to pigs with a shovel every day, would you?" "no, i would not," said elnora hotly. "you'd give a boy all the apples he wanted, if he hadn't any breakfast, and was so hungry he was all twisty inside, wouldn't you?" "yes, i would," said elnora. "if you had anything to eat you would give me something right now, wouldn't you?" "yes," said elnora. "there's nothing but just stones in the package. but my dinner is in that case. i'll gladly divide." she opened the box. the famished child gave a little cry and reached both hands. elnora caught them back. "did you have any supper?" "no." "any dinner yesterday?" "an apple and some grapes i stole." "whose boy are you?" "old tom billings's." "why doesn't your father get you something to eat?" "he does most days, but he's drunk now." "hush, you must not!" said elnora. "he's your father!" "he's spent all the money to get drunk, too," said the boy, "and jimmy and belle are both crying for breakfast. i'd a got out all right with an apple for myself, but i tried to get some for them and the dog got too close. say, you can throw, can't you?" "yes," admitted elnora. she poured half the milk into the cup. "drink this," she said, holding it to him. the boy gulped the milk and swore joyously, gripping the cup with shaking fingers. "hush!" cried elnora. "that's dreadful!" "what's dreadful?" "to say such awful words." "huh! pa says worser 'an that every breath he draws." elnora saw that the child was older than she had thought. he might have been forty judging by his hard, unchildish expression. "do you want to be like your father?" "no, i want to be like you. couldn't a angel be prettier 'an you. can i have more milk?" elnora emptied the flask. the boy drained the cup. he drew a breath of satisfaction as he gazed into her face. "you wouldn't go off and leave your little boy, would you?" he asked. "did some one go away and leave you?" "yes, my mother went off and left me, and left jimmy and belle, too," said the boy. "you wouldn't leave your little boy, would you?" "no." the boy looked eagerly at the box. elnora lifted a sandwich and uncovered the fried chicken. the boy gasped with delight. "say, i could eat the stuff in the glass and the other box and carry the bread and the chicken to jimmy and belle," he offered. elnora silently uncovered the custard with preserved cherries on top and handed it and the spoon to the child. never did food disappear faster. the salad went next, and a sandwich and half a chicken breast followed. "i better leave the rest for jimmy and belle," he said, "they're 'ist fightin' hungry." elnora gave him the remainder of the carefully prepared lunch. the boy clutched it and ran with a sidewise hop like a wild thing. she covered the dishes and cup, polished the spoon, replaced it, and closed the case. she caught her breath in a tremulous laugh. "if aunt margaret knew that, she'd never forgive me," she said. "it seems as if secrecy is literally forced upon me, and i hate it. what shall i do for lunch? i'll have to sell my arrows and keep enough money for a restaurant sandwich." so she walked hurriedly into town, sold her points at a good price, deposited her funds, and went away with a neat little bank book and the note from the limberlost carefully folded inside. elnora passed down the hall that morning, and no one paid the slightest attention to her. the truth was she looked so like every one else that she was perfectly inconspicuous. but in the coat room there were members of her class. surely no one intended it, but the whisper was too loud. "look at the girl from the limberlost in the clothes that woman gave her!" elnora turned on them. "i beg your pardon," she said unsteadily, "i couldn't help hearing that! no one gave me these clothes. i paid for them myself." some one muttered, "pardon me," but incredulous faces greeted her. elnora felt driven. "aunt margaret selected them, and she meant to give them to me," she explained, "but i wouldn't take them. i paid for them myself." there was silence. "don't you believe me?" panted elnora. "really, it is none of our affair," said another girl. "come on, let's go." elnora stepped before the girl who had spoken. "you have made this your affair," she said, "because you told a thing which was not true. no one gave me what i am wearing. i paid for my clothes myself with money i earned selling moths to the bird woman. i just came from the bank where i deposited what i did not use. here is my credit." elnora drew out and offered the little red book. "surely you will believe that," she said. "why of course," said the girl who first had spoken. "we met such a lovely woman in brownlee's store, and she said she wanted our help to buy some things for a girl, and that's how we came to know." "dear aunt margaret," said elnora, "it was like her to ask you. isn't she splendid?" "she is indeed," chorused the girls. elnora set down her lunch box and books, unpinned her hat, hanging it beside the others, and taking up the books she reached to set the box in its place and dropped it. with a little cry she snatched at it and caught the strap on top. that pulled from the fastening, the cover unrolled, the box fell away as far as it could, two porcelain lids rattled on the floor, and the one sandwich rolled like a cartwheel across the room. elnora lifted a ghastly face. for once no one laughed. she stood an instant staring. "it seems to be my luck to be crucified at every point of the compass," she said at last. "first two days you thought i was a pauper, now you will think i'm a fraud. all of you will believe i bought an expensive box, and then was too poor to put anything but a restaurant sandwich in it. you must stop till i prove to you that i'm not." elnora gathered up the lids, and kicked the sandwich into a corner. "i had milk in that bottle, see! and custard in the cup. there was salad in the little box, fried chicken in the large one, and nut sandwiches in the tray. you can see the crumbs of all of them. a man set a dog on a child who was so starved he was stealing apples. i talked with him, and i thought i could bear hunger better, he was such a little boy, so i gave him my lunch, and got the sandwich at the restaurant." elnora held out the box. the girls were laughing by that time. "you goose," said one, "why didn't you give him the money, and save your lunch?" "he was such a little fellow, and he really was hungry," said elnora. "i often go without anything to eat at noon in the fields and woods, and never think of it." she closed the box and set it beside the lunches of other country pupils. while her back was turned, into the room came the girl of her encounter on the first day, walked to the rack, and with an exclamation of approval took down elnora's hat. "just the thing i have been wanting!" she said. "i never saw such beautiful quills in all my life. they match my new broadcloth to perfection. i've got to have that kind of quills for my hat. i never saw the like! whose is it, and where did it come from?" no one said a word, for elnora's question, the reply, and her answer, had been repeated. every one knew that the limberlost girl had come out ahead and sadie reed had not been amiable, when the little flourish had been added to elnora's name in the algebra class. elnora's swift glance was pathetic, but no one helped her. sadie reed glanced from the hat to the faces around her and wondered. "why, this is the freshman section, whose hat is it?" she asked again, this time impatiently. "that's the tassel of the cornstock," said elnora with a forced laugh. the response was genuine. every one shouted. sadie reed blushed, but she laughed also. "well, it's beautiful," she said, "especially the quills. they are exactly what i want. i know i don't deserve any kindness from you, but i do wish you would tell me at whose store you found those quills." "gladly!" said elnora. you can't buy quills like those at a store. they are from a living bird. phoebe simms gathers them in her orchard as her peacocks shed them. they are wing quills from the males." then there was perfect silence. how was elnora to know that not a girl there would have told that? "i haven't a doubt but i can get you some," she offered. "she gave aunt margaret a large bunch, and those are part of them. i am quite sure she has more, and would spare some." sadie reed laughed shortly. "you needn't trouble," she said, "i was fooled. i thought they were expensive quills. i wanted them for a twenty-dollar velvet toque to match my new suit. if they are gathered from the ground, really, i couldn't use them." "only in spots!" said elnora. "they don't just cover the earth. phoebe simms's peacocks are the only ones within miles of onabasha, and they moult but once a year. if your hat cost only twenty dollars, it's scarcely good enough for those quills. you see, the almighty made and coloured those himself; and he puts the same kind on phoebe simms's peacocks that he put on the head of the family in the forests of ceylon, away back in the beginning. any old manufactured quill from new york or chicago will do for your little twenty-dollar hat. you should have something infinitely better than that to be worthy of quills that are made by the creator." how those girls did laugh! one of them walked with elnora to the auditorium, sat beside her during exercises, and tried to talk whenever she dared, to keep elnora from seeing the curious and admiring looks bent upon her. for the brown-eyed boy whistled, and there was pantomime of all sorts going on behind elnora's back that day. happy with her books, no one knew how much she saw, and from her absorption in her studies it was evident she cared too little to notice. after school she went again to the home of the bird woman, and together they visited the swamp and carried away more specimens. this time elnora asked the bird woman to keep the money until noon of the next day, when she would call for it and have it added to her bank account. she slowly walked home, for the visit to the swamp had brought back full force the experience of the morning. again and again she examined the crude little note, for she did not know what it meant, yet it bred vague fear. the only thing of which elnora knew herself afraid was her mother; when with wild eyes and ears deaf to childish pleading, she sometimes lost control of herself in the night and visited the pool where her husband had sunk before her, calling his name in unearthly tones and begging of the swamp to give back its dead. chapter vi wherein mrs. comstock indulges in "frills," and billy reappears it was wesley sinton who really wrestled with elnora's problem while he drove about his business. he was not forced to ask himself what it meant; he knew. the old corson gang was still holding together. elder members who had escaped the law had been joined by a younger brother of jack's, and they met in the thickest of the few remaining fast places of the swamp to drink, gamble, and loaf. then suddenly, there would be a robbery in some country house where a farmer that day had sold his wheat or corn and not paid a visit to the bank; or in some neighbouring village. the home of mrs. comstock and elnora adjoined the swamp. sinton's land lay next, and not another residence or man easy to reach in case of trouble. whoever wrote that note had some human kindness in his breast, but the fact stood revealed that he feared his strength if elnora were delivered into his hands. where had he been the previous night when he heard that prayer? was that the first time he had been in such proximity? sinton drove fast, for he wished to reach the swamp before elnora and the bird woman would go there. at almost four he came to the case, and dropping on his knees studied the ground, every sense alert. he found two or three little heel prints. those were made by elnora or the bird woman. what sinton wanted to learn was whether all the remainder were the footprints of one man. it was easily seen, they were not. there were deep, even tracks made by fairly new shoes, and others where a well-worn heel cut deeper on the inside of the print than at the outer edge. undoubtedly some of corson's old gang were watching the case, and the visits of the women to it. there was no danger that any one would attack the bird woman. she never went to the swamp at night, and on her trips in the daytime, every one knew that she carried a revolver, understood how to use it, and pursued her work in a fearless manner. elnora, prowling around the swamp and lured into the interior by the flight of moths and butterflies; elnora, without father, money, or friends save himself, to defend her--elnora was a different proposition. for this to happen just when the limberlost was bringing the very desire of her heart to the girl, it was too bad. sinton was afraid for her, yet he did not want to add the burden of fear to katharine comstock's trouble, or to disturb the joy of elnora in her work. he stopped at the cabin and slowly went up the walk. mrs. comstock was sitting on the front steps with some sewing. the work seemed to sinton as if she might be engaged in putting a tuck in a petticoat. he thought of how margaret had shortened elnora's dress to the accepted length for girls of her age, and made a mental note of mrs. comstock's occupation. she dropped her work on her lap, laid her hands on it and looked into his face with a sneer. "you didn't let any grass grow under your feet," she said. sinton saw her white, drawn face and comprehended. "i went to pay a debt and see about this opening of the ditch, kate." "you said you were going to prosecute me." "good gracious, kate!" cried sinton. "is that what you have been thinking all day? i told you before i left yesterday that i would not need do that. and i won't! we can't afford to quarrel over elnora. she's all we've got. now that she has proved that if you don't do just what i think you ought by way of clothes and schooling, she can take care of herself, i put that out of my head. what i came to see you about is a kind of scare i've had to-day. i want to ask you if you ever see anything about the swamp that makes you think the old corson gang is still at work?" "can't say that i do," said mrs. comstock. "there's kind of dancing lights there sometimes, but i supposed it was just people passing along the road with lanterns. folks hereabout are none too fond of the swamp. i hate it like death. i've never stayed here a night in my life without robert's revolver, clean and loaded, under my pillow, and the shotgun, same condition, by the bed. i can't say that i'm afraid here at home. i'm not. i can take care of myself. but none of the swamp for me!" "well, i'm glad you are not afraid, kate, because i must tell you something. elnora stopped at the case this morning, and somebody had been into it in the night." "broke the lock?" "no. used a duplicate key. to-day i heard there was a man here last night. i want to nose around a little." sinton went to the east end of the cabin and looked up at the window. there was no way any one could have reached it without a ladder, for the logs were hewed and mortar filled the cracks even. then he went to the west end, the willow faced him as he turned the corner. he examined the trunk carefully. there was no mistake about small particles of black swamp muck adhering to the sides of the tree. he reached the low branches and climbed the willow. there was earth on the large limb crossing elnora's window. he stood on it, holding the branch as had been done the night before, and looked into the room. he could see very little, but he knew that if it had been dark outside and sufficiently light for elnora to study inside he could have seen vividly. he brought his face close to the netting, and he could see the bed with its head to the east, at its foot the table with the candles and the chair before it, and then he knew where the man had been who had heard elnora's prayer. mrs. comstock had followed around the corner and stood watching him. "do you think some slinking hulk was up there peekin' in at elnora?" she demanded indignantly. "there is muck on the trunk, and plenty on the limb," said sinton. "hadn't you better get a saw and let me take this branch off?" "no, i hadn't," said mrs. comstock. "first place, elnora's climbed from that window on that limb all her life, and it's hers. second place, no one gets ahead of me after i've had warning. any crow that perches on that roost again will get its feathers somewhat scattered. look along the fence, there, and see if you can find where he came in." the place was easy to find as was a trail leading for some distance west of the cabin. "you just go home, and don't fret yourself," said mrs. comstock. "i'll take care of this. if you should hear the dinner bell at any time in the night you come down. but i wouldn't say anything to elnora. she better keep her mind on her studies, if she's going to school." when the work was finished that night elnora took her books and went to her room to prepare some lessons, but every few minutes she looked toward the swamp to see if there were lights near the case. mrs. comstock raked together the coals in the cooking stove, got out the lunch box, and sitting down she studied it grimly. at last she arose. "wonder how it would do to show mag sinton a frill or two," she murmured. she went to her room, knelt before a big black-walnut chest and hunted through its contents until she found an old-fashioned cook book. she tended the fire as she read and presently was in action. she first sawed an end from a fragrant, juicy, sugar-cured ham and put it to cook. then she set a couple of eggs boiling, and after long hesitation began creaming butter and sugar in a crock. an hour later the odour of the ham, mingled with some of the richest spices of "happy araby," in a combination that could mean nothing save spice cake, crept up to elnora so strongly that she lifted her head and sniffed amazedly. she would have given all her precious money to have gone down and thrown her arms around her mother's neck, but she did not dare move. mrs. comstock was up early, and without a word handed elnora the case as she left the next morning. "thank you, mother," said elnora, and went on her way. she walked down the road looking straight ahead until she came to the corner, where she usually entered the swamp. she paused, glanced that way and smiled. then she turned and looked back. there was no one coming in any direction. she followed the road until well around the corner, then she stopped and sat on a grassy spot, laid her books beside her and opened the lunch box. last night's odours had in a measure prepared her for what she would see, but not quite. she scarcely could believe her senses. half the bread compartment was filled with dainty sandwiches of bread and butter sprinkled with the yolk of egg and the remainder with three large slices of the most fragrant spice cake imaginable. the meat dish contained shaved cold ham, of which she knew the quality, the salad was tomatoes and celery, and the cup held preserved pear, clear as amber. there was milk in the bottle, two tissue-wrapped cucumber pickles in the folding drinking-cup, and a fresh napkin in the ring. no lunch was ever daintier or more palatable; of that elnora was perfectly sure. and her mother had prepared it for her! "she does love me!" cried the happy girl. "sure as you're born she loves me; only she hasn't found it out yet!" she touched the papers daintily, and smiled at the box as if it were a living thing. as she began closing it a breath of air swept by, lifting the covering of the cake. it was like an invitation, and breakfast was several hours away. elnora picked up a piece and ate it. that cake tasted even better than it looked. then she tried a sandwich. how did her mother come to think of making them that way. they never had any at home. she slipped out the fork, sampled the salad, and one-quarter of pear. then she closed the box and started down the road nibbling one of the pickles and trying to decide exactly how happy she was, but she could find no standard high enough for a measure. she was to go to the bird woman's after school for the last load from the case. saturday she would take the arrow points and specimens to the bank. that would exhaust her present supplies and give her enough money ahead to pay for books, tuition, and clothes for at least two years. she would work early and late gathering nuts. in october she would sell all the ferns she could find. she must collect specimens of all tree leaves before they fell, gather nests and cocoons later, and keep her eyes wide open for anything the grades could use. she would see the superintendent that night about selling specimens to the ward buildings. she must be ahead of any one else if she wanted to furnish these things. so she approached the bridge. that it was occupied could be seen from a distance. as she came up she found the small boy of yesterday awaiting her with a confident smile. "we brought you something!" he announced without greeting. "this is jimmy and belle--and we brought you a present." he offered a parcel wrapped in brown paper. "why, how lovely of you!" said elnora. "i supposed you had forgotten me when you ran away so fast yesterday." "naw, i didn't forget you," said the boy. "i wouldn't forget you, not ever! why, i was ist a-hurrying to take them things to jimmy and belle. my they was glad!" elnora glanced at the children. they sat on the edge of the bridge, obviously clad in a garment each, very dirty and unkept, a little boy and a girl of about seven and nine. elnora's heart began to ache. "say," said the boy. "ain't you going to look what we have gave you?" "i thought it wasn't polite to look before people," answered elnora. "of course, i will, if you would like to have me." elnora opened the package. she had been presented with a quarter of a stale loaf of baker's bread, and a big piece of ancient bologna. "but don't you want this yourselves?" she asked in surprise. "gosh, no! i mean ist no," said the boy. "we always have it. we got stacks this morning. pa's come out of it now, and he's so sorry he got more 'an ever we can eat. have you had any before?" "no," said elnora, "i never did!" the boy's eyes brightened and the girl moved restlessly. "we thought maybe you hadn't," said the boy. "first you ever have, you like it real well; but when you don't have anything else for a long time, years an' years, you git so tired." he hitched at the string which held his trousers and watched elnora speculatively. "i don't s'pose you'd trade what you got in that box for ist old bread and bologna now, would you? mebby you'd like it! and i know, i ist know, what you got would taste like heaven to jimmy and belle. they never had nothing like that! not even belle, and she's most ten! no, sir-ee, they never tasted things like you got!" it was in elnora's heart to be thankful for even a taste in time, as she knelt on the bridge, opened the box and divided her lunch into three equal parts, the smaller boy getting most of the milk. then she told them it was school time and she must go. "why don't you put your bread and bologna in the nice box?" asked the boy. "of course," said elnora. "i didn't think." when the box was arranged to the children's satisfaction all of them accompanied elnora to the corner where she turned toward the high school. "billy," said elnora, "i would like you much better if you were cleaner. surely, you have water! can't you children get some soap and wash yourselves? gentlemen are never dirty. you want to be a gentleman, don't you?" "is being clean all you have to do to be a gentleman?" "no," said elnora. "you must not say bad words, and you must be kind and polite to your sister." "must belle be kind and polite to me, else she ain't a lady?" "yes." "then belle's no lady!" said billy succinctly. elnora could say nothing more just then, and she bade them good-bye and started them home. "the poor little souls!" she mused. "i think the almighty put them in my way to show me real trouble. i won't be likely to spend much time pitying myself while i can see them." she glanced at the lunchbox. "what on earth do i carry this for? i never had anything that was so strictly ornamental! one sure thing! i can't take this stuff to the high school. you never seem to know exactly what is going to happen to you while you are there." as if to provide a way out of her difficulty a big dog arose from a lawn, and came toward the gate wagging his tail. "if those children ate the stuff, it can't possibly kill him!" thought elnora, so she offered the bologna. the dog accepted it graciously, and being a beast of pedigree he trotted around to a side porch and laid the bologna before his mistress. the woman snatched it, screaming: "come, quick! some one is trying to poison pedro!" her daughter came running from the house. "go see who is on the street. hurry!" cried the excited mother. ellen brownlee ran and looked. elnora was half a block away, and no one nearer. ellen called loudly, and elnora stopped. ellen came running toward her. "did you see any one give our dog something?" she cried as she approached. elnora saw no escape. "i gave it a piece of bologna myself," she said. "it was fit to eat. it wouldn't hurt the dog." ellen stood and looked at her. "of course, i didn't know it was your dog," explained elnora. "i had something i wanted to throw to some dog, and that one looked big enough to manage it." ellen had arrived at her conclusions. "pass over that lunch box," she demanded. "i will not!" said elnora. "then i will have you arrested for trying to poison our dog," laughed the girl as she took the box. "one chunk of stale bread, one half mile of antique bologna contributed for dog feed; the remains of cake, salad and preserves in an otherwise empty lunch box. one ham sandwich yesterday. i think it's lovely you have the box. who ate your lunch to-day?" "same," confessed elnora, "but there were three of them this time." "wait, until i run back and tell mother about the dog, and get my books." elnora waited. that morning she walked down the hall and into the auditorium beside one of the very nicest girls in onabasha, and it was the fourth day. but the surprise came at noon when ellen insisted upon elnora lunching at the brownlee home, and convulsed her parents and family, and overwhelmed elnora with a greatly magnified, but moderately accurate history of her lunch box. "gee! but it's a box, daddy!" cried the laughing girl. "it's carved leather and fastens with a strap that has her name on it. inside are trays for things all complete, and it bears evidence of having enclosed delicious food, but elnora never gets any. she's carried it two days now, and both times it has been empty before she reached school. isn't that killing?" "it is, ellen, in more ways than one. no girl is going to eat breakfast at six o'clock, walk three miles, and do good work without her lunch. you can't tell me anything about that box. i sold it last monday night to wesley sinton, one of my good country customers. he told me it was a present for a girl who was worthy of it, and i see he was right." "he's so good to me," said elnora. "sometimes i look at him and wonder if a neighbour can be so kind to one, what a real father would be like. i envy a girl with a father unspeakably." "you have cause," said ellen brownlee. "a father is the very dearest person in the whole round world, except a mother, who is just a dear." the girl, starting to pay tribute to her father, saw that she must include her mother, and said the thing before she remembered what mrs. sinton had told the girls in the store. she stopped in dismay. elnora's face paled a trifle, but she smiled bravely. "then i'm fortunate in having a mother," she said. mr. brownlee lingered at the table after the girls had excused themselves and returned to school. "there's a girl ellen can't see too much of, in my opinion," he said. "she is every inch a lady, and not a foolish notion or action about her. i can't understand just what combination of circumstances produced her in this day." "it has been an unusual case of repression, for one thing. she waits on her elders and thinks before she speaks," said mrs. brownlee. "she's mighty pretty. she looks so sound and wholesome, and she's neatly dressed." "ellen says she was a fright the first two days. long brown calico dress almost touching the floor, and big, lumbering shoes. those sinton people bought her clothes. ellen was in the store, and the woman stopped her crowd and asked them about their dresses. she said the girl was not poor, but her mother was selfish and didn't care for her. but elnora showed a bank book the next day, and declared that she paid for the things herself, so the sinton people must just have selected them. there's something peculiar about it, but nothing wrong i am sure. i'll encourage ellen to ask her again." "i should say so, especially if she is going to keep on giving away her lunch." "she lunched with the bird woman one day this week." "she did!" "yes, she lives out by the limberlost. you know the bird woman works there a great deal, and probably knows her that way. i think the girl gathers specimens for her. ellen says she knows more than the teachers about any nature question that comes up, and she is going to lead all of them in mathematics, and make them work in any branch." when elnora entered the coat room after having had luncheon with ellen brownlee there was such a difference in the atmosphere that she could feel it. "i am almost sorry i have these clothes," she said to ellen. "in the name of sense, why?" cried the astonished girl. "every one is so nice to me in them, it sets me to wondering if in time i could have made them be equally friendly in the others." ellen looked at her introspectively. "i believe you could," she announced at last. "but it would have taken time and heartache, and your mind would have been less free to work on your studies. no one is happy without friends, and i just simply can't study when i am unhappy." that night the bird woman made the last trip to the swamp. every specimen she possibly could use had been purchased at a fair price, and three additions had been made to the bank book, carrying the total a little past two hundred dollars. there remained the indian relics to sell on saturday, and elnora had secured the order to furnish material for nature work for the grades. life suddenly grew very full. there was the most excitingly interesting work for every hour, and that work was to pay high school expenses and start the college fund. there was one little rift in her joy. all of it would have been so much better if she could have told her mother, and given the money into her keeping; but the struggle to get a start had been so terrible, elnora was afraid to take the risk. when she reached home, she only told her mother that the last of the things had been sold that evening. "i think," said mrs. comstock, "that we will ask wesley to move that box over here back of the garden for you. there you are apt to get tolled farther into the swamp than you intend to go, and you might mire or something. there ought to be just the same things in our woods, and along our swampy places, as there are in the limberlost. can't you hunt your stuff here?" "i can try," said elnora. "i don't know what i can find until i do. our woods are undisturbed, and there is a possibility they might be even better hunting than the swamp. but i wouldn't have freckles's case moved for the world. he might come back some day, and not like it. i've tried to keep his room the best i could, and taking out the box would make a big hole in one side of it. store boxes don't cost much. i will have uncle wesley buy me one, and set it up wherever hunting looks the best, early in the spring. i would feel safer at home." "shall we do the work or have supper first?" "let's do the work," said elnora. "i can't say that i'm hungry now. doesn't seem as if i ever could be hungry again with such a lunch. i am quite sure no one carried more delicious things to eat than i." mrs. comstock was pleased. "i put in a pretty good hunk of cake. did you divide it with any one?" "why, yes, i did," admitted elnora. "who?" this was becoming uncomfortable. "i ate the biggest piece myself," said elnora, "and gave the rest to a couple of boys named jimmy and billy and a girl named belle. they said it was the very best cake they ever tasted in all their lives." mrs. comstock sat straight. "i used to be a master hand at spice cake," she boasted. "but i'm a little out of practice. i must get to work again. with the very weeds growing higher than our heads, we should raise plenty of good stuff to eat on this land, if we can't afford anything else but taxes." elnora laughed and hurried up stairs to change her dress. margaret sinton came that night bringing a beautiful blue one in its place, and carried away the other to launder. "do you mean to say those dresses are to be washed every two days?" questioned mrs. comstock. "they have to be, to look fresh," replied margaret. "we want our girl sweet as a rose." "well, of all things!" cried mrs. comstock. "every two days! any girl who can't keep a dress clean longer than that is a dirty girl. you'll wear the goods out and fade the colours with so much washing." "we'll have a clean girl, anyway." "well, if you like the job you can have it," said mrs. comstock. "i don't mind the washing, but i'm so inconvenient with an iron." elnora sat late that night working over her lessons. the next morning she put on her blue dress and ribbon and in those she was a picture. mrs. comstock caught her breath with a queer stirring around her heart, and looked twice to be sure of what she saw. as elnora gathered her books her mother silently gave her the lunch box. "feels heavy," said elnora gaily. "and smelly! like as not i'll be called upon to divide again." "then you divide!" said mrs. comstock. "eating is the one thing we don't have to economize on, elnora. spite of all i can do food goes to waste in this soil every day. if you can give some of those city children a taste of the real thing, why, don't be selfish." elnora went down the road thinking of the city children with whom she probably would divide. of course, the bridge would be occupied again. so she stopped and opened the box. "i don't want to be selfish," murmured elnora, "but it really seems as if i can't give away this lunch. if mother did not put love into it, she's substituted something that's likely to fool me." she almost felt her steps lagging as she approached the bridge. a very hungry dog had been added to the trio of children. elnora loved all dogs, and as usual, this one came to her in friendliness. the children said "good morning!" with alacrity, and another paper parcel layconspicuous. "how are you this morning?" inquired elnora. "all right!" cried the three, while the dog sniffed ravenously at the lunch box, and beat a perfect tattoo with his tail. "how did you like the bologna?" questioned billy eagerly. "one of the girls took me to lunch at her home yesterday," answered elnora. dawn broke beautifully over billy's streaked face. he caught the package and thrust it toward elnora. "then maybe you'd like to try the bologna to-day!" the dog leaped in glad apprehension of something, and belle scrambled to her feet and took a step forward. the look of famished greed in her eyes was more than elnora could endure. it was not that she cared for the food so much. good things to eat had been in abundance all her life. she wanted with this lunch to try to absorb what she felt must be an expression of some sort from her mother, and if it were not a manifestation of love, she did not know what to think it. but it was her mother who had said "be generous." she knelt on the bridge. "keep back the dog!" she warned the elder boy. she opened the box and divided the milk between billy and the girl. she gave each a piece of cake leaving one and a sandwich. billy pressed forward eagerly, bitter disappointment on his face, and the elder boy forgot his charge. "aw, i thought they'd be meat!" lamented billy. elnora could not endure that. "there is!" she said gladly. "there is a little pigeon bird. i want a teeny piece of the breast, for a sort of keepsake, just one bite, and you can have the rest among you". elnora drew the knife from its holder and cut off the wishbone. then she held the bird toward the girl. "you can divide it," she said. the dog made a bound and seizing the squab sprang from the bridge and ran for life. the girl and boy hurried after him. with awful eyes billy stared and swore tempestuously. elnora caught him and clapped her hand over the little mouth. a delivery wagon came tearing down the street, the horse running full speed, passed the fleeing dog with the girl and boy in pursuit, and stopped at the bridge. high school girls began to roll from all sides of it. "a rescue! a rescue!" they shouted. it was ellen brownlee and her crowd, and every girl of them carried a big parcel. they took in the scene as they approached. the fleeing dog with something in its mouth, the half-naked girl and boy chasing it told the story. those girls screamed with laughter as they watched the pursuit. "thank goodness, i saved the wishbone!" said elnora. "as usual, i can prove that there was a bird." she turned toward the box. billy had improved the time. he had the last piece of cake in one hand, and the last bite of salad disappeared in one great gulp. then the girls shouted again. "let's have a sample ourselves," suggested one. she caught up the box and handed out the remaining sandwich. another girl divided it into bites each little over an inch square, and then she lifted the cup lid and deposited a preserved strawberry on each bite. "one, two, three, altogether now!" she cried. "you old mean things!" screamed billy. in an instant he was down in the road and handfuls of dust began to fly among them. the girls scattered before him. "billy!" cried elnora. "billy! i'll never give you another bite, if you throw dust on any one!" then billy dropped the dust, bored both fists into his eyes, and fled sobbing into elnora's new blue skirt. she stooped to meet him and consolation began. those girls laughed on. they screamed and shouted until the little bridge shook. "to-morrow might as well be a clear day," said ellen, passing around and feeding the remaining berries to the girls as they could compose themselves enough to take them. "billy, i admire your taste more than your temper." elnora looked up. "the little soul is nothing but skin and bones," she said. "i never was really hungry myself; were any of you?" "well, i should say so," cried a plump, rosy girl. "i'm famished right now. let's have breakfast immediate!" "we got to refill this box first!" said ellen brownlee. "who's got the butter?" a girl advanced with a wooden tray. "put it in the preserve cup, a little strawberry flavour won't hurt it. next!" called ellen. a loaf of bread was produced and ellen cut off a piece which filled the sandwich box. "next!" a bottle of olives was unwrapped. the grocer's boy who was waiting opened that, and ellen filled the salad dish. "next!" a bag of macaroons was produced and the cake compartment filled. "next!" "i don't suppose this will make quite as good dog feed as a bird," laughed a girl holding open a bag of sliced ham while ellen filled the meat dish. "next!" a box of candy was handed her and she stuffed every corner of the lunch box with chocolates and nougat. then it was closed and formally presented to elnora. the girls each helped themselves to candy and olives, and gave billy the remainder of the food. billy took one bite of ham, and approved. belle and jimmy had given up chasing the dog, and angry and ashamed, stood waiting half a block away. "come back!" cried billy. "you great big dunces, come back! they's a new kind of meat, and cake and candy." the boy delayed, but the girl joined billy. ellen wiped her fingers, stepped to the cement abutment and began reciting "horatio at the bridge!" substituting elnora wherever the hero appeared in the lines. elnora gathered up the sacks, and gave them to belle, telling her to take the food home, cut and spread the bread, set things on the table, and eat nicely. then elnora was taken into the wagon with the girls, and driven on the run to the high school. they sang a song beginning- "elnora, please give me a sandwich. i'm ashamed to ask for cake" as they went. elnora did not know it, but that was her initiation. she belonged to "the crowd." she only knew that she was happy, and vaguely wondered what her mother and aunt margaret would have said about the proceedings. chapter vii wherein mrs. comstock manipulates margaret and billy acquires a residence saturday morning elnora helped her mother with the work. when she had finished mrs. comstock told her to go to sintons' and wash her indian relics, so that she would be ready to accompany wesley to town in the afternoon. elnora hurried down the road and was soon at the cistern with a tub busily washing arrow points, stone axes, tubes, pipes, and skin-cleaning implements. then she went home, dressed and was waiting when the carriage reached the gate. she stopped at the bank with the box, and sinton went to do his marketing and some shopping for his wife. at the dry goods store mr. brownlee called to him, "hello, sinton! how do you like the fate of your lunch box?" then he began to laugh-"i always hate to see a man laughing alone," said sinton. it looks so selfish! tell me the fun, and let me help you." mr. brownlee wiped his eyes. "i supposed you knew, but i see she hasn't told." then the three days' history of the lunch box was repeated with particulars which included the dog. "now laugh!" concluded mr. brownlee. "blest if i see anything funny!" replied wesley sinton. "and if you had bought that box and furnished one of those lunches yourself, you wouldn't either. i call such a work a shame! i'll have it stopped." "some one must see to that, all right. they are little leeches. their father earns enough to support them, but they have no mother, and they run wild. i suppose they are crazy for cooked food. but it is funny, and when you think it over you will see it, if you don't now." "about where would a body find that father?" inquired wesley sinton grimly. mr. brownlee told him and he started, locating the house with little difficulty. house was the proper word, for of home there was no sign. just a small empty house with three unkept little children racing through and around it. the girl and the elder boy hung back, but dirty little billy greeted sinton with: "what you want here?" "i want to see your father," said sinton.) "well, he's asleep," said billy. "where?" asked sinton. "in the house," answered billy, "and you can't wake him." "well, i'll try," said wesley. billy led the way. "there he is!" he said. "he is drunk again." on a dirty mattress in a corner lay a man who appeared to be strong and well. billy was right. you could not awake him. he had gone the limit, and a little beyond. he was now facing eternity. sinton went out and closed the door. "your father is sick and needs help," he said. "you stay here, and i will send a man to see him." "if you just let him 'lone, he'll sleep it off," volunteered billy. "he's that way all the time, but he wakes up and gets us something to eat after awhile. only waitin' twists you up inside pretty bad." the boy wore no air of complaint. he was merely stating facts. wesley sinton looked intently at billy. "are you twisted up inside now?" he asked. billy laid a grimy hand on the region of his stomach and the filthy little waist sank close to the backbone. "bet yer life, boss," he said cheerfully. "how long have you been twisted?" asked sinton. billy appealed to the others. "when was it we had the stuff on the bridge?" "yesterday morning," said the girl. "is that all gone?" asked sinton. "she went and told us to take it home," said billy ruefully, "and 'cos she said to, we took it. pa had come back, he was drinking some more, and he ate a lot of it-almost the whole thing, and it made him sick as a dog, and he went and wasted all of it. then he got drunk some more, and now he's asleep again. we didn't get hardly none." "you children sit on the steps until the man comes," said sinton. "i'll send you some things to eat with him. what's your name, sonny?" "billy," said the boy. "well, billy, i guess you better come with me. i'll take care of him," sinton promised the others. he reached a hand to billy. "i ain't no baby, i'm a boy!" said billy, as he shuffled along beside sinton, taking a kick at every movable object without regard to his battered toes. once they passed a great dane dog lolling after its master, and billy ascended sinton as if he were a tree, and clung to him with trembling hot hands. "i ain't afraid of that dog," scoffed billy, as he was again placed on the walk, "but onc't he took me for a rat or somepin' and his teeth cut into my back. if i'd a done right, i'd a took the law on him." sinton looked down into the indignant little face. the child was bright enough, he had a good head, but oh, such a body! "i 'bout got enough of dogs," said billy. "i used to like 'em, but i'm getting pretty tired. you ought to seen the lickin' jimmy and belle and me give our dog when we caught him, for taking a little bird she gave us. we waited 'till he was asleep 'nen laid a board on him and all of us jumped on it to onc't. you could a heard him yell a mile. belle said mebbe we could squeeze the bird out of him. but, squeeze nothing! he was holler as us, and that bird was lost long 'fore it got to his stummick. it was ist a little one, anyway. belle said it wouldn't 'a' made a bite apiece for three of us nohow, and the dog got one good swaller. we didn't get much of the meat, either. pa took most of that. seems like pas and dogs gets everything." billy laughed dolefully. involuntarily wesley sinton reached his hand. they were coming into the business part of onabasha and the streets were crowded. billy understood it to mean that he might lose his companion and took a grip. that little hot hand clinging tight to his, the sore feet recklessly scouring the walk, the hungry child panting for breath as he tried to keep even, the brave soul jesting in the face of hard luck, caught sinton in a tender, empty spot. "say, son," he said. "how would you like to be washed clean, and have all the supper your skin could hold, and sleep in a good bed?" "aw, gee!" said billy. "i ain't dead yet! them things is in heaven! poor folks can't have them. pa said so." "well, you can have them if you want to go with me and get them," promised sinton. "honest?" "yes, honest." "crost yer heart?" "yes," said sinton. "kin i take some to jimmy and belle?" "if you'll come with me and be my boy, i'll see that they have plenty." "what will pa say?" "your pa is in that kind of sleep now where he won't wake up, billy," said sinton. "i am pretty sure the law will give you to me, if you want to come." "when people don't ever wake up they're dead," announced billy. "is my pa dead?" "yes, he is," answered sinton. "and you'll take care of jimmy and belle, too?" "i can't adopt all three of you," said sinton. "i'll take you, and see that they are well provided for. will you come?" "yep, i'll come," said billy. "let's eat, first thing we do." "all right," agreed sinton. "come into this restaurant." he lifted billy to the lunch counter and ordered the clerk to give him as many glasses of milk as he wanted, and a biscuit. "i think there's going to be fried chicken when we get home, billy," he said, "so you just take the edge off now, and fill up later." while billy lunched sinton called up the different departments and notified the proper authorities ending with the women's relief association. he sent a basket of food to belle and jimmy, bought billy a pair of trousers, and a shirt, and went to bring elnora. "why, uncle wesley!" cried the girl. "where did you find billy?" "i've adopted him for the time being, if not longer," replied wesley sinton. "where did you get him?" "well, young woman," said wesley sinton, "mr. brownlee told me the history of your lunch box. it didn't seem so funny to me as it does to the rest of them; so i went to look up the father of billy's family, and make him take care of them, or allow the law to do it for him. it will have to be the law." "he's deader than anything!" broke in billy. "he can't ever take all the meat any more." "billy!" gasped elnora. "never you mind!" said sinton. "a child doesn't say such things about a father who loved and raised him right. when it happens, the father alone is to blame. you won't hear billy talk like that about me when i cross over." "you don't mean you are going to take him to keep!" "i'll soon need help," said wesley. "billy will come in just about right ten years from now, and if i raise him i'll have him the way i want him." "but aunt margaret doesn't like boys," objected elnora. "well, she likes me, and i used to be a boy. anyway, as i remember she has had her way about everything at our house ever since we were married. i am going to please myself about billy. hasn't she always done just as she chose so far as you know? honest, elnora!" "honest!" replied elnora. "you are beautiful to all of us, uncle wesley; but aunt margaret won't like billy. she won't want him in her home." "in our home," corrected wesley. "what makes you want him?" marvelled elnora. "god only knows," said sinton. "billy ain't so beautiful, and he ain't so smart, i guess it's because he's so human. my heart goes out to him." "so did mine," said elnora. "i love him. i'd rather see him eat my lunch than have it myself any time." "what makes you like him?" asked wesley. "why, i don't know," pondered elnora. "he's so little, he needs so much, he's got such splendid grit, and he's perfectly unselfish with his brother and sister. but we must wash him before aunt margaret sees him. i wonder if mother----" "you needn't bother. i'm going to take him home the way he is," said sinton. "i want maggie to see the worst of it." "i'm afraid----" began elnora. "so am i," said wesley, "but i won't give him up. he's taken a sort of grip on my heart. i've always been crazy for a boy. don't let him hear us." "don't let him be killed!" cried elnora. during their talk billy had wandered to the edge of the walk and barely escaped the wheels of a passing automobile in an effort to catch a stray kitten that seemed in danger. wesley drew billy back to the walk, and held his hand closely. "are you ready, elnora?" "yes; you were gone a long time," she said. wesley glanced at a package she carried. "have to have another book?" he asked. "no, i bought this for mother. i've had such splendid luck selling my specimens, i didn't feel right about keeping all the money for myself, so i saved enough from the indian relics to get a few things i wanted. i would have liked to have gotten her a dress, but i didn't dare, so i compromised on a book." "what did you select, elnora?" asked wesley wonderingly. "well," said she, "i have noticed mother always seemed interested in anything mark twain wrote in the newspapers, and i thought it would cheer her up a little, so i just got his `innocents abroad.' i haven't read it myself, but i've seen mention made of it all my life, and the critics say it's genuine fun." "good!" cried sinton. "good! you've made a splendid choice. it will take her mind off herself a lot. but she will scold you." "of course," assented elnora. "but, possibly she will read it, and feel better. i'm going to serve her a trick. i am going to hide it until monday, and set it on her little shelf of books the last thing before i go away. she must have all of them by heart. when, she sees a new one she can't help being glad, for she loves to read, and if she has all day to become interested, maybe she'll like it so she won't scold so much." "we are both in for it, but i guess we are prepared. i don't know what margaret will say, but i'm going to take billy home and see. maybe he can win with her, as he did with us." elnora had doubts, but she did not say anything more. when they started home billy sat on the front seat. he drove with the hitching strap tied to the railing of the dash-board, flourished the whip, and yelled with delight. at first sinton laughed with him, but by the time he left elnora with several packages at her gate, he was looking serious enough. margaret was at the door as they drove up the lane. wesley left billy in the carriage, hitched the horses and went to explain to her. he had not reached her before she cried, "look, wesley, that child! you'll have a runaway!" wesley looked and ran. billy was standing in the carriage slashing the mettlesome horses with the whip. "see me make 'em go!" he shouted as the whip fell a second time. he did make them go. they took the hitching post and a few fence palings, which scraped the paint from a wheel. sinton missed the lines at the first effort, but the dragging post impeded the horses, and he soon caught them. he led them to the barn, and ordered billy to remain in the carriage while he unhitched. then leading billy and carrying his packages he entered the yard. "you run play a few minutes, billy," he said. "i want to talk to the nice lady." the nice lady was looking rather stupefied as wesley approached her. "where in the name of sense did you get that awful child?" she demanded. "he is a young gentleman who has been stopping elnora and eating her lunch every day, part of the time with the assistance of his brother and sister, while our girl went hungry. brownlee told me about it at the store. it's happened three days running. the first time she went without anything, the second time brownlee's girl took her to lunch, and the third a crowd of high school girls bought a lot of stuff and met them at the bridge. the youngsters seemed to think they could rob her every day, so i went to see their father about having it stopped." "well, i should think so!" cried margaret. "there were three of them, margaret," said wesley, "that little fellow----" "hyena, you mean," interpolated margaret. "hyena," corrected wesley gravely, "and another boy and a girl, all equally dirty and hungry. the man was dead. they thought he was in a drunken sleep, but he was stone dead. i brought the little boy with me, and sent the officers and other help to the house. he's half starved. i want to wash him, and put clean clothes on him, and give him some supper." "have you got anything to put on him?" "yes." "where did you get it?" "bought it. it ain't much. all i got didn't cost a dollar." "a dollar is a good deal when you work and save for it the way we do." "well, i don't know a better place to put it. have you got any hot water? i'll use this tub at the cistern. please give me some soap and towels." instead margaret pushed by him with a shriek. billy had played by producing a cord from his pocket, and having tied the tails of margaret's white kittens together, he had climbed on a box and hung them across the clothes line. wild with fright the kittens were clawing each other to death, and the air was white with fur. the string had twisted and the frightened creatures could not recognize friends. margaret stepped back with bleeding hands. sinton cut the cord with his knife and the poor little cats raced under the house bleeding and disfigured. margaret white with wrath faced wesley. "if you don't hitch up and take that animal back to town," she said, "i will." billy threw himself on the grass and began to scream. "you said i could have fried chicken for supper," he wailed. "you said she was a nice lady!" wesley lifted him and something in his manner of handling the child infuriated margaret. his touch was so gentle. she reached for billy and gripped his shirt collar in the back. wesley's hand closed over hers. "gently, girl!" he said. "this little body is covered with sores." "sores!" she ejaculated. "sores? what kind of sores?" "oh, they might be from bruises made by fists or boot toes, or they might be bad blood, from wrong eating, or they might be pure filth. will you hand me some towels?" "no, i won't!" said margaret. "well, give me some rags, then." margaret compromised on pieces of old tablecloth. wesley led billy to the cistern, pumped cold water into the tub, poured in a kettle of hot, and beginning at the head scoured him. the boy shut his little teeth, and said never a word though he twisted occasionally when the soap struck a raw spot. margaret watched the process from the window in amazed and ever-increasing anger. where did wesley learn it? how could his big hands be so gentle? he came to the door. "have you got any peroxide?" he asked. "a little," she answered stiffly. "well, i need about a pint, but i'll begin on what you have." margaret handed him the bottle. wesley took a cup, weakened the drug and said to billy: "man, these sores on you must be healed. then you must eat the kind of food that's fit for little men. i am going to put some medicine on you, and it is going to sting like fire. if it just runs off, i won't use any more. if it boils, there is poison in these places, and they must be tied up, dosed every day, and you must be washed, and kept mighty clean. now, hold still, because i am going to put it on." "i think the one on my leg is the worst," said the undaunted billy, holding out a raw place. sinton poured on the drug. billy's body twisted and writhed, but he did not run. "gee, look at it boil!" he cried. "i guess they's poison. you'll have to do it to all of them." wesley's teeth were set, as he watched the boy's face. he poured the drug, strong enough to do effective work, on a dozen places over that little body and bandaged all he could. billy's lips quivered at times, and his chin jumped, but he did not shed a tear or utter a sound other than to take a deep interest in the boiling. as wesley put the small shirt on the boy, and fastened the trousers, he was ready to reset the hitching post and mend the fence without a word. "now am i clean?" asked billy. "yes, you are clean outside," said wesley. "there is some dirty blood in your body, and some bad words in your mouth, that we have to get out, but that takes time. if we put right things to eat into your stomach that will do away with the sores, and if you know that i don't like bad words you won't say them any oftener than you can help, will you billy?" billy leaned against wesley in apparent indifference. "i want to see me!" he demanded. wesley led the boy into the house, and lifted him to a mirror. "my, i'm purty good-looking, ain't i?" bragged billy. then as wesley stooped to set him on the floor billy's lips passed close to the big man's ear and hastily whispered a vehement "no!" as he ran for the door. "how long until supper, margaret?" asked wesley as he followed. "you are going to keep him for supper?" she asked "sure!" said wesley. "that's what i brought him for. it's likely he never had a good square meal of decent food in his life. he's starved to the bone." margaret arose deliberately, removed the white cloth from the supper table and substituted an old red one she used to wrap the bread. she put away the pretty dishes they commonly used and set the table with old plates for pies and kitchen utensils. but she fried the chicken, and was generous with milk and honey, snowy bread, gravy, potatoes, and fruit. wesley repainted the scratched wheel. he mended the fence, with billy holding the nails and handing the pickets. then he filled the old hole, digged a new one and set the hitching post. billy hopped on one foot at his task of holding the post steady as the earth was packed around it. there was not the shadow of a trouble on his little freckled face. sinton threw in stones and pounded the earth solid around the post. the sound of a gulping sob attracted him to billy. the tears were rolling down his cheeks. "if i'd a knowed you'd have to get down in a hole, and work so hard i wouldn't 'a' hit the horses," he said. "never you mind, billy," said wesley. "you will know next time, so you can think over it, and make up your mind whether you really want to before you strike." wesley went to the barn to put away the tools. he thought billy was at his heels, but the boy lagged on the way. a big snowy turkey gobbler resented the small intruder in his especial preserves, and with spread tail and dragging wings came toward him threateningly. if that turkey gobbler had known the sort of things with which billy was accustomed to holding his own, he never would have issued the challenge. billy accepted instantly. he danced around with stiff arms at his sides and imitated the gobbler. then came his opportunity, and he jumped on the big turkey's back. wesley heard margaret's scream in time to see the flying leap and admire its dexterity. the turkey tucked its tail and scampered. billy slid from its back and as he fell he clutched wildly, caught the folded tail, and instinctively clung to it. the turkey gave one scream and relaxed its muscles. then it fled in disfigured defeat to the haystack. billy scrambled to his feet holding the tail, while his eyes were bulging. "why, the blasted old thing came off!" he said to wesley, holding out the tail in amazed wonder. the man, caught suddenly, forgot everything and roared. seeing which, billy thought a turkey tail of no account and flung that one high above him shouting in wild childish laughter, when the feathers scattered and fell. margaret, watching, began to cry. wesley had gone mad. for the first time in her married life she wanted to tell her mother. when wesley had waited until he was so hungry he could wait no longer he invaded the kitchen to find a cooked supper baking on the back of the stove, while margaret with red eyes nursed a pair of demoralized white kittens. "is supper ready?" he asked. "it has been for an hour," answered margaret. "why didn't you call us?" that "us" had too much comradeship in it. it irritated margaret. "i supposed it would take you even longer than this to fix things decent again. as for my turkey, and my poor little kittens, they don't matter." "i am mighty sorry about them, margaret, you know that. billy is very bright, and he will soon learn----" "soon learn!" cried margaret. "wesley sinton, you don't mean to say that you think of keeping that creature here for some time?" "no, i think of keeping a well-behaved little boy." margaret set the supper on the table. seeing the old red cloth wesley stared in amazement. then he understood. billy capered around in delight. "ain't that pretty?" he exulted. "i wish jimmy and belle could see. we, why we ist eat out of our hands or off a old dry goods box, and when we fix up a lot, we have newspaper. we ain't ever had a nice red cloth like this." wesley looked straight at margaret, so intently that she turned away, her face flushing. he stacked the dictionary and the geography of the world on a chair, and lifted billy beside him. he heaped a plate generously, cut the food, put a fork into billy's little fist, and made him eat slowly and properly. billy did his best. occasionally greed overcame him, and he used his left hand to pop a bite into his mouth with his fingers. these lapses wesley patiently overlooked, and went on with his general instructions. luckily billy did not spill anything on his clothing or the cloth. after supper wesley took him to the barn while he finished the night work. then he went and sat beside margaret on the front porch. billy appropriated the hammock, and swung by pulling a rope tied around a tree. the very energy with which he went at the work of swinging himself appealed to wesley. "mercy, but he's an active little body," he said. "there isn't a lazy bone in him. see how he works to pay for his fun." "there goes his foot through it!" cried margaret. "wesley, he shall not ruin my hammock." "of course he shan't!" said wesley. "wait, billy, let me show you." thereupon he explained to billy that ladies wearing beautiful white dresses sat in hammocks, so little boys must not put their dusty feet in them. billy immediately sat, and allowed his feet to swing. "margaret," said wesley after a long silence on the porch, "isn't it true that if billy had been a half-starved sore cat, dog, or animal of any sort, that you would have pitied, and helped care for it, and been glad to see me get any pleasure out of it i could?" "yes," said margaret coldly. "but because i brought a child with an immortal soul, there is no welcome." "that isn't a child, it's an animal." "you just said you would have welcomed an animal." "not a wild one. i meant a tame beast." "billy is not a beast!" said wesley hotly. "he is a very dear little boy. margaret, you've always done the church-going and bible reading for this family. how do you reconcile that `suffer little children to come unto me' with the way you are treating billy?" margaret arose. "i haven't treated that child. i have only let him alone. i can barely hold myself. he needs the hide tanned about off him!" "if you'd cared to look at his body, you'd know that you couldn't find a place to strike without cutting into a raw spot," said wesley. "besides, billy has not done a thing for which a child should be punished. he is only full of life, no training, and with a boy's love of mischief. he did abuse your kittens, but an hour before i saw him risk his life to save one from being run over. he minds what you tell him, and doesn't do anything he is told not to. he thinks of his brother and sister right away when anything pleases him. he took that stinging medicine with the grit of a bulldog. he is just a bully little chap, and i love him." "oh good heavens!" cried margaret, going into the house as she spoke. sinton sat still. at last billy tired of the swing, came to him and leaned his slight body against the big knee. "am i going to sleep here?" he asked. "sure you are!" said sinton. billy swung his feet as he laid across wesley's knee. "come on," said wesley, "i must clean you up for bed." "you have to be just awful clean here," announced billy. "i like to be clean, you feel so good, after the hurt is over." sinton registered that remark, and worked with especial tenderness as he redressed the ailing places and washed the dust from billy's feet and hands. "where can he sleep?" he asked margaret. "i'm sure i don't know," she answered. "oh, i can sleep ist any place," said billy. "on the floor or anywhere. home, i sleep on pa's coat on a storebox, and jimmy and belle they sleep on the storebox, too. "i sleep between them, so's i don't roll off and crack my head. ain't you got a storebox and a old coat?" wesley arose and opened a folding lounge. then he brought an armload of clean horse blankets from a closet. "these don't look like the nice white bed a little boy should have, billy," he said, "but we'll make them do. this will beat a storebox all hollow." billy took a long leap for the lounge. when he found it bounced, he proceeded to bounce, until he was tired. by that time the blankets had to be refolded. wesley had billy take one end and help, while both of them seemed to enjoy the job. then billy lay down and curled up in his clothes like a small dog. but sleep would not come. finally he sat up. he stared around restlessly. then he arose, went to wesley, and leaned against his knee. he picked up the boy and folded his arms around him. billy sighed in rapturous content. "that bed feels so lost like," he said. "jimmy always jabbed me on one side, and belle on the other, and so i knew i was there. do you know where they are?" "they are with kind people who gave them a fine supper, a clean bed, and will always take good care of them." "i wisht i was--" billy hesitated and looked earnestly at wesley. "i mean i wish they was here." "you are about all i can manage, billy," said wesley. billy sat up. "can't she manage anything?" he asked, waving toward margaret. "indeed, yes," said wesley. "she has managed me for twenty years." "my, but she made you nice!" said billy. "i just love you. i wisht she'd take jimmy and belle and make them nice as you." "she isn't strong enough to do that, billy. they will grow into a good boy and girl where they are." billy slid from wesley's arms and walked toward margaret until he reached the middle of the room. then he stopped, and at last sat on the floor. finally he lay down and closed his eyes. "this feels more like my bed; if only jimmy and belle was here to crowd up a little, so it wasn't so alone like." "won't i do, billy?" asked wesley in a husky voice. billy moved restlessly. "seems like--seems like toward night as if a body got kind o' lonesome for a woman person--like her." billy indicated margaret and then closed his eyes so tight his small face wrinkled. soon he was up again. "wisht i had snap," he said. "oh, i ist wisht i had snap!" "i thought you laid a board on snap and jumped on it," said wesley. "we did!" cried billy--"oh, you ought to heard him squeal!" billy laughed loudly, then his face clouded. "but i want snap to lay beside me so bad now--that if he was here i'd give him a piece of my chicken, 'for, i ate any. do you like dogs?" "yes, i do," said wesley. billy was up instantly. "would you like snap?" "i am sure i would," said wesley. "would she?" billy indicated margaret. and then he answered his own question. "but of course, she wouldn't, cos she likes cats, and dogs chases cats. oh, dear, i thought for a minute maybe snap could come here." billy lay down and closed his eyes resolutely. suddenly they flew open. "does it hurt to be dead?" he demanded. "nothing hurts you after you are dead, billy," said wesley. "yes, but i mean does it hurt getting to be dead?" "sometimes it does. it did not hurt your father, billy. it came softly while he was asleep." "it ist came softly?" "yes." "i kind o' wisht he wasn't dead!" said billy. "'course i like to stay with you, and the fried chicken, and the nice soft bed, and--and everything, and i like to be clean, but he took us to the show, and he got us gum, and he never hurt us when he wasn't drunk." billy drew a deep breath, and tightly closed his eyes. but very soon they opened. then he sat up. he looked at wesley pitifully, and then he glanced at margaret. "you don't like boys, do you?" he questioned. "i like good boys," said margaret. billy was at her knee instantly. "well say, i'm a good boy!" he announced joyously. "i do not think boys who hurt helpless kittens and pull out turkeys' tails are good boys." "yes, but i didn't hurt the kittens," explained billy. "they got mad 'bout ist a little fun and scratched each other. i didn't s'pose they'd act like that. and i didn't pull the turkey's tail. i ist held on to the first thing i grabbed, and the turkey pulled. honest, it was the turkey pulled." he turned to wesley. "you tell her! didn't the turkey pull? i didn't know its tail was loose, did i?" "i don't think you did, billy," said wesley. billy stared into margaret's cold face. "sometimes at night, belle sits on the floor, and i lay my head in her lap. i could pull up a chair and lay my head in your lap. like this, i mean." billy pulled up a chair, climbed on it and laid his head on margaret's lap. then he shut his eyes again. margaret could have looked little more repulsed if he had been a snake. billy was soon up. "my, but your lap is hard," he said. "and you are a good deal fatter 'an belle, too!" he slid from the chair and came back to the middle of the room. "oh but i wisht he wasn't dead!" he cried. the flood broke and billy screamed in desperation. out of the night a soft, warm young figure flashed through the door and with a swoop caught him in her arms. she dropped into a chair, nestled him closely, drooped her fragrant brown head over his little bullet-eyed red one, and rocked softly while she crooned over him- "billy, boy, where have you been? oh, i have been to seek a wife, she's the joy of my life, but then she's a young thing and she can't leave her mammy!" billy clung to her frantically. elnora wiped his eyes, kissed his face, swayed and sang. "why aren't you asleep?" she asked at last. "i don't know," said billy. "i tried. i tried awful hard cos i thought he wanted me to, but it ist wouldn't come. please tell her i tried." he appealed to margaret. "he did try to go to sleep," admitted margaret. "maybe he can't sleep in his clothes," suggested elnora. "haven't you an old dressing sacque? i could roll the sleeves." margaret got an old sacque, and elnora put it on billy. then she brought a basin of water and bathed his face and head. she gathered him up and began to rock again. "have you got a pa?" asked billy. "no," said elnora. "is he dead like mine?" "yes." "did it hurt him to die?" "i don't know." billy was wide awake again. "it didn't hurt my pa," he boasted; "he ist died while he was asleep. he didn't even know it was coming." "i am glad of that," said elnora, pressing the small head against her breast again. billy escaped her hand and sat up. "i guess i won't go to sleep," he said. "it might `come softly' and get me." "it won't get you, billy," said elnora, rocking and singing between sentences. "it doesn't get little boys. it just takes big people who are sick." "was my pa sick?" "yes," said elnora. "he had a dreadful sickness inside him that burned, and made him drink things. that was why he would forget his little boys and girl. if he had been well, he would have gotten you good things to eat, clean clothes, and had the most fun with you." billy leaned against her and closed his eyes, and elnora rocked hopefully. "if i was dead would you cry?" he was up again. "yes, i would," said elnora, gripping him closer until billy almost squealed with the embrace. "do you love me tight as that?" he questioned blissfully. "yes, bushels and bushels," said elnora. "better than any little boy in the whole world." billy looked at margaret. "she don't!" he said. "she'd be glad if it would get me `softly,' right now. she don't want me here 't all." elnora smothered his face against her breast and rocked. "you love me, don't you?" "i will, if you will go to sleep." "every single day you will give me your dinner for the bologna, won't you," said billy. "yes, i will," replied elnora. "but you will have as good lunch as i do after this. you will have milk, eggs, chicken, all kinds of good things, little pies, and cakes, maybe." billy shook his head. "i am going back home soon as it is light," he said, "she don't want me. she thinks i'm a bad boy. she's going to whip me--if he lets her. she said so. i heard her. oh, i wish he hadn't died! i want to go home." billy shrieked again. mrs. comstock had started to walk slowly to meet elnora. the girl had been so late that her mother reached the sinton gate and followed the path until the picture inside became visible. elnora had told her about wesley taking billy home. mrs. comstock had some curiosity to see how margaret bore the unexpected addition to her family. billy's voice, raised with excitement, was plainly audible. she could see elnora holding him, and hear his excited wail. wesley's face was drawn and haggard, and margaret's set and defiant. a very imp of perversity entered the breast of mrs. comstock. "hoity, toity!" she said as she suddenly appeared in the door. "blest if i ever heard a man making sounds like that before!" billy ceased suddenly. mrs. comstock was tall, angular, and her hair was prematurely white. she was only thirty-six, although she appeared fifty. but there was an expression on her usually cold face that was attractive just then, and billy was in search of attractions. "have i stayed too late, mother?" asked elnora anxiously. "i truly intended to come straight back, but i thought i could rock billy to sleep first. everything is strange, and he's so nervous." "is that your ma?" demanded billy. "yes." "does she love you?" "of course!" "my mother didn't love me," said billy. "she went away and left me, and never came back. she don't care what happens to me. you wouldn't go away and leave your little girl, would you?" questioned billy. "no," said katharine comstock, "and i wouldn't leave a little boy, either." billy began sliding from elnora's knees. "do you like boys?" he questioned. "if there is anything i love it is a boy," said mrs. comstock assuringly. billy was on the floor. "do you like dogs?" "yes. almost as well as boys. i am going to buy a dog as soon as i can find a good one." billy swept toward her with a whoop. "do you want a boy?" he shouted. katharine comstock stretched out her arms, and gathered him in. "of course, i want a boy!" she rejoiced. "maybe you'd like to have me?" offered billy. "sure i would," triumphed mrs. comstock. "any one would like to have you. you are just a real boy, billy." "will you take snap?" "i'd like to have snap almost as well as you." "mother!" breathed elnora imploringly. "don't! oh, don't! he thinks you mean it!" "and so i do mean it," said mrs. comstock. "i'll take him in a jiffy. i throw away enough to feed a little tyke like him every day. his chatter would be great company while you are gone. blood soon can be purified with right food and baths, and as for snap, i meant to buy a bulldog, but possibly snap will serve just as well. all i ask of a dog is to bark at the right time. i'll do the rest. would you like to come and be my boy, billy?" billy leaned against mrs. comstock, reached his arms around her neck and gripped her with all his puny might. "you can whip me all you want to," he said. "i won't make a sound." mrs. comstock held him closely and her hard face was softening; of that there could be no doubt. "now, why would any one whip a nice little boy like you?" she asked wonderingly. "she"--billy from his refuge waved toward margaret --"she was going to whip me 'cause her cats fought, when i tied their tails together and hung them over the line to dry. how did i know her old cats would fight?" mrs. comstock began to laugh suddenly, and try as she would she could not stop so soon as she desired. billy studied her. "have you got turkeys?" he demanded. "yes, flocks of them," said mrs. comstock, vainly struggling to suppress her mirth, and settle her face in its accustomed lines. "are their tails fast?" demanded billy. "why, i think so," marvelled mrs. comstock. "hers ain't!" said billy with the wave toward margaret that was becoming familiar. "her turkey pulled, and its tail comed right off. she's going to whip me if he lets her. i didn't know the turkey would pull. i didn't know its tail would come off. i won't ever touch one again, will i?" "of course, you won't," said mrs. comstock. "and what's more, i don't care if you do! i'd rather have a fine little man like you than all the turkeys in the country. let them lose their old tails if they want to, and let the cats fight. cats and turkeys don't compare with boys, who are going to be fine big men some of these days." then billy and mrs. comstock hugged each other rapturously, while their audience stared in silent amazement. "you like boys!" exulted billy, and his head dropped against mrs. comstock in unspeakable content. "yes, and if i don't have to carry you the whole way home, we must start right now," said mrs. comstock. "you are going to be asleep before you know it." billy opened his eyes and braced himself. "i can walk," he said proudly. "all right, we must start. come, elnora! good-night, folks!" mrs. comstock set billy on the floor, and arose gripping his hand. "you take the other side, elnora, and we will help him as much as we can," she said. elnora stared piteously at margaret, then at wesley, and arose in white-faced bewilderment. "billy, are you going to leave without even saying goodbye to me?" asked wesley, with a gulp. billy held tight to mrs. comstock and elnora. "good-bye!" he said casually. "i'll come and see you some time." wesley sinton gave a smothered sob, and strode from the room. mrs. comstock started toward the door, dragging at billy while elnora pulled back, but mrs. sinton was before them, her eyes flashing. "kate comstock, you think you are mighty smart, don't you?" she cried. "i ain't in the lunatic asylum, where you belong, anyway,"said mrs. comstock. "i am smart enough to tell a dandy boy when i see him, and i'm good and glad to get him. i'll love to have him!" "well, you won't have him!" exclaimed margaret sinton. "that boy is wesley's! he found him, and brought him here. you can't come in and take him like that! let go of him!" "not much, i won't!" cried mrs. comstock. "leave the poor sick little soul here for you to beat, because he didn't know just how to handle things! of course, he'll make mistakes. he must have a lot of teaching, but not the kind he'll get from you! clear out of my way!" "you let go of our boy," ordered margaret. "why? do you want to whip him, before he can go to sleep?" jeered mrs. comstock. "no, i don't!" said margaret. "he's wesley's, and nobody shall touch him. wesley!" wesley sinton appeared behind margaret in the doorway, and she turned to him. "make kate comstock let go of our boy!" she demanded. "billy, she wants you now," said wesley sinton. "she won't whip you, and she won't let any one else. you can have stacks of good things to eat, ride in the carriage, and have a great time. won't you stay with us?" billy drew away from mrs. comstock and elnora. he faced margaret, his eyes shrewd with unchildish wisdom. necessity had taught him to strike the hot iron, to drive the hard bargain. "can i have snap to live here always?" he demanded. "yes, you can have all the dogs you want," said margaret sinton. "can i sleep close enough so's i can touch you?" "yes, you can move your lounge up so that you can hold my hand," said margaret. "do you love me now?" questioned billy. "i'll try to love you, if you are a good boy," said margaret. "then i guess i'll stay," said billy, walking over to her. out in the night elnora and her mother went down the road in the moonlight; every few rods mrs. comstock laughed aloud. "mother, i don't understand you," sobbed elnora. "well, maybe when you have gone to high school longer you will," said mrs. comstock. "anyway, you saw me bring mag sinton to her senses, didn't you?" "yes, i did," answered elnora, "but i thought you were in earnest. so did billy, and uncle wesley, and aunt margaret." "well, wasn't i?" inquired mrs. comstock. "but you just said you brought aunt margaret to!" "well, didn't i?" "i don't understand you." "that's the reason i am recommending more schooling!" elnora took her candle and went to bed. mrs. comstock was feeling too good to sleep. twice of late she really had enjoyed herself for the first in sixteen years, and greediness for more of the same feeling crept into her blood like intoxication. as she sat brooding alone she knew the truth. she would have loved to have taken billy. she would not have minded his mischief, his chatter, or his dog. he would have meant a distraction from herself that she greatly needed; she was even sincere about the dog. she had intended to tell wesley to buy her one at the very first opportunity. her last thought was of billy. she chuckled softly, for she was not saintly, and now she knew how she could even a long score with margaret and wesley in a manner that would fill her soul with grim satisfaction. chapter viii wherein the limberlost tempts elnora, and billy buries his father immediately after dinner on sunday wesley sinton stopped at the comstock gate to ask if elnora wanted to go to town with them. billy sat beside him and he did not appear as if he were on his way to a funeral. elnora said she had to study and could not go, but she suggested that her mother take her place. mrs. comstock put on her hat and went at once, which surprised elnora. she did not know that her mother was anxious for an opportunity to speak with sinton alone. elnora knew why she was repeatedly cautioned not to leave their land, if she went specimen hunting. she studied two hours and was several lessons ahead of her classes. there was no use to go further. she would take a walk and see if she could gather any caterpillars or find any freshly spun cocoons. she searched the bushes and low trees behind the garden and all around the edge of the woods on their land, and having little success, at last came to the road. almost the first thorn bush she examined yielded a polyphemus cocoon. elnora lifted her head with the instinct of a hunter on the chase, and began work. she reached the swamp before she knew it, carrying five fine cocoons of different species as her reward. she pushed back her hair and gazed around longingly. a few rods inside she thought she saw cocoons on a bush, to which she went, and found several. sense of caution was rapidly vanishing; she was in a fair way to forget everything and plunge into the swamp when she thought she heard footsteps coming down the trail. she went back, and came out almost facing pete corson. that ended her difficulty. she had known him since childhood. when she sat on the front bench of the brushwood schoolhouse, pete had been one of the big boys at the back of the room. he had been rough and wild, but she never had been afraid of him, and often he had given her pretty things from the swamp. "what luck!" she cried. "i promised mother i would not go inside the swamp alone, and will you look at the cocoons i've found! there are more just screaming for me to come get them, because the leaves will fall with the first frost, and then the jays and crows will begin to tear them open. i haven't much time, since i'm going to school. you will go with me, pete! please say yes! just a little way!" "what are those things?" asked the man, his keen black eyes staring at her. "they are the cases these big caterpillars spin for winter, and in the spring they come out great night moths, and i can sell them. oh, pete, i can sell them for enough to take me through high school and dress me so like the others that i don't look different, and if i have very good luck i can save some for college. pete, please go with me?" "why don't you go like you always have?" "well, the truth is, i had a little scare," said elnora. "i never did mean to go alone; sometimes i sort of wandered inside farther than i intended, chasing things. you know duncan gave me freckles's books, and i have been gathering moths like he did. lately i found i could sell them. if i can make a complete collection, i can get three hundred dollars for it. three such collections would take me almost through college, and i've four years in the high school yet. that's a long time. i might collect them." "can every kind there is be found here?" "no, not all of them, but when i get more than i need of one kind, i can trade them with collectors farther north and west, so i can complete sets. it's the only way i see to earn the money. look what i have already. big gray cecropias come from this kind; brown polyphemus from that, and green lunas from these. you aren't working on sunday. go with me only an hour, pete!" the man looked at her narrowly. she was young, wholesome, and beautiful. she was innocent, intensely in earnest, and she needed the money, he knew that. "you didn't tell me what scared you," he said. "oh, i thought i did! why you know i had freckles's box packed full of moths and specimens, and one evening i sold some to the bird woman. next morning i found a note telling me it wasn't safe to go inside the swamp. that sort of scared me. i think i'll go alone, rather than miss the chance, but i'd be so happy if you would take care of me. then i could go anywhere i chose, because if i mired you could pull me out. you will take care of me, pete?" "yes, i'll take care of you," promised pete corson. "goody!" said elnora. "let's start quick! and pete, you look at these closely, and when you are hunting or going along the road, if one dangles under your nose, you cut off the little twig and save it for me, will you?" "yes, i'll save you all i see," promised pete. he pushed back his hat and followed elnora. she plunged fearlessly among bushes, over underbrush, and across dead logs. one minute she was crying wildly, that here was a big one, the next she was reaching for a limb above her head or on her knees overturning dead leaves under a hickory or oak tree, or working aside black muck with her bare hands as she searched for buried pupae cases. for the first hour pete bent back bushes and followed, carrying what elnora discovered. then he found one. "is this the kind of thing you are looking for?" he asked bashfully, as he presented a wild cherry twig. "oh pete, that's a promethea! i didn't even hope to find one." "what's the bird like?" asked pete. "almost black wings," said elnora, "with clay-coloured edges, and the most wonderful wine-coloured flush over the under side if it's a male, and stronger wine above and below if it's a female. oh, aren't i happy!" "how would it do to make what you have into a bunch that we could leave here, and come back for them?" "that would be all right." relieved of his load pete began work. first, he narrowly examined the cocoons elnora had found. he questioned her as to what other kinds would be like. he began to use the eyes of a trained woodman and hunter in her behalf. he saw several so easily, and moved through the forest so softly, that elnora forgot the moths in watching him. presently she was carrying the specimens, and he was making the trips of investigation to see which was a cocoon and which a curled leaf, or he was on his knees digging around stumps. as he worked he kept asking questions. what kind of logs were best to look beside, what trees were pupae cases most likely to be under; on what bushes did caterpillars spin most frequently? time passed, as it always does when one's occupation is absorbing. when the sintons took mrs. comstock home, they stopped to see elnora. she was not there. mrs. comstock called at the edge of her woods and received no reply. then wesley turned and drove back to the limberlost. he left margaret and mrs. comstock holding the team and entertaining billy, while he entered the swamp. elnora and pete had made a wide trail behind them. before sinton had thought of calling, he heard voices and approached with some caution. soon he saw elnora, her flushed face beaming as she bent with an armload of twigs and branches and talked to a kneeling man. "now go cautiously!" she was saying. "i am just sure we will find an imperialis here. it's their very kind of a place. there! what did i tell you! isn't that splendid? oh, i am so glad you came with me!" wesley stood staring in speechless astonishment, for the man had arisen, brushed the dirt from his hands, and held out to elnora a small shining dark pupa case. as his face came into view sinton almost cried out, for he was the one man of all others wesley knew with whom he most feared for elnora's safety. she had him on his knees digging pupae cases for her from the swamp. "elnora!" called sinton. "elnora!" "oh, uncle wesley!" cried the girl. "see what luck we've had! i know we have a dozen and a half cocoons and we have three pupae cases. it's much harder to get the cases because you have to dig for them, and you can't see where to look. but pete is fine at it! he's found three, and he says he will keep watch beside the roads, and through the woods while he hunts. isn't that splendid of him? uncle wesley, there is a college over there on the western edge of the swamp. look closely, and you can see the great dome up among the clouds." "i should say you have had luck," said wesley, striving to make his voice natural. "but i thought you were not coming to the swamp?" "well, i wasn't," said elnora, "but i couldn't find many anywhere else, honest, i couldn't, and just as soon as i came to the edge i began to see them here. i kept my promise. i didn't come in alone. pete came with me. he's so strong, he isn't afraid of anything, and he's perfectly splendid to locate cocoons! he's found half of these. come on, pete, it's getting dark now, and we must go." they started toward the trail, pete carrying the cocoons. he left them at the case, while elnora and wesley went on to the carriage together. "elnora comstock, what does this mean?" demanded her mother. "it's all right, one of the neighbours was with her, and she got several dollars' worth of stuff," interposed wesley. "you oughter seen my pa," shouted billy. "he was ist all whited out, and he laid as still as anything. they put him away deep in the ground." "billy!" breathed margaret in a prolonged groan. "jimmy and belle are going to be together in a nice place. they are coming to see me, and snap is right down here by the wheel. here, snap! my, but he'll be tickled to get something to eat! he's 'most twisted as me. they get new clothes, and all they want to eat, too, but they'll miss me. they couldn't have got along without me. i took care of them. i had a lot of things give to me 'cause i was the littlest, and i always divided with them. but they won't need me now." when she left the carriage mrs. comstock gravely shook hands with billy. "remember," she said to him, "i love boys, and i love dogs. whenever you don't have a good time up there, take your dog and come right down and be my little boy. we will just have loads of fun. you should hear the whistles i can make. if you aren't treated right you come straight to me." billy wagged his head sagely. "you ist bet i will!" he said. "mother, how could you?" asked elnora as they walked up the path. "how could i, missy? you better ask how couldn't i? i just couldn't! not for enough to pay, my road tax! not for enough to pay the road tax, and the dredge tax, too!" "aunt margaret always has been lovely to me, and i don't think it's fair to worry her." "i choose to be lovely to billy, and let her sweat out her own worries just as she has me, these sixteen years. there is nothing in all this world so good for people as taking a dose of their own medicine. the difference is that i am honest. i just say in plain english, `if they don't treat you right, come to me.' they have only said it in actions and inferences. i want to teach mag sinton how her own doses taste, but she begins to sputter before i fairly get the spoon to her lips. just you wait!" "when i think what i owe her----" began elnora. "well, thank goodness, i don't owe her anything, and so i'm perfectly free to do what i choose. come on, and help me get supper. i'm hungry as billy!" margaret sinton rocked slowly back and forth in her chair. on her breast lay billy's red head, one hand clutched her dress front with spasmodic grip, even after he was unconscious. "you mustn't begin that, margaret," said sinton. "he's too heavy. and it's bad for him. he's better off to lie down and go to sleep alone." "he's very light, wesley. he jumps and quivers so. he has to be stronger than he is now, before he will sleep soundly." chapter ix wherein elnora discovers a violin, and billy disciplines margaret elnora missed the little figure at the bridge the following morning. she slowly walked up the street and turned in at the wide entrance to the school grounds. she scarcely could comprehend that only a week ago she had gone there friendless, alone, and so sick at heart that she was physically ill. to-day she had decent clothing, books, friends, and her mind was at ease to work on her studies. as she approached home that night the girl paused in amazement. her mother had company, and she was laughing. elnora entered the kitchen softly and peeped into the sitting-room. mrs. comstock sat in her chair holding a book and every few seconds a soft chuckle broke into a real laugh. mark twain was doing his work; while mrs. comstock was not lacking in a sense of humour. elnora entered the room before her mother saw her. mrs. comstock looked up with flushed face. "where did you get this?" she demanded. "i bought it," said elnora. "bought it! with all the taxes due!" "i paid for it out of my indian money, mother," said elnora. "i couldn't bear to spend so much on myself and nothing at all on you. i was afraid to buy the dress i should have liked to, and i thought the book would be company, while i was gone. i haven't read it, but i do hope it's good." "good! it's the biggest piece of foolishness i have read in all my life. i've laughed all day, ever since i found it. i had a notion to go out and read some of it to the cows and see if they wouldn't laugh." "if it made you laugh, it's a wise book," said elnora. "wise!" cried mrs. comstock. "you can stake your life it's a wise book. it takes the smartest man there is to do this kind of fooling," and she began laughing again. elnora, highly satisfied with her purchase, went to her room and put on her working clothes. thereafter she made a point of bringing a book that she thought would interest her mother, from the library every week, and leaving it on the sitting-room table. each night she carried home at least two school books and studied until she had mastered the points of her lessons. she did her share of the work faithfully, and every available minute she was in the fields searching for cocoons, for the moths promised to become her largest source of income. she gathered baskets of nests, flowers, mosses, insects, and all sorts of natural history specimens and sold them to the grade teachers. at first she tried to tell these instructors what to teach their pupils about the specimens; but recognizing how much more she knew than they, one after another begged her to study at home, and use her spare hours in school to exhibit and explain nature subjects to their pupils. elnora loved the work, and she needed the money, for every few days some matter of expense arose that she had not expected. from the first week she had been received and invited with the crowd of girls in her class, and it was their custom in passing through the business part of the city to stop at the confectioners' and take turns in treating to expensive candies, ice cream sodas, hot chocolate, or whatever they fancied. when first elnora was asked she accepted without understanding. the second time she went because she seldom had tasted these things, and they were so delicious she could not resist. after that she went because she knew all about it, and had decided to go. she had spent half an hour on the log beside the trail in deep thought and had arrived at her conclusions. she worked harder than usual for the next week, but she seemed to thrive on work. it was october and the red leaves were falling when her first time came to treat. as the crowd flocked down the broad walk that night elnora called, "girls, it's my treat to-night! come on!" she led the way through the city to the grocery they patronized when they had a small spread, and entering came out with a basket, which she carried to the bridge on her home road. there she arranged the girls in two rows on the cement abutments and opening her basket she gravely offered each girl an exquisite little basket of bark, lined with red leaves, in one end of which nestled a juicy big red apple and in the other a spicy doughnut not an hour from margaret sinton's frying basket. another time she offered big balls of popped corn stuck together with maple sugar, and liberally sprinkled with beechnut kernels. again it was hickory-nut kernels glazed with sugar, another time maple candy, and once a basket of warm pumpkin pies. she never made any apology, or offered any excuse. she simply gave what she could afford, and the change was as welcome to those city girls accustomed to sodas and french candy, as were these same things to elnora surfeited on popcorn and pie. in her room was a little slip containing a record of the number of weeks in the school year, the times it would be her turn to treat and the dates on which such occasions would fall, with a number of suggestions beside each. once the girls almost fought over a basket lined with yellow leaves, and filled with fat, very ripe red haws. in late october there was a riot over one which was lined with red leaves and contained big fragrant pawpaws frost-bitten to a perfect degree. then hazel nuts were ripe, and once they served. one day elnora at her wits' end, explained to her mother that the girls had given her things and she wanted to treat them. mrs. comstock, with characteristic stubbornness, had said she would leave a basket at the grocery for her, but firmly declined to say what would be in it. all day elnora struggled to keep her mind on her books. for hours she wavered in tense uncertainty. what would her mother do? should she take the girls to the confectioner's that night or risk the basket? mrs. comstock could make delicious things to eat, but would she? as they left the building elnora made a final rapid mental calculation. she could not see her way clear to a decent treat for ten people for less than two dollars and if the basket proved to be nice, then the money would be wasted. she decided to risk it. as they went to the bridge the girls were betting on what the treat would be, and crowding near elnora like spoiled small children. elnora set down the basket. "girls," she said, "i don't know what this is myself, so all of us are going to be surprised. here goes!" she lifted the cover and perfumes from the land of spices rolled up. in one end of the basket lay ten enormous sugar cakes the tops of which had been liberally dotted with circles cut from stick candy. the candy had melted in baking and made small transparent wells of waxy sweetness and in the centre of each cake was a fat turtle made from a raisin with cloves for head and feet. the remainder of the basket was filled with big spiced pears that could be held by their stems while they were eaten. the girls shrieked and attacked the cookies, and of all the treats elnora offered perhaps none was quite so long remembered as that. when elnora took her basket, placed her books in it, and started home, all the girls went with her as far as the fence where she crossed the field to the swamp. at parting they kissed her good-bye. elnora was a happy girl as she hurried home to thank her mother. she was happy over her books that night, and happy all the way to school the following morning. when the music swelled from the orchestra her heart almost broke with throbbing joy. for music always had affected her strangely, and since she had been comfortable enough in her surroundings to notice things, she had listened to every note to find what it was that literally hurt her heart, and at last she knew. it was the talking of the violins. they were human voices, and they spoke a language elnora understood. it seemed to her that she must climb up on the stage, take the instruments from the fingers of the players and make them speak what was in her heart. that night she said to her mother, "i am perfectly crazy for a violin. i am sure i could play one, sure as i live. did any one----" elnora never completed that sentence. "hush!" thundered mrs. comstock. "be quiet! never mention those things before me again--never as long as you live! i loathe them! they are a snare of the very devil himself! they were made to lure men and women from their homes and their honour. if ever i see you with one in your fingers i will smash it in pieces." naturally elnora hushed, but she thought of nothing else after she had finished her lessons. at last there came a day when for some reason the leader of the orchestra left his violin on the grand piano. that morning elnora made her first mistake in algebra. at noon, as soon as the building was empty, she slipped into the auditorium, found the side door which led to the stage, and going through the musicians' entrance she took the violin. she carried it back into the little side room where the orchestra assembled, closed all the doors, opened the case and lifted out the instrument. she laid it on her breast, dropped her chin on it and drew the bow softly across the strings. one after another she tested the open notes. gradually her stroke ceased to tremble and she drew the bow firmly. then her fingers began to fall and softly, slowly she searched up and down those strings for sounds she knew. standing in the middle of the floor, she tried over and over. it seemed scarcely a minute before the hall was filled with the sound of hurrying feet, and she was forced to put away the violin and go to her classes. the next day she prayed that the violin would be left again, but her petition was not answered. that night when she returned from the school she made an excuse to go down to see billy. he was engaged in hulling walnuts by driving them through holes in a board. his hands were protected by a pair of margaret's old gloves, but he had speckled his face generously. he appeared well, and greeted elnora hilariously. "me an' the squirrels are laying up our winter stores," he shouted. "cos the cold is coming, an' the snow an' if we have any nuts we have to fix 'em now. but i'm ahead, cos uncle wesley made me this board, and i can hull a big pile while the old squirrel does only ist one with his teeth." elnora picked him up and kissed him. "billy, are you happy?" she asked. "yes, and so's snap," answered billy. "you ought to see him make the dirt fly when he gets after a chipmunk. i bet you he could dig up pa, if anybody wanted him to." "billy!" gasped margaret as she came out to them. "well, me and snap don't want him up, and i bet you jimmy and belle don't, either. i ain't been twisty inside once since i been here, and i don't want to go away, and snap don't, either. he told me so." "billy! that is not true. dogs can't talk," cautioned margaret. "then what makes you open the door when he asks you to?" demanded billy. "scratching and whining isn't talking." "anyway, it's the best snap can talk, and you get up and do things he wants done. chipmunks can talk too. you ought to hear them damn things holler when snap gets them!" "billy! when you want a cooky for supper and i don't give it to you it is because you said a wrong word." "well, for----" billy clapped his hand over his mouth and stained his face in swipes. "well, for--anything! did i go an' forget again! the cookies will get all hard, won't they? i bet you ten dollars i don't say that any more." he espied wesley and ran to show him a walnut too big to go through the holes, and elnora and margaret entered the house. they talked of many things for a time and then elnora said suddenly: "aunt margaret, i like music." "i've noticed that in you all your life," answered margaret. "if dogs can't talk, i can make a violin talk," announced elnora, and then in amazement watched the face of margaret sinton grow pale. "a violin!" she wavered. "where did you get a violin?" "they fairly seemed to speak to me in the orchestra. one day the conductor left his in the auditorium, and i took it, and aunt margaret, i can make it do the wind in the swamp, the birds, and the animals. i can make any sound i ever heard on it. if i had a chance to practise a little, i could make it do the orchestra music, too. i don't know how i know, but i do." "did--did you ever mention it to your mother?" faltered margaret. "yes, and she seems prejudiced against them. but oh, aunt margaret, i never felt so about anything, not even going to school. i just feel as if i'd die if i didn't have one. i could keep it at school, and practise at noon a whole hour. soon they'd ask me to play in the orchestra. i could keep it in the case and practise in the woods in summer. you'd let me play over here sunday. oh, aunt margaret, what does one cost? would it be wicked for me to take of my money, and buy a very cheap one? i could play on the least expensive one made." "oh, no you couldn't! a cheap machine makes cheap music. you got to have a fine fiddle to make it sing. but there's no sense in your buying one. there isn't a decent reason on earth why you shouldn't have your fa----" "my father's!" cried elnora. she caught margaret sinton by the arm. "my father had a violin! he played it. that's why i can! where is it! is it in our house? is it in mother's room?" "elnora!" panted margaret. "your mother will kill me! she always hated it." "mother dearly loves music," said elnora. "not when it took the man she loved away from her to make it!" "where is my father's violin?" "elnora!" "i've never seen a picture of my father. i've never heard his name mentioned. i've never had a scrap that belonged to him. was he my father, or am i a charity child like billy, and so she hates me?" "she has good pictures of him. seems she just can't bear to hear him talked about. of course, he was your father. they lived right there when you were born. she doesn't dislike you; she merely tries to make herself think she does. there's no sense in the world in you not having his violin. i've a great notion----" "has mother got it?" "no. i've never heard her mention it. it was not at home when he--when he died." "do you know where it is?" "yes. i'm the only person on earth who does, except the one who has it." "who is that?" "i can't tell you, but i will see if they have it yet, and get it if i can. but if your mother finds it out she will never forgive me." "i can't help it," said elnora. i want that violin." "i'll go to-morrow, and see if it has been destroyed." "destroyed! oh, aunt margaret! would any one dare?" "i hardly think so. it was a good instrument. he played it like a master." "tell me!" breathed elnora. "his hair was red and curled more than yours, and his eyes were blue. he was tall, slim, and the very imp of mischief. he joked and teased all day until he picked up that violin. then his head bent over it, and his eyes got big and earnest. he seemed to listen as if he first heard the notes, and then copied them. sometimes he drew the bow trembly, like he wasn't sure it was right, and he might have to try again. he could almost drive you crazy when he wanted to, and no man that ever lived could make you dance as he could. he made it all up as he went. he seemed to listen for his dancing music, too. it appeared to come to him; he'd begin to play and you had to keep time. you couldn't be still; he loved to sweep a crowd around with that bow of his. i think it was the thing you call inspiration. i can see him now, his handsome head bent, his cheeks red, his eyes snapping, and that bow going across the strings, and driving us like sheep. he always kept his body swinging, and he loved to play. he often slighted his work shamefully, and sometimes her a little; that is why she hated it--elnora, what are you making me do?" the tears were rolling down elnora's cheeks. "oh, aunt margaret," she sobbed. "why haven't you told me about him sooner? i feel as if you had given my father to me living, so that i could touch him. i can see him, too! why didn't you ever tell me before? go on! go on!" "i can't, elnora! i'm scared silly. i never meant to say anything. if i hadn't promised her not to talk of him to you she wouldn't have let you come here. she made me swear it." "but why? why? was he a shame? was he disgraced?" "maybe it was that unjust feeling that took possession of her when she couldn't help him from the swamp. she had to blame some one, or go crazy, so she took it out on you. at times, those first ten years, if i had talked to you, and you had repeated anything to her, she might have struck you too hard. she was not master of herself. you must be patient with her, elnora. god only knows what she has gone through, but i think she is a little better, lately." "so do i," said elnora. "she seems more interested in my clothes, and she fixes me such delicious lunches that the girls bring fine candies and cake and beg to trade. i gave half my lunch for a box of candy one day, brought it home to her, and told her. since, she has wanted me to carry a market basket and treat the crowd every day, she was so pleased. life has been too monotonous for her. i think she enjoys even the little change made by my going and coming. she sits up half the night to read the library books i bring, but she is so stubborn she won't even admit that she touches them. tell me more about my father." "wait until i see if i can find the violin." so elnora went home in suspense, and that night she added to her prayers: "dear lord, be merciful to my father, and oh, do help aunt margaret to get his violin." wesley and billy came in to supper tired and hungry. billy ate heartily, but his eyes often rested on a plate of tempting cookies, and when wesley offered them to the boy he reached for one. margaret was compelled to explain that cookies were forbidden that night. "what!" said wesley. "wrong words been coming again. oh billy, i do wish you could remember! i can't sit and eat cookies before a little boy who has none. i'll have to put mine back, too." billy's face twisted in despair. "aw go on!" he said gruffly, but his chin was jumping, for wesley was his idol. "can't do it," said wesley. "it would choke me." billy turned to margaret. "you make him," he appealed. "he can't, billy," said margaret. "i know how he feels. you see, i can't myself." then billy slid from his chair, ran to the couch, buried his face in the pillow and cried heart-brokenly. wesley hurried to the barn, and margaret to the kitchen. when the dishes were washed billy slipped from the back door. wesley piling hay into the mangers heard a sound behind him and inquired, "that you, billy?" "yes," answered billy, "and it's all so dark you can't see me now, isn't it?" "well, mighty near," answered wesley. "then you stoop down and open your mouth." sinton had shared bites of apple and nuts for weeks, for billy had not learned how to eat anything without dividing with jimmy and belle. since he had been separated from them, he shared with wesley and margaret. so he bent over the boy and received an instalment of cooky that almost choked him. "now you can eat it!" shouted billy in delight. "it's all dark! i can't see what you're doing at all!" wesley picked up the small figure and set the boy on the back of a horse to bring his face level so that they could talk as men. he never towered from his height above billy, but always lifted the little soul when important matters were to be discussed. "now what a dandy scheme," he commented. "did you and aunt margaret fix it up?" "no. she ain't had hers yet. but i got one for her. ist as soon as you eat yours, i am going to take hers, and feed her first time i find her in the dark." "but billy, where did you get the cookies? you know aunt margaret said you were not to have any." "i ist took them," said billy, "i didn't take them for me. i ist took them for you and her." wesley thought fast. in the warm darkness of the barn the horses crunched their corn, a rat gnawed at a corner of the granary, and among the rafters the white pigeon cooed a soft sleepy note to his dusky mate. "did--did--i steal?" wavered billy. wesley's big hands closed until he almost hurt the boy. "no!" he said vehemently. "that is too big a word. you made a mistake. you were trying to be a fine little man, but you went at it the wrong way. you only made a mistake. all of us do that, billy. the world grows that way. when we make mistakes we can see them; that teaches us to be more careful the next time, and so we learn." "how wouldn't it be a mistake?" "if you had told aunt margaret what you wanted to do, and asked her for the cookies she would have given them to you." "but i was 'fraid she wouldn't, and you ist had to have it." "not if it was wrong for me to have it, billy. i don't want it that much." "must i take it back?" "you think hard, and decide yourself." "lift me down," said billy, after a silence, "i got to put this in the jar, and tell her." wesley set the boy on the floor, but as he did so he paused one second and strained him close to his breast. margaret sat in her chair sewing; billy slipped in and crept beside her. the little face was lined with tragedy. "why billy, whatever is the matter?" she cried as she dropped her sewing and held out her arms. billy stood back. he gripped his little fists tight and squared his shoulders. "i got to be shut up in the closet," he said. "oh billy! what an unlucky day! what have you done now?" "i stold!" gulped billy. "he said it was ist a mistake, but it was worser 'an that. i took something you told me i wasn't to have." "stole!" margaret was in despair. "what, billy?" "cookies!" answered billy in equal trouble. "billy!" wailed margaret. "how could you?" "it was for him and you," sobbed billy. "he said he couldn't eat it 'fore me, but out in the barn it's all dark and i couldn't see. i thought maybe he could there. then we might put out the light and you could have yours. he said i only made it worse, cos i mustn't take things, so i got to go in the closet. will you hold me tight a little bit first? he did." margaret opened her arms and billy rushed in and clung to her a few seconds, with all the force of his being, then he slipped to the floor and marched to the closet. margaret opened the door. billy gave one glance at the light, clinched his fists and, walking inside, climbed on a box. margaret closed the door. then she sat and listened. was the air pure enough? possibly he might smother. she had read something once. was it very dark? what if there should be a mouse in the closet and it should run across his foot and frighten him into spasms. somewhere she had heard-margaret leaned forward with tense face and listened. something dreadful might happen. she could bear it no longer. she arose hurriedly and opened the door. billy was drawn up on the box in a little heap, and he lifted a disapproving face to her. "shut that door!" he said. "i ain't been in here near long enough yet!" chapter x wherein elnora has more financial troubles, and mrs. comstock again hears the song of the limberlost the following night elnora hurried to sintons'. she threw open the back door and with anxious eyes searched margaret's face. "you got it!" panted elnora. "you got it! i can see by your face that you did. oh, give it to me!" "yes, i got it, honey, i got it all right, but don't be so fast. it had been kept in such a damp place it needed glueing, it had to have strings, and a key was gone. i knew how much you wanted it, so i sent wesley right to town with it. they said they could fix it good as new, but it should be varnished, and that it would take several days for the glue to set. you can have it saturday." "you found it where you thought it was? you know it's his?" "yes, it was just where i thought, and it's the same violin i've seen him play hundreds of times. it's all right, only laying so long it needs fixing." "oh aunt margaret! can i ever wait?" "it does seem a long time, but how could i help it? you couldn't do anything with it as it was. you see, it had been hidden away in a garret, and it needed cleaning and drying to make it fit to play again. you can have it saturday sure. but elnora, you've got to promise me that you will leave it here, or in town, and not let your mother get a hint of it. i don't know what she'd do." "uncle wesley can bring it here until monday. then i will take it to school so that i can practise at noon. oh, i don't know how to thank you. and there's more than the violin for which to be thankful. you've given me my father. last night i saw him plainly as life." "elnora you were dreaming!" "i know i was dreaming, but i saw him. i saw him so closely that a tiny white scar at the corner of his eyebrow showed. i was just reaching out to touch him when he disappeared." "who told you there was a scar on his forehead?" "no one ever did in all my life. i saw it last night as he went down. and oh, aunt margaret! i saw what she did, and i heard his cries! no matter what she does, i don't believe i ever can be angry with her again. her heart is broken, and she can't help it. oh, it was terrible, but i am glad i saw it. now, i will always understand." "i don't know what to make of that," said margaret. i don't believe in such stuff at all, but you couldn't make it up, for you didn't know." "i only know that i played the violin last night, as he played it, and while i played he came through the woods from the direction of carneys'. it was summer and all the flowers were in bloom. he wore gray trousers and a blue shirt, his head was bare, and his face was beautiful. i could almost touch him when he sank." margaret stood perplexed. "i don't know what to think of that!" she ejaculated. "i was next to the last person who saw him before he was drowned. it was late on a june afternoon, and he was dressed as you describe. he was bareheaded because he had found a quail's nest before the bird began to brood, and he gathered the eggs in his hat and left it in a fence corner to get on his way home; they found it afterward." "was he coming from carneys'?" "he was on that side of the quagmire. why he ever skirted it so close as to get caught is a mystery you will have to dream out. i never could understand it." "was he doing something he didn't want my mother to know?" "why?" "because if he had been, he might have cut close the swamp so he couldn't be seen from the garden. you know, the whole path straight to the pool where he sank can be seen from our back door. it's firm on our side. the danger is on the north and east. if he didn't want mother to know, he might have tried to pass on either of those sides and gone too close. was he in a hurry?" "yes, he was," said margaret. "he had been away longer than he expected, and he almost ran when he started home." "and he'd left his violin somewhere that you knew, and you went and got it. i'll wager he was going to play, and didn't want mother to find it out!" "it wouldn't make any difference to you if you knew every little thing, so quit thinking about it, and just be glad you are to have what he loved best of anything." "that's true. now i must hurry home. i am dreadfully late." elnora sprang up and ran down the road, but when she approached the cabin she climbed the fence, crossed the open woods pasture diagonally and entered at the back garden gate. as she often came that way when she had been looking for cocoons her mother asked no questions. elnora lived by the minute until saturday, when, contrary to his usual custom, wesley went to town in the forenoon, taking her along to buy some groceries. wesley drove straight to the music store, and asked for the violin he had left to be mended. in its new coat of varnish, with new keys and strings, it seemed much like any other violin to sinton, but to elnora it was the most beautiful instrument ever made, and a priceless treasure. she held it in her arms, touched the strings softly and then she drew the bow across them in whispering measure. she had no time to think what a remarkably good bow it was for sixteen years' disuse. the tan leather case might have impressed her as being in fine condition also, had she been in a state to question anything. she did remember to ask for the bill and she was gravely presented with a slip calling for four strings, one key, and a coat of varnish, total, one dollar fifty. it seemed to elnora she never could put the precious instrument in the case and start home. wesley left her in the music store where the proprietor showed her all he could about tuning, and gave her several beginners' sheets of notes and scales. she carried the violin in her arms as far as the crossroads at the corner of their land, then reluctantly put it under the carriage seat. as soon as her work was done she ran down to sintons' and began to play, and on monday the violin went to school with her. she made arrangements with the superintendent to leave it in his office and scarcely took time for her food at noon, she was so eager to practise. often one of the girls asked her to stay in town all night for some lecture or entertainment. she could take the violin with her, practise, and secure help. her skill was so great that the leader of the orchestra offered to give her lessons if she would play to pay for them, so her progress was rapid in technical work. but from the first day the instrument became hers, with perfect faith that she could play as her father did, she spent half her practice time in imitating the sounds of all outdoors and improvising the songs her happy heart sang in those days. so the first year went, and the second and third were a repetition; but the fourth was different, for that was the close of the course, ending with graduation and all its attendant ceremonies and expenses. to elnora these appeared mountain high. she had hoarded every cent, thinking twice before she parted with a penny, but teaching natural history in the grades had taken time from her studies in school which must be made up outside. she was a conscientious student, ranking first in most of her classes, and standing high in all branches. her interest in her violin had grown with the years. she went to school early and practised half an hour in the little room adjoining the stage, while the orchestra gathered. she put in a full hour at noon, and remained another half hour at night. she carried the violin to sintons' on saturday and practised all the time she could there, while margaret watched the road to see that mrs. comstock was not coming. she had become so skilful that it was a delight to hear her play music of any composer, but when she played her own, that was joy inexpressible, for then the wind blew, the water rippled, the limberlost sang her songs of sunshine, shadow, black storm, and white night. since her dream elnora had regarded her mother with peculiar tenderness. the girl realized, in a measure, what had happened. she avoided anything that possibly could stir bitter memories or draw deeper a line on the hard, white face. this cost many sacrifices, much work, and sometimes delayed progress, but the horror of that awful dream remained with elnora. she worked her way cheerfully, doing all she could to interest her mother in things that happened in school, in the city, and by carrying books that were entertaining from the public library. three years had changed elnora from the girl of sixteen to the very verge of womanhood. she had grown tall, round, and her face had the loveliness of perfect complexion, beautiful eyes and hair and an added touch from within that might have been called comprehension. it was a compound of self-reliance, hard knocks, heart hunger, unceasing work, and generosity. there was no form of suffering with which the girl could not sympathize, no work she was afraid to attempt, no subject she had investigated she did not understand. these things combined to produce a breadth and depth of character altogether unusual. she was so absorbed in her classes and her music that she had not been able to gather many specimens. when she realized this and hunted assiduously, she soon found that changing natural conditions had affected such work. men all around were clearing available land. the trees fell wherever corn would grow. the swamp was broken by several gravel roads, dotted in places around the edge with little frame houses, and the machinery of oil wells; one especially low place around the region of freckles's room was nearly all that remained of the original. wherever the trees fell the moisture dried, the creeks ceased to flow, the river ran low, and at times the bed was dry. with unbroken sweep the winds of the west came, gathering force with every mile and howled and raved; threatening to tear the shingles from the roof, blowing the surface from the soil in clouds of fine dust and rapidly changing everything. from coming in with two or three dozen rare moths in a day, in three years' time elnora had grown to be delighted with finding two or three. big pursy caterpillars could not be picked from their favourite bushes, when there were no bushes. dragonflies would not hover over dry places, and butterflies became scarce in proportion to the flowers, while no land yields over three crops of indian relics. all the time the expense of books, clothing and incidentals had continued. elnora added to her bank account whenever she could, and drew out when she was compelled, but she omitted the important feature of calling for a balance. so, one early spring morning in the last quarter of the fourth year, she almost fainted when she learned that her funds were gone. commencement with its extra expense was coming, she had no money, and very few cocoons to open in june, which would be too late. she had one collection for the bird woman complete to a pair of imperialis moths, and that was her only asset. on the day she added these big yellow emperors she had been promised a check for three hundred dollars, but she would not get it until these specimens were secured. she remembered that she never had found an emperor before june. moreover, that sum was for her first year in college. then she would be of age, and she meant to sell enough of her share of her father's land to finish. she knew her mother would oppose her bitterly in that, for mrs. comstock had clung to every acre and tree that belonged to her husband. her land was almost complete forest where her neighbours owned cleared farms, dotted with wells that every hour sucked oil from beneath her holdings, but she was too absorbed in the grief she nursed to know or care. the brushwood road and the redredging of the big limberlost ditch had been more than she could pay from her income, and she had trembled before the wicket as she asked the banker if she had funds to pay it, and wondered why he laughed when he assured her she had. for mrs. comstock had spent no time on compounding interest, and never added the sums she had been depositing through nearly twenty years. now she thought her funds were almost gone, and every day she worried over expenses. she could see no reason in going through the forms of graduation when pupils had all in their heads that was required to graduate. elnora knew she had to have her diploma in order to enter the college she wanted to attend, but she did not dare utter the word, until high school was finished, for, instead of softening as she hoped her mother had begun to do, she seemed to remain very much the same. when the girl reached the swamp she sat on a log and thought over the expense she was compelled to meet. every member of her particular set was having a large photograph taken to exchange with the others. elnora loved these girls and boys, and to say she could not have their pictures to keep was more than she could endure. each one would give to all the others a handsome graduation present. she knew they would prepare gifts for her whether she could make a present in return or not. then it was the custom for each graduating class to give a great entertainment and use the funds to present the school with a statue for the entrance hall. elnora had been cast for and was practising a part in that performance. she was expected to furnish her dress and personal necessities. she had been told that she must have a green gauze dress, and where was it to come from? every girl of the class would have three beautiful new frocks for commencement: one for the baccalaureate sermon, another, which could be plain, for graduation exercises, and a handsome one for the banquet and ball. elnora faced the past three years and wondered how she could have spent so much money and not kept account of it. she did not realize where it had gone. she did not know what she could do now. she thought over the photographs, and at last settled that question to her satisfaction. she studied longer over the gifts, ten handsome ones there must be, and at last decided she could arrange for them. the green dress came first. the lights would be dim in the scene, and the setting deep woods. she could manage that. she simply could not have three dresses. she would have to get a very simple one for the sermon and do the best she could for graduation. whatever she got for that must be made with a guimpe that could be taken out to make it a little more festive for the ball. but where could she get even two pretty dresses? the only hope she could see was to break into the collection of the man from india, sell some moths, and try to replace them in june. but in her soul she knew that never would do. no june ever brought just the things she hoped it would. if she spent the college money she knew she could not replace it. if she did not, the only way was to secure a room in the grades and teach a year. her work there had been so appreciated that elnora felt with the recommendation she knew she could get from the superintendent and teachers she could secure a position. she was sure she could pass the examinations easily. she had once gone on saturday, taken them and secured a license for a year before she left the brushwood school. she wanted to start to college when the other girls were going. if she could make the first year alone, she could manage the remainder. but make that first year herself, she must. instead of selling any of her collection, she must hunt as she never before had hunted and find a yellow emperor. she had to have it, that was all. also, she had to have those dresses. she thought of wesley and dismissed it. she thought of the bird woman, and knew she could not tell her. she thought of every way in which she ever had hoped to earn money and realized that with the play, committee meetings, practising, and final examinations she scarcely had time to live, much less to do more than the work required for her pictures and gifts. again elnora was in trouble, and this time it seemed the worst of all. it was dark when she arose and went home. "mother," she said, "i have a piece of news that is decidedly not cheerful." "then keep it to yourself!" said mrs. comstock. "i think i have enough to bear without a great girl like you piling trouble on me." "my money is all gone!" said elnora. "well, did you think it would last forever? it's been a marvel to me that it's held out as well as it has, the way you've dressed and gone." "i don't think i've spent any that i was not compelled to," said elnora. "i've dressed on just as little as i possibly could to keep going. i am heartsick. i thought i had over fifty dollars to put me through commencement, but they tell me it is all gone." "fifty dollars! to put you through commencement! what on earth are you proposing to do?" "the same as the rest of them, in the very cheapest way possible." "and what might that be?" elnora omitted the photographs, the gifts and the play. she told only of the sermon, graduation exercises, and the ball. "well, i wouldn't trouble myself over that," sniffed mrs. comstock. "if you want to go to a sermon, put on the dress you always use for meeting. if you need white for the exercises wear the new dress you got last spring. as for the ball, the best thing for you to do is to stay a mile away from such folly. in my opinion you'd best bring home your books, and quit right now. you can't be fixed like the rest of them, don't be so foolish as to run into it. just stay here and let these last few days go. you can't learn enough more to be of any account." "but, mother," gasped elnora. "you don't understand!" "oh, yes, i do!" said mrs. comstock. "i understand perfectly. so long as the money lasted, you held up your head, and went sailing without even explaining how you got it from the stuff you gathered. goodness knows i couldn't see. but now it's gone, you come whining to me. what have i got? have you forgot that the ditch and the road completely strapped me? i haven't any money. there's nothing for you to do but get out of it." "i can't!" said elnora desperately. "i've gone on too long. it would make a break in everything. they wouldn't let me have my diploma!" "what's the difference? you've got the stuff in your head. i wouldn't give a rap for a scrap of paper. that don't mean anything!" "but i've worked four years for it, and i can't enter-i ought to have it to help me get a school, when i want to teach. if i don't have my grades to show, people will think i quit because i couldn't pass my examinations. i must have my diploma!" "then get it!" said mrs. comstock. "the only way is to graduate with the others." "well, graduate if you are bound to!" "but i can't, unless i have things enough like the class, that i don't look as i did that first day." "well, please remember i didn't get you into this, and i can't get you out. you are set on having your own way. go on, and have it, and see how you like it!" elnora went upstairs and did not come down again that night, which her mother called pouting. "i've thought all night," said the girl at breakfast, "and i can't see any way but to borrow the money of uncle wesley and pay it back from some that the bird woman will owe me, when i get one more specimen. but that means that i can't go to--that i will have to teach this winter, if i can get a city grade or a country school." "just you dare go dinging after wesley sinton for money," cried mrs. comstock. "you won't do any such a thing!" "i can't see any other way. i've got to have the money!" "quit, i tell you!" "i can't quit!--i've gone too far!" "well then, let me get your clothes, and you can pay me back." "but you said you had no money!" "maybe i can borrow some at the bank. then you can return it when the bird woman pays you." "all right," said elnora. "i don't need expensive things. just some kind of a pretty cheap white dress for the sermon, and a white one a little better than i had last summer, for commencement and the ball. i can use the white gloves and shoes i got myself for last year, and you can get my dress made at the same place you did that one. they have my measurements, and do perfect work. don't get expensive things. it will be warm so i can go bareheaded." then she started to school, but was so tired and discouraged she scarcely could walk. four years' plans going in one day! for she felt that if she did not start to college that fall she never would. instead of feeling relieved at her mother's offer, she was almost too ill to go on. for the thousandth time she groaned: "oh, why didn't i keep account of my money?" after that the days passed so swiftly she scarcely had time to think, but several trips her mother made to town, and the assurance that everything was all right, satisfied elnora. she worked very hard to pass good final examinations and perfect herself for the play. for two days she had remained in town with the bird woman in order to spend more time practising and at her work. often margaret had asked about her dresses for graduation, and elnora had replied that they were with a woman in the city who had made her a white dress for last year's commencement when she was a junior usher, and they would be all right. so margaret, wesley, and billy concerned themselves over what they would give her for a present. margaret suggested a beautiful dress. wesley said that would look to every one as if she needed dresses. the thing was to get a handsome gift like all the others would have. billy wanted to present her a five-dollar gold piece to buy music for her violin. he was positive elnora would like that best of anything. it was toward the close of the term when they drove to town one evening to try to settle this important question. they knew mrs. comstock had been alone several days, so they asked her to accompany them. she had been more lonely than she would admit, filled with unusual unrest besides, and so she was glad to go. but before they had driven a mile billy had told that they were going to buy elnora a graduation present, and mrs. comstock devoutly wished that she had remained at home. she was prepared when billy asked: "aunt kate, what are you going to give elnora when she graduates?" "plenty to eat, a good bed to sleep in, and do all the work while she trollops," answered mrs. comstock dryly. billy reflected. "i guess all of them have that," he said. "i mean a present you buy at the store, like christmas?" "it is only rich folks who buy presents at stores," replied mrs.comstock. "i can't afford it." "well, we ain't rich," he said, "but we are going to buy elnora something as fine as the rest of them have if we sell a corner of the farm. uncle wesley said so." "a fool and his land are soon parted," said mrs. comstock tersely. wesley and billy laughed, but margaret did not enjoy the remark. while they were searching the stores for something on which all of them could decide, and margaret was holding billy to keep him from saying anything before mrs. comstock about the music on which he was determined, mr. brownlee met wesley and stopped to shake hands. "i see your boy came out finely," he said. "i don't allow any boy anywhere to be finer than billy," said wesley. "i guess you don't allow any girl to surpass elnora," said mr. brownlee. "she comes home with ellen often, and my wife and i love her. ellen says she is great in her part to-night. best thing in the whole play! of course, you are in to see it! if you haven't reserved seats, you'd better start pretty soon, for the high school auditorium only seats a thousand. it's always jammed at these hometalent plays. all of us want to see how our children perform." "why yes, of course," said the bewildered wesley. then he hurried to margaret. "say," he said, "there is going to be a play at the high school to-night; and elnora is in it. why hasn't she told us?" "i don't know," said margaret, "but i'm going." "so am i," said billy. "me too!" said wesley, "unless you think for some reason she doesn't want us. looks like she would have told us if she had. i'm going to ask her mother." "yes, that's what's she's been staying in town for," said mrs. comstock. "it's some sort of a swindle to raise money for her class to buy some silly thing to stick up in the school house hall to remember them by. i don't know whether it's now or next week, but there's something of the kind to be done." "well, it's to-night," said wesley, "and we are going. it's my treat, and we've got to hurry or we won't get in. there are reserved seats, and we have none, so it's the gallery for us, but i don't care so i get to take one good peep at elnora." "s'pose she plays?" whispered margaret in his ear. "aw, tush! she couldn't!" said wesley. "well, she's been doing it three years in the orchestra, and working like a slave at it." "oh, well that's different. she's in the play to-night. brownlee told me so. come on, quick! we'll drive and hitch closest place we can find to the building." margaret went in the excitement of the moment, but she was troubled. when they reached the building wesley tied the team to a railing and billy sprang out to help margaret. mrs. comstock sat still. "come on, kate," said wesley, reaching his hand. "i'm not going anywhere," said mrs. comstock, settling comfortably back against the cushions. all of them begged and pleaded, but it was no use. not an inch would mrs. comstock budge. the night was warm and the carriage comfortable, the horses were securely hitched. she did not care to see what idiotic thing a pack of school children were doing, she would wait until the sintons returned. wesley told her it might be two hours, and she said she did not care if it were four, so they left her. "did you ever see such----?" "cookies!" cried billy. "such blamed stubbornness in all your life?" demanded wesley. "won't come to see as fine a girl as elnora in a stage performance. why, i wouldn't miss it for fifty dollars! "i think it's a blessing she didn't," said margaret placidly. "i begged unusually hard so she wouldn't. i'm scared of my life for fear elnora will play." they found seats near the door where they could see fairly well. billy stood at the back of the hall and had a good view. by and by, a great volume of sound welled from the orchestra, but elnora was not playing. "told you so!" said sinton. "got a notion to go out and see if kate won't come now. she can take my seat, and i'll stand with billy." "you sit still!" said margaret emphatically. "this is not over yet." so wesley remained in his seat. the play opened and progressed very much as all high school plays have gone for the past fifty years. but elnora did not appear in any of the scenes. out in the warm summer night a sour, grim woman nursed an aching heart and tried to justify herself. the effort irritated her intensely. she felt that she could not afford the things that were being done. the old fear of losing the land that she and robert comstock had purchased and started clearing was strong upon her. she was thinking of him, how she needed him, when the orchestra music poured from the open windows near her. mrs. comstock endured it as long as she could, and then slipped from the carriage and fled down the street. she did not know how far she went or how long she stayed, but everything was still, save an occasional raised voice when she wandered back. she stood looking at the building. slowly she entered the wide gates and followed up the walk. elnora had been coming here for almost four years. when mrs. comstock reached the door she looked inside. the wide hall was lighted with electricity, and the statuary and the decorations of the walls did not seem like pieces of foolishness. the marble appeared pure, white, and the big pictures most interesting. she walked the length of the hall and slowly read the titles of the statues and the names of the pupils who had donated them. she speculated on where the piece elnora's class would buy could be placed to advantage. then she wondered if they were having a large enough audience to buy marble. she liked it better than the bronze, but it looked as if it cost more. how white the broad stairway was! elnora had been climbing those stairs for years and never told her they were marble. of course, she thought they were wood. probably the upper hall was even grander than this. she went over to the fountain, took a drink, climbed to the first landing and looked around her, and then without thought to the second. there she came opposite the wide-open doors and the entrance to the auditorium packed with people and a crowd standing outside. when they noticed a tall woman with white face and hair and black dress, one by one they stepped a little aside, so that mrs. comstock could see the stage. it was covered with curtains, and no one was doing anything. just as she turned to go a sound so faint that every one leaned forward and listened, drifted down the auditorium. it was difficult to tell just what it was; after one instant half the audience looked toward the windows, for it seemed only a breath of wind rustling freshly opened leaves; merely a hint of stirring air. then the curtains were swept aside swiftly. the stage had been transformed into a lovely little corner of creation, where trees and flowers grew and moss carpeted the earth. a soft wind blew and it was the gray of dawn. suddenly a robin began to sing, then a song sparrow joined him, and then several orioles began talking at once. the light grew stronger, the dew drops trembled, flower perfume began to creep out to the audience; the air moved the branches gently and a rooster crowed. then all the scene was shaken with a babel of bird notes in which you could hear a cardinal whistling, and a blue finch piping. back somewhere among the high branches a dove cooed and then a horse neighed shrilly. that set a blackbird crying, "t'check," and a whole flock answered it. the crows began to caw and a lamb bleated. then the grosbeaks, chats, and vireos had something to say, and the sun rose higher, the light grew stronger and the breeze rustled the treetops loudly; a cow bawled and the whole barnyard answered. the guineas were clucking, the turkey gobbler strutting, the hens calling, the chickens cheeping, the light streamed down straight overhead and the bees began to hum. the air stirred strongly, and away in an unseen field a reaper clacked and rattled through ripening wheat while the driver whistled. an uneasy mare whickered to her colt, the colt answered, and the light began to decline. miles away a rooster crowed for twilight, and dusk was coming down. then a catbird and a brown thrush sang against a grosbeak and a hermit thrush. the air was tremulous with heavenly notes, the lights went out in the hall, dusk swept across the stage, a cricket sang and a katydid answered, and a wood pewee wrung the heart with its lonesome cry. then a night hawk screamed, a whippoor-will complained, a belated killdeer swept the sky, and the night wind sang a louder song. a little screech owl tuned up in the distance, a barn owl replied, and a great horned owl drowned both their voices. the moon shone and the scene was warm with mellow light. the bird voices died and soft exquisite melody began to swell and roll. in the centre of the stage, piece by piece the grasses, mosses and leaves dropped from an embankment, the foliage softly blew away, while plainer and plainer came the outlines of a lovely girl figure draped in soft clinging green. in her shower of bright hair a few green leaves and white blossoms clung, and they fell over her robe down to her feet. her white throat and arms were bare, she leaned forward a little and swayed with the melody, her eyes fast on the clouds above her, her lips parted, a pink tinge of exercise in her cheeks as she drew her bow. she played as only a peculiar chain of circumstances puts it in the power of a very few to play. all nature had grown still, the violin sobbed, sang, danced and quavered on alone, no voice in particular; the soul of the melody of all nature combined in one great outpouring. at the doorway, a white-faced woman endured it as long as she could and then fell senseless. the men nearest carried her down the hall to the fountain, revived her, and then placed her in the carriage to which she directed them. the girl played on and never knew. when she finished, the uproar of applause sounded a block down the street, but the half-senseless woman scarcely realized what it meant. then the girl came to the front of the stage, bowed, and lifting the violin she played her conception of an invitation to dance. every living soul within sound of her notes strained their nerves to sit still and let only their hearts dance with her. when that began the woman ran toward the country. she never stopped until the carriage overtook her half-way to her cabin. she said she had grown tired of sitting, and walked on ahead. that night she asked billy to remain with her and sleep on elnora's bed. then she pitched headlong upon her own, and suffered agony of soul such as she never before had known. the swamp had sent back the soul of her loved dead and put it into the body of the daughter she resented, and it was almost more than she could endure and live. chapter xi wherein elnora graduates, and freckles and the angel send gifts that was friday night. elnora came home saturday morning and began work. mrs. comstock asked no questions, and the girl only told her that the audience had been large enough to more than pay for the piece of statuary the class had selected for the hall. then she inquired about her dresses and was told they would be ready for her. she had been invited to go to the bird woman's to prepare for both the sermon and commencement exercises. since there was so much practising to do, it had been arranged that she should remain there from the night of the sermon until after she was graduated. if mrs. comstock decided to attend she was to drive in with the sintons. when elnora begged her to come she said she cared nothing about such silliness. it was almost time for wesley to come to take elnora to the city, when fresh from her bath, and dressed to her outer garment, she stood with expectant face before her mother and cried: "now my dress, mother!" mrs. comstock was pale as she replied: "it's on my bed. help yourself." elnora opened the door and stepped into her mother's room with never a misgiving. since the night margaret and wesley had brought her clothing, when she first started to school, her mother had selected all of her dresses, with mrs. sinton's help made most of them, and elnora had paid the bills. the white dress of the previous spring was the first made at a dressmaker's. she had worn that as junior usher at commencement; but her mother had selected the material, had it made, and it had fitted perfectly and had been suitable in every way. so with her heart at rest on that point, elnora hurried to the bed to find only her last summer's white dress, freshly washed and ironed. for an instant she stared at it, then she picked up the garment, looked at the bed beneath it, and her gaze slowly swept the room. it was unfamiliar. perhaps this was the third time she had been in it since she was a very small child. her eyes ranged over the beautiful walnut dresser, the tall bureau, the big chest, inside which she never had seen, and the row of masculine attire hanging above it. somewhere a dainty lawn or mull dress simply must be hanging: but it was not. elnora dropped on the chest because she felt too weak to stand. in less than two hours she must be in the church, at onabasha. she could not wear a last year's washed dress. she had nothing else. she leaned against the wall and her father's overcoat brushed her face. she caught the folds and clung to it with all her might. "oh father! father!" she moaned. "i need you! i don't believe you would have done this!" at last she opened the door. "i can't find my dress," she said. "well, as it's the only one there i shouldn't think it would be much trouble." "you mean for me to wear an old washed dress to-night?" "it's a good dress. there isn't a hole in it! there's no reason on earth why you shouldn't wear it." "except that i will not," said elnora. "didn't you provide any dress for commencement, either?" "if you soil that to-night, i've plenty of time to wash it again." wesley's voice called from the gate. "in a minute," answered elnora. she ran upstairs and in an incredibly short time came down wearing one of her gingham school dresses. her face cold and hard, she passed her mother and went into the night. half an hour later margaret and billy stopped for mrs. comstock with the carriage. she had determined fully that she would not go before they called. with the sound of their voices a sort of horror of being left seized her, so she put on her hat, locked the door and went out to them. "how did elnora look?" inquired margaret anxiously. "like she always does," answered mrs. comstock curtly. "i do hope her dresses are as pretty as the others," said margaret. "none of them will have prettier faces or nicer ways." wesley was waiting before the big church to take care of the team. as they stood watching the people enter the building, mrs. comstock felt herself growing ill. when they went inside among the lights, saw the flower-decked stage, and the masses of finely dressed people, she grew no better. she could hear margaret and billy softly commenting on what was being done. "that first chair in the very front row is elnora's," exulted billy, "cos she's got the highest grades, and so she gets to lead the procession to the platform." "the first chair!" "lead the procession!" mrs. comstock was dumbfounded. the notes of the pipe organ began to fill the building in a slow rolling march. would elnora lead the procession in a gingham dress? or would she be absent and her chair vacant on this great occasion? for now, mrs. comstock could see that it was a great occasion. every one would remember how elnora had played a few nights before, and they would miss her and pity her. pity? because she had no one to care for her. because she was worse off than if she had no mother. for the first time in her life, mrs. comstock began to study herself as she would appear to others. every time a junior girl came fluttering down the aisle, leading some one to a seat, and mrs. comstock saw a beautiful white dress pass, a wave of positive illness swept over her. what had she done? what would become of elnora? as elnora rode to the city, she answered wesley's questions in monosyllables so that he thought she was nervous or rehearsing her speech and did not care to talk. several times the girl tried to tell him and realized that if she said the first word it would bring uncontrollable tears. the bird woman opened the screen and stared unbelievingly. "why, i thought you would be ready; you are so late!" she said. "if you have waited to dress here, we must hurry." "i have nothing to put on," said elnora. in bewilderment the bird woman drew her inside. "did--did--" she faltered. "did you think you would wear that?" "no. i thought i would telephone ellen that there had been an accident and i could not come. i don't know yet how to explain. i'm too sick to think. oh, do you suppose i can get something made by tuesday, so that i can graduate?" "yes; and you'll get something on you to-night, so that you can lead your class, as you have done for four years. go to my room and take off that gingham, quickly. anna, drop everything, and come help me." the bird woman ran to the telephone and called ellen brownlee. "elnora has had an accident. she will be a little late," she said. "you have got to make them wait. have them play extra music before the march." then she turned to the maid. "tell benson to have the carriage at the gate, just as soon as he can get it there. then come to my room. bring the thread box from the sewing-room, that roll of wide white ribbon on the cutting table, and gather all the white pins from every dresser in the house. but first come with me a minute." "i want that trunk with the swamp angel's stuff in it, from the cedar closet," she panted as they reached the top of the stairs. they hurried down the hall together and dragged the big trunk to the bird woman's room. she opened it and began tossing out white stuff. "how lucky that she left these things!" she cried. "here are white shoes, gloves, stockings, fans, everything!" "i am all ready but a dress," said elnora. the bird woman began opening closets and pulling out drawers and boxes. "i think i can make it this way," she said. she snatched up a creamy lace yoke with long sleeves that recently had been made for her and held it out. elnora slipped into it, and the bird woman began smoothing out wrinkles and sewing in pins. it fitted very well with a little lapping in the back. next, from among the angel's clothing she caught up a white silk waist with low neck and elbow sleeves, and elnora put it on. it was large enough, but distressingly short in the waist, for the angel had worn it at a party when she was sixteen. the bird woman loosened the sleeves and pushed them to a puff on the shoulders, catching them in places with pins. she began on the wide draping of the yoke, fastening it front, back and at each shoulder. she pulled down the waist and pinned it. next came a soft white dress skirt of her own. by pinning her waist band quite four inches above elnora's, the bird woman could secure a perfect empire sweep, with the clinging silk. then she began with the wide white ribbon that was to trim a new frock for herself, bound it three times around the high waist effect she had managed, tied the ends in a knot and let them fall to the floor in a beautiful sash. "i want four white roses, each with two or three leaves," she cried. anna ran to bring them, while the bird woman added pins. "elnora," she said, "forgive me, but tell me truly. is your mother so poor as to make this necessary?" "no," answered elnora. "next year i am heir to my share of over three hundred acres of land covered with almost as valuable timber as was in the limberlost. we adjoin it. there could be thirty oil wells drilled that would yield to us the thousands our neighbours are draining from under us, and the bare land is worth over one hundred dollars an acre for farming. she is not poor, she is--i don't know what she is. a great trouble soured and warped her. it made her peculiar. she does not in the least understand, but it is because she doesn't care to, instead of ignorance. she does not----" elnora stopped. "she is--is different," finished the girl. anna came with the roses. the bird woman set one on the front of the draped yoke, one on each shoulder and the last among the bright masses of brown hair. then she turned the girl facing the tall mirror. "oh!" panted elnora. "you are a genius! why, i will look as well as any of them." "thank goodness for that!" cried the bird woman. "if it wouldn't do, i should have been ill. you are lovely; altogether lovely! ordinarily i shouldn't say that; but when i think of how you are carpentered, i'm admiring the result." the organ began rolling out the march as they came in sight. elnora took her place at the head of the procession, while every one wondered. secretly they had hoped that she would be dressed well enough, that she would not appear poor and neglected. what this radiant young creature, gowned in the most recent style, her smooth skin flushed with excitement, and a rose-set coronet of red gold on her head, had to do with the girl they knew was difficult to decide. the signal was given and elnora began the slow march across the vestry and down the aisle. the music welled softly, and margaret began to sob without knowing why. mrs. comstock gripped her hands together and shut her eyes. it seemed an eternity to the suffering woman before margaret caught her arm and whispered, "oh, kate! for any sake look at her! here! the aisle across!" mrs. comstock opened her eyes and directing them where she was told, gazed intently, and slid down in her seat close to collapse. she was saved by margaret's tense clasp and her command: "here! idiot! stop that!" in the blaze of light elnora climbed the steps to the palm-embowered platform, crossed it and took her place. sixty young men and women, each of them dressed the best possible, followed her. there were manly, finelooking men in that class which elnora led. there were girls of beauty and grace, but not one of them was handsomer or clothed in better taste than she. billy thought the time never would come when elnora would see him, but at last she met his eye, then margaret and wesley had faint signs of recognition in turn, but there was no softening of the girl's face and no hint of a smile when she saw her mother. heartsick, katharine comstock tried to prove to herself that she was justified in what she had done, but she could not. she tried to blame elnora for not saying that she was to lead a procession and sit on a platform in the sight of hundreds of people; but that was impossible, for she realized that she would have scoffed and not understood if she had been told. her heart pained until she suffered with every breath. when at last the exercises were over she climbed into the carriage and rode home without a word. she did not hear what margaret and billy were saying. she scarcely heard wesley, who drove behind, when he told her that elnora would not be home until wednesday. early the next morning mrs. comstock was on her way to onabasha. she was waiting when the brownlee store opened. she examined ready-made white dresses, but they had only one of the right size, and it was marked forty dollars. mrs. comstock did not hesitate over the price, but whether the dress would be suitable. she would have to ask elnora. she inquired her way to the home of the bird woman and knocked. "is elnora comstock here?" she asked the maid. "yes, but she is still in bed. i was told to let her sleep as long as she would." "maybe i could sit here and wait," said mrs. comstock. "i want to see about getting her a dress for to-morrow. i am her mother." "then you don't need wait or worry," said the girl cheerfully. "there are two women up in the sewing-room at work on a dress for her right now. it will be done in time, and it will be a beauty." mrs. comstock turned and trudged back to the limberlost. the bitterness in her soul became a physical actuality, which water would not wash from her lips. she was too late! she was not needed. another woman was mothering her girl. another woman would prepare a beautiful dress such as elnora had worn the previous night. the girl's love and gratitude would go to her. mrs. comstock tried the old process of blaming some one else, but she felt no better. she nursed her grief as closely as ever in the long days of the girl's absence. she brooded over elnora's possession of the forbidden violin and her ability to play it until the performance could not have been told from her father's. she tried every refuge her mind could conjure, to quiet her heart and remove the fear that the girl never would come home again, but it persisted. mrs. comstock could neither eat nor sleep. she wandered around the cabin and garden. she kept far from the pool where robert comstock had sunk from sight for she felt that it would entomb her also if elnora did not come home wednesday morning. the mother told herself that she would wait, but the waiting was as bitter as anything she ever had known. when elnora awoke monday another dress was in the hands of a seamstress and was soon fitted. it had belonged to the angel, and was a soft white thing that with a little alteration would serve admirably for commencement and the ball. all that day elnora worked, helping prepare the auditorium for the exercises, rehearsing the march and the speech she was to make in behalf of the class. the following day was even busier. but her mind was at rest, for the dress was a soft delicate lace easy to change, and the marks of alteration impossible to detect. the bird woman had telephoned to grand rapids, explained the situation and asked the angel if she might use it. the reply had been to give the girl the contents of the chest. when the bird woman told elnora, tears filled her eyes. "i will write at once and thank her," she said. "with all her beautiful gowns she does not need them, and i do. they will serve for me often, and be much finer than anything i could afford. it is lovely of her to give me the dress and of you to have it altered for me, as i never could." the bird woman laughed. "i feel religious to-day," she said. "you know the first and greatest rock of my salvation is `do unto others.' i'm only doing to you what there was no one to do for me when i was a girl very like you. anna tells me your mother was here early this morning and that she came to see about getting you a dress." "she is too late!" said elnora coldly. "she had over a month to prepare my dresses, and i was to pay for them, so there is no excuse." "nevertheless, she is your mother," said the bird woman, softly. "i think almost any kind of a mother must be better than none at all, and you say she has had great trouble." "she loved my father and he died," said elnora. "the same thing, in quite as tragic a manner, has happened to thousands of other women, and they have gone on with calm faces and found happiness in life by loving others. there was something else i am afraid i never shall forget; this i know i shall not, but talking does not help. i must deliver my presents and photographs to the crowd. i have a picture and i made a present for you, too, if you would care for them." "i shall love anything you give me," said the bird woman. "i know you well enough to know that whatever you do will be beautiful." elnora was pleased over that, and as she tried on her dress for the last fitting she was really happy. she was lovely in the dainty gown: it would serve finely for the ball and many other like occasions, and it was her very own. the bird woman's driver took elnora in the carriage and she called on all the girls with whom she was especially intimate, and left her picture and the package containing her gift to them. by the time she returned parcels for her were arriving. friends seemed to spring from everywhere. almost every one she knew had some gift for her, while because they so loved her the members of her crowd had made her beautiful presents. there were books, vases, silver pieces, handkerchiefs, fans, boxes of flowers and candy. one big package settled the trouble at sinton's, for it contained a dainty dress from margaret, a five-dollar gold piece, conspicuously labelled, "i earned this myself," from billy, with which to buy music; and a gorgeous cut-glass perfume bottle, it would have cost five dollars to fill with even a moderatepriced scent, from wesley. in an expressed crate was a fine curly-maple dressing table, sent by freckles. the drawers were filled with wonderful toilet articles from the angel. the bird woman added an embroidered linen cover and a small silver vase for a few flowers, so no girl of the class had finer gifts. elnora laid her head on the table sobbing happily, and the bird woman was almost crying herself. professor henley sent a butterfly book, the grade rooms in which elnora had taught gave her a set of volumes covering every phase of life afield, in the woods, and water. elnora had no time to read so she carried one of these books around with her hugging it as she went. after she had gone to dress a queer-looking package was brought by a small boy who hopped on one foot as he handed it in and said: "tell elnora that is from her ma." "who are you?" asked the bird woman as she took the bundle. "i'm billy!" announced the boy. "i gave her the five dollars. i earned it myself dropping corn, sticking onions, and pulling weeds. my, but you got to drop, and stick, and pull a lot before it's five dollars' worth." "would you like to come in and see elnora's gifts?" "yes, ma'am!" said billy, trying to stand quietly. "gee-mentley!" he gasped. "does elnora get all this?" "yes." "i bet you a thousand dollars i be first in my class when i graduate. say, have the others got a lot more than elnora?" "i think not." "well, uncle wesley said to find out if i could, and if she didn't have as much as the rest, he'd buy till she did, if it took a hundred dollars. say, you ought to know him! he's just scrumptious! there ain't anybody any where finer 'an he is. my, he's grand!" "i'm very sure of it!" said the bird woman. "i've often heard elnora say so." "i bet you nobody can beat this!" he boasted. then he stopped, thinking deeply. "i don't know, though," he began reflectively. "some of them are awful rich; they got big families to give them things and wagon loads of friends, and i haven't seen what they have. now, maybe elnora is getting left, after all!" "don't worry, billy," she said. "i will watch, and if i find elnora is `getting left' i'll buy her some more things myself. but i'm sure she is not. she has more beautiful gifts now than she will know what to do with, and others will come. tell your uncle wesley his girl is bountifully remembered, very happy, and she sends her dearest love to all of you. now you must go, so i can help her dress. you will be there to-night of course?" "yes, sir-ee! she got me a seat, third row from the front, middle section, so i can see, and she's going to wink at me, after she gets her speech off her mind. she kissed me, too! she's a perfect lady, elnora is. i'm going to marry her when i am big enough." "why isn't that splendid!" laughed the bird woman as she hurried upstairs. "dear!" she called. "here is another gift for you." elnora was half disrobed as she took the package and, sitting on a couch, opened it. the bird woman bent over her and tested the fabric with her fingers. "why, bless my soul!" she cried. "hand-woven, handembroidered linen, fine as silk. it's priceless' i haven't seen such things in years. my mother had garments like those when i was a child, but my sisters had them cut up for collars, belts, and fancy waists while i was small. look at the exquisite work!" "where could it have come from?" cried elnora. she shook out a petticoat, with a hand-wrought ruffle a foot deep, then an old-fashioned chemise the neck and sleeve work of which was elaborate and perfectly wrought. on the breast was pinned a note that she hastily opened. "i was married in these," it read, "and i had intended to be buried in them, but perhaps it would be more sensible for you to graduate and get married in them yourself, if you like. your mother." "from my mother!" wide-eyed, elnora looked at the bird woman. "i never in my life saw the like. mother does things i think i never can forgive, and when i feel hardest, she turns around and does something that makes me think she just must love me a little bit, after all. any of the girls would give almost anything to graduate in hand-embroidered linen like that. money can't buy such things. and they came when i was thinking she didn't care what became of me. do you suppose she can be insane?" "yes," said the bird woman. "wildly insane, if she does not love you and care what becomes of you." elnora arose and held the petticoat to her. "will you look at it?" she cried. "only imagine her not getting my dress ready, and then sending me such a petticoat as this! ellen would pay fifty dollars for it and never blink. i suppose mother has had it all my life, and i never saw it before." "go take your bath and put on those things," said the bird woman. "forget everything and be happy. she is not insane. she is embittered. she did not understand how things would be. when she saw, she came at once to provide you a dress. this is her way of saying she is sorry she did not get the other. you notice she has not spent any money, so perhaps she is quite honest in saying she has none." "oh, she is honest!" said elnora. "she wouldn't care enough to tell an untruth. she'd say just how things were, no matter what happened." soon elnora was ready for her dress. she never had looked so well as when she again headed the processional across the flower and palm decked stage of the high school auditorium. as she sat there she could have reached over and dropped a rose she carried into the seat she had occupied that september morning when she entered the high school. she spoke the few words she had to say in behalf of the class beautifully, had the tiny wink ready for billy, and the smile and nod of recognition for wesley and margaret. when at last she looked into the eyes of a white-faced woman next them, she slipped a hand to her side and raised her skirt the fraction of an inch, just enough to let the embroidered edge of a petticoat show a trifle. when she saw the look of relief which flooded her mother's face, elnora knew that forgiveness was in her heart, and that she would go home in the morning. it was late afternoon before she arrived, and a dray followed with a load of packages. mrs. comstock was overwhelmed. she sat half dazed and made elnora show her each costly and beautiful or simple and useful gift, tell her carefully what it was and from where it came. she studied the faces of elnora's particular friends. the gifts from them had to be set in a group. several times she started to speak and then stopped. at last, between her dry lips, came a harsh whisper. "elnora, what did you give back for these things?" "i'll show you," said elnora cheerfully. "i made the same gifts for the bird woman, aunt margaret and you if you care for it. but i have to run upstairs to get it." when she returned she handed her mother an oblong frame, hand carved, enclosing elnora's picture, taken by a schoolmate's camera. she wore her storm-coat and carried a dripping umbrella. from under it looked her bright face; her books and lunchbox were on her arm, and across the bottom of the frame was carved, "your country classmate." then she offered another frame. "i am strong on frames," she said. "they seemed to be the best i could do without money. i located the maple and the black walnut myself, in a little corner that had been overlooked between the river and the ditch. they didn't seem to belong to any one so i just took them. uncle wesley said it was all right, and he cut and hauled them for me. i gave the mill half of each tree for sawing and curing the remainder. then i gave the wood-carver half of that for making my frames. a photographer gave me a lot of spoiled plates, and i boiled off the emulsion, and took the specimens i framed from my stuff. the man said the white frames were worth three and a half, and the black ones five. i exchanged those little framed pictures for the photographs of the others. for presents, i gave each one of my crowd one like this, only a different moth. the bird woman gave me the birch bark. she got it up north last summer." elnora handed her mother a handsome black-walnut frame a foot and a half wide by two long. it finished a small, shallow glass-covered box of birch bark, to the bottom of which clung a big night moth with delicate pale green wings and long exquisite trailers. "so you see i did not have to be ashamed of my gifts," said elnora. "i made them myself and raised and mounted the moths." "moth, you call it," said mrs. comstock. "i've seen a few of the things before." "they are numerous around us every june night, or at least they used to be," said elnora. "i've sold hundreds of them, with butterflies, dragonflies, and other specimens. now, i must put away these and get to work, for it is almost june and there are a few more i want dreadfully. if i find them i will be paid some money for which i have been working." she was afraid to say college at that time. she thought it would be better to wait a few days and see if an opportunity would not come when it would work in more naturally. besides, unless she could secure the yellow emperor she needed to complete her collection, she could not talk college until she was of age, for she would have no money. chapter xii wherein margaret sinton reveals a secret, and mrs. comstock possesses the limberlost elnora, bring me the towel, quick!" cried mrs comstock. "in a minute, mother," mumbled elnora. she was standing before the kitchen mirror, tying the back part of her hair, while the front turned over her face. "hurry! there's a varmint of some kind!" elnora ran into the sitting-room and thrust the heavy kitchen towel into her mother's hand. mrs. comstock swung open the screen door and struck at some object, elnora tossed the hair from her face so that she could see past her mother. the girl screamed wildly. "don't! mother, don't!" mrs. comstock struck again. elnora caught her arm. "it's the one i want! it's worth a lot of money! don't! oh, you shall not!" "shan't, missy?" blazed mrs. comstock. "when did you get to bossing me?" the hand that held the screen swept a half-circle and stopped at elnora's cheek. she staggered with the blow, and across her face, paled with excitement, a red mark arose rapidly. the screen slammed shut, throwing the creature on the floor before them. instantly mrs. comstock crushed it with her foot. elnora stepped back. excepting the red mark, her face was very white. "that was the last moth i needed," she said, "to complete a collection worth three hundred dollars. you've ruined it before my eyes!" "moth!" cried mrs. comstock. "you say that because you are mad. moths have big wings. i know a moth!" "i've kept things from you," said elnora, "because i didn't dare confide in you. you had no sympathy with me. but you know i never told you untruths in all my life." "it's no moth!" reiterated mrs. comstock. "it is!" cried elnora. "it's from a case in the ground. its wings take two or three hours to expand and harden." "if i had known it was a moth----" mrs. comstock wavered. "you did know! i told you! i begged you to stop! it meant just three hundred dollars to me." "bah! three hundred fiddlesticks!" "they are what have paid for books, tuition, and clothes for the past four years. they are what i could have started on to college. you've ruined the very one i needed. you never made any pretence of loving me. at last i'll be equally frank with you. i hate you! you are a selfish, wicked woman! i hate you!" elnora turned, went through the kitchen and from the back door. she followed the garden path to the gate and walked toward the swamp a short distance when reaction overtook her. she dropped on the ground and leaned against a big log. when a little child, desperate as now, she had tried to die by holding her breath. she had thought in that way to make her mother sorry, but she had learned that life was a thing thrust upon her and she could not leave it at her wish. she was so stunned over the loss of that moth, which she had childishly named the yellow emperor, that she scarcely remembered the blow. she had thought no luck in all the world would be so rare as to complete her collection; now she had been forced to see a splendid imperialis destroyed before her. there was a possibility that she could find another, but she was facing the certainty that the one she might have had and with which she undoubtedly could have attracted others, was spoiled by her mother. how long she sat there elnora did not know or care. she simply suffered in dumb, abject misery, an occasional dry sob shaking her. aunt margaret was right. elnora felt that morning that her mother never would be any different. the girl had reached the place where she realized that she could endure it no longer. as elnora left the room, mrs. comstock took one step after her. "you little huzzy!" she gasped. but elnora was gone. her mother stood staring. "she never did lie to me," she muttered. "i guess it was a moth. and the only one she needed to get three hundred dollars, she said. i wish i hadn't been so fast! i never saw anything like it. i thought it was some deadly, stinging, biting thing. a body does have to be mighty careful here. but likely i've spilt the milk now. pshaw! she can find another! there's no use to be foolish. maybe moths are like snakes, where there's one, there are two." mrs. comstock took the broom and swept the moth out of the door. then she got down on her knees and carefully examined the steps, logs and the earth of the flower beds at each side. she found the place where the creature had emerged from the ground, and the hard, dark-brown case which had enclosed it, still wet inside. then she knew elnora had been right. it was a moth. its wings had been damp and not expanded. mrs. comstock never before had seen one in that state, and she did not know how they originated. she had thought all of them came from cases spun on trees or against walls or boards. she had seen only enough to know that there were such things; as a flash of white told her that an ermine was on her premises, or a sharp "buzzzzz" warned her of a rattler. so it was from creatures like that elnora had secured her school money. in one sickening sweep there rushed into the heart of the woman a full realization of the width of the gulf that separated her from her child. lately many things had pointed toward it, none more plainly than when elnora, like a reincarnation of her father, had stood fearlessly before a large city audience and played with even greater skill than he, on what mrs. comstock felt very certain was his violin. but that little crawling creature of earth, crushed by her before its splendid yellow and lavender wings could spread and carry it into the mystery of night, had performed a miracle. "we are nearer strangers to each other than we are with any of the neighbours," she muttered. so one of the almighty's most delicate and beautiful creations was sacrificed without fulfilling the law, yet none of its species ever served so glorious a cause, for at last mrs. comstock's inner vision had cleared. she went through the cabin mechanically. every few minutes she glanced toward the back walk to see if elnora were coming. she knew arrangements had been made with margaret to go to the city some time that day, so she grew more nervous and uneasy every moment. she was haunted by the fear that the blow might discolour elnora's cheek; that she would tell margaret. she went down the back walk, looking intently in all directions, left the garden and followed the swamp path. her step was noiseless on the soft, black earth, and soon she came close enough to see elnora. mrs. comstock stood looking at the girl in troubled uncertainty. not knowing what to say, at last she turned and went back to the cabin. noon came and she prepared dinner, calling, as she always did, when elnora was in the garden, but she got no response, and the girl did not come. a little after one o'clock margaret stopped at the gate. "elnora has changed her mind. she is not going," called mrs. comstock. she felt that she hated margaret as she hitched her horse and came up the walk instead of driving on. "you must be mistaken," said margaret. "i was going on purpose for her. she asked me to take her. i had no errand. where is she?" "i will call her," said mrs. comstock. she followed the path again, and this time found elnora sitting on the log. her face was swollen and discoloured, and her eyes red with crying. she paid no attention to her mother. "mag sinton is here," said mrs. comstock harshly. "i told her you had changed your mind, but she said you asked her to go with you, and she had nothing to go for herself." elnora arose, recklessly waded through the deep swamp grasses and so reached the path ahead of her mother. mrs. comstock followed as far as the garden, but she could not enter the cabin. she busied herself among the vegetables, barely looking up when the back-door screen slammed noisily. margaret sinton approached colourless, her eyes so angry that mrs. comstock shrank back. "what's the matter with elnora's face?" demanded margaret. mrs. comstock made no reply. "you struck her, did you?" "i thought you wasn't blind!" "i have been, for twenty long years now, kate comstock," said margaret sinton, "but my eyes are open at last. what i see is that i've done you no good and elnora a big wrong. i had an idea that it would kill you to know, but i guess you are tough enough to stand anything. kill or cure, you get it now!" "what are you frothing about?" coolly asked mrs. comstock. "you!" cried margaret. "you! the woman who doesn't pretend to love her only child. who lets her grow to a woman, as you have let elnora, and can't be satisfied with every sort of neglect, but must add abuse yet; and all for a fool idea about a man who wasn't worth his salt!" mrs. comstock picked up a hoe. "go right on!" she said. "empty yourself. it's the last thing you'll ever do!" "then i'll make a tidy job of it," said margaret. "you'll not touch me. you'll stand there and hear the truth at last, and because i dare face you and tell it, you will know in your soul it is truth. when robert comstock shaved that quagmire out there so close he went in, he wanted to keep you from knowing where he was coming from. he'd been to see elvira carney. they had plans to go to a dance that night----" "close your lips!" said mrs. comstock in a voice of deadly quiet. "you know i wouldn't dare open them if i wasn't telling you the truth. i can prove what i say. i was coming from reeds. it was hot in the woods and i stopped at carney's as i passed for a drink. elvira's bedridden old mother heard me, and she was so crazy for some one to talk with, i stepped in a minute. i saw robert come down the path. elvira saw him, too, so she ran out of the house to head him off. it looked funny, and i just deliberately moved where i could see and hear. he brought her his violin, and told her to get ready and meet him in the woods with it that night, and they would go to a dance. she took it and hid it in the loft to the well-house and promised she'd go." "are you done?" demanded mrs. comstock. "no. i am going to tell you the whole story. you don't spare elnora anything. i shan't spare you. i hadn't been here that day, but i can tell you just how he was dressed, which way he went and every word they said, though they thought i was busy with her mother and wouldn't notice them. put down your hoe, kate. i went to elvira, told her what i knew and made her give me comstock's violin for elnora over three years ago. she's been playing it ever since. i won't see her slighted and abused another day on account of a man who would have broken your heart if he had lived. six months more would have showed you what everybody else knew. he was one of those men who couldn't trust himself, and so no woman was safe with him. now, will you drop grieving over him, and do elnora justice?" mrs. comstock grasped the hoe tighter and turning she went down the walk, and started across the woods to the home of elvira carney. with averted head she passed the pool, steadily pursuing her way. elvira carney, hanging towels across the back fence, saw her coming and went toward the gate to meet her. twenty years she had dreaded that visit. since margaret sinton had compelled her to produce the violin she had hidden so long, because she was afraid to destroy it, she had come closer expectation than dread. the wages of sin are the hardest debts on earth to pay, and they are always collected at inconvenient times and unexpected places. mrs. comstock's face and hair were so white, that her dark eyes seemed burned into their setting. silently she stared at the woman before her a long time. "i might have saved myself the trouble of coming," she said at last, "i see you are guilty as sin!" "what has mag sinton been telling you?" panted the miserable woman, gripping the fence. "the truth!" answered mrs. comstock succinctly. "guilt is in every line of your face, in your eyes, all over your wretched body. if i'd taken a good look at you any time in all these past years, no doubt i could have seen it just as plain as i can now. no woman or man can do what you've done, and not get a mark set on them for every one to read." "mercy!" gasped weak little elvira carney. "have mercy!" "mercy?" scoffed mrs. comstock. "mercy! that's a nice word from you! how much mercy did you have on me? where's the mercy that sent comstock to the slime of the bottomless quagmire, and left me to see it, and then struggle on in agony all these years? how about the mercy of letting me neglect my baby all the days of her life? mercy! do you really dare use the word to me?" "if you knew what i've suffered!" "suffered?" jeered mrs. comstock. "that's interesting. and pray, what have you suffered?" "all the neighbours have suspected and been down on me. i ain't had a friend. i've always felt guilty of his death! i've seen him go down a thousand times, plain as ever you did. many's the night i've stood on the other bank of that pool and listened to you, and i tried to throw myself in to keep from hearing you, but i didn't dare. i knew god would send me to burn forever, but i'd better done it; for now, he has set the burning on my body, and every hour it is slowly eating the life out of me. the doctor says it's a cancer----" mrs. comstock exhaled a long breath. her grip on the hoe relaxed and her stature lifted to towering height. "i didn't know, or care, when i came here, just what i did," she said. "but my way is beginning to clear. if the guilt of your soul has come to a head, in a cancer on your body, it looks as if the almighty didn't need any of my help in meting out his punishments. i really couldn't fix up anything to come anywhere near that. if you are going to burn until your life goes out with that sort of fire, you don't owe me anything!" "oh, katharine comstock!" groaned elvira carney, clinging to the fence for support. "looks as if the bible is right when it says, `the wages of sin is death,' doesn't it?" asked mrs. comstock. "instead of doing a woman's work in life, you chose the smile of invitation, and the dress of unearned cloth. now you tell me you are marked to burn to death with the unquenchable fire. and him! it was shorter with him, but let me tell you he got his share! he left me with an untruth on his lips, for he told me he was going to take his violin to onabasha for a new key, when he carried it to you. every vow of love and constancy he ever made me was a lie, after he touched your lips, so when he tried the wrong side of the quagmire, to hide from me the direction in which he was coming, it reached out for him, and it got him. it didn't hurry, either! it sucked him down, slow and deliberate." "mercy!" groaned elvira carney. "mercy!" "i don't know the word," said mrs. comstock. "you took all that out of me long ago. the past twenty years haven't been of the sort that taught mercy. i've never had any on myself and none on my child. why in the name of justice, should i have mercy on you, or on him? you were both older than i, both strong, sane people, you deliberately chose your course when you lured him, and he, when he was unfaithful to me. when a loose man and a light woman face the end the almighty ordained for them, why should they shout at me for mercy? what did i have to do with it?" elvira carney sobbed in panting gasps. "you've got tears, have you?" marvelled mrs. comstock. "mine all dried long ago. i've none left to shed over my wasted life, my disfigured face and hair, my years of struggle with a man's work, my wreck of land among the tilled fields of my neighbours, or the final knowledge that the man i so gladly would have died to save, wasn't worth the sacrifice of a rattlesnake. if anything yet could wring a tear from me, it would be the thought of the awful injustice i always have done my girl. if i'd lay hand on you for anything, it would be for that." "kill me if you want to," sobbed elvira carney. "i know that i deserve it, and i don't care." "you are getting your killing fast enough to suit me," said mrs. comstock. "i wouldn't touch you, any more than i would him, if i could. once is all any man or woman deceives me about the holiest things of life. i wouldn't touch you any more than i would the black plague. i am going back to my girl." mrs. comstock turned and started swiftly through the woods, but she had gone only a few rods when she stopped, and leaning on the hoe, she stood thinking deeply. then she turned back. elvira still clung to the fence, sobbing bitterly. "i don't know," said mrs. comstock, "but i left a wrong impression with you. i don't want you to think that i believe the almighty set a cancer to burning you as a punishment for your sins. i don't! i think a lot more of the almighty. with a whole sky-full of worlds on his hands to manage, i'm not believing that he has time to look down on ours, and pick you out of all the millions of us sinners, and set a special kind of torture to eating you. it wouldn't be a gentlemanly thing to do, and first of all, the almighty is bound to be a gentleman. i think likely a bruise and bad blood is what caused your trouble. anyway, i've got to tell you that the cleanest housekeeper i ever knew, and one of the noblest christian women, was slowly eaten up by a cancer. she got hers from the careless work of a poor doctor. the almighty is to forgive sin and heal disease, not to invent and spread it." she had gone only a few steps when she again turned back. "if you will gather a lot of red clover bloom, make a tea strong as lye of it, and drink quarts, i think likely it will help you, if you are not too far gone. anyway, it will cool your blood and make the burning easier to bear." then she swiftly went home. enter the lonely cabin she could not, neither could she sit outside and think. she attacked a bed of beets and hoed until the perspiration ran from her face and body, then she began on the potatoes. when she was too tired to take another stroke she bathed and put on dry clothing. in securing her dress she noticed her husband's carefully preserved clothing lining one wall. she gathered it in an armload and carried it to the swamp. piece by piece she pitched into the green maw of the quagmire all those articles she had dusted carefully and fought moths from for years, and stood watching as it slowly sucked them down. she went back to her room and gathered every scrap that had in any way belonged to robert comstock, excepting his gun and revolver, and threw it into the swamp. then for the first time she set her door wide open. she was too weary now to do more, but an urging unrest drove her. she wanted elnora. it seemed to her she never could wait until the girl came and delivered her judgment. at last in an effort to get nearer to her, mrs. comstock climbed the stairs and stood looking around elnora's room. it was very unfamiliar. the pictures were strange to her. commencement had filled it with packages and bundles. the walls were covered with cocoons; moths and dragonflies were pinned everywhere. under the bed she could see half a dozen large white boxes. she pulled out one and lifted the lid. the bottom was covered with a sheet of thin cork, and on long pins sticking in it were large, velvet-winged moths. each one was labelled, always there were two of a kind, in many cases four, showing under and upper wings of both male and female. they were of every colour and shape. mrs. comstock caught her breath sharply. when and where had elnora found them? they were the most exquisite sight the woman ever had seen, so she opened all the boxes to feast on their beautiful contents. as she did so there came more fully a sense of the distance between her and her child. she could not understand how elnora had gone to school, and performed so much work secretly. when it was finished, to the last moth, she, the mother who should have been the first confidant and helper, had been the one to bring disappointment. small wonder elnora had come to hate her. mrs. comstock carefully closed and replaced the boxes; and again stood looking around the room. this time her eyes rested on some books she did not remember having seen before, so she picked up one and found that it was a moth book. she glanced over the first pages and was soon eagerly reading. when the text reached the classification of species, she laid it down, took up another and read the introductory chapters. by that time her brain was in a confused jumble of ideas about capturing moths with differing baits and bright lights. she went down stairs thinking deeply. being unable to sit still and having nothing else to do she glanced at the clock and began preparing supper. the work dragged. a chicken was snatched up and dressed hurriedly. a spice cake sprang into being. strawberries that had been intended for preserves went into shortcake. delicious odours crept from the cabin. she put many extra touches on the table and then commenced watching the road. everything was ready, but elnora did not come. then began the anxious process of trying to keep cooked food warm and not spoil it. the birds went to bed and dusk came. mrs. comstock gave up the fire and set the supper on the table. then she went out and sat on the front-door step watching night creep around her. she started eagerly as the gate creaked, but it was only wesley sinton coming. "katharine, margaret and elnora passed where i was working this afternoon, and margaret got out of the carriage and called me to the fence. she told me what she had done. i've come to say to you that i am sorry. she has heard me threaten to do it a good many times, but i never would have got it done. i'd give a good deal if i could undo it, but i can't, so i've come to tell you how sorry i am." "you've got something to be sorry for," said mrs. comstock, "but likely we ain't thinking of the same thing. it hurts me less to know the truth, than to live in ignorance. if mag had the sense of a pewee, she'd told me long ago. that's what hurts me, to think that both of you knew robert was not worth an hour of honest grief, yet you'd let me mourn him all these years and neglect elnora while i did it. if i have anything to forgive you, that is what it is." wesley removed his hat and sat on a bench. "katharine," he said solemnly, "nobody ever knows how to take you." "would it be asking too much to take me for having a few grains of plain common sense?" she inquired. "you've known all this time that comstock got what he deserved, when he undertook to sneak in an unused way across a swamp, with which he was none too familiar. now i should have thought that you'd figure that knowing the same thing would be the best method to cure me of pining for him, and slighting my child." "heaven only knows we have thought of that, and talked of it often, but we were both too big cowards. we didn't dare tell you." "so you have gone on year after year, watching me show indifference to elnora, and yet a little horse-sense would have pointed out to you that she was my salvation. why look at it! not married quite a year. all his vows of love and fidelity made to me before the almighty forgotten in a few months, and a dance and a light woman so alluring he had to lie and sneak for them. what kind of a prospect is that for a life? i know men and women. an honourable man is an honourable man, and a liar is a liar; both are born and not made. one cannot change to the other any more than that same old leopard can change its spots. after a man tells a woman the first untruth of that sort, the others come piling thick, fast, and mountain high. the desolation they bring in their wake overshadows anything i have suffered completely. if he had lived six months more i should have known him for what he was born to be. it was in the blood of him. his father and grandfather before him were fiddling, dancing people; but i was certain of him. i thought we could leave ohio and come out here alone, and i could so love him and interest him in his work, that he would be a man. of all the fool, fruitless jobs, making anything of a creature that begins by deceiving her, is the foolest a sane woman ever undertook. i am more than sorry you and margaret didn't see your way clear to tell me long ago. i'd have found it out in a few more months if he had lived, and i wouldn't have borne it a day. the man who breaks his vows to me once, doesn't get the second chance. i give truth and honour. i have a right to ask it in return. i am glad i understand at last. now, if elnora will forgive me, we will take a new start and see what we can make out of what is left of life. if she won't, then it will be my time to learn what suffering really means." "but she will," said wesley. "she must! she can't help it when things are explained." "i notice she isn't hurrying any about coming home. do you know where she is or what she is doing?" "i do not. but likely she will be along soon. i must go help billy with the night work. good-bye, katharine. thank the lord you have come to yourself at last!" they shook hands and wesley went down the road while mrs. comstock entered the cabin. she could not swallow food. she stood in the back door watching the sky for moths, but they did not seem to be very numerous. her spirits sank and she breathed unevenly. then she heard the front screen. she reached the middle door as elnora touched the foot of the stairs. "hurry, and get ready, elnora," she said. "your supper is almost spoiled now." elnora closed the stair door behind her, and for the first time in her life, threw the heavy lever which barred out anyone from down stairs. mrs. comstock heard the thud, and knew what it meant. she reeled slightly and caught the doorpost for support. for a few minutes she clung there, then sank to the nearest chair. after a long time she arose and stumbling half blindly, she put the food in the cupboard and covered the table. she took the lamp in one hand, the butter in the other, and started to the spring house. something brushed close by her face, and she looked just in time to see a winged creature rise above the cabin and sail away. "that was a night bird," she muttered. as she stopped to set the butter in the water, came another thought. "perhaps it was a moth!" mrs. comstock dropped the butter and hurried out with the lamp; she held it high above her head and waited until her arms ached. small insects of night gathered, and at last a little dusty miller, but nothing came of any size. "i must go where they are, if i get them," muttered mrs. comstock. she went to the barn after the stout pair of high boots she used in feeding stock in deep snow. throwing these beside the back door she climbed to the loft over the spring house, and hunted an old lard oil lantern and one of first manufacture for oil. both these she cleaned and filled. she listened until everything up stairs had been still for over half an hour. by that time it was past eleven o'clock. then she took the lantern from the kitchen, the two old ones, a handful of matches, a ball of twine, and went from the cabin, softly closing the door. sitting on the back steps, she put on the boots, and then stood gazing into the perfumed june night, first in the direction of the woods on her land, then toward the limberlost. its outline was so dark and forbidding she shuddered and went down the garden, following the path toward the woods, but as she neared the pool her knees wavered and her courage fled. the knowledge that in her soul she was now glad robert comstock was at the bottom of it made a coward of her, who fearlessly had mourned him there, nights untold. she could not go on. she skirted the back of the garden, crossed a field, and came out on the road. soon she reached the limberlost. she hunted until she found the old trail, then followed it stumbling over logs and through clinging vines and grasses. the heavy boots clumped on her feet, overhanging branches whipped her face and pulled her hair. but her eyes were on the sky as she went straining into the night, hoping to find signs of a living creature on wing. by and by she began to see the wavering flight of something she thought near the right size. she had no idea where she was, but she stopped, lighted a lantern and hung it as high as she could reach. a little distance away she placed the second and then the third. the objects came nearer and sick with disappointment she saw that they were bats. crouching in the damp swamp grasses, without a thought of snakes or venomous insects, she waited, her eyes roving from lantern to lantern. once she thought a creature of high flight dropped near the lard oil light, so she arose breathlessly waiting, but either it passed or it was an illusion. she glanced at the old lantern, then at the new, and was on her feet in an instant creeping close. something large as a small bird was fluttering around. mrs. comstock began to perspire, while her hand shook wildly. closer she crept and just as she reached for it, something similar swept past and both flew away together. mrs. comstock set her teeth and stood shivering. for a long time the locusts rasped, the whip-poor-wills cried and a steady hum of night life throbbed in her ears. away in the sky she saw something coming when it was no larger than a falling leaf. straight toward the light it flew. mrs. comstock began to pray aloud. "this way, o lord! make it come this way! please! o lord, send it lower!" the moth hesitated at the first light, then slowly, easily it came toward the second, as if following a path of air. it touched a leaf near the lantern and settled. as mrs. comstock reached for it a thin yellow spray wet her hand and the surrounding leaves. when its wings raised above its back, her fingers came together. she held the moth to the light. it was nearer brown than yellow, and she remembered having seen some like it in the boxes that afternoon. it was not the one needed to complete the collection, but elnora might want it, so mrs. comstock held on. then the almighty was kind, or nature was sufficient, as you look at it, for following the law of its being when disturbed, the moth again threw the spray by which some suppose it attracts its kind, and liberally sprinkled mrs. comstock's dress front and arms. from that instant, she became the best moth bait ever invented. every polyphemus in range hastened to her, and other fluttering creatures of night followed. the influx came her way. she snatched wildly here and there until she had one in each hand and no place to put them. she could see more coming, and her aching heart, swollen with the strain of long excitement, hurt pitifully. she prayed in broken exclamations that did not always sound reverent, but never was human soul in more intense earnest. moths were coming. she had one in each hand. they were not yellow, and she did not know what to do. she glanced around to try to discover some way to keep what she had, and her throbbing heart stopped and every muscle stiffened. there was the dim outline of a crouching figure not two yards away, and a pair of eyes their owner thought hidden, caught the light in a cold stream. her first impulse was to scream and fly for life. before her lips could open a big moth alighted on her breast while she felt another walking over her hair. all sense of caution deserted her. she did not care to live if she could not replace the yellow moth she had killed. she turned her eyes to those among the leaves. "here, you!" she cried hoarsely. "i need you! get yourself out here, and help me. these critters are going to get away from me. hustle!" pete corson parted the bushes and stepped into the light. "oh, it's you!" said mrs. comstock. "i might have known! but you gave me a start. here, hold these until i make some sort of bag for them. go easy! if you break them i don't guarantee what will happen to you!" "pretty fierce, ain't you!" laughed pete, but he advanced and held out his hands. "for elnora, i s'pose?" "yes," said mrs. comstock. "in a mad fit, i trampled one this morning, and by the luck of the old boy himself it was the last moth she needed to complete a collection. i got to get another one or die." "then i guess it's your funeral," said pete. "there ain't a chance in a dozen the right one will come. what colour was it?" "yellow, and big as a bird." "the emperor, likely," said pete. "you dig for that kind, and they are not numerous, so's 'at you can smash 'em for fun." "well, i can try to get one, anyway," said mrs. comstock. "i forgot all about bringing anything to put them in. you take a pinch on their wings until i make a poke." mrs. comstock removed her apron, tearing off the strings. she unfastened and stepped from the skirt of her calico dress. with one apron string she tied shut the band and placket. she pulled a wire pin from her hair, stuck it through the other string, and using it as a bodkin ran it around the hem of her skirt, so shortly she had a large bag. she put several branches inside to which the moths could cling, closed the mouth partially and held it toward pete. "put your hand well down and let the things go!" she ordered. "but be careful, man! don't run into the twigs! easy! that's one. now the other. is the one on my head gone? there was one on my dress, but i guess it flew. here comes a kind of a gray-looking one." pete slipped several more moths into the bag. "now, that's five, mrs. comstock," he said. "i'm sorry, but you'll have to make that do. you must get out of here lively. your lights will be taken for hurry calls, and inside the next hour a couple of men will ride here like fury. they won't be nice sunday-school men, and they won't hold bags and catch moths for you. you must go quick!" mrs. comstock laid down the bag and pulled one of the lanterns lower. "i won't budge a step," she said. "this land doesn't belong to you. you have no right to order me off it. here i stay until i get a yellow emperor, and no little petering thieves of this neighbourhood can scare me away." "you don't understand," said pete. "i'm willing to help elnora, and i'd take care of you, if i could, but there will be too many for me, and they will be mad at being called out for nothing." "well, who's calling them out?" demanded mrs. comstock. "i'm catching moths. if a lot of good-for-nothings get fooled into losing some sleep, why let them, they can't hurt me, or stop my work." "they can, and they'll do both." "well, i'll see them do it!" said mrs. comstock. "i've got robert's revolver in my dress, and i can shoot as straight as any man, if i'm mad enough. any one who interferes with me to-night will find me mad a-plenty. there goes another!" she stepped into the light and waited until a big brown moth settled on her and was easily taken. then in light, airy flight came a delicate pale green thing, and mrs. comstock started in pursuit. but the scent was not right. the moth fluttered high, then dropped lower, still lower, and sailed away. with outstretched hands mrs. comstock pursued it. she hurried one way and another, then ran over an object which tripped her and she fell. she regained her feet in an instant, but she had lost sight of the moth. with livid face she turned to the crouching man. "you nasty, sneaking son of satan!" she cried. "why are you hiding there? you made me lose the one i wanted most of any i've had a chance at yet. get out of here! go this minute, or i'll fill your worthless carcass so full of holes you'll do to sift cornmeal. go, i say! i'm using the limberlost to-night, and i won't be stopped by the devil himself! cut like fury, and tell the rest of them they can just go home. pete is going to help me, and he is all of you i need. now go!" the man turned and went. pete leaned against a tree, held his mouth shut and shook inwardly. mrs. comstock came back panting. "the old scoundrel made me lose that!" she said. "if any one else comes snooping around here i'll just blow them up to start with. i haven't time to talk. suppose that had been yellow! i'd have killed that man, sure! the limberlost isn't safe to-night, and the sooner those whelps find it out, the better it will be for them." pete stopped laughing to look at her. he saw that she was speaking the truth. she was quite past reason, sense, or fear. the soft night air stirred the wet hair around her temples, the flickering lanterns made her face a ghastly green. she would stop at nothing, that was evident. pete suddenly began catching moths with exemplary industry. in putting one into the bag, another escaped. "we must not try that again," said mrs. comstock. "now, what will we do?" "we are close to the old case," said pete. "i think i can get into it. maybe we could slip the rest in there." "that's a fine idea!" said mrs. comstock. "they'll have so much room there they won't be likely to hurt themselves, and the books say they don't fly in daytime unless they are disturbed, so they will settle when it's light, and i can come with elnora to get them." they captured two more, and then pete carried them to the case. "here comes a big one!" he cried as he returned. mrs. comstock looked up and stepped out with a prayer on her lips. she could not tell the colour at that distance, but the moth appeared different from the others. on it came, dropping lower and darting from light to light. as it swept near her, "o heavenly father!" exulted mrs. comstock, "it's yellow! careful pete! your hat, maybe!" pete made a long sweep. the moth wavered above the hat and sailed away. mrs. comstock leaned against a tree and covered her face with her shaking hands. "that is my punishment!" she cried. "oh, lord, if you will give a moth like that into my possession, i'll always be a better woman!" the emperor again came in sight. pete stood tense and ready. mrs. comstock stepped into the light and watched the moth's course. then a second appeared in pursuit of the first. the larger one wavered into the radius of light once more. the perspiration rolled down the man's face. he half lifted the hat. "pray, woman! pray now!" he panted. "i guess i best get over by that lard oil light and go to work," breathed mrs. comstock. "the lord knows this is all in prayer, but it's no time for words just now. ready, pete! you are going to get a chance first!" pete made another long, steady sweep, but the moth darted beneath the hat. in its flight it came straight toward mrs. comstock. she snatched off the remnant of apron she had tucked into her petticoat band and held the calico before her. the moth struck full against it and clung to the goods. pete crept up stealthily. the second moth followed the first, and the spray showered the apron. "wait!" gasped mrs. comstock. "i think they have settled. the books say they won't leave now." the big pale yellow creature clung firmly, lowering and raising its wings. the other came nearer. mrs. comstock held the cloth with rigid hands, while pete could hear her breathing in short gusts. "shall i try now?" he implored. "wait!" whispered the woman. "something seems to say wait!" the night breeze stiffened and gently waved the apron. locusts rasped, mosquitoes hummed and frogs sang uninterruptedly. a musky odour slowly filled the air. "now shall i?" questioned pete. "no. leave them alone. they are safe now. they are mine. they are my salvation. god and the limberlost gave them to me! they won't move for hours. the books all say so. o heavenly father, i am thankful to you, and you, too, pete corson! you are a good man to help me. now, i can go home and face my girl." instead, mrs. comstock dropped suddenly. she spread the apron across her knees. the moths remained undisturbed. then her tired white head dropped, the tears she had thought forever dried gushed forth, and she sobbed for pure joy. "oh, i wouldn't do that now, you know!" comforted pete. "think of getting two! that's more than you ever could have expected. a body would think you would cry, if you hadn't got any. come on, now. it's almost morning. let me help you home." pete took the bag and the two old lanterns. mrs. comstock carried her moths and the best lantern and went ahead to light the way. elnora had sat beside her window far into the night. at last she undressed and went to bed, but sleep would not come. she had gone to the city to talk with members of the school board about a room in the grades. there was a possibility that she might secure the moth, and so be able to start to college that fall, but if she did not, then she wanted the school. she had been given some encouragement, but she was so unhappy that nothing mattered. she could not see the way open to anything in life, save a long series of disappointments, while she remained with her mother. yet margaret sinton had advised her to go home and try once more. margaret had seemed so sure there would be a change for the better, that elnora had consented, although she had no hope herself. so strong is the bond of blood, she could not make up her mind to seek a home elsewhere, even after the day that had passed. unable to sleep she arose at last, and the room being warm, she sat on the floor close the window. the lights in the swamp caught her eye. she was very uneasy, for quite a hundred of her best moths were in the case. however, there was no money, and no one ever had touched a book or any of her apparatus. watching the lights set her thinking, and before she realized it, she was in a panic of fear. she hurried down the stairway softly calling her mother. there was no answer. she lightly stepped across the sitting-room and looked in at the open door. there was no one, and the bed had not been used. her first thought was that her mother had gone to the pool; and the limberlost was alive with signals. pity and fear mingled in the heart of the girl. she opened the kitchen door, crossed the garden and ran back to the swamp. as she neared it she listened, but she could hear only the usual voices of night. "mother!" she called softly. then louder, "mother!" there was not a sound. chilled with fright she hurried back to the cabin. she did not know what to do. she understood what the lights in the limberlost meant. where was her mother? she was afraid to enter, while she was growing very cold and still more fearful about remaining outside. at last she went to her mother's room, picked up the gun, carried it into the kitchen, and crowding in a little corner behind the stove, she waited in trembling anxiety. the time was dreadfully long before she heard her mother's voice. then she decided some one had been ill and sent for her, so she took courage, and stepping swiftly across the kitchen she unbarred the door and drew back from sight beside the table. mrs. comstock entered dragging her heavy feet. her dress skirt was gone, her petticoat wet and drabbled, and the waist of her dress was almost torn from her body. her hair hung in damp strings; her eyes were red with crying. in one hand she held the lantern, and in the other stiffly extended before her, on a wad of calico reposed a magnificent pair of yellow emperors. elnora stared, her lips parted. "shall i put these others in the kitchen?" inquired a man's voice. the girl shrank back to the shadows. "yes, anywhere inside the door," replied mrs. comstock as she moved a few steps to make way for him. pete's head appeared. he set down the moths and was gone. "thank you, pete, more than ever woman thanked you before!" said mrs. comstock. she placed the lantern on the table and barred the door. as she turned elnora came into view. mrs. comstock leaned toward her, and held out the moths. in a voice vibrant with tones never before heard she said: "elnora, my girl, mother's found you another moth!" chapter xiii wherein mother love is bestowed on elnora, and she finds an assistant in moth hunting elnora awoke at dawn and lay gazing around the unfamiliar room. she noticed that every vestige of masculine attire and belongings was gone, and knew, without any explanation, what that meant. for some reason every tangible evidence of her father was banished, and she was at last to be allowed to take his place. she turned to look at her mother. mrs. comstock's face was white and haggard, but on it rested an expression of profound peace elnora never before had seen. as she studied the features on the pillow beside her, the heart of the girl throbbed in tenderness. she realized as fully as any one else could what her mother had suffered. thoughts of the night brought shuddering fear. she softly slipped from the bed, went to her room, dressed and entered the kitchen to attend the emperors and prepare breakfast. the pair had been left clinging to the piece of calico. the calico was there and a few pieces of beautiful wing. a mouse had eaten the moths! "well, of all the horrible luck!" gasped elnora. with the first thought of her mother, she caught up the remnants of the moths, burying them in the ashes of the stove. she took the bag to her room, hurriedly releasing its contents, but there was not another yellow one. her mother had said some had been confined in the case in the limberlost. there was still a hope that an emperor might be among them. she peeped at her mother, who still slept soundly. elnora took a large piece of mosquito netting, and ran to the swamp. throwing it over the top of the case, she unlocked the door. she reeled, faint with distress. the living moths that had been confined there in their fluttering to escape to night and the mates they sought not only had wrecked the other specimens of the case, but torn themselves to fringes on the pins. a third of the rarest moths of the collection for the man of india were antennaless, legless, wingless, and often headless. elnora sobbed aloud. "this is overwhelming," she said at last. "it is making a fatalist of me. i am beginning to think things happen as they are ordained from the beginning, this plainly indicating that there is to be no college, at least, this year, for me. my life is all mountain-top or canon. i wish some one would lead me into a few days of `green pastures.' last night i went to sleep on mother's arm, the moths all secured, love and college, certainties. this morning i wake to find all my hopes wrecked. i simply don't dare let mother know that instead of helping me, she has ruined my collection. everything is gone--unless the love lasts. that actually seemed true. i believe i will go see." the love remained. indeed, in the overflow of the longhardened, pent-up heart, the girl was almost suffocated with tempestuous caresses and generous offerings. before the day was over, elnora realized that she never had known her mother. the woman who now busily went through the cabin, her eyes bright, eager, alert, constantly planning, was a stranger. her very face was different, while it did not seem possible that during one night the acid of twenty years could disappear from a voice and leave it sweet and pleasant. for the next few days elnora worked at mounting the moths her mother had taken. she had to go to the bird woman and tell about the disaster, but mrs. comstock was allowed to think that elnora delivered the moths when she made the trip. if she had told her what actually happened, the chances were that mrs. comstock again would have taken possession of the limberlost, hunting there until she replaced all the moths that had been destroyed. but elnora knew from experience what it meant to collect such a list in pairs. it would require steady work for at least two summers to replace the lost moths. when she left the bird woman she went to the president of the onabasha schools and asked him to do all in his power to secure her a room in one of the ward buildings. the next morning the last moth was mounted, and the housework finished. elnora said to her mother, "if you don't mind, i believe i will go into the woods pasture beside sleepy snake creek and see if i can catch some dragonflies or moths." "wait until i get a knife and a pail and i will go along," answered mrs. comstock. "the dandelions are plenty tender for greens among the deep grasses, and i might just happen to see something myself. my eyes are pretty sharp." "i wish you could realize how young you are," said elnora. "i know women in onabasha who are ten years older than you, yet they look twenty years younger. so could you, if you would dress your hair becomingly, and wear appropriate clothes." "i think my hair puts me in the old woman class permanently," said mrs. comstock. "well, it doesn't!" cried elnora. "there is a woman of twenty-eight who has hair as white as yours from sick headaches, but her face is young and beautiful. if your face would grow a little fuller and those lines would go away, you'd be lovely!" "you little pig!" laughed mrs. comstock. "any one would think you would be satisfied with having a splinter new mother, without setting up a kick on her looks, first thing. greedy!" "that is a good word," said elnora. "i admit the charge. i am greedy over every wasted year. i want you young, lovely, suitably dressed and enjoying life like the other girls' mothers." mrs. comstock laughed softly as she pushed back her sunbonnet so that shrubs and bushes beside the way could be scanned closely. elnora walked ahead with a case over her shoulder, a net in her hand. her head was bare, the rolling collar of her lavender gingham dress was cut in a v at the throat, the sleeves only reached the elbows. every few steps she paused and examined the shrubbery carefully, while mrs. comstock was watching until her eyes ached, but there were no dandelions in the pail she carried. early june was rioting in fresh grasses, bright flowers, bird songs, and gay-winged creatures of air. down the footpath the two went through the perfect morning, the love of god and all nature in their hearts. at last they reached the creek, following it toward the bridge. here mrs. comstock found a large bed of tender dandelions and stopped to fill her pail. then she sat on the bank, picking over the greens, while she listened to the creek softly singing its june song. elnora remained within calling distance, and was having good success. at last she crossed the creek, following it up to a bridge. there she began a careful examination of the under sides of the sleepers and flooring for cocoons. mrs. comstock could see her and the creek for several rods above. the mother sat beating the long green leaves across her hand, carefully picking out the white buds, because elnora liked them, when a splash up the creek attracted her attention. around the bend came a man. he was bareheaded, dressed in a white sweater, and waders which reached his waist. he walked on the bank, only entering the water when forced. he had a queer basket strapped on his hip, and with a small rod he sent a long line spinning before him down the creek, deftly manipulating with it a little floating object. he was closer elnora than her mother, but mrs. comstock thought possibly by hurrying she could remain unseen and yet warn the girl that a stranger was coming. as she approached the bridge, she caught a sapling and leaned over the water to call elnora. with her lips parted to speak she hesitated a second to watch a sort of insect that flashed past on the water, when a splash from the man attracted the girl. she was under the bridge, one knee planted in the embankment and a foot braced to support her. her hair was tousled by wind and bushes, her face flushed, and she lifted her arms above her head, working to loosen a cocoon she had found. the call mrs. comstock had intended to utter never found voice, for as elnora looked down at the sound, "possibly i could get that for you," suggested the man. mrs. comstock drew back. he was a young man with a wonderfully attractive face, although it was too white for robust health, broad shoulders, and slender, upright frame. "oh, i do hope you can!" answered elnora. "it's quite a find! it's one of those lovely pale red cocoons described in the books. i suspect it comes from having been in a dark place and screened from the weather." "is that so?" cried the man. "wait a minute. i've never seen one. i suppose it's a cecropia, from the location." "of course," said elnora. "it's so cool here the moth hasn't emerged. the cocoon is a big, baggy one, and it is as red as fox tail." "what luck!" he cried. "are you making a collection?" he reeled in his line, laid his rod across a bush and climbed the embankment to elnora's side, produced a knife and began the work of whittling a deep groove around the cocoon. "yes. i paid my way through the high school in onabasha with them. now i am starting a collection which means college." "onabasha!" said the man. "that is where i am visiting. possibly you know my people--dr. ammon's? the doctor is my uncle. my home is in chicago. i've been having typhoid fever, something fierce. in the hospital six weeks. didn't gain strength right, so uncle doc sent for me. i am to live out of doors all summer, and exercise until i get in condition again. do you know my uncle?" "yes. he is aunt margaret's doctor, and he would be ours, only we are never ill." "well, you look it!" said the man, appraising elnora at a glance. "strangers always mention it," sighed elnora. "i wonder how it would seem to be a pale, languid lady and ride in a carriage." "ask me!" laughed the man. "it feels like the--dickens! i'm so proud of my feet. it's quite a trick to stand on them now. i have to keep out of the water all i can and stop to baby every half-mile. but with interesting outdoor work i'll be myself in a week." "do you call that work?" elnora indicated the creek. "i do, indeed! nearly three miles, banks too soft to brag on and never a strike. wouldn't you call that hard labour?" "yes," laughed elnora. "work at which you might kill yourself and never get a fish. did any one tell you there were trout in sleepy snake creek?" "uncle said i could try." "oh, you can," said elnora. "you can try no end, but you'll never get a trout. this is too far south and too warm for them. if you sit on the bank and use worms you might catch some perch or catfish." "but that isn't exercise." "well, if you only want exercise, go right on fishing. you will have a creel full of invisible results every night." "i object," said the man emphatically. he stopped work again and studied elnora. even the watching mother could not blame him. in the shade of the bridge elnora's bright head and her lavender dress made a picture worthy of much contemplation. "i object!" repeated the man. "when i work i want to see results. i'd rather exercise sawing wood, making one pile grow little and the other big than to cast all day and catch nothing because there is not a fish to take. work for work's sake doesn't appeal to me." he digged the groove around the cocoon with skilled hand. "now there is some fun in this!" he said. it's going to be a fair job to cut it out, but when it comes, it is not only beautiful, but worth a price; it will help you on your way. i think i'll put up my rod and hunt moths. that would be something like! don't you want help?" elnora parried the question. "have you ever hunted moths, mr. ammon? "enough to know the ropes in taking them and to distinguish the commonest ones. i go wild on catocalae. there's too many of them, all too much alike for philip, but i know all these fellows. one flew into my room when i was about ten years old, and we thought it a miracle. none of us ever had seen one so we took it over to the museum to dr. dorsey. he said they were common enough, but we didn't see them because they flew at night. he showed me the museum collection, and i was so interested i took mine back home and started to hunt them. every year after that we went to our cottage a month earlier, so i could find them, and all my family helped. i stuck to it until i went to college. then, keeping the little moths out of the big ones was too much for the mater, so father advised that i donate mine to the museum. he bought a fine case for them with my name on it, which constitutes my sole contribution to science. i know enough to help you all right." "aren't you going north this year?" "all depends on how this fever leaves me. uncle says the nights are too cold and the days too hot there for me. he thinks i had better stay in an even temperature until i am strong again. i am going to stick pretty close to him until i know i am. i wouldn't admit it to any one at home, but i was almost gone. i don't believe anything can eat up nerve much faster than the burning of a slow fever. no, thanks, i have enough. i stay with uncle doc, so if i feel it coming again he can do something quickly." "i don't blame you," said elnora. "i never have been sick, but it must be dreadful. i am afraid you are tiring yourself over that. let me take the knife awhile." "oh, it isn't so bad as that! i wouldn't be wading creeks if it were. i only need a few more days to get steady on my feet again. i'll soon have this out." "it is kind of you to get it," said elnora. "i should have had to peel it, which would spoil the cocoon for a' specimen and ruin the moth." "you haven't said yet whether i may help you while i am here." elnora hesitated. "you better say `yes,'" he persisted. "it would be a real kindness. it would keep me outdoors all day and give an incentive to work. i'm good at it. i'll show you if i am not in a week or so. i can `sugar,' manipulate lights, and mirrors, and all the expert methods. i'll wager, moths are numerous in the old swamp over there." "they are," said elnora. "most i have i took there. a few nights ago my mother caught a number, but we don't dare go alone." "all the more reason why you need me. where do you live? i can't get an answer from you, i'll go tell your mother who i am and ask her if i may help you. i warn you, young lady, i have a very effective way with mothers. they almost never turn me down." "then it's probable you will have a new experience when you meet mine," said elnora. "she never was known to do what any one expected she surely would." the cocoon came loose. philip ammon stepped down the embankment turning to offer his hand to elnora. she ran down as she would have done alone, and taking the cocoon turned it end for end to learn if the imago it contained were alive. then ammon took back the cocoon to smooth the edges. mrs. comstock gave them one long look as they stood there, and returned to her dandelions. while she worked she paused occasionally, listening intently. presently they came down the creek, the man carrying the cocoon as if it were a jewel, while elnora made her way along the bank, taking a lesson in casting. her face was flushed with excitement, her eyes shining, the bushes taking liberties with her hair. for a picture of perfect loveliness she scarcely could have been surpassed, and the eyes of philip ammon seemed to be in working order. "moth-er!" called elnora. there was an undulant, caressing sweetness in the girl's voice, as she sung out the call in perfect confidence that it would bring a loving answer, that struck deep in mrs. comstock's heart. she never had heard that word so pronounced before and a lump arose in her throat. "here!" she answered, still cleaning dandelions. "mother, this is mr. philip ammon, of chicago," said elnora. "he has been ill and he is staying with dr. ammon in onabasha. he came down the creek fishing and cut this cocoon from under the bridge for me. he feels that it would be better to hunt moths than to fish, until he is well. what do you think about it?" philip ammon extended his hand. "i am glad to know you," he said. "you may take the hand-shaking for granted," replied mrs. comstock. "dandelions have a way of making fingers sticky, and i like to know a man before i take his hand, anyway. that introduction seems mighty comprehensive on your part, but it still leaves me unclassified. my name is comstock." philip ammon bowed. "i am sorry to hear you have been sick," said mrs. comstock. "but if people will live where they have such vile water as they do in chicago, i don't see what else they are to expect." philip studied her intently. "i am sure i didn't have a fever on purpose," he said. "you do seem a little wobbly on your legs," she observed. "maybe you had better sit and rest while i finish these greens. it's late for the genuine article, but in the shade, among long grass they are still tender." "may i have a leaf?" he asked, reaching for one as he sat on the bank, looking from the little creek at his feet, away through the dim cool spaces of the june forest on the opposite side. he drew a deep breath. "glory, but this is good after almost two months inside hospital walls!" he stretched on the grass and lay gazing up at the leaves, occasionally asking the interpretation of a bird note or the origin of an unfamiliar forest voice. elnora began helping with the dandelions. "another, please," said the young man, holding out his hand. "do you suppose this is the kind of grass nebuchadnezzar ate?" elnora asked, giving the leaf. "he knew a good thing if it is." "oh, you should taste dandelions boiled with bacon and served with mother's cornbread." "don't! my appetite is twice my size now. while it is--how far is it to onabasha, shortest cut?" "three miles." the man lay in perfect content, nibbling leaves. "this surely is a treat," he said. "no wonder you find good hunting here. there seems to be foliage for almost every kind of caterpillar. but i suppose you have to exchange for northern species and pacific coast kinds?" "yes. and every one wants regalis in trade. i never saw the like. they consider a cecropia or a polyphemus an insult, and a luna is barely acceptable." "what authorities have you?" elnora began to name text-books which started a discussion. mrs. comstock listened. she cleaned dandelions with greater deliberation than they ever before were examined. in reality she was taking stock of the young man's long, well-proportioned frame, his strong hands, his smooth, fine-textured skin, his thick shock of dark hair, and making mental notes of his simple manly speech and the fact that he evidently did know much about moths. it pleased her to think that if he had been a neighbour boy who had lain beside her every day of his life while she worked, he could have been no more at home. she liked the things he said, but she was proud that elnora had a ready answer which always seemed appropriate. at last mrs. comstock finished the greens. "you are three miles from the city and less than a mile from where we live," she said. "if you will tell me what you dare eat, i suspect you had best go home with us and rest until the cool of the day before you start back. probably some one that you can ride in with will be passing before evening." "that is mighty kind of you," said philip. "i think i will. it doesn't matter so much what i eat, the point is that i must be moderate. i am hungry all the time." "then we will go," said mrs. comstock, "and we will not allow you to make yourself sick with us." philip ammon arose: picking up the pail of greens and his fishing rod, he stood waiting. elnora led the way. mrs. comstock motioned philip to follow and she walked in the rear. the girl carried the cocoon and the box of moths she had taken, searching every step for more. the young man frequently set down his load to join in the pursuit of a dragonfly or moth, while mrs. comstock watched the proceedings with sharp eyes. every time philip picked up the pail of greens she struggled to suppress a smile. elnora proceeded slowly, chattering about everything beside the trail. philip was interested in all the objects she pointed out, noticing several things which escaped her. he carried the greens as casually when they took a short cut down the roadway as on the trail. when elnora turned toward the gate of her home philip ammon stopped, took a long look at the big hewed log cabin, the vines which clambered over it, the flower garden ablaze with beds of bright bloom interspersed with strawberries and tomatoes, the trees of the forest rising north and west like a green wall and exclaimed: "how beautiful!" mrs. comstock was pleased. "if you think that," she said, "perhaps you will understand how, in all this presentday rush to be modern, i have preferred to remain as i began. my husband and i took up this land, and enough trees to build the cabin, stable, and outbuildings are nearly all we ever cut. of course, if he had lived, i suppose we should have kept up with our neighbours. i hear considerable about the value of the land, the trees which are on it, and the oil which is supposed to be under it, but as yet i haven't brought myself to change anything. so we stand for one of the few remaining homes of first settlers in this region. come in. you are very welcome to what we have." mrs. comstock stepped forward and took the lead. she had a bowl of soft water and a pair of boots to offer for the heavy waders, for outer comfort, a glass of cold buttermilk and a bench on which to rest, in the circular arbour until dinner was ready. philip ammon splashed in the water. he followed to the stable and exchanged boots there. he was ravenous for the buttermilk, and when he stretched on the bench in the arbour the flickering patches of sunlight so tantalized his tired eyes, while the bees made such splendid music, he was soon sound asleep. when elnora and her mother came out with a table they stood a short time looking at him. it is probable mrs. comstock voiced a united thought when she said: "what a refined, decent looking young man! how proud his mother must be of him! we must be careful what we let him eat." then they returned to the kitchen where mrs. comstock proceeded to be careful. she broiled ham of her own sugar-curing, creamed potatoes, served asparagus on toast, and made a delicious strawberry shortcake. as she cooked dandelions with bacon, she feared to serve them to him, so she made an excuse that it took too long to prepare them, blanched some and made a salad. when everything was ready she touched philip's sleeve. "best have something to eat, lad, before you get too hungry," she said. "please hurry!" he begged laughingly as he held a plate toward her to be filled. "i thought i had enough selfrestraint to start out alone, but i see i was mistaken. if you would allow me, just now, i am afraid i should start a fever again. i never did smell food so good as this. it's mighty kind of you to take me in. i hope i will be man enough in a few days to do something worth while in return." spots of sunshine fell on the white cloth and blue china, the bees and an occasional stray butterfly came searching for food. a rose-breasted grosbeak, released from a three hours' siege of brooding, while his independent mate took her bath and recreation, mounted the top branch of a maple in the west woods from which he serenaded the dinner party with a joyful chorus in celebration of his freedom. philip's eyes strayed to the beautiful cabin, to the mixture of flowers and vegetables stretching down to the road, and to the singing bird with his red-splotched breast of white and he said: "i can't realize now that i ever lay in ice packs in a hospital. how i wish all the sick folks could come here to grow strong!" the grosbeak sang on, a big turnus butterfly sailed through the arbour and poised over the table. elnora held up a lump of sugar and the butterfly, clinging to her fingers, tasted daintily. with eager eyes and parted lips, the girl held steadily. when at last it wavered away, "that made a picture!" said philip. "ask me some other time how i lost my illusions concerning butterflies. i always thought of them in connection with sunshine, flower pollen, and fruit nectar, until one sad day." "i know!" laughed elnora. "i've seen that, too, but it didn't destroy any illusion for me. i think quite as much of the butterflies as ever." then they talked of flowers, moths, dragonflies, indian relics, and all the natural wonders the swamp afforded, straying from those subjects to books and school work. when they cleared the table philip assisted, carrying several tray loads to the kitchen. he and elnora mounted specimens while mrs comstock washed the dishes. then she came out with a ruffle she was embroidering. "i wonder if i did not see a picture of you in onabasha last night," philip said to elnora. "aunt anna took me to call on miss brownlee. she was showing me her crowd--of course, it was you! but it didn't half do you justice, although it was the nearest human of any of them. miss brownlee is very fond of you. she said the finest things." then they talked of commencement, and at last philip said he must go or his friends would become anxious about him. mrs. comstock brought him a blue bowl of creamy milk and a plate of bread. she stopped a passing team and secured a ride to the city for him, as his exercise of the morning had been too violent, and he was forced to admit he was tired. "may i come to-morrow afternoon and hunt moths awhile?" he asked mrs. comstock as he arose. "we will `sugar' a tree and put a light beside it, if i can get stuff to make the preparation. possibly we can take some that way. i always enjoy moth hunting, i'd like to help miss elnora, and it would be a charity to me. i've got to remain outdoors some place, and i'm quite sure i'd get well faster here than anywhere else. please say i may come." "i have no objections, if elnora really would like help," said mrs. comstock. in her heart she wished he would not come. she wanted her newly found treasure all to herself, for a time, at least. but elnora's were eager, shining eyes. she thought it would be splendid to have help, and great fun to try book methods for taking moths, so it was arranged. as philip rode away, mrs. comstock's eyes followed him. "what a nice young man!" she said. "he seems fine," agreed elnora. "he comes of a good family, too. i've often heard of his father. he is a great lawyer." "i am glad he likes it here. i need help. possibly----" "possibly what?" "we can find many moths." "what did he mean about the butterflies?" "that he always had connected them with sunshine, flowers, and fruits, and thought of them as the most exquisite of creations; then one day he found some clustering thickly over carrion." "come to think of it, i have seen butterflies----" "so had he," laughed elnora. "and that is what he meant." chapter xiv wherein a new position is tendered elnora, and philip ammon is shown limberlost violets the next morning mrs. comstock called to elnora, "the mail carrier stopped at our box." elnora ran down the walk and came back carrying an official letter. she tore it open and read: my dear miss comstock: at the weekly meeting of the onabasha school board last night, it was decided to add the position of lecturer on natural history to our corps of city teachers. it will be the duty of this person to spend two hours a week in each of the grade schools exhibiting and explaining specimens of the most prominent objects in nature: animals, birds, insects, flowers, vines, shrubs, bushes, and trees. these specimens and lectures should be appropriate to the seasons and the comprehension of the grades. this position was unanimously voted to you. i think you will find the work delightful and much easier than the routine grind of the other teachers. it is my advice that you accept and begin to prepare yourself at once. your salary will be $750 a year, and you will be allowed $200 for expenses in procuring specimens and books. let us know at once if you want the position, as it is going to be difficult to fill satisfactorily if you do not. very truly yours, david thompson, president, onabasha schools. "i hardly understand," marvelled mrs. comstock. "it is a new position. they never have had anything like it before. i suspect it arose from the help i've been giving the grade teachers in their nature work. they are trying to teach the children something, and half the instructors don't know a blue jay from a king-fisher, a beech leaf from an elm, or a wasp from a hornet." "well, do you?" anxiously inquired mrs. comstock. "indeed, i do!" laughed elnora, "and several other things beside. when freckles bequeathed me the swamp, he gave me a bigger inheritance than he knew. while you have thought i was wandering aimlessly, i have been following a definite plan, studying hard, and storing up the stuff that will earn these seven hundred and fifty dollars. mother dear, i am going to accept this, of course. the work will be a delight. i'd love it most of anything in teaching. you must help me. we must find nests, eggs, leaves, queer formations in plants and rare flowers. i must have flower boxes made for each of the rooms and filled with wild things. i should begin to gather specimens this very day." elnora's face was flushed and her eyes bright. "oh, what great work that will be!" she cried. "you must go with me so you can see the little faces when i tell them how the goldfinch builds its nest, and how the bees make honey." so elnora and her mother went into the woods behind the cabin to study nature. "i think," said elnora, "the idea is to begin with fall things in the fall, keeping to the seasons throughout the year." "what are fall things?" inquired mrs. comstock. "oh, fringed gentians, asters, ironwort, every fall flower, leaves from every tree and vine, what makes them change colour, abandoned bird nests, winter quarters of caterpillars and insects, what becomes of the butterflies and grasshoppers--myriads of stuff. i shall have to be very wise to select the things it will be most beneficial for the children to learn." "can i really help you?" mrs. comstock's strong face was pathetic. "indeed, yes!" cried elnora. "i never can get through it alone. there will be an immense amount of work connected with securing and preparing specimens." mrs. comstock lifted her head proudly and began doing business at once. her sharp eyes ranged from earth to heaven. she investigated everything, asking innumerable questions. at noon mrs. comstock took the specimens they had collected, and went to prepare dinner, while elnora followed the woods down to the sintons' to show her letter. she had to explain what became of her moths, and why college would have to be abandoned for that year, but margaret and wesley vowed not to tell. wesley waved the letter excitedly, explaining it to margaret as if it were a personal possession. margaret was deeply impressed, while billy volunteered first aid in gathering material. "now anything you want in the ground, snap can dig it out," he said. "uncle wesley and i found a hole three times as big as snap, that he dug at the roots of a tree." "we will train him to hunt pupae cases," said elnora. "are you going to the woods this afternoon?" asked billy. "yes," answered elnora. "dr. ammon's nephew from chicago is visiting in onabasha. he is going to show me how men put some sort of compound on a tree, hang a light beside it, and take moths that way. it will be interesting to watch and learn." "may i come?" asked billy. "of course you may come!" answered elnora. "is this nephew of dr. ammon a young man?" inquired margaret. "about twenty-six, i should think," said elnora. "he said he had been out of college and at work in his father's law office three years." "does he seem nice?" asked margaret, and wesley smiled. "finest kind of a person," said elnora. "he can teach me so much. it is very interesting to hear him talk. he knows considerable about moths that will be a help to me. he had a fever and he has to stay outdoors until he grows strong again." "billy, i guess you better help me this afternoon," said margaret. "maybe elnora had rather not bother with you." "there's no reason on earth why billy should not come!" cried elnora, and wesley smiled again. "i must hurry home or i won't be ready," she added. hastening down the road she entered the cabin, her face glowing. "i thought you never would come," said mrs. comstock. "if you don't hurry mr. ammon will be here before you are dressed." "i forgot about him until just now," said elnora. "i am not going to dress. he's not coming to visit. we are only going to the woods for more specimens. i can't wear anything that requires care. the limbs take the most dreadful liberties with hair and clothing." mrs. comstock opened her lips, looked at elnora and closed them. in her heart she was pleased that the girl was so interested in her work that she had forgotten philip ammon's coming. but it did seem to her that such a pleasant young man should have been greeted by a girl in a fresh dress. "if she isn't disposed to primp at the coming of a man, heaven forbid that i should be the one to start her," thought mrs. comstock. philip came whistling down the walk between the cinnamon pinks, pansies, and strawberries. he carried several packages, while his face flushed with more colour than on the previous day. "only see what has happened to me!" cried elnora, offering her letter. "i'll wager i know!" answered philip. "isn't it great! every one in onabasha is talking about it. at last there is something new under the sun. all of them are pleased. they think you'll make a big success. this will give an incentive to work. in a few days more i'll be myself again, and we'll overturn the fields and woods around here." he went on to congratulate mrs. comstock. "aren't you proud of her, though?" he asked. "you should hear what folks are saying! they say she created the necessity for the position, and every one seems to feel that it is a necessity. now, if she succeeds, and she will, all of the other city schools will have such departments, and first thing you know she will have made the whole world a little better. let me rest a few seconds; my feet are acting up again. then we will cook the moth compound and put it to cool." he laughed as he sat breathing shortly. "it doesn't seem possible that a fellow could lose his strength like this. my knees are actually trembling, but i'll be all right in a minute. uncle doc said i could come. i told him how you took care of me, and he said i would be safe here." then he began unwrapping packages and explaining to mrs. comstock how to cook the compound to attract the moths. he followed her into the kitchen, kindled the fire, and stirred the preparation as he talked. while the mixture cooled, he and elnora walked through the vegetable garden behind the cabin and strayed from there into the woods. "what about college?" he asked. "miss brownlee said you were going." "i had hoped to," replied elnora, "but i had a streak of dreadful luck, so i'll have to wait until next year. if you won't speak of it, i'll tell you." philip promised, so elnora recited the history of the yellow emperor. she was so interested in doing the emperor justice she did not notice how many personalities went into the story. a few pertinent questions told him the remainder. he looked at the girl in wonder. in face and form she was as lovely as any one of her age and type he ever had seen. her school work far surpassed that of most girls of her age he knew. she differed in other ways. this vast store of learning she had gathered from field and forest was a wealth of attraction no other girl possessed. her frank, matter-of-fact manner was an inheritance from her mother, but there was something more. once, as they talked he thought "sympathy" was the word to describe it and again "comprehension." she seemed to possess a large sense of brotherhood for all human and animate creatures. she spoke to him as if she had known him all her life. she talked to the grosbeak in exactly the same manner, as she laid strawberries and potato bugs on the fence for his family. she did not swerve an inch from her way when a snake slid past her, while the squirrels came down from the trees and took corn from her fingers. she might as well have been a boy, so lacking was she in any touch of feminine coquetry toward him. he studied her wonderingly. as they went along the path they reached a large slime-covered pool surrounded by decaying stumps and logs thickly covered with water hyacinths and blue flags. philip stopped. "is that the place?" he asked. elnora assented. "the doctor told you?" "yes. it was tragic. is that pool really bottomless?" "so far as we ever have been able to discover." philip stood looking at the water, while the long, sweet grasses, thickly sprinkled with blue flag bloom, over which wild bees clambered, swayed around his feet. then he turned to the girl. she had worked hard. the same lavender dress she had worn the previous day clung to her in limp condition. but she was as evenly coloured and of as fine grain as a wild rose petal, her hair was really brown, but never was such hair touched with a redder glory, while her heavy arching brows added a look of strength to her big gray-blue eyes. "and you were born here?" he had not intended to voice that thought. "yes," she said, looking into his eyes. "just in time to prevent my mother from saving the life of my father. she came near never forgiving me." "ah, cruel!" cried philip. "i find much in life that is cruel, from our standpoints," said elnora. "it takes the large wisdom of the unfathomable, the philosophy of the almighty, to endure some of it. but there is always right somewhere, and at last it seems to come." "will it come to you?" asked philip, who found himself deeply affected. "it has come," said the girl serenely. "it came a week ago. it came in fullest measure when my mother ceased to regret that i had been born. now, work that i love has come--that should constitute happiness. a little farther along is my violet bed. i want you to see it." as philip ammon followed he definitely settled upon the name of the unusual feature of elnora's face. it should be called "experience." she had known bitter experiences early in life. suffering had been her familiar more than joy. he watched her earnestly, his heart deeply moved. she led him into a swampy half-open space in the woods, stopped and stepped aside. he uttered a cry of surprised delight. a few decaying logs were scattered around, the grass grew in tufts long and fine. blue flags waved, clusters of cowslips nodded gold heads, but the whole earth was purple with a thick blanket of violets nodding from stems a foot in length. elnora knelt and slipping her fingers between the leaves and grasses to the roots, gathered a few violets and gave them to philip. "can your city greenhouses surpass them?" she asked. he sat on a log to examine the blooms. "they are superb!" he said. "i never saw such length of stem or such rank leaves, while the flowers are the deepest blue, the truest violet i ever saw growing wild. they are coloured exactly like the eyes of the girl i am going to marry." elnora handed him several others to add to those he held. "she must have wonderful eyes," she commented. "no other blue eyes are quite so beautiful," he said. "in fact, she is altogether lovely." "is it customary for a man to think the girl he is going to marry lovely? i wonder if i should find her so." "you would," said philip. "no one ever fails to. she is tall as you, very slender, but perfectly rounded; you know about her eyes; her hair is black and wavy--while her complexion is clear and flushed with red." "why, she must be the most beautiful girl in the whole world!" she cried. "no, indeed!" he said. "she is not a particle better looking in her way than you are in yours. she is a type of dark beauty, but you are equally as perfect. she is unusual in her combination of black hair and violet eyes, although every one thinks them black at a little distance. you are quite as unusual with your fair face, black brows, and brown hair; indeed, i know many people who would prefer your bright head to her dark one. it's all a question of taste--and being engaged to the girl," he added. "that would be likely to prejudice one," laughed elnora. "edith has a birthday soon; if these last will you let me have a box of them to send her?" "i will help gather and pack them for you, so they will carry nicely. does she hunt moths with you?" back went philip ammon's head in a gale of laughter. "no!" he cried. "she says they are `creepy.' she would go into a spasm if she were compelled to touch those caterpillars i saw you handling yesterday." "why would she?" marvelled elnora. "haven't you told her that they are perfectly clean, helpless, and harmless as so much animate velvet?" "no, i have not told her. she wouldn't care enough about caterpillars to listen." "in what is she interested?" "what interests edith carr? let me think! first, i believe she takes pride in being a little handsomer and better dressed than any girl of her set. she is interested in having a beautiful home, fine appointments, in being petted, praised, and the acknowledged leader of society. "she likes to find new things which amuse her, and to always and in all circumstances have her own way about everything." "good gracious!" cried elnora, staring at him. "but what does she do? how does she spend her time?" "spend her time!" repeated philip. "well, she would call that a joke. her days are never long enough. there is endless shopping, to find the pretty things; regular visits to the dressmakers, calls, parties, theatres, entertainments. she is always rushed. i never am able to be with her half as much as i would like." "but i mean work," persisted elnora. "in what is she interested that is useful to the world?" "me!" cried philip promptly. "i can understand that," laughed elnora. "what i can't understand is how you can be in----" she stopped in confusion, but she saw that he had finished the sentence as she had intended. "i beg your pardon!" she cried. "i didn't intend to say that. but i cannot understand these people i hear about who live only for their own amusement. perhaps it is very great; i'll never have a chance to know. to me, it seems the only pleasure in this world worth having is the joy we derive from living for those we love, and those we can help. i hope you are not angry with me." philip sat silently looking far away, with deep thought in his eyes. "you are angry," faltered elnora. his look came back to her as she knelt before him among the flowers and he gazed at her steadily. "no doubt i should be," he said, "but the fact is i am not. i cannot understand a life purely for personal pleasure myself. but she is only a girl, and this is her playtime. when she is a woman in her own home, then she will be different, will she not?" elnora never resembled her mother so closely as when she answered that question. "i would have to be well acquainted with her to know, but i should hope so. to make a real home for a tired business man is a very different kind of work from that required to be a leader of society. it demands different talent and education. of course, she means to change, or she would not have promised to make a home for you. i suspect our dope is cool now, let's go try for some butterflies." as they went along the path together elnora talked of many things but philip answered absently. evidently he was thinking of something else. but the moth bait recalled him and he was ready for work as they made their way back to the woods. he wanted to try the limberlost, but elnora was firm about remaining on home ground. she did not tell him that lights hung in the swamp would be a signal to call up a band of men whose presence she dreaded. so they started, ammon carrying the dope, elnora the net, billy and mrs. comstock following with cyanide boxes and lanterns. first they tried for butterflies and captured several fine ones without trouble. they also called swarms of ants, bees, beetles, and flies. when it grew dusk, mrs. comstock and philip went to prepare supper. elnora and billy remained until the butterflies disappeared. then they lighted the lanterns, repainted the trees and followed the home trail. "do you 'spec you'll get just a lot of moths?" asked billy, as he walked beside elnora. "i am sure i hardly know," said the girl. "this is a new way for me. perhaps they will come to the lights, but few moths eat; and i have some doubt about those which the lights attract settling on the right trees. maybe the smell of that dope will draw them. between us, billy, i think i like my old way best. if i can find a hidden moth, slip up and catch it unawares, or take it in full flight, it's my captive, and i can keep it until it dies naturally. but this way you seem to get it under false pretences, it has no chance, and it will probably ruin its wings struggling for freedom before morning." "well, any moth ought to be proud to be taken anyway, by you," said billy. "just look what you do! you can make everybody love them. people even quit hating caterpillars when they see you handle them and hear you tell all about them. you must have some to show people how they are. it's not like killing things to see if you can, or because you want to eat them, the way most men kill birds. i think it is right for you to take enough for collections, to show city people, and to illustrate the bird woman's books. you go on and take them! the moths don't care. they're glad to have you. they like it!" "billy, i see your future," said elnora. "we will educate you and send you up to mr. ammon to make a great lawyer. you'd beat the world as a special pleader. you actually make me feel that i am doing the moths a kindness to take them." "and so you are!" cried billy. "why, just from what you have taught them uncle wesley and aunt margaret never think of killing a caterpillar until they look whether it's the beautiful june moth kind, or the horrid tent ones. that's what you can do. you go straight ahead!" "billy, you are a jewel!" cried elnora, throwing her arm across his shoulders as they came down the path. "my, i was scared!" said billy with a deep breath. "scared?" questioned elnora. "yes sir-ee! aunt margaret scared me. may i ask you a question?" "of course, you may!" "is that man going to be your beau?" "billy! no! what made you think such a thing?" "aunt margaret said likely he would fall in love with you, and you wouldn't want me around any more. oh, but i was scared! it isn't so, is it?" "indeed, no!" "i am your beau, ain't i?" "surely you are!" said elnora, tightening her arm. "i do hope aunt kate has ginger cookies," said billy with a little skip of delight. chapter xv wherein mrs. comstock faces the almighty, and philip ammon writes a letter mrs. comstock and elnora were finishing breakfast the following morning when they heard a cheery whistle down the road. elnora with surprised eyes looked at her mother. "could that be mr. ammon?" she questioned. "i did not expect him so soon," commented mrs. comstock. it was sunrise, but the musician was philip ammon. he appeared stronger than on yesterday. "i hope i am not too early," he said. "i am consumed with anxiety to learn if we have made a catch. if we have, we should beat the birds to it. i promised uncle doc to put on my waders and keep dry for a few days yet, when i go to the woods. let's hurry! i am afraid of crows. there might be a rare moth." the sun was topping the limberlost when they started. as they neared the place philip stopped. "now we must use great caution," he said. "the lights and the odours always attract numbers that don't settle on the baited trees. every bush, shrub, and limb may hide a specimen we want." so they approached with much care. "there is something, anyway!" cried philip. "there are moths! i can see them!" exulted elnora. "those you see are fast enough. it's the ones for which you must search that will escape. the grasses are dripping, and i have boots, so you look beside the path while i take the outside," suggested ammon. mrs. comstock wanted to hunt moths, but she was timid about making a wrong movement, so she wisely sat on a log and watched philip and elnora to learn how they proceeded. back in the deep woods a hermit thrush was singing his chant to the rising sun. orioles were sowing the pure, sweet air with notes of gold, poured out while on wing. the robins were only chirping now, for their morning songs had awakened all the other birds an hour ago. scolding red-wings tilted on half the bushes. excepting late species of haws, tree bloom was almost gone, but wild flowers made the path border and all the wood floor a riot of colour. elnora, born among such scenes, worked eagerly, but to the city man, recently from a hospital, they seemed too good to miss. he frequently stooped to examine a flower face, paused to listen intently to the thrush or lifted his head to see the gold flash which accompanied the oriole's trailing notes. so elnora uttered the first cry, as she softly lifted branches and peered among the grasses. "my find!" she called. "bring the box, mother!" philip came hurrying also. when they reached her she stood on the path holding a pair of moths. her eyes were wide with excitement, her cheeks pink, her red lips parted, and on the hand she held out to them clung a pair of delicate blue-green moths, with white bodies, and touches of lavender and straw colour. all around her lay flower-brocaded grasses, behind the deep green background of the forest, while the sun slowly sifted gold from heaven to burnish her hair. mrs. comstock heard a sharp breath behind her. "oh, what a picture!" exulted philip at her shoulder. "she is absolutely and altogether lovely! i'd give a small fortune for that faithfully set on canvas!" he picked the box from mrs. comstock's fingers and slowly advanced with it. elnora held down her hand and transferred the moths. philip closed the box carefully, but the watching mother saw that his eyes were following the girl's face. he was not making the slightest attempt to conceal his admiration. "i wonder if a woman ever did anything lovelier than to find a pair of luna moths on a forest path, early on a perfect june morning," he said to mrs. comstock, when he returned the box. she glanced at elnora who was intently searching the bushes. "look here, young man," said mrs. comstock. "you seem to find that girl of mine about right." "i could suggest no improvement," said philip. "i never saw a more attractive girl anywhere. she seems absolutely perfect to me." "then suppose you don't start any scheme calculated to spoil her!" proposed mrs. comstock dryly. "i don't think you can, or that any man could, but i'm not taking any risks. you asked to come here to help in this work. we are both glad to have you, if you confine yourself to work; but it's the least you can do to leave us as you find us." "i beg your pardon!" said philip. "i intended no offence. i admire her as i admire any perfect creation." "and nothing in all this world spoils the average girl so quickly and so surely," said mrs. comstock. she raised her voice. "elnora, fasten up that tag of hair over your left ear. these bushes muss you so you remind me of a sheep poking its nose through a hedge fence." mrs. comstock started down the path toward the log again, when she reached it she called sharply: "elnora, come here! i believe i have found something myself." the "something" was a citheronia regalis which had emerged from its case on the soft earth under the log. it climbed up the wood, its stout legs dragging a big pursy body, while it wildly flapped tiny wings the size of a man's thumb-nail. elnora gave one look and a cry which brought philip. "that's the rarest moth in america!" he announced. "mrs. comstock, you've gone up head. you can put that in a box with a screen cover to-night, and attract half a dozen, possibly." "is it rare, elnora?" inquired mrs. comstock, as if no one else knew. "it surely is," answered elnora. "if we can find it a mate to-night, it will lay from two hundred and fifty to three hundred eggs to-morrow. with any luck at all i can raise two hundred caterpillars from them. i did once before. and they are worth a dollar apiece." "was the one i killed like that?" "no. that was a different moth, but its life processes were the same as this. the bird woman calls this the king of the poets." "why does she?" "because it is named for citheron who was a poet, and regalis refers to a king. you mustn't touch it or you may stunt wing development. you watch and don't let that moth out of sight, or anything touch it. when the wings are expanded and hardened we will put it in a box." "i am afraid it will race itself to death," objected mrs. comstock. "that's a part of the game," said philip. "it is starting circulation now. when the right moment comes, it will stop and expand its wings. if you watch closely you can see them expand." presently the moth found a rough projection of bark and clung with its feet, back down, its wings hanging. the body was an unusual orange red, the tiny wings were gray, striped with the red and splotched here and there with markings of canary yellow. mrs. comstock watched breathlessly. presently she slipped from the log and knelt to secure a better view. "are its wings developing?" called elnora. "they are growing larger and the markings coming stronger every minute." "let's watch, too," said elnora to philip. they came and looked over mrs. comstock's shoulder. lower drooped the gay wings, wider they spread, brighter grew the markings as if laid off in geometrical patterns. they could hear mrs. comstock's tense breath and see her absorbed expression. "young people," she said solemnly, "if your studying science and the elements has ever led you to feel that things just happen, kind of evolve by chance, as it were, this sight will be good for you. maybe earth and air accumulate, but it takes the wisdom of the almighty god to devise the wing of a moth. if there ever was a miracle, this whole process is one. now, as i understand it, this creature is going to keep on spreading those wings, until they grow to size and harden to strength sufficient to bear its body. then it flies away, mates with its kind, lays its eggs on the leaves of a certain tree, and the eggs hatch tiny caterpillars which eat just that kind of leaves, and the worms grow and grow, and take on different forms and colours until at last they are big caterpillars six inches long, with large horns. then they burrow into the earth, build a water-proof house around themselves from material which is inside them, and lie through rain and freezing cold for months. a year from egg laying they come out like this, and begin the process all over again. they don't eat, they don't see distinctly, they live but a few days, and fly only at night; then they drop off easy, but the process goes on." a shivering movement went over the moth. the wings drooped and spread wider. mrs. comstock sank into soft awed tones. "there never was a moment in my life," she said, "when i felt so in the presence, as i do now. i feel as if the almighty were so real, and so near, that i could reach out and touch him, as i could this wonderful work of his, if i dared. i feel like saying to him: `to the extent of my brain power i realize your presence, and all it is in me to comprehend of your power. help me to learn, even this late, the lessons of your wonderful creations. help me to unshackle and expand my soul to the fullest realization of your wonders. almighty god, make me bigger, make me broader!'" the moth climbed to the end of the projection, up it a little way, then suddenly reversed its wings, turned the hidden sides out and dropped them beside its abdomen, like a large fly. the upper side of the wings, thus exposed, was far richer colour, more exquisite texture than the under, and they slowly half lifted and drooped again. mrs. comstock turned her face to philip. "am i an old fool, or do you feel it, too?" she half whispered. "you are wiser than you ever have been before," answered he. "i feel it, also." "and i," breathed elnora. the moth spread its wings, shivered them tremulously, opening and closing them rapidly. philip handed the box to elnora. she shook her head. "i can't take that one," she said. "give her freedom." "but, elnora," protested mrs. comstock, "i don't want to let her go. she's mine. she's the first one i ever found this way. can't you put her in a big box, and let her live, without hurting her? i can't bear to let her go. i want to learn all about her." "then watch while we gather these on the trees," said elnora. "we will take her home until night and then decide what to do. she won't fly for a long time yet." mrs. comstock settled on the ground, gazing at the moth. elnora and philip went to the baited trees, placing several large moths and a number of smaller ones in the cyanide jar, and searching the bushes beyond where they found several paired specimens of differing families. when they returned elnora showed her mother how to hold her hand before the moth so that it would climb upon her fingers. then they started back to the cabin, elnora and philip leading the way; mrs. comstock followed slowly, stepping with great care lest she stumble and injure the moth. her face wore a look of comprehension, in her eyes was an exalted light. on she came to the bluebordered pool lying beside her path. a turtle scrambled from a log and splashed into the water, while a red-wing shouted, "o-ka-lee!" to her. mrs. comstock paused and looked intently at the slimecovered quagmire, framed in a flower riot and homed over by sweet-voiced birds. then she gazed at the thing of incomparable beauty clinging to her fingers and said softly: "if you had known about wonders like these in the days of your youth, robert comstock, could you ever have done what you did?" elnora missed her mother, and turning to look for her, saw her standing beside the pool. would the old fascination return? a panic of fear seized the girl. she went back swiftly. "are you afraid she is going?" elnora asked. "if you are, cup your other hand over her for shelter. carrying her through this air and in the hot sunshine will dry her wings and make them ready for flight very quickly. you can't trust her in such air and light as you can in the cool dark woods." while she talked she took hold of her mother's sleeve, anxiously smiling a pitiful little smile that mrs. comstock understood. philip set his load at the back door, returning to hold open the garden gate for elnora and mrs. comstock. he reached it in time to see them standing together beside the pool. the mother bent swiftly and kissed the girl on the lips. philip turned and was busily hunting moths on the raspberry bushes when they reached the gate. and so excellent are the rewards of attending your own business, that he found a promethea on a lilac in a corner; a moth of such rare wine-coloured, velvety shades that it almost sent mrs. comstock to her knees again. but this one was fully developed, able to fly, and had to be taken into the cabin hurriedly. mrs. comstock stood in the middle of the room holding up her regalis. "now what must i do?" she asked. elnora glanced at philip ammon. their eyes met and both of them smiled; he with amusement at the tall, spare figure, with dark eyes and white crown, asking the childish question so confidingly; and elnora with pride. she was beginning to appreciate the character of her mother. "how would you like to sit and see her finish development? i'll get dinner," proposed the girl. after they had dined, philip and elnora carried the dishes to the kitchen, brought out boxes, sheets of cork, pins, ink, paper slips and everything necessary for mounting and classifying the moths they had taken. when the housework was finished mrs. comstock with her ruffle sat near, watching and listening. she remembered all they said that she understood, and when uncertain she asked questions. occasionally she laid down her work to straighten some flower which needed attention or to search the garden for a bug for the grosbeak. in one of these absences elnora said to philip: "these replace quite a number of the moths i lost for the man of india. with a week of such luck, i could almost begin to talk college again." "there is no reason why you should not have the week and the luck," said he. "i have taken moths until the middle of august, though i suspect one is more likely to find late ones in the north where it is colder than here. the next week is hay-time, but we can count on a few double-brooders and strays, and by working the exchange method for all it is worth, i think we can complete the collection again." "you almost make me hope," said elnora, "but i must not allow myself. i don't truly think i can replace all i lost, not even with your help. if i could, i scarcely see my way clear to leave mother this winter. i have found her so recently, and she is so precious, i can't risk losing her again. i am going to take the nature position in the onabasha schools, and i shall be most happy doing the work. only, these are a temptation." "i wish you might go to college this fall with the other girls," said philip. "i feel that if you don't you never will. isn't there some way?" "i can't see it if there is, and i really don't want to leave mother." "well, mother is mighty glad to hear it," said mrs. comstock, entering the arbour. philip noticed that her face was pale, her lips quivering, her voice cold. "i was telling your daughter that she should go to college this winter," he explained, "but she says she doesn't want to leave you." "if she wants to go, i wish she could," said mrs. comstock, a look of relief spreading over her face. "oh, all girls want to go to college," said philip. "it's the only proper place to learn bridge and embroidery; not to mention midnight lunches of mixed pickles and fruit cake, and all the delights of the sororities." "i have thought for years of going to college," said elnora, "but i never thought of any of those things." "that is because your education in fudge and bridge has been sadly neglected," said philip. "you should hear my sister polly! this was her final year! lunches and sororities were all i heard her mention, until tom levering came on deck; now he is the leading subject. i can't see from her daily conversation that she knows half as much really worth knowing as you do, but she's ahead of you miles on fun." "oh, we had some good times in the high school," said elnora. "life hasn't been all work and study. is edith carr a college girl?" "no. she is the very selectest kind of a private boardingschool girl." "who is she?" asked mrs. comstock. philip opened his lips. "she is a girl in chicago, that mr. ammon knows very well," said elnora. "she is beautiful and rich, and a friend of his sister's. or, didn't you say that?" "i don't remember, but she is," said philip. "this moth needs an alcohol bath to remove the dope." "won't the down come, too?" asked elnora anxiously. "no. you watch and you will see it come out, as polly would say, `a perfectly good' moth." "is your sister younger than you?" inquired elnora. "yes," said philip, "but she is three years older than you. she is the dearest sister in all the world. i'd love to see her now." "why don't you send for her," suggested elnora. "perhaps she'd like to help us catch moths." "yes, i think polly in a virot hat, picot embroidered frock and three-inch heels would take more moths than any one who ever tried the limberlost," laughed philip. "well, you find many of them, and you are her brother." "yes, but that is different. father was reared in onabasha, and he loved the country. he trained me his way and mother took charge of polly. i don't quite understand it. mother is a great home body herself, but she did succeed in making polly strictly ornamental." "does tom levering need a `strictly ornamental' girl?" "you are too matter of fact! too `strictly' material. he needs a darling girl who will love him plenty, and polly is that." "well, then, does the limberlost need a `strictly ornamental' girl?" "no!" cried philip. "you are ornament enough for the limberlost. i have changed my mind. i don't want polly here. she would not enjoy catching moths, or anything we do." "she might," persisted elnora. "you are her brother, and surely you care for these things." "the argument does not hold," said philip. "polly and i do not like the same things when we are at home, but we are very fond of each other. the member of my family who would go crazy about this is my father. i wish he could come, if only for a week. i'd send for him, but he is tied up in preparing some papers for a great corporation case this summer. he likes the country. it was his vote that brought me here." philip leaned back against the arbour, watching the grosbeak as it hunted food between a tomato vine and a day lily. elnora set him to making labels, and when he finished them he asked permission to write a letter. he took no pains to conceal his page, and from where she sat opposite him, elnora could not look his way without reading: "my dearest edith." he wrote busily for a time and then sat staring across the garden. "have you run out of material so quickly?" asked elnora. "that's about it," said philip. "i have said that i am getting well as rapidly as possible, that the air is fine, the folks at uncle doc's all well, and entirely too good to me; that i am spending most of my time in the country helping catch moths for a collection, which is splendid exercise; now i can't think of another thing that will be interesting." there was a burst of exquisite notes in the maple. "put in the grosbeak," suggested elnora. "tell her you are so friendly with him you feed him potato bugs." philip lowered the pen to the sheet, bent forward, then hesitated. "blest if i do!" he cried. "she'd think a grosbeak was a depraved person with a large nose. she'd never dream that it was a black-robed lover, with a breast of snow and a crimson heart. she doesn't care for hungry babies and potato bugs. i shall write that to father. he will find it delightful." elnora deftly picked up a moth, pinned it and placed its wings. she straightened the antennae, drew each leg into position and set it in perfectly lifelike manner. as she lifted her work to see if she had it right, she glanced at philip. he was still frowning and hesitating over the paper. "i dare you to let me dictate a couple of paragraphs." "done!" cried philip. "go slowly enough that i can write it." elnora laughed gleefully. "i am writing this," she began, "in an old grape arbour in the country, near a log cabin where i had my dinner. from where i sit i can see directly into the home of the next-door neighbour on the west. his name is r. b. grosbeak. from all i have seen of him, he is a gentleman of the old school; the oldest school there is, no doubt. he always wears a black suit and cap and a white vest, decorated with one large red heart, which i think must be the emblem of some ancient order. i have been here a number of times, and i never have seen him wear anything else, or his wife appear in other than a brown dress with touches of white. "it has appealed to me at times that she was a shade neglectful of her home duties, but he does not seem to feel that way. he cheerfully stays in the sitting-room, while she is away having a good time, and sings while he cares for the four small children. i must tell you about his music. i am sure he never saw inside a conservatory. i think he merely picked up what he knows by ear and without vocal training, but there is a tenderness in his tones, a depth of pure melody, that i never have heard surpassed. it may be that i think more of his music than that of some other good vocalists hereabout, because i see more of him and appreciate his devotion to his home life. "i just had an encounter with him at the west fence, and induced him to carry a small gift to his children. when i see the perfect harmony in which he lives, and the depth of content he and the brown lady find in life, i am almost persuaded to- now this is going to be poetry," said elnora. "move your pen over here and begin with a quote and a cap." philip's face had been an interesting study while he wrote her sentences. now he gravely set the pen where she indicated, and elnora dictated- "buy a nice little home in the country, and settle down there for life." "that's the truth!" cried philip. "it's as big a temptation as i ever had. go on!" "that's all," said elnora. "you can finish. the moths are done. i am going hunting for whatever i can find for the grades." "wait a minute," begged philip. "i am going, too." "no. you stay with mother and finish your letter." "it is done. i couldn't add anything to that." "very well! sign your name and come on. but i forgot to tell you all the bargain. maybe you won't send the letter when you hear that. the remainder is that you show me the reply to my part of it." "oh, that's easy! i wouldn't have the slightest objection to showing you the whole letter." he signed his name, folded the sheets and slipped them into his pocket. "where are we going and what do we take?" "will you go, mother?" asked elnora. "i have a little work that should be done," said mrs. comstock. "could you spare me? where do you want to go?" "we will go down to aunt margaret's and see her a few minutes and get billy. we will be back in time for supper." mrs. comstock smiled as she watched them down the road. what a splendid-looking pair of young creatures they were! how finely proportioned, how full of vitality! then her face grew troubled as she saw them in earnest conversation. just as she was wishing she had not trusted her precious girl with so much of a stranger, she saw elnora stoop to lift a branch and peer under. the mother grew content. elnora was thinking only of her work. she was to be trusted utterly. chapter xvi wherein the limberlost sings for philip, and the talking trees tell great secrets a few days later philip handed elnora a sheet of paper and she read: "in your condition i should think the moth hunting and life at that cabin would be very good for you, but for any sake keep away from that grosbeak person, and don't come home with your head full of granger ideas. no doubt he has a remarkable voice, but i can't bear untrained singers, and don't you get the idea that a june song is perennial. you are not hearing the music he will make when the four babies have the scarlet fever and the measles, and the gadding wife leaves him at home to care for them then. poor soul, i pity her! how she exists where rampant cows bellow at you, frogs croak, mosquitoes consume you, the butter goes to oil in summer and bricks in winter, while the pump freezes every day, and there is no earthly amusement, and no society! poor things! can't you influence him to move? no wonder she gads when she has a chance! i should die. if you are thinking of settling in the country, think also of a woman who is satisfied with white and brown to accompany you! brown! of all deadly colours! i should go mad in brown." elnora laughed while she read. her face was dimpling, as she returned the sheet. "who's ahead?" she asked. "who do you think?" he parried. "she is," said elnora. "are you going to tell her in your next that r. b. grosbeak is a bird, and that he probably will spend the winter in a wild plum thicket in tennessee?" "no," said philip. "i shall tell her that i understand her ideas of life perfectly, and, of course, i never shall ask her to deal with oily butter and frozen pumps--" "--and measley babies," interpolated elnora. "exactly!" said philip. "at the same time i find so much to counterbalance those things, that i should not object to bearing them myself, in view of the recompense. where do we go and what do we do to-day?" "we will have to hunt beside the roads and around the edge of the limberlost to-day," said elnora. "mother is making strawberry preserves, and she can't come until she finishes. suppose we go down to the swamp and i'll show you what is left of the flower-room that terence o'more, the big lumber man of great rapids, made when he was a homeless boy here. of course, you have heard the story?" "yes, and i've met the o'mores who are frequently in chicago society. they have friends there. i think them one ideal couple." "that sounds as if they might be the only one," said elnora, "and, indeed, they are not. i know dozens. aunt margaret and uncle wesley are another, the brownlees another, and my mathematics professor and his wife. the world is full of happy people, but no one ever hears of them. you must fight and make a scandal to get into the papers. no one knows about all the happy people. i am happy myself, and look how perfectly inconspicuous i am." "you only need go where you will be seen," began philip, when he remembered and finished. "what do we take to-day?" "ourselves," said elnora. "i have a vagabond streak in my blood and it's in evidence. i am going to show you where real flowers grow, real birds sing, and if i feel quite right about it, perhaps i shall raise a note or two myself." "oh, do you sing?" asked philip politely. "at times," answered elnora. "`as do the birds; because i must,' but don't be scared. the mood does not possess me often. perhaps i shan't raise a note." they went down the road to the swamp, climbed the snake fence, followed the path to the old trail and then turned south upon it. elnora indicated to philip the trail with remnants of sagging barbed wire. "it was ten years ago," she said. "i was a little school girl, but i wandered widely even then, and no one cared. i saw him often. he had been in a city institution all his life, when he took the job of keeping timber thieves out of this swamp, before many trees had been cut. it was a strong man's work, and he was a frail boy, but he grew hardier as he lived out of doors. this trail we are on is the path his feet first wore, in those days when he was insane with fear and eaten up with loneliness, but he stuck to his work and won out. i used to come down to the road and creep among the bushes as far as i dared, to watch him pass. he walked mostly, at times he rode a wheel. "some days his face was dreadfully sad, others it was so determined a little child could see the force in it, and once he was radiant. that day the swamp angel was with him. i can't tell you what she was like. i never saw any one who resembled her. he stopped close here to show her a bird's nest. then they went on to a sort of flower-room he had made, and he sang for her. by the time he left, i had gotten bold enough to come out on the trail, and i met the big scotchman freckles lived with. he saw me catching moths and butterflies, so he took me to the flower-room and gave me everything there. i don't dare come alone often, so i can't keep it up as he did, but you can see something of how it was." elnora led the way and philip followed. the outlines of the room were not distinct, because many of the trees were gone, but elnora showed how it had been as nearly as she could. "the swamp is almost ruined now," she said. "the maples, walnuts, and cherries are all gone. the talking trees are the only things left worth while." "the `talking trees!' i don't understand," commented philip. "no wonder!" laughed elnora. "they are my discovery. you know all trees whisper and talk during the summer, but there are two that have so much to say they keep on the whole winter, when the others are silent. the beeches and oaks so love to talk, they cling to their dead, dry leaves. in the winter the winds are stiffest and blow most, so these trees whisper, chatter, sob, laugh, and at times roar until the sound is deafening. they never cease until new leaves come out in the spring to push off the old ones. i love to stand beneath them with my ear to the trunks, interpreting what they say to fit my moods. the beeches branch low, and their leaves are small so they only know common earthly things; but the oaks run straight above almost all other trees before they branch, their arms are mighty, their leaves large. they meet the winds that travel around the globe, and from them learn the big things." philip studied the girls face. "what do the beeches tell you, elnora?" he asked gently. "to be patient, to be unselfish, to do unto others as i would have them do to me." "and the oaks?" "they say `be true,' `live a clean life,' `send your soul up here and the winds of the world will teach it what honour achieves.'" "wonderful secrets, those!" marvelled philip. "are they telling them now? could i hear?" "no. they are only gossiping now. this is play-time. they tell the big secrets to a white world, when the music inspires them." "the music?" "all other trees are harps in the winter. their trunks are the frames, their branches the strings, the winds the musicians. when the air is cold and clear, the world very white, and the harp music swelling, then the talking trees tell the strengthening, uplifting things." "you wonderful girl!" cried philip. "what a woman you will be!" "if i am a woman at all worth while, it will be because i have had such wonderful opportunities," said elnora. "not every girl is driven to the forest to learn what god has to say there. here are the remains of freckles's room. the time the angel came here he sang to her, and i listened. i never heard music like that. no wonder she loved him. every one who knew him did, and they do yet. try that log, it makes a fairly good seat. this old store box was his treasure house, just as it's now mine. i will show you my dearest possession. i do not dare take it home because mother can't overcome her dislike for it. it was my father's, and in some ways i am like him. this is the strongest." elnora lifted the violin and began to play. she wore a school dress of green gingham, with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. she seemed a part of the setting all around her. her head shone like a small dark sun, and her face never had seemed so rose-flushed and fair. from the instant she drew the bow, her lips parted and her eyes turned toward something far away in the swamp, and never did she give more of that impression of feeling for her notes and repeating something audible only to her. philip was too close to get the best effect. he arose and stepped back several yards, leaning against a large tree, looking and listening intently. as he changed positions he saw that mrs. comstock had followed them, and was standing on the trail, where she could not have helped hearing everything elnora had said. so to philip before her and the mother watching on the trail, elnora played the song of the limberlost. it seemed as if the swamp hushed all its other voices and spoke only through her dancing bow. the mother out on the trail had heard it all, once before from the girl, many times from her father. to the man it was a revelation. he stood so stunned he forgot mrs. comstock. he tried to realize what a city audience would say to that music, from such a player, with a similar background, and he could not imagine. he was wondering what he dared say, how much he might express, when the last note fell and the girl laid the violin in the case, closed the door, locked it and hid the key in the rotting wood at the end of a log. then she came to him. philip stood looking at her curiously. "i wonder," he said, "what people would say to that?" "i played that in public once," said elnora. "i think they liked it, fairly well. i had a note yesterday offering me the leadership of the high school orchestra in onabasha. i can take it as well as not. none of my talks to the grades come the first thing in the morning. i can play a few minutes in the orchestra and reach the rooms in plenty of time. it will be more work that i love, and like finding the money. i would gladly play for nothing, merely to be able to express myself." "with some people it makes a regular battlefield of the human heart--this struggle for self-expression," said philip. "you are going to do beautiful work in the world, and do it well. when i realize that your violin belonged to your father, that he played it before you were born, and it no doubt affected your mother strongly, and then couple with that the years you have roamed these fields and swamps finding in nature all you had to lavish your heart upon, i can see how you evolved. i understand what you mean by self-expression. i know something of what you have to express. the world never so wanted your message as it does now. it is hungry for the things you know. i can see easily how your position came to you. what you have to give is taught in no college, and i am not sure but you would spoil yourself if you tried to run your mind through a set groove with hundreds of others. i never thought i should say such a thing to any one, but i do say to you, and i honestly believe it; give up the college idea. your mind does not need that sort of development. stick close to your work in the woods. you are becoming so infinitely greater on it, than the best college girl i ever knew, that there is no comparison. when you have money to spend, take that violin and go to one of the world's great masters and let the limberlost sing to him; if he thinks he can improve it, very well. i have my doubts." "do you really mean that you would give up all idea of going to college, in my place?" "i really mean it," said philip. "if i now held the money in my hands to send you, and could give it to you in some way you would accept i would not. i do not know why it is the fate of the world always to want something different from what life gives them. if you only could realize it, my girl, you are in college, and have been always. you are in the school of experience, and it has taught you to think, and given you a heart. god knows i envy the man who wins it! you have been in the college of the limberlost all your life, and i never met a graduate from any other institution who could begin to compare with you in sanity, clarity, and interesting knowledge. i wouldn't even advise you to read too many books on your lines. you acquire your material first hand, and you know that you are right. what you should do is to begin early to practise self-expression. don't wait too long to tell us about the woods as you know them." "follow the course of the bird woman, you mean?" asked elnora. "in your own way; with your own light. she won't live forever. you are younger, and you will be ready to begin where she ends. the swamp has given you all you need so far; now you give it to the world in payment. college be confounded! go to work and show people what there is in you!" not until then did he remember mrs. comstock. "should we go out to the trail and see if your mother is coming?" he asked. "here she is now," said elnora. "gracious, it's a mercy i got that violin put away in time! i didn't expect her so soon," whispered the girl as she turned and went toward her mother. mrs. comstock's expression was peculiar as she looked at elnora. "i forgot that you were making sun-preserves and they didn't require much cooking," she said. "we should have waited for you." "not at all!" answered mrs. comstock. "have you found anything yet?" "nothing that i can show you," said elnora. "i am almost sure i have found an idea that will revolutionize the whole course of my work, thought, and ambitions." "`ambitions!' my, what a hefty word!" laughed mrs. comstock. "now who would suspect a little red-haired country girl of harbouring such a deadly germ in her body? can you tell mother about it?" "not if you talk to me that way, i can't," said elnora. "well, i guess we better let ambition lie. i've always heard it was safest asleep. if you ever get a bona fide attack, it will be time to attend it. let's hunt specimens. it is june. philip and i are in the grades. you have an hour to put an idea into our heads that will stick for a lifetime, and grow for good. that's the way i look at your job. now, what are you going to give us? we don't want any old silly stuff that has been hashed over and over, we want a big new idea to plant in our hearts. come on, miss teacher, what is the boiled-down, double-distilled essence of june? give it to us strong. we are large enough to furnish it developing ground. hurry up! time is short and we are waiting. what is the miracle of june? what one thing epitomizes the whole month, and makes it just a little different from any other?" "the birth of these big night moths," said elnora promptly. philip clapped his hands. the tears started to mrs. comstock's eyes. she took elnora in her arms, and kissed her forehead. "you'll do!" she said. "june is june, not because it has bloom, bird, fruit, or flower, exclusive to it alone. it's half may and half july in all of them. but to me, it's just june, when it comes to these great, velvet-winged night moths which sweep its moonlit skies, consummating their scheme of creation, and dropping like a bloomedout flower. give them moths for june. then make that the basis of your year's work. find the distinctive feature of each month, the one thing which marks it a time apart, and hit them squarely between the eyes with it. even the babies of the lowest grades can comprehend moths when they see a few emerge, and learn their history, as it can be lived before them. you should show your specimens in pairs, then their eggs, the growing caterpillars, and then the cocoons. you want to dig out the red heart of every month in the year, and hold it pulsing before them. "i can't name all of them off-hand, but i think of one more right now. february belongs to our winter birds. it is then the great horned owl of the swamp courts his mate, the big hawks pair, and even the crows begin to take notice. these are truly our birds. like the poor we have them always with us. you should hear the musicians of this swamp in february, philip, on a mellow night. oh, but they are in earnest! for twenty-one years i've listened by night to the great owls, all the smaller sizes, the foxes, coons, and every resident left in these woods, and by day to the hawks, yellow-hammers, sap-suckers, titmice, crows, and other winter birds. only just now it's come to me that the distinctive feature of february is not linen bleaching, nor sugar making; it's the love month of our very own birds. give them hawks and owls for february, elnora." with flashing eyes the girl looked at philip. "how's that?" she said. "don't you think i will succeed, with such help? you should hear the concert she is talking about! it is simply indescribable when the ground is covered with snow, and the moonlight white." "it's about the best music we have," said mrs. comstock. "i wonder if you couldn't copy that and make a strong, original piece out of it for your violin, elnora?" there was one tense breath, then--- "i could try," said elnora simply. philip rushed to the rescue. "we must go to work," he said, and began examining a walnut branch for luna moth eggs. elnora joined him while mrs. comstock drew her embroidery from her pocket and sat on a log. she said she was tired, they could come for her when they were ready to go. she could hear their voices around her until she called them at supper time. when they came to her she stood waiting on the trail, the sewing in one hand, the violin in the other. elnora became very white, but followed the trail without a word. philip, unable to see a woman carry a heavier load than he, reached for the instrument. mrs. comstock shook her head. she carried the violin home, took it into her room and closed the door. elnora turned to philip. "if she destroys that, i shall die!" cried the girl. "she won't!" said philip. "you misunderstand her. she wouldn't have said what she did about the owls, if she had meant to. she is your mother. no one loves you as she does. trust her! myself--i think she's simply great!" mrs. comstock returned with serene face, and all of them helped with the supper. when it was over philip and elnora sorted and classified the afternoon's specimens, and made a trip to the woods to paint and light several trees for moths. when they came back mrs. comstock sat in the arbour, and they joined her. the moonlight was so intense, print could have been read by it. the damp night air held odours near to earth, making flower and tree perfume strong. a thousand insects were serenading, and in the maple the grosbeak occasionally said a reassuring word to his wife, while she answered that all was well. a whip-poor-will wailed in the swamp and beside the blue-bordered pool a chat complained disconsolately. mrs. comstock went into the cabin, but she returned immediately, laying the violin and bow across elnora's lap. "i wish you would give us a little music," she said. chapter xvii wherein mrs. comstock dances in the moonlight, and elnora makes a confession billy was swinging in the hammock, at peace with himself and all the world, when he thought he heard something. he sat bolt upright, his eyes staring. once he opened his lips, then thought again and closed them. the sound persisted. billy vaulted the fence, and ran down the road with his queer sidewise hop. when he neared the comstock cabin, he left the warm dust of the highway and stepped softly at slower pace over the rank grasses of the roadside. he had heard aright. the violin was in the grape arbour, singing a perfect jumble of everything, poured out in an exultant tumult. the strings were voicing the joy of a happy girl heart. billy climbed the fence enclosing the west woods and crept toward the arbour. he was not a spy and not a sneak. he merely wanted to satisfy his child-heart as to whether mrs. comstock was at home, and elnora at last playing her loved violin with her mother's consent. one peep sufficed. mrs. comstock sat in the moonlight, her head leaning against the arbour; on her face was a look of perfect peace and contentment. as he stared at her the bow hesitated a second and mrs. comstock spoke: "that's all very melodious and sweet," she said, "but i do wish you could play money musk and some of the tunes i danced as a girl." elnora had been carefully avoiding every note that might be reminiscent of her father. at the words she laughed softly and began "turkey in the straw." an instant later mrs. comstock was dancing in the moon light. ammon sprang to her side, caught her in his arms, while to elnora's laughter and the violin's impetus they danced until they dropped panting on the arbour bench. billy scarcely knew when he reached the road. his light feet barely touched the soft way, so swiftly he flew. he vaulted the fence and burst into the house. "aunt margaret! uncle wesley!" he screamed. "listen! listen! she's playing it! elnora's playing her violin at home! and aunt kate is dancing like anything before the arbour! i saw her in the moonlight! i ran down! oh, aunt margaret!" billy fled sobbing to margaret's breast. "why billy!" she chided. "don't cry, you little dunce! that's what we've all prayed for these many years; but you must be mistaken about kate. i can't believe it." billy lifted his head. "well, you just have to!" he said. "when i say i saw anything, uncle wesley knows i did. the city man was dancing with her. they danced together and elnora laughed. but it didn't look funny to me; i was scared." "who was it said `wonders never cease,'" asked wesley. "you mark my word, once you get kate comstock started, you can't stop her. there's a wagon load of penned-up force in her. dancing in the moonlight! well, i'll be hanged!" billy was at his side instantly. "whoever does it will have to hang me, too," he cried. sinton threw his arm around billy and drew him closely. "tell us all about it, son," he said. billy told. "and when elnora just stopped a breath, `can't you play some of the old things i knew when i was a girl?' said her ma. then elnora began to do a thing that made you want to whirl round and round, and quicker 'an scat there was her ma a-whirling. the city man, he ups and grabs her and whirls, too, and back in the woods i was going just like they did. elnora begins to laugh, and i ran to tell you, cos i knew you'd like to know. now, all the world is right, ain't it?" ended billy in supreme satisfaction. "you just bet it is!" said wesley. billy looked steadily at margaret. "is it, aunt margaret?" margaret sinton smiled at him bravely. an hour later when billy was ready to climb the stairs to his room, he went to margaret to say good night. he leaned against her an instant, then brought his lips to her ear. "wish i could get your little girls back for you!" he whispered and dashed toward the stairs. down at the comstock cabin the violin played on until elnora was so tired she scarcely could lift the bow. then philip went home. the women walked to the gate with him, and stood watching him from sight. "that's what i call one decent young man!" said mrs. comstock. "to see him fit in with us, you'd think he'd been brought up in a cabin; but it's likely he's always had the very cream o' the pot." "yes, i think so," laughed elnora, "but it hasn't hurt him. i've never seen anything i could criticise. he's teaching me so much, unconsciously. you know he graduated from harvard, and has several degrees in law. he's coming in the morning, and we are going to put in a big day on catocalae." "which is----?" "those gray moths with wings that fold back like big flies, and they appear as if they had been carved from old wood. then, when they fly, the lower wings flash out and they are red and black, or gold and black, or pink and black, or dozens of bright, beautiful colours combined with black. no one ever has classified all of them and written their complete history, unless the bird woman is doing it now. she wants everything she can get about them." "i remember," said mrs. comstock. "they are mighty pretty things. i've started up slews of them from the vines covering the logs, all my life. i must be cautious and catch them after this, but they seem powerful spry. i might get hold of something rare." she thought intently and added, "and wouldn't know it if i did. it would just be my luck. i've had the rarest thing on earth in reach this many a day and only had the wit to cinch it just as it was going. i'll bet i don't let anything else escape me." next morning philip came early, and he and elnora went at once to the fields and woods. mrs. comstock had come to believe so implicitly in him that she now stayed at home to complete the work before she joined them, and when she did she often sat sewing, leaving them wandering hours at a time. it was noon before she finished, and then she packed a basket of lunch. she found elnora and philip near the violet patch, which was still in its prime. they all lunched together in the shade of a wild crab thicket, with flowers spread at their feet, and the gold orioles streaking the air with flashes of light and trailing ecstasy behind them, while the redwings, as always, asked the most impertinent questions. then mrs. comstock carried the basket back to the cabin, and philip and elnora sat on a log, resting a few minutes. they had unexpected luck, and both were eager to continue the search. "do you remember your promise about these violets?" asked he. "to-morrow is edith's birthday, and if i'd put them special delivery on the morning train, she'd get them in the late afternoon. they ought to keep that long. she leaves for the north next day." "of course, you may have them," said elnora. "we will quit long enough before supper to gather a large bunch. they can be packed so they will carry all right. they should be perfectly fresh, especially if we gather them this evening and let them drink all night." then they went back to hunt catocalae. it was a long and a happy search. it led them into new, unexplored nooks of the woods, past a red-poll nest, and where goldfinches prospected for thistledown for the cradles they would line a little later. it led them into real forest, where deep, dark pools lay, where the hermit thrush and the wood robin extracted the essence from all other bird melody, and poured it out in their pure bell-tone notes. it seemed as if every old gray tree-trunk, slab of loose bark, and prostrate log yielded the flashing gray treasures; while of all others they seemed to take alarm most easily, and be most difficult to capture. philip came to elnora at dusk, daintily holding one by the body, its dark wings showing and its long slender legs trying to clasp his fingers and creep from his hold. "oh for mercy's sake!" cried elnora, staring at him. "i half believe it!" exulted ammon. "did you ever see one?" "only in collections, and very seldom there." elnora studied the black wings intently. "i surely believe that's sappho," she marvelled. "the bird woman will be overjoyed." "we must get the cyanide jar quickly," said philip. "i wouldn't lose her for anything. such a chase as she led me!" elnora brought the jar and began gathering up paraphernalia. "when you make a find like that," she said, "it's the right time to quit and feel glorious all the rest of that day. i tell you i'm proud! we will go now. we have barely time to carry out our plans before supper. won't mother be pleased to see that we have a rare one?" "i'd like to see any one more pleased than i am!" said philip ammon. "i feel as if i'd earned my supper to-night. let's go." he took the greater part of the load and stepped aside for elnora to precede him. she followed the path, broken by the grazing cattle, toward the cabin and nearest the violet patch she stopped, laid down her net, and the things she carried. philip passed her and hurried straight toward the back gate. "aren't you going to----?" began elnora. "i'm going to get this moth home in a hurry," he said. "this cyanide has lost its strength, and it's not working well. we need some fresh in the jar." he had forgotten the violets! elnora stood looking after him, a curious expression on her face. one second so--then she picked up the net and followed. at the blue-bordered pool she paused and half turned back, then she closed her lips firmly and went on. it was nine o'clock when philip said good-bye, and started to town. his gay whistle floated to them from the farthest corner of the limberlost. elnora complained of being tired, so she went to her room and to bed. but sleep would not come. thought was racing in her brain and the longer she lay the wider awake she grew. at last she softly slipped from bed, lighted her lamp and began opening boxes. then she went to work. two hours later a beautiful birch bark basket, strongly and artistically made, stood on her table. she set a tiny alarm clock at three, returned to bed and fell asleep instantly with a smile on her lips. she was on the floor with the first tinkle of the alarm, and hastily dressing, she picked up the basket and a box to fit it, crept down the stairs, and out to the violet patch. she was unafraid as it was growing light, and lining the basket with damp mosses she swiftly began picking, with practised hands, the best of the flowers. she scarcely could tell which were freshest at times, but day soon came creeping over the limberlost and peeped at her. the robins awoke all their neighbours, and a babel of bird notes filled the air. the dew was dripping, while the first strong rays of light fell on a world in which elnora worshipped. when the basket was filled to overflowing, she set it in the stout pasteboard box, packed it solid with mosses, tied it firmly and slipped under the cord a note she had written the previous night. then she took a short cut across the woods and walked swiftly to onabasha. it was after six o'clock, but all of the city she wished to avoid were asleep. she had no trouble in finding a small boy out, and she stood at a distance waiting while he rang dr. ammon's bell and delivered the package for philip to a maid, with the note which was to be given him at once. on the way home through the woods passing some baited trees she collected the captive moths. she entered the kitchen with them so naturally that mrs. comstock made no comment. after breakfast elnora went to her room, cleared away all trace of the night's work and was out in the arbour mounting moths when philip came down the road. "i am tired sitting," she said to her mother. "i think i will walk a few rods and meet him." "who's a trump?" he called from afar. "not you!" retorted elnora. "confess that you forgot!" "completely!" said philip. "but luckily it would not have been fatal. i wrote polly last week to send edith something appropriate to-day, with my card. but that touch from the woods will be very effective. thank you more than i can say. aunt anna and i unpacked it to see the basket, and it was a beauty. she says you are always doing such things." "well, i hope not!" laughed elnora. "if you'd seen me sneaking out before dawn, not to awaken mother and coming in with moths to make her think i'd been to the trees, you'd know it was a most especial occasion." "then philip understood two things: elnora's mother did not know of the early morning trip to the city, and the girl had come to meet him to tell him so. "you were a brick to do it!" he whispered as he closed the gate behind them. "i'll never forget you for it. thank you ever so much." "i did not do that for you," said elnora tersely. "i did it mostly to preserve my own self-respect. i saw you were forgetting. if i did it for anything besides that, i did it for her." "just look what i've brought!" said philip, entering the arbour and greeting mrs. comstock. "borrowed it of the bird woman. and it isn't hers. a rare edition of catocalae with coloured plates. i told her the best i could, and she said to try for sappho here. i suspect the bird woman will be out presently. she was all excitement." then they bent over the book together and with the mounted moth before them determined her family. the bird woman did come later, and carried the moth away, to put into a book and elnora and philip were freshly filled with enthusiasm. so these days were the beginning of the weeks that followed. six of them flying on time's wings, each filled to the brim with interest. after june, the moth hunts grew less frequent; the fields and woods were searched for material for elnora's grade work. the most absorbing occupation they found was in carrying out mrs. comstock's suggestion to learn the vital thing for which each month was distinctive, and make that the key to the nature work. they wrote out a list of the months, opposite each the things all of them could suggest which seemed to pertain to that month alone, and then tried to sift until they found something typical. mrs. comstock was a great help. her mother had been dutch and had brought from holland numerous quaint sayings and superstitions easily traceable to pliny's natural history; and in mrs. comstock's early years in ohio she had heard much indian talk among her elders, so she knew the signs of each season, and sometimes they helped. always her practical thought and sterling common sense were useful. when they were afield until exhausted they came back to the cabin for food, to prepare specimens and classify them, and to talk over the day. sometimes philip brought books and read while elnora and her mother worked, and every night mrs. comstock asked for the violin. her perfect hunger for music was sufficient evidence of how she had suffered without it. so the days crept by, golden, filled with useful work and pure pleasure. the grosbeak had led the family in the maple abroad and a second brood, in a wild grape vine clambering over the well, was almost ready for flight. the dust lay thick on the country roads, the days grew warmer; summer was just poising to slip into fall, and philip remained, coming each day as if he had belonged there always. one warm august afternoon mrs. comstock looked up from the ruffle on which she was engaged to see a blue-coated messenger enter the gate. "is philip ammon here?" asked the boy. "he is," said mrs. comstock. "i have a message for him." "he is in the woods back of the cabin. i will ring the bell. do you know if it is important?" "urgent," said the boy; "i rode hard." mrs. comstock stepped to the back door and clanged the dinner bell sharply, paused a second, and rang again. in a short time philip and elnora ran down the path. "are you ill, mother?" cried elnora. mrs. comstock indicated the boy. "there is an important message for philip," she said. he muttered an excuse and tore open the telegram. his colour faded slightly. "i have to take the first train," he said. "my father is ill and i am needed." he handed the sheet to elnora. "i have about two hours, as i remember the trains north, but my things are all over uncle doc's house, so i must go at once." "certainly," said elnora, giving back the message. "is there anything i can do to help? mother, bring philip a glass of buttermilk to start on. i will gather what you have here." "never mind. there is nothing of importance. i don't want to be hampered. i'll send for it if i miss anything i need." philip drank the milk, said good-bye to mrs. comstock; thanked her for all her kindness, and turned to elnora. "will you walk to the edge of the limberlost with me?" he asked. elnora assented. mrs. comstock followed to the gate, urged him to come again soon, and repeated her good-bye. then she went back to the arbour to await elnora's return. as she watched down the road she smiled softly. "i had an idea he would speak to me first," she thought, "but this may change things some. he hasn't time. elnora will come back a happy girl, and she has good reason. he is a model young man. her lot will be very different from mine." she picked up her embroidery and began setting dainty precise little stitches, possible only to certain women. on the road elnora spoke first. "i do hope it is nothing serious," she said. "is he usually strong?" "quite strong," said philip. "i am not at all alarmed but i am very much ashamed. i have been well enough for the past month to have gone home and helped him with some critical cases that were keeping him at work in this heat. i was enjoying myself so i wouldn't offer to go, and he would not ask me to come, so long as he could help it. i have allowed him to overtax himself until he is down, and mother and polly are north at our cottage. he's never been sick before, and it's probable i am to blame that he is now." "he intended you to stay this long when you came," urged elnora. "yes, but it's hot in chicago. i should have remembered him. he is always thinking of me. possibly he has needed me for days. i am ashamed to go to him in splendid condition and admit that i was having such a fine time i forgot to come home." "you have had a fine time, then?" asked elnora. they had reached the fence. philip vaulted over to take a short cut across the fields. he turned and looked at her. "the best, the sweetest, and most wholesome time any man ever had in this world," he said. "elnora, if i talked hours i couldn't make you understand what a girl i think you are. i never in all my life hated anything as i hate leaving you. it seems to me that i have not strength to do it." "if you have learned anything worth while from me," said elnora, "that should be it. just to have strength to go to your duty, and to go quickly." he caught the hand she held out to him in both his. "elnora, these days we have had together, have they been sweet to you?" "beautiful days!" said elnora. "each like a perfect dream to be thought over and over all my life. oh, they have been the only really happy days i've ever known; these days rich with mother's love, and doing useful work with your help. good-bye! you must hurry!" philip gazed at her. he tried to drop her hand, only clutched it closer. suddenly he drew her toward him. "elnora," he whispered, "will you kiss me good-bye?" elnora drew back and stared at him with wide eyes. "i'd strike you sooner!" she said. "have i ever said or done anything in your presence that made you feel free to ask that, philip ammon?" "no!" panted philip. "no! i think so much of you i wanted to touch your lips once before i left you. you know, elnora----" "don't distress yourself," said elnora calmly. "i am broad enough to judge you sanely. i know what you mean. it would be no harm to you. it would not matter to me, but here we will think of some one else. edith carr would not want your lips to-morrow if she knew they had touched mine to-day. i was wise to say: `go quickly!'" philip still clung to her. "will you write me?" he begged. "no," said elnora. "there is nothing to say, save good-bye. we can do that now." he held on. "promise that you will write me only one letter," he urged. "i want just one message from you to lock in my desk, and keep always. promise you will write once, elnora." she looked into his eyes, and smiled serenely. "if the talking trees tell me this winter, the secret of how a man may grow perfect, i will write you what it is, philip. in all the time i have known you, i never have liked you so little. good-bye." she drew away her hand and swiftly turned back to the road. philip ammon, wordless, started toward onabasha on a run. elnora crossed the road, climbed the fence and sought the shelter of their own woods. she chose a diagonal course and followed it until she came to the path leading past the violet patch. she went down this hurriedly. her hands were clenched at her side, her eyes dry and bright, her cheeks red-flushed, and her breath coming fast. when she reached the patch she turned into it and stood looking around her. the mosses were dry, the flowers gone, weeds a foot high covered it. she turned away and went on down the path until she was almost in sight of the cabin. mrs. comstock smiled and waited in the arbour until it occurred to her that elnora was a long time coming, so she went to the gate. the road stretched away toward the limberlost empty and lonely. then she knew that elnora had gone into their own woods and would come in the back way. she could not understand why the girl did not hurry to her with what she would have to tell. she went out and wandered around the garden. then she stepped into the path and started along the way leading to the woods, past the pool now framed in a thick setting of yellow lilies. then she saw, and stopped, gasping for breath. her hands flew up and her lined face grew ghastly. she stared at the sky and then at the prostrate girl figure. over and over she tried to speak, but only a dry breath came. she turned and fled back to the garden. in the familiar enclosure she gazed around her like a caged animal seeking escape. the sun beat down on her bare head mercilessly, and mechanically she moved to the shade of a half-grown hickory tree that voluntarily had sprouted beside the milk house. at her feet lay an axe with which she made kindlings for fires. she stooped and picked it up. the memory of that prone figure sobbing in the grass caught her with a renewed spasm. she shut her eyes as if to close it out. that made hearing so acute she felt certain she heard elnora moaning beside the path. the eyes flew open. they looked straight at a few spindling tomato plants set too near the tree and stunted by its shade. mrs. comstock whirled on the hickory and swung the axe. her hair shook down, her clothing became disarranged, in the heat the perspiration streamed, but stroke fell on stroke until the tree crashed over, grazing a corner of the milk house and smashing the garden fence on the east. at the sound elnora sprang to her feet and came running down the garden walk. "mother!" she cried. "mother! what in the world are you doing?" mrs. comstock wiped her ghastly face on her apron. "i've laid out to cut that tree for years," she said. "it shades the beets in the morning, and the tomatoes in the afternoon!" elnora uttered one wild little cry and fled into her mother's arms. "oh mother!" she sobbed. "will you ever forgive me?" mrs. comstock's arms swept together in a tight grip around elnora. "there isn't a thing on god's footstool from a to izzard i won't forgive you, my precious girl!" she said. "tell mother what it is!" elnora lifted her wet face. "he told me," she panted, "just as soon as he decently could--that second day he told me. almost all his life he's been engaged to a girl at home. he never cared anything about me. he was only interested in the moths and growing strong." mrs. comstock's arms tightened. with a shaking hand she stroked the bright hair. "tell me, honey," she said. "is he to blame for a single one of these tears?" "not one!" sobbed elnora. "oh mother, i won't forgive you if you don't believe that. not one! he never said, or looked, or did anything all the world might not have known. he likes me very much as a friend. he hated to go dreadfully!" "elnora!" the mother's head bent until the white hair mingled with the brown. "elnora, why didn't you tell me at first?" elnora caught her breath in a sharp snatch. "i know i should!" she sobbed. "i will bear any punishment for not, but i didn't feel as if i possibly could. i was afraid." "afraid of what?" the shaking hand was on the hair again. "afraid you wouldn't let him come!" panted elnora. "and oh, mother, i wanted him so!" chapter xviii wherein mrs. comstock experiments with rejuvenation, and elnora teaches natural history for the following week mrs. comstock and elnora worked so hard there was no time to talk, and they were compelled to sleep from physical exhaustion. neither of them made any pretence of eating, for they could not swallow without an effort, so they drank milk and worked. elnora kept on setting bait for catacolae and sphinginae, which, unlike the big moths of june, live several months. she took all the dragonflies and butterflies she could, and when she went over the list for the man of india, she found, to her amazement, that with philip's help she once more had it complete save a pair of yellow emperors. this circumstance was so surprising she had a fleeting thought of writing philip and asking him to see if he could not secure her a pair. she did tell the bird woman, who from every source at her command tried to complete the series with these moths, but could not find any for sale. "i think the mills of the gods are grinding this grist," said elnora, "and we might as well wait patiently until they choose to send a yellow emperor." mrs. comstock invented work. when she had nothing more to do, she hoed in the garden although the earth was hard and dry and there were no plants that really needed attention. then came a notification that elnora would be compelled to attend a week's session of the teachers' institute held at the county seat twenty miles north of onabasha the following week. that gave them something of which to think and real work to do. elnora was requested to bring her violin. as she was on the programme of one of the most important sessions for a talk on nature work in grade schools, she was driven to prepare her speech, also to select and practise some music. her mother turned her attention to clothing. they went to onabasha together and purchased a simple and appropriate fall suit and hat, goods for a dainty little coloured frock, and a dress skirt and several fancy waists. margaret sinton came down and the sewing began. when everything was finished and packed, elnora kissed her mother good-bye at the depot, and entered the train. mrs. comstock went into the waiting-room and dropped into a seat to rest. her heart was so sore her whole left side felt tender. she was half starved for the food she had no appetite to take. she had worked in dogged determination until she was exhausted. for a time she simply sat and rested. then she began to think. she was glad elnora had gone where she would be compelled to fix her mind on other matters for a few days. she remembered the girl had said she wanted to go. school would begin the following week. she thought over what elnora would have to do to accomplish her work successfully. she would be compelled to arise at six o'clock, walk three miles through varying weather, lead the high school orchestra, and then put in the remainder of the day travelling from building to building over the city, teaching a specified length of time every week in each room. she must have her object lessons ready, and she must do a certain amount of practising with the orchestra. then a cold lunch at noon, and a three-mile walk at night. "humph!" said mrs. comstock, "to get through that the girl would have to be made of cast-iron. i wonder how i can help her best?" she thought deeply. "the less she sees of what she's been having all summer, the sooner she'll feel better about it," she muttered. she arose, went to the bank and inquired for the cashier. "i want to know just how i am fixed here," she said. the cashier laughed. "you haven't been in a hurry," he replied. "we have been ready for you any time these twenty years, but you didn't seem to pay much attention. your account is rather flourishing. interest, when it gets to compounding, is quite a money breeder. come back here to a table and i will show you your balances." mrs. comstock sank into a chair and waited while the cashier read a jumble of figures to her. it meant that her deposits had exceeded her expenses from one to three hundred dollars a year, according to the cattle, sheep, hogs, poultry, butter, and eggs she had sold. the aggregate of these sums had been compounding interest throughout the years. mrs. comstock stared at the total with dazed and unbelieving eyes. through her sick heart rushed the realization, that if she merely had stood before that wicket and asked one question, she would have known that all those bitter years of skimping for elnora and herself had been unnecessary. she arose and went back to the depot. "i want to send a message," she said. she picked up the pencil, and with rash extravagance, wrote, "found money at bank didn't know about. if you want to go to college, come on first train and get ready." she hesitated a second and then she said to herself grimly, "yes, i'll pay for that, too," and recklessly added, "with love, mother." then she sat waiting for the answer. it came in less than an hour. "will teach this winter. with dearest love, elnora." mrs. comstock held the message a long time. when she arose she was ravenously hungry, but the pain in her heart was a little easier. she went to a restaurant and ate some food, then to a dressmaker where she ordered four dresses: two very plain every-day ones, a serviceable dark gray cloth suit, and a soft light gray silk with touches of lavender and lace. she made a heavy list of purchases at brownlee's, and the remainder of the day she did business in her direct and spirited way. at night she was so tired she scarcely could walk home, but she built a fire and cooked and ate a hearty meal. later she went out beside the west fence and gathered an armful of tansy which she boiled to a thick green tea. then she stirred in oatmeal until it was a stiff paste. she spread a sheet over her bed and began tearing strips of old muslin. she bandaged each hand and arm with the mixture and plastered the soggy, evil-smelling stuff in a thick poultice over her face and neck. she was so tired she went to sleep, and when she awoke she was half skinned. she bathed her face and hands, did the work and went back to town, coming home at night to go through the same process. by the third morning she was a raw even red, the fourth she had faded to a brilliant pink under the soothing influence of a cream recommended. that day came a letter from elnora saying that she would remain where she was until saturday morning, and then come to ellen brownlee's at onabasha and stay for the saturday's session of teachers to arrange their year's work. sunday was ellen's last day at home, and she wanted elnora very much. she had to call together the orchestra and practise them sunday; and could not come home until after school monday night. mrs. comstock at once answered the letter saying those arrangements suited her. the following day she was a pale pink, later a delicate porcelain white. then she went to a hairdresser and had the rope of snowy hair which covered her scalp washed, dressed, and fastened with such pins and combs as were decided to be most becoming. she took samples of her dresses, went to a milliner, and bought a street hat to match her suit, and a gray satin with lavender orchids to wear with the silk dress. her last investment was a loose coat of soft gray broadcloth with white lining, and touches of lavender on the embroidered collar, and gray gloves to match. then she went home, rested and worked by turns until monday. when school closed on that evening, elnora, so tired she almost trembled, came down the long walk after a late session of teachers' meeting, to be stopped by a messenger boy. "there's a lady wants to see you most important. i am to take you to the place," he said. elnora groaned. she could not imagine who wanted her, but there was nothing to do but find out; tired and anxious to see her mother as she was. "this is the place," said the boy, and went his way whistling. elnora was three blocks from the high school building on the same street. she was before a quaint old house, fresh with paint and covered with vines. there was a long wide lot, grass-covered, closely set with trees, and a barn and chicken park at the back that seemed to be occupied. elnora stepped on the veranda which was furnished with straw rugs, benthickory chairs, hanging baskets, and a table with a workbox and magazines, and knocked at the screen door. inside she could see polished floors, walls freshly papered in low-toned harmonious colours, straw rugs and madras curtains. it seemed to be a restful, homelike place to which she had come. a second later down an open stairway came a tall, dark-eyed woman with cheeks faintly pink and a crown of fluffy snowwhite hair. she wore a lavender gingham dress with white collar and cuffs, and she called as she advanced: "that screen isn't latched! open it and come see your brand-new mother, my girl." elnora stepped inside the door. "mother!" she cried. "you my mother! i don't believe it!" "well, you better!" said mrs. comstock, "because it's true! you said you wished i were like the other girls' mothers, and i've shot as close the mark as i could without any practice. i thought that walk would be too much for you this winter, so i just rented this house and moved in, to be near you, and help more in case i'm needed. i've only lived here a day, but i like it so well i've a mortal big notion to buy the place." "but mother!" protested elnora, clinging to her wonderingly. "you are perfectly beautiful, and this house is a little paradise, but how will we ever pay for it? we can't afford it!" "humph! have you forgotten i telegraphed you i'd found some money i didn't know about? all i've done is paid for, and plenty more to settle for all i propose to do." mrs. comstock glanced around with satisfaction. "i may get homesick as a pup before spring," she said, "but if i do i can go back. if i don't, i'll sell some timber and put a few oil wells where they don't show much. i can have land enough cleared for a few fields and put a tenant on our farm, and we will buy this and settle here. it's for sale." "you don't look it, but you've surely gone mad!" "just the reverse, my girl," said mrs. comstock, "i've gone sane. if you are going to undertake this work, you must be convenient to it. and your mother should be where she can see that you are properly dressed, fed, and cared for. this is our--let me think--reception-room. how do you like it? this door leads to your workroom and study. i didn't do much there because i wasn't sure of my way. but i knew you would want a rug, curtains, table, shelves for books, and a case for your specimens, so i had a carpenter shelve and enclose that end of it. looks pretty neat to me. the dining-room and kitchen are back, one of the cows in the barn, and some chickens in the coop. i understand that none of the other girls' mothers milk a cow, so a neighbour boy will tend to ours for a third of the milk. there are three bedrooms, and a bath upstairs. go take one, put on some fresh clothes, and come to supper. you can find your room because your things are in it." elnora kissed her mother over and over, and hurried upstairs. she identified her room by the dressing-case. there were a pretty rug, and curtains, white iron bed, plain and rocking chairs to match her case, a shirtwaist chest, and the big closet was filled with her old clothing and several new dresses. she found the bathroom, bathed, dressed in fresh linen and went down to a supper that was an evidence of mrs. comstock's highest art in cooking. elnora was so hungry she ate her first real meal in two weeks. but the bites went down slowly because she forgot about them in watching her mother. "how on earth did you do it?" she asked at last. "i always thought you were naturally brown as a nut." "oh, that was tan and sunburn!" explained mrs. comstock. "i always knew i was white underneath it. i hated to shade my face because i hadn't anything but a sunbonnet, and i couldn't stand for it to touch my ears, so i went bareheaded and took all the colour i accumulated. but when i began to think of moving you in to your work, i saw i must put up an appearance that wouldn't disgrace you, so i thought i'd best remove the crust. it took some time, and i hope i may die before i ever endure the feel and the smell of the stuff i used again, but it skinned me nicely. what you now see is my own with a little dust of rice powder, for protection. i'm sort of tender yet." "and your lovely, lovely hair?" breathed elnora. "hairdresser did that!" said mrs. comstock. "it cost like smoke. but i watched her, and with a little help from you i can wash it alone next time, though it will be hard work. i let her monkey with it until she said she had found `my style.' then i tore it down and had her show me how to build it up again three times. i thought my arms would drop. when i paid the bill for her work, the time i'd taken, the pins, and combs she'd used, i nearly had heart failure, but i didn't turn a hair before her. i just smiled at her sweetly and said, `how reasonable you are!' come to think of it, she was! she might have charged me ten dollars for what she did quite as well as nine seventy-five. i couldn't have helped myself. i had made no bargain to begin on." then elnora leaned back in her chair and shouted, in a gust of hearty laughter, so a little of the ache ceased in her breast. there was no time to think, the remainder of that evening, she was so tired she had to sleep, while her mother did not awaken her until she barely had time to dress, breakfast and reach school. there was nothing in the new life to remind her of the old. it seemed as if there never came a minute for retrospection, but her mother appeared on the scene with more work, or some entertaining thing to do. mrs. comstock invited elnora's friends to visit her, and proved herself a bright and interesting hostess. she digested a subject before she spoke; and when she advanced a view, her point was sure to be original and tersely expressed. before three months people waited to hear what she had to say. she kept her appearance so in mind that she made a handsome and a distinguished figure. elnora never mentioned philip ammon, neither did mrs. comstock. early in december came a note and a big box from him. it contained several books on nature subjects which would be of much help in school work, a number of conveniences elnora could not afford, and a pair of glass-covered plaster casts, for each large moth she had. in these the upper and underwings of male and female showed. he explained that she would break her specimens easily, carrying them around in boxes. he had seen these and thought they would be of use. elnora was delighted with them, and at once began the tedious process of softening the mounted moths and fitting them to the casts moulded to receive them. her time was so taken in school, she progressed slowly, so her mother undertook this work. after trying one or two very common ones she learned to handle the most delicate with ease. she took keen pride in relaxing the tense moths, fitting them to the cases, polishing the glass covers to the last degree and sealing them. the results were beautiful to behold. soon after elnora wrote to philip: dear friend: i am writing to thank you for the books, and the box of conveniences sent me for my work. i can use everything with fine results. hope i am giving good satisfaction in my position. you will be interested to learn that when the summer's work was classified and pinned, i again had my complete collection for the man of india, save a yellow emperor. i have tried everywhere i know, so has the bird woman. we cannot find a pair for sale. fate is against me, at least this season. i shall have to wait until next year and try again. thank you very much for helping me with my collection and for the books and cases. sincerely yours, elnora comstock. philip was disappointed over that note and instead of keeping it he tore it into bits and dropped them into the waste basket. that was precisely what elnora had intended he should do. christmas brought beautiful cards of greeting to mrs. comstock and elnora, easter others, and the year ran rapidly toward spring. elnora's position had been intensely absorbing, while she had worked with all her power. she had made a wonderful success and won new friends. mrs. comstock had helped in every way she could, so she was very popular also. throughout the winter they had enjoyed the city thoroughly, and the change of life it afforded, but signs of spring did wonderful things to the hearts of the country-bred women. a restlessness began on bright february days, calmed during march storms and attacked full force in april. when neither could bear it any longer they were forced to discuss the matter and admit they were growing ill with pure homesickness. they decided to keep the city house during the summer, but to return to the farm to live as soon as school closed. so mrs. comstock would prepare breakfast and lunch and then slip away to the farm to make up beds in her ploughed garden, plant seeds, trim and tend her flowers, and prepare the cabin for occupancy. then she would go home and make the evening as cheerful as possible for elnora; in these days she lived only for the girl. both of them were glad when the last of may came and the schools closed. they packed the books and clothing they wished to take into a wagon and walked across the fields to the old cabin. as they approached it, mrs. comstock said to elnora: "you are sure you won't be lonely here?" elnora knew what she really meant. "quite sure," she said. "for a time last fall i was glad to be away, but that all wore out with the winter. spring made me homesick as i could be. i can scarcely wait until we get back again." so they began that summer as they had begun all others --with work. but both of them took a new joy in everything, and the violin sang by the hour in the twilight. chapter xix wherein philip ammon gives a ball in honour of edith carr, and hart henderson appears on the scene edith carr stood in a vine-enclosed side veranda of the lake shore club house waiting while philip ammon gave some important orders. in a few days she would sail for paris to select a wonderful trousseau she had planned for her marriage in october. to-night philip was giving a club dance in her honour. he had spent days in devising new and exquisite effects in decorations, entertainment, and supper. weeks before the favoured guests had been notified. days before they had received the invitations asking them to participate in this entertainment by philip ammon in honour of miss carr. they spoke of it as "phil's dance for edith!" she could hear the rumble of carriages and the panting of automobiles as in a steady stream they rolled to the front entrance. she could catch glimpses of floating draperies of gauze and lace, the flash of jewels, and the passing of exquisite colour. every one was newly arrayed in her honour in the loveliest clothing, and the most expensive jewels they could command. as she thought of it she lifted her head a trifle higher and her eyes flashed proudly. she was robed in a french creation suggested and designed by philip. he had said to her: "i know a competent judge who says the distinctive feature of june is her exquisite big night moths. i want you to be the very essence of june that night, as you will be the embodiment of love. be a moth. the most beautiful of them is either the pale-green luna or the yellow imperialis. be my moon lady, or my gold empress." he took her to the museum and showed her the moths. she instantly decided on the yellow. because she knew the shades would make her more startlingly beautiful than any other colour. to him she said: "a moon lady seems so far away and cold. i would be of earth and very near on that night. i choose the empress." so she matched the colours exactly, wrote out the idea and forwarded the order to paquin. to-night when philip ammon came for her, he stood speechless a minute and then silently kissed her hands. for she stood tall, lithe, of grace inborn, her dark waving hair high piled and crossed by gold bands studded with amethyst and at one side an enamelled lavender orchid rimmed with diamonds, which flashed and sparkled. the soft yellow robe of lightest weight velvet fitted her form perfectly, while from each shoulder fell a great velvet wing lined with lavender, and flecked with embroidery of that colour in imitation of the moth. around her throat was a wonderful necklace and on her arms were bracelets of gold set with amethyst and rimmed with diamonds. philip had said that her gloves, fan, and slippers must be lavender, because the feet of the moth were that colour. these accessories had been made to order and embroidered with gold. it had been arranged that her mother, philip's, and a few best friends should receive his guests. she was to appear when she led the grand march with philip ammon. miss carr was positive that she would be the most beautiful, and most exquisitely gowned woman present. in her heart she thought of herself as "imperialis regalis," as the yellow empress. in a few moments she would stun her world into feeling it as philip ammon had done, for she had taken pains that the history of her costume should be whispered to a few who would give it circulation. she lifted her head proudly and waited, for was not philip planning something unusual and unsurpassed in her honour? then she smiled. but of all the fragmentary thoughts crossing her brain the one that never came was that of philip ammon as the emperor. philip the king of her heart; at least her equal in all things. she was the empress--yes, philip was but a mere man, to devise entertainments, to provide luxuries, to humour whims, to kiss hands! "ah, my luck!" cried a voice behind her. edith carr turned and smiled. "i thought you were on the ocean," she said. "i only reached the dock," replied the man, "when i had a letter that recalled me by the first limited." "oh! important business?" "the only business of any importance in all the world to me. i'm triumphant that i came. edith, you are the most superb woman in every respect that i have ever seen. one glimpse is worth the whole journey." "you like my dress?" she moved toward him and turned, lifting her arms. "do you know what it is intended to represent?" "yes, polly ammon told me. i knew when i heard about it how you would look, so i started a sleuth hunt, to get the first peep. edith, i can become intoxicated merely with looking at you to-night." he half-closed his eyes and smilingly stared straight at her. he was taller than she, a lean man, with close-cropped light hair, steel-gray eyes, a square chin and "man of the world" written all over him. edith carr flushed. "i thought you realized when you went away that you were to stop that, hart henderson," she cried. "i did, but this letter of which i tell you called me back to start it all over again." she came a step closer. "who wrote that letter, and what did it contain concerning me?" she demanded. "one of your most intimate chums wrote it. it contained the hazard that possibly i had given up too soon. it said that in a fit of petulance you had broken your engagement with ammon twice this winter, and he had come back because he knew you did not really mean it. i thought deeply there on the dock when i read that, and my boat sailed without me. i argued that anything so weak as an engagement twice broken and patched up again was a mighty frail affair indeed, and likely to smash completely at any time, so i came on the run. i said once i would not see you marry any other man. because i could not bear it, i planned to go into exile of any sort to escape that. i have changed my mind. i have come back to haunt you until the ceremony is over. then i go, not before. i was insane!" the girl laughed merrily. "not half so insane as you are now, hart!" she cried gaily. "you know that philip ammon has been devoted to me all my life. now i'll tell you something else, because this looks serious for you. i love him with all my heart. not while he lives shall he know it, and i will laugh at him if you tell him, but the fact remains: i intend to marry him, but no doubt i shall tease him constantly. it's good for a man to be uncertain. if you could see philip's face at the quarterly return of his ring, you would understand the fun of it. you had better have taken your boat." "possibly," said henderson calmly. "but you are the only woman in the world for me, and while you are free, as i now see my light, i remain near you. you know the old adage." "but i'm not `free!'" cried edith carr. "i'm telling you i am not. this night is my public acknowledgment that phil and i are promised, as our world has surmised since we were children. that promise is an actual fact, because of what i just have told you. my little fits of temper don't count with phil. he's been reared on them. in fact, i often invent one in a perfect calm to see him perform. he is the most amusing spectacle. but, please, please, do understand that i love him, and always shall, and that we shall be married." "just the same, i'll wait and see it an accomplished fact," said henderson. "and edith, because i love you, with the sort of love it is worth a woman's while to inspire, i want your happiness before my own. so i am going to say this to you, for i never dreamed you were capable of the feeling you have displayed for phil. if you do love him, and have loved him always, a disappointment would cut you deeper than you know. go careful from now on! don't strain that patched engagement of yours any further. i've known philip all my life. i've known him through boyhood, in college, and since. all men respect him. where the rest of us confess our sins, he stands clean. you can go to his arms with nothing to forgive. mark this thing! i have heard him say, `edith is my slogan,' and i have seen him march home strong in the strength of his love for you, in the face of temptations before which every other man of us fell. before the gods! that ought to be worth something to a girl, if she really is the delicate, sensitive, refined thing she would have man believe. it would take a woman with the organism of an ostrich to endure some of the men here to-night, if she knew them as i do; but phil is sound to the core. so this is what i would say to you: first, your instincts are right in loving him, why not let him feel it in the ways a woman knows? second, don't break your engagement again. as men know the man, any of us would be afraid to the soul. he loves you, yes! he is long-suffering for you, yes! but men know he has a limit. when the limit is reached, he will stand fast, and all the powers can't move him. you don't seem to think it, but you can go too far!" "is that all?" laughed edith carr sarcastically. "no, there is one thing more," said henderson. "here or here-after, now and so long as i breathe, i am your slave. you can do anything you choose and know that i will kneel before you again. so carry this in the depths of your heart; now or at any time, in any place or condition, merely lift your hand, and i will come. anything you want of me, that thing will i do. i am going to wait; if you need me, it is not necessary to speak; only give me the faintest sign. all your life i will be somewhere near you waiting for it." "idjit! you rave!" laughed edith carr. "how you would frighten me! what a bugbear you would raise! be sensible and go find what keeps phil. i was waiting patiently, but my patience is going. i won't look nearly so well as i do now when it is gone." at that instant philip ammon entered. he was in full evening dress and exceptionally handsome. "everything is ready," he said; "they are waiting for us to lead the march. it is formed." edith carr smiled entrancingly. "do you think i am ready?" philip looked what he thought, and offered his arm. edith carr nodded carelessly to hart henderson, and moved away. attendants parted the curtains and the yellow empress bowing right and left, swept the length of the ballroom and took her place at the head of the formed procession. the large open dancing pavilion was draped with yellow silk caught up with lilac flowers. every corner was filled with bloom of those colours. the music was played by harpers dressed in yellow and violet, so the ball opened. the midnight supper was served with the same colours and the last half of the programme was being danced. never had girl been more complimented and petted in the same length of time than edith carr. every minute she seemed to grow more worthy of praise. a partners' dance was called and the floor was filled with couples waiting for the music. philip stood whispering delightful things to edith facing him. from out of the night, in at the wide front entrance to the pavilion, there swept in slow wavering flight a large yellow moth and fluttered toward the centre cluster of glaring electric lights. philip ammon and edith carr saw it at the same instant. "why, isn't that----?" she began excitedly. "it's a yellow emperor! this is fate!" cried philip. "the last one elnora needs for her collection. i must have it! excuse me!" he ran toward the light. "hats! handkerchiefs! fans! anything!" he panted. "every one hold up something and stop that! it's a moth; i've got to catch it!" "it's yellow! he wants it for edith!" ran in a murmur around the hall. the girl's face flushed, while she bit her lips in vexation. instantly every one began holding up something to keep the moth from flying back into the night. one fan held straight before it served, and the moth gently settled on it. "hold steady!" cried philip. "don't move for your life!" he rushed toward the moth, made a quick sweep and held it up between his fingers. "all right!" he called. "thanks, every one! excuse me a minute." he ran to the office. "an ounce of gasolene, quick!" he ordered. "a cigar box, a cork, and the glue bottle." he poured some glue into the bottom of the box, set the cork in it firmly, dashed the gasolene over the moth repeatedly, pinned it to the cork, poured the remainder of the liquid over it, closed the box, and fastened it. then he laid a bill on the counter. "pack that box with cork around it, in one twice its size, tie securely and express to this address at once." he scribbled on a sheet of paper and shoved it over. "on your honour, will you do that faithfully as i say?" he asked the clerk. "certainly," was the reply. "then keep the change," called philip as he ran back to the pavilion. edith carr stood where he left her, thinking rapidly. she heard the murmur that arose when philip started to capture the exquisite golden creature she was impersonating. she saw the flash of surprise that went over unrestrained faces when he ran from the room, without even showing it to her. "the last one elnora needs," rang in her ears. he had told her that he helped collect moths the previous summer, but she had understood that the bird woman, with whose work miss carr was familiar, wanted them to put in a book. he had spoken of a country girl he had met who played the violin wonderfully, and at times, he had shown a disposition to exalt her as a standard of womanhood. miss carr had ignored what he said, and talked of something else. but that girl's name had been elnora. it was she who was collecting moths! no doubt she was the competent judge who was responsible for the yellow costume philip had devised. had edith carr been in her room, she would have torn off the dress at the thought. being in a circle of her best friends, which to her meant her keenest rivals and harshest critics, she grew rigid with anger. her breath hurt her paining chest. no one thought to speak to the musicians, and seeing the floor filled, they began the waltz. only part of the guests could see what had happened, and at once the others formed and commenced to dance. gay couples came whirling past her. edith carr grew very white as she stood alone. her lips turned pale, while her dark eyes flamed with anger. she stood perfectly still where philip had left her, and the approaching men guided their partners around her, while the girls, looking back, could be seen making exclamations of surprise. the idolized only daughter of the carr family hoped that she would drop dead from mortification, but nothing happened. she was too perverse to step aside and say that she was waiting for philip. then came tom levering dancing with polly ammon. being in the scales with the ammon family, tom scented trouble from afar, so he whispered to polly: "edith is standing in the middle of the floor, and she's awful mad about something." "that won't hurt her," laughed polly. "it's an old pose of hers. she knows she looks superb when she is angry, so she keeps herself furious half the time on purpose." "she looks like the mischief!" answered tom. "hadn't we better steer over and wait with her? she's the ugliest sight i ever saw!" "why, tom!" cried polly. "stop, quickly!" they hurried to edith. "come dear," said polly. "we are going to wait with you until phil returns. let's go after a drink. i am so thirsty!" "yes, do!" begged tom, offering his arm. "let's get out of here until phil comes." there was the opportunity to laugh and walk away, but edith carr would not accept it. "my betrothed left me here," she said. "here i shall remain until he returns for me, and then--he will be my betrothed no longer!" polly grasped edith's arm. "oh, edith!" she implored. "don't make a scene here, and to-night. edith, this has been the loveliest dance ever given at the club house. every one is saying so. edith! darling, do come! phil will be back in a second. he can explain! it's only a breath since i saw him go out. i thought he had returned." as polly panted these disjointed ejaculations, tom levering began to grow angry on her account. "he has been gone just long enough to show every one of his guests that he will leave me standing alone, like a neglected fool, for any passing whim of his. explain! his explanation would sound well! do you know for whom he caught that moth? it is being sent to a girl he flirted with all last summer. it has just occurred to me that the dress i am wearing is her suggestion. let him try to explain!" speech unloosed the fountain. she stripped off her gloves to free her hands. at that instant the dancers parted to admit philip. instinctively they stopped as they approached and with wondering faces walled in edith and philip, polly and tom. "mighty good of you to wait!" cried philip, his face showing his delight over his success in capturing the yellow emperor. "i thought when i heard the music you were going on." "how did you think i was going on?" demanded edith carr in frigid tones. "i thought you would step aside and wait a few seconds for me, or dance with henderson. it was most important to have that moth. it completes a valuable collection for a person who needs the money. come!" he held out his arms. "i `step aside' for no one!" stormed edith carr. "i await no other girl's pleasure! you may `complete the collection' with that!" she drew her engagement ring from her finger and reached to place it on one of philip's outstretched hands. he saw and drew back. instantly edith dropped the ring. as it fell, almost instinctively philip caught it in air. with amazed face he looked closely at edith carr. her distorted features were scarcely recognizable. he held the ring toward her. "edith, for the love of mercy, wait until i can explain," he begged. "put on your ring and let me tell you how it is." "i know perfectly `how it is,'" she answered. "i never shall wear that ring again." "you won't even hear what i have to say? you won't take back your ring?" he cried. "never! your conduct is infamous!" "come to think of it," said philip deliberately, "it is `infamous' to cut a girl, who has danced all her life, out of a few measures of a waltz. as for asking forgiveness for so black a sin as picking up a moth, and starting it to a friend who lives by collecting them, i don't see how i could! i have not been gone three minutes by the clock, edith. put on your ring and finish the dance like a dear girl." he thrust the glittering ruby into her fingers and again held out his arms. she dropped the ring, and it rolled some distance from them. hart henderson followed its shining course, and caught it before it was lost. "you really mean it?" demanded philip in a voice as cold as hers ever had been. "you know i mean it!" cried edith carr. "i accept your decision in the presence of these witnesses," said philip ammon. "where is my father?" the elder ammon with a distressed face hurried to him. "father, take my place," said philip. "excuse me to my guests. ask all my friends to forgive me. i am going away for awhile." he turned and walked from the pavilion. as he went hart henderson rushed to edith carr and forced the ring into her fingers. "edith, quick. come, quick!" he implored. "there's just time to catch him. if you let him go that way, he never will return in this world. remember what i told you." "great prophet! aren't you, hart?" she sneered. "who wants him to return? if that ring is thrust upon me again i shall fling it into the lake. signal the musicians to begin, and dance with me." henderson put the ring into his pocket, and began the dance. he could feel the muscular spasms of the girl in his arms, her face was cold and hard, but her breath burned with the scorch of fever. she finished the dance and all others, taking phil's numbers with henderson, who had arrived too late to arrange a programme. she left with the others, merely inclining her head as she passed ammon's father taking his place, and entered the big touring car for which henderson had telephoned. she sank limply into a seat and moaned softly. "shall i drive awhile in the night air?" asked henderson. she nodded. he instructed the chauffeur. she raised her head in a few seconds. "hart, i'm going to pieces," she said. "won't you put your arm around me a little while?" henderson gathered her into his arms and her head fell on his shoulder. "closer!" she cried. henderson held her until his arms were numb, but he did not know it. the tricks of fate are cruel enough, but there scarcely could have been a worse one than that: to care for a woman as he loved edith carr and have her given into his arms because she was so numb with misery over her trouble with another man that she did not know or care what she did. dawn was streaking the east when he spoke to her. "edith, it is growing light." "take me home," she said. henderson helped her up the steps and rang the bell. "miss carr is ill," he said to the footman. "arouse her maid instantly, and have her prepare something hot as quickly as possible." "edith," he cried, "just a word. i have been thinking. it isn't too late yet. take your ring and put it on. i will go find phil at once and tell him you have, that you are expecting him, and he will come." "think what he said!" she cried. "he accepted my decision as final, `in the presence of witnesses,' as if it were court. he can return it to me, if i ever wear it again." "you think that now, but in a few days you will find that you feel very differently. living a life of heartache is no joke, and no job for a woman. put on your ring and send me to tell him to come." "no." "edith, there was not a soul who saw that, but sympathized with phil. it was ridiculous for you to get so angry over a thing which was never intended for the slightest offence, and by no logical reasoning could have been so considered." "do you think that?" she demanded. "i do!" said henderson. "if you had laughed and stepped aside an instant, or laughed and stayed where you were, phil would have been back; or, if he needed punishment in your eyes, to have found me having one of his dances would have been enough. i was waiting. you could have called me with one look. but to publicly do and say what you did, my lady--i know phil, and i know you went too far. put on that ring, and send him word you are sorry, before it is too late." "i will not! he shall come to me." "then god help you!" said henderson, "for you are plunging into misery whose depth you do not dream. edith, i beg of you----" she swayed where she stood. her maid opened the door and caught her. henderson went down the hall and out to his car. chapter xx wherein the elder ammon offers advice, and edith carr experiences regrets philip ammon walked from among his friends a humiliated and a wounded man. never before had edith carr appeared quite so beautiful. all evening she had treated him with unusual consideration. never had he loved her so deeply. then in a few seconds everything was different. seeing the change in her face, and hearing her meaningless accusations, killed something in his heart. warmth went out and a cold weight took its place. but even after that, he had offered the ring to her again, and asked her before others to reconsider. the answer had been further insult. he walked, paying no heed to where he went. he had traversed many miles when he became aware that his feet had chosen familiar streets. he was passing his home. dawn was near, but the first floor was lighted. he staggered up the steps and was instantly admitted. the library door stood open, while his father sat with a book pretending to read. at philip's entrance the father scarcely glanced up. "come on!" he called. "i have just told banks to bring me a cup of coffee before i turn in. have one with me!" philip sat beside the table and leaned his head on his hands, but he drank a cup of steaming coffee and felt better. "father," he said, "father, may i talk with you a little while?" "of course," answered mr. ammon. "i am not at all tired. i think i must have been waiting in the hope that you would come. i want no one's version of this but yours. tell me the straight of the thing, phil." philip told all he knew, while his father sat in deep thought. "on my life i can't see any occasion for such a display of temper, phil. it passed all bounds of reason and breeding. can't you think of anything more?" "i cannot!" "polly says every one expected you to carry the moth you caught to edith. why didn't you?" "she screams if a thing of that kind comes near her. she never has taken the slightest interest in them. i was in a big hurry. i didn't want to miss one minute of my dance with her. the moth was not so uncommon, but by a combination of bad luck it had become the rarest in america for a friend of mine, who is making a collection to pay college expenses. for an instant last june the series was completed; when a woman's uncontrolled temper ruined this specimen and the search for it began over. a few days later a pair was secured, and again the money was in sight for several hours. then an accident wrecked one-fourth of the collection. i helped replace those last june, all but this yellow emperor which we could not secure, and we haven't been able to find, buy or trade for one since. so my friend was compelled to teach this past winter instead of going to college. when that moth came flying in there to-night, it seemed to me like fate. all i thought of was, that to secure it would complete the collection and secure the money. so i caught the emperor and started it to elnora. i declare to you that i was not out of the pavilion over three minutes at a liberal estimate. if i only had thought to speak to the orchestra! i was sure i would be back before enough couples gathered and formed for the dance." the eyes of the father were very bright. "the friend for whom you wanted the moth is a girl?" he asked indifferently, as he ran the book leaves through his fingers. "the girl of whom i wrote you last summer, and told you about in the fall. i helped her all the time i was away." "did edith know of her?" "i tried many times to tell her, to interest her, but she was so indifferent that it was insulting. she would not hear me." "we are neither one in any condition to sleep. why don't you begin at the first and tell me about this girl? to think of other matters for a time may clear our vision for a sane solution of this. who is she, just what is she doing, and what is she like? you know i was reared among those limberlost people, i can understand readily. what is her name and where does she live?" philip gave a man's version of the previous summer, while his father played with the book industriously. "you are very sure as to her refinement and education?" "in almost two months' daily association, could a man be mistaken? she can far and away surpass polly, edith, or any girl of our set on any common, high school, or supplementary branch, and you know high schools have french, german, and physics now. besides, she is a graduate of two other institutions. all her life she has been in the school of hard knocks. she has the biggest, tenderest, most human heart i ever knew in a girl. she has known life in its most cruel phases, and instead of hardening her, it has set her trying to save other people suffering. then this nature position of which i told you; she graduated in the school of the woods, before she secured that. the bird woman, whose work you know, helped her there. elnora knows more interesting things in a minute than any other girl i ever met knew in an hour, provided you are a person who cares to understand plant and animal life." the book leaves slid rapidly through his fingers as the father drawled: "what sort of looking girl is she?" "tall as edith, a little heavier, pink, even complexion, wide open blue-gray eyes with heavy black brows, and lashes so long they touch her cheeks. she has a rope of waving, shining hair that makes a real crown on her head, and it appears almost red in the light. she is as handsome as any fair woman i ever saw, but she doesn't know it. every time any one pays her a compliment, her mother, who is a caution, discovers that, for some reason, the girl is a fright, so she has no appreciation of her looks." "and you were in daily association two months with a girl like that! how about it, phil?" "if you mean, did i trifle with her, no!" cried philip hotly. "i told her the second time i met her all about edith. almost every day i wrote to edith in her presence. elnora gathered violets and made a fancy basket to put them in for edith's birthday. i started to err in too open admiration for elnora, but her mother brought me up with a whirl i never forgot. fifty times a day in the swamps and forests elnora made a perfect picture, but i neither looked nor said anything. i never met any girl so downright noble in bearing and actions. i never hated anything as i hated leaving her, for we were dear friends, like two wholly congenial men. her mother was almost always with us. she knew how much i admired elnora, but so long as i concealed it from the girl, the mother did not care." "yet you left such a girl and came back whole-hearted to edith carr!" "surely! you know how it has been with me about edith all my life." "yet the girl you picture is far her superior to an unprejudiced person, when thinking what a man would require in a wife to be happy." "i never have thought what i would `require' to be happy! i only thought whether i could make edith happy. i have been an idiot! what i've borne you'll never know! to-night is only one of many outbursts like that, in varying and lesser degrees." "phil, i love you, when you say you have thought only of edith! i happen to know that it is true. you are my only son, and i have had a right to watch you closely. i believe you utterly. any one who cares for you as i do, and has had my years of experience in this world over yours, knows that in some ways, to-night would be a blessed release, if you could take it; but you cannot! go to bed now, and rest. to-morrow, go back to her and fix it up." "you heard what i said when i left her! i said it because something in my heart died a minute before that, and i realized that it was my love for edith carr. never again will i voluntarily face such a scene. if she can act like that at a ball, before hundreds, over a thing of which i thought nothing at all, she would go into actual physical fits and spasms, over some of the household crises i've seen the mater meet with a smile. sir, it is truth that i have thought only of her up to the present. now, i will admit i am thinking about myself. father, did you see her? life is too short, and it can be too sweet, to throw it away in a battle with an unrestrained woman. i am no fighter--where a girl is concerned, anyway. i respect and love her or i do nothing. never again is either respect or love possible between me and edith carr. whenever i think of her in the future, i will see her as she was to-night. but i can't face the crowd just yet. could you spare me a few days?" "it is only ten days until you were to go north for the summer, go now." "i don't want to go north. i don't want to meet people i know. there, the story would precede me. i do not need pitying glances or rough condolences. i wonder if i could not hide at uncle ed's in wisconsin for awhile?" the book closed suddenly. the father leaned across the table and looked into the son's eyes. "phil, are you sure of what you just have said?" "perfectly sure!" "do you think you are in any condition to decide to-night?" "death cannot return to life, father. my love for edith carr is dead. i hope never to see her again." "if i thought you could be certain so soon! but, come to think of it, you are very like me in many ways. i am with you in this. public scenes and disgraces i would not endure. it would be over with me, were i in your position, that i know." "it is done for all time," said philip ammon. "let us not speak of it further." "then, phil," the father leaned closer and looked at the son tenderly, "phil, why don't you go to the limberlost?" "father!" "why not? no one can comfort a hurt heart like a tender woman; and, phil, have you ever stopped to think that you may have a duty in the limberlost, if you are free? i don't know! i only suggest it. but, for a country schoolgirl, unaccustomed to men, two months with a man like you might well awaken feelings of which you do not think. because you were safe-guarded is no sign the girl was. she might care to see you. you can soon tell. with you, she comes next to edith, and you have made it clear to me that you appreciate her in many ways above. so i repeat it, why not go to the limberlost?" a long time philip ammon sat in deep thought. at last he raised his head. "well, why not!" he said. "years could make me no surer than i am now, and life is short. please ask banks to get me some coffee and toast, and i will bathe and dress so i can take the early train." "go to your bath. i will attend to your packing and everything. and phil, if i were you, i would leave no addresses." "not an address!" said philip. "not even polly." when the train pulled out, the elder ammon went home to find hart henderson waiting. "where is phil?" he demanded. "he did not feel like facing his friends at present, and i am just back from driving him to the station. he said he might go to siam, or patagonia. he would leave no address." henderson almost staggered. "he's not gone? and left no address? you don't mean it! he'll never forgive her!" "never is a long time, hart," said mr. ammon. "and it seems even longer to those of us who are well acquainted with phil. last night was not the last straw. it was the whole straw-stack. it crushed phil so far as she is concerned. he will not see her again voluntarily, and he will not forget if he does. you can take it from him, and from me, we have accepted the lady's decision. will you have a cup of coffee?" twice henderson opened his lips to speak of edith carr's despair. twice he looked into the stern, inflexible face of mr. ammon and could not betray her. he held out the ring. "i have no instructions as to that," said the elder ammon, drawing back. "possibly miss carr would have it as a keepsake." "i am sure not," said henderson curtly. "then suppose you return it to peacock. i will phone him. he will give you the price of it, and you might add it to the children's fresh air fund. we would be obliged if you would do that. no one here cares to handle the object." "as you choose," said henderson. "good morning!" then he went to his home, but he could not think of sleep. he ordered breakfast, but he could not eat. he paced the library for a time, but it was too small. going on the streets he walked until exhausted, then he called a hansom and was driven to his club. he had thought himself familiar with every depth of suffering; that night had taught him that what he felt for himself was not to be compared with the anguish which wrung his heart over the agony of edith carr. he tried to blame philip ammon, but being an honest man, henderson knew that was unjust. the fault lay wholly with her, but that only made it harder for him, as he realized it would in time for her. as he sauntered into the room an attendant hurried to him. "you are wanted most urgently at the 'phone, mr. henderson," he said. "you have had three calls from main 5770." henderson shivered as he picked down the receiver and gave the call. "is that you, hart?" came edith's voice. "yes." "did you find phil?" "no." "did you try?" "yes. as soon as i left you i went straight there." "wasn't he home yet?" "he has been home and gone again." "gone!" the cry tore henderson's heart. "shall i come and tell you, edith?" "no! tell me now." "when i reached the house banks said mr. ammon and phil were out in the motor, so i waited. mr. ammon came back soon. edith, are you alone?" "yes. go on!" "call your maid. i can't tell you until some one is with you." "tell me instantly!" "edith, he said he had been to the station. he said phil had started to siam or patagonia, he didn't know which, and left no address. he said----" distinctly henderson heard her fall. he set the buzzer ringing, and in a few seconds heard voices, so he knew she had been found. then he crept into a private den and shook with a hard, nervous chill. the next day edith carr started on her trip to europe. henderson felt certain she hoped to meet philip there. he was sure she would be disappointed, though he had no idea where ammon could have gone. but after much thought he decided he would see edith soonest by remaining at home, so he spent the summer in chicago. chapter xxi wherein philip ammon returns to the limberlost, and elnora studies the situation we must be thinking about supper, mother," said elnora, while she set the wings of a cecropia with much care. "it seems as if i can't get enough to eat, or enough of being at home. i enjoyed that city house. i don't believe i could have done my work if i had been compelled to walk back and forth. i thought at first i never wanted to come here again. now, i feel as if i could not live anywhere else." "elnora," said mrs. comstock, "there's some one coming down the road." "coming here, do you think?" "yes, coming here, i suspect." elnora glanced quickly at her mother and then turned to the road as philip ammon reached the gate. "careful, mother!" the girl instantly warned. "if you change your treatment of him a hair's breadth, he will suspect. come with me to meet him." she dropped her work and sprang up. "well, of all the delightful surprises!" she cried. she was a trifle thinner than during the previous summer. on her face there was a more mature, patient look, but the sun struck her bare head with the same ray of red gold. she wore one of the old blue gingham dresses, open at the throat and rolled to the elbows. mrs. comstock did not appear at all the same woman, but philip saw only elnora; heard only her greeting. he caught both hands where she offered but one. "elnora," he cried, "if you were engaged to me, and we were at a ball, among hundreds, where i offended you very much, and didn't even know i had done anything, and if i asked you before all of them to allow me to explain, to forgive me, to wait, would your face grow distorted and unfamiliar with anger? would you drop my ring on the floor and insult me repeatedly? oh elnora, would you?" elnora's big eyes seemed to leap, while her face grew very white. she drew away her hands. "hush, phil! hush!" she protested. "that fever has you again! you are dreadfully ill. you don't know what you are saying." "i am sleepless and exhausted; i'm heartsick; but i am well as i ever was. answer me, elnora, would you?" "answer nothing!" cried mrs. comstock. "answer nothing! hang your coat there on your nail, phil, and come split some kindling. elnora, clean away that stuff, and set the table. can't you see the boy is starved and tired? he's come home to rest and eat a decent meal. come on, phil!" mrs. comstock marched away, and philip hung his coat in its old place and followed. out of sight and hearing she turned on him. "do you call yourself a man or a hound?" she flared. "i beg your pardon----" stammered philip ammon. "i should think you would!" she ejaculated. "i'll admit you did the square thing and was a man last summer, though i'd liked it better if you'd faced up and told me you were promised; but to come back here babying, and take hold of elnora like that, and talk that way because you have had a fuss with your girl, i don't tolerate. split that kindling and i'll get your supper, and then you better go. i won't have you working on elnora's big heart, because you have quarrelled with some one else. you'll have it patched up in a week and be gone again, so you can go right away." "mrs. comstock, i came to ask elnora to marry me." "the more fool you, then!" cried mrs. comstock. "this time yesterday you were engaged to another woman, no doubt. now, for some little flare-up you come racing here to use elnora as a tool to spite the other girl. a week of sane living, and you will be sorry and ready to go back to chicago, or, if you really are man enough to be sure of yourself, she will come to claim you. she has her rights. an engagement of years is a serious matter, and not broken for a whim. if you don't go, she'll come. then, when you patch up your affairs and go sailing away together, where does my girl come in?" "i am a lawyer, mrs. comstock," said philip. "it appeals to me as beneath your ordinary sense of justice to decide a case without hearing the evidence. it is due me that you hear me first." "hear your side!" flashed mrs. comstock. "i'd a heap sight rather hear the girl!" "i wish to my soul that you had heard and seen her last night, mrs. comstock," said ammon. "then, my way would be clear. i never even thought of coming here to-day. i'll admit i would have come in time, but not for many months. my father sent me." "your father sent you! why?" "father, mother, and polly were present last night. they, and all my friends, saw me insulted and disgraced in the worst exhibition of uncontrolled temper any of us ever witnessed. all of them knew it was the end. father liked what i had told him of elnora, and he advised me to come here, so i came. if she does not want me, i can leave instantly, but, oh i hoped she would understand!" "you people are not splitting wood," called elnora. "oh yes we are!" answered mrs. comstock. "you set out the things for biscuit, and lay the table." she turned again to philip. "i know considerable about your father," she said. "i have met your uncle's family frequently this winter. i've heard your aunt anna say that she didn't at all like miss carr, and that she and all your family secretly hoped that something would happen to prevent your marrying her. that chimes right in with your saying that your father sent you here. i guess you better speak your piece." philip gave his version of the previous night. "do you believe me?" he finished. "yes," said mrs. comstock. "may i stay?" "oh, it looks all right for you, but what about her?" "nothing, so far as i am concerned. her plans were all made to start to europe to-day. i suspect she is on the way by this time. elnora is very sensible, mrs. comstock. hadn't you better let her decide this?" "the final decision rests with her, of course," admitted mrs. comstock. "but look you one thing! she's all i have. as solomon says, `she is the one child, the only child of her mother.' i've suffered enough in this world that i fight against any suffering which threatens her. so far as i know you've always been a man, and you may stay. but if you bring tears and heartache to her, don't have the assurance to think i'll bear it tamely. i'll get right up and fight like a catamount, if things go wrong for elnora!" "i have no doubt but you will," replied philip, "and i don't blame you in the least if you do. i have the utmost devotion to offer elnora, a good home, fair social position, and my family will love her dearly. think it over. i know it is sudden, but my father advised it." "yes, i reckon he did!" said mrs. comstock dryly. "i guess instead of me being the catamount, you had the genuine article up in chicago, masquerading in peacock feathers, and posing as a fine lady, until her time came to scratch. human nature seems to be the same the world over. but i'd give a pretty to know that secret thing you say you don't, that set her raving over your just catching a moth for elnora. you might get that crock of strawberries in the spring house." they prepared and ate supper. afterward they sat in the arbour and talked, or elnora played until time for philip to go. "will you walk to the gate with me?" he asked elnora as he arose. "not to-night," she answered lightly. "come early in the morning if you like, and we will go over to sleepy snake creek and hunt moths and gather dandelions for dinner." philip leaned toward her. "may i tell you to-morrow why i came?" he asked. "i think not," replied elnora. "the fact is, i don't care why you came. it is enough for me that we are your very good friends, and that in trouble, you have found us a refuge. i fancy we had better live a week or two before you say anything. there is a possibility that what you have to say may change in that length of time. "it will not change one iota!" cried philip. "then it will have the grace of that much age to give it some small touch of flavour," said the girl. "come early in the morning." she lifted the violin and began to play. "well bless my soul!" ejaculated the astounded mrs. comstock. "to think i was worrying for fear you couldn't take care of yourself!" elnora laughed while she played. "shall i tell you what he said?" "nope! i don't want to hear it!" said elnora. "he is only six hours from chicago. i'll give her a week to find him and fix it up, if he stays that long. if she doesn't put in an appearance then, he can tell me what he wants to say, and i'll take my time to think it over. time in plenty, too! there are three of us in this, and one must be left with a sore heart for life. if the decision rests with me i propose to be very sure that it is the one who deserves such hard luck." the next morning philip came early, dressed in the outing clothing he had worn the previous summer, and aside from a slight paleness seemed very much the same as when he left. elnora met him on the old footing, and for a week life went on exactly as it had the previous summer. mrs. comstock made mental notes and watched in silence. she could see that elnora was on a strain, though she hoped philip would not. the girl grew restless as the week drew to a close. once when the gate clicked she suddenly lost colour and moved nervously. billy came down the walk. philip leaned toward mrs. comstock and said: "i am expressly forbidden to speak to elnora as i would like. would you mind telling her for me that i had a letter from my father this morning saying that miss carr is on her way to europe for the summer?" "elnora," said mrs. comstock promptly, "i have just heard that carr woman is on her way to europe, and i wish to my gracious stars she'd stay there!" philip ammon shouted, but elnora arose hastily and went to meet billy. they came into the arbour together and after speaking to mrs. comstock and philip, billy said: "uncle wesley and i found something funny, and we thought you'd like to see." "i don't know what i should do without you and uncle wesley to help me," said elnora. "what have you found now?" "something i couldn't bring. you have to come to it. i tried to get one and i killed it. they are a kind of insecty things, and they got a long tail that is three fine hairs. they stick those hairs right into the hard bark of trees, and if you pull, the hairs stay fast and it kills the bug." "we will come at once," laughed elnora. "i know what they are, and i can use some in my work." "billy, have you been crying?" inquired mrs. comstock. billy lifted a chastened face. "yes, ma'am," he replied. "this has been the worst day." "what's the matter with the day?" "the day is all right," admitted billy. "i mean every single thing has gone wrong with me." "now that is too bad!" sympathized mrs. comstock. "began early this morning," said billy. "all snap's fault, too." "what has poor snap been doing?" demanded mrs. comstock, her eyes beginning to twinkle. "digging for woodchucks, like he always does. he gets up at two o'clock to dig for them. he was coming in from the woods all tired and covered thick with dirt. i was going to the barn with the pail of water for uncle wesley to use in milking. i had to set down the pail to shut the gate so the chickens wouldn't get into the flower beds, and old snap stuck his dirty nose into the water and began to lap it down. i knew uncle wesley wouldn't use that, so i had to go 'way back to the cistern for more, and it pumps awful hard. made me mad, so i threw the water on snap." "well, what of it?" "nothing, if he'd stood still. but it scared him awful, and when he's afraid he goes a-humping for aunt margaret. when he got right up against her he stiffened out and gave a big shake. you oughter seen the nice blue dress she had put on to go to onabasha!" mrs. comstock and philip laughed, but elnora put her arms around the boy. "oh billy!" she cried. "that was too bad!" "she got up early and ironed that dress to wear because it was cool. then, when it was all dirty, she wouldn't go, and she wanted to real bad." billy wiped his eyes. "that ain't all, either," he added. "we'd like to know about it, billy," suggested mrs. comstock, struggling with her face. "cos she couldn't go to the city, she's most worked herself to death. she's done all the dirty, hard jobs she could find. she's fixing her grape juice now." "sure!" cried mrs. comstock. "when a woman is disappointed she always works like a dog to gain sympathy!" "well, uncle wesley and i are sympathizing all we know how, without her working so. i've squeezed until i almost busted to get the juice out from the seeds and skins. that's the hard part. now, she has to strain it through white flannel and seal it in bottles, and it's good for sick folks. most wish i'd get sick myself, so i could have a glass. it's so good!" elnora glanced swiftly at her mother. "i worked so hard," continued billy, "that she said if i would throw the leavings in the woods, then i could come after you to see about the bugs. do you want to go?" "we will all go," said mrs. comstock. "i am mightily interested in those bugs myself." from afar commotion could be seen at the sinton home. wesley and margaret were running around wildly and peculiar sounds filled the air. "what's the trouble?" asked philip, hurrying to wesley. "cholera!" groaned sinton. "my hogs are dying like flies." margaret was softly crying. "wesley, can't i fix something hot? can't we do anything? it means several hundred dollars and our winter meat." "i never saw stock taken so suddenly and so hard," said wesley. "i have 'phoned for the veterinary to come as soon as he can get here." all of them hurried to the feeding pen into which the pigs seemed to be gathering from the woods. among the common stock were big white beasts of pedigree which were wesley's pride at county fairs. several of these rolled on their backs, pawing the air feebly and emitting little squeaks. a huge berkshire sat on his haunches, slowly shaking his head, the water dropping from his eyes, until he, too, rolled over with faint grunts. a pair crossing the yard on wavering legs collided, and attacked each other in anger, only to fall, so weak they scarcely could squeal. a fine snowy plymouth rock rooster, after several attempts, flew to the fence, balanced with great effort, wildly flapped his wings and started a guttural crow, but fell sprawling among the pigs, too helpless to stand. "did you ever see such a dreadful sight?" sobbed margaret. billy climbed on the fence, took one long look and turned an astounded face to wesley. "why them pigs is drunk!" he cried. "they act just like my pa!" wesley turned to margaret. "where did you put the leavings from that grape juice?" he demanded. "i sent billy to throw it in the woods." "billy----" began wesley. "threw it just where she told me to," cried billy. but some of the pigs came by there coming into the pen, and some were close in the fence corners." "did they eat it?" demanded wesley. "they just chanked into it," replied billy graphically. "they pushed, and squealed, and fought over it. you couldn't blame 'em! it was the best stuff i ever tasted!" "margaret," said wesley, "run 'phone that doctor he won't be needed. billy, take elnora and mr. ammon to see the bugs. katharine, suppose you help me a minute." wesley took the clothes basket from the back porch and started in the direction of the cellar. margaret returned from the telephone. "i just caught him," she said. "there's that much saved. why wesley, what are you going to do?" "you go sit on the front porch a little while," said wesley. "you will feel better if you don't see this." "wesley," cried margaret aghast. "some of that wine is ten years old. there are days and days of hard work in it, and i couldn't say how much sugar. dr. ammon keeps people alive with it when nothing else will stay on their stomachs." "let 'em die, then!" said wesley. "you heard the boy, didn't you?" "it's a cold process. there's not a particle of fermentation about it." "not a particle of fermentation! great day, margaret! look at those pigs!" margaret took a long look. "leave me a few bottles for mince-meat," she wavered. "not a smell for any use on this earth! you heard the boy! he shan't say, when he grows to manhood, that he learned to like it here!" wesley threw away the wine, mrs. comstock cheerfully assisting. then they walked to the woods to see and learn about the wonderful insects. the day ended with a big supper at sintons', and then they went to the comstock cabin for a concert. elnora played beautifully that night. when the sintons left she kissed billy with particular tenderness. she was so moved that she was kinder to philip than she had intended to be, and elnora as an antidote to a disappointed lover was a decided success in any mood. however strong the attractions of edith carr had been, once the bond was finally broken, philip ammon could not help realizing that elnora was the superior woman, and that he was fortunate to have escaped, when he regarded his ties strongest. every day, while working with elnora, he saw more to admire. he grew very thankful that he was free to try to win her, and impatient to justify himself to her. elnora did not evince the slightest haste to hear what he had to say, but waited the week she had set, in spite of philip's hourly manifest impatience. when she did consent to listen, philip felt before he had talked five minutes, that she was putting herself in edith carr's place, and judging him from what the other girl's standpoint would be. that was so disconcerting, he did not plead his cause nearly so well as he had hoped, for when he ceased elnora sat in silence. "you are my judge," he said at last. "what is your verdict?" "if i could hear her speak from her heart as i just have heard you, then i could decide," answered elnora. "she is on the ocean," said philip. "she went because she knew she was wholly in the wrong. she had nothing to say, or she would have remained." "that sounds plausible," reasoned elnora, "but it is pretty difficult to find a woman in an affair that involves her heart with nothing at all to say. i fancy if i could meet her, she would say several things. i should love to hear them. if i could talk with her three minutes, i could tell what answer to make you." "don't you believe me, elnora?" "unquestioningly," answered elnora. "but i would believe her also. if only i could meet her i soon would know." "i don't see how that is to be accomplished," said philip, "but i am perfectly willing. there is no reason why you should not meet her, except that she probably would lose her temper and insult you." "not to any extent," said elnora calmly. "i have a tongue of my own, while i am not without some small sense of personal values." philip glanced at her and began to laugh. very different of facial formation and colouring, elnora at times closely resembled her mother. she joined in his laugh ruefully. "the point is this," she said. "some one is going to be hurt, most dreadfully. if the decision as to whom it shall be rests with me, i must know it is the right one. of course, no one ever hinted it to you, but you are a very attractive man, philip. you are mighty good to look at, and you have a trained, refined mind, that makes you most interesting. for years edith carr has felt that you were hers. now, how is she going to change? i have been thinking--thinking deep and long, phil. if i were in her place, i simply could not give you up, unless you had made yourself unworthy of love. undoubtedly, you never seemed so desirable to her as just now, when she is told she can't have you. what i think is that she will come to claim you yet." "you overlook the fact that it is not in a woman's power to throw away a man and pick him up at pleasure," said philip with some warmth. "she publicly and repeatedly cast me off. i accepted her decision as publicly as it was made. you have done all your thinking from a wrong viewpoint. you seem to have an idea that it lies with you to decide what i shall do, that if you say the word, i shall return to edith. put that thought out of your head! now, and for all time to come, she is a matter of indifference to me. she killed all feeling in my heart for her so completely that i do not even dread meeting her. "if i hated her, or was angry with her, i could not be sure the feeling would not die. as it is, she has deadened me into a creature of indifference. so you just revise your viewpoint a little, elnora. cease thinking it is for you to decide what i shall do, and that i will obey you. i make my own decisions in reference to any woman, save you. the question you are to decide is whether i may remain here, associating with you as i did last summer; but with the difference that it is understood that i am free; that it is my intention to care for you all i please, to make you return my feeling for you if i can. there is just one question for you to decide, and it is not triangular. it is between us. may i remain? may i love you? will you give me the chance to prove what i think of you?" "you speak very plainly," said elnora. "this is the time to speak plainly," said philip ammon. "there is no use in allowing you to go on threshing out a problem which does not exist. if you do not want me here, say so and i will go. of course, i warn you before i start, that i will come back. i won't yield without the stiffest fight it is in me to make. but drop thinking it lies in your power to send me back to edith carr. if she were the last woman in the world, and i the last man, i'd jump off the planet before i would give her further opportunity to exercise her temper on me. narrow this to us, elnora. will you take the place she vacated? will you take the heart she threw away? i'd give my right hand and not flinch, if i could offer you my life, free from any contact with hers, but that is not possible. i can't undo things which are done. i can only profit by experience and build better in the future." "i don't see how you can be sure of yourself," said elnora. "i don't see how i could be sure of you. you loved her first, you never can care for me anything like that. always i'd have to be afraid you were thinking of her and regretting." "folly!" cried philip. "regretting what? that i was not married to a woman who was liable to rave at me any time or place, without my being conscious of having given offence? a man does relish that! i am likely to pine for more!" "you'd be thinking she'd learned a lesson. you would think it wouldn't happen again." "no, i wouldn't be `thinking,'" said, philip. "i'd be everlastingly sure! i wouldn't risk what i went through that night again, not to save my life! just you and me, elnora. decide for us." "i can't!" cried elnora. "i am afraid!" "very well," said philip. "we will wait until you feel that you can. wait until fear vanishes. just decide now whether you would rather have me go for a few months, or remain with you. which shall it be, elnora?" "you can never love me as you did her," wailed elnora. "i am happy to say i cannot," replied he. "i've cut my matrimonial teeth. i'm cured of wanting to swell in society. i'm over being proud of a woman for her looks alone. i have no further use for lavishing myself on a beautiful, elegantly dressed creature, who thinks only of self. i have learned that i am a common man. i admire beauty and beautiful clothing quite as much as i ever did; but, first, i want an understanding, deep as the lowest recess of my soul, with the woman i marry. i want to work for you, to plan for you, to build you a home with every comfort, to give you all good things i can, to shield you from every evil. i want to interpose my body between yours and fire, flood, or famine. i want to give you everything; but i hate the idea of getting nothing at all on which i can depend in return. edith carr had only good looks to offer, and when anger overtook her, beauty went out like a snuffed candle. "i want you to love me. i want some consideration. i even crave respect. i've kept myself clean. so far as i know how to be, i am honest and scrupulous. it wouldn't hurt me to feel that you took some interest in these things. rather fierce temptations strike a man, every few days, in this world. i can keep decent, for a woman who cares for decency, but when i do, i'd like to have the fact recognized, by just enough of a show of appreciation that i could see it. i am tired of this onesided business. after this, i want to get a little in return for what i give. elnora, you have love, tenderness, and honest appreciation of the finest in life. take what i offer, and give what i ask." "you do not ask much," said elnora. "as for not loving you as i did edith," continued philip, "as i said before, i hope not! i have a newer and a better idea of loving. the feeling i offer you was inspired by you. it is a limberlost product. it is as much bigger, cleaner, and more wholesome than any feeling i ever had for edith carr, as you are bigger than she, when you stand before your classes and in calm dignity explain the marvels of the almighty, while she stands on a ballroom floor, and gives way to uncontrolled temper. ye gods, elnora, if you could look into my soul, you would see it leap and rejoice over my escape! perhaps it isn't decent, but it's human; and i'm only a common human being. i'm the gladdest man alive that i'm free! i would turn somersaults and yell if i dared. what an escape! stop straining after edith carr's viewpoint and take a look from mine. put yourself in my place and try to study out how i feel. "i am so happy i grow religious over it. fifty times a day i catch myself whispering, `my soul is escaped!' as for you, take all the time you want. if you prefer to be alone, i'll take the next train and stay away as long as i can bear it, but i'll come back. you can be most sure of that. straight as your pigeons to their loft, i'll come back to you, elnora. shall i go?" "oh, what's the use to be extravagant?" murmured elnora. chapter xxii wherein philip ammon kneels to elnora, and strangers come to the limberlost the month which followed was a reproduction of the previous june. there were long moth hunts, days of specimen gathering, wonderful hours with great books, big dinners all of them helped to prepare, and perfect nights filled with music. everything was as it had been, with the difference that philip was now an avowed suitor. he missed no opportunity to advance himself in elnora's graces. at the end of the month he was no nearer any sort of understanding with her than he had been at the beginning. he revelled in the privilege of loving her, but he got no response. elnora believed in his love, yet she hesitated to accept him, because she could not forget edith carr. one afternoon early in july, philip came across the fields, through the comstock woods, and entered the garden. he inquired for elnora at the back door and was told that she was reading under the willow. he went around the west end of the cabin to her. she sat on a rustic bench they had made and placed beneath a drooping branch. he had not seen her before in the dress she was wearing. it was clinging mull of pale green, trimmed with narrow ruffles and touched with knots of black velvet; a simple dress, but vastly becoming. every tint of her bright hair, her luminous eyes, her red lips, and her rose-flushed face, neck, and arms grew a little more vivid with the delicate green setting. he stopped short. she was so near, so temptingly sweet, he lost control. he went to her with a halfsmothered cry after that first long look, dropped on one knee beside her and reached an arm behind her to the bench back, so that he was very near. he caught her hands. "elnora!" he cried tensely, "end it now! say this strain is over. i pledge you that you will be happy. you don't know! if you only would say the word, you would awake to new life and great joy! won't you promise me now, elnora?" the girl sat staring into the west woods, while strong in her eyes was her father's look of seeing something invisible to others. philip's arm slipped from the bench around her. his fingers closed firmly over hers. elnora," he pleaded, "you know me well enough. you have had time in plenty. end it now. say you will be mine!" he gathered her closer, pressing his face against hers, his breath on her cheek. "can't you quite promise yet, my girl of the limberlost?" elnora shook her head. instantly he released her. "forgive me," he begged. "i had no intention of thrusting myself upon you, but, elnora, you are the veriest queen of love this afternoon. from the tips of your toes to your shining crown, i worship you. i want no woman save you. you are so wonderful this afternoon, i couldn't help urging. forgive me. perhaps it was something that came this morning for you. i wrote polly to send it. may we try if it fits? will you tell me if you like it?" he drew a little white velvet box from his pocket and showed her a splendid emerald ring. "it may not be right," he said. "the inside of a glove finger is not very accurate for a measure, but it was the best i could do. i wrote polly to get it, because she and mother are home from the east this week, but next they will go on to our cottage in the north, and no one knows what is right quite so well as polly." he laid the ring in elnora's hand. "dearest," he said, "don't slip that on your finger; put your arms around my neck and promise me, all at once and abruptly, or i'll keel over and die of sheer joy." elnora smiled. "i won't! not all those venturesome things at once; but, phil, i'm ashamed to confess that ring simply fascinates me. it is the most beautiful one i ever saw, and do you know that i never owned a ring of any kind in my life? would you think me unwomanly if i slip it on for a second, before i can say for sure? phil, you know i care! i care very much! you know i will tell you the instant i feel right about it." "certainly you will," agreed philip promptly. "it is your right to take all the time you choose. i can't put that ring on you until it means a bond between us. i'll shut my eyes and you try it on, so we can see if it fits." philip turned his face toward the west woods and tightly closed his eyes. it was a boyish thing to do, and it caught the hesitating girl in the depths of her heart as the boy element in a man ever appeals to a motherly woman. before she quite realized what she was doing, the ring slid on her finger. with both arms she caught philip and drew him to her breast, holding him closely. her head drooped over his, her lips were on his hair. so an instant, then her arms dropped. he lifted a convulsed, white face. "dear lord!" he whispered. "you--you didn't mean that, elnora! you--- what made you do it?" "you--you looked so boyish!" panted elnora. "i didn't mean it! i--i forgot that you were older than billy. look--look at the ring!" "`the queen can do no wrong,'" quoted philip between his set teeth. "but don't you do that again, elnora, unless you do mean it. kings are not so good as queens, and there is a limit with all men. as you say, we will look at your ring. it seems very lovely to me. suppose you leave it on until time for me to go. please do! i have heard of mute appeals; perhaps it will plead for me. i am wild for your lips this afternoon. i am going to take your hands." he caught both of them and covered them with kisses. "elnora," he said, "will you be my wife?" "i must have a little more time," she whispered. "i must be absolutely certain, for when i say yes, and give myself to you, only death shall part us. i would not give you up. so i want a little more time--but, i think i will." "thank you," said philip. "if at any time you feel that you have reached a decision, will you tell me? will you promise me to tell me instantly, or shall i keep asking you until the time comes?" "you make it difficult," said elnora. "but i will promise you that. whenever the last doubt vanishes, i will let you know instantly--if i can." "would it be difficult for you?" whispered ammon. "i--i don't know," faltered elnora. "it seems as if i can't be man enough to put this thought aside and give up this afternoon," said philip. "i am ashamed of myself, but i can't help it. i am going to ask god to make that last doubt vanish before i go this night. i am going to believe that ring will plead for me. i am going to hope that doubt will disappear suddenly. i will be watching. every second i will be watching. if it happens and you can't speak, give me your hand. just the least movement toward me, i will understand. would it help you to talk this over with your mother? shall i call her? shall i----?" honk! honk! honk! hart henderson set the horn of the big automobile going as it shot from behind the trees lining the brushwood road. the picture of a vinecovered cabin, a large drooping tree, a green-clad girl and a man bending over her very closely flashed into view. edith carr caught her breath with a snap. polly ammon gave tom levering a quick touch and wickedly winked at him. several days before, edith had returned from europe suddenly. she and henderson had called at the ammon residence saying that they were going to motor down to the limberlost to see philip a few hours, and urged that polly and tom accompany them. mrs. ammon knew that her husband would disapprove of the trip, but it was easy to see that edith carr had determined on going. so the mother thought it better to have polly along to support philip than to allow him to confront edith unexpectedly and alone. polly was full of spirit. she did not relish the thought of edith as a sister. always they had been in the same set, always edith, because of greater beauty and wealth, had patronized polly. although it had rankled, she had borne it sweetly. but two days before, her father had extracted a promise of secrecy, given her philip's address and told her to send him the finest emerald ring she could select. polly knew how that ring would be used. what she did not know was that the girl who accompanied her went back to the store afterward, made an excuse to the clerk that she had been sent to be absolutely sure that the address was right, and so secured it for edith carr. two days later edith had induced hart henderson to take her to onabasha. by the aid of maps they located the comstock land and passed it, merely to see the place. henderson hated that trip, and implored edith not to take it, but she made no effort to conceal from him what she suffered, and it was more than he could endure. he pointed out that philip had gone away without leaving an address, because he did not wish to see her, or any of them. but edith was so sure of her power, she felt certain philip needed only to see her to succumb to her beauty as he always had done, while now she was ready to plead for forgiveness. so they came down the brushwood road, and henderson had just said to edith beside him: "this should be the comstock land on our left." a minute later the wood ended, while the sunlight, as always pitiless, etched with distinctness the scene at the west end of the cabin. instinctively, to save edith, henderson set the horn blowing. he had thought to drive to the city, but polly ammon arose crying: "phil! phil!" tom levering was on his feet shouting and waving, while edith in her most imperial manner ordered him to turn into the lane leading through the woods beside the cabin. "find some way for me to have a minute alone with her," she commanded as he stopped the car. "that is my sister polly, her fiance tom levering, a friend of mine named henderson, and----" began philip, "--and edith carr," volunteered elnora. "and edith carr," repeated philip ammon. "elnora, be brave, for my sake. their coming can make no difference in any way. i won't let them stay but a few minutes. come with me!" "do i seem scared?" inquired elnora serenely. "this is why you haven't had your answer. i have been waiting just six weeks for that motor. you may bring them to me at the arbour." philip glanced at her and broke into a laugh. she had not lost colour. her self-possession was perfect. she deliberately turned and walked toward the grape arbour, while he sprang over the west fence and ran to the car. elnora standing in the arbour entrance made a perfect picture, framed in green leaves and tendrils. no matter how her heart ached, it was good to her, for it pumped steadily, and kept her cheeks and lips suffused with colour. she saw philip reach the car and gather his sister into his arms. past her he reached a hand to levering, then to edith carr and henderson. he lifted his sister to the ground, and assisted edith to alight. instantly, she stepped beside him, and elnora's heart played its first trick. she could see that miss carr was splendidly beautiful, while she moved with the hauteur and grace supposed to be the prerogatives of royalty. and she had instantly taken possession of philip. but he also had a brain which was working with rapidity. he knew elnora was watching, so he turned to the others. "give her up, tom!" he cried. "i didn't know i wanted to see the little nuisance so badly, but i do. how are father and mother? polly, didn't the mater send me something?" "she did!" said polly ammon, stopping on the path and lifting her chin as a little child, while she drew away her veil. philip caught her in his arms and stooped for his mother's kiss. "be good to elnora!" he whispered. "umhu!" assented polly. and aloud--"look at that ripping green and gold symphony! i never saw such a beauty! thomas asquith levering, you come straight here and take my hand!" edith's move to compel philip to approach elnora beside her had been easy to see; also its failure. henderson stepped into philip's place as he turned to his sister. instead of taking polly's hand levering ran to open the gate. edith passed through first, but polly darted in front of her on the run, with phil holding her arm, and swept up to elnora. polly looked for the ring and saw it. that settled matters with her. "you lovely, lovely, darling girl!" she cried, throwing her arms around elnora and kissing her. with her lips close elnora's ear, polly whispered, "sister! dear, dear sister!" elnora drew back, staring at polly in confused amazement. she was a beautiful girl, her eyes were sparkling and dancing, and as she turned to make way for the others, she kept one of elnora's hands in hers. polly would have dropped dead in that instant if edith carr could have killed with a look, for not until then did she realize that polly would even many a slight, and that it had been a great mistake to bring her. edith bowed low, muttered something and touched elnora's fingers. tom took his cue from polly. "i always follow a good example," he said, and before any one could divine his intention he kissed elnora as he gripped her hand and cried: "mighty glad to meet you! like to meet you a dozen times a day, you know!" elnora laughed and her heart pumped smoothly. they had accomplished their purpose. they had let her know they were there through compulsion, but on her side. in that instant only pity was in elnora's breast for the flashing dark beauty, standing with smiling face while her heart must have been filled with exceeding bitterness. elnora stepped back from the entrance. "come into the shade," she urged. "you must have found it warm on these country roads. won't you lay aside your dust-coats and have a cool drink? philip, would you ask mother to come, and bring that pitcher from the spring house?" they entered the arbour exclaiming at the dim, green coolness. there was plenty of room and wide seats around the sides, a table in the centre, on which lay a piece of embroidery, magazines, books, the moth apparatus, and the cyanide jar containing several specimens. polly rejoiced in the cooling shade, slipped off her duster, removed her hat, rumpled her pretty hair and seated herself to indulge in the delightful occupation of paying off old scores. tom levering followed her example. edith took a seat but refused to remove her hat and coat, while henderson stood in the entrance. "there goes something with wings! should you have that?" cried levering. he seized a net from the table and raced across the garden after a butterfly. he caught it and came back mightily pleased with himself. as the creature struggled in the net, elnora noted a repulsed look on edith carr's face. levering helped the situation beautifully. "now what have i got?" he demanded. "is it just a common one that every one knows and you don't keep, or is it the rarest bird off the perch?" "you must have had practice, you took that so perfectly," said elnora. "i am sorry, but it is quite common and not of a kind i keep. suppose all of you see how beautiful it is and then it may go nectar hunting again." she held the butterfly where all of them could see, showed its upper and under wing colours, answered polly's questions as to what it ate, how long it lived, and how it died. then she put it into polly's hand saying: "stand there in the light and loosen your hold slowly and easily." elnora caught a brush from the table and began softly stroking the creature's sides and wings. delighted with the sensation the butterfly opened and closed its wings, clinging to polly's soft little fingers, while every one cried out in surprise. elnora laid aside the brush, and the butterfly sailed away. "why, you are a wizard! you charm them!" marvelled levering. "i learned that from the bird woman," said elnora. "she takes soft brushes and coaxes butterflies and moths into the positions she wants for the illustrations of a book she is writing. i have helped her often. most of the rare ones i find go to her." "then you don't keep all you take?" questioned levering. "oh, dear, no!" cried elnora. "not a tenth! for myself, a pair of each kind to use in illustrating the lectures i give in the city schools in the winter, and one pair for each collection i make. one might as well keep the big night moths of june, for they only live four or five days anyway. for the bird woman, i only save rare ones she has not yet secured. sometimes i think it is cruel to take such creatures from freedom, even for an hour, but it is the only way to teach the masses of people how to distinguish the pests they should destroy, from the harmless ones of great beauty. here comes mother with something cool to drink." mrs. comstock came deliberately, talking to philip as she approached. elnora gave her one searching look, but could discover only an extreme brightness of eye to denote any unusual feeling. she wore one of her lavender dresses, while her snowy hair was high piled. she had taken care of her complexion, and her face had grown fuller during the winter. she might have been any one's mother with pride, and she was perfectly at ease. polly instantly went to her and held up her face to be kissed. mrs. comstock's eyes twinkled and she made the greeting hearty. the drink was compounded of the juices of oranges and berries from the garden. it was cool enough to frost glasses and pitcher and delicious to dusty tired travellers. soon the pitcher was empty, and elnora picked it up and went to refill it. while she was gone henderson asked philip about some trouble he was having with his car. they went to the woods and began a minute examination to find a defect which did not exist. polly and levering were having an animated conversation with mrs. comstock. henderson saw edith arise, follow the garden path next the woods and stand waiting under the willow which elnora would pass on her return. it was for that meeting he had made the trip. he got down on the ground, tore up the car, worked, asked for help, and kept philip busy screwing bolts and applying the oil can. all the time henderson kept an eye on edith and elnora under the willow. but he took pains to lay the work he asked philip to do where that scene would be out of his sight. when elnora came around the corner with the pitcher, she found herself facing edith carr. "i want a minute with you," said miss carr. "very well," replied elnora, walking on. "set the pitcher on the bench there," commanded edith carr, as if speaking to a servant. "i prefer not to offer my visitors a warm drink," said elnora. "i'll come back if you really wish to speak with me." "i came solely for that," said edith carr. "it would be a pity to travel so far in this dust and heat for nothing. i'll only be gone a second." elnora placed the pitcher before her mother. "please serve this," she said. "miss carr wishes to speak with me." "don't you pay the least attention to anything she says," cried polly. "tom and i didn't come here because we wanted to. we only came to checkmate her. i hoped i'd get the opportunity to say a word to you, and now she has given it to me. i just want to tell you that she threw phil over in perfectly horrid way. she hasn't any right to lay the ghost of a claim to him, has she, tom?" "nary a claim," said tom levering earnestly. "why, even you, polly, couldn't serve me as she did phil, and ever get me back again. if i were you, miss comstock, i'd send my mother to talk with her and i'd stay here." tom had gauged mrs. comstock rightly. polly put her arms around elnora. "let me go with you, dear," she begged. "i promised i would speak with her alone," said elnora, "and she must be considered. but thank you, very much." "how i shall love you!" exulted polly, giving elnora a parting hug. the girl slowly and gravely walked back to the willow. she could not imagine what was coming, but she was promising herself that she would be very patient and control her temper. "will you be seated?" she asked politely. edith carr glanced at the bench, while a shudder shook her. "no. i prefer to stand," she said. "did mr. ammon give you the ring you are wearing, and do you consider yourself engaged to him?" "by what right do you ask such personal questions as those?" inquired elnora. "by the right of a betrothed wife. i have been promised to philip ammon ever since i wore short skirts. all our lives we have expected to marry. an agreement of years cannot be broken in one insane moment. always he has loved me devotedly. give me ten minutes with him and he will be mine for all time." "i seriously doubt that," said elnora. "but i am willing that you should make the test. i will call him." "stop!" commanded edith carr. "i told you that it was you i came to see." "i remember," said elnora. "mr. ammon is my betrothed," continued edith carr. "i expect to take him back to chicago with me." "you expect considerable," murmured elnora. "i will raise no objection to your taking him, if you can--but, i tell you frankly, i don't think it possible." "you are so sure of yourself as that," scoffed edith carr. "one hour in my presence will bring back the old spell, full force. we belong to each other. i will not give him up." "then it is untrue that you twice rejected his ring, repeatedly insulted him, and publicly renounced him?" "that was through you!" cried edith carr. "phil and i never had been so near and so happy as we were on that night. it was your clinging to him for things that caused him to desert me among his guests, while he tried to make me await your pleasure. i realize the spell of this place, for a summer season. i understand what you and your mother have done to inveigle him. i know that your hold on him is quite real. i can see just how you have worked to ensnare him!" "men would call that lying," said elnora calmly. "the second time i met philip ammon he told me of his engagement to you, and i respected it. i did by you as i would want you to do by me. he was here parts of each day, almost daily last summer. the almighty is my witness that never once, by word or look, did i ever make the slightest attempt to interest him in my person or personality. he wrote you frequently in my presence. he forgot the violets for which he asked to send you. i gathered them and carried them to him. i sent him back to you in unswerving devotion, and the almighty is also my witness that i could have changed his heart last summer, if i had tried. i wisely left that work for you. all my life i shall be glad that i lived and worked on the square. that he ever would come back to me free, by your act, i never dreamed. when he left me i did not hope or expect to see him again," elnora's voice fell soft and low," and, behold! you sent him--and free!" "you exult in that!" cried edith carr. "let me tell you he is not free! we have belonged for years. we always shall. if you cling to him, and hold him to rash things he has said and done, because he thought me still angry and unforgiving with him, you will ruin all our lives. if he married you, before a month you would read heart-hunger for me in his eyes. he could not love me as he has done, and give me up for a little scene like that!" "there is a great poem," said elnora, "one line of which reads, `for each man kills the thing he loves.' let me tell you that a woman can do that also. he did love you --that i concede. but you killed his love everlastingly, when you disgraced him in public. killed it so completely he does not even feel resentment toward you. to-day, he would do you a favour, if he could; but love you, no! that is over!" edith carr stood truly regal and filled with scorn. "you are mistaken! nothing on earth could kill that!" she cried, and elnora saw that the girl really believed what she said. "you are very sure of yourself!" said elnora. "i have reason to be sure," answered edith carr. "we have lived and loved too long. i have had years with him to match against your days. he is mine! his work, his ambitions, his friends, his place in society are with me. you may have a summer charm for a sick man in the country; if he tried placing you in society, he soon would see you as others will. it takes birth to position, schooling, and endless practice to meet social demands gracefully. you would put him to shame in a week." "i scarcely think i should follow your example so far," said elnora dryly. "i have a feeling for philip that would prevent my hurting him purposely, either in public or private. as for managing a social career for him he never mentioned that he desired such a thing. what he asked of me was that i should be his wife. i understood that to mean that he desired me to keep him a clean house, serve him digestible food, mother his children, and give him loving sympathy and tenderness." "shameless!" cried edith carr. "to which of us do you intend that adjective to apply?" inquired elnora. "i never was less ashamed in all my life. please remember i am in my own home, and your presence here is not on my invitation." miss carr lifted her head and struggled with her veil. she was very pale and trembling violently, while elnora stood serene, a faint smile on her lips. "such vulgarity!" panted edith carr. "how can a man like philip endure it?" "why don't you ask him?" inquired elnora. "i can call him with one breath; but, if he judged us as we stand, i should not be the one to tremble at his decision. miss carr, you have been quite plain. you have told me in carefully selected words what you think of me. you insult my birth, education, appearance, and home. i assure you i am legitimate. i will pass a test examination with you on any high school or supplementary branch, or french or german. i will take a physical examination beside you. i will face any social emergency you can mention with you. i am acquainted with a whole world in which philip ammon is keenly interested, that you scarcely know exists. i am not afraid to face any audience you can get together anywhere with my violin. i am not repulsive to look at, and i have a wholesome regard for the proprieties and civilities of life. philip ammon never asked anything more of me, why should you?" "it is plain to see," cried edith carr, "that you took him when he was hurt and angry and kept his wound wide open. oh, what have you not done against me?" "i did not promise to marry him when an hour ago he asked me, and offered me this ring, because there was so much feeling in my heart for you, that i knew i never could be happy, if i felt that in any way i had failed in doing justice to your interests. i did slip on this ring, which he had just brought, because i never owned one, and it is very beautiful, but i made him no promise, nor shall i make any, until i am quite, quite sure, that you fully realize he never would marry you if i sent him away this hour." "you know perfectly that if your puny hold on him were broken, if he were back in his home, among his friends, and where he was meeting me, in one short week he would be mine again, as he always has been. in your heart you don't believe what you say. you don't dare trust him in my presence. you are afraid to allow him out of your sight, because you know what the results would be. right or wrong, you have made up your mind to ruin him and me, and you are going to be selfish enough to do it. but----" "that will do!" said elnora. "spare me the enumeration of how i will regret it. i shall regret nothing. i shall not act until i know there will be nothing to regret. i have decided on my course. you may return to your friends." "what do you mean?" demanded edith carr. "that is my affair," replied elnora. "only this! when your opportunity comes, seize it! any time you are in philip ammon's presence, exert the charms of which you boast, and take him. i grant you are justified in doing it if you can. i want nothing more than i want to see you marry philip if he wants you. he is just across the fence under that automobile. go spread your meshes and exert your wiles. i won't stir to stop you. take him to onabasha, and to chicago with you. use every art you possess. if the old charm can be revived i will be the first to wish both of you well. now, i must return to my visitors. kindly excuse me." elnora turned and went back to the arbour. edith carr followed the fence and passed through the gate into the west woods where she asked henderson about the car. as she stood near him she whispered: "take phil back to onabasha with us." "i say, ammon, can't you go to the city with us and help me find a shop where i can get this pinion fixed?" asked henderson. "we want to lunch and start back by five. that will get us home about midnight. why don't you bring your automobile here?" "i am a working man," said philip. "i have no time to be out motoring. i can't see anything the matter with your car, myself; but, of course you don't want to break down in the night, on strange roads, with women on your hands. i'll see." philip went into the arbour, where polly took possession of his lap, fingered his hair, and kissed his forehead and lips. "when are you coming to the cottage, phil?" she asked. "come soon, and bring miss comstock for a visit. all of us will be so glad to have her." philip beamed on polly. "i'll see about that," he said. "sounds pretty good. elnora, henderson is in trouble with his automobile. he wants me to go to onabasha with him to show him where the doctor lives, and make repairs so he can start back this evening. it will take about two hours. may i go?" "of course, you must go," she said, laughing lightly. "you can't leave your sister. why don't you return to chicago with them? there is plenty of room, and you could have a fine visit." "i'll be back in just two hours," said philip. "while i am gone, you be thinking over what we were talking of when the folks came." "miss comstock can go with us as well as not," said polly. "that back seat was made for three, and i can sit on your lap." "come on! do come!" urged philip instantly, and tom levering joined him, but henderson and edith silently waited at the gate. "no, thank you," laughed elnora. "that would crowd you, and it's warm and dusty. we will say good-bye here." she offered her hand to all of them, and when she came to philip she gave him one long steady look in the eyes, then shook hands with him also. chapter xxiii wherein elnora reaches a decision, and freckles and the angel appear well, she came, didn't she?" remarked mrs. comstock to elnora as they watched the automobile speed down the road. as it turned the limberlost corner, philip arose and waved to them. "she hasn't got him yet, anyway," said mrs. comstock, taking heart. "what's that on your finger, and what did she say to you?" elnora explained about the ring as she drew it off. "i have several letters to write, then i am going to change my dress and walk down toward aunt margaret's for a little exercise. i may meet some of them, and i don't want them to see this ring. you keep it until philip comes," said elnora. "as for what miss carr said to me, many things, two of importance: one, that i lacked every social requirement necessary for the happiness of philip ammon, and that if i married him i would see inside a month that he was ashamed of me----" "aw, shockins!" scorned mrs. comstock. "go on!" "the other was that she has been engaged to him for years, that he belongs to her, and she refuses to give him up. she said that if he were in her presence one hour, she would have him under a mysterious thing she calls `her spell' again; if he were where she could see him for one week, everything would be made up. it is her opinion that he is suffering from wounded pride, and that the slightest concession on her part will bring him to his knees before her." mrs. comstock giggled. "i do hope the boy isn't weak-kneed," she said. "i just happened to be passing the west window this afternoon----" elnora laughed. "nothing save actual knowledge ever would have made me believe there was a girl in all this world so infatuated with herself. she speaks casually of her power over men, and boasts of `bringing a man to his knees' as complacently as i would pick up a net and say: `i am going to take a butterfly.' she honestly believes that if philip were with her a short time she could rekindle his love for her and awaken in him every particle of the old devotion. mother, the girl is honest! she is absolutely sincere! she so believes in herself and the strength of phil's love for her, that all her life she will believe in and brood over that thought, unless she is taught differently. so long as she thinks that, she will nurse wrong ideas and pine over her blighted life. she must be taught that phil is absolutely free, and yet he will not go to her." "but how on earth are you proposing to teach her that?" "the way will open." "lookey here, elnora!" cried mrs. comstock. "that carr girl is the handsomest dark woman i ever saw. she's got to the place where she won't stop at anything. her coming here proves that. i don't believe there was a thing the matter with that automobile. i think that was a scheme she fixed up to get phil where she could see him alone, as she worked to see you. if you are going deliberately to put philip under her influence again, you've got to brace yourself for the possibility that she may win. a man is a weak mortal, where a lovely woman is concerned, and he never denied that he loved her once. you may make yourself downright miserable." "but mother, if she won, it wouldn't make me half so miserable as to marry phil myself, and then read hunger for her in his eyes! some one has got to suffer over this. if it proves to be me, i'll bear it, and you'll never hear a whisper of complaint from me. i know the real philip ammon better in our months of work in the fields than she knows him in all her years of society engagements. so she shall have the hour she asked, many, many of them, enough to make her acknowledge that she is wrong. now i am going to write my letters and take my walk." elnora threw her arms around her mother and kissed her repeatedly. "don't you worry about me," she said. "i will get along all right, and whatever happens, i always will be your girl and you my darling mother." she left two sealed notes on her desk. then she changed her dress, packed a small bundle which she dropped with her hat from the window beside the willow, and softly went down stairs. mrs. comstock was in the garden. elnora picked up the hat and bundle, hurried down the road a few rods, then climbed the fence and entered the woods. she took a diagonal course, and after a long walk reached a road two miles west and one south. there she straightened her clothing, put on her hat and a thin dark veil and waited the passing of the next trolley. she left it at the first town and took a train for fort wayne. she made that point just in time to climb on the evening train north, as it pulled from the station. it was after midnight when she left the car at grand rapids, and went into the depot to await the coming of day. tired out, she laid her head on her bundle and fell asleep on a seat in the women's waiting-room. long after light she was awakened by the roar and rattle of trains. she washed, re-arranged her hair and clothing, and went into the general waiting-room to find her way to the street. she saw him as he entered the door. there was no mistaking the tall, lithe figure, the bright hair, the lean, brown-splotched face, the steady gray eyes. he was dressed for travelling, and carried a light overcoat and a bag. straight to him elnora went speeding. "oh, i was just starting to find you!" she cried. "thank you!" he said. "you are going away?" she panted. "not if i am needed. i have a few minutes. can you be telling me briefly?" "i am the limberlost girl to whom your wife gave the dress for commencement last spring, and both of you sent lovely gifts. there is a reason, a very good reason, why i must be hidden for a time, and i came straight to you--as if i had a right." "you have!" answered freckles. "any boy or girl who ever suffered one pang in the limberlost has a claim to the best drop of blood in my heart. you needn't be telling me anything more. the angel is at our cottage on mackinac. you shall tell her and play with the babies while you want shelter. this way!" they breakfasted in a luxurious car, talked over the swamp, the work of the bird woman; elnora told of her nature lectures in the schools, and soon they were good friends. in the evening they left the train at mackinaw city and crossed the straits by boat. sheets of white moonlight flooded the water and paved a molten path across the breast of it straight to the face of the moon. the island lay a dark spot on the silver surface, its tall trees sharply outlined on the summit, and a million lights blinked around the shore. the night guns boomed from the white fort and a dark sentinel paced the ramparts above the little city tucked down close to the water. a great tenor summering in the north came out on the upper deck of the big boat, and baring his head, faced the moon and sang: "oh, the moon shines bright on my old kentucky home!" elnora thought of the limberlost, of philip, and her mother, and almost choked with the sobs that would arise in her throat. on the dock a woman of exquisite beauty swept into the arms of terence o'more. "oh, freckles!" she cried. "you've been gone a month!" "four days, angel, only four days by the clock," remonstrated freckles. "where are the children?" "asleep! thank goodness! i'm worn to a thread. i never saw such inventive, active children. i can't keep track of them!" "i have brought you help," said freckles. "here is the limberlost girl in whom the bird woman is interested. miss comstock needs a rest before beginning her school work for next year, so she came to us." "you dear thing! how good of you!" cried the angel. "we shall be so happy to have you!" in her room that night, in a beautiful cottage furnished with every luxury, elnora lifted a tired face to the angel. "of course, you understand there is something back of this?" she said. "i must tell you." "yes," agreed the angel. "tell me! if you get it out of your system, you will stand a better chance of sleeping." elnora stood brushing the copper-bright masses of her hair as she talked. when she finished the angel was almost hysterical. "you insane creature!" she cried. "how crazy of you to leave him to her! i know both of them. i have met them often. she may be able to make good her boast. but it is perfectly splendid of you! and, after all, really it is the only way. i can see that. i think it is what i should have done myself, or tried to do. i don't know that i could have done it! when i think of walking away and leaving freckles with a woman he once loved, to let her see if she can make him love her again, oh, it gives me a graveyard heart. no, i never could have done it! you are bigger than i ever was. i should have turned coward, sure." "i am a coward," admitted elnora. "i am soul-sick! i am afraid i shall lose my senses before this is over. i didn't want to come! i wanted to stay, to go straight into his arms, to bind myself with his ring, to love him with all my heart. it wasn't my fault that i came. there was something inside that just pushed me. she is beautiful----" "i quite agree with you!" "you can imagine how fascinating she can be. she used no arts on me. her purpose was to cower me. she found she could not do that, but she did a thing which helped her more: she proved that she was honest, perfectly sincere in what she thought. she believes that if she merely beckons to philip, he will go to her. so i am giving her the opportunity to learn from him what he will do. she never will believe it from any one else. when she is satisfied, i shall be also." "but, child! suppose she wins him back!" "that is the supposition with which i shall eat and sleep for the coming few weeks. would one dare ask for a peep at the babies before going to bed?" "now, you are perfect!" announced the angel. "i never should have liked you all i can, if you had been content to go to sleep in this house without asking to see the babies. come this way. we named the first boy for his father, of course, and the girl for aunt alice. the next boy is named for my father, and the baby for the bird woman. after this we are going to branch out." elnora began to laugh. "oh, i suspect there will be quite a number of them," said the angel serenely. "i am told the more there are the less trouble they make. the big ones take care of the little ones. we want a large family. this is our start." she entered a dark room and held aloft a candle. she went to the side of a small white iron bed in which lay a boy of eight and another of three. they were perfectly formed, rosy children, the elder a replica of his mother, the other very like. then they came to a cradle where a baby girl of almost two slept soundly, and made a picture. "but just see here!" said the angel. she threw the light on a sleeping girl of six. a mass of red curls swept the pillow. line and feature the face was that of freckles. without asking, elnora knew the colour and expression of the closed eyes. the angel handed elnora the candle, and stooping, straightened the child's body. she ran her fingers through the bright curls, and lightly touched the aristocratic little nose. "the supply of freckles holds out in my family, you see!" she said. "both of the girls will have them, and the second boy a few." she stood an instant longer, then bending, ran her hand caressingly down a rosy bare leg, while she kissed the babyish red mouth. there had been some reason for touching all of them, the kiss fell on the lips which were like freckles's. to elnora she said a tender good-night, whispering brave words of encouragement and making plans to fill the days to come. then she went away. an hour later there was a light tap on the girl's door. "come!" she called as she lay staring into the dark. the angel felt her way to the bedside, sat down and took elnora's hands. "i just had to come back to you," she said. "i have been telling freckles, and he is almost hurting himself with laughing. i didn't think it was funny, but he does. he thinks it's the funniest thing that ever happened. he says that to run away from mr. ammon, when you had made him no promise at all, when he wasn't sure of you, won't send him home to her; it will set him hunting you! he says if you had combined the wisdom of solomon, socrates, and all the remainder of the wise men, you couldn't have chosen any course that would have sealed him to you so surely. he feels that now mr. ammon will perfectly hate her for coming down there and driving you away. and you went to give her the chance she wanted. oh, elnora! it is becoming funny! i see it, too!" the angel rocked on the bedside. elnora faced the dark in silence. "forgive me," gulped the angel. "i didn't mean to laugh. i didn't think it was funny, until all at once it came to me. oh, dear! elnora, it <i is> funny! i've got to laugh!" "maybe it is," admitted elnora "to others; but it isn't very funny to me. and it won't be to philip, or to mother." that was very true. mrs. comstock had been slightly prepared for stringent action of some kind, by what elnora had said. the mother instantly had guessed where the girl would go, but nothing was said to philip. that would have been to invalidate elnora's test in the beginning, and mrs. comstock knew her child well enough to know that she never would marry philip unless she felt it right that she should. the only way was to find out, and elnora had gone to seek the information. there was nothing to do but wait until she came back, and her mother was not in the least uneasy but that the girl would return brave and self-reliant, as always. philip ammon hurried back to the limberlost, strong in the hope that now he might take elnora into his arms and receive her promise to become his wife. his first shock of disappointment came when he found her gone. in talking with mrs. comstock he learned that edith carr had made an opportunity to speak with elnora alone. he hastened down the road to meet her, coming back alone, an agitated man. then search revealed the notes. his read: dear philip: i find that i am never going to be able to answer your question of this afternoon fairly to all of us, when you are with me. so i am going away a few weeks to think over matters alone. i shall not tell you, or even mother, where i am going, but i shall be safe, well cared for, and happy. please go back home and live among your friends, just as you always have done, and on or before the first of september, i will write you where i am, and what i have decided. please do not blame edith carr for this, and do not avoid her. i hope you will call on her and be friends. i think she is very sorry, and covets your friendship at least. until september, then, as ever, elnora. mrs. comstock's note was much the same. philip was ill with disappointment. in the arbour he laid his head on the table, among the implements of elnora's loved work, and gulped down dry sobs he could not restrain. mrs. comstock never had liked him so well. her hand involuntarily crept toward his dark head, then she drew back. elnora would not want her to do anything whatever to influence him. "what am i going to do to convince edith carr that i do not love her, and elnora that i am hers?" he demanded. "i guess you have to figure that out yourself," said mrs. comstock. "i'd be glad to help you if i could, but it seems to be up to you." philip sat a long time in silence. "well, i have decided!" he said abruptly. "are you perfectly sure elnora had plenty of money and a safe place to go?" "absolutely!" answered mrs. comstock. "she has been taking care of herself ever since she was born, and she always has come out all right, so far; i'll stake all i'm worth on it, that she always will. i don't know where she is, but i'm not going to worry about her safety." "i can't help worrying!" cried philip. "i can think of fifty things that may happen to her when she thinks she is safe. this is distracting! first, i am going to run up to see my father. then, i'll let you know what we have decided. is there anything i can do for you?" "nothing!" said mrs. comstock. but the desire to do something for him was so strong with her she scarcely could keep her lips closed or her hands quiet. she longed to tell him what edith carr had said, how it had affected elnora, and to comfort him as she felt she could. but loyalty to the girl held her. if elnora truly felt that she could not decide until edith carr was convinced, then edith carr would have to yield or triumph. it rested with philip. so mrs. comstock kept silent, while philip took the night limited, a bitterly disappointed man. by noon the next day he was in his father's offices. they had a long conference, but did not arrive at much until the elder ammon suggested sending for polly. anything that might have happened could be explained after polly had told of the private conference between edith and elnora. "talk about lovely woman!" cried philip ammon. "one would think that after such a dose as edith gave me, she would be satisfied to let me go my way, but no! not caring for me enough herself to save me from public disgrace, she must now pursue me to keep any other woman from loving me. i call that too much! i am going to see her, and i want you to go with me, father." "very well," said mr. ammon, "i will go." when edith carr came into her reception-room that afternoon, gowned for conquest, she expected only philip, and him penitent. she came hurrying toward him, smiling, radiant, ready to use every allurement she possessed, and paused in dismay when she saw his cold face and his father. "why, phil!" she cried. "when did you come home?" "i am not at home," answered philip. "i merely ran up to see my father on business, and to inquire of you what it was you said to miss comstock yesterday that caused her to disappear before i could return to the limberlost." "miss comstock disappear! impossible!" cried edith carr. "where could she go?" "i thought perhaps you could answer that, since it was through you that she went." "phil, i haven't the faintest idea where she is," said the girl gently. "but you know perfectly why she went! kindly tell me that." "let me see you alone, and i will." "here and now, or not at all." "phil!" "what did you say to the girl i love?" then edith carr stretched out her arms. "phil, i am the girl you love!" she cried. "all your life you have loved me. surely it cannot be all gone in a few weeks of misunderstanding. i was jealous of her! i did not want you to leave me an instant that night for any other girl living. that was the moth i was representing. every one knew it! i wanted you to bring it to me. when you did not, i knew instantly it had been for her that you worked last summer, she who suggested my dress, she who had power to take you from me, when i wanted you most. the thought drove me mad, and i said and did those insane things. phil, i beg your pardon! i ask your forgiveness. yesterday she said that you had told her of me at once. she vowed both of you had been true to me and phil, i couldn't look into her eyes and not see that it was the truth. oh, phil, if you understood how i have suffered you would forgive me. phil, i never knew how much i cared for you! i will do anything--anything!" "then tell me what you said to elnora yesterday that drove her, alone and friendless, into the night, heaven knows where!" "you have no thought for any one save her?" "yes," said philip. "i have. because i once loved you, and believed in you, my heart aches for you. i will gladly forgive anything you ask. i will do anything you want, except to resume our former relations. that is impossible. it is hopeless and useless to ask it." "you truly mean that!" "yes." "then find out from her what i said!" "come, father," said philip, rising. "you were going to show miss comstock's letter to edith!" suggested mr. ammon. "i have not the slightest interest in miss comstock's letter," said edith carr. "you are not even interested in the fact that she says you are not responsible for her going, and that i am to call on you and be friends with you?" "that is interesting, indeed!" sneered miss carr. she took the letter, read and returned it. "she has done what she could for my cause, it seems," she said coldly. "how very generous of her! do you propose calling out pinkertons and instituting a general search?" "no," replied philip. "i simply propose to go back to the limberlost and live with her mother, until elnora becomes convinced that i am not courting you, and never shall be. then, perhaps, she will come home to us. good-bye. good luck to you always!" chapter xxiv wherein edith carr wages a battle, and hart henderson stands guard many people looked, a few followed, when edith carr slowly came down the main street of mackinac, pausing here and there to note the glow of colour in one small booth after another, overflowing with gay curios. that street of packed white sand, winding with the curves of the shore, outlined with brilliant shops, and thronged with laughing, bare-headed people in outing costumes was a picturesque and fascinating sight. thousands annually made long journeys and paid exorbitant prices to take part in that pageant. as edith carr passed, she was the most distinguished figure of the old street. her clinging black gown was sufficiently elaborate for a dinner dress. on her head was a large, wide, drooping-brimmed black hat, with immense floating black plumes, while on the brim, and among the laces on her breast glowed velvety, deep red roses. some way these made up for the lack of colour in her cheeks and lips, and while her eyes seemed unnaturally bright, to a close observer they appeared weary. despite the effort she made to move lightly she was very tired, and dragged her heavy feet with an effort. she turned at the little street leading to the dock, and went to meet the big lake steamer ploughing up the straits from chicago. past the landing place, on to the very end of the pier she went, then sat down, leaned against a dock support and closed her tired eyes. when the steamer came very close she languidly watched the people lining the railing. instantly she marked one lean anxious face turned toward hers, and with a throb of pity she lifted a hand and waved to hart henderson. he was the first man to leave the boat, coming to her instantly. she spread her trailing skirts and motioned him to sit beside her. silently they looked across the softly lapping water. at last she forced herself to speak to him. "did you have a successful trip?" "i accomplished my purpose." "you didn't lose any time getting back." "i never do when i am coming to you." "do you want to go to the cottage for anything?" "no." "then let us sit here and wait until the petoskey steamer comes in. i like to watch the boats. sometimes i study the faces, if i am not too tired." "have you seen any new types to-day?" she shook her head. "this has not been an easy day, hart." "and it's going to be worse," said henderson bitterly. "there's no use putting it off. edith, i saw some one to-day." "you should have seen thousands," she said lightly. "i did. but of them all, only one will be of interest to you." "man or woman?" "man." "where?" "lake shore private hospital." "an accident?" "no. nervous and physical breakdown." "phil said he was going back to the limberlost." "he went. he was there three weeks, but the strain broke him. he has an old letter in his hands that he has handled until it is ragged. he held it up to me and said: "you can see for yourself that she says she will be well and happy, but we can't know until we see her again, and that may never be. she may have gone too near that place her father went down, some of that limberlost gang may have found her in the forest, she may lie dead in some city morgue this instant, waiting for me to find her body." "hart! for pity sake stop!" "i can't," cried henderson desperately. "i am forced to tell you. they are fighting brain fever. he did go back to the swamp and he prowled it night and day. the days down there are hot now, and the nights wet with dew and cold. he paid no attention and forgot his food. a fever started and his uncle brought him home. they've never had a word from her, or found a trace of her. mrs. comstock thought she had gone to o'mores' at great rapids, so when phil broke down she telegraphed there. they had been gone all summer, so her mother is as anxious as phil." "the o'mores are here," said edith. "i haven't seen any of them, because i haven't gone out much in the few days since we came, but this is their summer home." "edith, they say at the hospital that it will take careful nursing to save phil. he is surrounded by stacks of maps and railroad guides. he is trying to frame up a plan to set the entire detective agency of the country to work. he says he will stay there just two days longer. the doctors say he will kill himself when he goes. he is a sick man, edith. his hands are burning and shaky and his breath was hot against my face." "why are you telling me?" it was a cry of acute anguish. "he thinks you know where she is." "i do not! i haven't an idea! i never dreamed she would go away when she had him in her hand! i should not have done it!" "he said it was something you said to her that made her go." "that may be, but it doesn't prove that i know where she went." henderson looked across the water and suffered keenly. at last he turned to edith and laid a firm, strong hand over hers. "edith," he said, "do you realize how serious this is?" "i suppose i do." "do you want as fine a fellow as philip driven any further? if he leaves that hospital now, and goes out to the exposure and anxiety of a search for her, there will be a tragedy that no after regrets can avert. edith, what did you say to miss comstock that made her run away from phil?" the girl turned her face from him and sat still, but the man gripping her hands and waiting in agony could see that she was shaken by the jolting of the heart in her breast. "edith, what did you say?" "what difference can it make?" "it might furnish some clue to her action." "it could not possibly." "phil thinks so. he has thought so until his brain is worn enough to give way. tell me, edith!" "i told her phil was mine! that if he were away from her an hour and back in my presence, he would be to me as he always has been." "edith, did you believe that?" "i would have staked my life, my soul on it!" "do you believe it now?" there was no answer. henderson took her other hand and holding both of them firmly he said softly: "don't mind me, dear. i don't count! i'm just old hart! you can tell me anything. do you still believe that?" the beautiful head barely moved in negation. henderson gathered both her hands in one of his and stretched an arm across her shoulders to the post to support her. she dragged her hands from him and twisted them together. "oh, hart!" she cried. "it isn't fair! there is a limit! i have suffered my share. can't you see? can't you understand?" "yes," he panted. "yes, my girl! tell me just this one thing yet, and i'll cheerfully kill any one who annoys you further. tell me, edith!" then she lifted her big, dull, pain-filled eyes to his and cried: "no! i do not believe it now! i know it is not true! i killed his love for me. it is dead and gone forever. nothing will revive it! nothing in all this world. and that is not all. i did not know how to touch the depths of his nature. i never developed in him those things he was made to enjoy. he admired me. he was proud to be with me. he thought, and i thought, that he worshipped me; but i know now that he never did care for me as he cares for her. never! i can see it! i planned to lead society, to make his home a place sought for my beauty and popularity. she plans to advance his political ambitions, to make him comfortable physically, to stimulate his intellect, to bear him a brood of red-faced children. he likes her and her plans as he never did me and mine. oh, my soul! now, are you satisfied?" she dropped back against his arm exhausted. henderson held her and learned what suffering truly means. he fanned her with his hat, rubbed her cold hands and murmured broken, incoherent things. by and by slow tears slipped from under her closed lids, but when she opened them her eyes were dull and hard. "what a rag one is when the last secret of the soul is torn out and laid bare!" she cried. henderson thrust his handkerchief into her fingers and whispered, "edith, the boat has been creeping up. it's very close. maybe some of our crowd are on it. hadn't we better slip away from here before it lands?" "if i can walk," she said. "oh, i am so dead tired, hart! "yes, dear," said henderson soothingly. "just try to pass the landing before the boat anchors. if i only dared carry you!" they struggled through the waiting masses, but directly opposite the landing there was a backward movement in the happy, laughing crowd, the gang-plank came down with a slam, and people began hurrying from the boat. crowded against the fish house on the dock, henderson could only advance a few steps at a time. he was straining every nerve to protect and assist edith. he saw no one he recognized near them, so he slipped his arm across her back to help support her. he felt her stiffen against him and catch her breath. at the same instant, the clearest, sweetest male voice he ever had heard called: "be careful there, little men!" henderson sent a swift glance toward the boat. terence o'more had stepped from the gang-plank, leading a little daughter, so like him, it was comical. there followed a picture not easy to describe. the angel in the full flower of her beauty, richly dressed, a laugh on her cameo face, the setting sun glinting on her gold hair, escorted by her eldest son, who held her hand tightly and carefully watched her steps. next came elnora, dressed with equal richness, a trifle taller and slenderer, almost the same type of colouring, but with different eyes and hair, facial lines and expression. she was led by the second o'more boy who convulsed the crowd by saying: "tareful, elnora! don't 'oo be 'teppin' in de water!" people surged around them, purposely closing them in. "what lovely women! who are they? it's the o'mores. the lightest one is his wife. is that her sister? no, it is his! they say he has a title in england." whispers ran fast and audible. as the crowd pressed around the party an opening was left beside the fish sheds. edith ran down the dock. henderson sprang after her, catching her arm and assisting her to the street. "up the shore! this way!" she panted. "every one will go to dinner the first thing they do." they left the street and started around the beach, but edith was breathless from running, while the yielding sand made difficult walking. "help me!" she cried, clinging to henderson. he put his arm around her, almost carrying her from sight into a little cove walled by high rocks at the back, while there was a clean floor of white sand, and logs washed from the lake for seats. he found one of these with a back rest, and hurrying down to the water he soaked his handkerchief and carried it to her. she passed it across her lips, over her eyes, and then pressed the palms of her hands upon it. henderson removed the heavy hat, fanned her with his, and wet the handkerchief again. "hart, what makes you?" she said wearily. "my mother doesn't care. she says this is good for me. do you think this is good for me, hart?" "edith, you know i would give my life if i could save you this," he said, and could not speak further. she leaned against him, closed her eyes and lay silent so long the man fell into panic. "edith, you are not unconscious?" he whispered, touching her. "no. just resting. please don't leave me." he held her carefully, gently fanning her. she was suffering almost more than either of them could endure. "i wish you had your boat," she said at last. "i want to sail with the wind in my face." "there is no wind. i can bring my motor around in a few minutes." "then get it." "lie on the sand. i can 'phone from the first booth. it won't take but a little while." edith lay on the white sand, and henderson covered her face with her hat. then he ran to the nearest booth and talked imperatively. presently he was back bringing a hot drink that was stimulating. shortly the motor ran close to the beach and stopped. henderson's servant brought a row-boat ashore and took them to the launch. it was filled with cushions and wraps. henderson made a couch and soon, warmly covered, edith sped out over the water in search of peace. hour after hour the boat ran up and down the shore. the moon arose and the night air grew very chilly. henderson put on an overcoat and piled more covers on edith. "you must take me home," she said at last. "the folks will be uneasy." he was compelled to take her to the cottage with the battle still raging. he went back early the next morning, but already she had wandered out over the island. instinctively henderson felt that the shore would attract her. there was something in the tumult of rough little huron's waves that called to him. it was there he found her, crouching so close the water the foam was dampening her skirts. "may i stay?" he asked. "i have been hoping you would come," she answered. "it's bad enough when you are here, but it is a little easier than bearing it alone." "thank god for that!" said henderson sitting beside her. "shall i talk to you?" she shook her head. so they sat by the hour. at last she spoke: "of course, you know there is something i have got to do, hart!" "you have not!" cried henderson, violently. "that's all nonsense! give me just one word of permission. that is all that is required of you." "`required?' you grant, then, that there is something `required?'" "one word. nothing more." "did you ever know one word could be so big, so black, so desperately bitter? oh, hart!" "no." "but you know it now, hart!" "yes." "and still you say that it is `required?'" henderson suffered unspeakably. at last he said: "if you had seen and heard him, edith, you, too, would feel that it is `required.' remember----" "no! no! no!" she cried. "don't ask me to remember even the least of my pride and folly. let me forget!" she sat silent for a long time. "will you go with me?" she whispered. "of course." at last she arose. "i might as well give up and have it over," she faltered. that was the first time in her life that edith carr ever had proposed to give up anything she wanted. "help me, hart!" henderson started around the beach assisting her all he could. finally he stopped. "edith, there is no sense in this! you are too tired to go. you know you can trust me. you wait in any of these lovely places and send me. you will be safe, and i'll run. one word is all that is necessary." "but i've got to say that word myself, hart!" "then write it, and let me carry it. the message is not going to prove who went to the office and sent it." "that is quite true," she said, dropping wearily, but she made no movement to take the pen and paper he offered. "hart, you write it," she said at last. henderson turned away his face. he gripped the pen, while his breath sucked between his dry teeth. "certainly!" he said when he could speak. "mackinac, august 27, 1908. philip ammon, lake shore hospital, chicago." he paused with suspended pen and glanced at edith. her white lips were working, but no sound came. "miss comstock is with the terence o'mores, on mackinac island," prompted henderson. edith nodded. "signed, henderson," continued the big man. edith shook her head. "say, `she is well and happy,' and sign, edith carr!" she panted. "not on your life!" flashed henderson. "for the love of mercy, hart, don't make this any harder! it is the least i can do, and it takes every ounce of strength in me to do it." "will you wait for me here?" he asked. she nodded, and, pulling his hat lower over his eyes, henderson ran around the shore. in less than an hour he was back. he helped her a little farther to where the devil's kitchen lay cut into the rocks; it furnished places to rest, and cool water. before long his man came with the boat. from it they spread blankets on the sand for her, and made chafing-dish tea. she tried to refuse it, but the fragrance overcame her for she drank ravenously. then henderson cooked several dishes and spread an appetizing lunch. she was young, strong, and almost famished for food. she was forced to eat. that made her feel much better. then henderson helped her into the boat and ran it through shady coves of the shore, where there were refreshing breezes. when she fell asleep the girl did not know, but the man did. sadly in need of rest himself, he ran that boat for five hours through quiet bays, away from noisy parties, and where the shade was cool and deep. when she awoke he took her home, and as they went she knew that she had been mistaken. she would not die. her heart was not even broken. she had suffered horribly; she would suffer more; but eventually the pain must wear out. into her head crept a few lines of an old opera: "hearts do not break, they sting and ache, for old love's sake, but do not die, as witnesseth the living i." that evening they were sailing down the straits before a stiff breeze and henderson was busy with the tiller when she said to him: "hart, i want you to do something more for me." "you have only to tell me," he said. "have i only to tell you, hart?" she asked softly. "haven't you learned that yet, edith?" "i want you to go away." "very well," he said quietly, but his face whitened visibly. "you say that as if you had been expecting it." "i have. i knew from the beginning that when this was over you would dislike me for having seen you suffer. i have grown my gethsemane in a full realization of what was coming, but i could not leave you, edith, so long as it seemed to me that i was serving you. does it make any difference to you where i go?" "i want you where you will be loved, and good care taken of you." "thank you!" said henderson, smiling grimly. "have you any idea where such a spot might be found?" "it should be with your sister at los angeles. she always has seemed very fond of you." "that is quite true," said henderson, his eyes brightening a little. "i will go to her. when shall i start?" "at once." henderson began to tack for the landing, but his hands shook until he scarcely could manage the boat. edith carr sat watching him indifferently, but her heart was throbbing painfully. "why is there so much suffering in the world?" she kept whispering to herself. inside her door henderson took her by the shoulders almost roughly. "for how long is this, edith, and how are you going to say good-bye to me?" she raised tired, pain-filled eyes to his. "i don't know for how long it is," she said. "it seems now as if it had been a slow eternity. i wish to my soul that god would be merciful to me and make something `snap' in my heart, as there did in phil's, that would give me rest. i don't know for how long, but i'm perfectly shameless with you, hart. if peace ever comes and i want you, i won't wait for you to find it out yourself, i'll cable, marconigraph, anything. as for how i say good-bye; any way you please, i don't care in the least what happens to me." henderson studied her intently. "in that case, we will shake hands," he said. "good-bye, edith. don't forget that every hour i am thinking of you and hoping all good things will come to you soon." chapter xxv wherein philip finds elnora, and edith carr offers a yellow emperor oh, i need my own violin," cried elnora. "this one may be a thousand times more expensive, and much older than mine; but it wasn't inspired and taught to sing by a man who knew how. it doesn't know `beans,' as mother would say, about the limberlost." the guests in the o'more music-room laughed appreciatively. "why don't you write your mother to come for a visit and bring yours?" suggested freckles. "i did that three days ago," acknowledged elnora. "i am half expecting her on the noon boat. that is one reason why this violin grows worse every minute. there is nothing at all the matter with me." "splendid!" cried the angel. "i've begged and begged her to do it. i know how anxious these mothers become. when did you send? what made you? why didn't you tell me?" "`when?' three days ago. `what made me?' you. `why didn't i tell you?' because i can't be sure in the least that she will come. mother is the most individual person. she never does what every one expects she will. she may not come, and i didn't want you to be disappointed." "how did i make you?" asked the angel. "loving alice. it made me realize that if you cared for your girl like that, with mr. o'more and three other children, possibly my mother, with no one, might like to see me. i know i want to see her, and you had told me to so often, i just sent for her. oh, i do hope she comes! i want her to see this lovely place." "i have been wondering what you thought of mackinac," said freckles. "oh, it is a perfect picture, all of it! i should like to hang it on the wall, so i could see it whenever i wanted to; but it isn't real, of course; it's nothing but a picture." "these people won't agree with you," smiled freckles. "that isn't necessary," retorted elnora. "they know this, and they love it; but you and i are acquainted with something different. the limberlost is life. here it is a carefully kept park. you motor, sail, and golf, all so secure and fine. but what i like is the excitement of choosing a path carefully, in the fear that the quagmire may reach out and suck me down; to go into the swamp naked-handed and wrest from it treasures that bring me books and clothing, and i like enough of a fight for things that i always remember how i got them. i even enjoy seeing a canny old vulture eyeing me as if it were saying: `ware the sting of the rattler, lest i pick your bones as i did old limber's.' i like sufficient danger to put an edge on life. this is so tame. i should have loved it when all the homes were cabins, and watchers for the stealthy indian canoes patrolled the shores. you wait until mother comes, and if my violin isn't angry with me for leaving it, to-night we shall sing you the song of the limberlost. you shall hear the big gold bees over the red, yellow, and purple flowers, bird song, wind talk, and the whispers of sleepy snake creek, as it goes past you. you will know!" elnora turned to freckles. he nodded. "who better?" he asked. "this is secure while the children are so small, but when they grow larger, we are going farther north, into real forest, where they can learn self-reliance and develop backbone." elnora laid away the violin. "come along, children," she said. "we must get at that backbone business at once. let's race to the playhouse." with the brood at her heels elnora ran, and for an hour lively sounds stole from the remaining spot of forest on the island, which lay beside the o'more cottage. then terry went to the playroom to bring alice her doll. he came racing back, dragging it by one leg, and crying: "there's company! someone has come that mamma and papa are just tearing down the house over. i saw through the window." "it could not be my mother, yet," mused elnora. "her boat is not due until twelve. terry, give alice that doll----" "it's a man-person, and i don't know him, but my father is shaking his hand right straight along, and my mother is running for a hot drink and a cushion. it's a kind of a sick person, but they are going to make him well right away, any one can see that. this is the best place. i'll go tell him to come lie on the pine needles in the sun and watch the sails go by. that will fix him!" "watch sails go by," chanted little brother. "'a fix him! elnora fix him, won't you?" "i don't know about that," answered elnora. "what sort of person is he, terry?" "a beautiful white person; but my father is going to `colour him up,' i heard him say so. he's just out of the hospital, and he is a bad person, 'cause he ran away from the doctors and made them awful angry. but father and mother are going to doctor him better. i didn't know they could make sick people well." "'ey do anyfing!" boasted little brother. before elnora missed her, alice, who had gone to investigate, came flying across the shadows and through the sunshine waving a paper. she thurst it into elnora's hand. "there is a man-person--a stranger-person!" she shouted. "but he knows you! he sent you that! you are to be the doctor! he said so! oh, do hurry! i like him heaps!" elnora read edith carr's telegram to philip ammon and understood that he had been ill, that she had been located by edith who had notified him. in so doing she had acknowledged defeat. at last philip was free. elnora looked up with a radiant face. "i like him `heaps' myself!" she cried. "come on children, we will go tell him so." terry and alice ran, but elnora had to suit her steps to little brother, who was her loyal esquire, and would have been heartbroken over desertion and insulted at being carried. he was rather dragged, but he was arriving, and the emergency was great, he could see that. "she's coming!" shouted alice. "she's going to be the doctor!" cried terry. "she looked just like she'd seen angels when she read the letter," explained alice. "she likes you `heaps!' she said so!" danced terry. "be waiting! here she is!" elnora helped little brother up the steps, then deserted him and came at a rush. the stranger-person stood holding out trembling arms. "are you sure, at last, runaway?" asked philip ammon. "perfectly sure!" cried elnora. "will you marry me now?" "this instant! that is, any time after the noon boat comes in." "why such unnecessary delay?" demanded ammon. "it is almost september," explained elnora. "i sent for mother three days ago. we must wait until she comes, and we either have to send for uncle wesley and aunt margaret, or go to them. i couldn't possibly be married properly without those dear people." "we will send," decided ammon. "the trip will be a treat for them. o'more, would you get off a message at once?" every one met the noon boat. they went in the motor because philip was too weak to walk so far. as soon as people could be distinguished at all elnora and philip sighted an erect figure, with a head like a snowdrift. when the gang-plank fell the first person across it was a lean, red-haired boy of eleven, carrying a violin in one hand and an enormous bouquet of yellow marigolds and purple asters in the other. he was beaming with broad smiles until he saw philip. then his expression changed. "aw, say!" he exclaimed reproachfully. "i bet you aunt margaret is right. he is going to be your beau!" elnora stooped to kiss billy as she caught her mother. "there, there!" cried mrs. comstock. "don't knock my headgear into my eye. i'm not sure i've got either hat or hair. the wind blew like bizzem coming up the river." she shook out her skirts, straightened her hat, and came forward to meet philip, who took her into his arms and kissed her repeatedly. then he passed her along to freckles and the angel to whom her greetings were mingled with scolding and laughter over her wind-blown hair. "no doubt i'm a precious spectacle!" she said to the angel. "i saw your pa a little before i started, and he sent you a note. it's in my satchel. he said he was coming up next week. what a lot of people there are in this world! and what on earth are all of them laughing about? did none of them ever hear of sickness, or sorrow, or death? billy, don't you go to playing indian or chasing woodchucks until you get out of those clothes. i promised margaret i'd bring back that suit good as new." then the o'more children came crowding to meet elnora's mother. "merry christmas!" cried mrs. comstock, gathering them in. "got everything right here but the tree, and there seems to be plenty of them a little higher up. if this wind would stiffen just enough more to blow away the people, so one could see this place, i believe it would be right decent looking." "see here," whispered elnora to philip. "you must fix this with billy. i can't have his trip spoiled." "now, here is where i dust the rest of 'em!" complacently remarked mrs. comstock, as she climbed into the motor car for her first ride, in company with philip and little brother. "i have been the one to trudge the roads and hop out of the way of these things for quite a spell." she sat very erect as the car rolled into the broad main avenue, where only stray couples were walking. her eyes began to twinkle and gleam. suddenly she leaned forward and touched the driver on the shoulder. "young man," she said, "just you toot that horn suddenly and shave close enough a few of those people, so that i can see how i look when i leap for ragweed and snake fences." the amazed chauffeur glanced questioningly at philip who slightly nodded. a second later there was a quick "honk!" and a swerve at a corner. a man engrossed in conversation grabbed the woman to whom he was talking and dashed for the safety of a lawn. the woman tripped in her skirts, and as she fell the man caught and dragged her. both of them turned red faces to the car and berated the driver. mrs. comstock laughed in unrestrained enjoyment. then she touched the chauffeur again. "that's enough," she said. "it seems a mite risky." a minute later she added to philip, "if only they had been carrying six pounds of butter and ten dozen eggs apiece, wouldn't that have been just perfect?" billy had wavered between elnora and the motor, but his loyal little soul had been true to her, so the walk to the cottage began with him at her side. long before they arrived the little o'mores had crowded around and captured billy, and he was giving them an expurgated version of mrs. comstock's tales of big foot and adam poe, boasting that uncle wesley had been in the camps of me-shin-go-me-sia and knew wa-ca-co-nah before he got religion and dressed like white men; while the mighty prowess of snap as a woodchuck hunter was done full justice. when they reached the cottage philip took billy aside, showed him the emerald ring and gravely asked his permission to marry elnora. billy struggled to be just, but it was going hard with him, when alice, who kept close enough to hear, intervened. "why don't you let them get married?" she asked. "you are much too small for her. you wait for me!" billy studied her intently. at last he turned to ammon. "aw, well! go on, then!" he said gruffly. "i'll marry alice!" alice reached her hand. "if you got that settled let's put on our indian clothes, call the boys, and go to the playhouse." "i haven't got any indian clothes," said billy ruefully. "yes, you have," explained alice. "father bought you some coming from the dock. you can put them on in the playhouse. the boys do." billy examined the playhouse with gleaming eyes. never had he encountered such possibilities. he could see a hundred amusing things to try, and he could not decide which to do first. the most immediate attraction seemed to be a dead pine, held perpendicularly by its fellows, while its bark had decayed and fallen, leaving a bare, smooth trunk. "if we just had some grease that would make the dandiest pole to play fourth of july with!" he shouted. the children remembered the fourth. it had been great fun. "butter is grease. there is plenty in the 'frigerator," suggested alice, speeding away. billy caught the cold roll and began to rub it against the tree excitedly. "how are you going to get it greased to the top?" inquired terry. billy's face lengthened. "that's so!" he said. "the thing is to begin at the top and grease down. i'll show you!" billy put the butter in his handkerchief and took the corners between his teeth. he climbed the pole, greasing it as he slid down. "now, i got to try first," he said, "because i'm the biggest and so i have the best chance; only the one that goes first hasn't hardly any chance at all, because he has to wipe off the grease on himself, so the others can get up at last. see?" "all right!" said terry. "you go first and then i will and then alice. phew! it's slick. he'll never get up." billy wrestled manfully, and when he was exhausted he boosted terry, and then both of them helped alice, to whom they awarded a prize of her own doll. as they rested billy remembered. "do your folks keep cows?" he asked. "no, we buy milk," said terry. "gee! then what about the butter? maybe your ma needs it for dinner!" "no, she doesn't!" cried alice. "there's stacks of it! i can have all the butter i want." "well, i'm mighty glad of it!" said billy. "i didn't just think. i'm afraid we've greased our clothes, too." "that's no difference," said terry. "we can play what we please in these things." "well, we ought to be all dirty, and bloody, and have feathers on us to be real indians," said billy. alice tried a handful of dirt on her sleeve and it streaked beautifully. instantly all of them began smearing themselves. "if we only had feathers," lamented billy. terry disappeared and shortly returned from the garage with a feather duster. billy fell on it with a shriek. around each one's head he firmly tied a twisted handkerchief, and stuck inside it a row of stiffly upstanding feathers. "now, if we just only had some pokeberries to paint us red, we'd be real, for sure enough indians, and we could go on the warpath and fight all the other tribes and burn a lot of them at the stake." alice sidled up to him. "would huckleberries do?" she asked softly. "yes!" shouted terry, wild with excitement. "anything that's a colour." alice made another trip to the refrigerator. billy crushed the berries in his hands and smeared and streaked all their faces liberally. "now are we ready?" asked alice. billy collapsed. "i forgot the ponies! you got to ride ponies to go on the warpath!" "you ain't neither!" contradicted terry. "it's the very latest style to go on the warpath in a motor. everybody does! they go everywhere in them. they are much faster and better than any old ponies." billy gave one genuine whoop. "can we take your motor?" terry hesitated. "i suppose you are too little to run it?" said billy. "i am not!" flashed terry. "i know how to start and stop it, and i drive lots for stephens. it is hard to turn over the engine when you start." "i'll turn it," volunteered billy. "i'm strong as anything." "maybe it will start without. if stephens has just been running it, sometimes it will. come on, let's try." billy straightened up, lifted his chin and cried: "houpe! houpe! houpe!" the little o'mores stared in amazement. "why don't you come on and whoop?" demanded billy. "don't you know how? you are great indians! you got to whoop before you go on the warpath. you ought to kill a bat, too, and see if the wind is right. but maybe the engine won't run if we wait to do that. you can whoop, anyway. all together now!" they did whoop, and after several efforts the cry satisfied billy, so he led the way to the big motor, and took the front seat with terry. alice and little brother climbed into the back. "will it go?" asked billy, "or do we have to turn it?" "it will go," said terry as the machine gently slid out into the avenue and started under his guidance. "this is no warpath!" scoffed billy. "we got to go a lot faster than this, and we got to whoop. alice, why don't you whoop? alice arose, took hold of the seat in front and whooped. "if i open the throttle, i can't squeeze the bulb to scare people out of our way," said terry. "i can't steer and squeeze, too." "we'll whoop enough to get them out of the way. go faster!" urged billy. billy also stood, lifted his chin and whooped like the wildest little savage that ever came out of the west. alice and little brother added their voices, and when he was not absorbed with the steering gear, terry joined in. "faster!" shouted billy. intoxicated with the speed and excitement, terry threw the throttle wider and the big car leaped forward and sped down the avenue. in it four black, featherbedecked children whooped in wild glee until suddenly terry's war cry changed to a scream of panic. "the lake is coming!" "stop!" cried billy. "stop! why don't you stop?" paralyzed with fear terry clung to the steering gear and the car sped onward. "you little fool! why don't you stop?" screamed billy, catching terry's arm. "tell me how to stop!" a bicycle shot beside them and freckles standing on the pedals shouted: "pull out the pin in that little circle at your feet!" billy fell on his knees and tugged and the pin yielded at last. just as the wheels struck the white sand the bicycle sheered close, freckles caught the lever and with one strong shove set the brake. the water flew as the car struck huron, but luckily it was shallow and the beach smooth. hub deep the big motor stood quivering as freckles climbed in and backed it to dry sand. then he drew a deep breath and stared at his brood. "terence, would you kindly be explaining?" he said at last. billy looked at the panting little figure of terry. "i guess i better," he said. "we were playing indians on the warpath, and we hadn't any ponies, and terry said it was all the style to go in automobiles now, so we----" freckles's head went back, and be did some whooping himself. "i wonder if you realize how nearly you came to being four drowned children?" he said gravely, after a time. "oh, i think i could swim enough to get most of us out," said billy. "anyway, we need washing." "you do indeed," said freckles. "i will head this procession to the garage, and there we will remove the first coat." for the remainder of billy's visit the nurse, chauffeur, and every servant of the o'more household had something of importance on their minds, and billy's every step was shadowed. "i have billy's consent," said philip to elnora, "and all the other consent you have stipulated. before you think of something more, give me your left hand, please." elnora gave it gladly, and the emerald slipped on her finger. then they went together into the forest to tell each other all about it, and talk it over. "have you seen edith?" asked philip. "no," answered elnora. "but she must be here, or she may have seen me when we went to petoskey a few days ago. her people have a cottage over on the bluff, but the angel never told me until to-day. i didn't want to make that trip, but the folks were so anxious to entertain me, and it was only a few days until i intended to let you know myself where i was." "and i was going to wait just that long, and if i didn't hear then i was getting ready to turn over the country. i can scarcely realize yet that edith sent me that telegram." "no wonder! it's a difficult thing to believe. i can't express how i feel for her." "let us never speak of it again," said philip. "i came nearer feeling sorry for her last night than i have yet. i couldn't sleep on that boat coming over, and i couldn't put away the thought of what sending that message cost her. i never would have believed it possible that she would do it. but it is done. we will forget it." "i scarcely think i shall," said elnora. "it is something i like to remember. how suffering must have changed her! i would give anything to bring her peace." "henderson came to see me at the hospital a few days ago. he's gone a rather wild pace, but if he had been held from youth by the love of a good woman he might have lived differently. there are things about him one cannot help admiring." "i think he loves her," said elnora softly. "he does! he always has! he never made any secret of it. he will cut in now and do his level best, but he told me that he thought she would send him away. he understands her thoroughly." edith carr did not understand herself. she went to her room after her good-bye to henderson, lay on her bed and tried to think why she was suffering as she was. "it is all my selfishness, my unrestrained temper, my pride in my looks, my ambition to be first," she said. "that is what has caused this trouble." then she went deeper. "how does it happen that i am so selfish, that i never controlled my temper, that i thought beauty and social position the vital things of life?" she muttered. "i think that goes a little past me. i think a mother who allows a child to grow up as i did, who educates it only for the frivolities of life, has a share in that child's ending. i think my mother has some responsibility in this," edith carr whispered to the night. "but she will recognize none. she would laugh at me if i tried to tell her what i have suffered and the bitter, bitter lesson i have learned. no one really cares, but hart. i've sent him away, so there is no one! no one!" edith pressed her fingers across her burning eyes and lay still. "he is gone!" she whispered at last. "he would go at once. he would not see me again. i should think he never would want to see me any more. but i will want to see him! my soul! i want him now! i want him every minute! he is all i have. and i've sent him away. oh, these dreadful days to come, alone! i can't bear it. hart! hart!" she cried aloud. "i want you! no one cares but you. no one understands but you. oh, i want you!" she sprang from her bed and felt her way to her desk. "get me some one at the henderson cottage," she said to central, and waited shivering. "they don't answer." "they are there! you must get them. turn on the buzzer." after a time the sleepy voice of mrs. henderson answered. "has hart gone?" panted edith carr. "no! he came in late and began to talk about starting to california. he hasn't slept in weeks to amount to anything. i put him to bed. there is time enough to start to california when he awakens. edith, what are you planning to do next with that boy of mine?" "will you tell him i want to see him before he goes?" "yes, but i won't wake him." "i don't want you to. just tell him in the morning." "very well." "you will be sure?" "sure!" hart was not gone. edith fell asleep. she arose at noon the next day, took a cold bath, ate her breakfast, dressed carefully, and leaving word that she had gone to the forest, she walked slowly across the leaves. it was cool and quiet there, so she sat where she could see him coming, and waited. she was thinking deep and fast. henderson came swiftly down the path. a long sleep, food, and edith's message had done him good. he had dressed in new light flannels that were becoming. edith arose and went to meet him. "let us walk in the forest," she said. they passed the old catholic graveyard, and entered the deepest wood of the island, where all shadows were green, all voices of humanity ceased, and there was no sound save the whispering of the trees, a few bird notes and squirrel rustle. there edith seated herself on a mossy old log, and henderson studied her. he could detect a change. she was still pale and her eyes tired, but the dull, strained look was gone. he wanted to hope, but he did not dare. any other man would have forced her to speak. the mighty tenderness in henderson's heart shielded her in every way. "what have you thought of that you wanted yet, edith?" he asked lightly as he stretched himself at her feet. "you!" henderson lay tense and very still. "well, i am here!" "thank heaven for that!" henderson sat up suddenly, leaning toward her with questioning eyes. not knowing what he dared say, afraid of the hope which found birth in his heart, he tried to shield her and at the same time to feel his way. "i am more thankful than i can express that you feel so," he said. "i would be of use, of comfort, to you if i knew how, edith." "you are my only comfort," she said. "i tried to send you away. i thought i didn't want you. i thought i couldn't bear the sight of you, because of what you have seen me suffer. but i went to the root of this thing last night, hart, and with self in mind, as usual, i found that i could not live without you." henderson began breathing lightly. he was afraid to speak or move. "i faced the fact that all this is my own fault," continued edith, "and came through my own selfishness. then i went farther back and realized that i am as i was reared. i don't want to blame my parents, but i was carefully trained into what i am. if elnora comstock had been like me, phil would have come back to me. i can see how selfish i seem to him, and how i appear to you, if you would admit it." "edith," said henderson desperately, "there is no use to try to deceive you. you have known from the first that i found you wrong in this. but it's the first time in your life i ever thought you wrong about anything--and it's the only time i ever shall. understand, i think you the bravest, most beautiful woman on earth, the one most worth loving." "i'm not to be considered in the same class with her." "i don't grant that, but if i did, you, must remember how i compare with phil. he's my superior at every point. there's no use in discussing that. you wanted to see me, edith. what did you want?" "i wanted you to not go away." "not at all?" "not at all! not ever! not unless you take me with you, hart." she slightly extended one hand to him. henderson took that hand, kissing it again and again. "anything you want, edith," he said brokenly. "just as you wish it. do you want me to stay here, and go on as we have been?" "yes, only with a difference." "can you tell me, edith?" "first, i want you to know that you are the dearest thing on earth to me, right now. i would give up everything else, before i would you. i can't honestly say that i love you with the love you deserve. my heart is too sore. it's too soon to know. but i love you some way. you are necessary to me. you are my comfort, my shield. if you want me, as you know me to be, hart, you may consider me yours. i give you my word of honour i will try to be as you would have me, just as soon as i can." henderson kissed her hand passionately. "don't, edith," he begged. "don't say those things. i can't bear it. i understand. everything will come right in time. love like mine must bring a reward. you will love me some day. i can wait. i am the most patient fellow." "but i must say it," cried edith. "i--i think, hart, that i have been on the wrong road to find happiness. i planned to finish life as i started it with phil; and you see how glad he was to change. he wanted the other sort of girl far more than he ever wanted me. and you, hart, honest, now--i'll know if you don't tell me the truth! would you rather have a wife as i planned to live life with phil, or would you rather have her as elnora comstock intends to live with him?" "edith!" cried the man, "edith!" "of course, you can't say it in plain english," said the girl. "you are far too chivalrous for that. you needn't say anything. i am answered. if you could have your choice you wouldn't have a society wife, either. in your heart you'd like the smaller home of comfort, the furtherance of your ambitions, the palatable meals regularly served, and little children around you. i am sick of all we have grown up to, hart. when your hour of trouble comes, there is no comfort for you. i am tired to death. you find out what you want to do, and be, that is a man's work in the world, and i will plan our home, with no thought save your comfort. i'll be the other kind of a girl, as fast as i can learn. i can't correct all my faults in one day, but i'll change as rapidly as i can." "god knows, i will be different, too, edith. you shall not be the only generous one. i will make all the rest of life worthy of you. i will change, too!" "don't you dare!" said edith carr, taking his head between her hands and holding it against her knees, while the tears slid down her cheeks. "don't you dare change, you big-hearted, splendid lover! i am little and selfish. you are the very finest, just as you are!" henderson was not talking then, so they sat through a long silence. at last he heard edith draw a quick breath, and lifting his head he looked where she pointed. up a fern stalk climbed a curious looking object. they watched breathlessly. by lavender feet clung a big, pursy, lavender-splotched, yellow body. yellow and lavender wings began to expand and take on colour. every instant great beauty became more apparent. it was one of those double-brooded freaks, which do occur on rare occasions, or merely an eacles imperialis moth that in the cool damp northern forest had failed to emerge in june. edith carr drew back with a long, shivering breath. henderson caught her hands and gripped them firmly. steadily she looked the thought of her heart into his eyes. "by all the powers, you shall not!" swore the man. "you have done enough. i will smash that thing!" "oh no you won't!" cried the girl, clinging to his hands. "i am not big enough yet, hart, but before i leave this forest i shall have grown to breadth and strength to carry that to her. she needs two of each kind. phil only sent her one!" "edith i can't bear it! that's not demanded! let me take it!" "you may go with me. i know where the o'more cottage is. i have been there often." "i'll say you sent it!" "you may watch me deliver it!" "phil may be there by now." "i hope he is! i should like him to see me do one decent thing by which to remember me." "i tell you that is not necessary!" "`not necessary!'" cried the girl, her big eyes shining. "not necessary? then what on earth is the thing doing here? i just have boasted that i would change, that i would be like her, that i would grow bigger and broader. as the words are spoken god gives me the opportunity to prove whether i am sincere. this is my test, hart! don't you see it? if i am big enough to carry that to her, you will believe that there is some good in me. you will not be loving me in vain. this is an especial providence, man! be my strength! help me, as you always have done!" henderson arose and shook the leaves from his clothing. he drew edith carr to her feet and carefully picked the mosses from her skirts. he went to the water and moistened his handkerchief to bathe her face. "now a dust of powder," he said when the tears were washed away. from a tiny book edith tore leaves that she passed over her face. "all gone!" cried henderson, critically studying her. "you look almost half as lovely as you really are!" edith carr drew a wavering breath. she stretched one hand to him. "hold tight, hart!" she said. "i know they handle these things, but i would quite as soon touch a snake." henderson clenched his teeth and held steadily. the moth had emerged too recently to be troublesome. it climbed on her fingers quietly and obligingly clung there without moving. so hand in hand they went down the dark forest path. when they came to the avenue, the first person they met paused with an ejaculation of wonder. the next stopped also, and every one following. they could make little progress on account of marvelling, interested people. a strange excitement took possession of edith. she began to feel proud of the moth. "do you know," she said to henderson," this is growing easier every step. its clinging is not disagreeable as i thought it would be. i feel as if i were saving it, protecting it. i am proud that we are taking it to be put into a collection or a book. it seems like doing a thing worth while. oh, hart, i wish we could work together at something for which people would care as they seem to for this. hear what they say! see them lift their little children to look at it!" "edith, if you don't stop," said henderson, "i will take you in my arms here on the avenue. you are adorable!" "don't you dare!" laughed edith carr. the colour rushed to her cheeks and a new light leaped in her eyes "oh, hart!" she cried. "let's work! let's do something! that's the way she makes people love her so. there's the place, and thank goodness, there is a crowd." "you darling!" whispered henderson as they passed up the walk. her face was rose-flushed with excitement and her eyes shone. "hello, every, one!" she cried as she came on the wide veranda. "only see what we found up in the forest! we thought you might like to have it for some of your collections." she held out the moth as she walked straight to elnora, who arose to meet her, crying: "how perfectly splendid! i don't even know how to begin to thank you." elnora took the moth. edith shook hands with all of them and asked philip if he were improving. she said a few polite words to freckles and the angel, declined to remain on account of an engagement, and went away, gracefully. "well bully for her!" said mrs. comstock. "she's a little thoroughbred after all!" "that was a mighty big thing for her to be doing," said freckles in a hushed voice. "if you knew her as well as i do," said philip ammon, "you would have a better conception of what that cost." "it was a terror!" cried the angel. "i never could have done it." "`never could have done it!'" echoed freckles. "why, angel, dear, that is the one thing of all the world you would have done!" "i have to take care of this," faltered elnora, hurrying toward the door to hide the tears which were rolling down her cheeks. "i must help," said philip, disappearing also. "elnora," he called, catching up with her, "take me where i may cry, too. wasn't she great?" "superb!" exclaimed elnora. "i have no words. i feel so humbled!" "so do i," said philip. "i think a brave deed like that always makes one feel so. now are you happy?" "unspeakably happy!" answered elnora. [end.] . *******the project gutenberg etext of in the south seas******** #20 in our series by robert louis stevenson copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. in the south seas by robert louis stevenson march, 1996 [etext #464] *******the project gutenberg etext of in the south seas******** *****this file should be named sseas10.txt or sseas10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, sseas11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, sseas10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* in the south seas by robert louis stevenson 1908 edition. scanned and proofed by david price ccx074@coventry.ac.uk in the south seas part 1: the marquesas chapter i an island landfall for nearly ten years my health had been declining; and for some while before i set forth upon my voyage, i believed i was come to the afterpiece of life, and had only the nurse and undertaker to expect. it was suggested that i should try the south seas; and i was not unwilling to visit like a ghost, and be carried like a bale, among scenes that had attracted me in youth and health. i chartered accordingly dr. merrit's schooner yacht, the casco, seventy-four tons register; sailed from san francisco towards the end of june 1888, visited the eastern islands, and was left early the next year at honolulu. hence, lacking courage to return to my old life of the house and sick-room, i set forth to leeward in a trading schooner, the equator, of a little over seventy tons, spent four months among the atolls (low coral islands) of the gilbert group, and reached samoa towards the close of '89. by that time gratitude and habit were beginning to attach me to the islands; i had gained a competency of strength; i had made friends; i had learned new interests; the time of my voyages had passed like days in fairyland; and i decided to remain. i began to prepare these pages at sea, on a third cruise, in the trading steamer janet nicoll. if more days are granted me, they shall be passed where i have found life most pleasant and man most interesting; the axes of my black boys are already clearing the foundations of my future house; and i must learn to address readers from the uttermost parts of the sea. that i should thus have reversed the verdict of lord tennyson's hero is less eccentric than appears. few men who come to the islands leave them; they grow grey where they alighted; the palm shades and the trade-wind fans them till they die, perhaps cherishing to the last the fancy of a visit home, which is rarely made, more rarely enjoyed, and yet more rarely repeated. no part of the world exerts the same attractive power upon the visitor, and the task before me is to communicate to fireside travellers some sense of its seduction, and to describe the life, at sea and ashore, of many hundred thousand persons, some of our own blood and language, all our contemporaries, and yet as remote in thought and habit as rob roy or barbarossa, the apostles or the caesars. the first experience can never be repeated. the first love, the first sunrise, the first south sea island, are memories apart and touched a virginity of sense. on the 28th of july 1888 the moon was an hour down by four in the morning. in the east a radiating centre of brightness told of the day; and beneath, on the skyline, the morning bank was already building, black as ink. we have all read of the swiftness of the day's coming and departure in low latitudes; it is a point on which the scientific and sentimental tourist are at one, and has inspired some tasteful poetry. the period certainly varies with the season; but here is one case exactly noted. although the dawn was thus preparing by four, the sun was not up till six; and it was half-past five before we could distinguish our expected islands from the clouds on the horizon. eight degrees south, and the day two hours a-coming. the interval was passed on deck in the silence of expectation, the customary thrill of landfall heightened by the strangeness of the shores that we were then approaching. slowly they took shape in the attenuating darkness. ua-huna, piling up to a truncated summit, appeared the first upon the starboard bow; almost abeam arose our destination, nuka-hiva, whelmed in cloud; and betwixt and to the southward, the first rays of the sun displayed the needles of uapu. these pricked about the line of the horizon; like the pinnacles of some ornate and monstrous church, they stood there, in the sparkling brightness of the morning, the fit signboard of a world of wonders. not one soul aboard the casco had set foot upon the islands, or knew, except by accident, one word of any of the island tongues; and it was with something perhaps of the same anxious pleasure as thrilled the bosom of discoverers that we drew near these problematic shores. the land heaved up in peaks and rising vales; it fell in cliffs and buttresses; its colour ran through fifty modulations in a scale of pearl and rose and olive; and it was crowned above by opalescent clouds. the suffusion of vague hues deceived the eye; the shadows of clouds were confounded with the articulations of the mountains; and the isle and its unsubstantial canopy rose and shimmered before us like a single mass. there was no beacon, no smoke of towns to be expected, no plying pilot. somewhere, in that pale phantasmagoria of cliff and cloud, our haven lay concealed; and somewhere to the east of it the only sea-mark given a certain headland, known indifferently as cape adam and eve, or cape jack and jane, and distinguished by two colossal figures, the gross statuary of nature. these we were to find; for these we craned and stared, focused glasses, and wrangled over charts; and the sun was overhead and the land close ahead before we found them. to a ship approaching, like the casco, from the north, they proved indeed the least conspicuous features of a striking coast; the surf flying high above its base; strange, austere, and feathered mountains rising behind; and jack and jane, or adam and eve, impending like a pair of warts above the breakers. thence we bore away along shore. on our port beam we might hear the explosions of the surf; a few birds flew fishing under the prow; there was no other sound or mark of life, whether of man or beast, in all that quarter of the island. winged by her own impetus and the dying breeze, the casco skimmed under cliffs, opened out a cove, showed us a beach and some green trees, and flitted by again, bowing to the swell. the trees, from our distance, might have been hazel; the beach might have been in europe; the mountain forms behind modelled in little from the alps, and the forest which clustered on their ramparts a growth no more considerable than our scottish heath. again the cliff yawned, but now with a deeper entry; and the casco, hauling her wind, began to slide into the bay of anaho. the cocoa-palm, that giraffe of vegetables, so graceful, so ungainly, to the european eye so foreign, was to be seen crowding on the beach, and climbing and fringing the steep sides of mountains. rude and bare hills embraced the inlet upon either hand; it was enclosed to the landward by a bulk of shattered mountains. in every crevice of that barrier the forest harboured, roosting and nestling there like birds about a ruin; and far above, it greened and roughened the razor edges of the summit. under the eastern shore, our schooner, now bereft of any breeze, continued to creep in: the smart creature, when once under way, appearing motive in herself. from close aboard arose the bleating of young lambs; a bird sang in the hillside; the scent of the land and of a hundred fruits or flowers flowed forth to meet us; and, presently, a house or two appeared, standing high upon the ankles of the hills, and one of these surrounded with what seemed a garden. these conspicuous habitations, that patch of culture, had we but known it, were a mark of the passage of whites; and we might have approached a hundred islands and not found their parallel. it was longer ere we spied the native village, standing (in the universal fashion) close upon a curve of beach, close under a grove of palms; the sea in front growling and whitening on a concave arc of reef. for the cocoa-tree and the island man are both lovers and neighbours of the surf. 'the coral waxes, the palm grows, but man departs,' says the sad tahitian proverb; but they are all three, so long as they endure, co-haunters of the beach. the mark of anchorage was a blow-hole in the rocks, near the south-easterly corner of the bay. punctually to our use, the blow-hole spouted; the schooner turned upon her heel; the anchor plunged. it was a small sound, a great event; my soul went down with these moorings whence no windlass may extract nor any diver fish it up; and i, and some part of my ship's company, were from that hour the bondslaves of the isles of vivien. before yet the anchor plunged a canoe was already paddling from the hamlet. it contained two men: one white, one brown and tattooed across the face with bands of blue, both in immaculate white european clothes: the resident trader, mr. regler, and the native chief, taipi-kikino. 'captain, is it permitted to come on board?' were the first words we heard among the islands. canoe followed canoe till the ship swarmed with stalwart, six-foot men in every stage of undress; some in a shirt, some in a loin-cloth, one in a handkerchief imperfectly adjusted; some, and these the more considerable, tattooed from head to foot in awful patterns; some barbarous and knived; one, who sticks in my memory as something bestial, squatting on his hams in a canoe, sucking an orange and spitting it out again to alternate sides with ape-like vivacity all talking, and we could not understand one word; all trying to trade with us who had no thought of trading, or offering us island curios at prices palpably absurd. there was no word of welcome; no show of civility; no hand extended save that of the chief and mr. regler. as we still continued to refuse the proffered articles, complaint ran high and rude; and one, the jester of the party, railed upon our meanness amid jeering laughter. amongst other angry pleasantries 'here is a mighty fine ship,' said he, 'to have no money on board!' i own i was inspired with sensible repugnance; even with alarm. the ship was manifestly in their power; we had women on board; i knew nothing of my guests beyond the fact that they were cannibals; the directory (my only guide) was full of timid cautions; and as for the trader, whose presence might else have reassured me, were not whites in the pacific the usual instigators and accomplices of native outrage? when he reads this confession, our kind friend, mr. regler, can afford to smile. later in the day, as i sat writing up my journal, the cabin was filled from end to end with marquesans: three brown-skinned generations, squatted cross-legged upon the floor, and regarding me in silence with embarrassing eyes. the eyes of all polynesians are large, luminous, and melting; they are like the eyes of animals and some italians. a kind of despair came over me, to sit there helpless under all these staring orbs, and be thus blocked in a corner of my cabin by this speechless crowd: and a kind of rage to think they were beyond the reach of articulate communication, like furred animals, or folk born deaf, or the dwellers of some alien planet. to cross the channel is, for a boy of twelve, to change heavens; to cross the atlantic, for a man of twenty-four, is hardly to modify his diet. but i was now escaped out of the shadow of the roman empire, under whose toppling monuments we were all cradled, whose laws and letters are on every hand of us, constraining and preventing. i was now to see what men might be whose fathers had never studied virgil, had never been conquered by caesar, and never been ruled by the wisdom of gaius or papinian. by the same step i had journeyed forth out of that comfortable zone of kindred languages, where the curse of babel is so easy to be remedied; and my new fellow-creatures sat before me dumb like images. methought, in my travels, all human relation was to be excluded; and when i returned home (for in those days i still projected my return) i should have but dipped into a picture-book without a text. nay, and i even questioned if my travels should be much prolonged; perhaps they were destined to a speedy end; perhaps my subsequent friend, kauanui, whom i remarked there, sitting silent with the rest, for a man of some authority, might leap from his hams with an ear-splitting signal, the ship be carried at a rush, and the ship's company butchered for the table. there could be nothing more natural than these apprehensions, nor anything more groundless. in my experience of the islands, i had never again so menacing a reception; were i to meet with such today, i should be more alarmed and tenfold more surprised. the majority of polynesians are easy folk to get in touch with, frank, fond of notice, greedy of the least affection, like amiable, fawning dogs; and even with the marquesans, so recently and so imperfectly redeemed from a blood-boltered barbarism, all were to become our intimates, and one, at least, was to mourn sincerely our departure. chapter ii making friends the impediment of tongues was one that i particularly overestimated. the languages of polynesia are easy to smatter, though hard to speak with elegance. and they are extremely similar, so that a person who has a tincture of one or two may risk, not without hope, an attempt upon the others. and again, not only is polynesian easy to smatter, but interpreters abound. missionaries, traders, and broken white folk living on the bounty of the natives, are to be found in almost every isle and hamlet; and even where these are unserviceable, the natives themselves have often scraped up a little english, and in the french zone (though far less commonly) a little french-english, or an efficient pidgin, what is called to the westward 'beach-la-mar,' comes easy to the polynesian; it is now taught, besides, in the schools of hawaii; and from the multiplicity of british ships, and the nearness of the states on the one hand and the colonies on the other, it may be called, and will almost certainly become, the tongue of the pacific. i will instance a few examples. i met in majuro a marshall island boy who spoke excellent english; this he had learned in the german firm in jaluit, yet did not speak one word of german. i heard from a gendarme who had taught school in rapa-iti that while the children had the utmost difficulty or reluctance to learn french, they picked up english on the wayside, and as if by accident. on one of the most out-of-the-way atolls in the carolines, my friend mr. benjamin hird was amazed to find the lads playing cricket on the beach and talking english; and it was in english that the crew of the janet nicoll, a set of black boys from different melanesian islands, communicated with other natives throughout the cruise, transmitted orders, and sometimes jested together on the fore-hatch. but what struck me perhaps most of all was a word i heard on the verandah of the tribunal at noumea. a case had just been heard a trial for infanticide against an apelike native woman; and the audience were smoking cigarettes as they awaited the verdict. an anxious, amiable french lady, not far from tears, was eager for acquittal, and declared she would engage the prisoner to be her children's nurse. the bystanders exclaimed at the proposal; the woman was a savage, said they, and spoke no language. 'mais, vous savez,' objected the fair sentimentalist; 'ils apprennent si vite l'anglais!' but to be able to speak to people is not all. and in the first stage of my relations with natives i was helped by two things. to begin with, i was the show-man of the casco. she, her fine lines, tall spars, and snowy decks, the crimson fittings of the saloon, and the white, the gilt, and the repeating mirrors of the tiny cabin, brought us a hundred visitors. the men fathomed out her dimensions with their arms, as their fathers fathomed out the ships of cook; the women declared the cabins more lovely than a church; bouncing junos were never weary of sitting in the chairs and contemplating in the glass their own bland images; and i have seen one lady strip up her dress, and, with cries of wonder and delight, rub herself bare-breeched upon the velvet cushions. biscuit, jam, and syrup was the entertainment; and, as in european parlours, the photograph album went the round. this sober gallery, their everyday costumes and physiognomies, had become transformed, in three weeks' sailing, into things wonderful and rich and foreign; alien faces, barbaric dresses, they were now beheld and fingered, in the swerving cabin, with innocent excitement and surprise. her majesty was often recognised, and i have seen french subjects kiss her photograph; captain speedy in an abyssinian war-dress, supposed to be the uniform of the british army met with much acceptance; and the effigies of mr. andrew lang were admired in the marquesas. there is the place for him to go when he shall be weary of middlesex and homer. it was perhaps yet more important that i had enjoyed in my youth some knowledge of our scots folk of the highlands and the islands. not much beyond a century has passed since these were in the same convulsive and transitionary state as the marquesans of to-day. in both cases an alien authority enforced, the clans disarmed, the chiefs deposed, new customs introduced, and chiefly that fashion of regarding money as the means and object of existence. the commercial age, in each, succeeding at a bound to an age of war abroad and patriarchal communism at home. in one the cherished practice of tattooing, in the other a cherished costume, proscribed. in each a main luxury cut off: beef, driven under cloud of night from lowland pastures, denied to the meat-loving highlander; long-pig, pirated from the next village, to the maneating kanaka. the grumbling, the secret ferment, the fears and resentments, the alarms and sudden councils of marquesan chiefs, reminded me continually of the days of lovat and struan. hospitality, tact, natural fine manners, and a touchy punctilio, are common to both races: common to both tongues the trick of dropping medial consonants. here is a table of two widespread polynesian words: house. love. tahitian fare aroha new zealand whare samoan fale talofa manihiki fale aloha hawaiian hale aloha marquesan ha'e kaoha the elision of medial consonants, so marked in these marquesan instances, is no less common both in gaelic and the lowland scots. stranger still, that prevalent polynesian sound, the so-called catch, written with an apostrophe, and often or always the gravestone of a perished consonant, is to be heard in scotland to this day. when a scot pronounces water, better, or bottle wa'er, be'er, or bo'le the sound is precisely that of the catch; and i think we may go beyond, and say, that if such a population could be isolated, and this mispronunciation should become the rule, it might prove the first stage of transition from t to k, which is the disease of polynesian languages. the tendency of the marquesans, however, is to urge against consonants, or at least on the very common letter l, a war of mere extermination. a hiatus is agreeable to any polynesian ear; the ear even of the stranger soon grows used to these barbaric voids; but only in the marquesan will you find such names as haaii and paaaeua, when each individual vowel must be separately uttered. these points of similarity between a south sea people and some of my own folk at home ran much in my head in the islands; and not only inclined me to view my fresh acquaintances with favour, but continually modified my judgment. a polite englishman comes to-day to the marquesans and is amazed to find the men tattooed; polite italians came not long ago to england and found our fathers stained with woad; and when i paid the return visit as a little boy, i was highly diverted with the backwardness of italy: so insecure, so much a matter of the day and hour, is the pre-eminence of race. it was so that i hit upon a means of communication which i recommend to travellers. when i desired any detail of savage custom, or of superstitious belief, i cast back in the story of my fathers, and fished for what i wanted with some trait of equal barbarism: michael scott, lord derwentwater's head, the second-sight, the water kelpie, each of these i have found to be a killing bait; the black bull's head of stirling procured me the legend of rahero; and what i knew of the cluny macphersons, or the appin stewarts, enabled me to learn, and helped me to understand, about the tevas of tahiti. the native was no longer ashamed, his sense of kinship grew warmer, and his lips were opened. it is this sense of kinship that the traveller must rouse and share; or he had better content himself with travels from the blue bed to the brown. and the presence of one cockney titterer will cause a whole party to walk in clouds of darkness. the hamlet of anaho stands on a margin of flat land between the west of the beach and the spring of the impending mountains. a grove of palms, perpetually ruffling its green fans, carpets it (as for a triumph) with fallen branches, and shades it like an arbour. a road runs from end to end of the covert among beds of flowers, the milliner's shop of the community; and here and there, in the grateful twilight, in an air filled with a diversity of scents, and still within hearing of the surf upon the reef, the native houses stand in scattered neighbourhood. the same word, as we have seen, represents in many tongues of polynesia, with scarce a shade of difference, the abode of man. but although the word be the same, the structure itself continually varies; and the marquesan, among the most backward and barbarous of islanders, is yet the most commodiously lodged. the grass huts of hawaii, the birdcage houses of tahiti, or the open shed, with the crazy venetian blinds, of the polite samoan none of these can be compared with the marquesan paepae-hae, or dwelling platform. the paepae is an oblong terrace built without cement or black volcanic stone, from twenty to fifty feet in length, raised from four to eight feet from the earth, and accessible by a broad stair. along the back of this, and coming to about half its width, runs the open front of the house, like a covered gallery: the interior sometimes neat and almost elegant in its bareness, the sleeping space divided off by an endlong coaming, some bright raiment perhaps hanging from a nail, and a lamp and one of white's sewing-machines the only marks of civilization. on the outside, at one end of the terrace, burns the cooking-fire under a shed; at the other there is perhaps a pen for pigs; the remainder is the evening lounge and al fresco banquet-hall of the inhabitants. to some houses water is brought down the mountains in bamboo pipes, perforated for the sake of sweetness. with the highland comparison in my mind, i was struck to remember the sluttish mounds of turf and stone in which i have sat and been entertained in the hebrides and the north islands. two things, i suppose, explain the contrast. in scotland wood is rare, and with materials so rude as turf and stone the very hope of neatness is excluded. and in scotland it is cold. shelter and a hearth are needs so pressing that a man looks not beyond; he is out all day after a bare bellyful, and at night when he saith, 'aha, it is warm!' he has not appetite for more. or if for something else, then something higher; a fine school of poetry and song arose in these rough shelters, and an air like 'lochaber no more' is an evidence of refinement more convincing, as well as more imperishable, than a palace. to one such dwelling platform a considerable troop of relatives and dependants resort. in the hour of the dusk, when the fire blazes, and the scent of the cooked breadfruit fills the air, and perhaps the lamp glints already between the pillars and the house, you shall behold them silently assemble to this meal, men, women, and children; and the dogs and pigs frisk together up the terrace stairway, switching rival tails. the strangers from the ship were soon equally welcome: welcome to dip their fingers in the wooden dish, to drink cocoanuts, to share the circulating pipe, and to hear and hold high debate about the misdeeds of the french, the panama canal, or the geographical position of san francisco and new yo'ko. in a highland hamlet, quite out of reach of any tourist, i have met the same plain and dignified hospitality. i have mentioned two facts the distasteful behaviour of our earliest visitors, and the case of the lady who rubbed herself upon the cushions which would give a very false opinion of marquesan manners. the great majority of polynesians are excellently mannered; but the marquesan stands apart, annoying and attractive, wild, shy, and refined. if you make him a present he affects to forget it, and it must be offered him again at his going: a pretty formality i have found nowhere else. a hint will get rid of any one or any number; they are so fiercely proud and modest; while many of the more lovable but blunter islanders crowd upon a stranger, and can be no more driven off than flies. a slight or an insult the marquesan seems never to forget. i was one day talking by the wayside with my friend hoka, when i perceived his eyes suddenly to flash and his stature to swell. a white horseman was coming down the mountain, and as he passed, and while he paused to exchange salutations with myself, hoka was still staring and ruffling like a gamecock. it was a corsican who had years before called him cochon sauvage cocon chauvage, as hoka mispronounced it. with people so nice and so touchy, it was scarce to be supposed that our company of greenhorns should not blunder into offences. hoka, on one of his visits, fell suddenly in a brooding silence, and presently after left the ship with cold formality. when he took me back into favour, he adroitly and pointedly explained the nature of my offence: i had asked him to sell cocoanuts; and in hoka's view articles of food were things that a gentleman should give, not sell; or at least that he should not sell to any friend. on another occasion i gave my boat's crew a luncheon of chocolate and biscuits. i had sinned, i could never learn how, against some point of observance; and though i was drily thanked, my offerings were left upon the beach. but our worst mistake was a slight we put on toma, hoka's adoptive father, and in his own eyes the rightful chief of anaho. in the first place, we did not call upon him, as perhaps we should, in his fine new european house, the only one in the hamlet. in the second, when we came ashore upon a visit to his rival, taipi-kikino, it was toma whom we saw standing at the head of the beach, a magnificent figure of a man, magnificently tattooed; and it was of toma that we asked our question: 'where is the chief?' 'what chief?' cried toma, and turned his back on the blasphemers. nor did he forgive us. hoka came and went with us daily; but, alone i believe of all the countryside, neither toma nor his wife set foot on board the casco. the temptation resisted it is hard for a european to compute. the flying city of laputa moored for a fortnight in st. james's park affords but a pale figure of the casco anchored before anaho; for the londoner has still his change of pleasures, but the marquesan passes to his grave through an unbroken uniformity of days. on the afternoon before it was intended we should sail, a valedictory party came on board: nine of our particular friends equipped with gifts and dressed as for a festival. hoka, the chief dancer and singer, the greatest dandy of anaho, and one of the handsomest young fellows in the world-sullen, showy, dramatic, light as a feather and strong as an ox it would have been hard, on that occasion, to recognise, as he sat there stooped and silent, his face heavy and grey. it was strange to see the lad so much affected; stranger still to recognise in his last gift one of the curios we had refused on the first day, and to know our friend, so gaily dressed, so plainly moved at our departure, for one of the half-naked crew that had besieged and insulted us on our arrival: strangest of all, perhaps, to find, in that carved handle of a fan, the last of those curiosities of the first day which had now all been given to us by their possessors their chief merchandise, for which they had sought to ransom us as long as we were strangers, which they pressed on us for nothing as soon as we were friends. the last visit was not long protracted. one after another they shook hands and got down into their canoe; when hoka turned his back immediately upon the ship, so that we saw his face no more. taipi, on the other hand, remained standing and facing us with gracious valedictory gestures; and when captain otis dipped the ensign, the whole party saluted with their hats. this was the farewell; the episode of our visit to anaho was held concluded; and though the casco remained nearly forty hours at her moorings, not one returned on board, and i am inclined to think they avoided appearing on the beach. this reserve and dignity is the finest trait of the marquesan. chapter iii the maroon of the beauties of anaho books might be written. i remember waking about three, to find the air temperate and scented. the long swell brimmed into the bay, and seemed to fill it full and then subside. gently, deeply, and silently the casco rolled; only at times a block piped like a bird. oceanward, the heaven was bright with stars and the sea with their reflections. if i looked to that side, i might have sung with the hawaiian poet: ua maomao ka lani, ua kahaea luna, ua pipi ka maka o ka hoku. (the heavens were fair, they stretched above, many were the eyes of the stars.) and then i turned shoreward, and high squalls were overhead; the mountains loomed up black; and i could have fancied i had slipped ten thousand miles away and was anchored in a highland loch; that when the day came, it would show pine, and heather, and green fern, and roofs of turf sending up the smoke of peats; and the alien speech that should next greet my ears must be gaelic, not kanaka. and day, when it came, brought other sights and thoughts. i have watched the morning break in many quarters of the world; it has been certainly one of the chief joys of my existence, and the dawn that i saw with most emotion shone upon the bay of anaho. the mountains abruptly overhang the port with every variety of surface and of inclination, lawn, and cliff, and forest. not one of these but wore its proper tint of saffron, of sulphur, of the clove, and of the rose. the lustre was like that of satin; on the lighter hues there seemed to float an efflorescence; a solemn bloom appeared on the more dark. the light itself was the ordinary light of morning, colourless and clean; and on this ground of jewels, pencilled out the least detail of drawing. meanwhile, around the hamlet, under the palms, where the blue shadow lingered, the red coals of cocoa husk and the light trails of smoke betrayed the awakening business of the day; along the beach men and women, lads and lasses, were returning from the bath in bright raiment, red and blue and green, such as we delighted to see in the coloured little pictures of our childhood; and presently the sun had cleared the eastern hill, and the glow of the day was over all. the glow continued and increased, the business, from the main part, ceased before it had begun. twice in the day there was a certain stir of shepherding along the seaward hills. at times a canoe went out to fish. at times a woman or two languidly filled a basket in the cotton patch. at times a pipe would sound out of the shadow of a house, ringing the changes on its three notes, with an effect like que le jour me dure, repeated endlessly. or at times, across a corner of the bay, two natives might communicate in the marquesan manner with conventional whistlings. all else was sleep and silence. the surf broke and shone around the shores; a species of black crane fished in the broken water; the black pigs were continually galloping by on some affair; but the people might never have awaked, or they might all be dead. my favourite haunt was opposite the hamlet, where was a landing in a cove under a lianaed cliff. the beach was lined with palms and a tree called the purao, something between the fig and mulberry in growth, and bearing a flower like a great yellow poppy with a maroon heart. in places rocks encroached upon the sand; the beach would be all submerged; and the surf would bubble warmly as high as to my knees, and play with cocoa-nut husks as our more homely ocean plays with wreck and wrack and bottles. as the reflux drew down, marvels of colour and design streamed between my feet; which i would grasp at, miss, or seize: now to find them what they promised, shells to grace a cabinet or be set in gold upon a lady's finger; now to catch only maya of coloured sand, pounded fragments and pebbles, that, as soon as they were dry, became as dull and homely as the flints upon a garden path. i have toiled at this childish pleasure for hours in the strong sun, conscious of my incurable ignorance; but too keenly pleased to be ashamed. meanwhile, the blackbird (or his tropical understudy) would be fluting in the thickets overhead. a little further, in the turn of the bay, a streamlet trickled in the bottom of a den, thence spilling down a stair of rock into the sea. the draught of air drew down under the foliage in the very bottom of the den, which was a perfect arbour for coolness. in front it stood open on the blue bay and the casco lying there under her awning and her cheerful colours. overhead was a thatch of puraos, and over these again palms brandished their bright fans, as i have seen a conjurer make himself a halo out of naked swords. for in this spot, over a neck of low land at the foot of the mountains, the trade-wind streams into anaho bay in a flood of almost constant volume and velocity, and of a heavenly coolness. it chanced one day that i was ashore in the cove, with mrs. stevenson and the ship's cook. except for the casco lying outside, and a crane or two, and the ever-busy wind and sea, the face of the world was of a prehistoric emptiness; life appeared to stand stockstill, and the sense of isolation was profound and refreshing. on a sudden, the trade-wind, coming in a gust over the isthmus, struck and scattered the fans of the palms above the den; and, behold! in two of the tops there sat a native, motionless as an idol and watching us, you would have said, without a wink. the next moment the tree closed, and the glimpse was gone. this discovery of human presences latent over-head in a place where we had supposed ourselves alone, the immobility of our tree-top spies, and the thought that perhaps at all hours we were similarly supervised, struck us with a chill. talk languished on the beach. as for the cook (whose conscience was not clear), he never afterwards set foot on shore, and twice, when the casco appeared to be driving on the rocks, it was amusing to observe that man's alacrity; death, he was persuaded, awaiting him upon the beach. it was more than a year later, in the gilberts, that the explanation dawned upon myself. the natives were drawing palm-tree wine, a thing forbidden by law; and when the wind thus suddenly revealed them, they were doubtless more troubled than ourselves. at the top of the den there dwelt an old, melancholy, grizzled man of the name of tari (charlie) coffin. he was a native of oahu, in the sandwich islands; and had gone to sea in his youth in the american whalers; a circumstance to which he owed his name, his english, his down-east twang, and the misfortune of his innocent life. for one captain, sailing out of new bedford, carried him to nuka-hiva and marooned him there among the cannibals. the motive for this act was inconceivably small; poor tari's wages, which were thus economised, would scarce have shook the credit of the new bedford owners. and the act itself was simply murder. tari's life must have hung in the beginning by a hair. in the grief and terror of that time, it is not unlikely he went mad, an infirmity to which he was still liable; or perhaps a child may have taken a fancy to him and ordained him to be spared. he escaped at least alive, married in the island, and when i knew him was a widower with a married son and a granddaughter. but the thought of oahu haunted him; its praise was for ever on his lips; he beheld it, looking back, as a place of ceaseless feasting, song, and dance; and in his dreams i daresay he revisits it with joy. i wonder what he would think if he could be carried there indeed, and see the modern town of honolulu brisk with traffic, and the palace with its guards, and the great hotel, and mr. berger's band with their uniforms and outlandish instruments; or what he would think to see the brown faces grown so few and the white so many; and his father's land sold, for planting sugar, and his father's house quite perished, or perhaps the last of them struck leprous and immured between the surf and the cliffs on molokai? so simply, even in south sea islands, and so sadly, the changes come. tari was poor, and poorly lodged. his house was a wooden frame, run up by europeans; it was indeed his official residence, for tari was the shepherd of the promontory sheep. i can give a perfect inventory of its contents: three kegs, a tin biscuit-box, an iron saucepan, several cocoa-shell cups, a lantern, and three bottles, probably containing oil; while the clothes of the family and a few mats were thrown across the open rafters. upon my first meeting with this exile he had conceived for me one of the baseless island friendships, had given me nuts to drink, and carried me up the den 'to see my house' the only entertainment that he had to offer. he liked the 'amelican,' he said, and the 'inglisman,' but the 'flessman' was his abhorrence; and he was careful to explain that if he had thought us 'fless,' we should have had none of his nuts, and never a sight of his house. his distaste for the french i can partly understand, but not at all his toleration of the anglosaxon. the next day he brought me a pig, and some days later one of our party going ashore found him in act to bring a second. we were still strange to the islands; we were pained by the poor man's generosity, which he could ill afford, and, by a natural enough but quite unpardonable blunder, we refused the pig. had tari been a marquesan we should have seen him no more; being what he was, the most mild, long-suffering, melancholy man, he took a revenge a hundred times more painful. scarce had the canoe with the nine villagers put off from their farewell before the casco was boarded from the other side. it was tari; coming thus late because he had no canoe of his own, and had found it hard to borrow one; coming thus solitary (as indeed we always saw him), because he was a stranger in the land, and the dreariest of company. the rest of my family basely fled from the encounter. i must receive our injured friend alone; and the interview must have lasted hard upon an hour, for he was loath to tear himself away. 'you go 'way. i see you no more no, sir!' he lamented; and then looking about him with rueful admiration, 'this goodee ship no, sir! goodee ship!' he would exclaim: the 'no, sir,' thrown out sharply through the nose upon a rising inflection, an echo from new bedford and the fallacious whaler. from these expressions of grief and praise, he would return continually to the case of the rejected pig. 'i like give present all 'e same you,' he complained; 'only got pig: you no take him!' he was a poor man; he had no choice of gifts; he had only a pig, he repeated; and i had refused it. i have rarely been more wretched than to see him sitting there, so old, so grey, so poor, so hardly fortuned, of so rueful a countenance, and to appreciate, with growing keenness, the affront which i had so innocently dealt him; but it was one of those cases in which speech is vain. tari's son was smiling and inert; his daughter-in-law, a girl of sixteen, pretty, gentle, and grave, more intelligent than most anaho women, and with a fair share of french; his grandchild, a mite of a creature at the breast. i went up the den one day when tari was from home, and found the son making a cotton sack, and madame suckling mademoiselle. when i had sat down with them on the floor, the girl began to question me about england; which i tried to describe, piling the pan and the cocoa shells one upon another to represent the houses, and explaining, as best i was able, and by word and gesture, the over-population, the hunger, and the perpetual toil. 'pas de cocotiers? pas do popoi?' she asked. i told her it was too cold, and went through an elaborate performance, shutting out draughts, and crouching over an imaginary fire, to make sure she understood. but she understood right well; remarked it must be bad for the health, and sat a while gravely reflecting on that picture of unwonted sorrows. i am sure it roused her pity, for it struck in her another thought always uppermost in the marquesan bosom; and she began with a smiling sadness, and looking on me out of melancholy eyes, to lament the decease of her own people. 'ici pas de kanaques,' said she; and taking the baby from her breast, she held it out to me with both her hands. 'tenez a little baby like this; then dead. all the kanaques die. then no more.' the smile, and this instancing by the girl-mother of her own tiny flesh and blood, affected me strangely; they spoke of so tranquil a despair. meanwhile the husband smilingly made his sack; and the unconscious babe struggled to reach a pot of raspberry jam, friendship's offering, which i had just brought up the den; and in a perspective of centuries i saw their case as ours, death coming in like a tide, and the day already numbered when there should be no more beretani, and no more of any race whatever, and (what oddly touched me) no more literary works and no more readers. chapter iv death the thought of death, i have said, is uppermost in the mind of the marquesan. it would be strange if it were otherwise. the race is perhaps the handsomest extant. six feet is about the middle height of males; they are strongly muscled, free from fat, swift in action, graceful in repose; and the women, though fatter and duller, are still comely animals. to judge by the eye, there is no race more viable; and yet death reaps them with both hands. when bishop dordillon first came to tai-o-hae, he reckoned the inhabitants at many thousands; he was but newly dead, and in the same bay stanislao moanatini counted on his fingers eight residual natives. or take the valley of hapaa, known to readers of herman melville under the grotesque misspelling of hapar. there are but two writers who have touched the south seas with any genius, both americans: melville and charles warren stoddard; and at the christening of the first and greatest, some influential fairy must have been neglected: 'he shall be able to see,' 'he shall be able to tell,' 'he shall be able to charm,' said the friendly godmothers; 'but he shall not be able to hear,' exclaimed the last. the tribe of hapaa is said to have numbered some four hundred, when the small-pox came and reduced them by one-fourth. six months later a woman developed tubercular consumption; the disease spread like a fire about the valley, and in less than a year two survivors, a man and a woman, fled from that new-created solitude. a similar adam and eve may some day wither among new races, the tragic residue of britain. when i first heard this story the date staggered me; but i am now inclined to think it possible. early in the year of my visit, for example, or late the year before, a first case of phthisis appeared in a household of seventeen persons, and by the month of august, when the tale was told me, one soul survived, and that was a boy who had been absent at his schooling. and depopulation works both ways, the doors of death being set wide open, and the door of birth almost closed. thus, in the half-year ending july 1888 there were twelve deaths and but one birth in the district of the hatiheu. seven or eight more deaths were to be looked for in the ordinary course; and m. aussel, the observant gendarme, knew of but one likely birth. at this rate it is no matter of surprise if the population in that part should have declined in forty years from six thousand to less than four hundred; which are, once more on the authority of m. aussel, the estimated figures. and the rate of decline must have even accelerated towards the end. a good way to appreciate the depopulation is to go by land from anaho to hatiheu on the adjacent bay. the road is good travelling, but cruelly steep. we seemed scarce to have passed the deserted house which stands highest in anaho before we were looking dizzily down upon its roof; the casco well out in the bay, and rolling for a wager, shrank visibly; and presently through the gap of tari's isthmus, ua-huna was seen to hang cloudlike on the horizon. over the summit, where the wind blew really chill, and whistled in the reed-like grass, and tossed the grassy fell of the pandanus, we stepped suddenly, as through a door, into the next vale and bay of hatiheu. a bowl of mountains encloses it upon three sides. on the fourth this rampart has been bombarded into ruins, runs down to seaward in imminent and shattered crags, and presents the one practicable breach of the blue bay. the interior of this vessel is crowded with lovely and valuable trees, orange, breadfruit, mummy-apple, cocoa, the island chestnut, and for weeds, the pine and the banana. four perennial streams water and keep it green; and along the dell, first of one, then of another, of these, the road, for a considerable distance, descends into this fortunate valley. the song of the waters and the familiar disarray of boulders gave us a strong sense of home, which the exotic foliage, the daft-like growth of the pandanus, the buttressed trunk of the banyan, the black pigs galloping in the bush, and the architecture of the native houses dissipated ere it could be enjoyed. the houses on the hatiheu side begin high up; higher yet, the more melancholy spectacle of empty paepaes. when a native habitation is deserted, the superstructure pandanus thatch, wattle, unstable tropical timber speedily rots, and is speedily scattered by the wind. only the stones of the terrace endure; nor can any ruin, cairn, or standing stone, or vitrified fort present a more stern appearance of antiquity. we must have passed from six to eight of these now houseless platforms. on the main road of the island, where it crosses the valley of taipi, mr. osbourne tells me they are to be reckoned by the dozen; and as the roads have been made long posterior to their erection, perhaps to their desertion, and must simply be regarded as lines drawn at random through the bush, the forest on either hand must be equally filled with these survivals: the gravestones of whole families. such ruins are tapu in the strictest sense; no native must approach them; they have become outposts of the kingdom of the grave. it might appear a natural and pious custom in the hundreds who are left, the rearguard of perished thousands, that their feet should leave untrod these hearthstones of their fathers. i believe, in fact, the custom rests on different and more grim conceptions. but the house, the grave, and even the body of the dead, have been always particularly honoured by marquesans. until recently the corpse was sometimes kept in the family and daily oiled and sunned, until, by gradual and revolting stages, it dried into a kind of mummy. offerings are still laid upon the grave. in traitor's bay, mr. osbourne saw a man buy a looking-glass to lay upon his son's. and the sentiment against the desecration of tombs, thoughtlessly ruffled in the laying down of the new roads, is a chief ingredient in the native hatred for the french. the marquesan beholds with dismay the approaching extinction of his race. the thought of death sits down with him to meat, and rises with him from his bed; he lives and breathes under a shadow of mortality awful to support; and he is so inured to the apprehension that he greets the reality with relief. he does not even seek to support a disappointment; at an affront, at a breach of one of his fleeting and communistic love-affairs, he seeks an instant refuge in the grave. hanging is now the fashion. i heard of three who had hanged themselves in the west end of hiva-oa during the first half of 1888; but though this be a common form of suicide in other parts of the south seas, i cannot think it will continue popular in the marquesas. far more suitable to marquesan sentiment is the old form of poisoning with the fruit of the eva, which offers to the native suicide a cruel but deliberate death, and gives time for those decencies of the last hour, to which he attaches such remarkable importance. the coffin can thus be at hand, the pigs killed, the cry of the mourners sounding already through the house; and then it is, and not before, that the marquesan is conscious of achievement, his life all rounded in, his robes (like caesar's) adjusted for the final act. praise not any man till he is dead, said the ancients; envy not any man till you hear the mourners, might be the marquesan parody. the coffin, though of late introduction, strangely engages their attention. it is to the mature marquesan what a watch is to the european schoolboy. for ten years queen vaekehu had dunned the fathers; at last, but the other day, they let her have her will, gave her her coffin, and the woman's soul is at rest. i was told a droll instance of the force of this preoccupation. the polynesians are subject to a disease seemingly rather of the will than of the body. i was told the tahitians have a word for it, erimatua, but cannot find it in my dictionary. a gendarme, m. nouveau, has seen men beginning to succumb to this insubstantial malady, has routed them from their houses, turned them on to do their trick upon the roads, and in two days has seen them cured. but this other remedy is more original: a marquesan, dying of this discouragement perhaps i should rather say this acquiescence has been known, at the fulfilment of his crowning wish, on the mere sight of that desired hermitage, his coffin to revive, recover, shake off the hand of death, and be restored for years to his occupations carving tikis (idols), let us say, or braiding old men's beards. from all this it may be conceived how easily they meet death when it approaches naturally. i heard one example, grim and picturesque. in the time of the small-pox in hapaa, an old man was seized with the disease; he had no thought of recovery; had his grave dug by a wayside, and lived in it for near a fortnight, eating, drinking, and smoking with the passers-by, talking mostly of his end, and equally unconcerned for himself and careless of the friends whom he infected. this proneness to suicide, and loose seat in life, is not peculiar to the marquesan. what is peculiar is the widespread depression and acceptance of the national end. pleasures are neglected, the dance languishes, the songs are forgotten. it is true that some, and perhaps too many, of them are proscribed; but many remain, if there were spirit to support or to revive them. at the last feast of the bastille, stanislao moanatini shed tears when he beheld the inanimate performance of the dancers. when the people sang for us in anaho, they must apologise for the smallness of their repertory. they were only young folk present, they said, and it was only the old that knew the songs. the whole body of marquesan poetry and music was being suffered to die out with a single dispirited generation. the full import is apparent only to one acquainted with other polynesian races; who knows how the samoan coins a fresh song for every trifling incident, or who has heard (on penrhyn, for instance) a band of little stripling maids from eight to twelve keep up their minstrelsy for hours upon a stretch, one song following another without pause. in like manner, the marquesan, never industrious, begins now to cease altogether from production. the exports of the group decline out of all proportion even with the death-rate of the islanders. 'the coral waxes, the palm grows, and man departs,' says the marquesan; and he folds his hands. and surely this is nature. fond as it may appear, we labour and refrain, not for the rewards of any single life, but with a timid eye upon the lives and memories of our successors; and where no one is to succeed, of his own family, or his own tongue, i doubt whether rothschilds would make money or cato practise virtue. it is natural, also, that a temporary stimulus should sometimes rouse the marquesan from his lethargy. over all the landward shore of anaho cotton runs like a wild weed; man or woman, whoever comes to pick it, may earn a dollar in the day; yet when we arrived, the trader's store-house was entirely empty; and before we left it was near full. so long as the circus was there, so long as the casco was yet anchored in the bay, it behoved every one to make his visit; and to this end every woman must have a new dress, and every man a shirt and trousers. never before, in mr. regler's experience, had they displayed so much activity. in their despondency there is an element of dread. the fear of ghosts and of the dark is very deeply written in the mind of the polynesian; not least of the marquesan. poor taipi, the chief of anaho, was condemned to ride to hatiheu on a moonless night. he borrowed a lantern, sat a long while nerving himself for the adventure, and when he at last departed, wrung the cascos by the hand as for a final separation. certain presences, called vehinehae, frequent and make terrible the nocturnal roadside; i was told by one they were like so much mist, and as the traveller walked into them dispersed and dissipated; another described them as being shaped like men and having eyes like cats; from none could i obtain the smallest clearness as to what they did, or wherefore they were dreaded. we may be sure at least they represent the dead; for the dead, in the minds of the islanders, are allpervasive. 'when a native says that he is a man,' writes dr. codrington, 'he means that he is a man and not a ghost; not that he is a man and not a beast. the intelligent agents of this world are to his mind the men who are alive, and the ghosts the men who are dead.' dr. codrington speaks of melanesia; from what i have learned his words are equally true of the polynesian. and yet more. among cannibal polynesians a dreadful suspicion rests generally on the dead; and the marquesans, the greatest cannibals of all, are scarce likely to be free from similar beliefs. i hazard the guess that the vehinehae are the hungry spirits of the dead, continuing their life's business of the cannibal ambuscade, and lying everywhere unseen, and eager to devour the living. another superstition i picked up through the troubled medium of tari coffin's english. the dead, he told me, came and danced by night around the paepae of their former family; the family were thereupon overcome by some emotion (but whether of pious sorrow or of fear i could not gather), and must 'make a feast,' of which fish, pig, and popoi were indispensable ingredients. so far this is clear enough. but here tari went on to instance the new house of toma and the house-warming feast which was just then in preparation as instances in point. dare we indeed string them together, and add the case of the deserted ruin, as though the dead continually besieged the paepaes of the living: were kept at arm's-length, even from the first foundation, only by propitiatory feasts, and, so soon as the fire of life went out upon the hearth, swarmed back into possession of their ancient seat? i speak by guess of these marquesan superstitions. on the cannibal ghost i shall return elsewhere with certainty. and it is enough, for the present purpose, to remark that the men of the marquesas, from whatever reason, fear and shrink from the presence of ghosts. conceive how this must tell upon the nerves in islands where the number of the dead already so far exceeds that of the living, and the dead multiply and the living dwindle at so swift a rate. conceive how the remnant huddles about the embers of the fire of life; even as old red indians, deserted on the march and in the snow, the kindly tribe all gone, the last flame expiring, and the night around populous with wolves. chapter v depopulation over the whole extent of the south seas, from one tropic to another, we find traces of a bygone state of over-population, when the resources of even a tropical soil were taxed, and even the improvident polynesian trembled for the future. we may accept some of the ideas of mr. darwin's theory of coral islands, and suppose a rise of the sea, or the subsidence of some former continental area, to have driven into the tops of the mountains multitudes of refugees. or we may suppose, more soberly, a people of sea-rovers, emigrants from a crowded country, to strike upon and settle island after island, and as time went on to multiply exceedingly in their new seats. in either case the end must be the same; soon or late it must grow apparent that the crew are too numerous, and that famine is at hand. the polynesians met this emergent danger with various expedients of activity and prevention. a way was found to preserve breadfruit by packing it in artificial pits; pits forty feet in depth and of proportionate bore are still to be seen, i am told, in the marquesas; and yet even these were insufficient for the teeming people, and the annals of the past are gloomy with famine and cannibalism. among the hawaiians a hardier people, in a more exacting climate agriculture was carried far; the land was irrigated with canals; and the fish-ponds of molokai prove the number and diligence of the old inhabitants. meanwhile, over all the island world, abortion and infanticide prevailed. on coral atolls, where the danger was most plainly obvious, these were enforced by law and sanctioned by punishment. on vaitupu, in the ellices, only two children were allowed to a couple; on nukufetau, but one. on the latter the punishment was by fine; and it is related that the fine was sometimes paid, and the child spared. this is characteristic. for no people in the world are so fond or so long-suffering with children children make the mirth and the adornment of their homes, serving them for playthings and for picture-galleries. 'happy is the man that has his quiver full of them.' the stray bastard is contended for by rival families; and the natural and the adopted children play and grow up together undistinguished. the spoiling, and i may almost say the deification, of the child, is nowhere carried so far as in the eastern islands; and furthest, according to my opportunities of observation, in the paumotu group, the so-called low or dangerous archipelago. i have seen a paumotuan native turn from me with embarrassment and disaffection because i suggested that a brat would be the better for a beating. it is a daily matter in some eastern islands to see a child strike or even stone its mother, and the mother, so far from punishing, scarce ventures to resist. in some, when his child was born, a chief was superseded and resigned his name; as though, like a drone, he had then fulfilled the occasion of his being. and in some the lightest words of children had the weight of oracles. only the other day, in the marquesas, if a child conceived a distaste to any stranger, i am assured the stranger would be slain. and i shall have to tell in another place an instance of the opposite: how a child in manihiki having taken a fancy to myself, her adoptive parents at once accepted the situation and loaded me with gifts. with such sentiments the necessity for child-destruction would not fail to clash, and i believe we find the trace of divided feeling in the tahitian brotherhood of oro. at a certain date a new god was added to the society-island olympus, or an old one refurbished and made popular. oro was his name, and he may be compared with the bacchus of the ancients. his zealots sailed from bay to bay, and from island to island; they were everywhere received with feasting; wore fine clothes; sang, danced, acted; gave exhibitions of dexterity and strength; and were the artists, the acrobats, the bards, and the harlots of the group. their life was public and epicurean; their initiation a mystery; and the highest in the land aspired to join the brotherhood. if a couple stood next in line to a high-chieftaincy, they were suffered, on grounds of policy, to spare one child; all other children, who had a father or a mother in the company of oro, stood condemned from the moment of conception. a freemasonry, an agnostic sect, a company of artists, its members all under oath to spread unchastity, and all forbidden to leave offspring i do not know how it may appear to others, but to me the design seems obvious. famine menacing the islands, and the needful remedy repulsive, it was recommended to the native mind by these trappings of mystery, pleasure, and parade. this is the more probable, and the secret, serious purpose of the institution appears the more plainly, if it be true that, after a certain period of life, the obligation of the votary was changed; at first, bound to be profligate: afterwards, expected to be chaste. here, then, we have one side of the case. man-eating among kindly men, child-murder among child-lovers, industry in a race the most idle, invention in a race the least progressive, this grim, pagan salvation-army of the brotherhood of oro, the report of early voyagers, the widespread vestiges of former habitation, and the universal tradition of the islands, all point to the same fact of former crowding and alarm. and to-day we are face to face with the reverse. to-day in the marquesas, in the eight islands of hawaii, in mangareva, in easter island, we find the same race perishing like flies. why this change? or, grant that the coming of the whites, the change of habits, and the introduction of new maladies and vices, fully explain the depopulation, why is that depopulation not universal? the population of tahiti, after a period of alarming decrease, has again become stationary. i hear of a similar result among some maori tribes; in many of the paumotus a slight increase is to be observed; and the samoans are to-day as healthy and at least as fruitful as before the change. grant that the tahitians, the maoris, and the paumotuans have become inured to the new conditions; and what are we to make of the samoans, who have never suffered? those who are acquainted only with a single group are apt to be ready with solutions. thus i have heard the mortality of the maoris attributed to their change of residence from fortified hill-tops to the low, marshy vicinity of their plantations. how plausible! and yet the marquesans are dying out in the same houses where their fathers multiplied. or take opium. the marquesas and hawaii are the two groups the most infected with this vice; the population of the one is the most civilised, that of the other by far the most barbarous, of polynesians; and they are two of those that perish the most rapidly. here is a strong case against opium. but let us take unchastity, and we shall find the marquesas and hawaii figuring again upon another count. thus, samoans are the most chaste of polynesians, and they are to this day entirely fertile; marquesans are the most debauched: we have seen how they are perishing; hawaiians are notoriously lax, and they begin to be dotted among deserts. so here is a case stronger still against unchastity; and here also we have a correction to apply. whatever the virtues of the tahitian, neither friend nor enemy dares call him chaste; and yet he seems to have outlived the time of danger. one last example: syphilis has been plausibly credited with much of the sterility. but the samoans are, by all accounts, as fruitful as at first; by some accounts more so; and it is not seriously to be argued that the samoans have escaped syphilis. these examples show how dangerous it is to reason from any particular cause, or even from many in a single group. i have in my eye an able and amiable pamphlet by the rev. s. e. bishop: 'why are the hawaiians dying out?' any one interested in the subject ought to read this tract, which contains real information; and yet mr. bishop's views would have been changed by an acquaintance with other groups. samoa is, for the moment, the main and the most instructive exception to the rule. the people are the most chaste and one of the most temperate of island peoples. they have never been tried and depressed with any grave pestilence. their clothing has scarce been tampered with; at the simple and becoming tabard of the girls, tartuffe, in many another island, would have cried out; for the cool, healthy, and modest lava-lava or kilt, tartuffe has managed in many another island to substitute stifling and inconvenient trousers. lastly, and perhaps chiefly, so far from their amusements having been curtailed, i think they have been, upon the whole, extended. the polynesian falls easily into despondency: bereavement, disappointment, the fear of novel visitations, the decay or proscription of ancient pleasures, easily incline him to be sad; and sadness detaches him from life. the melancholy of the hawaiian and the emptiness of his new life are striking; and the remark is yet more apposite to the marquesas. in samoa, on the other hand, perpetual song and dance, perpetual games, journeys, and pleasures, make an animated and a smiling picture of the island life. and the samoans are to-day the gayest and the best entertained inhabitants of our planet. the importance of this can scarcely be exaggerated. in a climate and upon a soil where a livelihood can be had for the stooping, entertainment is a prime necessity. it is otherwise with us, where life presents us with a daily problem, and there is a serious interest, and some of the heat of conflict, in the mere continuing to be. so, in certain atolls, where there is no great gaiety, but man must bestir himself with some vigour for his daily bread, public health and the population are maintained; but in the lotos islands, with the decay of pleasures, life itself decays. it is from this point of view that we may instance, among other causes of depression, the decay of war. we have been so long used in europe to that dreary business of war on the great scale, trailing epidemics and leaving pestilential corpses in its train, that we have almost forgotten its original, the most healthful, if not the most humane, of all field sports hedge-warfare. from this, as well as from the rest of his amusements and interests, the islander, upon a hundred islands, has been recently cut off. and to this, as well as to so many others, the samoan still makes good a special title. upon the whole, the problem seems to me to stand thus:where there have been fewest changes, important or unimportant, salutary or hurtful, there the race survives. where there have been most, important or unimportant, salutary or hurtful, there it perishes. each change, however small, augments the sum of new conditions to which the race has to become inured. there may seem, a priori, no comparison between the change from 'sour toddy' to bad gin, and that from the island kilt to a pair of european trousers. yet i am far from persuaded that the one is any more hurtful than the other; and the unaccustomed race will sometimes die of pin-pricks. we are here face to face with one of the difficulties of the missionary. in polynesian islands he easily obtains pre-eminent authority; the king becomes his mairedupalais; he can proscribe, he can command; and the temptation is ever towards too much. thus (by all accounts) the catholics in mangareva, and thus (to my own knowledge) the protestants in hawaii, have rendered life in a more or less degree unliveable to their converts. and the mild, uncomplaining creatures (like children in a prison) yawn and await death. it is easy to blame the missionary. but it is his business to make changes. it is surely his business, for example, to prevent war; and yet i have instanced war itself as one of the elements of health. on the other hand, it were, perhaps, easy for the missionary to proceed more gently, and to regard every change as an affair of weight. i take the average missionary; i am sure i do him no more than justice when i suppose that he would hesitate to bombard a village, even in order to convert an archipelago. experience begins to show us (at least in polynesian islands) that change of habit is bloodier than a bombardment. there is one point, ere i have done, where i may go to meet criticism. i have said nothing of faulty hygiene, bathing during fevers, mistaken treatment of children, native doctoring, or abortion all causes frequently adduced. and i have said nothing of them because they are conditions common to both epochs, and even more efficient in the past than in the present. was it not the same with unchastity, it may be asked? was not the polynesian always unchaste? doubtless he was so always: doubtless he is more so since the coming of his remarkably chaste visitors from europe. take the hawaiian account of cook: i have no doubt it is entirely fair. take krusenstern's candid, almost innocent, description of a russian man-of-war at the marquesas; consider the disgraceful history of missions in hawaii itself, where (in the war of lust) the american missionaries were once shelled by an english adventurer, and once raided and mishandled by the crew of an american warship; add the practice of whaling fleets to call at the marquesas, and carry off a complement of women for the cruise; consider, besides, how the whites were at first regarded in the light of demi-gods, as appears plainly in the reception of cook upon hawaii; and again, in the story of the discovery of tutuila, when the really decent women of samoa prostituted themselves in public to the french; and bear in mind how it was the custom of the adventurers, and we may almost say the business of the missionaries, to deride and infract even the most salutary tapus. here we see every engine of dissolution directed at once against a virtue never and nowhere very strong or popular; and the result, even in the most degraded islands, has been further degradation. mr. lawes, the missionary of savage island, told me the standard of female chastity had declined there since the coming of the whites. in heathen time, if a girl gave birth to a bastard, her father or brother would dash the infant down the cliffs; and to-day the scandal would be small. or take the marquesas. stanislao moanatini told me that in his own recollection, the young were strictly guarded; they were not suffered so much as to look upon one another in the street, but passed (so my informant put it) like dogs; and the other day the whole school-children of nuka-hiva and ua-pu escaped in a body to the woods, and lived there for a fortnight in promiscuous liberty. readers of travels may perhaps exclaim at my authority, and declare themselves better informed. i should prefer the statement of an intelligent native like stanislao (even if it stood alone, which it is far from doing) to the report of the most honest traveller. a ship of war comes to a haven, anchors, lands a party, receives and returns a visit, and the captain writes a chapter on the manners of the island. it is not considered what class is mostly seen. yet we should not be pleased if a lascar foremast hand were to judge england by the ladies who parade ratcliffe highway, and the gentlemen who share with them their hire. stanislao's opinion of a decay of virtue even in these unvirtuous islands has been supported to me by others; his very example, the progress of dissolution amongst the young, is adduced by mr. bishop in hawaii. and so far as marquesans are concerned, we might have hazarded a guess of some decline in manners. i do not think that any race could ever have prospered or multiplied with such as now obtain; i am sure they would have been never at the pains to count paternal kinship. it is not possible to give details; suffice it that their manners appear to be imitated from the dreams of ignorant and vicious children, and their debauches persevered in until energy, reason, and almost life itself are in abeyance. chapter vi chiefs and tapus we used to admire exceedingly the bland and gallant manners of the chief called taipi-kikino. an elegant guest at table, skilled in the use of knife and fork, a brave figure when he shouldered a gun and started for the woods after wild chickens, always serviceable, always ingratiating and gay, i would sometimes wonder where he found his cheerfulness. he had enough to sober him, i thought, in his official budget. his expenses for he was always seen attired in virgin white must have by far exceeded his income of six dollars in the year, or say two shillings a month. and he was himself a man of no substance; his house the poorest in the village. it was currently supposed that his elder brother, kauanui, must have helped him out. but how comes it that the elder brother should succeed to the family estate, and be a wealthy commoner, and the younger be a poor man, and yet rule as chief in anaho? that the one should be wealthy, and the other almost indigent is probably to be explained by some adoption; for comparatively few children are brought up in the house or succeed to the estates of their natural begetters. that the one should be chief instead of the other must be explained (in a very irish fashion) on the ground that neither of them is a chief at all. since the return and the wars of the french, many chiefs have been deposed, and many so-called chiefs appointed. we have seen, in the same house, one such upstart drinking in the company of two such extruded island bourbons, men, whose word a few years ago was life and death, now sunk to be peasants like their neighbours. so when the french overthrew hereditary tyrants, dubbed the commons of the marquesas freeborn citizens of the republic, and endowed them with a vote for a conseiller-general at tahiti, they probably conceived themselves upon the path to popularity; and so far from that, they were revolting public sentiment. the deposition of the chiefs was perhaps sometimes needful; the appointment of others may have been needful also; it was at least a delicate business. the government of george ii. exiled many highland magnates. it never occurred to them to manufacture substitutes; and if the french have been more bold, we have yet to see with what success. our chief at anaho was always called, he always called himself, taipi-kikino; and yet that was not his name, but only the wand of his false position. as soon as he was appointed chief, his name which signified, if i remember exactly, prince born among flowers fell in abeyance, and he was dubbed instead by the expressive byword, taipi-kikino highwater man-of-no-account or, englishing more boldly, beggar on horseback a witty and a wicked cut. a nickname in polynesia destroys almost the memory of the original name. to-day, if we were polynesians, gladstone would be no more heard of. we should speak of and address our nestor as the grand old man, and it is so that himself would sign his correspondence. not the prevalence, then, but the significancy of the nickname is to be noted here. the new authority began with small prestige. taipi has now been some time in office; from all i saw he seemed a person very fit. he is not the least unpopular, and yet his power is nothing. he is a chief to the french, and goes to breakfast with the resident; but for any practical end of chieftaincy a rag doll were equally efficient. we had been but three days in anaho when we received the visit of the chief of hatiheu, a man of weight and fame, late leader of a war upon the french, late prisoner in tahiti, and the last eater of long-pig in nuka-hiva. not many years have elapsed since he was seen striding on the beach of anaho, a dead man's arm across his shoulder. 'so does kooamua to his enemies!' he roared to the passers-by, and took a bite from the raw flesh. and now behold this gentleman, very wisely replaced in office by the french, paying us a morning visit in european clothes. he was the man of the most character we had yet seen: his manners genial and decisive, his person tall, his face rugged, astute, formidable, and with a certain similarity to mr. gladstone's only for the brownness of the skin, and the high-chief's tattooing, all one side and much of the other being of an even blue. further acquaintance increased our opinion of his sense. he viewed the casco in a manner then quite new to us, examining her lines and the running of the gear; to a piece of knitting on which one of the party was engaged, he must have devoted ten minutes' patient study; nor did he desist before he had divined the principles; and he was interested even to excitement by a type-writer, which he learned to work. when he departed he carried away with him a list of his family, with his own name printed by his own hand at the bottom. i should add that he was plainly much of a humorist, and not a little of a humbug. he told us, for instance, that he was a person of exact sobriety; such being the obligation of his high estate: the commons might be sots, but the chief could not stoop so low. and not many days after he was to be observed in a state of smiling and lop-sided imbecility, the casco ribbon upside down on his dishonoured hat. but his business that morning in anaho is what concerns us here. the devil-fish, it seems, were growing scarce upon the reef; it was judged fit to interpose what we should call a close season; for that end, in polynesia, a tapu (vulgarly spelt 'taboo') has to be declared, and who was to declare it? taipi might; he ought; it was a chief part of his duty; but would any one regard the inhibition of a beggar on horse-back? he might plant palm branches: it did not in the least follow that the spot was sacred. he might recite the spell: it was shrewdly supposed the spirits would not hearken. and so the old, legitimate cannibal must ride over the mountains to do it for him; and the respectable official in white clothes could but look on and envy. at about the same time, though in a different manner, kooamua established a forest law. it was observed the cocoa-palms were suffering, for the plucking of green nuts impoverishes and at last endangers the tree. now kooamua could tapu the reef, which was public property, but he could not tapu other people's palms; and the expedient adopted was interesting. he tapu'd his own trees, and his example was imitated over all hatiheu and anaho. i fear taipi might have tapu'd all that he possessed and found none to follow him. so much for the esteem in which the dignity of an appointed chief is held by others; a single circumstance will show what he thinks of it himself. i never met one, but he took an early opportunity to explain his situation. true, he was only an appointed chief when i beheld him; but somewhere else, perhaps upon some other isle, he was a chieftain by descent: upon which ground, he asked me (so to say it) to excuse his mushroom honours. it will be observed with surprise that both these tapus are for thoroughly sensible ends. with surprise, i say, because the nature of that institution is much misunderstood in europe. it is taken usually in the sense of a meaningless or wanton prohibition, such as that which to-day prevents women in some countries from smoking, or yesterday prevented any one in scotland from taking a walk on sunday. the error is no less natural than it is unjust. the polynesians have not been trained in the bracing, practical thought of ancient rome; with them the idea of law has not been disengaged from that of morals or propriety; so that tapu has to cover the whole field, and implies indifferently that an act is criminal, immoral, against sound public policy, unbecoming or (as we say) 'not in good form.' many tapus were in consequence absurd enough, such as those which deleted words out of the language, and particularly those which related to women. tapu encircled women upon all hands. many things were forbidden to men; to women we may say that few were permitted. they must not sit on the paepae; they must not go up to it by the stair; they must not eat pork; they must not approach a boat; they must not cook at a fire which any male had kindled. the other day, after the roads were made, it was observed the women plunged along margin through the bush, and when they came to a bridge waded through the water: roads and bridges were the work of men's hands, and tapu for the foot of women. even a man's saddle, if the man be native, is a thing no self-respecting lady dares to use. thus on the anaho side of the island, only two white men, mr. regler and the gendarme, m. aussel, possess saddles; and when a woman has a journey to make she must borrow from one or other. it will be noticed that these prohibitions tend, most of them, to an increased reserve between the sexes. regard for female chastity is the usual excuse for these disabilities that men delight to lay upon their wives and mothers. here the regard is absent; and behold the women still bound hand and foot with meaningless proprieties! the women themselves, who are survivors of the old regimen, admit that in those days life was not worth living. and yet even then there were exceptions. there were female chiefs and (i am assured) priestesses besides; nice customs curtseyed to great dames, and in the most sacred enclosure of a high place, father simeon delmar was shown a stone, and told it was the throne of some well-descended lady. how exactly parallel is this with european practice, when princesses were suffered to penetrate the strictest cloister, and women could rule over a land in which they were denied the control of their own children. but the tapu is more often the instrument of wise and needful restrictions. we have seen it as the organ of paternal government. it serves besides to enforce, in the rare case of some one wishing to enforce them, rights of private property. thus a man, weary of the coming and going of marquesan visitors, tapus his door; and to this day you may see the palm-branch signal, even as our greatgrandfathers saw the peeled wand before a highland inn. or take another case. anaho is known as 'the country without popoi.' the word popoi serves in different islands to indicate the main food of the people: thus, in hawaii, it implies a preparation of taro; in the marquesas, of breadfruit. and a marquesan does not readily conceive life possible without his favourite diet. a few years ago a drought killed the breadfruit trees and the bananas in the district of anaho; and from this calamity, and the open-handed customs of the island, a singular state of things arose. wellwatered hatiheu had escaped the drought; every householder of anaho accordingly crossed the pass, chose some one in hatiheu, 'gave him his name' an onerous gift, but one not to be rejected and from this improvised relative proceeded to draw his supplies, for all the world as though he had paid for them. hence a continued traffic on the road. some stalwart fellow, in a loin-cloth, and glistening with sweat, may be seen at all hours of the day, a stick across his bare shoulders, tripping nervously under a double burthen of green fruits. and on the far side of the gap a dozen stone posts on the wayside in the shadow of a grove mark the breathing-space of the popoi-carriers. a little back from the beach, and not half a mile from anaho, i was the more amazed to find a cluster of well-doing breadfruits heavy with their harvest. 'why do you not take these?' i asked. 'tapu,' said hoka; and i thought to myself (after the manner of dull travellers) what children and fools these people were to toil over the mountain and despoil innocent neighbours when the staff of life was thus growing at their door. i was the more in error. in the general destruction these surviving trees were enough only for the family of the proprietor, and by the simple expedient of declaring a tapu he enforced his right. the sanction of the tapu is superstitious; and the punishment of infraction either a wasting or a deadly sickness. a slow disease follows on the eating of tapu fish, and can only be cured with the bones of the same fish burned with the due mysteries. the cocoanut and breadfruit tapu works more swiftly. suppose you have eaten tapu fruit at the evening meal, at night your sleep will be uneasy; in the morning, swelling and a dark discoloration will have attacked your neck, whence they spread upward to the face; and in two days, unless the cure be interjected, you must die. this cure is prepared from the rubbed leaves of the tree from which the patient stole; so that he cannot be saved without confessing to the tahuku the person whom he wronged. in the experience of my informant, almost no tapu had been put in use, except the two described: he had thus no opportunity to learn the nature and operation of the others; and, as the art of making them was jealously guarded amongst the old men, he believed the mystery would soon die out. i should add that he was no marquesan, but a chinaman, a resident in the group from boyhood, and a reverent believer in the spells which he described. white men, amongst whom ah fu included himself, were exempt; but he had a tale of a tahitian woman, who had come to the marquesas, eaten tapu fish, and, although uninformed of her offence and danger, had been afflicted and cured exactly like a native. doubtless the belief is strong; doubtless, with this weakly and fanciful race, it is in many cases strong enough to kill; it should be strong indeed in those who tapu their trees secretly, so that they may detect a depredator by his sickness. or, perhaps, we should understand the idea of the hidden tapu otherwise, as a politic device to spread uneasiness and extort confessions: so that, when a man is ailing, he shall ransack his brain for any possible offence, and send at once for any proprietor whose rights he has invaded. 'had you hidden a tapu?' we may conceive him asking; and i cannot imagine the proprietor gainsaying it; and this is perhaps the strangest feature of the system that it should be regarded from without with such a mental and implicit awe, and, when examined from within, should present so many apparent evidences of design. we read in dr. campbell's poenamo of a new zealand girl, who was foolishly told that she had eaten a tapu yam, and who instantly sickened, and died in the two days of simple terror. the period is the same as in the marquesas; doubtless the symptoms were so too. how singular to consider that a superstition of such sway is possibly a manufactured article; and that, even if it were not originally invented, its details have plainly been arranged by the authorities of some polynesian scotland yard. fitly enough, the belief is to-day and was probably always far from universal. hell at home is a strong deterrent with some; a passing thought with others; with others, again, a theme of public mockery, not always well assured; and so in the marquesas with the tapu. mr. regler has seen the two extremes of scepticism and implicit fear. in the tapu grove he found one fellow stealing breadfruit, cheerful and impudent as a street arab; and it was only on a menace of exposure that he showed himself the least discountenanced. the other case was opposed in every point. mr. regler asked a native to accompany him upon a voyage; the man went gladly enough, but suddenly perceiving a dead tapu fish in the bottom of the boat, leaped back with a scream; nor could the promise of a dollar prevail upon him to advance. the marquesan, it will be observed, adheres to the old idea of the local circumscription of beliefs and duties. not only are the whites exempt from consequences; but their transgressions seem to be viewed without horror. it was mr. regler who had killed the fish; yet the devout native was not shocked at mr. regler only refused to join him in his boat. a white is a white: the servant (so to speak) of other and more liberal gods; and not to be blamed if he profit by his liberty. the jews were perhaps the first to interrupt this ancient comity of faiths; and the jewish virus is still strong in christianity. all the world must respect our tapus, or we gnash our teeth. chapter vii hatiheu the bays of anaho and hatiheu are divided at their roots by the knife-edge of a single hill the pass so often mentioned; but this isthmus expands to the seaward in a considerable peninsula: very bare and grassy; haunted by sheep and, at night and morning, by the piercing cries of the shepherds; wandered over by a few wild goats; and on its sea-front indented with long, clamorous caves, and faced with cliffs of the colour and ruinous outline of an old peat-stack. in one of these echoing and sunless gullies we saw, clustered like sea-birds on a splashing ledge, shrill as sea-birds in their salutation to the passing boat, a group of fisherwomen, stripped to their gaudy under-clothes. (the clash of the surf and the thin female voices echo in my memory.) we had that day a native crew and steersman, kauanui; it was our first experience of polynesian seamanship, which consists in hugging every point of land. there is no thought in this of saving time, for they will pull a long way in to skirt a point that is embayed. it seems that, as they can never get their houses near enough the surf upon the one side, so they can never get their boats near enough upon the other. the practice in bold water is not so dangerous as it looks the reflex from the rocks sending the boat off. near beaches with a heavy run of sea, i continue to think it very hazardous, and find the composure of the natives annoying to behold. we took unmingled pleasure, on the way out, to see so near at hand the beach and the wonderful colours of the surf. on the way back, when the sea had risen and was running strong against us, the fineness of the steersman's aim grew more embarrassing. as we came abreast of the sea-front, where the surf broke highest, kauanui embraced the occasion to light his pipe, which then made the circuit of the boat each man taking a whiff or two, and, ere he passed it on, filling his lungs and cheeks with smoke. their faces were all puffed out like apples as we came abreast of the cliff foot, and the bursting surge fell back into the boat in showers. at the next point 'cocanetti' was the word, and the stroke borrowed my knife, and desisted from his labours to open nuts. these untimely indulgences may be compared to the tot of grog served out before a ship goes into action. my purpose in this visit led me first to the boys' school, for hatiheu is the university of the north islands. the hum of the lesson came out to meet us. close by the door, where the draught blew coolest, sat the lay brother; around him, in a packed halfcircle, some sixty high-coloured faces set with staring eyes; and in the background of the barn-like room benches were to be seen, and blackboards with sums on them in chalk. the brother rose to greet us, sensibly humble. thirty years he had been there, he said, and fingered his white locks as a bashful child pulls out his pinafore. 'et point de resultats, monsieur, presque pas de resultats.' he pointed to the scholars: 'you see, sir, all the youth of nuka-hiva and ua-pu. between the ages of six and fifteen this is all that remains; and it is but a few years since we had a hundred and twenty from nuka-hiva alone. oui, monsieur, cela se deperit.' prayers, and reading and writing, prayers again and arithmetic, and more prayers to conclude: such appeared to be the dreary nature of the course. for arithmetic all island people have a natural taste. in hawaii they make good progress in mathematics. in one of the villages on majuro, and generally in the marshall group, the whole population sit about the trader when he is weighing copra, and each on his own slate takes down the figures and computes the total. the trader, finding them so apt, introduced fractions, for which they had been taught no rule. at first they were quite gravelled but ultimately, by sheer hard thinking, reasoned out the result, and came one after another to assure the trader he was right. not many people in europe could have done the like. the course at hatiheu is therefore less dispiriting to polynesians than a stranger might have guessed; and yet how bald it is at best! i asked the brother if he did not tell them stories, and he stared at me; if he did not teach them history, and he said, 'o yes, they had a little scripture history from the new testament'; and repeated his lamentations over the lack of results. i had not the heart to put more questions; i could but say it must be very discouraging, and resist the impulse to add that it seemed also very natural. he looked up 'my days are far spent,' he said; 'heaven awaits me.' may that heaven forgive me, but i was angry with the old man and his simple consolation. for think of his opportunity! the youth, from six to fifteen, are taken from their homes by government, centralised at hatiheu, where they are supported by a weekly tax of food; and, with the exception of one month in every year, surrendered wholly to the direction of the priests. since the escapade already mentioned the holiday occurs at a different period for the girls and for the boys; so that a marquesan brother and sister meet again, after their education is complete, a pair of strangers. it is a harsh law, and highly unpopular; but what a power it places in the hands of the instructors, and how languidly and dully is that power employed by the mission! too much concern to make the natives pious, a design in which they all confess defeat, is, i suppose, the explanation of their miserable system. but they might see in the girls' school at tai-o-hae, under the brisk, housewifely sisters, a different picture of efficiency, and a scene of neatness, airiness, and spirited and mirthful occupation that should shame them into cheerier methods. the sisters themselves lament their failure. they complain the annual holiday undoes the whole year's work; they complain particularly of the heartless indifference of the girls. out of so many pretty and apparently affectionate pupils whom they have taught and reared, only two have ever returned to pay a visit of remembrance to their teachers. these, indeed, come regularly, but the rest, so soon as their school-days are over, disappear into the woods like captive insects. it is hard to imagine anything more discouraging; and yet i do not believe these ladies need despair. for a certain interval they keep the girls alive and innocently busy; and if it be at all possible to save the race, this would be the means. no such praise can be given to the boys' school at hatiheu. the day is numbered already for them all; alike for the teacher and the scholars death is girt; he is afoot upon the march; and in the frequent interval they sit and yawn. but in life there seems a thread of purpose through the least significant; the drowsiest endeavour is not lost, and even the school at hatiheu may be more useful than it seems. hatiheu is a place of some pretensions. the end of the bay towards anaho may be called the civil compound, for it boasts the house of kooamua, and close on the beach, under a great tree, that of the gendarme, m. armand aussel, with his garden, his pictures, his books, and his excellent table, to which strangers are made welcome. no more singular contrast is possible than between the gendarmerie and the priesthood, who are besides in smouldering opposition and full of mutual complaints. a priest's kitchen in the eastern islands is a depressing spot to see; and many, or most of them, make no attempt to keep a garden, sparsely subsisting on their rations. but you will never dine with a gendarme without smacking your lips; and m. aussel's home-made sausage and the salad from his garden are unforgotten delicacies. pierre loti may like to know that he is m. aussel's favourite author, and that his books are read in the fit scenery of hatiheu bay. the other end is all religious. it is here that an overhanging and tip-tilted horn, a good sea-mark for hatiheu, bursts naked from the verdure of the climbing forest, and breaks down shoreward in steep taluses and cliffs. from the edge of one of the highest, perhaps seven hundred or a thousand feet above the beach, a virgin looks insignificantly down, like a poor lost doll, forgotten there by a giant child. this laborious symbol of the catholics is always strange to protestants; we conceive with wonder that men should think it worth while to toil so many days, and clamber so much about the face of precipices, for an end that makes us smile; and yet i believe it was the wise bishop dordillon who chose the place, and i know that those who had a hand in the enterprise look back with pride upon its vanquished dangers. the boys' school is a recent importation; it was at first in tai-o-hae, beside the girls'; and it was only of late, after their joint escapade, that the width of the island was interposed between the sexes. but hatiheu must have been a place of missionary importance from before. about midway of the beach no less than three churches stand grouped in a patch of bananas, intermingled with some pineapples. two are of wood: the original church, now in disuse; and a second that, for some mysterious reason, has never been used. the new church is of stone, with twin towers, walls flangeing into buttresses, and sculptured front. the design itself is good, simple, and shapely; but the character is all in the detail, where the architect has bloomed into the sculptor. it is impossible to tell in words of the angels (although they are more like winged archbishops) that stand guard upon the door, of the cherubs in the corners, of the scapegoat gargoyles, or the quaint and spirited relief, where st. michael (the artist's patron) makes short work of a protesting lucifer. we were never weary of viewing the imagery, so innocent, sometimes so funny, and yet in the best sense in the sense of inventive gusto and expression so artistic. i know not whether it was more strange to find a building of such merit in a corner of a barbarous isle, or to see a building so antique still bright with novelty. the architect, a french lay brother, still alive and well, and meditating fresh foundations, must have surely drawn his descent from a master-builder in the age of the cathedrals; and it was in looking on the church of hatiheu that i seemed to perceive the secret charm of mediaeval sculpture; that combination of the childish courage of the amateur, attempting all things, like the schoolboy on his slate, with the manly perseverance of the artist who does not know when he is conquered. i had always afterwards a strong wish to meet the architect, brother michel; and one day, when i was talking with the resident in tai-o-hae (the chief port of the island), there were shown in to us an old, worn, purblind, ascetic-looking priest, and a lay brother, a type of all that is most sound in france, with a broad, clever, honest, humorous countenance, an eye very large and bright, and a strong and healthy body inclining to obesity. but that his blouse was black and his face shaven clean, you might pick such a man to-day, toiling cheerfully in his own patch of vines, from half a dozen provinces of france; and yet he had always for me a haunting resemblance to an old kind friend of my boyhood, whom i name in case any of my readers should share with me that memory dr. paul, of the west kirk. almost at the first word i was sure it was my architect, and in a moment we were deep in a discussion of hatiheu church. brother michel spoke always of his labours with a twinkle of humour, underlying which it was possible to spy a serious pride, and the change from one to another was often very human and diverting. 'et vos gargouilles moyen-age,' cried i; 'comme elles sont originates!' 'n'est-ce pas? elles sont bien droles!' he said, smiling broadly; and the next moment, with a sudden gravity: 'cependant il y en a une qui a une patte de casse; il faut que je voie cela.' i asked if he had any model a point we much discussed. 'non,' said he simply; 'c'est une eglise ideale.' the relievo was his favourite performance, and very justly so. the angels at the door, he owned, he would like to destroy and replace. 'ils n'ont pas de vie, ils manquent de vie. vous devriez voir mon eglise a la dominique; j'ai la une vierge qui est vraiment gentille.' 'ah,' i cried, 'they told me you had said you would never build another church, and i wrote in my journal i could not believe it.' 'oui, j'aimerais bien en fairs une autre,' he confessed, and smiled at the confession. an artist will understand how much i was attracted by this conversation. there is no bond so near as a community in that unaffected interest and slightly shame-faced pride which mark the intelligent man enamoured of an art. he sees the limitations of his aim, the defects of his practice; he smiles to be so employed upon the shores of death, yet sees in his own devotion something worthy. artists, if they had the same sense of humour with the augurs, would smile like them on meeting, but the smile would not be scornful. i had occasion to see much of this excellent man. he sailed with us from tai-o-hae to hiva-oa, a dead beat of ninety miles against a heavy sea. it was what is called a good passage, and a feather in the casco's cap; but among the most miserable forty hours that any one of us had ever passed. we were swung and tossed together all that time like shot in a stage thunder-box. the mate was thrown down and had his head cut open; the captain was sick on deck; the cook sick in the galley. of all our party only two sat down to dinner. i was one. i own that i felt wretchedly; and i can only say of the other, who professed to feel quite well, that she fled at an early moment from the table. it was in these circumstances that we skirted the windward shore of that indescribable island of ua-pu; viewing with dizzy eyes the coves, the capes, the breakers, the climbing forests, and the inaccessible stone needles that surmount the mountains. the place persists, in a dark corner of our memories, like a piece of the scenery of nightmares. the end of this distressful passage, where we were to land our passengers, was in a similar vein of roughness. the surf ran high on the beach at taahauku; the boat broached-to and capsized; and all hands were submerged. only the brother himself, who was well used to the experience, skipped ashore, by some miracle of agility, with scarce a sprinkling. thenceforward, during our stay at hiva-oa, he was our cicerone and patron; introducing us, taking us excursions, serving us in every way, and making himself daily more beloved. michel blanc had been a carpenter by trade; had made money and retired, supposing his active days quite over; and it was only when he found idleness dangerous that he placed his capital and acquirements at the service of the mission. he became their carpenter, mason, architect, and engineer; added sculpture to his accomplishments, and was famous for his skill in gardening. he wore an enviable air of having found a port from life's contentions and lying there strongly anchored; went about his business with a jolly simplicity; complained of no lack of results perhaps shyly thinking his own statuary result enough; and was altogether a pattern of the missionary layman. chapter viii the port of entry the port the mart, the civil and religious capital of these rude islands is called tai-o-hae, and lies strung along the beach of a precipitous green bay in nuka-hiva. it was midwinter when we came thither, and the weather was sultry, boisterous, and inconstant. now the wind blew squally from the land down gaps of splintered precipice; now, between the sentinel islets of the entry, it came in gusts from seaward. heavy and dark clouds impended on the summits; the rain roared and ceased; the scuppers of the mountain gushed; and the next day we would see the sides of the amphitheatre bearded with white falls. along the beach the town shows a thin file of houses, mostly white, and all ensconced in the foliage of an avenue of green puraos; a pier gives access from the sea across the belt of breakers; to the eastward there stands, on a projecting bushy hill, the old fort which is now the calaboose, or prison; eastward still, alone in a garden, the residency flies the colours of france. just off calaboose hill, the tiny government schooner rides almost permanently at anchor, marks eight bells in the morning (there or thereabout) with the unfurling of her flag, and salutes the setting sun with the report of a musket. here dwell together, and share the comforts of a club (which may be enumerated as a billiard-board, absinthe, a map of the world on mercator's projection, and one of the most agreeable verandahs in the tropics), a handful of whites of varying nationality, mostly french officials, german and scottish merchant clerks, and the agents of the opium monopoly. there are besides three tavernkeepers, the shrewd scot who runs the cotton gin-mill, two white ladies, and a sprinkling of people 'on the beach' a south sea expression for which there is no exact equivalent. it is a pleasant society, and a hospitable. but one man, who was often to be seen seated on the logs at the pier-head, merits a word for the singularity of his history and appearance. long ago, it seems, he fell in love with a native lady, a high chiefess in ua-pu. she, on being approached, declared she could never marry a man who was untattooed; it looked so naked; whereupon, with some greatness of soul, our hero put himself in the hands of the tahukus, and, with still greater, persevered until the process was complete. he had certainly to bear a great expense, for the tahuku will not work without reward; and certainly exquisite pain. kooamua, high chief as he was, and one of the old school, was only part tattooed; he could not, he told us with lively pantomime, endure the torture to an end. our enamoured countryman was more resolved; he was tattooed from head to foot in the most approved methods of the art; and at last presented himself before his mistress a new man. the fickle fair one could never behold him from that day except with laughter. for my part, i could never see the man without a kind of admiration; of him it might be said, if ever of any, that he had loved not wisely, but too well. the residency stands by itself, calaboose hill screening it from the fringe of town along the further bay. the house is commodious, with wide verandahs; all day it stands open, back and front, and the trade blows copiously over its bare floors. on a week-day the garden offers a scene of most untropical animation, half a dozen convicts toiling there cheerfully with spade and barrow, and touching hats and smiling to the visitor like old attached family servants. on sunday these are gone, and nothing to be seen but dogs of all ranks and sizes peacefully slumbering in the shady grounds; for the dogs of tai-o-hae are very courtly-minded, and make the seat of government their promenade and place of siesta. in front and beyond, a strip of green down loses itself in a low wood of many species of acacia; and deep in the wood a ruinous wall encloses the cemetery of the europeans. english and scottish sleep there, and scandinavians, and french maitres de manoeuvres and maitres ouvriers: mingling alien dust. back in the woods, perhaps, the blackbird, or (as they call him there) the island nightingale, will be singing home strains; and the ceaseless requiem of the surf hangs on the ear. i have never seen a restingplace more quiet; but it was a long thought how far these sleepers had all travelled, and from what diverse homes they had set forth, to lie here in the end together. on the summit of its promontory hill, the calaboose stands all day with doors and window-shutters open to the trade. on my first visit a dog was the only guardian visible. he, indeed, rose with an attitude so menacing that i was glad to lay hands on an old barrel-hoop; and i think the weapon must have been familiar, for the champion instantly retreated, and as i wandered round the court and through the building, i could see him, with a couple of companions, humbly dodging me about the corners. the prisoners' dormitory was a spacious, airy room, devoid of any furniture; its whitewashed walls covered with inscriptions in marquesan and rude drawings: one of the pier, not badly done; one of a murder; several of french soldiers in uniform. there was one legend in french: 'je n'est' (sic) 'pas le sou.' from this noontide quietude it must not be supposed the prison was untenanted; the calaboose at tai-o-hae does a good business. but some of its occupants were gardening at the residency, and the rest were probably at work upon the streets, as free as our scavengers at home, although not so industrious. on the approach of evening they would be called in like children from play; and the harbour-master (who is also the jailer) would go through the form of locking them up until six the next morning. should a prisoner have any call in town, whether of pleasure or affairs, he has but to unhook the window-shutters; and if he is back again, and the shutter decently replaced, by the hour of call on the morrow, he may have met the harbour-master in the avenue, and there will be no complaint, far less any punishment. but this is not all. the charming french resident, m. delaruelle, carried me one day to the calaboose on an official visit. in the green court, a very ragged gentleman, his legs deformed with the island elephantiasis, saluted us smiling. 'one of our political prisoners an insurgent from raiatea,' said the resident; and then to the jailer: 'i thought i had ordered him a new pair of trousers.' meanwhile no other convict was to be seen 'eh bien,' said the resident, 'ou sont vos prisonniers?' 'monsieur le resident,' replied the jailer, saluting with soldierly formality, 'comme c'est jour de fete, je les ai laisse aller a la chasse.' they were all upon the mountains hunting goats! presently we came to the quarters of the women, likewise deserted 'ou sont vos bonnes femmes?' asked the resident; and the jailer cheerfully responded: 'je crois, monsieur le resident, qu'elles sont allees quelquepart faire une visite.' it had been the design of m. delaruelle, who was much in love with the whimsicalities of his small realm, to elicit something comical; but not even he expected anything so perfect as the last. to complete the picture of convict life in tai-o-hae, it remains to be added that these criminals draw a salary as regularly as the president of the republic. ten sous a day is their hire. thus they have money, food, shelter, clothing, and, i was about to write, their liberty. the french are certainly a good-natured people, and make easy masters. they are besides inclined to view the marquesans with an eye of humorous indulgence. 'they are dying, poor devils!' said m. delaruelle: 'the main thing is to let them die in peace.' and it was not only well said, but i believe expressed the general thought. yet there is another element to be considered; for these convicts are not merely useful, they are almost essential to the french existence. with a people incurably idle, dispirited by what can only be called endemic pestilence, and inflamed with illfeeling against their new masters, crime and convict labour are a godsend to the government. theft is practically the sole crime. originally petty pilferers, the men of tai-o-hae now begin to force locks and attack strongboxes. hundreds of dollars have been taken at a time; though, with that redeeming moderation so common in polynesian theft, the marquesan burglar will always take a part and leave a part, sharing (so to speak) with the proprietor. if it be chilian coin the island currency he will escape; if the sum is in gold, french silver, or bank-notes, the police wait until the money begins to come in circulation, and then easily pick out their man. and now comes the shameful part. in plain english, the prisoner is tortured until he confesses and (if that be possible) restores the money. to keep him alone, day and night, in the black hole, is to inflict on the marquesan torture inexpressible. even his robberies are carried on in the plain daylight, under the open sky, with the stimulus of enterprise, and the countenance of an accomplice; his terror of the dark is still insurmountable; conceive, then, what he endures in his solitary dungeon; conceive how he longs to confess, become a full-fledged convict, and be allowed to sleep beside his comrades. while we were in tai-o-hae a thief was under prevention. he had entered a house about eight in the morning, forced a trunk, and stolen eleven hundred francs; and now, under the horrors of darkness, solitude, and a bedevilled cannibal imagination, he was reluctantly confessing and giving up his spoil. from one cache, which he had already pointed out, three hundred francs had been recovered, and it was expected that he would presently disgorge the rest. this would be ugly enough if it were all; but i am bound to say, because it is a matter the french should set at rest, that worse is continually hinted. i heard that one man was kept six days with his arms bound backward round a barrel; and it is the universal report that every gendarme in the south seas is equipped with something in the nature of a thumbscrew. i do not know this. i never had the face to ask any of the gendarmes pleasant, intelligent, and kindly fellows with whom i have been intimate, and whose hospitality i have enjoyed; and perhaps the tale reposes (as i hope it does) on a misconstruction of that ingenious cat'scradle with which the french agent of police so readily secures a prisoner. but whether physical or moral, torture is certainly employed; and by a barbarous injustice, the state of accusation (in which a man may very well be innocently placed) is positively painful; the state of conviction (in which all are supposed guilty) is comparatively free, and positively pleasant. perhaps worse still, not only the accused, but sometimes his wife, his mistress, or his friend, is subjected to the same hardships. i was admiring, in the tapu system, the ingenuity of native methods of detection; there is not much to admire in those of the french, and to lock up a timid child in a dark room, and, if he proved obstinate, lock up his sister in the next, is neither novel nor humane. the main occasion of these thefts is the new vice of opium-eating. 'here nobody ever works, and all eat opium,' said a gendarme; and ah fu knew a woman who ate a dollar's worth in a day. the successful thief will give a handful of money to each of his friends, a dress to a woman, pass an evening in one of the taverns of tai-o-hae, during which he treats all comers, produce a big lump of opium, and retire to the bush to eat and sleep it off. a trader, who did not sell opium, confessed to me that he was at his wit's end. 'i do not sell it, but others do,' said he. 'the natives only work to buy it; if they walk over to me to sell their cotton, they have just to walk over to some one else to buy their opium with my money. and why should they be at the bother of two walks? there is no use talking,' he added 'opium is the currency of this country.' the man under prevention during my stay at tai-o-hae lost patience while the chinese opium-seller was being examined in his presence. 'of course he sold me opium!' he broke out; 'all the chinese here sell opium. it was only to buy opium that i stole; it is only to buy opium that anybody steals. and what you ought to do is to let no opium come here, and no chinamen.' this is precisely what is done in samoa by a native government; but the french have bound their own hands, and for forty thousand francs sold native subjects to crime and death. this horrid traffic may be said to have sprung up by accident. it was captain hart who had the misfortune to be the means of beginning it, at a time when his plantations flourished in the marquesas, and he found a difficulty in keeping chinese coolies. to-day the plantations are practically deserted and the chinese gone; but in the meanwhile the natives have learned the vice, the patent brings in a round sum, and the needy government at papeete shut their eyes and open their pockets. of course, the patentee is supposed to sell to chinamen alone; equally of course, no one could afford to pay forty thousand francs for the privilege of supplying a scattered handful of chinese; and every one knows the truth, and all are ashamed of it. french officials shake their heads when opium is mentioned; and the agents of the farmer blush for their employment. those that live in glass houses should not throw stones; as a subject of the british crown, i am an unwilling shareholder in the largest opium business under heaven. but the british case is highly complicated; it implies the livelihood of millions; and must be reformed, when it can be reformed at all, with prudence. this french business, on the other hand, is a nostrum and a mere excrescence. no native industry was to be encouraged: the poison is solemnly imported. no native habit was to be considered: the vice has been gratuitously introduced. and no creature profits, save the government at papeete the not very enviable gentlemen who pay them, and the chinese underlings who do the dirty work. chapter ix the house of temoana the history of the marquesas is, of late years, much confused by the coming and going of the french. at least twice they have seized the archipelago, at least once deserted it; and in the meanwhile the natives pursued almost without interruption their desultory cannibal wars. through these events and changing dynasties, a single considerable figure may be seen to move: that of the high chief, a king, temoana. odds and ends of his history came to my ears: how he was at first a convert to the protestant mission; how he was kidnapped or exiled from his native land, served as cook aboard a whaler, and was shown, for small charge, in english seaports; how he returned at last to the marquesas, fell under the strong and benign influence of the late bishop, extended his influence in the group, was for a while joint ruler with the prelate, and died at last the chief supporter of catholicism and the french. his widow remains in receipt of two pounds a month from the french government. queen she is usually called, but in the official almanac she figures as 'madame vaekehu, grande chefesse.' his son (natural or adoptive, i know not which), stanislao moanatini, chief of akaui, serves in tai-o-hae as a kind of minister of public works; and the daughter of stanislao is high chiefess of the southern island of tauata. these, then, are the greatest folk of the archipelago; we thought them also the most estimable. this is the rule in polynesia, with few exceptions; the higher the family, the better the man better in sense, better in manners, and usually taller and stronger in body. a stranger advances blindfold. he scrapes acquaintance as he can. save the tattoo in the marquesas, nothing indicates the difference of rank; and yet almost invariably we found, after we had made them, that our friends were persons of station. i have said 'usually taller and stronger.' i might have been more absolute, over all polynesia, and a part of micronesia, the rule holds good; the great ones of the isle, and even of the village, are greater of bone and muscle, and often heavier of flesh, than any commoner. the usual explanation that the high-born child is more industriously shampooed, is probably the true one. in new caledonia, at least, where the difference does not exist, has never been remarked, the practice of shampooing seems to be itself unknown. doctors would be well employed in a study of the point. vaekehu lives at the other end of the town from the residency, beyond the buildings of the mission. her house is on the european plan: a table in the midst of the chief room; photographs and religious pictures on the wall. it commands to either hand a charming vista: through the front door, a peep of green lawn, scurrying pigs, the pendent fans of the coco-palm and splendour of the bursting surf: through the back, mounting forest glades and coronals of precipice. here, in the strong thorough-draught, her majesty received us in a simple gown of print, and with no mark of royalty but the exquisite finish of her tattooed mittens, the elaboration of her manners, and the gentle falsetto in which all the highly refined among marquesan ladies (and vaekehu above all others) delight to sing their language. an adopted daughter interpreted, while we gave the news, and rehearsed by name our friends of anaho. as we talked, we could see, through the landward door, another lady of the household at her toilet under the green trees; who presently, when her hair was arranged, and her hat wreathed with flowers, appeared upon the back verandah with gracious salutations. vaekehu is very deaf; 'merci' is her only word of french; and i do not know that she seemed clever. an exquisite, kind refinement, with a shade of quietism, gathered perhaps from the nuns, was what chiefly struck us. or rather, upon that first occasion, we were conscious of a sense as of district-visiting on our part, and reduced evangelical gentility on the part of our hostess. the other impression followed after she was more at ease, and came with stanislao and his little girl to dine on board the casco. she had dressed for the occasion: wore white, which very well became her strong brown face; and sat among us, eating or smoking her cigarette, quite cut off from all society, or only now and then included through the intermediary of her son. it was a position that might have been ridiculous, and she made it ornamental; making believe to hear and to be entertained; her face, whenever she met our eyes, lighting with the smile of good society; her contributions to the talk, when she made any, and that was seldom, always complimentary and pleasing. no attention was paid to the child, for instance, but what she remarked and thanked us for. her parting with each, when she came to leave, was gracious and pretty, as had been every step of her behaviour. when mrs. stevenson held out her hand to say good-bye, vaekehu took it, held it, and a moment smiled upon her; dropped it, and then, as upon a kindly after-thought, and with a sort of warmth of condescension, held out both hands and kissed my wife upon both cheeks. given the same relation of years and of rank, the thing would have been so done on the boards of the comedie francaise; just so might madame brohan have warmed and condescended to madame broisat in the marquis de villemer. it was my part to accompany our guests ashore: when i kissed the little girl good-bye at the pier steps, vaekehu gave a cry of gratification, reached down her hand into the boat, took mine, and pressed it with that flattering softness which seems the coquetry of the old lady in every quarter of the earth. the next moment she had taken stanislao's arm, and they moved off along the pier in the moonlight, leaving me bewildered. this was a queen of cannibals; she was tattooed from hand to foot, and perhaps the greatest masterpiece of that art now extant, so that a while ago, before she was grown prim, her leg was one of the sights of tai-ohae; she had been passed from chief to chief; she had been fought for and taken in war; perhaps, being so great a lady, she had sat on the high place, and throned it there, alone of her sex, while the drums were going twenty strong and the priests carried up the blood-stained baskets of long-pig. and now behold her, out of that past of violence and sickening feasts, step forth, in her age, a quiet, smooth, elaborate old lady, such as you might find at home (mittened also, but not often so well-mannered) in a score of country houses. only vaekehu's mittens were of dye, not of silk; and they had been paid for, not in money, but the cooked flesh of men. it came in my mind with a clap, what she could think of it herself, and whether at heart, perhaps, she might not regret and aspire after the barbarous and stirring past. but when i asked stanislao 'ah!' said he, 'she is content; she is religious, she passes all her days with the sisters.' stanislao (stanislaos, with the final consonant evaded after the polynesian habit) was sent by bishop dordillon to south america, and there educated by the fathers. his french is fluent, his talk sensible and spirited, and in his capacity of ganger-in-chief, he is of excellent service to the french. with the prestige of his name and family, and with the stick when needful, he keeps the natives working and the roads passable. without stanislao and the convicts, i am in doubt what would become of the present regimen in nuka-hiva; whether the highways might not be suffered to close up, the pier to wash away, and the residency to fall piecemeal about the ears of impotent officials. and yet though the hereditary favourer, and one of the chief props of french authority, he has always an eye upon the past. he showed me where the old public place had stood, still to be traced by random piles of stone; told me how great and fine it was, and surrounded on all sides by populous houses, whence, at the beating of the drums, the folk crowded to make holiday. the drum-beat of the polynesian has a strange and gloomy stimulation for the nerves of all. white persons feel it at these precipitate sounds their hearts beat faster; and, according to old residents, its effect on the natives was extreme. bishop dordillon might entreat; temoana himself command and threaten; at the note of the drum wild instincts triumphed. and now it might beat upon these ruins, and who should assemble? the houses are down, the people dead, their lineage extinct; and the sweepings and fugitives of distant bays and islands encamp upon their graves. the decline of the dance stanislao especially laments. 'chaque pays a ses coutumes,' said he; but in the report of any gendarme, perhaps corruptly eager to increase the number of delits and the instruments of his own power, custom after custom is placed on the expurgatorial index. 'tenez, une danse qui n'est pas permise,' said stanislao: 'je ne sais pas pourquoi, elle est tres jolie, elle va comme ca,' and sticking his umbrella upright in the road, he sketched the steps and gestures. all his criticisms of the present, all his regrets for the past, struck me as temperate and sensible. the short term of office of the resident he thought the chief defect of the administration; that officer having scarce begun to be efficient ere he was recalled. i thought i gathered, too, that he regarded with some fear the coming change from a naval to a civil governor. i am sure at least that i regard it so myself; for the civil servants of france have never appeared to any foreigner as at all the flower of their country, while her naval officers may challenge competition with the world. in all his talk, stanislao was particular to speak of his own country as a land of savages; and when he stated an opinion of his own, it was with some apologetic preface, alleging that he was 'a savage who had travelled.' there was a deal, in this elaborate modesty, of honest pride. yet there was something in the precaution that saddened me; and i could not but fear he was only forestalling a taunt that he had heard too often. i recall with interest two interviews with stanislao. the first was a certain afternoon of tropic rain, which we passed together in the verandah of the club; talking at times with heightened voices as the showers redoubled overhead, passing at times into the billiard-room, to consult, in the dim, cloudy daylight, that map of the world which forms its chief adornment. he was naturally ignorant of english history, so that i had much of news to communicate. the story of gordon i told him in full, and many episodes of the indian mutiny, lucknow, the second battle of cawnpore, the relief of arrah, the death of poor spottis-woode, and sir hugh rose's hotspur, midland campaign. he was intent to hear; his brown face, strongly marked with small-pox, kindled and changed with each vicissitude. his eyes glowed with the reflected light of battle; his questions were many and intelligent, and it was chiefly these that sent us so often to the map. but it is of our parting that i keep the strongest sense. we were to sail on the morrow, and the night had fallen, dark, gusty, and rainy, when we stumbled up the hill to bid farewell to stanislao. he had already loaded us with gifts; but more were waiting. we sat about the table over cigars and green cocoa-nuts; claps of wind blew through the house and extinguished the lamp, which was always instantly relighted with a single match; and these recurrent intervals of darkness were felt as a relief. for there was something painful and embarrassing in the kindness of that separation. 'ah, vous devriez rester ici, mon cher ami!' cried stanislao. 'vous etes les gens qu'il faut pour les kanaques; vous etes doux, vous et votre famille; vous seriez obeis dans toutes les iles.' we had been civil; not always that, my conscience told me, and never anything beyond; and all this to-do is a measure, not of our considerateness, but of the want of it in others. the rest of the evening, on to vaekehu's and back as far as to the pier, stanislao walked with my arm and sheltered me with his umbrella; and after the boat had put off, we could still distinguish, in the murky darkness, his gestures of farewell. his words, if there were any, were drowned by the rain and the loud surf. i have mentioned presents, a vexed question in the south seas; and one which well illustrates the common, ignorant habit of regarding races in a lump. in many quarters the polynesian gives only to receive. i have visited islands where the population mobbed me for all the world like dogs after the waggon of cat's-meat; and where the frequent proposition, 'you my pleni (friend),' or (with more of pathos) 'you all 'e same my father,' must be received with hearty laughter and a shout. and perhaps everywhere, among the greedy and rapacious, a gift is regarded as a sprat to catch a whale. it is the habit to give gifts and to receive returns, and such characters, complying with the custom, will look to it nearly that they do not lose. but for persons of a different stamp the statement must be reversed. the shabby polynesian is anxious till he has received the return gift; the generous is uneasy until he has made it. the first is disappointed if you have not given more than he; the second is miserable if he thinks he has given less than you. this is my experience; if it clash with that of others, i pity their fortune, and praise mine: the circumstances cannot change what i have seen, nor lessen what i have received. and indeed i find that those who oppose me often argue from a ground of singular presumptions; comparing polynesians with an ideal person, compact of generosity and gratitude, whom i never had the pleasure of encountering; and forgetting that what is almost poverty to us is wealth almost unthinkable to them. i will give one instance: i chanced to speak with consideration of these gifts of stanislao's with a certain clever man, a great hater and contemner of kanakas. 'well! what were they?' he cried. 'a pack of old men's beards. trash!' and the same gentleman, some half an hour later, being upon a different train of thought, dwelt at length on the esteem in which the marquesans held that sort of property, how they preferred it to all others except land, and what fancy prices it would fetch. using his own figures, i computed that, in this commodity alone, the gifts of vaekehu and stanislao represented between two and three hundred dollars; and the queen's official salary is of two hundred and forty in the year. but generosity on the one hand, and conspicuous meanness on the other, are in the south seas, as at home, the exception. it is neither with any hope of gain, nor with any lively wish to please, that the ordinary polynesian chooses and presents his gifts. a plain social duty lies before him, which he performs correctly, but without the least enthusiasm. and we shall best understand his attitude of mind, if we examine our own to the cognate absurdity of marriage presents. there we give without any special thought of a return; yet if the circumstance arise, and the return be withheld, we shall judge ourselves insulted. we give them usually without affection, and almost never with a genuine desire to please; and our gift is rather a mark of our own status than a measure of our love to the recipients. so in a great measure and with the common run of the polynesians; their gifts are formal; they imply no more than social recognition; and they are made and reciprocated, as we pay and return our morning visits. and the practice of marking and measuring events and sentiments by presents is universal in the island world. a gift plays with them the part of stamp and seal; and has entered profoundly into the mind of islanders. peace and war, marriage, adoption and naturalisation, are celebrated or declared by the acceptance or the refusal of gifts; and it is as natural for the islander to bring a gift as for us to carry a cardcase. chapter x a portrait and a story i have had occasion several times to name the late bishop, father dordillon, 'monseigneur,' as he is still almost universally called, vicar-apostolic of the marquesas and bishop of cambysopolis in partibus. everywhere in the islands, among all classes and races, this fine, old, kindly, cheerful fellow is remembered with affection and respect. his influence with the natives was paramount. they reckoned him the highest of men higher than an admiral; brought him their money to keep; took his advice upon their purchases; nor would they plant trees upon their own land till they had the approval of the father of the islands. during the time of the french exodus he singly represented europe, living in the residency, and ruling by the hand of temoana. the first roads were made under his auspices and by his persuasion. the old road between hatiheu and anaho was got under way from either side on the ground that it would be pleasant for an evening promenade, and brought to completion by working on the rivalry of the two villages. the priest would boast in hatiheu of the progress made in anaho, and he would tell the folk of anaho, 'if you don't take care, your neighbours will be over the hill before you are at the top.' it could not be so done to-day; it could then; death, opium, and depopulation had not gone so far; and the people of hatiheu, i was told, still vied with each other in fine attire, and used to go out by families, in the cool of the evening, boat-sailing and racing in the bay. there seems some truth at least in the common view, that this joint reign of temoana and the bishop was the last and brief golden age of the marquesas. but the civil power returned, the mission was packed out of the residency at twentyfour hours' notice, new methods supervened, and the golden age (whatever it quite was) came to an end. it is the strongest proof of father dordillon's prestige that it survived, seemingly without loss, this hasty deposition. his method with the natives was extremely mild. among these barbarous children he still played the part of the smiling father; and he was careful to observe, in all indifferent matters, the marquesan etiquette. thus, in the singular system of artificial kinship, the bishop had been adopted by vaekehu as a grandson; miss fisher, of hatiheu, as a daughter. from that day, monseigneur never addressed the young lady except as his mother, and closed his letters with the formalities of a dutiful son. with europeans he could be strict, even to the extent of harshness. he made no distinction against heretics, with whom he was on friendly terms; but the rules of his own church he would see observed; and once at least he had a white man clapped in jail for the desecration of a saint's day. but even this rigour, so intolerable to laymen, so irritating to protestants, could not shake his popularity. we shall best conceive him by examples nearer home; we may all have known some divine of the old school in scotland, a literal sabbatarian, a stickler for the letter of the law, who was yet in private modest, innocent, genial and mirthful. much such a man, it seems, was father dordillon. and his popularity bore a test yet stronger. he had the name, and probably deserved it, of a shrewd man in business and one that made the mission pay. nothing so much stirs up resentment as the inmixture in commerce of religious bodies; but even rival traders spoke well of monseigneur. his character is best portrayed in the story of the days of his decline. a time came when, from the failure of sight, he must desist from his literary labours: his marquesan hymns, grammars, and dictionaries; his scientific papers, lives of saints, and devotional poetry. he cast about for a new interest: pitched on gardening, and was to be seen all day, with spade and water-pot, in his childlike eagerness, actually running between the borders. another step of decay, and he must leave his garden also. instantly a new occupation was devised, and he sat in the mission cutting paper flowers and wreaths. his diocese was not great enough for his activity; the churches of the marquesas were papered with his handiwork, and still he must be making more. 'ah,' said he, smiling, 'when i am dead what a fine time you will have clearing out my trash!' he had been dead about six months; but i was pleased to see some of his trophies still exposed, and looked upon them with a smile: the tribute (if i have read his cheerful character aright) which he would have preferred to any useless tears. disease continued progressively to disable him; he who had clambered so stalwartly over the rude rocks of the marquesas, bringing peace to warfaring clans, was for some time carried in a chair between the mission and the church, and at last confined to bed, impotent with dropsy, and tormented with bed-sores and sciatica. here he lay two months without complaint; and on the 11th january 1888, in the seventy-ninth year of his life, and the thirty-fourth of his labours in the marquesas, passed away. those who have a taste for hearing missions, protestant or catholic, decried, must seek their pleasure elsewhere than in my pages. whether catholic or protestant, with all their gross blots, with all their deficiency of candour, of humour, and of common sense, the missionaries are the best and the most useful whites in the pacific. this is a subject which will follow us throughout; but there is one part of it that may conveniently be treated here. the married and the celibate missionary, each has his particular advantage and defect. the married missionary, taking him at the best, may offer to the native what he is much in want of a higher picture of domestic life; but the woman at his elbow tends to keep him in touch with europe and out of touch with polynesia, and to perpetuate, and even to ingrain, parochial decencies far best forgotten. the mind of the female missionary tends, for instance, to be continually busied about dress. she can be taught with extreme difficulty to think any costume decent but that to which she grew accustomed on clapham common; and to gratify this prejudice, the native is put to useless expense, his mind is tainted with the morbidities of europe, and his health is set in danger. the celibate missionary, on the other hand, and whether at best or worst, falls readily into native ways of life; to which he adds too commonly what is either a mark of celibate man at large, or an inheritance from mediaeval saints i mean slovenly habits and an unclean person. there are, of course, degrees in this; and the sister (of course, and all honour to her) is as fresh as a lady at a ball. for the diet there is nothing to be said it must amaze and shock the polynesian but for the adoption of native habits there is much. 'chaque pays a ses coutumes,' said stanislao; these it is the missionary's delicate task to modify; and the more he can do so from within, and from a native standpoint, the better he will do his work; and here i think the catholics have sometimes the advantage; in the vicariate of dordillon, i am sure they had it. i have heard the bishop blamed for his indulgence to the natives, and above all because he did not rage with sufficient energy against cannibalism. it was a part of his policy to live among the natives like an elder brother; to follow where he could; to lead where it was necessary; never to drive; and to encourage the growth of new habits, instead of violently rooting up the old. and it might be better, in the longrun, if this policy were always followed. it might be supposed that native missionaries would prove more indulgent, but the reverse is found to be the case. the new broom sweeps clean; and the white missionary of to-day is often embarrassed by the bigotry of his native coadjutor. what else should we expect? on some islands, sorcery, polygamy, human sacrifice, and tobacco-smoking have been prohibited, the dress of the native has been modified, and himself warned in strong terms against rival sects of christianity; all by the same man, at the same period of time, and with the like authority. by what criterion is the convert to distinguish the essential from the unessential? he swallows the nostrum whole; there has been no play of mind, no instruction, and, except for some brute utility in the prohibitions, no advance. to call things by their proper names, this is teaching superstition. it is unfortunate to use the word; so few people have read history, and so many have dipped into little atheistic manuals, that the majority will rush to a conclusion, and suppose the labour lost. and far from that: these semi-spontaneous superstitions, varying with the sect of the original evangelist and the customs of the island, are found in practice to be highly fructifying; and in particular those who have learned and who go forth again to teach them offer an example to the world. the best specimen of the christian hero that i ever met was one of these native missionaries. he had saved two lives at the risk of his own; like nathan, he had bearded a tyrant in his hour of blood; when a whole white population fled, he alone stood to his duty; and his behaviour under domestic sorrow with which the public has no concern filled the beholder with sympathy and admiration. a poor little smiling laborious man he looked; and you would have thought he had nothing in him but that of which indeed he had too much facile good-nature. it chances that the only rivals of monseigneur and his mission in the marquesas were certain of these brown-skinned evangelists, natives from hawaii. i know not what they thought of father dordillon: they are the only class i did not question; but i suspect the prelate to have regarded them askance, for he was eminently human. during my stay at tai-o-hae, the time of the yearly holiday came round at the girls' school; and a whole fleet of whale-boats came from ua-pu to take the daughters of that island home. on board of these was kauwealoha, one of the pastors, a fine, rugged old gentleman, of that leonine type so common in hawaii. he paid me a visit in the casco, and there entertained me with a tale of one of his colleagues, kekela, a missionary in the great cannibal isle of hiva-oa. it appears that shortly after a kidnapping visit from a peruvian slaver, the boats of an american whaler put into a bay upon that island, were attacked, and made their escape with difficulty, leaving their mate, a mr. whalon, in the hands of the natives. the captive, with his arms bound behind his back, was cast into a house; and the chief announced the capture to kekela. and here i begin to follow the version of kauwealoha; it is a good specimen of kanaka english; and the reader is to conceive it delivered with violent emphasis and speaking pantomime. '"i got 'melican mate," the chief he say. "what you go do 'melican mate?" kekela he say. "i go make fire, i go kill, i go eat him," he say; "you come to-mollow eat piece." "i no want eat 'melican mate!" kekela he say; "why you want?" "this bad shippee, this slave shippee," the chief he say. "one time a shippee he come from pelu, he take away plenty kanaka, he take away my son. 'melican mate he bad man. i go eat him; you eat piece." "i no want eat 'melican mate!" kekela he say; and he cly all night he cly! tomollow kekela he get up, he put on blackee coat, he go see chief; he see missa whela, him hand tie' like this. (pantomime.) kekela he cly. he say chief:"chief, you like things of mine? you like whale-boat?" "yes," he say. "you like file-a'm?" (fire-arms). "yes," he say. "you like blackee coat?" "yes," he say. kekela he take missa whela by he shoul'a' (shoulder), he take him light out house; he give chief he whale-boat, he file-a'm, he blackee coat. he take missa whela he house, make him sit down with he wife and chil'en. missa whela all-the-same pelison (prison); he wife, he chil'en in amelica; he cly o, he cly. kekela he solly. one day kekela he see ship. (pantomime.) he say missa whela, "ma' whala?" missa whela he say, "yes." kanaka they begin go down beach. kekela he get eleven kanaka, get oa' (oars), get evely thing. he say missa whela, "now you go quick." they jump in whale-boat. "now you low!" kekela he say: "you low quick, quick!" (violent pantomime, and a change indicating that the narrator has left the boat and returned to the beach.) all the kanaka they say, "how! 'melican mate he go away?" jump in boat; low afta. (violent pantomime, and change again to boat.) kekela he say, "low quick!"' here i think kauwealoha's pantomime had confused me; i have no more of his ipsissima verba; and can but add, in my own less spirited manner, that the ship was reached, mr. whalon taken aboard, and kekela returned to his charge among the cannibals. but how unjust it is to repeat the stumblings of a foreigner in a language only partly acquired! a thoughtless reader might conceive kauwealoha and his colleague to be a species of amicable baboon; but i have here the anti-dote. in return for his act of gallant charity, kekela was presented by the american government with a sum of money, and by president lincoln personally with a gold watch. from his letter of thanks, written in his own tongue, i give the following extract. i do not envy the man who can read it without emotion. 'when i saw one of your countrymen, a citizen of your great nation, ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten, i ran to save him, full of pity and grief at the evil deed of these benighted people. i gave my boat for the stranger's life. this boat came from james hunnewell, a gift of friendship. it became the ransom of this countryman of yours, that he might not be eaten by the savages who knew not jehovah. this was mr. whalon, and the date, jan. 14, 1864. as to this friendly deed of mine in saving mr. whalon, its seed came from your great land, and was brought by certain of your countrymen, who had received the love of god. it was planted in hawaii, and i brought it to plant in this land and in these dark regions, that they might receive the root of all that is good and true, which is love. '1. love to jehovah. '2. love to self. '3. love to our neighbour. 'if a man have a sufficiency of these three, he is good and holy, like his god, jehovah, in his triune character (father, son, and holy ghost), one-three, three-one. if he have two and wants one, it is not well; and if he have one and wants two, indeed, is not well; but if he cherishes all three, then is he holy, indeed, after the manner of the bible. 'this is a great thing for your great nation to boast of, before all the nations of the earth. from your great land a most precious seed was brought to the land of darkness. it was planted here, not by means of guns and men-of-war and threatening. it was planted by means of the ignorant, the neglected, the despised. such was the introduction of the word of the almighty god into this group of nuuhiwa. great is my debt to americans, who have taught me all things pertaining to this life and to that which is to come. 'how shall i repay your great kindness to me? thus david asked of jehovah, and thus i ask of you, the president of the united states. this is my only payment that which i have received of the lord, love (aloha).' chapter xi long-pig a cannibal high place nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, nothing so surely unmortars a society; nothing, we might plausibly argue, will so harden and degrade the minds of those that practise it. and yet we ourselves make much the same appearance in the eyes of the buddhist and the vegetarian. we consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions, and organs with ourselves; we feed on babes, though not our own; and the slaughter-house resounds daily with screams of pain and fear. we distinguish, indeed; but the unwillingness of many nations to eat the dog, an animal with whom we live on terms of the next intimacy, shows how precariously the distinction is grounded. the pig is the main element of animal food among the islands; and i had many occasions, my mind being quickened by my cannibal surroundings, to observe his character and the manner of his death. many islanders live with their pigs as we do with our dogs; both crowd around the hearth with equal freedom; and the island pig is a fellow of activity, enterprise, and sense. he husks his own cocoa-nuts, and (i am told) rolls them into the sun to burst; he is the terror of the shepherd. mrs. stevenson, senior, has seen one fleeing to the woods with a lamb in his mouth; and i saw another come rapidly (and erroneously) to the conclusion that the casco was going down, and swim through the flush water to the rail in search of an escape. it was told us in childhood that pigs cannot swim; i have known one to leap overboard, swim five hundred yards to shore, and return to the house of his original owner. i was once, at tautira, a pigmaster on a considerable scale; at first, in my pen, the utmost good feeling prevailed; a little sow with a belly-ache came and appealed to us for help in the manner of a child; and there was one shapely black boar, whom we called catholicus, for he was a particular present from the catholics of the village, and who early displayed the marks of courage and friendliness; no other animal, whether dog or pig, was suffered to approach him at his food, and for human beings he showed a full measure of that toadying fondness so common in the lower animals, and possibly their chief title to the name. one day, on visiting my piggery, i was amazed to see catholicus draw back from my approach with cries of terror; and if i was amazed at the change, i was truly embarrassed when i learnt its reason. one of the pigs had been that morning killed; catholicus had seen the murder, he had discovered he was dwelling in the shambles, and from that time his confidence and his delight in life were ended. we still reserved him a long while, but he could not endure the sight of any two-legged creature, nor could we, under the circumstances, encounter his eye without confusion. i have assisted besides, by the ear, at the act of butchery itself; the victim's cries of pain i think i could have borne, but the execution was mismanaged, and his expression of terror was contagious: that small heart moved to the same tune with ours. upon such 'dread foundations' the life of the european reposes, and yet the european is among the less cruel of races. the paraphernalia of murder, the preparatory brutalities of his existence, are all hid away; an extreme sensibility reigns upon the surface; and ladies will faint at the recital of one tithe of what they daily expect of their butchers. some will be even crying out upon me in their hearts for the coarseness of this paragraph. and so with the island cannibals. they were not cruel; apart from this custom, they are a race of the most kindly; rightly speaking, to cut a man's flesh after he is dead is far less hateful than to oppress him whilst he lives; and even the victims of their appetite were gently used in life and suddenly and painlessly despatched at last. in island circles of refinement it was doubtless thought bad taste to expatiate on what was ugly in the practice. cannibalism is traced from end to end of the pacific, from the marquesas to new guinea, from new zealand to hawaii, here in the lively haunt of its exercise, there by scanty but significant survivals. hawaii is the most doubtful. we find cannibalism chronicled in hawaii, only in the history of a single war, where it seems to have been thought exception, as in the case of mountain outlaws, such as fell by the hand of theseus. in tahiti, a single circumstance survived, but that appears conclusive. in historic times, when human oblation was made in the marae, the eyes of the victim were formally offered to the chief: a delicacy to the leading guest. all melanesia appears tainted. in micronesia, in the marshalls, with which my acquaintance is no more than that of a tourist, i could find no trace at all; and even in the gilbert zone i long looked and asked in vain. i was told tales indeed of men who had been eaten in a famine; but these were nothing to my purpose, for the same thing is done under the same stress by all kindreds and generations of men. at last, in some manuscript notes of dr. turner's, which i was allowed to consult at malua, i came on one damning evidence: on the island of onoatoa the punishment for theft was to be killed and eaten. how shall we account for the universality of the practice over so vast an area, among people of such varying civilisation, and, with whatever intermixture, of such different blood? what circumstance is common to them all, but that they lived on islands destitute, or very nearly so, of animal food? i can never find it in my appetite that man was meant to live on vegetables only. when our stores ran low among the islands, i grew to weary for the recurrent day when economy allowed us to open another tin of miserable mutton. and in at least one ocean language, a particular word denotes that a man is 'hungry for fish,' having reached that stage when vegetables can no longer satisfy, and his soul, like those of the hebrews in the desert, begins to lust after flesh-pots. add to this the evidences of over-population and imminent famine already adduced, and i think we see some ground of indulgence for the island cannibal. it is right to look at both sides of any question; but i am far from making the apology of this worse than bestial vice. the higher polynesian races, such as the tahitians, hawaiians, and samoans, had one and all outgrown, and some of them had in part forgot, the practice, before cook or bougainville had shown a topsail in their waters. it lingered only in some low islands where life was difficult to maintain, and among inveterate savages like the new-zealanders or the marquesans. the marquesans intertwined man-eating with the whole texture of their lives; long-pig was in a sense their currency and sacrament; it formed the hire of the artist, illustrated public events, and was the occasion and attraction of a feast. to-day they are paying the penalty of this bloody commixture. the civil power, in its crusade against maneating, has had to examine one after another all marquesan arts and pleasures, has found them one after another tainted with a cannibal element, and one after another has placed them on the proscript list. their art of tattooing stood by itself, the execution exquisite, the designs most beautiful and intricate; nothing more handsomely sets off a handsome man; it may cost some pain in the beginning, but i doubt if it be near so painful in the long-run, and i am sure it is far more becoming than the ignoble european practice of tight-lacing among women. and now it has been found needful to forbid the art. their songs and dances were numerous (and the law has had to abolish them by the dozen). they now face empty-handed the tedium of their uneventful days; and who shall pity them? the least rigorous will say that they were justly served. death alone could not satisfy marquesan vengeance: the flesh must be eaten. the chief who seized mr. whalon preferred to eat him; and he thought he had justified the wish when he explained it was a vengeance. two or three years ago, the people of a valley seized and slew a wretch who had offended them. his offence, it is to be supposed, was dire; they could not bear to leave their vengeance incomplete, and, under the eyes of the french, they did not dare to hold a public festival. the body was accordingly divided; and every man retired to his own house to consummate the rite in secret, carrying his proportion of the dreadful meat in a swedish match-box. the barbarous substance of the drama and the european properties employed offer a seizing contrast to the imagination. yet more striking is another incident of the very year when i was there myself, 1888. in the spring, a man and woman skulked about the school-house in hiva-oa till they found a particular child alone. him they approached with honeyed words and carneying manners 'you are so-and-so, son of so-and-so?' they asked; and caressed and beguiled him deeper in the woods. some instinct woke in the child's bosom, or some look betrayed the horrid purpose of his deceivers. he sought to break from them; he screamed; and they, casting off the mask, seized him the more strongly and began to run. his cries were heard; his schoolmates, playing not far off, came running to the rescue; and the sinister couple fled and vanished in the woods. they were never identified; no prosecution followed; but it was currently supposed they had some grudge against the boy's father, and designed to eat him in revenge. all over the islands, as at home among our own ancestors, it will be observed that the avenger takes no particular heed to strike an individual. a family, a class, a village, a whole valley or island, a whole race of mankind, share equally the guilt of any member. so, in the above story, the son was to pay the penalty for his father; so mr. whalon, the mate of an american whaler, was to bleed and be eaten for the misdeeds of a peruvian slaver. i am reminded of an incident in jaluit in the marshall group, which was told me by an eye-witness, and which i tell here again for the strangeness of the scene. two men had awakened the animosity of the jaluit chiefs; and it was their wives who were selected to be punished. a single native served as executioner. early in the morning, in the face of a large concourse of spectators, he waded out upon the reef between his victims. these neither complained nor resisted; accompanied their destroyer patiently; stooped down, when they had waded deep enough, at his command; and he (laying one hand upon the shoulders of each) held them under water till they drowned. doubtless, although my informant did not tell me so, their families would be lamenting aloud upon the beach. it was from hatiheu that i paid my first visit to a cannibal high place. the day was sultry and clouded. drenching tropical showers succeeded bursts of sweltering sunshine. the green pathway of the road wound steeply upward. as we went, our little schoolboy guide a little ahead of us, father simeon had his portfolio in his hand, and named the trees for me, and read aloud from his notes the abstract of their virtues. presently the road, mounting, showed us the vale of hatiheu, on a larger scale; and the priest, with occasional reference to our guide, pointed out the boundaries and told me the names of the larger tribes that lived at perpetual war in the old days: one on the north-east, one along the beach, one behind upon the mountain. with a survivor of this latter clan father simeon had spoken; until the pacification he had never been to the sea's edge, nor, if i remember exactly, eaten of sea-fish. each in its own district, the septs lived cantoned and beleaguered. one step without the boundaries was to affront death. if famine came, the men must out to the woods to gather chestnuts and small fruits; even as to this day, if the parents are backward in their weekly doles, school must be broken up and the scholars sent foraging. but in the old days, when there was trouble in one clan, there would be activity in all its neighbours; the woods would be laid full of ambushes; and he who went after vegetables for himself might remain to be a joint for his hereditary foes. nor was the pointed occasion needful. a dozen different natural signs and social junctures called this people to the war-path and the cannibal hunt. let one of chiefly rank have finished his tattooing, the wife of one be near upon her time, two of the debauching streams have deviated nearer on the beach of hatiheu, a certain bird have been heard to sing, a certain ominous formation of cloud observed above the northern sea; and instantly the arms were oiled, and the man-hunters swarmed into the wood to lay their fratricidal ambuscades. it appears besides that occasionally, perhaps in famine, the priest would shut himself in his house, where he lay for a stated period like a person dead. when he came forth it was to run for three days through the territory of the clan, naked and starving, and to sleep at night alone in the high place. it was now the turn of the others to keep the house, for to encounter the priest upon his rounds was death. on the eve of the fourth day the time of the running was over; the priest returned to his roof, the laymen came forth, and in the morning the number of the victims was announced. i have this tale of the priest on one authority i think a good one, but i set it down with diffidence. the particulars are so striking that, had they been true, i almost think i must have heard them oftener referred to. upon one point there seems to be no question: that the feast was sometimes furnished from within the clan. in times of scarcity, all who were not protected by their family connections in the highland expression, all the commons of the clan had cause to tremble. it was vain to resist, it was useless to flee. they were begirt upon all hands by cannibals; and the oven was ready to smoke for them abroad in the country of their foes, or at home in the valley of their fathers. at a certain corner of the road our scholar-guide struck off to his left into the twilight of the forest. we were now on one of the ancient native roads, plunged in a high vault of wood, and clambering, it seemed, at random over boulders and dead trees; but the lad wound in and out and up and down without a check, for these paths are to the natives as marked as the king's highway is to us; insomuch that, in the days of the man-hunt, it was their labour rather to block and deface than to improve them. in the crypt of the wood the air was clammy and hot and cold; overhead, upon the leaves, the tropical rain uproariously poured, but only here and there, as through holes in a leaky roof, a single drop would fall, and make a spot upon my mackintosh. presently the huge trunk of a banyan hove in sight, standing upon what seemed the ruins of an ancient fort; and our guide, halting and holding forth his arm, announced that we had reached the paepae tapu. paepae signifies a floor or platform such as a native house is built on; and even such a paepae a paepae hae may be called a paepae tapu in a lesser sense when it is deserted and becomes the haunt of spirits; but the public high place, such as i was now treading, was a thing on a great scale. as far as my eyes could pierce through the dark undergrowth, the floor of the forest was all paved. three tiers of terrace ran on the slope of the hill; in front, a crumbling parapet contained the main arena; and the pavement of that was pierced and parcelled out with several wells and small enclosures. no trace remained of any superstructure, and the scheme of the amphitheatre was difficult to seize. i visited another in hiva-oa, smaller but more perfect, where it was easy to follow rows of benches, and to distinguish isolated seats of honour for eminent persons; and where, on the upper platform, a single joist of the temple or dead-house still remained, its uprights richly carved. in the old days the high place was sedulously tended. no tree except the sacred banyan was suffered to encroach upon its grades, no dead leaf to rot upon the pavement. the stones were smoothly set, and i am told they were kept bright with oil. on all sides the guardians lay encamped in their subsidiary huts to watch and cleanse it. no other foot of man was suffered to draw near; only the priest, in the days of his running, came there to sleep perhaps to dream of his ungodly errand; but, in the time of the feast, the clan trooped to the high place in a body, and each had his appointed seat. there were places for the chiefs, the drummers, the dancers, the women, and the priests. the drums perhaps twenty strong, and some of them twelve feet high continuously throbbed in time. in time the singers kept up their long-drawn, lugubrious, ululating song; in time, too, the dancers, tricked out in singular finery, stepped, leaped, swayed, and gesticulated their plumed fingers fluttering in the air like butterflies. the sense of time, in all these ocean races, is extremely perfect; and i conceive in such a festival that almost every sound and movement fell in one. so much the more unanimously must have grown the agitation of the feasters; so much the more wild must have been the scene to any european who could have beheld them there, in the strong sun and the strong shadow of the banyan, rubbed with saffron to throw in a more high relief the arabesque of the tattoo; the women bleached by days of confinement to a complexion almost european; the chiefs crowned with silver plumes of old men's beards and girt with kirtles of the hair of dead women. all manner of island food was meanwhile spread for the women and the commons; and, for those who were privileged to eat of it, there were carried up to the dead-house the baskets of longpig. it is told that the feasts were long kept up; the people came from them brutishly exhausted with debauchery, and the chiefs heavy with their beastly food. there are certain sentiments which we call emphatically human denying the honour of that name to those who lack them. in such feasts particularly where the victim has been slain at home, and men banqueted on the poor clay of a comrade with whom they had played in infancy, or a woman whose favours they had shared the whole body of these sentiments is outraged. to consider it too closely is to understand, if not to excuse, the fervours of self-righteous old ship-captains, who would man their guns, and open fire in passing, on a cannibal island. and yet it was strange. there, upon the spot, as i stood under the high, dripping vault of the forest, with the young priest on the one hand, in his kilted gown, and the bright-eyed marquesan schoolboy on the other, the whole business appeared infinitely distant, and fallen in the cold perspective and dry light of history. the bearing of the priest, perhaps, affected me. he smiled; he jested with the boy, the heir both of these feasters and their meat; he clapped his hands, and gave me a stave of one of the old, ill-omened choruses. centuries might have come and gone since this slimy theatre was last in operation; and i beheld the place with no more emotion than i might have felt in visiting stonehenge. in hiva-oa, as i began to appreciate that the thing was still living and latent about my footsteps, and that it was still within the bounds of possibility that i might hear the cry of the trapped victim, my historic attitude entirely failed, and i was sensible of some repugnance for the natives. but here, too, the priests maintained their jocular attitude: rallying the cannibals as upon an eccentricity rather absurd than horrible; seeking, i should say, to shame them from the practice by good-natured ridicule, as we shame a child from stealing sugar. we may here recognise the temperate and sagacious mind of bishop dordillon. chapter xii the story of a plantation taahauku, on the south-westerly coast of the island of hiva-oa tahuku, say the slovenly whites may be called the port of atuona. it is a narrow and small anchorage, set between low cliffy points, and opening above upon a woody valley: a little french fort, now disused and deserted, overhangs the valley and the inlet. atuona itself, at the head of the next bay, is framed in a theatre of mountains, which dominate the more immediate settling of taahauku and give the salient character of the scene. they are reckoned at no higher than four thousand feet; but tahiti with eight thousand, and hawaii with fifteen, can offer no such picture of abrupt, melancholy alps. in the morning, when the sun falls directly on their front, they stand like a vast wall: green to the summit, if by any chance the summit should be clear water-courses here and there delineated on their face, as narrow as cracks. towards afternoon, the light falls more obliquely, and the sculpture of the range comes in relief, huge gorges sinking into shadow, huge, tortuous buttresses standing edged with sun. at all hours of the day they strike the eye with some new beauty, and the mind with the same menacing gloom. the mountains, dividing and deflecting the endless airy deluge of the trade, are doubtless answerable for the climate. a strong draught of wind blew day and night over the anchorage. day and night the same fantastic and attenuated clouds fled across the heavens, the same dusky cap of rain and vapour fell and rose on the mountain. the land-breezes came very strong and chill, and the sea, like the air, was in perpetual bustle. the swell crowded into the narrow anchorage like sheep into a fold; broke all along both sides, high on the one, low on the other; kept a certain blowhole sounding and smoking like a cannon; and spent itself at last upon the beach. on the side away from atuona, the sheltering promontory was a nursery of coco-trees. some were mere infants, none had attained to any size, none had yet begun to shoot skyward with that whiplike shaft of the mature palm. in the young trees the colour alters with the age and growth. now all is of a grass-like hue, infinitely dainty; next the rib grows golden, the fronds remaining green as ferns; and then, as the trunk continues to mount and to assume its final hue of grey, the fans put on manlier and more decided depths of verdure, stand out dark upon the distance, glisten against the sun, and flash like silver fountains in the assault of the wind. in this young wood of taahauku, all these hues and combinations were exampled and repeated by the score. the trees grew pleasantly spaced upon a hilly sward, here and there interspersed with a rack for drying copra, or a tumble-down hut for storing it. every here and there the stroller had a glimpse of the casco tossing in the narrow anchorage below; and beyond he had ever before him the dark amphitheatre of the atuona mountains and the cliffy bluff that closes it to seaward. the trade-wind moving in the fans made a ceaseless noise of summer rain; and from time to time, with the sound of a sudden and distant drum-beat, the surf would burst in a sea-cave. at the upper end of the inlet, its low, cliffy lining sinks, at both sides, into a beach. a copra warehouse stands in the shadow of the shoreside trees, flitted about for ever by a clan of dwarfish swallows; and a line of rails on a high wooden staging bends back into the mouth of the valley. walking on this, the newlanded traveller becomes aware of a broad fresh-water lagoon (one arm of which he crosses), and beyond, of a grove of noble palms, sheltering the house of the trader, mr. keane. overhead, the cocos join in a continuous and lofty roof; blackbirds are heard lustily singing; the island cock springs his jubilant rattle and airs his golden plumage; cow-bells sound far and near in the grove; and when you sit in the broad verandah, lulled by this symphony, you may say to yourself, if you are able: 'better fifty years of europe . . .' farther on, the floor of the valley is flat and green, and dotted here and there with stripling coco-palms. through the midst, with many changes of music, the river trots and brawls; and along its course, where we should look for willows, puraos grow in clusters, and make shadowy pools after an angler's heart. a vale more rich and peaceful, sweeter air, a sweeter voice of rural sounds, i have found nowhere. one circumstance alone might strike the experienced: here is a convenient beach, deep soil, good water, and yet nowhere any paepaes, nowhere any trace of island habitation. it is but a few years since this valley was a place choked with jungle, the debatable land and battle-ground of cannibals. two clans laid claim to it neither could substantiate the claim, and the roads lay desert, or were only visited by men in arms. it is for this very reason that it wears now so smiling an appearance: cleared, planted, built upon, supplied with railways, boat-houses, and bath-houses. for, being no man's land, it was the more readily ceded to a stranger. the stranger was captain john hart: ima hati, 'broken-arm,' the natives call him, because when he first visited the islands his arm was in a sling. captain hart, a man of english birth, but an american subject, had conceived the idea of cotton culture in the marquesas during the american war, and was at first rewarded with success. his plantation at anaho was highly productive; island cotton fetched a high price, and the natives used to debate which was the stronger power, ima hati or the french: deciding in favour of the captain, because, though the french had the most ships, he had the more money. he marked taahauku for a suitable site, acquired it, and offered the superintendence to mr. robert stewart, a fifeshire man, already some time in the islands, who had just been ruined by a war on tauata. mr. stewart was somewhat averse to the adventure, having some acquaintance with atuona and its notorious chieftain, moipu. he had once landed there, he told me, about dusk, and found the remains of a man and woman partly eaten. on his starting and sickening at the sight, one of moipu's young men picked up a human foot, and provocatively staring at the stranger, grinned and nibbled at the heel. none need be surprised if mr. stewart fled incontinently to the bush, lay there all night in a great horror of mind, and got off to sea again by daylight on the morrow. 'it was always a bad place, atuona,' commented mr. stewart, in his homely fifeshire voice. in spite of this dire introduction, he accepted the captain's offer, was landed at taahauku with three chinamen, and proceeded to clear the jungle. war was pursued at that time, almost without interval, between the men of atuona and the men of haamau; and one day, from the opposite sides of the valley, battle or i should rather say the noise of battle raged all the afternoon: the shots and insults of the opposing clans passing from hill to hill over the heads of mr. stewart and his chinamen. there was no genuine fighting; it was like a bicker of schoolboys, only some fool had given the children guns. one man died of his exertions in running, the only casualty. with night the shots and insults ceased; the men of haamau withdrew; and victory, on some occult principle, was scored to moipu. perhaps, in consequence, there came a day when moipu made a feast, and a party from haamau came under safe-conduct to eat of it. these passed early by taahauku, and some of moipu's young men were there to be a guard of honour. they were not long gone before there came down from haamau, a man, his wife, and a girl of twelve, their daughter, bringing fungus. several atuona lads were hanging round the store; but the day being one of truce none apprehended danger. the fungus was weighed and paid for; the man of haamau proposed he should have his axe ground in the bargain; and mr. stewart demurring at the trouble, some of the atuona lads offered to grind it for him, and set it on the wheel. while the axe was grinding, a friendly native whispered mr. stewart to have a care of himself, for there was trouble in hand; and, all at once, the man of haamau was seized, and his head and arm stricken from his body, the head at one sweep of his own newly sharpened axe. in the first alert, the girl escaped among the cotton; and mr. stewart, having thrust the wife into the house and locked her in from the outside, supposed the affair was over. but the business had not passed without noise, and it reached the ears of an older girl who had loitered by the way, and who now came hastily down the valley, crying as she came for her father. her, too, they seized and beheaded; i know not what they had done with the axe, it was a blunt knife that served their butcherly turn upon the girl; and the blood spurted in fountains and painted them from head to foot. thus horrible from crime, the party returned to atuona, carrying the heads to moipu. it may be fancied how the feast broke up; but it is notable that the guests were honourably suffered to retire. these passed back through taahauku in extreme disorder; a little after the valley began to be overrun with shouting and triumphing braves; and a letter of warning coming at the same time to mr. stewart, he and his chinamen took refuge with the protestant missionary in atuona. that night the store was gutted, and the bodies cast in a pit and covered with leaves. three days later the schooner had come in; and things appearing quieter, mr. stewart and the captain landed in taahauku to compute the damage and to view the grave, which was already indicated by the stench. while they were so employed, a party of moipu's young men, decked with red flannel to indicate martial sentiments, came over the hills from atuona, dug up the bodies, washed them in the river, and carried them away on sticks. that night the feast began. those who knew mr. stewart before this experience declare the man to be quite altered. he stuck, however, to his post; and somewhat later, when the plantation was already well established, and gave employment to sixty chinamen and seventy natives, he found himself once more in dangerous times. the men of haamau, it was reported, had sworn to plunder and erase the settlement; letters came continually from the hawaiian missionary, who acted as intelligence department; and for six weeks mr. stewart and three other whites slept in the cotton-house at night in a rampart of bales, and (what was their best defence) ostentatiously practised rifle-shooting by day upon the beach. natives were often there to watch them; the practice was excellent; and the assault was never delivered if it ever was intended, which i doubt, for the natives are more famous for false rumours than for deeds of energy. i was told the late french war was a case in point; the tribes on the beach accusing those in the mountains of designs which they had never the hardihood to entertain. and the same testimony to their backwardness in open battle reached me from all sides. captain hart once landed after an engagement in a certain bay; one man had his hand hurt, an old woman and two children had been slain; and the captain improved the occasion by poulticing the hand, and taunting both sides upon so wretched an affair. it is true these wars were often merely formal comparable with duels to the first blood. captain hart visited a bay where such a war was being carried on between two brothers, one of whom had been thought wanting in civility to the guests of the other. about one-half of the population served day about on alternate sides, so as to be well with each when the inevitable peace should follow. the forts of the belligerents were over against each other, and close by. pigs were cooking. well-oiled braves, with well-oiled muskets, strutted on the paepae or sat down to feast. no business, however needful, could be done, and all thoughts were supposed to be centred in this mockery of war. a few days later, by a regrettable accident, a man was killed; it was felt at once the thing had gone too far, and the quarrel was instantly patched up. but the more serious wars were prosecuted in a similar spirit; a gift of pigs and a feast made their inevitable end; the killing of a single man was a great victory, and the murder of defenceless solitaries counted a heroic deed. the foot of the cliffs, about all these islands, is the place of fishing. between taahauku and atuona we saw men, but chiefly women, some nearly naked, some in thin white or crimson dresses, perched in little surf-beat promontories the brown precipice overhanging them, and the convolvulus overhanging that, as if to cut them off the more completely from assistance. there they would angle much of the morning; and as fast as they caught any fish, eat them, raw and living, where they stood. it was such helpless ones that the warriors from the opposite island of tauata slew, and carried home and ate, and were thereupon accounted mighty men of valour. of one such exploit i can give the account of an eyewitness. 'portuguese joe,' mr. keane's cook, was once pulling an oar in an atuona boat, when they spied a stranger in a canoe with some fish and a piece of tapu. the atuona men cried upon him to draw near and have a smoke. he complied, because, i suppose, he had no choice; but he knew, poor devil, what he was coming to, and (as joe said) 'he didn't seem to care about the smoke.' a few questions followed, as to where he came from, and what was his business. these he must needs answer, as he must needs draw at the unwelcome pipe, his heart the while drying in his bosom. and then, of a sudden, a big fellow in joe's boat leaned over, plucked the stranger from his canoe, struck him with a knife in the neck inward and downward, as joe showed in pantomime more expressive than his words and held him under water, like a fowl, until his struggles ceased. whereupon the long-pig was hauled on board, the boat's head turned about for atuona, and these marquesan braves pulled home rejoicing. moipu was on the beach and rejoiced with them on their arrival. poor joe toiled at his oar that day with a white face, yet he had no fear for himself. 'they were very good to me gave me plenty grub: never wished to eat white man,' said he. if the most horrible experience was mr. stewart's, it was captain hart himself who ran the nearest danger. he had bought a piece of land from timau, chief of a neighbouring bay, and put some chinese there to work. visiting the station with one of the godeffroys, he found his chinamen trooping to the beach in terror: timau had driven them out, seized their effects, and was in war attire with his young men. a boat was despatched to taahauku for reinforcement; as they awaited her return, they could see, from the deck of the schooner, timau and his young men dancing the war-dance on the hill-top till past twelve at night; and so soon as the boat came (bringing three gendarmes, armed with chassepots, two white men from taahauku station, and some native warriors) the party set out to seize the chief before he should awake. day was not come, and it was a very bright moonlight morning, when they reached the hill-top where (in a house of palm-leaves) timau was sleeping off his debauch. the assailants were fully exposed, the interior of the hut quite dark; the position far from sound. the gendarmes knelt with their pieces ready, and captain hart advanced alone. as he drew near the door he heard the snap of a gun cocking from within, and in sheer self-defence there being no other escape sprang into the house and grappled timau. 'timau, come with me!' he cried. but timau a great fellow, his eyes blood-red with the abuse of kava, six foot three in stature cast him on one side; and the captain, instantly expecting to be either shot or brained, discharged his pistol in the dark. when they carried timau out at the door into the moonlight, he was already dead, and, upon this unlooked-for termination of their sally, the whites appeared to have lost all conduct, and retreated to the boats, fired upon by the natives as they went. captain hart, who almost rivals bishop dordillon in popularity, shared with him the policy of extreme indulgence to the natives, regarding them as children, making light of their defects, and constantly in favour of mild measures. the death of timau has thus somewhat weighed upon his mind; the more so, as the chieftain's musket was found in the house unloaded. to a less delicate conscience the matter will seem light. if a drunken savage elects to cock a fire-arm, a gentleman advancing towards him in the open cannot wait to make sure if it be charged. i have touched on the captain's popularity. it is one of the things that most strikes a stranger in the marquesas. he comes instantly on two names, both new to him, both locally famous, both mentioned by all with affection and respect the bishop's and the captain's. it gave me a strong desire to meet with the survivor, which was subsequently gratified to the enrichment of these pages. long after that again, in the place dolorous molokai i came once more on the traces of that affectionate popularity. there was a blind white leper there, an old sailor 'an old tough,' he called himself who had long sailed among the eastern islands. him i used to visit, and, being fresh from the scenes of his activity, gave him the news. this (in the true island style) was largely a chronicle of wrecks; and it chanced i mentioned the case of one not very successful captain, and how he had lost a vessel for mr. hart; thereupon the blind leper broke forth in lamentation. 'did he lose a ship of john hart's?' he cried; 'poor john hart! well, i'm sorry it was hart's,' with needless force of epithet, which i neglect to reproduce. perhaps, if captain hart's affairs had continued to prosper, his popularity might have been different. success wins glory, but it kills affection, which misfortune fosters. and the misfortune which overtook the captain's enterprise was truly singular. he was at the top of his career. ile masse belonged to him, given by the french as an indemnity for the robberies at taahauku. but the ile masse was only suitable for cattle; and his two chief stations were anaho, in nuka-hiva, facing the north-east, and taahauku in hivaoa, some hundred miles to the southward, and facing the south-west. both these were on the same day swept by a tidal wave, which was not felt in any other bay or island of the group. the south coast of hiva-oa was bestrewn with building timber and camphor-wood chests, containing goods; which, on the promise of a reasonable salvage, the natives very honestly brought back, the chests apparently not opened, and some of the wood after it had been built into their houses. but the recovery of such jetsam could not affect the result. it was impossible the captain should withstand this partiality of fortune; and with his fall the prosperity of the marquesas ended. anaho is truly extinct, taahauku but a shadow of itself; nor has any new plantation arisen in their stead. chapter xiii characters there was a certain traffic in our anchorage at atuona; different indeed from the dead inertia and quiescence of the sister island, nuka-hiva. sails were seen steering from its mouth; now it would be a whale-boat manned with native rowdies, and heavy with copra for sale; now perhaps a single canoe come after commodities to buy. the anchorage was besides frequented by fishers; not only the lone females perched in niches of the cliff, but whole parties, who would sometimes camp and build a fire upon the beach, and sometimes lie in their canoes in the midst of the haven and jump by turns in the water; which they would cast eight or nine feet high, to drive, as we supposed, the fish into their nets. the goods the purchasers came to buy were sometimes quaint. i remarked one outrigger returning with a single ham swung from a pole in the stern. and one day there came into mr. keane's store a charming lad, excellently mannered, speaking french correctly though with a babyish accent; very handsome too, and much of a dandy, as was shown not only in his shining raiment, but by the nature of his purchases. these were five ship-biscuits, a bottle of scent, and two balls of washing blue. he was from tauata, whither he returned the same night in an outrigger, daring the deep with these youngladyish treasures. the gross of the native passengers were more ill-favoured: tall, powerful fellows, well tattooed, and with disquieting manners. something coarse and jeering distinguished them, and i was often reminded of the slums of some great city. one night, as dusk was falling, a whale-boat put in on that part of the beach where i chanced to be alone. six or seven ruffianly fellows scrambled out; all had enough english to give me 'goodbye,' which was the ordinary salutation; or 'good-morning,' which they seemed to regard as an intensitive; jests followed, they surrounded me with harsh laughter and rude looks, and i was glad to move away. i had not yet encountered mr. stewart, or i should have been reminded of his first landing at atuona and the humorist who nibbled at the heel. but their neighbourhood depressed me; and i felt, if i had been there a castaway and out of reach of help, my heart would have been sick. nor was the traffic altogether native. while we lay in the anchorage there befell a strange coincidence. a schooner was observed at sea and aiming to enter. we knew all the schooners in the group, but this appeared larger than any; she was rigged, besides, after the english manner; and, coming to an anchor some way outside the casco, showed at last the blue ensign. there were at that time, according to rumour, no fewer than four yachts in the pacific; but it was strange that any two of them should thus lie side by side in that outlandish inlet: stranger still that in the owner of the nyanza, captain dewar, i should find a man of the same country and the same county with myself, and one whom i had seen walking as a boy on the shores of the alpes maritimes. we had besides a white visitor from shore, who came and departed in a crowded whale-boat manned by natives; having read of yachts in the sunday papers, and being fired with the desire to see one. captain chase, they called him, an old whaler-man, thickset and white-bearded, with a strong indiana drawl; years old in the country, a good backer in battle, and one of those dead shots whose practice at the target struck terror in the braves of haamau. captain chase dwelt farther east in a bay called hanamate, with a mr. m'callum; or rather they had dwelt together once, and were now amicably separated. the captain is to be found near one end of the bay, in a wreck of a house, and waited on by a chinese. at the point of the opposing corner another habitation stands on a tall paepae. the surf runs there exceeding heavy, seas of seven and eight feet high bursting under the walls of the house, which is thus continually filled with their clamour, and rendered fit only for solitary, or at least for silent, inmates. here it is that mr. m'callum, with a shakespeare and a burns, enjoys the society of the breakers. his name and his burns testify to scottish blood; but he is an american born, somewhere far east; followed the trade of a ship-carpenter; and was long employed, the captain of a hundred indians, breaking up wrecks about cape flattery. many of the whites who are to be found scattered in the south seas represent the more artistic portion of their class; and not only enjoy the poetry of that new life, but came there on purpose to enjoy it. i have been shipmates with a man, no longer young, who sailed upon that voyage, his first time to sea, for the mere love of samoa; and it was a few letters in a newspaper that sent him on that pilgrimage. mr. m'callum was another instance of the same. he had read of the south seas; loved to read of them; and let their image fasten in his heart: till at length he could refrain no longer must set forth, a new rudel, for that unseen homeland and has now dwelt for years in hiva-oa, and will lay his bones there in the end with full content; having no desire to behold again the places of his boyhood, only, perhaps once, before he dies the rude and wintry landscape of cape flattery. yet he is an active man, full of schemes; has bought land of the natives; has planted five thousand coco-palms; has a desert island in his eye, which he desires to lease, and a schooner in the stocks, which he has laid and built himself, and even hopes to finish. mr. m'callum and i did not meet, but, like gallant troubadours, corresponded in verse. i hope he will not consider it a breach of copyright if i give here a specimen of his muse. he and bishop dordillon are the two european bards of the marquesas. 'sail, ho! ahoy! casco, first among the pleasure fleet that came around to greet these isles from san francisco, and first, too; only one among the literary men that this way has ever been welcome, then, to stevenson. please not offended be at this little notice of the casco, captain otis, with the novelist's family. avoir une voyage magnifical is our wish sincere, that you'll have from here allant sur la grande pacifical.' but our chief visitor was one mapiao, a great tahuku which seems to mean priest, wizard, tattooer, practiser of any art, or, in a word, esoteric person and a man famed for his eloquence on public occasions and witty talk in private. his first appearance was typical of the man. he came down clamorous to the eastern landing, where the surf was running very high; scorned all our signals to go round the bay; carried his point, was brought aboard at some hazard to our skiff, and set down in one corner of the cockpit to his appointed task. he had been hired, as one cunning in the art, to make my old men's beards into a wreath: what a wreath for celia's arbour! his own beard (which he carried, for greater safety, in a sailor's knot) was not merely the adornment of his age, but a substantial piece of property. one hundred dollars was the estimated value; and as brother michel never knew a native to deposit a greater sum with bishop dordillon, our friend was a rich man in virtue of his chin. he had something of an east indian cast, but taller and stronger: his nose hooked, his face narrow, his forehead very high, the whole elaborately tattooed. i may say i have never entertained a guest so trying. in the least particular he must be waited on; he would not go to the scuttlebutt for water; he would not even reach to get the glass, it must be given him in his hand; if aid were denied him, he would fold his arms, bow his head, and go without: only the work would suffer. early the first forenoon he called aloud for biscuit and salmon; biscuit and ham were brought; he looked on them inscrutably, and signed they should be set aside. a number of considerations crowded on my mind; how the sort of work on which he was engaged was probably tapu in a high degree; should by rights, perhaps, be transacted on a tapu platform which no female might approach; and it was possible that fish might be the essential diet. some salted fish i therefore brought him, and along with that a glass of rum: at sight of which mapiao displayed extraordinary animation, pointed to the zenith, made a long speech in which i picked up umati the word for the sun and signed to me once more to place these dainties out of reach. at last i had understood, and every day the programme was the same. at an early period of the morning his dinner must be set forth on the roof of the house and at a proper distance, full in view but just out of reach; and not until the fit hour, which was the point of noon, would the artificer partake. this solemnity was the cause of an absurd misadventure. he was seated plaiting, as usual, at the beards, his dinner arrayed on the roof, and not far off a glass of water standing. it appears he desired to drink; was of course far too great a gentleman to rise and get the water for himself; and spying mrs. stevenson, imperiously signed to her to hand it. the signal was misunderstood; mrs. stevenson was, by this time, prepared for any eccentricity on the part of our guest; and instead of passing him the water, flung his dinner overboard. i must do mapiao justice: all laughed, but his laughter rang the loudest. these troubles of service were at worst occasional; the embarrassment of the man's talk incessant. he was plainly a practised conversationalist; the nicety of his inflections, the elegance of his gestures, and the fine play of his expression, told us that. we, meanwhile, sat like aliens in a playhouse; we could see the actors were upon some material business and performing well, but the plot of the drama remained undiscoverable. names of places, the name of captain hart, occasional disconnected words, tantalised without enlightening us; and the less we understood, the more gallantly, the more copiously, and with still the more explanatory gestures, mapiao returned to the assault. we could see his vanity was on the rack; being come to a place where that fine jewel of his conversational talent could earn him no respect; and he had times of despair when he desisted from the endeavour, and instants of irritation when he regarded us with unconcealed contempt. yet for me, as the practitioner of some kindred mystery to his own, he manifested to the last a measure of respect. as we sat under the awning in opposite corners of the cockpit, he braiding hairs from dead men's chins, i forming runes upon a sheet of folio paper, he would nod across to me as one tahuku to another, or, crossing the cockpit, study for a while my shapeless scrawl and encourage me with a heartfelt 'mitai! good!' so might a deaf painter sympathise far off with a musician, as the slave and master of some uncomprehended and yet kindred art. a silly trade, he doubtless considered it; but a man must make allowance for barbarians chaque pays a ses coutumes and he felt the principle was there. the time came at last when his labours, which resembled those rather of penelope than hercules, could be no more spun out, and nothing remained but to pay him and say farewell. after a long, learned argument in marquesan, i gathered that his mind was set on fish-hooks; with three of which, and a brace of dollars, i thought he was not ill rewarded for passing his forenoons in our cockpit, eating, drinking, delivering his opinions, and pressing the ship's company into his menial service. for all that, he was a man of so high a bearing, and so like an uncle of my own who should have gone mad and got tattooed, that i applied to him, when we were both on shore, to know if he were satisfied. 'mitai ehipe?' i asked. and he, with rich unction, offering at the same time his hand 'mitai ehipe, mitai kaehae; kaoha nui!' or, to translate freely: 'the ship is good, the victuals are up to the mark, and we part in friendship.' which testimonial uttered, he set off along the beach with his head bowed and the air of one deeply injured. i saw him go, on my side, with relief. it would be more interesting to learn how our relation seemed to mapiao. his exigence, we may suppose, was merely loyal. he had been hired by the ignorant to do a piece of work; and he was bound that he would do it the right way. countless obstacles, continual ignorant ridicule, availed not to dissuade him. he had his dinner laid out; watched it, as was fit, the while he worked; ate it at the fit hour; was in all things served and waited on; and could take his hire in the end with a clear conscience, telling himself the mystery was performed duly, the beards rightfully braided, and we (in spite of ourselves) correctly served. his view of our stupidity, even he, the mighty talker, must have lacked language to express. he never interfered with my tahuku work; civilly praised it, idle as it seemed; civilly supposed that i was competent in my own mystery: such being the attitude of the intelligent and the polite. and we, on the other hand who had yet the most to gain or lose, since the product was to be ours who had professed our disability by the very act of hiring him to do it were never weary of impeding his own more important labours, and sometimes lacked the sense and the civility to refrain from laughter. chapter xiv in a cannibal valley the road from taahauku to atuona skirted the north-westerly side of the anchorage, somewhat high up, edged, and sometimes shaded, by the splendid flowers of the flamboyant its english name i do not know. at the turn of the hand, atuona came in view: a long beach, a heavy and loud breach of surf, a shore-side village scattered among trees, and the guttered mountains drawing near on both sides above a narrow and rich ravine. its infamous repute perhaps affected me; but i thought it the loveliest, and by far the most ominous and gloomy, spot on earth. beautiful it surely was; and even more salubrious. the healthfulness of the whole group is amazing; that of atuona almost in the nature of a miracle. in atuona, a village planted in a shore-side marsh, the houses standing everywhere intermingled with the pools of a taro-garden, we find every condition of tropical danger and discomfort; and yet there are not even mosquitoes not even the hateful day-fly of nuka-hiva and fever, and its concomitant, the island fe'efe'e, are unknown. this is the chief station of the french on the man-eating isle of hiva-oa. the sergeant of gendarmerie enjoys the style of the viceresident, and hoists the french colours over a quite extensive compound. a chinaman, a waif from the plantation, keeps a restaurant in the rear quarters of the village; and the mission is well represented by the sister's school and brother michel's church. father orens, a wonderful octogenarian, his frame scarce bowed, the fire of his eye undimmed, has lived, and trembled, and suffered in this place since 1843. again and again, when moipu had made coco-brandy, he has been driven from his house into the woods. 'a mouse that dwelt in a cat's ear' had a more easy resting-place; and yet i have never seen a man that bore less mark of years. he must show us the church, still decorated with the bishop's artless ornaments of paper the last work of industrious old hands, and the last earthly amusement of a man that was much of a hero. in the sacristy we must see his sacred vessels, and, in particular, a vestment which was a 'vraie curiosite,' because it had been given by a gendarme. to the protestant there is always something embarrassing in the eagerness with which grown and holy men regard these trifles; but it was touching and pretty to see orens, his aged eyes shining in his head, display his sacred treasures. august 26. the vale behind the village, narrowing swiftly to a mere ravine, was choked with profitable trees. a river gushed in the midst. overhead, the tall coco-palms made a primary covering; above that, from one wall of the mountain to another, the ravine was roofed with cloud; so that we moved below, amid teeming vegetation, in a covered house of heat. on either hand, at every hundred yards, instead of the houseless, disembowelling paepaes of nuka-hiva, populous houses turned out their inhabitants to cry 'kaoha!' to the passers-by. the road, too, was busy: strings of girls, fair and foul, as in less favoured countries; men bearing breadfruit; the sisters, with a little guard of pupils; a fellow bestriding a horse passed and greeted us continually; and now it was a chinaman who came to the gate of his flower-yard, and gave us 'good-day' in excellent english; and a little farther on it would be some natives who set us down by the wayside, made us a feast of mummy-apple, and entertained us as we ate with drumming on a tin case. with all this fine plenty of men and fruit, death is at work here also. the population, according to the highest estimate, does not exceed six hundred in the whole vale of atuona; and yet, when i once chanced to put the question, brother michel counted up ten whom he knew to be sick beyond recovery. it was here, too, that i could at last gratify my curiosity with the sight of a native house in the very article of dissolution. it had fallen flat along the paepae, its poles sprawling ungainly; the rains and the mites contended against it; what remained seemed sound enough, but much was gone already; and it was easy to see how the insects consumed the walls as if they had been bread, and the air and the rain ate into them like vitriol. a little ahead of us, a young gentleman, very well tattooed, and dressed in a pair of white trousers and a flannel shirt, had been marching unconcernedly. of a sudden, without apparent cause, he turned back, took us in possession, and led us undissuadably along a by-path to the river's edge. there, in a nook of the most attractive amenity, he bade us to sit down: the stream splashing at our elbow, a shock of nondescript greenery enshrining us from above; and thither, after a brief absence, he brought us a cocoanut, a lump of sandal-wood, and a stick he had begun to carve: the nut for present refreshment, the sandal-wood for a precious gift, and the stick in the simplicity of his vanity to harvest premature praise. only one section was yet carved, although the whole was pencil-marked in lengths; and when i proposed to buy it, poni (for that was the artist's name) recoiled in horror. but i was not to be moved, and simply refused restitution, for i had long wondered why a people who displayed, in their tattooing, so great a gift of arabesque invention, should display it nowhere else. here, at last, i had found something of the same talent in another medium; and i held the incompleteness, in these days of world-wide brummagem, for a happy mark of authenticity. neither my reasons nor my purpose had i the means of making clear to poni; i could only hold on to the stick, and bid the artist follow me to the gendarmerie, where i should find interpreters and money; but we gave him, in the meanwhile, a boat-call in return for his sandalwood. as he came behind us down the vale he sounded upon this continually. and continually, from the wayside houses, there poured forth little groups of girls in crimson, or of men in white. and to these must poni pass the news of who the strangers were, of what they had been doing, of why it was that poni had a boatwhistle; and of why he was now being haled to the vice-residency, uncertain whether to be punished or rewarded, uncertain whether he had lost a stick or made a bargain, but hopeful on the whole, and in the meanwhile highly consoled by the boat-whistle. whereupon he would tear himself away from this particular group of inquirers, and once more we would hear the shrill call in our wake. august 27. i made a more extended circuit in the vale with brother michel. we were mounted on a pair of sober nags, suitable to these rude paths; the weather was exquisite, and the company in which i found myself no less agreeable than the scenes through which i passed. we mounted at first by a steep grade along the summit of one of those twisted spurs that, from a distance, mark out provinces of sun and shade upon the mountain-side. the ground fell away on either hand with an extreme declivity. from either hand, out of profound ravines, mounted the song of falling water and the smoke of household fires. here and there the hills of foliage would divide, and our eye would plunge down upon one of these deep-nested habitations. and still, high in front, arose the precipitous barrier of the mountain, greened over where it seemed that scarce a harebell could find root, barred with the zigzags of a human road where it seemed that not a goat could scramble. and in truth, for all the labour that it cost, the road is regarded even by the marquesans as impassable; they will not risk a horse on that ascent; and those who lie to the westward come and go in their canoes. i never knew a hill to lose so little on a near approach: a consequence, i must suppose, of its surprising steepness. when we turned about, i was amazed to behold so deep a view behind, and so high a shoulder of blue sea, crowned by the whale-like island of motane. and yet the wall of mountain had not visibly dwindled, and i could even have fancied, as i raised my eyes to measure it, that it loomed higher than before. we struck now into covert paths, crossed and heard more near at hand the bickering of the streams, and tasted the coolness of those recesses where the houses stood. the birds sang about us as we descended. all along our path my guide was being hailed by voices: 'mikael kaoha, mikael!' from the doorstep, from the cottonpatch, or out of the deep grove of island-chestnuts, these friendly cries arose, and were cheerily answered as we passed. in a sharp angle of a glen, on a rushing brook and under fathoms of cool foliage, we struck a house upon a well-built paepae, the fire brightly burning under the popoi-shed against the evening meal; and here the cries became a chorus, and the house folk, running out, obliged us to dismount and breathe. it seemed a numerous family: we saw eight at least; and one of these honoured me with a particular attention. this was the mother, a woman naked to the waist, of an aged countenance, but with hair still copious and black, and breasts still erect and youthful. on our arrival i could see she remarked me, but instead of offering any greeting, disappeared at once into the bush. thence she returned with two crimson flowers. 'good-bye!' was her salutation, uttered not without coquetry; and as she said it she pressed the flowers into my hand 'good-bye! i speak inglis.' it was from a whaler-man, who (she informed me) was 'a plenty good chap,' that she had learned my language; and i could not but think how handsome she must have been in these times of her youth, and could not but guess that some memories of the dandy whaler-man prompted her attentions to myself. nor could i refrain from wondering what had befallen her lover; in the rain and mire of what sea-ports he had tramped since then; in what close and garish drinking-dens had found his pleasure; and in the ward of what infirmary dreamed his last of the marquesas. but she, the more fortunate, lived on in her green island. the talk, in this lost house upon the mountains, ran chiefly upon mapiao and his visits to the casco: the news of which had probably gone abroad by then to all the island, so that there was no paepae in hiva-oa where they did not make the subject of excited comment. not much beyond we came upon a high place in the foot of the ravine. two roads divided it, and met in the midst. save for this intersection the amphitheatre was strangely perfect, and had a certain ruder air of things roman. depths of foliage and the bulk of the mountain kept it in a grateful shadow. on the benches several young folk sat clustered or apart. one of these, a girl perhaps fourteen years of age, buxom and comely, caught the eye of brother michel. why was she not at school? she was done with school now. what was she doing here? she lived here now. why so? no answer but a deepening blush. there was no severity in brother michel's manner; the girl's own confusion told her story. 'elle a honte,' was the missionary's comment, as we rode away. near by in the stream, a grown girl was bathing naked in a goyle between two stepping-stones; and it amused me to see with what alacrity and real alarm she bounded on her many-coloured underclothes. even in these daughters of cannibals shame was eloquent. it is in hiva-oa, owing to the inveterate cannibalism of the natives, that local beliefs have been most rudely trodden underfoot. it was here that three religious chiefs were set under a bridge, and the women of the valley made to defile over their heads upon the road-way: the poor, dishonoured fellows sitting there (all observers agree) with streaming tears. not only was one road driven across the high place, but two roads intersected in its midst. there is no reason to suppose that the last was done of purpose, and perhaps it was impossible entirely to avoid the numerous sacred places of the islands. but these things are not done without result. i have spoken already of the regard of marquesans for the dead, making (as it does) so strange a contrast with their unconcern for death. early on this day's ride, for instance, we encountered a petty chief, who inquired (of course) where we were going, and suggested by way of amendment. 'why do you not rather show him the cemetery?' i saw it; it was but newly opened, the third within eight years. they are great builders here in hiva-oa; i saw in my ride paepaes that no european dry-stone mason could have equalled, the black volcanic stones were laid so justly, the corners were so precise, the levels so true; but the retaining-wall of the new graveyard stood apart, and seemed to be a work of love. the sentiment of honour for the dead is therefore not extinct. and yet observe the consequence of violently countering men's opinions. of the four prisoners in atuona gaol, three were of course thieves; the fourth was there for sacrilege. he had levelled up a piece of the graveyard to give a feast upon, as he informed the court and declared he had no thought of doing wrong. why should he? he had been forced at the point of the bayonet to destroy the sacred places of his own piety; when he had recoiled from the task, he had been jeered at for a superstitious fool. and now it is supposed he will respect our european superstitions as by second nature. chapter xv the two chiefs of atuona it had chanced (as the casco beat through the bordelais straits for taahauku) she approached on one board very near the land in the opposite isle of tauata, where houses were to be seen in a grove of tall coco-palms. brother michel pointed out the spot. 'i am at home now,' said he. 'i believe i have a large share in these cocoa-nuts; and in that house madame my mother lives with her two husbands!' 'with two husbands?' somebody inquired. 'c'est ma honte,' replied the brother drily. a word in passing on the two husbands. i conceive the brother to have expressed himself loosely. it seems common enough to find a native lady with two consorts; but these are not two husbands. the first is still the husband; the wife continues to be referred to by his name; and the position of the coadjutor, or pikio, although quite regular, appears undoubtedly subordinate. we had opportunities to observe one household of the sort. the pikio was recognised; appeared openly along with the husband when the lady was thought to be insulted, and the pair made common cause like brothers. at home the inequality was more apparent. the husband sat to receive and entertain visitors; the pikio was running the while to fetch cocoa-nuts like a hired servant, and i remarked he was sent on these errands in preference even to the son. plainly we have here no second husband; plainly we have the tolerated lover. only, in the marquesas, instead of carrying his lady's fan and mantle, he must turn his hand to do the husband's housework. the sight of brother michel's family estate led the conversation for some while upon the method and consequence of artificial kinship. our curiosity became extremely whetted; the brother offered to have the whole of us adopted, and some two days later we became accordingly the children of paaaeua, appointed chief of atuona. i was unable to be present at the ceremony, which was primitively simple. the two mrs. stevensons and mr. osbourne, along with paaaeua, his wife, and an adopted child of theirs, son of a shipwrecked austrian, sat down to an excellent island meal, of which the principal and the only necessary dish was pig. a concourse watched them through the apertures of the house; but none, not even brother michel, might partake; for the meal was sacramental, and either creative or declaratory of the new relationship. in tahiti things are not so strictly ordered; when ori and i 'made brothers,' both our families sat with us at table, yet only he and i, who had eaten with intention were supposed to be affected by the ceremony. for the adoption of an infant i believe no formality to be required; the child is handed over by the natural parents, and grows up to inherit the estates of the adoptive. presents are doubtless exchanged, as at all junctures of island life, social or international; but i never heard of any banquet the child's presence at the daily board perhaps sufficing. we may find the rationale in the ancient arabian idea that a common diet makes a common blood, with its derivative axiom that 'he is the father who gives the child its morning draught.' in the marquesan practice, the sense would thus be evanescent; from the tahitian, a mere survival, it will have entirely fled. an interesting parallel will probably occur to many of my readers. what is the nature of the obligation assumed at such a festival? it will vary with the characters of those engaged, and with the circumstances of the case. thus it would be absurd to take too seriously our adoption at atuona. on the part of paaaeua it was an affair of social ambition; when he agreed to receive us in his family the man had not so much as seen us, and knew only that we were inestimably rich and travelled in a floating palace. we, upon our side, ate of his baked meats with no true animus affiliandi, but moved by the single sentiment of curiosity. the affair was formal, and a matter of parade, as when in europe sovereigns call each other cousin. yet, had we stayed at atuona, paaaeua would have held himself bound to establish us upon his land, and to set apart young men for our service, and trees for our support. i have mentioned the austrian. he sailed in one of two sister ships, which left the clyde in coal; both rounded the horn, and both, at several hundred miles of distance, though close on the same point of time, took fire at sea on the pacific. one was destroyed; the derelict iron frame of the second, after long, aimless cruising, was at length recovered, refitted, and hails to-day from san francisco. a boat's crew from one of these disasters reached, after great hardships, the isle of hiva-oa. some of these men vowed they would never again confront the chances of the sea; but alone of them all the austrian has been exactly true to his engagement, remains where he landed, and designs to die where he has lived. now, with such a man, falling and taking root among islanders, the processes described may be compared to a gardener's graft. he passes bodily into the native stock; ceases wholly to be alien; has entered the commune of the blood, shares the prosperity and consideration of his new family, and is expected to impart with the same generosity the fruits of his european skill and knowledge. it is this implied engagement that so frequently offends the ingrafted white. to snatch an immediate advantage to get (let us say) a station for his store he will play upon the native custom and become a son or a brother for the day, promising himself to cast down the ladder by which he shall have ascended, and repudiate the kinship so soon as it shall grow burdensome. and he finds there are two parties to the bargain. perhaps his polynesian relative is simple, and conceived the blood-bond literally; perhaps he is shrewd, and himself entered the covenant with a view to gain. and either way the store is ravaged, the house littered with lazy natives; and the richer the man grows, the more numerous, the more idle, and the more affectionate he finds his native relatives. most men thus circumstanced contrive to buy or brutally manage to enforce their independence; but many vegetate without hope, strangled by parasites. we had no cause to blush with brother michel. our new parents were kind, gentle, well-mannered, and generous in gifts; the wife was a most motherly woman, the husband a man who stood justly high with his employers. enough has been said to show why moipu should be deposed; and in paaaeua the french had found a reputable substitute. he went always scrupulously dressed, and looked the picture of propriety, like a dark, handsome, stupid, and probably religious young man hot from a european funeral. in character he seemed the ideal of what is known as the good citizen. he wore gravity like an ornament. none could more nicely represent the desired character as an appointed chief, the outpost of civilisation and reform. and yet, were the french to go and native manners to revive, fancy beholds him crowned with old men's beards and crowding with the first to a man-eating festival. but i must not seem to be unjust to paaaeua. his respectability went deeper than the skin; his sense of the becoming sometimes nerved him for unexpected rigours. one evening captain otis and mr. osbourne were on shore in the village. all was agog; dancing had begun; it was plain it was to be a night of festival, and our adventurers were overjoyed at their good fortune. a strong fall of rain drove them for shelter to the house of paaaeua, where they were made welcome, wiled into a chamber, and shut in. presently the rain took off, the fun was to begin in earnest, and the young bloods of atuona came round the house and called to my fellow-travellers through the interstices of the wall. late into the night the calls were continued and resumed, and sometimes mingled with taunts; late into the night the prisoners, tantalised by the noises of the festival, renewed their efforts to escape. but all was vain; right across the door lay that god-fearing householder, paaaeua, feigning sleep; and my friends had to forego their junketing. in this incident, so delightfully european, we thought we could detect three strands of sentiment. in the first place, paaaeua had a charge of souls: these were young men, and he judged it right to withhold them from the primrose path. secondly, he was a public character, and it was not fitting that his guests should countenance a festival of which he disapproved. so might some strict clergyman at home address a worldly visitor: 'go to the theatre if you like, but, by your leave, not from my house!' thirdly, paaaeua was a man jealous, and with some cause (as shall be shown) for jealousy; and the feasters were the satellites of his immediate rival, moipu. for the adoption had caused much excitement in the village; it made the strangers popular. paaaeua, in his difficult posture of appointed chief, drew strength and dignity from their alliance, and only moipu and his followers were malcontent. for some reason nobody (except myself) appears to dislike moipu. captain hart, who has been robbed and threatened by him; father orens, whom he has fired at, and repeatedly driven to the woods; my own family, and even the french officials all seemed smitten with an irrepressible affection for the man. his fall had been made soft; his son, upon his death, was to succeed paaaeua in the chieftaincy; and he lived, at the time of our visit, in the shoreward part of the village in a good house, and with a strong following of young men, his late braves and pot-hunters. in this society, the coming of the casco, the adoption, the return feast on board, and the presents exchanged between the whites and their new parents, were doubtless eagerly and bitterly canvassed. it was felt that a few years ago the honours would have gone elsewhere. in this unwonted business, in this reception of some hitherto undreamed-of and outlandish potentate some prester john or old assaracus a few years back it would have been the part of moipu to play the hero and the host, and his young men would have accompanied and adorned the various celebrations as the acknowledged leaders of society. and now, by a malign vicissitude of fortune, moipu must sit in his house quite unobserved; and his young men could but look in at the door while their rivals feasted. perhaps m. grevy felt a touch of bitterness towards his successor when he beheld him figure on the broad stage of the centenary of eighty-nine; the visit of the casco which moipu had missed by so few years was a more unusual occasion in atuona than a centenary in france; and the dethroned chief determined to reassert himself in the public eye. mr. osbourne had gone into atuona photographing; the population of the village had gathered together for the occasion on the place before the church, and paaaeua, highly delighted with this new appearance of his family, played the master of ceremonies. the church had been taken, with its jolly architect before the door; the nuns with their pupils; sundry damsels in the ancient and singularly unbecoming robes of tapa; and father orens in the midst of a group of his parishioners. i know not what else was in hand, when the photographer became aware of a sensation in the crowd, and, looking around, beheld a very noble figure of a man appear upon the margin of a thicket and stroll nonchalantly near. the nonchalance was visibly affected; it was plain he came there to arouse attention, and his success was instant. he was introduced; he was civil, he was obliging, he was always ineffably superior and certain of himself; a well-graced actor. it was presently suggested that he should appear in his war costume; he gracefully consented; and returned in that strange, inappropriate and illomened array (which very well became his handsome person) to strut in a circle of admirers, and be thenceforth the centre of photography. thus had moipu effected his introduction, as by accident, to the white strangers, made it a favour to display his finery, and reduced his rival to a secondary role on the theatre of the disputed village. paaaeua felt the blow; and, with a spirit which we never dreamed he could possess, asserted his priority. it was found impossible that day to get a photograph of moipu alone; for whenever he stood up before the camera his successor placed himself unbidden by his side, and gently but firmly held to his position. the portraits of the pair, jacob and esau, standing shoulder to shoulder, one in his careful european dress, one in his barbaric trappings, figure the past and present of their island. a graveyard with its humble crosses would be the aptest symbol of the future. we are all impressed with the belief that moipu had planned his campaign from the beginning to the end. it is certain that he lost no time in pushing his advantage. mr. osbourne was inveigled to his house; various gifts were fished out of an old sea-chest; father orens was called into service as interpreter, and moipu formally proposed to 'make brothers' with mata-galahi glass-eyes, the not very euphonious name under which mr. osbourne passed in the marquesas. the feast of brotherhood took place on board the casco. paaaeua had arrived with his family, like a plain man; and his presents, which had been numerous, had followed one another, at intervals through several days. moipu, as if to mark at every point the opposition, came with a certain feudal pomp, attended by retainers bearing gifts of all descriptions, from plumes of old men's beard to little, pious, catholic engravings. i had met the man before this in the village, and detested him on sight; there was something indescribably raffish in his looks and ways that raised my gorge; and when man-eating was referred to, and he laughed a low, cruel laugh, part boastful, part bashful, like one reminded of some dashing peccadillo, my repugnance was mingled with nausea. this is no very human attitude, nor one at all becoming in a traveller. and, seen more privately, the man improved. something negroid in character and face was still displeasing; but his ugly mouth became attractive when he smiled, his figure and bearing were certainly noble, and his eyes superb. in his appreciation of jams and pickles, in is delight in the reverberating mirrors of the dining cabin, and consequent endless repetition of moipus and mata-galahis, he showed himself engagingly a child. and yet i am not sure; and what seemed childishness may have been rather courtly art. his manners struck me as beyond the mark; they were refined and caressing to the point of grossness, and when i think of the serene absent-mindedness with which he first strolled in upon our party, and then recall him running on hands and knees along the cabin sofas, pawing the velvet, dipping into the beds, and bleating commendatory 'mitais' with exaggerated emphasis, like some enormous over-mannered ape, i feel the more sure that both must have been calculated. and i sometimes wonder next, if moipu were quite alone in this polite duplicity, and ask myself whether the casco were quite so much admired in the marquesas as our visitors desired us to suppose. i will complete this sketch of an incurable cannibal grandee with two incongruous traits. his favourite morsel was the human hand, of which he speaks to-day with an ill-favoured lustfulness. and when he said good-bye to mrs. stevenson, holding her hand, viewing her with tearful eyes, and chanting his farewell improvisation in the falsetto of marquesan high society, he wrote upon her mind a sentimental impression which i try in vain to share. part ii: the paumotus chapter i the dangerous archipelago atolls at a distance in the early morning of 4th september a whale-boat manned by natives dragged us down the green lane of the anchorage and round the spouting promontory. on the shore level it was a hot, breathless, and yet crystal morning; but high overhead the hills of atuona were all cowled in cloud, and the ocean-river of the trades streamed without pause. as we crawled from under the immediate shelter of the land, we reached at last the limit of their influence. the wind fell upon our sails in puffs, which strengthened and grew more continuous; presently the casco heeled down to her day's work; the whale-boat, quite outstripped, clung for a noisy moment to her quarter; the stipulated bread, rum, and tobacco were passed in; a moment more and the boat was in our wake, and our late pilots were cheering our departure. this was the more inspiriting as we were bound for scenes so different, and though on a brief voyage, yet for a new province of creation. that wide field of ocean, called loosely the south seas, extends from tropic to tropic, and from perhaps 123 degrees w. to 150 degrees e., a parallelogram of one hundred degrees by fortyseven, where degrees are the most spacious. much of it lies vacant, much is closely sown with isles, and the isles are of two sorts. no distinction is so continually dwelt upon in south sea talk as that between the 'low' and the 'high' island, and there is none more broadly marked in nature. the himalayas are not more different from the sahara. on the one hand, and chiefly in groups of from eight to a dozen, volcanic islands rise above the sea; few reach an altitude of less than 4000 feet; one exceeds 13,000; their tops are often obscured in cloud, they are all clothed with various forests, all abound in food, and are all remarkable for picturesque and solemn scenery. on the other hand, we have the atoll; a thing of problematic origin and history, the reputed creature of an insect apparently unidentified; rudely annular in shape; enclosing a lagoon; rarely extending beyond a quarter of a mile at its chief width; often rising at its highest point to less than the stature of a man man himself, the rat and the land crab, its chief inhabitants; not more variously supplied with plants; and offering to the eye, even when perfect, only a ring of glittering beach and verdant foliage, enclosing and enclosed by the blue sea. in no quarter are the atolls so thickly congregated, in none are they so varied in size from the greatest to the least, and in none is navigation so beset with perils, as in that archipelago that we were now to thread. the huge system of the trades is, for some reason, quite confounded by this multiplicity of reefs, the wind intermits, squalls are frequent from the west and south-west, hurricanes are known. the currents are, besides, inextricably intermixed; dead reckoning becomes a farce; the charts are not to be trusted; and such is the number and similarity of these islands that, even when you have picked one up, you may be none the wiser. the reputation of the place is consequently infamous; insurance offices exclude it from their field, and it was not without misgiving that my captain risked the casco in such waters. i believe, indeed, it is almost understood that yachts are to avoid this baffling archipelago; and it required all my instances and all mr. otis's private taste for adventure to deflect our course across its midst. for a few days we sailed with a steady trade, and a steady westerly current setting us to leeward; and toward sundown of the seventh it was supposed we should have sighted takaroa, one of cook's socalled king george islands. the sun set; yet a while longer the old moon semi-brilliant herself, and with a silver belly, which was her successor sailed among gathering clouds; she, too, deserted us; stars of every degree of sheen, and clouds of every variety of form disputed the sub-lustrous night; and still we gazed in vain for takaroa. the mate stood on the bowsprit, his tall grey figure slashing up and down against the stars, and still 'nihil astra praeter vidit et undas. the rest of us were grouped at the port anchor davit, staring with no less assiduity, but with far less hope on the obscure horizon. islands we beheld in plenty, but they were of 'such stuff as dreams are made on,' and vanished at a wink, only to appear in other places; and by and by not only islands, but refulgent and revolving lights began to stud the darkness; lighthouses of the mind or of the wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. at length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again from his unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed our destination. he was the only man of practice in these waters, our sole pilot, shipped for that end at tai-o-hae. if he declared we had missed takaroa, it was not for us to quarrel with the fact, but, if we could, to explain it. we had certainly run down our southing. our canted wake upon the sea and our somewhat drunkenlooking course upon the chart both testified with no less certainty to an impetuous westward current. we had no choice but to conclude we were again set down to leeward; and the best we could do was to bring the casco to the wind, keep a good watch, and expect morning. i slept that night, as was then my somewhat dangerous practice, on deck upon the cockpit bench. a stir at last awoke me, to see all the eastern heaven dyed with faint orange, the binnacle lamp already dulled against the brightness of the day, and the steersman leaning eagerly across the wheel. 'there it is, sir!' he cried, and pointed in the very eyeball of the dawn. for awhile i could see nothing but the bluish ruins of the morning bank, which lay far along the horizon, like melting icebergs. then the sun rose, pierced a gap in these debris of vapours, and displayed an inconsiderable islet, flat as a plate upon the sea, and spiked with palms of disproportioned altitude. so far, so good. here was certainly an atoll; and we were certainly got among the archipelago. but which? and where? the isle was too small for either takaroa: in all our neighbourhood, indeed, there was none so inconsiderable, save only tikei; and tikei, one of roggewein's so-called pernicious islands, seemed beside the question. at that rate, instead of drifting to the west, we must have fetched up thirty miles to windward. and how about the current? it had been setting us down, by observation, all these days: by the deflection of our wake, it should be setting us down that moment. when had it stopped? when had it begun again? and what kind of torrent was that which had swept us eastward in the interval? to these questions, so typical of navigation in that range of isles, i have no answer. such were at least the facts; tikei our island turned out to be; and it was our first experience of the dangerous archipelago, to make our landfall thirty miles out. the sight of tikei, thrown direct against the splendour of the morning, robbed of all its colour, and deformed with disproportioned trees like bristles on a broom, had scarce prepared us to be much in love with atolls. later the same day we saw under more fit conditions the island of taiaro. lost in the sea is possibly the meaning of the name. and it was so we saw it; lost in blue sea and sky: a ring of white beach, green underwood, and tossing palms, gem-like in colour; of a fairy, of a heavenly prettiness. the surf ran all around it, white as snow, and broke at one point, far to seaward, on what seems an uncharted reef. there was no smoke, no sign of man; indeed, the isle is not inhabited, only visited at intervals. and yet a trader (mr. narii salmon) was watching from the shore and wondering at the unexpected ship. i have spent since then long months upon low islands; i know the tedium of their undistinguished days; i know the burden of their diet. with whatever envy we may have looked from the deck on these green coverts, it was with a tenfold greater that mr. salmon and his comrades saw us steer, in our trim ship, to seaward. the night fell lovely in the extreme. after the moon went down, the heaven was a thing to wonder at for stars. and as i lay in the cockpit and looked upon the steersman i was haunted by emerson's verses: 'and the lone seaman all the night sails astonished among stars.' by this glittering and imperfect brightness, about four bells in the first watch we made our third atoll, raraka. the low line of the isle lay straight along the sky; so that i was at first reminded of a towpath, and we seemed to be mounting some engineered and navigable stream. presently a red star appeared, about the height and brightness of a danger signal, and with that my simile was changed; we seemed rather to skirt the embankment of a railway, and the eye began to look instinctively for the telegraph-posts, and the ear to expect the coming of a train. here and there, but rarely, faint tree-tops broke the level. and the sound of the surf accompanied us, now in a drowsy monotone, now with a menacing swing. the isle lay nearly east and west, barring our advance on fakarava. we must, therefore, hug the coast until we gained the western end, where, through a passage eight miles wide, we might sail southward between raraka and the next isle, kauehi. we had the wind free, a lightish air; but clouds of an inky blackness were beginning to arise, and at times it lightened without thunder. something, i know not what, continually set us up upon the island. we lay more and more to the nor'ard; and you would have thought the shore copied our manoeuvre and outsailed us. once and twice raraka headed us again again, in the sea fashion, the quite innocent steersman was abused and again the casco kept away. had i been called on, with no more light than that of our experience, to draw the configuration of that island, i should have shown a series of bowwindow promontories, each overlapping the other to the nor'ard, and the trend of the land from the south-east to the north-west, and behold, on the chart it lay near east and west in a straight line. we had but just repeated our manoeuvre and kept away for not more than five minutes the railway embankment had been lost to view and the surf to hearing when i was aware of land again, not only on the weather bow, but dead ahead. i played the part of the judicious landsman, holding my peace till the last moment; and presently my mariners perceived it for themselves. 'land ahead!' said the steersman. 'by god, it's kauehi!' cried the mate. and so it was. and with that i began to be sorry for cartographers. we were scarce doing three and a half; and they asked me to believe that (in five minutes) we had dropped an island, passed eight miles of open water, and run almost high and dry upon the next. but my captain was more sorry for himself to be afloat in such a labyrinth; laid the casco to, with the log line up and down, and sat on the stern rail and watched it till the morning. he had enough of night in the paumotus. by daylight on the 9th we began to skirt kauehi, and had now an opportunity to see near at hand the geography of atolls. here and there, where it was high, the farther side loomed up; here and there the near side dipped entirely and showed a broad path of water into the lagoon; here and there both sides were equally abased, and we could look right through the discontinuous ring to the sea horizon on the south. conceive, on a vast scale, the submerged hoop of the duck-hunter, trimmed with green rushes to conceal his head water within, water without you have the image of the perfect atoll. conceive one that has been partly plucked of its rush fringe; you have the atoll of kauehi. and for either shore of it at closer quarters, conceive the line of some old roman highway traversing a wet morass, and here sunk out of view and there re-arising, crowned with a green tuft of thicket; only instead of the stagnant waters of a marsh, the live ocean now boiled against, now buried the frail barrier. last night's impression in the dark was thus confirmed by day, and not corrected. we sailed indeed by a mere causeway in the sea, of nature's handiwork, yet of no greater magnitude than many of the works of man. the isle was uninhabited; it was all green brush and white sand, set in transcendently blue water; even the coco-palms were rare, though some of these completed the bright harmony of colour by hanging out a fan of golden yellow. for long there was no sign of life beyond the vegetable, and no sound but the continuous grumble of the surf. in silence and desertion these fair shores slipped past, and were submerged and rose again with clumps of thicket from the sea. and then a bird or two appeared, hovering and crying; swiftly these became more numerous, and presently, looking ahead, we were aware of a vast effervescence of winged life. in this place the annular isle was mostly under water, carrying here and there on its submerged line a wooded islet. over one of these the birds hung and flew with an incredible density like that of gnats or hiving bees; the mass flashed white and black, and heaved and quivered, and the screaming of the creatures rose over the voice of the surf in a shrill clattering whirr. as you descend some inland valley a not dissimilar sound announces the nearness of a mill and pouring river. some stragglers, as i said, came to meet our approach; a few still hung about the ship as we departed. the crying died away, the last pair of wings was left behind, and once more the low shores of kauehi streamed past our eyes in silence like a picture. i supposed at the time that the birds lived, like ants or citizens, concentred where we saw them. i have been told since (i know not if correctly) that the whole isle, or much of it, is similarly peopled; and that the effervescence at a single spot would be the mark of a boat's crew of egg-hunters from one of the neighbouring inhabited atolls. so that here at kauehi, as the day before at taiaro, the casco sailed by under the fire of unsuspected eyes. and one thing is surely true, that even on these ribbons of land an army might lie hid and no passing mariner divine its presence. chapter ii fakarava: an atoll at hand by a little before noon we were running down the coast of our destination, fakarava: the air very light, the sea near smooth; though still we were accompanied by a continuous murmur from the beach, like the sound of a distant train. the isle is of a huge longitude, the enclosed lagoon thirty miles by ten or twelve, and the coral tow-path, which they call the land, some eighty or ninety miles by (possibly) one furlong. that part by which we sailed was all raised; the underwood excellently green, the topping wood of coco-palms continuous a mark, if i had known it, of man's intervention. for once more, and once more unconsciously, we were within hail of fellow-creatures, and that vacant beach was but a pistol-shot from the capital city of the archipelago. but the life of an atoll, unless it be enclosed, passes wholly on the shores of the lagoon; it is there the villages are seated, there the canoes ply and are drawn up; and the beach of the ocean is a place accursed and deserted, the fit scene only for wizardry and shipwreck, and in the native belief a haunting ground of murderous spectres. by and by we might perceive a breach in the low barrier; the woods ceased; a glittering point ran into the sea, tipped with an emerald shoal the mark of entrance. as we drew near we met a little run of sea the private sea of the lagoon having there its origin and end, and here, in the jaws of the gateway, trying vain conclusions with the more majestic heave of the pacific. the casco scarce avowed a shock; but there are times and circumstances when these harbour mouths of inland basins vomit floods, deflecting, burying, and dismasting ships. for, conceive a lagoon perfectly sealed but in the one point, and that of merely navigable width; conceive the tide and wind to have heaped for hours together in that coral fold a superfluity of waters, and the tide to change and the wind fall the open sluice of some great reservoirs at home will give an image of the unstemmable effluxion. we were scarce well headed for the pass before all heads were craned over the rail. for the water, shoaling under our board, became changed in a moment to surprising hues of blue and grey; and in its transparency the coral branched and blossomed, and the fish of the inland sea cruised visibly below us, stained and striped, and even beaked like parrots. i have paid in my time to view many curiosities; never one so curious as that first sight over the ship's rail in the lagoon of fakarava. but let not the reader be deceived with hope. i have since entered, i suppose, some dozen atolls in different parts of the pacific, and the experience has never been repeated. that exquisite hue and transparency of submarine day, and these shoals of rainbow fish, have not enraptured me again. before we could raise our eyes from that engaging spectacle the schooner had slipped betwixt the pierheads of the reef, and was already quite committed to the sea within. the containing shores are so little erected, and the lagoon itself is so great, that, for the more part, it seemed to extend without a check to the horizon. here and there, indeed, where the reef carried an inlet, like a signet-ring upon a finger, there would be a pencilling of palms; here and there, the green wall of wood ran solid for a length of miles; and on the port hand, under the highest grove of trees, a few houses sparkled white rotoava, the metropolitan settlement of the paumotus. hither we beat in three tacks, and came to an anchor close in shore, in the first smooth water since we had left san francisco, five fathoms deep, where a man might look overboard all day at the vanishing cable, the coral patches, and the manycoloured fish. fakarava was chosen to be the seat of government from nautical considerations only. it is eccentrically situate; the productions, even for a low island, poor; the population neither many nor for low islanders industrious. but the lagoon has two good passages, one to leeward, one to windward, so that in all states of the wind it can be left and entered, and this advantage, for a government of scattered islands, was decisive. a pier of coral, landing-stairs, a harbour light upon a staff and pillar, and two spacious government bungalows in a handsome fence, give to the northern end of rotoava a great air of consequence. this is confirmed on the one hand by an empty prison, on the other by a gendarmerie pasted over with hand-bills in tahitian, land-law notices from papeete, and republican sentiments from paris, signed (a little after date) 'jules grevy, perihidente.' quite at the far end a belfried catholic chapel concludes the town; and between, on a smooth floor of white coral sand and under the breezy canopy of coco-palms, the houses of the natives stand irregularly scattered, now close on the lagoon for the sake of the breeze, now back under the palms for love of shadow. not a soul was to be seen. but for the thunder of the surf on the far side, it seemed you might have heard a pin drop anywhere about that capital city. there was something thrilling in the unexpected silence, something yet more so in the unexpected sound. here before us a sea reached to the horizon, rippling like an inland mere; and behold! close at our back another sea assaulted with assiduous fury the reverse of the position. at night the lantern was run up and lit a vacant pier. in one house lights were seen and voices heard, where the population (i was told) sat playing cards. a little beyond, from deep in the darkness of the palmgrove, we saw the glow and smelt the aromatic odour of a coal of cocoa-nut husk, a relic of the evening kitchen. crickets sang; some shrill thing whistled in a tuft of weeds; and the mosquito hummed and stung. there was no other trace that night of man, bird, or insect in the isle. the moon, now three days old, and as yet but a silver crescent on a still visible sphere, shone through the palm canopy with vigorous and scattered lights. the alleys where we walked were smoothed and weeded like a boulevard; here and there were plants set out; here and there dusky cottages clustered in the shadow, some with verandahs. a public garden by night, a rich and fashionable watering-place in a by-season, offer sights and vistas not dissimilar. and still, on the one side, stretched the lapping mere, and from the other the deep sea still growled in the night. but it was most of all on board, in the dead hours, when i had been better sleeping, that the spell of fakarava seized and held me. the moon was down. the harbour lantern and two of the greater planets drew vari-coloured wakes on the lagoon. from shore the cheerful watch-cry of cocks rang out at intervals above the organ-point of surf. and the thought of this depopulated capital, this protracted thread of annular island with its crest of coco-palms and fringe of breakers, and that tranquil inland sea that stretched before me till it touched the stars, ran in my head for hours with delight. so long as i stayed upon that isle these thoughts were constant. i lay down to sleep, and woke again with an unblunted sense of my surroundings. i was never weary of calling up the image of that narrow causeway, on which i had my dwelling, lying coiled like a serpent, tail to mouth, in the outrageous ocean, and i was never weary of passing a mere quarter-deck parade from the one side to the other, from the shady, habitable shores of the lagoon to the blinding desert and uproarious breakers of the opposite beach. the sense of insecurity in such a thread of residence is more than fanciful. hurricanes and tidal waves over-leap these humble obstacles; oceanus remembers his strength, and, where houses stood and palms flourished, shakes his white beard again over the barren coral. fakarava itself has suffered; the trees immediately beyond my house were all of recent replantation; and anaa is only now recovered from a heavier stroke. i knew one who was then dwelling in the isle. he told me that he and two ship captains walked to the sea beach. there for a while they viewed the on-coming breakers, till one of the captains clapped suddenly his hand before his eyes and cried aloud that he could endure no longer to behold them. this was in the afternoon; in the dark hours of the night the sea burst upon the island like a flood; the settlement was razed all but the church and presbytery; and, when day returned, the survivors saw themselves clinging in an abattis of uprooted coco-palms and ruined houses. danger is but a small consideration. but men are more nicely sensible of a discomfort; and the atoll is a discomfortable home. there are some, and these probably ancient, where a deep soil has formed and the most valuable fruit-trees prosper. i have walked in one, with equal admiration and surprise, through a forest of huge breadfruits, eating bananas and stumbling among taro as i went. this was in the atoll of namorik in the marshall group, and stands alone in my experience. to give the opposite extreme, which is yet far more near the average, i will describe the soil and productions of fakarava. the surface of that narrow strip is for the more part of broken coral lime-stone, like volcanic clinkers, and excruciating to the naked foot; in some atolls, i believe, not in fakarava, it gives a fine metallic ring when struck. here and there you come upon a bank of sand, exceeding fine and white, and these parts are the least productive. the plants (such as they are) spring from and love the broken coral, whence they grow with that wonderful verdancy that makes the beauty of the atoll from the sea. the coco-palm in particular luxuriates in that stern solum, striking down his roots to the brackish, percolated water, and bearing his green head in the wind with every evidence of health and pleasure. and yet even the coco-palm must be helped in infancy with some extraneous nutriment, and through much of the low archipelago there is planted with each nut a piece of ship's biscuit and a rusty nail. the pandanus comes next in importance, being also a food tree; and he, too, does bravely. a green bush called miki runs everywhere; occasionally a purao is seen; and there are several useless weeds. according to m. cuzent, the whole number of plants on an atoll such as fakarava will scarce exceed, even if it reaches to, one score. not a blade of grass appears; not a grain of humus, save when a sack or two has been imported to make the semblance of a garden; such gardens as bloom in cities on the window-sill. insect life is sometimes dense; a cloud o' mosquitoes, and, what is far worse, a plague of flies blackening our food, has sometimes driven us from a meal on apemama; and even in fakarava the mosquitoes were a pest. the land crab may be seen scuttling to his hole, and at night the rats besiege the houses and the artificial gardens. the crab is good eating; possibly so is the rat; i have not tried. pandanus fruit is made, in the gilberts, into an agreeable sweetmeat, such as a man may trifle with at the end of a long dinner; for a substantial meal i have no use for it. the rest of the food-supply, in a destitute atoll such as fakarava, can be summed up in the favourite jest of the archipelago cocoa-nut beefsteak. cocoa-nut green, cocoa-nut ripe, cocoa-nut germinated; cocoa-nut to eat and cocoa-nut to drink; cocoa-nut raw and cooked, cocoa-nut hot and cold such is the bill of fare. and some of the entrees are no doubt delicious. the germinated nut, cooked in the shell and eaten with a spoon, forms a good pudding; cocoa-nut milk the expressed juice of a ripe nut, not the water of a green one goes well in coffee, and is a valuable adjunct in cookery through the south seas; and cocoanut salad, if you be a millionaire, and can afford to eat the value of a field of corn for your dessert, is a dish to be remembered with affection. but when all is done there is a sameness, and the israelites of the low islands murmur at their manna. the reader may think i have forgot the sea. the two beaches do certainly abound in life, and they are strangely different. in the lagoon the water shallows slowly on a bottom of the fine slimy sand, dotted with clumps of growing coral. then comes a strip of tidal beach on which the ripples lap. in the coral clumps the great holy-water clam (tridacna) grows plentifully; a little deeper lie the beds of the pearl-oyster and sail the resplendent fish that charmed us at our entrance; and these are all more or less vigorously coloured. but the other shells are white like lime, or faintly tinted with a little pink, the palest possible display; many of them dead besides, and badly rolled. on the ocean side, on the mounds of the steep beach, over all the width of the reef right out to where the surf is bursting, in every cranny, under every scattered fragment of the coral, an incredible plenty of marine life displays the most wonderful variety and brilliancy of hues. the reef itself has no passage of colour but is imitated by some shell. purple and red and white, and green and yellow, pied and striped and clouded, the living shells wear in every combination the livery of the dead reef if the reef be dead so that the eye is continually baffled and the collector continually deceived. i have taken shells for stones and stones for shells, the one as often as the other. a prevailing character of the coral is to be dotted with small spots of red, and it is wonderful how many varieties of shell have adopted the same fashion and donned the disguise of the red spot. a shell i had found in plenty in the marquesas i found here also unchanged in all things else, but there were the red spots. a lively little crab wore the same markings. the case of the hermit or soldier crab was more conclusive, being the result of conscious choice. this nasty little wrecker, scavenger, and squatter has learned the value of a spotted house; so it be of the right colour he will choose the smallest shard, tuck himself in a mere corner of a broken whorl, and go about the world half naked; but i never found him in this imperfect armour unless it was marked with the red spot. some two hundred yards distant is the beach of the lagoon. collect the shells from each, set them side by side, and you would suppose they came from different hemispheres; the one so pale, the other so brilliant; the one prevalently white, the other of a score of hues, and infected with the scarlet spot like a disease. this seems the more strange, since the hermit crabs pass and repass the island, and i have met them by the residency well, which is about central, journeying either way. without doubt many of the shells in the lagoon are dead. but why are they dead? without doubt the living shells have a very different background set for imitation. but why are these so different? we are only on the threshold of the mysteries. either beach, i have said, abounds with life. on the sea-side and in certain atolls this profusion of vitality is even shocking: the rock under foot is mined with it. i have broken off notably in funafuti and arorai great lumps of ancient weathered rock that rang under my blows like iron, and the fracture has been full of pendent worms as long as my hand, as thick as a child's finger, of a slightly pinkish white, and set as close as three or even four to the square inch. even in the lagoon, where certain shell-fish seem to sicken, others (it is notorious) prosper exceedingly and make the riches of these islands. fish, too, abound; the lagoon is a closed fish-pond, such as might rejoice the fancy of an abbot; sharks swarm there, and chiefly round the passages, to feast upon this plenty, and you would suppose that man had only to prepare his angle. alas! it is not so. of these painted fish that came in hordes about the entering casco, some bore poisonous spines, and others were poisonous if eaten. the stranger must refrain, or take his chance of painful and dangerous sickness. the native, on his own isle, is a safe guide; transplant him to the next, and he is helpless as yourself. for it is a question both of time and place. a fish caught in a lagoon may be deadly; the same fish caught the same day at sea, and only a few hundred yards without the passage, will be wholesome eating: in a neighbouring isle perhaps the case will be reversed; and perhaps a fortnight later you shall be able to eat of them indifferently from within and from without. according to the natives, these bewildering vicissitudes are ruled by the movement of the heavenly bodies. the beautiful planet venus plays a great part in all island tales and customs; and among other functions, some of them more awful, she regulates the season of good fish. with venus in one phase, as we had her, certain fish were poisonous in the lagoon: with venus in another, the same fish was harmless and a valued article of diet. white men explain these changes by the phases of the coral. it adds a last touch of horror to the thought of this precarious annular gangway in the sea, that even what there is of it is not of honest rock, but organic, part alive, part putrescent; even the clean sea and the bright fish about it poisoned, the most stubborn boulder burrowed in by worms, the lightest dust venomous as an apothecary's drugs. chapter iii a house to let in a low island never populous, it was yet by a chapter of accidents that i found the island so deserted that no sound of human life diversified the hours; that we walked in that trim public garden of a town, among closed houses, without even a lodging-bill in a window to prove some tenancy in the back quarters; and, when we visited the government bungalow, that mr. donat, acting vice-resident, greeted us alone, and entertained us with cocoa-nut punches in the sessions hall and seat of judgment of that widespread archipelago, our glasses standing arrayed with summonses and census returns. the unpopularity of a late vice-resident had begun the movement of exodus, his native employes resigning court appointments and retiring each to his own coco-patch in the remoter districts of the isle. upon the back of that, the governor in papeete issued a decree: all land in the paumotus must be defined and registered by a certain date. now, the folk of the archipelago are half nomadic; a man can scarce be said to belong to a particular atoll; he belongs to several, perhaps holds a stake and counts cousinship in half a score; and the inhabitants of rotoava in particular, man, woman, and child, and from the gendarme to the mormon prophet and the schoolmaster, owned i was going to say land owned at least coral blocks and growing coco-palms in some adjacent isle. thither from the gendarme to the babe in arms, the pastor followed by his flock, the schoolmaster carrying along with him his scholars, and the scholars with their books and slates they had taken ship some two days previous to our arrival, and were all now engaged disputing boundaries. fancy overhears the shrillness of their disputation mingle with the surf and scatter sea-fowl. it was admirable to observe the completeness of their flight, like that of hibernating birds; nothing left but empty houses, like old nests to be reoccupied in spring; and even the harmless necessary dominie borne with them in their transmigration. fifty odd set out, and only seven, i was informed, remained. but when i made a feast on board the casco, more than seven, and nearer seven times seven, appeared to be my guests. whence they appeared, how they were summoned, whither they vanished when the feast was eaten, i have no guess. in view of low island tales, and that awful frequentation which makes men avoid the seaward beaches of an atoll, some two score of those that ate with us may have returned, for the occasion, from the kingdom of the dead. it was this solitude that put it in our minds to hire a house, and become, for the time being, indwellers of the isle a practice i have ever since, when it was possible, adhered to. mr. donat placed us, with that intent, under the convoy of one taniera mahinui, who combined the incongruous characters of catechist and convict. the reader may smile, but i affirm he was well qualified for either part. for that of convict, first of all, by a good substantial felony, such as in all lands casts the perpetrator in chains and dungeons. taniera was a man of birth the chief a while ago, as he loved to tell, of a district in anaa of 800 souls. in an evil hour it occurred to the authorities in papeete to charge the chiefs with the collection of the taxes. it is a question if much were collected; it is certain that nothing was handed on; and taniera, who had distinguished himself by a visit to papeete and some high living in restaurants, was chosen for the scapegoat. the reader must understand that not taniera but the authorities in papeete were first in fault. the charge imposed was disproportioned. i have not yet heard of any polynesian capable of such a burden; honest and upright hawaiians one in particular, who was admired even by the whites as an inflexible magistrate have stumbled in the narrow path of the trustee. and taniera, when the pinch came, scorned to denounce accomplices; others had shared the spoil, he bore the penalty alone. he was condemned in five years. the period, when i had the pleasure of his friendship, was not yet expired; he still drew prison rations, the sole and not unwelcome reminder of his chains, and, i believe, looked forward to the date of his enfranchisement with mere alarm. for he had no sense of shame in the position; complained of nothing but the defective table of his place of exile; regretted nothing but the fowls and eggs and fish of his own more favoured island. and as for his parishioners, they did not think one hair the less of him. a schoolboy, mulcted in ten thousand lines of greek and dwelling sequestered in the dormitories, enjoys unabated consideration from his fellows. so with taniera: a marked man, not a dishonoured; having fallen under the lash of the unthinkable gods; a job, perhaps, or say a taniera in the den of lions. songs are likely made and sung about this saintly robin hood. on the other hand, he was even highly qualified for his office in the church; being by nature a grave, considerate, and kindly man; his face rugged and serious, his smile bright; the master of several trades, a builder both of boats and houses; endowed with a fine pulpit voice; endowed besides with such a gift of eloquence that at the grave of the late chief of fakarava he set all the assistants weeping. i never met a man of a mind more ecclesiastical; he loved to dispute and to inform himself of doctrine and the history of sects; and when i showed him the cuts in a volume of chambers's encyclopaedia except for one of an ape reserved his whole enthusiasm for cardinals' hats, censers, candlesticks, and cathedrals. methought when he looked upon the cardinal's hat a voice said low in his ear: 'your foot is on the ladder.' under the guidance of taniera we were soon installed in what i believe to have been the best-appointed private house in fakarava. it stood just beyond the church in an oblong patch of cultivation. more than three hundred sacks of soil were imported from tahiti for the residency garden; and this must shortly be renewed, for the earth blows away, sinks in crevices of the coral, and is sought for at last in vain. i know not how much earth had gone to the garden of my villa; some at least, for an alley of prosperous bananas ran to the gate, and over the rest of the enclosure, which was covered with the usual clinker-like fragments of smashed coral, not only coco-palms and mikis but also fig-trees flourished, all of a delicious greenness. of course there was no blade of grass. in front a picket fence divided us from the white road, the palmfringed margin of the lagoon, and the lagoon itself, reflecting clouds by day and stars by night. at the back, a bulwark of uncemented coral enclosed us from the narrow belt of bush and the nigh ocean beach where the seas thundered, the roar and wash of them still humming in the chambers of the house. this itself was of one story, verandahed front and back. it contained three rooms, three sewing-machines, three sea-chests, chairs, tables, a pair of beds, a cradle, a double-barrelled gun, a pair of enlarged coloured photographs, a pair of coloured prints after wilkie and mulready, and a french lithograph with the legend: 'le brigade du general lepasset brulant son drapeau devant metz.' under the stilts of the house a stove was rusting, till we drew it forth and put it in commission. not far off was the burrow in the coral whence we supplied ourselves with brackish water. there was live stock, besides, on the estate cocks and hens and a brace of ill-regulated cats, whom taniera came every morning with the sun to feed on grated cocoa-nut. his voice was our regular reveille, ringing pleasantly about the garden: 'pooty pooty poo poo poo!' far as we were from the public offices, the nearness of the chapel made our situation what is called eligible in advertisements, and gave us a side look on some native life. every morning, as soon as he had fed the fowls, taniera set the bell agoing in the small belfry; and the faithful, who were not very numerous, gathered to prayers. i was once present: it was the lord's day, and seven females and eight males composed the congregation. a woman played precentor, starting with a longish note; the catechist joined in upon the second bar; and then the faithful in a body. some had printed hymn-books which they followed; some of the rest filled up with 'eh eh eh,' the paumotuan tol-de-rol. after the hymn, we had an antiphonal prayer or two; and then taniera rose from the front bench, where he had been sitting in his catechist's robes, passed within the altar-rails, opened his tahitian bible, and began to preach from notes. i understood one word the name of god; but the preacher managed his voice with taste, used rare and expressive gestures, and made a strong impression of sincerity. the plain service, the vernacular bible, the hymn-tunes mostly on an english pattern 'god save the queen,' i was informed, a special favourite, all, save some paper flowers upon the altar, seemed not merely but austerely protestant. it is thus the catholics have met their low island proselytes half-way. taniera had the keys of our house; it was with him i made my bargain, if that could be called a bargain in which all was remitted to my generosity; it was he who fed the cats and poultry, he who came to call and pick a meal with us like an acknowledged friend; and we long fondly supposed he was our landlord. this belief was not to bear the test of experience; and, as my chapter has to relate, no certainty succeeded it. we passed some days of airless quiet and great heat; shellgatherers were warned from the ocean beach, where sunstroke waited them from ten till four; the highest palm hung motionless, there was no voice audible but that of the sea on the far side. at last, about four of a certain afternoon, long cat's-paws flawed the face of the lagoon; and presently in the tree-tops there awoke the grateful bustle of the trades, and all the houses and alleys of the island were fanned out. to more than one enchanted ship, that had lain long becalmed in view of the green shore, the wind brought deliverance; and by daylight on the morrow a schooner and two cutters lay moored in the port of rotoava. not only in the outer sea, but in the lagoon itself, a certain traffic woke with the reviving breeze; and among the rest one francois, a half-blood, set sail with the first light in his own half-decked cutter. he had held before a court appointment; being, i believe, the residency sweeper-out. trouble arising with the unpopular vice-resident, he had thrown his honours down, and fled to the far parts of the atoll to plant cabbages or at least coco-palms. thence he was now driven by such need as even a cincinnatus must acknowledge, and fared for the capital city, the seat of his late functions, to exchange half a ton of copra for necessary flour. and here, for a while, the story leaves to tell of his voyaging. it must tell, instead, of our house, where, toward seven at night, the catechist came suddenly in with his pleased air of being welcome; armed besides with a considerable bunch of keys. these he proceeded to try on the sea-chests, drawing each in turn from its place against the wall. heads of strangers appeared in the doorway and volunteered suggestions. all in vain. either they were the wrong keys or the wrong boxes, or the wrong man was trying them. for a little taniera fumed and fretted; then had recourse to the more summary method of the hatchet; one of the chests was broken open, and an armful of clothing, male and female, baled out and handed to the strangers on the verandah. these were francois, his wife, and their child. about eight a.m., in the midst of the lagoon, their cutter had capsized in jibbing. they got her righted, and though she was still full of water put the child on board. the mainsail had been carried away, but the jib still drew her sluggishly along, and francois and the woman swam astern and worked the rudder with their hands. the cold was cruel; the fatigue, as time went on, became excessive; and in that preserve of sharks, fear hunted them. again and again, francois, the half-breed, would have desisted and gone down; but the woman, whole blood of an amphibious race, still supported him with cheerful words. i am reminded of a woman of hawaii who swam with her husband, i dare not say how many miles, in a high sea, and came ashore at last with his dead body in her arms. it was about five in the evening, after nine hours' swimming, that francois and his wife reached land at rotoava. the gallant fight was won, and instantly the more childish side of native character appears. they had supped, and told and retold their story, dripping as they came; the flesh of the woman, whom mrs. stevenson helped to shift, was cold as stone; and francois, having changed to a dry cotton shirt and trousers, passed the remainder of the evening on my floor and between open doorways, in a thorough draught. yet francois, the son of a french father, speaks excellent french himself and seems intelligent. it was our first idea that the catechist, true to his evangelical vocation, was clothing the naked from his superfluity. then it came out that francois was but dealing with his own. the clothes were his, so was the chest, so was the house. francois was in fact the landlord. yet you observe he had hung back on the verandah while taniera tried his 'prentice hand upon the locks: and even now, when his true character appeared, the only use he made of the estate was to leave the clothes of his family drying on the fence. taniera was still the friend of the house, still fed the poultry, still came about us on his daily visits, francois, during the remainder of his stay, holding bashfully aloof. and there was stranger matter. since francois had lost the whole load of his cutter, the half ton of copra, an axe, bowls, knives, and clothes since he had in a manner to begin the world again, and his necessary flour was not yet bought or paid for i proposed to advance him what he needed on the rent. to my enduring amazement he refused, and the reason he gave if that can be called a reason which but darkens counsel was that taniera was his friend. his friend, you observe; not his creditor. i inquired into that, and was assured that taniera, an exile in a strange isle, might possibly be in debt himself, but certainly was no man's creditor. very early one morning we were awakened by a bustling presence in the yard, and found our camp had been surprised by a tall, lean old native lady, dressed in what were obviously widow's weeds. you could see at a glance she was a notable woman, a housewife, sternly practical, alive with energy, and with fine possibilities of temper. indeed, there was nothing native about her but the skin; and the type abounds, and is everywhere respected, nearer home. it did us good to see her scour the grounds, examining the plants and chickens; watering, feeding, trimming them; taking angry, purposelike possession. when she neared the house our sympathy abated; when she came to the broken chest i wished i were elsewhere. we had scarce a word in common; but her whole lean body spoke for her with indignant eloquence. 'my chest!' it cried, with a stress on the possessive. 'my chest broken open! this is a fine state of things!' i hastened to lay the blame where it belonged on francois and his wife and found i had made things worse instead of better. she repeated the names at first with incredulity, then with despair. a while she seemed stunned, next fell to disembowelling the box, piling the goods on the floor, and visibly computing the extent of francois's ravages; and presently after she was observed in high speech with taniera, who seemed to hang an ear like one reproved. here, then, by all known marks, should be my land-lady at last; here was every character of the proprietor fully developed. should i not approach her on the still depending question of my rent? i carried the point to an adviser. 'nonsense!' he cried. 'that's the old woman, the mother. it doesn't belong to her. i believe that's the man the house belongs to,' and he pointed to one of the coloured photographs on the wall. on this i gave up all desire of understanding; and when the time came for me to leave, in the judgment-hall of the archipelago, and with the awful countenance of the acting governor, i duly paid my rent to taniera. he was satisfied, and so was i. but what had he to do with it? mr. donat, acting magistrate and a man of kindred blood, could throw no light upon the mystery; a plain private person, with a taste for letters, cannot be expected to do more. chapter iv traits and sects in the paumotus the most careless reader must have remarked a change of air since the marquesas. the house, crowded with effects, the bustling housewife counting her possessions, the serious, indoctrinated island pastor, the long fight for life in the lagoon: here are traits of a new world. i read in a pamphlet (i will not give the author's name) that the marquesan especially resembles the paumotuan. i should take the two races, though so near in neighbourhood, to be extremes of polynesian diversity. the marquesan is certainly the most beautiful of human races, and one of the tallest the paumotuan averaging a good inch shorter, and not even handsome; the marquesan open-handed, inert, insensible to religion, childishly self-indulgent the paumotuan greedy, hardy, enterprising, a religious disputant, and with a trace of the ascetic character. yet a few years ago, and the people of the archipelago were crafty savages. their isles might be called sirens' isles, not merely from the attraction they exerted on the passing mariner, but from the perils that awaited him on shore. even to this day, in certain outlying islands, danger lingers; and the civilized paumotuan dreads to land and hesitates to accost his backward brother. but, except in these, to-day the peril is a memory. when our generation were yet in the cradle and playroom it was still a living fact. between 1830 and 1840, hao, for instance, was a place of the most dangerous approach, where ships were seized and crews kidnapped. as late as 1856, the schooner sarah ann sailed from papeete and was seen no more. she had women on board, and children, the captain's wife, a nursemaid, a baby, and the two young sons of a captain steven on their way to the mainland for schooling. all were supposed to have perished in a squall. a year later, the captain of the julia, coasting along the island variously called bligh, lagoon, and tematangi saw armed natives follow the course of his schooner, clad in many-coloured stuffs. suspicion was at once aroused; the mother of the lost children was profuse of money; and one expedition having found the place deserted, and returned content with firing a few shots, she raised and herself accompanied another. none appeared to greet or to oppose them; they roamed a while among abandoned huts and empty thickets; then formed two parties and set forth to beat, from end to end, the pandanus jungle of the island. one man remained alone by the landing-place teina, a chief of anaa, leader of the armed natives who made the strength of the expedition. now that his comrades were departed this way and that, on their laborious exploration, the silence fell profound; and this silence was the ruin of the islanders. a sound of stones rattling caught the ear of teina. he looked, thinking to perceive a crab, and saw instead the brown hand of a human being issue from a fissure in the ground. a shout recalled the search parties and announced their doom to the buried caitiffs. in the cave below, sixteen were found crouching among human bones and singular and horrid curiosities. one was a head of golden hair, supposed to be a relic of the captain's wife; another was half of the body of a european child, sun-dried and stuck upon a stick, doubtless with some design of wizardry. the paumotuan is eager to be rich. he saves, grudges, buries money, fears not work. for a dollar each, two natives passed the hours of daylight cleaning our ship's copper. it was strange to see them so indefatigable and so much at ease in the water working at times with their pipes lighted, the smoker at times submerged and only the glowing bowl above the surface; it was stranger still to think they were next congeners to the incapable marquesan. but the paumotuan not only saves, grudges, and works, he steals besides; or, to be more precise, he swindles. he will never deny a debt, he only flees his creditor. he is always keen for an advance; so soon as he has fingered it he disappears. he knows your ship; so soon as it nears one island, he is off to another. you may think you know his name; he has already changed it. pursuit in that infinity of isles were fruitless. the result can be given in a nutshell. it has been actually proposed in a government report to secure debts by taking a photograph of the debtor; and the other day in papeete credits on the paumotus to the amount of sixteen thousand pounds were sold for less than forty quatre cent mille francs pour moins de mille francs. even so, the purchase was thought hazardous; and only the man who made it and who had special opportunities could have dared to give so much. the paumotuan is sincerely attached to those of his own blood and household. a touching affection sometimes unites wife and husband. their children, while they are alive, completely rule them; after they are dead, their bones or their mummies are often jealously preserved and carried from atoll to atoll in the wanderings of the family. i was told there were many houses in fakarava with the mummy of a child locked in a sea-chest; after i heard it, i would glance a little jealously at those by my own bed; in that cupboard, also, it was possible there was a tiny skeleton. the race seems in a fair way to survive. from fifteen islands, whose rolls i had occasion to consult, i found a proportion of 59 births to 47 deaths for 1887. dropping three out of the fifteen, there remained for the other twelve the comfortable ratio of 50 births to 32 deaths. long habits of hardship and activity doubtless explain the contrast with marquesan figures. but the paumotuan displays, besides, a certain concern for health and the rudiments of a sanitary discipline. public talk with these freespoken people plays the part of the contagious diseases act; incomers to fresh islands anxiously inquire if all be well; and syphilis, when contracted, is successfully treated with indigenous herbs. like their neighbours of tahiti, from whom they have perhaps imbibed the error, they regard leprosy with comparative indifference, elephantiasis with disproportionate fear. but, unlike indeed to the tahitian, their alarm puts on the guise of self-defence. any one stricken with this painful and ugly malady is confined to the ends of villages, denied the use of paths and highways, and condemned to transport himself between his house and coco-patch by water only, his very footprint being held infectious. fe'efe'e, being a creature of marshes and the sequel of malarial fever, is not original in atolls. on the single isle of makatea, where the lagoon is now a marsh, the disease has made a home. many suffer; they are excluded (if mr. wilmot be right) from much of the comfort of society; and it is believed they take a secret vengeance. the defections of the sick are considered highly poisonous. early in the morning, it is narrated, aged and malicious persons creep into the sleeping village, and stealthily make water at the doors of the houses of young men. thus they propagate disease; thus they breathe on and obliterate comeliness and health, the objects of their envy. whether horrid fact or more abominable legend, it equally depicts that something bitter and energetic which distinguishes paumotuan man. the archipelago is divided between two main religions, catholic and mormon. they front each other proudly with a false air of permanence; yet are but shapes, their membership in a perpetual flux. the mormon attends mass with devotion: the catholic sits attentive at a mormon sermon, and to-morrow each may have transferred allegiance. one man had been a pillar of the church of rome for fifteen years; his wife dying, he decided that must be a poor religion that could not save a man his wife, and turned mormon. according to one informant, catholicism was the more fashionable in health, but on the approach of sickness it was judged prudent to secede. as a mormon, there were five chances out of six you might recover; as a catholic, your hopes were small; and this opinion is perhaps founded on the comfortable rite of unction. we all know what catholics are, whether in the paumotus or at home. but the paumotuan mormon seemed a phenomenon apart. he marries but the one wife, uses the protestant bible, observes protestant forms of worship, forbids the use of liquor and tobacco, practises adult baptism by immersion, and after every public sin, rechristens the backslider. i advised with mahinui, whom i found well informed in the history of the american mormons, and he declared against the least connection. 'pour moi,' said he, with a fine charity, 'les mormons ici un petit catholiques.' some months later i had an opportunity to consult an orthodox fellow-countryman, an old dissenting highlander, long settled in tahiti, but still breathing of the heather of tiree. 'why do they call themselves mormons?' i asked. 'my dear, and that is my question!' he exclaimed. 'for by all that i can hear of their doctrine, i have nothing to say against it, and their life, it is above reproach.' and for all that, mormons they are, but of the earlier sowing: the so-called josephites, the followers of joseph smith, the opponents of brigham young. grant, then, the mormons to be mormons. fresh points at once arise: what are the israelites? and what the kanitus? for a long while back the sect had been divided into mormons proper and socalled israelites, i never could hear why. a few years since there came a visiting missionary of the name of williams, who made an excellent collection, and retired, leaving fresh disruption imminent. something irregular (as i was told) in his way of 'opening the service' had raised partisans and enemies; the church was once more rent asunder; and a new sect, the kanitu, issued from the division. since then kanitus and israelites, like the cameronians and the united presbyterians, have made common cause; and the ecclesiastical history of the paumotus is, for the moment, uneventful. there will be more doing before long, and these isles bid fair to be the scotland of the south. two things i could never learn. the nature of the innovations of the rev. mr. williams none would tell me, and of the meaning of the name kanitu none had a guess. it was not tahitian, it was not marquesan; it formed no part of that ancient speech of the paumotus, now passing swiftly into obsolescence. one man, a priest, god bless him! said it was the latin for a little dog. i have found it since as the name of a god in new guinea; it must be a bolder man than i who should hint at a connection. here, then, is a singular thing: a brand-new sect, arising by popular acclamation, and a nonsense word invented for its name. the design of mystery seems obvious, and according to a very intelligent observer, mr. magee of mangareva, this element of the mysterious is a chief attraction of the mormon church. it enjoys some of the status of freemasonry at home, and there is for the convert some of the exhilaration of adventure. other attractions are certainly conjoined. perpetual rebaptism, leading to a succession of baptismal feasts, is found, both from the social and the spiritual side, a pleasing feature. more important is the fact that all the faithful enjoy office; perhaps more important still, the strictness of the discipline. 'the veto on liquor,' said mr. magee, 'brings them plenty members.' there is no doubt these islanders are fond of drink, and no doubt they refrain from the indulgence; a bout on a feast-day, for instance, may be followed by a week or a month of rigorous sobriety. mr. wilmot attributes this to paumotuan frugality and the love of hoarding; it goes far deeper. i have mentioned that i made a feast on board the casco. to wash down ship's bread and jam, each guest was given the choice of rum or syrup, and out of the whole number only one man voted in a defiant tone, and amid shouts of mirth for 'trum'! this was in public. i had the meanness to repeat the experiment, whenever i had a chance, within the four walls of my house; and three at least, who had refused at the festival, greedily drank rum behind a door. but there were others thoroughly consistent. i said the virtues of the race were bourgeois and puritan; and how bourgeois is this! how puritanic! how scottish! and how yankee! the temptation, the resistance, the public hypocritical conformity, the pharisees, the holy willies, and the true disciples. with such a people the popularity of an ascetic church appears legitimate; in these strict rules, in this perpetual supervision, the weak find their advantage, the strong a certain pleasure; and the doctrine of rebaptism, a clean bill and a fresh start, will comfort many staggering professors. there is yet another sect, or what is called a sect no doubt improperly that of the whistlers. duncan cameron, so clear in favour of the mormons, was no less loud in condemnation of the whistlers. yet i do not know; i still fancy there is some connection, perhaps fortuitous, probably disavowed. here at least are some doings in the house of an israelite clergyman (or prophet) in the island of anaa, of which i am equally sure that duncan would disclaim and the whistlers hail them for an imitation of their own. my informant, a tahitian and a catholic, occupied one part of the house; the prophet and his family lived in the other. night after night the mormons, in the one end, held their evening sacrifice of song; night after night, in the other, the wife of the tahitian lay awake and listened to their singing with amazement. at length she could contain herself no longer, woke her husband, and asked him what he heard. 'i hear several persons singing hymns,' said he. 'yes,' she returned, 'but listen again! do you not hear something supernatural?' his attention thus directed, he was aware of a strange buzzing voice and yet he declared it was beautiful which justly accompanied the singers. the next day he made inquiries. 'it is a spirit,' said the prophet, with entire simplicity, 'which has lately made a practice of joining us at family worship.' it did not appear the thing was visible, and like other spirits raised nearer home in these degenerate days, it was rudely ignorant, at first could only buzz, and had only learned of late to bear a part correctly in the music. the performances of the whistlers are more business-like. their meetings are held publicly with open doors, all being 'cordially invited to attend.' the faithful sit about the room according to one informant, singing hymns; according to another, now singing and now whistling; the leader, the wizard let me rather say, the medium sits in the midst, enveloped in a sheet and silent; and presently, from just above his head, or sometimes from the midst of the roof, an aerial whistling proceeds, appalling to the inexperienced. this, it appears, is the language of the dead; its purport is taken down progressively by one of the experts, writing, i was told, 'as fast as a telegraph operator'; and the communications are at last made public. they are of the baldest triviality; a schooner is, perhaps, announced, some idle gossip reported of a neighbour, or if the spirit shall have been called to consultation on a case of sickness, a remedy may be suggested. one of these, immersion in scalding water, not long ago proved fatal to the patient. the whole business is very dreary, very silly, and very european; it has none of the picturesque qualities of similar conjurations in new zealand; it seems to possess no kernel of possible sense, like some that i shall describe among the gilbert islanders. yet i was told that many hardy, intelligent natives were inveterate whistlers. 'like mahinui?' i asked, willing to have a standard; and i was told 'yes.' why should i wonder? men more enlightened than my convict-catechist sit down at home to follies equally sterile and dull. the medium is sometimes female. it was a woman, for instance, who introduced these practices on the north coast of taiarapu, to the scandal of her own connections, her brother-in-law in particular declaring she was drunk. but what shocked tahiti might seem fit enough in the paumotus, the more so as certain women there possess, by the gift of nature, singular and useful powers. they say they are honest, well-intentioned ladies, some of them embarrassed by their weird inheritance. and indeed the trouble caused by this endowment is so great, and the protection afforded so infinitesimally small, that i hesitate whether to call it a gift or a hereditary curse. you may rob this lady's coco-patch, steal her canoes, burn down her house, and slay her family scatheless; but one thing you must not do: you must not lay a hand upon her sleeping-mat, or your belly will swell, and you can only be cured by the lady or her husband. here is the report of an eye-witness, tasmanian born, educated, a man who has made money certainly no fool. in 1886 he was present in a house on makatea, where two lads began to skylark on the mats, and were (i think) ejected. instantly after, their bellies began to swell; pains took hold on them; all manner of island remedies were exhibited in vain, and rubbing only magnified their sufferings. the man of the house was called, explained the nature of the visitation, and prepared the cure. a cocoa-nut was husked, filled with herbs, and with all the ceremonies of a launch, and the utterance of spells in the paumotuan language, committed to the sea. from that moment the pains began to grow more easy and the swelling to subside. the reader may stare. i can assure him, if he moved much among old residents of the archipelago, he would be driven to admit one thing of two either that there is something in the swollen bellies or nothing in the evidence of man. i have not met these gifted ladies; but i had an experience of my own, for i have played, for one night only, the part of the whistling spirit. it had been blowing wearily all day, but with the fall of night the wind abated, and the moon, which was then full, rolled in a clear sky. we went southward down the island on the side of the lagoon, walking through long-drawn forest aisles of palm, and on a floor of snowy sand. no life was abroad, nor sound of life; till in a clear part of the isle we spied the embers of a fire, and not far off, in a dark house, heard natives talking softly. to sit without a light, even in company, and under cover, is for a paumotuan a somewhat hazardous extreme. the whole scene the strong moonlight and crude shadows on the sand, the scattered coals, the sound of the low voices from the house, and the lap of the lagoon along the beach put me (i know not how) on thoughts of superstition. i was barefoot, i observed my steps were noiseless, and drawing near to the dark house, but keeping well in shadow, began to whistle. 'the heaving of the lead' was my air no very tragic piece. with the first note the conversation and all movement ceased; silence accompanied me while i continued; and when i passed that way on my return i found the lamp was lighted in the house, but the tongues were still mute. all night, as i now think, the wretches shivered and were silent. for indeed, i had no guess at the time at the nature and magnitude of the terrors i inflicted, or with what grisly images the notes of that old song had peopled the dark house. chapter v a paumotuan funeral no, i had no guess of these men's terrors. yet i had received ere that a hint, if i had understood; and the occasion was a funeral. a little apart in the main avenue of rotoava, in a low hut of leaves that opened on a small enclosure, like a pigsty on a pen, an old man dwelt solitary with his aged wife. perhaps they were too old to migrate with the others; perhaps they were too poor, and had no possessions to dispute. at least they had remained behind; and it thus befell that they were invited to my feast. i dare say it was quite a piece of politics in the pigsty whether to come or not to come, and the husband long swithered between curiosity and age, till curiosity conquered, and they came, and in the midst of that last merrymaking death tapped him on the shoulder. for some days, when the sky was bright and the wind cool, his mat would be spread in the main highway of the village, and he was to be seen lying there inert, a mere handful of a man, his wife inertly seated by his head. they seemed to have outgrown alike our needs and faculties; they neither spoke nor listened; they suffered us to pass without a glance; the wife did not fan, she seemed not to attend upon her husband, and the two poor antiques sat juxtaposed under the high canopy of palms, the human tragedy reduced to its bare elements, a sight beyond pathos, stirring a thrill of curiosity. and yet there was one touch of the pathetic haunted me: that so much youth and expectation should have run in these starved veins, and the man should have squandered all his lees of life on a pleasure party. on the morning of 17th september the sufferer died, and, time pressing, he was buried the same day at four. the cemetery lies to seaward behind government house; broken coral, like so much roadmetal, forms the surface; a few wooden crosses, a few inconsiderable upright stones, designate graves; a mortared wall, high enough to lean on, rings it about; a clustering shrub surrounds it with pale leaves. here was the grave dug that morning, doubtless by uneasy diggers, to the sound of the nigh sea and the cries of sea-birds; meanwhile the dead man waited in his house, and the widow and another aged woman leaned on the fence before the door, no speech upon their lips, no speculation in their eyes. sharp at the hour the procession was in march, the coffin wrapped in white and carried by four bearers; mourners behind not many, for not many remained in rotoava, and not many in black, for these were poor; the men in straw hats, white coats, and blue trousers or the gorgeous parti-coloured pariu, the tahitian kilt; the women, with a few exceptions, brightly habited. far in the rear came the widow, painfully carrying the dead man's mat; a creature aged beyond humanity, to the likeness of some missing link. the dead man had been a mormon; but the mormon clergyman was gone with the rest to wrangle over boundaries in the adjacent isle, and a layman took his office. standing at the head of the open grave, in a white coat and blue pariu, his tahitian bible in his hand and one eye bound with a red handkerchief, he read solemnly that chapter in job which has been read and heard over the bones of so many of our fathers, and with a good voice offered up two prayers. the wind and the surf bore a burthen. by the cemetery gate a mother in crimson suckled an infant rolled in blue. in the midst the widow sat upon the ground and polished one of the coffinstretchers with a piece of coral; a little later she had turned her back to the grave and was playing with a leaf. did she understand? god knows. the officiant paused a moment, stooped, and gathered and threw reverently on the coffin a handful of rattling coral. dust to dust: but the grains of this dust were gross like cherries, and the true dust that was to follow sat near by, still cohering (as by a miracle) in the tragic semblance of a female ape. so far, mormon or not, it was a christian funeral. the well-known passage had been read from job, the prayers had been rehearsed, the grave was filled, the mourners straggled homeward. with a little coarser grain of covering earth, a little nearer outcry of the sea, a stronger glare of sunlight on the rude enclosure, and some incongruous colours of attire, the well-remembered form had been observed. by rights it should have been otherwise. the mat should have been buried with its owner; but, the family being poor, it was thriftily reserved for a fresh service. the widow should have flung herself upon the grave and raised the voice of official grief, the neighbours have chimed in, and the narrow isle rung for a space with lamentation. but the widow was old; perhaps she had forgotten, perhaps never understood, and she played like a child with leaves and coffin-stretchers. in all ways my guest was buried with maimed rites. strange to think that his last conscious pleasure was the casco and my feast; strange to think that he had limped there, an old child, looking for some new good. and the good thing, rest, had been allotted him. but though the widow had neglected much, there was one part she must not utterly neglect. she came away with the dispersing funeral; but the dead man's mat was left behind upon the grave, and i learned that by set of sun she must return to sleep there. this vigil is imperative. from sundown till the rising of the morning star the paumotuan must hold his watch above the ashes of his kindred. many friends, if the dead have been a man of mark, will keep the watchers company; they will be well supplied with coverings against the weather; i believe they bring food, and the rite is persevered in for two weeks. our poor survivor, if, indeed, she properly survived, had little to cover, and few to sit with her; on the night of the funeral a strong squall chased her from her place of watch; for days the weather held uncertain and outrageous; and ere seven nights were up she had desisted, and returned to sleep in her low roof. that she should be at the pains of returning for so short a visit to a solitary house, that this borderer of the grave should fear a little wind and a wet blanket, filled me at the time with musings. i could not say she was indifferent; she was so far beyond me in experience that the court of my criticism waived jurisdiction; but i forged excuses, telling myself she had perhaps little to lament, perhaps suffered much, perhaps understood nothing. and lo! in the whole affair there was no question whether of tenderness or piety, and the sturdy return of this old remnant was a mark either of uncommon sense or of uncommon fortitude. yet one thing had occurred that partly set me on the trail. i have said the funeral passed much as at home. but when all was over, when we were trooping in decent silence from the graveyard gate and down the path to the settlement, a sudden inbreak of a different spirit startled and perhaps dismayed us. two people walked not far apart in our procession: my friend mr. donat donat-rimarau: 'donat the much-handed' acting vice-resident, present ruler of the archipelago, by far the man of chief importance on the scene, but known besides for one of an unshakable good temper; and a certain comely, strapping young paumotuan woman, the comeliest on the isle, not (let us hope) the bravest or the most polite. of a sudden, ere yet the grave silence of the funeral was broken, she made a leap at the resident, with pointed finger, shrieked a few words, and fell back again with a laughter, not a natural mirth. 'what did she say to you?' i asked. 'she did not speak to me,' said donat, a shade perturbed; 'she spoke to the ghost of the dead man.' and the purport of her speech was this: 'see there! donat will be a fine feast for you to-night.' 'm. donat called it a jest,' i wrote at the time in my diary. 'it seemed to me more in the nature of a terrified conjuration, as though she would divert the ghost's attention from herself. a cannibal race may well have cannibal phantoms.' the guesses of the traveller appear foredoomed to be erroneous; yet in these i was precisely right. the woman had stood by in terror at the funeral, being then in a dread spot, the graveyard. she looked on in terror to the coming night, with that ogre, a new spirit, loosed upon the isle. and the words she had cried in donat's face were indeed a terrified conjuration, basely to shield herself, basely to dedicate another in her stead. one thing is to be said in her excuse. doubtless she partly chose donat because he was a man of great good-nature, but partly, too, because he was a man of the halfcaste. for i believe all natives regard white blood as a kind of talisman against the powers of hell. in no other way can they explain the unpunished recklessness of europeans. chapter vi graveyard stories with my superstitious friend, the islander, i fear i am not wholly frank, often leading the way with stories of my own, and being always a grave and sometimes an excited hearer. but the deceit is scarce mortal, since i am as pleased to hear as he to tell, as pleased with the story as he with the belief; and, besides, it is entirely needful. for it is scarce possible to exaggerate the extent and empire of his superstitions; they mould his life, they colour his thinking; and when he does not speak to me of ghosts, and gods, and devils, he is playing the dissembler and talking only with his lips. with thoughts so different, one must indulge the other; and i would rather that i should indulge his superstition than he my incredulity. of one thing, besides, i may be sure: let me indulge it as i please, i shall not hear the whole; for he is already on his guard with me, and the amount of the lore is boundless. i will give but a few instances at random, chiefly from my own doorstep in upolu, during the past month (october 1890). one of my workmen was sent the other day to the banana patch, there to dig; this is a hollow of the mountain, buried in woods, out of all sight and cry of mankind; and long before dusk lafaele was back again beside the cook-house with embarrassed looks; he dared not longer stay alone, he was afraid of 'spirits in the bush.' it seems these are the souls of the unburied dead, haunting where they fell, and wearing woodland shapes of pig, or bird, or insect; the bush is full of them, they seem to eat nothing, slay solitary wanderers apparently in spite, and at times, in human form, go down to villages and consort with the inhabitants undetected. so much i learned a day or so after, walking in the bush with a very intelligent youth, a native. it was a little before noon; a grey day and squally; and perhaps i had spoken lightly. a dark squall burst on the side of the mountain; the woods shook and cried; the dead leaves rose from the ground in clouds, like butterflies; and my companion came suddenly to a full stop. he was afraid, he said, of the trees falling; but as soon as i had changed the subject of our talk he proceeded with alacrity. a day or two before a messenger came up the mountain from apia with a letter; i was in the bush, he must await my return, then wait till i had answered: and before i was done his voice sounded shrill with terror of the coming night and the long forest road. these are the commons. take the chiefs. there has been a great coming and going of signs and omens in our group. one river ran down blood; red eels were captured in another; an unknown fish was thrown upon the coast, an ominous word found written on its scales. so far we might be reading in a monkish chronicle; now we come on a fresh note, at once modern and polynesian. the gods of upolu and savaii, our two chief islands, contended recently at cricket. since then they are at war. sounds of battle are heard to roll along the coast. a woman saw a man swim from the high seas and plunge direct into the bush; he was no man of that neighbourhood; and it was known he was one of the gods, speeding to a council. most perspicuous of all, a missionary on savaii, who is also a medical man, was disturbed late in the night by knocking; it was no hour for the dispensary, but at length he woke his servant and sent him to inquire; the servant, looking from a window, beheld crowds of persons, all with grievous wounds, lopped limbs, broken heads, and bleeding bullet-holes; but when the door was opened all had disappeared. they were gods from the field of battle. now these reports have certainly significance; it is not hard to trace them to political grumblers or to read in them a threat of coming trouble; from that merely human side i found them ominous myself. but it was the spiritual side of their significance that was discussed in secret council by my rulers. i shall best depict this mingled habit of the polynesian mind by two connected instances. i once lived in a village, the name of which i do not mean to tell. the chief and his sister were persons perfectly intelligent: gentlefolk, apt of speech. the sister was very religious, a great church-goer, one that used to reprove me if i stayed away; i found afterwards that she privately worshipped a shark. the chief himself was somewhat of a freethinker; at the least, a latitudinarian: he was a man, besides, filled with european knowledge and accomplishments; of an impassive, ironical habit; and i should as soon have expected superstition in mr. herbert spencer. hear the sequel. i had discovered by unmistakable signs that they buried too shallow in the village graveyard, and i took my friend, as the responsible authority, to task. 'there is something wrong about your graveyard,' said i, 'which you must attend to, or it may have very bad results.' 'something wrong? what is it?' he asked, with an emotion that surprised me. 'if you care to go along there any evening about nine o'clock you can see for yourself,' said i. he stepped backward. 'a ghost!' he cried. in short, in the whole field of the south seas, there is not one to blame another. half blood and whole, pious and debauched, intelligent and dull, all men believe in ghosts, all men combine with their recent christianity fear of and a lingering faith in the old island deities. so, in europe, the gods of olympus slowly dwindled into village bogies; so to-day, the theological highlander sneaks from under the eye of the free church divine to lay an offering by a sacred well. i try to deal with the whole matter here because of a particular quality in paumotuan superstitions. it is true i heard them told by a man with a genius for such narrations. close about our evening lamp, within sound of the island surf, we hung on his words, thrilling. the reader, in far other scenes, must listen close for the faint echo. this bundle of weird stories sprang from the burial and the woman's selfish conjuration. i was dissatisfied with what i heard, harped upon questions, and struck at last this vein of metal. it is from sundown to about four in the morning that the kinsfolk camp upon the grave; and these are the hours of the spirits' wanderings. at any time of the night it may be earlier, it may be later a sound is to be heard below, which is the noise of his liberation; at four sharp, another and a louder marks the instant of the reimprisonment; between-whiles, he goes his malignant rounds. 'did you ever see an evil spirit?' was once asked of a paumotuan. 'once.' 'under what form?' 'it was in the form of a crane.' 'and how did you know that crane to be a spirit?' was asked. 'i will tell you,' he answered; and this was the purport of his inconclusive narrative. his father had been dead nearly a fortnight; others had wearied of the watch; and as the sun was setting, he found himself by the grave alone. it was not yet dark, rather the hour of the afterglow, when he was aware of a snow-white crane upon the coral mound; presently more cranes came, some white, some black; then the cranes vanished, and he saw in their place a white cat, to which there was silently joined a great company of cats of every hue conceivable; then these also disappeared, and he was left astonished. this was an anodyne appearance. take instead the experience of rua-a-mariterangi on the isle of katiu. he had a need for some pandanus, and crossed the isle to the sea-beach, where it chiefly flourishes. the day was still, and rua was surprised to hear a crashing sound among the thickets, and then the fall of a considerable tree. here must be some one building a canoe; and he entered the margin of the wood to find and pass the time of day with this chance neighbour. the crashing sounded more at hand; and then he was aware of something drawing swiftly near among the treetops. it swung by its heels downward, like an ape, so that its hands were free for murder; it depended safely by the slightest twigs; the speed of its coming was incredible; and soon rua recognised it for a corpse, horrible with age, its bowels hanging as it came. prayer was the weapon of christian in the valley of the shadow, and it is to prayer that rua-a-mariterangi attributes his escape. no merely human expedition had availed. this demon was plainly from the grave; yet you will observe he was abroad by day. and inconsistent as it may seem with the hours of the night watch and the many references to the rising of the morning star, it is no singular exception. i could never find a case of another who had seen this ghost, diurnal and arboreal in its habits; but others have heard the fall of the tree, which seems the signal of its coming. mr. donat was once pearling on the uninhabited isle of haraiki. it was a day without a breath of wind, such as alternate in the archipelago with days of contumelious breezes. the divers were in the midst of the lagoon upon their employment; the cook, a boy of ten, was over his pots in the camp. thus were all souls accounted for except a single native who accompanied donat into the wood in quest of sea-fowls' eggs. in a moment, out of the stillness, came the sound of the fall of a great tree. donat would have passed on to find the cause. 'no,' cried his companion, 'that was no tree. it was something not right. let us go back to camp.' next sunday the divers were turned on, all that part of the isle was thoroughly examined, and sure enough no tree had fallen. a little later mr. donat saw one of his divers flee from a similar sound, in similar unaffected panic, on the same isle. but neither would explain, and it was not till afterwards, when he met with rua, that he learned the occasion of their terrors. but whether by day or night, the purpose of the dead in these abhorred activities is still the same. in samoa, my informant had no idea of the food of the bush spirits; no such ambiguity would exist in the mind of a paumotuan. in that hungry archipelago, living and dead must alike toil for nutriment; and the race having been cannibal in the past, the spirits are so still. when the living ate the dead, horrified nocturnal imagination drew the shocking inference that the dead might eat the living. doubtless they slay men, doubtless even mutilate them, in mere malice. marquesan spirits sometimes tear out the eyes of travellers; but even that may be more practical than appears, for the eye is a cannibal dainty. and certainly the root-idea of the dead, at least in the far eastern islands, is to prowl for food. it was as a dainty morsel for a meal that the woman denounced donat at the funeral. there are spirits besides who prey in particular not on the bodies but on the souls of the dead. the point is clearly made in a tahitian story. a child fell sick, grew swiftly worse, and at last showed signs of death. the mother hastened to the house of a sorcerer, who lived hard by. 'you are yet in time,' said he; 'a spirit has just run past my door carrying the soul of your child wrapped in the leaf of a purao; but i have a spirit stronger and swifter who will run him down ere he has time to eat it.' wrapped in a leaf: like other things edible and corruptible. or take an experience of mr. donat's on the island of anaa. it was a night of a high wind, with violent squalls; his child was very sick, and the father, though he had gone to bed, lay wakeful, hearkening to the gale. all at once a fowl was violently dashed on the house wall. supposing he had forgot to put it in shelter with the rest, donat arose, found the bird (a cock) lying on the verandah, and put it in the hen-house, the door of which he securely fastened. fifteen minutes later the business was repeated, only this time, as it was being dashed against the wall, the bird crew. again donat replaced it, examining the hen-house thoroughly and finding it quite perfect; as he was so engaged the wind puffed out his light, and he must grope back to the door a good deal shaken. yet a third time the bird was dashed upon the wall; a third time donat set it, now near dead, beside its mates; and he was scarce returned before there came a rush, like that of a furious strong man, against the door, and a whistle as loud as that of a railway engine rang about the house. the sceptical reader may here detect the finger of the tempest; but the women gave up all for lost and clustered on the beds lamenting. nothing followed, and i must suppose the gale somewhat abated, for presently after a chief came visiting. he was a bold man to be abroad so late, but doubtless carried a bright lantern. and he was certainly a man of counsel, for as soon as he heard the details of these disturbances he was in a position to explain their nature. 'your child,' said he, 'must certainly die. this is the evil spirit of our island who lies in wait to eat the spirits of the newly dead.' and then he went on to expatiate on the strangeness of the spirit's conduct. he was not usually, he explained, so open of assault, but sat silent on the house-top waiting, in the guise of a bird, while within the people tended the dying and bewailed the dead, and had no thought of peril. but when the day came and the doors were opened, and men began to go abroad, blood-stains on the wall betrayed the tragedy. this is the quality i admire in paumotuan legend. in tahiti the spirit-eater is said to assume a vesture which has much more of pomp, but how much less of horror. it has been seen by all sorts and conditions, native and foreign; only the last insist it is a meteor. my authority was not so sure. he was riding with his wife about two in the morning; both were near asleep, and the horses not much better. it was a brilliant and still night, and the road wound over a mountain, near by a deserted marae (old tahitian temple). all at once the appearance passed above them: a form of light; the head round and greenish; the body long, red, and with a focus of yet redder brilliancy about the midst. a buzzing hoot accompanied its passage; it flew direct out of one marae, and direct for another down the mountain side. and this, as my informant argued, is suggestive. for why should a mere meteor frequent the altars of abominable gods? the horses, i should say, were equally dismayed with their riders. now i am not dismayed at all not even agreeably. give me rather the bird upon the housetop and the morning blood-gouts on the wall. but the dead are not exclusive in their diet. they carry with them to the grave, in particular, the polynesian taste for fish, and enter at times with the living into a partnership in fishery. ruaa-mariterangi is again my authority; i feel it diminishes the credit of the fact, but how it builds up the image of this inveterate ghost-seer! he belongs to the miserably poor island of taenga, yet his father's house was always well supplied. as rua grew up he was called at last to go a-fishing with this fortunate parent. they rowed the lagoon at dusk, to an unlikely place, and the lay down in the stern, and the father began vainly to cast his line over the bows. it is to be supposed that rua slept; and when he awoke there was the figure of another beside his father, and his father was pulling in the fish hand over hand. 'who is that man, father?' rua asked. 'it is none of your business,' said the father; and rua supposed the stranger had swum off to them from shore. night after night they fared into the lagoon, often to the most unlikely places; night after night the stranger would suddenly be seen on board, and as suddenly be missed; and morning after morning the canoe returned laden with fish. 'my father is a very lucky man,' thought rua. at last, one fine day, there came first one boat party and then another, who must be entertained; father and son put off later than usual into the lagoon; and before the canoe was landed it was four o'clock, and the morning star was close on the horizon. then the stranger appeared seized with some distress; turned about, showing for the first time his face, which was that of one long dead, with shining eyes; stared into the east, set the tips of his fingers to his mouth like one a-cold, uttered a strange, shuddering sound between a whistle and a moan a thing to freeze the blood; and, the day-star just rising from the sea, he suddenly was not. then rua understood why his father prospered, why his fishes rotted early in the day, and why some were always carried to the cemetery and laid upon the graves. my informant is a man not certainly averse to superstition, but he keeps his head, and takes a certain superior interest, which i may be allowed to call scientific. the last point reminding him of some parallel practice in tahiti, he asked rua if the fish were left, or carried home again after a formal dedication. it appears old mariterangi practised both methods; sometimes treating his shadowy partner to a mere oblation, sometimes honestly leaving his fish to rot upon the grave. it is plain we have in europe stories of a similar complexion; and the polynesian varua ino or aitu o le vao is clearly the near kinsman of the transylvanian vampire. here is a tale in which the kinship appears broadly marked. on the atoll of penrhyn, then still partly savage, a certain chief was long the salutary terror of the natives. he died, he was buried; and his late neighbours had scarce tasted the delights of licence ere his ghost appeared about the village. fear seized upon all; a council was held of the chief men and sorcerers; and with the approval of the rarotongan missionary, who was as frightened as the rest, and in the presence of several whites my friend mr. ben hird being one the grave was opened, deepened until water came, and the body re-interred face down. the still recent staking of suicides in england and the decapitation of vampires in the east of europe form close parallels. so in samoa only the spirits of the unburied awake fear. during the late war many fell in the bush; their bodies, sometimes headless, were brought back by native pastors and interred; but this (i know not why) was insufficient, and the spirit still lingered on the theatre of death. when peace returned a singular scene was enacted in many places, and chiefly round the high gorges of lotoanuu, where the struggle was long centred and the loss had been severe. kinswomen of the dead came carrying a mat or sheet and guided by survivors of the fight. the place of death was earnestly sought out; the sheet was spread upon the ground; and the women, moved with pious anxiety, sat about and watched it. if any living thing alighted it was twice brushed away; upon the third coming it was known to be the spirit of the dead, was folded in, carried home and buried beside the body; and the aitu rested. the rite was practised beyond doubt in simple piety; the repose of the soul was its object: its motive, reverent affection. the present king disowns indeed all knowledge of a dangerous aitu; he declares the souls of the unburied were only wanderers in limbo, lacking an entrance to the proper country of the dead, unhappy, nowise hurtful. and this severely classic opinion doubtless represents the views of the enlightened. but the flight of my lafaele marks the grosser terrors of the ignorant. this belief in the exorcising efficacy of funeral rites perhaps explains a fact, otherwise amazing, that no polynesian seems at all to share our european horror of human bones and mummies. of the first they made their cherished ornaments; they preserved them in houses or in mortuary caves; and the watchers of royal sepulchres dwelt with their children among the bones of generations. the mummy, even in the making, was as little feared. in the marquesas, on the extreme coast, it was made by the household with continual unction and exposure to the sun; in the carolines, upon the farthest west, it is still cured in the smoke of the family hearth. head-hunting, besides, still lives around my doorstep in samoa. and not ten years ago, in the gilberts, the widow must disinter, cleanse, polish, and thenceforth carry about her, by day and night, the head of her dead husband. in all these cases we may suppose the process, whether of cleansing or drying, to have fully exorcised the aitu. but the paumotuan belief is more obscure. here the man is duly buried, and he has to be watched. he is duly watched, and the spirit goes abroad in spite of watches. indeed, it is not the purpose of the vigils to prevent these wanderings; only to mollify by polite attention the inveterate malignity of the dead. neglect (it is supposed) may irritate and thus invite his visits, and the aged and weakly sometimes balance risks and stay at home. observe, it is the dead man's kindred and next friends who thus deprecate his fury with nocturnal watchings. even the placatory vigil is held perilous, except in company, and a boy was pointed out to me in rotoava, because he had watched alone by his own father. not the ties of the dead, nor yet their proved character, affect the issue. a late resident, who died in fakarava of sunstroke, was beloved in life and is still remembered with affection; none the less his spirit went about the island clothed with terrors, and the neighbourhood of government house was still avoided after dark. we may sum up the cheerful doctrine thus: all men become vampires, and the vampire spares none. and here we come face to face with a tempting inconsistency. for the whistling spirits are notoriously clannish; i understood them to wait upon and to enlighten kinsfolk only, and that the medium was always of the race of the communicating spirit. here, then, we have the bonds of the family, on the one hand, severed at the hour of death; on the other, helpfully persisting. the child's soul in the tahitian tale was wrapped in leaves. it is the spirits of the newly dead that are the dainty. when they are slain, the house is stained with blood. rua's dead fisherman was decomposed; so and horribly was his arboreal demon. the spirit, then, is a thing material; and it is by the material ensigns of corruption that he is distinguished from the living man. this opinion is widespread, adds a gross terror to the more ugly polynesian tales, and sometimes defaces the more engaging with a painful and incongruous touch. i will give two examples sufficiently wide apart, one from tahiti, one from samoa. and first from tahiti. a man went to visit the husband of his sister, then some time dead. in her life the sister had been dainty in the island fashion, and went always adorned with a coronet of flowers. in the midst of the night the brother awoke and was aware of a heavenly fragrance going to and fro in the dark house. the lamp i must suppose to have burned out; no tahitian would have lain down without one lighted. a while he lay wondering and delighted; then called upon the rest. 'do none of you smell flowers?' he asked. 'o,' said his brother-in-law, 'we are used to that here.' the next morning these two men went walking, and the widower confessed that his dead wife came about the house continually, and that he had even seen her. she was shaped and dressed and crowned with flowers as in her lifetime; only she moved a few inches above the earth with a very easy progress, and flitted dryshod above the surface of the river. and now comes my point: it was always in a back view that she appeared; and these brothersin-law, debating the affair, agreed that this was to conceal the inroads of corruption. now for the samoan story. i owe it to the kindness of dr. f. otto sierich, whose collection of folk-tales i expect with a high degree of interest. a man in manu'a was married to two wives and had no issue. he went to savaii, married there a third, and was more fortunate. when his wife was near her time he remembered he was in a strange island, like a poor man; and when his child was born he must be shamed for lack of gifts. it was in vain his wife dissuaded him. he returned to his father in manu'a seeking help; and with what he could get he set off in the night to re-embark. now his wives heard of his coming; they were incensed that he did not stay to visit them; and on the beach, by his canoe, intercepted and slew him. now the third wife lay asleep in savaii; her babe was born and slept by her side; and she was awakened by the spirit of her husband. 'get up,' he said, 'my father is sick in manu'a and we must go to visit him.' 'it is well,' said she; 'take you the child, while i carry its mats.' 'i cannot carry the child,' said the spirit; 'i am too cold from the sea.' when they were got on board the canoe the wife smelt carrion. 'how is this?' she said. 'what have you in the canoe that i should smell carrion?' 'it is nothing in the canoe,' said the spirit. 'it is the landwind blowing down the mountains, where some beast lies dead.' it appears it was still night when they reached manu'a the swiftest passage on record and as they entered the reef the bale-fires burned in the village. again she asked him to carry the child; but now he need no more dissemble. 'i cannot carry your child,' said he, 'for i am dead, and the fires you see are burning for my funeral.' the curious may learn in dr. sierich's book the unexpected sequel of the tale. here is enough for my purpose. though the man was but new dead, the ghost was already putrefied, as though putrefaction were the mark and of the essence of a spirit. the vigil on the paumotuan grave does not extend beyond two weeks, and they told me this period was thought to coincide with that of the resolution of the body. the ghost always marked with decay the danger seemingly ending with the process of dissolution here is tempting matter for the theorist. but it will not do. the lady of the flowers had been long dead, and her spirit was still supposed to bear the brand of perishability. the resident had been more than a fortnight buried, and his vampire was still supposed to go the rounds. of the lost state of the dead, from the lurid mangaian legend, in which infernal deities hocus and destroy the souls of all, to the various submarine and aerial limbos where the dead feast, float idle, or resume the occupations of their life on earth, it would be wearisome to tell. one story i give, for it is singular in itself, is well-known in tahiti, and has this of interest, that it is postchristian, dating indeed from but a few years back. a princess of the reigning house died; was transported to the neighbouring isle of raiatea; fell there under the empire of a spirit who condemned her to climb coco-palms all day and bring him the nuts; was found after some time in this miserable servitude by a second spirit, one of her own house; and by him, upon her lamentations, reconveyed to tahiti, where she found her body still waked, but already swollen with the approaches of corruption. it is a lively point in the tale that, on the sight of this dishonoured tabernacle, the princess prayed she might continue to be numbered with the dead. but it seems it was too late, her spirit was replaced by the least dignified of entrances, and her startled family beheld the body move. the seemingly purgatorial labours, the helpful kindred spirit, and the horror of the princess at the sight of her tainted body, are all points to be remarked. the truth is, the tales are not necessarily consistent in themselves; and they are further darkened for the stranger by an ambiguity of language. ghosts, vampires, spirits, and gods are all confounded. and yet i seem to perceive that (with exceptions) those whom we would count gods were less maleficent. permanent spirits haunt and do murder in corners of samoa; but those legitimate gods of upolu and savaii, whose wars and cricketings of late convulsed society, i did not gather to be dreaded, or not with a like fear. the spirit of aana that ate souls is certainly a fearsome inmate; but the high gods, even of the archipelago, seem helpful. mahinui from whom our convict-catechist had been named the spirit of the sea, like a proteus endowed with endless avatars, came to the assistance of the shipwrecked and carried them ashore in the guise of a ray fish. the same divinity bore priests from isle to isle about the archipelago, and by his aid, within the century, persons have been seen to fly. the tutelar deity of each isle is likewise helpful, and by a particular form of wedge-shaped cloud on the horizon announces the coming of a ship. to one who conceives of these atolls, so narrow, so barren, so beset with sea, here would seem a superfluity of ghostly denizens. and yet there are more. in the various brackish pools and ponds, beautiful women with long red hair are seen to rise and bathe; only (timid as mice) on the first sound of feet upon the coral they dive again for ever. they are known to be healthy and harmless living people, dwellers of an underworld; and the same fancy is current in tahiti, where also they have the hair red. tetea is the tahitian name; the paumotuan, mokurea. part iii: the gilberts chapter i butaritari at honolulu we had said farewell to the casco and to captain otis, and our next adventure was made in changed conditions. passage was taken for myself, my wife, mr. osbourne, and my china boy, ah fu, on a pigmy trading schooner, the equator, captain dennis reid; and on a certain bright june day in 1889, adorned in the hawaiian fashion with the garlands of departure, we drew out of port and bore with a fair wind for micronesia. the whole extent of the south seas is a desert of ships; more especially that part where we were now to sail. no post runs in these islands; communication is by accident; where you may have designed to go is one thing, where you shall be able to arrive another. it was my hope, for instance, to have reached the carolines, and returned to the light of day by way of manila and the china ports; and it was in samoa that we were destined to reappear and be once more refreshed with the sight of mountains. since the sunset faded from the peaks of oahu six months had intervened, and we had seen no spot of earth so high as an ordinary cottage. our path had been still on the flat sea, our dwellings upon unerected coral, our diet from the pickle-tub or out of tins; i had learned to welcome shark's flesh for a variety; and a mountain, an onion, an irish potato or a beef-steak, had been long lost to sense and dear to aspiration. the two chief places of our stay, butaritari and apemama, lie near the line; the latter within thirty miles. both enjoy a superb ocean climate, days of blinding sun and bracing wind, nights of a heavenly brightness. both are somewhat wider than fakarava, measuring perhaps (at the widest) a quarter of a mile from beach to beach. in both, a coarse kind of taro thrives; its culture is a chief business of the natives, and the consequent mounds and ditches make miniature scenery and amuse the eye. in all else they show the customary features of an atoll: the low horizon, the expanse of the lagoon, the sedge-like rim of palm-tops, the sameness and smallness of the land, the hugely superior size and interest of sea and sky. life on such islands is in many points like life on shipboard. the atoll, like the ship, is soon taken for granted; and the islanders, like the ship's crew, become soon the centre of attention. the isles are populous, independent, seats of kinglets, recently civilised, little visited. in the last decade many changes have crept in; women no longer go unclothed till marriage; the widow no longer sleeps at night and goes abroad by day with the skull of her dead husband; and, fire-arms being introduced, the spear and the shark-tooth sword are sold for curiosities. ten years ago all these things and practices were to be seen in use; yet ten years more, and the old society will have entirely vanished. we came in a happy moment to see its institutions still erect and (in apemama) scarce decayed. populous and independent warrens of men, ruled over with some rustic pomp such was the first and still the recurring impression of these tiny lands. as we stood across the lagoon for the town of butaritari, a stretch of the low shore was seen to be crowded with the brown roofs of houses; those of the palace and king's summer parlour (which are of corrugated iron) glittered near one end conspicuously bright; the royal colours flew hard by on a tall flagstaff; in front, on an artificial islet, the gaol played the part of a martello. even upon this first and distant view, the place had scarce the air of what it truly was, a village; rather of that which it was also, a petty metropolis, a city rustic and yet royal. the lagoon is shoal. the tide being out, we waded for some quarter of a mile in tepid shallows, and stepped ashore at last into a flagrant stagnancy of sun and heat. the lee side of a line island after noon is indeed a breathless place; on the ocean beach the trade will be still blowing, boisterous and cool; out in the lagoon it will be blowing also, speeding the canoes; but the screen of bush completely intercepts it from the shore, and sleep and silence and companies of mosquitoes brood upon the towns. we may thus be said to have taken butaritari by surprise. a few inhabitants were still abroad in the north end, at which we landed. as we advanced, we were soon done with encounter, and seemed to explore a city of the dead. only, between the posts of open houses, we could see the townsfolk stretched in the siesta, sometimes a family together veiled in a mosquito-net, sometimes a single sleeper on a platform like a corpse on a bier. the houses were of all dimensions, from those of toys to those of churches. some might hold a battalion, some were so minute they could scarce receive a pair of lovers; only in the playroom, when the toys are mingled, do we meet such incongruities of scale. many were open sheds; some took the form of roofed stages; others were walled and the walls pierced with little windows. a few were perched on piles in the lagoon; the rest stood at random on a green, through which the roadway made a ribbon of sand, or along the embankments of a sheet of water like a shallow dock. one and all were the creatures of a single tree; palm-tree wood and palmtree leaf their materials; no nail had been driven, no hammer sounded, in their building, and they were held together by lashings of palm-tree sinnet. in the midst of the thoroughfare, the church stands like an island, a lofty and dim house with rows of windows; a rich tracery of framing sustains the roof; and through the door at either end the street shows in a vista. the proportions of the place, in such surroundings, and built of such materials, appeared august; and we threaded the nave with a sentiment befitting visitors in a cathedral. benches run along either side. in the midst, on a crazy dais, two chairs stand ready for the king and queen when they shall choose to worship; over their heads a hoop, apparently from a hogshead, depends by a strip of red cotton; and the hoop (which hangs askew) is dressed with streamers of the same material, red and white. this was our first advertisement of the royal dignity, and presently we stood before its seat and centre. the palace is built of imported wood upon a european plan; the roof of corrugated iron, the yard enclosed with walls, the gate surmounted by a sort of lych-house. it cannot be called spacious; a labourer in the states is sometimes more commodiously lodged; but when we had the chance to see it within, we found it was enriched (beyond all island expectation) with coloured advertisements and cuts from the illustrated papers. even before the gate some of the treasures of the crown stand public: a bell of a good magnitude, two pieces of cannon, and a single shell. the bell cannot be rung nor the guns fired; they are curiosities, proofs of wealth, a part of the parade of the royalty, and stand to be admired like statues in a square. a straight gut of water like a canal runs almost to the palace door; the containing quay-walls excellently built of coral; over against the mouth, by what seems an effect of landscape art, the martello-like islet of the gaol breaks the lagoon. vassal chiefs with tribute, neighbour monarchs come a-roving, might here sail in, view with surprise these extensive public works, and be awed by these mouths of silent cannon. it was impossible to see the place and not to fancy it designed for pageantry. but the elaborate theatre then stood empty; the royal house deserted, its doors and windows gaping; the whole quarter of the town immersed in silence. on the opposite bank of the canal, on a roofed stage, an ancient gentleman slept publicly, sole visible inhabitant; and beyond on the lagoon a canoe spread a striped lateen, the sole thing moving. the canal is formed on the south by a pier or causeway with a parapet. at the far end the parapet stops, and the quay expands into an oblong peninsula in the lagoon, the breathing-place and summer parlour of the king. the midst is occupied by an open house or permanent marquee called here a maniapa, or, as the word is now pronounced, a maniap' at the lowest estimation forty feet by sixty. the iron roof, lofty but exceedingly low-browed, so that a woman must stoop to enter, is supported externally on pillars of coral, within by a frame of wood. the floor is of broken coral, divided in aisles by the uprights of the frame; the house far enough from shore to catch the breeze, which enters freely and disperses the mosquitoes; and under the low eaves the sun is seen to glitter and the waves to dance on the lagoon. it was now some while since we had met any but slumberers; and when we had wandered down the pier and stumbled at last into this bright shed, we were surprised to find it occupied by a society of wakeful people, some twenty souls in all, the court and guardsmen of butaritari. the court ladies were busy making mats; the guardsmen yawned and sprawled. half a dozen rifles lay on a rock and a cutlass was leaned against a pillar: the armoury of these drowsy musketeers. at the far end, a little closed house of wood displayed some tinsel curtains, and proved, upon examination, to be a privy on the european model. in front of this, upon some mats, lolled tebureimoa, the king; behind him, on the panels of the house, two crossed rifles represented fasces. he wore pyjamas which sorrowfully misbecame his bulk; his nose was hooked and cruel, his body overcome with sodden corpulence, his eye timorous and dull: he seemed at once oppressed with drowsiness and held awake by apprehension: a pepper rajah muddled with opium, and listening for the march of a dutch army, looks perhaps not otherwise. we were to grow better acquainted, and first and last i had the same impression; he seemed always drowsy, yet always to hearken and start; and, whether from remorse or fear, there is no doubt he seeks a refuge in the abuse of drugs. the rajah displayed no sign of interest in our coming. but the queen, who sat beside him in a purple sacque, was more accessible; and there was present an interpreter so willing that his volubility became at last the cause of our departure. he had greeted us upon our entrance:'that is the honourable king, and i am his interpreter,' he had said, with more stateliness than truth. for he held no appointment in the court, seemed extremely illacquainted with the island language, and was present, like ourselves, upon a visit of civility. mr. williams was his name: an american darkey, runaway ship's cook, and bar-keeper at the land we live in tavern, butaritari. i never knew a man who had more words in his command or less truth to communicate; neither the gloom of the monarch, nor my own efforts to be distant, could in the least abash him; and when the scene closed, the darkey was left talking. the town still slumbered, or had but just begun to turn and stretch itself; it was still plunged in heat and silence. so much the more vivid was the impression that we carried away of the house upon the islet, the micronesian saul wakeful amid his guards, and his unmelodious david, mr. williams, chattering through the drowsy hours. chapter ii the four brothers the kingdom of tebureimoa includes two islands, great and little makin; some two thousand subjects pay him tribute, and two semiindependent chieftains do him qualified homage. the importance of the office is measured by the man; he may be a nobody, he may be absolute; and both extremes have been exemplified within the memory of residents. on the death of king tetimararoa, tebureimoa's father, nakaeia, the eldest son, succeeded. he was a fellow of huge physical strength, masterful, violent, with a certain barbaric thrift and some intelligence of men and business. alone in his islands, it was he who dealt and profited; he was the planter and the merchant; and his subjects toiled for his behoof in servitude. when they wrought long and well their taskmaster declared a holiday, and supplied and shared a general debauch. the scale of his providing was at times magnificent; six hundred dollars' worth of gin and brandy was set forth at once; the narrow land resounded with the noise of revelry: and it was a common thing to see the subjects (staggering themselves) parade their drunken sovereign on the fore-hatch of a wrecked vessel, king and commons howling and singing as they went. at a word from nakaeia's mouth the revel ended; makin became once more an isle of slaves and of teetotalers; and on the morrow all the population must be on the roads or in the taro-patches toiling under his bloodshot eye. the fear of nakaeia filled the land. no regularity of justice was affected; there was no trial, there were no officers of the law; it seems there was but one penalty, the capital; and daylight assault and midnight murder were the forms of process. the king himself would play the executioner: and his blows were dealt by stealth, and with the help and countenance of none but his own wives. these were his oarswomen; one that caught a crab, he slew incontinently with the tiller; thus disciplined, they pulled him by night to the scene of his vengeance, which he would then execute alone and return well-pleased with his connubial crew. the inmates of the harem held a station hard for us to conceive. beasts of draught, and driven by the fear of death, they were yet implicitly trusted with their sovereign's life; they were still wives and queens, and it was supposed that no man should behold their faces. they killed by the sight like basilisks; a chance view of one of those boatwomen was a crime to be wiped out with blood. in the days of nakaeia the palace was beset with some tall coco-palms which commanded the enclosure. it chanced one evening, while nakaeia sat below at supper with his wives, that the owner of the grove was in a tree-top drawing palm-tree wine; it chanced that he looked down, and the king at the same moment looking up, their eyes encountered. instant flight preserved the involuntary criminal. but during the remainder of that reign he must lurk and be hid by friends in remote parts of the isle; nakaeia hunted him without remission, although still in vain; and the palms, accessories to the fact, were ruthlessly cut down. such was the ideal of wifely purity in an isle where nubile virgins went naked as in paradise. and yet scandal found its way into nakaeia's well-guarded harem. he was at that time the owner of a schooner, which he used for a pleasurehouse, lodging on board as she lay anchored; and thither one day he summoned a new wife. she was one that had been sealed to him; that is to say (i presume), that he was married to her sister, for the husband of an elder sister has the call of the cadets. she would be arrayed for the occasion; she would come scented, garlanded, decked with fine mats and family jewels, for marriage, as her friends supposed; for death, as she well knew. 'tell me the man's name, and i will spare you,' said nakaeia. but the girl was staunch; she held her peace, saved her lover and the queens strangled her between the mats. nakaeia was feared; it does not appear that he was hated. deeds that smell to us of murder wore to his subjects the reverend face of justice; his orgies made him popular; natives to this day recall with respect the firmness of his government; and even the whites, whom he long opposed and kept at arm's-length, give him the name (in the canonical south sea phrase) of 'a perfect gentleman when sober.' when he came to lie, without issue, on the bed of death, he summoned his next brother, nanteitei, made him a discourse on royal policy, and warned him he was too weak to reign. the warning was taken to heart, and for some while the government moved on the model of nakaeia's. nanteitei dispensed with guards, and walked abroad alone with a revolver in a leather mail-bag. to conceal his weakness he affected a rude silence; you might talk to him all day; advice, reproof, appeal, and menace alike remained unanswered. the number of his wives was seventeen, many of them heiresses; for the royal house is poor, and marriage was in these days a chief means of buttressing the throne. nakaeia kept his harem busy for himself; nanteitei hired it out to others. in his days, for instance, messrs. wightman built a pier with a verandah at the north end of the town. the masonry was the work of the seventeen queens, who toiled and waded there like fisher lasses; but the man who was to do the roofing durst not begin till they had finished, lest by chance he should look down and see them. it was perhaps the last appearance of the harem gang. for some time already hawaiian missionaries had been seated at butaritari maka and kanoa, two brave childlike men. nakaeia would none of their doctrine; he was perhaps jealous of their presence; being human, he had some affection for their persons. in the house, before the eyes of kanoa, he slew with his own hand three sailors of oahu, crouching on their backs to knife them, and menacing the missionary if he interfered; yet he not only spared him at the moment, but recalled him afterwards (when he had fled) with some expressions of respect. nanteitei, the weaker man, fell more completely under the spell. maka, a light-hearted, lovable, yet in his own trade very rigorous man, gained and improved an influence on the king which soon grew paramount. nanteitei, with the royal house, was publicly converted; and, with a severity which liberal missionaries disavow, the harem was at once reduced. it was a compendious act. the throne was thus impoverished, its influence shaken, the queen's relatives mortified, and sixteen chief women (some of great possessions) cast in a body on the market. i have been shipmates with a hawaiian sailor who was successively married to two of these impromptu widows, and successively divorced by both for misconduct. that two great and rich ladies (for both of these were rich) should have married 'a man from another island' marks the dissolution of society. the laws besides were wholly remodelled, not always for the better. i love maka as a man; as a legislator he has two defects: weak in the punishment of crime, stern to repress innocent pleasures. war and revolution are the common successors of reform; yet nanteitei died (of an overdose of chloroform), in quiet possession of the throne, and it was in the reign of the third brother, nabakatokia, a man brave in body and feeble of character, that the storm burst. the rule of the high chiefs and notables seems to have always underlain and perhaps alternated with monarchy. the old men (as they were called) have a right to sit with the king in the speak house and debate: and the king's chief superiority is a form of closure 'the speaking is over.' after the long monocracy of nakaeia and the changes of nanteitei, the old men were doubtless grown impatient of obscurity, and they were beyond question jealous of the influence of maka. calumny, or rather caricature, was called in use; a spoken cartoon ran round society; maka was reported to have said in church that the king was the first man in the island and himself the second; and, stung by the supposed affront, the chiefs broke into rebellion and armed gatherings. in the space of one forenoon the throne of nakaeia was humbled in the dust. the king sat in the maniap' before the palace gate expecting his recruits; maka by his side, both anxious men; and meanwhile, in the door of a house at the north entry of the town, a chief had taken post and diverted the succours as they came. they came singly or in groups, each with his gun or pistol slung about his neck. 'where are you going?' asked the chief. 'the king called us,' they would reply. 'here is your place. sit down,' returned the chief. with incredible disloyalty, all obeyed; and sufficient force being thus got together from both sides, nabakatokia was summoned and surrendered. about this period, in almost every part of the group, the kings were murdered; and on tapituea, the skeleton of the last hangs to this day in the chief speak house of the isle, a menace to ambition. nabakatokia was more fortunate; his life and the royal style were spared to him, but he was stripped of power. the old men enjoyed a festival of public speaking; the laws were continually changed, never enforced; the commons had an opportunity to regret the merits of nakaeia; and the king, denied the resource of rich marriages and the service of a troop of wives, fell not only in disconsideration but in debt. he died some months before my arrival on the islands, and no one regretted him; rather all looked hopefully to his successor. this was by repute the hero of the family. alone of the four brothers, he had issue, a grown son, natiata, and a daughter three years old; it was to him, in the hour of the revolution, that nabakatokia turned too late for help; and in earlier days he had been the right hand of the vigorous nakaeia. nontemat', mr. corpse, was his appalling nickname, and he had earned it well. again and again, at the command of nakaeia, he had surrounded houses in the dead of night, cut down the mosquito bars and butchered families. here was the hand of iron; here was nakaeia redux. he came, summoned from the tributary rule of little makin: he was installed, he proved a puppet and a trembler, the unwieldy shuttlecock of orators; and the reader has seen the remains of him in his summer parlour under the name of tebureimoa. the change in the man's character was much commented on in the island, and variously explained by opium and christianity. to my eyes, there seemed no change at all, rather an extreme consistency. mr. corpse was afraid of his brother: king tebureimoa is afraid of the old men. terror of the first nerved him for deeds of desperation; fear of the second disables him for the least act of government. he played his part of bravo in the past, following the line of least resistance, butchering others in his own defence: to-day, grown elderly and heavy, a convert, a reader of the bible, perhaps a penitent, conscious at least of accumulated hatreds, and his memory charged with images of violence and blood, he capitulates to the old men, fuddles himself with opium, and sits among his guards in dreadful expectation. the same cowardice that put into his hand the knife of the assassin deprives him of the sceptre of a king. a tale that i was told, a trifling incident that fell in my observation, depicts him in his two capacities. a chief in little makin asked, in an hour of lightness, 'who is kaeia?' a bird carried the saying; and nakaeia placed the matter in the hands of a committee of three. mr. corpse was chairman; the second commissioner died before my arrival; the third was yet alive and green, and presented so venerable an appearance that we gave him the name of abou ben adhem. mr. corpse was troubled with a scruple; the man from little makin was his adopted brother; in such a case it was not very delicate to appear at all, to strike the blow (which it seems was otherwise expected of him) would be worse than awkward. 'i will strike the blow,' said the venerable abou; and mr. corpse (surely with a sigh) accepted the compromise. the quarry was decoyed into the bush; he was set to carrying a log; and while his arms were raised abou ripped up his belly at a blow. justice being thus done, the commission, in a childish horror, turned to flee. but their victim recalled them to his side. 'you need not run away now,' he said. 'you have done this thing to me. stay.' he was some twenty minutes dying, and his murderers sat with him the while: a scene for shakespeare. all the stages of a violent death, the blood, the failing voice, the decomposing features, the changed hue, are thus present in the memory of mr. corpse; and since he studied them in the brother he betrayed, he has some reason to reflect on the possibilities of treachery. i was never more sure of anything than the tragic quality of the king's thoughts; and yet i had but the one sight of him at unawares. i had once an errand for his ear. it was once more the hour of the siesta; but there were loiterers abroad, and these directed us to a closed house on the bank of the canal where tebureimoa lay unguarded. we entered without ceremony, being in some haste. he lay on the floor upon a bed of mats, reading in his gilbert island bible with compunction. on our sudden entrance the unwieldy man reared himself half-sitting so that the bible rolled on the floor, stared on us a moment with blank eyes, and, having recognised his visitors, sank again upon the mats. so eglon looked on ehud. the justice of facts is strange, and strangely just; nakaeia, the author of these deeds, died at peace discoursing on the craft of kings; his tool suffers daily death for his enforced complicity. not the nature, but the congruity of men's deeds and circumstances damn and save them; and tebureimoa from the first has been incongruously placed. at home, in a quiet bystreet of a village, the man had been a worthy carpenter, and, even bedevilled as he is, he shows some private virtues. he has no lands, only the use of such as are impignorate for fines; he cannot enrich himself in the old way by marriages; thrift is the chief pillar of his future, and he knows and uses it. eleven foreign traders pay him a patent of a hundred dollars, some two thousand subjects pay capitation at the rate of a dollar for a man, half a dollar for a woman, and a shilling for a child: allowing for the exchange, perhaps a total of three hundred pounds a year. he had been some nine months on the throne: had bought his wife a silk dress and hat, figure unknown, and himself a uniform at three hundred dollars; had sent his brother's photograph to be enlarged in san francisco at two hundred and fifty dollars; had greatly reduced that brother's legacy of debt and had still sovereigns in his pocket. an affectionate brother, a good economist; he was besides a handy carpenter, and cobbled occasionally on the woodwork of the palace. it is not wonderful that mr. corpse has virtues; that tebureimoa should have a diversion filled me with surprise. chapter iii around our house when we left the palace we were still but seafarers ashore; and within the hour we had installed our goods in one of the six foreign houses of butaritari, namely, that usually occupied by maka, the hawaiian missionary. two san francisco firms are here established, messrs. crawford and messrs. wightman brothers; the first hard by the palace of the mid town, the second at the north entry; each with a store and bar-room. our house was in the wightman compound, betwixt the store and bar, within a fenced enclosure. across the road a few native houses nestled in the margin of the bush, and the green wall of palms rose solid, shutting out the breeze. a little sandy cove of the lagoon ran in behind, sheltered by a verandah pier, the labour of queens' hands. here, when the tide was high, sailed boats lay to be loaded; when the tide was low, the boats took ground some half a mile away, and an endless series of natives descended the pier stair, tailed across the sand in strings and clusters, waded to the waist with the bags of copra, and loitered backward to renew their charge. the mystery of the copra trade tormented me, as i sat and watched the profits drip on the stair and the sands. in front, from shortly after four in the morning until nine at night, the folk of the town streamed by us intermittingly along the road: families going up the island to make copra on their lands; women bound for the bush to gather flowers against the evening toilet; and, twice a day, the toddy-cutters, each with his knife and shell. in the first grey of the morning, and again late in the afternoon, these would straggle past about their tree-top business, strike off here and there into the bush, and vanish from the face of the earth. at about the same hour, if the tide be low in the lagoon, you are likely to be bound yourself across the island for a bath, and may enter close at their heels alleys of the palm wood. right in front, although the sun is not yet risen, the east is already lighted with preparatory fires, and the huge accumulations of the trade-wind cloud glow with and heliograph the coming day. the breeze is in your face; overhead in the tops of the palms, its playthings, it maintains a lively bustle; look where you will, above or below, there is no human presence, only the earth and shaken forest. and right overhead the song of an invisible singer breaks from the thick leaves; from farther on a second tree-top answers; and beyond again, in the bosom of the woods, a still more distant minstrel perches and sways and sings. so, all round the isle, the toddy-cutters sit on high, and are rocked by the trade, and have a view far to seaward, where they keep watch for sails, and like huge birds utter their songs in the morning. they sing with a certain lustiness and bacchic glee; the volume of sound and the articulate melody fall unexpected from the tree-top, whence we anticipate the chattering of fowls. and yet in a sense these songs also are but chatter; the words are ancient, obsolete, and sacred; few comprehend them, perhaps no one perfectly; but it was understood the cutters 'prayed to have good toddy, and sang of their old wars.' the prayer is at least answered; and when the foaming shell is brought to your door, you have a beverage well 'worthy of a grace.' all forenoon you may return and taste; it only sparkles, and sharpens, and grows to be a new drink, not less delicious; but with the progress of the day the fermentation quickens and grows acid; in twelve hours it will be yeast for bread, in two days more a devilish intoxicant, the counsellor of crime. the men are of a marked arabian cast of features, often bearded and mustached, often gaily dressed, some with bracelets and anklets, all stalking hidalgo-like, and accepting salutations with a haughty lip. the hair (with the dandies of either sex) is worn turban-wise in a frizzled bush; and like the daggers of the japanese a pointed stick (used for a comb) is thrust gallantly among the curls. the women from this bush of hair look forth enticingly: the race cannot be compared with the tahitian for female beauty; i doubt even if the average be high; but some of the prettiest girls, and one of the handsomest women i ever saw, were gilbertines. butaritari, being the commercial centre of the group, is europeanised; the coloured sacque or the white shift are common wear, the latter for the evening; the trade hat, loaded with flowers, fruit, and ribbons, is unfortunately not unknown; and the characteristic female dress of the gilberts no longer universal. the ridi is its name: a cutty petticoat or fringe of the smoked fibre of cocoa-nut leaf, not unlike tarry string: the lower edge not reaching the mid-thigh, the upper adjusted so low upon the haunches that it seems to cling by accident. a sneeze, you think, and the lady must surely be left destitute. 'the perilous, hairbreadth ridi' was our word for it; and in the conflict that rages over women's dress it has the misfortune to please neither side, the prudish condemning it as insufficient, the more frivolous finding it unlovely in itself. yet if a pretty gilbertine would look her best, that must be her costume. in that and naked otherwise, she moves with an incomparable liberty and grace and life, that marks the poetry of micronesia. bundle her in a gown, the charm is fled, and she wriggles like an englishwoman. towards dusk the passers-by became more gorgeous. the men broke out in all the colours of the rainbow or at least of the traderoom, and both men and women began to be adorned and scented with new flowers. a small white blossom is the favourite, sometimes sown singly in a woman's hair like little stars, now composed in a thick wreath. with the night, the crowd sometimes thickened in the road, and the padding and brushing of bare feet became continuous; the promenades mostly grave, the silence only interrupted by some giggling and scampering of girls; even the children quiet. at nine, bed-time struck on a bell from the cathedral, and the life of the town ceased. at four the next morning the signal is repeated in the darkness, and the innocent prisoners set free; but for seven hours all must lie i was about to say within doors, of a place where doors, and even walls, are an exception housed, at least, under their airy roofs and clustered in the tents of the mosquitonets. suppose a necessary errand to occur, suppose it imperative to send abroad, the messenger must then go openly, advertising himself to the police with a huge brand of cocoa-nut, which flares from house to house like a moving bonfire. only the police themselves go darkling, and grope in the night for misdemeanants. i used to hate their treacherous presence; their captain in particular, a crafty old man in white, lurked nightly about my premises till i could have found it in my heart to beat him. but the rogue was privileged. not one of the eleven resident traders came to town, no captain cast anchor in the lagoon, but we saw him ere the hour was out. this was owing to our position between the store and the bar the sans souci, as the last was called. mr. rick was not only messrs. wightman's manager, but consular agent for the states; mrs. rick was the only white woman on the island, and one of the only two in the archipelago; their house besides, with its cool verandahs, its bookshelves, its comfortable furniture, could not be rivalled nearer than jaluit or honolulu. every one called in consequence, save such as might be prosecuting a south sea quarrel, hingeing on the price of copra and the odd cent, or perhaps a difference about poultry. even these, if they did not appear upon the north, would be presently visible to the southward, the sans souci drawing them as with cords. in an island with a total population of twelve white persons, one of the two drinking-shops might seem superfluous: but every bullet has its billet, and the double accommodation of butaritari is found in practice highly convenient by the captains and the crews of ships: the land we live in being tacitly resigned to the forecastle, the sans souci tacitly reserved for the afterguard. so aristocratic were my habits, so commanding was my fear of mr. williams, that i have never visited the first; but in the other, which was the club or rather the casino of the island, i regularly passed my evenings. it was small, but neatly fitted, and at night (when the lamp was lit) sparkled with glass and glowed with coloured pictures like a theatre at christmas. the pictures were advertisements, the glass coarse enough, the carpentry amateur; but the effect, in that incongruous isle, was of unbridled luxury and inestimable expense. here songs were sung, tales told, tricks performed, games played. the ricks, ourselves, norwegian tom the bar-keeper, a captain or two from the ships, and perhaps three or four traders come down the island in their boats or by the road on foot, made up the usual company. the traders, all bred to the sea, take a humorous pride in their new business; 'south sea merchants' is the title they prefer. 'we are all sailors here' 'merchants, if you please' 'south sea merchants,' was a piece of conversation endlessly repeated, that never seemed to lose in savour. we found them at all times simple, genial, gay, gallant, and obliging; and, across some interval of time, recall with pleasure the traders of butaritari. there was one black sheep indeed. i tell of him here where he lived, against my rule; for in this case i have no measure to preserve, and the man is typical of a class of ruffians that once disgraced the whole field of the south seas, and still linger in the rarely visited isles of micronesia. he had the name on the beach of 'a perfect gentleman when sober,' but i never saw him otherwise than drunk. the few shocking and savage traits of the micronesian he has singled out with the skill of a collector, and planted in the soil of his original baseness. he has been accused and acquitted of a treacherous murder; and has since boastfully owned it, which inclines me to suppose him innocent. his daughter is defaced by his erroneous cruelty, for it was his wife he had intended to disfigure, and in the darkness of the night and the frenzy of cocobrandy, fastened on the wrong victim. the wife has since fled and harbours in the bush with natives; and the husband still demands from deaf ears her forcible restoration. the best of his business is to make natives drink, and then advance the money for the fine upon a lucrative mortgage. 'respect for whites' is the man's word: 'what is the matter with this island is the want of respect for whites.' on his way to butaritari, while i was there, he spied his wife in the bush with certain natives and made a dash to capture her; whereupon one of her companions drew a knife and the husband retreated: 'do you call that proper respect for whites?' he cried. at an early stage of the acquaintance we proved our respect for his kind of white by forbidding him our enclosure under pain of death. thenceforth he lingered often in the neighbourhood with i knew not what sense of envy or design of mischief; his white, handsome face (which i beheld with loathing) looked in upon us at all hours across the fence; and once, from a safe distance, he avenged himself by shouting a recondite island insult, to us quite inoffensive, on his english lips incredibly incongruous. our enclosure, round which this composite of degradations wandered, was of some extent. in one corner was a trellis with a long table of rough boards. here the fourth of july feast had been held not long before with memorable consequences, yet to be set forth; here we took our meals; here entertained to a dinner the king and notables of makin. in the midst was the house, with a verandah front and back, and three is rooms within. in the verandah we slung our man-of-war hammocks, worked there by day, and slept at night. within were beds, chairs, a round table, a fine hanging lamp, and portraits of the royal family of hawaii. queen victoria proves nothing; kalakaua and mrs. bishop are diagnostic; and the truth is we were the stealthy tenants of the parsonage. on the day of our arrival maka was away; faithless trustees unlocked his doors; and the dear rigorous man, the sworn foe of liquor and tobacco, returned to find his verandah littered with cigarettes and his parlour horrible with bottles. he made but one condition on the round table, which he used in the celebration of the sacraments, he begged us to refrain from setting liquor; in all else he bowed to the accomplished fact, refused rent, retired across the way into a native house, and, plying in his boat, beat the remotest quarters of the isle for provender. he found us pigs i could not fancy where no other pigs were visible; he brought us fowls and taro; when we gave our feast to the monarch and gentry, it was he who supplied the wherewithal, he who superintended the cooking, he who asked grace at table, and when the king's health was proposed, he also started the cheering with an english hip-hip-hip. there was never a more fortunate conception; the heart of the fatted king exulted in his bosom at the sound. take him for all in all, i have never known a more engaging creature than this parson of butaritari: his mirth, his kindness, his noble, friendly feelings, brimmed from the man in speech and gesture. he loved to exaggerate, to act and overact the momentary part, to exercise his lungs and muscles, and to speak and laugh with his whole body. he had the morning cheerfulness of birds and healthy children; and his humour was infectious. we were next neighbours and met daily, yet our salutations lasted minutes at a stretch shaking hands, slapping shoulders, capering like a pair of merry-andrews, laughing to split our sides upon some pleasantry that would scarce raise a titter in an infant-school. it might be five in the morning, the toddy-cutters just gone by, the road empty, the shade of the island lying far on the lagoon: and the ebullition cheered me for the day. yet i always suspected maka of a secret melancholy these jubilant extremes could scarce be constantly maintained. he was besides long, and lean, and lined, and corded, and a trifle grizzled; and his sabbath countenance was even saturnine. on that day we made a procession to the church, or (as i must always call it) the cathedral: maka (a blot on the hot landscape) in tall hat, black frock-coat, black trousers; under his arm the hymn-book and the bible; in his face, a reverent gravity:beside him mary his wife, a quiet, wise, and handsome elderly lady, seriously attired: myself following with singular and moving thoughts. long before, to the sound of bells and streams and birds, through a green lothian glen, i had accompanied sunday by sunday a minister in whose house i lodged; and the likeness, and the difference, and the series of years and deaths, profoundly touched me. in the great, dusky, palm-tree cathedral the congregation rarely numbered thirty: the men on one side, the women on the other, myself posted (for a privilege) amongst the women, and the small missionary contingent gathered close around the platform, we were lost in that round vault. the lessons were read antiphonally, the flock was catechised, a blind youth repeated weekly a long string of psalms, hymns were sung i never heard worse singing, and the sermon followed. to say i understood nothing were untrue; there were points that i learned to expect with certainty; the name of honolulu, that of kalakaua, the word cap'n-man-o'-wa', the word ship, and a description of a storm at sea, infallibly occurred; and i was not seldom rewarded with the name of my own sovereign in the bargain. the rest was but sound to the ears, silence for the mind: a plain expanse of tedium, rendered unbearable by heat, a hard chair, and the sight through the wide doors of the more happy heathen on the green. sleep breathed on my joints and eyelids, sleep hummed in my ears; it reigned in the dim cathedral. the congregation stirred and stretched; they moaned, they groaned aloud; they yawned upon a singing note, as you may sometimes hear a dog when he has reached the tragic bitterest of boredom. in vain the preacher thumped the table; in vain he singled and addressed by name particular hearers. i was myself perhaps a more effective excitant; and at least to one old gentleman the spectacle of my successful struggles against sleep and i hope they were successful cheered the flight of time. he, when he was not catching flies or playing tricks upon his neighbours, gloated with a fixed, truculent eye upon the stages of my agony; and once, when the service was drawing towards a close, he winked at me across the church. i write of the service with a smile; yet i was always there always with respect for maka, always with admiration for his deep seriousness, his burning energy, the fire of his roused eye, the sincere and various accents of his voice. to see him weekly flogging a dead horse and blowing a cold fire was a lesson in fortitude and constancy. it may be a question whether if the mission were fully supported, and he was set free from business avocations, more might not result; i think otherwise myself; i think not neglect but rigour has reduced his flock, that rigour which has once provoked a revolution, and which to-day, in a man so lively and engaging, amazes the beholder. no song, no dance, no tobacco, no liquor, no alleviative of life only toil and churchgoing; so says a voice from his face; and the face is the face of the polynesian esau, but the voice is the voice of a jacob from a different world. and a polynesian at the best makes a singular missionary in the gilberts, coming from a country recklessly unchaste to one conspicuously strict; from a race hag-ridden with bogies to one comparatively bold against the terrors of the dark. the thought was stamped one morning in my mind, when i chanced to be abroad by moonlight, and saw all the town lightless, but the lamp faithfully burning by the missionary's bed. it requires no law, no fire, and no scouting police, to withhold maka and his countrymen from wandering in the night unlighted. chapter iv a tale of a tapu on the morrow of our arrival (sunday, 14th july 1889) our photographers were early stirring. once more we traversed a silent town; many were yet abed and asleep; some sat drowsily in their open houses; there was no sound of intercourse or business. in that hour before the shadows, the quarter of the palace and canal seemed like a landing-place in the arabian nights or from the classic poets; here were the fit destination of some 'faery frigot,' here some adventurous prince might step ashore among new characters and incidents; and the island prison, where it floated on the luminous face of the lagoon, might have passed for the repository of the grail. in such a scene, and at such an hour, the impression received was not so much of foreign travel rather of past ages; it seemed not so much degrees of latitude that we had crossed, as centuries of time that we had re-ascended; leaving, by the same steps, home and to-day. a few children followed us, mostly nude, all silent; in the clear, weedy waters of the canal some silent damsels waded, baring their brown thighs; and to one of the maniap's before the palace gate we were attracted by a low but stirring hum of speech. the oval shed was full of men sitting cross-legged. the king was there in striped pyjamas, his rear protected by four guards with winchesters, his air and bearing marked by unwonted spirit and decision; tumblers and black bottles went the round; and the talk, throughout loud, was general and animated. i was inclined at first to view this scene with suspicion. but the hour appeared unsuitable for a carouse; drink was besides forbidden equally by the law of the land and the canons of the church; and while i was yet hesitating, the king's rigorous attitude disposed of my last doubt. we had come, thinking to photograph him surrounded by his guards, and at the first word of the design his piety revolted. we were reminded of the day the sabbath, in which thou shalt take no photographs and returned with a flea in our ear, bearing the rejected camera. at church, a little later, i was struck to find the throne unoccupied. so nice a sabbatarian might have found the means to be present; perhaps my doubts revived; and before i got home they were transformed to certainties. tom, the bar-keeper of the sans souci, was in conversation with two emissaries from the court. the 'keen,' they said, wanted 'din,' failing which 'perandi.' no din, was tom's reply, and no perandi; but 'pira' if they pleased. it seems they had no use for beer, and departed sorrowing. 'why, what is the meaning of all this?' i asked. 'is the island on the spree?' such was the fact. on the 4th of july a feast had been made, and the king, at the suggestion of the whites, had raised the tapu against liquor. there is a proverb about horses; it scarce applies to the superior animal, of whom it may be rather said, that any one can start him drinking, not any twenty can prevail on him to stop. the tapu, raised ten days before, was not yet re-imposed; for ten days the town had been passing the bottle or lying (as we had seen it the afternoon before) in hoggish sleep; and the king, moved by the old men and his own appetites, continued to maintain the liberty, to squander his savings on liquor, and to join in and lead the debauch. the whites were the authors of this crisis; it was upon their own proposal that the freedom had been granted at the first; and for a while, in the interests of trade, they were doubtless pleased it should continue. that pleasure had now sometime ceased; the bout had been prolonged (it was conceded) unduly; and it now began to be a question how it might conclude. hence tom's refusal. yet that refusal was avowedly only for the moment, and it was avowedly unavailing; the king's foragers, denied by tom at the sans souci, would be supplied at the land we live in by the gobbling mr. williams. the degree of the peril was not easy to measure at the time, and i am inclined to think now it was easy to exaggerate. yet the conduct of drunkards even at home is always matter for anxiety; and at home our populations are not armed from the highest to the lowest with revolvers and repeating rifles, neither do we go on a debauch by the whole townful and i might rather say, by the whole polity king, magistrates, police, and army joining in one common scene of drunkenness. it must be thought besides that we were here in barbarous islands, rarely visited, lately and partly civilised. first and last, a really considerable number of whites have perished in the gilberts, chiefly through their own misconduct; and the natives have displayed in at least one instance a disposition to conceal an accident under a butchery, and leave nothing but dumb bones. this last was the chief consideration against a sudden closing of the bars; the bar-keepers stood in the immediate breach and dealt direct with madmen; too surly a refusal might at any moment precipitate a blow, and the blow might prove the signal for a massacre. monday, 15th. at the same hour we returned to the same muniap'. kummel (of all drinks) was served in tumblers; in the midst sat the crown prince, a fatted youth, surrounded by fresh bottles and busily plying the corkscrew; and king, chief, and commons showed the loose mouth, the uncertain joints, and the blurred and animated eye of the early drinker. it was plain we were impatiently expected; the king retired with alacrity to dress, the guards were despatched after their uniforms; and we were left to await the issue of these preparations with a shedful of tipsy natives. the orgie had proceeded further than on sunday. the day promised to be of great heat; it was already sultry, the courtiers were already fuddled; and still the kummel continued to go round, and the crown prince to play butler. flemish freedom followed upon flemish excess; and a funny dog, a handsome fellow, gaily dressed, and with a full turban of frizzed hair, delighted the company with a humorous courtship of a lady in a manner not to be described. it was our diversion, in this time of waiting, to observe the gathering of the guards. they have european arms, european uniforms, and (to their sorrow) european shoes. we saw one warrior (like mars) in the article of being armed; two men and a stalwart woman were scarce strong enough to boot him; and after a single appearance on parade the army is crippled for a week. at last, the gates under the king's house opened; the army issued, one behind another, with guns and epaulettes; the colours stooped under the gateway; majesty followed in his uniform bedizened with gold lace; majesty's wife came next in a hat and feathers, and an ample trained silk gown; the royal imps succeeded; there stood the pageantry of makin marshalled on its chosen theatre. dickens might have told how serious they were; how tipsy; how the king melted and streamed under his cocked hat; how he took station by the larger of his two cannons austere, majestic, but not truly vertical; how the troops huddled, and were straightened out, and clubbed again; how they and their firelocks raked at various inclinations like the masts of ships; and how an amateur photographer reviewed, arrayed, and adjusted them, to see his dispositions change before he reached the camera. the business was funny to see; i do not know that it is graceful to laugh at; and our report of these transactions was received on our return with the shaking of grave heads. the day had begun ill; eleven hours divided us from sunset; and at any moment, on the most trifling chance, the trouble might begin. the wightman compound was in a military sense untenable, commanded on three sides by houses and thick bush; the town was computed to contain over a thousand stand of excellent new arms; and retreat to the ships, in the case of an alert, was a recourse not to be thought of. our talk that morning must have closely reproduced the talk in english garrisons before the sepoy mutiny; the sturdy doubt that any mischief was in prospect, the sure belief that (should any come) there was nothing left but to go down fighting, the halfamused, half-anxious attitude of mind in which we were awaiting fresh developments. the kummel soon ran out; we were scarce returned before the king had followed us in quest of more. mr. corpse was now divested of his more awful attitude, the lawless bulk of him again encased in striped pyjamas; a guardsman brought up the rear with his rifle at the trail: and his majesty was further accompanied by a rarotongan whalerman and the playful courtier with the turban of frizzed hair. there was never a more lively deputation. the whalerman was gapingly, tearfully tipsy: the courtier walked on air; the king himself was even sportive. seated in a chair in the ricks' sitting-room, he bore the brunt of our prayers and menaces unmoved. he was even rated, plied with historic instances, threatened with the men-of-war, ordered to restore the tapu on the spot and nothing in the least affected him. it should be done to-morrow, he said; to-day it was beyond his power, to-day he durst not. 'is that royal?' cried indignant mr. rick. no, it was not royal; had the king been of a royal character we should ourselves have held a different language; and royal or not, he had the best of the dispute. the terms indeed were hardly equal; for the king was the only man who could restore the tapu, but the ricks were not the only people who sold drink. he had but to hold his ground on the first question, and they were sure to weaken on the second. a little struggle they still made for the fashion's sake; and then one exceedingly tipsy deputation departed, greatly rejoicing, a case of brandy wheeling beside them in a barrow. the rarotongan (whom i had never seen before) wrung me by the hand like a man bound on a far voyage. 'my dear frien'!' he cried, 'good-bye, my dear frien'!' tears of kummel standing in his eyes; the king lurched as he went, the courtier ambled, a strange party of intoxicated children to be entrusted with that barrowful of madness. you could never say the town was quiet; all morning there was a ferment in the air, an aimless movement and congregation of natives in the street. but it was not before half-past one that a sudden hubbub of voices called us from the house, to find the whole white colony already gathered on the spot as by concerted signal. the sans souci was overrun with rabble, the stair and verandah thronged. from all these throats an inarticulate babbling cry went up incessantly; it sounded like the bleating of young lambs, but angrier. in the road his royal highness (whom i had seen so lately in the part of butler) stood crying upon tom; on the top step, tossed in the hurly-burly, tom was shouting to the prince. yet a while the pack swayed about the bar, vociferous. then came a brutal impulse; the mob reeled, and returned, and was rejected; the stair showed a stream of heads; and there shot into view, through the disbanding ranks, three men violently dragging in their midst a fourth. by his hair and his hands, his head forced as low as his knees, his face concealed, he was wrenched from the verandah and whisked along the road into the village, howling as he disappeared. had his face been raised, we should have seen it bloodied, and the blood was not his own. the courtier with the turban of frizzed hair had paid the costs of this disturbance with the lower part of one ear. so the brawl passed with no other casualty than might seem comic to the inhumane. yet we looked round on serious faces and a fact that spoke volumes tom was putting up the shutters on the bar. custom might go elsewhere, mr. williams might profit as he pleased, but tom had had enough of bar-keeping for that day. indeed the event had hung on a hair. a man had sought to draw a revolver on what quarrel i could never learn, and perhaps he himself could not have told; one shot, when the room was so crowded, could scarce have failed to take effect; where many were armed and all tipsy, it could scarce have failed to draw others; and the woman who spied the weapon and the man who seized it may very well have saved the white community. the mob insensibly melted from the scene; and for the rest of the day our neighbourhood was left in peace and a good deal in solitude. but the tranquillity was only local; din and perandi still flowed in other quarters: and we had one more sight of gilbert island violence. in the church, where we had wandered photographing, we were startled by a sudden piercing outcry. the scene, looking forth from the doors of that great hall of shadow, was unforgettable. the palms, the quaint and scattered houses, the flag of the island streaming from its tall staff, glowed with intolerable sunshine. in the midst two women rolled fighting on the grass. the combatants were the more easy to be distinguished, because the one was stripped to the ridi and the other wore a holoku (sacque) of some lively colour. the first was uppermost, her teeth locked in her adversary's face, shaking her like a dog; the other impotently fought and scratched. so for a moment we saw them wallow and grapple there like vermin; then the mob closed and shut them in. it was a serious question that night if we should sleep ashore. but we were travellers, folk that had come far in quest of the adventurous; on the first sign of an adventure it would have been a singular inconsistency to have withdrawn; and we sent on board instead for our revolvers. mindful of taahauku, mr. rick, mr. osbourne, and mrs. stevenson held an assault of arms on the public highway, and fired at bottles to the admiration of the natives. captain reid of the equator stayed on shore with us to be at hand in case of trouble, and we retired to bed at the accustomed hour, agreeably excited by the day's events. the night was exquisite, the silence enchanting; yet as i lay in my hammock looking on the strong moonshine and the quiescent palms, one ugly picture haunted me of the two women, the naked and the clad, locked in that hostile embrace. the harm done was probably not much, yet i could have looked on death and massacre with less revolt. the return to these primeval weapons, the vision of man's beastliness, of his ferality, shocked in me a deeper sense than that with which we count the cost of battles. there are elements in our state and history which it is a pleasure to forget, which it is perhaps the better wisdom not to dwell on. crime, pestilence, and death are in the day's work; the imagination readily accepts them. it instinctively rejects, on the contrary, whatever shall call up the image of our race upon its lowest terms, as the partner of beasts, beastly itself, dwelling pell-mell and hugger-mugger, hairy man with hairy woman, in the caves of old. and yet to be just to barbarous islanders we must not forget the slums and dens of our cities; i must not forget that i have passed dinnerward through soho, and seen that which cured me of my dinner. chapter v a tale of a tapu continued tuesday, july 16. it rained in the night, sudden and loud, in gilbert island fashion. before the day, the crowing of a cock aroused me and i wandered in the compound and along the street. the squall was blown by, the moon shone with incomparable lustre, the air lay dead as in a room, and yet all the isle sounded as under a strong shower, the eaves thickly pattering, the lofty palms dripping at larger intervals and with a louder note. in this bold nocturnal light the interior of the houses lay inscrutable, one lump of blackness, save when the moon glinted under the roof, and made a belt of silver, and drew the slanting shadows of the pillars on the floor. nowhere in all the town was any lamp or ember; not a creature stirred; i thought i was alone to be awake; but the police were faithful to their duty; secretly vigilant, keeping account of time; and a little later, the watchman struck slowly and repeatedly on the cathedral bell; four o'clock, the warning signal. it seemed strange that, in a town resigned to drunkenness and tumult, curfew and reveille should still be sounded and still obeyed. the day came, and brought little change. the place still lay silent; the people slept, the town slept. even the few who were awake, mostly women and children, held their peace and kept within under the strong shadow of the thatch, where you must stop and peer to see them. through the deserted streets, and past the sleeping houses, a deputation took its way at an early hour to the palace; the king was suddenly awakened, and must listen (probably with a headache) to unpalatable truths. mrs. rick, being a sufficient mistress of that difficult tongue, was spokeswoman; she explained to the sick monarch that i was an intimate personal friend of queen victoria's; that immediately on my return i should make her a report upon butaritari; and that if my house should have been again invaded by natives, a man-of-war would be despatched to make reprisals. it was scarce the fact rather a just and necessary parable of the fact, corrected for latitude; and it certainly told upon the king. he was much affected; he had conceived the notion (he said) that i was a man of some importance, but not dreamed it was as bad as this; and the missionary house was tapu'd under a fine of fifty dollars. so much was announced on the return of the deputation; not any more; and i gathered subsequently that much more had passed. the protection gained was welcome. it had been the most annoying and not the least alarming feature of the day before, that our house was periodically filled with tipsy natives, twenty or thirty at a time, begging drink, fingering our goods, hard to be dislodged, awkward to quarrel with. queen victoria's friend (who was soon promoted to be her son) was free from these intrusions. not only my house, but my neighbourhood as well, was left in peace; even on our walks abroad we were guarded and prepared for; and, like great persons visiting a hospital, saw only the fair side. for the matter of a week we were thus suffered to go out and in and live in a fool's paradise, supposing the king to have kept his word, the tapu to be revived and the island once more sober. tuesday, july 23. we dined under a bare trellis erected for the fourth of july; and here we used to linger by lamplight over coffee and tobacco. in that climate evening approaches without sensible chill; the wind dies out before sunset; heaven glows a while and fades, and darkens into the blueness of the tropical night; swiftly and insensibly the shadows thicken, the stars multiply their number; you look around you and the day is gone. it was then that we would see our chinaman draw near across the compound in a lurching sphere of light, divided by his shadows; and with the coming of the lamp the night closed about the table. the faces of the company, the spars of the trellis, stood out suddenly bright on a ground of blue and silver, faintly designed with palm-tops and the peaked roofs of houses. here and there the gloss upon a leaf, or the fracture of a stone, returned an isolated sparkle. all else had vanished. we hung there, illuminated like a galaxy of stars in vacuo; we sat, manifest and blind, amid the general ambush of the darkness; and the islanders, passing with light footfalls and low voices in the sand of the road, lingered to observe us, unseen. on tuesday the dusk had fallen, the lamp had just been brought, when a missile struck the table with a rattling smack and rebounded past my ear. three inches to one side and this page had never been written; for the thing travelled like a cannon ball. it was supposed at the time to be a nut, though even at the time i thought it seemed a small one and fell strangely. wednesday, july 24. the dusk had fallen once more, and the lamp been just brought out, when the same business was repeated. and again the missile whistled past my ear. one nut i had been willing to accept; a second, i rejected utterly. a cocoa-nut does not come slinging along on a windless evening, making an angle of about fifteen degrees with the horizon; cocoa-nuts do not fall on successive nights at the same hour and spot; in both cases, besides, a specific moment seemed to have been chosen, that when the lamp was just carried out, a specific person threatened, and that the head of the family. i may have been right or wrong, but i believed i was the mark of some intimidation; believed the missile was a stone, aimed not to hit, but to frighten. no idea makes a man more angry. i ran into the road, where the natives were as usual promenading in the dark; maka joined me with a lantern; and i ran from one to another, glared in quite innocent faces, put useless questions, and proffered idle threats. thence i carried my wrath (which was worthy the son of any queen in history) to the ricks. they heard me with depression, assured me this trick of throwing a stone into a family dinner was not new; that it meant mischief, and was of a piece with the alarming disposition of the natives. and then the truth, so long concealed from us, came out. the king had broken his promise, he had defied the deputation; the tapu was still dormant, the land we live in still selling drink, and that quarter of the town disturbed and menaced by perpetual broils. but there was worse ahead: a feast was now preparing for the birthday of the little princess; and the tributary chiefs of kuma and little makin were expected daily. strong in a following of numerous and somewhat savage clansmen, each of these was believed, like a douglas of old, to be of doubtful loyalty. kuma (a little pot-bellied fellow) never visited the palace, never entered the town, but sat on the beach on a mat, his gun across his knees, parading his mistrust and scorn; karaiti of makin, although he was more bold, was not supposed to be more friendly; and not only were these vassals jealous of the throne, but the followers on either side shared in the animosity. brawls had already taken place; blows had passed which might at any moment be repaid in blood. some of the strangers were already here and already drinking; if the debauch continued after the bulk of them had come, a collision, perhaps a revolution, was to be expected. the sale of drink is in this group a measure of the jealousy of traders; one begins, the others are constrained to follow; and to him who has the most gin, and sells it the most recklessly, the lion's share of copra is assured. it is felt by all to be an extreme expedient, neither safe, decent, nor dignified. a trader on tarawa, heated by an eager rivalry, brought many cases of gin. he told me he sat afterwards day and night in his house till it was finished, not daring to arrest the sale, not venturing to go forth, the bush all round him filled with howling drunkards. at night, above all, when he was afraid to sleep, and heard shots and voices about him in the darkness, his remorse was black. 'my god!' he reflected, 'if i was to lose my life on such a wretched business!' often and often, in the story of the gilberts, this scene has been repeated; and the remorseful trader sat beside his lamp, longing for the day, listening with agony for the sound of murder, registering resolutions for the future. for the business is easy to begin, but hazardous to stop. the natives are in their way a just and law-abiding people, mindful of their debts, docile to the voice of their own institutions; when the tapu is reenforced they will cease drinking; but the white who seeks to antedate the movement by refusing liquor does so at his peril. hence, in some degree, the anxiety and helplessness of mr. rick. he and tom, alarmed by the rabblement of the sans souci, had stopped the sale; they had done so without danger, because the land we live in still continued selling; it was claimed, besides, that they had been the first to begin. what step could be taken? could mr. rick visit mr. muller (with whom he was not on terms) and address him thus: 'i was getting ahead of you, now you are getting ahead of me, and i ask you to forego your profit. i got my place closed in safety, thanks to your continuing; but now i think you have continued long enough. i begin to be alarmed; and because i am afraid i ask you to confront a certain danger'? it was not to be thought of. something else had to be found; and there was one person at one end of the town who was at least not interested in copra. there was little else to be said in favour of myself as an ambassador. i had arrived in the wightman schooner, i was living in the wightman compound, i was the daily associate of the wightman coterie. it was egregious enough that i should now intrude unasked in the private affairs of crawford's agent, and press upon him the sacrifice of his interests and the venture of his life. but bad as i might be, there was none better; since the affair of the stone i was, besides, sharp-set to be doing, the idea of a delicate interview attracted me, and i thought it policy to show myself abroad. the night was very dark. there was service in the church, and the building glimmered through all its crevices like a dim kirk allowa'. i saw few other lights, but was indistinctly aware of many people stirring in the darkness, and a hum and sputter of low talk that sounded stealthy. i believe (in the old phrase) my beard was sometimes on my shoulder as i went. muller's was but partly lighted, and quite silent, and the gate was fastened. i could by no means manage to undo the latch. no wonder, since i found it afterwards to be four or five feet long a fortification in itself. as i still fumbled, a dog came on the inside and sniffed suspiciously at my hands, so that i was reduced to calling 'house ahoy!' mr. muller came down and put his chin across the paling in the dark. 'who is that?' said he, like one who has no mind to welcome strangers. 'my name is stevenson,' said i. 'o, mr. stevens! i didn't know you. come inside.' we stepped into the dark store, when i leaned upon the counter and he against the wall. all the light came from the sleeping-room, where i saw his family being put to bed; it struck full in my face, but mr. muller stood in shadow. no doubt he expected what was coming, and sought the advantage of position; but for a man who wished to persuade and had nothing to conceal, mine was the preferable. 'look here,' i began, 'i hear you are selling to the natives.' 'others have done that before me,' he returned pointedly. 'no doubt,' said i, 'and i have nothing to do with the past, but the future. i want you to promise you will handle these spirits carefully.' 'now what is your motive in this?' he asked, and then, with a sneer, 'are you afraid of your life?' 'that is nothing to the purpose,' i replied. 'i know, and you know, these spirits ought not to be used at all.' 'tom and mr. rick have sold them before.' 'i have nothing to do with tom and mr. rick. all i know is i have heard them both refuse.' 'no, i suppose you have nothing to do with them. then you are just afraid of your life.' 'come now,' i cried, being perhaps a little stung, 'you know in your heart i am asking a reasonable thing. i don't ask you to lose your profit though i would prefer to see no spirits brought here, as you would ' 'i don't say i wouldn't. i didn't begin this,' he interjected. 'no, i don't suppose you did,' said i. 'and i don't ask you to lose; i ask you to give me your word, man to man, that you will make no native drunk.' up to now mr. muller had maintained an attitude very trying to my temper; but he had maintained it with difficulty, his sentiment being all upon my side; and here he changed ground for the worse. 'it isn't me that sells,' said he. 'no, it's that nigger,' i agreed. 'but he's yours to buy and sell; you have your hand on the nape of his neck; and i ask you i have my wife here to use the authority you have.' he hastily returned to his old ward. 'i don't deny i could if i wanted,' said he. 'but there's no danger, the natives are all quiet. you're just afraid of your life.' i do not like to be called a coward, even by implication; and here i lost my temper and propounded an untimely ultimatum. 'you had better put it plain,' i cried. 'do you mean to refuse me what i ask?' 'i don't want either to refuse it or grant it,' he replied. 'you'll find you have to do the one thing or the other, and right now!' i cried, and then, striking into a happier vein, 'come,' said i, 'you're a better sort than that. i see what's wrong with you you think i came from the opposite camp. i see the sort of man you are, and you know that what i ask is right.' again he changed ground. 'if the natives get any drink, it isn't safe to stop them,' he objected. 'i'll be answerable for the bar,' i said. 'we are three men and four revolvers; we'll come at a word, and hold the place against the village.' 'you don't know what you're talking about; it's too dangerous!' he cried. 'look here,' said i, 'i don't mind much about losing that life you talk so much of; but i mean to lose it the way i want to, and that is, putting a stop to all this beastliness.' he talked a while about his duty to the firm; i minded not at all, i was secure of victory. he was but waiting to capitulate, and looked about for any potent to relieve the strain. in the gush of light from the bedroom door i spied a cigar-holder on the desk. 'that is well coloured,' said i. 'will you take a cigar?' said he. i took it and held it up unlighted. 'now,' said i, 'you promise me.' 'i promise you you won't have any trouble from natives that have drunk at my place,' he replied. 'that is all i ask,' said i, and showed it was not by immediately offering to try his stock. so far as it was anyway critical our interview here ended. mr. muller had thenceforth ceased to regard me as an emissary from his rivals, dropped his defensive attitude, and spoke as he believed. i could make out that he would already, had he dared, have stopped the sale himself. not quite daring, it may be imagined how he resented the idea of interference from those who had (by his own statement) first led him on, then deserted him in the breach, and now (sitting themselves in safety) egged him on to a new peril, which was all gain to them, all loss to him! i asked him what he thought of the danger from the feast. 'i think worse of it than any of you,' he answered. 'they were shooting around here last night, and i heard the balls too. i said to myself, "that's bad." what gets me is why you should be making this row up at your end. i should be the first to go.' it was a thoughtless wonder. the consolation of being second is not great; the fact, not the order of going there was our concern. scott talks moderately of looking forward to a time of fighting 'with a feeling that resembled pleasure.' the resemblance seems rather an identity. in modern life, contact is ended; man grows impatient of endless manoeuvres; and to approach the fact, to find ourselves where we can push an advantage home, and stand a fair risk, and see at last what we are made of, stirs the blood. it was so at least with all my family, who bubbled with delight at the approach of trouble; and we sat deep into the night like a pack of schoolboys, preparing the revolvers and arranging plans against the morrow. it promised certainly to be a busy and eventful day. the old men were to be summoned to confront me on the question of the tapu; muller might call us at any moment to garrison his bar; and suppose muller to fail, we decided in a family council to take that matter into our own hands, the land we live in at the pistol's mouth, and with the polysyllabic williams, dance to a new tune. as i recall our humour i think it would have gone hard with the mulatto. wednesday, july 24. it was as well, and yet it was disappointing that these thunder-clouds rolled off in silence. whether the old men recoiled from an interview with queen victoria's son, whether muller had secretly intervened, or whether the step flowed naturally from the fears of the king and the nearness of the feast, the tapu was early that morning re-enforced; not a day too soon, from the manner the boats began to arrive thickly, and the town was filled with the big rowdy vassals of karaiti. the effect lingered for some time on the minds of the traders; it was with the approval of all present that i helped to draw up a petition to the united states, praying for a law against the liquor trade in the gilberts; and it was at this request that i added, under my own name, a brief testimony of what had passed; useless pains; since the whole reposes, probably unread and possibly unopened, in a pigeon-hole at washington. sunday, july 28. this day we had the afterpiece of the debauch. the king and queen, in european clothes, and followed by armed guards, attended church for the first time, and sat perched aloft in a precarious dignity under the barrel-hoops. before sermon his majesty clambered from the dais, stood lopsidedly upon the gravel floor, and in a few words abjured drinking. the queen followed suit with a yet briefer allocution. all the men in church were next addressed in turn; each held up his right hand, and the affair was over throne and church were reconciled. chapter vi the five days' festival thursday, july 25. the street was this day much enlivened by the presence of the men from little makin; they average taller than butaritarians, and being on a holiday, went wreathed with yellow leaves and gorgeous in vivid colours. they are said to be more savage, and to be proud of the distinction. indeed, it seemed to us they swaggered in the town, like plaided highlanders upon the streets of inverness, conscious of barbaric virtues. in the afternoon the summer parlour was observed to be packed with people; others standing outside and stooping to peer under the eaves, like children at home about a circus. it was the makin company, rehearsing for the day of competition. karaiti sat in the front row close to the singers, where we were summoned (i suppose in honour of queen victoria) to join him. a strong breathless heat reigned under the iron roof, and the air was heavy with the scent of wreaths. the singers, with fine mats about their loins, cocoanut feathers set in rings upon their fingers, and their heads crowned with yellow leaves, sat on the floor by companies. a varying number of soloists stood up for different songs; and these bore the chief part in the music. but the full force of the companies, even when not singing, contributed continuously to the effect, and marked the ictus of the measure, mimicking, grimacing, casting up their heads and eyes, fluttering the feathers on their fingers, clapping hands, or beating (loud as a kettledrum) on the left breast; the time was exquisite, the music barbarous, but full of conscious art. i noted some devices constantly employed. a sudden change would be introduced (i think of key) with no break of the measure, but emphasised by a sudden dramatic heightening of the voice and a swinging, general gesticulation. the voices of the soloists would begin far apart in a rude discord, and gradually draw together to a unison; which, when, they had reached, they were joined and drowned by the full chorus. the ordinary, hurried, barking unmelodious movement of the voices would at times be broken and glorified by a psalm-like strain of melody, often well constructed, or seeming so by contrast. there was much variety of measure, and towards the end of each piece, when the fun became fast and furious, a recourse to this figure [musical notation which cannot be produced. it means two/four time with quaver, quaver, crotchet repeated for three bars.] it is difficult to conceive what fire and devilry they get into these hammering finales; all go together, voices, hands, eyes, leaves, and fluttering finger-rings; the chorus swings to the eye, the song throbs on the ear; the faces are convulsed with enthusiasm and effort. presently the troop stood up in a body, the drums forming a halfcircle for the soloists, who were sometimes five or even more in number. the songs that followed were highly dramatic; though i had none to give me any explanation, i would at times make out some shadowy but decisive outline of a plot; and i was continually reminded of certain quarrelsome concerted scenes in grand operas at home; just so the single voices issue from and fall again into the general volume; just so do the performers separate and crowd together, brandish the raised hand, and roll the eye to heaven or the gallery. already this is beyond the thespian model; the art of this people is already past the embryo: song, dance, drums, quartette and solo it is the drama full developed although still in miniature. of all so-called dancing in the south seas, that which i saw in butaritari stands easily the first. the hula, as it may be viewed by the speedy globe-trotter in honolulu, is surely the most dull of man's inventions, and the spectator yawns under its length as at a college lecture or a parliamentary debate. but the gilbert island dance leads on the mind; it thrills, rouses, subjugates; it has the essence of all art, an unexplored imminent significance. where so many are engaged, and where all must make (at a given moment) the same swift, elaborate, and often arbitrary movement, the toil of rehearsal is of course extreme. but they begin as children. a child and a man may often be seen together in a maniap': the man sings and gesticulates, the child stands before him with streaming tears and tremulously copies him in act and sound; it is the gilbert island artist learning (as all artists must) his art in sorrow. i may seem to praise too much; here is a passage from my wife's diary, which proves that i was not alone in being moved, and completes the picture:'the conductor gave the cue, and all the dancers, waving their arms, swaying their bodies, and clapping their breasts in perfect time, opened with an introductory. the performers remained seated, except two, and once three, and twice a single soloist. these stood in the group, making a slight movement with the feet and rhythmical quiver of the body as they sang. there was a pause after the introductory, and then the real business of the opera for it was no less began; an opera where every singer was an accomplished actor. the leading man, in an impassioned ecstasy which possessed him from head to foot, seemed transfigured; once it was as though a strong wind had swept over the stage their arms, their feathered fingers thrilling with an emotion that shook my nerves as well: heads and bodies followed like a field of grain before a gust. my blood came hot and cold, tears pricked my eyes, my head whirled, i felt an almost irresistible impulse to join the dancers. one drama, i think, i very nearly understood. a fierce and savage old man took the solo part. he sang of the birth of a prince, and how he was tenderly rocked in his mother's arms; of his boyhood, when he excelled his fellows in swimming, climbing, and all athletic sports; of his youth, when he went out to sea with his boat and fished; of his manhood, when he married a wife who cradled a son of his own in her arms. then came the alarm of war, and a great battle, of which for a time the issue was doubtful; but the hero conquered, as he always does, and with a tremendous burst of the victors the piece closed. there were also comic pieces, which caused great amusement. during one, an old man behind me clutched me by the arm, shook his finger in my face with a roguish smile, and said something with a chuckle, which i took to be the equivalent of "o, you women, you women; it is true of you all!" i fear it was not complimentary. at no time was there the least sign of the ugly indecency of the eastern islands. all was poetry pure and simple. the music itself was as complex as our own, though constructed on an entirely different basis; once or twice i was startled by a bit of something very like the best english sacred music, but it was only for an instant. at last there was a longer pause, and this time the dancers were all on their feet. as the drama went on, the interest grew. the performers appealed to each other, to the audience, to the heaven above; they took counsel with each other, the conspirators drew together in a knot; it was just an opera, the drums coming in at proper intervals, the tenor, baritone, and bass all where they should be except that the voices were all of the same calibre. a woman once sang from the back row with a very fine contralto voice spoilt by being made artificially nasal; i notice all the women affect that unpleasantness. at one time a boy of angelic beauty was the soloist; and at another, a child of six or eight, doubtless an infant phenomenon being trained, was placed in the centre. the little fellow was desperately frightened and embarrassed at first, but towards the close warmed up to his work and showed much dramatic talent. the changing expressions on the faces of the dancers were so speaking, that it seemed a great stupidity not to understand them.' our neighbour at this performance, karaiti, somewhat favours his butaritarian majesty in shape and feature, being, like him, portly, bearded, and oriental. in character he seems the reverse: alert, smiling, jovial, jocular, industrious. at home in his own island, he labours himself like a slave, and makes his people labour like a slave-driver. he takes an interest in ideas. george the trader told him about flying-machines. 'is that true, george?' he asked. 'it is in the papers,' replied george. 'well,' said karaiti, 'if that man can do it with machinery, i can do it without'; and he designed and made a pair of wings, strapped them on his shoulders, went to the end of a pier, launched himself into space, and fell bulkily into the sea. his wives fished him out, for his wings hindered him in swimming. 'george,' said he, pausing as he went up to change, 'george, you lie.' he had eight wives, for his small realm still follows ancient customs; but he showed embarrassment when this was mentioned to my wife. 'tell her i have only brought one here,' he said anxiously. altogether the black douglas pleased us much; and as we heard fresh details of the king's uneasiness, and saw for ourselves that all the weapons in the summer parlour had been hid, we watched with the more admiration the cause of all this anxiety rolling on his big legs, with his big smiling face, apparently unarmed, and certainly unattended, through the hostile town. the red douglas, pot-bellied kuma, having perhaps heard word of the debauch, remained upon his fief; his vassals thus came uncommanded to the feast, and swelled the following of karaiti. friday, july 26. at night in the dark, the singers of makin paraded in the road before our house and sang the song of the princess. 'this is the day; she was born to-day; nei kamaunave was born to-day a beautiful princess, queen of butaritari.' so i was told it went in endless iteration. the song was of course out of season, and the performance only a rehearsal. but it was a serenade besides; a delicate attention to ourselves from our new friend, karaiti. saturday, july 27. we had announced a performance of the magic lantern to-night in church; and this brought the king to visit us. in honour of the black douglas (i suppose) his usual two guardsmen were now increased to four; and the squad made an outlandish figure as they straggled after him, in straw hats, kilts and jackets. three carried their arms reversed, the butts over their shoulders, the muzzles menacing the king's plump back; the fourth had passed his weapon behind his neck, and held it there with arms extended like a backboard. the visit was extraordinarily long. the king, no longer galvanised with gin, said and did nothing. he sat collapsed in a chair and let a cigar go out. it was hot, it was sleepy, it was cruel dull; there was no resource but to spy in the countenance of tebureimoa for some remaining trait of mr. corpse the butcher. his hawk nose, crudely depressed and flattened at the point, did truly seem to us to smell of midnight murder. when he took his leave, maka bade me observe him going down the stair (or rather ladder) from the verandah. 'old man,' said maka. 'yes,' said i, 'and yet i suppose not old man.' 'young man,' returned maka, 'perhaps fo'ty.' and i have heard since he is most likely younger. while the magic lantern was showing, i skulked without in the dark. the voice of maka, excitedly explaining the scripture slides, seemed to fill not the church only, but the neighbourhood. all else was silent. presently a distant sound of singing arose and approached; and a procession drew near along the road, the hot clean smell of the men and women striking in my face delightfully. at the corner, arrested by the voice of maka and the lightening and darkening of the church, they paused. they had no mind to go nearer, that was plain. they were makin people, i believe, probably staunch heathens, contemners of the missionary and his works. of a sudden, however, a man broke from their company, took to his heels, and fled into the church; next moment three had followed him; the next it was a covey of near upon a score, all pelting for their lives. so the little band of the heathen paused irresolute at the corner, and melted before the attractions of a magic lantern, like a glacier in spring. the more staunch vainly taunted the deserters; three fled in a guilty silence, but still fled; and when at length the leader found the wit or the authority to get his troop in motion and revive the singing, it was with much diminished forces that they passed musically on up the dark road. meanwhile inside the luminous pictures brightened and faded. i stood for some while unobserved in the rear of the spectators, when i could hear just in front of me a pair of lovers following the show with interest, the male playing the part of interpreter and (like adam) mingling caresses with his lecture. the wild animals, a tiger in particular, and that old school-treat favourite, the sleeper and the mouse, were hailed with joy; but the chief marvel and delight was in the gospel series. maka, in the opinion of his aggrieved wife, did not properly rise to the occasion. 'what is the matter with the man? why can't he talk?' she cried. the matter with the man, i think, was the greatness of the opportunity; he reeled under his good fortune; and whether he did ill or well, the exposure of these pious 'phantoms' did as a matter of fact silence in all that part of the island the voice of the scoffer. 'why then,' the word went round, 'why then, the bible is true!' and on our return afterwards we were told the impression was yet lively, and those who had seen might be heard telling those who had not, 'o yes, it is all true; these things all happened, we have seen the pictures.' the argument is not so childish as it seems; for i doubt if these islanders are acquainted with any other mode of representation but photography; so that the picture of an event (on the old melodrama principle that 'the camera cannot lie, joseph,') would appear strong proof of its occurrence. the fact amused us the more because our slides were some of them ludicrously silly, and one (christ before pilate) was received with shouts of merriment, in which even maka was constrained to join. sunday, july 28. karaiti came to ask for a repetition of the 'phantoms' this was the accepted word and, having received a promise, turned and left my humble roof without the shadow of a salutation. i felt it impolite to have the least appearance of pocketing a slight; the times had been too difficult, and were still too doubtful; and queen victoria's son was bound to maintain the honour of his house. karaiti was accordingly summoned that evening to the ricks, where mrs. rick fell foul of him in words, and queen victoria's son assailed him with indignant looks. i was the ass with the lion's skin; i could not roar in the language of the gilbert islands; but i could stare. karaiti declared he had meant no offence; apologised in a sound, hearty, gentlemanly manner; and became at once at his ease. he had in a dagger to examine, and announced he would come to price it on the morrow, today being sunday; this nicety in a heathen with eight wives surprised me. the dagger was 'good for killing fish,' he said roguishly; and was supposed to have his eye upon fish upon two legs. it is at least odd that in eastern polynesia fish was the accepted euphemism for the human sacrifice. asked as to the population of his island, karaiti called out to his vassals who sat waiting him outside the door, and they put it at four hundred and fifty; but (added karaiti jovially) there will soon be plenty more, for all the women are in the family way. long before we separated i had quite forgotten his offence. he, however, still bore it in mind; and with a very courteous inspiration returned early on the next day, paid us a long visit, and punctiliously said farewell when he departed. monday, july 29. the great day came round at last. in the first hours the night was startled by the sound of clapping hands and the chant of nei kamaunava; its melancholy, slow, and somewhat menacing measures broken at intervals by a formidable shout. the little morsel of humanity thus celebrated in the dark hours was observed at midday playing on the green entirely naked, and equally unobserved and unconcerned. the summer parlour on its artificial islet, relieved against the shimmering lagoon, and shimmering itself with sun and tinned iron, was all day crowded about by eager men and women. within, it was boxed full of islanders, of any age and size, and in every degree of nudity and finery. so close we squatted, that at one time i had a mighty handsome woman on my knees, two little naked urchins having their feet against my back. there might be a dame in full attire of holoku and hat and flowers; and her next neighbour might the next moment strip some little rag of a shift from her fat shoulders and come out a monument of flesh, painted rather than covered by the hairbreadth ridi. little ladies who thought themselves too great to appear undraped upon so high a festival were seen to pause outside in the bright sunshine, their miniature ridis in their hand; a moment more and they were full-dressed and entered the concert-room. at either end stood up to sing, or sat down to rest, the alternate companies of singers; kuma and little makin on the north, butaritari and its conjunct hamlets on the south; both groups conspicuous in barbaric bravery. in the midst, between these rival camps of troubadours, a bench was placed; and here the king and queen throned it, some two or three feet above the crowded audience on the floor tebureimoa as usual in his striped pyjamas with a satchel strapped across one shoulder, doubtless (in the island fashion) to contain his pistols; the queen in a purple holoku, her abundant hair let down, a fan in her hand. the bench was turned facing to the strangers, a piece of well-considered civility; and when it was the turn of butaritari to sing, the pair must twist round on the bench, lean their elbows on the rail, and turn to us the spectacle of their broad backs. the royal couple occasionally solaced themselves with a clay pipe; and the pomp of state was further heightened by the rifles of a picket of the guard. with this kingly countenance, and ourselves squatted on the ground, we heard several songs from one side or the other. then royalty and its guards withdrew, and queen victoria's son and daughter-inlaw were summoned by acclamation to the vacant throne. our pride was perhaps a little modified when we were joined on our high places by a certain thriftless loafer of a white; and yet i was glad too, for the man had a smattering of native, and could give me some idea of the subject of the songs. one was patriotic, and dared tembinok' of apemama, the terror of the group, to an invasion. one mixed the planting of taro and the harvest-home. some were historical, and commemorated kings and the illustrious chances of their time, such as a bout of drinking or a war. one, at least, was a drama of domestic interest, excellently played by the troop from makin. it told the story of a man who has lost his wife, at first bewails her loss, then seeks another: the earlier strains (or acts) are played exclusively by men; but towards the end a woman appears, who has just lost her husband; and i suppose the pair console each other, for the finale seemed of happy omen. of some of the songs my informant told me briefly they were 'like about the weemen'; this i could have guessed myself. each side (i should have said) was strengthened by one or two women. they were all soloists, did not very often join in the performance, but stood disengaged at the back part of the stage, and looked (in ridi, necklace, and dressed hair) for all the world like european balletdancers. when the song was anyway broad these ladies came particularly to the front; and it was singular to see that, after each entry, the premiere danseuse pretended to be overcome by shame, as though led on beyond what she had meant, and her male assistants made a feint of driving her away like one who had disgraced herself. similar affectations accompany certain truly obscene dances of samoa, where they are very well in place. here it was different. the words, perhaps, in this free-spoken world, were gross enough to make a carter blush; and the most suggestive feature was this feint of shame. for such parts the women showed some disposition; they were pert, they were neat, they were acrobatic, they were at times really amusing, and some of them were pretty. but this is not the artist's field; there is the whole width of heaven between such capering and ogling, and the strange rhythmic gestures, and strange, rapturous, frenzied faces with which the best of the male dancers held us spellbound through a gilbert island ballet. almost from the first it was apparent that the people of the city were defeated. i might have thought them even good, only i had the other troop before my eyes to correct my standard, and remind me continually of 'the little more, and how much it is.' perceiving themselves worsted, the choir of butaritari grew confused, blundered, and broke down; amid this hubbub of unfamiliar intervals i should not myself have recognised the slip, but the audience were quick to catch it, and to jeer. to crown all, the makin company began a dance of truly superlative merit. i know not what it was about, i was too much absorbed to ask. in one act a part of the chorus, squealing in some strange falsetto, produced very much the effect of our orchestra; in another, the dancers, leaping like jumping-jacks, with arms extended, passed through and through each other's ranks with extraordinary speed, neatness, and humour. a more laughable effect i never saw; in any european theatre it would have brought the house down, and the island audience roared with laughter and applause. this filled up the measure for the rival company, and they forgot themselves and decency. after each act or figure of the ballet, the performers pause a moment standing, and the next is introduced by the clapping of hands in triplets. not until the end of the whole ballet do they sit down, which is the signal for the rivals to stand up. but now all rules were to be broken. during the interval following on this great applause, the company of butaritari leaped suddenly to their feet and most unhandsomely began a performance of their own. it was strange to see the men of makin staring; i have seen a tenor in europe stare with the same blank dignity into a hissing theatre; but presently, to my surprise, they sobered down, gave up the unsung remainder of their ballet, resumed their seats, and suffered their ungallant adversaries to go on and finish. nothing would suffice. again, at the first interval, butaritari unhandsomely cut in; makin, irritated in turn, followed the example; and the two companies of dancers remained permanently standing, continuously clapping hands, and regularly cutting across each other at each pause. i expected blows to begin with any moment; and our position in the midst was highly unstrategical. but the makin people had a better thought; and upon a fresh interruption turned and trooped out of the house. we followed them, first because these were the artists, second because they were guests and had been scurvily ill-used. a large population of our neighbours did the same, so that the causeway was filled from end to end by the procession of deserters; and the butaritari choir was left to sing for its own pleasure in an empty house, having gained the point and lost the audience. it was surely fortunate that there was no one drunk; but, drunk or sober, where else would a scene so irritating have concluded without blows? the last stage and glory of this auspicious day was of our own providing the second and positively the last appearance of the phantoms. all round the church, groups sat outside, in the night, where they could see nothing; perhaps ashamed to enter, certainly finding some shadowy pleasure in the mere proximity. within, about one-half of the great shed was densely packed with people. in the midst, on the royal dais, the lantern luminously smoked; chance rays of light struck out the earnest countenance of our chinaman grinding the hand-organ; a fainter glimmer showed off the rafters and their shadows in the hollow of the roof; the pictures shone and vanished on the screen; and as each appeared, there would run a hush, a whisper, a strong shuddering rustle, and a chorus of small cries among the crowd. there sat by me the mate of a wrecked schooner. 'they would think this a strange sight in europe or the states,' said he, 'going on in a building like this, all tied with bits of string.' chapter vii husband and wife the trader accustomed to the manners of eastern polynesia has a lesson to learn among the gilberts. the ridi is but a spare attire; as late as thirty years back the women went naked until marriage; within ten years the custom lingered; and these facts, above all when heard in description, conveyed a very false idea of the manners of the group. a very intelligent missionary described it (in its former state) as a 'paradise of naked women' for the resident whites. it was at least a platonic paradise, where lothario ventured at his peril. since 1860, fourteen whites have perished on a single island, all for the same cause, all found where they had no business, and speared by some indignant father of a family; the figure was given me by one of their contemporaries who had been more prudent and survived. the strange persistence of these fourteen martyrs might seem to point to monomania or a series of romantic passions; gin is the more likely key. the poor buzzards sat alone in their houses by an open case; they drank; their brain was fired; they stumbled towards the nearest houses on chance; and the dart went through their liver. in place of a paradise the trader found an archipelago of fierce husbands and of virtuous women. 'of course if you wish to make love to them, it's the same as anywhere else,' observed a trader innocently; but he and his companions rarely so choose. the trader must be credited with a virtue: he often makes a kind and loyal husband. some of the worst beachcombers in the pacific, some of the last of the old school, have fallen in my path, and some of them were admirable to their native wives, and one made a despairing widower. the position of a trader's wife in the gilberts is, besides, unusually enviable. she shares the immunities of her husband. curfew in butaritari sounds for her in vain. long after the bell is rung and the great island ladies are confined for the night to their own roof, this chartered libertine may scamper and giggle through the deserted streets or go down to bathe in the dark. the resources of the store are at her hand; she goes arrayed like a queen, and feasts delicately everyday upon tinned meats. and she who was perhaps of no regard or station among natives sits with captains, and is entertained on board of schooners. five of these privileged dames were some time our neighbours. four were handsome skittish lasses, gamesome like children, and like children liable to fits of pouting. they wore dresses by day, but there was a tendency after dark to strip these lendings and to career and squall about the compound in the aboriginal ridi. games of cards were continually played, with shells for counters; their course was much marred by cheating; and the end of a round (above all if a man was of the party) resolved itself into a scrimmage for the counters. the fifth was a matron. it was a picture to see her sail to church on a sunday, a parasol in hand, a nursemaid following, and the baby buried in a trade hat and armed with a patent feeding-bottle. the service was enlivened by her continual supervision and correction of the maid. it was impossible not to fancy the baby was a doll, and the church some european playroom. all these women were legitimately married. it is true that the certificate of one, when she proudly showed it, proved to run thus, that she was 'married for one night,' and her gracious partner was at liberty to 'send her to hell' the next morning; but she was none the wiser or the worse for the dastardly trick. another, i heard, was married on a work of mine in a pirated edition; it answered the purpose as well as a hall bible. notwithstanding all these allurements of social distinction, rare food and raiment, a comparative vacation from toil, and legitimate marriage contracted on a pirated edition, the trader must sometimes seek long before he can be mated. while i was in the group one had been eight months on the quest, and he was still a bachelor. within strictly native society the old laws and practices were harsh, but not without a certain stamp of high-mindedness. stealthy adultery was punished with death; open elopement was properly considered virtue in comparison, and compounded for a fine in land. the male adulterer alone seems to have been punished. it is correct manners for a jealous man to hang himself; a jealous woman has a different remedy she bites her rival. ten or twenty years ago it was a capital offence to raise a woman's ridi; to this day it is still punished with a heavy fine; and the garment itself is still symbolically sacred. suppose a piece of land to be disputed in butaritari, the claimant who shall first hang a ridi on the tapu-post has gained his cause, since no one can remove or touch it but himself. the ridi was the badge not of the woman but the wife, the mark not of her sex but of her station. it was the collar on the slave's neck, the brand on merchandise. the adulterous woman seems to have been spared; were the husband offended, it would be a poor consolation to send his draught cattle to the shambles. karaiti, to this day, calls his eight wives 'his horses,' some trader having explained to him the employment of these animals on farms; and nanteitei hired out his wives to do mason-work. husbands, at least when of high rank, had the power of life and death; even whites seem to have possessed it; and their wives, when they had transgressed beyond forgiveness, made haste to pronounce the formula of deprecation i kana kim. this form of words had so much virtue that a condemned criminal repeating it on a particular day to the king who had condemned him, must be instantly released. it is an offer of abasement, and, strangely enough, the reverse the imitation is a common vulgar insult in great britain to this day. i give a scene between a trader and his gilbert island wife, as it was told me by the husband, now one of the oldest residents, but then a freshman in the group. 'go and light a fire,' said the trader, 'and when i have brought this oil i will cook some fish.' the woman grunted at him, island fashion. 'i am not a pig that you should grunt at me,' said he. 'i know you are not a pig,' said the woman, 'neither am i your slave.' 'to be sure you are not my slave, and if you do not care to stop with me, you had better go home to your people,' said he. 'but in the mean time go and light the fire; and when i have brought this oil i will cook some fish.' she went as if to obey; and presently when the trader looked she had built a fire so big that the cook-house was catching in flames. 'i kana kim!' she cried, as she saw him coming; but he recked not, and hit her with a cooking-pot. the leg pierced her skull, blood spouted, it was thought she was a dead woman, and the natives surrounded the house in a menacing expectation. another white was present, a man of older experience. 'you will have us both killed if you go on like this,' he cried. 'she had said i kana kim!' if she had not said i kana kim he might have struck her with a caldron. it was not the blow that made the crime, but the disregard of an accepted formula. polygamy, the particular sacredness of wives, their semi-servile state, their seclusion in kings' harems, even their privilege of biting, all would seem to indicate a mohammedan society and the opinion of the soullessness of woman. and not so in the least. it is a mere appearance. after you have studied these extremes in one house, you may go to the next and find all reversed, the woman the mistress, the man only the first of her thralls. the authority is not with the husband as such, nor the wife as such. it resides in the chief or the chief-woman; in him or her who has inherited the lands of the clan, and stands to the clansman in the place of parent, exacting their service, answerable for their fines. there is but the one source of power and the one ground of dignity rank. the king married a chief-woman; she became his menial, and must work with her hands on messrs. wightman's pier. the king divorced her; she regained at once her former state and power. she married the hawaiian sailor, and behold the man is her flunkey and can be shown the door at pleasure. nay, and such low-born lords are even corrected physically, and, like grown but dutiful children, must endure the discipline. we were intimate in one such household, that of nei takauti and nan tok'; i put the lady first of necessity. during one week of fool's paradise, mrs. stevenson had gone alone to the sea-side of the island after shells. i am very sure the proceeding was unsafe; and she soon perceived a man and woman watching her. do what she would, her guardians held her steadily in view; and when the afternoon began to fall, and they thought she had stayed long enough, took her in charge, and by signs and broken english ordered her home. on the way the lady drew from her earring-hole a clay pipe, the husband lighted it, and it was handed to my unfortunate wife, who knew not how to refuse the incommodious favour; and when they were all come to our house, the pair sat down beside her on the floor, and improved the occasion with prayer. from that day they were our family friends; bringing thrice a day the beautiful island garlands of white flowers, visiting us any evening, and frequently carrying us down to their own maniap' in return, the woman leading mrs. stevenson by the hand like one child with another. nan tok', the husband, was young, extremely handsome, of the most approved good humour, and suffering in his precarious station from suppressed high spirits. nei takauti, the wife, was getting old; her grown son by a former marriage had just hanged himself before his mother's eyes in despair at a well-merited rebuke. perhaps she had never been beautiful, but her face was full of character, her eye of sombre fire. she was a high chief-woman, but by a strange exception for a person of her rank, was small, spare, and sinewy, with lean small hands and corded neck. her full dress of an evening was invariably a white chemise and for adornment, green leaves (or sometimes white blossoms) stuck in her hair and thrust through her huge earring-holes. the husband on the contrary changed to view like a kaleidoscope. whatever pretty thing my wife might have given to nei takauti a string of beads, a ribbon, a piece of bright fabric appeared the next evening on the person of nan tok'. it was plain he was a clothes-horse; that he wore livery; that, in a word, he was his wife's wife. they reversed the parts indeed, down to the least particular; it was the husband who showed himself the ministering angel in the hour of pain, while the wife displayed the apathy and heartlessness of the proverbial man. when nei takauti had a headache nan tok' was full of attention and concern. when the husband had a cold and a racking toothache the wife heeded not, except to jeer. it is always the woman's part to fill and light the pipe; nei takauti handed hers in silence to the wedded page; but she carried it herself, as though the page were not entirely trusted. thus she kept the money, but it was he who ran the errands, anxiously sedulous. a cloud on her face dimmed instantly his beaming looks; on an early visit to their maniap' my wife saw he had cause to be wary. nan tok' had a friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too often disregarded. nei takauti mentioned her own name. instantly nan tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an ecstasy of slyness. it was plain the lady had two names; and from the nature of their merriment, and the wrath that gathered on her brow, there must be something ticklish in the second. the husband pronounced it; a well-directed cocoa-nut from the hand of his wife caught him on the side of the head, and the voices and the mirth of these indiscreet young gentlemen ceased for the day. the people of eastern polynesia are never at a loss; their etiquette is absolute and plenary; in every circumstance it tells them what to do and how to do it. the gilbertines are seemingly more free, and pay for their freedom (like ourselves) in frequent perplexity. this was often the case with the topsy-turvy couple. we had once supplied them during a visit with a pipe and tobacco; and when they had smoked and were about to leave, they found themselves confronted with a problem: should they take or leave what remained of the tobacco? the piece of plug was taken up, it was laid down again, it was handed back and forth, and argued over, till the wife began to look haggard and the husband elderly. they ended by taking it, and i wager were not yet clear of the compound before they were sure they had decided wrong. another time they had been given each a liberal cup of coffee, and nan tok' with difficulty and disaffection made an end of his. nei takauti had taken some, she had no mind for more, plainly conceived it would be a breach of manners to set down the cup unfinished, and ordered her wedded retainer to dispose of what was left. 'i have swallowed all i can, i cannot swallow more, it is a physical impossibility,' he seemed to say; and his stern officer reiterated her commands with secret imperative signals. luckless dog! but in mere humanity we came to the rescue and removed the cup. i cannot but smile over this funny household; yet i remember the good souls with affection and respect. their attention to ourselves was surprising. the garlands are much esteemed, the blossoms must be sought far and wide; and though they had many retainers to call to their aid, we often saw themselves passing afield after the blossoms, and the wife engaged with her own in putting them together. it was no want of only that disregard so incident to husbands, that made nei takauti despise the sufferings of nan tok'. when my wife was unwell she proved a diligent and kindly nurse; and the pair, to the extreme embarrassment of the sufferer, became fixtures in the sick-room. this rugged, capable, imperious old dame, with the wild eyes, had deep and tender qualities: her pride in her young husband it seemed that she dissembled, fearing possibly to spoil him; and when she spoke of her dead son there came something tragic in her face. but i seemed to trace in the gilbertines a virility of sense and sentiment which distinguishes them (like their harsh and uncouth language) from their brother islanders in the east. part iv: the gilberts apemama chapter i the king of apemama: the royal trader there is one great personage in the gilberts: tembinok' of apemama: solely conspicuous, the hero of song, the butt of gossip. through the rest of the group the kings are slain or fallen in tutelage: tembinok' alone remains, the last tyrant, the last erect vestige of a dead society. the white man is everywhere else, building his houses, drinking his gin, getting in and out of trouble with the weak native governments. there is only one white on apemama, and he on sufferance, living far from court, and hearkening and watching his conduct like a mouse in a cat's ear. through all the other islands a stream of native visitors comes and goes, travelling by families, spending years on the grand tour. apemama alone is left upon one side, the tourist dreading to risk himself within the clutch of tembinok'. and fear of the same gorgon follows and troubles them at home. maiana once paid him tribute; he once fell upon and seized nonuti: first steps to the empire of the archipelago. a british warship coming on the scene, the conqueror was driven to disgorge, his career checked in the outset, his dear-bought armoury sunk in his own lagoon. but the impression had been made; periodical fear of him still shakes the islands; rumour depicts him mustering his canoes for a fresh onfall; rumour can name his destination; and tembinok' figures in the patriotic war-songs of the gilberts like napoleon in those of our grandfathers. we were at sea, bound from mariki to nonuti and tapituea, when the wind came suddenly fair for apemama. the course was at once changed; all hands were turned-to to clean ship, the decks holystoned, all the cabin washed, the trade-room overhauled. in all our cruising we never saw the equator so smart as she was made for tembinok'. nor was captain reid alone in these coquetries; for, another schooner chancing to arrive during my stay in apemama, i found that she also was dandified for the occasion. and the two cases stand alone in my experience of south sea traders. we had on board a family of native tourists, from the grandsire to the babe in arms, trying (against an extraordinary series of illluck) to regain their native island of peru. five times already they had paid their fare and taken ship; five times they had been disappointed, dropped penniless upon strange islands, or carried back to butaritari, whence they sailed. this last attempt had been no better-starred; their provisions were exhausted. peru was beyond hope, and they had cheerfully made up their minds to a fresh stage of exile in tapituea or nonuti. with this slant of wind their random destination became once more changed; and like the calendar's pilot, when the 'black mountains' hove in view, they changed colour and beat upon their breasts. their camp, which was on deck in the ship's waist, resounded with complaint. they would be set to work, they must become slaves, escape was hopeless, they must live and toil and die in apemama, in the tyrant's den. with this sort of talk they so greatly terrified their children, that one (a big hulking boy) must at last be torn screaming from the schooner's side. and their fears were wholly groundless. i have little doubt they were not suffered to be idle; but i can vouch for it that they were kindly and generously used. for, the matter of a year later, i was once more shipmate with these inconsistent wanderers on board the janet nicoll. their fare was paid by tembinok'; they who had gone ashore from the equator destitute, reappeared upon the janet with new clothes, laden with mats and presents, and bringing with them a magazine of food, on which they lived like fighting-cocks throughout the voyage; i saw them at length repatriated, and i must say they showed more concern on quitting apemama than delight at reaching home. we entered by the north passage (sunday, september 1st), dodging among shoals. it was a day of fierce equatorial sunshine; but the breeze was strong and chill; and the mate, who conned the schooner from the cross-trees, returned shivering to the deck. the lagoon was thick with many-tinted wavelets; a continuous roaring of the outer sea overhung the anchorage; and the long, hollow crescent of palm ruffled and sparkled in the wind. opposite our berth the beach was seen to be surmounted for some distance by a terrace of white coral seven or eight feet high and crowned in turn by the scattered and incongruous buildings of the palace. the village adjoins on the south, a cluster of high-roofed maniap's. and village and palace seemed deserted. we were scarce yet moored, however, before distant and busy figures appeared upon the beach, a boat was launched, and a crew pulled out to us bringing the king's ladder. tembinok' had once an accident; has feared ever since to entrust his person to the rotten chandlery of south sea traders; and devised in consequence a frame of wood, which is brought on board a ship as soon as she appears, and remains lashed to her side until she leave. the boat's crew, having applied this engine, returned at once to shore. they might not come on board; neither might we land, or not without danger of offence; the king giving pratique in person. an interval followed, during which dinner was delayed for the great man the prelude of the ladder, giving us some notion of his weighty body and sensible, ingenious character, had highly whetted our curiosity; and it was with something like excitement that we saw the beach and terrace suddenly blacken with attendant vassals, the king and party embark, the boat (a man-of-war gig) come flying towards us dead before the wind, and the royal coxswain lay us cleverly aboard, mount the ladder with a jealous diffidence, and descend heavily on deck. not long ago he was overgrown with fat, obscured to view, and a burthen to himself. captains visiting the island advised him to walk; and though it broke the habits of a life and the traditions of his rank, he practised the remedy with benefit. his corpulence is now portable; you would call him lusty rather than fat; but his gait is still dull, stumbling, and elephantine. he neither stops nor hastens, but goes about his business with an implacable deliberation. we could never see him and not be struck with his extraordinary natural means for the theatre: a beaked profile like dante's in the mask, a mane of long black hair, the eye brilliant, imperious, and inquiring: for certain parts, and to one who could have used it, the face was a fortune. his voice matched it well, being shrill, powerful, and uncanny, with a note like a sea-bird's. where there are no fashions, none to set them, few to follow them if they were set, and none to criticise, he dresses as sir charles grandison lived 'to his own heart.' now he wears a woman's frock, now a naval uniform; now (and more usually) figures in a masquerade costume of his own design: trousers and a singular jacket with shirt tails, the cut and fit wonderful for island workmanship, the material always handsome, sometimes green velvet, sometimes cardinal red silk. this masquerade becomes him admirably. in the woman's frock he looks ominous and weird beyond belief. i see him now come pacing towards me in the cruel sun, solitary, a figure out of hoffmann. a visit on board ship, such as that at which we now assisted, makes a chief part and by far the chief diversion of the life of tembinok'. he is not only the sole ruler, he is the sole merchant of his triple kingdom, apemama, aranuka, and kuria, well-planted islands. the taro goes to the chiefs, who divide as they please among their immediate adherents; but certain fish, turtles which abound in kuria, and the whole produce of the coco-palm, belong exclusively to tembinok'. 'a' cobra berong me,' observed his majesty with a wave of his hand; and he counts and sells it by the houseful. 'you got copra, king?' i have heard a trader ask. 'i got two, three outches,' his majesty replied: 'i think three.' hence the commercial importance of apemama, the trade of three islands being centred there in a single hand; hence it is that so many whites have tried in vain to gain or to preserve a footing; hence ships are adorned, cooks have special orders, and captains array themselves in smiles, to greet the king. if he be pleased with his welcome and the fare he may pass days on board, and, every day, and sometimes every hour, will be of profit to the ship. he oscillates between the cabin, where he is entertained with strange meats, and the trade-room, where he enjoys the pleasures of shopping on a scale to match his person. a few obsequious attendants squat by the house door, awaiting his least signal. in the boat, which has been suffered to drop astern, one or two of his wives lie covered from the sun under mats, tossed by the short sea of the lagoon, and enduring agonies of heat and tedium. this severity is now and then relaxed and the wives allowed on board. three or four were thus favoured on the day of our arrival: substantial ladies airily attired in ridis. each had a share of copra, her peculium, to dispose of for herself. the display in the trade-room hats, ribbbons, dresses, scents, tins of salmon the pride of the eye and the lust of the flesh tempted them in vain. they had but the one idea tobacco, the island currency, tantamount to minted gold; returned to shore with it, burthened but rejoicing; and late into the night, on the royal terrace, were to be seen counting the sticks by lamplight in the open air. the king is no such economist. he is greedy of things new and foreign. house after house, chest after chest, in the palace precinct, is already crammed with clocks, musical boxes, blue spectacles, umbrellas, knitted waistcoats, bolts of stuff, tools, rifles, fowling-pieces, medicines, european foods, sewing-machines, and, what is more extraordinary, stoves: all that ever caught his eye, tickled his appetite, pleased him for its use, or puzzled him with its apparent inutility. and still his lust is unabated. he is possessed by the seven devils of the collector. he hears a thing spoken of, and a shadow comes on his face. 'i think i no got him,' he will say; and the treasures he has seem worthless in comparison. if a ship be bound for apemama, the merchant racks his brain to hit upon some novelty. this he leaves carelessly in the main cabin or partly conceals in his own berth, so that the king shall spy it for himself. 'how much you want?' inquires tembinok', passing and pointing. 'no, king; that too dear,' returns the trader. 'i think i like him,' says the king. this was a bowl of gold-fish. on another occasion it was scented soap. 'no, king; that cost too much,' said the trader; 'too good for a kanaka.' 'how much you got? i take him all,' replied his majesty, and became the lord of seventeen boxes at two dollars a cake. or again, the merchant feigns the article is not for sale, is private property, an heirloom or a gift; and the trick infallibly succeeds. thwart the king and you hold him. his autocratic nature rears at the affront of opposition. he accepts it for a challenge; sets his teeth like a hunter going at a fence; and with no mark of emotion, scarce even of interest, stolidly piles up the price. thus, for our sins, he took a fancy to my wife's dressing-bag, a thing entirely useless to the man, and sadly battered by years of service. early one forenoon he came to our house, sat down, and abruptly offered to purchase it. i told him i sold nothing, and the bag at any rate was a present from a friend; but he was acquainted with these pretexts from of old, and knew what they were worth and how to meet them. adopting what i believe is called 'the object method,' he drew out a bag of english gold, sovereigns and half-sovereigns, and began to lay them one by one in silence on the table; at each fresh piece reading our faces with a look. in vain i continued to protest i was no trader; he deigned not to reply. there must have been twenty pounds on the table, he was still going on, and irritation had begun to mingle with our embarrassment, when a happy idea came to our delivery. since his majesty thought so much of the bag, we said, we must beg him to accept it as a present. it was the most surprising turn in tembinok's experience. he perceived too late that his persistence was unmannerly; hung his head a while in silence; then, lifting up a sheepish countenance, 'i 'shamed,' said the tyrant. it was the first and the last time we heard him own to a flaw in his behaviour. half an hour after he sent us a camphor-wood chest worth only a few dollars but then heaven knows what tembinok' had paid for it. cunning by nature, and versed for forty years in the government of men, it must not be supposed that he is cheated blindly, or has resigned himself without resistance to be the milch-cow of the passing trader. his efforts have been even heroic. like nakaeia of makin, he has owned schooners. more fortunate than nakaeia, he has found captains. ships of his have sailed as far as to the colonies. he has trafficked direct, in his own bottoms, with new zealand. and even so, even there, the world-enveloping dishonesty of the white man prevented him; his profit melted, his ship returned in debt, the money for the insurance was embezzled, and when the coronet came to be lost, he was astonished to find he had lost all. at this he dropped his weapons; owned he might as hopefully wrestle with the winds of heaven; and like an experienced sheep, submitted his fleece thenceforward to the shearers. he is the last man in the world to waste anger on the incurable; accepts it with cynical composure; asks no more in those he deals with than a certain decency of moderation; drives as good a bargain as he can; and when he considers he is more than usually swindled, writes it in his memory against the merchant's name. he once ran over to me a list of captains and supercargoes with whom he had done business, classing them under three heads: 'he cheat a litty' 'he cheat plenty' and 'i think he cheat too much.' for the first two classes he expressed perfect toleration; sometimes, but not always, for the third. i was present when a certain merchant was turned about his business, and was the means (having a considerable influence ever since the bag) of patching up the dispute. even on the day of our arrival there was like to have been a hitch with captain reid: the ground of which is perhaps worth recital. among goods exported specially for tembinok' there is a beverage known (and labelled) as hennessy's brandy. it is neither hennessy, nor even brandy; is about the colour of sherry, but is not sherry; tastes of kirsch, and yet neither is it kirsch. the king, at least, has grown used to this amazing brand, and rather prides himself upon the taste; and any substitution is a double offence, being at once to cheat him and to cast a doubt upon his palate. a similar weakness is to be observed in all connoisseurs. now the last case sold by the equator was found to contain a different and i would fondly fancy a superior distillation; and the conversation opened very black for captain reid. but tembinok' is a moderate man. he was reminded and admitted that all men were liable to error, even himself; accepted the principle that a fault handsomely acknowledged should be condoned; and wound the matter up with this proposal: 'tuppoti i mi'take, you 'peakee me. tuppoti you mi'take, i 'peakee you. mo' betta.' after dinner and supper in the cabin, a glass or two of 'hennetti' the genuine article this time, with the kirsch bouquet, and five hours' lounging on the trade-room counter, royalty embarked for home. three tacks grounded the boat before the palace; the wives were carried ashore on the backs of vassals; tembinok' stepped on a railed platform like a steamer's gangway, and was borne shoulder high through the shallows, up the beach, and by an inclined plane, paved with pebbles, to the glaring terrace where he dwells. chapter ii the king of apemama: foundation of equator town our first sight of tembinok' was a matter of concern, almost alarm, to my whole party. we had a favour to seek; we must approach in the proper courtly attitude of a suitor; and must either please him or fail in the main purpose of our voyage. it was our wish to land and live in apemama, and see more near at hand the odd character of the man and the odd (or rather ancient) condition of his island. in all other isles of the south seas a white man may land with his chest, and set up house for a lifetime, if he choose, and if he have the money or the trade; no hindrance is conceivable. but apemama is a close island, lying there in the sea with closed doors; the king himself, like a vigilant officer, ready at the wicket to scrutinise and reject intrenching visitors. hence the attraction of our enterprise; not merely because it was a little difficult, but because this social quarantine, a curiosity in itself, has been the preservative of others. tembinok', like most tyrants, is a conservative; like many conservatives, he eagerly welcomes new ideas, and, except in the field of politics, leans to practical reform. when the missionaries came, professing a knowledge of the truth, he readily received them; attended their worship, acquired the accomplishment of public prayer, and made himself a student at their feet. it is thus it is by the cultivation of similar passing chances that he has learned to read, to write, to cipher, and to speak his queer, personal english, so different from ordinary 'beach de mar,' so much more obscure, expressive, and condensed. his education attended to, he found time to become critical of the new inmates. like nakaeia of makin, he is an admirer of silence in the island; broods over it like a great ear; has spies who report daily; and had rather his subjects sang than talked. the service, and in particular the sermon, were thus sure to become offences: 'here, in my island, i 'peak,' he once observed to me. 'my chieps no 'peak do what i talk.' he looked at the missionary, and what did he see? 'see kanaka 'peak in a big outch!' he cried, with a strong ring of sarcasm. yet he endured the subversive spectacle, and might even have continued to endure it, had not a fresh point arisen. he looked again, to employ his own figure; and the kanaka was no longer speaking, he was doing worse he was building a copra-house. the king was touched in his chief interests; revenue and prerogative were threatened. he considered besides (and some think with him) that trade is incompatible with the missionary claims. 'tuppoti mitonary think "good man": very good. tuppoti he think "cobra": no good. i send him away ship.' such was his abrupt history of the evangelist in apemama. similar deportations are common: 'i send him away ship' is the epitaph of not a few, his majesty paying the exile's fare to the next place of call. for instance, being passionately fond of european food, he has several times added to his household a white cook, and one after another these have been deported. they, on their side, swear they were not paid their wages; he, on his, that they robbed and swindled him beyond endurance: both perhaps justly. a more important case was that of an agent, despatched (as i heard the story) by a firm of merchants to worm his way into the king's good graces, become, if possible, premier, and handle the copra in the interest of his employers. he obtained authority to land, practised his fascinations, was patiently listened to by tembinok', supposed himself on the highway to success; and behold! when the next ship touched at apemama, the would-be premier was flung into a boat had on board his fare paid, and so good-bye. but it is needless to multiply examples; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. when we came to apemama, of so many white men who have scrambled for a place in that rich market, one remained a silent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of whom the king remarks, 'i think he good; he no 'peak.' i was warned at the outset we might very well fail in our design: yet never dreamed of what proved to be the fact, that we should be left four-and-twenty hours in suspense and come within an ace of ultimate rejection. captain reid had primed himself; no sooner was the king on board, and the hennetti question amicably settled, than he proceeded to express my request and give an abstract of my claims and virtues. the gammon about queen victoria's son might do for butaritari; it was out of the question here; and i now figured as 'one of the old men of england,' a person of deep knowledge, come expressly to visit tembinok's dominion, and eager to report upon it to the no less eager queen victoria. the king made no shadow of an answer, and presently began upon a different subject. we might have thought that he had not heard, or not understood; only that we found ourselves the subject of a constant study. as we sat at meals, he took us in series and fixed upon each, for near a minute at a time, the same hard and thoughtful stare. as he thus looked he seemed to forget himself, the subject and the company, and to become absorbed in the process of his thought; the look was wholly impersonal; i have seen the same in the eyes of portraitpainters. the counts upon which whites have been deported are mainly four: cheating tembinok', meddling overmuch with copra, which is the source of his wealth, and one of the sinews of his power, 'peaking, and political intrigue. i felt guiltless upon all; but how to show it? i would not have taken copra in a gift: how to express that quality by my dinner-table bearing? the rest of the party shared my innocence and my embarrassment. they shared also in my mortification when after two whole meal-times and the odd moments of an afternoon devoted to this reconnoitring, tembinok' took his leave in silence. next morning, the same undisguised study, the same silence, was resumed; and the second day had come to its maturity before i was informed abruptly that i had stood the ordeal. 'i look your eye. you good man. you no lie,' said the king: a doubtful compliment to a writer of romance. later he explained he did not quite judge by the eye only, but the mouth as well. 'tuppoti i see man,' he explained. 'i no tavvy good man, bad man. i look eye, look mouth. then i tavvy. look eye, look mouth,' he repeated. and indeed in our case the mouth had the most to do with it, and it was by our talk that we gained admission to the island; the king promising himself (and i believe really amassing) a vast amount of useful knowledge ere we left. the terms of our admission were as follows: we were to choose a site, and the king should there build us a town. his people should work for us, but the king only was to give them orders. one of his cooks should come daily to help mine, and to learn of him. in case our stores ran out, he would supply us, and be repaid on the return of the equator. on the other hand, he was to come to meals with us when so inclined; when he stayed at home, a dish was to be sent him from our table; and i solemnly engaged to give his subjects no liquor or money (both of which they are forbidden to possess) and no tobacco, which they were to receive only from the royal hand. i think i remember to have protested against the stringency of this last article; at least, it was relaxed, and when a man worked for me i was allowed to give him a pipe of tobacco on the premises, but none to take away. the site of equator city we named our city for the schooner was soon chosen. the immediate shores of the lagoon are windy and blinding; tembinok' himself is glad to grope blue-spectacled on his terrace; and we fled the neighbourhood of the red conjunctiva, the suppurating eyeball, and the beggar who pursues and beseeches the passing foreigner for eye wash. behind the town the country is diversified; here open, sandy, uneven, and dotted with dwarfish palms; here cut up with taro trenches, deep and shallow, and, according to the growth of the plants, presenting now the appearance of a sandy tannery, now of an alleyed and green garden. a path leads towards the sea, mounting abruptly to the main level of the island twenty or even thirty feet, although findlay gives five; and just hard by the top of the rise, where the coco-palms begin to be well grown, we found a grove of pandanus, and a piece of soil pleasantly covered with green underbush. a well was not far off under a rustic well-house; nearer still, in a sandy cup of the land, a pond where we might wash our clothes. the place was out of the wind, out of the sun, and out of sight of the village. it was shown to the king, and the town promised for the morrow. the morrow came, mr. osbourne landed, found nothing done, and carried his complaint to tembinok'. he heard it, rose, called for a winchester, stepped without the royal palisade, and fired two shots in the air. a shot in the air is the first apemama warning; it has the force of a proclamation in more loquacious countries; and his majesty remarked agreeably that it would make his labourers 'mo' bright.' in less than thirty minutes, accordingly, the men had mustered, the work was begun, and we were told that we might bring our baggage when we pleased. it was two in the afternoon ere the first boat was beached, and the long procession of chests and crates and sacks began to straggle through the sandy desert towards equator town. the grove of pandanus was practically a thing of the past. fire surrounded and smoke rose in the green underbush. in a wide circuit the axes were still crashing. those very advantages for which the place was chosen, it had been the king's first idea to abolish; and in the midst of this devastation there stood already a good-sized maniap' and a small closed house. a mat was spread near by for tembinok'; here he sat superintending, in cardinal red, a pith helmet on his head, a meerschaum pipe in his mouth, a wife stretched at his back with custody of the matches and tobacco. twenty or thirty feet in front of him the bulk of the workers squatted on the ground; some of the bush here survived and in this the commons sat nearly to their shoulders, and presented only an arc of brown faces, black heads, and attentive eyes fixed on his majesty. long pauses reigned, during which the subjects stared and the king smoked. then tembinok' would raise his voice and speak shrilly and briefly. there was never a response in words; but if the speech were jesting, there came by way of answer discreet, obsequious laughter such laughter as we hear in schoolrooms; and if it were practical, the sudden uprising and departure of the squad. twice they so disappeared, and returned with further elements of the city: a second house and a second maniap'. it was singular to spy, far off through the coco stems, the silent oncoming of the maniap', at first (it seemed) swimming spontaneously in the air but on a nearer view betraying under the eaves many score of moving naked legs. in all the affair servile obedience was no less remarkable than servile deliberation. the gang had here mustered by the note of a deadly weapon; the man who looked on was the unquestioned master of their lives; and except for civility, they bestirred themselves like so many american hotel clerks. the spectator was aware of an unobtrusive yet invincible inertia, at which the skipper of a trading dandy might have torn his hair. yet the work was accomplished. by dusk, when his majesty withdrew, the town was founded and complete, a new and ruder amphion having called it from nothing with three cracks of a rifle. and the next morning the same conjurer obliged us with a further miracle: a mystic rampart fencing us, so that the path which ran by our doors became suddenly impassable, the inhabitants who had business across the isle must fetch a wide circuit, and we sat in the midst in a transparent privacy, seeing, seen, but unapproachable, like bees in a glass hive. the outward and visible sign of this glamour was no more than a few ragged coco-leaf garlands round the stems of the outlying palms; but its significance reposed on the tremendous sanction of the tapu and the guns of tembinok'. we made our first meal that night in the improvised city, where we were to stay two months, and which so soon as we had done with it was to vanish in a day as it appeared, its elements returning whence they came, the tapu raised, the traffic on the path resumed, the sun and the moon peering in vain between the palm-trees for the bygone work, the wind blowing over an empty site. yet the place, which is now only an episode in some memories, seemed to have been built, and to be destined to endure, for years. it was a busy hamlet. one of the maniap's we made our dining-room, one the kitchen. the houses we reserved for sleeping. they were on the admirable apemama plan: out and away the best house in the south seas; standing some three feet above the ground on posts; the sides of woven flaps, which can be raised to admit light and air, or lowered to shut out the wind and the rain: airy, healthy, clean, and watertight. we had a hen of a remarkable kind: almost unique in my experience, being a hen that occasionally laid eggs. not far off, mrs. stevenson tended a garden of salad and shalots. the salad was devoured by the hen which was her bane. the shalots were served out a leaf at a time, and welcomed and relished like peaches. toddy and green cocoa-nuts were brought us daily. we once had a present of fish from the king, and once of a turtle. sometimes we shot so-called plover along on the shore, sometimes wild chicken in the bush. the rest of our diet was from tins. our occupations were very various. while some of the party would be away sketching, mr. osbourne and i hammered away at a novel. we read gibbon and carlyle aloud; we blew on flageolets, we strummed on guitars; we took photographs by the light of the sun, the moon, and flash-powder; sometimes we played cards. pot-hunting engaged a part of our leisure. i have myself passed afternoons in the exciting but innocuous pursuit of winged animals with a revolver; and it was fortunate there were better shots of the party, and fortunate the king could lend us a more suitable weapon, in the form of an excellent fowling-piece, or our spare diet had been sparer still. night was the time to see our city, after the moon was up, after the lamps were lighted, and so long as the fire sparkled in the cook-house. we suffered from a plague of flies and mosquitoes, comparable to that of egypt; our dinner-table (lent, like all our furniture, by the king) must be enclosed in a tent of netting, our citadel and refuge; and this became all luminous, and bulged and beaconed under the eaves, like the globe of some monstrous lamp under the margin of its shade. our cabins, the sides being propped at a variety of inclinations, spelled out strange, angular patterns of brightness. in his roofed and open kitchen, ah fu was to be seen by lamp and firelight, dabbling among pots. over all, there fell in the season an extraordinary splendour of mellow moonshine. the sand sparkled as with the dust of diamonds; the stars had vanished. at intervals, a dusky night-bird, slow and low flying, passed in the colonnade of the tree stems and uttered a hoarse croaking cry. chapter iii the king of apemama: the palace of many women the palace, or rather the ground which it includes, is several acres in extent. a terrace encloses it toward the lagoon; on the side of the land, a palisade with several gates. these are scarce intended for defence; a man, if he were strong, might easily pluck down the palisade; he need not be specially active to leap from the beach upon the terrace. there is no parade of guards, soldiers, or weapons; the armoury is under lock and key; and the only sentinels are certain inconspicuous old women lurking day and night before the gates. by day, these crones were often engaged in boiling syrup or the like household occupation; by night, they lay ambushed in the shadow or crouched along the palisade, filling the office of eunuchs to this harem, sole guards upon a tyrant life. female wardens made a fit outpost for this palace of many women. of the number of the king's wives i have no guess; and but a loose idea of their function. he himself displayed embarrassment when they were referred to as his wives, called them himself 'my pamily,' and explained they were his 'cutcheons' cousins. we distinguished four of the crowd: the king's mother; his sister, a grave, trenchant woman, with much of her brother's intelligence; the queen proper, to whom (and to whom alone) my wife was formally presented; and the favourite of the hour, a pretty, graceful girl, who sat with the king daily, and once (when he shed tears) consoled him with caresses. i am assured that even with her his relations are platonic. in the background figured a multitude of ladies, the lean, the plump, and the elephantine, some in sacque frocks, some in the hairbreadth ridi; high-born and low, slave and mistress; from the queen to the scullion, from the favourite to the scraggy sentries at the palisade. not all of these of course are of 'my pamily,' many are mere attendants; yet a surprising number shared the responsibility of the king's trust. these were key-bearers, treasurers, wardens of the armoury, the napery, and the stores. each knew and did her part to admiration. should anything be required a particular gun, perhaps, or a particular bolt of stuff, the right queen was summoned; she came bringing the right chest, opened it in the king's presence, and displayed her charge in perfect preservation the gun cleaned and oiled, the goods duly folded. without delay or haste, and with the minimum of speech, the whole great establishment turned on wheels like a machine. nowhere have i seen order more complete and pervasive. and yet i was always reminded of norse tales of trolls and ogres who kept their hearts buried in the ground for the mere safety, and must confide the secret to their wives. for these weapons are the life of tembinok'. he does not aim at popularity; but drives and braves his subjects, with a simplicity of domination which it is impossible not to admire, hard not to sympathise with. should one out of so many prove faithless, should the armoury be secretly unlocked, should the crones have dozed by the palisade and the weapons find their way unseen into the village, revolution would be nearly certain, death the most probable result, and the spirit of the tyrant of apemama flit to rejoin his predecessors of mariki and tapituea. yet those whom he so trusts are all women, and all rivals. there is indeed a ministry and staff of males: cook, steward, carpenter, and supercargoes: the hierarchy of a schooner. the spies, 'his majesty's daily papers,' as we called them, come every morning to report, and go again. the cook and steward are concerned with the table only. the supercargoes, whose business it is to keep tally of the copra at three pounds a month and a percentage, are rarely in the palace; and two at least are in the other islands. the carpenter, indeed, shrewd and jolly old rubam query, reuben? promoted on my last visit to the greater dignity of governor, is daily present, altering, extending, embellishing, pursuing the endless series of the king's inventions; and his majesty will sometimes pass an afternoon watching and talking with rubam at his work. but the males are still outsiders; none seems to be armed, none is entrusted with a key; by dusk they are all usually departed from the palace; and the weight of the monarchy and of the monarch's life reposes unshared on the women. here is a household unlike, indeed, to one of ours; more unlike still to the oriental harem: that of an elderly childless man, his days menaced, dwelling alone amid a bevy of women of all ages, ranks, and relationships, the mother, the sister, the cousin, the legitimate wife, the concubine, the favourite, the eldest born, and she of yesterday; he, in their midst, the only master, the only male, the sole dispenser of honours, clothes, and luxuries, the sole mark of multitudinous ambitions and desires. i doubt if you could find a man in europe so bold as to attempt this piece of tact and government. and seemingly tembinok' himself had trouble in the beginning. i hear of him shooting at a wife for some levity on board a schooner. another, on some more serious offence, he slew outright; he exposed her body in an open box, and (to make the warning more memorable) suffered it to putrefy before the palace gate. doubtless his growing years have come to his assistance; for upon so large a scale it is more easy to play the father than the husband. and to-day, at least to the eye of a stranger, all seems to go smoothly, and the wives to be proud of their trust, proud of their rank, and proud of their cunning lord. i conceived they made rather a hero of the man. a popular master in a girls' school might, perhaps, offer a figure of his preponderating station. but then the master does not eat, sleep, live, and wash his dirty linen in the midst of his admirers; he escapes, he has a room of his own, he leads a private life; if he had nothing else, he has the holidays, and the more unhappy tembinok' is always on the stage and on the stretch. in all my coming and going, i never heard him speak harshly or express the least displeasure. an extreme, rather heavy, benignity the benignity of one sure to be obeyed marked his demeanour; so that i was at times reminded of samual richardson in his circle of admiring women. the wives spoke up and seemed to volunteer opinions, like our wives at home or, say, like doting but respectable aunts. altogether, i conclude that he rules his seraglio much more by art than terror; and those who give a different account (and who have none of them enjoyed my opportunities of observation) perhaps failed to distinguish between degrees of rank, between 'my pamily' and the hangers-on, laundresses, and prostitutes. a notable feature is the evening game of cards when lamps are set forth upon the terrace, and 'i and my pamily' play for tobacco by the hour. it is highly characteristic of tembinok' that he must invent a game for himself; highly characteristic of his worshipping household that they should swear by the absurd invention. it is founded on poker, played with the honours out of many packs, and inconceivably dreary. but i have a passion for all games, studied it, and am supposed to be the only white who ever fairly grasped its principle: a fact for which the wives (with whom i was not otherwise popular) admired me with acclamation. it was impossible to be deceived; this was a genuine feeling: they were proud of their private game, had been cut to the quick by the want of interest shown in it by others, and expanded under the flattery of my attention. tembinok' puts up a double stake, and receives in return two hands to choose from: a shallow artifice which the wives (in all these years) have not yet fathomed. he himself, when talking with me privately, made not the least secret that he was secure of winning; and it was thus he explained his recent liberality on board the equator. he let the wives buy their own tobacco, which pleased them at the moment. he won it back at cards, which made him once more, and without fresh expense, that which he ought to be, the sole fount of all indulgences. and he summed the matter up in that phrase with which he almost always concludes any account of his policy: 'mo' betta.' the palace compound is laid with broken coral, excruciating to the eyes and the bare feet, but exquisitely raked and weeded. a score or more of buildings lie in a sort of street along the palisade and scattered on the margin of the terrace; dwelling-houses for the wives and the attendants, storehouses for the king's curios and treasures, spacious maniap's for feast or council, some on pillars of wood, some on piers of masonry. one was still in hand, a new invention, the king's latest born: a european frame-house built for coolness inside a lofty maniap': its roof planked like a ship's deck to be a raised, shady, and yet private promenade. it was here the king spent hours with rubam; here i would sometimes join them; the place had a most singular appearance; and i must say i was greatly taken with the fancy, and joined with relish in the counsels of the architects. suppose we had business with his majesty by day: we strolled over the sand and by the dwarfish palms, exchanged a 'konamaori' with the crone on duty, and entered the compound. the wide sheet of coral glared before us deserted; all having stowed themselves in dark canvas from the excess of room. i have gone to and fro in that labyrinth of a place, seeking the king; and the only breathing creature i could find was when i peered under the eaves of a maniap', and saw the brawny body of one of the wives stretched on the floor, a naked amazon plunged in noiseless slumber. if it were still the hour of the 'morning papers' the quest would be more easy, the half-dozen obsequious, sly dogs squatting on the ground outside a house, crammed as far as possible in its narrow shadow, and turning to the king a row of leering faces. tembinok' would be within, the flaps of the cabin raised, the trade blowing through, hearing their report. like journalists nearer home, when the day's news were scanty, these would make the more of it in words; and i have known one to fill up a barren morning with an imaginary conversation of two dogs. sometimes the king deigns to laugh, sometimes to question or jest with them, his voice sounding shrilly from the cabin. by his side he may have the heir-apparent, paul, his nephew and adopted son, six years old, stark naked, and a model of young human beauty. and there will always be the favourite and perhaps two other wives awake; four more lying supine under mats and whelmed in slumber. or perhaps we came later, fell on a more private hour, and found tembinok' retired in the house with the favourite, an earthenware spittoon, a leaden inkpot, and a commercial ledger. in the last, lying on his belly, he writes from day to day the uneventful history of his reign; and when thus employed he betrayed a touch of fretfulness on interruption with which i was well able to sympathise. the royal annalist once read me a page or so, translating as he went; but the passage being genealogical, and the author boggling extremely in his version, i own i have been sometimes better entertained. nor does he confine himself to prose, but touches the lyre, too, in his leisure moments, and passes for the chief bard of his kingdom, as he is its sole public character, leading architect, and only merchant. his competence, however, does not reach to music; and his verses, when they are ready, are taught to a professional musician, who sets them and instructs the chorus. asked what his songs were about, tembinok' replied, 'sweethearts and trees and the sea. not all the same true, all the same lie.' for a condensed view of lyrical poetry (except that he seems to have forgot the stars and flowers) this would be hard to mend. these multifarious occupations bespeak (in a native and an absolute prince) unusual activity of mind. the palace court at noon is a spot to be remembered with awe, the visitor scrambling there, on the loose stones, through a splendid nightmare of light and heat; but the sweep of the wind delivers it from flies and mosquitoes; and with the set of sun it became heavenly. i remember it best on moonless nights. the air was like a bath of milk. countless shining stars were over-head, the lagoon paved with them. herds of wives squatted by companies on the gravel, softly chatting. tembinok' would doff his jacket, and sit bare and silent, perhaps meditating songs; the favourite usually by him, silent also. meanwhile in the midst of the court, the palace lanterns were being lit and marshalled in rank upon the ground six or eight square yards of them; a sight that gave one strange ideas of the number of 'my pamily': such a sight as may be seen about dusk in a corner of some great terminus at home. presently these fared off into all corners of the precinct, lighting the last labours of the day, lighting one after another to their rest that prodigious company of women. a few lingered in the middle of the court for the card-party, and saw the honours shuffled and dealt, and tembinok' deliberating between his two; hands, and the queens losing their tobacco. then these also were scattered and extinguished; and their place was taken by a great bonfire, the night-light of the palace. when this was no more, smaller fires burned likewise at the gates. these were tended by the crones, unseen, unsleeping not always unheard. should any approach in the dark hours, a guarded alert made the circuit of the palisade; each sentry signalled her neighbour with a stone; the rattle of falling pebbles passed and died away; and the wardens of tembinok' crouched in their places silent as before. chapter iv the king of apemama: equator town and the palace five persons were detailed to wait upon us. uncle parker, who brought us toddy and green nuts, was an elderly, almost an old man, with the spirits, the industry, and the morals of a boy of ten. his face was ancient, droll, and diabolical, the skin stretched over taut sinews, like a sail on the guide-rope; and he smiled with every muscle of his head. his nuts must be counted every day, or he would deceive us in the tale; they must be daily examined, or some would prove to be unhusked; nothing but the king's name, and scarcely that, would hold him to his duty. after his toils were over he was given a pipe, matches, and tobacco, and sat on the floor in the maniap' to smoke. he would not seem to move from his position, and yet every day, when the things fell to be returned the plug had disappeared; he had found the means to conceal it in the roof, whence he could radiantly produce it on the morrow. although this piece of legerdemain was performed regularly before three or four pairs of eyes, we could never catch him in the fact; although we searched after he was gone, we could never find the tobacco. such were the diversions of uncle parker, a man nearing sixty. but he was punished according unto his deeds: mrs. stevenson took a fancy to paint him, and the sufferings of the sitter were beyond description. three lasses came from the palace to do our washing and racket with ah fu. they were of the lowest class, hangers-on kept for the convenience of merchant skippers, probably low-born, perhaps outislanders, with little refinement whether of manner or appearance, but likely and jolly enough wenches in their way. we called one guttersnipe, for you may find her image in the slums of any city; the same lean, dark-eyed, eager, vulgar face, the same sudden, hoarse guffaws, the same forward and yet anxious manner, as with a tail of an eye on the policeman: only the policeman here was a live king, and his truncheon a rifle. i doubt if you could find anywhere out of the islands, or often there, the parallel of fatty, a mountain of a girl, who must have weighed near as many stones as she counted summers, could have given a good account of a lifeguardsman, had the face of a baby, and applied her vast mechanical forces almost exclusively to play. but they were all three of the same merry spirit. our washing was conducted in a game of romps; and they fled and pursued, and splashed, and pelted, and rolled each other in the sand, and kept up a continuous noise of cries and laughter like holiday children. indeed, and however strange their own function in that austere establishment, were they not escaped for the day from the largest and strictest ladies' school in the south seas? our fifth attendant was no less a person than the royal cook. he was strikingly handsome both in face and body, lazy as a slave, and insolent as a butcher's boy. he slept and smoked on our premises in various graceful attitudes; but so far from helping ah fu, he was not at the pains to watch him. it may be said of him that he came to learn, and remained to teach; and his lessons were at times difficult to stomach. for example, he was sent to fill a bucket from the well. about half-way he found my wife watering her onions, changed buckets with her, and leaving her the empty, returned to the kitchen with the full. on another occasion he was given a dish of dumplings for the king, was told they must be eaten hot, and that he should carry them as fast as possible. the wretch set off at the rate of about a mile in the hour, head in air, toes turned out. my patience, after a month of trial, failed me at the sight. i pursued, caught him by his two big shoulders, and thrusting him before me, ran with him down the hill, over the sands, and through the applauding village, to the speak house, where the king was then holding a pow-wow. he had the impudence to pretend he was internally injured by my violence, and to profess serious apprehensions for his life. all this we endured; for the ways of tembinok' are summary, and i was not yet ripe to take a hand in the man's death. but in the meanwhile, here was my unfortunate china boy slaving for the pair, and presently he fell sick. i was now in the position of cimondain lantenac, and indeed all the characters in quatre-vingt-treize: to continue to spare the guilty, i must sacrifice the innocent. i took the usual course and tried to save both, with the usual consequence of failure. well rehearsed, i went down to the palace, found the king alone, and obliged him with a vast amount of rigmarole. the cook was too old to learn: i feared he was not making progress; how if we had a boy instead? boys were more teachable. it was all in vain; the king pierced through my disguises to the root of the fact; saw that the cook had desperately misbehaved; and sat a while glooming. 'i think he tavvy too much,' he said at last, with grim concision; and immediately turned the talk to other subjects. the same day another high officer, the steward, appeared in the cook's place, and, i am bound to say, proved civil and industrious. as soon as i left, it seems the king called for a winchester and strolled outside the palisade, awaiting the defaulter. that day tembinok' wore the woman's frock; as like as not, his make-up was completed by a pith helmet and blue spectacles. conceive the glaring stretch of sandhills, the dwarf palms with their noon-day shadows, the line of the palisade, the crone sentries (each by a small clear fire) cooking syrup on their posts and this chimaera waiting with his deadly engine. to him, enter at last the cook, strolling down the sandhill from equator town, listless, vain and graceful; with no thought of alarm. as soon as he was well within range, the travestied monarch fired the six shots over his head, at his feet, and on either hand of him: the second apemama warning, startling in itself, fatal in significance, for the next time his majesty will aim to hit. i am told the king is a crack shot; that when he aims to kill, the grave may be got ready; and when he aims to miss, misses by so near a margin that the culprit tastes six times the bitterness of death. the effect upon the cook i had an opportunity of seeing for myself. my wife and i were returning from the sea-side of the island, when we spied one coming to meet us at a very quick, disordered pace, between a walk and a run. as we drew nearer we saw it was the cook, beside himself with some emotion, his usual warm, mulatto colour declined into a bluish pallor. he passed us without word or gesture, staring on us with the face of a satan, and plunged on across the wood for the unpeopled quarter of the island and the long, desert beach, where he might rage to and fro unseen, and froth out the vials of his wrath, fear, and humiliation. doubtless in the curses that he there uttered to the bursting surf and the tropic birds, the name of the kaupoi the rich man was frequently repeated. i had made him the laughing-stock of the village in the affair of the king's dumplings; i had brought him by my machinations into disgrace and the immediate jeopardy of his days; last, and perhaps bitterest, he had found me there by the way to spy upon him in the hour of his disorder. time passed, and we saw no more of him. the season of the full moon came round, when a man thinks shame to lie sleeping; and i continued until late perhaps till twelve or one in the morning to walk on the bright sand and in the tossing shadow of the palms. i played, as i wandered, on a flageolet, which occupied much of my attention; the fans overhead rattled in the wind with a metallic chatter; and a bare foot falls at any rate almost noiseless on that shifting soil. yet when i got back to equator town, where all the lights were out, and my wife (who was still awake, and had been looking forth) asked me who it was that followed me, i thought she spoke in jest. 'not at all,' she said. 'i saw him twice as you passed, walking close at your heels. he only left you at the corner of the maniap'; he must be still behind the cook-house.' thither i ran like a fool, without any weapon and came face to face with the cook. he was within my tapu-line, which was death in itself; he could have no business there at such an hour but either to steal or to kill; guilt made him timorous; and he turned and fled before me in the night in silence. as he went i kicked him in that place where honour lies, and he gave tongue faintly like an injured mouse. at the moment i daresay he supposed it was a deadly instrument that touched him. what had the man been after? i have found my music better qualified to scatter than to collect an audience. amateur as i was, i could not suppose him interested in my reading of the carnival of venice, or that he would deny himself his natural rest to follow my variations on the ploughboy. and whatever his design, it was impossible i should suffer him to prowl by night among the houses. a word to the king, and the man were not, his case being far beyond pardon. but it is one thing to kill a man yourself; quite another to bear tales behind his back and have him shot by a third party; and i determined to deal with the fellow in some method of my own. i told ah fu the story, and bade him fetch me the cook whenever he should find him. i had supposed this would be a matter of difficulty; and far from that, he came of his own accord: an act really of desperation, since his life hung by my silence, and the best he could hope was to be forgotten. yet he came with an assured countenance, volunteered no apology or explanation, complained of injuries received, and pretended he was unable to sit down. i suppose i am the weakest man god made; i had kicked him in the least vulnerable part of his big carcase; my foot was bare, and i had not even hurt my foot. ah fu could not control his merriment. on my side, knowing what must be the nature of his apprehensions, i found in so much impudence a kind of gallantry, and secretly admired the man. i told him i should say nothing of his night's adventure to the king; that i should still allow him, when he had an errand, to come within my tapu-line by day; but if ever i found him there after the set of the sun i would shoot him on the spot; and to the proof showed him a revolver. he must have been incredibly relieved; but he showed no sign of it, took himself off with his usual dandy nonchalance, and was scarce seen by us again. these five, then, with the substitution of the steward for the cook, came and went, and were our only visitors. the circle of the tapu held at arm's-length the inhabitants of the village. as for 'my pamily,' they dwelt like nuns in their enclosure; only once have i met one of them abroad, and she was the king's sister, and the place in which i found her (the island infirmary) was very likely privileged. there remains only the king to be accounted for. he would come strolling over, always alone, a little before a meal-time, take a chair, and talk and eat with us like an old family friend. gilbertine etiquette appears defective on the point of leave-taking. it may be remembered we had trouble in the matter with karaiti; and there was something childish and disconcerting in tembinok's abrupt 'i want go home now,' accompanied by a kind of ducking rise, and followed by an unadorned retreat. it was the only blot upon his manners, which were otherwise plain, decent, sensible, and dignified. he never stayed long nor drank much, and copied our behaviour where he perceived it to differ from his own. very early in the day, for instance, he ceased eating with his knife. it was plain he was determined in all things to wring profit from our visit, and chiefly upon etiquette. the quality of his white visitors puzzled and concerned him; he would bring up name after name, and ask if its bearer were a 'big chiep,' or even a 'chiep' at all which, as some were my excellent good friends, and none were actually born in the purple, became at times embarrassing. he was struck to learn that our classes were distinguishable by their speech, and that certain words (for instance) were tapu on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war; and he begged in consequence that we should watch and correct him on the point. we were able to assure him that he was beyond correction. his vocabulary is apt and ample to an extraordinary degree. god knows where he collected it, but by some instinct or some accident he has avoided all profane or gross expressions. 'obliged,' 'stabbed,' 'gnaw,' 'lodge,' 'power,' 'company,' 'slender,' 'smooth,' and 'wonderful,' are a few of the unexpected words that enrich his dialect. perhaps what pleased him most was to hear about saluting the quarter-deck of a man-of-war. in his gratitude for this hint he became fulsome. 'schooner cap'n no tell me,' he cried; 'i think no tavvy! you tavvy too much; tavvy 'teama', tavvy man-a-wa'. i think you tavvy everything.' yet he gravelled me often enough with his perpetual questions; and the false mr. barlow stood frequently exposed before the royal sandford. i remember once in particular. we were showing the magic-lantern; a slide of windsor castle was put in, and i told him there was the 'outch' of victoreea. 'how many pathom he high?' he asked, and i was dumb before him. it was the builder, the indefatigable architect of palaces, that spoke; collector though he was, he did not collect useless information; and all his questions had a purpose. after etiquette, government, law, the police, money, and medicine were his chief interests things vitally important to himself as a king and the father of his people. it was my part not only to supply new information, but to correct the old. 'my patha he tell me,' or 'white man he tell me,' would be his constant beginning; 'you think he lie?' sometimes i thought he did. tembinok' once brought me a difficulty of this kind, which i was long of comprehending. a schooner captain had told him of captain cook; the king was much interested in the story; and turned for more information not to mr. stephen's dictionary, not to the britannica, but to the bible in the gilbert island version (which consists chiefly of the new testament and the psalms). here he sought long and earnestly; paul he found, and festus and alexander the coppersmith: no word of cook. the inference was obvious: the explorer was a myth. so hard it is, even for a man of great natural parts like tembinok', to grasp the ideas of a new society and culture. chapter v king and commons we saw but little of the commons of the isle. at first we met them at the well, where they washed their linen and we drew water for the table. the combination was distasteful; and, having a tyrant at command, we applied to the king and had the place enclosed in our tapu. it was one of the few favours which tembinok' visibly boggled about granting, and it may be conceived how little popular it made the strangers. many villagers passed us daily going afield; but they fetched a wide circuit round our tapu, and seemed to avert their looks. at times we went ourselves into the village a strange place. dutch by its canals, oriental by the height and steepness of the roofs, which looked at dusk like temples; but we were rarely called into a house: no welcome, no friendship, was offered us; and of home life we had but the one view: the waking of a corpse, a frigid, painful scene: the widow holding on her lap the cold, bluish body of her husband, and now partaking of the refreshments which made the round of the company, now weeping and kissing the pale mouth. ('i fear you feel this affliction deeply,' said the scottish minister. 'eh, sir, and that i do!' replied the widow. 'i've been greetin' a' nicht; an' noo i'm just gaun to sup this bit parritch, and then i'll begin an' greet again.') in our walks abroad i have always supposed the islanders avoided us, perhaps from distaste, perhaps by order; and those whom we met we took generally by surprise. the surface of the isle is diversified with palm groves, thickets, and romantic dingles four feet deep, relics of old taro plantation; and it is thus possible to stumble unawares on folk resting or hiding from their work. about pistolshot from our township there lay a pond in the bottom of a jungle; here the maids of the isle came to bathe, and were several times alarmed by our intrusion. not for them are the bright cold rivers of tahiti or upolu, not for them to splash and laugh in the hour of the dusk with a villageful of gay companions; but to steal here solitary, to crouch in a place like a cow-wallow, and wash (if that can be called washing) in lukewarm mud, brown as their own skins. other, but still rare, encounters occur to my memory. i was several times arrested by a tender sound in the bush of voices talking, soft as flutes and with quiet intonations. hope told a flattering tale; i put aside the leaves; and behold! in place of the expected dryads, a pair of all too solid ladies squatting over a clay pipe in the ungraceful ridi. the beauty of the voice and the eye was all that remained to those vast dames; but that of the voice was indeed exquisite. it is strange i should have never heard a more winning sound of speech, yet the dialect should be one remarkable for violent, ugly, and outlandish vocables; so that tembinok' himself declared it made him weary, and professed to find repose in talking english. the state of this folk, of whom i saw so little, i can merely guess at. the king himself explains the situation with some art. 'no; i no pay them,' he once said. 'i give them tobacco. they work for me all the same brothers.' it is true there was a brother once in arden! but we prefer the shorter word. they bear every servile mark, levity like a child's, incurable idleness, incurious content. the insolence of the cook was a trait of his own; not so his levity, which he shared with the innocent uncle parker. with equal unconcern both gambolled under the shadow of the gallows, and took liberties with death that might have surprised a careless student of man's nature. i wrote of parker that he behaved like a boy of ten: what was he else, being a slave of sixty? he had passed all his years in school, fed, clad, thought for, commanded; and had grown familiar and coquetted with the fear of punishment. by terror you may drive men long, but not far. here, in apemama, they work at the constant and the instant peril of their lives; and are plunged in a kind of lethargy of laziness. it is common to see one go afield in his stiff mat ungirt, so that he walks elbows-in like a trussed fowl; and whatsoever his right hand findeth to do, the other must be off duty holding on his clothes. it is common to see two men carrying between them on a pole a single bucket of water. to make two bites of a cherry is good enough: to make two burthens of a soldier's kit, for a distance of perhaps half a furlong, passes measure. woman, being the less childish animal, is less relaxed by servile conditions. even in the king's absence, even when they were alone, i have seen apemama women work with constancy. but the outside to be hoped for in a man is that he may attack his task in little languid fits, and lounge between-whiles. so i have seen a painter, with his pipe going, and a friend by the studio fireside. you might suppose the race to lack civility, even vitality, until you saw them in the dance. night after night, and sometimes day after day, they rolled out their choruses in the great speak house solemn andantes and adagios, led by the clapped hand, and delivered with an energy that shook the roof. the time was not so slow, though it was slow for the islands; but i have chosen rather to indicate the effect upon the hearer. their music had a church-like character from near at hand, and seemed to european ears more regular than the run of island music. twice i have heard a discord regularly solved. from farther off, heard at equator town for instance, the measures rose and fell and crepitated like the barking of hounds in a distant kennel. the slaves are certainly not overworked children of ten do more without fatigue and the apemama labourers have holidays, when the singing begins early in the afternoon. the diet is hard; copra and a sweetmeat of pounded pandanus are the only dishes i observed outside the palace; but there seems no defect in quantity, and the king shares with them his turtles. three came in a boat from kuria during our stay; one was kept for the palace, one sent to us, one presented to the village. it is the habit of the islanders to cook the turtle in its carapace; we had been promised the shells, and we asked a tapu on this foolish practice. the face of tembinok' darkened and he answered nothing. hesitation in the question of the well i could understand, for water is scarce on a low island; that he should refuse to interfere upon a point of cookery was more than i had dreamed of; and i gathered (rightly or wrongly) that he was scrupulous of touching in the least degree the private life and habits of his slaves. so that even here, in full despotism, public opinion has weight; even here, in the midst of slavery, freedom has a corner. orderly, sober, and innocent, life flows in the isle from day to day as in a model plantation under a model planter. it is impossible to doubt the beneficence of that stern rule. a curious politeness, a soft and gracious manner, something effeminate and courtly, distinguishes the islanders of apemama; it is talked of by all the traders, it was felt even by residents so little beloved as ourselves, and noticeable even in the cook, and even in that scoundrel's hours of insolence. the king, with his manly and plain bearing, stood out alone; you might say he was the only gilbert islander in apemama. violence, so common in butaritari, seems unknown. so are theft and drunkenness. i am assured the experiment has been made of leaving sovereigns on the beach before the village; they lay there untouched. in all our time on the island i was but once asked for drink. this was by a mighty plausible fellow, wearing european clothes and speaking excellent english tamaiti his name, or, as the whites have now corrupted it, 'tom white': one of the king's supercargoes at three pounds a month and a percentage, a medical man besides, and in his private hours a wizard. he found me one day in the outskirts of the village, in a secluded place, hot and private, where the taro-pits are deep and the plants high. here he buttonholed me, and, looking about him like a conspirator, inquired if i had gin. i told him i had. he remarked that gin was forbidden, lauded the prohibition a while, and then went on to explain that he was a doctor, or 'dogstar' as he pronounced the word, that gin was necessary to him for his medical infusions, that he was quite out of it, and that he would be obliged to me for some in a bottle. i told him i had passed the king my word on landing; but since his case was so exceptional, i would go down to the palace at once, and had no doubt that tembinok' would set me free. tom white was immediately overwhelmed with embarrassment and terror, besought me in the most moving terms not to betray him, and fled my neighbourhood. he had none of the cook's valour; it was weeks before he dared to meet my eye; and then only by the order of the king and on particular business. the more i viewed and admired this triumph of firm rule, the more i was haunted and troubled by a problem, the problem (perhaps) of tomorrow for ourselves. here was a people protected from all serious misfortune, relieved of all serious anxieties, and deprived of what we call our liberty. did they like it? and what was their sentiment toward the ruler? the first question i could not of course ask, nor perhaps the natives answer. even the second was delicate; yet at last, and under charming and strange circumstances, i found my opportunity to put it and a man to reply. it was near the full of the moon, with a delicious breeze; the isle was bright as day to sleep would have been sacrilege; and i walked in the bush, playing my pipe. it must have been the sound of what i am pleased to call my music that attracted in my direction another wanderer of the night. this was a young man attired in a fine mat, and with a garland on his hair, for he was new come from dancing and singing in the public hall; and his body, his face, and his eyes were all of an enchanting beauty. every here and there in the gilberts youths are to be found of this absurd perfection; i have seen five of us pass half an hour in admiration of a boy at mariki; and te kop (my friend in the fine mat and garland) i had already several times remarked, and long ago set down as the loveliest animal in apemama. the philtre of admiration must be very strong, or these natives specially susceptible to its effects, for i have scarce ever admired a person in the islands but what he has sought my particular acquaintance. so it was with te kop. he led me to the ocean side; and for an hour or two we sat smoking and talking on the resplendent sand and under the ineffable brightness of the moon. my friend showed himself very sensible of the beauty and amenity of the hour. 'good night! good wind!' he kept exclaiming, and as he said the words he seemed to hug myself. i had long before invented such reiterated expressions of delight for a character (felipe, in the story of olalla) intended to be partly bestial. but there was nothing bestial in te kop; only a childish pleasure in the moment. he was no less pleased with his companion, or was good enough to say so; honoured me, before he left, by calling me te kop; apostrophised me as 'my name!' with an intonation exquisitely tender, laying his hand at the same time swiftly on my knee; and after we had risen, and our paths began to separate in the bush, twice cried to me with a sort of gentle ecstasy, 'i like you too much!' from the beginning he had made no secret of his terror of the king; would not sit down nor speak above a whisper till he had put the whole breadth of the isle between himself and his monarch, then harmlessly asleep; and even there, even within a stone-cast of the outer sea, our talk covered by the sound of the surf and the rattle of the wind among the palms, continued to speak guardedly, softening his silver voice (which rang loud enough in the chorus) and looking about him like a man in fear of spies. the strange thing is that i should have beheld him no more. in any other island in the whole south seas, if i had advanced half as far with any native, he would have been at my door next morning, bringing and expecting gifts. but te kop vanished in the bush for ever. my house, of course, was unapproachable; but he knew where to find me on the ocean beach, where i went daily. i was the kaupoi, the rich man; my tobacco and trade were known to be endless: he was sure of a present. i am at a loss how to explain his behaviour, unless it be supposed that he recalled with terror and regret a passage in our interview. here it is: 'the king, he good man?' i asked. 'suppose he like you, he good man,' replied te kop: 'no like, no good.' that is one way of putting it, of course. te kop himself was probably no favourite, for he scarce appealed to my judgment as a type of industry. and there must be many others whom the king (to adhere to the formula) does not like. do these unfortunates like the king? or is not rather the repulsion mutual? and the conscientious tembinok', like the conscientious braxfield before him, and many other conscientious rulers and judges before either, surrounded by a considerable body of 'grumbletonians'? take the cook, for instance, when he passed us by, blue with rage and terror. he was very wroth with me; i think by all the old principles of human nature he was not very well pleased with his sovereign. it was the rich man he sought to waylay: i think it must have been by the turn of a hair that it was not the king he waylaid instead. and the king gives, or seems to give, plenty of opportunities; day and night he goes abroad alone, whether armed or not i can but guess; and the taro-patches, where his business must so often carry him, seem designed for assassination. the case of the cook was heavy indeed to my conscience. i did not like to kill my enemy at second-hand; but had i a right to conceal from the king, who had trusted me, the dangerous secret character of his attendant? and suppose the king should fall, what would be the fate of the king's friends? it was our opinion at the time that we should pay dear for the closing of the well; that our breath was in the king's nostrils; that if the king should by any chance be bludgeoned in a taro-patch, the philosophical and musical inhabitants of equator town might lay aside their pleasant instruments, and betake themselves to what defence they had, with a very dim prospect of success. these speculations were forced upon us by an incident which i am ashamed to betray. the schooner h. l. haseltine (since capsized at sea, with the loss of eleven lives) put into apemama in a good hour for us, who had near exhausted our supplies. the king, after his habit, spent day after day on board; the gin proved unhappily to his taste; he brought a store of it ashore with him; and for some time the sole tyrant of the isle was half-seas-over. he was not drunk the man is not a drunkard, he has always stores of liquor at hand, which he uses with moderation, but he was muzzy, dull, and confused. he came one day to lunch with us, and while the cloth was being laid fell asleep in his chair. his confusion, when he awoke and found he had been detected, was equalled by our uneasiness. when he was gone we sat and spoke of his peril, which we thought to be in some degree our own; of how easily the man might be surprised in such a state by grumbletonians; of the strange scenes that would follow the royal treasures and stores at the mercy of the rabble, the palace overrun, the garrison of women turned adrift. and as we talked we were startled by a gun-shot and a sudden, barbaric outcry. i believe we all changed colour; but it was only the king firing at a dog and the chorus striking up in the speak house. a day or two later i learned the king was very sick; went down, diagnosed the case; and took at once the highest medical degree by the exhibition of bicarbonate of soda. within the hour richard was himself again; and i found him at the unfinished house, enjoying the double pleasure of directing rubam and making a dinner of cocoa-nut dumplings, and all eagerness to have the formula of this new sort of pain-killer for pain-killer in the islands is the generic name of medicine. so ended the king's modest spree and our anxiety. on the face of things, i ought to say, loyalty appeared unshaken. when the schooner at last returned for us, after much experience of baffling winds, she brought a rumour that tebureimoa had declared war on apemama. tembinok' became a new man; his face radiant; his attitude, as i saw him preside over a council of chiefs in one of the palace maniap's, eager as a boy's; his voice sounding abroad, shrill and jubilant, over half the compound. war is what he wants, and here was his chance. the english captain, when he flung his arms in the lagoon, had forbidden him (except in one case) all military adventures in the future: here was the case arrived. all morning the council sat; men were drilled, arms were bought, the sound of firing disturbed the afternoon; the king devised and communicated to me his plan of campaign, which was highly elaborate and ingenious, but perhaps a trifle fine-spun for the rough and random vicissitudes of war. and in all this bustle the temper of the people appeared excellent, an unwonted animation in every face, and even uncle parker burning with military zeal. of course it was a false alarm. tebureimoa had other fish to fry. the ambassador who accompanied us on our return to butaritari found him retired to a small island on the reef, in a huff with the old men, a tiff with the traders, and more fear of insurrection at home than appetite for wars abroad. the plenipotentiary had been placed under my protection; and we solemnly saluted when we met. he proved an excellent fisherman, and caught bonito over the ship's side. he pulled a good oar, and made himself useful for a whole fiery afternoon, towing the becalmed equator off mariki. he went to his post and did no good. he returned home again, having done no harm. o si sic omnes! chapter vi the king of apemama: devil-work the ocean beach of apemama was our daily resort. the coast is broken by shallow bays. the reef is detached, elevated, and includes a lagoon about knee-deep, the unrestful spending-basin of the surf. the beach is now of fine sand, now of broken coral. the trend of the coast being convex, scarce a quarter of a mile of it is to be seen at once; the land being so low, the horizon appears within a stone-cast; and the narrow prospect enhances the sense of privacy. man avoids the place even his footprints are uncommon; but a great number of birds hover and pipe there fishing, and leave crooked tracks upon the sand. apart from these, the only sound (and i was going to say the only society), is that of the breakers on the reef. on each projection of the coast, the bank of coral clinkers immediately above the beach has been levelled, and a pillar built, perhaps breast-high. these are not sepulchral; all the dead being buried on the inhabited side of the island, close to men's houses, and (what is worse) to their wells. i was told they were to protect the isle against inroads from the sea divine or diabolical martellos, probably sacred to taburik, god of thunder. the bay immediately opposite equator town, which we called fu bay, in honour of our cook, was thus fortified on either horn. it was well sheltered by the reef, the enclosed water clear and tranquil, the enclosing beach curved like a horseshoe, and both steep and broad. the path debouched about the midst of the re-entrant angle, the woods stopping some distance inland. in front, between the fringe of the wood and the crown of the beach, there had been designed a regular figure, like the court for some new variety of tennis, with borders of round stones imbedded, and pointed at the angles with low posts, likewise of stone. this was the king's pray place. when he prayed, what he prayed for, and to whom he addressed his supplications i could never learn. the ground was tapu. in the angle, by the mouth of the path, stood a deserted maniap'. near by there had been a house before our coming, which was now transported and figured for the moment in equator town. it had been, and it would be again when we departed, the residence of the guardian and wizard of the spot tamaiti. here, in this lone place, within sound of the sea, he had his dwelling and uncanny duties. i cannot call to mind another case of a man living on the ocean side of any open atoll; and tamaiti must have had strong nerves, the greater confidence in his own spells, or, what i believe to be the truth, an enviable scepticism. whether tamaiti had any guardianship of the pray place i never heard. but his own particular chapel stood farther back in the fringe of the wood. it was a tree of respectable growth. around it there was drawn a circle of stones like those that enclosed the pray place; in front, facing towards the sea, a stone of a much greater size, and somewhat hollowed, like a piscina, stood close against the trunk; in front of that again a conical pile of gravel. in the hollow of what i have called the piscina (though it proved to be a magic seat) lay an offering of green cocoa-nuts; and when you looked up you found the boughs of the tree to be laden with strange fruit: palm-branches elaborately plaited, and beautiful models of canoes, finished and rigged to the least detail. the whole had the appearance of a mid-summer and sylvan christmas-tree al fresco. yet we were already well enough acquainted in the gilberts to recognise it, at the first sight, for a piece of wizardry, or, as they say in the group, of devil-work. the plaited palms were what we recognised. we had seen them before on apaiang, the most christianised of all these islands; where excellent mr. bingham lived and laboured and has left golden memories; whence all the education in the northern gilberts traces its descent; and where we were boarded by little native sundayschool misses in clean frocks, with demure faces, and singing hymns as to the manner born. our experience of devil-work at apaiang had been as follows:it chanced we were benighted at the house of captain tierney. my wife and i lodged with a chinaman some half a mile away; and thither captain reid and a native boy escorted us by torch-light. on the way the torch went out, and we took shelter in a small and lonely christian chapel to rekindle it. stuck in the rafters of the chapel was a branch of knotted palm. 'what is that?' i asked. 'o, that's devil-work,' said the captain. 'and what is devil-work?' i inquired. 'if you like, i'll show you some when we get to johnnie's,' he replied. 'johnnie's' was a quaint little house upon the crest of the beach, raised some three feet on posts, approached by stairs; part walled, part trellised. trophies of advertisementphotographs were hung up within for decoration. there was a table and a recess-bed, in which mrs. stevenson slept; while i camped on the matted floor with johnnie, mrs. johnnie, her sister, and the devil's own regiment of cockroaches. hither was summoned an old witch, who looked the part to horror. the lamp was set on the floor; the crone squatted on the threshold, a green palm-branch in her hand, the light striking full on her aged features and picking out behind her, from the black night, timorous faces of spectators. our sorceress began with a chanted incantation; it was in the old tongue, for which i had no interpreter; but ever and again there ran among the crowd outside that laugh which every traveller in the islands learns so soon to recognise, the laugh of terror. doubtless these half-christian folk were shocked, these halfheathen folk alarmed. chench or taburik thus invoked, we put our questions; the witch knotted the leaves, here a leaf and there a leaf, plainly on some arithmetical system; studied the result with great apparent contention of mind; and gave the answers. sidney colvin was in robust health and gone a journey; and we should have a fair wind upon the morrow: that was the result of our consultation, for which we paid a dollar. the next day dawned cloudless and breathless; but i think captain reid placed a secret reliance on the sibyl, for the schooner was got ready for sea. by eight the lagoon was flawed with long cat's-paws, and the palms tossed and rustled; before ten we were clear of the passage and skimming under all plain sail, with bubbling scuppers. so we had the breeze, which was well worth a dollar in itself; but the bulletin about my friend in england proved, some six months later, when i got my mail, to have been groundless. perhaps london lies beyond the horizon of the island gods. tembinok', in his first dealings, showed himself sternly averse from superstition: and had not the equator delayed, we might have left the island and still supposed him an agnostic. it chanced one day, however, that he came to our maniap', and found mrs. stevenson in the midst of a game of patience. she explained the game as well as she was able, and wound up jocularly by telling him this was her devil-work, and if she won, the equator would arrive next day. tembinok' must have drawn a long breath; we were not so high-anddry after all; he need no longer dissemble, and he plunged at once into confessions. he made devil-work every day, he told us, to know if ships were coming in; and thereafter brought us regular reports of the results. it was surprising how regularly he was wrong; but he always had an explanation ready. there had been some schooner in the offing out of view; but either she was not bound for apemama, or had changed her course, or lay becalmed. i used to regard the king with veneration as he thus publicly deceived himself. i saw behind him all the fathers of the church, all the philosophers and men of science of the past; before him, all those that are to come; himself in the midst; the whole visionary series bowed over the same task of welding incongruities. to the end tembinok' spoke reluctantly of the island gods and their worship, and i learned but little. taburik is the god of thunder, and deals in wind and weather. a while since there were wizards who could call him down in the form of lightning. 'my patha he tell me he see: you think he lie?' tienti pronounced something like 'chench,' and identified by his majesty with the devil sends and removes bodily sickness. he is whistled for in the paumotuan manner, and is said to appear; but the king has never seen him. the doctors treat disease by the aid of chench: eclectic tembinok' at the same time administering 'pain-killer' from his medicinechest, so as to give the sufferer both chances. 'i think mo' betta,' observed his majesty, with more than his usual selfapproval. apparently the gods are not jealous, and placidly enjoy both shrine and priest in common. on tamaiti's medicine-tree, for instance, the model canoes are hung up ex voto for a prosperous voyage, and must therefore be dedicated to taburik, god of the weather; but the stone in front is the place of sick folk come to pacify chench. it chanced, by great good luck, that even as we spoke of these affairs, i found myself threatened with a cold. i do not suppose i was ever glad of a cold before, or shall ever be again; but the opportunity to see the sorcerers at work was priceless, and i called in the faculty of apemama. they came in a body, all in their sunday's best and hung with wreaths and shells, the insignia of the devil-worker. tamaiti i knew already: terutak' i saw for the first time a tall, lank, raw-boned, serious north-sea fisherman turned brown; and there was a third in their company whose name i never heard, and who played to tamaiti the part of famulus. tamaiti took me in hand first, and led me, conversing agreeably, to the shores of fu bay. the famulus climbed a tree for some green cocoa-nuts. tamaiti himself disappeared a while in the bush and returned with coco tinder, dry leaves, and a spray of waxberry. i was placed on the stone, with my back to the tree and my face to windward; between me and the gravel-heap one of the green nuts was set; and then tamaiti (having previously bared his feet, for he had come in canvas shoes, which tortured him) joined me within the magic circle, hollowed out the top of the gravelheap, built his fire in the bottom, and applied a match: it was one of bryant and may's. the flame was slow to catch, and the irreverent sorcerer filled in the time with talk of foreign places of london, and 'companies,' and how much money they had; of san francisco, and the nefarious fogs, 'all the same smoke,' which had been so nearly the occasion of his death. i tried vainly to lead him to the matter in hand. 'everybody make medicine,' he said lightly. and when i asked him if he were himself a good practitioner 'no savvy,' he replied, more lightly still. at length the leaves burst in a flame, which he continued to feed; a thick, light smoke blew in my face, and the flames streamed against and scorched my clothes. he in the meanwhile addressed, or affected to address, the evil spirit, his lips moving fast, but without sound; at the same time he waved in the air and twice struck me on the breast with his green spray. so soon as the leaves were consumed the ashes were buried, the green spray was imbedded in the gravel, and the ceremony was at an end. a reader of the arabian nights felt quite at home. here was the suffumigation; here was the muttering wizard; here was the desert place to which aladdin was decoyed by the false uncle. but they manage these things better in fiction. the effect was marred by the levity of the magician, entertaining his patient with small talk like an affable dentist, and by the incongruous presence of mr. osbourne with a camera. as for my cold, it was neither better nor worse. i was now handed over to terutak', the leading practitioner or medical baronet of apemama. his place is on the lagoon side of the island, hard by the palace. a rail of light wood, some two feet high, encloses an oblong piece of gravel like the king's pray place; in the midst is a green tree; below, a stone table bears a pair of boxes covered with a fine mat; and in front of these an offering of food, a cocoa-nut, a piece of taro or a fish, is placed daily. on two sides the enclosure is lined with maniap's; and one of our party, who had been there to sketch, had remarked a daily concourse of people and an extraordinary number of sick children; for this is in fact the infirmary of apemama. the doctor and myself entered the sacred place alone; the boxes and the mat were displaced; and i was enthroned in their stead upon the stone, facing once more to the east. for a while the sorcerer remained unseen behind me, making passes in the air with a branch of palm. then he struck lightly on the brim of my straw hat; and this blow he continued to repeat at intervals, sometimes brushing instead my arm and shoulder. i have had people try to mesmerise me a dozen times, and never with the least result. but at the first tap on a quarter no more vital than my hat-brim, and from nothing more virtuous than a switch of palm wielded by a man i could not even see sleep rushed upon me like an armed man. my sinews fainted, my eyes closed, my brain hummed, with drowsiness. i resisted, at first instinctively, then with a certain flurry of despair, in the end successfully; if that were indeed success which enabled me to scramble to my feet, to stumble home somnambulous, to cast myself at once upon my bed, and sink at once into a dreamless stupor. when i awoke my cold was gone. so i leave a matter that i do not understand. meanwhile my appetite for curiosities (not usually very keen) had been strangely whetted by the sacred boxes. they were of pandanus wood, oblong in shape, with an effect of pillaring along the sides like straw work, lightly fringed with hair or fibre and standing on four legs. the outside was neat as a toy; the inside a mystery i was resolved to penetrate. but there was a lion in the path. i might not approach terutak', since i had promised to buy nothing in the island; i dared not have recourse to the king, for i had already received from him more gifts than i knew how to repay. in this dilemma (the schooner being at last returned) we hit on a device. captain reid came forward in my stead, professed an unbridled passion for the boxes, and asked and obtained leave to bargain for them with the wizard. that same afternoon the captain and i made haste to the infirmary, entered the enclosure, raised the mat, and had begun to examine the boxes at our leisure, when terutak's wife bounced out of one of the nigh houses, fell upon us, swept up the treasures, and was gone. there was never a more absolute surprise. she came, she took, she vanished, we had not a guess whither; and we remained, with foolish looks and laughter on the empty field. such was the fit prologue of our memorable bargaining. presently terutak' came, bringing tamaiti along with him, both smiling; and we four squatted without the rail. in the three maniap's of the infirmary a certain audience was gathered: the family of a sick child under treatment, the king's sister playing cards, a pretty girl, who swore i was the image of her father; in all perhaps a score. terutak's wife had returned (even as she had vanished) unseen, and now sat, breathless and watchful, by her husband's side. perhaps some rumour of our quest had gone abroad, or perhaps we had given the alert by our unseemly freedom: certain, at least, that in the faces of all present, expectation and alarm were mingled. captain reid announced, without preface or disguise, that i was come to purchase; terutak', with sudden gravity, refused to sell. he was pressed; he persisted. it was explained we only wanted one: no matter, two were necessary for the healing of the sick. he was rallied, he was reasoned with: in vain. he sat there, serious and still, and refused. all this was only a preliminary skirmish; hitherto no sum of money had been mentioned; but now the captain brought his great guns to bear. he named a pound, then two, then three. out of the maniap's one person after another came to join the group, some with mere excitement, others with consternation in their faces. the pretty girl crept to my side; it was then that surely with the most artless flattery she informed me of my likeness to her father. tamaiti the infidel sat with hanging head and every mark of dejection. terutak' streamed with sweat, his eye was glazed, his face wore a painful rictus, his chest heaved like that of one spent with running. the man must have been by nature covetous; and i doubt if ever i saw moral agony more tragically displayed. his wife by his side passionately encouraged his resistance. and now came the charge of the old guard. the captain, making a skip, named the surprising figure of five pounds. at the word the maniap's were emptied. the king's sister flung down her cards and came to the front to listen, a cloud on her brow. the pretty girl beat her breast and cried with wearisome iteration that if the box were hers i should have it. terutak's wife was beside herself with pious fear, her face discomposed, her voice (which scarce ceased from warning and encouragement) shrill as a whistle. even terutak' lost that image-like immobility which he had hitherto maintained. he rocked on his mat, threw up his closed knees alternately, and struck himself on the breast after the manner of dancers. but he came gold out of the furnace; and with what voice was left him continued to reject the bribe. and now came a timely interjection. 'money will not heal the sick,' observed the king's sister sententiously; and as soon as i heard the remark translated my eyes were unsealed, and i began to blush for my employment. here was a sick child, and i sought, in the view of its parents, to remove the medicine-box. here was the priest of a religion, and i (a heathen millionaire) was corrupting him to sacrilege. here was a greedy man, torn in twain betwixt greed and conscience; and i sat by and relished, and lustfully renewed his torments. ave, caesar! smothered in a corner, dormant but not dead, we have all the one touch of nature: an infant passion for the sand and blood of the arena. so i brought to an end my first and last experience of the joys of the millionaire, and departed amid silent awe. nowhere else can i expect to stir the depths of human nature by an offer of five pounds; nowhere else, even at the expense of millions, could i hope to see the evil of riches stand so legibly exposed. of all the bystanders, none but the king's sister retained any memory of the gravity and danger of the thing in hand. their eyes glowed, the girl beat her breast, in senseless animal excitement. nothing was offered them; they stood neither to gain nor to lose; at the mere name and wind of these great sums satan possessed them. from this singular interview i went straight to the palace; found the king; confessed what i had been doing; begged him, in my name, to compliment terutak' on his virtue, and to have a similar box made for me against the return of the schooner. tembinok', rubam, and one of the daily papers him we used to call 'the facetiae column' laboured for a while of some idea, which was at last intelligibly delivered. they feared i thought the box would cure me; whereas, without the wizard, it was useless; and when i was threatened with another cold i should do better to rely on painkiller. i explained i merely wished to keep it in my 'outch' as a thing made in apemama and these honest men were much relieved. late the same evening, my wife, crossing the isle to windward, was aware of singing in the bush. nothing is more common in that hour and place than the jubilant carol of the toddy-cutter, swinging high overhead, beholding below him the narrow ribbon of the isle, the surrounding field of ocean, and the fires of the sunset. but this was of a graver character, and seemed to proceed from the ground-level. advancing a little in the thicket, mrs. stevenson saw a clear space, a fine mat spread in the midst, and on the mat a wreath of white flowers and one of the devil-work boxes. a woman whom we guess to have been mrs. terutak' sat in front, now drooping over the box like a mother over a cradle, now lifting her face and directing her song to heaven. a passing toddy-cutter told my wife that she was praying. probably she did not so much pray as deprecate; and perhaps even the ceremony was one of disenchantment. for the box was already doomed; it was to pass from its green medicine-tree, reverend precinct, and devout attendants; to be handled by the profane; to cross three seas; to come to land under the foolscap of st. paul's; to be domesticated within the hail of lillie bridge; there to be dusted by the british housemaid, and to take perhaps the roar of london for the voice of the outer sea along the reef. before even we had finished dinner chench had begun his journey, and one of the newspapers had already placed the box upon my table as the gift of tembinok'. i made haste to the palace, thanked the king, but offered to restore the box, for i could not bear that the sick of the island should be made to suffer. i was amazed by his reply. terutak', it appeared, had still three or four in reserve against an accident; and his reluctance, and the dread painted at first on every face, was not in the least occasioned by the prospect of medical destitution, but by the immediate divinity of chench. how much more did i respect the king's command, which had been able to extort in a moment and for nothing a sacrilegious favour that i had in vain solicited with millions! but now i had a difficult task in front of me; it was not in my view that terutak' should suffer by his virtue; and i must persuade the king to share my opinion, to let me enrich one of his subjects, and (what was yet more delicate) to pay for my present. nothing shows the king in a more becoming light than the fact that i succeeded. he demurred at the principle; he exclaimed, when he heard it, at the sum. 'plenty money!' cried he, with contemptuous displeasure. but his resistance was never serious; and when he had blown off his illhumour 'a' right,' said he. 'you give him. mo' betta.' armed with this permission, i made straight for the infirmary. the night was now come, cool, dark, and starry. on a mat hard by a clear fire of wood and coco shell, terutak' lay beside his wife. both were smiling; the agony was over, the king's command had reconciled (i must suppose) their agitating scruples; and i was bidden to sit by them and share the circulating pipe. i was a little moved myself when i placed five gold sovereigns in the wizard's hand; but there was no sign of emotion in terutak' as he returned them, pointed to the palace, and named tembinok'. it was a changed scene when i had managed to explain. terutak', long, dour scots fisherman as he was, expressed his satisfaction within bounds; but the wife beamed; and there was an old gentleman present her father, i suppose who seemed nigh translated. his eyes stood out of his head; 'kaupoi, kaupoi rich, rich!' ran on his lips like a refrain; and he could not meet my eye but what he gurgled into foolish laughter. i might now go home, leaving that fire-lit family party gloating over their new millions, and consider my strange day. i had tried and rewarded the virtue of terutak'. i had played the millionaire, had behaved abominably, and then in some degree repaired my thoughtlessness. and now i had my box, and could open it and look within. it contained a miniature sleeping-mat and a white shell. tamaiti, interrogated next day as to the shell, explained it was not exactly chench, but a cell, or body, which he would at times inhabit. asked why there was a sleeping-mat, he retorted indignantly, 'why have you mats?' and this was the sceptical tamaiti! but island scepticism is never deeper than the lips. chapter vii the king of apemama thus all things on the island, even the priests of the gods, obey the word of tembinok'. he can give and take, and slay, and allay the scruples of the conscientious, and do all things (apparently) but interfere in the cookery of a turtle. 'i got power' is his favourite word; it interlards his conversation; the thought haunts him and is ever fresh; and when be has asked and meditates of foreign countries, he looks up with a smile and reminds you, 'i got power.' nor is his delight only in the possession, but in the exercise. he rejoices in the crooked and violent paths of kingship like a strong man to run a race, or like an artist in his art. to feel, to use his power, to embellish his island and the picture of the island life after a private ideal, to milk the island vigorously, to extend his singular museum these employ delightfully the sum of his abilities. i never saw a man more patently in the right trade. it would be natural to suppose this monarchy inherited intact through generations. and so far from that, it is a thing of yesterday. i was already a boy at school while apemama was yet republican, ruled by a noisy council of old men, and torn with incurable feuds. and tembinok' is no bourbon; rather the son of a napoleon. of course he is well-born. no man need aspire high in the isles of the pacific unless his pedigree be long and in the upper regions mythical. and our king counts cousinship with most of the high families in the archipelago, and traces his descent to a shark and a heroic woman. directed by an oracle, she swam beyond sight of land to meet her revolting paramour, and received at sea the seed of a predestined family. 'i think lie,' is the king's emphatic commentary; yet he is proud of the legend. from this illustrious beginning the fortunes of the race must have declined; and tenkoruti, the grandfather of tembinok', was the chief of a village at the north end of the island. kuria and aranuka were yet independent; apemama itself the arena of devastating feuds. through this perturbed period of history the figure of tenkoruti stalks memorable. in war he was swift and bloody; several towns fell to his spear, and the inhabitants were butchered to a man. in civil life this arrogance was unheard of. when the council of old men was summoned, he went to the speak house, delivered his mind, and left without waiting to be answered. wisdom had spoken: let others opine according to their folly. he was feared and hated, and this was his pleasure. he was no poet; he cared not for arts or knowledge. 'my gran'patha one thing savvy, savvy pight,' observed the king. in some lull of their own disputes the old men of apemama adventured on the conquest of apemama; and this unlicked caius marcius was elected general of the united troops. success attended him; the islands were reduced, and tenkoruti returned to his own government, glorious and detested. he died about 1860, in the seventieth year of his age and the full odour of unpopularity. he was tall and lean, says his grandson, looked extremely old, and 'walked all the same young man.' the same observer gave me a significant detail. the survivors of that rough epoch were all defaced with spearmarks; there was none on the body of this skilful fighter. 'i see old man, no got a spear,' said the king. tenkoruti left two sons, tembaitake and tembinatake. tembaitake, our king's father, was short, middling stout, a poet, a good genealogist, and something of a fighter; it seems he took himself seriously, and was perhaps scarce conscious that he was in all things the creature and nursling of his brother. there was no shadow of dispute between the pair: the greater man filled with alacrity and content the second place; held the breach in war, and all the portfolios in the time of peace; and, when his brother rated him, listened in silence, looking on the ground. like tenkoruti, he was tall and lean and a swift talker a rare trait in the islands. he possessed every accomplishment. he knew sorcery, he was the best genealogist of his day, he was a poet, he could dance and make canoes and armour; and the famous mast of apemama, which ran one joint higher than the mainmast of a fullrigged ship, was of his conception and design. but these were avocations, and the man's trade was war. 'when my uncle go make wa', he laugh,' said tembinok'. he forbade the use of field fortification, that protractor of native hostilities; his men must fight in the open, and win or be beaten out of hand; his own activity inspired his followers; and the swiftness of his blows beat down, in one lifetime, the resistance of three islands. he made his brother sovereign, he left his nephew absolute. 'my uncle make all smooth,' said tembinok'. 'i mo' king than my patha: i got power,' he said, with formidable relish. such is the portrait of the uncle drawn by the nephew. i can set beside it another by a different artist, who has often i may say always delighted me with his romantic taste in narrative, but not always and i may say not often persuaded me of his exactitude. i have already denied myself the use of so much excellent matter from the same source, that i begin to think it time to reward good resolution; and his account of tembinatake agrees so well with the king's, that it may very well be (what i hope it is) the record of a fact, and not (what i suspect) the pleasing exercise of an imagination more than sailorly. a., for so i had perhaps better call him, was walking up the island after dusk, when he came on a lighted village of some size, was directed to the chief's house, and asked leave to rest and smoke a pipe. 'you will sit down, and smoke a pipe, and wash, and eat, and sleep,' replied the chief, 'and to-morrow you will go again.' food was brought, prayers were held (for this was in the brief day of christianity), and the chief himself prayed with eloquence and seeming sincerity. all evening a. sat and admired the man by the firelight. he was six feet high, lean, with the appearance of many years, and an extraordinary air of breeding and command. 'he looked like a man who would kill you laughing,' said a., in singular echo of one of the king's expressions. and again: 'i had been reading the musketeer books, and he reminded me of aramis.' such is the portrait of tembinatake, drawn by an expert romancer. we had heard many tales of 'my patha'; never a word of my uncle till two days before we left. as the time approached for our departure tembinok' became greatly changed; a softer, a more melancholy, and, in particular, a more confidential man appeared in his stead. to my wife he contrived laboriously to explain that though he knew he must lose his father in the course of nature, he had not minded nor realised it till the moment came; and that now he was to lose us he repeated the experience. we showed fireworks one evening on the terrace. it was a heavy business; the sense of separation was in all our minds, and the talk languished. the king was specially affected, sat disconsolate on his mat, and often sighed. of a sudden one of the wives stepped forth from a cluster, came and kissed him in silence, and silently went again. it was just such a caress as we might give to a disconsolate child, and the king received it with a child's simplicity. presently after we said good-night and withdrew; but tembinok' detained mr. osbourne, patting the mat by his side and saying: 'sit down. i feel bad, i like talk.' osbourne sat down by him. 'you like some beer?' said he; and one of the wives produced a bottle. the king did not partake, but sat sighing and smoking a meerschaum pipe. 'i very sorry you go,' he said at last. 'miss stlevens he good man, woman he good man, boy he good man; all good man. woman he smart all the same man. my woman' (glancing towards his wives) 'he good woman, no very smart. i think miss stlevens he is chiep all the same cap'n man-o-wa'. i think miss stlevens he rich man all the same me. all go schoona. i very sorry. my patha he go, my uncle he go, my cutcheons he go, miss stlevens he go: all go. you no see king cry before. king all the same man: feel bad, he cry. i very sorry.' in the morning it was the common topic in the village that the king had wept. to me he said: 'last night i no can 'peak: too much here,' laying his hand upon his bosom. 'now you go away all the same my pamily. my brothers, my uncle go away. all the same.' this was said with a dejection almost passionate. and it was the first time i had heard him name his uncle, or indeed employ the word. the same day he sent me a present of two corselets, made in the island fashion of plaited fibre, heavy and strong. one had been worn by tenkoruti, one by tembaitake; and the gift being gratefully received, he sent me, on the return of his messengers, a third that of tembinatake. my curiosity was roused; i begged for information as to the three wearers; and the king entered with gusto into the details already given. here was a strange thing, that he should have talked so much of his family, and not once mentioned that relative of whom he was plainly the most proud. nay, more: he had hitherto boasted of his father; thenceforth he had little to say of him; and the qualities for which he had praised him in the past were now attributed where they were due, to the uncle. a confusion might be natural enough among islanders, who call all the sons of their grandfather by the common name of father. but this was not the case with tembinok'. now the ice was broken the word uncle was perpetually in his mouth; he who had been so ready to confound was now careful to distinguish; and the father sank gradually into a self-complacent ordinary man, while the uncle rose to his true stature as the hero and founder of the race. the more i heard and the more i considered, the more this mystery of tembinok's behaviour puzzled and attracted me. and the explanation, when it came, was one to strike the imagination of a dramatist. tembinok' had two brothers. one, detected in private trading, was banished, then forgiven, lives to this day in the island, and is the father of the heir-apparent, paul. the other fell beyond forgiveness. i have heard it was a love-affair with one of the king's wives, and the thing is highly possible in that romantic archipelago. war was attempted to be levied; but tembinok' was too swift for the rebels, and the guilty brother escaped in a canoe. he did not go alone. tembinatake had a hand in the rebellion, and the man who had gained a kingdom for a weakling brother was banished by that brother's son. the fugitives came to shore in other islands, but tembinok' remains to this day ignorant of their fate. so far history. and now a moment for conjecture. tembinok' confused habitually, not only the attributes and merits of his father and his uncle, but their diverse personal appearance. before he had even spoken, or thought to speak, of tembinatake, he had told me often of a tall, lean father, skilled in war, and his own schoolmaster in genealogy and island arts. how if both were fathers, one natural, one adoptive? how if the heir of tembaitake, like the heir of tembinok' himself, were not a son, but an adopted nephew? how if the founder of the monarchy, while he worked for his brother, worked at the same time for the child of his loins? how if on the death of tembaitake, the two stronger natures, father and son, king and kingmaker, clashed, and tembinok', when he drove out his uncle, drove out the author of his days? here is at least a tragedy four-square. the king took us on board in his own gig, dressed for the occasion in the naval uniform. he had little to say, he refused refreshments, shook us briefly by the hand, and went ashore again. that night the palm-tops of apemama had dipped behind the sea, and the schooner sailed solitary under the stars. end of the project gutenberg etext of in the south seas the internet wiretap first electronic edition of a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court by mark twain (samuel l. clemens) copyright, 1889 and 1899, by samuel l. clemens this text is in the public domain. from the writings of mark twain volume xvi harper & brothers publishers, new york electronic edition by <dell@wiretap.spies.com> released to the public june 1993 preface the ungentle laws and customs touched upon in this tale are historical, and the episodes which are used to illustrate them are also historical. it is not pretended that these laws and customs existed in england in the sixth century; no, it is only pretended that inasmuch as they existed in the english and other civilizations of far later times, it is safe to consider that it is no libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to have been in practice in that day also. one is quite justified in inferring that whatever one of these laws or customs was lacking in that remote time, its place was competently filled by a worse one. the question as to whether there is such a thing as divine right of kings is not settled in this book. it was found too difficult. that the executive head of a nation should be a person of lofty character and extraordinary ability, was manifest and indisputable; that none but the deity could select that head unerringly, was also manifest and indisputable; that the deity ought to make that selection, then, was likewise manifest and indisputable; consequently, that he does make it, as claimed, was an unavoidable deduction. i mean, until the author of this book encountered the pompadour, and lady castlemaine, and some other executive heads of that kind; these were found so difficult to work into the scheme, that it was judged better to take the other tack in this book (which must be issued this fall), and then go into training and settle the question in another book. it is, of course, a thing which ought to be settled, and i am not going to have anything particular to do next winter anyway. mark twain. a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court a word of explanation it was in warwick castle that i came across the curious stranger whom i am going to talk about. he attracted me by three things: his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the restfulness of his company -for he did all the talking. we fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herd that was being shown through, and he at once began to say things which interested me. as he talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this world and time, and into some remote era and old forgotten country; and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that i seemed to move among the specters and shadows and dust and mold of a gray antiquity, holding speech with a relic of it! exactly as i would speak of my nearest personal friends or enemies, or my most familiar neighbors, he spoke of sir bedivere, sir bors de ganis, sir launcelot of the lake, sir galahad, and all the other great names of the table round -and how old, old, unspeakably old and faded and dry and musty and ancient he came to look as he went on! presently he turned to me and said, just as one might speak of the weather, or any other common matter -"you know about transmigration of souls; do you know about transposition of epochs -and bodies?" i said i had not heard of it. he was so little interested -just as when people speak of the weather -that he did not notice whether i made him any answer or not. there was half a moment of silence, immediately interrupted by the droning voice of the salaried cicerone: "ancient hauberk, date of the sixth century, time of king arthur and the round table; said to have belonged to the knight sir sagramor le desirous; observe the round hole through the chain-mail in the left breast; can't be accounted for; supposed to have been done with a bullet since invention of firearms -perhaps maliciously by cromwell's soldiers." my acquaintance smiled -not a modern smile, but one that must have gone out of general use many, many centuries ago -and muttered apparently to himself: "wit ye well, i saw it done." then, after a pause, added: "i did it myself." by the time i had recovered from the electric surprise of this remark, he was gone. all that evening i sat by my fire at the warwick arms, steeped in a dream of the olden time, while the rain beat upon the windows, and the wind roared about the eaves and corners. from time to time i dipped into old sir thomas malory's enchanting book, and fed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventures, breathed in the fragrance of its obsolete names, and dreamed again. midnight being come at length, i read another tale, for a nightcap -this which here follows, to wit: how sir launcelot slew two giants, and made a castle free anon withal came there upon him two great giants, well armed, all save the heads, with two horrible clubs in their hands. sir launcelot put his shield afore him, and put the stroke away of the one giant, and with his sword he clave his head asunder. when his fellow saw that, he ran away as he were wood [* demented], for fear of the horrible strokes, and sir launcelot after him with all his might, and smote him on the shoulder, and clave him to the middle. then sir launcelot went into the hall, and there came afore him three score ladies and damsels, and all kneeled unto him, and thanked god and him of their deliverance. for, sir, said they, the most part of us have been here this seven year their prisoners, and we have worked all manner of silk works for our meat, and we are all great gentle-women born, and blessed be the time, knight, that ever thou wert born;for thou hast done the most worship that ever did knight in the world, that will we bear record, and we all pray you to tell us your name, that we may tell our friends who delivered us out of prison. fair damsels, he said, my name is sir launcelot du lake. and so he departed from them and betaught them unto god. and then he mounted upon his horse, and rode into many strange and wild countries, and through many waters and valleys, and evil was he lodged. and at the last by fortune him happened against a night to come to a fair courtilage, and therein he found an old gentle-woman that lodged him with a good-will, and there he had good cheer for him and his horse. and when time was, his host brought him into a fair garret over the gate to his bed. there sir launcelot unarmed him, and set his harness by him, and went to bed, and anon he fell on sleep. so, soon after there came one on horseback, and knocked at the gate in great haste. and when sir launcelot heard this he rose up, and looked out at the window, and saw by the moonlight three knights come riding after that one man, and all three lashed on him at once with swords, and that one knight turned on them knightly again and defended him. truly, said sir launcelot, yonder one knight shall i help, for it were shame for me to see three knights on one, and if he be slain i am partner of his death. and therewith he took his harness and went out at a window by a sheet down to the four knights, and then sir launcelot said on high, turn you knights unto me, and leave your fighting with that knight. and then they all three left sir kay, and turned unto sir launcelot, and there began great battle, for they alight all three, and strake many strokes at sir launcelot, and assailed him on every side. then sir kay dressed him for to have holpen sir launcelot. nay, sir, said he, i will none of your help, therefore as ye will have my help let me alone with them. sir kay for the pleasure of the knight suffered him for to do his will, and so stood aside. and then anon within six strokes sir launcelot had stricken them to the earth. and then they all three cried, sir knight, we yield us unto you as man of might matchless. as to that, said sir launcelot, i will not take your yielding unto me, but so that ye yield you unto sir kay the seneschal, on that covenant i will save your lives and else not. fair knight, said they, that were we loath to do; for as for sir kay we chased him hither, and had overcome him had ye not been; therefore, to yield us unto him it were no reason. well, as to that, said sir launcelot, advise you well, for ye may choose whether ye will die or live, for an ye be yielden, it shall be unto sir kay. fair knight, then they said, in saving our lives we will do as thou commandest us. then shall ye, said sir launcelot, on whitsunday next coming go unto the court of king arthur, and there shall ye yield you unto queen guenever, and put you all three in her grace and mercy, and say that sir kay sent you thither to be her prisoners. on the morn sir launcelot arose early, and left sir kay sleeping; and sir launcelot took sir kay's armor and his shield and armed him, and so he went to the stable and took his horse, and took his leave of his host, and so he departed. then soon after arose sir kay and missed sir launcelot; and then he espied that he had his armor and his horse. now by my faith i know well that he will grieve some of the court of king arthur; for on him knights will be bold, and deem that it is i, and that will beguile them; and because of his armor and shield i am sure i shall ride in peace. and then soon after departed sir kay, and thanked his host. as i laid the book down there was a knock at the door, and my stranger came in. i gave him a pipe and a chair, and made him welcome. i also comforted him with a hot scotch whisky; gave him another one; then still another -hoping always for his story. after a fourth persuader, he drifted into it himself, in a quite simple and natural way: the stranger's history i am an american. i was born and reared in hartford, in the state of connecticut -anyway, just over the river, in the country. so i am a yankee of the yankees -and practical; yes, and nearly barren of sentiment, i suppose -or poetry, in other words. my father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and i was both, along at first. then i went over to the great arms factory and learned my real trade; learned all there was to it; learned to make everything: guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all sorts of labor-saving machinery. why, i could make anything a body wanted -anything in the world, it didn't make any difference what; and if there wasn't any quick new-fangled way to make a thing, i could invent one -and do it as easy as rolling off a log. i became head superintendent; had a couple of thousand men under me. well, a man like that is a man that is full of fight -that goes without saying. with a couple of thousand rough men under one, one has plenty of that sort of amusement. i had, anyway. at last i met my match, and i got my dose. it was during a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call hercules. he laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everything crack, and seemed to spring every joint in my skull and made it overlap its neighbor. then the world went out in darkness, and i didn't feel anything more, and didn't know anything at all -at least for a while. when i came to again, i was sitting under an oak tree, on the grass, with a whole beautiful and broad country landscape all to myself -nearly. not entirely; for there was a fellow on a horse, looking down at me -a fellow fresh out of a picture-book. he was in old-time iron armor from head to heel, with a helmet on his head the shape of a nail-keg with slits in it; and he had a shield, and a sword, and a prodigious spear; and his horse had armor on, too, and a steel horn projecting from his forehead, and gorgeous red and green silk trappings that hung down all around him like a bedquilt, nearly to the ground. "fair sir, will ye just?" said this fellow. "will i which?" "will ye try a passage of arms for land or lady or for --" "what are you giving me?" i said. "get along back to your circus, or i'll report you." now what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards and then come rushing at me as hard as he could tear, with his nail-keg bent down nearly to his horse's neck and his long spear pointed straight ahead. i saw he meant business, so i was up the tree when he arrived. he allowed that i was his property, the captive of his spear. there was argument on his side -and the bulk of the advantage -so i judged it best to humor him. we fixed up an agreement whereby i was to go with him and he was not to hurt me. i came down, and we started away, i walking by the side of his horse. we marched comfortably along, through glades and over brooks which i could not remember to have seen before -which puzzled me and made me wonder -and yet we did not come to any circus or sign of a circus. so i gave up the idea of a circus, and concluded he was from an asylum. but we never came to an asylum -so i was up a stump, as you may say. i asked him how far we were from hartford. he said he had never heard of the place; which i took to be a lie, but allowed it to go at that. at the end of an hour we saw a far-away town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond it on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets, the first i had ever seen out of a picture. "bridgeport?" said i, pointing. "camelot," said he. my stranger had been showing signs of sleepiness. he caught himself nodding, now, and smiled one of those pathetic, obsolete smiles of his, and said: "i find i can't go on; but come with me, i've got it all written out, and you can read it if you like." in his chamber, he said: "first, i kept a journal; then by and by, after years, i took the journal and turned it into a book. how long ago that was!" he handed me his manuscript, and pointed out the place where i should begin: "begin here -i've already told you what goes before." he was steeped in drowsiness by this time. as i went out at his door i heard him murmur sleepily: "give you good den, fair sir." i sat down by my fire and examined my treasure. the first part of it -the great bulk of it -was parchment, and yellow with age. i scanned a leaf particularly and saw that it was a palimpsest. under the old dim writing of the yankee historian appeared traces of a penmanship which was older and dimmer still -latin words and sentences: fragments from old monkish legends, evidently. i turned to the place indicated by my stranger and began to read -as follows: the tale of the lost land. chapter i. camelot "camelot -camelot," said i to myself. "i don't seem to remember hearing of it before. name of the asylum, likely." it was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as sunday. the air was full of the smell of flowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the twittering of birds, and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on. the road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints in it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on either side in the grass -wheels that apparently had a tire as broad as one's hand. presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old, with a cataract of golden hair streaming down over her shoulders, came along. around her head she wore a hoop of flame-red poppies. it was as sweet an outfit as ever i saw, what there was of it. she walked indolently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in her innocent face. the circus man paid no attention to her; didn't even seem to see her. and she -she was no more startled at his fantastic make-up than if she was used to his like every day of her life. she was going by as indifferently as she might have gone by a couple of cows; but when she happened to notice me, then there was a change! up went her hands, and she was turned to stone; her mouth dropped open, her eyes stared wide and timorously, she was the picture of astonished curiosity touched with fear. and there she stood gazing, in a sort of stupefied fascination, till we turned a corner of the wood and were lost to her view. that she should be startled at me instead of at the other man, was too many for me; i couldn't make head or tail of it . and that she should seem to consider me a spectacle, and totally overlook her own merits in that respect, was another puzzling thing, and a display of magnanimity, too, that was surprising in one so young. there was food for thought here. i moved along as one in a dream. as we approached the town, signs of life began to appear. at intervals we passed a wretched cabin, with a thatched roof, and about it small fields and garden patches in an indifferent state of cultivation. there were people, too; brawny men, with long, coarse, uncombed hair that hung down over their faces and made them look like animals. they and the women, as a rule, wore a coarse tow-linen robe that came well below the knee, and a rude sort of sandal, and many wore an iron collar. the small boys and girls were always naked; but nobody seemed to know it. all of these people stared at me, talked about me, ran into the huts and fetched out their families to gape at me; but nobody ever noticed that other fellow, except to make him humble salutation and get no response for their pains. in the town were some substantial windowless houses of stone scattered among a wilderness of thatched cabins; the streets were mere crooked alleys, and unpaved; troops of dogs and nude children played in the sun and made life and noise; hogs roamed and rooted contentedly about, and one of them lay in a reeking wallow in the middle of the main thoroughfare and suckled her family. presently there was a distant blare of military music; it came nearer, still nearer, and soon a noble cavalcade wound into view, glorious with plumed helmets and flashing mail and flaunting banners and rich doublets and horse-cloths and gilded spearheads; and through the muck and swine, and naked brats, and joyous dogs, and shabby huts, it took its gallant way, and in its wake we followed. followed through one winding alley and then another, -and climbing, always climbing -till at last we gained the breezy height where the huge castle stood. there was an exchange of bugle blasts; then a parley from the walls, where men-at-arms, in hauberk and morion, marched back and forth with halberd at shoulder under flapping banners with the rude figure of a dragon displayed upon them; and then the great gates were flung open, the drawbridge was lowered, and the head of the cavalcade swept forward under the frowning arches; and we, following, soon found ourselves in a great paved court, with towers and turrets stretching up into the blue air on all the four sides; and all about us.the dismount was going on, and much greeting and ceremony, and running to and fro, and a gay display of moving and intermingling colors, and an altogether pleasant stir and noise and confusion. chapter ii. king arthur's court the moment i got a chance i slipped aside privately and touched an ancient common looking man on the shoulder and said, in an insinuating, confidential way: "friend, do me a kindness. do you belong to the asylum, or are you just on a visit or something like that?" he looked me over stupidly, and said: "marry, fair sir, me seemeth --" "that will do," i said; "i reckon you are a patient." i moved away, cogitating, and at the same time keeping an eye out for any chance passenger in his right mind that might come along and give me some light. i judged i had found one, presently; so i drew him aside and said in his ear: "if i could see the head keeper a minute -only just a minute --" "prithee do not let me." "let you what?" "hinder me, then, if the word please thee better. then he went on to say he was an under-cook and could not stop to gossip, though he would like it another time; for it would comfort his very liver to know where i got my clothes. as he started away he pointed and said yonder was one who was idle enough for my purpose, and was seeking me besides, no doubt. this was an airy slim boy in shrimp-colored tights that made him look like a forked carrot, the rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and ruffles; and he had long yellow curls, and wore a plumed pink satin cap tilted complacently over his ear. by his look, he was good-natured; by his gait, he was satisfied with himself. he was pretty enough to frame. he arrived, looked me over with a smiling and impudent curiosity; said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page. "go 'long," i said; "you ain't more than a paragraph." it was pretty severe, but i was nettled. however, it never phazed him; he didn't appear to know he was hurt. he began to talk and laugh, in happy, thoughtless, boyish fashion, as we walked along, and made himself old friends with me at once; asked me all sorts of questions about myself and about my clothes, but never waited for an answer -always chattered straight ahead, as if he didn't know he had asked a question and wasn't expecting any reply, until at last he happened to mention that he was born in the beginning of the year 513. it made the cold chills creep over me! i stopped and said, a little faintly: "maybe i didn't hear you just right. say it again -and say it slow. what year was it?" "513." "513! you don't look it! come, my boy, i am a stranger and friendless; be honest and honorable with me. are you in your right mind?" he said he was. "are these other people in their right minds?" he said they were. "and this isn't an asylum? i mean, it isn't a place where they cure crazy people?" he said it wasn't. "well, then," i said, "either i am a lunatic, or something just as awful has happened. now tell me, honest and true, where am i?" "in king arthur's court." i waited a minute, to let that idea shudder its way home, and then said: "and according to your notions, what year is it now?" "528 -nineteenth of june." i felt a mournful sinking at the heart, and muttered: "i shall never see my friends again -never, never again. they will not be born for more than thirteen hundred years yet." i seemed to believe the boy, i didn't know why. something in me seemed to believe him -my consciousness, as you may say; but my reason didn't. my reason straightway began to clamor; that was natural. i didn't know how to go about satisfying it, because i knew that the testimony of men wouldn't serve -my reason would say they were lunatics, and throw out their evidence. but all of a sudden i stumbled on the very thing, just by luck. i knew that the only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the sixth century occurred on the 21st of june, a. d. 528, o.s., and began at 3 minutes after 12 noon. i also knew that no total eclipse of the sun was due in what to me was the present year -i.e., 1879. so, if i could keep my anxiety and curiosity from eating the heart out of me for forty-eight hours, i should then find out for certain whether this boy was telling me the truth or not. wherefore, being a practical connecticut man, i now shoved this whole problem clear out of my mind till its appointed day and hour should come, in order that i might turn all my attention to the circumstances of the present moment, and be alert and ready to make the most out of them that could be made. one thing at a time, is my motto -and just play that thing for all it is worth, even if it's only two pair and a jack. i made up my mind to two things: if it was still the nineteenth century and i was among lunatics and couldn't get away, i would presently boss that asylum or know the reason why; and if, on the other hand, it was really the sixth century, all right, i didn't want any softer thing: i would boss the whole country inside of three months; for i judged i would have the start of the best-educated man in the kingdom by a matter of thirteen hundred years and upward. i'm not a man to waste time after my mind's made up and there's work on hand; so i said to the page: "now, clarence, my boy -if that might happen to be your name -i'll get you to post me up a little if you don't mind. what is the name of that apparition that brought me here?" "my master and thine? that is the good knight and great lord sir kay the seneschal, foster brother to our liege the king." "very good; go on, tell me everything." he made a long story of it; but the part that had immediate interest for me was this: he said i was sir kay's prisoner, and that in the due course of custom i would be flung into a dungeon and left there on scant commons until my friends ransomed me -unless i chanced to rot, first. i saw that the last chance had the best show, but i didn't waste any bother about that; time was too precious. the page said, further, that dinner was about ended in the great hall by this time, and that as soon as the sociability and the heavy drinking should begin, sir kay would have me in and exhibit me before king arthur and his illustrious knights seated at the table round, and would brag about his exploit in capturing me, and would probably exaggerate the facts a little, but it wouldn't be good form for me to correct him, and not over safe, either; and when i was done being exhibited, then ho for the dungeon; but he, clarence, would find a way to come and see me every now and then, and cheer me up, and help me get word to my friends. get word to my friends! i thanked him; i couldn't do less; and about this time a lackey came to say i was wanted; so clarence led me in and took me off to one side and sat down by me. well, it was a curious kind of spectacle, and interesting. it was an immense place, and rather naked -yes, and full of loud contrasts. it was very, very lofty; so lofty that the banners depending from the arched beams and girders away up there floated in a sort of twilight; there was a stone-railed gallery at each end, high up, with musicians in the one, and women, clothed in stunning colors, in the other. the floor was of big stone flags laid in black and white squares, rather battered by age and use, and needing repair. as to ornament, there wasn't any, strictly speaking; though on the walls hung some huge tapestries which were probably taxed as works of art; battle-pieces, they were, with horses shaped like those which children cut out of paper or create in gingerbread; with men on them in scale armor whose scales are represented by round holes -so that the man's coat looks as if it had been done with a biscuit-punch. there was a fireplace big enough to camp in; and its projecting sides and hood, of carved and pillared stonework, had the look of a cathedral door. along the walls stood men-at-arms, in breastplate and morion, with halberds for their only weapon -rigid as statues; and that is what they looked like. in the middle of this groined and vaulted public square was an oaken table which they called the table round. it was as large as a circus ring; and around it sat a great company of men dressed in such various and splendid colors that it hurt one's eyes to look at them. they wore their plumed hats, right along, except that whenever one addressed himself directly to the king, he lifted his hat a trifle just as he was beginning his remark. mainly they were drinking -from entire ox horns; but a few were still munching bread or gnawing beef bones. there was about an average of two dogs to one man; and these sat in expectant attitudes till a spent bone was flung to them, and then they went for it by brigades and divisions, with a rush, and there ensued a fight which filled the prospect with a tumultuous chaos of plunging heads and bodies and flashing tails, and the storm of howlings and barkings deafened all speech for the time; but that was no matter, for the dog-fight was always a bigger interest anyway; the men rose, sometimes, to observe it the better and bet on it, and the ladies and the musicians stretched themselves out over their balusters with the same object; and all broke into delighted ejaculations from time to time. in the end, the winning dog stretched himself out comfortably with his bone between his paws, and proceeded to growl over it, and gnaw it, and grease the floor with it, just as fifty others were already doing; and the rest of the court resumed their previous industries and entertainments. as a rule, the speech and behavior of these people were gracious and courtly; and i noticed that they were good and serious listeners when anybody was telling anything -i mean in a dog-fightless interval. and plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot; telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle and winning naivety, and ready and willing to listen to anybody else's lie, and believe it, too. it was hard to associate them with anything cruel or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of blood and suffering with a guileless relish that made me almost forget to shudder. i was not the only prisoner present. there were twenty or more. poor devils, many of them were maimed, hacked, carved, in a frightful way; and their hair, their faces, their clothing, were caked with black and stiffened drenchings of blood. they were suffering sharp physical pain, of course; and weariness, and hunger and thirst, no doubt; and at least none had given them the comfort of a wash, or even the poor charity of a lotion for their wounds; yet you never heard them utter a moan or a groan, or saw them show any sign of restlessness, or any disposition to complain. the thought was forced upon me: "the rascals -they have served other people so in their day; it being their own turn, now, they were not expecting any better treatment than this; so their philosophical bearing is not an outcome of mental training, intellectual fortitude, reasoning; it is mere animal training; they are white indians." chapter iii. knights of the table round mainly the round table talk was monologues -narrative accounts of the adventures in which these prisoners were captured and their friends and backers killed and stripped of their steeds and armor. as a general thing -as far as i could make out -these murderous adventures were not forays undertaken to avenge injuries, nor to settle old disputes or sudden fallings out; no, as a rule they were simply duels between strangers -duels between people who had never even been introduced to each other, and between whom existed no cause of offense whatever. many a time i had seen a couple of boys, strangers, meet by chance, and say simultaneously, "i can lick you," and go at it on the spot; but i had always imagined until now that that sort of thing belonged to children only, and was a sign and mark of childhood; but here were these big boobies sticking to it and taking pride in it clear up into full age and beyond. yet there was something very engaging about these great simple-hearted creatures, something attractive and lovable. there did not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait a fish-hook with; but you didn't seem to mind that, after a little, because you soon saw that brains were not needed in a society like that, and indeed would have marred it, hindered it, spoiled its symmetry -perhaps rendered its existence impossible. there was a fine manliness observable in almost every face; and in some a certain loftiness and sweetness that rebuked your belittling criticisms and stilled them. a most noble benignity and purity reposed in the countenance of him they called sir galahad, and likewise in the king's also; and there was majesty and greatness in the giant frame and high bearing of sir launcelot of the lake. there was presently an incident which centered the general interest upon this sir launcelot. at a sign from a sort of master of ceremonies, six or eight of the prisoners rose and came forward in a body and knelt on the floor and lifted up their hands toward the ladies' gallery and begged the grace of a word with the queen. the most conspicuously situated lady in that massed flower-bed of feminine show and finery inclined her head by way of assent, and then the spokesman of the prisoners delivered himself and his fellows into her hands for free pardon, ransom, captivity, or death, as she in her good pleasure might elect; and this, as he said, he was doing by command of sir kay the seneschal, whose prisoners they were, he having vanquished them by his single might and prowess in sturdy conflict in the field. surprise and astonishment flashed from face to face all over the house; the queen's gratified smile faded out at the name of sir kay, and she looked disappointed; and the page whispered in my ear with an accent and manner expressive of extravagant derision -"sir kay, forsooth! oh, call me pet names, dearest, call me a marine! in twice a thousand years shall the unholy invention of man labor at odds to beget the fellow to this majestic lie!" every eye was fastened with severe inquiry upon sir kay. but he was equal to the occasion. he got up and played his hand like a major -and took every trick. he said he would state the case exactly according to the facts; he would tell the simple straightforward tale, without comment of his own; "and then," said he, "if ye find glory and honor due, ye will give it unto him who is the mightiest man of his hands that ever bare shield or strake with sword in the ranks of christian battle -even him that sitteth there!" and he pointed to sir launcelot. ah, he fetched them; it was a rattling good stroke. then he went on and told how sir launcelot, seeking adventures, some brief time gone by, killed seven giants at one sweep of his sword, and set a hundred and forty-two captive maidens free; and then went further, still seeking adventures, and found him (sir kay) fighting a desperate fight against nine foreign knights, and straightway took the battle solely into his own hands, and conquered the nine; and that night sir launcelot rose quietly, and dressed him in sir kay's armor and took sir kay's horse and gat him away into distant lands, and vanquished sixteen knights in one pitched battle and thirty-four in another; and all these and the former nine he made to swear that about whitsuntide they would ride to arthur's court and yield them to queen guenever's hands as captives of sir kay the seneschal, spoil of his knightly prowess; and now here were these half dozen, and the rest would be along as soon as they might be healed of their desperate wounds. well, it was touching to see the queen blush and smile, and look embarrassed and happy, and fling furtive glances at sir launcelot that would have got him shot in arkansas, to a dead certainty. everybody praised the valor and magnanimity of sir launcelot; and as for me, i was perfectly amazed, that one man, all by himself, should have been able to beat down and capture such battalions of practiced fighters. i said as much to clarence; but this mocking featherhead only said: "an sir kay had had time to get another skin of sour wine into him, ye had seen the accompt doubled." i looked at the boy in sorrow; and as i looked i saw the cloud of a deep despondency settle upon his countenance. i followed the direction of his eye, and saw that a very old and white-bearded man, clothed in a flowing black gown, had risen and was standing at the table upon unsteady legs, and feebly swaying his ancient head and surveying the company with his watery and wandering eye. the same suffering look that was in the page's face was observable in all the faces around -the look of dumb creatures who know that they must endure and make no moan. "marry, we shall have it a again," sighed the boy; "that same old weary tale that he hath told a thousand times in the same words, and that he will tell till he dieth, every time he hath gotten his barrel full and feeleth his exaggeration-mill a-working. would god i had died or i saw this day!" "who is it?" "merlin, the mighty liar and magician, perdition singe him for the weariness he worketh with his one tale! but that men fear him for that he hath the storms and the lightnings and all the devils that be in hell at his beck and call, they would have dug his entrails out these many years ago to get at that tale and squelch it. he telleth it always in the third person, making believe he is too modest to glorify himself -maledictions light upon him, misfortune be his dole! good friend, prithee call me for evensong." the boy nestled himself upon my shoulder and pretended to go to sleep. the old man began his tale; and presently the lad was asleep in reality; so also were the dogs, and the court, the lackeys, and the files of men-at-arms. the droning voice droned on; a soft snoring arose on all sides and supported it like a deep and subdued accompaniment of wind instruments. some heads were bowed upon folded arms, some lay back with open mouths that issued unconscious music; the flies buzzed and bit, unmolested, the rats swarmed softly out from a hundred holes, and pattered about, and made themselves at home everywhere; and one of them sat up like a squirrel on the king's head and held a bit of cheese in its hands and nibbled it, and dribbled the crumbs in the king's face with naive and impudent irreverence. it was a tranquil scene, and restful to the weary eye and the jaded spirit. this was the old man's tale. he said: "right so the king and merlin departed, and went until an hermit that was a good man and a great leech. so the hermit searched all his wounds and gave him good salves; so the king was there three days, and then were his wounds well amended that he might ride and go, and so departed. and as they rode, arthur said, i have no sword. no force *, said merlin, hereby is a [* footnote from m.t.: no matter.] sword that shall be yours and i may. so they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand. lo, said merlin, yonder is that sword that i spake of. with that they saw a damsel going upon the lake. what damsel is that? said arthur. that is the lady of the lake, said merlin; and within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any on earth, and richly beseen, and this damsel will come to you anon, and then speak ye fair to her that she will give you that sword. anon withal came the damsel unto arthur and saluted him, and he her again. damsel, said arthur, what sword is that, that yonder the arm holdeth above the water? i would it were mine, for i have no sword. sir arthur king, said the damsel, that sword is mine, and if ye will give me a gift when i ask it you, ye shall have it. by my faith, said arthur, i will give you what gift ye will ask. well, said the damsel, go ye into yonder barge and row yourself to the sword, and take it and the scabbard with you, and i will ask my gift when i see my time. so sir arthur and merlin alight, and tied their horses to two trees, and so they went into the ship, and when they came to the sword that the hand held, sir arthur took it up by the handles, and took it with him. and the arm and the hand went under the water; and so they came unto the land and rode forth. and then sir arthur saw a rich pavilion. what signifieth yonder pavilion? it is the knight's pavilion, said merlin, that ye fought with last, sir pellinore, but he is out, he is not there; he hath ado with a knight of yours, that hight egglame, and they have fought together, but at the last egglame fled, and else he had been dead, and he hath chased him even to carlion, and we shall meet with him anon in the highway. that is well said, said arthur, now have i a sword, now will i wage battle with him, and be avenged on him. sir, ye shall not so, said merlin, for the knight is weary of fighting and chasing, so that ye shall have no worship to have ado with him; also, he will not lightly be matched of one knight living; and therefore it is my counsel, let him pass, for he shall do you good service in short time, and his sons, after his days. also ye shall see that day in short space ye shall be right glad to give him your sister to wed. when i see him, i will do as ye advise me, said arthur. then sir arthur looked on the sword, and liked it passing well. whether liketh you better, said merlin, the sword or the scabbard? me liketh better the sword, said arthur. ye are more unwise, said merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for while ye have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded; therefore, keep well the scabbard always with you. so they rode into carlion, and by the way they met with sir pellinore; but merlin had done such a craft that pellinore saw not arthur, and he passed by without any words. i marvel, said arthur, that the knight would not speak. sir, said merlin, he saw you not; for and he had seen you ye had not lightly departed. so they came unto carlion, whereof his knights were passing glad. and when they heard of his adventures they marveled that he would jeopard his person so alone. but all men of worship said it was merry to be under such a chieftain that would put his person in adventure as other poor knights did." chapter iv. sir dinadan the humorist it seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply and beautifully told; but then i had heard it only once, and that makes a difference; it was pleasant to the others when it was fresh, no doubt. sir dinadan the humorist was the first to awake, and he soon roused the rest with a practical joke of a sufficiently poor quality. he tied some metal mugs to a dog's tail and turned him loose, and he tore around and around the place in a frenzy of fright, with all the other dogs bellowing after him and battering and crashing against everything that came in their way and making altogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening din and turmoil; at which every man and woman of the multitude laughed till the tears flowed, and some fell out of their chairs and wallowed on the floor in ecstasy. it was just like so many children. sir dinadan was so proud of his exploit that he could not keep from telling over and over again, to weariness, how the immortal idea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with humorists of his breed, he was still laughing at it after everybody else had got through. he was so set up that he concluded to make a speech -of course a humorous speech. i think i never heard so many old played-out jokes strung together in my life. he was worse than the minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. it seemed peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before i was born, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had given me the dry gripes when i was a boy thirteen hundred years afterwards. it about convinced me that there isn't any such thing as a new joke possible. everybody laughed at these antiquities -but then they always do; i had noticed that, centuries later. however, of course the scoffer didn't laugh -i mean the boy. no, he scoffed; there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. he said the most of sir dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest were petrified. i said "petrified" was good; as i believed, myself, that the only right way to classify the majestic ages of some of those jokes was by geologic periods. but that neat idea hit the boy in a blank place, for geology hadn't been invented yet. however, i made a note of the remark, and calculated to educate the commonwealth up to it if i pulled through. it is no use to throw a good thing away merely because the market isn't ripe yet. now sir kay arose and began to fire up on his history-mill with me for fuel. it was time for me to feel serious, and i did. sir kay told how he had encountered me in a far land of barbarians, who all wore the same ridiculous garb that i did -a garb that was a work of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer secure from hurt by human hands. however he had nullified the force of the enchantment by prayer, and had killed my thirteen knights in a three hours' battle, and taken me prisoner, sparing my life in order that so strange a curiosity as i was might be exhibited to the wonder and admiration of the king and the court. he spoke of me all the time, in the blandest way, as "this prodigious giant," and "this horrible sky-towering monster," and "this tusked and taloned man-devouring ogre", and everybody took in all this bosh in the naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that there was any discrepancy between these watered statistics and me. he said that in trying to escape from him i sprang into the top of a tree two hundred cubits high at a single bound, but he dislodged me with a stone the size of a cow, which "all-to brast" the most of my bones, and then swore me to appear at arthur's court for sentence. he ended by condemning me to die at noon on the 21st; and was so little concerned about it that he stopped to yawn before he named the date. i was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, i was hardly enough in my right mind to keep the run of a dispute that sprung up as to how i had better be killed, the possibility of the killing being doubted by some, because of the enchantment in my clothes. and yet it was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slopshops. still, i was sane enough to notice this detail, to wit: many of the terms used in the most matter-offact way by this great assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen in the land would have made a comanche blush. indelicacy is too mild a term to convey the idea. however, i had read "tom jones," and "roderick random," and other books of that kind, and knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen in england had remained little or no cleaner in their talk, and in the morals and conduct which such talk implies, clear up to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into our own nineteenth century -in which century, broadly speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and real gentleman discoverable in english history -or in european history, for that matter -may be said to have made their appearance. suppose sir walter, instead of putting the conversations into the mouths of his characters, had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? we should have had talk from rebecca and ivanhoe and the soft lady rowena which would embarrass a tramp in our day. however, to the unconsciously indelicate all things are delicate. king arthur's people were not aware that they were indecent and i had presence of mind enough not to mention it. they were so troubled about my enchanted clothes that they were mightily relieved, at last, when old merlin swept the difficulty away for them with a common-sense hint. he asked them why they were so dull -why didn't it occur to them to strip me. in half a minute i was as naked as a pair of tongs! and dear, dear, to think of it: i was the only embarrassed person there. everybody discussed me; and did it as unconcernedly as if i had been a cabbage. queen guenever was as naively interested as the rest, and said she had never seen anybody with legs just like mine before. it was the only compliment i got -if it was a compliment. finally i was carried off in one direction, and my perilous clothes in another. i was shoved into a dark and narrow cell in a dungeon, with some scant remnants for dinner, some moldy straw for a bed, and no end of rats for company. chapter v. an inspiration i was so tired that even my fears were not able to keep me awake long. when i next came to myself, i seemed to have been asleep a very long time. my first thought was, "well, what an astonishing dream i've had! i reckon i've waked only just in time to keep from being hanged or drowned or burned or something.... i'll nap again till the whistle blows, and then i'll go down to the arms factory and have it out with hercules." but just then i heard the harsh music of rusty chains and bolts, a light flashed in my eyes, and that butterfly, clarence, stood before me! i gasped with surprise; my breath almost got away from me. "what!" i said, "you here yet? go along with the rest of the dream! scatter!" but he only laughed, in his light-hearted way, and fell to making fun of my sorry plight. "all right," i said resignedly, "let the dream go on; i'm in no hurry." "prithee what dream?" "what dream? why, the dream that i am in arthur's court -a person who never existed; and that i am talking to you, who are nothing but a work of the imagination." "oh, la, indeed! and is it a dream that you're to be burned to-morrow? ho-ho -answer me that!" the shock that went through me was distressing. i now began to reason that my situation was in the last degree serious, dream or no dream; for i knew by past experience of the lifelike intensity of dreams, that to be burned to death, even in a dream, would be very far from being a jest, and was a thing to be avoided, by any means, fair or foul, that i could contrive. so i said beseechingly: "ah, clarence, good boy, only friend i've got, -for you are my friend, aren't you? -don't fail me; help me to devise some way of escaping from this place!" "now do but hear thyself! escape? why, man, the corridors are in guard and keep of men-at-arms." "no doubt, no doubt. but how many, clarence? not many, i hope?" "full a score. one may not hope to escape." after a pause -hesitatingly: "and there be other reasons -and weightier." "other ones? what are they?" "well, they say -oh, but i daren't, indeed daren't!" "why, poor lad, what is the matter? why do you blench? why do you tremble so?" "oh, in sooth, there is need! i do want to tell you, but --" "come, come, be brave, be a man -speak out, there's a good lad!" he hesitated, pulled one way by desire, the other way by fear; then he stole to the door and peeped out, listening; and finally crept close to me and put his mouth to my ear and told me his fearful news in a whisper, and with all the cowering apprehension of one who was venturing upon awful ground and speaking of things whose very mention might be freighted with death. "merlin, in his malice, has woven a spell about this dungeon, and there bides not the man in these kingdoms that would be desperate enough to essay to cross its lines with you! now god pity me, i have told it! ah, be kind to me, be merciful to a poor boy who means thee well; for an thou betray me i am lost!" i laughed the only really refreshing laugh i had had for some time; and shouted: "merlin has wrought a spell! merlin, forsooth! that cheap old humbug, that maundering old ass? bosh, pure bosh, the silliest bosh in the world! why, it does seem to me that of all the childish, idiotic, chuckle-headed, chicken-livered superstitions that ev -oh, damn merlin!" but clarence had slumped to his knees before i had half finished, and he was like to go out of his mind with fright. "oh, beware! these are awful words! any moment these walls may crumble upon us if you say such things. oh call them back before it is too late!" now this strange exhibition gave me a good idea and set me to thinking. if everybody about here was so honestly and sincerely afraid of merlin's pretended magic as clarence was, certainly a superior man like me ought to be shrewd enough to contrive some way to take advantage of such a state of things. i went on thinking, and worked out a plan. then i said: "get up. pull yourself together; look me in the eye. do you know why i laughed?" "no -but for our blessed lady's sake, do it no more." "well, i'll tell you why i laughed. because i'm a magician myself." "thou!" the boy recoiled a step, and caught his breath, for the thing hit him rather sudden; but the aspect which he took on was very, very respectful. i took quick note of that; it indicated that a humbug didn't need to have a reputation in this asylum; people stood ready to take him at his word, without that. i resumed. "i've know merlin seven hundred years, and he --" "seven hun --" "don't interrupt me. he has died and come alive again thirteen times, and traveled under a new name every time: smith, jones, robinson, jackson, peters, haskins, merlin -a new alias every time he turns up. i knew him in egypt three hundred years ago; i knew him in india five hundred years ago -he is always blethering around in my way, everywhere i go; he makes me tired. he don't amount to shucks, as a magician; knows some of the old common tricks, but has never got beyond the rudiments, and never will. he is well enough for the provinces-one-night stands and that sort of thing, you know -but dear me, he oughtn't to set up for an expert -anyway not where there's a real artist. now look here, clarence, i am going to stand your friend, right along, and in return you must be mine. i want you to do me a favor. i want you to get word to the king that i am a magician myself -and the supreme grand high-yu-muckamuck and head of the tribe, at that; and i want him to be made to understand that i am just quietly arranging a little calamity here that will make the fur fly in these realms if sir kay's project is carried out and any harm comes to me. will you get that to the king for me?" the poor boy was in such a state that he could hardly answer me. it was pitiful to see a creature so terrified, so unnerved, so demoralized. but he promised everything; and on my side he made me promise over and over again that i would remain his friend, and never turn against him or cast any enchantments upon him. then he worked his way out, staying himself with his hand along the wall, like a sick person. presently this thought occurred to me: how heedless i have been! when the boy gets calm, he will wonder why a great magician like me should have begged a boy like him to help me get out of this place; he will put this and that together, and will see that i am a humbug. i worried over that heedless blunder for an hour, and called myself a great many hard names, meantime. but finally it occurred to me all of a sudden that these animals didn't reason; that they never put this and that together; that all their talk showed that they didn't know a discrepancy when they saw it. i was at rest, then. but as soon as one is at rest, in this world, off he goes on something else to worry about. it occurred to me that i had made another blunder: i had sent the boy off to alarm his betters with a threat -i intending to invent a calamity at my leisure; now the people who are the readiest and eagerest and willingest to swallow miracles are the very ones who are hungriest to see you perform them; suppose i should be called on for a sample? suppose i should be asked to name my calamity? yes, i had made a blunder; i ought to have invented my calamity first. "what shall i do? what can i say, to gain a little time?" i was in trouble again; in the deepest kind of trouble:... "there's a footstep! -they're coming. if i had only just a moment to think.... good, i've got it. i'm all right." you see, it was the eclipse. it came into my mind in the nick of time, how columbus, or cortez, or one of those people, played an eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and i saw my chance. i could play it myself, now, and it wouldn't be any plagiarism, either, because i should get it in nearly a thousand years ahead of those parties. clarence came in, subdued, distressed, and said: "i hasted the message to our liege the king, and straightway he had me to his presence. he was frighted even to the marrow, and was minded to give order for your instant enlargement, and that you be clothed in fine raiment and lodged as befitted one so great; but then came merlin and spoiled all; for he persuaded the king that you are mad, and know not whereof you speak; and said your threat is but foolishness and idle vaporing. they disputed long, but in the end, merlin, scoffing, said, 'wherefore hath he not named his brave calamity? verily it is because he cannot.' this thrust did in a most sudden sort close the king's mouth, and he could offer naught to turn the argument; and so, reluctant, and full loth to do you the discourtesy, he yet prayeth you to consider his perplexed case, as noting how the matter stands, and name the calamity -if so be you have determined the nature of it and the time of its coming. oh, prithee delay not; to delay at such a time were to double and treble the perils that already compass thee about. oh, be thou wise -name the calamity!" i allowed silence to accumulate while i got my impressiveness together, and then said: "how long have i been shut up in this hole?" "ye were shut up when yesterday was well spent it is 9 of the morning now." "no! then i have slept well, sure enough. nine in the morning now! and yet it is the very complexion of midnight, to a shade. this is the 20th, then?" "the 20th -yes." "and i am to be burned alive to-morrow." the boy shuddered. "at what hour?" "at high noon." "now then, i will tell you what to say." i paused, and stood over that cowering lad a whole minute in awful silence; then, in a voice deep, measured, charged with doom, i began, and rose by dramatically graded stages to my colossal climax, which i delivered in as sublime and noble a way as ever i did such a thing in my life: "go back and tell the king that at that hour i will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; i will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die, to the last man!" i had to carry the boy out myself, he sunk into such a collapse. i handed him over to the soldiers, and went back. chapter vi. the eclipse in the stillness and the darkness, realization soon began to supplement knowledge. the mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but when you come to realize your fact, it takes on color. it is all the difference between hearing of a man being stabbed to the heart, and seeing it done. in the stillness and the darkness, the knowledge that i was in deadly danger took to itself deeper and deeper meaning all the time; a something which was realization crept inch by inch through my veins and turned me cold. but it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done. when my rally came, it came with a bound. i said to myself that my eclipse would be sure to save me, and make me the greatest man in the kingdom besides; and straightway my mercury went up to the top of the tube, and my solicitudes all vanished. i was as happy a man as there was in the world. i was even impatient for tomorrow to come, i so wanted to gather in that great triumph and be the center of all the nation's wonder and reverence. besides, in a business way it would be the making of me; i knew that. meantime there was one thing which had got pushed into the background of my mind. that was the halfconviction that when the nature of my proposed calamity should be reported to those superstitious people, it would have such an effect that they would want to compromise. so, by and by when i heard footsteps coming, that thought was recalled to me, and i said to myself, "as sure as anything, it's the compromise. well, if it is good, all right, i will accept; but if it isn't, i mean to stand my ground and play my hand for all it is worth." the door opened, and some men-at-arms appeared. the leader said: "the stake is ready. come!" the stake! the strength went out of me, and i almost fell down. it is hard to get one's breath at such a time, such lumps come into one's throat, and such gaspings; but as soon as i could speak, i said: "but this is a mistake -the execution is tomorrow." "order changed; been set forward a day. haste thee!" i was lost. there was no help for me. i was dazed, stupefied; i had no command over myself, i only wandered purposely about, like one out of his mind; so the soldiers took hold of me, and pulled me along with them, out of the cell and along the maze of underground corridors, and finally into the fierce glare of daylight and the upper world. as we stepped into the vast enclosed court of the castle i got a shock; for the first thing i saw was the stake, standing in the center, and near it the piled fagots and a monk. on all four sides of the court the seated multitudes rose rank above rank, forming sloping terraces that were rich with color. the king and the queen sat in their thrones, the most conspicuous figures there, of course. to note all this, occupied but a second. the next second clarence had slipped from some place of concealment and was pouring news into my ear, his eyes beaming with triumph and gladness. he said: "'tis through me the change was wrought! and main hard have i worked to do it, too. but when i revealed to them the calamity in store, and saw how mighty was the terror it did engender, then saw i also that this was the time to strike! wherefore i diligently pretended, unto this and that and the other one, that your power against the sun could not reach its full until the morrow; and so if any would save the sun and the world, you must be slain to-day, while your enchantments are but in the weaving and lack potency. odsbodikins, it was but a dull lie, a most indifferent invention, but you should have seen them seize it and swallow it, in the frenzy of their fright, as it were salvation sent from heaven; and all the while was i laughing in my sleeve the one moment, to see them so cheaply deceived, and glorifying god the next, that he was content to let the meanest of his creatures be his instrument to the saving of thy life. ah how happy has the matter sped! you will not need to do the sun a real hurt -ah, forget not that, on your soul forget it not! only make a little darkness -only the littlest little darkness, mind, and cease with that. it will be sufficient. they will see that i spoke falsely, -being ignorant, as they will fancy -and with the falling of the first shadow of that darkness you shall see them go mad with fear; and they will set you free and make you great! go to thy triumph, now! but remember -ah, good friend, i implore thee remember my supplication, and do the blessed sun no hurt. for my sake, thy true friend." i choked out some words through my grief and misery; as much as to say i would spare the sun; for which the lad's eyes paid me back with such deep and loving gratitude that i had not the heart to tell him his good-hearted foolishness had ruined me and sent me to my death. as the soldiers assisted me across the court the stillness was so profound that if i had been blindfold i should have supposed i was in a solitude instead of walled in by four thousand people. there was not a movement perceptible in those masses of humanity; they were as rigid as stone images, and as pale; and dread sat upon every countenance. this hush continued while i was being chained to the stake; it still continued while the fagots were carefully and tediously piled about my ankles, my knees, my thighs, my body. then there was a pause, and a deeper hush, if possible, and a man knelt down at my feet with a blazing torch; the multitude strained forward, gazing, and parting slightly from their seats without knowing it; the monk raised his hands above my head, and his eyes toward the blue sky, and began some words in latin; in this attitude he droned on and on, a little while, and then stopped. i waited two or three moments; then looked up; he was standing there petrified. with a common impulse the multitude rose slowly up and stared into the sky. i followed their eyes, as sure as guns, there was my eclipse beginning! the life went boiling through my veins; i was a new man! the rim of black spread slowly into the sun's disk, my heart beat higher and higher, and still the assemblage and the priest stared into the sky, motionless. i knew that this gaze would be turned upon me, next. when it was, l was ready. i was in one of the most grand attitudes i ever struck, with my arm stretched up pointing to the sun. it was a noble effect. you could see the shudder sweep the mass like a wave. two shouts rang out, one close upon the heels of the other: "apply the torch!" "i forbid it!" the one was from merlin, the other from the king. merlin started from his place -to apply the torch himself, i judged. i said: "stay where you are. if any man moves -even the king -before i give him leave, i will blast him with thunder, i will consume him with lightnings!" the multitude sank meekly into their seats, and i was just expecting they would. merlin hesitated a moment or two, and i was on pins and needles during that little while. then he sat down, and i took a good breath; for i knew i was master of the situation now. the king said: "be merciful, fair sir, and essay no further in this perilous matter, lest disaster follow. it was reported to us that your powers could not attain unto their full strength until the morrow; but --" "your majesty thinks the report may have been a lie? it was a lie." that made an immense effect; up went appealing hands everywhere, and the king was assailed with a storm of supplications that i might be bought off at any price, and the calamity stayed. the king was eager to comply. he said: "name any terms, reverend sir, even to the halving of my kingdom; but banish this calamity, spare the sun!" my fortune was made. i would have taken him up in a minute, but i couldn't stop an eclipse; the thing was out of the question. so i asked time to consider. the king said: "how long -ah, how long, good sir? be merciful; look, it groweth darker, moment by moment. prithee how long?" "not long. half an hour -maybe an hour." there were a thousand pathetic protests, but i couldn't shorten up any, for i couldn't remember how long a total eclipse lasts. i was in a puzzled condition, anyway, and wanted to think. something was wrong about that eclipse, and the fact was very unsettling. if this wasn't the one i was after, how was i to tell whether this was the sixth century, or nothing but a dream? dear me, if i could only prove it was the latter! here was a glad new hope. if the boy was right about the date, and this was surely the 20th, it wasn't the sixth century. i reached for the monk's sleeve, in considerable excitement, and asked him what day of the month it was. hang him, he said it was the twenty-first! it made me turn cold to hear him. i begged him not to make any mistake about it; but he was sure; he knew it was the 21st. so, that feather-headed boy had botched things again! the time of the day was right for the eclipse; i had seen that for myself, in the beginning, by the dial that was near by. yes, i was in king arthur's court, and i might as well make the most out of it i could. the darkness was steadily growing, the people becoming more and more distressed. i now said: "i have reflected, sir king. for a lesson, i will let this darkness proceed, and spread night in the world; but whether i blot out the sun for good, or restore it, shall rest with you. these are the terms, to wit: you shall remain king over all your dominions, and receive all the glories and honors that belong to the kingship; but you shall appoint me your perpetual minister and executive, and give me for my services one per cent. of such actual increase of revenue over and above its present amount as i may succeed in creating for the state. if i can't live on that, i sha'n't ask anybody to give me a lift. is it satisfactory?" there was a prodigious roar of applause, and out of the midst of it the king's voice rose, saying: "away with his bonds, and set him free! and do him homage, high and low, rich and poor, for he is become the king's right hand, is clothed with power and authority, and his seat is upon the highest step of the throne! now sweep away this creeping night, and bring the light and cheer again, that all the world may bless thee." but i said: "that a common man should be shamed before the world, is nothing; but it were dishonor to the king if any that saw his minister naked should not also see him delivered from his shame. if i might ask that my clothes be brought again --" "they are not meet," the king broke in. "fetch raiment of another sort; clothe him like a prince!" my idea worked. i wanted to keep things as they were till the eclipse was total, otherwise they would be trying again to get me to dismiss the darkness, and of course i couldn't do it. sending for the clothes gained some delay, but not enough. so i had to make another excuse. i said it would be but natural if the king should change his mind and repent to some extent of what he had done under excitement; therefore i would let the darkness grow a while, and if at the end of a reasonable time the king had kept his mind the same, the darkness should be dismissed. neither the king nor anybody else was satisfied with that arrangement, but i had to stick to my point. it grew darker and darker and blacker and blacker, while i struggled with those awkward sixth-century clothes. it got to be pitch dark, at last, and the multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold uncanny night breezes fan through the place and see the stars come out and twinkle in the sky. at last the eclipse was total, and i was very glad of it, but everybody else was in misery; which was quite natural. i said: "the king, by his silence, still stands to the terms." then i lifted up my hands -stood just so a moment -then i said, with the most awful solemnity: "let the enchantment dissolve and pass harmless away!" there was no response, for a moment, in that deep darkness and that graveyard hush. but when the silver rim of the sun pushed itself out, a moment or two later, the assemblage broke loose with a vast shout and came pouring down like a deluge to smother me with blessings and gratitude; and clarence was not the last of the wash, to be sure. chapter vii. merlin's tower inasmuch as i was now the second personage in the kingdom, as far as political power and authorty were concerned, much was made of me. my raiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold, and by consequence was very showy, also uncomfortable. but habit would soon reconcile me to my clothes; i was aware of that. i was given the choicest suite of apartments in the castle, after the king's. they were aglow with loud-colored silken hangings, but the stone floors had nothing but rushes on them for a carpet, and they were misfit rushes at that, being not all of one breed. as for conveniences, properly speaking, there weren't any. i mean little conveniences; it is the little conveniences that make the real comfort of life. the big oaken chairs, graced with rude carvings, were well enough, but that was the stopping place. there was no soap, no matches, no looking-glass -except a metal one, about as powerful as a pail of water. and not a chromo. i had been used to chromos for years, and i saw now that without my suspecting it a passion for art had got worked into the fabric of my being, and was become a part of me. it made me homesick to look around over this proud and gaudy but heartless barrenness and remember that in our house in east hartford, all unpretending as it was, you couldn't go into a room but you would find an insurance-chromo, or at least a three-color god-bless-our-home over the door; and in the parlor we had nine. but here, even in my grand room of state, there wasn't anything in the nature of a picture except a thing the size of a bedquilt, which was either woven or knitted (it had darned places in it), and nothing in it was the right color or the right shape; and as for proportions, even raphael himself couldn't have botched them more formidably, after all his practice on those nightmares they call his "celebrated hampton court cartoons." raphael was a bird. we had several of his chromos; one was his "miraculous draught of fishes," where he puts in a miracle of his own -puts three men into a canoe which wouldn't have held a dog without upsetting. i always admired to study r.'s art, it was so fresh and unconventional. there wasn't even a bell or a speaking-tube in the castle. i had a great many servants, and those that were on duty lolled in the anteroom; and when i wanted one of them i had to go and call for him. there was no gas, there were no candles; a bronze dish half full of boarding-house butter with a blazing rag floating in it was the thing that produced what was regarded as light. a lot of these hung along the walls and modified the dark, just toned it down enough to make it dismal. if you went out at night, your servants carried torches. there were no books, pens, paper or ink, and no glass in the openings they believed to be windows. it is a little thing -glass is -until it is absent, then it becomes a big thing. but perhaps the worst of all was, that there wasn't any sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. i saw that i was just another robinson crusoe cast away on an uninhabited island, with no society but some more or less tame animals, and if i wanted to make life bearable i must do as he did -invent, contrive, create, reorganize things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy. well, that was in my line. one thing troubled me along at first -the immense interest which people took in me. apparently the whole nation wanted a look at me. it soon transpired that the eclipse had scared the british world almost to death; that while it lasted the whole country, from one end to the other, was in a pitiable state of panic, and the churches, hermitages, and monkeries overflowed with praying and weeping poor creatures who thought the end of the world was come. then had followed the news that the producer of this awful event was a stranger, a mighty magician at arthur's court; that he could have blown out the sun like a candle, and was just going to do it when his mercy was purchased, and he then dissolved his enchantments, and was now recognized and honored as the man who had by his unaided might saved the globe from destruction and its peoples from extinction. now if you consider that everybody believed that, and not only believed it, but never even dreamed of doubting it, you will easily understand that there was not a person in all britain that would not have walked fifty miles to get a sight of me. of course i was all the talk -all other subjects were dropped; even the king became suddenly a person of minor interest and notoriety. within twentyfour hours the delegations began to arrive, and from that time onward for a fortnight they kept coming. the village was crowded, and all the countryside. i had to go out a dozen times a day and show myself to these reverent and awe-stricken multitudes. it came to be a great burden, as to time and trouble, but of course it was at the same time compensatingly agreeable to be so celebrated and such a center of homage. it turned brer merlin green with envy and spite, which was a great satisfaction to me. but there was one thing i couldn't understand -nobody had asked for an autograph. i spoke to clarence about it. by george! i had to explain to him what it was. then he said nobody in the country could read or write but a few dozen priests. land! think of that. there was another thing that troubled me a little. those multitudes presently began to agitate for another miracle. that was natural. to be able to carry back to their far homes the boast that they had seen the man who could command the sun, riding in the heavens, and be obeyed, would make them great in the eyes of their neighbors, and envied by them all; but to be able to also say they had seen him work a miracle themselves -why, people would come a distance to see them. the pressure got to be pretty strong. there was going to be an eclipse of the moon, and i knew the date and hour, but it was too far away. two years. i would have given a good deal for license to hurry it up and use it now when there was a big market for it. it seemed a great pity to have it wasted so, and come lagging along at a time when a body wouldn't have any use for it, as like as not. if it had been booked for only a month away, i could have sold it short; but, as matters stood, i couldn't seem to cipher out any way to make it do me any good, so i gave up trying. next, clarence found that old merlin was making himself busy on the sly among those people. he was spreading a report that i was a humbug, and that the reason i didn't accommodate the people with a miracle was because i couldn't. i saw that i must do something. i presently thought out a plan. by my authority as executive i threw merlin into prison -the same cell i had occupied myself. then i gave public notice by herald and trumpet that i should be busy with affairs of state for a fortnight, but about the end of that time i would take a moment's leisure and blow up merlin's stone tower by fires from heaven; in the meantime, whoso listened to evil reports about me, let him beware. furthermore, i would perform but this one miracle at this time, and no more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured, i would turn the murmurers into horses, and make them useful. quiet ensued. i took clarence into my confidence, to a certain degree, and we went to work privately. i told him that this was a sort of miracle that required a trifle of preparation, and that it would be sudden death to ever talk about these preparations to anybody. that made his mouth safe enough. clandestinely we made a few bushels of first-rate blasting powder, and i superintended my armorers while they constructed a lightningrod and some wires. this old stone tower was very massive -and rather ruinous, too, for it was roman, and four hundred years old. yes, and handsome, after a rude fashion, and clothed with ivy from base to summit, as with a shirt of scale mail. it stood on a lonely eminence, in good view from the castle, and about half a mile away. working by night, we stowed the powder in the tower -dug stones out, on the inside, and buried the powder in the walls themselves, which were fifteen feet thick at the base. we put in a peck at a time, in a dozen places. we could have blown up the tower of london with these charges. when the thirteenth night was come we put up our lightning-rod, bedded it in one of the batches of powder, and ran wires from it to the other batches. everybody had shunned that locality from the day of my proclamation, but on the morning of the fourteenth i thought best to warn the people, through the heralds, to keep clear away -a quarter of a mile away. then added, by command, that at some time during the twenty-four hours i would consummate the miracle, but would first give a brief notice; by flags on the castle towers if in the daytime, by torch-baskets in the same places if at night. thunder-showers had been tolerably frequent of late, and i was not much afraid of a failure; still, i shouldn't have cared for a delay of a day or two; i should have explained that i was busy with affairs of state yet, and the people must wait. of course, we had a blazing sunny day -almost the first one without a cloud for three weeks; things always happen so. i kept secluded, and watched the weather. clarence dropped in from time to time and said the public excitement was growing and growing all the time, and the whole country filling up with human masses as far as one could see from the battlements. at last the wind sprang up and a cloud appeared -in the right quarter, too, and just at nightfall. for a little while i watched that distant cloud spread and blacken, then i judged it was time for me to appear. i ordered the torch-baskets to be lit, and merlin liberated and sent to me. a quarter of an hour later i ascended the parapet and there found the king and the court assembled and gazing off in the darkness toward merlin's tower. already the darkness was so heavy that one could not see far; these people and the old turrets, being partly in deep shadow and partly in the red glow from the great torch-baskets overhead, made a good deal of a picture. merlin arrived in a gloomy mood. i said: "you wanted to burn me alive when i had not done you any harm, and latterly you have been trying to injure my professional reputation. therefore i am going to call down fire and blow up your tower, but it is only fair to give you a chance; now if you think you can break my enchantments and ward off the fires, step to the bat, it's your innings." "i can, fair sir, and i will. doubt it not." he drew an imaginary circle on the stones of the roof, and burnt a pinch of powder in it, which sent up a small cloud of aromatic smoke, whereat everybody fell back and began to cross themselves and get uncomfortable. then he began to mutter and make passes in the air with his hands. he worked himself up slowly and gradually into a sort of frenzy, and got to thrashing around with his arms like the sails of a windmill. by this time the storm had about reached us; the gusts of wind were flaring the torches and making the shadows swash about, the first heavy drops of rain were falling, the world abroad was black as pitch, the lightning began to wink fitfully. of course, my rod would be loading itself now. in fact, things were imminent. so i said: "you have had time enough. i have given you every advantage, and not interfered. it is plain your magic is weak. it is only fair that i begin now." i made about three passes in the air, and then there was an awful crash and that old tower leaped into the sky in chunks, along with a vast volcanic fountain of fire that turned night to noonday, and showed a thousand acres of human beings groveling on the ground in a general collapse of consternation. well, it rained mortar and masonry the rest of the week. this was the report; but probably the facts would have modified it. it was an effective miracle. the great bothersome temporary population vanished. there were a good many thousand tracks in the mud the next morning, but they were all outward bound. if i had advertised another miracle i couldn't have raised an audience with a sheriff. merlin's stock was flat. the king wanted to stop his wages; he even wanted to banish him, but i interfered. i said he would be useful to work the weather, and attend to small matters like that, and i would give him a lift now and then when his poor little parlormagic soured on him. there wasn't a rag of his tower left, but i had the government rebuild it for him, and advised him to take boarders; but he was too hightoned for that. and as for being grateful, he never even said thank you. he was a rather hard lot, take him how you might; but then you couldn't fairly expect a man to be sweet that had been set back so. chapter viii. the boss to be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have the on-looking world consent to it is a finer. the tower episode solidified my power, and made it impregnable. if any were perchance disposed to be jealous and critical before that, they experienced a change of heart, now. there was not any one in the kingdom who would have considered it good judgment to meddle with my matters. i was fast getting adjusted to my situation and circumstances. for a time, i used to wake up, mornings, and smile at my "dream," and listen for the colt's factory whistle; but that sort of thing played itself out, gradually, and at last i was fully able to realize that i was actually living in the sixth century, and in arthur's court, not a lunatic asylum. after that, i was just as much at home in that century as i could have been in any other; and as for preference, i wouldn't have traded it for the twentieth. look at the opportunities here for a man of knowledge, brains, pluck, and enterprise to sail in and grow up with the country. the grandest field that ever was; and all my own; not a competitor; not a man who wasn't a baby to me in acquirements and capacities; whereas, what would i amount to in the twentieth century? i should be foreman of a factory, that is about all; and could drag a seine down street any day and catch a hundred better men than myself. what a jump i had made! i couldn't keep from thinking about it, and contemplating it, just as one does who has struck oil. there was nothing back of me that could approach it, unless it might be joseph's case; and joseph's only approached it, it didn't equal it, quite. for it stands to reason that as joseph's splendid financial ingenuities advantaged nobody but the king, the general public must have regarded him with a good deal of disfavor, whereas i had done my entire public a kindness in sparing the sun, and was popular by reason of it. i was no shadow of a king; i was the substance; the king himself was the shadow. my power was colossal; and it was not a mere name, as such things have generally been, it was the genuine article. i stood here, at the very spring and source of the second great period of the world's history; and could see the trickling stream of that history gather and deepen and broaden, and roll its mighty tides down the far centuries; and i could note the upspringing of adventurers like myself in the shelter of its long array of thrones: de montforts, gavestons, mortimers, villierses; the war-making, campaign-directing wantons of france, and charles the second's scepter-wielding drabs; but nowhere in the procession was my fullsized fellow visible. i was a unique; and glad to know that that fact could not be dislodged or challenged for thirteen centuries and a half, for sure. yes, in power i was equal to the king. at the same time there was another power that was a trifle stronger than both of us put together. that was the church. i do not wish to disguise that fact. i couldn't, if i wanted to. but never mind about that, now; it will show up, in its proper place, later on. it didn't cause me any trouble in the beginning -at least any of consequence. well, it was a curious country, and full of interest. and the people! they were the quaintest and simplest and trustingest race; why, they were nothing but rabbits. it was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! why, dear me,any kind of royalty, howsoever modified, any kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody else tells you. it is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies -a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions. the most of king arthur's british nation were slaves, pure and simple, and bore that name, and wore the iron collar on their necks; and the rest were slaves in fact, but without the name; they imagined themselves men and freemen, and called themselves so. the truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. and for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor. inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe and examine. i had mine, the king and his people had theirs. in both cases they flowed in ruts worn deep by time and habit, and the man who should have proposed to divert them by reason and argument would have had a long contract on his hands. for instance, those people had inherited the idea that all men without title and a long pedigree, whether they had great natural gifts and acquirements or hadn't, were creatures of no more consideration than so many animals, bugs, insects; whereas i had inherited the idea that human daws who can consent to masquerade in the peacock-shams of inherited dignities and unearned titles, are of no good but to be laughed at. the way i was looked upon was odd, but it was natural. you know how the keeper and the public regard the elephant in the menagerie: well, that is the idea. they are full of admiration of his vast bulk and his prodigious strength; they speak with pride of the fact that he can do a hundred marvels which are far and away beyond their own powers; and they speak with the same pride of the fact that in his wrath he is able to drive a thousand men before him. but does that make him one of them? no; the raggedest tramp in the pit would smile at the idea. he couldn't comprehend it; couldn't take it in; couldn't in any remote way conceive of it. well, to the king, the nobles, and all the nation, down to the very slaves and tramps, i was just that kind of an elephant, and nothing more. i was admired, also feared; but it was as an animal is admired and feared. the animal is not reverenced, neither was i; i was not even respected. i had no pedigree, no inherited title; so in the king's and nobles' eyes i was mere dirt; the people regarded me with wonder and awe, but there was no reverence mixed with it; through the force of inherited ideas they were not able to conceive of anything being entitled to that except pedigree and lordship. there you see the hand of that awful power, the roman catholic church. in two or three little centuries it had converted a nation of men to a nation of worms. before the day of the church's supremacy in the world, men were men, and held their heads up, and had a man's pride and spirit and independence; and what of greatness and position a person got, he got mainly by achievement, not by birth. but then the church came to the front, with an axe to grind; and she was wise, subtle, and knew more than one way to skin a cat -or a nation; she invented "divine right of kings," and propped it all around, brick by brick, with the beatitudes -wrenching them from their good purpose to make them fortify an evil one; she preached (to the commoner) humility, obedience to superiors, the beauty of self-sacrifice; she preached (to the commoner) meekness under insult; preached (still to the commoner, always to the commoner) patience, meanness of spirit, non-resistance under oppression; and she introduced heritable ranks and aristocracies, and taught all the christian populations of the earth to bow down to them and worship them. even down to my birth-century that poison was still in the blood of christendom, and the best of english commoners was still content to see his inferiors impudently continuing to hold a number of positions, such as lordships and the throne, to which the grotesque laws of his country did not allow him to aspire; in fact, he was not merely contented with this strange condition of things, he was even able to persuade himself that he was proud of it. it seems to show that there isn't anything you can't stand, if you are only born and bred to it. of course that taint, that reverence for rank and title, had been in our american blood, too -i know that; but when i left america it had disappeared -at least to all intents and purposes. the remnant of it was restricted to the dudes and dudesses. when a disease has worked its way down to that level, it may fairly be said to be out of the system. but to return to my anomalous position in king arthur's kingdom. here i was, a giant among pigmies, a man among children, a master intelligence among intellectual moles: by all rational measurement the one and only actually great man in that whole british world; and yet there and then, just as in the remote england of my birth-time, the sheep-witted earl who could claim long descent from a king's leman, acquired at second-hand from the slums of london, was a better man than i was. such a personage was fawned upon in arthur's realm and reverently looked up to by everybody, even though his dispositions were as mean as his intelligence, and his morals as base as his lineage. there were times when he could sit down in the king's presence, but i couldn't. i could have got a title easily enough, and that would have raised me a large step in everybody's eyes; even in the king's, the giver of it. but i didn't ask for it; and i declined it when it was offered. i couldn't have enjoyed such a thing with my notions; and it wouldn't have been fair, anyway, because as far back as i could go, our tribe had always been short of the bar sinister. i couldn't have felt really and satisfactorily fine and proud and set-up over any title except one that should come from the nation itself, the only legitimate source; and such an one i hoped to win; and in the course of years of honest and honorable endeavor, i did win it and did wear it with a high and clean pride. this title fell casually from the lips of a blacksmith, one day, in a village, was caught up as a happy thought and tossed from mouth to mouth with a laugh and an affirmative vote; in ten days it had swept the kingdom, and was become as familiar as the king's name. i was never known by any other designation afterward, whether in the nation's talk or in grave debate upon matters of state at the council-board of the sovereign. this title, translated into modern speech, would be the boss. elected by the nation. that suited me. and it was a pretty high title. there were very few the's, and i was one of them. if you spoke of the duke, or the earl, or the bishop, how could anybody tell which one you meant? but if you spoke of the king or the queen or the boss, it was different. well, i liked the king, and as king i respected him -respected the office; at least respected it as much as i was capable of respecting any unearned supremacy; but as men i looked down upon him and his nobles -privately. and he and they liked me, and respected my office; but as an animal, without birth or sham title, they looked down upon me -and were not particularly private about it, either. i didn't charge for my opinion about them, and they didn't charge for their opinion about me: the account was square, the books balanced, everybody was satisfied. chapter ix. the tournament they were always having grand tournaments there at camelot; and very stirring and picturesque and ridiculous human bull-fights they were, too, but just a little wearisome to the practical mind. however, i was generally on hand -for two reasons: a man must not hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and his community have at heart if he would be liked -especially as a statesman; and both as business man and statesman i wanted to study the tournament and see if i couldn't invent an improvement on it. that reminds me to remark, in passing, that the very first official thing i did, in my administration -and it was on the very first day of it, too -was to start a patent office; for i knew that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn't travel any way but sideways or backways. things ran along, a tournament nearly every week; and now and then the boys used to want me to take a hand -i mean sir launcelot and the rest -but i said i would by and by; no hurry yet, and too much government machinery to oil up and set to rights and start a-going. we had one tournament which was continued from day to day during more than a week, and as many as five hundred knights took part in it, from first to last. they were weeks gathering. they came on horseback from everywhere; from the very ends of the country, and even from beyond the sea; and many brought ladies, and all brought squires and troops of servants. it was a most gaudy and gorgeous crowd, as to costumery, and very characteristic of the country and the time, in the way of high animal spirits, innocent indecencies of language, and happy-hearted indifference to morals. it was fight or look on, all day and every day; and sing, gamble, dance, carouse half the night every night. they had a most noble good time. you never saw such people. those banks of beautiful ladies, shining in their barbaric splendors, would see a knight sprawl from his horse in the lists with a lanceshaft the thickness of your ankle clean through him and the blood spouting, and instead of fainting they would clap their hands and crowd each other for a better view; only sometimes one would dive into her handkerchief, and look ostentatiously broken-hearted, and then you could lay two to one that there was a scandal there somewhere and she was afraid the public hadn't found it out. the noise at night would have been annoying to me ordinarily, but i didn't mind it in the present circumstances, because it kept me from hearing the quacks detaching legs and arms from the day's cripples. they ruined an uncommon good old cross-cut saw for me, and broke the saw-buck, too, but i let it pass. and as for my axe -well, i made up my mind that the next time i lent an axe to a surgeon i would pick my century. i not only watched this tournament from day to day, but detailed an intelligent priest from my department of public morals and agriculture, and ordered him to report it; for it was my purpose by and by, when i should have gotten the people along far enough, to start a newspaper. the first thing you want in a new country, is a patent office; then work up your school system; and after that, out with your paper. a newspaper has its faults, and plenty of them, but no matter, it's hark from the tomb for a dead nation, and don't you forget it. you can't resurrect a dead nation without it; there isn't any way. so i wanted to sample things, and be finding out what sort of reportermaterial i might be able to rake together out of the sixth century when i should come to need it. well, the priest did very well, considering. he got in all the details, and that is a good thing in a local item: you see, he had kept books for the undertakerdepartment of his church when he was younger, and there, you know, the money's in the details; the more details, the more swag: bearers, mutes, candles, prayers -everything counts; and if the bereaved don't buy prayers enough you mark up your candles with a forked pencil, and your bill shows up all right. and he had a good knack at getting in the complimentary thing here and there about a knight that was likely to advertise -no, i mean a knight that had influence; and he also had a neat gift of exaggeration, for in his time he had kept door for a pious hermit who lived in a sty and worked miracles. of course this novice's report lacked whoop and crash and lurid description, and therefore wanted the true ring; but its antique wording was quaint and sweet and simple, and full of the fragrances and flavors of the time, and these little merits made up in a measure for its more important lacks. here is an extract from it: then sir brian de les isles and grummore grummorsum, knights of the castle, encountered with sir aglovale and sir tor, and sir tor smote down sir grummore grummorsum to the earth. then came sir carados of the dolorous tower, and sir turquine, knights of the castle, and there encountered with them sir percivale de galis and sir lamorak de galis, that were two brethren, and there encountered sir percivale with sir carados, and either brake their spears unto their hands, and then sir turquine with sir lamorak, and either of them smote down other, horse and all, to the earth, and either parties rescued other and horsed them again. and sir arnold, and sir gauter, knights of the castle, encountered with sir brandiles and sir kay, and these four knights encountered mightily, and brake their spears to their hands. then came sir pertolope from the castle, and there encountered with him sir lionel, and there sir pertolope the green knight smote down sir lionel, brother to sir launcelot. all this was marked by noble heralds, who bare him best, and their names. then sir bleobaris brake his spear upon sir gareth, but of that stroke sir bleobaris fell to the earth. when sir galihodin saw that, he bad sir gareth keep him, and sir gareth smote him to the earth. then sir galihud gat a spear to avenge his brother, and in the same wise sir gareth served him, and sir dinadan and his brother la cote male taile, and sir sagramore le disirous, and sir dodinas le savage; all these he bare down with one spear. when king aswisance of ireland saw sir gareth fare so he marvelled what he might be, that one time seemed green, and another time, at his again coming, he seemed blue. and thus at every course that he rode to and fro he changed his color, so that there might neither king nor knight have ready cognizance of him. then sir agwisance the king of ireland encountered with sir gareth, and there sir gareth smote him from his horse, saddle and all. and then came king carados of scotland, and sir gareth smote him down horse and man. and in the same wise he served king uriens of the land of gore. and then there came in six bagdemagus, and sir gareth smote him down horse and man to the earth. and bagdemagus's son meliganus brake a spear upon sir gareth mightily and knightly. and then sir galahault the noble prince cried on high, knight with the many colors, well hast thou justed; now make thee ready that i may just with thee. sir gareth heard him, and he gat a great spear, and so they encountered together, and there the prince brake his spear; but sir gareth smote him upon the left side of the helm, that he reeled here and there, and he had fallen down had not his men recovered him. truly, said king arthur, that knight with the many colors is a good knight. wherefore the king called unto him sir launcelot, and prayed him to encounter with that knight. sir, said launcelot, i may as well find in my heart for to forbear him at this time, for he hath had travail enough this day, and when a good knight doth so well upon some day, it is no good knight's part to let him of his worship, and, namely, when he seeth a knight hath done so great labour; for peradventure, said sir launcelot, his quarrel is here this day, and peradventure he is best beloved with this lady of all that be here, for i see well he paineth himself and enforceth him to do great deeds, and therefore, said sir launcelot, as for me, this day he shall have the honour; though it lay in my power to put him from it, i would not. there was an unpleasant little episode that day, which for reasons of state i struck out of my priest's report. you will have noticed that garry was doing some great fighting in the engagement. when i say garry i mean sir gareth. garry was my private pet name for him; it suggests that i had a deep affection for him, and that was the case. but it was a private pet name only, and never spoken aloud to any one, much less to him; being a noble, he would not have endured a familiarity like that from me. well, to proceed: i sat in the private box set apart for me as the king's minister. while sir dinadan was waiting for his turn to enter the lists, he came in there and sat down and began to talk; for he was always making up to me, because i was a stranger and he liked to have a fresh market for his jokes, the most of them having reached that stage of wear where the teller has to do the laughing himself while the other person looks sick. i had always responded to his efforts as well as i could, and felt a very deep and real kindness for him, too, for the reason that if by malice of fate he knew the one particular anecdote which i had heard oftenest and had most hated and most loathed all my life, he had at least spared it me. it was one which i had heard attributed to every humorous person who had ever stood on american soil, from columbus down to artemus ward. it was about a humorous lecturer who flooded an ignorant audience with the killingest jokes for an hour and never got a laugh; and then when he was leaving, some gray simpletons wrung him gratefully by the hand and said it had been the funniest thing they had ever heard, and "it was all they could do to keep from laughin' right out in meetin'." that anecdote never saw the day that it was worth the telling; and yet i had sat under the telling of it hundreds and thousands and millions and billions of times, and cried and cursed all the way through. then who can hope to know what my feelings were, to hear this armorplated ass start in on it again, in the murky twilight of tradition, before the dawn of history, while even lactantius might be referred to as "the late lactantius," and the crusades wouldn't be born for five hundred years yet? just as he finished, the call-boy came; so, haw-hawing like a demon, he went rattling and clanking out like a crate of loose castings, and i knew nothing more. it was some minutes before i came to, and then i opened my eyes just in time to see sir gareth fetch him an awful welt, and i unconsciously out with the prayer, "i hope to gracious he's killed!" but by ill-luck, before i had got half through with the words, sir gareth crashed into sir sagramor le desirous and sent him thundering over his horse's crupper, and sir sagramor caught my remark and thought i meant it for him. well, whenever one of those people got a thing into his head, there was no getting it out again. i knew that, so i saved my breath, and offered no explanations. as soon as sir sagramor got well, he notified me that there was a little account to settle between us, and he named a day three or four years in the future; place of settlement, the lists where the offense had been given. i said i would be ready when he got back. you see, he was going for the holy grail. the boys all took a flier at the holy grail now and then. it was a several years' cruise. they always put in the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the holy grail really was, and i don't think any of them actually expected to find it, or would have known what to do with it if he had run across it. you see, it was just the northwest passage of that day, as you may say; that was all. every year expeditions went out holy grailing, and next year relief expeditions went out to hunt for them. there was worlds of reputation in it, but no money. why, they actually wanted me to put in! well, i should smile. chapter x. beginnings of civilization the round table soon heard of the challenge, and of course it was a good deal discussed, for such things interested the boys. the king thought i ought now to set forth in quest of adventures, so that i might gain renown and be the more worthy to meet sir sagramor when the several years should have rolled away. i excused myself for the present; i said it would take me three or four years yet to get things well fixed up and going smoothly; then i should be ready; all the chances were that at the end of that time sir sagramor would still be out grailing, so no valuable time would be lost by the postponement; i should then have been in office six or seven years, and i believed my system and machinery would be so well developed that i could take a holiday without its working any harm. i was pretty well satisfied with what i had already accomplished. in various quiet nooks and corners i had the beginnings of all sorts of industries under way -nuclei of future vast factories, the iron and steel missionaries of my future civilization. in these were gathered together the brightest young minds i could find, and i kept agents out raking the country for more, all the time. i was training a crowd of ignorant folk into experts -experts in every sort of handiwork and scientific calling. these nurseries of mine went smoothly and privately along undisturbed in their obscure country retreats, for nobody was allowed to come into their precincts without a special permit -for i was afraid of the church. i had started a teacher-factory and a lot of sundayschools the first thing; as a result, i now had an admirable system of graded schools in full blast in those places, and also a complete variety of protestant congregations all in a prosperous and growing condition. everybody could be any kind of a christian he wanted to; there was perfect freedom in that matter. but i confined public religious teaching to the churches and the sunday-schools, permitting nothing of it in my other educational buildings. i could have given my own sect the preference and made everybody a presbyterian without any trouble, but that would have been to affront a law of human nature: spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as are physical appetites, complexions, and features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped with the religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it; and, besides, i was afraid of a united church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty and paralysis to human thought. all mines were royal property, and there were a good many of them. they had formerly been worked as savages always work mines -holes grubbed in the earth and the mineral brought up in sacks of hide by hand, at the rate of a ton a day; but i had begun to put the mining on a scientific basis as early as i could. yes, i had made pretty handsome progress when sir sagramor's challenge struck me. four years rolled by -and then! well, you would never imagine it in the world. unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. the despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government. an earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual. but as a perishable perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible. my works showed what a despot could do with the resources of a kingdom at his command. unsuspected by this dark land, i had the civilization of the nineteenth century booming under its very nose! it was fenced away from the public view, but there it was, a gigantic and unassailable fact -and to be heard from, yet, if i lived and had luck. there it was, as sure a fact and as substantial a fact as any serene volcano, standing innocent with its smokeless summit in the blue sky and giving no sign of the rising hell in its bowels. my schools and churches were children four years before; they were grown-up now; my shops of that day were vast factories now; where i had a dozen trained men then, i had a thousand now; where i had one brilliant expert then, i had fifty now. i stood with my hand on the cock, so to speak, ready to turn it on and flood the midnight world with light at any moment. but i was not going to do the thing in that sudden way. it was not my policy. the people could not have stood it; and, moreover, i should have had the established roman catholic church on my back in a minute. no, i had been going cautiously all the while. i had had confidential agents trickling through the country some time, whose office was to undermine knighthood by imperceptible degrees, and to gnaw a little at this and that and the other superstition, and so prepare the way gradually for a better order of things. i was turning on my light one-candle-power at a time, and meant to continue to do so. i had scattered some branch schools secretly about the kingdom, and they were doing very well. i meant to work this racket more and more, as time wore on, if nothing occurred to frighten me. one of my deepest secrets was my west point -my military academy. i kept that most jealously out of sight; and i did the same with my naval academy which i had established at a remote seaport. both were prospering to my satisfaction. clarence was twenty-two now, and was my head executive, my right hand. he was a darling; he was equal to anything; there wasn't anything he couldn't turn his hand to. of late i had been training him for journalism, for the time seemed about right for a start in the newspaper line; nothing big, but just a small weekly for experimental circulation in my civilizationnurseries. he took to it like a duck; there was an editor concealed in him, sure. already he had doubled himself in one way; he talked sixth century and wrote nineteenth. his journalistic style was climbing, steadily; it was already up to the back settlement alabama mark, and couldn't be told from the editorial output of that region either by matter or flavor. we had another large departure on hand, too. this was a telegraph and a telephone; our first venture in this line. these wires were for private service only, as yet, and must be kept private until a riper day should come. we had a gang of men on the road, working mainly by night. they were stringing ground wires; we were afraid to put up poles, for they would attract too much inquiry. ground wires were good enough, in both instances, for my wires were protected by an insulation of my own invention which was perfect. my men had orders to strike across country, avoiding roads, and establishing connection with any considerable towns whose lights betrayed their presence, and leaving experts in charge. nobody could tell you how to find any place in the kingdom, for nobody ever went intentionally to any place, but only struck it by accident in his wanderings, and then generally left it without thinking to inquire what its name was. at one time and another we had sent out topographical expeditions to survey and map the kingdom, but the priests had always interfered and raised trouble. so we had given the thing up, for the present; it would be poor wisdom to antagonize the church. as for the general condition of the country, it was as it had been when i arrived in it, to all intents and purposes. i had made changes, but they were necessarily slight, and they were not noticeable. thus far, i had not even meddled with taxation, outside of the taxes which provided the royal revenues. i had systematized those, and put the service on an effective and righteous basis. as a result, these revenues were already quadrupled, and yet the burden was so much more equably distributed than before, that all the kingdom felt a sense of relief, and the praises of my administration were hearty and general. personally, i struck an interruption, now, but i did not mind it, it could not have happened at a better time. earlier it could have annoyed me, but now everything was in good hands and swimming right along. the king had reminded me several times, of late, that the postponement i had asked for, four years before, had about run out now. it was a hint that i ought to be starting out to seek adventures and get up a reputation of a size to make me worthy of the honor of breaking a lance with sir sagramor, who was still out grailing, but was being hunted for by various relief expeditions, and might be found any year, now. so you see i was expecting this interruption; it did not take me by surprise. chapter xi. the yankee in search of adventures. there never was such a country for wandering liars; and they were of both sexes. hardly a month went by without one of these tramps arriving; and generally loaded with a tale about some princess or other wanting help to get her out of some far-away castle where she was held in captivity by a lawless scoundrel, usually a giant. now you would think that the first thing the king would do after listening to such a novelette from an entire stranger, would be to ask for credentials -yes, and a pointer or two as to locality of castle, best route to it, and so on. but nobody ever thought of so simple and common-sense a thing at that. no, everybody swallowed these people's lies whole, and never asked a question of any sort or about anything. well, one day when i was not around, one of these people came along -it was a she one, this time -and told a tale of the usual pattern. her mistress was a captive in a vast and gloomy castle, along with forty-four other young and beautiful girls, pretty much all of them princesses; they had been languishing in that cruel captivity for twenty-six years; the masters of the castle were three stupendous brothers, each with four arms and one eye -the eye in the center of the forehead, and as big as a fruit. sort of fruit not mentioned; their usual slovenliness in statistics. would you believe it? the king and the whole round table were in raptures over this preposterous opportunity for adventure. every knight of the table jumped for the chance, and begged for it; but to their vexation and chagrin the king conferred it upon me, who had not asked for it at all. by an effort, i contained my joy when clarence brought me the news. but he -he could not contain his. his mouth gushed delight and gratitude in a steady discharge -delight in my good fortune, gratitude to the king for this splendid mark of his favor for me. he could keep neither his legs nor his body still, but pirouetted about the place in an airy ecstasy of happiness. on my side, i could have cursed the kindness that conferred upon me this benefaction, but i kept my vexation under the surface for policy's sake, and did what i could to let on to be glad. indeed, i said i was glad. and in a way it was true; i was as glad as a person is when he is scalped. well, one must make the best of things, and not waste time with useless fretting, but get down to business and see what can be done. in all lies there is wheat among the chaff; i must get at the wheat in this case: so i sent for the girl and she came. she was a comely enough creature, and soft and modest, but, if signs went for anything, she didn't know as much as a lady's watch. i said: "my dear, have you been questioned as to particulars?" she said she hadn't. "well, i didn't expect you had, but i thought i would ask, to make sure; it's the way i've been raised. now you mustn't take it unkindly if i remind you that as we don't know you, we must go a little slow. you may be all right, of course, and we'll hope that you are; but to take it for granted isn't business. you understand that. i'm obliged to ask you a few questions; just answer up fair and square, and don't be afraid. where do you live, when you are at home?" "in the land of moder, fair sir." "land of moder. i don't remember hearing of it before. parents living?" "as to that, i know not if they be yet on live, sith it is many years that i have lain shut up in the castle." "your name, please?" "i hight the demoiselle alisande la carteloise, an it please you." "do you know anybody here who can identify you?" "that were not likely, fair lord, i being come hither now for the first time." "have you brought any letters -any documents -any proofs that you are trustworthy and truthful?" "of a surety, no; and wherefore should i? have i not a tongue, and cannot i say all that myself?" "but your saying it, you know, and somebody else's saying it, is different." "different? how might that be? i fear me i do not understand." "don't understand? land of -why, you see -you see -why, great scott, can't you understand a little thing like that? can't you understand the difference between your -why do you look so innocent and idiotic!" "i? in truth i know not, but an it were the will of god." "yes, yes, i reckon that's about the size of it. don't mind my seeming excited; i'm not. let us change the subject. now as to this castle, with fortyfive princesses in it, and three ogres at the head of it, tell me -where is this harem?" "harem?" "the castle, you understand; where is the castle?" "oh, as to that, it is great, and strong, and well beseen, and lieth in a far country. yes, it is many leagues." "how many?" "ah, fair sir, it were woundily hard to tell, they are so many, and do so lap the one upon the other, and being made all in the same image and tincted with the same color, one may not know the one league from its fellow, nor how to count them except they be taken apart, and ye wit well it were god's work to do that, being not within man's capacity; for ye will note --" "hold on, hold on, never mind about the distance; whereabouts does the castle lie? what's the direction from here?" "ah, please you sir, it hath no direction from here; by reason that the road lieth not straight, but turneth evermore; wherefore the direction of its place abideth not, but is some time under the one sky and anon under another, whereso if ye be minded that it is in the east, and wend thitherward, ye shall observe that the way of the road doth yet again turn upon itself by the space of half a circle, and this marvel happing again and yet again and still again, it will grieve you that you had thought by vanities of the mind to thwart and bring to naught the will of him that giveth not a castle a direction from a place except it pleaseth him, and if it please him not, will the rather that even all castles and all directions thereunto vanish out of the earth, leaving the places wherein they tarried desolate and vacant, so warning his creatures that where he will he will, and where he will not he --" "oh, that's all right, that's all right, give us a rest; never mind about the direction, hang the direction -i beg pardon, i beg a thousand pardons, i am not well to-day; pay no attention when i soliloquize, it is an old habit, an old, bad habit, and hard to get rid of when one's digestion is all disordered with eating food that was raised forever and ever before he was born; good land! a man can't keep his functions regular on spring chickens thirteen hundred years old. but come -never mind about that; let's -have you got such a thing as a map of that region about you? now a good map --" "is it peradventure that manner of thing which of late the unbelievers have brought from over the great seas, which, being boiled in oil, and an onion and salt added thereto, doth --" "what, a map? what are you talking about? don't you know what a map is? there, there, never mind, don't explain, i hate explanations; they fog a thing up so that you can't tell anything about it. run along, dear; good-day; show her the way, clarence." oh, well, it was reasonably plain, now, why these donkeys didn't prospect these liars for details. it may be that this girl had a fact in her somewhere, but i don't believe you could have sluiced it out with a hydraulic; nor got it with the earlier forms of blasting, even; it was a case for dynamite. why, she was a perfect ass; and yet the king and his knights had listened to her as if she had been a leaf out of the gospel. it kind of sizes up the whole party. and think of the simple ways of this court: this wandering wench hadn't any more trouble to get access to the king in his palace than she would have had to get into the poorhouse in my day and country. in fact, he was glad to see her, glad to hear her tale; with that adventure of hers to offer, she was as welcome as a corpse is to a coroner. just as i was ending-up these reflections, clarence came back. i remarked upon the barren result of my efforts with the girl; hadn't got hold of a single point that could help me to find the castle. the youth looked a little surprised, or puzzled, or something, and intimated that he had been wondering to himself what i had wanted to ask the girl all those questions for. "why, great guns," i said, "don't i want to find the castle? and how else would i go about it?" "la, sweet your worship, one may lightly answer that, i ween. she will go with thee. they always do. she will ride with thee." "ride with me? nonsense!" "but of a truth she will. she will ride with thee. thou shalt see." "what? she browse around the hills and scour the woods with me -alone -and i as good as engaged to be married? why, it's scandalous. think how it would look." my, the dear face that rose before me! the boy was eager to know all about this tender matter. i swore him to secresy and then whispered her name -"puss flanagan." he looked disappointed, and said he didn't remember the countess. how natural it was for the little courtier to give her a rank. he asked me where she lived. "in east har--" i came to myself and stopped, a little confused; then i said, "never mind, now; i'll tell you some time." and might he see her? would i let him see her some day? it was but a little thing to promise -thirteen hundred years or so -and he so eager; so i said yes. but i sighed; i couldn't help it. and yet there was no sense in sighing, for she wasn't born yet. but that is the way we are made: we don't reason, where we feel; we just feel. my expedition was all the talk that day and that night, and the boys were very good to me, and made much of me, and seemed to have forgotten their vexation and disappointment, and come to be as anxious for me to hive those ogres and set those ripe old virgins loose as if it were themselves that had the contract. well, they were good children -but just children, that is all. and they gave me no end of points about how to scout for giants, and how to scoop them in; and they told me all sorts of charms against enchantments, and gave me salves and other rubbish to put on my wounds. but it never occurred to one of them to reflect that if i was such a wonderful necromancer as i was pretending to be, i ought not to need salves or instructions, or charms against enchantments, and, least of all, arms and armor, on a foray of any kind -even against fire-spouting dragons, and devils hot from perdition, let alone such poor adversaries as these i was after, these commonplace ogres of the back settlements. i was to have an early breakfast, and start at dawn, for that was the usual way; but i had the demon's own time with my armor, and this delayed me a little. it is troublesome to get into, and there is so much detail. first you wrap a layer or two of blanket around your body, for a sort of cushion and to keep off the cold iron; then you put on your sleeves and shirt of chain mail -these are made of small steel links woven together, and they form a fabric so flexible that if you toss your shirt onto the floor, it slumps into a pile like a peck of wet fish-net; it is very heavy and is nearly the uncomfortablest material in the world for a night shirt, yet plenty used it for that -tax collectors, and reformers, and one-horse kings with a defective title, and those sorts of people; then you put on your shoes -flat-boats roofed over with interleaving bands of steel -and screw your clumsy spurs into the heels. next you buckle your greaves on your legs, and your cuisses on your thighs; then come your backplate and your breastplate, and you begin to feel crowded; then you hitch onto the breastplate the half-petticoat of broad overlapping bands of steel which hangs down in front but is scolloped out behind so you can sit down, and isn't any real improvement on an inverted coal scuttle, either for looks or for wear, or to wipe your hands on; next you belt on your sword; then you put your stove-pipe joints onto your arms, your iron gauntlets onto your hands, your iron rat-trap onto your head, with a rag of steel web hitched onto it to hang over the back of your neck -and there you are, snug as a candle in a candle-mould. this is no time to dance. well, a man that is packed away like that is a nut that isn't worth the cracking, there is so little of the meat, when you get down to it, by comparison with the shell. the boys helped me, or i never could have got in. just as we finished, sir bedivere happened in, and i saw that as like as not i hadn't chosen the most convenient outfit for a long trip. how stately he looked; and tall and broad and grand. he had on his head a conical steel casque that only came down to his ears, and for visor had only a narrow steel bar that extended down to his upper lip and protected his nose; and all the rest of him, from neck to heel, was flexible chain mail, trousers and all. but pretty much all of him was hidden under his outside garment, which of course was of chain mail, as i said, and hung straight from his shoulders to his ankles; and from his middle to the bottom, both before and behind, was divided, so that he could ride and let the skirts hang down on each side. he was going grailing, and it was just the outfit for it, too. i would have given a good deal for that ulster, but it was too late now to be fooling around. the sun was just up, the king and the court were all on hand to see me off and wish me luck; so it wouldn't be etiquette for me to tarry. you don't get on your horse yourself; no, if you tried it you would get disappointed. they carry you out, just as they carry a sun-struck man to the drug store, and put you on, and help get you to rights, and fix your feet in the stirrups; and all the while you do feel so strange and stuffy and like somebody else -like somebody that has been married on a sudden, or struck by lightning, or something like that, and hasn't quite fetched around yet, and is sort of numb, and can't just get his bearings. then they stood up the mast they called a spear, in its socket by my left foot, and i gripped it with my hand; lastly they hung my shield around my neck, and i was all complete and ready to up anchor and get to sea. everybody was as good to me as they could be, and a maid of honor gave me the stirrup-cup her own self. there was nothing more to do now, but for that damsel to get up behind me on a pillion, which she did, and put an arm or so around me to hold on. and so we started, and everybody gave us a goodbye and waved their handkerchiefs or helmets. and everybody we met, going down the hill and through the village was respectful to us, except some shabby little boys on the outskirts. they said: "oh, what a guy!" and hove clods at us. in my experience boys are the same in all ages. they don't respect anything, they don't care for anything or anybody. they say "go up, baldhead" to the prophet going his unoffending way in the gray of antiquity; they sass me in the holy gloom of the middle ages; and i had seen them act the same way in buchanan's administration; i remember, because i was there and helped. the prophet had his bears and settled with his boys; and i wanted to get down and settle with mine, but it wouldn't answer, because i couldn't have got up again. i hate a country without a derrick. chapter xii. slow torture straight off, we were in the country. it was most lovely and pleasant in those sylvan solitudes in the early cool morning in the first freshness of autumn. from hilltops we saw fair green valleys lying spread out below, with streams winding through them, and island groves of trees here and there, and huge lonely oaks scattered about and casting black blots of shade; and beyond the valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue with haze, stretching away in billowy perspective to the horizon, with at wide intervals a dim fleck of white or gray on a wave-summit, which we knew was a castle. we crossed broad natural lawns sparkling with dew, and we moved like spirits, the cushioned turf giving out no sound of footfall; we dreamed along through glades in a mist of green light that got its tint from the sun-drenched roof of leaves overhead, and by our feet the clearest and coldest of runlets went frisking and gossiping over its reefs and making a sort of whispering music, comfortable to hear; and at times we left the world behind and entered into the solemn great deeps and rich gloom of the forest, where furtive wild things whisked and scurried by and were gone before you could even get your eye on the place where the noise was; and where only the earliest birds were turning out and getting to business with a song here and a quarrel yonder and a mysterious faroff hammering and drumming for worms on a tree trunk away somewhere in the impenetrable remotenesses of the woods. and by and by out we would swing again into the glare. about the third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out into the glare -it was along there somewhere, a couple of hours or so after sun-up -it wasn't as pleasant as it had been. it was beginning to get hot. this was quite noticeable. we had a very long pull, after that, without any shade. now it is curious how progressively little frets grow and multiply after they once get a start. things which i didn't mind at all, at first, i began to mind now -and more and more, too, all the time. the first ten or fifteen times i wanted my handkerchief i didn't seem to care; i got along, and said never mind, it isn't any matter, and dropped it out of my mind. but now it was different; i wanted it all the time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest; i couldn't get it out of my mind; and so at last i lost my temper and said hang a man that would make a suit of armor without any pockets in it. you see i had my handkerchief in my helmet; and some other things; but it was that kind of a helmet that you can't take off by yourself. that hadn't occurred to me when i put it there; and in fact i didn't know it. i supposed it would be particularly convenient there. and so now, the thought of its being there, so handy and close by, and yet not get-at-able, made it all the worse and the harder to bear. yes, the thing that you can't get is the thing that you want, mainly; every one has noticed that. well, it took my mind off from everything else; took it clear off, and centered it in my helmet; and mile after mile, there it stayed, imagining the handkerchief, picturing the handkerchief; and it was bitter and aggravating to have the salt sweat keep trickling down into my eyes, and i couldn't get at it. it seems like a little thing, on paper, but it was not a little thing at all; it was the most real kind of misery. i would not say it if it was not so. i made up my mind that i would carry along a reticule next time, let it look how it might, and people say what they would. of course these iron dudes of the round table would think it was scandalous, and maybe raise sheol about it, but as for me, give me comfort first, and style afterwards. so we jogged along, and now and then we struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in clouds and get into my nose and make me sneeze and cry; and of course i said things i oughtn't to have said, i don't deny that. i am not better than others. we couldn't seem to meet anybody in this lonesome britain, not even an ogre; and, in the mood i was in then, it was well for the ogre; that is, an ogre with a handkerchief. most knights would have thought of nothing but getting his armor; but so i got his bandanna, he could keep his hardware, for all of me. meantime, it was getting hotter and hotter in there. you see, the sun was beating down and warming up the iron more and more all the time. well, when you are hot, that way, every little thing irritates you. when i trotted, i rattled like a crate of dishes, and that annoyed me; and moreover i couldn't seem to stand that shield slatting and banging, now about my breast, now around my back; and if i dropped into a walk my joints creaked and screeched in that wearisome way that a wheelbarrow does, and as we didn't create any breeze at that gait, i was like to get fried in that stove; and besides, the quieter you went the heavier the iron settled down on you and the more and more tons you seemed to weigh every minute. and you had to be always changing hands, and passing your spear over to the other foot, it got so irksome for one hand to hold it long at a time. well, you know, when you perspire that way, in rivers, there comes a time when you -when you -well, when you itch. you are inside, your hands are outside; so there you are; nothing but iron between. it is not a light thing, let it sound as it may. first it is one place; then another; then some more; and it goes on spreading and spreading, and at last the territory is all occupied, and nobody can imagine what you feel like, nor how unpleasant it is. and when it had got to the worst, and it seemed to me that i could not stand anything more, a fly got in through the bars and settled on my nose, and the bars were stuck and wouldn't work, and i couldn't get the visor up; and i could only shake my head, which was baking hot by this time, and the fly -well, you know how a fly acts when he has got a certainty -he only minded the shaking enough to change from nose to lip, and lip to ear, and buzz and buzz all around in there, and keep on lighting and biting, in a way that a person, already so distressed as i was, simply could not stand. so i gave in, and got alisande to unship the helmet and relieve me of it. then she emptied the conveniences out of it and fetched it full of water, and i drank and then stood up, and she poured the rest down inside the armor. one cannot think how refreshing it was. she continued to fetch and pour until i was well soaked and thoroughly comfortable. it was good to have a rest -and peace. but nothing is quite perfect in this life, at any time. i had made a pipe a while back, and also some pretty fair tobacco; not the real thing, but what some of the indians use: the inside bark of the willow, dried. these comforts had been in the helmet, and now i had them again, but no matches. gradually, as the time wore along, one annoying fact was borne in upon my understanding -that we were weather-bound. an armed novice cannot mount his horse without help and plenty of it. sandy was not enough; not enough for me, anyway. we had to wait until somebody should come along. waiting, in silence, would have been agreeable enough, for i was full of matter for reflection, and wanted to give it a chance to work. i wanted to try and think out how it was that rational or even half-rational men could ever have learned to wear armor, considering its inconveniences; and how they had managed to keep up such a fashion for generations when it was plain that what i had suffered to-day they had had to suffer all the days of their lives. i wanted to think that out; and moreover i wanted to think out some way to reform this evil and persuade the people to let the foolish fashion die out; but thinking was out of the question in the circumstances. you couldn't think, where sandy was. she was a quite biddable creature and good-hearted, but she had a flow of talk that was as steady as a mill, and made your head sore like the drays and wagons in a city. if she had had a cork she would have been a comfort. but you can't cork that kind; they would die. her clack was going all day, and you would think something would surely happen to her works, by and by; but no, they never got out of order; and she never had to slack up for words. she could grind, and pump, and churn, and buzz by the week, and never stop to oil up or blow out. and yet the result was just nothing but wind. she never had any ideas, any more than a fog has. she was a perfect blatherskite; i mean for jaw, jaw, jaw, talk, talk, talk, jabber, jabber, jabber; but just as good as she could be. i hadn't minded her mill that morning, on account of having that hornets' nest of other troubles; but more than once in the afternoon i had to say: "take a rest, child; the way you are using up all the domestic air, the kingdom will have to go to importing it by to-morrow, and it's a low enough treasury without that." chapter xiii. freemen yes, it is strange how little a while at a time a person can be contented. only a little while back, when i was riding and suffering, what a heaven this peace, this rest, this sweet serenity in this secluded shady nook by this purling stream would have seemed, where i could keep perfectly comfortable all the time by pouring a dipper of water into my armor now and then; yet already i was getting dissatisfied; partly because i could not light my pipe -for, although i had long ago started a match factory, i had forgotten to bring matches with me -and partly because we had nothing to eat. here was another illustration of the childlike improvidence of this age and people. a man in armor always trusted to chance for his food on a journey, and would have been scandalized at the idea of hanging a basket of sandwiches on his spear. there was probably not a knight of all the round table combination who would not rather have died than been caught carrying such a thing as that on his flagstaff. and yet there could not be anything more sensible. it had been my intention to smuggle a couple of sandwiches into my helmet, but i was interrupted in the act, and had to make an excuse and lay them aside, and a dog got them. night approached, and with it a storm. the darkness came on fast. we must camp, of course. i found a good shelter for the demoiselle under a rock, and went off and found another for myself. but i was obliged to remain in my armor, because i could not get it off by myself and yet could not allow alisande to help, because it would have seemed so like undressing before folk. it would not have amounted to that in reality, because i had clothes on underneath; but the prejudices of one's breeding are not gotten rid of just at a jump, and i knew that when it came to stripping off that bob-tailed iron petticoat i should be embarrassed. with the storm came a change of weather; and the stronger the wind blew, and the wilder the rain lashed around, the colder and colder it got. pretty soon, various kinds of bugs and ants and worms and things began to flock in out of the wet and crawl down inside my armor to get warm; and while some of them behaved well enough, and snuggled up amongst my clothes and got quiet, the majority were of a restless, uncomfortable sort, and never stayed still, but went on prowling and hunting for they did not know what; especially the ants, which went tickling along in wearisome procession from one end of me to the other by the hour, and are a kind of creatures which i never wish to sleep with again. it would be my advice to persons situated in this way, to not roll or thrash around, because this excites the interest of all the different sorts of animals and makes every last one of them want to turn out and see what is going on, and this makes things worse than they were before, and of course makes you objurgate harder, too, if you can. still, if one did not roll and thrash around he would die; so perhaps it is as well to do one way as the other; there is no real choice. even after i was frozen solid i could still distinguish that tickling, just as a corpse does when he is taking electric treatment. i said i would never wear armor after this trip. all those trying hours whilst i was frozen and yet was in a living fire, as you may say, on account of that swarm of crawlers, that same unanswerable question kept circling and circling through my tired head: how do people stand this miserable armor? how have they managed to stand it all these generations? how can they sleep at night for dreading the tortures of next day? when the morning came at last, i was in a bad enough plight: seedy, drowsy, fagged, from want of sleep; weary from thrashing around, famished from long fasting; pining for a bath, and to get rid of the animals; and crippled with rheumatism. and how had it fared with the nobly born, the titled aristocrat, the demoiselle alisande la carteloise? why, she was as fresh as a squirrel; she had slept like the dead; and as for a bath, probably neither she nor any other noble in the land had ever had one, and so she was not missing it. measured by modern standards, they were merely modified savages, those people. this noble lady showed no impatience to get to breakfast -and that smacks of the savage, too. on their journeys those britons were used to long fasts, and knew how to bear them; and also how to freight up against probable fasts before starting, after the style of the indian and the anaconda. as like as not, sandy was loaded for a three-day stretch. we were off before sunrise, sandy riding and i limping along behind. in half an hour we came upon a group of ragged poor creatures who had assembled to mend the thing which was regarded as a road. they were as humble as animals to me; and when i proposed to breakfast with them, they were so flattered, so overwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine that at first they were not able to believe that i was in earnest. my lady put up her scornful lip and withdrew to one side; she said in their hearing that she would as soon think of eating with the other cattle -a remark which embarrassed these poor devils merely because it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offended them, for it didn't. and yet they were not slaves, not chattels. by a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree: small "independent" farmers, artisans, etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the actual nation; they were about all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respect-worthy, and to subtract them would have been to subtract the nation and leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world. and yet, by ingenious contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be the nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not only that, but to believe it right and as it should be. the priests had told their fathers and themselves that this ironical state of things was ordained of god; and so, not reflecting upon how unlike god it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially such poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter there and become respectfully quiet. the talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound in a formerly american ear. they were freemen, but they could not leave the estates of their lord or their bishop without his permission; they could not prepare their own bread, but must have their corn ground and their bread baked at his mill and his bakery, and pay roundly for the same; they could not sell a piece of their own property without paying him a handsome percentage of the proceeds, nor buy a piece of somebody else's without remembering him in cash for the privilege; they had to harvest his grain for him gratis, and be ready to come at a moment's notice, leaving their own crop to destruction by the threatened storm; they had to let him plant fruit trees in their fields, and then keep their indignation to themselves when his heedless fruit-gatherers trampled the grain around the trees; they had to smother their anger when his hunting parties galloped through their fields laying waste the result of their patient toil; they were not allowed to keep doves themselves, and when the swarms from my lord's dovecote settled on their crops they must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful would the penalty be; when the harvest was at last gathered, then came the procession of robbers to levy their blackmail upon it: first the church carted off its fat tenth, then the king's commissioner took his twentieth, then my lord's people made a mighty inroad upon the remainder; after which, the skinned freeman had liberty to bestow the remnant in his barn, in case it was worth the trouble; there were taxes, and taxes, and taxes, and more taxes, and taxes again, and yet other taxes -upon this free and independent pauper, but none upon his lord the baron or the bishop, none upon the wasteful nobility or the all-devouring church; if the baron would sleep unvexed, the freeman must sit up all night after his day's work and whip the ponds to keep the frogs quiet; if the freeman's daughter -but no, that last infamy of monarchical government is unprintable; and finally, if the freeman, grown desperate with his tortures, found his life unendurable under such conditions, and sacrificed it and fled to death for mercy and refuge, the gentle church condemned him to eternal fire, the gentle law buried him at midnight at the cross-roads with a stake through his back, and his master the baron or the bishop confiscated all his property and turned his widow and his orphans out of doors. and here were these freemen assembled in the early morning to work on their lord the bishop's road three days each -gratis; every head of a family, and every son of a family, three days each, gratis, and a day or so added for their servants. why, it was like reading about france and the french, before the ever memorable and blessed revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood -one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. there were two "reigns of terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor terror, the momentary terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? what is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? a city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all france could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real terror -that unspeakably bitter and awful terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. these poor ostensible freemen who were sharing their breakfast and their talk with me, were as full of humble reverence for their king and church and nobility as their worst enemy could desire. there was something pitifully ludicrous about it. i asked them if they supposed a nation of people ever existed, who, with a free vote in every man's hand, would elect that a single family and its descendants should reign over it forever, whether gifted or boobies, to the exclusion of all other families -including the voter's; and would also elect that a certain hundred families should be raised to dizzy summits of rank, and clothed on with offensive transmissible glories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation's families -including his own. they all looked unhit, and said they didn't know; that they had never thought about it before, and it hadn't ever occurred to them that a nation could be so situated that every man could have a say in the government. i said i had seen one -and that it would last until it had an established church. again they were all unhit -at first. but presently one man looked up and asked me to state that proposition again; and state it slowly, so it could soak into his understanding. i did it; and after a little he had the idea, and he brought his fist down and said he didn't believe a nation where every man had a vote would voluntarily get down in the mud and dirt in any such way; and that to steal from a nation its will and preference must be a crime and the first of all crimes. i said to myself: "this one's a man. if i were backed by enough of his sort, i would make a strike for the welfare of this country, and try to prove myself its loyalest citizen by making a wholesome change in its system of government." you see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. the country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. to be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags -that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it. i was from connecticut, whose constitution declares "that all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit; and that they have at all times an undeniable and indefeasible right to alter their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient." under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor. that he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does. and now here i was, in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. for the nine hundred and ninety-four to express dissatisfaction with the regnant system and propose to change it, would have made the whole six shudder as one man, it would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid black treason. so to speak, i was become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. it seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal. the thing that would have best suited the circus side of my nature would have been to resign the boss-ship and get up an insurrection and turn it into a revolution; but i knew that the jack cade or the wat tyler who tries such a thing without first educating his materials up to revolution grade is almost absolutely certain to get left. i had never been accustomed to getting left, even if i do say it myself. wherefore, the "deal" which had been for some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite different pattern from the cade-tyler sort. so i did not talk blood and insurrection to that man there who sat munching black bread with that abused and mistaught herd of human sheep, but took him aside and talked matter of another sort to him. after i had finished, i got him to lend me a little ink from his veins; and with this and a sliver i wrote on a piece of bark - put him in the man-factory -and gave it to him, and said: "take it to the palace at camelot and give it into the hands of amyas le poulet, whom i call clarence, and he will understand." "he is a priest, then," said the man, and some of the enthusiasm went out of his face. "how -a priest? didn't i tell you that no chattel of the church, no bond-slave of pope or bishop can enter my man-factory? didn't i tell you that you couldn't enter unless your religion, whatever it might be, was your own free property?" "marry, it is so, and for that i was glad; wherefore it liked me not, and bred in me a cold doubt, to hear of this priest being there." "but he isn't a priest, i tell you." the man looked far from satisfied. he said: "he is not a priest, and yet can read?" "he is not a priest and yet can read -yes, and write, too, for that matter. i taught him myself." the man's face cleared. "and it is the first thing that you yourself will be taught in that factory --" "i? i would give blood out of my heart to know that art. why, i will be your slave, your --" "no you won't, you won't be anybody's slave. take your family and go along. your lord the bishop will confiscate your small property, but no matter. clarence will fix you all right." chapter xiv. "defend thee, lord" i paid three pennies for my breakfast, and a most extravagant price it was, too, seeing that one could have breakfasted a dozen persons for that money; but i was feeling good by this time, and i had always been a kind of spendthrift anyway; and then these people had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant as their provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to emphasize my appreciation and sincere thankfulness with a good big financial lift where the money would do so much more good than it would in my helmet, where, these pennies being made of iron and not stinted in weight, my half-dollar's worth was a good deal of a burden to me. i spent money rather too freely in those days, it is true; but one reason for it was that i hadn't got the proportions of things entirely adjusted, even yet, after so long a sojourn in britain -hadn't got along to where i was able to absolutely realize that a penny in arthur's land and a couple of dollars in connecticut were about one and the same thing: just twins, as you may say, in purchasing power. if my start from camelot could have been delayed a very few days i could have paid these people in beautiful new coins from our own mint, and that would have pleased me; and them, too, not less. i had adopted the american values exclusively. in a week or two now, cents, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars, and also a trifle of gold, would be trickling in thin but steady streams all through the commercial veins of the kingdom, and i looked to see this new blood freshen up its life. the farmers were bound to throw in something, to sort of offset my liberality, whether i would or no; so i let them give me a flint and steel; and as soon as they had comfortably bestowed sandy and me on our horse, i lit my pipe. when the first blast of smoke shot out through the bars of my helmet, all those people broke for the woods, and sandy went over backwards and struck the ground with a dull thud. they thought i was one of those fire-belching dragons they had heard so much about from knights and other professional liars. i had infinite trouble to persuade those people to venture back within explaining distance. then i told them that this was only a bit of enchantment which would work harm to none but my enemies. and i promised, with my hand on my heart, that if all who felt no enmity toward me would come forward and pass before me they should see that only those who remained behind would be struck dead. the procession moved with a good deal of promptness. there were no casualties to report, for nobody had curiosity enough to remain behind to see what would happen. i lost some time, now, for these big children, their fears gone, became so ravished with wonder over my awe-compelling fireworks that i had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out before they would let me go. still the delay was not wholly unproductive, for it took all that time to get sandy thoroughly wonted to the new thing, she being so close to it, you know. it plugged up her conversation mill, too, for a considerable while, and that was a gain. but above all other benefits accruing, i had learned something. i was ready for any giant or any ogre that might come along, now. we tarried with a holy hermit, that night, and my opportunity came about the middle of the next afternoon. we were crossing a vast meadow by way of short-cut, and i was musing absently, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, when sandy suddenly interrupted a remark which she had begun that morning, with the cry: "defend thee, lord! -peril of life is toward!" and she slipped down from the horse and ran a little way and stood. i looked up and saw, far off in the shade of a tree, half a dozen armed knights and their squires; and straightway there was bustle among them and tightening of saddle-girths for the mount. my pipe was ready and would have been lit, if i had not been lost in thinking about how to banish oppression from this land and restore to all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliging anybody. i lit up at once, and by the time i had got a good head of reserved steam on, here they came. all together, too; none of those chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so much about -one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fair play. no, they came in a body, they came with a whirr and a rush, they came like a volley from a battery; came with heads low down, plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. it was a handsome sight, a beautiful sight -for a man up a tree. i laid my lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the iron wave was just ready to break over me, then spouted a column of white smoke through the bars of my helmet. you should have seen the wave go to pieces and scatter! this was a finer sight than the other one. but these people stopped, two or three hundred yards away, and this troubled me. my satisfaction collapsed, and fear came; i judged i was a lost man. but sandy was radiant; and was going to be eloquent -but i stopped her, and told her my magic had miscarried, somehow or other, and she must mount, with all despatch, and we must ride for life. no, she wouldn't. she said that my enchantment had disabled those knights; they were not riding on, because they couldn't; wait, they would drop out of their saddles presently, and we would get their horses and harness. i could not deceive such trusting simplicity, so i said it was a mistake; that when my fireworks killed at all, they killed instantly; no, the men would not die, there was something wrong about my apparatus, i couldn't tell what; but we must hurry and get away, for those people would attack us again, in a minute. sandy laughed, and said: "lack-a-day, sir, they be not of that breed! sir launcelot will give battle to dragons, and will abide by them, and will assail them again, and yet again, and still again, until he do conquer and destroy them; and so likewise will sir pellinore and sir aglovale and sir carados, and mayhap others, but there be none else that will venture it, let the idle say what the idle will. and, la, as to yonder base rufflers, think ye they have not their fill, but yet desire more?" "well, then, what are they waiting for? why don't they leave? nobody's hindering. good land, i'm willing to let bygones be bygones, i'm sure." "leave, is it? oh, give thyself easement as to that. they dream not of it, no, not they. they wait to yield them." "come -really, is that 'sooth' -as you people say? if they want to, why don't they?" "it would like them much; but an ye wot how dragons are esteemed, ye would not hold them blamable. they fear to come." "well, then, suppose i go to them instead, and --" "ah, wit ye well they would not abide your coming. i will go." and she did. she was a handy person to have along on a raid. i would have considered this a doubtful errand, myself. i presently saw the knights riding away, and sandy coming back. that was a relief. i judged she had somehow failed to get the first innings -i mean in the conversation; otherwise the interview wouldn't have been so short. but it turned out that she had managed the business well; in fact, admirably. she said that when she told those people i was the boss, it hit them where they lived: "smote them sore with fear and dread" was her word; and then they were ready to put up with anything she might require. so she swore them to appear at arthur's court within two days and yield them, with horse and harness, and be my knights henceforth, and subject to my command. how much better she managed that thing than i should have done it myself! she was a daisy. chapter xv. sandy's tale and so i'm proprietor of some knights," said i, as we rode off. "who would ever have supposed that i should live to list up assets of that sort. i shan't know what to do with them; unless i raffle them off. how many of them are there, sandy?" "seven, please you, sir, and their squires." "it is a good haul. who are they? where do they hang out?" "where do they hang out?" "yes, where do they live?" "ah, i understood thee not. that will i tell eftsoons." then she said musingly, and softly, turning the words daintily over her tongue: "hang they out -hang they out -where hang -where do they hang out; eh, right so; where do they hang out. of a truth the phrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and is prettily worded withal. i will repeat it anon and anon in mine idlesse, whereby i may peradventure learn it. where do they hang out. even so! already it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and forasmuch as --" "don't forget the cowboys, sandy." "cowboys?" "yes; the knights, you know: you were going to tell me about them. a while back, you remember. figuratively speaking, game's called." "game --" "yes, yes, yes! go to the bat. i mean, get to work on your statistics, and don't burn so much kindling getting your fire started. tell me about the knights." "i will well, and lightly will begin. so they two departed and rode into a great forest. and --" "great scott!" you see, i recognized my mistake at once. i had set her works a-going; it was my own fault; she would be thirty days getting down to those facts. and she generally began without a preface and finished without a result. if you interrupted her she would either go right along without noticing, or answer with a couple of words, and go back and say the sentence over again. so, interruptions only did harm; and yet i had to interrupt, and interrupt pretty frequently, too, in order to save my life; a person would die if he let her monotony drip on him right along all day. "great scott! " i said in my distress. she went right back and began over again: "so they two departed and rode into a great forest. and --" "which two?" "sir gawaine and sir uwaine. and so they came to an abbey of monks, and there were well lodged. so on the morn they heard their masses in the abbey, and so they rode forth till they came to a great forest; then was sir gawaine ware in a valley by a turret, of twelve fair damsels, and two knights armed on great horses, and the damsels went to and fro by a tree. and then was sir gawaine ware how there hung a white shield on that tree, and ever as the damsels came by it they spit upon it, and some threw mire upon the shield --" "now, if i hadn't seen the like myself in this country, sandy, i wouldn't believe it. but i've seen it, and i can just see those creatures now, parading before that shield and acting like that. the women here do certainly act like all possessed. yes, and i mean your best, too, society's very choicest brands. the humblest hello-girl along ten thousand miles of wire could teach gentleness, patience, modesty, manners, to the highest duchess in arthur's land." "hello-girl?" "yes, but don't you ask me to explain; it's a new kind of a girl; they don't have them here; one often speaks sharply to them when they are not the least in fault, and he can't get over feeling sorry for it and ashamed of himself in thirteen hundred years, it's such shabby mean conduct and so unprovoked; the fact is, no gentleman ever does it -though i -well, i myself, if i've got to confess --" "peradventure she --" "never mind her; never mind her; i tell you i couldn't ever explain her so you would understand." "even so be it, sith ye are so minded. then sir gawaine and sir uwaine went and saluted them, and asked them why they did that despite to the shield. sirs, said the damsels, we shall tell you. there is a knight in this country that owneth this white shield, and he is a passing good man of his hands, but he hateth all ladies and gentlewomen, and therefore we do all this despite to the shield. i will say you, said sir gawaine, it beseemeth evil a good knight to despise all ladies and gentlewomen, and peradventure though he hate you he hath some cause, and peradventure he loveth in some other places ladies and gentlewomen, and to be loved again, and he such a man of prowess as ye speak of --" "man of prowess -yes, that is the man to please them, sandy. man of brains -that is a thing they never think of. tom sayers -john heenan -john l. sullivan -pity but you could be here. you would have your legs under the round table and a 'sir' in front of your names within the twenty-four hours; and you could bring about a new distribution of the married princesses and duchesses of the court in another twenty-four. the fact is, it is just a sort of polished-up court of comanches, and there isn't a squaw in it who doesn't stand ready at the dropping of a hat to desert to the buck with the biggest string of scalps at his belt." "-and he be such a man of prowess as ye speak of, said sir gawaine. now, what is his name? sir, said they, his name is marhaus the king's son of ireland." "son of the king of ireland, you mean; the other form doesn't mean anything. and look out and hold on tight, now, we must jump this gully.... there, we are all right now. this horse belongs in the circus; he is born before his time." "i know him well, said sir uwaine, he is a passing good knight as any is on live." "on live. if you've got a fault in the world, sandy, it is that you are a shade too archaic. but it isn't any matter." "-for i saw him once proved at a justs where many knights were gathered, and that time there might no man withstand him. ah, said sir gawaine, damsels, methinketh ye are to blame, for it is to suppose he that hung that shield there will not be long therefrom, and then may those knights match him on horseback, and that is more your worship than thus; for i will abide no longer to see a knight's shield dishonored. and therewith sir uwaine and sir gawaine departed a little from them, and then were they ware where sir marhaus came riding on a great horse straight toward them. and when the twelve damsels saw sir marhaus they fled into the turret as they were wild, so that some of them fell by the way. then the one of the knights of the tower dressed his shield, and said on high, sir marhaus defend thee. and so they ran together that the knight brake his spear on marhaus, and sir marhaus smote him so hard that he brake his neck and the horse's back --" "well, that is just the trouble about this state of things, it ruins so many horses." "that saw the other knight of the turret, and dressed him toward marhaus, and they went so eagerly together, that the knight of the turret was soon smitten down, horse and man, stark dead --" "another horse gone; i tell you it is a custom that ought to be broken up. i don't see how people with any feeling can applaud and support it." .... "so these two knights came together with great random --" i saw that i had been asleep and missed a chapter, but i didn't say anything. i judged that the irish knight was in trouble with the visitors by this time, and this turned out to be the case. "-that sir uwaine smote sir marhaus that his spear brast in pieces on the shield, and sir marhaus smote him so sore that horse and man he bare to the earth, and hurt sir uwaine on the left side -"the truth is, alisande, these archaics are a little too simple; the vocabulary is too limited, and so, by consequence, descriptions suffer in the matter of variety; they run too much to level saharas of fact, and not enough to picturesque detail; this throws about them a certain air of the monotonous; in fact the fights are all alike: a couple of people come together with great random -random is a good word, and so is exegesis, for that matter, and so is holocaust, and defalcation, and usufruct and a hundred others, but land! a body ought to discriminate -they come together with great random, and a spear is brast, and one party brake his shield and the other one goes down, horse and man, over his horse-tail and brake his neck, and then the next candidate comes randoming in, and brast his spear, and the other man brast his shield, and down he goes, horse and man, over his horse-tail, and brake his neck, and then there's another elected, and another and another and still another, till the material is all used up; and when you come to figure up results, you can't tell one fight from another, nor who whipped; and as a picture, of living, raging, roaring battle, sho! why, it's pale and noiseless -just ghosts scuffling in a fog. dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest spectacle? -the burning of rome in nero's time, for instance? why, it would merely say, 'town burned down; no insurance; boy brast a window, fireman brake his neck!' why, that ain't a picture!" it was a good deal of a lecture, i thought, but it didn't disturb sandy, didn't turn a feather; her steam soared steadily up again, the minute i took off the lid: "then sir marhaus turned his horse and rode toward gawaine with his spear. and when sir gawaine saw that, he dressed his shield, and they aventred their spears, and they came together with all the might of their horses, that either knight smote other so hard in the midst of their shields, but sir gawaine's spear brake --" "i knew it would." -"but sir marhaus's spear held; and therewith sir gawaine and his horse rushed down to the earth --" "just so -and brake his back." -"and lightly sir gawaine rose upon his feet and pulled out his sword, and dressed him toward sir marhaus on foot, and therewith either came unto other eagerly, and smote together with their swords, that their shields flew in cantels, and they bruised their helms and their hauberks, and wounded either other. but sir gawaine, fro it passed nine of the clock, waxed by the space of three hours ever stronger and stronger. and thrice his might was increased. all this espied sir marhaus, and had great wonder how his might increased, and so they wounded other passing sore; and then when it was come noon --" the pelting sing-song of it carried me forward to scenes and sounds of my boyhood days: "n-e-e-ew haven! ten minutes for refreshments -knductr'll strike the gong-bell two minutes before train leaves -passengers for the shore line please take seats in the rear k'yar, this k'yar don't go no furder -ahh pls, aw-rnjz, b'nanners, s-a-n-d'ches, p--op-corn!" -"and waxed past noon and drew toward evensong. sir gawaine's strength feebled and waxed passing faint, that unnethes he might dure any longer, and sir marhaus was then bigger and bigger --" "which strained his armor, of course; and yet little would one of these people mind a small thing like that." -"and so, sir knight, said sir marhaus, i have well felt that ye are a passing good knight, and a marvelous man of might as ever i felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, and therefore it were a pity to do you hurt, for i feel you are passing feeble. ah, said sir gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the word that i should say. and therewith they took off their helms and either kissed other, and there they swore together either to love other as brethren --" but i lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber, thinking about what a pity it was that men with such superb strength -strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensome iron and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bang each other for six hours on a stretch -should not have been born at a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. take a jackass, for instance: a jackass has that kind of strength, and puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world because he is a jackass; but a nobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass. it is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should never have been attempted in the first place. and yet, once you start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is going to come of it. when i came to myself again and began to listen, i perceived that i had lost another chapter, and that alisande had wandered a long way off with her people. "and so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones, and thereby they saw a fair stream of water; above thereby was the head of the stream, a fair fountain, and three damsels sitting thereby. in this country, said sir marhaus, came never knight since it was christened, but he found strange adventures --" "this is not good form, alisande. sir marhaus the king's son of ireland talks like all the rest; you ought to give him a brogue, or at least a characteristic expletive; by this means one would recognize him as soon as he spoke, without his ever being named. it is a common literary device with the great authors. you should make him say, 'in this country, be jabers, came never knight since it was christened, but he found strange adventures, be jabers.' you see how much better that sounds." -"came never knight but he found strange adventures, be jabers. of a truth it doth indeed, fair lord, albeit 'tis passing hard to say, though peradventure that will not tarry but better speed with usage. and then they rode to the damsels, and either saluted other, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head, and she was threescore winter of age or more --" "the damsel was?" "even so, dear lord -and her hair was white under the garland --" "celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not -the loose-fit kind, that go up and down like a portcullis when you eat, and fall out when you laugh." "the second damsel was of thirty winter of age, with a circlet of gold about her head. the third damsel was but fifteen year of age --" billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and the voice faded out of my hearing! fifteen! break -my heart! oh, my lost darling! just her age who was so gentle, and lovely, and all the world to me, and whom i shall never see again! how the thought of her carries me back over wide seas of memory to a vague dim time, a happy time, so many, many centuries hence, when i used to wake in the soft summer mornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say "hello, central!" just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a "hello, hank!" that was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear. she got three dollars a week, but she was worth it. i could not follow alisande's further explanation of who our captured knights were, now -i mean in case she should ever get to explaining who they were. my interest was gone, my thoughts were far away, and sad. by fitful glimpses of the drifting tale, caught here and there and now and then, i merely noted in a vague way that each of these three knights took one of these three damsels up behind him on his horse, and one rode north, another east, the other south, to seek adventures, and meet again and lie, after year and day. year and day -and without baggage. it was of a piece with the general simplicity of the country. the sun was now setting. it was about three in the afternoon when alisande had begun to tell me who the cowboys were; so she had made pretty good progress with it -for her. she would arrive some time or other, no doubt, but she was not a person who could be hurried. we were approaching a castle which stood on high ground; a huge, strong, venerable structure, whose gray towers and battlements were charmingly draped with ivy, and whose whole majestic mass was drenched with splendors flung from the sinking sun. it was the largest castle we had seen, and so i thought it might be the one we were after, but sandy said no. she did not know who owned it; she said she had passed it without calling, when she went down to camelot. chapter xvi. morgan le fay if knights errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirable places to seek hospitality in. as a matter of fact, knights errant were not persons to be believed -that is, measured by modern standards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. it was very simple: you discounted a statement ninetyseven per cent.; the rest was fact. now after making this allowance, the truth remained that if i could find out something about a castle before ringing the doorbell -i mean hailing the warders -it was the sensible thing to do. so i was pleased when i saw in the distance a horseman making the bottom turn of the road that wound down from this castle. as we approached each other, i saw that he wore a plumed helmet, and seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curious addition also -a stiff square garment like a herald's tabard. however, i had to smile at my own forgetfulness when i got nearer and read this sign on his tabard: "persimmon's soap -all the prime-donna use it." that was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposes in view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation. in the first place, it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense of knight errantry, though nobody suspected that but me. i had started a number of these people out -the bravest knights i could get -each sandwiched between bulletin-boards bearing one device or another, and i judged that by and by when they got to be numerous enough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then, even the steel-clad ass that hadn't any board would himself begin to look ridiculous because he was out of the fashion. secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. this would undermine the church. i mean would be a step toward that. next, education -next, freedom -and then she would begin to crumble. it being my conviction that any established church is an established crime, an established slave-pen, i had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. why, in my own former day -in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb of time -there were old englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a free country: a "free" country with the corporation act and the test still in force in it -timbers propped against men's liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an established anachronism with. my missionaries were taught to spell out the gilt signs on their tabards -the showy gilding was a neat idea, i could have got the king to wear a bulletin-board for the sake of that barbaric splendor -they were to spell out these signs and then explain to the lords and ladies what soap was; and if the lords and ladies were afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog. the missionary's next move was to get the family together and try it on himself; he was to stop at no experiment, however desperate. that could convince the nobility that soap was harmless; if any final doubt remained, he must catch a hermit -the woods were full of them; saints they called themselves, and saints they were believed to be. they were unspeakably holy, and worked miracles, and everybody stood in awe of them. if a hermit could survive a wash, and that failed to convince a duke, give him up, let him alone. whenever my missionaries overcame a knight errant on the road they washed him, and when he got well they swore him to go and get a bulletin-board and disseminate soap and civilization the rest of his days. as a consequence the workers in the field were increasing by degrees, and the reform was steadily spreading. my soap factory felt the strain early. at first i had only two hands; but before i had left home i was already employing fifteen, and running night and day; and the atmospheric result was getting so pronounced that the king went sort of fainting and gasping around and said he did not believe he could stand it much longer, and sir launcelot got so that he did hardly anything but walk up and down the roof and swear, although i told him it was worse up there than anywhere else, but he said he wanted plenty of air; and he was always complaining that a palace was no place for a soap factory anyway, and said if a man was to start one in his house he would be damned if he wouldn't strangle him. there were ladies present, too, but much these people ever cared for that; they would swear before children, if the wind was their way when the factory was going. this missionary knight's name was la cote male taile, and he said that this castle was the abode of morgan le fay, sister of king arthur, and wife of king uriens. monarch of a realm about as big as the district of columbia -you could stand in the middle of it and throw bricks into the next kingdom. "kings" and "kingdoms" were as thick in britain as they had been in little palestine in joshua's time, when people had to sleep with their knees pulled up because they couldn't stretch out without a passport. la cote was much depressed, for he had scored here the worst failure of his campaign. he had not worked off a cake; yet he had tried all the tricks of the trade, even to the washing of a hermit; but the hermit died. this was, indeed, a bad failure, for this animal would now be dubbed a martyr, and would take his place among the saints of the roman calendar. thus made he his moan, this poor sir la cote male taile, and sorrowed passing sore. and so my heart bled for him, and i was moved to comfort and stay him. wherefore i said: "forbear to grieve, fair knight, for this is not a defeat. we have brains, you and i; and for such as have brains there are no defeats, but only victories. observe how we will turn this seeming disaster into an advertisement; an advertisement for our soap; and the biggest one, to draw, that was ever thought of; an advertisement that will transform that mount washington defeat into a matterhorn victory. we will put on your bulletin-board, 'patronized by the elect.' how does that strike you?" "verily, it is wonderly bethought!" "well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest little one-line ad., it's a corker." so the poor colporteur's griefs vanished away. he was a brave fellow, and had done mighty feats of arms in his time. his chief celebrity rested upon the events of an excursion like this one of mine, which he had once made with a damsel named maledisant, who was as handy with her tongue as was sandy, though in a different way, for her tongue churned forth only railings and insult, whereas sandy's music was of a kindlier sort. i knew his story well, and so i knew how to interpret the compassion that was in his face when he bade me farewell. he supposed i was having a bitter hard time of it. sandy and i discussed his story, as we rode along, and she said that la cote's bad luck had begun with the very beginning of that trip; for the king's fool had overthrown him on the first day, and in such cases it was customary for the girl to desert to the conqueror, but maledisant didn't do it; and also persisted afterward in sticking to him, after all his defeats. but, said i, suppose the victor should decline to accept his spoil? she said that that wouldn't answer -he must. he couldn't decline; it wouldn't be regular. i made a note of that. if sandy's music got to be too burdensome, some time, i would let a knight defeat me, on the chance that she would desert to him. in due time we were challenged by the warders, from the castle walls, and after a parley admitted. i have nothing pleasant to tell about that visit. but it was not a disappointment, for i knew mrs. le fay by reputation, and was not expecting anything pleasant. she was held in awe by the whole realm, for she had made everybody believe she was a great sorceress. all her ways were wicked, all her instincts devilish. she was loaded to the eyelids with cold malice. all her history was black with crime; and among her crimes murder was common. i was most curious to see her; as curious as i could have been to see satan. to my surprise she was beautiful; black thoughts had failed to make her expression repulsive, age had failed to wrinkle her satin skin or mar its bloomy freshness. she could have passed for old uriens' granddaughter, she could have been mistaken for sister to her own son. as soon as we were fairly within the castle gates we were ordered into her presence. king uriens was there, a kind-faced old man with a subdued look; and also the son, sir uwaine le blanchemains, in whom i was, of course, interested on account of the tradition that he had once done battle with thirty knights, and also on account of his trip with sir gawaine and sir marhaus, which sandy had been aging me with. but morgan was the main attraction, the conspicuous personality here; she was head chief of this household, that was plain. she caused us to be seated, and then she began, with all manner of pretty graces and graciousnesses, to ask me questions. dear me, it was like a bird or a flute, or something, talking. i felt persuaded that this woman must have been misrepresented, lied about. she trilled along, and trilled along, and presently a handsome young page, clothed like the rainbow, and as easy and undulatory of movement as a wave, came with something on a golden salver, and, kneeling to present it to her, overdid his graces and lost his balance, and so fell lightly against her knee. she slipped a dirk into him in as matter-of-course a way as another person would have harpooned a rat! poor child! he slumped to the floor, twisted his silken limbs in one great straining contortion of pain, and was dead. out of the old king was wrung an involuntary "o-h!" of compassion. the look he got, made him cut it suddenly short and not put any more hyphens in it. sir uwaine, at a sign from his mother, went to the anteroom and called some servants, and meanwhile madame went rippling sweetly along with her talk. i saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while she talked she kept a corner of her eye on the servants to see that they made no balks in handling the body and getting it out; when they came with fresh clean towels, she sent back for the other kind; and when they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicated a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes had overlooked. it was plain to me that la cote male taile had failed to see the mistress of the house. often, how louder and clearer than any tongue, does dumb circumstantial evidence speak. morgan le fay rippled along as musically as ever. marvelous woman. and what a glance she had: when it fell in reproof upon those servants, they shrunk and quailed as timid people do when the lightning flashes out of a cloud. i could have got the habit myself. it was the same with that poor old brer uriens; he was always on the ragged edge of apprehension; she could not even turn toward him but he winced. in the midst of the talk i let drop a complimentary word about king arthur, forgetting for the moment how this woman hated her brother. that one little compliment was enough. she clouded up like storm; she called for her guards, and said: "hale me these varlets to the dungeons." that struck cold on my ears, for her dungeons had a reputation. nothing occurred to me to say -or do. but not so with sandy. as the guard laid a hand upon me, she piped up with the tranquilest confidence, and said: "god's wounds, dost thou covet destruction, thou maniac? it is the boss!" now what a happy idea that was! -and so simple; yet it would never have occurred to me. i was born modest; not all over, but in spots; and this was one of the spots. the effect upon madame was electrical. it cleared her countenance and brought back her smiles and all her persuasive graces and blandishments; but nevertheless she was not able to entirely cover up with them the fact that she was in a ghastly fright. she said: "la, but do list to thine handmaid! as if one gifted with powers like to mine might say the thing which i have said unto one who has vanquished merlin, and not be jesting. by mine enchantments i foresaw your coming, and by them i knew you when you entered here. i did but play this little jest with hope to surprise you into some display of your art, as not doubting you would blast the guards with occult fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot, a marvel much beyond mine own ability, yet one which i have long been childishly curious to see." the guards were less curious, and got out as soon as they got permission. chapter xvii. a royal banquet madame, seeing me pacific and unresentful, no doubt judged that i was deceived by her excuse; for her fright dissolved away, and she was soon so importunate to have me give an exhibition and kill somebody, that the thing grew to be embarrassing. however, to my relief she was presently interrupted by the call to prayers. i will say this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religious. nothing could divert them from the regular and faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by the church. more than once i had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage, stop to pray before cutting his throat; more than once i had seen a noble, after ambushing and despatching his enemy, retire to the nearest wayside shrine and humbly give thanks, without even waiting to rob the body. there was to be nothing finer or sweeter in the life of even benvenuto cellini, that rough-hewn saint, ten centuries later. all the nobles of britain, with their families, attended divine service morning and night daily, in their private chapels, and even the worst of them had family worship five or six times a day besides. the credit of this belonged entirely to the church. although i was no friend to that catholic church, i was obliged to admit this. and often, in spite of me, i found myself saying, "what would this country be without the church?" after prayers we had dinner in a great banqueting hall which was lighted by hundreds of grease-jets, and everything was as fine and lavish and rudely splendid as might become the royal degree of the hosts. at the head of the hall, on a dais, was the table of the king, queen, and their son, prince uwaine. stretching down the hall from this, was the general table, on the floor. at this, above the salt, sat the visiting nobles and the grown members of their families, of both sexes, -the resident court, in effect -sixty-one persons; below the salt sat minor officers of the household, with their principal subordinates: altogether a hundred and eighteen persons sitting, and about as many liveried servants standing behind their chairs, or serving in one capacity or another. it was a very fine show. in a gallery a band with cymbals, horns, harps, and other horrors, opened the proceedings with what seemed to be the crude first-draft or original agony of the wail known to later centuries as "in the sweet bye and bye." it was new, and ought to have been rehearsed a little more. for some reason or other the queen had the composer hanged, after dinner. after this music, the priest who stood behind the royal table said a noble long grace in ostensible latin. then the battalion of waiters broke away from their posts, and darted, rushed, flew, fetched and carried, and the mighty feeding began; no words anywhere, but absorbing attention to business. the rows of chops opened and shut in vast unison, and the sound of it was like to the muffled burr of subterranean machinery. the havoc continued an hour and a half, and unimaginable was the destruction of substantials. of the chief feature of the feast -the huge wild boar that lay stretched out so portly and imposing at the start -nothing was left but the semblance of a hoop-skirt; and he was but the type and symbol of what had happened to all the other dishes. with the pastries and so on, the heavy drinking began -and the talk. gallon after gallon of wine and mead disappeared, and everybody got comfortable, then happy, then sparklingly joyous -both sexes, -and by and by pretty noisy. men told anecdotes that were terrific to hear, but nobody blushed; and when the nub was sprung, the assemblage let go with a horse-laugh that shook the fortress. ladies answered back with historiettes that would almost have made queen margaret of navarre or even the great elizabeth of england hide behind a handkerchief, but nobody hid here, but only laughed -howled, you may say. in pretty much all of these dreadful stories, ecclesiastics were the hardy heroes, but that didn't worry the chaplain any, he had his laugh with the rest; more than that, upon invitation he roared out a song which was of as daring a sort as any that was sung that night. by midnight everybody was fagged out, and sore with laughing; and, as a rule, drunk: some weepingly, some affectionately, some hilariously, some quarrelsomely, some dead and under the table. of the ladies, the worst spectacle was a lovely young duchess, whose wedding-eve this was; and indeed she was a spectacle, sure enough. just as she was she could have sat in advance for the portrait of the young daughter of the regent d'orleans, at the famous dinner whence she was carried, foul-mouthed, intoxicated, and helpless, to her bed, in the lost and lamented days of the ancient regime. suddenly, even while the priest was lifting his hands, and all conscious heads were bowed in reverent expectation of the coming blessing, there appeared under the arch of the far-off door at the bottom of the hall an old and bent and white-haired lady, leaning upon a crutch-stick; and she lifted the stick and pointed it toward the queen and cried out: "the wrath and curse of god fall upon you, woman without pity, who have slain mine innocent grandchild and made desolate this old heart that had nor chick, nor friend nor stay nor comfort in all this world but him!" everybody crossed himself in a grisly fright, for a curse was an awful thing to those people; but the queen rose up majestic, with the death-light in her eye, and flung back this ruthless command: "lay hands on her! to the stake with her!" the guards left their posts to obey. it was a shame; it was a cruel thing to see. what could be done? sandy gave me a look; i knew she had another inspiration. i said: "do what you choose." she was up and facing toward the queen in a moment. she indicated me, and said: "madame, he saith this may not be. recall the commandment, or he will dissolve the castle and it shall vanish away like the instable fabric of a dream!" confound it, what a crazy contract to pledge a person to! what if the queen -but my consternation subsided there, and my panic passed off; for the queen, all in a collapse, made no show of resistance but gave a countermanding sign and sunk into her seat. when she reached it she was sober. so were many of the others. the assemblage rose, whiffed ceremony to the winds, and rushed for the door like a mob; overturning chairs, smashing crockery, tugging, struggling, shouldering, crowding -anything to get out before i should change my mind and puff the castle into the measureless dim vacancies of space. well, well, well, they were a superstitious lot. it is all a body can do to conceive of it. the poor queen was so scared and humbled that she was even afraid to hang the composer without first consulting me. i was very sorry for her -indeed, any one would have been, for she was really suffering; so i was willing to do anything that was reasonable, and had no desire to carry things to wanton extremities. i therefore considered the matter thoughtfully, and ended by having the musicians ordered into our presence to play that sweet bye and bye again, which they did. then i saw that she was right, and gave her permission to hang the whole band. this little relaxation of sternness had a good effect upon the queen. a statesman gains little by the arbitrary exercise of iron-clad authority upon all occasions that offer, for this wounds the just pride of his subordinates, and thus tends to undermine his strength. a little concession, now and then, where it can do no harm, is the wiser policy. now that the queen was at ease in her mind once more, and measurably happy, her wine naturally began to assert itself again, and it got a little the start of her. i mean it set her music going -her silver bell of a tongue. dear me, she was a master talker. it would not become me to suggest that it was pretty late and that i was a tired man and very sleepy. i wished i had gone off to bed when i had the chance. now i must stick it out; there was no other way. so she tinkled along and along, in the otherwise profound and ghostly hush of the sleeping castle, until by and by there came, as if from deep down under us, a far-away sound, as of a muffled shriek -with an expression of agony about it that made my flesh crawl. the queen stopped, and her eyes lighted with pleasure; she tilted her graceful head as a bird does when it listens. the sound bored its way up through the stillness again. "what is it?" i said. "it is truly a stubborn soul, and endureth long. it is many hours now." "endureth what?" "the rack. come -ye shall see a blithe sight. an he yield not his secret now, ye shall see him torn asunder." what a silky smooth hellion she was; and so composed and serene, when the cords all down my legs were hurting in sympathy with that man's pain. conducted by mailed guards bearing flaring torches, we tramped along echoing corridors, and down stone stairways dank and dripping, and smelling of mould and ages of imprisoned night -a chill, uncanny journey and a long one, and not made the shorter or the cheerier by the sorceress's talk, which was about this sufferer and his crime. he had been accused by an anonymous informer, of having killed a stag in the royal preserves. i said: "anonymous testimony isn't just the right thing, your highness. it were fairer to confront the accused with the accuser." "i had not thought of that, it being but of small consequence. but an i would, i could not, for that the accuser came masked by night, and told the forester, and straightway got him hence again, and so the forester knoweth him not." "then is this unknown the only person who saw the stag killed?" "marry, no man saw the killing, but this unknown saw this hardy wretch near to the spot where the stag lay, and came with right loyal zeal and betrayed him to the forester." "so the unknown was near the dead stag, too? isn't it just possible that he did the killing himself? his loyal zeal -in a mask -looks just a shade suspicious. but what is your highness's idea for racking the prisoner? where is the profit?" "he will not confess, else; and then were his soul lost. for his crime his life is forfeited by the law -and of a surety will i see that he payeth it! -but it were peril to my own soul to let him die unconfessed and unabsolved. nay, i were a fool to fling me into hell for his accommodation." "but, your highness, suppose he has nothing to confess?" "as to that, we shall see, anon. an i rack him to death and he confess not, it will peradventure show that he had indeed naught to confess -ye will grant that that is sooth? then shall i not be damned for an unconfessed man that had naught to confess -wherefore, i shall be safe." it was the stubborn unreasoning of the time. it was useless to argue with her. arguments have no chance against petrified training; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff. and her training was everybody's. the brightest intellect in the land would not have been able to see that her position was defective. as we entered the rack-cell i caught a picture that will not go from me; i wish it would. a native young giant of thirty or thereabouts lay stretched upon the frame on his back, with his wrists and ankles tied to ropes which led over windlasses at either end. there was no color in him; his features were contorted and set, and sweat-drops stood upon his forehead. a priest bent over him on each side; the executioner stood by; guards were on duty; smoking torches stood in sockets along the walls; in a corner crouched a poor young creature, her face drawn with anguish, a half-wild and hunted look in her eyes, and in her lap lay a little child asleep. just as we stepped across the threshold the executioner gave his machine a slight turn, which wrung a cry from both the prisoner and the woman; but i shouted, and the executioner released the strain without waiting to see who spoke. i could not let this horror go on; it would have killed me to see it. i asked the queen to let me clear the place and speak to the prisoner privately; and when she was going to object i spoke in a low voice and said i did not want to make a scene before her servants, but i must have my way; for i was king arthur's representative, and was speaking in his name. she saw she had to yield. i asked her to indorse me to these people, and then leave me. it was not pleasant for her, but she took the pill; and even went further than i was meaning to require. i only wanted the backing of her own authority; but she said: "ye will do in all things as this lord shall command. it is the boss." it was certainly a good word to conjure with: you could see it by the squirming of these rats. the queen's guards fell into line, and she and they marched away, with their torch-bearers, and woke the echoes of the cavernous tunnels with the measured beat of their retreating footfalls. i had the prisoner taken from the rack and placed upon his bed, and medicaments applied to his hurts, and wine given him to drink. the woman crept near and looked on, eagerly, lovingly, but timorously, -like one who fears a repulse; indeed, she tried furtively to touch the man's forehead, and jumped back, the picture of fright, when i turned unconsciously toward her. it was pitiful to see. "lord," i said, "stroke him, lass, if you want to. do anything you're a mind to; don't mind me." why, her eyes were as grateful as an animal's, when you do it a kindness that it understands. the baby was out of her way and she had her cheek against the man's in a minute. and her hands fondling his hair, and her happy tears running down. the man revived and caressed his wife with his eyes, which was all he could do. i judged i might clear the den, now, and i did; cleared it of all but the family and myself. then i said: "now, my friend, tell me your side of this matter; i know the other side." the man moved his head in sign of refusal. but the woman looked pleased -as it seemed to me -pleased with my suggestion. i went on -"you know of me?" "yes. all do, in arthur's realms." "if my reputation has come to you right and straight, you should not be afraid to speak." the woman broke in, eagerly: "ah, fair my lord, do thou persuade him! thou canst an thou wilt. ah, he suffereth so; and it is for me -for me! and how can i bear it? i would i might see him die -a sweet, swift death; oh, my hugo, i cannot bear this one!" and she fell to sobbing and grovelling about my feet, and still imploring. imploring what? the man's death? i could not quite get the bearings of the thing. but hugo interrupted her and said: "peace! ye wit not what ye ask. shall i starve whom i love, to win a gentle death? i wend thou knewest me better." "well," i said, "i can't quite make this out. it is a puzzle. now --" "ah, dear my lord, an ye will but persuade him! consider how these his tortures wound me! oh, and he will not speak! -whereas, the healing, the solace that lie in a blessed swift death --" "what are you maundering about? he's going out from here a free man and whole -he's not going to die." the man's white face lit up, and the woman flung herself at me in a most surprising explosion of joy, and cried out: "he is saved! -for it is the king's word by the mouth of the king's servant -arthur, the king whose word is gold!" "well, then you do believe i can be trusted, after all. why didn't you before?" "who doubted? not i, indeed; and not she." "well, why wouldn't you tell me your story, then?" "ye had made no promise; else had it been otherwise." "i see, i see.... and yet i believe i don't quite see, after all. you stood the torture and refused to confess; which shows plain enough to even the dullest understanding that you had nothing to confess --" "i, my lord? how so? it was i that killed the deer!" "you did? oh, dear, this is the most mixed-up business that ever --" "dear lord, i begged him on my knees to confess, but --" "you did! it gets thicker and thicker. what did you want him to do that for?" "sith it would bring him a quick death and save him all this cruel pain." "well -yes, there is reason in that. but he didn't want the quick death." "he? why, of a surety he did." "well, then, why in the world didn't he confess?" "ah, sweet sir, and leave my wife and chick without bread and shelter?" "oh, heart of gold, now i see it! the bitter law takes the convicted man's estate and beggars his widow and his orphans. they could torture you to death, but without conviction or confession they could not rob your wife and baby. you stood by them like a man; and you -true wife and the woman that you are -you would have bought him release from torture at cost to yourself of slow starvation and death -well, it humbles a body to think what your sex can do when it comes to self-sacrifice. i'll book you both for my colony; you'll like it there; it's a factory where i'm going to turn groping and grubbing automata into men." chapter xviii. in the queen's dungeons well, i arranged all that; and i had the man sent to his home. i had a great desire to rack the executioner; not because he was a good, painstaking and paingiving official, -for surely it was not to his discredit that he performed his functions well -but to pay him back for wantonly cuffing and otherwise distressing that young woman. the priests told me about this, and were generously hot to have him punished. something of this disagreeable sort was turning up every now and then. i mean, episodes that showed that not all priests were frauds and self-seekers, but that many, even the great majority, of these that were down on the ground among the common people, were sincere and right-hearted, and devoted to the alleviation of human troubles and sufferings. well, it was a thing which could not be helped, so i seldom fretted about it, and never many minutes at a time; it has never been my way to bother much about things which you can't cure. but i did not like it, for it was just the sort of thing to keep people reconciled to an established church. we must have a religion -it goes without saying -but my idea is, to have it cut up into forty free sects, so that they will police each other, as had been the case in the united states in my time. concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and and an established church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition. that wasn't law; it wasn't gospel: it was only an opinion -my opinion, and i was only a man, one man: so it wasn't worth any more than the pope's -or any less, for that matter. well, i couldn't rack the executioner, neither would i overlook the just complaint of the priests. the man must be punished somehow or other, so i degraded him from his office and made him leader of the band -the new one that was to be started. he begged hard, and said he couldn't play -a plausible excuse, but too thin; there wasn't a musician in the country that could. the queen was a good deal outraged, next morning when she found she was going to have neither hugo's life nor his property. but i told her she must bear this cross; that while by law and custom she certainly was entitled to both the man's life and his property, there were extenuating circumstances, and so in arthur the king's name i had pardoned him. the deer was ravaging the man's fields, and he had killed it in sudden passion, and not for gain; and he had carried it into the royal forest in the hope that that might make detection of the misdoer impossible. confound her, i couldn't make her see that sudden passion is an extenuating circumstance in the killing of venison -or of a person -so i gave it up and let her sulk it out i did think i was going to make her see it by remarking that her own sudden passion in the case of the page modified that crime. "crime!" she exclaimed. "how thou talkest! crime, forsooth! man, i am going to pay for him!" oh, it was no use to waste sense on her. training -training is everything; training is all there is to a person. we speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. we have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us. all that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable or discreditable to us, can be covered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the adam-clam or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so tediously and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed. and as for me, all that i think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this pathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one microscopic atom in me that is truly me: the rest may land in sheol and welcome for all i care. no, confound her, her intellect was good, she had brains enough, but her training made her an ass -that is, from a many-centuries-later point of view. to kill the page was no crime -it was her right; and upon her right she stood, serenely and unconscious of offense. she was a result of generations of training in the unexamined and unassailed belief that the law which permitted her to kill a subject when she chose was a perfectly right and righteous one. well, we must give even satan his due. she deserved a compliment for one thing; and i tried to pay it, but the words stuck in my throat. she had a right to kill the boy, but she was in no wise obliged to pay for him. that was law for some other people, but not for her. she knew quite well that she was doing a large and generous thing to pay for that lad, and that i ought in common fairness to come out with something handsome about it, but i couldn't -my mouth refused. i couldn't help seeing, in my fancy, that poor old grandma with the broken heart, and that fair young creature lying butchered, his little silken pomps and vanities laced with his golden blood. how could she pay for him! whom could she pay? and so, well knowing that this woman, trained as she had been, deserved praise, even adulation, i was yet not able to utter it, trained as i had been. the best i could do was to fish up a compliment from outside, so to speak -and the pity of it was, that it was true: "madame, your people will adore you for this." quite true, but i meant to hang her for it some day if i lived. some of those laws were too bad, altogether too bad. a master might kill his slave for nothing -for mere spite, malice, or to pass the time -just as we have seen that the crowned head could do it with his slave, that is to say, anybody. a gentleman could kill a free commoner, and pay for him -cash or garden-truck. a noble could kill a noble without expense, as far as the law was concerned, but reprisals in kind were to be expected. anybody could kill somebody, except the commoner and the slave; these had no privileges. if they killed, it was murder, and the law wouldn't stand murder. it made short work of the experimenter -and of his family, too, if he murdered somebody who belonged up among the ornamental ranks. if a commoner gave a noble even so much as a damiens-scratch which didn't kill or even hurt, he got damiens' dose for it just the same; they pulled him to rags and tatters with horses, and all the world came to see the show, and crack jokes, and have a good time; and some of the performances of the best people present were as tough, and as properly unprintable, as any that have been printed by the pleasant casanova in his chapter about the dismemberment of louis xv.'s poor awkward enemy. i had had enough of this grisly place by this time, and wanted to leave, but i couldn't, because i had something on my mind that my conscience kept prodding me about, and wouldn't let me forget. if i had the remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience. it is one of the most disagreeable things connected with a person; and although it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot be said to pay, in the long run; it would be much better to have less good and more comfort. still, this is only my opinion, and i am only one man; others, with less experience, may think differently. they have a right to their view. i only stand to this: i have noticed my conscience for many years, and i know it is more trouble and bother to me than anything else i started with. i suppose that in the beginning i prized it, because we prize anything that is ours; and yet how foolish it was to think so. if we look at it in another way, we see how absurd it is: if i had an anvil in me would i prize it? of course not. and yet when you come to think, there is no real difference between a conscience and an anvil -i mean for comfort. i have noticed it a thousand times. and you could dissolve an anvil with acids, when you couldn't stand it any longer; but there isn't any way that you can work off a conscience -at least so it will stay worked off; not that i know of, anyway. there was something i wanted to do before leaving, but it was a disagreeable matter, and i hated to go at it. well, it bothered me all the morning. i could have mentioned it to the old king, but what would be the use? -he was but an extinct volcano; he had been active in his time, but his fire was out, this good while, he was only a stately ash-pile now; gentle enough, and kindly enough for my purpose, without doubt, but not usable. he was nothing, this so-called king: the queen was the only power there. and she was a vesuvius. as a favor, she might consent to warm a flock of sparrows for you, but then she might take that very opportunity to turn herself loose and bury a city. however, i reflected that as often as any other way, when you are expecting the worst, you get something that is not so bad, after all. so i braced up and placed my matter before her royal highness. i said i had been having a general jail-delivery at camelot and among neighboring castles, and with her permission i would like to examine her collection, her bric-a-brac -that is to say, her prisoners. she resisted; but i was expecting that. but she finally consented. i was expecting that, too, but not so soon. that about ended my discomfort. she called her guards and torches, and we went down into the dungeons. these were down under the castle's foundations, and mainly were small cells hollowed out of the living rock. some of these cells had no light at all. in one of them was a woman, in foul rags, who sat on the ground, and would not answer a question or speak a word, but only looked up at us once or twice, through a cobweb of tangled hair, as if to see what casual thing it might be that was disturbing with sound and light the meaningless dull dream that was become her life; after that, she sat bowed, with her dirt-caked fingers idly interlocked in her lap, and gave no further sign. this poor rack of bones was a woman of middle age, apparently; but only apparently; she had been there nine years, and was eighteen when she entered. she was a commoner, and had been sent here on her bridal night by sir breuse sance pite, a neighboring lord whose vassal her father was, and to which said lord she had refused what has since been called le droit du seigneur, and, moreover, had opposed violence to violence and spilt half a gill of his almost sacred blood. the young husband had interfered at that point. believing the bride's life in danger, and had flung the noble out into the midst of the humble and trembling wedding guests, in the parlor, and left him there astonished at this strange treatment, and implacably embittered against both bride and groom. the said lord being cramped for dungeon-room had asked the queen to accommodate his two criminals, and here in her bastile they had been ever since; hither, indeed, they had come before their crime was an hour old, and had never seen each other since. here they were, kenneled like toads in the same rock; they had passed nine pitch dark years within fifty feet of each other, yet neither knew whether the other was alive or not. all the first years, their only question had been -asked with beseechings and tears that might have moved stones, in time, perhaps, but hearts are not stones: "is he alive?" "is she alive?" but they had never got an answer; and at last that question was not asked any more -or any other. i wanted to see the man, after hearing all this. he was thirty-four years old, and looked sixty. he sat upon a squared block of stone, with his head bent down, his forearms resting on his knees, his long hair hanging like a fringe before his face, and he was muttering to himself. he raised his chin and looked us slowly over, in a listless dull way, blinking with the distress of the torchlight, then dropped his head and fell to muttering again and took no further notice of us. there were some pathetically suggestive dumb witnesses present. on his wrists and ankles were cicatrices, old smooth scars, and fastened to the stone on which he sat was a chain with manacles and fetters attached; but this apparatus lay idle on the ground, and was thick with rust. chains cease to be needed after the spirit has gone out of a prisoner. i could not rouse the man; so i said we would take him to her, and see -to the bride who was the fairest thing in the earth to him, once -roses, pearls, and dew made flesh, for him; a wonder-work, the master-work of nature: with eyes like no other eyes, and voice like no other voice, and a freshness, and lithe young grace, and beauty, that belonged properly to the creatures of dreams -as he thought -and to no other. the sight of her would set his stagnant blood leaping; the sight of her -but it was a disappointment. they sat together on the ground and looked dimly wondering into each other's faces a while, with a sort of weak animal curiosity; then forgot each other's presence, and dropped their eyes, and you saw that they were away again and wandering in some far land of dreams and shadows that we know nothing about. i had them taken out and sent to their friends. the queen did not like it much. not that she felt any personal interest in the matter, but she thought it disrespectful to sir breuse sance pite. however, i assured her that if he found he couldn't stand it i would fix him so that he could. i set forty-seven prisoners loose out of those awful rat-holes, and left only one in captivity. he was a lord, and had killed another lord, a sort of kinsman of the queen. that other lord had ambushed him to assassinate him, but this fellow had got the best of him and cut his throat. however, it was not for that that i left him jailed, but for maliciously destroying the only public well in one of his wretched villages. the queen was bound to hang him for killing her kinsman, but i would not allow it: it was no crime to kill an assassin. but i said i was willing to let her hang him for destroying the well; so she concluded to put up with that, as it was better than nothing. dear me, for what trifling offenses the most of those forty-seven men and women were shut up there! indeed, some were there for no distinct offense at all, but only to gratify somebody's spite; and not always the queen's by any means, but a friend's. the newest prisoner's crime was a mere remark which he had made. he said he believed that men were about all alike, and one man as good as another, barring clothes. he said he believed that if you were to strip the nation naked and send a stranger through the crowd, he couldn't tell the king from a quack doctor, nor a duke from a hotel clerk. apparently here was a man whose brains had not been reduced to an ineffectual mush by idiotic training. i set him loose and sent him to the factory. some of the cells carved in the living rock were just behind the face of the precipice, and in each of these an arrow-slit had been pierced outward to the daylight, and so the captive had a thin ray from the blessed sun for his comfort. the case of one of these poor fellows was particularly hard. from his dusky swallow's hole high up in that vast wall of native rock he could peer out through the arrow-slit and see his own home off yonder in the valley; and for twenty-two years he had watched it, with heartache and longing, through that crack. he could see the lights shine there at night, and in the daytime he could see figures go in and come out -his wife and children, some of them, no doubt, though he could not make out at that distance. in the course of years he noted festivities there, and tried to rejoice, and wondered if they were weddings or what they might be. and he noted funerals; and they wrung his heart. he could make out the coffin, but he could not determine its size, and so could not tell whether it was wife or child. he could see the procession form, with priests and mourners, and move solemnly away, bearing the secret with them. he had left behind him five children and a wife; and in nineteen years he had seen five funerals issue, and none of them humble enough in pomp to denote a servant. so he had lost five of his treasures; there must still be one remaining -one now infinitely, unspeakably precious, -but which one? wife, or child? that was the question that tortured him, by night and by day, asleep and awake. well, to have an interest, of some sort, and half a ray of light, when you are in a dungeon, is a great support to the body and preserver of the intellect. this man was in pretty good condition yet. by the time he had finished telling me his distressful tale, i was in the same state of mind that you would have been in yourself, if you have got average human curiosity; that is to say, i was as burning up as he was to find out which member of the family it was that was left. so i took him over home myself; and an amazing kind of a surprise party it was, too -typhoons and cyclones of frantic joy, and whole niagaras of happy tears; and by george! we found the aforetime young matron graying toward the imminent verge of her half century, and the babies all men and women, and some of them married and experimenting familywise themselves -for not a soul of the tribe was dead! conceive of the ingenious devilishness of that queen: she had a special hatred for this prisoner, and she had invented all those funerals herself, to scorch his heart with; and the sublimest stroke of genius of the whole thing was leaving the family-invoice a funeral short, so as to let him wear his poor old soul out guessing. but for me, he never would have got out. morgan le fay hated him with her whole heart, and she never would have softened toward him. and yet his crime was committed more in thoughtlessness than deliberate depravity. he had said she had red hair. well, she had; but that was no way to speak of it. when redheaded people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn. consider it: among these forty-seven captives there were five whose names, offenses, and dates of incarceration were no longer known! one woman and four men -all bent, and wrinkled, and mind-extinguished patriarchs. they themselves had long ago forgotten these details; at any rate they had mere vague theories about them, nothing definite and nothing that they repeated twice in the same way. the succession of priests whose office it had been to pray daily with the captives and remind them that god had put them there, for some wise purpose or other, and teach them that patience, humbleness, and submission to oppression was what he loved to see in parties of a subordinate rank, had traditions about these poor old human ruins, but nothing more. these traditions went but little way, for they concerned the length of the incarceration only, and not the names of the offenses. and even by the help of tradition the only thing that could be proven was that none of the five had seen daylight for thirty-five years: how much longer this privation has lasted was not guessable. the king and the queen knew nothing about these poor creatures, except that they were heirlooms, assets inherited, along with the throne, from the former firm. nothing of their history had been transmitted with their persons, and so the inheriting owners had considered them of no value, and had felt no interest in them. i said to the queen: "then why in the world didn't you set them free?" the question was a puzzler. she didn't know why she hadn't, the thing had never come up in her mind. so here she was, forecasting the veritable history of future prisoners of the castle d'if, without knowing it. it seemed plain to me now, that with her training, those inherited prisoners were merely property -nothing more, nothing less. well, when we inherit property, it does not occur to us to throw it away, even when we do not value it. when i brought my procession of human bats up into the open world and the glare of the afternoon sun -previously blindfolding them, in charity for eyes so long untortured by light - they were a spectacle to look at. skeletons, scarecrows, goblins, pathetic frights, every one; legitimatest possible children of monarchy by the grace of god and the established church. i muttered absently: "i wish i could photograph them!" you have seen that kind of people who will never let on that they don't know the meaning of a new big word. the more ignorant they are, the more pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven't shot over their heads. the queen was just one of that sort, and was always making the stupidest blunders by reason of it. she hesitated a moment; then her face brightened up with sudden comprehension, and she said she would do it for me. i thought to myself: she? why what can she know about photography? but it was a poor time to be thinking. when i looked around, she was moving on the procession with an axe! well, she certainly was a curious one, was morgan le fay. i have seen a good many kinds of women in my time, but she laid over them all for variety. and how sharply characteristic of her this episode was. she had no more idea than a horse of how to photograph a procession; but being in doubt, it was just like her to try to do it with an axe. chapter xix. knight-errantry as a trade sandy and i were on the road again, next morning, bright and early. it was so good to open up one's lungs and take in whole luscious barrels-ful of the blessed god's untainted, dew-fashioned, woodlandscented air once more, after suffocating body and mind for two days and nights in the moral and physical stenches of that intolerable old buzzard-roost! mean, for me: of course the place was all right and agreeable enough for sandy, for she had been used to high life all her days. poor girl, her jaws had had a wearisome rest now for a while, and i was expecting to get the consequences. i was right; but she had stood by me most helpfully in the castle, and had mightily supported and reinforced me with gigantic foolishnesses which were worth more for the occasion than wisdoms double their size; so i thought she had earned a right to work her mill for a while, if she wanted to, and i felt not a pang when she started it up: "now turn we unto sir marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirty winter of age southward --" "are you going to see if you can work up another half-stretch on the trail of the cowboys, sandy?" "even so, fair my lord." "go ahead, then. i won't interrupt this time, if i can help it. begin over again; start fair, and shake out all your reefs, and i will load my pipe and give good attention." "now turn we unto sir marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirty winter of age southward. and so they came into a deep forest, and by fortune they were nighted, and rode along in a deep way, and at the last they came into a courtelage where abode the duke of south marches, and there they asked harbour. and on the morn the duke sent unto sir marhaus, and bad him make him ready. and so sir marhaus arose and armed him, and there was a mass sung afore him, and he brake his fast, and so mounted on horseback in the court of the castle, there they should do the battle. so there was the duke already on horseback, clean armed, and his six sons by him, and every each had a spear in his hand, and so they encountered, whereas the duke and his two sons brake their spears upon him, but sir marhaus held up his spear and touched none of them. then came the four sons by couples, and two of them brake their spears, and so did the other two. and all this while sir marhaus touched them not. then sir marhaus ran to the duke, and smote him with his spear that horse and man fell to the earth. and so he served his sons. and then sir marhaus alight down, and bad the duke yield him or else he would slay him. and then some of his sons recovered, and would have set upon sir marhaus. then sir marhaus said to the duke, cease thy sons, or else i will do the uttermost to you all. when the duke saw he might not escape the death, he cried to his sons, and charged them to yield them to sir marhaus. and they kneeled all down and put the pommels of their swords to the knight, and so he received them. and then they holp up their father, and so by their common assent promised unto sir marhaus never to be foes unto king arthur, and thereupon at whitsuntide after, to come he and his sons, and put them in the king's grace. * [* footnote: the story is borrowed, language and all, from the morte d'arthur. --m.t.] "even so standeth the history, fair sir boss. now ye shall wit that that very duke and his six sons are they whom but few days past you also did overcome and send to arthur's court!" "why, sandy, you can't mean it!" "an i speak not sooth, let it be the worse for me." "well, well, well, -now who would ever have thought it? one whole duke and six dukelets; why, sandy, it was an elegant haul. knight-errantry is a most chuckle-headed trade, and it is tedious hard work, too, but i begin to see that there is money in it, after all, if you have luck. not that i would ever engage in it as a business, for i wouldn't. no sound and legitimate business can be established on a basis of speculation. a successful whirl in the knight-errantry line -now what is it when you blow away the nonsense and come down to the cold facts? it's just a corner in pork, that's all, and you can't make anything else out of it. you're rich -yes, -suddenly rich -for about a day, maybe a week; then somebody corners the market on you, and down goes your bucketshop; ain't that so, sandy?" "whethersoever it be that my mind miscarrieth, bewraying simple language in such sort that the words do seem to come endlong and overthwart --" "there's no use in beating about the bush and trying to get around it that way, sandy, it's so, just as i say. i know it's so. and, moreover, when you come right down to the bedrock, knight-errantry is worse than pork; for whatever happens, the pork's left, and so somebody's benefited anyway; but when the market breaks, in a knight-errantry whirl, and every knight in the pool passes in his checks, what have you got for assets? just a rubbish-pile of battered corpses and a barrel or two of busted hardware. can you call those assets? give me pork, every time. am i right?" "ah, peradventure my head being distraught by the manifold matters whereunto the confusions of these but late adventured haps and fortunings whereby not i alone nor you alone, but every each of us, meseemeth --" "no, it's not your head, sandy. your head's all right, as far as it goes, but you don't know business; that's where the trouble is. it unfits you to argue about business, and you're wrong to be always trying. however, that aside, it was a good haul, anyway, and will breed a handsome crop of reputation in arthur's court. and speaking of the cowboys, what a curious country this is for women and men that never get old. now there's morgan le fay, as fresh and young as a vassar pullet, to all appearances, and here is this old duke of the south marches still slashing away with sword and lance at his time of life, after raising such a family as he has raised. as i understand it, sir gawaine killed seven of his sons, and still he had six left for sir marhaus and me to take into camp. and then there was that damsel of sixty winter of age still excursioning around in her frosty bloom -how old are you, sandy?" it was the first time i ever struck a still place in her. the mill had shut down for repairs, or something. chapter xx. the ogre's castle between six and nine we made ten miles, which was plenty for a horse carrying triple -man, woman, and armor; then we stopped for a long nooning under some trees by a limpid brook. right so came by and by a knight riding; and as he drew near he made dolorous moan, and by the words of it i perceived that he was cursing and swearing; yet nevertheless was i glad of his coming, for that i saw he bore a bulletin-board whereon in letters all of shining gold was writ: "use peterson s prophylactic tooth-brush- all the go." i was glad of his coming, for even by this token i knew him for knight of mine. it was sir madok de la montaine, a burly great fellow whose chief distinction was that he had come within an ace of sending sir launcelot down over his horse-tail once. he was never long in a stranger's presence without finding some pretext or other to let out that great fact. but there was another fact of nearly the same size, which he never pushed upon anybody unasked, and yet never withheld when asked: that was, that the reason he didn't quite succeed was, that he was interrupted and sent down over horse-tail himself. this innocent vast lubber did not see any particular difference between the two facts. i liked him, for he was earnest in his work, and very valuable. and he was so fine to look at, with his broad mailed shoulders, and the grand leonine set of his plumed head, and his big shield with its quaint device of a gauntleted hand clutching a prophylactic tooth-brush, with motto: "try noyoudont." this was a tooth-wash that i was introducing. he was aweary, he said, and indeed he looked it; but he would not alight. he said he was after the stove-polish man; and with this he broke out cursing and swearing anew. the bulletin-boarder referred to was sir ossaise of surluse, a brave knight, and of considerable celebrity on account of his having tried conclusions in a tournament once, with no less a mogul that sir gaheris himself -although not successfully. he was of a light and laughing disposition, and to him nothing in this world was serious. it was for this reason that i had chosen him to work up a stove-polish sentiment. there were no stoves yet, and so there could be nothing serious about stove-polish. all that the agent needed to do was to deftly and by degrees prepare the public for the great change, and have them established in predilections toward neatness against the time when the stove should appear upon the stage. sir madok was very bitter, and brake out anew with cursings. he said he had cursed his soul to rags; and yet he would not get down from his horse, neither would he take any rest, or listen to any comfort, until he should have found sir ossaise and settled this account. it appeared, by what i could piece together of the unprofane fragments of his statement, that he had chanced upon sir ossaise at dawn of the morning, and been told that if he would make a short cut across the fields and swamps and broken hills and glades, he could head off a company of travelers who would be rare customers for prophylactics and tooth-wash. with characteristic zeal sir madok had plunged away at once upon this quest, and after three hours of awful crosslot riding had overhauled his game. and behold, it was the five patriarchs that had been released from the dungeons the evening before! poor old creatures, it was all of twenty years since any one of them had known what it was to be equipped with any remaining snag or remnant of a tooth. "blank-blank-blank him," said sir madok, "an i do not stove-polish him an i may find him, leave it to me; for never no knight that hight ossaise or aught else may do me this disservice and bide on live, an i may find him, the which i have thereunto sworn a great oath this day." and with these words and others, he lightly took his spear and gat him thence. in the middle of the afternoon we came upon one of those very patriarchs ourselves, in the edge of a poor village. he was basking in the love of relatives and friends whom he had not seen for fifty years; and about him and caressing him were also descendants of his own body whom he had never seen at all till now; but to him these were all strangers, his memory was gone, his mind was stagnant. it seemed incredible that a man could outlast half a century shut up in a dark hole like a rat, but here were his old wife and some old comrades to testify to it. they could remember him as he was in the freshness and strength of his young manhood, when he kissed his child and delivered it to its mother's hands and went away into that long oblivion. the people at the castle could not tell within half a generation the length of time the man had been shut up there for his unrecorded and forgotten offense; but this old wife knew; and so did her old child, who stood there among her married sons and daughters trying to realize a father who had been to her a name, a thought, a formless image, a tradition, all her life, and now was suddenly concreted into actual flesh and blood and set before her face. it was a curious situation; yet it is not on that account that i have made room for it here, but on account of a thing which seemed to me still more curious. to wit, that this dreadful matter brought from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage against these oppressors. they had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness. yes, here was a curious revelation, indeed, of the depth to which this people had been sunk in slavery. their entire being was reduced to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation, dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them in this life. their very imagination was dead. when you can say that of a man, he has struck bottom, i reckon; there is no lower deep for him. i rather wished i had gone some other road. this was not the sort of experience for a statesman to encounter who was planning out a peaceful revolution in his mind. for it could not help bringing up the unget-aroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in the world ever did achieve their freedom by goodygoody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed must begin in blood, whatever may answer afterward. if history teaches anything, it teaches that. what this folk needed, then, was a reign of terror and a guillotine, and i was the wrong man for them. two days later, toward noon, sandy began to show signs of excitement and feverish expectancy. she said we were approaching the ogre's castle. i was surprised into an uncomfortable shock. the object of our quest had gradually dropped out of my mind; this sudden resurrection of it made it seem quite a real and startling thing for a moment, and roused up in me a smart interest. sandy's excitement increased every moment; and so did mine, for that sort of thing is catching. my heart got to thumping. you can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns. presently, when sandy slid from the horse, motioned me to stop, and went creeping stealthily, with her head bent nearly to her knees, toward a row of bushes that bordered a declivity, the thumpings grew stronger and quicker. and they kept it up while she was gaining her ambush and getting her glimpse over the declivity; and also while i was creeping to her side on my knees. her eyes were burning now, as she pointed with her finger, and said in a panting whisper: "the castle! the castle! lo, where it looms!" what a welcome disappointment i experienced! i said: "castle? it is nothing but a pigsty; a pigsty with a wattled fence around it." she looked surprised and distressed. the animation faded out of her face; and during many moments she was lost in thought and silent. then: "it was not enchanted aforetime," she said in a musing fashion, as if to herself. "and how strange is this marvel, and how awful -that to the one perception it is enchanted and dight in a base and shameful aspect; yet to the perception of the other it is not enchanted, hath suffered no change, but stands firm and stately still, girt with its moat and waving its banners in the blue air from its towers. and god shield us, how it pricks the heart to see again these gracious captives, and the sorrow deepened in their sweet faces! we have tarried along, and are to blame." i saw my cue. the castle was enchanted to me, not to her. it would be wasted time to try to argue her out of her delusion, it couldn't be done; i must just humor it. so i said: "this is a common case -the enchanting of a thing to one eye and leaving it in its proper form to another. you have heard of it before, sandy, though you haven't happened to experience it. but no harm is done. in fact, it is lucky the way it is. if these ladies were hogs to everybody and to themselves, it would be necessary to break the enchantment, and that might be impossible if one failed to find out the particular process of the enchantment. and hazardous, too; for in attempting a disenchantment without the true key, you are liable to err, and turn your hogs into dogs, and the dogs into cats, the cats into rats, and so on, and end by reducing your materials to nothing finally, or to an odorless gas which you can't follow -which, of course, amounts to the same thing. but here, by good luck, no one's eyes but mine are under the enchantment, and so it is of no consequence to dissolve it. these ladies remain ladies to you, and to themselves, and to everybody else; and at the same time they will suffer in no way from my delusion, for when i know that an ostensible hog is a lady, that is enough for me, i know how to treat her." "thanks, oh, sweet my lord, thou talkest like an angel. and i know that thou wilt deliver them, for that thou art minded to great deeds and art as strong a knight of your hands and as brave to will and to do, as any that is on live." "i will not leave a princess in the sty, sandy. are those three yonder that to my disordered eyes are starveling swine-herds --" "the ogres, are they changed also? it is most wonderful. now am i fearful; for how canst thou strike with sure aim when five of their nine cubits of stature are to thee invisible? ah, go warily, fair sir; this is a mightier emprise than i wend." "you be easy, sandy. all i need to know is, how much of an ogre is invisible; then i know how to locate his vitals. don't you be afraid, i will make short work of these bunco-steerers. stay where you are." i left sandy kneeling there, corpse-faced but plucky and hopeful, and rode down to the pigsty, and struck up a trade with the swine-herds. i won their gratitude by buying out all the hogs at the lump sum of sixteen pennies, which was rather above latest quotations. i was just in time; for the church, the lord of the manor, and the rest of the tax-gatherers would have been along next day and swept off pretty much all the stock, leaving the swine-herds very short of hogs and sandy out of princesses. but now the tax people could be paid in cash, and there would be a stake left besides. one of the men had ten children; and he said that last year when a priest came and of his ten pigs took the fattest one for tithes, the wife burst out upon him, and offered him a child and said: "thou beast without bowels of mercy, why leave me my child, yet rob me of the wherewithal to feed it?" how curious. the same thing had happened in the wales of my day, under this same old established church, which was supposed by many to have changed its nature when it changed its disguise. i sent the three men away, and then opened the sty gate and beckoned sandy to come -which she did; and not leisurely, but with the rush of a prairie fire. and when i saw her fling herself upon those hogs, with tears of joy running down her cheeks, and strain them to her heart, and kiss them, and caress them, and call them reverently by grand princely names, i was ashamed of her, ashamed of the human race. we had to drive those hogs home -ten miles; and no ladies were ever more fickle-minded or contrary. they would stay in no road, no path; they broke out through the brush on all sides, and flowed away in all directions, over rocks, and hills, and the roughest places they could find. and they must not be struck, or roughly accosted; sandy could not bear to see them treated in ways unbecoming their rank. the troublesomest old sow of the lot had to be called my lady, and your highness, like the rest. it is annoying and difficult to scour around after hogs, in armor. there was one small countess, with an iron ring in her snout and hardly any hair on her back, that was the devil for perversity. she gave me a race of an hour, over all sorts of country, and then we were right where we had started from, having made not a rod of real progress. i seized her at last by the tail, and brought her along squealing. when i overtook sandy she was horrified, and said it was in the last degree indelicate to drag a countess by her train. we got the hogs home just at dark -most of them. the princess nerovens de morganore was missing, and two of her ladies in waiting: namely, miss angela bohun, and the demoiselle elaine courtemains, the former of these two being a young black sow with a white star in her forehead, and the latter a brown one with thin legs and a slight limp in the forward shank on the starboard side -a couple of the tryingest blisters to drive that i ever saw. also among the missing were several mere baronesses -and i wanted them to stay missing; but no, all that sausage-meat had to be found; so servants were sent out with torches to scour the woods and hills to that end. of course, the whole drove was housed in the house, and, great guns! -well, i never saw anything like it. nor ever heard anything like it. and never smelt anything like it. it was like an insurrection in a gasometer. chapter xxi. the pilgrims when i did get to bed at last i was unspeakably tired; the stretching out, and the relaxing of the long-tense muscles, how luxurious, how delicious! but that was as far as i could get -sleep was out of the question for the present. the ripping and tearing and squealing of the nobility up and down the halls and corridors was pandemonium come again, and kept me broad awake. being awake, my thoughts were busy, of course; and mainly they busied themselves with sandy's curious delusion. here she was, as sane a person as the kingdom could produce; and yet, from my point of view she was acting like a crazy woman. my land, the power of training! of influence! of education! it can bring a body up to believe anything. i had to put myself in sandy's place to realize that she was not a lunatic. yes, and put her in mine, to demonstrate how easy it is to seem a lunatic to a person who has not been taught as you have been taught. if i had told sandy i had seen a wagon, uninfluenced by enchantment, spin along fifty miles an hour; had seen a man, unequipped with magic powers, get into a basket and soar out of sight among the clouds; and had listened, without any necromancer's help, to the conversation of a person who was several hundred miles away, sandy would not merely have supposed me to be crazy, she would have thought she knew it. everybody around her believed in enchantments; nobody had any doubts; to doubt that a castle could be turned into a sty, and its occupants into hogs, would have been the same as my doubting among connecticut people the actuality of the telephone and its wonders, -and in both cases would be absolute proof of a diseased mind, an unsettled reason. yes, sandy was sane; that must be admitted. if i also would be sane -to sandy -i must keep my superstitions about unenchanted and unmiraculous locomotives, balloons, and telephones, to myself. also, i believed that the world was not flat, and hadn't pillars under it to support it, nor a canopy over it to turn off a universe of water that occupied all space above; but as i was the only person in the kingdom afflicted with such impious and criminal opinions, i recognized that it would be good wisdom to keep quiet about this matter, too, if i did not wish to be suddenly shunned and forsaken by everybody as a madman. the next morning sandy assembled the swine in the dining-room and gave them their breakfast, waiting upon them personally and manifesting in every way the deep reverence which the natives of her island, ancient and modern, have always felt for rank, let its outward casket and the mental and moral contents be what they may. i could have eaten with the hogs if i had had birth approaching my lofty official rank; but i hadn't, and so accepted the unavoidable slight and made no complaint. sandy and i had our breakfast at the second table. the family were not at home. i said: "how many are in the family, sandy, and where do they keep themselves?" "family?" "yes." "which family, good my lord?" "why, this family; your own family." "sooth to say, i understand you not. i have no family." "no family? why, sandy, isn't this your home?" "now how indeed might that be? i have no home." "well, then, whose house is this?" "ah, wit you well i would tell you an i knew myself." "come -you don't even know these people? then who invited us here?" "none invited us. we but came; that is all." "why, woman, this is a most extraordinary performance. the effrontery of it is beyond admiration. we blandly march into a man's house, and cram it full of the only really valuable nobility the sun has yet discovered in the earth, and then it turns out that we don't even know the man's name. how did you ever venture to take this extravagant liberty? i supposed, of course, it was your home. what will the man say?" "what will he say? forsooth what can he say but give thanks?" "thanks for what?" her face was filled with a puzzled surprise: "verily, thou troublest mine understanding with strange words. do ye dream that one of his estate is like to have the honor twice in his life to entertain company such as we have brought to grace his house withal?" "well, no -when you come to that. no, it's an even bet that this is the first time he has had a treat like this." "then let him be thankful, and manifest the same by grateful speech and due humility; he were a dog, else, and the heir and ancestor of dogs." to my mind, the situation was uncomfortable. it might become more so. it might be a good idea to muster the hogs and move on. so i said: "the day is wasting, sandy. it is time to get the nobility together and be moving." "wherefore, fair sir and boss?" "we want to take them to their home, don't we?" "la, but list to him! they be of all the regions of the earth! each must hie to her own home; wend you we might do all these journeys in one so brief life as he hath appointed that created life, and thereto death likewise with help of adam, who by sin done through persuasion of his helpmeet, she being wrought upon and bewrayed by the beguilements of the great enemy of man, that serpent hight satan, aforetime consecrated and set apart unto that evil work by overmastering spite and envy begotten in his heart through fell ambitions that did blight and mildew a nature erst so white and pure whenso it hove with the shining multitudes its brethren-born in glade and shade of that fair heaven wherein all such as native be to that rich estate and --" "great scott!" "my lord?" "well, you know we haven't got time for this sort of thing. don't you see, we could distribute these people around the earth in less time than it is going to take you to explain that we can't. we mustn't talk now, we must act. you want to be careful; you mustn't let your mill get the start of you that way, at a time like this. to business now -and sharp's the word. who is to take the aristocracy home?" "even their friends. these will come for them from the far parts of the earth." this was lightning from a clear sky, for unexpectedness; and the relief of it was like pardon to a prisoner. she would remain to deliver the goods, of course. "well, then, sandy, as our enterprise is handsomely and successfully ended, i will go home and report; and if ever another one --" "i also am ready; i will go with thee." this was recalling the pardon. "how? you will go with me? why should you?" "will i be traitor to my knight, dost think? that were dishonor. i may not part from thee until in knightly encounter in the field some overmatching champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me. i were to blame an i thought that that might ever hap." "elected for the long term," i sighed to myself. "i may as well make the best of it." so then i spoke up and said: "all right; let us make a start." while she was gone to cry her farewells over the pork, i gave that whole peerage away to the servants. and i asked them to take a duster and dust around a little where the nobilities had mainly lodged and promenaded; but they considered that that would be hardly worth while, and would moreover be a rather grave departure from custom, and therefore likely to make talk. a departure from custom -that settled it; it was a nation capable of committing any crime but that. the servants said they would follow the fashion, a fashion grown sacred through immemorial observance; they would scatter fresh rushes in all the rooms and halls, and then the evidence of the aristocratic visitation would be no longer visible. it was a kind of satire on nature: it was the scientific method, the geologic method; it deposited the history of the family in a stratified record; and the antiquary could dig through it and tell by the remains of each period what changes of diet the family had introduced successively for a hundred years. the first thing we struck that day was a procession of pilgrims. it was not going our way, but we joined it, nevertheless; for it was hourly being borne in upon me now, that if i would govern this country wisely, i must be posted in the details of its life, and not at second hand, but by personal observation and scrutiny. this company of pilgrims resembled chaucer's in this: that it had in it a sample of about all the upper occupations and professions the country could show, and a corresponding variety of costume. there were young men and old men, young women and old women, lively folk and grave folk. they rode upon mules and horses, and there was not a side-saddle in the party; for this specialty was to remain unknown in england for nine hundred years yet. it was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd; pious, happy, merry and full of unconscious coarsenesses and innocent indecencies. what they regarded as the merry tale went the continual round and caused no more embarrassment than it would have caused in the best english society twelve centuries later. practical jokes worthy of the english wits of the first quarter of the far-off nineteenth century were sprung here and there and yonder along the line, and compelled the delightedest applause; and sometimes when a bright remark was made at one end of the procession and started on its travels toward the other, you could note its progress all the way by the sparkling spray of laughter it threw off from its bows as it plowed along; and also by the blushes of the mules in its wake. sandy knew the goal and purpose of this pilgrimage, and she posted me. she said: "they journey to the valley of holiness, for to be blessed of the godly hermits and drink of the miraculous waters and be cleased from sin." "where is this watering place?" "it lieth a two-day journey hence, by the borders of the land that hight the cuckoo kingdom." "tell me about it. is it a celebrated place?" "oh, of a truth, yes. there be none more so. of old time there lived there an abbot and his monks. belike were none in the world more holy than these; for they gave themselves to study of pious books, and spoke not the one to the other, or indeed to any, and ate decayed herbs and naught thereto, and slept hard, and prayed much, and washed never; also they wore the same garment until it fell from their bodies through age and decay. right so came they to be known of all the world by reason of these holy austerities, and visited by rich and poor, and reverenced." "proceed." "but always there was lack of water there. whereas, upon a time, the holy abbot prayed, and for answer a great stream of clear water burst forth by miracle in a desert place. now were the fickle monks tempted of the fiend, and they wrought with their abbot unceasingly by beggings and beseechings that he would construct a bath; and when he was become aweary and might not resist more, he said have ye your will, then, and granted that they asked. now mark thou what 'tis to forsake the ways of purity the which he loveth, and wanton with such as be worldly and an offense. these monks did enter into the bath and come thence washed as white as snow; and lo, in that moment his sign appeared, in miraculous rebuke! for his insulted waters ceased to flow, and utterly vanished away." "they fared mildly, sandy, considering how that kind of crime is regarded in this country." "belike; but it was their first sin; and they had been of perfect life for long, and differing in naught from the angels. prayers, tears, torturings of the flesh, all was vain to beguile that water to flow again. even processions; even burnt-offerings; even votive candles to the virgin, did fail every each of them; and all in the land did marvel." "how odd to find that even this industry has its financial panics, and at times sees its assignats and greenbacks languish to zero, and everything come to a standstill. go on, sandy." "and so upon a time, after year and day, the good abbot made humble surrender and destroyed the bath. and behold, his anger was in that moment appeased, and the waters gushed richly forth again, and even unto this day they have not ceased to flow in that generous measure." "then i take it nobody has washed since." "he that would essay it could have his halter free; yes, and swiftly would he need it, too." "the community has prospered since?" "even from that very day. the fame of the miracle went abroad into all lands. from every land came monks to join; they came even as the fishes come, in shoals; and the monastery added building to building, and yet others to these, and so spread wide its arms and took them in. and nuns came, also; and more again, and yet more; and built over against the monastery on the yon side of the vale, and added building to building, until mighty was that nunnery. and these were friendly unto those, and they joined their loving labors together, and together they built a fair great foundling asylum midway of the valley between." "you spoke of some hermits, sandy." "these have gathered there from the ends of the earth. a hermit thriveth best where there be multitudes of pilgrims. ye shall not find no hermit of no sort wanting. if any shall mention a hermit of a kind he thinketh new and not to be found but in some far strange land, let him but scratch among the holes and caves and swamps that line that valley of holiness, and whatsoever be his breed, it skills not, he shall find a sample of it there." i closed up alongside of a burly fellow with a fat good-humored face, purposing to make myself agreeable and pick up some further crumbs of fact; but i had hardly more than scraped acquaintance with him when he began eagerly and awkwardly to lead up, in the immemorial way, to that same old anecdote -the one sir dinadan told me, what time i got into trouble with sir sagramor and was challenged of him on account of it. i excused myself and dropped to the rear of the procession, sad at heart, willing to go hence from this troubled life, this vale of tears, this brief day of broken rest, of cloud and storm, of weary struggle and monotonous defeat; and yet shrinking from the change, as remembering how long eternity is, and how many have wended thither who know that anecdote. early in the afternoon we overtook another procession of pilgrims; but in this one was no merriment, no jokes, no laughter, no playful ways, nor any happy giddiness, whether of youth or age. yet both were here, both age and youth; gray old men and women, strong men and women of middle age, young husbands, young wives, little boys and girls, and three babies at the breast. even the children were smileless; there was not a face among all these half a hundred people but was cast down, and bore that set expression of hopelessness which is bred of long and hard trials and old acquaintance with despair. they were slaves. chains led from their fettered feet and their manacled hands to a sole-leather belt about their waists; and all except the children were also linked together in a file six feet apart, by a single chain which led from collar to collar all down the line. they were on foot, and had tramped three hundred miles in eighteen days, upon the cheapest odds and ends of food, and stingy rations of that. they had slept in these chains every night, bundled together like swine. they had upon their bodies some poor rags, but they could not be said to be clothed. their irons had chafed the skin from their ankles and made sores which were ulcerated and wormy. their naked feet were torn, and none walked without a limp. originally there had been a hundred of these unfortunates, but about half had been sold on the trip. the trader in charge of them rode a horse and carried a whip with a short handle and a long heavy lash divided into several knotted tails at the end. with this whip he cut the shoulders of any that tottered from weariness and pain, and straightened them up. he did not speak; the whip conveyed his desire without that. none of these poor creatures looked up as we rode along by; they showed no consciousness of our presence. and they made no sound but one; that was the dull and awful clank of their chains from end to end of the long file, as forty-three burdened feet rose and fell in unison. the file moved in a cloud of its own making. all these faces were gray with a coating of dust. one has seen the like of this coating upon furniture in unoccupied houses, and has written his idle thought in it with his finger. i was reminded of this when i noticed the faces of some of those women, young mothers carrying babes that were near to death and freedom, how a something in their hearts was written in the dust upon their faces, plain to see, and lord, how plain to read! for it was the track of tears. one of these young mothers was but a girl, and it hurt me to the heart to read that writing, and reflect that it was come up out of the breast of such a child, a breast that ought not to know trouble yet, but only the gladness of the morning of life; and no doubt -she reeled just then, giddy with fatigue, and down came the lash and flicked a flake of skin from her naked shoulder. it stung me as if i had been hit instead. the master halted the file and jumped from his horse. he stormed and swore at this girl, and said she had made annoyance enough with her laziness, and as this was the last chance he should have, he would settle the account now. she dropped on her knees and put up her hands and began to beg, and cry, and implore, in a passion of terror, but the master gave no attention. he snatched the child from her, and then made the men-slaves who were chained before and behind her throw her on the ground and hold her there and expose her body; and then he laid on with his lash like a madman till her back was flayed, she shrieking and struggling the while piteously. one of the men who was holding her turned away his face, and for this humanity he was reviled and flogged. all our pilgrims looked on and commented -on the expert way in which the whip was handled. they were too much hardened by lifelong everyday familiarity with slavery to notice that there was anything else in the exhibition that invited comment. this was what slavery could do, in the way of ossifying what one may call the superior lobe of human feeling; for these pilgrims were kind-hearted people, and they would not have allowed that man to treat a horse like that. i wanted to stop the whole thing and set the slaves free, but that would not do. i must not interfere too much and get myself a name for riding over the country's laws and the citizen's rights roughshod. if i lived and prospered i would be the death of slavery, that i was resolved upon; but i would try to fix it so that when i became its executioner it should be by command of the nation. just here was the wayside shop of a smith; and now arrived a landed proprietor who had bought this girl a few miles back, deliverable here where her irons could be taken off. they were removed; then there was a squabble between the gentleman and the dealer as to which should pay the blacksmith. the moment the girl was delivered from her irons, she flung herself, all tears and frantic sobbings, into the arms of the slave who had turned away his face when she was whipped. he strained her to his breast, and smothered her face and the child's with kisses, and washed them with the rain of his tears. i suspected. i inquired. yes, i was right; it was husband and wife. they had to be torn apart by force; the girl had to be dragged away, and she struggled and fought and shrieked like one gone mad till a turn of the road hid her from sight; and even after that, we could still make out the fading plaint of those receding shrieks. and the husband and father, with his wife and child gone, never to be seen by him again in life? -well, the look of him one might not bear at all, and so i turned away; but i knew i should never get his picture out of my mind again, and there it is to this day, to wring my heartstrings whenever i think of it. we put up at the inn in a village just at nightfall, and when i rose next morning and looked abroad, i was ware where a knight came riding in the golden glory of the new day, and recognized him for knight of mine -sir ozana le cure hardy. he was in the gentlemen's furnishing line, and his missionarying specialty was plug hats. he was clothed all in steel, in the beautifulest armor of the time -up to where his helmet ought to have been; but he hadn't any helmet, he wore a shiny stove-pipe hat, and was ridiculous a spectacle as one might want to see. it was another of my surreptitious schemes for extinguishing knighthood by making it grotesque and absurd. sir ozana's saddle was hung about with leather hat boxes, and every time he overcame a wandering knight he swore him into my service and fitted him with a plug and made him wear it. i dressed and ran down to welcome sir ozana and get his news. "how is trade?" i asked. "ye will note that i have but these four left; yet were they sixteen whenas i got me from camelot." "why, you have certainly done nobly, sir ozana. where have you been foraging of late?" "i am but now come from the valley of holiness, please you sir." "i am pointed for that place myself. is there anything stirring in the monkery, more than common?" "by the mass ye may not question it!.... give him good feed, boy, and stint it not, an thou valuest thy crown; so get ye lightly to the stable and do even as i bid...... sir, it is parlous news i bring, and -be these pilgrims? then ye may not do better, good folk, than gather and hear the tale i have to tell, sith it concerneth you, forasmuch as ye go to find that ye will not find, and seek that ye will seek in vain, my life being hostage for my word, and my word and message being these, namely: that a hap has happened whereof the like has not been seen no more but once this two hundred years, which was the first and last time that that said misfortune strake the holy valley in that form by commandment of the most high whereto by reasons just and causes thereunto contributing, wherein the matter --" "the miraculous fount hath ceased to flow!" this shout burst from twenty pilgrim mouths at once. "ye say well, good people. i was verging to it, even when ye spake. " "has somebody been washing again?" "nay, it is suspected, but none believe it. it is thought to be some other sin, but none wit what." "how are they feeling about the calamity?" "none may describe it in words. the fount is these nine days dry. the prayers that did begin then, and the lamentations in sackcloth and ashes, and the holy processions, none of these have ceased nor night nor day; and so the monks and the nuns and the foundlings be all exhausted, and do hang up prayers writ upon parchment, sith that no strength is left in man to lift up voice. and at last they sent for thee, sir boss, to try magic and enchantment; and if you could not come, then was the messenger to fetch merlin, and he is there these three days now, and saith he will fetch that water though he burst the globe and wreck its kingdoms to accomplish it; and right bravely doth he work his magic and call upon his hellions to hie them hither and help, but not a whiff of moisture hath he started yet, even so much as might qualify as mist upon a copper mirror an ye count not the barrel of sweat he sweateth betwixt sun and sun over the dire labors of his task; and if ye --" breakfast was ready. as soon as it was over i showed to sir ozana these words which i had written on the inside of his hat: chemical department, laboratory extension, section g. pxxp. send two of first size, two of no. 3, and six of no. 4, together with the proper complementary details -and two of my trained assistants." and i said: "now get you to camelot as fast as you can fly, brave knight, and show the writing to clarence, and tell him to have these required matters in the valley of holiness with all possible dispatch." "i will well, sir boss," and he was off. chapter xxii. the holy fountain the pilgrims were human beings. otherwise they would have acted differently. they had come a long and difficult journey, and now when the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the main thing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do as horses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done -turn back and get at something profitable -no, anxious as they had before been to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as forty times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be. there is no accounting for human beings. we made good time; and a couple of hours before sunset we stood upon the high confines of the valley of holiness, and our eyes swept it from end to end and noted its features. that is, its large features. these were the three masses of buildings. they were distant and isolated temporalities shrunken to toy constructions in the lonely waste of what seemed a desert -and was. such a scene is always mournful, it is so impressively still, and looks so steeped in death. but there was a sound here which interrupted the stillness only to add to its mournfulness; this was the faint far sound of tolling bells which floated fitfully to us on the passing breeze, and so faintly, so softly, that we hardly knew whether we heard it with our ears or with our spirits. we reached the monastery before dark, and there the males were given lodging, but the women were sent over to the nunnery. the bells were close at hand now, and their solemn booming smote upon the ear like a message of doom. a superstitious despair possessed the heart of every monk and published itself in his ghastly face. everywhere, these black-robed, soft-sandaled, tallow-visaged specters appeared, flitted about and disappeared, noiseless as the creatures of a troubled dream, and as uncanny. the old abbot's joy to see me was pathetic. even to tears; but he did the shedding himself. he said: "delay not, son, but get to thy saving work. an we bring not the water back again, and soon, we are ruined, and the good work of two hundred years must end. and see thou do it with enchantments that be holy, for the church will not endure that work in her cause be done by devil's magic." "when i work, father, be sure there will be no devil's work connected with it. i shall use no arts that come of the devil, and no elements not created by the hand of god. but is merlin working strictly on pious lines?" "ah, he said he would, my son, he said he would, and took oath to make his promise good." "well, in that case, let him proceed." "but surely you will not sit idle by, but help?" "it will not answer to mix methods, father; neither would it be professional courtesy. two of a trade must not underbid each other. we might as well cut rates and be done with it; it would arrive at that in the end. merlin has the contract; no other magician can touch it till he throws it up." "but i will take it from him; it is a terrible emergency and the act is thereby justified. and if it were not so, who will give law to the church? the church giveth law to all; and what she wills to do, that she may do, hurt whom it may. i will take it from him; you shall begin upon the moment." "it may not be, father. no doubt, as you say, where power is supreme, one can do as one likes and suffer no injury; but we poor magicians are not so situated. merlin is a very good magician in a small way, and has quite a neat provincial reputation. he is struggling along, doing the best he can, and it would not be etiquette for me to take his job until he himself abandons it." the abbot's face lighted. "ah, that is simple. there are ways to persuade him to abandon it." "no-no, father, it skills not, as these people say. if he were persuaded against his will, he would load that well with a malicious enchantment which would balk me until i found out its secret. it might take a month. i could set up a little enchantment of mine which i call the telephone, and he could not find out its secret in a hundred years. yes, you perceive, he might block me for a month. would you like to risk a month in a dry time like this?" "a month! the mere thought of it maketh me to shudder. have it thy way, my son. but my heart is heavy with this disappointment. leave me, and let me wear my spirit with weariness and waiting, even as i have done these ten long days, counterfeiting thus the thing that is called rest, the prone body making outward sign of repose where inwardly is none." of course, it would have been best, all round, for merlin to waive etiquette and quit and call it half a day, since he would never be able to start that water, for he was a true magician of the time; which is to say, the big miracles, the ones that gave him his reputation, always had the luck to be performed when nobody but merlin was present; he couldn't start this well with all this crowd around to see; a crowd was as bad for a magician's miracle in that day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine; there was sure to be some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucial moment and spoil everything. but i did not want merlin to retire from the job until i was ready to take hold of it effectively myself; and i could not do that until i got my things from camelot, and that would take two or three days. my presence gave the monks hope, and cheered them up a good deal; insomuch that they ate a square meal that night for the first time in ten days. as soon as their stomachs had been properly reinforced with food, their spirits began to rise fast; when the mead began to go round they rose faster. by the time everybody was half-seas over, the holy community was in good shape to make a night of it; so we stayed by the board and put it through on that line. matters got to be very jolly. good old questionable stories were told that made the tears run down and cavernous mouths stand wide and the round bellies shake with laughter; and questionable songs were bellowed out in a mighty chorus that drowned the boom of the tolling bells. at last i ventured a story myself; and vast was the success of it. not right off, of course, for the native of those islands does not, as a rule, dissolve upon the early applications of a humorous thing; but the fifth time i told it, they began to crack in places; the eight time i told it, they began to crumble; at the twelfth repetition they fell apart in chunks; and at the fifteenth they disintegrated, and i got a broom and swept them up. this language is figurative. those islanders -well, they are slow pay at first, in the matter of return for your investment of effort, but in the end they make the pay of all other nations poor and small by contrast. i was at the well next day betimes. merlin was there, enchanting away like a beaver, but not raising the moisture. he was not in a pleasant humor; and every time i hinted that perhaps this contract was a shade too hefty for a novice he unlimbered his tongue and cursed like a bishop -french bishop of the regency days, i mean. matters were about as i expected to find them. the "fountain" was an ordinary well, it had been dug in the ordinary way, and stoned up in the ordinary way. there was no miracle about it. even the lie that had created its reputation was not miraculous; i could have told it myself, with one hand tied behind me. the well was in a dark chamber which stood in the center of a cut-stone chapel, whose walls were hung with pious pictures of a workmanship that would have made a chromo feel good; pictures historically commemorative of curative miracles which had been achieved by the waters when nobody was looking. that is, nobody but angels; they are always on deck when there is a miracle to the fore -so as to get put in the picture, perhaps. angels are as fond of that as a fire company; look at the old masters. the well-chamber was dimly lighted by lamps; the water was drawn with a windlass and chain by monks, and poured into troughs which delivered it into stone reservoirs outside in the chapel -when there was water to draw, i mean -and none but monks could enter the well-chamber. i entered it, for i had temporary authority to do so, by courtesy of my professional brother and subordinate. but he hadn't entered it himself. he did everything by incantations; he never worked his intellect. if he had stepped in there and used his eyes, instead of his disordered mind, he could have cured the well by natural means, and then turned it into a miracle in the customary way; but no, he was an old numskull, a magician who believed in his own magic; and no magician can thrive who is handicapped with a superstition like that. i had an idea that the well had sprung a leak; that some of the wall stones near the bottom had fallen and exposed fissures that allowed the water to escape. i measured the chain -98 feet. then i called in couple of monks, locked the door, took a candle, and made them lower me in the bucket. when the chain was all paid out, the candle confirmed my suspicion; a considerable section of the wall was gone, exposing a good big fissure. i almost regretted that my theory about the well's trouble was correct, because i had another one that had a showy point or two about it for a miracle. i remembered that in america, many centuries later, when an oil well ceased to flow, they used to blast it out with a dynamite torpedo. if i should find this well dry and no explanation of it, i could astonish these people most nobly by having a person of no especial value drop a dynamite bomb into it. it was my idea to appoint merlin. however, it was plain that there was no occasion for the bomb. one cannot have everything the way he would like it. a man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even. that is what i did. i said to myself, i am in no hurry, i can wait; that bomb will come good yet. and it did, too. when i was above ground again, i turned out the monks, and let down a fish-line; the well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and there was forty-one feet of water in it i i called in a monk and asked: a yankee in king arthur's court 187 "how deep is the well?" "that, sir, i wit not, having never been told." "how does the water usually stand in it?" "near to the top, these two centuries, as the testimony goeth, brought down to us through our predecessors." it was true -as to recent times at least -for there was witness to it, and better witness than a monk; only about twenty or thirty feet of the chain showed wear and use, the rest of it was unworn and rusty. what had happened when the well gave out that other time? without doubt some practical person had come along and mended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he had discovered by divination that if the sinful bath were destroyed the well would flow again. the leak had befallen again now, and these children would have prayed, and processioned, and tolled their bells for heavenly succor till they all dried up and blew away, and no innocent of them all would ever have thought to drop a fish-line into the well or go down in it and find out what was really the matter. old habit of mind is one of the toughest things to get away from in the world. it transmits itself like physical form and feature; and for a man, in those days, to have had an idea that his ancestors hadn't had, would have brought him under suspicion of being illegitimate. i said to the monk: "it is a difficult miracle to restore water in a dry well, but we will try, if my brother merlin fails. brother merlin is a very passable artist, but only in the parlor-magic line, and he may not succeed; in fact, is not likely to succeed. but that should be nothing to his discredit; the man that can do this kind of miracle knows enough to keep hotel." "hotel? i mind not to have heard --" "of hotel? it's what you call hostel. the man that can do this miracle can keep hostel. i can do this miracle; i shall do this miracle; yet i do not try to conceal from you that it is a miracle to tax the occult powers to the last strain." "none knoweth that truth better than the brotherhood, indeed; for it is of record that aforetime it was parlous difficult and took a year. natheless, god send you good success, and to that end will we pray." as a matter of business it was a good idea to get the notion around that the thing was difficult. many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising. that monk was filled up with the difficulty of this enterprise; he would fill up the others. in two days the solicitude would be booming. on my way home at noon, i met sandy. she had been sampling the hermits. i said: "i would like to do that myself. this is wednesday. is there a matinee?" "a which, please you, sir?" "matinee. do they keep open afternoons?" "who?" "the hermits, of course." "keep open?" "yes, keep open. isn't that plain enough? do they knock off at noon?" "knock off?" "knock off? -yes, knock off. what is the matter with knock off? i never saw such a dunderhead; can't you understand anything at all? in plain terms, do they shut up shop, draw the game, bank the fires --" "shut up shop, draw --" "there, never mind, let it go; you make me tired. you can't seem to understand the simplest thing." i would i might please thee, sir, and it is to me dole and sorrow that i fail, albeit sith i am but a simple damsel and taught of none, being from the cradle unbaptized in those deep waters of learning that do anoint with a sovereignty him that partaketh of that most noble sacrament, investing him with reverend state to the mental eye of the humble mortal who, by bar and lack of that great consecration seeth in his own unlearned estate but a symbol of that other sort of lack and loss which men do publish to the pitying eye with sackcloth trappings whereon the ashes of grief do lie bepowdered and bestrewn, and so, when such shall in the darkness of his mind encounter these golden phrases of high mystery, these shut-up-shops, and draw-the-game, and bank-the-fires, it is but by the grace of god that he burst not for envy of the mind that can beget, and tongue that can deliver so great and mellow-sounding miracles of speech, and if there do ensue confusion in that humbler mind, and failure to divine the meanings of these wonders, then if so be this miscomprehension is not vain but sooth and true, wit ye well it is the very substance of worshipful dear homage and may not lightly be misprized, nor had been, an ye had noted this complexion of mood and mind and understood that that i would i could not, and that i could not i might not, nor yet nor might nor could, nor might-not nor could-not, might be by advantage turned to the desired would, and so i pray you mercy of my fault, and that ye will of your kindness and your charity forgive it, good my master and most dear lord." i couldn't make it all out -that is, the details -but i got the general idea; and enough of it, too, to be ashamed. it was not fair to spring those nineteenth century technicalities upon the untutored infant of the sixth and then rail at her because she couldn't get their drift; and when she was making the honest best drive at it she could, too, and no fault of hers that she couldn't fetch the home plate; and so i apologized. then we meandered pleasantly away toward the hermit holes in sociable converse together, and better friends than ever. i was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence for this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that i was standing in the awful presence of the mother of the german language. i was so impressed with this, that sometimes when she began to empty one of these sentences on me i unconsciously took the very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words had been water, i had been drowned, sure. she had exactly the german way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. whenever the literary german dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth. we drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon. it was a most strange menagerie. the chief emulation among them seemed to be, to see which could manage to be the uncleanest and most prosperous with vermin. their manner and attitudes were the last expression of complacent self-righteousness. it was one anchorite's pride to lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite him and blister him unmolested; it was another's to lean against a rock, all day long, conspicuous to the admiration of the throng of pilgrims and pray; it was another's to go naked and crawl around on all fours; it was another's to drag about with him, year in and year out, eighty pounds of iron; it was another's to never lie down when he slept, but to stand among the thorn-bushes and snore when there were pilgrims around to look; a woman, who had the white hair of age, and no other apparel, was black from crown to heel with forty-seven years of holy abstinence from water. groups of gazing pilgrims stood around all and every of these strange objects, lost in reverent wonder, and envious of the fleckless sanctity which these pious austerities had won for them from an exacting heaven. by and by we went to see one of the supremely great ones. he was a mighty celebrity; his fame had penetrated all christendom; the noble and the renowned journeyed from the remotest lands on the globe to pay him reverence. his stand was in the center of the widest part of the valley; and it took all that space to hold his crowds. his stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad platform on the top of it. he was now doing what he had been doing every day for twenty years up there -bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly almost to his feet. it was his way of praying. i timed him with a stop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 minutes and 46 seconds. it seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste. it was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedal movement; so i made a note in my memorandum book, purposing some day to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing machine with it. i afterward carried out that scheme, and got five years' good service out of him; in which time he turned out upward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, which was ten a day. i worked him sundays and all; he was going, sundays, the same as week days, and it was no use to waste the power. these shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for the materials -i furnished those myself, it would not have been right to make him do that -and they sold like smoke to pilgrims at a dollar and a half apiece, which was the price of fifty cows or a blooded race horse in arthurdom. they were regarded as a perfect protection against sin, and advertised as such by my knights everywhere, with the paint-pot and stencil-plate; insomuch that there was not a cliff or a bowlder or a dead wall in england but you could read on it at a mile distance: "buy the only genuine st. stylite; patronized by the nobility. patent applied for." there was more money in the business than one knew what to do with. as it extended, i brought out a line of goods suitable for kings, and a nobby thing for duchesses and that sort, with ruffles down the forehatch and the running-gear clewed up with a featherstitch to leeward and then hauled aft with a back-stay and triced up with a half-turn in the standing rigging forward of the weather-gaskets. yes, it was a daisy. but about that time i noticed that the motive power had taken to standing on one leg, and i found that there was something the matter with the other one; so i stocked the business and unloaded, taking sir bors de ganis into camp financially along with certain of his friends; for the works stopped within a year, and the good saint got him to his rest. but he had earned it. i can say that for him. when i saw him that first time -however, his personal condition will not quite bear description here. you can read it in the lives of the saints. * [* all the details concerning the hermits, in this chapter, are from lecky -but greatly modified. this book not being a history but only a tale, the majority of the historian's frank details were too strong for reproduction in it. editor] chapter xxiii. restoration of the fountain saturday noon i went to the well and looked on a while. merlin was still burning smoke-powders, and pawing the air, and muttering gibberish as hard as ever, but looking pretty down-hearted, for of course he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet. finally i said: "how does the thing promise by this time, partner?" "behold, i am even now busied with trial of the powerfulest enchantment known to the princes of the occult arts in the lands of the east; an it fail me, naught can avail. peace, until i finish." he raised a smoke this time that darkened all the region, and must have made matters uncomfortable for the hermits, for the wind was their way, and it rolled down over their dens in a dense and billowy fog. he poured out volumes of speech to match, and contorted his body and sawed the air with his hands in a most extraordinary way. at the end of twenty minutes he dropped down panting, and about exhausted. now arrived the abbot and several hundred monks and nuns, and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a couple of acres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious smoke, and all in a grand state of excitement. the abbot inquired anxiously for results. merlin said: "if any labor of mortal might break the spell that binds these waters, this which i have but just essayed had done it. it has failed; whereby i do now know that that which i had feared is a truth established; the sign of this failure is, that the most potent spirit known to the magicians of the east, and whose name none may utter and live, has laid his spell upon this well. the mortal does not breathe, nor ever will, who can penetrate the secret of that spell, and without that secret none can break it. the water will flow no more forever, good father. i have done what man could. suffer me to go." of course this threw the abbot into a good deal of a consternation. he turned to me with the signs of it in his face, and said: "ye have heard him. is it true?" "part of it is." "not all, then, not all! what part is true?" "that that spirit with the russian name has put his spell upon the well." "god's wownds, then are we ruined!" "possibly." "but not certainly? ye mean, not certainly?" "that is it." "wherefore, ye also mean that when he saith none can break the spell --" "yes, when he says that, he says what isn't necessarily true. there are conditions under which an effort to break it may have some chance -that is, some small, some trifling chance -of success." "the conditions --" "oh, they are nothing difficult. only these: i want the well and the surroundings for the space of half a mile, entirely to myself from sunset to-day until i remove the ban -and nobody allowed to cross the ground but by my authority." "are these all?" "yes." "and you have no fear to try?" "oh, none. one may fail, of course; and one may also succeed. one can try, and i am ready to chance it. i have my conditions?" "these and all others ye may name. i will issue commandment to that effect." "wait," said merlin, with an evil smile. "ye wit that he that would break this spell must know that spirit's name?" "yes, i know his name." "and wit you also that to know it skills not of itself, but ye must likewise pronounce it? ha-ha! knew ye that?" "yes, i knew that, too." "you had that knowledge! art a fool? are ye minded to utter that name and die?" "utter it? why certainly. i would utter it if it was welsh." "ye are even a dead man, then; and i go to tell arthur." "that's all right. take your gripsack and get along. the thing for you to do is to go home and work the weather, john w. merlin." it was a home shot, and it made him wince; for he was the worst weather-failure in the kingdom. whenever he ordered up the danger-signals along the coast there was a week's dead calm, sure, and every time he prophesied fair weather it rained brickbats. but i kept him in the weather bureau right along, to undermine his reputation. however, that shot raised his bile, and instead of starting home to report my death, he said he would remain and enjoy it. my two experts arrived in the evening, and pretty well fagged, for they had traveled double tides. they had pack-mules along, and had brought everything i needed -tools, pump, lead pipe, greek fire, sheaves of big rockets, roman candles, colored fire sprays, electric apparatus, and a lot of sundries -everything necessary for the stateliest kind of a miracle. they got their supper and a nap, and about midnight we sallied out through a solitude so wholly vacant and complete that it quite overpassed the required conditions. we took possession of the well and its surroundings. my boys were experts in all sorts of things, from the stoning up of a well to the constructing of a mathematical instrument. an hour before sunrise we had that leak mended in ship-shape fashion, and the water began to rise. then we stowed our fireworks in the chapel, locked up the place, and went home to bed. before the noon mass was over, we were at the well again; for there was a deal to do yet, and i was determined to spring the miracle before midnight, for business reasons: for whereas a miracle worked for the church on a week-day is worth a good deal, it is worth six times as much if you get it in on a sunday. in nine hours the water had risen to its customary level -that is to say, it was within twenty-three feet of the top. we put in a little iron pump, one of the first turned out by my works near the capital; we bored into a stone reservoir which stood against the outer wall of the well-chamber and inserted a section of lead pipe that was long enough to reach to the door of the chapel and project beyond the threshold, where the gushing water would be visible to the two hundred and fifty acres of people i was intending should be present on the flat plain in front of this little holy hillock at the proper time. we knocked the head out of an empty hogshead and hoisted this hogshead to the flat roof of the chapel, where we clamped it down fast, poured in gunpowder till it lay loosely an inch deep on the bottom, then we stood up rockets in the hogshead as thick as they could loosely stand, all the different breeds of rockets there are; and they made a portly and imposing sheaf, i can tell you. we grounded the wire of a pocket electrical battery in that powder, we placed a whole magazine of greek fire on each corner of the roof -blue on one corner, green on another, red on another, and purple on the last -and grounded a wire in each. about two hundred yards off, in the flat, we built a pen of scantlings, about four feet high, and laid planks on it, and so made a platform. we covered it with swell tapestries borrowed for the occasion, and topped it off with the abbot's own throne. when you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want to get in every detail that will count; you want to make all the properties impressive to the public eye; you want to make matters comfortable for your head guest; then you can turn yourself loose and play your effects for all they are worth. i know the value of these things, for i know human nature. you can't throw too much style into a miracle. it costs trouble, and work, and sometimes money; but it pays in the end. well, we brought the wires to the ground at the chapel, and then brought them under the ground to the platform, and hid the batteries there. we put a rope fence a hundred feet square around the platform to keep off the common multitude, and that finished the work. my idea was, doors open at 10:30, performance to begin at 11:25 sharp. i wished i could charge admission, but of course that wouldn't answer. i instructed my boys to be in the chapel as early as 10, before anybody was around, and be ready to man the pumps at the proper time, and make the fur fly. then we went home to supper. the news of the disaster to the well had traveled far by this time; and now for two or three days a steady avalanche of people had been pouring into the valley. the lower end of the valley was become one huge camp; we should have a good house, no question about that. criers went the rounds early in the evening and announced the coming attempt, which put every pulse up to fever heat. they gave notice that the abbot and his official suite would move in state and occupy the platform at 10:30, up to which time all the region which was under my ban must be clear; the bells would then cease from tolling, and this sign should be permission to the multitudes to close in and take their places. i was at the platform and all ready to do the honors when the abbot's solemn procession hove in sight -which it did not do till it was nearly to the rope fence, because it was a starless black night and no torches permitted. with it came merlin, and took a front seat on the platform; he was as good as his word for once. one could not see the multitudes banked together beyond the ban, but they were there, just the same. the moment the bells stopped, those banked masses broke and poured over the line like a vast black wave, and for as much as a half hour it continued to flow, and then it solidified itself, and you could have walked upon a pavement of human heads to -well, miles. we had a solemn stage-wait, now, for about twenty minutes -a thing i had counted on for effect; it is always good to let your audience have a chance to work up its expectancy. at length, out of the silence a noble latin chant -men's voices -broke and swelled up and rolled away into the night, a majestic tide of melody. i had put that up, too, and it was one of the best effects i ever invented. when it was finished i stood up on the platform and extended my hands abroad, for two minutes, with my face uplifted -that always produces a dead hush -and then slowly pronounced this ghastly word with a kind of awfulness which caused hundreds to tremble, and many women to faint: "constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifen machersgesellschafft!" just as i was moaning out the closing hunks of that word, i touched off one of my electric connections and all that murky world of people stood revealed in a hideous blue glare! it was immense -that effect! lots of people shrieked, women curled up and quit in every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons. the abbot and the monks crossed themselves nimbly and their lips fluttered with agitated prayers. merlin held his grip, but he was astonished clear down to his corns; he had never seen anything to begin with that, before. now was the time to pile in the effects. i lifted my hands and groaned out this word -as it were in agony: "nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchensspreng ungsattentaetsversuchungen!" -and turned on the red fire! you should have heard that atlantic of people moan and howl when that crimson hell joined the blue! after sixty seconds i shouted: "transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthier treibertrauungsthraenentragoedie!" -and lit up the green fire! after waiting only forty seconds this time, i spread my arms abroad and thundered out the devastating syllables of this word of words: "mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmutter marmormonumentenmacher!" -and whirled on the purple glare! there they were, all going at once, red, blue, green, purple! -four furious volcanoes pouring vast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blinding rainbowed noonday to the furthest confines of that valley. in the distance one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid against the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for the first time in twenty years. i knew the boys were at the pump now and ready. so i said to the abbot: "the time is come, father. i am about to pronounce the dread name and command the spell to dissolve. you want to brace up, and take hold of something." then i shouted to the people: "behold, in another minute the spell will be broken, or no mortal can break it. if it break, all will know it, for you will see the sacred water gush from the chapel door!" i stood a few moments, to let the hearers have a chance to spread my announcement to those who couldn't hear, and so convey it to the furthest ranks, then i made a grand exhibition of extra posturing and gesturing, and shouted: "lo, i command the fell spirit that possesses the holy fountain to now disgorge into the skies all the infernal fires that still remain in him, and straightway dissolve his spell and flee hence to the pit, there to lie bound a thousand years. by his own dread name i command it -bgwjjilligkkk!" then i touched off the hogshead of rockets, and a vast fountain of dazzling lances of fire vomited itself toward the zenith with a hissing rush, and burst in mid-sky into a storm of flashing jewels! one mighty groan of terror started up from the massed people -then suddenly broke into a wild hosannah of joy -for there, fair and plain in the uncanny glare, they saw the freed water leaping forth! the old abbot could not speak a word, for tears and the chokings in his throat; without utterance of any sort, he folded me in his arms and mashed me. it was more eloquent than speech. and harder to get over, too, in a country where there were really no doctors that were worth a damaged nickel. you should have seen those acres of people throw themselves down in that water and kiss it; kiss it, and pet it, and fondle it, and talk to it as if it were alive, and welcome it back with the dear names they gave their darlings, just as if it had been a friend who was long gone away and lost, and was come home again. yes, it was pretty to see, and made me think more of them than i had done before. i sent merlin home on a shutter. he had caved in and gone down like a landslide when i pronounced that fearful name, and had never come to since. he never had heard that name before, -neither had i -but to him it was the right one. any jumble would have been the right one. he admitted, afterward, that that spirit's own mother could not have pronounced that name better than i did. he never could understand how i survived it, and i didn't tell him. it is only young magicians that give away a secret like that. merlin spent three months working enchantments to try to find out the deep trick of how to pronounce that name and outlive it. but he didn't arrive. when i started to the chapel, the populace uncovered and fell back reverently to make a wide way for me, as if i had been some kind of a superior being -and i was. i was aware of that. i took along a night shift of monks, and taught them the mystery of the pump, and set them to work, for it was plain that a good part of the people out there were going to sit up with the water all night, consequently it was but right that they should have all they wanted of it. to those monks that pump was a good deal of a miracle itself, and they were full of wonder over it; and of admiration, too, of the exceeding effectiveness of its performance. it was a great night, an immense night. there was reputation in it. i could hardly get to sleep for glorying over it. chapter xxiv. a rival magician my influence in the valley of holiness was something prodigious now. it seemed worth while to try to turn it to some valuable account. the thought came to me the next morning, and was suggested by my seeing one of my knights who was in the soap line come riding in. according to history, the monks of this place two centuries before had been worldly minded enough to want to wash. it might be that there was a leaven of this unrighteousness still remaining. so i sounded a brother: "wouldn't you like a bath?" he shuddered at the thought -the thought of the peril of it to the well -but he said with feeling: "one needs not to ask that of a poor body who has not known that blessed refreshment sith that he was a boy. would god i might wash me! but it may not be, fair sir, tempt me not; it is forbidden." and then he sighed in such a sorrowful way that i was resolved he should have at least one layer of his real estate removed, if it sized up my whole influence and bankrupted the pile. so i went to the abbot and asked for a permit for this brother. he blenched at the idea -i don't mean that you could see him blench, for of course you couldn't see it without you scraped him, and i didn't care enough about it to scrape him, but i knew the blench was there, just the same, and within a book-cover's thickness of the surface, too -blenched, and trembled. he said: "ah, son, ask aught else thou wilt, and it is thine, and freely granted out of a grateful heart -but this, oh, this! would you drive away the blessed water again?" "no, father, i will not drive it away. i have mysterious knowledge which teaches me that there was an error that other time when it was thought the institution of the bath banished the fountain." a large interest began to show up in the old man's face. "my knowledge informs me that the bath was innocent of that misfortune, which was caused by quite another sort of sin." "these are brave words -but -but right welcome, if they be true." "they are true, indeed. let me build the bath again, father. let me build it again, and the fountain shall flow forever." "you promise this? -you promise it? say the word -say you promise it!" "i do promise it." "then will i have the first bath myself! go -get ye to your work. tarry not, tarry not, but go." i and my boys were at work, straight off. the ruins of the old bath were there yet in the basement of the monastery, not a stone missing. they had been left just so, all these lifetimes, and avoided with a pious fear, as things accursed. in two days we had it all done and the water in -a spacious pool of clear pure water that a body could swim in. it was running water, too. it came in, and went out, through the ancient pipes. the old abbot kept his word, and was the first to try it. he went down black and shaky, leaving the whole black community above troubled and worried and full of bodings; but he came back white and joyful, and the game was made! another triumph scored. it was a good campaign that we made in that valley of holiness, and i was very well satisfied, and ready to move on now, but i struck a disappointment. i caught a heavy cold, and it started up an old lurking rheumatism of mine. of course the rheumatism hunted up my weakest place and located itself there. this was the place where the abbot put his arms about me and mashed me, what time he was moved to testify his gratitude to me with an embrace. when at last i got out, i was a shadow. but everybody was full of attentions and kindnesses, and these brought cheer back into my life, and were the right medicine to help a convalescent swiftly up toward health and strength again; so i gained fast. sandy was worn out with nursing; so i made up my mind to turn out and go a cruise alone, leaving her at the nunnery to rest up. my idea was to disguise myself as a freeman of peasant degree and wander through the country a week or two on foot. this would give me a chance to eat and lodge with the lowliest and poorest class of free citizens on equal terms. there was no other way to inform myself perfectly of their everyday life and the operation of the laws upon it. if i went among them as a gentleman, there would be restraints and conventionalities which would shut me out from their private joys and troubles, and i should get no further than the outside shell. one morning i was out on a long walk to get up muscle for my trip, and had climbed the ridge which bordered the northern extremity of the valley, when i came upon an artificial opening in the face of a low precipice, and recognized it by its location as a hermitage which had often been pointed out to me from a distance as the den of a hermit of high renown for dirt and austerity. i knew he had lately been offered a situation in the great sahara, where lions and sandflies made the hermit-life peculiarly attractive and difficult, and had gone to africa to take possession, so i thought i would look in and see how the atmosphere of this den agreed with its reputation. my surprise was great: the place was newly swept and scoured. then there was another surprise. back in the gloom of the cavern i heard the clink of a little bell, and then this exclamation: "hello central! is this you, camelot? -behold, thou mayst glad thy heart an thou hast faith to believe the wonderful when that it cometh in unexpected guise and maketh itself manifest in impossible places -here standeth in the flesh his mightiness the boss, and with thine own ears shall ye hear him speak!" now what a radical reversal of things this was; what a jumbling together of extravagant incongruities; what a fantastic conjunction of opposites and irreconcilables -the home of the bogus miracle become the home of a real one, the den of a mediaeval hermit turned into a telephone office! the telephone clerk stepped into the light, and i recognized one of my young fellows. i said: "how long has this office been established here, ulfius?" "but since midnight, fair sir boss, an it please you. we saw many lights in the valley, and so judged it well to make a station, for that where so many lights be needs must they indicate a town of goodly size." "quite right. it isn't a town in the customary sense, but it's a good stand, anyway. do you know where you are?" "of that i have had no time to make inquiry; for whenas my comradeship moved hence upon their labors, leaving me in charge, i got me to needed rest, purposing to inquire when i waked, and report the place's name to camelot for record." "well, this is the valley of holiness." it didn't take; i mean, he didn't start at the name, as i had supposed he would. he merely said: "i will so report it." "why, the surrounding regions are filled with the noise of late wonders that have happened here! you didn't hear of them?" "ah, ye will remember we move by night, and avoid speech with all. we learn naught but that we get by the telephone from camelot." "why they know all about this thing. haven't they told you anything about the great miracle of the restoration of a holy fountain?" "oh, that? indeed yes. but the name of this valley doth woundily differ from the name of that one; indeed to differ wider were not pos --" "what was that name, then?" "the valley of hellishness." "that explains it. confound a telephone, anyway. it is the very demon for conveying similarities of sound that are miracles of divergence from similarity of sense. but no matter, you know the name of the place now. call up camelot." he did it, and had clarence sent for. it was good to hear my boy's voice again. it was like being home. after some affectionate interchanges, and some account of my late illness, i said: "what is new?" "the king and queen and many of the court do start even in this hour, to go to your valley to pay pious homage to the waters ye have restored, and cleanse themselves of sin, and see the place where the infernal spirit spouted true hell-flames to the clouds -an ye listen sharply ye may hear me wink and hear me likewise smile a smile, sith 'twas i that made selection of those flames from out our stock and sent them by your order." "does the king know the way to this place?" "the king? -no, nor to any other in his realms, mayhap; but the lads that holp you with your miracle will be his guide and lead the way, and appoint the places for rests at noons and sleeps at night." "this will bring them here -when?" "mid-afternoon, or later, the third day." "anything else in the way of news?" "the king hath begun the raising of the standing army ye suggested to him; one regiment is complete and officered." "the mischief! i wanted a main hand in that myself. there is only one body of men in the kingdom that are fitted to officer a regular army." "yes -and now ye will marvel to know there's not so much as one west pointer in that regiment." "what are you talking about? are you in earnest?" "it is truly as i have said." "why, this makes me uneasy. who were chosen, and what was the method? competitive examination?" "indeed, i know naught of the method. i but know this -these officers be all of noble family, and are born -what is it you call it? -chuckleheads." "there's something wrong, clarence. " "comfort yourself, then; for two candidates for a lieutenancy do travel hence with the king -young nobles both -and if you but wait where you are you will hear them questioned." "that is news to the purpose. i will get one west pointer in, anyway. mount a man and send him to that school with a message; let him kill horses, if necessary, but he must be there before sunset to-night and say -" "there is no need. i have laid a ground wire to the school. prithee let me connect you with it." it sounded good! in this atmosphere of telephones and lightning communication with distant regions, i was breathing the breath of life again after long suffocation. i realized, then, what a creepy, dull, inanimate horror this land had been to me all these years, and how i had been in such a stifled condition of mind as to have grown used to it almost beyond the power to notice it. i gave my order to the superintendent of the academy personally. i also asked him to bring me some paper and a fountain pen and a box or so of safety matches. i was getting tired of doing without these conveniences. i could have them now, as i wasn't going to wear armor any more at present, and therefore could get at my pockets. when i got back to the monastery, i found a thing of interest going on. the abbot and his monks were assembled in the great hall, observing with childish wonder and faith the performances of a new magician, a fresh arrival. his dress was the extreme of the fantastic; as showy and foolish as the sort of thing an indian medicine-man wears. he was mowing, and mumbling, and gesticulating, and drawing mystical figures in the air and on the floor, -the regular thing, you know. he was a celebrity from asia -so he said, and that was enough. that sort of evidence was as good as gold, and passed current everywhere. how easy and cheap it was to be a great magician on this fellow's terms. his specialty was to tell you what any individual on the face of the globe was doing at the moment; and what he had done at any time in the past, and what he would do at any time in the future. he asked if any would like to know what the emperor of the east was doing now? the sparkling eyes and the delighted rubbing of hands made eloquent answer -this reverend crowd would like to know what that monarch was at, just as this moment. the fraud went through some more mummery, and then made grave announcement: "the high and mighty emperor of the east doth at this moment put money in the palm of a holy begging friar -one, two, three pieces, and they be all of silver." a buzz of admiring exclamations broke out, all around: "it is marvelous!" "wonderful!" "what study, what labor, to have acquired a so amazing power as this!" would they like to know what the supreme lord of inde was doing? yes. he told them what the supreme lord of inde was doing. then he told them what the sultan of egypt was at; also what the king of the remote seas was about. and so on and so on; and with each new marvel the astonishment at his accuracy rose higher and higher. they thought he must surely strike an uncertain place some time; but no, he never had to hesitate, he always knew, and always with unerring precision. i saw that if this thing went on i should lose my supremacy, this fellow would capture my following, i should be left out in the cold. i must put a cog in his wheel, and do it right away, too. i said: "if i might ask, i should very greatly like to know what a certain person is doing." "speak, and freely. i will tell you." "it will be difficult -perhaps impossible." "my art knoweth not that word. the more difficult it is, the more certainly will i reveal it to you." you see, i was working up the interest. it was getting pretty high, too; you could see that by the craning necks all around, and the half-suspended breathing. so now i climaxed it: "if you make no mistake -if you tell me truly what i want to know -i will give you two hundred silver pennies." "the fortune is mine! i will tell you what you would know." "then tell me what i am doing with my right hand." "ah-h!" there was a general gasp of surprise. it had not occurred to anybody in the crowd -that simple trick of inquiring about somebody who wasn't ten thousand miles away. the magician was hit hard; it was an emergency that had never happened in his experience before, and it corked him; he didn't know how to meet it. he looked stunned, confused; he couldn't say a word. "come," i said, "what are you waiting for? is it possible you can answer up, right off, and tell what anybody on the other side of the earth is doing, and yet can't tell what a person is doing who isn't three yards from you? persons behind me know what i am doing with my right hand -they will indorse you if you tell correctly." he was still dumb. "very well, i'll tell you why you don't speak up and tell; it is because you don't know. you a magician! good friends, this tramp is a mere fraud and liar." this distressed the monks and terrified them. they were not used to hearing these awful beings called names, and they did not know what might be the consequence. there was a dead silence now; superstitious bodings were in every mind. the magician began to pull his wits together, and when he presently smiled an easy, nonchalant smile, it spread a mighty relief around; for it indicated that his mood was not destructive. he said: "it hath struck me speechless, the frivolity of this person's speech. let all know, if perchance there be any who know it not, that enchanters of my degree deign not to concern themselves with the doings of any but kings, princes, emperors, them that be born in the purple and them only. had ye asked me what arthur the great king is doing, it were another matter, and i had told ye; but the doings of a subject interest me not." "oh, i misunderstood you. i thought you said 'anybody,' and so i supposed 'anybody' included -well, anybody; that is, everybody." "it doth -anybody that is of lofty birth; and the better if he be royal." "that, it meseemeth, might well be," said the abbot, who saw his opportunity to smooth things and avert disaster, "for it were not likely that so wonderful a gift as this would be conferred for the revelation of the concerns of lesser beings than such as be born near to the summits of greatness. our arthur the king --" "would you know of him?" broke in the enchanter. "most gladly, yea, and gratefully." everybody was full of awe and interest again right away, the incorrigible idiots. they watched the incantations absorbingly, and looked at me with a "there, now, what can you say to that?" air, when the announcement came: "the king is weary with the chase, and lieth in his palace these two hours sleeping a dreamless sleep." "god's benison upon him!" said the abbot, and crossed himself; "may that sleep be to the refreshment of his body and his soul." "and so it might be, if he were sleeping," i said, "but the king is not sleeping, the king rides." here was trouble again -a conflict of authority. nobody knew which of us to believe; i still had some reputation left. the magician's scorn was stirred, and he said: "lo, i have seen many wonderful soothsayers and prophets and magicians in my life days, but none before that could sit idle and see to the heart of things with never an incantation to help." "you have lived in the woods, and lost much by it. i use incantations myself, as this good brotherhood are aware -but only on occasions of moment." when it comes to sarcasming, i reckon i know how to keep my end up. that jab made this fellow squirm. the abbot inquired after the queen and the court, and got this information: "they be all on sleep, being overcome by fatigue, like as to the king." i said: "that is merely another lie. half of them are about their amusements, the queen and the other half are not sleeping, they ride. now perhaps you can spread yourself a little, and tell us where the king and queen and all that are this moment riding with them are going?" "they sleep now, as i said; but on the morrow they will ride, for they go a journey toward the sea." "and where will they be the day after to-morrow at vespers?" "far to the north of camelot, and half their journey will be done." "that is another lie, by the space of a hundred and fifty miles. their journey will not be merely half done, it will be all done, and they will be here, in this valley." that was a noble shot! it set the abbot and the monks in a whirl of excitement, and it rocked the enchanter to his base. i followed the thing right up: "if the king does not arrive, i will have myself ridden on a rail: if he does i will ride you on a rail instead." next day i went up to the telephone office and found that the king had passed through two towns that were on the line. i spotted his progress on the succeeding day in the same way. i kept these matters to myself. the third day's reports showed that if he kept up his gait he would arrive by four in the afternoon. there was still no sign anywhere of interest in his coming; there seemed to be no preparations making to receive him in state; a strange thing, truly. only one thing could explain this: that other magician had been cutting under me, sure. this was true. i asked a friend of mine, a monk, about it, and he said, yes, the magician had tried some further enchantments and found out that the court had concluded to make no journey at all, but stay at home. think of that! observe how much a reputation was worth in such a country. these people had seen me do the very showiest bit of magic in history, and the only one within their memory that had a positive value, and yet here they were, ready to take up with an adventurer who could offer no evidence of his powers but his mere unproven word. however, it was not good politics to let the king come without any fuss and feathers at all, so i went down and drummed up a procession of pilgrims and smoked out a batch of hermits and started them out at two o'clock to meet him. and that was the sort of state he arrived in. the abbot was helpless with rage and humiliation when i brought him out on a balcony and showed him the head of the state marching in and never a monk on hand to offer him welcome, and no stir of life or clang of joy-bell to glad his spirit. he took one look and then flew to rouse out his forces. the next minute the bells were dinning furiously, and the various buildings were vomiting monks and nuns, who went swarming in a rush toward the coming procession; and with them went that magician -and he was on a rail, too, by the abbot's order; and his reputation was in the mud, and mine was in the sky again. yes, a man can keep his trademark current in such a country, but he can't sit around and do it; he has got to be on deck and attending to business right along. chapter xxv. a competitive examination when the king traveled for change of air, or made a progress, or visited a distant noble whom he wished to bankrupt with the cost of his keep, part of the administration moved with him. it was a fashion of the time. the commission charged with the examination of candidates for posts in the army came with the king to the valley, whereas they could have transacted their business just as well at home. and although this expedition was strictly a holiday excursion for the king, he kept some of his business functions going just the same. he touched for the evil, as usual; he held court in the gate at sunrise and tried cases, for he was himself chief justice of the king's bench. he shone very well in this latter office. he was a wise and humane judge, and he clearly did his honest best and fairest, -according to his lights. that is a large reservation. his lights -i mean his rearing -often colored his decisions. whenever there was a dispute between a noble or gentleman and a person of lower degree, the king's leanings and sympathies were for the former class always, whether he suspected it or not. it was impossible that this should be otherwise. the blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded, the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name. this has a harsh sound, and yet should not be offensive to any -even to the noble himself -unless the fact itself be an offense: for the statement simply formulates a fact. the repulsive feature of slavery is the thing, not its name. one needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below him to recognize -and in but indifferently modified measure -the very air and tone of the actual slaveholder; and behind these are the slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feeling. they are the result of the same cause in both cases: the possessor's old and inbred custom of regarding himself as a superior being. the king's judgments wrought frequent injustices, but it was merely the fault of his training, his natural and unalterable sympathies. he was as unfitted for a judgeship as would be the average mother for the position of milkdistributor to starving children in famine-time; her own children would fare a shade better than the rest. one very curious case came before the king. a young girl, an orphan, who had a considerable estate, married a fine young fellow who had nothing. the girl's property was within a seigniory held by the church. the bishop of the diocese, an arrogant scion of the great nobility, claimed the girl's estate on the ground that she had married privately, and thus had cheated the church out of one of its rights as lord of the seigniory -the one heretofore referred to as le droit du seigneur. the penalty of refusal or avoidance was confiscation. the girl's defense was, that the lordship of the seigniory was vested in the bishop, and the particular right here involved was not transferable, but must be exercised by the lord himself or stand vacated; and that an older law, of the church itself, strictly barred the bishop from exercising it. it was a very odd case, indeed. it reminded me of something i had read in my youth about the ingenious way in which the aldermen of london raised the money that built the mansion house. a person who had not taken the sacrament according to the anglican rite could not stand as a candidate for sheriff of london. thus dissenters were ineligible; they could not run if asked, they could not serve if elected. the aldermen, who without any question were yankees in disguise, hit upon this neat device: they passed a by-law imposing a fine of l400 upon any one who should refuse to be a candidate for sheriff, and a fine of l600 upon any person who, after being elected sheriff, refused to serve. then they went to work and elected a lot of dissenters, one after another, and kept it up until they had collected l15,000 in fines; and there stands the stately mansion house to this day, to keep the blushing citizen in mind of a long past and lamented day when a band of yankees slipped into london and played games of the sort that has given their race a unique and shady reputation among all truly good and holy peoples that be in the earth. the girl's case seemed strong to me; the bishop's case was just as strong. i did not see how the king was going to get out of this hole. but he got out. i append his decision: "truly i find small difficulty here, the matter being even a child's affair for simpleness. an the young bride had conveyed notice, as in duty bound, to her feudal lord and proper master and protector the bishop, she had suffered no loss, for the said bishop could have got a dispensation making him, for temporary conveniency, eligible to the exercise of his said right, and thus would she have kept all she had. whereas, failing in her first duty, she hath by that failure failed in all; for whoso, clinging to a rope, severeth it above his hands, must fall; it being no defense to claim that the rest of the rope is sound, neither any deliverance from his peril, as he shall find. pardy, the woman's case is rotten at the source. it is the decree of the court that she forfeit to the said lord bishop all her goods, even to the last farthing that she doth possess, and be thereto mulcted in the costs. next!" here was a tragic end to a beautiful honeymoon not yet three months old. poor young creatures! they had lived these three months lapped to the lips in worldly comforts. these clothes and trinkets they were wearing were as fine and dainty as the shrewdest stretch of the sumptuary laws allowed to people of their degree; and in these pretty clothes, she crying on his shoulder, and he trying to comfort her with hopeful words set to the music of despair, they went from the judgment seat out into the world homeless, bedless, breadless; why, the very beggars by the roadsides were not so poor as they. well, the king was out of the hole; and on terms satisfactory to the church and the rest of the aristocracy, no doubt. men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible. arthur's people were of course poor material for a republic, because they had been debased so long by monarchy; and yet even they would have been intelligent enough to make short work of that law which the king had just been administering if it had been submitted to their full and free vote. there is a phrase which has grown so common in the world's mouth that it has come to seem to have sense and meaning -the sense and meaning implied when it is used; that is the phrase which refers to this or that or the other nation as possibly being "capable of selfgovernment"; and the implied sense of it is, that there has been a nation somewhere, some time or other which wasn't capable of it -wasn't as able to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were or would be to govern it. the master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only -not from its privileged classes; and so, no matter what the nation's intellectual grade was; whether high or low, the bulk of its ability was in the long ranks of its nameless and its poor, and so it never saw the day that it had not the material in abundance whereby to govern itself. which is to assert an always self-proven fact: that even the best governed and most free and most enlightened monarchy is still behind the best condition attainable by its people; and that the same is true of kindred governments of lower grades, all the way down to the lowest. king arthur had hurried up the army business altogether beyond my calculations. i had not supposed he would move in the matter while i was away; and so i had not mapped out a scheme for determining the merits of officers; i had only remarked that it would be wise to submit every candidate to a sharp and searching examination; and privately i meant to put together a list of military qualifications that nobody could answer to but my west pointers. that ought to have been attended to before i left; for the king was so taken with the idea of a standing army that he couldn't wait but must get about it at once, and get up as good a scheme of examination as he could invent out of his own head. i was impatient to see what this was; and to show, too, how much more admirable was the one which i should display to the examining board. i intimated this, gently, to the king, and it fired his curiosity when the board was assembled, i followed him in; and behind us came the candidates. one of these candidates was a bright young west pointer of mine, and with him were a couple of my west point professors. when i saw the board, i did not know whether to cry or to laugh. the head of it was the officer known to later centuries as norroy king-at-arms! the two other members were chiefs of bureaus in his department; and all three were priests, of course; all officials who had to know how to read and write were priests. my candidate was called first, out of courtesy to me, and the head of the board opened on him with official solemnity: "name?" "mal-ease." "son of?" "webster." "webster -webster. h'm -i -my memory faileth to recall the name. condition?" "weaver." "weaver! -god keep us!" the king was staggered, from his summit to his foundations; one clerk fainted, and the others came near it. the chairman pulled himself together, and said indignantly: "it is sufficient. get you hence." but i appealed to the king. i begged that my candidate might be examined. the king was willing, but the board, who were all well-born folk, implored the king to spare them the indignity of examining the weaver's son. i knew they didn't know enough to examine him anyway, so i joined my prayers to theirs and the king turned the duty over to my professors. i had had a blackboard prepared, and it was put up now, and the circus began. it was beautiful to hear the lad lay out the science of war, and wallow in details of battle and siege, of supply, transportation, mining and countermining, grand tactics, big strategy and little strategy, signal service, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and all about siege guns, field guns, gatling guns, rifled guns, smooth bores, musket practice, revolver practice -and not a solitary word of it all could these catfish make head or tail of, you understand -and it was handsome to see him chalk off mathematical nightmares on the blackboard that would stump the angels themselves, and do it like nothing, too -all about eclipses, and comets, and solstices, and constellations, and mean time, and sidereal time, and dinner time, and bedtime, and every other imaginable thing above the clouds or under them that you could harry or bullyrag an enemy with and make him wish he hadn't come -and when the boy made his military salute and stood aside at last, i was proud enough to hug him, and all those other people were so dazed they looked partly petrified, partly drunk, and wholly caught out and snowed under. i judged that the cake was ours, and by a large majority. education is a great thing. this was the same youth who had come to west point so ignorant that when i asked him, "if a general officer should have a horse shot under him on the field of battle, what ought he to do?" answered up naively and said: "get up and brush himself." one of the young nobles was called up now. i thought i would question him a little myself. i said: "can your lordship read?" his face flushed indignantly, and he fired this at me: "takest me for a clerk? i trow i am not of a blood that --" "answer the question!" he crowded his wrath down and made out to answer "no." "can you write?" he wanted to resent this, too, but i said: "you will confine yourself to the questions, and make no comments. you are not here to air your blood or your graces, and nothing of the sort will be permitted. can you write?" "no." "do you know the multiplication table?" "i wit not what ye refer to." "how much is 9 times 6?" "it is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, i abide barren of the knowledge." "if a trade a barrel of onions to b, worth 2 pence the bushel, in exchange for a sheep worth 4 pence and a dog worth a penny, and c kill the dog before delivery, because bitten by the same, who mistook him for d, what sum is still due to a from b, and which party pays for the dog, c or d, and who gets the money? if a, is the penny sufficient, or may he claim consequential damages in the form of additional money to represent the possible profit which might have inured from the dog, and classifiable as earned increment, that is to say, usufruct?" "verily, in the all-wise and unknowable providence of god, who moveth in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, have i never heard the fellow to this question for confusion of the mind and congestion of the ducts of thought. wherefore i beseech you let the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless names work out their several salvations from their piteous and wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an i tried to help i should but damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself to see the desolation wrought." "what do you know of the laws of attraction and gravitation?" "if there be such, mayhap his grace the king did promulgate them whilst that i lay sick about the beginning of the year and thereby failed to hear his proclamation." "what do you know of the science of optics?" "i know of governors of places, and seneschals of castles, and sheriffs of counties, and many like small offices and titles of honor, but him you call the science of optics i have not heard of before; peradventure it is a new dignity." "yes, in this country." try to conceive of this mollusk gravely applying for an official position, of any kind under the sun! why, he had all the earmarks of a typewriter copyist, if you leave out the disposition to contribute uninvited emendations of your grammar and punctuation. it was unaccountable that he didn't attempt a little help of that sort out of his majestic supply of incapacity for the job. but that didn't prove that he hadn't material in him for the disposition, it only proved that he wasn't a typewriter copyist yet. after nagging him a little more, i let the professors loose on him and they turned him inside out, on the line of scientific war, and found him empty, of course. he knew somewhat about the warfare of the time -bushwhacking around for ogres, and bull-fights in the tournament ring, and such things -but otherwise he was empty and useless. then we took the other young noble in hand, and he was the first one's twin, for ignorance and incapacity. i delivered them into the hands of the chairman of the board with the comfortable consciousness that their cake was dough. they were examined in the previous order of precedence. "name, so please you?" "pertipole, son of sir pertipole, baron of barley mash." "grandfather?" "also sir pertipole, baron of barley mash." "great-grandfather?" "the same name and title." "great-great-grandfather?" "we had none, worshipful sir, the line failing before it had reached so far back." "it mattereth not. it is a good four generations, and fulfilleth the requirements of the rule." "fulfills what rule?" i asked. "the rule requiring four generations of nobility or else the candidate is not eligible." "a man not eligible for a lieutenancy in the army unless he can prove four generations of noble descent?" "even so; neither lieutenant nor any other officer may be commissioned without that qualification." "oh, come, this is an astonishing thing. what good is such a qualification as that?" "what good? it is a hardy question, fair sir and boss, since it doth go far to impugn the wisdom of even our holy mother church herself." "as how?" "for that she hath established the self-same rule regarding saints. by her law none may be canonized until he hath lain dead four generations." "i see, i see -it is the same thing. it is wonderful. in the one case a man lies dead-alive four generations -mummified in ignorance and sloth -and that qualifies him to command live people, and take their weal and woe into his impotent hands; and in the other case, a man lies bedded with death and worms four generations, and that qualifies him for office in the celestial camp. does the king's grace approve of this strange law?" the king said: "why, truly i see naught about it that is strange. all places of honor and of profit do belong, by natural right, to them that be of noble blood, and so these dignities in the army are their property and would be so without this or any rule. the rule is but to mark a limit. its purpose is to keep out too recent blood, which would bring into contempt these offices, and men of lofty lineage would turn their backs and scorn to take them. i were to blame an i permitted this calamity. you can permit it an you are minded so to do, for you have the delegated authority, but that the king should do it were a most strange madness and not comprehensible to any." "i yield. proceed, sir chief of the herald's college. " the chairman resumed as follows: "by what illustrious achievement for the honor of the throne and state did the founder of your great line lift himself to the sacred dignity of the british nobility?" "he built a brewery." "sire, the board finds this candidate perfect in all the requirements and qualifications for military command, and doth hold his case open for decision after due examination of his competitor." the competitor came forward and proved exactly four generations of nobility himself. so there was a tie in military qualifications that far. he stood aside a moment, and sir pertipole was questioned further: "of what condition was the wife of the founder of your line?" "she came of the highest landed gentry, yet she was not noble; she was gracious and pure and charitable, of a blameless life and character, insomuch that in these regards was she peer of the best lady in the land." "that will do. stand down." he called up the competing lordling again, and asked: "what was the rank and condition of the great-grandmother who conferred british nobility upon your great house?" "she was a king's leman and did climb to that splendid eminence by her own unholpen merit from the sewer where she was born." "ah, this, indeed, is true nobility, this is the right and perfect intermixture. the lieutenancy is yours, fair lord. hold it not in contempt; it is the humble step which will lead to grandeurs more worthy of the splendor of an origin like to thine." i was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation. i had promised myself an easy and zenith-scouring triumph, and this was the outcome! i was almost ashamed to look my poor disappointed cadet in the face. i told him to go home and be patient, this wasn't the end. i had a private audience with the king, and made a proposition. i said it was quite right to officer that regiment with nobilities, and he couldn't have done a wiser thing. it would also be a good idea to add five hundred officers to it; in fact, add as many officers as there were nobles and relatives of nobles in the country, even if there should finally be five times as many officers as privates in it; and thus make it the crack regiment, the envied regiment, the king's own regiment, and entitled to fight on its own hook and in its own way, and go whither it would and come when it pleased, in time of war, and be utterly swell and independent. this would make that regiment the heart's desire of all the nobility, and they would all be satisfied and happy. then we would make up the rest of the standing army out of commonplace materials, and officer it with nobodies, as was proper -nobodies selected on a basis of mere efficiency -and we would make this regiment toe the line, allow it no aristocratic freedom from restraint, and force it to do all the work and persistent hammering, to the end that whenever the king's own was tired and wanted to go off for a change and rummage around amongst ogres and have a good time, it could go without uneasiness, knowing that matters were in safe hands behind it, and business going to be continued at the old stand, same as usual. the king was charmed with the idea. when i noticed that, it gave me a valuable notion. i thought i saw my way out of an old and stubborn difficulty at last. you see, the royalties of the pendragon stock were a long-lived race and very fruitful. whenever a child was born to any of these -and it was pretty often -there was wild joy in the nation's mouth, and piteous sorrow in the nation's heart. the joy was questionable, but the grief was honest. because the event meant another call for a royal grant. long was the list of these royalties, and they were a heavy and steadily increasing burden upon the treasury and a menace to the crown. yet arthur could not believe this latter fact, and he would not listen to any of my various projects for substituting something in the place of the royal grants. if i could have persuaded him to now and then provide a support for one of these outlying scions from his own pocket, i could have made a grand to-do over it, and it would have had a good effect with the nation; but no, he wouldn't hear of such a thing. he had something like a religious passion for royal grant; he seemed to look upon it as a sort of sacred swag, and one could not irritate him in any way so quickly and so surely as by an attack upon that venerable institution. if i ventured to cautiously hint that there was not another respectable family in england that would humble itself to hold out the hat -however, that is as far as i ever got; he always cut me short there, and peremptorily, too. but i believed i saw my chance at last. i would form this crack regiment out of officers alone -not a single private. half of it should consist of nobles, who should fill all the places up to major-general, and serve gratis and pay their own expenses; and they would be glad to do this when they should learn that the rest of the regiment would consist exclusively of princes of the blood. these princes of the blood should range in rank from lieutenant-general up to field marshal, and be gorgeously salaried and equipped and fed by the state. moreover -and this was the master stroke -it should be decreed that these princely grandees should be always addressed by a stunningly gaudy and awe-compelling title (which i would presently invent), and they and they only in all england should be so addressed. finally, all princes of the blood should have free choice; join that regiment, get that great title, and renounce the royal grant, or stay out and receive a grant. neatest touch of all: unborn but imminent princes of the blood could be born into the regiment, and start fair, with good wages and a permanent situation, upon due notice from the parents. all the boys would join, i was sure of that; so, all existing grants would be relinquished; that the newly born would always join was equally certain. within sixty days that quaint and bizarre anomaly, the royal grant, would cease to be a living fact, and take its place among the curiosities of the past. chapter xxvi. the first newspaper when i told the king i was going out disguised as a petty freeman to scour the country and familiarize myself with the humbler life of the people, he was all afire with the novelty of the thing in a minute, and was bound to take a chance in the adventure himself -nothing should stop him -he would drop everything and go along -it was the prettiest idea he had run across for many a day. he wanted to glide out the back way and start at once; but i showed him that that wouldn't answer. you see, he was billed for the king's-evil -to touch for it, i mean -and it wouldn't be right to disappoint the house and it wouldn't make a delay worth considering, anyway, it was only a one-night stand. and i thought he ought to tell the queen he was going away. he clouded up at that and looked sad. i was sorry i had spoken, especially when he said mournfully: "thou forgettest that launcelot is here; and where launcelot is, she noteth not the going forth of the king, nor what day he returneth." of course, i changed the subject. yes, guenever was beautiful, it is true, but take her all around she was pretty slack. i never meddled in these matters, they weren't my affair, but i did hate to see the way things were going on, and i don't mind saying that much. many's the time she had asked me, "sir boss, hast seen sir launcelot about?" but if ever she went fretting around for the king i didn't happen to be around at the time. there was a very good lay-out for the king's-evil business -very tidy and creditable. the king sat under a canopy of state; about him were clustered a large body of the clergy in full canonicals. conspicuous, both for location and personal outfit, stood marinel, a hermit of the quack-doctor species, to introduce the sick. all abroad over the spacious floor, and clear down to the doors, in a thick jumble, lay or sat the scrofulous, under a strong light. it was as good as a tableau; in fact, it had all the look of being gotten up for that, though it wasn't. there were eight hundred sick people present. the work was slow; it lacked the interest of novelty for me, because i had seen the ceremonies before; the thing soon became tedious, but the proprieties required me to stick it out. the doctor was there for the reason that in all such crowds there were many people who only imagined something was the matter with them, and many who were consciously sound but wanted the immortal honor of fleshly contact with a king, and yet others who pretended to illness in order to get the piece of coin that went with the touch. up to this time this coin had been a wee little gold piece worth about a third of a dollar. when you consider how much that amount of money would buy, in that age and country, and how usual it was to be scrofulous, when not dead, you would understand that the annual king's-evil appropriation was just the river and harbor bill of that government for the grip it took on the treasury and the chance it afforded for skinning the surplus. so i had privately concluded to touch the treasury itself for the king's-evil. i covered sixsevenths of the appropriation into the treasury a week before starting from camelot on my adventures, and ordered that the other seventh be inflated into fivecent nickels and delivered into the hands of the head clerk of the king's evil department; a nickel to take the place of each gold coin, you see, and do its work for it. it might strain the nickel some, but i judged it could stand it. as a rule, i do not approve of watering stock, but i considered it square enough in this case, for it was just a gift, anyway. of course, you can water a gift as much as you want to; and i generally do. the old gold and silver coins of the country were of ancient and unknown origin, as a rule, but some of them were roman; they were ill-shapen, and seldom rounder than a moon that is a week past the full; they were hammered, not minted, and they were so worn with use that the devices upon them were as illegible as blisters, and looked like them. i judged that a sharp, bright new nickel, with a first-rate likeness of the king on one side of it and guenever on the other, and a blooming pious motto, would take the tuck out of scrofula as handy as a nobler coin and please the scrofulous fancy more; and i was right. this batch was the first it was tried on, and it worked to a charm. the saving in expense was a notable economy. you will see that by these figures: we touched a trifle over 700 of the 800 patients; at former rates, this would have cost the government about $240; at the new rate we pulled through for about $35, thus saving upward of $200 at one swoop. to appreciate the full magnitude of this stroke, consider these other figures: the annual expenses of a national government amount to the equivalent of a contribution of three days' average wages of every individual of the population, counting every individual as if he were a man. if you take a nation of 60,000,000, where average wages are $2 per day, three days' wages taken from each individual will provide $360,000,000 and pay the government's expenses. in my day, in my own country, this money was collected from imposts, and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it, and it made him comfortable to think so; whereas, in fact, it was paid by the american people, and was so equally and exactly distributed among them that the annual cost to the 100-millionaire and the annual cost to the sucking child of the day-laborer was precisely the same -each paid $6. nothing could be equaler than that, i reckon. well, scotland and ireland were tributary to arthur, and the united populations of the british islands amounted to something less than 1,ooo,ooo. a mechanic's average wage was 3 cents a day, when he paid his own keep. by this rule the national government's expenses were $90,000 a year, or about $250 a day. thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king's-evil day, i not only injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleased all concerned and saved four-fifths of that day's national expense into the bargain -a saving which would have been the equivalent of $800,000 in my day in america. in making this substitution i had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source -the wisdom of my boyhood -for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom, howsoever lowly may be its origin: in my boyhood i had always saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary cause. the buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as the coin, the coin would answer me better than the buttons; all hands were happy and nobody hurt. marinel took the patients as they came. he examined the candidate; if he couldn't qualify he was warned off; if he could he was passed along to the king. a priest pronounced the words, "they shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover." then the king stroked the ulcers, while the reading continued; finally, the patient graduated and got his nickel -the king hanging it around his neck himself -and was dismissed. would you think that that would cure? it certainly did. any mummery will cure if the patient's faith is strong in it. up by astolat there was a chapel where the virgin had once appeared to a girl who used to herd geese around there -the girl said so herself -and they built the chapel upon that spot and hung a picture in it representing the occurrence -a picture which you would think it dangerous for a sick person to approach; whereas, on the contrary, thousands of the lame and the sick came and prayed before it every year and went away whole and sound; and even the well could look upon it and live. of course, when i was told these things i did not believe them; but when i went there and saw them i had to succumb. i saw the cures effected myself; and they were real cures and not questionable. i saw cripples whom i had seen around camelot for years on crutches, arrive and pray before that picture, and put down their crutches and walk off without a limp. there were piles of crutches there which had been left by such people as a testimony. in other places people operated on a patient's mind, without saying a word to him, and cured him. in others, experts assembled patients in a room and prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, and those patients went away cured. wherever you find a king who can't cure the king's-evil you can be sure that the most valuable superstition that supports his throne -the subject's belief in the divine appointment of his sovereign -has passed away. in my youth the monarchs of england had ceased to touch for the evil, but there was no occasion for this diffidence: they could have cured it forty-nine times in fifty. well, when the priest had been droning for three hours, and the good king polishing the evidences, and the sick were still pressing forward as plenty as ever, i got to feeling intolerably bored. i was sitting by an open window not far from the canopy of state. for the five hundredth time a patient stood forward to have his repulsivenesses stroked; again those words were being droned out: "they shall lay their hands on the sick" -when outside there rang clear as a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled thirteen worthless centuries about my ears: "camelot weekly hosannah and literary volcano! -latest irruption -only two cents -all about the big miracle in the valley of holiness!" one greater than kings had arrived -the newsboy. but i was the only person in all that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty birth, and what this imperial magician was come into the world to do. i dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper; the adam-newsboy of the world went around the corner to get my change; is around the corner yet. it was delicious to see a newspaper again, yet i was conscious of a secret shock when my eye fell upon the first batch of display head-lines. i had lived in a clammy atmosphere of reverence, respect, deference, so long that they sent a quivery little cold wave through me: high times in the valley of holiness! --- the water-works corked! --- brer merlin works his arts, but gets left? --- but the boss scores on his first innings! --- the miraculous well uncorked amid awful outbursts of infernal fire and smoke athunder! --- the buzzard-roost astonished! --- unparalleled rejoibings! -and so on, and so on. yes, it was too loud. once i could have enjoyed it and seen nothing out of the way about it, but now its note was discordant. it was good arkansas journalism, but this was not arkansas. moreover, the next to the last line was calculated to give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their advertising. indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through the paper. it was plain i had undergone a considerable change without noticing it. i found myself unpleasantly affected by pert little irreverencies which would have seemed but proper and airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life. there was an abundance of the following breed of items, and they discomforted me: local smoke and cinders. sir launcelot met up with old king agrivance of ireland unexpectedly last weok over on the moor south of sir balmoral le merveilleuse's hog dasture. the widow has been notified. expedition no. 3 will start adout the first of mext month on a search f8r sir sagramour le desirous. it is in com and of the renowned knight of the red lawns, assissted by sir persant of inde, who is compete9t. intelligent, courte ous, and in every way a brick, and fur ther assisted by sir palamides the sara cen, who is no huckleberry hinself. this is no pic-nic, these boys mean busine&s. the readers of the hosannah will re gret to learn that the hadndsome and popular sir charolais of gaul, who dur ing his four weeks' stay at the bull and halibut, this city, has won every heart by his polished manners and elegant cpnversation, will pull out to-day for home. give us another call, charley! the bdsiness end of the funeral of the late sir dalliance the duke's son of cornwall, killed in an encounter with the giant of the knotted bludgeon last tuesday on the borders of the plain of enchantment was in the hands of the ever affable and efficient mumble, prince of un3ertakers, then whom there exists none by whom it were a more satisfying pleasure to have the last sad offices performed. give him a trial. the cordial thanks of the hosannah office are due, from editor down to devil, to the ever courteous and thought ful lord high stew d of the palace's third assistant v t for several sau cets of ice cream a quality calculated to make the ey of the recipients hu mid with grt ude; and it done it. when this administration wants to chalk up a desirable name for early promotion, the hosannah would like a chance to sudgest. the demoiselle irene dewlap, of south astolat, is visiting her uncle, the popular host of the cattlemen's board ing ho&se, liver lane, this city. young barker the bellows-mender is home again, and looks much improved by his vacation round-up among the ut lying smithies. see his ad. a yankee in king arthur's court 239 of course it was good enough journalism for a beginning; i knew that quite well, and yet it was somehow disappointing. the "court circular" pleased me better; indeed, its simple and dignified respectfulness was a distinct refreshment to me after all those disgraceful familiarities. but even it could have been improved. do what one may, there is no getting an air of variety into a court circular, i acknowledge that. there is a profound monotonousness about its facts that baffles and defeats one's sincerest efforts to make them sparkle and enthuse. the best way to manage -in fact, the only sensible way -is to disguise repetitiousness of fact under variety of form: skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle of words. it deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; it gives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything; this excites you, and you drain the whole column, with a good appetite, and perhaps never notice that it's a barrel of soup made out of a single bean. clarence's way was good, it was simple, it was dignified, it was direct and business-like; all i say is, it was not the best way: court circular. on monday, the king rode in the park. " tuesday, " " " " wendesday " " " " thursday " " " " friday, " " " " saturday " " " " sunday, " " " however, take the paper by and large, i was vastly pleased with it. little crudities of a mechanical sort were observable here and there, but there were not enough of them to amount to anything, and it was good enough arkansas proof-reading, anyhow, and better than was needed in arthur's day and realm. as a rule, the grammar was leaky and the construction more or less lame; but i did not much mind these things. they are common defects of my own, and one mustn't criticise other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself. i was hungry enough for literature to want to take down the whole paper at this one meal, but i got only a few bites, and then had to postpone, because the monks around me besieged me so with eager questions: what is this curious thing? what is it for? is it a handkerchief? -saddle blanket? -part of a shirt? what is it made of? how thin it is, and how dainty and frail; and how it rattles. will it wear, do you think, and won't the rain injure it? is it writing that appears on it, or is it only ornamentation? they suspected it was writing, because those among them who knew how to read latin and had a smattering of greek, recognized some of the letters, but they could make nothing out of the result as a whole. i put my information in the simplest form i could: "it is a public journal; i will explain what that is, another time. it is not cloth, it is made of paper; some time i will explain what paper is. the lines on it are reading matter; and not written by hand, but printed; by and by i will explain what printing is. a thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this, in every minute detail -they can't be told apart." then they all broke out with exclamations of surprise and admiration: "a thousand! verily a mighty work -a year's work for many men." "no -merely a day's work for a man and a boy." they crossed themselves, and whiffed out a protective prayer or two. "ah-h -a miracle, a wonder! dark work of enchantment." i let it go at that. then i read in a low voice, to as many as could crowd their shaven heads within hearing distance, part of the account of the miracle of the restoration of the well, and was accompanied by astonished and reverent ejaculations all through: "ah-h-h!" "how true!" "amazing, amazing!" "these be the very haps as they happened, in marvelous exactness!" and might they take this strange thing in their hands, and feel of it and examine it? -they would be very careful. yes. so they took it, handling it as cautiously and devoutly as if it had been some holy thing come from some supernatural region; and gently felt of its texture, caressed its pleasant smooth surface with lingering touch, and scanned the mysterious characters with fascinated eyes. these grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speaking eyes -how beautiful to me! for was not this my darling, and was not all this mute wonder and interest and homage a most eloquent tribute and unforced compliment to it? i knew, then, how a mother feels when women, whether strangers or friends, take her new baby, and close themselves about it with one eager impulse, and bend their heads over it in a tranced adoration that makes all the rest of the universe vanish out of their consciousness and be as if it were not, for that time. i knew how she feels, and that there is no other satisfied ambition, whether of king, conqueror, or poet, that ever reaches half-way to that serene far summit or yields half so divine a contentment. during all the rest of the seance my paper traveled from group to group all up and down and about that huge hall, and my happy eye was upon it always, and i sat motionless, steeped in satisfaction, drunk with enjoyment. yes, this was heaven; i was tasting it once, if i might never taste it more. chapter xxvii. the yankee and the king travel incognito about bedtime i took the king to my private quarters to cut his hair and help him get the hang of the lowly raiment he was to wear. the high classes wore their hair banged across the forehead but hanging to the shoulders the rest of the way around, whereas the lowest ranks of commoners were banged fore and aft both; the slaves were bangless, and allowed their hair free growth. so i inverted a bowl over his head and cut away all the locks that hung below it. i also trimmed his whiskers and mustache until they were only about a half-inch long; and tried to do it inartistically, and succeeded. it was a villainous disfigurement. when he got his lubberly sandals on, and his long robe of coarse brown linen cloth, which hung straight from his neck to his ankle-bones, he was no longer the comeliest man in his kingdom, but one of the unhandsomest and most commonplace and unattractive. we were dressed and barbered alike, and could pass for small farmers, or farm bailiffs, or shepherds, or carters; yes, or for village artisans, if we chose, our costume being in effect universal among the poor, because of its strength and cheapness. i don't mean that it was really cheap to a very poor person, but i do mean that it was the cheapest material there was for male attire -manufactured material, you understand. we slipped away an hour before dawn, and by broad sun-up had made eight or ten miles, and were in the midst of a sparsely settled country. i had a pretty heavy knapsack; it was laden with provisions -provisions for the king to taper down on, till he could take to the coarse fare of the country without damage. i found a comfortable seat for the king by the roadside, and then gave him a morsel or two to stay his stomach with. then i said i would find some water for him, and strolled away. part of my project was to get out of sight and sit down and rest a little myself. it had always been my custom to stand when in his presence; even at the council board, except upon those rare occasions when the sitting was a very long one, extending over hours; then i had a trifling little backless thing which was like a reversed culvert and was as comfortable as the toothache. i didn't want to break him in suddenly, but do it by degrees. we should have to sit together now when in company, or people would notice; but it would not be good politics for me to be playing equality with him when there was no necessity for it. i found the water some three hundred yards away, and had been resting about twenty minutes, when i heard voices. that is all right, i thought -peasants going to work; nobody else likely to be stirring this early. but the next moment these comers jingled into sight around a turn of the road -smartly clad people of quality, with luggage-mules and servants in their train! i was off like a shot, through the bushes, by the shortest cut. for a while it did seem that these people would pass the king before i could get to him; but desperation gives you wings, you know, and i canted my body forward, inflated my breast, and held my breath and flew. i arrived. and in plenty good enough time, too. "pardon, my king, but it's no time for ceremony -jump! jump to your feet -some quality are coming!" "is that a marvel? let them come." "but my liege! you must not be seen sitting. rise! -and stand in humble posture while they pass. you are a peasant, you know." "true -i had forgot it, so lost was i in planning of a huge war with gaul" -he was up by this time, but a farm could have got up quicker, if there was any kind of a boom in real estate -"and right-so a thought came randoming overthwart this majestic dream the which --" "a humbler attitude, my lord the king -and quick! duck your head! -more! -still more! -droop it!" he did his honest best, but lord, it was no great things. he looked as humble as the leaning tower at pisa. it is the most you could say of it. indeed, it was such a thundering poor success that it raised wondering scowls all along the line, and a gorgeous flunkey at the tail end of it raised his whip; but i jumped in time and was under it when it fell; and under cover of the volley of coarse laughter which followed, i spoke up sharply and warned the king to take no notice. he mastered himself for the moment, but it was a sore tax; he wanted to eat up the procession. i said: "it would end our adventures at the very start; and we, being without weapons, could do nothing with that armed gang. if we are going to succeed in our emprise, we must not only look the peasant but act the peasant." "it is wisdom; none can gainsay it. let us go on, sir boss. i will take note and learn, and do the best i may." he kept his word. he did the best he could, but i've seen better. if you have ever seen an active, heedless, enterprising child going diligently out of one mischief and into another all day long, and an anxious mother at its heels all the while, and just saving it by a hair from drowning itself or breaking its neck with each new experiment, you've seen the king and me. if i could have foreseen what the thing was going to be like, i should have said, no, if anybody wants to make his living exhibiting a king as a peasant, let him take the layout; i can do better with a menagerie, and last longer. and yet, during the first three days i never allowed him to enter a hut or other dwelling. if he could pass muster anywhere during his early novitiate it would be in small inns and on the road; so to these places we confined ourselves. yes, he certainly did the best he could, but what of that? he didn't improve a bit that i could see. he was always frightening me, always breaking out with fresh astonishers, in new and unexpected places. toward evening on the second day, what does he do but blandly fetch out a dirk from inside his robe! "great guns, my liege, where did you get that?" "from a smuggler at the inn, yester eve." "what in the world possessed you to buy it?" "we have escaped divers dangers by wit -thy wit -but i have bethought me that it were but prudence if i bore a weapon, too. thine might fail thee in some pinch." "but people of our condition are not allowed to carry arms. what would a lord say -yes, or any other person of whatever condition -if he caught an upstart peasant with a dagger on his person?" it was a lucky thing for us that nobody came along just then. i persuaded him to throw the dirk away; and it was as easy as persuading a child to give up some bright fresh new way of killing itself. we walked along, silent and thinking. finally the king said: "when ye know that i meditate a thing inconvenient, or that hath a peril in it, why do you not warn me to cease from that project?" it was a startling question, and a puzzler. i didn't quite know how to take hold of it, or what to say, and so, of course, i ended by saying the natural thing: "but, sire, how can i know what your thoughts are?" the king stopped dead in his tracks, and stared at me. "i believed thou wert greater than merlin; and truly in magic thou art. but prophecy is greater than magic. merlin is a prophet." i saw i had made a blunder. i must get back my lost ground. after a deep reflection and careful planning, i said: "sire, i have been misunderstood. i will explain. there are two kinds of prophecy. one is the gift to foretell things that are but a little way off, the other is the gift to foretell things that are whole ages and centuries away. which is the mightier gift, do you think?" "oh, the last, most surely!" "true. does merlin possess it?" "partly, yes. he foretold mysteries about my birth and future kingship that were twenty years away." "has he ever gone beyond that?" "he would not claim more, i think." "it is probably his limit. all prophets have their limit. the limit of some of the great prophets has been a hundred years." "these are few, i ween." "there have been two still greater ones, whose limit was four hundred and six hundred years, and one whose limit compassed even seven hundred and twenty." "gramercy, it is marvelous!" "but what are these in comparison with me? they are nothing." "what? canst thou truly look beyond even so vast a stretch of time as --" "seven hundred years? my liege, as clear as the vision of an eagle does my prophetic eye penetrate and lay bare the future of this world for nearly thirteen centuries and a half!" my land, you should have seen the king's eyes spread slowly open, and lift the earth's entire atmosphere as much as an inch! that settled brer merlin. one never had any occasion to prove his facts, with these people; all he had to do was to state them. it never occurred to anybody to doubt the statement. "now, then," i continued, "i could work both kinds of prophecy -the long and the short -if i chose to take the trouble to keep in practice; but i seldom exercise any but the long kind, because the other is beneath my dignity. it is properer to merlin's sort -stump-tail prophets, as we call them in the profession. of course, i whet up now and then and flirt out a minor prophecy, but not often -hardly ever, in fact. you will remember that there was great talk, when you reached the valley of holiness, about my having prophesied your coming and the very hour of your arrival, two or three days beforehand." "indeed, yes, i mind it now." "well, i could have done it as much as forty times easier, and piled on a thousand times more detail into the bargain, if it had been five hundred years away instead of two or three days." "how amazing that it should be so!" "yes, a genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is five hundred years away easier than he can a thing that's only five hundred seconds off." "and yet in reason it should clearly be the other way; it should be five hundred times as easy to foretell the last as the first, for, indeed, it is so close by that one uninspired might almost see it. in truth, the law of prophecy doth contradict the likelihoods, most strangely making the difficult easy, and the easy difficult." it was a wise head. a peasant's cap was no safe disguise for it; you could know it for a king's under a diving-bell, if you could hear it work its intellect. i had a new trade now, and plenty of business in it. the king was as hungry to find out everything that was going to happen during the next thirteen centuries as if he were expecting to live in them. from that time out, i prophesied myself bald-headed trying to supply the demand. i have done some indiscreet things in my day, but this thing of playing myself for a prophet was the worst. still, it had its ameliorations. a prophet doesn't have to have any brains. they are good to have, of course, for the ordinary exigencies of life, but they are no use in professional work. it is the restfulest vocation there is. when the spirit of prophecy comes upon you, you merely cake your intellect and lay it off in a cool place for a rest, and unship your jaw and leave it alone; it will work itself: the result is prophecy. every day a knight-errant or so came along, and the sight of them fired the king's martial spirit every time. he would have forgotten himself, sure, and said something to them in a style a suspicious shade or so above his ostensible degree, and so i always got him well out of the road in time. then he would stand and look with all his eyes; and a proud light would flash from them, and his nostrils would inflate like a war-horse's, and i knew he was longing for a brush with them. but about noon of the third day i had stopped in the road to take a precaution which had been suggested by the whip-stroke that had fallen to my share two days before; a precaution which i had afterward decided to leave untaken, i was so loath to institute it; but now i had just had a fresh reminder: while striding heedlessly along, with jaw spread and intellect at rest, for i was prophesying, i stubbed my toe and fell sprawling. i was so pale i couldn't think for a moment; then i got softly and carefully up and unstrapped my knapsack. i had that dynamite bomb in it, done up in wool in a box. it was a good thing to have along; the time would come when i could do a valuable miracle with it, maybe, but it was a nervous thing to have about me, and i didn't like to ask the king to carry it. yet i must either throw it away or think up some safe way to get along with its society. i got it out and slipped it into my scrip, and just then here came a couple of knights. the king stood, stately as a statue, gazing toward them -had forgotten himself again, of course -and before i could get a word of warning out, it was time for him to skip, and well that he did it, too. he supposed they would turn aside. turn aside to avoid trampling peasant dirt under foot? when had he ever turned aside himself -or ever had the chance to do it, if a peasant saw him or any other noble knight in time to judiciously save him the trouble? the knights paid no attention to the king at all; it was his place to look out himself, and if he hadn't skipped he would have been placidly ridden down, and laughed at besides. the king was in a flaming fury, and launched out his challenge and epithets with a most royal vigor. the knights were some little distance by now. they halted, greatly surprised, and turned in their saddles and looked back, as if wondering if it might be worth while to bother with such scum as we. then they wheeled and started for us. not a moment must be lost. i started for them. i passed them at a rattling gait, and as i went by i flung out a hair-lifting soulscorching thirteen-jointed insult which made the king's effort poor and cheap by comparison. i got it out of the nineteenth century where they know how. they had such headway that they were nearly to the king before they could check up; then, frantic with rage, they stood up their horses on their hind hoofs and whirled them around, and the next moment here they came, breast to breast. i was seventy yards off, then, and scrambling up a great bowlder at the roadside. when they were within thirty yards of me they let their long lances droop to a level, depressed their mailed heads, and so, with their horse-hair plumes streaming straight out behind, most gallant to see, this lightning express came tearing for me! when they were within fifteen yards, i sent that bomb with a sure aim, and it struck the ground just under the horses' noses. yes, it was a neat thing, very neat and pretty to see. it resembled a steamboat explosion on the mississippi; and during the next fifteen minutes we stood under a steady drizzle of microscopic fragments of knights and hardware and horse-flesh. i say we, for the king joined the audience, of course, as soon as he had got his breath again. there was a hole there which would afford steady work for all the people in that region for some years to come -in trying to explain it, i mean; as for filling it up, that service would be comparatively prompt, and would fall to the lot of a select few -peasants of that seignory; and they wouldn't get anything for it, either. but i explained it to the king myself. i said it was done with a dynamite bomb, this information did him no damage, because it left him as intelligent as he was before. however, it was a noble miracle, in his eyes, and was another settler for merlin. i thought it well enough to explain that this was a miracle of so rare a sort that it couldn't be done except when the atmospheric conditions were just right. otherwise he would be encoring it every time we had a good subject, and that would be inconvenient, because i hadn't any more bombs along. chapter xxviii. drilling the king on the morning of the fourth day, when it was just sunrise, and we had been tramping an hour in the chill dawn, i came to a resolution: the king must be drilled; things could not go on so, he must be taken in hand and deliberately and conscientiously drilled, or we couldn't ever venture to enter a dwelling; the very cats would know this masquerader for a humbug and no peasant. so i called a halt and said: "sire, as between clothes and countenance, you are all right, there is no discrepancy; but as between your clothes and your bearing, you are all wrong, there is a most noticeable discrepancy. your soldierly stride, your lordly port -these will not do. you stand too straight, your looks are too high, too confident. the cares of a kingdom do not stoop the shoulders, they do not droop the chin, they do not depress the high level of the eye-glance, they do not put doubt and fear in the heart and hang out the signs of them in slouching body and unsure step. it is the sordid cares of the lowly born that do these things. you must learn the trick; you must imitate the trademarks of poverty, misery, oppression, insult, and the other several and common inhumanities that sap the manliness out of a man and make him a loyal and proper and approved subject and a satisfaction to his masters, or the very infants will know you for better than your disguise, and we shall go to pieces at the first hut we stop at. pray try to walk like this." the king took careful note, and then tried an imitation. "pretty fair -pretty fair. chin a little lower, please -there, very good. eyes too high; pray don't look at the horizon, look at the ground, ten steps in front of you. ah -that is better, that is very good. wait, please; you betray too much vigor, too much decision; you want more of a shamble. look at me, please -this is what i mean......now you are getting it; that is the idea -at least, it sort of approaches it......yes, that is pretty fair. but! there is a great big something wanting, i don't quite know what it is. please walk thirty yards, so that i can get a perspective on the thing......now, then -your head's right, speed's right, shoulders right, eyes right, chin right, gait, carriage, general style right -everything's right! and yet the fact remains, the aggregate's wrong. the account don't balance. do it again, please......now i think i begin to see what it is. yes, i've struck it. you see, the genuine spiritlessness is wanting; that's what's the trouble. it's all amatueur -mechanical details all right, almost to a hair; everything about the delusion perfect, except that it don't delude." "what, then, must one do, to prevail?" "let me think......i can't seem to quite get at it. in fact, there isn't anything that can right the matter but practice. this is a good place for it: roots and stony ground to break up your stately gait, a region not liable to interruption, only one field and one hut in sight, and they so far away that nobody could see us from there. it will be well to move a little off the road and put in the whole day drilling you, sire." after the drill had gone on a little while, i said: "now, sire, imagine that we are at the door of the hut yonder, and the family are before us. proceed, please -accost the head of the house." the king unconsciously straightened up like a monument, and said, with frozen austerity: "varlet, bring a seat; and serve to me what cheer ye have." "ah, your grace, that is not well done." "in what lacketh it?" "these people do not call each other varlets." "nay, is that true?" "yes; only those above them call them so." "then must i try again. i will call him villein." "no-no; for he may be a freeman." "ah -so. then peradventure i should call him goodman." "that would answer, your grace, but it would be still better if you said friend, or brother." "brother! -to dirt like that?" "ah, but we are pretending to be dirt like that, too." "it is even true. i will say it. brother, bring a seat, and thereto what cheer ye have, withal. now 'tis right." "not quite, not wholly right. you have asked for one, not us -for one, not both; food for one, a seat for one." the king looked puzzled -he wasn't a very heavy weight, intellectually. his head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once. "would you have a seat also -and sit?" "if i did not sit, the man would perceive that we were only pretending to be equals -and playing the deception pretty poorly, too." "it is well and truly said! how wonderful is truth, come it in whatsoever unexpected form it may! yes, he must bring out seats and food for both, and in serving us present not ewer and napkin with more show of respect to the one than to the other." "and there is even yet a detail that needs correcting. he must bring nothing outside; we will go in -in among the dirt, and possibly other repulsive things, -and take the food with the household, and after the fashion of the house, and all on equal terms, except the man be of the serf class; and finally, there will be no ewer and no napkin, whether he be serf or free. please walk again, my liege. there -it is better -it is the best yet; but not perfect. the shoulders have known no ignobler burden than iron mail, and they will not stoop." "give me, then, the bag. i will learn the spirit that goeth with burdens that have not honor. it is the spirit that stoopeth the shoulders, i ween, and not the weight; for armor is heavy, yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it......nay, but me no buts, offer me no objections. i will have the thing. strap it upon my back." he was complete now with that knapsack on, and looked as little like a king as any man i had ever seen. but it was an obstinate pair of shoulders; they could not seem to learn the trick of stooping with any sort of deceptive naturalness. the drill went on, i prompting and correcting: "now, make believe you are in debt, and eaten up by relentless creditors; you are out of work -which is horse-shoeing, let us say -and can get none; and your wife is sick, your children are crying because they are hungry --" and so on, and so on. i drilled him as representing in turn all sorts of people out of luck and suffering dire privations and misfortunes. but lord, it was only just words, words -they meant nothing in the world to him, i might just as well have whistled. words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to describe. there are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and complacently about "the working classes," and satisfy themselves that a day's hard intellectual work is very much harder than a day's hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much bigger pay. why, they really think that, you know, because they know all about the one, but haven't tried the other. but i know all about both; and so far as i am concerned, there isn't money enough in the universe to hire me to swing a pickaxe thirty days, but i will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as near nothing as you can cipher it down -and i will be satisfied, too. intellectual "work" is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. the poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the musician with the fiddle-bow in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him -why, certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it's a sarcasm just the same. the law of work does seem utterly unfair -but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, also. and it's also the very law of those transparent swindles, transmissible nobility and kingship. chapter xxix. the smallpox hut when we arrived at that hut at mid-afternoon, we saw no signs of life about it. the field near by had been denuded of its crop some time before, and had a skinned look, so exhaustively had it been harvested and gleaned. fences, sheds, everything had a ruined look, and were eloquent of poverty. no animal was around anywhere, no living thing in sight. the stillness was awful, it was like the stillness of death. the cabin was a one-story one, whose thatch was black with age, and ragged from lack of repair. the door stood a trifle ajar. we approached it stealthily -on tiptoe and at half-breath -for that is the way one's feeling makes him do, at such a time. the king knocked. we waited. no answer. knocked again. no answer. i pushed the door softly open and looked in. i made out some dim forms, and a woman started up from the ground and stared at me, as one does who is wakened from sleep. presently she found her voice: "have mercy!" she pleaded. "all is taken, nothing is left." "i have not come to take anything, poor woman." "you are not a priest?" "no." "nor come not from the lord of the manor?" "no, i am a stranger." "oh, then, for the fear of god, who visits with misery and death such as be harmless, tarry not here, but fly! this place is under his curse -and his church's." "let me come in and help you -you are sick and in trouble." i was better used to the dim light now. i could see her hollow eyes fixed upon me. i could see how emaciated she was. "i tell you the place is under the church's ban. save yourself -and go, before some straggler see thee here, and report it." "give yourself no trouble about me; i don't care anything for the church's curse. let me help you." "now all good spirits -if there be any such -bless thee for that word. would god i had a sup of water! -but hold, hold, forget i said it, and fly; for there is that here that even he that feareth not the church must fear: this disease whereof we die. leave us, thou brave, good stranger, and take with thee such whole and sincere blessing as them that be accursed can give." but before this i had picked up a wooden bowl and was rushing past the king on my way to the brook. it was ten yards away. when i got back and entered, the king was within, and was opening the shutter that closed the window-hole, to let in air and light. the place was full of a foul stench. i put the bowl to the woman's lips, and as she gripped it with her eager talons the shutter came open and a strong light flooded her face. smallpox! i sprang to the king, and said in his ear: "out of the door on the instant, sire! the woman is dying of that disease that wasted the skirts of camelot two years ago." he did not budge. "of a truth i shall remain -and likewise help." i whispered again: "king, it must not be. you must go." "ye mean well, and ye speak not unwisely. but it were shame that a king should know fear, and shame that belted knight should withhold his hand where be such as need succor. peace, i will not go. it is you who must go. the church's ban is not upon me, but it forbiddeth you to be here, and she will deal with you with a heavy hand an word come to her of your trespass." it was a desperate place for him to be in, and might cost him his life, but it was no use to argue with him. if he considered his knightly honor at stake here, that was the end of argument; he would stay, and nothing could prevent it; i was aware of that. and so i dropped the subject. the woman spoke: "fair sir, of your kindness will ye climb the ladder there, and bring me news of what ye find? be not afraid to report, for times can come when even a mother's heart is past breaking -being already broke." "abide," said the king, "and give the woman to eat. i will go." and he put down the knapsack. i turned to start, but the king had already started. he halted, and looked down upon a man who lay in a dim light, and had not noticed us thus far, or spoken. "is it your husband?" the king asked. "yes." "is he asleep?" "god be thanked for that one charity, yes -these three hours. where shall i pay to the full, my gratitude! for my heart is bursting with it for that sleep he sleepeth now." i said: "we will be careful. we will not wake him." "ah, no, that ye will not, for he is dead." "dead?" "yes, what triumph it is to know it! none can harm him, none insult him more. he is in heaven now, and happy; or if not there, he bides in hell and is content; for in that place he will find neither abbot nor yet bishop. we were boy and girl together; we were man and wife these five and twenty years, and never separated till this day. think how long that is to love and suffer together. this morning was he out of his mind, and in his fancy we were boy and girl again and wandering in the happy fields; and so in that innocent glad converse wandered he far and farther, still lightly gossiping, and entered into those other fields we know not of, and was shut away from mortal sight. and so there was no parting, for in his fancy i went with him; he knew not but i went with him, my hand in his -my young soft hand, not this withered claw. ah, yes, to go, and know it not; to separate and know it not; how could one go peace -fuller than that? it was his reward for a cruel life patiently borne." there was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where the ladder was. it was the king descending. i could see that he was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the other. he came forward into the light; upon his breast lay a slender girl of fifteen. she was but half conscious; she was dying of smallpox. here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility, its utmost summit; this was challenging death in the open field unarmed, with all the odds against the challenger, no reward set upon the contest, and no admiring world in silks and cloth of gold to gaze and applaud; and yet the king's bearing was as serenely brave as it had always been in those cheaper contests where knight meets knight in equal fight and clothed in protecting steel. he was great now; sublimely great. the rude statues of his ancestors in his palace should have an addition -i would see to that; and it would not be a mailed king killing a giant or a dragon, like the rest, it would be a king in commoner's garb bearing death in his arms that a peasant mother might look her last upon her child and be comforted. he laid the girl down by her mother, who poured out endearments and caresses from an overflowing heart, and one could detect a flickering faint light of response in the child's eyes, but that was all. the mother hung over her, kissing her, petting her, and imploring her to speak, but the lips only moved and no sound came. i snatched my liquor flask from my knapsack, but the woman forbade me, and said: "no -she does not suffer; it is better so. it might bring her back to life. none that be so good and kind as ye are would do her that cruel hurt. for look you -what is left to live for? her brothers are gone, her father is gone, her mother goeth, the church's curse is upon her, and none may shelter or befriend her even though she lay perishing in the road. she is desolate. i have not asked you, good heart, if her sister be still on live, here overhead; i had no need; ye had gone back, else, and not left the poor thing forsaken --" "she lieth at peace," interrupted the king, in a subdued voice. "i would not change it. how rich is this day in happiness! ah, my annis, thou shalt join thy sister soon -thou'rt on thy way, and these be merciful friends that will not hinder." and so she fell to murmuring and cooing over the girl again, and softly stroking her face and hair, and kissing her and calling her by endearing names; but there was scarcely sign of response now in the glazing eyes. i saw tears well from the king's eyes, and trickle down his face. the woman noticed them, too, and said: "ah, i know that sign: thou'st a wife at home, poor soul, and you and she have gone hungry to bed, many's the time, that the little ones might have your crust; you know what poverty is, and the daily insults of your betters, and the heavy hand of the church and the king." the king winced under this accidental home-shot, but kept still; he was learning his part; and he was playing it well, too, for a pretty dull beginner. i struck up a diversion. i offered the woman food and liquor, but she refused both. she would allow nothing to come between her and the release of death. then i slipped away and brought the dead child from aloft, and laid it by her. this broke her down again, and there was another scene that was full of heartbreak. by and by i made another diversion, and beguiled her to sketch her story. "ye know it well yourselves, having suffered it -for truly none of our condition in britain escape it. it is the old, weary tale. we fought and struggled and succeeded; meaning by success, that we lived and did not die; more than that is not to be claimed. no troubles came that we could not outlive, till this year brought them; then came they all at once, as one might say, and overwhelmed us. years ago the lord of the manor planted certain fruit trees on our farm; in the best part of it, too -a grievous wrong and shame --" "but it was his right," interrupted the king. "none denieth that, indeed; an the law mean anything, what is the lord's is his, and what is mine is his also. our farm was ours by lease, therefore 'twas likewise his, to do with it as he would. some little time ago, three of those trees were found hewn down. our three grown sons ran frightened to report the crime. well, in his lordship's dungeon there they lie, who saith there shall they lie and rot till they confess. they have naught to confess, being innocent, wherefore there will they remain until they die. ye know that right well, i ween. think how this left us; a man, a woman and two children, to gather a crop that was planted by so much greater force, yes, and protect it night and day from pigeons and prowling animals that be sacred and must not be hurt by any of our sort. when my lord's crop was nearly ready for the harvest, so also was ours; when his bell rang to call us to his fields to harvest his crop for nothing, he would not allow that i and my two girls should count for our three captive sons, but for only two of them; so, for the lacking one were we daily fined. all this time our own crop was perishing through neglect; and so both the priest and his lordship fined us because their shares of it were suffering through damage. in the end the fines ate up our crop -and they took it all; they took it all and made us harvest it for them, without pay or food, and we starving. then the worst came when i, being out of my mind with hunger and loss of my boys, and grief to see my husband and my little maids in rags and misery and despair, uttered a deep blasphemy -oh! a thousand of them! -against the church and the church's ways. it was ten days ago. i had fallen sick with this disease, and it was to the priest i said the words, for he was come to chide me for lack of due humility under the chastening hand of god. he carried my trespass to his betters; i was stubborn; wherefore, presently upon my head and upon all heads that were dear to me, fell the curse of rome. "since that day we are avoided, shunned with horror. none has come near this hut to know whether we live or not. the rest of us were taken down. then i roused me and got up, as wife and mother will. it was little they could have eaten in any case; it was less than little they had to eat. but there was water, and i gave them that. how they craved it! and how they blessed it! but the end came yesterday; my strength broke down. yesterday was the last time i ever saw my husband and this youngest child alive. i have lain here all these hours -these ages, ye may say -listening, listening for any sound up there that --" she gave a sharp quick glance at her eldest daughter, then cried out, "oh, my darling!" and feebly gathered the stiffening form to her sheltering arms. she had recognized the death-rattle. chapter xxx. the tragedy of the manor-house at midnight all was over, and we sat in the presence of four corpses. we covered them with such rags as we could find, and started away, fastening the door behind us. their home must be these people's grave, for they could not have christian burial, or be admitted to consecrated ground. they were as dogs, wild beasts, lepers, and no soul that valued its hope of eternal life would throw it away by meddling in any sort with these rebuked and smitten outcasts. we had not moved four steps when i caught a sound as of footsteps upon gravel. my heart flew to my throat. we must not be seen coming from that house. i plucked at the king's robe and we drew back and took shelter behind the corner of the cabin. "now we are safe," i said, "but it was a close call -so to speak. if the night had been lighter he might have seen us, no doubt, he seemed to be so near." "mayhap it is but a beast and not a man at all." "true. but man or beast, it will be wise to stay here a minute and let it get by and out of the way." "hark! it cometh hither." true again. the step was coming toward us -straight toward the hut. it must be a beast, then, and we might as well have saved our trepidation. i was going to step out, but the king laid his hand upon my arm. there was a moment of silence, then we heard a soft knock on the cabin door. it made me shiver. presently the knock was repeated, and then we heard these words in a guarded voice: "mother! father! open -we have got free, and we bring news to pale your cheeks but glad your hearts; and we may not tarry, but must fly! and -but they answer not. mother! father! --" i drew the king toward the other end of the hut and whispered: "come -now we can get to the road." the king hesitated, was going to demur; but just then we heard the door give way, and knew that those desolate men were in the presence of their dead. "come, my liege! in a moment they will strike a light, and then will follow that which it would break your heart to hear." he did not hesitate this time. the moment we were in the road i ran; and after a moment he threw dignity aside and followed. i did not want to think of what was happening in the hut -i couldn't bear it; i wanted to drive it out of my mind; so i struck into the first subject that lay under that one in my mind: "i have had the disease those people died of, and so have nothing to fear; but if you have not had it also --" he broke in upon me to say he was in trouble, and it was his conscience that was troubling him: "these young men have got free, they say -but how? it is not likely that their lord hath set them free." "oh, no, i make no doubt they escaped." "that is my trouble; i have a fear that this is so, and your suspicion doth confirm it, you having the same fear. "i should not call it by that name though. i do suspect that they escaped, but if they did, i am not sorry, certainly." "i am not sorry, i think -but --" "what is it? what is there for one to be troubled about?" "if they did escape, then are we bound in duty to lay hands upon them and deliver them again to their lord; for it is not seemly that one of his quality should suffer a so insolent and high-handed outrage from persons of their base degree." there it was again. he could see only one side of it. he was born so, educated so, his veins were full of ancestral blood that was rotten with this sort of unconscious brutality, brought down by inheritance from a long procession of hearts that had each done its share toward poisoning the stream. to imprison these men without proof, and starve their kindred, was no harm, for they were merely peasants and subject to the will and pleasure of their lord, no matter what fearful form it might take; but for these men to break out of unjust captivity was insult and outrage, and a thing not to be countenanced by any conscientious person who knew his duty to his sacred caste. i worked more than half an hour before i got him to change the subject -and even then an outside matter did it for me. this was a something which caught our eyes as we struck the summit of a small hill -a red glow, a good way off. "that's a fire," said i. fires interested me considerably, because i was getting a good deal of an insurance business started, and was also training some horses and building some steam fire-engines, with an eye to a paid fire department by and by. the priests opposed both my fire and life insurance, on the ground that it was an insolent attempt to hinder the decrees of god; and if you pointed out that they did not hinder the decrees in the least, but only modified the hard consequences of them if you took out policies and had luck, they retorted that that was gambling against the decrees of god, and was just as bad. so they managed to damage those industries more or less, but i got even on my accident business. as a rule, a knight is a lummox, and some times even a labrick, and hence open to pretty poor arguments when they come glibly from a superstition-monger, but even he could see the practical side of a thing once in a while; and so of late you couldn't clean up a tournament and pile the result without finding one of my accident-tickets in every helmet. we stood there awhile, in the thick darkness and stillness, looking toward the red blur in the distance, and trying to make out the meaning of a far-away murmur that rose and fell fitfully on the night. sometimes it swelled up and for a moment seemed less remote; but when we were hopefully expecting it to betray its cause and nature, it dulled and sank again, carrying its mystery with it. we started down the hill in its direction, and the winding road plunged us at once into almost solid darkness -darkness that was packed and crammed in between two tall forest walls. we groped along down for half a mile, perhaps, that murmur growing more and more distinct all the time. the coming storm threatening more and more, with now and then a little shiver of wind, a faint show of lightning, and dull grumblings of distant thunder. i was in the lead. i ran against something -a soft heavy something which gave, slightly, to the impulse of my weight; at the same moment the lightning glared out, and within a foot of my face was the writhing face of a man who was hanging from the limb of a tree! that is, it seemed to be writhing, but it was not. it was a grewsome sight. straightway there was an earsplitting explosion of thunder, and the bottom of heaven fell out; the rain poured down in a deluge. no matter, we must try to cut this man down, on the chance that there might be life in him yet, mustn't we? the lightning came quick and sharp now, and the place was alternately noonday and midnight. one moment the man would be hanging before me in an intense light, and the next he was blotted out again in the darkness. i told the king we must cut him down. the king at once objected. "if he hanged himself, he was willing to lose him property to his lord; so let him be. if others hanged him, belike they had the right -let him hang." "but --" "but me no buts, but even leave him as he is. and for yet another reason. when the lightning cometh again -there, look abroad." two others hanging, within fifty yards of us! "it is not weather meet for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk. they are past thanking you. come -it is unprofitable to tarry here." there was reason in what he said, so we moved on. within the next mile we counted six more hanging forms by the blaze of the lightning, and altogether it was a grisly excursion. that murmur was a murmur no longer, it was a roar; a roar of men's voices. a man came flying by now, dimly through the darkness, and other men chasing him. they disappeared. presently another case of the kind occurred, and then another and another. then a sudden turn of the road brought us in sight of that fire -it was a large manorhouse, and little or nothing was left of it -and everywhere men were flying and other men raging after them in pursuit. i warned the king that this was not a safe place for strangers. we would better get away from the light, until matters should improve. we stepped back a little, and hid in the edge of the wood. from this hiding-place we saw both men and women hunted by the mob. the fearful work went on until nearly dawn. then, the fire being out and the storm spent, the voices and flying footsteps presently ceased, and darkness and stillness reigned again. we ventured out, and hurried cautiously away; and although we were worn out and sleepy, we kept on until we had put this place some miles behind us. then we asked hospitality at the hut of a charcoal burner, and got what was to be had. a woman was up and about, but the man was still asleep, on a straw shake-down, on the clay floor. the woman seemed uneasy until i explained that we were travelers and had lost our way and been wandering in the woods all night. she became talkative, then, and asked if we had heard of the terrible goings-on at the manor-house of abblasoure. yes, we had heard of them, but what we wanted now was rest and sleep. the king broke in: "sell us the house and take yourselves away, for we be perilous company, being late come from people that died of the spotted death." it was good of him, but unnecessary. one of the commonest decorations of the nation was the waffleiron face. i had early noticed that the woman and her husband were both so decorated. she made us entirely welcome, and had no fears; and plainly she was immensely impressed by the king's proposition; for, of course, it was a good deal of an event in her life to run across a person of the king's humble appearance who was ready to buy a man's house for the sake of a night's lodging. it gave her a large respect for us, and she strained the lean possibilities of her hovel to the utmost to make us comfortable. we slept till far into the afternoon, and then got up hungry enough to make cotter fare quite palatable to the king, the more particularly as it was scant in quantity. and also in variety; it consisted solely of onions, salt, and the national black breadñmade out of horsefeed. the woman told us about the affair of the evening before. at ten or eleven at night, when everybody was in bed, the manor-house burst into flames. the country-side swarmed to the rescue, and the family were saved, with one exception, the master. he did not appear. everybody was frantic over this loss, and two brave yeomen sacrificed their lives in ransacking the burning house seeking that valuable personage. but after a while he was found -what was left of him -which was his corpse. it was in a copse three hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in a dozen places. who had done this? suspicion fell upon a humble family in the neighborhood who had been lately treated with peculiar harshness by the baron; and from these people the suspicion easily extended itself to their relatives and familiars. a suspicion was enough; my lord's liveried retainers proclaimed an instant crusade against these people, and were promptly joined by the community in general. the woman's husband had been active with the mob, and had not returned home until nearly dawn. he was gone now to find out what the general result had been. while we were still talking he came back from his quest. his report was revolting enough. eighteen persons hanged or butchered, and two yeomen and thirteen prisoners lost in the fire. "and how many prisoners were there altogether in the vaults?" "thirteen." "then every one of them was lost?" "yes, all." "but the people arrived in time to save the family; how is it they could save none of the prisoners?" the man looked puzzled, and said: "would one unlock the vaults at such a time? marry, some would have escaped." "then you mean that nobody did unlock them?" "none went near them, either to lock or unlock. it standeth to reason that the bolts were fast; wherefore it was only needful to establish a watch, so that if any broke the bonds he might not escape, but be taken. none were taken." "natheless, three did escape," said the king, "and ye will do well to publish it and set justice upon their track, for these murthered the baron and fired the house." i was just expecting he would come out with that. for a moment the man and his wife showed an eager interest in this news and an impatience to go out and spread it; then a sudden something else betrayed itself in their faces, and they began to ask questions. i answered the questions myself, and narrowly watched the effects produced. i was soon satisfied that the knowledge of who these three prisoners were had somehow changed the atmosphere; that our hosts' continued eagerness to go and spread the news was now only pretended and not real. the king did not notice the change, and i was glad of that. i worked the conversation around toward other details of the night's proceedings, and noted that these people were relieved to have it take that direction. the painful thing observable about all this business was the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor. this man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole caste to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. this man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it. this was depressing -to a man with the dream of a republic in his head. it reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the "poor whites" of our south who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them. and there was only one redeeming feature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that was, that secretly the "poor white" did detest the slave-lord, and did feel his own shame. that feeling was not brought to the surface, but the fact that it was there and could have been brought out, under favoring circumstances, was something -in fact, it was enough; for it showed that a man is at bottom a man, after all, even if it doesn't show on the outside. well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin of the southern "poor white" of the far future. the king presently showed impatience, and said: "an ye prattle here all the day, justice will miscarry. think ye the criminals will abide in their father's house? they are fleeing, they are not waiting. you should look to it that a party of horse be set upon their track." the woman paled slightly, but quite perceptibly, and the man looked flustered and irresolute. i said: "come, friend, i will walk a little way with you, and explain which direction i think they would try to take. if they were merely resisters of the gabelle or some kindred absurdity i would try to protect them from capture; but when men murder a person of high degree and likewise burn his house, that is another matter." the last remark was for the king -to quiet him. on the road the man pulled his resolution together, and began the march with a steady gait, but there was no eagerness in it. by and by i said: "what relation were these men to you -cousins?" he turned as white as his layer of charcoal would let him, and stopped, trembling. "ah, my god, how know ye that?" "i didn't know it; it was a chance guess." "poor lads, they are lost. and good lads they were, too." "were you actually going yonder to tell on them?" he didn't quite know how to take that; but he said, hesitatingly: "ye-s." "then i think you are a damned scoundrel!" it made him as glad as if i had called him an angel. "say the good words again, brother! for surely ye mean that ye would not betray me an i failed of my duty." "duty? there is no duty in the matter, except the duty to keep still and let those men get away. they've done a righteous deed." he looked pleased; pleased, and touched with apprehension at the same time. he looked up and down the road to see that no one was coming, and then said in a cautious voice: "from what land come you, brother, that you speak such perilous words, and seem not to be afraid?" "they are not perilous words when spoken to one of my own caste, i take it. you would not tell anybody i said them?" "i? i would be drawn asunder by wild horses first." "well, then, let me say my say. i have no fears of your repeating it. i think devil's work has been done last night upon those innocent poor people. that old baron got only what he deserved. if i had my way. all his kind should have the same luck." fear and depression vanished from the man's manner, and gratefulness and a brave animation took their place: "even though you be a spy, and your words a trap for my undoing, yet are they such refreshment that to hear them again and others like to them, i would go to the gallows happy, as having had one good feast at least in a starved life. and i will say my say now, and ye may report it if ye be so minded. i helped to hang my neighbors for that it were peril to my own life to show lack of zeal in the master's cause; the others helped for none other reason. all rejoice today that he is dead, but all do go about seemingly sorrowing, and shedding the hypocrite's tear, for in that lies safety. i have said the words, i have said the words! the only ones that have ever tasted good in my mouth, and the reward of that taste is sufficient. lead on, an ye will, be it even to the scaffold, for i am ready." there it was, you see. a man is a man, at bottom. whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken. yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that ever existed -even the russians; plenty of manhood in them -even in the germans -if one could but force it out of its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever supported it. we should see certain things yet, let us hope and believe. first, a modified monarchy, till arthur's days were done, then the destruction of the throne, nobility abolished, every member of it bound out to some useful trade, universal suffrage instituted, and the whole government placed in the hands of the men and women of the nation there to remain. yes, there was no occasion to give up my dream yet a while. chapter xxxi. marco we strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion now, and talked. we must dispose of about the amount of time it ought to take to go to the little hamlet of abblasoure and put justice on the track of those murderers and get back home again. and meantime i had an auxiliary interest which had never paled yet, never lost its novelty for me since i had been in arthur's kingdom: the behavior -born of nice and exact subdivisions of caste -of chance passers-by toward each other. toward the shaven monk who trudged along with his cowl tilted back and the sweat washing down his fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply reverent; to the gentleman he was abject; with the small farmer and the free mechanic he was cordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed by with a countenance respectfully lowered, this chap's nose was in the air -he couldn't even see him. well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce. presently we struck an incident. a small mob of half-naked boys and girls came tearing out of the woods, scared and shrieking. the eldest among them were not more than twelve or fourteen years old. they implored help, but they were so beside themselves that we couldn't make out what the matter was. however, we plunged into the wood, they skurrying in the lead, and the trouble was quickly revealed: they had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope, and he was kicking and struggling, in the process of choking to death. we rescued him, and fetched him around. it was some more human nature; the admiring little folk imitating their elders; they were playing mob, and had achieved a success which promised to be a good deal more serious than they had bargained for. it was not a dull excursion for me. i managed to put in the time very well. i made various acquaintanceships, and in my quality of stranger was able to ask as many questions as i wanted to. a thing which naturally interested me, as a statesman, was the matter of wages. i picked up what i could under that head during the afternoon. a man who hasn't had much experience, and doesn't think, is apt to measure a nation's prosperity or lack of prosperity by the mere size of the prevailing wages; if the wages be high, the nation is prosperous; if low, it isn't. which is an error. it isn't what sum you get, it's how much you can buy with it, that's the important thing; and it's that that tells whether your wages are high in fact or only high in name. i could remember how it was in the time of our great civil war in the nineteenth century. in the north a carpenter got three dollars a day, gold valuation; in the south he got fifty -payable in confederate shinplasters worth a dollar a bushel. in the north a suit of overalls cost three dollars -a day's wages; in the south it cost seventyfive -which was two days' wages. other things were in proportion. consequently, wages were twice as high in the north as they were in the south, because the one wage had that much more purchasing power than the other had. yes, i made various acquaintances in the hamlet and a thing that gratified me a good deal was to find our new coins in circulation -lots of milrays, lots of mills, lots of cents, a good many nickels, and some silver; all this among the artisans and commonalty generally; yes, and even some gold -but that was at the bank, that is to say, the goldsmith's. i dropped in there while marco, the son of marco, was haggling with a shopkeeper over a quarter of a pound of salt, and asked for change for a twenty-dollar gold piece. they furnished it -that is, after they had chewed the piece, and rung it on the counter, and tried acid on it, and asked me where i got it, and who i was, and where i was from, and where i was going to, and when i expected to get there, and perhaps a couple of hundred more questions; and when they got aground, i went right on and furnished them a lot of information voluntarily; told them i owned a dog, and his name was watch, and my first wife was a free will baptist, and her grandfather was a prohibitionist, and i used to know a man who had two thumbs on each hand and a wart on the inside of his upper lip, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection, and so on, and so on, and so on, till even that hungry village questioner began to look satisfied, and also a shade put out; but he had to respect a man of my financial strength, and so he didn't give me any lip, but i noticed he took it out of his underlings, which was a perfectly natural thing to do. yes, they changed my twenty, but i judged it strained the bank a little, which was a thing to be expected, for it was the same as walking into a paltry village store in the nineteenth century and requiring the boss of it to change a two thousand-dollar bill for you all of a sudden. he could do it, maybe; but at the same time he would wonder how a small farmer happened to be carrying so much money around in his pocket; which was probably this goldsmith's thought, too; for he followed me to the door and stood there gazing after me with reverent admiration. our new money was not only handsomely circulating, but its language was already glibly in use; that is to say, people had dropped the names of the former moneys, and spoke of things as being worth so many dollars or cents or mills or milrays now. it was very gratifying. we were progressing, that was sure. i got to know several master mechanics, but about the most interesting fellow among them was the blacksmith, dowley. he was a live man and a brisk talker, and had two journeymen and three apprentices, and was doing a raging business. in fact, he was getting rich, hand over fist, and was vastly respected. marco was very proud of having such a man for a friend. he had taken me there ostensibly to let me see the big establishment which bought so much of his charcoal, but really to let me see what easy and almost familiar terms he was on with this great man. dowley and i fraternized at once; i had had just such picked men, splendid fellows, under me in the colt arms factory. i was bound to see more of him, so i invited him to come out to marco's sunday, and dine with us. marco was appalled, and held his breath; and when the grandee accepted, he was so grateful that he almost forgot to be astonished at the condescension. marco's joy was exuberant -but only for a moment; then he grew thoughtful, then sad; and when he heard me tell dowley i should have dickon, the boss mason, and smug, the boss wheelwright, out there, too, the coal-dust on his face turned to chalk, and he lost his grip. but i knew what was the matter with him; it was the expense. he saw ruin before him; he judged that his financial days were numbered. however, on our way to invite the others, i said: "you must allow me to have these friends come; and you must also allow me to pay the costs." his face cleared, and he said with spirit: "but not all of it, not all of it. ye cannot well bear a burden like to this alone." i stopped him, and said: "now let's understand each other on the spot, old friend. i am only a farm bailiff, it is true; but i am not poor, nevertheless. i have been very fortunate this year -you would be astonished to know how i have thriven. i tell you the honest truth when i say i could squander away as many as a dozen feasts like this and never care that for the expense!" and i snapped my fingers. i could see myself rise a foot at a time in marco's estimation, and when i fetched out those last words i was become a very tower for style and altitude. "so you see, you must let me have my way. you can't contribute a cent to this orgy, that's settled." "it's grand and good of you --" "no, it isn't. you've opened your house to jones and me in the most generous way; jones was remarking upon it to-day, just before you came back from the village; for although he wouldn't be likely to say such a thing to you -because jones isn't a talker, and is diffident in society -he has a good heart and a grateful, and knows how to appreciate it when he is well treated; yes, you and your wife have been very hospitable toward us --" "ah, brother, 'tis nothing -such hospitality!" "but it is something; the best a man has, freely given, is always something, and is as good as a prince can do, and ranks right along beside it -for even a prince can but do his best. and so we'll shop around and get up this layout now, and don't you worry about the expense. i'm one of the worst spendthrifts that ever was born. why, do you know, sometimes in a single week i spend -but never mind about that -you'd never believe it anyway." and so we went gadding along, dropping in here and there, pricing things, and gossiping with the shopkeepers about the riot, and now and then running across pathetic reminders of it, in the persons of shunned and tearful and houseless remnants of families whose homes had been taken from them and their parents butchered or hanged. the raiment of marco and his wife was of coarse tow-linen and linsey-woolsey respectively, and resembled township maps, it being made up pretty exclusively of patches which had been added, township by township, in the course of five or six years, until hardly a hand's-breadth of the original garments was surviving and present. now i wanted to fit these people out with new suits, on account of that swell company, and i didn't know just how to get at it -with delicacy, until at last it struck me that as i had already been liberal in inventing wordy gratitude for the king, it would be just the thing to back it up with evidence of a substantial sort; so i said: "and marco, there's another thing which you must permit -out of kindness for jones -because you wouldn't want to offend him. he was very anxious to testify his appreciation in some way, but he is so diffident he couldn't venture it himself, and so he begged me to buy some little things and give them to you and dame phyllis and let him pay for them without your ever knowing they came from him -you know how a delicate person feels about that sort of thing -and so i said i would, and we would keep mum. well, his idea was, a new outfit of clothes for you both --" "oh, it is wastefulness! it may not be, brother, it may not be. consider the vastness of the sum --" "hang the vastness of the sum! try to keep quiet for a moment, and see how it would seem; a body can't get in a word edgeways, you talk so much. you ought to cure that, marco; it isn't good form, you know, and it will grow on you if you don't check it. yes, we'll step in here now and price this man's stuff -and don't forget to remember to not let on to jones that you know he had anything to do with it. you can't think how curiously sensitive and proud he is. he's a farmer -pretty fairly well-to-do farmer -an i'm his bailiff; but -the imagination of that man! why, sometimes when he forgets himself and gets to blowing off, you'd think he was one of the swells of the earth; and you might listen to him a hundred years and never take him for a farmer -especially if he talked agriculture. he thinks he's a sheol of a farmer; thinks he's old grayback from wayback; but between you and me privately he don't know as much about farming as he does about running a kingdom -still, whatever he talks about, you want to drop your underjaw and listen, the same as if you had never heard such incredible wisdom in all your life before, and were afraid you might die before you got enough of it. that will please jones." it tickled marco to the marrow to hear about such an odd character; but it also prepared him for accidents; and in my experience when you travel with a king who is letting on to be something else and can't remember it more than about half the time, you can't take too many precautions. this was the best store we had come across yet; it had everything in it, in small quantities, from anvils and drygoods all the way down to fish and pinchbeck jewelry. i concluded i would bunch my whole invoice right here, and not go pricing around any more. so i got rid of marco, by sending him off to invite the mason and the wheelwright, which left the field free to me. for i never care to do a thing in a quiet way; it's got to be theatrical or i don't take any interest in it. i showed up money enough, in a careless way, to corral the shopkeeper's respect, and then i wrote down a list of the things i wanted, and handed it to him to see if he could read it. he could, and was proud to show that he could. he said he had been educated by a priest, and could both read and write. he ran it through, and remarked with satisfaction that it was a pretty heavy bill. well, and so it was, for a little concern like that. i was not only providing a swell dinner, but some odds and ends of extras. i ordered that the things be carted out and delivered at the dwelling of marco, the son of marco, by saturday evening, and send me the bill at dinner-time sunday. he said i could depend upon his promptness and exactitude, it was the rule of the house. he also observed that he would throw in a couple of miller-guns for the marcos gratis -that everybody was using them now. he had a mighty opinion of that clever device. i said: "and please fill them up to the middle mark, too; and add that to the bill." he would, with pleasure. he filled them, and i took them with me. i couldn't venture to tell him that the miller-gun was a little invention of my own, and that i had officially ordered that every shopkeeper in the kingdom keep them on hand and sell them at government price -which was the merest trifle, and the shopkeeper got that, not the government. we furnished them for nothing. the king had hardly missed us when we got back at nightfall. he had early dropped again into his dream of a grand invasion of gaul with the whole strength of his kingdom at his back, and the afternoon had slipped away without his ever coming to himself again. chapter xxxii. dowley's humiliation well, when that cargo arrived toward sunset, saturday afternoon, i had my hands full to keep the marcos from fainting. they were sure jones and i were ruined past help, and they blamed themselves as accessories to this bankruptcy. you see, in addition to the dinner-materials, which called for a sufficiently round sum, i had bought a lot of extras for the future comfort of the family: for instance, a big lot of wheat, a delicacy as rare to the tables of their class as was ice-cream to a hermit's; also a sizeable deal dinner-table; also two entire pounds of salt, which was another piece of extravagance in those people's eyes; also crockery, stools, the clothes, a small cask of beer, and so on. i instructed the marcos to keep quiet about this sumptuousness, so as to give me a chance to surprise the guests and show off a little. concerning the new clothes, the simple couple were like children; they were up and down, all night, to see if it wasn't nearly daylight, so that they could put them on, and they were into them at last as much as an hour before dawn was due. then their pleasure -not to say delirium -was so fresh and novel and inspiring that the sight of it paid me well for the interruptions which my sleep had suffered. the king had slept just as usual -like the dead. the marcos could not thank him for their clothes, that being forbidden; but they tried every way they could think of to make him see how grateful they were. which all went for nothing: he didn't notice any change. it turned out to be one of those rich and rare fall days which is just a june day toned down to a degree where it is heaven to be out of doors. toward noon the guests arrived, and we assembled under a great tree and were soon as sociable as old acquaintances. even the king's reserve melted a little, though it was some little trouble to him to adjust himself to the name of jones along at first. i had asked him to try to not forget that he was a farmer; but i had also considered it prudent to ask him to let the thing stand at that, and not elaborate it any. because he was just the kind of person you could depend on to spoil a little thing like that if you didn't warn him, his tongue was so handy, and his spirit so willing, and his information so uncertain. dowley was in fine feather, and i early got him started, and then adroitly worked him around onto his own history for a text and himself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear him hum. self-made man, you know. they know how to talk. they do deserve more credit than any other breed of men, yes, that is true; and they are among the very first to find it out, too. he told how he had begun life an orphan lad without money and without friends able to help him; how he had lived as the slaves of the meanest master lived; how his day's work was from sixteen to eighteen hours long, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him in a half-fed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attracted the attention of a good blacksmith, who came near knocking him dead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totally unprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine years and give him board and clothes and teach him the trade -or "mystery" as dowley called it. that was his first great rise, his first gorgeous stroke of fortune; and you saw that he couldn't yet speak of it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such a gilded promotion should have fallen to the lot of a common human being. he got no new clothing during his apprenticeship, but on his graduation day his master tricked him out in spang-new tow-linens and made him feel unspeakably rich and fine. "i remember me of that day!" the wheelwright sang out, with enthusiasm. "and i likewise!" cried the mason. "i would not believe they were thine own; in faith i could not." "nor other!" shouted dowley, with sparkling eyes. "i was like to lose my character, the neighbors wending i had mayhap been stealing. it was a great day, a great day; one forgetteth not days like that." yes, and his master was a fine man, and prosperous, and always had a great feast of meat twice in the year, and with it white bread, true wheaten bread; in fact, lived like a lord, so to speak. and in time dowley succeeded to the business and married the daughter. "and now consider what is come to pass," said he, impressively. "two times in every month there is fresh meat upon my table." he made a pause here, to let that fact sink home, then added -"and eight times salt meat." "it is even true," said the wheelwright, with bated breath. "i know it of mine own knowledge," said the mason, in the same reverent fashion. "on my table appeareth white bread every sunday in the year," added the master smith, with solemnity. "i leave it to your own consciences, friends, if this is not also true?" "by my head, yes," cried the mason. "i can testify it -and i do," said the wheelwright. "and as to furniture, ye shall say yourselves what mine equipment is. " he waved his hand in fine gesture of granting frank and unhampered freedom of speech, and added: "speak as ye are moved; speak as ye would speak; an i were not here." "ye have five stools, and of the sweetest workmanship at that, albeit your family is but three," said the wheelwright, with deep respect. "and six wooden goblets, and six platters of wood and two of pewter to cat and drink from withal," said the mason, impressively. "and i say it as knowing god is my judge, and we tarry not here alway, but must answer at the last day for the things said in the body, be they false or be they sooth." "now ye know what manner of man i am, brother jones," said the smith, with a fine and friendly condescension, "and doubtless ye would look to find me a man jealous of his due of respect and but sparing of outgo to strangers till their rating and quality be assured, but trouble yourself not, as concerning that; wit ye well ye shall find me a man that regardeth not these matters but is willing to receive any he as his fellow and equal that carrieth a right heart in his body, be his worldly estate howsoever modest. and in token of it, here is my hand; and i say with my own mouth we are equals -equals "-and he smiled around on the company with the satisfaction of a god who is doing the handsome and gracious thing and is quite well aware of it. the king took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, and let go of it as willingly as a lady lets go of a fish; all of which had a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment natural to one who was being called upon by greatness. the dame brought out the table now, and set it under the tree. it caused a visible stir of surprise, it being brand new and a sumptuous article of deal. but the surprise rose higher still when the dame, with a body oozing easy indifference at every pore, but eyes that gave it all away by absolutely flaming with vanity, slowly unfolded an actual simon-pure tablecloth and spread it. that was a notch above even the blacksmith's domestic grandeurs, and it hit him hard; you could see it. but marco was in paradise; you could see that, too. then the dame brought two fine new stools -whew! that was a sensation; it was visible in the eyes of every guest. then she brought two more -as calmly as she could. sensation again -with awed murmurs. again she brought two -walking on air, she was so proud. the guests were petrified, and the mason muttered: "there is that about earthly pomps which doth ever move to reverence." as the dame turned away, marco couldn't help slapping on the climax while the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for a languid composure but was a poor imitation of it: "these suffice; leave the rest." so there were more yet! it was a fine effect. i couldn't have played the hand better myself. from this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush that fired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in the shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to gasped "oh's" and "ah's," and mute upliftings of hands and eyes. she fetched crockery -new, and plenty of it; new wooden goblets and other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealth of genuine white wheaten bread. take it by and large, that spread laid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd had seen before. and while they sat there just simply stupefied with wonder and awe, i sort of waved my hand as if by accident, and the storekeeper's son emerged from space and said he had come to collect. "that's all right," i said, indifferently. "what is the amount? give us the items." then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened, and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternate waves of terror and admiration surged over marco's: 2 pounds salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 8 dozen pints beer, in the wood . . . . . 800 3 bushels wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,700 2 pounds fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 3 hens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 1 goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 3 dozen eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 1 roast of beef . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 1 roast of mutton . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 1 ham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 1 sucking pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 2 crockery dinner sets . . . . . . . . . 6,000 2 men's suits and underwear . . . . . . . 2,800 1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown and underwear . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600 8 wooden goblets . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 various table furniture . . . . . . . . .10,000 1 deal table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 8 stools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000 2 miller guns, loaded . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 he ceased. there was a pale and awful silence. not a limb stirred. not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath. "is that all?" i asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness. "all, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment are placed together under a head hight sundries. if it would like you, i will sepa --" "it is of no consequence," i said, accompanying the words with a gesture of the most utter indifference; "give me the grand total, please." the clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself, and said: "thirty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty milrays!" the wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the table to save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of: "god be with us in the day of disaster!" the clerk hastened to say: "my father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require you to pay it all at this time, and therefore only prayeth you --" i paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze, but, with an air of indifference amounting almost to weariness, got out my money and tossed four dollars on to the table. ah, you should have seen them stare! the clerk was astonished and charmed. he asked me to retain one of the dollars as security, until he could go to town and -i interrupted: "what, and fetch back nine cents? nonsense! take the whole. keep the change." there was an amazed murmur to this effect: "verily this being is made of money! he throweth it away even as if it were dirt." the blacksmith was a crushed man. the clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune. i said to marco and his wife: "good folk, here is a little trifle for you" -handing the miller-guns as if it were a matter of no consequence, though each of them contained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatures went to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, i turned to the others and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day: "well, if we are all ready, i judge the dinner is. come, fall to." ah, well, it was immense; yes, it was a daisy. i don't know that i ever put a situation together better, or got happier spectacular effects out of the materials available. the blacksmith -well, he was simply mashed. land! i wouldn't have felt what that man was feeling, for anything in the world. here he had been blowing and bragging about his grand meat-feast twice a year, and his fresh meat twice a month, and his salt meat twice a week, and his white bread every sunday the year round -all for a family of three; the entire cost for the year not above 69.2.6 (sixty-nine cents, two mills and six milrays), and all of a sudden here comes along a man who slashes out nearly four dollars on a single blow-out; and not only that, but acts as if it made him tired to handle such small sums. yes, dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunk-up and collapsed; he had the aspect of a bladder-balloon that's been stepped on by a cow. chapter xxxiii. sixth century political economy however, i made a dead set at him, and before the first third of the dinner was reached, i had him happy again. it was easy to do -in a country of ranks and castes. you see, in a country where they have ranks and castes, a man isn't ever a man, he is only part of a man, he can't ever get his full growth. you prove your superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and that's the end of it -he knuckles down. you can't insult him after that. no, i don't mean quite that; of course you can insult him, i only mean it's difficult; and so, unless you've got a lot of useless time on your hands it doesn't pay to try. i had the smith's reverence now, because i was apparently immensely prosperous and rich; i could have had his adoration if i had had some little gimcrack title of nobility. and not only his, but any commoner's in the land, though he were the mightiest production of all the ages, in intellect, worth, and character, and i bankrupt in all three. this was to remain so, as long as england should exist in the earth. with the spirit of prophecy upon me, i could look into the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable georges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonored the creators of this world -after god -gutenburg, watt, arkwright, whitney, morse, stephenson, bell. the king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning upon battle, conquest, or iron-clad duel, he dulled down to drowsiness and went off to take a nap. mrs. marco cleared the table, placed the beer keg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavings in humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into matters near and dear to the hearts of our sort -business and wages, of course. at a first glance, things appeared to be exceeding prosperous in this little tributary kingdom -whose lord was king bagdemagus -as compared with the state of things in my own region. they had the "protection" system in full force here, whereas we were working along down toward free-trade, by easy stages, and were now about half way. before long, dowley and i were doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening. dowley warmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the air, and began to put questions which he considered pretty awkward ones for me, and they did have something of that look: "in your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff, master hind, carter, shepherd, swineherd?" "twenty-five milrays a day; that is to say, a quarter of a cent. the smith's face beamed with joy. he said: "with us they are allowed the double of it! and what may a mechanic get -carpenter, dauber, mason, painter, blacksmith, wheelwright, and the like?" "on the average, fifty milrays; half a cent a day." "ho-ho! with us they are allowed a hundred! with us any good mechanic is allowed a cent a day! i count out the tailor, but not the others -they are all allowed a cent a day, and in driving times they get more -yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteen milrays a day. i've paid a hundred and fifteen myself, within the week. 'rah for protection -to sheol with free-trade!" and his face shone upon the company like a sunburst. but i didn't scare at all. i rigged up my pile-driver, and allowed myself fifteen minutes to drive him into the earth -drive him all in -drive him in till not even the curve of his skull should show above ground. here is the way i started in on him. i asked: "what do you pay a pound for salt?" "a hundred milrays." "we pay forty. what do you pay for beef and mutton -when you buy it?" that was a neat hit; it made the color come. "it varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say 75 milrays the pound." "we pay 33. what do you pay for eggs?" "fifty milrays the dozen." "we pay 20. what do you pay for beer?" "it costeth us 8 1/2 milrays the pint." "we get it for 4; 25 bottles for a cent. what do you pay for wheat?" "at the rate of 900 milrays the bushel." "we pay 400. what do you pay for a man's towlinen suit?" "thirteen cents." "we pay 6. what do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of the laborer or the mechanic?" "we pay 8.4.0." "well, observe the difference: you pay eight cents and four mills, we pay only four cents." i prepared now to sock it to him. l said: "look here, dear friend, what's become of your high wages you were bragging so about a few minutes ago?" -and i looked around on the company with placid satisfaction, for i had slipped up on him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without his ever noticing that he was being tied at all. "what's become of those noble high wages of yours? -i seem to have knocked the stuffing all out of them, it appears to me." but if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, that is all! he didn't grasp the situation at all, didn't know he had walked into a trap, didn't discover that he was in a trap. i could have shot him, from sheer vexation. with cloudy eye and a struggling intellect he fetched this out: "marry, i seem not to understand. it is proved that our wages be double thine; how then may it be that thou'st knocked therefrom the stuffing? -an miscall not the wonderly word, this being the first time under grace and providence of god it hath been granted me to hear it." well, i was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on his part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided with him and were of his mind -if you might call it mind. my position was simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplified more? however, i must try: "why, look here, brother dowley, don't you see? your wages are merely higher than ours in name, not in fact." "hear him! they are the double -ye have confessed it yourself." "yes-yes, i don't deny that at all. but that's got nothing to do with it; the amount of the wages in mere coins, with meaningless names attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to do with it. the thing is, how much can you buy with your wages? -that's the idea. while it is true that with you a good mechanic is allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us only about a dollar and seventy-five --" "there -ye're confessing it again, ye're confessing it again!" "confound it, i've never denied it, i tell you! what i say is this. with us half a dollar buys more than a dollar buys with you -and therefore it stands to reason and the commonest kind of common-sense, that our wages are higher than yours." he looked dazed, and said, despairingly: "verily, i cannot make it out. ye've just said ours are the higher, and with the same breath ye take it back." "oh, great scott, isn't it possible to get such a simple thing through your head? now look here -let me illustrate. we pay four cents for a woman's stuff gown, you pay 8.4.0, which is four mills more than double. what do you allow a laboring woman who works on a farm?" "two mills a day." "very good; we allow but half as much; we pay her only a tenth of a cent a day; and --" "again ye're conf --" "wait! now, you see, the thing is very simple; this time you'll understand it. for instance, it takes your woman 42 days to earn her gown, at 2 mills a day -7 weeks' work; but ours earns hers in forty days -two days short of 7 weeks. your woman has a gown, and her whole seven weeks wages are gone; ours has a gown, and two days' wages left, to buy something else with. there -now you understand it!" he looked -well, he merely looked dubious, it's the most i can say; so did the others. i waited -to let the thing work. dowley spoke at last -and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten away from his rooted and grounded superstitions yet. he said, with a trifle of hesitancy: "but -but -ye cannot fail to grant that two mills a day is better than one." shucks! well, of course, i hated to give it up. so i chanced another flyer: "let us suppose a case. suppose one of your journeymen goes out and buys the following articles: "1 pound of salt; 1 dozen eggs; 1 dozen pints of beer; 1 bushel of wheat; 1 tow-linen suit; 5 pounds of beef; 5 pounds of mutton. "the lot will cost him 32 cents. it takes him 32 working days to earn the money -5 weeks and 2 days. let him come to us and work 32 days at half the wages; he can buy all those things for a shade under 14 1/2 cents; they will cost him a shade under 29 days' work, and he will have about half a week's wages over. carry it through the year; he would save nearly a week's wages every two months, your man nothing; thus saving five or six weeks' wages in a year, your man not a cent. now i reckon you understand that 'high wages' and 'low wages' are phrases that don't mean anything in the world until you find out which of them will buy the most!" it was a crusher. but, alas! it didn't crush. no, i had to give it up. what those people valued was high wages; it didn't seem to be a matter of any consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anything or not. they stood for "protection," and swore by it, which was reasonable enough, because interested parties had gulled them into the notion that it was protection which had created their high wages. i proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wages had advanced but 30 per cent., while the cost of living had gone up 100; and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had advanced 40 per cent. while the cost of living had gone steadily down. but it didn't do any good. nothing could unseat their strange beliefs. well, i was smarting under a sense of defeat. undeserved defeat, but what of that? that didn't soften the smart any. and to think of the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablest man, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any political firmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in argument by an ignorant country blacksmith! and i could see that those others were sorry for me -which made me blush till i could smell my whiskers scorching. put yourself in my place; feel as mean as i did, as ashamed as i felt -wouldn't you have struck below the belt to get even? yes, you would; it is simply human nature. well, that is what i did. i am not trying to justify it; i'm only saying that i was mad, and anybody would have done it. well, when i make up my mind to hit a man, i don't plan out a love-tap; no, that isn't my way; as long as i'm going to hit him at all, i'm going to hit him a lifter. and i don't jump at him all of a sudden, and risk making a blundering half-way business of it; no, i get away off yonder to one side, and work up on him gradually, so that he never suspects that i'm going to hit him at all; and by and by, all in a flash, he's flat on his back, and he can't tell for the life of him how it all happened. that is the way i went for brother dowley. i started to talking lazy and comfortable, as if i was just talking to pass the time; and the oldest man in the world couldn't have taken the bearings of my starting place and guessed where i was going to fetch up: "boys, there's a good many curious things about law, and custom, and usage, and all that sort of thing, when you come to look at it; yes, and about the drift and progress of human opinion and movement, too. there are written laws -they perish; but there are also unwritten laws -they are eternal. take the unwritten law of wages: it says they've got to advance, little by little, straight through the centuries. and notice how it works. we know what wages are now, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that's the wages of to-day. we know what the wages were a hundred years ago, and what they were two hundred years ago; that's as far back as we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress, the measure and rate of the periodical augmentation; and so, without a document to help us, we can come pretty close to determining what the wages were three and four and five hundred years ago. good, so far. do we stop there? no. we stop looking backward; we face around and apply the law to the future. my friends, i can tell you what people's wages are going to be at any date in the future you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years." "what, goodman, what!" "yes. in seven hundred years wages will have risen to six times what they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will be allowed 3 cents a day, and mechanics 6." "i would't i might die now and live then!" interrupted smug, the wheelwright, with a fine avaricious glow in his eye. "and that isn't all; they'll get their board besides -such as it is: it won't bloat them. two hundred and fifty years later -pay attention now -a mechanic's wages will be - mind you, this is law, not guesswork; a mechanic's wages will then be twenty cents a day!" there was a general gasp of awed astonishment, dickon the mason murmured, with raised eyes and hands: "more than three weeks' pay for one day's work!" "riches! -of a truth, yes, riches!" muttered marco, his breath coming quick and short, with excitement. "wages will keep on rising, little by little, little by little, as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three hundred and forty years more there'll be at least one country where the mechanic's average wage will be two hundred cents a day!" it knocked them absolutely dumb! not a man of them could get his breath for upwards of two minutes. then the coal-burner said prayerfully: "might i but live to see it!" "it is the income of an earl!" said smug. "an earl, say ye?" said dowley; "ye could say more than that and speak no lie; there's no earl in the realm of bagdemagus that hath an income like to that. income of an earl -mf! it's the income of an angel!" "now, then, that is what is going to happen as regards wages. in that remote day, that man will earn, with one week's work, that bill of goods which it takes you upwards of fifty weeks to earn now. some other pretty surprising things are going to happen, too. brother dowley, who is it that determines, every spring, what the particular wage of each kind of mechanic, laborer, and servant shall be for that year?" "sometimes the courts, sometimes the town council; but most of all, the magistrate. ye may say, in general terms, it is the magistrate that fixes the wages." "doesn't ask any of those poor devils to help him fix their wages for them, does he?" "hm! that were an idea! the master that's to pay him the money is the one that's rightly concerned in that matter, ye will notice " "yes -but i thought the other man might have some little trifle at stake in it, too; and even his wife and children, poor creatures. the masters are these: nobles, rich men, the prosperous generally. these few, who do no work, determine what pay the vast hive shall have who do work. you see? they're a 'combine' -a trade union, to coin a new phrase -who band themselves together to force their lowly brother to take what they choose to give. thirteen hundred years hence -so says the unwritten law -the 'combine' will be the other way, and then how these fine people's posterity will fume and fret and grit their teeth over the insolent tyranny of trade unions! yes, indeed! the magistrate will tranquilly arrange the wages from now clear away down into the nineteenth century; and then all of a sudden the wage-earner will consider that a couple of thousand years or so is enough of this one-sided sort of thing; and he will rise up and take a hand in fixing his wages himself. ah, he will have a long and bitter account of wrong and humiliation to settle." "do ye believe -" "that he actually will help to fix his own wages? yes, indeed. and he will be strong and able, then." "brave times, brave times, of a truth!" sneered the prosperous smith. "oh, -and there's another detail. in that day, a master may hire a man for only just one day, or one week, or one month at a time, if he wants to." "what?" "it's true. moreover, a magistrate won't be able to force a man to work for a master a whole year on a stretch whether the man wants to or not." "will there be no law or sense in that day?" "both of them, dowley. in that day a man will be his own property, not the property of magistrate and master. and he can leave town whenever he wants to, if the wages don't suit him! -and they can't put him in the pillory for it." "perdition catch such an age!" shouted dowley, in strong indignation. "an age of dogs, an age barren of reverence for superiors and respect for authority! the pillory --" "oh, wait, brother; say no good word for that institution. i think the pillory ought to be abolished." "a most strange idea. why?" "well, i'll tell you why. is a man ever put in the pillory for a capital crime?" "no." "is it right to condemn a man to a slight punishment for a small offense and then kill him?" there was no answer. i had scored my first point! for the first time, the smith wasn't up and ready. the company noticed it. good effect. "you don't answer, brother. you were about to glorify the pillory a while ago, and shed some pity on a future age that isn't going to use it. i think the pillory ought to be abolished. what usually happens when a poor fellow is put in the pillory for some little offense that didn't amount to anything in the world? the mob try to have some fun with him, don't they?" "yes." "they begin by clodding him; and they laugh themselves to pieces to see him try to dodge one clod and get hit with another?" "yes." "then they throw dead cats at him, don't they?" "yes." "well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemies in that mob and here and there a man or a woman with a secret grudge against him -and suppose especially that he is unpopular in the community, for his pride, or his prosperity, or one thing or another -stones and bricks take the place of clods and cats presently, don't they?" "there is no doubt of it." "as a rule he is crippled for life, isn't he? -jaws broken, teeth smashed out? -or legs mutilated, gangrened, presently cut off? -or an eye knocked out, maybe both eyes?" "it is true, god knoweth it." "and if he is unpopular he can depend on dying, right there in the stocks, can't he?" "he surely can! one may not deny it." "i take it none of you are unpopular -by reason of pride or insolence, or conspicuous prosperity, or any of those things that excite envy and malice among the base scum of a village? you wouldn't think it much of a risk to take a chance in the stocks?" dowley winced, visibly. i judged he was hit. but he didn't betray it by any spoken word. as for the others, they spoke out plainly, and with strong feeling. they said they had seen enough of the stocks to know what a man's chance in them was, and they would never consent to enter them if they could compromise on a quick death by hanging. "well, to change the subject -for i think i've established my point that the stocks ought to be abolished. i think some of our laws are pretty unfair. for instance, if i do a thing which ought to deliver me to the stocks, and you know i did it and yet keep still and don't report me, you will get the stocks if anybody informs on you." "ah, but that would serve you but right," said dowley, "for you must inform. so saith the law." the others coincided. "well, all right, let it go, since you vote me down. but there's one thing which certainly isn't fair. the magistrate fixes a mechanic's wage at 1 cent a day, for instance. the law says that if any master shall venture, even under utmost press of business, to pay anything over that cent a day, even for a single day, he shall be both fined and pilloried for it; and whoever knows he did it and doesn't inform, they also shall be fined and pilloried. now it seems to me unfair, dowley, and a deadly peril to all of us, that because you thoughtlessly confessed, a while ago, that within a week you have paid a cent and fifteen mil --" oh, i tell you it was a smasher! you ought to have seen them to go to pieces, the whole gang. i had just slipped up on poor smiling and complacent dowley so nice and easy and softly, that he never suspected anything was going to happen till the blow came crashing down and knocked him all to rags. a fine effect. in fact, as fine as any i ever produced, with so little time to work it up in. but i saw in a moment that i had overdone the thing a little. i was expecting to scare them, but i wasn't expecting to scare them to death. they were mighty near it, though. you see they had been a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; and to have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of them distinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger, if i chose to go and report -well, it was awful, and they couldn't seem to recover from the shock, they couldn't seem to pull themselves together. pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful? why, they weren't any better than so many dead men. it was very uncomfortable. of course, i thought they would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands, and take a drink all round, and laugh it off, and there an end. but no; you see i was an unknown person, among a cruelly oppressed and suspicious people, a people always accustomed to having advantage taken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kind treatment from any but their own families and very closest intimates. appeal to me to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous? of course, they wanted to, but they couldn't dare. chapter xxxiv. the yankee and the king sold as slaves well, what had i better do? nothing in a hurry, sure. i must get up a diversion; anything to employ me while i could think, and while these poor fellows could have a chance to come to life again. there sat marco, petrified in the act of trying to get the hang of his miller-gun -turned to stone, just in the attitude he was in when my pile-driver fell, the toy still gripped in his unconscious fingers. so i took it from him and proposed to explain its mystery. mystery! a simple little thing like that; and yet it was mysterious enough, for that race and that age. i never saw such an awkward people, with machinery; you see, they were totally unused to it. the miller-gun was a little double-barreled tube of toughened glass, with a neat little trick of a spring to it, which upon pressure would let a shot escape. but the shot wouldn't hurt anybody, it would only drop into your hand. in the gun were two sizes -wee mustardseed shot, and another sort that were several times larger. they were money. the mustard-seed shot represented milrays, the larger ones mills. so the gun was a purse; and very handy, too; you could pay out money in the dark with it, with accuracy; and you could carry it in your mouth; or in your vest pocket, if you had one. i made them of several sizes -one size so large that it would carry the equivalent of a dollar. using shot for money was a good thing for the government; the metal cost nothing, and the money couldn't be counterfeited, for i was the only person in the kingdom who knew how to manage a shot tower. "paying the shot" soon came to be a common phrase. yes, and i knew it would still be passing men's lips, away down in the nineteenth century, yet none would suspect how and when it originated. the king joined us, about this time, mightily refreshed by his nap, and feeling good. anything could make me nervous now, i was so uneasy -for our lives were in danger; and so it worried me to detect a complacent something in the king's eye which seemed to indicate that he had been loading himself up for a performance of some kind or other; confound it, why must he go and choose such a time as this? i was right. he began, straight off, in the most innocently artful, and transparent, and lubberly way, to lead up to the subject of agriculture. the cold sweat broke out all over me. i wanted to whisper in his ear, "man, we are in awful danger! every moment is worth a principality till we get back these men's confidence; don't waste any of this golden time." but of course i couldn't do it. whisper to him? it would look as if we were conspiring. so i had to sit there and look calm and pleasant while the king stood over that dynamite mine and mooned along about his damned onions and things. at first the tumult of my own thoughts, summoned by the danger-signal and swarming to the rescue from every quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusion and fifing and drumming that i couldn't take in a word; but presently when my mob of gathering plans began to crystallize and fall into position and form line of battle, a sort of order and quiet ensued and i caught the boom of the king's batteries, as if out of remote distance: "-were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not to be denied that authorities differ as concerning this point, some contending that the onion is but an unwholesome berry when stricken early from the tree --" the audience showed signs of life, and sought each other's eyes in a surprised and troubled way. "-whileas others do yet maintain, with much show of reason, that this is not of necessity the case, instancing that plums and other like cereals do be always dug in the unripe state --" the audience exhibited distinct distress; yes, and also fear. "-yet are they clearly wholesome, the more especially when one doth assuage the asperities of their nature by admixture of the tranquilizing juice of the wayward cabbage --" the wild light of terror began to glow in these men's eyes, and one of them muttered, "these be errors, every one -god hath surely smitten the mind of this farmer." i was in miserable apprehension; i sat upon thorns. "-and further instancing the known truth that in the case of animals, the young, which may be called the green fruit of the creature, is the better, all confessing that when a goat is ripe, his fur doth heat and sore engame his flesh, the which defect, taken in connection with his several rancid habits, and fulsome appetites, and godless attitudes of mind, and bilious quality of morals --" they rose and went for him! with a fierce shout, "the one would betray us, the other is mad! kill them! kill them!" they flung themselves upon us. what joy flamed up in the king's eye! he might be lame in agriculture, but this kind of thing was just in his line. he had been fasting long, he was hungry for a fight. he hit the blacksmith a crack under the jaw that lifted him clear off his feet and stretched him flat on his back. "st. george for britain!" and he downed the wheelwright. the mason was big, but i laid him out like nothing. the three gathered themselves up and came again; went down again; came again; and kept on repeating this, with native british pluck, until they were battered to jelly, reeling with exhaustion, and so blind that they couldn't tell us from each other; and yet they kept right on, hammering away with what might was left in them. hammering each other -for we stepped aside and looked on while they rolled, and struggled, and gouged, and pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention to business of so many bulldogs. we looked on without apprehension, for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us, and the arena was far enough from the public road to be safe from intrusion. well, while they were gradually playing out, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder what had become of marco. i looked around; he was nowhere to be seen. oh, but this was ominous! i pulled the king's sleeve, and we glided away and rushed for the hut. no marco there, no phyllis there! they had gone to the road for help, sure. i told the king to give his heels wings, and i would explain later. we made good time across the open ground, and as we darted into the shelter of the wood i glanced back and saw a mob of excited peasants swarm into view, with marco and his wife at their head. they were making a world of noise, but that couldn't hurt anybody; the wood was dense, and as soon as we were well into its depths we would take to a tree and let them whistle. ah, but then came another sound -dogs! yes, that was quite another matter. it magnified our contract -we must find running water. we tore along at a good gait, and soon left the sounds far behind and modified to a murmur. we struck a stream and darted into it. we waded swiftly down it, in the dim forest light, for as much as three hundred yards, and then came across an oak with a great bough sticking out over the water. we climbed up on this bough, and began to work our way along it to the body of the tree; now we began to hear those sounds more plainly; so the mob had struck our trail. for a while the sounds approached pretty fast. and then for another while they didn't. no doubt the dogs had found the place where we had entered the stream, and were now waltzing up and down the shores trying to pick up the trail again. when we were snugly lodged in the tree and curtained with foliage, the king was satisfied, but i was doubtful. i believed we could crawl along a branch and get into the next tree, and i judged it worth while to try. we tried it, and made a success of it, though the king slipped, at the junction, and came near failing to connect. we got comfortable lodgment and satisfactory concealment among the foliage, and then we had nothing to do but listen to the hunt. presently we heard it coming -and coming on the jump, too; yes, and down both sides of the stream. louder -louder -next minute it swelled swiftly up into a roar of shoutings, barkings, tramplings, and swept by like a cyclone. "i was afraid that the overhanging branch would suggest something to them," said i, "but i don't mind the disappointment. come, my liege, it were well that we make good use of our time. we've flanked them. dark is coming on, presently. if we can cross the stream and get a good start, and borrow a couple of horses from somebody's pasture to use for a few hours, we shall be safe enough." we started down, and got nearly to the lowest limb, when we seemed to hear the hunt returning. we stopped to listen. "yes," said i, "they're baffled, they've given it up, they're on their way home. we will climb back to our roost again, and let them go by." so we climbed back. the king listened a moment and said: "they still search -i wit the sign. we did best to abide." he was right. he knew more about hunting than i did. the noise approached steadily, but not with a rush. the king said: "they reason that we were advantaged by no parlous start of them, and being on foot are as yet no mighty way from where we took the water." "yes, sire, that is about it, i am afraid, though i was hoping better things." the noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van was drifting under us, on both sides of the water. a voice called a halt from the other bank, and said: "an they were so minded, they could get to yon tree by this branch that overhangs, and yet not touch ground. ye will do well to send a man up it." "marry, that we will do!" i was obliged to admire my cuteness in foreseeing this very thing and swapping trees to beat it. but, don't you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? awkwardness and stupidity can. the best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot. well, how could i, with all my gifts, make any valuable preparation against a near-sighted, cross-eyed, pudding-headed clown who would aim himself at the wrong tree and hit the right one? and that is what he did. he went for the wrong tree, which was, of course, the right one by mistake, and up he started. matters were serious now. we remained still, and awaited developments. the peasant toiled his difficult way up. the king raised himself up and stood; he made a leg ready, and when the comer's head arrived in reach of it there was a dull thud, and down went the man floundering to the ground. there was a wild outbreak of anger below, and the mob swarmed in from all around, and there we were treed, and prisoners. another man started up; the bridging bough was detected, and a volunteer started up the tree that furnished the bridge. the king ordered me to play horatius and keep the bridge. for a while the enemy came thick and fast; but no matter, the head man of each procession always got a buffet that dislodged him as soon as he came in reach. the king's spirits rose, his joy was limitless. he said that if nothing occurred to mar the prospect we should have a beautiful night, for on this line of tactics we could hold the tree against the whole country-side. however, the mob soon came to that conclusion themselves; wherefore they called off the assault and began to debate other plans. they had no weapons, but there were plenty of stones, and stones might answer. we had no objections. a stone might possibly penetrate to us once in a while, but it wasn't very likely; we were well protected by boughs and foliage, and were not visible from any good aiming point. if they would but waste half an hour in stonethrowing, the dark would come to our help. we were feeling very well satisfied. we could smile; almost laugh. but we didn't; which was just as well, for we should have been interrupted. before the stones had been raging through the leaves and bouncing from the boughs fifteen minutes, we began to notice a smell. a couple of sniffs of it was enough of an explanation -it was smoke! our game was up at last. we recognized that. when smoke invites you, you have to come. they raised their pile of dry brush and damp weeds higher and higher, and when they saw the thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree, they broke out in a storm of joy-clamors. i got enough breath to say: "proceed, my liege; after you is manners." the king gasped: "follow me down, and then back thyself against one side of the trunk, and leave me the other. then will we fight. let each pile his dead according to his own fashion and taste." then he descended, barking and coughing, and i followed. i struck the ground an instant after him; we sprang to our appointed places, and began to give and take with all our might. the powwow and racket were prodigious; it was a tempest of riot and confusion and thick-falling blows. suddenly some horsemen tore into the midst of the crowd, and a voice shouted: "hold -or ye are dead men!" how good it sounded! the owner of the voice bore all the marks of a gentleman: picturesque and costly raiment, the aspect of command, a hard countenance, with complexion and features marred by dissipation. the mob fell humbly back, like so many spaniels. the gentleman inspected us critically, then said sharply to the peasants: "what are ye doing to these people?" "they be madmen, worshipful sir, that have come wandering we know not whence, and --" "ye know not whence? do ye pretend ye know them not?" "most honored sir, we speak but the truth. they are strangers and unknown to any in this region; and they be the most violent and bloodthirsty madmen that ever --" "peace! ye know not what ye say. they are not mad. who are ye? and whence are ye? explain." "we are but peaceful strangers, sir," i said, "and traveling upon our own concerns. we are from a far country, and unacquainted here. we have purposed no harm; and yet but for your brave interference and protection these people would have killed us. as you have divined, sir, we are not mad; neither are we violent or bloodthirsty." the gentleman turned to his retinue and said calmly: "lash me these animals to their kennels!" the mob vanished in an instant; and after them plunged the horsemen, laying about them with their whips and pitilessly riding down such as were witless enough to keep the road instead of taking to the bush. the shrieks and supplications presently died away in the distance, and soon the horsemen began to straggle back. meantime the gentleman had been questioning us more closely, but had dug no particulars out of us. we were lavish of recognition of the service he was doing us, but we revealed nothing more than that we were friendless strangers from a far country. when the escort were all returned, the gentleman said to one of his servants: "bring the led-horses and mount these people." "yes, my lord." we were placed toward the rear, among the servants. we traveled pretty fast, and finally drew rein some time after dark at a roadside inn some ten or twelve miles from the scene of our troubles. my lord went immediately to his room, after ordering his supper, and we saw no more of him. at dawn in the morning we breakfasted and made ready to start. my lord's chief attendant sauntered forward at that moment with indolent grace, and said: "ye have said ye should continue upon this road, which is our direction likewise; wherefore my lord, the earl grip, hath given commandment that ye retain the horses and ride, and that certain of us ride with ye a twenty mile to a fair town that hight cambenet, whenso ye shall be out of peril." we could do nothing less than express our thanks and accept the offer. we jogged along, six in the party, at a moderate and comfortable gait, and in conversation learned that my lord grip was a very great personage in his own region, which lay a day's journey beyond cambenet. we loitered to such a degree that it was near the middle of the forenoon when we entered the market square of the town. we dismounted, and left our thanks once more for my lord, and then approached a crowd assembled in the center of the square, to see what might be the object of interest. it was the remnant of that old peregrinating band of slaves! so they had been dragging their chains about, all this weary time. that poor husband was gone, and also many others; and some few purchases had been added to the gang. the king was not interested, and wanted to move along, but i was absorbed, and full of pity. i could not take my eyes away from these worn and wasted wrecks of humanity. there they sat, grounded upon the ground, silent, uncomplaining, with bowed heads, a pathetic sight. and by hideous contrast, a redundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirty steps away, in fulsome laudation of "our glorious british liberties!" i was boiling. i had forgotten i was a plebeian, i was remembering i was a man. cost what it might, i would mount that rostrum and -click! the king and i were handcuffed together! our companions, those servants, had done it; my lord grip stood looking on. the king burst out in a fury, and said: "what meaneth this ill-mannered jest?" my lord merely said to his head miscreant, coolly: "put up the slaves and sell them!" slaves! the word had a new sound -and how unspeakably awful! the king lifted his manacles and brought them down with a deadly force; but my lord was out of the way when they arrived. a dozen of the rascal's servants sprang forward, and in a moment we were helpless, with our hands bound behind us. we so loudly and so earnestly proclaimed ourselves freemen, that we got the interested attention of that liberty-mouthing orator and his patriotic crowd, and they gathered about us and assumed a very determined attitude. the orator said: "if, indeed, ye are freemen, ye have nought to fear -the god-given liberties of britain are about ye for your shield and shelter! (applause.) ye shall soon see. bring forth your proofs." "what proofs?" "proof that ye are freemen." ah -i remembered! i came to myself; i said nothing. but the king stormed out: "thou'rt insane, man. it were better, and more in reason, that this thief and scoundrel here prove that we are not freemen." you see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often know the laws; by words, not by effects. they take a meaning, and get to be very vivid, when you come to apply them to yourself. all hands shook their heads and looked disappointed; some turned away, no longer interested. the orator said -and this time in the tones of business, not of sentiment: "an ye do not know your country's laws, it were time ye learned them. ye are strangers to us; ye will not deny that. ye may be freemen, we do not deny that; but also ye may be slaves. the law is clear: it doth not require the claimant to prove ye are slaves, it requireth you to prove ye are not." i said: "dear sir, give us only time to send to astolat; or give us only time to send to the valley of holiness --" "peace, good man, these are extraordinary requests, and you may not hope to have them granted. it would cost much time, and would unwarrantably inconvenience your master --" "master, idiot!" stormed the king. "i have no master, i myself am the m--" "silence, for god's sake!" i got the words out in time to stop the king. we were in trouble enough already; it could not help us any to give these people the notion that we were lunatics. there is no use in stringing out the details. the earl put us up and sold us at auction. this same infernal law had existed in our own south in my own time, more than thirteen hundred years later, and under it hundreds of freemen who could not prove that they were freemen had been sold into lifelong slavery without the circumstance making any particular impression upon me; but the minute law and the auction block came into my personal experience, a thing which had been merely improper before became suddenly hellish. well, that's the way we are made. yes, we were sold at auction, like swine. in a big town and an active market we should have brought a good price; but this place was utterly stagnant and so we sold at a figure which makes me ashamed, every time i think of it. the king of england brought seven dollars, and his prime minister nine; whereas the king was easily worth twelve dollars and i as easily worth fifteen. but that is the way things always go; if you force a sale on a dull market, i don't care what the property is, you are going to make a poor business of it, and you can make up your mind to it. if the earl had had wit enough to -however, there is no occasion for my working my sympathies up on his account. let him go, for the present; i took his number, so to speak. the slave-dealer bought us both, and hitched us onto that long chain of his, and we constituted the rear of his procession. we took up our line of march and passed out of cambenet at noon; and it seemed to me unaccountably strange and odd that the king of england and his chief minister, marching manacled and fettered and yoked, in a slave convoy, could move by all manner of idle men and women, and under windows where sat the sweet and the lovely, and yet never attract a curious eye, never provoke a single remark. dear, dear, it only shows that there is nothing diviner about a king than there is about a tramp, after all. he is just a cheap and hollow artificiality when you don't know he is a king. but reveal his quality, and dear me it takes your very breath away to look at him. i reckon we are all fools. born so, no doubt. chapter xxxv. a pitiful incident it's a world of surprises. the king brooded; this was natural. what would he brood about, should you say? why, about the prodigious nature of his fall, of course -from the loftiest place in the world to the lowest; from the most illustrious station in the world to the obscurest; from the grandest vocation among men to the basest. no, i take my oath that the thing that graveled him most, to start with, was not this, but the price he had fetched! he couldn't seem to get over that seven dollars. well, it stunned me so, when i first found it out, that i couldn't believe it; it didn't seem natural. but as soon as my mental sight cleared and i got a right focus on it, i saw i was mistaken; it was natural. for this reason: a king is a mere artificiality, and so a king's feelings, like the impulses of an automatic doll, are mere artificialities; but as a man, he is a reality, and his feelings, as a man, are real, not phantoms. it shames the average man to be valued below his own estimate of his worth, and the king certainly wasn't anything more than an average man, if he was up that high. confound him, he wearied me with arguments to show that in anything like a fair market he would have fetched twenty-five dollars, sure -a thing which was plainly nonsense, and full or the baldest conceit; i wasn't worth it myself. but it was tender ground for me to argue on. in fact, i had to simply shirk argument and do the diplomatic instead. i had to throw conscience aside, and brazenly concede that he ought to have brought twenty-five dollars; whereas i was quite well aware that in all the ages, the world had never seen a king that was worth half the money, and during the next thirteen centuries wouldn't see one that was worth the fourth of it. yes, he tired me. if he began to talk about the crops; or about the recent weather; or about the condition of politics; or about dogs, or cats, or morals, or theology -no matter what -i sighed, for i knew what was coming; he was going to get out of it a palliation of that tiresome seven-dollar sale. wherever we halted where there was a crowd, he would give me a look which said plainly: "if that thing could be tried over again now, with this kind of folk, you would see a different result." well, when he was first sold, it secretly tickled me to see him go for seven dollars; but before he was done with his sweating and worrying i wished he had fetched a hundred. the thing never got a chance to die, for every day, at one place or another, possible purchasers looked us over, and, as often as any other way, their comment on the king was something like this: "here's a two-dollar-and-a-half chump with a thirtydollar style. pity but style was marketable." at last this sort of remark produced an evil result. our owner was a practical person and he perceived that this defect must be mended if he hoped to find a purchaser for the king. so he went to work to take the style out of his sacred majesty. i could have given the man some valuable advice, but i didn't; you mustn't volunteer advice to a slave-driver unless you want to damage the cause you are arguing for. i had found it a sufficiently difficult job to reduce the king's style to a peasant's style, even when he was a willing and anxious pupil; now then, to undertake to reduce the king's style to a slave's style -and by force -go to! it was a stately contract. never mind the details -it will save me trouble to let you imagine them. i will only remark that at the end of a week there was plenty of evidence that lash and club and fist had done their work well; the king's body was a sight to see -and to weep over; but his spirit? -why, it wasn't even phased. even that dull clod of a slave-driver was able to see that there can be such a thing as a slave who will remain a man till he dies; whose bones you can break, but whose manhood you can't. this man found that from his first effort down to his latest, he couldn't ever come within reach of the king, but the king was ready to plunge for him, and did it. so he gave up at last, and left the king in possession of his style unimpaired. the fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king, he was a man; and when a man is a man, you can't knock it out of him. we had a rough time for a month, tramping to and fro in the earth, and suffering. and what englishman was the most interested in the slavery question by that time? his grace the king! yes; from being the most indifferent, he was become the most interested. he was become the bitterest hater of the institution i had ever heard talk. and so i ventured to ask once more a question which i had asked years before and had gotten such a sharp answer that i had not thought it prudent to meddle in the matter further. would he abolish slavery? his answer was as sharp as before, but it was music this time; i shouldn't ever wish to hear pleasanter, though the profanity was not good, being awkwardly put together, and with the crash-word almost in the middle instead of at the end, where, of course, it ought to have been. i was ready and willing to get free now; i hadn't wanted to get free any sooner. no, i cannot quite say that. i had wanted to, but i had not been willing to take desperate chances, and had always dissuaded the king from them. but now -ah, it was a new atmosphere! liberty would be worth any cost that might be put upon it now. i set about a plan, and was straightway charmed with it. it would require time, yes, and patience, too, a great deal of both. one could invent quicker ways, and fully as sure ones; but none that would be as picturesque as this; none that could be made so dramatic. and so i was not going to give this one up. it might delay us months, but no matter, i would carry it out or break something. now and then we had an adventure. one night we were overtaken by a snow-storm while still a mile from the village we were making for. almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog, the driving snow was so thick. you couldn't see a thing, and we were soon lost. the slave-driver lashed us desperately, for he saw ruin before him, but his lashings only made matters worse, for they drove us further from the road and from likelihood of succor. so we had to stop at last and slump down in the snow where we were. the storm continued until toward midnight, then ceased. by this time two of our feebler men and three of our women were dead, and others past moving and threatened with death. our master was nearly beside himself. he stirred up the living, and made us stand, jump, slap ourselves, to restore our circulation, and he helped as well as he could with his whip. now came a diversion. we heard shrieks and yells, and soon a woman came running and crying; and seeing our group, she flung herself into our midst and begged for protection. a mob of people came tearing after her, some with torches, and they said she was a witch who had caused several cows to die by a strange disease, and practiced her arts by help of a devil in the form of a black cat. this poor woman had been stoned until she hardly looked human, she was so battered and bloody. the mob wanted to burn her. well, now, what do you suppose our master did? when we closed around this poor creature to shelter her, he saw his chance. he said, burn her here, or they shouldn't have her at all. imagine that! they were willing. they fastened her to a post; they brought wood and piled it about her; they applied the torch while she shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young daughters to her breast; and our brute, with a heart solely for business, lashed us into position about the stake and warmed us into life and commercial value by the same fire which took away the innocent life of that poor harmless mother. that was the sort of master we had. i took his number. that snow-storm cost him nine of his flock; and he was more brutal to us than ever, after that, for many days together, he was so enraged over his loss. we had adventures all along. one day we ran into a procession. and such a procession! all the riffraff of the kingdom seemed to be comprehended in it; and all drunk at that. in the van was a cart with a coffin in it, and on the coffin sat a comely young girl of about eighteen suckling a baby, which she squeezed to her breast in a passion of love every little while, and every little while wiped from its face the tears which her eyes rained down upon it; and always the foolish little thing smiled up at her, happy and content, kneading her breast with its dimpled fat hand, which she patted and fondled right over her breaking heart. men and women, boys and girls, trotted along beside or after the cart, hooting, shouting profane and ribald remarks, singing snatches of foul song, skipping, dancing -a very holiday of hellions, a sickening sight. we had struck a suburb of london, outside the walls, and this was a sample of one sort of london society. our master secured a good place for us near the gallows. a priest was in attendance, and he helped the girl climb up, and said comforting words to her, and made the under-sheriff provide a stool for her. then he stood there by her on the gallows, and for a moment looked down upon the mass of upturned faces at his feet, then out over the solid pavement of heads that stretched away on every side occupying the vacancies far and near, and then began to tell the story of the case. and there was pity in his voice -how seldom a sound that was in that ignorant and savage land! i remember every detail of what he said, except the words he said it in; and so i change it into my own words: "law is intended to mete out justice. sometimes it fails. this cannot be helped. we can only grieve, and be resigned, and pray for the soul of him who falls unfairly by the arm of the law, and that his fellows may be few. a law sends this poor young thing to death -and it is right. but another law had placed her where she must commit her crime or starve with her child -and before god that law is responsible for both her crime and her ignominious death! "a little while ago this young thing, this child of eighteen years, was as happy a wife and mother as any in england; and her lips were blithe with song, which is the native speech of glad and innocent hearts. her young husband was as happy as she; for he was doing his whole duty, he worked early and late at his handicraft, his bread was honest bread well and fairly earned, he was prospering, he was furnishing shelter and sustenance to his family, he was adding his mite to the wealth of the nation. by consent of a treacherous law, instant destruction fell upon this holy home and swept it away! that young husband was waylaid and impressed, and sent to sea. the wife knew nothing of it. she sought him everywhere, she moved the hardest hearts with the supplications of her tears, the broken eloquence of her despair. weeks dragged by, she watching, waiting, hoping, her mind going slowly to wreck under the burden of her misery. little by little all her small possessions went for food. when she could no longer pay her rent, they turned her out of doors. she begged, while she had strength; when she was starving at last, and her milk failing, she stole a piece of linen cloth of the value of a fourth part of a cent, thinking to sell it and save her child. but she was seen by the owner of the cloth. she was put in jail and brought to trial. the man testified to the facts. a plea was made for her, and her sorrowful story was told in her behalf. she spoke, too, by permission, and said she did steal the cloth, but that her mind was so disordered of late by trouble that when she was overborne with hunger all acts, criminal or other, swam meaningless through her brain and she knew nothing rightly, except that she was so hungry! for a moment all were touched, and there was disposition to deal mercifully with her, seeing that she was so young and friendless, and her case so piteous, and the law that robbed her of her support to blame as being the first and only cause of her transgression; but the prosecuting officer replied that whereas these things were all true, and most pitiful as well, still there was much small theft in these days, and mistimed mercy here would be a danger to property -oh, my god, is there no property in ruined homes, and orphaned babes, and broken hearts that british law holds precious! -and so he must require sentence. "when the judge put on his black cap, the owner of the stolen linen rose trembling up, his lip quivering, his face as gray as ashes; and when the awful words came, he cried out, 'oh, poor child, poor child, i did not know it was death!' and fell as a tree falls. when they lifted him up his reason was gone; before the sun was set, he had taken his own life. a kindly man; a man whose heart was right, at bottom; add his murder to this that is to be now done here; and charge them both where they belong -to the rulers and the bitter laws of britain. the time is come, my child; let me pray over thee -not for thee, dear abused poor heart and innocent, but for them that be guilty of thy ruin and death, who need it more." after his prayer they put the noose around the young girl's neck, and they had great trouble to adjust the knot under her ear, because she was devouring the baby all the time, wildly kissing it, and snatching it to her face and her breast, and drenching it with tears, and half moaning, half shrieking all the while, and the baby crowing, and laughing, and kicking its feet with delight over what it took for romp and play. even the hangman couldn't stand it, but turned away. when all was ready the priest gently pulled and tugged and forced the child out of the mother's arms, and stepped quickly out of her reach; but she clasped her hands, and made a wild spring toward him, with a shriek; but the rope -and the under-sheriff -held her short. then she went on her knees and stretched out her hands and cried: "one more kiss -oh, my god, one more, one more, -it is the dying that begs it!" she got it; she almost smothered the little thing. and when they got it away again, she cried out: "oh, my child, my darling, it will die! it has no home, it has no father, no friend, no mother --" "it has them all!" said that good priest. "all these will i be to it till i die." you should have seen her face then! gratitude? lord, what do you want with words to express that? words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself. she gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong. chapter xxxvi. an encounter in the dark london -to a slave -was a sufficiently interesting place. it was merely a great big village; and mainly mud and thatch. the streets were muddy, crooked, unpaved. the populace was an ever flocking and drifting swarm of rags, and splendors, of nodding plumes and shining armor. the king had a palace there; he saw the outside of it. it made him sigh; yes, and swear a little, in a poor juvenile sixth century way. we saw knights and grandees whom we knew, but they didn't know us in our rags and dirt and raw welts and bruises, and wouldn't have recognized us if we had hailed them, nor stopped to answer, either, it being unlawful to speak with slaves on a chain. sandy passed within ten yards of me on a mule -hunting for me, i imagined. but the thing which clean broke my heart was something which happened in front of our old barrack in a square, while we were enduring the spectacle of a man being boiled to death in oil for counterfeiting pennies. it was the sight of a newsboy -and i couldn't get at him! still, i had one comfort -here was proof that clarence was still alive and banging away. i meant to be with him before long; the thought was full of cheer. i had one little glimpse of another thing, one day, which gave me a great uplift. it was a wire stretching from housetop to housetop. telegraph or telephone, sure. i did very much wish i had a little piece of it. it was just what i needed, in order to carry out my project of escape. my idea was to get loose some night, along with the king, then gag and bind our master, change clothes with him, batter him into the aspect of a stranger, hitch him to the slave-chain, assume possession of the property, march to camelot, and -but you get my idea; you see what a stunning dramatic surprise i would wind up with at the palace. it was all feasible, if i could only get hold of a slender piece of iron which i could shape into a lock-pick. i could then undo the lumbering padlocks with which our chains were fastened, whenever i might choose. but i never had any luck; no such thing ever happened to fall in my way. however, my chance came at last. a gentleman who had come twice before to dicker for me, without result, or indeed any approach to a result, came again. i was far from expecting ever to belong to him, for the price asked for me from the time i was first enslaved was exorbitant, and always provoked either anger or derision, yet my master stuck stubbornly to it -twenty-two dollars. he wouldn't bate a cent. the king was greatly admired, because of his grand physique, but his kingly style was against him, and he wasn't salable; nobody wanted that kind of a slave. i considered myself safe from parting from him because of my extravagant price. no, i was not expecting to ever belong to this gentleman whom i have spoken of, but he had something which i expected would belong to me eventually, if he would but visit us often enough. it was a steel thing with a long pin to it, with which his long cloth outside garment was fastened together in front. there were three of them. he had disappointed me twice, because he did not come quite close enough to me to make my project entirely safe; but this time i succeeded; i captured the lower clasp of the three, and when he missed it he thought he had lost it on the way. i had a chance to be glad about a minute, then straightway a chance to be sad again. for when the purchase was about to fail, as usual, the master suddenly spoke up and said what would be worded thus -in modern english: "i'll tell you what i'll do. i'm tired supporting these two for no good. give me twenty-two dollars for this one, and i'll throw the other one in." the king couldn't get his breath, he was in such a fury. he began to choke and gag, and meantime the master and the gentleman moved away discussing. "an ye will keep the offer open --" "'tis open till the morrow at this hour." "then i will answer you at that time," said the gentleman, and disappeared, the master following him. i had a time of it to cool the king down, but i managed it. i whispered in his ear, to this effect: "your grace will go for nothing, but after another fashion. and so shall i. to-night we shall both be free." "ah! how is that?" "with this thing which i have stolen, i will unlock these locks and cast off these chains to-night. when he comes about nine-thirty to inspect us for the night, we will seize him, gag him, batter him, and early in the morning we will march out of this town, proprietors of this caravan of slaves." that was as far as i went, but the king was charmed and satisfied. that evening we waited patiently for our fellow-slaves to get to sleep and signify it by the usual sign, for you must not take many chances on those poor fellows if you can avoid it. it is best to keep your own secrets. no doubt they fidgeted only about as usual, but it didn't seem so to me. it seemed to me that they were going to be forever getting down to their regular snoring. as the time dragged on i got nervously afraid we shouldn't have enough of it left for our needs; so i made several premature attempts, and merely delayed things by it; for i couldn't seem to touch a padlock, there in the dark, without starting a rattle out of it which interrupted somebody's sleep and made him turn over and wake some more of the gang. but finally i did get my last iron off, and was a free man once more. i took a good breath of relief, and reached for the king's irons. too late! in comes the master, with a light in one hand and his heavy walkingstaff in the other. i snuggled close among the wallow of snorers, to conceal as nearly as possible that i was naked of irons; and i kept a sharp lookout and prepared to spring for my man the moment he should bend over me. but he didn't approach. he stopped, gazed absently toward our dusky mass a minute, evidently thinking about something else; then set down his light, moved musingly toward the door, and before a body could imagine what he was going to do, he was out of the door and had closed it behind him. "quick!" said the king. "fetch him back!" of course, it was the thing to do, and i was up and out in a moment. but, dear me, there were no lamps in those days, and it was a dark night. but i glimpsed a dim figure a few steps away. i darted for it, threw myself upon it, and then there was a state of things and lively! we fought and scuffled and struggled, and drew a crowd in no time. they took an immense interest in the fight and encouraged us all they could, and, in fact, couldn't have been pleasanter or more cordial if it had been their own fight. then a tremendous row broke out behind us, and as much as half of our audience left us, with a rush, to invest some sympathy in that. lanterns began to swing in all directions; it was the watch gathering from far and near. presently a halberd fell across my back, as a reminder, and i knew what it meant. i was in custody. so was my adversary. we were marched off toward prison, one on each side of the watchman. here was disaster, here was a fine scheme gone to sudden destruction! i tried to imagine what would happen when the master should discover that it was i who had been fighting him; and what would happen if they jailed us together in the general apartment for brawlers and petty law-breakers, as was the custom; and what might -just then my antagonist turned his face around in my direction, the freckled light from the watchman's tin lantern fell on it, and, by george, he was the wrong man! chapter xxxvii. an awful predicament sleep? it was impossible. it would naturally have been impossible in that noisome cavern of a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken, quarrelsome, and song-singing rapscallions. but the thing that made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of, was my racking impatience to get out of this place and find out the whole size of what might have happened yonder in the slave-quarters in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine. it was a long night, but the morning got around at last. i made a full and frank explanation to the court. i said i was a slave, the property of the great earl grip, who had arrived just after dark at the tabard inn in the village on the other side of the water, and had stopped there over night, by compulsion, he being taken deadly sick with a strange and sudden disorder. i had been ordered to cross to the city in all haste and bring the best physician; i was doing my best; naturally i was running with all my might; the night was dark, i ran against this common person here, who seized me by the throat and began to pummel me, although i told him my errand, and implored him, for the sake of the great earl my master's mortal peril -the common person interrupted and said it was a lie; and was going to explain how i rushed upon him and attacked him without a word -"silence, sirrah!" from the court. "take him hence and give him a few stripes whereby to teach him how to treat the servant of a nobleman after a different fashion another time. go!" then the court begged my pardon, and hoped i would not fail to tell his lordship it was in no wise the court's fault that this high-handed thing had happened. i said i would make it all right, and so took my leave. took it just in time, too; he was starting to ask me why i didn't fetch out these facts the moment i was arrested. i said i would if i had thought of it -which was true -but that i was so battered by that man that all my wit was knocked out of me -and so forth and so on, and got myself away, still mumbling. i didn't wait for breakfast. no grass grew under my feet. i was soon at the slave quarters. empty -everybody gone! that is, everybody except one body -the slave-master's. it lay there all battered to pulp; and all about were the evidences of a terrific fight. there was a rude board coffin on a cart at the door, and workmen, assisted by the police, were thinning a road through the gaping crowd in order that they might bring it in. i picked out a man humble enough in life to condescend to talk with one so shabby as i, and got his account of the matter. "there were sixteen slaves here. they rose against their master in the night, and thou seest how it ended." "yes. how did it begin?" "there was no witness but the slaves. they said the slave that was most valuable got free of his bonds and escaped in some strange way -by magic arts 'twas thought, by reason that he had no key, and the locks were neither broke nor in any wise injured. when the master discovered his loss, he was mad with despair, and threw himself upon his people with his heavy stick, who resisted and brake his back and in other and divers ways did give him hurts that brought him swiftly to his end." "this is dreadful. it will go hard with the slaves, no doubt, upon the trial." "marry, the trial is over." "over!" "would they be a week, think you -and the matter so simple? they were not the half of a quarter of an hour at it." "why, i don't see how they could determine which were the guilty ones in so short a time." "which ones? indeed, they considered not particulars like to that. they condemned them in a body. wit ye not the law? -which men say the romans left behind them here when they went -that if one slave killeth his master all the slaves of that man must die for it." "true. i had forgotten. and when will these die?" "belike within a four and twenty hours; albeit some say they will wait a pair of days more, if peradventure they may find the missing one meantime." the missing one! it made me feel uncomfortable. "is it likely they will find him?" "before the day is spent -yes. they seek him everywhere. they stand at the gates of the town, with certain of the slaves who will discover him to them if he cometh, and none can pass out but he will be first examined." "might one see the place where the rest are confined?" "the outside of it -yes. the inside of it -but ye will not want to see that." i took the address of that prison for future reference and then sauntered off. at the first second-hand clothing shop i came to, up a back street, i got a rough rig suitable for a common seaman who might be going on a cold voyage, and bound up my face with a liberal bandage, saying i had a toothache. this concealed my worst bruises. it was a transformation. i no longer resembled my former self. then i struck out for that wire, found it and followed it to its den. it was a little room over a butcher's shop -which meant that business wasn't very brisk in the telegraphic line. the young chap in charge was drowsing at his table. i locked the door and put the vast key in my bosom. this alarmed the young fellow, and he was going to make a noise; but i said: "save your wind; if you open your mouth you are dead, sure. tackle your instrument. lively, now! call camelot." "this doth amaze me! how should such as you know aught of such matters as --" "call camelot! i am a desperate man. call camelot, or get away from the instrument and i will do it myself." "what -you?" "yes -certainly. stop gabbling. call the palace." he made the call. "now, then, call clarence." "clarence who?" "never mind clarence who. say you want clarence; you'll get an answer." he did so. we waited five nerve-straining minutes -ten minutes -how long it did seem! -and then came a click that was as familiar to me as a human voice; for clarence had been my own pupil. "now, my lad, vacate! they would have known my touch, maybe, and so your call was surest; but i'm all right now." he vacated the place and cocked his ear to listen -but it didn't win. i used a cipher. i didn't waste any time in sociabilities with clarence, but squared away for business, straight-off -thus: "the king is here and in danger. we were captured and brought here as slaves. we should not be able to prove our identity -and the fact is, i am not in a position to try. send a telegram for the palace here which will carry conviction with it." his answer came straight back: "they don't know anything about the telegraph; they haven't had any experience yet, the line to london is so new. better not venture that. they might hang you. think up something else." might hang us! little he knew how closely he was crowding the facts. i couldn't think up anything for the moment. then an idea struck me, and i started it along: "send five hundred picked knights with launcelot in the lead; and send them on the jump. let them enter by the southwest gate, and look out for the man with a white cloth around his right arm." the answer was prompt: "they shall start in half an hour." "all right, clarence; now tell this lad here that i'm a friend of yours and a dead-head; and that he must be discreet and say nothing about this visit of mine." the instrument began to talk to the youth and i hurried away. i fell to ciphering. in half an hour it would be nine o'clock. knights and horses in heavy armor couldn't travel very fast. these would make the best time they could, and now that the ground was in good condition, and no snow or mud, they would probably make a seven-mile gait; they would have to change horses a couple of times; they would arrive about six, or a little after; it would still be plenty light enough; they would see the white cloth which i should tie around my right arm, and i would take command. we would surround that prison and have the king out in no time. it would be showy and picturesque enough, all things considered, though i would have preferred noonday, on account of the more theatrical aspect the thing would have. now, then, in order to increase the strings to my bow, i thought i would look up some of those people whom i had formerly recognized, and make myself known. that would help us out of our scrape, without the knights. but i must proceed cautiously, for it was a risky business. i must get into sumptuous raiment, and it wouldn't do to run and jump into it. no, i must work up to it by degrees, buying suit after suit of clothes, in shops wide apart, and getting a little finer article with each change, until i should finally reach silk and velvet, and be ready for my project. so i started. but the scheme fell through like scat! the first corner i turned, i came plump upon one of our slaves, snooping around with a watchman. i coughed at the moment, and he gave me a sudden look that bit right into my marrow. i judge he thought he had heard that cough before. i turned immediately into a shop and worked along down the counter, pricing things and watching out of the corner of my eye. those people had stopped, and were talking together and looking in at the door. i made up my mind to get out the back way, if there was a back way, and i asked the shopwoman if i could step out there and look for the escaped slave, who was believed to be in hiding back there somewhere, and said i was an officer in disguise, and my pard was yonder at the door with one of the murderers in charge, and would she be good enough to step there and tell him he needn't wait, but had better go at once to the further end of the back alley and be ready to head him off when i rousted him out. she was blazing with eagerness to see one of those already celebrated murderers, and she started on the errand at once. i slipped out the back way, locked the door behind me, put the key in my pocket and started off, chuckling to myself and comfortable. well, i had gone and spoiled it again, made another mistake. a double one, in fact. there were plenty of ways to get rid of that officer by some simple and plausible device, but no, i must pick out a picturesque one; it is the crying defect of my character. and then, i had ordered my procedure upon what the officer, being human, would naturally do; whereas when you are least expecting it, a man will now and then go and do the very thing which it's not natural for him to do. the natural thing for the officer to do, in this case, was to follow straight on my heels; he would find a stout oaken door, securely locked, between him and me; before he could break it down, i should be far away and engaged in slipping into a succession of baffling disguises which would soon get me into a sort of raiment which was a surer protection from meddling law-dogs in britain than any amount of mere innocence and purity of character. but instead of doing the natural thing, the officer took me at my word, and followed my instructions. and so, as i came trotting out of that cul de sac, full of satisfaction with my own cleverness, he turned the corner and i walked right into his handcuffs. if i had known it was a cul de sac -however, there isn't any excusing a blunder like that, let it go. charge it up to profit and loss. of course, i was indignant, and swore i had just come ashore from a long voyage, and all that sort of thing -just to see, you know, if it would deceive that slave. but it didn't. he knew me. then i reproached him for betraying me. he was more surprised than hurt. he stretched his eyes wide, and said: "what, wouldst have me let thee, of all men, escape and not hang with us, when thou'rt the very cause of our hanging? go to!" "go to" was their way of saying "i should smile!" or "i like that!" queer talkers, those people. well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case, and so i dropped the matter. when you can't cure a disaster by argument, what is the use to argue? it isn't my way. so i only said: "you're not going to be hanged. none of us are." both men laughed, and the slave said: "ye have not ranked as a fool -before. you might better keep your reputation, seeing the strain would not be for long." "it will stand it, i reckon. before to-morrow we shall be out of prison, and free to go where we will, besides." the witty officer lifted at his left ear with his thumb, made a rasping noise in his throat, and said: "out of prison -yes -ye say true. and free likewise to go where ye will, so ye wander not out of his grace the devil's sultry realm." i kept my temper, and said, indifferently: "now i suppose you really think we are going to hang within a day or two." "i thought it not many minutes ago, for so the thing was decided and proclaimed." "ah, then you've changed your mind, is that it?" "even that. i only thought, then; i know, now." i felt sarcastical, so i said: "oh, sapient servant of the law, condescend to tell us, then, what you know." "that ye will all be hanged to-day, at mid-afternoon! oho! that shot hit home! lean upon me." the fact is i did need to lean upon somebody. my knights couldn't arrive in time. they would be as much as three hours too late. nothing in the world could save the king of england; nor me, which was more important. more important, not merely to me, but to the nation -the only nation on earth standing ready to blossom into civilization. i was sick. i said no more, there wasn't anything to say. i knew what the man meant; that if the missing slave was found, the postponement would be revoked, the execution take place to-day. well, the missing slave was found. chapter xxxviii. sir launcelot and knights to the rescue nearing four in the afternoon. the scene was just outside the walls of london. a cool, comfortable, superb day, with a brilliant sun; the kind of day to make one want to live, not die. the multitude was prodigious and far-reaching; and yet we fifteen poor devils hadn't a friend in it. there was something painful in that thought, look at it how you might. there we sat, on our tall scaffold, the butt of the hate and mockery of all those enemies. we were being made a holiday spectacle. they had built a sort of grand stand for the nobility and gentry, and these were there in full force, with their ladies. we recognized a good many of them. the crowd got a brief and unexpected dash of diversion out of the king. the moment we were freed of our bonds he sprang up, in his fantastic rags, with face bruised out of all recognition, and proclaimed himself arthur, king of britain, and denounced the awful penalties of treason upon every soul there present if hair of his sacred head were touched. it startled and surprised him to hear them break into a vast roar of laughter. it wounded his dignity, and he locked himself up in silence. then, although the crowd begged him to go on, and tried to provoke him to it by catcalls, jeers, and shouts of "let him speak! the king! the king! his humble subjects hunger and thirst for words of wisdom out of the mouth of their master his serene and sacred raggedness!" but it went for nothing. he put on all his majesty and sat under this rain of contempt and insult unmoved. he certainly was great in his way. absently, i had taken off my white bandage and wound it about my right arm. when the crowd noticed this, they began upon me. they said: "doubtless this sailor-man is his minister -observe his costly badge of office!" i let them go on until they got tired, and then i said: "yes, i am his minister, the boss; and to-morrow you will hear that from camelot which --" i got no further. they drowned me out with joyous derision. but presently there was silence; for the sheriffs of london, in their official robes, with their subordinates, began to make a stir which indicated that business was about to begin. in the hush which followed, our crime was recited, the death warrant read, then everybody uncovered while a priest uttered a prayer. then a slave was blindfolded; the hangman unslung his rope. there lay the smooth road below us, we upon one side of it, the banked multitude wailing its other side -a good clear road, and kept free by the police -how good it would be to see my five hundred horsemen come tearing down it! but no, it was out of the possibilities. i followed its receding thread out into the distance -not a horseman on it, or sign of one. there was a jerk, and the slave hung dangling; dangling and hideously squirming, for his limbs were not tied. a second rope was unslung, in a moment another slave was dangling. in a minute a third slave was struggling in the air. it was dreadful. i turned away my head a moment, and when i turned back i missed the king! they were blindfolding him! i was paralyzed; i couldn't move, i was choking, my tongue was petrified. they finished blindfolding him, they led him under the rope. i couldn't shake off that clinging impotence. but when i saw them put the noose around his neck, then everything let go in me and i made a spring to the rescue -and as i made it i shot one more glance abroad -by george! here they came, a-tilting! -five hundred mailed and belted knights on bicycles! the grandest sight that ever was seen. lord, how the plumes streamed, how the sun flamed and flashed from the endless procession of webby wheels! i waved my right arm as launcelot swept in -he recognized my rag -i tore away noose and bandage, and shouted: "on your knees, every rascal of you, and salute the king! who fails shall sup in hell to-night!" i always use that high style when i'm climaxing an effect. well, it was noble to see launcelot and the boys swarm up onto that scaffold and heave sheriffs and such overboard. and it was fine to see that astonished multitude go down on their knees and beg their lives of the king they had just been deriding and insulting. and as he stood apart there, receiving this homage in rags, i thought to myself, well, really there is something peculiarly grand about the gait and bearing of a king, after all. i was immensely satisfied. take the whole situation all around, it was one of the gaudiest effects i ever instigated. and presently up comes clarence, his own self! and winks, and says, very modernly: "good deal of a surprise, wasn't it? i knew you'd like it. i've had the boys practicing this long time, privately; and just hungry for a chance to show off." chapter xxxix. the yankee's fight with the knights home again, at camelot. a morning or two later i found the paper, damp from the press, by my plate at the breakfast table. i turned to the advertising columns, knowing i should find something of personal interest to me there. it was this: de par le roi. know that the great lord and illus trious kni8ht, sir sagramor le desirous naving condescended to meet the king's minister, hank mor gan, the which is surnamed the boss, for satisfgction of offence anciently given, these will engage in the lists by camelot about the fourth hour of the morning of the sixteenth day of this next succeeding month. the battle will be a l outrance, sith the said offence was of a deadly sort, admitting of no composition. de par le roi clarence's editorial reference to this affair was to this effect: it will be observed, by a gl7nce at our advertising columns, that the commu nity is to be favored with a treat of un usual interest in the tournament line. the n ames of the artists are warrant of good entertemment. the box-office will be open at noon of the 13th; ad mission 3 cents, reserved seatsh 5; pro ceeds to go to the hospital fund the royal pair and all the court will be pres ent. with these exceptions, and the press and the clergy, the free list is strict ly suspended. parties are hereby warn ed against buying tickets of speculators; they will not be good at the door. everybody knows and likes the boss, everybody knows and likes sir sag.; come, let us give the lads a good send off. remember, the proceeds go to a great and free charity, and one whose broad begevolence stretches out its help ing hand, warm with the blood of a lov ing heart, to all that suffer, regardless of race, creed, condition or color--the only charity yet established in the earth which has no politico-religious stop cock on its compassion, but says here flows the stream, let all come and drink! turn out, all hands! fetch along your dou3hnuts and your gum-drops and have a good time. pie for sale on the grounds, and rocks to crack it with; and circus-lemonade--three drops of lime juice to a barrel of water. n.b. this is the first tournament under the new law, whidh allow each combatant to use any weapon he may pre fer. you may want to make a note of that. up to the day set, there was no talk in all britain of anything but this combat. all other topics sank into insignificance and passed out of men's thoughts and interest. it was not because a tournament was a great matter, it was not because sir sagramor had found the holy grail, for he had not, but had failed; it was not because the second (official) personage in the kingdom was one of the duellists; no, all these features were commonplace. yet there was abundant reason for the extraordinary interest which this coming fight was creating. it was born of the fact that all the nation knew that this was not to be a duel between mere men, so to speak, but a duel between two mighty magicians; a duel not of muscle but of mind, not of human skill but of superhuman art and craft; a final struggle for supremacy between the two master enchanters of the age. it was realized that the most prodigious achievements of the most renowned knights could not be worthy of comparison with a spectacle like this; they could be but child's play, contrasted with this mysterious and awful battle of the gods. yes, all the world knew it was going to be in reality a duel between merlin and me, a measuring of his magic powers against mine. it was known that merlin had been busy whole days and nights together, imbuing sir sagramor's arms and armor with supernal powers of offense and defense, and that he had procured for him from the spirits of the air a fleecy veil which would render the wearer invisible to his antagonist while still visible to other men. against sir sagramor, so weaponed and protected, a thousand knights could accomplish nothing; against him no known enchantments could prevail. these facts were sure; regarding them there was no doubt, no reason for doubt. there was but one question: might there be still other enchantments, unknown to merlin, which could render sir sagramor's veil transparent to me, and make his enchanted mail vulnerable to my weapons? this was the one thing to be decided in the lists. until then the world must remain in suspense. so the world thought there was a vast matter at stake here, and the world was right, but it was not the one they had in their minds. no, a far vaster one was upon the cast of this die: the life of knight-errantry. i was a champion, it was true, but not the champion of the frivolous black arts, i was the champion of hard unsentimental common-sense and reason. i was entering the lists to either destroy knight-errantry or be its victim. vast as the show-grounds were, there were no vacant spaces in them outside of the lists, at ten o'clock on the morning of the 16th. the mammoth grand-stand was clothed in flags, streamers, and rich tapestries, and packed with several acres of small-fry tributary kings, their suites, and the british aristocracy; with our own royal gang in the chief place, and each and every individual a flashing prism of gaudy silks and velvets -well, i never saw anything to begin with it but a fight between an upper mississippi sunset and the aurora borealis. the huge camp of beflagged and gaycolored tents at one end of the lists, with a stiffstanding sentinel at every door and a shining shield hanging by him for challenge, was another fine sight. you see, every knight was there who had any ambition or any caste feeling; for my feeling toward their order was not much of a secret, and so here was their chance. if i won my fight with sir sagramor, others would have the right to call me out as long as i might be willing to respond. down at our end there were but two tents; one for me, and another for my servants. at the appointed hour the king made a sign, and the heralds, in their tabards, appeared and made proclamation, naming the combatants and stating the cause of quarrel. there was a pause, then a ringing bugle-blast, which was the signal for us to come forth. all the multitude caught their breath, and an eager curiosity flashed into every face. out from his tent rode great sir sagramor, an imposing tower of iron, stately and rigid, his huge spear standing upright in its socket and grasped in his strong hand, his grand horse's face and breast cased in steel, his body clothed in rich trappings that almost dragged the ground -oh, a most noble picture. a great shout went up, of welcome and admiration. and then out i came. but i didn't get any shout. there was a wondering and eloquent silence for a moment, then a great wave of laughter began to sweep along that human sea, but a warning bugle-blast cut its career short. i was in the simplest and comfortablest of gymnast costumes -flesh-colored tights from neck to heel, with blue silk puffings about my loins, and bareheaded. my horse was not above medium size, but he was alert, slender-limbed, muscled with watchsprings, and just a greyhound to go. he was a beauty, glossy as silk, and naked as he was when he was born, except for bridle and ranger-saddle. the iron tower and the gorgeous bedquilt came cumbrously but gracefully pirouetting down the lists, and we tripped lightly up to meet them. we halted; the tower saluted, i responded; then we wheeled and rode side by side to the grand-stand and faced our king and queen, to whom we made obeisance. the queen exclaimed: "alack, sir boss, wilt fight naked, and without lance or sword or --" but the king checked her and made her understand, with a polite phrase or two, that this was none of her business. the bugles rang again; and we separated and rode to the ends of the lists, and took position. now old merlin stepped into view and cast a dainty web of gossamer threads over sir sagramor which turned him into hamlet's ghost; the king made a sign, the bugles blew, sir sagramor laid his great lance in rest, and the next moment here he came thundering down the course with his veil flying out behind, and i went whistling through the air like an arrow to meet him -cocking my ear the while, as if noting the invisible knight's position and progress by hearing, not sight. a chorus of encouraging shouts burst out for him, and one brave voice flung out a heartening word for me -said: "go it, slim jim!" it was an even bet that clarence had procured that favor for me -and furnished the language, too. when that formidable lance-point was within a yard and a half of my breast i twitched my horse aside without an effort, and the big knight swept by, scoring a blank. i got plenty of applause that time. we turned, braced up, and down we came again. another blank for the knight, a roar of applause for me. this same thing was repeated once more; and it fetched such a whirlwind of applause that sir sagramor lost his temper, and at once changed his tactics and set himself the task of chasing me down. why, he hadn't any show in the world at that; it was a game of tag, with all the advantage on my side; i whirled out of his path with ease whenever i chose, and once i slapped him on the back as i went to the rear. finally i took the chase into my own hands; and after that, turn, or twist, or do what he would, he was never able to get behind me again; he found himself always in front at the end of his maneuver. so he gave up that business and retired to his end of the lists. his temper was clear gone now, and he forgot himself and flung an insult at me which disposed of mine. i slipped my lasso from the horn of my saddle, and grasped the coil in my right hand. this time you should have seen him come! -it was a business trip, sure; by his gait there was blood in his eye. i was sitting my horse at ease, and swinging the great loop of my lasso in wide circles about my head; the moment he was under way, i started for him; when the space between us had narrowed to forty feet, i sent the snaky spirals of the rope a-cleaving through the air, then darted aside and faced about and brought my trained animal to a halt with all his feet braced under him for a surge. the next moment the rope sprang taut and yanked sir sagramor out of the saddle! great scott, but there was a sensation! unquestionably, the popular thing in this world is novelty. these people had never seen anything of that cowboy business before, and it carried them clear off their feet with delight. from all around and everywhere, the shout went up: "encore! encore!" i wondered where they got the word, but there was no time to cipher on philological matters, because the whole knight-errantry hive was just humming now, and my prospect for trade couldn't have been better. the moment my lasso was released and sir sagramor had been assisted to his tent, i hauled in the slack, took my station and began to swing my loop around my head again. i was sure to have use for it as soon as they could elect a successor for sir sagramor, and that couldn't take long where there were so many hungry candidates. indeed, they elected one straight off -sir hervis de revel. bzz! here he came, like a house afire; i dodged: he passed like a flash, with my horse-hair coils settling around his neck; a second or so later, fst! his saddle was empty. i got another encore; and another, and another, and still another. when i had snaked five men out, things began to look serious to the ironclads, and they stopped and consulted together. as a result, they decided that it was time to waive etiquette and send their greatest and best against me. to the astonishment of that little world, i lassoed sir lamorak de galis, and after him sir galahad. so you see there was simply nothing to be done now, but play their right bower -bring out the superbest of the superb, the mightiest of the mighty, the great sir launcelot himself! a proud moment for me? i should think so. yonder was arthur, king of britain; yonder was guenever; yes, and whole tribes of little provincial kings and kinglets; and in the tented camp yonder, renowned knights from many lands; and likewise the selectest body known to chivalry, the knights of the table round, the most illustrious in christendom; and biggest fact of all, the very sun of their shining system was yonder couching his lance, the focal point of forty thousand adoring eyes; and all by myself, here was i laying for him. across my mind flitted the dear image of a certain hello-girl of west hartford, and i wished she could see me now. in that moment, down came the invincible, with the rush of a whirlwind -the courtly world rose to its feet and bent forward -the fateful coils went circling through the air, and before you could wink i was towing sir launcelot across the field on his back, and kissing my hand to the storm of waving kerchiefs and the thunder-crash of applause that greeted me! said i to myself, as i coiled my lariat and hung it on my saddle-horn, and sat there drunk with glory, "the victory is perfect -no other will venture against me -knight-errantry is dead." now imagine my astonishment -and everybody else's, too -to hear the peculiar bugle-call which announces that another competitor is about to enter the lists! there was a mystery here; i couldn't account for this thing. next, i noticed merlin gliding away from me; and then i noticed that my lasso was gone! the old sleight-of-hand expert had stolen it, sure, and slipped it under his robe. the bugle blew again. i looked, and down came sagramor riding again, with his dust brushed off and is veil nicely re-arranged. i trotted up to meet him, and pretended to find him by the sound of his horse's hoofs. he said: "thou'rt quick of ear, but it will not save thee from this!" and he touched the hilt of his great sword . "an ye are not able to see it, because of the influence of the veil, know that it is no cumbrous lance, but a sword -and i ween ye will not be able to avoid it." his visor was up; there was death in his smile. i should never be able to dodge his sword, that was plain. somebody was going to die this time. if he got the drop on me, i could name the corpse. we rode forward together, and saluted the royalties. this time the king was disturbed. he said: "where is thy strange weapon?" "it is stolen, sire." "hast another at hand?" "no, sire, i brought only the one." then merlin mixed in: "he brought but the one because there was but the one to bring. there exists none other but that one. it belongeth to the king of the demons of the sea. this man is a pretender, and ignorant, else he had known that that weapon can be used in but eight bouts only, and then it vanisheth away to its home under the sea." "then is he weaponless," said the king. "sir sagramore, ye will grant him leave to borrow." "and i will lend!" said sir launcelot, limping up. "he is as brave a knight of his hands as any that be on live, and he shall have mine." he put his hand on his sword to draw it, but sir sagramor said: "stay, it may not be. he shall fight with his own weapons; it was his privilege to choose them and bring them. if he has erred, on his head be it." "knight!" said the king. "thou'rt overwrought with passion; it disorders thy mind. wouldst kill a naked man?" "an he do it, he shall answer it to me," said sir launcelot. "i will answer it to any he that desireth!" retorted sir sagramor hotly. merlin broke in, rubbing his hands and smiling his lowdownest smile of malicious gratification: "'tis well said, right well said! and 'tis enough of parleying, let my lord the king deliver the battle signal." the king had to yield. the bugle made proclamation, and we turned apart and rode to our stations. there we stood, a hundred yards apart, facing each other, rigid and motionless, like horsed statues. and so we remained, in a soundless hush, as much as a full minute, everybody gazing, nobody stirring. it seemed as if the king could not take heart to give the signal. but at last he lifted his hand, the clear note of the bugle followed, sir sagramor's long blade described a flashing curve in the air, and it was superb to see him come. i sat still. on he came. i did not move. people got so excited that they shouted to me: "fly, fly! save thyself! this is murther!" i never budged so much as an inch till that thunderng apparition had got within fifteen paces of me; then i snatched a dragoon revolver out of my holster, there was a flash and a roar, and the revolver was back in the holster before anybody could tell what had happened. here was a riderless horse plunging by, and yonder lay sir sagramor, stone dead. the people that ran to him were stricken dumb to find that the life was actually gone out of the man and no reason for it visible, no hurt upon his body, nothing like a wound. there was a hole through the breast of his chain-mail, but they attached no importance to a little thing like that; and as a bullet wound there produces but little blood, none came in sight because of the clothing and swaddlings under the armor. the body was dragged over to let the king and the swells look down upon it. they were stupefied with astonishment naturally. i was requested to come and explain the miracle. but i remained in my tracks, like a statue, and said: "if it is a command, i will come, but my lord the king knows that i am where the laws of combat require me to remain while any desire to come against me." i waited. nobody challenged. then i said: "if there are any who doubt that this field is well and fairly won, i do not wait for them to challenge me, i challenge them." "it is a gallant offer," said the king, "and well beseems you. whom will you name first?" "i name none, i challenge all! here i stand, and dare the chivalry of england to come against me -not by individuals, but in mass!" "what!" shouted a score of knights. "you have heard the challenge. take it, or i proclaim you recreant knights and vanquished, every one!" it was a "bluff" you know. at such a time it is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to "call," and you rake in the chips. but just this once -well, things looked squally! in just no time, five hundred knights were scrambling into their saddles, and before you could wink a widely scattering drove were under way and clattering down upon me. i snatched both revolvers from the holsters and began to measure distances and calculate chances. bang! one saddle empty. bang! another one. bang -bang, and i bagged two. well, it was nip and tuck with us, and i knew it. if i spent the eleventh shot without convincing these people, the twelfth man would kill me, sure. and so i never did feel so happy as i did when my ninth downed its man and i detected the wavering in the crowd which is premonitory of panic. an instant lost now could knock out my last chance. but i didn't lose it. i raised both revolvers and pointed them -the halted host stood their ground just about one good square moment, then broke and fled. the day was mine. knight-errantry was a doomed institution. the march of civilization was begun. how did i feel? ah, you never could imagine it. and brer merlin? his stock was flat again. somehow, every time the magic of fol-de-rol tried conclusions with the magic of science, the magic of fol-de-rol got left. chapter xl. three years later when i broke the back of knight-errantry that time, i no longer felt obliged to work in secret. so, the very next day i exposed my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine factories and workshops to an astonished world. that is to say, i exposed the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth. well, it is always a good plan to follow up an advantage promptly. the knights were temporarily down, but if i would keep them so i must just simply paralyze them -nothing short of that would answer. you see, i was "bluffing" that last time in the field; it would be natural for them to work around to that conclusion, if i gave them a chance. so i must not give them time; and i didn't. i renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, posted it up where any priest could read it to them, and also kept it standing in the advertising columns of the paper. i not only renewed it, but added to its proportions. i said, name the day, and i would take fifty assistants and stand up against the massed chivalry of the whole earth and destroy it. i was not bluffing this time. i meant what i said; i could do what i promised. there wasn't any way to misunderstand the language of that challenge. even the dullest of the chivalry perceived that this was a plain case of "put up, or shut up." they were wise and did the latter. in all the next three years they gave me no trouble worth mentioning. consider the three years sped. now look around on england. a happy and prosperous country, and strangely altered. schools everywhere, and several colleges; a number of pretty good newspapers. even authorship was taking a start; sir dinadan the humorist was first in the field, with a volume of gray-headed jokes which i had been familiar with during thirteen centuries. if he had left out that old rancid one about the lecturer i wouldn't have said anything; but i couldn't stand that one. i suppressed the book and hanged the author. slavery was dead and gone; all men were equal before the law; taxation had been equalized. the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the typewriter, the sewing-machine, and all the thousand willing and handy servants of steam and electricity were working their way into favor. we had a steamboat or two on the thames, we had steam warships, and the beginnings of a steam commercial marine; i was getting ready to send out an expedition to discover america. we were building several lines of railway, and our line from camelot to london was already finished and in operation. i was shrewd enough to make all offices connected with the passenger service places of high and distinguished honor. my idea was to attract the chivalry and nobility, and make them useful and keep them out of mischief. the plan worked very well, the competition for the places was hot. the conductor of the 4.33 express was a duke; there wasn't a passenger conductor on the line below the degree of earl. they were good men, every one, but they had two defects which i couldn't cure, and so had to wink at: they wouldn't lay aside their armor, and they would "knock down" fare -i mean rob the company. there was hardly a knight in all the land who wasn't in some useful employment. they were going from end to end of the country in all manner of useful missionary capacities; their penchant for wandering, and their experience in it, made them altogether the most effective spreaders of civilization we had. they went clothed in steel and equipped with sword and lance and battle-axe, and if they couldn't persuade a person to try a sewing-machine on the installment plan, or a melodeon, or a barbed-wire fence, or a prohibition journal, or any of the other thousand and one things they canvassed for, they removed him and passed on. i was very happy. things were working steadily toward a secretly longed-for point. you see, i had two schemes in my head which were the vastest of all my projects. the one was to overthrow the catholic church and set up the protestant faith on its ruins -not as an established church, but a go-as-you-please one; and the other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commanding that upon arthur's death unlimited suffrage should be introduced, and given to men and women alike -at any rate to all men, wise or unwise, and to all mothers who at middle age should be found to know nearly as much as their sons at twenty-one. arthur was good for thirty years yet, he being about my own age -that is to say, forty -and i believed that in that time i could easily have the active part of the population of that day ready and eager for an event which should be the first of its kind in the history of the world -a rounded and complete governmental revolution without bloodshed. the result to be a republic. well, i may as well confess, though i do feel ashamed when i think of it: i was beginning to have a base hankering to be its first president myself. yes, there was more or less human nature in me; i found that out. clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modified way. his idea was a republic, without privileged orders, but with a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective chief magistrate. he believed that no nation that had ever known the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it and not fade away and die of melancholy. i urged that kings were dangerous. he said, then have cats. he was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. they would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive; finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house, and "tom vii., or tom xi., or tom xiv. by the grace of god king," would sound as well as it would when applied to the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on. "and as a rule," said he, in his neat modern english, "the character of these cats would be considerably above the character of the average king, and this would be an immense moral advantage to the nation, for the reason that a nation always models its morals after its monarch's. the worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it. the eyes of the whole harried world would soon be fixed upon this humane and gentle system, and royal butchers would presently begin to disappear; their subjects would fill the vacancies with catlings from our own royal house; we should become a factory; we should supply the thrones of the world; within forty years all europe would be governed by cats, and we should furnish the cats. the reign of universal peace would begin then, to end no more forever...... me-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow -fzt! -wow!" hang him, i supposed he was in earnest, and was beginning to be persuaded by him, until he exploded that cat-howl and startled me almost out of my clothes. but he never could be in earnest. he didn't know what it was. he had pictured a distinct and perfectly rational and feasible improvement upon constitutional monarchy, but he was too feather-headed to know it, or care anything about it, either. i was going to give him a scolding, but sandy came flying in at that moment, wild with terror, and so choked with sobs that for a minute she could not get her voice. i ran and took her in my arms, and lavished caresses upon her and said, beseechingly: "speak, darling, speak! what is it?" her head fell limp upon my bosom, and she gasped, almost inaudibly: "hello-central!" "quick!" i shouted to clarence; "telephone the king's homeopath to come!" in two minutes i was kneeling by the child's crib, and sandy was dispatching servants here, there, and everywhere, all over the palace. i took in the situation almost at a glance -membranous croup! i bent down and whispered: "wake up, sweetheart! hello-central" she opened her soft eyes languidly, and made out to say: "papa." that was a comfort. she was far from dead yet. i sent for preparations of sulphur, i rousted out the croup-kettle myself; for i don't sit down and wait for doctors when sandy or the child is sick. i knew how to nurse both of them, and had had experience. this little chap had lived in my arms a good part of its small life, and often i could soothe away its troubles and get it to laugh through the tear-dews on its eyelashes when even its mother couldn't. sir launcelot, in his richest armor, came striding along the great hall now on his way to the stockboard; he was president of the stock-board, and occupied the siege perilous, which he had bought of sir galahad; for the stock-board consisted of the knights of the round table, and they used the round table for business purposes now. seats at it were worth -well, you would never believe the figure, so it is no use to state it. sir launcelot was a bear, and he had put up a corner in one of the new lines, and was just getting ready to squeeze the shorts to-day; but what of that? he was the same old launcelot, and when he glanced in as he was passing the door and found out that his pet was sick, that was enough for him; bulls and bears might fight it out their own way for all him, he would come right in here and stand by little hellocentral for all he was worth. and that was what he did. he shied his helmet into the corner, and in half a minute he had a new wick in the alcohol lamp and was firing up on the croup-kettle. by this time sandy had built a blanket canopy over the crib, and everything was ready. sir launcelot got up steam, he and i loaded up the kettle with unslaked lime and carbolic acid, with a touch of lactic acid added thereto, then filled the thing up with water and inserted the steam-spout under the canopy. everything was ship-shape now, and we sat down on either side of the crib to stand our watch. sandy was so grateful and so comforted that she charged a couple of church-wardens with willow-bark and sumach-tobacco for us, and told us to smoke as much as we pleased, it couldn't get under the canopy, and she was used to smoke, being the first lady in the land who had ever seen a cloud blown. well, there couldn't be a more contented or comfortable sight than sir launcelot in his noble armor sitting in gracious serenity at the end of a yard of snowy church-warden. he was a beautiful man, a lovely man, and was just intended to make a wife and children happy. but, of course guenever -however, it's no use to cry over what's done and can't be helped. well, he stood watch-and-watch with me, right straight through, for three days and nights, till the child was out of danger; then he took her up in his great arms and kissed her, with his plumes falling about her golden head, then laid her softly in sandy's lap again and took his stately way down the vast hall, between the ranks of admiring men-at-arms and menials, and so disappeared. and no instinct warned me that i should never look upon him again in this world! lord, what a world of heart-break it is. the doctors said we must take the child away, if we would coax her back to health and strength again. and she must have sea-air. so we took a man-ofwar, and a suite of two hundred and sixty persons, and went cruising about, and after a fortnight of this we stepped ashore on the french coast, and the doctors thought it would be a good idea to make something of a stay there. the little king of that region offered us his hospitalities, and we were glad to accept. if he had had as many conveniences as he lacked, we should have been plenty comfortable enough; even as it was, we made out very well, in his queer old castle, by the help of comforts and luxuries from the ship. at the end of a month i sent the vessel home for fresh supplies, and for news. we expected her back in three or four days. she would bring me, along with other news, the result of a certain experiment which i had been starting. it was a project of mine to replace the tournament with something which might furnish an escape for the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucks entertained and out of mischief, and at the same time preserve the best thing in them, which was their hardy spirit of emulation. i had had a choice band of them in private training for some time, and the date was now arriving for their first public effort. this experiment was baseball. in order to give the thing vogue from the start, and place it out of the reach of criticism, i chose my nines by rank, not capacity. there wasn't a knight in either team who wasn't a sceptered sovereign. as for material of this sort, there was a glut of it always around arthur. you couldn't throw a brick in any direction and not cripple a king. of course, i couldn't get these people to leave off their armor; they wouldn't do that when they bathed. they consented to differentiate the armor so that a body could tell one team from the other, but that was the most they would do. so, one of the teams wore chain-mail ulsters, and the other wore platearmor made of my new bessemer steel. their practice in the field was the most fantastic thing i ever saw. being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way, but stood still and took the result; when a bessemer was at the bat and a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yards sometimes. and when a man was running, and threw himself on his stomach to slide to his base, it was like an iron-clad coming into port. at first i appointed men of no rank to act as umpires, but i had to discontinue that. these people were no easier to please than other nines. the umpire's first decision was usually his last; they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him home on a shutter. when it was noticed that no umpire ever survived a game, umpiring got to be unpopular. so i was obliged to appoint somebody whose rank and lofty position under the government would protect him. here are the names of the nines: bessemers ulsters king arthur. emperor lucius. king lot of lothian. king logris. king of northgalis. king marhalt of ireland. king marsil. king morganore. king of little britain. king mark of cornwall. king labor. king nentres of garlot. king pellam of listengese. king meliodas of liones. king bagdemagus. king of the lake. king tolleme la feintes. the sowdan of syria. umpire -clarence. the first public game would certainly draw fifty thousand people; and for solid fun would be worth going around the world to see. everything would be favorable; it was balmy and beautiful spring weather now, and nature was all tailored out in her new clothes. chapter xli. the interdict however, my attention was suddenly snatched from such matters; our child began to lose ground again, and we had to go to sitting up with her, her case became so serious. we couldn't bear to allow anybody to help in this service, so we two stood watch-and-watch, day in and day out. ah, sandy, what a right heart she had, how simple, and genuine, and good she was! she was a flawless wife and mother; and yet i had married her for no other particular reasons, except that by the customs of chivalry she was my property until some knight should win her from me in the field. she had hunted britain over for me; had found me at the hanging-bout outside of london, and had straightway resumed her old place at my side in the placidest way and as of right. i was a new englander, and in my opinion this sort of partnership would compromise her, sooner or later. she couldn't see how, but i cut argument short and we had a wedding. now i didn't know i was drawing a prize, yet that was what i did draw. within the twelvemonth i became her worshiper; and ours was the dearest and perfectest comradeship that ever was. people talk about beautiful friendships between two persons of the same sex. what is the best of that sort, as compared with the friendship of man and wife, where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same? there is no place for comparison between the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine. in my dreams, along at first, i still wandered thirteen centuries away, and my unsatisfied spirit went calling and harking all up and down the unreplying vacancies of a vanished world. many a time sandy heard that imploring cry come from my lips in my sleep. with a grand magnanimity she saddled that cry of mine upon our child, conceiving it to be the name of some lost darling of mine. it touched me to tears, and it also nearly knocked me off my feet, too, when she smiled up in my face for an earned reward, and played her quaint and pretty surprise upon me: "the name of one who was dear to thee is here preserved, here made holy, and the music of it will abide alway in our ears. now thou'lt kiss me, as knowing the name i have given the child." but i didn't know it, all the same. i hadn't an idea in the world; but it would have been cruel to confess it and spoil her pretty game; so i never let on, but said: "yes, i know, sweetheart -how dear and good it is of you, too! but i want to hear these lips of yours, which are also mine, utter it first -then its music will be perfect." pleased to the marrow, she murmured: "hello-central!" i didn't laugh -i am always thankful for that -but the strain ruptured every cartilage in me, and for weeks afterward i could hear my bones clack when i walked. she never found out her mistake. the first time she heard that form of salute used at the telephone she was surprised, and not pleased; but i told her i had given order for it: that henceforth and forever the telephone must always be invoked with that reverent formality, in perpetual honor and remembrance of my lost friend and her small namesake. this was not true. but it answered. well, during two weeks and a half we watched by the crib, and in our deep solicitude we were unconscious of any world outside of that sick-room. then our reward came: the center of the universe turned the corner and began to mend. grateful? it isn't the term. there isn't any term for it. you know that yourself, if you've watched your child through the valley of the shadow and seen it come back to life and sweep night out of the earth with one all-illuminating smile that you could cover with your hand. why, we were back in this world in one instant! then we looked the same startled thought into each other's eyes at the same moment; more than two weeks gone, and that ship not back yet! in another minute i appeared in the presence of my train. they had been steeped in troubled bodings all this time -their faces showed it. i called an escort and we galloped five miles to a hilltop overlooking the sea. where was my great commerce that so lately had made these glistening expanses populous and beautiful with its white-winged flocks? vanished, every one! not a sail, from verge to verge, not a smoke-bank -just a dead and empty solitude, in place of all that brisk and breezy life. i went swiftly back, saying not a word to anybody. i told sandy this ghastly news. we could imagine no explanation that would begin to explain. had there been an invasion? an earthquake? a pestilence? had the nation been swept out of existence? but guessing was profitless. i must go -at once. i borrowed the king's navy -a "ship" no bigger than a steam launch -and was soon ready. the parting -ah, yes, that was hard. as i was devouring the child with last kisses, it brisked up and jabbered out its vocabulary! -the first time in more than two weeks, and it made fools of us for joy. the darling mispronunciations of childhood! -dear me, there's no music that can touch it; and how one grieves when it wastes away and dissolves into correctness, knowing it will never visit his bereaved ear again. well, how good it was to be able to carry that gracious memory away with me! i approached england the next morning, with the wide highway of salt water all to myself. there were ships in the harbor, at dover, but they were naked as to sails, and there was no sign of life about them. it was sunday; yet at canterbury the streets were empty; strangest of all, there was not even a priest in sight, and no stroke of a bell fell upon my ear. the mournfulness of death was everywhere. i couldn't understand it. at last, in the further edge of that town i saw a small funeral procession -just a family and a few friends following a coffin -no priest; a funeral without bell, book, or candle; there was a church there close at hand, but they passed it by weeping, and did not enter it; i glanced up at the belfry, and there hung the bell, shrouded in black, and its tongue tied back. now i knew! now i understood the stupendous calamity that had overtaken england. invasion? invasion is a triviality to it. it was the interdict! i asked no questions; i didn't need to ask any. the church had struck; the thing for me to do was to get into a disguise, and go warily. one of my servants gave me a suit of clothes, and when we were safe beyond the town i put them on, and from that time i traveled alone; i could not risk the embarrassment of company. a miserable journey. a desolate silence everywhere. even in london itself. traffic had ceased; men did not talk or laugh, or go in groups, or even in couples; they moved aimlessly about, each man by himself, with his head down, and woe and terror at his heart. the tower showed recent war-scars. verily, much had been happening. of course, i meant to take the train for camelot. train! why, the station was as vacant as a cavern. i moved on. the journey to camelot was a repetition of what i had already seen. the monday and the tuesday differed in no way from the sunday. i arrived far in the night. from being the best electriclighted town in the kingdom and the most like a recumbent sun of anything you ever saw, it was become simply a blot -a blot upon darkness -that is to say, it was darker and solider than the rest of the darkness, and so you could see it a little better; it made me feel as if maybe it was symbolical -a sort of sign that the church was going to keep the upper hand now, and snuff out all my beautiful civilization just like that. i found no life stirring in the somber streets. i groped my way with a heavy heart. the vast castle loomed black upon the hilltop, not a spark visible about it. the drawbridge was down, the great gate stood wide, i entered without challenge, my own heels making the only sound i heard -and it was sepulchral enough, in those huge vacant courts. chapter xlii. war! i found clarence alone in his quarters, drowned in melancholy; and in place of the electric light, he had reinstituted the ancient rag-lamp, and sat there in a grisly twilight with all curtains drawn tight. he sprang up and rushed for me eagerly, saying: "oh, it's worth a billion milrays to look upon a live person again!" he knew me as easily as if i hadn't been disguised at all. which frightened me; one may easily believe that. "quick, now, tell me the meaning of this fearful disaster," i said. "how did it come about?" "well, if there hadn't been any queen guenever, it wouldn't have come so early; but it would have come, anyway. it would have come on your own account by and by; by luck, it happened to come on the queen's." "and sir launcelot's?" "just so." "give me the details." "i reckon you will grant that during some years there has been only one pair of eyes in these kingdoms that has not been looking steadily askance at the queen and sir launcelot --" "yes, king arthur's." "-and only one heart that was without suspicion --" "yes -the king's; a heart that isn't capable of thinking evil of a friend." "well, the king might have gone on, still happy and unsuspecting, to the end of his days, but for one of your modern improvements -the stock-board. when you left, three miles of the london, canterbury and dover were ready for the rails, and also ready and ripe for manipulation in the stock-market. it was wildcat, and everybody knew it. the stock was for sale at a give-away. what does sir launcelot do, but --" "yes, i know; he quietly picked up nearly all of it for a song; then he bought about twice as much more, deliverable upon call; and he was about to call when i left." "very well, he did call. the boys couldn't deliver. oh, he had them -and he just settled his grip and squeezed them. they were laughing in their sleeves over their smartness in selling stock to him at 15 and 16 and along there that wasn't worth 10. well, when they had laughed long enough on that side of their mouths, they rested-up that side by shifting the laugh to the other side. that was when they compromised with the invincible at 283!" "good land!" "he skinned them alive, and they deserved it -anyway, the whole kingdom rejoiced. well, among the flayed were sir agravaine and sir mordred, nephews to the king. end of the first act. act second, scene first, an apartment in carlisle castle, where the court had gone for a few days' hunting. persons present, the whole tribe of the king's nephews. mordred and agravaine propose to call the guileless arthur's attention to guenever and sir launcelot. sir gawaine, sir gareth, and sir gaheris will have nothing to do with it. a dispute ensues, with loud talk; in the midst of it enter the king. mordred and agravaine spring their devastating tale upon him. tableau. a trap is laid for launcelot, by the king's command, and sir launcelot walks into it. he made it sufficiently uncomfortable for the ambushed witnesses -to wit, mordred, agravaine, and twelve knights of lesser rank, for he killed every one of them but mordred; but of course that couldn't straighten matters between launcelot and the king, and didn't." "oh, dear, only one thing could result -i see that. war, and the knights of the realm divided into a king's party and a sir launcelot's party." "yes -that was the way of it. the king sent the queen to the stake, proposing to purify her with fire. launcelot and his knights rescued her, and in doing it slew certain good old friends of yours and mine -in fact, some of the best we ever had; to wit, sir belias le orgulous, sir segwarides, sir griflet le fils de dieu, sir brandiles, sir aglovale --" "oh, you tear out my heartstrings." "-wait, i'm not done yet -sir tor, sir gauter, sir gillimer --" "the very best man in my subordinate nine. what a handy right-fielder he was!" "-sir reynold's three brothers, sir damus, sir priamus, sir kay the stranger --" "my peerless short-stop! i've seen him catch a daisy-cutter in his teeth. come, i can't stand this!" "-sir driant, sir lambegus, sir herminde, sir pertilope, sir perimones, and -whom do you think?" "rush! go on." "sir gaheris, and sir gareth -both!" "oh, incredible! their love for launcelot was indestructible." "well, it was an accident. they were simply onlookers; they were unarmed, and were merely there to witness the queen's punishment. sir launcelot smote down whoever came in the way of his blind fury, and he killed these without noticing who they were. here is an instantaneous photograph one of our boys got of the battle; it's for sale on every news-stand. there -the figures nearest the queen are sir launcelot with his sword up, and sir gareth gasping his latest breath. you can catch the agony in the queen's face through the curling smoke. it's a rattling battle-picture." "indeed, it is. we must take good care of it; its historical value is incalculable. go on." "well, the rest of the tale is just war, pure and simple. launcelot retreated to his town and castle of joyous gard, and gathered there a great following of knights. the king, with a great host, went there, and there was desperate fighting during several days, and, as a result, all the plain around was paved with corpses and cast-iron. then the church patched up a peace between arthur and launcelot and the queen and everybody -everybody but sir gawaine. he was bitter about the slaying of his brothers, gareth and gaheris, and would not be appeased. he notified launcelot to get him thence, and make swift preparation, and look to be soon attacked. so launcelot sailed to his duchy of guienne with his following, and gawaine soon followed with an army, and he beguiled arthur to go with him. arthur left the kingdom in sir mordred's hands until you should return --" "ah -a king's customary wisdom!" "yes. sir mordred set himself at once to work to make his kingship permanent. he was going to marry guenever, as a first move; but she fled and shut herself up in the tower of london. mordred attacked; the bishop of canterbury dropped down on him with the interdict. the king returned; mordred fought him at dover, at canterbury, and again at barham down. then there was talk of peace and a composition. terms, mordred to have cornwall and kent during arthur's life, and the whole kingdom afterward." "well, upon my word! my dream of a republic to be a dream, and so remain." "yes. the two armies lay near salisbury. gawaine -gawaine's head is at dover castle, he fell in the fight there -gawaine appeared to arthur in a dream, at least his ghost did, and warned him to refrain from conflict for a month, let the delay cost what it might. but battle was precipitated by an accident. arthur had given order that if a sword was raised during the consultation over the proposed treaty with mordred, sound the trumpet and fall on! for he had no confidence in mordred. mordred had given a similar order to his people. well, by and by an adder bit a knight's heel; the knight forgot all about the order, and made a slash at the adder with his sword. inside of half a minute those two prodigious hosts came together with a crash! they butchered away all day. then the king -however, we have started something fresh since you left -our paper has." "no? what is that?" "war correspondence!" "why, that's good." "yes, the paper was booming right along, for the interdict made no impression, got no grip, while the war lasted. i had war correspondents with both armies. i will finish that battle by reading you what one of the boys says: then the king looked about him, and then was he ware of all his host and of all his good knights were left no more on live but two knights, that was sir lucan de butlere, and his brother sir bedivere: and they were full sore wounded. jesu mercy, said the king, where are all my noble knights becomen? alas that ever i should see this doleful day. for now, said arthur, i am come to mine end. but would to god that i wist where were that traitor sir mordred, that hath caused all this mischief. then was king arthur ware where sir mordred leaned upon his sword among a great heap of dead men. now give me my spear, said arthur unto sir lucan, for yonder i have espied the traitor that all this woe hath wrought. sir, let him be, said sir lucan, for he is unhappy; and if ye pass this unhappy day, ye shall be right well revenged upon him. good lord, remember ye of your night's dream, and what the spirit of sir gawaine told you this night, yet god of his great goodness hath preserved you hitherto. therefore, for god's sake, my lord, leave off by this. for blessed be god ye have won the field: for here we be three on live, and with sir mordred is none on live. and if ye leave off now, this wicked day of destiny is past. tide me death, betide me life, saith the king, now i see him yonder alone, he shall never escape mine hands, for at a better avail shall i never have him. god speed you well, said sir bedivere. then the king gat his spear in both his hands, and ran toward sir mordred crying, traitor, now is thy death day come. and when sir mordred heard sir arthur, he ran until him with his sword drawn in his hand. and then king arthur smote sir mordred under the shield, with a foin of his spear throughout the body more than a fathom. and when sir mordred felt that he had his death's wound, he thrust himself, with the might that he had, up to the butt of king arthur's spear. and right so he smote his father arthur with his sword holden in both his hands, on the side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet and the brain-pan, and therewithal sir mordred fell stark dead to the earth. and the noble arthur fell in a swoon to the earth, and there he swooned oft-times "that is a good piece of war correspondence, clarence; you are a first-rate newspaper man. well -is the king all right?" did he get well?" "poor soul, no. he is dead." i was utterly stunned; it had not seemed to me that any wound could be mortal to him. "and the queen, clarence?" "she is a nun, in almesbury." "what changes! and in such a short while. it is inconceivable. what next, i wonder?" "i can tell you what next." "well?" "stake our lives and stand by them!" "what do you mean by that?" "the church is master now. the interdict included you with mordred; it is not to be removed while you remain alive. the clans are gathering. the church has gathered all the knights that are left alive, and as soon as you are discovered we shall have business on our hands." "stuff! with our deadly scientific war-material; with our hosts of trained --" "save your breath -we haven't sixty faithful left!" "what are you saying? our schools, our colleges, our vast workshops, our --" "when those knights come, those establishments will empty themselves and go over to the enemy. did you think you had educated the superstition out of those people?" "i certainly did think it." "well, then, you may unthink it. they stood every strain easily -until the interdict. since then, they merely put on a bold outside -at heart they are quaking. make up your mind to it -when the armies come, the mask will fall." "it's hard news. we are lost. they will turn our own science against us." "no they won't." "why?" "because i and a handful of the faithful have blocked that game. i'll tell you what i've done, and what moved me to it. smart as you are, the church was smarter. it was the church that sent you cruising -through her servants, the doctors." "clarence!" "it is the truth. i know it. every officer of your ship was the church's picked servant, and so was every man of the crew." "oh, come!" "it is just as i tell you. i did not find out these things at once, but i found them out finally. did you send me verbal information, by the commander of the ship, to the effect that upon his return to you, with supplies, you were going to leave cadiz --" "cadiz! i haven't been at cadiz at all!" "-going to leave cadiz and cruise in distant seas indefinitely, for the health of your family? did you send me that word?" "of course not. i would have written, wouldn't i?" "naturally. i was troubled and suspicious. when the commander sailed again i managed to ship a spy with him. i have never heard of vessel or spy since. i gave myself two weeks to hear from you in. then i resolved to send a ship to cadiz. there was a reason why i didn't." "what was that?" "our navy had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared! also, as suddenly and as mysteriously, the railway and telegraph and telephone service ceased, the men all deserted, poles were cut down, the church laid a ban upon the electric light! i had to be up and doing -and straight off. your life was safe -nobody in these kingdoms but merlin would venture to touch such a magician as you without ten thousand men at his back -i had nothing to think of but how to put preparations in the best trim against your coming. i felt safe myself -nobody would be anxious to touch a pet of yours. so this is what i did. from our various works i selected all the men -boys i mean -whose faithfulness under whatsoever pressure i could swear to, and i called them together secretly and gave them their instructions. there are fifty-two of them; none younger than fourteen, and none above seventeen years old." "why did you select boys?" "because all the others were born in an atmosphere of superstition and reared in it. it is in their blood and bones. we imagined we had educated it out of them; they thought so, too; the interdict woke them up like a thunderclap! it revealed them to themselves, and it revealed them to me, too. with boys it was different. such as have been under our training from seven to ten years have had no acquaintance with the church's terrors, and it was among these that i found my fifty-two. as a next move, i paid a private visit to that old cave of merlin's -not the small one -the big one --" "yes, the one where we secretly established our first great electric plant when i was projecting a miracle." "just so. and as that miracle hadn't become necessary then, i thought it might be a good idea to utilize the plant now. i've provisioned the cave for a siege --" "a good idea, a first-rate idea." "i think so. i placed four of my boys there as a guard -inside, and out of sight. nobody was to be hurt -while outside; but any attempt to enter -well, we said just let anybody try it! then i went out into the hills and uncovered and cut the secret wires which connected your bedroom with the wires that go to the dynamite deposits under all our vast factories, mills, workshops, magazines, etc., and about midnight i and my boys turned out and connected that wire with the cave, and nobody but you and i suspects where the other end of it goes to. we laid it under ground, of course, and it was all finished in a couple of hours or so. we sha'n't have to leave our fortress now when we want to blow up our civilization." "it was the right move -and the natural one; military necessity, in the changed condition of things. well, what changes have come! we expected to be besieged in the palace some time or other, but -however, go on." "next, we built a wire fence." "wire fence?" "yes. you dropped the hint of it yourself, two or three years ago." "oh, i remember -the time the church tried her strength against us the first time, and presently thought it wise to wait for a hopefuler season. well, how have you arranged the fence?" "i start twelve immensely strong wires -naked, not insulated -from a big dynamo in the cave -dynamo with no brushes except a positive and a negative one --" "yes, that's right." "the wires go out from the cave and fence in a circle of level ground a hundred yards in diameter; they make twelve independent fences, ten feet apart -that is to say, twelve circles within circles -and their ends come into the cave again." "right; go on." "the fences are fastened to heavy oaken posts only three feet apart, and these posts are sunk five feet in the ground." "that is good and strong." "yes. the wires have no ground-connection outside of the cave. they go out from the positive brush of the dynamo; there is a ground-connection through the negative brush; the other ends of the wire return to the cave, and each is grounded independently." "nono, that won't do!" "why?" "it's too expensive -uses up force for nothing. you don't want any ground-connection except the one through the negative brush. the other end of every wire must be brought back into the cave and fastened independently, and without any ground-connection. now, then, observe the economy of it. a cavalry charge hurls itself against the fence; you are using no power, you are spending no money, for there is only one ground-connection till those horses come against the wire; the moment they touch it they form a connection with the negative brush through the ground, and drop dead. don't you see? -you are using no energy until it is needed; your lightning is there, and ready, like the load in a gun; but it isn't costing you a cent till you touch it off. oh, yes, the single ground-connection --" "of course! i don't know how i overlooked that. it's not only cheaper, but it's more effectual than the other way, for if wires break or get tangled, no harm is done. "no, especially if we have a tell-tale in the cave and disconnect the broken wire. well, go on. the gatlings?" "yes -that's arranged. in the center of the inner circle, on a spacious platform six feet high, i've grouped a battery of thirteen gatling guns, and provided plenty of ammunition." "that's it. they command every approach, and when the church's knights arrive, there's going to be music. the brow of the precipice over the cave --" "i've got a wire fence there, and a gatling. they won't drop any rocks down on us." "well, and the glass-cylinder dynamite torpedoes?" "that's attended to. it's the prettiest garden that was ever planted. it's a belt forty feet wide, and goes around the outer fence -distance between it and the fence one hundred yards -kind of neutral ground that space is. there isn't a single square yard of that whole belt but is equipped with a torpedo. we laid them on the surface of the ground, and sprinkled a layer of sand over them. it's an innocent looking garden, but you let a man start in to hoe it once, and you'll see." "you tested the torpedoes?" "well, i was going to, but --" "but what? why, it's an immense oversight not to apply a --" "test? yes, i know; but they're all right; i laid a few in the public road beyond our lines and they've been tested." "oh, that alters the case. who did it?" "a church committee." "how kind!" "yes. they came to command us to make submission . you see they didn't really come to test the torpedoes; that was merely an incident." "did the committee make a report?" "yes, they made one. you could have heard it a mile." "unanimous?" "that was the nature of it. after that i put up some signs, for the protection of future committees, and we have had no intruders since." "clarence, you've done a world of work, and done it perfectly." "we had plenty of time for it; there wasn't any occasion for hurry." we sat silent awhile, thinking. then my mind was made up, and i said: "yes, everything is ready; everything is shipshape, no detail is wanting. i know what to do now." "so do i; sit down and wait." "no, sir! rise up and strike!" "do you mean it?" "yes, indeed! the defensive isn't in my line, and the offensive is. that is, when i hold a fair hand -two-thirds as good a hand as the enemy. oh, yes, we'll rise up and strike; that's our game." " a hundred to one you are right. when does the performance begin?" "now! we'll proclaim the republic." "well, that will precipitate things, sure enough!" "it will make them buzz, i tell you! england will be a hornets' nest before noon to-morrow, if the church's hand hasn't lost its cunning -and we know it hasn't. now you write and i'll dictate thus: "proclamation -- "be it known unto all. whereas the king having died and left no heir, it becomes my duty to continue the executive authority vested in me, until a government shall have been created and set in motion. the monarchy has lapsed, it no longer exists. by consequence, all political power has reverted to its original source, the people of the nation. with the monarchy, its several adjuncts died also; wherefore there is no longer a nobility, no longer a privileged class, no longer an established church; all men are become exactly equal; they are upon one common level, and religion is free. a republic is hereby proclaimed, as being the natural estate of a nation when other authority has ceased. it is the duty of the british people to meet together immediately, and by their votes elect representatives and deliver into their hands the government." i signed it "the boss," and dated it from merlin's cave. clarence said -"why, that tells where we are, and invites them to call right away." "that is the idea. we strike -by the proclamation -then it's their innings. now have the thing set up and printed and posted, right off; that is, give the order; then, if you've got a couple of bicycles handy at the foot of the hill, ho for merlin's cave!" "i shall be ready in ten minutes. what a cyclone there is going to be to-morrow when this piece of paper gets to work!...... it's a pleasant old palace, this is; i wonder if we shall ever again -but never mind about that." chapter xliii. the battle of the sand belt in merlin's cave -clarence and i and fifty-two fresh, bright, well-educated, clean-minded young british boys. at dawn i sent an order to the factories and to all our great works to stop operations and remove all life to a safe distance, as everything was going to be blown up by secret mines, "and no telling at what moment -therefore, vacate at once." these people knew me, and had confidence in my word. they would clear out without waiting to part their hair, and i could take my own time about dating the explosion. you couldn't hire one of them to go back during the century, if the explosion was still impending. we had a week of waiting. it was not dull for me, because i was writing all the time. during the first three days, i finished turning my old diary into this narrative form; it only required a chapter or so to bring it down to date. the rest of the week i took up in writing letters to my wife. it was always my habit to write to sandy every day, whenever we were separate, and now i kept up the habit for love of it, and of her, though i couldn't do anything with the letters, of course, after i had written them. but it put in the time, you see, and was almost like talking; it was almost as if i was saying, "sandy, if you and hello-central were here in the cave, instead of only your photographs, what good times we could have!" and then, you know, i could imagine the baby googooing something out in reply, with its fists in its mouth and itself stretched across its mother's lap on its back, and she a-laughing and admiring and worshiping, and now and then tickling under the baby's chin to set it cackling, and then maybe throwing in a word of answer to me herself -and so on and so on -well, don't you know, i could sit there in the cave with my pen, and keep it up, that way, by the hour with them. why, it was almost like having us all together again. i had spies out every night, of course, to get news. every report made things look more and more impressive. the hosts were gathering, gathering; down all the roads and paths of england the knights were riding, and priests rode with them, to hearten these original crusaders, this being the church's war. all the nobilities, big and little, were on their way, and all the gentry. this was all as was expected. we should thin out this sort of folk to such a degree that the people would have nothing to do but just step to the front with their republic and -ah, what a donkey i was! toward the end of the week i began to get this large and disenchanting fact through my head: that the mass of the nation had swung their caps and shouted for the republic for about one day, and there an end! the church, the nobles, and the gentry then turned one grand, alldisapproving frown upon them and shriveled them into sheep! from that moment the sheep had begun to gather to the fold -that is to say, the camps -and offer their valueless lives and their valuable wool to the "righteous cause." why, even the very men who had lately been slaves were in the "righteous cause," and glorifying it, praying for it, sentimentally slabbering over it, just like all the other commoners. imagine such human muck as this; conceive of this folly! yes, it was now "death to the republic!" everywhere -not a dissenting voice. all england was marching against us! truly, this was more than i had bargained for. i watched my fifty-two boys narrowly; watched their faces, their walk, their unconscious attitudes: for all these are a language -a language given us purposely that it may betray us in times of emergency, when we have secrets which we want to keep. i knew that that thought would keep saying itself over and over again in their minds and hearts, all england is marching against us! and ever more strenuously imploring attention with each repetition, ever more sharply realizing itself to their imaginations, until even in their sleep they would find no rest from it, but hear the vague and flitting creatures of the dreams say, all england -all england! -is marching against you! i knew all this would happen; i knew that ultimately the pressure would become so great that it would compel utterance; therefore, i must be ready with an answer at that time -an answer well chosen and tranquilizing. i was right. the time came. they had to speak. poor lads, it was pitiful to see, they were so pale, so worn, so troubled. at first their spokesman could hardly find voice or words; but he presently got both. this is what he said -and he put it in the neat modern english taught him in my schools: "we have tried to forget what we are -english boys! we have tried to put reason before sentiment, duty before love; our minds approve, but our hearts reproach us. while apparently it was only the nobility, only the gentry, only the twenty-five or thirty thousand knights left alive out of the late wars, we were of one mind, and undisturbed by any troubling doubt; each and every one of these fifty-two lads who stand here before you, said, 'they have chosen -it is their affair.' but think! -the matter is altered -all england is marching against us! oh, sir, consider! -reflect! -these people are our people, they are bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, we love them -do not ask us to destroy our nation!" well, it shows the value of looking ahead, and being ready for a thing when it happens. if i hadn't foreseen this thing and been fixed, that boy would have had me! -i couldn't have said a word. but i was fixed. i said: "my boys, your hearts are in the right place, you have thought the worthy thought, you have done the worthy thing. you are english boys, you will remain english boys, and you will keep that name unsmirched. give yourselves no further concern, let your minds be at peace. consider this: while all england is marching against us, who is in the van? who, by the commonest rules of war, will march in the front? answer me." "the mounted host of mailed knights." "true. they are 30,000 strong. acres deep they will march. now, observe: none but they will ever strike the sand-belt! then there will be an episode! immediately after, the civilian multitude in the rear will retire, to meet business engagements elsewhere. none but nobles and gentry are knights, and none but these will remain to dance to our music after that episode. it is absolutely true that we shall have to fight nobody but these thirty thousand knights. now speak, and it shall be as you decide. shall we avoid the battle, retire from the field?" "no!!!" the shout was unanimous and hearty. "are you -are you -well, afraid of these thirty thousand knights?" that joke brought out a good laugh, the boys' troubles vanished away, and they went gaily to their posts. ah, they were a darling fifty-two! as pretty as girls, too. i was ready for the enemy now. let the approaching big day come along -it would find us on deck. the big day arrived on time. at dawn the sentry on watch in the corral came into the cave and reported a moving black mass under the horizon, and a faint sound which he thought to be military music. breakfast was just ready; we sat down and ate it. this over, i made the boys a little speech, and then sent out a detail to man the battery, with clarence in command of it. the sun rose presently and sent its unobstructed splendors over the land, and we saw a prodigious host moving slowly toward us, with the steady drift and aligned front of a wave of the sea. nearer and nearer it came, and more and more sublimely imposing became its aspect; yes, all england was there, apparently. soon we could see the innumerable banners fluttering, and then the sun struck the sea of armor and set it all aflash. yes, it was a fine sight; i hadn't ever seen anything to beat it. at last we could make out details. all the front ranks, no telling how many acres deep, were horsemen -plumed knights in armor. suddenly we heard the blare of trumpets; the slow walk burst into a gallop, and then -well, it was wonderful to see! down swept that vast horse-shoe wave -it approached the sand-belt -my breath stood still; nearer, nearer -the strip of green turf beyond the yellow belt grew narrow -narrower still -became a mere ribbon in front of the horses -then disappeared under their hoofs. great scott! why, the whole front of that host shot into the sky with a thunder-crash, and became a whirling tempest of rags and fragments; and along the ground lay a thick wall of smoke that hid what was left of the multitude from our sight. time for the second step in the plan of campaign! i touched a button, and shook the bones of england loose from her spine! in that explosion all our noble civilization-factories went up in the air and disappeared from the earth. it was a pity, but it was necessary. we could not afford to let the enemy turn our own weapons against us. now ensued one of the dullest quarter-hours i had ever endured. we waited in a silent solitude enclosed by our circles of wire, and by a circle of heavy smoke outside of these. we couldn't see over the wall of smoke, and we couldn't see through it. but at last it began to shred away lazily, and by the end of another quarter-hour the land was clear and our curiosity was enabled to satisfy itself. no living creature was in sight! we now perceived that additions had been made to our defenses. the dynamite had dug a ditch more than a hundred feet wide, all around us, and cast up an embankment some twenty-five feet high on both borders of it. as to destruction of life, it was amazing. moreover, it was beyond estimate. of course, we could not count the dead, because they did not exist as individuals, but merely as homogeneous protoplasm, with alloys of iron and buttons. no life was in sight, but necessarily there must have been some wounded in the rear ranks, who were carried off the field under cover of the wall of smoke; there would be sickness among the others -there always is, after an episode like that. but there would be no reinforcements; this was the last stand of the chivalry of england; it was all that was left of the order, after the recent annihilating wars. so i felt quite safe in believing that the utmost force that could for the future be brought against us would be but small; that is, of knights. i therefore issued a congratulatory proclamation to my army in these words: soldiers, champions of human liberty and equality: your general congratulates you! in the pride of his strength and the vanity of his renown, an arrogant enemy came against you. you were ready. the conflict was brief; on your side, glorious. this mighty victory, having been achieved utterly without loss, stands without example in history. so long as the planets shall continue to move in their orbits, the battle of the sand-belt will not perish out of the memories of men. the boss. i read it well, and the applause i got was very gratifying to me. i then wound up with these remarks: "the war with the english nation, as a nation, is at an end. the nation has retired from the field and the war. before it can be persuaded to return, war will have ceased. this campaign is the only one that is going to be fought. it will be brief -the briefest in history. also the most destructive to life, considered from the standpoint of proportion of casualties to numbers engaged. we are done with the nation; henceforth we deal only with the knights. english knights can be killed, but they cannot be conquered. we know what is before us. while one of these men remains alive, our task is not finished, the war is not ended. we will kill them all." [loud and long continued applause.] i picketed the great embankments thrown up around our lines by the dynamite explosion -merely a lookout of a couple of boys to announce the enemy when he should appear again. next, i sent an engineer and forty men to a point just beyond our lines on the south, to turn a mountain brook that was there, and bring it within our lines and under our command, arranging it in such a way that i could make instant use of it in an emergency. the forty men were divided into two shifts of twenty each, and were to relieve each other every two hours. in ten hours the work was accomplished. it was nightfall now, and i withdrew my pickets. the one who had had the northern outlook reported a camp in sight, but visible with the glass only. he also reported that a few knights had been feeling their way toward us, and had driven some cattle across our lines, but that the knights themselves had not come very near. that was what i had been expecting. they were feeling us, you see; they wanted to know if we were going to play that red terror on them again. they would grow bolder in the night, perhaps. i believed i knew what project they would attempt, because it was plainly the thing i would attempt myself if i were in their places and as ignorant as they were. i mentioned it to clarence. "i think you are right," said he; "it is the obvious thing for them to try." "well, then," i said, "if they do it they are doomed. "certainly." they won't have the slightest show in the world." "of course they won't." "it's dreadful, clarence. it seems an awful pity." the thing disturbed me so that i couldn't get any peace of mind.for thinking of it and worrying over it. so, at last, to quiet my conscience, i framed this message to the knights: to the honorable the commander of the insurgent chivalry of england: you fight in vain. we know your strength -if one may call it by that name. we know that at the utmost you cannot bring against us above five and twenty thousand knights. therefore, you have no chance -none whatever. reflect: we are well equipped, well fortified, we number 54. fifty-four what? men? no, minds -the capablest in the world; a force against which mere animal might may no more hope to prevail than may the idle waves of the sea hope to prevail against the granite barriers of england. be advised. we offer you your lives; for the sake of your families, do not reject the gift. we offer you this chance, and it is the last: throw down your arms; surrender unconditionally to the republic, and all will be forgiven. (signed) the boss. i read it to clarence, and said i proposed to send it by a flag of truce. he laughed the sarcastic laugh he was born with, and said: "somehow it seems impossible for you to ever fully realize what these nobilities are. now let us save a little time and trouble. consider me the commander of the knights yonder. now, then, you are the flag of truce; approach and deliver me your message, and i will give you your answer." i humored the idea. i came forward under an imaginary guard of the enemy's soldiers, produced my paper, and read it through. for answer, clarence struck the paper out of my hand, pursed up a scornful lip and said with lofty disdain: "dismember me this animal, and return him in a basket to the base-born knave who sent him; other answer have i none!" how empty is theory in presence of fact! and this was just fact, and nothing else. it was the thing that would have happened, there was no getting around that. i tore up the paper and granted my mistimed sentimentalities a permanent rest. then, to business. i tested the electric signals from the gatling platform to the cave, and made sure that they were all right; i tested and retested those which commanded the fences -these were signals whereby i could break and renew the electric current in each fence independently of the others at will. i placed the brook-connection under the guard and authority of three of my best boys, who would alternate in twohour watches all night and promptly obey my signal, if i should have occasion to give it -three revolvershots in quick succession. sentry-duty was discarded for the night, and the corral left empty of life; i ordered that quiet be maintained in the cave, and the electric lights turned down to a glimmer. as soon as it was good and dark, i shut off the current from all the fences, and then groped my way out to the embankment bordering our side of the great dynamite ditch. i crept to the top of it and lay there on the slant of the muck to watch. but it was too dark to see anything. as for sounds, there were none. the stillness was deathlike. true, there were the usual night-sounds of the country -the whir of nightbirds, the buzzing of insects, the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine -but these didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensified it, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into the bargain. i presently gave up looking, the night shut down so black, but i kept my ears strained to catch the least suspicious sound, for i judged i had only to wait, and i shouldn't be disappointed. however, i had to wait a long time. at last i caught what you may call in distinct glimpses of soundñdulled metallic sound. i pricked up my ears, then, and held my breath, for this was the sort of thing i had been waiting for. this sound thickened, and approached -from toward the north. presently, i heard it at my own level -the ridge-top of the opposite embankment, a hundred feet or more away. then i seemed to see a row of black dots appear along that ridge -human heads? i couldn't tell; it mightn't be anything at all; you can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. however, the question was soon settled. i heard that metallic noise descending into the great ditch. it augmented fast, it spread all along, and it unmistakably furnished me this fact: an armed host was taking up its quarters in the ditch. yes, these people were arranging a little surprise party for us. we could expect entertainment about dawn, possibly earlier. i groped my way back to the corral now; i had seen enough. i went to the platform and signaled to turn the current on to the two inner fences. then i went into the cave, and found everything satisfactory there -nobody awake but the working-watch. i woke clarence and told him the great ditch was filling up with men, and that i believed all the knights were coming for us in a body. it was my notion that as soon as dawn approached we could expect the ditch's ambuscaded thousands to swarm up over the embankment and make an assault, and be followed immediately by the rest of their army. clarence said: "they will be wanting to send a scout or two in the dark to make preliminary observations. why not take the lightning off the outer fences, and give them a chance?" "i've already done it, clarence. did you ever know me to be inhospitable?" "no, you are a good heart. i want to go and --" "be a reception committee? i will go, too." we crossed the corral and lay down together between the two inside fences. even the dim light of the cave had disordered our eyesight somewhat, but the focus straightway began to regulate itself and soon it was adjusted for present circumstances. we had had to feel our way before, but we could make out to see the fence posts now. we started a whispered conversation, but suddenly clarence broke off and said: "what is that?" "what is what?" "that thing yonder." "what thing -where?" "there beyond you a little piece -dark something -a dull shape of some kind -against the second fence." i gazed and he gazed. i said: "could it be a man, clarence?" "no, i think not. if you notice, it looks a lit -why, it is a man! -leaning on the fence." "i certainly believe it is; let us go and see." we crept along on our hands and knees until we were pretty close, and then looked up. yes, it was a man -a dim great figure in armor, standing erect, with both hands on the upper wire -and, of course, there was a smell of burning flesh. poor fellow, dead as a door-nail, and never knew what hurt him. he stood there like a statue -no motion about him, except that his plumes swished about a little in the night wind. we rose up and looked in through the bars of his visor, but couldn't make out whether we knew him or not -features too dim and shadowed. we heard muffled sounds approaching, and we sank down to the ground where we were. we made out another knight vaguely; he was coming very stealthily, and feeling his way. he was near enough now for us to see him put out a hand, find an upper wire, then bend and step under it and over the lower one. now he arrived at the first knight -and started slightly when he discovered him. he stood a moment -no doubt wondering why the other one didn't move on; then he said, in a low voice, "why dreamest thou here, good sir mar --" then he laid his hand on the corpse's shoulder -and just uttered a little soft moan and sunk down dead. killed by a dead man, you see -killed by a dead friend, in fact. there was something awful about it. these early birds came scattering along after each other, about one every five minutes in our vicinity, during half an hour. they brought no armor of offense but their swords; as a rule, they carried the sword ready in the hand, and put it forward and found the wires with it. we would now and then see a blue spark when the knight that caused it was so far away as to be invisible to us; but we knew what had happened, all the same; poor fellow, he had touched a charged wire with his sword and been elected. we had brief intervals of grim stillness, interrupted with piteous regularity by the clash made by the falling of an iron-clad; and this sort of thing was going on, right along, and was very creepy there in the dark and lonesomeness. we concluded to make a tour between the inner fences. we elected to walk upright, for convenience's sake; we argued that if discerned, we should be taken for friends rather than enemies, and in any case we should be out of reach of swords, and these gentry did not seem to have any spears along. well, it was a curious trip. everywhere dead men were lying outside the second fence -not plainly visible, but still visible; and we counted fifteen of those pathetic statues -dead knights standing with their hands on the upper wire. one thing seemed to be sufficiently demonstrated: our current was so tremendous that it killed before the victim could cry out. pretty soon we detected a muffled and heavy sound, and next moment we guessed what it was. it was a surprise in force coming! whispered clarence to go and wake the army, and notify it to wait in silence in the cave for further orders. he was soon back, and we stood by the inner fence and watched the silent lightning do its awful work upon that swarming host. one could make out but little of detail; but he could note that a black mass was piling itself up beyond the second fence. that swelling bulk was dead men! our camp was enclosed with a solid wall of the dead -a bulwark, a breastwork, of corpses, you may say. one terrible thing about this thing was the absence of human voices; there were no cheers, no war cries; being intent upon a surprise, these men moved as noiselessly as they could; and always when the front rank was near enough to their goal to make it proper for them to begin to get a shout ready, of course they struck the fatal line and went down without testifying. i sent a current through the third fence now; and almost immediately through the fourth and fifth, so quickly were the gaps filled up. i believed the time was come now for my climax; i believed that that whole army was in our trap. anyway, it was high time to find out. so i touched a button and set fifty electric suns aflame on the top of our precipice. land, what a sight! we were enclosed in three walls of dead men! all the other fences were pretty nearly filled with the living, who were stealthily working their way forward through the wires. the sudden glare paralyzed this host, petrified them, you may say, with astonishment; there was just one instant for me to utilize their immobility in, and i didn't lose the chance. you see, in another instant they would have recovered their faculties, then they'd have burst into a cheer and made a rush, and my wires would have gone down before it; but that lost instant lost them their opportunity forever; while even that slight fragment of time was still unspent, i shot the current through all the fences and struck the whole host dead in their tracks! there was a groan you could hear! it voiced the death-pang of eleven thousand men. it swelled out on the night with awful pathos. a glance showed that the rest of the enemy -perhaps ten thousand strong -were between us and the encircling ditch, and pressing forward to the assault. consequently we had them all! and had them past help. time for the last act of the tragedy. i fired the three appointed revolver shots -which meant: "turn on the water!" there was a sudden rush and roar, and in a minute the mountain brook was raging through the big ditch and creating a river a hundred feet wide and twentyfive deep. "stand to your guns, men! open fire!" the thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten thousand. they halted, they stood their ground a moment against that withering deluge of fire, then they broke, faced about and swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. a full fourth part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment; the three-fourths reached it and plunged over -to death by drowning. within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance was totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four were masters of england. twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us. but how treacherous is fortune! in a little while -say an hour -happened a thing, by my own fault, which -but i have no heart to write that. let the record end here. chapter xliv. a postscript by clarence i, clarence, must write it for him. he proposed that we two go out and see if any help could be accorded the wounded. i was strenuous against the project. i said that if there were many, we could do but little for them; and it would not be wise for us to trust ourselves among them, anyway. but he could seldom be turned from a purpose once formed; so we shut off the electric current from the fences, took an escort along, climbed over the enclosing ramparts of dead knights, and moved out upon the field. the first wounded mall who appealed for help was sitting with his back against a dead comrade. when the boss bent over him and spoke to him, the man recognized him and stabbed him. that knight was sir meliagraunce, as i found out by tearing off his helmet. he will not ask for help any more. we carried the boss to the cave and gave his wound, which was not very serious, the best care we could. in this service we had the help of merlin, though we did not know it. he was disguised as a woman, and appeared to be a simple old peasant goodwife. in this disguise, with brown-stained face and smooth shaven, he had appeared a few days after the boss was hurt and offered to cook for us, saying her people had gone off to join certain new camps which the enemy were forming, and that she was starving. the boss had been getting along very well, and had amused himself with finishing up his record. we were glad to have this woman, for we were short handed. we were in a trap, you see -a trap of our own making. if we stayed where we were, our dead would kill us; if we moved out of our defenses, we should no longer be invincible. we had conquered; in turn we were conquered. the boss recognized this; we all recognized it. if we could go to one of those new camps and patch up some kind of terms with the enemy -yes, but the boss could not go, and neither could i, for i was among the first that were made sick by the poisonous air bred by those dead thousands. others were taken down, and still others. to-morrow -to-morrow. it is here. and with it the end. about midnight i awoke, and saw that hag making curious passes in the air about the boss's head and face, and wondered what it meant. everybody but the dynamo-watch lay steeped in sleep; there was no sound. the woman ceased from her mysterious foolery, and started tip-toeing toward the door. i called out: "stop! what have you been doing?" she halted, and said with an accent of malicious satisfaction: "ye were conquerors; ye are conquered! these others are perishing -you also. ye shall all die in this place -every one -except him. he sleepeth now -and shall sleep thirteen centuries. i am merlin!" then such a delirium of silly laughter overtook him that he reeled about like a drunken man, and presently fetched up against one of our wires. his mouth is spread open yet; apparently he is still laughing. i suppose the face will retain that petrified laugh until the corpse turns to dust. the boss has never stirred -sleeps like a stone. if he does not wake to-day we shall understand what kind of a sleep it is, and his body will then be borne to a place in one of the remote recesses of the cave where none will ever find it to desecrate it. as for the rest of us -well, it is agreed that if any one of us ever escapes alive from this place, he will write the fact here, and loyally hide this manuscript with the boss, our dear good chief, whose property it is, be he alive or dead. the end of the manuscript final p.s. by m.t. the dawn was come when i laid the manuscript aside. the rain had almost ceased, the world was gray and sad, the exhausted storm was sighing and sobbing itself to rest. i went to the stranger's room, and listened at his door, which was slightly ajar. i could hear his voice, and so i knocked. there was no answer, but i still heard the voice. i peeped in. the man lay on his back in bed, talking brokenly but with spirit, and punctuating with his arms, which he thrashed about, restlessly, as sick people do in delirium. i slipped in softly and bent over him. his mutterings and ejaculations went on. i spoke -merely a word, to call his attention. his glassy eyes and his ashy face were alight in an instant with pleasure, gratitude, gladness, welcome: "oh, sandy, you are come at last -how i have longed for you! sit by me -do not leave me -never leave me again, sandy, never again. where is your hand? -give it me, dear, let me hold it -there -now all is well, all is peace, and i am happy again -we are happy again, isn't it so, sandy? you are so dim, so vague, you are but a mist, a cloud, but you are here, and that is blessedness sufficient; and i have your hand; don't take it away -it is for only a little while, i shall not require it long...... was that the child?...... hello-central!...... she doesn't answer. asleep, perhaps? bring her when she wakes, and let me touch her hands, her face, her hair, and tell her good-bye...... sandy! yes, you are there. i lost myself a moment, and i thought you were gone...... have i been sick long? it must be so; it seems months to me. and such dreams! such strange and awful dreams, sandy! dreams that were as real as reality -delirium, of course, but so real! why, i thought the king was dead, i thought you were in gaul and couldn't get home, i thought there was a revolution; in the fantastic frenzy of these dreams, i thought that clarence and i and a handful of my cadets fought and exterminated the whole chivalry of england! but even that was not the strangest. i seemed to be a creature out of a remote unborn age, centuries hence, and even that was as real as the rest! yes, i seemed to have flown back out of that age into this of ours, and then forward to it again, and was set down, a stranger and forlorn in that strange england, with an abyss of thirteen centuries yawning between me and you! between me and my home and my friends! between me and all that is dear to me, all that could make life worth the living! it was awful -awfuler than you can ever imagine, sandy. ah, watch by me, sandy -stay by me every moment -don't let me go out of my mind again; death is nothing, let it come, but not with those dreams, not with the torture of those hideous dreams -i cannot endure that again...... sandy?......" he lay muttering incoherently some little time; then for a time he lay silent, and apparently sinking away toward death. presently his fingers began to pick busily at the coverlet, and by that sign i knew that his end was at hand with the first suggestion of the death-rattle in his throat he started up slightly, and seemed to listen: then he said: "a bugle?...... it is the king! the drawbridge, there! man the battlements! -turn out the --" he was getting up his last "effect"; but he never finished it. the end . titus andronicus dramatis personae saturninus son to the late emperor of rome, and afterwards declared emperor. bassianus brother to saturninus; in love with lavinia. titus andronicus a noble roman, general against the goths. marcus andronicus tribune of the people, and brother to titus. lucius | | quintus | | sons to titus andronicus. martius | | mutius | young lucius a boy, son to lucius. publius son to marcus the tribune. sempronius | | caius | kinsmen to titus. | valentine | aemilius a noble roman. alarbus | | demetrius | sons to tamora. | chiron | aaron a moor, beloved by tamora. a captain, tribune, messenger, and clown; romans. (captain:) (messenger:) (clown:) goths and romans. (first goth:) (second goth:) (third goth:) tamora queen of the goths. lavinia daughter of titus andronicus. a nurse. (nurse:) senators, tribunes, officers, soldiers, and attendants. scene rome, and the country near it. titus andronicus act i scene i rome. before the capitol. [the tomb of the andronici appearing; the tribunes and senators aloft. enter, below, from one side, saturninus and his followers; and, from the other side, bassianus and his followers; with drum and colours] saturninus noble patricians, patrons of my right, defend the justice of my cause with arms, and, countrymen, my loving followers, plead my successive title with your swords: i am his first-born son, that was the last that wore the imperial diadem of rome; then let my father's honours live in me, nor wrong mine age with this indignity. bassianus romans, friends, followers, favorers of my right, if ever bassianus, caesar's son, were gracious in the eyes of royal rome, keep then this passage to the capitol and suffer not dishonour to approach the imperial seat, to virtue consecrate, to justice, continence and nobility; but let desert in pure election shine, and, romans, fight for freedom in your choice. [enter marcus andronicus, aloft, with the crown] marcus andronicus princes, that strive by factions and by friends ambitiously for rule and empery, know that the people of rome, for whom we stand a special party, have, by common voice, in election for the roman empery, chosen andronicus, surnamed pius for many good and great deserts to rome: a nobler man, a braver warrior, lives not this day within the city walls: he by the senate is accit'd home from weary wars against the barbarous goths; that, with his sons, a terror to our foes, hath yoked a nation strong, train'd up in arms. ten years are spent since first he undertook this cause of rome and chastised with arms our enemies' pride: five times he hath return'd bleeding to rome, bearing his valiant sons in coffins from the field; and now at last, laden with horror's spoils, returns the good andronicus to rome, renowned titus, flourishing in arms. let us entreat, by honour of his name, whom worthily you would have now succeed. and in the capitol and senate's right, whom you pretend to honour and adore, that you withdraw you and abate your strength; dismiss your followers and, as suitors should, plead your deserts in peace and humbleness. saturninus how fair the tribune speaks to calm my thoughts! bassianus marcus andronicus, so i do ally in thy uprightness and integrity, and so i love and honour thee and thine, thy noble brother titus and his sons, and her to whom my thoughts are humbled all, gracious lavinia, rome's rich ornament, that i will here dismiss my loving friends, and to my fortunes and the people's favor commit my cause in balance to be weigh'd. [exeunt the followers of bassianus] saturninus friends, that have been thus forward in my right, i thank you all and here dismiss you all, and to the love and favor of my country commit myself, my person and the cause. [exeunt the followers of saturninus] rome, be as just and gracious unto me as i am confident and kind to thee. open the gates, and let me in. bassianus tribunes, and me, a poor competitor. [flourish. saturninus and bassianus go up into the capitol] [enter a captain] captain romans, make way: the good andronicus. patron of virtue, rome's best champion, successful in the battles that he fights, with honour and with fortune is return'd from where he circumscribed with his sword, and brought to yoke, the enemies of rome. [drums and trumpets sounded. enter martius and mutius; after them, two men bearing a coffin covered with black; then lucius and quintus. after them, titus andronicus; and then tamora, with alarbus, demetrius, chiron, aaron, and other goths, prisoners; soldiers and people following. the bearers set down the coffin, and titus speaks] titus andronicus hail, rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds! lo, as the bark, that hath discharged her fraught, returns with precious jading to the bay from whence at first she weigh'd her anchorage, cometh andronicus, bound with laurel boughs, to re-salute his country with his tears, tears of true joy for his return to rome. thou great defender of this capitol, stand gracious to the rites that we intend! romans, of five and twenty valiant sons, half of the number that king priam had, behold the poor remains, alive and dead! these that survive let rome reward with love; these that i bring unto their latest home, with burial amongst their ancestors: here goths have given me leave to sheathe my sword. titus, unkind and careless of thine own, why suffer'st thou thy sons, unburied yet, to hover on the dreadful shore of styx? make way to lay them by their brethren. [the tomb is opened] there greet in silence, as the dead are wont, and sleep in peace, slain in your country's wars! o sacred receptacle of my joys, sweet cell of virtue and nobility, how many sons of mine hast thou in store, that thou wilt never render to me more! lucius give us the proudest prisoner of the goths, that we may hew his limbs, and on a pile ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh, before this earthy prison of their bones; that so the shadows be not unappeased, nor we disturb'd with prodigies on earth. titus andronicus i give him you, the noblest that survives, the eldest son of this distressed queen. tamora stay, roman brethren! gracious conqueror, victorious titus, rue the tears i shed, a mother's tears in passion for her son: and if thy sons were ever dear to thee, o, think my son to be as dear to me! sufficeth not that we are brought to rome, to beautify thy triumphs and return, captive to thee and to thy roman yoke, but must my sons be slaughter'd in the streets, for valiant doings in their country's cause? o, if to fight for king and commonweal were piety in thine, it is in these. andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood: wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods? draw near them then in being merciful: sweet mercy is nobility's true badge: thrice noble titus, spare my first-born son. titus andronicus patient yourself, madam, and pardon me. these are their brethren, whom you goths beheld alive and dead, and for their brethren slain religiously they ask a sacrifice: to this your son is mark'd, and die he must, to appease their groaning shadows that are gone. lucius away with him! and make a fire straight; and with our swords, upon a pile of wood, let's hew his limbs till they be clean consumed. [exeunt lucius, quintus, martius, and mutius, with alarbus] tamora o cruel, irreligious piety! chiron was ever scythia half so barbarous? demetrius oppose not scythia to ambitious rome. alarbus goes to rest; and we survive to tremble under titus' threatening looks. then, madam, stand resolved, but hope withal the self-same gods that arm'd the queen of troy with opportunity of sharp revenge upon the thracian tyrant in his tent, may favor tamora, the queen of goths- when goths were goths and tamora was queen- to quit the bloody wrongs upon her foes. [re-enter lucius, quintus, martius and mutius, with their swords bloody] lucius see, lord and father, how we have perform'd our roman rites: alarbus' limbs are lopp'd, and entrails feed the sacrificing fire, whose smoke, like incense, doth perfume the sky. remaineth nought, but to inter our brethren, and with loud 'larums welcome them to rome. titus andronicus let it be so; and let andronicus make this his latest farewell to their souls. [trumpets sounded, and the coffin laid in the tomb] in peace and honour rest you here, my sons; rome's readiest champions, repose you here in rest, secure from worldly chances and mishaps! here lurks no treason, here no envy swells, here grow no damned grudges; here are no storms, no noise, but silence and eternal sleep: in peace and honour rest you here, my sons! [enter lavinia] lavinia in peace and honour live lord titus long; my noble lord and father, live in fame! lo, at this tomb my tributary tears i render, for my brethren's obsequies; and at thy feet i kneel, with tears of joy, shed on the earth, for thy return to rome: o, bless me here with thy victorious hand, whose fortunes rome's best citizens applaud! titus andronicus kind rome, that hast thus lovingly reserved the cordial of mine age to glad my heart! lavinia, live; outlive thy father's days, and fame's eternal date, for virtue's praise! [enter, below, marcus andronicus and tribunes; re-enter saturninus and bassianus, attended] marcus andronicus long live lord titus, my beloved brother, gracious triumpher in the eyes of rome! titus andronicus thanks, gentle tribune, noble brother marcus. marcus andronicus and welcome, nephews, from successful wars, you that survive, and you that sleep in fame! fair lords, your fortunes are alike in all, that in your country's service drew your swords: but safer triumph is this funeral pomp, that hath aspired to solon's happiness and triumphs over chance in honour's bed. titus andronicus, the people of rome, whose friend in justice thou hast ever been, send thee by me, their tribune and their trust, this palliament of white and spotless hue; and name thee in election for the empire, with these our late-deceased emperor's sons: be candidatus then, and put it on, and help to set a head on headless rome. titus andronicus a better head her glorious body fits than his that shakes for age and feebleness: what should i don this robe, and trouble you? be chosen with proclamations to-day, to-morrow yield up rule, resign my life, and set abroad new business for you all? rome, i have been thy soldier forty years, and led my country's strength successfully, and buried one and twenty valiant sons, knighted in field, slain manfully in arms, in right and service of their noble country give me a staff of honour for mine age, but not a sceptre to control the world: upright he held it, lords, that held it last. marcus andronicus titus, thou shalt obtain and ask the empery. saturninus proud and ambitious tribune, canst thou tell? titus andronicus patience, prince saturninus. saturninus romans, do me right: patricians, draw your swords: and sheathe them not till saturninus be rome's emperor. andronicus, would thou wert shipp'd to hell, rather than rob me of the people's hearts! lucius proud saturnine, interrupter of the good that noble-minded titus means to thee! titus andronicus content thee, prince; i will restore to thee the people's hearts, and wean them from themselves. bassianus andronicus, i do not flatter thee, but honour thee, and will do till i die: my faction if thou strengthen with thy friends, i will most thankful be; and thanks to men of noble minds is honourable meed. titus andronicus people of rome, and people's tribunes here, i ask your voices and your suffrages: will you bestow them friendly on andronicus? tribunes to gratify the good andronicus, and gratulate his safe return to rome, the people will accept whom he admits. titus andronicus tribunes, i thank you: and this suit i make, that you create your emperor's eldest son, lord saturnine; whose virtues will, i hope, reflect on rome as titan's rays on earth, and ripen justice in this commonweal: then, if you will elect by my advice, crown him and say 'long live our emperor!' marcus andronicus with voices and applause of every sort, patricians and plebeians, we create lord saturninus rome's great emperor, and say 'long live our emperor saturnine!' [a long flourish till they come down] saturninus titus andronicus, for thy favors done to us in our election this day, i give thee thanks in part of thy deserts, and will with deeds requite thy gentleness: and, for an onset, titus, to advance thy name and honourable family, lavinia will i make my empress, rome's royal mistress, mistress of my heart, and in the sacred pantheon her espouse: tell me, andronicus, doth this motion please thee? titus andronicus it doth, my worthy lord; and in this match i hold me highly honour'd of your grace: and here in sight of rome to saturnine, king and commander of our commonweal, the wide world's emperor, do i consecrate my sword, my chariot and my prisoners; presents well worthy rome's imperial lord: receive them then, the tribute that i owe, mine honour's ensigns humbled at thy feet. saturninus thanks, noble titus, father of my life! how proud i am of thee and of thy gifts rome shall record, and when i do forget the least of these unspeakable deserts, romans, forget your fealty to me. titus andronicus [to tamora] now, madam, are you prisoner to an emperor; to him that, for your honour and your state, will use you nobly and your followers. saturninus a goodly lady, trust me; of the hue that i would choose, were i to choose anew. clear up, fair queen, that cloudy countenance: though chance of war hath wrought this change of cheer, thou comest not to be made a scorn in rome: princely shall be thy usage every way. rest on my word, and let not discontent daunt all your hopes: madam, he comforts you can make you greater than the queen of goths. lavinia, you are not displeased with this? lavinia not i, my lord; sith true nobility warrants these words in princely courtesy. saturninus thanks, sweet lavinia. romans, let us go; ransomless here we set our prisoners free: proclaim our honours, lords, with trump and drum. [flourish. saturninus courts tamora in dumb show] bassianus lord titus, by your leave, this maid is mine. [seizing lavinia] titus andronicus how, sir! are you in earnest then, my lord? bassianus ay, noble titus; and resolved withal to do myself this reason and this right. marcus andronicus 'suum cuique' is our roman justice: this prince in justice seizeth but his own. lucius and that he will, and shall, if lucius live. titus andronicus traitors, avaunt! where is the emperor's guard? treason, my lord! lavinia is surprised! saturninus surprised! by whom? bassianus by him that justly may bear his betroth'd from all the world away. [exeunt bassianus and marcus with lavinia] mutius brothers, help to convey her hence away, and with my sword i'll keep this door safe. [exeunt lucius, quintus, and martius] titus andronicus follow, my lord, and i'll soon bring her back. mutius my lord, you pass not here. titus andronicus what, villain boy! barr'st me my way in rome? [stabbing mutius] mutius help, lucius, help! [dies] [during the fray, saturninus, tamora, demetrius, chiron and aaron go out and re-enter, above] [re-enter lucius] lucius my lord, you are unjust, and, more than so, in wrongful quarrel you have slain your son. titus andronicus nor thou, nor he, are any sons of mine; my sons would never so dishonour me: traitor, restore lavinia to the emperor. lucius dead, if you will; but not to be his wife, that is another's lawful promised love. [exit] saturninus no, titus, no; the emperor needs her not, nor her, nor thee, nor any of thy stock: i'll trust, by leisure, him that mocks me once; thee never, nor thy traitorous haughty sons, confederates all thus to dishonour me. was there none else in rome to make a stale, but saturnine? full well, andronicus, agree these deeds with that proud brag of thine, that said'st i begg'd the empire at thy hands. titus andronicus o monstrous! what reproachful words are these? saturninus but go thy ways; go, give that changing piece to him that flourish'd for her with his sword a valiant son-in-law thou shalt enjoy; one fit to bandy with thy lawless sons, to ruffle in the commonwealth of rome. titus andronicus these words are razors to my wounded heart. saturninus and therefore, lovely tamora, queen of goths, that like the stately phoebe 'mongst her nymphs dost overshine the gallant'st dames of rome, if thou be pleased with this my sudden choice, behold, i choose thee, tamora, for my bride, and will create thee empress of rome, speak, queen of goths, dost thou applaud my choice? and here i swear by all the roman gods, sith priest and holy water are so near and tapers burn so bright and every thing in readiness for hymenaeus stand, i will not re-salute the streets of rome, or climb my palace, till from forth this place i lead espoused my bride along with me. tamora and here, in sight of heaven, to rome i swear, if saturnine advance the queen of goths, she will a handmaid be to his desires, a loving nurse, a mother to his youth. saturninus ascend, fair queen, pantheon. lords, accompany your noble emperor and his lovely bride, sent by the heavens for prince saturnine, whose wisdom hath her fortune conquered: there shall we consummate our spousal rites. [exeunt all but titus] titus andronicus i am not bid to wait upon this bride. titus, when wert thou wont to walk alone, dishonour'd thus, and challenged of wrongs? [re-enter marcus, lucius, quintus, and martius] marcus andronicus o titus, see, o, see what thou hast done! in a bad quarrel slain a virtuous son. titus andronicus no, foolish tribune, no; no son of mine, nor thou, nor these, confederates in the deed that hath dishonour'd all our family; unworthy brother, and unworthy sons! lucius but let us give him burial, as becomes; give mutius burial with our brethren. titus andronicus traitors, away! he rests not in this tomb: this monument five hundred years hath stood, which i have sumptuously re-edified: here none but soldiers and rome's servitors repose in fame; none basely slain in brawls: bury him where you can; he comes not here. marcus andronicus my lord, this is impiety in you: my nephew mutius' deeds do plead for him he must be buried with his brethren. quintus | | and shall, or him we will accompany. martius | titus andronicus 'and shall!' what villain was it that spake that word? quintus he that would vouch it in any place but here. titus andronicus what, would you bury him in my despite? marcus andronicus no, noble titus, but entreat of thee to pardon mutius and to bury him. titus andronicus marcus, even thou hast struck upon my crest, and, with these boys, mine honour thou hast wounded: my foes i do repute you every one; so, trouble me no more, but get you gone. martius he is not with himself; let us withdraw. quintus not i, till mutius' bones be buried. [marcus and the sons of titus kneel] marcus andronicus brother, for in that name doth nature plead,- quintus father, and in that name doth nature speak,- titus andronicus speak thou no more, if all the rest will speed. marcus andronicus renowned titus, more than half my soul,- lucius dear father, soul and substance of us all,- marcus andronicus suffer thy brother marcus to inter his noble nephew here in virtue's nest, that died in honour and lavinia's cause. thou art a roman; be not barbarous: the greeks upon advice did bury ajax that slew himself; and wise laertes' son did graciously plead for his funerals: let not young mutius, then, that was thy joy be barr'd his entrance here. titus andronicus rise, marcus, rise. the dismall'st day is this that e'er i saw, to be dishonour'd by my sons in rome! well, bury him, and bury me the next. [mutius is put into the tomb] lucius there lie thy bones, sweet mutius, with thy friends, till we with trophies do adorn thy tomb. all [kneeling] no man shed tears for noble mutius; he lives in fame that died in virtue's cause. marcus andronicus my lord, to step out of these dreary dumps, how comes it that the subtle queen of goths is of a sudden thus advanced in rome? titus andronicus i know not, marcus; but i know it is, whether by device or no, the heavens can tell: is she not then beholding to the man that brought her for this high good turn so far? yes, and will nobly him remunerate. [flourish. re-enter, from one side, saturninus attended, tamora, demetrius, chiron and aaron; from the other, bassianus, lavinia, and others] saturninus so, bassianus, you have play'd your prize: god give you joy, sir, of your gallant bride! bassianus and you of yours, my lord! i say no more, nor wish no less; and so, i take my leave. saturninus traitor, if rome have law or we have power, thou and thy faction shall repent this rape. bassianus rape, call you it, my lord, to seize my own, my truth-betrothed love and now my wife? but let the laws of rome determine all; meanwhile i am possess'd of that is mine. saturninus 'tis good, sir: you are very short with us; but, if we live, we'll be as sharp with you. bassianus my lord, what i have done, as best i may, answer i must and shall do with my life. only thus much i give your grace to know: by all the duties that i owe to rome, this noble gentleman, lord titus here, is in opinion and in honour wrong'd; that in the rescue of lavinia with his own hand did slay his youngest son, in zeal to you and highly moved to wrath to be controll'd in that he frankly gave: receive him, then, to favor, saturnine, that hath express'd himself in all his deeds a father and a friend to thee and rome. titus andronicus prince bassianus, leave to plead my deeds: 'tis thou and those that have dishonour'd me. rome and the righteous heavens be my judge, how i have loved and honour'd saturnine! tamora my worthy lord, if ever tamora were gracious in those princely eyes of thine, then hear me speak in indifferently for all; and at my suit, sweet, pardon what is past. saturninus what, madam! be dishonour'd openly, and basely put it up without revenge? tamora not so, my lord; the gods of rome forfend i should be author to dishonour you! but on mine honour dare i undertake for good lord titus' innocence in all; whose fury not dissembled speaks his griefs: then, at my suit, look graciously on him; lose not so noble a friend on vain suppose, nor with sour looks afflict his gentle heart. [aside to saturninus] my lord, be ruled by me, be won at last; dissemble all your griefs and discontents: you are but newly planted in your throne; lest, then, the people, and patricians too, upon a just survey, take titus' part, and so supplant you for ingratitude, which rome reputes to be a heinous sin, yield at entreats; and then let me alone: i'll find a day to massacre them all and raze their faction and their family, the cruel father and his traitorous sons, to whom i sued for my dear son's life, and make them know what 'tis to let a queen kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain. [aloud] come, come, sweet emperor; come, andronicus; take up this good old man, and cheer the heart that dies in tempest of thy angry frown. saturninus rise, titus, rise; my empress hath prevail'd. titus andronicus i thank your majesty, and her, my lord: these words, these looks, infuse new life in me. tamora titus, i am incorporate in rome, a roman now adopted happily, and must advise the emperor for his good. this day all quarrels die, andronicus; and let it be mine honour, good my lord, that i have reconciled your friends and you. for you, prince bassianus, i have pass'd my word and promise to the emperor, that you will be more mild and tractable. and fear not lords, and you, lavinia; by my advice, all humbled on your knees, you shall ask pardon of his majesty. lucius we do, and vow to heaven and to his highness, that what we did was mildly as we might, tendering our sister's honour and our own. marcus andronicus that, on mine honour, here i do protest. saturninus away, and talk not; trouble us no more. tamora nay, nay, sweet emperor, we must all be friends: the tribune and his nephews kneel for grace; i will not be denied: sweet heart, look back. saturninus marcus, for thy sake and thy brother's here, and at my lovely tamora's entreats, i do remit these young men's heinous faults: stand up. lavinia, though you left me like a churl, i found a friend, and sure as death i swore i would not part a bachelor from the priest. come, if the emperor's court can feast two brides, you are my guest, lavinia, and your friends. this day shall be a love-day, tamora. titus andronicus to-morrow, an it please your majesty to hunt the panther and the hart with me, with horn and hound we'll give your grace bonjour. saturninus be it so, titus, and gramercy too. [flourish. exeunt] titus andronicus act ii scene i rome. before the palace. [enter aaron] aaron now climbeth tamora olympus' top, safe out of fortune's shot; and sits aloft, secure of thunder's crack or lightning flash; advanced above pale envy's threatening reach. as when the golden sun salutes the morn, and, having gilt the ocean with his beams, gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach, and overlooks the highest-peering hills; so tamora: upon her wit doth earthly honour wait, and virtue stoops and trembles at her frown. then, aaron, arm thy heart, and fit thy thoughts, to mount aloft with thy imperial mistress, and mount her pitch, whom thou in triumph long hast prisoner held, fetter'd in amorous chains and faster bound to aaron's charming eyes than is prometheus tied to caucasus. away with slavish weeds and servile thoughts! i will be bright, and shine in pearl and gold, to wait upon this new-made empress. to wait, said i? to wanton with this queen, this goddess, this semiramis, this nymph, this siren, that will charm rome's saturnine, and see his shipwreck and his commonweal's. holloa! what storm is this? [enter demetrius and chiron, braving] demetrius chiron, thy years want wit, thy wit wants edge, and manners, to intrude where i am graced; and may, for aught thou know'st, affected be. chiron demetrius, thou dost over-ween in all; and so in this, to bear me down with braves. 'tis not the difference of a year or two makes me less gracious or thee more fortunate: i am as able and as fit as thou to serve, and to deserve my mistress' grace; and that my sword upon thee shall approve, and plead my passions for lavinia's love. aaron [aside] clubs, clubs! these lovers will not keep the peace. demetrius why, boy, although our mother, unadvised, gave you a dancing-rapier by your side, are you so desperate grown, to threat your friends? go to; have your lath glued within your sheath till you know better how to handle it. chiron meanwhile, sir, with the little skill i have, full well shalt thou perceive how much i dare. demetrius ay, boy, grow ye so brave? [they draw] aaron [coming forward] why, how now, lords! so near the emperor's palace dare you draw, and maintain such a quarrel openly? full well i wot the ground of all this grudge: i would not for a million of gold the cause were known to them it most concerns; nor would your noble mother for much more be so dishonour'd in the court of rome. for shame, put up. demetrius not i, till i have sheathed my rapier in his bosom and withal thrust these reproachful speeches down his throat that he hath breathed in my dishonour here. chiron for that i am prepared and full resolved. foul-spoken coward, that thunder'st with thy tongue, and with thy weapon nothing darest perform! aaron away, i say! now, by the gods that warlike goths adore, this petty brabble will undo us all. why, lords, and think you not how dangerous it is to jet upon a prince's right? what, is lavinia then become so loose, or bassianus so degenerate, that for her love such quarrels may be broach'd without controlment, justice, or revenge? young lords, beware! and should the empress know this discord's ground, the music would not please. chiron i care not, i, knew she and all the world: i love lavinia more than all the world. demetrius youngling, learn thou to make some meaner choice: lavinia is thine elder brother's hope. aaron why, are ye mad? or know ye not, in rome how furious and impatient they be, and cannot brook competitors in love? i tell you, lords, you do but plot your deaths by this device. chiron aaron, a thousand deaths would i propose to achieve her whom i love. aaron to achieve her! how? demetrius why makest thou it so strange? she is a woman, therefore may be woo'd; she is a woman, therefore may be won; she is lavinia, therefore must be loved. what, man! more water glideth by the mill than wots the miller of; and easy it is of a cut loaf to steal a shive, we know: though bassianus be the emperor's brother. better than he have worn vulcan's badge. aaron [aside] ay, and as good as saturninus may. demetrius then why should he despair that knows to court it with words, fair looks and liberality? what, hast not thou full often struck a doe, and borne her cleanly by the keeper's nose? aaron why, then, it seems, some certain snatch or so would serve your turns. chiron ay, so the turn were served. demetrius aaron, thou hast hit it. aaron would you had hit it too! then should not we be tired with this ado. why, hark ye, hark ye! and are you such fools to square for this? would it offend you, then that both should speed? chiron faith, not me. demetrius nor me, so i were one. aaron for shame, be friends, and join for that you jar: 'tis policy and stratagem must do that you affect; and so must you resolve, that what you cannot as you would achieve, you must perforce accomplish as you may. take this of me: lucrece was not more chaste than this lavinia, bassianus' love. a speedier course than lingering languishment must we pursue, and i have found the path. my lords, a solemn hunting is in hand; there will the lovely roman ladies troop: the forest walks are wide and spacious; and many unfrequented plots there are fitted by kind for rape and villany: single you thither then this dainty doe, and strike her home by force, if not by words: this way, or not at all, stand you in hope. come, come, our empress, with her sacred wit to villany and vengeance consecrate, will we acquaint with all that we intend; and she shall file our engines with advice, that will not suffer you to square yourselves, but to your wishes' height advance you both. the emperor's court is like the house of fame, the palace full of tongues, of eyes, and ears: the woods are ruthless, dreadful, deaf, and dull; there speak, and strike, brave boys, and take your turns; there serve your lusts, shadow'd from heaven's eye, and revel in lavinia's treasury. chiron thy counsel, lad, smells of no cowardice, demetrius sit fas aut nefas, till i find the stream to cool this heat, a charm to calm these fits. per styga, per manes vehor. [exeunt] titus andronicus act ii scene ii a forest near rome. horns and cry of hounds heard. [enter titus andronicus, with hunters, &c., marcus, lucius, quintus, and martius] titus andronicus the hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey, the fields are fragrant and the woods are green: uncouple here and let us make a bay and wake the emperor and his lovely bride and rouse the prince and ring a hunter's peal, that all the court may echo with the noise. sons, let it be your charge, as it is ours, to attend the emperor's person carefully: i have been troubled in my sleep this night, but dawning day new comfort hath inspired. [a cry of hounds and horns, winded in a peal. enter saturninus, tamora, bassianus, lavinia, demetrius, chiron, and attendants] many good morrows to your majesty; madam, to you as many and as good: i promised your grace a hunter's peal. saturninus and you have rung it lustily, my lord; somewhat too early for new-married ladies. bassianus lavinia, how say you? lavinia i say, no; i have been broad awake two hours and more. saturninus come on, then; horse and chariots let us have, and to our sport. [to tamora] madam, now shall ye see our roman hunting. marcus andronicus i have dogs, my lord, will rouse the proudest panther in the chase, and climb the highest promontory top. titus andronicus and i have horse will follow where the game makes way, and run like swallows o'er the plain. demetrius chiron, we hunt not, we, with horse nor hound, but hope to pluck a dainty doe to ground. [exeunt] titus andronicus act ii scene iii a lonely part of the forest. [enter aaron, with a bag of gold] aaron he that had wit would think that i had none, to bury so much gold under a tree, and never after to inherit it. let him that thinks of me so abjectly know that this gold must coin a stratagem, which, cunningly effected, will beget a very excellent piece of villany: and so repose, sweet gold, for their unrest [hides the gold] that have their alms out of the empress' chest. [enter tamora] tamora my lovely aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad, when every thing doth make a gleeful boast? the birds chant melody on every bush, the snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun, the green leaves quiver with the cooling wind and make a chequer'd shadow on the ground: under their sweet shade, aaron, let us sit, and, whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds, replying shrilly to the well-tuned horns, as if a double hunt were heard at once, let us sit down and mark their yelping noise; and, after conflict such as was supposed the wandering prince and dido once enjoy'd, when with a happy storm they were surprised and curtain'd with a counsel-keeping cave, we may, each wreathed in the other's arms, our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber; whiles hounds and horns and sweet melodious birds be unto us as is a nurse's song of lullaby to bring her babe asleep. aaron madam, though venus govern your desires, saturn is dominator over mine: what signifies my deadly-standing eye, my silence and my cloudy melancholy, my fleece of woolly hair that now uncurls even as an adder when she doth unroll to do some fatal execution? no, madam, these are no venereal signs: vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, blood and revenge are hammering in my head. hark tamora, the empress of my soul, which never hopes more heaven than rests in thee, this is the day of doom for bassianus: his philomel must lose her tongue to-day, thy sons make pillage of her chastity and wash their hands in bassianus' blood. seest thou this letter? take it up, i pray thee, and give the king this fatal plotted scroll. now question me no more; we are espied; here comes a parcel of our hopeful booty, which dreads not yet their lives' destruction. tamora ah, my sweet moor, sweeter to me than life! aaron no more, great empress; bassianus comes: be cross with him; and i'll go fetch thy sons to back thy quarrels, whatsoe'er they be. [exit] [enter bassianus and lavinia] bassianus who have we here? rome's royal empress, unfurnish'd of her well-beseeming troop? or is it dian, habited like her, who hath abandoned her holy groves to see the general hunting in this forest? tamora saucy controller of our private steps! had i the power that some say dian had, thy temples should be planted presently with horns, as was actaeon's; and the hounds should drive upon thy new-transformed limbs, unmannerly intruder as thou art! lavinia under your patience, gentle empress, 'tis thought you have a goodly gift in horning; and to be doubted that your moor and you are singled forth to try experiments: jove shield your husband from his hounds to-day! 'tis pity they should take him for a stag. bassianus believe me, queen, your swarth cimmerian doth make your honour of his body's hue, spotted, detested, and abominable. why are you sequester'd from all your train, dismounted from your snow-white goodly steed. and wander'd hither to an obscure plot, accompanied but with a barbarous moor, if foul desire had not conducted you? lavinia and, being intercepted in your sport, great reason that my noble lord be rated for sauciness. i pray you, let us hence, and let her joy her raven-colour'd love; this valley fits the purpose passing well. bassianus the king my brother shall have note of this. lavinia ay, for these slips have made him noted long: good king, to be so mightily abused! tamora why have i patience to endure all this? [enter demetrius and chiron] demetrius how now, dear sovereign, and our gracious mother! why doth your highness look so pale and wan? tamora have i not reason, think you, to look pale? these two have 'ticed me hither to this place: a barren detested vale, you see it is; the trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, o'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe: here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds, unless the nightly owl or fatal raven: and when they show'd me this abhorred pit, they told me, here, at dead time of the night, a thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes, ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins, would make such fearful and confused cries as any mortal body hearing it should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly. no sooner had they told this hellish tale, but straight they told me they would bind me here unto the body of a dismal yew, and leave me to this miserable death: and then they call'd me foul adulteress, lascivious goth, and all the bitterest terms that ever ear did hear to such effect: and, had you not by wondrous fortune come, this vengeance on me had they executed. revenge it, as you love your mother's life, or be ye not henceforth call'd my children. demetrius this is a witness that i am thy son. [stabs bassianus] chiron and this for me, struck home to show my strength. [also stabs bassianus, who dies] lavinia ay, come, semiramis, nay, barbarous tamora, for no name fits thy nature but thy own! tamora give me thy poniard; you shall know, my boys your mother's hand shall right your mother's wrong. demetrius stay, madam; here is more belongs to her; first thrash the corn, then after burn the straw: this minion stood upon her chastity, upon her nuptial vow, her loyalty, and with that painted hope braves your mightiness: and shall she carry this unto her grave? chiron an if she do, i would i were an eunuch. drag hence her husband to some secret hole, and make his dead trunk pillow to our lust. tamora but when ye have the honey ye desire, let not this wasp outlive, us both to sting. chiron i warrant you, madam, we will make that sure. come, mistress, now perforce we will enjoy that nice-preserved honesty of yours. lavinia o tamora! thou bear'st a woman's face,- tamora i will not hear her speak; away with her! lavinia sweet lords, entreat her hear me but a word. demetrius listen, fair madam: let it be your glory to see her tears; but be your heart to them as unrelenting flint to drops of rain. lavinia when did the tiger's young ones teach the dam? o, do not learn her wrath; she taught it thee; the milk thou suck'dst from her did turn to marble; even at thy teat thou hadst thy tyranny. yet every mother breeds not sons alike: [to chiron] do thou entreat her show a woman pity. chiron what, wouldst thou have me prove myself a bastard? lavinia 'tis true; the raven doth not hatch a lark: yet have i heard,--o, could i find it now!- the lion moved with pity did endure to have his princely paws pared all away: some say that ravens foster forlorn children, the whilst their own birds famish in their nests: o, be to me, though thy hard heart say no, nothing so kind, but something pitiful! tamora i know not what it means; away with her! lavinia o, let me teach thee! for my father's sake, that gave thee life, when well he might have slain thee, be not obdurate, open thy deaf ears. tamora hadst thou in person ne'er offended me, even for his sake am i pitiless. remember, boys, i pour'd forth tears in vain, to save your brother from the sacrifice; but fierce andronicus would not relent; therefore, away with her, and use her as you will, the worse to her, the better loved of me. lavinia o tamora, be call'd a gentle queen, and with thine own hands kill me in this place! for 'tis not life that i have begg'd so long; poor i was slain when bassianus died. tamora what begg'st thou, then? fond woman, let me go. lavinia 'tis present death i beg; and one thing more that womanhood denies my tongue to tell: o, keep me from their worse than killing lust, and tumble me into some loathsome pit, where never man's eye may behold my body: do this, and be a charitable murderer. tamora so should i rob my sweet sons of their fee: no, let them satisfy their lust on thee. demetrius away! for thou hast stay'd us here too long. lavinia no grace? no womanhood? ah, beastly creature! the blot and enemy to our general name! confusion fall- chiron nay, then i'll stop your mouth. bring thou her husband: this is the hole where aaron bid us hide him. [demetrius throws the body of bassianus into the pit; then exeunt demetrius and chiron, dragging off lavinia] tamora farewell, my sons: see that you make her sure. ne'er let my heart know merry cheer indeed, till all the andronici be made away. now will i hence to seek my lovely moor, and let my spleenful sons this trull deflow'r. [exit] [re-enter aaron, with quintus and martius] aaron come on, my lords, the better foot before: straight will i bring you to the loathsome pit where i espied the panther fast asleep. quintus my sight is very dull, whate'er it bodes. martius and mine, i promise you; were't not for shame, well could i leave our sport to sleep awhile. [falls into the pit] quintus what art thou fall'n? what subtle hole is this, whose mouth is cover'd with rude-growing briers, upon whose leaves are drops of new-shed blood as fresh as morning dew distill'd on flowers? a very fatal place it seems to me. speak, brother, hast thou hurt thee with the fall? martius o brother, with the dismall'st object hurt that ever eye with sight made heart lament! aaron [aside] now will i fetch the king to find them here, that he thereby may give a likely guess how these were they that made away his brother. [exit] martius why dost not comfort me, and help me out from this unhallowed and blood-stained hole? quintus i am surprised with an uncouth fear; a chilling sweat o'er-runs my trembling joints: my heart suspects more than mine eye can see. martius to prove thou hast a true-divining heart, aaron and thou look down into this den, and see a fearful sight of blood and death. quintus aaron is gone; and my compassionate heart will not permit mine eyes once to behold the thing whereat it trembles by surmise; o, tell me how it is; for ne'er till now was i a child to fear i know not what. martius lord bassianus lies embrewed here, all on a heap, like to a slaughter'd lamb, in this detested, dark, blood-drinking pit. quintus if it be dark, how dost thou know 'tis he? martius upon his bloody finger he doth wear a precious ring, that lightens all the hole, which, like a taper in some monument, doth shine upon the dead man's earthy cheeks, and shows the ragged entrails of the pit: so pale did shine the moon on pyramus when he by night lay bathed in maiden blood. o brother, help me with thy fainting hand- if fear hath made thee faint, as me it hath- out of this fell devouring receptacle, as hateful as cocytus' misty mouth. quintus reach me thy hand, that i may help thee out; or, wanting strength to do thee so much good, i may be pluck'd into the swallowing womb of this deep pit, poor bassianus' grave. i have no strength to pluck thee to the brink. martius nor i no strength to climb without thy help. quintus thy hand once more; i will not loose again, till thou art here aloft, or i below: thou canst not come to me: i come to thee. [falls in] [enter saturninus with aaron] saturninus along with me: i'll see what hole is here, and what he is that now is leap'd into it. say who art thou that lately didst descend into this gaping hollow of the earth? martius the unhappy son of old andronicus: brought hither in a most unlucky hour, to find thy brother bassianus dead. saturninus my brother dead! i know thou dost but jest: he and his lady both are at the lodge upon the north side of this pleasant chase; 'tis not an hour since i left him there. martius we know not where you left him all alive; but, out, alas! here have we found him dead. [re-enter tamora, with attendants; titus andronicus, and lucius] tamora where is my lord the king? saturninus here, tamora, though grieved with killing grief. tamora where is thy brother bassianus? saturninus now to the bottom dost thou search my wound: poor bassianus here lies murdered. tamora then all too late i bring this fatal writ, the complot of this timeless tragedy; and wonder greatly that man's face can fold in pleasing smiles such murderous tyranny. [she giveth saturninus a letter] saturninus [reads] 'an if we miss to meet him handsomely- sweet huntsman, bassianus 'tis we mean- do thou so much as dig the grave for him: thou know'st our meaning. look for thy reward among the nettles at the elder-tree which overshades the mouth of that same pit where we decreed to bury bassianus. do this, and purchase us thy lasting friends.' o tamora! was ever heard the like? this is the pit, and this the elder-tree. look, sirs, if you can find the huntsman out that should have murdered bassianus here. aaron my gracious lord, here is the bag of gold. saturninus [to titus] two of thy whelps, fell curs of bloody kind, have here bereft my brother of his life. sirs, drag them from the pit unto the prison: there let them bide until we have devised some never-heard-of torturing pain for them. tamora what, are they in this pit? o wondrous thing! how easily murder is discovered! titus andronicus high emperor, upon my feeble knee i beg this boon, with tears not lightly shed, that this fell fault of my accursed sons, accursed if the fault be proved in them,- saturninus if it be proved! you see it is apparent. who found this letter? tamora, was it you? tamora andronicus himself did take it up. titus andronicus i did, my lord: yet let me be their bail; for, by my father's reverend tomb, i vow they shall be ready at your highness' will to answer their suspicion with their lives. saturninus thou shalt not bail them: see thou follow me. some bring the murder'd body, some the murderers: let them not speak a word; the guilt is plain; for, by my soul, were there worse end than death, that end upon them should be executed. tamora andronicus, i will entreat the king; fear not thy sons; they shall do well enough. titus andronicus come, lucius, come; stay not to talk with them. [exeunt] titus andronicus act ii scene iv another part of the forest. [enter demetrius and chiron with lavinia, ravished; her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out] demetrius so, now go tell, an if thy tongue can speak, who 'twas that cut thy tongue and ravish'd thee. chiron write down thy mind, bewray thy meaning so, an if thy stumps will let thee play the scribe. demetrius see, how with signs and tokens she can scrowl. chiron go home, call for sweet water, wash thy hands. demetrius she hath no tongue to call, nor hands to wash; and so let's leave her to her silent walks. chiron an 'twere my case, i should go hang myself. demetrius if thou hadst hands to help thee knit the cord. [exeunt demetrius and chiron] [enter marcus] marcus who is this? my niece, that flies away so fast! cousin, a word; where is your husband? if i do dream, would all my wealth would wake me! if i do wake, some planet strike me down, that i may slumber in eternal sleep! speak, gentle niece, what stern ungentle hands have lopp'd and hew'd and made thy body bare of her two branches, those sweet ornaments, whose circling shadows kings have sought to sleep in, and might not gain so great a happiness as have thy love? why dost not speak to me? alas, a crimson river of warm blood, like to a bubbling fountain stirr'd with wind, doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips, coming and going with thy honey breath. but, sure, some tereus hath deflowered thee, and, lest thou shouldst detect him, cut thy tongue. ah, now thou turn'st away thy face for shame! and, notwithstanding all this loss of blood, as from a conduit with three issuing spouts, yet do thy cheeks look red as titan's face blushing to be encountered with a cloud. shall i speak for thee? shall i say 'tis so? o, that i knew thy heart; and knew the beast, that i might rail at him, to ease my mind! sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp'd, doth burn the heart to cinders where it is. fair philomela, she but lost her tongue, and in a tedious sampler sew'd her mind: but, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee; a craftier tereus, cousin, hast thou met, and he hath cut those pretty fingers off, that could have better sew'd than philomel. o, had the monster seen those lily hands tremble, like aspen-leaves, upon a lute, and make the silken strings delight to kiss them, he would not then have touch'd them for his life! or, had he heard the heavenly harmony which that sweet tongue hath made, he would have dropp'd his knife, and fell asleep as cerberus at the thracian poet's feet. come, let us go, and make thy father blind; for such a sight will blind a father's eye: one hour's storm will drown the fragrant meads; what will whole months of tears thy father's eyes? do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee o, could our mourning ease thy misery! [exeunt] titus andronicus act iii scene i rome. a street. [enter judges, senators and tribunes, with martius and quintus, bound, passing on to the place of execution; titus going before, pleading] titus andronicus hear me, grave fathers! noble tribunes, stay! for pity of mine age, whose youth was spent in dangerous wars, whilst you securely slept; for all my blood in rome's great quarrel shed; for all the frosty nights that i have watch'd; and for these bitter tears, which now you see filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks; be pitiful to my condemned sons, whose souls are not corrupted as 'tis thought. for two and twenty sons i never wept, because they died in honour's lofty bed. [lieth down; the judges, &c., pass by him, and exeunt] for these, these, tribunes, in the dust i write my heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears: let my tears stanch the earth's dry appetite; my sons' sweet blood will make it shame and blush. o earth, i will befriend thee more with rain, that shall distil from these two ancient urns, than youthful april shall with all his showers: in summer's drought i'll drop upon thee still; in winter with warm tears i'll melt the snow and keep eternal spring-time on thy face, so thou refuse to drink my dear sons' blood. [enter lucius, with his sword drawn] o reverend tribunes! o gentle, aged men! unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death; and let me say, that never wept before, my tears are now prevailing orators. lucius o noble father, you lament in vain: the tribunes hear you not; no man is by; and you recount your sorrows to a stone. titus andronicus ah, lucius, for thy brothers let me plead. grave tribunes, once more i entreat of you,- lucius my gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak. titus andronicus why, tis no matter, man; if they did hear, they would not mark me, or if they did mark, they would not pity me, yet plead i must; and bootless unto them [ ] therefore i tell my sorrows to the stones; who, though they cannot answer my distress, yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes, for that they will not intercept my tale: when i do weep, they humbly at my feet receive my tears and seem to weep with me; and, were they but attired in grave weeds, rome could afford no tribune like to these. a stone is soft as wax,--tribunes more hard than stones; a stone is silent, and offendeth not, and tribunes with their tongues doom men to death. [rises] but wherefore stand'st thou with thy weapon drawn? lucius to rescue my two brothers from their death: for which attempt the judges have pronounced my everlasting doom of banishment. titus andronicus o happy man! they have befriended thee. why, foolish lucius, dost thou not perceive that rome is but a wilderness of tigers? tigers must prey, and rome affords no prey but me and mine: how happy art thou, then, from these devourers to be banished! but who comes with our brother marcus here? [enter marcus and lavinia] marcus andronicus titus, prepare thy aged eyes to weep; or, if not so, thy noble heart to break: i bring consuming sorrow to thine age. titus andronicus will it consume me? let me see it, then. marcus andronicus this was thy daughter. titus andronicus why, marcus, so she is. lucius ay me, this object kills me! titus andronicus faint-hearted boy, arise, and look upon her. speak, lavinia, what accursed hand hath made thee handless in thy father's sight? what fool hath added water to the sea, or brought a faggot to bright-burning troy? my grief was at the height before thou camest, and now like nilus, it disdaineth bounds. give me a sword, i'll chop off my hands too; for they have fought for rome, and all in vain; and they have nursed this woe, in feeding life; in bootless prayer have they been held up, and they have served me to effectless use: now all the service i require of them is that the one will help to cut the other. 'tis well, lavinia, that thou hast no hands; for hands, to do rome service, are but vain. lucius speak, gentle sister, who hath martyr'd thee? marcus andronicus o, that delightful engine of her thoughts that blabb'd them with such pleasing eloquence, is torn from forth that pretty hollow cage, where, like a sweet melodious bird, it sung sweet varied notes, enchanting every ear! lucius o, say thou for her, who hath done this deed? marcus andronicus o, thus i found her, straying in the park, seeking to hide herself, as doth the deer that hath received some unrecuring wound. titus andronicus it was my deer; and he that wounded her hath hurt me more than had he killed me dead: for now i stand as one upon a rock environed with a wilderness of sea, who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave, expecting ever when some envious surge will in his brinish bowels swallow him. this way to death my wretched sons are gone; here stands my other son, a banished man, and here my brother, weeping at my woes. but that which gives my soul the greatest spurn, is dear lavinia, dearer than my soul. had i but seen thy picture in this plight, it would have madded me: what shall i do now i behold thy lively body so? thou hast no hands, to wipe away thy tears: nor tongue, to tell me who hath martyr'd thee: thy husband he is dead: and for his death thy brothers are condemn'd, and dead by this. look, marcus! ah, son lucius, look on her! when i did name her brothers, then fresh tears stood on her cheeks, as doth the honey-dew upon a gather'd lily almost wither'd. marcus andronicus perchance she weeps because they kill'd her husband; perchance because she knows them innocent. titus andronicus if they did kill thy husband, then be joyful because the law hath ta'en revenge on them. no, no, they would not do so foul a deed; witness the sorrow that their sister makes. gentle lavinia, let me kiss thy lips. or make some sign how i may do thee ease: shall thy good uncle, and thy brother lucius, and thou, and i, sit round about some fountain, looking all downwards to behold our cheeks how they are stain'd, as meadows, yet not dry, with miry slime left on them by a flood? and in the fountain shall we gaze so long till the fresh taste be taken from that clearness, and made a brine-pit with our bitter tears? or shall we cut away our hands, like thine? or shall we bite our tongues, and in dumb shows pass the remainder of our hateful days? what shall we do? let us, that have our tongues, plot some deuce of further misery, to make us wonder'd at in time to come. lucius sweet father, cease your tears; for, at your grief, see how my wretched sister sobs and weeps. marcus andronicus patience, dear niece. good titus, dry thine eyes. titus andronicus ah, marcus, marcus! brother, well i wot thy napkin cannot drink a tear of mine, for thou, poor man, hast drown'd it with thine own. lucius ah, my lavinia, i will wipe thy cheeks. titus andronicus mark, marcus, mark! i understand her signs: had she a tongue to speak, now would she say that to her brother which i said to thee: his napkin, with his true tears all bewet, can do no service on her sorrowful cheeks. o, what a sympathy of woe is this, as far from help as limbo is from bliss! [enter aaron] aaron titus andronicus, my lord the emperor sends thee this word,--that, if thou love thy sons, let marcus, lucius, or thyself, old titus, or any one of you, chop off your hand, and send it to the king: he for the same will send thee hither both thy sons alive; and that shall be the ransom for their fault. titus andronicus o gracious emperor! o gentle aaron! did ever raven sing so like a lark, that gives sweet tidings of the sun's uprise? with all my heart, i'll send the emperor my hand: good aaron, wilt thou help to chop it off? lucius stay, father! for that noble hand of thine, that hath thrown down so many enemies, shall not be sent: my hand will serve the turn: my youth can better spare my blood than you; and therefore mine shall save my brothers' lives. marcus andronicus which of your hands hath not defended rome, and rear'd aloft the bloody battle-axe, writing destruction on the enemy's castle? o, none of both but are of high desert: my hand hath been but idle; let it serve to ransom my two nephews from their death; then have i kept it to a worthy end. aaron nay, come, agree whose hand shall go along, for fear they die before their pardon come. marcus andronicus my hand shall go. lucius by heaven, it shall not go! titus andronicus sirs, strive no more: such wither'd herbs as these are meet for plucking up, and therefore mine. lucius sweet father, if i shall be thought thy son, let me redeem my brothers both from death. marcus andronicus and, for our father's sake and mother's care, now let me show a brother's love to thee. titus andronicus agree between you; i will spare my hand. lucius then i'll go fetch an axe. marcus andronicus but i will use the axe. [exeunt lucius and marcus] titus andronicus come hither, aaron; i'll deceive them both: lend me thy hand, and i will give thee mine. aaron [aside] if that be call'd deceit, i will be honest, and never, whilst i live, deceive men so: but i'll deceive you in another sort, and that you'll say, ere half an hour pass. [cuts off titus's hand] [re-enter lucius and marcus] titus andronicus now stay your strife: what shall be is dispatch'd. good aaron, give his majesty my hand: tell him it was a hand that warded him from thousand dangers; bid him bury it more hath it merited; that let it have. as for my sons, say i account of them as jewels purchased at an easy price; and yet dear too, because i bought mine own. aaron i go, andronicus: and for thy hand look by and by to have thy sons with thee. [aside] their heads, i mean. o, how this villany doth fat me with the very thoughts of it! let fools do good, and fair men call for grace. aaron will have his soul black like his face. [exit] titus andronicus o, here i lift this one hand up to heaven, and bow this feeble ruin to the earth: if any power pities wretched tears, to that i call! [to lavinia] what, wilt thou kneel with me? do, then, dear heart; for heaven shall hear our prayers; or with our sighs we'll breathe the welkin dim, and stain the sun with fog, as sometime clouds when they do hug him in their melting bosoms. marcus andronicus o brother, speak with possibilities, and do not break into these deep extremes. titus andronicus is not my sorrow deep, having no bottom? then be my passions bottomless with them. marcus andronicus but yet let reason govern thy lament. titus andronicus if there were reason for these miseries, then into limits could i bind my woes: when heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o'erflow? if the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad, threatening the welkin with his big-swoln face? and wilt thou have a reason for this coil? i am the sea; hark, how her sighs do blow! she is the weeping welkin, i the earth: then must my sea be moved with her sighs; then must my earth with her continual tears become a deluge, overflow'd and drown'd; for why my bowels cannot hide her woes, but like a drunkard must i vomit them. then give me leave, for losers will have leave to ease their stomachs with their bitter tongues. [enter a messenger, with two heads and a hand] messenger worthy andronicus, ill art thou repaid for that good hand thou sent'st the emperor. here are the heads of thy two noble sons; and here's thy hand, in scorn to thee sent back; thy griefs their sports, thy resolution mock'd; that woe is me to think upon thy woes more than remembrance of my father's death. [exit] marcus andronicus now let hot aetna cool in sicily, and be my heart an ever-burning hell! these miseries are more than may be borne. to weep with them that weep doth ease some deal; but sorrow flouted at is double death. lucius ah, that this sight should make so deep a wound, and yet detested life not shrink thereat! that ever death should let life bear his name, where life hath no more interest but to breathe! [lavinia kisses titus] marcus andronicus alas, poor heart, that kiss is comfortless as frozen water to a starved snake. titus andronicus when will this fearful slumber have an end? marcus andronicus now, farewell, flattery: die, andronicus; thou dost not slumber: see, thy two sons' heads, thy warlike hand, thy mangled daughter here: thy other banish'd son, with this dear sight struck pale and bloodless; and thy brother, i, even like a stony image, cold and numb. ah, now no more will i control thy griefs: rend off thy silver hair, thy other hand gnawing with thy teeth; and be this dismal sight the closing up of our most wretched eyes; now is a time to storm; why art thou still? titus andronicus ha, ha, ha! marcus andronicus why dost thou laugh? it fits not with this hour. titus andronicus why, i have not another tear to shed: besides, this sorrow is an enemy, and would usurp upon my watery eyes and make them blind with tributary tears: then which way shall i find revenge's cave? for these two heads do seem to speak to me, and threat me i shall never come to bliss till all these mischiefs be return'd again even in their throats that have committed them. come, let me see what task i have to do. you heavy people, circle me about, that i may turn me to each one of you, and swear unto my soul to right your wrongs. the vow is made. come, brother, take a head; and in this hand the other i will bear. lavinia, thou shalt be employ'd: these arms! bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thy teeth. as for thee, boy, go get thee from my sight; thou art an exile, and thou must not stay: hie to the goths, and raise an army there: and, if you love me, as i think you do, let's kiss and part, for we have much to do. [exeunt titus, marcus, and lavinia] lucius farewell andronicus, my noble father, the wofull'st man that ever lived in rome: farewell, proud rome; till lucius come again, he leaves his pledges dearer than his life: farewell, lavinia, my noble sister; o, would thou wert as thou tofore hast been! but now nor lucius nor lavinia lives but in oblivion and hateful griefs. if lucius live, he will requite your wrongs; and make proud saturnine and his empress beg at the gates, like tarquin and his queen. now will i to the goths, and raise a power, to be revenged on rome and saturnine. [exit] titus andronicus act iii scene ii a room in titus's house. a banquet set out. [enter titus, marcus, lavinia and young lucius, a boy] titus andronicus so, so; now sit: and look you eat no more than will preserve just so much strength in us as will revenge these bitter woes of ours. marcus, unknit that sorrow-wreathen knot: thy niece and i, poor creatures, want our hands, and cannot passionate our tenfold grief with folded arms. this poor right hand of mine is left to tyrannize upon my breast; who, when my heart, all mad with misery, beats in this hollow prison of my flesh, then thus i thump it down. [to lavinia] thou map of woe, that thus dost talk in signs! when thy poor heart beats with outrageous beating, thou canst not strike it thus to make it still. wound it with sighing, girl, kill it with groans; or get some little knife between thy teeth, and just against thy heart make thou a hole; that all the tears that thy poor eyes let fall may run into that sink, and soaking in drown the lamenting fool in sea-salt tears. marcus andronicus fie, brother, fie! teach her not thus to lay such violent hands upon her tender life. titus andronicus how now! has sorrow made thee dote already? why, marcus, no man should be mad but i. what violent hands can she lay on her life? ah, wherefore dost thou urge the name of hands; to bid aeneas tell the tale twice o'er, how troy was burnt and he made miserable? o, handle not the theme, to talk of hands, lest we remember still that we have none. fie, fie, how franticly i square my talk, as if we should forget we had no hands, if marcus did not name the word of hands! come, let's fall to; and, gentle girl, eat this: here is no drink! hark, marcus, what she says; i can interpret all her martyr'd signs; she says she drinks no other drink but tears, brew'd with her sorrow, mesh'd upon her cheeks: speechless complainer, i will learn thy thought; in thy dumb action will i be as perfect as begging hermits in their holy prayers: thou shalt not sigh, nor hold thy stumps to heaven, nor wink, nor nod, nor kneel, nor make a sign, but i of these will wrest an alphabet and by still practise learn to know thy meaning. young lucius good grandsire, leave these bitter deep laments: make my aunt merry with some pleasing tale. marcus andronicus alas, the tender boy, in passion moved, doth weep to see his grandsire's heaviness. titus andronicus peace, tender sapling; thou art made of tears, and tears will quickly melt thy life away. [marcus strikes the dish with a knife] what dost thou strike at, marcus, with thy knife? marcus andronicus at that that i have kill'd, my lord; a fly. titus andronicus out on thee, murderer! thou kill'st my heart; mine eyes are cloy'd with view of tyranny: a deed of death done on the innocent becomes not titus' brother: get thee gone: i see thou art not for my company. marcus andronicus alas, my lord, i have but kill'd a fly. titus andronicus but how, if that fly had a father and mother? how would he hang his slender gilded wings, and buzz lamenting doings in the air! poor harmless fly, that, with his pretty buzzing melody, came here to make us merry! and thou hast kill'd him. marcus andronicus pardon me, sir; it was a black ill-favor'd fly, like to the empress' moor; therefore i kill'd him. titus andronicus o, o, o, then pardon me for reprehending thee, for thou hast done a charitable deed. give me thy knife, i will insult on him; flattering myself, as if it were the moor come hither purposely to poison me.- there's for thyself, and that's for tamora. ah, sirrah! yet, i think, we are not brought so low, but that between us we can kill a fly that comes in likeness of a coal-black moor. marcus andronicus alas, poor man! grief has so wrought on him, he takes false shadows for true substances. titus andronicus come, take away. lavinia, go with me: i'll to thy closet; and go read with thee sad stories chanced in the times of old. come, boy, and go with me: thy sight is young, and thou shalt read when mine begin to dazzle. [exeunt] titus andronicus act iv scene i rome. titus's garden. [enter young lucius, and lavinia running after him, and the boy flies from her, with books under his arm. then enter titus and marcus] young lucius help, grandsire, help! my aunt lavinia follows me every where, i know not why: good uncle marcus, see how swift she comes. alas, sweet aunt, i know not what you mean. marcus andronicus stand by me, lucius; do not fear thine aunt. titus andronicus she loves thee, boy, too well to do thee harm. young lucius ay, when my father was in rome she did. marcus andronicus what means my niece lavinia by these signs? titus andronicus fear her not, lucius: somewhat doth she mean: see, lucius, see how much she makes of thee: somewhither would she have thee go with her. ah, boy, cornelia never with more care read to her sons than she hath read to thee sweet poetry and tully's orator. marcus andronicus canst thou not guess wherefore she plies thee thus? young lucius my lord, i know not, i, nor can i guess, unless some fit or frenzy do possess her: for i have heard my grandsire say full oft, extremity of griefs would make men mad; and i have read that hecuba of troy ran mad through sorrow: that made me to fear; although, my lord, i know my noble aunt loves me as dear as e'er my mother did, and would not, but in fury, fright my youth: which made me down to throw my books, and fly- causeless, perhaps. but pardon me, sweet aunt: and, madam, if my uncle marcus go, i will most willingly attend your ladyship. marcus andronicus lucius, i will. [lavinia turns over with her stumps the books which lucius has let fall] titus andronicus how now, lavinia! marcus, what means this? some book there is that she desires to see. which is it, girl, of these? open them, boy. but thou art deeper read, and better skill'd come, and take choice of all my library, and so beguile thy sorrow, till the heavens reveal the damn'd contriver of this deed. why lifts she up her arms in sequence thus? marcus andronicus i think she means that there was more than one confederate in the fact: ay, more there was; or else to heaven she heaves them for revenge. titus andronicus lucius, what book is that she tosseth so? young lucius grandsire, 'tis ovid's metamorphoses; my mother gave it me. marcus andronicus for love of her that's gone, perhaps she cull'd it from among the rest. titus andronicus soft! see how busily she turns the leaves! [helping her] what would she find? lavinia, shall i read? this is the tragic tale of philomel, and treats of tereus' treason and his rape: and rape, i fear, was root of thine annoy. marcus andronicus see, brother, see; note how she quotes the leaves. titus andronicus lavinia, wert thou thus surprised, sweet girl, ravish'd and wrong'd, as philomela was, forced in the ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods? see, see! ay, such a place there is, where we did hunt- o, had we never, never hunted there!- pattern'd by that the poet here describes, by nature made for murders and for rapes. marcus andronicus o, why should nature build so foul a den, unless the gods delight in tragedies? titus andronicus give signs, sweet girl, for here are none but friends, what roman lord it was durst do the deed: or slunk not saturnine, as tarquin erst, that left the camp to sin in lucrece' bed? marcus andronicus sit down, sweet niece: brother, sit down by me. apollo, pallas, jove, or mercury, inspire me, that i may this treason find! my lord, look here: look here, lavinia: this sandy plot is plain; guide, if thou canst this after me, when i have writ my name without the help of any hand at all. [he writes his name with his staff, and guides it with feet and mouth] cursed be that heart that forced us to this shift! write thou good niece; and here display, at last, what god will have discover'd for revenge; heaven guide thy pen to print thy sorrows plain, that we may know the traitors and the truth! [she takes the staff in her mouth, and guides it with her stumps, and writes] titus andronicus o, do ye read, my lord, what she hath writ? 'stuprum. chiron. demetrius.' marcus andronicus what, what! the lustful sons of tamora performers of this heinous, bloody deed? titus andronicus magni dominator poli, tam lentus audis scelera? tam lentus vides? marcus andronicus o, calm thee, gentle lord; although i know there is enough written upon this earth to stir a mutiny in the mildest thoughts and arm the minds of infants to exclaims. my lord, kneel down with me; lavinia, kneel; and kneel, sweet boy, the roman hector's hope; and swear with me, as, with the woful fere and father of that chaste dishonour'd dame, lord junius brutus sware for lucrece' rape, that we will prosecute by good advice mortal revenge upon these traitorous goths, and see their blood, or die with this reproach. titus andronicus 'tis sure enough, an you knew how. but if you hunt these bear-whelps, then beware: the dam will wake; and, if she wind you once, she's with the lion deeply still in league, and lulls him whilst she playeth on her back, and when he sleeps will she do what she list. you are a young huntsman, marcus; let it alone; and, come, i will go get a leaf of brass, and with a gad of steel will write these words, and lay it by: the angry northern wind will blow these sands, like sibyl's leaves, abroad, and where's your lesson, then? boy, what say you? young lucius i say, my lord, that if i were a man, their mother's bed-chamber should not be safe for these bad bondmen to the yoke of rome. marcus andronicus ay, that's my boy! thy father hath full oft for his ungrateful country done the like. young lucius and, uncle, so will i, an if i live. titus andronicus come, go with me into mine armoury; lucius, i'll fit thee; and withal, my boy, shalt carry from me to the empress' sons presents that i intend to send them both: come, come; thou'lt do thy message, wilt thou not? young lucius ay, with my dagger in their bosoms, grandsire. titus andronicus no, boy, not so; i'll teach thee another course. lavinia, come. marcus, look to my house: lucius and i'll go brave it at the court: ay, marry, will we, sir; and we'll be waited on. [exeunt titus, lavinia, and young lucius] marcus andronicus o heavens, can you hear a good man groan, and not relent, or not compassion him? marcus, attend him in his ecstasy, that hath more scars of sorrow in his heart than foemen's marks upon his batter'd shield; but yet so just that he will not revenge. revenge, ye heavens, for old andronicus! [exit] titus andronicus act iv scene ii the same. a room in the palace. [enter, from one side, aaron, demetrius, and chiron; from the other side, young lucius, and an attendant, with a bundle of weapons, and verses writ upon them] chiron demetrius, here's the son of lucius; he hath some message to deliver us. aaron ay, some mad message from his mad grandfather. young lucius my lords, with all the humbleness i may, i greet your honours from andronicus. [aside] and pray the roman gods confound you both! demetrius gramercy, lovely lucius: what's the news? young lucius [aside] that you are both decipher'd, that's the news, for villains mark'd with rape.--may it please you, my grandsire, well advised, hath sent by me the goodliest weapons of his armoury to gratify your honourable youth, the hope of rome; for so he bade me say; and so i do, and with his gifts present your lordships, that, whenever you have need, you may be armed and appointed well: and so i leave you both: [aside] like bloody villains. [exeunt young lucius, and attendant] demetrius what's here? a scroll; and written round about? let's see; [reads] 'integer vitae, scelerisque purus, non eget mauri jaculis, nec arcu.' chiron o, 'tis a verse in horace; i know it well: i read it in the grammar long ago. aaron ay, just; a verse in horace; right, you have it. [aside] now, what a thing it is to be an ass! here's no sound jest! the old man hath found their guilt; and sends them weapons wrapped about with lines, that wound, beyond their feeling, to the quick. but were our witty empress well afoot, she would applaud andronicus' conceit: but let her rest in her unrest awhile. and now, young lords, was't not a happy star led us to rome, strangers, and more than so, captives, to be advanced to this height? it did me good, before the palace gate to brave the tribune in his brother's hearing. demetrius but me more good, to see so great a lord basely insinuate and send us gifts. aaron had he not reason, lord demetrius? did you not use his daughter very friendly? demetrius i would we had a thousand roman dames at such a bay, by turn to serve our lust. chiron a charitable wish and full of love. aaron here lacks but your mother for to say amen. chiron and that would she for twenty thousand more. demetrius come, let us go; and pray to all the gods for our beloved mother in her pains. aaron [aside] pray to the devils; the gods have given us over. [trumpets sound within] demetrius why do the emperor's trumpets flourish thus? chiron belike, for joy the emperor hath a son. demetrius soft! who comes here? [enter a nurse, with a blackamoor child in her arms] nurse good morrow, lords: o, tell me, did you see aaron the moor? aaron well, more or less, or ne'er a whit at all, here aaron is; and what with aaron now? nurse o gentle aaron, we are all undone! now help, or woe betide thee evermore! aaron why, what a caterwauling dost thou keep! what dost thou wrap and fumble in thine arms? nurse o, that which i would hide from heaven's eye, our empress' shame, and stately rome's disgrace! she is deliver'd, lords; she is deliver'd. aaron to whom? nurse i mean, she is brought a-bed. aaron well, god give her good rest! what hath he sent her? nurse a devil. aaron why, then she is the devil's dam; a joyful issue. nurse a joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue: here is the babe, as loathsome as a toad amongst the fairest breeders of our clime: the empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal, and bids thee christen it with thy dagger's point. aaron 'zounds, ye whore! is black so base a hue? sweet blowse, you are a beauteous blossom, sure. demetrius villain, what hast thou done? aaron that which thou canst not undo. chiron thou hast undone our mother. aaron villain, i have done thy mother. demetrius and therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone. woe to her chance, and damn'd her loathed choice! accursed the offspring of so foul a fiend! chiron it shall not live. aaron it shall not die. nurse aaron, it must; the mother wills it so. aaron what, must it, nurse? then let no man but i do execution on my flesh and blood. demetrius i'll broach the tadpole on my rapier's point: nurse, give it me; my sword shall soon dispatch it. aaron sooner this sword shall plough thy bowels up. [takes the child from the nurse, and draws] stay, murderous villains! will you kill your brother? now, by the burning tapers of the sky, that shone so brightly when this boy was got, he dies upon my scimitar's sharp point that touches this my first-born son and heir! i tell you, younglings, not enceladus, with all his threatening band of typhon's brood, nor great alcides, nor the god of war, shall seize this prey out of his father's hands. what, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys! ye white-limed walls! ye alehouse painted signs! coal-black is better than another hue, in that it scorns to bear another hue; for all the water in the ocean can never turn the swan's black legs to white, although she lave them hourly in the flood. tell the empress from me, i am of age to keep mine own, excuse it how she can. demetrius wilt thou betray thy noble mistress thus? aaron my mistress is my mistress; this myself, the vigour and the picture of my youth: this before all the world do i prefer; this maugre all the world will i keep safe, or some of you shall smoke for it in rome. demetrius by this our mother is forever shamed. chiron rome will despise her for this foul escape. nurse the emperor, in his rage, will doom her death. chiron i blush to think upon this ignomy. aaron why, there's the privilege your beauty bears: fie, treacherous hue, that will betray with blushing the close enacts and counsels of the heart! here's a young lad framed of another leer: look, how the black slave smiles upon the father, as who should say 'old lad, i am thine own.' he is your brother, lords, sensibly fed of that self-blood that first gave life to you, and from that womb where you imprison'd were he is enfranchised and come to light: nay, he is your brother by the surer side, although my seal be stamped in his face. nurse aaron, what shall i say unto the empress? demetrius advise thee, aaron, what is to be done, and we will all subscribe to thy advice: save thou the child, so we may all be safe. aaron then sit we down, and let us all consult. my son and i will have the wind of you: keep there: now talk at pleasure of your safety. [they sit] demetrius how many women saw this child of his? aaron why, so, brave lords! when we join in league, i am a lamb: but if you brave the moor, the chafed boar, the mountain lioness, the ocean swells not so as aaron storms. but say, again; how many saw the child? nurse cornelia the midwife and myself; and no one else but the deliver'd empress. aaron the empress, the midwife, and yourself: two may keep counsel when the third's away: go to the empress, tell her this i said. [he kills the nurse] weke, weke! so cries a pig prepared to the spit. demetrius what mean'st thou, aaron? wherefore didst thou this? aaron o lord, sir, 'tis a deed of policy: shall she live to betray this guilt of ours, a long-tongued babbling gossip? no, lords, no: and now be it known to you my full intent. not far, one muli lives, my countryman; his wife but yesternight was brought to bed; his child is like to her, fair as you are: go pack with him, and give the mother gold, and tell them both the circumstance of all; and how by this their child shall be advanced, and be received for the emperor's heir, and substituted in the place of mine, to calm this tempest whirling in the court; and let the emperor dandle him for his own. hark ye, lords; ye see i have given her physic, [pointing to the nurse] and you must needs bestow her funeral; the fields are near, and you are gallant grooms: this done, see that you take no longer days, but send the midwife presently to me. the midwife and the nurse well made away, then let the ladies tattle what they please. chiron aaron, i see thou wilt not trust the air with secrets. demetrius for this care of tamora, herself and hers are highly bound to thee. [exeunt demetrius and chiron bearing off the nurse's body] aaron now to the goths, as swift as swallow flies; there to dispose this treasure in mine arms, and secretly to greet the empress' friends. come on, you thick lipp'd slave, i'll bear you hence; for it is you that puts us to our shifts: i'll make you feed on berries and on roots, and feed on curds and whey, and suck the goat, and cabin in a cave, and bring you up to be a warrior, and command a camp. [exit] titus andronicus act iv scene iii the same. a public place. [enter titus, bearing arrows with letters at the ends of them; with him, marcus, young lucius, publius, sempronius, caius, and other gentlemen, with bows] titus andronicus come, marcus; come, kinsmen; this is the way. sir boy, now let me see your archery; look ye draw home enough, and 'tis there straight. terras astraea reliquit: be you remember'd, marcus, she's gone, she's fled. sirs, take you to your tools. you, cousins, shall go sound the ocean, and cast your nets; happily you may catch her in the sea; yet there's as little justice as at land: no; publius and sempronius, you must do it; 'tis you must dig with mattock and with spade, and pierce the inmost centre of the earth: then, when you come to pluto's region, i pray you, deliver him this petition; tell him, it is for justice and for aid, and that it comes from old andronicus, shaken with sorrows in ungrateful rome. ah, rome! well, well; i made thee miserable what time i threw the people's suffrages on him that thus doth tyrannize o'er me. go, get you gone; and pray be careful all, and leave you not a man-of-war unsearch'd: this wicked emperor may have shipp'd her hence; and, kinsmen, then we may go pipe for justice. marcus andronicus o publius, is not this a heavy case, to see thy noble uncle thus distract? publius therefore, my lord, it highly us concerns by day and night to attend him carefully, and feed his humour kindly as we may, till time beget some careful remedy. marcus andronicus kinsmen, his sorrows are past remedy. join with the goths; and with revengeful war take wreak on rome for this ingratitude, and vengeance on the traitor saturnine. titus andronicus publius, how now! how now, my masters! what, have you met with her? publius no, my good lord; but pluto sends you word, if you will have revenge from hell, you shall: marry, for justice, she is so employ'd, he thinks, with jove in heaven, or somewhere else, so that perforce you must needs stay a time. titus andronicus he doth me wrong to feed me with delays. i'll dive into the burning lake below, and pull her out of acheron by the heels. marcus, we are but shrubs, no cedars we no big-boned men framed of the cyclops' size; but metal, marcus, steel to the very back, yet wrung with wrongs more than our backs can bear: and, sith there's no justice in earth nor hell, we will solicit heaven and move the gods to send down justice for to wreak our wrongs. come, to this gear. you are a good archer, marcus; [he gives them the arrows] 'ad jovem,' that's for you: here, 'ad apollinem:' 'ad martem,' that's for myself: here, boy, to pallas: here, to mercury: to saturn, caius, not to saturnine; you were as good to shoot against the wind. to it, boy! marcus, loose when i bid. of my word, i have written to effect; there's not a god left unsolicited. marcus andronicus kinsmen, shoot all your shafts into the court: we will afflict the emperor in his pride. titus andronicus now, masters, draw. [they shoot] o, well said, lucius! good boy, in virgo's lap; give it pallas. marcus andronicus my lord, i aim a mile beyond the moon; your letter is with jupiter by this. titus andronicus ha, ha! publius, publius, what hast thou done? see, see, thou hast shot off one of taurus' horns. marcus andronicus this was the sport, my lord: when publius shot, the bull, being gall'd, gave aries such a knock that down fell both the ram's horns in the court; and who should find them but the empress' villain? she laugh'd, and told the moor he should not choose but give them to his master for a present. titus andronicus why, there it goes: god give his lordship joy! [enter a clown, with a basket, and two pigeons in it] news, news from heaven! marcus, the post is come. sirrah, what tidings? have you any letters? shall i have justice? what says jupiter? clown o, the gibbet-maker! he says that he hath taken them down again, for the man must not be hanged till the next week. titus andronicus but what says jupiter, i ask thee? clown alas, sir, i know not jupiter; i never drank with him in all my life. titus andronicus why, villain, art not thou the carrier? clown ay, of my pigeons, sir; nothing else. titus andronicus why, didst thou not come from heaven? clown from heaven! alas, sir, i never came there god forbid i should be so bold to press to heaven in my young days. why, i am going with my pigeons to the tribunal plebs, to take up a matter of brawl betwixt my uncle and one of the emperial's men. marcus andronicus why, sir, that is as fit as can be to serve for your oration; and let him deliver the pigeons to the emperor from you. titus andronicus tell me, can you deliver an oration to the emperor with a grace? clown nay, truly, sir, i could never say grace in all my life. titus andronicus sirrah, come hither: make no more ado, but give your pigeons to the emperor: by me thou shalt have justice at his hands. hold, hold; meanwhile here's money for thy charges. give me pen and ink. sirrah, can you with a grace deliver a supplication? clown ay, sir. titus andronicus then here is a supplication for you. and when you come to him, at the first approach you must kneel, then kiss his foot, then deliver up your pigeons, and then look for your reward. i'll be at hand, sir; see you do it bravely. clown i warrant you, sir, let me alone. titus andronicus sirrah, hast thou a knife? come, let me see it. here, marcus, fold it in the oration; for thou hast made it like an humble suppliant. and when thou hast given it the emperor, knock at my door, and tell me what he says. clown god be with you, sir; i will. titus andronicus come, marcus, let us go. publius, follow me. [exeunt] titus andronicus act iv scene iv the same. before the palace. [enter saturninus, tamora, demetrius, chiron, lords, and others; saturninus with the arrows in his hand that titus shot] saturninus why, lords, what wrongs are these! was ever seen an emperor in rome thus overborne, troubled, confronted thus; and, for the extent of egal justice, used in such contempt? my lords, you know, as know the mightful gods, however these disturbers of our peace buz in the people's ears, there nought hath pass'd, but even with law, against the willful sons of old andronicus. and what an if his sorrows have so overwhelm'd his wits, shall we be thus afflicted in his wreaks, his fits, his frenzy, and his bitterness? and now he writes to heaven for his redress: see, here's to jove, and this to mercury; this to apollo; this to the god of war; sweet scrolls to fly about the streets of rome! what's this but libelling against the senate, and blazoning our injustice every where? a goodly humour, is it not, my lords? as who would say, in rome no justice were. but if i live, his feigned ecstasies shall be no shelter to these outrages: but he and his shall know that justice lives in saturninus' health, whom, if she sleep, he'll so awake as she in fury shall cut off the proud'st conspirator that lives. tamora my gracious lord, my lovely saturnine, lord of my life, commander of my thoughts, calm thee, and bear the faults of titus' age, the effects of sorrow for his valiant sons, whose loss hath pierced him deep and scarr'd his heart; and rather comfort his distressed plight than prosecute the meanest or the best for these contempts. [aside] why, thus it shall become high-witted tamora to gloze with all: but, titus, i have touched thee to the quick, thy life-blood out: if aaron now be wise, then is all safe, the anchor's in the port. [enter clown] how now, good fellow! wouldst thou speak with us? clown yea, forsooth, an your mistership be emperial. tamora empress i am, but yonder sits the emperor. clown 'tis he. god and saint stephen give you good den: i have brought you a letter and a couple of pigeons here. [saturninus reads the letter] saturninus go, take him away, and hang him presently. clown how much money must i have? tamora come, sirrah, you must be hanged. clown hanged! by'r lady, then i have brought up a neck to a fair end. [exit, guarded] saturninus despiteful and intolerable wrongs! shall i endure this monstrous villany? i know from whence this same device proceeds: may this be borne?--as if his traitorous sons, that died by law for murder of our brother, have by my means been butcher'd wrongfully! go, drag the villain hither by the hair; nor age nor honour shall shape privilege: for this proud mock i'll be thy slaughterman; sly frantic wretch, that holp'st to make me great, in hope thyself should govern rome and me. [enter aemilius] what news with thee, aemilius? aemilius arm, arm, my lord;--rome never had more cause. the goths have gather'd head; and with a power high-resolved men, bent to the spoil, they hither march amain, under conduct of lucius, son to old andronicus; who threats, in course of this revenge, to do as much as ever coriolanus did. saturninus is warlike lucius general of the goths? these tidings nip me, and i hang the head as flowers with frost or grass beat down with storms: ay, now begin our sorrows to approach: 'tis he the common people love so much; myself hath often over-heard them say, when i have walked like a private man, that lucius' banishment was wrongfully, and they have wish'd that lucius were their emperor. tamora why should you fear? is not your city strong? saturninus ay, but the citizens favor lucius, and will revolt from me to succor him. tamora king, be thy thoughts imperious, like thy name. is the sun dimm'd, that gnats do fly in it? the eagle suffers little birds to sing, and is not careful what they mean thereby, knowing that with the shadow of his wings he can at pleasure stint their melody: even so mayst thou the giddy men of rome. then cheer thy spirit : for know, thou emperor, i will enchant the old andronicus with words more sweet, and yet more dangerous, than baits to fish, or honey-stalks to sheep, when as the one is wounded with the bait, the other rotted with delicious feed. saturninus but he will not entreat his son for us. tamora if tamora entreat him, then he will: for i can smooth and fill his aged ear with golden promises; that, were his heart almost impregnable, his old ears deaf, yet should both ear and heart obey my tongue. [to aemilius] go thou before, be our ambassador: say that the emperor requests a parley of warlike lucius, and appoint the meeting even at his father's house, the old andronicus. saturninus aemilius, do this message honourably: and if he stand on hostage for his safety, bid him demand what pledge will please him best. aemilius your bidding shall i do effectually. [exit] tamora now will i to that old andronicus; and temper him with all the art i have, to pluck proud lucius from the warlike goths. and now, sweet emperor, be blithe again, and bury all thy fear in my devices. saturninus then go successantly, and plead to him. [exeunt] titus andronicus act v scene i plains near rome. [enter lucius with an army of goths, with drum and colours] lucius approved warriors, and my faithful friends, i have received letters from great rome, which signify what hate they bear their emperor and how desirous of our sight they are. therefore, great lords, be, as your titles witness, imperious and impatient of your wrongs, and wherein rome hath done you any scath, let him make treble satisfaction. first goth brave slip, sprung from the great andronicus, whose name was once our terror, now our comfort; whose high exploits and honourable deeds ingrateful rome requites with foul contempt, be bold in us: we'll follow where thou lead'st, like stinging bees in hottest summer's day led by their master to the flowered fields, and be avenged on cursed tamora. all the goths and as he saith, so say we all with him. lucius i humbly thank him, and i thank you all. but who comes here, led by a lusty goth? [enter a goth, leading aaron with his child in his arms] second goth renowned lucius, from our troops i stray'd to gaze upon a ruinous monastery; and, as i earnestly did fix mine eye upon the wasted building, suddenly i heard a child cry underneath a wall. i made unto the noise; when soon i heard the crying babe controll'd with this discourse: 'peace, tawny slave, half me and half thy dam! did not thy hue bewray whose brat thou art, had nature lent thee but thy mother's look, villain, thou mightst have been an emperor: but where the bull and cow are both milk-white, they never do beget a coal-black calf. peace, villain, peace!'--even thus he rates the babe,- 'for i must bear thee to a trusty goth; who, when he knows thou art the empress' babe, will hold thee dearly for thy mother's sake.' with this, my weapon drawn, i rush'd upon him, surprised him suddenly, and brought him hither, to use as you think needful of the man. lucius o worthy goth, this is the incarnate devil that robb'd andronicus of his good hand; this is the pearl that pleased your empress' eye, and here's the base fruit of his burning lust. say, wall-eyed slave, whither wouldst thou convey this growing image of thy fiend-like face? why dost not speak? what, deaf? not a word? a halter, soldiers! hang him on this tree. and by his side his fruit of bastardy. aaron touch not the boy; he is of royal blood. lucius too like the sire for ever being good. first hang the child, that he may see it sprawl; a sight to vex the father's soul withal. get me a ladder. [a ladder brought, which aaron is made to ascend] aaron lucius, save the child, and bear it from me to the empress. if thou do this, i'll show thee wondrous things, that highly may advantage thee to hear: if thou wilt not, befall what may befall, i'll speak no more but 'vengeance rot you all!' lucius say on: an if it please me which thou speak'st thy child shall live, and i will see it nourish'd. aaron an if it please thee! why, assure thee, lucius, 'twill vex thy soul to hear what i shall speak; for i must talk of murders, rapes and massacres, acts of black night, abominable deeds, complots of mischief, treason, villanies ruthful to hear, yet piteously perform'd: and this shall all be buried by my death, unless thou swear to me my child shall live. lucius tell on thy mind; i say thy child shall live. aaron swear that he shall, and then i will begin. lucius who should i swear by? thou believest no god: that granted, how canst thou believe an oath? aaron what if i do not? as, indeed, i do not; yet, for i know thou art religious and hast a thing within thee called conscience, with twenty popish tricks and ceremonies, which i have seen thee careful to observe, therefore i urge thy oath; for that i know an idiot holds his bauble for a god and keeps the oath which by that god he swears, to that i'll urge him: therefore thou shalt vow by that same god, what god soe'er it be, that thou adorest and hast in reverence, to save my boy, to nourish and bring him up; or else i will discover nought to thee. lucius even by my god i swear to thee i will. aaron first know thou, i begot him on the empress. lucius o most insatiate and luxurious woman! aaron tut, lucius, this was but a deed of charity to that which thou shalt hear of me anon. 'twas her two sons that murder'd bassianus; they cut thy sister's tongue and ravish'd her and cut her hands and trimm'd her as thou saw'st. lucius o detestable villain! call'st thou that trimming? aaron why, she was wash'd and cut and trimm'd, and 'twas trim sport for them that had the doing of it. lucius o barbarous, beastly villains, like thyself! aaron indeed, i was their tutor to instruct them: that codding spirit had they from their mother, as sure a card as ever won the set; that bloody mind, i think, they learn'd of me, as true a dog as ever fought at head. well, let my deeds be witness of my worth. i train'd thy brethren to that guileful hole where the dead corpse of bassianus lay: i wrote the letter that thy father found and hid the gold within the letter mention'd, confederate with the queen and her two sons: and what not done, that thou hast cause to rue, wherein i had no stroke of mischief in it? i play'd the cheater for thy father's hand, and, when i had it, drew myself apart and almost broke my heart with extreme laughter: i pry'd me through the crevice of a wall when, for his hand, he had his two sons' heads; beheld his tears, and laugh'd so heartily, that both mine eyes were rainy like to his : and when i told the empress of this sport, she swooned almost at my pleasing tale, and for my tidings gave me twenty kisses. first goth what, canst thou say all this, and never blush? aaron ay, like a black dog, as the saying is. lucius art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds? aaron ay, that i had not done a thousand more. even now i curse the day--and yet, i think, few come within the compass of my curse,- wherein i did not some notorious ill, as kill a man, or else devise his death, ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it, accuse some innocent and forswear myself, set deadly enmity between two friends, make poor men's cattle break their necks; set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night, and bid the owners quench them with their tears. oft have i digg'd up dead men from their graves, and set them upright at their dear friends' doors, even when their sorrows almost were forgot; and on their skins, as on the bark of trees, have with my knife carved in roman letters, 'let not your sorrow die, though i am dead.' tut, i have done a thousand dreadful things as willingly as one would kill a fly, and nothing grieves me heartily indeed but that i cannot do ten thousand more. lucius bring down the devil; for he must not die so sweet a death as hanging presently. aaron if there be devils, would i were a devil, to live and burn in everlasting fire, so i might have your company in hell, but to torment you with my bitter tongue! lucius sirs, stop his mouth, and let him speak no more. [enter a goth] third goth my lord, there is a messenger from rome desires to be admitted to your presence. lucius let him come near. [enter aemilius] welcome, aemilius what's the news from rome? aemilius lord lucius, and you princes of the goths, the roman emperor greets you all by me; and, for he understands you are in arms, he craves a parley at your father's house, willing you to demand your hostages, and they shall be immediately deliver'd. first goth what says our general? lucius aemilius, let the emperor give his pledges unto my father and my uncle marcus, and we will come. march away. [exeunt] titus andronicus act v scene ii rome. before titus's house. [enter tamora, demetrius, and chiron, disguised] tamora thus, in this strange and sad habiliment, i will encounter with andronicus, and say i am revenge, sent from below to join with him and right his heinous wrongs. knock at his study, where, they say, he keeps, to ruminate strange plots of dire revenge; tell him revenge is come to join with him, and work confusion on his enemies. [they knock] [enter titus, above] titus andronicus who doth molest my contemplation? is it your trick to make me ope the door, that so my sad decrees may fly away, and all my study be to no effect? you are deceived: for what i mean to do see here in bloody lines i have set down; and what is written shall be executed. tamora titus, i am come to talk with thee. titus andronicus no, not a word; how can i grace my talk, wanting a hand to give it action? thou hast the odds of me; therefore no more. tamora if thou didst know me, thou wouldest talk with me. titus andronicus i am not mad; i know thee well enough: witness this wretched stump, witness these crimson lines; witness these trenches made by grief and care, witness the tiring day and heavy night; witness all sorrow, that i know thee well for our proud empress, mighty tamora: is not thy coming for my other hand? tamora know, thou sad man, i am not tamora; she is thy enemy, and i thy friend: i am revenge: sent from the infernal kingdom, to ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind, by working wreakful vengeance on thy foes. come down, and welcome me to this world's light; confer with me of murder and of death: there's not a hollow cave or lurking-place, no vast obscurity or misty vale, where bloody murder or detested rape can couch for fear, but i will find them out; and in their ears tell them my dreadful name, revenge, which makes the foul offender quake. titus andronicus art thou revenge? and art thou sent to me, to be a torment to mine enemies? tamora i am; therefore come down, and welcome me. titus andronicus do me some service, ere i come to thee. lo, by thy side where rape and murder stands; now give me some surance that thou art revenge, stab them, or tear them on thy chariot-wheels; and then i'll come and be thy waggoner, and whirl along with thee about the globe. provide thee two proper palfreys, black as jet, to hale thy vengeful waggon swift away, and find out murderers in their guilty caves: and when thy car is loaden with their heads, i will dismount, and by the waggon-wheel trot, like a servile footman, all day long, even from hyperion's rising in the east until his very downfall in the sea: and day by day i'll do this heavy task, so thou destroy rapine and murder there. tamora these are my ministers, and come with me. titus andronicus are these thy ministers? what are they call'd? tamora rapine and murder; therefore called so, cause they take vengeance of such kind of men. titus andronicus good lord, how like the empress' sons they are! and you, the empress! but we worldly men have miserable, mad, mistaking eyes. o sweet revenge, now do i come to thee; and, if one arm's embracement will content thee, i will embrace thee in it by and by. [exit above] tamora this closing with him fits his lunacy whate'er i forge to feed his brain-sick fits, do you uphold and maintain in your speeches, for now he firmly takes me for revenge; and, being credulous in this mad thought, i'll make him send for lucius his son; and, whilst i at a banquet hold him sure, i'll find some cunning practise out of hand, to scatter and disperse the giddy goths, or, at the least, make them his enemies. see, here he comes, and i must ply my theme. [enter titus below] titus andronicus long have i been forlorn, and all for thee: welcome, dread fury, to my woful house: rapine and murder, you are welcome too. how like the empress and her sons you are! well are you fitted, had you but a moor: could not all hell afford you such a devil? for well i wot the empress never wags but in her company there is a moor; and, would you represent our queen aright, it were convenient you had such a devil: but welcome, as you are. what shall we do? tamora what wouldst thou have us do, andronicus? demetrius show me a murderer, i'll deal with him. chiron show me a villain that hath done a rape, and i am sent to be revenged on him. tamora show me a thousand that have done thee wrong, and i will be revenged on them all. titus andronicus look round about the wicked streets of rome; and when thou find'st a man that's like thyself. good murder, stab him; he's a murderer. go thou with him; and when it is thy hap to find another that is like to thee, good rapine, stab him; he's a ravisher. go thou with them; and in the emperor's court there is a queen, attended by a moor; well mayst thou know her by thy own proportion, for up and down she doth resemble thee: i pray thee, do on them some violent death; they have been violent to me and mine. tamora well hast thou lesson'd us; this shall we do. but would it please thee, good andronicus, to send for lucius, thy thrice-valiant son, who leads towards rome a band of warlike goths, and bid him come and banquet at thy house; when he is here, even at thy solemn feast, i will bring in the empress and her sons, the emperor himself and all thy foes; and at thy mercy shalt they stoop and kneel, and on them shalt thou ease thy angry heart. what says andronicus to this device? titus andronicus marcus, my brother! 'tis sad titus calls. [enter marcus] go, gentle marcus, to thy nephew lucius; thou shalt inquire him out among the goths: bid him repair to me, and bring with him some of the chiefest princes of the goths; bid him encamp his soldiers where they are: tell him the emperor and the empress too feast at my house, and he shall feast with them. this do thou for my love; and so let him, as he regards his aged father's life. marcus andronicus this will i do, and soon return again. [exit] tamora now will i hence about thy business, and take my ministers along with me. titus andronicus nay, nay, let rape and murder stay with me; or else i'll call my brother back again, and cleave to no revenge but lucius. tamora [aside to her sons] what say you, boys? will you bide with him, whiles i go tell my lord the emperor how i have govern'd our determined jest? yield to his humour, smooth and speak him fair, and tarry with him till i turn again. titus andronicus [aside] i know them all, though they suppose me mad, and will o'erreach them in their own devices: a pair of cursed hell-hounds and their dam! demetrius madam, depart at pleasure; leave us here. tamora farewell, andronicus: revenge now goes to lay a complot to betray thy foes. titus andronicus i know thou dost; and, sweet revenge, farewell. [exit tamora] chiron tell us, old man, how shall we be employ'd? titus andronicus tut, i have work enough for you to do. publius, come hither, caius, and valentine! [enter publius and others] publius what is your will? titus andronicus know you these two? publius the empress' sons, i take them, chiron and demetrius. titus andronicus fie, publius, fie! thou art too much deceived; the one is murder, rape is the other's name; and therefore bind them, gentle publius. caius and valentine, lay hands on them. oft have you heard me wish for such an hour, and now i find it; therefore bind them sure, and stop their mouths, if they begin to cry. [exit] [publius, &c. lay hold on chiron and demetrius] chiron villains, forbear! we are the empress' sons. publius and therefore do we what we are commanded. stop close their mouths, let them not speak a word. is he sure bound? look that you bind them fast. [re-enter titus, with lavinia; he bearing a knife, and she a basin] titus andronicus come, come, lavinia; look, thy foes are bound. sirs, stop their mouths, let them not speak to me; but let them hear what fearful words i utter. o villains, chiron and demetrius! here stands the spring whom you have stain'd with mud, this goodly summer with your winter mix'd. you kill'd her husband, and for that vile fault two of her brothers were condemn'd to death, my hand cut off and made a merry jest; both her sweet hands, her tongue, and that more dear than hands or tongue, her spotless chastity, inhuman traitors, you constrain'd and forced. what would you say, if i should let you speak? villains, for shame you could not beg for grace. hark, wretches! how i mean to martyr you. this one hand yet is left to cut your throats, whilst that lavinia 'tween her stumps doth hold the basin that receives your guilty blood. you know your mother means to feast with me, and calls herself revenge, and thinks me mad: hark, villains! i will grind your bones to dust and with your blood and it i'll make a paste, and of the paste a coffin i will rear and make two pasties of your shameful heads, and bid that strumpet, your unhallow'd dam, like to the earth swallow her own increase. this is the feast that i have bid her to, and this the banquet she shall surfeit on; for worse than philomel you used my daughter, and worse than progne i will be revenged: and now prepare your throats. lavinia, come, [he cuts their throats] receive the blood: and when that they are dead, let me go grind their bones to powder small and with this hateful liquor temper it; and in that paste let their vile heads be baked. come, come, be every one officious to make this banquet; which i wish may prove more stern and bloody than the centaurs' feast. so, now bring them in, for i'll play the cook, and see them ready 'gainst their mother comes. [exeunt, bearing the dead bodies] titus andronicus act v scene iii court of titus's house. a banquet set out. [enter lucius, marcus, and goths, with aaron prisoner] lucius uncle marcus, since it is my father's mind that i repair to rome, i am content. first goth and ours with thine, befall what fortune will. lucius good uncle, take you in this barbarous moor, this ravenous tiger, this accursed devil; let him receive no sustenance, fetter him till he be brought unto the empress' face, for testimony of her foul proceedings: and see the ambush of our friends be strong; i fear the emperor means no good to us. aaron some devil whisper curses in mine ear, and prompt me, that my tongue may utter forth the venomous malice of my swelling heart! lucius away, inhuman dog! unhallow'd slave! sirs, help our uncle to convey him in. [exeunt goths, with aaron. flourish within] the trumpets show the emperor is at hand. [enter saturninus and tamora, with aemilius, tribunes, senators, and others] saturninus what, hath the firmament more suns than one? lucius what boots it thee to call thyself a sun? marcus andronicus rome's emperor, and nephew, break the parle; these quarrels must be quietly debated. the feast is ready, which the careful titus hath ordain'd to an honourable end, for peace, for love, for league, and good to rome: please you, therefore, draw nigh, and take your places. saturninus marcus, we will. [hautboys sound. the company sit down at table] [enter titus dressed like a cook, lavinia veiled, young lucius, and others. titus places the dishes on the table] titus andronicus welcome, my gracious lord; welcome, dread queen; welcome, ye warlike goths; welcome, lucius; and welcome, all: although the cheer be poor, 'twill fill your stomachs; please you eat of it. saturninus why art thou thus attired, andronicus? titus andronicus because i would be sure to have all well, to entertain your highness and your empress. tamora we are beholding to you, good andronicus. titus andronicus an if your highness knew my heart, you were. my lord the emperor, resolve me this: was it well done of rash virginius to slay his daughter with his own right hand, because she was enforced, stain'd, and deflower'd? saturninus it was, andronicus. titus andronicus your reason, mighty lord? saturninus because the girl should not survive her shame, and by her presence still renew his sorrows. titus andronicus a reason mighty, strong, and effectual; a pattern, precedent, and lively warrant, for me, most wretched, to perform the like. die, die, lavinia, and thy shame with thee; [kills lavinia] and, with thy shame, thy father's sorrow die! saturninus what hast thou done, unnatural and unkind? titus andronicus kill'd her, for whom my tears have made me blind. i am as woful as virginius was, and have a thousand times more cause than he to do this outrage: and it now is done. saturninus what, was she ravish'd? tell who did the deed. titus andronicus will't please you eat? will't please your highness feed? tamora why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus? titus andronicus not i; 'twas chiron and demetrius: they ravish'd her, and cut away her tongue; and they, 'twas they, that did her all this wrong. saturninus go fetch them hither to us presently. titus andronicus why, there they are both, baked in that pie; whereof their mother daintily hath fed, eating the flesh that she herself hath bred. 'tis true, 'tis true; witness my knife's sharp point. [kills tamora] saturninus die, frantic wretch, for this accursed deed! [kills titus] lucius can the son's eye behold his father bleed? there's meed for meed, death for a deadly deed! [kills saturninus. a great tumult. lucius, marcus, and others go up into the balcony] marcus andronicus you sad-faced men, people and sons of rome, by uproar sever'd, like a flight of fowl scatter'd by winds and high tempestuous gusts, o, let me teach you how to knit again this scatter'd corn into one mutual sheaf, these broken limbs again into one body; lest rome herself be bane unto herself, and she whom mighty kingdoms court'sy to, like a forlorn and desperate castaway, do shameful execution on herself. but if my frosty signs and chaps of age, grave witnesses of true experience, cannot induce you to attend my words, [to lucius] speak, rome's dear friend, as erst our ancestor, when with his solemn tongue he did discourse to love-sick dido's sad attending ear the story of that baleful burning night when subtle greeks surprised king priam's troy, tell us what sinon hath bewitch'd our ears, or who hath brought the fatal engine in that gives our troy, our rome, the civil wound. my heart is not compact of flint nor steel; nor can i utter all our bitter grief, but floods of tears will drown my oratory, and break my utterance, even in the time when it should move you to attend me most, lending your kind commiseration. here is a captain, let him tell the tale; your hearts will throb and weep to hear him speak. lucius then, noble auditory, be it known to you, that cursed chiron and demetrius were they that murdered our emperor's brother; and they it were that ravished our sister: for their fell faults our brothers were beheaded; our father's tears despised, and basely cozen'd of that true hand that fought rome's quarrel out, and sent her enemies unto the grave. lastly, myself unkindly banished, the gates shut on me, and turn'd weeping out, to beg relief among rome's enemies: who drown'd their enmity in my true tears. and oped their arms to embrace me as a friend. i am the turned forth, be it known to you, that have preserved her welfare in my blood; and from her bosom took the enemy's point, sheathing the steel in my adventurous body. alas, you know i am no vaunter, i; my scars can witness, dumb although they are, that my report is just and full of truth. but, soft! methinks i do digress too much, citing my worthless praise: o, pardon me; for when no friends are by, men praise themselves. marcus andronicus now is my turn to speak. behold this child: [pointing to the child in the arms of an attendant] of this was tamora delivered; the issue of an irreligious moor, chief architect and plotter of these woes: the villain is alive in titus' house, and as he is, to witness this is true. now judge what cause had titus to revenge these wrongs, unspeakable, past patience, or more than any living man could bear. now you have heard the truth, what say you, romans? have we done aught amiss,--show us wherein, and, from the place where you behold us now, the poor remainder of andronici will, hand in hand, all headlong cast us down. and on the ragged stones beat forth our brains, and make a mutual closure of our house. speak, romans, speak; and if you say we shall, lo, hand in hand, lucius and i will fall. aemilius come, come, thou reverend man of rome, and bring our emperor gently in thy hand, lucius our emperor; for well i know the common voice do cry it shall be so. all lucius, all hail, rome's royal emperor! marcus andronicus go, go into old titus' sorrowful house, [to attendants] and hither hale that misbelieving moor, to be adjudged some direful slaughtering death, as punishment for his most wicked life. [exeunt attendants] [lucius, marcus, and the others descend] all lucius, all hail, rome's gracious governor! lucius thanks, gentle romans: may i govern so, to heal rome's harms, and wipe away her woe! but, gentle people, give me aim awhile, for nature puts me to a heavy task: stand all aloof: but, uncle, draw you near, to shed obsequious tears upon this trunk. o, take this warm kiss on thy pale cold lips, [kissing titus] these sorrowful drops upon thy blood-stain'd face, the last true duties of thy noble son! marcus andronicus tear for tear, and loving kiss for kiss, thy brother marcus tenders on thy lips: o were the sum of these that i should pay countless and infinite, yet would i pay them! lucius come hither, boy; come, come, and learn of us to melt in showers: thy grandsire loved thee well: many a time he danced thee on his knee, sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow: many a matter hath he told to thee, meet and agreeing with thine infancy; in that respect, then, like a loving child, shed yet some small drops from thy tender spring, because kind nature doth require it so: friends should associate friends in grief and woe: bid him farewell; commit him to the grave; do him that kindness, and take leave of him. young lucius o grandsire, grandsire! even with all my heart would i were dead, so you did live again! o lord, i cannot speak to him for weeping; my tears will choke me, if i ope my mouth. [re-enter attendants with aaron] aemilius you sad andronici, have done with woes: give sentence on this execrable wretch, that hath been breeder of these dire events. lucius set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him; there let him stand, and rave, and cry for food; if any one relieves or pities him, for the offence he dies. this is our doom: some stay to see him fasten'd in the earth. aaron o, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb? i am no baby, i, that with base prayers i should repent the evils i have done: ten thousand worse than ever yet i did would i perform, if i might have my will; if one good deed in all my life i did, i do repent it from my very soul. lucius some loving friends convey the emperor hence, and give him burial in his father's grave: my father and lavinia shall forthwith be closed in our household's monument. as for that heinous tiger, tamora, no funeral rite, nor man m mourning weeds, no mournful bell shall ring her burial; but throw her forth to beasts and birds of prey: her life was beast-like, and devoid of pity; and, being so, shall have like want of pity. see justice done on aaron, that damn'd moor, by whom our heavy haps had their beginning: then, afterwards, to order well the state, that like events may ne'er it ruinate. [exeunt] 1847 to m.l.s. by edgar allan poe of all who hail thy presence as the morning of all to whom thine absence is the night the blotting utterly from out high heaven the sacred sunof all who, weeping, bless thee hourly for hopefor lifeah! above all, for the resurrection of deep-buried faith in truthin virtuein humanity of all who, on despair's unhallowed bed lying down to die, have suddenly arisen at thy soft-murmured words, "let there be light!" at the soft-murmured words that were fulfilled in the seraphic glancing of thine eyes of all who owe thee mostwhose gratitude nearest resembles worshipoh, remember the truestthe most fervently devoted, and think that these weak lines are written by him by him who, as he pens them, thrills to think his spirit is communing with an angel's. -the end. 1831 the sleeper by edgar allan poe at midnight, in the month of june, i stand beneath the mystic moon. an opiate vapor, dewy, dim, exhales from out her golden rim, and, softly dripping, drop by drop, upon the quiet mountain top, steals drowsily and musically into the universal valley. the rosemary nods upon the grave; the lily lolls upon the wave; wrapping the fog about its breast, the ruin molders into rest; looking like lethe, see! the lake a conscious slumber seems to take, and would not, for the world, awake. all beauty sleeps!and lo! where lies irene, with her destinies! o, lady bright! can it be right this window open to the night? the wanton airs, from the tree-top, laughingly through the lattice drop the bodiless airs, a wizard rout, flit through thy chamber in and out, and wave the curtain canopy so fitfullyso fearfully above the closed and fringed lid 'neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid, that, o'er the floor and down the wall, like ghosts the shadows rise and fall! oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear? why and what art thou dreaming here? sure thou art come o'er far-off seas, a wonder to these garden trees! strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress, strange, above all, thy length of tress, and this all solemn silentness! the lady sleeps! oh, may her sleep, which is enduring, so be deep! heaven have her in its sacred keep! this chamber changed for one more holy, this bed for one more melancholy, i pray to god that she may lie for ever with unopened eye, while the pale sheeted ghosts go by! my love, she sleeps! oh, may her sleep as it is lasting, so be deep! soft may the worms about her creep! far in the forest, dim and old, for her may some tall vault unfold some vault that oft has flung its black and winged panels fluttering back, triumphant, o'er the crested palls, of her grand family funerals some sepulchre, remote, alone, against whose portal she hath thrown, in childhood, many an idle stone some tomb from out whose sounding door she ne'er shall force an echo more, thrilling to think, poor child of sin! it was the dead who groaned within. -the end. 1597 epithalamion by edmund spenser epithalamion ye learned sisters, which have oftentimes beene to me ayding, others to adorne, whom ye thought worthy for your gracefull rymes, that even the greatest did not greatly scorne to heare theyr names sung in your simple layes, but joyed in theyr praise; and when ye list your owne mishaps to mourne, which death, or love, or fortunes wreck did rayse, your string could soone to sadder tenor turne, and teach the woods and waters to lament your doleful dreriment: now lay those sorrowfull complaints aside, and having all your heads with girland crownd, helpe me mine owne loves prayses to resound; ne let the same of any be envide: so orpheus did for his owne bride: so i unto my selfe alone will sing; the woods shall to me answer, and my eccho ring. early, before the worlds light giving lampe his golden beame upon the hils doth spred, having disperst the nights unchearefull dampe, doe ye awake, and, with fresh lustyhed, go to the bowre of my beloved love, my truest turtle dove: bid her awake; for hymen is awake, and long since ready forth his maske to move, with his bright tead that flames with many a flake, and many a bachelor to waite on him, in theyr fresh garments trim. bid her awake therefore, and soone her dight, for lo! the wished day is come at last, that shall, for al the paynes and sorrowes past, pay to her usury of long delight: and whylest she doth her dight, doe ye to her of joy and solace sing, that all the woods may answer, and your eccho ring. bring with you all the nymphes that you can heare, both of the rivers and the forrests greene, and of the sea that neighbours to her neare, al with gay girlands goodly wel beseene. and let them also with them bring in hand another gay girland, for my fayre love, of lillyes and of roses, bound truelove wize with a blew silke riband. and let them make great store of bridale poses, and let them eeke bring store of other flowers, to deck the bridale bowers. and let the ground whereas her foot shall tread, for feare the stones her tender foot should wrong, be strewed with fragrant flowers all along, and diapred lyke the discolored mead. which done, doe at her chamber dore awayt, for she will waken strayt; the whiles doe ye this song unto her sing the woods shall to you answer, and your eccho ring. ye nymphes of mulla, which with carefull heed the silver scaly trouts doe tend full well, and greedy pikes which use therein to feed, (those trouts and pikes all others doo excell) and ye likewise which keepe the rushy lake, where none doo fishes take, bynd up the locks the which hang scatterd light, and in his waters, which your mirror make, behold your faces as the christall bright, that when you come whereas my love doth lie, no blemish she may spie. and eke ye lightfoot mayds which keepe the dere that on the hoary mountayne use to towre, and the wylde wolves, which seeke them to devoure, with your steele darts doo chace from comming neer, be also present heere, to helpe to decke her, and to help to sing, that all the woods may answer, and your eccho ring. wake now, my love, awake! for it is time: the rosy morne long since left tithones bed, all ready to her silver coche to clyme, and phoebus gins to shew his glorious hed. hark how the cheerefull birds do chaunt theyr laies, and carroll of loves praise! the merry larke hir mattins sings aloft, the thrush replyes, the mavis descant playes, the ouzell shrills, the ruddock warbles soft, so goodly all agree, with sweet consent, to this dayes merriment. ah! my deere love, why doe ye sleepe thus long, when meeter were that ye should now awake, t'awayt the comming of your joyous make, and hearken to the birds love-learned song, the deawy leaves among? for they of joy and pleasance to you sing, that all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring. my love is now awake out of her dreame, and her fayre eyes, like stars that dimmed were with darksome cloud, now shew theyr goodly beams more bright then hesperus his head doth rere. come now, ye damzels, daughters of delight, helpe quickly her to dight. but first come ye, fayre houres, which were begot, in joves sweet paradice, of day and night, which doe the seasons of the year allot, and al that ever in this world is fayre do make and still repayre. and ye three handmayds of the cyprian queene, the which doe still adorne her beauties pride, helpe to addorne my beautifullest bride: and as ye her array, still throw betweene some graces to be seene: and as ye use to venus, to her sing, the whiles the woods shal answer, and your eccho ring. now is my love all ready forth to come: let all the virgins therefore well awayt, and ye fresh boyes, that tend upon her groome, prepare your selves, for he is comming strayt. set all your things in seemely good aray, fit for so joyfull day, that joyfulst day that ever sunne did see. faire sun, shew forth thy favourable ray, and let thy lifull heat not fervent be, for feare of burning her sunshyny face, her beauty to disgrace. o fayrest phoebus, father of the muse, if ever i did honour thee aright, or sing the thing that mote thy mind delight, doe not thy servants simple boone refuse, but let this day, let this one day be myne, let all the rest be thine. then i thy soverayne prayses loud wil sing, that all the woods shal answer, and theyr eccho ring. harke how the minstrels gin to shrill aloud their merry musick that resounds from far, the pipe, the tabor, and the trembling croud, that well agree withouten breach or jar, but most of all the damzels doe delite, when they their tymbrels smyte, and thereunto doe daunce and carrol sweet, that all the sences they doe ravish quite, the whyles the boyes run up and downe the street, crying aloud with strong confused noyce, as if it were one voyce. 'hymen, io hymen, hymen,' they do shout, that even to the heavens theyr shouting shrill doth reach, and all the firmament doth fill; to which the people, standing all about, as in approvance doe thereto applaud, and loud advaunce her laud, and evermore they 'hymen, hymen' sing, that al the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring. loe! where she comes along with portly pace, lyke phoebe, from her chamber of the east, arysing forth to run her mighty race, clad all in white, that seemes a virgin best. so well it her beseemes, that ye would weene some angell she had beene, her long loose yellow locks lyke golden wyre, sprinckled with perle, and perling flowres atweene, doe lyke a golden mantle her attyre, and being crowned with a girland greene, seeme lyke some mayden queene. her modest eyes, abashed to behold so many gazers as on her do stare, upon the lowly ground affixed are; ne dare lift up her countenance too bold, but blush to heare her prayses sung so loud, so farre from being proud. nathlesse doe ye still loud her prayses sing, that all the woods may answer, and your eccho ring. tell me, ye merchants daughters, did ye see so fayre a creature in your towne before, so sweet, so lovely, and so mild as she, adornd with beautyes grace and vertues store? her goodly eyes lyke saphyres shining bright, her forehead yvory white, her cheekes lyke apples with the sun hath rudded, her lips lyke cherryes charming men to byte, her brest like to a bowle of creame uncrudded, her paps lyke lyllies budded, her snowie necke lyke to a marble towre, and all her body like a pallace fayre, ascending uppe, with many a stately stayre, to honors seat and chastities sweet bowre. why stand ye still, ye virgins, in amaze, upon her so to gaze, whiles ye forget your former lay to sing, to which the woods did answer, and your eccho ring. but if ye saw that which no eyes can see, the inward beauty of her lively spright, garnisht with heavenly guifts of high degree, much more then would ye wonder at that sight, and stand astonisht lyke to those which red medusaes mazeful hed. there dwels sweet love and constant chastity, unspotted fayth, and comely womanhood, regard of honour, and mild modesty; there vertue raynes as queene in royal throne, and giveth lawes alone, the which the base affections doe obay, and yeeld theyr services unto her will; ne thought of thing uncomely ever may thereto approch to tempt her mind to ill. had ye once seene these her celestial threasures, and unrevealed pleasures, then would ye wonder, and her prayses sing, that al the woods should answer, and your eccho ring. open the temple gates unto my love, open them wide that she may enter in, and all the postes adorne as doth behove, and all the pillours deck with girlands trim, for to receyve this saynt with honour dew, that commeth in to you. with trembling steps and humble reverence, she commeth in before th' almighties vew: of her, ye virgins, learne obedience, when so ye come into those holy places, to humble your proud faces. bring her up to th' high altar, that she may the sacred ceremonies there partake, that which do endlesse matrimony make; and let the roring organs loudly play the praises of the lord in lively notes, the whiles with hollow throates the choristers the joyous antheme sing, that al the woods may answere, and their eccho ring. behold, whiles she before the altar stands, hearing the holy priest that to her speakes, and blesseth her with his two happy hands, how the red roses flush up in her cheekes, and the pure snow with goodly vermill stayne, like crimsin dyde in grayne: that even th' angels, which continually about the sacred altare doe remaine, forget their service and about her fly, ofte peeping in her face, that seemes more fayre, the more they on it stare. but her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground, are governed with goodly modesty, that suffers not one looke to glaunce awry, which may let in a little though unsownd. why blush ye, love, to give to me your hand, the pledge of all our band? sing, ye sweet angels, alleluya sing, that all the woods may answere, and your eccho ring. now al is done; bring home the bride againe, bring home the triumph of our victory, bring home with you the glory of her gaine, with joyance bring her and with jollity. never had man more joyfull day then this, whom heaven would heape with blis. make feast therefore now all this live long day; this day for ever to me holy is; poure out the wine without restraint or stay, poure not by cups, but by the belly full, poure out to all that wull, and sprinkle all the postes and wals with wine, that they may sweat, and drunken be withall. crowne ye god bacchus with a coronall. and hymen also crowne with wreathes of vine; and let the graces daunce unto the rest, for they can doo it best: the whiles the maydens doe theyr carroll sing, the which the woods shal answer, and theyr eccho ring. ring ye the bels, ye yong men of the towne, and leave your wonted labors for this day: this day is holy; doe ye write it downe, that ye for ever it remember may. this day the sunne is in his chiefest hight, with barnaby the bright, from whence declining daily by degrees, he somewhat loseth of his heat and light, when once the crab behind his back he sees. but for this time it ill ordained was, to chose the longest day in all the yeare, and shortest night, when longest fitter weare: yet never day so long, but late would passe. ring ye the bels, to make it weare away, and bonefires make all day, and daunce about them, and about them sing: that all the woods may answer, and your eccho ring. ah! when will this long weary day have end, and lende me leave to come unto my love? how slowly do the houres theyr numbers spend! how slowly does sad time his feathers move! hast thee, o fayrest planet, to thy home within the westerne fome: thy tyred steedes long since have need of rest, long though it be, at last i see it gloome, and the bright evening star with golden creast appeare out of the east. fayre childe of beauty, glorious lampe of love, that all the host of heaven in rankes doost lead, and guydest lovers through the nightes dread, how chearefully thou lookest from above, and seemst to laugh atweene thy twinkling light, as joying in the sight of these glad many, which for joy doe sing, that all the woods them answer, and their eccho ring! now ceasse, ye damsels, your delights forepast; enough is it that all the day was youres: now day is doen, and night is nighing fast: now bring the bryde into the brydall boures. the night is come, now soone her disaray, and in her bed her lay; lay her in lillies and in violets, and silken courteins over her display, and odourd sheetes, and arras coverlets. behold how goodly my faire love does ly, in proud humility! like unto maia, when as jove her tooke in tempe, lying on the flowry gras, twixt sleepe and wake, after she weary was with bathing in the acidalian brooke. now it is night, ye damsels may be gon, and leave my love alone. and leave likewise your former lay to sing: the woods no more shal answere, nor your eccho ring. now welcome, night! thou night so long expected, that long daies labour doest at last defray, and all my cares, which cruell love collected, hast sumd in one, and cancelled for aye: spread thy broad wing over my love and me, that no man may us see, and in thy sable mantle us enwrap, from feare of perrill and foule horror free. let no false treason seeke us to entrap, nor any dread disquiet once annoy the safety of our joy: but let the night be calme and quietsome, without tempestuous storms or sad afray: lyke as when jove with fayre alcmena lay, when he begot the great tirynthian groome: or lyke as when he with thy selfe did lie, and begot majesty. and let the mayds and yongmen cease to sing: ne let the woods them answer, nor theyr eccho ring. let no lamenting cryes, nor dolefull teares, be heard all night within, nor yet without: ne let false whispers, breeding hidden feares, breake gentle sleepe with misconceived dout. let no deluding dreames, nor dreadul sights, make sudden sad affrights; ne let house-fyres, nor lightnings helplesse harmes, ne let the pouke, nor other evill sprights, ne let mischivous witches with theyr charmes, ne let hob goblins, names whose sense we see not, fray us with things that be not. let not the shriech oule, nor the storke be heard, nor the night raven that still deadly yels, nor damned ghosts cald up with mighty spels, nor griesly vultures make us once affeard: ne let th' unpleasant quyre of frogs still croking make us to wish theyr choking. let none of these theyr drery accents sing; ne let the woods them answer, nor theyr eccho ring. but let stil silence trew night watches keepe, that sacred peace may in assurance rayne, and tymely sleep, when it is tyme to sleepe, may poure his limbs forth on your pleasant playne, the whiles an hundred little winged loves, like divers fethered doves, shall fly and flutter round about our bed, and in the secret darke, that none reproves, their prety stealthes shall worke, and snares shal spread to filch away sweet snatches of delight, conceald through covert night. ye sonnes of venus, play your sports at will: for greedy pleasure, careless of your toyes, thinks more upon her paradise of joyes, then what ye do, albe it good or ill. all night therefore attend your merry play, for it will soone be day: now none doth hinder you, that say or sing, ne will the woods now answer, nor your eccho ring. who is the same which at my window peepes? or whose is that faire face that shines so bright? is it no cinthia, she that never sleepes, but walkes about high heaven al the night? o fayrest goddesse, do thou not envy my love with me to spy: for thou likewise didst love, though now unthought, and for a fleece of woll, which privily the latmian shephard once unto thee brought, his pleasures with thee wrought. therefore to us be favorable now; and sith of wemens labours thou hast charge, and generation goodly dost enlarge, encline thy will t' effect our wishfull vow, and the chast wombe informe with timely seed, that may our comfort breed: till which we cease our hopefull hap to sing, ne let the woods us answere, nor our eccho ring. and thou, great juno, which with awful might the lawes of wedlock still dost patronize and the religion of the faith first plight with sacred rites hast taught to solemnize, and eeke for comfort often called art of women in their smart, eternally bind thou this lovely bank, and all thy blessings unto us impart. and thou, glad genius, in whose gentle hand the bridale bowre and geniall bed remaine, without blemish or staine, and the sweet pleasures of theyr loves delight with secret ayde doest succour and supply, till they bring forth the fruitfull progeny, send us the timely fruit of this same night. and thou, fayre hebe, and thou, hymen free, grant that it may so be. til which we cease your further prayse to sing, ne any words shal answer, nor your eccho ring. and ye high heavens, the temple of the gods, in which a thousand torches flaming bright doe burne, that to us wretched earthly clods in dreadful darknesse lend desired light, and all ye powers which in the same remayne, more then we men can fayne, poure out your blessing on us plentiously, and happy influence upon us raine, that we may raise a large posterity, which from the earth, which they may long possesse with lasting happinesse, up to your haughty pallaces may mount, and for the guerdon of theyr glorious merit, may heavenly tabernacles there inherit, of blessed saints for to increase the count. so let us rest, sweet love, in hope of this, and cease till then our tymely joyes to sing: the woods no more us answer, nor our eccho ring. song, made in lieu of many ornaments with which my love should duly have bene dect, which cutting off through hasty accidents, ye would not stay your dew time to expect, but promist both to recompens, be unto her a goodly ornament, and for a short time an endless moniment. the end . 1845 the raven by edgar allan poe once upon a midnight dreary, while i pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, while i nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'tis some visitor," i muttered, "tapping at my chamber door only this, and nothing more." ah, distinctly i remember it was in the bleak december, and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. eagerly i wished the morrow;vainly i had sought to borrow from my books surcease of sorrowsorrow for the lost lenore for the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name lenore nameless here for evermore. and the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain thrilled mefilled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; so that now, to still the beating of my heart, i stood repeating, "'tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; this it is, and nothing more." presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "sir," said i, "or madam, truly your forgiveness i implore; but the fact is i was napping, and so gently you came rapping, and so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, that i scarce was sure i heard you"here i opened wide the door; darkness there, and nothing more. deep into that darkness peering, long i stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; but the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, and the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "lenore!" this i whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "lenore!" merely this, and nothing more. back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, soon again i heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. "surely," said i, "surely that is something at my window lattice: let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; 'tis the wind and nothing more." open here i flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, in there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore; not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; but, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door perched upon a bust of pallas just above my chamber door perched, and sat, and nothing more. then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, by the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore. "though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," i said, "art sure no craven, ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's plutonian shore!" quoth the raven, "nevermore." much i marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, though its answer little meaninglittle relevancy bore; for we cannot help agreeing that no living human being ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, with such name as "nevermore." but the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only that one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. nothing further then he utterednot a feather then he fluttered till i scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown before on the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before." then the bird said, "nevermore." startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "doubtless," said i, "what it utters is its only stock and store, caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore of 'nevernevermore'." but the raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling, straight i wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door; then upon the velvet sinking, i betook myself to linking fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore what this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore meant in croaking "nevermore." this i sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing to the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; this and more i sat divining, with my head at ease reclining on the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er, but whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er, she shall press, ah, nevermore! then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. "wretch," i cried, "thy god hath lent theeby these angels he hath sent thee respiterespite and nepenthe, from thy memories of lenore! quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost lenore!" quoth the raven, "nevermore." "prophet!" said i, "thing of evil!prophet still, if bird or devil! whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted on this home by horror hauntedtell me truly, i implore is thereis there balm in gilead?tell metell me, i implore!" quoth the raven, "nevermore." "prophet!" said i, "thing of evilprophet still, if bird or devil! by that heaven that bends above usby that god we both adore tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant aidenn, it shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name lenore clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name lenore." quoth the raven, "nevermore." "be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend," i shrieked, upstarting "get thee back into the tempest and the night's plutonian shore! leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! leave my loneliness unbroken!quit the bust above my door! take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" quoth the raven, "nevermore." and the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting on the pallid bust of pallas just above my chamber door; and his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, and the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; and my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be liftednevermore! -the end. the merry wives of windsor dramatis personae sir john falstaff (falstaff:) fenton a gentleman. shallow a country justice. slender cousin to shallow. ford | | two gentlemen dwelling at windsor. page | william page a boy, son to page. sir hugh evans a welsh parson. doctor caius a french physician. host of the garter inn. (host:) bardolph | | pistol | sharpers attending on falstaff. | nym | robin page to falstaff. simple servant to slender. rugby servant to doctor caius. mistress ford: mistress page: anne page her daughter. mistress quickly servant to doctor caius. servants to page, ford, &c. (servant:) (first servant:) (second servant:) scene windsor, and the neighbourhood. the merry wives of windsor act i scene i windsor. before page's house. [enter shallow, slender, and sir hugh evans] shallow sir hugh, persuade me not; i will make a star chamber matter of it: if he were twenty sir john falstaffs, he shall not abuse robert shallow, esquire. slender in the county of gloucester, justice of peace and 'coram.' shallow ay, cousin slender, and 'custalourum. slender ay, and 'rato-lorum' too; and a gentleman born, master parson; who writes himself 'armigero,' in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, 'armigero.' shallow ay, that i do; and have done any time these three hundred years. slender all his successors gone before him hath done't; and all his ancestors that come after him may: they may give the dozen white luces in their coat. shallow it is an old coat. sir hugh evans the dozen white louses do become an old coat well; it agrees well, passant; it is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love. shallow the luce is the fresh fish; the salt fish is an old coat. slender i may quarter, coz. shallow you may, by marrying. sir hugh evans it is marring indeed, if he quarter it. shallow not a whit. sir hugh evans yes, py'r lady; if he has a quarter of your coat, there is but three skirts for yourself, in my simple conjectures: but that is all one. if sir john falstaff have committed disparagements unto you, i am of the church, and will be glad to do my benevolence to make atonements and compremises between you. shallow the council shall bear it; it is a riot. sir hugh evans it is not meet the council hear a riot; there is no fear of got in a riot: the council, look you, shall desire to hear the fear of got, and not to hear a riot; take your vizaments in that. shallow ha! o' my life, if i were young again, the sword should end it. sir hugh evans it is petter that friends is the sword, and end it: and there is also another device in my prain, which peradventure prings goot discretions with it: there is anne page, which is daughter to master thomas page, which is pretty virginity. slender mistress anne page? she has brown hair, and speaks small like a woman. sir hugh evans it is that fery person for all the orld, as just as you will desire; and seven hundred pounds of moneys, and gold and silver, is her grandsire upon his death's-bed--got deliver to a joyful resurrections! --give, when she is able to overtake seventeen years old: it were a goot motion if we leave our pribbles and prabbles, and desire a marriage between master abraham and mistress anne page. slender did her grandsire leave her seven hundred pound? sir hugh evans ay, and her father is make her a petter penny. slender i know the young gentlewoman; she has good gifts. sir hugh evans seven hundred pounds and possibilities is goot gifts. shallow well, let us see honest master page. is falstaff there? sir hugh evans shall i tell you a lie? i do despise a liar as i do despise one that is false, or as i despise one that is not true. the knight, sir john, is there; and, i beseech you, be ruled by your well-willers. i will peat the door for master page. [knocks] what, hoa! got pless your house here! page [within] who's there? [enter page] sir hugh evans here is got's plessing, and your friend, and justice shallow; and here young master slender, that peradventures shall tell you another tale, if matters grow to your likings. page i am glad to see your worships well. i thank you for my venison, master shallow. shallow master page, i am glad to see you: much good do it your good heart! i wished your venison better; it was ill killed. how doth good mistress page?--and i thank you always with my heart, la! with my heart. page sir, i thank you. shallow sir, i thank you; by yea and no, i do. page i am glad to see you, good master slender. slender how does your fallow greyhound, sir? i heard say he was outrun on cotsall. page it could not be judged, sir. slender you'll not confess, you'll not confess. shallow that he will not. 'tis your fault, 'tis your fault; 'tis a good dog. page a cur, sir. shallow sir, he's a good dog, and a fair dog: can there be more said? he is good and fair. is sir john falstaff here? page sir, he is within; and i would i could do a good office between you. sir hugh evans it is spoke as a christians ought to speak. shallow he hath wronged me, master page. page sir, he doth in some sort confess it. shallow if it be confessed, it is not redress'd: is not that so, master page? he hath wronged me; indeed he hath, at a word, he hath, believe me: robert shallow, esquire, saith, he is wronged. page here comes sir john. [enter falstaff, bardolph, nym, and pistol] falstaff now, master shallow, you'll complain of me to the king? shallow knight, you have beaten my men, killed my deer, and broke open my lodge. falstaff but not kissed your keeper's daughter? shallow tut, a pin! this shall be answered. falstaff i will answer it straight; i have done all this. that is now answered. shallow the council shall know this. falstaff 'twere better for you if it were known in counsel: you'll be laughed at. sir hugh evans pauca verba, sir john; goot worts. falstaff good worts! good cabbage. slender, i broke your head: what matter have you against me? slender marry, sir, i have matter in my head against you; and against your cony-catching rascals, bardolph, nym, and pistol. bardolph you banbury cheese! slender ay, it is no matter. pistol how now, mephostophilus! slender ay, it is no matter. nym slice, i say! pauca, pauca: slice! that's my humour. slender where's simple, my man? can you tell, cousin? sir hugh evans peace, i pray you. now let us understand. there is three umpires in this matter, as i understand; that is, master page, fidelicet master page; and there is myself, fidelicet myself; and the three party is, lastly and finally, mine host of the garter. page we three, to hear it and end it between them. sir hugh evans fery goot: i will make a prief of it in my note book; and we will afterwards ork upon the cause with as great discreetly as we can. falstaff pistol! pistol he hears with ears. sir hugh evans the tevil and his tam! what phrase is this, 'he hears with ear'? why, it is affectations. falstaff pistol, did you pick master slender's purse? slender ay, by these gloves, did he, or i would i might never come in mine own great chamber again else, of seven groats in mill-sixpences, and two edward shovel-boards, that cost me two shilling and two pence apiece of yead miller, by these gloves. falstaff is this true, pistol? sir hugh evans no; it is false, if it is a pick-purse. pistol ha, thou mountain-foreigner! sir john and master mine, i combat challenge of this latten bilbo. word of denial in thy labras here! word of denial: froth and scum, thou liest! slender by these gloves, then, 'twas he. nym be avised, sir, and pass good humours: i will say 'marry trap' with you, if you run the nuthook's humour on me; that is the very note of it. slender by this hat, then, he in the red face had it; for though i cannot remember what i did when you made me drunk, yet i am not altogether an ass. falstaff what say you, scarlet and john? bardolph why, sir, for my part i say the gentleman had drunk himself out of his five sentences. sir hugh evans it is his five senses: fie, what the ignorance is! bardolph and being fap, sir, was, as they say, cashiered; and so conclusions passed the careires. slender ay, you spake in latin then too; but 'tis no matter: i'll ne'er be drunk whilst i live again, but in honest, civil, godly company, for this trick: if i be drunk, i'll be drunk with those that have the fear of god, and not with drunken knaves. sir hugh evans so got udge me, that is a virtuous mind. falstaff you hear all these matters denied, gentlemen; you hear it. [enter anne page, with wine; mistress ford and mistress page, following] page nay, daughter, carry the wine in; we'll drink within. [exit anne page] slender o heaven! this is mistress anne page. page how now, mistress ford! falstaff mistress ford, by my troth, you are very well met: by your leave, good mistress. [kisses her] page wife, bid these gentlemen welcome. come, we have a hot venison pasty to dinner: come, gentlemen, i hope we shall drink down all unkindness. [exeunt all except shallow, slender, and sir hugh evans] slender i had rather than forty shillings i had my book of songs and sonnets here. [enter simple] how now, simple! where have you been? i must wait on myself, must i? you have not the book of riddles about you, have you? simple book of riddles! why, did you not lend it to alice shortcake upon all-hallowmas last, a fortnight afore michaelmas? shallow come, coz; come, coz; we stay for you. a word with you, coz; marry, this, coz: there is, as 'twere, a tender, a kind of tender, made afar off by sir hugh here. do you understand me? slender ay, sir, you shall find me reasonable; if it be so, i shall do that that is reason. shallow nay, but understand me. slender so i do, sir. sir hugh evans give ear to his motions, master slender: i will description the matter to you, if you be capacity of it. slender nay, i will do as my cousin shallow says: i pray you, pardon me; he's a justice of peace in his country, simple though i stand here. sir hugh evans but that is not the question: the question is concerning your marriage. shallow ay, there's the point, sir. sir hugh evans marry, is it; the very point of it; to mistress anne page. slender why, if it be so, i will marry her upon any reasonable demands. sir hugh evans but can you affection the 'oman? let us command to know that of your mouth or of your lips; for divers philosophers hold that the lips is parcel of the mouth. therefore, precisely, can you carry your good will to the maid? shallow cousin abraham slender, can you love her? slender i hope, sir, i will do as it shall become one that would do reason. sir hugh evans nay, got's lords and his ladies! you must speak possitable, if you can carry her your desires towards her. shallow that you must. will you, upon good dowry, marry her? slender i will do a greater thing than that, upon your request, cousin, in any reason. shallow nay, conceive me, conceive me, sweet coz: what i do is to pleasure you, coz. can you love the maid? slender i will marry her, sir, at your request: but if there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another; i hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt: but if you say, 'marry her,' i will marry her; that i am freely dissolved, and dissolutely. sir hugh evans it is a fery discretion answer; save the fall is in the ort 'dissolutely:' the ort is, according to our meaning, 'resolutely:' his meaning is good. shallow ay, i think my cousin meant well. slender ay, or else i would i might be hanged, la! shallow here comes fair mistress anne. [re-enter anne page] would i were young for your sake, mistress anne! anne page the dinner is on the table; my father desires your worships' company. shallow i will wait on him, fair mistress anne. sir hugh evans od's plessed will! i will not be absence at the grace. [exeunt shallow and sir hugh evans] anne page will't please your worship to come in, sir? slender no, i thank you, forsooth, heartily; i am very well. anne page the dinner attends you, sir. slender i am not a-hungry, i thank you, forsooth. go, sirrah, for all you are my man, go wait upon my cousin shallow. [exit simple] a justice of peace sometimes may be beholding to his friend for a man. i keep but three men and a boy yet, till my mother be dead: but what though? yet i live like a poor gentleman born. anne page i may not go in without your worship: they will not sit till you come. slender i' faith, i'll eat nothing; i thank you as much as though i did. anne page i pray you, sir, walk in. slender i had rather walk here, i thank you. i bruised my shin th' other day with playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence; three veneys for a dish of stewed prunes; and, by my troth, i cannot abide the smell of hot meat since. why do your dogs bark so? be there bears i' the town? anne page i think there are, sir; i heard them talked of. slender i love the sport well but i shall as soon quarrel at it as any man in england. you are afraid, if you see the bear loose, are you not? anne page ay, indeed, sir. slender that's meat and drink to me, now. i have seen sackerson loose twenty times, and have taken him by the chain; but, i warrant you, the women have so cried and shrieked at it, that it passed: but women, indeed, cannot abide 'em; they are very ill-favored rough things. [re-enter page] page come, gentle master slender, come; we stay for you. slender i'll eat nothing, i thank you, sir. page by cock and pie, you shall not choose, sir! come, come. slender nay, pray you, lead the way. page come on, sir. slender mistress anne, yourself shall go first. anne page not i, sir; pray you, keep on. slender i'll rather be unmannerly than troublesome. you do yourself wrong, indeed, la! [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act i scene ii the same. [enter sir hugh evans and simple] sir hugh evans go your ways, and ask of doctor caius' house which is the way: and there dwells one mistress quickly, which is in the manner of his nurse, or his dry nurse, or his cook, or his laundry, his washer, and his wringer. simple well, sir. sir hugh evans nay, it is petter yet. give her this letter; for it is a 'oman that altogether's acquaintance with mistress anne page: and the letter is, to desire and require her to solicit your master's desires to mistress anne page. i pray you, be gone: i will make an end of my dinner; there's pippins and cheese to come. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act i scene iii a room in the garter inn. [enter falstaff, host, bardolph, nym, pistol, and robin] falstaff mine host of the garter! host what says my bully-rook? speak scholarly and wisely. falstaff truly, mine host, i must turn away some of my followers. host discard, bully hercules; cashier: let them wag; trot, trot. falstaff i sit at ten pounds a week. host thou'rt an emperor, caesar, keisar, and pheezar. i will entertain bardolph; he shall draw, he shall tap: said i well, bully hector? falstaff do so, good mine host. host i have spoke; let him follow. [to bardolph] let me see thee froth and lime: i am at a word; follow. [exit] falstaff bardolph, follow him. a tapster is a good trade: an old cloak makes a new jerkin; a withered serving-man a fresh tapster. go; adieu. bardolph it is a life that i have desired: i will thrive. pistol o base hungarian wight! wilt thou the spigot wield? [exit bardolph] nym he was gotten in drink: is not the humour conceited? falstaff i am glad i am so acquit of this tinderbox: his thefts were too open; his filching was like an unskilful singer; he kept not time. nym the good humour is to steal at a minute's rest. pistol 'convey,' the wise it call. 'steal!' foh! a fico for the phrase! falstaff well, sirs, i am almost out at heels. pistol why, then, let kibes ensue. falstaff there is no remedy; i must cony-catch; i must shift. pistol young ravens must have food. falstaff which of you know ford of this town? pistol i ken the wight: he is of substance good. falstaff my honest lads, i will tell you what i am about. pistol two yards, and more. falstaff no quips now, pistol! indeed, i am in the waist two yards about; but i am now about no waste; i am about thrift. briefly, i do mean to make love to ford's wife: i spy entertainment in her; she discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation: i can construe the action of her familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behavior, to be englished rightly, is, 'i am sir john falstaff's.' pistol he hath studied her will, and translated her will, out of honesty into english. nym the anchor is deep: will that humour pass? falstaff now, the report goes she has all the rule of her husband's purse: he hath a legion of angels. pistol as many devils entertain; and 'to her, boy,' say i. nym the humour rises; it is good: humour me the angels. falstaff i have writ me here a letter to her: and here another to page's wife, who even now gave me good eyes too, examined my parts with most judicious oeillades; sometimes the beam of her view gilded my foot, sometimes my portly belly. pistol then did the sun on dunghill shine. nym i thank thee for that humour. falstaff o, she did so course o'er my exteriors with such a greedy intention, that the appetite of her eye did seem to scorch me up like a burning-glass! here's another letter to her: she bears the purse too; she is a region in guiana, all gold and bounty. i will be cheater to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me; they shall be my east and west indies, and i will trade to them both. go bear thou this letter to mistress page; and thou this to mistress ford: we will thrive, lads, we will thrive. pistol shall i sir pandarus of troy become, and by my side wear steel? then, lucifer take all! nym i will run no base humour: here, take the humour-letter: i will keep the havior of reputation. falstaff [to robin] hold, sirrah, bear you these letters tightly; sail like my pinnace to these golden shores. rogues, hence, avaunt! vanish like hailstones, go; trudge, plod away o' the hoof; seek shelter, pack! falstaff will learn the humour of the age, french thrift, you rogues; myself and skirted page. [exeunt falstaff and robin] pistol let vultures gripe thy guts! for gourd and fullam holds, and high and low beguiles the rich and poor: tester i'll have in pouch when thou shalt lack, base phrygian turk! nym i have operations which be humours of revenge. pistol wilt thou revenge? nym by welkin and her star! pistol with wit or steel? nym with both the humours, i: i will discuss the humour of this love to page. pistol and i to ford shall eke unfold how falstaff, varlet vile, his dove will prove, his gold will hold, and his soft couch defile. nym my humour shall not cool: i will incense page to deal with poison; i will possess him with yellowness, for the revolt of mine is dangerous: that is my true humour. pistol thou art the mars of malecontents: i second thee; troop on. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act i scene iv a room in doctor caius' house. [enter mistress quickly, simple, and rugby] mistress quickly what, john rugby! i pray thee, go to the casement, and see if you can see my master, master doctor caius, coming. if he do, i' faith, and find any body in the house, here will be an old abusing of god's patience and the king's english. rugby i'll go watch. mistress quickly go; and we'll have a posset for't soon at night, in faith, at the latter end of a sea-coal fire. [exit rugby] an honest, willing, kind fellow, as ever servant shall come in house withal, and, i warrant you, no tell-tale nor no breed-bate: his worst fault is, that he is given to prayer; he is something peevish that way: but nobody but has his fault; but let that pass. peter simple, you say your name is? simple ay, for fault of a better. mistress quickly and master slender's your master? simple ay, forsooth. mistress quickly does he not wear a great round beard, like a glover's paring-knife? simple no, forsooth: he hath but a little wee face, with a little yellow beard, a cain-coloured beard. mistress quickly a softly-sprighted man, is he not? simple ay, forsooth: but he is as tall a man of his hands as any is between this and his head; he hath fought with a warrener. mistress quickly how say you? o, i should remember him: does he not hold up his head, as it were, and strut in his gait? simple yes, indeed, does he. mistress quickly well, heaven send anne page no worse fortune! tell master parson evans i will do what i can for your master: anne is a good girl, and i wish- [re-enter rugby] rugby out, alas! here comes my master. mistress quickly we shall all be shent. run in here, good young man; go into this closet: he will not stay long. [shuts simple in the closet] what, john rugby! john! what, john, i say! go, john, go inquire for my master; i doubt he be not well, that he comes not home. [singing] and down, down, adown-a, &c. [enter doctor caius] doctor caius vat is you sing? i do not like des toys. pray you, go and vetch me in my closet un boitier vert, a box, a green-a box: do intend vat i speak? a green-a box. mistress quickly ay, forsooth; i'll fetch it you. [aside] i am glad he went not in himself: if he had found the young man, he would have been horn-mad. doctor caius fe, fe, fe, fe! ma foi, il fait fort chaud. je m'en vais a la cour--la grande affaire. mistress quickly is it this, sir? doctor caius oui; mette le au mon pocket: depeche, quickly. vere is dat knave rugby? mistress quickly what, john rugby! john! rugby here, sir! doctor caius you are john rugby, and you are jack rugby. come, take-a your rapier, and come after my heel to the court. rugby 'tis ready, sir, here in the porch. doctor caius by my trot, i tarry too long. od's me! qu'ai-j'oublie! dere is some simples in my closet, dat i vill not for the varld i shall leave behind. mistress quickly ay me, he'll find the young man here, and be mad! doctor caius o diable, diable! vat is in my closet? villain! larron! [pulling simple out] rugby, my rapier! mistress quickly good master, be content. doctor caius wherefore shall i be content-a? mistress quickly the young man is an honest man. doctor caius what shall de honest man do in my closet? dere is no honest man dat shall come in my closet. mistress quickly i beseech you, be not so phlegmatic. hear the truth of it: he came of an errand to me from parson hugh. doctor caius vell. simple ay, forsooth; to desire her to- mistress quickly peace, i pray you. doctor caius peace-a your tongue. speak-a your tale. simple to desire this honest gentlewoman, your maid, to speak a good word to mistress anne page for my master in the way of marriage. mistress quickly this is all, indeed, la! but i'll ne'er put my finger in the fire, and need not. doctor caius sir hugh send-a you? rugby, baille me some paper. tarry you a little-a while. [writes] mistress quickly [aside to simple] i am glad he is so quiet: if he had been thoroughly moved, you should have heard him so loud and so melancholy. but notwithstanding, man, i'll do you your master what good i can: and the very yea and the no is, the french doctor, my master,--i may call him my master, look you, for i keep his house; and i wash, wring, brew, bake, scour, dress meat and drink, make the beds and do all myself,- simple [aside to mistress quickly] 'tis a great charge to come under one body's hand. mistress quickly [aside to simple] are you avised o' that? you shall find it a great charge: and to be up early and down late; but notwithstanding,--to tell you in your ear; i would have no words of it,--my master himself is in love with mistress anne page: but notwithstanding that, i know anne's mind,--that's neither here nor there. doctor caius you jack'nape, give-a this letter to sir hugh; by gar, it is a shallenge: i will cut his troat in dee park; and i will teach a scurvy jack-a-nape priest to meddle or make. you may be gone; it is not good you tarry here. by gar, i will cut all his two stones; by gar, he shall not have a stone to throw at his dog: [exit simple] mistress quickly alas, he speaks but for his friend. doctor caius it is no matter-a ver dat: do not you tell-a me dat i shall have anne page for myself? by gar, i vill kill de jack priest; and i have appointed mine host of de jarteer to measure our weapon. by gar, i will myself have anne page. mistress quickly sir, the maid loves you, and all shall be well. we must give folks leave to prate: what, the good-jer! doctor caius rugby, come to the court with me. by gar, if i have not anne page, i shall turn your head out of my door. follow my heels, rugby. [exeunt doctor caius and rugby] mistress quickly you shall have an fool's-head of your own. no, i know anne's mind for that: never a woman in windsor knows more of anne's mind than i do; nor can do more than i do with her, i thank heaven. fenton [within] who's within there? ho! mistress quickly who's there, i trow! come near the house, i pray you. [enter fenton] fenton how now, good woman? how dost thou? mistress quickly the better that it pleases your good worship to ask. fenton what news? how does pretty mistress anne? mistress quickly in truth, sir, and she is pretty, and honest, and gentle; and one that is your friend, i can tell you that by the way; i praise heaven for it. fenton shall i do any good, thinkest thou? shall i not lose my suit? mistress quickly troth, sir, all is in his hands above: but notwithstanding, master fenton, i'll be sworn on a book, she loves you. have not your worship a wart above your eye? fenton yes, marry, have i; what of that? mistress quickly well, thereby hangs a tale: good faith, it is such another nan; but, i detest, an honest maid as ever broke bread: we had an hour's talk of that wart. i shall never laugh but in that maid's company! but indeed she is given too much to allicholy and musing: but for you--well, go to. fenton well, i shall see her to-day. hold, there's money for thee; let me have thy voice in my behalf: if thou seest her before me, commend me. mistress quickly will i? i'faith, that we will; and i will tell your worship more of the wart the next time we have confidence; and of other wooers. fenton well, farewell; i am in great haste now. mistress quickly farewell to your worship. [exit fenton] truly, an honest gentleman: but anne loves him not; for i know anne's mind as well as another does. out upon't! what have i forgot? [exit] the merry wives of windsor act ii scene i before page's house. [enter mistress page, with a letter] mistress page what, have i scaped love-letters in the holiday time of my beauty, and am i now a subject for them? let me see. [reads] 'ask me no reason why i love you; for though love use reason for his physician, he admits him not for his counsellor. you are not young, no more am i; go to then, there's sympathy: you are merry, so am i; ha, ha! then there's more sympathy: you love sack, and so do i; would you desire better sympathy? let it suffice thee, mistress page,--at the least, if the love of soldier can suffice,- that i love thee. i will not say, pity me; 'tis not a soldier-like phrase: but i say, love me. by me, thine own true knight, by day or night, or any kind of light, with all his might for thee to fight, john falstaff' what a herod of jewry is this! o wicked world! one that is well-nigh worn to pieces with age to show himself a young gallant! what an unweighed behavior hath this flemish drunkard picked--with the devil's name!--out of my conversation, that he dares in this manner assay me? why, he hath not been thrice in my company! what should i say to him? i was then frugal of my mirth: heaven forgive me! why, i'll exhibit a bill in the parliament for the putting down of men. how shall i be revenged on him? for revenged i will be, as sure as his guts are made of puddings. [enter mistress ford] mistress ford mistress page! trust me, i was going to your house. mistress page and, trust me, i was coming to you. you look very ill. mistress ford nay, i'll ne'er believe that; i have to show to the contrary. mistress page faith, but you do, in my mind. mistress ford well, i do then; yet i say i could show you to the contrary. o mistress page, give me some counsel! mistress page what's the matter, woman? mistress ford o woman, if it were not for one trifling respect, i could come to such honour! mistress page hang the trifle, woman! take the honour. what is it? dispense with trifles; what is it? mistress ford if i would but go to hell for an eternal moment or so, i could be knighted. mistress page what? thou liest! sir alice ford! these knights will hack; and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy gentry. mistress ford we burn daylight: here, read, read; perceive how i might be knighted. i shall think the worse of fat men, as long as i have an eye to make difference of men's liking: and yet he would not swear; praised women's modesty; and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof to all uncomeliness, that i would have sworn his disposition would have gone to the truth of his words; but they do no more adhere and keep place together than the hundredth psalm to the tune of 'green sleeves.' what tempest, i trow, threw this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly, ashore at windsor? how shall i be revenged on him? i think the best way were to entertain him with hope, till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease. did you ever hear the like? mistress page letter for letter, but that the name of page and ford differs! to thy great comfort in this mystery of ill opinions, here's the twin-brother of thy letter: but let thine inherit first; for, i protest, mine never shall. i warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for different names--sure, more,--and these are of the second edition: he will print them, out of doubt; for he cares not what he puts into the press, when he would put us two. i had rather be a giantess, and lie under mount pelion. well, i will find you twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste man. mistress ford why, this is the very same; the very hand, the very words. what doth he think of us? mistress page nay, i know not: it makes me almost ready to wrangle with mine own honesty. i'll entertain myself like one that i am not acquainted withal; for, sure, unless he know some strain in me, that i know not myself, he would never have boarded me in this fury. mistress ford 'boarding,' call you it? i'll be sure to keep him above deck. mistress page so will i if he come under my hatches, i'll never to sea again. let's be revenged on him: let's appoint him a meeting; give him a show of comfort in his suit and lead him on with a fine-baited delay, till he hath pawned his horses to mine host of the garter. mistress ford nay, i will consent to act any villany against him, that may not sully the chariness of our honesty. o, that my husband saw this letter! it would give eternal food to his jealousy. mistress page why, look where he comes; and my good man too: he's as far from jealousy as i am from giving him cause; and that i hope is an unmeasurable distance. mistress ford you are the happier woman. mistress page let's consult together against this greasy knight. come hither. [they retire] [enter ford with pistol, and page with nym] ford well, i hope it be not so. pistol hope is a curtal dog in some affairs: sir john affects thy wife. ford why, sir, my wife is not young. pistol he wooes both high and low, both rich and poor, both young and old, one with another, ford; he loves the gallimaufry: ford, perpend. ford love my wife! pistol with liver burning hot. prevent, or go thou, like sir actaeon he, with ringwood at thy heels: o, odious is the name! ford what name, sir? pistol the horn, i say. farewell. take heed, have open eye, for thieves do foot by night: take heed, ere summer comes or cuckoo-birds do sing. away, sir corporal nym! believe it, page; he speaks sense. [exit] ford [aside] i will be patient; i will find out this. nym [to page] and this is true; i like not the humour of lying. he hath wronged me in some humours: i should have borne the humoured letter to her; but i have a sword and it shall bite upon my necessity. he loves your wife; there's the short and the long. my name is corporal nym; i speak and i avouch; 'tis true: my name is nym and falstaff loves your wife. adieu. i love not the humour of bread and cheese, and there's the humour of it. adieu. [exit] page 'the humour of it,' quoth a'! here's a fellow frights english out of his wits. ford i will seek out falstaff. page i never heard such a drawling, affecting rogue. ford if i do find it: well. page i will not believe such a cataian, though the priest o' the town commended him for a true man. ford 'twas a good sensible fellow: well. page how now, meg! [mistress page and mistress ford come forward] mistress page whither go you, george? hark you. mistress ford how now, sweet frank! why art thou melancholy? ford i melancholy! i am not melancholy. get you home, go. mistress ford faith, thou hast some crotchets in thy head. now, will you go, mistress page? mistress page have with you. you'll come to dinner, george. [aside to mistress ford] look who comes yonder: she shall be our messenger to this paltry knight. mistress ford [aside to mistress page] trust me, i thought on her: she'll fit it. [enter mistress quickly] mistress page you are come to see my daughter anne? mistress quickly ay, forsooth; and, i pray, how does good mistress anne? mistress page go in with us and see: we have an hour's talk with you. [exeunt mistress page, mistress ford, and mistress quickly] page how now, master ford! ford you heard what this knave told me, did you not? page yes: and you heard what the other told me? ford do you think there is truth in them? page hang 'em, slaves! i do not think the knight would offer it: but these that accuse him in his intent towards our wives are a yoke of his discarded men; very rogues, now they be out of service. ford were they his men? page marry, were they. ford i like it never the better for that. does he lie at the garter? page ay, marry, does he. if he should intend this voyage towards my wife, i would turn her loose to him; and what he gets more of her than sharp words, let it lie on my head. ford i do not misdoubt my wife; but i would be loath to turn them together. a man may be too confident: i would have nothing lie on my head: i cannot be thus satisfied. page look where my ranting host of the garter comes: there is either liquor in his pate or money in his purse when he looks so merrily. [enter host] how now, mine host! host how now, bully-rook! thou'rt a gentleman. cavaleiro-justice, i say! [enter shallow] shallow i follow, mine host, i follow. good even and twenty, good master page! master page, will you go with us? we have sport in hand. host tell him, cavaleiro-justice; tell him, bully-rook. shallow sir, there is a fray to be fought between sir hugh the welsh priest and caius the french doctor. ford good mine host o' the garter, a word with you. [drawing him aside] host what sayest thou, my bully-rook? shallow [to page] will you go with us to behold it? my merry host hath had the measuring of their weapons; and, i think, hath appointed them contrary places; for, believe me, i hear the parson is no jester. hark, i will tell you what our sport shall be. [they converse apart] host hast thou no suit against my knight, my guest-cavaleire? ford none, i protest: but i'll give you a pottle of burnt sack to give me recourse to him and tell him my name is brook; only for a jest. host my hand, bully; thou shalt have egress and regress; --said i well?--and thy name shall be brook. it is a merry knight. will you go, an-heires? shallow have with you, mine host. page i have heard the frenchman hath good skill in his rapier. shallow tut, sir, i could have told you more. in these times you stand on distance, your passes, stoccadoes, and i know not what: 'tis the heart, master page; 'tis here, 'tis here. i have seen the time, with my long sword i would have made you four tall fellows skip like rats. host here, boys, here, here! shall we wag? page have with you. i would rather hear them scold than fight. [exeunt host, shallow, and page] ford though page be a secure fool, an stands so firmly on his wife's frailty, yet i cannot put off my opinion so easily: she was in his company at page's house; and what they made there, i know not. well, i will look further into't: and i have a disguise to sound falstaff. if i find her honest, i lose not my labour; if she be otherwise, 'tis labour well bestowed. [exit] the merry wives of windsor act ii scene ii a room in the garter inn. [enter falstaff and pistol] falstaff i will not lend thee a penny. pistol why, then the world's mine oyster. which i with sword will open. falstaff not a penny. i have been content, sir, you should lay my countenance to pawn; i have grated upon my good friends for three reprieves for you and your coach-fellow nym; or else you had looked through the grate, like a geminy of baboons. i am damned in hell for swearing to gentlemen my friends, you were good soldiers and tall fellows; and when mistress bridget lost the handle of her fan, i took't upon mine honour thou hadst it not. pistol didst not thou share? hadst thou not fifteen pence? falstaff reason, you rogue, reason: thinkest thou i'll endanger my soul gratis? at a word, hang no more about me, i am no gibbet for you. go. a short knife and a throng! to your manor of pickt-hatch! go. you'll not bear a letter for me, you rogue! you stand upon your honour! why, thou unconfinable baseness, it is as much as i can do to keep the terms of my honour precise: i, i, i myself sometimes, leaving the fear of god on the left hand and hiding mine honour in my necessity, am fain to shuffle, to hedge and to lurch; and yet you, rogue, will ensconce your rags, your cat-a-mountain looks, your red-lattice phrases, and your bold-beating oaths, under the shelter of your honour! you will not do it, you! pistol i do relent: what would thou more of man? [enter robin] robin sir, here's a woman would speak with you. falstaff let her approach. [enter mistress quickly] mistress quickly give your worship good morrow. falstaff good morrow, good wife. mistress quickly not so, an't please your worship. falstaff good maid, then. mistress quickly i'll be sworn, as my mother was, the first hour i was born. falstaff i do believe the swearer. what with me? mistress quickly shall i vouchsafe your worship a word or two? falstaff two thousand, fair woman: and i'll vouchsafe thee the hearing. mistress quickly there is one mistress ford, sir:--i pray, come a little nearer this ways:--i myself dwell with master doctor caius,- falstaff well, on: mistress ford, you say,- mistress quickly your worship says very true: i pray your worship, come a little nearer this ways. falstaff i warrant thee, nobody hears; mine own people, mine own people. mistress quickly are they so? god bless them and make them his servants! falstaff well, mistress ford; what of her? mistress quickly why, sir, she's a good creature. lord lord! your worship's a wanton! well, heaven forgive you and all of us, i pray! falstaff mistress ford; come, mistress ford,- mistress quickly marry, this is the short and the long of it; you have brought her into such a canaries as 'tis wonderful. the best courtier of them all, when the court lay at windsor, could never have brought her to such a canary. yet there has been knights, and lords, and gentlemen, with their coaches, i warrant you, coach after coach, letter after letter, gift after gift; smelling so sweetly, all musk, and so rushling, i warrant you, in silk and gold; and in such alligant terms; and in such wine and sugar of the best and the fairest, that would have won any woman's heart; and, i warrant you, they could never get an eye-wink of her: i had myself twenty angels given me this morning; but i defy all angels, in any such sort, as they say, but in the way of honesty: and, i warrant you, they could never get her so much as sip on a cup with the proudest of them all: and yet there has been earls, nay, which is more, pensioners; but, i warrant you, all is one with her. falstaff but what says she to me? be brief, my good she-mercury. mistress quickly marry, she hath received your letter, for the which she thanks you a thousand times; and she gives you to notify that her husband will be absence from his house between ten and eleven. falstaff ten and eleven? mistress quickly ay, forsooth; and then you may come and see the picture, she says, that you wot of: master ford, her husband, will be from home. alas! the sweet woman leads an ill life with him: he's a very jealousy man: she leads a very frampold life with him, good heart. falstaff ten and eleven. woman, commend me to her; i will not fail her. mistress quickly why, you say well. but i have another messenger to your worship. mistress page hath her hearty commendations to you too: and let me tell you in your ear, she's as fartuous a civil modest wife, and one, i tell you, that will not miss you morning nor evening prayer, as any is in windsor, whoe'er be the other: and she bade me tell your worship that her husband is seldom from home; but she hopes there will come a time. i never knew a woman so dote upon a man: surely i think you have charms, la; yes, in truth. falstaff not i, i assure thee: setting the attractions of my good parts aside i have no other charms. mistress quickly blessing on your heart for't! falstaff but, i pray thee, tell me this: has ford's wife and page's wife acquainted each other how they love me? mistress quickly that were a jest indeed! they have not so little grace, i hope: that were a trick indeed! but mistress page would desire you to send her your little page, of all loves: her husband has a marvellous infection to the little page; and truly master page is an honest man. never a wife in windsor leads a better life than she does: do what she will, say what she will, take all, pay all, go to bed when she list, rise when she list, all is as she will: and truly she deserves it; for if there be a kind woman in windsor, she is one. you must send her your page; no remedy. falstaff why, i will. mistress quickly nay, but do so, then: and, look you, he may come and go between you both; and in any case have a nay-word, that you may know one another's mind, and the boy never need to understand any thing; for 'tis not good that children should know any wickedness: old folks, you know, have discretion, as they say, and know the world. falstaff fare thee well: commend me to them both: there's my purse; i am yet thy debtor. boy, go along with this woman. [exeunt mistress quickly and robin] this news distracts me! pistol this punk is one of cupid's carriers: clap on more sails; pursue; up with your fights: give fire: she is my prize, or ocean whelm them all! [exit] falstaff sayest thou so, old jack? go thy ways; i'll make more of thy old body than i have done. will they yet look after thee? wilt thou, after the expense of so much money, be now a gainer? good body, i thank thee. let them say 'tis grossly done; so it be fairly done, no matter. [enter bardolph] bardolph sir john, there's one master brook below would fain speak with you, and be acquainted with you; and hath sent your worship a morning's draught of sack. falstaff brook is his name? bardolph ay, sir. falstaff call him in. [exit bardolph] such brooks are welcome to me, that o'erflow such liquor. ah, ha! mistress ford and mistress page have i encompassed you? go to; via! [re-enter bardolph, with ford disguised] ford bless you, sir! falstaff and you, sir! would you speak with me? ford i make bold to press with so little preparation upon you. falstaff you're welcome. what's your will? give us leave, drawer. [exit bardolph] ford sir, i am a gentleman that have spent much; my name is brook. falstaff good master brook, i desire more acquaintance of you. ford good sir john, i sue for yours: not to charge you; for i must let you understand i think myself in better plight for a lender than you are: the which hath something embolden'd me to this unseasoned intrusion; for they say, if money go before, all ways do lie open. falstaff money is a good soldier, sir, and will on. ford troth, and i have a bag of money here troubles me: if you will help to bear it, sir john, take all, or half, for easing me of the carriage. falstaff sir, i know not how i may deserve to be your porter. ford i will tell you, sir, if you will give me the hearing. falstaff speak, good master brook: i shall be glad to be your servant. ford sir, i hear you are a scholar,--i will be brief with you,--and you have been a man long known to me, though i had never so good means, as desire, to make myself acquainted with you. i shall discover a thing to you, wherein i must very much lay open mine own imperfection: but, good sir john, as you have one eye upon my follies, as you hear them unfolded, turn another into the register of your own; that i may pass with a reproof the easier, sith you yourself know how easy it is to be such an offender. falstaff very well, sir; proceed. ford there is a gentlewoman in this town; her husband's name is ford. falstaff well, sir. ford i have long loved her, and, i protest to you, bestowed much on her; followed her with a doting observance; engrossed opportunities to meet her; fee'd every slight occasion that could but niggardly give me sight of her; not only bought many presents to give her, but have given largely to many to know what she would have given; briefly, i have pursued her as love hath pursued me; which hath been on the wing of all occasions. but whatsoever i have merited, either in my mind or, in my means, meed, i am sure, i have received none; unless experience be a jewel that i have purchased at an infinite rate, and that hath taught me to say this: 'love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues; pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.' falstaff have you received no promise of satisfaction at her hands? ford never. falstaff have you importuned her to such a purpose? ford never. falstaff of what quality was your love, then? ford like a fair house built on another man's ground; so that i have lost my edifice by mistaking the place where i erected it. falstaff to what purpose have you unfolded this to me? ford when i have told you that, i have told you all. some say, that though she appear honest to me, yet in other places she enlargeth her mirth so far that there is shrewd construction made of her. now, sir john, here is the heart of my purpose: you are a gentleman of excellent breeding, admirable discourse, of great admittance, authentic in your place and person, generally allowed for your many war-like, court-like, and learned preparations. falstaff o, sir! ford believe it, for you know it. there is money; spend it, spend it; spend more; spend all i have; only give me so much of your time in exchange of it, as to lay an amiable siege to the honesty of this ford's wife: use your art of wooing; win her to consent to you: if any man may, you may as soon as any. falstaff would it apply well to the vehemency of your affection, that i should win what you would enjoy? methinks you prescribe to yourself very preposterously. ford o, understand my drift. she dwells so securely on the excellency of her honour, that the folly of my soul dares not present itself: she is too bright to be looked against. now, could i could come to her with any detection in my hand, my desires had instance and argument to commend themselves: i could drive her then from the ward of her purity, her reputation, her marriage-vow, and a thousand other her defences, which now are too too strongly embattled against me. what say you to't, sir john? falstaff master brook, i will first make bold with your money; next, give me your hand; and last, as i am a gentleman, you shall, if you will, enjoy ford's wife. ford o good sir! falstaff i say you shall. ford want no money, sir john; you shall want none. falstaff want no mistress ford, master brook; you shall want none. i shall be with her, i may tell you, by her own appointment; even as you came in to me, her assistant or go-between parted from me: i say i shall be with her between ten and eleven; for at that time the jealous rascally knave her husband will be forth. come you to me at night; you shall know how i speed. ford i am blest in your acquaintance. do you know ford, sir? falstaff hang him, poor cuckoldly knave! i know him not: yet i wrong him to call him poor; they say the jealous wittolly knave hath masses of money; for the which his wife seems to me well-favored. i will use her as the key of the cuckoldly rogue's coffer; and there's my harvest-home. ford i would you knew ford, sir, that you might avoid him if you saw him. falstaff hang him, mechanical salt-butter rogue! i will stare him out of his wits; i will awe him with my cudgel: it shall hang like a meteor o'er the cuckold's horns. master brook, thou shalt know i will predominate over the peasant, and thou shalt lie with his wife. come to me soon at night. ford's a knave, and i will aggravate his style; thou, master brook, shalt know him for knave and cuckold. come to me soon at night. [exit] ford what a damned epicurean rascal is this! my heart is ready to crack with impatience. who says this is improvident jealousy? my wife hath sent to him; the hour is fixed; the match is made. would any man have thought this? see the hell of having a false woman! my bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation gnawn at; and i shall not only receive this villanous wrong, but stand under the adoption of abominable terms, and by him that does me this wrong. terms! names! amaimon sounds well; lucifer, well; barbason, well; yet they are devils' additions, the names of fiends: but cuckold! wittol!--cuckold! the devil himself hath not such a name. page is an ass, a secure ass: he will trust his wife; he will not be jealous. i will rather trust a fleming with my butter, parson hugh the welshman with my cheese, an irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle, or a thief to walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself; then she plots, then she ruminates, then she devises; and what they think in their hearts they may effect, they will break their hearts but they will effect. god be praised for my jealousy! eleven o'clock the hour. i will prevent this, detect my wife, be revenged on falstaff, and laugh at page. i will about it; better three hours too soon than a minute too late. fie, fie, fie! cuckold! cuckold! cuckold! [exit] the merry wives of windsor act ii scene iii a field near windsor. [enter doctor caius and rugby] doctor caius jack rugby! rugby sir? doctor caius vat is de clock, jack? rugby 'tis past the hour, sir, that sir hugh promised to meet. doctor caius by gar, he has save his soul, dat he is no come; he has pray his pible well, dat he is no come: by gar, jack rugby, he is dead already, if he be come. rugby he is wise, sir; he knew your worship would kill him, if he came. doctor caius by gar, de herring is no dead so as i vill kill him. take your rapier, jack; i vill tell you how i vill kill him. rugby alas, sir, i cannot fence. doctor caius villany, take your rapier. rugby forbear; here's company. [enter host, shallow, slender, and page] host bless thee, bully doctor! shallow save you, master doctor caius! page now, good master doctor! slender give you good morrow, sir. doctor caius vat be all you, one, two, tree, four, come for? host to see thee fight, to see thee foin, to see thee traverse; to see thee here, to see thee there; to see thee pass thy punto, thy stock, thy reverse, thy distance, thy montant. is he dead, my ethiopian? is he dead, my francisco? ha, bully! what says my aesculapius? my galen? my heart of elder? ha! is he dead, bully stale? is he dead? doctor caius by gar, he is de coward jack priest of de vorld; he is not show his face. host thou art a castalion-king-urinal. hector of greece, my boy! doctor caius i pray you, bear vitness that me have stay six or seven, two, tree hours for him, and he is no come. shallow he is the wiser man, master doctor: he is a curer of souls, and you a curer of bodies; if you should fight, you go against the hair of your professions. is it not true, master page? page master shallow, you have yourself been a great fighter, though now a man of peace. shallow bodykins, master page, though i now be old and of the peace, if i see a sword out, my finger itches to make one. though we are justices and doctors and churchmen, master page, we have some salt of our youth in us; we are the sons of women, master page. page 'tis true, master shallow. shallow it will be found so, master page. master doctor caius, i am come to fetch you home. i am sworn of the peace: you have showed yourself a wise physician, and sir hugh hath shown himself a wise and patient churchman. you must go with me, master doctor. host pardon, guest-justice. a word, mounseur mockwater. doctor caius mock-vater! vat is dat? host mock-water, in our english tongue, is valour, bully. doctor caius by gar, den, i have as mush mock-vater as de englishman. scurvy jack-dog priest! by gar, me vill cut his ears. host he will clapper-claw thee tightly, bully. doctor caius clapper-de-claw! vat is dat? host that is, he will make thee amends. doctor caius by gar, me do look he shall clapper-de-claw me; for, by gar, me vill have it. host and i will provoke him to't, or let him wag. doctor caius me tank you for dat. host and, moreover, bully,--but first, master guest, and master page, and eke cavaleiro slender, go you through the town to frogmore. [aside to them] page sir hugh is there, is he? host he is there: see what humour he is in; and i will bring the doctor about by the fields. will it do well? shallow we will do it. page | | shallow | adieu, good master doctor. | slender | [exeunt page, shallow, and slender] doctor caius by gar, me vill kill de priest; for he speak for a jack-an-ape to anne page. host let him die: sheathe thy impatience, throw cold water on thy choler: go about the fields with me through frogmore: i will bring thee where mistress anne page is, at a farm-house a-feasting; and thou shalt woo her. cried i aim? said i well? doctor caius by gar, me dank you for dat: by gar, i love you; and i shall procure-a you de good guest, de earl, de knight, de lords, de gentlemen, my patients. host for the which i will be thy adversary toward anne page. said i well? doctor caius by gar, 'tis good; vell said. host let us wag, then. doctor caius come at my heels, jack rugby. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act iii scene i a field near frogmore. [enter sir hugh evans and simple] sir hugh evans i pray you now, good master slender's serving-man, and friend simple by your name, which way have you looked for master caius, that calls himself doctor of physic? simple marry, sir, the pittie-ward, the park-ward, every way; old windsor way, and every way but the town way. sir hugh evans i most fehemently desire you you will also look that way. simple i will, sir. [exit] sir hugh evans 'pless my soul, how full of chollors i am, and trempling of mind! i shall be glad if he have deceived me. how melancholies i am! i will knog his urinals about his knave's costard when i have good opportunities for the ork. 'pless my soul! [sings] to shallow rivers, to whose falls melodious birds sings madrigals; there will we make our peds of roses, and a thousand fragrant posies. to shallow- mercy on me! i have a great dispositions to cry. [sings] melodious birds sing madrigals- when as i sat in pabylon- and a thousand vagram posies. to shallow &c. [re-enter simple] simple yonder he is coming, this way, sir hugh. sir hugh evans he's welcome. [sings] to shallow rivers, to whose falls heaven prosper the right! what weapons is he? simple no weapons, sir. there comes my master, master shallow, and another gentleman, from frogmore, over the stile, this way. sir hugh evans pray you, give me my gown; or else keep it in your arms. [enter page, shallow, and slender] shallow how now, master parson! good morrow, good sir hugh. keep a gamester from the dice, and a good student from his book, and it is wonderful. slender [aside] ah, sweet anne page! page 'save you, good sir hugh! sir hugh evans 'pless you from his mercy sake, all of you! shallow what, the sword and the word! do you study them both, master parson? page and youthful still! in your doublet and hose this raw rheumatic day! sir hugh evans there is reasons and causes for it. page we are come to you to do a good office, master parson. sir hugh evans fery well: what is it? page yonder is a most reverend gentleman, who, belike having received wrong by some person, is at most odds with his own gravity and patience that ever you saw. shallow i have lived fourscore years and upward; i never heard a man of his place, gravity and learning, so wide of his own respect. sir hugh evans what is he? page i think you know him; master doctor caius, the renowned french physician. sir hugh evans got's will, and his passion of my heart! i had as lief you would tell me of a mess of porridge. page why? sir hugh evans he has no more knowledge in hibocrates and galen, --and he is a knave besides; a cowardly knave as you would desires to be acquainted withal. page i warrant you, he's the man should fight with him. shallow [aside] o sweet anne page! shallow it appears so by his weapons. keep them asunder: here comes doctor caius. [enter host, doctor caius, and rugby] page nay, good master parson, keep in your weapon. shallow so do you, good master doctor. host disarm them, and let them question: let them keep their limbs whole and hack our english. doctor caius i pray you, let-a me speak a word with your ear. vherefore vill you not meet-a me? sir hugh evans [aside to doctor caius] pray you, use your patience: in good time. doctor caius by gar, you are de coward, de jack dog, john ape. sir hugh evans [aside to doctor caius] pray you let us not be laughing-stocks to other men's humours; i desire you in friendship, and i will one way or other make you amends. [aloud] i will knog your urinals about your knave's cockscomb for missing your meetings and appointments. doctor caius diable! jack rugby,--mine host de jarteer,--have i not stay for him to kill him? have i not, at de place i did appoint? sir hugh evans as i am a christians soul now, look you, this is the place appointed: i'll be judgement by mine host of the garter. host peace, i say, gallia and gaul, french and welsh, soul-curer and body-curer! doctor caius ay, dat is very good; excellent. host peace, i say! hear mine host of the garter. am i politic? am i subtle? am i a machiavel? shall i lose my doctor? no; he gives me the potions and the motions. shall i lose my parson, my priest, my sir hugh? no; he gives me the proverbs and the no-verbs. give me thy hand, terrestrial; so. give me thy hand, celestial; so. boys of art, i have deceived you both; i have directed you to wrong places: your hearts are mighty, your skins are whole, and let burnt sack be the issue. come, lay their swords to pawn. follow me, lads of peace; follow, follow, follow. shallow trust me, a mad host. follow, gentlemen, follow. slender [aside] o sweet anne page! [exeunt shallow, slender, page, and host] doctor caius ha, do i perceive dat? have you make-a de sot of us, ha, ha? sir hugh evans this is well; he has made us his vlouting-stog. i desire you that we may be friends; and let us knog our prains together to be revenge on this same scall, scurvy cogging companion, the host of the garter. doctor caius by gar, with all my heart. he promise to bring me where is anne page; by gar, he deceive me too. sir hugh evans well, i will smite his noddles. pray you, follow. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act iii scene ii a street. [enter mistress page and robin] mistress page nay, keep your way, little gallant; you were wont to be a follower, but now you are a leader. whether had you rather lead mine eyes, or eye your master's heels? robin i had rather, forsooth, go before you like a man than follow him like a dwarf. mistress page o, you are a flattering boy: now i see you'll be a courtier. [enter ford] ford well met, mistress page. whither go you? mistress page truly, sir, to see your wife. is she at home? ford ay; and as idle as she may hang together, for want of company. i think, if your husbands were dead, you two would marry. mistress page be sure of that,--two other husbands. ford where had you this pretty weather-cock? mistress page i cannot tell what the dickens his name is my husband had him of. what do you call your knight's name, sirrah? robin sir john falstaff. ford sir john falstaff! mistress page he, he; i can never hit on's name. there is such a league between my good man and he! is your wife at home indeed? ford indeed she is. mistress page by your leave, sir: i am sick till i see her. [exeunt mistress page and robin] ford has page any brains? hath he any eyes? hath he any thinking? sure, they sleep; he hath no use of them. why, this boy will carry a letter twenty mile, as easy as a cannon will shoot point-blank twelve score. he pieces out his wife's inclination; he gives her folly motion and advantage: and now she's going to my wife, and falstaff's boy with her. a man may hear this shower sing in the wind. and falstaff's boy with her! good plots, they are laid; and our revolted wives share damnation together. well; i will take him, then torture my wife, pluck the borrowed veil of modesty from the so seeming mistress page, divulge page himself for a secure and wilful actaeon; and to these violent proceedings all my neighbours shall cry aim. [clock heard] the clock gives me my cue, and my assurance bids me search: there i shall find falstaff: i shall be rather praised for this than mocked; for it is as positive as the earth is firm that falstaff is there: i will go. [enter page, shallow, slender, host, sir hugh evans, doctor caius, and rugby] shallow | | page | well met, master ford. | &c | ford trust me, a good knot: i have good cheer at home; and i pray you all go with me. shallow i must excuse myself, master ford. slender and so must i, sir: we have appointed to dine with mistress anne, and i would not break with her for more money than i'll speak of. shallow we have lingered about a match between anne page and my cousin slender, and this day we shall have our answer. slender i hope i have your good will, father page. page you have, master slender; i stand wholly for you: but my wife, master doctor, is for you altogether. doctor caius ay, be-gar; and de maid is love-a me: my nursh-a quickly tell me so mush. host what say you to young master fenton? he capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells april and may: he will carry't, he will carry't; 'tis in his buttons; he will carry't. page not by my consent, i promise you. the gentleman is of no having: he kept company with the wild prince and poins; he is of too high a region; he knows too much. no, he shall not knit a knot in his fortunes with the finger of my substance: if he take her, let him take her simply; the wealth i have waits on my consent, and my consent goes not that way. ford i beseech you heartily, some of you go home with me to dinner: besides your cheer, you shall have sport; i will show you a monster. master doctor, you shall go; so shall you, master page; and you, sir hugh. shallow well, fare you well: we shall have the freer wooing at master page's. [exeunt shallow, and slender] doctor caius go home, john rugby; i come anon. [exit rugby] host farewell, my hearts: i will to my honest knight falstaff, and drink canary with him. [exit] ford [aside] i think i shall drink in pipe wine first with him; i'll make him dance. will you go, gentles? all have with you to see this monster. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act iii scene iii a room in ford's house. [enter mistress ford and mistress page] mistress ford what, john! what, robert! mistress page quickly, quickly! is the buck-basket- mistress ford i warrant. what, robin, i say! [enter servants with a basket] mistress page come, come, come. mistress ford here, set it down. mistress page give your men the charge; we must be brief. mistress ford marry, as i told you before, john and robert, be ready here hard by in the brew-house: and when i suddenly call you, come forth, and without any pause or staggering take this basket on your shoulders: that done, trudge with it in all haste, and carry it among the whitsters in datchet-mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch close by the thames side. mistress page you will do it? mistress ford i ha' told them over and over; they lack no direction. be gone, and come when you are called. [exeunt servants] mistress page here comes little robin. [enter robin] mistress ford how now, my eyas-musket! what news with you? robin my master, sir john, is come in at your back-door, mistress ford, and requests your company. mistress page you little jack-a-lent, have you been true to us? robin ay, i'll be sworn. my master knows not of your being here and hath threatened to put me into everlasting liberty if i tell you of it; for he swears he'll turn me away. mistress page thou'rt a good boy: this secrecy of thine shall be a tailor to thee and shall make thee a new doublet and hose. i'll go hide me. mistress ford do so. go tell thy master i am alone. [exit robin] mistress page, remember you your cue. mistress page i warrant thee; if i do not act it, hiss me. [exit] mistress ford go to, then: we'll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watery pumpion; we'll teach him to know turtles from jays. [enter falstaff] falstaff have i caught thee, my heavenly jewel? why, now let me die, for i have lived long enough: this is the period of my ambition: o this blessed hour! mistress ford o sweet sir john! falstaff mistress ford, i cannot cog, i cannot prate, mistress ford. now shall i sin in my wish: i would thy husband were dead: i'll speak it before the best lord; i would make thee my lady. mistress ford i your lady, sir john! alas, i should be a pitiful lady! falstaff let the court of france show me such another. i see how thine eye would emulate the diamond: thou hast the right arched beauty of the brow that becomes the ship-tire, the tire-valiant, or any tire of venetian admittance. mistress ford a plain kerchief, sir john: my brows become nothing else; nor that well neither. falstaff by the lord, thou art a traitor to say so: thou wouldst make an absolute courtier; and the firm fixture of thy foot would give an excellent motion to thy gait in a semi-circled farthingale. i see what thou wert, if fortune thy foe were not, nature thy friend. come, thou canst not hide it. mistress ford believe me, there is no such thing in me. falstaff what made me love thee? let that persuade thee there's something extraordinary in thee. come, i cannot cog and say thou art this and that, like a many of these lisping hawthorn-buds, that come like women in men's apparel, and smell like bucklersbury in simple time; i cannot: but i love thee; none but thee; and thou deservest it. mistress ford do not betray me, sir. i fear you love mistress page. falstaff thou mightst as well say i love to walk by the counter-gate, which is as hateful to me as the reek of a lime-kiln. mistress ford well, heaven knows how i love you; and you shall one day find it. falstaff keep in that mind; i'll deserve it. mistress ford nay, i must tell you, so you do; or else i could not be in that mind. robin [within] mistress ford, mistress ford! here's mistress page at the door, sweating and blowing and looking wildly, and would needs speak with you presently. falstaff she shall not see me: i will ensconce me behind the arras. mistress ford pray you, do so: she's a very tattling woman. [falstaff hides himself] [re-enter mistress page and robin] what's the matter? how now! mistress page o mistress ford, what have you done? you're shamed, you're overthrown, you're undone for ever! mistress ford what's the matter, good mistress page? mistress page o well-a-day, mistress ford! having an honest man to your husband, to give him such cause of suspicion! mistress ford what cause of suspicion? mistress page what cause of suspicion! out pon you! how am i mistook in you! mistress ford why, alas, what's the matter? mistress page your husband's coming hither, woman, with all the officers in windsor, to search for a gentleman that he says is here now in the house by your consent, to take an ill advantage of his assence: you are undone. mistress ford 'tis not so, i hope. mistress page pray heaven it be not so, that you have such a man here! but 'tis most certain your husband's coming, with half windsor at his heels, to search for such a one. i come before to tell you. if you know yourself clear, why, i am glad of it; but if you have a friend here convey, convey him out. be not amazed; call all your senses to you; defend your reputation, or bid farewell to your good life for ever. mistress ford what shall i do? there is a gentleman my dear friend; and i fear not mine own shame so much as his peril: i had rather than a thousand pound he were out of the house. mistress page for shame! never stand 'you had rather' and 'you had rather:' your husband's here at hand, bethink you of some conveyance: in the house you cannot hide him. o, how have you deceived me! look, here is a basket: if he be of any reasonable stature, he may creep in here; and throw foul linen upon him, as if it were going to bucking: or--it is whiting-time --send him by your two men to datchet-mead. mistress ford he's too big to go in there. what shall i do? falstaff [coming forward] let me see't, let me see't, o, let me see't! i'll in, i'll in. follow your friend's counsel. i'll in. mistress page what, sir john falstaff! are these your letters, knight? falstaff i love thee. help me away. let me creep in here. i'll never- [gets into the basket; they cover him with foul linen] mistress page help to cover your master, boy. call your men, mistress ford. you dissembling knight! mistress ford what, john! robert! john! [exit robin] [re-enter servants] go take up these clothes here quickly. where's the cowl-staff? look, how you drumble! carry them to the laundress in datchet-meat; quickly, come. [enter ford, page, doctor caius, and sir hugh evans] ford pray you, come near: if i suspect without cause, why then make sport at me; then let me be your jest; i deserve it. how now! whither bear you this? servant to the laundress, forsooth. mistress ford why, what have you to do whither they bear it? you were best meddle with buck-washing. ford buck! i would i could wash myself of the buck! buck, buck, buck! ay, buck; i warrant you, buck; and of the season too, it shall appear. [exeunt servants with the basket] gentlemen, i have dreamed to-night; i'll tell you my dream. here, here, here be my keys: ascend my chambers; search, seek, find out: i'll warrant we'll unkennel the fox. let me stop this way first. [locking the door] so, now uncape. page good master ford, be contented: you wrong yourself too much. ford true, master page. up, gentlemen: you shall see sport anon: follow me, gentlemen. [exit] sir hugh evans this is fery fantastical humours and jealousies. doctor caius by gar, 'tis no the fashion of france; it is not jealous in france. page nay, follow him, gentlemen; see the issue of his search. [exeunt page, doctor caius, and sir hugh evans] mistress page is there not a double excellency in this? mistress ford i know not which pleases me better, that my husband is deceived, or sir john. mistress page what a taking was he in when your husband asked who was in the basket! mistress ford i am half afraid he will have need of washing; so throwing him into the water will do him a benefit. mistress page hang him, dishonest rascal! i would all of the same strain were in the same distress. mistress ford i think my husband hath some special suspicion of falstaff's being here; for i never saw him so gross in his jealousy till now. mistress page i will lay a plot to try that; and we will yet have more tricks with falstaff: his dissolute disease will scarce obey this medicine. mistress ford shall we send that foolish carrion, mistress quickly, to him, and excuse his throwing into the water; and give him another hope, to betray him to another punishment? mistress page we will do it: let him be sent for to-morrow, eight o'clock, to have amends. [re-enter ford, page, doctor caius, and sir hugh evans] ford i cannot find him: may be the knave bragged of that he could not compass. mistress page [aside to mistress ford] heard you that? mistress ford you use me well, master ford, do you? ford ay, i do so. mistress ford heaven make you better than your thoughts! ford amen! mistress page you do yourself mighty wrong, master ford. ford ay, ay; i must bear it. sir hugh evans if there be any pody in the house, and in the chambers, and in the coffers, and in the presses, heaven forgive my sins at the day of judgment! doctor caius by gar, nor i too: there is no bodies. page fie, fie, master ford! are you not ashamed? what spirit, what devil suggests this imagination? i would not ha' your distemper in this kind for the wealth of windsor castle. ford 'tis my fault, master page: i suffer for it. sir hugh evans you suffer for a pad conscience: your wife is as honest a 'omans as i will desires among five thousand, and five hundred too. doctor caius by gar, i see 'tis an honest woman. ford well, i promised you a dinner. come, come, walk in the park: i pray you, pardon me; i will hereafter make known to you why i have done this. come, wife; come, mistress page. i pray you, pardon me; pray heartily, pardon me. page let's go in, gentlemen; but, trust me, we'll mock him. i do invite you to-morrow morning to my house to breakfast: after, we'll a-birding together; i have a fine hawk for the bush. shall it be so? ford any thing. sir hugh evans if there is one, i shall make two in the company. doctor caius if dere be one or two, i shall make-a the turd. ford pray you, go, master page. sir hugh evans i pray you now, remembrance tomorrow on the lousy knave, mine host. doctor caius dat is good; by gar, with all my heart! sir hugh evans a lousy knave, to have his gibes and his mockeries! [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act iii scene iv a room in page's house. [enter fenton and anne page] fenton i see i cannot get thy father's love; therefore no more turn me to him, sweet nan. anne page alas, how then? fenton why, thou must be thyself. he doth object i am too great of birth--, and that, my state being gall'd with my expense, i seek to heal it only by his wealth: besides these, other bars he lays before me, my riots past, my wild societies; and tells me 'tis a thing impossible i should love thee but as a property. anne page may be he tells you true. fenton no, heaven so speed me in my time to come! albeit i will confess thy father's wealth was the first motive that i woo'd thee, anne: yet, wooing thee, i found thee of more value than stamps in gold or sums in sealed bags; and 'tis the very riches of thyself that now i aim at. anne page gentle master fenton, yet seek my father's love; still seek it, sir: if opportunity and humblest suit cannot attain it, why, then,--hark you hither! [they converse apart] [enter shallow, slender, and mistress quickly] shallow break their talk, mistress quickly: my kinsman shall speak for himself. slender i'll make a shaft or a bolt on't: 'slid, 'tis but venturing. shallow be not dismayed. slender no, she shall not dismay me: i care not for that, but that i am afeard. mistress quickly hark ye; master slender would speak a word with you. anne page i come to him. [aside] this is my father's choice. o, what a world of vile ill-favor'd faults looks handsome in three hundred pounds a-year! mistress quickly and how does good master fenton? pray you, a word with you. shallow she's coming; to her, coz. o boy, thou hadst a father! slender i had a father, mistress anne; my uncle can tell you good jests of him. pray you, uncle, tell mistress anne the jest, how my father stole two geese out of a pen, good uncle. shallow mistress anne, my cousin loves you. slender ay, that i do; as well as i love any woman in gloucestershire. shallow he will maintain you like a gentlewoman. slender ay, that i will, come cut and long-tail, under the degree of a squire. shallow he will make you a hundred and fifty pounds jointure. anne page good master shallow, let him woo for himself. shallow marry, i thank you for it; i thank you for that good comfort. she calls you, coz: i'll leave you. anne page now, master slender,- slender now, good mistress anne,- anne page what is your will? slender my will! 'od's heartlings, that's a pretty jest indeed! i ne'er made my will yet, i thank heaven; i am not such a sickly creature, i give heaven praise. anne page i mean, master slender, what would you with me? slender truly, for mine own part, i would little or nothing with you. your father and my uncle hath made motions: if it be my luck, so; if not, happy man be his dole! they can tell you how things go better than i can: you may ask your father; here he comes. [enter page and mistress page] page now, master slender: love him, daughter anne. why, how now! what does master fenton here? you wrong me, sir, thus still to haunt my house: i told you, sir, my daughter is disposed of. fenton nay, master page, be not impatient. mistress page good master fenton, come not to my child. page she is no match for you. fenton sir, will you hear me? page no, good master fenton. come, master shallow; come, son slender, in. knowing my mind, you wrong me, master fenton. [exeunt page, shallow, and slender] mistress quickly speak to mistress page. fenton good mistress page, for that i love your daughter in such a righteous fashion as i do, perforce, against all cheques, rebukes and manners, i must advance the colours of my love and not retire: let me have your good will. anne page good mother, do not marry me to yond fool. mistress page i mean it not; i seek you a better husband. mistress quickly that's my master, master doctor. anne page alas, i had rather be set quick i' the earth and bowl'd to death with turnips! mistress page come, trouble not yourself. good master fenton, i will not be your friend nor enemy: my daughter will i question how she loves you, and as i find her, so am i affected. till then farewell, sir: she must needs go in; her father will be angry. fenton farewell, gentle mistress: farewell, nan. [exeunt mistress page and anne page] mistress quickly this is my doing, now: 'nay,' said i, 'will you cast away your child on a fool, and a physician? look on master fenton:' this is my doing. fenton i thank thee; and i pray thee, once to-night give my sweet nan this ring: there's for thy pains. mistress quickly now heaven send thee good fortune! [exit fenton] a kind heart he hath: a woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart. but yet i would my master had mistress anne; or i would master slender had her; or, in sooth, i would master fenton had her; i will do what i can for them all three; for so i have promised, and i'll be as good as my word; but speciously for master fenton. well, i must of another errand to sir john falstaff from my two mistresses: what a beast am i to slack it! [exit] the merry wives of windsor act iii scene v a room in the garter inn. [enter falstaff and bardolph] falstaff bardolph, i say,- bardolph here, sir. falstaff go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in't. [exit bardolph] have i lived to be carried in a basket, like a barrow of butcher's offal, and to be thrown in the thames? well, if i be served such another trick, i'll have my brains ta'en out and buttered, and give them to a dog for a new-year's gift. the rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse as they would have drowned a blind bitch's puppies, fifteen i' the litter: and you may know by my size that i have a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as deep as hell, i should down. i had been drowned, but that the shore was shelvy and shallow,--a death that i abhor; for the water swells a man; and what a thing should i have been when i had been swelled! i should have been a mountain of mummy. [re-enter bardolph with sack] bardolph here's mistress quickly, sir, to speak with you. falstaff let me pour in some sack to the thames water; for my belly's as cold as if i had swallowed snowballs for pills to cool the reins. call her in. bardolph come in, woman! [enter mistress quickly] mistress quickly by your leave; i cry you mercy: give your worship good morrow. falstaff take away these chalices. go brew me a pottle of sack finely. bardolph with eggs, sir? falstaff simple of itself; i'll no pullet-sperm in my brewage. [exit bardolph] how now! mistress quickly marry, sir, i come to your worship from mistress ford. falstaff mistress ford! i have had ford enough; i was thrown into the ford; i have my belly full of ford. mistress quickly alas the day! good heart, that was not her fault: she does so take on with her men; they mistook their erection. falstaff so did i mine, to build upon a foolish woman's promise. mistress quickly well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn your heart to see it. her husband goes this morning a-birding; she desires you once more to come to her between eight and nine: i must carry her word quickly: she'll make you amends, i warrant you. falstaff well, i will visit her: tell her so; and bid her think what a man is: let her consider his frailty, and then judge of my merit. mistress quickly i will tell her. falstaff do so. between nine and ten, sayest thou? mistress quickly eight and nine, sir. falstaff well, be gone: i will not miss her. mistress quickly peace be with you, sir. [exit] falstaff i marvel i hear not of master brook; he sent me word to stay within: i like his money well. o, here he comes. [enter ford] ford bless you, sir! falstaff now, master brook, you come to know what hath passed between me and ford's wife? ford that, indeed, sir john, is my business. falstaff master brook, i will not lie to you: i was at her house the hour she appointed me. ford and sped you, sir? falstaff very ill-favoredly, master brook. ford how so, sir? did she change her determination? falstaff no, master brook; but the peaking cornuto her husband, master brook, dwelling in a continual 'larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant of our encounter, after we had embraced, kissed, protested, and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his companions, thither provoked and instigated by his distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his wife's love. ford what, while you were there? falstaff while i was there. ford and did he search for you, and could not find you? falstaff you shall hear. as good luck would have it, comes in one mistress page; gives intelligence of ford's approach; and, in her invention and ford's wife's distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket. ford a buck-basket! falstaff by the lord, a buck-basket! rammed me in with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins; that, master brook, there was the rankest compound of villanous smell that ever offended nostril. ford and how long lay you there? falstaff nay, you shall hear, master brook, what i have suffered to bring this woman to evil for your good. being thus crammed in the basket, a couple of ford's knaves, his hinds, were called forth by their mistress to carry me in the name of foul clothes to datchet-lane: they took me on their shoulders; met the jealous knave their master in the door, who asked them once or twice what they had in their basket: i quaked for fear, lest the lunatic knave would have searched it; but fate, ordaining he should be a cuckold, held his hand. well: on went he for a search, and away went i for foul clothes. but mark the sequel, master brook: i suffered the pangs of three several deaths; first, an intolerable fright, to be detected with a jealous rotten bell-wether; next, to be compassed, like a good bilbo, in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head; and then, to be stopped in, like a strong distillation, with stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease: think of that,--a man of my kidney,--think of that,--that am as subject to heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution and thaw: it was a miracle to scape suffocation. and in the height of this bath, when i was more than half stewed in grease, like a dutch dish, to be thrown into the thames, and cooled, glowing hot, in that surge, like a horse-shoe; think of that,--hissing hot,--think of that, master brook. ford in good sadness, i am sorry that for my sake you have sufferd all this. my suit then is desperate; you'll undertake her no more? falstaff master brook, i will be thrown into etna, as i have been into thames, ere i will leave her thus. her husband is this morning gone a-birding: i have received from her another embassy of meeting; 'twixt eight and nine is the hour, master brook. ford 'tis past eight already, sir. falstaff is it? i will then address me to my appointment. come to me at your convenient leisure, and you shall know how i speed; and the conclusion shall be crowned with your enjoying her. adieu. you shall have her, master brook; master brook, you shall cuckold ford. [exit] ford hum! ha! is this a vision? is this a dream? do i sleep? master ford awake! awake, master ford! there's a hole made in your best coat, master ford. this 'tis to be married! this 'tis to have linen and buck-baskets! well, i will proclaim myself what i am: i will now take the lecher; he is at my house; he cannot 'scape me; 'tis impossible he should; he cannot creep into a halfpenny purse, nor into a pepper-box: but, lest the devil that guides him should aid him, i will search impossible places. though what i am i cannot avoid, yet to be what i would not shall not make me tame: if i have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with me: i'll be horn-mad. [exit] the merry wives of windsor act iv scene i a street. [enter mistress page, mistress quickly, and william page] mistress page is he at master ford's already, think'st thou? mistress quickly sure he is by this, or will be presently: but, truly, he is very courageous mad about his throwing into the water. mistress ford desires you to come suddenly. mistress page i'll be with her by and by; i'll but bring my young man here to school. look, where his master comes; 'tis a playing-day, i see. [enter sir hugh evans] how now, sir hugh! no school to-day? sir hugh evans no; master slender is let the boys leave to play. mistress quickly blessing of his heart! mistress page sir hugh, my husband says my son profits nothing in the world at his book. i pray you, ask him some questions in his accidence. sir hugh evans come hither, william; hold up your head; come. mistress page come on, sirrah; hold up your head; answer your master, be not afraid. sir hugh evans william, how many numbers is in nouns? william page two. mistress quickly truly, i thought there had been one number more, because they say, ''od's nouns.' sir hugh evans peace your tattlings! what is 'fair,' william? william page pulcher. mistress quickly polecats! there are fairer things than polecats, sure. sir hugh evans you are a very simplicity 'oman: i pray you peace. what is 'lapis,' william? william page a stone. sir hugh evans and what is 'a stone,' william? william page a pebble. sir hugh evans no, it is 'lapis:' i pray you, remember in your prain. william page lapis. sir hugh evans that is a good william. what is he, william, that does lend articles? william page articles are borrowed of the pronoun, and be thus declined, singulariter, nominativo, hic, haec, hoc. sir hugh evans nominativo, hig, hag, hog; pray you, mark: genitivo, hujus. well, what is your accusative case? william page accusativo, hinc. sir hugh evans i pray you, have your remembrance, child, accusative, hung, hang, hog. mistress quickly 'hang-hog' is latin for bacon, i warrant you. sir hugh evans leave your prabbles, 'oman. what is the focative case, william? william page o,--vocativo, o. sir hugh evans remember, william; focative is caret. mistress quickly and that's a good root. sir hugh evans 'oman, forbear. mistress page peace! sir hugh evans what is your genitive case plural, william? william page genitive case! sir hugh evans ay. william page genitive,--horum, harum, horum. mistress quickly vengeance of jenny's case! fie on her! never name her, child, if she be a whore. sir hugh evans for shame, 'oman. mistress quickly you do ill to teach the child such words: he teaches him to hick and to hack, which they'll do fast enough of themselves, and to call 'horum:' fie upon you! sir hugh evans 'oman, art thou lunatics? hast thou no understandings for thy cases and the numbers of the genders? thou art as foolish christian creatures as i would desires. mistress page prithee, hold thy peace. sir hugh evans show me now, william, some declensions of your pronouns. william page forsooth, i have forgot. sir hugh evans it is qui, quae, quod: if you forget your 'quies,' your 'quaes,' and your 'quods,' you must be preeches. go your ways, and play; go. mistress page he is a better scholar than i thought he was. sir hugh evans he is a good sprag memory. farewell, mistress page. mistress page adieu, good sir hugh. [exit sir hugh evans] get you home, boy. come, we stay too long. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act iv scene ii a room in ford's house. [enter falstaff and mistress ford] falstaff mistress ford, your sorrow hath eaten up my sufferance. i see you are obsequious in your love, and i profess requital to a hair's breadth; not only, mistress ford, in the simple office of love, but in all the accoutrement, complement and ceremony of it. but are you sure of your husband now? mistress ford he's a-birding, sweet sir john. mistress page [within] what, ho, gossip ford! what, ho! mistress ford step into the chamber, sir john. [exit falstaff] [enter mistress page] mistress page how now, sweetheart! who's at home besides yourself? mistress ford why, none but mine own people. mistress page indeed! mistress ford no, certainly. [aside to her] speak louder. mistress page truly, i am so glad you have nobody here. mistress ford why? mistress page why, woman, your husband is in his old lunes again: he so takes on yonder with my husband; so rails against all married mankind; so curses all eve's daughters, of what complexion soever; and so buffets himself on the forehead, crying, 'peer out, peer out!' that any madness i ever yet beheld seemed but tameness, civility and patience, to this his distemper he is in now: i am glad the fat knight is not here. mistress ford why, does he talk of him? mistress page of none but him; and swears he was carried out, the last time he searched for him, in a basket; protests to my husband he is now here, and hath drawn him and the rest of their company from their sport, to make another experiment of his suspicion: but i am glad the knight is not here; now he shall see his own foolery. mistress ford how near is he, mistress page? mistress page hard by; at street end; he will be here anon. mistress ford i am undone! the knight is here. mistress page why then you are utterly shamed, and he's but a dead man. what a woman are you!--away with him, away with him! better shame than murder. ford which way should be go? how should i bestow him? shall i put him into the basket again? [re-enter falstaff] falstaff no, i'll come no more i' the basket. may i not go out ere he come? mistress page alas, three of master ford's brothers watch the door with pistols, that none shall issue out; otherwise you might slip away ere he came. but what make you here? falstaff what shall i do? i'll creep up into the chimney. mistress ford there they always use to discharge their birding-pieces. creep into the kiln-hole. falstaff where is it? mistress ford he will seek there, on my word. neither press, coffer, chest, trunk, well, vault, but he hath an abstract for the remembrance of such places, and goes to them by his note: there is no hiding you in the house. falstaff i'll go out then. mistress page if you go out in your own semblance, you die, sir john. unless you go out disguised- mistress ford how might we disguise him? mistress page alas the day, i know not! there is no woman's gown big enough for him otherwise he might put on a hat, a muffler and a kerchief, and so escape. falstaff good hearts, devise something: any extremity rather than a mischief. mistress ford my maid's aunt, the fat woman of brentford, has a gown above. mistress page on my word, it will serve him; she's as big as he is: and there's her thrummed hat and her muffler too. run up, sir john. mistress ford go, go, sweet sir john: mistress page and i will look some linen for your head. mistress page quick, quick! we'll come dress you straight: put on the gown the while. [exit falstaff] mistress ford i would my husband would meet him in this shape: he cannot abide the old woman of brentford; he swears she's a witch; forbade her my house and hath threatened to beat her. mistress page heaven guide him to thy husband's cudgel, and the devil guide his cudgel afterwards! mistress ford but is my husband coming? mistress page ah, in good sadness, is he; and talks of the basket too, howsoever he hath had intelligence. mistress ford we'll try that; for i'll appoint my men to carry the basket again, to meet him at the door with it, as they did last time. mistress page nay, but he'll be here presently: let's go dress him like the witch of brentford. mistress ford i'll first direct my men what they shall do with the basket. go up; i'll bring linen for him straight. [exit] mistress page hang him, dishonest varlet! we cannot misuse him enough. we'll leave a proof, by that which we will do, wives may be merry, and yet honest too: we do not act that often jest and laugh; 'tis old, but true, still swine eat all the draff. [exit] [re-enter mistress ford with two servants] mistress ford go, sirs, take the basket again on your shoulders: your master is hard at door; if he bid you set it down, obey him: quickly, dispatch. [exit] first servant come, come, take it up. second servant pray heaven it be not full of knight again. first servant i hope not; i had as lief bear so much lead. [enter ford, page, shallow, doctor caius, and sir hugh evans] ford ay, but if it prove true, master page, have you any way then to unfool me again? set down the basket, villain! somebody call my wife. youth in a basket! o you panderly rascals! there's a knot, a ging, a pack, a conspiracy against me: now shall the devil be shamed. what, wife, i say! come, come forth! behold what honest clothes you send forth to bleaching! page why, this passes, master ford; you are not to go loose any longer; you must be pinioned. sir hugh evans why, this is lunatics! this is mad as a mad dog! shallow indeed, master ford, this is not well, indeed. ford so say i too, sir. [re-enter mistress ford] come hither, mistress ford; mistress ford the honest woman, the modest wife, the virtuous creature, that hath the jealous fool to her husband! i suspect without cause, mistress, do i? mistress ford heaven be my witness you do, if you suspect me in any dishonesty. ford well said, brazen-face! hold it out. come forth, sirrah! [pulling clothes out of the basket] page this passes! mistress ford are you not ashamed? let the clothes alone. ford i shall find you anon. sir hugh evans 'tis unreasonable! will you take up your wife's clothes? come away. ford empty the basket, i say! mistress ford why, man, why? ford master page, as i am a man, there was one conveyed out of my house yesterday in this basket: why may not he be there again? in my house i am sure he is: my intelligence is true; my jealousy is reasonable. pluck me out all the linen. mistress ford if you find a man there, he shall die a flea's death. page here's no man. shallow by my fidelity, this is not well, master ford; this wrongs you. sir hugh evans master ford, you must pray, and not follow the imaginations of your own heart: this is jealousies. ford well, he's not here i seek for. page no, nor nowhere else but in your brain. ford help to search my house this one time. if i find not what i seek, show no colour for my extremity; let me for ever be your table-sport; let them say of me, 'as jealous as ford, chat searched a hollow walnut for his wife's leman.' satisfy me once more; once more search with me. mistress ford what, ho, mistress page! come you and the old woman down; my husband will come into the chamber. ford old woman! what old woman's that? mistress ford nay, it is my maid's aunt of brentford. ford a witch, a quean, an old cozening quean! have i not forbid her my house? she comes of errands, does she? we are simple men; we do not know what's brought to pass under the profession of fortune-telling. she works by charms, by spells, by the figure, and such daubery as this is, beyond our element we know nothing. come down, you witch, you hag, you; come down, i say! mistress ford nay, good, sweet husband! good gentlemen, let him not strike the old woman. [re-enter falstaff in woman's clothes, and mistress page] mistress page come, mother prat; come, give me your hand. ford i'll prat her. [beating him] out of my door, you witch, you hag, you baggage, you polecat, you runyon! out, out! i'll conjure you, i'll fortune-tell you. [exit falstaff] mistress page are you not ashamed? i think you have killed the poor woman. mistress ford nay, he will do it. 'tis a goodly credit for you. ford hang her, witch! sir hugh evans by the yea and no, i think the 'oman is a witch indeed: i like not when a 'oman has a great peard; i spy a great peard under his muffler. ford will you follow, gentlemen? i beseech you, follow; see but the issue of my jealousy: if i cry out thus upon no trail, never trust me when i open again. page let's obey his humour a little further: come, gentlemen. [exeunt ford, page, shallow, doctor caius, and sir hugh evans] mistress page trust me, he beat him most pitifully. mistress ford nay, by the mass, that he did not; he beat him most unpitifully, methought. mistress page i'll have the cudgel hallowed and hung o'er the altar; it hath done meritorious service. mistress ford what think you? may we, with the warrant of womanhood and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any further revenge? mistress page the spirit of wantonness is, sure, scared out of him: if the devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and recovery, he will never, i think, in the way of waste, attempt us again. mistress ford shall we tell our husbands how we have served him? mistress page yes, by all means; if it be but to scrape the figures out of your husband's brains. if they can find in their hearts the poor unvirtuous fat knight shall be any further afflicted, we two will still be the ministers. mistress ford i'll warrant they'll have him publicly shamed: and methinks there would be no period to the jest, should he not be publicly shamed. mistress page come, to the forge with it then; shape it: i would not have things cool. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act iv scene iii a room in the garter inn. [enter host and bardolph] bardolph sir, the germans desire to have three of your horses: the duke himself will be to-morrow at court, and they are going to meet him. host what duke should that be comes so secretly? i hear not of him in the court. let me speak with the gentlemen: they speak english? bardolph ay, sir; i'll call them to you. host they shall have my horses; but i'll make them pay; i'll sauce them: they have had my house a week at command; i have turned away my other guests: they must come off; i'll sauce them. come. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act iv scene iv a room in ford's house. [enter page, ford, mistress page, mistress ford, and sir hugh evans] sir hugh evans 'tis one of the best discretions of a 'oman as ever i did look upon. page and did he send you both these letters at an instant? mistress page within a quarter of an hour. ford pardon me, wife. henceforth do what thou wilt; i rather will suspect the sun with cold than thee with wantonness: now doth thy honour stand in him that was of late an heretic, as firm as faith. page 'tis well, 'tis well; no more: be not as extreme in submission as in offence. but let our plot go forward: let our wives yet once again, to make us public sport, appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow, where we may take him and disgrace him for it. ford there is no better way than that they spoke of. page how? to send him word they'll meet him in the park at midnight? fie, fie! he'll never come. sir hugh evans you say he has been thrown in the rivers and has been grievously peaten as an old 'oman: methinks there should be terrors in him that he should not come; methinks his flesh is punished, he shall have no desires. page so think i too. mistress ford devise but how you'll use him when he comes, and let us two devise to bring him thither. mistress page there is an old tale goes that herne the hunter, sometime a keeper here in windsor forest, doth all the winter-time, at still midnight, walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns; and there he blasts the tree and takes the cattle and makes milch-kine yield blood and shakes a chain in a most hideous and dreadful manner: you have heard of such a spirit, and well you know the superstitious idle-headed eld received and did deliver to our age this tale of herne the hunter for a truth. page why, yet there want not many that do fear in deep of night to walk by this herne's oak: but what of this? mistress ford marry, this is our device; that falstaff at that oak shall meet with us. page well, let it not be doubted but he'll come: and in this shape when you have brought him thither, what shall be done with him? what is your plot? mistress page that likewise have we thought upon, and thus: nan page my daughter and my little son and three or four more of their growth we'll dress like urchins, ouphes and fairies, green and white, with rounds of waxen tapers on their heads, and rattles in their hands: upon a sudden, as falstaff, she and i, are newly met, let them from forth a sawpit rush at once with some diffused song: upon their sight, we two in great amazedness will fly: then let them all encircle him about and, fairy-like, to-pinch the unclean knight, and ask him why, that hour of fairy revel, in their so sacred paths he dares to tread in shape profane. mistress ford and till he tell the truth, let the supposed fairies pinch him sound and burn him with their tapers. mistress page the truth being known, we'll all present ourselves, dis-horn the spirit, and mock him home to windsor. ford the children must be practised well to this, or they'll ne'er do't. sir hugh evans i will teach the children their behaviors; and i will be like a jack-an-apes also, to burn the knight with my taber. ford that will be excellent. i'll go and buy them vizards. mistress page my nan shall be the queen of all the fairies, finely attired in a robe of white. page that silk will i go buy. [aside] and in that time shall master slender steal my nan away and marry her at eton. go send to falstaff straight. ford nay i'll to him again in name of brook he'll tell me all his purpose: sure, he'll come. mistress page fear not you that. go get us properties and tricking for our fairies. sir hugh evans let us about it: it is admirable pleasures and fery honest knaveries. [exeunt page, ford, and sir hugh evans] mistress page go, mistress ford, send quickly to sir john, to know his mind. [exit mistress ford] i'll to the doctor: he hath my good will, and none but he, to marry with nan page. that slender, though well landed, is an idiot; and he my husband best of all affects. the doctor is well money'd, and his friends potent at court: he, none but he, shall have her, though twenty thousand worthier come to crave her. [exit] the merry wives of windsor act iv scene v a room in the garter inn. [enter host and simple] host what wouldst thou have, boor? what: thick-skin? speak, breathe, discuss; brief, short, quick, snap. simple marry, sir, i come to speak with sir john falstaff from master slender. host there's his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing-bed and truckle-bed; 'tis painted about with the story of the prodigal, fresh and new. go knock and call; hell speak like an anthropophaginian unto thee: knock, i say. simple there's an old woman, a fat woman, gone up into his chamber: i'll be so bold as stay, sir, till she come down; i come to speak with her, indeed. host ha! a fat woman! the knight may be robbed: i'll call. bully knight! bully sir john! speak from thy lungs military: art thou there? it is thine host, thine ephesian, calls. falstaff [above] how now, mine host! host here's a bohemian-tartar tarries the coming down of thy fat woman. let her descend, bully, let her descend; my chambers are honourable: fie! privacy? fie! [enter falstaff] falstaff there was, mine host, an old fat woman even now with me; but she's gone. simple pray you, sir, was't not the wise woman of brentford? falstaff ay, marry, was it, mussel-shell: what would you with her? simple my master, sir, master slender, sent to her, seeing her go through the streets, to know, sir, whether one nym, sir, that beguiled him of a chain, had the chain or no. falstaff i spake with the old woman about it. simple and what says she, i pray, sir? falstaff marry, she says that the very same man that beguiled master slender of his chain cozened him of it. simple i would i could have spoken with the woman herself; i had other things to have spoken with her too from him. falstaff what are they? let us know. host ay, come; quick. simple i may not conceal them, sir. host conceal them, or thou diest. simple why, sir, they were nothing but about mistress anne page; to know if it were my master's fortune to have her or no. falstaff 'tis, 'tis his fortune. simple what, sir? falstaff to have her, or no. go; say the woman told me so. simple may i be bold to say so, sir? falstaff ay, sir; like who more bold. simple i thank your worship: i shall make my master glad with these tidings. [exit] host thou art clerkly, thou art clerkly, sir john. was there a wise woman with thee? falstaff ay, that there was, mine host; one that hath taught me more wit than ever i learned before in my life; and i paid nothing for it neither, but was paid for my learning. [enter bardolph] bardolph out, alas, sir! cozenage, mere cozenage! host where be my horses? speak well of them, varletto. bardolph run away with the cozeners; for so soon as i came beyond eton, they threw me off from behind one of them, in a slough of mire; and set spurs and away, like three german devils, three doctor faustuses. host they are gone but to meet the duke, villain: do not say they be fled; germans are honest men. [enter sir hugh evans] sir hugh evans where is mine host? host what is the matter, sir? sir hugh evans have a care of your entertainments: there is a friend of mine come to town tells me there is three cozen-germans that has cozened all the hosts of readins, of maidenhead, of colebrook, of horses and money. i tell you for good will, look you: you are wise and full of gibes and vlouting-stocks, and 'tis not convenient you should be cozened. fare you well. [exit] [enter doctor caius] doctor caius vere is mine host de jarteer? host here, master doctor, in perplexity and doubtful dilemma. doctor caius i cannot tell vat is dat: but it is tell-a me dat you make grand preparation for a duke de jamany: by my trot, dere is no duke dat the court is know to come. i tell you for good vill: adieu. [exit] host hue and cry, villain, go! assist me, knight. i am undone! fly, run, hue and cry, villain! i am undone! [exeunt host and bardolph] falstaff i would all the world might be cozened; for i have been cozened and beaten too. if it should come to the ear of the court, how i have been transformed and how my transformation hath been washed and cudgelled, they would melt me out of my fat drop by drop and liquor fishermen's boots with me; i warrant they would whip me with their fine wits till i were as crest-fallen as a dried pear. i never prospered since i forswore myself at primero. well, if my wind were but long enough to say my prayers, i would repent. [enter mistress quickly] now, whence come you? mistress quickly from the two parties, forsooth. falstaff the devil take one party and his dam the other! and so they shall be both bestowed. i have suffered more for their sakes, more than the villanous inconstancy of man's disposition is able to bear. mistress quickly and have not they suffered? yes, i warrant; speciously one of them; mistress ford, good heart, is beaten black and blue, that you cannot see a white spot about her. falstaff what tellest thou me of black and blue? i was beaten myself into all the colours of the rainbow; and i was like to be apprehended for the witch of brentford: but that my admirable dexterity of wit, my counterfeiting the action of an old woman, delivered me, the knave constable had set me i' the stocks, i' the common stocks, for a witch. mistress quickly sir, let me speak with you in your chamber: you shall hear how things go; and, i warrant, to your content. here is a letter will say somewhat. good hearts, what ado here is to bring you together! sure, one of you does not serve heaven well, that you are so crossed. falstaff come up into my chamber. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act iv scene vi another room in the garter inn. [enter fenton and host] host master fenton, talk not to me; my mind is heavy: i will give over all. fenton yet hear me speak. assist me in my purpose, and, as i am a gentleman, i'll give thee a hundred pound in gold more than your loss. host i will hear you, master fenton; and i will at the least keep your counsel. fenton from time to time i have acquainted you with the dear love i bear to fair anne page; who mutually hath answer'd my affection, so far forth as herself might be her chooser, even to my wish: i have a letter from her of such contents as you will wonder at; the mirth whereof so larded with my matter, that neither singly can be manifested, without the show of both; fat falstaff hath a great scene: the image of the jest i'll show you here at large. hark, good mine host. to-night at herne's oak, just 'twixt twelve and one, must my sweet nan present the fairy queen; the purpose why, is here: in which disguise, while other jests are something rank on foot, her father hath commanded her to slip away with slender and with him at eton immediately to marry: she hath consented: now, sir, her mother, ever strong against that match and firm for doctor caius, hath appointed that he shall likewise shuffle her away, while other sports are tasking of their minds, and at the deanery, where a priest attends, straight marry her: to this her mother's plot she seemingly obedient likewise hath made promise to the doctor. now, thus it rests: her father means she shall be all in white, and in that habit, when slender sees his time to take her by the hand and bid her go, she shall go with him: her mother hath intended, the better to denote her to the doctor, for they must all be mask'd and vizarded, that quaint in green she shall be loose enrobed, with ribands pendent, flaring 'bout her head; and when the doctor spies his vantage ripe, to pinch her by the hand, and, on that token, the maid hath given consent to go with him. host which means she to deceive, father or mother? fenton both, my good host, to go along with me: and here it rests, that you'll procure the vicar to stay for me at church 'twixt twelve and one, and, in the lawful name of marrying, to give our hearts united ceremony. host well, husband your device; i'll to the vicar: bring you the maid, you shall not lack a priest. fenton so shall i evermore be bound to thee; besides, i'll make a present recompense. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act v scene i a room in the garter inn. [enter falstaff and mistress quickly] falstaff prithee, no more prattling; go. i'll hold. this is the third time; i hope good luck lies in odd numbers. away i go. they say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death. away! mistress quickly i'll provide you a chain; and i'll do what i can to get you a pair of horns. falstaff away, i say; time wears: hold up your head, and mince. [exit mistress quickly] [enter ford] how now, master brook! master brook, the matter will be known to-night, or never. be you in the park about midnight, at herne's oak, and you shall see wonders. ford went you not to her yesterday, sir, as you told me you had appointed? falstaff i went to her, master brook, as you see, like a poor old man: but i came from her, master brook, like a poor old woman. that same knave ford, her husband, hath the finest mad devil of jealousy in him, master brook, that ever governed frenzy. i will tell you: he beat me grievously, in the shape of a woman; for in the shape of man, master brook, i fear not goliath with a weaver's beam; because i know also life is a shuttle. i am in haste; go along with me: i'll tell you all, master brook. since i plucked geese, played truant and whipped top, i knew not what 'twas to be beaten till lately. follow me: i'll tell you strange things of this knave ford, on whom to-night i will be revenged, and i will deliver his wife into your hand. follow. strange things in hand, master brook! follow. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act v scene ii windsor park. [enter page, shallow, and slender] page come, come; we'll couch i' the castle-ditch till we see the light of our fairies. remember, son slender, my daughter. slender ay, forsooth; i have spoke with her and we have a nay-word how to know one another: i come to her in white, and cry 'mum;' she cries 'budget;' and by that we know one another. shallow that's good too: but what needs either your 'mum' or her 'budget?' the white will decipher her well enough. it hath struck ten o'clock. page the night is dark; light and spirits will become it well. heaven prosper our sport! no man means evil but the devil, and we shall know him by his horns. let's away; follow me. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act v scene iii a street leading to the park. [enter mistress page, mistress ford, and doctor caius] mistress page master doctor, my daughter is in green: when you see your time, take her by the band, away with her to the deanery, and dispatch it quickly. go before into the park: we two must go together. doctor caius i know vat i have to do. adieu. mistress page fare you well, sir. [exit doctor caius] my husband will not rejoice so much at the abuse of falstaff as he will chafe at the doctor's marrying my daughter: but 'tis no matter; better a little chiding than a great deal of heart-break. mistress ford where is nan now and her troop of fairies, and the welsh devil hugh? mistress page they are all couched in a pit hard by herne's oak, with obscured lights; which, at the very instant of falstaff's and our meeting, they will at once display to the night. mistress ford that cannot choose but amaze him. mistress page if he be not amazed, he will be mocked; if he be amazed, he will every way be mocked. mistress ford we'll betray him finely. mistress page against such lewdsters and their lechery those that betray them do no treachery. mistress ford the hour draws on. to the oak, to the oak! [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act v scene iv windsor park. [enter sir hugh evans, disguised, with others as fairies] sir hugh evans trib, trib, fairies; come; and remember your parts: be pold, i pray you; follow me into the pit; and when i give the watch-'ords, do as i pid you: come, come; trib, trib. [exeunt] the merry wives of windsor act v scene v another part of the park. [enter falstaff disguised as herne] falstaff the windsor bell hath struck twelve; the minute draws on. now, the hot-blooded gods assist me! remember, jove, thou wast a bull for thy europa; love set on thy horns. o powerful love! that, in some respects, makes a beast a man, in some other, a man a beast. you were also, jupiter, a swan for the love of leda. o omnipotent love! how near the god drew to the complexion of a goose! a fault done first in the form of a beast. o jove, a beastly fault! and then another fault in the semblance of a fowl; think on 't, jove; a foul fault! when gods have hot backs, what shall poor men do? for me, i am here a windsor stag; and the fattest, i think, i' the forest. send me a cool rut-time, jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow? who comes here? my doe? [enter mistress ford and mistress page] mistress ford sir john! art thou there, my deer? my male deer? falstaff my doe with the black scut! let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of green sleeves, hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, i will shelter me here. mistress ford mistress page is come with me, sweetheart. falstaff divide me like a bribe buck, each a haunch: i will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow of this walk, and my horns i bequeath your husbands. am i a woodman, ha? speak i like herne the hunter? why, now is cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution. as i am a true spirit, welcome! [noise within] mistress page alas, what noise? mistress ford heaven forgive our sins falstaff what should this be? mistress ford | | away, away! mistress page | [they run off] falstaff i think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire; he would never else cross me thus. [enter sir hugh evans, disguised as before; pistol, as hobgoblin; mistress quickly, anne page, and others, as fairies, with tapers] mistress quickly fairies, black, grey, green, and white, you moonshine revellers and shades of night, you orphan heirs of fixed destiny, attend your office and your quality. crier hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes. pistol elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys. cricket, to windsor chimneys shalt thou leap: where fires thou find'st unraked and hearths unswept, there pinch the maids as blue as bilberry: our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery. falstaff they are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die: i'll wink and couch: no man their works must eye. [lies down upon his face] sir hugh evans where's bede? go you, and where you find a maid that, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said, raise up the organs of her fantasy; sleep she as sound as careless infancy: but those as sleep and think not on their sins, pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides and shins. mistress quickly about, about; search windsor castle, elves, within and out: strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room: that it may stand till the perpetual doom, in state as wholesome as in state 'tis fit, worthy the owner, and the owner it. the several chairs of order look you scour with juice of balm and every precious flower: each fair instalment, coat, and several crest, with loyal blazon, evermore be blest! and nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing, like to the garter's compass, in a ring: the expressure that it bears, green let it be, more fertile-fresh than all the field to see; and 'honi soit qui mal y pense' write in emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue and white; let sapphire, pearl and rich embroidery, buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee: fairies use flowers for their charactery. away; disperse: but till 'tis one o'clock, our dance of custom round about the oak of herne the hunter, let us not forget. sir hugh evans pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set and twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be, to guide our measure round about the tree. but, stay; i smell a man of middle-earth. falstaff heavens defend me from that welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese! pistol vile worm, thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth. mistress quickly with trial-fire touch me his finger-end: if he be chaste, the flame will back descend and turn him to no pain; but if he start, it is the flesh of a corrupted heart. pistol a trial, come. sir hugh evans come, will this wood take fire? [they burn him with their tapers] falstaff oh, oh, oh! mistress quickly corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire! about him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme; and, as you trip, still pinch him to your time. song. fie on sinful fantasy! fie on lust and luxury! lust is but a bloody fire, kindled with unchaste desire, fed in heart, whose flames aspire as thoughts do blow them, higher and higher. pinch him, fairies, mutually; pinch him for his villany; pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about, till candles and starlight and moonshine be out. [during this song they pinch falstaff. doctor caius comes one way, and steals away a boy in green; slender another way, and takes off a boy in white; and fenton comes and steals away ann page. a noise of hunting is heard within. all the fairies run away. falstaff pulls off his buck's head, and rises] [enter page, ford, mistress page, and mistress ford] page nay, do not fly; i think we have watch'd you now will none but herne the hunter serve your turn? mistress page i pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher now, good sir john, how like you windsor wives? see you these, husband? do not these fair yokes become the forest better than the town? ford now, sir, who's a cuckold now? master brook, falstaff's a knave, a cuckoldly knave; here are his horns, master brook: and, master brook, he hath enjoyed nothing of ford's but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds of money, which must be paid to master brook; his horses are arrested for it, master brook. mistress ford sir john, we have had ill luck; we could never meet. i will never take you for my love again; but i will always count you my deer. falstaff i do begin to perceive that i am made an ass. ford ay, and an ox too: both the proofs are extant. falstaff and these are not fairies? i was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies: and yet the guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my powers, drove the grossness of the foppery into a received belief, in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason, that they were fairies. see now how wit may be made a jack-a-lent, when 'tis upon ill employment! sir hugh evans sir john falstaff, serve got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you. ford well said, fairy hugh. sir hugh evans and leave your jealousies too, i pray you. ford i will never mistrust my wife again till thou art able to woo her in good english. falstaff have i laid my brain in the sun and dried it, that it wants matter to prevent so gross o'erreaching as this? am i ridden with a welsh goat too? shall i have a coxcomb of frize? 'tis time i were choked with a piece of toasted cheese. sir hugh evans seese is not good to give putter; your belly is all putter. falstaff 'seese' and 'putter'! have i lived to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of english? this is enough to be the decay of lust and late-walking through the realm. mistress page why sir john, do you think, though we would have the virtue out of our hearts by the head and shoulders and have given ourselves without scruple to hell, that ever the devil could have made you our delight? ford what, a hodge-pudding? a bag of flax? mistress page a puffed man? page old, cold, withered and of intolerable entrails? ford and one that is as slanderous as satan? page and as poor as job? ford and as wicked as his wife? sir hugh evans and given to fornications, and to taverns and sack and wine and metheglins, and to drinkings and swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles? falstaff well, i am your theme: you have the start of me; i am dejected; i am not able to answer the welsh flannel; ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me: use me as you will. ford marry, sir, we'll bring you to windsor, to one master brook, that you have cozened of money, to whom you should have been a pander: over and above that you have suffered, i think to repay that money will be a biting affliction. page yet be cheerful, knight: thou shalt eat a posset to-night at my house; where i will desire thee to laugh at my wife, that now laughs at thee: tell her master slender hath married her daughter. mistress page [aside] doctors doubt that: if anne page be my daughter, she is, by this, doctor caius' wife. [enter slender] slender whoa ho! ho, father page! page son, how now! how now, son! have you dispatched? slender dispatched! i'll make the best in gloucestershire know on't; would i were hanged, la, else. page of what, son? slender i came yonder at eton to marry mistress anne page, and she's a great lubberly boy. if it had not been i' the church, i would have swinged him, or he should have swinged me. if i did not think it had been anne page, would i might never stir!--and 'tis a postmaster's boy. page upon my life, then, you took the wrong. slender what need you tell me that? i think so, when i took a boy for a girl. if i had been married to him, for all he was in woman's apparel, i would not have had him. page why, this is your own folly. did not i tell you how you should know my daughter by her garments? slender i went to her in white, and cried 'mum,' and she cried 'budget,' as anne and i had appointed; and yet it was not anne, but a postmaster's boy. mistress page good george, be not angry: i knew of your purpose; turned my daughter into green; and, indeed, she is now with the doctor at the deanery, and there married. [enter doctor caius] doctor caius vere is mistress page? by gar, i am cozened: i ha' married un garcon, a boy; un paysan, by gar, a boy; it is not anne page: by gar, i am cozened. mistress page why, did you take her in green? doctor caius ay, by gar, and 'tis a boy: by gar, i'll raise all windsor. [exit] ford this is strange. who hath got the right anne? page my heart misgives me: here comes master fenton. [enter fenton and anne page] how now, master fenton! anne page pardon, good father! good my mother, pardon! page now, mistress, how chance you went not with master slender? mistress page why went you not with master doctor, maid? fenton you do amaze her: hear the truth of it. you would have married her most shamefully, where there was no proportion held in love. the truth is, she and i, long since contracted, are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us. the offence is holy that she hath committed; and this deceit loses the name of craft, of disobedience, or unduteous title, since therein she doth evitate and shun a thousand irreligious cursed hours, which forced marriage would have brought upon her. ford stand not amazed; here is no remedy: in love the heavens themselves do guide the state; money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate. falstaff i am glad, though you have ta'en a special stand to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced. page well, what remedy? fenton, heaven give thee joy! what cannot be eschew'd must be embraced. falstaff when night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased. mistress page well, i will muse no further. master fenton, heaven give you many, many merry days! good husband, let us every one go home, and laugh this sport o'er by a country fire; sir john and all. ford let it be so. sir john, to master brook you yet shall hold your word for he tonight shall lie with mistress ford. [exeunt] chicago poems, by carl sandburg. digitized by cardinalis etext press, c.e.k. posted to wiretap in june 1993, as chicago.txt. this text is in the public domain. chicago poems by carl sandburg new york henry holt and company copyright, 1916 by henry holt and company to my wife and pal lillian steichen sandburg prefatory note some of these writings were first printed in poetry: a magazine of verse, chicago. permission to reprint is by courtesy of that publication. the writer wishes to thank harriet monroe and alice corbin henderson, editors of poetry, and william marion reedy, editor of reedy's mirror, st. louis, whose services have heightened what values of human address herein hold good. contents chicago poems chicago. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sketch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . masses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the harbor . . . . . . . . . . . . . they will say. . . . . . . . . . . . mill-doors . . . . . . . . . . . . . halsted street car . . . . . . . . . clark street bridge. . . . . . . . . passers-by . . . . . . . . . . . . . the walking man of rodin . . . . . . subway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the shovel man . . . . . . . . . . . a teamster's farewell. . . . . . . . fish crier . . . . . . . . . . . . . picnic boat. . . . . . . . . . . . . happiness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . muckers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . blacklisted. . . . . . . . . . . . . graceland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . child of the romans. . . . . . . . . the right to grief . . . . . . . . . mag. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . onion days . . . . . . . . . . . . . population drifts. . . . . . . . . . cripple. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a fence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . anna imroth. . . . . . . . . . . . . working girls. . . . . . . . . . . . mamie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . personality. . . . . . . . . . . . . cumulatives. . . . . . . . . . . . . to certain journeymen. . . . . . . . chamfort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . limited. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the has-been . . . . . . . . . . . . in a back alley. . . . . . . . . . . a coin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dynamiter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ice handler. . . . . . . . . . . . . jack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . fellow citizens. . . . . . . . . . . nigger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . two neighbors. . . . . . . . . . . . style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . to beachey--1912 . . . . . . . . . . under a hat rim. . . . . . . . . . . in a breath. . . . . . . . . . . . . bath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . bronzes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dunes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . on the way . . . . . . . . . . . . . ready to kill. . . . . . . . . . . . to a contemporary bunkshooter. . . . skyscraper . . . . . . . . . . . . . handfuls fog. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . jan kubelik. . . . . . . . . . . . . choose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . crimson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . whitelight . . . . . . . . . . . . . flux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . kin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . white shoulders. . . . . . . . . . . losses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . troths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . war poems (1914-1915) killers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . among the red guns . . . . . . . . . iron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . murmurings in a field hospital . . . statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . fight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . buttons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and they obey. . . . . . . . . . . . jaws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . salvage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the road and the end the road and the end . . . . . . . . choices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . graves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . aztec mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . momus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the answer . . . . . . . . . . . . . to a dead man. . . . . . . . . . . . under. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a sphinx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . who am i?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . our prayer of thanks . . . . . . . . fogs and fires at a window. . . . . . . . . . . . . under the harvest moon . . . . . . . the great hunt . . . . . . . . . . . monotone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . joy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . shirt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . aztec. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . two. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . back yard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . on the breakwater. . . . . . . . . . mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pearl fog. . . . . . . . . . . . . . i sang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . follies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . june . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . nocturne in a deserted brickyard . . hydrangeas . . . . . . . . . . . . . theme in yellow. . . . . . . . . . . between two hills. . . . . . . . . . last answers . . . . . . . . . . . . window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . young sea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . bones. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . poppies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . child moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . margaret . . . . . . . . . . . . . . shadows poems done on a late night car. . . . it is much. . . . . . . . . . . . . . trafficker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . harrison street court . . . . . . . . soiled dove . . . . . . . . . . . . . jungheimer's. . . . . . . . . . . . . gone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . other days (1900-1910) dreams in the dusk. . . . . . . . . . docks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . all day long. . . . . . . . . . . . . waiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . from the shore. . . . . . . . . . . . uplands in may. . . . . . . . . . . . a dream girl. . . . . . . . . . . . . the plowboy . . . . . . . . . . . . . broadway. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . old woman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the noon hour . . . . . . . . . . . . 'boes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . under a telephone pole. . . . . . . . i am the people, the mob. . . . . . . government. . . . . . . . . . . . . . languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . letters to dead imagists. . . . . . . sheep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the red son . . . . . . . . . . . . . the mist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the junk man. . . . . . . . . . . . . silver nails. . . . . . . . . . . . . gypsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chicago poems chicago hog butcher for the world, tool maker, stacker of wheat, player with railroads and the nation's freight handler; stormy, husky, brawling, city of the big shoulders: they tell me you are wicked and i believe them, for i have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. and they tell me you are crooked and i answer: yes, it is true i have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. and they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: on the faces of women and children i have seen the marks of wanton hunger. and having answered so i turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and i give them back the sneer and say to them: come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities; fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness, bareheaded, shoveling, wrecking, planning, building, breaking, rebuilding, under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth, under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs, laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle, bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse. and under his ribs the heart of the people, laughing! laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be hog butcher, tool maker, stacker of wheat, player with railroads and freight handler to the nation. sketch the shadows of the ships rock on the crest in the low blue lustre of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide. a long brown bar at the dip of the sky puts an arm of sand in the span of salt. the lucid and endless wrinkles draw in, lapse and withdraw. wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles wash on the floor of the beach. rocking on the crest in the low blue lustre are the shadows of the ships. masses among the mountains i wandered and saw blue haze and red crag and was amazed; on the beach where the long push under the endless tide maneuvers, i stood silent; under the stars on the prairie watching the dipper slant over the horizon's grass, i was full of thoughts. great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and workers, mothers lifting their children--these all i touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them. and then one day i got a true look at the poor, millions of the poor, patient and toiling; more patient than crags, tides, and stars; innumerable, patient as the darkness of night--and all broken, humble ruins of nations. lost desolate and lone all night long on the lake where fog trails and mist creeps, the whistle of a boat calls and cries unendingly, like some lost child in tears and trouble hunting the harbor's breast and the harbor's eyes. the harbor passing through huddled and ugly walls by doorways where women looked from their hunger-deep eyes, haunted with shadows of hunger-hands, out from the huddled and ugly walls, i came sudden, at the city's edge, on a blue burst of lake, long lake waves breaking under the sun on a spray-flung curve of shore; and a fluttering storm of gulls, masses of great gray wings and flying white bellies veering and wheeling free in the open. they will say of my city the worst that men will ever say is this: you took little children away from the sun and the dew, and the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky, and the reckless rain; you put them between walls to work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages, to eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted for a little handful of pay on a few saturday nights. mill-doors you never come back. i say good-by when i see you going in the doors, the hopeless open doors that call and wait and take you then for--how many cents a day? how many cents for the sleepy eyes and fingers? i say good-by because i know they tap your wrists, in the dark, in the silence, day by day, and all the blood of you drop by drop, and you are old before you are young. you never come back. halsted street car come you, cartoonists, hang on a strap with me here at seven o'clock in the morning on a halsted street car. take your pencils and draw these faces. try with your pencils for these crooked faces, that pig-sticker in one corner--his mouth-that overall factory girl--her loose cheeks. find for your pencils a way to mark your memory of tired empty faces. after their night's sleep, in the moist dawn and cool daybreak, faces tired of wishes, empty of dreams. clark street bridge dust of the feet and dust of the wheels, wagons and people going, all day feet and wheels. now. . . . . only stars and mist a lonely policeman, two cabaret dancers, stars and mist again, no more feet or wheels, no more dust and wagons. voices of dollars and drops of blood . . . . . voices of broken hearts, . . voices singing, singing, . . silver voices, singing, softer than the stars, softer than the mist. passers-by passers-by, out of your many faces flash memories to me now at the day end away from the sidewalks where your shoe soles traveled and your voices rose and blent to form the city's afternoon roar hindering an old silence. passers-by, i remember lean ones among you, throats in the clutch of a hope, lips written over with strivings, mouths that kiss only for love. records of great wishes slept with, held long and prayed and toiled for. . yes, written on your mouths and your throats i read them when you passed by. the walking man of rodin legs hold a torso away from the earth. and a regular high poem of legs is here. powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and ears hear and arms have a chance to hammer and shoot and run motors. you make us proud of our legs, old man. and you left off the head here, the skull found always crumbling neighbor of the ankles. subway down between the walls of shadow where the iron laws insist, the hunger voices mock. the worn wayfaring men with the hunched and humble shoulders, throw their laughter into toil. the shovel man on the street slung on his shoulder is a handle half way across, tied in a big knot on the scoop of cast iron are the overalls faded from sun and rain in the ditches; spatter of dry clay sticking yellow on his left sleeve and a flimsy shirt open at the throat, i know him for a shovel man, a dago working for a dollar six bits a day and a dark-eyed woman in the old country dreams of him for one of the world's ready men with a pair of fresh lips and a kiss better than all the wild grapes that ever grew in tuscany. a teamster's farewell sobs en route to a penitentiary good-by now to the streets and the clash of wheels and locking hubs, the sun coming on the brass buckles and harness knobs. the muscles of the horses sliding under their heavy haunches, good-by now to the traffic policeman and his whistle, the smash of the iron hoof on the stones, all the crazy wonderful slamming roar of the street-o god, there's noises i'm going to be hungry for. fish crier i know a jew fish crier down on maxwell street with a voice like a north wind blowing over corn stubble in january. he dangles herring before prospective customers evincing a joy identical with that of pavlowa dancing. his face is that of a man terribly glad to be selling fish, terribly glad that god made fish, and customers to whom he may call his wares, from a pushcart. picnic boat sunday night and the park policemen tell each other it is dark as a stack of black cats on lake michigan. a big picnic boat comes home to chicago from the peach farms of saugatuck. hundreds of electric bulbs break the night's darkness, a flock of red and yellow birds with wings at a standstill. running along the deck railings are festoons and leaping in curves are loops of light from prow and stern to the tall smokestacks. over the hoarse crunch of waves at my pier comes a hoarse answer in the rhythmic oompa of the brasses playing a polish folk-song for the home-comers. happiness i asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. and i went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. they all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though i was trying to fool with them and then one sunday afternoon i wandered out along the desplaines river and i saw a crowd of hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion. muckers twenty men stand watching the muckers. stabbing the sides of the ditch where clay gleams yellow, driving the blades of their shovels deeper and deeper for the new gas mains wiping sweat off their faces with red bandanas the muckers work on . . pausing . . to pull their boots out of suckholes where they slosh. of the twenty looking on ten murmer, "o, its a hell of a job," ten others, "jesus, i wish i had the job." blacklisted why shall i keep the old name? what is a name anywhere anyway? a name is a cheap thing all fathers and mothers leave each child: a job is a job and i want to live, so why does god almighty or anybody else care whether i take a new name to go by? graceland tomb of a millionaire, a multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen, place of the dead where they spend every year the usury of twenty-five thousand dollars for upkeep and flowers to keep fresh the memory of the dead. the merchant prince gone to dust commanded in his written will over the signed name of his last testament twenty-five thousand dollars be set aside for roses, lilacs, hydrangeas, tulips, for perfume and color, sweetness of remembrance around his last long home. (a hundred cash girls want nickels to go to the movies to-night. in the back stalls of a hundred saloons, women are at tables drinking with men or waiting for men jingling loose silver dollars in their pockets. in a hundred furnished rooms is a girl who sells silk or dress goods or leather stuff for six dollars a week wages and when she pulls on her stockings in the morning she is reckless about god and the newspapers and the police, the talk of her home town or the name people call her.) child of the romans the dago shovelman sits by the railroad track eating a noon meal of bread and bologna. a train whirls by, and men and women at tables alive with red roses and yellow jonquils, eat steaks running with brown gravy, strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee. the dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna, washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy, and goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day's work keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases standing slender on the tables in the dining cars. the right to grief to certain poets about to die take your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow, over the dead child of a millionaire, and the pity of death refusing any check on the bank which the millionaire might order his secretary to scratch off and get cashed. very well, you for your grief and i for mine. let me have a sorrow my own if i want to. i shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky. his job is sweeping blood off the floor. he gets a dollar seventy cents a day when he works and it's many tubs of blood he shoves out with a broom day by day. now his three year old daughter is in a white coffin that cost him a week's wages. every saturday night he will pay the undertaker fifty cents till the debt is wiped out. the hunky and his wife and the kids cry over the pinched face almost at peace in the white box. they remember it was scrawny and ran up high doctor bills. they are glad it is gone for the rest of the family now will have more to eat and wear. yet before the majesty of death they cry around the coffin and wipe their eyes with red bandanas and sob when the priest says, "god have mercy on us all." i have a right to feel my throat choke about this. you take your grief and i mine--see? to-morrow there is no funeral and the hunky goes back to his job sweeping blood off the floor at a dollar seventy cents a day. all he does all day long is keep on shoving hog blood ahead of him with a broom mag i wish to god i never saw you, mag. i wish you never quit your job and came along with me. i wish we never bought a license and a white dress for you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister and told him we would love each other and take care of each other always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere. yes, i'm wishing now you lived somewhere away from here and i was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away dead broke. i wish the kids had never come and rent and coal and clothes to pay for and a grocery man calling for cash, every day cash for beans and prunes. i wish to god i never saw you, mag. i wish to god the kids had never come. onion days mrs. gabrielle giovannitti comes along peoria street every morning at nine o'clock with kindling wood piled on top of her head, her eyes looking straight ahead to find the way for her old feet. her daughter-in-law, mrs. pietro giovannitti, whose husband was killed in a tunnel explosion through the negligence of a fellow-servant, works ten hours a day, sometimes twelve, picking onions for jasper on the bowmanville road. she takes a street car at half-past five in the morning, mrs. pietro giovannitti does, and gets back from jasper's with cash for her day's work, between nine and ten o'clock at night. last week she got eight cents a box, mrs. pietro giovannitti, picking onions for jasper, but this week jasper dropped the pay to six cents a box because so many women and girls were answering the ads in the daily news. jasper belongs to an episcopal church in ravenswood and on certain sundays he enjoys chanting the nicene creed with his daughters on each side of him joining their voices with his. if the preacher repeats old sermons of a sunday, jasper's mind wanders to his 700-acre farm and how he can make it produce more efficiently and sometimes he speculates on whether he could word an ad in the daily news so it would bring more women and girls out to his farm and reduce operating costs. mrs. pietro giovannitti is far from desperate about life; her joy is in a child she knows will arrive to her in three months. and now while these are the pictures for today there are other pictures of the giovannitti people i could give you for to-morrow, and how some of them go to the county agent on winter mornings with their baskets for beans and cornmeal and molasses. i listen to fellows saying here's good stuff for a novel or it might be worked up into a good play. i say there's no dramatist living can put old mrs. gabrielle giovannitti into a play with that kindling wood piled on top of her head coming along peoria street nine o'clock in the morning. population drifts new-mown hay smell and wind of the plain made her a woman whose ribs had the power of the hills in them and her hands were tough for work and there was passion for life in her womb. she and her man crossed the ocean and the years that marked their faces saw them haggling with landlords and grocers while six children played on the stones and prowled in the garbage cans. one child coughed its lungs away, two more have adenoids and can neither talk nor run like their mother, one is in jail, two have jobs in a box factory and as they fold the pasteboard, they wonder what the wishing is and the wistful glory in them that flutters faintly when the glimmer of spring comes on the air or the green of summer turns brown: they do not know it is the new-mown hay smell calling and the wind of the plain praying for them to come back and take hold of life again with tough hands and with passion. cripple once when i saw a cripple gasping slowly his last days with the white plague, looking from hollow eyes, calling for air, desperately gesturing with wasted hands in the dark and dust of a house down in a slum, i said to myself i would rather have been a tall sunflower living in a country garden lifting a golden-brown face to the summer, rain-washed and dew-misted, mixed with the poppies and ranking hollyhocks, and wonderingly watching night after night the clear silent processionals of stars. a fence now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the workmen are beginning the fence. the palings are made of iron bars with steel points that can stab the life out of any man who falls on them. as a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering children looking for a place to play. passing through the bars and over the steel points will go nothing except death and the rain and to-morrow. anna imroth cross the hands over the breast here--so. straighten the legs a little more--so. and call for the wagon to come and take her home. her mother will cry some and so will her sisters and brothers. but all of the others got down and they are safe and this is the only one of the factory girls who wasn't lucky in making the jump when the fire broke. it is the hand of god and the lack of fire escapes. working girls the working girls in the morning are going to work- long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms. each morning as i move through this river of young woman life i feel a wonder about where it is all going, so many with a peach bloom of young years on them and laughter of red lips and memories in their eyes of dances the night before and plays and walks. green and gray streams run side by side in a river and so here are always the others, those who have been over the way, the women who know each one the end of life's gamble for her, the meaning and the clew, the how and the why of the dances and the arms that passed around their waists and the fingers that played in their hair. faces go by written over: "i know it all, i know where the bloom and the laughter go and i have memories," and the feet of these move slower and they have wisdom where the others have beauty. so the green and the gray move in the early morning on the downtown streets. mamie mamie beat her head against the bars of a little indiana town and dreamed of romance and big things off somewhere the way the railroad trains all ran. she could see the smoke of the engines get lost down where the streaks of steel flashed in the sun and when the newspapers came in on the morning mail she knew there was a big chicago far off, where all the trains ran. she got tired of the barber shop boys and the post office chatter and the church gossip and the old pieces the band played on the fourth of july and decoration day and sobbed at her fate and beat her head against the bars and was going to kill herself when the thought came to her that if she was going to die she might as well die struggling for a clutch of romance among the streets of chicago. she has a job now at six dollars a week in the basement of the boston store and even now she beats her head against the bars in the same old way and wonders if there is a bigger place the railroads run to from chicago where maybe there is romance and big things and real dreams that never go smash. personality musings of a police reporter in the identification bureau you have loved forty women, but you have only one thumb. you have led a hundred secret lives, but you mark only one thumb. you go round the world and fight in a thousand wars and win all the world's honors, but when you come back home the print of the one thumb your mother gave you is the same print of thumb you had in the old home when your mother kissed you and said good-by. out of the whirling womb of time come millions of men and their feet crowd the earth and they cut one anothers' throats for room to stand and among them all are not two thumbs alike. somewhere is a great god of thumbs who can tell the inside story of this. cumulatives storms have beaten on this point of land and ships gone to wreck here and the passers-by remember it with talk on the deck at night as they near it. fists have beaten on the face of this old prize-fighter and his battles have held the sporting pages and on the street they indicate him with their right fore-finger as one who once wore a championship belt. a hundred stories have been published and a thousand rumored about why this tall dark man has divorced two beautiful young women and married a third who resembles the first two and they shake their heads and say, "there he goes," when he passes by in sunny weather or in rain along the city streets. to certain journeymen undertakers, hearse drivers, grave diggers, i speak to you as one not afraid of your business. you handle dust going to a long country, you know the secret behind your job is the same whether you lower the coffin with modern, automatic machinery, well-oiled and noiseless, or whether the body is laid in by naked hands and then covered by the shovels. your day's work is done with laughter many days of the year, and you earn a living by those who say good-by today in thin whispers. chamfort there's chamfort. he's a sample. locked himself in his library with a gun, shot off his nose and shot out his right eye. and this chamfort knew how to write and thousands read his books on how to live, but he himself didn't know how to die by force of his own hand--see? they found him a red pool on the carpet cool as an april forenoon, talking and talking gay maxims and grim epigrams. well, he wore bandages over his nose and right eye, drank coffee and chatted many years with men and women who loved him because he laughed and daily dared death: "come and take me." limited i am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation. hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people. (all the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.) i ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: "omaha." the has-been a stone face higher than six horses stood five thousand years gazing at the world seeming to clutch a secret. a boy passes and throws a niggerhead that chips off the end of the nose from the stone face; he lets fly a mud ball that spatters the right eye and cheek of the old looker-on. the boy laughs and goes whistling "ee-ee-ee ee-ee-ee." the stone face stands silent, seeming to clutch a secret. in a back alley remembrance for a great man is this. the newsies are pitching pennies. and on the copper disk is the man's face. dead lover of boys, what do you ask for now? a coin your western heads here cast on money, you are the two that fade away together, partners in the mist. lunging buffalo shoulder, lean indian face, we who come after where you are gone salute your forms on the new nickel. you are to us: the past. runners on the prairie: good-by. dynamiter i sat with a dynamiter at supper in a german saloon eating steak and onions. and he laughed and told stories of his wife and children and the cause of labor and the working class. it was laughter of an unshakable man knowing life to be a rich and red-blooded thing. yes, his laugh rang like the call of gray birds filled with a glory of joy ramming their winged flight through a rain storm. his name was in many newspapers as an enemy of the nation and few keepers of churches or schools would open their doors to him. over the steak and onions not a word was said of his deep days and nights as a dynamiter. only i always remember him as a lover of life, a lover of children, a lover of all free, reckless laughter everywhere--lover of red hearts and red blood the world over. ice handler i know an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with pearl buttons the size of a dollar, and he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread, tells the bartender it's hotter than yesterday and will be hotter yet to-morrow, by jesus, and is on his way with his head in the air and a hard pair of fists. he spends a dollar or so every saturday night on a two hundred pound woman who washes dishes in the hotel morrison. he remembers when the union was organized he broke the noses of two scabs and loosened the nuts so the wheels came off six different wagons one morning, and he came around and watched the ice melt in the street. all he was sorry for was one of the scabs bit him on the knuckles of the right hand so they bled when he came around to the saloon to tell the boys about it. jack jack was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. he worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day, and his hands were tougher than sole leather. he married a tough woman and they had eight children and the woman died and the children grew up and went away and wrote the old man every two years. he died in the poorhouse sitting on a bench in the sun telling reminiscences to other old men whose women were dead and children scattered. there was joy on his face when he died as there was joy on his face when he lived--he was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. fellow citizens i drank musty ale at the illinois athletic club with the millionaire manufacturer of green river butter one night and his face had the shining light of an old-time quaker, he spoke of a beautiful daughter, and i knew he had a peace and a happiness up his sleeve somewhere. then i heard jim kirch make a speech to the advertising association on the trade resources of south america. and the way he lighted a three-for-a-nickel stogie and cocked it at an angle regardless of the manners of our best people, i knew he had a clutch on a real happiness even though some of the reporters on his newspaper say he is the living double of jack london's sea wolf. in the mayor's office the mayor himself told me he was happy though it is a hard job to satisfy all the office seekers and eat all the dinners he is asked to eat. down in gilpin place, near hull house, was a man with his jaw wrapped for a bad toothache, and he had it all over the butter millionaire, jim kirch and the mayor when it came to happiness. he is a maker of accordions and guitars and not only makes them from start to finish, but plays them after he makes them. and he had a guitar of mahogany with a walnut bottom he offered for seven dollars and a half if i wanted it, and another just like it, only smaller, for six dollars, though he never mentioned the price till i asked him, and he stated the price in a sorry way, as though the music and the make of an instrument count for a million times more than the price in money. i thought he had a real soul and knew a lot about god. there was light in his eyes of one who has conquered sorrow in so far as sorrow is conquerable or worth conquering. anyway he is the only chicago citizen i was jealous of that day. he played a dance they play in some parts of italy when the harvest of grapes is over and the wine presses are ready for work. nigger i am the nigger. singer of songs, dancer. . . softer than fluff of cotton. . . harder than dark earth roads beaten in the sun by the bare feet of slaves. . . foam of teeth. . . breaking crash of laughter. . . red love of the blood of woman, white love of the tumbling pickaninnies. . . lazy love of the banjo thrum. . . sweated and driven for the harvest-wage, loud laugher with hands like hams, fists toughened on the handles, smiling the slumber dreams of old jungles, crazy as the sun and dew and dripping, heaving life of the jungle, brooding and muttering with memories of shackles: i am the nigger. look at me. i am the nigger. two neighbors faces of two eternities keep looking at me. one is omar khayam and the red stuff wherein men forget yesterday and to-morrow and remember only the voices and songs, the stories, newspapers and fights of today. one is louis cornaro and a slim trick of slow, short meals across slow, short years, letting death open the door only in slow, short inches. i have a neighbor who swears by omar. i have a neighbor who swears by cornaro. both are happy. faces of two eternities keep looking at me. let them look. style style--go ahead talking about style. you can tell where a man gets his style just as you can tell where pavlowa got her legs or ty cobb his batting eye. go on talking. only don't take my style away. it's my face. maybe no good but anyway, my face. i talk with it, i sing with it, i see, taste and feel with it, i know why i want to keep it. kill my style and you break pavlowa's legs, and you blind ty cobb's batting eye. to beachey, 1912 riding against the east, a veering, steady shadow purrs the motor-call of the man-bird ready with the death-laughter in his throat and in his heart always the love of the big blue beyond. only a man, a far fleck of shadow on the east sitting at ease with his hands on a wheel and around him the large gray wings. hold him, great soft wings, keep and deal kindly, o wings, with the cool, calm shadow at the wheel. under a hat rim while the hum and the hurry of passing footfalls beat in my ear like the restless surf of a wind-blown sea, a soul came to me out of the look on a face. eyes like a lake where a storm-wind roams caught me from under the rim of a hat. i thought of a midsea wreck and bruised fingers clinging to a broken state-room door. in a breath to the williamson brothers high noon. white sun flashes on the michigan avenue asphalt. drum of hoofs and whirr of motors. women trapsing along in flimsy clothes catching play of sun-fire to their skin and eyes. inside the playhouse are movies from under the sea. from the heat of pavements and the dust of sidewalks, passers-by go in a breath to be witnesses of large cool sponges, large cool fishes, large cool valleys and ridges of coral spread silent in the soak of the ocean floor thousands of years. a naked swimmer dives. a knife in his right hand shoots a streak at the throat of a shark. the tail of the shark lashes. one swing would kill the swimmer. . . soon the knife goes into the soft under neck of the veering fish. . . its mouthful of teeth, each tooth a dagger itself, set row on row, glistens when the shuddering, yawning cadaver is hauled up by the brothers of the swimmer. outside in the street is the murmur and singing of life in the sun--horses, motors, women trapsing along in flimsy clothes, play of sun-fire in their blood. bath a man saw the whole world as a grinning skull and cross-bones. the rose flesh of life shriveled from all faces. nothing counts. everything is a fake. dust to dust and ashes to ashes and then an old darkness and a useless silence. so he saw it all. then he went to a mischa elman concert. two hours waves of sound beat on his eardrums. music washed something or other inside him. music broke down and rebuilt something or other in his head and heart. he joined in five encores for the young russian jew with the fiddle. when he got outside his heels hit the sidewalk a new way. he was the same man in the same world as before. only there was a singing fire and a climb of roses everlastingly over the world he looked on. bronzes i the bronze general grant riding a bronze horse in lincoln park shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr by in long processions going somewhere to keep appointment for dinner and matinees and buying and selling though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are piling on the slabs of the promenade along the lake shore near by i have seen the general dare the combers come closer and make to ride his bronze horse out into the hoofs and guns of the storm. ii i cross lincoln park on a winter night when the snow is falling. lincoln in bronze stands among the white lines of snow, his bronze forehead meeting soft echoes of the newsies crying forty thousand men are dead along the yser, his bronze ears listening to the mumbled roar of the city at his bronze feet. a lithe indian on a bronze pony, shakespeare seated with long legs in bronze, garibaldi in a bronze cape, they hold places in the cold, lonely snow to-night on their pedestals and so they will hold them past midnight and into the dawn. dunes what do we see here in the sand dunes of the white moon alone with our thoughts, bill, alone with our dreams, bill, soft as the women tying scarves around their heads dancing, alone with a picture and a picture coming one after the other of all the dead, the dead more than all these grains of sand one by one piled here in the moon, piled against the sky-line taking shapes like the hand of the wind wanted, what do we see here, bill, outside of what the wise men beat their heads on, outside of what the poets cry for and the soldiers drive on headlong and leave their skulls in the sun for- what, bill? on the way little one, you have been buzzing in the books, flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with lawyers and amid the educated men of the clubs you have been getting an earful of speech from trained tongues. take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike along sand stretches on the great inland sea here and while the eastern breeze blows on us and the restless surge of the lake waves on the breakwater breaks with an ever fresh monotone, let us ask ourselves: what is truth? what do you or i know? how much do the wisest of the world's men know about where the massed human procession is going? you have heard the mob laughed at? i ask you: is not the mob rough as the mountains are rough? and all things human rise from the mob and relapse and rise again as rain to the sea? ready to kill ten minutes now i have been looking at this. i have gone by here before and wondered about it. this is a bronze memorial of a famous general riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver on him. i want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be hauled away to the scrap yard. i put it straight to you, after the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory hand, the fireman and the teamster, have all been remembered with bronze memorials, shaping them on the job of getting all of us something to eat and something to wear, when they stack a few silhouettes against the sky here in the park, and show the real huskies that are doing the work of the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them, then maybe i will stand here and look easy at this general of the army holding a flag in the air, and riding like hell on horseback ready to kill anybody that gets in his way, ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men all over the sweet new grass of the prairie. to a contemporary bunkshooter you come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about jesus. where do you get that stuff? what do you know about jesus? jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few bankers and higher-ups among the con men of jerusalem everybody liked to have this jesus around because he never made any fake passes and everything he said went and he helped the sick and gave the people hope. you come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist and calling us all dam fools so fierce the froth slobbers over your lips. . . always blabbing we're all going to hell straight off and you know all about it. i've read jesus' words. i know what he said. you don't throw any scare into me. i've got your number. i know how much you know about jesus. he never came near clean people or dirty people but they felt cleaner because he came along. it was your crowd of bankers and business men and lawyers hired the sluggers and murderers who put jesus out of the running. i say the same bunch backing you nailed the nails into the hands of this jesus of nazareth. he had lined up against him the same crooks and strong-arm men now lined up with you paying your way. this jesus was good to look at, smelled good, listened good. he threw out something fresh and beautiful from the skin of his body and the touch of his hands wherever he passed along. you slimy bunkshooter, you put a smut on every human blossom in reach of your rotten breath belching about hell-fire and hiccupping about this man who lived a clean life in galilee. when are you going to quit making the carpenters build emergency hospitals for women and girls driven crazy with wrecked nerves from your gibberish about jesus--i put it to you again: where do you get that stuff; what do you know about jesus? go ahead and bust all the chairs you want to. smash a whole wagon load of furniture at every performance. turn sixty somersaults and stand on your nutty head. if it wasn't for the way you scare the women and kids i'd feel sorry for you and pass the hat. i like to watch a good four-flusher work, but not when he starts people puking and calling for the doctors. i like a man that's got nerve and can pull off a great original performance, but you--you're only a bug house peddler of second-hand gospel--you're only shoving out a phoney imitation of the goods this jesus wanted free as air and sunlight. you tell people living in shanties jesus is going to fix it up all right with them by giving them mansions in the skies after they're dead and the worms have eaten 'em. you tell $6 a week department store girls all they need is jesus; you take a steel trust wop, dead without having lived, gray and shrunken at forty years of age, and you tell him to look at jesus on the cross and he'll be all right. you tell poor people they don't need any more money on pay day and even if it's fierce to be out of a job, jesus'll fix that up all right, all right--all they gotta do is take jesus the way you say. i'm telling you jesus wouldn't stand for the stuff you're handing out. jesus played it different. the bankers and lawyers of jerusalem got their sluggers and murderers to go after jesus just because jesus wouldn't play their game. he didn't sit in with the big thieves. i don't want a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion. i won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory except the face of the woman on the american silver dollar. i ask you to come through and show me where you're pouring out the blood of your life. i've been to this suburb of jerusalem they call golgotha, where they nailed him, and i know if the story is straight it was real blood ran from his hands and the nail-holes, and it was real blood spurted in red drops where the spear of the roman soldier rammed in between the ribs of this jesus of nazareth. skyscraper by day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and has a soul. prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are poured out again back to the streets, prairies and valleys. it is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and out all day that give the building a soul of dreams and thoughts and memories. (dumped in the sea or fixed in a desert, who would care for the building or speak its name or ask a policeman the way to it?) elevators slide on their cables and tubes catch letters and parcels and iron pipes carry gas and water in and sewage out. wires climb with secrets, carry light and carry words, and tell terrors and profits and loves--curses of men grappling plans of business and questions of women in plots of love. hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the earth and hold the building to a turning planet. hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and hold together the stone walls and floors. hour by hour the hand of the mason and the stuff of the mortar clinch the pieces and parts to the shape an architect voted. hour by hour the sun and the rain, the air and the rust, and the press of time running into centuries, play on the building inside and out and use it. men who sunk the pilings and mixed the mortar are laid in graves where the wind whistles a wild song without words and so are men who strung the wires and fixed the pipes and tubes and those who saw it rise floor by floor. souls of them all are here, even the hod carrier begging at back doors hundreds of miles away and the brick layer who went to state's prison for shooting another man while drunk. (one man fell from a girder and broke his neck at the end of a straight plunge--he is here--his soul has gone into the stones of the building.) on the office doors from tier to tier--hundreds of names and each name standing for a face written across with a dead child, a passionate lover, a driving ambition for a million dollar business or a lobster's ease of life. behind the signs on the doors they work and the walls tell nothing from room to room. ten-dollar-a-week stenographers take letters from corporation officers, lawyers, efficiency engineers, and tons of letters go bundled from the building to all ends of the earth. smiles and tears of each office girl go into the soul of the building just the same as the master-men who rule the building. hands of clocks turn to noon hours and each floor empties its men and women who go away and eat and come back to work. toward the end of the afternoon all work slackens and all jobs go slower as the people feel day closing on them. one by one the floors are emptied. . . the uniformed elevator men are gone. pails clang. . . scrubbers work, talking in foreign tongues. broom and water and mop clean from the floors human dust and spit, and machine grime of the day. spelled in electric fire on the roof are words telling miles of houses and people where to buy a thing for money. the sign speaks till midnight. darkness on the hallways. voices echo. silence holds. . . watchmen walk slow from floor to floor and try the doors. revolvers bulge from their hip pockets. . . steel safes stand in corners. money is stacked in them. a young watchman leans at a window and sees the lights of barges butting their way across a harbor, nets of red and white lanterns in a railroad yard, and a span of glooms splashed with lines of white and blurs of crosses and clusters over the sleeping city. by night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul. handfuls fog the fog comes on little cat feet. it sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. pool out of the fire came a man sunken to less than cinders, a tea-cup of ashes or so. and i, the gold in the house, writhed into a stiff pool. jan kubelik your bow swept over a string, and a long low note quivered to the air. (a mother of bohemia sobs over a new child perfect learning to suck milk.) your bow ran fast over all the high strings fluttering and wild. (all the girls in bohemia are laughing on a sunday afternoon in the hills with their lovers.) choose the single clenched fist lifted and ready, or the open asking hand held out and waiting. choose: for we meet by one or the other. crimson crimson is the slow smolder of the cigar end i hold, gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire. (a great man i know is dead and while he lies in his coffin a gone flame i sit here in cumbering shadows and smoke and watch my thoughts come and go.) whitelight your whitelight flashes the frost to-night moon of the purple and silent west. remember me one of your lovers of dreams. flux sand of the sea runs red where the sunset reaches and quivers. sand of the sea runs yellow where the moon slants and wavers. kin brother, i am fire surging under the ocean floor. i shall never meet you, brother-not for years, anyhow; maybe thousands of years, brother. then i will warm you, hold you close, wrap you in circles, use you and change you-maybe thousands of years, brother. white shoulders your white shoulders i remember and your shrug of laughter. low laughter shaken slow from your white shoulders. losses i have love and a child, a banjo and shadows. (losses of god, all will go and one day we will hold only the shadows.) troths yellow dust on a bumble bee's wing, grey lights in a woman's asking eyes, red ruins in the changing sunset embers: i take you and pile high the memories. death will break her claws on some i keep. war poems (1914-1915) killers i am singing to you soft as a man with a dead child speaks; hard as a man in handcuffs, held where he cannot move: under the sun are sixteen million men, chosen for shining teeth, sharp eyes, hard legs, and a running of young warm blood in their wrists. and a red juice runs on the green grass; and a red juice soaks the dark soil. and the sixteen million are killing. . . and killing and killing. i never forget them day or night: they beat on my head for memory of them; they pound on my heart and i cry back to them, to their homes and women, dreams and games. i wake in the night and smell the trenches, and hear the low stir of sleepers in lines-sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark: some of them long sleepers for always, some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always, fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak, eating and drinking, toiling. . . on a long job of killing. sixteen million men. among the red guns after waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang low among dry leaves in an elm among the red guns, in the hearts of soldiers running free blood in the long, long campaign: dreams go on. among the leather saddles, in the heads of soldiers heavy in the wracks and kills of all straight fighting: dreams go on. among the hot muzzles, in the hands of soldiers brought from flesh-folds of women-soft amid the blood and crying-in all your hearts and heads among the guns and saddles and muzzles: dreams, dreams go on, out of the dead on their backs, broken and no use any more: dreams of the way and the end go on. iron guns, long, steel guns, pointed from the war ships in the name of the war god. straight, shining, polished guns, clambered over with jackies in white blouses, glory of tan faces, tousled hair, white teeth, laughing lithe jackies in white blouses, sitting on the guns singing war songs, war chanties. shovels, broad, iron shovels, scooping out oblong vaults, loosening turf and leveling sod. i ask you to witness- the shovel is brother to the gun. murmurings in a field hospital [they picked him up in the grass where he had lain two days in the rain with a piece of shrapnel in his lungs.] come to me only with playthings now. . . a picture of a singing woman with blue eyes standing at a fence of hollyhocks, poppies and sunflowers. . . or an old man i remember sitting with children telling stories of days that never happened anywhere in the world. . . no more iron cold and real to handle, shaped for a drive straight ahead. bring me only beautiful useless things. only old home things touched at sunset in the quiet. . . and at the window one day in summer yellow of the new crock of butter stood against the red of new climbing roses. . . and the world was all playthings. statistics napoleon shifted, restless in the old sarcophagus and murmured to a watchguard: "who goes there?" "twenty-one million men, soldiers, armies, guns, twenty-one million afoot, horseback, in the air, under the sea." and napoleon turned to his sleep: "it is not my world answering; it is some dreamer who knows not the world i marched in from calais to moscow." and he slept on in the old sarcophagus while the aeroplanes droned their motors between napoleon's mausoleum and the cool night stars. fight red drips from my chin where i have been eating. not all the blood, nowhere near all, is wiped off my mouth. clots of red mess my hair and the tiger, the buffalo, know how. i was a killer. yes, i am a killer. i come from killing. i go to more. i drive red joy ahead of me from killing. red gluts and red hungers run in the smears and juices of my inside bones: the child cries for a suck mother and i cry for war. buttons i have been watching the war map slammed up for advertising in front of the newspaper office. buttons--red and yellow buttons--blue and black buttons- are shoved back and forth across the map. a laughing young man, sunny with freckles, climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd, and then fixes a yellow button one inch west and follows the yellow button with a black button one inch west. (ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in a red soak along a river edge, gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling death in their throats.) who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing to us? and they obey smash down the cities. knock the walls to pieces. break the factories and cathedrals, warehouses and homes into loose piles of stone and lumber and black burnt wood: you are the soldiers and we command you. build up the cities. set up the walls again. put together once more the factories and cathedrals, warehouses and homes into buildings for life and labor: you are workmen and citizens all: we command you. jaws seven nations stood with their hands on the jaws of death. it was the first week in august, nineteen hundred fourteen. i was listening, you were listening, the whole world was listening, and all of us heard a voice murmuring: "i am the way and the light, he that believeth on me shall not perish but shall have everlasting life." seven nations listening heard the voice and answered: "o hell!" the jaws of death began clicking and they go on clicking. "o hell!" salvage guns on the battle lines have pounded now a year between brussels and paris. and, william morris, when i read your old chapter on the great arches and naves and little whimsical corners of the churches of northern france--brr-rr! i'm glad you're a dead man, william morris, i'm glad you're down in the damp and mouldy, only a memory instead of a living man--i'm glad you're gone. you never lied to us, william morris, you loved the shape of those stones piled and carved for you to dream over and wonder because workmen got joy of life into them, workmen in aprons singing while they hammered, and praying, and putting their songs and prayers into the walls and roofs, the bastions and cornerstones and gargoyles--all their children and kisses of women and wheat and roses growing. i say, william morris, i'm glad you're gone, i'm glad you're a dead man. guns on the battle lines have pounded a year now between brussels and paris. wars in the old wars drum of hoofs and the beat of shod feet. in the new wars hum of motors and the tread of rubber tires. in the wars to come silent wheels and whirr of rods not yet dreamed out in the heads of men. in the old wars clutches of short swords and jabs into faces with spears. in the new wars long range guns and smashed walls, guns running a spit of metal and men falling in tens and twenties. in the wars to come new silent deaths, new silent hurlers not yet dreamed out in the heads of men. in the old wars kings quarreling and thousands of men following. in the new wars kings quarreling and millions of men following. in the wars to come kings kicked under the dust and millions of men following great causes not yet dreamed out in the heads of men. the road and the end the road and the end i shall foot it down the roadway in the dusk, where shapes of hunger wander and the fugitives of pain go by. i shall foot it in the silence of the morning, see the night slur into dawn, hear the slow great winds arise where tall trees flank the way and shoulder toward the sky. the broken boulders by the road shall not commemorate my ruin. regret shall be the gravel under foot. i shall watch for slim birds swift of wing that go where wind and ranks of thunder drive the wild processionals of rain. the dust of the traveled road shall touch my hands and face. choices they offer you many things, i a few. moonlight on the play of fountains at night with water sparkling a drowsy monotone, bare-shouldered, smiling women and talk and a cross-play of loves and adulteries and a fear of death and a remembering of regrets: all this they offer you. i come with: salt and bread a terrible job of work and tireless war; come and have now: hunger. danger and hate. graves i dreamed one man stood against a thousand, one man damned as a wrongheaded fool. one year and another he walked the streets, and a thousand shrugs and hoots met him in the shoulders and mouths he passed. he died alone. and only the undertaker came to his funeral. flowers grow over his grave anod in the wind, and over the graves of the thousand, too, the flowers grow anod in the wind. flowers and the wind, flowers anod over the graves of the dead, petals of red, leaves of yellow, streaks of white, masses of purple sagging. . . i love you and your great way of forgetting. aztec mask i wanted a man's face looking into the jaws and throat of life with something proud on his face, so proud no smash of the jaws, no gulp of the throat leaves the face in the end with anything else than the old proud look: even to the finish, dumped in the dust, lost among the used-up cinders, this face, men would say, is a flash, is laid on bones taken from the ribs of the earth, ready for the hammers of changing, changing years, ready for the sleeping, sleeping years of silence. ready for the dust and fire and wind. i wanted this face and i saw it today in an aztec mask. a cry out of storm and dark, a red yell and a purple prayer, a beaten shape of ashes waiting the sunrise or night, something or nothing, proud-mouthed, proud-eyed gambler. momus momus is the name men give your face, the brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle finding a way mid mist on a shoreland, where gray rocks let the salt water shatter spray against horizons purple, silent. yes, momus, men have flung your face in bronze to gaze in gargoyle downward on a street-whirl of folk. they were artists did this, shaped your sad mouth, gave you a tall forehead slanted with calm, broad wisdom; all your lips to the corners and your cheeks to the high bones thrown over and through with a smile that forever wishes and wishes, purple, silent, fled from all the iron things of life, evaded like a sought bandit, gone into dreams, by god. i wonder, momus, whether shadows of the dead sit somewhere and look with deep laughter on men who play in terrible earnest the old, known, solemn repetitions of history. a droning monotone soft as sea laughter hovers from your kindliness of bronze, you give me the human ease of a mountain peak, purple, silent; granite shoulders heaving above the earth curves, careless eye-witness of the spawning tides of men and women swarming always in a drift of millions to the dust of toil, the salt of tears, and blood drops of undiminishing war. the answer you have spoken the answer. a child searches far sometimes into the red dust on a dark rose leaf and so you have gone far for the answer is: silence. in the republic of the winking stars and spent cataclysms sure we are it is off there the answer is hidden and folded over, sleeping in the sun, careless whether it is sunday or any other day of the week, knowing silence will bring all one way or another. have we not seen purple of the pansy out of the mulch and mold crawl into a dusk of velvet? blur of yellow? almost we thought from nowwhere but it was the silence, the future, working. to a dead man over the dead line we have called to you to come across with a word to us, some beaten whisper of what happens where you are over the dead line deaf to our calls and voiceless. the flickering shadows have not answered nor your lips sent a signal whether love talks and roses grow and the sun breaks at morning splattering the sea with crimson. under i i am the undertow washing tides of power battering the pillars under your things of high law. ii i am a sleepless slowfaring eater, maker of rust and rot in your bastioned fastenings, caissons deep. iii i am the law older than you and your builders proud. i am deaf in all days whether you say "yes" or "no". i am the crumbler: to-morrow. a sphinx close-mouthed you sat five thousand years and never let out a whisper. processions came by, marchers, asking questions you answered with grey eyes never blinking, shut lips never talking. not one croak of anything you know has come from your cat crouch of ages. i am one of those who know all you know and i keep my questions: i know the answers you hold. who am i? my head knocks against the stars. my feet are on the hilltops. my finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life. down in the sounding foam of primal things i reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny. i have been to hell and back many times. i know all about heaven, for i have talked with god. i dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible. i know the passionate seizure of beauty and the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading "keep off." my name is truth and i am the most elusive captive in the universe. our prayer of thanks for the gladness here where the sun is shining at evening on the weeds at the river, our prayer of thanks. for the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and bareheaded in the summer grass, our prayer of thanks. for the sunset and the stars, the women and the white arms that hold us, our prayer of thanks. god, if you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you, god, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are forever deaf and blind and lost, our prayer of thanks. god, the game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and the system; and so for the break of the game and the first play and the last. our prayer of thanks. fogs and fires at a window give me hunger, o you gods that sit and give the world its orders. give me hunger, pain and want, shut me out with shame and failure from your doors of gold and fame, give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger! but leave me a little love, a voice to speak to me in the day end, a hand to touch me in the dark room breaking the long loneliness. in the dusk of day-shapes blurring the sunset, one little wandering, western star thrust out from the changing shores of shadow. let me go to the window, watch there the day-shapes of dusk and wait and know the coming of a little love. under the harvest moon under the harvest moon, when the soft silver drips shimmering over the garden nights, death, the gray mocker, comes and whispers to you as a beautiful friend who remembers. under the summer roses when the flagrant crimson lurks in the dusk of the wild red leaves, love, with little hands, comes and touches you with a thousand memories, and asks you beautiful, unanswerable questions. the great hunt i cannot tell you now; when the wind's drive and whirl blow me along no longer, and the wind's a whisper at last-maybe i'll tell you then- some other time. when the rose's flash to the sunset reels to the rack and the twist, and the rose is a red bygone, when the face i love is going and the gate to the end shall clang, and it's no use to beckon or say, "so long"-maybe i'll tell you then- some other time. i never knew any more beautiful than you: i have hunted you under my thoughts, i have broken down under the wind and into the roses looking for you. i shall never find any greater than you. monotone the monotone of the rain is beautiful, and the sudden rise and slow relapse of the long multitudinous rain. the sun on the hills is beautiful, or a captured sunset sea-flung, bannered with fire and gold. a face i know is beautiful-with fire and gold of sky and sea, and the peace of long warm rain. joy let a joy keep you. reach out your hands and take it when it runs by, as the apache dancer clutches his woman. i have seen them live long and laugh loud, sent on singing, singing, smashed to the heart under the ribs with a terrible love. joy always, joy everywhere-let joy kill you! keep away from the little deaths. shirt i remember once i ran after you and tagged the fluttering shirt of you in the wind. once many days ago i drank a glassful of something and the picture of you shivered and slid on top of the stuff. and again it was nobody else but you i heard in the singing voice of a careless humming woman. one night when i sat with chums telling stories at a bonfire flickering red embers, in a language its own talking to a spread of white stars: it was you that slunk laughing in the clumsy staggering shadows. broken answers of remembrance let me know you are alive with a peering phantom face behind a doorway somewhere in the city's push and fury or under a pack of moss and leaves waiting in silence under a twist of oaken arms ready as ever to run away again when i tag the fluttering shirt of you. aztec you came from the aztecs with a copper on your fore-arms tawnier than a sunset saying good-by to an even river. and i said, you remember, those fore-arms of yours were finer than bronzes and you were glad. it was tears and a path west and a home-going when i asked why there were scars of worn gold where a man's ring was fixed once on your third finger. and i call you to come back before the days are longer. two memory of you is . . . a blue spear of flower. i cannot remember the name of it. alongside a bold dripping poppy is fire and silk. and they cover you. back yard shine on, o moon of summer. shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak, all silver under your rain to-night. an italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion. a polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month; to-night they are throwing you kisses. an old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a cherry tree in his back yard. the clocks say i must go--i stay here sitting on the back porch drinking white thoughts you rain down. shine on, o moon, shake out more and more silver changes. on the breakwater on the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a girl are sitting, she across his knee and they are looking face into face talking to each other without words, singing rythms in silence to each other. a funnel of white ranges the blue dusk from an out going boat, playing its searchlight, puzzled, abrupt, over a streak of green, and two on the breakwater keep their silence, she on his knee. mask fling your red scarf faster and faster, dancer. it is summer and the sun loves a million green leaves, masses of green. your red scarf flashes across them calling and a-calling. the silk and flare of it is a great soprano leading a chorus carried along in a rouse of voices reaching for the heart of the world. your toes are singing to meet the song of your arms: let the red scarf go swifter. summer and the sun command you. pearl fog open the door now. go roll up the collar of your coat to walk in the changing scarf of mist. tell your sins here to the pearl fog and know for once a deepening night strange as the half-meanings alurk in a wise woman's mousey eyes. yes, tell your sins and know how careless a pearl fog is of the laws you have broken. i sang i sang to you and the moon but only the moon remembers. i sang o reckless free-hearted free-throated rythms, even the moon remembers them and is kind to me. follies shaken, the blossoms of lilac, and shattered, the atoms of purple. green dip the leaves, darker the bark, longer the shadows. sheer lines of poplar shimmer with masses of silver and down in a garden old with years and broken walls of ruin and story, roses rise with red rain-memories. may! in the open world the sun comes and finds your face, remembering all. june paula is digging and shaping the loam of a salvia, scarlet chinese talker of summer. two petals of crabapple blossom blow fallen in paula's hair, and fluff of white from a cottonwood. nocturne in a deserted brickyard stuff of the moon runs on the lapping sand out to the longest shadows. under the curving willows, and round the creep of the wave line, fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night. hydrangeas dragoons, i tell you the white hydrangeas turn rust and go soon. already mid september a line of brown runs over them. one sunset after another tracks the faces, the petals. waiting, they look over the fence for what way they go. theme in yellow i spot the hills with yellow balls in autumn. i light the prairie cornfields orange and tawny gold clusters and i am called pumpkins. on the last of october when dusk is fallen children join hands and circle round me singing ghost songs and love to the harvest moon; i am a jack-o'-lantern with terrible teeth and the children know i am fooling. between two hills between two hills the old town stands. the houses loom and the roofs and trees and the dusk and the dark, the damp and the dew are there. the prayers are said and the people rest for sleep is there and the touch of dreams is over all. last answers i wrote a poem on the mist and a woman asked me what i meant by it. i had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, and change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color. i answered: the whole world was mist once long ago and some day it will all go back to mist, our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue and all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers go running back to dust and mist. window night from a railroad car window is a great, dark, soft thing broken across with slashes of light. young sea the sea is never still. it pounds on the shore restless as a young heart, hunting. the sea speaks and only the stormy hearts know what it says: it is the face of a rough mother speaking. the sea is young. one storm cleans all the hoar and loosens the age of it. i hear it laughing, reckless. they love the sea, men who ride on it and know they will die under the salt of it let only the young come, says the sea. let them kiss my face and hear me. i am the last word and i tell where storms and stars come from. bones sling me under the sea. pack me down in the salt and wet. no farmer's plow shall touch my bones. no hamlet hold my jaws and speak how jokes are gone and empty is my mouth. long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes, purple fish play hide-and-seek, and i shall be song of thunder, crash of sea, down on the floors of salt and wet. sling me . . . under the sea. pals take a hold now on the silver handles here, six silver handles, one for each of his old pals. take hold and lift him down the stairs, put him on the rollers over the floor of the hearse. take him on the last haul, to the cold straight house, the level even house, to the last house of all. the dead say nothing and the dead know much and the dead hold under their tongues a locked-up story. child the young child, christ, is straight and wise and asks questions of the old men, questions found under running water for all children and found under shadows thrown on still waters by tall trees looking downward, old and gnarled. found to the eyes of children alone, untold, singing a low song in the loneliness. and the young child, christ, goes on asking and the old men answer nothing and only know love for the young child. christ, straight and wise. poppies she loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in. in a loose white gown she walks and a new child tugs at cords in her body. her head to the west at evening when the dew is creeping, a shudder of gladness runs in her bones and torsal fiber: she loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in. child moon the child's wonder at the old moon comes back nightly. she points her finger to the far silent yellow thing shining through the branches filtering on the leaves a golden sand, crying with her little tongue, "see the moon!" and in her bed fading to sleep with babblings of the moon on her little mouth. margaret many birds and the beating of wings make a flinging reckless hum in the early morning at the rocks above the blue pool where the gray shadows swim lazy. in your blue eyes, o reckless child, i saw today many little wild wishes, eager as the great morning. shadows poems done on a late night car i. chickens i am the great white way of the city: when you ask what is my desire, i answer: "girls fresh as country wild flowers, with young faces tired of the cows and barns, eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries, slender supple girls with shapely legs, lure in the arch of their little shoulders and wisdom from the prairies to cry only softly at the ashes of my mysteries." ii. used up lines based on certain regrets that come with rumination upon the painted faces of women on north clark street, chicago roses, red roses, crushed in the rain and wind like mouths of women beaten by the fists of men using them. o little roses and broken leaves and petal wisps: you that so flung your crimson to the sun only yesterday. iii. home here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of: i heard it in the air of one night when i listened to a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry in the darkness. it is much women of night life amid the lights where the line of your full, round throats matches in gleam the glint of your eyes and the ring of your heart-deep laughter: it is much to be warm and sure of to-morrow. women of night life along the shadows, lean at your throats and skulking the walls, gaunt as a bitch worn to the bone, under the paint of your smiling faces: it is much to be warm and sure of to-morrow. trafficker among the shadows where two streets cross, a woman lurks in the dark and waits to move on when a policeman heaves in view. smiling a broken smile from a face painted over haggard bones and desperate eyes, all night she offers passers-by what they will of her beauty wasted, body faded, claims gone, and no takers. harrison street court i heard a woman's lips speaking to a companion say these words: "a woman what hustles never keeps nothin' for all her hustlin'. somebody always gets what she goes on the street for. if it ain't a pimp it's a bull what gets it. i been hustlin' now till i ain't much good any more. i got nothin' to show for it. some man got it all, every night's hustlin' i ever did." soiled dove let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she married a corporation lawyer who picked her from a ziegfeld chorus. before then she never took anybody's money and paid for her silk stockings out of what she earned singing and dancing. she loved one man and he loved six women and the game was changing her looks, calling for more and more massage money and high coin for the beauty doctors. now she drives a long, underslung motor car all by herself, reads in the day's papers what her husband is doing to the inter-state commerce commission, requires a larger corsage from year to year, and wonders sometimes how one man is coming along with six women. jungheimer's in western fields of corn and northern timber lands, they talk about me, a saloon with a soul, the soft red lights, the long curving bar, the leather seats and dim corners, tall brass spittoons, a nigger cutting ham, and the painting of a woman half-dressed thrown reckless across a bed after a night of booze and riots. gone everybody loved chick lorimer in our town. far off everybody loved her. so we all love a wild girl keeping a hold on a dream she wants. nobody knows now where chick lorimer went. nobody knows why she packed her trunk. . a few old things and is gone, gone with her little chin thrust ahead of her and her soft hair blowing careless from under a wide hat, dancer, singer, a laughing passionate lover. were there ten men or a hundred hunting chick? were there five men or fifty with aching hearts? everybody loved chick lorimer. nobody knows where she's gone. other days (1900-1910) dreams in the dusk dreams in the dusk, only dreams closing the day and with the day's close going back to the gray things, the dark things, the far, deep things of dreamland. dreams, only dreams in the dusk, only the old remembered pictures of lost days when the day's loss wrote in tears the heart's loss. tears and loss and broken dreams may find your heart at dusk. docks strolling along by the teeming docks, i watch the ships put out. black ships that heave and lunge and move like mastodons arising from lethargic sleep. the fathomed harbor calls them not nor dares them to a strain of action, but outward, on and outward, sounding low-reverberating calls, shaggy in the half-lit distance, they pass the pointed headland, view the wide, far-lifting wilderness and leap with cumulative speed to test the challenge of the sea. plunging, doggedly onward plunging, into salt and mist and foam and sun. all day long all day long in fog and wind, the waves have flung their beating crests against the palisades of adamant. my boy, he went to sea, long and long ago, curls of brown were slipping underneath his cap, he looked at me from blue and steely eyes; natty, straight and true, he stepped away, my boy, he went to sea. all day long in fog and wind, the waves have flung their beating crests against the palisades of adamant. waiting today i will let the old boat stand where the sweep of the harbor tide comes in to the pulse of a far, deep-steady sway. and i will rest and dream and sit on the deck watching the world go by and take my pay for many hard days gone i remember. i will choose what clouds i like in the great white fleets that wander the blue as i lie on my back or loaf at the rail. and i will listen as the veering winds kiss me and fold me and put on my brow the touch of the world's great will. daybreak will hear the heart of the boat beat, engine throb and piston play in the quiver and leap at call of life. to-morrow we move in the gaps and heights on changing floors of unlevel seas and no man shall stop us and no man follow for ours is the quest of an unknown shore and we are husky and lusty and shouting-gay. from the shore a lone gray bird, dim-dipping, far-flying, alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults of night and the sea and the stars and storms. out over the darkness it wavers and hovers, out into the gloom it swings and batters, out into the wind and the rain and the vast, out into the pit of a great black world, where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown, love of mist and rapture of flight, glories of chance and hazards of death on its eager and palpitant wings. out into the deep of the great dark world, beyond the long borders where foam and drift of the sundering waves are lost and gone on the tides that plunge and rear and crumble. uplands in may wonder as of old things fresh and fair come back hangs over pasture and road. lush in the lowland grasses rise and upland beckons to upland. the great strong hills are humble. dream girl you will come one day in a waver of love, tender as dew, impetuous as rain, the tan of the sun will be on your skin, the purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech, you will pose with a hill-flower grace. you will come, with your slim, expressive arms, a poise of the head no sculptor has caught and nuances spoken with shoulder and neck, your face in a pass-and-repass of moods as many as skies in delicate change of cloud and blue and flimmering sun. yet, you may not come, o girl of a dream, we may but pass as the world goes by and take from a look of eyes into eyes, a film of hope and a memoried day. plowboy after the last red sunset glimmer, black on the line of a low hill rise, formed into moving shadows, i saw a plowboy and two horses lined against the gray, plowing in the dusk the last furrow. the turf had a gleam of brown, and smell of soil was in the air, and, cool and moist, a haze of april. i shall remember you long, plowboy and horses against the sky in shadow. i shall remember you and the picture you made for me, turning the turf in the dusk and haze of an april gloaming. broadway i shall never forget you, broadway your golden and calling lights. i'll remember you long, tall-walled river of rush and play. hearts that know you hate you and lips that have given you laughter have gone to their ashes of life and its roses, cursing the dreams that were lost in the dust of your harsh and trampled stones. old woman the owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo from building and battered paving-stone. the headlight scoffs at the mist, and fixes its yellow rays in the cold slow rain; against a pane i press my forehead and drowsily look on the walls and sidewalks. the headlight finds the way and life is gone from the wet and the welter-only an old woman, bloated, disheveled and bleared. far-wandered waif of other days, huddles for sleep in a doorway, homeless. noon hour she sits in the dust at the walls and makes cigars, bending at the bench with fingers wage-anxious, changing her sweat for the day's pay. now the noon hour has come, and she leans with her bare arms on the window-sill over the river, leans and feels at her throat cool-moving things out of the free open ways: at her throat and eyes and nostrils the touch and the blowing cool of great free ways beyond the walls. 'boes i waited today for a freight train to pass. cattle cars with steers butting their horns against the bars, went by. and a half a dozen hoboes stood on bumpers between cars. well, the cattle are respectable, i thought. every steer has its transportation paid for by the farmer sending it to market, while the hoboes are law-breakers in riding a railroad train without a ticket. it reminded me of ten days i spent in the allegheny county jail in pittsburgh. i got ten days even though i was a veteran of the spanish-american war. cooped in the same cell with me was an old man, a bricklayer and a booze-fighter. but it just happened he, too, was a veteran soldier, and he had fought to preserve the union and free the niggers. we were three in all, the other being a lithuanian who got drunk on pay day at the steel works and got to fighting a policeman; all the clothes he had was a shirt, pants and shoes- somebody got his hat and coat and what money he had left over when he got drunk. under a telephone pole i am a copper wire slung in the air, slim against the sun i make not even a clear line of shadow. night and day i keep singing--humming and thrumming: it is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the tears, the work and want, death and laughter of men and women passing through me, carrier of your speech, in the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and the shine drying, a copper wire. i am the people, the mob i am the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass. do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me? i am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world's food and clothes. i am the audience that witnesses history. the napoleons come from me and the lincolns. they die. and then i send forth more napoleons and lincolns. i am the seed ground. i am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. terrible storms pass over me. i forget. the best of me is sucked out and wasted. i forget. everything but death comes to me and makes me work and give up what i have. and i forget. sometimes i growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. then--i forget. when i, the people, learn to remember, when i, the people, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: "the people," with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision. the mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then. government the government--i heard about the government and i went out to find it. i said i would look closely at it when i saw it. then i saw a policeman dragging a drunken man to the callaboose. it was the government in action. i saw a ward alderman slip into an office one morning and talk with a judge. later in the day the judge dismissed a case against a pickpocket who was a live ward worker for the alderman. again i saw this was the government, doing things. i saw militiamen level their rifles at a crowd of workingmen who were trying to get other workingmen to stay away from a shop where there was a strike on. government in action. everywhere i saw that government is a thing made of men, that government has blood and bones, it is many mouths whispering into many ears, sending telegrams, aiming rifles, writing orders, saying "yes" and "no." government dies as the men who form it die and are laid away in their graves and the new government that comes after is human, made of heartbeats of blood, ambitions, lusts, and money running through it all, money paid and money taken, and money covered up and spoken of with hushed voices. a government is just as secret and mysterious and sensitive as any human sinner carrying a load of germs, traditions and corpuscles handed down from fathers and mothers away back. languages there are no handles upon a language whereby men take hold of it and mark it with signs for its remembrance. it is a river, this language, once in a thousand years breaking a new course changing its way to the ocean. it is mountain effluvia moving to valleys and from nation to nation crossing borders and mixing. languages die like rivers. words wrapped round your tongue today and broken to shape of thought between your teeth and lips speaking now and today shall be faded hieroglyphics ten thousand years from now. sing--and singing--remember your song dies and changes and is not here to-morrow any more than the wind blowing ten thousand years ago. letters to dead imagists emily dickinson: you gave us the bumble bee who has a soul, the everlasting traveler among the hollyhocks, and how god plays around a back yard garden. stevie crane: war is kind and we never knew the kindness of war till you came; nor the black riders and clashes of spear and shield out of the sea, nor the mumblings and shots that rise from dreams on call. sheep thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep-one by one going up the hill and over the fence--one by one four-footed pattering up and over--one by one wiggling their stub tails as they take the short jump and go over--one by one silently unless for the multitudinous drumming of their hoofs as they move on and go over-thousands and thousands of them in the grey haze of evening just after sundown--one by one slanting in a long line to pass over the hill- i am the slow, long-legged sleepyman and i love you sheep in persia, california, argentine, australia, or spain--you are the thoughts that help me when i, the sleepyman, lay my hands on the eyelids of the children of the world at eight o'clock every night--you thousands and thousands of sheep in a procession of dusk making an endless multitudinous drumming on the hills with your hoofs. the red son i love your faces i saw the many years i drank your milk and filled my mouth with your home talk, slept in your house and was one of you. but a fire burns in my heart. under the ribs where pulses thud and flitting between bones of skull is the push, the endless mysterious command, saying: "i leave you behind-you for the little hills and the years all alike, you with your patient cows and old houses protected from the rain, i am going away and i never come back to you; crags and high rough places call me, great places of death where men go empty handed and pass over smiling to the star-drift on the horizon rim. my last whisper shall be alone, unknown; i shall go to the city and fight against it, and make it give me passwords of luck and love, women worth dying for, and money. i go where you wist not of nor i nor any man nor woman. i only know i go to storms grappling against things wet and naked." there is no pity of it and no blame. none of us is in the wrong. after all it is only this: you for the little hills and i go away. the mist i am the mist, the impalpable mist, back of the thing you seek. my arms are long, long as the reach of time and space. some toil and toil, believing, looking now and again on my face, catching a vital, olden glory. but no one passes me, i tangle and snare them all. i am the cause of the sphinx, the voiceless, baffled, patient sphinx. i was at the first of things, i will be at the last. i am the primal mist and no man passes me; my long impalpable arms bar them all. the junk man i am glad god saw death and gave death a job taking care of all who are tired of living: when all the wheels in a clock are worn and slow and the connections loose and the clock goes on ticking and telling the wrong time from hour to hour and people around the house joke about what a bum clock it is, how glad the clock is when the big junk man drives his wagon up to the house and puts his arms around the clock and says: "you don't belong here, you gotta come along with me," how glad the clock is then, when it feels the arms of the junk man close around it and carry it away. silver nails a man was crucified. he came to the city a stranger, was accused, and nailed to a cross. he lingered hanging. laughed at the crowd. "the nails are iron," he said, "you are cheap. in my country when we crucify we use silver nails. . ." so he went jeering. they did not understand him at first. later they talked about him in changed voices in the saloons, bowling alleys, and churches. it came over them every man is crucified only once in his life and the law of humanity dictates silver nails be used for the job. a statue was erected to him in a public square. not having gathered his name when he was among them, they wrote him as john silvernail on the statue. gypsy i asked a gypsy pal to imitate an old image and speak old wisdom. she drew in her chin, made her neck and head the top piece of a nile obelisk and said: snatch off the gag from thy mouth, child, and be free to keep silence. tell no man anything for no man listens, yet hold thy lips ready to speak. [end.] . ******the project gutenberg etext of a footnote to history****** #25 in our series by robert louis stevenson copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. a footnote to history by robert louis stevenson may, 1996 [etext #536] ******the project gutenberg etext of a footnote to history****** *****this file should be named fnhst10.txt or fnhst10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, fnhst11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, fnhst10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* a footnote to history by robert louis stevenson scanned and proofed by david price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk a footnote to history preface an affair which might be deemed worthy of a note of a few lines in any general history has been here expanded to the size of a volume or large pamphlet. the smallness of the scale, and the singularity of the manners and events and many of the characters, considered, it is hoped that, in spite of its outlandish subject, the sketch may find readers. it has been a task of difficulty. speed was essential, or it might come too late to be of any service to a distracted country. truth, in the midst of conflicting rumours and in the dearth of printed material, was often hard to ascertain, and since most of those engaged were of my personal acquaintance, it was often more than delicate to express. i must certainly have erred often and much; it is not for want of trouble taken nor of an impartial temper. and if my plain speaking shall cost me any of the friends that i still count, i shall be sorry, but i need not be ashamed. in one particular the spelling of samoan words has been altered; and the characteristic nasal n of the language written throughout ng instead of g. thus i put pango-pango, instead of pago-pago; the sound being that of soft ng in english, as in singer, not as in finger. r. l. s. vailima, upolu, samoa. eight years of trouble in samoa chapter i the elements of discord: native the story i have to tell is still going on as i write; the characters are alive and active; it is a piece of contemporary history in the most exact sense. and yet, for all its actuality and the part played in it by mails and telegraphs and iron warships, the ideas and the manners of the native actors date back before the roman empire. they are christians, church-goers, singers of hymns at family worship, hardy cricketers; their books are printed in london by spottiswoode, trubner, or the tract society; but in most other points they are the contemporaries of our tattooed ancestors who drove their chariots on the wrong side of the roman wall. we have passed the feudal system; they are not yet clear of the patriarchal. we are in the thick of the age of finance; they are in a period of communism. and this makes them hard to understand. to us, with our feudal ideas, samoa has the first appearance of a land of despotism. an elaborate courtliness marks the race alone among polynesians; terms of ceremony fly thick as oaths on board a ship; commoners my-lord each other when they meet and urchins as they play marbles. and for the real noble a whole private dialect is set apart. the common names for an axe, for blood, for bamboo, a bamboo knife, a pig, food, entrails, and an oven are taboo in his presence, as the common names for a bug and for many offices and members of the body are taboo in the drawing-rooms of english ladies. special words are set apart for his leg, his face, his hair, his belly, his eyelids, his son, his daughter, his wife, his wife's pregnancy, his wife's adultery, adultery with his wife, his dwelling, his spear, his comb, his sleep, his dreams, his anger, the mutual anger of several chiefs, his food, his pleasure in eating, the food and eating of his pigeons, his ulcers, his cough, his sickness, his recovery, his death, his being carried on a bier, the exhumation of his bones, and his skull after death. to address these demigods is quite a branch of knowledge, and he who goes to visit a high chief does well to make sure of the competence of his interpreter. to complete the picture, the same word signifies the watching of a virgin and the warding of a chief; and the same word means to cherish a chief and to fondle a favourite child. men like us, full of memories of feudalism, hear of a man so addressed, so flattered, and we leap at once to the conclusion that he is hereditary and absolute. hereditary he is; born of a great family, he must always be a man of mark; but yet his office is elective and (in a weak sense) is held on good behaviour. compare the case of a highland chief: born one of the great ones of his clan, he was sometimes appointed its chief officer and conventional father; was loved, and respected, and served, and fed, and died for implicitly, if he gave loyalty a chance; and yet if he sufficiently outraged clan sentiment, was liable to deposition. as to authority, the parallel is not so close. doubtless the samoan chief, if he be popular, wields a great influence; but it is limited. important matters are debated in a fono, or native parliament, with its feasting and parade, its endless speeches and polite genealogical allusions. debated, i say not decided; for even a small minority will often strike a clan or a province impotent. in the midst of these ineffective councils the chief sits usually silent: a kind of a gagged audience for village orators. and the deliverance of the fono seems (for the moment) to be final. the absolute chiefs of tahiti and hawaii were addressed as plain john and thomas; the chiefs of samoa are surfeited with lip-honour, but the seat and extent of their actual authority is hard to find. it is so in the members of the state, and worse in the belly. the idea of a sovereign pervades the air; the name we have; the thing we are not so sure of. and the process of election to the chief power is a mystery. certain provinces have in their gift certain high titles, or names, as they are called. these can only be attributed to the descendants of particular lines. once granted, each name conveys at once the principality (whatever that be worth) of the province which bestows it, and counts as one suffrage towards the general sovereignty of samoa. to be indubitable king, they say, or some of them say, i find few in perfect harmony, a man should resume five of these names in his own person. but the case is purely hypothetical; local jealousy forbids its occurrence. there are rival provinces, far more concerned in the prosecution of their rivalry than in the choice of a right man for king. if one of these shall have bestowed its name on competitor a, it will be the signal and the sufficient reason for the other to bestow its name on competitor b or c. the majority of savaii and that of aana are thus in perennial opposition. nor is this all. in 1881, laupepa, the present king, held the three names of malietoa, natoaitele, and tamasoalii; tamasese held that of tuiaana; and mataafa that of tuiatua. laupepa had thus a majority of suffrages; he held perhaps as high a proportion as can be hoped in these distracted islands; and he counted among the number the preponderant name of malietoa. here, if ever, was an election. here, if a king were at all possible, was the king. and yet the natives were not satisfied. laupepa was crowned, march 19th; and next month, the provinces of aana and atua met in joint parliament, and elected their own two princes, tamasese and mataafa, to an alternate monarchy, tamasese taking the first trick of two years. war was imminent, when the consuls interfered, and any war were preferable to the terms of the peace which they procured. by the lackawanna treaty, laupepa was confirmed king, and tamasese set by his side in the nondescript office of vice-king. the compromise was not, i am told, without precedent; but it lacked all appearance of success. to the constitution of samoa, which was already all wheels and no horses, the consuls had added a fifth wheel. in addition to the old conundrum, "who is the king?" they had supplied a new one, "what is the vice-king?" two royal lines; some cloudy idea of alternation between the two; an electorate in which the vote of each province is immediately effectual, as regards itself, so that every candidate who attains one name becomes a perpetual and dangerous competitor for the other four: such are a few of the more trenchant absurdities. many argue that the whole idea of sovereignty is modern and imported; but it seems impossible that anything so foolish should have been suddenly devised, and the constitution bears on its front the marks of dotage. but the king, once elected and nominated, what does he become? it may be said he remains precisely as he was. election to one of the five names is significant; it brings not only dignity but power, and the holder is secure, from that moment, of a certain following in war. but i cannot find that the further step of election to the kingship implies anything worth mention. the successful candidate is now the tupu o samoa much good may it do him! he can so sign himself on proclamations, which it does not follow that any one will heed. he can summon parliaments; it does not follow they will assemble. if he be too flagrantly disobeyed, he can go to war. but so he could before, when he was only the chief of certain provinces. his own provinces will support him, the provinces of his rivals will take the field upon the other part; just as before. in so far as he is the holder of any of the five names, in short, he is a man to be reckoned with; in so far as he is king of samoa, i cannot find but what the president of a college debating society is a far more formidable officer. and unfortunately, although the credit side of the account proves thus imaginary, the debit side is actual and heavy. for he is now set up to be the mark of consuls; he will be badgered to raise taxes, to make roads, to punish crime, to quell rebellion: and how he is to do it is not asked. if i am in the least right in my presentation of this obscure matter, no one need be surprised to hear that the land is full of war and rumours of war. scarce a year goes by but what some province is in arms, or sits sulky and menacing, holding parliaments, disregarding the king's proclamations and planting food in the bush, the first step of military preparation. the religious sentiment of the people is indeed for peace at any price; no pastor can bear arms; and even the layman who does so is denied the sacraments. in the last war the college of malua, where the picked youth are prepared for the ministry, lost but a single student; the rest, in the bosom of a bleeding country, and deaf to the voices of vanity and honour, peacefully pursued their studies. but if the church looks askance on war, the warrior in no extremity of need or passion forgets his consideration for the church. the houses and gardens of her ministers stand safe in the midst of armies; a way is reserved for themselves along the beach, where they may be seen in their white kilts and jackets openly passing the lines, while not a hundred yards behind the skirmishers will be exchanging the useless volleys of barbaric warfare. women are also respected; they are not fired upon; and they are suffered to pass between the hostile camps, exchanging gossip, spreading rumour, and divulging to either army the secret councils of the other. this is plainly no savage war; it has all the punctilio of the barbarian, and all his parade; feasts precede battles, fine dresses and songs decorate and enliven the field; and the young soldier comes to camp burning (on the one hand) to distinguish himself by acts of valour, and (on the other) to display his acquaintance with field etiquette. thus after mataafa became involved in hostilities against the germans, and had another code to observe beside his own, he was always asking his white advisers if "things were done correctly." let us try to be as wise as mataafa, and to conceive that etiquette and morals differ in one country and another. we shall be the less surprised to find samoan war defaced with some unpalatable customs. the childish destruction of fruit-trees in an enemy's country cripples the resources of samoa; and the habit of head-hunting not only revolts foreigners, but has begun to exercise the minds of the natives themselves. soon after the german heads were taken, mr. carne, wesleyan missionary, had occasion to visit mataafa's camp, and spoke of the practice with abhorrence. "misi kane," said one chief, "we have just been puzzling ourselves to guess where that custom came from. but, misi, is it not so that when david killed goliath, he cut off his head and carried it before the king?" with the civil life of the inhabitants we have far less to do; and yet even here a word of preparation is inevitable. they are easy, merry, and pleasure-loving; the gayest, though by far from either the most capable or the most beautiful of polynesians. fine dress is a passion, and makes a samoan festival a thing of beauty. song is almost ceaseless. the boatman sings at the oar, the family at evening worship, the girls at night in the guest-house, sometimes the workman at his toil. no occasion is too small for the poets and musicians; a death, a visit, the day's news, the day's pleasantry, will be set to rhyme and harmony. even half-grown girls, the occasion arising, fashion words and train choruses of children for its celebration. song, as with all pacific islanders, goes hand in hand with the dance, and both shade into the drama. some of the performances are indecent and ugly, some only dull; others are pretty, funny, and attractive. games are popular. cricket-matches, where a hundred played upon a side, endured at times for weeks, and ate up the country like the presence of an army. fishing, the daily bath, flirtation; courtship, which is gone upon by proxy; conversation, which is largely political; and the delights of public oratory, fill in the long hours. but the special delight of the samoan is the malanga. when people form a party and go from village to village, junketing and gossiping, they are said to go on a malanga. their songs have announced their approach ere they arrive; the guest-house is prepared for their reception; the virgins of the village attend to prepare the kava bowl and entertain them with the dance; time flies in the enjoyment of every pleasure which an islander conceives; and when the malanga sets forth, the same welcome and the same joys expect them beyond the next cape, where the nearest village nestles in its grove of palms. to the visitors it is all golden; for the hosts, it has another side. in one or two words of the language the fact peeps slyly out. the same word (afemoeina) expresses "a long call" and "to come as a calamity"; the same word (lesolosolou) signifies "to have no intermission of pain" and "to have no cessation, as in the arrival of visitors"; and soua, used of epidemics, bears the sense of being overcome as with "fire, flood, or visitors." but the gem of the dictionary is the verb alovao, which illustrates its pages like a humorous woodcut. it is used in the sense of "to avoid visitors," but it means literally "hide in the wood." so, by the sure hand of popular speech, we have the picture of the house deserted, the malanga disappointed, and the host that should have been quaking in the bush. we are thus brought to the beginning of a series of traits of manners, highly curious in themselves, and essential to an understanding of the war. in samoa authority sits on the one hand entranced; on the other, property stands bound in the midst of chartered marauders. what property exists is vested in the family, not in the individual; and of the loose communism in which a family dwells, the dictionary may yet again help us to some idea. i find a string of verbs with the following senses: to deal leniently with, as in helping oneself from a family plantation; to give away without consulting other members of the family; to go to strangers for help instead of to relatives; to take from relatives without permission; to steal from relatives; to have plantations robbed by relatives. the ideal of conduct in the family, and some of its depravations, appear here very plainly. the man who (in a native word of praise) is mata-ainga, a race-regarder, has his hand always open to his kindred; the man who is not (in a native term of contempt) noa, knows always where to turn in any pinch of want or extremity of laziness. beggary within the family and by the less self-respecting, without it has thus grown into a custom and a scourge, and the dictionary teems with evidence of its abuse. special words signify the begging of food, of uncooked food, of fish, of pigs, of pigs for travellers, of pigs for stock, of taro, of taro-tops, of taro-tops for planting, of tools, of flyhooks, of implements for netting pigeons, and of mats. it is true the beggar was supposed in time to make a return, somewhat as by the roman contract of mutuum. but the obligation was only moral; it could not be, or was not, enforced; as a matter of fact, it was disregarded. the language had recently to borrow from the tahitians a word for debt; while by a significant excidence, it possessed a native expression for the failure to pay "to omit to make a return for property begged." conceive now the position of the householder besieged by harpies, and all defence denied him by the laws of honour. the sacramental gesture of refusal, his last and single resource, was supposed to signify "my house is destitute." until that point was reached, in other words, the conduct prescribed for a samoan was to give and to continue giving. but it does not appear he was at all expected to give with a good grace. the dictionary is well stocked with expressions standing ready, like missiles, to be discharged upon the locusts "troop of shamefaced ones," "you draw in your head like a tern," "you make your voice small like a whistle-pipe," "you beg like one delirious"; and the verb pongitai, "to look cross," is equipped with the pregnant rider, "as at the sight of beggars." this insolence of beggars and the weakness of proprietors can only be illustrated by examples. we have a girl in our service to whom we had given some finery, that she might wait at table, and (at her own request) some warm clothing against the cold mornings of the bush. she went on a visit to her family, and returned in an old tablecloth, her whole wardrobe having been divided out among relatives in the course of twenty-four hours. a pastor in the province of atua, being a handy, busy man, bought a boat for a hundred dollars, fifty of which he paid down. presently after, relatives came to him upon a visit and took a fancy to his new possession. "we have long been wanting a boat," said they. "give us this one." so, when the visit was done, they departed in the boat. the pastor, meanwhile, travelled into savaii the best way he could, sold a parcel of land, and begged mats among his other relatives, to pay the remainder of the price of the boat which was no longer his. you might think this was enough; but some months later, the harpies, having broken a thwart, brought back the boat to be repaired and repainted by the original owner. such customs, it might be argued, being double-edged, will ultimately right themselves. but it is otherwise in practice. such folk as the pastor's harpy relatives will generally have a boat, and will never have paid for it; such men as the pastor may have sometimes paid for a boat, but they will never have one. it is there as it is with us at home: the measure of the abuse of either system is the blackness of the individual heart. the same man, who would drive his poor relatives from his own door in england, would besiege in samoa the doors of the rich; and the essence of the dishonesty in either case is to pursue one's own advantage and to be indifferent to the losses of one's neighbour. but the particular drawback of the polynesian system is to depress and stagger industry. to work more is there only to be more pillaged; to save is impossible. the family has then made a good day of it when all are filled and nothing remains over for the crew of free-booters; and the injustice of the system begins to be recognised even in samoa. one native is said to have amassed a certain fortune; two clever lads have individually expressed to us their discontent with a system which taxes industry to pamper idleness; and i hear that in one village of savaii a law has been passed forbidding gifts under the penalty of a sharp fine. under this economic regimen, the unpopularity of taxes, which strike all at the same time, which expose the industrious to a perfect siege of mendicancy, and the lazy to be actually condemned to a day's labour, may be imagined without words. it is more important to note the concurrent relaxation of all sense of property. from applying for help to kinsmen who are scarce permitted to refuse, it is but a step to taking from them (in the dictionary phrase) "without permission"; from that to theft at large is but a hair's-breadth. chapter ii the elements of discord: foreign the huge majority of samoans, like other god-fearing folk in other countries, are perfectly content with their own manners. and upon one condition, it is plain they might enjoy themselves far beyond the average of man. seated in islands very rich in food, the idleness of the many idle would scarce matter; and the provinces might continue to bestow their names among rival pretenders, and fall into war and enjoy that a while, and drop into peace and enjoy that, in a manner highly to be envied. but the condition that they should be let alone is now no longer possible. more than a hundred years ago, and following closely on the heels of cook, an irregular invasion of adventurers began to swarm about the isles of the pacific. the seven sleepers of polynesia stand, still but half aroused, in the midst of the century of competition. and the island races, comparable to a shopful of crockery launched upon the stream of time, now fall to make their desperate voyage among pots of brass and adamant. apia, the port and mart, is the seat of the political sickness of samoa. at the foot of a peaked, woody mountain, the coast makes a deep indent, roughly semicircular. in front the barrier reef is broken by the fresh water of the streams; if the swell be from the north, it enters almost without diminution; and the war-ships roll dizzily at their moorings, and along the fringing coral which follows the configuration of the beach, the surf breaks with a continuous uproar. in wild weather, as the world knows, the roads are untenable. along the whole shore, which is everywhere green and level and overlooked by inland mountain-tops, the town lies drawn out in strings and clusters. the western horn is mulinuu, the eastern, matautu; and from one to the other of these extremes, i ask the reader to walk. he will find more of the history of samoa spread before his eyes in that excursion, than has yet been collected in the blue-books or the white-books of the world. mulinuu (where the walk is to begin) is a flat, wind-swept promontory, planted with palms, backed against a swamp of mangroves, and occupied by a rather miserable village. the reader is informed that this is the proper residence of the samoan kings; he will be the more surprised to observe a board set up, and to read that this historic village is the property of the german firm. but these boards, which are among the commonest features of the landscape, may be rather taken to imply that the claim has been disputed. a little farther east he skirts the stores, offices, and barracks of the firm itself. thence he will pass through matafele, the one really town-like portion of this long string of villages, by german bars and stores and the german consulate; and reach the catholic mission and cathedral standing by the mouth of a small river. the bridge which crosses here (bridge of mulivai) is a frontier; behind is matafele; beyond, apia proper; behind, germans are supreme; beyond, with but few exceptions, all is anglo-saxon. here the reader will go forward past the stores of mr. moors (american) and messrs. macarthur (english); past the english mission, the office of the english newspaper, the english church, and the old american consulate, till he reaches the mouth of a larger river, the vaisingano. beyond, in matautu, his way takes him in the shade of many trees and by scattered dwellings, and presently brings him beside a great range of offices, the place and the monument of a german who fought the german firm during his life. his house (now he is dead) remains pointed like a discharged cannon at the citadel of his old enemies. fitly enough, it is at present leased and occupied by englishmen. a little farther, and the reader gains the eastern flanking angle of the bay, where stands the pilot-house and signal-post, and whence he can see, on the line of the main coast of the island, the british and the new american consulates. the course of his walk will have been enlivened by a considerable to and fro of pleasure and business. he will have encountered many varieties of whites, sailors, merchants, clerks, priests, protestant missionaries in their pith helmets, and the nondescript hangers-on of any island beach. and the sailors are sometimes in considerable force; but not the residents. he will think at times there are more signboards than men to own them. it may chance it is a full day in the harbour; he will then have seen all manner of ships, from men-of-war and deep-sea packets to the labour vessels of the german firm and the cockboat island schooner; and if he be of an arithmetical turn, he may calculate that there are more whites afloat in apia bay than whites ashore in the whole archipelago. on the other hand, he will have encountered all ranks of natives, chiefs and pastors in their scrupulous white clothes; perhaps the king himself, attended by guards in uniform; smiling policemen with their pewter stars; girls, women, crowds of cheerful children. and he will have asked himself with some surprise where these reside. here and there, in the back yards of european establishments, he may have had a glimpse of a native house elbowed in a corner; but since he left mulinuu, none on the beach where islanders prefer to live, scarce one on the line of street. the handful of whites have everything; the natives walk in a foreign town. a year ago, on a knoll behind a bar-room, he might have observed a native house guarded by sentries and flown over by the standard of samoa. he would then have been told it was the seat of government, driven (as i have to relate) over the mulivai and from beyond the german town into the anglo-saxon. to-day, he will learn it has been carted back again to its old quarters. and he will think it significant that the king of the islands should be thus shuttled to and fro in his chief city at the nod of aliens. and then he will observe a feature more significant still: a house with some concourse of affairs, policemen and idlers hanging by, a man at a bank-counter overhauling manifests, perhaps a trial proceeding in the front verandah, or perhaps the council breaking up in knots after a stormy sitting. and he will remember that he is in the eleele sa, the "forbidden soil," or neutral territory of the treaties; that the magistrate whom he has just seen trying native criminals is no officer of the native king's; and that this, the only port and place of business in the kingdom, collects and administers its own revenue for its own behoof by the hands of white councillors and under the supervision of white consuls. let him go further afield. he will find the roads almost everywhere to cease or to be made impassable by native pig-fences, bridges to be quite unknown, and houses of the whites to become at once a rare exception. set aside the german plantations, and the frontier is sharp. at the boundary of the eleele sa, europe ends, samoa begins. here, then, is a singular state of affairs: all the money, luxury, and business of the kingdom centred in one place; that place excepted from the native government and administered by whites for whites; and the whites themselves holding it not in common but in hostile camps, so that it lies between them like a bone between two dogs, each growling, each clutching his own end. should apia ever choose a coat of arms, i have a motto ready: "enter rumour painted full of tongues." the majority of the natives do extremely little; the majority of the whites are merchants with some four mails in the month, shopkeepers with some ten or twenty customers a day, and gossip is the common resource of all. the town hums to the day's news, and the bars are crowded with amateur politicians. some are office-seekers, and earwig king and consul, and compass the fall of officials, with an eye to salary. some are humorists, delighted with the pleasure of faction for itself. "i never saw so good a place as this apia," said one of these; "you can be in a new conspiracy every day!" many, on the other hand, are sincerely concerned for the future of the country. the quarters are so close and the scale is so small, that perhaps not any one can be trusted always to preserve his temper. every one tells everything he knows; that is our country sickness. nearly every one has been betrayed at times, and told a trifle more; the way our sickness takes the predisposed. and the news flies, and the tongues wag, and fists are shaken. pot boil and caldron bubble! within the memory of man, the white people of apia lay in the worst squalor of degradation. they are now unspeakably improved, both men and women. to-day they must be called a more than fairly respectable population, and a much more than fairly intelligent. the whole would probably not fill the ranks of even an english half-battalion, yet there are a surprising number above the average in sense, knowledge, and manners. the trouble (for samoa) is that they are all here after a livelihood. some are sharp practitioners, some are famous (justly or not) for foul play in business. tales fly. one merchant warns you against his neighbour; the neighbour on the first occasion is found to return the compliment: each with a good circumstantial story to the proof. there is so much copra in the islands, and no more; a man's share of it is his share of bread; and commerce, like politics, is here narrowed to a focus, shows its ugly side, and becomes as personal as fisticuffs. close at their elbows, in all this contention, stands the native looking on. like a child, his true analogue, he observes, apprehends, misapprehends, and is usually silent. as in a child, a considerable intemperance of speech is accompanied by some power of secrecy. news he publishes; his thoughts have often to be dug for. he looks on at the rude career of the dollar-hunt, and wonders. he sees these men rolling in a luxury beyond the ambition of native kings; he hears them accused by each other of the meanest trickery; he knows some of them to be guilty; and what is he to think? he is strongly conscious of his own position as the common milk-cow; and what is he to do? "surely these white men on the beach are not great chiefs?" is a common question, perhaps asked with some design of flattering the person questioned. and one, stung by the last incident into an unusual flow of english, remarked to me: "i begin to be weary of white men on the beach." but the true centre of trouble, the head of the boil of which samoa languishes, is the german firm. from the conditions of business, a great island house must ever be an inheritance of care; and it chances that the greatest still afoot has its chief seat in apia bay, and has sunk the main part of its capital in the island of upolu. when its founder, john caesar godeffroy, went bankrupt over russian paper and westphalian iron, his most considerable asset was found to be the south sea business. this passed (i understand) through the hands of baring brothers in london, and is now run by a company rejoicing in the gargantuan name of the deutsche handels und plantagen gesellschaft fur sud-see inseln zu hamburg. this piece of literature is (in practice) shortened to the d. h. and p. g., the old firm, the german firm, the firm, and (among humorists) the long handle firm. even from the deck of an approaching ship, the island is seen to bear its signature zones of cultivation showing in a more vivid tint of green on the dark vest of forest. the total area in use is near ten thousand acres. hedges of fragrant lime enclose, broad avenues intersect them. you shall walk for hours in parks of palm-tree alleys, regular, like soldiers on parade; in the recesses of the hills you may stumble on a millhouse, tolling and trembling there, fathoms deep in superincumbent forest. on the carpet of clean sward, troops of horses and herds of handsome cattle may be seen to browse; and to one accustomed to the rough luxuriance of the tropics, the appearance is of fairyland. the managers, many of them german sea-captains, are enthusiastic in their new employment. experiment is continually afoot: coffee and cacao, both of excellent quality, are among the more recent outputs; and from one plantation quantities of pineapples are sent at a particular season to the sydney markets. a hundred and fifty thousand pounds of english money, perhaps two hundred thousand, lie sunk in these magnificent estates. in estimating the expense of maintenance quite a fleet of ships must be remembered, and a strong staff of captains, supercargoes, overseers, and clerks. these last mess together at a liberal board; the wages are high, and the staff is inspired with a strong and pleasing sentiment of loyalty to their employers. seven or eight hundred imported men and women toil for the company on contracts of three or of five years, and at a hypothetical wage of a few dollars in the month. i am now on a burning question: the labour traffic; and i shall ask permission in this place only to touch it with the tongs. suffice it to say that in queensland, fiji, new caledonia, and hawaii it has been either suppressed or placed under close public supervision. in samoa, where it still flourishes, there is no regulation of which the public receives any evidence; and the dirty linen of the firm, if there be any dirty, and if it be ever washed at all, is washed in private. this is unfortunate, if germans would believe it. but they have no idea of publicity, keep their business to themselves, rather affect to "move in a mysterious way," and are naturally incensed by criticisms, which they consider hypocritical, from men who would import "labour" for themselves, if they could afford it, and would probably maltreat them if they dared. it is said the whip is very busy on some of the plantations; it is said that punitive extralabour, by which the thrall's term of service is extended, has grown to be an abuse; and it is complained that, even where that term is out, much irregularity occurs in the repatriation of the discharged. to all this i can say nothing, good or bad. a certain number of the thralls, many of them wild negritos from the west, have taken to the bush, harbour there in a state partly bestial, or creep into the back quarters of the town to do a day's stealthy labour under the nose of their proprietors. twelve were arrested one morning in my own boys' kitchen. farther in the bush, huts, small patches of cultivation, and smoking ovens, have been found by hunters. there are still three runaways in the woods of tutuila, whither they escaped upon a raft. and the samoans regard these dark-skinned rangers with extreme alarm; the fourth refugee in tutuila was shot down (as i was told in that island) while carrying off the virgin of a village; and tales of cannibalism run round the country, and the natives shudder about the evening fire. for the samoans are not cannibals, do not seem to remember when they were, and regard the practice with a disfavour equal to our own. the firm is gulliver among the lilliputs; and it must not be forgotten, that while the small, independent traders are fighting for their own hand, and inflamed with the usual jealousy against corporations, the germans are inspired with a sense of the greatness of their affairs and interests. the thought of the money sunk, the sight of these costly and beautiful plantations, menaced yearly by the returning forest, and the responsibility of administering with one hand so many conjunct fortunes, might well nerve the manager of such a company for desperate and questionable deeds. upon this scale, commercial sharpness has an air of patriotism; and i can imagine the man, so far from haggling over the scourge for a few solomon islanders, prepared to oppress rival firms, overthrow inconvenient monarchs, and let loose the dogs of war. whatever he may decide, he will not want for backing. every clerk will be eager to be up and strike a blow; and most germans in the group, whatever they may babble of the firm over the walnuts and the wine, will rally round the national concern at the approach of difficulty. they are so few i am ashamed to give their number, it were to challenge contradiction they are so few, and the amount of national capital buried at their feet is so vast, that we must not wonder if they seem oppressed with greatness and the sense of empire. other whites take part in our brabbles, while temper holds out, with a certain schoolboy entertainment. in the germans alone, no trace of humour is to be observed, and their solemnity is accompanied by a touchiness often beyond belief. patriotism flies in arms about a hen; and if you comment upon the colour of a dutch umbrella, you have cast a stone against the german emperor. i give one instance, typical although extreme. one who had returned from tutuila on the mail cutter complained of the vermin with which she is infested. he was suddenly and sharply brought to a stand. the ship of which he spoke, he was reminded, was a german ship. john caesar godeffroy himself had never visited the islands; his sons and nephews came, indeed, but scarcely to reap laurels; and the mainspring and headpiece of this great concern, until death took him, was a certain remarkable man of the name of theodor weber. he was of an artful and commanding character; in the smallest thing or the greatest, without fear or scruple; equally able to affect, equally ready to adopt, the most engaging politeness or the most imperious airs of domination. it was he who did most damage to rival traders; it was he who most harried the samoans; and yet i never met any one, white or native, who did not respect his memory. all felt it was a gallant battle, and the man a great fighter; and now when he is dead, and the war seems to have gone against him, many can scarce remember, without a kind of regret, how much devotion and audacity have been spent in vain. his name still lives in the songs of samoa. one, that i have heard, tells of misi ueba and a biscuit-box the suggesting incident being long since forgotten. another sings plaintively how all things, land and food and property, pass progressively, as by a law of nature, into the hands of misi ueba, and soon nothing will be left for samoans. this is an epitaph the man would have enjoyed. at one period of his career, weber combined the offices of director of the firm and consul for the city of hamburg. no question but he then drove very hard. germans admit that the combination was unfortunate; and it was a german who procured its overthrow. captain zembsch superseded him with an imperial appointment, one still remembered in samoa as "the gentleman who acted justly." there was no house to be found, and the new consul must take up his quarters at first under the same roof with weber. on several questions, in which the firm was vitally interested, zembsch embraced the contrary opinion. riding one day with an englishman in vailele plantation, he was startled by a burst of screaming, leaped from the saddle, ran round a house, and found an overseer beating one of the thralls. he punished the overseer, and, being a kindly and perhaps not a very diplomatic man, talked high of what he felt and what he might consider it his duty to forbid or to enforce. the firm began to look askance at such a consul; and worse was behind. a number of deeds being brought to the consulate for registration, zembsch detected certain transfers of land in which the date, the boundaries, the measure, and the consideration were all blank. he refused them with an indignation which he does not seem to have been able to keep to himself; and, whether or not by his fault, some of these unfortunate documents became public. it was plain that the relations between the two flanks of the german invasion, the diplomatic and the commercial, were strained to bursting. but weber was a man ill to conquer. zembsch was recalled; and from that time forth, whether through influence at home, or by the solicitations of weber on the spot, the german consulate has shown itself very apt to play the game of the german firm. that game, we may say, was twofold, the first part even praiseworthy, the second at least natural. on the one part, they desired an efficient native administration, to open up the country and punish crime; they wished, on the other, to extend their own provinces and to curtail the dealings of their rivals. in the first, they had the jealous and diffident sympathy of all whites; in the second, they had all whites banded together against them for their lives and livelihoods. it was thus a game of beggar my neighbour between a large merchant and some small ones. had it so remained, it would still have been a cut-throat quarrel. but when the consulate appeared to be concerned, when the war-ships of the german empire were thought to fetch and carry for the firm, the rage of the independent traders broke beyond restraint. and, largely from the national touchiness and the intemperate speech of german clerks, this scramble among dollar-hunters assumed the appearance of an inter-racial war. the firm, with the indomitable weber at its head and the consulate at its back there has been the chief enemy at samoa. no english reader can fail to be reminded of john company; and if the germans appear to have been not so successful, we can only wonder that our own blunders and brutalities were less severely punished. even on the field of samoa, though german faults and aggressors make up the burthen of my story, they have been nowise alone. three nations were engaged in this infinitesimal affray, and not one appears with credit. they figure but as the three ruffians of the elder playwrights. the united states have the cleanest hands, and even theirs are not immaculate. it was an ambiguous business when a private american adventurer was landed with his pieces of artillery from an american war-ship, and became prime minister to the king. it is true (even if he were ever really supported) that he was soon dropped and had soon sold himself for money to the german firm. i will leave it to the reader whether this trait dignifies or not the wretched story. and the end of it spattered the credit alike of england and the states, when this man (the premier of a friendly sovereign) was kidnapped and deported, on the requisition of an american consul, by the captain of an english war-ship. i shall have to tell, as i proceed, of villages shelled on very trifling grounds by germans; the like has been done of late years, though in a better quarrel, by ourselves of england. i shall have to tell how the germans landed and shed blood at fangalii; it was only in 1876 that we british had our own misconceived little massacre at mulinuu. i shall have to tell how the germans bludgeoned malietoa with a sudden call for money; it was something of the suddenest that sir arthur gordon himself, smarting under a sensible public affront, made and enforced a somewhat similar demand. chapter iii the sorrows of laupepa, 1883 to 1887 you ride in a german plantation and see no bush, no soul stirring; only acres of empty sward, miles of cocoa-nut alley: a desert of food. in the eyes of the samoan the place has the attraction of a park for the holiday schoolboy, of a granary for mice. we must add the yet more lively allurement of a haunted house, for over these empty and silent miles there broods the fear of the negrito cannibal. for the samoan besides, there is something barbaric, unhandsome, and absurd in the idea of thus growing food only to send it from the land and sell it. a man at home who should turn all yorkshire into one wheatfield, and annually burn his harvest on the altar of mumbo-jumbo, might impress ourselves not much otherwise. and the firm which does these things is quite extraneous, a wen that might be excised to-morrow without loss but to itself; few natives drawing from it so much as day's wages; and the rest beholding in it only the occupier of their acres. the nearest villages have suffered most; they see over the hedge the lands of their ancestors waving with useless cocoa-palms; and the sales were often questionable, and must still more often appear so to regretful natives, spinning and improving yarns about the evening lamp. at the worst, then, to help oneself from the plantation will seem to a samoan very like orchard-breaking to the british schoolboy; at the best, it will be thought a gallant robinhoodish readjustment of a public wrong. and there is more behind. not only is theft from the plantations regarded rather as a lark and peccadillo, the idea of theft in itself is not very clearly present to these communists; and as to the punishment of crime in general, a great gulf of opinion divides the natives from ourselves. indigenous punishments were short and sharp. death, deportation by the primitive method of setting the criminal to sea in a canoe, fines, and in samoa itself the penalty of publicly biting a hot, ill-smelling root, comparable to a rough forfeit in a children's game these are approved. the offender is killed, or punished and forgiven. we, on the other hand, harbour malice for a period of years: continuous shame attaches to the criminal; even when he is doing his best even when he is submitting to the worst form of torture, regular work he is to stand aside from life and from his family in dreadful isolation. these ideas most polynesians have accepted in appearance, as they accept other ideas of the whites; in practice, they reduce it to a farce. i have heard the french resident in the marquesas in talk with the french gaoler of tai-o-hae: "eh bien, ou sont vos prisonnieres? je crois, mon commandant, qu'elles sont allees quelque part faire une visite." and the ladies would be welcome. this is to take the most savage of polynesians; take some of the most civilised. in honolulu, convicts labour on the highways in piebald clothing, gruesome and ridiculous; and it is a common sight to see the family of such an one troop out, about the dinner hour, wreathed with flowers and in their holiday best, to picnic with their kinsman on the public wayside. the application of these outlandish penalties, in fact, transfers the sympathy to the offender. remember, besides, that the clan system, and that imperfect idea of justice which is its worst feature, are still lively in samoa; that it is held the duty of a judge to favour kinsmen, of a king to protect his vassals; and the difficulty of getting a plantation thief first caught, then convicted, and last of all punished, will appear. during the early 'eighties, the germans looked upon this system with growing irritation. they might see their convict thrust in gaol by the front door; they could never tell how soon he was enfranchised by the back; and they need not be the least surprised if they met him, a few days after, enjoying the delights of a malanga. it was a banded conspiracy, from the king and the viceking downward, to evade the law and deprive the germans of their profits. in 1883, accordingly, the consul, dr. stuebel, extorted a convention on the subject, in terms of which samoans convicted of offences against german subjects were to be confined in a private gaol belonging to the german firm. to dr. stuebel it seemed simple enough: the offenders were to be effectually punished, the sufferers partially indemnified. to the samoans, the thing appeared no less simple, but quite different: "malietoa was selling samoans to misi ueba." what else could be expected? here was a private corporation engaged in making money; to it was delegated, upon a question of profit and loss, one of the functions of the samoan crown; and those who make anomalies must look for comments. public feeling ran unanimous and high. prisoners who escaped from the private gaol were not recaptured or not returned and malietoa hastened to build a new prison of his own, whither he conveyed, or pretended to convey, the fugitives. in october 1885 a trenchant state paper issued from the german consulate. twenty prisoners, the consul wrote, had now been at large for eight months from weber's prison. it was pretended they had since then completed their term of punishment elsewhere. dr. stuebel did not seek to conceal his incredulity; but he took ground beyond; he declared the point irrelevant. the law was to be enforced. the men were condemned to a certain period in weber's prison; they had run away; they must now be brought back and (whatever had become of them in the interval) work out the sentence. doubtless dr. stuebel's demands were substantially just; but doubtless also they bore from the outside a great appearance of harshness; and when the king submitted, the murmurs of the people increased. but weber was not yet content. the law had to be enforced; property, or at least the property of the firm, must be respected. and during an absence of the consul's, he seems to have drawn up with his own hand, and certainly first showed to the king, in his own house, a new convention. weber here and weber there. as an able man, he was perhaps in the right to prepare and propose conventions. as the head of a trading company, he seems far out of his part to be communicating state papers to a sovereign. the administration of justice was the colour, and i am willing to believe the purpose, of the new paper; but its effect was to depose the existing government. a council of two germans and two samoans were to be invested with the right to make laws and impose taxes as might be "desirable for the common interest of the samoan government and the german residents." the provisions of this council the king and vice-king were to sign blindfold. and by a last hardship, the germans, who received all the benefit, reserved a right to recede from the agreement on six months' notice; the samoans, who suffered all the loss, were bound by it in perpetuity. i can never believe that my friend dr. stuebel had a hand in drafting these proposals; i am only surprised he should have been a party to enforcing them, perhaps the chief error in these islands of a man who has made few. and they were enforced with a rigour that seems injudicious. the samoans (according to their own account) were denied a copy of the document; they were certainly rated and threatened; their deliberation was treated as contumacy; two german war-ships lay in port, and it was hinted that these would shortly intervene. succeed in frightening a child, and he takes refuge in duplicity. "malietoa," one of the chiefs had written, "we know well we are in bondage to the great governments." it was now thought one tyrant might be better than three, and any one preferable to germany. on the 5th november 1885, accordingly, laupepa, tamasese, and fortyeight high chiefs met in secret, and the supremacy of samoa was secretly offered to great britain for the second time in history. laupepa and tamasese still figured as king and vice-king in the eyes of dr. stuebel; in their own, they had secretly abdicated, were become private persons, and might do what they pleased without binding or dishonouring their country. on the morrow, accordingly, they did public humiliation in the dust before the consulate, and five days later signed the convention. the last was done, it is claimed, upon an impulse. the humiliation, which it appeared to the samoans so great a thing to offer, to the practical mind of dr. stuebel seemed a trifle to receive; and the pressure was continued and increased. laupepa and tamasese were both heavy, well-meaning, inconclusive men. laupepa, educated for the ministry, still bears some marks of it in character and appearance; tamasese was in private of an amorous and sentimental turn, but no one would have guessed it from his solemn and dull countenance. impossible to conceive two less dashing champions for a threatened race; and there is no doubt they were reduced to the extremity of muddlement and childish fear. it was drawing towards night on the 10th, when this luckless pair and a chief of the name of tuiatafu, set out for the german consulate, still minded to temporise. as they went, they discussed their case with agitation. they could see the lights of the german war-ships as they walked an eloquent reminder. and it was then that tamasese proposed to sign the convention. "it will give us peace for the day," said laupepa, "and afterwards great britain must decide." "better fight germany than that!" cried tuiatafu, speaking words of wisdom, and departed in anger. but the two others proceeded on their fatal errand; signed the convention, writing themselves king and vice-king, as they now believed themselves to be no longer; and with childish perfidy took part in a scene of "reconciliation" at the german consulate. malietoa supposed himself betrayed by tamasese. consul churchward states with precision that the document was sold by a scribe for thirty-six dollars. twelve days later at least, november 22nd, the text of the address to great britain came into the hands of dr. stuebel. the germans may have been wrong before; they were now in the right to be angry. they had been publicly, solemnly, and elaborately fooled; the treaty and the reconciliation were both fraudulent, with the broad, farcical fraudulency of children and barbarians. this history is much from the outside; it is the digested report of eye-witnesses; it can be rarely corrected from state papers; and as to what consuls felt and thought, or what instructions they acted under, i must still be silent or proceed by guess. it is my guess that stuebel now decided malietoa laupepa to be a man impossible to trust and unworthy to be dealt with. and it is certain that the business of his deposition was put in hand at once. the position of weber, with his knowledge of things native, his prestige, and his enterprising intellect, must have always made him influential with the consul: at this juncture he was indispensable. here was the deed to be done; here the man of action. "mr. weber rested not," says laupepa. it was "like the old days of his own consulate," writes churchward. his messengers filled the isle; his house was thronged with chiefs and orators; he sat close over his loom, delightedly weaving the future. there was one thing requisite to the intrigue, a native pretender; and the very man, you would have said, stood waiting: mataafa, titular of atua, descended from both the royal lines, late joint king with tamasese, fobbed off with nothing in the time of the lackawanna treaty, probably mortified by the circumstance, a chief with a strong following, and in character and capacity high above the native average. yet when weber's spiriting was done, and the curtain rose on the set scene of the coronation, mataafa was absent, and tamasese stood in his place. malietoa was to be deposed for a piece of solemn and offensive trickery, and the man selected to replace him was his sole partner and accomplice in the act. for so strange a choice, good ground must have existed; but it remains conjectural: some supposing mataafa scratched as too independent; others that tamasese had indeed betrayed laupepa, and his new advancement was the price of his treachery. so these two chiefs began to change places like the scales of a balance, one down, the other up. tamasese raised his flag (jan. 28th, 1886) in leulumoenga, chief place of his own province of aana, usurped the style of king, and began to collect and arm a force. weber, by the admission of stuebel, was in the market supplying him with weapons; so were the americans; so, but for our salutary british law, would have been the british; for wherever there is a sound of battle, there will the traders be gathered together selling arms. a little longer, and we find tamasese visited and addressed as king and majesty by a german commodore. meanwhile, for the unhappy malietoa, the road led downward. he was refused a bodyguard. he was turned out of mulinuu, the seat of his royalty, on a land claim of weber's, fled across the mulivai, and "had the coolness" (german expression) to hoist his flag in apia. he was asked "in the most polite manner," says the same account "in the most delicate manner in the world," a reader of marryat might be tempted to amend the phrase, to strike his flag in his own capital; and on his "refusal to accede to this request," dr. stuebel appeared himself with ten men and an officer from the cruiser albatross; a sailor climbed into the tree and brought down the flag of samoa, which was carefully folded, and sent, "in the most polite manner," to its owner. the consuls of england and the states were there (the excellent gentlemen!) to protest. last, and yet more explicit, the german commodore who visited the be-titled tamasese, addressed the king we may surely say the late king as "the high chief malietoa." had he no party, then? at that time, it is probable, he might have called some five-sevenths of samoa to his standard. and yet he sat there, helpless monarch, like a fowl trussed for roasting. the blame lies with himself, because he was a helpless creature; it lies also with england and the states. their agents on the spot preached peace (where there was no peace, and no pretence of it) with eloquence and iteration. secretary bayard seems to have felt a call to join personally in the solemn farce, and was at the expense of a telegram in which he assured the sinking monarch it was "for the higher interests of samoa" he should do nothing. there was no man better at doing that; the advice came straight home, and was devoutly followed. and to be just to the great powers, something was done in europe; a conference was called, it was agreed to send commissioners to samoa, and the decks had to be hastily cleared against their visit. dr. stuebel had attached the municipality of apia and hoisted the german war-flag over mulinuu; the american consul (in a sudden access of good service) had flown the stars and stripes over samoan colours; on either side these steps were solemnly retracted. the germans expressly disowned tamasese; and the islands fell into a period of suspense, of some twelve months' duration, during which the seat of the history was transferred to other countries and escapes my purview. here on the spot, i select three incidents: the arrival on the scene of a new actor, the visit of the hawaiian embassy, and the riot on the emperor's birthday. the rest shall be silence; only it must be borne in view that tamasese all the while continued to strengthen himself in leulumoenga, and laupepa sat inactive listening to the song of consuls. captain brandeis. the new actor was brandeis, a bavarian captain of artillery, of a romantic and adventurous character. he had served with credit in war; but soon wearied of garrison life, resigned his battery, came to the states, found employment as a civil engineer, visited cuba, took a sub-contract on the panama canal, caught the fever, and came (for the sake of the sea voyage) to australia. he had that natural love for the tropics which lies so often latent in persons of a northern birth; difficulty and danger attracted him; and when he was picked out for secret duty, to be the hand of germany in samoa, there is no doubt but he accepted the post with exhilaration. it is doubtful if a better choice could have been made. he had courage, integrity, ideas of his own, and loved the employment, the people, and the place. yet there was a fly in the ointment. the double error of unnecessary stealth and of the immixture of a trading company in political affairs, has vitiated, and in the end defeated, much german policy. and brandeis was introduced to the islands as a clerk, and sent down to leulumoenga (where he was soon drilling the troops and fortifying the position of the rebel king) as an agent of the german firm. what this mystification cost in the end i shall tell in another place; and even in the beginning, it deceived no one. brandeis is a man of notable personal appearance; he looks the part allotted him; and the military clerk was soon the centre of observation and rumour. malietoa wrote and complained of his presence to becker, who had succeeded dr. stuebel in the consulate. becker replied, "i have nothing to do with the gentleman brandeis. be it well known that the gentleman brandeis has no appointment in a military character, but resides peaceably assisting the government of leulumoenga in their work, for brandeis is a quiet, sensible gentleman." and then he promised to send the vice-consul to "get information of the captain's doings": surely supererogation of deceit. the hawaiian embassy. the prime minister of the hawaiian kingdom was, at this period, an adventurer of the name of gibson. he claimed, on the strength of a romantic story, to be the heir of a great english house. he had played a part in a revolt in java, had languished in dutch fetters, and had risen to be a trusted agent of brigham young, the utah president. it was in this character of a mormon emissary that he first came to the islands of hawaii, where he collected a large sum of money for the church of the latter day saints. at a given moment, he dropped his saintship and appeared as a christian and the owner of a part of the island of lanai. the steps of the transformation are obscure; they seem, at least, to have been ill-received at salt lake; and there is evidence to the effect that he was followed to the islands by mormon assassins. his first attempt on politics was made under the auspices of what is called the missionary party, and the canvass conducted largely (it is said with tears) on the platform at prayer-meetings. it resulted in defeat. without any decency of delay he changed his colours, abjured the errors of reform, and, with the support of the catholics, rose to the chief power. in a very brief interval he had thus run through the gamut of religions in the south seas. it does not appear that he was any more particular in politics, but he was careful to consult the character and prejudices of the late king, kalakaua. that amiable, far from unaccomplished, but too convivial sovereign, had a continued use for money: gibson was observant to keep him well supplied. kalakaua (one of the most theoretical of men) was filled with visionary schemes for the protection and development of the polynesian race: gibson fell in step with him; it is even thought he may have shared in his illusions. the king and minister at least conceived between them a scheme of island confederation the most obvious fault of which was that it came too late and armed and fitted out the cruiser kaimiloa, nest-egg of the future navy of hawaii. samoa, the most important group still independent, and one immediately threatened with aggression, was chosen for the scene of action. the hon. john e. bush, a half-caste hawaiian, sailed (december 1887) for apia as minister-plenipotentiary, accompanied by a secretary of legation, henry f. poor; and as soon as she was ready for sea, the war-ship followed in support. the expedition was futile in its course, almost tragic in result. the kaimiloa was from the first a scene of disaster and dilapidation: the stores were sold; the crew revolted; for a great part of a night she was in the hands of mutineers, and the secretary lay bound upon the deck. the mission, installing itself at first with extravagance in matautu, was helped at last out of the island by the advances of a private citizen. and they returned from dreams of polynesian independence to find their own city in the hands of a clique of white shopkeepers, and the great gibson once again in gaol. yet the farce had not been quite without effect. it had encouraged the natives for the moment, and it seems to have ruffled permanently the temper of the germans. so might a fly irritate caesar. the arrival of a mission from hawaii would scarce affect the composure of the courts of europe. but in the eyes of polynesians the little kingdom occupies a place apart. it is there alone that men of their race enjoy most of the advantages and all the pomp of independence; news of hawaii and descriptions of honolulu are grateful topics in all parts of the south seas; and there is no better introduction than a photograph in which the bearer shall be represented in company with kalakaua. laupepa was, besides, sunk to the point at which an unfortunate begins to clutch at straws, and he received the mission with delight. letters were exchanged between him and kalakaua; a deed of confederation was signed, 17th february 1887, and the signature celebrated in the new house of the hawaiian embassy with some original ceremonies. malietoa laupepa came, attended by his ministry, several hundred chiefs, two guards, and six policemen. always decent, he withdrew at an early hour; by those that remained, all decency appears to have been forgotten; high chiefs were seen to dance; and day found the house carpeted with slumbering grandees, who must be roused, doctored with coffee, and sent home. as a first chapter in the history of polynesian confederation, it was hardly cheering, and laupepa remarked to one of the embassy, with equal dignity and sense: "if you have come here to teach my people to drink, i wish you had stayed away." the germans looked on from the first with natural irritation that a power of the powerlessness of hawaii should thus profit by its undeniable footing in the family of nations, and send embassies, and make believe to have a navy, and bark and snap at the heels of the great german empire. but becker could not prevent the hunted laupepa from taking refuge in any hole that offered, and he could afford to smile at the fantastic orgie in the embassy. it was another matter when the hawaiians approached the intractable mataafa, sitting still in his atua government like achilles in his tent, helping neither side, and (as the germans suspected) keeping the eggs warm for himself. when the kaimiloa steamed out of apia on this visit, the german war-ship adler followed at her heels; and mataafa was no sooner set down with the embassy than he was summoned and ordered on board by two german officers. the step is one of those triumphs of temper which can only be admired. mataafa is entertaining the plenipotentiary of a sovereign power in treaty with his own king, and the captain of a german corvette orders him to quit his guests. but there was worse to come. i gather that tamasese was at the time in the sulks. he had doubtless been promised prompt aid and a prompt success; he had seen himself surreptitiously helped, privately ordered about, and publicly disowned; and he was still the king of nothing more than his own province, and already the second in command of captain brandeis. with the adhesion of some part of his native cabinet, and behind the back of his white minister, he found means to communicate with the hawaiians. a passage on the kaimiloa, a pension, and a home in honolulu were the bribes proposed; and he seems to have been tempted. a day was set for a secret interview. poor, the hawaiian secretary, and j. d. strong, an american painter attached to the embassy in the surprising quality of "government artist," landed with a samoan boat's-crew in aana; and while the secretary hid himself, according to agreement, in the outlying home of an english settler, the artist (ostensibly bent on photography) entered the headquarters of the rebel king. it was a great day in leulumoenga; three hundred recruits had come in, a feast was cooking; and the photographer, in view of the native love of being photographed, was made entirely welcome. but beneath the friendly surface all were on the alert. the secret had leaked out: weber beheld his plans threatened in the root; brandeis trembled for the possession of his slave and sovereign; and the german vice-consul, mr. sonnenschein, had been sent or summoned to the scene of danger. it was after dark, prayers had been said and the hymns sung through all the village, and strong and the german sat together on the mats in the house of tamasese, when the events began. strong speaks german freely, a fact which he had not disclosed, and he was scarce more amused than embarrassed to be able to follow all the evening the dissension and the changing counsels of his neighbours. first the king himself was missing, and there was a false alarm that he had escaped and was already closeted with poor. next came certain intelligence that some of the ministry had run the blockade, and were on their way to the house of the english settler. thereupon, in spite of some protests from tamasese, who tried to defend the independence of his cabinet, brandeis gathered a posse of warriors, marched out of the village, brought back the fugitives, and clapped them in the corrugated iron shanty which served as gaol. along with these he seems to have seized billy coe, interpreter to the hawaiians; and poor, seeing his conspiracy public, burst with his boat's-crew into the town, made his way to the house of the native prime minister, and demanded coe's release. brandeis hastened to the spot, with strong at his heels; and the two principals being both incensed, and strong seriously alarmed for his friend's safety, there began among them a scene of great intemperance. at one point, when strong suddenly disclosed his acquaintance with german, it attained a high style of comedy; at another, when a pistol was most foolishly drawn, it bordered on drama; and it may be said to have ended in a mixed genus, when poor was finally packed into the corrugated iron gaol along with the forfeited ministers. meanwhile the captain of his boat, siteoni, of whom i shall have to tell again, had cleverly withdrawn the boat's-crew at an early stage of the quarrel. among the population beyond tamasese's marches, he collected a body of armed men, returned before dawn to leulumoenga, demolished the corrugated iron gaol, and liberated the hawaiian secretary and the rump of the rebel cabinet. no opposition was shown; and doubtless the rescue was connived at by brandeis, who had gained his point. poor had the face to complain the next day to becker; but to compete with becker in effrontery was labour lost. "you have been repeatedly warned, mr. poor, not to expose yourself among these savages," said he. not long after, the presence of the kaimiloa was made a casus belli by the germans; and the rough-and-tumble embassy withdrew, on borrowed money, to find their own government in hot water to the neck. the emperor's birthday. it is possible, and it is alleged, that the germans entered into the conference with hope. but it is certain they were resolved to remain prepared for either fate. and i take the liberty of believing that laupepa was not forgiven his duplicity; that, during this interval, he stood marked like a tree for felling; and that his conduct was daily scrutinised for further pretexts of offence. on the evening of the emperor's birthday, march 22nd, 1887, certain germans were congregated in a public bar. the season and the place considered, it is scarce cynical to assume they had been drinking; nor, so much being granted, can it be thought exorbitant to suppose them possibly in fault for the squabble that took place. a squabble, i say; but i am willing to call it a riot. and this was the new fault of laupepa; this it is that was described by a german commodore as "the trampling upon by malietoa of the german emperor." i pass the rhetoric by to examine the point of liability. four natives were brought to trial for this horrid fact: not before a native judge, but before the german magistrate of the tripartite municipality of apia. one was acquitted, one condemned for theft, and two for assault. on appeal, not to malietoa, but to the three consuls, the case was by a majority of two to one returned to the magistrate and (as far as i can learn) was then allowed to drop. consul becker himself laid the chief blame on one of the policemen of the municipality, a half-white of the name of scanlon. him he sought to have discharged, but was again baffled by his brother consuls. where, in all this, are we to find a corner of responsibility for the king of samoa? scanlon, the alleged author of the outrage, was a halfwhite; as becker was to learn to his cost, he claimed to be an american subject; and he was not even in the king's employment. apia, the scene of the outrage, was outside the king's jurisdiction by treaty; by the choice of germany, he was not so much as allowed to fly his flag there. and the denial of justice (if justice were denied) rested with the consuls of britain and the states. but when a dog is to be beaten, any stick will serve. in the meanwhile, on the proposition of mr. bayard, the washington conference on samoan affairs was adjourned till autumn, so that "the ministers of germany and great britain might submit the protocols to their respective governments." "you propose that the conference is to adjourn and not to be broken up?" asked sir lionel west. "to adjourn for the reasons stated," replied bayard. this was on july 26th; and, twenty-nine days later, by wednesday the 24th of august, germany had practically seized samoa. for this flagrant breach of faith one excuse is openly alleged; another whispered. it is openly alleged that bayard had shown himself impracticable; it is whispered that the hawaiian embassy was an expression of american intrigue, and that the germans only did as they were done by. the sufficiency of these excuses may be left to the discretion of the reader. but, however excused, the breach of faith was public and express; it must have been deliberately predetermined and it was resented in the states as a deliberate insult. by the middle of august 1887 there were five sail of german warships in apia bay: the bismarck, of 3000 tons displacement; the carola, the sophie, and the olga, all considerable ships; and the beautiful adler, which lies there to this day, kanted on her beam, dismantled, scarlet with rust, the day showing through her ribs. they waited inactive, as a burglar waits till the patrol goes by. and on the 23rd, when the mail had left for sydney, when the eyes of the world were withdrawn, and samoa plunged again for a period of weeks into her original island-obscurity, becker opened his guns. the policy was too cunning to seem dignified; it gave to conduct which would otherwise have seemed bold and even brutally straightforward, the appearance of a timid ambuscade; and helped to shake men's reliance on the word of germany. on the day named, an ultimatum reached malietoa at afenga, whither he had retired months before to avoid friction. a fine of one thousand dollars and an ifo, or public humiliation, were demanded for the affair of the emperor's birthday. twelve thousand dollars were to be "paid quickly" for thefts from german plantations in the course of the last four years. "it is my opinion that there is nothing just or correct in samoa while you are at the head of the government," concluded becker. "i shall be at afenga in the morning of tomorrow, wednesday, at 11 a.m." the blow fell on laupepa (in his own expression) "out of the bush"; the dilatory fellow had seen things hang over so long, he had perhaps begun to suppose they might hang over for ever; and here was ruin at the door. he rode at once to apia, and summoned his chiefs. the council lasted all night long. many voices were for defiance. but laupepa had grown inured to a policy of procrastination; and the answer ultimately drawn only begged for delay till saturday, the 27th. so soon as it was signed, the king took horse and fled in the early morning to afenga; the council hastily dispersed; and only three chiefs, selu, seumanu, and le mamea, remained by the government building, tremulously expectant of the result. by seven the letter was received. by 7.30 becker arrived in person, inquired for laupepa, was evasively answered, and declared war on the spot. before eight, the germans (seven hundred men and six guns) came ashore and seized and hoisted german colours on the government building. the three chiefs had made good haste to escape; but a considerable booty was made of government papers, fire-arms, and some seventeen thousand cartridges. then followed a scene which long rankled in the minds of the white inhabitants, when the german marines raided the town in search of malietoa, burst into private houses, and were accused (i am willing to believe on slender grounds) of violence to private persons. on the morrow, the 25th, one of the german war-ships, which had been despatched to leulumoenga over night re-entered the bay, flying the tamasese colours at the fore. the new king was given a royal salute of twenty-one guns, marched through the town by the commodore and a german guard of honour, and established on mulinuu with two or three hundred warriors. becker announced his recognition to the other consuls. these replied by proclaiming malietoa, and in the usual mealy-mouthed manner advised samoans to do nothing. on the 27th martial law was declared; and on the 1st september the german squadron dispersed about the group, bearing along with them the proclamations of the new king. tamasese was now a great man, to have five iron war-ships for his post-runners. but the moment was critical. the revolution had to be explained, the chiefs persuaded to assemble at a fono summoned for the 15th; and the ships carried not only a store of printed documents, but a squad of tamasese orators upon their round. such was the german coup d'etat. they had declared war with a squadron of five ships upon a single man; that man, late king of the group, was in hiding on the mountains; and their own nominee, backed by german guns and bayonets, sat in his stead in mulinuu. one of the first acts of malietoa, on fleeing to the bush, was to send for mataafa twice: "i am alone in the bush; if you do not come quickly you will find me bound." it is to be understood the men were near kinsmen, and had (if they had nothing else) a common jealousy. at the urgent cry, mataafa set forth from falefa, and came to mulinuu to tamasese. "what is this that you and the german commodore have decided on doing?" he inquired. "i am going to obey the german consul," replied tamasese, "whose wish it is that i should be the king and that all samoa should assemble here." "do not pursue in wrath against malietoa," said mataafa "but try to bring about a compromise, and form a united government." "very well," said tamasese, "leave it to me, and i will try." from mulinuu, mataafa went on board the bismarck, and was graciously received. "probably," said the commodore, "we shall bring about a reconciliation of all samoa through you"; and then asked his visitor if he bore any affection to malietoa. "yes," said mataafa. "and to tamasese?" "to him also; and if you desire the weal of samoa, you will allow either him or me to bring about a reconciliation." "if it were my will," said the commodore, "i would do as you say. but i have no will in the matter. i have instructions from the kaiser, and i cannot go back again from what i have been sent to do." "i thought you would be commanded," said mataafa, "if you brought about the weal of samoa." "i will tell you," said the commodore. "all shall go quietly. but there is one thing that must be done: malietoa must be deposed. i will do nothing to him beyond; he will only be kept on board for a couple of months and be well treated, just as we germans did to the french chief [napoleon iii.] some time ago, whom we kept a while and cared for well." becker was no less explicit: war, he told sewall, should not cease till the germans had custody of malietoa and tamasese should be recognised. meantime, in the malietoa provinces, a profound impression was received. people trooped to their fugitive sovereign in the bush. many natives in apia brought their treasures, and stored them in the houses of white friends. the tamasese orators were sometimes ill received. over in savaii, they found the village of satupaitea deserted, save for a few lads at cricket. these they harangued, and were rewarded with ironical applause; and the proclamation, as soon as they had departed, was torn down. for this offence the village was ultimately burned by german sailors, in a very decent and orderly style, on the 3rd september. this was the dinner-bell of the fono on the 15th. the threat conveyed in the terms of the summons "if any government district does not quickly obey this direction, i will make war on that government district" was thus commented on and reinforced. and the meeting was in consequence well attended by chiefs of all parties. they found themselves unarmed among the armed warriors of tamasese and the marines of the german squadron, and under the guns of five strong ships. brandeis rose; it was his first open appearance, the german firm signing its revolutionary work. his words were few and uncompromising: "great are my thanks that the chiefs and heads of families of the whole of samoa are assembled here this day. it is strictly forbidden that any discussion should take place as to whether it is good or not that tamasese is king of samoa, whether at this fono or at any future fono. i place for your signature the following: 'we inform all the people of samoa of what follows: (1) the government of samoa has been assumed by king tuiaana tamasese. (2) by order of the king, it was directed that a fono should take place to-day, composed of the chiefs and heads of families, and we have obeyed the summons. we have signed our names under this, 15th september 1887." needs must under all these guns; and the paper was signed, but not without open sullenness. the bearing of mataafa in particular was long remembered against him by the germans. "do you not see the king?" said the commodore reprovingly. "his father was no king," was the bold answer. a bolder still has been printed, but this is mataafa's own recollection of the passage. on the next day, the chiefs were all ordered back to shake hands with tamasese. again they obeyed; but again their attitude was menacing, and some, it is said, audibly murmured as they gave their hands. it is time to follow the poor sheet of paper (literal meaning of laupepa), who was now to be blown so broadly over the face of earth. as soon as news reached him of the declaration of war, he fled from afenga to tanunga-manono, a hamlet in the bush, about a mile and a half behind apia, where he lurked some days. on the 24th, selu, his secretary, despatched to the american consul an anxious appeal, his majesty's "cry and prayer" in behalf of "this weak people." by august 30th, the germans had word of his lurkingplace, surrounded the hamlet under cloud of night, and in the early morning burst with a force of sailors on the houses. the people fled on all sides, and were fired upon. one boy was shot in the hand, the first blood of the war. but the king was nowhere to be found; he had wandered farther, over the woody mountains, the backbone of the land, towards siumu and safata. here, in a safe place, he built himself a town in the forest, where he received a continual stream of visitors and messengers. day after day the german blue-jackets were employed in the hopeless enterprise of beating the forests for the fugitive; day after day they were suffered to pass unhurt under the guns of ambushed samoans; day after day they returned, exhausted and disappointed, to apia. seumanu tafa, high chief of apia, was known to be in the forest with the king; his wife, fatuila, was seized, imprisoned in the german hospital, and when it was thought her spirit was sufficiently reduced, brought up for cross-examination. the wise lady confined herself in answer to a single word. "is your husband near apia?" "yes." "is he far from apia?" "yes." "is he with the king?" "yes." "are he and the king in different places?" "yes." whereupon the witness was discharged. about the 10th of september, laupepa was secretly in apia at the american consulate with two companions. the german pickets were close set and visited by a strong patrol; and on his return, his party was observed and hailed and fired on by a sentry. they ran away on all fours in the dark, and so doing plumped upon another sentry, whom laupepa grappled and flung in a ditch; for the sheet of paper, although infirm of character, is, like most samoans, of an able body. the second sentry (like the first) fired after his assailants at random in the dark; and the two shots awoke the curiosity of apia. on the afternoon of the 16th, the day of the hand-shakings, suatele, a high chief, despatched two boys across the island with a letter. they were most of the night upon the road; it was near three in the morning before the sentries in the camp of malietoa beheld their lantern drawing near out of the wood; but the king was at once awakened. the news was decisive and the letter peremptory; if malietoa did not give himself up before ten on the morrow, he was told that great sorrows must befall his country. i have not been able to draw laupepa as a hero; but he is a man of certain virtues, which the germans had now given him an occasion to display. without hesitation he sacrificed himself, penned his touching farewell to samoa, and making more expedition than the messengers, passed early behind apia to the banks of the vaisingano. as he passed, he detached a messenger to mataafa at the catholic mission. mataafa followed by the same road, and the pair met at the riverside and went and sat together in a house. all present were in tears. "do not let us weep," said the talking man, lauati. "we have no cause for shame. we do not yield to tamasese, but to the invincible strangers." the departing king bequeathed the care of his country to mataafa; and when the latter sought to console him with the commodore's promises, he shook his head, and declared his assurance that he was going to a life of exile, and perhaps to death. about two o'clock the meeting broke up; mataafa returned to the catholic mission by the back of the town; and malietoa proceeded by the beach road to the german naval hospital, where he was received (as he owns, with perfect civility) by brandeis. about three, becker brought him forth again. as they went to the wharf, the people wept and clung to their departing monarch. a boat carried him on board the bismarck, and he vanished from his countrymen. yet it was long rumoured that he still lay in the harbour; and so late as october 7th, a boy, who had been paddling round the carola, professed to have seen and spoken with him. here again the needless mystery affected by the germans bitterly disserved them. the uncertainty which thus hung over laupepa's fate, kept his name continually in men's mouths. the words of his farewell rang in their ears: "to all samoa: on account of my great love to my country and my great affection to all samoa, this is the reason that i deliver up my body to the german government. that government may do as they wish to me. the reason of this is, because i do not desire that the blood of samoa shall be spilt for me again. but i do not know what is my offence which has caused their anger to me and to my country." and then, apostrophising the different provinces: "tuamasanga, farewell! manono and family, farewell! so, also, salafai, tutuila, aana, and atua, farewell! if we do not again see one another in this world, pray that we may be again together above." so the sheep departed with the halo of a saint, and men thought of him as of some king arthur snatched into avilion. on board the bismarck, the commodore shook hands with him, told him he was to be "taken away from all the chiefs with whom he had been accustomed," and had him taken to the wardroom under guard. the next day he was sent to sea in the adler. there went with him his brother moli, one meisake, and one alualu, half-caste german, to interpret. he was respectfully used; he dined in the stern with the officers, but the boys dined "near where the fire was." they come to a "newly-formed place" in australia, where the albatross was lying, and a british ship, which he knew to be a man-of-war "because the officers were nicely dressed and wore epaulettes." here he was transhipped, "in a boat with a screen," which he supposed was to conceal him from the british ship; and on board the albatross was sent below and told he must stay there till they had sailed. later, however, he was allowed to come on deck, where he found they had rigged a screen (perhaps an awning) under which he walked, looking at "the newly-formed settlement," and admiring a big house "where he was sure the governor lived." from australia, they sailed some time, and reached an anchorage where a consulgeneral came on board, and where laupepa was only allowed on deck at night. he could then see the lights of a town with wharves; he supposes cape town. off the cameroons they anchored or lay-to, far at sea, and sent a boat ashore to see (he supposes) that there was no british man-of-war. it was the next morning before the boat returned, when the albatross stood in and came to anchor near another german ship. here alualu came to him on deck and told him this was the place. "that is an astonishing thing," said he. "i thought i was to go to germany, i do not know what this means; i do not know what will be the end of it; my heart is troubled." whereupon alualu burst into tears. a little after, laupepa was called below to the captain and the governor. the last addressed him: "this is my own place, a good place, a warm place. my house is not yet finished, but when it is, you shall live in one of my rooms until i can make a house for you." then he was taken ashore and brought to a tall, iron house. "this house is regulated," said the governor; "there is no fire allowed to burn in it." in one part of this house, weapons of the government were hung up; there was a passage, and on the other side of the passage, fifty criminals were chained together, two and two, by the ankles. the windows were out of reach; and there was only one door, which was opened at six in the morning and shut again at six at night. all day he had his liberty, went to the baptist mission, and walked about viewing the negroes, who were "like the sand on the seashore" for number. at six they were called into the house and shut in for the night without beds or lights. "although they gave me no light," said he, with a smile, "i could see i was in a prison." good food was given him: biscuits, "tea made with warm water," beef, etc.; all excellent. once, in their walks, they spied a breadfruit tree bearing in the garden of an english merchant, ran back to the prison to get a shilling, and came and offered to purchase. "i am not going to sell breadfruit to you people," said the merchant; "come and take what you like." here malietoa interrupted himself to say it was the only tree bearing in the cameroons. "the governor had none, or he would have given it to me." on the passage from the cameroons to germany, he had great delight to see the cliffs of england. he saw "the rocks shining in the sun, and three hours later was surprised to find them sunk in the heavens." he saw also wharves and immense buildings; perhaps dover and its castle. in hamburg, after breakfast, mr. weber, who had now finally "ceased from troubling" samoa, came on board, and carried him ashore "suitably" in a steam launch to "a large house of the government," where he stayed till noon. at noon weber told him he was going to "the place where ships are anchored that go to samoa," and led him to "a very magnificent house, with carriages inside and a wonderful roof of glass"; to wit, the railway station. they were benighted on the train, and then went in "something with a house, drawn by horses, which had windows and many decks"; plainly an omnibus. here (at bremen or bremerhaven, i believe) they stayed some while in "a house of five hundred rooms"; then were got on board the nurnberg (as they understood) for samoa, anchored in england on a sunday, were joined en route by the famous dr. knappe, passed through "a narrow passage where they went very slow and which was just like a river," and beheld with exhilarated curiosity that red sea of which they had learned so much in their bibles. at last, "at the hour when the fires burn red," they came to a place where was a german man-of-war. laupepa was called, with one of the boys, on deck, when he found a german officer awaiting him, and a steam launch alongside, and was told he must now leave his brother and go elsewhere. "i cannot go like this," he cried. "you must let me see my brother and the other old men" a term of courtesy. knappe, who seems always to have been good-natured, revised his orders, and consented not only to an interview, but to allow moli to continue to accompany the king. so these two were carried to the man-of-war, and sailed many a day, still supposing themselves bound for samoa; and lo! she came to a country the like of which they had never dreamed of, and cast anchor in the great lagoon of jaluit; and upon that narrow land the exiles were set on shore. this was the part of his captivity on which he looked back with the most bitterness. it was the last, for one thing, and he was worn down with the long suspense, and terror, and deception. he could not bear the brackish water; and though "the germans were still good to him, and gave him beef and biscuit and tea," he suffered from the lack of vegetable food. such is the narrative of this simple exile. i have not sought to correct it by extraneous testimony. it is not so much the facts that are historical, as the man's attitude. no one could hear this tale as he originally told it in my hearing i think none can read it as here condensed and unadorned without admiring the fairness and simplicity of the samoan; and wondering at the want of heart or want of humour in so many successive civilised germans, that they should have continued to surround this infant with the secrecy of state. chapter iv brandeis september '87 to august '88 so tamasese was on the throne, and brandeis behind it; and i have now to deal with their brief and luckless reign. that it was the reign of brandeis needs not to be argued: the policy is throughout that of an able, over-hasty white, with eyes and ideas. but it should be borne in mind that he had a double task, and must first lead his sovereign, before he could begin to drive their common subjects. meanwhile, he himself was exposed (if all tales be true) to much dictation and interference, and to some "cumbrous aid," from the consulate and the firm. and to one of these aids, the suppression of the municipality, i am inclined to attribute his ultimate failure. the white enemies of the new regimen were of two classes. in the first stood moors and the employes of macarthur, the two chief rivals of the firm, who saw with jealousy a clerk (or a so-called clerk) of their competitors advanced to the chief power. the second class, that of the officials, numbered at first exactly one. wilson, the english acting consul, is understood to have held strict orders to help germany. commander leary, of the adams, the american captain, when he arrived, on the 16th october, and for some time after, seemed devoted to the german interest, and spent his days with a german officer, captain von widersheim, who was deservedly beloved by all who knew him. there remains the american consul-general, harold marsh sewall, a young man of high spirit and a generous disposition. he had obeyed the orders of his government with a grudge; and looked back on his past action with regret almost to be called repentance. from the moment of the declaration of war against laupepa, we find him standing forth in bold, consistent, and sometimes rather captious opposition, stirring up his government at home with clear and forcible despatches, and on the spot grasping at every opportunity to thrust a stick into the german wheels. for some while, he and moors fought their difficult battle in conjunction; in the course of which, first one, and then the other, paid a visit home to reason with the authorities at washington; and during the consul's absence, there was found an american clerk in apia, william blacklock, to perform the duties of the office with remarkable ability and courage. the three names just brought together, sewall, moors, and blacklock, make the head and front of the opposition; if tamasese fell, if brandeis was driven forth, if the treaty of berlin was signed, theirs is the blame or the credit. to understand the feelings of self-reproach and bitterness with which sewall took the field, the reader must see laupepa's letter of farewell to the consuls of england and america. it is singular that this far from brilliant or dignified monarch, writing in the forest, in heaviness of spirit and under pressure for time, should have left behind him not only one, but two remarkable and most effective documents. the farewell to his people was touching; the farewell to the consuls, for a man of the character of sewall, must have cut like a whip. "when the chief tamasese and others first moved the present troubles," he wrote, "it was my wish to punish them and put an end to the rebellion; but i yielded to the advice of the british and american consuls. assistance and protection was repeatedly promised to me and my government, if i abstained from bringing war upon my country. relying upon these promises, i did not put down the rebellion. now i find that war has been made upon me by the emperor of germany, and tamasese has been proclaimed king of samoa. i desire to remind you of the promises so frequently made by your government, and trust that you will so far redeem them as to cause the lives and liberties of my chiefs and people to be respected." sewall's immediate adversary was, of course, becker. i have formed an opinion of this gentleman, largely from his printed despatches, which i am at a loss to put in words. astute, ingenious, capable, at moments almost witty with a kind of glacial wit in action, he displayed in the course of this affair every description of capacity but that which is alone useful and which springs from a knowledge of men's natures. it chanced that one of sewall's early moves played into his hands, and he was swift to seize and to improve the advantage. the neutral territory and the tripartite municipality of apia were eyesores to the german consulate and brandeis. by landing tamasese's two or three hundred warriors at mulinuu, as becker himself owns, they had infringed the treaties, and sewall entered protest twice. there were two ways of escaping this dilemma: one was to withdraw the warriors; the other, by some hocus-pocus, to abrogate the neutrality. and the second had subsidiary advantages: it would restore the taxes of the richest district in the islands to the samoan king; and it would enable them to substitute over the royal seat the flag of germany for the new flag of tamasese. it is true (and it was the subject of much remark) that these two could hardly be distinguished by the naked eye; but their effects were different. to seat the puppet king on german land and under german colours, so that any rebellion was constructive war on germany, was a trick apparently invented by becker, and which we shall find was repeated and persevered in till the end. otto martin was at this time magistrate in the municipality. the post was held in turn by the three nationalities; martin had served far beyond his term, and should have been succeeded months before by an american. to make the change it was necessary to hold a meeting of the municipal board, consisting of the three consuls, each backed by an assessor. and for some time these meetings had been evaded or refused by the german consul. as long as it was agreed to continue martin, becker had attended regularly; as soon as sewall indicated a wish for his removal, becker tacitly suspended the municipality by refusing to appear. this policy was now the more necessary; for if the whole existence of the municipality were a check on the freedom of the new government, it was plainly less so when the power to enforce and punish lay in german hands. for some while back the malietoa flag had been flown on the municipal building: becker denies this; i am sorry; my information obliges me to suppose he is in error. sewall, with post-mortem loyalty to the past, insisted that this flag should be continued. and becker immediately made his point. he declared, justly enough, that the proposal was hostile, and argued that it was impossible he should attend a meeting under a flag with which his sovereign was at war. upon one occasion of urgency, he was invited to meet the two other consuls at the british consulate; even this he refused; and for four months the municipality slumbered, martin still in office. in the month of october, in consequence, the british and american ratepayers announced they would refuse to pay. becker doubtless rubbed his hands. on saturday, the 10th, the chief tamaseu, a malietoa man of substance and good character, was arrested on a charge of theft believed to be vexatious, and cast by martin into the municipal prison. he sent to moors, who was his tenant and owed him money at the time, for bail. moors applied to sewall, ranking consul. after some search, martin was found and refused to consider bail before the monday morning. whereupon sewall demanded the keys from the gaoler, accepted moors's verbal recognisances, and set tamaseu free. things were now at a deadlock; and becker astonished every one by agreeing to a meeting on the 14th. it seems he knew what to expect. writing on the 13th at least, he prophesies that the meeting will be held in vain, that the municipality must lapse, and the government of tamasese step in. on the 14th, sewall left his consulate in time, and walked some part of the way to the place of meeting in company with wilson, the english pro-consul. but he had forgotten a paper, and in an evil hour returned for it alone. wilson arrived without him, and becker broke up the meeting for want of a quorum. there was some unedifying disputation as to whether he had waited ten or twenty minutes, whether he had been officially or unofficially informed by wilson that sewall was on the way, whether the statement had been made to himself or to weber in answer to a question, and whether he had heard wilson's answer or only weber's question: all otiose; if he heard the question, he was bound to have waited for the answer; if he heard it not, he should have put it himself; and it was the manifest truth that he rejoiced in his occasion. "sir," he wrote to sewall, "i have the honour to inform you that, to my regret, i am obliged to consider the municipal government to be provisionally in abeyance since you have withdrawn your consent to the continuation of mr. martin in his position as magistrate, and since you have refused to take part in the meeting of the municipal board agreed to for the purpose of electing a magistrate. the government of the town and district of the municipality rests, as long as the municipality is in abeyance, with the samoan government. the samoan government has taken over the administration, and has applied to the commander of the imperial german squadron for assistance in the preservation of good order." this letter was not delivered until 4 p.m. by three, sailors had been landed. already german colours flew over tamasese's headquarters at mulinuu, and german guards had occupied the hospital, the german consulate, and the municipal gaol and courthouse, where they stood to arms under the flag of tamasese. the same day sewall wrote to protest. receiving no reply, he issued on the morrow a proclamation bidding all americans look to himself alone. on the 26th, he wrote again to becker, and on the 27th received this genial reply: "sir, your high favour of the 26th of this month, i give myself the honour of acknowledging. at the same time i acknowledge the receipt of your high favour of the 14th october in reply to my communication of the same date, which contained the information of the suspension of the arrangements for the municipal government." there the correspondence ceased. and on the 18th january came the last step of this irritating intrigue when tamasese appointed a judge and the judge proved to be martin. thus was the adventure of the castle municipal achieved by sir becker the chivalrous. the taxes of apia, the gaol, the police, all passed into the hands of tamasese-brandeis; a german was secured upon the bench; and the german flag might wave over her puppet unquestioned. but there is a law of human nature which diplomatists should be taught at school, and it seems they are not; that men can tolerate bare injustice, but not the combination of injustice and subterfuge. hence the chequered career of the thimble-rigger. had the municipality been seized by open force, there might have been complaint, it would not have aroused the same lasting grudge. this grudge was an ill gift to bring to brandeis, who had trouble enough in front of him without. he was an alien, he was supported by the guns of alien warships, and he had come to do an alien's work, highly needful for samoa, but essentially unpopular with all samoans. the law to be enforced, causes of dispute between white and brown to be eliminated, taxes to be raised, a central power created, the country opened up, the native race taught industry: all these were detestable to the natives, and to all of these he must set his hand. the more i learn of his brief term of rule, the more i learn to admire him, and to wish we had his like. in the face of bitter native opposition, he got some roads accomplished. he set up beacons. the taxes he enforced with necessary vigour. by the 6th of january, aua and fangatonga, districts in tutuila, having made a difficulty, brandeis is down at the island in a schooner, with the adler at his heels, seizes the chief maunga, fines the recalcitrant districts in three hundred dollars for expenses, and orders all to be in by april 20th, which if it is not, "not one thing will be done," he proclaimed, "but war declared against you, and the principal chiefs taken to a distant island." he forbade mortgages of copra, a frequent source of trickery and quarrel; and to clear off those already contracted, passed a severe but salutary law. each individual or family was first to pay off its own obligation; that settled, the free man was to pay for the indebted village, the free village for the indebted province, and one island for another. samoa, he declared, should be free of debt within a year. had he given it three years, and gone more gently, i believe it might have been accomplished. to make it the more possible, he sought to interdict the natives from buying cotton stuffs and to oblige them to dress (at least for the time) in their own tapa. he laid the beginnings of a royal territorial army. the first draft was in his hands drilling. but it was not so much on drill that he depended; it was his hope to kindle in these men an esprit de corps, which should weaken the old local jealousies and bonds, and found a central or national party in the islands. looking far before, and with a wisdom beyond that of many merchants, he had condemned the single dependence placed on copra for the national livelihood. his recruits, even as they drilled, were taught to plant cacao. each, his term of active service finished, should return to his own land and plant and cultivate a stipulated area. thus, as the young men continued to pass through the army, habits of discipline and industry, a central sentiment, the principles of the new culture, and actual gardens of cacao, should be concurrently spread over the face of the islands. tamasese received, including his household expenses, 1960 dollars a year; brandeis, 2400. all such disproportions are regrettable, but this is not extreme: we have seen horses of a different colour since then. and the tamaseseites, with true samoan ostentation, offered to increase the salary of their white premier: an offer he had the wisdom and good feeling to refuse. a european chief of police received twelve hundred. there were eight head judges, one to each province, and appeal lay from the district judge to the provincial, thence to mulinuu. from all salaries (i gather) a small monthly guarantee was withheld. the army was to cost from three to four thousand, apia (many whites refusing to pay taxes since the suppression of the municipality) might cost three thousand more: sir becker's high feat of arms coming expensive (it will be noticed) even in money. the whole outlay was estimated at twenty-seven thousand; and the revenue forty thousand: a sum samoa is well able to pay. such were the arrangements and some of the ideas of this strong, ardent, and sanguine man. of criticisms upon his conduct, beyond the general consent that he was rather harsh and in too great a hurry, few are articulate. the native paper of complaints was particularly childish. out of twenty-three counts, the first two refer to the private character of brandeis and tamasese. three complain that samoan officials were kept in the dark as to the finances; one, of the tapa law; one, of the direct appointment of chiefs by tamasese-brandeis, the sort of mistake into which europeans in the south seas fall so readily; one, of the enforced labour of chiefs; one, of the taxes; and one, of the roads. this i may give in full from the very lame translation in the american white book. "the roads that were made were called the government roads; they were six fathoms wide. their making caused much damage to samoa's lands and what was planted on it. the samoans cried on account of their lands, which were taken high-handedly and abused. they again cried on account of the loss of what they had planted, which was now thrown away in a high-handed way, without any regard being shown or question asked of the owner of the land, or any compensation offered for the damage done. this was different with foreigners' land; in their case permission was first asked to make the roads; the foreigners were paid for any destruction made." the sting of this count was, i fancy, in the last clause. no less than six articles complain of the administration of the law; and i believe that was never satisfactory. brandeis told me himself he was never yet satisfied with any native judge. and men say (and it seems to fit in well with his hasty and eager character) that he would legislate by word of mouth; sometimes forget what he had said; and, on the same question arising in another province, decide it perhaps otherwise. i gather, on the whole, our artillery captain was not great in law. two articles refer to a matter i must deal with more at length, and rather from the point of view of the white residents. the common charge against brandeis was that of favouring the german firm. coming as he did, this was inevitable. weber had bought steinberger with hard cash; that was matter of history. the present government he did not even require to buy, having founded it by his intrigues, and introduced the premier to samoa through the doors of his own office. and the effect of the initial blunder was kept alive by the chatter of the clerks in bar-rooms, boasting themselves of the new government and prophesying annihilation to all rivals. the time of raising a tax is the harvest of the merchants; it is the time when copra will be made, and must be sold; and the intention of the german firm, first in the time of steinberger, and again in april and may, 1888, with brandeis, was to seize and handle the whole operation. their chief rivals were the messrs. macarthur; and it seems beyond question that provincial governors more than once issued orders forbidding samoans to take money from "the new zealand firm." these, when they were brought to his notice, brandeis disowned, and he is entitled to be heard. no man can live long in samoa and not have his honesty impugned. but the accusations against brandeis's veracity are both few and obscure. i believe he was as straight as his sword. the governors doubtless issued these orders, but there were plenty besides brandeis to suggest them. every wandering clerk from the firm's office, every plantation manager, would be dinning the same story in the native ear. and here again the initial blunder hung about the neck of brandeis, a ton's weight. the natives, as well as the whites, had seen their premier masquerading on a stool in the office; in the eyes of the natives, as well as in those of the whites, he must always have retained the mark of servitude from that ill-judged passage; and they would be inclined to look behind and above him, to the great house of misi ueba. the government was like a vista of puppets. people did not trouble with tamasese, if they got speech with brandeis; in the same way, they might not always trouble to ask brandeis, if they had a hint direct from misi ueba. in only one case, though it seems to have had many developments, do i find the premier personally committed. the macarthurs claimed the copra of fasitotai on a district mortgage of three hundred dollars. the german firm accepted a mortgage of the whole province of aana, claimed the copra of fasitotai as that of a part of aana, and were supported by the government. here brandeis was false to his own principle, that personal and village debts should come before provincial. but the case occurred before the promulgation of the law, and was, as a matter of fact, the cause of it; so the most we can say is that he changed his mind, and changed it for the better. if the history of his government be considered how it originated in an intrigue between the firm and the consulate, and was (for the firm's sake alone) supported by the consulate with foreign bayonets the existence of the least doubt on the man's action must seem marvellous. we should have looked to find him playing openly and wholly into their hands; that he did not, implies great independence and much secret friction; and i believe (if the truth were known) the firm would be found to have been disgusted with the stubbornness of its intended tool, and brandeis often impatient of the demands of his creators. but i may seem to exaggerate the degree of white opposition. and it is true that before fate overtook the brandeis government, it appeared to enjoy the fruits of victory in apia; and one dissident, the unconquerable moors, stood out alone to refuse his taxes. but the victory was in appearance only; the opposition was latent; it found vent in talk, and thus reacted on the natives; upon the least excuse, it was ready to flame forth again. and this is the more singular because some were far from out of sympathy with the native policy pursued. when i met captain brandeis, he was amazed at my attitude. "whom did you find in apia to tell you so much good of me?" he asked. i named one of my informants. "he?" he cried. "if he thought all that, why did he not help me?" i told him as well as i was able. the man was a merchant. he beheld in the government of brandeis a government created by and for the firm who were his rivals. if brandeis were minded to deal fairly, where was the probability that he would be allowed? if brandeis insisted and were strong enough to prevail, what guarantee that, as soon as the government were fairly accepted, brandeis might not be removed? here was the attitude of the hour; and i am glad to find it clearly set forth in a despatch of sewall's, june 18th, 1888, when he commends the law against mortgages, and goes on: "whether the author of this law will carry out the good intentions which he professes whether he will be allowed to do so, if he desires, against the opposition of those who placed him in power and protect him in the possession of it may well be doubted." brandeis had come to apia in the firm's livery. even while he promised neutrality in commerce, the clerks were prating a different story in the bar-rooms; and the late high feat of the knight-errant, becker, had killed all confidence in germans at the root. by these three impolicies, the german adventure in samoa was defeated. i imply that the handful of whites were the true obstacle, not the thousands of malcontent samoans; for had the whites frankly accepted brandeis, the path of germany was clear, and the end of their policy, however troublesome might be its course, was obvious. but this is not to say that the natives were content. in a sense, indeed, their opposition was continuous. there will always be opposition in samoa when taxes are imposed; and the deportation of malietoa stuck in men's throats. tuiatua mataafa refused to act under the new government from the beginning, and tamasese usurped his place and title. as early as february, i find him signing himself "tuiaana tuiatua tamasese," the first step on a dangerous path. asi, like mataafa, disclaimed his chiefship and declared himself a private person; but he was more rudely dealt with. german sailors surrounded his house in the night, burst in, and dragged the women out of the mosquito nets an offence against samoan manners. no asi was to be found; but at last they were shown his fishing-lights on the reef, rowed out, took him as he was, and carried him on board a man-of-war, where he was detained some while between-decks. at last, january 16th, after a farewell interview over the ship's side with his wife, he was discharged into a ketch, and along with two other chiefs, maunga and tuiletufunga, deported to the marshalls. the blow struck fear upon all sides. le mamea (a very able chief) was secretly among the malcontents. his family and followers murmured at his weakness; but he continued, throughout the duration of the government, to serve brandeis with trembling. a circus coming to apia, he seized at the pretext for escape, and asked leave to accept an engagement in the company. "i will not allow you to make a monkey of yourself," said brandeis; and the phrase had a success throughout the islands, pungent expressions being so much admired by the natives that they cannot refrain from repeating them, even when they have been levelled at themselves. the assumption of the atua name spread discontent in that province; many chiefs from thence were convicted of disaffection, and condemned to labour with their hands upon the roads a great shock to the samoan sense of the becoming, which was rendered the more sensible by the death of one of the number at his task. mataafa was involved in the same trouble. his disaffected speech at a meeting of atua chiefs was betrayed by the girls that made the kava, and the man of the future was called to apia on safe-conduct, but, after an interview, suffered to return to his lair. the peculiarly tender treatment of mataafa must be explained by his relationship to tamasese. laupepa was of malietoa blood. the hereditary retainers of the tupua would see him exiled even with some complacency. but mataafa was tupua himself; and tupua men would probably have murmured, and would perhaps have mutinied, had he been harshly dealt with. the native opposition, i say, was in a sense continuous. and it kept continuously growing. the sphere of brandeis was limited to mulinuu and the north central quarters of upolu practically what is shown upon the map opposite. there the taxes were expanded; in the out-districts, men paid their money and saw no return. here the eye and hand of the dictator were ready to correct the scales of justice; in the out-districts, all things lay at the mercy of the native magistrates, and their oppressions increased with the course of time and the experience of impunity. in the spring of the year, a very intelligent observer had occasion to visit many places in the island of savaii. "our lives are not worth living," was the burthen of the popular complaint. "we are groaning under the oppression of these men. we would rather die than continue to endure it." on his return to apia, he made haste to communicate his impressions to brandeis. brandeis replied in an epigram: "where there has been anarchy in a country, there must be oppression for a time." but unfortunately the terms of the epigram may be reversed; and personal supervision would have been more in season than wit. the same observer who conveyed to him this warning thinks that, if brandeis had himself visited the districts and inquired into complaints, the blow might yet have been averted and the government saved. at last, upon a certain unconstitutional act of tamasese, the discontent took life and fire. the act was of his own conception; the dull dog was ambitious. brandeis declares he would not be dissuaded; perhaps his adviser did not seriously try, perhaps did not dream that in that welter of contradictions, the samoan constitution, any one point would be considered sacred. i have told how tamasese assumed the title of tuiatua. in august 1888 a year after his installation, he took a more formidable step and assumed that of malietoa. this name, as i have said, is of peculiar honour; it had been given to, it had never been taken from, the exiled laupepa; those in whose grant it lay, stood punctilious upon their rights; and tamasese, as the representative of their natural opponents, the tupua line, was the last who should have had it. and there was yet more, though i almost despair to make it thinkable by europeans. certain old mats are handed down, and set huge store by; they may be compared to coats of arms or heirlooms among ourselves; and to the horror of more than one-half of samoa, tamasese, the head of the tupua, began collecting malietoa mats. it was felt that the cup was full, and men began to prepare secretly for rebellion. the history of the month of august is unknown to whites; it passed altogether in the covert of the woods or in the stealthy councils of samoans. one ominous sign was to be noted; arms and ammunition began to be purchased or inquired about; and the more wary traders ordered fresh consignments of material of war. but the rest was silence; the government slept in security; and brandeis was summoned at last from a public dinner, to find rebellion organised, the woods behind apia full of insurgents, and a plan prepared, and in the very article of execution, to surprise and seize mulinuu. the timely discovery averted all; and the leaders hastily withdrew towards the south side of the island, leaving in the bush a rear-guard under a young man of the name of saifaleupolu. according to some accounts, it scarce numbered forty; the leader was no great chief, but a handsome, industrious lad who seems to have been much beloved. and upon this obstacle brandeis fell. it is the man's fault to be too impatient of results; his public intention to free samoa of all debt within the year, depicts him; and instead of continuing to temporise and let his enemies weary and disperse, he judged it politic to strike a blow. he struck it, with what seemed to be success, and the sound of it roused samoa to rebellion. about two in the morning of august 31st, apia was wakened by men marching. day came, and brandeis and his war-party were already long disappeared in the woods. all morning belated tamaseseites were still to be seen running with their guns. all morning shots were listened for in vain; but over the top of the forest, far up the mountain, smoke was for some time observed to hang. about ten a dead man was carried in, lashed under a pole like a dead pig, his rosary (for he was a catholic) hanging nearly to the ground. next came a young fellow wounded, sitting in a rope swung from a pole; two fellows bearing him, two running behind for a relief. at last about eleven, three or four heavy volleys and a great shouting were heard from the bush town tanungamanono; the affair was over, the victorious force, on the march back, was there celebrating its victory by the way. presently after, it marched through apia, five or six hundred strong, in tolerable order and strutting with the ludicrous assumption of the triumphant islander. women who had been buying bread ran and gave them loaves. at the tail end came brandeis himself, smoking a cigar, deadly pale, and with perhaps an increase of his usual nervous manner. one spoke to him by the way. he expressed his sorrow the action had been forced on him. "poor people, it's all the worse for them!" he said. "it'll have to be done another way now." and it was supposed by his hearer that he referred to intervention from the german war-ships. he meant, he said, to put a stop to head-hunting; his men had taken two that day, he added, but he had not suffered them to bring them in, and they had been left in tanungamanono. thither my informant rode, was attracted by the sound of walling, and saw in a house the two heads washed and combed, and the sister of one of the dead lamenting in the island fashion and kissing the cold face. soon after, a small grave was dug, the heads were buried in a beef box, and the pastor read the service. the body of saifaleupolu himself was recovered unmutilated, brought down from the forest, and buried behind apia. the same afternoon, the men of vaimaunga were ordered to report in mulinuu, where tamasese's flag was half-masted for the death of a chief in the skirmish. vaimaunga is that district of taumasanga which includes the bay and the foothills behind apia; and both province and district are strong malietoa. not one man, it is said, obeyed the summons. night came, and the town lay in unusual silence; no one abroad; the blinds down around the native houses, the men within sleeping on their arms; the old women keeping watch in pairs. and in the course of the two following days all vaimaunga was gone into the bush, the very gaoler setting free his prisoners and joining them in their escape. hear the words of the chiefs in the 23rd article of their complaint: "some of the chiefs fled to the bush from fear of being reported, fear of german menof-war, constantly being accused, etc., and brandeis commanded that they were to be shot on sight. this act was carried out by brandeis on the 31st day of august, 1888. after this we evaded these laws; we could not stand them; our patience was worn out with the constant wickedness of tamasese and brandeis. we were tired out and could stand no longer the acts of these two men." so through an ill-timed skirmish, two severed heads, and a dead body, the rule of brandeis came to a sudden end. we shall see him a while longer fighting for existence in a losing battle; but his government take it for all in all, the most promising that has ever been in these unlucky islands was from that hour a piece of history. chapter v the battle of matautu september 1888 the revolution had all the character of a popular movement. many of the high chiefs were detained in mulinuu; the commons trooped to the bush under inferior leaders. a camp was chosen near faleula, threatening mulinuu, well placed for the arrival of recruits and close to a german plantation from which the force could be subsisted. manono came, all tuamasanga, much of savaii, and part of aana, tamasese's own government and titular seat. both sides were arming. it was a brave day for the trader, though not so brave as some that followed, when a single cartridge is said to have been sold for twelve cents currency between nine and ten cents gold. yet even among the traders a strong party feeling reigned, and it was the common practice to ask a purchaser upon which side he meant to fight. on september 5th, brandeis published a letter: "to the chiefs of tuamasanga, manono, and faasaleleanga in the bush: chiefs, by authority of his majesty tamasese, the king of samoa, i make known to you all that the german man-of-war is about to go together with a samoan fleet for the purpose of burning manono. after this island is all burnt, 'tis good if the people return to manono and live quiet. to the people of faasaleleanga i say, return to your houses and stop there. the same to those belonging to tuamasanga. if you obey this instruction, then you will all be forgiven; if you do not obey, then all your villages will be burnt like manono. these instructions are made in truth in the sight of god in the heaven." the same morning, accordingly, the adler steamed out of the bay with a force of tamasese warriors and some native boats in tow, the samoan fleet in question. manono was shelled; the tamasese warriors, under the conduct of a manono traitor, who paid before many days the forfeit of his blood, landed and did some damage, but were driven away by the sight of a force returning from the mainland; no one was hurt, for the women and children, who alone remained on the island, found a refuge in the bush; and the adler and her acolytes returned the same evening. the letter had been energetic; the performance fell below the programme. the demonstration annoyed and yet re-assured the insurgents, and it fully disclosed to the germans a new enemy. captain yon widersheim had been relieved. his successor, captain fritze, was an officer of a different stamp. i have nothing to say of him but good; he seems to have obeyed the consul's requisitions with secret distaste; his despatches were of admirable candour; but his habits were retired, he spoke little english, and was far indeed from inheriting von widersheim's close relations with commander leary. it is believed by germans that the american officer resented what he took to be neglect. i mention this, not because i believe it to depict commander leary, but because it is typical of a prevailing infirmity among germans in samoa. touchy themselves, they read all history in the light of personal affronts and tiffs; and i find this weakness indicated by the big thumb of bismarck, when he places "sensitiveness to small disrespects empfindlichkeit ueber mangel an respect," among the causes of the wild career of knappe. whatever the cause, at least, the natives had no sooner taken arms than leary appeared with violence upon that side. as early as the 3rd, he had sent an obscure but menacing despatch to brandeis. on the 6th, he fell on fritze in the matter of the manono bombardment. "the revolutionists," he wrote, "had an armed force in the field within a few miles of this harbour, when the vessels under your command transported the tamasese troops to a neighbouring island with the avowed intention of making war on the isolated homes of the women and children of the enemy. being the only other representative of a naval power now present in this harbour, for the sake of humanity i hereby respectfully and solemnly protest in the name of the united states of america and of the civilised world in general against the use of a national war-vessel for such services as were yesterday rendered by the german corvette adler." fritze's reply, to the effect that he is under the orders of the consul and has no right of choice, reads even humble; perhaps he was not himself vain of the exploit, perhaps not prepared to see it thus described in words. from that moment leary was in the front of the row. his name is diagnostic, but it was not required; on every step of his subsequent action in samoa irishman is writ large; over all his doings a malign spirit of humour presided. no malice was too small for him, if it were only funny. when night signals were made from mulinuu, he would sit on his own poop and confound them with gratuitous rockets. he was at the pains to write a letter and address it to "the high chief tamasese" a device as old at least as the wars of robert bruce in order to bother the officials of the german post-office, in whose hands he persisted in leaving it, although the address was death to them and the distribution of letters in samoa formed no part of their profession. his great masterwork of pleasantry, the scanlon affair, must be narrated in its place. and he was no less bold than comical. the adams was not supposed to be a match for the adler; there was no glory to be gained in beating her; and yet i have heard naval officers maintain she might have proved a dangerous antagonist in narrow waters and at short range. doubtless leary thought so. he was continually daring fritze to come on; and already, in a despatch of the 9th, i find becker complaining of his language in the hearing of german officials, and how he had declared that, on the adler again interfering, he would interfere himself, "if he went to the bottom for it und wenn sein schiff dabei zu grunde ginge." here is the style of opposition which has the merit of being frank, not that of being agreeable. becker was annoying, leary infuriating; there is no doubt that the tempers in the german consulate were highly ulcerated; and if war between the two countries did not follow, we must set down the praise to the forbearance of the german navy. this is not the last time that i shall have to salute the merits of that service. the defeat and death of saifaleupolu and the burning of manono had thus passed off without the least advantage to tamasese. but he still held the significant position of mulinuu, and brandeis was strenuous to make it good. the whole peninsula was surrounded with a breastwork; across the isthmus it was six feet high and strengthened with a ditch; and the beach was staked against landing. weber's land claim the same that now broods over the village in the form of a signboard then appeared in a more military guise; the german flag was hoisted, and german sailors manned the breastwork at the isthmus "to protect german property" and its trifling parenthesis, the king of samoa. much vigilance reigned and, in the island fashion, much wild firing. and in spite of all, desertion was for a long time daily. the detained high chiefs would go to the beach on the pretext of a natural occasion, plunge in the sea, and swimming across a broad, shallow bay of the lagoon, join the rebels on the faleula side. whole bodies of warriors, sometimes hundreds strong, departed with their arms and ammunition. on the 7th of september, for instance, the day after leary's letter, too and mataia left with their contingents, and the whole aana people returned home in a body to hold a parliament. ten days later, it is true, a part of them returned to their duty; but another part branched off by the way and carried their services, and tamasese's dear-bought guns, to faleula. on the 8th, there was a defection of a different kind, but yet sensible. the high chief seumanu had been still detained in mulinuu under anxious observation. his people murmured at his absence, threatened to "take away his name," and had already attempted a rescue. the adventure was now taken in hand by his wife faatulia, a woman of much sense and spirit and a strong partisan; and by her contrivance, seumanu gave his guardians the slip and rejoined his clan at faleula. this process of winnowing was of course counterbalanced by another of recruitment. but the harshness of european and military rule had made brandeis detested and tamasese unpopular with many; and the force on mulinuu is thought to have done little more than hold its own. mataafa sympathisers set it down at about two or three thousand. i have no estimate from the other side; but becker admits they were not strong enough to keep the field in the open. the political significance of mulinuu was great, but in a military sense the position had defects. if it was difficult to carry, it was easy to blockade: and to be hemmed in on that narrow finger of land were an inglorious posture for the monarch of samoa. the peninsula, besides, was scant of food and destitute of water. pressed by these considerations, brandeis extended his lines till he had occupied the whole foreshore of apia bay and the opposite point, matautu. his men were thus drawn out along some three nautical miles of irregular beach, everywhere with their backs to the sea, and without means of communication or mutual support except by water. the extension led to fresh sorrows. the tamasese men quartered themselves in the houses of the absent men of the vaimaunga. disputes arose with english and americans. leary interposed in a loud voice of menace. it was said the firm profited by the confusion to buttress up imperfect land claims; i am sure the other whites would not be far behind the firm. properties were fenced in, fences and houses were torn down, scuffles ensued. the german example at mulinuu was followed with laughable unanimity; wherever an englishman or an american conceived himself to have a claim, he set up the emblem of his country; and the beach twinkled with the flags of nations. all this, it will be observed, was going forward in that neutral territory, sanctified by treaty against the presence of armed samoans. the insurgents themselves looked on in wonder: on the 4th, trembling to transgress against the great powers, they had written for a delimitation of the eleele sa; and becker, in conversation with the british consul, replied that he recognised none. so long as tamasese held the ground, this was expedient. but suppose tamasese worsted, it might prove awkward for the stores, mills, and offices of a great german firm, thus bared of shelter by the act of their own consul. on the morning of the 9th september, just ten days after the death of saifaleupolu, mataafa, under the name of malietoa to'oa mataafa, was crowned king at faleula. on the 11th he wrote to the british and american consuls: "gentlemen, i write this letter to you two very humbly and entreatingly, on account of this difficulty that has come before me. i desire to know from you two gentlemen the truth where the boundaries of the neutral territory are. you will observe that i am now at vaimoso [a step nearer the enemy], and i have stopped here until i knew what you say regarding the neutral territory. i wish to know where i can go, and where the forbidden ground is, for i do not wish to go on any neutral territory, or on any foreigner's property. i do not want to offend any of the great powers. another thing i would like. would it be possible for you three consuls to make tamasese remove from german property? for i am in awe of going on german land." he must have received a reply embodying becker's renunciation of the principle, at once; for he broke camp the same day, and marched eastward through the bush behind apia. brandeis, expecting attack, sought to improve his indefensible position. he reformed his centre by the simple expedient of suppressing it. apia was evacuated. the two flanks, mulinuu and matautu, were still held and fortified, mulinuu (as i have said) to the isthmus, matautu on a line from the bayside to the little river fuisa. the centre was represented by the trajectory of a boat across the bay from one flank to another, and was held (we may say) by the german war-ship. mataafa decided (i am assured) to make a feint on matautu, induce brandeis to deplete mulinuu in support, and then fall upon and carry that. and there is no doubt in my mind that such a plan was bruited abroad, for nothing but a belief in it could explain the behaviour of brandeis on the 12th. that it was seriously entertained by mataafa i stoutly disbelieve; the german flag and sailors forbidding the enterprise in mulinuu. so that we may call this false intelligence the beginning and the end of mataafa's strategy. the whites who sympathised with the revolt were uneasy and impatient. they will still tell you, though the dates are there to show them wrong, that mataafa, even after his coronation, delayed extremely: a proof of how long two days may seem to last when men anticipate events. on the evening of the 11th, while the new king was already on the march, one of these walked into matautu. the moon was bright. by the way he observed the native houses dark and silent; the men had been about a fortnight in the bush, but now the women and children were gone also; at which he wondered. on the sea-beach, in the camp of the tamaseses, the solitude was near as great; he saw three or four men smoking before the british consulate, perhaps a dozen in all; the rest were behind in the bush upon their line of forts. about the midst he sat down, and here a woman drew near to him. the moon shone in her face, and he knew her for a householder near by, and a partisan of mataafa's. she looked about her as she came, and asked him, trembling, what he did in the camp of tamasese. he was there after news, he told her. she took him by the hand. "you must not stay here, you will get killed," she said. "the bush is full of our people, the others are watching them, fighting may begin at any moment, and we are both here too long." so they set off together; and she told him by the way that she had came to the hostile camp with a present of bananas, so that the tamasese men might spare her house. by the vaisingano they met an old man, a woman, and a child; and these also she warned and turned back. such is the strange part played by women among the scenes of samoan warfare, such were the liberties then permitted to the whites, that these two could pass the lines, talk together in tamasese's camp on the eve of an engagement, and pass forth again bearing intelligence, like privileged spies. and before a few hours the white man was in direct communication with the opposing general. the next morning he was accosted "about breakfast-time" by two natives who stood leaning against the pickets of a public-house, where the siumu road strikes in at right angles to the main street of apia. they told him battle was imminent, and begged him to pass a little way inland and speak with mataafa. the road is at this point broad and fairly good, running between thick groves of cocoa-palm and breadfruit. a few hundred yards along this the white man passed a picket of four armed warriors, with red handkerchiefs and their faces blackened in the form of a full beard, the mataafa rallying signs for the day; a little farther on, some fifty; farther still, a hundred; and at last a quarter of a mile of them sitting by the wayside armed and blacked. near by, in the verandah of a house on a knoll, he found mataafa seated in white clothes, a winchester across his knees. his men, he said, were still arriving from behind, and there was a turning movement in operation beyond the fuisa, so that the tamaseses should be assailed at the same moment from the south and east. and this is another indication that the attack on matautu was the true attack; had any design on mulinuu been in the wind, not even a samoan general would have detached these troops upon the other side. while they still spoke, five tamasese women were brought in with their hands bound; they had been stealing "our" bananas. all morning the town was strangely deserted, the very children gone. a sense of expectation reigned, and sympathy for the attack was expressed publicly. some men with unblacked faces came to moors's store for biscuit. a native woman, who was there marketing, inquired after the news, and, hearing that the battle was now near at hand, "give them two more tins," said she; "and don't put them down to my husband he would growl; put them down to me." between twelve and one, two white men walked toward matautu, finding as they went no sign of war until they had passed the vaisingano and come to the corner of a by-path leading to the bush. here were four blackened warriors on guard, the extreme left wing of the mataafa force, where it touched the waters of the bay. thence the line (which the white men followed) stretched inland among bush and marsh, facing the forts of the tamaseses. the warriors lay as yet inactive behind trees; but all the young boys and harlots of apia toiled in the front upon a trench, digging with knives and cocoa-shells; and a continuous stream of children brought them water. the young sappers worked crouching; from the outside only an occasional head, or a hand emptying a shell of earth, was visible; and their enemies looked on inert from the line of the opposing forts. the lists were not yet prepared, the tournament was not yet open; and the attacking force was suffered to throw up works under the silent guns of the defence. but there is an end even to the delay of islanders. as the white men stood and looked, the tamasese line thundered into a volley; it was answered; the crowd of silent workers broke forth in laughter and cheers; and the battle had begun. thenceforward, all day and most of the next night, volley followed volley; and pounds of lead and pounds sterling of money continued to be blown into the air without cessation and almost without result. colonel de coetlogon, an old soldier, described the noise as deafening. the harbour was all struck with shots; a man was knocked over on the german war-ship; half apia was under fire; and a house was pierced beyond the mulivai. all along the two lines of breastwork, the entrenched enemies exchanged this hail of balls; and away on the east of the battle the fusillade was maintained, with equal spirit, across the narrow barrier of the fuisa. the whole rear of the tamaseses was enfiladed by this flank fire; and i have seen a house there, by the river brink, that was riddled with bullets like a piece of worm-eaten wreck-wood. at this point of the field befell a trait of samoan warfare worth recording. taiese (brother to siteoni already mentioned) shot a tamasese man. he saw him fall, and, inflamed with the lust of glory, passed the river single-handed in that storm of missiles to secure the head. on the farther bank, as was but natural, he fell himself; he who had gone to take a trophy remained to afford one; and the mataafas, who had looked on exulting in the prospect of a triumph, saw themselves exposed instead to a disgrace. then rose one vingi, passed the deadly water, swung the body of taiese on his back, and returned unscathed to his own side, the head saved, the corpse filled with useless bullets. at this rate of practice, the ammunition soon began to run low, and from an early hour of the afternoon, the malietoa stores were visited by customers in search of more. an elderly man came leaping and cheering, his gun in one hand, a basket of three heads in the other. a fellow came shot through the forearm. "it doesn't hurt now," he said, as he bought his cartridges; "but it will hurt to-morrow, and i want to fight while i can." a third followed, a mere boy, with the end of his nose shot off: "have you any painkiller? give it me quick, so that i can get back to fight." on either side, there was the same delight in sound and smoke and schoolboy cheering, the same unsophisticated ardour of battle; and the misdirected skirmish proceeded with a din, and was illustrated with traits of bravery that would have fitted a waterloo or a sedan. i have said how little i regard the alleged plan of battle. at least it was now all gone to water. the whole forces of mataafa had leaked out, man by man, village by village, on the so-called false attack. they were all pounding for their lives on the front and the left flank of matautu. about half-past three they enveloped the right flank also. the defenders were driven back along the beach road as far as the pilot station at the turn of the land. from this also they were dislodged, stubbornly fighting. one, it is told, retreated to his middle in the lagoon; stood there, loading and firing, till he fell; and his body was found on the morrow pierced with four mortal wounds. the tamasese force was now enveloped on three sides; it was besides almost cut off from the sea; and across its whole rear and only way of retreat a fire of hostile bullets crossed from east and west, in the midst of which men were surprised to observe the birds continuing to sing, and a cow grazed all afternoon unhurt. doubtless here was the defence in a poor way; but then the attack was in irons. for the mataafas about the pilot house could scarcely advance beyond without coming under the fire of their own men from the other side of the fuisa; and there was not enough organisation, perhaps not enough authority, to divert or to arrest that fire. the progress of the fight along the beach road was visible from mulinuu, and brandeis despatched ten boats of reinforcements. they crossed the harbour, paused for a while beside the adler it is supposed for ammunition and drew near the matautu shore. the mataafa men lay close among the shore-side bushes, expecting their arrival; when a silly lad, in mere lightness of heart, fired a shot in the air. my native friend, mrs. mary hamilton, ran out of her house and gave the culprit a good shaking: an episode in the midst of battle as incongruous as the grazing cow. but his sillier comrades followed his example; a harmless volley warned the boats what they might expect; and they drew back and passed outside the reef for the passage of the fuisa. here they came under the fire of the right wing of the mataafas on the river-bank. the beach, raked east and west, appeared to them no place to land on. and they hung off in the deep water of the lagoon inside the barrier reef, feebly fusillading the pilot house. between four and five, the fabeata regiment (or folk of that village) on the mataafa left, which had been under arms all day, fell to be withdrawn for rest and food; the siumu regiment, which should have relieved it, was not ready or not notified in time; and the tamaseses, gallantly profiting by the mismanagement, recovered the most of the ground in their proper right. it was not for long. they lost it again, yard by yard and from house to house, till the pilot station was once more in the hands of the mataafas. this is the last definite incident in the battle. the vicissitudes along the line of the entrenchments remain concealed from us under the cover of the forest. some part of the tamasese position there appears to have been carried, but what part, or at what hour, or whether the advantage was maintained, i have never learned. night and rain, but not silence, closed upon the field. the trenches were deep in mud; but the younger folk wrecked the houses in the neighbourhood, carried the roofs to the front, and lay under them, men and women together, through a long night of furious squalls and furious and useless volleys. meanwhile the older folk trailed back into apia in the rain; they talked as they went of who had fallen and what heads had been taken upon either side they seemed to know by name the losses upon both; and drenched with wet and broken with excitement and fatigue, they crawled into the verandahs of the town to eat and sleep. the morrow broke grey and drizzly, but as so often happens in the islands, cleared up into a glorious day. during the night, the majority of the defenders had taken advantage of the rain and darkness and stolen from their forts unobserved. the rallying sign of the tamaseses had been a white handkerchief. with the dawn, the de coetlogons from the english consulate beheld the ground strewn with these badges discarded; and close by the house, a belated turncoat was still changing white for red. matautu was lost; tamasese was confined to mulinuu; and by nine o'clock two mataafa villages paraded the streets of apia, taking possession. the cost of this respectable success in ammunition must have been enormous; in life it was but small. some compute forty killed on either side, others forty on both, three or four being women and one a white man, master of a schooner from fiji. nor was the number even of the wounded at all proportionate to the surprising din and fury of the affair while it lasted. chapter vi last exploits of becker september november 1888 brandeis had held all day by mulinuu, expecting the reported real attack. he woke on the 13th to find himself cut off on that unwatered promontory, and the mataafa villagers parading apia. the same day fritze received a letter from mataafa summoning him to withdraw his party from the isthmus; and fritze, as if in answer, drew in his ship into the small harbour close to mulinuu, and trained his port battery to assist in the defence. from a step so decisive, it might be thought the german plans were unaffected by the disastrous issue of the battle. i conceive nothing would be further from the truth. here was tamasese penned on mulinuu with his troops; apia, from which alone these could be subsisted, in the hands of the enemy; a battle imminent, in which the german vessel must apparently take part with men and battery, and the buildings of the german firm were apparently destined to be the first target of fire. unless becker re-established that which he had so lately and so artfully thrown down the neutral territory the firm would have to suffer. if he re-established it, tamasese must retire from mulinuu. if becker saved his goose, he lost his cabbage. nothing so well depicts the man's effrontery as that he should have conceived the design of saving both, of reestablishing only so much of the neutral territory as should hamper mataafa, and leaving in abeyance all that could incommode tamasese. by drawing the boundary where he now proposed, across the isthmus, he protected the firm, drove back the mataafas out of almost all that they had conquered, and, so far from disturbing tamasese, actually fortified him in his old position. the real story of the negotiations that followed we shall perhaps never learn. but so much is plain: that while becker was thus outwardly straining decency in the interest of tamasese, he was privately intriguing, or pretending to intrigue, with mataafa. in his despatch of the 11th, he had given an extended criticism of that chieftain, whom he depicts as very dark and artful; and while admitting that his assumption of the name of malietoa might raise him up followers, predicted that he could not make an orderly government or support himself long in sole power "without very energetic foreign help." of what help was the consul thinking? there was no helper in the field but germany. on the 15th he had an interview with the victor; told him that tamasese's was the only government recognised by germany, and that he must continue to recognise it till he received "other instructions from his government, whom he was now advising of the late events"; refused, accordingly, to withdraw the guard from the isthmus; and desired mataafa, "until the arrival of these fresh instructions," to refrain from an attack on mulinuu. one thing of two: either this language is extremely perfidious, or becker was preparing to change sides. the same detachment appears in his despatch of october 7th. he computes the losses of the german firm with an easy cheerfulness. if tamasese get up again (gelingt die wiederherstellung der regierung tamasese's), tamasese will have to pay. if not, then mataafa. this is not the language of a partisan. the tone of indifference, the easy implication that the case of tamasese was already desperate, the hopes held secretly forth to mataafa and secretly reported to his government at home, trenchantly contrast with his external conduct. at this very time he was feeding tamasese; he had german sailors mounting guard on tamasese's battlements; the german war-ship lay close in, whether to help or to destroy. if he meant to drop the cause of tamasese, he had him in a corner, helpless, and could stifle him without a sob. if he meant to rat, it was to be with every condition of safety and every circumstance of infamy. was it conceivable, then, that he meant it? speaking with a gentleman who was in the confidence of dr. knappe: "was it not a pity," i asked, "that knappe did not stick to becker's policy of supporting mataafa?" "you are quite wrong there; that was not knappe's doing," was the reply. "becker had changed his mind before knappe came." why, then, had he changed it? this excellent, if ignominious, idea once entertained, why was it let drop? it is to be remembered there was another german in the field, brandeis, who had a respect, or rather, perhaps, an affection, for tamasese, and who thought his own honour and that of his country engaged in the support of that government which they had provoked and founded. becker described the captain to laupepa as "a quiet, sensible gentleman." if any word came to his ears of the intended manoeuvre, brandeis would certainly show himself very sensible of the affront; but becker might have been tempted to withdraw his former epithet of quiet. some such passage, some such threatened change of front at the consulate, opposed with outcry, would explain what seems otherwise inexplicable, the bitter, indignant, almost hostile tone of a subsequent letter from brandeis to knappe "brandeis's inflammatory letter," bismarck calls it the proximate cause of the german landing and reverse at fangalii. but whether the advances of becker were sincere or not whether he meditated treachery against the old king or was practising treachery upon the new, and the choice is between one or other no doubt but he contrived to gain his points with mataafa, prevailing on him to change his camp for the better protection of the german plantations, and persuading him (long before he could persuade his brother consuls) to accept that miraculous new neutral territory of his, with a piece cut out for the immediate needs of tamasese. during the rest of september, tamasese continued to decline. on the 19th one village and half of another deserted him; on the 22nd two more. on the 21st the mataafas burned his town of leulumoenga, his own splendid house flaming with the rest; and there are few things of which a native thinks more, or has more reason to think well, than of a fine samoan house. tamasese women and children were marched up the same day from atua, and handed over with their sleeping-mats to mulinuu: a most unwelcome addition to a party already suffering from want. by the 20th, they were being watered from the adler. on the 24th the manono fleet of sixteen large boats, fortified and rendered unmanageable with tons of firewood, passed to windward to intercept supplies from atua. by the 27th the hungry garrison flocked in great numbers to draw rations at the german firm. on the 28th the same business was repeated with a different issue. mataafas crowded to look on; words were exchanged, blows followed; sticks, stones, and bottles were caught up; the detested brandeis, at great risk, threw himself between the lines and expostulated with the mataafas his only personal appearance in the wars, if this could be called war. the same afternoon, the tamasese boats got in with provisions, having passed to seaward of the lumbering manono fleet; and from that day on, whether from a high degree of enterprise on the one side or a great lack of capacity on the other, supplies were maintained from the sea with regularity. thus the spectacle of battle, or at least of riot, at the doors of the german firm was not repeated. but the memory must have hung heavy on the hearts, not of the germans only, but of all apia. the samoans are a gentle race, gentler than any in europe; we are often enough reminded of the circumstance, not always by their friends. but a mob is a mob, and a drunken mob is a drunken mob, and a drunken mob with weapons in its hands is a drunken mob with weapons in its hands, all the world over: elementary propositions, which some of us upon these islands might do worse than get by rote, but which must have been evident enough to becker. and i am amazed by the man's constancy, that, even while blows were going at the door of that german firm which he was in samoa to protect, he should have stuck to his demands. ten days before, blacklock had offered to recognise the old territory, including mulinuu, and becker had refused, and still in the midst of these "alarums and excursions," he continued to refuse it. on october 2nd, anchored in apia bay h.b.m.s. calliope, captain kane, carrying the flag of rear-admiral fairfax, and the gunboat lizard, lieutenant-commander pelly. it was rumoured the admiral had come to recognise the government of tamasese, i believe in error. and at least the day for that was quite gone by; and he arrived not to salute the king's accession, but to arbitrate on his remains. a conference of the consuls and commanders met on board the calliope, october 4th, fritze alone being absent, although twice invited: the affair touched politics, his consul was to be there; and even if he came to the meeting (so he explained to fairfax) he would have no voice in its deliberations. the parties were plainly marked out: blacklock and leary maintaining their offer of the old neutral territory, and probably willing to expand or to contract it to any conceivable extent, so long as mulinuu was still included; knappe offered (if the others liked) to include "the whole eastern end of the island," but quite fixed upon the one point that mulinuu should be left out; the english willing to meet either view, and singly desirous that apia should be neutralised. the conclusion was foregone. becker held a trump card in the consent of mataafa; blacklock and leary stood alone, spoke with all ill grace, and could not long hold out. becker had his way; and the neutral boundary was chosen just where he desired: across the isthmus, the firm within, mulinuu without. he did not long enjoy the fruits of victory. on the 7th, three days after the meeting, one of the scanlons (well-known and intelligent half-castes) came to blacklock with a complaint. the scanlon house stood on the hither side of the tamasese breastwork, just inside the newly accepted territory, and within easy range of the firm. armed men, to the number of a hundred, had issued from mulinuu, had "taken charge" of the house, had pointed a gun at scanlon's head, and had twice "threatened to kill" his pigs. i hear elsewhere of some effects (gegenstande) removed. at the best a very pale atrocity, though we shall find the word employed. germans declare besides that scanlon was no american subject; they declare the point had been decided by courtmartial in 1875; that blacklock had the decision in the consular archives; and that this was his reason for handing the affair to leary. it is not necessary to suppose so. it is plain he thought little of the business; thought indeed nothing of it; except in so far as armed men had entered the neutral territory from mulinuu; and it was on this ground alone, and the implied breach of becker's engagement at the conference, that he invited leary's attention to the tale. the impish ingenuity of the commander perceived in it huge possibilities of mischief. he took up the scanlon outrage, the atrocity of the threatened pigs; and with that poor instrument i am sure, to his own wonder drove tamasese out of mulinuu. it was "an intrigue," becker complains. to be sure it was; but who was becker to be complaining of intrigue? on the 7th leary laid before fritze the following conundrum: "as the natives of mulinuu appear to be under the protection of the imperial german naval guard belonging to the vessel under your command, i have the honour to request you to inform me whether or not they are under such protection? amicable relations," pursued the humorist, "amicable relations exist between the government of the united states and his imperial german majesty's government, but we do not recognise tamasese's government, and i am desirous of locating the responsibility for violations of american rights." becker and fritze lost no time in explanation or denial, but went straight to the root of the matter and sought to buy off scanlon. becker declares that every reparation was offered. scanlon takes a pride to recapitulate the leases and the situations he refused, and the long interviews in which he was tempted and plied with drink by becker or beckmann of the firm. no doubt, in short, that he was offered reparation in reason and out of reason, and, being thoroughly primed, refused it all. meantime some answer must be made to leary; and fritze repeated on the 8th his oft-repeated assurances that he was not authorised to deal with politics. the same day leary retorted: "the question is not one of diplomacy nor of politics. it is strictly one of military jurisdiction and responsibility. under the shadow of the german fort at mulinuu," continued the hyperbolical commander, "atrocities have been committed. . . . and i again have the honour respectfully to request to be informed whether or not the armed natives at mulinuu are under the protection of the imperial german naval guard belonging to the vessel under your command." to this no answer was vouchsafed till the 11th, and then in the old terms; and meanwhile, on the 10th, leary got into his gaiters the sure sign, as was both said and sung aboard his vessel, of some desperate or some amusing service and was set ashore at the scanlons' house. of this he took possession at the head of an old woman and a mop, and was seen from the tamasese breastwork directing operations and plainly preparing to install himself there in a military posture. so much he meant to be understood; so much he meant to carry out, and an armed party from the adams was to have garrisoned on the morrow the scene of the atrocity. but there is no doubt he managed to convey more. no doubt he was a master in the art of loose speaking, and could always manage to be overheard when he wanted; and by this, or some other equally unofficial means, he spread the rumour that on the morrow he was to bombard. the proposed post, from its position, and from leary's wellestablished character as an artist in mischief, must have been regarded by the germans with uneasiness. in the bombardment we can scarce suppose them to have believed. but tamasese must have both believed and trembled. the prestige of the european powers was still unbroken. no native would then have dreamed of defying these colossal ships, worked by mysterious powers, and laden with outlandish instruments of death. none would have dreamed of resisting those strange but quite unrealised great powers, understood (with difficulty) to be larger than tonga and samoa put together, and known to be prolific of prints, knives, hard biscuit, picture-books, and other luxuries, as well as of overbearing men and inconsistent orders. laupepa had fallen in ill-blood with one of them; his only idea of defence had been to throw himself in the arms of another; his name, his rank, and his great following had not been able to preserve him; and he had vanished from the eyes of men as the samoan thinks of it, beyond the sky. asi, maunga, tuiletu-funga, had followed him in that new path of doom. we have seen how carefully mataafa still walked, how he dared not set foot on the neutral territory till assured it was no longer sacred, how he withdrew from it again as soon as its sacredness had been restored, and at the bare word of a consul (however gilded with ambiguous promises) paused in his course of victory and left his rival unassailed in mulinuu. and now it was the rival's turn. hitherto happy in the continued support of one of the white powers, he now found himself or thought himself threatened with war by no less than two others. tamasese boats as they passed matautu were in the habit of firing on the shore, as like as not without particular aim, and more in high spirits than hostility. one of these shots pierced the house of a british subject near the consulate; the consul reported to admiral fairfax; and, on the morning of the 10th, the admiral despatched captain kane of the calliope to mulinuu. brandeis met the messenger with voluble excuses and engagements for the future. he was told his explanations were satisfactory so far as they went, but that the admiral's message was to tamasese, the de facto king. brandeis, not very well assured of his puppet's courage, attempted in vain to excuse him from appearing. no de facto king, no message, he was told: produce your de facto king. and tamasese had at last to be produced. to him kane delivered his errand: that the lizard was to remain for the protection of british subjects; that a signalman was to be stationed at the consulate; that, on any further firing from boats, the signalman was to notify the lizard and she to fire one gun, on which all boats must lower sail and come alongside for examination and the detection of the guilty; and that, "in the event of the boats not obeying the gun, the admiral would not be responsible for the consequences." it was listened to by brandeis and tamasese "with the greatest attention." brandeis, when it was done, desired his thanks to the admiral for the moderate terms of his message, and, as kane went to his boat, repeated the expression of his gratitude as though he meant it, declaring his own hands would be thus strengthened for the maintenance of discipline. but i have yet to learn of any gratitude on the part of tamasese. consider the case of the poor owlish man hearing for the first time our diplomatic commonplaces. the admiral would not be answerable for the consequences. think of it! a devil of a position for a de facto king. and here, the same afternoon, was leary in the scalon house, mopping it out for unknown designs by the hands of an old woman, and proffering strange threats of bloodshed. scanlon and his pigs, the admiral and his gun, leary and his bombardment, what a kettle of fish! i dwell on the effect on tamasese. whatever the faults of becker, he was not timid; he had already braved so much for mulinuu that i cannot but think he might have continued to hold up his head even after the outrage of the pigs, and that the weakness now shown originated with the king. late in the night, blacklock was wakened to receive a despatch addressed to leary. "you have asked that i and my government go away from mulinuu, because you pretend a man who lives near mulinuu and who is under your protection, has been threatened by my soldiers. as your excellency has forbidden the man to accept any satisfaction, and as i do not wish to make war against the united states, i shall remove my government from mulinuu to another place." it was signed by tamasese, but i think more heads than his had wagged over the direct and able letter. on the morning of the 11th, accordingly, mulinuu the much defended lay desert. tamasese and brandeis had slipped to sea in a schooner; their troops had followed them in boats; the german sailors and their war-flag had returned on board the adler; and only the german merchant flag blew there for weber's land-claim. mulinuu, for which becker had intrigued so long and so often, for which he had overthrown the municipality, for which he had abrogated and refused and invented successive schemes of neutral territory, was now no more to the germans than a very unattractive, barren peninsula and a very much disputed land-claim of mr. weber's. it will scarcely be believed that the tale of the scanlon outrages was not yet finished. leary had gained his point, but scanlon had lost his compensation. and it was months later, and this time in the shape of a threat of bombardment in black and white, that tamasese heard the last of the absurd affair. scanlon had both his fun and his money, and leary's practical joke was brought to an artistic end. becker sought and missed an instant revenge. mataafa, a devout catholic, was in the habit of walking every morning to mass from his camp at vaiala beyond matautu to the mission at the mulivai. he was sometimes escorted by as many as six guards in uniform, who displayed their proficiency in drill by perpetually shifting arms as they marched. himself, meanwhile, paced in front, bareheaded and barefoot, a staff in his hand, in the customary chief's dress of white kilt, shirt, and jacket, and with a conspicuous rosary about his neck. tall but not heavy, with eager eyes and a marked appearance of courage and capacity, mataafa makes an admirable figure in the eyes of europeans; to those of his countrymen, he may seem not always to preserve that quiescence of manner which is thought becoming in the great. on the morning of october 16th he reached the mission before day with two attendants, heard mass, had coffee with the fathers, and left again in safety. the smallness of his following we may suppose to have been reported. he was scarce gone, at least, before becker had armed men at the mission gate and came in person seeking him. the failure of this attempt doubtless still further exasperated the consul, and he began to deal as in an enemy's country. he had marines from the adler to stand sentry over the consulate and parade the streets by threes and fours. the bridge of the vaisingano, which cuts in half the english and american quarters, he closed by proclamation and advertised for tenders to demolish it. on the 17th leary and pelly landed carpenters and repaired it in his teeth. leary, besides, had marines under arms, ready to land them if it should be necessary to protect the work. but becker looked on without interference, perhaps glad enough to have the bridge repaired; for even becker may not always have offended intentionally. such was now the distracted posture of the little town: all government extinct, the german consul patrolling it with armed men and issuing proclamations like a ruler, the two other powers defying his commands, and at least one of them prepared to use force in the defiance. close on its skirts sat the warriors of mataafa, perhaps four thousand strong, highly incensed against the germans, having all to gain in the seizure of the town and firm, and, like an army in a fairy tale, restrained by the air-drawn boundary of the neutral ground. i have had occasion to refer to the strange appearance in these islands of an american adventurer with a battery of cannon. the adventurer was long since gone, but his guns remained, and one of them was now to make fresh history. it had been cast overboard by brandeis on the outer reef in the course of this retreat; and word of it coming to the ears of the mataafas, they thought it natural that they should serve themselves the heirs of tamasese. on the 23rd a manono boat of the kind called taumualua dropped down the coast from mataafa's camp, called in broad day at the german quarter of the town for guides, and proceeded to the reef. here, diving with a rope, they got the gun aboard; and the night being then come, returned by the same route in the shallow water along shore, singing a boat-song. it will be seen with what childlike reliance they had accepted the neutrality of apia bay; they came for the gun without concealment, laboriously dived for it in broad day under the eyes of the town and shipping, and returned with it, singing as they went. on grevsmuhl's wharf, a light showed them a crowd of german blue-jackets clustered, and a hail was heard. "stop the singing so that we may hear what is said," said one of the chiefs in the taumualua. the song ceased; the hail was heard again, "au mai le fana bring the gun"; and the natives report themselves to have replied in the affirmative, and declare that they had begun to back the boat. it is perhaps not needful to believe them. a volley at least was fired from the wharf, at about fifty yards' range and with a very ill direction, one bullet whistling over pelly's head on board the lizard. the natives jumped overboard; and swimming under the lee of the taumualua (where they escaped a second volley) dragged her towards the east. as soon as they were out of range and past the mulivai, the german border, they got on board and (again singing though perhaps a different song) continued their return along the english and american shore. off matautu they were hailed from the seaward by one of the adler's boats, which had been suddenly despatched on the sound of the firing or had stood ready all evening to secure the gun. the hail was in german; the samoans knew not what it meant, but took the precaution to jump overboard and swim for land. two volleys and some dropping shot were poured upon them in the water; but they dived, scattered, and came to land unhurt in different quarters of matautu. the volleys, fired inshore, raked the highway, a british house was again pierced by numerous bullets, and these sudden sounds of war scattered consternation through the town. two british subjects, hetherington-carruthers, a solicitor, and maben, a land-surveyor the first being in particular a man well versed in the native mind and language hastened at once to their consul; assured him the mataafas would be roused to fury by this onslaught in the neutral zone, that the german quarter would be certainly attacked, and the rest of the town and white inhabitants exposed to a peril very difficult of estimation; and prevailed upon him to intrust them with a mission to the king. by the time they reached headquarters, the warriors were already taking post round matafele, and the agitation of mataafa himself was betrayed in the fact that he spoke with the deputation standing and gun in hand: a breach of high-chief dignity perhaps unparalleled. the usual result, however, followed: the whites persuaded the samoan; and the attack was countermanded, to the benefit of all concerned, and not least of mataafa. to the benefit of all, i say; for i do not think the germans were that evening in a posture to resist; the liquor-cellars of the firm must have fallen into the power of the insurgents; and i will repeat my formula that a mob is a mob, a drunken mob is a drunken mob, and a drunken mob with weapons in its hands is a drunken mob with weapons in its hands, all the world over. in the opinion of some, then, the town had narrowly escaped destruction, or at least the miseries of a drunken sack. to the knowledge of all, the air of the neutral territory had once more whistled with bullets. and it was clear the incident must have diplomatic consequences. leary and pelly both protested to fritze. leary announced he should report the affair to his government "as a gross violation of the principles of international law, and as a breach of the neutrality." "i positively decline the protest," replied fritze, "and cannot fail to express my astonishment at the tone of your last letter." this was trenchant. it may be said, however, that leary was already out of court; that, after the night signals and the scanlon incident, and so many other acts of practical if humorous hostility, his position as a neutral was no better than a doubtful jest. the case with pelly was entirely different; and with pelly, fritze was less well inspired. in his first note, he was on the old guard; announced that he had acted on the requisition of his consul, who was alone responsible on "the legal side"; and declined accordingly to discuss "whether the lives of british subjects were in danger, and to what extent armed intervention was necessary." pelly replied judiciously that he had nothing to do with political matters, being only responsible for the safety of her majesty's ships under his command and for the lives and property of british subjects; that he had considered his protest a purely naval one; and as the matter stood could only report the case to the admiral on the station. "i have the honour," replied fritze, "to refuse to entertain the protest concerning the safety of her britannic majesty's ship lizard as being a naval matter. the safety of her majesty's ship lizard was never in the least endangered. this was guaranteed by the disciplined fire of a few shots under the direction of two officers." this offensive note, in view of fritze's careful and honest bearing among so many other complications, may be attributed to some misunderstanding. his small knowledge of english perhaps failed him. but i cannot pass it by without remarking how far too much it is the custom of german officials to fall into this style. it may be witty, i am sure it is not wise. it may be sometimes necessary to offend for a definite object, it can never be diplomatic to offend gratuitously. becker was more explicit, although scarce less curt. and his defence may be divided into two statements: first, that the taumualua was proceeding to land with a hostile purpose on mulinuu; second, that the shots complained of were fired by the samoans. the second may be dismissed with a laugh. human nature has laws. and no men hitherto discovered, on being suddenly challenged from the sea, would have turned their backs upon the challenger and poured volleys on the friendly shore. the first is not extremely credible, but merits examination. the story of the recovered gun seems straightforward; it is supported by much testimony, the diving operations on the reef seem to have been watched from shore with curiosity; it is hard to suppose that it does not roughly represent the fact. and yet if any part of it be true, the whole of becker's explanation falls to the ground. a boat which had skirted the whole eastern coast of mulinuu, and was already opposite a wharf in matafele, and still going west, might have been guilty on a thousand points there was one on which she was necessarily innocent; she was necessarily innocent of proceeding on mulinuu. or suppose the diving operations, and the native testimony, and pelly's chart of the boat's course, and the boat itself, to be all stages of some epidemic hallucination or steps in a conspiracy suppose even a second taumualua to have entered apia bay after nightfall, and to have been fired upon from grevsmuhl's wharf in the full career of hostilities against mulinuu suppose all this, and becker is not helped. at the time of the first fire, the boat was off grevsmuhl's wharf. at the time of the second (and that is the one complained of) she was off carruthers's wharf in matautu. was she still proceeding on mulinuu? i trow not. the danger to german property was no longer imminent, the shots had been fired upon a very trifling provocation, the spirit implied was that of designed disregard to the neutrality. such was the impression here on the spot; such in plain terms the statement of count hatzfeldt to lord salisbury at home: that the neutrality of apia was only "to prevent the natives from fighting," not the germans; and that whatever becker might have promised at the conference, he could not "restrict german war-vessels in their freedom of action." there was nothing to surprise in this discovery; and had events been guided at the same time with a steady and discreet hand, it might have passed with less observation. but the policy of becker was felt to be not only reckless, it was felt to be absurd also. sudden nocturnal onfalls upon native boats could lead, it was felt, to no good end whether of peace or war; they could but exasperate; they might prove, in a moment, and when least expected, ruinous. to those who knew how nearly it had come to fighting, and who considered the probable result, the future looked ominous. and fear was mingled with annoyance in the minds of the anglo-saxon colony. on the 24th, a public meeting appealed to the british and american consuls. at half-past seven in the evening guards were landed at the consulates. on the morrow they were each fortified with sand-bags; and the subjects informed by proclamation that these asylums stood open to them on any alarm, and at any hour of the day or night. the social bond in apia was dissolved. the consuls, like barons of old, dwelt each in his armed citadel. the rank and file of the white nationalities dared each other, and sometimes fell to on the street like rival clansmen. and the little town, not by any fault of the inhabitants, rather by the act of becker, had fallen back in civilisation about a thousand years. there falls one more incident to be narrated, and then i can close with this ungracious chapter. i have mentioned the name of the new english consul. it is already familiar to english readers; for the gentleman who was fated to undergo some strange experiences in apia was the same de coetlogon who covered hicks's flank at the time of the disaster in the desert, and bade farewell to gordon in khartoum before the investment. the colonel was abrupt and testy; mrs. de coetlogon was too exclusive for society like that of apia; but whatever their superficial disabilities, it is strange they should have left, in such an odour of unpopularity, a place where they set so shining an example of the sterling virtues. the colonel was perhaps no diplomatist; he was certainly no lawyer; but he discharged the duties of his office with the constancy and courage of an old soldier, and these were found sufficient. he and his wife had no ambition to be the leaders of society; the consulate was in their time no house of feasting; but they made of it that house of mourning to which the preacher tells us it is better we should go. at an early date after the battle of matautu, it was opened as a hospital for the wounded. the english and americans subscribed what was required for its support. pelly of the lizard strained every nerve to help, and set up tents on the lawn to be a shelter for the patients. the doctors of the english and american ships, and in particular dr. oakley of the lizard, showed themselves indefatigable. but it was on the de coetlogons that the distress fell. for nearly half a year, their lawn, their verandah, sometimes their rooms, were cumbered with the sick and dying, their ears were filled with the complaints of suffering humanity, their time was too short for the multiplicity of pitiful duties. in mrs. de coetlogon, and her helper, miss taylor, the merit of this endurance was perhaps to be looked for; in a man of the colonel's temper, himself painfully suffering, it was viewed with more surprise, if with no more admiration. doubtless all had their reward in a sense of duty done; doubtless, also, as the days passed, in the spectacle of many traits of gratitude and patience, and in the success that waited on their efforts. out of a hundred cases treated, only five died. they were all well-behaved, though full of childish wiles. one old gentleman, a high chief, was seized with alarming symptoms of belly-ache whenever mrs. de coetlogon went her rounds at night: he was after brandy. others were insatiable for morphine or opium. a chief woman had her foot amputated under chloroform. "let me see my foot! why does it not hurt?" she cried. "it hurt so badly before i went to sleep." siteoni, whose name has been already mentioned, had his shoulderblade excised, lay the longest of any, perhaps behaved the worst, and was on all these grounds the favourite. at times he was furiously irritable, and would rail upon his family and rise in bed until he swooned with pain. once on the balcony he was thought to be dying, his family keeping round his mat, his father exhorting him to be prepared, when mrs. de coetlogon brought him round again with brandy and smelling-salts. after discharge, he returned upon a visit of gratitude; and it was observed, that instead of coming straight to the door, he went and stood long under his umbrella on that spot of ground where his mat had been stretched and he had endured pain so many months. similar visits were the rule, i believe without exception; and the grateful patients loaded mrs. de coetlogon with gifts which (had that been possible in polynesia) she would willingly have declined, for they were often of value to the givers. the tissue of my story is one of rapacity, intrigue, and the triumphs of temper; the hospital at the consulate stands out almost alone as an episode of human beauty, and i dwell on it with satisfaction. but it was not regarded at the time with universal favour; and even to-day its institution is thought by many to have been impolitic. it was opened, it stood open, for the wounded of either party. as a matter of fact it was never used but by the mataafas, and the tamaseses were cared for exclusively by german doctors. in the progressive decivilisation of the town, these duties of humanity became thus a ground of quarrel. when the mataafa hurt were first brought together after the battle of matautu, and some more or less amateur surgeons were dressing wounds on a green by the wayside, one from the german consulate went by in the road. "why don't you let the dogs die?" he asked. "go to hell," was the rejoinder. such were the amenities of apia. but becker reserved for himself the extreme expression of this spirit. on november 7th hostilities began again between the samoan armies, and an inconclusive skirmish sent a fresh crop of wounded to the de coetlogons. next door to the consulate, some native houses and a chapel (now ruinous) stood on a green. chapel and houses were certainly samoan, but the ground was under a land-claim of the german firm; and de coetlogon wrote to becker requesting permission (in case it should prove necessary) to use these structures for his wounded. before an answer came, the hospital was startled by the appearance of a case of gangrene, and the patient was hastily removed into the chapel. a rebel laid on german ground here was an atrocity! the day before his own relief, november 11th, becker ordered the man's instant removal. by his aggressive carriage and singular mixture of violence and cunning, he had already largely brought about the fall of brandeis, and forced into an attitude of hostility the whole non-german population of the islands. now, in his last hour of office, by this wanton buffet to his english colleague, he prepared a continuance of evil days for his successor. if the object of diplomacy be the organisation of failure in the midst of hate, he was a great diplomatist. and amongst a certain party on the beach he is still named as the ideal consul. chapter vii the samoan camps november 1888 when brandeis and tamasese fled by night from mulinuu, they carried their wandering government some six miles to windward, to a position above lotoanuu. for some three miles to the eastward of apia, the shores of upolu are low and the ground rises with a gentle acclivity, much of which waves with german plantations. a barrier reef encloses a lagoon passable for boats: and the traveller skims there, on smooth, many-tinted shallows, between the wall of the breakers on the one hand, and on the other a succession of palm-tree capes and cheerful beach-side villages. beyond the great plantation of vailele, the character of the coast is changed. the barrier reef abruptly ceases, the surf beats direct upon the shore; and the mountains and untenanted forest of the interior descend sheer into the sea. the first mountain promontory is letongo. the bay beyond is called laulii, and became the headquarters of mataafa. and on the next projection, on steep, intricate ground, veiled in forest and cut up by gorges and defiles, tamasese fortified his lines. this greenwood citadel, which proved impregnable by samoan arms, may be regarded as his front; the sea covered his right; and his rear extended along the coast as far as saluafata, and thus commanded and drew upon a rich country, including the plain of falefa. he was left in peace from 11th october till november 6th. but his adversary is not wholly to be blamed for this delay, which depended upon island etiquette. his savaii contingent had not yet come in, and to have moved again without waiting for them would have been surely to offend, perhaps to lose them. with the month of november they began to arrive: on the 2nd twenty boats, on the 3rd twentynine, on the 5th seventeen. on the 6th the position mataafa had so long occupied on the skirts of apia was deserted; all that day and night his force kept streaming eastward to laulii; and on the 7th the siege of lotoanuu was opened with a brisk skirmish. each side built forts, facing across the gorge of a brook. an endless fusillade and shouting maintained the spirit of the warriors; and at night, even if the firing slackened, the pickets continued to exchange from either side volleys of songs and pungent pleasantries. nearer hostilities were rendered difficult by the nature of the ground, where men must thread dense bush and clamber on the face of precipices. apia was near enough; a man, if he had a dollar or two, could walk in before a battle and array himself in silk or velvet. casualties were not common; there was nothing to cast gloom upon the camps, and no more danger than was required to give a spice to the perpetual firing. for the young warriors it was a period of admirable enjoyment. but the anxiety of mataafa must have been great and growing. his force was now considerable. it was scarce likely he should ever have more. that he should be long able to supply them with ammunition seemed incredible; at the rates then or soon after current, hundreds of pounds sterling might be easily blown into the air by the skirmishers in the course of a few days. and in the meanwhile, on the mountain opposite, his outnumbered adversary held his ground unshaken. by this time the partisanship of the whites was unconcealed. americans supplied mataafa with ammunition; english and americans openly subscribed together and sent boat-loads of provisions to his camp. one such boat started from apia on a day of rain; it was pulled by six oars, three being paid by moors, three by the macarthurs; moors himself and a clerk of the macarthurs' were in charge; and the load included not only beef and biscuit, but three or four thousand rounds of ammunition. they came ashore in laulii, and carried the gift to mataafa. while they were yet in his house a bullet passed overhead; and out of his door they could see the tamasese pickets on the opposite hill. thence they made their way to the left flank of the mataafa position next the sea. a tamasese barricade was visible across the stream. it rained, but the warriors crowded in their shanties, squatted in the mud, and maintained an excited conversation. balls flew; either faction, both happy as lords, spotting for the other in chance shots, and missing. one point is characteristic of that war; experts in native feeling doubt if it will characterise the next. the two white visitors passed without and between the lines to a rocky point upon the beach. the person of moors was well known; the purpose of their coming to laulii must have been already bruited abroad; yet they were not fired upon. from the point they spied a crow's nest, or hanging fortification, higher up; and, judging it was a good position for a general view, obtained a guide. he led them up a steep side of the mountain, where they must climb by roots and tufts of grass; and coming to an open hill-top with some scattered trees, bade them wait, let him draw the fire, and then be swift to follow. perhaps a dozen balls whistled about him ere he had crossed the dangerous passage and dropped on the farther side into the crow's-nest; the white men, briskly following, escaped unhurt. the crow's-nest was built like a bartizan on the precipitous front of the position. across the ravine, perhaps at five hundred yards, heads were to be seen popping up and down in a fort of tamesese's. on both sides the same enthusiasm without council, the same senseless vigilance, reigned. some took aim; some blazed before them at a venture. now when a head showed on the other side one would take a crack at it, remarking that it would never do to "miss a chance." now they would all fire a volley and bob down; a return volley rang across the ravine, and was punctually answered: harmless as lawn-tennis. the whites expostulated in vain. the warriors, drunken with noise, made answer by a fresh general discharge and bade their visitors run while it was time. upon their return to headquarters, men were covering the front with sheets of coral limestone, two balls having passed through the house in the interval. mataafa sat within, over his kava bowl, unmoved. the picture is of a piece throughout: excellent courage, super-excellent folly, a war of school-children; expensive guns and cartridges used like squibs or catherine-wheels on guy fawkes's day. on the 20th mataafa changed his attack. tamasese's front was seemingly impregnable. something must be tried upon his rear. there was his bread-basket; a small success in that direction would immediately curtail his resources; and it might be possible with energy to roll up his line along the beach and take the citadel in reverse. the scheme was carried out as might be expected from these childish soldiers. mataafa, always uneasy about apia, clung with a portion of his force to laulii; and thus, had the foe been enterprising, exposed himself to disaster. the expedition fell successfully enough on saluafata and drove out the tamaseses with a loss of four heads; but so far from improving the advantage, yielded immediately to the weakness of the samoan warrior, and ranged farther east through unarmed populations, bursting with shouts and blackened faces into villages terrified or admiring, making spoil of pigs, burning houses, and destroying gardens. the tamasese had at first evacuated several beach towns in succession, and were still in retreat on lotoanuu; finding themselves unpursued, they reoccupied them one after another, and reestablished their lines to the very borders of saluafata. night fell; mataafa had taken saluafata, tamasese had lost it; and that was all. but the day came near to have a different and very singular issue. the village was not long in the hands of the mataafas, when a schooner, flying german colours, put into the bay and was immediately surrounded by their boats. it chanced that brandeis was on board. word of it had gone abroad, and the boats as they approached demanded him with threats. the late premier, alone, entirely unarmed, and a prey to natural and painful feelings, concealed himself below. the captain of the schooner remained on deck, pointed to the german colours, and defied approaching boats. again the prestige of a great power triumphed; the samoans fell back before the bunting; the schooner worked out of the bay; brandeis escaped. he himself apprehended the worst if he fell into samoan hands; it is my diffident impression that his life would have been safe. on the 22nd, a new german war-ship, the eber, of tragic memory, came to apia from the gilberts, where she had been disarming turbulent islands. the rest of that day and all night she loaded stores from the firm, and on the morrow reached saluafata bay. thanks to the misconduct of the mataafas, the most of the foreshore was still in the hands of the tamaseses; and they were thus able to receive from the eber both the stores and weapons. the weapons had been sold long since to tarawa, apaiang, and pleasant island; places unheard of by the general reader, where obscure inhabitants paid for these instruments of death in money or in labour, misused them as it was known they would be misused, and had been disarmed by force. the eber had brought back the guns to a german counter, whence many must have been originally sold; and was here engaged, like a shopboy, in their distribution to fresh purchasers. such is the vicious circle of the traffic in weapons of war. another aid of a more metaphysical nature was ministered by the eber to tamasese, in the shape of uncountable german flags. the full history of this epidemic of bunting falls to be told in the next chapter. but the fact has to be chronicled here, for i believe it was to these flags that we owe the visit of the adams, and my next and best authentic glance into a native camp. the adams arrived in saluafata on the 26th. on the morrow leary and moors landed at the village. it was still occupied by mataafas, mostly from manono and savaii, few in number, high in spirit. the tamasese pickets were meanwhile within musket range; there was maintained a steady sputtering of shots; and yet a party of tamasese women were here on a visit to the women of manono, with whom they sat talking and smoking, under the fire of their own relatives. it was reported that leary took part in a council of war, and promised to join with his broadside in the next attack. it is certain he did nothing of the sort: equally certain that, in tamasese circles, he was firmly credited with having done so. and this heightens the extraordinary character of what i have now to tell. prudence and delicacy alike ought to have forbid the camp of tamasese to the feet of either leary or moors. moors was the original there was a time when he had been the only opponent of the puppet king. leary had driven him from the seat of government; it was but a week or two since he had threatened to bombard him in his present refuge. both were in close and daily council with his adversary, and it was no secret that moors was supplying the latter with food. they were partisans; it lacked but a hair that they should be called belligerents; it were idle to try to deny they were the most dangerous of spies. and yet these two now sailed across the bay and landed inside the tamasese lines at salelesi. on the very beach they had another glimpse of the artlessness of samoan war. hitherto the tamasese fleet, being hardy and unencumbered, had made a fool of the huge floating forts upon the other side; and here they were tolling, not to produce another boat on their own pattern in which they had always enjoyed the advantage, but to make a new one the type of their enemies', of which they had now proved the uselessness for months. it came on to rain as the americans landed; and though none offered to oppose their coming ashore, none invited them to take shelter. they were nowise abashed, entered a house unbidden, and were made welcome with obvious reserve. the rain clearing off, they set forth westward, deeper into the heart of the enemies' position. three or four young men ran some way before them, doubtless to give warning; and leary, with his indomitable taste for mischief, kept inquiring as he went after "the high chief" tamasese. the line of the beach was one continuous breastwork; some thirty odd iron cannon of all sizes and patterns stood mounted in embrasures; plenty grape and canister lay ready; and at every hundred yards or so the german flag was flying. the numbers of the guns and flags i give as i received them, though they test my faith. at the house of brandeis a little, weatherboard house, crammed at the time with natives, men, women, and squalling children leary and moors again asked for "the high chief," and, were again assured that he was farther on. a little beyond, the road ran in one place somewhat inland, the two americans had gone down to the line of the beach to continue their inspection of the breastwork, when brandeis himself, in his shirtsleeves and accompanied by several german officers, passed them by the line of the road. the two parties saluted in silence. beyond eva point there was an observable change for the worse in the reception of the americans; some whom they met began to mutter at moors; and the adventurers, with tardy but commendable prudence, desisted from their search after the high chief, and began to retrace their steps. on the return, suatele and some chiefs were drinking kava in a "big house," and called them in to join their only invitation. but the night was closing, the rain had begun again: they stayed but for civility, and returned on board the adams, wet and hungry, and i believe delighted with their expedition. it was perhaps the last as it was certainly one of the most extreme examples of that divinity which once hedged the white in samoa. the feeling was already different in the camp of mataafa, where the safety of a german loiterer had been a matter of extreme concern. ten days later, three commissioners, an englishman, an american, and a german, approached a post of mataafas, were challenged by an old man with a gun, and mentioned in answer what they were. "ifea siamani? which is the german?" cried the old gentleman, dancing, and with his finger on the trigger; and the commissioners stood somewhile in a very anxious posture, till they were released by the opportune arrival of a chief. it was november the 27th when leary and moors completed their absurd excursion; in about three weeks an event was to befall which changed at once, and probably for ever, the relations of the natives and the whites. by the 28th tamasese had collected seventeen hundred men in the trenches before saluafata, thinking to attack next day. but the mataafas evacuated the place in the night. at half-past five on the morning of the 29th a signal-gun was fired in the trenches at laulii, and the tamasese citadel was assaulted and defended with a fury new among samoans. when the battle ended on the following day, one or more outworks remained in the possession of mataafa. another had been taken and lost as many as four times. carried originally by a mixed force from savaii and tuamasanga, the victors, instead of completing fresh defences or pursuing their advantage, fell to eat and smoke and celebrate their victory with impromptu songs. in this humour a rally of the tamaseses smote them, drove them out pell-mell, and tumbled them into the ravine, where many broke their heads and legs. again the work was taken, again lost. ammunition failed the belligerents; and they fought hand to hand in the contested fort with axes, clubs, and clubbed rifles. the sustained ardour of the engagement surprised even those who were engaged; and the butcher's bill was counted extraordinary by samoans. on december 1st the women of either side collected the headless bodies of the dead, each easily identified by the name tattooed on his forearm. mataafa is thought to have lost sixty killed; and the de coetlogons' hospital received three women and forty men. the casualties on the tamasese side cannot be accepted, but they were presumably much less. chapter viii affairs of laulii and fangalii november-december 1888 for becker i have not been able to conceal my distaste, for he seems to me both false and foolish. but of his successor, the unfortunately famous dr. knappe, we may think as of a good enough fellow driven distraught. fond of samoa and the samoans, he thought to bring peace and enjoy popularity among the islanders; of a genial, amiable, and sanguine temper, he made no doubt but he could repair the breach with the english consul. hope told a flattering tale. he awoke to find himself exchanging defiances with de coetlogon, beaten in the field by mataafa, surrounded on the spot by general exasperation, and disowned from home by his own government. the history of his administration leaves on the mind of the student a sentiment of pity scarcely mingled. on blacklock he did not call, and, in view of leary's attitude, may be excused. but the english consul was in a different category. england, weary of the name of samoa, and desirous only to see peace established, was prepared to wink hard during the process and to welcome the result of any german settlement. it was an unpardonable fault in becker to have kicked and buffeted his readymade allies into a state of jealousy, anger, and suspicion. knappe set himself at once to efface these impressions, and the english officials rejoiced for the moment in the change. between knappe and de coetlogon there seems to have been mutual sympathy; and, in considering the steps by which they were led at last into an attitude of mutual defiance, it must be remembered that both the men were sick, knappe from time to time prostrated with that formidable complaint, new guinea fever, and de coetlogon throughout his whole stay in the islands continually ailing. tamasese was still to be recognised, and, if possible, supported: such was the german policy. two days after his arrival, accordingly, knappe addressed to mataafa a threatening despatch. the german plantation was suffering from the proximity of his "warparty." he must withdraw from laulii at once, and, whithersoever he went, he must approach no german property nor so much as any village where there was a german trader. by five o'clock on the morrow, if he were not gone, knappe would turn upon him "the attention of the man-of-war" and inflict a fine. the same evening, november 14th, knappe went on board the adler, which began to get up steam. three months before, such direct intervention on the part of germany would have passed almost without protest; but the hour was now gone by. becker's conduct, equally timid and rash, equally inconclusive and offensive, had forced the other nations into a strong feeling of common interest with mataafa. even had the german demands been moderate, de coetlogon could not have forgotten the night of the taumualua, nor how mataafa had relinquished, at his request, the attack upon the german quarter. blacklock, with his driver of a captain at his elbow, was not likely to lag behind. and mataafa having communicated knappe's letter, the example of the germans was on all hands exactly followed; the consuls hastened on board their respective war-ships, and these began to get up steam. about midnight, in a pouring rain, pelly communicated to fritze his intention to follow him and protect british interests; and knappe replied that he would come on board the lizard and see de coetlogon personally. it was deep in the small hours, and de coetlogon had been long asleep, when he was wakened to receive his colleague; but he started up with an old soldier's readiness. the conference was long. de coetlogon protested, as he did afterwards in writing, against knappe's claim: the samoans were in a state of war; they had territorial rights; it was monstrous to prevent them from entering one of their own villages because a german trader kept the store; and in case property suffered, a claim for compensation was the proper remedy. knappe argued that this was a question between germans and samoans, in which de coetlogon had nothing to see; and that he must protect german property according to his instructions. to which de coetlogon replied that he was himself in the same attitude to the property of the british; that he understood knappe to be intending hostilities against laulii; that laulii was mortgaged to the macarthurs; that its crops were accordingly british property; and that, while he was ever willing to recognise the territorial rights of the samoans, he must prevent that property from being molested "by any other nation." "but if a german man-of-war does it?" asked knappe. "we shall prevent it to the best of our ability," replied the colonel. it is to the credit of both men that this trying interview should have been conducted and concluded without heat; but knappe must have returned to the adler with darker anticipations. at sunrise on the morning of the 15th, the three ships, each loaded with its consul, put to sea. it is hard to exaggerate the peril of the forenoon that followed, as they lay off laulii. nobody desired a collision, save perhaps the reckless leary; but peace and war trembled in the balance; and when the adler, at one period, lowered her gun ports, war appeared to preponderate. it proved, however, to be a last and therefore surely an unwise extremity. knappe contented himself with visiting the rival kings, and the three ships returned to apia before noon. beyond a doubt, coming after knappe's decisive letter of the day before, this impotent conclusion shook the credit of germany among the natives of both sides; the tamaseses fearing they were deserted, the mataafas (with secret delight) hoping they were feared. and it gave an impetus to that ridiculous business which might have earned for the whole episode the name of the war of flags. british and american flags had been planted the night before, and were seen that morning flying over what they claimed about laulii. british and american passengers, on the way up and down, pointed out from the decks of the warships, with generous vagueness, the boundaries of problematical estates. ten days later, the beach of saluafata bay fluttered (as i have told in the last chapter) with the flag of germany. the americans riposted with a claim to tamasese's camp, some small part of which (says knappe) did really belong to "an american nigger." the disease spread, the flags were multiplied, the operations of war became an egg-dance among miniature neutral territories; and though all men took a hand in these proceedings, all men in turn were struck with their absurdity. mullan, leary's successor, warned knappe, in an emphatic despatch, not to squander and discredit the solemnity of that emblem which was all he had to be a defence to his own consulate. and knappe himself, in his despatch of march 21st, 1889, castigates the practice with much sense. but this was after the tragicomic culmination had been reached, and the burnt rags of one of these too-frequently mendacious signals gone on a progress to washington, like caesar's body, arousing indignation where it came. to such results are nations conducted by the patent artifices of a becker. the discussion of the morning, the silent menace and defiance of the voyage to laulii, might have set the best-natured by the ears. but knappe and de coetlogon took their difference in excellent part. on the morrow, november 16th, they sat down together with blacklock in conference. the english consul introduced his colleagues, who shook hands. if knappe were dead-weighted with the inheritance of becker, blacklock was handicapped by reminiscences of leary; it is the more to the credit of this inexperienced man that he should have maintained in the future so excellent an attitude of firmness and moderation, and that when the crash came, knappe and de coetlogon, not knappe and blacklock, were found to be the protagonists of the drama. the conference was futile. the english and american consuls admitted but one cure of the evils of the time: that the farce of the tamasese monarchy should cease. it was one which the german refused to consider. and the agents separated without reaching any result, save that diplomatic relations had been restored between the states and germany, and that all three were convinced of their fundamental differences. knappe and de coetlogon were still friends; they had disputed and differed and come within a finger's breadth of war, and they were still friends. but an event was at hand which was to separate them for ever. on december 4th came the royalist, captain hand, to relieve the lizard. pelly of course had to take his canvas from the consulate hospital; but he had in charge certain awnings belonging to the royalist, and with these they made shift to cover the wounded, at that time (after the fight at laulii) more than usually numerous. a lieutenant came to the consulate, and delivered (as i have received it) the following message: "captain hand's compliments, and he says you must get rid of these niggers at once, and he will help you to do it." doubtless the reply was no more civil than the message. the promised "help," at least, followed promptly. a boat's crew landed and the awnings were stripped from the wounded, hand himself standing on the colonel's verandah to direct operations. it were fruitless to discuss this passage from the humanitarian point of view, or from that of formal courtesy. the mind of the new captain was plainly not directed to these objects. but it is understood that he considered the existence of a hospital a source of irritation to germans and a fault in policy. his own rude act proved in the result far more impolitic. the hospital had now been open some two months, and de coetlogon was still on friendly terms with knappe, and he and his wife were engaged to dine with him that day. by the morrow that was practically ended. for the rape of the awnings had two results: one, which was the fault of de coetlogon, not at all of hand, who could not have foreseen it; the other which it was his duty to have seen and prevented. the first was this: the de coetlogons found themselves left with their wounded exposed to the inclemencies of the season; they must all be transported into the house and verandah; in the distress and pressure of this task, the dinner engagement was too long forgotten; and a note of excuse did not reach the german consulate before the table was set, and knappe dressed to receive his visitors. the second consequence was inevitable. captain hand was scarce landed ere it became public (was "sofort bekannt," writes knappe) that he and the consul were in opposition. all that had been gained by the demonstration at laulii was thus immediately cast away; de coetlogon's prestige was lessened; and it must be said plainly that hand did less than nothing to restore it. twice indeed he interfered, both times with success; and once, when his own person had been endangered, with vehemence; but during all the strange doings i have to narrate, he remained in close intimacy with the german consulate, and on one occasion may be said to have acted as its marshal. after the worst is over, after bismarck has told knappe that "the protests of his english colleague were grounded," that his own conduct "has not been good," and that in any dispute which may arise he "will find himself in the wrong," knappe can still plead in his defence that captain hand "has always maintained friendly intercourse with the german authorities." singular epitaph for an english sailor. in this complicity on the part of hand we may find the reason and i had almost said, the excuse of much that was excessive in the bearing of the unfortunate knappe. on the 11th december, mataafa received twenty-eight thousand cartridges, brought into the country in salt-beef kegs by the british ship richmond. this not only sharpened the animosity between whites; following so closely on the german fizzle at laulii, it raised a convulsion in the camp of tamasese. on the 13th brandeis addressed to knappe his famous and fatal letter. i may not describe it as a letter of burning words, but it is plainly dictated by a burning heart. tamasese and his chiefs, he announces, are now sick of the business, and ready to make peace with mataafa. they began the war relying upon german help; they now see and say that "e faaalo siamani i peritania ma america, that germany is subservient to england and the states." it is grimly given to be understood that the despatch is an ultimatum, and a last chance is being offered for the recreant ally to fulfil her pledge. to make it more plain, the document goes on with a kind of bilious irony: "the two german war-ships now in samoa are here for the protection of german property alone; and when the olga shall have arrived" [she arrived on the morrow] "the german war-ships will continue to do against the insurgents precisely as little as they have done heretofore." plant flags, in fact. here was knappe's opportunity, could he have stooped to seize it. i find it difficult to blame him that he could not. far from being so inglorious as the treachery once contemplated by becker, the acceptance of this ultimatum would have been still in the nature of a disgrace. brandeis's letter, written by a german, was hard to swallow. it would have been hard to accept that solution which knappe had so recently and so peremptorily refused to his brother consuls. and he was tempted, on the other hand, by recent changes. there was no pelly to support de coetlogon, who might now be disregarded. mullan, leary's successor, even if he were not precisely a hand, was at least no leary; and even if mullan should show fight, knappe had now three ships and could defy or sink him without danger. many small circumstances moved him in the same direction. the looting of german plantations continued; the whole force of mataafa was to a large extent subsisted from the crops of vailele; and armed men were to be seen openly plundering bananas, bread-fruit, and cocoa-nuts under the walls of the plantation building. on the night of the 13th the consulate stable had been broken into and a horse removed. on the 16th there was a riot in apia between half-castes and sailors from the new ship olga, each side claiming that the other was the worse of drink, both (for a wager) justly. the multiplication of flags and little neutral territories had, besides, begun to irritate the samoans. the protests of german settlers had been received uncivilly. on the 16th the mataafas had again sought to land in saluafata bay, with the manifest intention to attack the tamaseses, or (in other words) "to trespass on german lands, covered, as your excellency knows, with flags." i quote from his requisition to fritze, december 17th. upon all these considerations, he goes on, it is necessary to bring the fighting to an end. both parties are to be disarmed and returned to their villages mataafa first. and in case of any attempt upon apia, the roads thither are to be held by a strong landing-party. mataafa was to be disarmed first, perhaps rightly enough in his character of the last insurgent. then was to have come the turn of tamasese; but it does not appear the disarming would have had the same import or have been gone about in the same way. germany was bound to tamasese. no honest man would dream of blaming knappe because he sought to redeem his country's word. the path he chose was doubtless that of honour, so far as honour was still left. but it proved to be the road to ruin. fritze, ranking german officer, is understood to have opposed the measure. his attitude earned him at the time unpopularity among his country-people on the spot, and should now redound to his credit. it is to be hoped he extended his opposition to some of the details. if it were possible to disarm mataafa at all, it must be done rather by prestige than force. a party of blue-jackets landed in samoan bush, and expected to hold against samoans a multiplicity of forest paths, had their work cut out for them. and it was plain they should be landed in the light of day, with a discouraging openness, and even with parade. to sneak ashore by night was to increase the danger of resistance and to minimise the authority of the attack. the thing was a bluff, and it is impossible to bluff with stealth. yet this was what was tried. a landing-party was to leave the olga in apia bay at two in the morning; the landing was to be at four on two parts of the foreshore of vailele. at eight they were to be joined by a second landing-party from the eber. by nine the olgas were to be on the crest of letongo mountain, and the ebers to be moving round the promontory by the seaward paths, "with measures of precaution," disarming all whom they encountered. there was to be no firing unless fired upon. at the appointed hour (or perhaps later) on the morning of the 19th, this unpromising business was put in hand, and there moved off from the olga two boats with some fifty bluejackets between them, and a praam or punt containing ninety, the boats and the whole expedition under the command of captainlieutenant jaeckel, the praam under lieutenant spengler. the men had each forty rounds, one day's provisions, and their flasks filled. in the meanwhile, mataafa sympathisers about apia were on the alert. knappe had informed the consuls that the ships were to put to sea next day for the protection of german property; but the tamaseses had been less discreet. "to-morrow at the hour of seven," they had cried to their adversaries, "you will know of a difficulty, and our guns shall be made good in broken bones." an accident had pointed expectation towards apia. the wife of le mamea washed for the german ships a perquisite, i suppose, for her husband's unwilling fidelity. she sent a man with linen on board the adler, where he was surprised to see le mamea in person, and to be himself ordered instantly on shore. the news spread. if mamea were brought down from lotoanuu, others might have come at the same time. tamasese himself and half his army might perhaps lie concealed on board the german ships. and a watch was accordingly set and warriors collected along the line of the shore. one detachment lay in some rifle-pits by the mouth of the fuisa. they were commanded by seumanu; and with his party, probably as the most contiguous to apia, was the war-correspondent, john klein. of english birth, but naturalised american, this gentleman had been for some time representing the new york world in a very effective manner, always in the front, living in the field with the samoans, and in all vicissitudes of weather, toiling to and fro with his despatches. his wisdom was perhaps not equal to his energy. he made himself conspicuous, going about armed to the teeth in a boat under the stars and stripes; and on one occasion, when he supposed himself fired upon by the tamaseses, had the petulance to empty his revolver in the direction of their camp. by the light of the moon, which was then nearly down, this party observed the olga's two boats and the praam, which they described as "almost sinking with men," the boats keeping well out towards the reef, the praam at the moment apparently heading for the shore. an extreme agitation seems to have reigned in the rifle-pits. what were the newcomers? what was their errand? were they germans or tamaseses? had they a mind to attack? the praam was hailed in samoan and did not answer. it was proposed to fire upon her ere she drew near. and at last, whether on his own suggestion or that of seumanu, klein hailed her in english, and in terms of unnecessary melodrama. "do not try to land here," he cried. "if you do, your blood will be upon your head." spengler, who had never the least intention to touch at the fuisa, put up the head of the praam to her true course and continued to move up the lagoon with an offing of some seventy or eighty yards. along all the irregularities and obstructions of the beach, across the mouth of the vaivasa, and through the startled village of matafangatele, seumanu, klein, and seven or eight others raced to keep up, spreading the alarm and rousing reinforcements as they went. presently a man on horse-back made his appearance on the opposite beach of fangalii. klein and the natives distinctly saw him signal with a lantern; which is the more strange, as the horseman (captain hufnagel, plantation manager of vailele) had never a lantern to signal with. the praam kept in. many men in white were seen to stand up, step overboard, and wade to shore. at the same time the eye of panic descried a breastwork of "foreign stone" (brick) upon the beach. samoans are prepared to-day to swear to its existence, i believe conscientiously, although no such thing was ever made or ever intended in that place. the hour is doubtful. "it was the hour when the streak of dawn is seen, the hour known in the warfare of heathen times as the hour of the night attack," says the mataafa official account. a native whom i met on the field declared it was at cock-crow. captain hufnagel, on the other hand, is sure it was long before the day. it was dark at least, and the moon down. darkness made the samoans bold; uncertainty as to the composition and purpose of the landing-party made them desperate. fire was opened on the germans, one of whom was here killed. the germans returned it, and effected a lodgment on the beach; and the skirmish died again to silence. it was at this time, if not earlier, that klein returned to apia. here, then, were spengler and the ninety men of the praam, landed on the beach in no very enviable posture, the woods in front filled with unnumbered enemies, but for the time successful. meanwhile, jaeckel and the boats had gone outside the reef, and were to land on the other side of the vailele promontory, at sunga, by the buildings of the plantation. it was hufnagel's part to go and meet them. his way led straight into the woods and through the midst of the samoans, who had but now ceased firing. he went in the saddle and at a foot's pace, feeling speed and concealment to be equally helpless, and that if he were to fall at all, he had best fall with dignity. not a shot was fired at him; no effort made to arrest him on his errand. as he went, he spoke and even jested with the samoans, and they answered in good part. one fellow was leaping, yelling, and tossing his axe in the air, after the way of an excited islander. "faimalosi! go it!" said hufnagel, and the fellow laughed and redoubled his exertions. as soon as the boats entered the lagoon, fire was again opened from the woods. the fifty blue-jackets jumped overboard, hove down the boats to be a shield, and dragged them towards the landing-place. in this way, their rations, and (what was more unfortunate) some of their miserable provision of forty rounds got wetted; but the men came to shore and garrisoned the plantation house without a casualty. meanwhile the sound of the firing from sunga immediately renewed the hostilities at fangalii. the civilians on shore decided that spengler must be at once guided to the house, and haideln, the surveyor, accepted the dangerous errand. like hufnagel, he was suffered to pass without question through the midst of these platonic enemies. he found spengler some way inland on a knoll, disastrously engaged, the woods around him filled with samoans, who were continuously reinforced. in three successive charges, cheering as they ran, the blue-jackets burst through their scattered opponents, and made good their junction with jaeckel. four men only remained upon the field, the other wounded being helped by their comrades or dragging themselves painfully along. the force was now concentrated in the house and its immediate patch of garden. their rear, to the seaward, was unmolested; but on three sides they were beleaguered. on the left, the samoans occupied and fired from some of the plantation offices. in front, a long rising crest of land in the horse-pasture commanded the house, and was lined with the assailants. and on the right, the hedge of the same paddock afforded them a dangerous cover. it was in this place that a samoan sharpshooter was knocked over by jaeckel with his own hand. the fire was maintained by the samoans in the usual wasteful style. the roof was made a sieve; the balls passed clean through the house; lieutenant sieger, as he lay, already dying, on hufnagel's bed, was despatched with a fresh wound. the samoans showed themselves extremely enterprising: pushed their lines forward, ventured beyond cover, and continually threatened to envelop the garden. thrice, at least, it was necessary to repel them by a sally. the men were brought into the house from the rear, the front doors were thrown suddenly open, and the gallant blue-jackets issued cheering: necessary, successful, but extremely costly sorties. neither could these be pushed far. the foes were undaunted; so soon as the sailors advanced at all deep in the horse-pasture, the samoans began to close in upon both flanks; and the sally had to be recalled. to add to the dangers of the german situation, ammunition began to run low; and the cartridge-boxes of the wounded and the dead had been already brought into use before, at about eight o'clock, the eber steamed into the bay. her commander, wallis, threw some shells into letongo, one of which killed five men about their cooking-pot. the samoans began immediately to withdraw; their movements were hastened by a sortie, and the remains of the landing-party brought on board. this was an unfortunate movement; it gave an irremediable air of defeat to what might have been else claimed for a moderate success. the blue-jackets numbered a hundred and forty all told; they were engaged separately and fought under the worst conditions, in the dark and among woods; their position in the house was scarce tenable; they lost in killed and wounded fiftysix, forty per cent.; and their spirit to the end was above question. whether we think of the poor sailor lads, always so pleasantly behaved in times of peace, or whether we call to mind the behaviour of the two civilians, haideln and hufnagel, we can only regret that brave men should stand to be exposed upon so poor a quarrel, or lives cast away upon an enterprise so hopeless. news of the affair reached apia early, and moors, always curious of these spectacles of war, was immediately in the saddle. near matafangatele he met a manono chief, whom he asked if there were any german dead. "i think there are about thirty of them knocked over," said he. "have you taken their heads?" asked moors. "yes," said the chief. "some foolish people did it, but i have stopped them. we ought not to cut off their heads when they do not cut off ours." he was asked what had been done with the heads. "two have gone to mataafa," he replied, "and one is buried right under where your horse is standing, in a basket wrapped in tapa." this was afterwards dug up, and i am told on native authority that, besides the three heads, two ears were taken. moors next asked the manono man how he came to be going away. "the man-of-war is throwing shells," said he. "when they stopped firing out of the house, we stopped firing also; so it was as well to scatter when the shells began. we could have killed all the white men. i wish they had been tamaseses." this is an ex parte statement, and i give it for such; but the course of the affair, and in particular the adventures of haideln and hufnagel, testify to a surprising lack of animosity against the germans. about the same time or but a little earlier than this conversation, the same spirit was being displayed. hufnagel, with a party of labour, had gone out to bring in the german dead, when he was surprised to be suddenly fired on from the wood. the boys he had with him were not negritos, but polynesians from the gilbert islands; and he suddenly remembered that these might be easily mistaken for a detachment of tamaseses. bidding his boys conceal themselves in a thicket, this brave man walked into the open. so soon as he was recognised, the firing ceased, and the labourers followed him in safety. this is chivalrous war; but there was a side to it less chivalrous. as moors drew nearer to vailele, he began to meet samoans with hats, guns, and even shirts, taken from the german sailors. with one of these who had a hat and a gun he stopped and spoke. the hat was handed up for him to look at; it had the late owner's name on the inside. "where is he?" asked moors. "he is dead; i cut his head off." "you shot him?" "no, somebody else shot him in the hip. when i came, he put up his hands, and cried: 'don't kill me; i am a malietoa man.' i did not believe him, and i cut his head off...... have you any ammunition to fit that gun?" "i do not know." "what has become of the cartridge-belt?" "another fellow grabbed that and the cartridges, and he won't give them to me." a dreadful and silly picture of barbaric war. the words of the german sailor must be regarded as imaginary: how was the poor lad to speak native, or the samoan to understand german? when moors came as far as sunga, the eber was yet in the bay, the smoke of battle still lingered among the trees, which were themselves marked with a thousand bullet-wounds. but the affair was over, the combatants, german and samoan, were all gone, and only a couple of negrito labour boys lurked on the scene. the village of letongo beyond was equally silent; part of it was wrecked by the shells of the eber, and still smoked; the inhabitants had fled. on the beach were the native boats, perhaps five thousand dollars' worth, deserted by the mataafas and over-looked by the germans, in their common hurry to escape. still moors held eastward by the sea-paths. it was his hope to get a view from the other side of the promontory, towards laulii. in the way he found a house hidden in the wood and among rocks, where an aged and sick woman was being tended by her elderly daughter. last lingerers in that deserted piece of coast, they seemed indifferent to the events which had thus left them solitary, and, as the daughter said, did not know where mataafa was, nor where tamasese. it is the official samoan pretension that the germans fired first at fangalii. in view of all german and some native testimony, the text of fritze's orders, and the probabilities of the case, no honest mind will believe it for a moment. certainly the samoans fired first. as certainly they were betrayed into the engagement in the agitation of the moment, and it was not till afterwards that they understood what they had done. then, indeed, all samoa drew a breath of wonder and delight. the invincible had fallen; the men of the vaunted war-ships had been met in the field by the braves of mataafa: a superstition was no more. conceive this people steadily as schoolboys; and conceive the elation in any school if the head boy should suddenly arise and drive the rector from the schoolhouse. i have received one instance of the feeling instantly aroused. there lay at the time in the consular hospital an old chief who was a pet of the colonel's. news reached him of the glorious event; he was sick, he thought himself sinking, sent for the colonel, and gave him his gun. "don't let the germans get it," said the old gentleman, and having received a promise, was at peace. chapter ix "furor consularis" december 1888 to march 1889 knappe, in the adler, with a flag of truce at the fore, was entering laulii bay when the eber brought him the news of the night's reverse. his heart was doubtless wrung for his young countrymen who had been butchered and mutilated in the dark woods, or now lay suffering, and some of them dying, on the ship. and he must have been startled as he recognised his own position. he had gone too far; he had stumbled into war, and, what was worse, into defeat; he had thrown away german lives for less than nothing, and now saw himself condemned either to accept defeat, or to kick and pummel his failure into something like success; either to accept defeat, or take frenzy for a counsellor. yesterday, in cold blood, he had judged it necessary to have the woods to the westward guarded lest the evacuation of laulii should prove only the peril of apia. to-day, in the irritation and alarm of failure, he forgot or despised his previous reasoning, and, though his detachment was beat back to the ships, proceeded with the remainder of his maimed design. the only change he made was to haul down the flag of truce. he had now no wish to meet with mataafa. words were out of season, shells must speak. at this moment an incident befell him which must have been trying to his self-command. the new american ship nipsic entered laulii bay; her commander, mullan, boarded the adler to protest, succeeded in wresting from knappe a period of delay in order that the women might be spared, and sent a lieutenant to mataafa with a warning. the camp was already excited by the news and the trophies of fangalii. already tamasese and lotoanuu seemed secondary objectives to the germans and apia. mullan's message put an end to hesitation. laulii was evacuated. the troops streamed westward by the mountain side, and took up the same day a strong position about tanungamanono and mangiangi, some two miles behind apia, which they threatened with the one hand, while with the other they continued to draw their supplies from the devoted plantations of the german firm. laulii, when it was shelled, was empty. the british flags were, of course, fired upon; and i hear that one of them was struck down, but i think every one must be privately of the mind that it was fired upon and fell, in a place where it had little business to be shown. such was the military epilogue to the ill-judged adventure of fangalii; it was difficult for failure to be more complete. but the other consequences were of a darker colour and brought the whites immediately face to face in a spirit of ill-favoured animosity. knappe was mourning the defeat and death of his country-folk, he was standing aghast over the ruin of his own career, when mullan boarded him. the successor of leary served himself, in that bitter moment, heir to leary's part. and in mullan, knappe saw more even than the successor of leary, he saw in him the representative of klein. klein had hailed the praam from the rifle-pits; he had there uttered ill-chosen words, unhappily prophetic; it is even likely that he was present at the time of the first fire. to accuse him of the design and conduct of the whole attack was but a step forward; his own vapouring served to corroborate the accusation; and it was not long before the german consulate was in possession of sworn native testimony in support. the worth of native testimony is small, the worth of white testimony not overwhelming; and i am in the painful position of not being able to subscribe either to klein's own account of the affair or to that of his accusers. klein was extremely flurried; his interest as a reporter must have tempted him at first to make the most of his share in the exploit, the immediate peril in which he soon found himself to stand must have at least suggested to him the idea of minimising it; one way and another, he is not a good witness. as for the natives, they were no doubt cross-examined in that hall of terror, the german consulate, where they might be trusted to lie like schoolboys, or (if the reader prefer it) like samoans. by outside white testimony, it remains established for me that klein returned to apia either before or immediately after the first shots. that he ever sought or was ever allowed a share in the command may be denied peremptorily; but it is more than likely that he expressed himself in an excited manner and with a highly inflammatory effect upon his hearers. he was, at least, severely punished. the germans, enraged by his provocative behaviour and what they thought to be his german birth, demanded him to be tried before court-martial; he had to skulk inside the sentries of the american consulate, to be smuggled on board a war-ship, and to be carried almost by stealth out of the island; and what with the agitations of his mind, and the results of a marsh fever contracted in the lines of mataafa, reached honolulu a very proper object of commiseration. nor was klein the only accused: de coetlogon was himself involved. as the boats passed matautu, knappe declares a signal was made from the british consulate. perhaps we should rather read "from its neighbourhood"; since, in the general warding of the coast, the point of matautu could scarce have been neglected. on the other hand, there is no doubt that the samoans, in the anxiety of that night of watching and fighting, crowded to the friendly consul for advice. late in the night, the wounded siteoni, lying on the colonel's verandah, one corner of which had been blinded down that he might sleep, heard the coming and going of bare feet and the voices of eager consultation. and long after, a man who had been discharged from the colonel's employment took upon himself to swear an affidavit as to the nature of the advice then given, and to carry the document to the german consul. it was an act of private revenge; it fell long out of date in the good days of dr. stuebel, and had no result but to discredit the gentleman who volunteered it. colonel de coetlogon had his faults, but they did not touch his honour; his bare word would always outweigh a waggon-load of such denunciations; and he declares his behaviour on that night to have been blameless. the question was besides inquired into on the spot by sir john thurston, and the colonel honourably acquitted. but during the weeks that were now to follow, knappe believed the contrary; he believed not only that moors and others had supplied ammunition and klein commanded in the field, but that de coetlogon had made the signal of attack; that though his blue-jackets had bled and fallen against the arms of samoans, these were supplied, inspired, and marshalled by americans and english. the legend was the more easily believed because it embraced and was founded upon so much truth. germans lay dead, the german wounded groaned in their cots; and the cartridges by which they fell had been sold by an american and brought into the country in a british bottom. had the transaction been entirely mercenary, it would already have been hard to swallow; but it was notoriously not so. british and americans were notoriously the partisans of mataafa. they rejoiced in the result of fangalii, and so far from seeking to conceal their rejoicing, paraded and displayed it. calumny ran high. before the dead were buried, while the wounded yet lay in pain and fever, cowardly accusations of cowardice were levelled at the german blue-jackets. it was said they had broken and run before their enemies, and that they had huddled helpless like sheep in the plantation house. small wonder if they had; small wonder had they been utterly destroyed. but the fact was heroically otherwise; and these dastard calumnies cut to the blood. they are not forgotten; perhaps they will never be forgiven. in the meanwhile, events were pressing towards a still more trenchant opposition. on the 20th, the three consuls met and parted without agreement, knappe announcing that he had lost men and must take the matter in his own hands to avenge their death. on the 21st the olga came before matafangatele, ordered the delivery of all arms within the hour, and at the end of that period, none being brought, shelled and burned the village. the shells fell for the most part innocuous; an eyewitness saw children at play beside the flaming houses; not a soul was injured; and the one noteworthy event was the mutilation of captain hamilton's american flag. in one sense an incident too small to be chronicled, in another this was of historic interest and import. these rags of tattered bunting occasioned the display of a new sentiment in the united states; and the republic of the west, hitherto so apathetic and unwieldy, but already stung by german nonchalance, leaped to its feet for the first time at the news of this fresh insult. as though to make the inefficiency of the warships more apparent, three shells were thrown inland at mangiangi; they flew high over the mataafa camp, where the natives could "hear them singing" as they flew, and fell behind in the deep romantic valley of the vaisingano. mataafa had been already summoned on board the adler; his life promised if he came, declared "in danger" if he came not; and he had declined in silence the unattractive invitation. these fresh hostile acts showed him that the worst had come. he was in strength, his force posted along the whole front of the mountain behind apia, matautu occupied, the siumu road lined up to the houses of the town with warriors passionate for war. the occasion was unique, and there is no doubt that he designed to seize it. the same day of this bombardment, he sent word bidding all english and americans wear a black band upon their arm, so that his men should recognise and spare them. the hint was taken, and the band worn for a continuance of days. to have refused would have been insane; but to consent was unhappily to feed the resentment of the germans by a fresh sign of intelligence with their enemies, and to widen the breach between the races by a fresh and a scarce pardonable mark of their division. the same day again the germans repeated one of their earlier offences by firing on a boat within the harbour. times were changed; they were now at war and in peril, the rigour of military advantage might well be seized by them and pardoned by others; but it so chanced that the bullets flew about the ears of captain hand, and that commander is said to have been insatiable of apologies. the affair, besides, had a deplorable effect on the inhabitants. a black band (they saw) might protect them from the mataafas, not from undiscriminating shots. panic ensued. the war-ships were open to receive the fugitives, and the gentlemen who had made merry over fangalii were seen to thrust each other from the wharves in their eagerness to flee apia. i willingly drop the curtain on the shameful picture. meanwhile, on the german side of the bay, a more manly spirit was exhibited in circumstances of alarming weakness. the plantation managers and overseers had all retreated to matafele, only one (i understand) remaining at his post. the whole german colony was thus collected in one spot, and could count and wonder at its scanty numbers. knappe declares (to my surprise) that the warships could not spare him more than fifty men a day. the great extension of the german quarter, he goes on, did not "allow a full occupation of the outer line"; hence they had shrunk into the western end by the firm buildings, and the inhabitants were warned to fall back on this position, in the case of an alert. so that he who had set forth, a day or so before, to disarm the mataafas in the open field, now found his resources scarce adequate to garrison the buildings of the firm. but knappe seemed unteachable by fate. it is probable he thought he had "already waded in so deep, returning were as tedious as go o'er"; it is certain that he continued, on the scene of his defeat and in the midst of his weakness, to bluster and menace like a conqueror. active war, which he lacked the means of attempting, was continually threatened. on the 22nd he sought the aid of his brother consuls to maintain the neutral territory against mataafa; and at the same time, as though meditating instant deeds of prowess, refused to be bound by it himself. this singular proposition was of course refused: blacklock remarking that he had no fear of the natives, if these were let alone; de coetlogon refusing in the circumstances to recognise any neutral territory at all. in vain knappe amended and baited his proposal with the offer of forty-eight or ninety-six hours' notice, according as his objective should be near or within the boundary of the eleele sa. it was rejected; and he learned that he must accept war with all its consequences and not that which he desired war with the immunities of peace. this monstrous exigence illustrates the man's frame of mind. it has been still further illuminated in the german white-book by printing alongside of his despatches those of the unimpassioned fritze. on january 8th the consulate was destroyed by fire. knappe says it was the work of incendiaries, "without doubt"; fritze admits that "everything seems to show" it was an accident. "tamasese's people fit to bear arms," writes knappe, "are certainly for the moment equal to mataafa's," though restrained from battle by the lack of ammunition. "as for tamasese," says fritze of the same date, "he is now but a phantom dient er nur als gespenst. his party, for practical purposes, is no longer large. they pretend ammunition to be lacking, but what they lack most is goodwill. captain brandeis, whose influence is now small, declares they can no longer sustain a serious engagement, and is himself in the intention of leaving samoa by the lubeck of the 5th february." and knappe, in the same despatch, confutes himself and confirms the testimony of his naval colleague, by the admission that "the reestablishment of tamasese's government is, under present circumstances, not to be thought of." plainly, then, he was not so much seeking to deceive others, as he was himself possessed; and we must regard the whole series of his acts and despatches as the agitations of a fever. the british steamer richmond returned to apia, january 15th. on the last voyage she had brought the ammunition already so frequently referred to; as a matter of fact, she was again bringing contraband of war. it is necessary to be explicit upon this, which served as spark to so great a flame of scandal. knappe was justified in interfering; he would have been worthy of all condemnation if he had neglected, in his posture of semiinvestment, a precaution so elementary; and the manner in which he set about attempting it was conciliatory and almost timid. he applied to captain hand, and begged him to accept himself the duty of "controlling" the discharge of the richmond's cargo. hand was unable to move without his consul; and at night an armed boat from the germans boarded, searched, and kept possession of, the suspected ship. the next day, as by an after-thought, war and martial law were proclaimed for the samoan islands, the introduction of contraband of war forbidden, and ships and boats declared liable to search. "all support of the rebels will be punished by martial law," continued the proclamation, "no matter to what nationality the person [thater] may belong." hand, it has been seen, declined to act in the matter of the richmond without the concurrence of his consul; but i have found no evidence that either hand or knappe communicated with de coetlogon, with whom they were both at daggers drawn. first the seizure and next the proclamation seem to have burst on the english consul from a clear sky; and he wrote on the same day, throwing doubt on knappe's authority to declare war. knappe replied on the 20th that the imperial german government had been at war as a matter of fact since december 19th, and that it was only for the convenience of the subjects of other states that he had been empowered to make a formal declaration. "from that moment," he added, "martial law prevails in samoa." de coetlogon instantly retorted, declining martial law for british subjects, and announcing a proclamation in that sense. instantly, again, came that astonishing document, knappe's rejoinder, without pause, without reflection the pens screeching on the paper, the messengers (you would think) running from consulate to consulate: "i have had the honour to receive your excellency's [hochwohlgeboren] agreeable communication of to-day. since, on the ground of received instructions, martial law has been declared in samoa, british subjects as well as others fall under its application. i warn you therefore to abstain from such a proclamation as you announce in your letter. it will be such a piece of business as shall make yourself answerable under martial law. besides, your proclamation will be disregarded." de coetlogon of course issued his proclamation at once, knappe retorted with another, and night closed on the first stage of this insane collision. i hear the german consul was on this day prostrated with fever; charity at least must suppose him hardly answerable for his language. early on the 21st, mr. mansfield gallien, a passing traveller, was seized in his berth on board the richmond, and carried, halfdressed, on board a german war-ship. his offence was, in the circumstances and after the proclamation, substantial. he had gone the day before, in the spirit of a tourist to mataafa's camp, had spoken with the king, and had even recommended him an appeal to sir george grey. fritze, i gather, had been long uneasy; this arrest on board a british ship fitted the measure. doubtless, as he had written long before, the consul alone was responsible "on the legal side"; but the captain began to ask himself, "what next?" telegraphed direct home for instructions, "is arrest of foreigners on foreign vessels legal?" and was ready, at a word from captain hand, to discharge his dangerous prisoner. the word in question (so the story goes) was not without a kind of wit. "i wish you would set that man ashore," hand is reported to have said, indicating gallien; "i wish you would set that man ashore, to save me the trouble." the same day de coetlogon published a proclamation requesting captains to submit to search for contraband of war. on the 22nd the samoa times and south sea advertiser was suppressed by order of fritze. i have hitherto refrained from mentioning the single paper of our islands, that i might deal with it once for all. it is of course a tiny sheet; but i have often had occasion to wonder at the ability of its articles, and almost always at the decency of its tone. officials may at times be a little roughly, and at times a little captiously, criticised; private persons are habitually respected; and there are many papers in england, and still more in the states, even of leading organs in chief cities, that might envy, and would do well to imitate, the courtesy and discretion of the samoa times. yet the editor, cusack, is only an amateur in journalism, and a carpenter by trade. his chief fault is one perhaps inevitable in so small a place that he seems a little in the leading of a clique; but his interest in the public weal is genuine and generous. one man's meat is another man's poison: anglo-saxons and germans have been differently brought up. to our galled experience the paper appears moderate; to their untried sensations it seems violent. we think a public man fair game; we think it a part of his duty, and i am told he finds it a part of his reward, to be continually canvassed by the press. for the germans, on the other hand, an official wears a certain sacredness; when he is called over the coals, they are shocked, and (if the official be a german) feel that germany itself has been insulted. the samoa times had been long a mountain of offence. brandeis had imported from the colonies another printer of the name of jones, to deprive cusack of the government printing. german sailors had come ashore one day, wild with offended patriotism, to punish the editor with stripes, and the result was delightfully amusing. the champions asked for the english printer. they were shown the wrong man, and the blows intended for cusack had hailed on the shoulders of his rival jones. on the 12th, cusack had reprinted an article from a san francisco paper; the germans had complained; and de coetlogon, in a moment of weakness, had fined the editor twenty pounds. the judgment was afterwards reversed in fiji; but even at the time it had not satisfied the germans. and so now, on the third day of martial law, the paper was suppressed. here we have another of these international obscurities. to fritze the step seemed natural and obvious; for anglo-saxons it was a hand laid upon the altar; and the month was scarce out before the voice of senator frye announced to his colleagues that free speech had been suppressed in samoa. perhaps we must seek some similar explanation for fritze's shortlived code, published and withdrawn the next day, the 23rd. fritze himself was in no humour for extremities. he was much in the position of a lieutenant who should perceive his captain urging the ship upon the rocks. it is plain he had lost all confidence in his commanding officer "upon the legal side"; and we find him writing home with anxious candour. he had understood that martial law implied military possession; he was in military possession of nothing but his ship, and shrewdly suspected that his martial jurisdiction should be confined within the same limits. "as a matter of fact," he writes, "we do not occupy the territory, and cannot give foreigners the necessary protection, because mataafa and his people can at any moment forcibly interrupt me in my jurisdiction." yet in the eyes of anglo-saxons the severity of his code appeared burlesque. i give but three of its provisions. the crime of inciting german troops "by any means, as, for instance, informing them of proclamations by the enemy," was punishable with death; that of "publishing or secretly distributing anything, whether printed or written, bearing on the war," with prison or deportation; and that of calling or attending a public meeting, unless permitted, with the same. such were the tender mercies of knappe, lurking in the western end of the german quarter, where mataafa could "at any moment" interrupt his jurisdiction. on the 22nd (day of the suppression of the times) de coetlogon wrote to inquire if hostilities were intended against great britain, which knappe on the same day denied. on the 23rd de coetlogon sent a complaint of hostile acts, such as the armed and forcible entry of the richmond before the declaration and arrest of gallien. in his reply, dated the 24th, knappe took occasion to repeat, although now with more self-command, his former threat against de coetlogon. "i am still of the opinion," he writes, "that even foreign consuls are liable to the application of martial law, if they are guilty of offences against the belligerent state." the same day (24th) de coetlogon complained that fletcher, manager for messrs. macarthur, had been summoned by fritze. in answer, knappe had "the honour to inform your excellency that since the declaration of the state of war, british subjects are liable to martial law, and mr. fletcher will be arrested if he does not appear." here, then, was the gauntlet thrown down, and de coetlogon was burning to accept it. fletcher's offence was this. upon the 22nd a steamer had come in from wellington, specially chartered to bring german despatches to apia. the rumour came along with her from new zealand that in these despatches knappe would find himself rebuked, and fletcher was accused of having "interested himself in the spreading of this rumour." his arrest was actually ordered, when hand succeeded in persuading him to surrender. at the german court, the case was dismissed "wegen nichtigkeit"; and the acute stage of these distempers may be said to have ended. blessed are the peacemakers. hand had perhaps averted a collision. what is more certain, he had offered to the world a perfectly original reading of the part of british seaman. hand may have averted a collision, i say; but i am tempted to believe otherwise. i am tempted to believe the threat to arrest fletcher was the last mutter of the declining tempest and a mere sop to knappe's self-respect. i am tempted to believe the rumour in question was substantially correct, and the steamer from wellington had really brought the german consul grounds for hesitation, if not orders to retreat. i believe the unhappy man to have awakened from a dream, and to have read ominous writing on the wall. an enthusiastic popularity surrounded him among the germans. it was natural. consul and colony had passed through an hour of serious peril, and the consul had set the example of undaunted courage. he was entertained at dinner. fritze, who was known to have secretly opposed him, was scorned and avoided. but the clerks of the german firm were one thing, prince bismarck was another; and on a cold review of these events, it is not improbable that knappe may have envied the position of his naval colleague. it is certain, at least, that he set himself to shuffle and capitulate; and when the blow fell, he was able to reply that the martial law business had in the meanwhile come right; that the english and american consular courts stood open for ordinary cases and that in different conversations with captain hand, "who has always maintained friendly intercourse with the german authorities," it had been repeatedly explained that only the supply of weapons and ammunition, or similar aid and support, was to come under german martial law. was it weapons or ammunition that fletcher had supplied? but it is unfair to criticise these wrigglings of an unfortunate in a false position. in a despatch of the 23rd, which has not been printed, knappe had told his story: how he had declared war, subjected foreigners to martial law, and been received with a counter-proclamation by the english consul; and how (in an interview with mataafa chiefs at the plantation house of motuotua, of which i cannot find the date) he had demanded the cession of arms and of ringleaders for punishment, and proposed to assume the government of the islands. on february 12th he received bismarck's answer: "you had no right to take foreigners from the jurisdiction of their consuls. the protest of your english colleague is grounded. in disputes which may arise from this cause you will find yourself in the wrong. the demand formulated by you, as to the assumption of the government of samoa by germany, lay outside of your instructions and of our design. take it immediately back. if your telegram is here rightly understood, i cannot call your conduct good." it must be a hard heart that does not sympathise with knappe in the hour when he received this document. yet it may be said that his troubles were still in the beginning. men had contended against him, and he had not prevailed; he was now to be at war with the elements, and find his name identified with an immense disaster. one more date, however, must be given first. it was on february 27th that fritze formally announced martial law to be suspended, and himself to have relinquished the control of the police. chapter x the hurricane march 1889 the so-called harbour of apia is formed in part by a recess of the coast-line at matautu, in part by the slim peninsula of mulinuu, and in part by the fresh waters of the mulivai and vaisingano. the barrier reef that singular breakwater that makes so much of the circuit of pacific islands is carried far to sea at matautu and mulinuu; inside of these two horns it runs sharply landward, and between them it is burst or dissolved by the fresh water. the shape of the enclosed anchorage may be compared to a highshouldered jar or bottle with a funnel mouth. its sides are almost everywhere of coral; for the reef not only bounds it to seaward and forms the neck and mouth, but skirting about the beach, it forms the bottom also. as in the bottle of commerce, the bottom is reentrant, and the shore-reef runs prominently forth into the basin and makes a dangerous cape opposite the fairway of the entrance. danger is, therefore, on all hands. the entrance gapes three cables wide at the narrowest, and the formidable surf of the pacific thunders both outside and in. there are days when speech is difficult in the chambers of shore-side houses; days when no boat can land, and when men are broken by stroke of sea against the wharves. as i write these words, three miles in the mountains, and with the land-breeze still blowing from the island summit, the sound of that vexed harbour hums in my ears. such a creek in my native coast of scotland would scarce be dignified with the mark of an anchor in the chart; but in the favoured climate of samoa, and with the mechanical regularity of the winds in the pacific, it forms, for ten or eleven months out of the twelve, a safe if hardly a commodious port. the ill-found island traders ride there with their insufficient moorings the year through, and discharge, and are loaded, without apprehension. of danger, when it comes, the glass gives timely warning; and that any modern warship, furnished with the power of steam, should have been lost in apia, belongs not so much to nautical as to political history. the weather throughout all that winter (the turbulent summer of the islands) was unusually fine, and the circumstance had been commented on as providential, when so many samoans were lying on their weapons in the bush. by february it began to break in occasional gales. on february 10th a german brigantine was driven ashore. on the 14th the same misfortune befell an american brigantine and a schooner. on both these days, and again on the 7th march, the men-of-war must steam to their anchors. and it was in this last month, the most dangerous of the twelve, that man's animosities crowded that indentation of the reef with costly, populous, and vulnerable ships. i have shown, perhaps already at too great a length, how violently passion ran upon the spot; how high this series of blunders and mishaps had heated the resentment of the germans against all other nationalities and of all other nationalities against the germans. but there was one country beyond the borders of samoa where the question had aroused a scarce less angry sentiment. the breach of the washington congress, the evidence of sewall before a subcommittee on foreign relations, the proposal to try klein before a military court, and the rags of captain hamilton's flag, had combined to stir the people of the states to an unwonted fervour. germany was for the time the abhorred of nations. germans in america publicly disowned the country of their birth. in honolulu, so near the scene of action, german and american young men fell to blows in the street. in the same city, from no traceable source, and upon no possible authority, there arose a rumour of tragic news to arrive by the next occasion, that the nipsic had opened fire on the adler, and the adler had sunk her on the first reply. punctually on the day appointed, the news came; and the two nations, instead of being plunged into war, could only mingle tears over the loss of heroes. by the second week in march three american ships were in apia bay, the nipsic, the vandalia, and the trenton, carrying the flag of rear-admiral kimberley; three german, the adler, the eber, and the olga; and one british, the calliope, captain kane. six merchant-men, ranging from twenty-five up to five hundred tons, and a number of small craft, further encumbered the anchorage. its capacity is estimated by captain kane at four large ships; and the latest arrivals, the vandalia and trenton, were in consequence excluded, and lay without in the passage. of the seven war-ships, the seaworthiness of two was questionable: the trenton's, from an original defect in her construction, often reported, never remedied her hawse-pipes leading in on the berth-deck; the eber's, from an injury to her screw in the blow of february 14th. in this overcrowding of ships in an open entry of the reef, even the eye of the landsman could spy danger; and captain-lieutenant wallis of the eber openly blamed and lamented, not many hours before the catastrophe, their helpless posture. temper once more triumphed. the army of mataafa still hung imminent behind the town; the german quarter was still daily garrisoned with fifty sailors from the squadron; what was yet more influential, germany and the states, at least in apia bay, were on the brink of war, viewed each other with looks of hatred, and scarce observed the letter of civility. on the day of the admiral's arrival, knappe failed to call on him, and on the morrow called on him while he was on shore. the slight was remarked and resented, and the two squadrons clung more obstinately to their dangerous station. on the 15th the barometer fell to 29.11 in. by 2 p.m. this was the moment when every sail in port should have escaped. kimberley, who flew the only broad pennant, should certainly have led the way: he clung, instead, to his moorings, and the germans doggedly followed his example: semi-belligerents, daring each other and the violence of heaven. kane, less immediately involved, was led in error by the report of residents and a fallacious rise in the glass; he stayed with the others, a misjudgment that was like to cost him dear. all were moored, as is the custom in apia, with two anchors practically east and west, clear hawse to the north, and a kedge astern. topmasts were struck, and the ships made snug. the night closed black, with sheets of rain. by midnight it blew a gale; and by the morning watch, a tempest. through what remained of darkness, the captains impatiently expected day, doubtful if they were dragging, steaming gingerly to their moorings, and afraid to steam too much. day came about six, and presented to those on shore a seizing and terrific spectacle. in the pressure of the squalls the bay was obscured as if by midnight, but between them a great part of it was clearly if darkly visible amid driving mist and rain. the wind blew into the harbour mouth. naval authorities describe it as of hurricane force. it had, however, few or none of the effects on shore suggested by that ominous word, and was successfully withstood by trees and buildings. the agitation of the sea, on the other hand, surpassed experience and description. seas that might have awakened surprise and terror in the midst of the atlantic ranged bodily and (it seemed to observers) almost without diminution into the belly of that flask-shaped harbour; and the war-ships were alternately buried from view in the trough, or seen standing on end against the breast of billows. the trenton at daylight still maintained her position in the neck of the bottle. but five of the remaining ships tossed, already close to the bottom, in a perilous and helpless crowd; threatening ruin to each other as they tossed; threatened with a common and imminent destruction on the reefs. three had been already in collision: the olga was injured in the quarter, the adler had lost her bowsprit; the nipsic had lost her smoke-stack, and was making steam with difficulty, maintaining her fire with barrels of pork, and the smoke and sparks pouring along the level of the deck. for the seventh war-ship the day had come too late; the eber had finished her last cruise; she was to be seen no more save by the eyes of divers. a coral reef is not only an instrument of destruction, but a place of sepulchre; the submarine cliff is profoundly undercut, and presents the mouth of a huge antre in which the bodies of men and the hulls of ships are alike hurled down and buried. the eber had dragged anchors with the rest; her injured screw disabled her from steaming vigorously up; and a little before day she had struck the front of the coral, come off, struck again, and gone down stern foremost, oversetting as she went, into the gaping hollow of the reef. of her whole complement of nearly eighty, four souls were cast alive on the beach; and the bodies of the remainder were, by the voluminous outpouring of the flooded streams, scoured at last from the harbour, and strewed naked on the seaboard of the island. five ships were immediately menaced with the same destruction. the eber vanished the four poor survivors on shore read a dreadful commentary on their danger; which was swelled out of all proportion by the violence of their own movements as they leaped and fell among the billows. by seven the nipsic was so fortunate as to avoid the reef and beach upon a space of sand; where she was immediately deserted by her crew, with the assistance of samoans, not without loss of life. by about eight it was the turn of the adler. she was close down upon the reef; doomed herself, it might yet be possible to save a portion of her crew; and for this end captain fritze placed his reliance on the very hugeness of the seas that threatened him. the moment was watched for with the anxiety of despair, but the coolness of disciplined courage. as she rose on the fatal wave, her moorings were simultaneously slipped; she broached to in rising; and the sea heaved her bodily upward and cast her down with a concussion on the summit of the reef, where she lay on her beam-ends, her back broken, buried in breaching seas, but safe. conceive a table: the eber in the darkness had been smashed against the rim and flung below; the adler, cast free in the nick of opportunity, had been thrown upon the top. many were injured in the concussion; many tossed into the water; twenty perished. the survivors crept again on board their ship, as it now lay, and as it still remains, keel to the waves, a monument of the sea's potency. in still weather, under a cloudless sky, in those seasons when that ill-named ocean, the pacific, suffers its vexed shores to rest, she lies high and dry, the spray scarce touching her the hugest structure of man's hands within a circuit of a thousand miles tossed up there like a schoolboy's cap upon a shelf; broken like an egg; a thing to dream of. the unfriendly consuls of germany and britain were both that morning in matautu, and both displayed their nobler qualities. de coetlogon, the grim old soldier, collected his family and kneeled with them in an agony of prayer for those exposed. knappe, more fortunate in that he was called to a more active service, must, upon the striking of the adler, pass to his own consulate. from this he was divided by the vaisingano, now a raging torrent, impetuously charioting the trunks of trees. a kelpie might have dreaded to attempt the passage; we may conceive this brave but unfortunate and now ruined man to have found a natural joy in the exposure of his life; and twice that day, coming and going, he braved the fury of the river. it was possible, in spite of the darkness of the hurricane and the continual breaching of the seas, to remark human movements on the adler; and by the help of samoans, always nobly forward in the work, whether for friend or enemy, knappe sought long to get a line conveyed from shore, and was for long defeated. the shore guard of fifty men stood to their arms the while upon the beach, useless themselves, and a great deterrent of samoan usefulness. it was perhaps impossible that this mistake should be avoided. what more natural, to the mind of a european, than that the mataafas should fall upon the germans in this hour of their disadvantage? but they had no other thought than to assist; and those who now rallied beside knappe braved (as they supposed) in doing so a double danger, from the fury of the sea and the weapons of their enemies. about nine, a quarter-master swam ashore, and reported all the officers and some sixty men alive but in pitiable case; some with broken limbs, others insensible from the drenching of the breakers. later in the forenoon, certain valorous samoans succeeded in reaching the wreck and returning with a line; but it was speedily broken; and all subsequent attempts proved unavailing, the strongest adventurers being cast back again by the bursting seas. thenceforth, all through that day and night, the deafened survivors must continue to endure their martyrdom; and one officer died, it was supposed from agony of mind, in his inverted cabin. three ships still hung on the next margin of destruction, steaming desperately to their moorings, dashed helplessly together. the calliope was the nearest in; she had the vandalia close on her port side and a little ahead, the olga close a-starboard, the reef under her heel; and steaming and veering on her cables, the unhappy ship fenced with her three dangers. about a quarter to nine she carried away the vandalia's quarter gallery with her jib-boom; a moment later, the olga had near rammed her from the other side. by nine the vandalia dropped down on her too fast to be avoided, and clapped her stern under the bowsprit of the english ship, the fastenings of which were burst asunder as she rose. to avoid cutting her down, it was necessary for the calliope to stop and even to reverse her engines; and her rudder was at the moment or it seemed so to the eyes of those on board within ten feet of the reef. "between the vandalia and the reef" (writes kane, in his excellent report) "it was destruction." to repeat fritze's manoeuvre with the adler was impossible; the calliope was too heavy. the one possibility of escape was to go out. if the engines should stand, if they should have power to drive the ship against wind and sea, if she should answer the helm, if the wheel, rudder, and gear should hold out, and if they were favoured with a clear blink of weather in which to see and avoid the outer reef there, and there only, were safety. upon this catalogue of "ifs" kane staked his all. he signalled to the engineer for every pound of steam and at that moment (i am told) much of the machinery was already red-hot. the ship was sheered well to starboard of the vandalia, the last remaining cable slipped. for a time and there was no onlooker so cold-blooded as to offer a guess at its duration the calliope lay stationary; then gradually drew ahead. the highest speed claimed for her that day is of one sea-mile an hour. the question of times and seasons, throughout all this roaring business, is obscured by a dozen contradictions; i have but chosen what appeared to be the most consistent; but if i am to pay any attention to the time named by admiral kimberley, the calliope, in this first stage of her escape, must have taken more than two hours to cover less than four cables. as she thus crept seaward, she buried bow and stem alternately under the billows. in the fairway of the entrance the flagship trenton still held on. her rudder was broken, her wheel carried away; within she was flooded with water from the peccant hawse-pipes; she had just made the signal "fires extinguished," and lay helpless, awaiting the inevitable end. between this melancholy hulk and the external reef kane must find a path. steering within fifty yards of the reef (for which she was actually headed) and her foreyard passing on the other hand over the trenton's quarter as she rolled, the calliope sheered between the rival dangers, came to the wind triumphantly, and was once more pointed for the sea and safety. not often in naval history was there a moment of more sickening peril, and it was dignified by one of those incidents that reconcile the chronicler with his otherwise abhorrent task. from the doomed flagship the americans hailed the success of the english with a cheer. it was led by the old admiral in person, rang out over the storm with holiday vigour, and was answered by the calliopes with an emotion easily conceived. this ship of their kinsfolk was almost the last external object seen from the calliope for hours; immediately after, the mists closed about her till the morrow. she was safe at sea again una de multis with a damaged foreyard, and a loss of all the ornamental work about her bow and stern, three anchors, one kedge-anchor, fourteen lengths of chain, four boats, the jib-boom, bobstay, and bands and fastenings of the bowsprit. shortly after kane had slipped his cable, captain schoonmaker, despairing of the vandalia, succeeded in passing astern of the olga, in the hope to beach his ship beside the nipsic. at a quarter to eleven her stern took the reef, her hand swung to starboard, and she began to fill and settle. many lives of brave men were sacrificed in the attempt to get a line ashore; the captain, exhausted by his exertions, was swept from deck by a sea; and the rail being soon awash, the survivors took refuge in the tops. out of thirteen that had lain there the day before, there were now but two ships afloat in apia harbour, and one of these was doomed to be the bane of the other. about 3 p.m. the trenton parted one cable, and shortly after a second. it was sought to keep her head to wind with storm-sails and by the ingenious expedient of filling the rigging with seamen; but in the fury of the gale, and in that sea, perturbed alike by the gigantic billows and the volleying discharges of the rivers, the rudderless ship drove down stern foremost into the inner basin; ranging, plunging, and striking like a frightened horse; drifting on destruction for herself and bringing it to others. twice the olga (still well under command) avoided her impact by the skilful use of helm and engines. but about four the vigilance of the germans was deceived, and the ships collided; the olga cutting into the trenton's quarters, first from one side, then from the other, and losing at the same time two of her own cables. captain von ehrhardt instantly slipped the remainder of his moorings, and setting fore and aft canvas, and going full steam ahead, succeeded in beaching his ship in matautu; whither knappe, recalled by this new disaster, had returned. the berth was perhaps the best in the harbour, and von ehrhardt signalled that ship and crew were in security. the trenton, guided apparently by an under-tow or eddy from the discharge of the vaisingano, followed in the course of the nipsic and vandalia, and skirted south-eastward along the front of the shore reef, which her keel was at times almost touching. hitherto she had brought disaster to her foes; now she was bringing it to friends. she had already proved the ruin of the olga, the one ship that had rid out the hurricane in safety; now she beheld across her course the submerged vandalia, the tops filled with exhausted seamen. happily the approach of the trenton was gradual, and the time employed to advantage. rockets and lines were thrown into the tops of the friendly wreck; the approach of danger was transformed into a means of safety; and before the ships struck, the men from the vandalia's main and mizzen masts, which went immediately by the board in the collision, were already mustered on the trenton's decks. those from the foremast were next rescued; and the flagship settled gradually into a position alongside her neighbour, against which she beat all night with violence. out of the crew of the vandalia forty-three had perished; of the four hundred and fifty on board the trenton, only one. the night of the 16th was still notable for a howling tempest and extraordinary floods of rain. it was feared the wreck could scarce continue to endure the breaching of the seas; among the germans, the fate of those on board the adler awoke keen anxiety; and knappe, on the beach of matautu, and the other officers of his consulate on that of matafele, watched all night. the morning of the 17th displayed a scene of devastation rarely equalled: the adler high and dry, the olga and nipsic beached, the trenton partly piled on the vandalia and herself sunk to the gun-deck; no sail afloat; and the beach heaped high with the debris of ships and the wreck of mountain forests. already, before the day, seumanu, the chief of apia, had gallantly ventured forth by boat through the subsiding fury of the seas, and had succeeded in communicating with the admiral; already, or as soon after as the dawn permitted, rescue lines were rigged, and the survivors were with difficulty and danger begun to be brought to shore. and soon the cheerful spirit of the admiral added a new feature to the scene. surrounded as he was by the crews of two wrecked ships, he paraded the band of the trenton, and the bay was suddenly enlivened with the strains of "hail columbia." during a great part of the day the work of rescue was continued, with many instances of courage and devotion; and for a long time succeeding, the almost inexhaustible harvest of the beach was to be reaped. in the first employment, the samoans earned the gratitude of friend and foe; in the second, they surprised all by an unexpected virtue, that of honesty. the greatness of the disaster, and the magnitude of the treasure now rolling at their feet, may perhaps have roused in their bosoms an emotion too serious for the rule of greed, or perhaps that greed was for the moment satiated. sails that twelve strong samoans could scarce drag from the water, great guns (one of which was rolled by the sea on the body of a man, the only native slain in all the hurricane), an infinite wealth of rope and wood, of tools and weapons, tossed upon the beach. yet i have never heard that much was stolen; and beyond question, much was very honestly returned. on both accounts, for the saving of life and the restoration of property, the government of the united states showed themselves generous in reward. a fine boat was fitly presented to seumanu; and rings, watches, and money were lavished on all who had assisted. the germans also gave money at the rate (as i receive the tale) of three dollars a head for every german saved. the obligation was in this instance incommensurably deep, those with whom they were at war had saved the german blue-jackets at the venture of their lives; knappe was, besides, far from ungenerous; and i can only explain the niggard figure by supposing it was paid from his own pocket. in one case, at least, it was refused. "i have saved three germans," said the rescuer; "i will make you a present of the three." the crews of the american and german squadrons were now cast, still in a bellicose temper, together on the beach. the discipline of the americans was notoriously loose; the crew of the nipsic had earned a character for lawlessness in other ports; and recourse was had to stringent and indeed extraordinary measures. the town was divided in two camps, to which the different nationalities were confined. kimberley had his quarter sentinelled and patrolled. any seaman disregarding a challenge was to be shot dead; any tavern-keeper who sold spirits to an american sailor was to have his tavern broken and his stock destroyed. many of the publicans were german; and knappe, having narrated these rigorous but necessary dispositions, wonders (grinning to himself over his despatch) how far these americans will go in their assumption of jurisdiction over germans. such as they were, the measures were successful. the incongruous mass of castaways was kept in peace, and at last shipped in peace out of the islands. kane returned to apia on the 19th, to find the calliope the sole survivor of thirteen sail. he thanked his men, and in particular the engineers, in a speech of unusual feeling and beauty, of which one who was present remarked to another, as they left the ship, "this has been a means of grace." nor did he forget to thank and compliment the admiral; and i cannot deny myself the pleasure of transcribing from kimberley's reply some generous and engaging words. "my dear captain," he wrote, "your kind note received. you went out splendidly, and we all felt from our hearts for you, and our cheers came with sincerity and admiration for the able manner in which you handled your ship. we could not have been gladder if it had been one of our ships, for in a time like that i can truly say with old admiral josiah latnall, 'that blood is thicker than water.'" one more trait will serve to build up the image of this typical sea-officer. a tiny schooner, the equator, captain edwin reid, dear to myself from the memories of a six months' cruise, lived out upon the high seas the fury of that tempest which had piled with wrecks the harbour of apia, found a refuge in pangopango, and arrived at last in the desolated port with a welcome and lucrative cargo of pigs. the admiral was glad to have the pigs; but what most delighted the man's noble and childish soul, was to see once more afloat the colours of his country. thus, in what seemed the very article of war, and within the duration of a single day, the sword-arm of each of the two angry powers was broken; their formidable ships reduced to junk; their disciplined hundreds to a horde of castaways, fed with difficulty, and the fear of whose misconduct marred the sleep of their commanders. both paused aghast; both had time to recognise that not the whole samoan archipelago was worth the loss in men and costly ships already suffered. the so-called hurricane of march 16th made thus a marking epoch in world-history; directly, and at once, it brought about the congress and treaty of berlin; indirectly, and by a process still continuing, it founded the modern navy of the states. coming years and other historians will declare the influence of that. chapter xi laupepa and mataafa 1889-1892 with the hurricane, the broken war-ships, and the stranded sailors, i am at an end of violence, and my tale flows henceforth among carpet incidents. the blue-jackets on apia beach were still jealously held apart by sentries, when the powers at home were already seeking a peaceable solution. it was agreed, so far as might be, to obliterate two years of blundering; and to resume in 1889, and at berlin, those negotiations which had been so unhappily broken off at washington in 1887. the example thus offered by germany is rare in history; in the career of prince bismarck, so far as i am instructed, it should stand unique. on a review of these two years of blundering, bullying, and failure in a little isle of the pacific, he seems magnanimously to have owned his policy was in the wrong. he left fangalii unexpiated; suffered that house of cards, the tamasese government, to fall by its own frailty and without remark or lamentation; left the samoan question openly and fairly to the conference: and in the meanwhile, to allay the local heats engendered by becker and knappe, he sent to apia that invaluable public servant, dr. stuebel. i should be a dishonest man if i did not bear testimony to the loyalty since shown by germans in samoa. their position was painful; they had talked big in the old days, now they had to sing small. even stuebel returned to the islands under the prejudice of an unfortunate record. to the minds of the samoans his name represented the beginning of their sorrows; and in his first term of office he had unquestionably driven hard. the greater his merit in the surprising success of the second. so long as he stayed, the current of affairs moved smoothly; he left behind him on his departure all men at peace; and whether by fortune, or for the want of that wise hand of guidance, he was scarce gone before the clouds began to gather once more on our horizon. before the first convention, germany and the states hauled down their flags. it was so done again before the second; and germany, by a still more emphatic step of retrogression, returned the exile laupepa to his native shores. for two years the unfortunate man had trembled and suffered in the cameroons, in germany, in the rainy marshalls. when he left (september 1887) tamasese was king, served by five iron war-ships; his right to rule (like a dogma of the church) was placed outside dispute; the germans were still, as they were called at that last tearful interview in the house by the river, "the invincible strangers"; the thought of resistance, far less the hope of success, had not yet dawned on the samoan mind. he returned (november 1889) to a changed world. the tupua party was reduced to sue for peace, brandeis was withdrawn, tamasese was dying obscurely of a broken heart; the german flag no longer waved over the capital; and over all the islands one figure stood supreme. during laupepa's absence this man had succeeded him in all his honours and titles, in tenfold more than all his power and popularity. he was the idol of the whole nation but the rump of the tamaseses, and of these he was already the secret admiration. in his position there was but one weak point, that he had even been tacitly excluded by the germans. becker, indeed, once coquetted with the thought of patronising him; but the project had no sequel, and it stands alone. in every other juncture of history the german attitude has been the same. choose whom you will to be king; when he has failed, choose whom you please to succeed him; when the second fails also, replace the first: upon the one condition, that mataafa be excluded. "pourvu qu'il sache signer!" an official is said to have thus summed up the qualifications necessary in a samoan king. and it was perhaps feared that mataafa could do no more and might not always do so much. but this original diffidence was heightened by late events to something verging upon animosity. fangalii was unavenged: the arms of mataafa were nondum inexpiatis uncta cruoribus, still soiled with the unexpiated blood of german sailors; and though the chief was not present in the field, nor could have heard of the affair till it was over, he had reaped from it credit with his countrymen and dislike from the germans. i may not say that trouble was hoped. i must say if it were not feared, the practice of diplomacy must teach a very hopeful view of human nature. mataafa and laupepa, by the sudden repatriation of the last, found themselves face to face in conditions of exasperating rivalry. the one returned from the dead of exile to find himself replaced and excelled. the other, at the end of a long, anxious, and successful struggle, beheld his only possible competitor resuscitated from the grave. the qualities of both, in this difficult moment, shone out nobly. i feel i seem always less than partial to the lovable laupepa; his virtues are perhaps not those which chiefly please me, and are certainly not royal; but he found on his return an opportunity to display the admirable sweetness of his nature. the two entered into a competition of generosity, for which i can recall no parallel in history, each waiving the throne for himself, each pressing it upon his rival; and they embraced at last a compromise the terms of which seem to have been always obscure and are now disputed. laupepa at least resumed his style of king of samoa; mataafa retained much of the conduct of affairs, and continued to receive much of the attendance and respect befitting royalty; and the two malietoas, with so many causes of disunion, dwelt and met together in the same town like kinsmen. it was so, that i first saw them; so, in a house set about with sentries for there was still a haunting fear of germany, that i heard them relate their various experience in the past; heard laupepa tell with touching candour of the sorrows of his exile, and mataafa with mirthful simplicity of his resources and anxieties in the war. the relation was perhaps too beautiful to last; it was perhaps impossible but the titular king should grow at last uneasily conscious of the maire de palais at his side, or the king-maker be at last offended by some shadow of distrust or assumption in his creature. i repeat the words king-maker and creature; it is so that mataafa himself conceives of their relation: surely not without justice; for, had he not contended and prevailed, and been helped by the folly of consuls and the fury of the storm, laupepa must have died in exile. foreigners in these islands know little of the course of native intrigue. partly the samoans cannot explain, partly they will not tell. ask how much a master can follow of the puerile politics in any school; so much and no more we may understand of the events which surround and menace us with their results. the missions may perhaps have been to blame. missionaries are perhaps apt to meddle overmuch outside their discipline; it is a fault which should be judged with mercy; the problem is sometimes so insidiously presented that even a moderate and able man is betrayed beyond his own intention; and the missionary in such a land as samoa is something else besides a minister of mere religion; he represents civilisation, he is condemned to be an organ of reform, he could scarce evade (even if he desired) a certain influence in political affairs. and it is believed, besides, by those who fancy they know, that the effective force of division between mataafa and laupepa came from the natives rather than from whites. before the end of 1890, at least, it began to be rumoured that there was dispeace between the two malietoas; and doubtless this had an unsettling influence throughout the islands. but there was another ingredient of anxiety. the berlin convention had long closed its sittings; the text of the act had been long in our hands; commissioners were announced to right the wrongs of the land question, and two high officials, a chief justice and a president, to guide policy and administer law in samoa. their coming was expected with an impatience, with a childishness of trust, that can hardly be exaggerated. months passed, these angel-deliverers still delayed to arrive, and the impatience of the natives became changed to an ominous irritation. they have had much experience of being deceived, and they began to think they were deceived again. a sudden crop of superstitious stories buzzed about the islands. rivers had come down red; unknown fishes had been taken on the reef and found to be marked with menacing runes; a headless lizard crawled among chiefs in council; the gods of upolu and savaii made war by night, they swam the straits to battle, and, defaced by dreadful wounds, they had besieged the house of a medical missionary. readers will remember the portents in mediaeval chronicles, or those in julius caesar when "fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds in ranks and squadrons." and doubtless such fabrications are, in simple societies, a natural expression of discontent; and those who forge, and even those who spread them, work towards a conscious purpose. early in january 1891 this period of expectancy was brought to an end by the arrival of conrad cedarcrantz, chief justice of samoa. the event was hailed with acclamation, and there was much about the new official to increase the hopes already entertained. he was seen to be a man of culture and ability; in public, of an excellent presence in private, of a most engaging cordiality. but there was one point, i scarce know whether to say of his character or policy, which immediately and disastrously affected public feeling in the islands. he had an aversion, part judicial, part perhaps constitutional, to haste; and he announced that, until he should have well satisfied his own mind, he should do nothing; that he would rather delay all than do aught amiss. it was impossible to hear this without academical approval; impossible to hear it without practical alarm. the natives desired to see activity; they desired to see many fair speeches taken on a body of deeds and works of benefit. fired by the event of the war, filled with impossible hopes, they might have welcomed in that hour a ruler of the stamp of brandeis, breathing hurry, perhaps dealing blows. and the chief justice, unconscious of the fleeting opportunity, ripened his opinions deliberately in mulinuu; and had been already the better part of half a year in the islands before he went through the form of opening his court. the curtain had risen; there was no play. a reaction, a chill sense of disappointment, passed about the island; and intrigue, one moment suspended, was resumed. in the berlin act, the three powers recognise, on the threshold, "the independence of the samoan government, and the free right of the natives to elect their chief or king and choose their form of government." true, the text continues that, "in view of the difficulties that surround an election in the present disordered condition of the government," malietoa laupepa shall be recognised as king, "unless the three powers shall by common accord otherwise declare." but perhaps few natives have followed it so far, and even those who have, were possibly all cast abroad again by the next clause: "and his successor shall be duly elected according to the laws and customs of samoa." the right to elect, freely given in one sentence, was suspended in the next, and a line or so further on appeared to be reconveyed by a side-wind. the reason offered for suspension was ludicrously false; in may 1889, when sir edward malet moved the matter in the conference, the election of mataafa was not only certain to have been peaceful, it could not have been opposed; and behind the english puppet it was easy to suspect the hand of germany. no one is more swift to smell trickery than a samoan; and the thought, that, under the long, bland, benevolent sentences of the berlin act, some trickery lay lurking, filled him with the breath of opposition. laupepa seems never to have been a popular king. mataafa, on the other hand, holds an unrivalled position in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen; he was the hero of the war, he had lain with them in the bush, he had borne the heat and burthen of the day; they began to claim that he should enjoy more largely the fruits of victory; his exclusion was believed to be a stroke of german vengeance, his elevation to the kingship was looked for as the fitting crown and copestone of the samoan triumph; and but a little after the coming of the chief justice, an ominous cry for mataafa began to arise in the islands. it is difficult to see what that official could have done but what he did. he was loyal, as in duty bound, to the treaty and to laupepa; and when the orators of the important and unruly islet of manono demanded to his face a change of kings, he had no choice but to refuse them, and (his reproof being unheeded) to suspend the meeting. whether by any neglect of his own or the mere force of circumstance, he failed, however, to secure the sympathy, failed even to gain the confidence, of mataafa. the latter is not without a sense of his own abilities or of the great service he has rendered to his native land. he felt himself neglected; at the very moment when the cry for his elevation rang throughout the group he thought himself made little of on mulinuu; and he began to weary of his part. in this humour, he was exposed to a temptation which i must try to explain, as best i may be able, to europeans. the bestowal of the great name, malietoa, is in the power of the district of malie, some seven miles to the westward of apia. the most noisy and conspicuous supporters of that party are the inhabitants of manono. hence in the elaborate, allusive oratory of samoa, malie is always referred to by the name of pule (authority) as having the power of the name, and manono by that of ainga (clan, sept, or household) as forming the immediate family of the chief. but these, though so important, are only small communities; and perhaps the chief numerical force of the malietoas inhabits the island of savaii. savaii has no royal name to bestow, all the five being in the gift of different districts of upolu; but she has the weight of numbers, and in these latter days has acquired a certain force by the preponderance in her councils of a single man, the orator lauati. the reader will now understand the peculiar significance of a deputation which should embrace lauati and the orators of both malie and manono, how it would represent all that is most effective on the malietoa side, and all that is most considerable in samoan politics, except the opposite feudal party of the tupua. and in the temptation brought to bear on mataafa, even the tupua was conjoined. tamasese was dead. his followers had conceived a not unnatural aversion to all germans, from which only the loyal brandeis is excepted; and a not unnatural admiration for their late successful adversary. men of his own blood and clan, men whom he had fought in the field, whom he had driven from matautu, who had smitten him back time and again from before the rustic bulwarks of lotoanuu, they approached him hand in hand with their ancestral enemies and concurred in the same prayer. the treaty (they argued) was not carried out. the right to elect their king had been granted them; or if that were denied or suspended, then the right to elect "his successor." they were dissatisfied with laupepa, and claimed, "according to the laws and customs of samoa," duly to appoint another. the orators of malie declared with irritation that their second appointment was alone valid and mataafa the sole malietoa; the whole body of malcontents named him as their choice for king; and they requested him in consequence to leave apia and take up his dwelling in malie, the name-place of malietoa; a step which may be described, to european ears, as placing before the country his candidacy for the crown. i do not know when the proposal was first made. doubtless the disaffection grew slowly, every trifle adding to its force; doubtless there lingered for long a willingness to give the new government a trial. the chief justice at least had been nearly five months in the country, and the president, baron senfft von pilsach, rather more than a month before the mine was sprung. on may 31, 1891, the house of mataafa was found empty, he and his chiefs had vanished from apia, and, what was worse, three prisoners, liberated from the gaol, had accompanied them in their secession; two being political offenders, and the third (accused of murder) having been perhaps set free by accident. although the step had been discussed in certain quarters, it took all men by surprise. the inhabitants at large expected instant war. the officials awakened from a dream to recognise the value of that which they had lost. mataafa at vaiala, where he was the pledge of peace, had perhaps not always been deemed worthy of particular attention; mataafa at malie was seen, twelve hours too late, to be an altogether different quantity. with excess of zeal on the other side, the officials trooped to their boats and proceeded almost in a body to malie, where they seem to have employed every artifice of flattery and every resource of eloquence upon the fugitive high chief. these courtesies, perhaps excessive in themselves, had the unpardonable fault of being offered when too late. mataafa showed himself facile on small issues, inflexible on the main; he restored the prisoners, he returned with the consuls to apia on a flying visit; he gave his word that peace should be preserved a pledge in which perhaps no one believed at the moment, but which he has since nobly redeemed. on the rest he was immovable; he had cast the die, he had declared his candidacy, he had gone to malie. thither, after his visit to apia, he returned again; there he has practically since resided. thus was created in the islands a situation, strange in the beginning, and which, as its inner significance is developed, becomes daily stranger to observe. on the one hand, mataafa sits in malie, assumes a regal state, receives deputations, heads his letters "government of samoa," tacitly treats the king as a coordinate; and yet declares himself, and in many ways conducts himself, as a law-abiding citizen. on the other, the white officials in mulinuu stand contemplating the phenomenon with eyes of growing stupefaction; now with symptoms of collapse, now with accesses of violence. for long, even those well versed in island manners and the island character daily expected war, and heard imaginary drums beat in the forest. but for now close upon a year, and against every stress of persuasion and temptation, mataafa has been the bulwark of our peace. apia lay open to be seized, he had the power in his hand, his followers cried to be led on, his enemies marshalled him the same way by impotent examples; and he has never faltered. early in the day, a white man was sent from the government of mulinuu to examine and report upon his actions: i saw the spy on his return; "it was only our rebel that saved us," he said, with a laugh. there is now no honest man in the islands but is well aware of it; none but knows that, if we have enjoyed during the past eleven months the conveniences of peace, it is due to the forbearance of "our rebel." nor does this part of his conduct stand alone. he calls his party at malie the government, "our government," but he pays his taxes to the government at mulinuu. he takes ground like a king; he has steadily and blandly refused to obey all orders as to his own movements or behaviour; but upon requisition he sends offenders to be tried under the chief justice. we have here a problem of conduct, and what seems an image of inconsistency, very hard at the first sight to be solved by any european. plainly mataafa does not act at random. plainly, in the depths of his samoan mind, he regards his attitude as regular and constitutional. it may be unexpected, it may be inauspicious, it may be undesirable; but he thinks it and perhaps it is in full accordance with those "laws and customs of samoa" ignorantly invoked by the draughtsmen of the berlin act. the point is worth an effort of comprehension; a man's life may yet depend upon it. let us conceive, in the first place, that there are five separate kingships in samoa, though not always five different kings; and that though one man, by holding the five royal names, might become king in all parts of samoa, there is perhaps no such matter as a kingship of all samoa. he who holds one royal name would be, upon this view, as much a sovereign person as he who should chance to hold the other four; he would have less territory and fewer subjects, but the like independence and an equal royalty. now mataafa, even if all debatable points were decided against him, is still tuiatua, and as such, on this hypothesis, a sovereign prince. in the second place, the draughtsmen of the act, waxing exceeding bold, employed the word "election," and implicitly justified all precedented steps towards the kingship according with the "customs of samoa." i am not asking what was intended by the gentlemen who sat and debated very benignly and, on the whole, wisely in berlin; i am asking what will be understood by a samoan studying their literary work, the berlin act; i am asking what is the result of taking a word out of one state of society, and applying it to another, of which the writers know less than nothing, and no european knows much. several interpreters and several days were employed last september in the fruitless attempt to convey to the mind of laupepa the sense of the word "resignation." what can a samoan gather from the words, election? election of a king? election of a king according to the laws and customs of samoa? what are the electoral measures, what is the method of canvassing, likely to be employed by two, three, four, or five, more or less absolute princelings, eager to evince each other? and who is to distinguish such a process from the state of war? in such international or, i should say, interparochial differences, the nearest we can come towards understanding is to appreciate the cloud of ambiguity in which all parties grope "treading the crude consistence, half on foot, half flying." now, in one part of mataafa's behaviour his purpose is beyond mistake. towards the provisions of the berlin act, his desire to be formally obedient is manifest. the act imposed the tax. he has paid his taxes, although he thus contributes to the ways and means of his immediate rival. the act decreed the supreme court, and he sends his partisans to be tried at mulinuu, although he thus places them (as i shall have occasion to show) in a position far from wholly safe. from this literal conformity, in matters regulated, to the terms of the berlin plenipotentiaries, we may plausibly infer, in regard to the rest, a no less exact observance of the famous and obscure "laws and customs of samoa." but though it may be possible to attain, in the study, to some such adumbration of an understanding, it were plainly unfair to expect it of officials in the hurry of events. our two white officers have accordingly been no more perspicacious than was to be looked for, and i think they have sometimes been less wise. it was not wise in the president to proclaim mataafa and his followers rebels and their estates confiscated. such words are not respectable till they repose on force; on the lips of an angry white man, standing alone on a small promontory, they were both dangerous and absurd; they might have provoked ruin; thanks to the character of mataafa, they only raised a smile and damaged the authority of government. and again it is not wise in the government of mulinuu to have twice attempted to precipitate hostilities, once in savaii, once here in the tuamasanga. the fate of the savaii attempt i never heard; it seems to have been stillborn. the other passed under my eyes. a war-party was armed in apia, and despatched across the island against mataafa villages, where it was to seize the women and children. it was absent for some days, engaged in feasting with those whom it went out to fight; and returned at last, innocuous and replete. in this fortunate though undignified ending we may read the fact that the natives on laupepa's side are sometimes more wise than their advisers. indeed, for our last twelve months of miraculous peace under what seem to be two rival kings, the credit is due first of all to mataafa, and second to the half-heartedness, or the forbearance, or both, of the natives in the other camp. the voice of the two whites has ever been for war. they have published at least one incendiary proclamation; they have armed and sent into the field at least one samoan war-party; they have continually besieged captains of war-ships to attack malie, and the captains of the war-ships have religiously refused. thus in the last twelve months our european rulers have drawn a picture of themselves, as bearded like the pard, full of strange oaths, and gesticulating like semaphores; while over against them mataafa reposes smilingly obstinate, and their own retainers surround them, frowningly inert. into the question of motive i refuse to enter; but if we come to war in these islands, and with no fresh occasion, it will be a manufactured war, and one that has been manufactured, against the grain of opinion, by two foreigners. for the last and worst of the mistakes on the laupepa side it would be unfair to blame any but the king himself. capable both of virtuous resolutions and of fits of apathetic obstinacy, his majesty is usually the whip-top of competitive advisers; and his conduct is so unstable as to wear at times an appearance of treachery which would surprise himself if he could see it. take, for example, the experience of lieutenant ulfsparre, late chief of police, and (so to speak) commander of the forces. his men were under orders for a certain hour; he found himself almost alone at the place of muster, and learned the king had sent the soldiery on errands. he sought an audience, explained that he was here to implant discipline, that (with this purpose in view) his men could only receive orders through himself, and if that condition were not agreed to and faithfully observed, he must send in his papers. the king was as usual easily persuaded, the interview passed and ended to the satisfaction of all parties engaged and the bargain was kept for one day. on the day after, the troops were again dispersed as post-runners, and their commander resigned. with such a sovereign, i repeat, it would be unfair to blame any individual minister for any specific fault. and yet the policy of our two whites against mataafa has appeared uniformly so excessive and implacable, that the blame of the last scandal is laid generally at their doors. it is yet fresh. lauati, towards the end of last year, became deeply concerned about the situation; and by great personal exertions and the charms of oratory brought savaii and manono into agreement upon certain terms of compromise: laupepa still to be king, mataafa to accept a high executive office comparable to that of our own prime minister, and the two governments to coalesce. intractable manono was a party. malie was said to view the proposal with resignation, if not relief. peace was thought secure. the night before the king was to receive lauati, i met one of his company, the family chief, iina, and we shook hands over the unexpected issue of our troubles. what no one dreamed was that laupepa would refuse. and he did. he refused undisputed royalty for himself and peace for these unhappy islands; and the two whites on mulinuu rightly or wrongly got the blame of it. but their policy has another and a more awkward side. about the time of the secession to malie, many ugly things were said; i will not repeat that which i hope and believe the speakers did not wholly mean; let it suffice that, if rumour carried to mataafa the language i have heard used in my own house and before my own native servants, he would be highly justified in keeping clear of apia and the whites. one gentleman whose opinion i respect, and am so bold as to hope i may in some points modify, will understand the allusion and appreciate my reserve. about the same time there occurred an incident, upon which i must be more particular. a was a gentleman who had long been an intimate of mataafa's, and had recently (upon account, indeed, of the secession to malie) more or less wholly broken off relations. to him came one whom i shall call b with a dastardly proposition. it may have been b's own, in which case he were the more unpardonable; but from the closeness of his intercourse with the chief justice, as well as from the terms used in the interview, men judged otherwise. it was proposed that a should simulate a renewal of the friendship, decoy mataafa to a suitable place, and have him there arrested. what should follow in those days of violent speech was at the least disputable; and the proposal was of course refused. "you do not understand," was the base rejoinder. "you will have no discredit. the germans are to take the blame of the arrest." of course, upon the testimony of a gentleman so depraved, it were unfair to hang a dog; and both the germans and the chief justice must be held innocent. but the chief justice has shown that he can himself be led, by his animosity against mataafa, into questionable acts. certain natives of malie were accused of stealing pigs; the chief justice summoned them through mataafa; several were sent, and along with them a written promise that, if others were required, these also should be forthcoming upon requisition. such as came were duly tried and acquitted; and mataafa's offer was communicated to the chief justice, who made a formal answer, and the same day (in pursuance of his constant design to have malie attacked by war-ships) reported to one of the consuls that his warrant would not run in the country and that certain of the accused had been withheld. at least, this is not fair dealing; and the next instance i have to give is possibly worse. for one blunder the chief justice is only so far responsible, in that he was not present where it seems he should have been, when it was made. he had nothing to do with the silly proscription of the mataafas; he has always disliked the measure; and it occurred to him at last that he might get rid of this dangerous absurdity and at the same time reap a further advantage. let mataafa leave malie for any other district in samoa; it should be construed as an act of submission and the confiscation and proscription instantly recalled. this was certainly well devised; the government escaped from their own false position, and by the same stroke lowered the prestige of their adversaries. but unhappily the chief justice did not put all his eggs in one basket. concurrently with these negotiations he began again to move the captain of one of the war-ships to shell the rebel village; the captain, conceiving the extremity wholly unjustified, not only refused these instances, but more or less publicly complained of their being made; the matter came to the knowledge of the white resident who was at that time playing the part of intermediary with malie; and he, in natural anger and disgust, withdrew from the negotiation. these duplicities, always deplorable when discovered, are never more fatal than with men imperfectly civilised. almost incapable of truth themselves, they cherish a particular score of the same fault in whites. and mataafa is besides an exceptional native. i would scarce dare say of any samoan that he is truthful, though i seem to have encountered the phenomenon; but i must say of mataafa that he seems distinctly and consistently averse to lying. for the affair of the manono prisoners, the chief justice is only again in so far answerable as he was at the moment absent from the seat of his duties; and the blame falls on baron senfft von pilsach, president of the municipal council. there were in manono certain dissidents, loyal to laupepa. being manono people, i daresay they were very annoying to their neighbours; the majority, as they belonged to the same island, were the more impatient; and one fine day fell upon and destroyed the houses and harvests of the dissidents "according to the laws and customs of samoa." the president went down to the unruly island in a war-ship and was landed alone upon the beach. to one so much a stranger to the mansuetude of polynesians, this must have seemed an act of desperation; and the baron's gallantry met with a deserved success. the six ring-leaders, acting in mataafa's interest, had been guilty of a delict; with mataafa's approval, they delivered themselves over to be tried. on friday, september 4, 1891, they were convicted before a native magistrate and sentenced to six months' imprisonment; or, i should rather say, detention; for it was expressly directed that they were to be used as gentlemen and not as prisoners, that the door was to stand open, and that all their wishes should be gratified. this extraordinary sentence fell upon the accused like a thunderbolt. there is no need to suppose perfidy, where a careless interpreter suffices to explain all; but the six chiefs claim to have understood their coming to apia as an act of submission merely formal, that they came in fact under an implied indemnity, and that the president stood pledged to see them scatheless. already, on their way from the court-house, they were tumultuously surrounded by friends and clansmen, who pressed and cried upon them to escape; lieutenant ulfsparre must order his men to load; and with that the momentary effervescence died away. next day, saturday, 5th, the chief justice took his departure from the islands a step never yet explained and (in view of the doings of the day before and the remonstrances of other officials) hard to justify. the president, an amiable and brave young man of singular inexperience, was thus left to face the growing difficulty by himself. the clansmen of the prisoners, to the number of near upon a hundred, lay in vaiusu, a village half way between apia and malie; there they talked big, thence sent menacing messages; the gaol should be broken in the night, they said, and the six martyrs rescued. allowance is to be made for the character of the people of manono, turbulent fellows, boastful of tongue, but of late days not thought to be answerably bold in person. yet the moment was anxious. the government of mulinuu had gained an important moral victory by the surrender and condemnation of the chiefs; and it was needful the victory should be maintained. the guard upon the gaol was accordingly strengthened; a war-party was sent to watch the vaiusu road under asi; and the chiefs of the vaimaunga were notified to arm and assemble their men. it must be supposed the president was doubtful of the loyalty of these assistants. he turned at least to the war-ships, where it seems he was rebuffed; thence he fled into the arms of the wrecker gang, where he was unhappily more successful. the government of washington had presented to the samoan king the wrecks of the trenton and the vandalia; an american syndicate had been formed to break them up; an experienced gang was in consequence settled in apia and the report of submarine explosions had long grown familiar in the ears of residents. from these artificers the president obtained a supply of dynamite, the needful mechanism, and the loan of a mechanic; the gaol was mined, and the manono people in vaiusu were advertised of the fact in a letter signed by laupepa. partly by the indiscretion of the mechanic, who had sought to embolden himself (like lady macbeth) with liquor for his somewhat dreadful task, the story leaked immediately out and raised a very general, or i might say almost universal, reprobation. some blamed the proposed deed because it was barbarous and a foul example to set before a race half barbarous itself; others because it was illegal; others again because, in the face of so weak an enemy, it appeared pitifully pusillanimous; almost all because it tended to precipitate and embitter war. in the midst of the turmoil he had raised, and under the immediate pressure of certain indignant white residents, the baron fell back upon a new expedient, certainly less barbarous, perhaps no more legal; and on monday afternoon, september 7th, packed his six prisoners on board the cutter lancashire lass, and deported them to the neighbouring low-island group of the tokelaus. we watched her put to sea with mingled feelings. anything were better than dynamite, but this was not good. the men had been summoned in the name of law; they had surrendered; the law had uttered its voice; they were under one sentence duly delivered; and now the president, by no right with which we were acquainted, had exchanged it for another. it was perhaps no less fortunate, though it was more pardonable in a stranger, that he had increased the punishment to that which, in the eyes of samoans, ranks next to death, exile from their native land and friends. and the lancashire lass appeared to carry away with her into the uttermost parts of the sea the honour of the administration and the prestige of the supreme court. the policy of the government towards mataafa has thus been of a piece throughout; always would-be violent, it has been almost always defaced with some appearance of perfidy or unfairness. the policy of mataafa (though extremely bewildering to any white) appears everywhere consistent with itself, and the man's bearing has always been calm. but to represent the fulness of the contrast, it is necessary that i should give some description of the two capitals, or the two camps, and the ways and means of the regular and irregular government. mulinuu. mulinuu, the reader may remember, is a narrow finger of land planted in cocoa-palms, which runs forth into the lagoon perhaps three quarters of a mile. to the east is the bay of apia. to the west, there is, first of all, a mangrove swamp, the mangroves excellently green, the mud ink-black, and its face crawled upon by countless insects and black and scarlet crabs. beyond the swamp is a wide and shallow bay of the lagoon, bounded to the west by faleula point. faleula is the next village to malie; so that from the top of some tall palm in malie it should be possible to descry against the eastern heavens the palms of mulinuu. the trade wind sweeps over the low peninsula and cleanses it from the contagion of the swamp. samoans have a quaint phrase in their language; when out of health, they seek exposed places on the shore "to eat the wind," say they; and there can be few better places for such a diet than the point of mulinuu. two european houses stand conspicuous on the harbour side; in europe they would seem poor enough, but they are fine houses for samoa. one is new; it was built the other day under the apologetic title of a government house, to be the residence of baron senfft. the other is historical; it was built by brandeis on a mortgage, and is now occupied by the chief justice on conditions never understood, the rumour going uncontradicted that he sits rent free. i do not say it is true, i say it goes uncontradicted; and there is one peculiarity of our officials in a nutshell, their remarkable indifference to their own character. from the one house to the other extends a scattering village for the faipule or native parliament men. in the days of tamasese this was a brave place, both his own house and those of the faipule good, and the whole excellently ordered and approached by a sanded way. it is now like a neglected bush-town, and speaks of apathy in all concerned. but the chief scandal of mulinuu is elsewhere. the house of the president stands just to seaward of the isthmus, where the watch is set nightly, and armed men guard the uneasy slumbers of the government. on the landward side there stands a monument to the poor german lads who fell at fangalii, just beyond which the passer-by may chance to observe a little house standing back-ward from the road. it is such a house as a commoner might use in a bush village; none could dream that it gave shelter even to a family chief; yet this is the palace of malietoa-natoaiteletamasoalii laupepa, king of samoa. as you sit in his company under this humble shelter, you shall see, between the posts, the new house of the president. his majesty himself beholds it daily, and the tenor of his thoughts may be divined. the fine house of a samoan chief is his appropriate attribute; yet, after seventeen months, the government (well housed themselves) have not yet found have not yet sought a roof-tree for their sovereign. and the lodging is typical. i take up the president's financial statement of september 8, 1891. i find the king's allowance to figure at seventy-five dollars a month; and i find that he is further (though somewhat obscurely) debited with the salaries of either two or three clerks. take the outside figure, and the sum expended on or for his majesty amounts to ninety-five dollars in the month. lieutenant ulfsparre and dr. hagberg (the chief justice's swedish friends) drew in the same period one hundred and forty and one hundred dollars respectively on account of salary alone. and it should be observed that dr. hagberg was employed, or at least paid, from government funds, in the face of his majesty's express and reiterated protest. in another column of the statement, one hundred and seventy-five dollars and seventy-five cents are debited for the chief justice's travelling expenses. i am of the opinion that if his majesty desired (or dared) to take an outing, he would be asked to bear the charge from his allowance. but although i think the chief justice had done more nobly to pay for himself, i am far from denying that his excursions were well meant; he should indeed be praised for having made them; and i leave the charge out of consideration in the following statement. on the one hand salary of chief justice cedarkrantz $500 salary of president baron senfft von pilsach (about) 415 salary of lieutenant ulfsparre, chief of police 140 salary of dr. hagberg, private secretary to the chief justice 100 total monthly salary to four whites, one of them paid against his majesty's protest $1155 on the other hand total monthly payments to and for his majesty the king, including allowance and hire of three clerks, one of these placed under the rubric of extraordinary expenses $95 this looks strange enough and mean enough already. but we have ground of comparison in the practice of brandeis. brandeis, white prime minister $200 tamasese (about) 160 white chief of police 100 under brandeis, in other words, the king received the second highest allowance on the sheet; and it was a good second, and the third was a bad third. and it must be borne in mind that tamasese himself was pointed and laughed at among natives. judge, then, what is muttered of laupepa, housed in his shanty before the president's doors like lazarus before the doors of dives; receiving not so much of his own taxes as the private secretary of the law officer; and (in actual salary) little more than half as much as his own chief of police. it is known besides that he has protested in vain against the charge for dr. hagberg; it is known that he has himself applied for an advance and been refused. money is certainly a grave subject on mulinuu; but respect costs nothing, and thrifty officials might have judged it wise to make up in extra politeness for what they curtailed of pomp or comfort. one instance may suffice. laupepa appeared last summer on a public occasion; the president was there and not even the president rose to greet the entrance of the sovereign. since about the same period, besides, the monarch must be described as in a state of sequestration. a white man, an irishman, the true type of all that is most gallant, humorous, and reckless in his country, chose to visit his majesty and give him some excellent advice (to make up his difference with mataafa) couched unhappily in vivid and figurative language. the adviser now sleeps in the pacific, but the evil that he chanced to do lives after him. his majesty was greatly (and i must say justly) offended by the freedom of the expressions used; he appealed to his white advisers; and these, whether from want of thought or by design, issued an ignominious proclamation. intending visitors to the palace must appear before their consuls and justify their business. the majesty of buried samoa was henceforth only to be viewed (like a private collection) under special permit; and was thus at once cut off from the company and opinions of the self respecting. to retain any dignity in such an abject state would require a man of very different virtues from those claimed by the not unvirtuous laupepa. he is not designed to ride the whirlwind or direct the storm, rather to be the ornament of private life. he is kind, gentle, patient as job, conspicuously well-intentioned, of charming manners; and when he pleases, he has one accomplishment in which he now begins to be alone i mean that he can pronounce correctly his own beautiful language. the government of brandeis accomplished a good deal and was continually and heroically attempting more. the government of our two whites has confined itself almost wholly to paying and receiving salaries. they have built, indeed, a house for the president; they are believed (if that be a merit) to have bought the local newspaper with government funds; and their rule has been enlivened by a number of scandals, into which i feel with relief that it is unnecessary i should enter. even if the three powers do not remove these gentlemen, their absurd and disastrous government must perish by itself of inanition. native taxes (except perhaps from mataafa, true to his own private policy) have long been beyond hope. and only the other day (may 6th, 1892), on the expressed ground that there was no guarantee as to how the funds would be expended, and that the president consistently refused to allow the verification of his cash balances, the municipal council has negatived the proposal to call up further taxes from the whites. all is well that ends even ill, so that it end; and we believe that with the last dollar we shall see the last of the last functionary. now when it is so nearly over, we can afford to smile at this extraordinary passage, though we must still sigh over the occasion lost. malie. the way to malie lies round the shores of faleula bay and through a succession of pleasant groves and villages. the road, one of the works of brandeis, is now cut up by pig fences. eight times you must leap a barrier of cocoa posts; the take-off and the landing both in a patch of mire planted with big stones, and the stones sometimes reddened with the blood of horses that have gone before. to make these obstacles more annoying, you have sometimes to wait while a black boar clambers sedately over the so-called pig fence. nothing can more thoroughly depict the worst side of the samoan character than these useless barriers which deface their only road. it was one of the first orders issued by the government of mulinuu after the coming of the chief justice, to have the passage cleared. it is the disgrace of mataafa that the thing is not yet done. the village of malie is the scene of prosperity and peace. in a very good account of a visit there, published in the australasian, the writer describes it to be fortified; she must have been deceived by the appearance of some pig walls on the shore. there is no fortification, no parade of war. i understand that from one to five hundred fighting men are always within reach; but i have never seen more than five together under arms, and these were the king's guard of honour. a sabbath quiet broods over the wellweeded green, the picketed horses, the troops of pigs, the round or oval native dwellings. of these there are a surprising number, very fine of their sort: yet more are in the building; and in the midst a tall house of assembly, by far the greatest samoan structure now in these islands, stands about half finished and already makes a figure in the landscape. no bustle is to be observed, but the work accomplished testifies to a still activity. the centre-piece of all is the high chief himself, malietoatuiatua-tuiaana mataafa, king or not king or king-claimant of samoa. all goes to him, all comes from him. native deputations bring him gifts and are feasted in return. white travellers, to their indescribable irritation, are (on his approach) waved from his path by his armed guards. he summons his dancers by the note of a bugle. he sits nightly at home before a semicircle of talking-men from many quarters of the islands, delivering and hearing those ornate and elegant orations in which the samoan heart delights. about himself and all his surroundings there breathes a striking sense of order, tranquillity, and native plenty. he is of a tall and powerful person, sixty years of age, white-haired and with a white moustache; his eyes bright and quiet; his jaw perceptibly underhung, which gives him something of the expression of a benevolent mastiff; his manners dignified and a thought insinuating, with an air of a catholic prelate. he was never married, and a natural daughter attends upon his guests. long since he made a vow of chastity, "to live as our lord lived on this earth" and polynesians report with bated breath that he has kept it. on all such points, true to his catholic training, he is inclined to be even rigid. lauati, the pivot of savaii, has recently repudiated his wife and taken a fairer; and when i was last in malie, mataafa (with a strange superiority to his own interests) had but just despatched a reprimand. in his immediate circle, in spite of the smoothness of his ways, he is said to be more respected than beloved; and his influence is the child rather of authority than popularity. no samoan grandee now living need have attempted that which he has accomplished during the last twelve months with unimpaired prestige, not only to withhold his followers from war, but to send them to be judged in the camp of their enemies on mulinuu. and it is a matter of debate whether such a triumph of authority were ever possible before. speaking for myself, i have visited and dwelt in almost every seat of the polynesian race, and have met but one man who gave me a stronger impression of character and parts. about the situation, mataafa expresses himself with unshaken peace. to the chief justice he refers with some bitterness; to laupepa, with a smile, as "my poor brother." for himself, he stands upon the treaty, and expects sooner or later an election in which he shall be raised to the chief power. in the meanwhile, or for an alternative, he would willingly embrace a compromise with laupepa; to which he would probably add one condition, that the joint government should remain seated at malie, a sensible but not inconvenient distance from white intrigues and white officials. one circumstance in my last interview particularly pleased me. the king's chief scribe, esela, is an old employe under tamasese, and the talk ran some while upon the character of brandeis. loyalty in this world is after all not thrown away; brandeis was guilty, in samoan eyes, of many irritating errors, but he stood true to tamasese; in the course of time a sense of this virtue and of his general uprightness has obliterated the memory of his mistakes; and it would have done his heart good if he could have heard his old scribe and his old adversary join in praising him. "yes," concluded mataafa, "i wish we had planteisa back again." a quelque chose malheur est bon. so strong is the impression produced by the defects of cedarcrantz and baron senfft, that i believe mataafa far from singular in this opinion, and that the return of the upright brandeis might be even welcome to many. i must add a last touch to the picture of malie and the pretender's life. about four in the morning, the visitor in his house will be awakened by the note of a pipe, blown without, very softly and to a soothing melody. this is mataafa's private luxury to lead on pleasant dreams. we have a bird here in samoa that about the same hour of darkness sings in the bush. the father of mataafa, while he lived, was a great friend and protector to all living creatures, and passed under the by-name of the king of birds. it may be it was among the woodland clients of the sire that the son acquired his fancy for this morning music. i have now sought to render without extenuation the impressions received: of dignity, plenty, and peace at malie, of bankruptcy and distraction at mulinuu. and i wish i might here bring to an end ungrateful labours. but i am sensible that there remain two points on which it would be improper to be silent. i should be blamed if i did not indicate a practical conclusion; and i should blame myself if i did not do a little justice to that tried company of the land commissioners. the land commission has been in many senses unfortunate. the original german member, a gentleman of the name of eggert, fell early into precarious health; his work was from the first interrupted, he was at last (to the regret of all that knew him) invalided home; and his successor had but just arrived. in like manner, the first american commissioner, henry c. ide, a man of character and intelligence, was recalled (i believe by private affairs) when he was but just settling into the spirit of the work; and though his place was promptly filled by ex-governor ormsbee, a worthy successor, distinguished by strong and vivacious common sense, the break was again sensible. the english commissioner, my friend bazett michael haggard, is thus the only one who has continued at his post since the beginning. and yet, in spite of these unusual changes, the commission has a record perhaps unrivalled among international commissions. it has been unanimous practically from the first until the last; and out of some four hundred cases disposed of, there is but one on which the members were divided. it was the more unfortunate they should have early fallen in a difficulty with the chief justice. the original ground of this is supposed to be a difference of opinion as to the import of the berlin act, on which, as a layman, it would be unbecoming if i were to offer an opinion. but it must always seem as if the chief justice had suffered himself to be irritated beyond the bounds of discretion. it must always seem as if his original attempt to deprive the commissioners of the services of a secretary and the use of a safe were even senseless; and his step in printing and posting a proclamation denying their jurisdiction were equally impolitic and undignified. the dispute had a secondary result worse than itself. the gentleman appointed to be natives' advocate shared the chief justice's opinion, was his close intimate, advised with him almost daily, and drifted at last into an attitude of opposition to his colleagues. he suffered himself besides (being a layman in law) to embrace the interest of his clients with something of the warmth of a partisan. disagreeable scenes occurred in court; the advocate was more than once reproved, he was warned that his consultations with the judge of appeal tended to damage his own character and to lower the credit of the appellate court. having lost some cases on which he set importance, it should seem that he spoke unwisely among natives. a sudden cry of colour prejudice went up; and samoans were heard to assure each other that it was useless to appear before the land commission, which was sworn to support the whites. this deplorable state of affairs was brought to an end by the departure from samoa of the natives' advocate. he was succeeded pro tempore by a young new zealander, e. w. gurr, not much more versed in law than himself, and very much less so in samoan. whether by more skill or better fortune, gurr has been able in the course of a few weeks to recover for the natives several important tracts of land; and the prejudice against the commission seems to be abating as fast as it arose. i should not omit to say that, in the eagerness of the original advocate, there was much that was amiable; nor must i fail to point out how much there was of blindness. fired by the ardour of pursuit, he seems to have regarded his immediate clients as the only natives extant and the epitome and emblem of the samoan race. thus, in the case that was the most exclaimed against as "an injustice to natives," his client, puaauli, was certainly nonsuited. but in that intricate affair who lost the money? the german firm. and who got the land? other natives. to twist such a decision into evidence, either of a prejudice against samoans or a partiality to whites, is to keep one eye shut and have the other bandaged. and lastly, one word as to the future. laupepa and mataafa stand over against each other, rivals with no third competitor. they may be said to hold the great name of malietoa in commission; each has borne the style, each exercised the authority, of a samoan king; one is secure of the small but compact and fervent following of the catholics, the other has the sympathies of a large part of the protestant majority, and upon any sign of catholic aggression would have more. with men so nearly balanced, it may be asked whether a prolonged successful exercise of power be possible for either. in the case of the feeble laupepa, it is certainly not; we have the proof before us. nor do i think we should judge, from what we see to-day, that it would be possible, or would continue to be possible, even for the kingly mataafa. it is always the easier game to be in opposition. the tale of david and saul would infallibly be re-enacted; once more we shall have two kings in the land, the latent and the patent; and the house of the first will become once more the resort of "every one that is in distress, and every one that is in debt, and every one that is discontented." against such odds it is my fear that mataafa might contend in vain; it is beyond the bounds of my imagination that laupepa should contend at all. foreign ships and bayonets is the cure proposed in mulinuu. and certainly, if people at home desire that money should be thrown away and blood shed in samoa, an effect of a kind, and for the time, may be produced. its nature and prospective durability i will ask readers of this volume to forecast for themselves. there is one way to peace and unity: that laupepa and mataafa should be again conjoined on the best terms procurable. there may be other ways, although i cannot see them; but not even malevolence, not even stupidity, can deny that this is one. it seems, indeed, so obvious, and sure, and easy, that men look about with amazement and suspicion, seeking some hidden motive why it should not be adopted. to laupepa's opposition, as shown in the case of the lauati scheme, no dweller in samoa will give weight, for they know him to be as putty in the hands of his advisers. it may be right, it may be wrong, but we are many of us driven to the conclusion that the stumbling-block is fangalii, and that the memorial of that affair shadows appropriately the house of a king who reigns in right of it. if this be all, it should not trouble us long. germany has shown she can be generous; it now remains for her only to forget a natural but certainly ill-grounded prejudice, and allow to him, who was sole king before the plenipotentiaries assembled, and who would be sole king to-morrow if the berlin act could be rescinded, a fitting share of rule. the future of samoa should lie thus in the hands of a single man, on whom the eyes of europe are already fixed. great concerns press on his attention; the samoan group, in his view, is but as a grain of dust; and the country where he reigns has bled on too many august scenes of victory to remember for ever a blundering skirmish in the plantation of vailele. it is to him to the sovereign of the wise stuebel and the loyal brandeis, that i make my appeal. may 25, 1892. end of the project gutenberg etext of a footnote to history king henry viii dramatis personae king henry the eighth (king henry viii:) cardinal wolsey: cardinal campeius: capucius ambassador from the emperor charles v cranmer archbishop of canterbury. duke of norfolk (norfolk:) duke of buckingham (buckingham:) duke of suffolk (suffolk:) earl of surrey (surrey:) lord chamberlain (chamberlain:) lord chancellor (chancellor:) gardiner bishop of winchester. bishop of lincoln. (lincoln:) lord abergavenny (abergavenny:) lord sands (sands:) sir henry guildford (guildford:) sir thomas lovell (lovell:) sir anthony denny (denny:) sir nicholas vaux (vaux:) secretaries to wolsey. (first secretary:) (second secretary:) cromwell servant to wolsey. griffith gentleman-usher to queen katharine. three gentlemen. (first gentleman:) (second gentleman:) (third gentleman:) doctor butts physician to the king. garter king-at-arms. (garter:) surveyor to the duke of buckingham. (surveyor:) brandon: a sergeant-at-arms. (sergeant:) door-keeper of the council-chamber. porter, (porter:) and his man. (man:) page to gardiner. (boy:) a crier. (crier:) queen katharine (queen katharine:) wife to king henry, afterwards divorced. (katharine:) anne bullen (anne:) her maid of honour, afterwards queen. (queen anne:) an old lady, friend to anne bullen. (old lady:) patience woman to queen katharine. several lords and ladies in the dumb shows; women attending upon the queen; scribes, officers, guards, and other attendants. spirits. (scribe:) (keeper:) (servant:) (messenger:) scene london; westminster; kimbolton king henry viii the prologue i come no more to make you laugh: things now, that bear a weighty and a serious brow, sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow, we now present. those that can pity, here may, if they think it well, let fall a tear; the subject will deserve it. such as give their money out of hope they may believe, may here find truth too. those that come to see only a show or two, and so agree the play may pass, if they be still and willing, i'll undertake may see away their shilling richly in two short hours. only they that come to hear a merry bawdy play, a noise of targets, or to see a fellow in a long motley coat guarded with yellow, will be deceived; for, gentle hearers, know, to rank our chosen truth with such a show as fool and fight is, beside forfeiting our own brains, and the opinion that we bring, to make that only true we now intend, will leave us never an understanding friend. therefore, for goodness' sake, and as you are known the first and happiest hearers of the town, be sad, as we would make ye: think ye see the very persons of our noble story as they were living; think you see them great, and follow'd with the general throng and sweat of thousand friends; then in a moment, see how soon this mightiness meets misery: and, if you can be merry then, i'll say a man may weep upon his wedding-day. king henry viii act i scene i london. an ante-chamber in the palace. [enter norfolk at one door; at the other, buckingham and abergavenny] buckingham good morrow, and well met. how have ye done since last we saw in france? norfolk i thank your grace, healthful; and ever since a fresh admirer of what i saw there. buckingham an untimely ague stay'd me a prisoner in my chamber when those suns of glory, those two lights of men, met in the vale of andren. norfolk 'twixt guynes and arde: i was then present, saw them salute on horseback; beheld them, when they lighted, how they clung in their embracement, as they grew together; which had they, what four throned ones could have weigh'd such a compounded one? buckingham all the whole time i was my chamber's prisoner. norfolk then you lost the view of earthly glory: men might say, till this time pomp was single, but now married to one above itself. each following day became the next day's master, till the last made former wonders its. to-day the french, all clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods, shone down the english; and, to-morrow, they made britain india: every man that stood show'd like a mine. their dwarfish pages were as cherubins, all guilt: the madams too, not used to toil, did almost sweat to bear the pride upon them, that their very labour was to them as a painting: now this masque was cried incomparable; and the ensuing night made it a fool and beggar. the two kings, equal in lustre, were now best, now worst, as presence did present them; him in eye, still him in praise: and, being present both 'twas said they saw but one; and no discerner durst wag his tongue in censure. when these suns- for so they phrase 'em--by their heralds challenged the noble spirits to arms, they did perform beyond thought's compass; that former fabulous story, being now seen possible enough, got credit, that bevis was believed. buckingham o, you go far. norfolk as i belong to worship and affect in honour honesty, the tract of every thing would by a good discourser lose some life, which action's self was tongue to. all was royal; to the disposing of it nought rebell'd. order gave each thing view; the office did distinctly his full function. buckingham who did guide, i mean, who set the body and the limbs of this great sport together, as you guess? norfolk one, certes, that promises no element in such a business. buckingham i pray you, who, my lord? norfolk all this was order'd by the good discretion of the right reverend cardinal of york. buckingham the devil speed him! no man's pie is freed from his ambitious finger. what had he to do in these fierce vanities? i wonder that such a keech can with his very bulk take up the rays o' the beneficial sun and keep it from the earth. norfolk surely, sir, there's in him stuff that puts him to these ends; for, being not propp'd by ancestry, whose grace chalks successors their way, nor call'd upon for high feats done to the crown; neither allied for eminent assistants; but, spider-like, out of his self-drawing web, he gives us note, the force of his own merit makes his way a gift that heaven gives for him, which buys a place next to the king. abergavenny i cannot tell what heaven hath given him,--let some graver eye pierce into that; but i can see his pride peep through each part of him: whence has he that, if not from hell? the devil is a niggard, or has given all before, and he begins a new hell in himself. buckingham why the devil, upon this french going out, took he upon him, without the privity o' the king, to appoint who should attend on him? he makes up the file of all the gentry; for the most part such to whom as great a charge as little honour he meant to lay upon: and his own letter, the honourable board of council out, must fetch him in the papers. abergavenny i do know kinsmen of mine, three at the least, that have by this so sickened their estates, that never they shall abound as formerly. buckingham o, many have broke their backs with laying manors on 'em for this great journey. what did this vanity but minister communication of a most poor issue? norfolk grievingly i think, the peace between the french and us not values the cost that did conclude it. buckingham every man, after the hideous storm that follow'd, was a thing inspired; and, not consulting, broke into a general prophecy; that this tempest, dashing the garment of this peace, aboded the sudden breach on't. norfolk which is budded out; for france hath flaw'd the league, and hath attach'd our merchants' goods at bourdeaux. abergavenny is it therefore the ambassador is silenced? norfolk marry, is't. abergavenny a proper title of a peace; and purchased at a superfluous rate! buckingham why, all this business our reverend cardinal carried. norfolk like it your grace, the state takes notice of the private difference betwixt you and the cardinal. i advise you- and take it from a heart that wishes towards you honour and plenteous safety--that you read the cardinal's malice and his potency together; to consider further that what his high hatred would effect wants not a minister in his power. you know his nature, that he's revengeful, and i know his sword hath a sharp edge: it's long and, 't may be said, it reaches far, and where 'twill not extend, thither he darts it. bosom up my counsel, you'll find it wholesome. lo, where comes that rock that i advise your shunning. [enter cardinal wolsey, the purse borne before him, certain of the guard, and two secretaries with papers. cardinal wolsey in his passage fixeth his eye on buckingham, and buckingham on him, both full of disdain] cardinal wolsey the duke of buckingham's surveyor, ha? where's his examination? first secretary here, so please you. cardinal wolsey is he in person ready? first secretary ay, please your grace. cardinal wolsey well, we shall then know more; and buckingham shall lessen this big look. [exeunt cardinal wolsey and his train] buckingham this butcher's cur is venom-mouth'd, and i have not the power to muzzle him; therefore best not wake him in his slumber. a beggar's book outworths a noble's blood. norfolk what, are you chafed? ask god for temperance; that's the appliance only which your disease requires. buckingham i read in's looks matter against me; and his eye reviled me, as his abject object: at this instant he bores me with some trick: he's gone to the king; i'll follow and outstare him. norfolk stay, my lord, and let your reason with your choler question what 'tis you go about: to climb steep hills requires slow pace at first: anger is like a full-hot horse, who being allow'd his way, self-mettle tires him. not a man in england can advise me like you: be to yourself as you would to your friend. buckingham i'll to the king; and from a mouth of honour quite cry down this ipswich fellow's insolence; or proclaim there's difference in no persons. norfolk be advised; heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself: we may outrun, by violent swiftness, that which we run at, and lose by over-running. know you not, the fire that mounts the liquor til run o'er, in seeming to augment it wastes it? be advised: i say again, there is no english soul more stronger to direct you than yourself, if with the sap of reason you would quench, or but allay, the fire of passion. buckingham sir, i am thankful to you; and i'll go along by your prescription: but this top-proud fellow, whom from the flow of gall i name not but from sincere motions, by intelligence, and proofs as clear as founts in july when we see each grain of gravel, i do know to be corrupt and treasonous. norfolk say not 'treasonous.' buckingham to the king i'll say't; and make my vouch as strong as shore of rock. attend. this holy fox, or wolf, or both,--for he is equal ravenous as he is subtle, and as prone to mischief as able to perform't; his mind and place infecting one another, yea, reciprocally- only to show his pomp as well in france as here at home, suggests the king our master to this last costly treaty, the interview, that swallow'd so much treasure, and like a glass did break i' the rinsing. norfolk faith, and so it did. buckingham pray, give me favour, sir. this cunning cardinal the articles o' the combination drew as himself pleased; and they were ratified as he cried 'thus let be': to as much end as give a crutch to the dead: but our count-cardinal has done this, and 'tis well; for worthy wolsey, who cannot err, he did it. now this follows,- which, as i take it, is a kind of puppy to the old dam, treason,--charles the emperor, under pretence to see the queen his aunt- for 'twas indeed his colour, but he came to whisper wolsey,--here makes visitation: his fears were, that the interview betwixt england and france might, through their amity, breed him some prejudice; for from this league peep'd harms that menaced him: he privily deals with our cardinal; and, as i trow,- which i do well; for i am sure the emperor paid ere he promised; whereby his suit was granted ere it was ask'd; but when the way was made, and paved with gold, the emperor thus desired, that he would please to alter the king's course, and break the foresaid peace. let the king know, as soon he shall by me, that thus the cardinal does buy and sell his honour as he pleases, and for his own advantage. norfolk i am sorry to hear this of him; and could wish he were something mistaken in't. buckingham no, not a syllable: i do pronounce him in that very shape he shall appear in proof. [enter brandon, a sergeant-at-arms before him, and two or three of the guard] brandon your office, sergeant; execute it. sergeant sir, my lord the duke of buckingham, and earl of hereford, stafford, and northampton, i arrest thee of high treason, in the name of our most sovereign king. buckingham lo, you, my lord, the net has fall'n upon me! i shall perish under device and practise. brandon i am sorry to see you ta'en from liberty, to look on the business present: 'tis his highness' pleasure you shall to the tower. buckingham it will help me nothing to plead mine innocence; for that dye is on me which makes my whitest part black. the will of heaven be done in this and all things! i obey. o my lord abergavenny, fare you well! brandon nay, he must bear you company. the king [to abergavenny] is pleased you shall to the tower, till you know how he determines further. abergavenny as the duke said, the will of heaven be done, and the king's pleasure by me obey'd! brandon here is a warrant from the king to attach lord montacute; and the bodies of the duke's confessor, john de la car, one gilbert peck, his chancellor- buckingham so, so; these are the limbs o' the plot: no more, i hope. brandon a monk o' the chartreux. buckingham o, nicholas hopkins? brandon he. buckingham my surveyor is false; the o'er-great cardinal hath show'd him gold; my life is spann'd already: i am the shadow of poor buckingham, whose figure even this instant cloud puts on, by darkening my clear sun. my lord, farewell. [exeunt] king henry viii act i scene ii the same. the council-chamber. [cornets. enter king henry viii, leaning on cardinal wolsey's shoulder, the nobles, and lovell; cardinal wolsey places himself under king henry viii's feet on his right side] king henry viii my life itself, and the best heart of it, thanks you for this great care: i stood i' the level of a full-charged confederacy, and give thanks to you that choked it. let be call'd before us that gentleman of buckingham's; in person i'll hear him his confessions justify; and point by point the treasons of his master he shall again relate. [a noise within, crying 'room for the queen!' enter queen katharine, ushered by norfolk, and suffolk: she kneels. king henry viii riseth from his state, takes her up, kisses and placeth her by him] queen katharine nay, we must longer kneel: i am a suitor. king henry viii arise, and take place by us: half your suit never name to us; you have half our power: the other moiety, ere you ask, is given; repeat your will and take it. queen katharine thank your majesty. that you would love yourself, and in that love not unconsider'd leave your honour, nor the dignity of your office, is the point of my petition. king henry viii lady mine, proceed. queen katharine i am solicited, not by a few, and those of true condition, that your subjects are in great grievance: there have been commissions sent down among 'em, which hath flaw'd the heart of all their loyalties: wherein, although, my good lord cardinal, they vent reproaches most bitterly on you, as putter on of these exactions, yet the king our master- whose honour heaven shield from soil!--even he escapes not language unmannerly, yea, such which breaks the sides of loyalty, and almost appears in loud rebellion. norfolk not almost appears, it doth appear; for, upon these taxations, the clothiers all, not able to maintain the many to them longing, have put off the spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers, who, unfit for other life, compell'd by hunger and lack of other means, in desperate manner daring the event to the teeth, are all in uproar, and danger serves among then! king henry viii taxation! wherein? and what taxation? my lord cardinal, you that are blamed for it alike with us, know you of this taxation? cardinal wolsey please you, sir, i know but of a single part, in aught pertains to the state; and front but in that file where others tell steps with me. queen katharine no, my lord, you know no more than others; but you frame things that are known alike; which are not wholesome to those which would not know them, and yet must perforce be their acquaintance. these exactions, whereof my sovereign would have note, they are most pestilent to the bearing; and, to bear 'em, the back is sacrifice to the load. they say they are devised by you; or else you suffer too hard an exclamation. king henry viii still exaction! the nature of it? in what kind, let's know, is this exaction? queen katharine i am much too venturous in tempting of your patience; but am bolden'd under your promised pardon. the subjects' grief comes through commissions, which compel from each the sixth part of his substance, to be levied without delay; and the pretence for this is named, your wars in france: this makes bold mouths: tongues spit their duties out, and cold hearts freeze allegiance in them; their curses now live where their prayers did: and it's come to pass, this tractable obedience is a slave to each incensed will. i would your highness would give it quick consideration, for there is no primer business. king henry viii by my life, this is against our pleasure. cardinal wolsey and for me, i have no further gone in this than by a single voice; and that not pass'd me but by learned approbation of the judges. if i am traduced by ignorant tongues, which neither know my faculties nor person, yet will be the chronicles of my doing, let me say 'tis but the fate of place, and the rough brake that virtue must go through. we must not stint our necessary actions, in the fear to cope malicious censurers; which ever, as ravenous fishes, do a vessel follow that is new-trimm'd, but benefit no further than vainly longing. what we oft do best, by sick interpreters, once weak ones, is not ours, or not allow'd; what worst, as oft, hitting a grosser quality, is cried up for our best act. if we shall stand still, in fear our motion will be mock'd or carp'd at, we should take root here where we sit, or sit state-statues only. king henry viii things done well, and with a care, exempt themselves from fear; things done without example, in their issue are to be fear'd. have you a precedent of this commission? i believe, not any. we must not rend our subjects from our laws, and stick them in our will. sixth part of each? a trembling contribution! why, we take from every tree lop, bark, and part o' the timber; and, though we leave it with a root, thus hack'd, the air will drink the sap. to every county where this is question'd send our letters, with free pardon to each man that has denied the force of this commission: pray, look to't; i put it to your care. cardinal wolsey a word with you. [to the secretary] let there be letters writ to every shire, of the king's grace and pardon. the grieved commons hardly conceive of me; let it be noised that through our intercession this revokement and pardon comes: i shall anon advise you further in the proceeding. [exit secretary] [enter surveyor] queen katharine i am sorry that the duke of buckingham is run in your displeasure. king henry viii it grieves many: the gentleman is learn'd, and a most rare speaker; to nature none more bound; his training such, that he may furnish and instruct great teachers, and never seek for aid out of himself. yet see, when these so noble benefits shall prove not well disposed, the mind growing once corrupt, they turn to vicious forms, ten times more ugly than ever they were fair. this man so complete, who was enroll'd 'mongst wonders, and when we, almost with ravish'd listening, could not find his hour of speech a minute; he, my lady, hath into monstrous habits put the graces that once were his, and is become as black as if besmear'd in hell. sit by us; you shall hear- this was his gentleman in trust--of him things to strike honour sad. bid him recount the fore-recited practises; whereof we cannot feel too little, hear too much. cardinal wolsey stand forth, and with bold spirit relate what you, most like a careful subject, have collected out of the duke of buckingham. king henry viii speak freely. surveyor first, it was usual with him, every day it would infect his speech, that if the king should without issue die, he'll carry it so to make the sceptre his: these very words i've heard him utter to his son-in-law, lord abergavenny; to whom by oath he menaced revenge upon the cardinal. cardinal wolsey please your highness, note this dangerous conception in this point. not friended by by his wish, to your high person his will is most malignant; and it stretches beyond you, to your friends. queen katharine my learn'd lord cardinal, deliver all with charity. king henry viii speak on: how grounded he his title to the crown, upon our fail? to this point hast thou heard him at any time speak aught? surveyor he was brought to this by a vain prophecy of nicholas hopkins. king henry viii what was that hopkins? surveyor sir, a chartreux friar, his confessor, who fed him every minute with words of sovereignty. king henry viii how know'st thou this? surveyor not long before your highness sped to france, the duke being at the rose, within the parish saint lawrence poultney, did of me demand what was the speech among the londoners concerning the french journey: i replied, men fear'd the french would prove perfidious, to the king's danger. presently the duke said, 'twas the fear, indeed; and that he doubted 'twould prove the verity of certain words spoke by a holy monk; 'that oft,' says he, 'hath sent to me, wishing me to permit john de la car, my chaplain, a choice hour to hear from him a matter of some moment: whom after under the confession's seal he solemnly had sworn, that what he spoke my chaplain to no creature living, but to me, should utter, with demure confidence this pausingly ensued: neither the king nor's heirs, tell you the duke, shall prosper: bid him strive to gain the love o' the commonalty: the duke shall govern england.' queen katharine if i know you well, you were the duke's surveyor, and lost your office on the complaint o' the tenants: take good heed you charge not in your spleen a noble person and spoil your nobler soul: i say, take heed; yes, heartily beseech you. king henry viii let him on. go forward. surveyor on my soul, i'll speak but truth. i told my lord the duke, by the devil's illusions the monk might be deceived; and that 'twas dangerous for him to ruminate on this so far, until it forged him some design, which, being believed, it was much like to do: he answer'd, 'tush, it can do me no damage;' adding further, that, had the king in his last sickness fail'd, the cardinal's and sir thomas lovell's heads should have gone off. king henry viii ha! what, so rank? ah ha! there's mischief in this man: canst thou say further? surveyor i can, my liege. king henry viii proceed. surveyor being at greenwich, after your highness had reproved the duke about sir william blomer,- king henry viii i remember of such a time: being my sworn servant, the duke retain'd him his. but on; what hence? surveyor 'if,' quoth he, 'i for this had been committed, as, to the tower, i thought, i would have play'd the part my father meant to act upon the usurper richard; who, being at salisbury, made suit to come in's presence; which if granted, as he made semblance of his duty, would have put his knife to him.' king henry viii a giant traitor! cardinal wolsey now, madam, may his highness live in freedom, and this man out of prison? queen katharine god mend all! king henry viii there's something more would out of thee; what say'st? surveyor after 'the duke his father,' with 'the knife,' he stretch'd him, and, with one hand on his dagger, another spread on's breast, mounting his eyes he did discharge a horrible oath; whose tenor was,--were he evil used, he would outgo his father by as much as a performance does an irresolute purpose. king henry viii there's his period, to sheathe his knife in us. he is attach'd; call him to present trial: if he may find mercy in the law, 'tis his: if none, let him not seek 't of us: by day and night, he's traitor to the height. [exeunt] king henry viii act i scene iii an ante-chamber in the palace. [enter chamberlain and sands] chamberlain is't possible the spells of france should juggle men into such strange mysteries? sands new customs, though they be never so ridiculous, nay, let 'em be unmanly, yet are follow'd. chamberlain as far as i see, all the good our english have got by the late voyage is but merely a fit or two o' the face; but they are shrewd ones; for when they hold 'em, you would swear directly their very noses had been counsellors to pepin or clotharius, they keep state so. sands they have all new legs, and lame ones: one would take it, that never saw 'em pace before, the spavin or springhalt reign'd among 'em. chamberlain death! my lord, their clothes are after such a pagan cut too, that, sure, they've worn out christendom. [enter lovell] how now! what news, sir thomas lovell? lovell faith, my lord, i hear of none, but the new proclamation that's clapp'd upon the court-gate. chamberlain what is't for? lovell the reformation of our travell'd gallants, that fill the court with quarrels, talk, and tailors. chamberlain i'm glad 'tis there: now i would pray our monsieurs to think an english courtier may be wise, and never see the louvre. lovell they must either, for so run the conditions, leave those remnants of fool and feather that they got in france, with all their honourable point of ignorance pertaining thereunto, as fights and fireworks, abusing better men than they can be, out of a foreign wisdom, renouncing clean the faith they have in tennis, and tall stockings, short blister'd breeches, and those types of travel, and understand again like honest men; or pack to their old playfellows: there, i take it, they may, 'cum privilegio,' wear away the lag end of their lewdness and be laugh'd at. sands 'tis time to give 'em physic, their diseases are grown so catching. chamberlain what a loss our ladies will have of these trim vanities! lovell ay, marry, there will be woe indeed, lords: the sly whoresons have got a speeding trick to lay down ladies; a french song and a fiddle has no fellow. sands the devil fiddle 'em! i am glad they are going, for, sure, there's no converting of 'em: now an honest country lord, as i am, beaten a long time out of play, may bring his plainsong and have an hour of hearing; and, by'r lady, held current music too. chamberlain well said, lord sands; your colt's tooth is not cast yet. sands no, my lord; nor shall not, while i have a stump. chamberlain sir thomas, whither were you a-going? lovell to the cardinal's: your lordship is a guest too. chamberlain o, 'tis true: this night he makes a supper, and a great one, to many lords and ladies; there will be the beauty of this kingdom, i'll assure you. lovell that churchman bears a bounteous mind indeed, a hand as fruitful as the land that feeds us; his dews fall every where. chamberlain no doubt he's noble; he had a black mouth that said other of him. sands he may, my lord; has wherewithal: in him sparing would show a worse sin than ill doctrine: men of his way should be most liberal; they are set here for examples. chamberlain true, they are so: but few now give so great ones. my barge stays; your lordship shall along. come, good sir thomas, we shall be late else; which i would not be, for i was spoke to, with sir henry guildford this night to be comptrollers. sands i am your lordship's. [exeunt] king henry viii act i scene iv a hall in york place. [hautboys. a small table under a state for cardinal wolsey, a longer table for the guests. then enter anne and divers other ladies and gentlemen as guests, at one door; at another door, enter guildford] guildford ladies, a general welcome from his grace salutes ye all; this night he dedicates to fair content and you: none here, he hopes, in all this noble bevy, has brought with her one care abroad; he would have all as merry as, first, good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people. o, my lord, you're tardy: [enter chamberlain, sands, and lovell] the very thought of this fair company clapp'd wings to me. chamberlain you are young, sir harry guildford. sands sir thomas lovell, had the cardinal but half my lay thoughts in him, some of these should find a running banquet ere they rested, i think would better please 'em: by my life, they are a sweet society of fair ones. lovell o, that your lordship were but now confessor to one or two of these! sands i would i were; they should find easy penance. lovell faith, how easy? sands as easy as a down-bed would afford it. chamberlain sweet ladies, will it please you sit? sir harry, place you that side; i'll take the charge of this: his grace is entering. nay, you must not freeze; two women placed together makes cold weather: my lord sands, you are one will keep 'em waking; pray, sit between these ladies. sands by my faith, and thank your lordship. by your leave, sweet ladies: if i chance to talk a little wild, forgive me; i had it from my father. anne was he mad, sir? sands o, very mad, exceeding mad, in love too: but he would bite none; just as i do now, he would kiss you twenty with a breath. [kisses her] chamberlain well said, my lord. so, now you're fairly seated. gentlemen, the penance lies on you, if these fair ladies pass away frowning. sands for my little cure, let me alone. [hautboys. enter cardinal wolsey, and takes his state] cardinal wolsey you're welcome, my fair guests: that noble lady, or gentleman, that is not freely merry, is not my friend: this, to confirm my welcome; and to you all, good health. [drinks] sands your grace is noble: let me have such a bowl may hold my thanks, and save me so much talking. cardinal wolsey my lord sands, i am beholding to you: cheer your neighbours. ladies, you are not merry: gentlemen, whose fault is this? sands the red wine first must rise in their fair cheeks, my lord; then we shall have 'em talk us to silence. anne you are a merry gamester, my lord sands. sands yes, if i make my play. here's to your ladyship: and pledge it, madam, for 'tis to such a thing,- anne you cannot show me. sands i told your grace they would talk anon. [drum and trumpet, chambers discharged] cardinal wolsey what's that? chamberlain look out there, some of ye. [exit servant] cardinal wolsey what warlike voice, and to what end is this? nay, ladies, fear not; by all the laws of war you're privileged. [re-enter servant] chamberlain how now! what is't? servant a noble troop of strangers; for so they seem: they've left their barge and landed; and hither make, as great ambassadors from foreign princes. cardinal wolsey good lord chamberlain, go, give 'em welcome; you can speak the french tongue; and, pray, receive 'em nobly, and conduct 'em into our presence, where this heaven of beauty shall shine at full upon them. some attend him. [exit chamberlain, attended. all rise, and tables removed] you have now a broken banquet; but we'll mend it. a good digestion to you all: and once more i shower a welcome on ye; welcome all. [hautboys. enter king henry viii and others, as masquers, habited like shepherds, ushered by the chamberlain. they pass directly before cardinal wolsey, and gracefully salute him] a noble company! what are their pleasures? chamberlain because they speak no english, thus they pray'd to tell your grace, that, having heard by fame of this so noble and so fair assembly this night to meet here, they could do no less out of the great respect they bear to beauty, but leave their flocks; and, under your fair conduct, crave leave to view these ladies and entreat an hour of revels with 'em. cardinal wolsey say, lord chamberlain, they have done my poor house grace; for which i pay 'em a thousand thanks, and pray 'em take their pleasures. [they choose ladies for the dance. king henry viii chooses anne] king henry viii the fairest hand i ever touch'd! o beauty, till now i never knew thee! [music. dance] cardinal wolsey my lord! chamberlain your grace? cardinal wolsey pray, tell 'em thus much from me: there should be one amongst 'em, by his person, more worthy this place than myself; to whom, if i but knew him, with my love and duty i would surrender it. chamberlain i will, my lord. [whispers the masquers] cardinal wolsey what say they? chamberlain such a one, they all confess, there is indeed; which they would have your grace find out, and he will take it. cardinal wolsey let me see, then. by all your good leaves, gentlemen; here i'll make my royal choice. king henry viii ye have found him, cardinal: [unmasking] you hold a fair assembly; you do well, lord: you are a churchman, or, i'll tell you, cardinal, i should judge now unhappily. cardinal wolsey i am glad your grace is grown so pleasant. king henry viii my lord chamberlain, prithee, come hither: what fair lady's that? chamberlain an't please your grace, sir thomas bullen's daughter- the viscount rochford,--one of her highness' women. king henry viii by heaven, she is a dainty one. sweetheart, i were unmannerly, to take you out, and not to kiss you. a health, gentlemen! let it go round. cardinal wolsey sir thomas lovell, is the banquet ready i' the privy chamber? lovell yes, my lord. cardinal wolsey your grace, i fear, with dancing is a little heated. king henry viii i fear, too much. cardinal wolsey there's fresher air, my lord, in the next chamber. king henry viii lead in your ladies, every one: sweet partner, i must not yet forsake you: let's be merry: good my lord cardinal, i have half a dozen healths to drink to these fair ladies, and a measure to lead 'em once again; and then let's dream who's best in favour. let the music knock it. [exeunt with trumpets] king henry viii act ii scene i westminster. a street. [enter two gentlemen, meeting] first gentleman whither away so fast? second gentleman o, god save ye! even to the hall, to hear what shall become of the great duke of buckingham. first gentleman i'll save you that labour, sir. all's now done, but the ceremony of bringing back the prisoner. second gentleman were you there? first gentleman yes, indeed, was i. second gentleman pray, speak what has happen'd. first gentleman you may guess quickly what. second gentleman is he found guilty? first gentleman yes, truly is he, and condemn'd upon't. second gentleman i am sorry for't. first gentleman so are a number more. second gentleman but, pray, how pass'd it? first gentleman i'll tell you in a little. the great duke came to the bar; where to his accusations he pleaded still not guilty and alleged many sharp reasons to defeat the law. the king's attorney on the contrary urged on the examinations, proofs, confessions of divers witnesses; which the duke desired to have brought viva voce to his face: at which appear'd against him his surveyor; sir gilbert peck his chancellor; and john car, confessor to him; with that devil-monk, hopkins, that made this mischief. second gentleman that was he that fed him with his prophecies? first gentleman the same. all these accused him strongly; which he fain would have flung from him, but, indeed, he could not: and so his peers, upon this evidence, have found him guilty of high treason. much he spoke, and learnedly, for life; but all was either pitied in him or forgotten. second gentleman after all this, how did he bear himself? first gentleman when he was brought again to the bar, to hear his knell rung out, his judgment, he was stirr'd with such an agony, he sweat extremely, and something spoke in choler, ill, and hasty: but he fell to himself again, and sweetly in all the rest show'd a most noble patience. second gentleman i do not think he fears death. first gentleman sure, he does not: he never was so womanish; the cause he may a little grieve at. second gentleman certainly the cardinal is the end of this. first gentleman 'tis likely, by all conjectures: first, kildare's attainder, then deputy of ireland; who removed, earl surrey was sent thither, and in haste too, lest he should help his father. second gentleman that trick of state was a deep envious one. first gentleman at his return no doubt he will requite it. this is noted, and generally, whoever the king favours, the cardinal instantly will find employment, and far enough from court too. second gentleman all the commons hate him perniciously, and, o' my conscience, wish him ten fathom deep: this duke as much they love and dote on; call him bounteous buckingham, the mirror of all courtesy;- first gentleman stay there, sir, and see the noble ruin'd man you speak of. [enter buckingham from his arraignment; tip-staves before him; the axe with the edge towards him; halberds on each side: accompanied with lovell, vaux, sands, and common people] second gentleman let's stand close, and behold him. buckingham all good people, you that thus far have come to pity me, hear what i say, and then go home and lose me. i have this day received a traitor's judgment, and by that name must die: yet, heaven bear witness, and if i have a conscience, let it sink me, even as the axe falls, if i be not faithful! the law i bear no malice for my death; 't has done, upon the premises, but justice: but those that sought it i could wish more christians: be what they will, i heartily forgive 'em: yet let 'em look they glory not in mischief, nor build their evils on the graves of great men; for then my guiltless blood must cry against 'em. for further life in this world i ne'er hope, nor will i sue, although the king have mercies more than i dare make faults. you few that loved me, and dare be bold to weep for buckingham, his noble friends and fellows, whom to leave is only bitter to him, only dying, go with me, like good angels, to my end; and, as the long divorce of steel falls on me, make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice, and lift my soul to heaven. lead on, o' god's name. lovell i do beseech your grace, for charity, if ever any malice in your heart were hid against me, now to forgive me frankly. buckingham sir thomas lovell, i as free forgive you as i would be forgiven: i forgive all; there cannot be those numberless offences 'gainst me, that i cannot take peace with: no black envy shall mark my grave. commend me to his grace; and if he speak of buckingham, pray, tell him you met him half in heaven: my vows and prayers yet are the king's; and, till my soul forsake, shall cry for blessings on him: may he live longer than i have time to tell his years! ever beloved and loving may his rule be! and when old time shall lead him to his end, goodness and he fill up one monument! lovell to the water side i must conduct your grace; then give my charge up to sir nicholas vaux, who undertakes you to your end. vaux prepare there, the duke is coming: see the barge be ready; and fit it with such furniture as suits the greatness of his person. buckingham nay, sir nicholas, let it alone; my state now will but mock me. when i came hither, i was lord high constable and duke of buckingham; now, poor edward bohun: yet i am richer than my base accusers, that never knew what truth meant: i now seal it; and with that blood will make 'em one day groan for't. my noble father, henry of buckingham, who first raised head against usurping richard, flying for succor to his servant banister, being distress'd, was by that wretch betray'd, and without trial fell; god's peace be with him! henry the seventh succeeding, truly pitying my father's loss, like a most royal prince, restored me to my honours, and, out of ruins, made my name once more noble. now his son, henry the eighth, life, honour, name and all that made me happy at one stroke has taken for ever from the world. i had my trial, and, must needs say, a noble one; which makes me, a little happier than my wretched father: yet thus far we are one in fortunes: both fell by our servants, by those men we loved most; a most unnatural and faithless service! heaven has an end in all: yet, you that hear me, this from a dying man receive as certain: where you are liberal of your loves and counsels be sure you be not loose; for those you make friends and give your hearts to, when they once perceive the least rub in your fortunes, fall away like water from ye, never found again but where they mean to sink ye. all good people, pray for me! i must now forsake ye: the last hour of my long weary life is come upon me. farewell: and when you would say something that is sad, speak how i fell. i have done; and god forgive me! [exeunt buckingham and train] first gentleman o, this is full of pity! sir, it calls, i fear, too many curses on their beads that were the authors. second gentleman if the duke be guiltless, 'tis full of woe: yet i can give you inkling of an ensuing evil, if it fall, greater than this. first gentleman good angels keep it from us! what may it be? you do not doubt my faith, sir? second gentleman this secret is so weighty, 'twill require a strong faith to conceal it. first gentleman let me have it; i do not talk much. second gentleman i am confident, you shall, sir: did you not of late days hear a buzzing of a separation between the king and katharine? first gentleman yes, but it held not: for when the king once heard it, out of anger he sent command to the lord mayor straight to stop the rumor, and allay those tongues that durst disperse it. second gentleman but that slander, sir, is found a truth now: for it grows again fresher than e'er it was; and held for certain the king will venture at it. either the cardinal, or some about him near, have, out of malice to the good queen, possess'd him with a scruple that will undo her: to confirm this too, cardinal campeius is arrived, and lately; as all think, for this business. first gentleman 'tis the cardinal; and merely to revenge him on the emperor for not bestowing on him, at his asking, the archbishopric of toledo, this is purposed. second gentleman i think you have hit the mark: but is't not cruel that she should feel the smart of this? the cardinal will have his will, and she must fall. first gentleman 'tis woful. we are too open here to argue this; let's think in private more. [exeunt] king henry viii act ii scene ii an ante-chamber in the palace. [enter chamberlain, reading a letter] chamberlain 'my lord, the horses your lordship sent for, with all the care i had, i saw well chosen, ridden, and furnished. they were young and handsome, and of the best breed in the north. when they were ready to set out for london, a man of my lord cardinal's, by commission and main power, took 'em from me; with this reason: his master would be served before a subject, if not before the king; which stopped our mouths, sir.' i fear he will indeed: well, let him have them: he will have all, i think. [enter, to chamberlain, norfolk and suffolk] norfolk well met, my lord chamberlain. chamberlain good day to both your graces. suffolk how is the king employ'd? chamberlain i left him private, full of sad thoughts and troubles. norfolk what's the cause? chamberlain it seems the marriage with his brother's wife has crept too near his conscience. suffolk no, his conscience has crept too near another lady. norfolk 'tis so: this is the cardinal's doing, the king-cardinal: that blind priest, like the eldest son of fortune, turns what he list. the king will know him one day. suffolk pray god he do! he'll never know himself else. norfolk how holily he works in all his business! and with what zeal! for, now he has crack'd the league between us and the emperor, the queen's great nephew, he dives into the king's soul, and there scatters dangers, doubts, wringing of the conscience, fears, and despairs; and all these for his marriage: and out of all these to restore the king, he counsels a divorce; a loss of her that, like a jewel, has hung twenty years about his neck, yet never lost her lustre; of her that loves him with that excellence that angels love good men with; even of her that, when the greatest stroke of fortune falls, will bless the king: and is not this course pious? chamberlain heaven keep me from such counsel! 'tis most true these news are every where; every tongue speaks 'em, and every true heart weeps for't: all that dare look into these affairs see this main end, the french king's sister. heaven will one day open the king's eyes, that so long have slept upon this bold bad man. suffolk and free us from his slavery. norfolk we had need pray, and heartily, for our deliverance; or this imperious man will work us all from princes into pages: all men's honours lie like one lump before him, to be fashion'd into what pitch he please. suffolk for me, my lords, i love him not, nor fear him; there's my creed: as i am made without him, so i'll stand, if the king please; his curses and his blessings touch me alike, they're breath i not believe in. i knew him, and i know him; so i leave him to him that made him proud, the pope. norfolk let's in; and with some other business put the king from these sad thoughts, that work too much upon him: my lord, you'll bear us company? chamberlain excuse me; the king has sent me otherwhere: besides, you'll find a most unfit time to disturb him: health to your lordships. norfolk thanks, my good lord chamberlain. [exit chamberlain; and king henry viii draws the curtain, and sits reading pensively] suffolk how sad he looks! sure, he is much afflicted. king henry viii who's there, ha? norfolk pray god he be not angry. king henry viii who's there, i say? how dare you thrust yourselves into my private meditations? who am i? ha? norfolk a gracious king that pardons all offences malice ne'er meant: our breach of duty this way is business of estate; in which we come to know your royal pleasure. king henry viii ye are too bold: go to; i'll make ye know your times of business: is this an hour for temporal affairs, ha? [enter cardinal wolsey and cardinal campeius, with a commission] who's there? my good lord cardinal? o my wolsey, the quiet of my wounded conscience; thou art a cure fit for a king. [to cardinal campeius] you're welcome, most learned reverend sir, into our kingdom: use us and it. [to cardinal wolsey] my good lord, have great care i be not found a talker. cardinal wolsey sir, you cannot. i would your grace would give us but an hour of private conference. king henry viii [to norfolk and suffolk] we are busy; go. norfolk [aside to suffolk] this priest has no pride in him? suffolk [aside to norfolk] not to speak of: i would not be so sick though for his place: but this cannot continue. norfolk [aside to suffolk] if it do, i'll venture one have-at-him. suffolk [aside to norfolk] i another. [exeunt norfolk and suffolk] cardinal wolsey your grace has given a precedent of wisdom above all princes, in committing freely your scruple to the voice of christendom: who can be angry now? what envy reach you? the spaniard, tied blood and favour to her, must now confess, if they have any goodness, the trial just and noble. all the clerks, i mean the learned ones, in christian kingdoms have their free voices: rome, the nurse of judgment, invited by your noble self, hath sent one general tongue unto us, this good man, this just and learned priest, cardinal campeius; whom once more i present unto your highness. king henry viii and once more in mine arms i bid him welcome, and thank the holy conclave for their loves: they have sent me such a man i would have wish'd for. cardinal campeius your grace must needs deserve all strangers' loves, you are so noble. to your highness' hand i tender my commission; by whose virtue, the court of rome commanding, you, my lord cardinal of york, are join'd with me their servant in the unpartial judging of this business. king henry viii two equal men. the queen shall be acquainted forthwith for what you come. where's gardiner? cardinal wolsey i know your majesty has always loved her so dear in heart, not to deny her that a woman of less place might ask by law: scholars allow'd freely to argue for her. king henry viii ay, and the best she shall have; and my favour to him that does best: god forbid else. cardinal, prithee, call gardiner to me, my new secretary: i find him a fit fellow. [exit cardinal wolsey] [re-enter cardinal wolsey, with gardiner] cardinal wolsey [aside to gardiner] give me your hand much joy and favour to you; you are the king's now. gardiner [aside to cardinal wolsey] but to be commanded for ever by your grace, whose hand has raised me. king henry viii come hither, gardiner. [walks and whispers] cardinal campeius my lord of york, was not one doctor pace in this man's place before him? cardinal wolsey yes, he was. cardinal campeius was he not held a learned man? cardinal wolsey yes, surely. cardinal campeius believe me, there's an ill opinion spread then even of yourself, lord cardinal. cardinal wolsey how! of me? cardinal campeius they will not stick to say you envied him, and fearing he would rise, he was so virtuous, kept him a foreign man still; which so grieved him, that he ran mad and died. cardinal wolsey heaven's peace be with him! that's christian care enough: for living murmurers there's places of rebuke. he was a fool; for he would needs be virtuous: that good fellow, if i command him, follows my appointment: i will have none so near else. learn this, brother, we live not to be grip'd by meaner persons. king henry viii deliver this with modesty to the queen. [exit gardiner] the most convenient place that i can think of for such receipt of learning is black-friars; there ye shall meet about this weighty business. my wolsey, see it furnish'd. o, my lord, would it not grieve an able man to leave so sweet a bedfellow? but, conscience, conscience! o, 'tis a tender place; and i must leave her. [exeunt] king henry viii act ii scene iii an ante-chamber of the queen's apartments. [enter anne and an old lady] anne not for that neither: here's the pang that pinches: his highness having lived so long with her, and she so good a lady that no tongue could ever pronounce dishonour of her; by my life, she never knew harm-doing: o, now, after so many courses of the sun enthroned, still growing in a majesty and pomp, the which to leave a thousand-fold more bitter than 'tis sweet at first to acquire,--after this process, to give her the avaunt! it is a pity would move a monster. old lady hearts of most hard temper melt and lament for her. anne o, god's will! much better she ne'er had known pomp: though't be temporal, yet, if that quarrel, fortune, do divorce it from the bearer, 'tis a sufferance panging as soul and body's severing. old lady alas, poor lady! she's a stranger now again. anne so much the more must pity drop upon her. verily, i swear, 'tis better to be lowly born, and range with humble livers in content, than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief, and wear a golden sorrow. old lady our content is our best having. anne by my troth and maidenhead, i would not be a queen. old lady beshrew me, i would, and venture maidenhead for't; and so would you, for all this spice of your hypocrisy: you, that have so fair parts of woman on you, have too a woman's heart; which ever yet affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty; which, to say sooth, are blessings; and which gifts, saving your mincing, the capacity of your soft cheveril conscience would receive, if you might please to stretch it. anne nay, good troth. old lady yes, troth, and troth; you would not be a queen? anne no, not for all the riches under heaven. old lady: 'tis strange: a three-pence bow'd would hire me, old as i am, to queen it: but, i pray you, what think you of a duchess? have you limbs to bear that load of title? anne no, in truth. old lady then you are weakly made: pluck off a little; i would not be a young count in your way, for more than blushing comes to: if your back cannot vouchsafe this burthen,'tis too weak ever to get a boy. anne how you do talk! i swear again, i would not be a queen for all the world. old lady in faith, for little england you'ld venture an emballing: i myself would for carnarvonshire, although there long'd no more to the crown but that. lo, who comes here? [enter chamberlain] chamberlain good morrow, ladies. what were't worth to know the secret of your conference? anne my good lord, not your demand; it values not your asking: our mistress' sorrows we were pitying. chamberlain it was a gentle business, and becoming the action of good women: there is hope all will be well. anne now, i pray god, amen! chamberlain you bear a gentle mind, and heavenly blessings follow such creatures. that you may, fair lady, perceive i speak sincerely, and high note's ta'en of your many virtues, the king's majesty commends his good opinion of you, and does purpose honour to you no less flowing than marchioness of pembroke: to which title a thousand pound a year, annual support, out of his grace he adds. anne i do not know what kind of my obedience i should tender; more than my all is nothing: nor my prayers are not words duly hallow'd, nor my wishes more worth than empty vanities; yet prayers and wishes are all i can return. beseech your lordship, vouchsafe to speak my thanks and my obedience, as from a blushing handmaid, to his highness; whose health and royalty i pray for. chamberlain lady, i shall not fail to approve the fair conceit the king hath of you. [aside] i have perused her well; beauty and honour in her are so mingled that they have caught the king: and who knows yet but from this lady may proceed a gem to lighten all this isle? i'll to the king, and say i spoke with you. [exit chamberlain] anne my honour'd lord. old lady why, this it is; see, see! i have been begging sixteen years in court, am yet a courtier beggarly, nor could come pat betwixt too early and too late for any suit of pounds; and you, o fate! a very fresh-fish here--fie, fie, fie upon this compell'd fortune!--have your mouth fill'd up before you open it. anne this is strange to me. old lady how tastes it? is it bitter? forty pence, no. there was a lady once, 'tis an old story, that would not be a queen, that would she not, for all the mud in egypt: have you heard it? anne come, you are pleasant. old lady with your theme, i could o'ermount the lark. the marchioness of pembroke! a thousand pounds a year for pure respect! no other obligation! by my life, that promises moe thousands: honour's train is longer than his foreskirt. by this time i know your back will bear a duchess: say, are you not stronger than you were? anne good lady, make yourself mirth with your particular fancy, and leave me out on't. would i had no being, if this salute my blood a jot: it faints me, to think what follows. the queen is comfortless, and we forgetful in our long absence: pray, do not deliver what here you've heard to her. old lady what do you think me? [exeunt] king henry viii act ii scene iv a hall in black-friars. [trumpets, sennet, and cornets. enter two vergers, with short silver wands; next them, two scribes, in the habit of doctors; after them, canterbury alone; after him, lincoln, ely, rochester, and saint asaph; next them, with some small distance, follows a gentleman bearing the purse, with the great seal, and a cardinal's hat; then two priests, bearing each a silver cross; then a gentleman-usher bare-headed, accompanied with a sergeant-at-arms bearing a silver mace; then two gentlemen bearing two great silver pillars; after them, side by side, cardinal wolsey and cardinal campeius; two noblemen with the sword and mace. king henry viii takes place under the cloth of state; cardinal wolsey and cardinal campeius sit under him as judges. queen katharine takes place some distance from king henry viii. the bishops place themselves on each side the court, in manner of a consistory; below them, the scribes. the lords sit next the bishops. the rest of the attendants stand in convenient order about the stage] cardinal wolsey whilst our commission from rome is read, let silence be commanded. king henry viii what's the need? it hath already publicly been read, and on all sides the authority allow'd; you may, then, spare that time. cardinal wolsey be't so. proceed. scribe say, henry king of england, come into the court. crier henry king of england, &c. king henry viii here. scribe say, katharine queen of england, come into the court. crier katharine queen of england, &c. [queen katharine makes no answer, rises out of her chair, goes about the court, comes to king henry viii, and kneels at his feet; then speaks] queen katharine sir, i desire you do me right and justice; and to bestow your pity on me: for i am a most poor woman, and a stranger, born out of your dominions; having here no judge indifferent, nor no more assurance of equal friendship and proceeding. alas, sir, in what have i offended you? what cause hath my behavior given to your displeasure, that thus you should proceed to put me off, and take your good grace from me? heaven witness, i have been to you a true and humble wife, at all times to your will conformable; ever in fear to kindle your dislike, yea, subject to your countenance, glad or sorry as i saw it inclined: when was the hour i ever contradicted your desire, or made it not mine too? or which of your friends have i not strove to love, although i knew he were mine enemy? what friend of mine that had to him derived your anger, did i continue in my liking? nay, gave notice he was from thence discharged. sir, call to mind that i have been your wife, in this obedience, upward of twenty years, and have been blest with many children by you: if, in the course and process of this time, you can report, and prove it too, against mine honour aught, my bond to wedlock, or my love and duty, against your sacred person, in god's name, turn me away; and let the foul'st contempt shut door upon me, and so give me up to the sharp'st kind of justice. please you sir, the king, your father, was reputed for a prince most prudent, of an excellent and unmatch'd wit and judgment: ferdinand, my father, king of spain, was reckon'd one the wisest prince that there had reign'd by many a year before: it is not to be question'd that they had gather'd a wise council to them of every realm, that did debate this business, who deem'd our marriage lawful: wherefore i humbly beseech you, sir, to spare me, till i may be by my friends in spain advised; whose counsel i will implore: if not, i' the name of god, your pleasure be fulfill'd! cardinal wolsey you have here, lady, and of your choice, these reverend fathers; men of singular integrity and learning, yea, the elect o' the land, who are assembled to plead your cause: it shall be therefore bootless that longer you desire the court; as well for your own quiet, as to rectify what is unsettled in the king. cardinal campeius his grace hath spoken well and justly: therefore, madam, it's fit this royal session do proceed; and that, without delay, their arguments be now produced and heard. queen katharine lord cardinal, to you i speak. cardinal wolsey your pleasure, madam? queen katharine sir, i am about to weep; but, thinking that we are a queen, or long have dream'd so, certain the daughter of a king, my drops of tears i'll turn to sparks of fire. cardinal wolsey be patient yet. queen katharine i will, when you are humble; nay, before, or god will punish me. i do believe, induced by potent circumstances, that you are mine enemy, and make my challenge you shall not be my judge: for it is you have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me; which god's dew quench! therefore i say again, i utterly abhor, yea, from my soul refuse you for my judge; whom, yet once more, i hold my most malicious foe, and think not at all a friend to truth. cardinal wolsey i do profess you speak not like yourself; who ever yet have stood to charity, and display'd the effects of disposition gentle, and of wisdom o'ertopping woman's power. madam, you do me wrong: i have no spleen against you; nor injustice for you or any: how far i have proceeded, or how far further shall, is warranted by a commission from the consistory, yea, the whole consistory of rome. you charge me that i have blown this coal: i do deny it: the king is present: if it be known to him that i gainsay my deed, how may he wound, and worthily, my falsehood! yea, as much as you have done my truth. if he know that i am free of your report, he knows i am not of your wrong. therefore in him it lies to cure me: and the cure is, to remove these thoughts from you: the which before his highness shall speak in, i do beseech you, gracious madam, to unthink your speaking and to say so no more. queen katharine my lord, my lord, i am a simple woman, much too weak to oppose your cunning. you're meek and humble-mouth'd; you sign your place and calling, in full seeming, with meekness and humility; but your heart is cramm'd with arrogancy, spleen, and pride. you have, by fortune and his highness' favours, gone slightly o'er low steps and now are mounted where powers are your retainers, and your words, domestics to you, serve your will as't please yourself pronounce their office. i must tell you, you tender more your person's honour than your high profession spiritual: that again i do refuse you for my judge; and here, before you all, appeal unto the pope, to bring my whole cause 'fore his holiness, and to be judged by him. [she curtsies to king henry viii, and offers to depart] cardinal campeius the queen is obstinate, stubborn to justice, apt to accuse it, and disdainful to be tried by't: 'tis not well. she's going away. king henry viii call her again. crier katharine queen of england, come into the court. griffith madam, you are call'd back. queen katharine what need you note it? pray you, keep your way: when you are call'd, return. now, the lord help, they vex me past my patience! pray you, pass on: i will not tarry; no, nor ever more upon this business my appearance make in any of their courts. [exeunt queen katharine and her attendants] king henry viii go thy ways, kate: that man i' the world who shall report he has a better wife, let him in nought be trusted, for speaking false in that: thou art, alone, if thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness, thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government, obeying in commanding, and thy parts sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out, the queen of earthly queens: she's noble born; and, like her true nobility, she has carried herself towards me. cardinal wolsey most gracious sir, in humblest manner i require your highness, that it shall please you to declare, in hearing of all these ears,--for where i am robb'd and bound, there must i be unloosed, although not there at once and fully satisfied,--whether ever i did broach this business to your highness; or laid any scruple in your way, which might induce you to the question on't? or ever have to you, but with thanks to god for such a royal lady, spake one the least word that might be to the prejudice of her present state, or touch of her good person? king henry viii my lord cardinal, i do excuse you; yea, upon mine honour, i free you from't. you are not to be taught that you have many enemies, that know not why they are so, but, like to village-curs, bark when their fellows do: by some of these the queen is put in anger. you're excused: but will you be more justified? you ever have wish'd the sleeping of this business; never desired it to be stirr'd; but oft have hinder'd, oft, the passages made toward it: on my honour, i speak my good lord cardinal to this point, and thus far clear him. now, what moved me to't, i will be bold with time and your attention: then mark the inducement. thus it came; give heed to't: my conscience first received a tenderness, scruple, and prick, on certain speeches utter'd by the bishop of bayonne, then french ambassador; who had been hither sent on the debating a marriage 'twixt the duke of orleans and our daughter mary: i' the progress of this business, ere a determinate resolution, he, i mean the bishop, did require a respite; wherein he might the king his lord advertise whether our daughter were legitimate, respecting this our marriage with the dowager, sometimes our brother's wife. this respite shook the bosom of my conscience, enter'd me, yea, with a splitting power, and made to tremble the region of my breast; which forced such way, that many mazed considerings did throng and press'd in with this caution. first, methought i stood not in the smile of heaven; who had commanded nature, that my lady's womb, if it conceived a male child by me, should do no more offices of life to't than the grave does to the dead; for her male issue or died where they were made, or shortly after this world had air'd them: hence i took a thought, this was a judgment on me; that my kingdom, well worthy the best heir o' the world, should not be gladded in't by me: then follows, that i weigh'd the danger which my realms stood in by this my issue's fail; and that gave to me many a groaning throe. thus hulling in the wild sea of my conscience, i did steer toward this remedy, whereupon we are now present here together: that's to say, i meant to rectify my conscience,--which i then did feel full sick, and yet not well,- by all the reverend fathers of the land and doctors learn'd: first i began in private with you, my lord of lincoln; you remember how under my oppression i did reek, when i first moved you. lincoln very well, my liege. king henry viii i have spoke long: be pleased yourself to say how far you satisfied me. lincoln so please your highness, the question did at first so stagger me, bearing a state of mighty moment in't and consequence of dread, that i committed the daring'st counsel which i had to doubt; and did entreat your highness to this course which you are running here. king henry viii i then moved you, my lord of canterbury; and got your leave to make this present summons: unsolicited i left no reverend person in this court; but by particular consent proceeded under your hands and seals: therefore, go on: for no dislike i' the world against the person of the good queen, but the sharp thorny points of my alleged reasons, drive this forward: prove but our marriage lawful, by my life and kingly dignity, we are contented to wear our mortal state to come with her, katharine our queen, before the primest creature that's paragon'd o' the world. cardinal campeius so please your highness, the queen being absent, 'tis a needful fitness that we adjourn this court till further day: meanwhile must be an earnest motion made to the queen, to call back her appeal she intends unto his holiness. king henry viii [aside] i may perceive these cardinals trifle with me: i abhor this dilatory sloth and tricks of rome. my learn'd and well-beloved servant, cranmer, prithee, return: with thy approach, i know, my comfort comes along. break up the court: i say, set on. [exeunt in manner as they entered] king henry viii act iii scene i london. queen katharine's apartments. [enter queen katharine and her women, as at work] queen katharine take thy lute, wench: my soul grows sad with troubles; sing, and disperse 'em, if thou canst: leave working. [song] orpheus with his lute made trees, and the mountain tops that freeze, bow themselves when he did sing: to his music plants and flowers ever sprung; as sun and showers there had made a lasting spring. every thing that heard him play, even the billows of the sea, hung their heads, and then lay by. in sweet music is such art, killing care and grief of heart fall asleep, or hearing, die. [enter a gentleman] queen katharine how now! gentleman an't please your grace, the two great cardinals wait in the presence. queen katharine would they speak with me? gentleman they will'd me say so, madam. queen katharine pray their graces to come near. [exit gentleman] what can be their business with me, a poor weak woman, fall'n from favour? i do not like their coming. now i think on't, they should be good men; their affairs as righteous: but all hoods make not monks. [enter cardinal wolsey and cardinal campeius] cardinal wolsey peace to your highness! queen katharine your graces find me here part of a housewife, i would be all, against the worst may happen. what are your pleasures with me, reverend lords? cardinal wolsey may it please you noble madam, to withdraw into your private chamber, we shall give you the full cause of our coming. queen katharine speak it here: there's nothing i have done yet, o' my conscience, deserves a corner: would all other women could speak this with as free a soul as i do! my lords, i care not, so much i am happy above a number, if my actions were tried by every tongue, every eye saw 'em, envy and base opinion set against 'em, i know my life so even. if your business seek me out, and that way i am wife in, out with it boldly: truth loves open dealing. cardinal wolsey tanta est erga te mentis integritas, regina serenissima,- queen katharine o, good my lord, no latin; i am not such a truant since my coming, as not to know the language i have lived in: a strange tongue makes my cause more strange, suspicious; pray, speak in english: here are some will thank you, if you speak truth, for their poor mistress' sake; believe me, she has had much wrong: lord cardinal, the willing'st sin i ever yet committed may be absolved in english. cardinal wolsey noble lady, i am sorry my integrity should breed, and service to his majesty and you, so deep suspicion, where all faith was meant. we come not by the way of accusation, to taint that honour every good tongue blesses, nor to betray you any way to sorrow, you have too much, good lady; but to know how you stand minded in the weighty difference between the king and you; and to deliver, like free and honest men, our just opinions and comforts to your cause. cardinal campeius most honour'd madam, my lord of york, out of his noble nature, zeal and obedience he still bore your grace, forgetting, like a good man your late censure both of his truth and him, which was too far, offers, as i do, in a sign of peace, his service and his counsel. queen katharine [aside] to betray me.- my lords, i thank you both for your good wills; ye speak like honest men; pray god, ye prove so! but how to make ye suddenly an answer, in such a point of weight, so near mine honour,- more near my life, i fear,--with my weak wit, and to such men of gravity and learning, in truth, i know not. i was set at work among my maids: full little, god knows, looking either for such men or such business. for her sake that i have been,--for i feel the last fit of my greatness,--good your graces, let me have time and counsel for my cause: alas, i am a woman, friendless, hopeless! cardinal wolsey madam, you wrong the king's love with these fears: your hopes and friends are infinite. queen katharine in england but little for my profit: can you think, lords, that any englishman dare give me counsel? or be a known friend, 'gainst his highness' pleasure, though he be grown so desperate to be honest, and live a subject? nay, forsooth, my friends, they that must weigh out my afflictions, they that my trust must grow to, live not here: they are, as all my other comforts, far hence in mine own country, lords. cardinal campeius i would your grace would leave your griefs, and take my counsel. queen katharine how, sir? cardinal campeius put your main cause into the king's protection; he's loving and most gracious: 'twill be much both for your honour better and your cause; for if the trial of the law o'ertake ye, you'll part away disgraced. cardinal wolsey he tells you rightly. queen katharine ye tell me what ye wish for both,--my ruin: is this your christian counsel? out upon ye! heaven is above all yet; there sits a judge that no king can corrupt. cardinal campeius your rage mistakes us. queen katharine the more shame for ye: holy men i thought ye, upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues; but cardinal sins and hollow hearts i fear ye: mend 'em, for shame, my lords. is this your comfort? the cordial that ye bring a wretched lady, a woman lost among ye, laugh'd at, scorn'd? i will not wish ye half my miseries; i have more charity: but say, i warn'd ye; take heed, for heaven's sake, take heed, lest at once the burthen of my sorrows fall upon ye. cardinal wolsey madam, this is a mere distraction; you turn the good we offer into envy. queen katharine ye turn me into nothing: woe upon ye and all such false professors! would you have me- if you have any justice, any pity; if ye be any thing but churchmen's habits- put my sick cause into his hands that hates me? alas, has banish'd me his bed already, his love, too long ago! i am old, my lords, and all the fellowship i hold now with him is only my obedience. what can happen to me above this wretchedness? all your studies make me a curse like this. cardinal campeius your fears are worse. queen katharine have i lived thus long--let me speak myself, since virtue finds no friends--a wife, a true one? a woman, i dare say without vain-glory, never yet branded with suspicion? have i with all my full affections still met the king? loved him next heaven? obey'd him? been, out of fondness, superstitious to him? almost forgot my prayers to content him? and am i thus rewarded? 'tis not well, lords. bring me a constant woman to her husband, one that ne'er dream'd a joy beyond his pleasure; and to that woman, when she has done most, yet will i add an honour, a great patience. cardinal wolsey madam, you wander from the good we aim at. queen katharine my lord, i dare not make myself so guilty, to give up willingly that noble title your master wed me to: nothing but death shall e'er divorce my dignities. cardinal wolsey pray, hear me. queen katharine would i had never trod this english earth, or felt the flatteries that grow upon it! ye have angels' faces, but heaven knows your hearts. what will become of me now, wretched lady! i am the most unhappy woman living. alas, poor wenches, where are now your fortunes! shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity, no friend, no hope; no kindred weep for me; almost no grave allow'd me: like the lily, that once was mistress of the field and flourish'd, i'll hang my head and perish. cardinal wolsey if your grace could but be brought to know our ends are honest, you'ld feel more comfort: why should we, good lady, upon what cause, wrong you? alas, our places, the way of our profession is against it: we are to cure such sorrows, not to sow 'em. for goodness' sake, consider what you do; how you may hurt yourself, ay, utterly grow from the king's acquaintance, by this carriage. the hearts of princes kiss obedience, so much they love it; but to stubborn spirits they swell, and grow as terrible as storms. i know you have a gentle, noble temper, a soul as even as a calm: pray, think us those we profess, peace-makers, friends, and servants. cardinal campeius madam, you'll find it so. you wrong your virtues with these weak women's fears: a noble spirit, as yours was put into you, ever casts such doubts, as false coin, from it. the king loves you; beware you lose it not: for us, if you please to trust us in your business, we are ready to use our utmost studies in your service. queen katharine do what ye will, my lords: and, pray, forgive me, if i have used myself unmannerly; you know i am a woman, lacking wit to make a seemly answer to such persons. pray, do my service to his majesty: he has my heart yet; and shall have my prayers while i shall have my life. come, reverend fathers, bestow your counsels on me: she now begs, that little thought, when she set footing here, she should have bought her dignities so dear. [exeunt] king henry viii act iii scene ii ante-chamber to king henry viii's apartment. [enter norfolk, suffolk, surrey, and chamberlain] norfolk if you will now unite in your complaints, and force them with a constancy, the cardinal cannot stand under them: if you omit the offer of this time, i cannot promise but that you shall sustain moe new disgraces, with these you bear already. surrey i am joyful to meet the least occasion that may give me remembrance of my father-in-law, the duke, to be revenged on him. suffolk which of the peers have uncontemn'd gone by him, or at least strangely neglected? when did he regard the stamp of nobleness in any person out of himself? chamberlain my lords, you speak your pleasures: what he deserves of you and me i know; what we can do to him, though now the time gives way to us, i much fear. if you cannot bar his access to the king, never attempt any thing on him; for he hath a witchcraft over the king in's tongue. norfolk o, fear him not; his spell in that is out: the king hath found matter against him that for ever mars the honey of his language. no, he's settled, not to come off, in his displeasure. surrey sir, i should be glad to hear such news as this once every hour. norfolk believe it, this is true: in the divorce his contrary proceedings are all unfolded wherein he appears as i would wish mine enemy. surrey how came his practises to light? suffolk most strangely. surrey o, how, how? suffolk the cardinal's letters to the pope miscarried, and came to the eye o' the king: wherein was read, how that the cardinal did entreat his holiness to stay the judgment o' the divorce; for if it did take place, 'i do,' quoth he, 'perceive my king is tangled in affection to a creature of the queen's, lady anne bullen.' surrey has the king this? suffolk believe it. surrey will this work? chamberlain the king in this perceives him, how he coasts and hedges his own way. but in this point all his tricks founder, and he brings his physic after his patient's death: the king already hath married the fair lady. surrey would he had! suffolk may you be happy in your wish, my lord for, i profess, you have it. surrey now, all my joy trace the conjunction! suffolk my amen to't! norfolk all men's! suffolk there's order given for her coronation: marry, this is yet but young, and may be left to some ears unrecounted. but, my lords, she is a gallant creature, and complete in mind and feature: i persuade me, from her will fall some blessing to this land, which shall in it be memorised. surrey but, will the king digest this letter of the cardinal's? the lord forbid! norfolk marry, amen! suffolk no, no; there be moe wasps that buzz about his nose will make this sting the sooner. cardinal campeius is stol'n away to rome; hath ta'en no leave; has left the cause o' the king unhandled; and is posted, as the agent of our cardinal, to second all his plot. i do assure you the king cried ha! at this. chamberlain now, god incense him, and let him cry ha! louder! norfolk but, my lord, when returns cranmer? suffolk he is return'd in his opinions; which have satisfied the king for his divorce, together with all famous colleges almost in christendom: shortly, i believe, his second marriage shall be publish'd, and her coronation. katharine no more shall be call'd queen, but princess dowager and widow to prince arthur. norfolk this same cranmer's a worthy fellow, and hath ta'en much pain in the king's business. suffolk he has; and we shall see him for it an archbishop. norfolk so i hear. suffolk 'tis so. the cardinal! [enter cardinal wolsey and cromwell] norfolk observe, observe, he's moody. cardinal wolsey the packet, cromwell. gave't you the king? cromwell to his own hand, in's bedchamber. cardinal wolsey look'd he o' the inside of the paper? cromwell presently he did unseal them: and the first he view'd, he did it with a serious mind; a heed was in his countenance. you he bade attend him here this morning. cardinal wolsey is he ready to come abroad? cromwell i think, by this he is. cardinal wolsey leave me awhile. [exit cromwell] [aside] it shall be to the duchess of alencon, the french king's sister: he shall marry her. anne bullen! no; i'll no anne bullens for him: there's more in't than fair visage. bullen! no, we'll no bullens. speedily i wish to hear from rome. the marchioness of pembroke! norfolk he's discontented. suffolk may be, he hears the king does whet his anger to him. surrey sharp enough, lord, for thy justice! cardinal wolsey [aside] the late queen's gentlewoman, a knight's daughter, to be her mistress' mistress! the queen's queen! this candle burns not clear: 'tis i must snuff it; then out it goes. what though i know her virtuous and well deserving? yet i know her for a spleeny lutheran; and not wholesome to our cause, that she should lie i' the bosom of our hard-ruled king. again, there is sprung up an heretic, an arch one, cranmer; one hath crawl'd into the favour of the king, and is his oracle. norfolk he is vex'd at something. surrey i would 'twere something that would fret the string, the master-cord on's heart! [enter king henry viii, reading of a schedule, and lovell] suffolk the king, the king! king henry viii what piles of wealth hath he accumulated to his own portion! and what expense by the hour seems to flow from him! how, i' the name of thrift, does he rake this together! now, my lords, saw you the cardinal? norfolk my lord, we have stood here observing him: some strange commotion is in his brain: he bites his lip, and starts; stops on a sudden, looks upon the ground, then lays his finger on his temple, straight springs out into fast gait; then stops again, strikes his breast hard, and anon he casts his eye against the moon: in most strange postures we have seen him set himself. king henry viii it may well be; there is a mutiny in's mind. this morning papers of state he sent me to peruse, as i required: and wot you what i found there,--on my conscience, put unwittingly? forsooth, an inventory, thus importing; the several parcels of his plate, his treasure, rich stuffs, and ornaments of household; which i find at such proud rate, that it out-speaks possession of a subject. norfolk it's heaven's will: some spirit put this paper in the packet, to bless your eye withal. king henry viii if we did think his contemplation were above the earth, and fix'd on spiritual object, he should still dwell in his musings: but i am afraid his thinkings are below the moon, not worth his serious considering. [king henry viii takes his seat; whispers lovell, who goes to cardinal wolsey] cardinal wolsey heaven forgive me! ever god bless your highness! king henry viii good my lord, you are full of heavenly stuff, and bear the inventory of your best graces in your mind; the which you were now running o'er: you have scarce time to steal from spiritual leisure a brief span to keep your earthly audit: sure, in that i deem you an ill husband, and am glad to have you therein my companion. cardinal wolsey sir, for holy offices i have a time; a time to think upon the part of business which i bear i' the state; and nature does require her times of preservation, which perforce i, her frail son, amongst my brethren mortal, must give my tendence to. king henry viii you have said well. cardinal wolsey and ever may your highness yoke together, as i will lend you cause, my doing well with my well saying! king henry viii 'tis well said again; and 'tis a kind of good deed to say well: and yet words are no deeds. my father loved you: his said he did; and with his deed did crown his word upon you. since i had my office, i have kept you next my heart; have not alone employ'd you where high profits might come home, but pared my present havings, to bestow my bounties upon you. cardinal wolsey [aside] what should this mean? surrey [aside] the lord increase this business! king henry viii have i not made you, the prime man of the state? i pray you, tell me, if what i now pronounce you have found true: and, if you may confess it, say withal, if you are bound to us or no. what say you? cardinal wolsey my sovereign, i confess your royal graces, shower'd on me daily, have been more than could my studied purposes requite; which went beyond all man's endeavours: my endeavours have ever come too short of my desires, yet filed with my abilities: mine own ends have been mine so that evermore they pointed to the good of your most sacred person and the profit of the state. for your great graces heap'd upon me, poor undeserver, i can nothing render but allegiant thanks, my prayers to heaven for you, my loyalty, which ever has and ever shall be growing, till death, that winter, kill it. king henry viii fairly answer'd; a loyal and obedient subject is therein illustrated: the honour of it does pay the act of it; as, i' the contrary, the foulness is the punishment. i presume that, as my hand has open'd bounty to you, my heart dropp'd love, my power rain'd honour, more on you than any; so your hand and heart, your brain, and every function of your power, should, notwithstanding that your bond of duty, as 'twere in love's particular, be more to me, your friend, than any. cardinal wolsey i do profess that for your highness' good i ever labour'd more than mine own; that am, have, and will be- though all the world should crack their duty to you, and throw it from their soul; though perils did abound, as thick as thought could make 'em, and appear in forms more horrid,--yet my duty, as doth a rock against the chiding flood, should the approach of this wild river break, and stand unshaken yours. king henry viii 'tis nobly spoken: take notice, lords, he has a loyal breast, for you have seen him open't. read o'er this; [giving him papers] and after, this: and then to breakfast with what appetite you have. [exit king henry viii, frowning upon cardinal wolsey: the nobles throng after him, smiling and whispering] cardinal wolsey what should this mean? what sudden anger's this? how have i reap'd it? he parted frowning from me, as if ruin leap'd from his eyes: so looks the chafed lion upon the daring huntsman that has gall'd him; then makes him nothing. i must read this paper; i fear, the story of his anger. 'tis so; this paper has undone me: 'tis the account of all that world of wealth i have drawn together for mine own ends; indeed, to gain the popedom, and fee my friends in rome. o negligence! fit for a fool to fall by: what cross devil made me put this main secret in the packet i sent the king? is there no way to cure this? no new device to beat this from his brains? i know 'twill stir him strongly; yet i know a way, if it take right, in spite of fortune will bring me off again. what's this? 'to the pope!' the letter, as i live, with all the business i writ to's holiness. nay then, farewell! i have touch'd the highest point of all my greatness; and, from that full meridian of my glory, i haste now to my setting: i shall fall like a bright exhalation m the evening, and no man see me more. [re-enter to cardinal wolsey, norfolk and suffolk, surrey, and the chamberlain] norfolk hear the king's pleasure, cardinal: who commands you to render up the great seal presently into our hands; and to confine yourself to asher house, my lord of winchester's, till you hear further from his highness. cardinal wolsey stay: where's your commission, lords? words cannot carry authority so weighty. suffolk who dare cross 'em, bearing the king's will from his mouth expressly? cardinal wolsey till i find more than will or words to do it, i mean your malice, know, officious lords, i dare and must deny it. now i feel of what coarse metal ye are moulded, envy: how eagerly ye follow my disgraces, as if it fed ye! and how sleek and wanton ye appear in every thing may bring my ruin! follow your envious courses, men of malice; you have christian warrant for 'em, and, no doubt, in time will find their fit rewards. that seal, you ask with such a violence, the king, mine and your master, with his own hand gave me; bade me enjoy it, with the place and honours, during my life; and, to confirm his goodness, tied it by letters-patents: now, who'll take it? surrey the king, that gave it. cardinal wolsey it must be himself, then. surrey thou art a proud traitor, priest. cardinal wolsey proud lord, thou liest: within these forty hours surrey durst better have burnt that tongue than said so. surrey thy ambition, thou scarlet sin, robb'd this bewailing land of noble buckingham, my father-in-law: the heads of all thy brother cardinals, with thee and all thy best parts bound together, weigh'd not a hair of his. plague of your policy! you sent me deputy for ireland; far from his succor, from the king, from all that might have mercy on the fault thou gavest him; whilst your great goodness, out of holy pity, absolved him with an axe. cardinal wolsey this, and all else this talking lord can lay upon my credit, i answer is most false. the duke by law found his deserts: how innocent i was from any private malice in his end, his noble jury and foul cause can witness. if i loved many words, lord, i should tell you you have as little honesty as honour, that in the way of loyalty and truth toward the king, my ever royal master, dare mate a sounder man than surrey can be, and all that love his follies. surrey by my soul, your long coat, priest, protects you; thou shouldst feel my sword i' the life-blood of thee else. my lords, can ye endure to hear this arrogance? and from this fellow? if we live thus tamely, to be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet, farewell nobility; let his grace go forward, and dare us with his cap like larks. cardinal wolsey all goodness is poison to thy stomach. surrey yes, that goodness of gleaning all the land's wealth into one, into your own hands, cardinal, by extortion; the goodness of your intercepted packets you writ to the pope against the king: your goodness, since you provoke me, shall be most notorious. my lord of norfolk, as you are truly noble, as you respect the common good, the state of our despised nobility, our issues, who, if he live, will scarce be gentlemen, produce the grand sum of his sins, the articles collected from his life. i'll startle you worse than the scaring bell, when the brown wench lay kissing in your arms, lord cardinal. cardinal wolsey how much, methinks, i could despise this man, but that i am bound in charity against it! norfolk those articles, my lord, are in the king's hand: but, thus much, they are foul ones. cardinal wolsey so much fairer and spotless shall mine innocence arise, when the king knows my truth. surrey this cannot save you: i thank my memory, i yet remember some of these articles; and out they shall. now, if you can blush and cry 'guilty,' cardinal, you'll show a little honesty. cardinal wolsey speak on, sir; i dare your worst objections: if i blush, it is to see a nobleman want manners. surrey i had rather want those than my head. have at you! first, that, without the king's assent or knowledge, you wrought to be a legate; by which power you maim'd the jurisdiction of all bishops. norfolk then, that in all you writ to rome, or else to foreign princes, 'ego et rex meus' was still inscribed; in which you brought the king to be your servant. suffolk then that, without the knowledge either of king or council, when you went ambassador to the emperor, you made bold to carry into flanders the great seal. surrey item, you sent a large commission to gregory de cassado, to conclude, without the king's will or the state's allowance, a league between his highness and ferrara. suffolk that, out of mere ambition, you have caused your holy hat to be stamp'd on the king's coin. surrey then that you have sent innumerable substance- by what means got, i leave to your own conscience- to furnish rome, and to prepare the ways you have for dignities; to the mere undoing of all the kingdom. many more there are; which, since they are of you, and odious, i will not taint my mouth with. chamberlain o my lord, press not a falling man too far! 'tis virtue: his faults lie open to the laws; let them, not you, correct him. my heart weeps to see him so little of his great self. surrey i forgive him. suffolk lord cardinal, the king's further pleasure is, because all those things you have done of late, by your power legatine, within this kingdom, fall into the compass of a praemunire, that therefore such a writ be sued against you; to forfeit all your goods, lands, tenements, chattels, and whatsoever, and to be out of the king's protection. this is my charge. norfolk and so we'll leave you to your meditations how to live better. for your stubborn answer about the giving back the great seal to us, the king shall know it, and, no doubt, shall thank you. so fare you well, my little good lord cardinal. [exeunt all but cardinal wolsey] cardinal wolsey so farewell to the little good you bear me. farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness! this is the state of man: to-day he puts forth the tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms, and bears his blushing honours thick upon him; the third day comes a frost, a killing frost, and, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely his greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, and then he falls, as i do. i have ventured, like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, this many summers in a sea of glory, but far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride at length broke under me and now has left me, weary and old with service, to the mercy of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. vain pomp and glory of this world, i hate ye: i feel my heart new open'd. o, how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours! there is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, that sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, more pangs and fears than wars or women have: and when he falls, he falls like lucifer, never to hope again. [enter cromwell, and stands amazed] why, how now, cromwell! cromwell i have no power to speak, sir. cardinal wolsey what, amazed at my misfortunes? can thy spirit wonder a great man should decline? nay, an you weep, i am fall'n indeed. cromwell how does your grace? cardinal wolsey why, well; never so truly happy, my good cromwell. i know myself now; and i feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience. the king has cured me, i humbly thank his grace; and from these shoulders, these ruin'd pillars, out of pity, taken a load would sink a navy, too much honour: o, 'tis a burthen, cromwell, 'tis a burthen too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven! cromwell i am glad your grace has made that right use of it. cardinal wolsey i hope i have: i am able now, methinks, out of a fortitude of soul i feel, to endure more miseries and greater far than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer. what news abroad? cromwell the heaviest and the worst is your displeasure with the king. cardinal wolsey god bless him! cromwell the next is, that sir thomas more is chosen lord chancellor in your place. cardinal wolsey that's somewhat sudden: but he's a learned man. may he continue long in his highness' favour, and do justice for truth's sake and his conscience; that his bones, when he has run his course and sleeps in blessings, may have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on em! what more? cromwell that cranmer is return'd with welcome, install'd lord archbishop of canterbury. cardinal wolsey that's news indeed. cromwell last, that the lady anne, whom the king hath in secrecy long married, this day was view'd in open as his queen, going to chapel; and the voice is now only about her coronation. cardinal wolsey there was the weight that pull'd me down. o cromwell, the king has gone beyond me: all my glories in that one woman i have lost for ever: no sun shall ever usher forth mine honours, or gild again the noble troops that waited upon my smiles. go, get thee from me, cromwell; i am a poor fall'n man, unworthy now to be thy lord and master: seek the king; that sun, i pray, may never set! i have told him what and how true thou art: he will advance thee; some little memory of me will stir him- i know his noble nature--not to let thy hopeful service perish too: good cromwell, neglect him not; make use now, and provide for thine own future safety. cromwell o my lord, must i, then, leave you? must i needs forego so good, so noble and so true a master? bear witness, all that have not hearts of iron, with what a sorrow cromwell leaves his lord. the king shall have my service: but my prayers for ever and for ever shall be yours. cardinal wolsey cromwell, i did not think to shed a tear in all my miseries; but thou hast forced me, out of thy honest truth, to play the woman. let's dry our eyes: and thus far hear me, cromwell; and, when i am forgotten, as i shall be, and sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention of me more must be heard of, say, i taught thee, say, wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory, and sounded all the depths and shoals of honour, found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in; a sure and safe one, though thy master miss'd it. mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me. cromwell, i charge thee, fling away ambition: by that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, the image of his maker, hope to win by it? love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee; corruption wins not more than honesty. still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, to silence envious tongues. be just, and fear not: let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, thy god's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, o cromwell, thou fall'st a blessed martyr! serve the king; and,--prithee, lead me in: there take an inventory of all i have, to the last penny; 'tis the king's: my robe, and my integrity to heaven, is all i dare now call mine own. o cromwell, cromwell! had i but served my god with half the zeal i served my king, he would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies. cromwell good sir, have patience. cardinal wolsey so i have. farewell the hopes of court! my hopes in heaven do dwell. [exeunt] king henry viii act iv scene i a street in westminster. [enter two gentlemen, meeting one another] first gentleman you're well met once again. second gentleman so are you. first gentleman you come to take your stand here, and behold the lady anne pass from her coronation? second gentleman 'tis all my business. at our last encounter, the duke of buckingham came from his trial. first gentleman 'tis very true: but that time offer'd sorrow; this, general joy. second gentleman 'tis well: the citizens, i am sure, have shown at full their royal minds- as, let 'em have their rights, they are ever forward- in celebration of this day with shows, pageants and sights of honour. first gentleman never greater, nor, i'll assure you, better taken, sir. second gentleman may i be bold to ask at what that contains, that paper in your hand? first gentleman yes; 'tis the list of those that claim their offices this day by custom of the coronation. the duke of suffolk is the first, and claims to be high-steward; next, the duke of norfolk, he to be earl marshal: you may read the rest. second gentleman i thank you, sir: had i not known those customs, i should have been beholding to your paper. but, i beseech you, what's become of katharine, the princess dowager? how goes her business? first gentleman that i can tell you too. the archbishop of canterbury, accompanied with other learned and reverend fathers of his order, held a late court at dunstable, six miles off from ampthill where the princess lay; to which she was often cited by them, but appear'd not: and, to be short, for not appearance and the king's late scruple, by the main assent of all these learned men she was divorced, and the late marriage made of none effect since which she was removed to kimbolton, where she remains now sick. second gentleman alas, good lady! [trumpets] the trumpets sound: stand close, the queen is coming. [hautboys] [the order of the coronation] 1. a lively flourish of trumpets. 2. then, two judges. 3. lord chancellor, with the purse and mace before him. 4. choristers, singing. [music] 5. mayor of london, bearing the mace. then garter, in his coat of arms, and on his head a gilt copper crown. 6. marquess dorset, bearing a sceptre of gold, on his head a demi-coronal of gold. with him, surrey, bearing the rod of silver with the dove, crowned with an earl's coronet. collars of ss. 7. suffolk, in his robe of estate, his coronet on his head, bearing a long white wand, as high-steward. with him, norfolk, with the rod of marshalship, a coronet on his head. collars of ss. 8. a canopy borne by four of the cinque-ports; under it, queen anne in her robe; in her hair richly adorned with pearl, crowned. on each side her, the bishops of london and winchester. 9. the old duchess of norfolk, in a coronal of gold, wrought with flowers, bearing queen anne's train. 10. certain ladies or countesses, with plain circlets of gold without flowers. [they pass over the stage in order and state] second gentleman a royal train, believe me. these i know: who's that that bears the sceptre? first gentleman marquess dorset: and that the earl of surrey, with the rod. second gentleman a bold brave gentleman. that should be the duke of suffolk? first gentleman 'tis the same: high-steward. second gentleman and that my lord of norfolk? first gentleman yes; second gentleman heaven bless thee! [looking on queen anne] thou hast the sweetest face i ever look'd on. sir, as i have a soul, she is an angel; our king has all the indies in his arms, and more and richer, when he strains that lady: i cannot blame his conscience. first gentleman they that bear the cloth of honour over her, are four barons of the cinque-ports. second gentleman those men are happy; and so are all are near her. i take it, she that carries up the train is that old noble lady, duchess of norfolk. first gentleman it is; and all the rest are countesses. second gentleman their coronets say so. these are stars indeed; and sometimes falling ones. first gentleman no more of that. [exit procession, and then a great flourish of trumpets] [enter a third gentleman] first gentleman god save you, sir! where have you been broiling? third gentleman among the crowd i' the abbey; where a finger could not be wedged in more: i am stifled with the mere rankness of their joy. second gentleman you saw the ceremony? third gentleman that i did. first gentleman how was it? third gentleman well worth the seeing. second gentleman good sir, speak it to us. third gentleman as well as i am able. the rich stream of lords and ladies, having brought the queen to a prepared place in the choir, fell off a distance from her; while her grace sat down to rest awhile, some half an hour or so, in a rich chair of state, opposing freely the beauty of her person to the people. believe me, sir, she is the goodliest woman that ever lay by man: which when the people had the full view of, such a noise arose as the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest, as loud, and to as many tunes: hats, cloaks- doublets, i think,--flew up; and had their faces been loose, this day they had been lost. such joy i never saw before. great-bellied women, that had not half a week to go, like rams in the old time of war, would shake the press, and make 'em reel before 'em. no man living could say 'this is my wife' there; all were woven so strangely in one piece. second gentleman but, what follow'd? third gentleman at length her grace rose, and with modest paces came to the altar; where she kneel'd, and saint-like cast her fair eyes to heaven and pray'd devoutly. then rose again and bow'd her to the people: when by the archbishop of canterbury she had all the royal makings of a queen; as holy oil, edward confessor's crown, the rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblems laid nobly on her: which perform'd, the choir, with all the choicest music of the kingdom, together sung 'te deum.' so she parted, and with the same full state paced back again to york-place, where the feast is held. first gentleman sir, you must no more call it york-place, that's past; for, since the cardinal fell, that title's lost: 'tis now the king's, and call'd whitehall. third gentleman i know it; but 'tis so lately alter'd, that the old name is fresh about me. second gentleman what two reverend bishops were those that went on each side of the queen? third gentleman stokesly and gardiner; the one of winchester, newly preferr'd from the king's secretary, the other, london. second gentleman he of winchester is held no great good lover of the archbishop's, the virtuous cranmer. third gentleman all the land knows that: however, yet there is no great breach; when it comes, cranmer will find a friend will not shrink from him. second gentleman who may that be, i pray you? third gentleman thomas cromwell; a man in much esteem with the king, and truly a worthy friend. the king has made him master o' the jewel house, and one, already, of the privy council. second gentleman he will deserve more. third gentleman yes, without all doubt. come, gentlemen, ye shall go my way, which is to the court, and there ye shall be my guests: something i can command. as i walk thither, i'll tell ye more. both you may command us, sir. [exeunt] king henry viii act iv scene ii kimbolton. [enter katharine, dowager, sick; led between griffith, her gentleman usher, and patience, her woman] griffith how does your grace? katharine o griffith, sick to death! my legs, like loaden branches, bow to the earth, willing to leave their burthen. reach a chair: so; now, methinks, i feel a little ease. didst thou not tell me, griffith, as thou led'st me, that the great child of honour, cardinal wolsey, was dead? griffith yes, madam; but i think your grace, out of the pain you suffer'd, gave no ear to't. katharine prithee, good griffith, tell me how he died: if well, he stepp'd before me, happily for my example. griffith well, the voice goes, madam: for after the stout earl northumberland arrested him at york, and brought him forward, as a man sorely tainted, to his answer, he fell sick suddenly, and grew so ill he could not sit his mule. katharine alas, poor man! griffith at last, with easy roads, he came to leicester, lodged in the abbey; where the reverend abbot, with all his covent, honourably received him; to whom he gave these words, 'o, father abbot, an old man, broken with the storms of state, is come to lay his weary bones among ye; give him a little earth for charity!' so went to bed; where eagerly his sickness pursued him still: and, three nights after this, about the hour of eight, which he himself foretold should be his last, full of repentance, continual meditations, tears, and sorrows, he gave his honours to the world again, his blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace. katharine so may he rest; his faults lie gently on him! yet thus far, griffith, give me leave to speak him, and yet with charity. he was a man of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking himself with princes; one that, by suggestion, tied all the kingdom: simony was fair-play; his own opinion was his law: i' the presence he would say untruths; and be ever double both in his words and meaning: he was never, but where he meant to ruin, pitiful: his promises were, as he then was, mighty; but his performance, as he is now, nothing: of his own body he was ill, and gave the clergy in example. griffith noble madam, men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water. may it please your highness to hear me speak his good now? katharine yes, good griffith; i were malicious else. griffith this cardinal, though from an humble stock, undoubtedly was fashion'd to much honour from his cradle. he was a scholar, and a ripe and good one; exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading: lofty and sour to them that loved him not; but to those men that sought him sweet as summer. and though he were unsatisfied in getting, which was a sin, yet in bestowing, madam, he was most princely: ever witness for him those twins of learning that he raised in you, ipswich and oxford! one of which fell with him, unwilling to outlive the good that did it; the other, though unfinish'd, yet so famous, so excellent in art, and still so rising, that christendom shall ever speak his virtue. his overthrow heap'd happiness upon him; for then, and not till then, he felt himself, and found the blessedness of being little: and, to add greater honours to his age than man could give him, he died fearing god. katharine after my death i wish no other herald, no other speaker of my living actions, to keep mine honour from corruption, but such an honest chronicler as griffith. whom i most hated living, thou hast made me, with thy religious truth and modesty, now in his ashes honour: peace be with him! patience, be near me still; and set me lower: i have not long to trouble thee. good griffith, cause the musicians play me that sad note i named my knell, whilst i sit meditating on that celestial harmony i go to. [sad and solemn music] griffith she is asleep: good wench, let's sit down quiet, for fear we wake her: softly, gentle patience. [the vision. enter, solemnly tripping one after another, six personages, clad in white robes, wearing on their heads garlands of bays, and golden vizards on their faces; branches of bays or palm in their hands. they first congee unto her, then dance; and, at certain changes, the first two hold a spare garland over her head; at which the other four make reverent curtsies; then the two that held the garland deliver the same to the other next two, who observe the same order in their changes, and holding the garland over her head: which done, they deliver the same garland to the last two, who likewise observe the same order: at which, as it were by inspiration, she makes in her sleep signs of rejoicing, and holdeth up her hands to heaven: and so in their dancing vanish, carrying the garland with them. the music continues] katharine spirits of peace, where are ye? are ye all gone, and leave me here in wretchedness behind ye? griffith madam, we are here. katharine it is not you i call for: saw ye none enter since i slept? griffith none, madam. katharine no? saw you not, even now, a blessed troop invite me to a banquet; whose bright faces cast thousand beams upon me, like the sun? they promised me eternal happiness; and brought me garlands, griffith, which i feel i am not worthy yet to wear: i shall, assuredly. griffith i am most joyful, madam, such good dreams possess your fancy. katharine bid the music leave, they are harsh and heavy to me. [music ceases] patience do you note how much her grace is alter'd on the sudden? how long her face is drawn? how pale she looks, and of an earthy cold? mark her eyes! griffith she is going, wench: pray, pray. patience heaven comfort her! [enter a messenger] messenger an't like your grace,- katharine you are a saucy fellow: deserve we no more reverence? griffith you are to blame, knowing she will not lose her wonted greatness, to use so rude behavior; go to, kneel. messenger i humbly do entreat your highness' pardon; my haste made me unmannerly. there is staying a gentleman, sent from the king, to see you. katharine admit him entrance, griffith: but this fellow let me ne'er see again. [exeunt griffith and messenger] [re-enter griffith, with capucius] if my sight fail not, you should be lord ambassador from the emperor, my royal nephew, and your name capucius. capucius madam, the same; your servant. katharine o, my lord, the times and titles now are alter'd strangely with me since first you knew me. but, i pray you, what is your pleasure with me? capucius noble lady, first mine own service to your grace; the next, the king's request that i would visit you; who grieves much for your weakness, and by me sends you his princely commendations, and heartily entreats you take good comfort. katharine o my good lord, that comfort comes too late; 'tis like a pardon after execution: that gentle physic, given in time, had cured me; but now i am past an comforts here, but prayers. how does his highness? capucius madam, in good health. katharine so may he ever do! and ever flourish, when i shall dwell with worms, and my poor name banish'd the kingdom! patience, is that letter, i caused you write, yet sent away? patience no, madam. [giving it to katharine] katharine sir, i most humbly pray you to deliver this to my lord the king. capucius most willing, madam. katharine in which i have commended to his goodness the model of our chaste loves, his young daughter; the dews of heaven fall thick in blessings on her! beseeching him to give her virtuous breeding- she is young, and of a noble modest nature, i hope she will deserve well,--and a little to love her for her mother's sake, that loved him, heaven knows how dearly. my next poor petition is, that his noble grace would have some pity upon my wretched women, that so long have follow'd both my fortunes faithfully: of which there is not one, i dare avow, and now i should not lie, but will deserve for virtue and true beauty of the soul, for honesty and decent carriage, a right good husband, let him be a noble and, sure, those men are happy that shall have 'em. the last is, for my men; they are the poorest, but poverty could never draw 'em from me; that they may have their wages duly paid 'em, and something over to remember me by: if heaven had pleased to have given me longer life and able means, we had not parted thus. these are the whole contents: and, good my lord, by that you love the dearest in this world, as you wish christian peace to souls departed, stand these poor people's friend, and urge the king to do me this last right. capucius by heaven, i will, or let me lose the fashion of a man! katharine i thank you, honest lord. remember me in all humility unto his highness: say his long trouble now is passing out of this world; tell him, in death i bless'd him, for so i will. mine eyes grow dim. farewell, my lord. griffith, farewell. nay, patience, you must not leave me yet: i must to bed; call in more women. when i am dead, good wench, let me be used with honour: strew me over with maiden flowers, that all the world may know i was a chaste wife to my grave: embalm me, then lay me forth: although unqueen'd, yet like a queen, and daughter to a king, inter me. i can no more. [exeunt, leading katharine] king henry viii act v scene i london. a gallery in the palace. [enter gardiner, bishop of winchester, a page with a torch before him, met by lovell] gardiner it's one o'clock, boy, is't not? boy it hath struck. gardiner these should be hours for necessities, not for delights; times to repair our nature with comforting repose, and not for us to waste these times. good hour of night, sir thomas! whither so late? lovell came you from the king, my lord gardiner i did, sir thomas: and left him at primero with the duke of suffolk. lovell i must to him too, before he go to bed. i'll take my leave. gardiner not yet, sir thomas lovell. what's the matter? it seems you are in haste: an if there be no great offence belongs to't, give your friend some touch of your late business: affairs, that walk, as they say spirits do, at midnight, have in them a wilder nature than the business that seeks dispatch by day. lovell my lord, i love you; and durst commend a secret to your ear much weightier than this work. the queen's in labour, they say, in great extremity; and fear'd she'll with the labour end. gardiner the fruit she goes with i pray for heartily, that it may find good time, and live: but for the stock, sir thomas, i wish it grubb'd up now. lovell methinks i could cry the amen; and yet my conscience says she's a good creature, and, sweet lady, does deserve our better wishes. gardiner but, sir, sir, hear me, sir thomas: you're a gentleman of mine own way; i know you wise, religious; and, let me tell you, it will ne'er be well, 'twill not, sir thomas lovell, take't of me, till cranmer, cromwell, her two hands, and she, sleep in their graves. lovell now, sir, you speak of two the most remark'd i' the kingdom. as for cromwell, beside that of the jewel house, is made master o' the rolls, and the king's secretary; further, sir, stands in the gap and trade of moe preferments, with which the time will load him. the archbishop is the king's hand and tongue; and who dare speak one syllable against him? gardiner yes, yes, sir thomas, there are that dare; and i myself have ventured to speak my mind of him: and indeed this day, sir, i may tell it you, i think i have incensed the lords o' the council, that he is, for so i know he is, they know he is, a most arch heretic, a pestilence that does infect the land: with which they moved have broken with the king; who hath so far given ear to our complaint, of his great grace and princely care foreseeing those fell mischiefs our reasons laid before him, hath commanded to-morrow morning to the council-board he be convented. he's a rank weed, sir thomas, and we must root him out. from your affairs i hinder you too long: good night, sir thomas. lovell many good nights, my lord: i rest your servant. [exeunt gardiner and page] [enter king henry viii and suffolk] king henry viii charles, i will play no more tonight; my mind's not on't; you are too hard for me. suffolk sir, i did never win of you before. king henry viii but little, charles; nor shall not, when my fancy's on my play. now, lovell, from the queen what is the news? lovell i could not personally deliver to her what you commanded me, but by her woman i sent your message; who return'd her thanks in the great'st humbleness, and desired your highness most heartily to pray for her. king henry viii what say'st thou, ha? to pray for her? what, is she crying out? lovell so said her woman; and that her sufferance made almost each pang a death. king henry viii alas, good lady! suffolk god safely quit her of her burthen, and with gentle travail, to the gladding of your highness with an heir! king henry viii 'tis midnight, charles; prithee, to bed; and in thy prayers remember the estate of my poor queen. leave me alone; for i must think of that which company would not be friendly to. suffolk i wish your highness a quiet night; and my good mistress will remember in my prayers. king henry viii charles, good night. [exit suffolk] [enter denny] well, sir, what follows? denny sir, i have brought my lord the archbishop, as you commanded me. king henry viii ha! canterbury? denny ay, my good lord. king henry viii 'tis true: where is he, denny? denny he attends your highness' pleasure. [exit denny] lovell [aside] this is about that which the bishop spake: i am happily come hither. [re-enter denny, with cranmer] king henry viii avoid the gallery. [lovell seems to stay] ha! i have said. be gone. what! [exeunt lovell and denny] cranmer [aside] i am fearful: wherefore frowns he thus? 'tis his aspect of terror. all's not well. king henry viii how now, my lord! you desire to know wherefore i sent for you. cranmer [kneeling] it is my duty to attend your highness' pleasure. king henry viii pray you, arise, my good and gracious lord of canterbury. come, you and i must walk a turn together; i have news to tell you: come, come, give me your hand. ah, my good lord, i grieve at what i speak, and am right sorry to repeat what follows i have, and most unwillingly, of late heard many grievous, i do say, my lord, grievous complaints of you; which, being consider'd, have moved us and our council, that you shall this morning come before us; where, i know, you cannot with such freedom purge yourself, but that, till further trial in those charges which will require your answer, you must take your patience to you, and be well contented to make your house our tower: you a brother of us, it fits we thus proceed, or else no witness would come against you. cranmer [kneeling] i humbly thank your highness; and am right glad to catch this good occasion most throughly to be winnow'd, where my chaff and corn shall fly asunder: for, i know, there's none stands under more calumnious tongues than i myself, poor man. king henry viii stand up, good canterbury: thy truth and thy integrity is rooted in us, thy friend: give me thy hand, stand up: prithee, let's walk. now, by my holidame. what manner of man are you? my lord, i look'd you would have given me your petition, that i should have ta'en some pains to bring together yourself and your accusers; and to have heard you, without indurance, further. cranmer most dread liege, the good i stand on is my truth and honesty: if they shall fail, i, with mine enemies, will triumph o'er my person; which i weigh not, being of those virtues vacant. i fear nothing what can be said against me. king henry viii know you not how your state stands i' the world, with the whole world? your enemies are many, and not small; their practises must bear the same proportion; and not ever the justice and the truth o' the question carries the due o' the verdict with it: at what ease might corrupt minds procure knaves as corrupt to swear against you? such things have been done. you are potently opposed; and with a malice of as great size. ween you of better luck, i mean, in perjured witness, than your master, whose minister you are, whiles here he lived upon this naughty earth? go to, go to; you take a precipice for no leap of danger, and woo your own destruction. cranmer god and your majesty protect mine innocence, or i fall into the trap is laid for me! king henry viii be of good cheer; they shall no more prevail than we give way to. keep comfort to you; and this morning see you do appear before them: if they shall chance, in charging you with matters, to commit you, the best persuasions to the contrary fail not to use, and with what vehemency the occasion shall instruct you: if entreaties will render you no remedy, this ring deliver them, and your appeal to us there make before them. look, the good man weeps! he's honest, on mine honour. god's blest mother! i swear he is true--hearted; and a soul none better in my kingdom. get you gone, and do as i have bid you. [exit cranmer] he has strangled his language in his tears. [enter old lady, lovell following] gentleman [within] come back: what mean you? old lady i'll not come back; the tidings that i bring will make my boldness manners. now, good angels fly o'er thy royal head, and shade thy person under their blessed wings! king henry viii now, by thy looks i guess thy message. is the queen deliver'd? say, ay; and of a boy. old lady ay, ay, my liege; and of a lovely boy: the god of heaven both now and ever bless her! 'tis a girl, promises boys hereafter. sir, your queen desires your visitation, and to be acquainted with this stranger 'tis as like you as cherry is to cherry. king henry viii lovell! lovell sir? king henry viii give her an hundred marks. i'll to the queen. [exit] old lady an hundred marks! by this light, i'll ha' more. an ordinary groom is for such payment. i will have more, or scold it out of him. said i for this, the girl was like to him? i will have more, or else unsay't; and now, while it is hot, i'll put it to the issue. [exeunt] king henry viii act v scene ii before the council-chamber. pursuivants, pages, &c. attending. [enter cranmer] cranmer i hope i am not too late; and yet the gentleman, that was sent to me from the council, pray'd me to make great haste. all fast? what means this? ho! who waits there? sure, you know me? [enter keeper] keeper yes, my lord; but yet i cannot help you. cranmer why? [enter doctor butts] keeper your grace must wait till you be call'd for. cranmer so. doctor butts [aside] this is a piece of malice. i am glad i came this way so happily: the king shall understand it presently. [exit] cranmer [aside] 'tis butts, the king's physician: as he pass'd along, how earnestly he cast his eyes upon me! pray heaven, he sound not my disgrace! for certain, this is of purpose laid by some that hate me- god turn their hearts! i never sought their malice- to quench mine honour: they would shame to make me wait else at door, a fellow-counsellor, 'mong boys, grooms, and lackeys. but their pleasures must be fulfill'd, and i attend with patience. [enter the king henry viii and doctor butts at a window above] doctor butts i'll show your grace the strangest sight- king henry viii what's that, butts? doctor butts i think your highness saw this many a day. king henry viii body o' me, where is it? doctor butts there, my lord: the high promotion of his grace of canterbury; who holds his state at door, 'mongst pursuivants, pages, and footboys. king henry viii ha! 'tis he, indeed: is this the honour they do one another? 'tis well there's one above 'em yet. i had thought they had parted so much honesty among 'em at least, good manners, as not thus to suffer a man of his place, and so near our favour, to dance attendance on their lordships' pleasures, and at the door too, like a post with packets. by holy mary, butts, there's knavery: let 'em alone, and draw the curtain close: we shall hear more anon. [exeunt] king henry viii act v scene iii the council-chamber. [enter chancellor; places himself at the upper end of the table on the left hand; a seat being left void above him, as for cranmer's seat. suffolk, norfolk, surrey, chamberlain, gardiner, seat themselves in order on each side. cromwell at lower end, as secretary. keeper at the door] chancellor speak to the business, master-secretary: why are we met in council? cromwell please your honours, the chief cause concerns his grace of canterbury. gardiner has he had knowledge of it? cromwell yes. norfolk who waits there? keeper without, my noble lords? gardiner yes. keeper my lord archbishop; and has done half an hour, to know your pleasures. chancellor let him come in. keeper your grace may enter now. [cranmer enters and approaches the council-table] chancellor my good lord archbishop, i'm very sorry to sit here at this present, and behold that chair stand empty: but we all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels: out of which frailty and want of wisdom, you, that best should teach us, have misdemean'd yourself, and not a little, toward the king first, then his laws, in filling the whole realm, by your teaching and your chaplains, for so we are inform'd, with new opinions, divers and dangerous; which are heresies, and, not reform'd, may prove pernicious. gardiner which reformation must be sudden too, my noble lords; for those that tame wild horses pace 'em not in their hands to make 'em gentle, but stop their mouths with stubborn bits, and spur 'em, till they obey the manage. if we suffer, out of our easiness and childish pity to one man's honour, this contagious sickness, farewell all physic: and what follows then? commotions, uproars, with a general taint of the whole state: as, of late days, our neighbours, the upper germany, can dearly witness, yet freshly pitied in our memories. cranmer my good lords, hitherto, in all the progress both of my life and office, i have labour'd, and with no little study, that my teaching and the strong course of my authority might go one way, and safely; and the end was ever, to do well: nor is there living, i speak it with a single heart, my lords, a man that more detests, more stirs against, both in his private conscience and his place, defacers of a public peace, than i do. pray heaven, the king may never find a heart with less allegiance in it! men that make envy and crooked malice nourishment dare bite the best. i do beseech your lordships, that, in this case of justice, my accusers, be what they will, may stand forth face to face, and freely urge against me. suffolk nay, my lord, that cannot be: you are a counsellor, and, by that virtue, no man dare accuse you. gardiner my lord, because we have business of more moment, we will be short with you. 'tis his highness' pleasure, and our consent, for better trial of you, from hence you be committed to the tower; where, being but a private man again, you shall know many dare accuse you boldly, more than, i fear, you are provided for. cranmer ah, my good lord of winchester, i thank you; you are always my good friend; if your will pass, i shall both find your lordship judge and juror, you are so merciful: i see your end; 'tis my undoing: love and meekness, lord, become a churchman better than ambition: win straying souls with modesty again, cast none away. that i shall clear myself, lay all the weight ye can upon my patience, i make as little doubt, as you do conscience in doing daily wrongs. i could say more, but reverence to your calling makes me modest. gardiner my lord, my lord, you are a sectary, that's the plain truth: your painted gloss discovers, to men that understand you, words and weakness. cromwell my lord of winchester, you are a little, by your good favour, too sharp; men so noble, however faulty, yet should find respect for what they have been: 'tis a cruelty to load a falling man. gardiner good master secretary, i cry your honour mercy; you may, worst of all this table, say so. cromwell why, my lord? gardiner do not i know you for a favourer of this new sect? ye are not sound. cromwell not sound? gardiner not sound, i say. cromwell would you were half so honest! men's prayers then would seek you, not their fears. gardiner i shall remember this bold language. cromwell do. remember your bold life too. chancellor this is too much; forbear, for shame, my lords. gardiner i have done. cromwell and i. chancellor then thus for you, my lord: it stands agreed, i take it, by all voices, that forthwith you be convey'd to the tower a prisoner; there to remain till the king's further pleasure be known unto us: are you all agreed, lords? all we are. cranmer is there no other way of mercy, but i must needs to the tower, my lords? gardiner what other would you expect? you are strangely troublesome. let some o' the guard be ready there. [enter guard] cranmer for me? must i go like a traitor thither? gardiner receive him, and see him safe i' the tower. cranmer stay, good my lords, i have a little yet to say. look there, my lords; by virtue of that ring, i take my cause out of the gripes of cruel men, and give it to a most noble judge, the king my master. chamberlain this is the king's ring. surrey 'tis no counterfeit. suffolk 'tis the right ring, by heaven: i told ye all, when ye first put this dangerous stone a-rolling, 'twould fall upon ourselves. norfolk do you think, my lords, the king will suffer but the little finger of this man to be vex'd? chancellor 'tis now too certain: how much more is his life in value with him? would i were fairly out on't! cromwell my mind gave me, in seeking tales and informations against this man, whose honesty the devil and his disciples only envy at, ye blew the fire that burns ye: now have at ye! [enter king, frowning on them; takes his seat] gardiner dread sovereign, how much are we bound to heaven in daily thanks, that gave us such a prince; not only good and wise, but most religious: one that, in all obedience, makes the church the chief aim of his honour; and, to strengthen that holy duty, out of dear respect, his royal self in judgment comes to hear the cause betwixt her and this great offender. king henry viii you were ever good at sudden commendations, bishop of winchester. but know, i come not to hear such flattery now, and in my presence; they are too thin and bare to hide offences. to me you cannot reach, you play the spaniel, and think with wagging of your tongue to win me; but, whatsoe'er thou takest me for, i'm sure thou hast a cruel nature and a bloody. [to cranmer] good man, sit down. now let me see the proudest he, that dares most, but wag his finger at thee: by all that's holy, he had better starve than but once think this place becomes thee not. surrey may it please your grace,- king henry viii no, sir, it does not please me. i had thought i had had men of some understanding and wisdom of my council; but i find none. was it discretion, lords, to let this man, this good man,--few of you deserve that title,- this honest man, wait like a lousy footboy at chamber--door? and one as great as you are? why, what a shame was this! did my commission bid ye so far forget yourselves? i gave ye power as he was a counsellor to try him, not as a groom: there's some of ye, i see, more out of malice than integrity, would try him to the utmost, had ye mean; which ye shall never have while i live. chancellor thus far, my most dread sovereign, may it like your grace to let my tongue excuse all. what was purposed concerning his imprisonment, was rather, if there be faith in men, meant for his trial, and fair purgation to the world, than malice, i'm sure, in me. king henry viii well, well, my lords, respect him; take him, and use him well, he's worthy of it. i will say thus much for him, if a prince may be beholding to a subject, i am, for his love and service, so to him. make me no more ado, but all embrace him: be friends, for shame, my lords! my lord of canterbury, i have a suit which you must not deny me; that is, a fair young maid that yet wants baptism, you must be godfather, and answer for her. cranmer the greatest monarch now alive may glory in such an honour: how may i deserve it that am a poor and humble subject to you? king henry viii come, come, my lord, you'ld spare your spoons: you shall have two noble partners with you; the old duchess of norfolk, and lady marquess dorset: will these please you? once more, my lord of winchester, i charge you, embrace and love this man. gardiner with a true heart and brother-love i do it. cranmer and let heaven witness, how dear i hold this confirmation. king henry viii good man, those joyful tears show thy true heart: the common voice, i see, is verified of thee, which says thus, 'do my lord of canterbury a shrewd turn, and he is your friend for ever.' come, lords, we trifle time away; i long to have this young one made a christian. as i have made ye one, lords, one remain; so i grow stronger, you more honour gain. [exeunt] king henry viii act v scene iv the palace yard. [noise and tumult within. enter porter and his man] porter you'll leave your noise anon, ye rascals: do you take the court for paris-garden? ye rude slaves, leave your gaping. [within] good master porter, i belong to the larder. porter belong to the gallows, and be hanged, ye rogue! is this a place to roar in? fetch me a dozen crab-tree staves, and strong ones: these are but switches to 'em. i'll scratch your heads: you must be seeing christenings? do you look for ale and cakes here, you rude rascals? man pray, sir, be patient: 'tis as much impossible- unless we sweep 'em from the door with cannons- to scatter 'em, as 'tis to make 'em sleep on may-day morning; which will never be: we may as well push against powle's, as stir em. porter how got they in, and be hang'd? man alas, i know not; how gets the tide in? as much as one sound cudgel of four foot- you see the poor remainder--could distribute, i made no spare, sir. porter you did nothing, sir. man i am not samson, nor sir guy, nor colbrand, to mow 'em down before me: but if i spared any that had a head to hit, either young or old, he or she, cuckold or cuckold-maker, let me ne'er hope to see a chine again and that i would not for a cow, god save her! [within] do you hear, master porter? porter i shall be with you presently, good master puppy. keep the door close, sirrah. man what would you have me do? porter what should you do, but knock 'em down by the dozens? is this moorfields to muster in? or have we some strange indian with the great tool come to court, the women so besiege us? bless me, what a fry of fornication is at door! on my christian conscience, this one christening will beget a thousand; here will be father, godfather, and all together. man the spoons will be the bigger, sir. there is a fellow somewhat near the door, he should be a brazier by his face, for, o' my conscience, twenty of the dog-days now reign in's nose; all that stand about him are under the line, they need no other penance: that fire-drake did i hit three times on the head, and three times was his nose discharged against me; he stands there, like a mortar-piece, to blow us. there was a haberdasher's wife of small wit near him, that railed upon me till her pinked porringer fell off her head, for kindling such a combustion in the state. i missed the meteor once, and hit that woman; who cried out 'clubs!' when i might see from far some forty truncheoners draw to her succor, which were the hope o' the strand, where she was quartered. they fell on; i made good my place: at length they came to the broom-staff to me; i defied 'em still: when suddenly a file of boys behind 'em, loose shot, delivered such a shower of pebbles, that i was fain to draw mine honour in, and let 'em win the work: the devil was amongst 'em, i think, surely. porter these are the youths that thunder at a playhouse, and fight for bitten apples; that no audience, but the tribulation of tower-hill, or the limbs of limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure. i have some of 'em in limbo patrum, and there they are like to dance these three days; besides the running banquet of two beadles that is to come. [enter chamberlain] chamberlain mercy o' me, what a multitude are here! they grow still too; from all parts they are coming, as if we kept a fair here! where are these porters, these lazy knaves? ye have made a fine hand, fellows: there's a trim rabble let in: are all these your faithful friends o' the suburbs? we shall have great store of room, no doubt, left for the ladies, when they pass back from the christening. porter an't please your honour, we are but men; and what so many may do, not being torn a-pieces, we have done: an army cannot rule 'em. chamberlain as i live, if the king blame me for't, i'll lay ye all by the heels, and suddenly; and on your heads clap round fines for neglect: ye are lazy knaves; and here ye lie baiting of bombards, when ye should do service. hark! the trumpets sound; they're come already from the christening: go, break among the press, and find a way out to let the troop pass fairly; or i'll find a marshalsea shall hold ye play these two months. porter make way there for the princess. man you great fellow, stand close up, or i'll make your head ache. porter you i' the camlet, get up o' the rail; i'll peck you o'er the pales else. [exeunt] king henry viii act v scene v the palace. [enter trumpets, sounding; then two aldermen, lord mayor, garter, cranmer, norfolk with his marshal's staff, suffolk, two noblemen bearing great standing-bowls for the christening-gifts; then four noblemen bearing a canopy, under which the duchess of norfolk, godmother, bearing the child richly habited in a mantle, &c., train borne by a lady; then follows the marchioness dorset, the other godmother, and ladies. the troop pass once about the stage, and garter speaks] garter heaven, from thy endless goodness, send prosperous life, long, and ever happy, to the high and mighty princess of england, elizabeth! [flourish. enter king henry viii and guard] cranmer [kneeling] and to your royal grace, and the good queen, my noble partners, and myself, thus pray: all comfort, joy, in this most gracious lady, heaven ever laid up to make parents happy, may hourly fall upon ye! king henry viii thank you, good lord archbishop: what is her name? cranmer elizabeth. king henry viii stand up, lord. [king henry viii kisses the child] with this kiss take my blessing: god protect thee! into whose hand i give thy life. cranmer amen. king henry viii my noble gossips, ye have been too prodigal: i thank ye heartily; so shall this lady, when she has so much english. cranmer let me speak, sir, for heaven now bids me; and the words i utter let none think flattery, for they'll find 'em truth. this royal infant--heaven still move about her!- though in her cradle, yet now promises upon this land a thousand thousand blessings, which time shall bring to ripeness: she shall be- but few now living can behold that goodness- a pattern to all princes living with her, and all that shall succeed: saba was never more covetous of wisdom and fair virtue than this pure soul shall be: all princely graces, that mould up such a mighty piece as this is, with all the virtues that attend the good, shall still be doubled on her: truth shall nurse her, holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her: she shall be loved and fear'd: her own shall bless her; her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, and hang their heads with sorrow: good grows with her: in her days every man shall eat in safety, under his own vine, what he plants; and sing the merry songs of peace to all his neighbours: god shall be truly known; and those about her from her shall read the perfect ways of honour, and by those claim their greatness, not by blood. nor shall this peace sleep with her: but as when the bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, her ashes new create another heir, as great in admiration as herself; so shall she leave her blessedness to one, when heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness, who from the sacred ashes of her honour shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was, and so stand fix'd: peace, plenty, love, truth, terror, that were the servants to this chosen infant, shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him: wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine, his honour and the greatness of his name shall be, and make new nations: he shall flourish, and, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches to all the plains about him: our children's children shall see this, and bless heaven. king henry viii thou speakest wonders. cranmer she shall be, to the happiness of england, an aged princess; many days shall see her, and yet no day without a deed to crown it. would i had known no more! but she must die, she must, the saints must have her; yet a virgin, a most unspotted lily shall she pass to the ground, and all the world shall mourn her. king henry viii o lord archbishop, thou hast made me now a man! never, before this happy child, did i get any thing: this oracle of comfort has so pleased me, that when i am in heaven i shall desire to see what this child does, and praise my maker. i thank ye all. to you, my good lord mayor, and your good brethren, i am much beholding; i have received much honour by your presence, and ye shall find me thankful. lead the way, lords: ye must all see the queen, and she must thank ye, she will be sick else. this day, no man think has business at his house; for all shall stay: this little one shall make it holiday. [exeunt] king henry viii epilogue 'tis ten to one this play can never please all that are here: some come to take their ease, and sleep an act or two; but those, we fear, we have frighted with our trumpets; so, 'tis clear, they'll say 'tis naught: others, to hear the city abused extremely, and to cry 'that's witty!' which we have not done neither: that, i fear, all the expected good we're like to hear for this play at this time, is only in the merciful construction of good women; for such a one we show'd 'em: if they smile, and say 'twill do, i know, within a while all the best men are ours; for 'tis ill hap, if they hold when their ladies bid 'em clap. antony and cleopatra dramatis personae mark antony | | octavius caesar | triumvirs. | m. aemilius | lepidus (lepidus:) | sextus pompeius (pompey:) domitius enobarbus | | ventidius | | eros | | scarus | friends to antony. | dercetas | | demetrius | | philo | mecaenas | | agrippa | | dolabella | | proculeius | friends to caesar. | thyreus | | gallus | | menas | menecrates | | friends to pompey. varrius | taurus lieutenant-general to caesar. canidius lieutenant-general to antony. silius an officer in ventidius's army. euphronius an ambassador from antony to caesar. alexas | | mardian a eunuch. | | attendants on cleopatra. seleucus | | diomedes | a soothsayer. (soothsayer:) a clown. (clown:) cleopatra queen of egypt. octavia sister to caesar and wife to antony. charmian | | attendants on cleopatra. iras | officers, soldiers, messengers, and other attendants. (first officer:) (second officer:) (third officer:) (messenger:) (second messenger:) (first servant:) (second servant:) (egyptian:) (guard:) (first guard:) (second guard:) (attendant:) (first attendant:) (second attendant:) scene in several parts of the roman empire. antony and cleopatra act i scene i alexandria. a room in cleopatra's palace. [enter demetrius and philo] philo nay, but this dotage of our general's o'erflows the measure: those his goodly eyes, that o'er the files and musters of the war have glow'd like plated mars, now bend, now turn, the office and devotion of their view upon a tawny front: his captain's heart, which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst the buckles on his breast, reneges all temper, and is become the bellows and the fan to cool a gipsy's lust. [flourish. enter antony, cleopatra, her ladies, the train, with eunuchs fanning her] look, where they come: take but good note, and you shall see in him. the triple pillar of the world transform'd into a strumpet's fool: behold and see. cleopatra if it be love indeed, tell me how much. mark antony there's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd. cleopatra i'll set a bourn how far to be beloved. mark antony then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth. [enter an attendant] attendant news, my good lord, from rome. mark antony grates me: the sum. cleopatra nay, hear them, antony: fulvia perchance is angry; or, who knows if the scarce-bearded caesar have not sent his powerful mandate to you, 'do this, or this; take in that kingdom, and enfranchise that; perform 't, or else we damn thee.' mark antony how, my love! cleopatra perchance! nay, and most like: you must not stay here longer, your dismission is come from caesar; therefore hear it, antony. where's fulvia's process? caesar's i would say? both? call in the messengers. as i am egypt's queen, thou blushest, antony; and that blood of thine is caesar's homager: else so thy cheek pays shame when shrill-tongued fulvia scolds. the messengers! mark antony let rome in tiber melt, and the wide arch of the ranged empire fall! here is my space. kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life is to do thus; when such a mutual pair [embracing] and such a twain can do't, in which i bind, on pain of punishment, the world to weet we stand up peerless. cleopatra excellent falsehood! why did he marry fulvia, and not love her? i'll seem the fool i am not; antony will be himself. mark antony but stirr'd by cleopatra. now, for the love of love and her soft hours, let's not confound the time with conference harsh: there's not a minute of our lives should stretch without some pleasure now. what sport tonight? cleopatra hear the ambassadors. mark antony fie, wrangling queen! whom every thing becomes, to chide, to laugh, to weep; whose every passion fully strives to make itself, in thee, fair and admired! no messenger, but thine; and all alone to-night we'll wander through the streets and note the qualities of people. come, my queen; last night you did desire it: speak not to us. [exeunt mark antony and cleopatra with their train] demetrius is caesar with antonius prized so slight? philo sir, sometimes, when he is not antony, he comes too short of that great property which still should go with antony. demetrius i am full sorry that he approves the common liar, who thus speaks of him at rome: but i will hope of better deeds to-morrow. rest you happy! [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act i scene ii the same. another room. [enter charmian, iras, alexas, and a soothsayer] charmian lord alexas, sweet alexas, most any thing alexas, almost most absolute alexas, where's the soothsayer that you praised so to the queen? o, that i knew this husband, which, you say, must charge his horns with garlands! alexas soothsayer! soothsayer your will? charmian is this the man? is't you, sir, that know things? soothsayer in nature's infinite book of secrecy a little i can read. alexas show him your hand. [enter domitius enobarbus] domitius enobarbus bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough cleopatra's health to drink. charmian good sir, give me good fortune. soothsayer i make not, but foresee. charmian pray, then, foresee me one. soothsayer you shall be yet far fairer than you are. charmian he means in flesh. iras no, you shall paint when you are old. charmian wrinkles forbid! alexas vex not his prescience; be attentive. charmian hush! soothsayer you shall be more beloving than beloved. charmian i had rather heat my liver with drinking. alexas nay, hear him. charmian good now, some excellent fortune! let me be married to three kings in a forenoon, and widow them all: let me have a child at fifty, to whom herod of jewry may do homage: find me to marry me with octavius caesar, and companion me with my mistress. soothsayer you shall outlive the lady whom you serve. charmian o excellent! i love long life better than figs. soothsayer you have seen and proved a fairer former fortune than that which is to approach. charmian then belike my children shall have no names: prithee, how many boys and wenches must i have? soothsayer if every of your wishes had a womb. and fertile every wish, a million. charmian out, fool! i forgive thee for a witch. alexas you think none but your sheets are privy to your wishes. charmian nay, come, tell iras hers. alexas we'll know all our fortunes. domitius enobarbus mine, and most of our fortunes, to-night, shall be--drunk to bed. iras there's a palm presages chastity, if nothing else. charmian e'en as the o'erflowing nilus presageth famine. iras go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay. charmian nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, i cannot scratch mine ear. prithee, tell her but a worky-day fortune. soothsayer your fortunes are alike. iras but how, but how? give me particulars. soothsayer i have said. iras am i not an inch of fortune better than she? charmian well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than i, where would you choose it? iras not in my husband's nose. charmian our worser thoughts heavens mend! alexas,--come, his fortune, his fortune! o, let him marry a woman that cannot go, sweet isis, i beseech thee! and let her die too, and give him a worse! and let worst follow worse, till the worst of all follow him laughing to his grave, fifty-fold a cuckold! good isis, hear me this prayer, though thou deny me a matter of more weight; good isis, i beseech thee! iras amen. dear goddess, hear that prayer of the people! for, as it is a heartbreaking to see a handsome man loose-wived, so it is a deadly sorrow to behold a foul knave uncuckolded: therefore, dear isis, keep decorum, and fortune him accordingly! charmian amen. alexas lo, now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they would make themselves whores, but they'ld do't! domitius enobarbus hush! here comes antony. charmian not he; the queen. [enter cleopatra] cleopatra saw you my lord? domitius enobarbus no, lady. cleopatra was he not here? charmian no, madam. cleopatra he was disposed to mirth; but on the sudden a roman thought hath struck him. enobarbus! domitius enobarbus madam? cleopatra seek him, and bring him hither. where's alexas? alexas here, at your service. my lord approaches. cleopatra we will not look upon him: go with us. [exeunt] [enter mark antony with a messenger and attendants] messenger fulvia thy wife first came into the field. mark antony against my brother lucius? messenger ay: but soon that war had end, and the time's state made friends of them, joining their force 'gainst caesar; whose better issue in the war, from italy, upon the first encounter, drave them. mark antony well, what worst? messenger the nature of bad news infects the teller. mark antony when it concerns the fool or coward. on: things that are past are done with me. 'tis thus: who tells me true, though in his tale lie death, i hear him as he flatter'd. messenger labienus- this is stiff news--hath, with his parthian force, extended asia from euphrates; his conquering banner shook from syria to lydia and to ionia; whilst- mark antony antony, thou wouldst say,- messenger o, my lord! mark antony speak to me home, mince not the general tongue: name cleopatra as she is call'd in rome; rail thou in fulvia's phrase; and taunt my faults with such full licence as both truth and malice have power to utter. o, then we bring forth weeds, when our quick minds lie still; and our ills told us is as our earing. fare thee well awhile. messenger at your noble pleasure. [exit] mark antony from sicyon, ho, the news! speak there! first attendant the man from sicyon,--is there such an one? second attendant he stays upon your will. mark antony let him appear. these strong egyptian fetters i must break, or lose myself in dotage. [enter another messenger] what are you? second messenger fulvia thy wife is dead. mark antony where died she? second messenger in sicyon: her length of sickness, with what else more serious importeth thee to know, this bears. [gives a letter] mark antony forbear me. [exit second messenger] there's a great spirit gone! thus did i desire it: what our contempt doth often hurl from us, we wish it ours again; the present pleasure, by revolution lowering, does become the opposite of itself: she's good, being gone; the hand could pluck her back that shoved her on. i must from this enchanting queen break off: ten thousand harms, more than the ills i know, my idleness doth hatch. how now! enobarbus! [re-enter domitius enobarbus] domitius enobarbus what's your pleasure, sir? mark antony i must with haste from hence. domitius enobarbus why, then, we kill all our women: we see how mortal an unkindness is to them; if they suffer our departure, death's the word. mark antony i must be gone. domitius enobarbus under a compelling occasion, let women die; it were pity to cast them away for nothing; though, between them and a great cause, they should be esteemed nothing. cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly; i have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment: i do think there is mettle in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying. mark antony she is cunning past man's thought. [exit alexas] domitius enobarbus alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love: we cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report: this cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as jove. mark antony would i had never seen her. domitius enobarbus o, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work; which not to have been blest withal would have discredited your travel. mark antony fulvia is dead. domitius enobarbus sir? mark antony fulvia is dead. domitius enobarbus fulvia! mark antony dead. domitius enobarbus why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. when it pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man from him, it shows to man the tailors of the earth; comforting therein, that when old robes are worn out, there are members to make new. if there were no more women but fulvia, then had you indeed a cut, and the case to be lamented: this grief is crowned with consolation; your old smock brings forth a new petticoat: and indeed the tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow. mark antony the business she hath broached in the state cannot endure my absence. domitius enobarbus and the business you have broached here cannot be without you; especially that of cleopatra's, which wholly depends on your abode. mark antony no more light answers. let our officers have notice what we purpose. i shall break the cause of our expedience to the queen, and get her leave to part. for not alone the death of fulvia, with more urgent touches, do strongly speak to us; but the letters too of many our contriving friends in rome petition us at home: sextus pompeius hath given the dare to caesar, and commands the empire of the sea: our slippery people, whose love is never link'd to the deserver till his deserts are past, begin to throw pompey the great and all his dignities upon his son; who, high in name and power, higher than both in blood and life, stands up for the main soldier: whose quality, going on, the sides o' the world may danger: much is breeding, which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life, and not a serpent's poison. say, our pleasure, to such whose place is under us, requires our quick remove from hence. domitius enobarbus i shall do't. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act i scene iii the same. another room. [enter cleopatra, charmian, iras, and alexas] cleopatra where is he? charmian i did not see him since. cleopatra see where he is, who's with him, what he does: i did not send you: if you find him sad, say i am dancing; if in mirth, report that i am sudden sick: quick, and return. [exit alexas] charmian madam, methinks, if you did love him dearly, you do not hold the method to enforce the like from him. cleopatra what should i do, i do not? charmian in each thing give him way, cross him nothing. cleopatra thou teachest like a fool; the way to lose him. charmian tempt him not so too far; i wish, forbear: in time we hate that which we often fear. but here comes antony. [enter mark antony] cleopatra i am sick and sullen. mark antony i am sorry to give breathing to my purpose,- cleopatra help me away, dear charmian; i shall fall: it cannot be thus long, the sides of nature will not sustain it. mark antony now, my dearest queen,- cleopatra pray you, stand further from me. mark antony what's the matter? cleopatra i know, by that same eye, there's some good news. what says the married woman? you may go: would she had never given you leave to come! let her not say 'tis i that keep you here: i have no power upon you; hers you are. mark antony the gods best know,- cleopatra o, never was there queen so mightily betray'd! yet at the first i saw the treasons planted. mark antony cleopatra,- cleopatra why should i think you can be mine and true, though you in swearing shake the throned gods, who have been false to fulvia? riotous madness, to be entangled with those mouth-made vows, which break themselves in swearing! mark antony most sweet queen,- cleopatra nay, pray you, seek no colour for your going, but bid farewell, and go: when you sued staying, then was the time for words: no going then; eternity was in our lips and eyes, bliss in our brows' bent; none our parts so poor, but was a race of heaven: they are so still, or thou, the greatest soldier of the world, art turn'd the greatest liar. mark antony how now, lady! cleopatra i would i had thy inches; thou shouldst know there were a heart in egypt. mark antony hear me, queen: the strong necessity of time commands our services awhile; but my full heart remains in use with you. our italy shines o'er with civil swords: sextus pompeius makes his approaches to the port of rome: equality of two domestic powers breed scrupulous faction: the hated, grown to strength, are newly grown to love: the condemn'd pompey, rich in his father's honour, creeps apace, into the hearts of such as have not thrived upon the present state, whose numbers threaten; and quietness, grown sick of rest, would purge by any desperate change: my more particular, and that which most with you should safe my going, is fulvia's death. cleopatra though age from folly could not give me freedom, it does from childishness: can fulvia die? mark antony she's dead, my queen: look here, and at thy sovereign leisure read the garboils she awaked; at the last, best: see when and where she died. cleopatra o most false love! where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill with sorrowful water? now i see, i see, in fulvia's death, how mine received shall be. mark antony quarrel no more, but be prepared to know the purposes i bear; which are, or cease, as you shall give the advice. by the fire that quickens nilus' slime, i go from hence thy soldier, servant; making peace or war as thou affect'st. cleopatra cut my lace, charmian, come; but let it be: i am quickly ill, and well, so antony loves. mark antony my precious queen, forbear; and give true evidence to his love, which stands an honourable trial. cleopatra so fulvia told me. i prithee, turn aside and weep for her, then bid adieu to me, and say the tears belong to egypt: good now, play one scene of excellent dissembling; and let it look life perfect honour. mark antony you'll heat my blood: no more. cleopatra you can do better yet; but this is meetly. mark antony now, by my sword,- cleopatra and target. still he mends; but this is not the best. look, prithee, charmian, how this herculean roman does become the carriage of his chafe. mark antony i'll leave you, lady. cleopatra courteous lord, one word. sir, you and i must part, but that's not it: sir, you and i have loved, but there's not it; that you know well: something it is i would, o, my oblivion is a very antony, and i am all forgotten. mark antony but that your royalty holds idleness your subject, i should take you for idleness itself. cleopatra 'tis sweating labour to bear such idleness so near the heart as cleopatra this. but, sir, forgive me; since my becomings kill me, when they do not eye well to you: your honour calls you hence; therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly. and all the gods go with you! upon your sword sit laurel victory! and smooth success be strew'd before your feet! mark antony let us go. come; our separation so abides, and flies, that thou, residing here, go'st yet with me, and i, hence fleeting, here remain with thee. away! [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act i scene iv rome. octavius caesar's house. [enter octavius caesar, reading a letter, lepidus, and their train] octavius caesar you may see, lepidus, and henceforth know, it is not caesar's natural vice to hate our great competitor: from alexandria this is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes the lamps of night in revel; is not more man-like than cleopatra; nor the queen of ptolemy more womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or vouchsafed to think he had partners: you shall find there a man who is the abstract of all faults that all men follow. lepidus i must not think there are evils enow to darken all his goodness: his faults in him seem as the spots of heaven, more fiery by night's blackness; hereditary, rather than purchased; what he cannot change, than what he chooses. octavius caesar you are too indulgent. let us grant, it is not amiss to tumble on the bed of ptolemy; to give a kingdom for a mirth; to sit and keep the turn of tippling with a slave; to reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet with knaves that smell of sweat: say this becomes him,- as his composure must be rare indeed whom these things cannot blemish,--yet must antony no way excuse his soils, when we do bear so great weight in his lightness. if he fill'd his vacancy with his voluptuousness, full surfeits, and the dryness of his bones, call on him for't: but to confound such time, that drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud as his own state and ours,--'tis to be chid as we rate boys, who, being mature in knowledge, pawn their experience to their present pleasure, and so rebel to judgment. [enter a messenger] lepidus here's more news. messenger thy biddings have been done; and every hour, most noble caesar, shalt thou have report how 'tis abroad. pompey is strong at sea; and it appears he is beloved of those that only have fear'd caesar: to the ports the discontents repair, and men's reports give him much wrong'd. octavius caesar i should have known no less. it hath been taught us from the primal state, that he which is was wish'd until he were; and the ebb'd man, ne'er loved till ne'er worth love, comes dear'd by being lack'd. this common body, like to a vagabond flag upon the stream, goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide, to rot itself with motion. messenger caesar, i bring thee word, menecrates and menas, famous pirates, make the sea serve them, which they ear and wound with keels of every kind: many hot inroads they make in italy; the borders maritime lack blood to think on't, and flush youth revolt: no vessel can peep forth, but 'tis as soon taken as seen; for pompey's name strikes more than could his war resisted. octavius caesar antony, leave thy lascivious wassails. when thou once wast beaten from modena, where thou slew'st hirtius and pansa, consuls, at thy heel did famine follow; whom thou fought'st against, though daintily brought up, with patience more than savages could suffer: thou didst drink the stale of horses, and the gilded puddle which beasts would cough at: thy palate then did deign the roughest berry on the rudest hedge; yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets, the barks of trees thou browsed'st; on the alps it is reported thou didst eat strange flesh, which some did die to look on: and all this- it wounds thine honour that i speak it now- was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek so much as lank'd not. lepidus 'tis pity of him. octavius caesar let his shames quickly drive him to rome: 'tis time we twain did show ourselves i' the field; and to that end assemble we immediate council: pompey thrives in our idleness. lepidus to-morrow, caesar, i shall be furnish'd to inform you rightly both what by sea and land i can be able to front this present time. octavius caesar till which encounter, it is my business too. farewell. lepidus farewell, my lord: what you shall know meantime of stirs abroad, i shall beseech you, sir, to let me be partaker. octavius caesar doubt not, sir; i knew it for my bond. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act i scene v alexandria. cleopatra's palace. [enter cleopatra, charmian, iras, and mardian] cleopatra charmian! charmian madam? cleopatra ha, ha! give me to drink mandragora. charmian why, madam? cleopatra that i might sleep out this great gap of time my antony is away. charmian you think of him too much. cleopatra o, 'tis treason! charmian madam, i trust, not so. cleopatra thou, eunuch mardian! mardian what's your highness' pleasure? cleopatra not now to hear thee sing; i take no pleasure in aught an eunuch has: 'tis well for thee, that, being unseminar'd, thy freer thoughts may not fly forth of egypt. hast thou affections? mardian yes, gracious madam. cleopatra indeed! mardian not in deed, madam; for i can do nothing but what indeed is honest to be done: yet have i fierce affections, and think what venus did with mars. cleopatra o charmian, where think'st thou he is now? stands he, or sits he? or does he walk? or is he on his horse? o happy horse, to bear the weight of antony! do bravely, horse! for wot'st thou whom thou movest? the demi-atlas of this earth, the arm and burgonet of men. he's speaking now, or murmuring 'where's my serpent of old nile?' for so he calls me: now i feed myself with most delicious poison. think on me, that am with phoebus' amorous pinches black, and wrinkled deep in time? broad-fronted caesar, when thou wast here above the ground, i was a morsel for a monarch: and great pompey would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow; there would he anchor his aspect and die with looking on his life. [enter alexas, from octavius caesar] alexas sovereign of egypt, hail! cleopatra how much unlike art thou mark antony! yet, coming from him, that great medicine hath with his tinct gilded thee. how goes it with my brave mark antony? alexas last thing he did, dear queen, he kiss'd,--the last of many doubled kisses,- this orient pearl. his speech sticks in my heart. cleopatra mine ear must pluck it thence. alexas 'good friend,' quoth he, 'say, the firm roman to great egypt sends this treasure of an oyster; at whose foot, to mend the petty present, i will piece her opulent throne with kingdoms; all the east, say thou, shall call her mistress.' so he nodded, and soberly did mount an arm-gaunt steed, who neigh'd so high, that what i would have spoke was beastly dumb'd by him. cleopatra what, was he sad or merry? alexas like to the time o' the year between the extremes of hot and cold, he was nor sad nor merry. cleopatra o well-divided disposition! note him, note him good charmian, 'tis the man; but note him: he was not sad, for he would shine on those that make their looks by his; he was not merry, which seem'd to tell them his remembrance lay in egypt with his joy; but between both: o heavenly mingle! be'st thou sad or merry, the violence of either thee becomes, so does it no man else. met'st thou my posts? alexas ay, madam, twenty several messengers: why do you send so thick? cleopatra who's born that day when i forget to send to antony, shall die a beggar. ink and paper, charmian. welcome, my good alexas. did i, charmian, ever love caesar so? charmian o that brave caesar! cleopatra be choked with such another emphasis! say, the brave antony. charmian the valiant caesar! cleopatra by isis, i will give thee bloody teeth, if thou with caesar paragon again my man of men. charmian by your most gracious pardon, i sing but after you. cleopatra my salad days, when i was green in judgment: cold in blood, to say as i said then! but, come, away; get me ink and paper: he shall have every day a several greeting, or i'll unpeople egypt. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act ii scene i messina. pompey's house. [enter pompey, menecrates, and menas, in warlike manner] pompey if the great gods be just, they shall assist the deeds of justest men. menecrates know, worthy pompey, that what they do delay, they not deny. pompey whiles we are suitors to their throne, decays the thing we sue for. menecrates we, ignorant of ourselves, beg often our own harms, which the wise powers deny us for our good; so find we profit by losing of our prayers. pompey i shall do well: the people love me, and the sea is mine; my powers are crescent, and my auguring hope says it will come to the full. mark antony in egypt sits at dinner, and will make no wars without doors: caesar gets money where he loses hearts: lepidus flatters both, of both is flatter'd; but he neither loves, nor either cares for him. menas caesar and lepidus are in the field: a mighty strength they carry. pompey where have you this? 'tis false. menas from silvius, sir. pompey he dreams: i know they are in rome together, looking for antony. but all the charms of love, salt cleopatra, soften thy waned lip! let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both! tie up the libertine in a field of feasts, keep his brain fuming; epicurean cooks sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite; that sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour even till a lethe'd dulness! [enter varrius] how now, varrius! varrius this is most certain that i shall deliver: mark antony is every hour in rome expected: since he went from egypt 'tis a space for further travel. pompey i could have given less matter a better ear. menas, i did not think this amorous surfeiter would have donn'd his helm for such a petty war: his soldiership is twice the other twain: but let us rear the higher our opinion, that our stirring can from the lap of egypt's widow pluck the ne'er-lust-wearied antony. menas i cannot hope caesar and antony shall well greet together: his wife that's dead did trespasses to caesar; his brother warr'd upon him; although, i think, not moved by antony. pompey i know not, menas, how lesser enmities may give way to greater. were't not that we stand up against them all, 'twere pregnant they should square between themselves; for they have entertained cause enough to draw their swords: but how the fear of us may cement their divisions and bind up the petty difference, we yet not know. be't as our gods will have't! it only stands our lives upon to use our strongest hands. come, menas. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act ii scene ii rome. the house of lepidus. [enter domitius enobarbus and lepidus] lepidus good enobarbus, 'tis a worthy deed, and shall become you well, to entreat your captain to soft and gentle speech. domitius enobarbus i shall entreat him to answer like himself: if caesar move him, let antony look over caesar's head and speak as loud as mars. by jupiter, were i the wearer of antonius' beard, i would not shave't to-day. lepidus 'tis not a time for private stomaching. domitius enobarbus every time serves for the matter that is then born in't. lepidus but small to greater matters must give way. domitius enobarbus not if the small come first. lepidus your speech is passion: but, pray you, stir no embers up. here comes the noble antony. [enter mark antony and ventidius] domitius enobarbus and yonder, caesar. [enter octavius caesar, mecaenas, and agrippa] mark antony if we compose well here, to parthia: hark, ventidius. octavius caesar i do not know, mecaenas; ask agrippa. lepidus noble friends, that which combined us was most great, and let not a leaner action rend us. what's amiss, may it be gently heard: when we debate our trivial difference loud, we do commit murder in healing wounds: then, noble partners, the rather, for i earnestly beseech, touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms, nor curstness grow to the matter. mark antony 'tis spoken well. were we before our armies, and to fight. i should do thus. [flourish] octavius caesar welcome to rome. mark antony thank you. octavius caesar sit. mark antony sit, sir. octavius caesar nay, then. mark antony i learn, you take things ill which are not so, or being, concern you not. octavius caesar i must be laugh'd at, if, or for nothing or a little, i should say myself offended, and with you chiefly i' the world; more laugh'd at, that i should once name you derogately, when to sound your name it not concern'd me. mark antony my being in egypt, caesar, what was't to you? octavius caesar no more than my residing here at rome might be to you in egypt: yet, if you there did practise on my state, your being in egypt might be my question. mark antony how intend you, practised? octavius caesar you may be pleased to catch at mine intent by what did here befal me. your wife and brother made wars upon me; and their contestation was theme for you, you were the word of war. mark antony you do mistake your business; my brother never did urge me in his act: i did inquire it; and have my learning from some true reports, that drew their swords with you. did he not rather discredit my authority with yours; and make the wars alike against my stomach, having alike your cause? of this my letters before did satisfy you. if you'll patch a quarrel, as matter whole you have not to make it with, it must not be with this. octavius caesar you praise yourself by laying defects of judgment to me; but you patch'd up your excuses. mark antony not so, not so; i know you could not lack, i am certain on't, very necessity of this thought, that i, your partner in the cause 'gainst which he fought, could not with graceful eyes attend those wars which fronted mine own peace. as for my wife, i would you had her spirit in such another: the third o' the world is yours; which with a snaffle you may pace easy, but not such a wife. domitius enobarbus would we had all such wives, that the men might go to wars with the women! mark antony so much uncurbable, her garboils, caesar made out of her impatience, which not wanted shrewdness of policy too, i grieving grant did you too much disquiet: for that you must but say, i could not help it. octavius caesar i wrote to you when rioting in alexandria; you did pocket up my letters, and with taunts did gibe my missive out of audience. mark antony sir, he fell upon me ere admitted: then three kings i had newly feasted, and did want of what i was i' the morning: but next day i told him of myself; which was as much as to have ask'd him pardon. let this fellow be nothing of our strife; if we contend, out of our question wipe him. octavius caesar you have broken the article of your oath; which you shall never have tongue to charge me with. lepidus soft, caesar! mark antony no, lepidus, let him speak: the honour is sacred which he talks on now, supposing that i lack'd it. but, on, caesar; the article of my oath. octavius caesar to lend me arms and aid when i required them; the which you both denied. mark antony neglected, rather; and then when poison'd hours had bound me up from mine own knowledge. as nearly as i may, i'll play the penitent to you: but mine honesty shall not make poor my greatness, nor my power work without it. truth is, that fulvia, to have me out of egypt, made wars here; for which myself, the ignorant motive, do so far ask pardon as befits mine honour to stoop in such a case. lepidus 'tis noble spoken. mecaenas if it might please you, to enforce no further the griefs between ye: to forget them quite were to remember that the present need speaks to atone you. lepidus worthily spoken, mecaenas. domitius enobarbus or, if you borrow one another's love for the instant, you may, when you hear no more words of pompey, return it again: you shall have time to wrangle in when you have nothing else to do. mark antony thou art a soldier only: speak no more. domitius enobarbus that truth should be silent i had almost forgot. mark antony you wrong this presence; therefore speak no more. domitius enobarbus go to, then; your considerate stone. octavius caesar i do not much dislike the matter, but the manner of his speech; for't cannot be we shall remain in friendship, our conditions so differing in their acts. yet if i knew what hoop should hold us stanch, from edge to edge o' the world i would pursue it. agrippa give me leave, caesar,- octavius caesar speak, agrippa. agrippa thou hast a sister by the mother's side, admired octavia: great mark antony is now a widower. octavius caesar say not so, agrippa: if cleopatra heard you, your reproof were well deserved of rashness. mark antony i am not married, caesar: let me hear agrippa further speak. agrippa to hold you in perpetual amity, to make you brothers, and to knit your hearts with an unslipping knot, take antony octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims no worse a husband than the best of men; whose virtue and whose general graces speak that which none else can utter. by this marriage, all little jealousies, which now seem great, and all great fears, which now import their dangers, would then be nothing: truths would be tales, where now half tales be truths: her love to both would, each to other and all loves to both, draw after her. pardon what i have spoke; for 'tis a studied, not a present thought, by duty ruminated. mark antony will caesar speak? octavius caesar not till he hears how antony is touch'd with what is spoke already. mark antony what power is in agrippa, if i would say, 'agrippa, be it so,' to make this good? octavius caesar the power of caesar, and his power unto octavia. mark antony may i never to this good purpose, that so fairly shows, dream of impediment! let me have thy hand: further this act of grace: and from this hour the heart of brothers govern in our loves and sway our great designs! octavius caesar there is my hand. a sister i bequeath you, whom no brother did ever love so dearly: let her live to join our kingdoms and our hearts; and never fly off our loves again! lepidus happily, amen! mark antony i did not think to draw my sword 'gainst pompey; for he hath laid strange courtesies and great of late upon me: i must thank him only, lest my remembrance suffer ill report; at heel of that, defy him. lepidus time calls upon's: of us must pompey presently be sought, or else he seeks out us. mark antony where lies he? octavius caesar about the mount misenum. mark antony what is his strength by land? octavius caesar great and increasing: but by sea he is an absolute master. mark antony so is the fame. would we had spoke together! haste we for it: yet, ere we put ourselves in arms, dispatch we the business we have talk'd of. octavius caesar with most gladness: and do invite you to my sister's view, whither straight i'll lead you. mark antony let us, lepidus, not lack your company. lepidus noble antony, not sickness should detain me. [flourish. exeunt octavius caesar, mark antony, and lepidus] mecaenas welcome from egypt, sir. domitius enobarbus half the heart of caesar, worthy mecaenas! my honourable friend, agrippa! agrippa good enobarbus! mecaenas we have cause to be glad that matters are so well digested. you stayed well by 't in egypt. domitius enobarbus ay, sir; we did sleep day out of countenance, and made the night light with drinking. mecaenas eight wild-boars roasted whole at a breakfast, and but twelve persons there; is this true? domitius enobarbus this was but as a fly by an eagle: we had much more monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserved noting. mecaenas she's a most triumphant lady, if report be square to her. domitius enobarbus when she first met mark antony, she pursed up his heart, upon the river of cydnus. agrippa there she appeared indeed; or my reporter devised well for her. domitius enobarbus i will tell you. the barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold; purple the sails, and so perfumed that the winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as amorous of their strokes. for her own person, it beggar'd all description: she did lie in her pavilion--cloth-of-gold of tissue- o'er-picturing that venus where we see the fancy outwork nature: on each side her stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling cupids, with divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem to glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, and what they undid did. agrippa o, rare for antony! domitius enobarbus her gentlewomen, like the nereides, so many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes, and made their bends adornings: at the helm a seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands, that yarely frame the office. from the barge a strange invisible perfume hits the sense of the adjacent wharfs. the city cast her people out upon her; and antony, enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone, whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy, had gone to gaze on cleopatra too, and made a gap in nature. agrippa rare egyptian! domitius enobarbus upon her landing, antony sent to her, invited her to supper: she replied, it should be better he became her guest; which she entreated: our courteous antony, whom ne'er the word of 'no' woman heard speak, being barber'd ten times o'er, goes to the feast, and for his ordinary pays his heart for what his eyes eat only. agrippa royal wench! she made great caesar lay his sword to bed: he plough'd her, and she cropp'd. domitius enobarbus i saw her once hop forty paces through the public street; and having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted, that she did make defect perfection, and, breathless, power breathe forth. mecaenas now antony must leave her utterly. domitius enobarbus never; he will not: age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety: other women cloy the appetites they feed: but she makes hungry where most she satisfies; for vilest things become themselves in her: that the holy priests bless her when she is riggish. mecaenas if beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle the heart of antony, octavia is a blessed lottery to him. agrippa let us go. good enobarbus, make yourself my guest whilst you abide here. domitius enobarbus humbly, sir, i thank you. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act ii scene iii the same. octavius caesar's house. [enter mark antony, octavius caesar, octavia between them, and attendants] mark antony the world and my great office will sometimes divide me from your bosom. octavia all which time before the gods my knee shall bow my prayers to them for you. mark antony good night, sir. my octavia, read not my blemishes in the world's report: i have not kept my square; but that to come shall all be done by the rule. good night, dear lady. good night, sir. octavius caesar good night. [exeunt octavius caesar and octavia] [enter soothsayer] mark antony now, sirrah; you do wish yourself in egypt? soothsayer would i had never come from thence, nor you thither! mark antony if you can, your reason? soothsayer i see it in my motion, have it not in my tongue: but yet hie you to egypt again. mark antony say to me, whose fortunes shall rise higher, caesar's or mine? soothsayer caesar's. therefore, o antony, stay not by his side: thy demon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is noble, courageous high, unmatchable, where caesar's is not; but, near him, thy angel becomes a fear, as being o'erpower'd: therefore make space enough between you. mark antony speak this no more. soothsayer to none but thee; no more, but when to thee. if thou dost play with him at any game, thou art sure to lose; and, of that natural luck, he beats thee 'gainst the odds: thy lustre thickens, when he shines by: i say again, thy spirit is all afraid to govern thee near him; but, he away, 'tis noble. mark antony get thee gone: say to ventidius i would speak with him: [exit soothsayer] he shall to parthia. be it art or hap, he hath spoken true: the very dice obey him; and in our sports my better cunning faints under his chance: if we draw lots, he speeds; his cocks do win the battle still of mine, when it is all to nought; and his quails ever beat mine, inhoop'd, at odds. i will to egypt: and though i make this marriage for my peace, i' the east my pleasure lies. [enter ventidius] o, come, ventidius, you must to parthia: your commission's ready; follow me, and receive't. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act ii scene iv the same. a street. [enter lepidus, mecaenas, and agrippa] lepidus trouble yourselves no further: pray you, hasten your generals after. agrippa sir, mark antony will e'en but kiss octavia, and we'll follow. lepidus till i shall see you in your soldier's dress, which will become you both, farewell. mecaenas we shall, as i conceive the journey, be at the mount before you, lepidus. lepidus your way is shorter; my purposes do draw me much about: you'll win two days upon me. mecaenas | | sir, good success! agrippa | lepidus farewell. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act ii scene v alexandria. cleopatra's palace. [enter cleopatra, charmian, iras, and alexas] cleopatra give me some music; music, moody food of us that trade in love. attendants the music, ho! [enter mardian] cleopatra let it alone; let's to billiards: come, charmian. charmian my arm is sore; best play with mardian. cleopatra as well a woman with an eunuch play'd as with a woman. come, you'll play with me, sir? mardian as well as i can, madam. cleopatra and when good will is show'd, though't come too short, the actor may plead pardon. i'll none now: give me mine angle; we'll to the river: there, my music playing far off, i will betray tawny-finn'd fishes; my bended hook shall pierce their slimy jaws; and, as i draw them up, i'll think them every one an antony, and say 'ah, ha! you're caught.' charmian 'twas merry when you wager'd on your angling; when your diver did hang a salt-fish on his hook, which he with fervency drew up. cleopatra that time,--o times!- i laugh'd him out of patience; and that night i laugh'd him into patience; and next morn, ere the ninth hour, i drunk him to his bed; then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst i wore his sword philippan. [enter a messenger] o, from italy ram thou thy fruitful tidings in mine ears, that long time have been barren. messenger madam, madam,- cleopatra antonius dead!--if thou say so, villain, thou kill'st thy mistress: but well and free, if thou so yield him, there is gold, and here my bluest veins to kiss; a hand that kings have lipp'd, and trembled kissing. messenger first, madam, he is well. cleopatra why, there's more gold. but, sirrah, mark, we use to say the dead are well: bring it to that, the gold i give thee will i melt and pour down thy ill-uttering throat. messenger good madam, hear me. cleopatra well, go to, i will; but there's no goodness in thy face: if antony be free and healthful,--so tart a favour to trumpet such good tidings! if not well, thou shouldst come like a fury crown'd with snakes, not like a formal man. messenger will't please you hear me? cleopatra i have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak'st: yet if thou say antony lives, is well, or friends with caesar, or not captive to him, i'll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail rich pearls upon thee. messenger madam, he's well. cleopatra well said. messenger and friends with caesar. cleopatra thou'rt an honest man. messenger caesar and he are greater friends than ever. cleopatra make thee a fortune from me. messenger but yet, madam,- cleopatra i do not like 'but yet,' it does allay the good precedence; fie upon 'but yet'! 'but yet' is as a gaoler to bring forth some monstrous malefactor. prithee, friend, pour out the pack of matter to mine ear, the good and bad together: he's friends with caesar: in state of health thou say'st; and thou say'st free. messenger free, madam! no; i made no such report: he's bound unto octavia. cleopatra for what good turn? messenger for the best turn i' the bed. cleopatra i am pale, charmian. messenger madam, he's married to octavia. cleopatra the most infectious pestilence upon thee! [strikes him down] messenger good madam, patience. cleopatra what say you? hence, [strikes him again] horrible villain! or i'll spurn thine eyes like balls before me; i'll unhair thy head: [she hales him up and down] thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stew'd in brine, smarting in lingering pickle. messenger gracious madam, i that do bring the news made not the match. cleopatra say 'tis not so, a province i will give thee, and make thy fortunes proud: the blow thou hadst shall make thy peace for moving me to rage; and i will boot thee with what gift beside thy modesty can beg. messenger he's married, madam. cleopatra rogue, thou hast lived too long. [draws a knife] messenger nay, then i'll run. what mean you, madam? i have made no fault. [exit] charmian good madam, keep yourself within yourself: the man is innocent. cleopatra some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt. melt egypt into nile! and kindly creatures turn all to serpents! call the slave again: though i am mad, i will not bite him: call. charmian he is afeard to come. cleopatra i will not hurt him. [exit charmian] these hands do lack nobility, that they strike a meaner than myself; since i myself have given myself the cause. [re-enter charmian and messenger] come hither, sir. though it be honest, it is never good to bring bad news: give to a gracious message. an host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt. messenger i have done my duty. cleopatra is he married? i cannot hate thee worser than i do, if thou again say 'yes.' messenger he's married, madam. cleopatra the gods confound thee! dost thou hold there still? messenger should i lie, madam? cleopatra o, i would thou didst, so half my egypt were submerged and made a cistern for scaled snakes! go, get thee hence: hadst thou narcissus in thy face, to me thou wouldst appear most ugly. he is married? messenger i crave your highness' pardon. cleopatra he is married? messenger take no offence that i would not offend you: to punish me for what you make me do. seems much unequal: he's married to octavia. cleopatra o, that his fault should make a knave of thee, that art not what thou'rt sure of! get thee hence: the merchandise which thou hast brought from rome are all too dear for me: lie they upon thy hand, and be undone by 'em! [exit messenger] charmian good your highness, patience. cleopatra in praising antony, i have dispraised caesar. charmian many times, madam. cleopatra i am paid for't now. lead me from hence: i faint: o iras, charmian! 'tis no matter. go to the fellow, good alexas; bid him report the feature of octavia, her years, her inclination, let him not leave out the colour of her hair: bring me word quickly. [exit alexas] let him for ever go:--let him not--charmian, though he be painted one way like a gorgon, the other way's a mars. bid you alexas [to mardian] bring me word how tall she is. pity me, charmian, but do not speak to me. lead me to my chamber. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act ii scene vi near misenum. [flourish. enter pompey and menas at one door, with drum and trumpet: at another, octavius caesar, mark antony, lepidus, domitius enobarbus, mecaenas, with soldiers marching] pompey your hostages i have, so have you mine; and we shall talk before we fight. octavius caesar most meet that first we come to words; and therefore have we our written purposes before us sent; which, if thou hast consider'd, let us know if 'twill tie up thy discontented sword, and carry back to sicily much tall youth that else must perish here. pompey to you all three, the senators alone of this great world, chief factors for the gods, i do not know wherefore my father should revengers want, having a son and friends; since julius caesar, who at philippi the good brutus ghosted, there saw you labouring for him. what was't that moved pale cassius to conspire; and what made the all-honour'd, honest roman, brutus, with the arm'd rest, courtiers and beauteous freedom, to drench the capitol; but that they would have one man but a man? and that is it hath made me rig my navy; at whose burthen the anger'd ocean foams; with which i meant to scourge the ingratitude that despiteful rome cast on my noble father. octavius caesar take your time. mark antony thou canst not fear us, pompey, with thy sails; we'll speak with thee at sea: at land, thou know'st how much we do o'er-count thee. pompey at land, indeed, thou dost o'er-count me of my father's house: but, since the cuckoo builds not for himself, remain in't as thou mayst. lepidus be pleased to tell us- for this is from the present--how you take the offers we have sent you. octavius caesar there's the point. mark antony which do not be entreated to, but weigh what it is worth embraced. octavius caesar and what may follow, to try a larger fortune. pompey you have made me offer of sicily, sardinia; and i must rid all the sea of pirates; then, to send measures of wheat to rome; this 'greed upon to part with unhack'd edges, and bear back our targes undinted. octavius caesar | | mark antony | that's our offer. | lepidus | pompey know, then, i came before you here a man prepared to take this offer: but mark antony put me to some impatience: though i lose the praise of it by telling, you must know, when caesar and your brother were at blows, your mother came to sicily and did find her welcome friendly. mark antony i have heard it, pompey; and am well studied for a liberal thanks which i do owe you. pompey let me have your hand: i did not think, sir, to have met you here. mark antony the beds i' the east are soft; and thanks to you, that call'd me timelier than my purpose hither; for i have gain'd by 't. octavius caesar since i saw you last, there is a change upon you. pompey well, i know not what counts harsh fortune casts upon my face; but in my bosom shall she never come, to make my heart her vassal. lepidus well met here. pompey i hope so, lepidus. thus we are agreed: i crave our composition may be written, and seal'd between us. octavius caesar that's the next to do. pompey we'll feast each other ere we part; and let's draw lots who shall begin. mark antony that will i, pompey. pompey no, antony, take the lot: but, first or last, your fine egyptian cookery shall have the fame. i have heard that julius caesar grew fat with feasting there. mark antony you have heard much. pompey i have fair meanings, sir. mark antony and fair words to them. pompey then so much have i heard: and i have heard, apollodorus carried- domitius enobarbus no more of that: he did so. pompey what, i pray you? domitius enobarbus a certain queen to caesar in a mattress. pompey i know thee now: how farest thou, soldier? domitius enobarbus well; and well am like to do; for, i perceive, four feasts are toward. pompey let me shake thy hand; i never hated thee: i have seen thee fight, when i have envied thy behavior. domitius enobarbus sir, i never loved you much; but i ha' praised ye, when you have well deserved ten times as much as i have said you did. pompey enjoy thy plainness, it nothing ill becomes thee. aboard my galley i invite you all: will you lead, lords? octavius caesar | | mark antony | show us the way, sir. | lepidus | pompey come. [exeunt all but menas and enobarbus] menas [aside] thy father, pompey, would ne'er have made this treaty.--you and i have known, sir. domitius enobarbus at sea, i think. menas we have, sir. domitius enobarbus you have done well by water. menas and you by land. domitius enobarbus i will praise any man that will praise me; though it cannot be denied what i have done by land. menas nor what i have done by water. domitius enobarbus yes, something you can deny for your own safety: you have been a great thief by sea. menas and you by land. domitius enobarbus there i deny my land service. but give me your hand, menas: if our eyes had authority, here they might take two thieves kissing. menas all men's faces are true, whatsome'er their hands are. domitius enobarbus but there is never a fair woman has a true face. menas no slander; they steal hearts. domitius enobarbus we came hither to fight with you. menas for my part, i am sorry it is turned to a drinking. pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune. domitius enobarbus if he do, sure, he cannot weep't back again. menas you've said, sir. we looked not for mark antony here: pray you, is he married to cleopatra? domitius enobarbus caesar's sister is called octavia. menas true, sir; she was the wife of caius marcellus. domitius enobarbus but she is now the wife of marcus antonius. menas pray ye, sir? domitius enobarbus 'tis true. menas then is caesar and he for ever knit together. domitius enobarbus if i were bound to divine of this unity, i would not prophesy so. menas i think the policy of that purpose made more in the marriage than the love of the parties. domitius enobarbus i think so too. but you shall find, the band that seems to tie their friendship together will be the very strangler of their amity: octavia is of a holy, cold, and still conversation. menas who would not have his wife so? domitius enobarbus not he that himself is not so; which is mark antony. he will to his egyptian dish again: then shall the sighs of octavia blow the fire up in caesar; and, as i said before, that which is the strength of their amity shall prove the immediate author of their variance. antony will use his affection where it is: he married but his occasion here. menas and thus it may be. come, sir, will you aboard? i have a health for you. domitius enobarbus i shall take it, sir: we have used our throats in egypt. menas come, let's away. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act ii scene vii on board pompey's galley, off misenum. [music plays. enter two or three servants with a banquet] first servant here they'll be, man. some o' their plants are ill-rooted already: the least wind i' the world will blow them down. second servant lepidus is high-coloured. first servant they have made him drink alms-drink. second servant as they pinch one another by the disposition, he cries out 'no more;' reconciles them to his entreaty, and himself to the drink. first servant but it raises the greater war between him and his discretion. second servant why, this is to have a name in great men's fellowship: i had as lief have a reed that will do me no service as a partisan i could not heave. first servant to be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in't, are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully disaster the cheeks. [a sennet sounded. enter octavius caesar, mark antony, lepidus, pompey, agrippa, mecaenas, domitius enobarbus, menas, with other captains] mark antony [to octavius caesar] thus do they, sir: they take the flow o' the nile by certain scales i' the pyramid; they know, by the height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth or foison follow: the higher nilus swells, the more it promises: as it ebbs, the seedsman upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain, and shortly comes to harvest. lepidus you've strange serpents there. mark antony ay, lepidus. lepidus your serpent of egypt is bred now of your mud by the operation of your sun: so is your crocodile. mark antony they are so. pompey sit,--and some wine! a health to lepidus! lepidus i am not so well as i should be, but i'll ne'er out. domitius enobarbus not till you have slept; i fear me you'll be in till then. lepidus nay, certainly, i have heard the ptolemies' pyramises are very goodly things; without contradiction, i have heard that. menas [aside to pompey] pompey, a word. pompey [aside to menas] say in mine ear: what is't? menas [aside to pompey] forsake thy seat, i do beseech thee, captain, and hear me speak a word. pompey [aside to menas] forbear me till anon. this wine for lepidus! lepidus what manner o' thing is your crocodile? mark antony it is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad as it hath breadth: it is just so high as it is, and moves with its own organs: it lives by that which nourisheth it; and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates. lepidus what colour is it of? mark antony of it own colour too. lepidus 'tis a strange serpent. mark antony 'tis so. and the tears of it are wet. octavius caesar will this description satisfy him? mark antony with the health that pompey gives him, else he is a very epicure. pompey [aside to menas] go hang, sir, hang! tell me of that? away! do as i bid you. where's this cup i call'd for? menas [aside to pompey] if for the sake of merit thou wilt hear me, rise from thy stool. pompey [aside to menas] i think thou'rt mad. the matter? [rises, and walks aside] menas i have ever held my cap off to thy fortunes. pompey thou hast served me with much faith. what's else to say? be jolly, lords. mark antony these quick-sands, lepidus, keep off them, for you sink. menas wilt thou be lord of all the world? pompey what say'st thou? menas wilt thou be lord of the whole world? that's twice. pompey how should that be? menas but entertain it, and, though thou think me poor, i am the man will give thee all the world. pompey hast thou drunk well? menas now, pompey, i have kept me from the cup. thou art, if thou darest be, the earthly jove: whate'er the ocean pales, or sky inclips, is thine, if thou wilt ha't. pompey show me which way. menas these three world-sharers, these competitors, are in thy vessel: let me cut the cable; and, when we are put off, fall to their throats: all there is thine. pompey ah, this thou shouldst have done, and not have spoke on't! in me 'tis villany; in thee't had been good service. thou must know, 'tis not my profit that does lead mine honour; mine honour, it. repent that e'er thy tongue hath so betray'd thine act: being done unknown, i should have found it afterwards well done; but must condemn it now. desist, and drink. menas [aside] for this, i'll never follow thy pall'd fortunes more. who seeks, and will not take when once 'tis offer'd, shall never find it more. pompey this health to lepidus! mark antony bear him ashore. i'll pledge it for him, pompey. domitius enobarbus here's to thee, menas! menas enobarbus, welcome! pompey fill till the cup be hid. domitius enobarbus there's a strong fellow, menas. [pointing to the attendant who carries off lepidus] menas why? domitius enobarbus a' bears the third part of the world, man; see'st not? menas the third part, then, is drunk: would it were all, that it might go on wheels! domitius enobarbus drink thou; increase the reels. menas come. pompey this is not yet an alexandrian feast. mark antony it ripens towards it. strike the vessels, ho? here is to caesar! octavius caesar i could well forbear't. it's monstrous labour, when i wash my brain, and it grows fouler. mark antony be a child o' the time. octavius caesar possess it, i'll make answer: but i had rather fast from all four days than drink so much in one. domitius enobarbus ha, my brave emperor! [to mark antony] shall we dance now the egyptian bacchanals, and celebrate our drink? pompey let's ha't, good soldier. mark antony come, let's all take hands, till that the conquering wine hath steep'd our sense in soft and delicate lethe. domitius enobarbus all take hands. make battery to our ears with the loud music: the while i'll place you: then the boy shall sing; the holding every man shall bear as loud as his strong sides can volley. [music plays. domitius enobarbus places them hand in hand] the song. come, thou monarch of the vine, plumpy bacchus with pink eyne! in thy fats our cares be drown'd, with thy grapes our hairs be crown'd: cup us, till the world go round, cup us, till the world go round! octavius caesar what would you more? pompey, good night. good brother, let me request you off: our graver business frowns at this levity. gentle lords, let's part; you see we have burnt our cheeks: strong enobarb is weaker than the wine; and mine own tongue splits what it speaks: the wild disguise hath almost antick'd us all. what needs more words? good night. good antony, your hand. pompey i'll try you on the shore. mark antony and shall, sir; give's your hand. pompey o antony, you have my father's house,--but, what? we are friends. come, down into the boat. domitius enobarbus take heed you fall not. [exeunt all but domitius enobarbus and menas] menas, i'll not on shore. menas no, to my cabin. these drums! these trumpets, flutes! what! let neptune hear we bid a loud farewell to these great fellows: sound and be hang'd, sound out! [sound a flourish, with drums] domitius enobarbus ho! says a' there's my cap. menas ho! noble captain, come. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene i a plain in syria. [enter ventidius as it were in triumph, with silius, and other romans, officers, and soldiers; the dead body of pacorus borne before him] ventidius now, darting parthia, art thou struck; and now pleased fortune does of marcus crassus' death make me revenger. bear the king's son's body before our army. thy pacorus, orodes, pays this for marcus crassus. silius noble ventidius, whilst yet with parthian blood thy sword is warm, the fugitive parthians follow; spur through media, mesopotamia, and the shelters whither the routed fly: so thy grand captain antony shall set thee on triumphant chariots and put garlands on thy head. ventidius o silius, silius, i have done enough; a lower place, note well, may make too great an act: for learn this, silius; better to leave undone, than by our deed acquire too high a fame when him we serve's away. caesar and antony have ever won more in their officer than person: sossius, one of my place in syria, his lieutenant, for quick accumulation of renown, which he achieved by the minute, lost his favour. who does i' the wars more than his captain can becomes his captain's captain: and ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than gain which darkens him. i could do more to do antonius good, but 'twould offend him; and in his offence should my performance perish. silius thou hast, ventidius, that without the which a soldier, and his sword, grants scarce distinction. thou wilt write to antony! ventidius i'll humbly signify what in his name, that magical word of war, we have effected; how, with his banners and his well-paid ranks, the ne'er-yet-beaten horse of parthia we have jaded out o' the field. silius where is he now? ventidius he purposeth to athens: whither, with what haste the weight we must convey with's will permit, we shall appear before him. on there; pass along! [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene ii rome. an ante-chamber in octavius caesar's house. [enter agrippa at one door, domitius enobarbus at another] agrippa what, are the brothers parted? domitius enobarbus they have dispatch'd with pompey, he is gone; the other three are sealing. octavia weeps to part from rome; caesar is sad; and lepidus, since pompey's feast, as menas says, is troubled with the green sickness. agrippa 'tis a noble lepidus. domitius enobarbus a very fine one: o, how he loves caesar! agrippa nay, but how dearly he adores mark antony! domitius enobarbus caesar? why, he's the jupiter of men. agrippa what's antony? the god of jupiter. domitius enobarbus spake you of caesar? how! the non-pareil! agrippa o antony! o thou arabian bird! domitius enobarbus would you praise caesar, say 'caesar:' go no further. agrippa indeed, he plied them both with excellent praises. domitius enobarbus but he loves caesar best; yet he loves antony: ho! hearts, tongues, figures, scribes, bards, poets, cannot think, speak, cast, write, sing, number, ho! his love to antony. but as for caesar, kneel down, kneel down, and wonder. agrippa both he loves. domitius enobarbus they are his shards, and he their beetle. [trumpets within] so; this is to horse. adieu, noble agrippa. agrippa good fortune, worthy soldier; and farewell. [enter octavius caesar, mark antony, lepidus, and octavia] mark antony no further, sir. octavius caesar you take from me a great part of myself; use me well in 't. sister, prove such a wife as my thoughts make thee, and as my farthest band shall pass on thy approof. most noble antony, let not the piece of virtue, which is set betwixt us as the cement of our love, to keep it builded, be the ram to batter the fortress of it; for better might we have loved without this mean, if on both parts this be not cherish'd. mark antony make me not offended in your distrust. octavius caesar i have said. mark antony you shall not find, though you be therein curious, the least cause for what you seem to fear: so, the gods keep you, and make the hearts of romans serve your ends! we will here part. octavius caesar farewell, my dearest sister, fare thee well: the elements be kind to thee, and make thy spirits all of comfort! fare thee well. octavia my noble brother! mark antony the april 's in her eyes: it is love's spring, and these the showers to bring it on. be cheerful. octavia sir, look well to my husband's house; and- octavius caesar what, octavia? octavia i'll tell you in your ear. mark antony her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can her heart inform her tongue,--the swan's down-feather, that stands upon the swell at full of tide, and neither way inclines. domitius enobarbus [aside to agrippa] will caesar weep? agrippa [aside to domitius enobarbus] he has a cloud in 's face. domitius enobarbus [aside to agrippa] he were the worse for that, were he a horse; so is he, being a man. agrippa [aside to domitius enobarbus] why, enobarbus, when antony found julius caesar dead, he cried almost to roaring; and he wept when at philippi he found brutus slain. domitius enobarbus [aside to agrippa] that year, indeed, he was troubled with a rheum; what willingly he did confound he wail'd, believe't, till i wept too. octavius caesar no, sweet octavia, you shall hear from me still; the time shall not out-go my thinking on you. mark antony come, sir, come; i'll wrestle with you in my strength of love: look, here i have you; thus i let you go, and give you to the gods. octavius caesar adieu; be happy! lepidus let all the number of the stars give light to thy fair way! octavius caesar farewell, farewell! [kisses octavia] mark antony farewell! [trumpets sound. exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene iii alexandria. cleopatra's palace. [enter cleopatra, charmian, iras, and alexas] cleopatra where is the fellow? alexas half afeard to come. cleopatra go to, go to. [enter the messenger as before] come hither, sir. alexas good majesty, herod of jewry dare not look upon you but when you are well pleased. cleopatra that herod's head i'll have: but how, when antony is gone through whom i might command it? come thou near. messenger most gracious majesty,- cleopatra didst thou behold octavia? messenger ay, dread queen. cleopatra where? messenger madam, in rome; i look'd her in the face, and saw her led between her brother and mark antony. cleopatra is she as tall as me? messenger she is not, madam. cleopatra didst hear her speak? is she shrill-tongued or low? messenger madam, i heard her speak; she is low-voiced. cleopatra that's not so good: he cannot like her long. charmian like her! o isis! 'tis impossible. cleopatra i think so, charmian: dull of tongue, and dwarfish! what majesty is in her gait? remember, if e'er thou look'dst on majesty. messenger she creeps: her motion and her station are as one; she shows a body rather than a life, a statue than a breather. cleopatra is this certain? messenger or i have no observance. charmian three in egypt cannot make better note. cleopatra he's very knowing; i do perceive't: there's nothing in her yet: the fellow has good judgment. charmian excellent. cleopatra guess at her years, i prithee. messenger madam, she was a widow,- cleopatra widow! charmian, hark. messenger and i do think she's thirty. cleopatra bear'st thou her face in mind? is't long or round? messenger round even to faultiness. cleopatra for the most part, too, they are foolish that are so. her hair, what colour? messenger brown, madam: and her forehead as low as she would wish it. cleopatra there's gold for thee. thou must not take my former sharpness ill: i will employ thee back again; i find thee most fit for business: go make thee ready; our letters are prepared. [exit messenger] charmian a proper man. cleopatra indeed, he is so: i repent me much that so i harried him. why, methinks, by him, this creature's no such thing. charmian nothing, madam. cleopatra the man hath seen some majesty, and should know. charmian hath he seen majesty? isis else defend, and serving you so long! cleopatra i have one thing more to ask him yet, good charmian: but 'tis no matter; thou shalt bring him to me where i will write. all may be well enough. charmian i warrant you, madam. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene iv athens. a room in mark antony's house. [enter mark antony and octavia] mark antony nay, nay, octavia, not only that,- that were excusable, that, and thousands more of semblable import,--but he hath waged new wars 'gainst pompey; made his will, and read it to public ear: spoke scantly of me: when perforce he could not but pay me terms of honour, cold and sickly he vented them; most narrow measure lent me: when the best hint was given him, he not took't, or did it from his teeth. octavia o my good lord, believe not all; or, if you must believe, stomach not all. a more unhappy lady, if this division chance, ne'er stood between, praying for both parts: the good gods me presently, when i shall pray, 'o bless my lord and husband!' undo that prayer, by crying out as loud, 'o, bless my brother!' husband win, win brother, prays, and destroys the prayer; no midway 'twixt these extremes at all. mark antony gentle octavia, let your best love draw to that point, which seeks best to preserve it: if i lose mine honour, i lose myself: better i were not yours than yours so branchless. but, as you requested, yourself shall go between 's: the mean time, lady, i'll raise the preparation of a war shall stain your brother: make your soonest haste; so your desires are yours. octavia thanks to my lord. the jove of power make me most weak, most weak, your reconciler! wars 'twixt you twain would be as if the world should cleave, and that slain men should solder up the rift. mark antony when it appears to you where this begins, turn your displeasure that way: for our faults can never be so equal, that your love can equally move with them. provide your going; choose your own company, and command what cost your heart has mind to. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene v the same. another room. [enter domitius enobarbus and eros, meeting] domitius enobarbus how now, friend eros! eros there's strange news come, sir. domitius enobarbus what, man? eros caesar and lepidus have made wars upon pompey. domitius enobarbus this is old: what is the success? eros caesar, having made use of him in the wars 'gainst pompey, presently denied him rivality; would not let him partake in the glory of the action: and not resting here, accuses him of letters he had formerly wrote to pompey; upon his own appeal, seizes him: so the poor third is up, till death enlarge his confine. domitius enobarbus then, world, thou hast a pair of chaps, no more; and throw between them all the food thou hast, they'll grind the one the other. where's antony? eros he's walking in the garden--thus; and spurns the rush that lies before him; cries, 'fool lepidus!' and threats the throat of that his officer that murder'd pompey. domitius enobarbus our great navy's rigg'd. eros for italy and caesar. more, domitius; my lord desires you presently: my news i might have told hereafter. domitius enobarbus 'twill be naught: but let it be. bring me to antony. eros come, sir. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene vi rome. octavius caesar's house. [enter octavius caesar, agrippa, and mecaenas] octavius caesar contemning rome, he has done all this, and more, in alexandria: here's the manner of 't: i' the market-place, on a tribunal silver'd, cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold were publicly enthroned: at the feet sat caesarion, whom they call my father's son, and all the unlawful issue that their lust since then hath made between them. unto her he gave the stablishment of egypt; made her of lower syria, cyprus, lydia, absolute queen. mecaenas this in the public eye? octavius caesar i' the common show-place, where they exercise. his sons he there proclaim'd the kings of kings: great media, parthia, and armenia. he gave to alexander; to ptolemy he assign'd syria, cilicia, and phoenicia: she in the habiliments of the goddess isis that day appear'd; and oft before gave audience, as 'tis reported, so. mecaenas let rome be thus inform'd. agrippa who, queasy with his insolence already, will their good thoughts call from him. octavius caesar the people know it; and have now received his accusations. agrippa who does he accuse? octavius caesar caesar: and that, having in sicily sextus pompeius spoil'd, we had not rated him his part o' the isle: then does he say, he lent me some shipping unrestored: lastly, he frets that lepidus of the triumvirate should be deposed; and, being, that we detain all his revenue. agrippa sir, this should be answer'd. octavius caesar 'tis done already, and the messenger gone. i have told him, lepidus was grown too cruel; that he his high authority abused, and did deserve his change: for what i have conquer'd, i grant him part; but then, in his armenia, and other of his conquer'd kingdoms, i demand the like. mecaenas he'll never yield to that. octavius caesar nor must not then be yielded to in this. [enter octavia with her train] octavia hail, caesar, and my lord! hail, most dear caesar! octavius caesar that ever i should call thee castaway! octavia you have not call'd me so, nor have you cause. octavius caesar why have you stol'n upon us thus! you come not like caesar's sister: the wife of antony should have an army for an usher, and the neighs of horse to tell of her approach long ere she did appear; the trees by the way should have borne men; and expectation fainted, longing for what it had not; nay, the dust should have ascended to the roof of heaven, raised by your populous troops: but you are come a market-maid to rome; and have prevented the ostentation of our love, which, left unshown, is often left unloved; we should have met you by sea and land; supplying every stage with an augmented greeting. octavia good my lord, to come thus was i not constrain'd, but did on my free will. my lord, mark antony, hearing that you prepared for war, acquainted my grieved ear withal; whereon, i begg'd his pardon for return. octavius caesar which soon he granted, being an obstruct 'tween his lust and him. octavia do not say so, my lord. octavius caesar i have eyes upon him, and his affairs come to me on the wind. where is he now? octavia my lord, in athens. octavius caesar no, my most wronged sister; cleopatra hath nodded him to her. he hath given his empire up to a whore; who now are levying the kings o' the earth for war; he hath assembled bocchus, the king of libya; archelaus, of cappadocia; philadelphos, king of paphlagonia; the thracian king, adallas; king malchus of arabia; king of pont; herod of jewry; mithridates, king of comagene; polemon and amyntas, the kings of mede and lycaonia, with a more larger list of sceptres. octavia ay me, most wretched, that have my heart parted betwixt two friends that do afflict each other! octavius caesar welcome hither: your letters did withhold our breaking forth; till we perceived, both how you were wrong led, and we in negligent danger. cheer your heart; be you not troubled with the time, which drives o'er your content these strong necessities; but let determined things to destiny hold unbewail'd their way. welcome to rome; nothing more dear to me. you are abused beyond the mark of thought: and the high gods, to do you justice, make them ministers of us and those that love you. best of comfort; and ever welcome to us. agrippa welcome, lady. mecaenas welcome, dear madam. each heart in rome does love and pity you: only the adulterous antony, most large in his abominations, turns you off; and gives his potent regiment to a trull, that noises it against us. octavia is it so, sir? octavius caesar most certain. sister, welcome: pray you, be ever known to patience: my dear'st sister! [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene vii near actium. mark antony's camp. [enter cleopatra and domitius enobarbus] cleopatra i will be even with thee, doubt it not. domitius enobarbus but why, why, why? cleopatra thou hast forspoke my being in these wars, and say'st it is not fit. domitius enobarbus well, is it, is it? cleopatra if not denounced against us, why should not we be there in person? domitius enobarbus [aside] well, i could reply: if we should serve with horse and mares together, the horse were merely lost; the mares would bear a soldier and his horse. cleopatra what is't you say? domitius enobarbus your presence needs must puzzle antony; take from his heart, take from his brain, from's time, what should not then be spared. he is already traduced for levity; and 'tis said in rome that photinus an eunuch and your maids manage this war. cleopatra sink rome, and their tongues rot that speak against us! a charge we bear i' the war, and, as the president of my kingdom, will appear there for a man. speak not against it: i will not stay behind. domitius enobarbus nay, i have done. here comes the emperor. [enter mark antony and canidius] mark antony is it not strange, canidius, that from tarentum and brundusium he could so quickly cut the ionian sea, and take in toryne? you have heard on't, sweet? cleopatra celerity is never more admired than by the negligent. mark antony a good rebuke, which might have well becomed the best of men, to taunt at slackness. canidius, we will fight with him by sea. cleopatra by sea! what else? canidius why will my lord do so? mark antony for that he dares us to't. domitius enobarbus so hath my lord dared him to single fight. canidius ay, and to wage this battle at pharsalia. where caesar fought with pompey: but these offers, which serve not for his vantage, be shakes off; and so should you. domitius enobarbus your ships are not well mann'd; your mariners are muleters, reapers, people ingross'd by swift impress; in caesar's fleet are those that often have 'gainst pompey fought: their ships are yare; yours, heavy: no disgrace shall fall you for refusing him at sea, being prepared for land. mark antony by sea, by sea. domitius enobarbus most worthy sir, you therein throw away the absolute soldiership you have by land; distract your army, which doth most consist of war-mark'd footmen; leave unexecuted your own renowned knowledge; quite forego the way which promises assurance; and give up yourself merely to chance and hazard, from firm security. mark antony i'll fight at sea. cleopatra i have sixty sails, caesar none better. mark antony our overplus of shipping will we burn; and, with the rest full-mann'd, from the head of actium beat the approaching caesar. but if we fail, we then can do't at land. [enter a messenger] thy business? messenger the news is true, my lord; he is descried; caesar has taken toryne. mark antony can he be there in person? 'tis impossible; strange that power should be. canidius, our nineteen legions thou shalt hold by land, and our twelve thousand horse. we'll to our ship: away, my thetis! [enter a soldier] how now, worthy soldier? soldier o noble emperor, do not fight by sea; trust not to rotten planks: do you misdoubt this sword and these my wounds? let the egyptians and the phoenicians go a-ducking; we have used to conquer, standing on the earth, and fighting foot to foot. mark antony well, well: away! [exeunt mark antony, queen cleopatra, and domitius enobarbus] soldier by hercules, i think i am i' the right. canidius soldier, thou art: but his whole action grows not in the power on't: so our leader's led, and we are women's men. soldier you keep by land the legions and the horse whole, do you not? canidius marcus octavius, marcus justeius, publicola, and caelius, are for sea: but we keep whole by land. this speed of caesar's carries beyond belief. soldier while he was yet in rome, his power went out in such distractions as beguiled all spies. canidius who's his lieutenant, hear you? soldier they say, one taurus. canidius well i know the man. [enter a messenger] messenger the emperor calls canidius. canidius with news the time's with labour, and throes forth, each minute, some. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene viii a plain near actium. [enter octavius caesar, and taurus, with his army, marching] octavius caesar taurus! taurus my lord? octavius caesar strike not by land; keep whole: provoke not battle, till we have done at sea. do not exceed the prescript of this scroll: our fortune lies upon this jump. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene ix another part of the plain. [enter mark antony and domitius enobarbus] mark antony set we our squadrons on yond side o' the hill, in eye of caesar's battle; from which place we may the number of the ships behold, and so proceed accordingly. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene x another part of the plain. [canidius marcheth with his land army one way over the stage; and taurus, the lieutenant of octavius caesar, the other way. after their going in, is heard the noise of a sea-fight] [alarum. enter domitius enobarbus] domitius enobarbus naught, naught all, naught! i can behold no longer: the antoniad, the egyptian admiral, with all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder: to see't mine eyes are blasted. [enter scarus] scarus gods and goddesses, all the whole synod of them! domitius enobarbus what's thy passion! scarus the greater cantle of the world is lost with very ignorance; we have kiss'd away kingdoms and provinces. domitius enobarbus how appears the fight? scarus on our side like the token'd pestilence, where death is sure. yon ribaudred nag of egypt,- whom leprosy o'ertake!--i' the midst o' the fight, when vantage like a pair of twins appear'd, both as the same, or rather ours the elder, the breese upon her, like a cow in june, hoists sails and flies. domitius enobarbus that i beheld: mine eyes did sicken at the sight, and could not endure a further view. scarus she once being loof'd, the noble ruin of her magic, antony, claps on his sea-wing, and, like a doting mallard, leaving the fight in height, flies after her: i never saw an action of such shame; experience, manhood, honour, ne'er before did violate so itself. domitius enobarbus alack, alack! [enter canidius] canidius our fortune on the sea is out of breath, and sinks most lamentably. had our general been what he knew himself, it had gone well: o, he has given example for our flight, most grossly, by his own! domitius enobarbus ay, are you thereabouts? why, then, good night indeed. canidius toward peloponnesus are they fled. scarus 'tis easy to't; and there i will attend what further comes. canidius to caesar will i render my legions and my horse: six kings already show me the way of yielding. domitius enobarbus i'll yet follow the wounded chance of antony, though my reason sits in the wind against me. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene xi alexandria. cleopatra's palace. [enter mark antony with attendants] mark antony hark! the land bids me tread no more upon't; it is ashamed to bear me! friends, come hither: i am so lated in the world, that i have lost my way for ever: i have a ship laden with gold; take that, divide it; fly, and make your peace with caesar. all fly! not we. mark antony i have fled myself; and have instructed cowards to run and show their shoulders. friends, be gone; i have myself resolved upon a course which has no need of you; be gone: my treasure's in the harbour, take it. o, i follow'd that i blush to look upon: my very hairs do mutiny; for the white reprove the brown for rashness, and they them for fear and doting. friends, be gone: you shall have letters from me to some friends that will sweep your way for you. pray you, look not sad, nor make replies of loathness: take the hint which my despair proclaims; let that be left which leaves itself: to the sea-side straightway: i will possess you of that ship and treasure. leave me, i pray, a little: pray you now: nay, do so; for, indeed, i have lost command, therefore i pray you: i'll see you by and by. [sits down] [enter cleopatra led by charmian and iras; eros following] eros nay, gentle madam, to him, comfort him. iras do, most dear queen. charmian do! why: what else? cleopatra let me sit down. o juno! mark antony no, no, no, no, no. eros see you here, sir? mark antony o fie, fie, fie! charmian madam! iras madam, o good empress! eros sir, sir,- mark antony yes, my lord, yes; he at philippi kept his sword e'en like a dancer; while i struck the lean and wrinkled cassius; and 'twas i that the mad brutus ended: he alone dealt on lieutenantry, and no practise had in the brave squares of war: yet now--no matter. cleopatra ah, stand by. eros the queen, my lord, the queen. iras go to him, madam, speak to him: he is unqualitied with very shame. cleopatra well then, sustain him: o! eros most noble sir, arise; the queen approaches: her head's declined, and death will seize her, but your comfort makes the rescue. mark antony i have offended reputation, a most unnoble swerving. eros sir, the queen. mark antony o, whither hast thou led me, egypt? see, how i convey my shame out of thine eyes by looking back what i have left behind 'stroy'd in dishonour. cleopatra o my lord, my lord, forgive my fearful sails! i little thought you would have follow'd. mark antony egypt, thou knew'st too well my heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings, and thou shouldst tow me after: o'er my spirit thy full supremacy thou knew'st, and that thy beck might from the bidding of the gods command me. cleopatra o, my pardon! mark antony now i must to the young man send humble treaties, dodge and palter in the shifts of lowness; who with half the bulk o' the world play'd as i pleased, making and marring fortunes. you did know how much you were my conqueror; and that my sword, made weak by my affection, would obey it on all cause. cleopatra pardon, pardon! mark antony fall not a tear, i say; one of them rates all that is won and lost: give me a kiss; even this repays me. we sent our schoolmaster; is he come back? love, i am full of lead. some wine, within there, and our viands! fortune knows we scorn her most when most she offers blows. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene xii egypt. octavius caesar's camp. [enter octavius caesar, dolabella, thyreus, with others] octavius caesar let him appear that's come from antony. know you him? dolabella caesar, 'tis his schoolmaster: an argument that he is pluck'd, when hither he sends so poor a pinion off his wing, which had superfluous kings for messengers not many moons gone by. [enter euphronius, ambassador from mark antony] octavius caesar approach, and speak. euphronius such as i am, i come from antony: i was of late as petty to his ends as is the morn-dew on the myrtle-leaf to his grand sea. octavius caesar be't so: declare thine office. euphronius lord of his fortunes he salutes thee, and requires to live in egypt: which not granted, he lessens his requests; and to thee sues to let him breathe between the heavens and earth, a private man in athens: this for him. next, cleopatra does confess thy greatness; submits her to thy might; and of thee craves the circle of the ptolemies for her heirs, now hazarded to thy grace. octavius caesar for antony, i have no ears to his request. the queen of audience nor desire shall fail, so she from egypt drive her all-disgraced friend, or take his life there: this if she perform, she shall not sue unheard. so to them both. euphronius fortune pursue thee! octavius caesar bring him through the bands. [exit euphronius] [to thyreus] to try eloquence, now 'tis time: dispatch; from antony win cleopatra: promise, and in our name, what she requires; add more, from thine invention, offers: women are not in their best fortunes strong; but want will perjure the ne'er touch'd vestal: try thy cunning, thyreus; make thine own edict for thy pains, which we will answer as a law. thyreus caesar, i go. octavius caesar observe how antony becomes his flaw, and what thou think'st his very action speaks in every power that moves. thyreus caesar, i shall. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iii scene xiii alexandria. cleopatra's palace. [enter cleopatra, domitius enobarbus, charmian, and iras] cleopatra what shall we do, enobarbus? domitius enobarbus think, and die. cleopatra is antony or we in fault for this? domitius enobarbus antony only, that would make his will lord of his reason. what though you fled from that great face of war, whose several ranges frighted each other? why should he follow? the itch of his affection should not then have nick'd his captainship; at such a point, when half to half the world opposed, he being the meered question: 'twas a shame no less than was his loss, to course your flying flags, and leave his navy gazing. cleopatra prithee, peace. [enter mark antony with euphronius, the ambassador] mark antony is that his answer? euphronius ay, my lord. mark antony the queen shall then have courtesy, so she will yield us up. euphronius he says so. mark antony let her know't. to the boy caesar send this grizzled head, and he will fill thy wishes to the brim with principalities. cleopatra that head, my lord? mark antony to him again: tell him he wears the rose of youth upon him; from which the world should note something particular: his coin, ships, legions, may be a coward's; whose ministers would prevail under the service of a child as soon as i' the command of caesar: i dare him therefore to lay his gay comparisons apart, and answer me declined, sword against sword, ourselves alone. i'll write it: follow me. [exeunt mark antony and euphronius] domitius enobarbus [aside] yes, like enough, high-battled caesar will unstate his happiness, and be staged to the show, against a sworder! i see men's judgments are a parcel of their fortunes; and things outward do draw the inward quality after them, to suffer all alike. that he should dream, knowing all measures, the full caesar will answer his emptiness! caesar, thou hast subdued his judgment too. [enter an attendant] attendant a messenger from caesar. cleopatra what, no more ceremony? see, my women! against the blown rose may they stop their nose that kneel'd unto the buds. admit him, sir. [exit attendant] domitius enobarbus [aside] mine honesty and i begin to square. the loyalty well held to fools does make our faith mere folly: yet he that can endure to follow with allegiance a fall'n lord does conquer him that did his master conquer and earns a place i' the story. [enter thyreus] cleopatra caesar's will? thyreus hear it apart. cleopatra none but friends: say boldly. thyreus so, haply, are they friends to antony. domitius enobarbus he needs as many, sir, as caesar has; or needs not us. if caesar please, our master will leap to be his friend: for us, you know, whose he is we are, and that is, caesar's. thyreus so. thus then, thou most renown'd: caesar entreats, not to consider in what case thou stand'st, further than he is caesar. cleopatra go on: right royal. thyreus he knows that you embrace not antony as you did love, but as you fear'd him. cleopatra o! thyreus the scars upon your honour, therefore, he does pity, as constrained blemishes, not as deserved. cleopatra he is a god, and knows what is most right: mine honour was not yielded, but conquer'd merely. domitius enobarbus [aside] to be sure of that, i will ask antony. sir, sir, thou art so leaky, that we must leave thee to thy sinking, for thy dearest quit thee. [exit] thyreus shall i say to caesar what you require of him? for he partly begs to be desired to give. it much would please him, that of his fortunes you should make a staff to lean upon: but it would warm his spirits, to hear from me you had left antony, and put yourself under his shrowd, the universal landlord. cleopatra what's your name? thyreus my name is thyreus. cleopatra most kind messenger, say to great caesar this: in deputation i kiss his conquering hand: tell him, i am prompt to lay my crown at 's feet, and there to kneel: tell him from his all-obeying breath i hear the doom of egypt. thyreus 'tis your noblest course. wisdom and fortune combating together, if that the former dare but what it can, no chance may shake it. give me grace to lay my duty on your hand. cleopatra your caesar's father oft, when he hath mused of taking kingdoms in, bestow'd his lips on that unworthy place, as it rain'd kisses. [re-enter mark antony and domitius enobarbus] mark antony favours, by jove that thunders! what art thou, fellow? thyreus one that but performs the bidding of the fullest man, and worthiest to have command obey'd. domitius enobarbus [aside] you will be whipp'd. mark antony approach, there! ah, you kite! now, gods and devils! authority melts from me: of late, when i cried 'ho!' like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth, and cry 'your will?' have you no ears? i am antony yet. [enter attendants] take hence this jack, and whip him. domitius enobarbus [aside] 'tis better playing with a lion's whelp than with an old one dying. mark antony moon and stars! whip him. were't twenty of the greatest tributaries that do acknowledge caesar, should i find them so saucy with the hand of she here,--what's her name, since she was cleopatra? whip him, fellows, till, like a boy, you see him cringe his face, and whine aloud for mercy: take him hence. thyreus mark antony! mark antony tug him away: being whipp'd, bring him again: this jack of caesar's shall bear us an errand to him. [exeunt attendants with thyreus] you were half blasted ere i knew you: ha! have i my pillow left unpress'd in rome, forborne the getting of a lawful race, and by a gem of women, to be abused by one that looks on feeders? cleopatra good my lord,- mark antony you have been a boggler ever: but when we in our viciousness grow hard- o misery on't!--the wise gods seel our eyes; in our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us adore our errors; laugh at's, while we strut to our confusion. cleopatra o, is't come to this? mark antony i found you as a morsel cold upon dead caesar's trencher; nay, you were a fragment of cneius pompey's; besides what hotter hours, unregister'd in vulgar fame, you have luxuriously pick'd out: for, i am sure, though you can guess what temperance should be, you know not what it is. cleopatra wherefore is this? mark antony to let a fellow that will take rewards and say 'god quit you!' be familiar with my playfellow, your hand; this kingly seal and plighter of high hearts! o, that i were upon the hill of basan, to outroar the horned herd! for i have savage cause; and to proclaim it civilly, were like a halter'd neck which does the hangman thank for being yare about him. [re-enter attendants with thyreus] is he whipp'd? first attendant soundly, my lord. mark antony cried he? and begg'd a' pardon? first attendant he did ask favour. mark antony if that thy father live, let him repent thou wast not made his daughter; and be thou sorry to follow caesar in his triumph, since thou hast been whipp'd for following him: henceforth the white hand of a lady fever thee, shake thou to look on 't. get thee back to caesar, tell him thy entertainment: look, thou say he makes me angry with him; for he seems proud and disdainful, harping on what i am, not what he knew i was: he makes me angry; and at this time most easy 'tis to do't, when my good stars, that were my former guides, have empty left their orbs, and shot their fires into the abysm of hell. if he mislike my speech and what is done, tell him he has hipparchus, my enfranched bondman, whom he may at pleasure whip, or hang, or torture, as he shall like, to quit me: urge it thou: hence with thy stripes, begone! [exit thyreus] cleopatra have you done yet? mark antony alack, our terrene moon is now eclipsed; and it portends alone the fall of antony! cleopatra i must stay his time. mark antony to flatter caesar, would you mingle eyes with one that ties his points? cleopatra not know me yet? mark antony cold-hearted toward me? cleopatra ah, dear, if i be so, from my cold heart let heaven engender hail, and poison it in the source; and the first stone drop in my neck: as it determines, so dissolve my life! the next caesarion smite! till by degrees the memory of my womb, together with my brave egyptians all, by the discandying of this pelleted storm, lie graveless, till the flies and gnats of nile have buried them for prey! mark antony i am satisfied. caesar sits down in alexandria; where i will oppose his fate. our force by land hath nobly held; our sever'd navy too have knit again, and fleet, threatening most sea-like. where hast thou been, my heart? dost thou hear, lady? if from the field i shall return once more to kiss these lips, i will appear in blood; i and my sword will earn our chronicle: there's hope in't yet. cleopatra that's my brave lord! mark antony i will be treble-sinew'd, hearted, breathed, and fight maliciously: for when mine hours were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives of me for jests; but now i'll set my teeth, and send to darkness all that stop me. come, let's have one other gaudy night: call to me all my sad captains; fill our bowls once more; let's mock the midnight bell. cleopatra it is my birth-day: i had thought to have held it poor: but, since my lord is antony again, i will be cleopatra. mark antony we will yet do well. cleopatra call all his noble captains to my lord. mark antony do so, we'll speak to them; and to-night i'll force the wine peep through their scars. come on, my queen; there's sap in't yet. the next time i do fight, i'll make death love me; for i will contend even with his pestilent scythe. [exeunt all but domitius enobarbus] domitius enobarbus now he'll outstare the lightning. to be furious, is to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood the dove will peck the estridge; and i see still, a diminution in our captain's brain restores his heart: when valour preys on reason, it eats the sword it fights with. i will seek some way to leave him. [exit] antony and cleopatra act iv scene i before alexandria. octavius caesar's camp. [enter octavius caesar, agrippa, and mecaenas, with his army; octavius caesar reading a letter] octavius caesar he calls me boy; and chides, as he had power to beat me out of egypt; my messenger he hath whipp'd with rods; dares me to personal combat, caesar to antony: let the old ruffian know i have many other ways to die; meantime laugh at his challenge. mecaenas caesar must think, when one so great begins to rage, he's hunted even to falling. give him no breath, but now make boot of his distraction: never anger made good guard for itself. octavius caesar let our best heads know, that to-morrow the last of many battles we mean to fight: within our files there are, of those that served mark antony but late, enough to fetch him in. see it done: and feast the army; we have store to do't, and they have earn'd the waste. poor antony! [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iv scene ii alexandria. cleopatra's palace. [enter mark antony, cleopatra, domitius enobarbus, charmian, iras, alexas, with others] mark antony he will not fight with me, domitius. domitius enobarbus no. mark antony why should he not? domitius enobarbus he thinks, being twenty times of better fortune, he is twenty men to one. mark antony to-morrow, soldier, by sea and land i'll fight: or i will live, or bathe my dying honour in the blood shall make it live again. woo't thou fight well? domitius enobarbus i'll strike, and cry 'take all.' mark antony well said; come on. call forth my household servants: let's to-night be bounteous at our meal. [enter three or four servitors] give me thy hand, thou hast been rightly honest;--so hast thou;- thou,--and thou,--and thou:--you have served me well, and kings have been your fellows. cleopatra [aside to domitius enobarbus] what means this? domitius enobarbus [aside to cleopatra] 'tis one of those odd tricks which sorrow shoots out of the mind. mark antony and thou art honest too. i wish i could be made so many men, and all of you clapp'd up together in an antony, that i might do you service so good as you have done. all the gods forbid! mark antony well, my good fellows, wait on me to-night: scant not my cups; and make as much of me as when mine empire was your fellow too, and suffer'd my command. cleopatra [aside to domitius enobarbus] what does he mean? domitius enobarbus [aside to cleopatra] to make his followers weep. mark antony tend me to-night; may be it is the period of your duty: haply you shall not see me more; or if, a mangled shadow: perchance to-morrow you'll serve another master. i look on you as one that takes his leave. mine honest friends, i turn you not away; but, like a master married to your good service, stay till death: tend me to-night two hours, i ask no more, and the gods yield you for't! domitius enobarbus what mean you, sir, to give them this discomfort? look, they weep; and i, an ass, am onion-eyed: for shame, transform us not to women. mark antony ho, ho, ho! now the witch take me, if i meant it thus! grace grow where those drops fall! my hearty friends, you take me in too dolorous a sense; for i spake to you for your comfort; did desire you to burn this night with torches: know, my hearts, i hope well of to-morrow; and will lead you where rather i'll expect victorious life than death and honour. let's to supper, come, and drown consideration. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iv scene iii the same. before the palace. [enter two soldiers to their guard] first soldier brother, good night: to-morrow is the day. second soldier it will determine one way: fare you well. heard you of nothing strange about the streets? first soldier nothing. what news? second soldier belike 'tis but a rumour. good night to you. first soldier well, sir, good night. [enter two other soldiers] second soldier soldiers, have careful watch. third soldier and you. good night, good night. [they place themselves in every corner of the stage] fourth soldier here we: and if to-morrow our navy thrive, i have an absolute hope our landmen will stand up. third soldier 'tis a brave army, and full of purpose. [music of the hautboys as under the stage] fourth soldier peace! what noise? first soldier list, list! second soldier hark! first soldier music i' the air. third soldier under the earth. fourth soldier it signs well, does it not? third soldier no. first soldier peace, i say! what should this mean? second soldier 'tis the god hercules, whom antony loved, now leaves him. first soldier walk; let's see if other watchmen do hear what we do? [they advance to another post] second soldier how now, masters! all [speaking together] how now! how now! do you hear this? first soldier ay; is't not strange? third soldier do you hear, masters? do you hear? first soldier follow the noise so far as we have quarter; let's see how it will give off. all content. 'tis strange. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iv scene iv the same. a room in the palace. [enter mark antony and cleopatra, charmian, and others attending] mark antony eros! mine armour, eros! cleopatra sleep a little. mark antony no, my chuck. eros, come; mine armour, eros! [enter eros with armour] come good fellow, put mine iron on: if fortune be not ours to-day, it is because we brave her: come. cleopatra nay, i'll help too. what's this for? mark antony ah, let be, let be! thou art the armourer of my heart: false, false; this, this. cleopatra sooth, la, i'll help: thus it must be. mark antony well, well; we shall thrive now. seest thou, my good fellow? go put on thy defences. eros briefly, sir. cleopatra is not this buckled well? mark antony rarely, rarely: he that unbuckles this, till we do please to daff't for our repose, shall hear a storm. thou fumblest, eros; and my queen's a squire more tight at this than thou: dispatch. o love, that thou couldst see my wars to-day, and knew'st the royal occupation! thou shouldst see a workman in't. [enter an armed soldier] good morrow to thee; welcome: thou look'st like him that knows a warlike charge: to business that we love we rise betime, and go to't with delight. soldier a thousand, sir, early though't be, have on their riveted trim, and at the port expect you. [shout. trumpets flourish] [enter captains and soldiers] captain the morn is fair. good morrow, general. all good morrow, general. mark antony 'tis well blown, lads: this morning, like the spirit of a youth that means to be of note, begins betimes. so, so; come, give me that: this way; well said. fare thee well, dame, whate'er becomes of me: this is a soldier's kiss: rebukeable [kisses her] and worthy shameful cheque it were, to stand on more mechanic compliment; i'll leave thee now, like a man of steel. you that will fight, follow me close; i'll bring you to't. adieu. [exeunt mark antony, eros, captains, and soldiers] charmian please you, retire to your chamber. cleopatra lead me. he goes forth gallantly. that he and caesar might determine this great war in single fight! then antony,--but now--well, on. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iv scene v alexandria. mark antony's camp. [trumpets sound. enter mark antony and eros; a soldier meeting them] soldier the gods make this a happy day to antony! mark antony would thou and those thy scars had once prevail'd to make me fight at land! soldier hadst thou done so, the kings that have revolted, and the soldier that has this morning left thee, would have still follow'd thy heels. mark antony who's gone this morning? soldier who! one ever near thee: call for enobarbus, he shall not hear thee; or from caesar's camp say 'i am none of thine.' mark antony what say'st thou? soldier sir, he is with caesar. eros sir, his chests and treasure he has not with him. mark antony is he gone? soldier most certain. mark antony go, eros, send his treasure after; do it; detain no jot, i charge thee: write to him- i will subscribe--gentle adieus and greetings; say that i wish he never find more cause to change a master. o, my fortunes have corrupted honest men! dispatch.--enobarbus! [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iv scene vi alexandria. octavius caesar's camp. [flourish. enter octavius caesar, agrippa, with domitius enobarbus, and others] octavius caesar go forth, agrippa, and begin the fight: our will is antony be took alive; make it so known. agrippa caesar, i shall. [exit] octavius caesar the time of universal peace is near: prove this a prosperous day, the three-nook'd world shall bear the olive freely. [enter a messenger] messenger antony is come into the field. octavius caesar go charge agrippa plant those that have revolted in the van, that antony may seem to spend his fury upon himself. [exeunt all but domitius enobarbus] domitius enobarbus alexas did revolt; and went to jewry on affairs of antony; there did persuade great herod to incline himself to caesar, and leave his master antony: for this pains caesar hath hang'd him. canidius and the rest that fell away have entertainment, but no honourable trust. i have done ill; of which i do accuse myself so sorely, that i will joy no more. [enter a soldier of caesar's] soldier enobarbus, antony hath after thee sent all thy treasure, with his bounty overplus: the messenger came on my guard; and at thy tent is now unloading of his mules. domitius enobarbus i give it you. soldier mock not, enobarbus. i tell you true: best you safed the bringer out of the host; i must attend mine office, or would have done't myself. your emperor continues still a jove. [exit] domitius enobarbus i am alone the villain of the earth, and feel i am so most. o antony, thou mine of bounty, how wouldst thou have paid my better service, when my turpitude thou dost so crown with gold! this blows my heart: if swift thought break it not, a swifter mean shall outstrike thought: but thought will do't, i feel. i fight against thee! no: i will go seek some ditch wherein to die; the foul'st best fits my latter part of life. [exit] antony and cleopatra act iv scene vii field of battle between the camps. [alarum. drums and trumpets. enter agrippa and others] agrippa retire, we have engaged ourselves too far: caesar himself has work, and our oppression exceeds what we expected. [exeunt] [alarums. enter mark antony and scarus wounded] scarus o my brave emperor, this is fought indeed! had we done so at first, we had droven them home with clouts about their heads. mark antony thou bleed'st apace. scarus i had a wound here that was like a t, but now 'tis made an h. mark antony they do retire. scarus we'll beat 'em into bench-holes: i have yet room for six scotches more. [enter eros] eros they are beaten, sir, and our advantage serves for a fair victory. scarus let us score their backs, and snatch 'em up, as we take hares, behind: 'tis sport to maul a runner. mark antony i will reward thee once for thy spritely comfort, and ten-fold for thy good valour. come thee on. scarus i'll halt after. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iv scene viii under the walls of alexandria. [alarum. enter mark antony, in a march; scarus, with others] mark antony we have beat him to his camp: run one before, and let the queen know of our gests. to-morrow, before the sun shall see 's, we'll spill the blood that has to-day escaped. i thank you all; for doughty-handed are you, and have fought not as you served the cause, but as 't had been each man's like mine; you have shown all hectors. enter the city, clip your wives, your friends, tell them your feats; whilst they with joyful tears wash the congealment from your wounds, and kiss the honour'd gashes whole. [to scarus] give me thy hand [enter cleopatra, attended] to this great fairy i'll commend thy acts, make her thanks bless thee. [to cleopatra] o thou day o' the world, chain mine arm'd neck; leap thou, attire and all, through proof of harness to my heart, and there ride on the pants triumphing! cleopatra lord of lords! o infinite virtue, comest thou smiling from the world's great snare uncaught? mark antony my nightingale, we have beat them to their beds. what, girl! though grey do something mingle with our younger brown, yet ha' we a brain that nourishes our nerves, and can get goal for goal of youth. behold this man; commend unto his lips thy favouring hand: kiss it, my warrior: he hath fought to-day as if a god, in hate of mankind, had destroy'd in such a shape. cleopatra i'll give thee, friend, an armour all of gold; it was a king's. mark antony he has deserved it, were it carbuncled like holy phoebus' car. give me thy hand: through alexandria make a jolly march; bear our hack'd targets like the men that owe them: had our great palace the capacity to camp this host, we all would sup together, and drink carouses to the next day's fate, which promises royal peril. trumpeters, with brazen din blast you the city's ear; make mingle with rattling tabourines; that heaven and earth may strike their sounds together, applauding our approach. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iv scene ix octavius caesar's camp. [sentinels at their post] first soldier if we be not relieved within this hour, we must return to the court of guard: the night is shiny; and they say we shall embattle by the second hour i' the morn. second soldier this last day was a shrewd one to's. [enter domitius enobarbus] domitius enobarbus o, bear me witness, night,- third soldier what man is this? second soldier stand close, and list him. domitius enobarbus be witness to me, o thou blessed moon, when men revolted shall upon record bear hateful memory, poor enobarbus did before thy face repent! first soldier enobarbus! third soldier peace! hark further. domitius enobarbus o sovereign mistress of true melancholy, the poisonous damp of night disponge upon me, that life, a very rebel to my will, may hang no longer on me: throw my heart against the flint and hardness of my fault: which, being dried with grief, will break to powder, and finish all foul thoughts. o antony, nobler than my revolt is infamous, forgive me in thine own particular; but let the world rank me in register a master-leaver and a fugitive: o antony! o antony! [dies] second soldier let's speak to him. first soldier let's hear him, for the things he speaks may concern caesar. third soldier let's do so. but he sleeps. first soldier swoons rather; for so bad a prayer as his was never yet for sleep. second soldier go we to him. third soldier awake, sir, awake; speak to us. second soldier hear you, sir? first soldier the hand of death hath raught him. [drums afar off] hark! the drums demurely wake the sleepers. let us bear him to the court of guard; he is of note: our hour is fully out. third soldier come on, then; he may recover yet. [exeunt with the body] antony and cleopatra act iv scene x between the two camps. [enter mark antony and scarus, with their army] mark antony their preparation is to-day by sea; we please them not by land. scarus for both, my lord. mark antony i would they'ld fight i' the fire or i' the air; we'ld fight there too. but this it is; our foot upon the hills adjoining to the city shall stay with us: order for sea is given; they have put forth the haven [ ] where their appointment we may best discover, and look on their endeavour. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iv scene xi another part of the same. [enter octavius caesar, and his army] octavius caesar but being charged, we will be still by land, which, as i take't, we shall; for his best force is forth to man his galleys. to the vales, and hold our best advantage. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iv scene xii another part of the same. [enter mark antony and scarus] mark antony yet they are not join'd: where yond pine does stand, i shall discover all: i'll bring thee word straight, how 'tis like to go. [exit] scarus swallows have built in cleopatra's sails their nests: the augurers say they know not, they cannot tell; look grimly, and dare not speak their knowledge. antony is valiant, and dejected; and, by starts, his fretted fortunes give him hope, and fear, of what he has, and has not. [alarum afar off, as at a sea-fight] [re-enter mark antony] mark antony all is lost; this foul egyptian hath betrayed me: my fleet hath yielded to the foe; and yonder they cast their caps up and carouse together like friends long lost. triple-turn'd whore! 'tis thou hast sold me to this novice; and my heart makes only wars on thee. bid them all fly; for when i am revenged upon my charm, i have done all. bid them all fly; begone. [exit scarus] o sun, thy uprise shall i see no more: fortune and antony part here; even here do we shake hands. all come to this? the hearts that spaniel'd me at heels, to whom i gave their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets on blossoming caesar; and this pine is bark'd, that overtopp'd them all. betray'd i am: o this false soul of egypt! this grave charm,- whose eye beck'd forth my wars, and call'd them home; whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,- like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose, beguiled me to the very heart of loss. what, eros, eros! [enter cleopatra] ah, thou spell! avaunt! cleopatra why is my lord enraged against his love? mark antony vanish, or i shall give thee thy deserving, and blemish caesar's triumph. let him take thee, and hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians: follow his chariot, like the greatest spot of all thy sex; most monster-like, be shown for poor'st diminutives, for doits; and let patient octavia plough thy visage up with her prepared nails. [exit cleopatra] 'tis well thou'rt gone, if it be well to live; but better 'twere thou fell'st into my fury, for one death might have prevented many. eros, ho! the shirt of nessus is upon me: teach me, alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage: let me lodge lichas on the horns o' the moon; and with those hands, that grasp'd the heaviest club, subdue my worthiest self. the witch shall die: to the young roman boy she hath sold me, and i fall under this plot; she dies for't. eros, ho! [exit] antony and cleopatra act iv scene xiii alexandria. cleopatra's palace. [enter cleopatra, charmian, iras, and mardian] cleopatra help me, my women! o, he is more mad than telamon for his shield; the boar of thessaly was never so emboss'd. charmian to the monument! there lock yourself, and send him word you are dead. the soul and body rive not more in parting than greatness going off. cleopatra to the monument! mardian, go tell him i have slain myself; say, that the last i spoke was 'antony,' and word it, prithee, piteously: hence, mardian, and bring me how he takes my death. to the monument! [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act iv scene xiv the same. another room. [enter mark antony and eros] mark antony eros, thou yet behold'st me? eros ay, noble lord. mark antony sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish; a vapour sometime like a bear or lion, a tower'd citadel, a pendent rock, a forked mountain, or blue promontory with trees upon't, that nod unto the world, and mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs; they are black vesper's pageants. eros ay, my lord, mark antony that which is now a horse, even with a thought the rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct, as water is in water. eros it does, my lord. mark antony my good knave eros, now thy captain is even such a body: here i am antony: yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave. i made these wars for egypt: and the queen,- whose heart i thought i had, for she had mine; which whilst it was mine had annex'd unto't a million more, now lost,--she, eros, has pack'd cards with caesar, and false-play'd my glory unto an enemy's triumph. nay, weep not, gentle eros; there is left us ourselves to end ourselves. [enter mardian] o! thy vile lady! she has robb'd me of my sword. mardian no, antony; my mistress loved thee, and her fortunes mingled with thine entirely. mark antony hence, saucy eunuch; peace! she hath betray'd me and shall die the death. mardian death of one person can be paid but once, and that she has discharged: what thou wouldst do is done unto thy hand: the last she spake was 'antony! most noble antony!' then in the midst a tearing groan did break the name of antony; it was divided between her heart and lips: she render'd life, thy name so buried in her. mark antony dead, then? mardian dead. mark antony unarm, eros; the long day's task is done, and we must sleep. [to mardian] that thou depart'st hence safe, does pay thy labour richly; go. [exit mardian] off, pluck off: the seven-fold shield of ajax cannot keep the battery from my heart. o, cleave, my sides! heart, once be stronger than thy continent, crack thy frail case! apace, eros, apace. no more a soldier: bruised pieces, go; you have been nobly borne. from me awhile. [exit eros] i will o'ertake thee, cleopatra, and weep for my pardon. so it must be, for now all length is torture: since the torch is out, lie down, and stray no farther: now all labour mars what it does; yea, very force entangles itself with strength: seal then, and all is done. eros!--i come, my queen:--eros!--stay for me: where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand, and with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze: dido and her aeneas shall want troops, and all the haunt be ours. come, eros, eros! [re-enter eros] eros what would my lord? mark antony since cleopatra died, i have lived in such dishonour, that the gods detest my baseness. i, that with my sword quarter'd the world, and o'er green neptune's back with ships made cities, condemn myself to lack the courage of a woman; less noble mind than she which by her death our caesar tells 'i am conqueror of myself.' thou art sworn, eros, that, when the exigent should come, which now is come indeed, when i should see behind me the inevitable prosecution of disgrace and horror, that, on my command, thou then wouldst kill me: do't; the time is come: thou strikest not me, 'tis caesar thou defeat'st. put colour in thy cheek. eros the gods withhold me! shall i do that which all the parthian darts, though enemy, lost aim, and could not? mark antony eros, wouldst thou be window'd in great rome and see thy master thus with pleach'd arms, bending down his corrigible neck, his face subdued to penetrative shame, whilst the wheel'd seat of fortunate caesar, drawn before him, branded his baseness that ensued? eros i would not see't. mark antony come, then; for with a wound i must be cured. draw that thy honest sword, which thou hast worn most useful for thy country. eros o, sir, pardon me! mark antony when i did make thee free, sworest thou not then to do this when i bade thee? do it at once; or thy precedent services are all but accidents unpurposed. draw, and come. eros turn from me, then, that noble countenance, wherein the worship of the whole world lies. mark antony lo thee! [turning from him] eros my sword is drawn. mark antony then let it do at once the thing why thou hast drawn it. eros my dear master, my captain, and my emperor, let me say, before i strike this bloody stroke, farewell. mark antony 'tis said, man; and farewell. eros farewell, great chief. shall i strike now? mark antony now, eros. eros why, there then: thus i do escape the sorrow of antony's death. [kills himself] mark antony thrice-nobler than myself! thou teachest me, o valiant eros, what i should, and thou couldst not. my queen and eros have by their brave instruction got upon me a nobleness in record: but i will be a bridegroom in my death, and run into't as to a lover's bed. come, then; and, eros, thy master dies thy scholar: to do thus [falling on his sword] i learn'd of thee. how! not dead? not dead? the guard, ho! o, dispatch me! [enter dercetas and guard] first guard what's the noise? mark antony i have done my work in, friends: o, make an end of what i have begun. second guard the star is fall'n. first guard and time is at his period. all alas, and woe! mark antony let him that loves me strike me dead. first guard not i. second guard nor i. third guard nor any one. [exeunt guard] dercetas thy death and fortunes bid thy followers fly. this sword but shown to caesar, with this tidings, shall enter me with him. [enter diomedes] diomedes where's antony? dercetas there, diomed there. diomedes lives he? wilt thou not answer, man? [exit dercetas] mark antony art thou there, diomed? draw thy sword, and give me sufficing strokes for death. diomedes most absolute lord, my mistress cleopatra sent me to thee. mark antony when did she send thee? diomedes now, my lord. mark antony where is she? diomedes lock'd in her monument. she had a prophesying fear of what hath come to pass: for when she saw- which never shall be found--you did suspect she had disposed with caesar, and that your rage would not be purged, she sent you word she was dead; but, fearing since how it might work, hath sent me to proclaim the truth; and i am come, i dread, too late. mark antony too late, good diomed: call my guard, i prithee. diomedes what, ho, the emperor's guard! the guard, what, ho! come, your lord calls! [enter four or five of the guard of mark antony] mark antony bear me, good friends, where cleopatra bides; 'tis the last service that i shall command you. first guard woe, woe are we, sir, you may not live to wear all your true followers out. all most heavy day! mark antony nay, good my fellows, do not please sharp fate to grace it with your sorrows: bid that welcome which comes to punish us, and we punish it seeming to bear it lightly. take me up: i have led you oft: carry me now, good friends, and have my thanks for all. [exeunt, bearing mark antony] antony and cleopatra act iv scene xv the same. a monument. [enter cleopatra and her maids aloft, with charmian and iras] cleopatra o charmian, i will never go from hence. charmian be comforted, dear madam. cleopatra no, i will not: all strange and terrible events are welcome, but comforts we despise; our size of sorrow, proportion'd to our cause, must be as great as that which makes it. [enter, below, diomedes] how now! is he dead? diomedes his death's upon him, but not dead. look out o' the other side your monument; his guard have brought him thither. [enter, below, mark antony, borne by the guard] cleopatra o sun, burn the great sphere thou movest in! darkling stand the varying shore o' the world. o antony, antony, antony! help, charmian, help, iras, help; help, friends below; let's draw him hither. mark antony peace! not caesar's valour hath o'erthrown antony, but antony's hath triumph'd on itself. cleopatra so it should be, that none but antony should conquer antony; but woe 'tis so! mark antony i am dying, egypt, dying; only i here importune death awhile, until of many thousand kisses the poor last i lay up thy lips. cleopatra i dare not, dear,- dear my lord, pardon,--i dare not, lest i be taken: not the imperious show of the full-fortuned caesar ever shall be brooch'd with me; if knife, drugs, serpents, have edge, sting, or operation, i am safe: your wife octavia, with her modest eyes and still conclusion, shall acquire no honour demuring upon me. but come, come, antony,- help me, my women,--we must draw thee up: assist, good friends. mark antony o, quick, or i am gone. cleopatra here's sport indeed! how heavy weighs my lord! our strength is all gone into heaviness, that makes the weight: had i great juno's power, the strong-wing'd mercury should fetch thee up, and set thee by jove's side. yet come a little,- wishes were ever fools,--o, come, come, come; [they heave mark antony aloft to cleopatra] and welcome, welcome! die where thou hast lived: quicken with kissing: had my lips that power, thus would i wear them out. all a heavy sight! mark antony i am dying, egypt, dying: give me some wine, and let me speak a little. cleopatra no, let me speak; and let me rail so high, that the false housewife fortune break her wheel, provoked by my offence. mark antony one word, sweet queen: of caesar seek your honour, with your safety. o! cleopatra they do not go together. mark antony gentle, hear me: none about caesar trust but proculeius. cleopatra my resolution and my hands i'll trust; none about caesar. mark antony the miserable change now at my end lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts in feeding them with those my former fortunes wherein i lived, the greatest prince o' the world, the noblest; and do now not basely die, not cowardly put off my helmet to my countryman,--a roman by a roman valiantly vanquish'd. now my spirit is going; i can no more. cleopatra noblest of men, woo't die? hast thou no care of me? shall i abide in this dull world, which in thy absence is no better than a sty? o, see, my women, [mark antony dies] the crown o' the earth doth melt. my lord! o, wither'd is the garland of the war, the soldier's pole is fall'n: young boys and girls are level now with men; the odds is gone, and there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon. [faints] charmian o, quietness, lady! iras she is dead too, our sovereign. charmian lady! iras madam! charmian o madam, madam, madam! iras royal egypt, empress! charmian peace, peace, iras! cleopatra no more, but e'en a woman, and commanded by such poor passion as the maid that milks and does the meanest chares. it were for me to throw my sceptre at the injurious gods; to tell them that this world did equal theirs till they had stol'n our jewel. all's but naught; patience is scottish, and impatience does become a dog that's mad: then is it sin to rush into the secret house of death, ere death dare come to us? how do you, women? what, what! good cheer! why, how now, charmian! my noble girls! ah, women, women, look, our lamp is spent, it's out! good sirs, take heart: we'll bury him; and then, what's brave, what's noble, let's do it after the high roman fashion, and make death proud to take us. come, away: this case of that huge spirit now is cold: ah, women, women! come; we have no friend but resolution, and the briefest end. [exeunt; those above bearing off mark antony's body] antony and cleopatra act v scene i alexandria. octavius caesar's camp. [enter octavius caesar, agrippa, dolabella, mecaenas, gallus, proculeius, and others, his council of war] octavius caesar go to him, dolabella, bid him yield; being so frustrate, tell him he mocks the pauses that he makes. dolabella caesar, i shall. [exit] [enter dercetas, with the sword of mark antony] octavius caesar wherefore is that? and what art thou that darest appear thus to us? dercetas i am call'd dercetas; mark antony i served, who best was worthy best to be served: whilst he stood up and spoke, he was my master; and i wore my life to spend upon his haters. if thou please to take me to thee, as i was to him i'll be to caesar; if thou pleasest not, i yield thee up my life. octavius caesar what is't thou say'st? dercetas i say, o caesar, antony is dead. octavius caesar the breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack: the round world should have shook lions into civil streets, and citizens to their dens: the death of antony is not a single doom; in the name lay a moiety of the world. dercetas he is dead, caesar: not by a public minister of justice, nor by a hired knife; but that self hand, which writ his honour in the acts it did, hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it, splitted the heart. this is his sword; i robb'd his wound of it; behold it stain'd with his most noble blood. octavius caesar look you sad, friends? the gods rebuke me, but it is tidings to wash the eyes of kings. agrippa and strange it is, that nature must compel us to lament our most persisted deeds. mecaenas his taints and honours waged equal with him. agrippa a rarer spirit never did steer humanity: but you, gods, will give us some faults to make us men. caesar is touch'd. mecaenas when such a spacious mirror's set before him, he needs must see himself. octavius caesar o antony! i have follow'd thee to this; but we do lance diseases in our bodies: i must perforce have shown to thee such a declining day, or look on thine; we could not stall together in the whole world: but yet let me lament, with tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts, that thou, my brother, my competitor in top of all design, my mate in empire, friend and companion in the front of war, the arm of mine own body, and the heart where mine his thoughts did kindle,--that our stars, unreconciliable, should divide our equalness to this. hear me, good friends- but i will tell you at some meeter season: [enter an egyptian] the business of this man looks out of him; we'll hear him what he says. whence are you? egyptian a poor egyptian yet. the queen my mistress, confined in all she has, her monument, of thy intents desires instruction, that she preparedly may frame herself to the way she's forced to. octavius caesar bid her have good heart: she soon shall know of us, by some of ours, how honourable and how kindly we determine for her; for caesar cannot live to be ungentle. egyptian so the gods preserve thee! [exit] octavius caesar come hither, proculeius. go and say, we purpose her no shame: give her what comforts the quality of her passion shall require, lest, in her greatness, by some mortal stroke she do defeat us; for her life in rome would be eternal in our triumph: go, and with your speediest bring us what she says, and how you find of her. proculeius caesar, i shall. [exit] octavius caesar gallus, go you along. [exit gallus] where's dolabella, to second proculeius? all dolabella! octavius caesar let him alone, for i remember now how he's employ'd: he shall in time be ready. go with me to my tent; where you shall see how hardly i was drawn into this war; how calm and gentle i proceeded still in all my writings: go with me, and see what i can show in this. [exeunt] antony and cleopatra act v scene ii alexandria. a room in the monument. [enter cleopatra, charmian, and iras] cleopatra my desolation does begin to make a better life. 'tis paltry to be caesar; not being fortune, he's but fortune's knave, a minister of her will: and it is great to do that thing that ends all other deeds; which shackles accidents and bolts up change; which sleeps, and never palates more the dug, the beggar's nurse and caesar's. [enter, to the gates of the monument, proculeius, gallus and soldiers] proculeius caesar sends greeting to the queen of egypt; and bids thee study on what fair demands thou mean'st to have him grant thee. cleopatra what's thy name? proculeius my name is proculeius. cleopatra antony did tell me of you, bade me trust you; but i do not greatly care to be deceived, that have no use for trusting. if your master would have a queen his beggar, you must tell him, that majesty, to keep decorum, must no less beg than a kingdom: if he please to give me conquer'd egypt for my son, he gives me so much of mine own, as i will kneel to him with thanks. proculeius be of good cheer; you're fall'n into a princely hand, fear nothing: make your full reference freely to my lord, who is so full of grace, that it flows over on all that need: let me report to him your sweet dependency; and you shall find a conqueror that will pray in aid for kindness, where he for grace is kneel'd to. cleopatra pray you, tell him i am his fortune's vassal, and i send him the greatness he has got. i hourly learn a doctrine of obedience; and would gladly look him i' the face. proculeius this i'll report, dear lady. have comfort, for i know your plight is pitied of him that caused it. gallus you see how easily she may be surprised: [here proculeius and two of the guard ascend the monument by a ladder placed against a window, and, having descended, come behind cleopatra. some of the guard unbar and open the gates] [to proculeius and the guard] guard her till caesar come. [exit] iras royal queen! charmian o cleopatra! thou art taken, queen: cleopatra quick, quick, good hands. [drawing a dagger] proculeius hold, worthy lady, hold: [seizes and disarms her] do not yourself such wrong, who are in this relieved, but not betray'd. cleopatra what, of death too, that rids our dogs of languish? proculeius cleopatra, do not abuse my master's bounty by the undoing of yourself: let the world see his nobleness well acted, which your death will never let come forth. cleopatra where art thou, death? come hither, come! come, come, and take a queen worthy many babes and beggars! proculeius o, temperance, lady! cleopatra sir, i will eat no meat, i'll not drink, sir; if idle talk will once be necessary, i'll not sleep neither: this mortal house i'll ruin, do caesar what he can. know, sir, that i will not wait pinion'd at your master's court; nor once be chastised with the sober eye of dull octavia. shall they hoist me up and show me to the shouting varletry of censuring rome? rather a ditch in egypt be gentle grave unto me! rather on nilus' mud lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies blow me into abhorring! rather make my country's high pyramides my gibbet, and hang me up in chains! proculeius you do extend these thoughts of horror further than you shall find cause in caesar. [enter dolabella] dolabella proculeius, what thou hast done thy master caesar knows, and he hath sent for thee: for the queen, i'll take her to my guard. proculeius so, dolabella, it shall content me best: be gentle to her. [to cleopatra] to caesar i will speak what you shall please, if you'll employ me to him. cleopatra say, i would die. [exeunt proculeius and soldiers] dolabella most noble empress, you have heard of me? cleopatra i cannot tell. dolabella assuredly you know me. cleopatra no matter, sir, what i have heard or known. you laugh when boys or women tell their dreams; is't not your trick? dolabella i understand not, madam. cleopatra i dream'd there was an emperor antony: o, such another sleep, that i might see but such another man! dolabella if it might please ye,- cleopatra his face was as the heavens; and therein stuck a sun and moon, which kept their course, and lighted the little o, the earth. dolabella most sovereign creature,- cleopatra his legs bestrid the ocean: his rear'd arm crested the world: his voice was propertied as all the tuned spheres, and that to friends; but when he meant to quail and shake the orb, he was as rattling thunder. for his bounty, there was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas that grew the more by reaping: his delights were dolphin-like; they show'd his back above the element they lived in: in his livery walk'd crowns and crownets; realms and islands were as plates dropp'd from his pocket. dolabella cleopatra! cleopatra think you there was, or might be, such a man as this i dream'd of? dolabella gentle madam, no. cleopatra you lie, up to the hearing of the gods. but, if there be, or ever were, one such, it's past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff to vie strange forms with fancy; yet, to imagine and antony, were nature's piece 'gainst fancy, condemning shadows quite. dolabella hear me, good madam. your loss is as yourself, great; and you bear it as answering to the weight: would i might never o'ertake pursued success, but i do feel, by the rebound of yours, a grief that smites my very heart at root. cleopatra i thank you, sir, know you what caesar means to do with me? dolabella i am loath to tell you what i would you knew. cleopatra nay, pray you, sir,- dolabella though he be honourable,- cleopatra he'll lead me, then, in triumph? dolabella madam, he will; i know't. [flourish, and shout within, 'make way there: octavius caesar!'] [enter octavius caesar, gallus, proculeius, mecaenas, seleucus, and others of his train] octavius caesar which is the queen of egypt? dolabella it is the emperor, madam. [cleopatra kneels] octavius caesar arise, you shall not kneel: i pray you, rise; rise, egypt. cleopatra sir, the gods will have it thus; my master and my lord i must obey. octavius caesar take to you no hard thoughts: the record of what injuries you did us, though written in our flesh, we shall remember as things but done by chance. cleopatra sole sir o' the world, i cannot project mine own cause so well to make it clear; but do confess i have been laden with like frailties which before have often shamed our sex. octavius caesar cleopatra, know, we will extenuate rather than enforce: if you apply yourself to our intents, which towards you are most gentle, you shall find a benefit in this change; but if you seek to lay on me a cruelty, by taking antony's course, you shall bereave yourself of my good purposes, and put your children to that destruction which i'll guard them from, if thereon you rely. i'll take my leave. cleopatra and may, through all the world: 'tis yours; and we, your scutcheons and your signs of conquest, shall hang in what place you please. here, my good lord. octavius caesar you shall advise me in all for cleopatra. cleopatra this is the brief of money, plate, and jewels, i am possess'd of: 'tis exactly valued; not petty things admitted. where's seleucus? seleucus here, madam. cleopatra this is my treasurer: let him speak, my lord, upon his peril, that i have reserved to myself nothing. speak the truth, seleucus. seleucus madam, i had rather seal my lips, than, to my peril, speak that which is not. cleopatra what have i kept back? seleucus enough to purchase what you have made known. octavius caesar nay, blush not, cleopatra; i approve your wisdom in the deed. cleopatra see, caesar! o, behold, how pomp is follow'd! mine will now be yours; and, should we shift estates, yours would be mine. the ingratitude of this seleucus does even make me wild: o slave, of no more trust than love that's hired! what, goest thou back? thou shalt go back, i warrant thee; but i'll catch thine eyes, though they had wings: slave, soulless villain, dog! o rarely base! octavius caesar good queen, let us entreat you. cleopatra o caesar, what a wounding shame is this, that thou, vouchsafing here to visit me, doing the honour of thy lordliness to one so meek, that mine own servant should parcel the sum of my disgraces by addition of his envy! say, good caesar, that i some lady trifles have reserved, immoment toys, things of such dignity as we greet modern friends withal; and say, some nobler token i have kept apart for livia and octavia, to induce their mediation; must i be unfolded with one that i have bred? the gods! it smites me beneath the fall i have. [to seleucus] prithee, go hence; or i shall show the cinders of my spirits through the ashes of my chance: wert thou a man, thou wouldst have mercy on me. octavius caesar forbear, seleucus. [exit seleucus] cleopatra be it known, that we, the greatest, are misthought for things that others do; and, when we fall, we answer others' merits in our name, are therefore to be pitied. octavius caesar cleopatra, not what you have reserved, nor what acknowledged, put we i' the roll of conquest: still be't yours, bestow it at your pleasure; and believe, caesar's no merchant, to make prize with you of things that merchants sold. therefore be cheer'd; make not your thoughts your prisons: no, dear queen; for we intend so to dispose you as yourself shall give us counsel. feed, and sleep: our care and pity is so much upon you, that we remain your friend; and so, adieu. cleopatra my master, and my lord! octavius caesar not so. adieu. [flourish. exeunt octavius caesar and his train] cleopatra he words me, girls, he words me, that i should not be noble to myself: but, hark thee, charmian. [whispers charmian] iras finish, good lady; the bright day is done, and we are for the dark. cleopatra hie thee again: i have spoke already, and it is provided; go put it to the haste. charmian madam, i will. [re-enter dolabella] dolabella where is the queen? charmian behold, sir. [exit] cleopatra dolabella! dolabella madam, as thereto sworn by your command, which my love makes religion to obey, i tell you this: caesar through syria intends his journey; and within three days you with your children will he send before: make your best use of this: i have perform'd your pleasure and my promise. cleopatra dolabella, i shall remain your debtor. dolabella i your servant, adieu, good queen; i must attend on caesar. cleopatra farewell, and thanks. [exit dolabella] now, iras, what think'st thou? thou, an egyptian puppet, shalt be shown in rome, as well as i mechanic slaves with greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths, rank of gross diet, shall be enclouded, and forced to drink their vapour. iras the gods forbid! cleopatra nay, 'tis most certain, iras: saucy lictors will catch at us, like strumpets; and scald rhymers ballad us out o' tune: the quick comedians extemporally will stage us, and present our alexandrian revels; antony shall be brought drunken forth, and i shall see some squeaking cleopatra boy my greatness i' the posture of a whore. iras o the good gods! cleopatra nay, that's certain. iras i'll never see 't; for, i am sure, my nails are stronger than mine eyes. cleopatra why, that's the way to fool their preparation, and to conquer their most absurd intents. [re-enter charmian] now, charmian! show me, my women, like a queen: go fetch my best attires: i am again for cydnus, to meet mark antony: sirrah iras, go. now, noble charmian, we'll dispatch indeed; and, when thou hast done this chare, i'll give thee leave to play till doomsday. bring our crown and all. wherefore's this noise? [exit iras. a noise within] [enter a guardsman] guard here is a rural fellow that will not be denied your highness presence: he brings you figs. cleopatra let him come in. [exit guardsman] what poor an instrument may do a noble deed! he brings me liberty. my resolution's placed, and i have nothing of woman in me: now from head to foot i am marble-constant; now the fleeting moon no planet is of mine. [re-enter guardsman, with clown bringing in a basket] guard this is the man. cleopatra avoid, and leave him. [exit guardsman] hast thou the pretty worm of nilus there, that kills and pains not? clown truly, i have him: but i would not be the party that should desire you to touch him, for his biting is immortal; those that do die of it do seldom or never recover. cleopatra rememberest thou any that have died on't? clown very many, men and women too. i heard of one of them no longer than yesterday: a very honest woman, but something given to lie; as a woman should not do, but in the way of honesty: how she died of the biting of it, what pain she felt: truly, she makes a very good report o' the worm; but he that will believe all that they say, shall never be saved by half that they do: but this is most fallible, the worm's an odd worm. cleopatra get thee hence; farewell. clown i wish you all joy of the worm. [setting down his basket] cleopatra farewell. clown you must think this, look you, that the worm will do his kind. cleopatra ay, ay; farewell. clown look you, the worm is not to be trusted but in the keeping of wise people; for, indeed, there is no goodness in worm. cleopatra take thou no care; it shall be heeded. clown very good. give it nothing, i pray you, for it is not worth the feeding. cleopatra will it eat me? clown you must not think i am so simple but i know the devil himself will not eat a woman: i know that a woman is a dish for the gods, if the devil dress her not. but, truly, these same whoreson devils do the gods great harm in their women; for in every ten that they make, the devils mar five. cleopatra well, get thee gone; farewell. clown yes, forsooth: i wish you joy o' the worm. [exit] [re-enter iras with a robe, crown, &c] cleopatra give me my robe, put on my crown; i have immortal longings in me: now no more the juice of egypt's grape shall moist this lip: yare, yare, good iras; quick. methinks i hear antony call; i see him rouse himself to praise my noble act; i hear him mock the luck of caesar, which the gods give men to excuse their after wrath: husband, i come: now to that name my courage prove my title! i am fire and air; my other elements i give to baser life. so; have you done? come then, and take the last warmth of my lips. farewell, kind charmian; iras, long farewell. [kisses them. iras falls and dies] have i the aspic in my lips? dost fall? if thou and nature can so gently part, the stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, which hurts, and is desired. dost thou lie still? if thus thou vanishest, thou tell'st the world it is not worth leave-taking. charmian dissolve, thick cloud, and rain; that i may say, the gods themselves do weep! cleopatra this proves me base: if she first meet the curled antony, he'll make demand of her, and spend that kiss which is my heaven to have. come, thou mortal wretch, [to an asp, which she applies to her breast] with thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate of life at once untie: poor venomous fool be angry, and dispatch. o, couldst thou speak, that i might hear thee call great caesar ass unpolicied! charmian o eastern star! cleopatra peace, peace! dost thou not see my baby at my breast, that sucks the nurse asleep? charmian o, break! o, break! cleopatra as sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle,- o antony!--nay, i will take thee too. [applying another asp to her arm] what should i stay- [dies] charmian in this vile world? so, fare thee well. now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies a lass unparallel'd. downy windows, close; and golden phoebus never be beheld of eyes again so royal! your crown's awry; i'll mend it, and then play. [enter the guard, rushing in] first guard where is the queen? charmian speak softly, wake her not. first guard caesar hath sent- charmian too slow a messenger. [applies an asp] o, come apace, dispatch! i partly feel thee. first guard approach, ho! all's not well: caesar's beguiled. second guard there's dolabella sent from caesar; call him. first guard what work is here! charmian, is this well done? charmian it is well done, and fitting for a princess descended of so many royal kings. ah, soldier! [dies] [re-enter dolabella] dolabella how goes it here? second guard all dead. dolabella caesar, thy thoughts touch their effects in this: thyself art coming to see perform'd the dreaded act which thou so sought'st to hinder. [within 'a way there, a way for caesar!'] [re-enter octavius caesar and all his train marching] dolabella o sir, you are too sure an augurer; that you did fear is done. octavius caesar bravest at the last, she levell'd at our purposes, and, being royal, took her own way. the manner of their deaths? i do not see them bleed. dolabella who was last with them? first guard a simple countryman, that brought her figs: this was his basket. octavius caesar poison'd, then. first guard o caesar, this charmian lived but now; she stood and spake: i found her trimming up the diadem on her dead mistress; tremblingly she stood and on the sudden dropp'd. octavius caesar o noble weakness! if they had swallow'd poison, 'twould appear by external swelling: but she looks like sleep, as she would catch another antony in her strong toil of grace. dolabella here, on her breast, there is a vent of blood and something blown: the like is on her arm. first guard this is an aspic's trail: and these fig-leaves have slime upon them, such as the aspic leaves upon the caves of nile. octavius caesar most probable that so she died; for her physician tells me she hath pursued conclusions infinite of easy ways to die. take up her bed; and bear her women from the monument: she shall be buried by her antony: no grave upon the earth shall clip in it a pair so famous. high events as these strike those that make them; and their story is no less in pity than his glory which brought them to be lamented. our army shall in solemn show attend this funeral; and then to rome. come, dolabella, see high order in this great solemnity. [exeunt] 1834 to one in paradise by edgar allan poe thou wast all that to me, love, for which my soul did pine a green isle in the sea, love, a fountain and a shrine, all wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, and all the flowers were mine. ah, dream too bright to last! ah, starry hope! that didst arise but to be overcast! a voice from out the future cries, "on! on!"but o'er the past (dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies mute, motionless, aghast! for, alas! alas! me the light of life is o'er! "no moreno moreno more-" (such language holds the solemn sea to the sands upon the shore) shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree or the stricken eagle soar! and all my days are trances, and all my nightly dreams are where thy grey eye glances, and where thy footstep gleams in what ethereal dances, by what eternal streams. -the end. 1850 the landscape garden by edgar allan poe the garden like a lady fair was cut that lay as if she slumbered in delight, and to the open skies her eyes did shut; the azure fields of heaven were 'sembled right in a large round set with flow'rs of light: the flowers de luce and the round sparks of dew that hung upon their azure leaves, did show like twinkling stars that sparkle in the ev'ning blue. giles fletcher no more remarkable man ever lived than my friend, the young ellison. he was remarkable in the entire and continuous profusion of good gifts ever lavished upon him by fortune. from his cradle to his grave, a gale of the blandest prosperity bore him along. nor do i use the word prosperity in its mere wordly or external sense. i mean it as synonymous with happiness. the person of whom i speak, seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the wild doctrines of turgot, price, priestley, and condorcetof exemplifying, by individual instance, what has been deemed the mere chimera of the perfectionists. in the brief existence of ellison, i fancy, that i have seen refuted the dogmathat in man's physical and spiritual nature, lies some hidden principle, the antagonist of bliss. an intimate and anxious examination of his career, has taught me to understand that, in general, from the violation of a few simple laws of humanity, arises the wretchedness of mankind; that, as a species, we have in our possession the as yet unwrought elements of content,and that even now, in the present blindness and darkness of all idea on the great question of the social condition, it is not impossible that man, the individual, under certain unusual and highly fortuitous conditions, may be happy. with opinions such as these was my young friend fully imbued; and thus is it especially worthy of observation that the uninterrupted enjoyment which distinguished his life was in great part the result of preconcert. it is, indeed evident, that with less of the instinctive philosophy which, now and then, stands so well in the stead of experience, mr. ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary successes of his life, into the common vortex of unhappiness which yawns for those of preeminent endowments. but it is by no means my present object to pen an essay on happiness. the ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words. he admitted but four unvarying laws, or rather elementary principles, of bliss. that which he considered chief, was (strange to say!) the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. "the health," he said, "attainable by other means than this is scarcely worth the name." he pointed to the tillers of the earththe only people who, as a class, are proverbially more happy than othersand then he instanced the high ecstasies of the fox-hunter. his second principle was the love of woman. his third was the contempt of ambition. his fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other things being equal, the extent of happiness was proportioned to the spirituality of this object. i have said that ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion of good gifts lavished upon him by fortune. in personal grace and beauty he exceeded all men. his intellect was of that order to which the attainment of knowledge is less a labor than a necessity and an intuition. his family was one of the most illustrious of the empire. his bride was the loveliest and most devoted of women. his possessions had been always ample; but, upon the attainment of his one and twentieth year, it was discovered that one of those extraordinary freaks of fate had been played in his behalf which startle the whole social world amid which they occur, and seldom fail radically to alter the entire moral constitution of those who are their objects. it appears that about one hundred years prior to mr. ellison's attainment of his majority, there had died, in a remote province, one mr. seabright ellison. this gentlemen had amassed a princely fortune, and, having no very immediate connexions, conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a century after his decease. minutely and sagaciously directing the various modes of investment, he bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest of blood, bearing the name ellison, who should be alive at the end of the hundred years. many futile attempts had been made to set aside this singular bequest; their ex post facto character rendered them abortive; but the attention of a jealous government was aroused, and a decree finally obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations. this act did not prevent young ellison, upon his twenty-first birth-day, from entering into possession, as the heir of his ancestor, seabright, of a fortune of four hundred and fifty millions of dollars.* * an incident similar in outline to the one here imagined, occurred, not very long ago, in england. the name of the fortunate heir (who still lives,) is thelluson. i first saw an account of this matter in the "tour" of prince puckler muskau. he makes the sum received ninety millions of pounds, and observes, with much force, that, "in the contemplation of so vast a sum, and of the services, to which it might be applied, there is something even of the sublime." to suit the views of this article, i have followed the prince's statementa grossly exaggerated one, no doubt. when it had become definitely known that such was the enormous wealth inherited, there were, of course, many speculations as to the mode of its disposal. the gigantic magnitude and the immediately available nature of the sum, dazzled and bewildered all who thought upon the topic. the possessor of any appreciable amount of money might have been imagined to perform any one of a thousand things. with riches merely surpassing those of any citizen, it would have been easy to suppose him engaging to supreme excess in the fashionable extravagances of his time; or busying himself with political intrigues; or aiming at ministerial power, or purchasing increase of nobility, or devising gorgeous architectural piles; or collecting large specimens of virtu; or playing the munificent patron of letters and art; or endowing and bestowing his name upon extensive institutions of charity. but, for the inconceivable wealth in the actual possession of the young heir, these objects and all ordinary objects were felt to be inadequate. recourse was had to figures; and figures but sufficed to confound. it was seen, that even at three per cent, the annual income of the inheritance amounted to no less than thirteen millions and five hundred thousand dollars; which was one million and one hundred and twenty-five thousand per month; or thirty-six thousand, nine hundred and eighty-six per day, or one thousand five hundred and forty-one per hour, or six and twenty dollars for every minute that flew. thus the usual track of supposition was thoroughly broken up. men knew not what to imagine. there were some who even conceived that mr. ellison would divest himself forthwith of at least two-thirds of his fortune as of utterly superfluous opulence; enriching whole troops of his relatives by division of his superabundance. i was not surprised, however, to perceive that he had long made up his mind upon a topic which had occasioned so much of discussion to his friends. nor was i greatly astonished at the nature of his decision. in the widest and noblest sense, he was a poet. he comprehended, moreover, the true character, the august aims, the supreme majesty and dignity of the poetic sentiment. the proper gratification of the sentiment he instinctively felt to lie in the creation of novel forms of beauty. some peculiarities, either in his early education, or in the nature of his intellect, had tinged with what is termed materialism the whole cast of his ethical speculations; and it was this bias, perhaps, which imperceptibly led him to perceive that the most advantageous, if not the sole legitimate field for the exercise of the poetic sentiment, was to be found in the creation of novel moods of purely physical loveliness. thus it happened that he became neither musician nor poet; if we use this latter term in its everyday acceptation. or it might have been that he became neither the one nor the other, in pursuance of an idea of his which i have already mentionedthe idea, that in the contempt of ambition lay one of the essential principles of happiness on earth. is it not, indeed, possible that while a high order of genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is invariably above that which is termed ambition? and may it not thus happen that many far greater than milton, have contentedly remained "mute and inglorious?" i believe the world has never yet seen, and that, unless through some series of accidents goading the noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion, the world will never behold, that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer productions of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable. mr. ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man lived more profoundly enamored both of music and the muse. under other circumstances than those which invested him, it is not impossible that he would have become a painter. the field of sculpture, although in its nature rigidly poetical, was too limited in its extent and in its consequences, to have occupied, at any time, much of his attention. and i have now mentioned all the provinces in which even the most liberal understanding of the poetic sentiment has declared this sentiment capable of expatiating. i mean the most liberal public or recognized conception of the idea involved in the phrase "poetic sentiment." but mr. ellison imagined that the richest, and altogether the most natural and most suitable province, had been blindly neglected. no definition had spoken of the landscape-gardener, as of the poet; yet my friend could not fail to perceive that the creation of the landscape-garden offered to the true muse the most magnificent of opportunities. here was, indeed, the fairest field for the display of invention, or imagination, in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty; the elements which should enter into combination being, at all times, and by a vast superiority, the most glorious which the earth could afford. in the multiform of the tree, and in the multicolor of the flower, he recognized the most direct and the most energetic efforts of nature at physical loveliness. and in the direction or concentration of this effort, or, still more properly, in its adaption to the eyes which were to behold it upon earth, he perceived that he should be employing the best meanslaboring to the greatest advantagein the fulfilment of his destiny as poet. "its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it upon earth." in his explanation of this phraseology, mr. ellison did much towards solving what has always seemed to me an enigma. i mean the fact (which none but the ignorant dispute,) that no such combinations of scenery exist in nature as the painter of genius has in his power to produce. no such paradises are to be found in reality as have glowed upon the canvass of claude. in the most enchanting of natural landscapes, there will always be found a defect or an excessmany excesses and defects. while the component parts may exceed, individually, the highest skill of the artist, the arrangement of the parts will always be susceptible of improvement. in short, no position can be attained, from which an artistical eye, looking steadily, will not find matter of offence, in what is technically termed the composition of a natural landscape. and yet how unintelligible is this! in all other matters we are justly instructed to regard nature as supreme. with her details we shrink from competition. who shall presume to imitate the colors of the tulip, or to improve the proportions of the lily of the valley? the criticism which says, of sculpture or of portraiture, that "nature is to be exalted rather than imitated," is in error. no pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human loveliness, do more than approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path. byron, who often erred, erred not in saying, i've seen more living beauty, ripe and real, than all the nonsense of their stone ideal. in landscape alone is the principle of the critic true; and, having felt its truth here, it is but the headlong spirit of generalization which has induced him to pronounce it true throughout all the domains of art. having, i say, felt its truth here. for the feeling is no affectation or chimera. the mathematics afford no more absolute demonstrations, than the sentiment of his art yields to the artist. he not only believes, but positively knows, that such and such apparently arbitrary arrangements of matter, or form, constitute, and alone constitute, the true beauty. yet his reasons have not yet been matured into expression. it remains for a more profound analysis than the world has yet seen, fully to investigate and express them. nevertheless is he confirmed in his instinctive opinions, by the concurrence of all his compeers. let a composition be defective, let an emendation be wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let this emendation be submitted to every artist in the world; by each will its necessity be admitted. and even far more than this, in remedy of the defective composition, each insulated member of the fraternity will suggest the identical emendation. i repeat that in landscape arrangements, or collocations alone, is the physical nature susceptible of "exaltation" and that, therefore, her susceptibility of improvement at this one point, was a mystery which, hitherto i had been unable to solve. it was mr. ellison who first suggested the idea that what we regarded as improvement or exaltation of the natural beauty, was really such, as respected only the mortal or human point of view; that each alteration or disturbance of the primitive scenery might possibly effect a blemish in the picture, if we could suppose this picture viewed at large from some remote point in the heavens. "it is easily understood," says mr. ellison, "that what might improve a closely scrutinized detail, might, at the same time, injure a general and more distantlyobserved effect." he spoke upon this topic with warmth: regarding not so much its immediate or obvious importance, (which is little,) as the character of the conclusions to which it might lead, or of the collateral propositions which it might serve to corroborate or sustain. there might be a class of beings, human once, but now to humanity invisible, for whose scrutiny and for whose refined appreciation of the beautiful, more especially than for our own, had been set in order by god the great landscape-garden of the whole earth. in the course of our discussion, my young friend took occasion to quote some passages from a writer who has been supposed to have well treated this theme. "there are, properly," he writes, "but two styles of landscape-gardening, the natural and the artificial. one seeks to recall the original beauty of the country, by adapting its means to the surrounding scenery; cultivating trees in harmony with the hills or plain of the neighboring land; detecting and bringing into practice those nice relations of size, proportion and color which, hid from the common observer, are revealed everywhere to the experienced student of nature. the result of the natural style of gardening, is seen rather in the absence of all defects and incongruitiesin the prevalence of a beautiful harmony and order, than in the creation of any special wonders or miracles. the artificial style has as many varieties as there are different tastes to gratify. it has a certain general relation to the various styles of building. there are the stately avenues and retirements of versailles; italian terraces; and a various mixed old english style, which bears some relation to the domestic gothic or english elizabethan architecture. whatever may be said against the abuses of the artificial landscape-gardening, a mixture of pure art in a garden scene, adds to it a great beauty. this is partly pleasing to the eye, by the show of order and design, and partly moral. a terrace, with an old moss-covered balustrade, calls up at once to the eye, the fair forms that have passed there in other days. the slightest exhibition of art is an evidence of care and human interest." "from what i have already observed," said mr. ellison, "you will understand that i reject the idea, here expressed, of 'recalling the original beauty of the country.' the original beauty is never so great as that which may be introduced. of course, much depends upon the selection of a spot with capabilities. what is said in respect to the 'detecting and bringing into practice those nice relations of size, proportion and color,' is a mere vagueness of speech, which may mean much, or little, or nothing, and which guides in no degree. that the true 'result of the natural style of gardening is seen rather in the absence of all defects and incongruities, than in the creation of any special wonders or miracles,' is a proposition better suited to the grovelling apprehension of the herd, than to the fervid dreams of the man of genius. the merit suggested is, at best, negative, and appertains to that hobbling criticism which, in letters, would elevate addison into apotheosis. in truth, while that merit which consists in the mere avoiding demerit, appeals directly to the understanding, and can thus be foreshadowed in rule, the loftier merit, which breathes and flames in invention or creation, can be apprehended solely in its results. rule applies but to the excellences of avoidanceto the virtues which deny or refrain. beyond these the critical art can but suggest. we may be instructed to build an odyssey, but it is in vain that we are told how to conceive a 'tempest,' an 'inferno,' a 'prometheus bound,' a 'nightingale,' such as that of keats, or the 'sensitive plant' of shelley. but, the thing done, the wonder accomplished, and the capacity for apprehension becomes universal. the sophists of the negative school, who, through inability to create, have scoffed at creation, are now found the loudest in applause. what, in its chrysalis condition of principle, affronted their demure reason, never fails, in its maturity of accomplishment, to extort admiration from their instinct of the beautiful or of the sublime. "our author's observations on the artificial style of gardening," continued mr. ellison, "are less objectionable. 'a mixture of pure art in a garden scene, adds to it a great beauty.' this is just; and the reference to the sense of human interest is equally so. i repeat that the principle here expressed, is incontrovertible; but there may be something even beyond it. there may be an object in full keeping with the principle suggestedan object unattainable by the means ordinarily in possession of mankind, yet which, if attained, would lend a charm to the landscape-garden immeasurably surpassing that which a merely human interest could bestow. the true poet possessed of very unusual pecuniary resources, might possibly, while retaining the necessary idea of art or interest or culture, so imbue his designs at once with extent and novelty of beauty, as to convey the sentiment of spiritual interference. it will be seen that, in bringing about such result, he secures all the advantages of interest or design, while relieving his work of all the harshness and technicality of art. in the most rugged of wildernessesin the most savage of the scenes of pure naturethere is apparent the art of a creator; yet is this art apparent only to reflection; in no respect has it the obvious force of a feeling. now, if we imagine this sense of the almighty design to be harmonized in a measurable degree, if we suppose a landscape whose combined strangeness, vastness, definitiveness, and magnificence, shall inspire the idea of culture, or care, or superintendence, on the part of intelligences superior yet akin to humanitythen the sentiment of interest is preserved, while the art is made to assume the air of an intermediate or secondary naturea nature which is not god, nor an emanation of god, but which still is nature, in the sense that it is the handiwork of the angels that hover between man and god." it was in devoting his gigantic wealth to the practical embodiment of a vision such as thisin the free exercise in the open air, which resulted from personal direction of his plansin the continuous and unceasing object which these plans affordin the contempt of ambition which it enabled him more to feel than to affectand, lastly, it was in the companionship and sympathy of a devoted wife, that ellison thought to find, and found, an exemption from the ordinary cares of humanity, with a far greater amount of positive happiness than ever glowed in the rapt day-dreams of de stael. the end . twelfth night dramatis personae orsino duke of illyria. (duke orsino:) sebastian brother to viola. antonio a sea captain, friend to sebastian. a sea captain, friend to viola. (captain:) valentine | | gentlemen attending on the duke. curio | sir toby belch uncle to olivia. sir andrew aguecheek (sir andrew:) malvolio steward to olivia. fabian | | servants to olivia. feste a clown (clown:) | olivia: viola: maria olivia's woman. lords, priests, sailors, officers, musicians, and other attendants. (priest:) (first officer:) (second officer:) (servant:) scene a city in illyria, and the sea-coast near it. twelfth night act i scene i duke orsino's palace. [enter duke orsino, curio, and other lords; musicians attending] duke orsino if music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die. that strain again! it had a dying fall: o, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound, that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and giving odour! enough; no more: 'tis not so sweet now as it was before. o spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou, that, notwithstanding thy capacity receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, of what validity and pitch soe'er, but falls into abatement and low price, even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy that it alone is high fantastical. curio will you go hunt, my lord? duke orsino what, curio? curio the hart. duke orsino why, so i do, the noblest that i have: o, when mine eyes did see olivia first, methought she purged the air of pestilence! that instant was i turn'd into a hart; and my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, e'er since pursue me. [enter valentine] how now! what news from her? valentine so please my lord, i might not be admitted; but from her handmaid do return this answer: the element itself, till seven years' heat, shall not behold her face at ample view; but, like a cloistress, she will veiled walk and water once a day her chamber round with eye-offending brine: all this to season a brother's dead love, which she would keep fresh and lasting in her sad remembrance. duke orsino o, she that hath a heart of that fine frame to pay this debt of love but to a brother, how will she love, when the rich golden shaft hath kill'd the flock of all affections else that live in her; when liver, brain and heart, these sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill'd her sweet perfections with one self king! away before me to sweet beds of flowers: love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers. [exeunt] twelfth night act i scene ii the sea-coast. [enter viola, a captain, and sailors] viola what country, friends, is this? captain this is illyria, lady. viola and what should i do in illyria? my brother he is in elysium. perchance he is not drown'd: what think you, sailors? captain it is perchance that you yourself were saved. viola o my poor brother! and so perchance may he be. captain true, madam: and, to comfort you with chance, assure yourself, after our ship did split, when you and those poor number saved with you hung on our driving boat, i saw your brother, most provident in peril, bind himself, courage and hope both teaching him the practise, to a strong mast that lived upon the sea; where, like arion on the dolphin's back, i saw him hold acquaintance with the waves so long as i could see. viola for saying so, there's gold: mine own escape unfoldeth to my hope, whereto thy speech serves for authority, the like of him. know'st thou this country? captain ay, madam, well; for i was bred and born not three hours' travel from this very place. viola who governs here? captain a noble duke, in nature as in name. viola what is the name? captain orsino. viola orsino! i have heard my father name him: he was a bachelor then. captain and so is now, or was so very late; for but a month ago i went from hence, and then 'twas fresh in murmur,--as, you know, what great ones do the less will prattle of,- that he did seek the love of fair olivia. viola what's she? captain a virtuous maid, the daughter of a count that died some twelvemonth since, then leaving her in the protection of his son, her brother, who shortly also died: for whose dear love, they say, she hath abjured the company and sight of men. viola o that i served that lady and might not be delivered to the world, till i had made mine own occasion mellow, what my estate is! captain that were hard to compass; because she will admit no kind of suit, no, not the duke's. viola there is a fair behavior in thee, captain; and though that nature with a beauteous wall doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee i will believe thou hast a mind that suits with this thy fair and outward character. i prithee, and i'll pay thee bounteously, conceal me what i am, and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent. i'll serve this duke: thou shall present me as an eunuch to him: it may be worth thy pains; for i can sing and speak to him in many sorts of music that will allow me very worth his service. what else may hap to time i will commit; only shape thou thy silence to my wit. captain be you his eunuch, and your mute i'll be: when my tongue blabs, then let mine eyes not see. viola i thank thee: lead me on. [exeunt] twelfth night act i scene iii olivia's house. [enter sir toby belch and maria] sir toby belch what a plague means my niece, to take the death of her brother thus? i am sure care's an enemy to life. maria by my troth, sir toby, you must come in earlier o' nights: your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours. sir toby belch why, let her except, before excepted. maria ay, but you must confine yourself within the modest limits of order. sir toby belch confine! i'll confine myself no finer than i am: these clothes are good enough to drink in; and so be these boots too: an they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps. maria that quaffing and drinking will undo you: i heard my lady talk of it yesterday; and of a foolish knight that you brought in one night here to be her wooer. sir toby belch who, sir andrew aguecheek? maria ay, he. sir toby belch he's as tall a man as any's in illyria. maria what's that to the purpose? sir toby belch why, he has three thousand ducats a year. maria ay, but he'll have but a year in all these ducats: he's a very fool and a prodigal. sir toby belch fie, that you'll say so! he plays o' the viol-de-gamboys, and speaks three or four languages word for word without book, and hath all the good gifts of nature. maria he hath indeed, almost natural: for besides that he's a fool, he's a great quarreller: and but that he hath the gift of a coward to allay the gust he hath in quarrelling, 'tis thought among the prudent he would quickly have the gift of a grave. sir toby belch by this hand, they are scoundrels and subtractors that say so of him. who are they? maria they that add, moreover, he's drunk nightly in your company. sir toby belch with drinking healths to my niece: i'll drink to her as long as there is a passage in my throat and drink in illyria: he's a coward and a coystrill that will not drink to my niece till his brains turn o' the toe like a parish-top. what, wench! castiliano vulgo! for here comes sir andrew agueface. [enter sir andrew] sir andrew sir toby belch! how now, sir toby belch! sir toby belch sweet sir andrew! sir andrew bless you, fair shrew. maria and you too, sir. sir toby belch accost, sir andrew, accost. sir andrew what's that? sir toby belch my niece's chambermaid. sir andrew good mistress accost, i desire better acquaintance. maria my name is mary, sir. sir andrew good mistress mary accost,- sir toby belch you mistake, knight; 'accost' is front her, board her, woo her, assail her. sir andrew by my troth, i would not undertake her in this company. is that the meaning of 'accost'? maria fare you well, gentlemen. sir toby belch an thou let part so, sir andrew, would thou mightst never draw sword again. sir andrew an you part so, mistress, i would i might never draw sword again. fair lady, do you think you have fools in hand? maria sir, i have not you by the hand. sir andrew marry, but you shall have; and here's my hand. maria now, sir, 'thought is free:' i pray you, bring your hand to the buttery-bar and let it drink. sir andrew wherefore, sweet-heart? what's your metaphor? maria it's dry, sir. sir andrew why, i think so: i am not such an ass but i can keep my hand dry. but what's your jest? maria a dry jest, sir. sir andrew are you full of them? maria ay, sir, i have them at my fingers' ends: marry, now i let go your hand, i am barren. [exit] sir toby belch o knight thou lackest a cup of canary: when did i see thee so put down? sir andrew never in your life, i think; unless you see canary put me down. methinks sometimes i have no more wit than a christian or an ordinary man has: but i am a great eater of beef and i believe that does harm to my wit. sir toby belch no question. sir andrew an i thought that, i'ld forswear it. i'll ride home to-morrow, sir toby. sir toby belch pourquoi, my dear knight? sir andrew what is 'pourquoi'? do or not do? i would i had bestowed that time in the tongues that i have in fencing, dancing and bear-baiting: o, had i but followed the arts! sir toby belch then hadst thou had an excellent head of hair. sir andrew why, would that have mended my hair? sir toby belch past question; for thou seest it will not curl by nature. sir andrew but it becomes me well enough, does't not? sir toby belch excellent; it hangs like flax on a distaff; and i hope to see a housewife take thee between her legs and spin it off. sir andrew faith, i'll home to-morrow, sir toby: your niece will not be seen; or if she be, it's four to one she'll none of me: the count himself here hard by woos her. sir toby belch she'll none o' the count: she'll not match above her degree, neither in estate, years, nor wit; i have heard her swear't. tut, there's life in't, man. sir andrew i'll stay a month longer. i am a fellow o' the strangest mind i' the world; i delight in masques and revels sometimes altogether. sir toby belch art thou good at these kickshawses, knight? sir andrew as any man in illyria, whatsoever he be, under the degree of my betters; and yet i will not compare with an old man. sir toby belch what is thy excellence in a galliard, knight? sir andrew faith, i can cut a caper. sir toby belch and i can cut the mutton to't. sir andrew and i think i have the back-trick simply as strong as any man in illyria. sir toby belch wherefore are these things hid? wherefore have these gifts a curtain before 'em? are they like to take dust, like mistress mall's picture? why dost thou not go to church in a galliard and come home in a coranto? my very walk should be a jig; i would not so much as make water but in a sink-a-pace. what dost thou mean? is it a world to hide virtues in? i did think, by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was formed under the star of a galliard. sir andrew ay, 'tis strong, and it does indifferent well in a flame-coloured stock. shall we set about some revels? sir toby belch what shall we do else? were we not born under taurus? sir andrew taurus! that's sides and heart. sir toby belch no, sir; it is legs and thighs. let me see the caper; ha! higher: ha, ha! excellent! [exeunt] twelfth night act i scene iv duke orsino's palace. [enter valentine and viola in man's attire] valentine if the duke continue these favours towards you, cesario, you are like to be much advanced: he hath known you but three days, and already you are no stranger. viola you either fear his humour or my negligence, that you call in question the continuance of his love: is he inconstant, sir, in his favours? valentine no, believe me. viola i thank you. here comes the count. [enter duke orsino, curio, and attendants] duke orsino who saw cesario, ho? viola on your attendance, my lord; here. duke orsino stand you a while aloof, cesario, thou know'st no less but all; i have unclasp'd to thee the book even of my secret soul: therefore, good youth, address thy gait unto her; be not denied access, stand at her doors, and tell them, there thy fixed foot shall grow till thou have audience. viola sure, my noble lord, if she be so abandon'd to her sorrow as it is spoke, she never will admit me. duke orsino be clamorous and leap all civil bounds rather than make unprofited return. viola say i do speak with her, my lord, what then? duke orsino o, then unfold the passion of my love, surprise her with discourse of my dear faith: it shall become thee well to act my woes; she will attend it better in thy youth than in a nuncio's of more grave aspect. viola i think not so, my lord. duke orsino dear lad, believe it; for they shall yet belie thy happy years, that say thou art a man: diana's lip is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe is as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound, and all is semblative a woman's part. i know thy constellation is right apt for this affair. some four or five attend him; all, if you will; for i myself am best when least in company. prosper well in this, and thou shalt live as freely as thy lord, to call his fortunes thine. viola i'll do my best to woo your lady: [aside] yet, a barful strife! whoe'er i woo, myself would be his wife. [exeunt] twelfth night act i scene v olivia's house. [enter maria and clown] maria nay, either tell me where thou hast been, or i will not open my lips so wide as a bristle may enter in way of thy excuse: my lady will hang thee for thy absence. clown let her hang me: he that is well hanged in this world needs to fear no colours. maria make that good. clown he shall see none to fear. maria a good lenten answer: i can tell thee where that saying was born, of 'i fear no colours.' clown where, good mistress mary? maria in the wars; and that may you be bold to say in your foolery. clown well, god give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents. maria yet you will be hanged for being so long absent; or, to be turned away, is not that as good as a hanging to you? clown many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage; and, for turning away, let summer bear it out. maria you are resolute, then? clown not so, neither; but i am resolved on two points. maria that if one break, the other will hold; or, if both break, your gaskins fall. clown apt, in good faith; very apt. well, go thy way; if sir toby would leave drinking, thou wert as witty a piece of eve's flesh as any in illyria. maria peace, you rogue, no more o' that. here comes my lady: make your excuse wisely, you were best. [exit] clown wit, an't be thy will, put me into good fooling! those wits, that think they have thee, do very oft prove fools; and i, that am sure i lack thee, may pass for a wise man: for what says quinapalus? 'better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.' [enter olivia with malvolio] god bless thee, lady! olivia take the fool away. clown do you not hear, fellows? take away the lady. olivia go to, you're a dry fool; i'll no more of you: besides, you grow dishonest. clown two faults, madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend: for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry: bid the dishonest man mend himself; if he mend, he is no longer dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. any thing that's mended is but patched: virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue. if that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not, what remedy? as there is no true cuckold but calamity, so beauty's a flower. the lady bade take away the fool; therefore, i say again, take her away. olivia sir, i bade them take away you. clown misprision in the highest degree! lady, cucullus non facit monachum; that's as much to say as i wear not motley in my brain. good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool. olivia can you do it? clown dexterously, good madonna. olivia make your proof. clown i must catechise you for it, madonna: good my mouse of virtue, answer me. olivia well, sir, for want of other idleness, i'll bide your proof. clown good madonna, why mournest thou? olivia good fool, for my brother's death. clown i think his soul is in hell, madonna. olivia i know his soul is in heaven, fool. clown the more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven. take away the fool, gentlemen. olivia what think you of this fool, malvolio? doth he not mend? malvolio yes, and shall do till the pangs of death shake him: infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool. clown god send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better increasing your folly! sir toby will be sworn that i am no fox; but he will not pass his word for two pence that you are no fool. olivia how say you to that, malvolio? malvolio i marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal: i saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool that has no more brain than a stone. look you now, he's out of his guard already; unless you laugh and minister occasion to him, he is gagged. i protest, i take these wise men, that crow so at these set kind of fools, no better than the fools' zanies. olivia oh, you are sick of self-love, malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite. to be generous, guiltless and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets: there is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove. clown now mercury endue thee with leasing, for thou speakest well of fools! [re-enter maria] maria madam, there is at the gate a young gentleman much desires to speak with you. olivia from the count orsino, is it? maria i know not, madam: 'tis a fair young man, and well attended. olivia who of my people hold him in delay? maria sir toby, madam, your kinsman. olivia fetch him off, i pray you; he speaks nothing but madman: fie on him! [exit maria] go you, malvolio: if it be a suit from the count, i am sick, or not at home; what you will, to dismiss it. [exit malvolio] now you see, sir, how your fooling grows old, and people dislike it. clown thou hast spoke for us, madonna, as if thy eldest son should be a fool; whose skull jove cram with brains! for,--here he comes,--one of thy kin has a most weak pia mater. [enter sir toby belch] olivia by mine honour, half drunk. what is he at the gate, cousin? sir toby belch a gentleman. olivia a gentleman! what gentleman? sir toby belch 'tis a gentle man here--a plague o' these pickle-herring! how now, sot! clown good sir toby! olivia cousin, cousin, how have you come so early by this lethargy? sir toby belch lechery! i defy lechery. there's one at the gate. olivia ay, marry, what is he? sir toby belch let him be the devil, an he will, i care not: give me faith, say i. well, it's all one. [exit] olivia what's a drunken man like, fool? clown like a drowned man, a fool and a mad man: one draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns him. olivia go thou and seek the crowner, and let him sit o' my coz; for he's in the third degree of drink, he's drowned: go, look after him. clown he is but mad yet, madonna; and the fool shall look to the madman. [exit] [re-enter malvolio] malvolio madam, yond young fellow swears he will speak with you. i told him you were sick; he takes on him to understand so much, and therefore comes to speak with you. i told him you were asleep; he seems to have a foreknowledge of that too, and therefore comes to speak with you. what is to be said to him, lady? he's fortified against any denial. olivia tell him he shall not speak with me. malvolio has been told so; and he says, he'll stand at your door like a sheriff's post, and be the supporter to a bench, but he'll speak with you. olivia what kind o' man is he? malvolio why, of mankind. olivia what manner of man? malvolio of very ill manner; he'll speak with you, will you or no. olivia of what personage and years is he? malvolio not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is before 'tis a peascod, or a cooling when 'tis almost an apple: 'tis with him in standing water, between boy and man. he is very well-favoured and he speaks very shrewishly; one would think his mother's milk were scarce out of him. olivia let him approach: call in my gentlewoman. malvolio gentlewoman, my lady calls. [exit] [re-enter maria] olivia give me my veil: come, throw it o'er my face. we'll once more hear orsino's embassy. [enter viola, and attendants] viola the honourable lady of the house, which is she? olivia speak to me; i shall answer for her. your will? viola most radiant, exquisite and unmatchable beauty,--i pray you, tell me if this be the lady of the house, for i never saw her: i would be loath to cast away my speech, for besides that it is excellently well penned, i have taken great pains to con it. good beauties, let me sustain no scorn; i am very comptible, even to the least sinister usage. olivia whence came you, sir? viola i can say little more than i have studied, and that question's out of my part. good gentle one, give me modest assurance if you be the lady of the house, that i may proceed in my speech. olivia are you a comedian? viola no, my profound heart: and yet, by the very fangs of malice i swear, i am not that i play. are you the lady of the house? olivia if i do not usurp myself, i am. viola most certain, if you are she, you do usurp yourself; for what is yours to bestow is not yours to reserve. but this is from my commission: i will on with my speech in your praise, and then show you the heart of my message. olivia come to what is important in't: i forgive you the praise. viola alas, i took great pains to study it, and 'tis poetical. olivia it is the more like to be feigned: i pray you, keep it in. i heard you were saucy at my gates, and allowed your approach rather to wonder at you than to hear you. if you be not mad, be gone; if you have reason, be brief: 'tis not that time of moon with me to make one in so skipping a dialogue. maria will you hoist sail, sir? here lies your way. viola no, good swabber; i am to hull here a little longer. some mollification for your giant, sweet lady. tell me your mind: i am a messenger. olivia sure, you have some hideous matter to deliver, when the courtesy of it is so fearful. speak your office. viola it alone concerns your ear. i bring no overture of war, no taxation of homage: i hold the olive in my hand; my words are as fun of peace as matter. olivia yet you began rudely. what are you? what would you? viola the rudeness that hath appeared in me have i learned from my entertainment. what i am, and what i would, are as secret as maidenhead; to your ears, divinity, to any other's, profanation. olivia give us the place alone: we will hear this divinity. [exeunt maria and attendants] now, sir, what is your text? viola most sweet lady,- olivia a comfortable doctrine, and much may be said of it. where lies your text? viola in orsino's bosom. olivia in his bosom! in what chapter of his bosom? viola to answer by the method, in the first of his heart. olivia o, i have read it: it is heresy. have you no more to say? viola good madam, let me see your face. olivia have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my face? you are now out of your text: but we will draw the curtain and show you the picture. look you, sir, such a one i was this present: is't not well done? [unveiling] viola excellently done, if god did all. olivia 'tis in grain, sir; 'twill endure wind and weather. viola 'tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on: lady, you are the cruell'st she alive, if you will lead these graces to the grave and leave the world no copy. olivia o, sir, i will not be so hard-hearted; i will give out divers schedules of my beauty: it shall be inventoried, and every particle and utensil labelled to my will: as, item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth. were you sent hither to praise me? viola i see you what you are, you are too proud; but, if you were the devil, you are fair. my lord and master loves you: o, such love could be but recompensed, though you were crown'd the nonpareil of beauty! olivia how does he love me? viola with adorations, fertile tears, with groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire. olivia your lord does know my mind; i cannot love him: yet i suppose him virtuous, know him noble, of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth; in voices well divulged, free, learn'd and valiant; and in dimension and the shape of nature a gracious person: but yet i cannot love him; he might have took his answer long ago. viola if i did love you in my master's flame, with such a suffering, such a deadly life, in your denial i would find no sense; i would not understand it. olivia why, what would you? viola make me a willow cabin at your gate, and call upon my soul within the house; write loyal cantons of contemned love and sing them loud even in the dead of night; halloo your name to the reverberate hills and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out 'olivia!' o, you should not rest between the elements of air and earth, but you should pity me! olivia you might do much. what is your parentage? viola above my fortunes, yet my state is well: i am a gentleman. olivia get you to your lord; i cannot love him: let him send no more; unless, perchance, you come to me again, to tell me how he takes it. fare you well: i thank you for your pains: spend this for me. viola i am no fee'd post, lady; keep your purse: my master, not myself, lacks recompense. love make his heart of flint that you shall love; and let your fervor, like my master's, be placed in contempt! farewell, fair cruelty. [exit] olivia 'what is your parentage?' 'above my fortunes, yet my state is well: i am a gentleman.' i'll be sworn thou art; thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit, do give thee five-fold blazon: not too fast: soft, soft! unless the master were the man. how now! even so quickly may one catch the plague? methinks i feel this youth's perfections with an invisible and subtle stealth to creep in at mine eyes. well, let it be. what ho, malvolio! [re-enter malvolio] malvolio here, madam, at your service. olivia run after that same peevish messenger, the county's man: he left this ring behind him, would i or not: tell him i'll none of it. desire him not to flatter with his lord, nor hold him up with hopes; i am not for him: if that the youth will come this way to-morrow, i'll give him reasons for't: hie thee, malvolio. malvolio madam, i will. [exit] olivia i do i know not what, and fear to find mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind. fate, show thy force: ourselves we do not owe; what is decreed must be, and be this so. [exit] twelfth night act ii scene i the sea-coast. [enter antonio and sebastian] antonio will you stay no longer? nor will you not that i go with you? sebastian by your patience, no. my stars shine darkly over me: the malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours; therefore i shall crave of you your leave that i may bear my evils alone: it were a bad recompense for your love, to lay any of them on you. antonio: let me yet know of you whither you are bound. sebastian no, sooth, sir: my determinate voyage is mere extravagancy. but i perceive in you so excellent a touch of modesty, that you will not extort from me what i am willing to keep in; therefore it charges me in manners the rather to express myself. you must know of me then, antonio, my name is sebastian, which i called roderigo. my father was that sebastian of messaline, whom i know you have heard of. he left behind him myself and a sister, both born in an hour: if the heavens had been pleased, would we had so ended! but you, sir, altered that; for some hour before you took me from the breach of the sea was my sister drowned. antonio alas the day! sebastian a lady, sir, though it was said she much resembled me, was yet of many accounted beautiful: but, though i could not with such estimable wonder overfar believe that, yet thus far i will boldly publish her; she bore a mind that envy could not but call fair. she is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though i seem to drown her remembrance again with more. antonio pardon me, sir, your bad entertainment. sebastian o good antonio, forgive me your trouble. antonio if you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant. sebastian if you will not undo what you have done, that is, kill him whom you have recovered, desire it not. fare ye well at once: my bosom is full of kindness, and i am yet so near the manners of my mother, that upon the least occasion more mine eyes will tell tales of me. i am bound to the count orsino's court: farewell. [exit] antonio the gentleness of all the gods go with thee! i have many enemies in orsino's court, else would i very shortly see thee there. but, come what may, i do adore thee so, that danger shall seem sport, and i will go. [exit] twelfth night act ii scene ii a street. [enter viola, malvolio following] malvolio were not you even now with the countess olivia? viola even now, sir; on a moderate pace i have since arrived but hither. malvolio she returns this ring to you, sir: you might have saved me my pains, to have taken it away yourself. she adds, moreover, that you should put your lord into a desperate assurance she will none of him: and one thing more, that you be never so hardy to come again in his affairs, unless it be to report your lord's taking of this. receive it so. viola she took the ring of me: i'll none of it. malvolio come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is, it should be so returned: if it be worth stooping for, there it lies in your eye; if not, be it his that finds it. [exit] viola i left no ring with her: what means this lady? fortune forbid my outside have not charm'd her! she made good view of me; indeed, so much, that sure methought her eyes had lost her tongue, for she did speak in starts distractedly. she loves me, sure; the cunning of her passion invites me in this churlish messenger. none of my lord's ring! why, he sent her none. i am the man: if it be so, as 'tis, poor lady, she were better love a dream. disguise, i see, thou art a wickedness, wherein the pregnant enemy does much. how easy is it for the proper-false in women's waxen hearts to set their forms! alas, our frailty is the cause, not we! for such as we are made of, such we be. how will this fadge? my master loves her dearly; and i, poor monster, fond as much on him; and she, mistaken, seems to dote on me. what will become of this? as i am man, my state is desperate for my master's love; as i am woman,--now alas the day!- what thriftless sighs shall poor olivia breathe! o time! thou must untangle this, not i; it is too hard a knot for me to untie! [exit] twelfth night act ii scene iii olivia's house. [enter sir toby belch and sir andrew] sir toby belch approach, sir andrew: not to be abed after midnight is to be up betimes; and 'diluculo surgere,' thou know'st,- sir andrew nay, my troth, i know not: but i know, to be up late is to be up late. sir toby belch a false conclusion: i hate it as an unfilled can. to be up after midnight and to go to bed then, is early: so that to go to bed after midnight is to go to bed betimes. does not our life consist of the four elements? sir andrew faith, so they say; but i think it rather consists of eating and drinking. sir toby belch thou'rt a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. marian, i say! a stoup of wine! [enter clown] sir andrew here comes the fool, i' faith. clown how now, my hearts! did you never see the picture of 'we three'? sir toby belch welcome, ass. now let's have a catch. sir andrew by my troth, the fool has an excellent breast. i had rather than forty shillings i had such a leg, and so sweet a breath to sing, as the fool has. in sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, when thou spokest of pigrogromitus, of the vapians passing the equinoctial of queubus: 'twas very good, i' faith. i sent thee sixpence for thy leman: hadst it? clown i did impeticos thy gratillity; for malvolio's nose is no whipstock: my lady has a white hand, and the myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses. sir andrew excellent! why, this is the best fooling, when all is done. now, a song. sir toby belch come on; there is sixpence for you: let's have a song. sir andrew there's a testril of me too: if one knight give a- clown would you have a love-song, or a song of good life? sir toby belch a love-song, a love-song. sir andrew ay, ay: i care not for good life. clown [sings] o mistress mine, where are you roaming? o, stay and hear; your true love's coming, that can sing both high and low: trip no further, pretty sweeting; journeys end in lovers meeting, every wise man's son doth know. sir andrew excellent good, i' faith. sir toby belch good, good. clown [sings] what is love? 'tis not hereafter; present mirth hath present laughter; what's to come is still unsure: in delay there lies no plenty; then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, youth's a stuff will not endure. sir andrew a mellifluous voice, as i am true knight. sir toby belch a contagious breath. sir andrew very sweet and contagious, i' faith. sir toby belch to hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion. but shall we make the welkin dance indeed? shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch that will draw three souls out of one weaver? shall we do that? sir andrew an you love me, let's do't: i am dog at a catch. clown by'r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well. sir andrew most certain. let our catch be, 'thou knave.' clown 'hold thy peace, thou knave,' knight? i shall be constrained in't to call thee knave, knight. sir andrew 'tis not the first time i have constrained one to call me knave. begin, fool: it begins 'hold thy peace.' clown i shall never begin if i hold my peace. sir andrew good, i' faith. come, begin. [catch sung] [enter maria] maria what a caterwauling do you keep here! if my lady have not called up her steward malvolio and bid him turn you out of doors, never trust me. sir toby belch my lady's a cataian, we are politicians, malvolio's a peg-a-ramsey, and 'three merry men be we.' am not i consanguineous? am i not of her blood? tillyvally. lady! [sings] 'there dwelt a man in babylon, lady, lady!' clown beshrew me, the knight's in admirable fooling. sir andrew ay, he does well enough if he be disposed, and so do i too: he does it with a better grace, but i do it more natural. sir toby belch [sings] 'o, the twelfth day of december,'- maria for the love o' god, peace! [enter malvolio] malvolio my masters, are you mad? or what are you? have ye no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night? do ye make an alehouse of my lady's house, that ye squeak out your coziers' catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you? sir toby belch we did keep time, sir, in our catches. sneck up! malvolio sir toby, i must be round with you. my lady bade me tell you, that, though she harbours you as her kinsman, she's nothing allied to your disorders. if you can separate yourself and your misdemeanors, you are welcome to the house; if not, an it would please you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you farewell. sir toby belch 'farewell, dear heart, since i must needs be gone.' maria nay, good sir toby. clown 'his eyes do show his days are almost done.' malvolio is't even so? sir toby belch 'but i will never die.' clown sir toby, there you lie. malvolio this is much credit to you. sir toby belch 'shall i bid him go?' clown 'what an if you do?' sir toby belch 'shall i bid him go, and spare not?' clown 'o no, no, no, no, you dare not.' sir toby belch out o' tune, sir: ye lie. art any more than a steward? dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? clown yes, by saint anne, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth too. sir toby belch thou'rt i' the right. go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs. a stoup of wine, maria! malvolio mistress mary, if you prized my lady's favour at any thing more than contempt, you would not give means for this uncivil rule: she shall know of it, by this hand. [exit] maria go shake your ears. sir andrew 'twere as good a deed as to drink when a man's a-hungry, to challenge him the field, and then to break promise with him and make a fool of him. sir toby belch do't, knight: i'll write thee a challenge: or i'll deliver thy indignation to him by word of mouth. maria sweet sir toby, be patient for tonight: since the youth of the count's was today with thy lady, she is much out of quiet. for monsieur malvolio, let me alone with him: if i do not gull him into a nayword, and make him a common recreation, do not think i have wit enough to lie straight in my bed: i know i can do it. sir toby belch possess us, possess us; tell us something of him. maria marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan. sir andrew o, if i thought that i'ld beat him like a dog! sir toby belch what, for being a puritan? thy exquisite reason, dear knight? sir andrew i have no exquisite reason for't, but i have reason good enough. maria the devil a puritan that he is, or any thing constantly, but a time-pleaser; an affectioned ass, that cons state without book and utters it by great swarths: the best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him; and on that vice in him will my revenge find notable cause to work. sir toby belch what wilt thou do? maria i will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love; wherein, by the colour of his beard, the shape of his leg, the manner of his gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and complexion, he shall find himself most feelingly personated. i can write very like my lady your niece: on a forgotten matter we can hardly make distinction of our hands. sir toby belch excellent! i smell a device. sir andrew i have't in my nose too. sir toby belch he shall think, by the letters that thou wilt drop, that they come from my niece, and that she's in love with him. maria my purpose is, indeed, a horse of that colour. sir andrew and your horse now would make him an ass. maria ass, i doubt not. sir andrew o, 'twill be admirable! maria sport royal, i warrant you: i know my physic will work with him. i will plant you two, and let the fool make a third, where he shall find the letter: observe his construction of it. for this night, to bed, and dream on the event. farewell. [exit] sir toby belch good night, penthesilea. sir andrew before me, she's a good wench. sir toby belch she's a beagle, true-bred, and one that adores me: what o' that? sir andrew i was adored once too. sir toby belch let's to bed, knight. thou hadst need send for more money. sir andrew if i cannot recover your niece, i am a foul way out. sir toby belch send for money, knight: if thou hast her not i' the end, call me cut. sir andrew if i do not, never trust me, take it how you will. sir toby belch come, come, i'll go burn some sack; 'tis too late to go to bed now: come, knight; come, knight. [exeunt] twelfth night act ii scene iv duke orsino's palace. [enter duke orsino, viola, curio, and others] duke orsino give me some music. now, good morrow, friends. now, good cesario, but that piece of song, that old and antique song we heard last night: methought it did relieve my passion much, more than light airs and recollected terms of these most brisk and giddy-paced times: come, but one verse. curio he is not here, so please your lordship that should sing it. duke orsino who was it? curio feste, the jester, my lord; a fool that the lady olivia's father took much delight in. he is about the house. duke orsino seek him out, and play the tune the while. [exit curio. music plays] come hither, boy: if ever thou shalt love, in the sweet pangs of it remember me; for such as i am all true lovers are, unstaid and skittish in all motions else, save in the constant image of the creature that is beloved. how dost thou like this tune? viola it gives a very echo to the seat where love is throned. duke orsino thou dost speak masterly: my life upon't, young though thou art, thine eye hath stay'd upon some favour that it loves: hath it not, boy? viola a little, by your favour. duke orsino what kind of woman is't? viola of your complexion. duke orsino she is not worth thee, then. what years, i' faith? viola about your years, my lord. duke orsino too old by heaven: let still the woman take an elder than herself: so wears she to him, so sways she level in her husband's heart: for, boy, however we do praise ourselves, our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, than women's are. viola i think it well, my lord. duke orsino then let thy love be younger than thyself, or thy affection cannot hold the bent; for women are as roses, whose fair flower being once display'd, doth fall that very hour. viola and so they are: alas, that they are so; to die, even when they to perfection grow! [re-enter curio and clown] duke orsino o, fellow, come, the song we had last night. mark it, cesario, it is old and plain; the spinsters and the knitters in the sun and the free maids that weave their thread with bones do use to chant it: it is silly sooth, and dallies with the innocence of love, like the old age. clown are you ready, sir? duke orsino ay; prithee, sing. [music] song. clown come away, come away, death, and in sad cypress let me be laid; fly away, fly away breath; i am slain by a fair cruel maid. my shroud of white, stuck all with yew, o, prepare it! my part of death, no one so true did share it. not a flower, not a flower sweet on my black coffin let there be strown; not a friend, not a friend greet my poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown: a thousand thousand sighs to save, lay me, o, where sad true lover never find my grave, to weep there! duke orsino there's for thy pains. clown no pains, sir: i take pleasure in singing, sir. duke orsino i'll pay thy pleasure then. clown truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid, one time or another. duke orsino give me now leave to leave thee. clown now, the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal. i would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be every thing and their intent every where; for that's it that always makes a good voyage of nothing. farewell. [exit] duke orsino let all the rest give place. [curio and attendants retire] once more, cesario, get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty: tell her, my love, more noble than the world, prizes not quantity of dirty lands; the parts that fortune hath bestow'd upon her, tell her, i hold as giddily as fortune; but 'tis that miracle and queen of gems that nature pranks her in attracts my soul. viola but if she cannot love you, sir? duke orsino i cannot be so answer'd. viola sooth, but you must. say that some lady, as perhaps there is, hath for your love a great a pang of heart as you have for olivia: you cannot love her; you tell her so; must she not then be answer'd? duke orsino there is no woman's sides can bide the beating of so strong a passion as love doth give my heart; no woman's heart so big, to hold so much; they lack retention alas, their love may be call'd appetite, no motion of the liver, but the palate, that suffer surfeit, cloyment and revolt; but mine is all as hungry as the sea, and can digest as much: make no compare between that love a woman can bear me and that i owe olivia. viola ay, but i know- duke orsino what dost thou know? viola too well what love women to men may owe: in faith, they are as true of heart as we. my father had a daughter loved a man, as it might be, perhaps, were i a woman, i should your lordship. duke orsino and what's her history? viola a blank, my lord. she never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought, and with a green and yellow melancholy she sat like patience on a monument, smiling at grief. was not this love indeed? we men may say more, swear more: but indeed our shows are more than will; for still we prove much in our vows, but little in our love. duke orsino but died thy sister of her love, my boy? viola i am all the daughters of my father's house, and all the brothers too: and yet i know not. sir, shall i to this lady? duke orsino ay, that's the theme. to her in haste; give her this jewel; say, my love can give no place, bide no denay. [exeunt] twelfth night act ii scene v olivia's garden. [enter sir toby belch, sir andrew, and fabian] sir toby belch come thy ways, signior fabian. fabian nay, i'll come: if i lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy. sir toby belch wouldst thou not be glad to have the niggardly rascally sheep-biter come by some notable shame? fabian i would exult, man: you know, he brought me out o' favour with my lady about a bear-baiting here. sir toby belch to anger him we'll have the bear again; and we will fool him black and blue: shall we not, sir andrew? sir andrew an we do not, it is pity of our lives. sir toby belch here comes the little villain. [enter maria] how now, my metal of india! maria get ye all three into the box-tree: malvolio's coming down this walk: he has been yonder i' the sun practising behavior to his own shadow this half hour: observe him, for the love of mockery; for i know this letter will make a contemplative idiot of him. close, in the name of jesting! lie thou there, [throws down a letter] for here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling. [exit] [enter malvolio] malvolio 'tis but fortune; all is fortune. maria once told me she did affect me: and i have heard herself come thus near, that, should she fancy, it should be one of my complexion. besides, she uses me with a more exalted respect than any one else that follows her. what should i think on't? sir toby belch here's an overweening rogue! fabian o, peace! contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him: how he jets under his advanced plumes! sir andrew 'slight, i could so beat the rogue! sir toby belch peace, i say. malvolio to be count malvolio! sir toby belch ah, rogue! sir andrew pistol him, pistol him. sir toby belch peace, peace! malvolio there is example for't; the lady of the strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe. sir andrew fie on him, jezebel! fabian o, peace! now he's deeply in: look how imagination blows him. malvolio having been three months married to her, sitting in my state,- sir toby belch o, for a stone-bow, to hit him in the eye! malvolio calling my officers about me, in my branched velvet gown; having come from a day-bed, where i have left olivia sleeping,- sir toby belch fire and brimstone! fabian o, peace, peace! malvolio and then to have the humour of state; and after a demure travel of regard, telling them i know my place as i would they should do theirs, to for my kinsman toby,- sir toby belch bolts and shackles! fabian o peace, peace, peace! now, now. malvolio seven of my people, with an obedient start, make out for him: i frown the while; and perchance wind up watch, or play with my--some rich jewel. toby approaches; courtesies there to me,- sir toby belch shall this fellow live? fabian though our silence be drawn from us with cars, yet peace. malvolio i extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard of control,- sir toby belch and does not toby take you a blow o' the lips then? malvolio saying, 'cousin toby, my fortunes having cast me on your niece give me this prerogative of speech,'- sir toby belch what, what? malvolio 'you must amend your drunkenness.' sir toby belch out, scab! fabian nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot. malvolio 'besides, you waste the treasure of your time with a foolish knight,'- sir andrew that's me, i warrant you. malvolio 'one sir andrew,'- sir andrew i knew 'twas i; for many do call me fool. malvolio what employment have we here? [taking up the letter] fabian now is the woodcock near the gin. sir toby belch o, peace! and the spirit of humour intimate reading aloud to him! malvolio by my life, this is my lady's hand these be her very c's, her u's and her t's and thus makes she her great p's. it is, in contempt of question, her hand. sir andrew her c's, her u's and her t's: why that? malvolio [reads] 'to the unknown beloved, this, and my good wishes:'--her very phrases! by your leave, wax. soft! and the impressure her lucrece, with which she uses to seal: 'tis my lady. to whom should this be? fabian this wins him, liver and all. malvolio [reads] jove knows i love: but who? lips, do not move; no man must know. 'no man must know.' what follows? the numbers altered! 'no man must know:' if this should be thee, malvolio? sir toby belch marry, hang thee, brock! malvolio [reads] i may command where i adore; but silence, like a lucrece knife, with bloodless stroke my heart doth gore: m, o, a, i, doth sway my life. fabian a fustian riddle! sir toby belch excellent wench, say i. malvolio 'm, o, a, i, doth sway my life.' nay, but first, let me see, let me see, let me see. fabian what dish o' poison has she dressed him! sir toby belch and with what wing the staniel cheques at it! malvolio 'i may command where i adore.' why, she may command me: i serve her; she is my lady. why, this is evident to any formal capacity; there is no obstruction in this: and the end,--what should that alphabetical position portend? if i could make that resemble something in me,--softly! m, o, a, i,- sir toby belch o, ay, make up that: he is now at a cold scent. fabian sowter will cry upon't for all this, though it be as rank as a fox. malvolio m,--malvolio; m,--why, that begins my name. fabian did not i say he would work it out? the cur is excellent at faults. malvolio m,--but then there is no consonancy in the sequel; that suffers under probation a should follow but o does. fabian and o shall end, i hope. sir toby belch ay, or i'll cudgel him, and make him cry o! malvolio and then i comes behind. fabian ay, an you had any eye behind you, you might see more detraction at your heels than fortunes before you. malvolio m, o, a, i; this simulation is not as the former: and yet, to crush this a little, it would bow to me, for every one of these letters are in my name. soft! here follows prose. [reads] 'if this fall into thy hand, revolve. in my stars i am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. thy fates open their hands; let thy blood and spirit embrace them; and, to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear fresh. be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants; let thy tongue tang arguments of state; put thyself into the trick of singularity: she thus advises thee that sighs for thee. remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered: i say, remember. go to, thou art made, if thou desirest to be so; if not, let me see thee a steward still, the fellow of servants, and not worthy to touch fortune's fingers. farewell. she that would alter services with thee, the fortunate-unhappy.' daylight and champaign discovers not more: this is open. i will be proud, i will read politic authors, i will baffle sir toby, i will wash off gross acquaintance, i will be point-devise the very man. i do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade me; for every reason excites to this, that my lady loves me. she did commend my yellow stockings of late, she did praise my leg being cross-gartered; and in this she manifests herself to my love, and with a kind of injunction drives me to these habits of her liking. i thank my stars i am happy. i will be strange, stout, in yellow stockings, and cross-gartered, even with the swiftness of putting on. jove and my stars be praised! here is yet a postscript. [reads] 'thou canst not choose but know who i am. if thou entertainest my love, let it appear in thy smiling; thy smiles become thee well; therefore in my presence still smile, dear my sweet, i prithee.' jove, i thank thee: i will smile; i will do everything that thou wilt have me. [exit] fabian i will not give my part of this sport for a pension of thousands to be paid from the sophy. sir toby belch i could marry this wench for this device. sir andrew so could i too. sir toby belch and ask no other dowry with her but such another jest. sir andrew nor i neither. fabian here comes my noble gull-catcher. [re-enter maria] sir toby belch wilt thou set thy foot o' my neck? sir andrew or o' mine either? sir toby belch shall i play my freedom at traytrip, and become thy bond-slave? sir andrew i' faith, or i either? sir toby belch why, thou hast put him in such a dream, that when the image of it leaves him he must run mad. maria nay, but say true; does it work upon him? sir toby belch like aqua-vitae with a midwife. maria if you will then see the fruits of the sport, mark his first approach before my lady: he will come to her in yellow stockings, and 'tis a colour she abhors, and cross-gartered, a fashion she detests; and he will smile upon her, which will now be so unsuitable to her disposition, being addicted to a melancholy as she is, that it cannot but turn him into a notable contempt. if you will see it, follow me. sir toby belch to the gates of tartar, thou most excellent devil of wit! sir andrew i'll make one too. [exeunt] twelfth night act iii scene i olivia's garden. [enter viola, and clown with a tabour] viola save thee, friend, and thy music: dost thou live by thy tabour? clown no, sir, i live by the church. viola art thou a churchman? clown no such matter, sir: i do live by the church; for i do live at my house, and my house doth stand by the church. viola so thou mayst say, the king lies by a beggar, if a beggar dwell near him; or, the church stands by thy tabour, if thy tabour stand by the church. clown you have said, sir. to see this age! a sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit: how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward! viola nay, that's certain; they that dally nicely with words may quickly make them wanton. clown i would, therefore, my sister had had no name, sir. viola why, man? clown why, sir, her name's a word; and to dally with that word might make my sister wanton. but indeed words are very rascals since bonds disgraced them. viola thy reason, man? clown troth, sir, i can yield you none without words; and words are grown so false, i am loath to prove reason with them. viola i warrant thou art a merry fellow and carest for nothing. clown not so, sir, i do care for something; but in my conscience, sir, i do not care for you: if that be to care for nothing, sir, i would it would make you invisible. viola art not thou the lady olivia's fool? clown no, indeed, sir; the lady olivia has no folly: she will keep no fool, sir, till she be married; and fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings; the husband's the bigger: i am indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words. viola i saw thee late at the count orsino's. clown foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines every where. i would be sorry, sir, but the fool should be as oft with your master as with my mistress: i think i saw your wisdom there. viola nay, an thou pass upon me, i'll no more with thee. hold, there's expenses for thee. clown now jove, in his next commodity of hair, send thee a beard! viola by my troth, i'll tell thee, i am almost sick for one; [aside] though i would not have it grow on my chin. is thy lady within? clown would not a pair of these have bred, sir? viola yes, being kept together and put to use. clown i would play lord pandarus of phrygia, sir, to bring a cressida to this troilus. viola i understand you, sir; 'tis well begged. clown the matter, i hope, is not great, sir, begging but a beggar: cressida was a beggar. my lady is within, sir. i will construe to them whence you come; who you are and what you would are out of my welkin, i might say 'element,' but the word is over-worn. [exit] viola this fellow is wise enough to play the fool; and to do that well craves a kind of wit: he must observe their mood on whom he jests, the quality of persons, and the time, and, like the haggard, cheque at every feather that comes before his eye. this is a practise as full of labour as a wise man's art for folly that he wisely shows is fit; but wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit. [enter sir toby belch, and sir andrew] sir toby belch save you, gentleman. viola and you, sir. sir andrew dieu vous garde, monsieur. viola et vous aussi; votre serviteur. sir andrew i hope, sir, you are; and i am yours. sir toby belch will you encounter the house? my niece is desirous you should enter, if your trade be to her. viola i am bound to your niece, sir; i mean, she is the list of my voyage. sir toby belch taste your legs, sir; put them to motion. viola my legs do better understand me, sir, than i understand what you mean by bidding me taste my legs. sir toby belch i mean, to go, sir, to enter. viola i will answer you with gait and entrance. but we are prevented. [enter olivia and maria] most excellent accomplished lady, the heavens rain odours on you! sir andrew that youth's a rare courtier: 'rain odours;' well. viola my matter hath no voice, to your own most pregnant and vouchsafed ear. sir andrew 'odours,' 'pregnant' and 'vouchsafed:' i'll get 'em all three all ready. olivia let the garden door be shut, and leave me to my hearing. [exeunt sir toby belch, sir andrew, and maria] give me your hand, sir. viola my duty, madam, and most humble service. olivia what is your name? viola cesario is your servant's name, fair princess. olivia my servant, sir! 'twas never merry world since lowly feigning was call'd compliment: you're servant to the count orsino, youth. viola and he is yours, and his must needs be yours: your servant's servant is your servant, madam. olivia for him, i think not on him: for his thoughts, would they were blanks, rather than fill'd with me! viola madam, i come to whet your gentle thoughts on his behalf. olivia o, by your leave, i pray you, i bade you never speak again of him: but, would you undertake another suit, i had rather hear you to solicit that than music from the spheres. viola dear lady,- olivia give me leave, beseech you. i did send, after the last enchantment you did here, a ring in chase of you: so did i abuse myself, my servant and, i fear me, you: under your hard construction must i sit, to force that on you, in a shameful cunning, which you knew none of yours: what might you think? have you not set mine honour at the stake and baited it with all the unmuzzled thoughts that tyrannous heart can think? to one of your receiving enough is shown: a cypress, not a bosom, hideth my heart. so, let me hear you speak. viola i pity you. olivia that's a degree to love. viola no, not a grize; for 'tis a vulgar proof, that very oft we pity enemies. olivia why, then, methinks 'tis time to smile again. o, world, how apt the poor are to be proud! if one should be a prey, how much the better to fall before the lion than the wolf! [clock strikes] the clock upbraids me with the waste of time. be not afraid, good youth, i will not have you: and yet, when wit and youth is come to harvest, your were is alike to reap a proper man: there lies your way, due west. viola then westward-ho! grace and good disposition attend your ladyship! you'll nothing, madam, to my lord by me? olivia stay: i prithee, tell me what thou thinkest of me. viola that you do think you are not what you are. olivia if i think so, i think the same of you. viola then think you right: i am not what i am. olivia i would you were as i would have you be! viola would it be better, madam, than i am? i wish it might, for now i am your fool. olivia o, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful in the contempt and anger of his lip! a murderous guilt shows not itself more soon than love that would seem hid: love's night is noon. cesario, by the roses of the spring, by maidhood, honour, truth and every thing, i love thee so, that, maugre all thy pride, nor wit nor reason can my passion hide. do not extort thy reasons from this clause, for that i woo, thou therefore hast no cause, but rather reason thus with reason fetter, love sought is good, but given unsought better. viola by innocence i swear, and by my youth i have one heart, one bosom and one truth, and that no woman has; nor never none shall mistress be of it, save i alone. and so adieu, good madam: never more will i my master's tears to you deplore. olivia yet come again; for thou perhaps mayst move that heart, which now abhors, to like his love. [exeunt] twelfth night act iii scene ii olivia's house. [enter sir toby belch, sir andrew, and fabian] sir andrew no, faith, i'll not stay a jot longer. sir toby belch thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason. fabian you must needs yield your reason, sir andrew. sir andrew marry, i saw your niece do more favours to the count's serving-man than ever she bestowed upon me; i saw't i' the orchard. sir toby belch did she see thee the while, old boy? tell me that. sir andrew as plain as i see you now. fabian this was a great argument of love in her toward you. sir andrew 'slight, will you make an ass o' me? fabian i will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment and reason. sir toby belch and they have been grand-jury-men since before noah was a sailor. fabian she did show favour to the youth in your sight only to exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in your heart and brimstone in your liver. you should then have accosted her; and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should have banged the youth into dumbness. this was looked for at your hand, and this was balked: the double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on a dutchman's beard, unless you do redeem it by some laudable attempt either of valour or policy. sir andrew an't be any way, it must be with valour; for policy i hate: i had as lief be a brownist as a politician. sir toby belch why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of valour. challenge me the count's youth to fight with him; hurt him in eleven places: my niece shall take note of it; and assure thyself, there is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in man's commendation with woman than report of valour. fabian there is no way but this, sir andrew. sir andrew will either of you bear me a challenge to him? sir toby belch go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent and fun of invention: taunt him with the licence of ink: if thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss; and as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of ware in england, set 'em down: go, about it. let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter: about it. sir andrew where shall i find you? sir toby belch we'll call thee at the cubiculo: go. [exit sir andrew] fabian this is a dear manikin to you, sir toby. sir toby belch i have been dear to him, lad, some two thousand strong, or so. fabian we shall have a rare letter from him: but you'll not deliver't? sir toby belch never trust me, then; and by all means stir on the youth to an answer. i think oxen and wainropes cannot hale them together. for andrew, if he were opened, and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, i'll eat the rest of the anatomy. fabian and his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great presage of cruelty. [enter maria] sir toby belch look, where the youngest wren of nine comes. maria if you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourself into stitches, follow me. yond gull malvolio is turned heathen, a very renegado; for there is no christian, that means to be saved by believing rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages of grossness. he's in yellow stockings. sir toby belch and cross-gartered? maria most villanously; like a pedant that keeps a school i' the church. i have dogged him, like his murderer. he does obey every point of the letter that i dropped to betray him: he does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the indies: you have not seen such a thing as 'tis. i can hardly forbear hurling things at him. i know my lady will strike him: if she do, he'll smile and take't for a great favour. sir toby belch come, bring us, bring us where he is. [exeunt] twelfth night act iii scene iii a street. [enter sebastian and antonio] sebastian i would not by my will have troubled you; but, since you make your pleasure of your pains, i will no further chide you. antonio i could not stay behind you: my desire, more sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth; and not all love to see you, though so much as might have drawn one to a longer voyage, but jealousy what might befall your travel, being skilless in these parts; which to a stranger, unguided and unfriended, often prove rough and unhospitable: my willing love, the rather by these arguments of fear, set forth in your pursuit. sebastian my kind antonio, i can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks; and ever [ ] oft good turns are shuffled off with such uncurrent pay: but, were my worth as is my conscience firm, you should find better dealing. what's to do? shall we go see the reliques of this town? antonio to-morrow, sir: best first go see your lodging. sebastian i am not weary, and 'tis long to night: i pray you, let us satisfy our eyes with the memorials and the things of fame that do renown this city. antonio would you'ld pardon me; i do not without danger walk these streets: once, in a sea-fight, 'gainst the count his galleys i did some service; of such note indeed, that were i ta'en here it would scarce be answer'd. sebastian belike you slew great number of his people. antonio the offence is not of such a bloody nature; albeit the quality of the time and quarrel might well have given us bloody argument. it might have since been answer'd in repaying what we took from them; which, for traffic's sake, most of our city did: only myself stood out; for which, if i be lapsed in this place, i shall pay dear. sebastian do not then walk too open. antonio it doth not fit me. hold, sir, here's my purse. in the south suburbs, at the elephant, is best to lodge: i will bespeak our diet, whiles you beguile the time and feed your knowledge with viewing of the town: there shall you have me. sebastian why i your purse? antonio haply your eye shall light upon some toy you have desire to purchase; and your store, i think, is not for idle markets, sir. sebastian i'll be your purse-bearer and leave you for an hour. antonio to the elephant. sebastian i do remember. [exeunt] twelfth night act iii scene iv olivia's garden. [enter olivia and maria] olivia i have sent after him: he says he'll come; how shall i feast him? what bestow of him? for youth is bought more oft than begg'd or borrow'd. i speak too loud. where is malvolio? he is sad and civil, and suits well for a servant with my fortunes: where is malvolio? maria he's coming, madam; but in very strange manner. he is, sure, possessed, madam. olivia why, what's the matter? does he rave? maria no. madam, he does nothing but smile: your ladyship were best to have some guard about you, if he come; for, sure, the man is tainted in's wits. olivia go call him hither. [exit maria] i am as mad as he, if sad and merry madness equal be. [re-enter maria, with malvolio] how now, malvolio! malvolio sweet lady, ho, ho. olivia smilest thou? i sent for thee upon a sad occasion. malvolio sad, lady! i could be sad: this does make some obstruction in the blood, this cross-gartering; but what of that? if it please the eye of one, it is with me as the very true sonnet is, 'please one, and please all.' olivia why, how dost thou, man? what is the matter with thee? malvolio not black in my mind, though yellow in my legs. it did come to his hands, and commands shall be executed: i think we do know the sweet roman hand. olivia wilt thou go to bed, malvolio? malvolio to bed! ay, sweet-heart, and i'll come to thee. olivia god comfort thee! why dost thou smile so and kiss thy hand so oft? maria how do you, malvolio? malvolio at your request! yes; nightingales answer daws. maria why appear you with this ridiculous boldness before my lady? malvolio 'be not afraid of greatness:' 'twas well writ. olivia what meanest thou by that, malvolio? malvolio 'some are born great,'- olivia ha! malvolio 'some achieve greatness,'- olivia what sayest thou? malvolio 'and some have greatness thrust upon them.' olivia heaven restore thee! malvolio 'remember who commended thy yellow stockings,'- olivia thy yellow stockings! malvolio 'and wished to see thee cross-gartered.' olivia cross-gartered! malvolio 'go to thou art made, if thou desirest to be so;'- olivia am i made? malvolio 'if not, let me see thee a servant still.' olivia why, this is very midsummer madness. [enter servant] servant madam, the young gentleman of the count orsino's is returned: i could hardly entreat him back: he attends your ladyship's pleasure. olivia i'll come to him. [exit servant] good maria, let this fellow be looked to. where's my cousin toby? let some of my people have a special care of him: i would not have him miscarry for the half of my dowry. [exeunt olivia and maria] malvolio o, ho! do you come near me now? no worse man than sir toby to look to me! this concurs directly with the letter: she sends him on purpose, that i may appear stubborn to him; for she incites me to that in the letter. 'cast thy humble slough,' says she; 'be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants; let thy tongue tang with arguments of state; put thyself into the trick of singularity;' and consequently sets down the manner how; as, a sad face, a reverend carriage, a slow tongue, in the habit of some sir of note, and so forth. i have limed her; but it is jove's doing, and jove make me thankful! and when she went away now, 'let this fellow be looked to:' fellow! not malvolio, nor after my degree, but fellow. why, every thing adheres together, that no dram of a scruple, no scruple of a scruple, no obstacle, no incredulous or unsafe circumstance--what can be said? nothing that can be can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes. well, jove, not i, is the doer of this, and he is to be thanked. [re-enter maria, with sir toby belch and fabian] sir toby belch which way is he, in the name of sanctity? if all the devils of hell be drawn in little, and legion himself possessed him, yet i'll speak to him. fabian here he is, here he is. how is't with you, sir? how is't with you, man? malvolio go off; i discard you: let me enjoy my private: go off. maria lo, how hollow the fiend speaks within him! did not i tell you? sir toby, my lady prays you to have a care of him. malvolio ah, ha! does she so? sir toby belch go to, go to; peace, peace; we must deal gently with him: let me alone. how do you, malvolio? how is't with you? what, man! defy the devil: consider, he's an enemy to mankind. malvolio do you know what you say? maria la you, an you speak ill of the devil, how he takes it at heart! pray god, he be not bewitched! fabian carry his water to the wise woman. maria marry, and it shall be done to-morrow morning, if i live. my lady would not lose him for more than i'll say. malvolio how now, mistress! maria o lord! sir toby belch prithee, hold thy peace; this is not the way: do you not see you move him? let me alone with him. fabian no way but gentleness; gently, gently: the fiend is rough, and will not be roughly used. sir toby belch why, how now, my bawcock! how dost thou, chuck? malvolio sir! sir toby belch ay, biddy, come with me. what, man! 'tis not for gravity to play at cherry-pit with satan: hang him, foul collier! maria get him to say his prayers, good sir toby, get him to pray. malvolio my prayers, minx! maria no, i warrant you, he will not hear of godliness. malvolio go, hang yourselves all! you are idle shallow things: i am not of your element: you shall know more hereafter. [exit] sir toby belch is't possible? fabian if this were played upon a stage now, i could condemn it as an improbable fiction. sir toby belch his very genius hath taken the infection of the device, man. maria nay, pursue him now, lest the device take air and taint. fabian why, we shall make him mad indeed. maria the house will be the quieter. sir toby belch come, we'll have him in a dark room and bound. my niece is already in the belief that he's mad: we may carry it thus, for our pleasure and his penance, till our very pastime, tired out of breath, prompt us to have mercy on him: at which time we will bring the device to the bar and crown thee for a finder of madmen. but see, but see. [enter sir andrew] fabian more matter for a may morning. sir andrew here's the challenge, read it: warrant there's vinegar and pepper in't. fabian is't so saucy? sir andrew ay, is't, i warrant him: do but read. sir toby belch give me. [reads] 'youth, whatsoever thou art, thou art but a scurvy fellow.' fabian good, and valiant. sir toby belch [reads] 'wonder not, nor admire not in thy mind, why i do call thee so, for i will show thee no reason for't.' fabian a good note; that keeps you from the blow of the law. sir toby belch [reads] 'thou comest to the lady olivia, and in my sight she uses thee kindly: but thou liest in thy throat; that is not the matter i challenge thee for.' fabian very brief, and to exceeding good sense--less. sir toby belch [reads] 'i will waylay thee going home; where if it be thy chance to kill me,'- fabian good. sir toby belch [reads] 'thou killest me like a rogue and a villain.' fabian still you keep o' the windy side of the law: good. sir toby belch [reads] 'fare thee well; and god have mercy upon one of our souls! he may have mercy upon mine; but my hope is better, and so look to thyself. thy friend, as thou usest him, and thy sworn enemy, andrew aguecheek. if this letter move him not, his legs cannot: i'll give't him. maria you may have very fit occasion for't: he is now in some commerce with my lady, and will by and by depart. sir toby belch go, sir andrew: scout me for him at the corner the orchard like a bum-baily: so soon as ever thou seest him, draw; and, as thou drawest swear horrible; for it comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him. away! sir andrew nay, let me alone for swearing. [exit] sir toby belch now will not i deliver his letter: for the behavior of the young gentleman gives him out to be of good capacity and breeding; his employment between his lord and my niece confirms no less: therefore this letter, being so excellently ignorant, will breed no terror in the youth: he will find it comes from a clodpole. but, sir, i will deliver his challenge by word of mouth; set upon aguecheek a notable report of valour; and drive the gentleman, as i know his youth will aptly receive it, into a most hideous opinion of his rage, skill, fury and impetuosity. this will so fright them both that they will kill one another by the look, like cockatrices. [re-enter olivia, with viola] fabian here he comes with your niece: give them way till he take leave, and presently after him. sir toby belch i will meditate the while upon some horrid message for a challenge. [exeunt sir toby belch, fabian, and maria] olivia i have said too much unto a heart of stone and laid mine honour too unchary out: there's something in me that reproves my fault; but such a headstrong potent fault it is, that it but mocks reproof. viola with the same 'havior that your passion bears goes on my master's grief. olivia here, wear this jewel for me, 'tis my picture; refuse it not; it hath no tongue to vex you; and i beseech you come again to-morrow. what shall you ask of me that i'll deny, that honour saved may upon asking give? viola nothing but this; your true love for my master. olivia how with mine honour may i give him that which i have given to you? viola i will acquit you. olivia well, come again to-morrow: fare thee well: a fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell. [exit] [re-enter sir toby belch and fabian] sir toby belch gentleman, god save thee. viola and you, sir. sir toby belch that defence thou hast, betake thee to't: of what nature the wrongs are thou hast done him, i know not; but thy intercepter, full of despite, bloody as the hunter, attends thee at the orchard-end: dismount thy tuck, be yare in thy preparation, for thy assailant is quick, skilful and deadly. viola you mistake, sir; i am sure no man hath any quarrel to me: my remembrance is very free and clear from any image of offence done to any man. sir toby belch you'll find it otherwise, i assure you: therefore, if you hold your life at any price, betake you to your guard; for your opposite hath in him what youth, strength, skill and wrath can furnish man withal. viola i pray you, sir, what is he? sir toby belch he is knight, dubbed with unhatched rapier and on carpet consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl: souls and bodies hath he divorced three; and his incensement at this moment is so implacable, that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre. hob, nob, is his word; give't or take't. viola i will return again into the house and desire some conduct of the lady. i am no fighter. i have heard of some kind of men that put quarrels purposely on others, to taste their valour: belike this is a man of that quirk. sir toby belch sir, no; his indignation derives itself out of a very competent injury: therefore, get you on and give him his desire. back you shall not to the house, unless you undertake that with me which with as much safety you might answer him: therefore, on, or strip your sword stark naked; for meddle you must, that's certain, or forswear to wear iron about you. viola this is as uncivil as strange. i beseech you, do me this courteous office, as to know of the knight what my offence to him is: it is something of my negligence, nothing of my purpose. sir toby belch i will do so. signior fabian, stay you by this gentleman till my return. [exit] viola pray you, sir, do you know of this matter? fabian i know the knight is incensed against you, even to a mortal arbitrement; but nothing of the circumstance more. viola i beseech you, what manner of man is he? fabian nothing of that wonderful promise, to read him by his form, as you are like to find him in the proof of his valour. he is, indeed, sir, the most skilful, bloody and fatal opposite that you could possibly have found in any part of illyria. will you walk towards him? i will make your peace with him if i can. viola i shall be much bound to you for't: i am one that had rather go with sir priest than sir knight: i care not who knows so much of my mettle. [exeunt] [re-enter sir toby belch, with sir andrew] sir toby belch why, man, he's a very devil; i have not seen such a firago. i had a pass with him, rapier, scabbard and all, and he gives me the stuck in with such a mortal motion, that it is inevitable; and on the answer, he pays you as surely as your feet hit the ground they step on. they say he has been fencer to the sophy. sir andrew pox on't, i'll not meddle with him. sir toby belch ay, but he will not now be pacified: fabian can scarce hold him yonder. sir andrew plague on't, an i thought he had been valiant and so cunning in fence, i'ld have seen him damned ere i'ld have challenged him. let him let the matter slip, and i'll give him my horse, grey capilet. sir toby belch i'll make the motion: stand here, make a good show on't: this shall end without the perdition of souls. [aside] marry, i'll ride your horse as well as i ride you. [re-enter fabian and viola] [to fabian] i have his horse to take up the quarrel: i have persuaded him the youth's a devil. fabian he is as horribly conceited of him; and pants and looks pale, as if a bear were at his heels. sir toby belch [to viola] there's no remedy, sir; he will fight with you for's oath sake: marry, he hath better bethought him of his quarrel, and he finds that now scarce to be worth talking of: therefore draw, for the supportance of his vow; he protests he will not hurt you. viola [aside] pray god defend me! a little thing would make me tell them how much i lack of a man. fabian give ground, if you see him furious. sir toby belch come, sir andrew, there's no remedy; the gentleman will, for his honour's sake, have one bout with you; he cannot by the duello avoid it: but he has promised me, as he is a gentleman and a soldier, he will not hurt you. come on; to't. sir andrew pray god, he keep his oath! viola i do assure you, 'tis against my will. [they draw] [enter antonio] antonio put up your sword. if this young gentleman have done offence, i take the fault on me: if you offend him, i for him defy you. sir toby belch you, sir! why, what are you? antonio one, sir, that for his love dares yet do more than you have heard him brag to you he will. sir toby belch nay, if you be an undertaker, i am for you. [they draw] [enter officers] fabian o good sir toby, hold! here come the officers. sir toby belch i'll be with you anon. viola pray, sir, put your sword up, if you please. sir andrew marry, will i, sir; and, for that i promised you, i'll be as good as my word: he will bear you easily and reins well. first officer this is the man; do thy office. second officer antonio, i arrest thee at the suit of count orsino. antonio you do mistake me, sir. first officer no, sir, no jot; i know your favour well, though now you have no sea-cap on your head. take him away: he knows i know him well. antonio i must obey. [to viola] this comes with seeking you: but there's no remedy; i shall answer it. what will you do, now my necessity makes me to ask you for my purse? it grieves me much more for what i cannot do for you than what befalls myself. you stand amazed; but be of comfort. second officer come, sir, away. antonio i must entreat of you some of that money. viola what money, sir? for the fair kindness you have show'd me here, and, part, being prompted by your present trouble, out of my lean and low ability i'll lend you something: my having is not much; i'll make division of my present with you: hold, there's half my coffer. antonio will you deny me now? is't possible that my deserts to you can lack persuasion? do not tempt my misery, lest that it make me so unsound a man as to upbraid you with those kindnesses that i have done for you. viola i know of none; nor know i you by voice or any feature: i hate ingratitude more in a man than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, or any taint of vice whose strong corruption inhabits our frail blood. antonio o heavens themselves! second officer come, sir, i pray you, go. antonio let me speak a little. this youth that you see here i snatch'd one half out of the jaws of death, relieved him with such sanctity of love, and to his image, which methought did promise most venerable worth, did i devotion. first officer what's that to us? the time goes by: away! antonio but o how vile an idol proves this god thou hast, sebastian, done good feature shame. in nature there's no blemish but the mind; none can be call'd deform'd but the unkind: virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil are empty trunks o'erflourish'd by the devil. first officer the man grows mad: away with him! come, come, sir. antonio lead me on. [exit with officers] viola methinks his words do from such passion fly, that he believes himself: so do not i. prove true, imagination, o, prove true, that i, dear brother, be now ta'en for you! sir toby belch come hither, knight; come hither, fabian: we'll whisper o'er a couplet or two of most sage saws. viola he named sebastian: i my brother know yet living in my glass; even such and so in favour was my brother, and he went still in this fashion, colour, ornament, for him i imitate: o, if it prove, tempests are kind and salt waves fresh in love. [exit] sir toby belch a very dishonest paltry boy, and more a coward than a hare: his dishonesty appears in leaving his friend here in necessity and denying him; and for his cowardship, ask fabian. fabian a coward, a most devout coward, religious in it. sir andrew 'slid, i'll after him again and beat him. sir toby belch do; cuff him soundly, but never draw thy sword. sir andrew an i do not,- fabian come, let's see the event. sir toby belch i dare lay any money 'twill be nothing yet. [exeunt] twelfth night act iv scene i before olivia's house. [enter sebastian and clown] clown will you make me believe that i am not sent for you? sebastian go to, go to, thou art a foolish fellow: let me be clear of thee. clown well held out, i' faith! no, i do not know you; nor i am not sent to you by my lady, to bid you come speak with her; nor your name is not master cesario; nor this is not my nose neither. nothing that is so is so. sebastian i prithee, vent thy folly somewhere else: thou know'st not me. clown vent my folly! he has heard that word of some great man and now applies it to a fool. vent my folly! i am afraid this great lubber, the world, will prove a cockney. i prithee now, ungird thy strangeness and tell me what i shall vent to my lady: shall i vent to her that thou art coming? sebastian i prithee, foolish greek, depart from me: there's money for thee: if you tarry longer, i shall give worse payment. clown by my troth, thou hast an open hand. these wise men that give fools money get themselves a good report--after fourteen years' purchase. [enter sir andrew, sir toby belch, and fabian] sir andrew now, sir, have i met you again? there's for you. sebastian why, there's for thee, and there, and there. are all the people mad? sir toby belch hold, sir, or i'll throw your dagger o'er the house. clown this will i tell my lady straight: i would not be in some of your coats for two pence. [exit] sir toby belch come on, sir; hold. sir andrew nay, let him alone: i'll go another way to work with him; i'll have an action of battery against him, if there be any law in illyria: though i struck him first, yet it's no matter for that. sebastian let go thy hand. sir toby belch come, sir, i will not let you go. come, my young soldier, put up your iron: you are well fleshed; come on. sebastian i will be free from thee. what wouldst thou now? if thou darest tempt me further, draw thy sword. sir toby belch what, what? nay, then i must have an ounce or two of this malapert blood from you. [enter olivia] olivia hold, toby; on thy life i charge thee, hold! sir toby belch madam! olivia will it be ever thus? ungracious wretch, fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves, where manners ne'er were preach'd! out of my sight! be not offended, dear cesario. rudesby, be gone! [exeunt sir toby belch, sir andrew, and fabian] i prithee, gentle friend, let thy fair wisdom, not thy passion, sway in this uncivil and thou unjust extent against thy peace. go with me to my house, and hear thou there how many fruitless pranks this ruffian hath botch'd up, that thou thereby mayst smile at this: thou shalt not choose but go: do not deny. beshrew his soul for me, he started one poor heart of mine in thee. sebastian what relish is in this? how runs the stream? or i am mad, or else this is a dream: let fancy still my sense in lethe steep; if it be thus to dream, still let me sleep! olivia nay, come, i prithee; would thou'ldst be ruled by me! sebastian madam, i will. olivia o, say so, and so be! [exeunt] twelfth night act iv scene ii olivia's house. [enter maria and clown] maria nay, i prithee, put on this gown and this beard; make him believe thou art sir topas the curate: do it quickly; i'll call sir toby the whilst. [exit] clown well, i'll put it on, and i will dissemble myself in't; and i would i were the first that ever dissembled in such a gown. i am not tall enough to become the function well, nor lean enough to be thought a good student; but to be said an honest man and a good housekeeper goes as fairly as to say a careful man and a great scholar. the competitors enter. [enter sir toby belch and maria] sir toby belch jove bless thee, master parson. clown bonos dies, sir toby: for, as the old hermit of prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of king gorboduc, 'that that is is;' so i, being master parson, am master parson; for, what is 'that' but 'that,' and 'is' but 'is'? sir toby belch to him, sir topas. clown what, ho, i say! peace in this prison! sir toby belch the knave counterfeits well; a good knave. malvolio [within] who calls there? clown sir topas the curate, who comes to visit malvolio the lunatic. malvolio sir topas, sir topas, good sir topas, go to my lady. clown out, hyperbolical fiend! how vexest thou this man! talkest thou nothing but of ladies? sir toby belch well said, master parson. malvolio sir topas, never was man thus wronged: good sir topas, do not think i am mad: they have laid me here in hideous darkness. clown fie, thou dishonest satan! i call thee by the most modest terms; for i am one of those gentle ones that will use the devil himself with courtesy: sayest thou that house is dark? malvolio as hell, sir topas. clown why it hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes, and the clearstores toward the south north are as lustrous as ebony; and yet complainest thou of obstruction? malvolio i am not mad, sir topas: i say to you, this house is dark. clown madman, thou errest: i say, there is no darkness but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled than the egyptians in their fog. malvolio i say, this house is as dark as ignorance, though ignorance were as dark as hell; and i say, there was never man thus abused. i am no more mad than you are: make the trial of it in any constant question. clown what is the opinion of pythagoras concerning wild fowl? malvolio that the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. clown what thinkest thou of his opinion? malvolio i think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion. clown fare thee well. remain thou still in darkness: thou shalt hold the opinion of pythagoras ere i will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. fare thee well. malvolio sir topas, sir topas! sir toby belch my most exquisite sir topas! clown nay, i am for all waters. maria thou mightst have done this without thy beard and gown: he sees thee not. sir toby belch to him in thine own voice, and bring me word how thou findest him: i would we were well rid of this knavery. if he may be conveniently delivered, i would he were, for i am now so far in offence with my niece that i cannot pursue with any safety this sport to the upshot. come by and by to my chamber. [exeunt sir toby belch and maria] clown [singing] 'hey, robin, jolly robin, tell me how thy lady does.' malvolio fool! clown 'my lady is unkind, perdy.' malvolio fool! clown 'alas, why is she so?' malvolio fool, i say! clown 'she loves another'--who calls, ha? malvolio good fool, as ever thou wilt deserve well at my hand, help me to a candle, and pen, ink and paper: as i am a gentleman, i will live to be thankful to thee for't. clown master malvolio? malvolio ay, good fool. clown alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits? malvolio fool, there was never a man so notoriously abused: i am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art. clown but as well? then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in your wits than a fool. malvolio they have here propertied me; keep me in darkness, send ministers to me, asses, and do all they can to face me out of my wits. clown advise you what you say; the minister is here. malvolio, malvolio, thy wits the heavens restore! endeavour thyself to sleep, and leave thy vain bibble babble. malvolio sir topas! clown maintain no words with him, good fellow. who, i, sir? not i, sir. god be wi' you, good sir topas. merry, amen. i will, sir, i will. malvolio fool, fool, fool, i say! clown alas, sir, be patient. what say you sir? i am shent for speaking to you. malvolio good fool, help me to some light and some paper: i tell thee, i am as well in my wits as any man in illyria. clown well-a-day that you were, sir malvolio by this hand, i am. good fool, some ink, paper and light; and convey what i will set down to my lady: it shall advantage thee more than ever the bearing of letter did. clown i will help you to't. but tell me true, are you not mad indeed? or do you but counterfeit? malvolio believe me, i am not; i tell thee true. clown nay, i'll ne'er believe a madman till i see his brains. i will fetch you light and paper and ink. malvolio fool, i'll requite it in the highest degree: i prithee, be gone. clown [singing] i am gone, sir, and anon, sir, i'll be with you again, in a trice, like to the old vice, your need to sustain; who, with dagger of lath, in his rage and his wrath, cries, ah, ha! to the devil: like a mad lad, pare thy nails, dad; adieu, good man devil. [exit] twelfth night act iv scene iii olivia's garden. [enter sebastian] sebastian this is the air; that is the glorious sun; this pearl she gave me, i do feel't and see't; and though 'tis wonder that enwraps me thus, yet 'tis not madness. where's antonio, then? i could not find him at the elephant: yet there he was; and there i found this credit, that he did range the town to seek me out. his counsel now might do me golden service; for though my soul disputes well with my sense, that this may be some error, but no madness, yet doth this accident and flood of fortune so far exceed all instance, all discourse, that i am ready to distrust mine eyes and wrangle with my reason that persuades me to any other trust but that i am mad or else the lady's mad; yet, if 'twere so, she could not sway her house, command her followers, take and give back affairs and their dispatch with such a smooth, discreet and stable bearing as i perceive she does: there's something in't that is deceiveable. but here the lady comes. [enter olivia and priest] olivia blame not this haste of mine. if you mean well, now go with me and with this holy man into the chantry by: there, before him, and underneath that consecrated roof, plight me the full assurance of your faith; that my most jealous and too doubtful soul may live at peace. he shall conceal it whiles you are willing it shall come to note, what time we will our celebration keep according to my birth. what do you say? sebastian i'll follow this good man, and go with you; and, having sworn truth, ever will be true. olivia then lead the way, good father; and heavens so shine, that they may fairly note this act of mine! [exeunt] twelfth night act v scene i before olivia's house. [enter clown and fabian] fabian now, as thou lovest me, let me see his letter. clown good master fabian, grant me another request. fabian any thing. clown do not desire to see this letter. fabian this is, to give a dog, and in recompense desire my dog again. [enter duke orsino, viola, curio, and lords] duke orsino belong you to the lady olivia, friends? clown ay, sir; we are some of her trappings. duke orsino i know thee well; how dost thou, my good fellow? clown truly, sir, the better for my foes and the worse for my friends. duke orsino just the contrary; the better for thy friends. clown no, sir, the worse. duke orsino how can that be? clown marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me; now my foes tell me plainly i am an ass: so that by my foes, sir i profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends, i am abused: so that, conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make your two affirmatives why then, the worse for my friends and the better for my foes. duke orsino why, this is excellent. clown by my troth, sir, no; though it please you to be one of my friends. duke orsino thou shalt not be the worse for me: there's gold. clown but that it would be double-dealing, sir, i would you could make it another. duke orsino o, you give me ill counsel. clown put your grace in your pocket, sir, for this once, and let your flesh and blood obey it. duke orsino well, i will be so much a sinner, to be a double-dealer: there's another. clown primo, secundo, tertio, is a good play; and the old saying is, the third pays for all: the triplex, sir, is a good tripping measure; or the bells of saint bennet, sir, may put you in mind; one, two, three. duke orsino you can fool no more money out of me at this throw: if you will let your lady know i am here to speak with her, and bring her along with you, it may awake my bounty further. clown marry, sir, lullaby to your bounty till i come again. i go, sir; but i would not have you to think that my desire of having is the sin of covetousness: but, as you say, sir, let your bounty take a nap, i will awake it anon. [exit] viola here comes the man, sir, that did rescue me. [enter antonio and officers] duke orsino that face of his i do remember well; yet, when i saw it last, it was besmear'd as black as vulcan in the smoke of war: a bawbling vessel was he captain of, for shallow draught and bulk unprizable; with which such scathful grapple did he make with the most noble bottom of our fleet, that very envy and the tongue of loss cried fame and honour on him. what's the matter? first officer orsino, this is that antonio that took the phoenix and her fraught from candy; and this is he that did the tiger board, when your young nephew titus lost his leg: here in the streets, desperate of shame and state, in private brabble did we apprehend him. viola he did me kindness, sir, drew on my side; but in conclusion put strange speech upon me: i know not what 'twas but distraction. duke orsino notable pirate! thou salt-water thief! what foolish boldness brought thee to their mercies, whom thou, in terms so bloody and so dear, hast made thine enemies? antonio orsino, noble sir, be pleased that i shake off these names you give me: antonio never yet was thief or pirate, though i confess, on base and ground enough, orsino's enemy. a witchcraft drew me hither: that most ingrateful boy there by your side, from the rude sea's enraged and foamy mouth did i redeem; a wreck past hope he was: his life i gave him and did thereto add my love, without retention or restraint, all his in dedication; for his sake did i expose myself, pure for his love, into the danger of this adverse town; drew to defend him when he was beset: where being apprehended, his false cunning, not meaning to partake with me in danger, taught him to face me out of his acquaintance, and grew a twenty years removed thing while one would wink; denied me mine own purse, which i had recommended to his use not half an hour before. viola how can this be? duke orsino when came he to this town? antonio to-day, my lord; and for three months before, no interim, not a minute's vacancy, both day and night did we keep company. [enter olivia and attendants] duke orsino here comes the countess: now heaven walks on earth. but for thee, fellow; fellow, thy words are madness: three months this youth hath tended upon me; but more of that anon. take him aside. olivia what would my lord, but that he may not have, wherein olivia may seem serviceable? cesario, you do not keep promise with me. viola madam! duke orsino gracious olivia,- olivia what do you say, cesario? good my lord,- viola my lord would speak; my duty hushes me. olivia if it be aught to the old tune, my lord, it is as fat and fulsome to mine ear as howling after music. duke orsino still so cruel? olivia still so constant, lord. duke orsino what, to perverseness? you uncivil lady, to whose ingrate and unauspicious altars my soul the faithfull'st offerings hath breathed out that e'er devotion tender'd! what shall i do? olivia even what it please my lord, that shall become him. duke orsino why should i not, had i the heart to do it, like to the egyptian thief at point of death, kill what i love?--a savage jealousy that sometimes savours nobly. but hear me this: since you to non-regardance cast my faith, and that i partly know the instrument that screws me from my true place in your favour, live you the marble-breasted tyrant still; but this your minion, whom i know you love, and whom, by heaven i swear, i tender dearly, him will i tear out of that cruel eye, where he sits crowned in his master's spite. come, boy, with me; my thoughts are ripe in mischief: i'll sacrifice the lamb that i do love, to spite a raven's heart within a dove. viola and i, most jocund, apt and willingly, to do you rest, a thousand deaths would die. olivia where goes cesario? viola after him i love more than i love these eyes, more than my life, more, by all mores, than e'er i shall love wife. if i do feign, you witnesses above punish my life for tainting of my love! olivia ay me, detested! how am i beguiled! viola who does beguile you? who does do you wrong? olivia hast thou forgot thyself? is it so long? call forth the holy father. duke orsino come, away! olivia whither, my lord? cesario, husband, stay. duke orsino husband! olivia ay, husband: can he that deny? duke orsino her husband, sirrah! viola no, my lord, not i. olivia alas, it is the baseness of thy fear that makes thee strangle thy propriety: fear not, cesario; take thy fortunes up; be that thou know'st thou art, and then thou art as great as that thou fear'st. [enter priest] o, welcome, father! father, i charge thee, by thy reverence, here to unfold, though lately we intended to keep in darkness what occasion now reveals before 'tis ripe, what thou dost know hath newly pass'd between this youth and me. priest a contract of eternal bond of love, confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands, attested by the holy close of lips, strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings; and all the ceremony of this compact seal'd in my function, by my testimony: since when, my watch hath told me, toward my grave i have travell'd but two hours. duke orsino o thou dissembling cub! what wilt thou be when time hath sow'd a grizzle on thy case? or will not else thy craft so quickly grow, that thine own trip shall be thine overthrow? farewell, and take her; but direct thy feet where thou and i henceforth may never meet. viola my lord, i do protest- olivia o, do not swear! hold little faith, though thou hast too much fear. [enter sir andrew] sir andrew for the love of god, a surgeon! send one presently to sir toby. olivia what's the matter? sir andrew he has broke my head across and has given sir toby a bloody coxcomb too: for the love of god, your help! i had rather than forty pound i were at home. olivia who has done this, sir andrew? sir andrew the count's gentleman, one cesario: we took him for a coward, but he's the very devil incardinate. duke orsino my gentleman, cesario? sir andrew 'od's lifelings, here he is! you broke my head for nothing; and that that i did, i was set on to do't by sir toby. viola why do you speak to me? i never hurt you: you drew your sword upon me without cause; but i bespoke you fair, and hurt you not. sir andrew if a bloody coxcomb be a hurt, you have hurt me: i think you set nothing by a bloody coxcomb. [enter sir toby belch and clown] here comes sir toby halting; you shall hear more: but if he had not been in drink, he would have tickled you othergates than he did. duke orsino how now, gentleman! how is't with you? sir toby belch that's all one: has hurt me, and there's the end on't. sot, didst see dick surgeon, sot? clown o, he's drunk, sir toby, an hour agone; his eyes were set at eight i' the morning. sir toby belch then he's a rogue, and a passy measures panyn: i hate a drunken rogue. olivia away with him! who hath made this havoc with them? sir andrew i'll help you, sir toby, because well be dressed together. sir toby belch will you help? an ass-head and a coxcomb and a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull! olivia get him to bed, and let his hurt be look'd to. [exeunt clown, fabian, sir toby belch, and sir andrew] [enter sebastian] sebastian i am sorry, madam, i have hurt your kinsman: but, had it been the brother of my blood, i must have done no less with wit and safety. you throw a strange regard upon me, and by that i do perceive it hath offended you: pardon me, sweet one, even for the vows we made each other but so late ago. duke orsino one face, one voice, one habit, and two persons, a natural perspective, that is and is not! sebastian antonio, o my dear antonio! how have the hours rack'd and tortured me, since i have lost thee! antonio sebastian are you? sebastian fear'st thou that, antonio? antonio how have you made division of yourself? an apple, cleft in two, is not more twin than these two creatures. which is sebastian? olivia most wonderful! sebastian do i stand there? i never had a brother; nor can there be that deity in my nature, of here and every where. i had a sister, whom the blind waves and surges have devour'd. of charity, what kin are you to me? what countryman? what name? what parentage? viola of messaline: sebastian was my father; such a sebastian was my brother too, so went he suited to his watery tomb: if spirits can assume both form and suit you come to fright us. sebastian a spirit i am indeed; but am in that dimension grossly clad which from the womb i did participate. were you a woman, as the rest goes even, i should my tears let fall upon your cheek, and say 'thrice-welcome, drowned viola!' viola my father had a mole upon his brow. sebastian and so had mine. viola and died that day when viola from her birth had number'd thirteen years. sebastian o, that record is lively in my soul! he finished indeed his mortal act that day that made my sister thirteen years. viola if nothing lets to make us happy both but this my masculine usurp'd attire, do not embrace me till each circumstance of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump that i am viola: which to confirm, i'll bring you to a captain in this town, where lie my maiden weeds; by whose gentle help i was preserved to serve this noble count. all the occurrence of my fortune since hath been between this lady and this lord. sebastian [to olivia] so comes it, lady, you have been mistook: but nature to her bias drew in that. you would have been contracted to a maid; nor are you therein, by my life, deceived, you are betroth'd both to a maid and man. duke orsino be not amazed; right noble is his blood. if this be so, as yet the glass seems true, i shall have share in this most happy wreck. [to viola] boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times thou never shouldst love woman like to me. viola and all those sayings will i overswear; and those swearings keep as true in soul as doth that orbed continent the fire that severs day from night. duke orsino give me thy hand; and let me see thee in thy woman's weeds. viola the captain that did bring me first on shore hath my maid's garments: he upon some action is now in durance, at malvolio's suit, a gentleman, and follower of my lady's. olivia he shall enlarge him: fetch malvolio hither: and yet, alas, now i remember me, they say, poor gentleman, he's much distract. [re-enter clown with a letter, and fabian] a most extracting frenzy of mine own from my remembrance clearly banish'd his. how does he, sirrah? clown truly, madam, he holds belzebub at the staves's end as well as a man in his case may do: has here writ a letter to you; i should have given't you to-day morning, but as a madman's epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much when they are delivered. olivia open't, and read it. clown look then to be well edified when the fool delivers the madman. [reads] 'by the lord, madam,'- olivia how now! art thou mad? clown no, madam, i do but read madness: an your ladyship will have it as it ought to be, you must allow vox. olivia prithee, read i' thy right wits. clown so i do, madonna; but to read his right wits is to read thus: therefore perpend, my princess, and give ear. olivia read it you, sirrah. [to fabian] fabian [reads] 'by the lord, madam, you wrong me, and the world shall know it: though you have put me into darkness and given your drunken cousin rule over me, yet have i the benefit of my senses as well as your ladyship. i have your own letter that induced me to the semblance i put on; with the which i doubt not but to do myself much right, or you much shame. think of me as you please. i leave my duty a little unthought of and speak out of my injury. the madly-used malvolio.' olivia did he write this? clown ay, madam. duke orsino this savours not much of distraction. olivia see him deliver'd, fabian; bring him hither. [exit fabian] my lord so please you, these things further thought on, to think me as well a sister as a wife, one day shall crown the alliance on't, so please you, here at my house and at my proper cost. duke orsino madam, i am most apt to embrace your offer. [to viola] your master quits you; and for your service done him, so much against the mettle of your sex, so far beneath your soft and tender breeding, and since you call'd me master for so long, here is my hand: you shall from this time be your master's mistress. olivia a sister! you are she. [re-enter fabian, with malvolio] duke orsino is this the madman? olivia ay, my lord, this same. how now, malvolio! malvolio madam, you have done me wrong, notorious wrong. olivia have i, malvolio? no. malvolio lady, you have. pray you, peruse that letter. you must not now deny it is your hand: write from it, if you can, in hand or phrase; or say 'tis not your seal, nor your invention: you can say none of this: well, grant it then and tell me, in the modesty of honour, why you have given me such clear lights of favour, bade me come smiling and cross-garter'd to you, to put on yellow stockings and to frown upon sir toby and the lighter people; and, acting this in an obedient hope, why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd, kept in a dark house, visited by the priest, and made the most notorious geck and gull that e'er invention play'd on? tell me why. olivia alas, malvolio, this is not my writing, though, i confess, much like the character but out of question 'tis maria's hand. and now i do bethink me, it was she first told me thou wast mad; then camest in smiling, and in such forms which here were presupposed upon thee in the letter. prithee, be content: this practise hath most shrewdly pass'd upon thee; but when we know the grounds and authors of it, thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge of thine own cause. fabian good madam, hear me speak, and let no quarrel nor no brawl to come taint the condition of this present hour, which i have wonder'd at. in hope it shall not, most freely i confess, myself and toby set this device against malvolio here, upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts we had conceived against him: maria writ the letter at sir toby's great importance; in recompense whereof he hath married her. how with a sportful malice it was follow'd, may rather pluck on laughter than revenge; if that the injuries be justly weigh'd that have on both sides pass'd. olivia alas, poor fool, how have they baffled thee! clown why, 'some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon them.' i was one, sir, in this interlude; one sir topas, sir; but that's all one. 'by the lord, fool, i am not mad.' but do you remember? 'madam, why laugh you at such a barren rascal? an you smile not, he's gagged:' and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges. malvolio i'll be revenged on the whole pack of you. [exit] olivia he hath been most notoriously abused. duke orsino pursue him and entreat him to a peace: he hath not told us of the captain yet: when that is known and golden time convents, a solemn combination shall be made of our dear souls. meantime, sweet sister, we will not part from hence. cesario, come; for so you shall be, while you are a man; but when in other habits you are seen, orsino's mistress and his fancy's queen. [exeunt all, except clown] clown [sings] when that i was and a little tiny boy, with hey, ho, the wind and the rain, a foolish thing was but a toy, for the rain it raineth every day. but when i came to man's estate, with hey, ho, &c. 'gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate, for the rain, &c. but when i came, alas! to wive, with hey, ho, &c. by swaggering could i never thrive, for the rain, &c. but when i came unto my beds, with hey, ho, &c. with toss-pots still had drunken heads, for the rain, &c. a great while ago the world begun, with hey, ho, &c. but that's all one, our play is done, and we'll strive to please you every day. [exit] 1845 the purloined letter by edgar allan poe nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. seneca. at paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18--, i was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend c. auguste dupin, in his little back library, or book-closet, au troisieme, no. 33, rue dunot, faubourg st. germain. for one hour at least we had maintained a profound silence; while each, to any casual observer, might have seemed intently and exclusively occupied with the curling eddies of smoke that oppressed the atmosphere of the chamber. for myself, however, i was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed matter for conversation between us at an earlier period of the evening; i mean the affair of the rue morgue, and the mystery attending the murder of marie roget. i looked upon it, therefore, as something of a coincidence, when the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance, monsieur g--, the prefect of the parisian police. we gave him a hearty welcome; for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man, and we had not seen him for several years. we had been sitting in the dark, and dupin now arose for the purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without doing so, upon g.'s saying that he had called to consult us, or rather to ask the opinion of my friend, about some official business which had occasioned a great deal of trouble. "if it is any point requiring reflection," observed dupin, as he forbore to enkindle the wick, "we shall examine it to better purpose in the dark." "that is another of your odd notions," said the prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing "odd" that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of "oddities." "very true," said dupin, as he supplied his visitor with a pipe, and rolled towards him a comfortable chair. "and what is the difficulty now?" i asked. "nothing more in the assassination way, i hope?" "oh no; nothing of that nature. the fact is, the business is very simple indeed, and i make no doubt that we can manage it sufficiently well ourselves; but then i thought dupin would like to hear the details of it, because it is so excessively odd." "simple and odd," said dupin. "why, yes; and not exactly that, either. the fact is, we have all been a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us altogether." "perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at fault," said my friend. "what nonsense you do talk!" replied the prefect, laughing heartily. "perhaps the mystery is a little too plain," said dupin. "oh, good heavens! who ever heard of such an idea?" "a little too self-evident." "ha! ha! ha! --ha! ha! ha! --ho! ho! ho!" --roared our visitor, profoundly amused, "oh, dupin, you will be the death of me yet!" "and what, after all, is the matter on hand?" i asked. "why, i will tell you," replied the prefect, as he gave a long, steady, and contemplative puff, and settled himself in his chair. "i will tell you in a few words; but, before i begin, let me caution you that this is an affair demanding the greatest secrecy, and that i should most probably lose the position i now hold, were it known that i confided it to any one. "proceed," said i. "or not," said dupin. "well, then; i have received personal information, from a very high quarter, that a certain document of the last importance, has been purloined from the royal apartments. the individual who purloined it is known; this beyond a doubt; he was seen to take it. it is known, also, that it still remains in his possession." "how is this known?" asked dupin. "it is clearly inferred," replied the prefect, "from the nature of the document, and from the nonappearance of certain results which would at once arise from its passing out of the robber's possession; --that is to say, from his employing it as he must design in the end to employ it." "be a little more explicit," i said. "well, i may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its holder a certain power in a certain quarter where such power is immensely valuable." the prefect was fond of the cant of diplomacy. "still i do not quite understand," said dupin. "no? well; the disclosure of the document to a third person, who shall be nameless, would bring in question the honor of a personage of most exalted station; and this fact gives the holder of the document an ascendancy over the illustrious personage whose honor and peace are so jeopardized." "but this ascendancy," i interposed, "would depend upon the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. who would dare--" "the thief," said g., is the minister d--, who dares all things, those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man. the method of the theft was not less ingenious than bold. the document in question --a letter, to be frank --had been received by the personage robbed while alone in the royal boudoir. during its perusal she was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the other exalted personage from whom especially it was her wish to conceal it. after a hurried and vain endeavor to thrust it in a drawer, she was forced to place it, open as it was, upon a table. the address, however, was uppermost, and, the contents thus unexposed, the letter escaped notice. at this juncture enters the minister d--. his lynx eye immediately perceives the paper, recognises the handwriting of the address, observes the confusion of the personage addressed, and fathoms her secret. after some business transactions, hurried through in his ordinary manner, he produces a letter somewhat similar to the one in question, opens it, pretends to read it, and then places it in close juxtaposition to the other. again he converses, for some fifteen minutes, upon the public affairs. at length, in taking leave, he takes also from the table the letter to which he had no claim. its rightful owner saw, but, of course, dared not call attention to the act, in the presence of the third personage who stood at her elbow. the minister decamped; leaving his own letter --one of no importance --upon the table." "here, then," said dupin to me, "you have precisely what you demand to make the ascendancy complete --the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber." "yes," replied the prefect; "and the power thus attained has, for some months past, been wielded, for political purposes, to a very dangerous extent. the personage robbed is more thoroughly convinced, every day, of the necessity of reclaiming her letter. but this, of course, cannot be done openly. in fine, driven to despair, she has committed the matter to me." "than whom," said dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, "no more sagacious agent could, i suppose, be desired, or even imagined." "you flatter me," replied the prefect; "but it is possible that some such opinion may have been entertained." "it is clear," said i, "as you observe, that the letter is still in possession of the minister; since it is this possession, and not any employment of the letter, which bestows the power. with the employment the power departs." "true," said g. "and upon this conviction i proceeded. my first care was to make thorough search of the minister's hotel; and here my chief embarrassment lay in the necessity of searching without his knowledge. beyond all things, i have been warned of the danger which would result from giving him reason to suspect our design." "but," said i, "you are quite au fait in these investigations. the parisian police have done this thing often before." "oh yes; and for this reason i did not despair. the habits of the minister gave me, too, a great advantage. he is frequently absent from home all night. his servants are by no means numerous. they sleep at a distance from their master's apartment, and, being chiefly neapolitans, are readily made drunk. i have keys, as you know, with which i can open any chamber or cabinet in paris. for three months a night has not passed, during the greater part of which i have not been engaged, personally, in ransacking the d-hotel. my honor is interested, and, to mention a great secret, the reward is enormous. so i did not abandon the search until i had become fully satisfied that the thief is a more astute man than myself. i fancy that i have investigated every nook and corner of the premises in which it is possible that the paper can be concealed." "but is it not possible," i suggested, "that although the letter may be in possession of the minister, as it unquestionably is, he may have concealed it elsewhere than upon his own premises?" "this is barely possible," said dupin. "the present peculiar condition of affairs at court, and especially of those intrigues in which d-is known to be involved, would render the instant availability of the document --its susceptibility of being produced at a moment's notice --a point of nearly equal importance with its possession." "its susceptibility of being produced?" said i. "that is to say, of being destroyed," said dupin. "true," i observed; "the paper is clearly then upon the premises. as for its being upon the person of the minister, we may consider that as out of the question." "entirely," said the prefect. "he has been twice waylaid, as if by footpads, and his person rigorously searched under my own inspection. "you might have spared yourself this trouble," said dupin. "d--, i presume, is not altogether a fool, and, if not, must have anticipated these waylayings, as a matter of course." "not altogether a fool," said g., "but then he's a poet, which i take to be only one remove from a fool." "true," said dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his meerschaum, "although i have been guilty of certain doggerel myself." "suppose you detail," said i, "the particulars of your search." "why the fact is, we took our time, and we searched every where. i have had long experience in these affairs. i took the entire building, room by room; devoting the nights of a whole week to each. we examined, first, the furniture of each apartment. we opened every possible drawer; and i presume you know that, to a properly trained police agent, such a thing as a secret drawer is impossible. any man is a dolt who permits a 'secret' drawer to escape him in a search of this kind. the thing is so plain. there is a certain amount of bulk --of space --to be accounted for in every cabinet. then we have accurate rules. the fiftieth part of a line could not escape us. after the cabinets we took the chairs. the cushions we probed with the fine long needles you have seen me employ. from the tables we removed the tops." "why so?" "sometimes the top of a table, or other similarly arranged piece of furniture, is removed by the person wishing to conceal an article; then the leg is excavated, the article deposited within the cavity, and the top replaced. the bottoms and tops of bedposts are employed in the same way." "but could not the cavity be detected by sounding?" i asked. "by no means, if, when the article is deposited, a sufficient wadding of cotton be placed around it. besides, in our case, we were obliged to proceed without noise." "but you could not have removed --you could not have taken to pieces all articles of furniture in which it would have been possible to make a deposit in the manner you mention. a letter may be compressed into a thin spiral roll, not differing much in shape or bulk from a large knitting-needle, and in this form it might be inserted into the rung of a chair, for example. you did not take to pieces all the chairs?" "certainly not; but we did better --we examined the rungs of every chair in the hotel, and, indeed, the jointings of every description of furniture, by the aid of a most powerful microscope. had there been any traces of recent disturbance we should not have failed to detect it instantly. a single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple. any disorder in the glueing --any unusual gaping in the joints --would have sufficed to insure detection." "i presume you looked to the mirrors, between the boards and the plates, and you probed the beds and the bed-clothes, as well as the curtains and carpets." "that of course; and when we had absolutely completed every particle of the furniture in this way, then we examined the house itself. we divided its entire surface into compartments, which we numbered, so that none might be missed; then we scrutinized each individual square inch throughout the premises, including the two houses immediately adjoining, with the microscope, as before." "the two houses adjoining!" i exclaimed; "you must have had a great deal of trouble." "we had; but the reward offered is prodigious. "you include the grounds about the houses?" "all the grounds are paved with brick. they gave us comparatively little trouble. we examined the moss between the bricks, and found it undisturbed." "you looked among d--'s papers, of course, and into the books of the library?" "certainly; we opened every package and parcel; we not only opened every book, but we turned over every leaf in each volume, not contenting ourselves with a mere shake, according to the fashion of some of our police officers. we also measured the thickness of every book-cover, with the most accurate admeasurement, and applied to each the most jealous scrutiny of the microscope. had any of the bindings been recently meddled with, it would have been utterly impossible that the fact should have escaped observation. some five or six volumes, just from the hands of the binder, we carefully probed, longitudinally, with the needles." "you explored the floors beneath the carpets?" "beyond doubt. we removed every carpet, and examined the boards with the microscope." "and the paper on the walls?" "yes. "you looked into the cellars?" "we did." "then," i said, "you have been making a miscalculation, and the letter is not upon the premises, as you suppose. "i fear you are right there," said the prefect. "and now, dupin, what would you advise me to do?" "to make a thorough re-search of the premises." "that is absolutely needless," replied g--. "i am not more sure that i breathe than i am that the letter is not at the hotel." "i have no better advice to give you," said dupin. "you have, of course, an accurate description of the letter?" "oh yes!" --and here the prefect, producing a memorandum-book, proceeded to read aloud a minute account of the internal, and especially of the external appearance of the missing document. soon after finishing the perusal of this description, he took his departure, more entirely depressed in spirits than i had ever known the good gentleman before. in about a month afterwards he paid us another visit, and found us occupied very nearly as before. he took a pipe and a chair and entered into some ordinary conversation. at length i said,- "well, but g--, what of the purloined letter? i presume you have at last made up your mind that there is no such thing as overreaching the minister?" "confound him, say i --yes; i made the reexamination, however, as dupin suggested --but it was all labor lost, as i knew it would be." "how much was the reward offered, did you say?" asked dupin. "why, a very great deal --a very liberal reward --i don't like to say how much, precisely; but one thing i will say, that i wouldn't mind giving my individual check for fifty thousand francs to any one who could obtain me that letter. the fact is, it is becoming of more and more importance every day; and the reward has been lately doubled. if it were trebled, however, i could do no more than i have done." "why, yes," said dupin, drawlingly, between the whiffs of his meerschaum, "i really --think, g--, you have not exerted yourself--to the utmost in this matter. you might --do a little more, i think, eh?" "how? --in what way?" "why --puff, puff --you might --puff, puff --employ counsel in the matter, eh? --puff, puff, puff. do you remember the story they tell of abernethy?" "no; hang abernethy!" "to be sure! hang him and welcome. but, once upon a time, a certain rich miser conceived the design of spunging upon this abernethy for a medical opinion. getting up, for this purpose, an ordinary conversation in a private company, he insinuated his case to the physician, as that of an imaginary individual. "'we will suppose,' said the miser, 'that his symptoms are such and such; now, doctor, what would you have directed him to take?' "'take!' said abernethy, 'why, take advice, to be sure.'" "but," said the prefect, a little discomposed, "i am perfectly willing to take advice, and to pay for it. i would really give fifty thousand francs to any one who would aid me in the matter." "in that case," replied dupin, opening a drawer, and producing a check-book, "you may as well fill me up a check for the amount mentioned. when you have signed it, i will hand you the letter." i was astounded. the prefect appeared absolutely thunderstricken. for some minutes he remained speechless and motionless, less, looking incredulously at my friend with open mouth, and eyes that seemed starting from their sockets; then, apparently in some measure, he seized a pen, and after several pauses and vacant stares, finally filled up and signed a check for fifty thousand francs, and handed it across the table to dupin. the latter examined it carefully and deposited it in his pocket-book; then, unlocking an escritoire, took thence a letter and gave it to the prefect. this functionary grasped it in a perfect agony of joy, opened it with a trembling hand, cast a rapid glance at its contents, and then, scrambling and struggling to the door, rushed at length unceremoniously from the room and from the house, without having uttered a syllable since dupin had requested him to fill up the check. when he had gone, my friend entered into some explanations. "the parisian police," he said, "are exceedingly able in their way. they are persevering, ingenious, cunning, and thoroughly versed in the knowledge which their duties seem chiefly to demand. thus, when g-detailed to us his mode of searching the premises at the hotel d--, i felt entire confidence in his having made a satisfactory investigation --so far as his labors extended." "so far as his labors extended?" said i. "yes," said dupin. "the measures adopted were not only the best of their kind, but carried out to absolute perfection. had the letter been deposited within the range of their search, these fellows would, beyond a question, have found it." i merely laughed --but he seemed quite serious in all that he said. "the measures, then," he continued, "were good in their kind, and well executed; their defect lay in their being inapplicable to the case, and to the man. a certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the prefect, a sort of procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs. but he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for the matter in hand; and many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he. i knew one about eight years of age, whose success at guessing in the game of 'even and odd' attracted universal admiration. this game is simple, and is played with marbles. one player holds in his hand a number of these toys, and demands of another whether that number is even or odd. if the guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one. the boy to whom i allude won all the marbles of the school. of course he had some principle of guessing; and this lay in mere observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents. for example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, 'are they even or odd?' our schoolboy replies, 'odd,' and loses; but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, the simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; i will therefore guess odd'; --he guesses odd, and wins. now, with a simpleton a degree above the first, he would have reasoned thus: 'this fellow finds that in the first instance i guessed odd, and, in the second, he will propose to himself upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as before. i will therefore guess even' guesses even, and wins. now this mode of reasoning in the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed "lucky," --what, in its last analysis, is it?" "it is merely," i said, "an identification of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent." "it is," said dupin;" and, upon inquiring of the boy by what means he effected the thorough identification in which his success consisted, i received answer as follows: 'when i wish to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at the moment, i fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.' this response of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of all the spurious profundity which has been attributed to rochefoucauld, to la bougive, to machiavelli, and to campanella." "and the identification," i said, "of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent, depends, if i understand you aright upon the accuracy with which the opponent's intellect is admeasured." "for its practical value it depends upon this," replied dupin; and the prefect and his cohort fall so frequently, first, by default of this identification, and, secondly, by ill-admeasurement, or rather through non-admeasurement, of the intellect with which they are engaged. they consider only their own ideas of ingenuity; and, in searching for anything hidden, advert only to the modes in which they would have hidden it. they are right in this much --that their own ingenuity is a faithful representative of that of the mass; but when the cunning of the individual felon is diverse in character from their own, the felon foils them, of course. this always happens when it is above their own, and very usually when it is below. they have no variation of principle in their investigations; at best, when urged by some unusual emergency --by some extraordinary reward --they extend or exaggerate their old modes of practice, without touching their principles. what, for example, in this case of d--, has been done to vary the principle of action? what is all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and scrutinizing with the microscope, and dividing the surface of the building into registered square inches --what is it all but an exaggeration of the application of the one principle or set of principles of search, which are based upon the one set of notions regarding human ingenuity, to which the prefect, in the long routine of his duty, has been accustomed? do you not see he has taken it for granted that all men proceed to conceal a letter, --not exactly in a gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg --but, at least, in some hole or corner suggested by the same tenor of thought which would urge a man to secrete a letter in a gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg? and do you not see also, that such recherches nooks for concealment are adapted only for ordinary occasions, and would be adopted only by ordinary intellects; for, in all cases of concealment, a disposal of the article concealed --a disposal of it in this recherche manner, --is, in the very first instance, presumable and presumed; and thus its discovery depends, not at all upon the acumen, but altogether upon the mere care, patience, and determination of the seekers; and where the case is of importance --or, what amounts to the same thing in the policial eyes, when the reward is of magnitude, --the qualities in question have never been known to fall. you will now understand what i meant in suggesting that, had the purloined letter been hidden anywhere within the limits of the prefect's examination --in other words, had the principle of its concealment been comprehended within the principles of the prefect --its discovery would have been a matter altogether beyond question. this functionary, however, has been thoroughly mystified; and the remote source of his defeat lies in the supposition that the minister is a fool, because he has acquired renown as a poet. all fools are poets; this the prefect feels; and he is merely guilty of a non distributio medii in thence inferring that all poets are fools." "but is this really the poet?" i asked. "there are two brothers, i know; and both have attained reputation in letters. the minister i believe has written learnedly on the differential calculus. he is a mathematician, and no poet." "you are mistaken; i know him well; he is both. as poet and mathematician, he would reason well; as mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the prefect." "you surprise me," i said, "by these opinions, which have been contradicted by the voice of the world. you do not mean to set at naught the well-digested idea of centuries. the mathematical reason has long been regarded as the reason par excellence. "'il y a a parier,'" replied dupin, quoting from chamfort, "'que toute idee publique, toute convention recue, est une sottise, car elle a convenu au plus grand nombre.' the mathematicians, i grant you, have done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you allude, and which is none the less an error for its promulgation as truth. with an art worthy a better cause, for example, they have insinuated the term 'analysis' into application to algebra. the french are the originators of this particular deception; but if a term is of any importance --if words derive any value from applicability --then 'analysis' conveys 'algebra' about as much as, in latin, 'ambitus' implies 'ambition,' 'religio' religion or 'homines honesti,' a set of honorable men." "you have a quarrel on hand, i see," said i, "with some of the algebraists of paris; but proceed." "i dispute the availability, and thus the value, of that reason which is cultivated in any especial form other than the abstractly logical. i dispute, in particular, the reason educed by mathematical study. the mathematics are the science of form and quantity; mathematical reasoning is merely logic applied to observation upon form and quantity. the great error lies in supposing that even the truths of what is called pure algebra, are abstract or general truths. and this error is so egregious that i am confounded at the universality with which it has been received. mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth. what is true of relation --of form and quantity --is often grossly false in regard to morals, for example. in this latter science it is very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to the whole. in chemistry also the axiom falls. in the consideration of motive it falls; for two motives, each of a given value, have not, necessarily, a value when united, equal to the sum of their values apart. there are numerous other mathematical truths which are only truths within the limits of relation. but the mathematician argues, from his finite truths, through habit, as if they were of an absolutely general applicability --as the world indeed imagines them to be. bryant, in his very learned 'mythology,' mentions an analogous source of error, when he says that 'although the pagan fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually, and make inferences from them as existing realities.' with the algebraists, however, who are pagans themselves, the 'pagan fables' are believed, and the inferences are made, not so much through lapse of memory, as through an unaccountable addling of the brains. in short, i never yet encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted out of equal roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith that x squared + px was absolutely and unconditionally equal to q. say to one of these gentlemen, by way of experiment, if you please, that you believe occasions may occur where x squared + px is not altogether equal to q, and, having made him understand what you mean, get out of his reach as speedily as convenient, for, beyond doubt, he will endeavor to knock you down. i mean to say," continued dupin, while i merely laughed at his last observations, "that if the minister had been no more than a mathematician, the prefect would have been under no necessity of giving me this check. i knew him, however, as both mathematician and poet, and my measures were adapted to his capacity, with reference to the circumstances by which he was surrounded. i knew him as a courtier, too, and as a bold intriguant. such a man, i considered, could not fall to be aware of the ordinary policial modes of action. he could not have failed to anticipate --and events have proved that he did not fail to anticipate --the waylayings to which he was subjected. he must have foreseen, i reflected, the secret investigations of his premises. his frequent absences from home at night, which were hailed by the prefect as certain aids to his success, i regarded only as ruses, to afford opportunity for thorough search to the police, and thus the sooner to impress them with the conviction to which g--, in fact, did finally arrive --the conviction that the letter was not upon the premises. i felt, also, that the whole train of thought, which i was at some pains in detailing to you just now, concerning the invariable principle of policial action in searches for articles concealed --i felt that this whole train of thought would necessarily pass through the mind of the minister. it would imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary nooks of concealment. he could not, i reflected, be so weak as not to see that the most intricate and remote recess of his hotel would be as open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the probes, to the gimlets, and to the microscopes of the prefect. i saw, in fine, that he would be driven, as a matter of course, to simplicity, if not deliberately induced to it as a matter of choice. you will remember, perhaps, how desperately the prefect laughed when i suggested, upon our first interview, that it was just possible this mystery troubled him so much on account of its being so very self-evident." "yes," said i, "i remember his merriment well. i really thought he would have fallen into convulsions." "the material world," continued dupin, "abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description. the principle of the vis inertiae, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. it is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress. again: have you ever noticed which of the street signs, over the shop doors, are the most attractive of attention?" "i have never given the matter a thought," i said. "there is a game of puzzles," he resumed, "which is played upon a map. one party playing requires another to find a given word --the name of town, river, state or empire --any word, in short, upon the motley and perplexed surface of the chart. a novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to the other. these, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident. but this is a point, it appears, somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the prefect. he never once thought it probable, or possible, that the minister had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the whole world, by way of best preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it. "but the more i reflected upon the daring, dashing, and discriminating ingenuity of d--; upon the fact that the document must always have been at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose; and upon the decisive evidence, obtained by the prefect, that it was not hidden within the limits of that dignitary's ordinary search --the more satisfied i became that, to conceal this letter, the minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all. "full of these ideas, i prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at the ministerial hotel. i found d-at home, yawning, lounging, and dawdling, as usual, and pretending to be in the last extremity of ennui. he is, perhaps, the most really energetic human being now alive --but that is only when nobody sees him. "to be even with him, i complained of my weak eyes, and lamented the necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which i cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the apartment, while seemingly intent only upon the conversation of my host. "i paid special attention to a large writing-table near which he sat, and upon which lay confusedly, some miscellaneous letters and other papers, with one or two musical instruments and a few books. here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, i saw nothing to excite particular suspicion. "at length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. in this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. this last was much soiled and crumpled. it was torn nearly in two, across the middle --as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. it had a large black seal, bearing the d-cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to d--, the minister, himself. it was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the upper divisions of the rack. "no sooner had i glanced at this letter, than i concluded it to be that of which i was in search. to be sure, it was, to all appearance, radically different from the one of which the prefect had read us so minute a description. here the seal was large and black, with the d-cipher; there it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the s-family. here, the address, to the minister, was diminutive and feminine; there the superscription, to a certain royal personage, was markedly bold and decided; the size alone formed a point of correspondence. but, then, the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of d--, and so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document; these things, together with the hyperobtrusive situation of this document, full in the view of every visitor, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which i had previously arrived; these things, i say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion, in one who came with the intention to suspect. "i protracted my visit as long as possible, and, while i maintained a most animated discussion with the minister, on a topic which i knew well had never failed to interest and excite him, i kept my attention really riveted upon the letter. in this examination, i committed to memory its external appearance and arrangement in the rack; and also fell, at length, upon a discovery which set at rest whatever trivial doubt i might have entertained. in scrutinizing the edges of the paper, i observed them to be more chafed than seemed necessary. they presented the broken appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, having been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a reversed direction, in the same creases or edges which had formed the original fold. this discovery was sufficient. it was clear to me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out, re-directed, and re-sealed. i bade the minister good morning, and took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box upon the table. "the next morning i called for the snuff-box, when we resumed, quite eagerly, the conversation of the preceding day. while thus engaged, however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard immediately beneath the windows of the hotel, and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and the shoutings of a mob. d-rushed to a casement, threw it open, and looked out. in the meantime, i stepped to the card-rack, took the letter, put it in my pocket, and replaced it by a fac-simile, (so far as regards externals,) which i had carefully prepared at my lodgings; imitating the d-cipher, very readily, by means of a seal formed of bread. "the disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the frantic behavior of a man with a musket. he had fired it among a crowd of women and children. it proved, however, to have been without ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. when he had gone, d-came from the window, whither i had followed him immediately upon securing the object in view. soon afterwards i bade him farewell. the pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay. "but what purpose had you," i asked, in replacing the letter by a fac-simile? would it not have been better, at the first visit, to have seized it openly, and departed?" "d--," replied dupin, "is a desperate man, and a man of nerve. his hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interests. had i made the wild attempt you suggest, i might never have left the ministerial presence alive. the good people of paris might have heard of me no more. but i had an object apart from these considerations. you know my political prepossessions. in this matter, i act as a partisan of the lady concerned. for eighteen months the minister has had her in his power. she has now him in hers; since, being unaware that the letter is not in his possession, he will proceed with his exactions as if it was. thus will he inevitably commit himself, at once, to his political destruction. his downfall, too, will not be more precipitate than awkward. it is all very well to talk about the facilis descensus averni; but in all kinds of climbing, as catalani said of singing, it is far more easy to get up than to come down. in the present instance i have no sympathy --at least no pity --for him who descends. he is the monstrum horrendum, an unprincipled man of genius. i confess, however, that i should like very well to know the precise character of his thoughts, when, being defied by her whom the prefect terms 'a certain personage,' he is reduced to opening the letter which i left for him in the card-rack." "how? did you put any thing particular in it?" "why --it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank --that would have been insulting. d--, at vienna once, did me an evil turn, which i told him, quite good-humoredly, that i should remember. so, as i knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, i thought it a pity not to give him a clue. he is well acquainted with my ms., and i just copied into the middle of the blank sheet the words- --un dessein si funeste, s'il n'est digne d'atree, est digne de thyeste. they are to be found in crebillon's 'atree.'" -the end. 1850 the sphinx by edgar allan poe sphinx during the dread reign of the cholera in new york, i had accepted the invitation of a relative to spend a fortnight with him in the retirement of his cottage ornee on the banks of the hudson. we had here around us all the ordinary means of summer amusement; and what with rambling in the woods, sketching, boating, fishing, bathing, music, and books, we should have passed the time pleasantly enough, but for the fearful intelligence which reached us every morning from the populous city. not a day elapsed which did not bring us news of the decease of some acquaintance. then as the fatality increased, we learned to expect daily the loss of some friend. at length we trembled at the approach of every messenger. the very air from the south seemed to us redolent with death. that palsying thought, indeed, took entire posession of my soul. i could neither speak, think, nor dream of any thing else. my host was of a less excitable temperament, and, although greatly depressed in spirits, exerted himself to sustain my own. his richly philosophical intellect was not at any time affected by unrealities. to the substances of terror he was sufficiently alive, but of its shadows he had no apprehension. his endeavors to arouse me from the condition of abnormal gloom into which i had fallen, were frustrated, in great measure, by certain volumes which i had found in his library. these were of a character to force into germination whatever seeds of hereditary superstition lay latent in my bosom. i had been reading these books without his knowledge, and thus he was often at a loss to account for the forcible impressions which had been made upon my fancy. a favorite topic with me was the popular belief in omensa belief which, at this one epoch of my life, i was almost seriously disposed to defend. on this subject we had long and animated discussionshe maintaining the utter groundlessness of faith in such matters,i contending that a popular sentiment arising with absolute spontaneitythat is to say, without apparent traces of suggestionhad in itself the unmistakable elements of truth, and was entitled to as much respect as that intuition which is the idiosyncrasy of the individual man of genius. the fact is, that soon after my arrival at the cottage there had occurred to myself an incident so entirely inexplicable, and which had in it so much of the portentous character, that i might well have been excused for regarding it as an omen. it appalled, and at the same time so confounded and bewildered me, that many days elapsed before i could make up my mind to communicate the circumstances to my friend. near the close of exceedingly warm day, i was sitting, book in hand, at an open window, commanding, through a long vista of the river banks, a view of a distant hill, the face of which nearest my position had been denuded by what is termed a land-slide, of the principal portion of its trees. my thoughts had been long wandering from the volume before me to the gloom and desolation of the neighboring city. uplifting my eyes from the page, they fell upon the naked face of the bill, and upon an objectupon some living monster of hideous conformation, which very rapidly made its way from the summit to the bottom, disappearing finally in the dense forest below. as this creature first came in sight, i doubted my own sanityor at least the evidence of my own eyes; and many minutes passed before i succeeded in convincing myself that i was neither mad nor in a dream. yet when i described the monster (which i distinctly saw, and calmly surveyed through the whole period of its progress), my readers, i fear, will feel more difficulty in being convinced of these points than even i did myself. estimating the size of the creature by comparison with the diameter of the large trees near which it passedthe few giants of the forest which had escaped the fury of the land-slidei concluded it to be far larger than any ship of the line in existence. i say ship of the line, because the shape of the monster suggested the ideathe hull of one of our seventy-four might convey a very tolerable conception of the general outline. the mouth of the animal was situated at the extremity of a proboscis some sixty or seventy feet in length, and about as thick as the body of an ordinary elephant. near the root of this trunk was an immense quantity of black shaggy hairmore than could have been supplied by the coats of a score of buffaloes; and projecting from this hair downwardly and laterally, sprang two gleaming tusks not unlike those of the wild boar, but of infinitely greater dimensions. extending forward, parallel with the proboscis, and on each side of it, was a gigantic staff, thirty or forty feet in length, formed seemingly of pure crystal and in shape a perfect prism,it reflected in the most gorgeous manner the rays of the declining sun. the trunk was fashioned like a wedge with the apex to the earth. from it there were outspread two pairs of wingseach wing nearly one hundred yards in lengthone pair being placed above the other, and all thickly covered with metal scales; each scale apparently some ten or twelve feet in diameter. i observed that the upper and lower tiers of wings were connected by a strong chain. but the chief peculiarity of this horrible thing was the representation of a death's head, which covered nearly the whole surface of its breast, and which was as accurately traced in glaring white, upon the dark ground of the body, as if it had been there carefully designed by an artist. while i regarded the terrific animal, and more especially the appearance on its breast, with a feeling or horror and awewith a sentiment of forthcoming evil, which i found it impossible to quell by any effort of the reason, i perceived the huge jaws at the extremity of the proboscis suddenly expand themselves, and from them there proceeded a sound so loud and so expressive of wo, that it struck upon my nerves like a knell and as the monster disappeared at the foot of the hill, i fell at once, fainting, to the floor. upon recovering, my first impulse, of course, was to inform my friend of what i had seen and heardand i can scarcely explain what feeling of repugnance it was which, in the end, operated to prevent me. at length, one evening, some three or four days after the occurrence, we were sitting together in the room in which i had seen the apparitioni occupying the same seat at the same window, and he lounging on a sofa near at hand. the association of the place and time impelled me to give him an account of the phenomenon. he heard me to the endat first laughed heartilyand then lapsed into an excessively grave demeanor, as if my insanity was a thing beyond suspicion. at this instant i again had a distinct view of the monsterto which, with a shout of absolute terror, i now directed his attention. he looked eagerlybut maintained that he saw nothingalthough i designated minutely the course of the creature, as it made its way down the naked face of the hill. i was now immeasurably alarmed, for i considered the vision either as an omen of my death, or, worse, as the fore-runner of an attack of mania. i threw myself passionately back in my chair, and for some moments buried my face in my hands. when i uncovered my eyes, the apparition was no longer apparent. my host, however, had in some degree resumed the calmness of his demeanor, and questioned me very rigorously in respect to the conformation of the visionary creature. when i had fully satisfied him on this head, he sighed deeply, as if relieved of some intolerable burden, and went on to talk, with what i thought a cruel calmness, of various points of speculative philosophy, which had heretofore formed subject of discussion between us. i remember his insisting very especially (among other things) upon the idea that the principle source of error in all human investigations lay in the liability of the understanding to under-rate or to over-value the importance of an object, through mere mis-admeasurement of its propinquity. "to estimate properly, for example," he said, "the influence to be exercised on mankind at large by the thorough diffusion of democracy, the distance of the epoch at which such diffusion may possibly be accomplished should not fail to form an item in the estimate. yet can you tell me one writer on the subject of government who has ever thought this particular branch of the subject worthy of discussion at all?" he here paused for a moment, stepped to a book-case, and brought forth one of the ordinary synopses of natural history. requesting me then to exchange seats with him, that he might the better distinguish the fine print of the volume, he took my armchair at the window, and, opening the book, resumed his discourse very much in the same tone as before. "but for your exceeding minuteness," he said, "in describing the monster, i might never have had it in my power to demonstrate to you what it was. in the first place, let me read to you a schoolboy account of the genus sphinx, of the family crepuscularia of the order lepidoptera, of the class of insectaor insects. the account runs thus: "'four membranous wings covered with little colored scales of metallic appearance; mouth forming a rolled proboscis, produced by an elongation of the jaws, upon the sides of which are found the rudiments of mandibles and downy palpi; the inferior wings retained to the superior by a stiff hair; antennae in the form of an elongated club, prismatic; abdomen pointed, the death'sheaded sphinx has occasioned much terror among the vulgar, at times, by the melancholy kind of cry which it utters, and the insignia of death which it wears upon its corslet.'" he here closed the book and leaned forward in the chair, placing himself accurately in the position which i had occupied at the moment of beholding "the monster." "ah, here it is," he presently exclaimed"it is reascending the face of the hill, and a very remarkable looking creature i admit it to be. still, it is by no means so large or so distant as you imagined it,for the fact is that, as it wriggles its way up this thread, which some spider has wrought along the window-sash, i find it to be about the sixteenth of an inch in its extreme length, and also about the sixteenth of an inch distant from the pupil of my eye." the end . 1850 the imp of the perverse by edgar allan poe in the consideration of the faculties and impulsesof the prima mobilia of the human soul, the phrenologists have failed to make room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally overlooked by all the moralists who have preceded them. in the pure arrogance of the reason, we have all overlooked it. we have suffered its existence to escape our senses, solely through want of beliefof faith;whether it be faith in revelation, or faith in the kabbala. the idea of it has never occurred to us, simply because of its supererogation. we saw no need of the impulsefor the propensity. we could not perceive its necessity. we could not understand, that is to say, we could not have understood, had the notion of this primum mobile ever obtruded itself;we could not have understood in what manner it might be made to further the objects of humanity, either temporal or eternal. it cannot be denied that phrenology and, in great measure, all metaphysicianism have been concocted a priori. the intellectual or logical man, rather than the understanding or observant man, set himself to imagine designsto dictate purposes to god. having thus fathomed, to his satisfaction, the intentions of jehovah, out of these intentions he built his innumerable systems of mind. in the matter of phrenology, for example, we first determined, naturally enough, that it was the design of the deity that man should eat. we then assigned to man an organ of alimentiveness, and this organ is the scourge with which the deity compels man, will-i nill-i, into eating. secondly, having settled it to be god's will that man should continue his species, we discovered an organ of amativeness, forthwith. and so with combativeness, with ideality, with causality, with constructiveness,so, in short, with every organ, whether representing a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty of the pure intellect. and in these arrangements of the principia of human action, the spurzheimites, whether right or wrong, in part, or upon the whole, have but followed, in principle, the footsteps of their predecessors: deducing and establishing every thing from the preconceived destiny of man, and upon the ground of the objects of his creator. it would have been wiser, it would have been safer, to classify (if classify we must) upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took it for granted the deity intended him to do. if we cannot comprehend god in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being? if we cannot understand him in his objective creatures, how then in his substantive moods and phases of creation? induction, a posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit, as an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something, which we may call perverseness, for want of a more characteristic term. in the sense i intend, it is, in fact, a mobile without motive, a motive not motivirt. through its promptings we act without comprehensible object; or, if this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to say, that through its promptings we act, for the reason that we should not. in theory, no reason can be more unreasonable, but, in fact, there is none more strong. with certain minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible. i am not more certain that i breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its prosecution. nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements. it is a radical, a primitive impulse-elementary. it will be said, i am aware, that when we persist in acts because we feel we should not persist in them, our conduct is but a modification of that which ordinarily springs from the combativeness of phrenology. but a glance will show the fallacy of this idea. the phrenological combativeness has for its essence, the necessity of self-defence. it is our safeguard against injury. its principle regards our well-being; and thus the desire to be well is excited simultaneously with its development. it follows, that the desire to be well must be excited simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a modification of combativeness, but in the case of that something which i term perverseness, the desire to be well is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment exists. an appeal to one's own heart is, after all, the best reply to the sophistry just noticed. no one who trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the propensity in question. it is not more incomprehensible than distinctive. there lives no man who at some period has not been tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by circumlocution. the speaker is aware that he displeases; he has every intention to please, he is usually curt, precise, and clear, the most laconic and luminous language is struggling for utterance upon his tongue, it is only with difficulty that he restrains himself from giving it flow; he dreads and deprecates the anger of him whom he addresses; yet, the thought strikes him, that by certain involutions and parentheses this anger may be engendered. that single thought is enough. the impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences) is indulged. we have a task before us which must be speedily performed. we know that it will be ruinous to make delay. the most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. we glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. it must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow, and why? there is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. to-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay. this craving gathers strength as the moments fly. the last hour for action is at hand. we tremble with the violence of the conflict within us,of the definite with the indefiniteof the substance with the shadow. but, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails,we struggle in vain. the clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. at the same time, it is the chanticleernote to the ghost that has so long overawed us. it fliesit disappearswe are free. the old energy returns. we will labor now. alas, it is too late! we stand upon the brink of a precipice. we peer into the abysswe grow sick and dizzy. our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. unaccountably we remain. by slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. by gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the arabian nights. but out of this our cloud upon the precipice's edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. it is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. and this fallthis rushing annihilationfor the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imaginationfor this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. and because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it. there is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. to indulge, for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, i say, that we cannot. if there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed. examine these similar actions as we will, we shall find them resulting solely from the spirit of the perverse. we perpetrate them because we feel that we should not. beyond or behind this there is no intelligible principle; and we might, indeed, deem this perverseness a direct instigation of the arch-fiend, were it not occasionally known to operate in furtherance of good. i have said thus much, that in some measure i may answer your question, that i may explain to you why i am here, that i may assign to you something that shall have at least the faint aspect of a cause for my wearing these fetters, and for my tenanting this cell of the condemned. had i not been thus prolix, you might either have misunderstood me altogether, or, with the rabble, have fancied me mad. as it is, you will easily perceive that i am one of the many uncounted victims of the imp of the perverse. it is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more thorough deliberation. for weeks, for months, i pondered upon the means of the murder. i rejected a thousand schemes, because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection. at length, in reading some french memoirs, i found an account of a nearly fatal illness that occurred to madame pilau, through the agency of a candle accidentally poisoned. the idea struck my fancy at once. i knew my victim's habit of reading in bed. i knew, too, that his apartment was narrow and ill-ventilated. but i need not vex you with impertinent details. i need not describe the easy artifices by which i substituted, in his bed-room candle-stand, a wax-light of my own making for the one which i there found. the next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and the coroner's verdict was"death by the visitation of god." having inherited his estate, all went well with me for years. the idea of detection never once entered my brain. of the remains of the fatal taper i had myself carefully disposed. i had left no shadow of a clew by which it would be possible to convict, or even to suspect me of the crime. it is inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom as i reflected upon my absolute security. for a very long period of time i was accustomed to revel in this sentiment. it afforded me more real delight than all the mere worldly advantages accruing from my sin. but there arrived at length an epoch, from which the pleasurable feeling grew, by scarcely perceptible gradations, into a haunting and harassing thought. it harassed because it haunted. i could scarcely get rid of it for an instant. it is quite a common thing to be thus annoyed with the ringing in our ears, or rather in our memories, of the burthen of some ordinary song, or some unimpressive snatches from an opera. nor will we be the less tormented if the song in itself be good, or the opera air meritorious. in this manner, at last, i would perpetually catch myself pondering upon my security, and repeating, in a low undertone, the phrase, "i am safe." one day, whilst sauntering along the streets, i arrested myself in the act of murmuring, half aloud, these customary syllables. in a fit of petulance, i remodelled them thus; "i am safei am safeyesif i be not fool enough to make open confession!" no sooner had i spoken these words, than i felt an icy chill creep to my heart. i had had some experience in these fits of perversity, (whose nature i have been at some trouble to explain), and i remembered well that in no instance i had successfully resisted their attacks. and now my own casual self-suggestion that i might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of which i had been guilty, confronted me, as if the very ghost of him whom i had murderedand beckoned me on to death. at first, i made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul. i walked vigorouslyfasterstill fasterat length i ran. i felt a maddening desire to shriek aloud. every succeeding wave of thought overwhelmed me with new terror, for, alas! i well, too well understood that to think, in my situation, was to be lost. i still quickened my pace. i bounded like a madman through the crowded thoroughfares. at length, the populace took the alarm, and pursued me. i felt then the consummation of my fate. could i have torn out my tongue, i would have done it, but a rough voice resounded in my earsa rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder. i turnedi gasped for breath. for a moment i experienced all the pangs of suffocation; i became blind, and deaf, and giddy; and then some invisible fiend, i thought, struck me with his broad palm upon the back. the long imprisoned secret burst forth from my soul. they say that i spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief, but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the hangman and to hell. having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial conviction, i fell prostrate in a swoon. but why shall i say more? to-day i wear these chains, and am here! to-morrow i shall be fetterless!but where? the end . *the project gutenberg etext of across the plains by stevenson* #26 in our series by robert louis stevenson copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. across the plains by robert louis stevenson august, 1996 [etext #614] *the project gutenberg etext of across the plains by stevenson* *****this file should be named axpln10.txt or axpln10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, axpln11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, axpln10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / benedictine university" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / benedictine university". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* across the plains by robert louis stevenson scanned and proofed by david price ccx074@coventry.ac.uk second proof by margaret price. contents i. across the plains ii. the old pacific capital iii. fontainebleau iv. epilogue to "an inland voyage" v. random memories vi. random memories continued vii. the lantern-bearers viii. a chapter on dreams ix. beggars x. letter to a young gentleman xi. pulvis et umbra xii. a christmas sermon chapter i across the plains leaves from the notebook of an emigrant between new york and san francisco monday. it was, if i remember rightly, five o'clock when we were all signalled to be present at the ferry depot of the railroad. an emigrant ship had arrived at new york on the saturday night, another on the sunday morning, our own on sunday afternoon, a fourth early on monday; and as there is no emigrant train on sunday a great part of the passengers from these four ships was concentrated on the train by which i was to travel. there was a babel of bewildered men, women, and children. the wretched little booking-office, and the baggage-room, which was not much larger, were crowded thick with emigrants, and were heavy and rank with the atmosphere of dripping clothes. open carts full of bedding stood by the half-hour in the rain. the officials loaded each other with recriminations. a bearded, mildewed little man, whom i take to have been an emigrant agent, was all over the place, his mouth full of brimstone, blustering and interfering. it was plain that the whole system, if system there was, had utterly broken down under the strain of so many passengers. my own ticket was given me at once, and an oldish man, who preserved his head in the midst of this turmoil, got my baggage registered, and counselled me to stay quietly where i was till he should give me the word to move. i had taken along with me a small valise, a knapsack, which i carried on my shoulders, and in the bag of my railway rug the whole of bancroft's history of the united states, in six fat volumes. it was as much as i could carry with convenience even for short distances, but it insured me plenty of clothing, and the valise was at that moment, and often after, useful for a stool. i am sure i sat for an hour in the baggageroom, and wretched enough it was; yet, when at last the word was passed to me and i picked up my bundles and got under way, it was only to exchange discomfort for downright misery and danger. i followed the porters into a long shed reaching downhill from west street to the river. it was dark, the wind blew clean through it from end to end; and here i found a great block of passengers and baggage, hundreds of one and tons of the other. i feel i shall have a difficulty to make myself believed; and certainly the scene must have been exceptional, for it was too dangerous for daily repetition. it was a tight jam; there was no fair way through the mingled mass of brute and living obstruction. into the upper skirts of the crowd porters, infuriated by hurry and overwork, clove their way with shouts. i may say that we stood like sheep, and that the porters charged among us like so many maddened sheepdogs; and i believe these men were no longer answerable for their acts. it mattered not what they were carrying, they drove straight into the press, and when they could get no farther, blindly discharged their barrowful. with my own hand, for instance, i saved the life of a child as it sat upon its mother's knee, she sitting on a box; and since i heard of no accident, i must suppose that there were many similar interpositions in the course of the evening. it will give some idea of the state of mind to which we were reduced if i tell you that neither the porter nor the mother of the child paid the least attention to my act. it was not till some time after that i understood what i had done myself, for to ward off heavy boxes seemed at the moment a natural incident of human life. cold, wet, clamour, dead opposition to progress, such as one encounters in an evil dream, had utterly daunted the spirits. we had accepted this purgatory as a child accepts the conditions of the world. for my part, i shivered a little, and my back ached wearily; but i believe i had neither a hope nor a fear, and all the activities of my nature had become tributary to one massive sensation of discomfort. at length, and after how long an interval i hesitate to guess, the crowd began to move, heavily straining through itself. about the same time some lamps were lighted, and threw a sudden flare over the shed. we were being filtered out into the river boat for jersey city. you may imagine how slowly this filtering proceeded, through the dense, choking crush, every one overladen with packages or children, and yet under the necessity of fishing out his ticket by the way; but it ended at length for me, and i found myself on deck under a flimsy awning and with a trifle of elbow-room to stretch and breathe in. this was on the starboard; for the bulk of the emigrants stuck hopelessly on the port side, by which we had entered. in vain the seamen shouted to them to move on, and threatened them with shipwreck. these poor people were under a spell of stupor, and did not stir a foot. it rained as heavily as ever, but the wind now came in sudden claps and capfuls, not without danger to a boat so badly ballasted as ours; and we crept over the river in the darkness, trailing one paddle in the water like a wounded duck, and passed ever and again by huge, illuminated steamers running many knots, and heralding their approach by strains of music. the contrast between these pleasure embarkations and our own grim vessel, with her list to port and her freight of wet and silent emigrants, was of that glaring description which we count too obvious for the purposes of art. the landing at jersey city was done in a stampede. i had a fixed sense of calamity, and to judge by conduct, the same persuasion was common to us all. a panic selfishness, like that produced by fear, presided over the disorder of our landing. people pushed, and elbowed, and ran, their families following how they could. children fell, and were picked up to be rewarded by a blow. one child, who had lost her parents, screamed steadily and with increasing shrillness, as though verging towards a fit; an official kept her by him, but no one else seemed so much as to remark her distress; and i am ashamed to say that i ran among the rest. i was so weary that i had twice to make a halt and set down my bundles in the hundred yards or so between the pier and the railway station, so that i was quite wet by the time that i got under cover. there was no waiting-room, no refreshment room; the cars were locked; and for at least another hour, or so it seemed, we had to camp upon the draughty, gaslit platform. i sat on my valise, too crushed to observe my neighbours; but as they were all cold, and wet, and weary, and driven stupidly crazy by the mismanagement to which we had been subjected, i believe they can have been no happier than myself. i bought half-a-dozen oranges from a boy, for oranges and nuts were the only refection to be had. as only two of them had even a pretence of juice, i threw the other four under the cars, and beheld, as in a dream, grown people and children groping on the track after my leavings. at last we were admitted into the cars, utterly dejected, and far from dry. for my own part, i got out a clothes-brush, and brushed my trousers as hard as i could till i had dried them and warmed my blood into the bargain; but no one else, except my next neighbour to whom i lent the brush, appeared to take the least precaution. as they were, they composed themselves to sleep. i had seen the lights of philadelphia, and been twice ordered to change carriages and twice countermanded, before i allowed myself to follow their example. tuesday. when i awoke, it was already day; the train was standing idle; i was in the last carriage, and, seeing some others strolling to and fro about the lines, i opened the door and stepped forth, as from a caravan by the wayside. we were near no station, nor even, as far as i could see, within reach of any signal. a green, open, undulating country stretched away upon all sides. locust trees and a single field of indian corn gave it a foreign grace and interest; but the contours of the land were soft and english. it was not quite england, neither was it quite france; yet like enough either to seem natural in my eyes. and it was in the sky, and not upon the earth, that i was surprised to find a change. explain it how you may, and for my part i cannot explain it at all, the sun rises with a different splendour in america and europe. there is more clear gold and scarlet in our old country mornings; more purple, brown, and smoky orange in those of the new. it may be from habit, but to me the coming of day is less fresh and inspiriting in the latter; it has a duskier glory, and more nearly resembles sunset; it seems to fit some subsequential, evening epoch of the world, as though america were in fact, and not merely in fancy, farther from the orient of aurora and the springs of day. i thought so then, by the railroad side in pennsylvania, and i have thought so a dozen times since in far distant parts of the continent. if it be an illusion it is one very deeply rooted, and in which my eyesight is accomplice. soon after a train whisked by, announcing and accompanying its passage by the swift beating of a sort of chapel bell upon the engine; and as it was for this we had been waiting, we were summoned by the cry of "all aboard!" and went on again upon our way. the whole line, it appeared, was topsy-turvy; an accident at midnight having thrown all the traffic hours into arrear. we paid for this in the flesh, for we had no meals all that day. fruit we could buy upon the cars; and now and then we had a few minutes at some station with a meagre show of rolls and sandwiches for sale; but we were so many and so ravenous that, though i tried at every opportunity, the coffee was always exhausted before i could elbow my way to the counter. our american sunrise had ushered in a noble summer's day. there was not a cloud; the sunshine was baking; yet in the woody river valleys among which we wound our way, the atmosphere preserved a sparkling freshness till late in the afternoon. it had an inland sweetness and variety to one newly from the sea; it smelt of woods, rivers, and the delved earth. these, though in so far a country, were airs from home. i stood on the platform by the hour; and as i saw, one after another, pleasant villages, carts upon the highway and fishers by the stream, and heard cockcrows and cheery voices in the distance, and beheld the sun, no longer shining blankly on the plains of ocean, but striking among shapely hills and his light dispersed and coloured by a thousand accidents of form and surface, i began to exult with myself upon this rise in life like a man who had come into a rich estate. and when i had asked the name of a river from the brakesman, and heard that it was called the susquehanna, the beauty of the name seemed to be part and parcel of the beauty of the land. as when adam with divine fitness named the creatures, so this word susquehanna was at once accepted by the fancy. that was the name, as no other could be, for that shining river and desirable valley. none can care for literature in itself who do not take a special pleasure in the sound of names; and there is no part of the world where nomenclature is so rich, poetical, humorous, and picturesque as the united states of america. all times, races, and languages have brought their contribution. pekin is in the same state with euclid, with bellefontaine, and with sandusky. chelsea, with its london associations of red brick, sloane square, and the king's road, is own suburb to stately and primeval memphis; there they have their seat, translated names of cities, where the mississippi runs by tennessee and arkansas; and both, while i was crossing the continent, lay, watched by armed men, in the horror and isolation of a plague. old, red manhattan lies, like an indian arrowhead under a steam factory, below anglified new york. the names of the states and territories themselves form a chorus of sweet and most romantic vocables: delaware, ohio, indiana, florida, dakota, iowa, wyoming, minnesota, and the carolinas; there are few poems with a nobler music for the ear: a songful, tuneful land; and if the new homer shall arise from the western continent, his verse will be enriched, his pages sing spontaneously, with the names of states and cities that would strike the fancy in a business circular. late in the evening we were landed in a waiting-room at pittsburg. i had now under my charge a young and sprightly dutch widow with her children; these i was to watch over providentially for a certain distance farther on the way; but as i found she was furnished with a basket of eatables, i left her in the waiting-room to seek a dinner for myself. i mention this meal, not only because it was the first of which i had partaken for about thirty hours, but because it was the means of my first introduction to a coloured gentleman. he did me the honour to wait upon me after a fashion, while i was eating; and with every word, look, and gesture marched me farther into the country of surprise. he was indeed strikingly unlike the negroes of mrs. beecher stowe, or the christy minstrels of my youth. imagine a gentleman, certainly somewhat dark, but of a pleasant warm hue, speaking english with a slight and rather odd foreign accent, every inch a man of the world, and armed with manners so patronisingly superior that i am at a loss to name their parallel in england. a butler perhaps rides as high over the unbutlered, but then he sets you right with a reserve and a sort of sighing patience which one is often moved to admire. and again, the abstract butler never stoops to familiarity. but the coloured gentleman will pass you a wink at a time; he is familiar like an upper form boy to a fag; he unbends to you like prince hal with poins and falstaff. he makes himself at home and welcome. indeed, i may say, this waiter behaved himself to me throughout that supper much as, with us, a young, free, and not very self-respecting master might behave to a good-looking chambermaid. i had come prepared to pity the poor negro, to put him at his ease, to prove in a thousand condescensions that i was no sharer in the prejudice of race; but i assure you i put my patronage away for another occasion, and had the grace to be pleased with that result. seeing he was a very honest fellow, i consulted him upon a point of etiquette: if one should offer to tip the american waiter? certainly not, he told me. never. it would not do. they considered themselves too highly to accept. they would even resent the offer. as for him and me, we had enjoyed a very pleasant conversation; he, in particular, had found much pleasure in my society; i was a stranger; this was exactly one of those rare conjunctures.... without being very clear seeing, i can still perceive the sun at noonday; and the coloured gentleman deftly pocketed a quarter. wednesday. a little after midnight i convoyed my widow and orphans on board the train; and morning found us far into ohio. this had early been a favourite home of my imagination; i have played at being in ohio by the week, and enjoyed some capital sport there with a dummy gun, my person being still unbreeched. my preference was founded on a work which appeared in cassell's family paper, and was read aloud to me by my nurse. it narrated the doings of one custaloga, an indian brave, who, in the last chapter, very obligingly washed the paint off his face and became sir reginald somebody-or-other; a trick i never forgave him. the idea of a man being an indian brave, and then giving that up to be a baronet, was one which my mind rejected. it offended verisimilitude, like the pretended anxiety of robinson crusoe and others to escape from uninhabited islands. but ohio was not at all as i had pictured it. we were now on those great plains which stretch unbroken to the rocky mountains. the country was flat like holland, but far from being dull. all through ohio, indiana, illinois, and iowa, or for as much as i saw of them from the train and in my waking moments, it was rich and various, and breathed an elegance peculiar to itself. the tall corn pleased the eye; the trees were graceful in themselves, and framed the plain into long, aerial vistas; and the clean, bright, gardened townships spoke of country fare and pleasant summer evenings on the stoop. it was a sort of flat paradise; but, i am afraid, not unfrequented by the devil. that morning dawned with such a freezing chill as i have rarely felt; a chill that was not perhaps so measurable by instrument, as it struck home upon the heart and seemed to travel with the blood. day came in with a shudder. white mists lay thinly over the surface of the plain, as we see them more often on a lake; and though the sun had soon dispersed and drunk them up, leaving an atmosphere of fever heat and crystal pureness from horizon to horizon, the mists had still been there, and we knew that this paradise was haunted by killing damps and foul malaria. the fences along the line bore but two descriptions of advertisement; one to recommend tobaccos, and the other to vaunt remedies against the ague. at the point of day, and while we were all in the grasp of that first chill, a native of the state, who had got in at some way station, pronounced it, with a doctoral air, "a fever and ague morning." the dutch widow was a person of some character. she had conceived at first sight a great aversion for the present writer, which she was at no pains to conceal. but being a woman of a practical spirit, she made no difficulty about accepting my attentions, and encouraged me to buy her children fruits and candies, to carry all her parcels, and even to sleep upon the floor that she might profit by my empty seat. nay, she was such a rattle by nature, and, so powerfully moved to autobiographical talk, that she was forced, for want of a better, to take me into confidence and tell me the story of her life. i heard about her late husband, who seemed to have made his chief impression by taking her out pleasuring on sundays. i could tell you her prospects, her hopes, the amount of her fortune, the cost of her housekeeping by the week, and a variety of particular matters that are not usually disclosed except to friends. at one station, she shook up her children to look at a man on the platform and say if he were not like mr. z.; while to me she explained how she had been keeping company with this mr. z., how far matters had proceeded, and how it was because of his desistance that she was now travelling to the west. then, when i was thus put in possession of the facts, she asked my judgment on that type of manly beauty. i admired it to her heart's content. she was not, i think, remarkably veracious in talk, but broidered as fancy prompted, and built castles in the air out of her past; yet she had that sort of candour, to keep me, in spite of all these confidences, steadily aware of her aversion. her parting words were ingeniously honest. "i am sure," said she, "we all ought to be very much obliged to you." i cannot pretend that she put me at my ease; but i had a certain respect for such a genuine dislike. a poor nature would have slipped, in the course of these familiarities, into a sort of worthless toleration for me. we reached chicago in the evening. i was turned out of the cars, bundled into an omnibus, and driven off through the streets to the station of a different railroad. chicago seemed a great and gloomy city. i remember having subscribed, let us say sixpence, towards its restoration at the period of the fire; and now when i beheld street after street of ponderous houses and crowds of comfortable burghers, i thought it would be a graceful act for the corporation to refund that sixpence, or, at the least, to entertain me to a cheerful dinner. but there was no word of restitution. i was that city's benefactor, yet i was received in a third-class waitingroom, and the best dinner i could get was a dish of ham and eggs at my own expense. i can safely say, i have never been so dog-tired as that night in chicago. when it was time to start, i descended the platform like a man in a dream. it was a long train, lighted from end to end; and car after car, as i came up with it, was not only filled but overflowing. my valise, my knapsack, my rug, with those six ponderous tomes of bancroft, weighed me double; i was hot, feverish, painfully athirst; and there was a great darkness over me, an internal darkness, not to be dispelled by gas. when at last i found an empty bench, i sank into it like a bundle of rags, the world seemed to swim away into the distance, and my consciousness dwindled within me to a mere pin's head, like a taper on a foggy night. when i came a little more to myself, i found that there had sat down beside me a very cheerful, rosy little german gentleman, somewhat gone in drink, who was talking away to me, nineteen to the dozen, as they say. i did my best to keep up the conversation; for it seemed to me dimly as if something depended upon that. i heard him relate, among many other things, that there were pickpockets on the train, who had already robbed a man of forty dollars and a return ticket; but though i caught the words, i do not think i properly understood the sense until next morning; and i believe i replied at the time that i was very glad to hear it. what else he talked about i have no guess; i remember a gabbling sound of words, his profuse gesticulation, and his smile, which was highly explanatory: but no more. and i suppose i must have shown my confusion very plainly; for, first, i saw him knit his brows at me like one who has conceived a doubt; next, he tried me in german, supposing perhaps that i was unfamiliar with the english tongue; and finally, in despair, he rose and left me. i felt chagrined; but my fatigue was too crushing for delay, and, stretching myself as far as that was possible upon the bench, i was received at once into a dreamless stupor. the little german gentleman was only going a little way into the suburbs after a diner fin, and was bent on entertainment while the journey lasted. having failed with me, he pitched next upon another emigrant, who had come through from canada, and was not one jot less weary than myself. nay, even in a natural state, as i found next morning when we scraped acquaintance, he was a heavy, uncommunicative man. after trying him on different topics, it appears that the little german gentleman flounced into a temper, swore an oath or two, and departed from that car in quest of livelier society. poor little gentleman! i suppose he thought an emigrant should be a rollicking, free-hearted blade, with a flask of foreign brandy and a long, comical story to beguile the moments of digestion. thursday. i suppose there must be a cycle in the fatigue of travelling, for when i awoke next morning, i was entirely renewed in spirits and ate a hearty breakfast of porridge, with sweet milk, and coffee and hot cakes, at burlington upon the mississippi. another long day's ride followed, with but one feature worthy of remark. at a place called creston, a drunken man got in. he was aggressively friendly, but, according to english notions, not at all unpresentable upon a train. for one stage he eluded the notice of the officials; but just as we were beginning to move out of the next station, cromwell by name, by came the conductor. there was a word or two of talk; and then the official had the man by the shoulders, twitched him from his seat, marched him through the car, and sent him flying on to the track. it was done in three motions, as exact as a piece of drill. the train was still moving slowly, although beginning to mend her pace, and the drunkard got his feet without a fall. he carried a red bundle, though not so red as his cheeks; and he shook this menacingly in the air with one hand, while the other stole behind him to the region of the kidneys. it was the first indication that i had come among revolvers, and i observed it with some emotion. the conductor stood on the steps with one hand on his hip, looking back at him; and perhaps this attitude imposed upon the creature, for he turned without further ado, and went off staggering along the track towards cromwell followed by a peal of laughter from the cars. they were speaking english all about me, but i knew i was in a foreign land. twenty minutes before nine that night, we were deposited at the pacific transfer station near council bluffs, on the eastern bank of the missouri river. here we were to stay the night at a kind of caravanserai, set apart for emigrants. but i gave way to a thirst for luxury, separated myself from my companions, and marched with my effects into the union pacific hotel. a white clerk and a coloured gentleman whom, in my plain european way, i should call the boots, were installed behind a counter like bank tellers. they took my name, assigned me a number, and proceeded to deal with my packages. and here came the tug of war. i wished to give up my packages into safe keeping; but i did not wish to go to bed. and this, it appeared, was impossible in an american hotel. it was, of course, some inane misunderstanding, and sprang from my unfamiliarity with the language. for although two nations use the same words and read the same books, intercourse is not conducted by the dictionary. the business of life is not carried on by words, but in set phrases, each with a special and almost a slang signification. some international obscurity prevailed between me and the coloured gentleman at council bluffs; so that what i was asking, which seemed very natural to me, appeared to him a monstrous exigency. he refused, and that with the plainness of the west. this american manner of conducting matters of business is, at first, highly unpalatable to the european. when we approach a man in the way of his calling, and for those services by which he earns his bread, we consider him for the time being our hired servant. but in the american opinion, two gentlemen meet and have a friendly talk with a view to exchanging favours if they shall agree to please. i know not which is the more convenient, nor even which is the more truly courteous. the english stiffness unfortunately tends to be continued after the particular transaction is at an end, and thus favours class separations. but on the other hand, these equalitarian plainnesses leave an open field for the insolence of jack-in-office. i was nettled by the coloured gentleman's refusal, and unbuttoned my wrath under the similitude of ironical submission. i knew nothing, i said, of the ways of american hotels; but i had no desire to give trouble. if there was nothing for it but to get to bed immediately, let him say the word, and though it was not my habit, i should cheerfully obey. he burst into a shout of laughter. "ah!" said he, "you do not know about america. they are fine people in america. oh! you will like them very well. but you mustn't get mad. i know what you want. you come along with me." and issuing from behind the counter, and taking me by the arm like an old acquaintance, he led me to the bar of the hotel. "there," said he, pushing me from him by the shoulder, "go and have a drink!" the emigrant train all this while i had been travelling by mixed trains, where i might meet with dutch widows and little german gentry fresh from table. i had been but a latent emigrant; now i was to be branded once more, and put apart with my fellows. it was about two in the afternoon of friday that i found myself in front of the emigrant house, with more than a hundred others, to be sorted and boxed for the journey. a white-haired official, with a stick under one arm, and a list in the other hand, stood apart in front of us, and called name after name in the tone of a command. at each name you would see a family gather up its brats and bundles and run for the hindmost of the three cars that stood awaiting us, and i soon concluded that this was to be set apart for the women and children. the second or central car, it turned out, was devoted to men travelling alone, and the third to the chinese. the official was easily moved to anger at the least delay; but the emigrants were both quick at answering their names, and speedy in getting themselves and their effects on board. the families once housed, we men carried the second car without ceremony by simultaneous assault. i suppose the reader has some notion of an american railroad-car, that long, narrow wooden box, like a flat-roofed noah's ark, with a stove and a convenience, one at either end, a passage down the middle, and transverse benches upon either hand. those destined for emigrants on the union pacific are only remarkable for their extreme plainness, nothing but wood entering in any part into their constitution, and for the usual inefficacy of the lamps, which often went out and shed but a dying glimmer even while they burned. the benches are too short for anything but a young child. where there is scarce elbow-room for two to sit, there will not be space enough for one to lie. hence the company, or rather, as it appears from certain bills about the transfer station, the company's servants, have conceived a plan for the better accommodation of travellers. they prevail on every two to chum together. to each of the chums they sell a board and three square cushions stuffed with straw, and covered with thin cotton. the benches can be made to face each other in pairs, for the backs are reversible. on the approach of night the boards are laid from bench to bench, making a couch wide enough for two, and long enough for a man of the middle height; and the chums lie down side by side upon the cushions with the head to the conductor's van and the feet to the engine. when the train is full, of course this plan is impossible, for there must not be more than one to every bench, neither can it be carried out unless the chums agree. it was to bring about this last condition that our white-haired official now bestirred himself. he made a most active master of ceremonies, introducing likely couples, and even guaranteeing the amiability and honesty of each. the greater the number of happy couples the better for his pocket, for it was he who sold the raw material of the beds. his price for one board and three straw cushions began with two dollars and a half; but before the train left, and, i am sorry to say, long after i had purchased mine, it had fallen to one dollar and a half. the match-maker had a difficulty with me; perhaps, like some ladies, i showed myself too eager for union at any price; but certainly the first who was picked out to be my bedfellow, declined the honour without thanks. he was an old, heavy, slow-spoken man, i think from yankeeland, looked me all over with great timidity, and then began to excuse himself in broken phrases. he didn't know the young man, he said. the young man might be very honest, but how was he to know that? there was another young man whom he had met already in the train; he guessed he was honest, and would prefer to chum with him upon the whole. all this without any sort of excuse, as though i had been inanimate or absent. i began to tremble lest every one should refuse my company, and i be left rejected. but the next in turn was a tall, strapping, long-limbed, small-headed, curly-haired pennsylvania dutchman, with a soldierly smartness in his manner. to be exact, he had acquired it in the navy. but that was all one; he had at least been trained to desperate resolves, so he accepted the match, and the white-haired swindler pronounced the connubial benediction, and pocketed his fees. the rest of the afternoon was spent in making up the train. i am afraid to say how many baggage-waggons followed the engine, certainly a score; then came the chinese, then we, then the families, and the rear was brought up by the conductor in what, if i have it rightly, is called his caboose. the class to which i belonged was of course far the largest, and we ran over, so to speak, to both sides; so that there were some caucasians among the chinamen, and some bachelors among the families. but our own car was pure from admixture, save for one little boy of eight or nine who had the whooping-cough. at last, about six, the long train crawled out of the transfer station and across the wide missouri river to omaha, westward bound. it was a troubled uncomfortable evening in the cars. there was thunder in the air, which helped to keep us restless. a man played many airs upon the cornet, and none of them were much attended to, until he came to "home, sweet home." it was truly strange to note how the talk ceased at that, and the faces began to lengthen. i have no idea whether musically this air is to be considered good or bad; but it belongs to that class of art which may be best described as a brutal assault upon the feelings. pathos must be relieved by dignity of treatment. if you wallow naked in the pathetic, like the author of "home, sweet home," you make your hearers weep in an unmanly fashion; and even while yet they are moved, they despise themselves and hate the occasion of their weakness. it did not come to tears that night, for the experiment was interrupted. an elderly, hard-looking man, with a goatee beard and about as much appearance of sentiment an you would expect from a retired slaver, turned with a start and bade the performer stop that "damned thing." "i've heard about enough of that," he added; "give us something about the good country we're going to." a murmur of adhesion ran round the car; the performer took the instrument from his lips, laughed and nodded, and then struck into a dancing measure; and, like a new timotheus, stilled immediately the emotion he had raised. the day faded; the lamps were lit; a party of wild young men, who got off next evening at north platte, stood together on the stern platform, singing "the sweet by-and-bye" with very tuneful voices; the chums began to put up their beds; and it seemed as if the business of the day were at an end. but it was not so; for, the train stopping at some station, the cars were instantly thronged with the natives, wives and fathers, young men and maidens, some of them in little more than nightgear, some with stable lanterns, and all offering beds for sale. their charge began with twenty-five cents a cushion, but fell, before the train went on again, to fifteen, with the bed-board gratis, or less than one-fifth of what i had paid for mine at the transfer. this is my contribution to the economy of future emigrants. a great personage on an american train is the newsboy. he sells books (such books!), papers, fruit, lollipops, and cigars; and on emigrant journeys, soap, towels, tin washing dishes, tin coffee pitchers, coffee, tea, sugar, and tinned eatables, mostly hash or beans and bacon. early next morning the newsboy went around the cars, and chumming on a more extended principle became the order of the hour. it requires but a copartnery of two to manage beds; but washing and eating can be carried on most economically by a syndicate of three. i myself entered a little after sunrise into articles of agreement, and became one of the firm of pennsylvania, shakespeare, and dubuque. shakespeare was my own nickname on the cars; pennsylvania that of my bedfellow; and dubuque, the name of a place in the state of iowa, that of an amiable young fellow going west to cure an asthma, and retarding his recovery by incessantly chewing or smoking, and sometimes chewing and smoking together. i have never seen tobacco so sillily abused. shakespeare bought a tin washing-dish, dubuque a towel, and pennsylvania a brick of soap. the partners used these instruments, one after another, according to the order of their first awaking; and when the firm had finished there was no want of borrowers. each filled the tin dish at the water filter opposite the stove, and retired with the whole stock in trade to the platform of the car. there he knelt down, supporting himself by a shoulder against the woodwork or one elbow crooked about the railing, and made a shift to wash his face and neck and hands; a cold, an insufficient, and, if the train is moving rapidly, a somewhat dangerous toilet. on a similar division of expense, the firm of pennsylvania, shakespeare, and dubuque supplied themselves with coffee, sugar, and necessary vessels; and their operations are a type of what went on through all the cars. before the sun was up the stove would be brightly burning; at the first station the natives would come on board with milk and eggs and coffee cakes; and soon from end to end the car would be filled with little parties breakfasting upon the bed-boards. it was the pleasantest hour of the day. there were meals to be had, however, by the wayside: a breakfast in the morning, a dinner somewhere between eleven and two, and supper from five to eight or nine at night. we had rarely less than twenty minutes for each; and if we had not spent many another twenty minutes waiting for some express upon a side track among miles of desert, we might have taken an hour to each repast and arrived at san francisco up to time. for haste is not the foible of an emigrant train. it gets through on sufferance, running the gauntlet among its more considerable brethren; should there be a block, it is unhesitatingly sacrificed; and they cannot, in consequence, predict the length of the passage within a day or so. civility is the main comfort that you miss. equality, though conceived very largely in america, does not extend so low down as to an emigrant. thus in all other trains, a warning cry of "all aboard!" recalls the passengers to take their seats; but as soon as i was alone with emigrants, and from the transfer all the way to san francisco, i found this ceremony was pretermitted; the train stole from the station without note of warning, and you had to keep an eye upon it even while you ate. the annoyance is considerable, and the disrespect both wanton and petty. many conductors, again, will hold no communication with an emigrant. i asked a conductor one day at what time the train would stop for dinner; as he made no answer i repeated the question, with a like result; a third time i returned to the charge, and then jack-in-office looked me coolly in the face for several seconds and turned ostentatiously away. i believe he was half ashamed of his brutality; for when another person made the same inquiry, although he still refused the information, he condescended to answer, and even to justify his reticence in a voice loud enough for me to hear. it was, he said, his principle not to tell people where they were to dine; for one answer led to many other questions, as what o'clock it was? or, how soon should we be there? and he could not afford to be eternally worried. as you are thus cut off from the superior authorities, a great deal of your comfort depends on the character of the newsboy. he has it in his power indefinitely to better and brighten the emigrant's lot. the newsboy with whom we started from the transfer was a dark, bullying, contemptuous, insolent scoundrel, who treated us like dogs. indeed, in his case, matters came nearly to a fight. it happened thus: he was going his rounds through the cars with some commodities for sale, and coming to a party who were at sevenup or cascino (our two games), upon a bed-board, slung down a cigar-box in the middle of the cards, knocking one man's hand to the floor. it was the last straw. in a moment the whole party were upon their feet, the cigars were upset, and he was ordered to "get out of that directly, or he would get more than he reckoned for." the fellow grumbled and muttered, but ended by making off, and was less openly insulting in the future. on the other hand, the lad who rode with us in this capacity from ogden to sacramento made himself the friend of all, and helped us with information, attention, assistance, and a kind countenance. he told us where and when we should have our meals, and how long the train would stop; kept seats at table for those who were delayed, and watched that we should neither be left behind nor yet unnecessarily hurried. you, who live at home at ease, can hardly realise the greatness of this service, even had it stood alone. when i think of that lad coming and going, train after train, with his bright face and civil words, i see how easily a good man may become the benefactor of his kind. perhaps he is discontented with himself, perhaps troubled with ambitions; why, if he but knew it, he is a hero of the old greek stamp; and while he thinks he is only earning a profit of a few cents, and that perhaps exorbitant, he is doing a man's work, and bettering the world. i must tell here an experience of mine with another newsboy. i tell it because it gives so good an example of that uncivil kindness of the american, which is perhaps their most bewildering character to one newly landed. it was immediately after i had left the emigrant train; and i am told i looked like a man at death's door, so much had this long journey shaken me. i sat at the end of a car, and the catch being broken, and myself feverish and sick, i had to hold the door open with my foot for the sake of air. in this attitude my leg debarred the newsboy from his box of merchandise. i made haste to let him pass when i observed that he was coming; but i was busy with a book, and so once or twice he came upon me unawares. on these occasions he most rudely struck my foot aside; and though i myself apologised, as if to show him the way, he answered me never a word. i chafed furiously, and i fear the next time it would have come to words. but suddenly i felt a touch upon my shoulder, and a large juicy pear was put into my hand. it was the newsboy, who had observed that i was looking ill, and so made me this present out of a tender heart. for the rest of the journey i was petted like a sick child; he lent me newspapers, thus depriving himself of his legitimate profit on their sale, and came repeatedly to sit by me and cheer me up. the plains of nebraska it had thundered on the friday night, but the sun rose on saturday without a cloud. we were at sea there is no other adequate expression on the plains of nebraska. i made my observatory on the top of a fruit-waggon, and sat by the hour upon that perch to spy about me, and to spy in vain for something new. it was a world almost without a feature; an empty sky, an empty earth; front and back, the line of railway stretched from horizon to horizon, like a cue across a billiard-board; on either hand, the green plain ran till it touched the skirts of heaven. along the track innumerable wild sunflowers, no bigger than a crown-piece, bloomed in a continuous flower-bed; grazing beasts were seen upon the prairie at all degrees of distance and diminution; and now and again we might perceive a few dots beside the railroad which grew more and more distinct as we drew nearer till they turned into wooden cabins, and then dwindled and dwindled in our wake until they melted into their surroundings, and we were once more alone upon the billiard-board. the train toiled over this infinity like a snail; and being the one thing moving, it was wonderful what huge proportions it began to assume in our regard. it seemed miles in length, and either end of it within but a step of the horizon. even my own body or my own head seemed a great thing in that emptiness. i note the feeling the more readily as it is the contrary of what i have read of in the experience of others. day and night, above the roar of the train, our ears were kept busy with the incessant chirp of grasshoppers a noise like the winding up of countless clocks and watches, which began after a while to seem proper to that land. to one hurrying through by steam there was a certain exhilaration in this spacious vacancy, this greatness of the air, this discovery of the whole arch of heaven, this straight, unbroken, prison-line of the horizon. yet one could not but reflect upon the weariness of those who passed by there in old days, at the foot's pace of oxen, painfully urging their teams, and with no landmark but that unattainable evening sun for which they steered, and which daily fled them by an equal stride. they had nothing, it would seem, to overtake; nothing by which to reckon their advance; no sight for repose or for encouragement; but stage after stage, only the dead green waste under foot, and the mocking, fugitive horizon. but the eye, as i have been told, found differences even here; and at the worst the emigrant came, by perseverance, to the end of his toil. it is the settlers, after all, at whom we have a right to marvel. our consciousness, by which we live, is itself but the creature of variety. upon what food does it subsist in such a land? what livelihood can repay a human creature for a life spent in this huge sameness? he is cut off from books, from news, from company, from all that can relieve existence but the prosecution of his affairs. a sky full of stars is the most varied spectacle that he can hope. he may walk five miles and see nothing; ten, and it is as though he had not moved; twenty, and still he is in the midst of the same great level, and has approached no nearer to the one object within view, the flat horizon which keeps pace with his advance. we are full at home of the question of agreeable wall-papers, and wise people are of opinion that the temper may be quieted by sedative surroundings. but what is to be said of the nebraskan settler? his is a wall-paper with a vengeance one quarter of the universe laid bare in all its gauntness. his eye must embrace at every glance the whole seeming concave of the visible world; it quails before so vast an outlook, it is tortured by distance; yet there is no rest or shelter till the man runs into his cabin, and can repose his sight upon things near at hand. hence, i am told, a sickness of the vision peculiar to these empty plains. yet perhaps with sunflowers and cicadae, summer and winter, cattle, wife and family, the settler may create a full and various existence. one person at least i saw upon the plains who seemed in every way superior to her lot. this was a woman who boarded us at a way station, selling milk. she was largely formed; her features were more than comely; she had that great rarity a fine complexion which became her; and her eyes were kind, dark, and steady. she sold milk with patriarchal grace. there was not a line in her countenance, not a note in her soft and sleepy voice, but spoke of an entire contentment with her life. it would have been fatuous arrogance to pity such a woman. yet the place where she lived was to me almost ghastly. less than a dozen wooden houses, all of a shape and all nearly of a size, stood planted along the railway lines. each stood apart in its own lot. each opened direct off the billiard-board, as if it were a billiardboard indeed, and these only models that had been set down upon it ready made. her own, into which i looked, was clean but very empty, and showed nothing homelike but the burning fire. this extreme newness, above all in so naked and flat a country, gives a strong impression of artificiality. with none of the litter and discoloration of human life; with the paths unworn, and the houses still sweating from the axe, such a settlement as this seems purely scenic. the mind is loth to accept it for a piece of reality; and it seems incredible that life can go on with so few properties, or the great child, man, find entertainment in so bare a playroom. and truly it is as yet an incomplete society in some points; or at least it contained, as i passed through, one person incompletely civilised. at north platte, where we supped that evening, one man asked another to pass the milk-jug. this other was well-dressed and of what we should call a respectable appearance; a darkish man, high spoken, eating as though he had some usage of society; but he turned upon the first speaker with extraordinary vehemence of tone "there's a waiter here!" he cried. "i only asked you to pass the milk," explained the first. here is the retort verbatim "pass! hell! i'm not paid for that business; the waiter's paid for it. you should use civility at table, and, by god, i'll show you how!" the other man very wisely made no answer, and the bully went on with his supper as though nothing had occurred. it pleases me to think that some day soon he will meet with one of his own kidney; and that perhaps both may fall. the desert of wyoming to cross such a plain is to grow homesick for the mountains. i longed for the black hills of wyoming, which i knew we were soon to enter, like an ice-bound whaler for the spring. alas! and it was a worse country than the other. all sunday and monday we travelled through these sad mountains, or over the main ridge of the rockies, which is a fair match to them for misery of aspect. hour after hour it was the same unhomely and unkindly world about our onward path; tumbled boulders, cliffs that drearily imitate the shape of monuments and fortifications how drearily, how tamely, none can tell who has not seen them; not a tree, not a patch of sward, not one shapely or commanding mountain form; sage-brush, eternal sagebrush; over all, the same weariful and gloomy colouring, grays warming into brown, grays darkening towards black; and for sole sign of life, here and there a few fleeing antelopes; here and there, but at incredible intervals, a creek running in a canon. the plains have a grandeur of their own; but here there is nothing but a contorted smallness. except for the air, which was light and stimulating, there was not one good circumstance in that godforsaken land. i had been suffering in my health a good deal all the way; and at last, whether i was exhausted by my complaint or poisoned in some wayside eating-house, the evening we left laramie, i fell sick outright. that was a night which i shall not readily forget. the lamps did not go out; each made a faint shining in its own neighbourhood, and the shadows were confounded together in the long, hollow box of the car. the sleepers lay in uneasy attitudes; here two chums alongside, flat upon their backs like dead folk; there a man sprawling on the floor, with his face upon his arm; there another half seated with his head and shoulders on the bench. the most passive were continually and roughly shaken by the movement of the train; others stirred, turned, or stretched out their arms like children; it was surprising how many groaned and murmured in their sleep; and as i passed to and fro, stepping across the prostrate, and caught now a snore, now a gasp, now a half-formed word, it gave me a measure of the worthlessness of rest in that unresting vehicle. although it was chill, i was obliged to open my window, for the degradation of the air soon became intolerable to one who was awake and using the full supply of life. outside, in a glimmering night, i saw the black, amorphous hills shoot by unweariedly into our wake. they that long for morning have never longed for it more earnestly than i. and yet when day came, it was to shine upon the same broken and unsightly quarter of the world. mile upon mile, and not a tree, a bird, or a river. only down the long, sterile canons, the train shot hooting and awoke the resting echo. that train was the one piece of life in all the deadly land; it was the one actor, the one spectacle fit to be observed in this paralysis of man and nature. and when i think how the railroad has been pushed through this unwatered wilderness and haunt of savage tribes, and now will bear an emigrant for some 12 pounds from the atlantic to the golden gates; how at each stage of the construction, roaring, impromptu cities, full of gold and lust and death, sprang up and then died away again, and are now but wayside stations in the desert; how in these uncouth places pig-tailed chinese pirates worked side by side with border ruffians and broken men from europe, talking together in a mixed dialect, mostly oaths, gambling, drinking, quarrelling and murdering like wolves; how the plumed hereditary lord of all america heard, in this last fastness, the scream of the "bad medicine waggon" charioting his foes; and then when i go on to remember that all this epical turmoil was conducted by gentlemen in frock coats, and with a view to nothing more extraordinary than a fortune and a subsequent visit to paris, it seems to me, i own, as if this railway were the one typical achievement of the age in which we live, as if it brought together into one plot all the ends of the world and all the degrees of social rank, and offered to some great writer the busiest, the most extended, and the most varied subject for an enduring literary work. if it be romance, if it be contrast, if it be heroism that we require, what was troy town to this? but, alas! it is not these things that are necessary it is only homer. here also we are grateful to the train, as to some god who conducts us swiftly through these shades and by so many hidden perils. thirst, hunger, the sleight and ferocity of indians are all no more feared, so lightly do we skim these horrible lands; as the gull, who wings safely through the hurricane and past the shark. yet we should not be forgetful of these hardships of the past; and to keep the balance true, since i have complained of the trifling discomforts of my journey, perhaps more than was enough, let me add an original document. it was not written by homer, but by a boy of eleven, long since dead, and is dated only twenty years ago. i shall punctuate, to make things clearer, but not change the spelling. "my dear sister mary, i am afraid you will go nearly crazy when you read my letter. if jerry" (the writer's eldest brother) "has not written to you before now, you will be surprised to heare that we are in california, and that poor thomas" (another brother, of fifteen) "is dead. we started from in july, with plenly of provisions and too yoke oxen. we went along very well till we got within six or seven hundred miles of california, when the indians attacked us. we found places where they had killed the emigrants. we had one passenger with us, too guns, and one revolver; so we ran all the lead we had into bullets (and) hung the guns up in the wagon so that we could get at them in a minit. it was about two o'clock in the afternoon; droave the cattel a little way; when a prairie chicken alited a little way from the wagon. "jerry took out one of the guns to shoot it, and told tom drive the oxen. tom and i drove the oxen, and jerry and the passenger went on. then, after a little, i left tom and caught up with jerry and the other man. jerry stopped tom to come up; me and the man went on and sit down by a little stream. in a few minutes, we heard some noise; then three shots (they all struck poor tom, i suppose); then they gave the war hoop, and as many as twenty of the redskins came down upon us. the three that shot tom was hid by the side of the road in the bushes. "i thought the tom and jerry were shot; so i told the other man that tom and jerry were dead, and that we had better try to escape, if possible. i had no shoes on; having a sore foot, i thought i would not put them on. the man and me run down the road, but we was soon stopped by an indian on a pony. we then turend the other way, and run up the side of the mountain, and hid behind some cedar trees, and stayed there till dark. the indians hunted all over after us, and verry close to us, so close that we could here there tomyhawks jingle. at dark the man and me started on, i stubing my toes against sticks and stones. we traveld on all night; and next morning, just as it was getting gray, we saw something in the shape of a man. it layed down in the grass. we went up to it, and it was jerry. he thought we ware indians. you can imagine how glad he was to see me. he thought we was all dead but him, and we thought him and tom was dead. he had the gun that he took out of the wagon to shoot the prairie chicken; all he had was the load that was in it. "we traveld on till about eight o'clock, we caught up with one wagon with too men with it. we had traveld with them before one day; we stopt and they drove on; we knew that they was ahead of us, unless they had been killed to. my feet was so sore when we caught up with them that i had to ride; i could not step. we traveld on for too days, when the men that owned the cattle said they would (could) not drive them another inch. we unyoked the oxen; we had about seventy pounds of flour; we took it out and divided it into four packs. each of the men took about 18 pounds apiece and a blanket. i carried a little bacon, dried meat, and little quilt; i had in all about twelve pounds. we had one pint of flour a day for our alloyance. sometimes we made soup of it; sometimes we (made) pancakes; and sometimes mixed it up with cold water and eat it that way. we traveld twelve or fourteen days. the time came at last when we should have to reach some place or starve. we saw fresh horse and cattle tracks. the morning come, we scraped all the flour out of the sack, mixed it up, and baked it into bread, and made some soup, and eat everything we had. we traveld on all day without anything to eat, and that evening we caught up with a sheep train of eight wagons. we traveld with them till we arrived at the settlements; and know i am safe in california, and got to good home, and going to school. "jerry is working in . it is a good country. you can get from 50 to 60 and 75 dollars for cooking. tell me all about the affairs in the states, and how all the folks get along." and so ends this artless narrative. the little man was at school again, god bless him, while his brother lay scalped upon the deserts. fellow-passengers at ogden we changed cars from the union pacific to the central pacific line of railroad. the change was doubly welcome; for, first, we had better cars on the new line; and, second, those in which we had been cooped for more than ninety hours had begun to stink abominably. several yards away, as we returned, let us say from dinner, our nostrils were assailed by rancid air. i have stood on a platform while the whole train was shunting; and as the dwelling-cars drew near, there would come a whiff of pure menagerie, only a little sourer, as from men instead of monkeys. i think we are human only in virtue of open windows. without fresh air, you only require a bad heart, and a remarkable command of the queen's english, to become such another as dean swift; a kind of leering, human goat, leaping and wagging your scut on mountains of offence. i do my best to keep my head the other way, and look for the human rather than the bestial in this yahoo-like business of the emigrant train. but one thing i must say, the car of the chinese was notably the least offensive. the cars on the central pacific were nearly twice as high, and so proportionally airier; they were freshly varnished, which gave us all a sense of cleanliness an though we had bathed; the seats drew out and joined in the centre, so that there was no more need for bed boards; and there was an upper tier of berths which could be closed by day and opened at night. i had by this time some opportunity of seeing the people whom i was among. they were in rather marked contrast to the emigrants i had met on board ship while crossing the atlantic. they were mostly lumpish fellows, silent and noisy, a common combination; somewhat sad, i should say, with an extraordinary poor taste in humour, and little interest in their fellow-creatures beyond that of a cheap and merely external curiosity. if they heard a man's name and business, they seemed to think they had the heart of that mystery; but they were as eager to know that much as they were indifferent to the rest. some of them were on nettles till they learned your name was dickson and you a journeyman baker; but beyond that, whether you were catholic or mormon, dull or clever, fierce or friendly, was all one to them. others who were not so stupid, gossiped a little, and, i am bound to say, unkindly. a favourite witticism was for some lout to raise the alarm of "all aboard!" while the rest of us were dining, thus contributing his mite to the general discomfort. such a one was always much applauded for his high spirits. when i was ill coming through wyoming, i was astonished fresh from the eager humanity on board ship to meet with little but laughter. one of the young men even amused himself by incommoding me, as was then very easy; and that not from illnature, but mere clodlike incapacity to think, for he expected me to join the laugh. i did so, but it was phantom merriment. later on, a man from kansas had three violent epileptic fits, and though, of course, there were not wanting some to help him, it was rather superstitious terror than sympathy that his case evoked among his fellow-passengers. "oh, i hope he's not going to die!" cried a woman; "it would be terrible to have a dead body!" and there was a very general movement to leave the man behind at the next station. this, by good fortune, the conductor negatived. there was a good deal of story-telling in some quarters; in others, little but silence. in this society, more than any other that ever i was in, it was the narrator alone who seemed to enjoy the narrative. it was rarely that any one listened for the listening. if he lent an ear to another man's story, it was because he was in immediate want of a hearer for one of his own. food and the progress of the train were the subjects most generally treated; many joined to discuss these who otherwise would hold their tongues. one small knot had no better occupation than to worm out of me my name; and the more they tried, the more obstinately fixed i grew to baffle them. they assailed me with artful questions and insidious offers of correspondence in the future; but i was perpetually on my guard, and parried their assaults with inward laughter. i am sure dubuque would have given me ten dollars for the secret. he owed me far more, had he understood life, for thus preserving him a lively interest throughout the journey. i met one of my fellow-passengers months after, driving a street tramway car in san francisco; and, as the joke was now out of season, told him my name without subterfuge. you never saw a man more chapfallen. but had my name been demogorgon, after so prolonged a mystery he had still been disappointed. there were no emigrants direct from europe save one german family and a knot of cornish miners who kept grimly by themselves, one reading the new testament all day long through steel spectacles, the rest discussing privately the secrets of their old-world, mysterious race. lady hester stanhope believed she could make something great of the cornish; for my part, i can make nothing of them at all. a division of races, older and more original than that of babel, keeps this close, esoteric family apart from neighbouring englishmen. not even a red indian seems more foreign in my eyes. this is one of the lessons of travel that some of the strangest races dwell next door to you at home. the rest were all american born, but they came from almost every quarter of that continent. all the states of the north had sent out a fugitive to cross the plains with me. from virginia, from pennsylvania, from new york, from far western iowa and kansas, from maime that borders on the canadas, and from the canadas themselves some one or two were fleeing in quest of a better land and better wages. the talk in the train, like the talk i heard on the steamer, ran upon hard times, short commons, and hope that moves ever westward. i thought of my shipful from great britain with a feeling of despair. they had come 3000 miles, and yet not far enough. hard times bowed them out of the clyde, and stood to welcome them at sandy hook. where were they to go? pennsylvania, maine, iowa, kansas? these were not places for immigration, but for emigration, it appeared; not one of them, but i knew a man who had lifted up his heel and left it for an ungrateful country. and it was still westward that they ran. hunger, you would have thought, came out of the east like the sun, and the evening was made of edible gold. and, meantime, in the car in front of me, were there not half a hundred emigrants from the opposite quarter? hungry europe and hungry china, each pouring from their gates in search of provender, had here come face to face. the two waves had met; east and west had alike failed; the whole round world had been prospected and condemned; there was no el dorado anywhere; and till one could emigrate to the moon, it seemed as well to stay patiently at home. nor was there wanting another sign, at once more picturesque and more disheartening; for, as we continued to steam westward toward the land of gold, we were continually passing other emigrant trains upon the journey east; and these were as crowded as our own. had all these return voyagers made a fortune in the mines? were they all bound for paris, and to be in rome by easter? it would seem not, for, whenever we met them, the passengers ran on the platform and cried to us through the windows, in a kind of wailing chorus, to "come back." on the plains of nebraska, in the mountains of wyoming, it was still the same cry, and dismal to my heart, "come back!" that was what we heard by the way "about the good country we were going to." and at that very hour the sand-lot of san francisco was crowded with the unemployed, and the echo from the other side of market street was repeating the rant of demagogues. if, in truth, it were only for the sake of wages that men emigrate, how many thousands would regret the bargain! but wages, indeed, are only one consideration out of many; for we are a race of gipsies, and love change and travel for themselves. despised races of all stupid ill-feelings, the sentiment of my fellow caucasians towards our companions in the chinese car was the most stupid and the worst. they seemed never to have looked at them, listened to them, or thought of them, but hated them a priori. the mongols were their enemies in that cruel and treacherous battle-field of money. they could work better and cheaper in half a hundred industries, and hence there was no calumny too idle for the caucasians to repeat, and even to believe. they declared them hideous vermin, and affected a kind of choking in the throat when they beheld them. now, as a matter of fact, the young chinese man is so like a large class of european women, that on raising my head and suddenly catching sight of one at a considerable distance, i have for an instant been deceived by the resemblance. i do not say it is the most attractive class of our women, but for all that many a man's wife is less pleasantly favoured. again, my emigrants declared that the chinese were dirty. i cannot say they were clean, for that was impossible upon the journey; but in their efforts after cleanliness they put the rest of us to shame. we all pigged and stewed in one infamy, wet our hands and faces for half a minute daily on the platform, and were unashamed. but the chinese never lost an opportunity, and you would see them washing their feet an act not dreamed of among ourselves and going as far as decency permitted to wash their whole bodies. i may remark by the way that the dirtier people are in their persons the more delicate is their sense of modesty. a clean man strips in a crowded boathouse; but he who is unwashed slinks in and out of bed without uncovering an inch of skin. lastly, these very foul and malodorous caucasians entertained the surprising illusion that it was the chinese waggon, and that alone, which stank. i have said already that it was the exceptions and notably the freshest of the three. these judgments are typical of the feeling in all western america. the chinese are considered stupid, because they are imperfectly acquainted with english. they are held to be base, because their dexterity and frugality enable them to underbid the lazy, luxurious caucasian. they are said to be thieves; i am sure they have no monopoly of that. they are called cruel; the anglo-saxon and the cheerful irishman may each reflect before he bears the accusation. i am told, again, that they are of the race of river pirates, and belong to the most despised and dangerous class in the celestial empire. but if this be so, what remarkable pirates have we here! and what must be the virtues, the industry, the education, and the intelligence of their superiors at home! awhile ago it was the irish, now it is the chinese that must go. such is the cry. it seems, after all, that no country is bound to submit to immigration any more than to invasion; each is war to the knife, and resistance to either but legitimate defence. yet we may regret the free tradition of the republic, which loved to depict herself with open arms, welcoming all unfortunates. and certainly, as a man who believes that he loves freedom, i may be excused some bitterness when i find her sacred name misused in the contention. it was but the other day that i heard a vulgar fellow in the sandlot, the popular tribune of san francisco, roaring for arms and butchery. "at the call of abraham lincoln," said the orator, "ye rose in the name of freedom to set free the negroes; can ye not rise and liberate yourselves from a few dirty mongolians?" for my own part, i could not look but with wonder and respect on the chinese. their forefathers watched the stars before mine had begun to keep pigs. gun-powder and printing, which the other day we imitated, and a school of manners which we never had the delicacy so much as to desire to imitate, were theirs in a longpast antiquity. they walk the earth with us, but it seems they must be of different clay. they hear the clock strike the same hour, yet surely of a different epoch. they travel by steam conveyance, yet with such a baggage of old asiatic thoughts and superstitions as might check the locomotive in its course. whatever is thought within the circuit of the great wall; what the wry-eyed, spectacled schoolmaster teaches in the hamlets round pekin; religions so old that our language looks a halfing boy alongside; philosophy so wise that our best philosophers find things therein to wonder at; all this travelled alongside of me for thousands of miles over plain and mountain. heaven knows if we had one common thought or fancy all that way, or whether our eyes, which yet were formed upon the same design, beheld the same world out of the railway windows. and when either of us turned his thoughts to home and childhood, what a strange dissimilarity must there not have been in these pictures of the mind when i beheld that old, gray, castled city, high throned above the firth, with the flag of britain flying, and the red-coat sentry pacing over all; and the man in the next car to me would conjure up some junks and a pagoda and a fort of porcelain, and call it, with the same affection, home. another race shared among my fellow-passengers in the disfavour of the chinese; and that, it is hardly necessary to say, was the noble red man of old story over whose own hereditary continent we had been steaming all these days. i saw no wild or independent indian; indeed, i hear that such avoid the neighbourhood of the train; but now and again at way stations, a husband and wife and a few children, disgracefully dressed out with the sweepings of civilisation, came forth and stared upon the emigrants. the silent stoicism of their conduct, and the pathetic degradation of their appearance, would have touched any thinking creature, but my fellow-passengers danced and jested round them with a truly cockney baseness. i was ashamed for the thing we call civilisation. we should carry upon our consciences so much, at least, of our forefathers' misconduct as we continue to profit by ourselves. if oppression drives a wise man mad, what should be raging in the hearts of these poor tribes, who have been driven back and back, step after step, their promised reservations torn from them one after another as the states extended westward, until at length they are shut up into these hideous mountain deserts of the centre and even there find themselves invaded, insulted, and hunted out by ruffianly diggers? the eviction of the cherokees (to name but an instance), the extortion of indian agents, the outrages of the wicked, the ill-faith of all, nay, down to the ridicule of such poor beings as were here with me upon the train, make up a chapter of injustice and indignity such as a man must be in some ways base if his heart will suffer him to pardon or forget. these old, wellfounded, historical hatreds have a savour of nobility for the independent. that the jew should not love the christian, nor the irishman love the english, nor the indian brave tolerate the thought of the american, is not disgraceful to the nature of man; rather, indeed, honourable, since it depends on wrongs ancient like the race, and not personal to him who cherishes the indignation. to the golden gates a little corner of utah is soon traversed, and leaves no particular impressions on the mind. by an early hour on wednesday morning we stopped to breakfast at toano, a little station on a bleak, highlying plateau in nevada. the man who kept the station eating-house was a scot, and learning that i was the same, he grew very friendly, and gave me some advice on the country i was now entering. "you see," said he, "i tell you this, because i come from your country." hail, brither scots! his most important hint was on the moneys of this part of the world. there is something in the simplicity of a decimal coinage which is revolting to the human mind; thus the french, in small affairs, reckon strictly by halfpence; and you have to solve, by a spasm of mental arithmetic, such posers as thirty-two, forty-five, or even a hundred halfpence. in the pacific states they have made a bolder push for complexity, and settle their affairs by a coin that no longer that no longer exists the bit, or old mexican real. the supposed value of the bit is twelve and a half cents, eight to the dollar. when it comes to two bits, the quarter-dollar stands for the required amount. but how about an odd bit? the nearest coin to it is a dime, which is, short by a fifth. that, then, is called a short bit. if you have one, you lay it triumphantly down, and save two and a half cents. but if you have not, and lay down a quarter, the bar-keeper or shopman calmly tenders you a dime by way of change; and thus you have paid what is called a long bit, and lost two and a half cents, or even, by comparison with a short bit, five cents. in country places all over the pacific coast, nothing lower than a bit is ever asked or taken, which vastly increases the cost of life; as even for a glass of beer you must pay fivepence or sevenpence-halfpenny, as the case may be. you would say that this system of mutual robbery was as broad as it was long; but i have discovered a plan to make it broader, with which i here endow the public. it is brief and simple radiantly simple. there is one place where five cents are recognised, and that is the post-office. a quarter is only worth two bits, a short and a long. whenever you have a quarter, go to the post-office and buy five cents worth of postage-stamps; you will receive in change two dimes, that is, two short bits. the purchasing power of your money is undiminished. you can go and have your two glasses of beer all the same; and you have made yourself a present of five cents worth of postage-stamps into the bargain. benjamin franklin would have patted me on the head for this discovery. from toano we travelled all day through deserts of alkali and sand, horrible to man, and bare sage-brush country that seemed little kindlier, and came by supper-time to elko. as we were standing, after our manner, outside the station, i saw two men whip suddenly from underneath the cars, and take to their heels across country. they were tramps, it appeared, who had been riding on the beams since eleven of the night before; and several of my fellowpassengers had already seen and conversed with them while we broke our fast at toano. these land stowaways play a great part over here in america, and i should have liked dearly to become acquainted with them. at elko an odd circumstance befell me. i was coming out from supper, when i was stopped by a small, stout, ruddy man, followed by two others taller and ruddier than himself. "excuse me, sir," he said, "but do you happen to be going on?" i said i was, whereupon he said he hoped to persuade me to desist from that intention. he had a situation to offer me, and if we could come to terms, why, good and well. "you see," he continued, "i'm running a theatre here, and we're a little short in the orchestra. you're a musician, i guess?" i assured him that, beyond a rudimentary acquaintance with "auld lang syne" and "the wearing of the green," i had no pretension whatever to that style. he seemed much put out of countenance; and one of his taller companions asked him, on the nail, for five dollars. "you see, sir," added the latter to me, "he bet you were a musician; i bet you weren't. no offence, i hope?" "none whatever," i said, and the two withdrew to the bar, where i presume the debt was liquidated. this little adventure woke bright hopes in my fellow-travellers, who thought they had now come to a country where situations went abegging. but i am not so sure that the offer was in good faith. indeed, i am more than half persuaded it was but a feeler to decide the bet. of all the next day i will tell you nothing, for the best of all reasons, that i remember no more than that we continued through desolate and desert scenes, fiery hot and deadly weary. but some time after i had fallen asleep that night, i was awakened by one of my companions. it was in vain that i resisted. a fire of enthusiasm and whisky burned in his eyes; and he declared we were in a new country, and i must come forth upon the platform and see with my own eyes. the train was then, in its patient way, standing halted in a by-track. it was a clear, moonlit night; but the valley was too narrow to admit the moonshine direct, and only a diffused glimmer whitened the tall rocks and relieved the blackness of the pines. a hoarse clamour filled the air; it was the continuous plunge of a cascade somewhere near at hand among the mountains. the air struck chill, but tasted good and vigorous in the nostrils a fine, dry, old mountain atmosphere. i was dead sleepy, but i returned to roost with a grateful mountain feeling at my heart. when i awoke next morning, i was puzzled for a while to know if it were day or night, for the illumination was unusual. i sat up at last, and found we were grading slowly downward through a long snowshed; and suddenly we shot into an open; and before we were swallowed into the next length of wooden tunnel, i had one glimpse of a huge pine-forested ravine upon my left, a foaming river, and a sky already coloured with the fires of dawn. i am usually very calm over the displays of nature; but you will scarce believe how my heart leaped at this. it was like meeting one's wife. i had come home again home from unsightly deserts to the green and habitable corners of the earth. every spire of pine along the hill-top, every trouty pool along that mountain river, was more dear to me than a blood relation. few people have praised god more happily than i did. and thenceforward, down by blue canon, alta, dutch flat, and all the old mining camps, through a sea of mountain forests, dropping thousands of feet toward the far sea-level as we went, not i only, but all the passengers on board, threw off their sense of dirt and heat and weariness, and bawled like schoolboys, and thronged with shining eyes upon the platform and became new creatures within and without. the sun no longer oppressed us with heat, it only shone laughingly along the mountain-side, until we were fain to laugh ourselves for glee. at every turn we could see farther into the land and our own happy futures. at every town the cocks were tossing their clear notes into the golden air, and crowing for the new day and the new country. for this was indeed our destination; this was "the good country" we had been going to so long. by afternoon we were at sacramento, the city of gardens in a plain of corn; and the next day before the dawn we were lying to upon the oakland side of san francisco bay. the day was breaking as we crossed the ferry; the fog was rising over the citied hills of san francisco; the bay was perfect not a ripple, scarce a stain, upon its blue expanse; everything was waiting, breathless, for the sun. a spot of cloudy gold lit first upon the head of tamalpais, and then widened downward on its shapely shoulder; the air seemed to awaken, and began to sparkle; and suddenly "the tall hills titan discovered," and the city of san francisco, and the bay of gold and corn, were lit from end to end with summer daylight. [1879.] chapter ii the old pacific capital the woods and the pacific the bay of monterey has been compared by no less a person than general sherman to a bent fishing-hook; and the comparison, if less important than the march through georgia, still shows the eye of a soldier for topography. santa cruz sits exposed at the shank; the mouth of the salinas river is at the middle of the bend; and monterey itself is cosily ensconced beside the barb. thus the ancient capital of california faces across the bay, while the pacific ocean, though hidden by low hills and forest, bombards her left flank and rear with never-dying surf. in front of the town, the long line of sea-beach trends north and north-west, and then westward to enclose the bay. the waves which lap so quietly about the jetties of monterey grow louder and larger in the distance; you can see the breakers leaping high and white by day; at night, the outline of the shore is traced in transparent silver by the moonlight and the flying foam; and from all round, even in quiet weather, the distant, thrilling roar of the pacific hangs over the coast and the adjacent country like smoke above a battle. these long beaches are enticing to the idle man. it would be hard to find a walk more solitary and at the same time more exciting to the mind. crowds of ducks and sea-gulls hover over the sea. sandpipers trot in and out by troops after the retiring waves, trilling together in a chorus of infinitesimal song. strange seatangles, new to the european eye, the bones of whales, or sometimes a whole whale's carcase, white with carrion-gulls and poisoning the wind, lie scattered here and there along the sands. the waves come in slowly, vast and green, curve their translucent necks, and burst with a surprising uproar, that runs, waxing and waning, up and down the long key-board of the beach. the foam of these great ruins mounts in an instant to the ridge of the sand glacis, swiftly fleets back again, and is met and buried by the next breaker. the interest is perpetually fresh. on no other coast that i know shall you enjoy, in calm, sunny weather, such a spectacle of ocean's greatness, such beauty of changing colour, or such degrees of thunder in the sound. the very air is more than usually salt by this homeric deep. inshore, a tract of sand-hills borders on the beach. here and there a lagoon, more or less brackish, attracts the birds and hunters. a rough, undergrowth partially conceals the sand. the crouching, hardy live-oaks flourish singly or in thickets the kind of wood for murderers to crawl among and here and there the skirts of the forest extend downward from the hills with a floor of turf and long aisles of pine-trees hung with spaniard's beard. through this quaint desert the railway cars drew near to monterey from the junction at salinas city though that and so many other things are now for ever altered and it was from here that you had the first view of the old township lying in the sands, its white windmills bickering in the chill, perpetual wind, and the first fogs of the evening drawing drearily around it from the sea. the one common note of all this country is the haunting presence of the ocean. a great faint sound of breakers follows you high up into the inland canons; the roar of water dwells in the clean, empty rooms of monterey as in a shell upon the chimney; go where you will, you have but to pause and listen to hear the voice of the pacific. you pass out of the town to the south-west, and mount the hill among pine-woods. glade, thicket, and grove surround you. you follow winding sandy tracks that lead nowhither. you see a deer; a multitude of quail arises. but the sound of the sea still follows you as you advance, like that of wind among the trees, only harsher and stranger to the ear; and when at length you gain the summit, out breaks on every hand and with freshened vigour that same unending, distant, whispering rumble of the ocean; for now you are on the top of monterey peninsula, and the noise no longer only mounts to you from behind along the beach towards santa cruz, but from your right also, round by chinatown and pinos lighthouse, and from down before you to the mouth of the carmello river. the whole woodland is begirt with thundering surges. the silence that immediately surrounds you where you stand is not so much broken as it is haunted by this distant, circling rumour. it sets your senses upon edge; you strain your attention; you are clearly and unusually conscious of small sounds near at hand; you walk listening like an indian hunter; and that voice of the pacific is a sort of disquieting company to you in your walk. when once i was in these woods i found it difficult to turn homeward. all woods lure a rambler onward; but in those of monterey it was the surf that particularly invited me to prolong my walks. i would push straight for the shore where i thought it to be nearest. indeed, there was scarce a direction that would not, sooner or later, have brought me forth on the pacific. the emptiness of the woods gave me a sense of freedom and discovery in these excursions. i never in all my visits met but one man. he was a mexican, very dark of hue, but smiling and fat, and he carried an axe, though his true business at that moment was to seek for straying cattle. i asked him what o'clock it was, but he seemed neither to know nor care; and when he in his turn asked me for news of his cattle, i showed myself equally indifferent. we stood and smiled upon each other for a few seconds, and then turned without a word and took our several ways across the forest. one day i shall never forget it i had taken a trail that was new to me. after a while the woods began to open, the sea to sound nearer hand. i came upon a road, and, to my surprise, a stile. a step or two farther, and, without leaving the woods, i found myself among trim houses. i walked through street after street, parallel and at right angles, paved with sward and dotted with trees, but still undeniable streets, and each with its name posted at the corner, as in a real town. facing down the main thoroughfare "central avenue," as it was ticketed i saw an open-air temple, with benches and sounding-board, as though for an orchestra. the houses were all tightly shuttered; there was no smoke, no sound but of the waves, no moving thing. i have never been in any place that seemed so dreamlike. pompeii is all in a bustle with visitors, and its antiquity and strangeness deceive the imagination; but this town had plainly not been built above a year or two, and perhaps had been deserted overnight. indeed, it was not so much like a deserted town as like a scene upon the stage by daylight, and with no one on the boards. the barking of a dog led me at last to the only house still occupied, where a scotch pastor and his wife pass the winter alone in this empty theatre. the place was "the pacific camp grounds, the christian seaside resort." thither, in the warm season, crowds come to enjoy a life of teetotalism, religion, and flirtation, which i am willing to think blameless and agreeable. the neighbourhood at least is well selected. the pacific booms in front. westward is point pinos, with the lighthouse in a wilderness of sand, where you will find the lightkeeper playing the piano, making models and bows and arrows, studying dawn and sunrise in amateur oil-painting, and with a dozen other elegant pursuits and interests to surprise his brave, old-country rivals. to the east, and still nearer, you will come upon a space of open down, a hamlet, a haven among rocks, a world of surge and screaming seagulls. such scenes are very similar in different climates; they appear homely to the eyes of all; to me this was like a dozen spots in scotland. and yet the boats that ride in the haven are of strange outlandish design; and, if you walk into the hamlet, you will behold costumes and faces and hear a tongue that are unfamiliar to the memory. the joss-stick burns, the opium pipe is smoked, the floors are strewn with slips of coloured paper prayers, you would say, that had somehow missed their destination and a man guiding his upright pencil from right to left across the sheet, writes home the news of monterey to the celestial empire. the woods and the pacific rule between them the climate of this seaboard region. on the streets of monterey, when the air does not smell salt from the one, it will be blowing perfumed from the resinous tree-tops of the other. for days together a hot, dry air will overhang the town, close as from an oven, yet healthful and aromatic in the nostrils. the cause is not far to seek, for the woods are afire, and the hot wind is blowing from the hills. these fires are one of the great dangers of california. i have seen from monterey as many as three at the same time, by day a cloud of smoke, by night a red coal of conflagration in the distance. a little thing will start them, and, if the wind be favourable, they gallop over miles of country faster than a horse. the inhabitants must turn out and work like demons, for it is not only the pleasant groves that are destroyed; the climate and the soil are equally at stake, and these fires prevent the rains of the next winter and dry up perennial fountains. california has been a land of promise in its time, like palestine; but if the woods continue so swiftly to perish, it may become, like palestine, a land of desolation. to visit the woods while they are languidly burning is a strange piece of experience. the fire passes through the underbrush at a run. every here and there a tree flares up instantaneously from root to summit, scattering tufts of flame, and is quenched, it seems, as quickly. but this last is only in semblance. for after this first squib-like conflagration of the dry moss and twigs, there remains behind a deep-rooted and consuming fire in the very entrails of the tree. the resin of the pitch-pine is principally condensed at the base of the bole and in the spreading roots. thus, after the light, showy, skirmishing flames, which are only as the match to the explosion, have already scampered down the wind into the distance, the true harm is but beginning for this giant of the woods. you may approach the tree from one side, and see it scorched indeed from top to bottom, but apparently survivor of the peril. make the circuit, and there, on the other side of the column, is a clear mass of living coal, spreading like an ulcer; while underground, to their most extended fibre, the roots are being eaten out by fire, and the smoke is rising through the fissures to the surface. a little while, and, without a nod of warning, the huge pine-tree snaps off short across the ground and falls prostrate with a crash. meanwhile the fire continues its silent business; the roots are reduced to a fine ash; and long afterwards, if you pass by, you will find the earth pierced with radiating galleries, and preserving the design of all these subterranean spurs, as though it were the mould for a new tree instead of the print of an old one. these pitch-pines of monterey are, with the single exception of the monterey cypress, the most fantastic of forest trees. no words can give an idea of the contortion of their growth; they might figure without change in a circle of the nether hell as dante pictured it; and at the rate at which trees grow, and at which forest fires spring up and gallop through the hills of california, we may look forward to a time when there will not be one of them left standing in that land of their nativity. at least they have not so much to fear from the axe, but perish by what may be called a natural although a violent death; while it is man in his short-sighted greed that robs the country of the nobler redwood. yet a little while and perhaps all the hills of seaboard california may be as bald as tamalpais. i have an interest of my own in these forest fires, for i came so near to lynching on one occasion, that a braver man might have retained a thrill from the experience. i wished to be certain whether it was the moss, that quaint funereal ornament of californian forests, which blazed up so rapidly when the flame first touched the tree. i suppose i must have been under the influence of satan, for instead of plucking off a piece for my experiment what should i do but walk up to a great pine-tree in a portion of the wood which had escaped so much as scorching, strike a match, and apply the flame gingerly to one of the tassels. the tree went off simply like a rocket; in three seconds it was a roaring pillar of fire. close by i could hear the shouts of those who were at work combating the original conflagration. i could see the waggon that had brought them tied to a live oak in a piece of open; i could even catch the flash of an axe as it swung up through the underwood into the sunlight. had any one observed the result of my experiment my neck was literally not worth a pinch of snuff; after a few minutes of passionate expostulation i should have been run up to convenient bough. to die for faction is a common evil; but to be hanged for nonsense is the devil. i have run repeatedly, but never as i ran that day. at night i went out of town, and there was my own particular fire, quite distinct from the other, and burning as i thought with even greater vigour. but it is the pacific that exercises the most direct and obvious power upon the climate. at sunset, for months together, vast, wet, melancholy fogs arise and come shoreward from the ocean. from the hill-top above monterey the scene is often noble, although it is always sad. the upper air is still bright with sunlight; a glow still rests upon the gabelano peak; but the fogs are in possession of the lower levels; they crawl in scarves among the sandhills; they float, a little higher, in clouds of a gigantic size and often of a wild configuration; to the south, where they have struck the seaward shoulder of the mountains of santa lucia, they double back and spire up skyward like smoke. where their shadow touches, colour dies out of the world. the air grows chill and deadly as they advance. the trade-wind freshens, the trees begin to sigh, and all the windmills in monterey are whirling and creaking and filling their cisterns with the brackish water of the sands. it takes but a little while till the invasion is complete. the sea, in its lighter order, has submerged the earth. monterey is curtained in for the night in thick, wet, salt, and frigid clouds, so to remain till day returns; and before the sun's rays they slowly disperse and retreat in broken squadrons to the bosom of the sea. and yet often when the fog is thickest and most chill, a few steps out of the town and up the slope, the night will be dry and warm and full of inland perfume. mexicans, americans, and indians the history of monterey has yet to be written. founded by catholic missionaries, a place of wise beneficence to indians, a place of arms, a mexican capital continually wrested by one faction from another, an american capital when the first house of representatives held its deliberations, and then falling lower and lower from the capital of the state to the capital of a county, and from that again, by the loss of its charter and town lands, to a mere bankrupt village, its rise and decline is typical of that of all mexican institutions and even mexican families in california. nothing is stranger in that strange state than the rapidity with which the soil has changed-hands. the mexicans, you may say, are all poor and landless, like their former capital; and yet both it and they hold themselves apart and preserve their ancient customs and something of their ancient air. the town, when i was there, was a place of two or three streets, economically paved with sea-sand, and two or three lanes, which were watercourses in the rainy season, and were, at all times, rent up by fissures four or five feet deep. there were no street lights. short sections of wooden sidewalk only added to the dangers of the night, for they were often high above the level of the roadway, and no one could tell where they would be likely to begin or end. the houses were, for the most part, built of unbaked adobe brick, many of them old for so new a country, some of very elegant proportions, with low, spacious, shapely rooms, and walls so thick that the heat of summer never dried them to the heart. at the approach of the rainy season a deathly chill and a graveyard smell began to hang about the lower floors; and diseases of the chest are common and fatal among house-keeping people of either sex. there was no activity but in and around the saloons, where people sat almost all day long playing cards. the smallest excursion was made on horseback. you would scarcely ever see the main street without a horse or two tied to posts, and making a fine figure with their mexican housings. it struck me oddly to come across some of the cornhill illustrations to mr. blackmore's erema, and see all the characters astride on english saddles. as a matter of fact, an english saddle is a rarity even in san francisco, and, you may say, a thing unknown in all the rest of california. in a place so exclusively mexican as monterey, you saw not only mexican saddles but true vaquero riding men always at the hand-gallop up hill and down dale, and round the sharpest corner, urging their horses with cries and gesticulations and cruel rotatory spurs, checking them dead with a touch, or wheeling them right-about-face in a square yard. the type of face and character of bearing are surprisingly un-american. the first ranged from something like the pure spanish, to something, in its sad fixity, not unlike the pure indian, although i do not suppose there was one pure blood of either race in all the country. as for the second, it was a matter of perpetual surprise to find, in that world of absolutely mannerless americans, a people full of deportment, solemnly courteous, and doing all things with grace and decorum. in dress they ran to colour and bright sashes. not even the most americanised could always resist the temptation to stick a red rose into his hat-band. not even the most americanised would descend to wear the vile dress hat of civilisation. spanish was the language of the streets. it was difficult to get along without a word or two of that language for an occasion. the only communications in which the population joined were with a view to amusement. a weekly public ball took place with great etiquette, in addition to the numerous fandangoes in private houses. there was a really fair amateur brass band. night after night serenaders would be going about the street, sometimes in a company and with several instruments and voice together, sometimes severally, each guitar before a different window. it was a strange thing to lie awake in nineteenth-century america, and hear the guitar accompany, and one of these old, heart-breaking spanish love-songs mount into the night air, perhaps in a deep baritone, perhaps in that highpitched, pathetic, womanish alto which is so common among mexican men, and which strikes on the unaccustomed ear as something not entirely human but altogether sad. the town, then, was essentially and wholly mexican; and yet almost all the land in the neighbourhood was held by americans, and it was from the same class, numerically so small, that the principal officials were selected. this mexican and that mexican would describe to you his old family estates, not one rood of which remained to him. you would ask him how that came about, and elicit some tangled story back-foremost, from which you gathered that the americans had been greedy like designing men, and the mexicans greedy like children, but no other certain fact. their merits and their faults contributed alike to the ruin of the former landholders. it is true they were improvident, and easily dazzled with the sight of ready money; but they were gentlefolk besides, and that in a way which curiously unfitted them to combat yankee craft. suppose they have a paper to sign, they would think it a reflection on the other party to examine the terms with any great minuteness; nay, suppose them to observe some doubtful clause, it is ten to one they would refuse from delicacy to object to it. i know i am speaking within the mark, for i have seen such a case occur, and the mexican, in spite of the advice of his lawyer, has signed the imperfect paper like a lamb. to have spoken in the matter, he said, above all to have let the other party guess that he had seen a lawyer, would have "been like doubting his word." the scruple sounds oddly to one of ourselves, who have been brought up to understand all business as a competition in fraud, and honesty itself to be a virtue which regards the carrying out but not the creation of agreements. this single unworldly trait will account for much of that revolution of which we are speaking. the mexicans have the name of being great swindlers, but certainly the accusation cuts both ways. in a contest of this sort, the entire booty would scarcely have passed into the hands of the more scupulous race. physically the americans have triumphed; but it is not entirely seen how far they have themselves been morally conquered. this is, of course, but a part of a part of an extraordinary problem now in the course of being solved in the various states of the american union. i am reminded of an anecdote. some years ago, at a great sale of wine, all the odd lots were purchased by a grocer in a small way in the old town of edinburgh. the agent had the curiosity to visit him some time after and inquire what possible use he could have for such material. he was shown, by way of answer, a huge vat where all the liquors, from humble gladstone to imperial tokay, were fermenting together. "and what," he asked, "do you propose to call this?" "i'm no very sure," replied the grocer, "but i think it's going to turn out port." in the older eastern states, i think we may say that this hotch-potch of races in going to turn out english, or thereabout. but the problem is indefinitely varied in other zones. the elements are differently mingled in the south, in what we may call the territorial belt and in the group of states on the pacific coast. above all, in these last, we may look to see some monstrous hybrid whether good or evil, who shall forecast? but certainly original and all their own. in my little restaurant at monterey, we have sat down to table day after day, a frenchman, two portuguese, an italian, a mexican, and a scotchman: we had for common visitors an american from illinois, a nearly pure blood indian woman, and a naturalised chinese; and from time to time a switzer and a german came down from country ranches for the night. no wonder that the pacific coast is a foreign land to visitors from the eastern states, for each race contributes something of its own. even the despised chinese have taught the youth of california, none indeed of their virtues, but the debasing use of opium. and chief among these influences is that of the mexicans. the mexicans although in the state are out of it. they still preserve a sort of international independence, and keep their affairs snug to themselves. only four or five years ago vasquez, the bandit, his troops being dispersed and the hunt too hot for him in other parts of california, returned to his native monterey, and was seen publicly in her streets and saloons, fearing no man. the year that i was there, there occurred two reputed murders. as the montereyans are exceptionally vile speakers of each other and of every one behind his back, it is not possible for me to judge how much truth there may have been in these reports; but in the one case every one believed, and in the other some suspected, that there had been foul play; and nobody dreamed for an instant of taking the authorities into their counsel. now this is, of course, characteristic enough of the mexicans; but it is a noteworthy feature that all the americans in monterey acquiesced without a word in this inaction. even when i spoke to them upon the subject, they seemed not to understand my surprise; they had forgotten the traditions of their own race and upbringing, and become, in a word, wholly mexicanised. again, the mexicans, having no ready money to speak of, rely almost entirely in their business transactions upon each other's worthless paper. pedro the penniless pays you with an i o u from the equally penniless miguel. it is a sort of local currency by courtesy. credit in these parts has passed into a superstition. i have seen a strong, violent man struggling for months to recover a debt, and getting nothing but an exchange of waste paper. the very storekeepers are averse to asking for cash payments, and are more surprised than pleased when they are offered. they fear there must be something under it, and that you mean to withdraw your custom from them. i have seen the enterprising chemist and stationer begging me with fervour to let my account run on, although i had my purse open in my hand; and partly from the commonness of the case, partly from some remains of that generous old mexican tradition which made all men welcome to their tables, a person may be notoriously both unwilling and unable to pay, and still find credit for the necessaries of life in the stores of monterey. now this villainous habit of living upon "tick" has grown into californian nature. i do not mean that the american and european storekeepers of monterey are as lax as mexicans; i mean that american farmers in many parts of the state expect unlimited credit, and profit by it in the meanwhile, without a thought for consequences. jew storekeepers have already learned the advantage to be gained from this; they lead on the farmer into irretrievable indebtedness, and keep him ever after as their bond-slave hopelessly grinding in the mill. so the whirligig of time brings in its revenges, and except that the jew knows better than to foreclose, you may see americans bound in the same chains with which they themselves had formerly bound the mexican. it seems as if certain sorts of follies, like certain sorts of grain, were natural to the soil rather than to the race that holds and tills it for the moment. in the meantime, however, the americans rule in monterey county. the new county seat, salinas city, in the bald, corn-bearing plain under the gabelano peak, is a town of a purely american character. the land is held, for the most part, in those enormous tracts which are another legacy of mexican days, and form the present chief danger and disgrace of california; and the holders are mostly of american or british birth. we have here in england no idea of the troubles and inconveniences which flow from the existence of these large landholders land-thieves, land-sharks, or land-grabbers, they are more commonly and plainly called. thus the townlands of monterey are all in the hands of a single man. how they came there is an obscure, vexatious question, and, rightly or wrongly, the man is hated with a great hatred. his life has been repeatedly in danger. not very long ago, i was told, the stage was stopped and examined three evenings in succession by disguised horsemen thirsting for his blood. a certain house on the salinas road, they say, he always passes in his buggy at full speed, for the squatter sent him warning long ago. but a year since he was publicly pointed out for death by no less a man than mr. dennis kearney. kearney is a man too well known in california, but a word of explanation is required for english readers. originally an irish dray-man, he rose, by his command of bad language, to almost dictatorial authority in the state; throned it there for six months or so, his mouth full of oaths, gallowses, and conflagrations; was first snuffed out last winter by mr. coleman, backed by his san francisco vigilantes and three gatling guns; completed his own ruin by throwing in his lot with the grotesque green-backer party; and had at last to be rescued by his old enemies, the police, out of the hands of his rebellious followers. it was while he was at the top of his fortune that kearney visited monterey with his battlecry against chinese labour, the railroad monopolists, and the landthieves; and his one articulate counsel to the montereyans was to "hang david jacks." had the town been american, in my private opinion, this would have been done years ago. land is a subject on which there is no jesting in the west, and i have seen my friend the lawyer drive out of monterey to adjust a competition of titles with the face of a captain going into battle and his smith-andwesson convenient to his hand. on the ranche of another of these landholders you may find our old friend, the truck system, in full operation. men live there, year in year out, to cut timber for a nominal wage, which is all consumed in supplies. the longer they remain in this desirable service the deeper they will fall in debt a burlesque injustice in a new country, where labour should be precious, and one of those typical instances which explains the prevailing discontent and the success of the demagogue kearney. in a comparison between what was and what is in california, the praisers of times past will fix upon the indians of carmel. the valley drained by the river so named is a true californian valley, bare, dotted with chaparal, overlooked by quaint, unfinished hills. the carmel runs by many pleasant farms, a clear and shallow river, loved by wading kine; and at last, as it is falling towards a quicksand and the great pacific, passes a ruined mission on a hill. from the mission church the eye embraces a great field of ocean, and the ear is filled with a continuous sound of distant breakers on the shore. but the day of the jesuit has gone by, the day of the yankee has succeeded, and there is no one left to care for the converted savage. the church is roofless and ruinous, sea-breezes and sea-fogs, and the alternation of the rain and sunshine, daily widening the breaches and casting the crockets from the wall. as an antiquity in this new land, a quaint specimen of missionary architecture, and a memorial of good deeds, it had a triple claim to preservation from all thinking people; but neglect and abuse have been its portion. there is no sign of american interference, save where a headboard has been torn from a grave to be a mark for pistol bullets. so it is with the indians for whom it was erected. their lands, i was told, are being yearly encroached upon by the neighbouring american proprietor, and with that exception no man troubles his head for the indians of carmel. only one day in the year, the day before our guy fawkes, the padre drives over the hill from monterey; the little sacristy, which is the only covered portion of the church, is filled with seats and decorated for the service; the indians troop together, their bright dresses contrasting with their dark and melancholy faces; and there, among a crowd of somewhat unsympathetic holiday-makers, you may hear god served with perhaps more touching circumstances than in any other temple under heaven. an indian, stone-blind and about eighty years of age, conducts the singing; other indians compose the choir; yet they have the gregorian music at their finger ends, and pronounce the latin so correctly that i could follow the meaning as they sang. the pronunciation was odd and nasal, the singing hurried and staccato. "in saecula saeculoho-horum," they went, with a vigorous aspirate to every additional syllable. i have never seen faces more vividly lit up with joy than the faces of these indian singers. it was to them not only the worship of god, nor an act by which they recalled and commemorated better days, but was besides an exercise of culture, where all they knew of art and letters was united and expressed. and it made a man's heart sorry for the good fathers of yore who had taught them to dig and to reap, to read and to sing, who had given them european mass-books which they still preserve and study in their cottages, and who had now passed away from all authority and influence in that land to be succeeded by greedy land-thieves and sacrilegious pistol-shots. so ugly a thing may our anglo-saxon protestantism appear beside the doings of the society of jesus. but revolution in this world succeeds to revolution. all that i say in this paper is in a paulo-past tense. the monterey of last year exists no longer. a huge hotel has sprung up in the desert by the railway. three sets of diners sit down successively to table. invaluable toilettes figure along the beach and between the live oaks; and monterey is advertised in the newspapers, and posted in the waiting-rooms at railway stations, as a resort for wealth and fashion. alas for the little town! it is not strong enough to resist the influence of the flaunting caravanserai, and the poor, quaint, penniless native gentlemen of monterey must perish, like a lower race, before the millionaire vulgarians of the big bonanza. [1880] chapter iii fontainebleau village communities of painters i the charm of fontainebleau is a thing apart. it is a place that people love even more than they admire. the vigorous forest air, the silence, the majestic avenues of highway, the wilderness of tumbled boulders, the great age and dignity of certain groves these are but ingredients, they are not the secret of the philtre. the place is sanative; the air, the light, the perfumes, and the shapes of things concord in happy harmony. the artist may be idle and not fear the "blues." he may dally with his life. mirth, lyric mirth, and a vivacious classical contentment are of the very essence of the better kind of art; and these, in that most smiling forest, he has the chance to learn or to remember. even on the plain of biere, where the angelus of millet still tolls upon the ear of fancy, a larger air, a higher heaven, something ancient and healthy in the face of nature, purify the mind alike from dulness and hysteria. there is no place where the young are more gladly conscious of their youth, or the old better contented with their age. the fact of its great and special beauty further recommends this country to the artist. the field was chosen by men in whose blood there still raced some of the gleeful or solemn exultation of great art millet who loved dignity like michelangelo, rousseau whose modern brush was dipped in the glamour of the ancients. it was chosen before the day of that strange turn in the history of art, of which we now perceive the culmination in impressionistic tales and pictures that voluntary aversion of the eye from all speciously strong and beautiful effects that disinterested love of dulness which has set so many peter bells to paint the riverside primrose. it was then chosen for its proximity to paris. and for the same cause, and by the force of tradition, the painter of to-day continues to inhabit and to paint it. there is in france scenery incomparable for romance and harmony. provence, and the valley of the rhone from vienne to tarascon, are one succession of masterpieces waiting for the brush. the beauty is not merely beauty; it tells, besides, a tale to the imagination, and surprises while it charms. here you shall see castellated towns that would befit the scenery of dreamland; streets that glow with colour like cathedral windows; hills of the most exquisite proportions; flowers of every precious colour, growing thick like grass. all these, by the grace of railway travel, are brought to the very door of the modern painter; yet he does not seek them; he remains faithful to fontainebleau, to the eternal bridge of gretz, to the watering-pot cascade in cernay valley. even fontainebleau was chosen for him; even in fontainebleau he shrinks from what is sharply charactered. but one thing, at least, is certain, whatever he may choose to paint and in whatever manner, it is good for the artist to dwell among graceful shapes. fontainebleau, if it be but quiet scenery, is classically graceful; and though the student may look for different qualities, this quality, silently present, will educate his hand and eye. but, before all its other advantages charm, loveliness, or proximity to paris comes the great fact that it is already colonised. the institution of a painters' colony is a work of time and tact. the population must be conquered. the innkeeper has to be taught, and he soon learns, the lesson of unlimited credit; he must be taught to welcome as a favoured guest a young gentleman in a very greasy coat, and with little baggage beyond a box of colours and a canvas; and he must learn to preserve his faith in customers who will eat heartily and drink of the best, borrow money to buy tobacco, and perhaps not pay a stiver for a year. a colour merchant has next to be attracted. a certain vogue must be given to the place, lest the painter, most gregarious of animals, should find himself alone. and no sooner are these first difficulties overcome, than fresh perils spring up upon the other side; and the bourgeois and the tourist are knocking at the gate. this is the crucial moment for the colony. if these intruders gain a footing, they not only banish freedom and amenity; pretty soon, by means of their long purses, they will have undone the education of the innkeeper; prices will rise and credit shorten; and the poor painter must fare farther on and find another hamlet. "not here, o apollo!" will become his song. thus trouville and, the other day, st. raphael were lost to the arts. curious and not always edifying are the shifts that the french student uses to defend his lair; like the cuttlefish, he must sometimes blacken the waters of his chosen pool; but at such a time and for so practical a purpose mrs. grundy must allow him licence. where his own purse and credit are not threatened, he will do the honours of his village generously. any artist is made welcome, through whatever medium he may seek expression; science is respected; even the idler, if he prove, as he so rarely does, a gentleman, will soon begin to find himself at home. and when that essentially modern creature, the english or american girl-student, began to walk calmly into his favourite inns as if into a drawing-room at home, the french painter owned himself defenceless; he submitted or he fled. his french respectability, quite as precise as ours, though covering different provinces of life, recoiled aghast before the innovation. but the girls were painters; there was nothing to be done; and barbizon, when i last saw it and for the time at least, was practically ceded to the fair invader. paterfamilias, on the other hand, the common tourist, the holiday shopman, and the cheap young gentleman upon the spree, he hounded from his villages with every circumstance of contumely. this purely artistic society is excellent for the young artist. the lads are mostly fools; they hold the latest orthodoxy in its crudeness; they are at that stage of education, for the most part, when a man is too much occupied with style to be aware of the necessity for any matter; and this, above all for the englishman, is excellent. to work grossly at the trade, to forget sentiment, to think of his material and nothing else, is, for awhile at least, the king's highway of progress. here, in england, too many painters and writers dwell dispersed, unshielded, among the intelligent bourgeois. these, when they are not merely indifferent, prate to him about the lofty aims and moral influence of art. and this is the lad's ruin. for art is, first of all and last of all, a trade. the love of words and not a desire to publish new discoveries, the love of form and not a novel reading of historical events, mark the vocation of the writer and the painter. the arabesque, properly speaking, and even in literature, is the first fancy of the artist; he first plays with his material as a child plays with a kaleidoscope; and he is already in a second stage when he begins to use his pretty counters for the end of representation. in that, he must pause long and toil faithfully; that is his apprenticeship; and it is only the few who will really grow beyond it, and go forward, fully equipped, to do the business of real art to give life to abstractions and significance and charm to facts. in the meanwhile, let him dwell much among his fellow-craftsmen. they alone can take a serious interest in the childish tasks and pitiful successes of these years. they alone can behold with equanimity this fingering of the dumb keyboard, this polishing of empty sentences, this dull and literal painting of dull and insignificant subjects. outsiders will spur him on. they will say, "why do you not write a great book? paint a great picture?" if his guardian angel fail him, they may even persuade him to the attempt, and, ten to one, his hand is coarsened and his style falsified for life. and this brings me to a warning. the life of the apprentice to any art is both unstrained and pleasing; it is strewn with small successes in the midst of a career of failure, patiently supported; the heaviest scholar is conscious of a certain progress; and if he come not appreciably nearer to the art of shakespeare, grows letter-perfect in the domain of a-b, ab. but the time comes when a man should cease prelusory gymnastic, stand up, put a violence upon his will, and, for better or worse, begin the business of creation. this evil day there is a tendency continually to postpone: above all with painters. they have made so many studies that it has become a habit; they make more, the walls of exhibitions blush with them; and death finds these aged students still busy with their horn-book. this class of man finds a congenial home in artist villages; in the slang of the english colony at barbizon we used to call them "snoozers." continual returns to the city, the society of men farther advanced, the study of great works, a sense of humour or, if such a thing is to be had, a little religion or philosophy, are the means of treatment. it will be time enough to think of curing the malady after it has been caught; for to catch it is the very thing for which you seek that dream-land of the painters' village. "snoozing" is a part of the artistic education; and the rudiments must be learned stupidly, all else being forgotten, as if they were an object in themselves. lastly, there is something, or there seems to be something, in the very air of france that communicates the love of style. precision, clarity, the cleanly and crafty employment of material, a grace in the handling, apart from any value in the thought, seem to be acquired by the mere residence; or if not acquired, become at least the more appreciated. the air of paris is alive with this technical inspiration. and to leave that airy city and awake next day upon the borders of the forest is but to change externals. the same spirit of dexterity and finish breathes from the long alleys and the lofty groves, from the wildernesses that are still pretty in their confusion, and the great plain that contrives to be decorative in its emptiness. ii in spite of its really considerable extent, the forest of fontainebleau is hardly anywhere tedious. i know the whole western side of it with what, i suppose, i may call thoroughness; well enough at least to testify that there is no square mile without some special character and charm. such quarters, for instance, as the long rocher, the bas-breau, and the reine blanche, might be a hundred miles apart; they have scarce a point in common beyond the silence of the birds. the two last are really conterminous; and in both are tall and ancient trees that have outlived a thousand political vicissitudes. but in the one the great oaks prosper placidly upon an even floor; they beshadow a great field; and the air and the light are very free below their stretching boughs. in the other the trees find difficult footing; castles of white rock lie tumbled one upon another, the foot slips, the crooked viper slumbers, the moss clings in the crevice; and above it all the great beech goes spiring and casting forth her arms, and, with a grace beyond church architecture, canopies this rugged chaos. meanwhile, dividing the two cantons, the broad white causeway of the paris road runs in an avenue: a road conceived for pageantry and for triumphal marches, an avenue for an army; but, its days of glory over, it now lies grilling in the sun between cool groves, and only at intervals the vehicle of the cruising tourist is seen far away and faintly audible along its ample sweep. a little upon one side, and you find a district of sand and birch and boulder; a little upon the other lies the valley of apremont, all juniper and heather; and close beyond that you may walk into a zone of pine trees. so artfully are the ingredients mingled. nor must it be forgotten that, in all this part, you come continually forth upon a hill-top, and behold the plain, northward and westward, like an unrefulgent sea; nor that all day long the shadows keep changing; and at last, to the red fires of sunset, night succeeds, and with the night a new forest, full of whisper, gloom, and fragrance. there are few things more renovating than to leave paris, the lamplit arches of the carrousel, and the long alignment of the glittering streets, and to bathe the senses in this fragrant darkness of the wood. in this continual variety the mind is kept vividly alive. it is a changeful place to paint, a stirring place to live in. as fast as your foot carries you, you pass from scene to scene, each vigorously painted in the colours of the sun, each endeared by that hereditary spell of forests on the mind of man who still remembers and salutes the ancient refuge of his race. and yet the forest has been civilised throughout. the most savage corners bear a name, and have been cherished like antiquities; in the most remote, nature has prepared and balanced her effects as if with conscious art; and man, with his guiding arrows of blue paint, has countersigned the picture. after your farthest wandering, you are never surprised to come forth upon the vast avenue of highway, to strike the centre point of branching alleys, or to find the aqueduct trailing, thousand-footed, through the brush. it is not a wilderness; it is rather a preserve. and, fitly enough, the centre of the maze is not a hermit's cavern. in the midst, a little mirthful town lies sunlit, humming with the business of pleasure; and the palace, breathing distinction and peopled by historic names, stands smokeless among gardens. perhaps the last attempt at savage life was that of the harmless humbug who called himself the hermit. in a great tree, close by the highroad, he had built himself a little cabin after the manner of the swiss family robinson; thither he mounted at night, by the romantic aid of a rope ladder; and if dirt be any proof of sincerity, the man was savage as a sioux. i had the pleasure of his acquaintance; he appeared grossly stupid, not in his perfect wits, and interested in nothing but small change; for that he had a great avidity. in the course of time he proved to be a chickenstealer, and vanished from his perch; and perhaps from the first he was no true votary of forest freedom, but an ingenious, theatrically-minded beggar, and his cabin in the tree was only stock-in-trade to beg withal. the choice of his position would seem to indicate so much; for if in the forest there are no places still to be discovered, there are many that have been forgotten, and that lie unvisited. there, to be sure, are the blue arrows waiting to reconduct you, now blazed upon a tree, now posted in the corner of a rock. but your security from interruption is complete; you might camp for weeks, if there were only water, and not a soul suspect your presence; and if i may suppose the reader to have committed some great crime and come to me for aid, i think i could still find my way to a small cavern, fitted with a hearth and chimney, where he might lie perfectly concealed. a confederate landscape-painter might daily supply him with food; for water, he would have to make a nightly tramp as far as to the nearest pond; and at last, when the hue and cry began to blow over, he might get gently on the train at some side station, work round by a series of junctions, and be quietly captured at the frontier. thus fontainebleau, although it is truly but a pleasure-ground, and although, in favourable weather, and in the more celebrated quarters, it literally buzzes with the tourist, yet has some of the immunities and offers some of the repose of natural forests. and the solitary, although he must return at night to his frequented inn, may yet pass the day with his own thoughts in the companionable silence of the trees. the demands of the imagination vary; some can be alone in a back garden looked upon by windows; others, like the ostrich, are content with a solitude that meets the eye; and others, again, expand in fancy to the very borders of their desert, and are irritably conscious of a hunter's camp in an adjacent county. to these last, of course, fontainebleau will seem but an extended tea-garden: a rosherville on a by-day. but to the plain man it offers solitude: an excellent thing in itself, and a good whet for company. iii i was for some time a consistent barbizonian; et ego in arcadia vixi, it was a pleasant season; and that noiseless hamlet lying close among the borders of the wood is for me, as for so many others, a green spot in memory. the great millet was just dead, the green shutters of his modest house were closed; his daughters were in mourning. the date of my first visit was thus an epoch in the history of art: in a lesser way, it was an epoch in the history of the latin quarter. the petit cenacle was dead and buried; murger and his crew of sponging vagabonds were all at rest from their expedients; the tradition of their real life was nearly lost; and the petrified legend of the vie de boheme had become a sort of gospel, and still gave the cue to zealous imitators. but if the book be written in rose-water, the imitation was still farther expurgated; honesty was the rule; the innkeepers gave, as i have said, almost unlimited credit; they suffered the seediest painter to depart, to take all his belongings, and to leave his bill unpaid; and if they sometimes lost, it was by english and americans alone. at the same time, the great influx of anglosaxons had begun to affect the life of the studious. there had been disputes; and, in one instance at least, the english and the americans had made common cause to prevent a cruel pleasantry. it would be well if nations and races could communicate their qualities; but in practice when they look upon each other, they have an eye to nothing but defects. the anglo-saxon is essentially dishonest; the french is devoid by nature of the principle that we call "fair play." the frenchman marvelled at the scruples of his guest, and, when that defender of innocence retired over-seas and left his bills unpaid, he marvelled once again; the good and evil were, in his eyes, part and parcel of the same eccentricity; a shrug expressed his judgment upon both. at barbizon there was no master, no pontiff in the arts. palizzi bore rule at gretz urbane, superior rule his memory rich in anecdotes of the great men of yore, his mind fertile in theories; sceptical, composed, and venerable to the eye; and yet beneath these outworks, all twittering with italian superstition, his eye scouting for omens, and the whole fabric of his manners giving way on the appearance of a hunchback. cernay had pelouse, the admirable, placid pelouse, smilingly critical of youth, who, when a full-blown commercial traveller, suddenly threw down his samples, bought a colour-box, and became the master whom we have all admired. marlotte, for a central figure, boasted olivier de penne. only barbizon, since the death of millet, was a headless commonwealth. even its secondary lights, and those who in my day made the stranger welcome, have since deserted it. the good lachevre has departed, carrying his household gods; and long before that gaston lafenestre was taken from our midst by an untimely death. he died before he had deserved success; it may be, he would never have deserved it; but his kind, comely, modest countenance still haunts the memory of all who knew him. another whom i will not name has moved farther on, pursuing the strange odyssey of his decadence. his days of royal favour had departed even then; but he still retained, in his narrower life at barbizon, a certain stamp of conscious importance, hearty, friendly, filling the room, the occupant of several chairs; nor had he yet ceased his losing battle, still labouring upon great canvases that none would buy, still waiting the return of fortune. but these days also were too good to last; and the former favourite of two sovereigns fled, if i heard the truth, by night. there was a time when he was counted a great man, and millet but a dauber; behold, how the whirligig of time brings in his revenges! to pity millet is a piece of arrogance; if life be hard for such resolute and pious spirits, it is harder still for us, had we the wit to understand it; but we may pity his unhappier rival, who, for no apparent merit, was raised to opulence and momentary fame, and, through no apparent fault was suffered step by step to sink again to nothing. no misfortune can exceed the bitterness of such back-foremost progress, even bravely supported as it was; but to those also who were taken early from the easel, a regret is due. from all the young men of this period, one stood out by the vigour of his promise; he was in the age of fermentation, enamoured of eccentricities. "il faut faire de la peinture nouvelle," was his watchword; but if time and experience had continued his education, if he had been granted health to return from these excursions to the steady and the central, i must believe that the name of hills had become famous. siron's inn, that excellent artists' barrack, was managed upon easy principles. at any hour of the night, when you returned from wandering in the forest, you went to the billiard-room and helped yourself to liquors, or descended to the cellar and returned laden with beer or wine. the sirons were all locked in slumber; there was none to check your inroads; only at the week's end a computation was made, the gross sum was divided, and a varying share set down to every lodger's name under the rubric: estrats. upon the more long-suffering the larger tax was levied; and your bill lengthened in a direct proportion to the easiness of your disposition. at any hour of the morning, again, you could get your coffee or cold milk, and set forth into the forest. the doves had perhaps wakened you, fluttering into your chamber; and on the threshold of the inn you were met by the aroma of the forest. close by were the great aisles, the mossy boulders, the interminable field of forest shadow. there you were free to dream and wander. and at noon, and again at six o'clock, a good meal awaited you on siron's table. the whole of your accommodation, set aside that varying item of the estrals, cost you five francs a day; your bill was never offered you until you asked it; and if you were out of luck's way, you might depart for where you pleased and leave it pending. iv theoretically, the house was open to all corners; practically, it was a kind of club. the guests protected themselves, and, in so doing, they protected siron. formal manners being laid aside, essential courtesy was the more rigidly exacted; the new arrival had to feel the pulse of the society; and a breach of its undefined observances was promptly punished. a man might be as plain, as dull, as slovenly, as free of speech as he desired; but to a touch of presumption or a word of hectoring these free barbizonians were as sensitive as a tea-party of maiden ladies. i have seen people driven forth from barbizon; it would be difficult to say in words what they had done, but they deserved their fate. they had shown themselves unworthy to enjoy these corporate freedoms; they had pushed themselves; they had "made their head"; they wanted tact to appreciate the "fine shades" of barbizonian etiquette. and once they were condemned, the process of extrusion was ruthless in its cruelty; after one evening with the formidable bodmer, the baily of our commonwealth, the erring stranger was beheld no more; he rose exceeding early the next day, and the first coach conveyed him from the scene of his discomfiture. these sentences of banishment were never, in my knowledge, delivered against an artist; such would, i believe, have been illegal; but the odd and pleasant fact is this, that they were never needed. painters, sculptors, writers, singers, i have seen all of these in barbizon; and some were sulky, and some blatant and inane; but one and all entered at once into the spirit of the association. this singular society is purely french, a creature of french virtues, and possibly of french defects. it cannot be imitated by the english. the roughness, the impatience, the more obvious selfishness, and even the more ardent friendships of the anglo-saxon, speedily dismember such a commonwealth. but this random gathering of young french painters, with neither apparatus nor parade of government, yet kept the life of the place upon a certain footing, insensibly imposed their etiquette upon the docile, and by caustic speech enforced their edicts against the unwelcome. to think of it is to wonder the more at the strange failure of their race upon the larger theatre. this inbred civility to use the word in its completest meaning this natural and facile adjustment of contending liberties, seems all that is required to make a governable nation and a just and prosperous country. our society, thus purged and guarded, was full of high spirits, of laughter, and of the initiative of youth. the few elder men who joined us were still young at heart, and took the key from their companions. we returned from long stations in the fortifying air, our blood renewed by the sunshine, our spirits refreshed by the silence of the forest; the babel of loud voices sounded good; we fell to eat and play like the natural man; and in the high inn chamber, panelled with indifferent pictures and lit by candles guttering in the night air, the talk and laughter sounded far into the night. it was a good place and a good life for any naturallyminded youth; better yet for the student of painting, and perhaps best of all for the student of letters. he, too, was saturated in this atmosphere of style; he was shut out from the disturbing currents of the world, he might forget that there existed other and more pressing interests than that of art. but, in such a place, it was hardly possible to write; he could not drug his conscience, like the painter, by the production of listless studies; he saw himself idle among many who were apparently, and some who were really, employed; and what with the impulse of increasing health and the continual provocation of romantic scenes, he became tormented with the desire to work. he enjoyed a strenuous idleness full of visions, hearty meals, long, sweltering walks, mirth among companions; and still floating like music through his brain, foresights of great works that shakespeare might be proud to have conceived, headless epics, glorious torsos of dramas, and words that were alive with import. so in youth, like moses from the mountain, we have sights of that house beautiful of art which we shall never enter. they are dreams and unsubstantial; visions of style that repose upon no base of human meaning; the last heartthrobs of that excited amateur who has to die in all of us before the artist can be born. but they come to us in such a rainbow of glory that all subsequent achievement appears dull and earthly in comparison. we were all artists; almost all in the age of illusion, cultivating an imaginary genius, and walking to the strains of some deceiving ariel; small wonder, indeed, if we were happy! but art, of whatever nature, is a kind mistress; and though these dreams of youth fall by their own baselessness, others succeed, graver and more substantial; the symptoms change, the amiable malady endures; and still, at an equal distance, the house beautiful shines upon its hill-top. v gretz lies out of the forest, down by the bright river. it boasts a mill, an ancient church, a castle, and a bridge of many sterlings. and the bridge is a piece of public property; anonymously famous; beaming on the incurious dilettante from the walls of a hundred exhibitions. i have seen it in the salon; i have seen it in the academy; i have seen it in the last french exposition, excellently done by bloomer; in a black-and-white by mr. a. henley, it once adorned this essay in the pages of the magazine of art. long-suffering bridge! and if you visit gretz to-morrow, you shall find another generation, camped at the bottom of chevillon's garden under their white umbrellas, and doggedly painting it again. the bridge taken for granted, gretz is a less inspiring place than barbizon. i give it the palm over cernay. there is something ghastly in the great empty village square of cernay, with the inn tables standing in one corner, as though the stage were set for rustic opera, and in the early morning all the painters breaking their fast upon white wine under the windows of the villagers. it is vastly different to awake in gretz, to go down the green inngarden, to find the river streaming through the bridge, and to see the dawn begin across the poplared level. the meals are laid in the cool arbour, under fluttering leaves. the splash of oars and bathers, the bathing costumes out to dry, the trim canoes beside the jetty, tell of a society that has an eye to pleasure. there is "something to do" at gretz. perhaps, for that very reason, i can recall no such enduring ardours, no such glories of exhilaration, as among the solemn groves and uneventful hours of barbizon. this "something to do" is a great enemy to joy; it is a way out of it; you wreak your high spirits on some cut-and-dry employment, and behold them gone! but gretz is a merry place after its kind: pretty to see, merry to inhabit. the course of its pellucid river, whether up or down, is full of gentle attractions for the navigator: islanded reed-mazes where, in autumn, the red berries cluster; the mirrored and inverted images of trees, lilies, and mills, and the foam and thunder of weirs. and of all noble sweeps of roadway, none is nobler, on a windy dusk, than the highroad to nemours between its lines of talking poplar. but even gretz is changed. the old inn, long shored and trussed and buttressed, fell at length under the mere weight of years, and the place as it was is but a fading image in the memory of former guests. they, indeed, recall the ancient wooden stair; they recall the rainy evening, the wide hearth, the blaze of the twig fire, and the company that gathered round the pillar in the kitchen. but the material fabric is now dust; soon, with the last of its inhabitants, its very memory shall follow; and they, in their turn, shall suffer the same law, and, both in name and lineament, vanish from the world of men. "for remembrance of the old house' sake," as pepys once quaintly put it, let me tell one story. when the tide of invasion swept over france, two foreign painters were left stranded and penniless in gretz; and there, until the war was over, the chevillons ungrudgingly harboured them. it was difficult to obtain supplies; but the two waifs were still welcome to the best, sat down daily with the family to table, and at the due intervals were supplied with clean napkins, which they scrupled to employ. madame chevillon observed the fact and reprimanded them. but they stood firm; eat they must, but having no money they would soil no napkins. vi nemours and moret, for all they are so picturesque, have been little visited by painters. they are, indeed, too populous; they have manners of their own, and might resist the drastic process of colonisation. montigny has been somewhat strangely neglected, i never knew it inhabited but once, when will h. low installed himself there with a barrel of piquette, and entertained his friends in a leafy trellis above the weir, in sight of the green country and to the music of the falling water. it was a most airy, quaint, and pleasant place of residence, just too rustic to be stagey; and from my memories of the place in general, and that garden trellis in particular at morning, visited by birds, or at night, when the dew fell and the stars were of the party i am inclined to think perhaps too favourably of the future of montigny. chailly-en-biere has outlived all things, and lies dustily slumbering in the plain the cemetery of itself. the great road remains to testify of its former bustle of postilions and carriage bells; and, like memorial tablets, there still hang in the inn room the paintings of a former generation, dead or decorated long ago. in my time, one man only, greatly daring, dwelt there. from time to time he would walk over to barbizon like a shade revisiting the glimpses of the moon, and after some communication with flesh and blood return to his austere hermitage. but even he, when i last revisited the forest, had come to barbizon for good, and closed the roll of chaillyites. it may revive but i much doubt it. acheres and recloses still wait a pioneer; bourron is out of the question, being merely gretz over again, without the river, the bridge, or the beauty; and of all the possible places on the western side, marlotte alone remains to be discussed. i scarcely know marlotte, and, very likely for that reason, am not much in love with it. it seems a glaring and unsightly hamlet. the inn of mother antonie is unattractive; and its more reputable rival, though comfortable enough, is commonplace. marlotte has a name; it is famous; if i were the young painter i would leave it alone in its glory. vii these are the words of an old stager; and though time is a good conservative in forest places, much may be untrue to-day. many of us have passed arcadian days there and moved on, but yet left a portion of our souls behind us buried in the woods. i would not dig for these reliquiae; they are incommunicable treasures that will not enrich the finder; and yet there may lie, interred below great oaks or scattered along forest paths, stores of youth's dynamite and dear remembrances. and as one generation passes on and renovates the field of tillage for the next, i entertain a fancy that when the young men of to-day go forth into the forest they shall find the air still vitalised by the spirits of their predecessors, and, like those "unheard melodies" that are the sweetest of all, the memory of our laughter shall still haunt the field of trees. those merry voices that in woods call the wanderer farther, those thrilling silences and whispers of the groves, surely in fontainebleau they must be vocal of me and my companions? we are not content to pass away entirely from the scenes of our delight; we would leave, if but in gratitude, a pillar and a legend. one generation after another fall like honey-bees upon this memorable forest, rifle its sweets, pack themselves with vital memories, and when the theft is consummated depart again into life richer, but poorer also. the forest, indeed, they have possessed, from that day forward it is theirs indissolubly, and they will return to walk in it at night in the fondest of their dreams, and use it for ever in their books and pictures. yet when they made their packets, and put up their notes and sketches, something, it should seem, had been forgotten. a projection of themselves shall appear to haunt unfriended these scenes of happiness, a natural child of fancy, begotten and forgotten unawares. over the whole field of our wanderings such fetches are still travelling like indefatigable bagmen; but the imps of fontainebleau, as of all beloved spots, are very long of life, and memory is piously unwilling to forget their orphanage. if anywhere about that wood you meet my airy bantling, greet him with tenderness. he was a pleasant lad, though now abandoned. and when it comes to your own turn to quit the forest, may you leave behind you such another; no antony or werther, let us hope, no tearful whipster, but, as becomes this not uncheerful and most active age in which we figure, the child of happy hours. no art, it may be said, was ever perfect, and not many noble, that has not been mirthfully conceived. and no man, it may be added, was ever anything but a wet blanket and a cross to his companions who boasted not a copious spirit of enjoyment. whether as man or artist let the youth make haste to fontainebleau, and once there let him address himself to the spirit of the place; he will learn more from exercise than from studies, although both are necessary; and if he can get into his heart the gaiety and inspiration of the woods he will have gone far to undo the evil of his sketches. a spirit once well strung up to the concert-pitch of the primeval out-of-doors will hardly dare to finish a study and magniloquently ticket it a picture. the incommunicable thrill of things, that is the tuning-fork by which we test the flatness of our art. here it is that nature teaches and condemns, and still spurs up to further effort and new failure. thus it is that she sets us blushing at our ignorant and tepid works; and the more we find of these inspiring shocks the less shall we be apt to love the literal in our productions. in all sciences and senses the letter kills; and to-day, when cackling human geese express their ignorant condemnation of all studio pictures, it is a lesson most useful to be learnt. let the young painter go to fontainebleau, and while he stupefies himself with studies that teach him the mechanical side of his trade, let him walk in the great air, and be a servant of mirth, and not pick and botanise, but wait upon the moods of nature. so he will learn or learn not to forget the poetry of life and earth, which, when he has acquired his track, will save him from joyless reproduction. [1882.] chapter iv epilogue to "an inland voyage" the country where they journeyed, that green, breezy valley of the loing, is one very attractive to cheerful and solitary people. the weather was superb; all night it thundered and lightened, and the rain fell in sheets; by day, the heavens were cloudless, the sun fervent, the air vigorous and pure. they walked separate: the cigarette plodding behind with some philosophy, the lean arethusa posting on ahead. thus each enjoyed his own reflections by the way; each had perhaps time to tire of them before he met his comrade at the designated inn; and the pleasures of society and solitude combined to fill the day. the arethusa carried in his knapsack the works of charles of orleans, and employed some of the hours of travel in the concoction of english roundels. in this path, he must thus have preceded mr. lang, mr. dobson, mr. henley, and all contemporary roundeleers; but for good reasons, he will be the last to publish the result. the cigarette walked burthened with a volume of michelet. and both these books, it will be seen, played a part in the subsequent adventure. the arethusa was unwisely dressed. he is no precisian in attire; but by all accounts, he was never so ill-inspired as on that tramp; having set forth indeed, upon a moment's notice, from the most unfashionable spot in europe, barbizon. on his head he wore a smoking-cap of indian work, the gold lace pitifully frayed and tarnished. a flannel shirt of an agreeable dark hue, which the satirical called black; a light tweed coat made by a good english tailor; ready-made cheap linen trousers and leathern gaiters completed his array. in person, he is exceptionally lean; and his face is not, like those of happier mortals, a certificate. for years he could not pass a frontier or visit a bank without suspicion; the police everywhere, but in his native city, looked askance upon him; and (though i am sure it will not be credited) he is actually denied admittance to the casino of monte carlo. if you will imagine him, dressed as above, stooping under his knapsack, walking nearly five miles an hour with the folds of the ready-made trousers fluttering about his spindle shanks, and still looking eagerly round him as if in terror of pursuit the figure, when realised, is far from reassuring. when villon journeyed (perhaps by the same pleasant valley) to his exile at roussillon, i wonder if he had not something of the same appearance. something of the same preoccupation he had beyond a doubt, for he too must have tinkered verses as he walked, with more success than his successor. and if he had anything like the same inspiring weather, the same nights of uproar, men in armour rolling and resounding down the stairs of heaven, the rain hissing on the village streets, the wild bull's-eye of the storm flashing all night long into the bare innchamber the same sweet return of day, the same unfathomable blue of noon, the same high-coloured, halcyon eves and above all, if he had anything like as good a comrade, anything like as keen a relish for what he saw, and what he ate, and the rivers that he bathed in, and the rubbish that he wrote, i would exchange estates to-day with the poor exile, and count myself a gainer. but there was another point of similarity between the two journeys, for which the arethusa was to pay dear: both were gone upon in days of incomplete security. it was not long after the francoprussian war. swiftly as men forget, that country-side was still alive with tales of uhlans, and outlying sentries, and hairbreadth 'scapes from the ignominious cord, and pleasant momentary friendships between invader and invaded. a year, at the most two years later, you might have tramped all that country over and not heard one anecdote. and a year or two later, you would if you were a rather ill-looking young man in nondescript array have gone your rounds in greater safety; for along with more interesting matter, the prussian spy would have somewhat faded from men's imaginations. for all that, our voyager had got beyond chateau renard before he was conscious of arousing wonder. on the road between that place and chatillon-sur-loing, however, he encountered a rural postman; they fell together in talk, and spoke of a variety of subjects; but through one and all, the postman was still visibly preoccupied, and his eyes were faithful to the arethusa's knapsack. at last, with mysterious roguishness, he inquired what it contained, and on being answered, shook his head with kindly incredulity. "non," said he, "non, vous avez des portraits." and then with a languishing appeal, "voyons, show me the portraits!" it was some little while before the arethusa, with a shout of laughter, recognised his drift. by portraits he meant indecent photographs; and in the arethusa, an austere and rising author, he thought to have identified a pornographic colporteur. when countryfolk in france have made up their minds as to a person's calling, argument is fruitless. along all the rest of the way, the postman piped and fluted meltingly to get a sight of the collection; now he would upbraid, now he would reason "voyons, i will tell nobody"; then he tried corruption, and insisted on paying for a glass of wine; and, at last when their ways separated "non," said he, "ce n'est pas bien de votre part. o non, ce n'est pas bien." and shaking his head with quite a sentimental sense of injury, he departed unrefreshed. on certain little difficulties encountered by the arethusa at chatillon-sur-loing, i have not space to dwell; another chatillon, of grislier memory, looms too near at hand. but the next day, in a certain hamlet called la jussiere, he stopped to drink a glass of syrup in a very poor, bare drinking shop. the hostess, a comely woman, suckling a child, examined the traveller with kindly and pitying eyes. "you are not of this department?" she asked. the arethusa told her he was english. "ah!" she said, surprised. "we have no english. we have many italians, however, and they do very well; they do not complain of the people of hereabouts. an englishman may do very well also; it will be something new." here was a dark saying, over which the arethusa pondered as he drank his grenadine; but when he rose and asked what was to pay, the light came upon him in a flash. "o, pour vous," replied the landlady, "a halfpenny!" pour vous? by heaven, she took him for a beggar! he paid his halfpenny, feeling that it were ungracious to correct her. but when he was forth again upon the road, he became vexed in spirit. the conscience is no gentleman, he is a rabbinical fellow; and his conscience told him he had stolen the syrup. that night the travellers slept in gien; the next day they passed the river and set forth (severally, as their custom was) on a short stage through the green plain upon the berry side, to chatillonsur-loire. it was the first day of the shooting; and the air rang with the report of firearms and the admiring cries of sportsmen. overhead the birds were in consternation, wheeling in clouds, settling and re-arising. and yet with all this bustle on either hand, the road itself lay solitary. the arethusa smoked a pipe beside a milestone, and i remember he laid down very exactly all he was to do at chatillon: how he was to enjoy a cold plunge, to change his shirt, and to await the cigarette's arrival, in sublime inaction, by the margin of the loire. fired by these ideas, he pushed the more rapidly forward, and came, early in the afternoon and in a breathing heat, to the entering-in of that ill-fated town. childe roland to the dark tower came. a polite gendarme threw his shadow on the path. "monsieur est voyageur?" he asked. and the arethusa, strong in his innocence, forgetful of his vile attire, replied i had almost said with gaiety: "so it would appear." "his papers are in order?" said the gendarme. and when the arethusa, with a slight change of voice, admitted he had none, he was informed (politely enough) that he must appear before the commissary. the commissary sat at a table in his bedroom, stripped to the shirt and trousers, but still copiously perspiring; and when he turned upon the prisoner a large meaningless countenance, that was (like bardolph's) "all whelks and bubuckles," the dullest might have been prepared for grief. here was a stupid man, sleepy with the heat and fretful at the interruption, whom neither appeal nor argument could reach. the commissary. you have no papers? the arethusa. not here. the commissary. why? the arethusa. i have left them behind in my valise. the commissary. you know, however, that it is forbidden to circulate without papers? the arethusa. pardon me: i am convinced of the contrary. i am here on my rights as an english subject by international treaty. the commissary (with scorn). you call yourself an englishman? the arethusa. i do. the commissary. humph. what is your trade? the arethusa. i am a scotch advocate. the commissary (with singular annoyance). a scotch advocate! do you then pretend to support yourself by that in this department? the arethusa modestly disclaimed the pretension. the commissary had scored a point. the commissary. why, then, do you travel? the arethusa. i travel for pleasure. the commissary (pointing to the knapsack, and with sublime incredulity). avec ca? voyez-vous, je suis un homme intelligent! (with that? look here, i am a person of intelligence!) the culprit remaining silent under this home thrust, the commissary relished his triumph for a while, and then demanded (like the postman, but with what different expectations!) to see the contents of the knapsack. and here the arethusa, not yet sufficiently awake to his position, fell into a grave mistake. there was little or no furniture in the room except the commissary's chair and table; and to facilitate matters, the arethusa (with all the innocence on earth) leant the knapsack on a corner of the bed. the commissary fairly bounded from his seat; his face and neck flushed past purple, almost into blue; and he screamed to lay the desecrating object on the floor. the knapsack proved to contain a change of shirts, of shoes, of socks, and of linen trousers, a small dressing-case, a piece of soap in one of the shoes, two volumes of the collection jannet lettered poesies de charles d'orleans, a map, and a version book containing divers notes in prose and the remarkable english roundels of the voyager, still to this day unpublished: the commissary of chatillon is the only living man who has clapped an eye on these artistic trifles. he turned the assortment over with a contumelious finger; it was plain from his daintiness that he regarded the arethusa and all his belongings as the very temple of infection. still there was nothing suspicious about the map, nothing really criminal except the roundels; as for charles of orleans, to the ignorant mind of the prisoner, he seemed as good as a certificate; and it was supposed the farce was nearly over. the inquisitor resumed his seat. the commissary (after a pause). eh bien, je vais vous dire ce que vous etes. vous etes allemand et vous venez chanter a la foire. (well, then, i will tell you what you are. you are a german and have come to sing at the fair.) the arethusa. would you like to hear me sing? i believe i could convince you of the contrary. the commissary. pas de plaisanterie, monsieur! the arethusa. well, sir, oblige me at least by looking at this book. here, i open it with my eyes shut. read one of these songs read this one and tell me, you who are a man of intelligence, if it would be possible to sing it at a fair? the commissary (critically). mais oui. tres bien. the arethusa. comment, monsieur! what! but do you not observe it is antique. it is difficult to understand, even for you and me; but for the audience at a fair, it would be meaningless. the commissary (taking a pen). enfin, il faui en finir. what is your name? the arethusa (speaking with the swallowing vivacity of the english). robert-louis-stev'ns'n. the commissary (aghast). he! quoi? the arethusa (perceiving and improving his advantage). rob'rtlou's-stev'ns'n. the commissary (after several conflicts with his pen). eh bien, il faut se passer du nom. ca ne s'ecrit pas. (well, we must do without the name: it is unspellable.) the above is a rough summary of this momentous conversation, in which i have been chiefly careful to preserve the plums of the commissary; but the remainder of the scene, perhaps because of his rising anger, has left but little definite in the memory of the arethusa. the commissary was not, i think, a practised literary man; no sooner, at least, had he taken pen in hand and embarked on the composition of the proces-verbal, than he became distinctly more uncivil and began to show a predilection for that simplest of all forms of repartee: "you lie!" several times the arethusa let it pass, and then suddenly flared up, refused to accept more insults or to answer further questions, defied the commissary to do his worst, and promised him, if he did, that he should bitterly repent it. perhaps if he had worn this proud front from the first, instead of beginning with a sense of entertainment and then going on to argue, the thing might have turned otherwise; for even at this eleventh hour the commissary was visibly staggered. but it was too late; he had been challenged the proces-verbal was begun; and he again squared his elbows over his writing, and the arethusa was led forth a prisoner. a step or two down the hot road stood the gendarmerie. thither was our unfortunate conducted, and there he was bidden to empty forth the contents of his pockets. a handkerchief, a pen, a pencil, a pipe and tobacco, matches, and some ten francs of change: that was all. not a file, not a cipher, not a scrap of writing whether to identify or to condemn. the very gendarme was appalled before such destitution. "i regret," he said, "that i arrested you, for i see that you are no voyou." and he promised him every indulgence. the arethusa, thus encouraged, asked for his pipe. that he was told was impossible, but if he chewed, he might have some tobacco. he did not chew, however, and asked instead to have his handkerchief. "non," said the gendarme. "nous avons eu des histoires de gens qui se sont pendus." (no, we have had histories of people who hanged themselves.) "what," cried the arethusa. "and is it for that you refuse me my handkerchief? but see how much more easily i could hang myself in my trousers!" the man was struck by the novelty of the idea; but he stuck to his colours, and only continued to repeat vague offers of service. "at least," said the arethusa, "be sure that you arrest my comrade; he will follow me ere long on the same road, and you can tell him by the sack upon his shoulders." this promised, the prisoner was led round into the back court of the building, a cellar door was opened, he was motioned down the stair, and bolts grated and chains clanged behind his descending person. the philosophic and still more the imaginative mind is apt to suppose itself prepared for any mortal accident. prison, among other ills, was one that had been often faced by the undaunted arethusa. even as he went down the stairs, he was telling himself that here was a famous occasion for a roundel, and that like the committed linnets of the tuneful cavalier, he too would make his prison musical. i will tell the truth at once: the roundel was never written, or it should be printed in this place, to raise a smile. two reasons interfered: the first moral, the second physical. it is one of the curiosities of human nature, that although all men are liars, they can none of them bear to be told so of themselves. to get and take the lie with equanimity is a stretch beyond the stoic; and the arethusa, who had been surfeited upon that insult, was blazing inwardly with a white heat of smothered wrath. but the physical had also its part. the cellar in which he was confined was some feet underground, and it was only lighted by an unglazed, narrow aperture high up in the wall and smothered in the leaves of a green vine. the walls were of naked masonry, the floor of bare earth; by way of furniture there was an earthenware basin, a waterjug, and a wooden bedstead with a blue-gray cloak for bedding. to be taken from the hot air of a summer's afternoon, the reverberation of the road and the stir of rapid exercise, and plunged into the gloom and damp of this receptacle for vagabonds, struck an instant chill upon the arethusa's blood. now see in how small a matter a hardship may consist: the floor was exceedingly uneven underfoot, with the very spade-marks, i suppose, of the labourers who dug the foundations of the barrack; and what with the poor twilight and the irregular surface, walking was impossible. the caged author resisted for a good while; but the chill of the place struck deeper and deeper; and at length, with such reluctance as you may fancy, he was driven to climb upon the bed and wrap himself in the public covering. there, then, he lay upon the verge of shivering, plunged in semi-darkness, wound in a garment whose touch he dreaded like the plague, and (in a spirit far removed from resignation) telling the roll of the insults he had just received. these are not circumstances favourable to the muse. meantime (to look at the upper surface where the sun was still shining and the guns of sportsmen were still noisy through the tufted plain) the cigarette was drawing near at his more philosophic pace. in those days of liberty and health he was the constant partner of the arethusa, and had ample opportunity to share in that gentleman's disfavour with the police. many a bitter bowl had he partaken of with that disastrous comrade. he was himself a man born to float easily through life, his face and manner artfully recommending him to all. there was but one suspicious circumstance he could not carry off, and that was his companion. he will not readily forget the commissary in what is ironically called the free town of frankfort-on-the-main ; nor the franco-belgian frontier; nor the inn at la fere; last, but not least, he is pretty certain to remember chatillon-sur-loire. at the town entry, the gendarme culled him like a wayside flower; and a moment later, two persons, in a high state of surprise, were confronted in the commissary's office. for if the cigarette was surprised to be arrested, the commissary was no less taken aback by the appearance and appointments of his captive. here was a man about whom there could be no mistake: a man of an unquestionable and unassailable manner, in apple-pie order, dressed not with neatness merely but elegance, ready with his passport, at a word, and well supplied with money: a man the commissary would have doffed his hat to on chance upon the highway; and this beau cavalier unblushingly claimed the arethusa for his comrade! the conclusion of the interview was foregone; of its humours, i remember only one. "baronet?" demanded the magistrate, glancing up from the passport. "alors, monsieur, vous etes le firs d'un baron?" and when the cigarette (his one mistake throughout the interview) denied the soft impeachment, "alors," from the commissary, "ce n'est pas votre passeport!" but these were ineffectual thunders; he never dreamed of laying hands upon the cigarette; presently he fell into a mood of unrestrained admiration, gloating over the contents of the knapsack, commanding our friend's tailor. ah, what an honoured guest was the commissary entertaining! what suitable clothes he wore for the warm weather! what beautiful maps, what an attractive work of history he carried in his knapsack! you are to understand there was now but one point of difference between them: what was to be done with the arethusa? the cigarette demanding his release, the commissary still claiming him as the dungeon's own. now it chanced that the cigarette had passed some years of his life in egypt, where he had made acquaintance with two very bad things, cholera morbus and pashas; and in the eye of the commissary, as he fingered the volume of michelet, it seemed to our traveller there was something turkish. i pass over this lightly; it is highly possible there was some misunderstanding, highly possible that the commissary (charmed with his visitor) supposed the attraction to be mutual and took for an act of growing friendship what the cigarette himself regarded as a bribe. and at any rate, was there ever a bribe more singular than an odd volume of michelet's history? the work was promised him for the morrow, before our departure; and presently after, either because he had his price, or to show that he was not the man to be behind in friendly offices "eh bien," he said, "je suppose qu'il faut laher voire camarade." and he tore up that feast of humour, the unfinished proces-verbal. ah, if he had only torn up instead the arethusa's roundels! there were many works burnt at alexandria, there are many treasured in the british museum, that i could better spare than the proces-verbal of chatillon. poor bubuckled commissary! i begin to be sorry that he never had his michelet: perceiving in him fine human traits, a broad-based stupidity, a gusto in his magisterial functions, a taste for letters, a ready admiration for the admirable. and if he did not admire the arethusa, he was not alone in that. to the imprisoned one, shivering under the public covering, there came suddenly a noise of bolts and chains. he sprang to his feet, ready to welcome a companion in calamity; and instead of that, the door was flung wide, the friendly gendarme appeared above in the strong daylight, and with a magnificent gesture (being probably a student of the drama) "vous etes libre!" he said. none too soon for the arethusa. i doubt if he had been half-an-hour imprisoned; but by the watch in a man's brain (which was the only watch he carried) he should have been eight times longer; and he passed forth with ecstasy up the cellar stairs into the healing warmth of the afternoon sun; and the breath of the earth came as sweet as a cow's into his nostril; and he heard again (and could have laughed for pleasure) the concord of delicate noises that we call the hum of life. and here it might be thought that my history ended; but not so, this was an act-drop and not the curtain. upon what followed in front of the barrack, since there was a lady in the case, i scruple to expatiate. the wife of the marechal-des-logis was a handsome woman, and yet the arethusa was not sorry to be gone from her society. something of her image, cool as a peach on that hot afternoon, still lingers in his memory: yet more of her conversation. "you have there a very fine parlour," said the poor gentleman. "ah," said madame la marechale (des-logis), "you are very well acquainted with such parlours!" and you should have seen with what a hard and scornful eye she measured the vagabond before her! i do not think he ever hated the commissary; but before that interview was at an end, he hated madame la marechale. his passion (as i am led to understand by one who was present) stood confessed in a burning eye, a pale cheek, and a trembling utterance; madame meanwhile tasting the joys of the matador, goading him with barbed words and staring him coldly down. it was certainly good to be away from this lady, and better still to sit down to an excellent dinner in the inn. here, too, the despised travellers scraped acquaintance with their next neighbour, a gentleman of these parts, returned from the day's sport, who had the good taste to find pleasure in their society. the dinner at an end, the gentleman proposed the acquaintance should be ripened in the cafe. the cafe was crowded with sportsmen conclamantly explaining to each other and the world the smallness of their bags. about the centre of the room, the cigarette and the arethusa sat with their new acquaintance; a trio very well pleased, for the travellers (after their late experience) were greedy of consideration, and their sportsman rejoiced in a pair of patient listeners. suddenly the glass door flew open with a crash; the marechal-des-logis appeared in the interval, gorgeously belted and befrogged, entered without salutation, strode up the room with a clang of spurs and weapons, and disappeared through a door at the far end. close at his heels followed the arethusa's gendarme of the afternoon, imitating, with a nice shade of difference, the imperial bearing of his chief; only, as he passed, he struck lightly with his open hand on the shoulder of his late captive, and with that ringing, dramatic utterance of which he had the secret "suivez!" said he. the arrest of the members, the oath of the tennis court, the signing of the declaration of independence, mark antony's oration, all the brave scenes of history, i conceive as having been not unlike that evening in the cafe at chatillon. terror breathed upon the assembly. a moment later, when the arethusa had followed his recaptors into the farther part of the house, the cigarette found himself alone with his coffee in a ring of empty chairs and tables, all the lusty sportsmen huddled into corners, all their clamorous voices hushed in whispering, all their eyes shooting at him furtively as at a leper. and the arethusa? well, he had a long, sometimes a trying, interview in the back kitchen. the marechal-des-logis, who was a very handsome man, and i believe both intelligent and honest, had no clear opinion on the case. he thought the commissary had done wrong, but he did not wish to get his subordinates into trouble; and he proposed this, that, and the other, to all of which the arethusa (with a growing sense of his position) demurred. "in short," suggested the arethusa, "you want to wash your hands of further responsibility? well, then, let me go to paris." the marechal-des-logis looked at his watch. "you may leave," said he, "by the ten o'clock train for paris." and at noon the next day the travellers were telling their misadventure in the dining-room at siron's. chapter v random memories i. the coast of fife many writers have vigorously described the pains of the first day or the first night at school; to a boy of any enterprise, i believe, they are more often agreeably exciting. misery or at least misery unrelieved is confined to another period, to the days of suspense and the "dreadful looking-for" of departure; when the old life is running to an end, and the new life, with its new interests, not yet begun: and to the pain of an imminent parting, there is added the unrest of a state of conscious pre-existence. the area railings, the beloved shop-window, the smell of semisuburban tanpits, the song of the church bells upon a sunday, the thin, high voices of compatriot children in a playing-field what a sudden, what an overpowering pathos breathes to him from each familiar circumstance! the assaults of sorrow come not from within, as it seems to him, but from without. i was proud and glad to go to school; had i been let alone, i could have borne up like any hero; but there was around me, in all my native town, a conspiracy of lamentation: "poor little boy, he is going away unkind little boy, he is going to leave us"; so the unspoken burthen followed me as i went, with yearning and reproach. and at length, one melancholy afternoon in the early autumn, and at a place where it seems to me, looking back, it must be always autumn and generally sunday, there came suddenly upon the face of all i saw the long empty road, the lines of the tall houses, the church upon the hill, the woody hillside garden a look of such a piercing sadness that my heart died; and seating myself on a doorstep, i shed tears of miserable sympathy. a benevolent cat cumbered me the while with consolations we two were alone in all that was visible of the london road: two poor waifs who had each tasted sorrow and she fawned upon the weeper, and gambolled for his entertainment, watching the effect it seemed, with motherly eyes. for the sake of the cat, god bless her! i confessed at home the story of my weakness; and so it comes about that i owed a certain journey, and the reader owes the present paper, to a cat in the london road. it was judged, if i had thus brimmed over on the public highway, some change of scene was (in the medical sense) indicated; my father at the time was visiting the harbour lights of scotland; and it was decided he should take me along with him around a portion of the shores of fife; my first professional tour, my first journey in the complete character of man, without the help of petticoats. the kingdom of fife (that royal province) may be observed by the curious on the map, occupying a tongue of land between the firths of forth and tay. it may be continually seen from many parts of edinburgh (among the rest, from the windows of my father's house) dying away into the distance and the easterly haar with one smoky seaside town beyond another, or in winter printing on the gray heaven some glittering hill-tops. it has no beauty to recommend it, being a low, sea-salted, wind-vexed promontory; trees very rare, except (as common on the east coast) along the dens of rivers; the fields well cultivated, i understand, but not lovely to the eye. it is of the coast i speak: the interior may be the garden of eden. history broods over that part of the world like the easterly haar. even on the map, its long row of gaelic placenames bear testimony to an old and settled race. of these little towns, posted along the shore as close as sedges, each with its bit of harbour, its old weather-beaten church or public building, its flavour of decayed prosperity and decaying fish, not one but has its legend, quaint or tragic: dunfermline, in whose royal towers the king may be still observed (in the ballad) drinking the bloodred wine; somnolent inverkeithing, once the quarantine of leith; aberdour, hard by the monastic islet of inchcolm, hard by donibristle where the "bonny face was spoiled"; burntisland where, when paul jones was off the coast, the reverend mr. shirra had a table carried between tidemarks, and publicly prayed against the rover at the pitch of his voice and his broad lowland dialect; kinghorn, where alexander "brak's neckbane" and left scotland to the english wars; kirkcaldy, where the witches once prevailed extremely and sank tall ships and honest mariners in the north sea; dysart, famous well famous at least to me for the dutch ships that lay in its harbour, painted like toys and with pots of flowers and cages of song-birds in the cabin windows, and for one particular dutch skipper who would sit all day in slippers on the break of the poop, smoking a long german pipe; wemyss (pronounce weems) with its bat-haunted caves, where the chevalier johnstone, on his flight from culloden, passed a night of superstitious terrors; leven, a bald, quite modern place, sacred to summer visitors, whence there has gone but yesterday the tall figure and the white locks of the last englishman in delhi, my uncle dr. balfour, who was still walking his hospital rounds, while the troopers from meerut clattered and cried "deen deen" along the streets of the imperial city, and willoughby mustered his handful of heroes at the magazine, and the nameless brave one in the telegraph office was perhaps already fingering his last despatch; and just a little beyond leven, largo law and the smoke of largo town mounting about its feet, the town of alexander selkirk, better known under the name of robinson crusoe. so on, the list might be pursued (only for private reasons, which the reader will shortly have an opportunity to guess) by st. monance, and pittenweem, and the two anstruthers, and cellardyke, and crail, where primate sharpe was once a humble and innocent country minister: on to the heel of the land, to fife ness, overlooked by a sea-wood of matted elders and the quaint old mansion of balcomie, itself overlooking but the breach or the quiescence of the deep the carr rock beacon rising close in front, and as night draws in, the star of the inchcape reef springing up on the one hand, and the star of the may island on the other, and farther off yet a third and a greater on the craggy foreland of st. abb's. and but a little way round the corner of the land, imminent itself above the sea, stands the gem of the province and the light of mediaeval scotland, st. andrews, where the great cardinal beaton held garrison against the world, and the second of the name and title perished (as you may read in knox's jeering narrative) under the knives of true-blue protestants, and to this day (after so many centuries) the current voice of the professor is not hushed. here it was that my first tour of inspection began, early on a bleak easterly morning. there was a crashing run of sea upon the shore, i recollect, and my father and the man of the harbour light must sometimes raise their voices to be audible. perhaps it is from this circumstance, that i always imagine st. andrews to be an ineffectual seat of learning, and the sound of the east wind and the bursting surf to linger in its drowsy classrooms and confound the utterance of the professor, until teacher and taught are alike drowned in oblivion, and only the sea-gull beats on the windows and the draught of the sea-air rustles in the pages of the open lecture. but upon all this, and the romance of st. andrews in general, the reader must consult the works of mr. andrew lang; who has written of it but the other day in his dainty prose and with his incommunicable humour, and long ago in one of his best poems, with grace, and local truth, and a note of unaffected pathos. mr. lang knows all about the romance, i say, and the educational advantages, but i doubt if he had turned his attention to the harbour lights; and it may be news even to him, that in the year 1863 their case was pitiable. hanging about with the east wind humming in my teeth, and my hands (i make no doubt) in my pockets, i looked for the first time upon that tragi-comedy of the visiting engineer which i have seen so often re-enacted on a more important stage. eighty years ago, i find my grandfather writing: "it is the most painful thing that can occur to me to have a correspondence of this kind with any of the keepers, and when i come to the light house, instead of having the satisfaction to meet them with approbation and welcome their family, it is distressing when one-is obliged to put on a most angry countenance and demeanour." this painful obligation has been hereditary in my race. i have myself, on a perfectly amateur and unauthorised inspection of turnberry point, bent my brows upon the keeper on the question of storm-panes; and felt a keen pang of self-reproach, when we went down stairs again and i found he was making a coffin for his infant child; and then regained my equanimity with the thought that i had done the man a service, and when the proper inspector came, he would be readier with his panes. the human race is perhaps credited with more duplicity than it deserves. the visitation of a lighthouse at least is a business of the most transparent nature. as soon as the boat grates on the shore, and the keepers step forward in their uniformed coats, the very slouch of the fellows' shoulders tells their story, and the engineer may begin at once to assume his "angry countenance." certainly the brass of the handrail will be clouded; and if the brass be not immaculate, certainly all will be to match the reflectors scratched, the spare lamp unready, the storm-panes in the storehouse. if a light is not rather more than middling good, it will be radically bad. mediocrity (except in literature) appears to be unattainable by man. but of course the unfortunate of st. andrews was only an amateur, he was not in the service, he had no uniform coat, he was (i believe) a plumber by his trade and stood (in the mediaeval phrase) quite out of the danger of my father; but he had a painful interview for all that, and perspired extremely. from st. andrews, we drove over magus muir. my father had announced we were "to post," and the phrase called up in my hopeful mind visions of top-boots and the pictures in rowlandson's dance of death; but it was only a jingling cab that came to the inn door, such as i had driven in a thousand times at the low price of one shilling on the streets of edinburgh. beyond this disappointment, i remember nothing of that drive. it is a road i have often travelled, and of not one of these journeys do i remember any single trait. the fact has not been suffered to encroach on the truth of the imagination. i still see magus muir two hundred years ago; a desert place, quite uninclosed; in the midst, the primate's carriage fleeing at the gallop; the assassins loose-reined in pursuit, burley balfour, pistol in hand, among the first. no scene of history has ever written itself so deeply on my mind; not because balfour, that questionable zealot, was an ancestral cousin of my own; not because of the pleadings of the victim and his daughter; not even because of the live bum-bee that flew out of sharpe's 'bacco-box, thus clearly indicating his complicity with satan; nor merely because, as it was after all a crime of a fine religious flavour, it figured in sunday books and afforded a grateful relief from ministering children or the memoirs of mrs. kathatine winslowe. the figure that always fixed my attention is that of hackston of rathillet, sitting in the saddle with his cloak about his mouth, and through all that long, bungling, vociferous hurly-burly, revolving privately a case of conscience. he would take no hand in the deed, because he had a private spite against the victim, and "that action" must be sullied with no suggestion of a worldly motive; on the other hand, "that action," in itself, was highly justified, he had cast in his lot with "the actors," and he must stay there, inactive but publicly sharing the responsibility. "you are a gentleman you will protect me!" cried the wounded old man, crawling towards him. "i will never lay a hand on you," said hackston, and put his cloak about his mouth. it is an old temptation with me, to pluck away that cloak and see the face to open that bosom and to read the heart. with incomplete romances about hackston, the drawers of my youth were lumbered. i read him up in every printed book that i could lay my hands on. i even dug among the wodrow manuscripts, sitting shame-faced in the very room where my hero had been tortured two centuries before, and keenly conscious of my youth in the midst of other and (as i fondly thought) more gifted students. all was vain: that he had passed a riotous nonage, that he was a zealot, that he twice displayed (compared with his grotesque companions) some tincture of soldierly resolution and even of military common sense, and that he figured memorably in the scene on magus muir, so much and no more could i make out. but whenever i cast my eyes backward, it is to see him like a landmark on the plains of history, sitting with his cloak about his mouth, inscrutable. how small a thing creates an immortality! i do not think he can have been a man entirely commonplace; but had he not thrown his cloak about his mouth, or had the witnesses forgot to chronicle the action, he would not thus have haunted the imagination of my boyhood, and to-day he would scarce delay me for a paragraph. an incident, at once romantic and dramatic, which at once awakes the judgment and makes a picture for the eye, how little do we realise its perdurable power! perhaps no one does so but the author, just as none but he appreciates the influence of jingling words; so that he looks on upon life, with something of a covert smile, seeing people led by what they fancy to be thoughts and what are really the accustomed artifices of his own trade, or roused by what they take to be principles and are really picturesque effects. in a pleasant book about a schoolclass club, colonel fergusson has recently told a little anecdote. a "philosophical society" was formed by some academy boys among them, colonel fergusson himself, fleeming jenkin, and andrew wilson, the christian buddhist and author of the abode of snow. before these learned pundits, one member laid the following ingenious problem: "what would be the result of putting a pound of potassium in a pot of porter?" "i should think there would be a number of interesting bi-products," said a smatterer at my elbow; but for me the tale itself has a bi-product, and stands as a type of much that is most human. for this inquirer who conceived himself to burn with a zeal entirely chemical, was really immersed in a design of a quite different nature; unconsciously to his own recently breeched intelligence, he was engaged in literature. putting, pound, potassium, pot, porter; initial p, mediant t that was his idea, poor little boy! so with politics and that which excites men in the present, so with history and that which rouses them in the past: there lie at the root of what appears, most serious unsuspected elements. the triple town of anstruther wester, anstruther easter, and cellardyke, all three royal burghs or two royal burghs and a less distinguished suburb, i forget which lies continuously along the seaside, and boasts of either two or three separate parish churches, and either two or three separate harbours. these ambiguities are painful; but the fact is (although it argue me uncultured), i am but poorly posted upon cellardyke. my business lay in the two anstruthers. a tricklet of a stream divides them, spanned by a bridge; and over the bridge at the time of my knowledge, the celebrated shell house stood outpost on the west. this had been the residence of an agreeable eccentric; during his fond tenancy, he had illustrated the outer walls, as high (if i remember rightly) as the roof, with elaborate patterns and pictures, and snatches of verse in the vein of exegi monumentum; shells and pebbles, artfully contrasted and conjoined, had been his medium; and i like to think of him standing back upon the bridge, when all was finished, drinking in the general effect and (like gibbon) already lamenting his employment. the same bridge saw another sight in the seventeenth century. mr. thomson, the "curat" of anstruther easter, was a man highly obnoxious to the devout: in the first place, because he was a "curat"; in the second place, because he was a person of irregular and scandalous life; and in the third place, because he was generally suspected of dealings with the enemy of man. these three disqualifications, in the popular literature of the time, go hand in hand; but the end of mr. thomson was a thing quite by itself, and in the proper phrase, a manifest judgment. he had been at a friend's house in anstruther wester, where (and elsewhere, i suspect) he had partaken of the bottle; indeed, to put the thing in our cold modern way, the reverend gentleman was on the brink of delirium tremens. it was a dark night, it seems; a little lassie came carrying a lantern to fetch the curate home; and away they went down the street of anstruther wester, the lantern swinging a bit in the child's hand, the barred lustre tossing up and down along the front of slumbering houses, and mr. thomson not altogether steady on his legs nor (to all appearance) easy in his mind. the pair had reached the middle of the bridge when (as i conceive the scene) the poor tippler started in some baseless fear and looked behind him; the child, already shaken by the minister's strange behaviour, started also; in so doing, she would jerk the lantern; and for the space of a moment the lights and the shadows would be all confounded. then it was that to the unhinged toper and the twittering child, a huge bulk of blackness seemed to sweep down, to pass them close by as they stood upon the bridge, and to vanish on the farther side in the general darkness of the night. "plainly the devil come for mr. thomson!" thought the child. what mr. thomson thought himself, we have no ground of knowledge; but he fell upon his knees in the midst of the bridge like a man praying. on the rest of the journey to the manse, history is silent; but when they came to the door, the poor caitiff, taking the lantern from the child, looked upon her with so lost a countenance that her little courage died within her, and she fled home screaming to her parents. not a soul would venture out; all that night, the minister dwelt alone with his terrors in the manse; and when the day dawned, and men made bold to go about the streets, they found the devil had come indeed for mr. thomson. this manse of anstruther easter has another and a more cheerful association. it was early in the morning, about a century before the days of mr. thomson, that his predecessor was called out of bed to welcome a grandee of spain, the duke of medina sidonia, just landed in the harbour underneath. but sure there was never seen a more decayed grandee; sure there was never a duke welcomed from a stranger place of exile. half-way between orkney and shetland, there lies a certain isle; on the one hand the atlantic, on the other the north sea, bombard its pillared cliffs; sore-eyed, shortliving, inbred fishers and their families herd in its few huts; in the graveyard pieces of wreck-wood stand for monuments; there is nowhere a more inhospitable spot. belle-isle-en-mer fair-isleat-sea that is a name that has always rung in my mind's ear like music; but the only "fair isle" on which i ever set my foot, was this unhomely, rugged turret-top of submarine sierras. here, when his ship was broken, my lord duke joyfully got ashore; here for long months he and certain of his men were harboured; and it was from this durance that he landed at last to be welcomed (as well as such a papist deserved, no doubt) by the godly incumbent of anstruther easter; and after the fair isle, what a fine city must that have appeared! and after the island diet, what a hospitable spot the minister's table! and yet he must have lived on friendly terms with his outlandish hosts. for to this day there still survives a relic of the long winter evenings when the sailors of the great armada crouched about the hearths of the fair-islanders, the planks of their own lost galleon perhaps lighting up the scene, and the gale and the surf that beat about the coast contributing their melancholy voices. all the folk of the north isles are great artificers of knitting: the fair-islanders alone dye their fabrics in the spanish manner. to this day, gloves and nightcaps, innocently decorated, may be seen for sale in the shetland warehouse at edinburgh, or on the fair isle itself in the catechist's house; and to this day, they tell the story of the duke of medina sidonia's adventure. it would seem as if the fair isle had some attraction for "persons of quality." when i landed there myself, an elderly gentleman, unshaved, poorly attired, his shoulders wrapped in a plaid, was seen walking to and fro, with a book in his hand, upon the beach. he paid no heed to our arrival, which we thought a strange thing in itself; but when one of the officers of the pharos, passing narrowly by him, observed his book to be a greek testament, our wonder and interest took a higher flight. the catechist was crossexamined; he said the gentleman had been put across some time before in mr. bruce of sumburgh's schooner, the only link between the fair isle and the rest of the world; and that he held services and was doing "good." so much came glibly enough; but when pressed a little farther, the catechist displayed embarrassment. a singular diffidence appeared upon his face: "they tell me," said he, in low tones, "that he's a lord." and a lord he was; a peer of the realm pacing that inhospitable beach with his greek testament, and his plaid about his shoulders, set upon doing good, as he understood it, worthy man! and his grandson, a good-looking little boy, much better dressed than the lordly evangelist, and speaking with a silken english accent very foreign to the scene, accompanied me for a while in my exploration of the island. i suppose this little fellow is now my lord, and wonder how much he remembers of the fair isle. perhaps not much; for he seemed to accept very quietly his savage situation; and under such guidance, it is like that this was not his first nor yet his last adventure. chapter vi random memories ii. the education of an engineer anstruther is a place sacred to the muse; she inspired (really to a considerable extent) tennant's vernacular poem anst'er fair; and i have there waited upon her myself with much devotion. this was when i came as a young man to glean engineering experience from the building of the breakwater. what i gleaned, i am sure i do not know; but indeed i had already my own private determination to be an author; i loved the art of words and the appearances of life; and travellers, and headers, and rubble, and polished ashlar, and pierres perdues, and even the thrilling question of the stringcourse, interested me only (if they interested me at all) as properties for some possible romance or as words to add to my vocabulary. to grow a little catholic is the compensation of years; youth is one-eyed; and in those days, though i haunted the breakwater by day, and even loved the place for the sake of the sunshine, the thrilling seaside air, the wash of waves on the seaface, the green glimmer of the divers' helmets far below, and the musical chinking of the masons, my one genuine preoccupation lay elsewhere, and my only industry was in the hours when i was not on duty. i lodged with a certain bailie brown, a carpenter by trade; and there, as soon as dinner was despatched, in a chamber scented with dry rose-leaves, drew in my chair to the table and proceeded to pour forth literature, at such a speed, and with such intimations of early death and immortality, as i now look back upon with wonder. then it was that i wrote voces fidelium, a series of dramatic monologues in verse; then that i indited the bulk of a covenanting novel like so many others, never finished. late i sat into the night, toiling (as i thought) under the very dart of death, toiling to leave a memory behind me. i feel moved to thrust aside the curtain of the years, to hail that poor feverish idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap voces fidelium on the fire before he goes; so clear does he appear before me, sitting there between his candles in the rose-scented room and the late night; so ridiculous a picture (to my elderly wisdom) does the fool present! but he was driven to his bed at last without miraculous intervention; and the manner of his driving sets the last touch upon this eminently youthful business. the weather was then so warm that i must keep the windows open; the night without was populous with moths. as the late darkness deepened, my literary tapers beaconed forth more brightly; thicker and thicker came the dusty night-fliers, to gyrate for one brilliant instant round the flame and fall in agonies upon my paper. flesh and blood could not endure the spectacle; to capture immortality was doubtless a noble enterprise, but not to capture it at such a cost of suffering; and out would go the candles, and off would i go to bed in the darkness raging to think that the blow might fall on the morrow, and there was voces fidelium still incomplete. well, the moths are all gone, and voces fidelium along with them; only the fool is still on hand and practises new follies. only one thing in connection with the harbour tempted me, and that was the diving, an experience i burned to taste of. but this was not to be, at least in anstruther; and the subject involves a change of scene to the sub-arctic town of wick. you can never have dwelt in a country more unsightly than that part of caithness, the land faintly swelling, faintly falling, not a tree, not a hedgerow, the fields divided by single slate stones set upon their edge, the wind always singing in your ears and (down the long road that led nowhere) thrumming in the telegraph wires. only as you approached the coast was there anything to stir the heart. the plateau broke down to the north sea in formidable cliffs, the tall out-stacks rose like pillars ringed about with surf, the coves were overbrimmed with clamorous froth, the sea-birds screamed, the wind sang in the thyme on the cliff's edge; here and there, small ancient castles toppled on the brim; here and there, it was possible to dip into a dell of shelter, where you might lie and tell yourself you were a little warm, and hear (near at hand) the whin-pods bursting in the afternoon sun, and (farther off) the rumour of the turbulent sea. as for wick itself, it is one of the meanest of man's towns, and situate certainly on the baldest of god's bays. it lives for herring, and a strange sight it is to see (of an afternoon) the heights of pulteney blackened by seaward-looking fishers, as when a city crowds to a review or, as when bees have swarmed, the ground is horrible with lumps and clusters; and a strange sight, and a beautiful, to see the fleet put silently out against a rising moon, the sea-line rough as a wood with sails, and ever and again and one after another, a boat flitting swiftly by the silver disk. this mass of fishers, this great fleet of boats, is out of all proportion to the town itself; and the oars are manned and the nets hauled by immigrants from the long island (as we call the outer hebrides), who come for that season only, and depart again, if "the take" be poor, leaving debts behind them. in a bad year, the end of the herring fishery is therefore an exciting time; fights are common, riots often possible; an apple knocked from a child's hand was once the signal for something like a war; and even when i was there, a gunboat lay in the bay to assist the authorities. to contrary interests, it should be observed, the curse of babel is here added; the lews men are gaelic speakers. caithness has adopted english; an odd circumstance, if you reflect that both must be largely norsemen by descent. i remember seeing one of the strongest instances of this division: a thing like a punch-andjudy box erected on the flat grave-stones of the churchyard; from the hutch or proscenium i know not what to call it an eldritchlooking preacher laying down the law in gaelic about some one of the name of powl, whom i at last divined to be the apostle to the gentiles; a large congregation of the lews men very devoutly listening; and on the outskirts of the crowd, some of the town's children (to whom the whole affair was greek and hebrew) profanely playing tigg. the same descent, the same country, the same narrow sect of the same religion, and all these bonds made very largely nugatory by an accidental difference of dialect! into the bay of wick stretched the dark length of the unfinished breakwater, in its cage of open staging; the travellers (like frames of churches) over-plumbing all; and away at the extreme end, the divers toiling unseen on the foundation. on a platform of loose planks, the assistants turned their air-mills; a stone might be swinging between wind and water; underneath the swell ran gaily; and from time to time, a mailed dragon with a window-glass snout came dripping up the ladder. youth is a blessed season after all; my stay at wick was in the year of voces fidelium and the rose-leaf room at bailie brown's; and already i did not care two straws for literary glory. posthumous ambition perhaps requires an atmosphere of roses; and the more rugged excitant of wick east winds had made another boy of me. to go down in the diving-dress, that was my absorbing fancy; and with the countenance of a certain handsome scamp of a diver, bob bain by name, i gratified the whim. it was gray, harsh, easterly weather, the swell ran pretty high, and out in the open there were "skipper's daughters," when i found myself at last on the diver's platform, twenty pounds of lead upon each foot and my whole person swollen with ply and ply of woollen underclothing. one moment, the salt wind was whistling round my night-capped head; the next, i was crushed almost double under the weight of the helmet. as that intolerable burthern was laid upon me, i could have found it in my heart (only for shame's sake) to cry off from the whole enterprise. but it was too late. the attendants began to turn the hurdy-gurdy, and the air to whistle through the tube; some one screwed in the barred window of the vizor; and i was cut off in a moment from my fellow-men; standing there in their midst, but quite divorced from intercourse: a creature deaf and dumb, pathetically looking forth upon them from a climate of his own. except that i could move and feel, i was like a man fallen in a catalepsy. but time was scarce given me to realise my isolation; the weights were hung upon my back and breast, the signal rope was thrust into my unresisting hand; and setting a twenty-pound foot upon the ladder, i began ponderously to descend. some twenty rounds below the platform, twilight fell. looking up, i saw a low green heaven mottled with vanishing bells of white; looking around, except for the weedy spokes and shafts of the ladder, nothing but a green gloaming, somewhat opaque but very restful and delicious. thirty rounds lower, i stepped off on the pierres perdues of the foundation; a dumb helmeted figure took me by the hand, and made a gesture (as i read it) of encouragement; and looking in at the creature's window, i beheld the face of bain. there we were, hand to hand and (when it pleased us) eye to eye; and either might have burst himself with shouting, and not a whisper come to his companion's hearing. each, in his own little world of air, stood incommunicably separate. bob had told me ere this a little tale, a five minutes' drama at the bottom of the sea, which at that moment possibly shot across my mind. he was down with another, settling a stone of the sea-wall. they had it well adjusted, bob gave the signal, the scissors were slipped, the stone set home; and it was time to turn to something else. but still his companion remained bowed over the block like a mourner on a tomb, or only raised himself to make absurd contortions and mysterious signs unknown to the vocabulary of the diver. there, then, these two stood for awhile, like the dead and the living; till there flashed a fortunate thought into bob's mind, and he stooped, peered through the window of that other world, and beheld the face of its inhabitant wet with streaming tears. ah! the man was in pain! and bob, glancing downward, saw what was the trouble: the block had been lowered on the foot of that unfortunate he was caught alive at the bottom of the sea under fifteen tons of rock. that two men should handle a stone so heavy, even swinging in the scissors, may appear strange to the inexpert. these must bear in mind the great density of the water of the sea, and the surprising results of transplantation to that medium. to understand a little what these are, and how a man's weight, so far from being an encumbrance, is the very ground of his agility, was the chief lesson of my submarine experience. the knowledge came upon me by degrees. as i began to go forward with the hand of my estranged companion, a world of tumbled stones was visible, pillared with the weedy uprights of the staging: overhead, a flat roof of green: a little in front, the sea-wall, like an unfinished rampart. and presently in our upward progress, bob motioned me to leap upon a stone; i looked to see if he were possibly in earnest, and he only signed to me the more imperiously. now the block stood six feet high; it would have been quite a leap to me unencumbered; with the breast and back weights, and the twenty pounds upon each foot, and the staggering load of the helmet, the thing was out of reason. i laughed aloud in my tomb; and to prove to bob how far he was astray, i gave a little impulse from my toes. up i soared like a bird, my companion soaring at my side. as high as to the stone, and then higher, i pursued my impotent and empty flight. even when the strong arm of bob had checked my shoulders, my heels continued their ascent; so that i blew out sideways like an autumn leaf, and must be hauled in, hand over hand, as sailors haul in the slack of a sail, and propped upon my feet again like an intoxicated sparrow. yet a little higher on the foundation, and we began to be affected by the bottom of the swell, running there like a strong breeze of wind. or so i must suppose; for, safe in my cushion of air, i was conscious of no impact; only swayed idly like a weed, and was now borne helplessly abroad, and now swiftly and yet with dream-like gentleness impelled against my guide. so does a child's balloon divagate upon the currents of the air, and touch, and slide off again from every obstacle. so must have ineffectually swung, so resented their inefficiency, those light crowds that followed the star of hades, and uttered exiguous voices in the land beyond cocytus. there was something strangely exasperating, as well as strangely wearying, in these uncommanded evolutions. it is bitter to return to infancy, to be supported, and directed, and perpetually set upon your feet, by the hand of some one else. the air besides, as it is supplied to you by the busy millers on the platform, closes the eustachian tubes and keeps the neophyte perpetually swallowing, till his throat is grown so dry that he can swallow no longer. and for all these reasons-although i had a fine, dizzy, muddle-headed joy in my surroundings, and longed, and tried, and always failed, to lay hands on the fish that darted here and there about me, swift as humming-birds yet i fancy i was rather relieved than otherwise when bain brought me back to the ladder and signed to me to mount. and there was one more experience before me even then. of a sudden, my ascending head passed into the trough of a swell. out of the green, i shot at once into a glory of rosy, almost of sanguine light the multitudinous seas incarnadined, the heaven above a vault of crimson. and then the glory faded into the hard, ugly daylight of a caithness autumn, with a low sky, a gray sea, and a whistling wind. bob bain had five shillings for his trouble, and i had done what i desired. it was one of the best things i got from my education as an engineer: of which, however, as a way of life, i wish to speak with sympathy. it takes a man into the open air; it keeps him hanging about harbour-sides, which is the richest form of idling; it carries him to wild islands; it gives him a taste of the genial dangers of the sea; it supplies him with dexterities to exercise; it makes demands upon his ingenuity; it will go far to cure him of any taste (if ever he had one) for the miserable life of cities. and when it has done so, it carries him back and shuts him in an office! from the roaring skerry and the wet thwart of the tossing boat, he passes to the stool and desk; and with a memory full of ships, and seas, and perilous headlands, and the shining pharos, he must apply his long-sighted eyes to the petty niceties of drawing, or measure his inaccurate mind with several pages of consecutive figures. he is a wise youth, to be sure, who can balance one part of genuine life against two parts of drudgery between four walls, and for the sake of the one, manfully accept the other. wick was scarce an eligible place of stay. but how much better it was to hang in the cold wind upon the pier, to go down with bob bain among the roots of the staging, to be all day in a boat coiling a wet rope and shouting orders not always very wise than to be warm and dry, and dull, and dead-alive, in the most comfortable office. and wick itself had in those days a note of originality. it may have still, but i misdoubt it much. the old minister of keiss would not preach, in these degenerate times, for an hour and a half upon the clock. the gipsies must be gone from their cavern; where you might see, from the mouth, the women tending their fire, like meg merrilies, and the men sleeping off their coarse potations; and where, in winter gales, the surf would beleaguer them closely, bursting in their very door. a traveller to-day upon the thurso coach would scarce observe a little cloud of smoke among the moorlands, and be told, quite openly, it marked a private still. he would not indeed make that journey, for there is now no thurso coach. and even if he could, one little thing that happened to me could never happen to him, or not with the same trenchancy of contrast. we had been upon the road all evening; the coach-top was crowded with lews fishers going home, scarce anything but gaelic had sounded in my ears; and our way had lain throughout over a moorish country very northern to behold. latish at night, though it was still broad day in our subarctic latitude, we came down upon the shores of the roaring pentland firth, that grave of mariners; on one hand, the cliffs of dunnet head ran seaward; in front was the little bare, white town of castleton, its streets full of blowing sand; nothing beyond, but the north islands, the great deep, and the perennial ice-fields of the pole. and here, in the last imaginable place, there sprang up young outlandish voices and a chatter of some foreign speech; and i saw, pursuing the coach with its load of hebridean fishers as they had pursued vetturini up the passes of the apennines or perhaps along the grotto under virgil's tomb two little dark-eyed, white-toothed italian vagabonds, of twelve to fourteen years of age, one with a hurdygurdy, the other with a cage of white mice. the coach passed on, and their small italian chatter died in the distance; and i was left to marvel how they had wandered into that country, and how they fared in it, and what they thought of it, and when (if ever) they should see again the silver wind-breaks run among the olives, and the stone-pine stand guard upon etruscan sepulchres. upon any american, the strangeness of this incident is somewhat lost. for as far back as he goes in his own land, he will find some alien camping there; the cornish miner, the french or mexican half-blood, the negro in the south, these are deep in the woods and far among the mountains. but in an old, cold, and rugged country such as mine, the days of immigration are long at an end; and away up there, which was at that time far beyond the northernmost extreme of railways, hard upon the shore of that ill-omened strait of whirlpools, in a land of moors where no stranger came, unless it should be a sportsman to shoot grouse or an antiquary to decipher runes, the presence of these small pedestrians struck the mind as though a bird-of-paradise had risen from the heather or an albatross come fishing in the bay of wick. they were as strange to their surroundings as my lordly evangelist or the old spanish grandee on the fair isle. chapter vii the lantern-bearers i these boys congregated every autumn about a certain easterly fisher-village, where they tasted in a high degree the glory of existence. the place was created seemingly on purpose for the diversion of young gentlemen. a street or two of houses, mostly red and many of, them tiled; a number of fine trees clustered about the manse and the kirkyard, and turning the chief street into a shady alley; many little gardens more than usually bright with flowers; nets a-drying, and fisher-wives scolding in the backward parts; a smell of fish, a genial smell of seaweed; whiffs of blowing sand at the street-corners; shops with golf-balls and bottled lollipops; another shop with penny pickwicks (that remarkable cigar) and the london journal, dear to me for its startling pictures, and a few novels, dear for their suggestive names: such, as well as memory serves me, were the ingredients of the town. these, you are to conceive posted on a spit between two sandy bays, and sparsely flanked with villas enough for the boys to lodge in with their subsidiary parents, not enough (not yet enough) to cocknify the scene: a haven in the rocks in front: in front of that, a file of gray islets: to the left, endless links and sand wreaths, a wilderness of hiding-holes, alive with popping rabbits and soaring gulls: to the right, a range of seaward crags, one rugged brow beyond another; the ruins of a mighty and ancient fortress on the brink of one; coves between now charmed into sunshine quiet, now whistling with wind and clamorous with bursting surges; the dens and sheltered hollows redolent of thyme and southernwood, the air at the cliff's edge brisk and clean and pungent of the sea in front of all, the bass rock, tilted seaward like a doubtful bather, the surf ringing it with white, the solangeese hanging round its summit like a great and glittering smoke. this choice piece of seaboard was sacred, besides, to the wrecker; and the bass, in the eye of fancy, still flew the colours of king james; and in the ear of fancy the arches of tantallon still rang with horse-shoe iron, and echoed to the commands of bell-the-cat. there was nothing to mar your days, if you were a boy summering in that part, but the embarrassment of pleasure. you might golf if you wanted; but i seem to have been better employed. you might secrete yourself in the lady's walk, a certain sunless dingle of elders, all mossed over by the damp as green as grass, and dotted here and there by the stream-side with roofless walls, the cold homes of anchorites. to fit themselves for life, and with a special eye to acquire the art of smoking, it was even common for the boys to harbour there; and you might have seen a single penny pickwick, honestly shared in lengths with a blunt knife, bestrew the glen with these apprentices. again, you might join our fishing parties, where we sat perched as thick as solan-geese, a covey of little anglers, boy and girl, angling over each other's heads, to the to the much entanglement of lines and loss of podleys and consequent shrill recrimination shrill as the geese themselves. indeed, had that been all, you might have done this often; but though fishing be a fine pastime, the podley is scarce to be regarded as a dainty for the table; and it was a point of honour that a boy should eat all that he had taken. or again, you might climb the law, where the whale's jawbone stood landmark in the buzzing wind, and behold the face of many counties, and the smoke and spires of many towns, and the sails of distant ships. you might bathe, now in the flaws of fine weather, that we pathetically call our summer, now in a gale of wind, with the sand scourging your bare hide, your clothes thrashing abroad from underneath their guardian stone, the froth of the great breakers casting you headlong ere it had drowned your knees. or you might explore the tidal rocks, above all in the ebb of springs, when the very roots of the hills were for the nonce discovered; following my leader from one group to another, groping in slippery tangle for the wreck of ships, wading in pools after the abominable creatures of the sea, and ever with an eye cast backward on the march off the tide and the menaced line of your retreat. and then you might go crusoeing, a word that covers all extempore eating in the open air: digging perhaps a house under the margin of the links, kindling a fire of the sea-ware, and cooking apples there if they were truly apples, for i sometimes suppose the merchant must have played us off with some inferior and quite local fruit capable of resolving, in the neighbourhood of fire, into mere sand and smoke and iodine; or perhaps pushing to tantallon, you might lunch on sandwiches and visions in the grassy court, while the wind hummed in the crumbling turrets; or clambering along the coast, eat geans (the worst, i must suppose, in christendom) from an adventurous gean tree that had taken root under a cliff, where it was shaken with an ague of east wind, and silvered after gales with salt, and grew so foreign among its bleak surroundings that to eat of its produce was an adventure in itself. there are mingled some dismal memories with so many that were joyous. of the fisher-wife, for instance, who had cut her throat at canty bay; and of how i ran with the other children to the top of the quadrant, and beheld a posse of silent people escorting a cart, and on the cart, bound in a chair, her throat bandaged, and the bandage all bloody horror! the fisher-wife herself, who continued thenceforth to hag-ride my thoughts, and even to-day (as i recall the scene) darkens daylight. she was lodged in the little old jail in the chief street; but whether or no she died there, with a wise terror of the worst, i never inquired. she had been tippling; it was but a dingy tragedy; and it seems strange and hard that, after all these years, the poor crazy sinner should be still pilloried on her cart in the scrap-book of my memory. nor shall i readily forget a certain house in the quadrant where a visitor died, and a dark old woman continued to dwell alone with the dead body; nor how this old woman conceived a hatred to myself and one of my cousins, and in the dread hour of the dusk, as we were clambering on the garden-walls, opened a window in that house of mortality and cursed us in a shrill voice and with a marrowy choice of language. it was a pair of very colourless urchins that fled down the lane from this remarkable experience! but i recall with a more doubtful sentiment, compounded out of fear and exultation, the coil of equinoctial tempests; trumpeting squalls, scouring flaws of rain; the boats with their reefed lugsails scudding for the harbour mouth, where danger lay, for it was hard to make when the wind had any east in it; the wives clustered with blowing shawls at the pier-head, where (if fate was against them) they might see boat and husband and sons their whole wealth and their whole family engulfed under their eyes; and (what i saw but once) a troop of neighbours forcing such an unfortunate homeward, and she squalling and battling in their midst, a figure scarcely human, a tragic maenad. these are things that i recall with interest; but what my memory dwells upon the most, i have been all this while withholding. it was a sport peculiar to the place, and indeed to a week or so of our two months' holiday there. maybe it still flourishes in its native spot; for boys and their pastimes are swayed by periodic forces inscrutable to man; so that tops and marbles reappear in their due season, regular like the sun and moon; and the harmless art of knucklebones has seen the fall of the roman empire and the rise of the united states. it may still flourish in its native spot, but nowhere else, i am persuaded; for i tried myself to introduce it on tweedside, and was defeated lamentably; its charm being quite local, like a country wine that cannot be exported. the idle manner of it was this:toward the end of september, when school-time was drawing near and the nights were already black, we would begin to sally from ourrespective villas, each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern. the thing was so well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce of great britain; and the grocers, about the due time, began to garnish their windows with our particular brand of luminary. we wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them, such was the rigour of the game, a buttoned top-coat. they smelled noisomely of blistered tin; they never burned aright, though they would always burn our fingers; their use was naught; the pleasure of them merely fanciful; and yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat asked for nothing more. the fishermen used lanterns about their boats, and it was from them, i suppose, that we had got the hint; but theirs were not bull's-eyes, nor did we ever play at being fishermen. the police carried them at their belts, and we had plainly copied them in that; yet we did not pretend to be policemen. burglars, indeed, we may have had some haunting thoughts of; and we had certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common, and to certain story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely. but take it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was substantive; and to be a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat was good enough for us. when two of these asses met, there would be an anxious "have you got your lantern?" and a gratified "yes!" that was the shibboleth, and very needful too; for, as it was the rule to keep our glory contained, none could recognise a lantern-bearer, unless (like the polecat) by the smell. four or five would sometimes climb into the belly of a ten-man lugger, with nothing but the thwarts above them for the cabin was usually locked, or choose out some hollow of the links where the wind might whistle overhead. there the coats would be unbuttoned and the bull's-eyes discovered; and in the chequering glimmer, under the huge windy hall of the night, and cheered by a rich steam of toasting tinware, these fortunate young gentlemen would crouch together in the cold sand of the links or on the scaly bilges of the fishing-boat, and delight themselves with inappropriate talk. woe is me that i may not give some specimens some of their foresights of life, or deep inquiries into the rudiments of man and nature, these were so fiery and so innocent, they were so richly silly, so romantically young. but the talk, at any rate, was but a condiment; and these gatherings themselves only accidents in the career of the lantern-bearer. the essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned; not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public: a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge. ii it is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid. it may be contended, rather, that this (somewhat minor) bard in almost every case survives, and is the spice of life to his possessor. justice is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man's imagination. his life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud; there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it, in which he dwells delighted; and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer, he will have some kind of a bull's-eye at his belt. it would be hard to pick out a career more cheerless than that of dancer, the miser, as he figures in the "old bailey reports," a prey to the most sordid persecutions, the butt of his neighbourhood, betrayed by his hired man, his house beleaguered by the impish schoolboy, and he himself grinding and fuming and impotently fleeing to the law against these pin-pricks. you marvel at first that any one should willingly prolong a life so destitute of charm and dignity; and then you call to memory that had he chosen, had he ceased to be a miser, he could have been freed at once from these trials, and might have built himself a castle and gone escorted by a squadron. for the love of more recondite joys, which we cannot estimate, which, it may be, we should envy, the man had willingly forgone both comfort and consideration. "his mind to him a kingdom was"; and sure enough, digging into that mind, which seems at first a dust-heap, we unearth some priceless jewels. for dancer must have had the love of power and the disdain of using it, a noble character in itself; disdain of many pleasures, a chief part of what is commonly called wisdom; disdain of the inevitable end, that finest trait of mankind; scorn of men's opinions, another element of virtue; and at the back of all, a conscience just like yours and mine, whining like a cur, swindling like a thimblerigger, but still pointing (there or there-about) to some conventional standard. here were a cabinet portrait to which hawthorne perhaps had done justice; and yet not hawthorne either, for he was mildly minded, and it lay not in him to create for us that throb of the miser's pulse, his fretful energy of gusto, his vast arms of ambition clutching in he knows not what: insatiable, insane, a god with a muck-rake. thus, at least, looking in the bosom of the miser, consideration detects the poet in the full tide of life, with more, indeed, of the poetic fire than usually goes to epics; and tracing that mean man about his cold hearth, and to and fro in his discomfortable house, spies within him a blazing bonfire of delight. and so with others, who do not live by bread alone, but by some cherished and perhaps fantastic pleasure; who are meat salesmen to the external eye, and possibly to themselves are shakespeares, napoleons, or beethovens; who have not one virtue to rub against another in the field of active life, and yet perhaps, in the life of contemplation, sit with the saints. we see them on the street, and we can count their buttons; but heaven knows in what they pride themselves! heaven knows where they have set their treasure! there is one fable that touches very near the quick of life: the fable of the monk who passed into the woods, heard a bird break into song, hearkened for a trill or two, and found himself on his return a stranger at his convent gates; for he had been absent fifty years, and of all his comrades there survived but one to recognise him. it is not only in the woods that this enchanter carols, though perhaps he is native there. he sings in the most doleful places. the miser hears him and chuckles, and the days are moments. with no more apparatus than an ill-smelling lantern i have evoked him on the naked links. all life that is not merely mechanical is spun out of two strands: seeking for that bird and hearing him. and it is just this that makes life so hard to value, and the delight of each so incommunicable. and just a knowledge of this, and a remembrance of those fortunate hours in which the bird has sung to us, that fills us with such wonder when we turn the pages of the realist. there, to be sure, we find a picture of life in so far as it consists of mud and of old iron, cheap desires and cheap fears, that which we are ashamed to remember and that which we are careless whether we forget; but of the note of that timedevouring nightingale we hear no news. the case of these writers of romance is most obscure. they have been boys and youths; they have lingered outside the window of the beloved, who was then most probably writing to some one else; they have sat before a sheet of paper, and felt themselves mere continents of congested poetry, not one line of which would flow; they have walked alone in the woods, they have walked in cities under the countless lamps; they have been to sea, they have hated, they have feared, they have longed to knife a man, and maybe done it; the wild taste of life has stung their palate. or, if you deny them all the rest, one pleasure at least they have tasted to the full their books are there to prove it the keen pleasure of successful literary composition. and yet they fill the globe with volumes, whose cleverness inspires me with despairing admiration, and whose consistent falsity to all i care to call existence, with despairing wrath. if i had no better hope than to continue to revolve among the dreary and petty businesses, and to be moved by the paltry hopes and fears with which they surround and animate their heroes, i declare i would die now. but there has never an hour of mine gone quite so dully yet; if it were spent waiting at a railway junction, i would have some scattering thoughts, i could count some grains of memory, compared to which the whole of one of these romances seems but dross. these writers would retort (if i take them properly) that this was very true; that it was the same with themselves and other persons of (what they call) the artistic temperament; that in this we were exceptional, and should apparently be ashamed of ourselves; but that our works must deal exclusively with (what they call) the average man, who was a prodigious dull fellow, and quite dead to all but the paltriest considerations. i accept the issue. we can only know others by ourselves. the artistic temperament (a plague on the expression!) does not make us different from our fellowmen, or it would make us incapable of writing novels; and the average man (a murrain on the word!) is just like you and me, or he would not be average. it was whitman who stamped a kind of birmingham sacredness upon the latter phrase; but whitman knew very well, and showed very nobly, that the average man was full of joys and full of a poetry of his own. and this harping on life's dulness and man's meanness is a loud profession of incompetence; it is one of two things: the cry of the blind eye, i cannot see, or the complaint of the dumb tongue, i cannot utter. to draw a life without delights is to prove i have not realised it. to picture a man without some sort of poetry well, it goes near to prove my case, for it shows an author may have little enough. to see dancer only as a dirty, old, small-minded, impotently fuming man, in a dirty house, besieged by harrow boys, and probably beset by small attorneys, is to show myself as keen an observer as . . . the harrow boys. but these young gentlemen (with a more becoming modesty) were content to pluck dancer by the coat-tails; they did not suppose they had surprised his secret or could put him living in a book: and it is there my error would have lain. or say that in the same romance i continue to call these books romances, in the hope of giving pain say that in the same romance, which now begins really to take shape, i should leave to speak of dancer, and follow instead the harrow boys; and say that i came on some such business as that of my lantern-bearers on the links; and described the boys as very cold, spat upon by flurries of rain, and drearily surrounded, all of which they were; and their talk as silly and indecent, which it certainly was. i might upon these lines, and had i zola's genius, turn out, in a page or so, a gem of literary art, render the lantern-light with the touches of a master, and lay on the indecency with the ungrudging hand of love; and when all was done, what a triumph would my picture be of shallowness and dulness! how it would have missed the point! how it would have belied the boys! to the ear of the stenographer, the talk is merely silly and indecent; but ask the boys themselves, and they are discussing (as it is highly proper they should) the possibilities of existence. to the eye of the observer they are wet and cold and drearily surrounded; but ask themselves, and they are in the heaven of a recondite pleasure, the ground of which is an ill-smelling lantern. iii for, to repeat, the ground of a man's joy is often hard to hit. it may hinge at times upon a mere accessory, like the lantern; it may reside, like dancer's, in the mysterious inwards of psychology. it may consist with perpetual failure, and find exercise in the continued chase. it has so little bond with externals (such as the observer scribbles in his note-book) that it may even touch them not; and the man's true life, for which he consents to live, lie altogether in the field of fancy. the clergyman, in his spare hours, may be winning battles, the farmer sailing ships, the banker reaping triumph in the arts: all leading another life, plying another trade from that they chose; like the poet's housebuilder, who, after all, is cased in stone, "by his fireside, as impotent fancy prompts. rebuilds it to his liking." in such a case the poetry runs underground. the observer (poor soul, with his documents!) is all abroad. for to look at the man is but to court deception. we shall see the trunk from which he draws his nourishment; but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome of foliage, hummed through by winds and nested in by nightingales. and the true realism were that of the poets, to climb up after him like a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven for which he lives. and, the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. for to miss the joy is to miss all. in the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action. that is the explanation, that the excuse. to one who has not the secret of the lanterns, the scene upon the links is meaningless. and hence the haunting and truly spectral unreality of realistic books. hence, when we read the english realists, the incredulous wonder with which we observe the hero's constancy under the submerging tide of dulness, and how he bears up with his jibbing sweetheart, and endures the chatter of idiot girls, and stands by his whole unfeatured wilderness of an existence, instead of seeking relief in drink or foreign travel. hence in the french, in that meat-market of middle-aged sensuality, the disgusted surprise with which we see the hero drift sidelong, and practically quite untempted, into every description of misconduct and dishonour. in each, we miss the personal poetry, the enchanted atmosphere, that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base; in each, life falls dead like dough, instead of soaring away like a balloon into the colours of the sunset; each is true, each inconceivable; for no man lives in the external truth, among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied walls. of this falsity we have had a recent example from a man who knows far better tolstoi's powers of darkness. here is a piece full of force and truth, yet quite untrue. for before mikita was led into so dire a situation he was tempted, and temptations are beautiful at least in part; and a work which dwells on the ugliness of crime and gives no hint of any loveliness in the temptation, sins against the modesty of life, and even when a tolstoi writes it, sinks to melodrama. the peasants are not understood; they saw their life in fairer colours; even the deaf girl was clothed in poetry for mikita, or he had never fallen. and so, once again, even an old bailey melodrama, without some brightness of poetry and lustre of existence, falls into the inconceivable and ranks with fairy tales. iv in nobler books we are moved with something like the emotions of life; and this emotion is very variously provoked. we are so moved when levine labours in the field, when andre sinks beyond emotion, when richard feverel and lucy desborough meet beside the river, when antony, "not cowardly, puts off his helmet," when kent has infinite pity on the dying lear, when, in dostoieffky's despised and rejected, the uncomplaining hero drains his cup of suffering and virtue. these are notes that please the great heart of man. not only love, and the fields, and the bright face of danger, but sacrifice and death and unmerited suffering humbly supported, touch in us the vein of the poetic. we love to think of them, we long to try them, we are humbly hopeful that we may prove heroes also. we have heard, perhaps, too much of lesser matters. here is the door, here is the open air. itur in antiquam silvam. chapter viii a chapter on dreams the past is all of one texture whether feigned or suffered whether acted out in three dimensions, or only witnessed in that small theatre of the brain which we keep brightly lighted all night long, after the jets are down, and darkness and sleep reign undisturbed in the remainder of the body. there is no distinction on the face of our experiences; one is vivid indeed, and one dull, and one pleasant, and another agonising to remember; but which of them is what we call true, and which a dream, there is not one hair to prove. the past stands on a precarious footing; another straw split in the field of metaphysic, and behold us robbed of it. there is scarce a family that can count four generations but lays a claim to some dormant title or some castle and estate: a claim not prosecutable in any court of law, but flattering to the fancy and a great alleviation of idle hours. a man's claim to his own past is yet less valid. a paper might turn up (in proper story-book fashion) in the secret drawer of an old ebony secretary, and restore your family to its ancient honours, and reinstate mine in a certain west indian islet (not far from st. kitt's, as beloved tradition hummed in my young ears) which was once ours, and is now unjustly some one else's, and for that matter (in the state of the sugar trade) is not worth anything to anybody. i do not say that these revolutions are likely; only no man can deny that they are possible; and the past, on the other baud, is, lost for ever: our old days and deeds, our old selves, too, and the very world in which these scenes were acted, all brought down to the same faint residuum as a last night's dream, to some incontinuous images, and an echo in the chambers of the brain. not an hour, not a mood, not a glance of the eye, can we revoke; it is all gone, past conjuring. and yet conceive us robbed of it, conceive that little thread of memory that we trail behind us broken at the pocket's edge; and in what naked nullity should we be left! for we only guide ourselves, and only know ourselves, by these air-painted pictures of the past. upon these grounds, there are some among us who claim to have lived longer and more richly than their neighbours; when they lay asleep they claim they were still active; and among the treasures of memory that all men review for their amusement, these count in no second place the harvests of their dreams. there is one of this kind whom i have in my eye, and whose case is perhaps unusual enough to be described. he was from a child an ardent and uncomfortable dreamer. when he had a touch of fever at night, and the room swelled and shrank, and his clothes, hanging on a nail, now loomed up instant to the bigness of a church, and now drew away into a horror of infinite distance and infinite littleness, the poor soul was very well aware of what must follow, and struggled hard against the approaches of that slumber which was the beginning of sorrows. but his struggles were in vain; sooner or later the night-hag would have him by the throat, and pluck him strangling and screaming, from his sleep. his dreams were at times commonplace enough, at times very strange, at times they were almost formless: he would be haunted, for instance, by nothing more definite than a certain hue of brown, which he did not mind in the least while he was awake, but feared and loathed while he was dreaming; at times, again, they took on every detail of circumstance, as when once he supposed he must swallow the populous world, and awoke screaming with the horror of the thought. the two chief troubles of his very narrow existence the practical and everyday trouble of school tasks and the ultimate and airy one of hell and judgment were often confounded together into one appalling nightmare. he seemed to himself to stand before the great white throne; he was called on, poor little devil, to recite some form of words, on which his destiny depended; his tongue stuck, his memory was blank, hell gaped for him; and he would awake, clinging to the curtain-rod with his knees to his chin. these were extremely poor experiences, on the whole; and at that time of life my dreamer would have very willingly parted with his power of dreams. but presently, in the course of his growth, the cries and physical contortions passed away, seemingly for ever; his visions were still for the most part miserable, but they were more constantly supported; and he would awake with no more extreme symptom than a flying heart, a freezing scalp, cold sweats, and the speechless midnight fear. his dreams, too, as befitted a mind better stocked with particulars, became more circumstantial, and had more the air and continuity of life. the look of the world beginning to take hold on his attention, scenery came to play a part in his sleeping as well as in his waking thoughts, so that he would take long, uneventful journeys and see strange towns and beautiful places as he lay in bed. and, what is more significant, an odd taste that he had for the georgian costume and for stories laid in that period of english history, began to rule the features of his dreams; so that he masqueraded there in a three-cornered hat and was much engaged with jacobite conspiracy between the hour for bed and that for breakfast. about the same time, he began to read in his dreams tales, for the most part, and for the most part after the manner of g. p. r. james, but so incredibly more vivid and moving than any printed book, that he has ever since been malcontent with literature. and then, while he was yet a student, there came to him a dreamadventure which he has no anxiety to repeat; he began, that is to say, to dream in sequence and thus to lead a double life one of the day, one of the night one that he had every reason to believe was the true one, another that he had no means of proving to be false. i should have said he studied, or was by way of studying, at edinburgh college, which (it may be supposed) was how i came to know him. well, in his dream-life, he passed a long day in the surgical theatre, his heart in his mouth, his teeth on edge, seeing monstrous malformations and the abhorred dexterity of surgeons. in a heavy, rainy, foggy evening he came forth into the south bridge, turned up the high street, and entered the door of a tall land, at the top of which he supposed himself to lodge. all night long, in his wet clothes, he climbed the stairs, stair after stair in endless series, and at every second flight a flaring lamp with a reflector. all night long, he brushed by single persons passing downward beggarly women of the street, great, weary, muddy labourers, poor scarecrows of men, pale parodies of women but all drowsy and weary like himself, and all single, and all brushing against him as they passed. in the end, out of a northern window, he would see day beginning to whiten over the firth, give up the ascent, turn to descend, and in a breath be back again upon the streets, in his wet clothes, in the wet, haggard dawn, trudging to another day of monstrosities and operations. time went quicker in the life of dreams, some seven hours (as near as he can guess) to one; and it went, besides, more intensely, so that the gloom of these fancied experiences clouded the day, and he had not shaken off their shadow ere it was time to lie down and to renew them. i cannot tell how long it was that he endured this discipline; but it was long enough to leave a great black blot upon his memory, long enough to send him, trembling for his reason, to the doors of a certain doctor; whereupon with a simple draught he was restored to the common lot of man. the poor gentleman has since been troubled by nothing of the sort; indeed, his nights were for some while like other men's, now blank, now chequered with dreams, and these sometimes charming, sometimes appalling, but except for an occasional vividness, of no extraordinary kind. i will just note one of these occasions, ere i pass on to what makes my dreamer truly interesting. it seemed to him that he was in the first floor of a rough hill-farm. the room showed some poor efforts at gentility, a carpet on the floor, a piano, i think, against the wall; but, for all these refinements, there was no mistaking he was in a moorland place, among hillside people, and set in miles of heather. he looked down from the window upon a bare farmyard, that seemed to have been long disused. a great, uneasy stillness lay upon the world. there was no sign of the farm-folk or of any live stock, save for an old, brown, curly dog of the retriever breed, who sat close in against the wall of the house and seemed to be dozing. something about this dog disquieted the dreamer; it was quite a nameless feeling, for the beast looked right enough indeed, he was so old and dull and dusty and broken-down, that he should rather have awakened pity; and yet the conviction came and grew upon the dreamer that this was no proper dog at all, but something hellish. a great many dozing summer flies hummed about the yard; and presently the dog thrust forth his paw, caught a fly in his open palm, carried it to his mouth like an ape, and looking suddenly up at the dreamer in the window, winked to him with one eye. the dream went on, it matters not how it went; it was a good dream as dreams go; but there was nothing in the sequel worthy of that devilish brown dog. and the point of interest for me lies partly in that very fact: that having found so singular an incident, my imperfect dreamer should prove unable to carry the tale to a fit end and fall back on indescribable noises and indiscriminate horrors. it would be different now; he knows his business better! for, to approach at last the point: this honest fellow had long been in the custom of setting himself to sleep with tales, and so had his father before him; but these were irresponsible inventions, told for the teller's pleasure, with no eye to the crass public or the thwart reviewer: tales where a thread might be dropped, or one adventure quitted for another, on fancy's least suggestion. so that the little people who manage man's internal theatre had not as yet received a very rigorous training; and played upon their stage like children who should have slipped into the house and found it empty, rather than like drilled actors performing a set piece to a huge hall of faces. but presently my dreamer began to turn his former amusement of story-telling to (what is called) account; by which i mean that he began to write and sell his tales. here was he, and here were the little people who did that part of his business, in quite new conditions. the stories must now be trimmed and pared and set upon all fours, they must run from a beginning to an end and fit (after a manner) with the laws of life; the pleasure, in one word, had become a business; and that not only for the dreamer, but for the little people of his theatre. these understood the change as well as he. when he lay down to prepare himself for sleep, he no longer sought amusement, but printable and profitable tales; and after he had dozed off in his box-seat, his little people continued their evolutions with the same mercantile designs. all other forms of dream deserted him but two: he still occasionally reads the most delightful books, he still visits at times the most delightful places; and it is perhaps worthy of note that to these same places, and to one in particular, he returns at intervals of months and years, finding new field-paths, visiting new neighbours, beholding that happy valley under new effects of noon and dawn and sunset. but all the rest of the family of visions is quite lost to him: the common, mangled version of yesterday's affairs, the raw-head-and-bloody-bones nightmare, rumoured to be the child of toasted cheese these and their like are gone; and, for the most part, whether awake or asleep, he is simply occupied he or his little people in consciously making stories for the market. this dreamer (like many other persons) has encountered some trifling vicissitudes of fortune. when the bank begins to send letters and the butcher to linger at the back gate, he sets to belabouring his brains after a story, for that is his readiest money-winner; and, behold! at once the little people begin to bestir themselves in the same quest, and labour all night long, and all night long set before him truncheons of tales upon their lighted theatre. no fear of his being frightened now; the flying heart and the frozen scalp are things by-gone; applause, growing applause, growing interest, growing exultation in his own cleverness (for he takes all the credit), and at last a jubilant leap to wakefulness, with the cry, "i have it, that'll do!" upon his lips: with such and similar emotions he sits at these nocturnal dramas, with such outbreaks, like claudius in the play, he scatters the performance in the midst. often enough the waking is a disappointment: he has been too deep asleep, as i explain the thing; drowsiness has gained his little people, they have gone stumbling and maundering through their parts; and the play, to the awakened mind, is seen to be a tissue of absurdities. and yet how often have these sleepless brownies done him honest service, and given him, as he sat idly taking his pleasure in the boxes, better tales than he could fashion for himself. here is one, exactly as it came to him. it seemed he was the son of a very rich and wicked man, the owner of broad acres and a most damnable temper. the dreamer (and that was the son) had lived much abroad, on purpose to avoid his parent; and when at length he returned to england, it was to find him married again to a young wife, who was supposed to suffer cruelly and to loathe her yoke. because of this marriage (as the dreamer indistinctly understood) it was desirable for father and son to have a meeting; and yet both being proud and both angry, neither would condescend upon a visit. meet they did accordingly, in a desolate, sandy country by the sea; and there they quarrelled, and the son, stung by some intolerable insult, struck down the father dead. no suspicion was aroused; the dead man was found and buried, and the dreamer succeeded to the broad estates, and found himself installed under the same roof with his father's widow, for whom no provision had been made. these two lived very much alone, as people may after a bereavement, sat down to table together, shared the long evenings, and grew daily better friends; until it seemed to him of a sudden that she was prying about dangerous matters, that she had conceived a notion of his guilt, that she watched him and tried him with questions. he drew back from her company as men draw back from a precipice suddenly discovered; and yet so strong was the attraction that he would drift again and again into the old intimacy, and again and again be startled back by some suggestive question or some inexplicable meaning in her eye. so they lived at cross purposes, a life full of broken dialogue, challenging glances, and suppressed passion; until, one day, he saw the woman slipping from the house in a veil, followed her to the station, followed her in the train to the seaside country, and out over the sandhills to the very place where the murder was done. there she began to grope among the bents, he watching her, flat upon his face; and presently she had something in her hand i cannot remember what it was, but it was deadly evidence against the dreamer and as she held it up to look at it, perhaps from the shock of the discovery, her foot slipped, and she hung at some peril on the brink of the tall sand-wreaths. he had no thought but to spring up and rescue her; and there they stood face to face, she with that deadly matter openly in her hand his very presence on the spot another link of proof. it was plain she was about to speak, but this was more than he could bear he could bear to be lost, but not to talk of it with his destroyer; and he cut her short with trivial conversation. arm in arm, they returned together to the train, talking he knew not what, made the journey back in the same carriage, sat down to dinner, and passed the evening in the drawing-room as in the past. but suspense and fear drummed in the dreamer's bosom. "she has not denounced me yet" so his thoughts ran "when will she denounce me? will it be tomorrow?" and it was not to-morrow, nor the next day, nor the next; and their life settled back on the old terms, only that she seemed kinder than before, and that, as for him, the burthen of his suspense and wonder grew daily more unbearable, so that he wasted away like a man with a disease. once, indeed, he broke all bounds of decency, seized an occasion when she was abroad, ransacked her room, and at last, hidden away among her jewels, found the damning evidence. there he stood, holding this thing, which was his life, in the hollow of his hand, and marvelling at her inconsequent behaviour, that she should seek, and keep, and yet not use it; and then the door opened, and behold herself. so, once more, they stood, eye to eye, with the evidence between them; and once more she raised to him a face brimming with some communication; and once more he shied away from speech and cut her off. but before he left the room, which he had turned upside down, he laid back his deathwarrant where he had found it; and at that, her face lighted up. the next thing he heard, she was explaining to her maid, with some ingenious falsehood, the disorder of her things. flesh and blood could bear the strain no longer; and i think it was the next morning (though chronology is always hazy in the theatre of the mind) that he burst from his reserve. they had been breakfasting together in one corner of a great, parqueted, sparely-furnished room of many windows; all the time of the meal she had tortured him with sly allusions; and no sooner were the servants gone, and these two protagonists alone together, than he leaped to his feet. she too sprang up, with a pale face; with a pale face, she heard him as he raved out his complaint: why did she torture him so? she knew all, she knew he was no enemy to her; why did she not denounce him at once? what signified her whole behaviour? why did she torture him? and yet again, why did she torture him? and when he had done, she fell upon her knees, and with outstretched hands: "do you not understand?" she cried. "i love you!" hereupon, with a pang of wonder and mercantile delight, the dreamer awoke. his mercantile delight was not of long endurance; for it soon became plain that in this spirited tale there were unmarketable elements; which is just the reason why you have it here so briefly told. but his wonder has still kept growing; and i think the reader's will also, if he consider it ripely. for now he sees why i speak of the little people as of substantive inventors and performers. to the end they had kept their secret. i will go bail for the dreamer (having excellent grounds for valuing his candour) that he had no guess whatever at the motive of the woman the hinge of the whole well-invented plot until the instant of that highly dramatic declaration. it was not his tale; it was the little people's! and observe: not only was the secret kept, the story was told with really guileful craftsmanship. the conduct of both actors is (in the cant phrase) psychologically correct, and the emotion aptly graduated up to the surprising climax. i am awake now, and i know this trade; and yet i cannot better it. i am awake, and i live by this business; and yet i could not outdo could not perhaps equal that crafty artifice (as of some old, experienced carpenter of plays, some dennery or sardou) by which the same situation is twice presented and the two actors twice brought face to face over the evidence, only once it is in her hand, once in his and these in their due order, the least dramatic first. the more i think of it, the more i am moved to press upon the world my question: who are the little people? they are near connections of the dreamer's, beyond doubt; they share in his financial worries and have an eye to the bank-book; they share plainly in his training; they have plainly learned like him to build the scheme of a considerate story and to arrange emotion in progressive order; only i think they have more talent; and one thing is beyond doubt, they can tell him a story piece by piece, like a serial, and keep him all the while in ignorance of where they aim. who are they, then? and who is the dreamer? well, as regards the dreamer, i can answer that, for he is no less a person than myself; as i might have told you from the beginning, only that the critics murmur over my consistent egotism; and as i am positively forced to tell you now, or i could advance but little farther with my story. and for the little people, what shall i say they are but just my brownies, god bless them! who do one-half my work for me while i am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood, do the rest for me as well, when i am wide awake and fondly suppose i do it for myself. that part which is done while i am sleeping is the brownies' part beyond contention; but that which is done when i am up and about is by no means necessarily mine, since all goes to show the brownies have a hand in it even then. here is a doubt that much concerns my conscience. for myself what i call i, my conscious ego, the denizen of the pineal gland unless he has changed his residence since descartes, the man with the conscience and the variable bank-account, the man with the hat and the boots, and the privilege of voting and not carrying his candidate at the general elections i am sometimes tempted to suppose he is no story-teller at all, but a creature as matter of fact as any cheesemonger or any cheese, and a realist bemired up to the ears in actuality; so that, by that account, the whole of my published fiction should be the single-handed product of some brownie, some familiar, some unseen collaborator, whom i keep locked in a back garret, while i get all the praise and he but a share (which i cannot prevent him getting) of the pudding. i am an excellent adviser, something like moliere's servant; i pull back and i cut down; and i dress the whole in the best words and sentences that i can find and make; i hold the pen, too; and i do the sitting at the table, which is about the worst of it; and when all is done, i make up the manuscript and pay for the registration; so that, on the whole, i have some claim to share, though not so largely as i do, in the profits of our common enterprise. i can but give an instance or so of what part is done sleeping and what part awake, and leave the reader to share what laurels there are, at his own nod, between myself and my collaborators; and to do this i will first take a book that a number of persons have been polite enough to read, the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde. i had long been trying to write a story on this subject, to find a body, a vehicle, for that strong sense of man's double being which must at times come in upon and overwhelm the mind of every thinking creature. i had even written one, the travelling companion, which was returned by an editor on the plea that it was a work of genius and indecent, and which i burned the other day on the ground that it was not a work of genius, and that jekyll had supplanted it. then came one of those financial fluctuations to which (with an elegant modesty) i have hitherto referred in the third person. for two days i went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort; and on the second night i dreamed the scene at the window, and a scene afterward split in two, in which hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers. all the rest was made awake, and consciously, although i think i can trace in much of it the manner of my brownies. the meaning of the tale is therefore mine, and had long pre-existed in my garden of adonis, and tried one body after another in vain; indeed, i do most of the morality, worse luck! and my brownies have not a rudiment of what we call a conscience. mine, too, is the setting, mine the characters. all that was given me was the matter of three scenes, and the central idea of a voluntary change becoming involuntary. will it be thought ungenerous, after i have been so liberally ladling out praise to my unseen collaborators, if i here toss them over, bound hand and foot, into the arena of the critics? for the business of the powders, which so many have censured, is, i am relieved to say, not mine at all but the brownies'. of another tale, in case the reader should have glanced at it, i may say a word: the not very defensible story of olalla. here the court, the mother, the mother's niche, olalla, olalla's chamber, the meetings on the stair, the broken window, the ugly scene of the bite, were all given me in bulk and detail as i have tried to write them; to this i added only the external scenery (for in my dream i never was beyond the court), the portrait, the characters of felipe and the priest, the moral, such as it is, and the last pages, such as, alas! they are. and i may even say that in this case the moral itself was given me; for it arose immediately on a comparison of the mother and the daughter, and from the hideous trick of atavism in the first. sometimes a parabolic sense is still more undeniably present in a dream; sometimes i cannot but suppose my brownies have been aping bunyan, and yet in no case with what would possibly be called a moral in a tract; never with the ethical narrowness; conveying hints instead of life's larger limitations and that sort of sense which we seem to perceive in the arabesque of time and space. for the most part, it will be seen, my brownies are somewhat fantastic, like their stories hot and hot, full of passion and the picturesque, alive with animating incident; and they have no prejudice against the supernatural. but the other day they gave me a surprise, entertaining me with a love-story, a little april comedy, which i ought certainly to hand over to the author of a chance acquaintance, for he could write it as it should be written, and i am sure (although i mean to try) that i cannot. but who would have supposed that a brownie of mine should invent a tale for mr. howells? chapter ix beggars in a pleasant, airy, up-hill country, it was my fortune when i was young to make the acquaintance of a certain beggar. i call him beggar, though he usually allowed his coat and his shoes (which were open-mouthed, indeed) to beg for him. he was the wreck of an athletic man, tall, gaunt, and bronzed; far gone in consumption, with that disquieting smile of the mortally stricken on his face; but still active afoot, still with the brisk military carriage, the ready military salute. three ways led through this piece of country; and as i was inconstant in my choice, i believe he must often have awaited me in vain. but often enough, he caught me; often enough, from some place of ambush by the roadside, he would spring suddenly forth in the regulation attitude, and launching at once into his inconsequential talk, fall into step with me upon my farther course. "a fine morning, sir, though perhaps a trifle inclining to rain. i hope i see you well, sir. why, no, sir, i don't feel as hearty myself as i could wish, but i am keeping about my ordinary. i am pleased to meet you on the road, sir. i assure you i quite look forward to one of our little conversations." he loved the sound of his own voice inordinately, and though (with something too off-hand to call servility) he would always hasten to agree with anything you said, yet he could never suffer you to say it to an end. by what transition he slid to his favourite subject i have no memory; but we had never been long together on the way before he was dealing, in a very military manner, with the english poets. "shelley was a fine poet, sir, though a trifle atheistical in his opinions. his queen mab, sir, is quite an atheistical work. scott, sir, is not so poetical a writer. with the works of shakespeare i am not so well acquainted, but he was a fine poet. keats john keats, sir he was a very fine poet." with such references, such trivial criticism, such loving parade of his own knowledge, he would beguile the road, striding forward uphill, his staff now clapped to the ribs of his deep, resonant chest, now swinging in the air with the remembered jauntiness of the private soldier; and all the while his toes looking out of his boots, and his shirt looking out of his elbows, and death looking out of his smile, and his big, crazy frame shaken by accesses of cough. he would often go the whole way home with me: often to borrow a book, and that book always a poet. off he would march, to continue his mendicant rounds, with the volume slipped into the pocket of his ragged coat; and although he would sometimes keep it quite a while, yet it came always back again at last, not much the worse for its travels into beggardom. and in this way, doubtless, his knowledge grew and his glib, random criticism took a wider range. but my library was not the first he had drawn upon: at our first encounter, he was already brimful of shelley and the atheistical queen mab, and "keats john keats, sir." and i have often wondered how he came by these acquirements; just as i often wondered how he fell to be a beggar. he had served through the mutiny of which (like so many people) he could tell practically nothing beyond the names of places, and that it was "difficult work, sir," and very hot, or that so-and-so was "a very fine commander, sir." he was far too smart a man to have remained a private; in the nature of things, he must have won his stripes. and yet here he was without a pension. when i touched on this problem, he would content himself with diffidently offering me advice. "a man should be very careful when he is young, sir. if you'll excuse me saying so, a spirited young gentleman like yourself, sir, should be very careful. i was perhaps a trifle inclined to atheistical opinions myself." for (perhaps with a deeper wisdom than we are inclined in these days to admit) he plainly bracketed agnosticism with beer and skittles. keats john keats, sir and shelley were his favourite bards. i cannot remember if i tried him with rossetti; but i know his taste to a hair, and if ever i did, he must have doted on that author. what took him was a richness in the speech; he loved the exotic, the unexpected word; the moving cadence of a phrase; a vague sense of emotion (about nothing) in the very letters of the alphabet: the romance of language. his honest head was very nearly empty, his intellect like a child's; and when he read his favourite authors, he can almost never have understood what he was reading. yet the taste was not only genuine, it was exclusive; i tried in vain to offer him novels; he would none of them, he cared for nothing but romantic language that he could not understand. the case may be commoner than we suppose. i am reminded of a lad who was laid in the next cot to a friend of mine in a public hospital and who was no sooner installed than he sent out (perhaps with his last pence) for a cheap shakespeare. my friend pricked up his ears; fell at once in talk with his new neighbour, and was ready, when the book arrived, to make a singular discovery. for this lover of great literature understood not one sentence out of twelve, and his favourite part was that of which he understood the least the inimitable, mouth-filling rodomontade of the ghost in hamlet. it was a bright day in hospital when my friend expounded the sense of this beloved jargon: a task for which i am willing to believe my friend was very fit, though i can never regard it as an easy one. i know indeed a point or two, on which i would gladly question mr. shakespeare, that lover of big words, could he revisit the glimpses of the moon, or could i myself climb backward to the spacious days of elizabeth. but in the second case, i should most likely pretermit these questionings, and take my place instead in the pit at the blackfriars, to hear the actor in his favourite part, playing up to mr. burbage, and rolling out as i seem to hear him with a ponderous gusto"unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd." what a pleasant chance, if we could go there in a party i and what a surprise for mr. burbage, when the ghost received the honours of the evening! as for my old soldier, like mr. burbage and mr. shakespeare, he is long since dead; and now lies buried, i suppose, and nameless and quite forgotten, in some poor city graveyard. but not for me, you brave heart, have you been buried! for me, you are still afoot, tasting the sun and air, and striding southward. by the groves of comiston and beside the hermitage of braid, by the hunters' tryst, and where the curlews and plovers cry around fairmilehead, i see and hear you, stalwartly carrying your deadly sickness, cheerfully discoursing of uncomprehended poets. ii the thought of the old soldier recalls that of another tramp, his counterpart. this was a little, lean, and fiery man, with the eyes of a dog and the face of a gipsy; whom i found one morning encamped with his wife and children and his grinder's wheel, beside the burn of kinnaird. to this beloved dell i went, at that time, daily; and daily the knife-grinder and i (for as long as his tent continued pleasantly to interrupt my little wilderness) sat on two stones, and smoked, and plucked grass, and talked to the tune of the brown water. his children were mere whelps, they fought and bit among the fern like vermin. his wife was a mere squaw; i saw her gather brush and tend the kettle, but she never ventured to address her lord while i was present. the tent was a mere gipsy hovel, like a sty for pigs. but the grinder himself had the fine selfsufficiency and grave politeness of the hunter and the savage; he did me the honours of this dell, which had been mine but the day before, took me far into the secrets of his life, and used me (i am proud to remember) as a friend. like my old soldier, he was far gone in the national complaint. unlike him, he had a vulgar taste in letters; scarce flying higher than the story papers; probably finding no difference, certainly seeking none, between tannahill and burns; his noblest thoughts, whether of poetry or music, adequately embodied in that somewhat obvious ditty, "will ye gang, lassie, gang to the braes o' balquidder." which is indeed apt to echo in the ears of scottish children, and to him, in view of his experience, must have found a special directness of address. but if he had no fine sense of poetry in letters, he felt with a deep joy the poetry of life. you should have heard him speak of what he loved; of the tent pitched beside the talking water; of the stars overhead at night; of the blest return of morning, the peep of day over the moors, the awaking birds among the birches; how he abhorred the long winter shut in cities; and with what delight, at the return of the spring, he once more pitched his camp in the living out-of-doors. but we were a pair of tramps; and to you, who are doubtless sedentary and a consistent first-class passenger in life, he would scarce have laid himself so open; to you, he might have been content to tell his story of a ghost that of a buccaneer with his pistols as he lived whom he had once encountered in a seaside cave near buckie; and that would have been enough, for that would have shown you the mettle of the man. here was a piece of experience solidly and livingly built up in words, here was a story created, teres atque rotundus. and to think of the old soldier, that lover of the literary bards! he had visited stranger spots than any seaside cave; encountered men more terrible than any spirit; done and dared and suffered in that incredible, unsung epic of the mutiny war; played his part with the field force of delhi, beleaguering and beleaguered; shared in that enduring, savage anger and contempt of death and decency that, for long months together, bedevil'd and inspired the army; was hurled to and fro in the battle-smoke of the assault; was there, perhaps, where nicholson fell; was there when the attacking column, with hell upon every side, found the soldier's enemy strong drink, and the lives of tens of thousands trembled in the scale, and the fate of the flag of england staggered. and of all this he had no more to say than "hot work, sir," or "the army suffered a great deal, sir," or "i believe general wilson, sir, was not very highly thought of in the papers." his life was naught to him, the vivid pages of experience quite blank: in words his pleasure lay melodious, agitated words printed words, about that which he had never seen and was connatally incapable of comprehending. we have here two temperaments face to face; both untrained, unsophisticated, surprised (we may say) in the egg; both boldly charactered: that of the artist, the lover and artificer of words; that of the maker, the seeer, the lover and forger of experience. if the one had a daughter and the other had a son, and these married, might not some illustrious writer count descent from the beggar-soldier and the needy knife-grinder? iii every one lives by selling something, whatever be his right to it. the burglar sells at the same time his own skill and courage and my silver plate (the whole at the most moderate figure) to a jew receiver. the bandit sells the traveller an article of prime necessity: that traveller's life. and as for the old soldier, who stands for central mark to my capricious figures of eight, he dealt in a specially; for he was the only beggar in the world who ever gave me pleasure for my money. he had learned a school of manners in the barracks and had the sense to cling to it, accosting strangers with a regimental freedom, thanking patrons with a merely regimental difference, sparing you at once the tragedy of his position and the embarrassment of yours. there was not one hint about him of the beggar's emphasis, the outburst of revolting gratitude, the rant and cant, the "god bless you, kind, kind gentleman," which insults the smallness of your alms by disproportionate vehemence, which is so notably false, which would be so unbearable if it were true. i am sometimes tempted to suppose this reading of the beggar's part, a survival of the old days when shakespeare was intoned upon the stage and mourners keened beside the death-bed; to think that we cannot now accept these strong emotions unless they be uttered in the just note of life; nor (save in the pulpit) endure these gross conventions. they wound us, i am tempted to say, like mockery; the high voice of keening (as it yet lingers on) strikes in the face of sorrow like a buffet; and the rant and cant of the staled beggar stirs in us a shudder of disgust. but the fact disproves these amateur opinions. the beggar lives by his knowledge of the average man. he knows what he is about when he bandages his head, and hires and drugs a babe, and poisons life with poor mary ann or long, long ago; he knows what he is about when he loads the critical ear and sickens the nice conscience with intolerable thanks; they know what they are about, he and his crew, when they pervade the slums of cities, ghastly parodies of suffering, hateful parodies of gratitude. this trade can scarce be called an imposition; it has been so blown upon with exposures; it flaunts its fraudulence so nakedly. we pay them as we pay those who show us, in huge exaggeration, the monsters of our drinking-water; or those who daily predict the fall of britain. we pay them for the pain they inflict, pay them, and wince, and hurry on. and truly there is nothing that can shake the conscience like a beggar's thanks; and that polity in which such protestations can be purchased for a shilling, seems no scene for an honest man. are there, then, we may be asked, no genuine beggars? and the answer is, not one. my old soldier was a humbug like the rest; his ragged boots were, in the stage phrase, properties; whole boots were given him again and again, and always gladly accepted; and the next day, there he was on the road as usual, with toes exposed. his boots were his method; they were the man's trade; without his boots he would have starved; he did not live by charity, but by appealing to a gross taste in the public, which loves the limelight on the actor's face, and the toes out of the beggar's boots. there is a true poverty, which no one sees: a false and merely mimetic poverty, which usurps its place and dress, and lives and above all drinks, on the fruits of the usurpation. the true poverty does not go into the streets; the banker may rest assured, he has never put a penny in its hand. the self-respecting poor beg from each other; never from the rich. to live in the frock-coated ranks of life, to hear canting scenes of gratitude rehearsed for twopence, a man might suppose that giving was a thing gone out of fashion; yet it goes forward on a scale so great as to fill me with surprise. in the houses of the working class, all day long there will be a foot upon the stair; all day long there will be a knocking at the doors; beggars come, beggars go, without stint, hardly with intermission, from morning till night; and meanwhile, in the same city and but a few streets off, the castles of the rich stand unsummoned. get the tale of any honest tramp, you will find it was always the poor who helped him; get the truth from any workman who has met misfortunes, it was always next door that he would go for help, or only with such exceptions as are said to prove a rule; look at the course of the mimetic beggar, it is through the poor quarters that he trails his passage, showing his bandages to every window, piercing even to the attics with his nasal song. here is a remarkable state of things in our christian commonwealths, that the poor only should be asked to give. iv there is a pleasant tale of some worthless, phrasing frenchman, who was taxed with ingratitude: "il faut savoir garder l'independance du coeur," cried he. i own i feel with him. gratitude without familarity, gratitude otherwise than as a nameless element in a friendship, is a thing so near to hatred that i do not care to split the difference. until i find a man who is pleased to receive obligations, i shall continue to question the tact of those who are eager to confer them. what an art it is, to give, even to our nearest friends! and what a test of manners, to receive! how, upon either side, we smuggle away the obligation, blushing for each other; how bluff and dull we make the giver; how hasty, how falsely cheerful, the receiver! and yet an act of such difficulty and distress between near friends, it is supposed we can perform to a total stranger and leave the man transfixed with grateful emotions. the last thing you can do to a man is to burthen him with an obligation, and it is what we propose to begin with! but let us not be deceived: unless he is totally degraded to his trade, anger jars in his inside, and he grates his teeth at our gratuity. we should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and charity. in real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from the hand of friendship, or it is resented. we are all too proud to take a naked gift: we must seem to pay it, if in nothing else, then with the delights of our society. here, then, is the pitiful fix of the rich man; here is that needle's eye in which he stuck already in the days of christ, and still sticks to-day, firmer, if possible, than ever: that he has the money and lacks the love which should make his money acceptable. here and now, just as of old in palestine, he has the rich to dinner, it is with the rich that he takes his pleasure: and when his turn comes to be charitable, he looks in vain for a recipient. his friends are not poor, they do not want; the poor are not his friends, they will not take. to whom is he to give? where to find note this phase the deserving poor? charity is (what they call) centralised; offices are hired; societies founded, with secretaries paid or unpaid: the hunt of the deserving poor goes merrily forward. i think it will take more than a merely human secretary to disinter that character. what! a class that is to be in want from no fault of its own, and yet greedily eager to receive from strangers; and to be quite respectable, and at the same time quite devoid of self-respect; and play the most delicate part of friendship, and yet never be seen; and wear the form of man, and yet fly in the face of all the laws of human nature: and all this, in the hope of getting a belly-god burgess through a needle's eye! o, let him stick, by all means: and let his polity tumble in the dust; and let his epitaph and all his literature (of which my own works begin to form no inconsiderable part) be abolished even from the history of man! for a fool of this monstrosity of dulness, there can be no salvation: and the fool who looked for the elixir of life was an angel of reason to the fool who looks for the deserving poor! v and yet there is one course which the unfortunate gentleman may take. he may subscribe to pay the taxes. there were the true charity, impartial and impersonal, cumbering none with obligation, helping all. there were a destination for loveless gifts; there were the way to reach the pocket of the deserving poor, and yet save the time of secretaries! but, alas! there is no colour of romance in such a course; and people nowhere demand the picturesque so much as in their virtues. chapter x letter to a young gentleman who proposes to embrace the career of art with the agreeable frankness of youth, you address me on a point of some practical importance to yourself and (it is even conceivable) of some gravity to the world: should you or should you not become an artist? it is one which you must decide entirely for yourself; all that i can do is to bring under your notice some of the materials of that decision; and i will begin, as i shall probably conclude also, by assuring you that all depends on the vocation. to know what you like is the beginning of wisdom and of old age. youth is wholly experimental. the essence and charm of that unquiet and delightful epoch is ignorance of self as well as ignorance of life. these two unknowns the young man brings together again and again, now in the airiest touch, now with a bitter hug; now with exquisite pleasure, now with cutting pain; but never with indifference, to which he is a total stranger, and never with that near kinsman of indifference, contentment. if he be a youth of dainty senses or a brain easily heated, the interest of this series of experiments grows upon him out of all proportion to the pleasure he receives. it is not beauty that he loves, nor pleasure that he seeks, though he may think so; his design and his sufficient reward is to verify his own existence and taste the variety of human fate. to him, before the razor-edge of curiosity is dulled, all that is not actual living and the hot chase of experience wears a face of a disgusting dryness difficult to recall in later days; or if there be any exception and here destiny steps in it is in those moments when, wearied or surfeited of the primary activity of the senses, he calls up before memory the image of transacted pains and pleasures. thus it is that such an one shies from all cut-and-dry professions, and inclines insensibly toward that career of art which consists only in the tasting and recording of experience. this, which is not so much a vocation for art as an impatience of all other honest trades, frequently exists alone; and so existing, it will pass gently away in the course of years. emphatically, it is not to be regarded; it is not a vocation, but a temptation; and when your father the other day so fiercely and (in my view) so properly discouraged your ambition, he was recalling not improbably some similar passage in his own experience. for the temptation is perhaps nearly as common as the vocation is rare. but again we have vocations which are imperfect; we have men whose minds are bound up, not so much in any art, as in the general ars artium and common base of all creative work; who will now dip into painting, and now study counterpoint, and anon will be inditing a sonnet: all these with equal interest, all often with genuine knowledge. and of this temper, when it stands alone, i find it difficult to speak; but i should counsel such an one to take to letters, for in literature (which drags with so wide a net) all his information may be found some day useful, and if he should go on as he has begun, and turn at last into the critic, he will have learned to use the necessary tools. lastly we come to those vocations which are at once decisive and precise; to the men who are born with the love of pigments, the passion of drawing, the gift of music, or the impulse to create with words, just as other and perhaps the same men are born with the love of hunting, or the sea, or horses, or the turning-lathe. these are predestined; if a man love the labour of any trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him. he may have the general vocation too: he may have a taste for all the arts, and i think he often has; but the mark of his calling is this laborious partiality for one, this inextinguishable zest in its technical successes, and (perhaps above all) a certain candour of mind to take his very trifling enterprise with a gravity that would befit the cares of empire, and to think the smallest improvement worth accomplishing at any expense of time and industry. the book, the statue, the sonata, must be gone upon with the unreasoning good faith and the unflagging spirit of children at their play. is it worth doing? when it shall have occurred to any artist to ask himself that question, it is implicitly answered in the negative. it does not occur to the child as he plays at being a pirate on the dining-room sofa, nor to the hunter as he pursues his quarry; and the candour of the one and the ardour of the other should be united in the bosom of the artist. if you recognise in yourself some such decisive taste, there is no room for hesitation: follow your bent. and observe (lest i should too much discourage you) that the disposition does not usually burn so brightly at the first, or rather not so constantly. habit and practice sharpen gifts; the necessity of toil grows less disgusting, grows even welcome, in the course of years; a small taste (if it be only genuine) waxes with indulgence into an exclusive passion. enough, just now, if you can look back over a fair interval, and see that your chosen art has a little more than held its own among the thronging interests of youth. time will do the rest, if devotion help it; and soon your every thought will be engrossed in that beloved occupation. but even with devotion, you may remind me, even with unfaltering and delighted industry, many thousand artists spend their lives, if the result be regarded, utterly in vain: a thousand artists, and never one work of art. but the vast mass of mankind are incapable of doing anything reasonably well, art among the rest. the worthless artist would not improbably have been a quite incompetent baker. and the artist, even if he does not amuse the public, amuses himself; so that there will always be one man the happier for his vigils. this is the practical side of art: its inexpugnable fortress for the true practitioner. the direct returns the wages of the trade are small, but the indirect the wages of the life are incalculably great. no other business offers a man his daily bread upon such joyful terms. the soldier and the explorer have moments of a worthier excitement, but they are purchased by cruel hardships and periods of tedium that beggar language. in the life of the artist there need be no hour without its pleasure. i take the author, with whose career i am best acquainted; and it is true he works in a rebellious material, and that the act of writing is cramped and trying both to the eyes and the temper; but remark him in his study, when matter crowds upon him and words are not wanting in what a continual series of small successes time flows by; with what a sense of power as of one moving mountains, he marshals his petty characters; with what pleasures, both of the ear and eye, he sees his airy structure growing on the page; and how he labours in a craft to which the whole material of his life is tributary, and which opens a door to all his tastes, his loves, his hatreds, and his convictions, so that what he writes is only what he longed to utter. he may have enjoyed many things in this big, tragic playground of the world; but what shall he have enjoyed more fully than a morning of successful work? suppose it ill paid: the wonder is it should be paid at all. other men pay, and pay dearly, for pleasures less desirable. nor will the practice of art afford you pleasure only; it affords besides an admirable training. for the artist works entirely upon honour. the public knows little or nothing of those merits in the quest of which you are condemned to spend the bulk of your endeavours. merits of design, the merit of first-hand energy, the merit of a certain cheap accomplishment which a man of the artistic temper easily acquires these they can recognise, and these they value. but to those more exquisite refinements of proficiency and finish, which the artist so ardently desires and so keenly feels, for which (in the vigorous words of balzac) he must toil "like a miner buried in a landslip," for which, day after day, he recasts and revises and rejects the gross mass of the public must be ever blind. to those lost pains, suppose you attain the highest pitch of merit, posterity may possibly do justice; suppose, as is so probable, you fall by even a hair's breadth of the highest, rest certain they shall never be observed. under the shadow of this cold thought, alone in his studio, the artist must preserve from day to day his constancy to the ideal. it is this which makes his life noble; it is by this that the practice of his craft strengthens and matures his character; it is for this that even the serious countenance of the great emperor was turned approvingly (if only for a moment) on the followers of apollo, and that sternly gentle voice bade the artist cherish his art. and here there fall two warnings to be made. first, if you are to continue to be a law to yourself, you must beware of the first signs of laziness. this idealism in honesty can only be supported by perpetual effort; the standard is easily lowered, the artist who says "it will do," is on the downward path; three or four potboilers are enough at times (above all at wrong times) to falsify a talent, and by the practice of journalism a man runs the risk of becoming wedded to cheap finish. this is the danger on the one side; there is not less upon the other. the consciousness of how much the artist is (and must be) a law to himself, debauches the small heads. perceiving recondite merits very hard to attain, making or swallowing artistic formulae, or perhaps falling in love with some particular proficiency of his own, many artists forget the end of all art: to please. it is doubtless tempting to exclaim against the ignorant bourgeois; yet it should not be forgotten, it is he who is to pay us, and that (surely on the face of it) for services that he shall desire to have performed. here also, if properly considered, there is a question of transcendental honesty. to give the public what they do not want, and yet expect to be supported: we have there a strange pretension, and yet not uncommon, above all with painters. the first duty in this world is for a man to pay his way; when that is quite accomplished, he may plunge into what eccentricity he likes; but emphatically not till then. till then, he must pay assiduous court to the bourgeois who carries the purse. and if in the course of these capitulations he shall falsify his talent, it can never have been a strong one, and he will have preserved a better thing than talent character. or if he be of a mind so independent that he cannot stoop to this necessity, one course is yet open: he can desist from art, and follow some more manly way of life. i speak of a more manly way of life, it is a point on which i must be frank. to live by a pleasure is not a high calling; it involves patronage, however veiled; it numbers the artist, however ambitious, along with dancing girls and billiard markers. the french have a romantic evasion for one employment, and call its practitioners the daughters of joy. the artist is of the same family, he is of the sons of joy, chose his trade to please himself, gains his livelihood by pleasing others, and has parted with something of the sterner dignity of man. journals but a little while ago declaimed against the tennyson peerage; and this son of joy was blamed for condescension when he followed the example of lord lawrence and lord cairns and lord clyde. the poet was more happily inspired; with a better modesty he accepted the honour; and anonymous journalists have not yet (if i am to believe them) recovered the vicarious disgrace to their profession. when it comes to their turn, these gentlemen can do themselves more justice; and i shall be glad to think of it; for to my barbarian eyesight, even lord tennyson looks somewhat out of place in that assembly. there should be no honours for the artist; he has already, in the practice of his art, more than his share of the rewards of life; the honours are pre-empted for other trades, less agreeable and perhaps more useful. but the devil in these trades of pleasing is to fail to please. in ordinary occupations, a man offers to do a certain thing or to produce a certain article with a merely conventional accomplishment, a design in which (we may almost say) it is difficult to fail. but the artist steps forth out of the crowd and proposes to delight: an impudent design, in which it is impossible to fail without odious circumstances. the poor daughter of joy, carrying her smiles and finery quite unregarded through the crowd, makes a figure which it is impossible to recall without a wounding pity. she is the type of the unsuccessful artist. the actor, the dancer, and the singer must appear like her in person, and drain publicly the cup of failure. but though the rest of us escape this crowning bitterness of the pillory, we all court in essence the same humiliation. we all profess to be able to delight. and how few of us are! we all pledge ourselves to be able to continue to delight. and the day will come to each, and even to the most admired, when the ardour shall have declined and the cunning shall be lost, and he shall sit by his deserted booth ashamed. then shall he see himself condemned to do work for which he blushes to take payment. then (as if his lot were not already cruel) he must lie exposed to the gibes of the wreckers of the press, who earn a little bitter bread by the condemnation of trash which they have not read, and the praise of excellence which they cannot understand. and observe that this seems almost the necessary end at least of writers. les blancs et les bleus (for instance) is of an order of merit very different from le vicomte de braglonne; and if any gentleman can bear to spy upon the nakedness of castle dangerous, his name i think is ham: let it be enough for the rest of us to read of it (not without tears) in the pages of lockhart. thus in old age, when occupation and comfort are most needful, the writer must lay aside at once his pastime and his breadwinner. the painter indeed, if he succeed at all in engaging the attention of the public, gains great sums and can stand to his easel until a great age without dishonourable failure. the writer has the double misfortune to be ill-paid while he can work, and to be incapable of working when he is old. it is thus a way of life which conducts directly to a false position. for the writer (in spite of notorious examples to the contrary) must look to be ill-paid. tennyson and montepin make handsome livelihoods; but we cannot all hope to be tennyson, and we do not all perhaps desire to be montepin. if you adopt an art to be your trade, weed your mind at the outset of all desire of money. what you may decently expect, if you have some talent and much industry, is such an income as a clerk will earn with a tenth or perhaps a twentieth of your nervous output. nor have you the right to look for more; in the wages of the life, not in the wages of the trade, lies your reward; the work is here the wages. it will be seen i have little sympathy with the common lamentations of the artist class. perhaps they do not remember the hire of the field labourer; or do they think no parallel will lie? perhaps they have never observed what is the retiring allowance of a field officer; or do they suppose their contributions to the arts of pleasing more important than the services of a colonel? perhaps they forget on how little millet was content to live; or do they think, because they have less genius, they stand excused from the display of equal virtues? but upon one point there should be no dubiety: if a man be not frugal, he has no business in the arts. if he be not frugal, he steers directly for that last tragic scene of le vieux saltimbanque; if he be not frugal, he will find it hard to continue to be honest. some day, when the butcher is knocking at the door, he may be tempted, he may be obliged, to turn out and sell a slovenly piece of work. if the obligation shall have arisen through no wantonness of his own, he is even to be commanded; for words cannot describe how far more necessary it is that a man should support his family, than that he should attain to or preserve distinction in the arts. but if the pressure comes, through his own fault, he has stolen, and stolen under trust, and stolen (which is the worst of all) in such a way that no law can reach him. and now you may perhaps ask me, if the debutant artist is to have no thought of money, and if (as is implied) he is to expect no honours from the state, he may not at least look forward to the delights of popularity? praise, you will tell me, is a savoury dish. and in so far as you may mean the countenance of other artists you would put your finger on one of the most essential and enduring pleasures of the career of art. but in so far as you should have an eye to the commendations of the public or the notice of the newspapers, be sure you would but be cherishing a dream. it is true that in certain esoteric journals the author (for instance) is duly criticised, and that he is often praised a great deal more than he deserves, sometimes for qualities which he prided himself on eschewing, and sometimes by ladies and gentlemen who have denied themselves the privilege of reading his work. but if a man be sensitive to this wild praise, we must suppose him equally alive to that which often accompanies and always follows it wild ridicule. a man may have done well for years, and then he may fail; he will hear of his failure. or he may have done well for years, and still do well, but the critics may have tired of praising him, or there may have sprung up some new idol of the instant, some "dust a little gilt," to whom they now prefer to offer sacrifice. here is the obverse and the reverse of that empty and ugly thing called popularity. will any man suppose it worth the gaining? chapter xi pulvis et umbra we look for some reward of our endeavours and are disappointed; not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun. the canting moralist tells us of right and wrong; and we look abroad, even on the face of our small earth, and find them change with every climate, and no country where some action is not honoured for a virtue and none where it is not branded for a vice; and we look in our experience, and find no vital congruity in the wisest rules, but at the best a municipal fitness. it is not strange if we are tempted to despair of good. we ask too much. our religions and moralities have been trimmed to flatter us, till they are all emasculate and sentimentalised, and only please and weaken. truth is of a rougher strain. in the harsh face of life, faith can read a bracing gospel. the human race is a thing more ancient than the ten commandments; and the bones and revolutions of the kosmos, in whose joints we are but moss and fungus, more ancient still. i of the kosmos in the last resort, science reports many doubtful things and all of them appalling. there seems no substance to this solid globe on which we stamp: nothing but symbols and ratios. symbols and ratios carry us and bring us forth and beat us down; gravity that swings the incommensurable suns and worlds through space, is but a figment varying inversely as the squares of distances; and the suns and worlds themselves, imponderable figures of abstraction, nh3, and h2o. consideration dares not dwell upon this view; that way madness lies; science carries us into zones of speculation, where there is no habitable city for the mind of man. but take the kosmos with a grosser faith, as our senses give it us. we behold space sown with rotatory islands, suns and worlds and the shards and wrecks of systems: some, like the sun, still blazing; some rotting, like the earth; others, like the moon, stable in desolation. all of these we take to be made of something we call matter: a thing which no analysis can help us to conceive; to whose incredible properties no familiarity can reconcile our minds. this stuff, when not purified by the lustration of fire, rots uncleanly into something we call life; seized through all its atoms with a pediculous malady; swelling in tumours that become independent, sometimes even (by an abhorrent prodigy) locomotory; one splitting into millions, millions cohering into one, as the malady proceeds through varying stages. this vital putrescence of the dust, used as we are to it, yet strikes us with occasional disgust, and the profusion of worms in a piece of ancient turf, or the air of a marsh darkened with insects, will sometimes check our breathing so that we aspire for cleaner places. but none is clean: the moving sand is infected with lice; the pure spring, where it bursts out of the mountain, is a mere issue of worms; even in the hard rock the crystal is forming. in two main shapes this eruption covers the countenance of the earth: the animal and the vegetable: one in some degree the inversion of the other: the second rooted to the spot; the first coming detached out of its natal mud, and scurrying abroad with the myriad feet of insects or towering into the heavens on the wings of birds: a thing so inconceivable that, if it be well considered, the heart stops. to what passes with the anchored vermin, we have little clue, doubtless they have their joys and sorrows, their delights and killing agonies: it appears not how. but of the locomotory, to which we ourselves belong, we can tell more. these share with us a thousand miracles: the miracles of sight, of hearing, of the projection of sound, things that bridge space; the miracles of memory and reason, by which the present is conceived, and when it is gone, its image kept living in the brains of man and brute; the miracle of reproduction, with its imperious desires and staggering consequences. and to put the last touch upon this mountain mass of the revolting and the inconceivable, all these prey upon each other, lives tearing other lives in pieces, cramming them inside themselves, and by that summary process, growing fat: the vegetarian, the whale, perhaps the tree, not less than the lion of the desert; for the vegetarian is only the eater of the dumb. meanwhile our rotatory island loaded with predatory life, and more drenched with blood, both animal and vegetable, than ever mutinied ship, scuds through space with unimaginable speed, and turns alternate cheeks to the reverberation of a blazing world, ninety million miles away. ii what a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a thing to set children screaming; and yet looked at nearlier, known as his fellows know him, how surprising are his attributes! poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow lives: who should have blamed him had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely barbarous? and we look and behold him instead filled with imperfect virtues: infinitely childish, often admirably valiant, often touchingly kind; sitting down, amidst his momentary life, to debate of right and wrong and the attributes of the deity; rising up to do battle for an egg or die for an idea; singling out his friends and his mate with cordial affection; bringing forth in pain, rearing with long-suffering solicitude, his young. to touch the heart of his mystery, we find, in him one thought, strange to the point of lunacy: the thought of duty; the thought of something owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his god: an ideal of decency, to which he would rise if it were possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be possible, he will not stoop. the design in most men is one of conformity; here and there, in picked natures, it transcends itself and soars on the other side, arming martyrs with independence; but in all, in their degrees, it is a bosom thought: not in man alone, for we trace it in dogs and cats whom we know fairly well, and doubtless some similar point of honour sways the elephant, the oyster, and the louse, of whom we know so little: but in man, at least, it sways with so complete an empire that merely selfish things come second, even with the selfish: that appetites are starved, fears are conquered, pains supported; that almost the dullest shrinks from the reproof of a glance, although it were a child's; and all but the most cowardly stand amid the risks of war; and the more noble, having strongly conceived an act as due to their ideal, affront and embrace death. strange enough if, with their singular origin and perverted practice, they think they are to be rewarded in some future life: stranger still, if they are persuaded of the contrary, and think this blow, which they solicit, will strike them senseless for eternity. i shall be reminded what a tragedy of misconception and misconduct man at large presents: of organised injustice, cowardly violence and treacherous crime; and of the damning imperfections of the best. they cannot be too darkly drawn. man is indeed marked for failure in his efforts to do right. but where the best consistently miscarry, how tenfold more remarkable that all should continue to strive; and surely we should find it both touching and inspiriting, that in a field from which success is banished, our race should not cease to labour. if the first view of this creature, stalking in his rotatory isle, be a thing to shake the courage of the stoutest, on this nearer sight, he startles us with an admiring wonder. it matters not where we look, under what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what depth of ignorance, burthened with what erroneous morality; by camp-fires in assiniboia, the snow powdering his shoulders, the wind plucking his blanket, as he sits, passing the ceremonial calumet and uttering his grave opinions like a roman senator; in ships at sea, a man inured to hardship and vile pleasures, his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern and a bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him, and he for all that simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave to drown, for others; in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent millions to mechanical employments, without hope of change in the future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to his virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his neighbours, tempted perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace, perhaps long-suffering with the drunken wife that ruins him; in india (a woman this time) kneeling with broken cries and streaming tears, as she drowns her child in the sacred river; in the brothel, the discard of society, living mainly on strong drink, fed with affronts, a fool, a thief, the comrade of thieves, and even here keeping the point of honour and the touch of pity, often repaying the world's scorn with service, often standing firm upon a scruple, and at a certain cost, rejecting riches: everywhere some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere some decency of thought and carriage, everywhere the ensign of man's ineffectual goodness: ah! if i could show you this! if i could show you these men and women, all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, the poor jewel of their souls! they may seek to escape, and yet they cannot; it is not alone their privilege and glory, but their doom; they are condemned to some nobility; all their lives long, the desire of good is at their heels, the implacable hunter. of all earth's meteors, here at least is the most strange and consoling: that this ennobled lemur, this hair-crowned bubble of the dust, this inheritor of a few years and sorrows, should yet deny himself his rare delights, and add to his frequent pains, and live for an ideal, however misconceived. nor can we stop with man. a new doctrine, received with screams a little while ago by canting moralists, and still not properly worked into the body of our thoughts, lights us a step farther into the heart of this rough but noble universe. for nowadays the pride of man denies in vain his kinship with the original dust. he stands no longer like a thing apart. close at his heels we see the dog, prince of another genus: and in him too, we see dumbly testified the same cultus of an unattainable ideal, the same constancy in failure. does it stop with the dog? we look at our feet where the ground is blackened with the swarming ant: a creature so small, so far from us in the hierarchy of brutes, that we can scarce trace and scarce comprehend his doings; and here also, in his ordered politics and rigorous justice, we see confessed the law of duty and the fact of individual sin. does it stop, then, with the ant? rather this desire of well-doing and this doom of frailty run through all the grades of life: rather is this earth, from the frosty top of everest to the next margin of the internal fire, one stage of ineffectual virtues and one temple of pious tears and perseverance. the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together. it is the common and the god-like law of life. the browsers, the biters, the barkers, the hairy coats of field and forest, the squirrel in the oak, the thousand-footed creeper in the dust, as they share with us the gift of life, share with us the love of an ideal: strive like us like us are tempted to grow weary of the struggle to do well; like us receive at times unmerited refreshment, visitings of support, returns of courage; and are condemned like us to be crucified between that double law of the members and the will. are they like us, i wonder, in the timid hope of some reward, some sugar with the drug? do they, too, stand aghast at unrewarded virtues, at the sufferings of those whom, in our partiality, we take to be just, and the prosperity of such as, in our blindness, we call wicked? it may be, and yet god knows what they should look for. even while they look, even while they repent, the foot of man treads them by thousands in the dust, the yelping hounds burst upon their trail, the bullet speeds, the knives are heating in the den of the vivisectionist; or the dew falls, and the generation of a day is blotted out. for these are creatures, compared with whom our weakness is strength, our ignorance wisdom, our brief span eternity. and as we dwell, we living things, in our isle of terror and under the imminent hand of death, god forbid it should be man the erected, the reasoner, the wise in his own eyes god forbid it should be man that wearies in well-doing, that despairs of unrewarded effort, or utters the language of complaint. let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy: surely not all in vain. chapter xii a christmas sermon by the time this paper appears, i shall have been talking for twelve months; and it is thought i should take my leave in a formal and seasonable manner. valedictory eloquence is rare, and deathbed sayings have not often hit the mark of the occasion. charles second, wit and sceptic, a man whose life had been one long lesson in human incredulity, an easy-going comrade, a manoeuvring king remembered and embodied all his wit and scepticism along with more than his usual good humour in the famous "i am afraid, gentlemen, i am an unconscionable time a-dying." i an unconscionable time a-dying there is the picture ("i am afraid, gentlemen,") of your life and of mine. the sands run out, and the hours are "numbered and imputed," and the days go by; and when the last of these finds us, we have been a long time dying, and what else? the very length is something, if we reach that hour of separation undishonoured; and to have lived at all is doubtless (in the soldierly expression) to have served. there is a tale in ticitus of how the veterans mutinied in the german wilderness; of how they mobbed germanicus, clamouing go home; and of how, seizing their general's hand, these old, war-worn exiles passed his finger along their toothless gums. sunt lacrymae rerum: this was the most eloquent of the songs of simeon. and when a man has lived to a fair age, he bears his marks of service. he may have never been remarked upon the breach at the head of the army; at least he shall have lost his teeth on the camp bread. the idealism of serious people in this age of ours is of a noble character. it never seems to them that they have served enough; they have a fine impatience of their virtues. it were perhaps more modest to be singly thankful that we are no worse. it is not only our enemies, those desperate characters it is we ourselves who know not what we do, thence springs the glimmering hope that perhaps we do better than we think: that to scramble through this random business with hands reasonably clean to have played the part of a man or woman with some reasonable fulness, to have often resisted the diabolic, and at the end to be still resisting it, is for the poor human soldier to have done right well. to ask to see some fruit of our endeavour is but a transcendental way of serving for reward; and what we take to be contempt of self is only greed of hire. and again if we require so much of ourselves, shall we not require much of others? if we do not genially judge our own deficiencies, is it not to be feared we shall be even stern to the trespasses of others? and he who (looking back upon his own life) can see no more than that he has been unconscionably long a-dying, will he not be tempted to think his neighbour unconscionably long of getting hanged? it is probable that nearly all who think of conduct at all, think of it too much; it is certain we all think too much of sin. we are not damned for doing wrong, but for not doing right; christ would never hear of negative morality; thou shalt was ever his word, with which he superseded thou shalt not. to make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto. if a thing is wrong for us, we should not dwell upon the thought of it; or we shall soon dwell upon it with inverted pleasure. if we cannot drive it from our minds one thing of two: either our creed is in the wrong and we must more indulgently remodel it; or else, if our morality be in the right, we are criminal lunatics and should place our persons in restraint. a mark of such unwholesomely divided minds is the passion for interference with others: the fox without the tail was of this breed, but had (if his biographer is to be trusted) a certain antique civility now out of date. a man may have a flaw, a weakness, that unfits him for the duties of life, that spoils his temper, that threatens his integrity, or that betrays him into cruelty. it has to be conquered; but it must never he suffered to engross his thoughts. the true duties lie all upon the farther side, and must be attended to with a whole mind so soon as this preliminary clearing of the decks has been effected. in order that he may be kind and honest, it may be needful he should become a total abstainer; let him become so then, and the next day let him forget the circumstance. trying to be kind and honest will require all his thoughts; a mortified appetite is never a wise companion; in so far as he has had to mortify an appetite, he will still be the worse man; and of such an one a great deal of cheerfulness will be required in judging life, and a great deal of humility in judging others. it may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life's endeavour springs in some degree from dulness. we require higher tasks, because we do not recognise the height of those we have. trying to be kind and honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemen of our heroic mould; we had rather set ourselves to something bold, arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. but the task before us, which is to co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. there is no cutting of the gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled. to be honest, to be kind to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. he has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. there is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. it is so in every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living well. here is a pleasant thought for the year's end or for the end of life. only self-deception will be satisfied, and there need be no despair for the despairer. ii but christmas is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to thoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its associations, whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. a man dissatisfied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. and in the midst of the winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of the empty chairs of his beloved, it is well he should be condemned to this fashion of the smiling face. noble disappointment, noble self-denial, are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness. it is one thing to enter the kingdom of heaven maim; another to maim yourself and stay without. and the kingdom of heaven is of the child-like, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. mighty men of their hands, the smiters and the builders and the judges, have lived long and done sternly and yet preserved this lovely character; and among our carpet interests and twopenny concerns, the shame were indelible if we should lose it. gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties. and it is the trouble with moral men that they have neither one nor other. it was the moral man, the pharisee, whom christ could not away with. if your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. i do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people. a strange temptation attends upon man: to keep his eye on pleasures, even when he will not share in them; to aim all his morals against them. this very year a lady (singular iconoclast!) proclaimed a crusade against dolls; and the racy sermon against lust is a feature of the age. i venture to call such moralists insincere. at any excess or perversion of a natural appetite, their lyre sounds of itself with relishing denunciations; but for all displays of the truly diabolic envy, malice, the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the back-biter, the petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family life their standard is quite different. these are wrong, they will admit, yet somehow not so wrong; there is no zeal in their assault on them, no secret element of gusto warms up the sermon; it is for things not wrong in themselves that they reserve the choicest of their indignation. a man may naturally disclaim all moral kinship with the reverend mr. zola or the hobgoblin old lady of the dolls; for these are gross and naked instances. and yet in each of us some similar element resides. the sight of a pleasure in which we cannot or else will not share moves us to a particular impatience. it may be because we are envious, or because we are sad, or because we dislike noise and romping being so refined, or because being so philosophic we have an over-weighing sense of life's gravity: at least, as we go on in years, we are all tempted to frown upon our neighbour's pleasures. people are nowadays so fond of resisting temptations; here is one to be resisted. they are fond of self-denial; here is a propensity that cannot be too peremptorily denied. there is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbours good. one person i have to make good: myself. but my duty to my neighbour is much more nearly expressed by saying that i have to make him happy if i may. iii happiness and goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in the relation of effect and cause. there was never anything less proved or less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our constitution; we stand buffet among friends and enemies; we may be so built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness, and so circumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease very painful. virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us. it is not even its own reward, except for the self-centred and i had almost said the unamiable. no man can pacify his conscience; if quiet be what he want, he shall do better to let that organ perish from disuse. and to avoid the penalties of the law, and the minor capitis diminutio of social ostracism, is an affair of wisdom of cunning, if you will and not of virtue. in his own life, then, a man is not to expect happiness, only to profit by it gladly when it shall arise; he is on duty here; he knows not how or why, and does not need to know; he knows not for what hire, and must not ask. somehow or other, though he does not know what goodness is, he must try to be good; somehow or other, though he cannot tell what will do it, he must try to give happiness to others. and no doubt there comes in here a frequent clash of duties. how far is he to make his neighbour happy? how far must he respect that smiling face, so easy to cloud, so hard to brighten again? and how far, on the other side, is he bound to be his brother's keeper and the prophet of his own morality? how far must he resent evil? the difficulty is that we have little guidance; christ's sayings on the point being hard to reconcile with each other, and (the most of them) hard to accept. but the truth of his teaching would seem to be this: in our own person and fortune, we should be ready to accept and to pardon all; it is our cheek we are to turn, our coat that we are to give away to the man who has taken our cloak. but when another's face is buffeted, perhaps a little of the lion will become us best. that we are to suffer others to be injured, and stand by, is not conceivable and surely not desirable. revenge, says bacon, is a kind of wild justice; its judgments at least are delivered by an insane judge; and in our own quarrel we can see nothing truly and do nothing wisely. but in the quarrel of our neighbour, let us be more bold. one person's happiness is as sacred as another's; when we cannot defend both, let us defend one with a stout heart. it is only in so far as we are doing this, that we have any right to interfere: the defence of b is our only ground of action against a. a has as good a right to go to the devil, as we to go to glory; and neither knows what he does. the truth is that all these interventions and denunciations and militant mongerings of moral half-truths, though they be sometimes needful, though they are often enjoyable, do yet belong to an inferior grade of duties. ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an arsenal of pious disguises; this is the playground of inverted lusts. with a little more patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be found in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine heady quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour's vices, might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy. iv to look back upon the past year, and see how little we have striven and to what small purpose; and how often we have been cowardly and hung back, or temerarious and rushed unwisely in; and how every day and all day long we have transgressed the law of kindness; it may seem a paradox, but in the bitterness of these discoveries, a certain consolation resides. life is not designed to minister to a man's vanity. he goes upon his long business most of the time with a hanging head, and all the time like a blind child. full of rewards and pleasures as it is so that to see the day break or the moon rise, or to meet a friend, or to hear the dinner-call when he is hungry, fills him with surprising joys this world is yet for him no abiding city. friendships fall through, health fails, weariness assails him; year after year, he must thumb the hardly varying record of his own weakness and folly. it is a friendly process of detachment. when the time comes that he should go, there need be few illusions left about himself. here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much: surely that may be his epitaph, of which he need not be ashamed. nor will he complain at the summons which calls a defeated soldier from the field: defeated, ay, if he were paul or marcus aurelius! but if there is still one inch of fight in his old spirit, undishonoured. the faith which sustained him in his life-long blindness and life-long disappointment will scarce even be required in this last formality of laying down his arms. give him a march with his old bones; there, out of the glorious sun-coloured earth, out of the day and the dust and the ecstasy there goes another faithful failure! from a recent book of verse, where there is more than one such beautiful and manly poem, i take this memorial piece: it says better than i can, what i love to think; let it be our parting word. "a late lark twitters from the quiet skies; and from the west, where the sun, his day's work ended, lingers as in content, there falls on the old, gray city an influence luminous and serene, a shining peace. "the smoke ascends in a rosy-and-golden haze. the spires shine, and are changed. in the valley shadows rise. the lark sings on. the sun, closing his benediction, sinks, and the darkening air thrills with a sense of the triumphing night night, with her train of stars and her great gift of sleep. "so be my passing! my task accomplished and the long day done, my wages taken, and in my heart some late lark singing, let me be gathered to the quiet west, the sundown splendid and serene, death." [1888.] end of the project gutenberg etext of across the plains by stevenson 1839 the haunted palace by edgar allan poe in the greenest of our valleys by good angels tenanted, once a fair and stately palace radiant palacereared its head. in the monarch thought's dominion it stood there! never seraph spread a pinion over fabric half so fair! banners yellow, glorious, golden, on its roof did float and flow, (thisall thiswas in the olden time long ago,) and every gentle air that dallied, in that sweet day, along the ramparts plumed and pallid, a winged odor went away. wanderers in that happy valley, through two luminous windows, saw spirits moving musically, to a lute's well-tuned law, round about a throne where, sitting (porphyrogene!) in state his glory well-befitting, the ruler of the realm was seen. and all with pearl and ruby glowing was the fair palace door, through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, and sparkling evermore, a troop of echoes, whose sweet duty was but to sing, in voices of surpassing beauty, the wit and wisdom of their king. but evil things, in robes of sorrow, assailed the monarch's high estate. (ah, let us mourn!for never morrow shall dawn upon him desolate!) and round about his home the glory that blushed and bloomed, is but a dim-remembered story of the old time entombed. and travellers, now, within that valley, through the red-litten windows see vast forms, that move fantastically to a discordant melody, while, like a ghastly rapid river, through the pale door a hideous throng rush out forever and laughbut smile no more. -the end. 1906 mark twain's speeches by mark twain preface preface. from the preface to the english edition of "mark twain's sketches." if i were to sell the reader a barrel of molasses, and he, instead of sweetening his substantial dinner with the same at judicious intervals, should eat the entire barrel at one sitting, and then abuse me for making him sick, i would say that he deserved to be made sick for not knowing any better how to utilize the blessings this world affords. and if i sell to the reader this volume of nonsense, and he, instead of seasoning his graver reading with a chapter of it now and then, when his mind demands such relaxation, unwisely overdoses himself with several chapters of it at a single sitting, he will deserve to be nauseated, and he will have nobody to blame but himself if he is. there is no more sin in publishing an entire volume of nonsense than there is in keeping a candy-store with no hardware in it. it lies wholly with the customer whether he will injure himself by means of either, or will derive from them the benefits which they will afford him if he uses their possibilities judiciously. respectfully submitted, the author. the story of a speech. an address delivered in 1877, and a review of it twenty-nine years later. the original speech was delivered at a dinner given by the publishers of the atlantic monthly in honor of the seventieth anniversary of the birth of john greenleaf whittier, at the hotel brunswick, boston, december 17, 1877. this is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant reminiscences concerning literary folk; therefore i will drop lightly into history myself. standing here on the shore of the atlantic and contemplating certain of its largest literary billows, i am reminded of a thing which happened to me thirteen years ago, when i had just succeeded in stirring up a little nevadian literary puddle myself, whose spume-flakes were beginning to blow thinly californiaward. i started an inspection tramp through the southern mines of california. i was callow and conceited, and i resolved to try the virtue of my nom de guerre. i very soon had an opportunity. i knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin in the foot-hills of the sierras just at nightfall. it was snowing at the time. a jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted, opened the door to me. when he heard my nom de guerre he looked more dejected than before. he let me inpretty reluctantly, i thoughtand after the customary bacon and beans, black coffee and hot whiskey, i took a pipe. this sorrowful man had not said three words up to this time. now he spoke up and said, in the voice of one who is secretly suffering, "you're the fourthi'm going to move." "the fourth what?" said i. "the fourth littery man that has been here in twenty-four hoursi'm going to move." "you don't tell me!" said i; "who were the others?" "mr. longfellow, mr. emerson, and mr. oliver wendell holmesconsound the lot!" you can easily believe i was interested. i supplicatedthree hot whiskeys did the restand finally the melancholy miner began. said he: "they came here just at dark yesterday evening, and i let them in of course. said they were going to the yosemite. they were a rough lot, but that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot. mr. emerson was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. mr. holmes was as fat as a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundred, and had double chins all the way down to his stomach. mr. longfellow was built like a prize-fighter. his head was cropped and bristly, like as if he had a wig made of hair-brushes. his nose lay straight down his face, like a finger with the end joint tilted up. they had been drinking, i could see that. and what queer talk they used! mr. holmes inspected this cabin, then he took me by the buttonhole, and says he: "'through the deep caves of thought i hear a voice that sings, build thee more stately mansions, o my soul!' "says i, 'i can't afford it, mr. holmes, and moreover i don't want to.' blamed if i liked it pretty well, either, coming from a stranger, that way. however, i started to get out my bacon and beans, when mr. emerson came and looked on awhile, and then he takes me aside by the buttonhole and says: "'give me agates for my meat; give me cantharids to eat; from air and ocean bring me foods, from all zones and altitudes.' "says i, 'mr. emerson, if you'll excuse me, this ain't no hotel.' you see it sort of riled mei warn't used to the ways of littery swells. but i went on a-sweating over my work, and next comes mr. longfellow and buttonholes me, and interrupts me. says he: "'honor be to mudjekeewis! you shall hear how pau-puk-keewis-' "but i broke in, and says i, 'beg your pardon, mr. longfellow, if you'll be so kind as to hold your yawp for about five minutes and let me get this grub ready, you'll do me proud.' well, sir, after they'd filled up i set out the jug. mr. holmes looks at it, and then he fires up all of a sudden and yells: "'flash out a stream of blood-red wine! for i would drink to other days.' "by george, i was getting kind of worked up. i don't deny it, i was getting kind of worked up. i turns to mr. holmes, and says i, 'looky here, my fat friend, i'm a-running this shanty, and if the court knows herself, you'll take whiskey straight or you'll go dry.' them's the very words i said to him. now i don't want to sass such famous littery people, but you see they kind of forced me. there ain't nothing unreasonable 'bout me; i don't mind a passel of guests a-treadin' on my tail three or four times, but when it comes to standing on it it's different, 'and if the court knows herself,' i says, 'you'll take whiskey straight or you'll go dry.' well, between drinks they'd swell around the cabin and strike attitudes and spout; and pretty soon they got out a greasy old deck and went to playing euchre at ten cents a corneron trust. i began to notice some pretty suspicious things. mr. emerson dealt, looked at his hand, shook his head, says: "'i am the doubter and the doubt-' and ca'mly bunched the hands and went to shuffling for a new layout. says he: "'they reckon ill who leave me out; they know not well the subtle ways i keep. i pass and deal again!' "hang'd if he didn't go ahead and do it, too! oh, he was a cool one! well, in about a minute things were running pretty tight, but all of a sudden i see by mr. emerson's eye he judged he had 'em. he had already corralled two tricks, and each of the others one. so now he kind of lifts a little in his chair and says: "'i tire of globes and aces! too long the game is played!' and down he fetched a right bower. mr. longfellow smiles as sweet as pie and says: "'thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, for the lesson thou hast taught,' and blamed if he didn't down with another right bower! emerson claps his hand on his bowie, longfellow claps his on his revolver, and i went under a bunk. there was going to be trouble; but that monstrous holmes rose up, wobbling his double chins, and says he, 'order, gentlemen; the first man that draws, i'll lay down on him and smother him!' all quiet on the potomac, you bet! "they were pretty how-come-you-so by now, and they begun to blow. emerson says, 'the nobbiest thing i ever wrote was "barbara frietchie."' says longfellow, 'it don't begin with my "biglow papers."' says holmes, 'my "thanatopis" lays over 'em both.' they mighty near ended in a fight. then they wished they had some more companyand mr. emerson pointed to me and says: "'is yonder squalid peasant all that this proud nursery could breed?' "he was a-whetting his bowie on his bootso i let it pass. well, sir, next they took it into their heads that they would like some music; so they made me stand up and sing "when johnny comes marching home" till i droppedat thirteen minutes past four this morning. that's what i've been through, my friend. when i woke at seven, they were leaving, thank goodness, and mr. longfellow had my only boots on, and his'n under his arm. says i, 'hold on, there, evangeline, what are you going to do with them?' he says, 'going to make tracks with 'em; because: "'lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime; and, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.' as i said, mr. twain, you are the fourth in twenty-four hoursand i'm going to move; i ain't suited to a littery atmosphere." i said to the miner, "why, my dear sir, these were not the gracious singers to whom we and the world pay loving reverence and homage; these were impostors." the miner investigated me with a calm eye for a while; then said he, "ah! impostors, were they? are you?" i did not pursue the subject, and since then i have not travelled on my nom de guerre enough to hurt. such was the reminiscence i was moved to contribute, mr. chairman. in my enthusiasm i may have exaggerated the details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since i believe it is the first time i have ever deflected from perpendicular fact on an occasion like this. from mark twain's autobiography. january 11, 1906. answer to a letter received this morning: dear mrs. h.,i am forever your debtor for reminding me of that curious passage in my life. during the first year or two after it happened, i could not bear to think of it. my pain and shame were so intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so settled, established and confirmed, that i drove the episode entirely from my mindand so all these twenty-eight or twenty-nine years i have lived in the conviction that my performance of that time was coarse, vulgar, and destitute of humor. but your suggestion that you and your family found humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to look into the matter. so i commissioned a boston typewriter to delve among the boston papers of that bygone time and send me a copy of it. it came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity about it i am not able to discover it. if it isn't innocently and ridiculously funny, i am no judge. i will see to it that you get a copy. what i have said to mrs. h. is true. i did suffer during a year or two from the deep humiliations of that episode. but at last, in 1888, in venice, my wife and i came across mr. and mrs. a. p. c., of concord, massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the sort which nothing but death terminates. the c.'s were very bright people and in every way charming and companionable. we were together a month or two in venice and several months in rome, afterward, and one day that lamented break of mine was mentioned. and when i was on the point of lathering those people for bringing it to my mind when i had gotten the memory of it almost squelched, i perceived with joy that the c.'s were indignant about the way that my performance had been received in boston. they poured out their opinions most freely and frankly about the frosty attitude of the people who were present at that performance, and about the boston newspapers for the position they had taken in regard to the matter. that position was that i had been irreverent beyond belief, beyond imagination. very well; i had accepted that as a fact for a year or two, and had been thoroughly miserable about it whenever i thought of itwhich was not frequently, if i could help it. whenever i thought of it i wondered how i ever could have been inspired to do so unholy a thing. well, the c.'s comforted me, but they did not persuade me to continue to think about the unhappy episode. i resisted that. i tried to get it out of my mind, and let it die, and i succeeded. until mrs. h.'s letter came, it had been a good twenty-five years since i had thought of that matter; and when she said that the thing was funny i wondered if possibly she might be right. at any rate, my curiosity was aroused, and i wrote to boston and got the whole thing copied, as above set forth. i vaguely remember some of the details of that gatheringdimly i can see a hundred people no, perhaps fiftyshadowy figures sitting at tables feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless forevermore. i don't know who they were, but i can very distinctly see, seated at the grand table and facing the rest of us, mr. emerson, supernaturally grave, unsmiling? mr. whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out of his face; mr. longfellow, with his silken white hair and his benignant face; dr. oliver wendell holmes, flashing smiles and affection and all good-fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond whose facets are being turned toward the light first one way and then anothera charming man, and always fascinating, whether he was talking or whether he was sitting still (what he would call still, but what would be more or less motion to other people). i can see those figures with entire distinctness across this abyss of time. one other feature is clearwillie winter (for these past thousand years dramatic editor of the new york tribune, and still occupying that high post in his old age) was there. he was much younger then than he is now, and he showed it. it was always a pleasure to me to see willie winter at a banquet. during a matter of twenty years i was seldom at a banquet where willie winter was not also present, and where he did not read a charming poem written for the occasion. he did it this time, and it was up to standard: dainty, happy, choicely phrased, and as good to listen to as music, and sounding exactly as if it was pouring unprepared out of heart and brain. now at that point ends all that was pleasurable about that notable celebration of mr. whittier's seventieth birthdaybecause i got up at that point and followed winter, with what i have no doubt i supposed would be the gem of the eveningthe gay oration above quoted from the boston paper. i had written it all out the day before and had perfectly memorized it, and i stood up there at my genial and happy and self-satisfied ease, and begin to deliver it. those majestic guests, that row of venerable and still active volcanoes, listened, as did everybody else in the house, with attentive interest. well, i delivered myself ofwe'll say the first two hundred words of my speech. i was expecting no returns from that part of the speech, but this was not the case as regarded the rest of it. i arrived now at the dialogue: "the old miner said, 'you are the fourth, i'm going to move.' 'the fourth what?' said i. he answered, 'the fourth littery man that has been here in twenty-four hours. i am going to move.' 'why, you don't tell me,' said i. 'who were the others?' 'mr. longfellow, mr. emerson, mr. oliver wendell holmes, consound the lot-'" now, then, the house's attention continued, but the expression of interest in the faces turned to a sort of black frost. i wondered what the trouble was. i didn't know. i went on, but with difficultyi struggled along, and entered upon that miner's fearful description of the bogus emerson, the bogus holmes, the bogus longfellow, always hopingbut with a gradually perishing hopethat somebody would laugh, or that somebody would at least smile, but nobody did. i didn't know enough to give it up and sit down, i was too new to public speaking, and so i went on with this awful performance, and carried it clear through to the end, in front of a body of people who seemed turned to stone with horror. it was the sort of expression their faces would have worn if i had been making these remarks about the deity and the rest of the trinity; there is no milder way in which to describe the petrified condition and the ghastly expression of those people. when i sat down it was with a heart which had long ceased to beat. i shall never be as dead again as i was then. i shall never be as miserable again as i was then. i speak now as one who doesn't know what the condition of things may be in the next world, but in this one i shall never be as wretched again as i was then. howells, who was near me, tried to say a comforting word, but couldn't get beyond a gasp. there was no usehe understood the whole size of the disaster. he had good intentions, but the words froze before they could get out. it was an atmosphere that would freeze anything. if benvenuto cellini's salamander had been in that place he would not have survived to be put into cellini's autobiography. there was a frightful pause. there was an awful silence, a desolating silence. then the next man on the list had to get upthere was no help for it. that was bishopbishop had just burst handsomely upon the world with a most acceptable novel, which had appeared in the atlantic monthly, a place which would make any novel respectable and any author noteworthy. in this case the novel itself was recognized as being, without extraneous help, respectable. bishop was away up in the public favor, and he was an object of high interest, consequently there was a sort of national expectancy in the air; we may say our american millions were standing, from maine to texas and from alaska to florida, holding their breath, their lips parted, their hands ready to applaud, when bishop should get up on that occasion, and for the first time in his life speak in public. it was under these damaging conditions that he got up to "make good," as the vulgar say. i had spoken several times before, and that is the reason why i was able to go on without dying in my tracks, as i ought to have donebut bishop had had no experience. he was up facing those awful deitiesfacing those other people, those strangersfacing human beings for the first time in his life, with a speech to utter. no doubt it was well packed away in his memory, no doubt it was fresh and usable, until i had been heard from. i suppose that after that, and under the smothering pall of that dreary silence, it began to waste away and disappear out of his head like the rags breaking from the edge of a fog, and presently there wasn't any fog left. he didn't go onhe didn't last long. it was not many sentences after his first before he began to hesitate, and break, and lose his grip, and totter, and wobble, and at last he slumped down in a limp and mushy pile. well, the programme for the occasion was probably not more than one-third finished, but it ended there. nobody rose. the next man hadn't strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so stupefied, paralyzed, it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or even try. nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. howells mournfully, and without words, hitched himself to bishop and me and supported us out of the room. it was very kindhe was most generous. he towed us tottering away into some room in that building, and we sat down there. i don't know what my remark was now, but i know the nature of it. it was the kind of remark you make when you know that nothing in the world can help your case. but howells was honesthe had to say the heart-breaking things he did say: that there was no help for this calamity, this shipwreck, this cataclysm; that this was the most disastrous thing that had ever happened in anybody's historyand then he added, "that is, for youand consider what you have done for bishop. it is bad enough in your case, you deserve to suffer. you have committed this crime, and you deserve to have all you are going to get. but here is an innocent man. bishop had never done you any harm, and see what you have done to him. he can never hold his head up again. the world can never look upon bishop as being a live person. he is a corpse." that is the history of that episode of twenty-eight years ago, which pretty nearly killed me with shame during that first year or two whenever it forced its way into my mind. now then, i take that speech up and examine it. as i said, it arrived this morning, from boston. i have read it twice, and unless i am an idiot, it hasn't a single defect in it from the first word to the last. it is just as good as good can be. it is smart; it is saturated with humor. there isn't a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it anywhere. what could have been the matter with that house? it is amazing, it is incredible, that they didn't shout with laughter, and those deities the loudest of them all. could the fault have been with me? did i lose courage when i saw those great men up there whom i was going to describe in such a strange fashion? if that happened, if i showed doubt, that can account for it, for you can't be successfully funny if you show that you are afraid of it. well, i can't account for it, but if i had those beloved and revered old literary immortals back here now on the platform at carnegie hall i would take that same old speech, deliver it, word for word, and melt them till they'd run all over that stage. oh, the fault must have been with me, it is not in the speech at all. plymouth rock and the pilgrims. address at the first annual dinner, n. e. society, philadelphia, december 22, 1881. on calling upon mr. clemens to make response, president rollins said: "this sentiment has been assigned to one who was never exactly born in new england, nor, perhaps, were any of his ancestors. he is not technically, therefore, of new england descent. under the painful circumstances in which he has found himself, however, he has done the best he couldhe has had all his children born there, and has made of himself a new england ancestor. he is a self-made man. more than this, and better even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature he is of new england ascent. to ascend there in anything that's reasonable is difficult, forconfidentially, with the door shutwe all know that they are the brightest, ablest sons of that goodly land who never leave it, and it is among and above them that mr. twain has made his brilliant and permanent ascentbecome a man of mark." i rise to protest. i have kept still for years, but really i think there is no sufficient justification for this sort of thing. what do you want to celebrate those people for?those ancestors of yours of 1620the mayflower tribe, i mean. what do you want to celebrate them for? your pardon: the gentleman at my left assures me that you are not celebrating the pilgrims themselves, but the landing of the pilgrims at plymouth rock on the 22d of december. so you are celebrating their landing. why, the other pretext was thin enough, but this is thinner than ever; the other was tissue, tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this is gold-leaf. celebrating their landing! what was there remarkable about it, i would like to know? what can you be thinking of? why, those pilgrims had been at sea three or four months. it was the very middle of winter: it was as cold as death off cape cod there. why shouldn't they come ashore? if they hadn't landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact. it would have been a case of monumental leatherheadedness which the world would not willingly let die. if it had been you, gentlemen, you probably wouldn't have landed, but you have no shadow of right to be celebrating, in your ancestors, gifts which they did not exercise, but only transmitted. why, to be celebrating the mere landing of the pilgrimsto be trying to make out that this most natural and simple and customary procedure was an extraordinary circumstancea circumstance to be amazed at, and admired, aggrandized and glorified, at orgies like this for two hundred and sixty yearshang it, a horse would have known enough to land; a horsepardon again; the gentleman on my right assures me that it was not merely the landing of the pilgrims that we are celebrating, but the pilgrims themselves. so we have struck an inconsistency hereone says it was the landing, the other says it was the pilgrims. it is an inconsistency characteristic of your intractable and disputatious tribe, for you never agree about anything but boston. well, then, what do you want to celebrate those pilgrims for? they were a mighty hard lotyou know it. i grant you, without the slightest unwillingness, that they were a deal more gentle and merciful and just than were the people of europe of that day; i grant you that they are better than their predecessors. but what of that?that is nothing. people always progress. you are better than your fathers and grandfathers were (this is the first time i have ever aimed a measureless slander at the departed, for i consider such things improper). yes, those among you who have not been in the penitentiary, if such there be, are better than your fathers and grandfathers were; but is that any sufficient reason for getting up annual dinners and celebrating you? no, by no meansby no means. well, i repeat, those pilgrims were a hard lot. they took good care of themselves, but they abolished everybody else's ancestors. i am a border-ruffian from the state of missouri. i am a connecticut yankee by adoption. in me, you have missouri morals, connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the combination which makes the perfect man. but where are my ancestors? whom shall i celebrate? where shall i find the raw material? my first american ancestor, gentlemen, was an indianan early indian. your ancestors skinned him alive, and i am an orphan. not one drop of my blood flows in that indian's veins today. i stand here, lone and forlorn, without an ancestor. they skinned him! i do not object to that, if they needed his fur; but alive, gentlemenalive! they skinned him aliveand before company! that is what rankles. think how he must have felt; for he was a sensitive person and easily embarrassed. if he had been a bird, it would have been all right, and no violence done to his feelings, because he would have been considered "dressed." but he was not a bird, gentlemen, he was a man, and probably one of the most undressed men that ever was. i ask you to put yourselves in his place. i ask it as a favor; i ask it as a tardy act of justice; i ask it in the interest of fidelity to the traditions of your ancestors; i ask it that the world may contemplate, with vision unobstructed by disguising swallow-tails and white cravats, the spectacle which the true new england society ought to present. cease to come to these annual orgies in this hollow modern mockerythe surplusage of raiment. come in character; come in the summer grace, come in the unadorned simplicity, come in the free and joyous costume which your sainted ancestors provided for mine. later ancestors of mine were the quakers william robinson, marmaduke stevenson, et al. your tribe chased them out of the country for their religion's sake; promised them death if they came back; for your ancestors had forsaken the homes they loved, and braved the perils of the sea, the implacable climate, and the savage wilderness, to acquire that highest and most precious of boons, freedom for every man on this broad continent to worship according to the dictates of his own conscienceand they were not going to allow a lot of pestiferous quakers to interfere with it. your ancestors broke forever the chains of political slavery, and gave the vote to every man in this wide land, excluding none!none except those who did not belong to the orthodox church. your ancestorsyes, they were a hard lot; but, nevertheless, they gave us religious liberty to worship as they required us to worship, and political liberty to vote as the church required; and so i the bereft one, i the forlorn one, am here to do my best to help you celebrate them right. the quaker woman elizabeth hooton was an ancestress of mine. your people were pretty severe with heryou will confess that. but, poor thing! i believe they changed her opinions before she died, and took her into their fold; and so we have every reason to presume that when she died she went to the same place which your ancestors went to. it is a great pity, for she was a good woman. roger williams was an ancestor of mine. i don't really remember what your people did with him. but they banished him to rhode island, anyway. and then, i believe, recognizing that this was really carrying harshness to an unjustifiable extreme, they took pity on him and burned him. they were a hard lot! all those salem witches were ancestors of mine! your people made it tropical for them. yes, they did; by pressure and the gallows they made such a clean deal with them that there hasn't been a witch and hardly a halter in our family from that day to this, and that is one hundred and eighty-nine years. the first slave brought into new england out of africa by your progenitors was an ancestor of minefor i am of a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite mongrel. i'm not one of your sham meerschaums that you can color in a week. no, my complexion is the patient art of eight generations. well, in my own time, i had acquired a lot of my kinby purchase, and swapping around, and one way and anotherand was getting along very well. then, with the inborn perversity of your lineage, you got up a war, and took them all away from me. and so, again am i bereft, again am i forlorn; no drop of my blood flows in the veins of any living being who is marketable. o my friends, hear me and reform! i seek your good, not mine. you have heard the speeches. disband these new england societiesnurseries of a system of steadily augmenting laudation and hosannaing, which, if persisted in uncurbed, may some day in the remote future beguile you into prevaricating and bragging. oh, stop, stop, while you are still temperate in your appreciation of your ancestors! hear me, i beseech you; get up an auction and sell plymouth rock! the pilgrims were a simple and ignorant race. they never had seen any good rocks before, or at least any that were not watched, and so they were excusable for hopping ashore in frantic delight and clapping an iron fence around this one. but you, gentlemen, are educated; you are enlightened; you know that in the rich land of your nativity, opulent new england, overflowing with rocks, this one isn't worth, at the outside, more than thirty-five cents. therefore, sell it, before it is injured by exposure, or at least throw it open to the patent-medicine advertisements, and let it earn its taxes. yes, hear your true friendyour only true friendlist to his voice. disband these societies, hotbeds of vice, of moral decayperpetuators of ancestral superstition. here on this board i see water, i see milk, i see the wild and deadly lemonade. these are but steps upon the downward path. next we shall see tea, then chocolate, then coffeehotel coffee. a few more yearsall too few, i fearmark my words, we shall have cider! gentlemen, pause ere it be too late. you are on the broad road which leads to dissipation, physical ruin, moral decay, gory crime and the gallows! i beseech you, i implore you, in the name of your anxious friends, in the name of your suffering families, in the name of your impending widows and orphans, stop ere it be too late. disband these new england societies, renounce these soul-blistering saturnalia, cease from varnishing the rusty reputations of your long-vanished ancestorsthe super-high-moral old iron-clads of cape cod, the pious buccaneers of plymouth rockgo home, and try to learn to behave! however, chaff and nonsense aside, i think i honor and appreciate your pilgrim stock as much as you do yourselves, perhaps; and i endorse and adopt a sentiment uttered by a grandfather of mine oncea man of sturdy opinions, of sincere make of mind, and not given to flattery. he said: "people may talk as they like about that pilgrim stock, but, after all's said and done, it would be pretty hard to improve on those people; and, as for me, i don't mind coming out flat-footed and saying there ain't any way to improve on themexcept having them born in missouri!" compliments and degrees. delivered at the lotos club, january 11, 1908. in introducing mr. clemens, frank r. lawrence, the president of the lotos club, recalled the fact that the first club dinner in the present club-house, some fourteen years ago, was in honor of mark twain. i wish to begin this time at the beginning, lest i forget it altogether; that is to say, i wish to thank you for this welcome that you are giving, and the welcome which you gave me seven years ago, and which i forgot to thank you for at that time. i also wish to thank you for the welcome you gave me fourteen years ago, which i also forgot to thank you for at the time. i hope you will continue this custom to give me a dinner every seven years before i join the hosts in the other worldi do not know which world. mr. lawrence and mr. porter have paid me many compliments. it is very difficult to take compliments. i do not care whether you deserve the compliments or not, it is just as difficult to take them. the other night i was at the engineers' club, and enjoyed the sufferings of mr. carnegie. they were complimenting him there; there it was all compliments, and none of them deserved. they say that you cannot live by bread alone, but i can live on compliments. i do not make any pretence that i dislike compliments. the stronger the better, and i can manage to digest them. i think i have lost so much by not making a collection of compliments, to put them away and take them out again once in a while. when in england i said that i would start to collect compliments, and i began there and i have brought some of them along. the first one of these liesi wrote them down and preserved themi think they are mighty good and extremely just. it is one of hamilton mabie's compliments. he said that la salle was the first one to make a voyage of the mississippi, but mark twain was the first to chart, light, and navigate it for the whole world. if that had been published at the time that i issued that book [life on the mississippi], it would have been money in my pocket. i tell you, it is a talent by itself to pay compliments gracefully and have them ring true. it's an art by itself. here is another compliment by albert bigelow paine, my biographer. he is writing four octavo volumes about me, and he has been at my elbow two and one-half years. i just suppose that he does not know me, but says he knows me. he says "mark twain is not merely a great writer, a great philosopher, a great man; he is the supreme expression of the human being, with his strength and his weakness." what a talent for compression! it takes a genius in compression to compact as many facts as that. w. d. howells spoke of me as first of hartford, and ultimately of the solar system, not to say of the universe. you know how modest howells is. if it can be proved that my fame reaches to neptune and saturn, that will satisfy even me. you know how modest and retiring howells seems to be, but deep down he is as vain as i am. mr. howells had been granted a degree at oxford, whose gown was red. he had been invited to an exercise at columbia, and upon inquiry had been told that it was usual to wear the black gown. later he had found that three other men wore bright gowns, and he had lamented that he had been one of the black mass, and not a red torch. edison wrote: "the average american loves his family. if he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects mark twain." now here's the compliment of a little montana girl which came to me indirectly. she was in a room in which there was a large photograph of me. after gazing at it steadily for a time, she said: "we've got a john the baptist like that." she also said: "only ours has more trimmings." i suppose she meant the halo. now here is a gold-miner's compliment. it is forty-two years old. it was my introduction to an audience to which i lectured in a log school-house. there were no ladies there. i wasn't famous then. they didn't know me. only the miners were there, with their breeches tucked into their boot-tops and with clay all over them. they wanted some one to introduce me, and they selected a miner, who protested, saying: "i don't know anything about this man. anyhow, i only know two things about him. one is, he has never been in jail, and the other is, i don't know why." there's one thing i want to say about that english trip. i knew his majesty the king of england long years ago, and i didn't meet him for the first time then. one thing that i regret was that some newspapers said i talked with the queen of england with my hat on. i don't do that with any woman. i did not put it on until she asked me to. then she told me to put it on, and it's a command there. i thought i had carried my american democracy far enough. so i put it on. i have no use for a hat, and never did have. who was it who said that the police of london knew me? why, the police know me everywhere. there never was a day over there when a policeman did not salute me, and then put up his hand and stop the traffic of the world. they treated me as though i were a duchess. the happiest experience i had in england was at a dinner given in the building of the punch publication, a humorous paper which is appreciated by all englishmen. it was the greatest privilege ever allowed a foreigner. i entered the dining-room of the building, where those men get together who have been running the paper for over fifty years. we were about to begin dinner when the toastmaster said: "just a minute; there ought to be a little ceremony." then there was that meditating silence for a while, and out of a closet there came a beautiful little girl dressed in pink, holding in her hand a copy of the previous week's paper, which had in it my cartoon. it broke me all up. i could not even say "thank you." that was the prettiest incident of the dinner, the delight of all that wonderful table. when she was about to go, i said, "my child, you are not going to leave me; i have hardly got acquainted with you." she replied, "you know i've got to go; they never let me come in here before, and they never will again." that is one of the beautiful incidents that i cherish. [at the conclusion of his speech, and while the diners were still cheering him, colonel porter brought forward the red-and-gray gown of the oxford "doctor," and mr. clemens was made to don it. the diners rose to their feet in their enthusiasm. with the mortar-board on his head, and looking down admiringly at himself, mr. twain said:] i like that gown. i always did like red. the redder it is the better i like it. i was born for a savage. now, whoever saw any red like this? there is no red outside the arteries of an archangel that could compare with this. i know you all envy me. i am going to have luncheon shortly with ladiesjust ladies. i will be the only lady of my sex present, and i shall put on this gown and make those ladies look dim. books, authors, and hats. address at the pilgrims' club luncheon, given in honor of mr. clemens at the savoy hotel, london, june 25, 1907. mr. birrell, m.p., chief-secretary for ireland, in introducing mr. clemens said: "we all love mark twain, and we are here to tell him so. one more pointall the world knows it, and that is why it is dangerous to omit itour guest is a distinguished citizen of the great republic beyond the seas. in america his huckleberry finn and his tom sawyer are what robinson crusoe and tom brown's school days have been to us. they are racy of the soil. they are books to which it is impossible to place any period of termination. i will not speak of the classicsreminiscences of much evil in our early lives. we do not meet here to-day as critics with our appreciations and depreciations, our two-penny little prefaces or our forewords. i am not going to say what the world a thousand years hence will think of mark twain. posterity will take care of itself, will read what it wants to read, will forget what it chooses to forget, and will pay no attention whatsoever to our critical mumblings and jumblings. let us therefore be content to say to our friend and guest that we are here speaking for ourselves and for our children, to say what he has been to us. i remember in liverpool, in 1867, first buying the copy, which i still preserve, of the celebrated jumping frog. it had a few words of preface which reminded me then that our guest in those days was called 'the wild humorist of the pacific slope,' and a few lines later down, 'the moralist of the main.' that was some forty years ago. here he is, still the humorist, still the moralist. his humor enlivens and enlightens his morality, and his morality is all the better for his humor. that is one of the reasons why we love him. i am not here to mention any book of histhat is a subject of dispute in my family circle, which is the best and which is the next bestbut i must put in a word, lest i should not be true to myselfa terrible thingfor his joan of arc, a book of chivalry, of nobility, and of manly sincerity for which i take this opportunity of thanking him. but you can all drink this toast, each one of you with his own intention. you can get into it what meaning you like. mark twain is a man whom english and americans do well to honor. he is the true consolidator of nations. his delightful humor is of the kind which dissipates and destroys national prejudices. his truth and his honor, his love of truth, and his love of honor, overflow all boundaries. he has made the world better by his presence. we rejoice to see him here. long may he live to reap the plentiful harvest of hearty, honest human affection!" pilgrims, i desire first to thank those undergraduates of oxford. when a man has grown so old as i am, when he has reached the verge of seventy-two years, there is nothing that carries him back to the dreamland of his life, to his boyhood, like recognition of those young hearts up yonder. and so i thank them out of my heart. i desire to thank the pilgrims of new york also for their kind notice and message which they have cabled over here. mr. birrell says he does not know how he got here. but he will be able to get away all righthe has not drunk anything since he came here. i am glad to know about those friends of his, otway and chattertonfresh, new names to me. i am glad of the disposition he has shown to rescue them from the evils of poverty, and if they are still in london, i hope to have a talk with them. for a while i thought he was going to tell us the effect which my book had upon his growing manhood. i thought he was going to tell us how much that effect amounted to, and whether it really made him what he now is, but with the discretion born of parliamentary experience he dodged that, and we do not know now whether he read the book or not. he did that very neatly. i could not do it any better myself. my books have had effects, and very good ones, too, here and there, and some others not so good. there is no doubt about that. but i remember one monumental instance of it years and years ago. professor norton, of harvard, was over here, and when he came back to boston i went out with howells to call on him. norton was allied in some way by marriage with darwin. mr. norton was very gentle in what he had to say, and almost delicate, and he said: "mr. clemens, i have been spending some time with mr. darwin in england, and i should like to tell you something connected with that visit. you were the object of it, and i myself would have been very proud of it, but you may not be proud of it. at any rate, i am going to tell you what it was, and to leave to you to regard it as you please. mr. darwin took me up to his bedroom and pointed out certain things therepitcher-plants, and so on, that he was measuring and watching from day to dayand he said: 'the chambermaid is permitted to do what she pleases in this room, but she must never touch those plants and never touch those books on that table by that candle. with those books i read myself to sleep every night.' those were your own books." i said: "there is no question to my mind as to whether i should regard that as a compliment or not. i do regard it as a very great compliment and a very high honor that that great mind, laboring for the whole human race, should rest itself on my books. i am proud that he should read himself to sleep with them." now, i could not keep that to myselfi was so proud of it. as soon as i got home to hartford i called up my oldest friendand dearest enemy on occasionthe rev. joseph twichell, my pastor, and i told him about that, and, of course, he was full of interest and venom. those people who get no compliments like that feel like that. he went off. he did not issue any applause of any kind, and i did not hear of that subject for some time. but when mr. darwin passed away from this life, and some time after darwin's life and letters came out, the rev. mr. twichell procured an early copy of that work and found something in it which he considered applied to me. he came over to my houseit was snowing, raining, sleeting, but that did not make any difference to twichell. he produced the book, and turned over and over, until he came to a certain place, when he said: "here, look at this letter from mr. darwin to sir joseph hooker." what mr. darwin saidi give you the idea and not the very wordswas this: i do not know whether i ought to have devoted my whole life to these drudgeries in natural history and the other sciences or not, for while i may have gained in one way i have lost in another. once i had a fine perception and appreciation of high literature, but in me that quality is atrophied. "that was the reason," said mr. twichell, "he was reading your books." mr. birrell has touched lightlyvery lightly, but in not an uncomplimentary wayon my position in this world as a moralist. i am glad to have that recognition, too, because i have suffered since i have been in this town; in the first place, right away, when i came here, from a newsman going around with a great red, highly displayed placard in the place of an apron. he was selling newspapers, and there were two sentences on that placard which would have been all right if they had been punctuated; but they ran those two sentences together without a comma or anything, and that would naturally create a wrong impression, because it said, "mark twain arrives ascot cup stolen." no doubt many a person was misled by those sentences joined together in that unkind way. i have no doubt my character has suffered from it. i suppose i ought to defend my character, but how can i defend it? i can say here and nowand anybody can see by my face that i am sincere, that i speak the truththat i have never seen that cup. i have not got the cupi did not have a chance to get it. i have always had a good character in that way. i have hardly ever stolen anything, and if i did steal anything i had discretion enough to know about the value of it first. i do not steal things that are likely to get myself into trouble. i do not think any of us do that. i know we all take thingsthat is to be expectedbut really, i have never taken anything, certainly in england, that amounts to any great thing. i do confess that when i was here seven years ago i stole a hat, but that did not amount to anything. it was not a good hat, and was only a clergyman's hat, anyway. i was at a luncheon party, and archdeacon wilberforce was there also. i dare say he is archdeacon nowhe was a canon thenand he was serving in the westminster battery, if that is the proper termi do not know, as you mix military and ecclesiastical things together so much. he left the luncheon table before i did. he began this. i did steal his hat, but he began by taking mine. i make that interjection because i would not accuse archdeacon wilberforce of stealing my hati should not think of it. i confine that phrase to myself. he merely took my hat. and with good judgment, tooit was a better hat than his. he came out before the luncheon was over, and sorted the hats in the hall, and selected one which suited. it happened to be mine. he went off with it. when i came out by-and-by there was no hat there which would go on my head except his, which was left behind. my head was not the customary size just at that time. i had been receiving a good many very nice and complimentary attentions, and my head was a couple of sizes larger than usual, and his hat just suited me. the bumps and corners were all right intellectually. there were results pleasing to mepossibly so to him. he found out whose hat it was, and wrote me saying it was pleasant that all the way home, whenever he met anybody his gravities, his solemnities, his deep thoughts, his eloquent remarks were all snatched up by the people he met, and mistaken for brilliant humorisms. i had another experience. it was not unpleasing. i was received with a deference which was entirely foreign to my experience by everybody whom i met, so that before i got home i had a much higher opinion of myself than i have ever had before or since. and there is in that very connection an incident which i remember at that old date which is rather melancholy to me, because it shows how a person can deteriorate in a mere seven years. it is seven years ago. i have not that hat now. i was going down pall-mall, or some other of your big streets, and i recognized that that hat needed ironing. i went into a big shop and passed in my hat, and asked that it might be ironed. they were courteous, very courteous, even courtly. they brought that hat back to me presently very sleek and nice, and i asked how much there was to pay. they replied that they did not charge the clergy anything. i have cherished the delight of that moment from that day to this. it was the first thing i did the other day to go and hunt up that shop and hand in my hat to have it ironed. i said when it came back, "how much to pay?" they said, "ninepence." in seven years i have acquired all that worldliness, and i am sorry to be back where i was seven years ago. but now i am chaffing and chaffing and chaffing here, and i hope you will forgive me for that; but when a man stands on the verge of seventy-two you know perfectly well that he never reached that place without knowing what this life isheartbreaking bereavement. and so our reverence is for our dead. we do not forget them; but our duty is toward the living; and if we can be cheerful, cheerful in spirit, cheerful in speech and in hope, that is a benefit to those who are around us. my own history includes an incident which will always connect me with england in a pathetic way, for when i arrived here seven years ago with my wife and my daughterwe had gone around the globe lecturing to raise money to clear off a debtmy wife and one of my daughters started across the ocean to bring to england our eldest daughter. she was twenty-four years of age and in the bloom of young womanhood, and we were unsuspecting. when my wife and daughterand my wife has passed from this life sincewhen they had reached mid-atlantic, a cablegramone of those heartbreaking cablegrams which we all in our days have to experiencewas put into my hand. it stated that that daughter of ours had gone to her long sleep. and so, as i say, i cannot always be cheerful, and i cannot always be chaffing; i must sometimes lay the cap and bells aside, and recognize that i am of the human race like the rest, and must have my cares and griefs. and therefore i noticed what mr. birrell saidi was so glad to hear him say itsomething that was in the nature of these verses here at the top of this: "he lit our life with shafts of sun and vanquished pain. thus two great nations stand as one in honoring twain." i am very glad to have those verses. i am very glad and very grateful for what mr. birrell said in that connection. i have received since i have been here, in this one week, hundreds of letters from all conditions of people in englandmen, women, and childrenand there is in them compliment, praise, and, above all and better than all, there is in them a note of affection. praise is well, compliment is well, but affectionthat is the last and final and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement, and i am very grateful to have that reward. all these letters make me feel that here in englandas in americawhen i stand under the english flag, i am not a stranger. i am not an alien, but at home. dedication speech. at the dedication of the college of the city of new york, may 14, 1908. mr. clemens wore his gown as doctor of laws, oxford university. ambassador bryce and mr. choate had made the formal addresses. how difficult indeed, is the higher education. mr. choate needs a little of it. he is not only short as a statistician of new york, but he is off, far off, in his mathematics. the four thousand citizens of greater new york, indeed! but i don't think it was wise or judicious on the part of mr. choate to show this higher education he has obtained. he sat in the lap of that great education (i was there at the time), and see the resultthe lamentable result. maybe if he had had a sandwich here to sustain him the result would not have been so serious. for seventy-two years i have been striving to acquire that higher education which stands for modesty and diffidence, and it doesn't work. and then look at ambassador bryce, who referred to his alma mater, oxford. he might just as well have included me. well, i am a later production. if i am the latest graduate, i really and sincerely hope i am not the final flower of its seven centuries; i hope it may go on for seven ages longer. die schrecken der deutschen sprache address to the vienna press club, november 21, 1897, as delivered in german es hat mich tief geruhrt, meine herren, hier so gastfreundlich empfangen zu werden, von kollegen aus meinem eigenen berufe, in diesem von meiner eigenen heimath so weit entferntem lande. mein herz ist voller dankbarkeit, aber meine armuth an deutschen worten zwingt mich zu groszer sparzamkeit des ausdruckes. entschuldigen sie, meine herren, dasz ich verlese, was ich ihnen sagen will. (er las aber nicht, anm. d. ref.) die deutsche sprache spreche ich nicht gut, doch haben mehrere sachverstandige mich versichert, dasz ich sie schreibe wie ein engel. mag seinich weisz nicht. habe bis jetzt keine bekanntschaften mit engeln gehabt. das kommt spaterwenn's dem lieben gott gefalltes hat keine eile. seit lange, meine herren, habe ich die leidenschaftliche sehnsucht gehegt, eine rede auf deutsch zu halten, aber man hat mir's nie erlauben wollen. leute, die kein gefuhl fur die kunst hatten, legten mir immer hindernisse in den weg und vereitelten meinen wunschzuweilen durch vorwande, haufig durch gewalt. immer sagten diese leute zu mir: "schweigen sie, ew. hochwohlgeboren! ruhe, um gotteswillen! suche eine andere art und weise, dich lastig zu machen." im jetzigen fall, wie gewohnlich, ist es mir schwierig geworden, mir die erlaubnisz zu verschaffen. das comite bedauerte sehr, aber es konnte mir die erlaubnisz nicht bewilligen wegen eines gesetzes, das von der concordia verlangt, sie soll die deutsche sprache schnutzen. du liebe zeit! wieso hatte man mir das sagen konnenmogendurfensollen? ich bin ja der treueste freund der deutschen spracheund nicht nur jetzt, sondern von lange herja vor zwanzig jahren schon. und nie habe ich das verlangen gehabt, der edlen sprache zu schaden, im gegentheil, nur gewunscht, sie zu verbessern; ich wollte sie blos reformiren. es ist der traum meines lebens gewesen. ich habe schon besuche bei den verschiedenen deutschen regierungen abgestattet und um kontrakte gebeten. ich bin jetzt nach oesterreich in demselben auftrag gekommen. ich wurde nur einige aenderungen anstreben. ich wurde blos die sprachmethodedie uppige, weitschweifige konstruktionzusammenrucken; die ewige parenthese unterdrucken, abschaffen, vernichten; die einfuhrung von mehr als dreizehn subjekten in einen satz verbieten; das zeitwort so weit nach vorne rucken, bis man es ohne fernrohr entdecken kann. mit einem wort, meine herren, ich mochte ihre geliebte sprache vereinfachen, auf dasz, meine herren, wenn sie sie zum gebet brauchen, man sie dort oben versteht. ich flehe sie an, von mir sich berathen zu lassen, fuhren sie diese erwahnten reformen aus. dann werden sie eine prachtvolle sprache besitzen und nachher, wenn sie etwas sagen wollen, werden sie wenigstens selber verstehen, was sie gesagt haben. aber ofters heutzutage, wenn sie einen meilen-langen satz von sich gegeben und sie sich etwas angelehnt haben, um auszuruhen, dann mussen sie eine ruhrende neugierde empfinden, selbst herauszubringen, was sie eigentlich gesprochen haben. vor mehreren tagen hat der korrespondent einer hiesigen zeitung einen satz zustande gebracht welcher hundertundzwolf worte enthielt und darin waren sieben parenthese eingeschachtelt und es wurde das subjekt siebenmal gewechselt. denken sie nur, meine herren, im laufe der reise eines einzigen satzes musz das arme, verfolgte, ermudete subjekt siebenmal umsteigen. nun, wenn wir die erwahnten reformen ausfuhren, wird's nicht mehre so arg sein. doch noch eins. ich mochte gern das trennbare zeitwort auch ein bischen reformiren. ich mochte niemand thun lassen, was schiller gethan: der hat die ganze geschichte des dreizigjahrigen krieges zwischen die zwei glieder eines trennbaren zeitwortes eingezwangt. das hat sogar deutschland selbst emport; und man hat schiller die erlaubnisz verweigert, die geschichte des hundert jahrigen krieges zu verfassengott sei's gedankt. nachdem alle diese reformen festgestellt sein werden, wird die deutsche sprache die edelste und die schonste auf der welt sein. da ihnen jetzt, meine herren, der charackter meiner mission bekannt ist, bitte ich sie, so freundlich zu sein und mir ihre werthvolle hilfe zu schenken. herr potzl hat das publikum glauben machen wollen, dasz ich nach wien gekommen bin, um die brucken zu verstopfen und den verkehr zu hindern, wahrend ich beobachtungen sammle und aufzeichne. lassen sie sich aber nicht von ihm anfuhren. meine haufige anwesenheit auf den brucken hat einen ganz unschuldigen grund. dort giebt's den nothigen raum. dort kann man einen edlen, langen, deutschen satz ausdehnen, die bruckengelander entlang, und seinen ganzen inhalt mit einem blick ubersehen. auf das eine ende des gelanders klebe ich das erste glied eines trennbaren zeitwortes und das schluszglied klebe ich an's andere endedann breite ich den leib des satzes dazwischen aus. gewohnlich sind fur meinen zweck die brucken der stadt lang genug: wenn ich aber potzl's schriften studiren will, fahre ich hinaus und benutze die herrliche unendliche reichsbrucke. aber das ist eine verleumdung. potzl schreibt das schonste deutsch. vielleicht nicht so biegsam wie das meinige, aber in manchen kleinigkeiten viel besser. entschuldigen sie diese schmeicheleien. die sind wohl verdient. nun bringe ich meine rede umneinich wollte sagen, ich bringe sie zum schlusz. ich bin ein fremderaber hier, unter ihnen, habe ich es ganz vergessen. und so, wieder, und noch wiederbiete ich ihnen meinen herzlichsten dank! horrors of the german language. address to the vienna press club, november 21, 1897 [a literal translation]. it has me deeply touched, my gentlemen, here so hospitably received to be. from colleagues out of my own profession, in this from my own home so far distant land. my heart is full of gratitude, but my poverty of german words forces me to greater economy of expression. excuse you, my gentlemen, that i read off, what i you say will. [but he didn't read]. the german language speak i not good, but have numerous connoisseurs me assured that i her write like an angel. maybemaybei know not. have till now no acquaintance with the angels had. that comes laterwhen it the dear god pleaseit has no hurry. since long, my gentlemen, have i the passionate longing nursed a speech on german to hold, but one has me not permitted. men, who no feeling for the art had, laid me ever hindrance in the way and made naught my desiresometimes by excuses, often by force. always said these men to me: "keep you still, your highness! silence! for god's sake seek another way and means yourself obnoxious to make." in the present case, as usual it is me difficult become, for me the permission to obtain. the committee sorrowed deeply, but could me the permission not grant on account of a law which from the concordia demands she shall the german language protect. du liebe zeit! how so had one to me this say couldmightdaredshould? i am indeed the truest friend of the german languageand not only now, but from long sinceyes, before twenty years already. and never have i the desire had the noble language to hurt; to the contrary, only wished she to improvei would her only reform. it is the dream of my life been. i have already visits by the various german governments paid and for contracts prayed. i am now to austria in the same task come. i would only some changes effect. i would only the language methodthe luxurious, elaborate construction compress, the eternal parenthesis suppress, do away with, annihilate; the introduction of more than thirteen subjects in one sentence forbid; the verb so far to the front pull that one it without a telescope discover can. with one word, my gentlemen, i would your beloved language simplify so that, my gentlemen, when you her for prayer need, one her yonder-up understands. i beseech you, from me yourself counsel to let, execute these mentioned reforms. then will you an elegant language possess, and afterward, when you some thing say will, will you at least yourself understand what you said had. but often nowadays, when you a mile-long sentence from you given and you yourself somewhat have rested, then must you have a touching inquisitiveness have yourself to determine what you actually spoken have. before several days has the correspondent of a local paper a sentence constructed which hundred and twelve words contain, and therein were seven parentheses smuggled in, and the subject seven times changed. think you only, my gentlemen, in the course of the voyage of a single sentence must the poor, persecuted, fatigued subject seven times change position! now, when we the mentioned reforms execute, will it no longer so bad be. doch noch eins. i might gladly the separable verb also a little bit reform. i might none do let what schiller did: he has the whole history of the thirty years' war between the two members of a separable verb in-pushed. that has even germany itself aroused, and one has schiller the permission refused the history of the hundred years' war to composegod be it thanked! after all these reforms established be will, will the german language the noblest and the prettiest on the world be. since to you now, my gentlemen, the character of my mission known is, beseech i you so friendly to be and to me your valuable help grant. mr. potzl has the public believed make would that i to vienna come am in order the bridges to clog up and the traffic to hinder, while i observations gather and note. allow you yourselves but not from him deceived. my frequent presence on the bridges has an entirely innocent ground. yonder gives it the necessary space, yonder can one a noble long german sentence elaborate, the bridge-railing along, and his whole contents with one glance overlook. on the one end of the railing pasted i the first member of a separable verb and the final member cleave i to the other endthen spread the body of the sentence between it out! usually are for my purposes the bridges of the city long enough; when i but potzl's writings study will i ride out and use the glorious endless imperial bridge. but this is a calumny; potzl writes the prettiest german. perhaps not so pliable as the mine, but in many details much better. excuse you these flatteries. these are well deserved. now i my speech executeno, i would say i bring her to the close. i am a foreignerbut here, under you, have i it entirely forgotten. and so again and yet again proffer i you my heartiest thanks. german for the hungarians. address at the jubilee celebration of the emancipation of the hungarian press, march 26, 1899. the ministry and members of parliament were present. the subject was the "ausgleich"i. e., the arrangement for the apportionment of the taxes between hungary and austria. paragraph 14 of the ausgleich fixes the proportion each country must pay to the support of the army. it is the paragraph which caused the trouble and prevented its renewal. now that we are all here together, i think it will be a good idea to arrange the ausgleich. if you will act for hungary i shall be quite willing to act for austria, and this is the very time for it. there couldn't be a better, for we are all feeling friendly, fair-minded, and hospitable now, and full of admiration for each other, full of confidence in each other, full of the spirit of welcome, full of the grace of forgiveness, and the disposition to let bygones be bygones. let us not waste this golden, this beneficent, this providential opportunity. i am willing to make any concession you want, just so we get it settled. i am not only willing to let grain come in free, i am willing to pay the freight on it, and you may send delegates to the reichsrath if you like. all i require is that they shall be quiet, peaceable people like your own deputies, and not disturb our proceedings. if you want the gegenseitigengeldbeitragendenverhaltnismassigkeiten rearranged and readjusted i am ready for that. i will let you off at twenty-eight per cent.twenty-seveneven twenty-five if you insist, for there is nothing illiberal about me when i am out on a diplomatic debauch. now, in return for these concessions, i am willing to take anything in reason, and i think we may consider the business settled and the ausgleich ausgegloschen at last for ten solid years, and we will sign the papers in blank, and do it here and now. well, i am unspeakably glad to have that ausgleich off my hands. it has kept me awake nights for anderthalbjahr. but i never could settle it before, because always when i called at the foreign office in vienna to talk about it, there wasn't anybody at home, and that is not a place where you can go in and see for yourself whether it is a mistake or not, because the person who takes care of the front door there is of a size that discourages liberty of action and the free spirit of investigation. to think the ausgleich is abgemacht at last! it is a grand and beautiful consummation, and i am glad i came. the way i feel now i do honestly believe i would rather be just my own humble self at this moment than paragraph 14. a new german word. to aid a local charity mr. clemens appeared before a fashionable audience in vienna, march 10, 1899, reading his sketch "the lucerne girl," and describing how he had been interviewed and ridiculed. he said in part: i have not sufficiently mastered german to allow my using it with impunity. my collection of fourteen-syllable german words is still incomplete. but i have just added to that collection a jewela veritable jewel. i found it in a telegram from linz, and it contains ninety-five letters: personaleinkommensteuerschatzungskommissionsmitgliedsreisekostenrechnungserganzungsrevisionsfund if i could get a similar word engraved upon my tombstone i should sleep beneath it in peace. unconscious plagiarism. delivered at the dinner given by the publishers of "the atlantic monthly" to oliver wendell holmes in honor of his seventieth birthday, august 29, 1879. i would have travelled a much greater distance than i have come to witness the paying of honors to doctor holmes; for my feeling toward him has always been one of peculiar warmth. when one receives a letter from a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large event to him, as all of you know by your own experience. you never can receive letters enough from famous men afterward to obliterate that one, or dim the memory of the pleasant surprise it was, and the gratification it gave you. lapse of time cannot make it commonplace or cheap. well, the first great man who ever wrote me a letter was our guestoliver wendell holmes. he was also the first great literary man i ever stole anything fromand that is how i came to write to him and he to me. when my first book was new, a friend of mine said to me, "the dedication is very neat." yes, i said, i thought it was. my friend said, "i always admired it, even before i saw it in the innocents abroad." i naturally said: "what do you mean? where did you ever see it before?" "well, i saw it first some years ago as doctor holmes's dedication to his songs in many keys." of course, my first impulse was to prepare this man's remains for burial, but upon reflection i said i would reprieve him for a moment or two and give him a chance to prove his assertion if he could. we stepped into a book-store, and he did prove it. i had really stolen that dedication, almost word for word. i could not imagine how this curious thing had happened; for i knew one thingthat a certain amount of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that this pride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people's ideas. that is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a manand admirers had often told me i had nearly a basketfulthough they were rather reserved as to the size of the basket. however, i thought the thing out, and solved the mystery. two years before, i had been laid up a couple of weeks in the sandwich islands, and had read and re-read doctor holmes's poems till my mental reservoir was filled up with them to the brim. the dedication lay on the top, and handy, so, by-and-by, i unconsciously stole it. perhaps i unconsciously stole the rest of the volume, too, for many people have told me that my book was pretty poetical, in one way or another. well, of course, i wrote doctor holmes and told him i hadn't meant to steal, and he wrote back and said in the kindest way that it was all right and no harm done; and added that he believed we all unconsciously worked over ideas gathered in reading and hearing, imagining they were original with ourselves. he stated a truth, and did it in such a pleasant way, and salved over my sore spot so gently and so healingly, that i was rather glad i had committed the crime, for the sake of the letter. i afterward called on him and told him to make perfectly free with any ideas of mine that struck him as being good protoplasm for poetry. he could see by that that there wasn't anything mean about me; so we got along right from the start. i have not met doctor holmes many times since; and lately he saidhowever, i am wandering wildly away from the one thing which i got on my feet to do; that is, to make my compliments to you, my fellow-teachers of the great public, and likewise to say that i am right glad to see that doctor holmes is still in his prime and full of generous life; and as age is not determined by years, but by trouble and infirmities of mind and body, i hope it may be a very long time yet before any one can truthfully say, "he is growing old." the weather. address at the new england society's seventy-first annual dinner, new york city. the next toast was: "the oldest inhabitantthe weather of new england." who can lose it and forget it? who can have it and regret it? "be interposer 'twixt us twain." -merchant of venice. i reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in new england but the weather. i don't know who makes that, but i think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and learn how, in new england, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. there is a sumptuous variety about the new england weather that compels the stranger's admirationand regret. the weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. but it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. in the spring i have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours. it was i that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that marvellous collection of weather on exhibition at the centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. he was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all the climes. i said, "don't you do it; you come to new england on a favorable spring day." i told him what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. well, he came and he made his collection in four days. as to variety, why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. and as to quantitywell, after he had picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor. the people of new england are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some things which they will not stand. every year they kill a lot of poets for writing about "beautiful spring." these are generally casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. and so the first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has permanently gone by. old probabilities has a mighty reputation for accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. you take up the paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what to-day's weather is going to be on the pacific, down south, in the middle states, in the wisconsin region. see him sail along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets to new england, and then see his tail drop. he doesn't know what the weather is going to be in new england. well, he mulls over it, and by-and-by he gets out something about like this: probably northeast to southwest winds, varying to the southward and westward and eastward, and points between, high and low barometer swapping around from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning. then he jots down his postscript from his wandering mind, to cover accidents. "but it is possible that the programme may be wholly changed in the mean time." yes, one of the brightest gems in the new england weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. there is only one thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of ita perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the procession is going to move first. you fix up for the drought; you leave your umbrella in the house and sally out, and two to one you get drowned. you make up your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand from under, and take hold of something to steady yourself, and the first thing you know you get struck by lightning. these are great disappointments; but they can't be helped. the lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whetherwell, you'd think it was something valuable, and a congressman had been there. and the thunder. when the thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape and saw, and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say, "why, what awful thunder you have here!" but when the baton is raised and the real concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar with his head in the ash-barrel. now as to the size of the weather in new englandlengthways, i mean. it is utterly disproportioned to the size of that little country. half the time, when it is packed as full as it can stick, you will see that new england weather sticking out beyond the edges and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring states. she can't hold a tenth part of her weather. you can see cracks all about where she has strained herself trying to do it. i could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the new england weather, but i will give but a single specimen. i like to hear rain on a tin roof. so i covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. well, sir, do you think it ever rains on that tin? no, sir; skips it every time. mind, in this speech i have been trying merely to do honor to the new england weatherno language could do it justice. but, after all, there is at least one or two things about that weather (or, if you please, effects produced by it) which we residents would not like to part with. if we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagariesthe ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the topice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the shah of persia's diamond plume. then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to goldthe tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. one cannot make the words too strong. the babies. delivered at the banquet, in chicago, given by the army of the tennessee to their first commander general u. s. grant, november, 1879. the fifteenth regular toast was "the babies.as they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities." i like that. we have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. we have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground. it is a shame that for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn't amount to anything. if you will stop and think a minuteif you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life and recontemplate your first babyyou will remember that he amounted to a good deal, and even something over. you soldiers all know that when that little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in your resignation. he took entire command. you became his lackey, his mere body-servant, and you had to stand around too. he was not a commander who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else. you had to execute his order whether it was possible or not. and there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick. he treated you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to say a word. you could face the death-storm at donelson and vicksburg, and give back blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your nose, you had to take it. when the thunders of war were sounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, and advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his war-whoop you advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of the chance, too. when he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw out any side-remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer and a gentleman? no. you got up and got it. when he ordered his pap bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? not you. you went to work and warmed it. you even descended so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was rightthree parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those immortal hiccoughs. i can taste that stuff yet. and how many things you learned as you went along! sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels are whispering to him. very pretty, but too thinsimply wind on the stomach, my friends. if the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual hour, two o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and remark, with a mental addition which would not improve a sunday-school book much, that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself? oh! you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing!rock-a-by baby in the tree-top, for instance. what a spectacle for an army of the tennessee! and what an affliction for the neighbors, too; for it is not everybody within a mile around that likes military music at three in the morning. and when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? you simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch. the idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. one baby can furnish more business than you and your whole interior department can attend to. he is enterprising, irrepressible,. brimful of lawless activities. do what you please, you can't make him stay on the reservation. sufficient unto the day is one baby. as long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins. twins amount to a permanent riot. and there ain't any real difference between triplets and an insurrection. yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of the babies. think what is in store for the present crop! fifty years from now we shall all be dead, i trust, and then this flag, if it still survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a republic numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our increase. our present schooner of state will have grown into a political leviathana great eastern. the cradled babies of to-day will be on deck. let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract on their hands. among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are. in one of these cradles the unconscious farragut of the future is at this moment teethingthink of it!and putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but perfectly justifiable profanity over it, too. in another the future renowned astronomer is blinking at the shining milky way with but a languid interestpoor little chap!and wondering what has become of that other one they call the wet-nurse. in another the future great historian is lyingand doubtless will continue to lie until his earthly mission is ended. in another the future president is busying himself with no profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become of his hair so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there are now some 60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasion to grapple with that same old problem a second time. and in still one more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious commander-in-chief of the american armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his big toe into his mouthan achievement which, meaning no disrespect, the illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to some fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded. our children and great discoveries. delivered at the authors' club, new york. our childrenyours-and-mine. they seem like little things to talk aboutour children, but little things often make up the sum of human lifethat's a good sentence. i repeat it, little things often produce great things. now, to illustrate, take sir isaac newtoni presume some of you have heard of mr. newton. well, once when sir isaac newtona mere ladgot over into the man's apple orchardi don't know what he was doing therei didn't come all the way from hartford to q-u-e-s-t-i-o-n mr. newton's honestybut when he was therein the main orchardhe saw an apple fall and he was a-t-t-racted toward it, and that led to the discoverynot of mr. newtonbut of the great law of attraction and gravitation. and there was once another great discovereri've forgotten his name, and i don't remember what he discovered, but i know it was something very important, and i hope you will all tell your children about it when you get home. well, when the great discoverer was once loafin' around down in virginia, and a-puttin' in his time flirting with pocahontasoh! captain john smith, that was the man's nameand while he and poca were sitting in mr. powhatan's garden, he accidentally put his arm around her and picked somethinga simple weed, which proved to be tobaccoand now we find it in every christian family, shedding its civilizing influence broadcast throughout the whole religious community. now there was another great man, i can't think of his name either, who used to loaf around and watch the great chandelier in the cathedral at pisa, which set him to thinking about the great law of gunpowder, and eventually led to the discovery of the cotton-gin. now, i don't say this as an inducement for our young men to loaf around like mr. newton and mr. galileo and captain smith, but they were once little babies two days old, and they show what little things have sometimes accomplished. educating theatre-goers. the children of the educational alliance gave a performance of "the prince and the pauper" on the afternoon of april 14, 1907, in the theatre of the alliance building in east broadway. the audience was composed of nearly one thousand children of the neighborhood. mr. clemens, mr. howells, and mr. daniel frohman were among the invited guests. i have not enjoyed a play so much, so heartily, and so thoroughly since i played miles hendon twenty-two years ago. i used to play in this piece ("the prince and the pauper") with my children, who, twenty-two years ago, were little youngsters. one of my daughters was the prince, and a neighbor's daughter was the pauper, and the children of other neighbors played other parts. but we never gave such a performance as we have seen here to-day. it would have been beyond us. my late wife was the dramatist and stage-manager. our coachman was the stage-manager, second in command. we used to play it in this simple way, and the one who used to bring in the crown on a cushionhe was a little fellow thenis now a clergyman way up highsix or seven feet highand growing higher all the time. we played it well, but not as well as you see it here, for you see it done by practically trained professionals. i was especially interested in the scene which we have just had, for miles hendon was my part. i did it as well as a person could who never remembered his part. the children all knew their parts. they did not mind if i did not know mine. i could thread a needle nearly as well as the player did whom you saw to-day. the words of my part i could supply on the spot. the words of the song that miles hendon sang here i did not catch. but i was great in that song. [then mr. clemens hummed a bit of doggerel that the reporter made out as this: "there was a woman in her town, she loved her husband well, but another man just twice as well." "how is that?" demanded mr. clemens. then resuming:] it was so fresh and enjoyable to make up a new set of words each time that i played the part. if i had a thousand citizens in front of me, i would like to give them information, but you children already know all that i have found out about the educational alliance. it's like a man living within thirty miles of vesuvius and never knowing about a volcano. it's like living for a lifetime in buffalo, eighteen miles from niagara, and never going to see the falls. so i had lived in new york and knew nothing about the educational alliance. this theatre is a part of the work, and furnishes pure and clean plays. this theatre is an influence. everything in the world is accomplished by influences which train and educate. when you get to be seventy-one and a half, as i am, you may think that your education is over, but it isn't. if we had forty theatres of this kind in this city of four millions, how they would educate and elevate! we should have a body of educated theatre-goers. it would make better citizens, honest citizens. one of the best gifts a millionaire could make would be a theatre here and a theatre there. it would make of you a real republic, and bring about an educational level. the educational theatre. on november 19, 1907, mr. clemens entertained a party of six or seven hundred of his friends, inviting them to witness the representation of "the prince and the pauper," played by boys and girls of the east side at the children's educational theatre, new york. just a word or two to let you know how deeply i appreciate the honor which the children who are the actors and frequenters of this cozy playhouse have conferred upon me. they have asked me to be their ambassador to invite the hearts and brains of new york to come down here and see the work they are doing. i consider it a grand distinction to be chosen as their intermediary. between the children and myself there is an indissoluble bond of friendship. i am proud of this theatre and this performanceproud, because i am naturally vainvain of myself and proud of the children. i wish we could reach more children at one time. i am glad to see that the children of the east side have turned their backs on the bowery theatres to come to see the pure entertainments presented here. this children's theatre is a great educational institution. i hope the time will come when it will be part of every public school in the land. i may be pardoned in being vain. i was born vain, i guess. [at this point the stage-manager's whistle interrupted mr. clemens.] that settles it; there's my cue to stop. i was to talk until the whistle blew, but it blew before i got started. it takes me longer to get started than most people. i guess i was born at slow speed. my time is up, and if you'll keep quiet for two minutes i'll tell you something about miss herts, the woman who conceived this splendid idea. she is the originator and the creator of this theatre. educationally, this institution coins the gold of young hearts into external good. [on april 23, 1908, he spoke again at the same place] i will be strictly honest with you; i am only fit to be honorary president. it is not to be expected that i should be useful as a real president. but when it comes to things ornamental i, of course, have no objection. there is, of course, no competition. i take it as a very real compliment because there are thousands of children who have had a part in this request. it is promotion in truth. it is a thing worth doing that is done here. you have seen the children play. you saw how little sally reformed her burglar. she could reform any burglar. she could reform me. this is the only school in which can be taught the highest and most difficult lessonsmorals. in other schools the way of teaching morals is revolting. here the children who come in thousands live through each part. they are terribly anxious for the villain to get his bullet, and that i take to be a humane and proper sentiment. they spend freely the ten cents that is not saved without a struggle. it comes out of the candy money, and the money that goes for chewing-gum and other necessaries of life. they make the sacrifice freely. this is the only school which they are sorry to leave. poets as policemen. mr. clemens was one of the speakers at the lotos club dinner to governor odell, march 24, 1900. the police problem was referred to at length. let us abolish policemen who carry clubs and revolvers, and put in a squad of poets armed to the teeth with poems on spring and love. i would be very glad to serve as commissioner, not because i think i am especially qualified, but because i am too tired to work and would like to take a rest. howells would go well as my deputy. he is tired too, and needs a rest badly. i would start in at once to elevate, purify, and depopulate the red-light district. i would assign the most soulful poets to that district, all heavily armed with their poems. take chauncey depew as a sample. i would station them on the corners after they had rounded up all the depraved people of the district so they could not escape, and then have them read from their poems to the poor unfortunates. the plan would be very effective in causing an emigration of the depraved element. pudd'nhead wilson dramatized. when mr. clemens arrived from europe in 1895 one of the first things he did was to see the dramatization of pudd'nhead wilson. the audience becoming aware of the fact that mr. clemens was in the house called upon him for a speech. never in my life have i been able to make a speech without preparation, and i assure you that this position in which i find myself is one totally unexpected. i have been hemmed in all day by william dean howells and other frivolous persons, and i have been talking about everything in the world except that of which speeches are constructed. then, too, seven days on the water is not conducive to speech-making. i will only say that i congratulate mr. mayhew; he has certainly made a delightful play out of my rubbish. his is a charming gift. confidentially i have always had an idea that i was well equipped to write plays, but i have never encountered a manager who has agreed with me. daly theatre. address at a dinner after the one hundredth performance of "the taming of the shrew." mr. clemens made the following speech, which he incorporated afterward in following the equator. i am glad to be here. this is the hardest theatre in new york to get into, even at the front door. i never got in without hard work. i am glad we have got so far in at last. two or three years ago i had an appointment to meet mr. daly on the stage of this theatre at eight o'clock in the evening. well, i got on a train at hartford to come to new york and keep the appointment. all i had to do was to come to the back door of the theatre on sixth avenue. i did not believe that; i did not believe it could be on sixth avenue, but that is what daly's note saidcome to that door, walk right in, and keep the appointment. it looked very easy. it looked easy enough, but i had not much confidence in the sixth avenue door. well, i was kind of bored on the train, and i bought some newspapersnew haven newspapersand there was not much news in them, so i read the advertisements. there was one advertisement of a bench-show. i had heard of bench-shows, and i often wondered what there was about them to interest people. i had seen bench-showslectured to bench-shows, in factbut i didn't want to advertise them or to brag about them. well, i read on a little, and learned that a bench-show was not a bench-showbut dogs, not benches at allonly dogs. i began to be interested, and as there was nothing else to do i read every bit of the advertisement, and learned that the biggest thing in this show was a st. bernard dog that weighed one hundred and forty-five pounds. before i got to new york i was so interested in the bench-shows that i made up my mind to go to one the first chance i got. down on sixth avenue, near where that back door might be, i began to take things leisurely. i did not like to be in too much of a hurry. there was not anything in sight that looked like a back door. the nearest approach to it was a cigar store. so i went in and bought a cigar, not too expensive, but it cost enough to pay for any information i might get and leave the dealer a fair profit. well, i did not like to be too abrupt, to make the man think me crazy, by asking him if that was the way to daly's theatre, so i started gradually to lead up to the subject, asking him first if that was the way to castle garden. when i got to the real question, and he said he would show me the way, i was astonished. he sent me through a long hallway, and i found myself in a back yard. then i went through a long passageway and into a little room, and there before my eyes was a big st. bernard dog lying on a bench. there was another door beyond and i went there, and was met by a big, fierce man with a fur cap on and coat off, who remarked, "phwat do yez want?" i told him i wanted to see mr. daly. "yez can't see mr. daly this time of night," he responded. i urged that i had an appointment with mr. daly, and gave him my card, which did not seem to impress him much. "yez can't get in and yez can't shmoke here. throw away that cigar. if yez want to see mr. daly, yez'll have to be after going to the front door and buy a ticket, and then if yez have luck and he's around that way yez may see him." i was getting discouraged, but i had one resource left that had been of good service in similar emergencies. firmly but kindly i told him my name was mark twain, and i awaited results. there was none. he was not fazed a bit. "phwere's your order to see mr. daly?" he asked. i handed him the note, and he examined it intently. "my friend," i remarked, "you can read that better if you hold it the other side up." but he took no notice of the suggestion, and finally asked: "where's mr. daly's name?" "there it is," i told him, "on the top of the page." "that's all right," he said, "that's where he always puts it; but i don't see the 'w' in his name," and he eyed me distrustfully. finally he asked, "phwat do yez want to see mr. daly for?" "business." "business?" "yes." it was my only hope. "pwhat kindtheatres?" that was too much. "no." "what kind of shows, then?" "bench-shows." it was risky, but i was desperate. "bench-shows, is itwhere?" the big man's face changed, and he began to look interested. "new haven." "new haven, it is? ah, that's going to be a fine show. i'm glad to see you. did you see a big dog in the other room?" "yes." "how much do you think that dog weighs?" "one hundred and forty-five pounds." "look at that, now! he's a good judge of dogs, and no mistake. he weighs all of one hundred and thirty-eight. sit down and shmokego on and shmoke your cigar, i'll tell mr. daly you are here." in a few minutes i was on the stage shaking hands with mr. daly, and the big man standing around glowing with satisfaction. "come around in front," said mr. daly, "and see the performance. i will put you into my own box." and as i moved away i heard my honest friend mutter, "well, he desarves it." the dress of civilized woman. a large part of the daughter of civilization is her dressas it should be. some civilized women would lose half their charm without dress, and some would lose all of it. the daughter of modern civilization dressed at her utmost best is a marvel of exquisite and beautiful art and expense. all the lands, all the climes, and all the arts are laid under tribute to furnish her forth. her linen is from belfast, her robe is from paris, her lace is from venice, or spain, or france, her feathers are from the remote regions of southern africa, her furs from the remoter region of the iceberg and the aurora, her fan from japan, her diamonds from brazil, her bracelets from california, her pearls from ceylon, her cameos from rome. she has gems and trinkets from buried pompeii, and others that graced comely egyptian forms that have been dust and ashes now for forty centuries. her watch is from geneva, her card-case is from china, her hair is fromfromi don't know where her hair is from; i never could find out; that is, her other hairher public hair, her sunday hair; i don't mean the hair she goes to bed with.... and that reminds me of a trifle. any time you want to you can glance around the carpet of a pullman car, and go and pick up a hair-pin; but not to save your life can you get any woman in that car to acknowledge that hair-pin. now, isn't that strange? but it's true. the woman who has never swerved from cast-iron veracity and fidelity in her whole life will, when confronted with this crucial test, deny her hair-pin. she will deny that hair-pin before a hundred witnesses. i have stupidly got into more trouble and more hot water trying to hunt up the owner of a hair-pin in a pullman than by any other indiscretion of my life. dress reform and copyright. when the present copyright law was under discussion, mr. clemens appeared before the committee. he had sent speaker cannon the following letter: "dear uncle joseph,please get me the thanks of congress, not next week but right away. it is very necessary. do accomplish this for your affectionate old friend right awayby persuasion if you can, by violence if you must, for it is imperatively necessary that i get on the floor of the house for two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man, in behalf of support, encouragement, and protection of one of the nation's most valuable assets and industriesits literature. i have arguments with mealso a barrel with liquid in it. "give me a chance. get me the thanks of congress. don't wait for othersthere isn't time; furnish them to me yourself and let congress ratify later. i have stayed away and let congress alone for seventy-one years and am entitled to the thanks. congress knows this perfectly well, and i have long felt hurt that this quite proper and earned expression of gratitude has been merely felt by the house and never publicly uttered. "send me an order on the sergeant-at-arms quick. when shall i come? "with love and a benediction, "mark twain." while waiting to appear before the committee, mr. clemens talked to the reporters: why don't you ask why i am wearing such apparently unseasonable clothes? i'll tell you. i have found that when a man reaches the advanced age of seventy-one years, as i have, the continual sight of dark clothing is likely to have a depressing effect upon him. light-colored clothing is more pleasing to the eye and enlivens the spirit. now, of course, i cannot compel every one to wear such clothing just for my especial benefit, so i do the next best thing and wear it myself. of course, before a man reaches my years the fear of criticism might prevent him from indulging his fancy. i am not afraid of that. i am decidedly for pleasing color combinations in dress. i like to see the women's clothes, say, at the opera. what can be more depressing than the sombre black which custom requires men to wear upon state occasions? a group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows, and is just about as inspiring. after all, what is the purpose of clothing? are not clothes intended primarily to preserve dignity and also to afford comfort to their wearer? now i know of nothing more uncomfortable than the present-day clothes of men. the finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this. the best-dressed man i have ever seen, however, was a native of the sandwich islands who attracted my attention thirty years ago. now, when that man wanted to don especial dress to honor a public occasion or a holiday, why, he occasionally put on a pair of spectacles. otherwise the clothing with which god had provided him sufficed. of course, i have ideas of dress reform. for one thing, why not adopt some of the women's styles? goodness knows, they adopt enough of ours. take the peek-a-boo waist, for instance. it has the obvious advantages of being cool and comfortable, and in addition it is almost always made up in pleasing colors which cheer and do not depress. it is true that i dressed the connecticut yankee at king arthur's court in a plug-hat, but, let's see, that was twenty-five years ago. then no man was considered fully dressed until he donned a plug-hat. nowadays i think that no man is dressed until he leaves it home. why, when i left home yesterday they trotted out a plug-hat for me to wear. "you must wear it," they told me; "why, just think of going to washington without a plug-hat!" but i said no; i would wear a derby or nothing. why, i believe i could walk along the streets of new yorki never dobut still i think i couldand i should never see a well-dressed man wearing a plug-hat. if i did i should suspect him of something. i don't know just what, but i would suspect him. why, when i got up on the second story of that pennsylvania ferry-boat coming down here yesterday i saw howells coming along. he was the only man on the boat with a plug-hat, and i tell you he felt ashamed of himself. he said he had been persuaded to wear it against his better sense. but just think of a man nearly seventy years old who has not a mind of his own on such matters! "are you doing any work now?" the youngest and most serious reporter asked. work? i retired from work on my seventieth birthday. since then i have been putting in merely twenty-six hours a day dictating my autobiography, which, as john phoenix said in regard to his autograph, may be relied upon as authentic, as it is written exclusively by me. but it is not to be published in full until i am thoroughly dead. i have made it as caustic, fiendish, and devilish as possible. it will fill many volumes, and i shall continue writing it until the time comes for me to join the angels. it is going to be a terrible autobiography. it will make the hair of some folks curl. but it cannot be published until i am dead, and the persons mentioned in it and their children and grand-children are dead. it is something awful! "can you tell us the names of some of the notables that are here to see you off?" i don't know. i am so shy. my shyness takes a peculiar phase. i never look a person in the face. the reason is that i am afraid they may know me and that i may not know them, which makes it very embarrassing for both of us. i always wait for the other person to speak. i know lots of people, but i don't know who they are. it is all a matter of ability to observe things. i never observe anything now. i gave up the habit years ago. you should keep a habit up if you want to become proficient in it. for instance, i was a pilot once, but i gave it up, and i do not believe the captain of the minneapolis would let me navigate his ship to london. still, if i think that he is not on the job i may go up on the bridge and offer him a few suggestions. college girls. five hundred undergraduates, under the auspices of the woman's university club, new york, welcomed mr. clemens as their guest, april 3, 1906, and gave him the freedom of the club, which the chairman explained was freedom to talk individually to any girl present. i've worked for the public good thirty years, so for the rest of my life i shall work for my personal contentment. i am glad miss neron has fed me, for there is no telling what iniquity i might wander into on an empty stomachi mean, an empty mind. i am going to tell you a practical story about how once upon a time i was blinda story i should have been using all these months, but i never thought about telling it until the other night, and now it is too late, for on the nineteenth of this month i hope to take formal leave of the platform forever at carnegie hallthat is, take leave so far as talking for money and for people who have paid money to hear me talk. i shall continue to infest the platform on these conditionsthat there is nobody in the house who has paid to hear me, that i am not paid to be heard, and that there will be none but young women students in the audience. [here mr. clemens told the story of how he took a girl to the theatre while he was wearing tight boots, which appears elsewhere in this volume, and ended by saying: "and now let this be a lesson to youi don't know what kind of a lesson; i'll let you think it out."] girls girls. in my capacity of publisher i recently received a manuscript from a teacher which embodied a number of answers given by her pupils to questions propounded. these answers show that the children had nothing but the sound to go bythe sense was perfectly empty. here are some of their answers to words they were asked to define: auriferouspertaining to an orifice; ammoniathe food of the gods; equestrianone who asks questions; parasitea kind of umbrella; ipecaca man who likes a good dinner. and here is the definition of an ancient word honored by a great party: republicana sinner mentioned in the bible. and here is an innocent deliverance of a zoological kind: "there are a good many donkeys in the theological gardens." here also is a definition which really isn't very bad in its way: demagoguea vessel containing beer and other liquids. here, too, is a sample of a boy's composition on girls, which, i must say, i rather like: "girls are very stuckup and dignified in their manner and behaveyour. they think more of dress than anything and like to play with dowls and rags. they cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of guns. they stay at home all the time and go to church every sunday. they are al-ways sick. they are al-ways funy and making fun of boys hands and they say how dirty. they cant play marbles. i pity them poor things. they make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. i don't belave they ever killed a cat or anything. they look out every nite and say, 'oh, a'nt the moon lovely!' thir is one thing i have not told and that is they al-ways now their lessons bettern boys." the ladies. delivered at the anniversary festival, 1872, of the scottish corporation of london mr. clemens replied to the toast "the ladies." i am proud, indeed, of the distinction of being chosen to respond to this especial toast, to "the ladies," or to women if you please, for that is the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and therefore the more entitled to reverence. i have noticed that the bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous characteristic of the scriptures, is always particular to never refer to even the illustrious mother of all mankind as a "lady," but speaks of her as a woman. it is odd, but you will find it is so. i am peculiarly proud of this honor, because i think that the toast to women is one which, by right and by every rule of gallantry, should take precedence of all othersof the army, of the navy, of even royalty itselfperhaps, though the latter is not necessary in this day and in this land, for the reason that, tacitly, you do drink a broad general health to all good women when you drink the health of the queen of england and the princess of wales. i have in mind a poem just now which is familiar to you all, familiar to everybody. and what an inspiration that was, and how instantly the present toast recalls the verses to all our minds when the most noble, the most gracious, the purest, and sweetest of all poets says: "woman! o woman!er wom-" however, you remember the lines; and you remember how feelingly, how daintily, how almost imperceptibly the verses raise up before you, feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman; and how, as you contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into worship of the intellect that could create so fair a thing out of mere breath, mere words. and you call to mind now, as i speak, how the poet, with stern fidelity to the history of all humanity, delivers this beautiful child of his heart and his brain over to the trials and sorrows that must come to all, sooner or later, that abide in the earth, and how the pathetic story culminates in that apostropheso wild, so regretful, so full of mournful retrospection. the lines run thus: "alas!alas!aalas! --alas!---alas!" and so on. i do not remember the rest; but, taken together, it seems to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that human genius has ever brought forthand i feel that if i were to talk hours i could not do my great theme completer or more graceful justice than i have now done in simply quoting that poet's matchless words. the phases of the womanly nature are infinite in their variety. take any type of woman, and you shall find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love. and you shall find the whole joining you heart and hand. who was more patriotic than joan of arc? who was braver? who has given us a grander instance of self-sacrificing devotion? ah! you remember, you remember well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal wave of grief swept over us all when joan of arc fell at waterloo. who does not sorrow for the loss of sappho, the sweet. singer of israel? who among us does not miss the gentle ministrations, the softening influences, the humble piety of lucretia borgia? who can join in the heartless libel that says woman is extravagant in dress when he can look back and call to mind our simple and lowly mother eve arrayed in her modification of the highland costume? sir, women have been soldiers, women have been painters, women have been poets. as long as language lives the name of cleopatra will live. and not because she conquered george iii.but because she wrote those divine lines: "let dogs delight to bark and bite, for god hath made them so." the story of the world is adorned with the names of illustrious ones of our own sexsome of them sons of st. andrew, tooscott, bruce, burns, the warrior wallace, ben nevisthe gifted ben lomond, and the great new scotchman, ben disraeli.* out of the great plains of history tower whole mountain ranges of sublime womenthe queen of sheba, josephine, semiramis, sairey gamp; the list is endlessbut i will not call the mighty roll, the names rise up in your own memories at the mere suggestion, luminous with the glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by the loving worship of the good and the true of all epochs and all climes. suffice it for our pride and our honor that we in our day have added to it such names as those of grace darling and florence nightingale. woman is all that she should begentle, patient, long-suffering, trustful, unselfish, full of generous impulses. it is her blessed mission to comfort the sorrowing, plead for the erring, encourage the faint of purpose, succor the distressed, uplift the fallen, befriend the friendlessin a word, afford the healing of her sympathies and a home in her heart for all the bruised and persecuted children of misfortune that knock at its hospitable door. and when i say, god bless her, there is none among us who has known the ennobling affection of a wife, or the steadfast devotion of a mother but in his heart will say, amen! * mr. benjamin disraeli, at that time prime minister of england, had just been elected lord rector of glasgow university, and had made a speech which gave rise to a world of discussion. woman's press club. on october 27, 1900, the new york woman's press club gave a tea in carnegie hall. mr. clemens was the guest of honor. if i were asked an opinion i would call this an ungrammatical nation. there is no such thing as perfect grammar, and i don't always speak good grammar myself. but i have been foregathering for the past few days with professors of american universities, and i've heard them all say things like this: "he don't like to do it." [there was a stir.] oh, you'll hear that to-night if you listen, or, "he would have liked to have done it." you'll catch some educated americans saying that. when these men take pen in hand they write with as good grammar as any. but the moment they throw the pen aside they throw grammatical morals aside with it. to illustrate the desirability and possibility of concentration, i must tell you a story of my little six-year-old daughter. the governess had been teaching her about the reindeer, and, as the custom was, she related it to the family. she reduced the history of that reindeer to two or three sentences when the governess could not have put it into a page. she said: "the reindeer is a very swift animal. a reindeer once drew a sled four hundred miles in two hours." she appended the comment: "this was regarded as extraordinary." and concluded: "when that reindeer was done drawing that sled four hundred miles in two hours it died." as a final instance of the force of limitations in the development of concentration, i must mention that beautiful creature, helen keller, whom i have known for these many years. i am filled with the wonder of her knowledge, acquired because shut out from all distraction. if i could have been deaf, dumb, and blind i also might have arrived at something. votes for women. at the annual meeting of the hebrew technical school for girls, held in the temple emmanuel, january 20, 1901 mr. clemens was introduced by president meyer, who said: "in one of mr. clemens's works he expressed his opinion of men, saying he had no choice between hebrew and gentile, black men or white; to him all men were alike. but i never could find that he expressed his opinion of women; perhaps that opinion was so exalted that he could not express it. we shall now be called to hear what he thinks of women." ladies and gentlemen,it is a small help that i can afford, but it is just such help that one can give as coming from the heart through the mouth. the report of mr. meyer was admirable, and i was as interested in it as you have been. why, i'm twice as old as he, and i've had so much experience that i would say to him, when he makes his appeal for help: "don't make it for to-day or to-morrow, but collect the money on the spot." we are all creatures of sudden impulse. we must be worked up by steam, as it were. get them to write their wills now, or it may be too late by-and-by. fifteen or twenty years ago i had an experience i shall never forget. i got into a church which was crowded by a sweltering and panting multitude. the city missionary of our townhartfordmade a telling appeal for help. he told of personal experiences among the poor in cellars and top lofts requiring instances of devotion and help. the poor are always good to the poor. when a person with his millions gives a hundred thousand dollars it makes a great noise in the world, but he does not miss it; it's the widow's mite that makes no noise but does the best work. i remember on that occasion in the hartford church the collection was being taken up. the appeal had so stirred me that i could hardly wait for the hat or plate to come my way. i had four hundred dollars in my pocket, and i was anxious to drop it in the plate and wanted to borrow more. but the plate was so long in coming my way that the fever-heat of beneficence was going down lower and lowergoing down at the rate of a hundred dollars a minute. the plate was passed too late. when it finally came to me, my enthusiasm had gone down so much that i kept my four hundred dollarsand stole a dime from the plate. so, you see, time sometimes leads to crime. oh, many a time have i thought of that and regretted it, and i adjure you all to give while the fever is on you. referring to woman's sphere in life, i'll say that woman is always right. for twenty-five years i've been a woman's rights man. i have always believed, long before my mother died, that, with her gray hairs and admirable intellect, perhaps she knew as much as i did. perhaps she knew as much about voting as i. i should like to see the time come when women shall help to make the laws. i should like to see that whip-lash, the ballot, in the hands of women. as for this city's government, i don't want to say much, except that it is a shamea shame; but if i should live twenty-five years longerand there is no reason why i shouldn'ti think i'll see women handle the ballot. if women had the ballot to-day, the state of things in this town would not exist. if all the women in this town had a vote to-day they would elect a mayor at the next election, and they would rise in their might and change the awful state of things now existing here. womanan opinion. address at an early banquet of the washington correspondents' club. the twelfth toast was as follows: "womanthe pride of any profession, and the jewel of ours." mr. president,i do not know why i should be singled out to receive the greatest distinction of the eveningfor so the office of replying to the toast of woman has been regarded in every age. i do not know why i have received this distinction, unless it be that i am a trifle less homely than the other members of the club. but be this as it may, mr. president, i am proud of the position, and you could not have chosen any one who would have accepted it more gladly, or labored with a heartier good-will to do the subject justice than ibecause, sir, i love the sex. i love all the women, irrespective of age or color. human intellect cannot estimate what we owe to woman, sir. she sews on our buttons; she mends our clothes; she ropes us in at the church fairs; she confides in us she tells us whatever she can find out about the little private affairs of the neighbors; she gives us good advice, and plenty of it; she soothes our aching brows; she bears our childrenours as a general thing. in all relations of life, sir, it is but a just and graceful tribute to woman to say of her that she is a brick. wheresoever you place woman, sirin whatever position or estateshe is an ornament to the place she occupies, and a treasure to the world. [here mr. clemens paused, looked inquiringly at his hearers, and remarked that the applause should come in at this point. it came in. he resumed his eulogy.] look at cleopatra!look at desdemona!look at florence nightingale!look at joan of arc!look at lucretia borgia! [disapprobation expressed.] well [said mr. clemens, scratching his head, doubtfully], suppose we let lucretia slide. look at joyce heth!look at mother eve! you need not look at her unless you want to, but [said mr. clemens, reflectively, after a pause] eve was ornamental, sirparticularly before the fashions changed. i repeat, sir, look at the illustrious names of history. look at the widow machree!look at lucy stone!look at elizabeth cady stanton!look at george francis train! and, sir, i say it with bowed head and deepest venerationlook at the mother of washington! she raised a boy that could not tell a liecould not tell a lie! but he never had any chance. it might have been different if he had belonged to the washington newspaper correspondents' club. i repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society and a treasure to the world. as a sweetheart, she has few equals and no superiors; as a cousin, she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is precious; as a wet-nurse, she has no equal among men. what, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? they would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce. then let us cherish her; let us protect her; let us give her our support, our encouragement, our sympathy, ourselvesif we get a chance. but, jesting aside, mr. president, woman is lovable, gracious, kind of heart, beautifulworthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference. not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially in this bumper of wine, for each and every one has personally known, and loved, and honored the very best one of them allhis own mother. advice to girls. in 1907 a young girl whom mr. clemens met on the steamer minnehaha called him "grandpa," and he called her his granddaughter. she was attending st. timothy's school, at catonsville, maryland, and mr. clemens promised her to see her graduate. he accordingly made the journey from new york on june 10, 1909, and delivered a short address. i don't know what to tell you girls to do. mr. martin has told you everything you ought to do, and now i must give you some don'ts. there are three things which come to my mind which i consider excellent advice: first, girls, don't smokethat is, don't smoke to excess. i am seventy-three and a half years old, and have been smoking seventy-three of them. but i never smoke to excessthat is, i smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time. second, don't drinkthat is, don't drink to excess. third, don't marryi mean, to excess. honesty is the best policy. that is an old proverb; but you don't want ever to forget it in your journey through life. taxes and morals. address delivered in new york, january 22, 1906. at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of tuskeegee institute by booker t. washington, mr. choate presided, and in introducing mr. clemens made fun of him because he made play his work, and that when he worked hardest he did so lying in bed. i came here in the responsible capacity of policeman to watch mr. choate. this is an occasion of grave and serious importance, and it seems necessary for me to be present, so that if he tried to work off any statement that required correction, reduction, refutation, or exposure, there would be a tried friend of the public to protect the house. he has not made one statement whose veracity fails to tally exactly with my own standard. i have never seen a person improve so. this makes me thankful and proud of a country that can produce such mentwo such men. and all in the same country. we can't be with you always; we are passing away, and thenwell, everything will have to stop, i reckon. it is a sad thought. but in spirit i shall still be with you. choate, tooif he can. every born american among the eighty millions, let his creed or destitution of creed be what it may, is indisputably a christian to this degreethat his moral constitution is christian. there are two kinds of christian morals, one private and the other public. these two are so distinct, so unrelated, that they are no more akin to each other than are archangels and politicians. during three hundred and sixty-three days in the year the american citizen is true to his christian private morals, and keeps undefiled the nation's character at its best and highest; then in the other two days of the year he leaves his christian private morals at home and carries his christian public morals to the tax office and the polls, and does the best he can to damage and undo his whole year's faithful and righteous work. without a blush he will vote for an unclean boss if that boss is his party's moses, without compunction he will vote against the best man in the whole land if he is on the other ticket. every year in a number of cities and states he helps put corrupt men in office, whereas if he would but throw away his christian public morals, and carry his christian private morals to the polls, he could promptly purify the public service and make the possession of office a high and honorable distinction. once a year he lays aside his christian private morals and hires a ferry-boat and piles up his bonds in a warehouse in new jersey for three days, and gets out his christian public morals and goes to the tax office and holds up his hands and swears he wishes he may nevernever if he's got a cent in the world, so help him. the next day the list appears in the papersa column and a quarter of names, in fine print, and every man in the list a billionaire and member of a couple of churches. i know all those people. i have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them. they never miss a sermon when they are so's to be around, and they never miss swearing-off day, whether they are so's to be around or not. i used to be an honest man. i am crumbling. noi have crumbled. when they assessed me at $75,000 a fortnight ago i went out and tried to borrow the money, and couldn't; then when i found they were letting a whole crop of millionaires live in new york at a third of the price they were charging me i was hurt, i was indignant, and said: "this is the last feather. i am not going to run this town all by myself." in that momentin that memorable momenti began to crumble. in fifteen minutes the disintegration was complete. in fifteen minutes i had become just a mere moral sand-pile; and i lifted up my hand along with those seasoned and experienced deacons and swore off every rag of personal property i've got in the world, clear down to cork leg, glass eye, and what is left of my wig. those tax officers were moved; they were profoundly moved. they had long been accustomed to seeing hardened old grafters act like that, and they could endure the spectacle; but they were expecting better things of me, a chartered, professional moralist, and they were saddened. i fell visibly in their respect and esteem, and i should have fallen in my own, except that i had already struck bottom, and there wasn't any place to fall to. at tuskeegee they will jump to misleading conclusions from insufficient evidence, along with doctor parkhurst, and they will deceive the student with the superstition that no gentleman ever swears. look at those good millionaires; aren't they gentlemen? well, they swear. only once in a year, maybe, but there's enough, bulk to it to make up for the lost time. and do they lose anything by it? no, they don't; they save enough in three minutes to support the family seven years. when they swear, do we shudder? nounless they say "damn!" then we do. it shrivels us all up. yet we ought not to feel so about it, because we all sweareverybody. including the ladies. including doctor parkhurst, that strong and brave and excellent citizen, but superficially educated. for it is not the word that is the sin, it is the spirit back of the word. when an irritated lady says "oh!" the spirit back of it is "damn!" and that is the way it is going to be recorded against her. it always makes me so sorry when i hear a lady swear like that. but if she says "damn," and says it in an amiable, nice way, it isn't going to be recorded at all. the idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong; he can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way. the historian, john fiske, whom i knew well and loved, was a spotless and most noble and upright christian gentleman, and yet he swore once. not exactly that, maybe; still, hebut i will tell you about it. one day, when he was deeply immersed in his work, his wife came in, much moved and profoundly distressed, and said: "i am sorry to disturb you, john, but i must, for this is a serious matter, and needs to be attended to at once." then, lamenting, she brought a grave accusation against their little son. she said: "he has been saying his aunt mary is a fool and his aunt martha is a damned fool." mr. fiske reflected upon the matter a minute, then said: "oh, well, it's about the distinction i should make between them myself." mr. washington, i beg you to convey these teachings to your great and prosperous and most beneficent educational institution, and add them to the prodigal mental and moral riches wherewith you equip your fortunate proteges for the struggle of life. tammany and croker. mr. clemens made his debut as a campaign orator on october 7, 1901, advocating the election of seth low for mayor, not as a republican, but as a member of the "acorns," which he described as a "third party having no political affiliation, but was concerned only in the selection of the best candidates and the best member." great britain had a tammany and a croker a good while ago. this tammany was in india, and it began its career with the spread of the english dominion after the battle of plassey. its first boss was clive, a sufficiently crooked person sometimes, but straight as a yardstick when compared with the corkscrew crookedness of the second boss, warren hastings. that old-time tammany was the east india company's government, and had its headquarters at calcutta. ostensibly it consisted of a great council of four persons, of whom one was the governor-general, warren hastings; really it consisted of one personwarren hastings; for by usurpation he concentrated all authority in himself and governed the country like an autocrat. ostensibly the court of directors, sitting in london and representing the vast interests of the stockholders, was supreme in authority over the calcutta great council, whose membership it appointed and removed at pleasure, whose policies it dictated, and to whom it conveyed its will in the form of sovereign commands; but whenever it suited hastings, he ignored even that august body's authority and conducted the mighty affairs of the british empire in india to suit his own notions. at his mercy was the daily bread of every official, every trader, every clerk, every civil servant, big and little, in the whole huge india company's machine, and the man who hazarded his bread by any failure of subserviency to the boss lost it. now then, let the supreme masters of british india, the giant corporation of the india company of london, stand for the voters of the city of new york; let the great council of calcutta stand for tammany; let the corrupt and money-grubbing great hive of serfs which served under the indian tammany's rod stand for new york tammany's serfs; let warren hastings stand for richard croker, and it seems to me that the parallel is exact and complete. and so let us be properly grateful and thank god and our good luck that we didn't invent tammany. edmund burke, regarded by many as the greatest orator of all times, conducted the case against warren hastings in that renowned trial which lasted years, and which promises to keep its renown for centuries to come. i wish to quote some of the things he said. i wish to imagine him arrainging mr. croker and tammany before the voters of new york city and pleading with them for the overthrow of that combined iniquity of the 5th of november, and will substitute for "my lords," read "fellow-citizens"; for "kingdom," read "city"; for "parliamentary process," read "political campaign"; for "two houses," read "two parties," and so it reads: "fellow-citizens, i must look upon it as an auspicious circumstance to this cause, in which the honor of the city is involved, that from the first commencement of our political campaign to this the hour of solemn trial not the smallest difference of opinion has arisen between the two parties. "you will see, in the progress of this cause, that there is not only a long, connected, systematic series of misdemeanors, but an equally connected system of maxims and principles invented to justify them. upon both of these you must judge. "it is not only the interest of the city of new york, now the most considerable part of the city of the americans, which is concerned, but the credit and honor of the nation itself will be decided by this decision." at a later meeting of the acorn club, mr. clemens said: tammany is dead, and there's no use in blackguarding a corpse. the election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. he had only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, "where is the best place to go to?" he was undecided about it. so the minister. told him that each place had its advantagesheaven for climate, and hell for society. municipal corruption. address at the city club dinner, january 4, 1901. bishop potter told how an alleged representative of tammany hall asked him in effect if he would cease his warfare upon the police department if a certain captain and inspector were dismissed. he replied that he would never be satisfied until the "man at the top" and the "system" which permitted evils in the police department were crushed. the bishop has just spoken of a condition of things which none of us can deny, and which ought not to exist; that is, the lust of gaina lust which does not stop short of the penitentiary or the jail to accomplish its ends. but we may be sure of one thing, and that is that this sort of thing is not universal. if it were, this country would not be. you may put this down as a fact: that out of every fifty men, forty-nine are clean. then why is it, you may ask, that the forty-nine don't have things the way they want them? i'll tell you why it is. a good deal has been said here to-night about what is to be accomplished by organization. that's just the thing. it's because the fiftieth fellow and his pals are organized and the other forty-nine are not that the dirty one rubs it into the clean fellows every time. you may say organize, organize, organize; but there may be so much organization that it will interfere with the work to be done. the bishop here had an experience of that sort, and told all about it down-town the other night. he was painting a barnit was his own barnand yet he was informed that his work must stop; he was a non-union painter, and couldn't continue at that sort of job. now, all these conditions of which you complain should be remedied, and i am here to tell you just how to do it. i've been a statesman without salary for many years, and i have accomplished great and widespread good. i don't know that it has benefited anybody very much, even if it was good; but i do know that it hasn't harmed me very much, and is hasn't made me any richer. we hold the balance of power. put up your best men for office, and we shall support the better one. with the election of the best man for mayor would follow the selection of the best man for police commissioner and chief of police. my first lesson in the craft of statesmanship was taken at an early age. fifty-one years ago i was fourteen years old, and we had a society in the town i lived in, patterned after the free-masons, or the ancient order of united farmers, or some such thingjust what it was patterned after doesn't matter. it had an inside guard and an outside guard, and a past-grand warden, and a lot of such things, so as to give dignity to the organization and offices to the members. generally speaking it was a pretty good sort of organization, and some of the very best boys in the village, includingbut i mustn't get personal on an occasion like thisand the society would have got along pretty well had it not been for the fact that there were a certain number of the members who could be bought. they got to be an infernal nuisance. every time we had an election the candidates had to go around and see the purchasable members. the price per vote was paid in doughnuts, and it depended somewhat on the appetites of the individuals as to the price of the votes. this thing ran along until some of us, the really very best boys in the organization, decided that these corrupt practices must stop, and for the purpose of stopping them we organized a third party. we had a name, but we were never known by that name. those who didn't like us called us the anti-doughnut party, but we didn't mind that. we said: "call us what you please; the name doesn't matter. we are organized for a principle." by-and-by the election came around, and we made a big mistake. we were triumphantly beaten. that taught us a lesson. then and there we decided never again to nominate anybody for anything. we decided simply to force the other two parties in the society to nominate their very best men. although we were organized for a principle, we didn't care much about that. principles aren't of much account anyway, except at election-time. after that you hang them up to let them season. the next time we had an election we told both the other parties that we'd beat any candidates put up by any one of them of whom we didn't approve. in that election we did business. we got the man we wanted. i suppose they called us the anti-doughnut party because they couldn't buy us with their doughnuts. they didn't have enough of them. most reformers arrive at their price sooner or later, and i suppose we would have had our price; but our opponents weren't offering anything but doughnuts, and those we spurned. now it seems to me that an anti-doughnut party is just what is wanted in the present emergency. i would have the anti-doughnuts felt in every city and hamlet and school district in this state and in the united states. i was an anti-doughnut in my boyhood, and i'm an anti-doughnut still. the modern designation is mugwump. there used to be quite a number of us mugwumps, but i think i'm the only one left. i had a vote this fall, and i began to make some inquiries as to what i had better do with it. i don't know anything about finance, and i never did, but i know some pretty shrewd financiers, and they told me that mr. bryan wasn't safe on any financial question. i said to myself, then, that it wouldn't do for me to vote for bryan, and i rather thoughti know nowthat mckinley wasn't just right on this philippine question, and so i just didn't vote for anybody. i've got that vote yet, and i've kept it clean, ready to deposit at some other election. it wasn't cast for any wildcat financial theories, and it wasn't cast to support the man who sends our boys as volunteers out into the philippines to get shot down under a polluted flag. municipal government. address at the annual dinner of the st. nicholas society, new york, december 6, 1900. doctor mackay, in his response to the toast "st. nicholas," referred to mr. clemens, saying: "mark twain is as true a preacher of true righteousness as any bishop, priest, or minister of any church to-day, because he moves men to forget their faults by cheerful well-doing instead of making them sour and morbid by everlastingly bending their attention to the seamy and sober side of life." mr. chairman and gentlemen of the st. nicholas society,these are, indeed, prosperous days for me. night before last, in a speech, the bishop of the diocese of new york complimented me for my contribution to theology, and to-night the reverend doctor mackay has elected me to the ministry. i thanked bishop potter then for his compliment, and i thank doctor mackay now for that promotion. i think that both have discerned in me what i long ago discerned, but what i was afraid the world would never learn to recognize. in this absence of nine years i find a great improvement in the city of new york. i am glad to speak on that as a toast"the city of new york." some say it has improved because i have been away. others, and i agree with them, say it has improved because i have come back. we must judge of a city, as of a man, by its external appearances and by its inward character. in externals the foreigner coming to these shores is more impressed at first by our sky-scrapers. they are new to him. he has not done anything of the sort since he built the tower of babel. the foreigner is shocked by them. in the daylight they are ugly. they arewell, too chimneyfied and too snaggylike a mouth that needs attention from a dentist; like a cemetery that is all monuments and no gravestones. but at night, seen from the river where they are columns towering against the sky, all sparkling with light, they are fairylike; they are beauty more satisfactory to the soul and more enchanting than anything that man has dreamed of since the arabian nights. we can't always have the beautiful aspect of things. let us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others go. when your foreigner makes disagreeable comments on new york by daylight, float him down the river at night. what has made these sky-scrapers possible is the elevator. the cigar-box which the european calls a "lift" needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. the lift stops to reflect between floors. that is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. the american elevator acts like the man's patent purgeit worked. as the inventor said, "this purge doesn't waste any time fooling around; it attends strictly to business." that new-yorkers have the cleanest, quickest, and most admirable system of street railways in the world has been forced upon you by the abnormal appreciation you have of your hackman. we ought always to be grateful to him for that service. nobody else would have brought such a system into existence for us. we ought to build him a monument. we owe him one as much as we owe one to anybody. let it be a tall one. nothing permanent, of course; build it of plaster, say. then gaze at it and realize how grateful we arefor the time beingand then pull it down and throw it on the ash-heap. that's the way to honor your public heroes. as to our streets, i find them cleaner than they used to be. i miss those dear old landmarks, the symmetrical mountain ranges of dust and dirt that used to be piled up along the streets for the wind and rain to tear down at their pleasure. yes, new york is cleaner than bombay. i realize that i have been in bombay, that i now am in new york; that it is not my duty to flatter bombay, but rather to flatter new york. compared with the wretched attempts of london to light that city, new york may fairly be said to be a well-lighted city. why, london's attempt at good lighting is almost as bad as london's attempt at rapid transit. there is just one good system of rapid transit in londonthe "tube," and that, of course, had been put in by americans. perhaps, after a while, those americans will come back and give new york also a good underground system. perhaps they have already begun. i have been so busy since i came back that i haven't had time as yet to go down cellar. but it is by the laws of the city, it is by the manners of the city, it is by the ideals of the city, it is by the customs of the city and by the municipal government which all these elements correct, support, and foster, by which the foreigner judges the city. it is by these that he realizes that new york may, indeed, hold her head high among the cities of the world. it is by these standards that he knows whether to class the city higher or lower than the other municipalities of the world. gentlemen, you have the best municipal government in the worldthe purest and the most fragrant. the very angels envy you, and wish they could establish a government like it in heaven. you got it by a noble fidelity to civic duty. you got it by stern and ever-watchful exertion of the great powers with which you are charged by the rights which were handed down to you by your forefathers, by your manly refusal to let base men invade the high places of your government, and by instant retaliation when any public officer has insulted you in the city's name by swerving in the slightest from the upright and full performance of his duty. it is you who have made this city the envy of the cities of the world. god will bless you for itgod will bless you for it. why, when you approach the final resting-place the angels of heaven will gather at the gates and cry out: "here they come! show them to the archangel's box, and turn the lime-light on them!" china and the philippines. at a dinner given in the waldorf-astoria hotel, december, 1900. winston spencer churchill was introduced by mr. clemens for years i've been a self-appointed missionary to bring about the union of america and the motherland. they ought to be united. behold america, the refuge of the oppressed from everywhere (who can pay fifty dollars' admission)any one except a chinamanstanding up for human rights everywhere, even helping china let people in free when she wants to collect fifty dollars upon them. and how unselfishly england has wrought for the open door for all! and how piously america has wrought for that open door in all cases where it was not her own! yes, as a missionary i've sung my songs of praise. and yet i think that england sinned when she got herself into a war in south africa which she could have avoided, just as we sinned in getting into a similar war in the philippines. mr. churchill, by his father, is an englishman; by his mother he is an americanno doubt a blend that makes the perfect man. england and america; yes, we are kin. and now that we are also kin in sin, there is nothing more to be desired. the harmony is complete, the blend is perfect. theoretical and practical morals. the new vagabonds club of london, made up of the leading younger literary men of the day, gave a dinner in honor of mr. and mrs. clemens, july 8, 1899. it has always been difficultleave that word difficultnot exceedingly difficult, but just difficult, nothing more than that, not the slightest shade to add to thatjust difficultto respond properly, in the right phraseology, when compliments are paid to me; but it is more than difficult when the compliments are paid to a better than imy wife. and while i am not here to testify against myselfi can't be expected to do so, a prisoner in your own country is not admitted to do soas to which member of the family wrote my books, i could say in general that really i wrote the books myself. my wife puts the facts in, and they make it respectable. my modesty won't suffer while compliments are being paid to literature, and through literature to my family. i can't get enough of them. i am curiously situated to-night. it so rarely happens that i am introduced by a humorist; i am generally introduced by a person of grave walk and carriage. that makes the proper background of gravity for brightness. i am going to alter to suit, and haply i may say some humorous things. when you start with a blaze of sunshine and upburst of humor, when you begin with that, the proper office of humor is to reflect, to put you into that pensive mood of deep thought, to make you think of your sins, if you wish half an hour to fly. humor makes me reflect now to-night, it sets the thinking machinery in motion. always, when i am thinking, there come suggestions of what i am, and what we all are, and what we are coming to. a sermon comes from my lips always when i listen to a humorous speech. i seize the opportunity to throw away frivolities, to say something to plant the seed, and make all better than when i came. in mr. grossmith's remarks there was a subtle something suggesting my favorite theory of the difference between theoretical morals and practical morals. i try to instil practical morals in the place of theatricali mean theoretical; but as an addenduman annexsomething added to theoretical morals. when your chairman said it was the first time he had ever taken the chair, he did not mean that he had not taken lots of other things; he attended my first lecture and took notes. this indicated the man's disposition. there was nothing else flying round, so he took notes; he would have taken anything he could get. i can bring a moral to bear here which shows the difference between theoretical morals and practical morals. theoretical morals are the sort you get on your mother's knee, in good books, and from the pulpit. you gather them in your head, and not in your heart; they are theory without practice. without the assistance of practice to perfect them, it is difficult to teach a child to "be honest, don't steal." i will teach you how it should be done, lead you into temptation, teach you how to steal, so that you may recognize when you have stolen and feel the proper pangs. it is no good going round and bragging you have never taken the chair. as by the fires of experience, so by commission of crime, you learn real morals. commit all the crimes, familiarize yourself with all sins, take them in rotation (there are only two or three thousand of them), stick to it, commit two or three every day, and by-and-by you will be proof against them. when you are through you will be proof against all sins and morally perfect. you will be vaccinated against every possible commission of them. this is the only way. i will read you a written statement upon the subject that i wrote three years ago to read to the sabbath-schools. [here the lecturer turned his pockets out, but without success.] no! i have left it at home. still, it was a mere statement of fact, illustrating the value of practical morals produced by the commission of crime. it was in my boyhoodjust a statement of fact, reading is only more formal, merely facts, merely pathetic facts, which i can state so as to be understood. it relates to the first time i ever stole a watermelon; that is, i think it was the first time; anyway, it was right along there somewhere. i stole it out of a farmer's wagon while he was waiting on another customer. "stole" is a harsh term. i withdrewi retired that watermelon. i carried it to a secluded corner of a lumber-yard. i broke it open. it was greenthe greenest watermelon raised in the valley that year. the minute i saw it was green i was sorry, and began to reflectreflection is the beginning of reform. if you don't reflect when you commit a crime then that crime is of no use; it might just as well have been committed by some one else. you must reflect or the value is lost; you are not vaccinated against committing it again. i began to reflect. i said to myself: "what ought a boy to do who has stolen a green watermelon? what would george washington do, the father of his country, the only american who could not tell a lie? what would he do? there is only one right, high, noble thing for any boy to do who has stolen a watermelon of that class: he must make restitution; he must restore that stolen property to its rightful owner." i said i would do it when i made that good resolution. i felt it to be a noble, uplifting obligation. i rose up spiritually stronger and refreshed. i carried that watermelon backwhat was left of itand restored it to the farmer, and made him give me a ripe one in its place. now you see that this constant impact of crime upon crime protects you against further commission of crime. it builds you up. a man can't become morally perfect by stealing one or a thousand green watermelons, but every little helps. i was at a great school yesterday (st. paul's), where for four hundred years they have been busy with brains, and building up england by producing pepys, miltons, and marlboroughs. six hundred boys left to nothing in the world but theoretical morality. i wanted to become the professor of practical morality, but the high master was away, so i suppose i shall have to go on making my livingthe same old wayby adding practical to theoretical morality. what are the glory that was greece, the grandeur that was rome, compared to the glory and grandeur and majesty of a perfected morality such as you see before you? the new vagabonds are old vagabonds (undergoing the old sort of reform). you drank my health; i hope i have not been unuseful. take this system of morality to your hearts. take it home to your neighbors and your graves, and i hope that it will be a long time before you arrive there. layman's sermon. the young men's christian association asked mr. clemens to deliver a lay sermon at the majestic theatre, new york, march 4, 1906. more than five thousand young men tried to get into the theatre, and in a short time traffic was practically stopped in the adjacent streets. the police reserves had to be called out to thin the crowd. doctor fagnani had said something before about the police episode, and mr. clemens took it up. i have been listening to what was said here, and there is in it a lesson of citizenship. you created the police, and you are responsible for them. one must pause, therefore, before criticising them too harshly. they are citizens, just as we are. a little of citizenship ought to be taught at the mother's knee and in the nursery. citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it. what keeps a republic on its legs is good citizenship. organization is necessary in all things. it is even necessary in reform. i was an organization myself oncefor twelve hours. i was in chicago a few years ago about to depart for new york. there were with me mr. osgood, a publisher, and a stenographer. i picked out a state-room on a train, the principal feature of which was that it contained the privilege of smoking. the train had started but a short time when the conductor came in and said that there had been a mistake made, and asked that we vacate the apartment. i refused, but when i went out on the platform osgood and the stenographer agreed to accept a section. they were too modest. now, i am not modest. i was born modest, but it didn't last. i asserted myself, insisted upon my rights, and finally the pullman conductor and the train conductor capitulated, and i was left in possession. i went into the dining-car the next morning for breakfast. ordinarily i only care for coffee and rolls, but this particular morning i espied an important-looking man on the other side of the car eating broiled chicken. i asked for broiled chicken, and i was told by the waiter and later by the dining-car conductor that there was no broiled chicken. there must have been an argument, for the pullman conductor came in and remarked: "if he wants broiled chicken, give it to him. if you haven't got it on the train, stop somewhere. it will be better for all concerned!" i got the chicken. it is from experiences such as these that you get your education of life, and you string them into jewels or into tinware, as you may choose. i have received recently several letters asking my counsel or advice. the principal request is for some incident that may prove helpful to the young. there were a lot of incidents in my career to help me alongsometimes they helped me along faster than i wanted to go. here is such a request. it is a telegram from joplin, missouri, and it reads: "in what one of your works can we find the definition of a gentleman?" i have not answered that telegram, either; i couldn't. it seems to me that if any man has just merciful and kindly instincts he would be a gentleman, for he would need nothing else in the world. i received the other day a letter from my old friend, william dean howellshowells, the head of american literature. no one is able to stand with him. he is an old, old friend of mine, and he writes me, "to-morrow i shall be sixty-nine years old." why, i am surprised at howells writing that! i have known him longer than that. i'm sorry to see a man trying to appear so young. let's see. howells says now, "i see you have been burying patrick. i suppose he was old, too." no, he was never oldpatrick. he came to us thirty-six years ago. he was my coachman on the morning that i drove my young bride to our new home. he was a young irishman, slender, tall, lithe, honest, truthful, and he never changed in all his life. he really was with us but twenty-five years, for he did not go with us to europe, but he never regarded that as separation. as the children grew up he was their guide. he was all honor, honesty, and affection. he was with us in new hampshire, with us last summer, and his hair was just as black, his eyes were just as blue, his form just as straight, and his heart just as good as on the day we first met. in all the long years patrick never made a mistake. he never needed an order, he never received a command. he knew. i have been asked for my idea of an ideal gentleman, and i give it to youpatrick mcaleer. university settlement society. after the serious addresses were made, seth low introduced mr. clemens at the settlement house, february 2, 1901. the older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes. ten days ago i did not know anything about the university settlement except what i'd read in the pamphlets sent me. now, after being here and hearing mrs. hewitt and mrs. thomas, it seems to me i know of nothing like it at all. it's a charity that carries no humiliation with it. marvellous it is, to think of schools where you don't have to drive the children in but drive them out. it was not so in my day. down-stairs just now i saw a dancing lesson going on. you must pay a cent for a lesson. you can't get it for nothing. that's the reason i never learned to dance. but it was the pawnbroker's shop you have here that interested me mightily. i've known something about pawnbrokers' shops in my time, but here you have a wonderful plan. the ordinary pawnbroker charges, thirty-six per cent; a year for a loan, and i've paid more myself, but here a man or woman in distress can obtain a loan. for one per cent. a month! it's wonderful! i've been interested in all i've heard to-day, especially in the romances recounted by mrs. thomas, which reminds me that i have a romance of my own in my autobiography, which i am building for the instruction of the world. in san francisco, many years ago, when i was a newspaper reporter (perhaps i should say i had been and was willing to be), a pawnbroker was taking care of what property i had. there was a friend of mine, a poet, out of a job, and he was having a hard time of it, too. there was passage in it, but i guess i've got to keep that for the autobiography. well, my friend the poet thought his life was a failure, and i told him i thought it was, and then he said he thought he ought to commit suicide, and i said "all right," which was disinterested advice to a friend in trouble; but, like all such advice, there was just a little bit of self-interest back of it, for if i could get a "scoop" on the other newspapers i could get a job. the poet could be spared, and so, largely for his own good and partly for mine, i kept the thing in his mind, which was necessary, as would-be suicides are very changeable and hard to hold to their purpose. he had a preference for a pistol, which was an extravagance, for we hadn't enough between us to hire a pistol. a fork would have been easier. and so he concluded to drown himself, and i said it was an excellent ideathe only trouble being that he was so good a swimmer. so we went down to the beach. i went along to see that the thing was done right. then something most romantic happened. there came in on the sea something that had been on its way for three years. it rolled in across the broad pacific with a message that was full of meaning to that poor poet and cast itself at his feet. it was a life-preserver! this was a complication. and then i had an ideahe never had any, especially when he was going to write poetry; i suggested that we pawn the life-preserver and get a revolver. the pawnbroker gave us an old derringer with a bullet as big as a hickory nut. when he heard that it was only a poet that was going to kill himself he did not quibble. well, we succeeded in sending a bullet right through his head. it was a terrible moment when he placed that pistol against his forehead and stood for an instant. i said, "oh, pull the trigger!" and he did, and cleaned out all the gray matter in his brains. it carried the poetic faculty away, and now he's a useful member of society. now, therefore, i realize that there's no more beneficent institution than this penny fund of yours, and i want all the poets to know this. i did think about writing you a check, but now i think i'll send you a few copies of what one of your little members called strawberry finn. public education association. address at a meeting of the berkeley lyceum, new york, november 23, 1900. i don't suppose that i am called here as an expert on education, for that would show a lack of foresight on your part and a deliberate intention to remind me of my shortcomings. as i sat here looking around for an idea it struck me that i was called for two reasons. one was to do good to me, a poor unfortunate traveller on the world's wide ocean, by giving me a knowledge of the nature and scope of your society and letting me know that others beside myself have been of some use in the world. the other reason that i can see is that you have called me to show by way of contrast what education can accomplish if administered in the right sort of doses. your worthy president said that the school pictures, which have received the admiration of the world at the paris exposition, have been sent to russia, and this was a compliment from that governmentwhich is very surprising to me. why, it is only an hour since i read a cablegram in the newspapers beginning "russia proposes to retrench." i was not expecting such a thunderbolt, and i thought what a happy thing it will be for russians when the retrenchment will bring home the thirty thousand russian troops now in manchuria, to live in peaceful pursuits. i thought this was what germany should do also without delay, and that france and all the other nations in china should follow suit. why should not china be free from the foreigners, who are only making trouble on her soil? if they would only all go home, what a pleasant place china would be for the chinese! we do not allow chinamen to come here, and i say in all seriousness that it would be a graceful thing to let china decide who shall go there. china never wanted foreigners any more than foreigners wanted chinamen, and on this question i am with the boxers every time. the boxer is a patriot. he loved his country better than he does the countries of other people. i wish him success. the boxer believes in driving us out of his country. i am a boxer too, for i believe in driving him out of our country. when i read the russian despatch further my dream of world peace vanished. it said that the vast expense of maintaining the army had made it necessary to retrench, and so the government had decided that to support the army it would be necessary to withdraw the appropriation from the public schools. this is a monstrous idea to us. we believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation. it is curious to reflect how history repeats itself the world over. why, i remember the same thing was done when i was a boy on the mississippi river. there was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. an old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built. it's like feeding a dog on his own tail. he'll never get fat. i believe it is better to support schools than jails. the work of your association is better and shows more wisdom than the czar of russia and all his people. this is not much of a compliment, but it's the best i've got in stock. education and citizenship. on the evening of may 14, 1908, the alumni of the college of the city of new york celebrated the opening of the new college buildings at a banquet in the waldorf-astoria. mr. clemens followed mayor mcclellan. i agreed when the mayor said that there was not a man within hearing who did not agree that citizenship should be placed above everything else, even learning. have you ever thought about this? is there a college in the whole country where there is a chair of good citizenship? there is a kind of bad citizenship which is taught in the schools, but no real good citizenship taught. there are some which teach insane citizenship, bastard citizenship, but that is all. patriotism! yes; but patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. he is the man who talks the loudest. you can begin that chair of citizenship in the college of the city of new york. you can place it above mathematics and literature, and that is where it belongs. we used to trust in god. i think it was in 1863 that some genius suggested that it be put upon the gold and silver coins which circulated among the rich. they didn't put it on the nickels and coppers because they didn't think the poor folks had any trust in god. good citizenship would teach accuracy of thinking and accuracy of statement. now, that motto on the coin is an overstatement. those congressmen had no right to commit this whole country to a theological doctrine. but since they did, congress ought to state what our creed should be. there was never a nation in the world that put its whole trust in god. it is a statement made on insufficient evidence. leaving out the gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in god after a fashion. but, after all, it is an overstatement. if the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would put their trust in the health board of the city of new york. i read in the papers within the last day or two of a poor young girl who they said was a leper. did the people in that populous section of the country where she wasdid they put their trust in god? the girl was afflicted with the leprosy, a disease which cannot be communicated from one person to another. yet, instead of putting their trust in god, they harried that poor creature, shelterless and friendless, from place to place, exactly as they did in the middle ages, when they made lepers wear bells, so that people could be warned of their approach and avoid them. perhaps those people in the middle ages thought they were putting their trust in god. the president ordered the removal of that motto from the coin, and i thought that it was well. i thought that overstatement should not stay there. but i think it would better read, "within certain judicious limitations we trust in god," and if there isn't enough room on the coin for this, why, enlarge the coin. now i want to tell a story about jumping at conclusions. it was told to me by bram stoker, and it concerns a christening. there was a little clergyman who was prone to jump at conclusions sometimes. one day he was invited to officiate at a christening. he went. there sat the relativesintelligent-looking relatives they were. the little clergyman's instinct came to him to make a great speech. he was given to flights of oratory that waya very dangerous thing, for often the wings which take one into clouds of oratorical enthusiasm are wax and melt up there, and down you come. but the little clergyman couldn't resist. he took the child in his arms, and, holding it, looked at it a moment. it wasn't much of a child. it was little, like a sweet-potato. then the little clergyman waited impressively, and then: "i see in your countenances," he said, "disappointment of him. i see you are disappointed with this baby. why? because he is so little. my friends, if you had but the power of looking into the future you might see that great things may come of little things. there is the great ocean, holding the navies of the world, which comes from little drops of water no larger than a woman's tears. there are the great constellations in the sky, made up of little bits of stars. oh, if you could consider his future you might see that he might become the greatest poet of the universe, the greatest warrior the world has ever known, greater than caesar, than hannibal, thanerer" (turning to the father)"what's his name?" the father hesitated, then whispered back: "his name? well, his name is mary ann." courage courage. at a beefsteak dinner, given by artists, caricaturists, and humorists of new york city, april 18, 1908, mr. clemens, mr. h. h. rogers, and mr. patrick mccarren were the guests of honor. each wore a white apron, and each made a short speech. in the matter of courage we all have our limits. there never was a hero who did not have his bounds. i suppose it may be said of nelson and all the others whose courage has been advertised that there came times in their lives when their bravery knew it had come to its limit. i have found mine a good many times. sometimes this was expectedoften it was unexpected. i know a man who is not afraid to sleep with a rattlesnake, but you could not get him to sleep with a safety-razor. i never had the courage to talk across a long, narrow room i should be at the end of the room facing all the audience. if i attempt to talk across a room i find myself turning this way and that, and thus at alternate periods i have part of the audience behind me. you ought never to have any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what they are going to do. i'll sit down. the dinner to mr. choate. at a dinner given in honor of ambassador joseph h. choate at the lotos club, november 24, 1901. the speakers, among others, were: senator depew, william henry white, speaker thomas reed, and mr. choate. mr. clemens spoke, in part, as follows: the greatness of this country rests on two anecdotes. the first one is that of washington and his hatchet, representing the foundation of true speaking, which is the characteristic of our people. the second one is an old one, and i've been waiting to hear it to-night, but as nobody has told it yet, i will tell it. you've heard it before, and you'll hear it many, many times more. it is an anecdote of our guest, of the time when he was engaged as a young man with a gentle hebrew, in the process of skinning the client. the main part in that business is the collection of the bill for services in skinning the man. "services" is the term used in that craft for the operation of that kinddiplomatic in its nature. choate'sco-respondentmade out a bill for $500 for his services, so called. but choate told him he had better leave the matter to him, and the next day he collected the bill for the services and handed the hebrew $5000, saying, "that's your half of the loot," and inducing that memorable response: "almost thou persuadest me to be a christian.' the deep-thinkers didn't merely laugh when that happened. they stopped to think, and said: "there's a rising man. he must be rescued from the law and consecrated to diplomacy. the commercial advantages of a great nation lie there in that man's keeping. we no longer require a man to take care of our moral character before the world. washington and his anecdote have done that. we require a man to take care of our commercial prosperity." mr. choate has carried that trait with him, and, as mr. carnegie has said, he has worked like a mole underground. we see the result when american railroad iron is sold so cheap in england that the poorest family can have it. he has so beguiled that cabinet of england. he has been spreading the commerce of this nation, and has depressed english commerce in the same ratio. this was the principle underlying that anecdote, and the wise men saw it; the principle of give and takegive one and take tenthe principle of diplomacy. on stanley and livingstone. mr. clemens was entertained at dinner by the white-friars' club, london, at the mitre tavern, on the evening of august 6, 1872. in reply to the toast in his honor he said: gentlemen,i thank you very heartily indeed for this expression of kindness toward me. what i have done for england and civilization in the arduous affairs which i have engaged in (that is good: that is so smooth that i will say it again and again)what i have done for england and civilization in the arduous part i have performed i have done with a single-hearted devotion and with no hope of reward. i am proud, i am very proud, that it was reserved for me to find doctor livingstone and for mr. stanley to get all the credit. i hunted for that man in africa all over seventy-five or one hundred parishes, thousands and thousands of miles in the wilds and deserts all over the place, sometimes riding negroes and sometimes travelling by rail. i didn't mind the rail or anything else, so that i didn't come in for the tar and feathers. i found that man at ujijia place you may remember if you have ever been thereand it was a very great satisfaction that i found him just in the nick of time. i found that poor old man deserted by his niggers and by his geographers, deserted by all of his kind except the gorillasdejected, miserable, famishing, absolutely famishingbut he was eloquent. just as i found him he had eaten his last elephant, and he said to me: "god knows where i shall get another." he had nothing to wear except his venerable and honorable naval suit, and nothing to eat but his diary. but i said to him: "it is all right; i have discovered you, and stanley will be here by the four-o'clock train and will discover you officially, and then we will turn to and have a reg'lar good time." i said: "cheer up, for stanley has got corn, ammunition, glass beads, hymn-books, whiskey, and everything which the human heart can desire; he has got all kinds of valuables, including telegraph-poles and a few cart-loads of money. by this time communication has been made with the land of bibles and civilization, and property will advance." and then we surveyed all that country, from ujiji, through unanogo and other places, to unyanyembe. i mention these names simply for your edification, nothing moredo not expect itparticularly as intelligence to the royal geographical society. and then, having filled up the old man, we were all too full for utterance and departed. we have since then feasted on honors. stanley has received a snuff-box and i have received considerable snuff; he has got to write a book and gather in the rest of the credit, and i am going to levy on the copyright and to collect the money. nothing comes amiss to mecash or credit; but, seriously, i do feel that stanley is the chief man and an illustrious one, and i do applaud him with all my heart. whether he is an american or a welshman by birth, or one, or both, matter's not to me. so far as i am personally concerned, i am simply here to stay a few months, and to see english people and to learn english manners and customs, and to enjoy myself; so the simplest thing i can do is to thank you for the toast you have honored me with and for the remarks you have made, and to wish health and prosperity to the white-friar's' club, and to sink down to my accustomed level. henry m. stanley. address delivered in boston, november, 1886. mr. clemens introduced mr. stanley. ladies and gentlemen, if any should ask, why is it that you are here as introducer of the lecturer? i should answer that i happened to be around and was asked to perform this function. i was quite willing to do so, and, as there was no sort of need of an introduction, anyway, it could be necessary only that some person come forward for a moment and do an unnecessary thing, and this is quite in my line. now, to introduce so illustrious a name as henry m. stanley by any detail of what the man has done is clear aside from my purpose; that would be stretching the unnecessary to an unconscionable degree. when i contrast what i have achieved in my measurably brief life with what he has achieved in his possibly briefer one, the effect is to sweep utterly away the ten-story edifice of my own self-appreciation and leave nothing behind but the cellar. when you compare these achievements of his with the achievements of really great men who exist in history, the comparison, i believe, is in his favor. i am not here to disparage columbus. no, i won't do that; but when you come to regard the achievements of these two men, columbus and stanley, from the standpoint of the difficulties their encountered, the advantage is with stanley and against columbus. now, columbus started out to discover america. well, he didn't need to do anything at all but sit in the cabin of his ship and hold his grip and sail straight on, and america would discover itself. here it was, barring his passage the whole length and breadth of the south american continent, and he couldn't get by it. he'd got to discover it. but stanley started out to find doctor livingstone, who was scattered abroad, as you may say, over the length and breadth of a vast slab of africa as big as the united states. it was a blind kind of search. he was the worst scattered of men. but i will throw the weight of this introduction upon one very peculiar feature of mr. stanley's character, and that is his indestructible americanisman americanism which he is proud of. and in this day and time, when it is the custom to ape and imitate english methods and fashion, it is like a breath of fresh air to stand in the presence of this untainted american citizen who has been caressed and complimented by half of the crowned heads of europe, who could clothe his body from his head to his heels with the orders and decorations lavished upon him. and yet, when the untitled myriads of his own country put out their hands in welcome to him and greet him, "well done," through the congress of the united states, that is the crown that is worth all the rest to him. he is a product of institutions which exist in no other country on earthinstitutions that bring out all that is best and most heroic in a man. i introduce henry m. stanley. dinner to mr. jerome. a dinner to express their confidence in the integrity and good judgment of district-attorney jerome was given as delmonico's by over three hundred of his admirers on the evening of may 7, 1909. indeed, that is very sudden. i was not informed that the verdict was going to depend upon my judgment, but that makes not the least difference in the world when you already know all about it. it is not any matter when you are called upon to express it; you can get up and do it, and my verdict has already been recorded in my heart and in my head as regards mr. jerome and his administration of the criminal affairs of this county. i agree with everything mr. choate has said in his letter regarding mr. jerome; i agree with everything mr. shepard has said; and i agree with everything mr. jerome has said in his own commendation. and i thought mr. jerome was modest in that. if he had been talking about another officer of this county, he could have painted the joys and sorrows of office and his victories in even stronger language than he did. i voted for mr. jerome in those old days, and i should like to vote for him again if he runs for any office. i moved out of new york, and that is the reason, i suppose, i cannot vote for him again. there may be some way, but i have not found it out. but now i am a farmera farmer up in connecticut, and winning laurels. those people already speak with such high favor, admiration, of my farming, and they say that i am the only man that has ever come to that region who could make two blades of grass grow where only three grew before. well, i cannot vote for him. you see that. as it stands now, i cannot. i am crippled in that way and to that extent, for i would ever so much like to do it. i am not a congress, and i cannot distribute pensions, and i don't know any other legitimate way to buy a vote. but if i should think of any legitimate way, i shall make use of it, and then i shall vote for mr. jerome. henry irving. the dramatic and literary society of london gave a welcome-home dinner to sir henry irving at the savoy hotel, london, june 9, 1900. in proposing the toast of "the drama" mr. clemens said: i find my task a very easy one. i have been a dramatist for thirty years. i have had an ambition in all that time to overdo the work of the spaniard who said he left behind him four hundred dramas when he died. i leave behind me four hundred and fifteen, and am not yet dead. the greatest of all the arts is to write a drama. it is a most difficult thing. it requires the highest talent possible and the rarest gifts. no, there is another talent that ranks with itfor anybody can write a dramai had four hundred of thembut to get one accepted requires real ability. and i have never had that felicity yet. but human nature is so constructed, we are so persistent, that when we know that we are born to a thing we do not care what the world thinks about it. we go on exploiting that talent year after year, as i have done. i shall go on writing dramas, and some day the impossible may happen, but i am not looking for it. in writing plays the chief thing is novelty. the world grows tired of solid forms in all the arts. i struck a new idea myself years ago. i was not surprised at it. i was always expecting it would happen. a person who has suffered disappointment for many years loses confidence, and i thought i had better make inquiries before i exploited my new idea of doing a drama in the form of a dream, so i wrote to a great authority on knowledge of all kinds, and asked him whether it was new. i could depend upon him. he lived in my dear home in americathat dear home, dearer to me through taxes. he sent me a list of plays in which that old device had been used, and he said that there was also a modern lot. he travelled back to china and to a play dated two thousand six hundred years before the christian era. he said he would follow it up with a list of the previous plays of the kind, and in his innocence would have carried them back to the flood. that is the most discouraging thing that has ever happened to me in my dramatic career. i have done a world of good in a silent and private way, and have furnished sir henry irving with plays and plays and plays. what has he achieved through that influence? see where he stands nowon the summit of his art in two worldsand it was i who put him therethat partly put him there. i need not enlarge upon the influence the drama has exerted upon civilization. it has made good morals entertaining. i am to be followed by mr. pinero. i conceive that we stand at the head of the profession. he has not written as many plays as i have, but he has had that god-given talent, which i lack, of working them off on the manager. i couple his name with this toast, and add the hope that his influence will be supported in exercising his masterly handicraft in that great gift, and that he will long live to continue his fine work. dinner to hamilton w. mabie. address delivered april 29, 1901. in introducing mr. clemens, doctor van dyke said: "the longer the speaking goes on to-night the more i wonder how i got this job, and the only explanation i can give for it is that it is the same kind of compensation for the number of articles i have sent to the outlook, to be rejected by hamilton w. mabie. there is one man here to-night that has a job cut out for him that none of you would have hada man whose humor has put a girdle of light around the globe, and whose sense of humor has been an example for all five continents. he is going to speak to you. gentlemen, you know him best as mark twain." mr. chairman and gentlemen,this man knows now how it feels to be the chief guest, and if he has enjoyed it he is the first man i have ever seen in that position that did enjoy it. and i know, by side-remarks which he made to me before his ordeal came upon him, that he was feeling as some of the rest of us have felt under the same circumstances. he was afraid that he would not do himself justice; but he didto my surprise. it is a most serious thing to be a chief guest on an occasion like this, and it is admirable, it is fine. it is a great compliment to a man that he shall come out of it so gloriously as mr. mabie came out of it to-nightto my surprise. he did it well. he appears to be editor of the outlook, and notwithstanding that, i have every admiration, because when everything is said concerning the outlook, after all one must admit that it is frank in its delinquencies, that it is outspoken in its departures from fact, that it is vigorous in its mistaken criticisms of men like me. i have lived in this world a long, long time, and i know you must not judge a man by the editorials that he puts in his paper. a man is always better than his printed opinions. a man always reserves to himself on the inside a purity and an honesty and a justice that are a credit to him, whereas the things that he prints are just the reverse. oh yes, you must not judge a man by what he writes in his paper. even in an ordinary secular paper a man must observe some care about it; he must be better than the principles which he puts in print. and that is the case with mr. mabie. why, to see what he writes about me and the missionaries you would think he did not have any principles. but that is mr. mabie in his public capacity. mr. mabie in his private capacity is just as clean a man as i am. in this very room, a month or two ago, some people admired that portrait; some admired this, but the great majority fastened on that, and said, "there is a portrait that is a beautiful piece of art." when that portrait is a hundred years old it will suggest what were the manners and customs in our time. just as they talk about mr. mabie to-night, in that enthusiastic way, pointing out the various virtues of the man and the grace of his spirit, and all that, so was that portrait talked about. they were enthusiastic, just as we men have been over the character and the work of mr. mabie. and when they were through they said that portrait, fine as it is, that work, beautiful as it is, that piece of humanity on that canvas, gracious and fine as it is, does not rise to those perfections that exist in the man himself. come up, mr. alexander. [the reference was to james w. alexander, who happened to be sitting beneath the portrait of himself on the wall.] now, i should come up and show myself. but he cannot do it, he cannot do it. he was born that way, he was reared in that way. let his modesty be an example, and i wish some of you had it, too. but that is just what i have been sayingthat portrait, fine as it is, is not as fine as the man it represents, and all the things that have been said about mr. mabie, and certainly they have been very nobly worded and beautiful, still fall short of the real mabie. introducing nye and riley. james whitcomb riley and edgar wilson nye (bill nye) were to give readings in tremont temple, boston, november, 1888. mr. clemens was induced to introduce messrs. riley and nye. his appearance on the platform was a surprise to the audience, and when they recognized him there was a tremendous demonstration. i am very glad indeed to introduce these young people to you, and at the same time get acquainted with them myself. i have seen them more than once for a moment, but have not had the privilege of knowing them personally as intimately as i wanted to. i saw them first, a great many years ago, when mr. barnum had them, and they were just fresh from siam. the ligature was their best hold then, the literature became their best hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to cut the old bond to accommodate the sheriff. in that old former time this one was chang, that one was eng. the sympathy existing between the two was most extraordinary; it was so fine, so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate the other digested; when one slept, the other snored; if one sold a thing, the other scooped the usufruct. this independent and yet dependent action was observable in all the details of their daily lifei mean this quaint and arbitrary distribution of originating cause and resulting effect between the twobetween, i may say, this dynamo and the other always motor, or, in other words, that the one was always the creating force, the other always the utilizing force; no, no, for while it is true that within certain well-defined zones of activity the one was always dynamo and the other always motor, within certain other well-defined zones these positions became exactly reversed. for instance, in moral matters mr. chang riley was always dynamo, mr. eng nye was always motor; for while mr. chang riley had a highin fact, an abnormally high and finemoral sense, he had no machinery to work it with; whereas, mr. eng nye, who hadn't any moral sense at all, and hasn't yet, was equipped with all the necessary plant for putting a noble deed through, if he could only get the inspiration on reasonable terms outside. in intellectual matters, on the other hand, mr. eng nye was always dynamo, mr. chang riley was always motor; mr. eng nye had a stately intellect, but couldn't make it go; mr. chang riley hadn't, but could. that is to say, that while mr. chang riley couldn't think things himself, he had a marvellous natural grace in setting them down and weaving them together when his pal furnished the raw material. thus, working together, they made a strong team; laboring together, they could do miracles; but break the circuit, and both were impotent. it has remained so to this day: they must travel together, hoe, and plant, and plough, and reap, and sell their public together, or there's no result. i have made this explanation, this analysis, this vivisection, so to speak, in order that you may enjoy these delightful adventurers understandingly. when mr. eng nye's deep and broad and limpid philosophies flow by in front of you, refreshing all the regions round about with their gracious floods, you will remember that it isn't his water; it's the other man's, and he is only working the pump. and when mr. chang riley enchants your ear, and soothes your spirit, and touches your heart with the sweet and genuine music of his poetryas sweet and as genuine as any that his friends, the birds and the bees, make about his other friends, the woods and the flowersyou will remember, while placing justice where justice is due, that it isn't his music, but the other man'she is only turning the crank. i beseech for these visitors a fair field, a single-minded, one-eyed umpire, and a score bulletin barren of goose-eggs if they earn itand i judge they will and hope they will. mr. james whitcomb chang riley will now go to the bat. dinner to whitelaw reid. address at the dinner in honor of ambassador reid, given by the pilgrims' club of new york on february 19, 1908. i am very proud to respond to this toast, as it recalls the proudest day of my life. the delightful hospitality shown me at the time of my visit to oxford i shall cherish until i die. in that long and distinguished career of mine i value that degree above all other honors. when the ship landed even the stevedores gathered on the shore and gave an english cheer. nothing could surpass in my life the pleasure of those four weeks. no one could pass by me without taking my hand, even the policemen. i've been in all the principal capitals of christendom in my life, and have always been an object of interest to policemen. sometimes there was suspicion in their eyes, but not always. with their puissant hand they would hold up the commerce of the world to let me pass. i noticed in the papers this afternoon a despatch from washington, saying that congress would immediately pass a bill restoring to our gold coinage the motto "in god we trust." i'm glad of that; i'm glad of that. i was troubled when that motto was removed. sure enough, the prosperities of the whole nation went down in a heap when we ceased to trust in god in that conspicuously advertised way. i knew there would be trouble. and if pierpont morgan hadn't stepped inbishop lawrence may now add to his message to the old country that we are now trusting in god again. so we can discharge mr. morgan from his office with honor. mr. reid said an hour or so ago something about my ruining my activities last summer. they are not ruined, they are renewed. i am stronger nowmuch stronger. i suppose that the spiritual uplift i received increased my physical power more than anything i ever had before. i was dancing last night at 12.30 o'clock. mr. choate has mentioned mr. reid's predecessors. mr. choate's head is full of history, and some of it is true, too. i enjoyed hearing him tell about the list of the men who had the place before he did. he mentioned a long list of those predecessors, people i never heard of before, and elected five of them to the presidency by his own vote. i'm glad and proud to find mr. reid in that high position, because he didn't look it when i knew him forty years ago. i was talking to reid the other day, and he showed me my autograph on an old paper twenty years old. i didn't know i had an autograph twenty years ago. nobody ever asked me for it. i remember a dinner i had long ago with whitelaw reid and john hay at reid's expense. i had another last summer when i was in london at the embassy that choate blackguards so. i'd like to live there. some people say they couldn't live on the salary, but i could live on the salary and the nation together. some of us don't appreciate what this country can do. there's john hay, reid, choate, and me. this is the only country in the world where youth, talent, and energy can reach such heights. it shows what we could do without means, and what people can do with talent and energy when they find it in people like us. when i first came to new york they were all struggling young men, and i am glad to see that they have got on in the world. i knew john hay when i had no white hairs in my head and more hair than reid has now. those were days of joy and hope. reid and hay were on the staff of the tribune. i went there once in that old building, and i looked all around, and i finally found a door ajar and looked in. it wasn't reid or hay there, but it was horace greeley. those were in the days when horace greeley was a king. that was the first time i ever saw him and the last. i was admiring him when he stopped and seemed to realize that there was a fine presence there somewhere. he tried to smile, but he was out of smiles. he looked at me a moment, and said: "what in hdo you want?" he began with that word "h." that's a long word and a profane word. i don't remember what the word was now, but i recognized the power of it. i had never used that language myself, but at that moment i was converted. it has been a great refuge for me in time of trouble. if a man doesn't know that language he can't express himself on strenuous occasions. when you have that word at your command let trouble come. but later hay rose, and you know what summit whitelaw reid has reached, and you see me. those two men have regulated troubles of nations and conferred peace upon mankind. and in my humble way, of which i am quite vain, i was the principal moral force in all those great international movements. these great men illustrated what i say. look at us great peoplewe all come from the dregs of society. that's what can be done in this country. that's what this country does for you. choate herehe hasn't got anything to say, but he says it just the same, and he can do it so felicitously, too. i said long ago he was the handsomest man america ever produced. may the progress of civilization always rest on such distinguished men as it has in the past! rogers and railroads. at a banquet given mr. h. h. rogers by the business men of norfolk, va., celebrating the opening of the virginian railway, april, 3, 1909. toastmaster: "i have often thought that when the time comes, which must come to all of us, when we reach that great way in the great beyond, and the question is propounded, 'what have you done to gain admission into this great realm?' if the answer could be sincerely made, 'i have made men laugh,' it would be the surest passport to a welcome entrance. we have here to-night one who has made millions laughnot the loud laughter that bespeaks the vacant mind, but the laugh of intelligent mirth that helps the human heart and the human mind. i refer, of course, to doctor clemens. i was going to say mark twain, his literary title, which is a household phrase in more homes than that of any other man, and you know him best by that dear old title." i thank you, mr. toastmaster, for the compliment which you have paid me, and i am sure i would rather have made people laugh than cry, yet in my time i have made some of them cry; and before i stop entirely i hope to make some more of them cry. i like compliments. i deal in them myself. i have listened with the greatest pleasure to the compliments which the chairman has paid to mr. rogers and that road of his to-night, and i hope some of them are deserved. it is no small distinction to a man like that to sit here before an intelligent crowd like this and to be classed with napoleon and caesar. why didn't he say that this was the proudest day of his life? napoleon and caesar are dead, and they can't be here to defend themselves. but i'm here! the chairman said, and very truly, that the most lasting thing in the hands of man are the roads which caesar built, and it is true that he built a lot of them; and they are there yet. yes, caesar built a lot of roads in england, and you can find them. but rogers has only built one road, and he hasn't finished that yet. i like to hear my old friend complimented, but i don't like to hear it overdone. i didn't go around to-day with the others to see what he is doing. i will do that in a quiet time, when there is not anything going on, and when i shall not be called upon to deliver intemperate compliments on a railroad in which i own no stock. they proposed that i go along with the committee and help inspect that dump down yonder. i didn't go. i saw that dump. i saw that thing when i was coming in on the steamer, and i didn't go because i was diffident, sentimentally diffident, about going and looking at that thing againthat great, long, bony thing; it looked just like mr. rogers's foot. the chairman says mr. rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is. it is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he is a very competent financier. maybe he is now, but it was not always so. i know lots of private things in his life which people don't know, and i know how he started; and it was not a very good start. i could have done better myself. the first time he crossed the atlantic he had just made the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to ask questions. he did not like to appear ignorant. to this day he don't like to appear ignorant, but he can look as ignorant as anybody. on board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship. he did not like to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn't know; but rather than be ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and in bed he could not sleep. he wondered if he could afford that outlay in case he lost. he kept wondering over it, and said to himself: "a king's crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000." he could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he went up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off. i like to hear mr. rogers complimented. i am not stingy in compliments to him myself. why, i did it to-day when i sent his wife a telegram to comfort her. that is the kind of person i am. i knew she would be uneasy about him. i knew she would be solicitous about what he might do down here, so i did it to quiet her and to comfort her. i said he was doing well for a person out of practice. there is nothing like it. he is like i used to be. there were times when i was carelesscareless in my dress when i got older. you know how uncomfortable your wife can get when you are going away without her superintendence. once when my wife could not go with me (she always went with me when she couldi always did meet that kind of luck), i was going to washington once, a long time ago, in mr. cleveland's first administration, and she could not go; but, in her anxiety that i should not desecrate the house, she made preparation. she knew that there was to be a reception of those authors at the white house at seven o'clock in the evening. she said, "if i should tell you now what i want to ask of you, you would forget it before you get to washington, and, therefore, i have written it on a card, and you will find it in your dress-vest pocket when you are dressing at the arlingtonwhen you are dressing to see the president." i never thought of it again until i was dressing, and i felt in that pocket and took it out, and it said, in a kind of imploring way, "don't wear your arctics in the white house." you complimented mr. rogers on his energy, his foresightedness, complimented him in various ways, and he has deserved those compliments, although i say it myself; and i enjoy them all. there is one side of mr. rogers that has not been mentioned. if you will leave that to me i will touch upon that. there was a note in an editorial in one of the norfolk papers this morning that touched upon that very thing, that hidden side of mr. rogers, where it spoke of helen keller and her affection for mr. rogers, to whom she dedicated her life book. and she has a right to feel that way, because, without the public knowing anything about it, he rescued, if i may use that term, that marvellous girl, that wonderful southern girl, that girl who was stone deaf, blind, and dumb from scarlet-fever when she was a baby eighteen months old; and who now is as well and thoroughly educated as any woman on this planet at twenty-nine years of age. she is the most marvellous person of her sex that has existed on this earth since joan of arc. that is not all mr. rogers has done; but you never see that side of his character, because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping hand daily out of that generous heart of his. you never hear of it. he is supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other bright. but the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright, and its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not god. i would take this opportunity to tell something that i have never been allowed to tell by mr. rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if i don't look at him i can tell it now. in 1893, when the publishing company of charles l. webster, of which i was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. if you will remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and i was on my back; my books were not worth anything at all, and i could not give away my copyrights. mr. rogers had long enough vision ahead to say, "your books have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support you again," and that was a correct proposition. he saved my copyrights, and saved me from financial ruin. he it was who arranged with my creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth for four years and persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising that at the end of four years i would pay dollar for dollar. that arrangement was made; otherwise i would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a borrowed one at that. you see his white mustache and his head trying to get white (he is always trying to look like mei don't blame him for that). these are only emblematic of his character, and that is all. i say, without exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man i have ever known. the old-fashioned printer. address at the typothetae dinner given at delmonico's, january 18, 1886, commemorating the birthday of benjamin franklin. mr. clemens responded to the toast "the compositor." the chairman's historical reminiscences of gutenberg have caused me to fall into reminiscences, for i myself am something of an antiquity. all things change in the procession of years, and it may be that i am among strangers. it may be that the printer of to-day is not the printer of thirty-five years ago. i was no stranger to him. i knew him well. i built his fire for him in the winter mornings; i brought his water from the village pump; i swept out his office; i picked up his type from under his stand; and, if he were there to see, i put the good type in his case and the broken ones among the "hell matter"; and if he wasn't there to see, i dumped it all with the "pi" on the imposing-stonefor that was the furtive fashion of the cub, and i was a cub. i wetted down the paper saturdays, i turned it sundaysfor this was a country weekly; i rolled, i washed the rollers, i washed the forms, i folded the papers, i carried them around at dawn thursday mornings. the carrier was then an object of interest to all the dogs in town. if i had saved up all the bites i ever received, i could keep m. pasteur busy for a year. i enveloped the papers that were for the mailwe had a hundred town subscribers and three hundred and fifty country ones; the town subscribers paid in groceries and the country ones in cabbages and cord-woodwhen they paid at all, which was merely sometimes, and then we always stated the fact in the paper, and gave them a puff; and if we forgot it they stopped the paper. every man on the town list helped edit the thingthat is, he gave orders as to how it was to be edited; dictated its opinions, marked out its course for it, and every time the boss failed to connect he stopped his paper. we were just infested with critics, and we tried to satisfy them all over. we had one subscriber who paid cash, and he was more trouble than all the rest. he bought us once a year, body and soul, for two dollars. he used to modify our politics every which way, and he made us change our religion four times in five years. if we ever tried to reason with him, he would threaten to stop his paper, and, of course, that meant bankruptcy and destruction. that man used to write articles a column and a half long, leaded long primer, and sign them "junius," or "veritas," or "vox populi," or some other high-sounding rot; and then, after it was set up, he would come in and say he had changed his mindwhich was a gilded figure of speech, because he hadn't anyand order it to be left out. we couldn't afford "bogus" in that office, so we always took the leads out, altered the signature, credited the article to the rival paper in the next village, and put it in. well, we did have one or two kinds of "bogus." whenever there was a barbecue, or a circus, or a baptizing, we knocked off for half a day, and then to make up for short matter we would "turn over ads"turn over the whole page and duplicate it. the other "bogus" was deep philosophical stuff, which we judged nobody ever read; so we kept a galley of it standing, and kept on slapping the same old batches of it in, every now and then, till it got dangerous. also, in the early days of the telegraph we used to economize on the news. we picked out the items that were pointless and barren of information and stood them on a galley, and changed the dates and localities, and used them over and over again till the public interest in them was worn to the bone. we marked the ads, but we seldom paid any attention to the marks afterward; so the life of a "td" ad and a "tf" ad was equally eternal. i have seen a "td" notice of a sheriffs sale still booming serenely along two years after the sale was over, the sheriff dead, and the whole circumstance become ancient history. most of the yearly ads were patent-medicine stereotypes, and we used to fence with them. i can see that printing-office of prehistoric times yet, with its horse bills on the walls, its "d" boxes clogged with tallow, because we always stood the candle in the "k" box nights, its towel, which was not considered soiled until it could stand alone, and other signs and symbols that marked the establishment of that kind in the mississippi valley; and i can see, also, the tramping "jour," who flitted by in the summer and tarried a day, with his wallet stuffed with one shirt and a hatful of handbills; for if he couldn't get any type to set he would do a temperance lecture. his way of life was simple, his needs not complex; all he wanted was plate and bed and money enough to get drunk on, and he was satisfied. but it may be, as i have said, that i am among strangers, and sing the glories of a forgotten age to unfamiliar ears, so i will "make even" and stop. society of american authors. on november 15, 1900, the society gave a reception to mr. clemens, who came with his wife and daughter. so many members surrounded the guests that mr. clemens asked: "is this genuine popularity or is it all a part of a prearranged programme?" chairman, ladies and gentlemen,it seems a most difficult thing for any man to say anything about me that is not complimentary. i don't know what the charm is about me which makes it impossible for a person to say a harsh thing about me and say it heartily, as if he was glad to say it. if this thing keeps on it will make me believe that i am what these kind chairmen say of me. in introducing me, judge ransom spoke of my modesty as if he was envious of me. i would like to have one man come out flat-footed and say something harsh and disparaging of me, even if it were true. i thought at one time, as the learned judge was speaking, that i had found that man; but he wound up, like all the others, by saying complimentary things. i am constructed like everybody else, and enjoy a compliment as well as any other fool, but i do like to have the other side presented. and there is another side. i have a wicked side. estimable friends who know all about it would tell you and take a certain delight in telling you things that i have done, and things further that i have not repented. the real life that i live, and the real life that i suppose all of you live, is a life of interior sin. that is what makes life valuable and pleasant. to lead a life of undiscovered sin! that is true joy. judge ransom seems to have all the virtues that he ascribes to me. but, oh my! if you could throw an x-ray through him. we are a pair. i have made a life-study of trying to appear to be what he seems to think i am. everybody believes that i am a monument of all the virtues, but it is nothing of the sort. i am living two lives, and it keeps me pretty busy. some day there will be a chairman who will forget some of these merits of mine, and then he will make a speech. i have more personal vanity than modesty, and twice as much veracity as the two put together. when that fearless and forgetful chairman is found there will be another story told. at the press club recently i thought that i had found him. he started in in the way that i knew i should be painted with all sincerity, and was leading to things that would not be to my credit; but when he said that he never read a book of mine i knew at once that he was a liar, because he never could have had all the wit and intelligence with which he was blessed unless he had read my works as a basis. i like compliments. i like to go home and tell them all over again to the members of my family. they don't believe them, but i like to tell them in the home circle, all the same. i like to dream of them if i can. i thank everybody for their compliments, but i don't think that i am praised any more than i am entitled to be. reading-room opening. on october 13, 1900. mr. clemens made his last address preceding his departure for america at kensal rise, london. i formally declare this reading-room open, and i think that the legislature should not compel a community to provide itself with intelligent food, but give it the privilege of providing it if the community so desires. if the community is anxious to have a reading-room it would put its hand in its pocket and bring out the penny tax. i think it a proof of the healthy, moral, financial, and mental condition of the community if it taxes itself for its mental food. a reading-room is the proper introduction to a library, leading up through the newspapers and magazines to other literature. what would we do without newspapers? look at the rapid manner in which the news of the galveston disaster was made known to the entire world. this reminds me of an episode which occurred fifteen years ago when i was at church in hartford, connecticut. the clergyman decided to make a collection for the survivors, if any. he did not include me among the leading citizens who took the plates around for collection. i complained to the governor of his lack of financial trust in me, and he replied: "i would trust you myselfif you had a bell-punch." you have paid me many compliments, and i like to listen to compliments. i indorse all your chairman has said to you about the union of england and america. he also alluded to my name, of which i am rather fond. a little girl wrote me from new zealand in a letter i received yesterday, stating that her father said my proper name was not mark twain but samuel clemens, but that she knew better, because clemens was the name of the man who sold the patent medicine, and his name was not mark. she was sure it was mark twain, because mark is in the bible and twain is in the bible. i was very glad to get that expression of confidence in my origin, and as i now know my name to be a scriptural one, i am not without hopes of making it worthy. literature literature. address at the royal literary fund banquet, london, may 4, 1900. anthony hope introduced mr. clemens to make the response to the toast "literature." mr. hope has been able to deal adequately with this toast without assistance from me. still, i was born generous. if he had advanced any theories that needed refutation or correction i would have attended to them, and if he had made any statements stronger than those which he is in the habit of making i would have dealt with them. in fact, i was surprised at the mildness of his statements. i could not have made such statements if i had preferred to, because to exaggerate is the only way i can approximate to the truth. you cannot have a theory without principles. principles is another name for prejudices. i have no prejudices in politics, religion, literature, or anything else. i am now on my way to my own country to run for the presidency because there are not yet enough candidates in the field, and those who have entered are too much hampered by their own principles, which are prejudices. i propose to go there to purify the political atmosphere. i am in favor of everything everybody is in favor of. what you should do is to satisfy the whole nation, not half of it, for then you would only be half a president. there could not be a broader platform than mine. i am in favor of anything and everythingof temperance and intemperance, morality and qualified immorality, gold standard and free silver. i have tried all sorts of things, and that is why i want to try the great position of ruler of a country. i have been in turn reporter, editor, publisher, author, lawyer, burglar. i have worked my way up, and wish to continue to do so. i read to-day in a magazine article that christendom issued last year fifty-five thousand new books. consider what that means! fifty-five thousand new books meant fifty-four thousand new authors. we are going to have them all on our hands to take care of sooner or later. therefore, double your subscriptions to the literary fund! disappearance of literature. address at the dinner of the nineteenth century club, at sherry's, new york, november 20, 1900. mr. clemens spoke to the toast "the disappearance of literature." doctor gould presided, and in introducing mr. clemens said that he (the speaker), when in germany, had to do a lot of apologizing for a certain literary man who was taking what the germans thought undue liberties with their language. it wasn't necessary for your chairman to apologize for me in germany. it wasn't necessary at all. instead of that he ought to have impressed upon those poor benighted teutons the service i rendered them. their language had needed untangling for a good many years. nobody else seemed to want to take the job, and so i took it, and i flatter myself that i made a pretty good job of it. the germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. it's downright inhuman to split it up. but that's just what those germans do. they take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in german. i maintain that there is no necessity for apologizing for a man who helped in a small way to stop such mutilation. we have heard a discussion to-night on the disappearance of literature. that's no new thing. that's what certain kinds of literature have been doing for several years. the fact is, my friends, that the fashion in literature changes, and the literary tailors have to change their cuts or go out of business. professor winchester here, if i remember fairly correctly what he said, remarked that few, if any, of the novels produced to-day would live as long as the novels of walter scott. that may be his notion. maybe he is right; but so far as i am concerned, i don't care if they don't. professor winchester also said something about there being no modern epics like paradise lost. i guess he's right. he talked as if he was pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody would suppose that he never had read it. i don't believe any of you have ever read paradise lost, and you don't want to. that's something that you just want to take on trust. it's a classic, just as professor winchester says, and it meets his definition of a classicsomething that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. professor trent also had a good deal to say about the disappearance of literature. he said that scott would outlive all his critics. i guess that's true. the fact of the business is, you've got to be one of two ages to appreciate scott. when you're eighteen you can read ivanhoe, and you want to wait until you are ninety to read some of the rest. it takes a pretty well-regulated, abstemious critic to live ninety years. but as much as these two gentlemen have talked about the disappearance of literature, they didn't say anything about my books. maybe they think they've disappeared. if they do, that just shows their ignorance on the general subject of literature. i am not as young as i was several years ago, and maybe i'm not so fashionable, but i'd be willing to take my chances with mr. scott to-morrow morning in selling a piece of literature to the century publishing company. and i haven't got much of a pull here, either. i often think that the highest compliment ever paid to my poor efforts was paid by darwin through president eliot, of harvard college. at least, eliot said it was a compliment, and i always take the opinion of great men like college presidents on all such subjects as that. i went out to cambridge one day a few years ago and called on president eliot. in the course of the conversation he said that he had just returned from england, and that he was very much touched by what he considered the high compliment darwin was paying to my books, and he went on to tell me something like this: "do you know that there is one room in darwin's house, his bedroom, where the housemaid is never allowed to touch two things? one is a plant he is growing and studying while it grows" (it was one of those insect-devouring plants which consumed bugs and beetles and things for the particular delectation of mr. darwin) "and the other some books that lie on the night table at the head of his bed. they are your books, mr. clemens, and mr. darwin reads them every night to lull him to sleep." my friends, i thoroughly appreciated that compliment, and considered it the highest one that was ever paid to me. to be the means of soothing to sleep a brain teeming with bugs and squirming things like darwin's was something that i had never hoped for, and now that he is dead i never hope to be able to do it again. the new york press club dinner. at the annual dinner, november 13, 1900. col. william l. brown, the former editor of the daily news, as president of the club, introduced mr. clemens as the principal ornament of american literature. i must say that i have already begun to regret that i left my gun at home. i've said so many times when a chairman has distressed me with just such compliments that the next time such a thing occurs i will certainly use a gun on that chairman. it is my privilege to compliment him in return. you behold before you a very, very old man. a cursory glance at him would deceive the most penetrating. his features seem to reveal a person dead to all honorable instinctsthey seem to bear the traces of all the known crimes, instead of the marks of a life spent for the most part, and now altogether, in the sunday-schoolof a life that may well stand as an example to all generations that have risen or will rizi mean to say, will rise. his private character is altogether suggestive of virtues which to all appearances he has not. if you examine his past history you will find it as deceptive as his features, because it is marked all over with waywardness and misdemeanormere effects of a great spirit upon a weak bodymere accidents of a great career. in his heart he cherishes every virtue on the list of virtues, and he practises them allsecretlyalways secretly. you all know him so well that there is no need for him to be introduced here. gentlemen, colonel brown. the alphabet and simplified spelling. address at the dinner given to mr. carnegie at the dedication of the new york engineers' club, december 9, 1907. mr. clemens was introduced by the president of the club, who, quoting from the mark twain autobiography, recalled the day when the distinguished writer came to new york with $3 in small change in his pockets and a $10 bill sewed in his clothes. it seems to me that i was around here in the neighborhood of the public library about fifty or sixty years ago. i don't deny the circumstance, although i don't see how you got it out of my autobiography, which was not to be printed until i am dead, unless i'm dead now. i had that $3 in change, and i remember well the $10 which was sewed in my coat. i have prospered since. now i have plenty of money and a disposition to squander it, but i can't. one of those trust companies is taking care of it. now, as this is probably the last time that i shall be out after nightfall this winter, i must say that i have come here with a mission, and i would make my errand of value. many compliments have been paid to mr. carnegie to-night. i was expecting them. they are very gratifying to me. i have been a guest of honor myself, and i know what mr. carnegie is experiencing now. it is embarrassing to get compliments and compliments and only compliments, particularly when he knows as well as the rest of us that on the other side of him there are all sorts of things worthy of our condemnation. just look at mr. carnegie's face. it is fairly scintillating with fictitious innocence. you would think, looking at him, that he had never committed a crime in his life. but nolook at his pestiferious simplified spelling. you can't any of you imagine what a crime that has been. torquemada was nothing to mr. carnegie. that old fellow shed some blood in the inquisition, but mr. carnegie has brought destruction to the entire race. i know he didn't mean it to be a crime, but it was, just the same. he's got us all so we can't spell anything. the trouble with him is that he attacked orthography at the wrong end. he meant well, but he attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the disease. he ought to have gone to work on the alphabet. there's not a vowel in it with a definite value, and not a consonant that you can hitch anything to. look at the "h's" distributed all around. there's "gherkin." what are you going to do with the "h" in that? what the devil's the use of "h" in gherkin, i'd like to know. it's one thing i admire the english for: they just don't mind anything about them at all. but look at the "pneumatics" and the "pneumonias" and the rest of them. a real reform would settle them once and for all, and wind up by giving us an alphabet that we wouldn't have to spell with at all, instead of this present silly alphabet, which i fancy was invented by a drunken thief. why, there isn't a man who doesn't have to throw out about fifteen hundred words a day when he writes his letters because he can't spell them! it's like trying to do a st. vitus's dance with wooden legs. now i'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell "pterodactyl," not even the prisoner at the bar. i'd like to hear him try oncebut not in public, for it's too near sunday, when all extravagant histrionic entertainments are barred. i'd like to hear him try in private, and when he got through trying to spell "pterodactyl" you wouldn't know whether it was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or walked with its wings. the chances are that he would give it tusks and make it lay eggs. let's get mr. carnegie to reform the alphabet, and we'll pray for himif he'll take the risk. if we had adequate, competent vowels, with a system of accents, giving to each vowel its own soul and value, so every shade of that vowel would be shown in its accent, there is not a word in any tongue that we could not spell accurately. that would be competent, adequate, simplified spelling, in contrast to the clipping, the hair punching, the carbuncles, and the cancers which go by the name of simplified spelling. if i ask you what b-o-w spells you can't tell me unless you know which b-o-w i mean, and it is the same with r-o-w, b-o-r-e, and the whole family of words which were born out of lawful wedlock and don't know their own origin. now, if we had an alphabet that was adequate and competent, instead of inadequate and incompetent, things would be different. spelling reform has only made it bald-headed and unsightly. there is the whole tribe of them, "row" and "read" and "lead"a whole family who don't know who they are. i ask you to pronounce s-o-w, and you ask me what kind of a one. if we had a sane, determinate alphabet, instead of a hospital of comminuted eunuchs, you would know whether one referred to the act of a man casting the seed over the ploughed land or whether one wished to recall the lady hog and the future ham. it's a rotten alphabet. i appoint mr. carnegie to get after it, and leave simplified spelling alone. simplified spelling brought about sun-spots, the san francisco earthquake, and the recent business depression, which we would never have had if spelling had been left all alone. now, i hope i have soothed mr. carnegie and made him more comfortable than he would have been had he received only compliment after compliment, and i wish to say to him that simplified spelling is all right, but, like chastity, you can carry it too far. spelling and pictures. address at the annual dinner of the associated press, at the waldorf-astoria, september 18, 1906. i am here to make an appeal to the nations in behalf of the simplified spelling. i have come here because they cannot all be reached except through you. there are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globeonly twothe sun in the heavens and the associated press down here. i may seem to be flattering the sun, but i do not mean it so; i am meaning only to be just and fair all around. you speak with a million voices; no one can reach so many races, so many hearts and intellects, as youexcept rudyard kipling, and he cannot do it without your help. if the associated press will adopt and use our simplified forms, and thus spread them to the ends of the earth, covering the whole spacious planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our difficulties are at an end. every day of the three hundred and sixty-five the only pages of the world's countless newspapers that are read by all the human beings and angels and devils that can read, are these pages that are built out of associated press despatches. and so i beg you, i beseech youoh, i implore you to spell them in our simplified forms. do this daily, constantly, persistently, for three monthsonly three monthsit is all i ask. the infallible result?victory, victory all down the line. for by that time all eyes here and above and below will have become adjusted to the change and in love with it, and the present clumsy and ragged forms will be grotesque to the eye and revolting to the soul. and we shall be rid of phthisis and phthisic and pneumonia and pneumatics, and diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other insane words which no man addicted to the simple christian life can try to spell and not lose some of the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt. do not doubt it. we are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change places with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it. we do not regret our old, yellow fangs and snags and tushes after we have worn nice, fresh, uniform store teeth a while. do i seem to be seeking the good of the world? that is the idea. it is my public attitude; privately i am merely seeking my own profit. we all do it, but it is sound and it is virtuous, for no public interest is anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private interests. in 1883, when the simplified-spelling movement first tried to make a noise, i was indifferent to it; morei even irreverently scoffed at it. what i needed was an object-lesson, you see. it is the only way to teach some people. very well, i got it. at that time i was scrambling along, earning the family's bread on magazine work at seven cents a word, compound words at single rates, just as it is in the dark present. i was the property of a magazine, a seven-cent slave under a boiler-iron contract. one day there came a note from the editor requiring me to write ten pages on this revolting text: "considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects." ten pages of that. each and every word a seventeen-jointed vestibuled railroad train. seven cents a word. i saw starvation staring the family in the face. i went to the editor, and i took a stenographer along so as to have the interview down in black and white, for no magazine editor can ever remember any part of a business talk except the part that's got graft in it for him and the magazine. i said, "read that text, jackson, and let it go on the record; read it out loud." he read it: "considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects." i said, "you want ten pages of those rumbling, great, long, summer thunderpeals, and you expect to get them at seven cents a peal?" he said, "a word's a word, and seven cents is the contract; what are you going to do about it?" i said, "jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression. what's an average english word?" he said, "six letters." i said, "nothing of the kind; that's french, and includes the spaces between the words; an average english word is four letters and a half. by hard, honest labor i've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three letters and a half. i can put one thousand and two hundred words on your page, and there's not another man alive that can come within two hundred of it. my page is worth eighty-four dollars to me. it takes exactly as long to fill your magazine page with long words as it does with short onesfour hours. now, then, look at the criminal injustice of this requirement of yours. i am careful, i am economical of my time and labor. for the family's sake i've got to be so. so i never write 'metropolis' for seven cents, because i can get the same money for 'city.' i never write 'policeman,' because i can get the same price for 'cop.' and so on and so on. i never write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where i will do a word like that for seven cents; i wouldn't do it for fifteen. examine your obscene text, please, count the words." he counted and said it was twenty-four. i asked him to count the letters. he made it two hundred and three. i said, "now, i hope you see the whole size of your crime. with my vocabulary i would make sixty words out of those two hundred and five letters, and get four dollars and twenty cents for it; whereas for your inhuman twenty-four i would get only one dollar and sixty-eight cents. ten pages of these sky-scrapers of yours would pay me only about three hundred dollars; in my simplified vocabulary the same space and the same labor would pay me eight hundred and forty dollars. i do not wish to work upon this scandalous job by the piece. i want to be hired by the year." he coldly refused. i said: "then for the sake of the family, if you have no feeling for me, you ought at least to allow me overtime on that word extemporaneousness." again he coldly refused. i seldom say a harsh word to any one, but i was not master of myself then, and i spoke right out and called him an anisodactylous plesiosaurian conchyliaceous ornithorhyneus, and rotten to the heart with holophotal subterranean extemporaneousness. god forgive me for that wanton crime; he lived only two hours. from that day to this i have been a devoted and hard-working member of the heaven-born institution, the international association for the prevention of cruelty to authors, and now i am laboring with carnegie's simplified committee, and with my heart in the work.... now then, let us look at this mighty question reasonably, rationally, sanelyyes, and calmly, not excitedly. what is the real function, the essential function, the supreme function, of language? isn't it merely to convey ideas and emotions? certainly. then if we can do it with words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome forms? but can we? yes. i hold in my hand the proof of it. here is a letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts. i think she never saw a spelling-book in her life. the spelling is her own. there isn't a waste letter in it anywhere. it reduces the fonetics to the last gaspit squeezes the surplusage out of every wordthere's no spelling that can begin with it on this planet outside of the white house. and as for the punctuation, there isn't any. it is all one sentence, eagerly and breathlessly uttered, without break or pause in it anywhere. the letter is absolutely genuinei have the proofs of that in my possession. i can't stop to spell the words for you, but you can take the letter presently and comfort your eyes with it. i will read the letter: "missdear friend i took some close into the armerry and give them to you to send too the suffrers out to california and i hate to truble you but i got to have one of them back it was a black oll wolle shevyott with a jacket to mach trimed kind of fancy no 38 burst measure and passy menterry acrost the front and the color i woodent trubble you but it belonged to my brothers wife and she is mad about it i thoght she was willin but she want she says she want done with it and she was going to wear it a spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am and she has got more to do with than i have having a husband to work and slave for her i gess you remember me i am shot and stout and light complected i torked with you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it was orful about that erth quake i shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off seeine general condision of the country is kind of explossive i hate to take that black dress away from the suffrars but i will hunt round and see if i can get another one if i can i will call to the armerry for it if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present from your true friend i liked your appearance very much" now you see what simplified spelling can do. it can convey any fact you need to convey; and it can pour out emotions like a sewer. i beg you, i beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print all your despatches in it. now i wish to say just one entirely serious word: i have reached a time of life, seventy years and a half, where none of the concerns of this world have much interest for me personally. i think i can speak dispassionately upon this matter, because in the little while that i have got to remain here i can get along very well with these old-fashioned forms, and i don't propose to make any trouble about it at all. i shall soon be where they won't care how i spell so long as i keep the sabbath. there are eighty-two millions of us people that use this orthography, and it ought to be simplified in our behalf, but it is kept in its present condition to satisfy one million people who like to have their literature in the old form. that looks to me to be rather selfish, and we keep the forms as they are while we have got one million people coming in here from foreign countries every year and they have got to struggle with this orthography of ours, and it keeps them back and damages their citizenship for years until they learn to spell the language, if they ever do learn. this is merely sentimental argument. people say it is the spelling of chaucer and spenser and shakespeare and a lot of other people who do not know how to spell anyway, and it has been transmitted to us and we preserved it and wish to preserve it because of its ancient and hallowed associations. now, i don't see that there is any real argument about that. if that argument is good, then it would be a good argument not to banish the flies and the cockroaches from hospitals because they have been there so long that the patients have got used to them and they feel a tenderness for them on account of the associations. why, it is like preserving a cancer in a family because it is a family cancer, and we are bound to it by the test of affection and reverence and old, mouldy antiquity. i think that this declaration to improve this orthography of ours is our family cancer, and i wish we could reconcile ourselves to have it cut out and let the family cancer go. now, you see before you the wreck and ruin of what was once a young person like yourselves. i am exhausted by the heat of the day. i must take what is left of this wreck and run out of your presence and carry it away to my home and spread it out there and sleep the sleep of the righteous. there is nothing much left of me but my age and my righteousness, but i leave with you my love and my blessing, and may you always keep your youth. books and burglars. address to the redding (conn.) library association, october 28, 1908. suppose this library had been in operation a few weeks ago, and the burglars who happened along and broke into my housetaking a lot of things they didn't need, and for that matter which i didn't needhad first made entry into this institution. picture them seated here on the floor, poring by the light of their dark-lanterns over some of the books they found, and thus absorbing moral truths and getting a moral uplift. the whole course of their lives would have been changed. as it was, they kept straight on in their immoral way and were sent to jail. for all we know, they may next be sent to congress. and, speaking of burglars, let us not speak of them too harshly. now, i have known so many burglarsnot exactly known, but so many of them have come near me in my various dwelling-places, that i am disposed to allow them credit for whatever good qualities they possess. chief among these, and, indeed, the only one i just now think of, is their great care while doing business to avoid disturbing people's sleep. noiseless as they may be while at work, however, the effect of their visitation is to murder sleep later on. now we are prepared for these visitors. all sorts of alarm devices have been put in the house, and the ground for half a mile around it has been electrified. the burglar who steps within this danger zone will set loose a bedlam of sounds, and spring into readiness for action our elaborate system of defences. as for the fate of the trespasser, do not seek to know that. he will never be heard of more. authors' club. address at the dinner given in honor of mr. clemens, london, june, 1899. mr. clemens was introduced by sir walter besant. it does not embarrass me to hear my books praised so much. it only pleases and delights me. i have not gone beyond the age when embarrassment is possible, but i have reached the age when i know how to conceal it. it is such a satisfaction to me to hear sir walter besant, who is much more capable than i to judge of my work, deliver a judgment which is such a contentment to my spirit. well, i have thought well of the books myself, but i think more of them now. it charms me also to hear sir spencer walpole deliver a similar judgment, and i shall treasure his remarks also. i shall not discount the praises in any possible way. when i report them to my family they shall lose nothing. there are, however, certain heredities which come down to us which our writings of the present day may be traced to. i, for instance, read the walpole letters when i was a boy. i absorbed them, gathered in their grace, wit, and humor, and put them away to be used by-and-by. one does that so unconsciously with things one really likes. i am reminded now of what use those letters have been to me. they must not claim credit in america for what was really written in another form so long ago. they must only claim that i trimmed this, that, and the other, and so changed their appearance as to make them seem to be original. you now see what modesty i have in stock. but it has taken long practice to get it there. but i must not stand here talking. i merely meant to get up and give my thanks for the pleasant things that preceding speakers have said of me. i wish also to extend my thanks to the authors' club for constituting me a member, at a reasonable price per year, and for giving me the benefit of your legal adviser. i believe you keep a lawyer. i have always kept a lawyer, too, though i have never made anything out of him. it is service to an author to have a lawyer. there is something so disagreeable in having a personal contact with a publisher. so it is better to work through a lawyerand lose your case. i understand that the publishers have been meeting together also like us. i don't know what for, but possibly they are devising new and mysterious ways for remunerating authors. i only wish now to thank you for electing me a member of this clubi believe i have paid my duesand to thank you again for the pleasant things you have said of me. last february, when rudyard kipling was ill in america, the sympathy which was poured out to him was genuine and sincere, and i believe that which cost kipling so much will bring england and america closer together. i have been proud and pleased to see this growing affection and respect between the two countries. i hope it will continue to grow, and, please god, it will continue to grow. i trust we authors will leave to posterity, if we have nothing else to leave, a friendship between england and america that will count for much. i will now confess that i have been engaged for the past eight days in compiling a publication. i have brought it here to lay at your feet. i do not ask your indulgence in presenting it, but for your applause. here it is: "since england and america may be joined together in kipling, may they not be severed in 'twain.'" booksellers booksellers. address at banquet on wednesday evening, may 20, 1908, of the american booksellers' association, which included most of the leading booksellers of america, held at the rooms of the aldine association, new york. this annual gathering of booksellers from all over america comes together ostensibly to eat and drink, but really to discuss business; therefore i am required to talk shop. i am required to furnish a statement of the indebtedness under which i lie to you gentlemen for your help in enabling we to earn my living. for something over forty years i have acquired my bread by print, beginning with the innocents abroad, followed at intervals of a year or so by roughing it, tom sawyer, gilded age, and so on. for thirty-six years my books were sold by subscription. you are not interested in those years, but only in the four which have since followed. the books passed into the hands of my present publishers at the beginning of 1904, and you then became the providers of my diet. i think i may say, without flattering you, that you have done exceedingly well by me. exceedingly well is not too strong a phrase, since the official statistics show that in four years you have sold twice as many volumes of my venerable books as my contract with my publishers bound you and them to sell in five years. to your sorrow you are aware that frequently, much too frequently, when a book gets to be five or ten years old its annual sale shrinks to two or three hundred copies, and after an added ten or twenty years ceases to sell. but you sell thousands of my moss-backed old books every yearthe youngest of them being books that range from fifteen to twenty-seven years old, and the oldest reaching back to thirty-five and forty. by the terms of my contract my publishers had to account to me for 50,000 volumes per year for five years, and pay me for them whether they sold them or not. it is at this point that you gentlemen come in, for it was your business to unload 250,000 volumes upon the public in five years if you possibly could. have you succeeded? yes, you haveand more. for in four years, with a year still to spare, you have sold the 250,000 volumes, and 240,000 besides. your sales have increased each year. in the first year you sold 90,328, in the second year, 104,851; in the third, 133,975; in the fourth yearwhich was last yearyou sold 160,000. the aggregate for the four years is 500,000 volumes lacking 11,000. of the oldest book, the innocents abroad,now forty years oldyou sold upward of 46,000 copies in the four years; of roughing itnow thirty-eight years old, i thinkyou sold 40,334; of tom sawyer, 41,000. and so on. and there is one thing that is peculiarly gratifying to me: the personal recollections of joan of arc is a serious book; i wrote it for love, and never expected it to sell, but you have pleasantly disappointed me in that matter. in youth hands its sale has increased each year. in 1904 you sold 1726 copies; in 1905, 2445; in 1906, 5381; and last year, 6574. "mark twain's first appearance." on october 5, 1906, mr. clemens, following a musical recital by his daughter in norfolk, conn., addressed her audience on the subject of stage-fright. he thanked the people for making things as easy as possible for his daughter's american debut as a contralto, and then told of his first experience before the public. my heart goes out in sympathy to any one who is making his first appearance before an audience of human beings. by a direct process of memory i go back forty years, less one monthfor i'm older than i look. i recall the occasion of my first appearance. san francisco knew me then only as a reporter, and i was to make my bow to san francisco as a lecturer. i knew that nothing short of compulsion would get me to the theatre. so i bound myself by a hard-and-fast contract so that i could not escape. i got to the theatre forty-five minutes before the hour set for the lecture. my knees were shaking so that i didn't know whether i could stand up. if there is an awful, horrible malady in the world, it is stage-frightand sea-sickness. they are a pair. i had stage-fright then for the first and last time. i was only seasick once, too. it was on a little ship on which there were two hundred other passengers. iwassick. i was so sick that there wasn't any left for those other two hundred passengers. it was dark and lonely behind the scenes in that theatre, and i peeked through the little peek-holes they have in theatre curtains and looked into the big auditorium. that was dark and empty, too. by-and-by it lighted up, and the audience began to arrive. i had got a number of friends of mine, stalwart men, to sprinkle themselves through the audience armed with big clubs. every time i said anything they could possibly guess i intended to be funny they were to pound those clubs on the floor. then there was a kind lady in a box up there, also a good friend of mine, the wife of the governor. she was to watch me intently, and whenever i glanced toward her she was going to deliver a gubernatorial laugh that would lead the whole audience into applause. at last i began. i had the manuscript tucked under a united states flag in front of me where i could get at it in case of need. but i managed to get started without it. i walked up and downi was young in those days and needed the exerciseand talked and talked. right in the middle of the speech i had placed a gem. i had put in a moving, pathetic part which was to get at the hearts and souls of my hearers. when i delivered it they did just what i hoped and expected. they sat silent and awed. i had touched them. then i happened to glance up at the box where the governor's wife wasyou know what happened. well, after the first agonizing five minutes, my stage-fright left me, never to return. i know if i was going to be hanged i could get up and make a good showing, and i intend to. but i shall never forget my feelings before the agony left me, and i got up here to thank you for her for helping my daughter, by your kindness, to live through her first appearance. and i want to thank you for your appreciation of her singing, which is, by-the-way, hereditary. morals and memory. mr. clemens was the guest of honor at a reception held at barnard college (columbia university), march 7, 1906, by the barnard union. one of the young ladies presented mr. clemens, and thanked him for his amiability in coming to make them an address. she closed with the expression of the great joy it gave her fellow-collegians, "because we all love you." if any one here loves me, she has my sincere thanks. nay, if any one here is so good as to love mewhy, i'll be a brother to her. she shall have my sincere, warm, unsullied affection. when i was coming up in the car with the very kind young lady who was delegated to show me the way, she asked me what i was going to talk about. and i said i wasn't sure. i said i had some illustrations, and i was going to bring them in. i said i was certain to give those illustrations, but that i hadn't the faintest notion what they were going to illustrate. now, i've been thinking it over in this forest glade [indicating the woods of arcady on the scene setting], and i've decided to work them in with something about morals and the caprices of memory. that seems to me to be a pretty good subject. you see, everybody has a memory and it's pretty sure to have caprices. and, of course, everybody has morals. it's my opinion that every one i know has morals, though i wouldn't like to ask. i know i have. but i'd rather teach them than practice them any day. "give them to others"that's my motto. then you never have any use for them when you're left without. now, speaking of the caprices of memory in general, and of mine in particular, it's strange to think of all the tricks this little mental process plays on us. here we're endowed with a faculty of mind that ought to be more supremely serviceable to us than them all. and what happens? this memory of ours stores up a perfect record of the most useless facts and anecdotes and experiences. and all the things that we ought to knowthat we need to knowthat we'd profit by knowingit casts aside with the careless indifference of a girl refusing her true lover. it's terrible to think of this phenomenon. i tremble in all my members when i consider all the really valuable things that i've forgotten in seventy yearswhen i meditate upon the caprices of my memory. there's a bird out in california that is one perfect symbol of the human memory. i've forgotten the bird's name (just because it would be valuable for me to know itto recall it to your own minds, perhaps). but this fool of a creature goes around collecting the most ridiculous things you can imagine and storing them up. he never selects a thing that could ever prove of the slightest help to him; but he goes about gathering iron forks, and spoons, and tin cans, and broken mouse-trapsall sorts of rubbish that is difficult for him to carry and yet be any use when he gets it. why, that bird will go by a gold watch to bring back one of those patent cake-pans. now, my mind is just like that, and my mind isn't very different from yoursand so our minds are just like that bird. we pass by what would be of inestimable value to us, and pack our memories with the most trivial odds and ends that never by any chance, under any circumstances whatsoever, could be of the slightest use to any one. now, things that i have remembered are constantly popping into my head. and i am repeatedly startled by the vividness with which they recur to me after the lapse of years and their utter uselessness in being remembered at all. i was thinking over some on my way up here. they were the illustrations i spoke about to the young lady on the way up. and i've come to the conclusion, curious though it is, that i can use every one of these freaks of memory to teach you all a lesson. i'm convinced that each one has its moral. and i think it's my duty to hand the moral on to you. now, i recall that when i was a boy i was a good boyi was a very good boy. why, i was the best boy in my school. i was the best boy in that little mississippi town where i lived. the population was only about twenty million. you may not believe it, but i was the best boy in that stateand in the united states, for that matter. but i don't know why i never heard any one say that but myself. i always recognized it. but even those nearest and dearest to me couldn't seem to see it. my mother, especially, seemed to think there was something wrong with that estimate. and she never got over that prejudice. now, when my mother got to be eighty-five years old her memory failed her. she forgot little threads that hold life's patches of meaning together. she was living out west then, and i went on to visit her. i hadn't seen my mother in a year or so. and when i got there she knew my face; knew i was married; knew i had a family, and that i was living, with them. but she couldn't, for the life of her, tell my name or who i was. so i told her i was her boy. "but you don't live with me," she said. "no," said i, "i'm living in rochester." "what are you doing there?" "going to school." "large school?" "very large." "all boys?" "all boys." "and how do you stand?" said my mother. "i'm the best boy in that school," i answered. "well," said my mother, with a return of her old fire, "i'd like to know what the other boys are like." now, one point in this story is the fact that my mother's mind went back to my school days, and remembered my little youthful self-prejudice when she'd forgotten everything else about me. the other point is the moral. there's one there that you will find if you search for it. now, here's something else i remember. it's about the first time i ever stole a watermelon. "stole" is a strong word. stole? stole? no, i don't mean that. it was the first time i ever withdrew a watermelon. it was the first time i ever extracted a watermelon. that is exactly the word i want"extracted." it is definite. it is precise. it perfectly conveys my idea. its use in dentistry connotes the delicate shade of meaning i am looking for. you know we never extract our own teeth. and it was not my watermelon that i extracted. i extracted that watermelon from a farmer's wagon while he was inside negotiating with another customer. i carried that watermelon to one of the secluded recesses of the lumber-yard, and there i broke it open. it was a green watermelon. well, do you know when i saw that i began to feel sorrysorrysorry. it seemed to me that i had done wrong. i reflected deeply. i reflected that i was youngi think i was just eleven. but i knew that though immature i did not lack moral advancement. i knew what a boy ought to do who had extracted a watermelon like that. i considered george washington, and what action he would have taken under similar circumstances. then i knew there was just one thing to make me feel right inside, and that wasrestitution. so i said to myself: "i will do that. i will take that green watermelon back where i got it from." and the minute i had said it i felt that great moral uplift that comes to you when you've made a noble resolution. so i gathered up the biggest fragments, and i carried them back to the farmer's wagon, and i restored the watermelonwhat was left of it. and i made him give me a good one in place of it, too. and i told him he ought to be ashamed of himself going around working off his worthless, old, green watermelons on trusting purchasers who had to rely on him. how could they tell from the outside whether the melons were good or not? that was his business. and if he didn't reform, i told him i'd see that he didn't get my more of my tradenor anybody else's i knew, if i could help it. you know that man was as contrite as a revivalist's last convert. he said be was all broken up to think i'd gotten a green watermelon. he promised me he would never carry another green watermelon if he starved for it. and he drove offa better man. now, do you see what i did for that man? he was on a downward path, and i rescued him. but all i got out of it was a watermelon. yet i'd rather have that memoryjust that memory of the good i did for that depraved farmerthan all the material gain you can think of. look at the lesson he got! i never got anything like that from it. but i ought to be satisfied. i was only eleven years old, but i secured everlasting benefit to other people. the moral in this is perfectly clear, and i think there's one in the next memory i'm going to tell you about. to go back to my childhood, there's another little incident that comes to me from which you can draw even another moral. it's about one of the times i went fishing. you see, in our house there was a sort of family prejudice against going fishing if you hadn't permission. but it would frequently be bad judgment to ask. so i went fishing secretly, as it wereway up the mississippi. it was an exquisitely happy trip, i recall, with a very pleasant sensation. well, while i was away there was a tragedy in our town. a stranger, stopping over on his way east from california, was stabbed to death in an unseemly brawl. now, my father was justice of the peace, and because he was justice of the peace he was coroner; and since he was coroner he was also constable; and being constable he was sheriff; and out of consideration for his holding the office of sheriff he was likewise county clerk and a dozen other officials i don't think of just this minute. i thought he had power of life or death; only he didn't use it over other boys. he was sort of an austere man. somehow i didn't like being round him when i'd done anything he disapproved of. so that's the reason i wasn't often around. well, when this gentleman got knifed they communicated with the proper authority, the coroner, and they laid the corpse out in the coroner's officeour front sitting-roomin preparation for the inquest the next morning. about 9 or 10 o'clock i got back from fishing. it was a little too late for me to be received by my folks, so i took my shoes off and slipped noiselessly up the back way to the sitting-room. i was very tired, and i didn't wish to disturb my people. so i groped my way to the sofa and lay down. now, i didn't know anything of what had happened during my absence. but i was sort of nervous on my own accountafraid of being caught, and rather dubious about the morning affair. and i had been lying there a few moments when my eyes gradually got used to the darkness, and i became aware of something on the other side of the room. it was something foreign to the apartment. it had an uncanny appearance. and i sat up looking very hard, and wondering what in heaven this long, formless, vicious-looking thing might be. first i thought i'd go and see. then i thought, "never mind that." mind you, i had no cowardly sensations whatever, but it didn't seem exactly prudent to investigate. but i somehow couldn't keep my eyes off the thing. and the more i looked at it the more disagreeably it grew on me. but i was resolved to play the man. so i decided to turn over and count a hundred, and let the patch of moonlight creep up and show me what the dickens it was. well, i turned over and tried to count, but i couldn't keep my mind on it. i kept thinking of that grewsome mass. i was losing count all the time, and going back and beginning over again. oh no; i wasn't frightenedjust annoyed. but by the time i'd gotten to the century mark i turned cautiously over and opened my eyes with great fortitude. the moonlight revealed to me a marble-white human hand. well, maybe i wasn't embarrassed! but then that changed to a creepy feeling again, and i thought i'd try the counting again. i don't know how many hours or weeks it was that i lay there counting hard. but the moonlight crept up that white arm, and it showed me a lead face and a terrible wound over the heart. i could scarcely say that i was terror-stricken or anything like that. but somehow his eyes interested me so that i went right out of the window. i didn't need the sash. but it seemed easier to take it than leave it behind. now, let that teach you a lessoni don't know just what it is. but at seventy years old i find that memory of peculiar value to me. i have been unconsciously guided by it all these years. things that seemed pigeon-holed and remote are a perpetual influence. yes, you're taught in so many ways. and you're so felicitously taught when you don't know it. here's something else that taught me a good deal. when i was seventeen i was very bashful, and a sixteen-year-old girl came to stay a week with us. she was a peach, and i was seized with a happiness not of this world. one evening my mother suggested that, to entertain her, i take i take her to the theatre. i didn't really like to, because i was seventeen and sensitive about appearing in the streets with a girl. i couldn't see my way to enjoying my delight in public. but we went. i didn't feel very happy. i couldn't seem to keep my mind on the play. i became unconscious after a while, that that was due less to my lovely company than my boots. they were sweet to look upon, as smooth as skin, but fitted ten times as close. i got oblivious to the play and the girl and the other people and everything but my boots until i hitched one partly off. the sensation was sensuously perfect. i couldn't help it. i had to get the other off, partly. then i was obliged to get them off altogether, except that i kept my feet in the legs so they couldn't get away. from that time i enjoyed the play. but the first thing i knew the curtain came down, like that, without my notice, and i hadn't any boots on. i tugged strenuously. and the people in our row got up and fussed and said things until the peach and i simply had to move on. we movedthe girl on one arm and the boots under the other. we walked home that way, sixteen blocks, with a retinue a mile long. every time we passed a lamp-post death gripped me at the throat. but we got homeand i had on white socks. if i live to be nine hundred and ninety-nine years old i don't suppose i could ever forget that walk. i remember it about as keenly as the chagrin i suffered on another occasion. at one time in our domestic history we had a colored butler who had a failing. he could never remember to ask people who came to the door to state their business. so i used to buffer a good many calls unnecessarily. one morning when i was especially busy he brought me a card engraved with a name i did not know. so i said, "what does he wish to see me for?" and sylvester said, "ah couldn't ask him, sah; he wuz a genlmun." "return instantly," i thundered, "and inquire his mission. ask him what's his game." well, sylvester returned with the announcement that he had lightning-rods to sell. "indeed," said i, "things are coming to a fine pass when lightning-rod agents send up engraved cards." "he has pictures," added sylvester. "pictures, indeed! he may be peddling etchings. has he a russia leather case?" but sylvester was too frightened to remember. i said, "i am going down to make it hot for that upstart!" i went down the stairs, working up my temper all the way. when i got to the parlor i was in a fine frenzy concealed beneath a veneer of frigid courtesy. and when i looked in the door, sure enough he had a russia leather case in his hand. but i didn't happen to notice that it was our russia leather case. and if you'd believe me, that man was sitting with a whole gallery of etchings spread out before him. but i didn't happen to notice that they were our etchings, spread out by some member of my family for some unguessed purpose. very curtly i asked the gentleman his business. with a surprised, timid manner he faltered that he had met my wife and daughter at onteora, and they had asked him to call. fine lie, i thought, and i froze him. he seemed to be kind of nonplussed, and sat there fingering the etchings in the case until i told him he needn't bother, because we had those. that pleased him so much that he leaned over, in an embarrassed way, to pick up another from the floor. but i stopped him. i said, "we've got that, too." he seemed pitifully amazed, but i was congratulating myself on my great success. finally the gentleman asked where mr. winton lived; he'd met him in the mountains, too. so i said i'd show him gladly. and i did on the spot. and when he was gone i felt queer, because there were all his etchings spread out on the floor. well, my wife came in and asked me who had been in. i showed her the card, and told her all exultantly. to my dismay she nearly fainted. she told me he had been a most kind friend to them in the country, and had forgotten to tell me that he was expected our way. and she pushed me out of the door, and commanded me to get over to the wintons in a hurry and get him back. i came into the drawing-room, where mrs. winton was sitting up very stiff in a chair, beating me at my own game. well, i began to put another light on things. before many seconds mrs. winton saw it was time to change her temperature. in five minutes i had asked the man to luncheon, and she to dinner, and so on. we made that fellow change his trip and stay a week, and we gave him the time of his life. why, i don't believe we let him get sober the whole time. i trust that you will carry away some good thought from these lessons i have given you, and that the memory of them will inspire you to higher things, and elevate you to plans far above the oldandand and i tell you one thing, young ladies: i've had a better time with you to-day than with that peach fifty-three years ago. queen victoria. address to the british schools and universities club at delmonico's, monday, may 25, 1908, in honor of queen victoria's birthday. mr. clemens told the story of his duel with a rival editor: how he practised firing at a barn door and failed to hit it; but a friend of his took off the head of a little bird at thirty-five yards and attributed the shot to mark twain. the duel did not take place. mr. clemens continued as follows: it also happened that i was the means of stopping the duelling in nevada, for a law was passed sending all duellists to jail for two years, and the governor, hearing of my marksmanship, said that if he got me i should go to prison for the full term. that's why i left nevada, and i have not been there since. you do me a high honor, indeed, in selecting me to speak of my country in this commemoration of the birthday of that noble lady whose life was consecrated to the virtues and the humanities and to the promotion of lofty ideals, and was a model upon which many a humbler life was formed and made beautiful while she lived, and upon which many such lives will still be formed in the generations that are to comelife which finds its just image in the star which falls out of its place in the sky and out of existence, but whose light still streams with unfaded lustre across the abysses of space long after its fires have been extinguished at their source. as a woman the queen was all that the most exacting standards could require. as a far-reaching and effective beneficent moral force she had no peer in her time among either monarchs or commoners. as a monarch she was without reproach in her great office. we may not venture, perhaps, to say so sweeping a thing as this in cold blood about any monarch that preceded her upon either her own throne or upon any other. it is a colossal eulogy, but it is justified. in those qualities of the heart which beget affection in all sorts and conditions of men she was rich, surprisingly rich, and for this she will still be remembered and revered in the far-off ages when the political glories of her reign shall have faded from vital history and fallen to a place in that scrap-heap of unverifiable odds and ends which we call tradition. which is to say, in briefer phrase, that her name will live always. and with it her charactera fame rare in the history of thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, since it will not rest upon harvested selfish and sordid ambitions, but upon love, earned and freely vouchsafed. she mended broken hearts where she could, but she broke none. what she did for us in america in our time of storm and stress we shall not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we shall always remember the wise and righteous mind that guided her in it and sustained and supported herprince albert's. we need not talk any idle talk here to-night about either possible or impossible war between the two countries; there will be no war while we remain sane and the son of victoria and albert sits upon the throne. in conclusion, i believe i may justly claim to utter the voice of my country in saying that we hold him in deep honor, and also in cordially wishing him a long life and a happy reign. joan of arc. address at the dinner of the society of illustrators, given at the aldine association club, december 22, 1905. just before mr. clemens made his speech, a young woman attired as joan of arc, with a page bearing her flag of battle, courtesied reverently and tendered mr. clemens a laurel wreath on a satin pillow. he tried to speak, but his voice failed from excess of emotion. "i thank you!" he finally exclaimed, and, pulling himself together, he began his speech. now there is an illustration [pointing to the retreating joan of arc]. that is exactly what i wantedprecisely what i wantedwhen i was describing to myself joan of arc, after studying her history and her character for twelve years diligently. that was the productnot the conventional joan of arc. wherever you find the conventional joan of arc in history she is an offence to anybody who knows the story of that wonderful girl. why, she wasshe was almost supreme in several details. she had a marvellous intellect; she had a great heart, had a noble spirit, was absolutely pure in her character, her feeling, her language, her words, her everythingshe was only eighteen years old. now put that heart into such a breasteighteen years oldand give it that masterly intellect which showed in the fate, and furnish it with that almost god-like spirit, and what are you going to have? the conventional joan of arc? not by any means. that is impossible. i cannot comprehend any such thing as that. you must have a creature like that young and fair and beautiful girl we just saw. and her spirit must look out of the eyes. the figure should bethe figure should be in harmony with all that, but, oh, what we get in the conventional picture, and it is always the conventional picture! i hope you will allow me to say that your guild, when you take the conventional, you have got it at second-hand. certainly, if you had studied and studied, then you might have something else as a result, but when you have the common convention you stick to that. you cannot prevail upon the artist to do it; he always gives you a joan of arcthat lovely creature that started a great career at thirteen, but whose greatness arrived when she was eighteen; and merely because she was a girl he cannot see the divinity in her, and so he paints a peasant, a coarse and lubberly figurethe figure of a cotton-bale, and he clothes that in the coarsest raiment of the peasant regionjust like a fish-woman, her hair cropped short like a russian peasant, and that face of hers, which should be beautiful and which should radiate all the glories which are in the spirit and in her heartthat expression in that face is always just the fixed expression of a ham. but now mr. beard has intimated a moment ago, and so has sir purdon-clarke also, that the artist, the illustrator, does not often get the idea of the man whose book he is illustrating. here is a very remarkable instance of the other thing in mr. beard, who illustrated a book of mine. you may never have heard of it. i will tell you about it nowa yankee in king arthur's court. now, beard got everything that i put into that book and a little more besides. those pictures of beard's in that bookoh, from the first page to the last is one vast sardonic laugh at the trivialities, the servilities of our poor human race, and also at the professions and the insolence of priest-craft and king-craftthose creatures that make slaves of themselves and have not the manliness to shake it off. beard put it all in that book. i meant it to be there. i put a lot of it there and beard put the rest. that publisher of mine in hartford had an eye for the pennies, and he saved them. he did not waste any on the illustrations. he had a very good artistwilliamswho had never taken a lesson in drawing. everything he did was original. the publisher hired the cheapest wood-engraver he could find, and in my early books you can see a trace of that. you can see that if williams had had a chance he would have made some very good pictures. he had a good heart and good intentions. i had a character in the first book he illustratedthe innocents abroad. that was a boy seventeen or eighteen years oldjack van nostranda new york boy, who, to my mind, was a very remarkable creature. he and i tried to get williams to understand that boy, and make a picture of jack that would be worthy of jack. jack was a most singular combination. he was born and reared in new york here. he was as delicate in his feelings, as clean and pure and refined in his feelings as any lovely girl that ever was, but whenever he expressed a feeling he did it in bowery slang, and it was a most curious combinationthat delicacy of his and that apparent coarseness. there was no coarseness inside of jack at all, and jack, in the course of seventeen or eighteen years, had acquired a capital of ignorance that was marvellousignorance of various things, not of all things. for instance, he did not know anything about the bible. he had never been in sunday-school. jack got more out of the holy land than anybody else, because the others knew what they were expecting, but it was a land of surprises to him. i said in the book that we found him watching a turtle on a log, stoning that turtle, and he was stoning that turtle because he had read that "the song of the turtle was heard in the land," and this turtle wouldn't sing. it sounded absurd, but it was charged on jack as a fact, and as he went along through that country he had a proper foil in an old rebel colonel, who was superintendent and head engineer in a large sunday-school in wheeling, west virginia. that man was full of enthusiasm wherever he went, and would stand and deliver himself of speeches, and jack would listen to those speeches of the colonel and wonder. jack had made a trip as a child almost across this continent in the first overland stage-coach. that man's name who ran that line of stageswell, i declare that name is gone. well, names will go. hallidayah, that's the nameben halliday, your uncle [turning to mr. carnegie]. that was the fellowben hallidayand jack was full of admiration at the prodigious speed that that line of stages madeand it was good speedone hundred and twenty-five miles a day, going day and night, and it was the event of jack's life, and there at the fords of the jordan the colonel was inspired to a speech (he was always making a speech), so he called us up to him. he called up five sinners and three saints. it has been only lately that mr. carnegie beatified me. and he said: "here are the fords of the jordana monumental place. at this very point, when moses brought the children of israel throughhe brought the children of israel from egypt through the desert you see therehe guarded them through that desert patiently, patiently during forty years, and brought them to this spot safe and sound. there you seethere is the scene of what moses did." and jack said: "moses who?" "oh," he says, "jack, you ought not to ask that! moses, the great law-giver! moses, the great patriot! moses, the great warrior! moses, the great guide, who, as i tell you, brought these people through these three hundred miles of sand in forty years, and landed them safe and sound." jack said: "there's nothin' in that three hundred miles in forty years. ben halliday would have snaked 'em through in thirty-six hours." well, i was speaking of jack's innocence, and it was beautiful. jack was not ignorant on all subjects. that boy was a deep student in the history of anglo-saxon liberty, and he was a patriot all the way through to the marrow. there was a subject that interested him all the time. other subjects were of no concern to jack, but that quaint, inscrutable innocence of his i could not get williams to put into the picture. yes, williams wanted to do it. he said: "i will make him as innocent as a virgin." he thought a moment, and then said, "i will make him as innocent as an unborn virgin," which covered the ground. i was reminded of jack because i came across a letter to-day which is over thirty years old that jack wrote. jack was doomed to consumption. he was very long and slim, poor creature, and in a year or two after he got back from that excursion to the holy land he went on a ride on horseback through colorado, and he did not last but a year or two. he wrote this letter, not to me, but to a friend of mine, and he said: "i have ridden horseback"this was three years after"i have ridden horseback four hundred miles through a desert country where you never see anything but cattle now and then, and now and then a cattle stationten miles apart, twenty miles apart. now you tell clemens that in all that stretch of four hundred miles i have seen only two booksthe bible and innocents abroad. tell clemens the bible was in a very good condition." i say that he had studied, and he had, the real saxon liberty, the acquirement of our liberty, and jack used to repeat some versesi don't know where they came from, but i thought of them to-day when i saw that letterthat that boy could have been talking of himself in those quoted lines from that unknown poet: "for he had sat at sidney's feet and walked with him in plain apart, and through the centuries heard the beat of freedom's march through cromwell's heart." and he was that kind of a boy. he should have lived, and yet he should not have lived, because he died at that early agehe couldn't have been more than twentyhe had seen all there was to see in the world that was worth the trouble of living in it; he had seen all of this world that is valuable; he had seen all of this world that was illusion, and illusion is the only valuable thing in it. he had arrived at that point where presently the illusions would cease and he would have entered upon the realities of life, and god help the man that has arrived at that point. accident insuranceetc. delivered in hartford, at a dinner to cornelius walford, of london. gentlemen,i am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance centre has extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band of brothers working sweetly hand in handthe colt's arms company making the destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life-insurance citizens paying for the victims when they pass away, mr. batterson perpetuating their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades taking care of their hereafter. i am glad to assist in welcoming our guestfirst, because he is an englishman, and i owe a heavy debt of hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly, because he is in sympathy with insurance, and has been the means of making many other men cast their sympathies in the same direction. certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance line of businessespecially accident insurance. ever since i have been a director in an accident-insurance company i have felt that i am a better man. life has seemed more precious. accidents have assumed a kindlier aspect. distressing special providences have lost half their horror. i look upon a cripple now with affectionate interestas an advertisement. i do not seem to care for poetry any more. i do not care for politics even agriculture does not excite me. but to me now there is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable. there is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. i have seen an entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon of a broken leg. i have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. in all my experience of life, i have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. and i have seen nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg. i will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity which we have named the hartford accident insurance company* is an institution which is peculiarly to be depended upon. a man is bound to prosper who gives it his custom. no man can take out a policy in it and not get crippled before the year is out. now there was one indigent man who had been disappointed so often with other companies that he had grown disheartened, his appetite left him, he ceased to smilesaid life was but a weariness. three weeks ago i got him to insure with us, and now he is the brightest, happiest spirit in this landhas a good steady income and a stylish suit of new bandages every day, and travels around on a shutter. * the speaker was a director of the company named. i will say, in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is none the less hearty because i talk so much nonsense, and i know that i can say the same for the rest of the speakers. osteopathy osteopathy. on february 27, 1901, mr. clemens appeared before the assembly committee in albany, new york, in favor of the seymour bill legalizing the practice of osteopathy. mr. chairman and gentlemen,dr. van fleet is the gentleman who gave me the character. i have heard my character discussed a thousand times before you were born, sir, and shown the iniquities in it, and you did not get more than half of them. i was touched and distressed when they brought that part of a child in here, and proved that you cannot take a child to pieces in that way. what remarkable names those diseases have! it makes me envious of the man that has them all. i have had many diseases, and am thankful for all i have had. one of the gentlemen spoke of the knowledge of something else found in sweden, a treatment which i took. it is, i suppose, a kindred thing. there is apparently no great difference between them. i was a year and a half in london and sweden, in the hands of that grand old man, mr. kildren. i cannot call him a doctor, for he has not the authority to give a certificate if a patient should die, but fortunately they don't. the state stands as a mighty gibraltar clothed with power. it stands between me and my body, and tells me what kind of a doctor i must employ. when my soul is sick unlimited spiritual liberty is given me by the state. now then, it doesn't seem logical that the state shall depart from this great policy, the health of the soul, and change about and take the other position in the matter of smaller consequencethe health of the body. the bell bill limitations would drive the osteopaths out of the state. oh, dear me! when you drive somebody out of the state you create the same condition as prevailed in the garden of eden. you want the thing that you can't have. i didn't care much about the osteopaths, but as soon as i found they were going to drive them out i got in a state of uneasiness, and i can't sleep nights now. i know how adam felt in the garden of eden about the prohibited apple. adam didn't want the apple till he found out he couldn't have it, just as he would have wanted osteopathy if he couldn't have it. whose property is my body? probably mine. i so regard it. if i experiment with it, who must be answerable? i, not the state. if i choose injudiciously, does the state die? oh no. i was the subject of my mother's experiment. she was wise. she made experiments cautiously. she didn't pick out just any child in the flock. no, she chose judiciously. she chose one she could spare, and she couldn't spare the others. i was the choice child of the flock, so i had to take all of the experiments. in 1844 kneipp filled the world with the wonder of the water cure. mother wanted to try it, but on sober second thought she put me through. a bucket of ice-water was poured over to see the effect. then i was rubbed down with flannels, a sheet was dipped in the water, and i was put to bed. i perspired so much that mother put a life-preserver to bed with me. but this had nothing but a spiritual effect on me, and i didn't care for that. when they took off the sheet it was yellow from the output of my conscience, the exudation of sin. it purified me spiritually, and it remains until this day. i have experimented with osteopathy and allopathy. i took a chance at the latter for old times' sake, for, three times, when a boy, mother's new methods got me so near death's door she had to call in the family physician to pull me out. the physicians think they are moved by regard for the best interests of the public. isn't there a little touch of self-interest back of it all? it seems to me there is, and i don't claim to have all the virtuesonly nine or ten of them. i was born in the "banner state," and by "banner state" i mean missouri. osteopathy was born in the same state, and both of us are getting along reasonably well. at a time during my younger days my attention was attracted to a picture of a house which bore the inscription, "christ disputing with the doctors." i could attach no other meaning to it than that christ was actually quarrelling with the doctors. so i asked an old slave, who was a sort of a herb doctor in a small wayunlicensed, of coursewhat the meaning of the picture was. "what has he done?" i asked. and the colored man replied: "humph, he ain't got no license." water-supply. mr. clemens visited albany on february 27 and 28, 1901. the privileges of the floor were granted to him, and he was asked to make a short address to the senate. mr. president and gentlemen,i do not know how to thank you sufficiently for this high honor which you are conferring upon me. i have for the second time now enjoyed this kind of prodigal hospitalityin the other house yesterday, to-day in this one. i am a modest man, and diffident about appearing before legislative bodies, and yet utterly and entirely appreciative of a courtesy like this when it is extended to me, and i thank you very much for it. if i had the privilege, which unfortunately i have not got, of suggesting things to the legislators in my individual capacity, i would so enjoy the opportunity that i would not charge anything for it at all. i would do that without a salary. i would give them the benefit of my wisdom and experience in legislative bodies, and if i could have had the privilege for a few minutes of giving advice to the other house i should have liked to, but of course i could not undertake it, as they did not ask me to do itbut if they had only asked me! now that the house is considering a measure which is to furnish a water-supply to the city of new york, why, permit me to say i live in new york myself. i know all about its ways, its desires, and its residents, andif i had the privilegei should have urged them not to weary themselves over a measure like that to furnish water to the city of new york, for we never drink it. but i will not venture to advise this body, as i only venture to advise bodies who are not present. mistaken identity. address at the annual "ladies' day," papyrus club, boston. ladies and gentlemen,i am perfectly astonisheda-s-t-o-n-i-s-h-e-dladies and gentlemenastonished at the way history repeats itself. i find myself situated at this moment exactly and precisely as i was once before, years ago, to a jot, to a tittleto a very hair. there isn't a shade of difference. it is the most astonishing coincidence that everbut wait. i will tell you the former instance, and then you will see it for yourself. years ago i arrived one day at salamanca, new york, eastward bound; must change cars there and take the sleeper train. there were crowds of people there, and they were swarming into the long sleeper train and packing it full, and it was a perfect purgatory of dust and confusion and gritting of teeth and soft, sweet, and low profanity. i asked the young man in the ticket-office if i could have a sleeping-section, and he answered "no," with a snarl that shrivelled me up like burned leather. i went off, smarting under this insult to my dignity, and asked another local official, supplicatingly, if i couldn't have some poor little corner somewhere in a sleeping-car; but he cut me short with a venomous "no, you can't; every corner is full. now, don't bother me any more"; and he turned his back and walked off. my dignity was in a state now which cannot be described. i was so ruffled thatwell, i said to my companion, "if these people knew who i am they-" but my companion cut me short there"don't talk such folly," he said; "if they did know who you are, do you suppose it would help your high-mightiness to a vacancy in a train which has no vacancies in it?" this did not improve my condition any to speak of, but just then i observed that the colored porter of a sleeping-car had his eye on me. i saw his dark countenance light up. he whispered to the uniformed conductor, punctuating with nods and jerks toward me, and straightway this conductor came forward, oozing politeness from every pore. "can i be of any service to you?" he asked. "will you have a place in the sleeper?" "yes," i said, "and much oblige me, too. give me anythinganything will answer." "we have nothing left but the big family stateroom," he continued, "with two berths and a couple of arm-chairs in it, but it is entirely at your disposal. here, tom, take these satchels aboard!" then he touched his hat and we and the colored tom moved along. i was bursting to drop just one little remark to my companion, but i held in and waited. tom made us comfortable in that sumptuous great apartment, and then said, with many bows and a perfect affluence of smiles: "now, is dey anything you want, sah? case you kin have jes' anything you wants. it don't make no difference what it is." "can i have some hot water and a tumbler at nine to-nightblazing hot?" i asked. "you know about the right temperature for a hot scotch punch?" "yes, sah, dat you kin; you kin pen on it; i'll get it myself." "good! now, that lamp is hung too high. can i have a big coach candle fixed up just at the head of my bed, so that i can read comfortably?" "yes, sah, you kin; i'll fix her up myself, an' i'll fix her so she'll burn all night. yes, sah; an' you can jes' call for anything you want, and dish yer whole railroad 'll be turned wrong end up an' inside out for to get it for you. dat's so." and he disappeared. well, i tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in my armholes, smiled a smile on my companion, and said, gently: "well, what do you say now?" my companion was not in the humor to respond, and didn't. the next moment that smiling black face was thrust in at the crack of the door, and this speech followed: "laws bless you, sah, i knowed you in a minute. i told de conductah so. laws! i knowed you de minute i sot eyes on you." "is that so, my boy?" (handing him a quadruple fee.) "who am i?" "jenuel mcclellan," and he disappeared again. my companion said, vinegarishly, "well, well! what do you say now?" right there comes in the marvellous coincidence i mentioned a while agoviz., i was speechless, and that is my condition now. perceive it? cats and candy. the following address was delivered at a social meeting of literary men in new york in 1874: when i was fourteen i was living with my parents, who were very poorand correspondently honest. we had a youth living with us by the name of jim wolfe. he was an excellent fellow, seventeen years old, and very diffident. he and i slept togethervirtuously; and one bitter winter's night a cousin maryshe's married now and gonegave what they call a candy-pulling in those days in the west, and they took the saucers of hot candy outside of the house into the snow, under a sort of old bower that came from the eavesit was a sort of an ell then, all covered with vinesto cool this hot candy in the snow, and they were all sitting there. in the mean time we were gone to bed. we were not invited to attend this party; we were too young. the young ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, and jim and i were in bed. there was about four inches of snow on the roof of this ell, and our windows looked out on it, and it was frozen hard. a couple of tom-catsit is possible one might have been of the opposite sexwere assembled on the chimney in the middle of this ell, and they were growling at a fearful rate, and switching their tails about and going on, and we couldn't sleep at all. finally jim said, "for two cents i'd go out and snake them cats off that chimney." so i said, "of course you would." he said, "well, i would; i have a mighty good notion to do it." says i, "of course you have; certainly you have, you have a great notion to do it." i hoped he might try it, but i was afraid he wouldn't. finally i did get his ambition up, and he raised the window and climbed out on the icy roof, with nothing on but his socks and a very short shirt. he went climbing along on all fours on the roof toward the chimney where the cats were. in the mean time these young ladies and gentlemen were enjoying themselves down under the eaves, and when jim got almost to that chimney he made a pass at the cats, and his heels flew up and he shot down and crashed through those vines, and lit in the midst of the ladies and gentlemen, and sat down in those hot saucers of candy. there was a stampede, of course, and he came up-stairs dropping pieces of chinaware and candy all the way up, and when he got up therenow anybody in the world would have gone into profanity or something calculated to relieve the mind, but he didn't; he scraped the candy off his legs, nursed his blisters a little, and said, "i could have ketched them cats if i had had on a good ready." obituary poetry. address at the actors' fund fair, philadelphia, in 1895. ladies and gentlemen,theerthiserwelcome occasion gives me aneropportunity to make anerexplanation that i have long desired to deliver myself of. i rise to the highest honors before a philadelphia audience. in the course of my checkered career i have, on divers occasions, been chargedermaliciously with a more or less serious offence. it is in reply to one of the moreerimportant of these that i wish to speak. more than once i have been accused of writing obituary poetry in the philadelphia ledger. i wish right here to deny that dreadful assertion. i will admit that once, when a compositor in the ledger establishment, i did set up some of that poetry, but for a worse offence than that no indictment can be found against me. i did not write that poetryat least, not all of it. cigars and tobacco. my friends for some years now have remarked that i am an inveterate consumer of tobacco. that is true, but my habits with regard to tobacco have changed. i have no doubt that you will say, when i have explained to you what my present purpose is, that my taste has deteriorated, but i do not so regard it. whenever i held a smoking-party at my house, i found that my guests had always just taken the pledge. let me tell you briefly the history of my personal relation to tobacco. it began, i think, when i was a lad, and took the form of a quid, which i became expert in tucking under my tongue. afterward i learned the delights of the pipe, and i suppose there was no other youngster of my age who could more deftly cut plug tobacco so as to make it available for pipe-smoking. well, time ran on, and there came a time when i was able to gratify one of my youthful ambitionsi could buy the choicest havana cigars without seriously interfering with my income. i smoked a good many, changing off from the havana cigars to the pipe in the course of a day's smoking. at last it occurred to me that something was lacking in the havana cigar. it did not quite fulfil my youthful anticipations. i experimented. i bought what was called a seed-leaf cigar with a connecticut wrapper. after a while i became satiated of these, and i searched for something else. the pittsburg stogy was recommended to me. it certainly had the merit of cheapness, if that be a merit in tobacco, and i experimented with the stogy. then, once more, i changed off, so that i might acquire the subtler flavor of the wheeling toby. now that palled, and i looked around new york in the hope of finding cigars which would seem to most people vile, but which, i am sure, would be ambrosial to me. i couldn't find any. they put into my hands some of those little things that cost ten cents a box, but they are a delusion. i said to a friend, "i want to know if you can direct me to an honest tobacco merchant who will tell me what is the worst cigar in the new york market, excepting those made for chinese consumptioni want real tobacco. if you will do this and i find the man is as good as his word, i will guarantee him a regular market for a fair amount of his cigars." we found a tobacco dealer who would tell the truthwho, if a cigar was bad, would boldly say so. he produced what he called the very worst cigars he had ever had in his shop. he let me experiment with one then and there. the test was satisfactory. this was, after all, the real thing. i negotiated for a box of them and took them away with me, so that i might be sure of having them handy when i want them. i discovered that the "worst cigars," so called, are the best for me after all. billiards billiards. mr. clemens attended a billiard tourney on the evening of april 24, 1906, and was called on to tell a story. the game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition. once, when i was an underpaid reporter in virginia city, whenever i wished to play billiards i went out to look for an easy mark. one day a stranger came to town and opened a billiard parlor. i looked him over casually. when he proposed a game, i answered, "all right." "just knock the balls around a little so that i can get your gait," he said; and when i had done so, he remarked: "i will be perfectly fair with you. i'll play you left-handed." i felt hurt, for he was cross-eyed, freckled, and had red hair, and i determined to teach him a lesson. he won first shot, ran out, took my half-dollar, and all i got was the opportunity to chalk my cue. "if you can play like that with your left hand," i said, "i'd like to see you play with your right." "i can't, he said. "i'm left-handed." the union right or wrong? reminiscences of nevada. i can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that nevada had lively newspapers in those days. my great competitor among the reporters was boggs, of the union, an excellent reporter. once in three or four months he would get a little intoxicated; but, as a general thing, he was a wary and cautious drinker, although always ready to damp himself a little with the enemy. he had the advantage of me in one thing: he could get the monthly public-school report and i could not, because the principal hated my sheetthe enterprise. one snowy night, when the report was due, i started out, sadly wondering how i was to get it. presently, a few steps up the almost deserted street, i stumbled on boggs, and asked him where he was going. "after the school report." "i'll go along with you." "no, sir. i'll excuse you." "have it your own way." a saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch, and boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully. he gazed fondly after the boy, and saw him start up the enterprise stairs. i said: "i wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't, i must run up to the union office and see if i can get a proof of it after it's set up, though i don't begin to suppose i can. good night." "hold on a minute. i don't mind getting the report and sitting around with the boys a little while you copy it, if you're willing to drop down to the principal's with me." "now you talk like a human being. come along." we ploughed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the reporta short documentand soon copied it in our office. meantime, boggs helped himself to the punch. i gave the manuscript back to him, and we started back to get an inquest. at four o'clock in the morning, when we had gone to press and were having a relaxing concert as usual (for some of the printers were good singers and others good performers on the guitar and on that atrocity the accordion), the proprietor of the union strode in and asked if anybody had heard anything of boggs or the school report. we stated the case, and all turned out to help hunt for the delinquent. we found him standing on a table in a saloon, with an old tin lantern in one hand and the school report in the other, haranguing a gang of "corned" miners on the iniquity of squandering the public money on education "when hundreds and hundreds of honest, hard-working men were literally starving for whiskey." he had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for hours. we dragged him away, and put him into bed. of course there was no school report in the union, and boggs held me accountable, though i was innocent of any intention or desire to compass its absence from that paper, and was as sorry as any one that the misfortune had occurred. but we were perfectly friendly. the day the next school report was due the proprietor of the tennessee mine furnished us a buggy, and asked us to go down and write something about the propertya very common request, and one always gladly acceded to when people furnished buggies, for we were as fond of pleasure excursions as other people. the "mine" was a hole in the ground ninety feet deep, and no way of getting down into it but by holding on to a rope and being lowered with a windlass. the workmen had just gone off somewhere to dinner. i was not strong enough to lower boggs's bulk, so i took an unlighted candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot in the end of the rope, implored boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the start of him, and then swung out over the shaft. i reached the bottom muddy and bruised about the elbows, but safe. i lit the candle, made an examination of the rock, selected some specimens, and shouted to boggs to hoist away. no answer. presently a head appeared in the circle of daylight away aloft, and a voice came down: "are you all set?" "all sethoist away!" "are you comfortable?" "perfectly." "could you wait a little?" "oh, certainlyno particular hurry." "wellgood-bye." "why, where are you going?" "after the school report!" and he did. i stayed down there an hour, and surprised the workmen when they hauled up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock. i walked home, toofive milesup-hill. we had no school report next morningbut the union had. an ideal french address. extract from "paris notes," in "tom sawyer abroad," etc. i am told that a french sermon is like a french speechit never names an historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up in dates, you get left. a french speech is something like this: "comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st january cast off our chains; that the 10th august relieved us of the shameful presence of foreign spies; that the 5th september was its own justification before heaven and humanity; that the 18th brumaire contained the seeds of its own punishment; that the 14th july was the mighty voice of liberty proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting the oppressed peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of france and live; and let us here record our everlasting curse against the man of the 2d december, and declare in thunder tones, the native tones of france, that but for him there had been no 17th march in history, no 12th october, no 19th january, no 22d april, no 16th november, no 30th september, no 2d july, no 14th february, no 29th june, no 15th august, no 31st maythat but for him, france, the pure, the grand, the peerless, had had a serene and vacant almanac to-day." i have heard of one french sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquent way: "my hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th january. the results of the vast crime of the 13th january have been in just proportion to the magnitude of the act itself. but for it there had been no 30th novembersorrowful spectacle! the grisly deed of the 16th june had not been done but for it, nor had the man of the 16th june known existence; to it alone the 3d september was due, also the fatal 12th october. shall we, then, be grateful for the 13th january, with its freight of death for you and me and all that breathe? yes, my friends, for it gave us also that which had never come but for it, and it alonethe blessed 25th december." it may be well enough to explain. the man of the 13th january is adam; the crime of that date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowful spectacle of the 30th november was the expulsion from eden; the grisly deed of the 16th june was the murder of abel; the act of the 3d september was the beginning of the journey to the land of nod; the 12th day of october, the last mountaintops disappeared under the flood. when you go to church in france, you want to take your almanac with youannotated. statistics statistics. extract from "the history of the savage club." during that period of gloom when domestic bereavement had forced mr. clemens and his dear ones to secure the privacy they craved until their wounds should heal, his address was known to only a very few of his closest friends. one old friend in new york, after vain efforts to get his address, wrote him a letter addressed as follows: mark twain, god knows where, try london. the letter found him, and mr. clemens replied to the letter expressing himself surprised and complimented that the person who was credited with knowing his whereabouts should take so much interest in him, adding: "had the letter been addressed to the care of the 'other party,' i would naturally have expected to receive it without delay." his correspondent tried again, and addressed the second letter: mark twain, the devil knows where, try london. this found him also no less promptly. on june 9, 1899, he consented to visit the savage club, london, on condition that there was to be no publicity and no speech was to be expected from him. the toastmaster, in proposing the health of their guest, said that as a scotchman, and therefore as a born expert, he thought mark twain had little or no claim to the title of humorist. mr. clemens had tried to be funny but had failed, and his true role in life was statistics; that he was a master of statistics, and loved them for their own sake, and it would be the easiest task he ever undertook if he would try to count all the real jokes he had ever made. while the toastmaster was speaking, the members saw mr. clemens's eyes begin to sparkle and his cheeks to flush. he jumped up, and made a characteristic speech. perhaps i am not a. humorist, but i am a first-class foola simpleton; for up to this moment i have believed chairman macalister to be a decent person whom i could allow to mix up with my friends and relatives. the exhibition he has just made of himself reveals him to be a scoundrel and a knave of the deepest dye. i have been cruelly deceived, and it serves me right for trusting a scotchman. yes, i do understand figures, and i can count. i have counted the words in macalister's drivel (i certainly cannot call it a speech), and there were exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine. i also carefully counted the liesthere were exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine. therefore, i leave macalister to his fate. i was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. chaucer is dead, spencer is dead, so is milton, so is shakespeare, and i am not feeling very well myself. galveston orphan bazaar. address at a fair held at the waldorf-astoria, new york, in october, 1900, in aid of the orphans at galveston. i expected that the governor of texas would occupy this place first and would speak to you, and in the course of his remarks would drop a text for me to talk from; but with the proverbial obstinacy that is proverbial with governors, they go back on their duties, and he has not come here, and has not furnished me with a text, and i am here without a text. i have no text except what you furnish me with your handsome faces, andbut i won't continue that, for i could go on forever about attractive faces, beautiful dresses, and other things. but, after all, compliments should be in order in a place like this. i have been in new york two or three days, and have been in a condition of strict diligence night and day, the object of this diligence being to regulate the moral and political situation on this planetput it on a sound basisand when you are regulating the conditions of a planet it requires a great deal of talk in a great many kinds of ways, and when you have talked a lot the emptier you get, and get also in a position of corking. when i am situated like that, with nothing to say, i feel as though i were a sort of fraud; i seem to be playing a part, and please consider i am playing a part for want of something better, and this is not unfamiliar to me; i have often done this before. when i was here about eight years ago i was coming up in a car of the elevated road. very few people were in that car, and on one end of it there was no one, except on the opposite seat, where sat a man about fifty years old, with a most winning face and an elegant eyea beautiful eye; and i took him from his dress to be a master mechanic, a man who had a vocation. he had with him a very fine little child of about four or five years. i was watching the affection which existed between those two. i judged he was the grandfather, perhaps. it was really a pretty child, and i was admiring her, and as soon as he saw i was admiring her he began to notice me. i could see his admiration of me in his eye, and i did what everybody else would doadmired the child four times as much, knowing i would get four times as much of his admiration. things went on very pleasantly. i was making my way into his heart. by-and-by, when he almost reached the station where he was to get off, he got up, crossed over, and he said: "now i am going to say something to you which i hope you will regard as a compliment." and then he went on to say: "i have never seen mark twain, but i have seen a portrait of him, and any friend of mine will tell you that when i have once seen a portrait of a man i place it in my eye and store it away in my memory, and i can tell you now that you look enough like mark twain to be his brother. now," he said, "i hope you take this as a compliment. yes, you are a very good imitation; but when i come to look closer, you are probably not that man." i said: "i will be frank with you. in my desire to look like that excellent character i have dressed for the character; i have been playing a part." he said: "that is all right, that is all right; you look very well on the outside, but when it comes to the inside you are not in it with the original." so when i come to a place like this with nothing valuable to say i always play a part. but i will say before i sit down that when it comes to saying anything here i will express myself in this way: i am heartily in sympathy with you in your efforts to help those who were sufferers in this calamity, and in your desire to help those who were rendered homeless, and in saying this i wish to impress on you the fact that i am not playing a part. san francisco earthquake. after the address at the robert fulton fund meeting, june 19, 1906, mr. clemens talked to the assembled reporters about the san francisco earthquake. i haven't been there since 1868, and that great city of san francisco has grown up since my day. when i was there she had one hundred and eighteen thousand people, and of this number eighteen thousand were chinese. i was a reporter on the virginia city enterprise in nevada in 1862, and stayed there, i think, about two years, when i went to san francisco and got a job as a reporter on the call. i was there three or four years. i remember one day i was walking down third street in san francisco. it was a sleepy, dull sunday afternoon, and no one was stirring. suddenly as i looked up the street about three hundred yards the whole side of a house fell out. the street was full of bricks and mortar. at the same time i was knocked against the side of a house, and stood there stunned for a moment. i thought it was an earthquake. nobody else had heard anything about it and no one said earthquake to me afterward, but i saw it and i wrote it. nobody else wrote it, and the house i saw go into the street was the only house in the city that felt it. i've always wondered if it wasn't a little performance gotten up for my especial entertainment by the nether regions. charity and actors. address at the actors' fund fair in the metropolitan opera house, new york, may 6, 1907. mr. clemens, in his white suit, formally declared the fair open. mr. daniel frohman, in introducing mr. clemens, said: "we intend to make this a banner week in the history of the fund, which takes an interest in every one on the stage, be he actor, singer, dancer, or workman. we have spent more than $40,000 during the past year. charity covers a multitude of sins, but it also reveals a multitude of virtues. at the opening of the former fair we had the assistance of edwin booth and joseph jefferson. in their place we have to-day that american institution and apostle of wide humanitymark twain." as mr. frohman has said, charity reveals a multitude of virtues. this is true, and it is to be proved here before the week is over. mr. frohman has told you something of the object and something of the character of the work. he told me he would do thisand he has kept his word! i had expected to hear of it through the newspapers. i wouldn't trust anything between frohman and the newspapersexcept when it's a case of charity! you should all remember that the actor has been your benefactor many and many a year. when you have been weary and downcast he has lifted your heart out of gloom and given you a fresh impulse. you are all under obligation to him. this is your opportunity to be his benefactorto help provide for him in his old age and when he suffers from infirmities. at this fair no one is to be persecuted to buy. if you offer a twenty-dollar bill in payment for a purchase of $1 you will receive $19 in change. there is to be no robbery here. there is to be no creed hereno religion except charity. we want to raise $250,000and that is a great task to attempt. the president has set the fair in motion by pressing the button in washington. now your good wishes are to be transmuted into cash. by virtue of the authority in me vested i declare the fair open. i call the ball game. let the transmuting begin! russian republic. the american auxiliary movement to aid the cause of freedom in russia was launched on the evening of april 11, 1906, at the club a house, 3 fifth avenue, with mr. clemens and maxim gorky as the principal spokesmen. mr. clemens made an introductory address, presenting mr. gorky. if we can build a russian republic to give to the persecuted people of the tsar's domain the same measure of freedom that we enjoy, let us go ahead and do it. we need not discuss the methods by which that purpose is to be attained. let us hope that fighting will be postponed or averted for a while, but if it must come i am most emphatically in sympathy with the movement, now on foot in russia, to make that country free. i am certain that it will be successful, as it deserves to be. any such movement should have and deserves our earnest and unanimous co-operation, and such a petition for funds as has been explained by mr. hunter, with its just and powerful meaning, should have the utmost support of each and every one of us. anybody whose ancestors were in this country when we were trying to free ourselves from oppression, must sympathize with those who now are trying to do the same thing in russia. the parallel i have just drawn only goes to show that it makes no difference whether the oppression is bitter or not; men with red, warm blood in their veins will not endure it, but will seek to cast it off. if we keep our hearts in this matter russia will be free. russian sufferers. on december 18, 1905, an entertainment was given at the casino for the benefit of the russian sufferers. after the performance mr. clemens spoke. ladies and gentlemen,it seems a sort of cruelty to inflict upon an audience like this our rude english tongue, after we have heard that divine speech flowing in that lucid gallic tongue. it has always been a marvel to methat french language; it has always been a puzzle to me. how beautiful that language is. how expressive it seems to be. how full of grace it is. and when it comes from lips like those, how eloquent and how liquid it is. and, oh, i am always deceivedi always think i am going to understand it. oh, it is such a delight to me, such a delight to me, to meet madame bernhardt, and laugh hand to hand and heart to heart with her. i have seen her play, as we all have, and oh, that is divine; but i have always wanted to know madame bernhardt herselfher fiery self. i have wanted to know that beautiful character. why, she is the youngest person i ever saw, except myselffor i always feel young when i come in the presence of young people. i have a pleasant recollection of an incident so many years agowhen madame bernhardt came to hartford, where i lived, and she was going to play and the tickets were three dollars, and there were two lovely womena widow and her daughterneighbors of ours, highly cultivated ladies they were; their tastes were fine and elevated, but they were very poor, and they said: "well, we must not spend six dollars on a pleasure of the mind, a pleasure of the intellect; we must spend it, if it must go at all, to furnish to somebody bread to eat." and so they sorrowed over the fact that they had to give up that great pleasure of seeing madame bernhardt, but there were two neighbors equally highly cultivated and who could not afford bread, and those good-hearted joneses sent that six dollarsdeprived themselves of itand sent it to those poor smiths to buy bread with. and those smiths took it and bought tickets with it to see madame bernhardt. oh yes, some people have tastes and intelligence also. now, i was going to make a speechi supposed i was, but i am not. it is late, late; and so i am going to tell a story; and there is this advantage about a story, anyway, that whatever moral or valuable thing you put into a speech, why, it gets diffused among those involuted sentences and possibly your audience goes away without finding out what that valuable thing was that you were trying to confer upon it; but, dear me, you put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the keystone of that story, and you are bound to get itit flashes, it flames, it is the jewel in the toad's headyou don't overlook that. now, if i am going to talk on such a subject as, for instance, the lost opportunityoh, the lost opportunity. anybody in this house who has reached the turn of lifesixty or seventy, or even fifty, or along therewhen he goes back along his history, there he finds it mile-stoned all the way with the lost opportunity, and you know how pathetic that is. you younger ones cannot know the full pathos that lies in those wordsthe lost opportunity; but anybody who is old, who has really lived and felt this life, he knows the pathos of the lost opportunity. now, i will tell you a story whose moral is that, whose lesson is that, whose lament is that. i was in a village which is a suburb of new bedford several years agowell, new bedford is a suburb of fair haven, or perhaps it is the other way; in any case, it took both of those towns to make a great centre of the great whaling industry of the first half of the nineteenth century, and i was up there at fair haven some years ago with a friend of mine. there was a dedication of a great town-hall, a public building, and we were there in the afternoon. this great building was filled, like this great theatre, with rejoicing villagers, and my friend and i started down the centre aisle. he saw a man standing in that aisle, and he said: "now, look at that bronzed veteranat that mahogany-faced man. now, tell me, do you see anything about that man's face that is emotional? do you see anything about it that suggests that inside that man anywhere there are fires that can be started? would you ever imagine that that is a human volcano?" "why, no," i said, "i would not. he looks like a wooden indian in front of a cigar store." "very well," said my friend, "i will show you that there is emotion even in that unpromising place. i will just go to that man and i will just mention in the most casual way an incident in his life. that man is getting along toward ninety years old. he is past eighty. i will mention an incident of fifty or sixty years ago. now, just watch the effect, and it will be so casual that if you don't watch you won't know when i do say that thingbut you just watch the effect." he went on down there and accosted this antiquity, and made a remark or two. i could not catch up. they were so casual i could not recognize which one it was that touched that bottom, for in an instant that old man was literally in eruption and was filling the whole place with profanity of the most exquisite kind. you never heard such accomplished profanity. i never heard it also delivered with such eloquence. i never enjoyed profanity as i enjoyed it thenmore than if i had been uttering it myself. there is nothing like listening to an artistall his passions passing away in lava, smoke, thunder, lightning, and earthquake. then this friend said to me: "now, i will tell you about that. about sixty years ago that man was a young fellow of twenty-three, and had just come home from a three years' whaling voyage. he came into that village of his, happy and proud because now, instead of being chief mate, he was going to be master of a whaleship, and he was proud and happy about it. "then he found that there had been a kind of a cold frost come upon that town and the whole region roundabout; for while he had been away the father mathew temperance excitement had come upon the whole region. therefore, everybody had taken the pledge; there wasn't anybody for miles and miles around that had not taken the pledge. "so you can see what a solitude it was to this young man, who was fond of his grog. and he was just an outcast, because when they found he would not join father mathew's society they ostracized him, and he went about that town three weeks, day and night, in utter lonelinessthe only human being in the whole place who ever took grog, and he had to take it privately. "if you don't know what it is to be ostracized, to be shunned by your fellow-man, may you never know it. then he recognized that there was something more valuable in this life than grog, and that is the fellowship of your fellow-man. and at last he gave it up, and at nine o'clock one night he went down to the father mathew temperance society, and with a broken heart he said: 'put my name down for membership in this society.' "and then he went away crying, and at earliest dawn the next morning they came for him and routed him out, and they said that new ship of his was ready to sail on a three years' voyage. in a minute he was on board that ship and gone. "and he saidwell, he was not out of sight of that town till he began to repent, but he had made up his mind that he would not take a drink, and so that whole voyage of three years was a three years' agony to that man because he saw all the time the mistake he had made. "he felt it all through; he had constant reminders of it, because the crew would pass him with their grog, come out on the deck and take it, and there was the torturous smell of it. "he went through the whole three years of suffering, and at last coming into port it was snowy, it was cold, he was stamping through the snow two feet deep on the deck and longing to get home, and there was his crew torturing him to the last minute with hot grog, but at last he had his reward. he really did get to shore at last, and jumped and ran and bought a jug and rushed to the society's office, and said to the secretary: "'take my name off your membership books, and do it right away! i have got a three years' thirst on.' "and the secretary said: 'it is not necessary. you were blackballed!'" watterson and twain as rebels. address at the celebration of abraham lincoln's 92d birthday anniversary, carnegie hall, february 11, 1901, to raise funds for the lincoln memorial university at cumberland gap, tenn. ladies and gentlemen,the remainder of my duties as presiding chairman here this evening are but twoonly two. one of them is easy, and the other difficult. that is to say, i must introduce the orator, and then keep still and give him a chance. the name of henry watterson carries with it its own explanation. it is like an electric light on top of madison square garden; you touch the button and the light flashes up out of the darkness. you mention the name of henry watterson, and your minds are at once illuminated with the splendid radiance of his fame and achievements. a journalist, a soldier, an orator, a statesman, a rebel. yes, he was a rebel; and, better still, now he is a reconstructed rebel. it is a curious circumstance, a circumstance brought about without any collusion or prearrangement, that he and i, both of whom were rebels related by blood to each other, should be brought here together this evening bearing a tribute in our hands and bowing our heads in reverence to that noble soul who for three years we tried to destroy. i don't know as the fact has ever been mentioned before, but it is a fact, nevertheless. colonel watterson and i were both rebels, and we are blood relations. i was a second lieutenant in a confederate companyfor a whileoh, i could have stayed on if i had wanted to. i made myself felt, i left tracks all around the country. i could have stayed on, but it was such weather. i never saw such weather to be out-of-doors in, in all my life. the colonel commanded a regiment, and did his part, i suppose, to destroy the union. he did not succeed, yet if he had obeyed me he would have done so. i had a plan, and i fully intended to drive general grant into the pacific oceanif i could get transportation. i told colonel watterson about it. i told him what he had to do. what i wanted him to do was to surround the eastern army and wait until i came up. but he was insubordinate; he stuck on some quibble of military etiquette about a second lieutenant giving orders to a colonel or something like that. and what was the consequence? the union was preserved. this is the first time i believe that that secret has ever been revealed. no one outside of the family circle, i think, knew it before; but there the facts are. watterson saved the union; yes, he saved the union. and yet there he sits, and not a step has been taken or a movement made toward granting him a pension. that is the way things are done. it is a case where some blushing ought to be done. you ought to blush, and i ought to blush, and hewell, he's a little out of practice now. robert fulton fund. address made on the evening of april 19, 1906. mr. clemens had been asked to address the association by gen. frederick d. grant, president. he was offered a fee of $1000, but refused it, saying: "i shall be glad to do it, but i must stipulate that you keep the $1000, and add it to the memorial fund as my contribution to erect a monument in new york to the memory of the man who applied steam to navigation." at this meeting mr. clemens made this formal announcement from the platform: "this is my last appearance on the paid platform. i shall not retire from the gratis platform until i am buried, and courtesy will compel me to keep still and not disturb the others. now, since i must, i shall say good-bye. i see many faces in this audience well known to me. they are all my friends, and i feel that those i don't know are my friends, too. i wish to consider that you represent the nation, and that in saying good-bye to you i am saying good-bye to the nation. in the great name of humanity, let me say this final word: i offer an appeal in behalf of that vast, pathetic multitude of fathers, mothers, and helpless little children. they were sheltered and happy two days ago. now they are wandering, forlorn, hopeless, and homeless, the victims of a great disaster. so i beg of you, i beg of you, to open your hearts and open your purses and remember san francisco, the smitten city." i wish to deliver a historical address. i've been studying the history oferalet me seea [then he stopped in confusion, and walked over to gen. fred d. grant, who sat at the head of the platform. he leaned over in a whisper, and then returned to the front of the stage and continued]. oh yes! i've been studying robert fulton. i've been studying a biographical sketch of robert fulton, the inventor oferalet's seeoh yes, the inventor of the electric telegraph and the morse sewing-machine. also, i understand he invented the airdiriapshaw! i have it at lastthe dirigible balloon. yes, the dirigible but it is a difficult word, and i don't see why anybody should marry a couple of words like that when they don't want to be married at all and are likely to quarrel with each other all the time. i should put that couple of words under the ban of the united states supreme court, under its decision of a few days ago, and take 'em out and drown 'em. i used to know fulton. it used to do me good to see him dashing through the town on a wild broncho. and fulton was born in erawell, it doesn't make much difference where he was born, does it? i remember a man who came to interview me once, to get a sketch of my life. i consulted with a frienda practical manbefore he came, to know how i should treat him. "whenever you give the interviewer a fact," he said, "give him another fact that will contradict it. then he'll go away with a jumble that he can't use at all. be gentle, be sweet, smile like an idiotjust be natural." that's what my friend told me to do, and i did it. "where were you born?" asked the interviewer. "wellera," i began, "i was born in alabama, or alaska, or the sandwich islands; i don't know where, but right around there somewhere. and you had better put it down before you forget it." "but you weren't born in all those places," he said. "well, i've offered you three places. take your choice. they're all at the same price." "how old are you?" he asked. "i shall be nineteen in june," i said. "why, there's such a discrepancy between your age and your looks," he said. "oh, that's nothing," i said, "i was born discrepantly." then we got to talking about my brother samuel, and he told me my explanations were confusing. "i suppose he is dead," i said. "some said that he was dead and some said that he wasn't." "did you bury him without knowing whether he was dead or not?" asked the reporter. "there was a mystery," said i. "we were twins, and one day when we were two weeks oldthat is, he was one week old, and i was one week oldwe got mixed up in the bath-tub, and one of us drowned. we never could tell which. one of us had a strawberry birthmark on the back of his hand. there it is on my hand. this is the one that was drowned. there's no doubt about it." "where's the mystery?" he said. "why, don't you see how stupid it was to bury the wrong twin?" i answered. i didn't explain it any more because he said the explanation confused him. to me it is perfectly plain. but, to get back to fulton. i'm going along like an old man i used to know who used to start to tell a story about his grandfather. he had an awfully retentive memory, and he never finished the story, because he switched off into something else. he used to tell about how his grandfather one day went into a pasture, where there was a ram. the old man dropped a silver dime in the grass, and stooped over to pick it up. the ram was observing him, and took the old man's action as an invitation. just as he was going to finish about the ram this friend of mine would recall that his grandfather had a niece who had a glass eye. she used to loan that glass eye to another lady friend, who used it when she received company. the eye didn't fit the friend's face, and it was loose. and whenever she winked it would turn over. then he got on the subject of accidents, and he would tell a story about how he believed accidents never happened. "there was an irishman coming down a ladder with a hod of bricks," he said, "and a dutchman was standing on the ground below. the irishman fell on the dutchman and killed him. accident? never! if the dutchman hadn't been there the irishman would have been killed. why didn't the irishman fall on a dog which was next to the dutchman? because the dog would have seen him coming." then he'd get off from the dutchman to an uncle named reginald wilson. reginald went into a carpet factory one day, and got twisted into the machinery's belt. he went excursioning around the factory until he was properly distributed and was woven into sixty-nine yards of the best three-ply carpet. his wife bought the carpet, and then she erected a monument to his memory. it read: sacred to the memory of sixty-nine yards of the best three-ply carpet containing the mortal remainders of reginald wilson go thou and do likewise and so on he would ramble about telling the story of his grandfather until we never were told whether he found the ten-cent piece or whether something else happened. fulton day, jamestown. address delivered september 23, 1907. lieutenant-governor ellyson, of virginia, in introducing mr. clemens, said: "the people have come here to bring a tribute of affectionate recollection for the man who has contributed so much to the progress of the world and the happiness of mankind." as mr. clemens came down to the platform the applause became louder and louder, until mr. clemens held out his hand for silence. it was a great triumph, and it was almost a minute after the applause ceased before mr. clemens could speak. he attempted it once, and when the audience noticed his emotion, it cheered again loudly. ladies and gentlemen,i am but human, and when you give me a reception like that i am obliged to wait a little while i get my voice. when you appeal to my head, i don't feel it; but when you appeal to my heart, i do feel it. we are here to celebrate one of the greatest events of american history, and not only in american history, but in the world's history. indeed it wasthe application of steam by robert fulton. it was a world eventthere are not many of them. it is peculiarly an american event, that is true, but the influence was very broad in effect. we should regard this day as a very great american holiday. we have not many that are exclusively american holidays. we have the fourth of july, which we regard as an american holiday, but it is nothing of the kind. i am waiting for a dissenting voice. all great efforts that led up to the fourth of july were made, not by americans, but by english residents of america, subjects of the king of england. they fought all the fighting that was done, they shed and spilt all the blood that was spilt, in securing to us the invaluable liberties which are incorporated in the declaration of independence; but they were not americans. they signed the declaration of independence; no american's name is signed to that document at all. there never was an american such as you and i are until after the revolution, when it had all been fought out and liberty secured, after the adoption of the constitution, and the recognition of the independence of america by all powers. while we revere the fourth of julyand let us always revere it, and the liberties it conferred upon usyet it was not an american event, a great american day. it was an american who applied that steam successfully. there are not a great many world events, and we have our full share. the telegraph, telephone, and the application of steam to navigationthese are great american events. to-day i have been requested, or i have requested myself, not to confine myself to furnishing you with information, but to remind you of things, and to introduce one of the nation's celebrants. admiral harrington here is going to tell you all that i have left untold. i am going to tell you all that i know, and then he will follow up with such rags and remnants as he can find, and tell you what he knows. no doubt you have heard a great deal about robert fulton and the influences that have grown from his invention, but the little steamboat is suffering neglect. you probably do not know a great deal about that boat. it was the most important steamboat in the world. i was there and saw it. admiral harrington was there at the time. it need not surprise you, for he is not as old as he looks. that little boat was interesting in every way. the size of it. the boat was one [consults admiral], he said ten feet long. the breadth of that boat [consults admiral], two hundred feet. you see, the first and most important detail is the length, then the breadth, and then the depth; the depth of that boat was [consults again]the admiral says it was a flat boat. then her tonnageyou know nothing about a boat until you know two more things: her speed and her tonnage. we know the speed she made. she made four milesand sometimes five miles. it was on her initial trip, on august 11, 1807, that she made her initial trip, when she went from [consults admiral] jersey cityto chicago. that's right. she went by way of albany. now comes the tonnage of that boat. tonnage of a boat means the amount of displacement; displacement means the amount of water a vessel can shove in a day. the tonnage of man is estimated by the amount of whiskey he can displace in a day. robert fulton named the clermont in honor of his bride, that is, clermont was the name of the county-seat. i feel that it surprises you that i know so much. in my remarks of welcome of admiral harrington i am not going to give him compliments. compliments always embarrass a man. you do not know anything to say. it does not inspire you with words. there is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. i have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass mei always feel that they have not said enough. the admiral and myself have held public office, and were associated together a great deal in a friendly way in the time of pocahontas. that incident where pocahontas saves the life of smith from her father, powhatan's club, was gotten up by the admiral and myself to advertise jamestown. at that time the admiral and myself did not have the facilities of advertising that you have. i have known admiral harrington in all kinds of situationsin public service, on the platform, and in the chain-gang now and thenbut it was a mistake. a case of mistaken identity. i do not think it is at all a necessity to tell you admiral harrington's public history. you know that it is in the histories. i am not here to tell you anything about his public life, but to expose his private life. i am something of a poet. when the great poet laureate, tennyson, died, and i found that the place was open, i tried to get itbut i did not get it. anybody can write the first line of a poem, but it is a very difficult task to make the second line rhyme with the first. when i was down in australia there were two towns named johnswood and par-am. i made this rhyme: "the people of johnswood are pious and good; the people of par-am they don't care a-" i do not want to compliment admiral harrington, but as long as such men as he devote their lives to the public service the credit of the country will never cease. i will say that the same high qualities, the same moral and intellectual attainments, the same graciousness of manner, of conduct, of observation, and expression have caused admiral harrington to be mistaken for meand i have been mistaken for him. a mutual compliment can go no further, and i now have the honor and privilege of introducing to you admiral harrington. lotos club dinner in honor of mark twain. address at the first formal dinner in the new club-house, november 11, 1893. in introducing the guest of the evening, mr. lawrence said: "to-night the old faces appear once more amid new surroundings. the place where last we met about the table has vanished, and to-night we have our first lotos dinner in a home that is all our own. it is peculiarly fitting that the board should now be spread in honor of one who has been a member of the club for full a score of years, and it is a happy augury for the future that our fellow-member whom we assemble to greet should be the bearer of a most distinguished name in the world of letters; for the lotos club is ever at its best when paying homage to genius in literature or in art. is there a civilized being who has not heard the name of mark twain? we knew him long years ago, before he came out of the boundless west, brimful of wit and eloquence, with no reverence for anything, and went abroad to educate the untutored european in the subtleties of the american joke. the world has looked on and applauded while he has broken many images. he has led us in imagination all over the globe. with him as our guide we have traversed alike the mississippi and the sea of galilee. at his bidding we have laughed at a thousand absurdities. by a laborious process of reasoning he has convinced us that the egyptian mummies are actually dead. he has held us spellbound upon the plain at the foot of the great sphinx, and we have joined him in weeping bitter tears at the tomb of adam. to-night we greet him in the flesh. what name is there in literature that can be likened to his? perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about this table can tell us, but i know of none. himself his only parallel!" mr. president, gentlemen, and fellow-members of the lotos club,i have seldom in my lifetime listened to compliments so felicitously phrased or so well deserved. i return thanks for them from a full heart and an appreciative spirit, and i will say this in self-defence: while i am charged with having no reverence for anything, i wish to say that i have reverence for the man who can utter such truths, and i also have a deep reverence and a sincere one for a club that can do such justice to me. to be the chief guest of such a club is something to be envied, and if i read your countenances rightly i am envied. i am glad to see this club in such palatial quarters. i remember it twenty years ago when it was housed in a stable. now when i was studying for the ministry there were two or three things that struck my attention particularly. at the first banquet mentioned in history that other prodigal son who came back from his travels was invited to stand up and have his say. they were all there, his brethren, david and goliath, and er, and if he had had such experience as i have had he would have waited until those other people got through talking. he got up and testified to all his failings. now if he had waited before telling all about his riotous living until the others had spoken he might not have given himself away as he did, and i think that i would give myself away if i should go on. i think i'd better wait until the others hand in their testimony; then if it is necessary for me to make an explanation, i will get up and explain, and if i cannot do that, i'll deny it happened. later in the evening mr. clemens made another speech, replying to a fire of short speeches by charles dudley warner, charles a. dana, seth low, general porter, and many others, each welcoming the guest of honor. i don't see that i have a great deal to explain. i got off very well, considering the opportunities that these other fellows had. i don't see that mr. low said anything against me, and neither did mr. dana. however, i will say that i never heard so many lies told in one evening as were told by mr. mckelwayand i consider myself very capable; but even in his case, when he got through, i was gratified by finding how much he hadn't found out. by accident he missed the very things that i didn't want to have said, and now, gentlemen, about americanism. i have been on the continent of europe for two and a half years. i have met many americans there, some sojourning for a short time only, others making protracted stays, and it has been very gratifying to me to find that nearly all preserved their americanism. i have found they all like to see the flag fly, and that their hearts rise when they see the stars and stripes. i met only one lady who had forgotten the land of her birth and glorified monarchical institutions. i think it is a great thing to say that in two and a half years i met only one person who had fallen a victim to the shamsi think we may call them shamsof nobilities and of heredities. she was entirely lost in them. after i had listened to her for a long time, i said to her: "at least you must admit that we have one merit. we are not like the chinese, who refuse to allow their citizens who are tired of the country to leave it. thank god, we don't!" copyright copyright. with mr. howells, edward everett hale, thomas nelson page, and a number of other authors, mr. clemens appeared before the committee december 6, 1906. the new copyright bill contemplated an author's copyright for the term of his life and for fifty years thereafter, applying also for the benefit of artists, musicians, and others, but the authors did most of the talking. f. d. millet made a speech for the artists, and john philip sousa for the musicians. mr. clemens was the last speaker of the day, and its chief feature. he made a speech, the serious, parts of which created a strong impression, and the humorous parts set the senators and representatives in roars of laughter. i have read this bill. at least i have read such portions as i could understand. nobody but a practised legislator can read the bill and thoroughly understand it, and i am not a practised legislator. i am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill which concerns my trade. i like that extension of copyright life to the author's life and fifty years afterward. i think that would satisfy any reasonable author, because it would take care of his children. let the grand-children take care of themselves. that would take care of my daughters, and after that i am not particular. i shall then have long been out of this struggle, independent of it, indifferent to it. it isn't objectionable to me that all the trades and professions in the united states are protected by the bill. i like that. they are all important and worthy, and if we can take care of them under the copyright law i should like to see it done. i should like to see oyster culture added, and anything else. i am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required by the constitution of the united states, which sets aside the earlier constitution, which we call the decalogue. the decalogue says you shall not take away from any man his profit. i don't like to be obliged to use the harsh term. what the decalogue really says is, "thou shalt not steal," but i am trying to use more polite language. the laws of england and america do take it away, do select but one class, the people who create the literature of the land. they always talk handsomely about the literature of the land, always what a fine, great, monumental thing a great literature is, and in the midst of their enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it. i know we must have a limit, but forty-two years is too much of a limit. i am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the possession of the product of a man's labor. there is no limit to real estate. doctor hale has suggested that a man might just as well, after discovering a coal-mine and working it forty-two years, have the government step in and take it away. what is the excuse? it is that the author who produced that book has had the profit of it long enough, and therefore the government takes a profit which does not belong to it and generously gives it to the 88,000,000 of people. but it doesn't do anything of the kind. it merely takes the author's property, takes his children's bread, and gives the publisher double profit. he goes on publishing the book and as many of his confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they rear families in affluence. and they continue the enjoyment of those ill-gotten gains generation after generation forever, for they never die. in a few weeks or months or years i shall be out of it, i hope under a monument. i hope i shall not be entirely forgotten, and i shall subscribe to the monument myself. but i shall not be caring what happens if there are fifty years left of my copyright. my copyright produces annually a good deal more than i can use, but my children can use it. i can get along; i know a lot of trades. but that goes to my daughters, who can't get along as well as i can because i have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know anything and can't do anything. i hope congress will extend to them the charity which they have failed to get from me. why, if a man who is not even mad, but only strenuousstrenuous about racesuicideshould come to me and try to get me to use my large political and ecclesiastical influence to get a bill passed by this congress limiting families to twenty-two children by one mother, i should try to calm him down. i should reason with him. i should say to him, "leave it alone. leave it alone and it will take care of itself. only one couple a year in the united states can reach that limit. if they have reached that limit let them go right on. let them have all the liberty they want. in restricting that family to twenty-two children you are merely conferring discomfort and unhappiness on one family per year in a nation of 88,000,000, which is not worth while." it is the very same with copyright. one author per year produces a book which can outlive the forty-two-year limit; that's all. this nation can't produce two authors a year that can do it; the thing is demonstrably impossible. all that the limited copyright can do is to take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per year. i made an estimate some years ago, when i appeared before a committee of the house of lords, that we had published in this country since the declaration of independence 220,000 books. they have all gone. they had all perished before they were ten years old. it is only one book in 1000 that can outlive the forty-two-year limit. therefore why put a limit at all? you might as well limit the family to twenty-two children. if you recall the americans in the nineteenth century who wrote books that lived forty-two years you will have to begin with cooper; you can follow with washington irving, harriet beecher stowe, edgar allan poe, and there you have to wait a long time. you come to emerson, and you have to stand still and look further. you find howells and t. b. aldrich, and, then your numbers begin to run pretty thin, and you question if you can name twenty persons in the united states who in a whole century have written books that would live forty-two years. why, you could take them all and put them on one bench there [pointing]. add the wives and children and you could put the result on two or three more benches. one hundred personsthat is the little, insignificant crowd whose bread-and-butter is to be taken away for what purpose, for what profit to anybody? you turn these few books into the hands of the pirate and of the legitimate publisher, too, and they get the profit that should have gone to the wife and children. when i appeared before that committee of the house of lords the chairman asked me what limit i would propose. i said, "perpetuity." i could see some resentment in his manner, and he said the idea was illogical, for the reason that it has long ago been decided that there can be no such thing as property in ideas. i said there was property in ideas before queen anne's time; they had perpetual copyright. he said, "what is a book? a book is just built from base to roof on ideas, and there can be no property in it." i said i wished he could mention any kind of property on this planet that had a pecuniary value which was not derived from an idea or ideas. he said real estate. i put a supposititious case, a dozen englishmen who travel through south africa and camp out, and eleven of them see nothing at all; they are mentally blind. but there is one in the party who knows what this harbor means and what the lay of the land means. to him it means that some day a railway will go through here, and there on that harbor a great city will spring up. that is his idea. and he has another idea, which is to go and trade his last bottle of scotch whiskey and his last horse-blanket to the principal chief of that region and buy a piece of land the size of pennsylvania. that was the value of an idea that the day would come when the cape to cairo railway would be built. every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an idea in somebody's head. the skyscraper is another idea; the railroad is another; the telephone and all those things are merely symbols which represent ideas. an andiron, a wash-tub, is the result of an idea that did not exist before. so if, as that gentleman said, a book does consist solely of ideas, that is the best argument in the world that it is property, and should not be under any limitation at all. we don't ask for that. fifty years from now we shall ask for it. i hope the bill will pass without any deleterious amendments. i do seem to be extraordinarily interested in a whole lot of arts and things that i have got nothing to do with. it is a part of my generous, liberal nature; i can't help it. i feel the same sort of charity to everybody that was manifested by a gentleman who arrived at home at two o'clock in the morning from the club and was feeling so perfectly satisfied with life, so happy, and so comfortable, and there was his house weaving, weaving, weaving around. he watched his chance, and by and by when the steps got in his neighborhood he made a jump and climbed up and got on the portico. and the house went on weaving and weaving and weaving, but he watched the door, and when it came around his way he plunged through it. he got to the stairs, and when he went up on all fours the house was so unsteady that he could hardly make his way, but at last he got to the top and raised his foot and put it on the top step. but only the toe hitched on the step, and he rolled down and fetched up on the bottom step, with his arm around the newel-post, and he said: "god pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this." in aid of the blind. address at a public meeting of the new york association for promoting the interests of the blind at the waldorf-astoria, march 29, 1906. if you detect any awkwardness in my movements and infelicities in my conduct i will offer the explanation that i never presided at a meeting of any kind before in my life, and that i do find it out of my line. i supposed i could do anything anybody else could, but i recognize that experience helps, and i do feel the lack of that experience. i don't feel as graceful and easy as i ought to be in-order to impress an audience. i shall not pretend that i know how to umpire a meeting like this, and i shall just take the humble place of the essex band. there was a great gathering in a small new england town about twenty-five years ago. i remember that circumstance because there was something that happened at that time. it was a great occasion. they gathered in the militia and orators and everybody from all the towns around. it was an extraordinary occasion. the little local paper threw itself into ecstasies of admiration and tried to do itself proud from beginning to end. it praised the orators, the militia, and all the bands that came from everywhere, and all this in honest country newspaper detail, but the writer ran out of adjectives toward the end. having exhausted his whole magazine of praise and glorification, he found he still had one band left over. he had to say something about it, and he said: "the essex band done the best it could." i am an essex band on this occasion, and i am going to get through as well as inexperience and good intentions will enable me. i have got all the documents here necessary to instruct you in the objects and intentions of this meeting and also of the association which has called the meeting. but they are too voluminous. i could not pack those statistics into my head, and i had to give it up. i shall have to just reduce all that mass of statistics to a few salient facts. there are too many statistics and figures for me. i never could do anything with figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only mathematics i know is multiplication, and the minute i get away up in that, as soon as i reach nine times seven [mr. clemens lapsed into deep thought for a moment. he was trying to figure out nine times seven, but it was a hopeless task, and he turned to st. clair mckelway, who sat near him. mr. mckelway whispered the answer, and the speaker resumed:] i've got it now. it's eighty-four. well, i can get that far all right with a little hesitation. after that i am uncertain, and i can't manage a statistic. "this association for the" [mr. clemens was in another dilemma. again he was obliged to turn to mr. mckelway.] oh yes, for promoting the interests of the blind. it's a long name. if i could i would write it out for you and let you take it home and study it, but i don't know how to spell it. and mr. carnegie is down in virginia somewhere. well, anyway, the object of that association which has been recently organized, five months ago, in fact, is in the hands of very, very energetic, intelligent, and capable people, and they will push it to success very surely, and all the more surely if you will give them a little of your assistance out of your pockets. the intention, the purpose, is to search out all the blind and find work for them to do so that they may earn their own bread. now it is dismal enough to be blindit is dreary, dreary life at best, but it can be largely ameliorated by finding something for these poor blind people to do with their hands. the time passes so heavily that it is never day or night with them, it is always night, and when they have to sit with folded hands and with nothing to do to amuse or entertain or employ their minds, it is drearier and drearier. and then the knowledge they have that they must subsist on charity, and so often reluctant charity, it would renew their lives if they could have something to do with their hands and pass their time and at the same time earn their bread, and know the sweetness of the bread which is the result of the labor of one's own hands. they need that cheer and pleasure. it is the only way you can turn their night into day, to give them happy hearts, the only thing you can put in the place of the blessed sun. that you can do in the way i speak of. blind people generally who have seen the light know what it is to miss the light. those who have gone blind since they were twenty years oldtheir lives are unendingly dreary. but they can be taught to use their hands and to employ themselves at a great many industries. that association from which this draws its birth in cambridge, massachusetts, has taught its blind to make many things. they make them better than most people, and more honest than people who have the use of their eyes. the goods they make are readily salable. people like them. and so they are supporting themselves, and it is a matter of cheer, cheer. they pass their time now not too irksomely as they formerly did. what this association needs and wants is $15,000. the figures are set down, and what the money is for, and there is no graft in it or i would not be here. and they hope to beguile that out of your pockets, and you will find affixed to the programme an opportunity, that little blank which you will fill out and promise so much money now or to-morrow or some time. then, there is another opportunity which is still better, and that is that you shall subscribe an annual sum. i have invented a good many useful things in my time, but never anything better than that of getting money out of people who don't want to part with it. it is always for good objects, of course. this is the plan: when you call upon a person to contribute to a great and good object, and you think he should furnish about $1000, he disappoints you as like as not. much the best way to work him to supply that thousand dollars is to split it into parts and contribute, say a hundred dollars a year, or fifty, or whatever the sum may be. let him contribute ten or twenty a year. he doesn't feel that, but he does feel it when you call upon him to contribute a large amount. when you get used to it you would rather contribute than borrow money. i tried it in helen keller's case. mr. hutton wrote me in 1896 or 1897 when i was in london and said: "the gentleman who has been so liberal in taking care of helen keller has died without making provision for her in his will, and now they don't know what to do." they were proposing to raise a fund, and he thought $50,000 enough to furnish an income of $2400 or $2500 a year for the support of that wonderful girl and her wonderful teacher, miss sullivan, now mrs. macy. i wrote to mr. hutton and said: "go on, get up your fund. it will be slow, but if you want quick work, i propose this system," the system i speak of, of asking people to contribute such and such a sum from year to year and drop out whenever they please, and he would find there wouldn't be any difficulty, people wouldn't feel the burden of it. and he wrote back saying he had raised the $2400 a year indefinitely by that system in a single afternoon. we would like to do something just like that to-night. we will take as many checks as you care to give. you can leave your donations in the big room outside. i knew once what it was to be blind. i shall never forget that experience. i have been as blind as anybody ever was for three or four hours, and the sufferings that i endured and the mishaps and the accidents that are burning in my memory make my sympathy rise when i feel for the blind and always shall feel. i once went to heidelberg on an excursion. i took a clergyman along with me, the rev. joseph twichell, of hartford, who is still among the living despite that fact. i always travel with clergymen when i can. it is better for them, it is better for me. and any preacher who goes out with me in stormy weather and without a lightning rod is a good one. the reverend twichell is one of those people filled with patience and endurance, two good ingredients for a man travelling with me, so we got along very well together. in that old town they have not altered a house nor built one in 1500 years. we went to the inn and they placed twichell and me in a most colossal bedroom, the largest i ever saw or heard of. it was as big as this room. i didn't take much notice of the place. i didn't really get my bearings. i noticed twichell got a german bed about two feet wide, the kind in which you've got to lie on your edge, because there isn't room to lie on your back, and he was way down south in that big room, and i was way up north at the other end of it, with a regular sahara in between. we went to bed. twichell went to sleep, but then he had his conscience loaded and it was easy for him to get to sleep. i couldn't get to sleep. it was one of those torturing kinds of lovely summer nights when you hear various kinds of noises now and then. a mouse away off in the southwest. you throw things at the mouse. that encourages the mouse. but i couldn't stand it, and about two o'clock i got up and thought i would give it up and go out in the square where there was one of those tinkling fountains, and sit on its brink and dream, full of romance. i got out of bed, and i ought to have lit a candle, but i didn't think of it until it was too late. it was the darkest place that ever was. there has never been darkness any thicker than that. it just lay in cakes. i thought that before dressing i would accumulate my clothes. i pawed around in the dark and found everything packed together on the floor except one sock. i couldn't get on the track of that sock. it might have occurred to me that maybe it was in the wash. but i didn't think of that. i went excursioning on my hands and knees. presently i thought, "i am never going to find it; i'll go back to bed again." that is what i tried to do during the next three hours. i had lost the bearings of that bed. i was going in the wrong direction all the time. by-and-by i came in collision with a chair and that encouraged me. it seemed to me, as far as i could recollect, there was only a chair here and there and yonder, five or six of them scattered over this territory, and i thought maybe after i found that chair i might find the next one. well, i did. and i found another and another and another. i kept going around on my hands and knees, having those sudden collisions, and finally when i banged into another chair i almost lost my temper. and i raised up, garbed as i was, not for public exhibition, right in front of a mirror fifteen or sixteen feet high. i hadn't noticed the mirror; didn't know it was there. and when i saw myself in the mirror i was frightened out of my wits. i don't allow any ghosts to bite me, and i took up a chair and smashed at it. a million pieces. then i reflected. that's the way i always do, and it's unprofitable unless a man has had much experience that way and has clear judgment. and i had judgment, and i would have had to pay for that mirror if i hadn't recollected to say it was twichell who broke it. then i got down on my hands and knees and went on another exploring expedition. as far as i could remember there were six chairs in that oklahoma, and one table, a great big heavy table, not a good table to hit with your head when rushing madly along. in the course of time i collided with thirty-five chairs and tables enough to stock that dining-room out there. it was a hospital for decayed furniture, and it was in a worse condition when i got through with it. i went on and on, and at last got to a place where i could feel my way up, and there was a shelf. i knew that wasn't in the middle of the room. up to that time i was afraid i had gotten out of the city. i was very careful and pawed along that shelf, and there was a pitcher of water about a foot high, and it was at the head of twichell's bed, but i didn't know it. i felt that pitcher going and i grabbed at it, but it didn't help any and came right down in twichell's face and nearly drowned him. but it woke him up. i was grateful to have company on any terms. he lit a match, and there i was, way down south when i ought to have been back up yonder. my bed was out of sight it was so far away. you needed a telescope to find it. twichell comforted me and i scrubbed him off and we got sociable. but that night wasn't wasted. i had my pedometer on my leg. twichell and i were in a pedometer match. twichell had longer legs than i. the only way i could keep up was to wear my pedometer to bed. i always walk in my sleep, and on this occasion i gained sixteen miles on him. after all, i never found that sock. i never have seen it from that day to this. but that adventure taught me what it is to be blind. that was one of the most serious occasions of my whole life, yet i never can speak of it without somebody thinking it isn't serious. you try it and see how serious it is to be as the blind are and i was that night. [mr. clemens read several letters of regret. he then introduced joseph h. choate, saying:] it is now my privilege to present to you mr. choate. i don't have to really introduce him. i don't have to praise him, or to flatter him. i could say truly that in the forty-seven years i have been familiarly acquainted with him he has always been the handsomest man america has ever produced. and i hope and believe he will hold the belt forty-five years more. he has served his country ably, faithfully, and brilliantly. he stands at the summit, at the very top in the esteem and regard of his countrymen, and if i could say one word which would lift him any higher in his countrymen's esteem and affection, i would say that word whether it was true or not. dr. mark twain, farmeopath. address at the annual dinner of the new york post-graduate medical school and hospital, january 21, 1909. the president, dr. george n. miller, in introducing mr. clemens, referred to his late experience with burglars. gentlemen and doctors,i am glad to be among my own kind to-night. i was once a sharpshooter, but now i practise a much higher and equally as deadly a profession. it wasn't so very long ago that i became a member of your cult, and for the time i've been in the business my record is one that can't be scoffed at. as to the burglars, i am perfectly familiar with these people. i have always had a good deal to do with burglarsnot officially, but through their attentions to me. i never suffered anything at the hands of a burglar. they have invaded my house time and time again. they never got anything. then those people who burglarized our house in septemberwe got back the plated ware they took off, we jailed them, and i have been sorry ever since. they did us a great servicethey scared off all the servants in the place. i consider the children's theatre, of which i am president, and the post-graduate medical school as the two greatest institutions in the country. this school, in bringing its twenty thousand physicians from all parts of the country, bringing them up to date, and sending them back with renewed confidence, has surely saved hundreds of thousands of lives which otherwise would have been lost. i have been practising now for seven months. when i settled on my farm in connecticut in june i found the community very thinly settledand since i have been engaged in practice it has become more thinly settled still. this gratifies me, as indicating that i am making an impression on my community. i suppose it is the same with all of you. i have always felt that i ought to do something for you, and so i organized a redding (connecticut) branch of the post-graduate school. i am only a country farmer up there, but i am doing the best i can. of course, the practice of medicine and surgery in a remote country district has its disadvantages, but in my case i am happy in a division of responsibility. i practise in conjunction with a horse-doctor, a sexton, and an undertaker. the combination is air-tight, and once a man is stricken in our district escape is impossible for him. these four of usthree in the regular profession and the fourth an undertakerare all good men. there is bill ferguson, the redding undertaker. bill is there in every respect. he is a little lukewarm on general practice, and writes his name with a rubber stamp. like my old southern friend, he is one of the finest planters anywhere. then there is jim ruggles, the horse-doctor. ruggles is one of the best men i have got. he also is not much on general medicine, but he is a fine horse-doctor. ferguson doesn't make any money off him. you see, the combination started this way. when i got up to redding and had become a doctor, i looked around to see what my chances were for aiding in the great work. the first thing i did was to determine what manner of doctor i was to be. being a connecticut farmer, i naturally consulted my farmacopia, and at once decided to become a farmeopath. then i got circulating about, and got in touch with ferguson and ruggles. ferguson joined readily in my ideas, but ruggles kept saying that, while it was all right for an undertaker to get aboard, he couldn't see where it helped horses. well, we started to find out what was the trouble with the community, and it didn't take long to find out that there was just one disease, and that was race-suicide. and driving about the country-side i was told by my fellow-farmers that it was the only rational human and valuable disease. but it is cutting into our profits so that we'll either have to stop it or we'll have to move. we've had some funny experiences up there in redding. not long ago a fellow came along with a rolling gait and a distressed face. we asked him what was the matter. we always hold consultations on every case, as there isn't business enough for four. he said he didn't know, but that he was a sailor, and perhaps that might help us to give a diagnosis. we treated him for that, and i never saw a man die more peacefully. that same afternoon my dog tige treed an african gentleman. we chained up the dog, and then the gentleman came down and said he had appendicitis. we asked him if he wanted to be cut open, and he said yes, that he'd like to know if there was anything in it. so we cut him open and found nothing in him but darkness. so we diagnosed his case as infidelity, because he was dark inside. tige is a very clever dog, and aids us greatly. the other day a patient came to me and inquired if i was old doctor clemens as a practitioner i have given a great deal of my attention to bright's disease. i have made some rules for treating it that may be valuable. listen: rule 1. when approaching the bedside of one whom an all-wise presidenti mean an all-wise providencewell, anyway, it's the same thinghas seen fit to afflict with diseasewell, the rule is simple, even if it is old-fashioned. rule 2. i've forgotten just what it is, but rule 3. this is always indispensable: bleed your patient. missouri university speech. address delivered june 4, 1902, at columbia, mo. when the name of samuel l. clemens was called the humorist stepped forward, put his hand to his hair, and apparently hesitated. there was a dead silence for a moment. suddenly the entire audience rose and stood in silence. some one began to spell out the word missouri with an interval between the letters. all joined in. then the house again became silent. mr. clemens broke the spell: as you are all standing [he drawled in his characteristic voice], i guess, i suppose i had better stand too. [then came a laugh and loud cries for a speech. as the great humorist spoke of his recent visit to hannibal, his old home, his voice trembled.] you cannot know what a strain it was on my emotions [he said]. in fact, when i found myself shaking hands with persons i had not seen for fifty years and looking into wrinkled faces that were so young and joyous when i last saw them, i experienced emotions that i had never expected, and did not know were in me. i was profoundly moved and saddened to think that this was the last time, perhaps, that i would ever behold those kind old faces and dear old scenes of childhood. [the humorist then changed to a lighter mood, and for a time the audience was in a continual roar of laughter. he was particularly amused at the eulogy on himself read by gardiner lathrop in conferring the degree.] he has a fine opportunity to distinguish himself [said mr. clemens] by telling the truth about me. i have seen it stated in print that as a boy i had been guilty of stealing peaches, apples, and watermelons. i read a story to this effect very closely not long ago, and i was convinced of one thing, which was that the man who wrote it was of the opinion that it was wrong to steal, and that i had not acted right in doing so. i wish now, however, to make an honest statement, which is that i do not believe, in all my checkered career, i stole a ton of peaches. one night i stolei mean i removeda watermelon from a wagon while the owner was attending to another customer. i crawled off to a secluded spot, where i found that it was green. it was the greenest melon in the mississippi valley. then i began to reflect. i began to be sorry. i wondered what george washington would have done had he been in my place. i thought a long time, and then suddenly felt that strange feeling which comes to a man with a good resolution, and took up that watermelon and took it back to its owner. i handed him the watermelon and told him to reform. he took my lecture much to heart, and, when he gave me a good one in place of the green melon, i forgave him. i told him that i would still be a customer of his, and that i cherished no ill-feeling because of the incidentthat would remain green in my memory. business business. the alumni of eastman college gave their annual banquet, march 30, 1901, at the y. m. c. a. building. mr. james g. cannon, of the fourth national bank, made the first speech of the evening, after which mr. clemens was introduced by mr. bailey as the personal friend of tom sawyer, who was one of the types of successful business men. mr. cannon has furnished me with texts enough to last as slow a speaker as myself all the rest of the night. i took exception to the introducing of mr. cannon as a great financier, as if he were the only great financier present. i am a financier. but my methods are not the same as mr. cannon's. i cannot say that i have turned out the great business man that i thought i was when i began life. but i am comparatively young yet, and may learn. i am rather inclined to believe that what troubled me was that i got the big-head early in the game. i want to explain to you a few points of difference between the principles of business as i see them and those that mr. cannon believes in. he says that the primary rule of business success is loyalty to your employer. that's all rightas a theory. what is the matter with loyalty to yourself? as nearly as i can understand mr. cannon's methods, there is one great drawback to them. he wants you to work a great deal. diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much morerestful. my idea is that the employer should be the busy man, and the employee the idle one. the employer should be the worried man, and the employee the happy one. and why not? he gets the salary. my plan is to get another man to do the work for me. in that there's more repose. what i want is repose first, last, and all the time. mr. cannon says that there are three cardinal rules of business success; they are diligence, honesty, and truthfulness. well, diligence is all right. let it go as a theory. honesty is the best policywhen there is money in it. but truthfulness is one of the most dangerouswhy, this man is misleading you. i had an experience to-day with my wife which illustrates this. i was acknowledging a belated invitation to another dinner for this evening, which seemed to have been sent about ten days ago. it only reached me this morning. i was mortified at the discourtesy into which i had been brought by this delay, and wondered what was being thought of me by my hosts. as i had accepted your invitation, of course i had to send regrets to my other friends. when i started to write this note my wife came up and stood looking over my shoulder. women always want to know what is going on. said she: "should not that read in the third person?" i conceded that it should, put aside what i was writing, and commenced over again. that seemed to satisfy her, and so she sat down and let me proceed. i then finished my first noteand so sent what i intended. i never could have done this if i had let my wife know the truth about it. here is what i wrote: to the ohio society,i have at this moment received a most kind invitation (eleven days old) from mr. southard, president; and a like one (ten days old) from mr. bryant, president of the press club. i thank the society cordially for the compliment of these invitations, although i am booked elsewhere and cannot come. but, oh, i should like to know the name of the lightning express by which they were forwarded; for i owe a friend a dozen chickens, and i believe it will be cheaper to send eggs instead, and let them develop on the road. sincerely yours, mark twain. i want to tell you of some of my experiences in business, and then i will be in a position to lay down one general rule for the guidance of those who want to succeed in business. my first effort was about twenty-five years ago. i took hold of an inventioni don't know now what it was all about, but some one came to me and told me it was a good thing, and that there was lots of money in it. he persuaded me to invest $15,000, and i lived up to my beliefs by engaging a man to develop it. to make a long story short, i sunk $40,000 in it. then i took up the publication of a book. i called in a publisher and said to him: "i want you to publish this book along lines which i shall lay down. i am the employer, and you are the employee. i am going to show them some new kinks in the publishing business. and i want you to draw on me for money as you go along," which he did. he drew on me for $56,000. then i asked him to take the book and call it off. but he refused to do that. my next venture was with a machine for doing something or other. i knew less about that than i did about the invention. but i sunk $170,000 in the business, and i can't for the life of me recollect what it was the machine was to do. i was still undismayed. you see, one of the strong points about my business life was that i never gave up. i undertook to publish general grant's book, and made $140,000 in six months. my axiom is, to succeed in business: avoid my example. carnegie the benefactor. at the dinner given in honor of andrew carnegie by the lotos club, march 17, 1909, mr. clemens appeared in a white suit from head to feet. he wore a white double-breasted coat, white trousers, and white shoes. the only relief was a big black cigar, which he confidentially informed the company was not from his usual stack bought at $3 per barrel. the state of missouri has for its coat of arms a barrel-head with two missourians, one on each side of it, and mark the motto"united we stand, divided we fall." mr. carnegie, this evening, has suffered from compliments. it is interesting to hear what people will say about a man. why, at the banquet given by this club in my honor, mr. carnegie had the inspiration for which the club is now honoring him. if dunfermline contributed so much to the united states in contributing mr. carnegie, what would have happened if all scotland had turned out? these dunfermline folk have acquired advantages in coming to america. doctor mckelway paid the top compliment, the cumulation, when he said of mr. carnegie: "there is a man who wants to pay more taxes than he is charged." richard watson gilder did very well for a poet. he advertised his magazine. he spoke of hiring mr. carnegiethe next thing he will be trying to hire me. if i undertook to pay compliments i would do it stronger than any others have done it, for what mr. carnegie wants are strong compliments. now, the other side of seventy, i have preserved, as my chiefest virtue, modesty. on poetry, veracity, and suicide. address at a dinner of the manhattan dickens fellowship, new york city, february 7, 1906. this dinner was in commemoration of the ninety-fourth anniversary of the birth of charles dickens. on another occasion mr. clemens told the same story with variations and a different conclusion to the university settlement society. i always had taken an interest in young people who wanted to become poets. i remember i was particularly interested in one budding poet when i was a reporter. his name was butter. one day he came to me and said, disconsolately, that he was going to commit suicidehe was tired of life, not being able to express his thoughts in poetic form. butter asked me what i thought of the idea. i said i would; that it was a good idea. "you can do me a friendly turn. you go off in a private place and do it there, and i'll get it all. you do it, and i'll do as much for you some time." at first he determined to drown himself. drowning is so nice and clean, and writes up so well in a newspaper. but things ne'er do go smoothly in weddings, suicides, or courtships. only there at the edge of the water, where butter was to end himself, lay a life-preservera big round canvas one, which would float after the scrap-iron was soaked out of it. butter wouldn't kill himself with the life-preserver in sight, and so i had an idea. i took it to a pawnshop, and soaked it for a revolver. the pawnbroker didn't think much of the exchange, but when i explained the situation he acquiesced. we went up on top of a high building, and this is what happened to the poet: he put the revolver to his forehead and blew a tunnel straight through his head. the tunnel was about the size of your finger. you could look right through it. the job was complete; there was nothing in it. well, after that that man never could write prose, but he could write poetry. he could write it after he had blown his brains out. there is lots of that talent all over the country, but the trouble is they don't develop it. i am suffering now from the fact that i, who have told the truth a good many times in my life, have lately received more letters than anybody else urging me to lead a righteous life. i have more friends who want to see me develop on a high level than anybody else. young john d. rockefeller, two weeks ago, taught his bible class all about veracity, and why it was better that everybody should always keep a plentiful supply on hand. some of the letters i have received suggest that i ought to attend his class and learn, too. why, i know mr. rockefeller, and he is a good fellow. he is competent in many ways to teach a bible class, but when it comes to veracity he is only thirty-five years old. i'm seventy years old. i have been familiar with veracity twice as long as he. and the story about george washington and his little hatchet has also been suggested to me in these lettersin a fugitive way, as if i needed some of george washington and his hatchet in my constitution. why, dear me, they overlook the real point in that story. the point is not the one that is usually suggested, and you can readily see that. the point is not that george said to his father, "yes, father, i cut down the cheery-tree; i can't tell a lie," but that the little boyonly seven years oldshould have his sagacity developed under such circumstances. he was a boy wise beyond his years. his conduct then was a prophecy of later years. yes, i think he was the most remarkable man the country ever producedup to my time, anyway. now then, little george realized that circumstantial evidence was against him. he knew that his father would know from the size of the chips that no full-grown hatchet cut that tree down, and that no man would have haggled it so. he knew that his father would send around the plantation and inquire for a small boy with a hatchet, and he had the wisdom to come out and confess it. now, the idea that his father was overjoyed when he told little george that he would rather have him cut down a thousand cheery-trees than tell a lie is all nonsense. what did he really mean? why, that he was absolutely astonished that he had a son who had the chance to tell a lie and didn't. i admire old georgeif that was his namefor his discernment. he knew when he said that his son couldn't tell a lie that he was stretching it a good deal. he wouldn't have to go to john d. rockefeller's bible class to find that out. the way the old george washington story goes down it doesn't do anybody any good. it only discourages people who cantell a lie. welcome home. address at the dinner in his honor at the lotos club, november 10, 1900. in august, 1895, just before sailing for australia, mr. clemens issued the following statement: "it has been reported that i sacrificed, for the benefit of the creditors, the property of the publishing firm whose financial backer i was, and that i am now lecturing for my own benefit. "this is an error. i intend the lectures, as well as the property, for the creditors. the law recognizes no mortgage on a man's brains, and a merchant who has given up all he has may take advantage of the laws of insolvency and may start free again for himself. but i am not a business man, and honor is a harder master than the law. it cannot compromise for less than one hundred cents on a dollar, and its debts are never outlawed. "i had a two-thirds interest in the publishing firm whose capital i furnished. if the firm had prospered i would have expected to collect two-thirds of the profits. as it is, i expect to pay all the debts. my partner has no resources, and i do not look for assistance to my wife, whose contributions in cash from her own means have nearly equalled the claims of all the creditors combined. she has taken nothing; on the contrary, she has helped and intends to help me to satisfy the obligations due to the rest of the creditors. "it is my intention to ask my creditors to accept that as a legal discharge, and trust to my honor to pay the other fifty per cent. as fast as i can earn it. from my reception thus far on my lecturing tour, i am confident that if i live i can pay off the last debt within four years. "after which, at the age of sixty-four, i can make a fresh and unincumbered start in life. i am going to australia, india, and south africa, and next year i hope to make a tour of the great cities of the united states." i thank you all out of my heart for this fraternal welcome, and it seems almost too fine, almost too magnificent, for a humble missourian such as i am, far from his native haunts on the banks of the mississippi; yet my modesty is in a degree fortified by observing that i am not the only missourian who has been honored here to-night, for i see at this very tablehere is a missourian [indicating mr. mckelway], and there is a missourian [indicating mr. depew], and there is another missourianand hendrix and clemens; and last but not least, the greatest missourian of them allhere he sitstom reed, who has always concealed his birth till now. and since i have been away i know what has been happening in his case: he has deserted politics, and now is leading a creditable life. he has reformed, and god prosper him; and i judge, by a remark which he made up-stairs awhile ago, that he had found a new business that is utterly suited to his make and constitution, and all he is doing now is that he is around raising the average of personal beauty. but i am grateful to the president for the kind words which he has said of me, and it is not for me to say whether these praises were deserved or not. i prefer to accept them just as they stand, without concerning myself with the statistics upon which they have been built, but only with that large matter, that essential matter, the good-fellowship, the kindliness, the magnanimity, and generosity that prompted their utterance. well, many things have happened since i sat here before, and now that i think of it, the president's reference to the debts which were left by the bankrupt firm of charles l. webster & co. gives me an opportunity to say a word which i very much wish to say, not for myself, but for ninety-five men and women whom i shall always hold in high esteem and in pleasant remembrancethe creditors of that firm. they treated me well; they treated me handsomely. there were ninety-six of them, and by not a finger's weight did ninety-five of them add to the burden of that time for me. ninety-five out of the ninety-sixthey didn't indicate by any word or sign that they were anxious about their money. they treated me well, and i shall not forget it; i could not forget it if i wanted to. many of them said, "don't you worry, don't you hurry"; that's what they said. why, if i could have that kind of creditors always, and that experience, i would recognize it as a personal loss to be out of debt. i owe those ninety-five creditors a debt of homage, and i pay it now in such measure as one may pay so fine a debt in mere words. yes, they said that very thing. i was not personally acquainted with ten of them, and yet they said, "don't you worry, and don't you hurry." i know that phrase by heart, and if all the other music should perish out of the world it would still sing to me. i appreciate that; i am glad to say this word; people say so much about me, and they forget those creditors. they were handsomer than i wasor tom reed. oh, you have been doing many things in this time that i have been absent; you have done lots of things, some that are well worth remembering, too. now, we have fought a righteous war since i have gone, and that is rare in historya righteous war is so rare that it is almost unknown in history; but by the grace of that war we set cuba free, and we joined her to those three or four nations that exist on this earth; and we started out to set those poor filipinos free, too, and why, why, why that most righteous purpose of ours has apparently miscarried i suppose i never shall know. but we have made a most creditable record in china in these daysour sound and level-headed administration has made a most creditable record over there, and there are some of the powers that cannot say that by any means. the yellow terror is threatening this world to-day. it is looming vast and ominous on that distant horizon. i do not know what is going to be the result of that yellow terror, but our government has had no hand in evoking it, and let's be happy in that and proud of it. we have nursed free silver, we watched by its cradle; we have done the best we could to raise that child, but those pestiferous republicans havewell, they keep giving it the measles every chance they get, and we never shall raise that child. well, that's no matterthere's plenty of other things to do, and we must think of something else. well, we have tried a president four years, criticised him and found fault with him the whole time, and turned around a day or two ago with votes enough to spare to elect another. o consistency! consistency! thy namei don't know what thy name isthompson will doany name will dobut you see there is the fact, there is the consistency. then we have tried for governor an illustrious rough rider, and we liked him so much in that great office that now we have made him vice-presidentnot in order that that office shall give him distinction, but that he may confer distinction upon that office. and it's needed, tooit's needed. and now, for a while anyway, we shall not be stammering and embarrassed when a stranger asks us, "what is the name of the vice-president?" this one is known; this one is pretty well known, pretty widely known, and in some quarters favorably. i am not accustomed to dealing in these fulsome compliments, and i am probably overdoing it a little; butwell, my old affectionate admiration for governor roosevelt has probably betrayed me into the complimentary excess; but i know him, and you know him; and if you give him rope enoughi mean ifoh yes, he will justify that compliment; leave it just as it is. and now we have put in his place mr. odell, another rough rider, i suppose; all the fat things go to that profession now. why, i could have been a rough rider myself if i had known that this political klondike was going to open up, and i would have been a rough rider if i could have gone to war on an automobilebut not on a horse! no, i know the horse too well; i have known the horse in war and in peace, and there is no place where a horse is comfortable. the horse has too many caprices, and he is too much given to initiative. he invents too many new ideas. no, i don't want anything to do with a horse. and then we have taken chauncey depew out of a useful and active life and made him a senatorembalmed him, corked him up. and i am not grieving. that man has said many a true thing about me in his time, and i always said something would happen to him. look at that [pointing to mr. depew] gilded mummy! he has made my life a sorrow to me at many a banquet on both sides of the ocean, and now he has got it. perish the hand that pulls that cork! all these things have happened, all these things have come to pass, while i have been away, and it just shows how little a mugwump can be missed in a cold, unfeeling world, even when he is the last one that is lefta grand old party all by himself. and there is another thing that has happened, perhaps the most imposing event of them all: the institution called the daughters of the crownthe daughters of the royal crownhas established itself and gone into business. now, there's an american idea for you; there's an idea born of god knows what kind of specialized insanity, but not softening of the brainyou cannot soften a thing that doesn't existthe daughters of the royal crown! nobody eligible but american descendants of charles ii. dear me, how the fancy product of that old harem still holds out! well, i am truly glad to foregather with you again, and partake of the bread and salt of this hospitable house once more. seven years ago, when i was your guest here, when i was old and despondent, you gave me the grip and the word that lift a man up and make him glad to be alive; and now i come back from my exile young again, fresh and alive, and ready to begin life once more, and your welcome puts the finishing touch .upon my restored youth and makes it real to me, and not a gracious dream that must vanish with the morning. i thank you. an undelivered speech. the steamship st. paul was to have been launched from cramp's shipyard in philadelphia on march 25, 1895. after the launching a luncheon was to have been given, at which mr. clemens was to make a speech. just before the final word was given a reporter asked mr. clemens for a copy of his speech to be delivered at the luncheon. to facilitate the work of the reporter he loaned him a typewritten copy of the speech. it happened, however, that when the blocks were knocked away the big ship refused to budge, and no amount of labor could move her an inch. she had stuck fast upon the ways. as a result, the launching was postponed for a week or two; but in the mean time mr. clemens had gone to europe. years after a reporter called on mr. clemens and submitted the manuscript of the speech, which was as follows: day after to-morrow i sail for england in a ship of this line, the paris. it will be my fourteenth crossing in three years and a half. therefore, my presence here, as you see, is quite natural, quite commercial. i am interested in ships. they interest me more now than hotels do. when a new ship is launched i feel a desire to go and see if she will be good quarters for me to live in, particularly if she belongs to this line, for it is by this line that i have done most of my ferrying. people wonder why i go so much. well, i go partly for my health, partly to familiarize myself with the road. i have gone over the same road so many times now that i know all the whales that belong along the route, and latterly it is an embarrassment to me to meet them, for they do not look glad to see me, but annoyed, and they seem to say: "here is this old derelict again." earlier in life this would have pained me and made me ashamed, but i am older now, and when i am behaving myself, and doing right, i do not care for a whale's opinion about me. when we are young we generally estimate an opinion by the size of the person that holds it, but later we find that that is an uncertain rule, for we realize that there are times when a hornet's opinion disturbs us more than an emperor's. i do not mean that i care nothing at all for a whale's opinion, for that would be going to too great a length. of course, it is better to have the good opinion of a whale than his disapproval; but my position is that if you cannot have a whale's good opinion, except at some sacrifice of principle or personal dignity, it is better to try to live without it. that is my idea about whales. yes, i have gone over that same route so often that i know my way without a compass, just by the waves. i know all the large waves and a good many of the small ones. also the sunsets. i know every sunset and where it belongs just by its color. necessarily, then, i do not make the passage now for scenery. that is all gone by. what i prize most is safety, and in the second place swift transit and handiness. these are best furnished by the american line, whose watertight compartments have no passage through them, no doors to be left open, and consequently no way for water to get from one of them to another in time of collision. if you nullify the peril which collisions threaten you with, you nullify the only very serious peril which attends voyages in the great liners of our day, and makes voyaging safer than staying at home. when the paris was half-torn to pieces some years ago, enough of the atlantic ebbed and flowed through one end of her, during her long agony, to sink the fleets of the world if distributed among them; but she floated in perfect safety, and no life was lost. in time of collision the rock of gibraltar is not safer than the paris and other great ships of this line. this seems to be the only great line in the world that takes a passenger from metropolis to metropolis without the intervention of tugs and barges or bridgestakes him through without breaking bulk, so to speak. on the english side he lands at a dock; on the dock a special train is waiting; in an hour and three-quarters he is in london. nothing could be handier. if your journey were from a sand-pit on our side to a lighthouse on the other, you could make it quicker by other lines, but that is not the case. the journey is from the city of new york to the city of london, and no line can do that journey quicker than this one, nor anywhere near as conveniently and handily. and when the passenger lands on our side he lands on the american side of the river, not in the provinces. as a very learned man said on the last voyage (he is head quartermaster of the new york land garboard streak of the middle watch): "when we land a passenger on the american side there's nothing betwix him and his hotel but hell and the hackman." i am glad, with you and the nation, to welcome the new ship. she is another pride, another consolation, for a great country whose mighty fleets have all vanished, and which has almost forgotten what it is to fly its flag to sea. i am not sure as to which st. paul she is named for. some think it is the one that is on the upper mississippi, but the head quartermaster told me it was the one that killed goliath. but it is not important. no matter which it is, let us give her hearty welcome and godspeed. sixty-seventh birthday. at the metropolitan club, new york, november 28, 1902. address at a dinner given in honor of mr. clemens by colonel harvey, president of harper & brothers. i think i ought to be allowed to talk as long as i want to, for the reason that i have cancelled all my winter's engagements of every kind, for good and sufficient reasons, and am making no new engagements for this winter, and, therefore, this is the only chance i shall have to disembowel my skull for a yearclose the mouth in that portrait for a year. i want to offer thanks and homage to the chairman for this innovation which he has introduced here, which is an improvement, as i consider it, on the old-fashioned style of conducting occasions like this. that was badthat was a bad, bad, bad arrangement. under that old custom the chairman got up and made a speech, he introduced the prisoner at the bar, and covered him all over with compliments, nothing but compliments, not a thing but compliments, never a slur, and sat down and left that man to get up and talk without a text. you cannot talk on compliments; that is not a text. no modest person, and i was born one, can talk on compliments. a man gets up and is filled to the eyes with happy emotions, but his tongue is tied; he has nothing to say; he is in the condition of doctor rice's friend who came home drunk and explained it to his wife, and his wife said to him, "john, when you have drunk all the whiskey you want, you ought to ask for sarsaparilla." he said, "yes, but when i have drunk all the whiskey i want i can't say sarsaparilla." and so i think it is much better to leave a man unmolested until the testimony and pleadings are all in. otherwise he is dumbhe is at the sarsaparilla stage. before i get to the higgledy-piggledy point, as mr. howells suggested i do, i want to thank you, gentlemen, for this very high honor you are doing me, and i am quite competent to estimate it at its value. i see around me captains of all the illustrious industries, most distinguished men; there are more than fifty here, and i believe i know thirty-nine of them well. i could probably borrow money fromfrom the others, anyway. it is a proud thing to me, indeed, to see such a distinguished company gather here on such an occasion as this, when there is no foreign prince to be fatedwhen you have come here not to do honor to hereditary privilege and ancient lineage, but to do reverence to mere moral excellence and elemental veracityand, dear me, how old it seems to make me! i look around me and i see three or four persons i have known so many, many years. i have known mr. secretary hayjohn hay, as the nation and the rest of his friends love to call himi have known john hay and tom reed and the reverend twichell close upon thirty-six years. close upon thirty-six years i have known those venerable men. i have known mr. howells nearly thirty-four years, and i knew chauncey depew before he could walk straight, and before he learned to tell the truth. twenty-seven years ago i heard him make the most noble and eloquent and beautiful speech that has ever fallen from even his capable lips. tom reed said that my principal defect was inaccuracy of statement. well, suppose that that is true. what's the use of telling the truth all the time? i never tell the truth about tom reedbut that is his defect, truth; he speaks the truth always. tom reed has a good heart, and he has a good intellect, but he hasn't any judgment. why, when tom reed was invited to lecture to the ladies' society for the procreation or procrastination, or something, of morals, i don't know what it wasadvancement, i suppose, of pure moralshe had the immortal indiscretion to begin by saying that some of us can't be optimists, but by judiciously utilizing the opportunities that providence puts in our way we can all be bigamists. you perceive his limitations. anything he has in his mind he states, if he thinks it is true. well, that was true, but that was no place to say itso they fired him out. a lot of accounts have been settled here tonight for me; i have held grudges against some of these people, but they have all been wiped out by the very handsome compliments that have been paid me. even wayne macveaghi have had a grudge against him many years. the first time i saw wayne macveagh was at a private dinner-party at charles a. dana's, and when i got there he was clattering along, and i tried to get a word in here and there; but you know what wayne macveagh is when he is started, and i could not get in five words to his oneor one word to his five. i struggled along and struggled along, andwell, i wanted to tell and i was trying to tell a dream i had had the night before, and it was a remarkable dream, a dream worth people's while to listen to, a dream recounting sam jones the revivalist's reception in heaven. i was on a train, and was approaching the celestial way-stationi had a through ticketand i noticed a man sitting alongside of me asleep, and he had his ticket in his hat. he was the remains of the archbishop of canterbury; i recognized him by his photograph. i had nothing against him, so i took his ticket and let him have mine. he didn't objecthe wasn't in a condition to objectand presently when the train stopped at the heavenly stationwell, i got off, and he went on by requestbut there they all were, the angels, you know, millions of them, every one with a torch; they had arranged for a torch-light procession; they were expecting the archbishop, and when i got off they started to raise a shout, but it didn't materialize. i don't know whether they were disappointed. i suppose they had a lot of superstitious ideas about the archbishop and what he should look like, and i didn't fill the bill, and i was trying to explain to saint peter, and was doing it in the german tongue, because i didn't want to be too explicit. well, i found it was no use, i couldn't get along, for wayne macveagh was occupying the whole place, and i said to mr. dana, "what is the matter with that man? who is that man with the long tongue? what's the trouble with him, that long, lank cadaver, old oil-derrick out of a jobwho is that?" "well, now," mr. dana said, "you don't want to meddle with him; you had better keep quiet; just keep quiet, because that's a bad man. talk! he was born to talk. don't let him get out with you; he'll skin you." i said, "i have been skinned, skinned, and skinned for years, there is nothing left." he said, "oh, you'll find there is; that man is the very seed and inspiration of that proverb which says, 'no matter how close you skin an onion, a clever man can always peel it again.'" well, i reflected and i quieted down. that would never occur to tom reed. he's got no discretion. well, macveagh is just the same man; he hasn't changed a bit in all those years; he has been peeling mr. mitchell lately. that's the kind of man he is. mr. howellsthat poem of his is admirable; that's the way to treat a person. howells has a peculiar gift for seeing the merits of people, and he has always exhibited them in my favor. howells has never written anything about me that i couldn't read six or seven times a day; he is always just and always fair; he has written more appreciatively of me than any one in this world, and published it in the north american review. he did me the justice to say that my intentionshe italicized thatthat my intentions were always good, that i wounded people's conventions rather than their convictions. now, i wouldn't want anything handsomer than that said of me. i would rather wait, with anything harsh i might have to say, till the convictions become conventions. bangs has traced me all the way down. he can't find that honest man, but i will look for him in the looking-glass when i get home. it was intimated by the colonel that it is new england that makes new york and builds up this country and makes it great, overlooking the fact that there's a lot of people here who came from elsewhere, like john hay from away out west, and howells from ohio, and st. clair mckelway and me from missouri, and we are doing what we can to build up new york a littleelevate it. why, when i was living in that village of hannibal, missouri, on the banks of the mississippi, and hay up in the town of warsaw, also on the banks of the mississippi riverit is an emotional bit of the mississippi, and when it is low water you have to climb up to it on a ladder, and when it floods you have to hunt for it with a deep-sea leadbut it is a great and beautiful country. in that old time it was a paradise for simplicityit was a simple, simple life, cheap but comfortable, and full of sweetness, and there was nothing of this rage of modern civilization there at all. it was a delectable land. i went out there last june, and i met in that town of hannibal a schoolmate of mine, john briggs, whom i had not seen for more than fifty years. i tell you, that was a meeting! that pal whom i had known as a little boy long ago, and knew now as a stately man three or four inches over six feet and browned by exposure to many climes, he was back there to see that old place again. we spent a whole afternoon going about here and there and yonder, and hunting up the scenes and talking of the crimes which we had committed so long ago. it was a heartbreaking delight, full of pathos, laughter, and tears, all mixed together; and we called the roll of the boys and girls that we picnicked and sweethearted with so many years ago, and there were hardly half a dozen of them left; the rest were in their graves; and we went up there on the summit of that hill, a treasured place in my memory, the summit of holiday's hill, and looked out again over that magnificent panorama of the mississippi river, sweeping along league after league, a level green paradise on one side, and retreating capes and promontories as far as you could see on the other, fading away in the soft, rich lights of the remote distance. i recognized then that i was seeing now the most enchanting river view the planet could furnish. i never knew it when i was a boy; it took an educated eye that had travelled over the globe to know and appreciate it; and john said, "can you point out the place where bear creek used to be before the railroad came?" i said, "yes, it ran along yonder." "and can you point out the swimming-hole?" "yes, out there." and he said, "can you point out the place where we stole the skiff?" well, i didn't know which one he meant. such a wilderness of events had intervened since that day, more than fifty years ago, it took me more than five minutes to call back that little incident, and then i did call it back; it was a white skiff, and we painted it red to allay suspicion. and the saddest, saddest man came alonga stranger he wasand he looked that red skiff over so pathetically, and he said: "well, if it weren't for the complexion i'd know whose skiff that was." he said it in that pleading way, you know, that appeals for sympathy and suggestion; we were full of sympathy for him, but we weren't in any condition to offer suggestions. i can see him yet as he turned away with that same sad look on his face and vanished out of history forever. i wonder what became of that man. i know what became of the skiff. well, it was a beautiful life, a lovely life. there was no crime. merely little things like pillaging orchards and watermelon-patches and breaking the sabbathwe didn't break the sabbath often enough to signifyonce a week perhaps. but we were good boys, good presbyterian boys, all presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that; anyway, we were good presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold. look at john hay and me. there we were in obscurity, and look where we are now. consider the ladder which he has climbed, the illustrious vocations he has servedand vocations is the right word; he has in all those vocations acquitted himself with high credit and honor to his country and to the mother that bore him. scholar, soldier, diplomat, poet, historiannow, see where we are. he is secretary of state and i am a gentleman. it could not happen in any other country. our institutions give men the positions that of right belong to them through merit; all you men have won your places, not by heredities, and not by family influence or extraneous help, but only by the natural gifts god gave you at your birth, made effective by your own energies; this is the country to live in. now, there is one invisible guest here. a part of me is present; the larger part, the better part, is yonder at her home; that is my wife, and she has a good many personal friends here, and i think it won't distress any one of them to know that, although she is going to be confined to that bed for many months to come from that nervous prostration, there is not any danger and she is coming along very welland i think it quite appropriate that i should speak of her. i knew her for the first time just in the same year that i first knew john hay and tom reed and mr. twichellthirty-six years agoand she has been the best friend i have ever had, and that is saying a good deal; she has reared me she and twichell togetherand what i am i owe to them. twichellwhy, it is such a pleasure to look upon twichell's face! for five-and-twenty years i was under the rev. mr. twichell's tuition, i was in his pastorate, occupying a pew in his church, and held him in due reverence. that man is full of all the graces that go to make a person companionable and beloved; and wherever twichell goes to start a church the people flock there to buy the land; they find real estate goes up all around the spot, and the envious and the thoughtful always try to get twichell to move to their neighborhood and start a church; and wherever you see him go you can go and buy land there with confidence, feeling sure that there will be a double price for you before very long. i am not saying this to flatter mr. twichell; it is the fact. many and many a time i have attended the annual sale in his church, and bought up all the pews on a marginand it would have been better for me spiritually and financially if i had stayed under his wing. i have tried to do good in this world, and it is marvellous in how many different ways i have done good, and it is comfortable to reflectnow, there's mr. rogersjust out of the affection i bear that man many a time i have given him points in finance that he had never thought ofand if he could lay aside envy, prejudice, and superstition, and utilize those ideas in his business, it would make a difference in his bank account. well, i like the poetry. i like all the speeches and the poetry, too. i liked doctor van dyke's poem. i wish i could return thanks in proper measure to you, gentlemen, who have spoken and violated your feelings to pay me compliments; some were merited and some you overlooked, it is true; and colonel harvey did slander every one of you, and put things into my mouth that i never said, never thought of at all. and now, my wife and i, out of our single heart, return you our deepest and most grateful thanks, andyesterday was her birthday. to the whitefriars. address at the dinner given by the whitefriars club in honor of mr. clemens, london, june 20, 1899. the whitefriars club was founded by dr. samuel johnson, and mr. clemens was made an honorary member in 1874. the members are representative of literary and journalistic london. the toast of "our guest" was proposed by louis f. austin, of the illustrated london news, and in the course of some humorous remarks he referred to the vow and to the imaginary woes of the "friars," as the members of the club style themselves. mr. chairman and brethren of the vowin whatever the vow is; for although i have been a member of this club for five-and-twenty years, i don't know any more about what that vow is than mr. austin seems to. but whatever the vow is, i don't care what it is. i have made a thousand vows. there is no pleasure comparable to making a vow in the presence of one who appreciates that vow, in the presence of men who honor and appreciate you for making the vow, and men who admire you for making the vow. there is only one pleasure higher than that, and that is to get outside and break the vow. a vow is always a pledge of some kind or other for the protection of your own morals and principles or somebody else's, and generally, by the irony of fate, it is for the protection of your own morals. hence we have pledges that make us eschew tobacco or wine, and while you are taking the pledge there is a holy influence about that makes you feel you are reformed, and that you can never be so happy again in this world untilyou get outside and take a drink. i had forgotten that i was a member of this clubit is so long ago. but now i remember that i was here five-and-twenty years ago, and that i was then at a dinner of the whitefriars club, and it was in those old days when you had just made two great finds. all london was talking about nothing else than that they had found livingstone, and that the lost sir roger tichborne had been foundand they were trying him for it. and at the dinner, chairman(i do not know who he was)failed to come to time. the gentleman who had been appointed to pay me the customary compliments and to introduce me forgot the compliments, and did not know what they were. and george augustus sala came in at the last moment, just when i was about to go without compliments altogether. and that man was a gifted man. they just called on him instantaneously, while he was going to sit down, to introduce the stranger, and sala made one of those marvellous speeches which he was capable of making. i think no man talked so fast as sala did. one did not need wine while he was making a speech. the rapidity of his utterance made a man drunk in a minute. an incomparable speech was that, an impromptu speech, and an impromptu speech is a seldom thing, and he did it so well. he went into the whole history of the united states, and made it entirely new to me. he filled it with episodes and incidents that washington never heard of, and he did it so convincingly that although i knew none of it had happened, from that day to this i do not know any history but sala's. i do not know anything so sad as a dinner where you are going to get up and say something by-and-by, and you do not know what it is. you sit and wonder and wonder what the gentleman is going to say who is going to introduce you. you know that if he says something severe, that if he will deride you, or traduce you, or do anything of that kind, he will furnish you with a text, because anybody can get up and talk against that. anybody can get up and straighten out his character. but when a gentleman gets up and merely tells the truth about you, what can you do? mr. austin has done well. he has supplied so many texts that i will have to drop out a lot of them, and that is about as difficult as when you do not have any text at all. now, he made a beautiful and smooth speech without any difficulty at all, and i could have done that if i had gone on with the schooling with which i began. i see here a gentleman on my left who was my master in the art of oratory more than twenty-five years ago. when i look upon the inspiring face of mr. depew, it carries me a long way back. an old and valued friend of mine is he, and i saw his career as it came along, and it has reached pretty well up to now, when he, by another miscarriage of justice, is a united states senator. but those were delightful days when i was taking lessons in oratory. my other masterthe ambassadoris not here yet. under those two gentlemen i learned to make after-dinner speeches, and it was charming. you know the new england dinner is the great occasion on the other side of the water. it is held every year to celebrate the landing of the pilgrims. those pilgrims were a lot of people who were not needed in england, and you know they had great rivalry, and they were persuaded to go elsewhere, and they chartered a ship called mayflower and set sail, and i have heard it said that they pumped the atlantic ocean through that ship sixteen times. they fell in over there with the dutch from rotterdam, amsterdam, and a lot of other places with profane names, and it is from that gang that mr. depew is descended. on the other hand, mr. choate is descended from those puritans who landed on a bitter night in december. every year those people used to meet at a great banquet in new york, and those masters of mind in oratory had to make speeches. it was doctor depew's business to get up there and apologize for the dutch, and mr. choate had to get up later and explain the crimes of the puritans, and grand, beautiful times we used to have. it is curious that after that long lapse of time i meet the whitefriars again, some looking as young and fresh as in the old days, others showing a certain amount of wear and tear, and here, after all this time, i find one of the masters of oratory and the others named in the list. and here we three meet again as exiles on one pretext or another, and you will notice that while we are absent there is a pleasing tranquillity in americaa building up of public confidence. we are doing the best we can for our country. i think we have spent our lives in serving our country, and we never serve it to greater advantage than when we get out of it. but impromptu speakingthat is what i was trying to learn. that is a difficult thing. i used to do it in this way. i used to begin about a week ahead, and write out my impromptu speech and get it by heart. then i brought it to the new england dinner printed on a piece of paper in my pocket, so that i could pass it to the reporters all cut and dried, and in order to do an impromptu speech as it should be done you have to indicate the places for pauses and hesitations. i put them all in it. and then you want the applause in the right places. when i got to the place where it should come in, if it did not come in i did not care, but i had it marked in the paper. and these masters of mind used to wonder why it was my speech came out in the morning in the first person, while theirs went through the butchery of synopsis. i do that kind of speech (i mean an offhand speech), and do it well, and make no mistake in such a way to deceive the audience completely and make that audience believe it is an impromptu speechthat is art. i was frightened out of it at last by an experience of doctor hayes. he was a sort of nansen of that day. he had been to the north pole, and it made him celebrated. he had even seen the polar bear climb the pole. he had made one of those magnificent voyages such as nansen made, and in those days when a man did anything which greatly distinguished him for the moment he had to come on to the lecture platform and tell all about it. doctor hayes was a great, magnificent creature like nansen, superbly built. he was to appear in boston. he wrote his lecture out, and it was his purpose to read it from manuscript; but in an evil hour he concluded that it would be a good thing to preface it with something rather handsome, poetical, and beautiful that he could get off by heart and deliver as if it were the thought of the moment. he had not had my experience, and could not do that. he came on the platform, held his manuscript down, and began with a beautiful piece of oratory. he spoke something like this: "when a lonely human being, a pigmy in the midst of the architecture of nature, stands solitary on those icy waters and looks abroad to the horizon and sees mighty castles and temples of eternal ice raising up their pinnacles tipped by the pencil of the departing sun-" here a man came across the platform and touched him on the shoulder, and said: "one minute." and then to the audience: "is mrs. john smith in the house? her husband has slipped on the ice and broken his leg." and you could see the mrs. john smiths get up everywhere and drift out of the house, and it made great gaps everywhere. then doctor hayes began again: "when a lonely man, a pigmy in the architecture-" the janitor came in again and shouted: "it is not mrs. john smith! it is mrs. john jones!" then all the mrs. jones got up and left. once more the speaker started, and was in the midst of the sentence when he was interrupted again, and the result was that the lecture was not delivered. but the lecturer interviewed the janitor afterward in a private room, and of the fragments of the janitor they took "twelve basketsful." now, i don't want to sit down just in this way. i have been talking with so much levity that i have said no serious thing, and you are really no better or wiser, although robert buchanan has suggested that i am a person who deals in wisdom. i have said nothing which would make you better than when you came here. i should be sorry to sit down without having said one serious word which you can carry home and relate to your children and the old people who are not able to get away. and this is just a little maxim which has saved me from many a difficulty and many a disaster, and in times of tribulation and uncertainty has come to my rescue, as it shall to yours if you observe it as i do day and night. i always use it in an emergency, and you can take it home as a legacy from me, and it is: "when in doubt, tell the truth." the ascot gold cup. the news of mr. clemens's arrival in england in june, 1907, was announced in the papers with big headlines. immediately following the announcement was the newsalso with big headlinesthat the ascot gold cup had been stolen the same day. the combination, mark twain arrivesascot cup stolen, amused the public. the lord mayor of london gave a banquet at the mansion house in honor of mr. clemens. i do assure you that i am not so dishonest as i look. i have been so busy trying to rehabilitate my honor about that ascot cup that i have had no time to prepare a speech. i was not so honest in former days as i am now, but i have always been reasonably honest. well, you know how a man is influenced by his surroundings. once upon a time i went to a public meeting where the oratory of a charitable worker so worked on my feelings that, in common with others, i would have dropped something substantial in the hatif it had come round at that moment. the speaker had the power of putting those vivid pictures before one. we were all affected. that was the moment for the hat. i would have put two hundred dollars in. before he had finished i could have put in four hundred dollars. i felt i could have filled up a blank checkwith somebody else's nameand dropped it in. well, now, another speaker got up, and in fifteen minutes damped my spirit; and during the speech of the third speaker all my enthusiasm went away. when at last the hat came round i dropped in ten centsand took out twenty-five. i came over here to get the honorary degree from oxford, and i would have encompassed the seven seas for an honor like thatthe greatest honor that has ever fallen to my share. i am grateful to oxford for conferring that honor upon me, and i am sure my country appreciates it, because first and foremost it is an honor to my country. and now i am going home again across the sea. i am in spirit young but in the flesh old, so that it is unlikely that when i go away i shall ever see england again. but i shall go with the recollection of the generous and kindly welcome i have had. i suppose i must say "good-bye." i say it not with my lips only, but from the heart. the savage club dinner. a portrait of mr. clemens, signed by all the members of the club attending the dinner, was presented to him, july 6, 1907, and in submitting the toast "the health of mark twain" mr. j. scott stokes recalled the fact that he had read parts of doctor clemens's works to harold frederic during frederic's last illness. mr. chairman and fellow-savages,i am very glad indeed to have that portrait. i think it is the best one that i have ever had, and there have been opportunities before to get a good photograph. i have sat to photographers twenty-two times to-day. those sittings added to those that have preceded them since i have been in europeif we average at that ratemust have numbered one hundred to two hundred sittings. out of all those there ought to be some good photographs. this is the best i have had, and i am glad to have your honored names on it. i did not know harold frederic personally, but i have heard a great deal about him, and nothing that was not pleasant and nothing except such things as lead a man to honor another man and to love him. i consider that it is a misfortune of mine that i have never had the luck to meet him, and if any book of mine read to him in his last hours made those hours easier for him and more comfortable, i am very glad and proud of that. i call to mind such a case many years ago of an english authoress, well known in her day, who wrote such beautiful child tales, touching and lovely in every possible way. in a little biographical sketch of her i found that her last hours were spent partly in reading a book of mine, until she was no longer able to read. that has always remained in my mind, and i have always cherished it as one of the good things of my life. i had read what she had written, and had loved her for what she had done. stanley apparently carried a book of mine feloniously away to africa, and i have not a doubt that it had a noble and uplifting influence there in the wilds of africabecause on his previous journeys he never carried anything to read except shakespeare and the bible. i did not know of that circumstance. i did not know that he had carried a book of mine. i only noticed that when he came back he was a reformed man. i knew stanley very well in those old days. stanley was the first man who ever reported a lecture of mine, and that was in st. louis. when i was down there the next time to give the same lecture i was told to give them something fresh, as they had read that in the papers. i met stanley here when he came back from that first expedition of his which closed with the finding of livingstone. you remember how he would break out at the meetings of the british association, and find fault with what people said, because stanley had notions of his own, and could not contain them. they had to come out or break him upand so he would go round and address geographical societies. he was always on the war-path in those days, and people always had to have stanley contradicting their geography for them and improving it. but he always came back and sat drinking beer with me in the hotel up to two in the morning, and he was then one of the most civilized human beings that ever was. i saw in a newspaper this evening a reference to an interview which appeared in one of the papers the other day, in which the interviewer said that i characterized mr. birrell's speech the other day at the pilgrims' club as "bully." now, if you will excuse me, i never use slang to an interviewer or anybody else. that distresses me. whatever i said about mr. birrell's speech was said in english, as good english as anybody uses. if i could not describe mr. birrell's delightful speech without using slang i would not describe it at all. i would close my mouth and keep it closed, much as it would discomfort me. now that comes of interviewing a man in the first person, which is an altogether wrong way to interview him. it is entirely wrong because none of you, i, or anybody else, could interview a mancould listen to a man talking any length of time and then go off and reproduce that talk in the first person. it can't be done. what results is merely that the interviewer gives the substance of what is said and puts it in his own language and puts it in your mouth. it will always be either better language than you use or worse, and in my case it is always worse. i have a great respect for the english language. i am one of its supporters, its promoters, its elevators. i don't degrade it. a slip of the tongue would be the most that you would get from me. i have always tried hard and faithfully to improve my english and never to degrade it. i always try to use the best english to describe what i think and what i feel, or what i don't feel and what i don't think. i am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts. i don't know anything that mars good literature so completely as too much truth. facts contain a deal of poetry, but you can't use too many of them without damaging your literature. i love all literature, and as long as i am a doctor of literaturei have suggested to you for twenty years i have been diligently trying to improve my own literature, and now, by virtue of the university of oxford, i mean to doctor everybody else's. now i think i ought to apologize for my clothes. at home i venture things that i am not permitted by my family to venture in foreign parts. i was instructed before i left home and ordered to refrain from white clothes in england. i meant to keep that command fair and clean, and i would have done it if i had been in the habit of obeying instructions, but i can't invent a new process in life right away. i have not had white clothes on since i crossed the ocean until now. in these three or four weeks i have grown so tired of gray and black that you have earned my gratitude in permitting me to come as i have. i wear white clothes in the depth of winter in my home, but i don't go out in the streets in them. i don't go out to attract too much attention. i like to attract some, and always i would like to be dressed so that i may, be more conspicuous than anybody else. if i had been an ancient briton, i would not have contented myself with blue paint, but i would have bankrupted the rainbow. i so enjoy gay clothes in which women clothe themselves that it always grieves me when i go to the opera to see that, while women look like a flower-bed, the men are a few gray stumps among them in their black evening dress. these are two or three reasons why i wish to wear white clothes. when i find myself in assemblies like this, with everybody in black clothes, i know i possess something that is superior to everybody else's. clothes are never clean. you don't know whether they are clean or not, because you can't see. here or anywhere you must scour your head every two or three days or it is full of grit. your clothes must collect just as much dirt as your hair. if you wear white clothes you are clean, and your cleaning bill gets so heavy that you have to take care. i am proud to say that i can wear a white suit of clothes without a blemish for three days. if you need any further instruction in the matter of clothes i shall be glad to give it to you. i hope i have convinced some of you that it is just as well to wear white clothes as any other kind. i do not want to boast. i only want to make you understand that you are not clean. as to age, the fact that i am nearly seventy-two years old does not clearly indicate how old i am, because part of every dayit is with me as with youyou try to describe your age, and you cannot do it. sometimes you are only fifteen; sometimes you are twenty-five. it is very seldom in a day that i am seventy-two years old. i am older now sometimes than i was when i used to rob orchards; a thing which i would not do todayif the orchards were watched. i am so glad to be here to-night. i am so glad to renew with the savages that now ancient time when i first sat with a company of this club in london in 1872. that is a long time ago. but i did stay with the savages a night in london long ago, and as i had come into a very strange land, and was with friends, as i could see, that has always remained in my mind as a peculiarly blessed evening, since it brought me into contact with men of my own kind and my own feelings. i am glad to be here, and to see you all again, because it is very likely that i shall not see you again. it is easier than i thought to come across the atlantic. i have been received, as you know, in the most delightfully generous way in england ever since i came here. it keeps me choked up all the time. everybody is so generous, and they do seem to give you such a hearty welcome. nobody in the world, can appreciate it higher than i do. it did not wait till i got to london, but when i came ashore at tilbury the stevedores on the dock raised the first welcomea good and hearty welcome from the men who do the heavy labor in the world, and save you and me having to do it. they are the men who with their hands build empires and make them prosper. it is because of them that the others are wealthy and can live in luxury. they received me with a "hurrah!" that went to my heart. they are the men that build civilization, and without them no civilization can be built. so i came first to the authors and creators of civilization, and i blessedly end this happy meeting with the savages who destroy it. general miles and the dog. mr. clemens was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the pleiades club at the hotel brevoort, december 22, 1907the toastmaster introduced the guest of the evening with a high tribute to his place in american literature, saying that he was dear to the hearts of all americans. it is hard work to make a speech when you have listened to compliments from the powers in authority. a compliment is a hard text to preach to. when the chairman introduces me as a person of merit, and when he says pleasant things about me, i always feel like answering simply that what he says is true; that it is all right; that, as far as i am concerned, the things he said can stand as they are. but you always have to say something, and that is what frightens me. i remember out in sydney once having to respond to some complimentary toast, and my one desire was to turn in my tracks like any other wormand run for it. i was remembering that occasion at a later date when i had to introduce a speaker. hoping, then, to spur his speech by putting him, in joke, on the defensive, i accused him in my introduction of everything i thought it impossible for him to have committed. when i finished there was an awful calm. i had been telling his life history by mistake. one must keep up one's character. earn a character first if you can, and if you can't, then assume one. from the code of morals i have been following and revising and revising for seventy-two years i remember one detail. all my life i have been honestcomparatively honest. i could never use money i had not made honestlyi could only lend it. last spring i met general miles again, and he commented on the fact that we had known each other thirty years. he said it was strange that we had not met years before, when we had both been in washington. at that point i changed the subject, and i changed it with art. but the facts are these: i was then under contract for my innocents abroad, but did not have a cent to live on while i wrote it. so i went to washington to do a little journalism. there i met an equally poor friend, william davidson, who had not a single vice, unless you call it a vice in a scot to love scotch. together we devised the first and original newspaper syndicate, selling two letters a week to twelve newspapers and getting $1 a letter. that $24 a week would have been enough for usif we had not had to support the jug. but there was a day when we felt that we must have $3 right away$3 at once. that was how i met the general. it doesn't matter now what we wanted so much money at one time for, but that scot and i did occasionally want it. the scot sent me out one day to get it. he had a great belief in providence, that scottish friend of mine. he said: "the lord will provide." i had given up trying to find the money lying about, and was in a hotel lobby in despair, when i saw a beautiful unfriended dog. the dog saw me, too, and at once we became acquainted. then general miles came in, admired the dog, and asked me to price it. i priced it at $3. he offered me an opportunity to reconsider the value of the beautiful animal, but i refused to take more than providence knew i needed. the general carried the dog to his room. then came in a sweet little middle-aged man, who at once began looking around the lobby. "did you lose a dog?" i asked. he said he had. "i think i could find it," i volunteered, "for a small sum." "'how much?'" he asked. and i told him $3. he urged me to accept more, but i did not wish to outdo providence. then i went to the general's room and asked for the dog back. he was very angry, and wanted to know why i had sold him a dog that did not belong to me. "that's a singular question to ask me, sir," i replied. "didn't you ask me to sell him? you started it." and he let me have him. i gave him back his $3 and returned the dog, collect, to its owner. that second $3 i carried home to the scot, and we enjoyed it, but the first $3, the money i got from the general, i would have had to lend. the general seemed not to remember my part in that adventure, and i never had the heart to tell him about it. when in doubt, tell the truth. mark twain's speech at the dinner of the "freundschaft society," march 9, 1906, had as a basis the words of introduction used by toastmaster frank, who, referring to pudd'nhead wilson, used the phrase, "when in doubt, tell the truth." mr. chairman, mr. putzel, and gentlemen of the freundschaft,that maxim i did invent, but never expected it to be applied to me. i did say, "when you are in doubt," but when i am in doubt myself i use more sagacity. mr. grout suggested that if i have anything to say against mr. putzel, or any criticism of his career or his character, i am the last person to come out on account of that maxim and tell the truth. that is altogether a mistake. i do think it is right for other people to be virtuous so that they can be happy hereafter, but if i knew every impropriety that even mr. putzel has committed in his life, i would not mention one of them. my judgment has been maturing for seventy years, and i have got to that point where i know better than that. mr. putzel stands related to me in a very tender way (through the tax office), and it does not behoove me to say anything which could by any possibility militate against that condition of things. now, that wordtaxes, taxes, taxes! i have heard it to-night. i have heard it all night. i wish somebody would change that subject; that is a very sore subject to me. i was so relieved when judge leventritt did find something that was not taxablewhen he said that the commissioner could not tax your patience. and that comforted me. we've got so much taxation. i don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed except the answer to prayer. on an occasion like this the proprieties require that you merely pay compliments to the guest of the occasion, and i am merely here to pay compliments to the guest of the occasion, not to criticise him in any way, and i can say only complimentary things to him. when i went down to the tax office some time ago, for the first time in new york, i saw mr. putzel sitting in the "seat of perjury." i recognized him right away. i warmed to him on the spot. i didn't know that i had ever seen him before, but just as soon as i saw him i recognized him. i had met him twenty-five years before, and at that time had achieved a knowledge of his abilities and something more than that. i thought: "now, this is the man whom i saw twenty-five years ago." on that occasion i not only went free at his hands, but carried off something more than that. i hoped it would happen again. it was twenty-five years ago when i saw a young clerk in putnam's book-store. i went in there and asked for george haven putnam, and handed him my card, and then the young man said mr. putnam was busy and i couldn't see him. well, i had merely called in a social way, and so it didn't matter. i was going out when i saw a great big, fat, interesting-looking book lying there, and i took it up. it was an account of the invasion of england in the fourteenth century by the preaching friar, and it interested me. i asked him the price of it, and he said four dollars. "well," i said, "what discount do you allow to publishers?" he said: "forty per cent. off." i said: "all right, i am a publisher." he put down the figure, forty per cent. off, on a card. then i said: "what discount do you allow to authors?" he said: "forty per cent. off." "well," i said, "set me down as an author." "now," said i, "what discount do you allow to the clergy?" he said: "forty per cent. off." i said to him that i was only on the road, and that i was studying for the ministry. i asked him wouldn't he knock off twenty per cent. for that. he set down the figure, and he never smiled once. i was working off these humorous brilliancies on him and getting no returnnot a scintillation in his eye, not a spark of recognition of what i was doing there. i was almost in despair. i thought i might try him once more, so i said: "now, i am also a member of the human race. will you let me have the ten per cent. off for that?" he set it down, and never smiled. well, i gave it up. i said: "there is my card with my address on it, but i have not any money with me. will you please send the bill to hartford?" i took up the book and was going away. he said: "wait a minute. there is forty cents coming to you." when i met him in the tax office i thought maybe i could make something again, but i could not. but i had not any idea i could when i came, and as it turned out i did get off entirely free. i put up my hand and made a statement. it gave me a good deal of pain to do that. i was not used to it. i was born and reared in the higher circles of missouri, and there we don't do such thingsdidn't in my time, but we have got that little matter settledgot a sort of tax levied on me. then he touched me. yes, he touched me this time, because he criedcried! he was moved to tears to see that i, a virtuous person only a year before, after immersion for one yearduring one year in the new york moralshad no more conscience than a millionaire. the day we celebrate. address at the fourth-of-july dinner of the american society, london, 1899. i noticed in ambassador choate's speech that he said: "you may be americans or englishmen, but you cannot be both at the same time." you responded by applause. consider the effect of a short residence here. i find the ambassador rises first to speak to a toast, followed by a senator, and i come third. what a subtle tribute that to monarchial influence of the country when you place rank above respectability! i was born modest, and if i had not been things like this would force it upon me. i understand it quite well. i am here to see that between them they do justice to the day we celebrate, and in case they do not i must do it myself. but i notice they have considered this day merely from one sideits sentimental, patriotic, poetic side. but it has another side. it has a commercial, a business side that needs reforming. it has a historical side. i do not say "an" historical side, because i am speaking the american language. i do not see why our cousins should continue to say "an" hospital, "an" historical fact, "an" horse. it seems to me the congress of women, now in session, should look to it. i think "an" is having a little too much to do with it. it comes of habit, which accounts for many things. yesterday, for example, i was at a luncheon party. at the end of the party a great dignitary of the english established church went away half an hour before anybody else and carried off my hat. now, that was an innocent act on his part. he went out first, and of course had the choice of hats. as a rule i try to get out first myself. but i hold that it was an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to heredity. he was thinking about ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that condition of mind he will take anybody's hat. the result was that the whole afternoon i was under the influence of his clerical hat and could not tell a lie. of course, he was hard at it. it is a compliment to both of us. his hat fitted me exactly; my hat fitted him exactly. so i judge i was born to rise to high dignity in the church some how or other, but i do not know what he was born for. that is an illustration of the influence of habit, and it is perceptible here when they say "an" hospital, "an" european, "an" historical. the business aspects of the fourth of july is not perfect as it stands. see what it costs us every year with loss of life, the crippling of thousands with its fireworks, and the burning down of property. it is not only sacred to patriotism and universal freedom, but to the surgeon, the undertaker, the insurance officesand they are working it for all it is worth. i am pleased to see that we have a cessation of war for the time. this coming from me, a soldier, you will appreciate. i was a soldier in the southern war for two weeks, and when gentlemen get up to speak of the great deeds our army and navy have recently done, why, it goes all through me and fires up the old war spirit. i had in my first engagement three horses shot under me. the next ones went over my head, the next hit me in the back. then i retired to meet an engagement. i thank you, gentlemen, for making even a slight reference to the war profession, in which i distinguished myself, short as my career was. independence day. the american society in london gave a banquet, july 4, 1907, at the hotel cecil. ambassador choate called on mr. clemens to respond to the toast "the day we celebrate." mr. chairman, my lord, and gentlemen,once more it happens, as it has happened so often since i arrived in england a week or two ago, that instead of celebrating the fourth of july properly as has been indicated, i have to first take care of my personal character. sir mortimer durand still remains unconvinced. well, i tried to convince these people from the beginning that i did not take the ascot cup; and as i have failed to convince anybody that i did not take the cup, i might as well confess i did take it and be done with it. i don't see why this uncharitable feeling should follow me everywhere, and why i should have that crime thrown up to me on all occasions. the tears that i have wept over it ought to have created a different feeling than thisand, besides, i don't think it is very right or fair that, considering england has been trying to take a cup of ours for forty yearsi don't see why they should take so much trouble when i tried to go into the business myself. sir mortimer durand, too, has had trouble from going to a dinner here, and he has told you what he suffered in consequence. but what did he suffer? he only missed his train and one night of discomfort, and he remembers it to this day. oh! if you could only think what i have suffered from a similar circumstance. two or three years ago, in new york, with that society there which is made up of people from all british colonies, and from great britain, generally, who were educated in british colleges and british schools, i was there to respond to a toast of some kind or other, and i did then what i have been in the habit of doing, from a selfish motive, for a long time, and that is, i got myself placed no. 3 in the list of speakersthen you get home early. i had to go five miles up-river, and had to catch a particular train or not get there. but see the magnanimity which is born in me, which i have cultivated all my life. a very famous and very great british clergyman came to me presently, and he said: "i am away down in the list; i have got to catch a certain train this saturday night; if i don't catch that train i shall be carried beyond midnight and break the sabbath. won't you change places with me? i said: "certainly i will." i did it at once. now, see what happened. talk about sir mortimer durand's sufferings for a single night! i have suffered ever since. because i saved that gentleman from breaking the sabbathyes, saved him. i took his place, but i lost my train, and it was i who broke the sabbath. up to that time i never had broken the sabbath in my life and from that day to this i never have kept it. oh! i am learning much here to-night. i find i didn't know anything about the american societythat is, i didn't know its chief virtue. i didn't know its chief virtue until his excellency our ambassador revealed iti may say, exposed it. i was intending to go home on the 13th of this month, but i look upon that in a different light now. i am going to stay here until the american society pays my passage. our ambassador has spoken of our fourth of july and the noise it makes. we have got a double fourth of julya daylight fourth and a midnight fourth. during the day in america, as our ambassador has indicated, we keep the fourth of july properly in a reverent spirit. we devote it to teaching our children patriotic thingsreverence for the declaration of independence. we honor the day all through the daylight hour's, and when night comes we dishonor it. presentlybefore longthey are getting nearly ready to begin nowon the atlantic coast, when night shuts down, that pandemonium will begin, and there will be noise, and noise, and noiseall night longand there will be more than noisethere will be people crippled, there will be people killed, there will be people who will lose their eyes, and all through that permission which we give to irresponsible boys to play with firearms and fire-crackers, and all sorts of dangerous things. we turn that fourth of july, alas! over to rowdies to drink and get drunk and make the night hideous, and we cripple and kill more people than you would imagine. we probably began to celebrate our fourth-of-july night in that way one hundred and twenty-five years ago, and on every fourth-of-july night since these horrors have grown and grown, until now, in our five thousand towns of america, somebody gets killed or crippled on every fourth-of-july night, besides those cases of sick persons whom we never hear of, who die as the result of the noise or the shock. they cripple and kill more people on the fourth of july in america than they kill and cripple in our wars nowadays, and there are no pensions for these folk. and, too, we burn houses. really we destroy more property on every fourth-of-july night than the whole of the united states was worth one hundred and twenty-five years ago. really our fourth of july is our day of mourning, our day of sorrow. fifty thousand people who have lost friends, or who have had friends crippled, receive that fourth of july, when it comes, as a day of mourning for the losses they have sustained in their families. i have suffered in that way myself. i have had relatives killed in that way. one was in chicago years agoan uncle of mine, just as good an uncle as i have ever had, and i had lots of themyes, uncles to burn, uncles to spare. this poor uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat. before that man could ask for a drink of water to quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him all over the forty-five states, andreally, now, this is truei know about it myselftwenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons, recognizable as his, on the atlantic seaboard. a person cannot have a disaster like that and be entirely cheerful the rest of his life. i had another uncle, on an entirely different fourth of july, who was blown up that way, and really it trimmed him as it would a tree. he had hardly a limb left on him anywhere. all we have left now is an expurgated edition of that uncle. but never mind about these things; they are merely passing matters. don't let me make you sad. sir mortimer durand said that you, the english people, gave up your colonies over theregot tired of themand did it with reluctance. now i wish you just to consider that he was right about that, and that he had his reasons for saying that england did not look upon our revolution as a foreign war, but as a civil war fought by englishmen. our fourth of july which we honor so much, and which we love so much, and which we take so much pride in, is an english institution, not an american one, and it comes of a great ancestry. the first fourth of july in that noble genealogy dates back seven centuries lacking eight years. that is the day of the great charterthe magna chartawhich was born at runnymede in the next to the last year of king john, and portions of the liberties secured thus by those hardy barons from that reluctant king john are a part of our declaration of independence, of our fourth of july, of our american liberties. and the second of those fourths of july was not born until four centuries later, in charles the first's time in the bill of rights, and that is ours, that is part of our liberties. the next one was still english, in new england, where they established that principle which remains with us to this day, and in will continue to remain with usno taxation without-representation. that is always going to stand, and that the english colonies in new england gave us. the fourth of july, and the one which you are celebrating now, born in philadelphia on the 4th of july, 1776that is english, too. it is not american. those were english colonists, subjects of king george iii., englishmen at heart, who protested against the oppressions of the home government. though they proposed to cure those oppressions and remove them, still remaining under the crown, they were not intending a revolution. the revolution was brought about by circumstances which they could not control. the declaration of independence was written by a british subject, every name signed to it was the name of a british subject. there was not the name of a single american attached to the declaration of independencein fact, there was not an american in the country in that day except the indians out on the plains. they were englishmen, all englishmenamericans did not begin until seven years later, when that fourth of july had become seven years old, and then the american republic was established. since then there have been americans. so you see what we owe to england in the matter of liberties. we have, however, one fourth of july which is absolutely our own, and that is that great proclamation issued forty years ago by that great american to whom sir mortimer durand paid that just and beautiful tributeabraham lincoln. lincoln's proclamation, which not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also. the owner was set free from the burden and offence, that sad condition of things where he was in so many instances a master and owner of slaves when he did not want to be. that proclamation set them all free. but even in this matter england suggested it, for england had set her slaves free thirty years before, and we followed her example. we always followed her example, whether it was good or bad. and it was an english judge that issued that other great proclamation, and established that great principle that, when a slave, let him belong to whom he may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon english soil, his fetters by that act fall away and he is a free man before the world. we followed the example of 1833, and we freed our slaves as i have said. it is true, then, that all our fourths of july, and we have five of them, england gave to us, except that one that i have mentionedthe emancipation proclamation, and, lest we forget, let us all remember that we owe these things to england. let us be able to say to old england, this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our fourths of july that we love and that we honor and revere, you gave us the declaration of independence, which is the charter of our rights, you, the venerable mother of liberties, the protector of anglo-saxon freedomyou gave us these things, and we do most honestly thank you for them. americans and the english. address at a gathering of americans in london, july 4, 1872. mr. chairman and ladies and gentlemen,i thank you for the compliment which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it i will not afflict you with many words. it is pleasant to celebrate in this peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an experiment which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and wrought out to a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. it has taken nearly a hundred years to bring the english and americans into kindly and mutually appreciative relations, but i believe it has been accomplished at last. it was a great step when the two last misunderstandings were settled by arbitration instead of cannon. it is another great step when england adopts our sewing-machines without claiming the inventionas usual. it was another when they imported one of our sleeping-cars the other day. and it warmed my heart more than i can tell, yesterday, when i witnessed the spectacle of an englishman ordering an american sherry cobbler of his own free will and accordand not only that but with a great brain and a level head reminding the barkeeper not to forget the strawberries. with a common origin, a common language, a common literature, a common religion, andcommon drinks, what is longer needful to the cementing of the two nations together in a permanent bond of brotherhood? this is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. a great and glorious land, tooa land which has developed a washington, a franklin, a wm. m. tweed, a longfellow, a motley, a jay gould, a samuel c. pomeroy, a recent congress which has never had its equal (in some respects), and a united states army which conquered sixty indians in eight months by tiring them outwhich is much better than uncivilized slaughter, god knows. we have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read. and i may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have saved cain. i think i can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world. i refer with effusion to our railway system, which contents to let us live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. it only destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and unnecessary people at crossings. the companies seriously regretted the killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for some of themvoluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law against a railway company. but, thank heaven, the railway companies are generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without compulsion. i know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. after an accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old relative of mine in a basket, with the remark, "please state what figure you hold him atand return the basket." now there couldn't be anything friendlier than that. but i must not stand here and brag all night. however, you won't mind a body bragging a little about his country on the fourth of july. it is a fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. i will say only one more word of bragand a hopeful one. it is this. we have a form of government which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. with us no individual is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in contempt. let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that. and we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is the condition of our political morality to-day, england has risen up out of a far fouler since the days when charles i. ennobled courtesans and all political place was a matter of bargain and sale. there is hope for us yet.* * at least the above is the speech which i was going to make, but our minister, general schenck, presided, and after the blessing, got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull harangue, and wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech-making did not seem to exhilarate the guests much, all further oratory would be dispensed with during the evening, and we could just sit and talk privately to our elbow-neighbors and have a good, sociable time. it is known that in consequence of that remark forty-four perfected speeches died in the womb. the depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over the banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many that were there. by that one thoughtless remark general schenck lost forty-four of the best friends he had in england. more than one said that night: "and this is the sort of person that is sent to represent us in a great sister empire!" about london. address at a dinner given by the savage club, london, september 28, 1872. reported by moncure d. conway in the cincinnati commercial. it affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club which has extended its hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many of my countrymen. i hope [and here the speaker's voice became low and fluttering] you will excuse these clothes. i am going to the theatre; that will explain these clothes. i have other clothes than these. judging human nature by what i have seen of it, i suppose that the customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a pun on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he is the first man that that idea has occurred to. it is a credit to our human nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all our depravity (and god knows and you know we are depraved enough) and all our sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ of innocence and simplicity still. when a stranger says to me, with a glow of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing about "twain and one flesh," and all that sort of thing, i don't try to crush that man into the earthno. i feel like saying: "let me take you by the hand, sir; let me embrace you; i have not heard that pun for weeks." we will deal in palpable puns. we will call parties named king "your majesty," and we will say to the smiths that we think we have heard that name before somewhere. such is human nature. we cannot alter this. it is god that made us so for some good and wise purpose. let us not repine. but though i may seem strange, may seem eccentric, i mean to refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though i could make a very good one if i had time to think about ita week. i cannot express to you what entire enjoyment i find in this first visit to this prodigious metropolis of yours. its wonders seem to me to be limitless. i go about as in a dreamas in a realm of enchantmentwhere many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and marvellous. hour after hour i standi stand spellbound, as it wereand gaze upon the statuary in leicester square. [leicester square being a horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the centre, the king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better condition.] i visit the mortuary effigies of noble old henry viii., and judge jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind which of my ancestors i admire the most. i go to that matchless hyde park and drive all around it, and then i start to enter it at the marble archandam induced to "change my mind." [cabs are not permitted in hyde parknothing less aristocratic than a private carriage.] it is a great benefactionis hyde park. there, in his hansom cab, the invalid can gothe poor, sad child of misfortuneand insert his nose between the railings, and breathe the pure, health-giving air of the country and of heaven. and if he is a swell invalid, who isn't obliged to depend upon parks for his country air, he can drive insideif he owns his vehicle. i drive round and round hyde park, and the more i see of the edges of it the more grateful i am that the margin is extensive. and i have been to the zoological gardens. what a wonderful place that is! i never have seen such a curious and interesting variety of wild animals in any garden beforeexcept "mabille." i never believed before there were so many different kinds of animals in the world as you can find thereand i don't believe it yet. i have been to the british museum. i would advise you to drop in there some time when you have nothing to do forfive minutesif you have never been there. it seems to me the noblest monument that this nation has yet erected to her greatness. i say to her, our greatnessas a nation. true, she has built other monuments, and stately ones, as well; but these she has uplifted in honor of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked across the world's stage, destroying tyrants and delivering nations, and whose prodigies will still live in the memories of men ages after their monuments shall have crumbled to dusti refer to the wellington and nelson monuments, andthe albert memorial. [sarcasm. the albert memorial is the finest monument in the world, and celebrates the existence of as commonplace a person as good luck ever lifted out of obscurity.] the library at the british museum i find particularly astounding. i have read there hours together, and hardly made an impression on it. i revere that library. it is the author's friend. i don't care how mean a book is, it always takes one copy. [a copy of every book printed in great britain must by law be sent to the british museum, a law much complained of by publishers.] and then every day that author goes there to gaze at that book, and is encouraged to go on in the good work. and what a touching sight it is of a saturday afternoon to see the poor, care-worn clergymen gathered together in that vast reading-room cabbaging sermons for sunday. you will pardon my referring to these things. everything in this monster city interests me, and i cannot keep from talking, even at the risk of being instructive. people here seem always to express distances by parables. to a stranger it is just a little confusing to be so parabolicso to speak. i collar a citizen, and i think i am going to get some valuable information out of him. i ask him how far it is to birmingham, and he says it is twenty-one shillings and sixpence. now we know that doesn't help a man who is trying to learn. i find myself down-town somewhere, and i want to get some sort of idea where i ambeing usually lost when aloneand i stop a citizen and say: "how far is it to charing cross?" "shilling fare in a cab," and off he goes. i suppose if i were to ask a londoner how far it is from the sublime to the ridiculous, he would try to express it in coin. but i am trespassing upon your time with these geological statistics and historical reflections. i will not longer keep you from your orgies. 'tis a real pleasure for me to be here, and i thank you for it. the name of the savage club is associated in my mind with the kindly interest and the friendly offices which you lavished upon an old friend of mine who came among you a stranger, and you opened your english hearts to him and gave him welcome and a homeartemus ward. asking that you will join me, i give you his memory. princeton princeton. mr. clemens spent several days in may, 1901, in princeton, new jersey, as the guest of lawrence hutton. he gave a reading one evening before a large audience composed of university students and professors. before the reading mr. clemens said: i feel exceedingly surreptitious in coming down here without an announcement of any kind. i do not want to see any advertisements around, for the reason that i'm not a lecturer any longer. i reformed long ago, and i break over and commit this sin only just one time this yearand that is moderate, i think, for a person of my disposition. it is not my purpose to lecture any more as long as i live. i never intend to stand up on a platform any moreunless by the request of a sheriff or something like that. the st. louis harbor-boat "mark twain". the countess de rochambeau christened the st. louis harbor-boat mark twain in honor of mr. clemens june 6, 19o2. just before the luncheon he acted as pilot. "lower away lead!" boomed out the voice of the pilot. "mark twain, quarter five and one-halfsix feet!" replied the leadsman below. "you are all dead safe as long as i have the wheelbut this is my last time at the wheel." at the luncheon mr. clemens made a short address. first of all, nosecond of alli wish to offer my thanks for the honor done me by naming this last rose of summer of the mississippi valley for me, this boat which represents a perished interest, which i fortified long ago, but did not save its life. and, in the first place, i wish to thank the countess de rochambeau for the honor she has done me in presiding at this christening. i believe that it is peculiarly appropriate that i should be allowed the privilege of joining my voice with the general voice of st. louis and missouri in welcoming to the mississippi valley and this part of the continent these illustrious visitors from france. when la salle came down this river a century and a quarter ago there was nothing on its banks but savages. he opened up this great river, and by his simple act was gathered in this great louisiana territory. i would have done it myself for half the money. seventieth birthday. address at a dinner given by colonel george harvey at delmonico's, december 5, 1905, to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of mr. clemens' birth. mr. howells introduced mr. clemens: "now, ladies and gentlemen, and colonel harvey, i will try not to be greedy on your behalf in wishing the health of our honored and, in view of his great age, our revered guest. i will not say, 'oh king, live forever!' but 'oh king, live as long as you like!'" [amid great applause and waving of napkins all rise and drink to mark twain.] well, if i made that joke, it is the best one i ever made, and it is in the prettiest language, too. i never can get quite to that height. but i appreciate that joke, and i shall remember itand i shall use it when occasion requires. i have had a great many birthdays in my time. i remember the first one very well, and i always think of it with indignation; everything was so crude, unaesthetic, primeval. nothing like this at all. no proper appreciative preparation made; nothing really ready. now, for a person born with high and delicate instinctswhy, even the cradle wasn't whitewashednothing ready at all. i hadn't any hair, i hadn't any teeth, i hadn't any clothes, i had to go to my first banquet just like that. well, everybody came swarming in. it was the merest little bit of a villagehardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of missouri, where nothing ever happened, and the people were all interested, and they all came; they looked me over to see if there was anything fresh in my line. why, nothing ever happened in that villageiwhy, i was the only thing that had really happened there for months and months and months; and although i say it myself that shouldn't, i came the nearest to being a real event that had happened in that village in more than two years. well, those people came, they came with that curiosity which is so provincial, with that frankness which also is so provincial, and they examined me all around and gave their opinion. nobody asked them, and i shouldn't have minded if anybody had paid me a compliment, but nobody did. their opinions were all just green with prejudice, and i feel those opinions to this day. well, i stood that as long aswell, you know i was born courteous and i stood it to the limit. i stood it an hour, and then the worm turned. i was the worm; it was my turn to turn, and i turned. i knew very well the strength of my position; i knew that i was the only spotlessly pure and innocent person in that whole town, and i came out and said so. and they could not say a word. it was so true, they blushed; they were embarrassed. well that was the first after-dinner speech i ever made. i think it was after dinner. it's a long stretch between that first birthday speech and this one. that was my cradle-song, and this is my swan-song, i suppose. i am used to swan-songs; i have sung them several times. this is my seventieth birthday, and i wonder if you all rise to the size of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase, seventieth birthday. the seventieth birthday! it is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teachunrebuked. you can tell the world how you got there. it is what they all do. you shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. you will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. i have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last i have the right. i have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else. it sounds like an exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining to old age. when we examine the programme of any of these garrulous old people we always find that the habits which have preserved them would have decayed us; that the way of life which enabled them to live upon the property of their heirs so long, as mr. choate says, would have put us out of commission ahead of time. i will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: that we can't reach old age by another man's road. i will now teach, offering my way of life to whomsoever desires to commit suicide by the scheme which has enabled me to beat the doctor and the hangman for seventy years. some of the details may sound untrue, but they are not. i am not here to deceive; i am here to teach. we have no permanent habits until we are forty. then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. since forty i have been regular about going to bed and getting upand that is one of the main things. i have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with; and i have made it a rule to get up when i had to. this has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity. it has saved me sound, but it would injure another person. in the matter of dietwhich is another main thingi have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. until lately i got the best of it myself. but last spring i stopped frolicking with mince-pie after midnight; up to then i had always believed it wasn't loaded. for thirty years i have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening. eleven hours. that is all right for me, and is wholesome, because i have never had a headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it. and i wish to urge upon you thiswhich i think is wisdomthat if you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. when they take off the pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station where there's a cemetery. i have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. i have no other restriction as regards smoking. i do not know just when i began to smoke, i only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and that i was discreet. he passed from this life early in 1847, when i was a shade past eleven; ever since then i have smoked publicly. as an example to others, and not that i care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake. it is a good rule. i mean, for me; but some of you know quite well that it wouldn't answer for everybody that's trying to get to be seventy. i smoke in bed until i have to go to sleep; i wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times, and i never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. this habit is so old and dear and precious to me that i would feel as you, sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you've gotmeaning the chairmanif you've got one: i am making no charges. i will grant, here, that i have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said i was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds. to-day it is all of sixty years since i began to smoke the limit. i have never bought cigars with life-belts around them. i early found that those were too expensive for me. i have always bought cheap cigarsreasonably cheap, at any rate. sixty years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and i pay seven now. six or seven. seven, i think. yes, it's seven. but that includes the barrel. i often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people that come have always just taken the pledge. i wonder why that is? as for drinking, i have no rule about that. when the others drink i like to help; otherwise i remain dry, by habit and preference. this dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are different. you let it alone. since i was seven years old i have seldom taken a dose of medicine, and have still seldomer needed one. but up to seven i lived exclusively on allopathic medicines. not that i needed them, for i don't think i did; it was for economy; my father took a drug-store for a debt, and it made cod-liver oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. we had nine barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. then. i was weaned. the rest of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such things, because i was the pet. i was the first standard oil trust. i had it all. by the time the drug store was exhausted my health was established, and there has never been much the matter with, me since. but you know very well it would be foolish for the average child to start for seventy on that basis. it happened to be just the thing for me, but that was merely an accident; it couldn't happen again in a century. i have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and i never intend to take any. exercise is loathsome. and it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; and i was always tired. but let another person try my way, and see where he will come out. i desire now to repeat and emphasize that maxim: we can't reach old age by another man's road. my habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you. i have lived a severely moral life. but it would be a mistake for other people to try that, or for me to recommend it. very few would succeed: you have to have a perfectly colossal stock of morals; and you can't get them on a margin; you have to have the whole thing, and put them in your box. morals are an acquirementlike music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysisno man is born. with them. i wasn't myself, i started poor. i hadn't a single moral. there is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than i was then. yes, i started like thatthe world before me, not a moral in the slot. not even an insurance moral. i can remember the first one i ever got. i can remember the landscape, the weather, thei can remember how everything looked. it was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. but if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and chautauquas, and world's fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. when i got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any exercise; but i worked her hard, i worked her sundays and all. under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. she was a great loss to me. yet not all loss. i sold herah, pathetic skeleton, as she wasi sold her to leopold, the pirate king of belgium; he sold her to our metropolitan museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. well, she looks it. they believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is morals. now you take a sterilized christiani mean, you take the sterilized christian, for there's only one. dear sir, i wish you wouldn't look at me like that. threescore years and ten! it is the scriptural statute of limitations. after that, you owe no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. you are a time-expired man, to use kipling's military phrase: you have served your term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. you are become an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, not any bugle-call but "lights out." you pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you preferand without prejudicefor they are not legally collectable. the previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many twinges, you can lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will never need it again. if you shrink at the thought of night and winter, and the late home-coming from the banquet and the lights and the laughter through the deserted streetsa desolation which would not remind you now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping, and you must creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only remind you that you need not tiptoe, you can never disturb them moreif you shrink at thought of these things, you need only reply, "your invitation honors me, and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but i am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and that when you in your return shall arrive at pier no. 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart. the end . 1831 to helen by edgar allan poe helen, thy beauty is to me like those nicean barks of yore, that gently, o'er a perfumed sea, the weary, wayworn wanderer bore to his own native shore. on desperate seas long wont to roam, thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, thy naiad airs have brought me home to the glory that was greece and the grandeur that was rome. lo! in yon brilliant window-niche how statue-like i see thee stand, the agate lamp within thy hand! ah, psyche, from the regions which are holy land! -the end. 1835 to f--s s. o--d by edgar allan poe thou wouldst be loved?then let thy heart from its present pathway part not! being everything which now thou art, be nothing which thou art not. so with the world thy gentle ways, thy grace, thy more than beauty, shall be an endless theme of praise, and lovea simple duty. -the end. the internet wiretap electronic edition of the wrecker by robert louis stevenson written in collaboration with lloyd osbourne edinburgh edition 1896 prepared by john hamm <john_hamm@mindlink.bc.ca> this text is in the public domain, released january 1994 scanned with omnipage professional ocr software donated by caere corporation. prologue in the marquesas it was about three o'clock of a winter's afternoon in tai-o-hae, the french capital and port of entry of the marquesas islands. the trades blew strong and squally; the surf roared loud on the shingle beach; and the fifty-ton schooner of war, that carries the flag and influence of france about the islands of the cannibal group, rolled at her moorings under prison hill. the clouds hung low and black on the surrounding amphitheatre of mountains; rain had fallen earlier in the day, real tropic rain, a waterspout for violence; and the green and gloomy brow of the mountain was still seamed with many silver threads of torrent. in these hot and healthy islands winter is but a name. the rain had not refreshed, nor could the wind invigorate, the dwellers of tai-o-hae: away at one end, indeed, the commandant was directing some changes in the residency garden beyond prison hill; and the gardeners, being all convicts, had no choice but to continue to obey. all other folks slumbered and took their rest: vaekehu, the native queen, in her trim house under the rustling palms; the tahitian commissary, in his be-flagged official residence; the merchants, in their deserted stores; and even the clubservant in the club, his head fallen forward on the bottle-counter, under the map of the world and the cards of navy officers. in the whole length of the single shoreside street, with its scattered board houses looking to the sea, its grateful shade of palms and green jungle of puraos, no moving figure could be seen. only, at the end of the rickety pier, that once (in the prosperous days of the american rebellion) was used to groan under the cotton of john hart, there might have been spied upon a pile of lumber the famous tattooed white man, the living curiosity of tai-o-hae. his eyes were open, staring down the bay. he saw the mountains droop, as they approached the entrance, and break down in cliffs: the surf boil white round the two sentinel islets; and between, on the narrow bight of blue horizon, ua-pu upraise the ghost of her pinnacled mountain-tops. but his mind would take no account of these familiar features; as he dodged in and out along the frontier line of sleep and waking, memory would serve him with broken fragments of the past: brown faces and white, of skipper and shipmate, king and chief, would arise before his mind and vanish; he would recall old voyages, old landfalls in the hour of dawn; he would hear again the drums beat for a man-eating festival; perhaps he would summon up the form of that island princess for the love of whom he had submitted his body to the cruel hands of the tattooer, and now sat on the lumber, at the pier-end of tai-o-hae, so strange a figure of a european. or perhaps, from yet further back, sounds and scents of england and his childhood might assail him: the merry clamour of cathedral bells, the broom upon the foreland, the song of the river on the weir. it is bold water at the mouth of the bay; you can steer a ship about either sentinel, close enough to toss a biscuit on the rocks. thus it chanced that, as the tattooed man sat dozing and dreaming, he was startled into wakefulness and animation by the appearance of a flying jib beyond the western islet. two more headsails followed; and before the tattooed man had scrambled to his feet, a topsail schooner, of some hundred tons, had luffed about the sentinel, and was standing up the bay, close-hauled. the sleeping city awakened by enchantment. natives appeared upon all sides, hailing each other with the magic cry "ehippy"--ship; the queen stepped forth on her verandah, shading her eyes under a hand that was a miracle of the fine art of tattooing; the commandant broke from his domestic convicts and ran into the residency for his glass; the harbour-master, who was also the gaoler, came speeding down the prison hill; the seventeen brown kanakas and the french boatswain's mate, that make up the complement of the war-schooner, crowded on the forward deck; and the various english, americans, germans, poles, corsicans, and scots--the merchants and the clerks of tai-o-hae--deserted their places of business, and gathered, according to invariable custom, on the road before the club. so quickly did these dozen whites collect, so short are the distances in tai-o-hae, that they were already exchanging guesses as to the nationality and business of the strange vessel, before she had gone about upon her second board towards the anchorage. a moment after, english colours were broken out at the main truck. "i told you she was a johnny bull--knew it by her headsails," said an evergreen old salt, still qualified (if he could anywhere have found an owner unacquainted with his story) to adorn another quarter-deck and lose another ship. "she has american lines, anyway," said the astute scots engineer of the gin-mill; "it's my belief she's a yacht." "that's it," said the old salt, "a yacht! look at her davits, and the boat over the stern." "a yacht in your eye!" said a glasgow voice. "look at her red ensign! a yacht! not much she isn't!" "you can close the store, anyway, tom," observed a gentlemanly german. "bon jour, mon prince!" he added, as a dark, intelligent native cantered by on a neat chestnut. "vous allez boire un verre de biere?" but prince stanila moanatini, the only reasonably busy human creature on the island, was riding hot-spur to view this morning's landslip on the mountain road; the sun already visibly declined; night was imminent; and if he would avoid the perils of darkness and precipice, and the fear of the dead, the haunters of the jungle, he must for once decline a hospitable invitation. even had he been minded to alight, it presently appeared there would be difficulty as to the refreshment offered. "beer!" cried the glasgow voice. "no such a thing; i tell you there's only eight bottles in the club! here's the first time i've seen british colours in this port! and the man that sails under them has got to drink that beer." the proposal struck the public mind as fair, though far from cheering; for some time back, indeed, the very name of beer had been a sound of sorrow in the club, and the evenings had passed in dolorous computation. "here is havens," said one, as if welcoming a fresh topic.--"what do you think of her, havens?" "i don't think," replied havens, a tall, bland, coollooking, leisurely englishman, attired in spotless duck, and deliberately dealing with a cigarette. "i may say i know. she's consigned to me from auckland by donald and edenborough. i am on my way aboard." "what ship is she?" asked the ancient mariner. "haven't an idea," returned havens. "some tramp they have chartered." with that he placidly resumed his walk, and was soon seated in the stern-sheets of a whaleboat manned by uproarious kanakas, himself daintily perched out of the way of the least maculation, giving his commands in an unobtrusive, dinner-table tone of voice, and sweeping neatly enough alongside the schooner. a weather-beaten captain received him at the gangway. "you are consigned to us, i think," said he. "i am mr. havens." "that is right, sir," replied the captain, shaking hands. "you will find the owner, mr. dodd, below. mind the fresh paint on the house." havens stepped along the alley-way, and descended the ladder into the main cabin. "mr. dodd, i believe," said he, addressing a smallish, bearded gentleman, who sat writing at the table.-"why," he cried, "it isn't loudon dodd?" "myself, my dear fellow," replied mr. dodd, springing to his feet with companionable alacrity. "i had a half-hope it might be you, when i found your name on the papers. well, there's no change in you; still the same placid, fresh-looking britisher." "i can't return the compliment; for you seem to have become a britisher yourself," said havens. "i promise you, i am quite unchanged," returned dodd. "the red tablecloth at the top of the stick is not my flag; it's my partner's. he is not dead, but sleepeth. there he is," he added, pointing to a bust which formed one of the numerous unexpected ornaments of that unusual cabin. havens politely studied it. "a fine bust," said he; "and a very nice-looking fellow." "yes; he's a good fellow," said dodd. "he runs me now. it's all his money." "he doesn't seem to be particularly short of it," added the other, peering with growing wonder round the cabin. "his money--my taste," said dodd. "the black walnut bookshelves are old english; the books all mine--mostly renaissance french. you should see how the beachcombers wilt away when they go round them, looking for a change of seaside library novels. the mirrors are genuine venice; that's a good piece in the corner. the daubs are mine--and his; the mudding mine." "mudding? what is that?" asked havens. "these bronzes," replied dodd. "i began life as a sculptor." "yes; i remember something about that," said the other. "i think, too, you said you were interested in californian real estate." "surely i never went so far as that," said dodd. "interested? i guess not. involved, perhaps. i was born an artist; i never took an interest in anything but art. if i were to pile up this old schooner tomorrow," he added, "i declare i believe i would try the thing again!" "insured?" inquired havens. "yes," responded dodd. "there's some fool in 'frisco who insures us, and comes down like a wolf on the fold on the profits; but we'll get even with him some day." "well, i suppose it's all right about the cargo," said havens. "o, i suppose so!" replied dodd. "shall we go into the papers?" "we'll have all to-morrow, you know," said havens; "and they'll be rather expecting you at the club. c'est l'heure de l'absinthe. of course, loudon, you'll dine with me later on?" mr. dodd signified his acquiescence; drew on his white coat, not without a trifling difficulty, for he was a man of middle age, and well-to-do; arranged his beard and moustaches at one of the venetian mirrors; and, taking a broad felt hat, led the way through the traderoom into the ship's waist. the stern boat was waiting alongside--a boat of an elegant model, with cushions and polished hard-wood fittings. "you steer," observed loudon. "you know the best place to land." "i never like to steer another man's boat," replied havens. "call it my partner's, and cry quits," returned loudon, getting nonchalantly down the side. havens followed and took the yoke lines without further protest. "i am sure i don't know how you make this pay," he said. "to begin with, she is too big for the trade, to my taste; and then you carry so much style." "i don't know that she does pay," returned loudon. "i never pretend to be a business man. my partner appears happy; and the money is all his, as i told you; i only bring the want of business habits." "you rather like the berth, i suppose?" suggested havens. "yes," said loudon; "it seems odd, but i rather do." while they were yet on board, the sun had dipped; the sunset gun (a rifle) had cracked from the war-schooner, and the colours had been handed down. dusk was deepening as they came ashore; and the cercle international (as the club is officially and significantly named) began to shine, from under its low verandahs, with the light of many lamps. the good hours of the twenty-four drew on; the hateful, poisonous day-fly of nukahiva was beginning to desist from its activity; the land-breeze came in refreshing draughts; and the club-men gathered together for the hour of absinthe. to the commandant himself, to the man whom he was then contending with at billiards--a trader from the next island, honorary member of the club, and once carpenter's mate on board a yankee warship--to the doctor of the port, to the brigadier of gendarmerie, to the opium-farmer, and to all the white men whom the tide of commerce, or the chances of shipwreck and desertion, had stranded on the beach of tai-o-hae, mr. loudon dodd was formally presented; by all (since he was a man of pleasing exterior, smooth ways, and an unexceptionable flow of talk, whether in french or english) he was excellently well received; and presently, with one of the last eight bottles of beer on a table at his elbow, found himself the rather silent centre-piece of a voluble group on the verandah. talk in the south seas is all upon one pattern; it is a wide ocean, indeed, but a narrow world: you shall never talk long and not hear the name of bully hayes, a naval hero whose exploits and deserved extinction left europe cold; commerce will be touched on, copra, shell, perhaps cotton or fungus; but in a far-away, dilettante fashion, as by men not deeply interested; through all, the names of schooners and their captains will keep coming and going, thick as may-flies; and news of the last shipwreck will be placidly exchanged and debated. to a stranger, this conversation will at first seem scarcely brilliant; but he will soon catch the tone; and by the time he shall have moved a year or so in the island world, and come across a good number of the schooners, so that every captain's name calls up a figure in pyjamas or white duck, and becomes used to a certain laxity of moral tone which prevails (as in memory of mr. hayes) on smuggling, ship-scuttling, barratry, piracy, the labour trade, and other kindred fields of human activity, he will find polynesia no less amusing and no less instructive than pall mall or paris. mr. loudon dodd, though he was new to the group of the marquesas, was already an old, salted trader; he knew the ships and the captains; he had assisted, in other islands, at the first steps of some career of which he now heard the culmination, or (vice versa) he had brought with him from further south the end of some story which had begun in tai-o-hae. among other matter of interest, like other arrivals in the south seas, he had a wreck to announce. the john t. richards, it appeared, had met the fate of other island schooners. "dickinson piled her up on palmerston island," dodd announced. "who were the owners?" inquired one of the club-men. "o, the usual parties!" returned loudon. "capsicum and co." a smile and a glance of intelligence went round the group; and perhaps loudon gave voice to the general sentiment by remarking-"talk of good business! i know nothing better than a schooner, a competent captain, and a sound reliable reef." "good business! there's no such a thing!" said the glasgow man. "nobody makes anything but the missionaries--dash it!" "i don't know," said another; "there's a good deal in opium. "it's a good job to strike a tabooed pearl-island--say, about the fourth year," remarked a third, "skim the whole lagoon on the sly, and up stick and away before the french get wind of you." "a pig nokket of cold is good," observed a german. "there's something in wrecks, too," said havens. "look at that man in honolulu, and the ship that went ashore on waikiki reef; it was blowing a kona, hard; and she began to break up as soon as she touched. lloyd's agent had her sold inside an hour; and before dark, when she went to pieces in earnest, the man that bought her had feathered his nest. three more hours of daylight, and he might have retired from business. as it was, he built a house on beretania street, and called it after the ship." "yes, there's something in wrecks sometimes," said the glasgow voice; "but not often." "as a general rule, there's deuced little in anything," said havens. "well, i believe that's a christian fact," cried the other. "what i want is a secret, get hold of a rich man by the right place, and make him squeal." "i suppose you know it's not thought to be the ticket," returned havens. "i don't care for that; it's good enough for me," cried the man from glasgow, stoutly. "the only devil of it is, a fellow can never find a secret in a place like the south seas: only in london and paris." "m'gibbon's been reading some dime novel, i suppose," said one club-man. "he's been reading aurora floyd," remarked another. "and what if i have?" cried m'gibbon. "it's all true. look at the newspapers! it's just your confounded ignorance that sets you snickering. i tell you, it's as much a trade as underwriting, and a dashed sight more honest." the sudden acrimony of these remarks called loudon (who was a man of peace) from his reserve. "it's rather singular," said he, "but i seem to have practised about all these means of livelihood." "tit you effer find a nokket?" inquired the inarticulate german, eagerly. "no. i have been most kinds of fool in my time," returned loudon, "but not the gold-digging variety. every man has a sane spot somewhere." "well, then," suggested some one, "did you ever smuggle opium?" "yes, i did," said loudon. "was there money in that?" "all the way," responded loudon. "and perhaps you bought a wreck?" asked another. "yes, sir," said loudon. "how did that pan out?" pursued the questioner. "well, mine was a peculiar kind of wreck," replied loudon. "i don't know, on the whole, that i can recommend that branch of industry." "did she break up?" asked some one. "i guess it was rather i that broke down," says loudon. "head not big enough." "ever try the blackmail?" inquired havens. "simple as you see me sitting here!" responded dodd. "good business?" "well, i'm not a lucky man, you see," returned the stranger. "it ought to have been good." "you had a secret?" asked the glasgow man. "as big as the state of texas." "and the other man was rich?" "he wasn't exactly jay gould, but i guess he could buy these islands if he wanted." "why, what was wrong, then? couldn't you get hands on him?" "it took time, but i had him cornered at last; and then---"what then?" "the speculation turned bottom up. i became the man's bosom friend." "the deuce you did!" "he couldn't have been particular, you mean?" asked dodd pleasantly. "well, no; he's a man of rather large sympathies." "if you're done talking nonsense, loudon," said havens, "let's be getting to my place for dinner." outside, the night was full of the roaring of the surf. scattered lights glowed in the green thicket. native women came by twos and threes out of the darkness, smiled and ogled the two whites, perhaps wooed them with a strain of laughter, and went by again, bequeathing to the air a heady perfume of palm-oil and frangipani blossom. from the club to mr. havens's residence was but a step or two, and to any dweller in europe they must have seemed steps in fairyland. if such an one could but have followed our two friends into the wide-verandahed house, sat down with them in the cool trellised room, where the wine shone on the lamp-lighted table-cloth; tasted of their exotic food-the raw fish, the bread-fruit, the cooked bananas, the roast pig served with the inimitable miti, and that king of delicacies, palm-tree salad; seen and heard by fits and starts, now peering round the corner of the door, now railing within against invisible assistants, a certain comely young native lady in a sacque, who seemed too modest to be a member of the family, and too imperious to be less; and then if such an one were whisked again through space to upper tooting, or wherever else he honoured the domestic gods, "i have had a dream," i think he would say, as he sat up, rubbing his eyes, in the familiar chimney-corner chair, "i have had a dream of a place, and i declare i believe it must be heaven." but to dodd and his entertainer, all this amenity of the tropic night, and all these dainties of the island table, were grown things of custom; and they fell to meat like men who were hungry, and drifted into idle talk like men who were a trifle bored. the scene in the club was referred to. "i never heard you talk so much nonsense, loudon," said the host. "well, it seemed to me there was sulphur in the air, so i talked for talking," returned the other. "but it was none of it nonsense." "do you mean to say it was true?" cried havens--"that about the opium and the wreck, and the blackmailing, and the man who became your friend?" "every last word of it," said loudon. "you seem to have been seeing life," returned the other. "yes, it's a queer yarn," said his friend; "if you think you would like, i'll tell it you." here follows the yarn of loudon dodd, not as he told it to his friend, but as he subsequently wrote it. the yarn chapter i a sound commercial education the beginning of this yarn is my poor father's character. there never was a better man, nor a handsomer, nor (in my view) a more unhappy--unhappy in his business, in his pleasures, in his place of residence, and (i am sorry to say it) in his son. he had begun life as a land-surveyor, soon became interested in real estate, branched off into many other speculations, and had the name of one of the smartest men in the state of muskegon. "dodd has a big head," people used to say; but i was never so sure of his capacity. his luck, at least, was beyond doubt for long; his assiduity, always. he fought in that daily battle of money-grubbing, with a kind of sad-eyed loyalty like a martyr's; rose early, ate fast, came home dispirited and over-weary, even from success; grudged himself all pleasure, if his nature was capable of taking any, which i sometimes wondered; and laid out, upon some deal in wheat or corner in aluminium, the essence of which was little better than highway robbery, treasures of conscientiousness and selfdenial. unluckily, i never cared a cent for anything but art, and never shall. my idea of man's chief end was to enrich the world with things of beauty, and have a fairly good time myself while doing so. i do not think i mentioned that second part, which is the only one i have managed to carry out; but my father must have suspected the suppression, for he branded the whole affair as self-indulgence. "well," i remember crying once, "and what is your life? you are only trying to get money, and to get it from other people at that." he sighed bitterly (which was very much his habit), and shook his poor head at me. "ah, loudon, loudon!" said he, "you boys think yourselves very smart. but, struggle as you please, a man has to work in this world. he must be an honest man or a thief, loudon." you can see for yourself how vain it was to argue with my father. the despair that seized upon me after such an interview was, besides, embittered by remorse; for i was at times petulant, but he invariably gentle; and i was fighting, after all, for my own liberty and pleasure, he singly for what he thought to be my good. and all the time he never despaired. "there is good stuff in you, loudon," he would say; "there is the right stuff in you. blood will tell, and you will come right in time. i am not afraid my boy will ever disgrace me; i am only vexed he should sometimes talk nonsense." and then he would pat my shoulder or my hand with a kind of motherly way he had, very affecting in a man so strong and beautiful. as soon as i had graduated from the high school, he packed me off to the muskegon commercial academy. you are a foreigner, and you will have a difficulty in accepting the reality of this seat of education. i assure you before i begin that i am wholly serious. the place really existed, possibly exists to-day: we were proud of it in the state, as something exceptionally nineteenth-century and civilised; and my father, when he saw me to the cars, no doubt considered he was putting me in a straight line for the presidency and the new jerusalem. "loudon," said he, "i am now giving you a chance that julius caesar could not have given to his son--a chance to see life as it is, before your own turn comes to start in earnest. avoid rash speculation, try to behave like a gentleman; and if you will take my advice, confine yourself to a safe, conservative business in railroads. breadstuffs are tempting, but very dangerous; i would not try breadstuffs at your time of life; but you may feel your way a little in other commodities. take a pride to keep your books posted, and never throw good money after bad. there, my dear boy, kiss me good-bye; and never forget that you are an only chick, and that your dad watches your career with fond suspense." the commercial college was a fine, roomy establishment, pleasantly situate among woods. the air was healthy, the food excellent, the premium high. electric wires connected it (to use the words of the prospectus) with "the various world centres." the reading-room was well supplied with "commercial organs." the talk was that of wall street; and the pupils (from fifty to a hundred lads) were principally engaged in rooking or trying to rook one another for nominal sums in what was called "college paper." we had class hours, indeed, in the morning, when we studied german, french, book-keeping, and the like goodly matters; but the bulk of our day and the gist of the education centred in the exchange, where we were taught to gamble in produce and securities. since not one of the participants possessed a bushel of wheat or a dollar's worth of stock, legitimate business was of course impossible from the beginning. it was cold-drawn gambling, without colour or disguise. just that which is the impediment and destruction of all genuine commercial enterprise, just that we were taught with every luxury of stage effect. our simulacrum of a market was ruled by the real markets outside, so that we might experience the course and vicissitude of prices. we must keep books, and our ledgers were overhauled at the month's end by the principal or his assistants. to add a spice of verisimilitude, "college paper" (like poker chips) had an actual marketable value. it was bought for each pupil by anxious parents and guardians at the rate of one cent for the dollar. the same pupil, when his education was complete, resold, at the same figure, so much as was left him to the college; and even in the midst of his curriculum, a successful operator would sometimes realise a proportion of his holding, and stand a supper on the sly in the neighbouring hamlet. in short, if there was ever a worse education, it must have been in that academy where oliver met charles bates. when i was first guided into the exchange to have my desk pointed out by one of the assistant teachers, i was overwhelmed by the clamour and confusion. certain blackboards at the other end of the building were covered with figures continually replaced. as each new set appeared, the pupils swayed to and fro, and roared out aloud with a formidable and to me quite meaningless vociferation; leaping at the same time upon the desks and benches, signalling with arms and heads, and scribbling briskly in note-books. i thought i had never beheld a scene more disagreeable; and when i considered that the whole traffic was illusory, and all the money then upon the market would scarce have sufficed to buy a pair of skates, i was at first astonished, although not for long. indeed, i had no sooner called to mind how grown-up men and women of considerable estate will lose their temper about halfpenny points, than (making an immediate allowance for my fellow-students) i transferred the whole of my astonishment to the assistant teacher, who--poor gentleman--had quite forgot to show me to my desk, and stood in the midst of this hurly-burly, absorbed and seemingly transported. "look, look," he shouted in my ear; "a falling market! the bears have had it all their own way since yesterday." "it can't matter," i replied, making him hear with difficulty, for i was unused to speak in such a babel, "since it is all fun." "true," said he; "and you must always bear in mind that the real profit is in the book-keeping. i trust, dodd, to be able to congratulate you upon your books. you are to start in with ten thousand dollars of college paper, a very liberal figure, which should see you through the whole curriculum, if you keep to a safe, conservative business.... why, what's that?" he broke off, once more attracted by the changing figures on the board. "seven, four, three! dodd, you are in luck: this is the most spirited rally we have had this term. and to think that the same scene is now transpiring in new york, chicago, st. louis, and rival business centres! for two cents, i would try a flutter with the boys myself," he cried, rubbing his hands; "only it's against the regulations." "what would you do, sir?" i asked. "do?" he cried, with glittering eyes. "buy for all i was worth!" "would that be a safe, conservative business?" i inquired, as innocent as a lamb. he looked daggers at me. "see that sandy-haired man in glasses?" he asked, as if to change the subject. "that's billson, our most prominent undergraduate. we build confidently on billson's future. you could not do better, dodd, than follow billson." presently after, in the midst of a still growing tumult, the figures coming and going more busily than ever on the board, and the hall resounding like pandemonium with the howls of operators, the assistant teacher left me to my own resources at my desk. the next boy was posting up his ledger, figuring his morning's loss, as i discovered later on; and from this ungenial task he was readily diverted by the sight of a new face. "say, freshman," he said, "what's your name? what? son of big head dodd? what's your figure? ten thousand? o, you're away up! what a soft-headed clam you must be to touch your books!" i asked him what else i could do, since the books were to be examined once a month. "why, you galoot, you get a clerk!" cries he. "one of our dead beats--that's all they're here for. if you're a successful operator, you need never do a stroke of work in this old college." the noise had now become deafening; and my new friend, telling me that some one had certainly "gone down," that he must know the news, and that he would bring me a clerk when he returned, buttoned his coat and plunged into the tossing throng. it proved that he was right: some one had gone down; a prince had fallen in israel; the corner in lard had proved fatal to the mighty; and the clerk who was brought back to keep my books, spare me all work, and get all my share of the education, at a thousand dollars a month, college paper (ten dollars, united states currency) was no other than the prominent billson whom i could do no better than follow. the poor lad was very unhappy. it's the only good thing i have to say for muskegon commercial college, that we were all, even the small fry, deeply mortified to be posted as defaulters; and the collapse of a merchant prince like billson, who had ridden pretty high in his days of prosperity, was, of course, particularly hard to bear. but the spirit of make-believe conquered even the bitterness of recent shame; and my clerk took his orders, and fell to his new duties, with decorum and civility. such were my first impressions in this absurd place of education; and, to be frank, they were far from disagreeable. as long as i was rich, my evenings and afternoons would be my own; the clerk must keep my books, the clerk could do the jostling and bawling in the exchange; and i could turn my mind to landscapepainting and balzac's novels, which were then my two pre-occupations. to remain rich, then, became my problem; or, in other words, to do a safe, conservative line of business. i am looking for that line still; and i believe the nearest thing to it in this imperfect world is the sort of speculation sometimes insidiously proposed to childhood, in the formula, "heads i win; tails you lose." mindful of my father's parting words, i turned my attention timidly to railroads; and for a month or so maintained a position of inglorious security, dealing for small amounts in the most inert stocks, and bearing (as best i could) the scorn of my hired clerk. one day i had ventured a little further by way of experiment; and, in the sure expectation they would continue to go down, sold several thousand dollars of pan-handle preference (i think it was). i had no sooner made this venture than some fools in new york began to bull the market; pan-handles rose like a balloon; and in the inside of half an hour i saw my position compromised. blood will tell, as my father said; and i stuck to it gallantly: all afternoon i continued selling that infernal stock, all afternoon it continued skying. i suppose i had come (a frail cockle-shell) athwart the hawse of jay gould; and, indeed, i think i remember that this vagary in the market proved subsequently to be the first move in a considerable deal. that evening, at least, the name of h. loudon dodd held the first rank in our collegiate gazette, and i and billson (once more thrown upon the world) were competing for the same clerkship. the present object takes the present eye. my disaster, for the moment, was the more conspicuous; and it was i that got the situation. so, you see, even in muskegon commercial college there were lessons to be learned. for my own part, i cared very little whether i lost or won at a game so random, so complex, and so dull; but it was sorry news to write to my poor father, and i employed all the resources of my eloquence. i told him (what was the truth) that the successful boys had none of the education; so that, if he wished me to learn, he should rejoice at my misfortune. i went on (not very consistently) to beg him to set me up again, when i would solemnly promise to do a safe business in reliable railroads. lastly (becoming somewhat carried away), i assured him i was totally unfit for business, and implored him to take me away from this abominable place, and let me go to paris to study art. he answered briefly, gently, and sadly, telling me the vacation was near at hand, when we could talk things over. when the time came, he met me at the depot, and i was shocked to see him looking older. he seemed to have no thought but to console me and restore (what he supposed i had lost) my courage. i must not be down-hearted; many of the best men had made a failure in the beginning. i told him i had no head for business, and his kind face darkened. "you must not say that, loudon," he replied; "i will never believe my son to be a coward." "but i don't like it," i pleaded. "it hasn't got any interest for me, and art has. i know i could do more in art," and i reminded him that a successful painter gains large sums; that a picture of meissonier's would sell for many thousand dollars. "and do you think, loudon," he replied, "that a man who can paint a thousand-dollar picture has not grit enough to keep his end up in the stock market? no, sir; this mason (of whom you speak) or our own american bierstadt--if you were to put them down in a wheat-pit to-morrow, they would show their mettle. come, loudon, my dear; heaven knows i have no thought but your own good, and i will offer you a bargain. i start you again next term with ten thousand dollars; show yourself a man, and double it, and then (if you still wish to go to paris, which i know you won't) i'll let you go. but to let you run away as if you were whipped, is what i am too proud to do." my heart leaped at this proposal, and then sank again. it seemed easier to paint a meissonier on the spot than to win ten thousand dollars on that mimic stock exchange. nor could i help reflecting on the singularity of such a test for a man's capacity to be a painter. i ventured even to comment on this. he sighed deeply. "you forget, my dear," said he, "i am a judge of the one, and not of the other. you might have the genius of bierstadt himself, and i would be none the wiser." "and then," i continued, "it's scarcely fair. the other boys are helped by their people, who telegraph and give them pointers. there's jim costello, who never budges without a word from his father in new york. and then, don't you see, if anybody is to win, somebody must lose?" "i'll keep you posted," cried my father, with unusual animation; "i did not know it was allowed. i'll wire you in the office cipher, and we'll make it a kind of partnership business, loudon:--dodd and son, eh?" and he patted my shoulder and repeated, "dodd and son, dodd and son," with the kindliest amusement. if my father was to give me pointers, and the commercial college was to be a stepping-stone to paris, i could look my future in the face. the old boy, too, was so pleased at the idea of our association in this foolery, that he immediately plucked up spirit. thus it befell that those who had met at the depot like a pair of mutes, sat down to table with holiday faces. and now i have to introduce a new character that never said a word nor wagged a finger, and yet shaped my whole subsequent career. you have crossed the states, so that in all likelihood you have seen the head of it, parcel-gilt and curiously fluted, rising among trees from a wide plain; for this new character was no other than the state capitol of muskegon, then first projected. my father had embraced the idea with a mixture of patriotism and commercial greed, both perfectly genuine. he was of all the committees, he had subscribed a great deal of money, and he was making arrangements to have a finger in most of the contracts. competitive plans had been sent in; at the time of my return from college my father was deep in their consideration; and as the idea entirely occupied his mind, the first evening did not pass away before he had called me into council. here was a subject at last into which i could throw myself with pleasurable zeal. architecture was new to me, indeed; but it was at least an art; and for all the arts i had a taste naturally classical, and that capacity to take delighted pains which some famous idiot has supposed to be synonymous with genius. i threw myself headlong into my father's work, acquainted myself with all the plans, their merits and defects, read besides in special books, made myself a master of the theory of strains, studied the current prices of materials, and (in one word) "devilled" the whole business so thoroughly, that when the plans came up for consideration, big head dodd was supposed to have earned fresh laurels. his arguments carried the day, his choice was approved by the committee, and i had the anonymous satisfaction to know that arguments and choice were wholly mine. in the recasting of the plan which followed, my part was even larger; for i designed and cast with my own hand a hotair grating for the offices, which had the luck or merit to be accepted. the energy and aptitude which i displayed throughout delighted and surprised my father, and i believe, although i say it, whose tongue should be tied, that they alone prevented muskegon capitol from being the eyesore of my native state. altogether, i was in a cheery frame of mind when i returned to the commercial college; and my earlier operations were crowned with a full measure of success. my father wrote and wired to me continually. "you are to exercise your own judgment, loudon," he would say. "all that i do is to give you the figures; but whatever operation you take up must be upon your own responsibility, and whatever you earn will be entirely due to your own dash and forethought." for all that, it was always clear what he intended me to do, and i was always careful to do it. inside of a month i was at the head of seventeen or eighteen thousand dollars, college paper. and here i fell a victim to one of the vices of the system. the paper (i have already explained) had a real value of one per cent; and cost, and could be sold for, currency. unsuccessful speculators were thus always selling clothes, books, banjos, and sleeve-links, in order to pay their differences; the successful, on the other hand, were often tempted to realise, and enjoy some return upon their profits. now i wanted thirty dollars' worth of artist truck, for i was always sketching in the woods; my allowance was for the time exhausted; i had begun to regard the exchange (with my father's help) as a place where money was to be got for stooping; and in an evil hour i realised three thousand dollars of the college paper and bought my easel. it was a wednesday morning when the things arrived, and set me in the seventh heaven of satisfaction. my father (for i can scarcely say myself) was trying at this time a "straddle" in wheat between chicago and new york; the operation so called is, as you know, one of the most tempting and least safe upon the chess-board of finance. on the thursday, luck began to turn against my father's calculations; and by the friday evening i was posted on the boards as a defaulter for the second time. here was a rude blow: my father would have taken it ill enough in any case; for however much a man may resent the incapacity of an only son, he will feel his own more sensibly. but it chanced that, in our bitter cup of failure, there was one ingredient that might truly be called poisonous. he had been keeping the run of my position; he missed the three thousand dollars, paper; and in his view, i had stolen thirty dollars, currency. it was an extreme view perhaps; but in some senses, it was just: and my father, although (to my judgment) quite reckless of honesty in the essence of his operations, was the soul of honour as to their details. i had one grieved letter from him, dignified and tender; and during the rest of that wretched term, working as a clerk, selling my clothes and sketches to make futile speculations, my dream of paris quite vanished. i was cheered by no word of kindness and helped by no hint of counsel from my father. all the time he was no doubt thinking of little else but his son, and what to do with him. i believe he had been really appalled by what he regarded as my laxity of principle, and began to think it might be well to preserve me from temptation; the architect of the capitol had, besides, spoken obligingly of my design; and while he was thus hanging between two minds, fortune suddenly stepped in, and muskegon state capitol reversed my destiny. "loudon," said my father, as he met me at the depot, with a smiling countenance, "if you were to go to paris, how long would it take you to become an experienced sculptor?" "how do you mean, father?" i cried--'experienced?" "a man that could be intrusted with the highest styles," he answered; "the nude, for instance; and the patriotic and emblematical styles." "it might take three years," i replied. "you think paris necessary?" he asked. "there are great advantages in our own country; and that man prodgers appears to be a very clever sculptor, though i suppose he stands too high to go around giving lessons." "paris is the only place," i assured him. "well, i think myself it will sound better," he admitted. "a young man, a native of this state, son of a leading citizen, studies prosecuted under the most experienced masters in paris," he added relishingly. "but, my dear dad, what is it all about?" i interrupted. "i never even dreamed of being a sculptor." "well, here it is," said he. "i took up the statuary contract on our new capitol; i took it up at first as a deal; and then it occurred to me it would be better to keep it in the family. it meets your idea; there's considerable money in the thing; and it's patriotic. so, if you say the word, you shall go to paris, and come back in three years to decorate the capitol of your native state. it's a big chance for you, loudon; and i'll tell you what--every dollar you earn, i'll put another alongside of it. but the sooner you go, and the harder you work, the better; for if the first halfdozen statues aren't in a line with public taste in muskegon, there will be trouble." chapter ii roussillon wine my mother's family was scottish, and it was judged fitting i should pay a visit, on my way paris-ward to my uncle adam loudon, a wealthy retired grocer of edinburgh. he was very stiff and very ironical; he fed me well, lodged me sumptuously, and seemed to take it out of me all the time, cent. per cent., in secret entertainment which caused his spectacles to glitter and his mouth to twitch. the ground of this illsuppressed mirth (as well as i could make out) was simply the fact that i was an american. "well," he would say, drawing out the word to infinity "and i suppose now in your country things will be so-and-so." and the whole group of my cousins would titter joyously. repeated receptions of this sort must be at the root, i suppose, of what they call the great american jest; and i know i was myself goaded into saying that my friends went naked in the summer months, and that the second methodist episcopal church in muskegon was decorated with scalps. i cannot say that these flights had any great success; they seemed to awaken little more surprise than the fact that my father was a republican, or that i had been taught in school to spell colour without the u. if i had told them (what was, after all, the truth) that my father had paid a considerable annual sum to have me brought up in a gambling-hell, the tittering and grinning of this dreadful family might perhaps have been excused. i cannot deny but i was sometimes tempted to knock my uncle adam down; and indeed i believe it must have come to a rupture at last, if they had not given a dinnerparty at which i was the lion. on this occasion i learned (to my surprise and relief) that the incivility to which i had been subjected was a matter for the family circle, and might be regarded almost in the light of an endearment. to strangers i was presented with consideration; and the account given of "my american brother-in-law, poor janie's man, james k. dodd, the well-known millionaire of muskegon," was calculated to enlarge the heart of a proud son. an aged assistant of my grandfather's, a pleasant, humble creature with a taste for whisky, was at first deputed to be my guide about the city. with this harmless but hardly aristocratic companion i went to arthur's seat and the calton hill, heard the band play in princes street gardens, inspected the regalia and the blood of rizzio, and fell in love with the great castle on its cliff, the innumerable spires of churches, the stately buildings, the broad prospects, and those narrow and crowded lanes of the old town where my ancestors had lived and died in the days before columbus. but there was another curiosity that interested me more deeply--my grandfather, alexander loudon. in his time the old gentleman had been a working mason, and had risen from the ranks--more, i think, by shrewdness than by merit. in his appearance, speech, and manners, he bore broad marks of his origin, which were gall and wormwood to my uncle adam. his nails, in spite of anxious supervision, were often in conspicuous mourning; his clothes hung about him in bags and wrinkles, like a ploughman's sunday coat; his accent was rude, broad, and dragging. take him at his best, and even when he could be induced to hold his tongue, his mere presence in a corner of the drawing-room, with his open-air wrinkles, his scanty hair, his battered hands, and the cheerful craftiness of his expression, advertised the whole gang of us for a self-made family. my aunt might mince and my cousins bridle, but there was no getting over the solid, physical fact of the stonemason in the chimney-corner. that is one advantage of being an american. it never occurred to me to be ashamed of my grandfather, and the old gentleman was quick to mark the difference. he held my mother in tender memory, perhaps because he was in the habit of daily contrasting her with uncle adam, whom he detested to the point of frenzy; and he set down to inheritance from his favourite my own becoming treatment of himself. on our walks abroad, which soon became daily, he would sometimes (after duly warning me to keep the matter dark from "aadam") skulk into some old familiar pot-house, and there (if he had the luck to encounter any of his veteran cronies) he would present me to the company with manifest pride, casting at the same time a covert slur on the rest of his descendants. "this is my jeannie's yin," he would say. "he's a fine fallow, him." the purpose of our excursions was not to seek antiquities or to enjoy famous prospects, but to visit one after another a series of doleful suburbs, for which it was the old gentleman's chief claim to renown that he had been the sole contractor, and too often the architect besides. i have rarely seen a more shocking exhibition: the brick seemed to be blushing in the walls, and the slates on the roof to have turned pale with shame; but i was careful not to communicate these impressions to the aged artificer at my side; and when he would direct my attention to some fresh monstrosity--perhaps with the comment, "there's an idee of mine's; it's cheap and tasty, and had a graand run; the idee was soon stole, and there's whole deestricts near glesgie with the goathic addeetion and that plunth," i would civilly make haste to admire and (what i found particularly delighted him) to inquire into the cost of each adornment. it will be conceived that muskegon capitol was a frequent and a welcome ground of talk. i drew him all the plans from memory; and he, with the aid of a narrow volume full of figures and tables, which answered (i believe) to the name of molesworth, and was his constant pocket-companion, would draw up rough estimates and make imaginary offers on the various contracts. our muskegon builders he pronounced a pack of cormorants; and the congenial subject, together with my knowledge of architectural terms, the theory of strains, and the prices of materials in the states, formed a strong bond of union between what might have been otherwise an ill-assorted pair, and led my grandfather to pronounce me, with emphasis, "a real intalligent kind of a chield." thus a second time, as you will presently see, the capitol of my native state had influentially affected the current of my life. i left edinburgh, however, with not the least idea that i had done a stroke of excellent business for myself, and singly delighted to escape out of a somewhat dreary house and plunge instead into the rainbow city of paris. every man has his own romance; mine clustered exclusively about the practice of the arts, the life of latin quarter students, and the world of paris as depicted by that grimy wizard, the author of the comedie humaine. i was not disappointed--i could not have been; for i did not see the facts, i brought them with me ready-made. z. marcas lived next door to me in my ungainly, ill-smelling hotel of the rue racine; i dined at my villainous restaurant with lousteau and with rastignac: if a curricle nearly ran me down at a street-crossing, maxime de trailles would be the driver. i dined, i say, at a poor restaurant and lived in a poor hotel; and this was not from need, but sentiment. my father gave me a profuse allowance, and i might have lived (had i chosen) in the quartier de l'etoile and driven to my studies daily. had i done so, the glamour must have fled: i should still have been but loudon dodd; whereas now i was a latin quarter student, murger's successor, living in flesh and blood the life of one of those romances i had loved to read, to re-read, and to dream over, among the woods of muskegon. at this time we were all a little murger-mad in the latin quarter. the play of the vie de boheme (a dreary, snivelling piece) had been produced at the odeon, had run an unconscionable time--for paris--and revived the freshness of the legend. the same business, you may say, or there and thereabout, was being privately enacted in consequence in every garret of the neighbourhood, and a good third of the students were consciously impersonating rodolphe or schaunard, to their own incommunicable satisfaction. some of us went far, and some farther. i always looked with awful envy (for instance) on a certain countryman of my own who had a studio in the rue monsieur le prince, wore boots, and long hair in a net, and could be seen tramping off, in this guise, to the worst eating-house of the quarter, followed by a corsican model, his mistress, in the conspicuous costume of her race and calling. it takes some greatness of soul to carry even folly to such heights as these; and for my own part, i had to content myself by pretending very arduously to be poor, by wearing a smoking-cap on the streets, and by pursuing, through a series of misadventures, that extinct mammal the grisette. the most grievous part was the eating and the drinking. i was born with a dainty tooth and a palate for wine; and only a genuine devotion to romance could have supported me under the cat-civets that i had to swallow, and the red ink of bercy i must wash them down withal. every now and again, after a hard day at the studio, where i was steadily and far from unsuccessfully industrious, a wave of distaste would overbear me; i would slink away from my haunts and companions, indemnify myself for weeks of self-denial with fine wines and dainty dishes; seated perhaps on a terrace, perhaps in an arbour in a garden, with a volume of one of my favourite authors propped open in front of me, and now consulted a while, and now forgotten: so remain, relishing my situation, till night fell and the lights of the city kindled; and thence stroll homeward by the river-side, under the moon or stars, in a heaven of poetry and digestion. one such indulgence led me in the course of my second year into an adventure which i must relate: indeed, it is the very point i have been aiming for, since that was what brought me in acquaintance with jim pinkerton. i sat down alone to dinner one october day when the rusty leaves were falling and scuttling on the boulevard, and the minds of impressionable men inclined in about an equal degree towards sadness and conviviality. the restaurant was no great place, but boasted a considerable cellar and a long printed list of vintages. this i was perusing with the double zest of a man who is fond of wine and a lover of beautiful names, when my eye fell (near the end of the card) on that not very famous or familiar brand, roussillon. i remembered it was a wine i had never tasted, ordered a bottle, found it excellent, and when i had discussed the contents, called (according to my habit) for a final pint. it appears they did not keep roussillon in half-bottles. "all right," said i, "another bottle." the tables at this eating-house are close together; and the next thing i can remember, i was in somewhat loud conversation with my nearest neighbours. from these i must have gradually extended my attentions; for i have a clear recollection of gazing about a room in which every chair was half turned round and every face turned smilingly to mine. i can even remember what i was saying at the moment; but after twenty years the embers of shame are still alive, and i prefer to give your imagination the cue by simply mentioning that my muse was the patriotic. it had been my design to adjourn for coffee in the company of some of these new friends; but i was no sooner on the sidewalk than i found myself unaccountably alone. the circumstance scarce surprised me at the time, much less now; but i was somewhat chagrined a little after to find i had walked into a kiosque. i began to wonder if i were any the worse for my last bottle, and decided to steady myself with coffee and brandy. in the cafe de la source, where i went for this restorative, the fountain was playing, and (what greatly surprised me) the mill and the various mechanical figures on the rockery appeared to have been freshly repaired, and performed the most enchanting antics. the cafe was extraordinarily hot and bright, with every detail of a conspicuous clearness--from the faces of the guests, to the type of the newspapers on the tables--and the whole apartment swang to and fro like a hammock, with an exhilarating motion. for some while i was so extremely pleased with these particulars that i thought i could never be weary of beholding them: then dropped of a sudden into a causeless sadness; and then, with the same swiftness and spontaneity, arrived at the conclusion that i was drunk and had better get to bed. it was but a step or two to my hotel, where i got my lighted candle from the porter, and mounted the four flights to my own room. although i could not deny that i was drunk, i was at the same time lucidly rational and practical. i had but one preoccupation--to be up in time on the morrow for my work; and when i observed the clock on my chimney-piece to have stopped, i decided to go down-stairs again and give directions to the porter. leaving the candle burning and my door open, to be a guide to me on my return, i set forth accordingly. the house was quite dark; but as there were only the three doors on each landing, it was impossible to wander, and i had nothing to do but descend the stairs until i saw the glimmer of the porter's night-light. i counted four flights: no porter. it was possible, of course, that i had reckoned incorrectly; so i went down another and another, and another, still counting as i went, until i had reached the preposterous figure of nine flights. it was now quite clear that i had somehow passed the porter's lodge without remarking it; indeed, i was, at the lowest figure, five pairs of stairs below the street, and plunged in the very bowels of the earth. that my hotel should thus be founded upon catacombs was a discovery of considerable interest; and if i had not been in a frame of mind entirely business-like, i might have continued to explore all night this subterranean empire. but i was bound i must be up betimes on the next morning, and for that end it was imperative that i should find the porter. i faced about accordingly, and counting with painful care, remounted towards the level of the street. five, six, and seven flights i climbed, and still there was no porter. i began to be weary of the job, and reflecting that i was now close to my own room, decided i should go to bed. eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen flights i mounted; and my open door seemed to be as wholly lost to me as the porter and his floating dip. i remembered that the house stood but six stories at its highest point, from which it appeared (on the most moderate computation) i was now three stories higher than the roof. my original sense of amusement was succeeded by a not unnatural irritation. "my room has just got to be here," said i, and i stepped towards the door with outspread arms. there was no door and no wall; in place of either there yawned before me a dark corridor, in which i continued to advance for some time without encountering the smallest opposition. and this in a house whose extreme area scantily contained three small rooms, a narrow landing, and the stair! the thing was manifestly nonsense; and you will scarcely be surprised to learn that i now began to lose my temper. at this juncture i perceived a filtering of light along the floor, stretched forth my hand, which encountered the knob of a door-handle, and without further ceremony entered a room. a young lady was within: she was going to bed, and her toilet was far advanced--or the other way about, if you prefer. "i hope you will pardon this intrusion," said i; "but my room is no. 12, and something has gone wrong with this blamed house." she looked at me a moment; and then, "if you will step outside for a moment, i will take you there," says she. thus, with perfect composure on both sides, the matter was arranged. i waited a while outside her door. presently she rejoined me, in a dressing-gown, took my hand, led me up another flight, which made the fourth above the level of the roof, and shut me into my own room, where (being quite weary after these contraordinary explorations) i turned in and slumbered like a child. i tell you the thing calmly, as it appeared to me to pass; but the next day, when i awoke and put memory in the witness-box, i could not conceal from myself that the tale presented a good many improbable features. i had no mind for the studio, after all, and went instead to the luxembourg gardens, there, among the sparrows and the statues and the falling leaves, to cool and clear my head. it is a garden i have always loved. you sit there in a public place of history and fiction. barras and fouche have looked from these windows. lousteau and de banville (one as real as the other) have rhymed upon these benches. the city tramples by without the railings to a lively measure; and within and about you, trees rustle, children and sparrows utter their small cries, and the statues look on for ever. here, then, in a seat opposite the gallery entrance, i set to work on the events of the last night, to disengage (if it were possible) truth from fiction. the house, by daylight, had proved to be six stories high, the same as ever. i could find, with all my architectural experience, no room in its altitude for those interminable stairways, no width between its walls for that long corridor, where i had tramped at night. and there was yet a greater difficulty. i had read somewhere an aphorism that everything may be false to itself save human nature. a house might elongate or enlarge itself--or seem to do so to a gentleman who had been dining. the ocean might dry up, the rocks melt in the sun, the stars fall from heaven like autumn apples; and there was nothing in these incidents to boggle the philosopher. but the case of the young lady stood upon a different foundation. girls were not good enough, or not good that way, or else they were too good. i was ready to accept any of these views: all pointed to the same conclusion, which i was thus already on the point of reaching, when a fresh argument occurred, and instantly confirmed it. i could remember the exact words we had each said; and i had spoken, and she had replied, in english. plainly, then, the whole affair was an illusion: catacombs, and stairs, and charitable lady, all were equally the stuff of dreams. i had just come to this determination, when there blew a flaw of wind through the autumnal gardens; the dead leaves showered down, and a flight of sparrows, thick as a snowfall, wheeled above my head with sudden pipings. this agreeable bustle was the affair of a moment, but it startled me from the abstraction into which i had fallen like a summons. i sat briskly up, and as i did so my eyes rested on the figure of a lady in a brown jacket and carrying a paint-box. by her side walked a fellow some years older than myself, with an easel under his arm; and alike by their course and cargo i might judge they were bound for the gallery, where the lady was, doubtless, engaged upon some copying. you can imagine my surprise when i recognised in her the heroine of my adventure. to put the matter beyond question our eyes met, and she, seeing herself remembered, and recalling the trim in which i had last beheld her, looked swiftly on the ground with just a shadow of confusion. i could not tell you to-day if she were plain or pretty; but she had behaved with so much good sense, and i had cut so poor a figure in her presence, that i became instantly fired with the desire to display myself in a more favourable light. the young man, besides, was possibly her brother; brothers are apt to be hasty, theirs being a part in which it is possible, at a comparatively early age, to assume the dignity of manhood; and it occurred to me it might be wise to forestall all possible complications by an apology. on this reasoning i drew near to the gallery door, and had hardly got in position before the young man came out. thus it was that i came face to face with my third destiny, for my career has been entirely shaped by these three elements--my father, the capitol of muskegon, and my friend jim pinkerton. as for the young lady, with whom my mind was at the moment chiefly occupied, i was never to hear more of her from that day forward--an excellent example of the blind man's buff that we call life. chapter iii to introduce mr. pinkerton the stranger, i have said, was some years older than myself: a man of a good stature, a very lively face, cordial, agitated manners, and a grey eye as active as a fowl's. "may i have a word with you?" said i. "my dear sir," he replied, "i don't know what it can be about, but you may have a hundred if you like." "you have just left the side of a young lady," i continued, "towards whom i was led (very unintentionally) into the appearance of an offence. to speak to herself would be only to renew her embarrassment, and i seize the occasion of making my apology, and declaring my respect, to one of my own sex who is her friend, and perhaps," i added, with a bow, "her natural protector." "you are a countryman of mine; i know it!" he cried: "i am sure of it by your delicacy to a lady. you do her no more than justice. i was introduced to her the other night at tea, in the apartment of some people, friends of mine; and meeting her again this morning, i could not do less than carry her easel for her. my dear sir, what is your name?" i was disappointed to find he had so little bond with my young lady; and but that it was i who had sought the acquaintance, might have been tempted to retreat. at the same time something in the stranger's eye engaged me. "my name," said i, "is loudon dodd; i am a student of sculpture here from muskegon." "of sculpture?" he cried, as though that would have been his last conjecture. "mine is james pinkerton; i am delighted to have the pleasure of your acquaintance." "pinkerton!" it was now my turn to exclaim. "are you broken-stool pinkerton?" he admitted his identity with a laugh of boyish delight; and indeed any young man in the quarter might have been proud to own a sobriquet thus gallantly acquired. in order to explain the name, i must here digress into a chapter of the history of manners in the nineteenth century, very well worth commemoration for its own sake. in some of the studios at that date, the hazing of new pupils was both barbarous and obscene. two incidents, following one on the heels of the other, tended to produce an advance in civilisation by the means (as so commonly happens) of a passing appeal to savage standards. the first was the arrival of a little gentleman from armenia. he had a fez upon his head and (what nobody counted on) a dagger in his pocket. the hazing was set about in the customary style, and, perhaps in virtue of the victim's headgear, even more boisterously than usual. he bore it at first with an inviting patience; but upon one of the students proceeding to an unpardonable freedom, plucked out his knife and suddenly plunged it in the belly of the jester. this gentleman, i am pleased to say, passed months upon a bed of sickness before he was in a position to resume his studies. the second incident was that which had earned pinkerton his reputation. in a crowded studio, while some very filthy brutalities were being practised on a trembling debutant, a tall pale fellow sprang from his stool and (without the smallest preface or explanation) sang out, "all english and americans to clear the shop!" our race is brutal, but not filthy; and the summons was nobly responded to. every anglo-saxon student seized his stool; in a moment the studio was full of bloody coxcombs, the french fleeing in disorder for the door, the victim liberated and amazed. in this feat of arms both english-speaking nations covered themselves with glory; but i am proud to claim the author of the whole for an american, and a patriotic american at that, being the same gentleman who had subsequently to be held down in the bottom of a box during a performance of l'oncle sam, sobbing at intervals, "my country! o my country!" while yet another (my new acquaintance pinkerton) was supposed to have made the most conspicuous figure in the actual battle. at one blow he had broken his own stool, and sent the largest of his opponents back foremost through what we used to call a "conscientious nude." it appears that, in the continuation of his flight, this fallen warrior issued on the boulevard still framed in the burst canvas. it will be understood how much talk the incident aroused in the students' quarter, and that i was highly gratified to make the acquaintance of my famous countryman. it chanced i was to see more of the quixotic side of his character before the morning was done; for, as we continued to stroll together, i found myself near the studio of a young frenchman whose work i had promised to examine, and in the fashion of the quarter carried up pinkerton along with me. some of my comrades of this date were pretty obnoxious fellows. i could almost always admire and respect the grown-up practitioners of art in paris; but many of those who were still in a state of pupilage were sorry specimens-so much so that i used often to wonder where the painters came from, and where the brutes of students went to. a similar mystery hangs over the intermediate stages of the medical profession, and must have perplexed the least observant. the ruffian, at least, whom i now carried pinkerton to visit, was one of the most crapulous in the quarter. he turned out for our delectation a huge "crust" (as we used to call it) of st. stephen, wallowing in red upon his belly in an exhausted receiver, and a crowd of hebrews in blue, green, and yellow, pelting him--apparently with buns; and while we gazed upon this contrivance, regaled us with a piece of his own recent biography, of which his mind was still very full, and which, he seemed to fancy, represented him in an heroic posture. i was one of those cosmopolitan americans who accept the world (whether at home or abroad) as they find it, and whose favourite part is that of the spectator; yet even i was listening with ill-suppressed disgust, when i was aware of a violent plucking at my sleeve. "is he saying he kicked her down-stairs?" asked pinkerton, white as st. stephen. "yes," said i: "his discarded mistress; and then he pelted her with stones. i suppose that's what gave him the idea for his picture. he has just been alleging the pathetic excuse that she was old enough to be his mother." something like a sob broke from pinkerton. "tell him," he gasped--"i can't speak this language, though i understand a little; i never had any proper education-tell him i'm going to punch his head." "for god's sake do nothing of the sort!" i cried, "they don't understand that sort of thing here"; and i tried to bundle him out. "tell him first what we think of him," he objected. "let me tell him what he looks in the eyes of a pureminded american" "leave that to me," said i, thrusting pinkerton clear through the door. "qu'est-ce qu'il a?"[1] inquired the student. [1] "what's the matter with him?" "monsieur se sent mal au coeur d'avoir trop regarde votre croute,"[2] said i, and made my escape, scarce with dignity, at pinkerton's heels. [2] "the gentleman is sick at his stomach from having looked too long at your daub." "what did you say to him?" he asked. "the only thing that he could feel," was my reply. after this scene, the freedom with which i had ejected my new acquaintance, and the precipitation with which i had followed him, the least i could do was to propose luncheon. i have forgot the name of the place to which i led him, nothing loath; it was on the far side of the luxembourg at least, with a garden behind, where we were speedily set face to face at table, and began to dig into each other's history and character, like terriers after rabbits, according to the approved fashion of youth. pinkerton's parents were from the old country; there, too, i incidentally gathered, he had himself been born, though it was a circumstance he seemed prone to forget. whether he had run away, or his father had turned him out, i never fathomed; but about the age of twelve he was thrown upon his own resources. a travelling tintype photographer picked him up, like a haw out of a hedgerow, on a wayside in new jersey; took a fancy to the urchin; carried him on with him in his wandering life; taught him all he knew himself--to take tin-types (as well as i can make out) and doubt the scriptures; and died at last in ohio at the corner of a road. "he was a grand specimen," cried pinkerton; "i wish you could have seen him, mr. dodd he had an appearance of magnanimity that used to remind me of the patriarchs." on the death of this random protector, the boy inherited the plant and continued the business. "it was a life i could have chosen, mr. dodd!" he cried. "i have been in all the finest scenes of that magnificent continent that we were born to be the heirs of i wish you could see my collection of tin-types; i wish i had them here. they were taken for my own pleasure, and to be a memento: and they show nature in her grandest as well as her gentlest moments." as he tramped the western states and territories, taking tintypes, the boy was continually getting hold of books, good, bad, and indifferent, popular and abstruse, from the novels of sylvanus cobb to euclid's elements, both of which i found (to my almost equal wonder) he had managed to peruse: he was taking stock by the way, of the people, the products, and the country, with an eye unusually observant and a memory unusually retentive; and he was collecting for himself a body of magnanimous and semi-intellectual nonsense, which he supposed to be the natural thoughts and to contain the whole duty of the born american. to be pure-minded, to be patriotic, to get culture and money with both hands and with the same irrational fervour--these appeared to be the chief articles of his creed. in later days (not of course upon this first occasion) i would sometimes ask him why; and he had his answer pat. "to build up the type!" he would cry. "we're all committed to that; we're all under bond to fulfil the american type! loudon, the hope of the world is there. if we fail, like these old feudal monarchies, what is left?" the trade of a tin-typer proved too narrow for the lad's ambition; it was insusceptible of expansion, he explained; it was not truly modern; and by a sudden conversion of front he became a railroad-scalper. the principles of this trade i never clearly understood; but its essence appears to be to cheat the railroads out of their due fare. "i threw my whole soul into it; i grudged myself food and sleep while i was at it; the most practised hands admitted i had caught on to the idea in a month and revolutionised the practice inside of a year," he said. "and there's interest in it, too. it's amusing to pick out some one going by, make up your mind about his character and tastes, dash out of the office, and hit him flying with an offer of the very place he wants to go to. i don't think there was a scalper on the continent made fewer blunders. but i took it only as a stage. i was saving every dollar; i was looking ahead. i knew what i wanted--wealth, education, a refined home, and a conscientious cultured lady for a wife; for, mr. dodd"--this with a formidable outcry--"every man is bound to marry above him: if the woman's not the man's superior, i brand it as mere sensuality. there was my idea, at least. that was what i was saving for; and enough, too! but it isn't every man, i know that--it's far from every man--could do what i did: close up the livest agency in saint jo, where he was coining dollars by the pot, set out alone, without a friend, or a word of french, and settle down here to spend his capital learning art." "was it an old taste?" i asked him, "or a sudden fancy?" "neither, mr. dodd," he admitted. "of course i had learned in my tin-typing excursions to glory and exult in the works of god. but it wasn't that. i just said to myself, "what is most wanted in my age and country? more culture and more art," i said; and i chose the best place, saved my money, and came here to get them." the whole attitude of this young man warmed and shamed me. he had more fire in his little toe than i had in my whole carcase; he was stuffed to bursting with the manly virtues; thrift and courage glowed in him; and even if his artistic vocation seemed (to one of my exclusive tenets) not quite clear, who could predict what might be accomplished by a creature so fullblooded and so inspired with animal and intellectual energy? so, when he proposed that i should come and see his work (one of the regular stages of a latin quarter friendship), i followed him with interest and hope. he lodged parsimoniously at the top of a tall house near the observatory, in a bare room principally furnished with his own trunks, and papered with his own despicable studies. no man has less taste for disagreeable duties than myself; perhaps there is only one subject on which i cannot flatter a man without a blush; but upon that, upon all that touches art, my sincerity is roman. once and twice i made the circuit of his walls in silence, spying in every corner for some spark of merit; he meanwhile following close at my heels, reading the verdict in my face with furtive glances, presenting some fresh study for my inspection with undisguised anxiety, and (after it had been silently weighed in the balances and found wanting) whisking it away with an open gesture of despair. by the time the second round was completed, we were both extremely depressed. "oh!" he groaned, breaking the long silence, "it's quite unnecessary you should speak!" "do you want me to be frank with you? i think you are wasting time," said i. "you don't see any promise?" he inquired, beguiled by some return of hope, and turning upon me the embarrassing brightness of his eye. "not in this still-life here of the melon? one fellow thought it good." it was the least i could do to give the melon a more particular examination; which, when i had done, i could but shake my head. "i am truly sorry, pinkerton," said i, "but i can't advise you to persevere." he seemed to recover his fortitude at the moment, rebounding from disappointment like a man of indiarubber. "well," said he stoutly, "i don't know that i'm surprised. but i'll go on with the course; and throw my whole soul into it too. you mustn't think the time is lost. it's all culture; it will help me to extend my relations when i get back home; it may fit me for a position on one of the illustrateds; and then i can always turn dealer," he said, uttering the monstrous proposition, which was enough to shake the latin quarter to the dust, with entire simplicity. "it's all experience, besides," he continued; "and it seems to me there's a tendency to underrate experience, both as net profit and investment. never mind. that's done with. but it took courage for you to say what you did, and i'll never forget it. here's my hand, mr. dodd. i'm not your equal in culture or talent." "you know nothing about that," i interrupted. "i have seen your work, but you haven't seen mine. "no more i have," he cried; "and let's go see it at once! but i know you are away up; i can feel it here." to say truth, i was almost ashamed to introduce him to my studio--my work, whether absolutely good or bad, being so vastly superior to his. but his spirits were now quite restored; and he amazed me, on the way, with his light-hearted talk and new projects. so that i began at last to understand how matters lay: that this was not an artist who had been deprived of the practice of his single art; but only a business man of very extended interests, informed (perhaps something of the most suddenly) that one investment out of twenty had gone wrong. as a matter of fact, besides (although i never suspected it), he was already seeking consolation with another of the muses, and pleasing himself with the notion that he would repay me for my sincerity, cement our friendship, and (at one and the same blow) restore my estimation of his talents. several times already, when i had been speaking of myself, he had pulled out a writing-pad and scribbled a brief note; and now, when we entered the studio, i saw it in his hand again, and the pencil go to his mouth, as he cast a comprehensive glance round the uncomfortable building. "are you going to make a sketch of it?" i could not help asking, as i unveiled the genius of muskegon. "ah, that's my secret," said he. "never you mind. a mouse can help a lion." he walked round my statue, and had the design explained to him. i had represented muskegon as a young, almost a stripling mother, with something of an indian type; the babe upon her knees was winged, to indicate our soaring future; and her seat was a medley of sculptured fragments, greek, roman, and gothic, to remind us of the older worlds from which we trace our generation. "now, does this satisfy you, mr. dodd?" he inquired, as soon as i had explained to him the main features of the design. "well," i said, "the fellows seem to think it's not a bad bonne femme for a beginner. i don't think it's entirely bad myself here is the best point; it builds up best from here. no, it seems to me it has a kind of merit," i admitted; "but i mean to do better." "ah, that's the word!" cried pinkerton. "there's the word i love!" and he scribbled in his pad. "what in creation ails you?" i inquired. "it's the most commonplace expression in the english language." "better and better!" chuckled pinkerton. "the unconsciousness of genius. lord, but this is coming in beautiful!" and he scribbled again. "if you're going to be fulsome," said i, "i'll close the place of entertainment"; and i threatened to replace the veil upon the genius. "no, no," said he; "don't be in a hurry. give me a point or two. show me what's particularly good." "i would rather you found that out for yourself," said i. "the trouble is," said he, "that i've never turned my attention to sculpture--beyond, of course, admiring it, as everybody must who has a soul. so do just be a good fellow, and explain to me what you like in it, and what you tried for, and where the merit comes in. it'll be all education for me." "well, in sculpture, you see, the first thing you have to consider is the masses. it's, after all, a kind of architecture," i began, and delivered a lecture on that branch of art, with illustrations from my own masterpiece there present--all of which, if you don't mind, or whether you mind or not, i mean to conscientiously omit. pinkerton listened with a fiery interest, questioned me with a certain uncultivated shrewdness, and continued to scratch down notes, and tear fresh sheets from his pad. i found it inspiring to have my words thus taken down like a professor's lecture; and having had no previous experience of the press, i was unaware that they were all being taken down wrong. for the same reason (incredible as it must appear in an american) i never entertained the least suspicion that they were destined to be dished up with a sauce of penny-a-lining gossip; and myself, my person, and my works of art, butchered to make a holiday for the readers of a sunday paper. night had fallen over the genius of muskegon before the issue of my theoretic eloquence was stayed, nor did i separate from my new friend without an appointment for the morrow. i was, indeed, greatly taken with this first view of my countryman, and continued, on further acquaintance, to be interested, amused, and attracted by him in about equal proportions. i must not say he had a fault, not only because my mouth is sealed by gratitude, but because those he had sprang merely from his education, and you could see he had cultivated and improved them like virtues. for all that, i can never deny he was a troublous friend to me, and the trouble began early. it may have been a fortnight later that i divined the secret of the writing-pad. my wretch (it leaked out) wrote letters for a paper in the west, and had filled a part of one of them with descriptions of myself i pointed out to him that he had no right to do so without asking my permission. "why, this is just what i hoped!" he exclaimed. "i thought you didn't seem to catch on; only it seemed too good to be true." "but, my good fellow, you were bound to warn me," i objected. "i know it's generally considered etiquette," he admitted; "but between friends, and when it was only with a view of serving you, i thought it wouldn't matter. i wanted it (if possible) to come on you as a surprise; i wanted you just to waken, like lord byron, and find the papers full of you. you must admit it was a natural thought. and no man likes to boast of a favour beforehand." "but, heavens and earth! how do you know i think it a favour?" i cried. he became immediately plunged in despair. "you think it a liberty," said he; "i see that. i would rather have cut off my hand. i would stop it now, only it's too late; it's published by now. and i wrote it with so much pride and pleasure!" i could think of nothing but how to console him. "o, i daresay it's all right," said i. "i know you meant it kindly, and you would be sure to do it in good taste." "that you may swear to," he cried. "it's a pure, bright, a number 1 paper; the st. jo sunday herald. the idea of the series was quite my own; i interviewed the editor, put it to him straight; the freshness of the idea took him, and i walked out of that office with the contract in my pocket, and did my first paris letter that evening in saint jo. the editor did no more than glance his eye down the headlines. 'you're the man for us,' said he." i was certainly far from reassured by this sketch of the class of literature in which i was to make my first appearance; but i said no more, and possessed my soul in patience, until the day came when i received a copy of a newspaper marked in the corner, "compliments of j. p." i opened it with sensible shrinkings; and there, wedged between an account of a prize-fight and a skittish article upon chiropody--think of chiropody treated with a leer!--i came upon a column and a half in which myself and my poor statue were embalmed. like the editor with the first of the series, i did but glance my eye down the head-lines, and was more than satisfied. another of pinkerton's spicy chats. art practitioners in paris. muskegon's columned capitol. son of millionaire dodd, patriot and artist. "he means to do better." in the body of the text, besides, my eye caught, as it passed, some deadly expressions: "figure somewhat fleshy," "bright, intellectual smile," "the unconsciousness of genius," "'now, mr. dodd,' resumed the reporter, 'what would be your idea of a distinctively american quality in sculpture?'" it was true the question had been asked; it was true, alas! that i had answered: and now here was my reply, or some strange hash of it, gibbeted in the cold publicity of type. i thanked god that my french fellow-students were ignorant of english; but when i thought of the british--of myner (for instance) or the stennises--i think i could have fallen on pinkerton and beat him. to divert my thoughts (if it were possible) from this calamity, i turned to a letter from my father which had arrived by the same post. the envelope contained a strip of newspaper cutting; and my eye caught again, "son of millionaire dodd--figure somewhat fleshy," and the rest of the degrading nonsense. what would my father think of it? i wondered, and opened his manuscript. "my dearest boy," it began, "i send you a cutting which has pleased me very much, from a st. joseph paper of high standing. at last you seem to be coming fairly to the front, and i cannot but reflect with delight and gratitude how very few youths of your age occupy nearly two columns of press-matter all to themselves. i only wish your dear mother had been here to read it over my shoulder; but we will hope she shares my grateful emotion in a better place. of course i have sent a copy to your grandfather and uncle in edinburgh; so you can keep the one i enclose. this jim pinkerton seems a valuable acquaintance; he has certainly great talent; and it is a good general rule to keep in with pressmen." i hope it will be set down to the right side of my account, but i had no sooner read these words, so touchingly silly, than my anger against pinkerton was swallowed up in gratitude. of all the circumstances of my career--my birth, perhaps, excepted--not one had given my poor father so profound a pleasure as this article in the sunday herald. what a fool, then, was i to be lamenting! when i had at last, and for once, and at the cost of only a few blushes, paid back a fraction of my debt of gratitude. so that, when i next met pinkerton, i took things very lightly; my father was pleased, and thought the letter very clever, i told him; for my own part, i had no taste for publicity; thought the public had no concern with the artist, only with his art; and though i owned he had handled it with great consideration, i should take it as a favour if he never did it again. "there it is," he said despondingly. "i've hurt you. you can't deceive me, loudon. it's the want of tact, and it's incurable." he sat down, and leaned his head upon his hand. "i had no advantages when i was young, you see," he added. "not in the least, my dear fellow," said i. "only the next time you wish to do me a service, just speak about my work; leave my wretched person out, and my still more wretched conversation; and above all," i added, with an irrepressible shudder, "don't tell them how i said it! there's that phrase, now: "with a proud, glad smile." who cares whether i smiled or not?" "oh, there now, loudon, you're entirely wrong," he broke in. "that's what the public likes; that's the merit of the thing, the literary value. it's to call up the scene before them; it's to enable the humblest citizen to enjoy that afternoon the same as i did. think what it would have been to me when i was tramping around with my tin-types to find a column and a half of real, cultured conversation--an artist, in his studio abroad, talking of his art,--and to know how he looked as he did it, and what the room was like, and what he had for breakfast; and to tell myself, eating tinned beans beside a creek, that if all went well, the same sort of thing would, sooner or later, happen to myself; why, loudon, it would have been like a peep-hole into heaven!" "well, if it gives so much pleasure," i admitted, "the sufferers shouldn't complain. only give the other fellows a turn." the end of the matter was to bring myself and the journalist in a more close relation. if i know anything at all of human nature--and the if is no mere figure of speech, but stands for honest doubt--no series of benefits conferred, or even dangers shared, would have so rapidly confirmed our friendship as this quarrel avoided, this fundamental difference of taste and training accepted and condoned. chapter iv in which i experience extremes of fortune whether it came from my training and repeated bankruptcy at the commercial college, or by direct inheritance from old loudon, the edinburgh mason, there can be no doubt about the fact that i was thrifty. looking myself impartially over, i believe that is my only manly virtue. during my first two years in paris i not only made it a point to keep well inside of my allowance, but accumulated considerable savings in the bank. you will say, with my masquerade of living as a penniless student, it must have been easy to do so: i should have had no difficulty, however, in doing the reverse. indeed, it is wonderful i did not; and early in the third year, or soon after i had known pinkerton, a singular incident proved it to have been equally wise. quarter-day came, and brought no allowance. a letter of remonstrance was despatched, and, for the first time in my experience, remained unanswered. a cablegram was more effectual; for it brought me at least a promise of attention. "will write at once," my father telegraphed, but i waited long for his letter. i was puzzled, angry, and alarmed; but, thanks to my previous thrift, i cannot say that i was ever practically embarrassed. the embarrassment, the distress, the agony, were all for my unhappy father at home in muskegon, struggling for life and fortune against untoward chances, returning at night, from a day of ill-starred shifts and ventures, to read and perhaps to weep over that last harsh letter from his only child, to which he lacked the courage to reply. nearly three months after time, and when my economies were beginning to run low, i received at last a letter with the customary bills of exchange. "my dearest boy," it ran, "i believe, in the press of anxious business, your letters, and even your allowance, have been somewhile neglected. you must try to forgive your poor old dad, for he has had a trying time; and now when it is over, the doctor wants me to take my shot-gun and go to the adirondacks for a change. you must not fancy i am sick, only over-driven and under the weather. many of our foremost operators have gone down: john t. m'brady skipped to canada with a trunkful of boodle; billy sandwith, charlie downs, joe kaiser, and many others of our leading men in this city bit the dust. but big head dodd has again weathered the blizzard, and i think i have fixed things so that we may be richer than ever before autumn. "now i will tell you, my dear, what i propose. you say you are well advanced with your first statue; start in manfully and finish it, and if your teacher--i can never remember how to spell his name--will send me a certificate that it is up to market standard, you shall have ten thousand dollars to do what you like with, either at home or in paris. i suggest, since you say the facilities for work are so much greater in that city, you would do well to buy or build a little home; and the first thing you know, your dad will be dropping in for a luncheon. indeed, i would come now--for i am beginning to grow old, and i long to see my dear boy,-but there are still some operations that want watching and nursing. tell your friend mr. pinkerton that i read his letters every week; and though i have looked in vain lately for my loudon's name, still i learn something of the life he is leading in that strange old world depicted by an able pen." here was a letter that no young man could possibly digest in solitude. it marked one of those junctures when the confidant is necessary; and the confidant selected was none other than jim pinkerton. my father's message may have had an influence in this decision; but i scarce suppose so, for the intimacy was already far advanced. i had a genuine and lively taste for my compatriot; i laughed at, i scolded, and i loved him. he, upon his side, paid me a kind of dog-like service of admiration, gazing at me from afar off, as at one who had liberally enjoyed those "advantages" which he envied for himself. he followed at heel; his laugh was ready chorus; our friends gave him the nickname of "the henchman." it was in this insidious form that servitude approached me. pinkerton and i read and re-read the famous news: he, i can swear, with an enjoyment as unalloyed and far more vocal than my own. the statue was nearly done: a few days' work sufficed to prepare it for exhibition; the master was approached; he gave his consent; and one cloudless morning of may beheld us gathered in my studio for the hour of trial. the master wore his many-hued rosette; he came attended by two of my french fellow-pupils--friends of mine, and both considerable sculptors in paris at this hour. "corporal john" (as we used to call him), breaking for once those habits of study and reserve which have since carried him so high in the opinion of the world, had left his easel of a morning to countenance a fellow-countryman in some suspense. my dear old romney was there by particular request; for who that knew him would think a pleasure quite complete unless he shared it, or not support a mortification more easily if he were present to console? the party was completed by john myner, the englishman; by the brothers stennis--stennis-aine and stennis-frere, as they used to figure on their accounts at barbizon--a pair of hare-brained scots; and by the inevitable jim, as white as a sheet and bedewed with the sweat of anxiety. i suppose i was little better myself when i unveiled the genius of muskegon. the master walked about it seriously; then he smiled. "it is already not so bad," said he, in that funny english of which he was so proud; "no, already not so bad." we all drew a deep breath of relief; and corporal john (as the most considerable junior present) explained to him it was intended for a public building, a kind of prefecture. "he! quoi?" cried he, relapsing into french. "qu'est-ce que vous me chantez la? o, in america," he added, on further information being hastily furnished. "that is anozer sing. o, very good--very good." the idea of the required certificate had to be introduced to his mind in the light of a pleasantry-the fancy of a nabob little more advanced than the red indians of "fennimore cooperr"; and it took all our talents combined to conceive a form of words that would be acceptable on both sides. one was found, however: corporal john engrossed it in his undecipherable hand, the master lent it the sanction of his name and flourish, i slipped it into an envelope along with one of the two letters i had ready prepared in my pocket, and as the rest of us moved off along the boulevard to breakfast, pinkerton was detached in a cab and duly committed it to the post. the breakfast was ordered at lavenue's, where no one need be ashamed to entertain even the master; the table was laid in the garden; i had chosen the bill of fare myself; on the wine question we held a council of war, with the most fortunate results; and the talk, as soon as the master laid aside his painful english, became fast and furious. there were a few interruptions, indeed, in the way of toasts. the master's health had to be drunk, and he responded in a little well-turned speech, full of neat allusions to my future and to the united states; my health followed; and then my father's must not only be proposed and drunk, but a full report must be despatched to him at once by cablegram--an extravagance which was almost the means of the master's dissolution. choosing corporal john to be his confidant (on the ground, i presume, that he was already too good an artist to be any longer an american except in name) he summed up his amazement in one oftrepeated formula--"c'est barbare!" apart from these genial formalities, we talked, talked of art, and talked of it as only artists can. here in the south seas we talk schooners most of the time; in the quarter we talked art with the like unflagging interest, and perhaps as much result. before very long the master went away; corporal john (who was already a sort of young master) followed on his heels; and the rank and file were naturally relieved by their departure. we were now among equals; the bottle passed, the conversation sped. i think i can still hear the stennis brothers pour forth their copious tirades; dijon, my portly french fellowstudent, drop witticisms, well-conditioned like himself; and another (who was weak in foreign languages) dash hotly into the current of talk with some "je trove que pore oon sontimong de delicacy, corot ...," or some "pour moi corot est le plou ...," and then, his little raft of french foundering at once, scramble silently to shore again. he at least could understand; but to pinkerton, i think the noise, the wine, the sun, the shadows of the leaves, and the esoteric glory of being seated at a foreign festival, made up the whole available means of entertainment. we sat down about half-past eleven; i suppose it was two when, some point arising and some particular picture being instanced, an adjournment to the louvre was proposed. i paid the score, and in a moment we were trooping down the rue de renne. it was smoking hot; paris glittered with that superficial brilliancy which is so agreeable to the man in high spirits, and in moods of dejection so depressing; the wine sang in my ears, it danced and brightened in my eyes. the pictures that we saw that afternoon, as we sped briskly and loquaciously through the immortal galleries, appear to me, upon a retrospect, the loveliest of all; the comments we exchanged to have touched the highest mark of criticism, grave or gay. it was only when we issued again from the museum that a difference of race broke up the party. dijon proposed an adjournment to a cafe, there to finish the afternoon on beer; the elder stennis revolted at the thought, moved for the country--a forest, if possible--and a long walk. at once the english speakers rallied to the name of any exercise; even to me, who have been often twitted with my sedentary habits, the thought of country air and stillness proved invincibly attractive. it appeared, upon investigation, we had just time to hail a cab and catch one of the fast trains for fontainebleau. beyond the clothes we stood in all were destitute of what is called, with dainty vagueness, personal effects; and it was earnestly mooted, on the other side, whether we had not time to call upon the way and pack a satchel? but the stennis boys exclaimed upon our effeminacy. they had come from london, it appeared, a week before with nothing but great-coats and tooth-brushes. no baggage--there was the secret of existence. it was expensive, to be sure, for every time you had to comb your hair a barber must be paid, and every time you changed your linen one shirt must be bought and another thrown away; but anything was better, argued these young gentlemen, than to be the slaves of haversacks. "a fellow has to get rid gradually of all material attachments: that was manhood," said they; "and as long as you were bound down to anything--house, umbrella, or portmanteau--you were still tethered by the umbilical cord." something engaging in this theory carried the most of us away. the two frenchmen, indeed, retired scoffing to their bock, and romney, being too poor to join the excursion on his own resources, and too proud to borrow, melted unobtrusively away. meanwhile the remainder of the company crowded the benches of a cab; the horse was urged, as horses have to be, by an appeal to the pocket of the driver; the train caught by the inside of a minute; and in less than an hour and a half we were breathing deep of the sweet air of the forest, and stretching our legs up the hill from fontainebleau octroi, bound for barbizon. that the leading members of our party covered the distance in fifty-one minutes and a half is, i believe, one of the historic landmarks of the colony; but you will scarce be surprised to learn that i was somewhat in the rear. myner, a comparatively philosophic briton, kept me company in my deliberate advance; the glory of the sun's going down, the fall of the long shadows, the inimitable scent, and the inspiration of the woods, attuned me more and more to walk in a silence which progressively infected my companion; and i remember that, when at last he spoke, i was startled from a deep abstraction. "your father seems to be a pretty good kind of a father," said he. "why don't he come to see you?" i was ready with some dozen of reasons, and had more in stock; but myner, with that shrewdness which made him feared and admired, suddenly fixed me with his eyeglass and asked, "ever press him?" the blood came in my face. no, i had never pressed him; i had never even encouraged him to come. i was proud of him, proud of his handsome looks, of his kind, gentle ways, of that bright face he could show when others were happy; proud, too--meanly proud, if you like--of his great wealth and startling liberalities. and yet he would have been in the way of my paris life, of much of which he would have disapproved. i had feared to expose to criticism his innocent remarks on art; i had told myself, i had even partly believed, he did not want to come; i had been, and still am, convinced that he was sure to be unhappy out of muskegon; in short, i had a thousand reasons, good and bad, not all of which could alter one iota of the fact that i knew he only waited for my invitation. "thank you, myner," said i; "you're a much better fellow than ever i supposed. i'll write to-night." "o, you're a pretty decent sort yourself," returned myner, with more than his usual flippancy of manner, but, as i was gratefully aware, not a trace of his occasional irony of meaning. well, these were brave days, on which i could dwell for ever. brave, too, were those that followed, when pinkerton and i walked paris and the suburbs, viewing and pricing houses for my new establishment, or covered ourselves with dust and returned laden with chinese gods and brass warming-pans from the dealers in antiquities. i found pinkerton well up in the situation of these establishments as well as in the current prices, and with quite a smattering of critical judgment. it turned out he was investing capital in pictures and curiosities for the states, and the superficial thoroughness of the creature appeared in the fact that although he would never be a connoisseur, he was already something of an expert. the things themselves left him as near as may be cold, but he had a joy of his own in understanding how to buy and sell them. in such engagements the time passed until i might very well expect an answer from my father. two mails followed each other, and brought nothing. by the third i received a long and almost incoherent letter of remorse, encouragement, consolation, and despair. from this pitiful document, which (with a movement of piety) i burned as soon as i had read it, i gathered that the bubble of my father's wealth was burst, that he was now both penniless and sick; and that i, so far from expecting ten thousand dollars to throw away in juvenile extravagance, must look no longer for the quarterly remittances on which i lived. my case was hard enough; but i had sense enough to perceive, and decency enough to do, my duty. i sold my curiosities-or, rather, i sent pinkerton to sell them; and he had previously bought, and now disposed of them, so wisely that the loss was trifling. this, with what remained of my last allowance, left me at the head of no less than five thousand francs. five hundred i reserved for my own immediate necessities: the rest i mailed inside of the week to my father at muskegon, where they came in time to pay his funeral expenses. the news of his death was scarcely a surprise and scarce a grief to me. i could not conceive my father a poor man. he had led too long a life of thoughtless and generous profusion to endure the change; and though i grieved for myself, i was able to rejoice that my father had been taken from the battle. i grieved, i say, for myself; and it is probable there were at the same date many thousands of persons grieving with less cause. i had lost my father; i had lost the allowance; my whole fortune (including what had been returned from muskegon) scarce amounted to a thousand francs; and, to crown my sorrows, the statuary contract had changed hands. the new contractor had a son of his own, or else a nephew; and it was signified to me, with business-like plainness, that i must find another market for my pigs. in the meanwhile i had given up my room, and slept on a truckle-bed in the corner of the studio, where, as i read myself to sleep at night, and when i awoke in the morning, that now useless bulk, the genius of muskegon, was ever present to my eyes. poor stone lady! born to be enthroned under the gilded, echoing dome of the new capitol, whither was she now to drift? for what base purposes be ultimately broken up, like an unseaworthy ship? and what should befall her ill-starred artificer, standing with his thousand francs on the threshold of a life so hard as that of the unbefriended sculptor? it was a subject often and earnestly debated by myself and pinkerton. in his opinion i should instantly discard my profession. "just drop it, here and now," he would say. "come back home with me, and let's throw our whole soul into business. i have the capital; you bring the culture. dodd and pinkerton--i never saw a better name for an advertisement; and you can't think, loudon, how much depends upon a name." on my side i would admit that a sculptor should possess one of three things--capital, influence, or an energy only to be qualified as hellish. the first two i had now lost; to the third i never had the smallest claim; and yet i wanted the cowardice (or, perhaps it was the courage) to turn my back on my career without a fight. i told him, besides, that however poor my chances were in sculpture, i was convinced they were yet worse in business, for which i equally lacked taste and aptitude. but upon this head he was my father over again; assured me that i spoke in ignorance; that any intelligent and cultured person was bound to succeed; that i must, besides, have inherited some of my father's fitness; and, at any rate, that i had been regularly trained for that career in the commercial college. "pinkerton," i said, "can't you understand that, as long as i was there, i never took the smallest interest in any stricken thing? the whole affair was poison to me." "it's not possible," he would cry; "it can't be; you couldn't live in the midst of it and not feel the charm; with all your poetry of soul you couldn't help! loudon," he would go on, "you drive me crazy. you expect a man to be all broken up about the sunset, and not to care a dime for a place where fortunes are fought for and made and lost all day; or for a career that consists in studying up life till you have it at your finger-ends, spying out every cranny where you can get your hand in and a dollar out, and standing there in the midst--one foot on bankruptcy, the other on a borrowed dollar, and the whole thing spinning round you like a mill--raking in the stamps, in spite of fate and fortune." to this romance of dickering i would reply with the romance (which is also the virtue) of art: reminding him of those examples of constancy through many tribulations, with which the role of apollo is illustrated--from the case of millet, to those of many of our friends and comrades, who had chosen this agreeable mountain path through life, and were now bravely clambering among rocks and brambles, penniless and hopeful. "you will never understand it, pinkerton," i would say. "you look to the result, you want to see some profit of your endeavours: that is why you could never learn to paint, if you lived to be methusalem. the result is always a fizzle: the eyes of the artist are turned in; he lives for a frame of mind. look at romney now. there is the nature of the artist. he hasn't a cent; and if you offered him to-morrow the command of an army, or the presidentship of the united states, he wouldn't take it, and you know he wouldn't." "i suppose not," pinkerton would cry, scouring his hair with both his hands; "and i can't see why; i can't see what in fits he would be after, not to; i don't seem to rise to these views. of course it's the fault of not having had advantages in early life; but, loudon, i'm so miserably low that it seems to me silly. the fact is," he might add, with a smile, "i don't seem to have the least use for a frame of mind without square meals; and you can't get it out of my head that it's a man's duty to die rich, if he can." "what for?" i asked him once. "o, i don't know," he replied. "why in snakes should anybody want to be a sculptor, if you come to that? i would love to sculp myself. but what i can't see is why you should want to do nothing else. it seems to argue a poverty of nature." whether or not he ever came to understand me--and i have been so tossed about since then that i am not very sure i understand myself--he soon perceived that i was perfectly in earnest; and after about ten days of argument, suddenly dropped the subject, and announced that he was wasting capital, and must go home at once. no doubt he should have gone long before, and had already lingered over his intended time for the sake of our companionship and my misfortune; but man is so unjustly minded that the very fact, which ought to have disarmed, only embittered my vexation. i resented his departure in the light of a desertion; i would not say, but doubtless i betrayed it; and something hang-dog in the man's face and bearing led me to believe he was himself remorseful. it is certain at least that, during the time of his preparations, we drew sensibly apart--a circumstance that i recall with shame. on the last day he had me to dinner at a restaurant which he knew i had formerly frequented, and had only forsworn of late from considerations of economy. he seemed ill at ease; i was myself both sorry and sulky; and the meal passed with little conversation. "now, loudon," said he, with a visible effort, after the coffee was come and our pipes lighted, "you can never understand the gratitude and loyalty i bear you. you don't know what a boon it is to be taken up by a man that stands on the pinnacle of civilisation; you can't think how it's refined and purified me, how it's appealed to my spiritual nature; and i want to tell you that i would die at your door like a dog. i don't know what answer i tried to make, but he cut me short. "let me say it out!" he cried. "i revere you for your whole-souled devotion to art; i can't rise to it, but there's a strain of poetry in my nature, loudon, that responds to it. i want you to carry it out, and i mean to help you." "pinkerton, what nonsense is this?" i interrupted. "now don't get mad, loudon; this is a plain piece of business," said he; "it's done every day; it's even typical. how are all those fellows over here in paris, henderson, sumner, long?--it's all the same story: a young man just plum full of artistic genius on the one side, a man of business on the other who doesn't know what to do with his dollars "but, you fool, you're as poor as a rat," i cried. "you wait till i get my irons in the fire!" returned pinkerton. "i'm bound to be rich; and i tell you i mean to have some of the fun as i go along. here's your first allowance; take it at the hand of a friend; i'm one that holds friendship sacred, as you do yourself it's only a hundred francs; you'll get the same every month, and as soon as my business begins to expand we'll increase it to something fitting. and so far from its being a favour, just let me handle your statuary for the american market, and i'll call it one of the smartest strokes of business in my life." it took me a long time, and it had cost us both much grateful and painful emotion, before i had finally managed to refuse his offer and compounded for a bottle of particular wine. he dropped the subject at last suddenly with a "never mind; that's all done with"; nor did he again refer to the subject, though we passed together the rest of the afternoon, and i accompanied him, on his departure; to the doors of the waiting-room at st. lazare. i felt myself strangely alone; a voice told me that i had rejected both the counsels of wisdom and the helping hand of friendship; and as i passed through the great bright city on my homeward way, i measured it for the first time with the eye of an adversary. chapter v in which i am down on my luck in paris in no part of the world is starvation an agreeable business; but i believe it is admitted there is no worse place to starve in than this city of paris. the appearances of life are there so especially gay, it is so much a magnified beer-garden, the houses are so ornate, the theatres so numerous, the very pace of the vehicles is so brisk, that a man in any deep concern of mind or pain of body is constantly driven in upon himself. in his own eyes, he seems the one serious creature moving in a world of horrible unreality; voluble people issuing from a cafe, the queue at theatre-doors, sunday cabfuls of second-rate pleasureseekers, the bedizened ladies of the pavement, the show in the jewellers' windows--all the familiar sights contributing to flout his own unhappiness, want, and isolation. at the same time, if he be at all after my pattern, he is perhaps supported by a childish satisfaction. "this is life at last," he may tell himself; "this is the real thing. the bladders on which i was set swimming are now empty; my own weight depends upon the ocean: by my own exertions i must perish or succeed; and i am now enduring, in the vivid fact, what i so much delighted to read of in the case of lousteau or lucien, rodolphe or schaunard." of the steps of my misery i cannot tell at length. in ordinary times what were politically called "loans" (although they were never meant to be repaid) were matters of constant course among the students, and many a man has partly lived on them for years. but my misfortune befell me at an awkward juncture. many of my friends were gone; others were themselves in a precarious situation. romney (for instance) was reduced to tramping paris in a pair of country sabots, his only suit of clothes so imperfect (in spite of cunningly-adjusted pins) that the authorities at the luxembourg suggested his withdrawal from the gallery. dijon, too, was on a lee-shore, designing clocks and gas-brackets for a dealer: and the most he could do was to offer me a corner of his studio where i might work. my own studio (it will be gathered) i had by that time lost; and in the course of my expulsion the genius of muskegon was finally separated from her author. to continue to possess a full-sized statue, a man must have a studio, a gallery, or at least the freedom of a back-garden. he cannot carry it about with him, like a satchel, in the bottom of a cab, nor can he cohabit in a garret ten by fifteen with so momentous a companion. it was my first idea to leave her behind at my departure. there, in her birthplace, she might lend an inspiration, methought, to my successor. but the proprietor, with whom i had unhappily quarrelled, seized the occasion to be disagreeable, and called upon me to remove my property. for a man in such straits as i now found myself, the hire of a lorry was a consideration; and yet even that i could have faced, if i had had anywhere to drive to after it was hired. hysterical laughter seized upon me as i beheld (in imagination) myself, the waggoner, and the genius of muskegon, standing in the public view of paris, without the shadow of a destination; perhaps driving at last to the nearest rubbish-heap, and dumping there, among the ordures of a city, the beloved child of my invention. from these extremities i was relieved by a seasonable offer, and i parted from the genius of muskegon for thirty francs. where she now stands, under what name she is admired or criticised, history does not inform us; but i like to think she may adorn the shrubbery of some suburban tea-garden, where holiday shop-girls hang their hats upon the mother, and their swains (by way of an approach of gallantry) identify the winged infant with the god of love. in a certain cabman's eating-house on the outer boulevard i got credit for my midday meal. supper i was supposed not to require, sitting down nightly to the delicate table of some rich acquaintances. this arrangement was extremely ill-considered. my fable, credible enough at first, and so long as my clothes were in good order, must have seemed worse than doubtful after my coat became frayed about the edges, and my boots began to squelch and pipe along the restaurant floors. the allowance of one meal a day, besides, though suitable enough to the state of my finances, agreed poorly with my stomach. the restaurant was a place i had often visited experimentally, to taste the life of students then more unfortunate than myself; and i had never in those days entered it without disgust, or left it without nausea. it was strange to find myself sitting down with avidity, rising up with satisfaction, and counting the hours that divided me from my return to such a table. but hunger is a great magician; and so soon as i had spent my ready cash, and could no longer fill up on bowls of chocolate or hunks of bread, i must depend entirely on that cabman's eating-house, and upon certain rare, long-expected, long-remembered windfalls. dijon (for instance) might get paid for some of his pot-boiling work, or else an old friend would pass through paris; and then i would be entertained to a meal after my own soul, and contract a latin quarter loan, which would keep me in tobacco and my morning coffee for a fortnight. it might be thought the latter would appear the more important. it might be supposed that a life, led so near the confines of actual famine, should have dulled the nicety of my palate. on the contrary, the poorer a man's diet, the more sharply is he set on dainties. the last of my ready cash, about thirty francs, was deliberately squandered on a single dinner; and a great part of my time when i was alone was passed upon the details of imaginary feasts. one gleam of hope visited me--an order for a bust from a rich southerner. he was free-handed, jolly of speech, merry of countenance; kept me in good-humour through the sittings, and, when they were over, carried me off with him to dinner and the sights of paris. i ate well, i laid on flesh; by all accounts i made a favourable likeness of the being, and i confess i thought my future was assured. but when the bust was done, and i had despatched it across the atlantic, i could never so much as learn of its arrival. the blow felled me; i should have lain down and tried no stroke to right myself, had not the honour of my country been involved. for dijon improved the opportunity in the european style, informing me (for the first time) of the manners of america: how it was a den of banditti, without the smallest rudiment of law or order, and debts could be there only collected with a shot-gun. "the whole world knows it," he would say; "you are alone, mon petit loudon--you are alone, to be in ignorance of these facts. the judges of the supreme court fought but the other day with stilettos on the bench at cincinnati. you should read the little book of one of my friends, le touriste dans le far-west, you will see it all there in good french." at last, incensed by days of such discussion, i undertook to prove to him the contrary, and put the affair in the hands of my late father's lawyer. from him i had the gratification of hearing, after a due interval, that my debtor was dead of the yellow fever in key west, and had left his affairs in some confusion. i suppress his name; for though he treated me with cruel nonchalance, it is probable he meant to deal fairly in the end. soon after this a shade of change in my reception at the cabman's eating-house marked the beginning of a new phase in my distress. the first day i told myself it was but fancy; the next, i made quite sure it was a fact; the third, in mere panic i stayed away, and went for forty-eight hours fasting. this was an act of great unreason; for the debtor who stays away is but the more remarked, and the boarder who misses a meal is sure to be accused of infidelity. on the fourth day, therefore, i returned, inwardly quaking. the proprietor looked askance upon my entrance; the waitresses (who were his daughters) neglected my wants, and sniffed at the affected joviality of my salutations; last, and most plain, when i called for a suisse (such as was being served to all the other diners), i was bluntly told there were no more. it was obvious i was near the end of my tether; one plank divided me from want, and now i felt it tremble. i passed a sleepless night, and the first thing in the morning took my way to myner's studio. it was a step i had long meditated and long refrained from; for i was scarce intimate with the englishman; and though i knew him to possess plenty of money, neither his manner nor his reputation were the least encouraging to beggars. i found him at work on a picture, which i was able conscientiously to praise, dressed in his usual tweeds-plain, but pretty fresh, and standing out in disagreeable contrast to my own withered and degraded outfit. as we talked, he continued to shift his eyes watchfully between his handiwork and the fat model, who sat at the far end of the studio in a state of nature, with one arm gallantly arched above her head. my errand would have been difficult enough under the best of circumstances: placed between myner, immersed in his art, and the white, fat, naked female in a ridiculous attitude, i found it quite impossible. again and again i attempted to approach the point, again and again fell back on commendations of the picture; and it was not until the model had enjoyed an interval of repose, during which she took the conversation in her own hands and regaled us (in a soft, weak voice) with details as to her husband's prosperity, her sister's lamented decline from the paths of virtue, and the consequent wrath of her father, a peasant of stern principles, in the vicinity of chalons on the marne--it was not, i say, until after this was over, and i had once more cleared my throat for the attack, and once more dropped aside into some commonplace about the picture, that myner himself brought me suddenly and vigorously to the point. "you didn't come here to talk this rot," said he. "no," i replied sullenly; "i came to borrow money." he painted a while in silence. "i don't think we were ever very intimate?" he asked. "thank you," said i. "i can take my answer," and i made as if to go, rage boiling in my heart. "of course you can go if you like," said myner, "but i advise you to stay and have it out." "what more is there to say?" i cried. "you don't want to keep me here for a needless humiliation?" "look here, dodd; you must try and command your temper," said he. "this interview is of your own seeking, and not mine; if you suppose it's not disagreeable to me, you're wrong; and if you think i will give you money without knowing thoroughly about your prospects, you take me for a fool. besides," he added, "if you come to look at it, you've got over the worst of it by now: you have done the asking, and you have every reason to know i mean to refuse. i hold out no false hopes, but it may be worth your while to let me judge." thus--i was going to say--encouraged, i stumbled through my story; told him i had credit at the cabman's eating-house, but began to think it was drawing to a close; how dijon lent me a corner of his studio, where i tried to model ornaments, figures for clocks, time with the scythe, leda and the swan, musketeers for candlesticks, and other kickshaws, which had never (up to that day) been honoured with the least approval. "and your room?" asked myner. "o, my room is all right, i think," said i. "she is a very good old lady, and has never even mentioned her bill." "because she is a very good old lady, i don't see why she should be fined," observed myner. "what do you mean by that?" i cried. "i mean this," said he. "the french give a great deal of credit amongst themselves; they find it pays on the whole, or the system would hardly be continued; but i can't see where we come in; i can't see that it's honest of us anglo-saxons to profit by their easy ways, and then skip over the channel or (as you yankees do) across the atlantic." "but i'm not proposing to skip," i objected. "exactly," he replied. "and shouldn't you? there's the problem. you seem to me to have a lack of sympathy for the proprietors of cabmen's eating-houses. by your own account you're not getting on; the longer you stay, it'll only be the more out of the pocket of the dear old lady at your lodgings. now, i'll tell you what i'll do: if you consent to go, i'll pay your passage to new york, and your railway fare and expenses to muskegon (if i have the name right), where your father lived, where he must have left friends, and where, no doubt, you'll find an opening. i don't seek any gratitude, for of course you'll think me a beast; but i do ask you to pay it back when you are able. at any rate, that's all i can do. it might be different if i thought you a genius, dodd; but i don't, and i advise you not to." "i think that was uncalled for, at least," said i. "i daresay it was," he returned with the same steadiness. "it seemed to me pertinent; and, besides, when you ask me for money upon no security, you treat me with the liberty of a friend, and it's to be presumed that i can do the like. but the point is, do you accept?" "no, thank you," said i; "i have another string to my bow." "all right," says myner; "be sure it's honest." "honest? honest?" i cried. "what do you mean by calling my honesty in question?" "i won't, if you don't like it," he replied. "you seem to think honesty as easy as blind man's buff: i don't. it's some difference of definition." i went straight from this irritating interview, during which myner had never discontinued painting, to the studio of my old master. only one card remained for me to play, and i was now resolved to play it: i must drop the gentleman and the frock-coat, and approach art in the workman's tunic. "tiens, this little dodd!" cried the master; and then, as his eye fell on my dilapidated clothing, i thought i could perceive his countenance to darken. i made my plea in english; for i knew, if he were vain of anything, it was of his achievement of the island tongue. "master," said i, "will you take me in your studio again--but this time as a workman?" "i sought your fazer was immensely reech?" said he. i explained to him that i was now an orphan, and penniless. he shook his head. "i have betterr workmen waiting at my door," said he, "far betterr workmen. "you used to think something of my work, sir," i pleaded. "somesing, somesing--yes!" he cried; "enough for a son of a reech man--not enough for an orphan. besides, i sought you might learn to be an artist; i did not sink you might learn to be a workman." on a certain bench on the outer boulevard, not far from the tomb of napoleon--a bench shaded at that date by a shabby tree, and commanding a view of muddy roadway and blank wall--i sat down to wrestle with my misery. the weather was cheerless and dark; in three days i had eaten but once; i had no tobacco; my shoes were soaked, my trousers horrid with mire; my humour and all the circumstances of the time and place lugubriously attuned. here were two men who had both spoken fairly of my work while i was rich and wanted nothing; now that i was poor and lacked all: "no genius," said the one; "not enough for an orphan," the other; and the first offered me my passage like a pauper immigrant, and the second refused me a day's wage as a hewer of stone--plain dealing for an empty belly. they had not been insincere in the past; they were not insincere today: change of circumstance had introduced a new criterion, that was all. but if i acquitted my two job's comforters of insincerity, i was yet far from admitting them infallible. artists had been contemned before, and had lived to turn the laugh on their contemners. how old was corot before he struck the vein of his own precious metal? when had a young man been more derided (or more justly so) than the god of my admiration, balzac? or, if i required a bolder inspiration, what had i to do but turn my head to where the gold dome of the invalides glittered against inky squalls, and recall the tale of him sleeping there: from the day when a young artillery sub could be giggled at and nicknamed puss-in-boots by frisky misses, on to the days of so many crowns and so many victories, and so many hundred mouths of cannon, and so many thousand war-hoofs trampling the roadways of astonished europe eighty miles in front of the grand army? to go back, to give up, to proclaim myself a failure, an ambitious failure-first a rocket, then a stick! i, loudon dodd, who had refused all other livelihoods with scorn, and been advertised in the saint joseph sunday herald as a patriot and an artist, to be returned upon my native muskegon like damaged goods, and go the circuit of my father's acquaintance, cap in hand, and begging to sweep offices! no, by napoleon! i would die at my chosen trade; and the two who had that day flouted me should live to envy my success, or to weep tears of unavailing penitence behind my pauper coffin. meantime, if my courage was still undiminished, i was none the nearer to a meal. at no great distance my cabman's eating-house stood, at the tail of a muddy cab-rank, on the shores of a wide thoroughfare of mud, offering (to fancy) a face of ambiguous invitation. i might be received, i might once more fill my belly there; on the other hand, it was perhaps this day the bolt was destined to fall, and i might be expelled instead, with vulgar hubbub. it was policy to make the attempt, and i knew it was policy; but i had already, in the course of that one morning, endured too many affronts, and i felt i could rather starve than face another. i had courage and to spare for the future, none left for that day, courage for the main campaign, but not a spark of it for that preliminary skirmish of the cabman's restaurant. i continued accordingly to sit upon my bench, not far from the ashes of napoleon, now drowsy, now light-headed, now in complete mental obstruction, or only conscious of an animal pleasure in quiescence; and now thinking, planning, and remembering with unexampled clearness, telling myself tales of sudden wealth, and gustfully ordering and greedily consuming imaginary meals, in the course of which i must have dropped asleep. it was towards dark that i was suddenly recalled to famine by a cold souse of rain, and sprang shivering to my feet. for a moment i stood bewildered; the whole train of my reasoning and dreaming passed afresh through my mind; i was again tempted, drawn as if with cords, by the image of the cabman's eating-house, and again recoiled from the possibility of insult. "qui dort dine," thought i to myself; and took my homeward way with wavering footsteps, through rainy streets in which the lamps and the shop-windows now began to gleam, still marshalling imaginary dinners as i went. "ah, monsieur dodd," said the porter, "there has been a registered letter for you. the facteur will bring it again to-morrow." a registered letter for me, who had been so long without one? of what it could possibly contain i had no vestige of a guess, nor did i delay myself guessing; far less form any conscious plan of dishonesty: the lies flowed from me like a natural secretion. "oh," said i, "my remittance at last! what a bother i should have missed it! can you lend me a hundred francs until to-morrow?" i had never attempted to borrow from the porter till that moment; the registered letter was, besides, my warranty; and he gave me what he had--three napoleons and some francs in silver. i pocketed the money carelessly, lingered a while chaffing, strolled leisurely to the door; and then (fast as my trembling legs could carry me) round the corner to the cafe de cluny. french waiters are deft and speedy; they were not deft enough for me: and i had scarce decency to let the man set the wine upon the table or put the butter alongside the bread, before my glass and my mouth were filled. exquisite bread of the cafe cluny, exquisite first glass of old pomard tingling to my wet feet, indescribable first olive culled from the hors d'oeuvre--i suppose, when i come to lie dying, and the lamp begins to grow dim, i shall still recall your savour. over the rest of that meal, and the rest of the evening, clouds lie thick; clouds perhaps of burgundy: perhaps, more properly, of famine and repletion. i remember clearly, at least, the shame, the despair, of the next morning, when i reviewed what i had done, and how i had swindled the poor honest porter: and, as if that were not enough, fairly burnt my ships, and brought bankruptcy home to that last refuge, my garret. the porter would expect his money; i could not pay him; here was scandal in the house; and i knew right well the cause of scandal would have to pack. "what do you mean by calling my honesty in question?" i had cried the day before, turning upon myner. ah, that day before! the day before waterloo, the day before the flood; the day before i had sold the roof over my head, my future, and my self-respect, for a dinner at the cafe cluny! in the midst of these lamentations the famous registered letter came to my door, with healing under its seal. it bore the postmark of san francisco, where pinkerton was already struggling to the neck in multifarious affairs; it renewed the offer of an allowance, which his improved estate permitted him to announce at the figure of two hundred francs a month; and in case i was in some immediate pinch, it enclosed an introductory draft for forty dollars. there are a thousand excellent reasons why a man, in this selfhelpful epoch, should decline to be dependent on another; but the most numerous and cogent considerations all bow to a necessity as stern as mine; and the banks were scarce open ere the draft was cashed. it was early in december that i thus sold myself into slavery, and for six months i dragged a slowly lengthening chain of gratitude and uneasiness. at the cost of some debt i managed to excel myself and eclipse the genius of muskegon, in a small but highly patriotic "standard bearer" for the salon; whither it was duly admitted, where it stood the proper length of days entirely unremarked, and whence it came back to me as patriotic as before. i threw my whole soul (as pinkerton would have phrased it) into clocks and candlesticks; the devil a candlestick-maker would have anything to say to my designs. even when dijon, with his infinite good-humour and infinite scorn for all such journey-work, consented to peddle them in indiscriminately with his own, the dealers still detected and rejected mine. home they returned to me, true as the standard bearer, who now, at the head of quite a regiment of lesser idols, began to grow an eyesore in the scanty studio of my friend. dijon and i have sat by the hour, and gazed upon that company of images. the severe, the frisky, the classical, the louis quinze, were there--from joan of arc in her soldierly cuirass to leda with the swan; nay--and god forgive me for a man that knew better!--the humorous was represented also. we sat and gazed, i say; we criticised, we turned them hither and thither; even upon the closest inspection they looked quite like statuettes; and yet nobody would have a gift of them! vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it out-lives the man: but about the sixth month, when i already owed near two hundred dollars to pinkerton, and half as much again in debts scattered about paris, i awoke one morning with a horrid sentiment of oppression, and found i was alone; my vanity had breathed her last during the night. i dared not plunge deeper in the bog; i saw no hope in my poor statuary; i owned myself beaten at last; and sitting down in my night-shirt, beside the window, whence i had a glimpse of the treetops at the corner of the boulevard, and where the music of its early traffic fell agreeably upon my ear, i penned my farewell to paris, to art, to my whole past life, and my whole former self. "i give in," i wrote. "when the next allowance arrives, i shall go straight out west, where you can do what you like with me." it is to be understood that pinkerton had been, in a sense, pressing me to come from the beginning; depicting his isolation among new acquaintances, "who have none of them your culture," he wrote; expressing his friendship in terms so warm that it sometimes embarrassed me to think how poorly i could echo them; dwelling upon his need for assistance; and the next moment turning about to commend my resolution and press me to remain in paris. "only remember, loudon," he would write, "if you ever do tire of it, there's plenty of work here for you--honest, hard, well-paid work, developing the resources of this practically virgin state. and, of course, i needn't say what a pleasure it would be to me if we were going at it shoulder to shoulder." i marvel, looking back, that i could so long have resisted these appeals, and continue to sink my friend's money in a manner that i knew him to dislike. at least, when i did awake to any sense of my position, i awoke to it entirely, and determined not only to follow his counsel for the future, but, even as regards the past, to rectify his losses. for in this juncture of affairs i called to mind that i was not without a possible resource, and resolved, at whatever cost of mortification, to beard the loudon family in their historic city. in the excellent scots phrase, i made a moonlight flitting, a thing never dignified, but in my case unusually easy. as i had scarce a pair of boots worth portage i deserted the whole of my effects without a pang. dijon fell heir to joan of arc, the standard bearer, and the musketeers. he was present when i bought and frugally stocked my new portmanteau, and it was at the door of the trunk-shop that i took my leave of him, for my last few hours in paris must be spent alone. it was alone, and at a far higher figure than my finances warranted, that i discussed my dinner; alone that i took my ticket at saint lazare; all alone, though in a carriage full of people, that i watched the moon shine on the seine flood with its tufted isles, on rouen with her spires, and on the shipping in the harbour of dieppe. when the first light of the morning called me from troubled slumbers on the deck, i beheld the dawn at first with pleasure; i watched with pleasure the green shores of england rising out of rosy haze; i took the salt air with delight into my nostrils; and then all came back to me--that i was no longer an artist, no longer myself; that i was leaving all i cared for, and returning to all that i detested, the slave of debt and gratitude, a public and a branded failure. from this picture of my own disgrace and wretchedness it is not wonderful if my mind turned with relief to the thought of pinkerton waiting for me, as i knew, with unwearied affection, and regarding me with a respect that i had never deserved, and might therefore fairly hope that i should never forfeit. the inequality of our relation struck me rudely. i must have been stupid, indeed, if i could have considered the history of that friendship without shame--i who had given so little, who had accepted and profited by so much. i had the whole day before me in london, and i determined, at least in words, to set the balance somewhat straighter. seated in the corner of a public place, and calling for sheet after sheet of paper, i poured forth the expression of my gratitude, my penitence for the past, my resolutions for the future. till now, i told him, my course had been mere selfishness. i had been selfish to my father and to my friend, taking their help and denying them (which was all they asked) the poor gratification of my company and countenance. wonderful are the consolations of literature! as soon as that letter was written and posted the consciousness of virtue glowed in my veins like some rare vintage. chapter vi in which i go west i reached my uncle's door next morning in time to sit down with the family to breakfast. more than three years had intervened--almost without mutation in that stationary household--since i had sat there first, a young american freshman, bewildered among unfamiliar dainties (finnan haddock, kippered salmon, baps, and mutton-ham), and had wearied my mind in vain to guess what should be under the tea-cosy. if there were any change at all, it seemed that i had risen in the family esteem. my father's death once fittingly referred to, with a ceremonial lengthening of scots upper lips and wagging of the female head, the party launched at once (god help me!) into the more cheerful topic of my own successes. they had been so pleased to hear such good accounts of me; i was quite a great man now; where was that beautiful statue of the genius of something or other?" you haven't it here? not here? really?" asks the sprightliest of my cousins, shaking curls at me; as though it were likely i had brought it in a cab, or kept it concealed about my person like a birthday surprise. in the bosom of this family, unaccustomed to the tropical nonsense of the west, it became plain the sunday herald and poor blethering pinkerton had been accepted for their face. it is not possible to invent a circumstance that could have more depressed me; and i am conscious that i behaved all through that breakfast like a whipped schoolboy. at length, the meal and family prayers being both happily over, i requested the favour of an interview with uncle adam on "the state of my affairs." at sound of this ominous expression the good man's face conspicuously lengthened; and when my grandfather, having had the proposition repeated to him (for he was hard of hearing), announced his intention of being present at the interview, i could not but think that uncle adam's sorrow kindled into momentary irritation. nothing, however, but the usual grim cordiality appeared upon the surface; and we all three passed ceremoniously to the adjoining library, a gloomy theatre for a depressing piece of business. my grandfather charged a clay pipe, and sat tremulously smoking in a corner of the fireless chimney; behind him, although the morning was both chill and dark, the window was partly open and the blind partly down: i cannot depict what an air he had of being out of place, like a man shipwrecked there. uncle adam had his station at the business-table in the midst. valuable rows of books looked down upon the place of torture; and i could hear sparrows chirping in the garden, and my sprightly cousin already banging the piano and pouring forth an acid stream of song from the drawingroom overhead. it was in these circumstances that, with all brevity of speech and a certain boyish sullenness of manner, looking the while upon the floor, i informed my relatives of my financial situation: the amount i owed pinkerton; the hopelessness of any maintenance from sculpture; the career offered me in the states; and how, before becoming more beholden to a stranger, i had judged it right to lay the case before my family. "i am only sorry you did not come to me at first," said uncle adam. "i take the liberty to say it would have been more decent." "i think so too, uncle adam," i replied; "but you must bear in mind i was ignorant in what light you might regard my application." "i hope i would never turn my back on my own flesh and blood," he returned with emphasis; but, to my anxious ear, with more of temper than affection. "i could never forget you were my sister's son. i regard this as a manifest duty. i have no choice but to accept the entire responsibility of the position you have made." i did not know what else to do but murmur "thank you." "yes," he pursued, "and there is something providential in the circumstance that you come at the right time. in my old firm there is a vacancy; they call themselves italian warehousemen now," he continued, regarding me with a twinkle of humour; "so you may think yourself in luck: we were only grocers in my day. i shall place you there to-morrow." "stop a moment, uncle adam," i broke in. "this is not at all what i am asking. i ask you to pay pinkerton, who is a poor man. i ask you to clear my feet of debt, not to arrange my life or any part of it." "if i wished to be harsh, i might remind you that beggars cannot be choosers," said my uncle; "and as to managing your life, you have tried your own way already, and you see what you have made of it. you must now accept the guidance of those older and (whatever you may think of it) wiser than yourself. all these schemes of your friend (of whom i know nothing, by the by) and talk of openings in the west, i simply disregard. i have no idea whatever of your going troking across a continent on a wild-goose chase. in this situation, which i am fortunately able to place at your disposal, and which many a well-conducted young man would be glad to jump at, you will receive, to begin with, eighteen shillings a week." "eighteen shillings a week!" i cried. "why, my poor friend gave me more than that for nothing!" "and i think it is this very friend you are now trying to repay?" observed my uncle, with an air of one advancing a strong argument. "aadam," said my grandfather. "i'm vexed you should be present at this business," quoth uncle adam, swinging rather obsequiously towards the stonemason; "but i must remind you it is of your own seeking." "aadam!" repeated the old man. "well, sir, i am listening," says my uncle. my grandfather took a puff or two in silence: and then, "ye're makin' an awfu' poor appearance, aadam," said he. my uncle visibly reared at the affront. "i'm sorry you should think so," said he, "and still more sorry you should say so before present company." "a believe that; a ken that, aadam," returned old loudon dryly; "and the curiis thing is, i'm no very carin'.--see here, ma man," he continued, addressing himself to me. "a'm your grandfaither, amn't i not? never you mind what aadam says. a'll see justice dune ye. a'm rich." "father," said uncle adam, "i would like one word with you in private." i rose to go. "set down upon your hinderlands," cried my grandfather, almost savagely. "if aadam has anything to say, let him say it. it's me that has the money here; and, by gravy! i'm goin' to be obeyed." upon this scurvy encouragement it appeared that my uncle had no remark to offer: twice challenged to "speak out and be done with it," he twice sullenly declined; and i may mention that about this period of the engagement i began to be sorry for him. "see here, then, jeannie's yin!" resumed my grandfather. "a'm goin' to give ye a set-off. your mither was always my fav'rite, for a never could agree with aadam. a like ye fine yoursel'; there's nae noansense aboot ye; ye've a fine nayteral idee of builder's work; ye've been to france, where, they tell me, they're grand at the stuccy. a splendid thing for ceilin's the stuccy! and it's a vailyable disguise, too; a don't believe there's a builder in scotland has used more stuccy than me. but, as a was sayin', if ye'll follie that trade, with the capital that a'm goin' to give ye, ye may live yet to be as rich as mysel'. ye see, ye would have always had a share of it when a was gone; it appears ye're needin' it now; well, ye'll get the less, as is only just and proper." uncle adam cleared his throat. "this is very handsome, father," said he; "and i am sure loudon feels it so. very handsome, and, as you say, very just; but will you allow me to say that it had better, perhaps, be put in black and white?" the enmity always smouldering between the two men, at this ill-judged interruption almost burst in flame. the stonemason turned upon his offspring, his long upper lip pulled down for all the world like a monkey's. he stared a while in virulent silence; and then "get gregg!" said he. the effect of these words was very visible. "he will be gone to his office," stammered my uncle. "get gregg!" repeated my grandfather. "i tell you, he will be gone to his office," reiterated adam. "and i tell ye, he's takin' his smoke," retorted the old man. "very well, then," cried my uncle, getting to his feet with some alacrity, as upon a sudden change of thought, "i will get him myself" "ye will not!" cried my grandfather. "ye will sit there upon your hinderland." "then how the devil am i to get him?" my uncle broke forth, with not unnatural petulance. my grandfather (having no possible answer) grinned at his son with the malice of a schoolboy; then he rang the bell. "take the garden key," said uncle adam to the servant; "go over to the garden, and if mr. gregg the lawyer is there (he generally sits under the red hawthorn), give him old mr. loudon's compliments, and will he step in here for a moment?" "mr. gregg the lawyer!" at once i understood (what had been puzzling me) the significance of my grandfather and the alarm of my poor uncle: the stonemason's will, it was supposed, hung trembling in the balance. "look here, grandfather," i said, "i didn't want any of this. all i wanted was a loan of, say, two hundred pounds. i can take care of myself; i have prospects and opportunities, good friends in the states----" the old man waved me down. "it's me that speaks here," he said curtly; and we waited the coming of the lawyer in a triple silence. he appeared at last, the maid ushering him in--a spectacled, dry, but not ungeniallooking man. "here, gregg," cried my grandfather, "just a question: what has aadam got to do with my will?" "i'm afraid i don't quite understand," said the lawyer, staring. "what has he got to do with it?" repeated the old man, smiting with his fist upon the arm of his chair. "is my money mine's, or is it aadam's? can aadam interfere?" "o, i see," said mr. gregg. "certainly not. on the marriage of both of your children a certain sum was paid down and accepted in full of legitim. you have surely not forgotten the circumstance, mr. loudon?" "so that, if i like," concluded my grandfather, hammering out his words, "i can leave every doit i die possessed of to the great magunn?"--meaning probably the great mogul. "no doubt of it," replied gregg, with a shadow of a smile. "ye hear that, aadam?" asked my grandfather. "i may be allowed to say i had no need to hear it," said my uncle. "very well," says my grandfather. "you and jeannie's yin can go for a bit walk. me and gregg has business." when once i was in the hall alone with uncle adam, i turned to him, sick at heart. "uncle adam," i said, "you can understand, better than i can say, how very painful all this is to me." "yes, i am sorry you have seen your grandfather in so unamiable a light," replied this extraordinary man. "you shouldn't allow it to affect your mind, though. he has sterling qualities, quite an extraordinary character; and i have no fear but he means to behave handsomely to you." his composure was beyond my imitation: the house could not contain me, nor could i even promise to return to it: in concession to which weakness, it was agreed that i should call in about an hour at the office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) uncle adam should waylay and inform of the arrangement. i suppose there was never a more topsy-turvy situation; you would have thought it was i who had suffered some rebuff, and that iron-sided adam was a generous conqueror who scorned to take advantage. it was plain enough that i was to be endowed: to what extent and upon what conditions i was now left for an hour to meditate in the wide and solitary thoroughfares of the new town, taking counsel with street-corner statues of george iv. and william pitt, improving my mind with the pictures in the window of a music-shop, and renewing my acquaintance with edinburgh east wind. by the end of the hour i made my way to mr. gregg's office, where i was placed, with a few appropriate words, in possession of a cheque for two thousand pounds and a small parcel of architectural works. "mr. loudon bids me add," continued the lawyer, consulting a little sheet of notes, "that although these volumes are very valuable to the practical builder, you must be careful not to lose originality. he tells you also not to be "hadden doun"--his own expression--by the theory of strains, and that portland cement, properly sanded, will go a long way." i smiled, and remarked that i supposed it would. "i once lived in one of my excellent client's houses," observed the lawyer; "and i was tempted, in that case, to think it had gone far enough." "under these circumstances, sir," said i, "you will be rather relieved to hear that i have no intention of becoming a builder." at this he fairly laughed; and, the ice being broken, i was able to consult him as to my conduct. he insisted i must return to the house--at least, for luncheon, and one of my walks with mr. loudon. "for the evening, i will furnish you with an excuse, if you please," said he, "by asking you to a bachelor dinner with myself but the luncheon and the walk are unavoidable. he is an old man, and, i believe, really fond of you; he would naturally feel aggrieved if there were any appearance of avoiding him; and as for mr. adam, do you know, i think your delicacy out of place.... and now, mr. dodd, what are you to do with this money?" ay, there was the question. with two thousand pounds-fifty thousand francs--i might return to paris and the arts, and be a prince and millionaire in that thrifty latin quarter. i think i had the grace, with one corner of my mind, to be glad that i had sent the london letter: i know very well that with the rest and worst of me, i repented bitterly of that precipitate act. on one point, however, my whole multiplex estate of man was unanimous: the letter being gone, there was no help but i must follow. the money was accordingly divided in two unequal shares: for the first, mr. gregg got me a bill in the name of dijon to meet my liabilities in paris; for the second, as i had already cash in hand for the expenses of my journey, he supplied me with drafts on san francisco. the rest of my business in edinburgh, not to dwell on a very agreeable dinner with the lawyer or the horrors of the family luncheon, took the form of an excursion with the stonemason, who led me this time to no suburb or work of his old hands, but, with an impulse both natural and pretty, to that more enduring home which he had chosen for his clay. it was in a cemetery, by some strange chance immured within the bulwarks of a prison; standing, besides, on the margin of a cliff, crowded with elderly stone memorials, and green with turf and ivy. the east wind (which i thought too harsh for the old man) continually shook the boughs, and the thin sun of a scottish summer drew their dancing shadows. "i wanted ye to see the place," said he. "yon's the stane. euphemia ross: that was my goodwife, your grandmither--hoots! i'm wrong; that was my first yin; i had no bairns by her;--yours is the second, mary murray, born 1819, died 1850; that's her--a fine, plain, decent sort of a creature, tak' her a'thegether. alexander loudon, born seventeen ninety-two, died-and then a hole in the ballant: that's me. alexander's my name. they ca'd me ecky when i was a boy. eh, ecky! ye're an awfu' auld man!" i had a second and sadder experience of graveyards at my next alighting-place, the city of muskegon, now rendered conspicuous by the dome of the new capitol encaged in scaffolding. it was late in the afternoon when i arrived, and raining; and as i walked in great streets, of the very name of which i was quite ignorant--double, treble, and quadruple lines of horsecars jingling by--hundred-fold wires of telegraph and telephone matting heaven above my head--huge, staring houses, garish and gloomy, flanking me from either hand--the thought of the rue racine, ay, and of the cabman's eating-house, brought tears to my eyes. the whole monotonous babel had grown--or, i should rather say, swelled--with such a leap since my departure that i must continually inquire my way; and the very cemetery was brand-new. death, however, had been active; the graves were already numerous, and i must pick my way in the rain among the tawdry sepulchres of millionaires, and past the plain black crosses of hungarian labourers, till chance or instinct led me to the place that was my father's. the stone had been erected (i knew already) "by admiring friends"; i could now judge their taste in monuments. their taste in literature, methought, i could imagine, and i refrained from drawing near enough to read the terms of the inscription. but the name was in larger letters and stared at me--james k. dodd. "what a singular thing is a name!" i thought; "how it clings to a man, and continually misrepresents, and then survives him!" and it flashed across my mind, with a mixture of regret and bitter mirth, that i had never known, and now probably never should know, what the k had represented. king, kilter, kay, kaiser, i went, running over names at random, and then stumbled, with ludicrous misspelling, on kornelius, and had nearly laughed aloud. i have never been more childish; i suppose (although the deeper voices of my nature seemed all dumb) because i have never been more moved. and at this last incongruous antic of my nerves i was seized with a panic of remorse, and fled the cemetery. scarce less funereal was the rest of my experience in muskegon, where, nevertheless, i lingered, visiting my father's circle, for some days. it was in piety to him i lingered; and i might have spared myself the pain. his memory was already quite gone out. for his sake, indeed, i was made welcome; and for mine the conversation rolled a while with laborious effort on the virtues of the deceased. his former comrades dwelt, in my company, upon his business talents or his generosity for public purposes: when my back was turned, they remembered him no more. my father had loved me; i had left him alone, to live and die among the indifferent; now i returned to find him dead and buried and forgotten. unavailing penitence translated itself in my thoughts to fresh resolve. there was another poor soul who loved me--pinkerton. i must not be guilty twice of the same error. a week perhaps had been thus wasted, nor had i prepared my friend for the delay. accordingly, when i had changed trains at council bluffs, i was aware of a man appearing at the end of the car with a telegram in his hand and inquiring whether there were any one aboard "of the name of london dodd"? i thought the name near enough, claimed the despatch, and found it was from pinkerton: "what day do you arrive? awfully important." i sent him an answer, giving day and hour, and at ogden found a fresh despatch awaiting me: "that will do. unspeakable relief. meet you at sacramento." in paris days i had a private name for pinkerton: "the irrepressible" was what i had called him in hours of bitterness, and the name rose once more on my lips. what mischief was he up to now? what new bowl was my benignant monster brewing for his frankenstein? in what new imbroglio should i alight on the pacific coast? my trust in the man was entire, and my distrust perfect. i knew he would never mean amiss; but i was convinced he would almost never (in my sense) do aright. i suppose these vague anticipations added a shade of gloom to that already gloomy place of travel: nebraska, wyoming, utah, nevada, scowled in my face at least, and seemed to point me back again to that other native land of mine, the latin quarter. but when the sierras had been climbed, and the train, after so long beating and panting, stretched itself upon the downward track--when i beheld that vast extent of prosperous country rolling seaward from the woods and the blue mountains, that illimitable spread of rippling corn, the trees growing and blowing in the merry weather, the country boys thronging aboard the train with figs and peaches, and the conductors, and the very darky stewards, visibly exulting in the change--up went my soul like a balloon; care fell from his perch upon my shoulders; and when i spied my pinkerton among the crowd at sacramento, i thought of nothing but to shout and wave for him, and grasp him by the hand, like what he was--my dearest friend. "o, loudon!" he cried; "man, how i've pined for you! and you haven't come an hour too soon. you're known here and waited for; i've been booming you already: you're billed for a lecture to-morrow night: "student life in paris, grave and gay": twelve hundred places booked at the last stock! tut, man, you're looking thin! here, try a drop of this." and he produced a case bottle, staringly labelled pinkerton's thirteen star golden state brandy, warranted entire. "god bless me!" said i, gasping and winking after my first plunge into this fiery fluid; "and what does 'warranted entire' mean?" "why, loudon, you ought to know that!" cried pinkerton. "it's real, copper-bottomed english; you see it on all the old-time wayside hostelries over there." "but if i'm not mistaken, it means something warranted entirely different," said i, "and applies to the public-house, and not the beverages sold." "it's very possible," said jim, quite unabashed. "it's effective, anyway; and i can tell you, sir, it has boomed that spirit: it goes now by the gross of cases. by the way, i hope you won't mind; i've got your portrait all over san francisco for the lecture, enlarged from that carte de visite: "h. loudon dodd, the americo-parisienne sculptor." here's a proof of the small handbills; the posters are the same, only in red and blue, and the letters fourteen by one." i looked at the handbill, and my head turned. what was the use of words? why seek to explain to pinkerton the knotted horrors of "americo-parisienne"? he took an early occasion to point it out as "rather a good phrase; gives the two sides at a glance: i wanted the lecture written up to that." even after we had reached san francisco, and at the actual physical shock of my own effigy placarded on the streets i had broken forth in petulant words, he never comprehended in the least the ground of my aversion. "if i had only known you disliked red lettering!" was as high as he could rise. "you are perfectly right: a clear-cut black is preferable, and shows a great deal further. the only thing that pains me is the portrait: i own i thought that a success. i'm dreadfully and truly sorry, my dear fellow: i see now it's not what you had a right to expect; but i did it, loudon, for the best; and the press is all delighted." at the moment, sweeping through green tule swamps, i fell direct on the essential. "but, pinkerton," i cried, "this lecture is the maddest of your madnesses. how can i prepare a lecture in thirty hours?" "all done, loudon!" he exclaimed in triumph. "all ready. trust me to pull a piece of business through. you'll find it all type-written in my desk at home. i put the best talent of san francisco on the job: harry miller, the brightest pressman in the city." and so he rattled on, beyond reach of my modest protestations, blurting out his complicated interests, crying up his new acquaintances, and ever and again hungering to introduce me to some "whole-souled, grand fellow, as sharp as a needle," from whom, and the very thought of whom, my spirit shrank instinctively. well, i was in for it--in for pinkerton, in for the portrait, in for the type-written lecture. one promise i extorted--that i was never again to be committed in ignorance. even for that, when i saw how its extortion puzzled and depressed the irrepressible, my soul repented me, and in all else i suffered myself to be led uncomplaining at his chariot-wheels. the irrepressible, did i say? the irresistible were nigher truth. but the time to have seen me was when i sat down to harry miller's lecture. he was a facetious dog, this harry miller. he had a gallant way of skirting the indecent, which in my case produced physical nausea, and he could be sentimental and even melodramatic about grisettes and starving genius. i found he had enjoyed the benefit of my correspondence with pinkerton; adventures of my own were here and there horridly misrepresented, sentiments of my own echoed and exaggerated till i blushed to recognise them. i will do harry miller justice: he must have had a kind of talent, almost of genius; all attempts to lower his tone proving fruitless, and the harry-millerism ineradicable. nay, the monster had a certain key of style, or want of style, so that certain milder passages, which i sought to introduce, discorded horribly and impoverished, if that were possible, the general effect. by an early hour of the numbered evening i might have been observed at the sign of "the poodle dog" dining with my agent--so pinkerton delighted to describe himself. thence, like an ox to the slaughter, he led me to the hall, where i stood presently alone, confronting assembled san francisco, with no better allies than a table, a glass of water, and a mass of manuscript and typework, representing harry miller and myself i read the lecture; for i had lacked both time and will to get the trash by heart--read it hurriedly, humbly, and with visible shame. now and then i would catch in the auditorium an eye of some intelligence, now and then in the manuscript would stumble on a richer vein of harry miller, and my heart would fail me, and i gabbled. the audience yawned, it stirred uneasily, it muttered, grumbled, and broke forth at last in articulate cries of "speak up!" and "nobody can hear!" i took to skipping, and, being extremely illacquainted with the country, almost invariably cut in again in the unintelligible midst of some new topic. what struck me as extremely ominous, these misfortunes were allowed to pass without a laugh. indeed, i was beginning to fear the worst, and even personal indignity, when all at once the humour of the thing broke upon me strongly. i could have laughed aloud, and, being again summoned to speak up, i faced my patrons for the first time with a smile. "very well," i said, "i will try, though i don't suppose anybody wants to hear, and i can't see why anybody should." audience and lecturer laughed together till the tears ran down, vociferous and repeated applause hailed my impromptu sally. another hit which i made but a little after, as i turned three pages of the copy--"you see, i am leaving out as much as i possibly can"--increased the esteem with which my patrons had begun to regard me; and when i left the stage at last, my departing form was cheered with laughter, stamping, shouting, and the waving of hats. pinkerton was in the waiting-room, feverishly jotting in his pocket-book. as he saw me enter, he sprang up, and i declare the tears were trickling on his cheeks. "my dear boy," he cried, "i can never forgive myself, and you can never forgive me. never mind, i did it for the best. and how nobly you clung on! i dreaded we should have had to return the money at the doors." "it would have been more honest if we had," said i. the pressmen followed me, harry miller in the front ranks; and i was amazed to find them, on the whole, a pleasant set of lads, probably more sinned against than sinning, and even harry miller apparently a gentleman. i had in oysters and champagne--for the receipts were excellent--and, being in a high state of nervous tension, kept the table in a roar. indeed, i was never in my life so well inspired as when i described my vigil over harry miller's literature or the series of my emotions as i faced the audience. the lads vowed i was the soul of good company and the prince of lecturers; and--so wonderful an institution is the popular press--if you had seen the notices next day in all the papers you must have supposed my evening's entertainment an unqualified success. i was in excellent spirits when i returned home that night, but the miserable pinkerton sorrowed for us both. "o, loudon," he said, "i shall never forgive myself. when i saw you didn't catch on to the idea of the lecture, i should have given it myself!" chapter vii irons in the fire opes strepitumque the food of the body differs not so greatly for the fool or the sage, the elephant or the cock-sparrow; and similar chemical elements, variously disguised, support all mortals. a brief study of pinkerton in his new setting convinced me of a kindred truth about that other and mental digestion by which we extract what is called "fun for our money" out of life. in the same spirit as a schoolboy deep in mayne reid handles a dummy gun and crawls among imaginary forests, pinkerton sped through kearney street upon his daily business, representing to himself a highly-coloured part in life's performance, and happy for hours if he should have chanced to brush against a millionaire. reality was his romance; he gloried to be thus engaged: he wallowed in his business. suppose a man to dig up a galleon on the coromandel coast, his rakish schooner keeping the while an offing under easy sail, and he, by the blaze of a great fire of wreckwood, to measure ingots by the bucketful on the uproarious beach; such an one might realise a greater material spoil; he should have no more profit of romance than pinkerton when he cast up his weekly balance-sheet in a bald office. every dollar gained was like something brought ashore from a mysterious deep; every venture made was like a diver's plunge; and as he thrust his bold hand into the plexus of the money-market he was delightedly aware of how he shook the pillars of existence, turned out men, as at a battle-cry, to labour in far countries, and set the gold twitching in the drawers of millionaires. i could never fathom the full extent of his speculations; but there were five separate businesses which he avowed and carried like a banner. the thirteen star golden state brandy, warranted entire (a very flagrant distillation) filled a great part of his thoughts, and was kept before the public in an eloquent but misleading treatise, "why drink french brandy? a word to the wise." he kept an office for advertisers, counselling, designing, acting as middleman with printers and bill-stickers, for the inexperienced or the uninspired: the dull haberdasher came to him for ideas, the smart theatrical agent for his local knowledge, and one and all departed with a copy of his pamphlet, "how, when, and where; or, the advertiser's vade-mecum." he had a tug chartered every saturday afternoon and night, carried people outside the heads, and provided them with lines and bait for six hours' fishing, at the rate of five dollars a person. i am told that some of them (doubtless adroit anglers) made a profit on the transaction. occasionally he bought wrecks and condemned vessels; these latter (i cannot tell you how) found their way to sea again under aliases, and continued to stem the waves triumphantly enough under the colours of bolivia or nicaragua. lastly, there was a certain agricultural engine, glorying in a great deal of vermilion and blue paint, and filling (it appeared) a "long-felt want," in which his interest was something like a tenth. this for the face or front of his concerns. "on the outside," as he phrased it, he was variously and mysteriously engaged. no dollar slept in his possession; rather, he kept all simultaneously flying, like a conjurer with oranges. my own earnings, when i began to have a share, he would but show me for a moment, and disperse again, like those illusive money gifts which are flashed in the eyes of childhood, only to be entombed in the missionary-box. and he would come down radiant from a weekly balance-sheet, clap me on the shoulder, declare himself a winner by gargantuan figures, and prove destitute of a quarter for a drink. "what on earth have you done with it?" i would ask. "into the mill again; all re-invested!" he would cry, with infinite delight. "investment was ever his word. he could not bear what he called gambling "never touch stocks, loudon," he would say; "nothing but legitimate business." and yet, heaven knows, many an indurated gambler might have drawn back appalled at the first hint of some of pinkerton's investments! one which i succeeded in tracking home, and instance for a specimen, was a seventh share in the charter of a certain ill-starred schooner bound for mexico--to smuggle weapons on the one trip, and cigars upon the other. the latter end of this enterprise, involving (as it did) shipwreck, confiscation, and a lawsuit with the underwriters, was too painful to be dwelt upon at length. "it's proved a disappointment," was as far as my friend would go with me in words; but i knew, from observation, that the fabric of his fortunes tottered. for the rest, it was only by accident i got wind of the transaction; for pinkerton, after a time, was shy of introducing me to his arcana: the reason you are to hear presently. the office which was (or should have been) the point of rest for so many evolving dollars stood in the heart of the city--a high and spacious room, with many plateglass windows. a glazed cabinet of polished redwood offered to the eye a regiment of some two hundred bottles, conspicuously labelled. these were all charged with pinkerton's thirteen star, although from across the room it would have required an expert to distinguish them from the same number of bottles of courvoisier. i used to twit my friend with this resemblance, and propose a new edition of the pamphlet, with the title thus improved, "why drink french brandy, when we give you the same labels?" the doors of the cabinet revolved all day upon their hinges; and if there entered any one who was a stranger to the merits of the brand, he departed laden with a bottle. when i used to protest at this extravagance, "my dear loudon," pinkerton would cry, "you don't seem to catch on to business principles! the prime cost of the spirit is literally nothing. i couldn't find a cheaper advertisement if i tried." against the side-post of the cabinet there leaned a gaudy umbrella, preserved there as a relic. it appears that when pinkerton was about to place thirteen star upon the market, the rainy season was at hand. he lay dark, almost in penury, awaiting the first shower, at which, as upon a signal, the main thoroughfares became dotted with his agents, vendors of advertisements; and the whole world of san francisco, from the businessman fleeing for the ferryboat, to the lady waiting at the corner for her car, sheltered itself under umbrellas with this strange device: are you, wet? try thirteen star. "it was a mammoth boom," said pinkerton, with a sigh of delighted recollection. "there wasn't another umbrella to be seen. i stood at this window, loudon, feasting my eyes; and i declare, i felt like vanderbilt." and it was to this neat application of the local climate that he owed, not only much of the sale of thirteen star, but the whole business of his advertising agency. the large desk (to resume our survey of the office) stood about the middle, knee-deep in stacks of handbills and posters of "why drink french brandy?" and "the advertiser's vade-mecum." it was flanked upon the one hand by two female type-writers, who rested not between the hours of nine and four, and upon the other by a model of the agricultural machine. the walls, where they were not broken by telephone-boxes and a couple of photographs--one representing the wreck of the james l. moody on a bold and broken coast, the other the saturday tug alive with amateur fishers-almost disappeared under oil-paintings gaudily framed. many of these were relics of the latin quarter, and i must do pinkerton the justice to say that none of them were bad, and some had remarkable merit. they went off slowly, but for handsome figures; and their places were progressively supplied with the work of local artists. these last it was one of my first duties to review and criticise. some of them were villainous, yet all were saleable. i said so; and the next moment saw myself, the figure of a miserable renegade, bearing arms in the wrong camp. i was to look at pictures thenceforward, not with the eye of the artist, but the dealer; and i saw the stream widen that divided me from all i loved. "now, loudon," pinkerton had said, the morning after the lecture,--"now, loudon, we can go at it shoulder to shoulder. this is what i have longed for: i wanted two heads and four arms; and now i have 'em. you'll find it's just the same as art--all observation and imagination; only more movement. just wait till you begin to feel the charm!" i might have waited long. perhaps i lack a sense; for our whole existence seemed to me one dreary bustle, and the place we bustled in fitly to be called the place of yawning. i slept in a little den behind the office; pinkerton, in the office itself, stretched on a patent sofa which sometimes collapsed, his slumbers still further menaced by an imminent clock with an alarm. roused by this diabolical contrivance, we rose early, went forth early to breakfast, and returned by nine to what pinkerton called work, and i distraction. masses of letters must be opened, read, and answered; some by me at a subsidiary desk which had been introduced on the morning of my arrival; others by my bright-eyed friend, pacing the room like a caged lion as he dictated to the tinkling type-writers. masses of wet proof had to be overhauled and scrawled upon with a blue pencil--"rustic"; "six-inch caps"; "bold spacing here"; or sometimes terms more fervid--as, for instance, this (which i remember pinkerton to have spirted on the margin of an advertisement of soothing syrup), "throw this all down. have you never printed an advertisement? i'll be round in half-an-hour." the ledger and sale-book, besides, we had always with us. such was the backbone of our occupation, and tolerable enough; but the far greater proportion of our time was consumed by visitors--whole-souled, grand fellows no doubt, and as sharp as a needle, but to me unfortunately not diverting. some were apparently half-witted, and must be talked over by the hour before they could reach the humblest decision, which they only left the office to return again (ten minutes later) and rescind. others came with a vast show of hurry and despatch, but i observed it to be principally show. the agricultural model, for instance, which was practicable, proved a kind of fly-paper for these busybodies. i have seen them blankly turn the crank of it for five minutes at a time, simulating (to nobody's deception) business interest: " good thing this, pinkerton? sell much of it? ha! couldn't use it, i suppose, as a medium of advertisement for my article?"-which was perhaps toilet soap. others (a still worse variety) carried us to neighbouring saloons to dice for cocktails and (after the cocktails were paid) for dollars on a corner of the counter. the attraction of dice for all these people was, indeed, extraordinary: at a certain club where i once dined in the character of "my partner, mr. dodd," the dice-box came on the table with the wine, an artless substitute for afterdinner wit. of all our visitors, i believe i preferred emperor norton; the very mention of whose name reminds me i am doing scanty justice to the folks of san francisco. in what other city would a harmless madman who supposed himself emperor of the two americas have been so fostered and encouraged? where else would even the people of the streets have respected the poor soul's illusion? where else would bankers and merchants have received his visits, cashed his cheques, and submitted to his small assessments? where else would he have been suffered to attend and address the exhibition days of schools and colleges? where else, in god's green earth, have taken his pick of restaurants, ransacked the bill of fare, and departed scatheless? they tell me he was even an exacting patron, threatening to withdraw his custom when dissatisfied; and i can believe it, for his face wore an expression distinctly gastronomical. pinkerton had received from this monarch a cabinet appointment; i have seen the brevet, wondering mainly at the good-nature of the printer who had executed the forms, and i think my friend was at the head either of foreign affairs or education: it mattered, indeed, nothing, the prestation being in all offices identical. it was at a comparatively early date that i saw jim in the exercise of his public functions. his majesty entered the office--a portly, rather flabby man, with the face of a gentleman, rendered unspeakably pathetic and absurd by the great sabre at his side and the peacock's feather in his hat. "i have called to remind you, mr. pinkerton, that you are somewhat in arrear of taxes," he said, with oldfashioned, stately courtesy. "well, your majesty, what is the amount?" asked jim; and, when the figure was named (it was generally two or three dollars), paid upon the nail and offered a bonus in the shape of thirteen star. "i am always delighted to patronise native industries," said norton the first. "san francisco is publicspirited in what concerns its emperor; and indeed, sir, of all my domains, it is my favourite city." "come," said i, when he was gone, "i prefer that customer to the lot." "it's really rather a distinction," jim admitted. "i think it must have been the umbrella racket that attracted him." we were distinguished under the rose by the notice of other and greater men. there were days when jim wore an air of unusual capacity and resolve, spoke with more brevity, like one pressed for time, and took often on his tongue such phrases as "longhurst told me so this morning," or "i had it straight from longhurst himself." it was no wonder, i used to think, that pinkerton was called to council with such titans; for the creature's quickness and resource were beyond praise. in the early days when he consulted me without reserve, pacing the room, projecting, ciphering, extending hypothetical interests, trebling imaginary capital, his "engine" (to renew an excellent old word) labouring full steam ahead, i could never decide whether my sense of respect or entertainment were the stronger. but these good hours were destined to curtailment. "yes, it's smart enough," i once observed. "but, pinkerton, do you think it's honest?" "you don't think it's honest?" he wailed. "o dear me, that ever i should have heard such an expression on your lips." at sight of his distress i plagiarised unblushingly from myner. "you seem to think honesty as simple as blind man's buff" said i. "it's a more delicate affair than that: delicate as any art." "o well, at that rate!" he exclaimed, with complete relief; "that's casuistry." "i am perfectly certain of one thing; that what you propose is dishonest," i returned. "well, say no more about it; that's settled," he replied. thus, almost at a word, my point was carried. but the trouble was that such differences continued to recur, until we began to regard each other with alarm. if there were one thing pinkerton valued himself upon, it was his honesty; if there were one thing he clung to, it was my good opinion; and when both were involved, as was the case in these commercial cruces, the man was on the rack. my own position, if you consider how much i owed him, how hateful is the trade of fault-finder, and that yet i lived and fattened on these questionable operations, was perhaps equally distressing. if i had been more sterling or more combative, things might have gone extremely far. but, in truth, i was just base enough to profit by what was not forced on my attention, rather than seek scenes; pinkerton quite cunning enough to avail himself of my weakness; and it was a relief to both when he began to involve his proceedings in a decent mystery. our last dispute, which had a most unlooked-for consequence, turned on the refitting of condemned ships. he had bought a miserable hulk, and came, rubbing his hands, to inform me she was already on the slip, under a new name, to be repaired. when first i had heard of this industry i suppose i scarcely comprehended; but much discussion had sharpened my faculties, and now my brow became heavy. "i can be no party to that, pinkerton," said i. he leaped like a man shot. "what next?" he cried. "what ails you anyway? you seem to me to dislike everything that's profitable." "this ship has been condemned by lloyd's agent," said i. "but i tell you it's a deal. the ship's in splendid condition; there's next to nothing wrong with her but the garboard streak and the sternpost. i tell you, lloyd's is a ring, like everybody else; only it's an english ring, and that's what deceives you. if it was american, you would be crying it down all day. it's anglomania--common anglomania," he cried, with growing irritation. "i will not make money by risking men's lives," was my ultimatum. "great caesar! isn't all speculation a risk? isn't the fairest kind of shipowning to risk men's lives? and mining--how's that for risk? and look at the elevator business--there's danger if you like! didn't i take my risk when i bought her? she might have been too far gone; and where would i have been? loudon," he cried, "i tell you the truth: you're too full of refinement for this world!" "i condemn you out of your own lips," i replied. "'the fairest kind of shipowning,' says you. if you please, let us only do the fairest kind of business." the shot told; the irrepressible was silenced; and i profited by the chance to pour in a broadside of another sort. he was all sunk in money-getting, i pointed out; he never dreamed of anything but dollars. where were all his generous, progressive sentiments? where was his culture? i asked. and where was the american type? "it's true, loudon," he cried, striding up and down the room, and wildly scouring at his hair. "you're perfectly right. i'm becoming materialised. o, what a thing to have to say, what a confession to make! materialised! me! loudon, this must go on no longer. you've been a loyal friend to me once more; give me your hand--you've saved me again. i must do something to rouse the spiritual side; something desperate; study something, something dry and tough. what shall it be? theology? algebra? what's algebra?" "it's dry and tough enough," said i; "a squared + 2ab + b squared." "it's stimulating, though?" he inquired. i told him i believed so, and that it was considered fortifying to types. "then that's the thing for me. i'll study algebra," he concluded. the next day, by application to one of his type-writing women, he got word of a young lady, one miss mamie mcbride, who was willing and able to conduct him in these bloomless meadows; and, her circumstances being lean, and terms consequently moderate, he and mamie were soon in agreement for two lessons in the week. he took fire with unexampled rapidity; he seemed unable to tear himself away from the symbolic art; an hour's lesson occupied the whole evening; and the original two was soon increased to four, and then to five. i bade him beware of female blandishments. "the first thing you know, you'll be falling in love with the algebraist," said i. "don't say it, even in jest," he cried. "she's a lady i revere. i could no more lay a hand upon her than i could upon a spirit loudon, i don't believe god ever made a purer-minded woman." which appeared to me too fervent to be reassuring. meanwhile i had been long expostulating with my friend upon a different matter. "i'm the fifth wheel," i kept telling him. "for any use i am, i might as well be in senegambia. the letters you give me to attend to might be answered by a sucking child. and i tell you what it is, pinkerton; either you've got to find me some employment, or i'll have to start in and find it for myself" this i said with a corner of my eye in the usual quarter, toward the arts, little dreaming what destiny was to provide. "i've got it, loudon," pinkerton at last replied. "got the idea on the potrero cars. found i hadn't a pencil, borrowed one from the conductor, and figured on it roughly all the way in town. i saw it was the thing at last; gives you a real show. all your talents and accomplishments come in. here's a sketch advertisement. just run your eye over it. "sun, ozone and music! pinkerton's hebdomadary picnics!" (that's a good, catching phrase, "hebdomadary," though it's hard to say. i made a note of it when i was looking in the dictionary how to spell hectagonal 'well, you're a boss word,' i said. 'before you're very much older, i'll have you in type as long as yourself.' and here it is, you see.) 'five dollars a head, and ladies free. monster olio of attractions.' (how does that strike you?) 'free luncheon under the greenwood tree. dance on the elastic sward. home again in the bright evening hours. manager and honorary steward, h. loudon dodd, esq., the well-known connoisseur.'" singular how a man runs from scylla to charybdis! i was so intent on securing the disappearance of a single epithet that i accepted the rest of the advertisement and all that it involved without discussion. so it befell that the words "well-known connoisseur" were deleted; but that h. loudon dodd became manager and honorary steward of pinkerton's hebdomadary picnics, soon shortened, by popular consent, to the dromedary. by eight o'clock, any sunday morning, i was to be observed by an admiring public on the wharf. the garb and attributes of sacrifice consisted of a black frockcoat, rosetted, its pockets bulging with sweetmeats and inferior cigars, trousers of light blue, a silk hat like a reflector, and a varnished wand. a goodly steamer guarded my one flank, panting and throbbing, flags fluttering fore and aft of her, illustrative of the dromedary and patriotism. my other flank was covered by the ticket-office, strongly held by a trusty character of the scots persuasion, rosetted like his superior, and smoking a cigar to mark the occasion festive. at half-past, having assured myself that all was well with the free luncheons, i lit a cigar myself, and awaited the strains of the "pioneer band." i had never to wait long--they were german and punctual--and by a few minutes after the half-hour i would hear them booming down street with a long military roll of drums, some score of gratuitous asses prancing at the head in bearskin hats and buckskin aprons, and conspicuous with resplendent axes. the band, of course, we paid for; but so strong is the san franciscan passion for public masquerade, that the asses (as i say) were all gratuitous, pranced for the love of it, and cost us nothing but their luncheon. the musicians formed up in the bows of my steamer, and struck into a skittish polka; the asses mounted guard upon the gangway and the ticket-office; and presently after, in family parties of father, mother, and children, in the form of duplicate lovers or in that of solitary youth, the public began to descend upon us by the carful at a time; four to six hundred perhaps, with a strong german flavour, and all merry as children. when these had been shepherded on board, and the inevitable belated two or three had gained the deck amidst the cheering of the public, the hawser was cast off, and we plunged into the bay. and now behold the honorary steward in hour of duty and glory; see me circulate amid crowd, radiating affability and laughter, liberal with my sweetmeats and cigars. i say unblushing things to hobbledehoy girls, tell shy young persons this is the married people's boat, roguishly ask the abstracted if they are thinking of their sweethearts, offer paterfamilias a cigar, am struck with the beauty and grow curious about the age of mamma's youngest, who (i assure her gaily) will be a man before his mother; or perhaps it may occur to me, from the sensible expression of her face, that she is a person of good counsel, and i ask her earnestly if she knows any particularly pleasant place on the saucelito or san rafael coast--for the scene of our picnic is always supposed to be uncertain. the next moment i am back at my giddy badinage with the young ladies, wakening laughter as i go, and leaving in my wake applausive comments of "isn't mr. dodd a funny gentleman?" and "o, i think he's just too nice!" an hour having passed in this airy manner, i start upon my rounds afresh, with a bag full of coloured tickets, all with pins attached, and all with legible inscriptions: "old germany," "california," "true love," "old fogies," "la belle france," "green erin," "the land of cakes," "washington," "blue jay," "robin redbreast"--twenty of each denomination; for when it comes to the luncheon we sit down by twenties. these are distributed with anxious tact--for, indeed, this is the most delicate part of my functions--but outwardly with reckless unconcern, amidst the gayest flutter and confusion; and are immediately after sported upon hats and bonnets, to the extreme diffusion of cordiality, total strangers hailing each other by "the number of their mess"--so we humorously name it--and the deck ringing with cries of, "here, all blue jays to the rescue!" or, "i say, am i alone in this blame' ship? ain't there no more californians?" by this time we are drawing near to the appointed spot. i mount upon the bridge, the observed of all observers. "captain," i say, in clear, emphatic tones, heard far and wide, "the majority of the company appear to be in favour of the little cove beyond one-tree point." "all right, mr. dodd," responds the captain heartily; "all one to me. i am not exactly sure of the place you mean; but just you stay here and pilot me." i do, pointing with my wand. i do pilot him, to the inexpressible entertainment of the picnic, for i am (why should i deny it?) the popular man. we slow down off the mouth of a grassy valley, watered by a brook and set in pines and redwoods. the anchor is let go, the boats are lowered--two of them already packed with the materials of an impromptu bar--and the pioneer band, accompanied by the resplendent asses, fill the other, and move shoreward to the inviting strains of "buffalo gals, won't you come out to-night?" it is a part of our programme that one of the asses shall, from sheer clumsiness, in the course of this embarkation, drop a dummy axe into the water, whereupon the mirth of the picnic can hardly be assuaged. upon one occasion the dummy axe floated, and the laugh turned rather the wrong way. in from ten to twenty minutes the boats are along-side again, the messes are marshalled separately on the deck, and the picnic goes ashore, to find the band and the impromptu bar awaiting them. then come the hampers, which are piled up on the beach, and surrounded by a stern guard of stalwart asses, axe on shoulder. it is here i take my place, note-book in hand, under a banner bearing the legend, "come here for hampers." each hamper contains a complete outfit for a separate twenty--cold provender, plates, glasses, knives, forks, and spoons. an agonised printed appeal from the fevered pen of pinkerton, pasted on the inside of the lid, beseeches that care be taken of the glass and silver. beer, wine, and lemonade are flowing already from the bar, and the various clans of twenty file away into the woods, with bottles under their arms and the hampers strung upon a stick. till one they feast there, in a very moderate seclusion, all being within earshot of the band. from one till four dancing takes place upon the grass; the bar does a roaring business; and the honorary steward, who has already exhausted himself to bring life into the dullest of the messes, must now indefatigably dance with the plainest of the women. at four a bugle-call is sounded, and by half-past behold us on board again--pioneers, corrugated iron bar, empty bottles, and all; while the honorary steward, free at last, subsides into the captain's cabin over a brandy and soda and a book. free at last, i say; yet there remains before him the frantic leavetakings at the pier, and a sober journey up to pinkerton's office with two policemen and the day's takings in a bag. what i have here sketched was the routine. but we appealed to the taste of san francisco more distinctly in particular fetes. "ye olde time pycke-nycke," largely advertised in hand-bills beginning "oyez, oyez!" and largely frequented by knights, monks, and cavaliers, was drowned out by unseasonable rain, and returned to the city one of the saddest spectacles i ever remember to have witnessed. in pleasing contrast, and certainly our chief success, was "the gathering of the clans," or scottish picnic. so many milk-white knees were never before simultaneously exhibited in public, and, to judge by the prevalence of "royal stewart" and the number of eagles' feathers, we were a high-born company. i threw forward the scottish flank of my own ancestry, and passed muster as a clansman with applause. there was, indeed, but one small cloud on this red-letter day. i had laid in a large supply of the national beverage in the shape of the "rob roy macgregor o' blend, warranted old and vatted"; and this must certainly have been a generous spirit, for i had some anxious work between four and half-past, conveying on board the inanimate forms of chieftains. to one of our ordinary festivities, where he was the life and soul of his own mess, pinkerton himself came incognito, bringing the algebraist on his arm. miss mamie proved to be a well-enough-looking mouse, with a large limpid eye, very good manners, and a flow of the most correct expressions i have ever heard upon the human lip. as pinkerton's incognito was strict, i had little opportunity to cultivate the lady's acquaintance, but i was informed afterwards that she considered me "the wittiest gentleman she had ever met." "the lord mend your taste in wit!" thought i; but i cannot conceal that such was the general impression. one of my pleasantries even went the round of san francisco, and i have heard it (myself all unknown) bandied in saloons. to be unknown began at last to be a rare experience; a bustle woke upon my passage, above all, in humble neighbourhoods. "who's that?" one would ask, and the other would cry, "that! why, dromedary dodd!" or, with withering scorn, "not know mr. dodd of the picnics? well!" and, indeed, i think it marked a rather barren destiny; for our picnics, if a trifle vulgar, were as gay and innocent as the age of gold. i am sure no people divert themselves so easily and so well, and even with the cares of my stewardship i was often happy to be there. indeed, there were but two drawbacks in the least considerable. the first was my terror of the hobbledehoy girls, to whom (from the demands of my situation) i was obliged to lay myself so open. the other, if less momentous, was more mortifying. in early days--at my mother's knee, as a man may say--i had acquired the unenviable accomplishment (which i have never since been able to lose) of singing "just before the battle." i have what the french call a fillet of voice--my best notes scarce audible about a dinner-table, and the upper register rather to be regarded as a higher power of silence. experts tell me, besides, that i sing flat; nor, if i were the best singer in the world, does "just before the battle" occur to my mature taste as the song that i would choose to sing. in spite of all which considerations, at one picnic, memorably dull, and after i had exhausted every other art of pleasing, i gave, in desperation, my one song. from that hour my doom was gone forth. either we had a chronic passenger (though i could never detect him), or the very wood and iron of the steamer must have retained the tradition. at every successive picnic word went round that mr. dodd was a singer; that mr. dodd sang "just before the battle"; and, finally, that now was the time when mr. dodd sang "just before the battle." so that the thing became a fixture, like the dropping of the dummy axe; and you are to conceive me, sunday after sunday, piping up my lamentable ditty, and covered, when it was done, with gratuitous applause. it is a beautiful trait in human nature that i was invariably offered an encore. i was well paid, however, even to sing. pinkerton and i, after an average sunday, had five hundred dollars to divide. nay, and the picnics were the means, although indirectly, of bringing me a singular windfall. this was at the end of the season, after the "grand farewell fancy dress gala." many of the hampers had suffered severely; and it was judged wiser to save storage, dispose of them, and lay in a fresh stock when the campaign reopened. among my purchasers was a working man of the name of speedy, to whose house, after several unavailing letters, i must proceed in person, wondering to find myself once again on the wrong side, and playing the creditor to some one else's debtor. speedy was in the belligerent stage of fear. he could not pay. it appeared he had already resold the hampers, and he defied me to do my worst. i did not like to lose my own money; i hated to lose pinkerton's; and the bearing of my creditor incensed me. "do you know, mr. speedy, that i can send you to the penitentiary?" said i, willing to read him a lesson. the dire expression was overheard in the next room. a large, fresh, motherly irishwoman ran forth upon the instant, and fell to besiege me with caresses and appeals. "sure now, and ye couldn't have the heart to ut, mr. dodd--you, that's so well known to be a pleasant gentleman; and it's a pleasant face ye have, and the picture of me own brother that's dead and gone. it's a truth that he's been drinking. ye can smell it off of him, more blame to him. but, indade, and there's nothing in the house beyont the furnicher, and thim stock. it's the stock that ye'll be taking, dear. a sore penny it has cost me, first and last, and, by all tales, not worth an owld tobacco-pipe." thus adjured, and somewhat embarrassed by the stern attitude i had adopted, i suffered myself to be invested with a considerable quantity of what is called "wild-cat stock," in which this excellent if illogical female had been squandering her hard-earned gold. it could scarce be said to better my position, but the step quieted the woman; and, on the other hand, i could not think i was taking much risk, for the shares in question (they were those of what i will call the catamount silver mine) had fallen some time before to the bed-rock quotation, and now lay perfectly inert, or were only kicked (like other waste-paper) about the kennel of the exchange by bankrupt speculators. a month or two after i perceived by the stock-list that catamount had taken a bound; before afternoon "thim stock" were worth a quite considerable pot of money; and i learned, upon inquiry, that a bonanza had been found in a condemned lead, and the mine was now expected to do wonders. remarkable to philosophers how bonanzas are found in condemned leads, and how the stock is always at freezing-point immediately before! by some stroke of chance the speedys had held on to the right thing; they had escaped the syndicate; yet a little more, if i had not come to dun them, and mrs. speedy would have been buying a silk dress. i could not bear, of course, to profit by the accident, and returned to offer restitution. the house was in a bustle; the neighbours (all stock-gamblers themselves) had crowded to condole; and mrs. speedy sat with streaming tears, the centre of a sympathetic group. "for fifteen year i've been at ut," she was lamenting as i entered, "and grudging the babes the very milk-more shame to me!--to pay their dhirty assessments. and now, my dears, i should be a lady, and driving in my coach, if all had their rights; and a sorrow on that man dodd! as soon as i set eyes on him, i seen the divil was in the house." it was upon these words that i made my entrance, which was therefore dramatic enough, though nothing to what followed. for when it appeared that i was come to restore the lost fortune, and when mrs. speedy (after copiously weeping on my bosom) had refused the restitution, and when mr. speedy (summoned to that end from a camp of the grand army of the republic) had added his refusal, and when i had insisted, and they had insisted, and the neighbours had applauded and supported each of us in turn; and when at last it was agreed we were to hold the stock together, and share the proceeds in three parts--one for me, one for mr. speedy, and one for his spouse--i will leave you to conceive the enthusiasm that reigned in that small, bare apartment, with the sewing-machine in the one corner, and the babes asleep in the other, and pictures of garfield and the battle of gettysburg on the yellow walls. port-wine was had in by a sympathiser, and we drank it mingled with tears. "and i dhrink to your health, my dear," sobbed mrs. speedy, especially affected by my gallantry in the matter of the third share; "and i'm sure we all dhrink to his health--mr. dodd of the picnics, no gentleman better known than him; and it's my prayer, dear, the good god may be long spared to see ye in health and happiness!" in the end i was the chief gainer; for i sold my third while it was worth five thousand dollars, but the speedys more adventurously held on until the syndicate reversed the process, when they were happy to escape with perhaps a quarter of that sum. it was just as well; for the bulk of the money was (in pinkerton's phrase) reinvested; and when next i saw mrs. speedy, she was still gorgeously dressed from the proceeds of the late success, but was already moist with tears over the new catastrophe. "we're froze out, me darlin"! all the money we had, dear, and the sewing-machine, and jim's uniform, was in the golden west; and the vipers has put on a new assessment." by the end of the year, therefore, this is how i stood. i had made by catamount silver mine.......... $5,000 by the picnics.................... 3,000 by the lecture.................... 600 by profit and loss on capital in pinkerton's business......... 1,350 ----- $9,950 to which must be added what remained of my grandfather's donation..................... 8,500 ----- $18,450 it appears, on the other hand, that i had spent....................... 4,000 ----- which thus left me to the good... $14,450 a result on which i am not ashamed to say i looked with gratitude and pride. some eight thousand (being late conquest) was liquid and actually tractile in the bank; the rest whirled beyond reach and even sight (save in the mirror of a balance-sheet) under the compelling spell of wizard pinkerton. dollars of mine were tacking off the shores of mexico, in peril of the deep and the guarda-costas; they rang on saloon counters in the city of tombstone, arizona; they shone in farotents among the mountain diggings; the imagination flagged in following them, so wide were they diffused, so briskly they span to the turning of the wizard's crank. but here, there, or everywhere i could still tell myself it was all mine, and--what was more convincing--draw substantial dividends. my fortune, i called it; and it represented, when expressed in dollars, or even british pounds, an honest pot of money; when extended into francs, a veritable fortune. perhaps i have let the cat out of the bag; perhaps you see already where my hopes were pointing, and begin to blame my inconsistency. but i must first tell you my excuse, and the change that had befallen pinkerton. about a week after the picnic to which he escorted mamie, pinkerton avowed the state of his affections. from what i had observed on board the steamer--where, methought, mamie waited on him with her limpid eyes--i encouraged the bashful lover to proceed; and the very next evening he was carrying me to call on his affianced. "you must befriend her, loudon, as you have always befriended me," he said pathetically. "by saying disagreeable things? i doubt if that be the way to a young lady's favour," i replied; "and since this picnicking i begin to be a man of some experience." "yes, you do nobly there; i can't describe how i admire you," he cried. "not that she will ever need it; she has had every advantage. god knows what i have done to deserve her. o man, what a responsibility this is for a rough fellow and not always truthful!" "brace up, old man--brace up!" said i. but when we reached mamie's boarding-house, it was almost with tears that he presented me. "here is loudon, mamie," were his words. "i want you to love him; he has a grand nature." "you are certainly no stranger to me, mr. dodd," was her gracious expression. "james is never weary of descanting on your goodness." "my dear lady," said i, "when you know our friend a little better, you will make a large allowance for his warm heart. my goodness has consisted in allowing him to feed and clothe and toil for me when he could ill afford it. if i am now alive, it is to him i owe it; no man had a kinder friend. you must take good care of him," i added, laying my hand on his shoulder, "and keep him in good order, for he needs it." pinkerton was much affected by this speech, and so, i fear, was mamie. i admit it was a tactless performance. "when you know our friend a little better," was not happily said; and even "keep him in good order, for he needs it," might be construed into matter of offence. but i lay it before you in all confidence of your acquittal: was the general tone of it "patronising"? even if such was the verdict of the lady, i cannot but suppose the blame was neither wholly hers nor wholly mine; i cannot but suppose that pinkerton had already sickened the poor woman of my very name; so that if i had come with the songs of apollo, she must still have been disgusted. here, however, were two finger-posts to paris--jim was going to be married, and so had the less need of my society; i had not pleased his bride, and so was, perhaps, better absent. late one evening i broached the idea to my friend. it had been a great day for me; i had just banked my five thousand catamountain dollars; and as jim had refused to lay a finger on the stock, risk and profit were both wholly mine, and i was celebrating the event with stout and crackers. i began by telling him that if it caused him any pain or any anxiety about his affairs, he had but to say the word, and he should hear no more of my proposal. he was the truest and best friend i ever had, or was ever like to have; and it would be a strange thing if i refused him any favour he was sure he wanted. at the same time i wished him to be sure; for my life was wasting in my hands. i was like one from home: all my true interests summoned me away. i must remind him, besides, that he was now about to marry and assume new interests, and that our extreme familiarity might be even painful to his wife. "o no, loudon; i feel you are wrong there," he interjected warmly; "she does appreciate your nature." "so much the better, then," i continued; and went on to point out that our separation need not be for long; that, in the way affairs were going, he might join me in two years with a fortune--small, indeed, for the states, but in france almost conspicuous; that we might unite our resources, and have one house in paris for the winter and a second near fontainebleau for summer, where we could be as happy as the day was long, and bring up little pinkertons as practical artistic workmen, far from the money-hunger of the west. "let me go, then," i concluded; "not as a deserter, but as the vanguard, to lead the march of the pinkerton men." so i argued and pleaded, not without emotion; my friend sitting opposite, resting his chin upon his hand and (but for that single interjection) silent. "i have been looking for this, loudon," said he, when i had done. "it does pain me, and that's the fact--i'm so miserably selfish. and i believe it's a death-blow to the picnics; for it's idle to deny that you were the heart and soul of them with your wand and your gallant bearing, and wit and humour and chivalry, and throwing that kind of society atmosphere about the thing. but, for all that, you're right, and you ought to go. you may count on forty dollars a week; and if depew city-one of nature's centres for this state--pan out the least as i expect, it may be double. but it's forty dollars anyway; and to think that two years ago you were almost reduced to beggary!" "i was reduced to it," said i. "well, the brutes gave you nothing, and i'm glad of it now!" cried jim. "it's the triumphant return i glory in! think of the master, and that cold-blooded myner too! yes, just let the depew city boom get on its legs, and you shall go; and two years later, day for day, i'll shake hands with you in paris, with mamie on my arm, god bless her!" we talked in this vein far into the night. i was myself so exultant in my new-found liberty, and pinkerton so proud of my triumph, so happy in my happiness, in so warm a glow about the gallant little woman of his choice, and the very room so filled with castles in the air and cottages at fontainebleau, that it was little wonder if sleep fled our eyelids, and three had followed two upon the office-clock before pinkerton unfolded the mechanism of his patent sofa. chapter viii faces on the city front it is very much the custom to view life as if it were exactly ruled in two, like sleep and waking--the provinces of play and business standing separate. the business side of my career in san francisco has been now disposed of; i approach the chapter of diversion; and it will be found they had about an equal share in building up the story of the wrecker--a gentleman whose appearance may be presently expected. with all my occupations, some six afternoons and two or three odd evenings remained at my disposal every week: a circumstance the more agreeable as i was a stranger in a city singularly picturesque. from what i had once called myself, "the amateur parisian," i grew (or declined) into a water-side prowler, a lingerer on wharves, a frequenter of shy neighbourhoods, a scraper of acquaintance with eccentric characters. i visited chinese and mexican gambling-hells, german secret societies, sailors' boarding-houses, and "dives" of every complexion of the disreputable and dangerous. i have seen greasy mexican hands pinned to the table with a knife for cheating, seamen (when blood-money ran high) knocked down upon the public street and carried insensible on board short-handed ships, shots exchanged, and the smoke (and the company) dispersing from the doors of the saloon. i have heard cold-minded polacks debate upon the readiest method of burning san francisco to the ground, hot-headed working men and women bawl and swear in the tribune at the sandlot, and kearney himself open his subscription for a gallows, name the manufacturers who were to grace it with their dangling bodies, and read aloud to the delighted multitude a telegram of adhesion from a member of the state legislature: all which preparations of proletarian war were (in a moment) breathed upon and abolished by the mere name and fame of mr. coleman. that lion of the vigilantes had but to rouse himself and shake his ears, and the whole brawling mob was silenced. i could not but reflect what a strange manner of man this was, to be living unremarked there as a private merchant, and to be so feared by a whole city; and if i was disappointed, in my character of looker-on, to have the matter end ingloriously without the firing of a shot or the hanging of a single millionaire, philosophy tried to tell me that this sight was truly the more picturesque. in a thousand towns and different epochs i might have had occasion to behold the cowardice and carnage of street-fighting; where else, but only there and then, could i have enjoyed a view of coleman (the intermittent despot) walking meditatively up hill in a quiet part of town, with a very rolling gait, and slapping gently his great thigh? minora canamus. this historic figure stalks silently through a corner of the san francisco of my memory. the rest is bric-a-brac, the reminiscences of a vagrant sketcher. my delight was much in slums. "little italy" was a haunt of mine. there i would look in at the windows of small eating-shops transported bodily from genoa or naples, with their macaroni, and chianti flasks, and portraits of garibaldi, and coloured political caricatures; or (entering in) hold high debate with some ear-ringed fisher of the bay as to the designs of "mr. owstria" and "mr. rooshia." i was often to be observed (had there been any to observe me) in that dis-peopled, hill-side solitude of "little mexico," with its crazy wooden houses, endless crazy wooden stairs, and perilous mountain-goat paths in the sand. chinatown by a thousand eccentricities drew and held me; i could never have enough of its ambiguous, inter-racial atmosphere, as of a vitalised museum; never wonder enough at its outlandish, necromanticlooking vegetables set forth to sell in commonplace american shop-windows, its temple-doors open and the scent of the joss-stick streaming forth on the american air, its kites of oriental fashion hanging fouled in western telegraph-wires, its flights of paper prayers which the trade-wind hunts and dissipates along western gutters. i was a frequent wanderer on north beach, gazing at the straits, and the huge cape horners creeping out to sea, and imminent tamalpais. thence, on my homeward way, i might visit that strange and filthy shed, earth-paved and walled with the cages of wild animals and birds, where at a ramshackle counter, amid the yells of monkeys and a poignant atmosphere of menagerie, forty-rod whisky was administered by a proprietor as dirty as his beasts. nor did i even neglect nob hill, which is itself a kind of slum, being the habitat of the mere millionaire. there they dwell upon the hill-top, high raised above man's clamour, and the trade-wind blows between their palaces about deserted streets. but san francisco is not herself only. she is not only the most interesting city in the union, and the hugest smelting-pot of races and the precious metals. she keeps, besides, the doors of the pacific, and is the port of entry to another world and an earlier epoch in man's history. nowhere else shall you observe (in the ancient phrase) so many tall ships as here convene from round the horn, from china, from sydney, and the indies. but, scarce remarked amid that crowd of deepsea giants, another class of craft, the island schooner, circulates--low in the water, with lofty spars and dainty lines, rigged and fashioned like a yacht, manned with brown-skinned, soft-spoken, sweeteyed native sailors, and equipped with their great double-ender boats that tell a tale of boisterous seabeaches. these steal out and in again, unnoted by the world or even the newspaper press, save for the line in the clearing column, "schooner so-and-so for yap and south sea islands"--steal out with nondescript cargoes of tinned salmon, gin, bolts of gaudy cotton stuff, women's hats, and waterbury watches, to return, after a year, piled as high as to the eaves of the house with copra, or wallowing deep with the shells of the tortoise or the pearl oyster. to me, in my character of the amateur parisian, this island traffic, and even the island world, were beyond the bounds of curiosity, and how much more of knowledge? i stood there on the extreme shore of the west and of to-day. seventeen hundred years ago, and seven thousand miles to the east, a legionary stood, perhaps, upon the wall of antoninus, and looked northward toward the mountains of the picts. for all the interval of time and space, i, when i looked from the cliff-house on the broad pacific, was that man's heir and analogue: each of us standing on the verge of the roman empire (or, as we now call it, western civilisation), each of us gazing onward into zones unromanised. but i was dull. i looked rather backward, keeping a kind eye on paris; and it required a series of converging incidents to change my attitude of nonchalance for one of interest, and even longing, which i little dreamed that i should live to gratify. the first of these incidents brought me in acquaintance with a certain san francisco character, who had something of a name beyond the limits of the city, and was known to many lovers of good english. i had discovered a new slum, a place of precarious sandy cliffs, deep sandy cuttings, solitary ancient houses, and the butt-ends of streets. it was already environed. the ranks of the street-lamps threaded it unbroken. the city, upon all sides of it, was tightly packed, and growled with traffic. to-day, i do not doubt the very landmarks are all swept away; but it offered then, within narrow limits, a delightful peace, and (in the morning, when i chiefly went there) a seclusion almost rural. on a steep sandhill in this neighbourhood toppled, on the most insecure foundation, a certain row of houses, each with a bit of garden, and all (i have to presume) inhabited. thither i used to mount by a crumbling footpath, and in front of the last of the houses would sit down to sketch. the very first day i saw i was observed out of the ground-floor window by a youngish, good-looking fellow, prematurely bald, and with an expression both lively and engaging. the second, as we were still the only figures in the landscape, it was no more than natural that we should nod. the third he came out fairly from his intrenchments, praised my sketch, and with the impromptu cordiality of artists carried me into his apartment; where i sat presently in the midst of a museum of strange objects--paddles, and battle-clubs, and baskets, rough-hewn stone images, ornaments of threaded shell, cocoa-nut bowls, snowy cocoa-nut plumes--evidences and examples of another earth, another climate, another race, and another (if a ruder) culture. nor did these objects lack a fitting commentary in the conversation of my new acquaintance. doubtless you have read his book. you know already how he tramped and starved, and had so fine a profit of living in his days among the islands; and meeting him as i did, one artist with another, after months of offices and picnics, you can imagine with what charm he would speak, and with what pleasure i would hear. it was in such talks, which we were both eager to repeat, that i first heard the names--first fell under the spell--of the islands; and it was from one of the first of them that i returned (a happy man) with "omoo" under one arm, and my friend's own adventures under the other. the second incident was more dramatic, and had, besides, a bearing on my future. i was standing one day near a boat-landing under telegraph hill. a large barque, perhaps of eighteen hundred tons, was coming more than usually close about the point to reach her moorings; and i was observing her with languid inattention, when i observed two men to stride across the bulwarks, drop into a shore boat, and, violently dispossessing the boatman of his oars, pull toward the landing where i stood. in a surprisingly short time they came tearing up the steps, and i could see that both were too well dressed to be foremast hands--the first even with research, and both, and specially the first, appeared under the empire of some strong emotion. "nearest police office!" cried the leader. "this way," said i, immediately falling in with their precipitate pace. "what's wrong? what ship is that?" "that's the gleaner," he replied. "i am chief officer, this gentleman's third, and we've to get in our depositions before the crew. you see, they might corral us with the captain, and that's no kind of berth for me. i've sailed with some hard cases in my time, and seen pins flying like sand on a squally day--but never a match to our old man. it never let up from the hook to the farallones, and the last man was dropped not sixteen hours ago. packet rats our men were, and as tough a crowd as ever sand-bagged a man's head in; but they looked sick enough when the captain started in with his fancy shooting." "o, he's done up," observed the other. "he won't go to sea no more." "you make me tired," retorted his superior. "if he gets ashore in one piece, and isn't lynched in the next ten minutes, he'll do yet. the owners have a longer memory than the public, they'll stand by him; they don't find as smart a captain every day in the year." "o, he's a son of a gun of a fine captain; there ain't no doubt of that," concurred the other heartily. "why, i don't suppose there's been no wages paid aboard that gleaner for three trips." "no wages?" i exclaimed, for i was still a novice in maritime affairs. "not to sailor-men before the mast," agreed the mate. "men cleared out; wasn't the soft job they maybe took it for. she isn't the first ship that never paid wages." i could not but observe that our pace was progressively relaxing; and, indeed, i have often wondered since whether the hurry of the start were not intended for the gallery alone. certain it is, at least, that when we had reached the police office, and the mates had made their deposition, and told their horrid tale of five men murdered--some with savage passion, some with cold brutality--between sandy hook and san francisco, the police were despatched in time to be too late. before we arrived the ruffian had slipped out upon the dock, and mingled with the crowd, and found a refuge in the house of an acquaintance; and the ship was only tenanted by his late victims. well for him that he had been thus speedy; for when word began to go abroad among the shore-side characters, when the last victim was carried by to the hospital, when those who had escaped (as by miracle) from that floating shambles began to circulate and show their wounds in the crowd, it was strange to witness the agitation that seized and shook that portion of the city. men shed tears in public; bosses of lodging-houses, long inured to brutality--and, above all, brutality to sailors--shook their fists at heaven. if hands could have been laid on the captain of the gleaner, his shrift would have been short. that night (so gossip reports) he was headed up in a barrel and smuggled across the bay. in two ships already he had braved the penitentiary and the gallows; and yet, by last accounts, he now commands another on the western ocean. as i have said, i was never quite certain whether mr. nares (the mate) did not intend that his superior should escape. it would have been like his preference of loyalty to law; it would have been like his prejudice, which was all in favour of the after-guard. but it must remain a matter of conjecture only. well as i came to know him in the sequel, he was never communicative on that point--nor, indeed, on any that concerned the voyage of the gleaner. doubtless he had some reason for his reticence. even during our walk to the police office he debated several times with johnson, the third officer, whether he ought not to give up himself, as well as to denounce the captain. he had decided in the negative, arguing that "it would probably come to nothing; and even if there was a stink, he had plenty good friends in san francisco." and to nothing it came; though it must have very nearly come to something, for mr. nares disappeared immediately from view, and was scarce less closely hidden than his captain. johnson, on the other hand, i often met. i could never learn this man's country; and though he himself claimed to be american, neither his english nor his education warranted the claim. in all likelihood he was of scandinavian birth and blood, long pickled in the forecastles of english and american ships. it is possible that, like so many of his race in similar positions, he had already lost his native tongue. in mind, at least, he was quite denationalised; thought only in english--to call it so; and though by nature one of the mildest, kindest, and most feebly playful of mankind, he had been so long accustomed to the cruelty of sea discipline that his stories (told perhaps with a giggle) would sometimes turn me chill. in appearance he was tall, light of weight, bold and high-bred of feature, dusky-haired, and with a face of a clean even brown--the ornament of outdoor men. seated in a chair, you might have passed him off for a baronet or a military officer; but let him rise, and it was fo'c's'le jack that came rolling toward you, crab-like; let him but open his lips, and it was fo'c's'le jack that piped and drawled his ungrammatical gibberish. he had sailed (among other places) much among the islands; and after a cape horn passage with its snow-squalls and its frozen sheets, he announced his intention of "taking a turn among them kanakas." i thought i should have lost him soon; but, according to the unwritten usage of mariners, he had first to dissipate his wages. "guess i'll have to paint this town red," was his hyperbolical expression; for sure no man ever embarked upon a milder course of dissipation, most of his days being passed in the little parlour behind black tom's public-house, with a select corps of old particular acquaintances, all from the south seas, and all patrons of a long yarn, a short pipe, and glasses round. black tom's, to the front, presented the appearance of a fourth-rate saloon, devoted to kanaka seamen, dirt, negrohead tobacco, bad cigars, worse gin, and guitars and banjos in a state of decline. the proprietor, a powerful coloured man, was at once a publican, a ward politician, leader of some brigade of "lambs" or "smashers," at the wind of whose clubs the party bosses and the mayor were supposed to tremble, and (what hurt nothing) an active and reliable crimp. his front quarters, then, were noisy, disreputable, and not even safe. i have seen worse-frequented saloons where there were fewer scandals; for tom was often drunk himself: and there is no doubt the lambs must have been a useful body, or the place would have been closed. i remember one day, not long before an election, seeing a blind man, very well dressed, led up to the counter and remain a long while in consultation with the negro. the pair looked so ill-assorted, and the awe with which the drinkers fell back and left them in the midst of an impromptu privacy was so unusual in such a place, that i turned to my next neighbour with a question. he told me the blind man was a distinguished party boss, called by some the king of san francisco, but perhaps better known by his picturesque chinese nickname of the blind white devil. "the lambs must be wanted pretty bad, i guess," my informant added. i have here a sketch of the blind white devil leaning on the counter; on the next page, and taken the same hour, a jotting of black tom threatening a whole crowd of customers with a long smith and wesson--to such heights and depths we rose and fell in the front parts of the saloon! meanwhile, away in the back quarters, sat the small informal south sea club, talking of another world, and surely of a different century. old schooner captains they were, old south sea traders, cooks, and mates; fine creatures, softened by residence among a softer race: full men besides, though not by reading, but by strange experience; and for days together i could hear their yarns with an unfading pleasure. all had, indeed, some touch of the poetic; for the beach-comber, when not a mere ruffian, is the poor relation of the artist. even through johnson's inarticulate speech, his "o yes, there ain't no harm in them kanakas," or "o yes, that's a son of a gun of a fine island, mountainious right down; i didn't never ought to have left that island," there pierced a certain gusto of appreciation; and some of the rest were master-talkers. from their long tales, their traits of character and unpremeditated landscape, there began to piece itself together in my head some image of the islands and the island life; precipitous shores, spired mountaintops, the deep shade of hanging forests, the unresting surf upon the reef, and the unending peace of the lagoon; sun, moon, and stars of an imperial brightness; man moving in these scenes scarce fallen, and woman lovelier than eve; the primal curse abrogated, the bed made ready for the stranger, life set to perpetual music, and the guest welcomed, the boat urged, and the long night beguiled with poetry and choral song. a man must have been an unsuccessful artist; he must have starved on the streets of paris; he must have been yoked to a commercial force like pinkerton, before he can conceive the longings that at times assailed me. the draughty, rowdy city of san francisco, the bustling office where my friend jim paced like a caged lion daily between ten and four, even (at times) the retrospect of paris, faded in comparison. many a man less tempted would have thrown up all to realise his visions; but i was by nature unadventurous and uninitiative; to divert me from all former paths and send me cruising through the isles of paradise, some force external to myself must be exerted; destiny herself must use the fitting wedge; and, little as i deemed it, that tool was already in her hand of brass. i sat, one afternoon, in the corner of a great, glassy, silvered saloon, a free lunch at my one elbow, at the other a "conscientious nude" from the brush of local talent; when, with the tramp of feet and a sudden buzz of voices, the swing-doors were flung broadly open, and the place carried as by storm. the crowd which thus entered (mostly seafaring men, and all prodigiously excited) contained a sort of kernel or general centre of interest, which the rest merely surrounded and advertised, as children in the old world surround and escort the punch-and-judy man; the word went round the bar like wildfire that these were captain trent and the survivors of the british brig flying scud, picked up by a british war-ship on midway island, arrived that morning in san francisco bay, and now fresh from making the necessary declarations. presently i had a good sight of them; four brown, seamanlike fellows, standing by the counter, glass in hand, the centre of a score of questioners. one was a kanaka--the cook, i was informed; one carried a cage with a canary, which occasionally trilled into thin song; one had his left arm in a sling, and looked gentleman-like and somewhat sickly, as though the injury had been severe and he was scarce recovered; and the captain himself--a red-faced, blue-eyed, thickset man of five-and-forty--wore a bandage on his right hand. the incident struck me; i was struck particularly to see captain, cook, and foremost hands walking the street and visiting saloons in company; and, as when anything impressed me, i got my sketch-book out, and began to steal a sketch of the four castaways. the crowd, sympathising with my design, made a clear lane across the room; and i was thus enabled, all unobserved myself, to observe with a still growing closeness the face and the demeanour of captain trent. warmed by whisky and encouraged by the eagerness of the bystanders, that gentleman was now rehearsing the history of his misfortune. it was but scraps that reached me: how he "filled her on the starboard tack," and how "it came up sudden out of the nor'-nor'-west," and "there she was, high and dry." sometimes he would appeal to one of the men--"that was how it was, jack?"-and the man would reply, "that was the way of it, captain trent." lastly, he started a fresh tide of popular sympathy by enunciating the sentiment, "damn all these admiralty charts, and that's what i say!" from the nodding of heads and the murmurs of assent that followed, i could see that captain trent had established himself in the public mind as a gentleman and a thorough navigator: about which period, my sketch of the four men and the canary-bird being finished, and all (especially the canary-bird) excellent likenesses, i buckled up my book and slipped from the saloon. little did i suppose that i was leaving act i. scene 1 of the drama of my life; and yet the scene--or rather the captain's face--lingered for some time in my memory. i was no prophet, as i say; but i was something else--i was an observer; and one thing i knew--i knew when a man was terrified. captain trent, of the british brig flying scud, had been glib; he had been ready; he had been loud; but in his blue eyes i could detect the chill, and in the lines of his countenance spy the agitation, of perpetual terror. was he trembling for his certificate? in my judgment it was some livelier kind of fear that thrilled in the man's marrow as he turned to drink. was it the result of recent shock, and had he not yet recovered the disaster to his brig? i remembered how a friend of mine had been in a railway accident, and shook and started for a month; and although captain trent of the flying scud had none of the appearance of a nervous man, i told myself, with incomplete conviction, that his must be a similar case. chapter ix the wreck of the "flying scud" the next morning i found pinkerton, who had risen before me, seated at our usual table, and deep in the perusal of what i will call the daily occidental. this was a paper (i know not if it be so still) that stood out alone among its brethren in the west. the others, down to their smallest item, were defaced with capitals, head-lines, alliterations, swaggering misquotations, and the shoddy picturesque and unpathetic pathos of the harry millers: the occidental alone appeared to be written by a dull, sane, christian gentleman, singly desirous of communicating knowledge. it had not only this merit-which endeared it to me--but was admittedly the best informed on business matters, which attracted pinkerton. "loudon," said he, looking up from the journal, "you sometimes think i have too many irons in the fire. my notion, on the other hand, is, when you see a dollar lying, pick it up! well, here i've tumbled over a whole pile of 'em on a reef in the middle of the pacific." "why, jim, you miserable fellow!" i exclaimed; haven't we depew city, one of god's green centres for this state? haven't we----" "just listen to this," interrupted jim. "it's miserable copy; these occidental reporter fellows have no fire; but the facts are right enough, i guess." and he began to read:-wreck of the british brig "flying scud." h.b.m.s. tempest, which arrived yesterday at this port, brings captain trent and four men of the british brig flying scud, cast away february 12th on midway island, and most providentially rescued the next day. the flying scud was of 200 tons burthen, owned in london, and has been out nearly two years tramping. captain trent left hong kong december 8th, bound for this port in rice and a small mixed cargo of silks, teas, and china notions, the whole valued at $10,000, fully covered by insurance. the log shows plenty of fine weather, with light airs, calms, and squalls. in lat. 28 n., long. 177 w., his water going rotten, and misled by hoyt's north pacific directory, which informed him there was a coaling station on the island, captain trent put in to midway island. he found it a literal sandbank, surrounded by a coral reef, mostly submerged. birds were very plenty, there was good fish in the lagoon, but no firewood; and the water, which could be obtained by digging, brackish. he found good holding-ground off the north end of the larger bank in fifteen fathoms water; bottom sandy, with coral patches. here he was detained seven days by a calm, the crew suffering severely from the water, which was gone quite bad; and it was only on the evening of the 12th that a little wind sprang up, coming puffy out of n.n.e. late as it was, captain trent immediately weighed anchor and attempted to get out. while the vessel was beating up to the passage, the wind took a sudden lull, and then veered squally into n., and even n.n.w., driving the brig ashore on the sand at about twenty minutes before six o'clock. john wallen, a native of finland, and charles holdorsen, a native of sweden, were drowned alongside, in attempting to lower a boat, neither being able to swim, the squall very dark, and the noise of the breakers drowning everything. at the same time john brown, another of the crew, had his arm broken by the falls. captain trent further informed the occidental reporter that the brig struck heavily at first bows on, he supposes upon coral; that she then drove over the obstacle, and now lies in sand, much down by the head, and with a list to starboard. in the first collision she must have sustained some damage, as she was making water forward. the rice will probably be all destroyed: but the more valuable part of the cargo is fortunately in the after-hold. captain trent was preparing his longboat for sea, when the providential arrival of the tempest, pursuant to admiralty orders to call at islands in her course for castaways, saved the gallant captain from all further danger. it is scarcely necessary to add that both the officers and men of the unfortunate vessel speak in high terms of the kindness they received on board the man-of-war. we print a list of the survivors: jacob trent, master, of hull, england; elias goddedaal, mate, native of christiansand, sweden; ah wing, cook, native of sana, china; john brown, native of glasgow, scotland; john hardy, native of london, england. the flying scud is ten years old, and this morning will be sold as she stands, by order of lloyd's agent, at public auction, for the benefit of the underwriters. the auction will take place in the merchants" exchange at ten o'clock. further particulars.--later in the afternoon the occidental reporter found lieutenant sebright, first officer of h.b.m.s. tempest, at the palace hotel. the gallant officer was somewhat pressed for time, but confirmed the account given by captain trent in all particulars. he added that the flying scud is in an excellent berth, and, except in the highly improbable event of a heavy n.w. gale, might last until next winter. "you will never know anything of literature," said i, when jim had finished. "that is a good, honest, plain piece of work, and tells the story clearly. i see only one mistake: the cook is not a chinaman; he is a kanaka, and, i think, a hawaiian." "why, how do you know that?" asked jim. "i saw the whole gang yesterday in a saloon," said i. "i even heard the tale, or might have heard it, from captain trent himself, who struck me as thirsty and nervous." "well, that's neither here nor there," cried pinkerton; "the point is, how about these dollars lying on a reef?" "will it pay?" i asked. "pay like a sugar trust!" exclaimed pinkerton. "don't you see what this british officer says about the safety? don't you see the cargo's valued at ten thousand? schooners are begging just now; i can get my pick of them at two hundred and fifty a month; and how does that foot up? it looks like three hundred per cent. to me." "you forget," i objected, "the captain himself declares the rice is damaged." "that's a point, i know," admitted jim. "but the rice is the sluggish article, anyway; it's little more account than ballast; it's the tea and silks that i look to: all we have to find is the proportion, and one look at the manifest will settle that. i've rung up lloyd's on purpose; the captain is to meet me there in an hour, and then i'll be as posted on that brig as if i built her. besides, you've no idea what pickings there are about a wreck--copper, lead, rigging, anchors, chains, even the crockery, loudon!" "you seem to me to forget one trifle," said i. "before you pick that wreck you've got to buy her, and how much will she cost?" "one hundred dollars," replied jim, with the promptitude of an automaton. "how on earth do you guess that?" i cried. "i don't guess; i know it," answered the commercial force. "my dear boy, i may be a galoot about literature, but you'll always be an outsider in business. how do you suppose i bought the james l. moody for two hundred and fifty, her boats alone worth four times the money? because my name stood first in the list well, it stands there again; i have the naming of the figure, and i name a small one because of the distance: but it wouldn't matter what i named; that would be the price." "it sounds mysterious enough," said i. "is this public auction conducted in a subterranean vault? could a plain citizen--myself, for instance--come and see?" "o, everything's open and above-board!" he cried indignantly. "anybody can come, only nobody bids against us; and if he did, he would get frozen out. it's been tried before now, and once was enough. we hold the plant; we've got the connection; we can afford to go higher than any outsider; there's two million dollars in the ring; and we stick at nothing. or suppose anybody did buy over our head--i tell you, loudon, he would think this town gone crazy; he could no more get business through on the city front than i can dance; schooners, divers, men--all he wanted--the prices would fly right up and strike him." "but how did you get in?" i asked. "you were once an outsider like your neighbours, i suppose?" "i took hold of that thing, loudon, and just studied it up," he replied. "it took my fancy; it was so romantic, and then i saw there was boodle in the thing; and i figured on the business till no man alive could give me points. nobody knew i had an eye on wrecks till one fine morning i dropped in upon douglas b. longhurst in his den, gave him all the facts and figures, and put it to him straight: "do you want me in this ring, or shall i start another?" he took half an hour, and when i came back, "pink," says he, "i've put your name on." the first time i came to the top it was that moody racket; now it's the flying scud whereupon pinkerton, looking at his watch, uttered an exclamation, made a hasty appointment with myself for the doors of the merchants' exchange, and fled to examine manifests and interview the skipper. i finished my cigarette with the deliberation of a man at the end of many picnics; reflecting to myself that of all forms of the dollar-hunt, this wrecking had by far the most address to my imagination. even as i went down town, in the brisk bustle and chill of the familiar san francisco thoroughfares, i was haunted by a vision of the wreck, baking so far away in the strong sun, under a cloud of sea-birds; and even then, and for no better reason, my heart inclined towards the adventure. if not myself, something that was mine, some one at least in my employment, should voyage to that ocean-bounded pin-point and descend to that deserted cabin. pinkerton met me at the appointed moment, pinched of lip, and more than usually erect of bearing, like one conscious of great resolves. "well?" i asked. "well," said he, "it might be better, and it might be worse. this captain trent is a remarkably honest fellow--one out of a thousand. as soon as he knew i was in the market, he owned up about the rice in so many words. by his calculation, if there's thirty mats of it saved, it's an outside figure. however, the manifest was cheerier. there's about five thousand dollars of the whole value in silks and teas and nutoils and that, all in the lazarette, and as safe as if it was in kearney street. the brig was new coppered a year ago. there's upwards of a hundred and fifty fathom away-up chain. it's not a bonanza, but there's boodle in it; and we'll try it on." it was by that time hard on ten o'clock, and we turned at once into the place of sale. the flying scud, although so important to ourselves, appeared to attract a very humble share of popular attention. the auctioneer was surrounded by perhaps a score of lookers-on--big fellows for the most part, of the true western build, long in the leg, broad in the shoulder, and adorned (to a plain man's taste) with needless finery. a jaunty ostentatious comradeship prevailed. bets were flying, and nicknames. "the boys" (as they would have called themselves) were very boyish; and it was plain they were here in mirth, and not on business. behind, and certainly in strong contrast to these gentlemen, i could detect the figure of my friend captain trent, come (as i could very well imagine that a captain would) to hear the last of his old vessel. since yesterday he had rigged himself anew in readymade black clothes, not very aptly fitted; the upper left-hand pocket showing a corner of silk handkerchief, the lower, on the other side, bulging with papers. pinkerton had just given this man a high character. certainly he seemed to have been very frank, and i looked at him again to trace (if possible) that virtue in his face. it was red and broad and flustered and (i thought) false. the whole man looked sick with some unknown anxiety; and as he stood there, unconscious of my observation, he tore at his nails, scowled on the floor, or glanced suddenly, sharply, and fearfully at passers-by. i was still gazing at the man in a kind of fascination, when the sale began. some preliminaries were rattled through, to the irreverent, uninterrupted gambolling of the boys; and then, amid a trifle more attention, the auctioneer sounded for some two or three minutes the pipe of the charmer. "fine brig--new copper--valuable fittings-three fine boats--remarkably choice cargo--what the auctioneer would call a perfectly safe investment; nay, gentlemen, he would go further, he would put a figure on it: he had no hesitation (had that bold auctioneer) in putting it in figures; and in his view, what with this and that, and one thing and another, the purchaser might expect to clear a sum equal to the entire estimated value of the cargo; or, gentlemen, in other words, a sum of ten thousand dollars." at this modest computation the roof immediately above the speaker's head (i suppose, through the intervention of a spectator of ventriloquial tastes) uttered a clear "cock-a-doodle-doo!"--whereat all laughed, the auctioneer himself obligingly joining. "now, gentlemen, what shall we say?" resumed that gentleman, plainly ogling pinkerton,--"what shall we say for this remarkable opportunity?" "one hundred dollars," said pinkerton. "one hundred dollars from mr. pinkerton," went the auctioneer, "one hundred dollars. no other gentleman inclined to make any advance? one hundred dollars, only one hundred dollars----" the auctioneer was droning on to some such tune as this, and i, on my part, was watching with something between sympathy and amazement the undisguised emotion of captain trent, when we were all startled by the interjection of a bid. "and fifty," said a sharp voice. pinkerton, the auctioneer, and the boys, who were all equally in the open secret of the ring, were now all equally and simultaneously taken aback. "i beg your pardon," said the auctioneer; "anybody bid?" "and fifty," reiterated the voice, which i was now able to trace to its origin, on the lips of a small unseemly rag of human-kind. the speaker's skin was grey and blotched; he spoke in a kind of broken song, with much variety of key; his gestures seemed (as in the disease called saint vitus's dance) to be imperfectly under control; he was badly dressed; he carried himself with an air of shrinking assumption, as though he were proud to be where he was and to do what he was doing, and yet half expected to be called in question and kicked out. i think i never saw a man more of a piece; and the type was new to me: i had never before set eyes upon his parallel, and i thought instinctively of balzac and the lower regions of the comedie humaine. pinkerton stared a moment on the intruder with no friendly eye, tore a leaf from his note-book, and scribbled a line in pencil, turned, beckoned a messenger boy, and whispered, "to longhurst." next moment the boy had sped upon his errand, and pinkerton was again facing the auctioneer. "two hundred dollars," said jim. "and fifty," said the enemy. "this looks lively," whispered i to pinkerton. "yes; the little beast means cold-drawn biz," returned my friend. "well, he'll have to have a lesson. wait till i see longhurst.--three hundred," he added aloud. "and fifty," came the echo. it was about this moment when my eye fell again on captain trent. a deeper shade had mounted to his crimson face; the new coat was unbuttoned and all flying open, the new silk handkerchief in busy requisition; and the man's eye, of a clear sailor blue, shone glassy with excitement. he was anxious still, but now (if i could read a face) there was hope in his anxiety. "jim," i whispered, "look at trent. bet you what you please he was expecting this." "yes," was the reply, "there's some blame' thing going on her"; and he renewed his bid. the figure had run up into the neighbourhood of a thousand when i was aware of a sensation in the faces opposite, and, looking over my shoulder, saw a very large, bland, handsome man come strolling forth and make a little signal to the auctioneer. "one word, mr. borden," said he; and then to jim, "well, pink, where are we up to now?" pinkerton gave him the figure. "i ran up to that on my own responsibility, mr. longhurst," he added, with a flush. "i thought it the square thing." "and so it was," said mr. longhurst, patting him kindly on the shoulder, like a gratified uncle. "well, you can drop out now; we take hold ourselves. you can run it up to five thousand; and if he likes to go beyond that, he's welcome to the bargain." "by-the-bye, who is he?" asked pinkerton. "he looks away down." "i've sent billy to find out"; and at the very moment mr. longhurst received from the hands of one of the expensive young gentlemen a folded paper. it was passed round from one to another till it came to me, and i read: "harry d. bellairs, attorney-at-law; defended clara varden: twice nearly disbarred." "well, that gets me!" observed mr. longhurst. "who can have put up a shyster [1] like that? no-body with money, that's a sure thing. suppose you tried a big bluff? i think i would, pink. well, ta-ta! your partner, mr. dodd? happy to have the pleasure of your acquaintance, sir"; and the great man withdrew. [1] a low lawyer. "well, what do you think of douglas b.?" whispered pinkerton, looking reverently after him as he departed. "six foot of perfect gentleman and culture to his boots." during this interview the auction had stood transparently arrested--the auctioneer, the spectators, and even bellairs, all well aware that mr. longhurst was the principal, and jim but a speaking-trumpet. but now that the olympian jupiter was gone, mr. borden thought proper to affect severity. "come, come, mr. pinkerton; any advance?" he snapped. and pinkerton, resolved on the big bluff, replied, "two thousand dollars." bellairs preserved his composure. "and fifty," said he. but there was a stir among the onlookers, and-what was of more importance--captain trent had turned pale and visibly gulped. "pitch it in again, jim," said i. "trent is weakening." "three thousand," said jim. "and fifty," said bellairs. and then the bidding returned to its original movement by hundreds and fifties; but i had been able in the meanwhile to draw two conclusions. in the first place, bellairs had made his last advance with a smile of gratified vanity, and i could see the creature was glorying in the kudos of an unusual position and secure of ultimate success. in the second, trent had once more changed colour at the thousand leap, and his relief when he heard the answering fifty was manifest and unaffected. here, then, was a problem: both were presumably in the same interest, yet the one was not in the confidence of the other. nor was this all. a few bids later it chanced that my eye encountered that of captain trent, and his, which glittered with excitement, was instantly, and i thought guiltily, withdrawn. he wished, then, to conceal his interest? as jim had said, there was some blamed thing going on. and for certain here were these two men, so strangely united, so strangely divided, both sharp-set to keep the wreck from us, and that at an exorbitant figure. was the wreck worth more than we supposed? a sudden heat was kindled in my brain; the bids were nearing longhurst's limit of five thousand; another minute and all would be too late. tearing a leaf from my sketchbook, and inspired (i suppose) by vanity in my own powers of inference and observation, i took the one mad decision of my life. "if you care to go ahead," i wrote, "i'm in for all i'm worth." jim read and looked round at me like one bewildered; then his eyes lightened, and turning again to the auctioneer he bid, "five thousand one hundred dollars." "and fifty," said monotonous bellairs. presently pinkerton scribbled, "what can it be?" and i answered, still on paper: "i can't imagine, but there's something. watch bellairs; he'll go up to the ten thousand, see if he don't." and he did, and we followed. long before this word had gone abroad that there was battle royal. we were surrounded by a crowd that looked on wondering, and when pinkerton had offered ten thousand dollars (the outside value of the cargo, even were it safe in san francisco bay) and bellairs, smirking from ear to ear to be the centre of so much attention, had jerked out his answering "and fifty," wonder deepened to excitement. "ten thousand one hundred," said jim; and even as he spoke he made a sudden gesture with his hand, his face changed, and i could see that he had guessed, or thought that he had guessed, the mystery. as he scrawled another memorandum in his note-book, his hand shook like a telegraph operator's. "chinese ship," ran the legend; and then in big, tremulous half-text, and with a flourish that overran the margin, "opium!" "to be sure," thought i, "this must be the secret." i knew that scarce a ship came in from any chinese port but she carried somewhere, behind a bulkhead or in some cunning hollow of the beams, a nest of the valuable poison. doubtless there was some such treasure on the flying scud. how much was it worth? we knew not; we were gambling in the dark. but trent knew, and bellairs; and we could only watch and judge. by this time neither pinkerton nor i were of sound mind. pinkerton was beside himself, his eyes like lamps; i shook in every member. to any stranger entering, say, in the course of the fifteenth thousand, we should probably have cut a poorer figure than bellairs himself. but we did not pause; and the crowd watched us--now in silence, now with a buzz of whispers. seventeen thousand had been reached, when douglas b. longhurst, forcing his way into the opposite row of faces, conspicuously and repeatedly shook his head at jim. jim's answer was a note of two words: "my racket!" which, when the great man had perused, he shook his finger warningly and departed--i thought, with a sorrowful countenance. although mr. longhurst knew nothing of bellairs, the shady lawyer knew all about the wrecker boss. he had seen him enter the ring with manifest expectation; he saw him depart, and the bids continue, with manifest surprise and disappointment. "hullo," he plainly thought, "this is not the ring i'm fighting, then?" and he determined to put on a spurt. "eighteen thousand," said he. "and fifty," said jim, taking a leaf out of his adversary's book. "twenty thousand," from bellairs. "and fifty," from jim, with a little nervous titter. and with one consent they returned to the old pace-only now it was bellairs who took the hundreds, and jim who did the fifty business. but by this time our idea had gone abroad. i could hear the word "opium" pass from mouth to mouth, and by the looks directed at us i could see we were supposed to have some private information. and here an incident occurred highly typical of san francisco. close at my back there had stood for some time a stout middle-aged gentleman, with pleasant eyes, hair pleasantly grizzled, and a ruddy pleasing face. all of a sudden he appeared as a third competitor, skied the flying scud with four fat bids of a thousand dollars each, and then as suddenly fled the field, remaining thenceforth (as before) a silent, interested spectator. ever since mr. longhurst's useless intervention bellairs had seemed uneasy, and at this new attack he began (in his turn) to scribble a note between the bids. i imagined, naturally enough, that it would go to captain trent; but when it was done, and the writer turned and looked behind him in the crowd, to my unspeakable amazement he did not seem to remark the captain's presence. "messenger boy, messenger boy!" i heard him say. "somebody call me a messenger boy." at last somebody did, but it was not the captain. "he's sending for instructions," i wrote to pinkerton. "for money," he wrote back. "shall i strike out? i think this is the time." i nodded. "thirty thousand," said pinkerton, making a leap of close upon three thousand dollars. i could see doubt in bellairs's eye; then, sudden resolution. "thirty-five thousand," said he. "forty thousand," said pinkerton. there was a long pause, during which bellairs's countenance was as a book; and then, not much too soon for the impending hammer, "forty thousand and five dollars," said he. pinkerton and i exchanged eloquent glances. we were of one mind. bellairs had tried a bluff; now he perceived his mistake, and was bidding against time; he was trying to spin out the sale until the messenger boy returned. "forty-five thousand dollars," said pinkerton: his voice was like a ghost's and tottered with emotion. "forty-five thousand and five dollars," said bellairs. "fifty thousand," said pinkerton. "i beg your pardon, mr. pinkerton. did i hear you make an advance, sir?" asked the auctioneer. "i--i have a difficulty in speaking," gasped jim. "it's fifty thousand, mr. borden." bellairs was on his feet in a moment. "auctioneer," he said, "i have to beg the favour of three moments at the telephone. in this matter i am acting on behalf of a certain party to whom i have just written----" "i have nothing to do with any of this," said the auctioneer brutally. "i am here to sell this wreck. do you make any advance on fifty thousand?" "i have the honour to explain to you, sir," returned bellairs, with a miserable assumption of dignity, "fifty thousand was the figure named by my principal; but if you will give me the small favour of two moments at the telephone "o, nonsense!" said the auctioneer. "if you make no advance, i'll knock it down to mr. pinkerton." "i warn you," cried the attorney, with sudden shrillness. "have a care what you're about. you are here to sell for the underwriters, let me tell you--not to act for mr. douglas longhurst. this sale has been already disgracefully interrupted to allow that person to hold a consultation with his minions; it has been much commented on." "there was no complaint at the time," said the auctioneer, manifestly discountenanced. "you should have complained at the time." "i am not here to conduct this sale," replied bellairs; "i am not paid for that." "well, i am, you see," retorted the auctioneer, his impudence quite restored; and he resumed his sing-song. "any advance on fifty thousand dollars? no advance on fifty thousand? no advance, gentlemen? going at fifty thousand, the wreck of the brig flying scud--going-going--gone!" "my god, jim, can we pay the money?" i cried, as the stroke of the hammer seemed to recall me from a dream. "it's got to be raised," said he, white as a sheet. "it'll be a hell of a strain, loudon. the credit's good for it, i think; but i shall have to get around. write me a cheque for your stuff. meet me at the occidental in an hour." i wrote my cheque at a desk, and i declare i could never have recognised my signature. jim was gone in a moment; trent had vanished even earlier; only bellairs remained, exchanging insults with the auctioneer; and, behold! as i pushed my way out of the exchange, who should run full tilt into my arms but the messenger boy! it was by so near a margin that we became the owners of the flying scud. chapter x in which the crew vanish at the door of the exchange i found myself along-side of the short middle-aged gentleman who had made an appearance, so vigorous and so brief, in the great battle. "congratulate you, mr. dodd," he said. "you and your friend stuck to your guns nobly." "no thanks to you, sir," i replied, "running us up a thousand at a time, and tempting all the speculators in san francisco to come and have a try." "o, that was temporary insanity," said he; "and i thank the higher powers i am still a free man. walking this way, mr. dodd? i'll walk along with you. it's pleasant for an old fogey like myself to see the young bloods in the ring; i've done some pretty wild gambles in my time in this very city, when it was a smaller place and i was a younger man. yes, i know you, mr. dodd. by sight, i may say i know you extremely well, you and your followers, the fellows in the kilts, eh? pardon me. but i have the misfortune to own a little box on the saucelito shore. i'll be glad to see you there any sunday--without the fellows in kilts, you know; and i can give you a bottle of wine, and show you the best collection of arctic voyages in the states. morgan is my name--judge morgan--a welshman and a forty-niner." "o, if you're a pioneer," cried i, "come to me and i'll provide you with an axe." "you'll want your axes for yourself, i fancy," he returned, with one of his quick looks. "unless you have private knowledge, there will be a good deal of rather violent wrecking to do before you find that-opium, do you call it?" "well, it's either opium, or we are stark staring mad," i replied. "but i assure you we have no private information. we went in (as i suppose you did yourself) on observation." "an observer, sir?" inquired the judge. "i may say it is my trade--or, rather, was," said i. "well now, and what did you think of bellairs?" he asked. "very little indeed," said i. "i may tell you," continued the judge, "that to me the employment of a fellow like that appears inexplicable. i knew him: he knows me, too; he has often heard from me in court; and i assure you the man is utterly blown upon; it is not safe to trust him with a dollar, and here we find him dealing up to fifty thousand. i can't think who can have so trusted him, but i am very sure it was a stranger in san francisco." "some one for the owners, i suppose," said i. "surely not!" exclaimed the judge. "owners in london can have nothing to say to opium smuggled between hong kong and san francisco. i should rather fancy they would be the last to hear of it--until the ship was seized. no; i was thinking of the captain. but where would he get the money--above all, after having laid out so much to buy the stuff in china?--unless, indeed, he were acting for some one in 'frisco; and in that case--here we go round again in the vicious circle-bellairs would not have been employed." "i think i can assure you it was not the captain," said i, "for he and bellairs are not acquainted." "wasn't that the captain with the red face and coloured handkerchief? he seemed to me to follow bellairs's game with the most thrilling interest," objected mr. morgan. "perfectly true," said i. "trent is deeply interested; he very likely knew bellairs, and he certainly knew what he was there for; but i can put my hand in the fire that bellairs didn't know trent." "another singularity," observed the judge. "well, we have had a capital forenoon. but you take an old lawyer's advice, and get to midway island as fast as you can. there's a pot of money on the table, and bellairs and co. are not the men to stick at trifles." with this parting counsel judge morgan shook hands and made off along montgomery street, while i entered the occidental hotel, on the steps of which we had finished our conversation. i was well known to the clerks, and as soon as it was understood that i was there to wait for pinkerton and lunch, i was invited to a seat inside the counter. here, then, in a retired corner, i was beginning to come a little to myself after these so violent experiences, when who should come hurrying in, and (after a moment with a clerk) fly to one of the telephone-boxes but mr. henry d. bellairs in person! call it what you will, but the impulse was irresistible, and i rose and took a place immediately at the man's back. it may be some excuse that i had often practised this very innocent form of eavesdropping upon strangers and for fun. indeed, i scarce know anything that gives a lower view of man's intelligence than to overhear (as you thus do) one side of a communication. "central," said the attorney, "2241 and 584 b" (or some such numbers)--"who's that?--all right--mr. bellairs-occidental; the wires are fouled in the other place-yes, about three minutes--yes--yes--your figure, i am sorry to say--no--i had no authority--neither more nor less--i have every reason to suppose so--o, pinkerton, montana block--yes--yes--very good, sir--as you will, sir--disconnect 584 b." bellairs turned to leave; at sight of me behind him, up flew his hands, and he winced and cringed, as though in fear of bodily attack. "o, it's you!" he cried; and then, somewhat recovered, "mr. pinkerton's partner, i believe? i am pleased to see you, sir--to congratulate you on your late success"; and with that he was gone, obsequiously bowing as he passed. and now a madcap humour came upon me. it was plain bellairs had been communicating with his principal; i knew the number, if not the name. should i ring up at once? it was more than likely he would return in person to the telephone. why should not i dash (vocally) into the presence of this mysterious person, and have some fun for my money? i pressed the bell. "central," said i, "connect again 2241 and 584 b." a phantom central repeated the numbers; there was a pause, and then "two two four one," came in a tiny voice into my ear--a voice with the english sing-song-the voice plainly of a gentleman. "is that you again, mr. bellairs?" it trilled. "i tell you it's no use. is that you, mr. bellairs? who is that?" "i only want to put a single question," said i, civilly. "why do you want to buy the flying scud?" no answer came. the telephone vibrated and hummed in miniature with all the numerous talk of a great city: but the voice of 2241 was silent. once and twice i put my question; but the tiny sing-song english voice i heard no more. the man, then, had fled--fled from an impertinent question. it scarce seemed natural to me-unless on the principle that the wicked fleeth when no man pursueth. i took the telephone list and turned the number up: "2241, mrs. keane, res. 942 mission street" and that, short of driving to the house and renewing my impertinence in person, was all that i could do. yet, as i resumed my seat in the corner of the office, i was conscious of a new element of the uncertain, the underhand, perhaps even the dangerous, in our adventure; and there was now a new picture in my mental gallery, to hang beside that of the wreck under its canopy of sea-birds and of captain trent mopping his red brow--the picture of a man with a telephone dicebox to his ear, and at the small voice of a single question struck suddenly as white as ashes. from these considerations i was awakened by the striking of the clock. an hour and nearly twenty minutes had elapsed since pinkerton departed for the money: he was twenty minutes behind time; and to me, who knew so well his gluttonous despatch of business, and had so frequently admired his iron punctuality, the fact spoke volumes. the twenty minutes slowly stretched into an hour; the hour had nearly extended to a second; and i still sat in my corner of the office, or paced the marble pavement of the hall, a prey to the most wretched anxiety and penitence. the hour for lunch was nearly over before i remembered that i had not eaten. heaven knows i had no appetite; but there might still be much to do--it was needful i should keep myself in proper trim, if it were only to digest the now too probable bad news; and leaving word at the office for pinkerton, i sat down to table and called for soup, oysters, and a pint of champagne. i was not long set before my friend returned. he looked pale and rather old, refused to hear of food, and called for tea. "i suppose all's up?" said i, with an incredible sinking. "no," he replied; "i've pulled it through, loudon--just pulled it through. i couldn't have raised another cent in all 'frisco. people don't like it; longhurst even went back on me; said he wasn't a three-card-monte man." "well, what's the odds?" said i. "that's all we wanted, isn't it?" "loudon, i tell you i've had to pay blood for that money," cried my friend, with almost savage energy and gloom. "it's all on ninety days, too; i couldn't get another day--not another day. if we go ahead with this affair, loudon, you'll have to go yourself and make the fur fly. i'll stay, of course--i've got to stay and face the trouble in this city; though, i tell you, i just long to go. i would show these fat brutes of sailors what work was; i would be all through that wreck and out at the other end, before they had boosted themselves upon the deck! but you'll do your level best, loudon; i depend on you for that. you must be all fire and grit and dash from the word "go." that schooner, and the boodle on board of her, are bound to be here before three months, or it's b u s t--bust." "i'll swear i'll do my best, jim; i'll work double tides," said i. "it is my fault that you are in this thing, and i'll get you out again, or kill myself. but what is that you say? 'if we go ahead?' have we any choice, then?" "i'm coming to that," said jim. "it isn't that i doubt the investment. don't blame yourself for that; you showed a fine sound business instinct: i always knew it was in you, but then it ripped right out. i guess that little beast of an attorney knew what he was doing; and he wanted nothing better than to go beyond. no, there's profit in the deal; it's not that; it's these ninety-day bills, and the strain i've given the credit-for i've been up and down borrowing, and begging and bribing to borrow. i don't believe there's another man but me in 'frisco," he cried, with a sudden fervour of self-admiration, "who could have raised that last ten thousand! then there's another thing. i had hoped you might have peddled that opium through the islands, which is safer and more profitable. but with this three-month limit, you must make tracks for honolulu straight, and communicate by steamer. i'll try to put up something for you there; i'll have a man spoken to who's posted on that line of biz. keep a bright lookout for him as soon's you make the islands; for it's on the cards he might pick you up at sea in a whaleboat or a steam-launch, and bring the dollars right on board." it shows how much i had suffered morally during my sojourn in san francisco that even now, when our fortunes trembled in the balance, i should have consented to become a smuggler--and (of all things) a smuggler of opium. yet i did, and that in silence; without a protest, not without a twinge. "and suppose," said i, "suppose the opium is so securely hidden that i can't get hands on it?" "then you will stay there till that brig is kindlingwood, and stay and split that kindling-wood with your penknife," cried pinkerton. "the stuff is there; we know that; and it must be found. but all this is only the one string to our bow--though i tell you i've gone into it head-first, as if it was our bottom dollar. why, the first thing i did before i'd raised a cent, and with this other notion in my head already--the first thing i did was to secure the schooner. the norah creina she is, sixty-four tons--quite big enough for our purpose since the rice is spoiled, and the fastest thing of her tonnage out of san francisco. for a bonus of two hundred, and a monthly charter of three, i have her for my own time; wages and provisions, say four hundred more: a drop in the bucket. they began firing the cargo out of her (she was part loaded) near two hours ago; and about the same time john smith got the order for the stores. that's what i call business." "no doubt of that," said i; "but the other notion?" "well, here it is," said jim. "you agree with me that bellairs was ready to go higher?" "i saw where he was coming. "yes--and why shouldn't he?" said i. "is that the line?" "that's the line, loudon dodd," assented jim. "if bellairs and his principal have any desire to go me better, i'm their man." a sudden thought, a sudden fear, shot into my mind. what if i had been right? what if my childish pleasantry had frightened the principal away, and thus destroyed our chance? shame closed my mouth; i began instinctively a long course of reticence; and it was without a word of my meeting with bellairs, or my discovery of the address in mission street, that i continued the discussion. "doubtless fifty thousand was originally mentioned as a round sum," said i, "or, at least, so bellairs supposed. but at the same time it may be an outside sum; and to cover the expenses we have already incurred for the money and the schooner--i am far from blaming you; i see how needful it was to be ready for either event--but to cover them we shall want a rather large advance." "bellairs will go to sixty thousand; it's my belief, if he were properly handled, he would take the hundred," replied pinkerton. "look back on the way the sale ran at the end." "that is my own impression as regards bellairs, i admitted; "the point i am trying to make is that bellairs himself may be mistaken; that what he supposed to be a round sum was really an outside figure." "well, loudon, if that is so," said jim, with extraordinary gravity of face and voice, "if that is so, let him take the flying scud at fifty thousand, and joy go with her! i prefer the loss." "is that so, jim? are we dipped as bad as that?" i cried. "we've put our hand farther out than we can pull it in again, loudon," he replied. "why, man, that fifty thousand dollars, before we get clear again, will cost us nearer seventy. yes, it figures up overhead to more than ten per cent. a month; and i could do no better, and there isn't the man breathing could have done as well. it was a miracle, loudon. i couldn't but admire myself. o, if we had just the four months! and you know, loudon, it may still be done. with your energy and charm, if the worst comes to the worst, you can run that schooner as you ran one of your picnics; and we may have luck. and o man! if we do pull it through, what a dashing operation it will be! what an advertisement! what a thing to talk of and remember all our lives! however," he broke off suddenly, "we must try the safe thing first. here's for the shyster!" there was another struggle in my mind, whether i should even now admit my knowledge of the mission street address. but i had let the favourable moment slip. i had now, which made it the more awkward, not merely the original discovery, but my late suppression to confess. i could not help reasoning, besides, that the more natural course was to approach the principal by the road of his agent's office; and there weighed upon my spirits a conviction that we were already too late, and that the man was gone two hours ago. once more, then, i held my peace; and after an exchange of words at the telephone to assure ourselves he was at home, we set out for the attorney's office. the endless streets of any american city pass, from one end to another, through strange degrees and vicissitudes of splendour and distress, running under the same name between monumental warehouses, the dens and taverns of thieves, and the sward and shrubbery of villas. in san francisco the sharp inequalities of the ground, and the sea bordering on so many sides, greatly exaggerate these contrasts. the street for which we were now bound took its rise among blowing sands, somewhere in view of the lone mountain cemetery; ran for a term across that rather windy olympus of nob hill, or perhaps just skirted its frontier; passed almost immediately after through a stage of little houses, rather impudently painted, and offering to the eye of the observer this diagnostic peculiarity, that the huge brass plates upon the small and highlycoloured doors bore only the first names of ladies-norah or lily or florence; traversed china town, where it was doubtless undermined with opium cellars, and its blocks pierced, after the similitude of rabbit-warrens, with a hundred doors and passages and galleries; enjoyed a glimpse of high publicity at the corner of kearney; and proceeded, among dives and warehouses, towards the city front and the region of the waterrats. in this last stage of its career, where it was both grimy and solitary, and alternately quiet and roaring to the wheels of drays, we found a certain house of some pretension to neatness, and furnished with a rustic outside stair. on the pillar of the stair a black plate bore in gilded lettering this device: "harry d. bellairs, attorney-at-law. consultations, 9 to 6." on ascending the stairs a door was found to stand open on the balcony, with this further inscription, "mr. bellairs in." "i wonder what we do next," said i. "guess we sail right in," returned jim, and suited the action to the word. the room in which we found ourselves was clean, but extremely bare. a rather old-fashioned secretaire stood by the wall, with a chair drawn to the desk; in one corner was a shelf with half-a-dozen law-books; and i can remember literally not another stick of furniture. one inference imposed itself: mr. bellairs was in the habit of sitting down himself and suffering his clients to stand. at the far end, and veiled by a curtain of red baize, a second door communicated with the interior of the house. hence, after some coughing and stamping, we elicited the shyster, who came timorously forth, for all the world like a man in fear of bodily assault, and then, recognising his guests, suffered from what i can only call a nervous paroxysm of courtesy. "mr. pinkerton and partner!" said he. "i will go and fetch you seats." "not the least," said jim. "no time. much rather stand. this is business, mr. bellairs. this morning, as you know, i bought the wreck flying scud." the lawyer nodded. "and bought her," pursued my friend, "at a figure out of all proportion to the cargo and the circumstances, as they appeared." "and now you think better of it, and would like to be off with your bargain? i have been figuring upon this," returned the lawyer. "my client, i will not hide from you, was displeased with me for putting her so high. i think we were both too heated, mr. pinkerton: rivalry-the spirit of competition. but i will be quite frank-i know when i am dealing with gentlemen--and i am almost certain, if you leave the matter in my hands, my client would relieve you of the bargain, so as you would lose"--he consulted our faces with gimlet-eyed calculation--"nothing," he added shrilly. and here pinkerton amazed me. "that's a little too thin," said he. "i have the wreck. i know there's boodle in her, and i mean to keep her. what i want is some points which may save me needless expense, and which i'm prepared to pay for, money down. the thing for you to consider is just this, am i to deal with you or direct with your principal? if you are prepared to give me the facts right off, why, name your figure. only one thing," added jim, holding a finger up, "when i say 'money down' i mean bills payable when the ship returns, and if the information proves reliable. i don't buy pigs in pokes." i had seen the lawyer's face light up for a moment, and then, at the sound of jim's proviso, miserably fade. "i guess you know more about this wreck than i do, mr. pinkerton," said he. "i only know that i was told to buy the thing, and tried, and couldn't." "what i like about you, mr. bellairs, is that you waste no time," said jim. "now then, your client's name and address." "on consideration," replied the lawyer, with indescribable furtivity, "i cannot see that i am entitled to communicate my client's name. i will sound him for you with pleasure, if you care to instruct me, but i cannot see that i can give you his address." "very well," said jim, and put his hat on. "rather a strong step, isn't it?" (between every sentence was a clear pause.) "not think better of it? well, come, call it a dollar?" "mr. pinkerton, sir!" exclaimed the offended attorney; and, indeed, i myself was almost afraid that jim had mistaken his man and gone too far. "no present use for a dollar?" says jim. "well, look here, mr. bellairs--we're both busy men, and i'll go to my outside figure with you right away--" "stop this, pinkerton," i broke in. "i know the address: 924 mission street." i do not know whether pinkerton or bellairs was the more taken aback. "why in snakes didn't you say so, loudon?" cried my friend. "you didn't ask for it before," said i, colouring to my temples under his troubled eyes. it was bellairs who broke silence, kindly supplying me with all that i had yet to learn. "since you know mr. dickson's address," said he, plainly burning to be rid of us, "i suppose i need detain you no longer." i do not know how pinkerton felt, but i had death in my soul as we came down the outside stair from the den of this blotched spider. my whole being was strung, waiting for jim's first question, and prepared to blurt out--i believe, almost with tears--a full avowal. but my friend asked nothing. "we must hack it," said he, tearing off in the direction of the nearest stand. "no time to be lost. you saw how i changed ground. no use in paying the shyster's commission." again i expected a reference to my suppression; again i was disappointed. it was plain jim feared the subject, and i felt i almost hated him for that fear. at last, when we were already in the hack and driving towards mission street, i could bear my suspense no longer. "you do not ask me about that address," said i. "no," said he, quickly and timidly, "what was it? i would like to know." the note of timidity offended me like a buffet; my temper rose as hot as mustard. "i must request you do not ask me," said i; "it is a matter i cannot explain." the moment the foolish words were said, that moment i would have given worlds to recall them; how much more when pinkerton, patting my hand, replied, "all right, dear boy, not another word; that's all done; i'm convinced it's perfectly right!" to return upon the subject was beyond my courage; but i vowed inwardly that i should do my utmost in the future for this mad speculation, and that i would cut myself in pieces before jim should lose one dollar. we had no sooner arrived at the address than i had other things to think of. "mr. dickson? he's gone," said the landlady. where had he gone? "i'm sure i can't tell you," she answered. "he was quite a stranger to me." "did he express his baggage, ma'am?" asked pinkerton. "hadn't any," was the reply. "he came last night, and left again to-day with a satchel." "when did he leave?" i inquired. "it was about noon," replied the landlady. "some one rang up the telephone, and asked for him; and i reckon he got some news, for he left right away, although his rooms were taken by the week. he seemed considerable put out: i reckon it was a death." my heart sank; perhaps my idiotic jest had indeed driven him away; and again i asked myself, "why?" and whirled for a moment in a vortex of untenable hypotheses. "what was he like, ma'am?" pinkerton was asking, when i returned to consciousness of my surroundings. "a clean-shaved man," said the woman, and could be led or driven into no more significant description. "pull up at the nearest drug-store," said pinkerton to the driver; and when there, the telephone was put in operation, and the message sped to the pacific mail steamship company's office--this was in the days before spreckels had arisen--"when does the next china steamer touch at honolulu?" "the city of pekin; she cast off the dock to-day, at half-past one," came the reply. "it's a clear case of bolt," said jim. "he's skipped, or my name's not pinkerton. he's gone to head us off at midway island." somehow i was not so sure; there were elements in the case not known to pinkerton--the fears of the captain, for example--that inclined me otherwise; and the idea that i had terrified mr. dickson into flight, though resting on so slender a foundation, clung obstinately in my mind. "shouldn't we see the list of passengers?" i asked. "dickson is such a blamed common name," returned jim; "and then, as like as not, he would change it." at this i had another intuition. a negative of a street scene, taken unconsciously when i was absorbed in other thought, rose in my memory with not a feature blurred: a view, from bellairs's door as we were coming down, of muddy roadway, passing drays, matted telegraph wires, a china-boy with a basket on his head, and (almost opposite) a corner grocery with the name of dickson in great gilt letters. "yes," said i, "you are right; he would change it. and anyway, i don't believe it was his name at all; i believe he took it from a corner grocery beside bellairs's." "as like as not," said jim, still standing on the side walk with contracted brows. "well, what shall we do next?" i asked. "the natural thing would be to rush the schooner," he replied. "but i don't know. i telephoned the captain to go at it head down and heels in air; he answered like a little man; and i guess he's getting around. i believe, loudon, we'll give trent a chance. trent was in it; he was in it up to the neck; even if he couldn't buy, he could give us the straight tip." "i think so, too," said i. "where shall we find him?" "british consulate, of course," said jim. "and that's another reason for taking him first. we can hustle that schooner up all evening; but when the consulate's shut, it's shut." at the consulate we learned that captain trent had alighted (such is, i believe, the classic phrase) at the what cheer house. to that large and unaristocratic hostelry we drove, and addressed ourselves to a large clerk, who was chewing a toothpick and looking straight before him. "captain jacob trent?" "gone," said the clerk. "where has he gone?" asked pinkerton. "cain't say," said the clerk. "when did he go?" i asked. "don't know," said the clerk, and with the simplicity of a monarch offered us the spectacle of his broad back. what might have happened next i dread to picture, for pinkerton's excitement had been growing steadily, and now burned dangerously high; but we were spared extremities by the intervention of a second clerk. "why, mr. dodd!" he exclaimed, running forward to the counter. "glad to see you, sir! can i do anything in your way?" how virtuous actions blossom! here was a young man to whose pleased ears i had rehearsed "just before the battle, mother," at some weekly picnic; and now, in that tense moment of my life, he came (from the machine) to be my helper. "captain trent, of the wreck? o yes, mr. dodd; he left about twelve; he and another of the men. the kanaka went earlier, by the city of pekin; i know that; i remember expressing his chest. captain trent? i'll inquire, mr. dodd. yes, they were all here. here are the names on the register; perhaps you would care to look at them while i go and see about the baggage?" i drew the book toward me, and stood looking at the four names, all written in the same hand--rather a big, and rather a bad one: trent, brown, hardy, and (instead of ah sing) jos. amalu. "pinkerton," said i, suddenly, "have you that occidental in your pocket?" "never left me," said pinkerton, producing the paper. i turned to the account of the wreck. "here," said i, "here's the name. "elias goddedaal, mate." why do we never come across elias goddedaal?" "that's so," said jim. "was he with the rest in that saloon when you saw them?" "i don't believe it," said i. "they were only four, and there was none that behaved like a mate." at this moment the clerk returned with his report. "the captain," it appeared, "came with some kind of an express wagon, and he and the man took off three chests and a big satchel. our porter helped to put them on, but they drove the cart themselves. the porter thinks they went down town. it was about one." "still in time for the city of pekin," observed jim. "how many of them were here?" i inquired. "three, sir, and the kanaka," replied the clerk. "the third, but he's gone too." "mr. goddedaal, the mate, wasn't here then?" i asked. "no, mr. dodd, none but what you see," says the clerk. "nor you never heard where he was?" "no. any particular reason for finding these men, mr. dodd?" inquired the clerk. "this gentleman and i have bought the wreck," i explained; "we wished to get some information, and it is very annoying to find the men all gone." a certain group had gradually formed about us, for the wreck was still a matter of interest; and at this, one of the bystanders, a rough seafaring man, spoke suddenly. "i guess the mate won't be gone," said he. "he's main sick; never left the sick-bay aboard the tempest; so they tell me." jim took me by the sleeve. "back to the consulate," said he. but even at the consulate nothing was known of mr. goddedaal. the doctor of the tempest had certified him very sick; he had sent his papers in, but never appeared in person before the authorities. "have you a telephone laid on to the tempest?" asked pinkerton. "laid on yesterday," said the clerk. "do you mind asking, or letting me ask? we are very anxious to get hold of mr. goddedaal." "all right," said the clerk, and turned to the telephone. "i'm sorry," he said presently, "mr. goddedaal has left the ship, and no one knows where he is." "do you pay the men's passage home?" i inquired, a sudden thought striking me. "if they want it," said the clerk; "sometimes they don't. but we paid the kanaka's passage to honolulu this morning; and by what captain trent was saying, i understand the rest are going home together." "then you haven't paid them?" said i. "not yet," said the clerk. "and you would be a good deal surprised if i were to tell you they were gone already?" i asked. "o, i should think you were mistaken," said he. "such is the fact, however," said i. "i am sure you must be mistaken," he repeated. "may i use your telephone one moment?" asked pinkerton; and as soon as permission had been granted, i heard him ring up the printing-office where our advertisements were usually handled. more i did not hear, for, suddenly recalling the big bad hand in the register of the what cheer house, i asked the consulate clerk if he had a specimen of captain trent's writing. whereupon i learned that the captain could not write, having cut his hand open a little before the loss of the brig; that the latter part of the log even had been written up by mr. goddedaal; and that trent had always signed with his left hand. by the time i had gleaned this information pinkerton was ready. "that's all that we can do. now for the schooner," said he; "and by to-morrow evening i lay hands on goddedaal, or my name's not pinkerton." "how have you managed?" i inquired. "you'll see before you get to bed," said pinkerton. "and now, after all this backwarding and forwarding, and that hotel clerk, and that bug bellairs, it'll be a change and a kind of consolation to see the schooner. i guess things are humming there." but on the wharf, when we reached it, there was no sign of bustle, and, but for the galley smoke, no mark of life on the norah creina. pinkerton's face grew pale and his mouth straightened as he leaped on board. "where's the captain of this----?" and he left the phrase unfinished, finding no epithet sufficiently energetic for his thoughts. it did not appear whom or what he was addressing; but a head, presumably the cook's, appeared in answer at the galley door. "in the cabin, at dinner," said the cook deliberately, chewing as he spoke. "is that cargo out?" "no, sir." "none of it?" "o, there's some of it out. we'll get at the rest of it livelier to-morrow, i guess." "i guess there'll be something broken first," said pinkerton, and strode to the cabin. here we found a man, fat, dark, and quiet, seated gravely at what seemed a liberal meal. he looked up upon our entrance; and seeing pinkerton continue to stand facing him in silence, hat on head, arms folded, and lips compressed, an expression of mingled wonder and annoyance began to dawn upon his placid face. "well!" said jim; and so this is what you call rushing around?" "who are you?" cries the captain. "me! i'm pinkerton!" retorted jim, as though the name had been a talisman. "you're not very civil, whoever you are," was the reply. but still a certain effect had been produced, for he scrambled to his feet, and added hastily, "a man must have a bit of dinner, you know, mr. pinkerton." "where's your mate?" snapped jim. "he's up town," returned the other. "up town!" sneered pinkerton. "now, i'll tell you what you are--you're a fraud; and if i wasn't afraid of dirtying my boot, i would kick you and your dinner into that dock." "i'll tell you something, too," retorted the captain, duskily flushing. "i wouldn't sail this ship for the man you are, if you went upon your knees. i've dealt with gentlemen up to now." "i can tell you the names of a number of gentlemen you'll never deal with any more, and that's the whole of longhurst's gang," said jim. "i'll put your pipe out in that quarter, my friend. here, rout out your traps as quick as look at it, and take your vermin along with you. i'll have a captain in, this very night, that's a sailor, and some sailors to work for him." "i'll go when i please, and that's to-morrow morning," cried the captain after us, as we departed for the shore. "there's something gone wrong with the world to-day; it must have come bottom up!" wailed pinkerton. "bellairs, and then the hotel clerk, and now this fraud! and what am i to do for a captain, loudon, with longhurst gone home an hour ago and the boys all scattered?" "i know," said i; "jump in!" and then to the driver: "do you know black tom's?" thither then we rattled, passed through the bar, and found (as i had hoped) johnson in the enjoyment of club life. the table had been thrust upon one side; a south sea merchant was discoursing music from a mouth-organ in one corner; and in the middle of the floor johnson and a fellow-seaman, their arms clasped about each other's bodies, somewhat heavily danced. the room was both cold and close; a jet of gas, which continually menaced the heads of the performers, shed a coarse illumination; the mouth-organ sounded shrill and dismal; and the faces of all concerned were church-like in their gravity. it were, of course, indelicate to interrupt these solemn frolics; so we edged ourselves to chairs, for all the world like belated comers in a concert-room, and patiently waited for the end. at length the organist, having exhausted his supply of breath, ceased abruptly in the middle of a bar. with the cessation of the strain the dancers likewise came to a full stop, swayed a moment, still embracing, and then separated, and looked about the circle for applause. "very well danced!" said one; but it appears the compliment was not strong enough for the performers, who (forgetful of the proverb) took up the tale in person. "well," said johnson, "i mayn't be no sailor, but i can dance!" and his late partner, with an almost pathetic conviction, added, "my foot is as light as a feather." seeing how the wind set, you may be sure i added a few words of praise before i carried johnson alone into the passage: to whom, thus mollified, i told so much as i judged needful of our situation, and begged him, if he would not take the job himself, to find me a smart man. "me!" he cried; "i couldn't no more do it than i could try to go to hell!" "i thought you were a mate?" said i. "so i am a mate," giggled johnson, "and you don't catch me shipping noways else. but i'll tell you what: i believe i can get you arty nares. you seen arty; first-rate navigator, and a son of a gun for style." and he proceeded to explain to me that mr. nares, who had the promise of a fine barque in six months, after things had quieted down, was in the meantime living very private, and would be pleased to have a change of air. i called out pinkerton and told him. "nares!" he cried, as soon as i had come to the name, "i would jump at the chance of a man that had had nares's trousers on! why, loudon, he's the smartest deep-water mate out of san francisco, and draws his dividends regular in service and out." this hearty indorsation clinched the proposal; johnson agreed to produce nares before six the following morning; and black tom, being called into the consultation, promised us four smart hands for the same hour, and even (what appeared to all of us excessive) promised them sober. the streets were fully lighted when we left black tom's: street after street sparkling with gas or electricity, line after line of distant luminaries climbing the steep sides of hills towards the overvaulting darkness; and on the other hand, where the waters of the bay invisibly trembled, a hundred riding lanterns marked the position of a hundred ships. the sea-fog flew high in heaven; and at the level of man's life and business it was clear and chill. by silent consent we paid the hack off, and proceeded arm-in-arm towards the "poodle dog" for dinner. at one of the first hoardings i was aware of a billsticker at work: it was a late hour for this employment, and i checked pinkerton until the sheet should be unfolded. this is what i read:- two hundred dollars reward. officers and men of the wrecked brig "flying scud" applying, personally or by letter, at the office of james pinkerton, montana block, before noon to-morrow, tuesday, 12th, will receive two hundred dollars reward. "this is your idea, pinkerton!" i cried. "yes. they've lost no time; i'll say that for them-not like the fraud," said he. "but mind you, loudon, that's not half of it. the cream of the idea's here: we know our man's sick; well, a copy of that has been mailed to every hospital, every doctor, and every drugstore in san francisco." of course, from the nature of our business, pinkerton could do a thing of the kind at a figure extremely reduced; for all that, i was appalled at the extravagance, and said so. "what matter a few dollars now?" he replied sadly; "it's in three months that the pull comes, loudon." we walked on again in silence, not without a shiver. even at the "poodle dog" we took our food with small appetite and less speech; and it was not until he was warmed with a third glass of champagne that pinkerton cleared his throat and looked upon me with a deprecating eye. "loudon," said he, "there was a subject you didn't wish to be referred to. i only want to do so indirectly. it wasn't"--he faltered--"it wasn't because you were dissatisfied with me?" he concluded, with a quaver. "pinkerton!" cried i. "no, no, not a word just now," he hastened to proceed; "let me speak first. i appreciate, though i can't imitate, the delicacy of your nature; and i can well understand you would rather die than speak of it, and yet might feel disappointed. i did think i could have done better myself. but when i found how tight money was in this city, and a man like douglas b. longhurst-a forty-niner, the man that stood at bay in a corn patch for five hours against the san diablo squatters-weakening on the operation, i tell you, loudon, i began to despair; and--i may have made mistakes, no doubt there are thousands who could have done better--but i give you a loyal hand on it, i did my best." "my poor jim," said i, "as if i ever doubted you! as if i didn't know you had done wonders! all day i've been admiring your energy and resource. and as for that affair----" "no, loudon, no more--not a word more! don't want to hear," cried jim. "well, to tell you the truth, i don't want to tell you," said i; "for it's a thing i'm ashamed of." "ashamed, loudon? o, don't say that; don't use such an expression, even in jest!" protested pinkerton. "do you never do anything you're ashamed of?" i inquired. "no," says he, rolling his eyes; "why? i'm sometimes sorry afterwards, when it pans out different from what i figured. but i can't see what i would want to be ashamed for." i sat a while considering with admiration the simplicity of my friend's character. then i sighed. "do you know, jim, what i'm sorriest for?" said i. "at this rate i can't be best man at your marriage." "my marriage!" he repeated, echoing the sigh. "no marriage for me now. i'm going right down to-night to break it to her. i think that's what's shaken me all day. i feel as if i had had no right (after i was engaged) to operate so widely." "well, you know, jim, it was my doing, and you must lay the blame on me," said i. "not a cent of it!" he cried. "i was as eager as yourself, only not so bright at the beginning. no; i've myself to thank for it; but it's a wrench." while jim departed on his dolorous mission, i returned alone to the office, lit the gas, and sat down to reflect on the events of that momentous day: on the strange features of the tale that had been so far unfolded, the disappearances, the terrors, the great sums of money; and on the dangerous and ungrateful task that awaited me in the immediate future. it is difficult, in the retrospect of such affairs, to avoid attributing to ourselves in the past a measure of the knowledge we possess to-day. but i may say, and yet be well within the mark, that i was consumed that night with a fever of suspicion and curiosity; exhausted my fancy in solutions, which i still dismissed as incommensurable with the facts; and in the mystery by which i saw myself surrounded found a precious stimulus for my courage and a convenient soothing draught for conscience. even had all been plain sailing, i do not hint that i should have drawn back. smuggling is one of the meanest of crimes, for by that we rob a whole country pro rata, and are therefore certain to impoverish the poor: to smuggle opium is an offence particularly dark, since it stands related--not so much to murder, as to massacre. upon all these points i was quite clear; my sympathy was all in arms against my interest; and had not jim been involved, i could have dwelt almost with satisfaction on the idea of my failure. but jim, his whole fortune, and his marriage depended upon my success; and i preferred the interests of my friend before those of all the islanders in the south seas. this is a poor, private morality, if you like; but it is mine, and the best i have; and i am not half so much ashamed of having embarked at all on this adventure, as i am proud that (while i was in it, and for the sake of my friend) i was up early and down late, set my own hand to everything, took dangers as they came, and for once in my life played the man throughout. at the same time i could have desired another field of energy; and i was the more grateful for the redeeming element of mystery. without that, though i might have gone ahead and done as well, it would scarce have been with ardour; and what inspired me that night with an impatient greed of the sea, the island, and the wreck, was the hope that i might stumble there upon the answer to a hundred questions, and learn why captain trent fanned his red face in the exchange, and why mr. dickson fled from the telephone in the mission street lodging-house. chapter xi in which jim and i take different ways i was unhappy when i closed my eyes; and it was to unhappiness that i opened them again next morning, to a confused sense of some calamity still inarticulate, and to the consciousness of jaded limbs and of a swimming head. i must have lain for some time inert and stupidly miserable before i became aware of a reiterated knocking at the door; with which discovery all my wits flowed back in their accustomed channels, and i remembered the sale and the wreck, and goddedaal and nares, and johnson and black tom, and the troubles of yesterday and the manifold engagements of the day that was to come. the thought thrilled me like a trumpet in the hour of battle. in a moment i had leaped from bed, crossed the office where pinkerton lay in a deep trance of sleep on the convertible sofa, and stood in the doorway, in my night gear, to receive our visitor. johnson was first, by way of usher, smiling. from a little behind, with his sunday hat tilted forward over his brow and a cigar glowing between his lips, captain nares acknowledged our previous acquaintance with a succinct nod. behind him again, in the top of the stairway, a knot of sailors, the new crew of the norah creina, stood polishing the wall with back and elbow. these i left without to their reflections. but our two officers i carried at once into the office, where (taking jim by the shoulder) i shook him slowly into consciousness. he sat up, all abroad for the moment, and stared on the new captain. "jim," said i, "this is captain nares. captain, mr. pinkerton." nares repeated his curt nod, still without speech; and i thought he held us both under a watchful scrutiny. "o!" says jim, "this is captain nares, is it? goodmorning, captain nares. happy to have the pleasure of your acquaintance, sir. i know you well by reputation." perhaps, under the circumstances of the moment, this was scarce a welcome speech. at least, nares received it with a grunt. "well, captain," jim continued, "you know about the size of the business? you're to take the norah creina to midway island, break up a wreck, call at honolulu, and back to this port? i suppose that's understood?" "well," returned nares, with the same unamiable reserve, "for a reason, which i guess you know, the cruise may suit me: but there's a point or two to settle. we shall have to talk, mr. pinkerton. but whether i go or not, somebody will. there's no sense in losing time; and you might give mr. johnson a note, let him take the hands right down, and set to to overhaul the rigging. the beasts look sober," he added, with an air of great disgust, "and need putting to work to keep them so." this being agreed upon, nares watched his subordinate depart, and drew a visible breath. "and now we're alone and can talk," said he "what's this thing about? it's been advertised like barnum's museum; that poster of yours has set the front talking. that's an objection in itself, for i'm laying a little dark just now; and, anyway, before i take the ship, i require to know what i'm going after." thereupon pinkerton gave him the whole tale, beginning with a business-like precision, and working himself up, as he went on, to the boiling-point of narrative enthusiasm. nares sat and smoked, hat still on head, and acknowledged each fresh feature of the story with a frowning nod. but his pale blue eyes betrayed him, and lighted visibly. "now you see for yourself," pinkerton concluded; "there's every last chance that trent has skipped to honolulu, and it won't take much of that fifty thousand dollars to charter a smart schooner down to midway. here's where i want a man!" cried jim, with contagious energy. "that wreck's mine; i've paid for it, money down; and if it's got to be fought for, i want to see it fought for lively. if you're not back in ninety days, i tell you plainly i'll make one of the biggest busts ever seen upon this coast. it's life or death for mr. dodd and me. as like as not it'll come to grapples on the island; and when i heard your name last night--and a blame' sight more this morning when i saw the eye you've got in your head--i said, 'nares is good enough for me!'" "i guess," observed nares, studying the ash of his cigar, "the sooner i get that schooner outside the farallones the better you'll be pleased." "you're the man i dreamed of!" cried jim, bouncing on the bed. "there's not five per cent. of fraud in all your carcase." "just hold on," said nares. "there's another point. i heard some talk about a supercargo." "that's mr. dodd here, my partner," said jim. "i don't see it," returned the captain drily. "one captain's enough for any ship that ever i was aboard." "now don't you start disappointing me," said pinkerton, "for you're talking without thought. i'm not going to give you the run of the books of this firm, am i? i guess not. well, this is not only a cruise, it's a business operation, and that's in the hands of my partner. you sail that ship, you see to breaking up that wreck and keeping the men upon the jump, and you'll find your hands about full. only, no mistake about one thing; it has to be done to mr. dodd's satisfaction, for it's mr. dodd that's paying." "i'm accustomed to give satisfaction," said mr. nares, with a dark flush. "and so you will here!" cried pinkerton. "i understand you. you're prickly to handle, but you're straight all through." "the position's got to be understood, though," returned nares, perhaps a trifle mollified. "my position, i mean. i'm not going to ship sailing-master; it's enough out of my way already, to set a foot on this mosquito schooner." "well, i'll tell you," retorted jim, with an indescribable twinkle: "you just meet me on the ballast, and we'll make it a barquantine." nares laughed a little; tactless pinkerton had once more gained a victory in tact. "then there's another point," resumed the captain, tacitly relinquishing the last. "how about the owners?" "o, you leave that to me; i'm one of longhurst's crowd, you know," said jim, with sudden bristling vanity. "any man that's good enough for me, is good enough for them." "who are they?" asked nares. "m'intyre and spittal," said jim. "o well, give me a card of yours," said the captain; "you needn't bother to write; i keep m'intyre and spittal in my vest-pocket." boast for boast; it was always thus with nares and pinkerton--the two vainest men of my acquaintance. and having thus reinstated himself in his own opinion, the captain rose, and, with a couple of his stiff nods, departed. "jim," i cried, as the door closed behind him, "i don't like that man." "you've just got to, loudon," returned jim. "he's a typical american seaman--brave as a lion, full of resource, and stands high with his owners. he's a man with a record." "for brutality at sea," said i. "say what you like," exclaimed pinkerton, "it was a good hour we got him in: i'd trust mamie's life to him to-morrow." "well, and talking of mamie?" says i. jim paused with his trousers half on. "she's the gallantest little soul god ever made!" he cried. "loudon, i'd meant to knock you up last night, and i hope you won't take it unfriendly that i didn't. i went in and looked at you asleep; and i saw you were all broken up, and let you be. the news would keep, anyway; and even you, loudon, couldn't feel it the same way as i did." "what news?" i asked. "it's this way," says jim. "i told her how we stood, and that i backed down from marrying. 'are you tired of me?' says she: god bless her! well, i explained the whole thing over again, the chance of smash, your absence unavoidable, the point i made of having you for the best man, and that. 'if you're not tired of me, i think i see one way to manage,' says she. "let's get married to-morrow, and mr. loudon can be best man before he goes to sea." that's how she said it, crisp and bright, like one of dickens's characters. it was no good for me to talk about the smash. 'you'll want me all the more,' she said. loudon, i only pray i can make it up to her; i prayed for it last night beside your bed, while you lay sleeping--for you, and mamie and myself; and--i don't know if you quite believe in prayer, i'm a bit ingersollian myself--but a kind of sweetness came over me, and i couldn't help but think it was an answer. never was a man so lucky! you and me and mamie; it's a triple cord, loudon. if either of you were to die! and she likes you so much, and thinks you so accomplished and distingue-looking, and was just as set as i was to have you for best man. 'mr. loudon,' she calls you; seems to me so friendly! and she sat up till three in the morning fixing up a costume for the marriage; it did me good to see her, loudon, and to see that needle going, going, and to say 'all this hurry, jim, is just to marry you!' i couldn't believe it; it was so like some blame' fairy story. to think of those old tin-type times about turned my head; i was so unrefined then, and so illiterate, and so lonesome; and here i am in clover, and i'm blamed if i can see what i've done to deserve it." so he poured forth with innocent volubility the fulness of his heart; and i, from these irregular communications, must pick out, here a little and there a little, the particulars of his new plan. they were to be married, sure enough, that day; the wedding breakfast was to be at frank's; the evening to be passed in a visit of god-speed aboard the norah creina; and then we were to part, jim and i--he to his married life, i on my sea-enterprise. if ever i cherished an ill-feeling for miss mamie, i forgave her now; so brave and kind, so pretty and venturesome, was her decision. the weather frowned overhead with a leaden sky, and san francisco had never (in all my experience) looked so bleak and gaunt, and shoddy and crazy, like a city prematurely old; but through all my wanderings and errands to and fro, by the dockside or in the jostling street, among rude sounds and ugly sights, there ran in my mind, like a tiny strain of music, the thought of my friend's happiness. for that was indeed a day of many and incongruous occupations. breakfast was scarce swallowed before jim must run to the city hall and frank's about the cares of marriage, and i hurry to john smith's upon the account of stores, and thence, on a visit of certification, to the norah creina. methought she looked smaller than ever, sundry great ships overspiring her from close without. she was already a nightmare of disorder; and the wharf alongside was piled with a world of casks and cases and tins, and tools and coils of rope, and miniature barrels of giant powder, such as it seemed no human ingenuity could stuff on board of her. johnson was in the waist, in a red shirt and dungaree trousers, his eye kindled with activity. with him i exchanged a word or two; thence stepped aft along the narrow alleyway between the house and the rail, and down the companion to the main cabin, where the captain sat with the commissioner at wine. i gazed with disaffection at the little box which for many a day i was to call home. on the starboard was a stateroom for the captain; on the port a pair of frowsy berths, one over the other, and abutting astern upon the side of an unsavoury cupboard. the walls were yellow and damp, the floor black and greasy; there was a prodigious litter of straw, old newspapers, and broken packing-cases; and by way of ornament, only a glass-rack, a thermometer presented "with compliments" of some advertising whisky-dealer, and a swinging lamp. it was hard to foresee that, before a week was up, i should regard that cabin as cheerful, lightsome, airy, and even spacious. i was presented to the commissioner, and to a young friend of his whom he had brought with him for the purpose (apparently) of smoking cigars; and after we had pledged one another in a glass of california port, a trifle sweet and sticky for a morning beverage, the functionary spread his papers on the table, and the hands were summoned. down they trooped, accordingly, into the cabin; and stood eyeing the ceiling or the floor, the picture of sheepish embarrassment, and with a common air of wanting to expectorate and not quite daring. in admirable contrast stood the chinese cook, easy, dignified, set apart by spotless raiment, the hidalgo of the seas. i daresay you never had occasion to assist at the farce which followed. our shipping laws in the united states (thanks to the inimitable dana) are conceived in a spirit of paternal stringency, and proceed throughout on the hypothesis that poor jack is an imbecile, and the other parties to the contract, rogues and ruffians. a long and wordy paper of precautions, a fo'c's'le bill of rights, must be read separately to each man. i had now the benefit of hearing it five times in brisk succession; and you would suppose i was acquainted with its contents. but the commissioner (worthy man) spends his days in doing little else; and when we bear in mind the parallel case of the irreverent curate, we need not be surprised that he took the passage tempo prestissimo, in one roulade of gabble--that i, with the trained attention of an educated man, could gather but a fraction of its import--and the sailors nothing. no profanity in giving orders, no sheath-knives, midway island and any other port the master may direct, not to exceed six calendar months, and to this port to be paid off: so it seemed to run, with surprising verbiage; so ended. and with the end the commissioner, in each case, fetched a deep breath, resumed his natural voice, and proceeded to business. "now, my man," he would say, "you ship a. b. at so many dollars, american gold coin. sign your name here, if you have one, and can write." whereupon, and the name (with infinite hard breathing) being signed, the commissioner would proceed to fill in the man's appearance, height, etc., on the official form. in this task of literary portraiture he seemed to rely wholly upon temperament; for i could not perceive him to cast one glance on any of his models. he was assisted, however, by a running commentary from the captain: "hair blue and eyes red, nose five foot seven, and stature broken"--jests as old, presumably, as the american marine; and, like the similar pleasantries of the billiard board, perennially relished. the highest note of humour was reached in the case of the chinese cook, who was shipped under the name of "one lung," to the sound of his own protests and the self-approving chuckles of the functionary. "now, captain," said the latter, when the men were gone, and he had bundled up his papers, "the law requires you to carry a slop-chest and a chest of medicines." "i guess i know that," said nares. "i guess you do," returned the commissioner, and helped himself to port. but when he was gone, i appealed to nares on the same subject, for i was well aware we carried none of these provisions. "well," drawled nares, "there's sixty pounds of niggerhead on the quay, isn't there? and twenty pounds of salts; and i never travel without some pain-killer in my gripsack." as a matter of fact, we were richer. the captain had the usual sailor's provision of quack medicines, with which, in the usual sailor fashion, he would daily drug himself, displaying an extreme inconstancy, and flitting from kennedy's red discovery to kennedy's white, and from hood's sarsaparilla to mother seigel's syrup. and there were, besides, some mildewed and half-empty bottles, the labels obliterated, over which nares would sometimes sniff and speculate. "seems to smell like diarrhaea stuff," he would remark. "i wish't i knew, and i would try it." but the slop-chest was indeed represented by the plugs of niggerhead, and nothing else. thus paternal laws are made, thus they are evaded; and the schooner put to sea, like plenty of her neighbours, liable to a fine of six hundred dollars. this characteristic scene, which has delayed me overlong, was but a moment in that day of exercise and agitation. to fit out a schooner for sea and improvise a marriage, between dawn and dusk, involves heroic effort. all day jim and i ran and tramped, and laughed and came near crying, and fell in sudden anxious consultations, and were sped (with a prepared sarcasm on our lips) to some fallacious milliner, and made dashes to the schooner and john smith's, and at every second corner were reminded (by our own huge posters) of our desperate estate. between-whiles i had found the time to hover at some half a dozen jewellers' windows; and my present, thus intemperately chosen, was graciously accepted. i believe, indeed, that was the last (though not the least) of my concerns, before the old minister, shabby and benign, was routed from his house and led to the office like a performing poodle; and there, in the growing dusk, under the cold glitter of thirteen star, two hundred strong, and beside the garish glories of the agricultural engine, mamie and jim were made one. the scene was incongruous, but the business pretty, whimsical, and affecting; the typewriters with such kindly faces and fine posies, mamie so demure, and jim--how shall i describe that poor, transfigured jim? he began by taking the minister aside to the far end of the office. i knew not what he said, but i have reason to believe he was protesting his unfitness, for he wept as he said it; and the old minister, himself genuinely moved, was heard to console and encourage him, and at one time to use this expression: "i assure you, mr. pinkerton, there are not many who can say so much"--from which i gathered that my friend had tempered his self-accusations with at least one legitimate boast. from this ghostly counselling, jim turned to me; and though he never got beyond the explosive utterance of my name and one fierce handgrip, communicated some of his own emotion, like a charge of electricity, to his best man. we stood up to the ceremony at last, in a general and kindly discomposure. jim was all abroad; and the divine himself betrayed his sympathy in voice and demeanour, and concluded with a fatherly allocution, in which he congratulated mamie (calling her "my dear") upon the fortune of an excellent husband, and protested he had rarely married a more interesting couple. at this stage, like a glory descending, there was handed in, ex machina, the card of douglas b. longhurst, with congratulations and four dozen perrier-jouet. a bottle was opened, and the minister pledged the bride, and the bridesmaids simpered and tasted, and i made a speech with airy bacchanalianism, glass in hand. but poor jim must leave the wine untasted. "don't touch it," i had found the opportunity to whisper; "in your state it will make you as drunk as a fiddler." and jim had wrung my hand with a "god bless you, loudon!--saved me again!" hard following upon this, the supper passed off at frank's with somewhat tremulous gaiety; and thence, with one-half of the perrier-jouet--i would accept no more--we voyaged in a hack to the norah creina. "what a dear little ship!" cried mamie, as our miniature craft was pointed out to her; and then, on second thought, she turned to the best man. "and how brave you must be, mr. dodd," she cried, "to go in that tiny thing so far upon the ocean!" and i perceived i had risen in the lady's estimation. the "dear little ship" presented a horrid picture of confusion, and its occupants of weariness and illhumour. from the cabin the cook was storing tins into the lazarette, and the four hands, sweaty and sullen, were passing them from one to another from the waist. johnson was three parts asleep over the table; and in his bunk, in his own cabin, the captain sourly chewed and puffed at a cigar. "see here," he said, rising; "you'll be sorry you came. we can't stop work if we're to get away to-morrow. a ship getting ready for sea is no place for people, anyway. you'll only interrupt my men." i was on the point of answering something tart; but jim, who was acquainted with the breed, as he was with most things that had a bearing on affairs, made haste to pour in oil. "captain," he said, "i know we're a nuisance here, and that you've had a rough time. but all we want is that you should drink one glass of wine with us, perrierjouet, from longhurst, on the occasion of my marriage, and loudon's--mr. dodd's--departure." "well, it's your look-out," said nares. "i don't mind half an hour. spell, o!" he added to the men; "go and kick your heels for half an hour, and then you can turn to again a trifle livelier. johnson, see if you can't wipe off a chair for the lady." his tone was no more gracious than his language; but when mamie had turned upon him the soft fire of her eyes, and informed him that he was the first seacaptain she had ever met, "except captains of steamers, of course"--she so qualified the statement--and had expressed a lively sense of his courage, and perhaps implied (for i suppose the arts of ladies are the same as those of men) a modest consciousness of his good looks, our bear began insensibly to soften; and it was already part as an apology, though still with unaffected heat of temper, that he volunteered some sketch of his annoyances. "a pretty mess we've had!" said he. "half the stores were wrong; i'll wring john smith's neck for him some of these days. then two newspaper beasts came down, and tried to raise copy out of me, till i threatened them with the first thing handy; and then some kind of missionary bug, wanting to work his passage to raiatea or somewhere. i told him i would take him off the wharf with the butt end of my boot, and he went away cursing. this vessel's been depreciated by the look of him." while the captain spoke, with his strange, humorous, arrogant abruptness, i observed jim to be sizing him up, like a thing at once quaint and familiar, and with a scrutiny that was both curious and knowing. "one word, dear boy," he said, turning suddenly to me. and when he had drawn me on deck--"that man," says he, "will carry sail till your hair grows white; but never you let on--never breathe a word. i know his line: he'll die before he'll take advice; and if you get his back up, he'll run you right under. i don't often jam in my advice, loudon; and when i do, it means i'm thoroughly posted." the little party in the cabin, so disastrously begun, finished, under the mellowing influence of wine and woman, in excellent feeling and with some hilarity. mamie, in a plush gainsborough hat and a gown of winecoloured silk, sat, an apparent queen, among her rude surroundings and companions. the dusky litter of the cabin set off her radiant trimness: tarry johnson was a foil to her fair beauty; she glowed in that poor place, fair as a star; until even i, who was not usually of her admirers, caught a spark of admiration; and even the captain, who was in no courtly humour, proposed that the scene should be commemorated by my pencil. it was the last act of the evening. hurriedly as i went about my task, the half-hour had lengthened out to more than three before it was completed: mamie in full value, the rest of the party figuring in outline only, and the artist himself introduced in a back view, which was pronounced a likeness. but it was to mamie that i devoted the best of my attention; and it was with her i made my chief success. "o!" she cried, "am i really like that? no wonder jim ..." she paused. "why, it's just as lovely as he's good!" she cried: an epigram which was appreciated, and repeated as we made our salutations, and called out after the retreating couple as they passed away under the lamplight on the wharf." thus it was that our farewells were smuggled through under an ambuscade of laughter, and the parting over ere i knew it was begun. the figures vanished, the steps died away along the silent city front; on board, the men had returned to their labours, the captain to his solitary cigar; and after that long and complex day of business and emotion, i was at last alone and free. it was, perhaps, chiefly fatigue that made my heart so heavy. i leaned, at least, upon the house, and stared at the foggy heaven, or over the rail at the wavering reflection of the lamps, like a man that was quite done with hope and would have welcomed the asylum of the grave. and all at once, as i thus stood, the city of pekin flashed into my mind, racing her thirteen knots for honolulu, with the hated trent--perhaps with the mysterious goddedaal--on board; and with the thought, the blood leaped and careered through all my body. it seemed no chase at all; it seemed we had no chance, as we lay there bound to iron pillars, and fooling away the precious moments over tins of beans. "let them get there first!" i thought. "let them! we can't be long behind." and from that moment i date myself a man of a rounded experience: nothing had lacked but this--that i should entertain and welcome the grim thought of bloodshed. it was long before the toil remitted in the cabin, and it was worth my while to get to bed; long after that, before sleep favoured me; and scarce a moment later (or so it seemed) when i was recalled to consciousness by bawling men and the jar of straining hawsers. the schooner was cast off before i got on deck. in the misty obscurity of the first dawn i saw the tug heading us with glowing fires and blowing smoke, and heard her beat the roughened waters of the bay. beside us, on her flock of hills, the lighted city towered up and stood swollen in the raw fog. it was strange to see her burn on thus wastefully, with half-quenched luminaries, when the dawn was already grown strong enough to show me, and to suffer me to recognise, a solitary figure standing by the piles. or was it really the eye, and not rather the heart, that identified that shadow in the dusk, among the shoreside lamps? i know not. it was jim, at least; jim, come for a last look; and we had but time to wave a valedictory gesture and exchange a wordless cry. this was our second parting, and our capacities were now reversed. it was mine to play the argonaut, to speed affairs, to plan and to accomplish--if need were, at the price of life; it was his to sit at home, to study the calendar, and to wait. i knew, besides, another thing that gave me joy--i knew that my friend had succeeded in my education; that the romance of business, if our fantastic purchase merited the name, had at last stirred my dilettante nature; and as we swept under cloudy tamalpais and through the roaring narrows of the bay, the yankee blood sang in my veins with suspense and exultation. outside the heads, as if to meet my desire, we found it blowing fresh from the north-east. no time had been lost. the sun was not yet up before the tug cast off the hawser, gave us a salute of three whistles, and turned homeward toward the coast, which now began to gleam along its margin with the earliest rays of day. there was no other ship in view when the norah creina, lying over under all plain sail, began her long and lonely voyage to the wreck. chapter xii the "norah creina" i love to recall the glad monotony of a pacific voyage, when the trades are not stinted, and the ship, day after day, goes free. the mountain scenery of tradewind clouds, watched (and in my case painted) under every vicissitude of light--blotting stars, withering in the moon's glory, barring the scarlet eve, lying across the dawn collapsed into the unfeatured morning bank, or at noon raising their snowy summits between the blue roof of heaven and the blue floor of sea; the small, busy, and deliberate world of the schooner, with its unfamiliar scenes, the spearing of dolphin from the bowsprit end, the holy war on sharks, the cook making bread on the main hatch; reefing down before a violent squall, with the men hanging out on the foot-ropes; the squall itself, the catch at the heart, the opened sluices of the sky; and the relief, the renewed loveliness of life, when all is over, the sun forth again, and our out-fought enemy only a blot upon the leeward sea. i love to recall, and would that i could reproduce that life, the unforgettable, the unrememberable. the memory, which shows so wise a backwardness in registering pain, is besides an imperfect recorder of extended pleasures; and a longcontinued wellbeing escapes (as it were, by its mass) our petty methods of commemoration. on a part of our life's map there lies a roseate, undecipherable haze, and that is all. of one thing, if i am at all to trust my own annals, i was delightedly conscious. day after day, in the sungilded cabin, the whisky-dealer's thermometer stood at 84 degrees. day after day the air had the same indescribable liveliness and sweetness, soft and nimble, and cool as the cheek of health. day after day the sun flamed; night after night the moon beaconed, or the stars paraded their lustrous regiment. i was aware of a spiritual change, or, perhaps, rather a molecular reconstitution. my bones were sweeter to me. i had come home to my own climate, and looked back with pity on those damp and wintry zones miscalled the temperate. "two years of this, and comfortable quarters to live in, kind of shake the grit out of a man," the captain remarked; "can't make out to be happy anywhere else. a townie of mine was lost down this way, in a coalship that took fire at sea. he struck the beach somewhere in the navigators; and he wrote to me that when he left the place it would be feet first. he's well off, too, and his father owns some coasting craft down east; but billy prefers the beach, and hot rolls off the breadfruit trees." a voice told me i was on the same track as billy. but when was this? our outward track in the norah creina lay well to the northward; and perhaps it is but the impression of a few pet days which i have unconsciously spread longer, or perhaps the feeling grew upon me later, in the run to honolulu. one thing i am sure: it was before i had ever seen an island worthy of the name that i must date my loyalty to the south seas. the blank sea itself grew desirable under such skies; and wherever the trade-wind blows i know no better country than a schooner's deck. but for the tugging anxiety as to the journeys end, the journey itself must thus have counted for the best of holidays. my physical wellbeing was over-proof; effects of sea and sky kept me for ever busy with my pencil; and i had no lack of intellectual exercise of a different order in the study of my inconsistent friend, the captain. i call him friend, here on the threshold; but that is to look well ahead. at first i was too much horrified by what i considered his barbarities, too much puzzled by his shifting humours, and too frequently annoyed by his small vanities, to regard him otherwise than as the cross of my existence. it was only by degrees, in his rare hours of pleasantness, when he forgot (and made me forget) the weaknesses to which he was so prone, that he won me to a kind of unconsenting fondness. lastly, the faults were all embraced in a more generous view; i saw them in their place, like discords in a musical progression; and accepted them and found them picturesque, as we accept and admire, in the habitable face of nature, the smoky head of the volcano or the pernicious thicket of the swamp. he was come of good people down east, and had the beginnings of a thorough education. his temper had been ungovernable from the first; and it is likely the defect was inherited, and the blame of the rupture not entirely his. he ran away at least to sea; suffered horrible maltreatment, which seemed to have rather hardened than enlightened him; ran away again to shore in a south american port; proved his capacity and made money, although still a child; fell among thieves and was robbed; worked back a passage to the states, and knocked one morning at the door of an old lady whose orchard he had often robbed. the introduction appears insufficient; but nares knew what he was doing. the sight of her old neighbourly depredator shivering at the door in tatters, the very oddity of his appeal, touched a soft spot in the spinster's heart. "i always had a fancy for the old lady," nares said, "even when she used to stampede me out of the orchard, and shake her thimble and her old curls at me out of the window as i was going by; i always thought she was a kind of pleasant old girl. well, when she came to the door that morning, i told her so, and that i was stonebroke; and she took me right in, and fetched out the pie." she clothed him, taught him, and had him to sea again in better shape, welcomed him to her hearth on his return from every cruise, and when she died bequeathed him her possessions. "she was a good old girl," he would say; "i tell you, mr. dodd, it was a queer thing to see me and the old lady talking a pasear in the garden, and the old man scowling at us over the pickets. she lived right next door to the old man, and i guess that's just what took me there. i wanted him to know that i was badly beat, you see, and would rather go to the devil than to him. what made the dig harder, he had quarrelled with the old lady about me and the orchard: i guess that made him rage. yes, i was a beast when i was young; but i was always pretty good to the old lady." since then he had prospered, not uneventfully, in his profession; the old lady's money had fallen in during the voyage of the gleaner, and he was now, as soon as the smoke of that engagement cleared away, secure of his ship. i suppose he was about thirty: a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow; clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner; when he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he chose, the greatest brute upon the seas. his usage of the men, his hazing, his bullying, his perpetual fault-finding for no cause, his perpetual and brutal sarcasm, might have raised a mutiny in a slavegalley. suppose the steersman's eye to have wandered; "you ----, ----, little, mutton-faced dutchman," nares would bawl, "you want a booting to keep you on your course! i know a little city-front slush when i see one. just you glue your eye to that compass, or i'll show you round the vessel at the butt-end of my boot." or suppose a hand to linger aft, whither he had perhaps been summoned not a minute before. "mr. daniells, will you oblige me by stepping clear of that main-sheet?" the captain might begin, with truculent courtesy. "thank you. and perhaps you'll be so kind as to tell me what the hell you're doing on my quarter-deck? i want no dirt of your sort here. is there nothing for you to do? where's the mate? don't you set me to find work for you, or i'll find you some that will keep you on your back a fortnight." such allocutions, conceived with a perfect knowledge of his audience, so that every insult carried home, were delivered with a mien so menacing, and an eye so fiercely cruel, that his unhappy subordinates shrank and quailed. too often violence followed; too often i have heard and seen and boiled at the cowardly aggression; and the victim, his hands bound by law, has risen again from deck and crawled forward stupefied--i know not what passion of revenge in his wronged heart. it seems strange i should have grown to like this tyrant. it may even seem strange that i should have stood by and suffered his excesses to proceed. but i was not quite such a chicken as to interfere in public, for i would rather have a man or two mishandled than one half of us butchered in a mutiny and the rest suffer on the gallows. and in private i was unceasing in my protests. "captain," i once said to him, appealing to his patriotism, which was of a hardy quality, "this is no way to treat american seamen. you don't call it american to treat men like dogs?" "americans?" he said grimly. "do you call these dutchmen and scattermouches [1] americans? i've been fourteen years to sea, all but one trip under american colours, and i've never laid eye on an american foremast hand. there used to be such things in the old days, when thirty-five dollars were the wages out of boston; and then you could see ships handled and run the way they want to be. but that's all past and gone, and nowadays the only thing that flies in an american ship is a belaying-pin. you don't know, you haven't a guess. how would you like to go on deck for your middle watch, fourteen months on end, with all your duty to do, and every one's life depending on you, and expect to get a knife ripped into you as you come out of your state-room, or be sand-bagged as you pass the boat, or get trapped into the hold if the hatches are off in fine weather? that kind of shakes the starch out of the brotherly love and new jerusalem business. you go through the mill, and you'll have a bigger grudge against every old shellback that dirties his plate in the three oceans than the bank of california could settle up. no; it has an ugly look to it, but the only way to run a ship is to make yourself a terror." [1] in sea lingo (pacific) dutchman includes all teutons and folk from the basin of the baltic; scattermouch, all latins and levantines. "come, captain," said i, "there are degrees in everything. you know american ships have a bad name, you know perfectly well if it wasn't for the high wage and the good food, there's not a man would ship in one if he could help; and even as it is, some prefer a british ship, beastly food and all." "o, the limejuicers?" said he. "there's plenty booting in limejuicers, i guess; though i don't deny but what some of them are soft." and with that he smiled, like a man recalling something. "look here, that brings a yarn in my head," he resumed, "and for the sake of the joke i'll give myself away. it was in 1874 i shipped mate in the british ship maria, from 'frisco for melbourne. she was the queerest craft in some ways that ever i was aboard of. the food was a caution; there was nothing fit to put your lips to but the limejuice, which was from the end bin no doubt; it used to make me sick to see the men's dinners, and sorry to see my own. the old man was good enough, i guess. green was his name--a mild, fatherly old galoot. but the hands were the lowest gang i ever handled, and whenever i tried to knock a little spirit into them the old man took their part. it was gilbert and sullivan on the high seas; but you bet i wouldn't let any man dictate to me. 'you give me your orders, captain green,' i said, 'and you'll find i'll carry them out; that's all you've got to say. you'll find i do my duty,' i said; 'how i do it is my look-out, and there's no man born that's going to give me lessons.' well, there was plenty dirt on board that maria first and last. of course the old man put my back up, and of course he put up the crew's, and i had to regular fight my way through every watch. the men got to hate me, so's i would hear them grit their teeth when i came up. at last one day i saw a big hulking beast of a dutchman booting the ship's boy. i made one shoot of it off the house and laid that dutchman out. up he came, and i laid him out again. 'now,' i said, 'if there's a kick left in you, just mention it, and i'll stamp your ribs in like a packing-case.' he thought better of it, and never let on; lay there as mild as a deacon at a funeral, and they took him below to reflect on his native dutchland. one night we got caught in rather a dirty thing about 25 south. i guess we were all asleep, for the first thing i knew there was the foreroyal gone. i ran forward, bawling blue hell; and just as i came by the foremast something struck me right through the forearm and stuck there. i put my other hand up, and, by george, it was the grain; the beasts had speared me like a porpoise. 'cap'n!' i cried. 'what's wrong?' says he. 'they've grained me,' says i. 'grained you?' says he. 'well, i've been looking for that.' 'and by god,' i cried, 'i want to have some of these beasts murdered for it!' 'now, mr. nares,' says he, 'you better go below. if i had been one of the men, you'd have got more than this. and i want no more of your language on deck. you've cost me my fore-royal already,' says he; 'and if you carry on, you'll have the three sticks out of her.' that was old man green's idea of supporting officers. but you wait a bit; the cream's coming. we made melbourne right enough, and the old man said: 'mr. nares, you and me don't draw together. you're a first-rate seaman, no mistake of that; but you're the most disagreeable man i ever sailed with, and your language and your conduct to the crew i cannot stomach. i guess we'll separate.' i didn't care about the berth, you may be sure; but i felt kind of mean, and if he made one kind of stink i thought i could make another. so i said i would go ashore and see how things stood; went, found i was all right, and came aboard again on the top rail. 'are you getting your traps together, mr. nares?' says the old man. 'no,' says i, 'i don't know as we'll separate much before 'frisco--at least,' i said, 'it's a point for your consideration. i'm very willing to say goodbye to the maria, but i don't know whether you'll care to start me out with three months' wages.' he got his money-box right away. 'my son,' says he, 'i think it cheap at the money.' he had me there." it was a singular tale for a man to tell of himself; above all, in the midst of our discussion; but it was guite in character for nares. i never made a good hit in our disputes, i never justly resented any act or speech of his, but what i found it long after carefully posted in his day-book and reckoned (here was the man's oddity) to my credit. it was the same with his father, whom he had hated; he would give a sketch of the old fellow, frank and credible, and yet so honestly touched that it was charming. i have never met a man so strangely constituted: to possess a reason of the most equal justice, to have his nerves at the same time quivering with petty spite, and to act upon the nerves and not the reason. a kindred wonder in my eyes was the nature of his courage. there was never a braver man: he went out to welcome danger; an emergency (came it never so sudden) stung him like a tonic. and yet, upon the other hand, i have known none so nervous, so oppressed with possibilities, looking upon the world at large, and the life of a sailor in particular, with so constant and haggard a consideration of the ugly chances. all his courage was in blood, not merely cold, but icy with reasoned apprehension. he would lay our little craft rail under, and "hang on" in a squall, until i gave myself up for lost, and the men were rushing to their stations of their own accord. "there," he would say, "i guess there's not a man on board would have hung on as long as i did that time: they'll have to give up thinking me no schooner sailor. i guess i can shave just as near capsizing as any other captain of this vessel, drunk or sober." and then he would fall to repining and wishing himself well out of the enterprise, and dilate on the peril of the seas, the particular dangers of the schooner rig, which he abhorred, the various ways in which we might go to the bottom, and the prodigious fleet of ships that have sailed out in the course of history, dwindled from the eyes of watchers, and returned no more. "well," he would wind up, "i guess it don't much matter. i can't see what any one wants to live for, anyway. if i could get into some one else's apple-tree, and be about twelve years old, and just stick the way i was, eating stolen apples, i won't say. but there's no sense in this grown-up business--sailorising, politics, the piety mill, and all the rest of it. good clean drowning is good enough for me." it is hard to imagine any more depressing talk for a poor landsman on a dirty night; it is hard to imagine anything less sailor-like (as sailors are supposed to be, and generally are) than this persistent harping on the minor. but i was to see more of the man's gloomy constancy ere the cruise was at an end. on the morning of the seventeenth day i came on deck, to find the schooner under double reefs, and flying rather wild before a heavy run of sea. snoring trades and humming sails had been our portion hitherto. we were already nearing the island. my restrained excitement had begun again to overmaster me; and for some time my only book had been the patent log that trailed over the taffrail, and my chief interest the daily observation and our caterpillar progress across the chart. my first glance, which was at the compass, and my second, which was at the log, were all that i could wish. we lay our course; we had been doing over eight since nine the night before, and i drew a heavy breath of satisfaction. and then i know not what odd and wintry appearance of the sea and sky knocked suddenly at my heart. i observed the schooner to look more than usually small, the men silent and studious of the weather. nares, in one of his rusty humours, afforded me no shadow of a morning salutation. he, too, seemed to observe the behaviour of the ship with an intent and anxious scrutiny. what i liked still less, johnson himself was at the wheel, which he span busily, often with a visible effort; and as the seas ranged up behind us, black and imminent, he kept casting behind him eyes of animal swiftness, and drawing in his neck between his shoulders, like a man dodging a blow. from these signs i gathered that all was not exactly for the best; and i would have given a good handful of dollars for a plain answer to the questions which i dared not put. had i dared, with the present danger-signal in the captain's face, i should only have been reminded of my position as supercargo-an office never touched upon in kindness--and advised, in a very indigestible manner, to go below. there was nothing for it, therefore, but to entertain my vague apprehensions as best i should be able, until it pleased the captain to enlighten me of his own accord. this he did sooner than i had expected--as soon, indeed, as the chinaman had summoned us to breakfast, and we sat face to face across the narrow board. "see here, mr. dodd," he began, looking at me rather queerly, "here is a business point arisen. this sea's been running up for the last two days, and now it's too high for comfort. the glass is falling, the wind is breezing up, and i won't say but what there's dirt in it. if i lay her to, we may have to ride out a gale of wind, and drift god knows where--on these french frigate shoals, for instance. if i keep her as she goes, we'll make that island to-morrow afternoon, and have the lee of it to lie under, if we can't make out to run in. the point you have to figure on, is whether you'll take the big chances of that captain trent making the place before you, or take the risk of something happening. i'm to run this ship to your satisfaction," he added, with an ugly sneer. "well, here's a point for the supercargo." "captain," i returned, with my heart in my mouth, "risk is better than certain failure." "life is all risk, mr. dodd," he remarked. "but there's one thing: it's now or never; in half an hour archdeacon gabriel couldn't lay her to, if he came down-stairs on purpose." "all right," said i; "let's run." "run goes," said he; and with that he fell to breakfast, and passed half an hour in stowing away pie, and devoutly wishing himself back in san francisco. when we came on deck again, he took the wheel from johnson--it appears they could trust none among the hands--and i stood close beside him, feeling safe in this proximity, and tasting a fearful joy from our surroundings and the consciousness of my decision. the breeze had already risen, and as it tore over our heads, it uttered at times a long hooting note that sent my heart into my boots. the sea pursued us without remission, leaping to the assault of the low rail. the quarter-deck was all awash, and we must close the companion doors. "and all this, if you please, for mr. pinkerton's dollars!" the captain suddenly exclaimed. "there's many a fine fellow gone under, mr. dodd, because of drivers like your friend. what do they care for a ship or two? insured, i guess. what do they care for sailors' lives alongside of a few thousand dollars? what they want is speed between ports, and a damned fool of a captain that'll drive a ship under as i'm doing this one. you can put in the morning, asking why i do it." i sheered off to another part of the vessel as fast as civility permitted. this was not at all the talk that i desired, nor was the train of reflection which it started anyway welcome. here i was, running some hazard of my life, and perilling the lives of seven others; exactly for what end, i was now at liberty to ask myself. for a very large amount of a very deadly poison, was the obvious answer; and i thought if all tales were true, and i were soon to be subjected to cross-examination at the bar of eternal justice, it was one which would not increase my popularity with the court. "well, never mind, jim," thought i; "i'm doing it for you." before eleven a third reef was taken in the main-sail, and johnson filled the cabin with a storm-sail of no. 1 duck, and sat cross-legged on the streaming floor, vigorously putting it to rights with a couple of the hands. by dinner i had fled the deck, and sat in the bench corner, giddy, dumb, and stupefied with terror. the frightened leaps of the poor norah creina, spanking like a stag for bare existence, bruised me between the table and the berths. overhead, the wild huntsman of the storm passed continuously in one blare of mingled noises; screaming wind, straining timber, lashing rope's-end, pounding block and bursting sea contributed; and i could have thought there was at times another, a more piercing, a more human note, that dominated all, like the wailing of an angel; i could have thought i knew the angel's name, and that his wings were black. it seemed incredible that any creature of man's art could long endure the barbarous mishandling of the seas, kicked as the schooner was from mountain-side to mountain-side, beaten and blown upon and wrenched in every joint and sinew, like a child upon the rack. there was not a plank of her that did not cry aloud for mercy; and as she continued to hold together, i became conscious of a growing sympathy with her endeavours, a growing admiration for her gallant staunchness, that amused and at times obliterated my terrors for myself god bless every man that swung a mallet on that tiny and strong hull! it was not for wages only that he laboured, but to save men's lives. all the rest of the day, and all the following night, i sat in the corner or lay wakeful in my bunk; and it was only with the return of morning that a new phase of my alarms drove me once more on deck. a gloomier interval i never passed. johnson and nares steadily relieved each other at the wheel and came below. the first glance of each was at the glass, which he repeatedly knuckled and frowned upon; for it was sagging lower all the time. then, if johnson were the visitor, he would pick a snack out of the cupboard, and stand, braced against the table, eating it, and perhaps obliging me with a word or two of his hee-haw conversation: how it was "a son of a gun of a cold night on deck, mr. dodd" (with a grin); how "it wasn't no night for panjammers, he could tell me"; having transacted all which, he would throw himself down in his bunk and sleep his two hours with compunction. but the captain neither ate nor slept. "you there, mr. dodd?" he would say, after the obligatory visit to the glass. "well, my son, we're one hundred and four miles" (or whatever it was) "off the island, and scudding for all we're worth. we'll make it to-morrow about four, or not, as the case may be. that's the news. and now, mr. dodd, i've stretched a point for you; you can see i'm dead tired; so just you stretch away back to your bunk again." and with this attempt at geniality, his teeth would settle hard down on his cigar, and he would pass his spell below staring and blinking at the cabin lamp through a cloud of tobacco-smoke. he has told me since that he was happy, which i should never have divined. "you see," he said, "the wind we had was never anything out of the way; but the sea was really nasty, the schooner wanted a lot of humouring, and it was clear from the glass that we were close to some dirt. we might be running out of it, or we might be running right crack into it. well, there's always something sublime about a big deal like that; and it kind of raises a man in his own liking. we're a queer kind of beasts, mr. dodd." the morning broke with sinister brightness; the air alarmingly transparent, the sky pure, the rim of the horizon clear and strong against the heavens. the wind and the wild seas, now vastly swollen, indefatigably hunted us. i stood on deck, choking with fear; i seemed to lose all power upon my limbs; my knees were as paper when she plunged into the murderous valleys; my heart collapsed when some black mountain fell in avalanche beside her counter, and the water, that was more than spray, swept round my ankles like a torrent. i was conscious of but one strong desire--to bear myself decently in my terrors, and, whatever should happen to my life, preserve my character: as the captain said, we are a queer kind of beasts. breakfast-time came, and i made shift to swallow some hot tea. then i must stagger below to take the time, reading the chronometer with dizzy eyes, and marvelling the while what value there could be in observations taken in a ship launched (as ours then was) like a missile among flying seas. the forenoon dragged on in a grinding monotony of peril; every spoke of the wheel a rash but an obliged experiment--rash as a forlorn hope, needful as the leap that lands a fireman from a burning staircase. noon was made; the captain dined on his day's work, and i on watching him; and our place was entered on the chart with a meticulous precision which seemed to me half pitiful and half absurd, since the next eye to behold that sheet of paper might be the eye of an exploring fish. one o'clock came, then two; the captain gloomed and chafed, as he held to the coaming of the house, and if ever i saw dormant murder in man's eye, it was in his. god help the hand that should have disobeyed him! of a sudden he turned towards the mate, who was doing his trick at the wheel. "two points on the port bow," i heard him say; and he took the wheel himself. johnson nodded, wiped his eyes with the back of his wet hand, watched a chance as the vessel lunged up hill, and got to the main rigging, where he swarmed aloft. up and up i watched him go, hanging on at every ugly plunge, gaining with every lull of the schooner's movement, until, clambering into the cross-trees and clinging with one arm around the masts, i could see him take one comprehensive sweep of the south-westerly horizon. the next moment he had slid down the backstay and stood on deck, with a grin, a nod, and a gesture of the finger that said "yes"; the next again, and he was back sweating and squirming at the wheel, his tired face streaming and smiling, and his hair and the rags and corners of his clothes lashing round him in the wind. nares went below, fetched up his binocular, and fell into a silent perusal of the sea-line: i also, with my unaided eyesight. little by little, in that white waste of water, i began to make out a quarter where the whiteness appeared more condensed: the sky above was whitish likewise, and misty like a squall; and little by little there thrilled upon my ears a note deeper and more terrible than the yelling of the gale--the long thundering roll of breakers. nares wiped his nightglass on his sleeve and passed it to me, motioning, as he did so, with his hand. an endless wilderness of raging billows came and went and danced in the circle of the glass; now and then a pale corner of sky, or the strong line of the horizon rugged with the heads of waves; and then of a sudden--come and gone ere i could fix it, with a swallow's swiftness--one glimpse of what we had come so far and paid so dear to see; the masts and rigging of a brig pencilled on heaven, with an ensign streaming at the main, and the ragged ribbons of a topsail thrashing from the yard. again and again, with toilful searching, i recalled that apparition. there was no sign of any land; the wreck stood between sea and sky, a thing the most isolated i had ever viewed; but as we drew nearer, i perceived her to be defended by a line of breakers which drew off on either hand, and marked, indeed, the nearest segment of the reef. heavy spray hung over them like a smoke, some hundred feet into the air; and the sound of their consecutive explosions rolled like a cannonade. in half an hour we were close in; for perhaps as long again we skirted that formidable barrier toward its farther side; and presently the sea began insensibly to moderate and the ship to go more sweetly. we had gained the lee of the island, as (for form's sake) i may call that ring of foam and haze and thunder; and shaking out a reef, wore ship and headed for the passage. chapter xiii the island and the wreck all hands were filled with joy. it was betrayed in their alacrity and easy faces: johnson smiling broadly at the wheel, nares studying the sketch chart of the island with an eye at peace, and the hands clustered forward, eagerly talking and pointing: so manifest was our escape, so wonderful the attraction of a single foot of earth after so many suns had set and risen on an empty sea! to add to the relief, besides, by one of those malicious coincidences which suggest for fate the image of an underbred and grinning schoolboy, we had no sooner worn ship than the wind began to abate. for myself, however, i did but exchange anxieties. i was no sooner out of one fear than i fell upon another; no sooner secure that i should myself make the intended haven, than i began to be convinced that trent was there before me. i climbed into the rigging, stood on the board, and eagerly scanned that ring of coral reef and bursting breaker, and the blue lagoon which they enclosed. the two islets within began to show plainly-middle brooks and lower brooks island, the directory named them: two low, bush-covered, rolling strips of sand, each with glittering beaches, each perhaps a mile or a mile and a half in length, running east and west, and divided by a narrow channel. over these, innumerable as maggots, there hovered, chattered, and screamed millions of twinkling sea-birds; white and black; the black by far the largest. with singular scintillations, this vortex of winged life swayed to and fro in the strong sunshine, whirled continually through itself, and would now and again burst asunder and scatter as wide as the lagoon: so that i was irresistibly reminded of what i had read of nebular convulsions. a thin cloud overspread the area of the reef and the adjacent sea--the dust, as i could not but fancy, of earlier explosions. and, a little apart, there was yet another focus of centrifugal and centripetal flight, where, hard by the deafening line of breakers, her sails (all but the tattered topsail) snugly furled down, and the red rag that marks old england on the seas beating, union down, at the main-the flying scud, the fruit of so many toilers, a recollection in so many lives of men, whose tall spars had been mirrored in the remotest corners of the sea-lay stationary at last and for ever, in the first stage of naval dissolution. towards her the taut norah creina, vulture-wise, wriggled to windward: come from so far to pick her bones. and, look as i pleased, there was no other presence of man or of man's handiwork; no honolulu schooner lay there crowded with armed rivals, no smoke rose from the fire at which i fancied trent cooking a meal of sea-birds. it seemed, after all, we were in time, and i drew a mighty breath. i had not arrived at this reviving certainty before the breakers were already close aboard, the leadsman at his station, and the captain posted in the fore cross-trees to con us through the coral lumps of the lagoon. all circumstances were in our favour, the light behind, the sun low, the wind still fresh and steady, and the tide about the turn. a moment later we shot at racing speed betwixt two pier heads of broken water; the lead began to be cast, the captain to bawl down his anxious directions, the schooner to tack and dodge among the scattered dangers of the lagoon; and at one bell in the first dog-watch we had come to our anchor off the north-east end of middle brooks island, in five fathoms water. the sails were gasketed and covered, the boats emptied of the miscellaneous stores and odds and ends of sea-furniture, that accumulate in the course of a voyage, the kedge sent ashore, and the decks tidied down: a good three-quarters of an hour's work, during which i raged about the deck like a man with a strong toothache. the transition from the wild sea to the comparative immobility of the lagoon had wrought strange distress among my nerves: i could not hold still whether in hand or foot; the slowness of the men, tired as dogs after our rough experience outside, irritated me like something personal; and the irrational screaming of the sea-birds saddened me like a dirge. it was a relief when, with nares, and a couple of hands, i might drop into the boat and move off at last for the flying scud. "she looks kind of pitiful, don't she?" observed the captain, nodding towards the wreck, from which we were separated by some half a mile. "looks as if she didn't like her berth, and captain trent had used her badly.-give her ginger, boys," he added to the hands, "and you can all have shore liberty to-night to see the birds and paint the town red." we all laughed at the pleasantry, and the boat skimmed the faster over the rippling face of the lagoon. the flying scud would have seemed small enough beside the wharves of san francisco, but she was some thrice the size of the norah creina, which had been so long our continent; and as we craned up at her wallsides, she impressed us with a mountain magnitude. she lay head to the reef, where the huge blue wall of the rollers was for ever ranging up and crumbling down; and to gain her starboard side, we must pass below the stern. the rudder was hard aport, and we could read the legend- flying scud hull. on the other side, about the break of the poop, some half a fathom of rope-ladder trailed over the rail, and by this we made our entrance. she was a roomy ship inside, with a raised poop standing some three feet higher than the deck, and a small forward house, for the men's bunks and the galley, just abaft the foremast. there was one boat on the house, and another and larger one, in beds on deck, on either hand of it. she had been painted white, with tropical economy, outside and in; and we found, later on, that the stanchions of the rail, hoops of the scuttle-butt, etc., were picked out with green. at that time, however, when we first stepped aboard, all was hidden under the droppings of innumerable seabirds. the birds themselves gyrated and screamed meanwhile among the rigging; and when we looked into the galley, their outrush drove us back. savage-looking fowl they were, savagely beaked, and some of the black ones great as eagles. half-buried in the slush, we were aware of a litter of kegs in the waist; and these, on being somewhat cleaned, proved to be water-beakers and quarter-casks of mess beef with some colonial brand, doubtless collected there before the tempest hove in sight, and while trent and his men had no better expectation than to strike for honolulu in the boats. nothing else was notable on deck, save where the loose topsail had played some havoc with the rigging, and there hung, and swayed, and sang in the declining wind, a raffle of intorted cordage. with a shyness that was almost awe, nares and i descended the companion. the stair turned upon itself and landed us just forward of a thwart-ship bulkhead that cut the poop in two. the fore part formed a kind of miscellaneous store-room, with a double-bunked division for the cook (as nares supposed) and second mate. the after part contained, in the midst, the main cabin, running in a kind of bow into the curvature of the stern; on the port side, a pantry opening forward and a state-room for the mate; and on the starboard, the captain's berth and water-closet. into these we did but glance, the main cabin holding us. it was dark, for the sea-birds had obscured the skylight with their droppings; it smelt rank and fusty: and it was beset with a loud swarm of flies that beat continually in our faces. supposing them close attendants upon man and his broken meat, i marvelled how they had found their way to midway reef; it was sure at least some vessel must have brought them, and that long ago, for they had multiplied exceedingly. part of the floor was strewn with a confusion of clothes, books, nautical instruments, odds and ends of finery, and such trash as might be expected from the turning out of several seamen's chests, upon a sudden emergency, and after a long cruise. it was strange in that dim cabin, quivering with the near thunder of the breakers, and pierced with the screaming of the fowls, to turn over so many things that other men had coveted, and prized, and worn on their warm bodies--frayed old underclothing, pyjamas of strange design, duck suits in every stage of rustiness, oil-skins, pilot coats, embroidered shirts, jackets of ponjee silk--clothes for the night watch at sea or the day ashore in the hotel verandah: and mingled among these, books, cigars, bottles of scent, fancy pipes, quantities of tobacco, many keys, a rusty pistol, and a sprinkling of cheap curiosities--benares brass, chinese jars and pictures, and bottles of odd shells in cotton, each designed, no doubt, for somebody at home--perhaps in hull, of which trent had been a native and his ship a citizen. thence we turned our attention to the table, which stood spread, as if for a meal, with stout ship's crockery and the remains of food--a pot of marmalade, dregs of coffee in the mugs, unrecognisable remains of food, bread, some toast, and a tin of condensed milk. the table-cloth, originally of a red colour, was stained a dark brown at the captain's end, apparently with coffee; at the other end it had been folded back, and a pen and ink-pot stood on the bare table. stools were here and there about the table, irregularly placed, as though the meal had been finished and the men smoking and chatting; and one of the stools lay on the floor, broken. "see! they were writing up the log," said nares, pointing to the ink-bottle. "caught napping, as usual. i wonder if there ever was a captain yet that lost a ship with his log-book up to date? he generally has about a month to fill up on a clean break, like charles dickens and his serial novels.--what a regular limejuicer spread!" he added contemptuously. "marmalade--and toast for the old man! nasty slovenly pigs!" there was something in this criticism of the absent that jarred upon my feelings. i had no love indeed for captain trent or any of his vanished gang; but the desertion and decay of this once habitable cabin struck me hard. the death of man's handiwork is melancholy, like the death of man himself; and i was impressed with an involuntary and irrational sense of tragedy in my surroundings. "this sickens me," i said; "let's go on deck and breathe." the captain nodded. "it is kind of lonely, isn't it?" he said; "but i can't go up till i get the code signals. i want to run up "got left" or something, just to brighten up this island home. captain trent hasn't been here yet, but he'll drop in before long; and it'll cheer him up to see a signal on the brig." "isn't there some official expression we could use?" i asked, vastly taken by the fancy. "'sold for the benefit of the underwriters: for further particulars apply to j. pinkerton, montana block, s.f.'" "well," returned nares, "i won't say but what an old navy quartermaster might telegraph all that, if you gave him a day to do it in and a pound of tobacco for himself. but it's above my register. i must try something short and sweet: kb, urgent signal, 'heave all aback'; or lm, urgent, 'the berth you're now in is not safe'; or what do you say to pqh?--'tell my owners the ship answers remarkably well.'" "it's premature," i replied; "but it seems calculated to give pain to trent. pqh for me." the flags were found in trent's cabin, neatly stored behind a lettered grating; nares chose what he required, and (i following) returned on deck, where the sun had already dipped, and the dusk was coming. "here! don't touch that, you fool!" shouted the captain to one of the hands, who was drinking from the scuttlebutt. "that water's rotten!" "beg pardon, sir," replied the man. "tastes quite sweet." "let me see," returned nares, and he took the dipper and held it to his lips. "yes, it's all right," he said. "must have rotted and come sweet again.--queer, isn't it, mr. dodd? though i've known the same on a cape horner." there was something in his intonation that made me look him in the face; he stood a little on tiptoe to look right and left about the ship, like a man filled with curiosity, and his whole expression and bearing testified to some suppressed excitement. "you don't believe what you're saying!" i broke out. "o, i don't know but what i do!" he replied, laying a hand upon me soothingly. "the thing's very possible. only, i'm bothered about something else." and with that he called a hand, gave him the code flags, and stepped himself to the main signal halliards, which vibrated under the weight of the ensign overhead. a minute later, the american colours, which we had brought in the boat, replaced the english red, and pqh was fluttering at the fore. "now, then," said nares, who had watched the breaking out of his signal with the old-maidish particularity of an american sailor, "out with those handspikes, and let's see what water there is in the lagoon." the bars were shoved home; the barbarous cacophony of the clanking pump rose in the waist; and streams of ill-smelling water gushed on deck and made valleys in the slab guano. nares leaned on the rail, watching the steady stream of bilge as though he found some interest in it. "what is it that bothers you?" i asked. "well, i'll tell you one thing shortly," he replied. "but here's another. do you see those boats there, one on the house and two on the beds? well, where is the boat trent lowered when he lost the hands?" "got it aboard again, i suppose," said i. "well, if you'll tell me why!" returned the captain. "then it must have been another," i suggested. "she might have carried another on the main hatch, i won't deny," admitted nares, "but i can't see what she wanted with it, unless it was for the old man to go out and play the accordion in on moonlight nights." "it can't much matter, anyway," i reflected. "o, i don't suppose it does," said he, glancing over his shoulder at the spouting of the scuppers. "and how long are we to keep up this racket?" i asked. "we're simply pumping up the lagoon. captain trent himself said she had settled down and was full forward." "did he?" said nares, with a significant dryness. and almost as he spoke the pumps sucked, and sucked again, and the men threw down their bars. "there, what do you make of that?" he asked. "now, i'll tell, mr. dodd," he went on, lowering his voice, but not shifting from his easy attitude against the rail, "this ship is as sound as the norah creina. i had a guess of it before we came aboard, and now i know." "it's not possible!" i cried. "what do you make of trent?" "i don't make anything of trent; i don't know whether he's a liar or only an old wife; i simply tell you what's the fact," said nares. "and i'll tell you something more," he added: "i've taken the ground myself in deep-water vessels; i know what i'm saying; and i say that, when she first struck and before she bedded down, seven or eight hours' work would have got this hooker off, and there's no man that ever went two years to sea but must have known it." i could only utter an exclamation. nares raised his finger warningly. "don't let them get hold of it," said he. "think what you like, but say nothing." i glanced round; the dusk was melting into early night; the twinkle of a lantern marked the schooner's position in the distance; and our men, free from further labour, stood grouped together in the waist, their faces illuminated by their glowing pipes. "why didn't trent get her off?" inquired the captain. "why did he want to buy her back in 'frisco for these fabulous sums, when he might have sailed her into the bay himself?" "perhaps he never knew her value until then," i suggested. "i wish we knew her value now," exclaimed nares. "however, i don't want to depress you; i'm sorry for you, mr. dodd; i know how bothering it must be to you, and the best i can say's this: i haven't taken much time getting down, and now i'm here i mean to work this thing in proper style. i just want to put your mind at rest; you shall have no trouble with me." there was something trusty and friendly in his voice; and i found myself gripping hands with him, in that hard, short shake that means so much with englishspeaking people. "we'll do, old fellow," said he. "we've shaken down into pretty good friends, you and me; and you won't find me working the business any the less hard for that and now let's scoot for supper." after supper, with the idle curiosity of the seafarer, we pulled ashore in a fine moonlight, and landed on middle brooks island. a flat beach surrounded it upon all sides; and the midst was occupied by a thicket of bushes, the highest of them scarcely five feet high, in which the sea-fowl lived. through this we tried at first to strike; but it were easier to cross trafalgar square on a day of demonstration than to invade these haunts of sleeping sea-birds. the nests sank, and the eggs burst under footing; wings beat in our faces, beaks menaced our eyes, our minds were confounded with the screeching, and the coil spread over the island and mounted high into the air. "i guess we'll saunter round the beach," said nares, when we had made good our retreat. the hands were all busy after sea-birds' eggs, so there were none to follow us. our way lay on the crisp sand by the margin of the water: on one side, the thicket from which we had been dislodged; on the other, the face of the lagoon, barred with a broad path of moonlight, and beyond that the line, alternately dark and shining, alternately hove high and fallen prone, of the external breakers. the beach was strewn with bits of wreck and drift: some redwood and spruce logs, no less than two lower masts of junks, and the stern-post of a european ship--all of which we looked on with a shade of serious concern, speaking of the dangers of the sea and the hard case of castaways. in this sober vein we made the greater part of the circuit of the island; had a near view of its neighbour from the southern end; walked the whole length of the westerly side in the shadow of the thicket; and came forth again into the moonlight at the opposite extremity. on our right, at the distance of about half a mile, the schooner lay faintly heaving at her anchors. about half a mile down the beach, at a spot still hidden from us by the thicket, an upboiling of the birds showed where the men were still (with sailor-like insatiability) collecting eggs. and right before us, in a small indentation of the sand, we were aware of a boat lying high and dry, and right side up. nares crouched back into the shadow of the bushes. "what the devil's this?" he whispered. "trent," i suggested, with a beating heart. "we were damned fools to come ashore unarmed," said he. "but i've got to know where i stand." in the shadow, his face looked conspicuously white, and his voice betrayed a strong excitement. he took his boat's whistle from his pocket "in case i might want to play a tune," said he grimly, and thrusting it between his teeth, advanced into the moonlit open, which we crossed with rapid steps, looking guiltily about us as we went. not a leaf stirred; and the boat, when we came up to it, offered convincing proof of long desertion. she was an eighteen-foot whaleboat of the ordinary type, equipped with oars and thole-pins. two or three quarter-casks lay on the bilge amidships, one of which must have been broached, and now stank horribly; and these, upon examination, proved to bear the same new zealand brand as the beef on board the wreck. "well, here's the boat," said i; "here's one of your difficulties cleared away." "h'm," said he. there was a little water in the bilge, and here he stooped and tasted it. "fresh," he said. "only rain-water." "you don't object to that?" i asked. "no," said he. "well, then, what ails you?" i cried. "in plain united states, mr. dodd," he returned, "a whaleboat, five ash sweeps, and a barrel of stinking pork." "or, in other words, the whole thing?" i commented. "well, it's this way," he condescended to explain. "i've no use for a fourth boat at all; but a boat of this model tops the business. i don't say the type's not common in these waters; it's as common as dirt; the traders carry them for surf-boats. but the flying scud? a deep-water tramp, who was lime-juicing around between big ports, calcutta and rangoon and 'frisco and the canton river? no, i don't see it." we were leaning over the gunwale of the boat as we spoke. the captain stood nearest the bow, and he was idly playing with the trailing painter, when a thought arrested him. he hauled the line in hand over hand, and stared, and remained staring, at the end. "anything wrong with it?" i asked. "do you know, mr. dodd," said he, in a queer voice, "this painter's been cut? a sailor always seizes a rope's end, but this is sliced short off with the cold steel. this won't do at all for the men," he added. "just stand by till i fix it up more natural." "any guess what it all means?" i asked. "well, it means one thing," said he. "it means trent was a liar. i guess the story of the flying scud was a sight more picturesque than he gave out." half an hour later the whaleboat was lying astern of the norah creina; and nares and i sought our bunks, silent and half-bewildered by our late discoveries. chapter xiv the cabin of the "flying scud" the sun of the morrow had not cleared the morning bank: the lake of the lagoon, the islets, and the wall of breakers now beginning to subside, still lay clearly pictured in the flushed obscurity of early day, when we stepped again upon the deck of the flying scud: nares, myself, the mate, two of the hands, and one dozen bright, virgin axes, in war against that massive structure. i think we all drew pleasurable breath; so profound in man is the instinct of destruction, so engaging is the interest of the chase. for we were now about to taste, in a supreme degree, the double joys of demolishing a toy and playing "hide the handkerchief"-sports from which we had all perhaps desisted since the days of infancy. and the toy we were to burst in pieces was a deep-sea ship; and the hidden good for which we were to hunt was a prodigious fortune. the decks were washed down, the main hatch removed, and a gun-tackle purchase rigged before the boat arrived with breakfast. i had grown so suspicious of the wreck, that it was a positive relief to me to look down into the hold, and see it full, or nearly full, of undeniable rice packed in the chinese fashion in boluses of matting. breakfast over, johnson and the hands turned to upon the cargo; while nares and i, having smashed open the sky-light and rigged up a windsail on deck, began the work of rummaging the cabins. i must not be expected to describe our first day's work, or (for that matter) any of the rest, in order and detail as it occurred. such particularity might have been possible for several officers and a draft of men from a ship of war, accompanied by an experienced secretary with a knowledge of shorthand. for two plain human beings, unaccustomed to the use of the broad-axe, and consumed with an impatient greed of the result, the whole business melts, in the retrospect, into a nightmare of exertion, heat, hurry, and bewilderment; sweat pouring from the face like rain, the scurry of rats, the choking exhalations of the bilge, and the throbs and splinterings of the toiling axes. i shall content myself with giving the cream of our discoveries in a logical rather than a temporal order; though the two indeed practically coincided, and we had finished our exploration of the cabin before we could be certain of the nature of the cargo. nares and i began operations by tossing up pell-mell through the companion, and piling in a squalid heap about the wheel, all clothes, personal effects, the crockery, the carpet, stale victuals, tins of meat, and, in a word, all movables from the main cabin. thence we transferred our attention to the captain's quarters on the starboard side. using the blankets for a basket, we sent up the books, instruments, and clothes to swell our growing midden on the deck; and then nares, going on hands and knees, began to forage underneath the bed. box after box of manilla cigars rewarded his search. i took occasion to smash some of these boxes open, and even to guillotine the bundles of cigars; but quite in vain--no secret cache of opium encouraged me to continue. "i guess i've got hold of the dicky now!" exclaimed nares, and turning round from my perquisitions, i found he had drawn forth a heavy iron box, secured to the bulkhead by chain and padlock. on this he was now gazing, not with the triumph that instantly inflamed my own bosom, but with a somewhat foolish appearance of surprise. "by george, we have it now!" i cried, and would have shaken hands with my companion; but he did not see, or would not accept, the salutation. "let's see what's in it first," he remarked dryly. and he adjusted the box upon its side, and with some blows of an axe burst the lock open. i threw myself beside him, as he replaced the box on its bottom and removed the lid. i cannot tell what i expected; a million's worth of diamonds might perhaps have pleased me; my cheeks burned, my heart throbbed to bursting; and lo! there was disclosed but a trayful of papers, neatly taped, and a cheque-book of the customary pattern. i made a snatch at the tray to see what was beneath, but the captain's hand fell on mine, heavy and hard. "now, boss!" he cried, not unkindly, "is this to be run shipshape? or is it a dutch grab-racket?" and he proceeded to untie and run over the contents of the papers, with a serious face and what seemed an ostentation of delay. me and my impatience it would appear he had forgotten; for when he was quite done, he sat a while thinking, whistled a bar or two, refolded the papers, tied them up again; and then, and not before, deliberately raised the tray. i saw a cigar-box, tied with a piece of fishing-line, and four fat canvas bags. nares whipped out his knife, cut the line, and opened the box. it was about halffull of sovereigns. "and the bags?" i whispered. the captain ripped them open one by one, and a flood of mixed silver coin burst forth and rattled in the rusty bottom of the box. without a word, he set to work to count the gold. "what is this?" i asked. "it's the ship's money," he returned, doggedly continuing his work. "the ship's money?" i repeated. "that's the money trent tramped and traded with. and there's his chequebook to draw upon his owners? and he has left it?" "i guess he has," said nares austerely, jotting down a note of the gold; and i was abashed into silence till his task should be completed. it came, i think, to three hundred and seventy-eight pounds sterling; some nineteen pounds of it in silver: all of which we turned again into the chest. "and what do you think of that?" i asked. "mr. dodd," he replied, "you see something of the rumness of this job, but not the whole. the specie bothers you, but what gets me is the papers. are you aware that the master of a ship has charge of all the cash in hand, pays the men advances, receives freight and passage-money, and runs up bills in every port? all this he does as the owner's confidential agent, and his integrity is proved by his receipted bills. i tell you, the captain of a ship is more likely to forget his pants than these bills which guarantee his character. i've known men drown to save them--bad men, too; but this is the ship-master's honour. and here this captain trent--not hurried, not threatened with anything but a free passage in a british man-of-war-has left them all behind. i don't want to express myself too strongly, because the facts appear against me, but the thing is impossible." dinner came to us not long after, and we ate it on deck, in a grim silence, each privately racking his brain for some solution of the mysteries. i was, indeed, so swallowed up in these considerations that the wreck, the lagoon, the islets, and the strident sea-fowl, the strong sun then beating on my head, and even the gloomy countenance of the captain at my elbow, all vanished from the field of consciousness. my mind was a blackboard on which i scrawled and blotted out hypotheses, comparing each with the pictorial records in my memory--ciphering with pictures. in the course of this tense mental exercise i recalled and studied the faces of one memorial masterpiece, the scene of the saloon; and here i found myself, on a sudden, looking in the eyes of the kanaka. "there's one thing i can put beyond doubt, at all events," i cried, relinquishing my dinner and getting briskly afoot. "there was that kanaka i saw in the bar with captain trent, the fellow the newspapers and ship's articles made out to be a chinaman. i mean to rout his quarters out and settle that." "all right," said nares. "i'll lazy off a bit longer, mr. dodd; i feel pretty rocky and mean." we had thoroughly cleared out the three aftercompartments of the ship; all the stuff from the main cabin and the mate's and captain's quarters lay piled about the wheel; but in the forward state-room with the two bunks, where nares had said the mate and cook most likely berthed, we had as yet done nothing. thither i went. it was very bare; a few photographs were tacked on the bulkhead, one of them indecent; a single chest stood open, and, like all we had yet found, it had been partly rifled. an armful of two-shilling novels proved to me beyond a doubt it was a european's; no chinaman would have possessed any, and the most literate kanaka conceivable in a ship's galley was not likely to have gone beyond one. it was plain, then, that the cook had not berthed aft, and i must look elsewhere. the men had stamped down the nests and driven the birds from the galley, so that i could now enter without contest. one door had been already blocked with rice; the place was in part darkness, full of a foul stale smell, and a cloud of nasty flies; it had been left, besides, in some disorder, or else the birds, during their time of tenancy, had knocked the things about; and the floor, like the deck before we washed it, was spread with pasty filth. against the wall, in the far corner, i found a handsome chest of camphor-wood bound with brass, such as chinamen and sailors love, and indeed all of mankind that plies in the pacific. from its outside view i could thus make no deduction; and, strange to say, the interior was concealed. all the other chests, as i have said already, we had found gaping open, and their contents scattered abroad; the same remark we found to apply afterwards in the quarters of the seamen; only this camphor-wood chest, a singular exception, was both closed and locked. i took an axe to it, readily forced the paltry chinese fastening, and, like a custom-house officer, plunged my hands among the contents. for some while i groped among linen and cotton. then my teeth were set on edge with silk, of which i drew forth several strips covered with mysterious characters. and these settled the business, for i recognised them as a kind of bedhanging popular with the commoner class of the chinese. nor were further evidences wanting, such as nightclothes of an extraordinary design, a three-stringed chinese fiddle, a silk handkerchief full of roots and herbs, and a neat apparatus for smoking opium, with a liberal provision of the drug. plainly, then, the cook had been a chinaman; and, if so, who was jos. amalu? or had jos. stolen the chest before he proceeded to ship under a false name and domicile? it was possible, as anything was possible in such a welter; but, regarded as a solution, it only led and left me deeper in the bog. for why should this chest have been deserted and neglected, when the others were rummaged or removed? and where had jos. come by that second chest, with which (according to the clerk at the what cheer) he had started for honolulu? "and how have you fared?" inquired the captain, whom i found luxuriously reclining in our mound of litter. and the accent on the pronoun, the heightened colour of the speaker's face, and the contained excitement in his tones, advertised me at once that i had not been alone to make discoveries. "i have found a chinaman's chest in the galley," said i, "and john (if there was any john) was not so much as at the pains to take his opium." nares seemed to take it mighty quietly. "that so?" said he. "now, cast your eyes on that and own you're beaten!" and with a formidable clap of his open hand he flattened out before me, on the deck, a pair of newspapers. i gazed upon them dully, being in no mood for fresh discoveries. "look at them, mr. dodd," cried the captain sharply. "can't you look at them?" and he ran a dirty thumb along the title. "'sydney morning herald, november 26th,' can't you make that out?" he cried, with rising energy. "and don't you know, sir, that not thirteen days after this paper appeared in new south pole, this ship we're standing in heaved her blessed anchors out of china? how did the sydney morning herald get to hong kong in thirteen days? trent made no land, he spoke no ship, till he got here. then he either got it here or in hong kong. i give you your choice, my son!" he cried, and fell back among the clothes like a man weary of life. "where did you find them?" i asked. "in that black bag?" "guess so," he said. "you needn't fool with it. there's nothing else but a lead-pencil and a kind of worked-out knife." i looked in the bag, however, and was well rewarded. "every man to his trade, captain," said i. "you're a sailor, and you've given me plenty of points; but i am an artist, and allow me to inform you this is quite as strange as all the rest. the knife is a palette-knife; the pencil a winsor and newton, and a b b b at that. a palette-knife and a b b b on a tramp brig! it's against the laws of nature." "it would sicken a dog, wouldn't it?" said nares. "yes," i continued, "it's been used by an artist, too: see how it's sharpened--not for writing--no man could write with that. an artist, and straight from sydney? how can he come in?" "o, that's natural enough," sneered nares. "they cabled him to come up and illustrate this dime novel." we fell a while silent. "captain," i said at last, "there is something deuced underhand about this brig. you tell me you've been to sea a good part of your life. you must have seen shady things done on ships, and heard of more. well, what is this? is it insurance? is it piracy? what is it about? what can it be for?" "mr. dodd," returned nares, "you're right about me having been to sea the bigger part of my life. and you're right again when you think i know a good many ways in which a dishonest captain mayn't be on the square, nor do exactly the right thing by his owners, and altogether be just a little too smart by ninetynine and three-quarters. there's a good many ways, but not so many as you'd think; and not one that has any mortal thing to do with trent. trent and his whole racket has got to do with nothing--that's the bed-rock fact; there's no sense to it, and no use in it, and no story to it--it's a beastly dream. and don't you run away with that notion that landsmen take about ships. a society actress don't go around more publicly than what a ship does, nor is more interviewed, nor more humbugged, nor more run after by all sorts of little fussinesses in brass buttons. and more than an actress, a ship has a deal to lose; she's capital, and the actress only character--if she's that. the ports of the world are thick with people ready to kick a captain into the penitentiary if he's not as bright as a dollar and as honest as the morning star; and what with lloyd keeping watch and watch in every corner of the three oceans, and the insurance leeches, and the consuls, and the customs bugs, and the medicos, you can only get the idea by thinking of a landsman watched by a hundred and fifty detectives, or a stranger in a village down east." "well, but at sea?" i said. "you make me tired," retorted the captain. "what's the use--at sea? everything's got to come to bearings at some port, hasn't it? you can't stop at sea for ever, can you?--no; the flying scud is rubbish; if it meant anything, it would have to mean something so almighty intricate that james g. blaine hasn't got the brains to engineer it; and i vote for more axeing, pioneering, and opening up the resources of this phenomenal brig, and less general fuss," he added, arising. "the dime-museum symptoms will drop in of themselves, i guess, to keep us cheery." but it appeared we were at the end of discoveries for the day; and we left the brig about sundown, without being further puzzled or further enlightened. the best of the cabin spoils--books, instruments, papers, silks, and curiosities--we carried along with us in a blanket, however, to divert the evening hours; and when supper was over, and the table cleared, and johnson set down to a dreary game of cribbage between his right hand and his left, the captain and i turned out our blanket on the floor, and sat side by side to examine and appraise the spoils. the books were the first to engage our notice. these were rather numerous (as nares contemptuously put it) "for a limejuicer." scorn of the british mercantile marine glows in the breast of every yankee merchant captain; as the scorn is not reciprocated, i can only suppose it justified in fact; and certainly the old country mariner appears of a less studious disposition. the more credit to the officers of the flying scud, who had quite a library, both literary and professional. there were findlay's five directories of the world--all broken-backed, as is usual with findlay, and all marked and scribbled over with corrections and additions,--several books of navigation, a signal-code, and an admiralty book of a sort of orange hue, called islands of the eastern pacific ocean, vol. iii., which appeared from its imprint to be the latest authority, and showed marks of frequent consultation in the passages about the french frigate shoals, the harman, cure, pearl, and hermes reefs, lisiansky island, ocean island, and the place where we then lay-brooks or midway. a volume of macaulay's essays and a shilling shakespeare led the van of the belles lettres; the rest were novels. several miss braddon's--of course, aurora floyd, which has penetrated to every island of the pacific, a good many cheap detective books, rob roy, auerbach's auf der hohe, in the german, and a prize temperance story, pillaged (to judge by the stamp) from an anglo-indian circulating library. "the admiralty man gives a fine picture of our island," remarked nares, who had turned up midway island. "he draws the dreariness rather mild, but you can make out he knows the place." "captain," i cried, "you've struck another point in this mad business. see here," i went on eagerly, drawing from my pocket a crumpled fragment of the daily occidental which i had inherited from jim: "misled by hoyt's pacific directory? where's hoyt?" "let's look into that," said nares. "i got that book on purpose for this cruise." therewith he fetched it from the shelf in his berth, turned to midway island, and read the account aloud. it stated with precision that the pacific mail company were about to form a depot there, in preference to honolulu, and that they had already a station on the island. "i wonder who gives these directory men their information," nares reflected. "nobody can blame trent after that. i never got in company with squarer lying; it reminds a man of a presidential campaign." "all very well," said i; "that's your hoyt, and a fine, tall copy. but what i want to know is, where is trent's hoyt?" "took it with him," chuckled nares; "he had left everything else, bills and money and all the rest: he was bound to take something, or it would have aroused attention on the tempest. 'happy thought,' says he, 'let's take hoyt.'" "and has it not occurred to you," i went on, "that all the hoyts in creation couldn't have misled trent, since he had in his hand that red admiralty book, an official publication, later in date, and particularly full on midway island?" "that's a fact!" cried nares; "and i bet the first hoyt he ever saw was out of the mercantile library of san francisco. looks as if he had brought her here on purpose, don't it? but then that's inconsistent with the steam-crusher of the sale. that's the trouble with this brig racket; any one can make half a dozen theories for sixty or seventy per cent. of it; but when they're made, there's always a fathom or two of slack hanging out of the other end." i believe our attention fell next on the papers, of which we had altogether a considerable bulk. i had hoped to find among these matter for a full-length character of captain trent; but here i was doomed, on the whole, to disappointment. we could make out he was an orderly man, for all his bills were docketed and preserved. that he was convivial, and inclined to be frugal even in conviviality, several documents proclaimed. such letters as we found were, with one exception, arid notes from tradesmen. the exception, signed hannah trent, was a somewhat fervid appeal for a loan. "you know what misfortunes i have had to bear," wrote hannah, "and how much i am disappointed in george. the land-lady appeared a true friend when i first came here, and i thought her a perfect lady. but she has come out since then in her true colours; and if you will not be softened by this last appeal, i can't think what is to become of your affectionate----" and then the signature. this document was without place or date, and a voice told me that it had gone likewise without answer. on the whole, there were few letters anywhere in the ship; but we found one before we were finished, in a seaman's chest, of which i must transcribe some sentences. it was dated from some place on the clyde. "my dearist son," it ran, "this is to tell you your dearist father passed away, jan twelft, in the peace of the lord. he had your photo and dear david's lade upon his bed, made me sit by him. let's be a' thegither, he said, and gave you all his blessing. o my dear laddie, why were nae you and davie here? he would have had a happier passage. he spok of both of ye all night most beautiful, and how ye used to stravaig on the saturday afternoons, and of auld kelvinside. sooth the tune to me, he said, though it was the sabbath, and i had to sooth him 'kelvin grove,' and he looked at his fiddle, the dear man. i cannae bear the sight of it, he'll never play it mair. o my lamb, come home to me, i'm all by my lane now." the rest was in a religious vein, and quite conventional. i have never seen any one more put out than nares, when i handed him this letter. he had read but a few words, before he cast it down; it was perhaps a minute ere he picked it up again, and the performance was repeated the third time before he reached the end. "it's touching, isn't it?" said i. for all answer, nares exploded in a brutal oath; and it was some half an hour later that he vouchsafed an explanation. "i'll tell you what broke me up about that letter," said he. "my old man played the fiddle, played it all out of tune: one of the things he played was 'martyrdom,' i remember--it was all martyrdom to me. he was a pig of a father, and i was a pig of a son; but it sort of came over me i would like to hear that fiddle squeak again. natural," he added; "i guess we're all beasts." "all sons are, i guess," said i. "i have the same trouble on my conscience: we can shake hands on that." which (oddly enough, perhaps) we did. amongst the papers we found a considerable sprinkling of photographs; for the most part either of very debonair-looking young ladies or old women of the lodging-house persuasion. but one among them was the means of our crowning discovery. "they're not pretty, are they, mr. dodd?" said nares, as he passed it over. "who?" i asked, mechanically taking the card (it was a quarter-plate) in hand, and smothering a yawn; for the hour was late, the day had been laborious, and i was wearying for bed. "trent and company," said he. "that's a historic picture of the gang." i held it to the light, my curiosity at a low ebb: i had seen captain trent once, and had no delight in viewing him again. it was a photograph of the deck of the brig, taken from forward: all in apple-pie order; the hands gathered in the waist, the officers on the poop. at the foot of the card was written "brig flying scud, rangoon," and a date; and above or below each individual figure the name had been carefully noted. as i continued to gaze, a shock went through me; the dimness of sleep and fatigue lifted from my eyes, as fog lifts in the channel; and i beheld with startled clearness the photographic presentment of a crowd of strangers. "j. trent, master" at the top of the card directed me to a smallish, wizened man, with bushy eyebrows and full white beard, dressed in a frock-coat and white trousers; a flower stuck in his button-hole, his bearded chin set forward, his mouth clenched with habitual determination. there was not much of the sailor in his looks, but plenty of the martinet; a dry, precise man, who might pass for a preacher in some rigid sect; and, whatever he was, not the captain trent of san francisco. the men, too, were all new to me: the cook, an unmistakable chinaman, in his characteristic dress, standing apart on the poop steps. but perhaps i turned on the whole with the greatest curiosity to the figure labelled "e. goddedaal, 1st off." he whom i had never seen, he might be the identical; he might be the clue and spring of all this mystery; and i scanned his features with the eye of a detective. he was of great stature, seemingly blonde as a viking, his hair clustering round his head in frowsy curls, and two enormous whiskers, like the tusks of some strange animal, jutting from his cheeks. with these virile appendages and the defiant attitude in which he stood, the expression of his face only imperfectly harmonised. it was wild, heroic, and womanish-looking; and i felt i was prepared to hear he was a sentimentalist, and to see him weep. for some while i digested my discovery in private, reflecting how best, and how with most of drama, i might share it with the captain. then my sketch-book came in my head, and i fished it out from where it lay, with other miscellaneous possessions, at the foot of my bunk, and turned to my sketch of captain trent and the survivors of the british brig flying scud in the san francisco bar-room. "nares," said i, "i've told you how i first saw captain trent in that saloon in 'frisco? how he came with his men, one of them a kanaka with a canary-bird in a cage; and how i saw him afterwards at the auction, frightened to death, and as much surprised at how the figures skipped up as anybody there. well," said i, "there's the man i saw"--and i laid the sketch before him-"there's trent of 'frisco and there are his three hands. find one of them in the photograph, and i'll be obliged." nares compared the two in silence. "well," he said at last, "i call this rather a relief: seems to clear the horizon. we might have guessed at something of the kind from the double ration of chests that figured." "does it explain anything?" i asked. "it would explain everything," nares replied, "but for the steam-crusher. it'll all tally as neat as a patent puzzle, if you leave out the way these people bid the wreck up. and there we come to a stone wall. but whatever it is, mr. dodd, it's on the crook." "and looks like piracy," i added. "looks like blind hookey!" cried the captain. "no, don't you deceive yourself; neither your head nor mine is big enough to put a name on this business. chapter xv the cargo of the "flying scud" in my early days i was a man, the most wedded to his idols of my generation. i was a dweller under roofs; the gull of that which we call civilisation; a superstitious votary of the plastic arts; a cit, and a prop of restaurants. i had a comrade in those days, somewhat of an outsider, though he moved in the company of artists, and a man famous in our small world for gallantry, knee-breeches, and dry and pregnant sayings. he, looking on the long meals and waxing bellies of the french, whom i confess i somewhat imitated, branded me as "a cultivator of restaurant fat." and i believe he had his finger on the dangerous spot; i believe, if things had gone smooth with me, i should be now swollen like a prize-ox in body, and fallen in mind to a thing perhaps as low as many types of bourgeois--the implicit or exclusive artist. that was a home word of pinkerton's, deserving to be writ in letters of gold on the portico of every school of art: " what i can't see is why you should want to do nothing else." the dull man is made, not by the nature, but by the degree of his immersion in a single business. and all the more if that be sedentary, uneventful, and ingloriously safe. more than one half of him will then remain unexercised and undeveloped; the rest will be distended and deformed by over-nutrition, over-cerebration, and the heat of rooms. and i have often marvelled at the impudence of gentlemen who describe and pass judgment on the life of man, in almost perfect ignorance of all its necessary elements and natural careers. those who dwell in clubs and studios may paint excellent pictures or write enchanting novels. there is one thing that they should not do: they should pass no judgment on man's destiny, for it is a thing with which they are unacquainted. their own life is an excrescence of the moment, doomed, in the vicissitude of history, to pass and disappear. the eternal life of man, spent under sun and rain and in rude physical effort, lies upon one side, scarce changed since the beginning. i would i could have carried along with me to midway island all the writers and the prating artists of my time. day after day of hope deferred, of heat, of unremitting toil; night after night of aching limbs, bruised hands, and a mind obscured with the grateful vacancy of physical fatigue. the scene, the nature of my employment, the rugged speech and faces of my fellow-toilers, the glare of the day on deck, the stinking twilight in the bilge, the shrill myriads of the ocean-fowl; above all, the sense of our immitigable isolation from the world and from the current epoch-keeping another time, some eras old; the new day heralded by no daily paper, only by the rising sun; and the state, the churches, the peopled empires, war, and the rumours of war, and the voices of the arts, all gone silent as in the days ere they were yet invented. such were the conditions of my new experience in life, of which (if i had been able) i would have had all my confreres and contemporaries to partake, forgetting, for that while, the orthodoxies of the moment, and devoted to a single and material purpose under the eye of heaven. of the nature of our task i must continue to give some summary idea. the forecastle was lumbered with ship's chandlery, the hold nigh full of rice, the lazarette crowded with the teas and silks. these must all be dug out; and that made but a fraction of our task. the hold was ceiled throughout; a part, where perhaps some delicate cargo was once stored, had been lined, in addition, with inch boards; and between every beam there was a movable panel into the bilge. any of these, the bulkheads of the cabins, the very timbers of the hull itself, might be the place of hiding. it was therefore necessary to demolish, as we proceeded, a great part of the ship's inner skin and fittings, and to auscultate what remained, like a doctor sounding for a lung disease. upon the return, from any beam or bulkhead, of a doubtful sound, we must up axe and hew into the timber: a violent and--from the amount of dry rot in the wreck--a mortifying exercise. every night saw a deeper inroad into the bones of the flying scud--more beams tapped and hewn in splinters, more planking peeled away and tossed aside--and every night saw us as far as ever from the end and object of our arduous devastation. in this perpetual disappointment, my courage did not fail me, but my spirits dwindled; and nares himself grew silent and morose. at night, when supper was done, we passed an hour in the cabin, mostly without speech: i, sometimes dozing over a book; nares, sullenly but busily drilling sea-shells with the instrument called a yankee fiddle. a stranger might have supposed we were estranged; as a matter of fact, in this silent comradeship of labour, our intimacy grew. i had been struck, at the first beginning of our enterprise upon the wreck, to find the men so ready at the captain's lightest word. i dare not say they liked, but i can never deny that they admired him thoroughly. a mild word from his mouth was more valued than flattery and half a dollar from myself; if he relaxed at all from his habitual attitude of censure, smiling alacrity surrounded him; and i was led to think his theory of captainship, even if pushed to excess, reposed upon some ground of reason. but even terror and admiration of the captain failed us before the end. the men wearied of the hopeless, unremunerative quest and the long strain of labour. they began to shirk and grumble. retribution fell on them at once, and retribution multiplied the grumblings. with every day it took harder driving to keep them to the daily drudge; and we, in our narrow boundaries, were kept conscious every moment of the ill-will of our assistants. in spite of the best care, the object of our search was perfectly well known to all on board; and there had leaked out, besides, some knowledge of those inconsistencies that had so greatly amazed the captain and myself. i could overhear the men debate the character of captain trent, and set forth competing theories of where the opium was stowed; and, as they seemed to have been eavesdropping on ourselves, i thought little shame to prick up my ears when i had the return chance of spying upon them. in this way i could diagnose their temper and judge how far they were informed upon the mystery of the flying scud. it was after having thus overheard some almost mutinous speeches that a fortunate idea crossed my mind. at night i matured it in my bed, and the first thing the next morning broached it to the captain. "suppose i spirit up the hands a bit," i asked, "by the offer of a reward?" "if you think you're getting your month's wages out of them the way it is, i don't," was his reply. "however, they are all the men you've got, and you're the supercargo." this, from a person of the captain's character, might be regarded as complete adhesion; and the crew were accordingly called aft. never had the captain worn a front more menacing. it was supposed by all that some misdeed had been discovered, and some surprising punishment was to be announced. "see here, you!" he threw at them over his shoulder as he walked the deck. "mr. dodd here is going to offer a reward to the first man who strikes the opium in that wreck. there's two ways of making a donkey go--both good, i guess; the one's kicks and the other's carrots. mr. dodd's going to try the carrots. well, my sons"-and here he faced the men for the first time with his hands behind him--"if that opium's not found in five days you can come to me for the kicks." he nodded to the present narrator, who took up the tale. "here is what i propose, men," said i: "i put up one hundred and fifty dollars. if any man can lay hands on the stuff right away, and off his own club, he shall have the hundred and fifty down. if any one can put us on the scent of where to look, he shall have a hundred and twenty-five, and the balance shall be for the lucky one who actually picks it up. we'll call it the pinkerton stakes, captain," i added, with a smile. "call it the grand combination sweep, then," cries he. "for i go you better.--look here, men, i make up this jack-pot to two hundred and fifty dollars, american gold coin." "thank you, captain nares," said i; "that was handsomely done." "it was kindly meant," he returned. the offer was not made in vain; the hands had scarce yet realised the magnitude of the reward, they had scarce begun to buzz aloud in the extremity of hope and wonder, ere the chinese cook stepped forward with gracious gestures and explanatory smiles. "captain," he began, "i serv-um two year melican navy; serv-um six year mail-boat steward. savvy plenty." "oho!" cried nares, "you savvy plenty, do you? (beggar's seen this trick in the mail-boat, i guess.) well, why you no savvy a little sooner, sonny?" "i think bimeby make-um reward," replied the cook, with smiling dignity. "well, you can't say fairer than that," the captain admitted; "and now the reward's offered you'll talk? speak up then. suppose you speak true you get reward. see?" "i think long time," replied the chinaman. "see plenty litty mat lice; too muchy plenty litty mat lice; sixty ton litty mat lice. i think all-e-time perhaps plenty opium plenty litty mat lice." "well, mr. dodd, how does that strike you?" asked the captain. "he may be right, he may be wrong. he's likely to be right, for if he isn't, where can the stuff be? on the other hand, if he's wrong we destroy a hundred and fifty tons of good rice for nothing. it's a point to be considered." "i don't hesitate," said i. "let's get to the bottom of the thing. the rice is nothing; the rice will neither make nor break us." "that's how i expected you to see it," returned nares. and we called the boat away and set forth on our new quest. the hold was now almost entirely emptied; the mats (of which there went forty to the short ton) had been stacked on deck, and now crowded the ship's waist and forecastle. it was our task to disembowel and explore six thousand individual mats, and incidentally to destroy a hundred and fifty tons of valuable food. nor were the circumstances of the day's business less strange than its essential nature. each man of us, armed with a great knife, attacked the pile from his own quarter, slashed into the nearest mat, burrowed in it with his hands, and shed forth the rice upon the deck, where it heaped up, overflowed, and was trodden down, poured at last into the scuppers, and occasionally spouted from the vents. about the wreck thus transformed into an overflowing granary, the seafowl swarmed in myriads and with surprising insolence. the sight of so much food confounded them; they deafened us with their shrill tongues, swooped in our midst, dashed in our faces, and snatched the grain from between our fingers. the men--their hands bleeding from these assaults--turned savagely on the offensive, drove their knives into the birds, drew them out crimsoned, and turned again to dig among the rice, unmindful of the gawking creatures that struggled and died among their feet. we made a singular picture--the hovering and diving birds; the bodies of the dead discolouring the rice with blood; the scuppers vomiting breadstuff; the men, frenzied by the gold hunt, toiling, slaying, and shouting aloud; over all the lofty intricacy of rigging and the radiant heaven of the pacific. every man there toiled in the immediate hope of fifty dollars, and i of fifty thousand. small wonder if we waded callously in blood and food. it was perhaps about ten in the forenoon when the scene was interrupted. nares, who had just ripped open a fresh mat, drew forth and slung at his feet, among the rice, a papered tin box. "how's that?" he shouted. a cry broke from all hands. the next moment, forgetting their own disappointment in that contagious sentiment of success, they gave three cheers that scared the sea-birds; and the next they had crowded round the captain, and were jostling together and groping with emulous hands in the new-opened mat. box after box rewarded them, six in all; wrapped, as i have said, in a paper envelope, and the paper printed on in chinese characters. nares turned to me and shook my hand. "i began to think we should never see this day," said he. "i congratulate you, mr. dodd, on having pulled it through." the captain's tones affected me profoundly; and when johnson and the men pressed round me in turn with congratulations, the tears came in my eyes. "these are five-tael boxes, more than two pounds," said nares, weighing one in his hand. "say two hundred and fifty dollars to the mat. lay into it, boys! we'll make mr. dodd a millionaire before dark." it was strange to see with what a fury we fell to. the men had now nothing to expect; the mere idea of great sums inspired them with disinterested ardour. mats were slashed and disembowelled, the rice flowed to our knees in the ship's waist, the sweat ran in our eyes and blinded us, our arms ached to agony; and yet our fire abated not. dinner came; we were too weary to eat, too hoarse for conversation; and yet dinner was scarce done, before we were afoot again and delving in the rice. before nightfall not a mat was unexplored, and we were face to face with the astonishing result. for of all the inexplicable things in the story of the flying scud, here was the most inexplicable. out of the six thousand mats, only twenty were found to have been sugared; in each we found the same amount, about twelve pounds of drug; making a grand total of two hundred and forty pounds. by the last san francisco quotation, opium was selling for a fraction over twenty dollars a pound; but it had been known not long before to bring as much as forty in honolulu, where it was contraband. taking, then, this high honolulu figure, the value of the opium on board the flying scud fell considerably short of ten thousand dollars, while at the san francisco rate it lacked a trifle of five thousand. and fifty thousand was the price that jim and i had paid for it. and bellairs had been eager to go higher! there is no language to express the stupor with which i contemplated this result. it may be argued we were not yet sure; there might be yet another cache; and you may be certain in that hour of my distress the argument was not forgotten. there was never a ship more ardently perquested; no stone was left unturned, and no expedient untried; day after day of growing despair, we punched and dug in the brig's vitals, exciting the men with promises and presents; evening after evening nares and i sat face to face in the narrow cabin, racking our minds for some neglected possibility of search. i could stake my salvation on the certainty of the result: in all that ship there was nothing left of value but the timber and the copper nails. so that our case was lamentably plain; we had paid fifty thousand dollars, borne the charges of the schooner, and paid fancy interest on money; and if things went well with us, we might realise fifteen per cent. of the first outlay. we were not merely bankrupt, we were comic bankrupts--a fair butt for jeering in the streets. i hope i bore the blow with a good countenance; indeed, my mind had long been quite made up, and since the day we found the opium i had known the result. but the thought of jim and mamie ached in me like a physical pain, and i shrank from speech and companionship. i was in this frame of mind when the captain proposed that we should land upon the island. i saw he had something to say, and only feared it might be consolation, for i could just bear my grief, not bungling sympathy; and yet i had no choice but to accede to his proposal. we walked a while along the beach in silence. the sun overhead reverberated rays of heat; the staring sand, the glaring lagoon, tortured our eyes; and the birds and the boom of the far-away breakers made a savage symphony. "i don't require to tell you the game's up?" nares asked. "no," said i. "i was thinking of getting to sea to-morrow," he pursued. "the best thing you can do," said i. "shall we say honolulu?" he inquired. "o, yes; let's stick to the programme," i cried. "honolulu be it!" there was another silence, and then nares cleared his throat. "we've been pretty good friends, you and me, mr. dodd," he resumed. "we've been going through the kind of thing that tries a man. we've had the hardest kind of work, we've been badly backed, and now we're badly beaten. and we've fetched through without a word of disagreement. i don't say this to praise myself: it's my trade; it's what i'm paid for, and trained for, and brought up to. but it was another thing for you; it was all new to you; and it did me good to see you stand right up to it and swing right into it--day in, day out. and then see how you've taken this disappointment, when everybody knows you must have been tautened up to shying-point! i wish you'd let me tell you, mr. dodd, that you've stood out mighty manly and handsomely in all this business, and made every one like you and admire you. and i wish you'd let me tell you, besides, that i've taken this wreck business as much to heart as you have; something kind of rises in my throat when i think we're beaten; and if i thought waiting would do it, i would stick on this reef until we starved." i tried in vain to thank him for these generous words, but he was beforehand with me in a moment. "i didn't bring you ashore to sound my praises," he interrupted. "we understand one another now, that's all; and i guess you can trust me. what i wished to speak about is more important, and it's got to be faced. what are we to do about the flying scud and the dime novel?" "i really have thought nothing about that," i replied; "but i expect i mean to get at the bottom of it, and if the bogus captain trent is to be found on the earth's surface, i guess i mean to find him." "all you've got to do is talk," said nares; "you can make the biggest kind of boom; it isn't often the reporters have a chance at such a yarn as this; and i can tell you how it will go. it will go by telegraph, mr. dodd; it'll be telegraphed by the column, and headlined, and frothed up, and denied by authority, and it'll hit bogus captain trent in a mexican bar-room, and knock over bogus goddedaal in a slum somewhere up the baltic, and bowl down hardy and brown in sailors' music-halls round greenock. o, there's no doubt you can have a regular domestic judgment day. the only point is whether you deliberately want to." "well," said i, "i deliberately don't want one thing: i deliberately don't want to make a public exhibition of myself and pinkerton: so moral--smuggling opium; such damned fools--paying fifty thousand for a 'dead horse'!" "no doubt it might damage you in a business sense," the captain agreed; "and i'm pleased you take that view, for i've turned kind of soft upon the job. there's been some crookedness about, no doubt of it; but, law bless you! if we dropped upon the troupe, all the premier artists would slip right out with the boodle in their grip-sacks, and you'd only collar a lot of old mutton-headed shell-backs that didn't know the back of the business from the front. i don't take much stock in mercantile jack, you know that, but, poor devil, he's got to go where he's told; and if you make trouble, ten to one it'll make you sick to see the innocents who have to stand the racket. it would be different if we understood the operation; but we don't, you see: there's a lot of queer corners in life, and my vote is to let the blame' thing lie." "you speak as if we had that in our power," i objected. "and so we have," said he. "what about the men?" i asked. "they know too much by half, and you can't keep them from talking." "can't i?" returned nares. "i bet a boarding-master can! they can be all half-seas-over when they get ashore, blind drunk by dark, and cruising out of the golden gate in different deep-sea ships by the next morning. can't keep them from talking, can't i? well, i can make 'em talk separate, least-ways. if a whole crew came talking, parties would listen; but if it's only one lone old shell-back, it's the usual yarn. and at least, they needn't talk before six months, or--if we have luck, and there's a whaler handy--three years. and by that time, mr. dodd, it's ancient history." "that's what they call shanghaiing, isn't it?" i asked. "i thought it belonged to the dime novel." "o, dime novels are right enough," returned the captain. "nothing wrong with the dime novel, only that things happen thicker than they do in life, and the practical seamanship is off colour." "so we can keep the business to ourselves," i mused. "there's one other person that might blab," said the captain. "though i don't believe she has anything left to tell." "and who is she?" i asked. "the old girl there," he answered, pointing to the wreck; "i know there's nothing in her; but somehow i'm afraid of some one else--it's the last thing you'd expect, so it's just the first that'll happen--some one dropping into this god-forgotten island where nobody drops in, waltzing into that wreck that we've grown old with searching, stooping straight down, and picking right up the very thing that tells the story. what's that to me? you may ask, and why am i gone soft tommy on this museum of crooks? they've smashed up you and mr. pinkerton; they've turned my hair grey with conundrums; they've been up to larks, no doubt; and that's all i know of them--you say. well, and that's just where it is. i don't know enough; i don't know what's uppermost; it's just such a lot of miscellaneous eventualities as i don't care to go stirring up; and i ask you to let me deal with the old girl after a patent of my own." "certainly--what you please," said i, scarce with attention, for a new thought now occupied my brain. "captain," i broke out, "you are wrong: we cannot hush this up. there is one thing you have forgotten." "what is that?" he asked. "a bogus captain trent, a bogus goddedaal, a whole bogus crew, have all started home," said i. "if we are right, not one of them will reach his journey's end. and do you mean to say that such a circumstance as that can pass without remark?" "sailors," said the captain, "only sailors! if they were all bound for one place in a body, i don't say so; but they're all going separate--to hull, to sweden, to the clyde, to the thames. well, at each place, what is it? nothing new. only one sailor-man missing: got drunk, or got drowned, or got left--the proper sailor's end." something bitter in the thought and in the speaker's tones struck me hard. "here is one that has got left!" i cried, getting sharply to my feet, for we had been some time seated. "i wish it were the other. i don't-don't relish going home to jim with this!" "see here," said nares, with ready tact, "i must be getting aboard. johnson's in the brig annexing chandlery and canvas, and there's some things in the norah that want fixing against we go to sea. would you like to be left here in the chicken-ranch? i'll send for you to supper." i embraced the proposal with delight. solitude, in my frame of mind, was not too dearly purchased at the risk of sunstroke or sand-blindness; and soon i was alone on the ill-omened islet. i should find it hard to tell of what i thought--of jim, of mamie, of our lost fortune, of my lost hopes, of the doom before me: to turn to at some mechanical occupation in some subaltern rank, and to toil there, unremarked and unamused, until the hour of the last deliverance. i was, at least, so sunk in sadness that i scarce remarked where i was going; and chance (or some finer sense that lives in us, and only guides us when the mind is in abeyance) conducted my steps into a quarter of the island where the birds were few. by some devious route, which i was unable to retrace for my return, i was thus able to mount, without interruption, to the highest point of land. and here i was recalled to consciousness by a last discovery. the spot on which i stood was level, and commanded a wide view of the lagoon, the bounding reef, the round horizon. nearer hand i saw the sister islet, the wreck, the norah creina, and the norah's boat already moving shoreward. for the sun was now low, flaming on the sea's verge; and the galley chimney smoked on board the schooner. it thus befell that though my discovery was both affecting and suggestive, i had no leisure to examine further. what i saw was the blackened embers of fire of wreck. by all the signs, it must have blazed to a good height and burned for days; from the scantling of a spar that lay upon the margin only half consumed, it must have been the work of more than one; and i received at once the image of a forlorn troop of castaways, houseless in that lost corner of the earth, and feeding there their fire of signal. the next moment a hail reached me from the boat; and bursting through the bushes and the rising sea-fowl, i said farewell (i trust for ever) to that desert isle. chapter xvi in which i turn smuggler, and the captain casuist the last night at midway i had little sleep; the next morning, after the sun was risen, and the clatter of departure had begun to reign on deck, i lay a long while dozing; and when at last i stepped from the companion, the schooner was already leaping through the pass into the open sea. close on her board, the huge scroll of a breaker unfurled itself along the reef with a prodigious clamour; and behind i saw the wreck vomiting into the morning air a coil of smoke. the wreaths already blew out far to leeward, flames already glittered in the cabin skylight, and the sea-fowl were scattered in surprise as wide as the lagoon. as we drew farther off, the conflagration of the flying scud flamed higher; and long after we had dropped all signs of midway island, the smoke still hung in the horizon like that of a distant steamer. with the fading out of that last vestige, the norah creina, passed again into the empty world of cloud and water by which she had approached; and the next features that appeared, eleven days later, to break the line of sky, were the arid mountains of oahu. it has often since been a comfortable thought to me that we had thus destroyed the tell-tale remnants of the flying scud; and often a strange one that my last sight and reminiscence of that fatal ship should be a pillar of smoke on the horizon. to so many others besides myself the same appearance had played a part in the various stages of that business; luring some to what they little imagined, filling some with unimaginable terrors. but ours was the last smoke raised in the story; and with its dying away the secret of the flying scud became a private property. it was by the first light of dawn that we saw, close on board, the metropolitan island of hawaii. we held along the coast, as near as we could venture, with a fresh breeze and under an unclouded heaven; beholding, as we went, the arid mountain sides and scrubby cocoapalms of that somewhat melancholy archipelago. about four of the afternoon we turned waimanolo point, the westerly headland of the great bight of honolulu; showed ourselves for twenty minutes in full view, and then fell again to leeward, and put in the rest of daylight, plying under shortened sail under the lee of waimanolo. a little after dark we beat once more about the point, and crept cautiously toward the mouth of the pearl lochs, where jim and i had arranged i was to meet the smugglers. the night was happily obscure, the water smooth. we showed, according to instructions, no light on deck; only a red lantern dropped from either cathead to within a couple of feet of the water. a look-out was stationed on the bowsprit end, another in the cross-trees; and the whole ship's company crowded forward, scouting for enemies or friends. it was now the crucial moment of our enterprise; we were now risking liberty and credit, and that for a sum so small to a man in my bankrupt situation, that i could have laughed aloud in bitterness. but the piece had been arranged, and we must play it to the finish. for some while we saw nothing but the dark mountain outline of the island, the torches of native fishermen glittering here and there along the fore-shore, and right in the midst that cluster of brave lights with which the town of honolulu advertises itself to the seaward. presently a ruddy star appeared inshore of us, and seemed to draw near unsteadily. this was the anticipated signal; and we made haste to show the countersign, lowering a white light from the quarter, extinguishing the two others, and laying the schooner incontinently to. the star approached slowly; the sounds of oars and of men's speech came to us across the water; and then a voice hailed us-"is that mr. dodd?" "yes," i returned. "is jim pinkerton there?" "no, sir," replied the voice. "but there's one of his crowd here, name of speedy." "i'm here, mr. dodd," added speedy himself "i have letters for you." "all right," i replied. "come aboard, gentlemen, and let me see my mail." a whaleboat accordingly ranged alongside, and three men boarded us: my old san francisco friend, the stockgambler speedy, a little wizened person of the name of sharpe, and a big, flourishing, dissipated-looking man called fowler. the two last (i learned afterward) were frequent partners; sharpe supplied the capital, and fowler, who was quite a character in the islands, and occupied a considerable station, brought activity, daring, and a private influence, highly necessary in the case. both seemed to approach the business with a keen sense of romance; and i believe this was the chief attraction, at least with fowler--for whom i early conceived a sentiment of liking. but in that first moment i had something else to think of than to judge my new acquaintances; and before speedy had fished out the letters, the full extent of our misfortune was revealed. "we've rather bad news for you, mr. dodd," said fowler. "your firm's gone up." "already?" i exclaimed. "well, it was thought rather a wonder pinkerton held on as long as he did," was the reply. "the wreck deal was too big for your credit; you were doing a big business, no doubt, but you were doing it on precious little capital, and when the strain came, you were bound to go. pinkerton's through all right: seven cents dividend, some remarks made, but nothing to hurt; the press let you down easy--i guess jim had relations there. the only trouble is, that all this flying scud affair got in the papers with the rest; everybody's wide awake in honolulu, and the sooner we get the stuff in and the dollars out, the better for all concerned." "gentlemen," said i, "you must excuse me. my friend, the captain here, will drink a glass of champagne with you to give you patience; but as for myself, i am unfit even for ordinary conversation till i have read these letters." they demurred a little, and indeed the danger of delay seemed obvious; but the sight of my distress, which i was unable entirely to control, appealed strongly to their good-nature, and i was suffered at last to get by myself on deck, where, by the light of a lantern smuggled under shelter of the low rail, i read the following wretched correspondence:- "my dear loudon," ran the first, "this will be handed you by your friend speedy of the catamount. his sterling character and loyal devotion to yourself pointed him out as the best man for our purposes in honolulu--the parties on the spot being difficult to manipulate. a man called billy fowler (you must have heard of billy) is the boss; he is in politics some, and squares the officers. i have hard times before me in the city, but i feel as bright as a dollar and as strong as john l. sullivan. what with mamie here, and my partner speeding over the seas, and the bonanza in the wreck, i feel like i could juggle with the pyramids of egypt, same as conjurers do with aluminium balls. my earnest prayers follow you, loudon, that you may feel the way i do--just inspired! my feet don't touch the ground; i kind of swim. mamie is like moses and aaron that held up the other individual's arms. she carries me along like a horse and buggy. i am beating the record. "your true partner, "j. pinkerton. number two was in a different style:- "my dearest loudon,--how am i to prepare you for this dire intelligence? o dear me, it will strike you to the earth. the fiat has gone forth; our firm went bust at a quarter before twelve. it was a bill of bradley's (for two hundred dollars) that brought these vast operations to a close, and evolved liabilities of upwards of two hundred and fifty thousand. o the shame and pity of it, and you but three weeks gone! loudon, don't blame your partner; if human hands and brains could have sufficed i would have held the thing together. but it just slowly crumbled; bradley was the last kick, but the blamed business just melted. i give the liabilities- it's supposed they're all in--for the cowards were waiting, and the claims were filed like taking tickets to hear patti. i don't quite have the hang of the assets yet, our interests were so extended; but i am at it day and night, and i guess will make a creditable dividend. if the wreck pans out only half the way it ought we'll turn the laugh still. i am as full of grit and work as ever, and just tower above our troubles. mamie is a host in herself. somehow i feel like it was only me that had gone bust, and you and she soared clear of it. hurry up. that's all you have to do. "yours ever, "j. pinkerton. the third was yet more altered:- "my poor loudon," it began, "i labour far into the night getting our affairs in order; you could not believe their vastness and complexity. douglas b. longhurst said humorously that the receiver's work would be cut out for him. i cannot deny that some of them have a speculative look. god forbid a sensitive, refined spirit like yours should ever come face to face with a commissioner in bankruptcy; these men get all the sweetness knocked right out of them. but i could bear up better if it weren't for press comments. often and often, loudon, i recall to mind your most legitimate critiques of the press system. they published an interview with me, not the least like what i said, and with jeering comments; it would make your blood boil, it was literally inhumane; i wouldn't have written it about a yellow dog that was in trouble like what i am. mamie just winced, the first time she has turned a hair right through the whole catastrophe. how wonderfully true was what you said long ago in paris about touching on people's personal appearance! the fellow said--" [and then these words had been scored through, and my distressed friend turned to another subject.] "i cannot bear to dwell upon our assets. they simply don't show up. even thirteen star, as sound a line as can be produced upon this coast, goes begging. the wreck has thrown a blight on all we ever touched. and where's the use? god never made a wreck big enough to fill our deficit. i am haunted by the thought that you may blame me; i know how i despised your remonstrances. o, loudon, don't be hard on your miserable partner. the funny-dog business is what kills. i fear your stern rectitude of mind like the eye of god. i cannot think but what some of my books seem mixed up; otherwise, i don't seem to see my way as plain as i could wish to. or else my brain is gone soft. loudon, if there should be any unpleasantness you can trust me to do the right thing and keep you clear. i've been telling them already how you had no business grip and never saw the books. o, i trust i have done right in this! i knew it was a liberty; i know you may justly complain, but it was some things that were said. and mind you, all legitimate business! not even your shrinking sensitiveness could find fault with the first look of one of them if they had panned out right. and you know the flying scud was the biggest gamble of the crowd, and that was your own idea. mamie says she never could bear to look you in the face if that idea had been mine, she is so conscientious! "your broken-hearted "jim." the last began without formality:- "this is the end of me commercially. i give up; my nerve has gone. i suppose i ought to be glad, for we're through the court. i don't know as ever i knew how, and i'm sure i don't remember. if it pans out- the wreck i mean--we'll go to europe and live on the interest of our money. no more work for me. i shake when people speak to me. i have gone on, hoping and hoping, and working and working, and the lead has pinched right out. i want to lie on my back in a garden and read shakespeare and e. p. roe. don't suppose it's cowardice, loudon. i'm a sick man. rest is what i must have. i've worked hard all my life; i never spared myself, every dollar i ever made i've coined my brains for it. i've never done a mean thing; i've lived respectable, and given to the poor. who has a better right to a holiday than i have? and i mean to have a year of it straight out, and if i don't i shall lie right down here in my tracks, and die of worry and brain trouble. don't mistake, that's so. if there are any pickings at all, trust speedy; don't let the creditors get wind of what there is. i helped you when you were down, help me now. don't deceive yourself; you've got to help me right now or never. i am clerking, and not fit to cipher. mamie's typewriting at the phoenix guano exchange, down town. the light is right out of my life. i know you'll not like to do what i propose. think only of this, that it's life or death for "jim pinkerton. "p.s.--our figure was seven per cent. o what a fall was there! well, well, it's past mending; i don't want to whine. but, loudon, i do want to live. no more ambition; all i ask is life. i have so much to make it sweet to me. i am clerking, and useless at that. i know i would have fired such a clerk inside of forty minutes in my time. but my time's over. i can only cling on to you. don't fail jim pinkerton." there was yet one more postscript, yet one more outburst of self-pity and pathetic adjuration; and a doctor's opinion, unpromising enough, was besides enclosed. i pass them both in silence. i think shame to have shown at so great length the half-baked virtues of my friend dissolving in the crucible of sickness and distress; and the effect upon my spirits can be judged already. i got to my feet when i had done, drew a deep breath, and stared hard at honolulu. one moment the world seemed at an end, the next i was conscious of a rush of independent energy. on jim i could rely no longer; i must now take hold myself i must decide and act on my own better thoughts. the word was easy to say; the thing, at the first blush, was undiscoverable. i was overwhelmed with miserable, womanish pity for my broken friend; his outcries grieved my spirit; i saw him then and now-then, so invincible; now, brought so low--and knew neither how to refuse nor how to consent to his proposal. the remembrance of my father, who had fallen in the same field unstained, the image of his monument incongruously rising a fear of the law, a chill air that seemed to blow upon my fancy from the doors of prisons, and the imaginary clank of fetters, recalled me to a different resolve. and then, again, the wails of my sick partner intervened. so i stood hesitating, and yet with a strong sense of capacity behind, sure, if i could but choose my path, that i should walk in it with resolution. then i remembered that i had a friend on board, and stepped to the companion. "gentlemen," said i, "only a few moments more: but these, i regret to say, i must make more tedious still by removing your companion. it is indispensable that i should have a word or two with captain nares." both the smugglers were afoot at once, protesting. the business, they declared, must be despatched at once; they had run risk enough, with a conscience, and they must either finish now, or go." "the choice is yours, gentlemen," said i, "and, i believe, the eagerness. i am not yet sure that i have anything in your way; even if i have, there are a hundred things to be considered; and i assure you it is not at all my habit to do business with a pistol to my head." "that is all very proper, mr. dodd; there is no wish to coerce you, believe me," said fowler; "only, please consider our position. it is really dangerous; we were not the only people to see your schooner off waimanolo." "mr. fowler," i replied, "i was not born yesterday. will you allow me to express an opinion, in which i may be quite wrong, but to which i am entirely wedded? if the custom-house officers had been coming, they would have been here now. in other words, somebody is working the oracle, and (for a good guess) his name is fowler." both men laughed loud and long; and being supplied with another bottle of longhurst's champagne, suffered the captain and myself to leave them without further word. i gave nares the correspondence, and he skimmed it through. "now, captain," said i, "i want a fresh mind on this. what does it mean?" "it's large enough text," replied the captain. "it means you're to stake your pile on speedy, hand him over all you can, and hold your tongue. i almost wish you hadn't shown it me," he added wearily. "what with the specie from the wreck and the opium-money, it comes to a biggish deal." "that's supposing that i do it?" said i. "exactly," said he, "supposing you do it." "and there are pros and cons to that," i observed. "there's san quentin, to start in with," said the captain; "and suppose you clear the penitentiary, there's the nasty taste in the mouth. the figure's big enough to make bad trouble, but it's not big enough to be picturesque; and i should guess a man always feels kind of small who has sold himself under six ciphers. that would be my way, at least; there's an excitement about a million that might carry me on; but the other way, i should feel kind of lonely when i woke in bed. then there's speedy. do you know him well?" "no, i do not," said i. "well, of course he can vamoose with the entire speculation, if he chooses," pursued the captain, "and if he don't i can't see but what you've got to support and bed and board with him to the end of time. i guess it would weary me. then there's mr. pinkerton, of course. he's been a good friend to you, hasn't he? stood by you, and all that? and pulled you through for all he was worth?" "that he has," i cried; "i could never begin telling you my debt to him!" "well, and that's a consideration," said the captain. "as a matter of principle, i wouldn't look at this business at the money. "not good enough," would be my word. but even principle goes under when it comes to friends--the right sort, i mean. this pinkerton is frightened, and he seems sick; the medico don't seem to care a cent about his state of health; and you've got to figure how you would like it if he came to die. remember, the risk of this little swindle is all yours; it's no sort of risk to mr. pinkerton. well, you've got to put it that way plainly, and see how you like the sound of it: my friend pinkerton is in danger of the new jerusalem, i am in danger of san quentin; which risk do i propose to run?" "that's an ugly way to put it," i objected, "and perhaps hardly fair. there's right and wrong to be considered." "don't know the parties," replied nares; "and i'm coming to them, anyway. for it strikes me, when it came to smuggling opium, you walked right up?" "so i did," i said. "sick i am to have to say it." "all the same," continued nares, "you went into the opium-smuggling with your head down; and a good deal of fussing i've listened to, that you hadn't more of it to smuggle. now, maybe your partner's not quite fixed the same as you are; maybe he sees precious little difference between the one thing and the other." "you could not say truer: he sees none, i do believe," cried i; "and though i see one, i could never tell you how." "we never can," said the oracular nares; "taste is all a matter of opinion. but the point is, how will your friend take it? you refuse a favour, and you take the high horse at the same time; you disappoint him, and you rap him over the knuckles. it won't do, mr. dodd; no friendship can stand that. you must be as good as your friend, or as bad as your friend, or start on a fresh deal without him." "i don't see it," said i. "you don't know jim." "well, you will see," said nares. "and now, here's another point. this bit of money looks mighty big to mr. pinkerton; it may spell life or health to him; but among all your creditors, i don't see that it amounts to a hill of beans--i don't believe it'll pay their car-fares all round. and don't you think you'll ever get thanked. you were known to pay a long price for the chance of rummaging that wreck; you do the rummaging, you come home, and you hand over ten thousand--or twenty, if you like,--a part of which you'll have to own up you made by smuggling; and, mind! you'll never get billy fowler to stick his name to a receipt. now just glance at the transaction from the outside, and see what a clear case it makes. your ten thousand is a sop; and people will only wonder you were so damned impudent as to offer such a small one! whichever way you take it, mr. dodd, the bottom's out of your character; so there's one thing less to be considered." "i daresay you'll scarce believe me," said i, "but i feel that a positive relief." "you must be made some way different from me, then," returned nares. "and, talking about me, i might just mention how i stand. you'll have no trouble from me-you've trouble enough of your own; and i'm friend enough, when a friend's in need, to shut my eyes and go right where he tells me. all the same, i'm rather queerly fixed. my owners'll have to rank with the rest on their charter-party. here am i, their representative! and i have to look over the ship's side while the bankrupt walks his assets ashore in mr. speedy's hat-box. it's a thing i wouldn't do for james g. blaine; but i'll do it for you, mr. dodd, and only sorry i can't do more. "thank you, captain; my mind is made up," said i. "i'll go straight, ruat coelum! i never understood that old tag before to-night." "i hope it isn't my business that decides you?" asked the captain. "i'll never deny it was an element," said i. "i hope, i hope i'm not cowardly; i hope i could steal for jim myself; but when it comes to dragging in you and speedy, and this one and the other, why, jim has got to die, and there's an end. i'll try and work for him when i get to 'frisco, i suppose; and i suppose i'll fail, and look on at his death, and kick myself: it can't be helped--i'll fight it on this line." "i don't say as you're wrong," replied nares, "and i'll be hanged if i know if you're right. it suits me anyway. and look here--hadn't you better just show our friends over the side?" he added; "no good of being at the risk and worry of smuggling for the benefit of creditors." "i don't think of the creditors," said i. "but i've kept this pair so long i haven't got the brass to fire them now." indeed, i believe that was my only reason for entering upon a transaction which was now outside my interest, but which (as it chanced) repaid me fifty-fold in entertainment. fowler and sharpe were both preternaturally sharp; they did me the honour in the beginning to attribute to myself their proper vices, and before we were done had grown to regard me with an esteem akin to worship. this proud position i attained by no more recondite arts than telling the mere truth and unaffectedly displaying my indifference to the result. i have doubtless stated the essentials of all good diplomacy, which may be rather regarded, therefore, as a grace of state than the effect of management. for to tell the truth is not in itself diplomatic, and to have no care for the result a thing involuntary. when i mentioned, for instance, that i had but two hundred and forty pounds of drug, my smugglers exchanged meaning glances, as who should say, "here is a foeman worthy of our steel!" but when i carelessly proposed thirty-five dollars a pound, as an amendment to their offered twenty, and wound up with the remark: "the whole thing is a matter of moonshine to me, gentlemen. take it or want it, and fill your glasses"--i had the indescribable gratification to see sharpe nudge fowler warningly, and fowler choke down the jovial acceptance that stood ready on his lips, and lamely substitute a "no--no more wine, please, mr. dodd!" nor was this all: for when the affair was settled at thirty dollars a pound--a shrewd stroke of business for my creditors--and our friends had got on board their whaleboat and shoved off, it appeared they were imperfectly acquainted with the conveyance of sound upon still water, and i had the joy to overhear the following testimonial. "deep man that dodd," said sharpe. and the bass-toned fowler echoed, "damned if i understand his game." thus we were left once more alone upon the norah creina; and the news of the night, and the lamentations of pinkerton, and the thought of my own harsh decision, returned and besieged me in the dark. according to all the rubbish i had read, i should have been sustained by the warm consciousness of virtue. alas, i had but the one feeling: that i had sacrificed my sick friend to the fear of prison-cells and stupid starers. and no moralist has yet advanced so far as to number cowardice amongst the things that are their own reward. chapter xvii light from the man of war in the early sunlight of the next day we tossed close off the buoy, and saw the city sparkle in its groves about the foot of the punch bowl, and the masts clustering thick in the small harbour. a good breeze, which had risen with the sea, carried us triumphantly through the intricacies of the passage; and we had soon brought up not far from the landing-stairs. i remember to have remarked an ugly-horned reptile of a modern warship in the usual moorings across the port, but my mind was so profoundly plunged in melancholy that i paid no heed. indeed, i had little time at my disposal. messieurs sharpe and fowler had left the night before in the persuasion that i was a liar of the first magnitude; the genial belief brought them aboard again with the earliest opportunity, proffering help to one who had proved how little he required it, and hospitality to so respectable a character. i had business to mind, i had some need both of assistance and diversion; i liked fowler--i don't know why; and in short, i let them do with me as they desired. no creditor intervening, i spent the first half of the day inquiring into the conditions of the tea and silk market under the auspices of sharpe; lunched with him in a private apartment at the hawaiian hotel--for sharpe was a teetotaler in public; and about four in the afternoon was delivered into the hands of fowler. this gentleman owned a bungalow on the waikiki beach; and there, in company with certain young bloods of honolulu, i was entertained to a sea-bathe, indiscriminate cocktails, a dinner, a hula-hula, and (to round off the night) poker and assorted liquors. to lose money in the small hours to pale intoxicated youth has always appeared to me a pleasure overrated. in my then frame of mind, i confess i found it even delightful; put up my money (or rather my creditors') and put down fowler's champagne with equal avidity and success; and awoke the next morning to a mild headache and the rather agreeable lees of the last night's excitement. the young bloods, many of whom were still far from sober, had taken the kitchen into their own hands, vice the chinaman deposed; and since each was engaged upon a dish of his own, and none had the least scruple in demolishing his neighbour's handiwork, i became early convinced that many eggs would be broken and few omelets made. the discovery of a jug of milk and a crust of bread enabled me to stay my appetite; and since it was sunday, when no business could be done, and the festivities were to be renewed that night in the abode of fowler, it occurred to me to slip silently away and enjoy some air and solitude. i turned seaward under the dead crater known as diamond head. my way was for some time under the shade of certain thickets of green thorny trees, dotted with houses. here i enjoyed some pictures' of the native life: wide-eyed, naked children, mingled with pigs; a youth asleep under a tree; an old gentleman spelling through glasses his hawaiian bible; the somewhat embarrassing spectacle of a lady at her bath in a spring; and the glimpse of gaudy-coloured gowns in the deep shade of the houses. thence i found a road along the beach itself, wading in sand, opposed and buffeted by the whole weight of the trade: on one hand, the glittering and sounding surf, and the bay lively with many sails; on the other, precipitous, arid gullies and sheer cliffs, mounting towards the crater and the blue sky. for all the companionship of skimming vessels, the place struck me with a sense of solitude. there came in my head what i had been told the day before at dinner, of a cavern above in the bowels off the volcano, a place only to be visited with the light of torches, a treasure-house of the bones of priests and warriors, and clamorous with the voice of an unseen river pouring seaward through the crannies of the mountain. at the thought, it was revealed to me suddenly how the bungalows, and the fowlers, and the bright busy town and crowding ships, were all children of yesterday; and for centuries before, the obscure life of the natives, with its glories and ambitions, its joys and crimes and agonies, had rolled unseen, like the mountain river, in that sea-girt place. not chaldea appeared more ancient, nor the pyramids of egypt more abstruse; and i heard time measured by "the drums and tramplings" of immemorial conquests, and saw myself the creature of an hour. over the bankruptcy of pinkerton and dodd, of montana block, s. f., and the conscientious troubles of the junior partner, the spirit of eternity was seen to smile. to this mood of philosophic sadness my excesses of the night before no doubt contributed, for more things than virtue are at times their own reward, but i was greatly healed at least of my distresses. and while i was yet enjoying my abstracted humour, a turn of the beach brought me in view of the signal-station, with its watch-house and flag-staff, perched on the immediate margin of a cliff. the house was new and clean and bald, and stood naked to the trades. the wind beat about it in loud squalls; the seaward windows rattled without mercy; the breach of the surf below contributed its increment of noise; and the fall of my foot in the narrow verandah passed unheard by those within. there were two on whom i thus entered unexpectedly: the look-out man, with grizzled beard, keen seaman's eyes, and that brand on his countenance that comes of solitary living; and a visitor, an oldish, oratorical fellow, in the smart tropical array of the british mano'-war's man, perched on a table, and smoking a cigar. i was made pleasantly welcome, and was soon listening with amusement to the sea-lawyer. "no, if i hadn't have been born an englishman," was one of his sentiments, "damn me! i'd rather 'a' been born a frenchy! i'd like to see another nation fit to black their boots." presently after, he developed his views on home politics with similar trenchancy. "i'd rather be a brute beast than what i'd be a liberal," he said; "carrying banners and that! a pig's got more sense. why, look at our chief engineer--they do say he carried a banner with his own 'ands: "hooroar for gladstone!" i suppose, or "down with the aristocracy!" what 'arm does the aristocracy do? show me a country any good without one! not the states; why, it's the 'ome of corruption! i knew a man--he was a good man, 'ome-born--who was signal-quartermaster in the wyandotte. he told me he could never have got there if he hadn't have 'run with the boys'--told it me as i'm telling you. now, we're all british subjects here----" he was going on. "i am afraid i am an american," i said apologetically. he seemed the least bit taken aback, but recovered himself; and, with the ready tact of his betters, paid me the usual british compliment on the riposte. "you don't say so!" he exclaimed; "well, i give you my word of honour i'd never have guessed it. nobody could tell it on you," said he, as though it were some form of liquor. i thanked him, as i always do, at this particular stage, with his compatriots; not so much, perhaps, for the compliment to myself and my poor country, as for the revelation (which is ever fresh to me) of britannic self-sufficiency and taste. and he was so far softened by my gratitude as to add a word of praise on the american method of lacing sails. "you're ahead of us in lacing sails," he said; "you can say that with a clear conscience." "thank you," i replied, "i shall certainly do so." at this rate we got along swimmingly; and when i rose to retrace my steps to the fowlery, he at once started to his feet and offered me the welcome solace of his company for the return. i believe i discovered much alacrity at the idea, for the creature (who seemed to be unique, or to represent a type like that of the dodo) entertained me hugely. but when he had produced his hat, i found i was in the way of more than entertainment, for on the ribbon i could read the legend, "h.m.s. tempest." "i say," i began, when our adieus were paid, and we were scrambling down the path from the look-out, "it was your ship that picked up the men on board the flying scud, wasn't it?" "you may say so," said he. "and a blessed good job for the flying-scuds. it's a god-forsaken spot that midway island." "i've just come from there," said i; "it was i who bought the wreck." "beg your pardon, sir," cried the sailor: "gen'lem'n in the white schooner?" "the same," said i. my friend saluted, as though we were now for the first time formally introduced. "of course," i continued, "i am rather taken up with the whole story; and i wish you would tell me what you can of how the men were saved." "it was like this," said he. "we had orders to call at midway after castaways, and had our distance pretty nigh run down the day before. we steamed half-speed all night, looking to make it about noon, for old tootles--beg your pardon, sir, the captain--was precious scared of the place at night. well, there's nasty filthy currents round that midway; you know, as has been there; and one on 'em must have set us down. leastways, about six bells, when we had ought to been miles away, some one sees a sail, and lo and be'old, there was the spars of a full-rigged brig! we raised her pretty fast, and the island after her; and made out she was hard aground, canted on her bilge, and had her ens'n flying, union down. it was breaking 'igh on the reef, and we laid well out and sent a couple of boats. i didn't go in neither; only stood and looked on: but it seems they was all badly scared and muddled, and didn't know which end was uppermost. one on 'em kep' snivelling and wringing of his 'ands; he come on board, all of a sop like a monthly nurse. that trent, he come first, with his 'and in a bloody rag. i was near 'em as i am to you; and i could make out he was all to bits--'eard his breath rattle in his blooming lungs as he come down the ladder. yes, they was a scared lot, small blame to 'em, i say! the next after trent come him as was mate." "goddedaal!" i exclaimed. "and a good name for him too," chuckled the man-o'war's man, who probably confounded the word with a familiar oath. "a good name too; only it weren't his. he was a gen'lem'n born, sir, as had gone maskewerading. one of our officers knowed him at 'ome, reckonises him, steps up, 'olds out his 'and right off, and says he, ''ullo, norrie, old chappie!' he says. the other was coming up, as bold as look at it; didn't seem put out--that's where blood tells, sir! well, no sooner does he 'ear his born name given him than he turns as white as the day of judgment, stares at mr. sebright like he was looking at a ghost, and then (i give you my word of honour) turned to, and doubled up in a dead faint. 'take him down to my berth,' says mr. sebright. ''tis poor old norrie carthew,' he says." "and what--what sort of a gentleman was this mr. carthew?" i gasped. "the ward-room steward told me he was come of the best blood in england," was my friend's reply: "eton and 'arrow bred; and might have been a bar'net!" "no, but to look at?" i corrected him. "the same as you or me," was the uncompromising answer: "not much to look at. i didn't know he was a gen'lem'n; but then, i never see him cleaned up." "how was that?" i cried. "o yes, i remember: he was sick all the way to 'frisco, was he not?" "sick, or sorry, or something," returned my informant. "my belief, he didn't hanker after showing up. he kep' close; the ward-room steward, what took his meals in, told me he ate nex' to nothing; and he was fetched ashore at 'frisco on the quiet. here was how it was. it seems his brother had took and died, him as had the estate. this one had gone in for his beer, by what i could make out; the old folks at 'ome had turned rusty; no one knew where he had gone to. here he was, slaving in a merchant brig, shipwrecked on midway, and packing up his duds for a long voyage in a open boat. he comes on board our ship, and by god, here he is a landed proprietor, and may be in parliament to-morrow! it's no less than natural he should keep dark: so would you and me in the same box." "i daresay," said i. "but you saw more of the others?" "to be sure," says he: "no 'arm in them from what i see. there was one 'ardy there: colonial born he was, and had been through a power of money. there was no nonsense about 'ardy; he had been up, and he had come down, and took it so. his 'eart was in the right place; and he was well-informed, and knew french; and latin, i believe, like a native! i liked that 'ardy: he was a good-looking boy too." "did they say much about the wreck?" i asked. "there wasn't much to say, i reckon," replied the mano'-war's man. "it was all in the papers. 'ardy used to yarn most about the coins he had gone through; he had lived with bookmakers, and jockeys, and pugs, and actors, and all that--a precious low lot," added this judicious person. "but it's about here my 'orse is moored, and by your leave i'll be getting ahead." "one moment," said i. "is mr. sebright on board?" "no, sir, he's ashore to-day," said the sailor. "i took up a bag for him to the 'otel." with that we parted. presently after my friend overtook and passed me on a hired steed which seemed to scorn its cavalier; and i was left in the dust of his passage, a prey to whirling thoughts. for i now stood, or seemed to stand, on the immediate threshold of these mysteries. i knew the name of the man dickson--his name was carthew; i knew where the money came from that opposed us at the sale--it was part of carthew's inheritance; and in my gallery of illustrations to the history of the wreck, one more picture hung, perhaps the most dramatic of the series. it showed me the deck of a warship in that distant part of the great ocean, the officers and seamen looking curiously on: and a man of birth and education, who had been sailing under an alias on a trading brig, and was now rescued from desperate peril, felled like an ox by the bare sound of his own name. i could not fail to be reminded of my own experience at the occidental telephone. the hero of three styles, dickson, goddedaal, or carthew, must be the owner of a lively--or a loaded--conscience, and the reflection recalled to me the photograph found on board the flying scud; just such a man, i reasoned, would be capable of just such starts and crises, and i inclined to think that goddedaal (or carthew) was the mainspring of the mystery. one thing was plain: as long as the tempest was in reach, i must make the acquaintance of both sebright and the doctor. to this end, i excused myself with mr. fowler, returned to honolulu, and passed the remainder of the day hanging vainly round the cool verandahs of the hotel. it was near nine o'clock at night before i was rewarded. "that is the gentleman you were asking for," said the clerk. i beheld a man in tweeds, of an incomparable languor of demeanour, and carrying a cane with genteel effort. from the name, i had looked to find a sort of viking and young ruler of the battle and the tempest; and i was the more disappointed, and not a little alarmed, to come face to face with this impracticable type. "i believe i have the pleasure of addressing lieutenant sebright," said i, stepping forward. "aw, yes," replied the hero; "but, aw! i dawn't knaw you, do i?" (he spoke for all the world like lord foppington in the old play--a proof of the perennial nature of man's affectations. but his limping dialect i scorn to continue to reproduce.) "it was with the intention of making myself known that i have taken this step," said i, entirely unabashed (for impudence begets in me its like--perhaps my only martial attribute). "we have a common subject of interest, to me very lively; and i believe i may be in a position to be of some service to a friend of yours-to give him, at least, some very welcome information." the last clause was a sop to my conscience; i could not pretend, even to myself, either the power or the will to serve mr. carthew; but i felt sure he would like to hear the flying scud was burned. "i don't know--i--i don't understand you," stammered my victim. "i don't have any friends in honolulu, don't you know?" the friend to whom i refer is english," i replied. "it is mr. carthew, whom you picked up at midway. my firm has bought the wreck; i am just returned from breaking her up; and--to make my business quite clear to you--i have a communication it is necessary i should make; and have to trouble you for mr. carthew's address." it will be seen how rapidly i had dropped all hope of interesting the frigid british bear. he, on his side, was plainly on thorns at my insistence; i judged he was suffering torments of alarm lest i should prove an undesirable acquaintance; diagnosed him for a shy, dull, vain, unamiable animal, without adequate defence-a sort of dishoused snail; and concluded, rightly enough, that he would consent to anything to bring our interview to a conclusion. a moment later he had fled, leaving me with a sheet of paper thus inscribed:- norris carthew, stallbridge-le-carthew, dorset. i might have cried victory, the field of battle and some of the enemy's baggage remaining in my occupation. as a matter of fact, my moral sufferings during the engagement had rivalled those of mr. sebright. i was left incapable of fresh hostilities; i owned that the navy of old england was (for me) invincible as of yore; and giving up all thought of the doctor, inclined to salute her veteran flag, in the future, from a prudent distance. such was my inclination when i retired to rest; and my first experience the next morning strengthened it to certainty. for i had the pleasure of encountering my fair antagonist on his way on board; and he honoured me with a recognition so disgustingly dry, that my impatience overflowed, and (recalling the tactics of nelson) i neglected to perceive or to return it. judge of my astonishment, some half-hour later, to receive a note of invitation from the tempest. "dear sir," it began, "we are all naturally very much interested in the wreck of the flying scud, and as soon as i mentioned that i had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, a very general wish was expressed that you would come and dine on board. it will give us all the greatest pleasure to see you to-night, or in case you should be otherwise engaged, to luncheon either to-morrow or to-day." a note of the hours followed, and the document wound up with the name of "j. lascelles sebright," under an undeniable statement that he was sincerely mine. "no, mr. lascelles sebright," i reflected, "you are not, but i begin to suspect that (like the lady in the song) you are another's. you have mentioned your adventure, my friend; you have been blown up; you have got your orders; this note has been dictated; and i am asked on board (in spite of your melancholy protests) not to meet the men, and not to talk about the flying scud, but to undergo the scrutiny of some one interested in carthew--the doctor, for a wager. and for a second wager, all this springs from your facility in giving the address." i lost no time in answering the billet, electing for the earliest occasion; and at the appointed hour a somewhat blackguard-looking boat's crew from the norah creina conveyed me under the guns of the tempest. the ward-room appeared pleased to see me; sebright's brother officers, in contrast to himself, took a boyish interest in my cruise; and much was talked of the flying scud; of how she had been lost, of how i had found her, and of the weather, the anchorage, and the currents about midway island. carthew was referred to more than once without embarrassment; the parallel case of a late earl of aberdeen, who died mate on board a yankee schooner, was adduced. if they told me little of the man, it was because they had not much to tell, and only felt an interest in his recognition and pity for his prolonged ill-health. i could never think the subject was avoided; and it was clear that the officers, far from practising concealment, had nothing to conceal. so far, then, all seemed natural, and yet the doctor troubled me. this was a tall, rugged, plain man, on the wrong side of fifty, already grey, and with a restless mouth and bushy eyebrows: he spoke seldom, but then with gaiety; and his great, quaking, silent laughter was infectious. i could make out that he was at once the quiz of the ward-room and perfectly respected; and i made sure that he observed me covertly. it is certain i returned the compliment. if carthew had feigned sickness--and all seemed to point in that direction--here was the man who knew all--or certainly knew much. his strong, sterling face progressively and silently persuaded of his full knowledge. that was not the mouth, these were not the eyes, of one who would act in ignorance, or could be led at random. nor again was it the face of a man squeamish in the case of malefactors; there was even a touch of brutus there, and something of the hanging judge. in short, he seemed the last character for the part assigned him in my theories; and wonder and curiosity contended in my mind. luncheon was over, and an adjournment to the smokingroom proposed, when (upon a sudden impulse) i burned my ships, and, pleading indisposition, requested to consult the doctor. "there is nothing the matter with my body, dr. urquart," said i, as soon as we were alone. he hummed, his mouth worked, he regarded me steadily with his grey eyes, but resolutely held his peace. "i want to talk to you about the flying scud and mr. carthew," i resumed. "come, you must have expected this. i am sure you know all; you are shrewd, and must have a guess that i know much. how are we to stand to one another? and how am i to stand to mr. carthew?" "i do not fully understand you," he replied, after a pause; and then, after another: "it is the spirit i refer to, mr. dodd." "the spirit of my inquiries?" i asked. he nodded. "i think we are at cross-purposes," said i. "the spirit is precisely what i came in quest of. i bought the flying scud at a ruinous figure, run up by mr. carthew through an agent; and i am, in consequence, a bankrupt. but if i have found no fortune in the wreck, i have found unmistakable evidences of foul play. conceive my position: i am ruined through this man, whom i never saw; i might very well desire revenge or compensation; and i think you will admit i have the means to extort either." he made no sign in answer to this challenge. "can you not understand, then," i resumed, "the spirit in which i come to one who is surely in the secret, and ask him, honestly and plainly, how do i stand to mr. carthew?" "i must ask you to be more explicit," said he. "you do not help me much," i retorted. "but see if you can understand: my conscience is not very fine-spun; still, i have one. now, there are degrees of foul play, to some of which i have no particular objection. i am sure with mr. carthew, i am not at all the person to forgo an advantage, and i have much curiosity. but, on the other hand, i have no taste for persecution; and i ask you to believe that i am not the man to make bad worse, or heap trouble on the unfortunate." "yes; i think i understand," said he. "suppose i pass you my word that, whatever may have occurred, there were excuses--great excuses--i may say, very great?" "it would have weight with me, doctor," i replied. "i may go further," he pursued. "suppose i had been there, or you had been there. after a certain event had taken place, it's a grave question what we might have done--it's even a question what we could have done--ourselves. or take me. i will be plain with you, and own that i am in possession of the facts. you have a shrewd guess how i have acted in that knowledge. may i ask you to judge from the character of my action something of the nature of that knowledge, which i have no call, nor yet no title, to share with you?" i cannot convey a sense of the rugged conviction and judicial emphasis of dr. urquart's speech. to those who did not hear him, it may appear as if he fed me on enigmas; to myself, who heard, i seemed to have received a lesson and a compliment. "i thank you," i said; "i feel you have said as much as possible, and more than i had any right to ask. i take that as a mark of confidence, which i will try to deserve. i hope, sir, you will let me regard you as a friend." he evaded my proffered friendship with a blunt proposal to rejoin the mess; and yet a moment later contrived to alleviate the snub. for, as we entered the smokingroom, he laid his hand on my shoulder with a kind familiarity-"i have just prescribed for mr. dodd," says he, "a glass of our madeira." i have never again met dr. urquart; but he wrote himself so clear upon my memory that i think i see him still. and indeed i had cause to remember the man for the sake of his communication. it was hard enough to make a theory fit the circumstances of the flying scud; but one in which the chief actor should stand the least excused, and might retain the esteem or at least the pity of a man like dr. urquart, failed me utterly. here at least was the end of my discoveries. i learned no more, till i learned all; and my reader has the evidence complete. is he more astute than i was? or, like me, does he give it up? chapter xviii cross-questions and crooked answers i have said hard words of san francisco; they must scarce be literally understood (one cannot suppose the israelites did justice to the land of pharaoh); and the city took a fine revenge of me on my return. she had never worn a more becoming guise; the sun shone, the air was lively, the people had flowers in their buttonholes and smiles upon their faces; and as i made my way towards jim's place of employment, with some very black anxieties at heart, i seemed to myself a blot on the surrounding gaiety. my destination was in a by-street in a mean, rickety building. "the franklin h. dodge steam printing company" appeared upon its front, and, in characters of greater freshness, so as to suggest recent conversion, the watch-cry, "white labour only." in the office in a dusty pen jim sat alone before a table. a wretched change had overtaken him in clothes, body, and bearing; he looked sick and shabby. he who had once rejoiced in his day's employment, like a horse among pastures, now sat staring on a column of accounts, idly chewing a pen, at times heavily sighing, the picture of inefficiency and inattention. he was sunk deep in a painful reverie; he neither saw nor heard me, and i stood and watched him unobserved. i had a sudden vain relenting. repentance bludgeoned me. as i had predicted to nares, i stood and kicked myself. here was i come home again, my honour saved; there was my friend in want of rest, nursing, and a generous diet; and i asked myself, with falstaff, "what is in that word honour? what is that honour?" and, like falstaff, i told myself that it was air. "jim!" said i. "loudon!" he gasped, and jumped from his chair and stood shaking. the next moment i was over the barrier, and we were hand in hand. "my poor old man!" i cried. "thank god, you're home at last!" he gulped, and kept patting my shoulder with his hand. "i've no good news for you, jim," said i. "you've come--that's the good news that i want," he replied. "o how i have longed for you, loudon!" "i couldn't do what you wrote me," i said, lowering my voice. "the creditors have it all. i couldn't do it." "s-s-h!" returned jim. "i was crazy when wrote. i could never have looked mamie in the face if we had done it. o, loudon, what a gift that woman is! you think you know something of life; you just don't know anything. it's the goodness of the woman, it's a revelation!" "that's all right," said i. "that's how i hoped to hear you, jim." "and so the flying scud was a fraud," he resumed. "i didn't quite understand your letter, but i made out that." "fraud is a mild term for it," said i. "the creditors will never believe what fools we were.--and that reminds me," i continued, rejoicing in the transition, "how about the bankruptcy?" "you were lucky to be out of that," answered jim, shaking his head; "you were lucky not to see the papers. the occidental called me a fifth-rate kerb-stone broker with water on the brain; another said i was a tree-frog that had got into the same meadow with longhurst, and had blown myself out till i went pop. it was rough on a man in his honeymoon; so was what they said about my looks, and what i had on, and the way i perspired. but i braced myself up with the flying scud.--how did it exactly figure out anyway? i don't seem to catch on to that story, loudon." "the devil you don't!" thinks i to myself; and then aloud, "you see we had neither one of us good luck. i didn't do much more than cover current expenses, and you got floored immediately. how did we come to go so soon?" "well, we'll have to have a talk over all this," said jim, with a sudden start. "i should be getting to my books, and i guess you had better go up right away to mamie. she's at speedy's. she expects you with impatience. she regards you in the light of a favourite brother, loudon." any scheme was welcome which allowed me to postpone the hour of explanation, and avoid (were it only for a breathing space) the topic of the flying scud. i hastened accordingly to bush street. mrs. speedy, already rejoicing in the return of a spouse, hailed me with acclamation. "and it's beautiful you're looking, mr. dodd, my dear," she was kind enough to say. "and a muracle they naygur waheenies let ye lave the oilands. i have my suspicions of shpeedy," she added roguishly. "did ye see him after the naygresses now?" i gave speedy an unblemished character. "the one of ye will never bethray the other," said the playful dame, and ushered me into a bare room, where mamie sat working a type-writer. i was touched by the cordiality of her greeting. with the prettiest gesture in the world she gave me both her hands, wheeled forth a chair, and produced from a cupboard a tin of my favourite tobacco, and a book of my exclusive cigarette-papers. "there!" she cried; "you see, mr. loudon, we were all prepared for you: the things were bought the very day you sailed." i imagined she had always intended me a pleasant welcome; but the certain fervour of sincerity, which i could not help remarking, flowed from an unexpected source. captain nares, with a kindness for which i can never be sufficiently grateful, had stolen a moment from his occupations, driven to call on mamie, and drawn her a generous picture of my prowess at the wreck. she was careful not to breathe a word of this interview, till she had led me on to tell my adventures for myself. "ah! captain nares was better," she cried, when i had done. "from your account, i have only learned one new thing, that you are modest as well as brave." i cannot tell with what sort of disclamation i sought to reply. "it is of no use," said mamie. "i know a hero. and when i heard of you working all day like a common labourer, with your hands bleeding and your nails broken--and how you told the captain to "crack on" (i think he said) in the storm, when he was terrified himself--and the danger of that horrid mutiny"--(nares had been obligingly dipping his brush in earthquake and eclipse)--"and how it was all done, in part at least, for jim and me--i felt we could never say how we admired and thanked you." "mamie," i cried, "don't talk of thanks; it is not a word to be used between friends. jim and i have been prosperous together; now we shall be poor together. we've done our best, and that's all that need be said. the next thing is for me to find a situation, and send you and jim up country for a long holiday in the redwoods--for a holiday jim has got to have." "jim can't take your money, mr. loudon," said mamie. "jim?" cried i. "he's got to. didn't i take his?" presently after, jim himself arrived, and before he had yet done mopping his brow, he was at me with the accursed subject. "now, loudon," said he, "here we are, all together, the day's work done and the evening before us; just start in with the whole story." "one word on business first," said i, speaking from the lips outward, and meanwhile (in the private apartments of my brain) trying for the thousandth time to find some plausible arrangement of my story. "i want to have a notion how we stand about the bankruptcy." "o, that's ancient history," cried jim. "we paid seven cents, and a wonder we did as well. the receiver----" (methought a spasm seized him at the name of this official, and he broke off). "but it's all past and done with, anyway; and what i want to get at is the facts about the wreck. i don't seem to understand it; appears to me like as there was something underneath." "there was nothing in it, anyway," i said, with a forced laugh. "that's what i want to judge of," returned jim. "how the mischief is it i can never keep you to that bankruptcy? it looks as if you avoided it," said i--for a man in my situation, with unpardonable folly. "don't it look a little as if you were trying to avoid the wreck?" asked jim. it was my own doing; there was no retreat. "my dear fellow, if you make a point of it, here goes!" said i, and launched with spurious gaiety into the current of my tale. i told it with point and spirit; described the island and the wreck, mimicked anderson and the chinese, maintained the suspense.... my pen has stumbled on the fatal word. i maintained the suspense so well that it was never relieved; and when i stopped-i dare not say concluded, where there was no conclusion--i found jim and mamie regarding me with surprise. "well?" said jim. "well, that's all," said i. "but how do you explain it?" he asked. "i can't explain it," said i. mamie wagged her head ominously. "but, great caesar's ghost, the money was offered!" cried jim. "it won't do, loudon; it's nonsense on the face of it! i don't say but what you and nares did your best; i'm sure, of course, you did; but i do say you got fooled. i say the stuff is in that ship to-day, and i say i mean to get it." "there is nothing in the ship, i tell you, but old wood and iron!" said i. "you'll see," said jim. "next time i go myself i'll take mamie for the trip: longhurst won't refuse me the expense of a schooner. you wait till i get the searching of her." "but you can't search her!" cried i. "she's burned." "burned!" cried mamie, starting a little from the attitude of quiescent capacity in which she had hitherto sat to hear me, her hands folded in her lap. there was an appreciable pause. "i beg your pardon, loudon," began jim at last, "but why in snakes did you burn her?" "it was an idea of nares's," said i. "this is certainly the strangest circumstance of all," observed mamie. "i must say, loudon, it does seem kind of unexpected," added jim. "it seems kind of crazy even. what did you--what did nares expect to gain by burning her?" "i don't know; it didn't seem to matter; we had got all there was to get," said i. "that's the very point," cried jim. "it was quite plain you hadn't" "what made you so sure?" asked mamie. "how can i tell you?" i cried. "we had been all through her. we were sure; that's all that i can say." "i begin to think you were," she returned, with a significant emphasis. jim hurriedly intervened. "what i don't quite make out, loudon, is, that you don't seem to appreciate the peculiarities of the thing," said he. "it doesn't seem to have struck you same as it does me." "pshaw! why go on with this?" cried mamie, suddenly rising. "mr. dodd is not telling us either what he thinks or what he knows." "mamie!" cried jim. "you need not be concerned for his feelings, james; he is not concerned for yours," returned the lady. "he dare not deny it, besides. and this is not the first time he has practised reticence. have you forgotten that he knew the address, and did not tell it you until that man had escaped?" jim turned to me pleadingly--we were all on our feet. "loudon," he said, "you see mamie has some fancy, and i must say there's just a sort of a shadow of an excuse; for it is bewildering--even to me, loudon, with my trained business intelligence. for god's sake clear it up." "this serves me right," said i. "i should not have tried to keep you in the dark; i should have told you at first that i was pledged to secrecy; i should have asked you to trust me in the beginning. it is all i can do now. there is more of the story, but it concerns none of us, and my tongue is tied. i have given my word of honour. you must trust me, and try to forgive me." "i daresay i am very stupid, mr. dodd," began mamie, with an alarming sweetness, "but i thought you went upon this trip as my husband's representative and with my husband's money? you tell us now that you are pledged, but i should have thought you were pledged first of all to james. you say it does not concern us; we are poor people, and my husband is sick, and it concerns us a great deal to understand how we come to have lost our money, and why our representative comes back to us with nothing. you ask that we should trust you; you do not seem to understand--the question we are asking ourselves is whether we have not trusted you too much." "i do not ask you to trust me," i replied. "i ask jim. he knows me." "you think you can do what you please with james; you trust to his affection, do you not? and me, i suppose, you do not consider," said mamie. "but it was perhaps an unfortunate day for you when we were married, for i at least am not blind. the crew run away, the ship is sold for a great deal of money, you know that man's address and you conceal it; you do not find what you were sent to look for, and yet you burn the ship; and now, when we ask explanations, you are pledged to secrecy! but i am pledged to no such thing; i will not stand by in silence and see my sick and ruined husband betrayed by his condescending friend. i will give you the truth for once. mr. dodd, you have been bought and sold." "mamie," cried jim, "no more of this! it's me you're striking; it's only me you hurt. you don't know, you cannot understand these things. why, to-day, if it hadn't been for loudon, i couldn't have looked you in the face. he saved my honesty." "i have heard plenty of this talk before," she replied. "you are a sweet-hearted fool, and i love you for it. but i am a clear-headed woman; my eyes are open, and i understand this man's hypocrisy. did he not come here to-day and pretend he would take a situation--pretend he would share his hard-earned wages with us until you were well? pretend! it makes me furious! his wages! a share of his wages! that would have been your pittance, that would have been your share of the flying scud--you who worked and toiled for him when he was a beggar in the streets of paris. but we do not want your charity; thank god, i can work for my own husband! see what it is to have obliged a gentleman! he would let you pick him up when he was begging; he would stand and look on, and let you black his shoes, and sneer at you. for you were always sneering at my james; you always looked down upon him in your heart, you know it!" she turned back to jim. "and now when he is rich," she began, and then swooped again on me. "for you are rich, i dare you to deny it; i defy you to look me in the face and try to deny that you are rich--rich with our money--my husband's money--heaven knows to what a height she might have risen, being, by this time, bodily whirled away in her own hurricane of words. heart-sickness, a black depression, a treacherous sympathy with my assailant, pity unutterable for poor jim, already filled, divided, and abashed my spirit. flight seemed the only remedy, and making a private sign to jim, as if to ask permission, i slunk from the unequal field. i was but a little way down the street, when i was arrested by the sound of some one running, and jim's voice calling me by name. he had followed me with a letter which had been long awaiting my return. i took it in a dream. "this has been a devil of a business," said i. "don't think hard of mamie," he pleaded. "it's the way she's made; it's her high-toned loyalty. and of course i know it's all right. i know your sterling character; but you didn't, somehow, make out to give us the thing straight, loudon. anybody might have--i mean it--i mean----" "never mind what you mean, my poor jim," said i. "she's a gallant little woman and a loyal wife: and i thought her splendid. my story was as fishy as the devil. i'll never think the less of either her or you." "it'll blow over; it must blow over," said he. "it never can," i returned, sighing: "and don't you try to make it! don't name me, unless it's with an oath. and get home to her right away. good-bye, my best of friends. good-bye, and god bless you. we shall never meet again." "o loudon, that we should live to say such words!" he cried. i had no views on life, beyond an occasional impulse to commit suicide, or to get drunk, and drifted down the street, semi-conscious, walking apparently on air in the light-headedness of grief. i had money in my pocket, whether mine or my creditors' i had no means of guessing; and, the poodle dog lying in my path, i went mechanically in and took a table. a waiter attended me, and i suppose i gave my orders; for presently i found myself, with a sudden return of consciousness, beginning dinner. on the white cloth at my elbow lay the letter, addressed in a clerk's hand, and bearing an english stamp and the edinburgh postmark. a bowl of bouillon and a glass of wine awakened in one corner of my brain (where all the rest was in mourning, the blinds down as for a funeral) a faint stir of curiosity; and while i waited the next course, wondering the while what i had ordered, i opened and began to read the epoch-making document: "dear sir,--i am charged with the melancholy duty of announcing to you the death of your excellent grandfather, mr. alexander loudon, on the 17th ult. on sunday the 13th he went to church as usual in the forenoon, and stopped on his way home, at the corner of princes street, in one of our seasonable east winds, to talk with an old friend. the same evening acute bronchitis declared itself; from the first, dr. m'combie anticipated a fatal result, and the old gentleman appeared to have no illusion as to his own state. he repeatedly assured me it was 'by' with him now; 'and high time too,' he once added with characteristic asperity. he was not in the least changed on the approach of death: only (what i am sure must be very grateful to your feelings) he seemed to think and speak even more kindly than usual of yourself, referring to you as 'jeannie's yin,' with strong expressions of regard. 'he was the only one i ever liket of the hale jing-bang' was one of his expressions; and you will be glad to know that he dwelt particularly on the dutiful respect you had always displayed in your relations. the small codicil, by which he bequeaths you his molesworth, and other professional works, was added (you will observe) on the day before his death; so that you were in his thoughts until the end. i should say that, though rather a trying patient, he was most tenderly nursed by your uncle, and your cousin, miss euphemia. i enclose a copy of the testament, by which you will see that you share equally with mr. adam, and that i hold at your disposal a sum nearly approaching seventeen thousand pounds. i beg to congratulate you on this considerable acquisition, and expect your orders, to which i shall hasten to give my best attention. thinking that you might desire to return at once to this country, and not knowing how you may be placed, i enclose a credit for six hundred pounds. please sign the accompanying slip, and let me have it at your earliest convenience. "i am, dear sir, yours truly, "w. rutherford gregg. "god bless the old gentleman!" i thought; "and for that matter god bless uncle adam! and my cousin euphemia! and mr. gregg!" i had a vision of that grey old life now brought to an end--"and high time too"--a vision of those sabbath streets alternately vacant and filled with silent people; of the babel of the bells, the long-drawn psalmody, the shrewd sting of the east wind, the hollow, echoing, dreary house to which "ecky" had returned with the hand of death already on his shoulder; a vision, too, of the long, rough country lad, perhaps a serious courtier of the lasses in the hawthorn den, perhaps a rustic dancer on the green, who had first earned and answered to that harsh diminutive. and i asked myself if, on the whole, poor ecky had succeeded in life; if the last state of that man were not on the whole worse than the first; and the house in randolph crescent a less admirable dwelling than the hamlet where he saw the day and grew to manhood. here was a consolatory thought for one who was himself a failure. yes, i declare the word came in my mind; and all the while, in another partition of the brain, i was glowing and singing for my new-found opulence. the pile of gold--four thousand two hundred and fifty double eagles, seventeen thousand ugly sovereigns, twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty napoleons--danced, and rang and ran molten, and lit up life with their effulgence, in the eye of fancy. here were all things made plain to me: paradise--paris, i mean--regained, carthew protected, jim restored, the creditors... "the creditors!" i repeated, and sank back benumbed. it was all theirs to the last farthing: my grandfather had died too soon to save me. i must have somewhere a rare vein of decision. in that revolutionary moment i found myself prepared for all extremes except the one: ready to do anything, or to go anywhere, so long as i might save my money. at the worst, there was flight, flight to some of those blest countries where the serpent extradition has not yet entered in. on no condition is extradition allowed in callao! --the old lawless words haunted me; and i saw myself hugging my gold in the company of such men as had once made and sung them, in the rude and bloody wharfside drinking-shops of chili and peru. the run of my illluck, the breach of my old friendship, this bubble fortune flaunted for a moment in my eyes and snatched again, had made me desperate and (in the expressive vulgarism) ugly. to drink vile spirits among vile companions by the flare of a pine-torch; to go burthened with my furtive treasure in a belt; to fight for it knife in hand, rolling on a clay floor; to flee perpetually in fresh ships and to be chased through the sea from isle to isle, seemed, in my then frame of mind, a welcome series of events. that was for the worst; but it began to dawn slowly on my mind that there was yet a possible better. once escaped, once safe in callao, i might approach my creditors with a good grace; and, properly handled by a cunning agent, it was just possible they might accept some easy composition. the hope recalled me to the bankruptcy. it was strange, i reflected: often as i had questioned jim, he had never obliged me with an answer. in his haste for news about the wreck, my own no less legitimate curiosity had gone disappointed. hateful as the thought was to me, i must return at once and find out where i stood. i left my dinner still unfinished, paying for the whole, of course, and tossing the waiter a gold piece. i was reckless; i knew not what was mine, and cared not: i must take what i could get and give as i was able; to rob and to squander seemed the complementary parts of my new destiny. i walked up bush street, whistling, brazening myself to confront mamie in the first place, and the world at large and a certain visionary judge upon a bench in the second. just outside, i stopped and lighted a cigar to give me greater countenance; and puffing this and wearing what (i am sure) was a wretched assumption of braggadocio, i reappeared on the scene of my disgrace. my friend and his wife were finishing a poor meal--rags of old mutton, the remainder cakes from breakfast eaten cold, and a starveling pot of coffee. "i beg your pardon, mrs. pinkerton," said i. "sorry to inflict my presence where it cannot be desired; but there is a piece of business necessary to be discussed." "pray do not consider me," said mamie, rising, and she sailed into the adjoining bedroom. jim watched her go and shook his head; he looked miserably old and ill. "what is it now?" he asked. "perhaps you remember you answered none of my questions," said i. "your questions?" faltered jim. "even so, jim; my questions," i repeated. "i put questions as well as yourself; and however little i may have satisfied mamie with my answers, i beg to remind you that you gave me none at all." "you mean about the bankruptcy?" asked jim. i nodded. he writhed in his chair. "the straight truth is, i was ashamed," he said. "i was trying to dodge you. i've been playing fast and loose with you, loudon; i've deceived you from the first, i blush to own it. and here you came home and put the very question i was fearing. why did we bust so soon? your keen business eye had not deceived you. that's the point, that's my shame; that's what killed me this afternoon when mamie was treating you so, and my conscience was telling me all the time, "thou art the man."" "what was it, jim?" i asked. "what i had been at all the time, loudon," he wailed; "and i don't know how i'm to look you in the face and say it, after my duplicity. it was stocks," he added in a whisper. "and you were afraid to tell me that!" i cried. "you poor, old, cheerless dreamer! what would it matter what you did or didn't? can't you see we're doomed? and anyway, that's not my point. it's how i stand that i want to know. there is a particular reason. am i clear? have i a certificate, or what have i to do to get one? and when will it be dated? you can't think what hangs by it!" "that's the worst of all," said jim, like a man in a dream; "i can't see how to tell him!" "what do you mean?" i cried, a small pang of terror at my heart. "i'm afraid i sacrificed you, loudon," he said, looking at me pitifully. "sacrificed me?" i repeated. "how? what do you mean by sacrifice?" "i know it'll shock your delicate self-respect," he said; "but what was i to do? things looked so bad. the receiver----" (as usual, the name stuck in his throat, and he began afresh). "there was a lot of talk, the reporters were after me already; there was the trouble, and all about the mexican business; and i got scared right out, and i guess i lost my head. you weren't there, you see, and that was my temptation." i did not know how long he might thus beat about the bush with dreadful hintings, and i was already beside myself with terror. what had he done? i saw he had been tempted; i knew from his letters that he was in no condition to resist. how had he sacrificed the absent? "jim," i said, "you must speak right out. i've got all that i can carry." "well," he said--"i know it was a liberty--i made it out you were no business man, only a stonebroke painter; that half the time you didn't know anything anyway, particularly money and accounts. i said you never could be got to understand whose was whose. i had to say that because of some entries in the books---" "for god's sake," i cried, "put me out of this agony! what did you accuse me of?" "accuse you of?" repeated jim. "of what i'm telling you. and there being no deed of partnership, i made out you were only a kind of clerk that i called a partner just to give you taffy; and so i got you ranked a creditor on the estate for your wages and the money you had lent. and----" i believe i reeled. "a creditor!" i roared; "a creditor! i'm not in the bankruptcy at all?" "no," said jim. "i know it was a liberty----" "o, damn your liberty! read that," i cried, dashing the letter before him on the table, "and call in your wife, and be done with eating this truck "--as i spoke i slung the cold mutton in the empty grate--"and let's all go and have a champagne supper. i've dined--i'm sure i don't remember what i had; i'd dine again ten scores of times upon a night like this. read it, you blazing ass! i'm not insane.--here, mamie," i continued, opening the bedroom door, "come out and make it up with me, and go and kiss your husband; and i'll tell you what, after the supper, let's go to some place where there's a band, and i'll waltz with you till sunrise." "what does it all mean?" cried jim. "it means we have a champagne supper to-night, and all go to vapor valley or to monterey to-morrow," said i.-"mamie, go and get your things on; and you, jim, sit down right where you are, take a sheet of paper, and tell franklin dodge to go to texas.--mamie, you were right, my dear; i was rich all the time, and didn't know it." chapter xix travels with a shyster the absorbing and disastrous adventure of the flying scud was now quite ended; we had dashed into these deep waters and we had escaped again to starve; we had been ruined and were saved, had quarrelled and made up; there remained nothing but to sing te deum, draw a line, and begin on a fresh page of my unwritten diary. i do not pretend that i recovered all i had lost with mamie, it would have been more than i had merited; and i had certainly been more uncommunicative than became either the partner or the friend. but she accepted the position handsomely; and during the week that i now passed with them, both she and jim had the grace to spare me questions. it was to calistoga that we went; there was some rumour of a napa land-boom at the moment, the possibility of stir attracted jim, and he informed me he would find a certain joy in looking on, much as napoleon on st. helena took a pleasure to read military works. the field of his ambition was quite closed; he was done with action, and looked forward to a ranch in a mountain dingle, a patch of corn, a pair of kine, a leisurely and contemplative age in the green shade of forests. "just let me get down on my back in a hayfield," said he, "and you'll find there's no more snap to me than that much putty." and for two days the perfervid being actually rested. the third, he was observed in consultation with the local editor, and owned he was in two minds about purchasing the press and paper. "it's a kind of a hold for an idle man," he said pleadingly; "and if the section was to open up the way it ought to, there might be dollars in the thing." on the fourth day he was gone till dinner-time alone; on the fifth we made a long picnic drive to the fresh field of enterprise; and the sixth was passed entirely in the preparation of prospectuses. the pioneer of m'bride city was already upright and self-reliant as of yore; the fire rekindled in his eye, the ring restored to his voice; a charger sniffing battle and saying "ha-ha" among the spears. on the seventh morning we signed a deed of partnership, for jim would not accept a dollar of my money otherwise; and having once more engaged myself--or that mortal part of me, my purse--among the wheels of his machinery, i returned alone to san francisco and took quarters in the palace hotel. the same night i had nares to dinner. his sun-burnt face, his queer and personal strain of talk, recalled days that were scarce over and that seemed already distant. through the music of the band outside, and the chink and clatter of the dining-room, it seemed to me as if i heard the foaming of the surf and the voices of the sea-birds about midway island. the bruises on our hands were not yet healed; and there we sat, waited on by elaborate darkies, eating pompino and drinking iced champagne. "think of our dinners on the norah, captain, and then oblige me by looking round the room for contrast." he took the scene in slowly. "yes, it is like a dream," he said: "like as if the darkies were really about as big as dimes; and a great big scuttle might open up there, and johnson stick in a great big head and shoulders, and cry, "eight bells!"--and the whole thing vanish." "well, it's the other thing that has done that," i replied. "it's all bygone now, all dead and buried. amen! say i." "i don't know that, mr. dodd; and to tell you the fact, i don't believe it," said nares. "there's more flying scud in the oven; and the baker's name, i take it, is bellairs. he tackled me the day we came in: sort of a razee of poor old humanity--jury clothes-full new suit of pimples: knew him at once from your description. i let him pump me till i saw his game. he knows a good deal that we don't know, a good deal that we do, and suspects the balance. there's trouble brewing for somebody." i was surprised i had not thought of this before. bellairs had been behind the scenes; he had known dickson; he knew the flight of the crew; it was hardly possible but what he should suspect; it was certain if he suspected that he would seek to trade on the suspicion. and sure enough, i was not yet dressed the next morning ere the lawyer was knocking at my door. i let him in, for i was curious; and he, after some ambiguous prolegomena, roundly proposed i should go shares with him. "shares in what?" i inquired. "if you will allow me to clothe my idea in a somewhat vulgar form," said he, "i might ask you, did you go to midway for your health?" "i don't know that i did," i replied. "similarly, mr. dodd, you may be sure i would never have taken the present step without influential grounds," pursued the lawyer. "intrusion is foreign to my character. but you and i, sir, are engaged on the same ends. if we can continue to work the thing in company, i place at your disposal my knowledge of the law and a considerable practice in delicate negotiations similar to this. should you refuse to consent, you might find in me a formidable and"--he hesitated--"and to my own regret, perhaps a dangerous competitor." "did you get this by heart?" i asked genially. "i advise you to!" he said, with a sudden sparkle of temper and menace, instantly gone, instantly succeeded by fresh cringing. "i assure you, sir, i arrive in the character of a friend, and i believe you underestimate my information. if i may instance an example, i am acquainted to the last dime with what you made (or rather lost), and i know you have since cashed a considerable draft on london." "what do you infer?" i asked. "i know where that draft came from," he cried, wincing back like one who has greatly dared, and instantly regrets the venture. "so?" said i. "you forget i was mr. dickson's confidential agent," he explained. "you had his address, mr. dodd. we were the only two that he communicated with in san francisco. you see my deductions are quite obvious; you see how open and frank i deal with you, as i should wish to do with any gentleman with whom i was conjoined in business. you see how much i know; and it can scarcely escape your strong common-sense how much better it would be if i knew all. you cannot hope to get rid of me at this time of day; i have my place in the affair, i cannot be shaken off; i am, if you will excuse a rather technical pleasantry, an encumbrance on the estate. the actual harm i can do i leave you to valuate for yourself. but without going so far, mr. dodd, and without in any way inconveniencing myself, i could make things very uncomfortable. for instance, mr. pinkerton's liquidation. you and i know, sir--and you better than i--on what a large fund you draw. is mr. pinkerton in the thing at all? it was you only who knew the address, and you were concealing it. suppose i should communicate with mr. pinkerton----" "look here!" i interrupted, "communicate with him (if you will permit me to clothe my idea in a vulgar shape) till you are blue in the face. there is only one person with whom i refuse to allow you to communicate further, and that is myself good-morning." he could not conceal his rage, disappointment, and surprise; and in the passage (i have no doubt) was shaken by st. vitus. i was disgusted by this interview; it struck me hard to be suspected on all hands, and to hear again from this trafficker what i had heard already from jim's wife; and yet my strongest impression was different, and might rather be described as an impersonal fear. there was something against nature in the man's craven impudence; it was as though a lamb had butted me; such daring at the hands of such a dastard implied unchangeable resolve, a great pressure of necessity, and powerful means. i thought of the unknown carthew, and it sickened me to see this ferret on his trail. upon inquiry i found the lawyer was but just disbarred for some malpractice, and the discovery added excessively to my disquiet. here was a rascal without money or the means of making it, thrust out of the doors of his own trade, publicly shamed, and doubtless in a deuce of a bad temper with the universe. here, on the other hand, was a man with a secret--rich, terrified, practically in hiding--who had been willing to pay ten thousand pounds for the bones of the flying scud. i slipped insensibly into a mental alliance with the victim. the business weighed on me all day long; i was wondering how much the lawyer knew, how much he guessed, and when he would open his attack. some of these problems are unsolved to this day; others were soon made clear. where he got carthew's name is still a mystery; perhaps some sailor on the tempest, perhaps my own sea-lawyer served him for a tool; but i was actually at his elbow when he learned the address. it fell so. one evening when i had an engagement, and was killing time until the hour, i chanced to walk in the court of the hotel while the band played. the place was bright as day with the electric light, and i recognised, at some distance among the loiterers, the person of bellairs in talk with a gentleman whose face appeared familiar. it was certainly some one i had seen, and seen recently; but who or where i knew not. a porter standing hard by gave me the necessary hint. the stranger was an english navy man invalided home from honolulu, where he had left his ship; indeed, it was only from the change of clothes and the effects of sickness that i had not immediately recognised my friend and correspondent, lieutenant sebright. the conjunction of these planets seeming ominous, i drew near; but it seemed bellairs had done his business; he vanished in the crowd, and i found my officer alone. "do you know whom you have been talking to, mr. sebright?" i began. "no," said he; "i don't know him from adam. anything wrong?" "he is a disreputable lawyer, recently disbarred," said i. "i wish i had seen you in time. i trust you told him nothing about carthew?" he flushed to his ears. "i'm awfully sorry," he said. "he seemed civil, and i wanted to get rid of him. it was only the address he asked." "and you gave it?" i cried. "i'm really awfully sorry," said sebright. "i'm afraid i did." "god forgive you!" was my only comment, and i turned my back upon the blunderer. the fat was in the fire now: bellairs had the address, and i was the more deceived or carthew would have news of him. so strong was this impression, and so painful, that the next morning i had the curiosity to pay the lawyer's den a visit. an old woman was scrubbing the stair, and the board was down. "lawyer bellairs?" said the old woman; "gone east this morning. there's lawyer dean next block up." i did not trouble lawyer dean, but walked slowly back to my hotel, ruminating as i went. the image of the old woman washing that desecrated stair had struck my fancy; it seemed that all the water-supply of the city and all the soap in the state would scarce suffice to cleanse it, it had been so long a clearing-house of dingy secrets and a factory of sordid fraud. and now the corner was untenanted; some judge, like a careful housewife, had knocked down the web; and the bloated spider was scuttling elsewhere after new victims. i had of late (as i have said) insensibly taken sides with carthew; now, when his enemy was at his heels, my interest grew more warm; and i began to wonder if i could not help. the drama of the flying scud was entering on a new phase. it had been singular from the first: it promised an extraordinary conclusion; and i, who had paid so much to learn the beginning, might pay a little more and see the end. i lingered in san francisco, indemnifying myself after the hardships of the cruise, spending money, regretting it, continually promising departure for the morrow. why not go indeed, and keep a watch upon bellairs? if i missed him, there was no harm done, i was the nearer paris. if i found and kept his trail, it was hard if i could not put some stick in his machinery, and at the worst i could promise myself interesting scenes and revelations. in such a mixed humour, i made up what it pleases me to call my mind, and once more involved myself in the story of carthew and the flying scud. the same night i wrote a letter of farewell to jim, and one of anxious warning to dr. urquart, begging him to set carthew on his guard; the morrow saw me in the ferryboat; and ten days later, i was walking the hurricanedeck on the city of denver. by that time my mind was pretty much made down again, its natural condition: i told myself that i was bound for paris or fontainebleau to resume the study of the arts; and i thought no more of carthew or bellairs, or only to smile at my own fondness. the one i could not serve, even if i wanted; the other i had no means of finding, even if i could have at all influenced him after he was found. and for all that, i was close on the heels of an absurd adventure. my neighbour at table that evening was a 'frisco man whom i knew slightly. i found he had crossed the plains two days in front of me, and this was the first steamer that had left new york for europe since his arrival. two days before me meant a day before bellairs; and dinner was scarce done before i was closeted with the purser. "bellairs?" he repeated. "not in the saloon, i am sure. he may be in the second class. the lists are not made out, but--hullo! "harry d. bellairs"? that the name? he's there right enough." and the next morning i saw him on the forward deck, sitting in a chair, a book in his hand, a shabby puma skin rug about his knees: the picture of respectable decay. off and on, i kept him in my eye. he read a good deal, he stood and looked upon the sea, he talked occasionally with his neighbours, and once when a child fell he picked it up and soothed it. i damned him in my heart; the book, which i was sure he did not read-the sea, to which i was ready to take oath he was indifferent--the child, whom i was certain he would as lieve have tossed overboard--all seemed to me elements in a theatrical performance; and i made no doubt he was already nosing after the secrets of his fellowpassengers. i took no pains to conceal myself, my scorn for the creature being as strong as my disgust. but he never looked my way, and it was night before i learned he had observed me. i was smoking by the engine-room door, for the air was a little sharp, when a voice rose close beside me in the darkness. "i beg your pardon, mr. dodd," it said. "that you, bellairs?" i replied. "a single word, sir. your presence on this ship has no connection with our interview?" he asked. "you have no idea, mr. dodd, of returning upon your determination?" "none," said i; and then, seeing he still lingered, i was polite enough to add "good-evening"; at which he sighed and went away. the next day he was there again with the chair and the puma skin; read his book and looked at the sea with the same constancy; and though there was no child to be picked up, i observed him to attend repeatedly on a sick woman. nothing fosters suspicion like the act of watching; a man spied upon can hardly blow his nose but we accuse him of designs; and i took an early opportunity to go forward and see the woman for myself. she was poor, elderly, and painfully plain; i stood abashed at the sight, felt i owed bellairs amends for the injustice of my thoughts, and, seeing him standing by the rail in his usual attitude of contemplation, walked up and addressed him by name. "you seem very fond of the sea," said i. "i may really call it a passion, mr. dodd," he replied. "'and the tall cataract haunted me like a passion,'" he quoted. "i never weary of the sea, sir. this is my first ocean voyage. i find it a glorious experience." and once more my disbarred lawyer dropped into poetry: "'roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!'" though i had learned the piece in my reading-book at school, i came into the world a little too late on the one hand--and i daresay a little too early on the other--to think much of byron; and the sonorous verse, prodigiously well delivered, struck me with surprise. "you are fond of poetry too?" i asked. "i am a great reader," he replied. "at one time i had begun to amass quite a small but well selected library; and when that was scattered, i still managed to preserve a few volumes--chiefly of pieces designed for recitation--which have been my travelling companions. "is that one of them?" i asked, pointing to the volume in his hand. "no, sir," he replied, showing me a translation of the sorrows of werther; "that is a novel i picked up some time ago. it has afforded me great pleasure, though immoral." "o, immoral!" cried i, indignant as usual at any complication of art and ethics. "surely you cannot deny that, sir--if you know the book," he said. "the passion is illicit, although certainly drawn with a good deal of pathos. it is not a work one could possibly put into the hands of a lady; which is to be regretted on all accounts, for i do not know how it may strike you; but it seems to me--as a depiction, if i make myself clear--to rise high above its compeers--even famous compeers. even in scott, dickens, thackeray, or hawthorne, the sentiment of love appears to me to be frequently done less justice to." "you are expressing a very general opinion," said i. "is that so, indeed, sir?" he exclaimed, with unmistakable excitement. "is the book well known? and who was go-eath? i am interested in that, because upon the title-page the usual initials are omitted, and it runs simply "by go-eath." was he an author of distinction? has he written other works?" such was our first interview, the first of many; and in all he showed the same attractive qualities and defects. his taste for literature was native and unaffected; his sentimentality, although extreme and a thought ridiculous, was plainly genuine. i wondered at my own innocent wonder. i knew that homer nodded, that caesar had compiled a jest-book, that turner lived by preference the life of puggy booth, that shelley made paper boats, and wordsworth wore green spectacles! and with all this mass of evidence before me, i had expected bellairs to be entirely of one piece, subdued to what he worked in, a spy all through. as i abominated the man's trade, so i had expected to detest the man himself; and behold, i liked him. poor devil! he was essentially a man on wires, all sensibility and tremor, brimful of a cheap poetry, not without parts, quite without courage. his boldness was despair; the gulf behind him thrust him on; he was one of those who might commit a murder rather than confess the theft of a postage-stamp. i was sure that his coming interview with carthew rode his imagination like a nightmare; when the thought crossed his mind, i used to think i knew of it, and that the qualm appeared in his face visibly. yet he would never flinch--necessity stalking at his back, famine (his old pursuer) talking in his ear; and i used to wonder whether i more admired or more despised this quivering heroism for evil. the image that occurred to me after his visit was just; i had been butted by a lamb, and the phase of life that i was now studying might be called the revolt of a sheep. it could be said of him that he had learned in sorrow what he taught in song--or wrong; and his life was that of one of his victims. he was born in the back parts of the state of new york; his father a farmer, who became subsequently bankrupt and went west. the lawyer and money-lender who had ruined this poor family seems to have conceived in the end a feeling of remorse; he turned the father out indeed, but he offered, in compensation, to charge himself with one of the sons: and harry, the fifth child, and already sickly, was chosen to be left behind. he made himself useful in the office: picked up the scattered rudiments of an education; read right and left; attended and debated at the young men's christian association; and in all his early years was the model for a good story-book. his landlady's daughter was his bane. he showed me her photograph; she was a big, handsome, dashing, dressy, vulgar hussy, without character, without tenderness, without mind, and (as the result proved) without virtue. the sickly and timid boy was in the house; he was handy; when she was otherwise unoccupied, she used and played with him--romeo and cressida; till in that dreary life of a poor boy in a country town, she grew to be the light of his days and the subject of his dreams. he worked hard, like jacob, for a wife; he surpassed his patron in sharp practice; he was made head clerk; and the same night, encouraged by a hundred freedoms, depressed by the sense of his youth and his infirmities, he offered marriage and was received with laughter. not a year had passed, before his master, conscious of growing infirmities, took him for a partner. he proposed again; he was accepted; led two years of troubled married life; and awoke one morning to find his wife had run away with a dashing drummer, and had left him heavily in debt. the debt, and not the drummer, was supposed to be the cause of the hegira; she had concealed her liabilities, they were on the point of bursting forth, she was weary of bellairs; and she took the drummer as she might have taken a cab. the blow disabled her husband, his partner was dead; he was now alone in the business, for which he was no longer fit; the debts hampered him; bankruptcy followed; and he fled from city to city, falling daily into lower practice. it is to be considered that he had been taught, and had learned as a delightful duty, a kind of business whose highest merit is to escape the commentaries of the bench: that of the usurious lawyer in a county town. with this training, he was now shot, a penniless stranger, into the deeper gulfs of cities; and the result is scarce a thing to be surprised at. "have you heard of your wife again?" i asked. he displayed a pitiful agitation. "i am afraid you will think ill of me," he said. "have you taken her back?" i asked. "no, sir. i trust i have too much self-respect," he answered, "and, at least, i was never tempted. she won't come, she dislikes, she seems to have conceived a positive distaste for me, and yet i was considered an indulgent husband." "you are still in relations, then?" i asked. "i place myself in your hands, mr. dodd," he replied. "the world is very hard; i have found it bitter hard myself--bitter hard to live. how much worse for a woman, and one who has placed herself (by her own misconduct, i am far from denying that) in so unfortunate a position!" "in short, you support her?" i suggested. "i cannot deny it. i practically do," he admitted. "it has been a millstone round my neck. but i think she is grateful. you can see for yourself." he handed me a letter in a sprawling, ignorant hand, but written with violet ink on fine, pink paper, with a monogram. it was very foolishly expressed, i and i thought (except for a few obvious cajoleries) very heartless and greedy in meaning. the writer said she had been sick, which i disbelieved; declared the last remittance was all gone in doctor's bills, for which i took the liberty of substituting dress, drink, and monograms; and prayed for an increase, which i could only hope had been denied her. "i think she is really grateful?" he asked, with some eagerness, as i returned it. "i daresay," said i. "has she any claim on you?" "o no, sir. i divorced her," he replied. "i have a very strong sense of self-respect in such matters, and i divorced her immediately." "what sort of life is she leading now?" i asked. "i will not deceive you, mr. dodd. i do not know, i make a point of not knowing; it appears more dignified. i have been very harshly criticised," he added, sighing. it will be seen that i had fallen into an ignominious intimacy with the man i had gone out to thwart. my pity for the creature, his admiration for myself, his pleasure in my society, which was clearly unassumed, were the bonds with which i was fettered; perhaps i should add, in honesty, my own ill-regulated interest in the phases of life and human character. the fact is (at least) that we spent hours together daily, and that i was nearly as much on the forward deck as in the saloon. yet all the while i could never forget he was a shabby trickster, embarked that very moment in a dirty enterprise. i used to tell myself at first that our acquaintance was a stroke of art, and that i was somehow fortifying carthew. i told myself, i say; but i was no such fool as to believe it, even then. in these circumstances i displayed the two chief qualities of my character on the largest scale--my helplessness and my instinctive love of procrastination--and fell upon a course of action so ridiculous that i blush when i recall it. we reached liverpool one forenoon, the rain falling thickly and insidiously on the filthy town. i had no plans, beyond a sensible unwillingness to let my rascal escape; and i ended by going to the same inn with him, dining with him, walking with him in the wet streets, and hearing with him in a penny gaff that venerable piece, the ticket-of-leave man. it was one of his first visits to a theatre, against which places of entertainment he had a strong prejudice; and his innocent, pompous talk, innocent old quotations, and innocent reverence for the character of hawkshaw delighted me beyond relief. in charity to myself, i dwell upon and perhaps exaggerate my pleasures. i have need of all conceivable excuses, when i confess that i went to bed without one word upon the matter of carthew, but not without having covenanted with my rascal for a visit to chester the next day. at chester we did the cathedral, walked on the walls, discussed shakespeare and the musical glasses--and made a fresh engagement for the morrow. i do not know, and i am glad to have forgotten, how long these travels were continued. we visited at least, by singular zigzags, stratford, warwick, coventry, gloucester, bristol, bath, and wells. at each stage we spoke dutifully of the scene and its associations; i sketched, the shyster spouted poetry and copied epitaphs. who could doubt we were the usual americans, travelling with a design of self-improvement? who was to guess that one was a blackmailer, trembling to approach the scene of action-the other a helpless, amateur detective, waiting on events? it is unnecessary to remark that none occurred, or none the least suitable with my design of protecting carthew. two trifles, indeed, completed though they scarcely changed my conception of the shyster. the first was observed in gloucester, where we spent sunday, and i proposed we should hear service in the cathedral. to my surprise, the creature had an ism of his own, to which he was loyal; and he left me to go alone to the cathedral--or perhaps not to go at all-and stole off down a deserted alley to some bethel or ebenezer of the proper shade. when we met again at lunch, i rallied him, and he grew restive. "you need employ no circumlocutions with me, mr. dodd," he said suddenly. "you regard my behaviour from an unfavourable point of view: you regard me, i much fear, as hypocritical." i was somewhat confused by the attack. "you know what i think of your trade," i replied lamely and coarsely. "excuse me, if i seem to press the subject," he continued; "but if you think my life erroneous, would you have me neglect the means of grace? because you consider me in the wrong on one point, would you have me place myself on the wrong in all? surely, sir, the church is for the sinner." "did you ask a blessing on your present enterprise?" i sneered. he had a bad attack of st. vitus, his face was changed, and his eyes flashed. "i will tell you what i did," he cried. "i prayed for an unfortunate man and a wretched woman whom he tries to support." i cannot pretend that i found any repartee. the second incident was at bristol, where i lost sight of my gentleman some hours. from this eclipse he returned to me with thick speech, wandering footsteps, and a back all whitened with plaster. i had half expected, yet i could have wept to see it. all disabilities were piled on that weak back--domestic misfortune, nervous disease, a displeasing exterior, empty pockets, and the slavery of vice. i will never deny that our prolonged conjunction was the result of double cowardice. each was afraid to leave the other, each was afraid to speak, or knew not what to say. save for my ill-judged allusion at gloucester, the subject uppermost in both our minds was buried. carthew, stallbridge-le-carthew, stallbridgeminster--which we had long since (and severally) identified to be the nearest station--even the name of dorsetshire was studiously avoided. and yet we were making progress all the time, tacking across broad england like an unweatherly vessel on a wind; approaching our destination, not openly, but by a sort of flying sap. and at length, i can scarce tell how, we were set down by a dilatory butt-end of local train on the untenanted platform of stallbridge-minster. the town was ancient and compact--a domino of tiled houses and walled gardens, dwarfed by the disproportionate bigness of the church. from the midst of the thoroughfare which divided it in half, fields and trees were visible at either end; and through the sally-port of every street there flowed in from the country a silent invasion of green grass. bees and birds appeared to make the majority of the inhabitants; every garden had its row of hives, the eaves of every house were plastered with the nests of swallows, and the pinnacles of the church were flickered about all day long by a multitude of wings. the town was of roman foundation; and as i looked out that afternoon from the low windows of the inn, i should scarce have been surprised to see a centurion coming up the street with a fatigue-draft of legionaries. in short, stallbridge-minster was one of those towns which appear to be maintained by england for the instruction and delight of the american rambler; to which he seems guided by an instinct not less surprising than the setter's; and which he visits and quits with equal enthusiasm. i was not at all in the humour of the tourist. i had wasted weeks of time and accomplished nothing; we were on the eve of the engagement, and i had neither plans nor allies. i had thrust myself into the trade of private providence, and amateur detective; i was spending money and i was reaping disgrace. all the time i kept telling myself that i must at least speak; that this ignominious silence should have been broken long ago, and must be broken now. i should have broken it when he first proposed to come to stallbridgeminster; i should have broken it in the train; i should break it there and then, on the inn doorstep, as the omnibus rolled off. i turned toward him at the thought; he seemed to wince, the words died on my lips, and i proposed instead that we should visit the minster. while we were engaged upon this duty, it came on to rain in a manner worthy of the tropics. the vault reverberated; every gargoyle instantly poured its full discharge; we waded back to the inn, ankle-deep in impromptu brooks; and the rest of the afternoon sat weatherbound, hearkening to the sonorous deluge. for two hours i talked of indifferent matters, laboriously feeding the conversation; for two hours my mind was quite made up to do my duty instantly--and at each particular instant i postponed it till the next. to screw up my faltering courage, i called at dinner for some sparkling wine. it proved, when it came, to be detestable; i could not put it to my lips; and bellairs, who had as much palate as a weevil, was left to finish it himself. doubtless the wine flushed him; doubtless he may have observed my embarrassment of the afternoon; doubtless he was conscious that we were approaching a crisis, and that that evening, if i did not join with him, i must declare myself an open enemy. at least he fled. dinner was done; this was the time when i had bound myself to break my silence; no more delays were to be allowed, no more excuses received. i went up-stairs after some tobacco, which i felt to be a mere necessity in the circumstances; and when i returned, the man was gone. the waiter told me he had left the house. the rain still plumped, like a vast shower-bath, over the deserted town. the night was dark and windless: the street lit glimmeringly from end to end, lamps, house-windows, and the reflections in the rain-pools all contributing. from a public-house on the other side of the way, i heard a harp twang and a doleful voice upraised in the "larboard watch," "the anchor's weighed," and other naval ditties. where had my shyster wandered? in all likelihood to that lyrical tavern; there was no choice of diversion; in comparison with stallbridge-minster on a rainy night a sheepfold would seem gay. again i passed in review the points of my interview, on which i was always constantly resolved so long as my adversary was absent from the scene, and again they struck me as inadequate. from this dispiriting exercise i turned to the native amusements of the inn coffee-room, and studied for some time the mezzotints that frowned upon the wall. the railway guide, after showing me how soon i could leave stallbridge and how quickly i could reach paris, failed to hold my attention. an illustrated advertisement-book of hotels brought me very low indeed; and when it came to the local paper, i could have wept. at this point i found a passing solace in a copy of whitaker's almanack, and obtained in fifty minutes more information than i have yet been able to use. then a fresh apprehension assailed me. suppose bellairs had given me the slip? suppose he was now rolling on the road to stallbridge-le-carthew? or perhaps there already and laying before a very whitefaced auditor his threats and propositions? a hasty person might have instantly pursued. whatever i am, i am not hasty, and i was aware of three grave objections. in the first place, i could not be certain that bellairs was gone. in the second, i had no taste whatever for a long drive at that hour of the night and in so merciless a rain. in the third, i had no idea how i was to get admitted if i went, and no idea what i should say if i got admitted. "in short," i concluded, "the whole situation is the merest farce. you have thrust yourself in where you had no business and have no power. you would be quite as useful in san francisco; far happier in paris; and being (by the wrath of god) at stallbridge-minster, the wisest thing is to go quietly to bed." on the way to my room i saw (in a flash) that which i ought to have done long ago, and which it was now too late to think of--written to carthew, i mean, detailing the facts and describing bellairs, letting him defend himself if he were able, and giving him time to flee if he were not. it was the last blow to my self-respect; and i flung myself into my bed with contumely. i have no guess what hour it was when i was wakened by the entrance of bellairs carrying a candle. he had been drunk, for he was bedaubed with mire from head to foot; but he was now sober, and under the empire of some violent emotion which he controlled with difficulty. he trembled visibly; and more than once, during the interview which followed, tears suddenly and silently overflowed his cheeks. "i have to ask your pardon, sir, for this untimely visit," he said. "i make no defence, i have no excuse, i have disgraced myself, i am properly punished; i appear before you to appeal to you in mercy for the most trifling aid, or, god help me! i fear i may go mad." "what on earth is wrong?" i asked. "i have been robbed," he said. "i have no defence to offer; it was of my own fault, i am properly punished." "but, gracious goodness me!" i cried, "who is there to rob you in a place like this?" "i can form no opinion," he replied. "i have no idea. i was lying in a ditch inanimate. this is a degrading confession, sir; i can only say in self-defence that perhaps (in your good-nature) you have made yourself partly responsible for my shame. i am not used to these rich wines." "in what form was your money? perhaps it may be traced," i suggested. "it was in english sovereigns. i changed it in new york; i got very good exchange," he said, and then, with a momentary outbreak, "god in heaven, how i toiled for it!" he cried. "that doesn't sound encouraging," said i. "it may be worth while to apply to the police, but it doesn't sound a hopeful case." "and i have no hope in that direction," said bellairs. "my hopes, mr. dodd, are all fixed upon yourself i could easily convince you that a small, a very small advance, would be in the nature of an excellent investment; but i prefer to rely on your humanity. our acquaintance began on an unusual footing; but you have now known me for some time, we have been some time--i was going to say we had been almost intimate. under the impulse of instinctive sympathy, i have bared my heart to you, mr. dodd, as i have done to few; and i believe--i trust--i may say that i feel sure--you heard me with a kindly sentiment. this is what brings me to your side at this most inexcusable hour. but put yourself in my place--how could i sleep--how could i dream of sleeping, in this blackness of remorse and despair? there was a friend at hand--so i ventured to think of you; it was instinctive: i fled to your side, as the drowning man clutches at a straw. these expressions are not exaggerated, they scarcely serve to express the agitation of my mind. and think, sir, how easily you can restore me to hope and, i may say, to reason. a small loan, which shall be faithfully repaid. five hundred dollars would be ample." he watched me with burning eyes. "four hundred would do. i believe, mr. dodd, that i could manage with economy on two." "and then you will repay me out of carthew's pocket?" i said. "i am much obliged. but i will tell you what i will do: i will see you on board a steamer, pay your fare through to san francisco, and place fifty dollars in the purser's hands, to be given you in new york." he drank in my words; his face represented an ecstasy of cunning thought. i could read there, plain as print, that he but thought to overreach me. "and what am i to do in 'frisco?" he asked. "i am disbarred, i have no trade, i cannot dig, to beg----" he paused in the citation. "and you know that i am not alone," he added, "others depend upon me." "i will write to pinkerton," i returned. "i feel sure he can help you to some employment, and in the meantime, and for three months after your arrival, he shall pay to yourself personally, on the first and the fifteenth, twenty-five dollars." "mr. dodd, i scarce believe you can be serious in this offer," he replied. "have you forgotten the circumstances of the case? do you know these people are the magnates of the section? they were spoken of tonight in the saloon; their wealth must amount to many millions of dollars in real estate alone; their house is one of the sights of the locality, and you offer me a bribe of a few hundred!" "i offer you no bribe, mr. bellairs; i give you alms," i returned. "i will do nothing to forward you in your hateful business; yet i would not willingly have you starve." "give me a hundred dollars then, and be done with it," he cried. "i will do what i have said, and neither more nor less," said i. "take care," he cried. "you are playing a fool's game; you are making an enemy for nothing; you will gain nothing by this, i warn you of it!" and then with one of his changes, "seventy dollars--only seventy--in mercy, mr. dodd, in common charity. don't dash the bowl from my lips! you have a kindly heart. think of my position, remember my unhappy wife." "you should have thought of her before," said i. "i have made my offer, and i wish to sleep." "is that your last word, sir? pray consider; pray weigh both sides: my misery, your own danger. i warn you--i beseech you; measure it well before you answer," so he half pleaded, half threatened me, with clasped hands. "my first word, and my last," said i. the change upon the man was shocking. in the storm of anger that now shook him, the lees of his intoxication rose again to the surface; his face was deformed, his words insane with fury; his pantomime, excessive in itself, was distorted by an access of st. vitus. "you will perhaps allow me to inform you of my cold opinion," he began, apparently self-possessed, truly bursting with rage: "when i am a glorified saint, i shall see you howling for a drop of water, and exult to see you. that your last word! take it in your face, you spy, you false friend, you fat hypocrite! i defy, i defy and despise and spit upon you! i'm on the trail, his trail or yours; i smell blood, i'll follow it on my hands and knees, i'll starve to follow it! i'll hunt you down, hunt you, hunt you down! if i were strong, i'd tear your vitals out, here in this room--tear them out--i'd tear them out! damn, damn, damn! you think me weak! i can bite, bite to the blood, bite you, hurt you, disgrace you ..." he was thus incoherently raging when the scene was interrupted by the arrival of the landlord and inn servants in various degrees of deshabille, and to them i gave my temporary lunatic in charge. "take him to his room," i said, "he's only drunk." these were my words; but i knew better. after all my study of mr. bellairs, one discovery had been reserved for the last moment--that of his latent and essential madness. chapter xx stallbridge-le-carthew long before i was awake the shyster had disappeared, leaving his bill unpaid. i did not need to inquire where he was gone, i knew too well, i knew there was nothing left me but to follow; and about ten in the morning, set forth in a gig for stallbridge-le-carthew. the road, for the first quarter of the way, deserts the valley of the river, and crosses the summit of a chalkdown, grazed over by flocks of sheep and haunted by innumerable larks. it was a pleasant but a vacant scene, arousing but not holding the attention; and my mind returned to the violent passage of the night before. my thought of the man i was pursuing had been greatly changed. i conceived of him, somewhere in front of me, upon his dangerous errand, not to be turned aside, not to be stopped, by either fear or reason. i had called him a ferret; i conceived him now as a mad dog. methought he would run, not walk; methought, as he ran, that he would bark and froth at the lips; methought, if the great wall of china were to rise across his path, he would attack it with his nails. presently the road left the down, returned by a precipitous descent into the valley of the stall, and ran thenceforward among enclosed fields and under the continuous shade of trees. i was told we had now entered on the carthew property. by and by, a battlemented wall appeared on the left hand, and a little after i had my first glimpse of the mansion. it stood in a hollow of a bosky park, crowded, to a degree that surprised and even displeased me, with huge timber and dense shrubberies of laurel and rhododendron. even from this low station and the thronging neighbourhood of the trees, the pile rose conspicuous like a cathedral. behind, as we continued to skirt the park wall, i began to make out a straggling town of offices which became conjoined to the rear with those of the home farm. on the left was an ornamental water sailed in by many swans. on the right extended a flower garden, laid in the old manner, and at this season of the year as brilliant as stained glass. the front of the house presented a facade of more than sixty windows, surmounted by a formal pediment and raised upon a terrace. a wide avenue, part in gravel, part in turf, and bordered by triple alleys, ran to the great double gateways. it was impossible to look without surprise on a place that had been prepared through so many generations, had cost so many tons of minted gold, and was maintained in order by so great a company of emulous servants. and yet of these there was no sign but the perfection of their work. the whole domain was drawn to the line and weeded like the front plot of some suburban amateur; and i looked in vain for any belated gardener, and listened in vain for any sounds of labour. some lowing of cattle and much calling of birds alone disturbed the stillness, and even the little hamlet, which clustered at the gates, appeared to hold its breath in awe of its great neighbour, like a troop of children who should have strayed into a king's anteroom. the carthew arms, the small, but very comfortable inn, was a mere appendage and outpost of the family whose name it bore. engraved portraits of bygone carthews adorned the walls; fielding carthew, recorder of the city of london; major-general john carthew in uniform, commanding some military operations; the right honourable bailley carthew, member of parliament for stallbridge, standing by a table and brandishing a document; singleton carthew, esquire, represented in the foreground of a herd of cattle--doubtless at the desire of his tenantry, who had made him a compliment of this work of art; and the venerable archdeacon carthew, d.d., ll.d., a.m., laying his hand on the head of a little child in a manner highly frigid and ridiculous. so far as my memory serves me, there were no other pictures in this exclusive hostelry; and i was not surprised to learn that the landlord was an exbutler, the landlady an ex-lady's-maid, from the great house; and that the bar-parlour was a sort of perquisite of former servants. to an american, the sense of the domination of this family over so considerable a tract of earth was even oppressive; and as i considered their simple annals, gathered from the legends of the engravings, surprise began to mingle with my disgust. "mr. recorder" doubtless occupies an honourable post; but i thought that, in the course of so many generations, one carthew might have clambered higher. the soldier had stuck at major-general; the church-man bloomed unremarked in an archdeaconry; and though the right honourable bailley seemed to have sneaked into the privy council, i have still to learn what he did when he had got there. such vast means, so long a start, and such a modest standard of achievement, struck in me a strong sense of the dulness of that race. i found that to come to the hamlet and not visit the hall would be regarded as a slight. to feed the swans, to see the peacocks and the raphaels--for these commonplace people actually possessed two raphaels,--to risk life and limb among a famous breed of cattle called the carthew chillinghams, and to do homage to the sire (still living) of donibristle, a renowned winner of the oaks: these, it seemed, were the inevitable stations of the pilgrimage. i was not so foolish as to resist, for i might have need, before i was done, of general goodwill; and two pieces of news fell in which changed my resignation to alacrity. it appeared, in the first place, that mr. norris was from home "travelling "; in the second, that a visitor had been before me, and already made the tour of the carthew curiosities. i thought i knew who this must be; i was anxious to learn what he had done and seen, and fortune so far favoured me that the under-gardener singled out to be my guide had already performed the same function for my predecessor. "yes, sir," he said, "an american gentleman right enough. at least, i don't think he was quite a gentleman, but a very civil person." the person, it seems, had been civil enough to be delighted with the carthew chillinghams, to perform the whole pilgrimage with rising admiration, and to have almost prostrated himself before the shrine of donibristle's sire. "he told me, sir," continued the gratified undergardener, "that he had often read of the 'stately 'omes of england,' but ours was the first he had the chance to see. when he came to the 'ead of the long alley, he fetched his breath. 'this is indeed a lordly domain!' he cries. and it was natural he should be interested in the place, for it seems mr. carthew had been kind to him in the states. in fact, he seemed a grateful kind of person, and wonderful taken up with flowers." i heard this story with amazement. the phrases quoted told their own tale; they were plainly from the shyster's mint. a few hours back i had seen him a mere bedlamite and fit for a strait-waistcoat; he was penniless in a strange country; it was highly probable he had gone without breakfast; the absence of norris must have been a crushing blow; the man (by all reason) should have been despairing. and now i heard of him, clothed and in his right mind, deliberate, insinuating, admiring vistas, smelling flowers, and talking like a book. the strength of character implied amazed and daunted me. "this is curious," i said to the under-gardener; "i have had the pleasure of some acquaintance with mr. carthew myself; and i believe none of our western friends ever were in england. who can this person be? he couldn't--no, that's impossible, he could never have had the impudence. his name was not bellairs?" "i didn't 'ear the name, sir. do you know anything against him?" cried my guide. "well," said i, "he is certainly not the person carthew would like to have here in his absence." "good gracious me!" exclaimed the gardener. "he was so pleasant-spoken too; i thought he was some form of a schoolmaster. perhaps, sir, you wouldn't mind going right up to mr. denman? i recommended him to mr. denman, when he had done the grounds. mr. denman is our butler, sir," he added. the proposal was welcome, particularly as affording me a graceful retreat from the neighbourhood of the carthew chillinghams; and, giving up our projected circuit, we took a short cut through the shrubbery and across the bowling-green to the back quarters of the hall. the bowling-green was surrounded by a great hedge of yew, and entered by an archway in the quick. as we were issuing from this passage my conductor arrested me. "the honourable lady ann carthew," he said, in an august whisper. and looking over his shoulder i was aware of an old lady with a stick, hobbling somewhat briskly along the garden path. she must have been extremely handsome in her youth; and even the limp with which she walked could not deprive her of an unusual and almost menacing dignity of bearing. melancholy was impressed besides on every feature, and her eyes, as she looked straight before her, seemed to contemplate misfortune. "she seems sad," said i, when she had hobbled past and we had resumed our walk. "she enjoy rather poor spirits, sir," responded the under-gardener. "mr. carthew--the old gentleman, i mean--died less than a year ago; lord tillibody, her ladyship's brother, two months after; and then there was the sad business about the young gentleman. killed in the 'unting-field, sir; and her ladyship's favourite. the present mr. norris has never been so equally." "so i have understood," said i persistently, and (i think) gracefully pursuing my inquiries and fortifying my position as a family friend. "dear, dear, how sad! and has this change--poor carthew's return, and all-has this not mended matters?" "well, no, sir, not a sign of it," was the reply. "worse, we think, than ever." "dear, dear!" said i again. "when mr. norris arrived she did seem glad to see him," he pursued, "and we were all pleased, i'm sure; for no one knows the young gentleman but what likes him. ah, sir, it didn't last long! that very night they had a talk, and fell out or something; her ladyship took on most painful; it was like old days, but worse. and the next morning mr. norris was off again upon his travels. "denman," he said to mr. denman, "denman, i'll never come back," he said, and shook him by the 'and. i wouldn't be saying all this to a stranger, sir," added my informant, overcome with a sudden fear lest he had gone too far. he had indeed told me much, and much that was unsuspected by himself. on that stormy night of his return, carthew had told his story; the old lady had more upon her mind than mere bereavements; and among the mental pictures on which she looked, as she walked staring down the path, was one of midway island and the flying scud. mr. denman heard my inquiries with discomposure, but informed me the shyster was already gone. "gone?" cried i. "then what can he have come for? one thing i can tell you, it was not to see the house." "i don't see it could have been anything else," replied the butler. "you may depend upon it, it was," said i. "and whatever it was, he has got it.--by the way, where is mr. carthew at present? i was sorry to find he was from home." "he is engaged in travelling, sir," replied the butler dryly. "ah, bravo!" cried i. "i laid a trap for you there, mr. denman. now i need not ask you; i am sure you did not tell this prying stranger." "to be sure not, sir," said the butler. i went through the form of "shaking him by the 'and"-like mr. norris--not, however, with genuine enthusiasm. for i had failed ingloriously to get the address for myself; and i felt a sure conviction that bellairs had done better, or he had still been here and still cultivating mr. denman. i had escaped the grounds and the cattle; i could not escape the house. a lady with silver hair, a slender silver voice, and a stream of insignificant information not to be diverted, led me through the picture-gallery, the music-room, the great dining-room, the long drawing-room, the indian room, the theatre, and every corner (as i thought) of that interminable mansion. there was but one place reserved, the garden-room, whither lady ann had now retired. i paused a moment on the outside of the door, and smiled to myself. the situation was indeed strange, and these thin boards divided the secret of the flying scud. all the while, as i went to and fro, i was considering the visit and departure of bellairs. that he had got the address, i was quite certain; that he had not got it by direct questioning, i was convinced; some ingenuity, some lucky accident, had served him. a similar chance, an equal ingenuity, was required, or i was left helpless; the ferret must run down his prey, the great oaks fall, the raphaels be scattered, the house let to some stockbroker suddenly made rich, and the name which now filled the mouths of five or six parishes dwindle to a memory. strange that such great matters, so old a mansion, a family so ancient and so dull, should come to depend for perpetuity upon the intelligence, the discretion, and the cunning of a latin-quarter student! what bellairs had done, i must do likewise. chance or ingenuity, ingenuity or chance-so i continued to ring the changes as i walked down the avenue, casting back occasional glances at the red brick facade and the twinkling windows of the house. how was i to command chance? where was i to find the ingenuity? these reflections brought me to the door of the inn. and here, pursuant to my policy of keeping well with all men, i immediately smoothed my brow, and accepted (being the only guest in the house) an invitation to dine with the family in the bar parlour. i sat down accordingly with mr. higgs the ex-butler, mrs. higgs the ex-lady's-maid, and miss agnes higgs their frowsyheaded little girl, the least promising and (as the event showed) the most useful of the lot. the talk ran endlessly on the great house and the great family; the roast beef, the yorkshire pudding, the jam-roll, and the cheddar cheese came and went, and still the stream flowed on; near four generations of carthews were touched upon without eliciting one point of interest; and we had killed mr. henry in "the 'unting-field," with a vast elaboration of painful circumstance, and buried him in the midst of a whole sorrowing county, before i could so much as manage to bring upon the stage my intimate friend, mr. norris. at the name the ex-butler grew diplomatic and the ex-lady's-maid tender. he was the only person of the whole featureless series who seemed to have accomplished anything worth mention; and his achievements, poor dog, seemed to have been confined to going to the devil and leaving some regrets. he had been the image of the right honourable bailley, one of the lights of that dim house, and a career of distinction had been predicted of him in consequence, almost from the cradle. but before he was out of long clothes the cloven foot began to show; he proved to be no carthew, developed a taste for low pleasures and bad company, went birdnesting with a stable-boy before he was eleven, and when he was near twenty, and might have been expected to display at least some rudiments of the family gravity, rambled the country over with a knapsack, making sketches and keeping company in wayside inns. he had no pride about him, i was told; he would sit down with any man; and it was somewhat woundingly implied that i was indebted to this peculiarity for my own acquaintance with the hero. unhappily, mr. norris was not only eccentric, he was fast. his debts were still remembered at the university; still more, it appeared, the highly humorous circumstances attending his expulsion. "he was always fond of his jest," commented mrs. higgs. "that he were!" observed her lord. but it was after he went into the diplomatic service that the real trouble began. "it seems, sir, that he went the pace extraordinary," said the ex-butler, with a solemn gusto. "his debts were somethink awful," said the lady's-maid. "and as nice a young gentleman all the time as you would wish to see!" "when word came to mr. carthew's ears the turn-up was 'orrible," continued mr. higgs. "i remember it as if it was yesterday. the bell was rung after her la'ship was gone, which i answered it myself, supposing it were the coffee. there was mr. carthew on his feet. ''iggs,' he says, pointing with his stick, for he had a turn of the gout, 'order the dog-cart instantly for this son of mine which has disgraced hisself.' mr. norris say nothink: he sit there with his 'ead down, making belief to be looking at a walnut. you might have bowled me over with a straw," said mr. higgs. "had he done anything very bad?" i asked. "not he, mr. dodsley!" cried the lady--it was so she had conceived my name. "he never did anythink to call really wrong in his poor life. the 'ole affair was a disgrace. it was all rank favouritising." "mrs. 'iggs! mrs. 'iggs!" cried the butler warningly. "well, what do i care?" retorted the lady, shaking her ringlets. "you know it was, yourself, mr. 'iggs, and so did every member of the staff." while i was getting these facts and opinions, i by no means neglected the child. she was not attractive; but fortunately she had reached the corrupt age of seven, when half-a-crown appears about as large as a saucer, and is fully as rare as the dodo. for a shilling down, sixpence in her money-box, and an american gold dollar which i happened to find in my pocket, i bought the creature soul and body. she declared her intention to accompany me to the ends of the earth; and had to be chidden by her sire for drawing comparisons between myself and her uncle william, highly damaging to the latter. dinner was scarce done, the cloth was not yet removed, when miss agnes must needs climb into my lap with her stamp album, a relic of the generosity of uncle william. there are few things i despise more than old stamps, unless perhaps it be crests; for cattle (from the carthew chillinghams down to the old gate-keeper's milk-cow in the lane) contempt is far from being my first sentiment. but it seemed i was doomed to pass that day in viewing curiosities, and, smothering a yawn, i devoted myself once more to tread the wellknown round. i fancy uncle william must have begun the collection himself and tired of it, for the book (to my surprise) was quite respectably filled. there were the varying shades of the english penny, russians with the coloured heart, old undecipherable thurn-und-taxis, obsolete triangular cape of good hopes, swan rivers with the swan, and guianas with the sailing ship. upon all these i looked with the eyes of a fish and the spirit of a sheep; i think, indeed, i was at times asleep; and it was probably in one of these moments that i capsized the album, and there fell from the end of it, upon the floor, a considerable number of what i believe to be called "exchanges." here, against all probability, my chance had come to me; for as i gallantly picked them up, i was struck with the disproportionate amount of five-sous french stamps. some one, i reasoned, must write very regularly from france to the neighbourhood of stallbridge-le-carthew. could it be norris? on one stamp i made out an initial c; upon a second i got as far as ch; beyond which point, the post-mark used was in every instance undecipherable. ch, when you consider that about a quarter of the towns in france begin with "chateau," was an insufficient clue; and i promptly annexed the plainest of the collection in order to consult the post-office. the wretched infant took me in the fact. "naughty man, to 'teal my 'tamp!" she cried; and when i would have brazened it off with a denial, recovered and displayed the stolen article. my position was now highly false; and i believe it was in mere pity that mrs. higgs came to my rescue with a welcome proposition. if the gentleman was really interested in stamps, she said, probably supposing me a monomaniac on the point, he should see mr. denman's album. mr. denman had been collecting forty years, and his collection was said to be worth a mint of money. "agnes," she went on, "if you were a kind little girl, you would run over to the 'all, tell mr. denman there's a connaisseer in the 'ouse, and ask him if one of the young gentlemen might bring the album down." "i should like to see his exchanges too," i cried, rising to the occasion. "i may have some of mine in my pocket-book, and we might trade." half an hour later mr. denman arrived himself with a most unconscionable volume under his arm. "ah, sir," he cried, "when i 'eard you was a collector i dropped all. it's a saying of mine, mr. dodsley, that collecting stamps makes all collectors kin. it's a bond, sir; it creates a bond." upon the truth of this i cannot say; but there is no doubt that the attempt to pass yourself off for a collector falsely creates a precarious situation. "ah, here's the second issue!" i would say, after consulting the legend at the side. "the pink--no, i mean the mauve--yes, that's the beauty of this lot. though of course, as you say," i would hasten to add, "this yellow on the thin paper is more rare." indeed i must certainly have been detected, had i not plied mr. denman in self-defence with his favourite liquor--a port so excellent that it could never have ripened in the cellar of the carthew arms, but must have been transported, under cloud of night, from the neighbouring vaults of the great house. at each threat of exposure, and in particular whenever i was directly challenged for an opinion, i made haste to fill the butler's glass, and by the time we had got to the exchanges, he was in a condition in which no stampcollector need be seriously feared. god forbid i should hint that he was drunk; he seemed incapable of the necessary liveliness; but the man's eyes were set, and so long as he was suffered to talk without interruption, he seemed careless of my heeding him. in mr. denman's exchanges, as in those of little agnes, the same peculiarity was to be remarked,--an undue preponderance of that despicably common stamp, the french twenty-five centimes. and here joining them in stealthy review, i found the c and the ch; then something of an a just following; and then a terminal y. here was also the whole name spelt out to me; it seemed familiar too; and yet for some time i could not bridge the imperfection. then i came upon another stamp, in which an l was legible before the y, and in a moment the word leaped up complete. chailly, that was the name: chailly-en-biere, the post-town of barbizon-ah, there was the very place for any man to hide himself--there was the very place for mr. norris, who had rambled over england making sketches--the very place for goddedaal, who had left a palette-knife on board the flying scud. singular, indeed, that while i was drifting over england with the shyster, the man we were in quest of awaited me at my own ultimate destination. whether mr. denman had shown his album to bellairs, whether, indeed, bellairs could have caught (as i did) this hint from an obliterated postmark, i shall never know, and it mattered not. we were equal now; my task at stallbridge-le-carthew was accomplished; my interest in postage-stamps died shamelessly away; the astonished denman was bowed out; and, ordering the horse to be put in, i plunged into the study of the time-table. chapter xxi face to face i fell from the skies on barbizon about two o'clock of a september afternoon. it is the dead hour of the day; all the workers have gone painting, all the idlers strolling, in the forest or the plain; the winding causewayed street is solitary, and the inn deserted. i was the more pleased to find one of my old companions in the dining-room; his town clothes marked him for a man in the act of departure; and indeed his portmanteau lay beside him on the floor. "why, stennis," i cried, "you're the last man i expected to find here." "you won't find me here long," he replied. "'king pandion he is dead; all his friends are lapped in lead.' for men of our antiquity, the poor old shop is played out." "'i have had playmates, i have had companions,'" i quoted in return. we were both moved, i think, to meet again in this scene of our old pleasure parties so unexpectedly, after so long an interval, and both already so much altered. "that is the sentiment," he replied. "'all, all are gone, the old familiar faces.' i have been here a week, and the only living creature who seemed to recollect me was the pharaon. bar the sirons, of course, and the perennial bodmer." "is there no survivor?" i inquired. "of our geological epoch? not one," he replied. "this is the city of petra in edom." "and what sort of bedouins encamp among the ruins?" i asked. "youth, dodd, youth; blooming, conscious youth," he returned. "such a gang, such reptiles! to think we were like that! i wonder siron didn't sweep us from his premises." "perhaps we weren't so bad," i suggested. "don't let me depress you," said he. "we were both anglo-saxons, anyway, and the only redeeming feature to-day is another." the thought of my quest, a moment driven out by this rencounter, revived in my mind. "who is he?" i cried. "tell me about him." "what, the redeeming feature?" said he. "well, he's a very pleasing creature, rather dim, and dull, and genteel, but really pleasing. he is very british, though, the artless briton! perhaps you'll find him too much so for the transatlantic nerves. come to think of it, on the other hand, you ought to get on famously, he is an admirer of your great republic in one of its (excuse me) shoddiest features; he takes in and sedulously reads a lot of american papers. i warned you he was artless." "what papers are they?" cried i. "san francisco papers," said he. "he gets a bale of them about twice a week, and studies them like the bible. that's one of his weaknesses; another is to be incalculably rich. he has taken masson's old studio-you remember?--at the corner of the road; he has furnished it regardless of expense, and lives there surrounded with vins fins and works of art. when the youth of to-day goes up to the caverne des brigands to make punch--they do all that we did, like some nauseous form of ape (i never appreciated before what a creature of tradition mankind is)--this madden follows with a basket of champagne. i told him he was wrong, and the punch tasted better; but he thought the boys liked the style of the thing, and i suppose they do. he is a very good-natured soul, and a very melancholy, and rather a helpless. o, and he has a third weakness which i came near forgetting. he paints. he has never been taught, and he's well on for thirty, and he paints." "how?" i asked. "rather well, i think," was the reply. "that's the annoying part of it. see for yourself. that panel is his." i stepped toward the window. it was the old familiar room, with the tables set like a greek ii, and the sideboard, and the aphasic piano, and the panels on the wall. there were romeo and juliet, antwerp from the river, enfield's ships among the ice, and the huge huntsman winding a huge horn; mingled with them a few new ones, the thin crop of a succeeding generation, not better and not worse. it was to one of these i was directed: a thing coarsely and wittily handled, mostly with the palette-knife; the colour in some parts excellent, the canvas in others loaded with mere clay. but it was the scene and not the art or want of it that riveted my notice. the foreground was of sand and scrub and wreckwood; in the middle distance the manyhued and smooth expanse of a lagoon, enclosed by a wall of breakers; beyond, a blue strip of ocean. the sky was cloudless, and i could hear the surf break. for the place was midway island; the point of view the very spot at which i had landed with the captain for the first time, and from which i had re-embarked the day before we sailed. i had already been gazing for some seconds before my attention was arrested by a blur on the sea-line, and, stooping to look, i recognised the smoke of a steamer. "yes," said i, turning toward stennis, "it has merit. what is it?" "a fancy piece," he returned. "that's what pleased me. so few of the fellows in our time had the imagination of a garden-snail." "madden, you say his name is?" i pursued. "madden," he repeated. has he travelled much?" i inquired. "i haven't an idea. he is one of the least autobiographical of men. he sits, and smokes, and giggles, and sometimes he makes small jests; but his contributions to the art of pleasing are generally confined to looking like a gentleman and being one. no," added stennis, "he'll never suit you, dodd; you like more head on your liquor. you'll find him as dull as ditch-water." "has he big blonde side-whiskers like tusks?" i asked, mindful of the photograph of goddedaal. "certainly not; why should he?" was the reply. "does he write many letters?" i continued. "god knows," said stennis.--" what is wrong with you? i never saw you taken this way before." "the fact is, i think i know the man," said i. "i think i'm looking for him. i rather think he is my long-lost brother." "not twins, anyway," returned stennis. and about the same time, a carriage driving up to the inn, he took his departure. i walked till dinner-time in the plain, keeping to the fields; for i instinctively shunned observation, and was racked by many incongruous and impatient feelings. here was a man whose voice i had once heard, whose doings had filled so many days of my life with interest and distress, whom i had lain awake to dream of like a lover, and now his hand was on the door; now we were to meet; now i was to learn at last the mystery of the substituted crew. the sun went down over the plain of the angelus, and as the hour approached my courage lessened. i let the laggard peasants pass me on the homeward way. the lamps were lit, the soup was served, the company were all at table, and the room sounded already with multitudinous talk before i entered. i took my place and found i was opposite to madden. over six feet high and well set up, the hair dark and streaked with silver, the eyes dark and kindly, the mouth very good-natured, the teeth admirable; linen and hands exquisite; english clothes, an english voice, an english bearing--the man stood out conspicuous from the company. yet he had made himself at home, and seemed to enjoy a certain quiet popularity among the noisy boys of the table-d'hote. he had an odd silver giggle of a laugh that sounded nervous even when he was really amused, and accorded ill with his big stature and manly, melancholy face. this laugh fell in continually all through dinner like the note of the triangle in a piece of modern french music; and he had at times a kind of pleasantry, rather of manner than of words, with which he started or maintained the merriment. he took his share in these diversions, not so much like a man in high spirits, but like one of an approved goodnature, habitually self-forgetful, accustomed to please and to follow others. i have remarked in old soldiers much the same smiling sadness and sociable selfeffacement. i feared to look at him, lest my glances should betray my deep excitement, and chance served me so well that the soup was scarce removed before we were naturally introduced. my first sip of chateau siron, a vintage from which i had been long estranged, startled me into speech. "o, this'll never do!" i cried, in english. "dreadful stuff, isn't it?" said madden, in the same language. "do let me ask you to share my bottle. they call it chambertin, which it isn't; but it's fairly palatable, and there's nothing in this house that a man can drink at all." i accepted; anything would do that paved the way to better knowledge. "your name is madden, i think," said i. "my old friend stennis told me about you when i came." "yes, i am sorry he went; i feel such a grandfather william alone among all these lads," he replied. "my name is dodd," i resumed. "yes," said he, "so madame siron told me." "dodd, of san francisco," i continued. "late of pinkerton and dodd." "montana block, i think?" said he. "the same," said i. neither of us looked at each other; but i could see his hand deliberately making bread pills. "that's a nice thing of yours," i pursued, "that panel. the foreground is a little clayey, perhaps, but the lagoon is excellent." "you ought to know," said he. "yes," returned i, "i'm rather a good judge of--that panel." there was a considerable pause. "you know a man by the name of bellairs, don't you?" he resumed. "ah!" cried i, "you have heard from doctor urquart?" "this very morning," he replied. "well, there is no hurry about bellairs," said i. "it's rather a long story, and rather a silly one. but i think we have a good deal to tell each other, and perhaps we had better wait till we are more alone." "i think so," said he. "not that any of these fellows know english, but we'll be more comfortable over at my place.--your health, dodd." and we took wine together across the table. thus had this singular introduction passed unperceived in the midst of more than thirty persons, art-students, ladies in dressing-gowns and covered with rice powder, six foot of siron whisking dishes over our head, and his noisy sons clattering in and out with fresh relays. "one question more," said i: "did you recognise my voice?" "your voice?" he repeated. "how should i? had never heard it--we have never met." "and yet we have been in conversation before now," said i, "and i asked you a question which you never answered, and which i have since had many thousand better reasons for putting to myself." he turned suddenly white. "good god!" he cried, "are you the man in the telephone?" i nodded. "well, well!" said he. "it would take a good deal of magnanimity to forgive you that. what nights i have passed! that little whisper has whistled in my ear ever since, like the wind in a keyhole. who could it be? what could it mean? i suppose i have had more real, solid misery out of that ..." he paused, and looked troubled. "though i had more to bother me, or ought to have," he added, and slowly emptied his glass. "it seems we were born to drive each other crazy with conundrums," said i. "i have often thought my head would split." carthew burst into his foolish laugh. "and yet neither you nor i had the worst of the puzzle," he cried. "there were others deeper in." "and who were they?" i asked. "the underwriters," said he. "why, to be sure!" cried i, "i never thought of that. what could they make of it?" "nothing," replied carthew. "it couldn't be explained. they were a crowd of small dealers at lloyd's who took it up in syndicate; one of them has a carriage now; and people say he is a deuce of a deep fellow, and has the makings of a great financier. another furnished a small villa on the profits. but they're all hopelessly muddled; and when they meet each other they don't know where to look, like the augurs." dinner was no sooner at an end than he carried me across the road to masson's old studio. it was strangely changed. on the walls were tapestry, a few good etchings, and some amazing pictures--a rousseau, a corot, a really superb old crome, a whistler, and a piece which my host claimed (and i believe) to be a titian. the room was furnished with comfortable english smoking-room chairs, some american rockers, and an elaborate business table; spirits and soda-water (with the mark of schweppe, no less) stood ready on a butler's tray, and in one corner, behind a half-drawn curtain, i spied a camp-bed and a capacious tub. such a room in barbizon astonished the beholder, like the glories of the cave of monte cristo. "now," said he, "we are quiet. sit down, if you don't mind, and tell me your story all through." i did as he asked, beginning with the day when jim showed me the passage in the daily occidental, and winding up with the stamp album and the chailly postmark. it was a long business; and carthew made it longer, for he was insatiable of details; and it had struck midnight on the old eight-day clock in the corner before i had made an end. "and now," said he, "turn about: i must tell you my side, much as i hate it. mine is a beastly story. you'll wonder how i can sleep. i've told it once before, mr. dodd." "to lady ann?" i asked. "as you suppose," he answered; "and, to say the truth, i had sworn never to tell it again. only, you seem somehow entitled to the thing; you have paid dear enough, god knows: and god knows i hope you may like it, now you've got it!" with that he began his yarn. a new day had dawned, the cocks crew in the village and the early woodmen were afoot, when he concluded. chapter xxii the remittance man singleton carthew, the father of norris, was heavily built and feebly vitalised, sensitive as a musician, dull as a sheep, and conscientious as a dog. he took his position with seriousness, even with pomp; the long rooms, the silent servants, seemed in his eyes like the observances of some religion of which he was the mortal god. he had the stupid man's intolerance of stupidity in others; the vain man's exquisite alarm lest it should be detected in himself. and on both sides norris irritated and offended him. he thought his son a fool, and he suspected that his son returned the compliment with interest. the history of their relation was simple; they met seldom, they quarrelled often. to his mother, a fiery, pungent, practical woman, already disappointed in her husband and her elder son, norris was only a fresh disappointment. yet the lad's faults were no great matter; he was diffident, placable, passive, unambitious, unenterprising; life did not much attract him; he watched it like a curious and dull exhibition, not much amused, and not tempted in the least to take a part. he beheld his father ponderously grinding sand, his mother fierily breaking butterflies, his brother labouring at the pleasures of the hawbuck with the ardour of a soldier in a doubtful battle; and the vital sceptic looked on wondering. they were careful and troubled about many things; for him there seemed not even one thing needful. he was born disenchanted, the world's promises awoke no echo in his bosom, the world's activities and the world's distinctions seemed to him equally without a base in fact. he liked the open air; he liked comradeship, it mattered not with whom, his comrades were only a remedy for solitude. and he had a taste for painted art. an array of fine pictures looked upon his childhood, and from these roods of jewelled canvas he received an indelible impression. the gallery at stallbridge betokened generations of picture-lovers; norris was perhaps the first of his race to hold the pencil. the taste was genuine, it grew and strengthened with his growth; and yet he suffered it to be suppressed with scarce a struggle. time came for him to go to oxford, and he resisted faintly. he was stupid, he said; it was no good to put him through the mill; he wished to be a painter. the words fell on his father like a thunderbolt, and norris made haste to give way. "it didn't really matter, don't you know?" said he. "and it seemed an awful shame to vex the old boy." to oxford he went obediently, hopelessly; and at oxford became the hero of a certain circle. he was active and adroit; when he was in the humour, he excelled in many sports; and his singular melancholy detachment gave him a place apart. he set a fashion in his clique. envious undergraduates sought to parody his unaffected lack of zeal and fear; it was a kind of new byronism more composed and dignified. "nothing really mattered"; among other things, this formula embraced the dons; and though he always meant to be civil, the effect on the college authorities was one of startling rudeness. his indifference cut like insolence; and in some outbreak of his constitutional levity (the complement of his melancholy) he was "sent down" in the middle of the second year. the event was new in the annals of the carthews, and singleton was prepared to make the most of it. it had been long his practice to prophesy for his second son a career of ruin and disgrace. there is an advantage in this artless parental habit. doubtless the father is interested in his son; but doubtless also the prophet grows to be interested in his prophecies. if the one goes wrong, the others come true. old carthew drew from this source esoteric consolations; he dwelt at length on his own foresight; he produced variations hitherto unheard from the old theme "i told you so," coupled his son's name with the gallows and the hulks, and spoke of his small handful of college debts as though he must raise money on a mortgage to discharge them. "i don't think that is fair, sir," said norris; "i lived at college exactly as you told me. i am sorry i was sent down, and you have a perfect right to blame me for that; but you have no right to pitch into me about these debts." the effect upon a stupid man not unjustly incensed need scarcely be described. for a while singleton raved. "i'll tell you what, father," said norris at last, "i don't think this is going to do. i think you had better let me take to painting. it's the only thing i take a spark of interest in. i shall never be steady as long as i'm at anything else." "when you stand here, sir, to the neck in disgrace," said the father, "i should have hoped you would have had more good taste than to repeat this levity." the hint was taken; the levity was never more obtruded on the father's notice, and norris was inexorably launched upon a backward voyage. he went abroad to study foreign languages, which he learned, at a very expensive rate; and a fresh crop of debts fell soon to be paid, with similar lamentations, which were in this case perfectly justified, and to which norris paid no regard. he had been unfairly treated over the oxford affair; and with a spice of malice very surprising in one so placable, and an obstinacy remarkable in one so weak, refused from that day forward to exercise the least captaincy on his expenses. he wasted what he would; he allowed his servants to despoil him at their pleasure; he sowed insolvency; and, when the crop was ripe, notified his father with exasperating calm. his own capital was put in his hands, he was planted in the diplomatic service, and told he must depend upon himself. he did so till he was twenty-five, by which time he had spent his money, laid in a handsome choice of debts, and acquired (like so many other melancholic and uninterested persons) a habit of gambling. an austrian colonel--the same who afterwards hanged himself at monte carlo--gave him a lesson which lasted two-andtwenty hours, and left him wrecked and helpless. old singleton once more repurchased the honour of his name, this time at a fancy figure; and norris was set afloat again on stern conditions. an allowance of three hundred pounds in the year was to be paid to him quarterly by a lawyer in sydney, new south wales. he was not to write. should he fail on any quarter-day to be in sydney, he was to be held for dead, and the allowance tacitly withdrawn. should he return to europe, an advertisement publicly disowning him was to appear in every paper of repute. it was one of his most annoying features as a son that he was always polite, always just, and in whatever whirlwind of domestic anger always calm. he expected trouble; when trouble came he was unmoved; he might have said with singleton, "i told you so": he was content with thinking, "just as i expected." on the fall of these last thunderbolts he bore himself like a person only distantly interested in the event, pocketed the money and the reproaches, obeyed orders punctually; took ship and came to sydney. some men are still lads at twenty-five; and so it was with norris. eighteen days after he landed his quarter's allowance was all gone, and with the light-hearted hopefulness of strangers in what is called a new country he began to besiege offices and apply for all manner of incongruous situations. everywhere, and last of all from his lodgings, he was bowed out; and found himself reduced, in a very elegant suit of summer tweeds, to herd and camp with the degraded outcasts of the city. in this strait he had recourse to the lawyer who paid him his allowance. "try to remember that my time is valuable, mr. carthew," said the lawyer. "it is quite unnecessary you should enlarge on the peculiar position in which you stand. remittance men, as we call them here, are not so rare in my experience; and in such cases i act upon a system. i make you a present of a sovereign--here it is. every day you choose to call my clerk will advance you a shilling; on saturday, since my office is closed on sunday, he will advance you half-a-crown. my conditions are these. that you do not come to me, but to my clerk; that you do not come here the worse of liquor; and you go away the moment you are paid and have signed a receipt.--i wish you a good-morning." "i have to thank you, i suppose," said carthew. "my position is so wretched that i cannot even refuse this starvation allowance." "starvation!" said the lawyer, smiling. "no man will starve here on a shilling a day. i had on my hands another young gentleman who remained continuously intoxicated for six years on the same allowance." and he once more busied himself with his papers. in the time that followed, the image of the smiling lawyer haunted carthew's memory. "that three minutes' talk was all the education i ever had worth talking of," says he. "it was all life in a nutshell. confound it," i thought, "have i got to the point of envying that ancient fossil?" every morning for the next two or three weeks the stroke of ten found norris, unkempt and haggard, at the lawyer's door. the long day and longer night he spent in the domain, now on a bench, now on the grass under a norfolk island pine, the companion of perhaps the lowest class on earth, the larrikins of sydney. morning after morning, the dawn behind the lighthouse recalled him from slumber; and he would stand and gaze upon the changing east, the fading lenses, the smokeless city, and the many-armed and many-masted harbour growing slowly clear under his eyes. his bedfellows (so to call them) were less active; they lay sprawled upon the grass and benches, the dingy men, the frowsy women, prolonging their late repose; and carthew wandered among the sleeping bodies alone, and cursed the incurable stupidity of his behaviour. day brought a new society of nursery-maids and children, and freshdressed and (i am sorry to say) tight-laced maidens, and gay people in rich traps; upon the skirts of which carthew and "the other blackguards"--his own bitter phrase--skulked, and chewed grass, and looked on. day passed, the light died, the green and leafy precinct sparkled with lamps or lay in shadow, and the round of the night began again--the loitering women, the lurking men, the sudden outburst of screams, the sound of flying feet "you mayn't believe it," says carthew, "but i got to that pitch that i didn't care a hang. i have been wakened out of my sleep to hear a woman screaming, and i have only turned upon my other side. yes, it's a queer place, where the dowagers and the kids walk all day, and at night you can hear people bawling for help as if it was the forest of bondy, with the lights of a great town all round, and parties spinning through in cabs from government house and dinner with my lord!" it was norris's diversion, having none other, to scrape acquaintance, where, how, and with whom he could. many a long dull talk he held upon the benches or the grass; many a strange waif he came to know; many strange things he heard, and saw some that were abominable. it was to one of these last that he owed his deliverance from the domain. for some time the rain had been merciless; one night after another he had been obliged to squander fourpence on a bed and reduce his board to the remaining eightpence: and he sat one morning near the macquarrie street entrance, hungry, for he had gone without breakfast, and wet, as he had already been for several days, when the cries of an animal in distress attracted his attention. some fifty yards away, in the extreme angle of the grass, a party of the chronically unemployed had got hold of a dog, whom they were torturing in a manner not to be described. the heart of norris, which had grown indifferent to the cries of human anger or distress, woke at the appeal of the dumb creature. he ran amongst the larrikins, scattered them, rescued the dog, and stood at bay. they were six in number, shambling gallows-birds; but for once the proverb was right, cruelty was coupled with cowardice, and the wretches cursed him and made off. it chanced that this act of prowess had not passed unwitnessed. on a bench near by there was seated a shopkeeper's assistant out of employ, a diminutive, cheerful, redheaded creature by the name of hemstead. he was the last man to have interfered himself, for his discretion more than equalled his valour: but he made haste to congratulate carthew, and to warn him he might not always be so fortunate. "they're a dyngerous lot of people about this park. my word! it doesn't do to ply with them!" he observed, in that rycy austrylian english, which (as it has received the imprimatur of mr. froude) we should all make haste to imitate. "why, i'm one of that lot myself," returned carthew. hemstead laughed, and remarked that he knew a gentleman when he saw one. "for all that, i am simply one of the unemployed," said carthew, seating himself beside his new acquaintance, as he had sat (since this experience began) beside so many dozen others. "i'm out of a plyce myself," said hemstead. "you beat me all the way and back," says carthew. "my trouble is that i have never been in one. "i suppose you've no tryde?" asked hemstead. "i know how to spend money," replied carthew, "and i really do know something of horses and something of the sea. but the unions head me off; if it weren't for them, i might have had a dozen berths." "my word!" cried the sympathetic listener. "ever try the mounted police?" he inquired. i did, and was bowled out," was the reply; "couldn't pass the doctors." "well, what do you think of the ryleways, then?" asked hemstead. "what do you think of them, if you come to that?" asked carthew. "o, i don't think of them; i don't go in for manual labour," said the little man proudly. "but if a man don't mind that, he's pretty sure of a job there." "by george, you tell me where to go!" cried carthew, rising. the heavy rains continued, the country was already overrun with floods; the railway system daily required more hands, daily the superintendent advertised; but "the unemployed " preferred the resources of charity and rapine, and a navvy, even an amateur navvy, commanded money in the market. the same night, after a tedious journey, and a change of trains to pass a landslip, norris found himself in a muddy cutting behind south clifton, attacking his first shift of manual labour. for weeks the rain scarce relented. the whole front of the mountain slipped seaward from above, avalanches of clay, rock, and uprooted forest spewed over the cliff's and fell upon the beach or in the breakers. houses were carried bodily away and smashed like nuts; others were menaced and deserted, the door locked, the chimney cold, the dwellers fled elsewhere for safety. night and the fire blazed in the encampment: night and day hot coffee was served to the overdriven toilers in the shift; night and day the engineer of the section made his rounds with words of encouragement, hearty and rough and well suited to his men. night and day, too, the telegraph clicked with disastrous news and anxious inquiry. along the terraced line of rail, rare trains came creeping and signalling; paused at the threatened corner, like living things conscious of peril; the commandant of the post would hastily review his labours, make (with a dry throat) the signal to advance; and the whole squad line the way and look on in a choking silence, or burst into a brief cheer as the train cleared the point of danger and shot on, perhaps through the thin sunshine between squalls, perhaps with blinking lamps into the gathering, rainy twilight. one such scene carthew will remember till he dies. it blew great guns from the seaward; a huge surf bombarded, five hundred feet below him, the steep mountain's foot; close in was a vessel in distress, firing shots from a fowling-piece, if any help might come. so he saw and heard her the moment before the train appeared and paused, throwing up a babylonian tower of smoke into the rain, and oppressing men's hearts with the scream of her whistle. the engineer was there himself; he paled as he made the signal: the engine came at a foot's pace; but the whole bulk of mountain shook and seemed to nod seaward, and the watching navvies instinctively clutched at shrubs and trees; vain precautions, vain as the shots from the poor sailors. once again fear was disappointed; the train passed unscathed; and norris, drawing a long breath, remembered the labouring ship, and glanced below. she was gone. so the days and the nights passed: homeric labour in homeric circumstance. carthew was sick with sleeplessness and coffee; his hands, softened by the wet, were cut to ribbons; yet he enjoyed a peace of mind and health of body hitherto unknown. plenty of open air, plenty of physical exertion, a continual instancy of toil--here was what had been hitherto lacking in that misdirected life, and the true cure of vital scepticism. to get the train through, there was the recurrent problem: no time remained to ask if it were necessary. carthew, the idler, the spendthrift, the drifting dilettante, was soon remarked, praised, and advanced. the engineer swore by him and pointed him out for an example. "i've a new chum, up here," norris over-heard him saying, "a young swell. he's worth any two in the squad." the words fell on the ears of the discarded son like music; and from that moment he not only found an interest, he took a pride, in his plebeian tasks. the press of work was still at its highest when quarter-day approached. norris was now raised to a position of some trust; at his discretion, trains were stopped or forwarded at the dangerous cornice near north clifton; and he found in this responsibility both terror and delight. the thought of the seventy-five pounds that would soon await him at the lawyer's, and of his own obligation to be present every quarter-day in sydney, filled him for a little with divided counsels. then he made up his mind, walked in a slack moment to the inn at clifton, ordered a sheet of paper and a bottle of beer, and wrote, explaining that he held a good appointment which he would lose if he came to sydney, and asking the lawyer to accept this letter as an evidence of his presence in the colony, and retain the money till next quarter-day. the answer came in course of post, and was not merely favourable but cordial. "although what you propose is contrary to the terms of my instructions," it ran, "i willingly accept the responsibility of granting your request. i should say i am agreeably disappointed in your behaviour. my experience has not led me to found much expectations on gentlemen in your position." the rains abated, and the temporary labour was discharged; not norris, to whom the engineer clung as to found money; not norris, who found himself a ganger on the line in the regular staff of navvies. his camp was pitched in a grey wilderness of rock and forest, far from any house; as he sat with his mates about the evening fire, the trains passing on the track were their next, and indeed their only, neighbours, except the wild things of the wood. lovely weather, light and monotonous employment, long hours of somnolent campfire talk, long sleepless nights, when he reviewed his foolish and fruitless career as he rose and walked in the moonlit forest, an occasional paper of which he would read all, the advertisements with as much relish as the text; such was the tenor of an existence which soon began to weary and harass him. he lacked and regretted the fatigue, the furious hurry, the suspense, the fires, the midnight coffee, the rude and mudbespattered poetry of the first toilful weeks. in the quietness of his new surroundings a voice summoned him from this exorbital part of life, and about the middle of october he threw up his situation and bade farewell to the camp of tents and the shoulder of bald mountain. clad in his rough clothes, with a bundle on his shoulder and his accumulated wages in his pocket, he entered sydney for the second time, and walked with pleasure and some bewilderment in the cheerful streets, like a man landed from a voyage. the sight of the people led him on. he forgot his necessary errands, he forgot to eat. he wandered in moving multitudes like a stick upon a river. last he came to the domain and strolled there, and remembered his shame and sufferings, and looked with poignant curiosity at his successors. hemstead, not much shabbier and no less cheerful than before, he recognised and addressed like an old family friend. "that was a good turn you did me," said he. "that railway was the making of me. i hope you've had luck yourself." "my word, no!" replied the little man. "i just sit here and read the dead bird. it's the depression in tryde, you see. there's no positions goin' that a man like me would care to look at." and he showed norris his certificates and written characters, one from a grocer in wooloomooloo, one from an ironmonger, and a third from a billiard saloon. "yes," he said, "i tried bein' a billiard-marker. it's no account; these lyte hours are no use for a man's health. i won't be no man's slyve," he added firmly. on the principle that he who is too proud to be a slave is usually not too modest to become a pensioner, carthew gave him half a sovereign and departed, being suddenly struck with hunger, in the direction of the paris house. when he came to that quarter of the city, the barristers were trotting in the streets in wig and gown, and he stood to observe them with his bundle on his shoulder, and his mind full of curious recollections of the past. "by george!" cried a voice, "it's mr. carthew!" and turning about he found himself face to face with a handsome sunburnt youth, somewhat fatted, arrayed in the finest of fine raiment, and sporting about a sovereign's worth of flowers in his button-hole. norris had met him during his first days in sydney at a farewell supper; had even escorted him on board a schooner full of cockroaches and black-boy sailors, in which he was bound for six months among the islands; and had kept him ever since in entertained remembrance. tom hadden (known to the bulk of sydney folk as tommy) was heir to a considerable property, which a prophetic father had placed in the hands of rigorous trustees. the income supported mr. hadden in splendour for about three months out of twelve; the rest of the year he passed in retreat among the islands. he was now about a week returned from his eclipse, pervading sydney in hansom cabs and airing the first bloom of six new suits of clothes; and yet the unaffected creature hailed carthew in his working jeans and with the damning bundle on his shoulder, as he might have claimed acquaintance with a duke. "come and have a drink?" was his cheerful cry. "i'm just going to have lunch at the paris house," returned carthew. "it's a long time since i have had a decent meal." "splendid scheme!" said hadden. "i've only had breakfast half an hour ago; but we'll have a private room, and i'll manage to pick something. it'll brace me up. i was on an awful tear last night, and i've met no end of fellows this morning." to meet a fellow, and to stand and share a drink, were with tom synonymous terms. they were soon at table in the corner room up-stairs, and paying due attention to the best fare in sydney. the odd similarity of their positions drew them together, and they began soon to exchange confidences. carthew related his privations in the domain, and his toils as a navvy; hadden gave his experience as an amateur copra merchant in the south seas, and drew a humorous picture of life in a coral island. of the two plans of retirement, carthew gathered that his own had been vastly the more lucrative; but hadden's trading outfit had consisted largely of bottled stout and brown sherry for his own consumption. "i had champagne too," said hadden, "but i kept that in case of sickness, until i didn't seem to be going to be sick, and then i opened a pint every sunday. used to sleep all morning, then breakfast with my pint of fizz, and lie in a hammock and read hallam's middle ages. have you read that? i always take something solid to the islands. there's no doubt i did the thing in rather a fine style; but if it was gone about a little cheaper, or there were two of us to bear the expense, it ought to pay hand over fist. i've got the influence, you see. i'm a chief now, and sit in the speak-house under my own strip of roof i'd like to see them taboo me! they daren't try it; i've a strong party, i can tell you. why, i've had upwards of thirty cowtops sitting in my front verandah eating tins of salmon." "cowtops?" asked carthew, "what are they?" "that's what hallam would call feudal retainers," explained hadden, not without vainglory. "they're my followers. they belong to my family. i tell you, they come expensive, though; you can't fill up all these retainers on tinned salmon for nothing; but whenever i could get it, i would give 'em squid. squid's good for natives, but i don't care for it, do you?--or shark either. it's like the working classes at home. with copra at the price it is, they ought to be willing to bear their share of the loss; and so i've told them again and again. i think it's a man's duty to open their minds, and i try to, but you can't get political economy into them; it doesn't seem to reach their intelligence." there was an expression still sticking in carthew's memory, and he returned upon it with a smile. "talking of political economy," said he, "you said if there were two of us to bear the expense, the profits would increase. how do you make out that?" "i'll show you! i'll figure it out for you!" cried hadden, and with a pencil on the back of the bill of fare proceeded to perform miracles. he was a man, or let us rather say a lad, of unusual projective power. give him the faintest hint of any speculation, and the figures flowed from him by the page. a lively imagination, and a ready, though inaccurate memory, supplied his data; he delivered himself with an inimitable heat that made him seem the picture of pugnacity; lavished contradiction; had a form of words, with or without significance, for every form of criticism; and the looker-on alternately smiled at his simplicity and fervour, or was amazed by his unexpected shrewdness. he was a kind of pinkerton in play. i have called jim's the romance of business; this was its arabian tale. "have you any idea what this would cost?" he asked, pausing at an item. "not i," said carthew. "ten pounds ought to be ample," concluded the projector. "o, nonsense!" cried carthew. "fifty at the very least." "you told me yourself this moment you knew nothing about it!" cried tommy. "how can i make a calculation if you blow hot and cold? you don't seem able to be serious!" but he consented to raise his estimate to twenty; and a little after, the calculation coming out with a deficit, cut it down again to five pounds ten, with the remark, "i told you it was nonsense. this sort of thing has to be done strictly, or where's the use?" some of these processes struck carthew as unsound; and he was at times altogether thrown out by the capricious startings of the prophet's mind. these plunges seemed to be gone into for exercise and by the way, like the curvets of a willing horse. gradually the thing took shape; the glittering if baseless edifice arose; and the hare still ran on the mountains, but the soup was already served in silver plate. carthew in a few days could command a hundred and fifty pounds; hadden was ready with five hundred; why should they not recruit a fellow or two more, charter an old ship, and go cruising on their own account? carthew was an experienced yachtsman; hadden professed himself able to "work an approximate sight." money was undoubtedly to be made, or why should so many vessels cruise about the islands? they, who worked their own ship, were sure of a still higher profit. "and whatever else comes of it, you see," cried hadden, "we get our keep for nothing.--come, buy some togs, that's the first thing you have to do of course; and then we'll take a hansom and go to the currency lass." "i'm going to stick to the togs i have," said norris. "are you?" cried hadden. "well, i must say i admire you. you're a regular sage. it's what you call pythagoreanism, isn't it? if i haven't forgotten my philosophy." "well, i call it economy," returned carthew. "if we are going to try this thing on, i shall want every sixpence. "you'll see if we're going to try it!" cried tommy, rising radiant from table. "only, mark you, carthew, it must be all in your name. i have capital, you see; but you're all right. you can play vacuus viator if the thing goes wrong." "i thought we had just proved it was quite safe," said carthew. "there's nothing safe in business, my boy," replied the sage; "not even bookmaking." the public-house and tea-garden called the currency lass represented a moderate fortune gained by its proprietor, captain bostock, during a long, active, and occasionally historic career, among the islands. anywhere from tonga to the admiralty isles, he knew the ropes and could lie in the native dialect. he had seen the end of sandalwood, the end of oil, and the beginning of copra; and he was himself a commercial pioneer, the first that ever carried human teeth into the gilberts. he was tried for his life in fiji in sir arthur gordon's time; and if ever he prayed at all, the name of sir arthur was certainly not forgotten. he was speared in seven places in new ireland--the same time his mate was killed--the famous "outrage on the brig jolly roger"; but the treacherous savages made little by their wickedness, and bostock, in spite of their teeth, got seventy-five head of volunteer labour on board, of whom not more than a dozen died of injuries. he had a hand, besides, in the amiable pleasantry which cost the life of patteson; and when the sham bishop landed, prayed, and gave his benediction to the natives, bostock, arrayed in a female chemise out of the traderoom, had stood at his right hand and boomed amens. this, when he was sure he was among good fellows, was his favourite yarn. "two hundred head of labour for a hatful of amens," he used to name the tale; and its sequel, the death of the real bishop, struck him as a circumstance of extraordinary humour. many of these details were communicated in the hansom, to the surprise of carthew. "why do we want to visit this old ruffian?" he asked. "you wait till you hear him," replied tommy. "that man knows everything." on descending from the hansom at the currency lass, hadden was struck with the appearance of the cabman, a gross, salt-looking man, red-faced, blue-eyed, shorthanded and short-winded, perhaps nearing forty. "surely i know you?" said he. "have you driven me before?" "many's the time, mr. hadden," returned the driver. "the last time you was back from the islands it was me that drove you to the races, sir." "all right: jump down and have a drink then," said tom, and he turned and led the way into the garden. captain bostock met the party: he was a slow, sour old man, with fishy eyes; greeted tommy off-hand, and (as was afterwards remembered) exchanged winks with the driver. "a bottle of beer for the cabman there at that table," said tom. "whatever you please from shandygaff to champagne at this one here; and you sit down with us. let me make you acquainted with my friend mr. carthew. i've come on business, billy; i want to consult you as a friend; i'm going into the island trade upon my own account." doubtless the captain was a mine of counsel, but opportunity was denied him. he could not venture on a statement, he was scarce allowed to finish a phrase, before hadden swept him from the field with a volley of protest and correction. that projector, his face blazing with inspiration, first laid before him at inordinate length a question, and as soon as he attempted to reply, leaped at his throat, called his facts into question, derided his policy, and at times thundered on him from the heights of moral indignation. "i beg your pardon," he said once. "i am a gentleman, mr. carthew here is a gentleman, and we don't mean to do that class of business. can't you see who you are talking to? can't you talk sense? can't you give us "a dead bird" for a good traderoom?" "no, i don't suppose i can," returned old bostock; "not when i can't hear my own voice for two seconds together. it was gin and guns i did it with." "take your gin and guns to putney," cried hadden. "it was the thing in your times, that's right enough; but you're old now, and the game's up. i'll tell you what's wanted nowadays, bill bostock," said he; and did, and took ten minutes to it. carthew could not refrain from smiling. he began to think less seriously of the scheme, hadden appearing too irresponsible a guide; but on the other hand, he enjoyed himself amazingly. it was far from being the same with captain bostock. "you know a sight, don't you?" remarked that gentleman bitterly, when tommy paused. "i know a sight more than you, if that's what you mean," retorted tom. "it stands to reason i do. you're not a man of any education; you've been all your life at sea, or in the islands; you don't suppose you can give points to a man like me?" "here's your health, tommy," returned bostock. "you'll make an a1 bake in the new hebrides." "that's what i call talking," cried tom, not perhaps grasping the spirit of this doubtful compliment. "now you give me your attention. we have the money and the enterprise, and i have the experience; what we want is a cheap, smart boat, a good captain, and an introduction to some house that will give us credit for the trade." "well, i'll tell you," said captain bostock. "i have seen men like you baked and eaten, and complained of afterwards. some was tough, and some hadn't no flaviour," he added grimly. "what do you mean by that?" cried tom. "i mean i don't care," cried bostock. "it ain't any of my interests. i haven't underwrote your life. only i'm blest if i'm not sorry for the cannibal as tries to eat your head. and what i recommend is a cheap, smart coffin and a good undertaker. see if you can find a house to give you credit for a coffin! look at your friend there: he's got some sense; he's laughing at you so as he can't stand." the exact degree of ill-feeling in mr. bostock's mind was difficult to gauge; perhaps there was not much, perhaps he regarded his remarks as a form of courtly badinage. but there is little doubt that hadden resented them. he had even risen from his place, and the conference was on the point of breaking up when a new voice joined suddenly in the conversation. the cabman sat with his back turned upon the party, smoking a meerschaum pipe. not a word of tommy's eloquence had missed him, and he now faced suddenly about with these amazing words-"excuse me, gentlemen; if you'll buy me the ship i want, i'll get you the trade on credit." there was a pause. "well, what do you, mean?" gasped tommy. "better tell 'em who i am, billy," said the cabman. "think it safe, joe?" inquired mr. bostock. "i'll take my risk of it," returned the cabman. "gentlemen," said bostock, rising suddenly, "let me make you acquainted with captain wicks of the grace darling." "yes, gentlemen, that is what i am," said the cab-man. "you know i've been in trouble, and i don't deny but what i struck the blow, and where was i to get evidence of my provocation? so i turned to and took a cab, and i've driven one for three year now, and nobody the wiser." "i beg your pardon," said carthew, joining almost for the first time, "i'm a new chum. what was the charge?" "murder," said captain wicks, "and i don't deny but what i struck the blow. and there's no sense in my trying to deny i was afraid to go to trial, or why would i be here? but it's a fact it was flat mutiny. ask billy here. he knows how it was." carthew breathed long; he had a strange, halfpleasurable sense of wading deeper in the tide of life. "well," said he, "you were going on to say?" "i was going on to say this," said the captain sturdily. "i've overheard what mr. hadden has been saying, and i think he talks good sense. i like some of his ideas first chop. he's sound on traderooms; he's all there on the traderoom, and i see that he and i would pull together. then you're both gentlemen, and i like that," observed captain wicks. "and then i'll tell you i'm tired of this cabbing cruise, and i want to get to work again. now, here's my offer. i've a little money i can stakeup--all of a hundred anyway. then my old firm will give me trade, and jump at the chance; they never lost by me; they know what i'm worth as supercargo. and, last of all, you want a good captain to sail your ship for you. well, here i am. i've sailed schooners for ten years. ask billy if i can handle a schooner." "no man better," said billy. "and as for my character as a shipmate," concluded wicks, "go and ask my old firm." "but, look here!" cried hadden, "how do you mean to manage? you can whisk round in a hansom and no questions asked; but if you try to come on a quarterdeck, my boy, you'll get nabbed." "i'll have to keep back till the last," replied wicks, "and take another name." "but how about clearing? what other name?" asked tommy, a little bewildered. "i don't know yet," returned the captain, with a grin. "i'll see what the name is on my new certificate, and that'll be good enough for me. if i can't get one to buy, though i never heard of such a thing, there's old kirkup, he's turned some sort of farmer down bondi way; he'll hire me his." "you seemed to speak as if you had a ship in view," said carthew. "so i have too," said captain wicks, "and a beauty. schooner yacht dream--got lines you never saw the beat of, and a witch to go. she passed me once off thursday island, doing two knots to my one and lying a point and a half better, and the grace darling was a ship that i was proud of i took and tore my hair. the dream's been my dream ever since. that was in her old days, when she carried a blue ens'n. grant sanderson was the party as owned her; he was rich and mad, and got a fever at last somewhere about the fly river and took and died. the captain brought the body back to sydney and paid off. well, it turned out grant sanderson had left any quantity of wills and any quantity of widows, and no fellow could make out which was the genuine article. all the widows brought lawsuits against all the rest, and every will had a firm of lawyers on the quarter-deck as long as your arm. they tell me it was one of the biggest turns-to that ever was seen, bar tichborne; the lord chamberlain himself was floored, and so was the lord chancellor, and all that time the dream lay rotting up by glebe point. well, it's done now; they've picked out a widow and a will--tossed up for it, as like as not--and the dream's for sale. she'll go cheap; she's had a long turn-to at rotting." "what size is she?" "well, big enough. we don't want her bigger. a hundred and ninety, going two hundred," replied the captain. "she's fully big for us three; it would be all the better if we had another hand, though it's a pity too, when you can pick up natives for half nothing. then we must have a cook. i can fix raw sailor-men, but there's no going to sea with a new-chum cook. i can lay hands on the man we want for that: a highway boy, an old shipmate of mine, of the name of amalu. cooks first-rate, and it's always better to have a native; he ain't fly, you can turn him to as you please, and he don't know enough to stand out for his rights." from the moment that captain wicks joined in the conversation carthew recovered interest and confidence; the man (whatever he might have done) was plainly goodnatured, and plainly capable; if he thought well of the enterprise, offered to contribute money, brought experience, and could thus solve at a word the problem of the trade, carthew was content to go ahead. as for hadden, his cup was full; he and bostock forgave each other in champagne; toast followed toast; it was proposed and carried amid acclamation to change the name of the schooner (when she should be bought) to the currency lass; and the "currency lass island trading company " was practically founded before dusk. three days later, carthew stood before the lawyer, still in his jean suit, received his hundred and fifty pounds, and proceeded rather timidly to ask for more indulgence. "i have a chance to get on in the world," he said. "by to-morrow evening i expect to be part owner of a ship." "dangerous property, mr. carthew," said the lawyer. "not if the partners work her themselves, and stand to go down along with her," was the reply. "i conceive it possible you might make something of it in that way," returned the other. "but are you a seaman? i thought you had been in the diplomatic service." "i am an old yachtsman," said norris; "and i must do the best i can. a fellow can't live in new south wales upon diplomacy. but the point i wish to prepare you for is this. it will be impossible i should present myself here next quarter-day; we expect to make a six months' cruise of it among the islands." "sorry, mr. carthew: i can't hear of that," replied the lawyer. "i mean upon the same conditions as the last," said carthew. "the conditions are exactly opposite," said the lawyer. "last time i had reason to know you were in the colony, and even then i stretched a point. this time, by your own confession, you are contemplating a breach of the agreement; and i give you warning if you carry it out, and i receive proof of it (for i will agree to regard this conversation as confidential), i shall have no choice but to do my duty. be here on quarter-day, or your allowance ceases." "this is very hard, and, i think, rather silly," returned carthew. "it is not of my doing. i have my instructions," said the lawyer. "and you so read these instructions that i am to be prohibited from making an honest livelihood?" asked carthew. "let us be frank," said the lawyer; "i find nothing in these instructions about an honest livelihood. i have no reason to suppose my clients care anything about that. i have reason to suppose only one thing--that they mean you shall stay in this colony, and to guess another, mr. carthew. and to guess another." "what do you mean by that?" asked norris. "i mean that i imagine, on very strong grounds, that your family desire to see no more of you," said the lawyer. "o, they may be very wrong; but that is the impression conveyed, that is what i suppose i am paid to bring about, and i have no choice but to try and earn my hire." "i would scorn to deceive you," said norris, with a strong flush; "you have guessed rightly. my family refuse to see me; but i am not going to england, i am going to the islands. how does that affect the islands?" "ah, but i don't know that you are going to the islands, said the lawyer, looking down, and spearing the blotting-paper with a pencil. "i beg your pardon. i have the pleasure of informing you," said norris. "i am afraid, mr. carthew, that i cannot regard that communication as official," was the slow reply. "i am not accustomed to have my word doubted!" cried norris. "hush! i allow no one to raise his voice in my office," said the lawyer. "and for that matter--you seem to be a young gentleman of sense--consider what i know of you. you are a discarded son; your family pays money to be shut of you. what have you done? i don't know. but do you not see how foolish i should be, if i exposed my business reputation on the safeguard of the honour of a gentleman of whom i know just so much and no more? this interview is very disagreeable. why prolong it? write home, get my instructions changed, and i will change my behaviour. not otherwise." "i am very fond of three hundred a year," said norris, "but i cannot pay the price required. i shall not have the pleasure of seeing you again." "you must please yourself," said the lawyer. "fail to be here next quarter-day, and the thing stops. but i warn you, and i mean the warning in a friendly spirit. three months later you will be here begging, and i shall have no choice but to show you in the street." "i wish you a good-evening," said norris. "the same to you, mr. carthew," retorted the lawyer, and rang for his clerk. so it befell that norris, during what remained to him of arduous days in sydney, saw not again the face of his legal adviser; and he was already at sea, and land was out of sight, when hadden brought him a sydney paper, over which he had been dozing in the shadow of the galley, and showed him an advertisement: "mr. norris carthew is earnestly entreated to call without delay at the office of mr. ----, where important intelligence awaits him." "it must manage to wait for me six months," said norris lightly enough, but yet conscious of a pang of curiosity. chapter xxiii the budget of the "currency lass" before noon, on the 26th november, there cleared from the port of sydney the schooner currency lass. the owner, norris carthew, was on board in the somewhat unusual position of mate; the master's name purported to be william kirkup; the cook was a hawaiian boy, joseph amalu; and there were two hands before the mast, thomas hadden and richard hemstead, the latter chosen partly because of his humble character, partly because he had an odd-jobman's handiness with tools. the currency lass was bound for the south sea islands, and first of all for butaritari in the gilberts, on a register; but it was understood about the harbour that her cruise was more than half a pleasure trip. a friend of the late grant sanderson (of auchentroon and kilclarty) might have recognised in that tall-masted ship the transformed and rechristened dream; and the lloyd's surveyor, had the services of such a one been called in requisition, must have found abundant subject of remark. for time, during her three years' inaction, had eaten deep into the dream and her fittings; she had sold in consequence a shade above her value as old junk; and the three adventurers had scarce been able to afford even the most vital repairs. the rigging, indeed, had been partly renewed, and the rest set up; all grant sanderson's old canvas had been patched together into one decently serviceable suit of sails; grant sanderson's masts still stood, and might have wondered at themselves. "i haven't the heart to tap them," captain wicks used to observe, as he squinted up their height or patted their rotundity; and "as rotten as our foremast" was an accepted metaphor in the ship's company. the sequel rather suggests it may have been sounder than was thought; but no one knew for certain, just as no one except the captain appreciated the dangers of the cruise. the captain, indeed, saw with clear eyes and spoke his mind aloud; and though a man of an astonishing hot-blooded courage, following life and taking its dangers in the spirit of a hound upon the slot, he had made a point of a big whaleboat. "take your choice," he had said; "either new masts and rigging or that boat. i simply ain't going to sea without the one or the other. chicken-coops are good enough, no doubt, and so is a dinghy; but they ain't for joe." and his partners had been forced to consent, and saw six-and-thirty pounds of their small capital vanish in the turn of a hand. all four had toiled the best part of six weeks getting ready; and though captain wicks was of course not seen or heard of, a fifth was there to help them, a fellow in a bushy red beard, which he would sometimes lay aside when he was below, and who strikingly resembled captain wicks in voice and character. as for captain kirkup, he did not appear till the last moment, when he proved to be a burly mariner, bearded like abou ben adhem. all the way down the harbour and through the heads, his milk-white whiskers blew in the wind and were conspicuous from shore; but the currency lass had no sooner turned her back upon the lighthouse than he went below for the inside of five seconds and reappeared clean shaven. so many doublings and devices were required to get to sea with an unseaworthy ship and a captain that was "wanted." nor might even these have sufficed, but for the fact that hadden was a public character, and the whole cruise regarded with an eye of indulgence as one of tom's engaging eccentricities. the ship, besides, had been a yacht before: and it came the more natural to allow her still some of the dangerous liberties of her old employment. a strange ship they had made of it, her lofty spars disfigured with patched canvas, her panelled cabin fitted for a traderoom with rude shelves. and the life they led in that anomalous schooner was no less curious than herself amalu alone berthed forward; the rest occupied staterooms, camped upon the satin divans, and sat down in grant sanderson's parquetry smoking-room to meals of junk and potatoes, bad of their kind, and often scant in quantity. hemstead grumbled; tommy had occasional moments of revolt, and increased the ordinary by a few haphazard tins or a bottle of his own brown sherry. but hemstead grumbled from habit, tommy revolted only for the moment, and there was underneath a real and general acquiescence in these hardships. for besides onions and potatoes, the currency lass may be said to have gone to sea without stores. she carried two thousand pounds' worth of assorted trade, advanced on credit, their whole hope and fortune. it was upon this that they subsisted--mice in their own granary. they dined upon their future profits; and every scanty meal was so much in the savings bank. republican as were their manners, there was no practical, at least no dangerous, lack of discipline. wicks was the only sailor on board, there was none to criticise; and besides, he was so easy-going, and so merry-minded, that none could bear to disappoint him. carthew did his best, partly for the love of doing it, partly for love of the captain; amalu was a willing drudge, and even hemstead and hadden turned to upon occasion with a will. tommy's department was the trade and traderoom; he would work down in the hold or over the shelves of the cabin, till the sydney dandy was unrecognisable; come up at last, draw a bucket of seawater, bathe, change, and lie down on deck over a big sheaf of sydney heralds and dead birds, or perhaps with a volume of buckle's history of civilisation, the standard work selected for that cruise. in the latter case a smile went round the ship, for buckle almost invariably laid his student out, and when tom awoke again he was almost always in the humour for brown sherry. the connection was so well established that "a glass of buckle" or "a bottle of civilisation" became current pleasantries on board the currency lass. hemstead's province was that of the repairs, and he had his hands full. nothing on board but was decayed in a proportion: the lamps leaked, so did the decks; doorknobs came off in the hand, mouldings parted company with the panels, the pump declined to suck, and the defective bathroom came near to swamp the ship. wicks insisted that all the nails were long ago consumed, and that she was only glued together by the rust. "you shouldn't make me laugh so much, tommy," he would say. "i'm afraid i'll shake the sternpost out of her." and, as hemstead went to and fro with his tool-basket on an endless round of tinkering, wicks lost no opportunity of chaffing him upon his duties. "if you'd turn to at sailoring or washing paint or something useful, now," he would say, "i could see the fun of it. but to be mending things that haven't no insides to them appears to me the height of foolishness." and doubtless these continual pleasantries helped to reassure the landsmen, who went to and fro unmoved, under circumstances that might have daunted nelson. the weather was from the outset splendid, and the wind fair and steady. the ship sailed like a witch. "this currency lass is a powerful old girl, and has more complaints than i would care to put a name on," the captain would say, as he pricked the chart; "but she could show her blooming heels to anything of her size in the western pacific." to wash decks, relieve the wheel, do the day's work after dinner on the smokingroom table, and take in kites at night--such was the easy routine of their life. in the evening--above all, if tommy had produced some of his civilisation--yarns and music were the rule. amalu had a sweet hawaiian voice; and hemstead, a great hand upon the banjo, accompanied his own quavering tenor with effect. there was a sense in which the little man could sing. it was great to hear him deliver "my boy tammie" in austrylian; and the words (some of the worst of the ruffian macneill's) were hailed in his version with inextinguishable mirth. "where hye ye been a' dye?" he would ask, and answer himself:- "i've been by burn and flowery brye, meadow green and mountain grye, courtin' o' this young thing, just come frye her mammie." it was the accepted jest for all hands to greet the conclusion of this song with the simultaneous cry, "my word!" thus winging the arrow of ridicule with a feather from the singer's wing. but he had his revenge with "home, sweet home," and "where is my wandering boy to-night?"--ditties into which he threw the most intolerable pathos. it appeared he had no home, nor had ever had one, nor yet any vestige of a family, except a truculent uncle, a baker in newcastle, n.s.w. his domestic sentiment was therefore wholly in the air, and expressed an unrealised ideal. or perhaps, of all his experiences, this of the currency lass, with its kindly, playful, and tolerant society, approached it the most nearly. it is perhaps because i know the sequel, but i can never think upon this voyage without a profound sense of pity and mystery; of the ship (once the whim of a rich blackguard) faring with her battered fineries and upon her homely errand, across the plains of ocean, and past the gorgeous scenery of dawn and sunset; and the ship's company, so strangely assembled, so britishly chuckle-headed, filling their days with chaff in place of conversation; no human book on board with them except hadden's buckle, and not a creature fit either to read or to understand it; and the one mark of any civilised interest being when carthew filled in his spare hours with the pencil and the brush: the whole unconscious crew of them posting in the meanwhile towards so tragic a disaster. twenty-eight days out of sydney, on christmas eve, they fetched up to the entrance of the lagoon, and plied all that night outside, keeping their position by the lights of fishers on the reef, and the outlines of the palms against the cloudy sky. with the break of day the schooner was hove-to, and the signal for a pilot shown. but it was plain her lights must have been observed in the darkness by the native fishermen, and word carried to the settlement, for a boat was already under weigh. she came towards them across the lagoon under a great press of sail, lying dangerously down, so that at times, in the heavier puffs, they thought she would turn turtle; covered the distance in fine style, luffed up smartly alongside, and emitted a haggardlooking white man in pyjamas. "good-mornin', cap'n," said he, when he had made good his entrance. "i was taking you for a fiji man-of-war, what with your flush decks and them spars. well, gen'lemen all, here's wishing you a merry christmas and a happy new year," he added, and lurched against a stay. "why, you're never the pilot?" exclaimed wicks, studying him with a profound disfavour. "you've never taken a ship in--don't tell me!" "well, i should guess i have," returned the pilot. "i'm captain dobbs, i am; and when i take charge, the captain of that ship can go below and shave." "but, man alive! you're drunk, man!" cried the captain. "drunk!" repeated dobbs. "you can't have seen much life if you call me drunk. i'm only just beginning. come night, i won't say; i guess i'll be properly full by then. but now i'm the soberest man in all big muggin." "it won't do," retorted wicks. "not for joseph, sir. i can't have you piling up my schooner." "all right," said dobbs, "lay and rot where you are, or take and go in and pile her up for yourself like the captain of the leslie. that's business, i guess; grudged me twenty dollars' pilotage, and lost twenty thousand in trade and a brand-new schooner; ripped the keel right off of her, and she went down in the inside of four minutes, and lies in twenty fathom, trade and all." "what's all this?" cried wicks. "trade? what vessel was this leslie, anyhow?" "consigned to cohen and co., from 'frisco," returned the pilot, "and badly wanted. there's a barque inside filling up for hamburg--you see her spars over there; and there's two more ships due, all the way from germany, one in two months, they say, and one in three; cohen and co.'s agent (that's mr. topelius) has taken and lain down with the jaundice on the strength of it. i guess most people would, in his shoes; no trade, no copra, and twenty hundred ton of shipping due. if you've any copra on board, cap'n, here's your chance. topelius will buy, gold down, and give three cents. it's all found money to him, the way it is, whatever he pays for it. and that's what come of going back on the pilot." "excuse me one moment, captain dobbs. i wish to speak with my mate," said the captain, whose face had begun to shine and his eyes to sparkle. "please yourself," replied the pilot.--"you couldn't think of offering a man a nip, could you? just to brace him up. this kind of thing looks damned inhospitable, and gives a schooner a bad name." "i'll talk about that after the anchor's down," returned wicks, and he drew carthew forward.--"i say," he whispered, "here's a fortune." "how much do you call that?" asked carthew. "i can't put a figure on it yet--i daren't!" said the captain. "we might cruise twenty years and not find the match of it. and suppose another ship came in tonight? everything's possible! and the difficulty is this dobbs. he's as drunk as a marine. how can we trust him? we ain't insured--worse luck!" "suppose you took him aloft and got him to point out the channel?" suggested carthew. "if he tallied at all with the chart, and didn't fall out of the rigging, perhaps we might risk it." "well, all's risk here," returned the captain. "take the wheel yourself, and stand by. mind, if there's two orders, follow mine, not his. set the cook for'ard with the heads'ls, and the two others at the main sheet, and see they don't sit on it." with that he called the pilot; they swarmed aloft in the fore rigging, and presently after there was bawled down the welcome order to ease sheets and fill away. at a quarter before nine o'clock on christmas morning the anchor was let go. the first cruise of the currency lass had thus ended in a stroke of fortune almost beyond hope. she had brought two thousand pounds' worth of trade, straight as a homing pigeon, to the place where it was most required. and captain wicks (or, rather, captain kirkup) showed himself the man to make the best of his advantage. for hard upon two days he walked a verandah with topelius, for hard upon two days his partners watched from the neighbouring public-house the field of battle; and the lamps were not yet lighted on the evening of the second before the enemy surrendered. wicks came across to the sans souci, as the saloon was called, his face nigh black, his eyes almost closed and all bloodshot, and yet bright as lighted matches. "come out here, boys," he said; and when they were some way off among the palms, "i hold twenty-four," he added in a voice scarcely recognisable, and doubtless referring to the venerable game of cribbage. "what do you mean?" asked tommy. "i've sold the trade," answered wicks; "or, rather, i've sold only some of it, for i've kept back all the mess beef, and half the flour and biscuit, and, by god, we're still provisioned for four months! by god, it's as good as stolen!" "my word!" cried hemstead. "but what have you sold it for?" gasped carthew, the captain's almost insane excitement shaking his nerve. "let me tell it my own way," cried wicks, loosening his neck. "let me get at it gradual or i'll explode. i've not only sold it, boys, i've wrung out a charter on my own terms to 'frisco and back,--on my own terms. i made a point of it. i fooled him first by making believe i wanted copra, which, of course, i knew he wouldn't hear of--couldn't, in fact; and whenever he showed fight i trotted out the copra, and that man dived! i would take nothing but copra, you see; and so i've got the blooming lot in specie--all but two short bills on 'frisco. and the sum? well, this whole adventure, including two thousand pounds of credit, cost us two thousand seven hundred and some odd. that's all paid back; in thirty days' cruise we've paid for the schooner and the trade. heard ever any man the match of that? and it's not all! for besides that," said the captain, hammering his words, "we've got thirteen blooming hundred pounds of profit to divide. i bled him in four thou.!" he cried, in a voice that broke like a schoolboy's. for a moment the partners looked upon their chief with stupefaction, incredulous surprise their only feeling. tommy was the first to grasp the consequences. "here," he said in a hard business tone, "come back to that saloon: i've got to get drunk." "you must please excuse me, boys," said the captain earnestly. "i daren't taste nothing. if i was to drink one glass of beer it's my belief i'd have the apoplexy. the last scrimmage and the blooming triumph pretty nigh-hand done me." "well, then, three cheers for the captain," proposed tommy. but wicks held up a shaking hand. "not that either, boys," he pleaded. "think of the other buffer, and let him down easy. if i'm like this, just fancy what topelius is. if he heard us singing out, he'd have the staggers." as a matter of fact, topelius accepted his defeat with a good grace; but the crew of the wrecked leslie, who were in the same employment, and loyal to their firm, took the thing more bitterly. rough words and ugly looks were common. once even they hooted captain wicks from the saloon verandah; the currency lasses drew out on the other side; for some minutes there had like to have been a battle in butaritari; and though the occasion passed off without blows, it left on either side an increase of ill-feeling. no such small matter could affect the happiness of the successful traders. five days more the ship lay in the lagoon, with little employment for any one but tommy and the captain, for topelius's natives discharged cargo and brought ballast. the time passed like a pleasant dream; the adventurers sat up half the night debating and praising their good fortune, or strayed by day in the narrow isle gaping like cockney tourists, and on the first of the new year the currency lass weighed anchor for the second time and set sail for 'frisco, attended by the same fine weather and good luck. she crossed the doldrums with but small delay; on a wind and in ballast of broken coral she outdid expectations; and, what added to the happiness of the ship's company, the small amount of work that fell on them to do was now lessened by the presence of another hand. this was the boatswain of the leslie. he had been on bad terms with his own captain, had already spent his wages in the saloons of butaritari, had wearied of the place, and while all his shipmates coldly refused to set foot on board the currency lass, he had offered to work his passage to the coast. he was a north of ireland man, between scotch and irish, rough, loud, humorous, and emotional, not without sterling qualities, and an expert and careful sailor. his frame of mind was different indeed from that of his new shipmates. instead of making an unexpected fortune he had lost a berth, and he was besides disgusted with the rations, and really appalled at the condition of the schooner. a stateroom door had stuck the first day at sea, and mac (as they called him) laid his strength to it and plucked it from the hinges. "glory!" said he, "this ship's rotten!" "i believe you, my boy," said captain wicks. the next day the sailor was observed with his nose aloft. "don't you get looking at these sticks," the captain said, "or you'll have a fit and fall overboard." mac turned towards the speaker with rather a wild eye. "why, i see what looks like a patch of dry rot up yonder, that i bet i could stick my fist into," said he. "looks as if a fellow could stick his head into it, don't it?" returned wicks. "but there's no good prying into things that can't be mended." "i think i was a currency ass to come on board of her!" reflected mac. "well, i never said she was seaworthy," replied the captain; "i only said she could show her blooming heels to anything afloat. and besides, i don't know that it's dry rot; i kind of sometimes hope it isn't.--here; turn to and heave the log; that'll cheer you up." "well, there's no denying it, you're a holy captain," said mac. and from that day on he made but the one reference to the ship's condition; and that was whenever tommy drew upon his cellar. "here's to the junk trade!" he would say, as he held out his can of sherry. "why do you always say that?" asked tommy. "i had an uncle in the business," replied mac, and launched at once into a yarn, in which an incredible number of the characters were "laid out as nice as you would want to see," and the oaths made up about twofifths of every conversation. only once he gave them a taste of his violence; he talked of it, indeed, often; "i'm rather a voilent man," he would say, not without pride; but this was the only specimen. of a sudden he turned on hemstead in the ship's waist, knocked him against the foresail boom, then knocked him under it, and had set him up and knocked him down once more, before any one had drawn a breath. "here! belay that!" roared wicks, leaping to his feet. "i won't have none of this." mac turned to the captain with ready civility. "i only want to learn him manners," said he. "he took and called me irishman." "did he?" said wicks. "o, that's a different story!-"that made you do it, you tomfool? you ain't big enough to call any man that." "i didn't call him it," spluttered hemstead, through his blood and tears. "i only mentioned-like he was." "well, let's have no more of it," said wicks. "but you are irish, ain't you?" carthew asked of his new shipmate shortly after. "i may be," replied mac, "but i'll allow no sydney duck to call me so. no," he added, with a sudden heated countenance, "nor any britisher that walks! why, look here," he went on, "you're a young swell, aren't you? suppose i called you that!" i'll show you," you would say, and turn to and take it out of me straight." on the 28th of january, when in lat. 27 degrees 20" n., long. 177 degrees w., the wind chopped suddenly into the west, not very strong, but puffy and with flaws of rain. the captain, eager for easting, made a fair wind of it and guyed the booms out wing and wing. it was tommy's trick at the wheel, and as it was within half an hour of the relief (7.30 in the morning), the captain judged it not worth while to change him. the puffs were heavy, but short; there was nothing to be called a squall, no danger to the ship, and scarce more than usual to the doubtful spars. all hands were on deck in their oilskins, expecting breakfast; the galley smoked, the ship smelt of coffee, all were in good humour to be speeding east-ward a full nine; when the rotten foresail tore suddenly between two cloths, and then split to either hand. it was for all the world as though some archangel with a huge sword had slashed it with the figure of a cross; all hands ran to secure the slatting canvas; and in the sudden uproar and alert, tommy hadden lost his head. many of his days have been passed since then in explaining how the thing happened; of these explanations it will be sufficient to say that they were all different, and none satisfactory: and the gross fact remains that the main boom gybed, carried away the tackle, broke the mainmast some three feet above the deck and whipped it over-board. for near a minute the suspected foremast gallantly resisted; then followed its companion; and by the time the wreck was cleared, of the whole beautiful fabric that enabled them to skim the seas, two ragged stumps remained. in these vast and solitary waters, to be dismasted is perhaps the worst calamity. let the ship turn turtle and go down, and at least the pang is over. but men chained on a hulk may pass months scanning the empty sea-line and counting the steps of death's invisible approach. there is no help but in the boats, and what a help is that! there heaved the currency lass, for instance, a wingless lump, and the nearest human coast (that of kauai in the sandwiches) lay about a thousand miles to south and east of her. over the way there, to men contemplating that passage in an open boat, all kinds of misery, and the fear of death and of madness, brooded. a serious company sat down to breakfast; but the captain helped his neighbours with a smile. "now, boys," he said, after a pull at the hot coffee, "we're done with this currency lass and no mistake. one good job: we made her pay while she lasted, and she paid first-rate; and if we were to try our hand again, we can try in style. another good job: we have a fine, stiff, roomy boat, and you know who you have to thank for that. we've got six lives to save, and a pot of money; and the point is, where are we to take 'em?" "it's all two thousand miles to the nearest of the sandwiches, i fancy," observed mac. "no, not so bad as that," returned the captain. "but it's bad enough; rather better'n a thousand." "i know a man who once did twelve hundred in a boat," said mac, "and he had all he wanted. he fetched ashore in the marquesas, and never set a foot on anything floating from that day to this. he said he would rather put a pistol to his head and knock his brains out." "ay, ay!" said wicks. "well i remember a boat's crew that made this very island of kauai, and from just about where we lie, or a bit further. when they got up with the land they were clean crazy. there was an iron-bound coast and an old bob ridley of a surf on. the natives hailed 'em from fishing-boats, and sung out it couldn't be done at the money. much they cared! there was the land, that was all they knew; and they turned to and drove the boat slap ashore in the thick of it, and was all drowned but one. no; boat trips are my eye," concluded the captain gloomily. the tone was surprising in a man of his indomitable temper. "come, captain," said carthew, "you have something else up your sleeve; out with it!" "it's a fact," admitted wicks. "you see there's a raft of little bally reefs about here, kind of chicken-pox on the chart. well, i looked 'em all up, and there's one--midway or brooks they call it, not forty mile from our assigned position--that i got news of. it turns out it's a coaling station of the pacific mail," he said simply. "well, and i know it ain't no such a thing," said mac. "i been quartermaster in that line myself." "all right," returned wicks. "there's the book. read what hoyt says--read it aloud and let the others hear." hoyt's falsehood (as readers know) was explicit; incredulity was impossible, and the news itself delightful beyond hope. each saw in his mind's eye the boat draw in to a trim island with a wharf, coal-sheds, gardens, the stars and stripes, and the white cottage of the keeper; saw themselves idle a few weeks in tolerable quarters, and then step on board the china mail, romantic waifs, and yet with pocketsful of money, calling for champagne, and waited on by troops of stewards. breakfast, that had begun so dully, ended amid sober jubilation, and all hands turned immediately to prepare the boat. now that all spars were gone, it was no easy job to get her launched. some of the necessary cargo was first stowed on board: the specie, in particular, being packed in a strong chest and secured with lashings to the afterthwart in case of a capsize. then a piece of the bulwark was razed to the level of the deck, and the boat swung thwart-ship, made fast with a slack line to either stump, and successfully run out. for a voyage of forty miles to hospitable quarters, not much food or water was required; but they took both in superfluity. amalu and mac, both ingrained sailor-men, had chests which were the headquarters of their lives; two more chests with handbags, oilskins, and blankets supplied the others; hadden, amid general applause, added the last case of the brown sherry; the captain brought the log, instruments, and chronometer; nor did hemstead forget the banjo or a pinned handkerchief of butaritari shells. it was about three p.m. when they pushed off, and (the wind being still westerly) fell to the oars. "well, we've got the guts out of you!" was the captain's nodded farewell to the hulk of the currency lass, which presently shrank and faded in the sea. a little after a calm succeeded, with much rain; and the first meal was eaten, and the watch below lay down to their uneasy slumber on the bilge under a roaring showerbath. the 29th dawned overhead from out of ragged clouds; there is no moment when a boat at sea appears so trenchantly black and so conspicuously little; and the crew looked about them at the sky and water with a thrill of loneliness and fear. with sunrise the trade set in, lusty and true to the point; sail was made; the boat flew; and by about four in the afternoon they were well up with the closed part of the reef, and the captain standing on the thwart, and holding by the mast, was studying the island through the binoculars. "well, and where's your station?" cried mac. "i don't someway pick it up," replied the captain. "no, nor never will!" retorted mac, with a clang of despair and triumph in his tones. the truth was soon plain to all. no buoys, no beacons, no lights, no coal, no station; the castaways pulled through a lagoon and landed on an isle, where was no mark of man but wreckwood, and no sound but of the sea. for the sea-fowl that harboured and lived there at the epoch of my visit were then scattered into the uttermost parts of the ocean, and had left no traces of their sojourn besides dropped feathers and addled eggs. it was to this they had been sent, for this they had stooped all night over the dripping oars, hourly moving further from relief. the boat, for as small as it was, was yet eloquent of the hands of men, a thing alone indeed upon the sea, but yet in itself all human; and the isle, for which they had exchanged it, was ingloriously savage, a place of distress, solitude, and hunger unrelieved. there was a strong glare and shadow of the evening over all; in which they sat or lay, not speaking, careless even to eat, men swindled out of life and riches by a lying book. in the great goodnature of the whole party, no word of reproach had been addressed to hadden, the author of these disasters. but the new blow was less magnanimously borne, and many angry glances rested on the captain. yet it was himself who roused them from their lethargy. grudgingly they obeyed, drew the boat beyond tidemark, and followed him to the top of the miserable islet, whence a view was commanded of the whole wheel of the horizon, then part darkened under the coming night, part dyed with the hues of the sunset, and populous with the sunset clouds. here the camp was pitched, and a tent run up with the oars, sails, and mast. and here amalu, at no man's bidding, from the mere instinct of habitual service, built a fire and cooked a meal. night was come, and the stars and the silver sickle of new moon beamed overhead, before the meal was ready. the cold sea shone about them, and the fire glowed in their faces as they ate. tommy had opened his case, and the brown sherry went the round; but it was long before they came to conversation. "well, is it to be kauai, after all?" asked mac suddenly. "this is bad enough for me," said tommy. "let's stick it out where we are." "well, i can tell ye one thing," said mac, "if ye care to hear it: when i was in the china mail we once made this island. it's in the course from honolulu." "deuce it is!" cried carthew. "that settles it, then. let's stay. we must keep good fires going; and there's plenty wreck." "lashings of wreck!" said the irishman. "there's nothing here but wreck and coffin-boards." "but we'll have to make a proper blyze," objected hemstead. "you can't see a fire like this--not any wye awye, i mean." "can't you?" said carthew. "look round." they did, and saw the hollow of the night, the bare, bright face of the sea, and the stars regarding them; and the voices died in their bosoms at the spectacle. in that huge isolation, it seemed they must be visible from china on the one hand and california on the other. "my god, it's dreary!" whispered hemstead. "dreary?" cried mac, and fell suddenly silent. "it's better than a boat, anyway," said hadden. "i've had my bellyful of boat." "what kills me is that specie!" the captain broke out. "think of all that riches--four thousand in gold, bad silver, and short bills--all found money too!--and no more use than that much dung!" "i'll tell you one thing," said tommy. "i don't like it being in the boat--i don't care to have it so far away." "why, who's to take it?" cried mac, with a guffaw of evil laughter. but this was not at all the feeling of the partners, who rose, clambered down the isle, brought back the inestimable treasure-chest slung upon two oars, and set it conspicuous in the shining of the fire. "there's my beauty!" cried wicks, viewing it with a cocked head; "that's better than a bonfire. what! we have a chest here, and bills for close upon two thousand pounds; there's no show to that--it would go in your vest-pocket--but the rest! upwards of forty pounds avoirdupois of coined gold, and close on two hundredweight of chile silver! what! ain't that good enough to fetch a fleet? do you mean to say that won't affect a ship's compass? do you mean to tell me that the look-out won't turn to and smell it?" he cried. mac, who had no part nor lot in the bills, the forty pounds of gold, or the two hundredweight of silver, heard this with impatience, and fell into a bitter, choking laughter. "you'll see!" he said harshly. "you'll be glad to feed them bills into the fire before you're through with ut!" and he turned, passed by himself out of the ring of the fire-light, and stood gazing seaward. his speech and his departure extinguished instantly those sparks of better humour kindled by the dinner and the chest. the group fell again to an ill-favoured silence, and hemstead began to touch the banjo, as was his habit of an evening. his repertory was small: the chords of "home, sweet home" fell under his fingers; and when he had played the symphony, he instinctively raised up his voice. "be it never so 'umble, there's no plyce like 'ome," he sang. the last word was still upon his lips, when the instrument was snatched from him and dashed into the fire; and he turned with a cry to look into the furious countenance of mac. "i'll be damned if i stand this!" cried the captain, leaping up belligerent. "i told ye i was a voilent man," said mac, with a movement of deprecation very surprising in one of his character. "why don't he give me a chance then? haven't we enough to bear the way we are?" and to the wonder and dismay of all, the man choked upon a sob. "it's ashamed of meself i am," he said presently, his irish accent twenty-fold increased. "i ask all your pardons for me voilence; and especially the little man's, who is a harmless craytur, and here's me hand to'm, if he'll condescind to take me by 't." so this scene of barbarity and sentimentalism passed off, leaving behind strange and incongruous impressions. true, every one was perhaps glad when silence succeeded that all too appropriate music; true, mac's apology and subsequent behaviour rather raised him in the opinion of his fellow-castaways. but the discordant note had been struck, and its harmonics tingled in the brain. in that savage, houseless isle, the passions of man had sounded, if only for the moment, and all men trembled at the possibilities of horror. it was determined to stand watch and watch in case of passing vessels; and tommy, on fire with an idea, volunteered to stand the first. the rest crawled under the tent, and were soon enjoying that comfortable gift of sleep, which comes everywhere and to all men, quenching anxieties and speeding time. and no sooner were all settled, no sooner had the drone of many snorers begun to mingle with and overcome the surf, than tommy stole from his post with the case of sherry, and dropped it in a quiet cove in a fathom of water. but the stormy inconstancy of mac's behaviour had no connection with a gill or two of wine; his passions, angry and otherwise, were on a different sail-plan from his neighbours'; and there were possibilities of good and evil in that hybrid celt beyond their prophecy. about two in the morning, the starry sky--or so it seemed, for the drowsy watchman had not observed the approach of any cloud--brimmed over in a deluge; and for three days it rained without remission. the islet was a sponge, the castaways sops; the view all gone, even the reef concealed behind the curtain of the falling water. the fire was soon drowned out; after a couple of boxes of matches had been scratched in vain, it was decided to wait for better weather; and the party lived in wretchedness on raw tins and a ration of hard bread. by the 2nd february, in the dark hours of the morning watch, the clouds were all blown by; the sun rose glorious; and once more the castaways sat by a quick fire, and drank hot coffee with the greed of brutes and sufferers. thenceforward their affairs moved in a routine. a fire was constantly maintained; and this occupied one hand continuously, and the others for an hour or so in the day. twice a day all hands bathed in the lagoon, their chief, almost their only, pleasure. often they fished in the lagoon with good success. and the rest was passed in lolling, strolling, yarns, and disputation. the time of the china steamers was calculated to a nicety; which done, the thought was rejected and ignored. it was one that would not bear consideration. the boat voyage having been tacitly set aside, the desperate part chosen to wait there for the coming of help or of starvation, no man had courage left to look his bargain in the face, far less to discuss it with his neighbours. but the unuttered terror haunted them; in every hour of idleness, at every moment of silence, it returned, and breathed a chill about the circle, and carried men's eyes to the horizon. then, in a panic of self-defence, they would rally to some other subject. and, in that lone spot, what else was to be found to speak of but the treasure? that was indeed the chief singularity, the one thing conspicuous in their island life; the presence of that chest of bills and specie dominated the mind like a cathedral; and there were besides connected with it certain irking problems well fitted to occupy the idle. two thousand pounds were due to the sydney firm; two thousand pounds were clear profit, and fell to be divided in varying proportions among six. it had been agreed how the partners were to range; every pound of capital subscribed, every pound that fell due in wages, was to count for one "lay." of these tommy could claim five hundred and ten, carthew one hundred and seventy, wicks one hundred and forty, and hemstead and amalu ten apiece: eight hundred and forty "lays" in all. what was the value of a lay? this was at first debated in the air, and chiefly by the strength of tommy's lungs. then followed a series of incorrect calculations; from which they issued, arithmetically foiled, but agreed from weariness upon an approximate value of 2 pounds, 7 shillings 7 1/4 pence. the figures were admittedly incorrect; the sum of the shares came not to 2000 pounds, but to 1996 pounds, 6 shillings--3 pounds, 14 shillings being thus left unclaimed. but it was the nearest they had yet found, and the highest as well, so that the partners were made the less critical by the contemplation of their splendid dividends. wicks put in 100 pounds, and stood to draw captain's wages for two months; his taking was 333 pounds, 3 shillings 6 1/2 pence. carthew had put in 150 pounds: he was to take out 401 pounds, 18 shillings 62 pence. tommy's 500 pounds had grown to be 1213 pounds, 12 shillings 9 3/4 pence; and amalu and hemstead, ranking for wages only, had 22 pounds, 16 shillings 1/2 pence each. from talking and brooding on these figures it was but a step to opening the chest, and once the chest open the glamour of the cash was irresistible. each felt that he must see his treasure separate with the eye of flesh, handle it in the hard coin, mark it for his own, and stand forth to himself the approved owner. and here an insurmountable difficulty barred the way. there were some seventeen shillings in english silver, the rest was chile; and the chile dollar, which had been taken at the rate of six to the pound sterling, was practically their smallest coin. it was decided, therefore, to divide the pounds only, and to throw the shillings, pence, and fractions in a common fund. this, with the three pound fourteen already in the heel, made a total of seven pounds one shilling. "i'll tell you," said wicks. "let carthew and tommy and me take one pound apiece, and hemstead and amalu split the other four, and toss up for the odd bob." "o, rot!" said carthew. "tommy and i are bursting already. we can take half a sov. each, and let the other three have forty shillings." "i'll tell you now, it's not worth splitting," broke in mac. "i've cards in my chest. why don't you play for the slump sum?" in that idle place the proposal was accepted with delight. mac, as the owner of the cards, was given a stake; the sum was played for in five games of cribbage; and when amalu, the last survivor in the tournament, was beaten by mac it was found the dinnerhour was past. after a hasty meal they fell again immediately to cards, this time (on carthew's proposal) to van john. it was then probably two p.m. on the 9th of february, and they played with varying chances for twelve hours, slept heavily, and rose late on the morrow to resume the game. all day of the 10th, with grudging intervals for food, and with one long absence on the part of tommy, from which he returned dripping with the case of sherry, they continued to deal and stake. night fell; they drew the closer to the fire. it was maybe two in the morning, and tommy was selling his deal by auction, as usual with that timid player, when carthew, who didn't intend to bid, had a moment of leisure and looked round him. he beheld the moonlight on the sea, the money piled and scattered in that incongruous place, the perturbed faces of the players. he felt in his own breast the familiar tumult; and it seemed as if there rose in his ears a sound of music, and the moon seemed still to shine upon a sea, but the sea was changed, and the casino towered from among lamp-lit gardens, and the money clinked on the green board. "good god!" he thought, "am i gambling again?" he looked the more curiously about the sandy table. he and mac had played and won like gamblers; the mingled gold and silver lay by their places in the heap. amalu and hemstead had each more than held their own, but tommy was cruel far to leeward, and the captain was reduced to perhaps fifty pounds. "i say, let's knock off," said carthew. "give that man a glass of buckle," said some one, and a fresh bottle was opened, and the game went inexorably on. carthew was himself too heavy a winner to withdraw or to say more, and all the rest of the night he must look on at the progress of this folly, and make gallant attempts to lose, with the not uncommon consequence of winning more. the first dawn of the 11th february found him well nigh desperate. it chanced he was then dealer, and still winning. he had just dealt a round of many tens; every one had staked heavily. the captain had put up all that remained to him--twelve pounds in gold and a few dollars,--and carthew, looking privately at his cards before he showed them, found he held a natural. "see here, you fellows," he broke out, "this is a sickening business, and i'm done with it for one." so saying, he showed his cards, tore them across, and rose from the ground. the company stared and murmured in mere amazement; but mac stepped gallantly to his support. "we've had enough of it, i do believe," said he. "but of course it was all fun, and here's my counters back. all counters in, boys!" and he began to pour his winnings into the chest, which stood fortunately near him. carthew stepped across and wrung him by the hand. "i'll never forget this," he said. "and what are ye going to do with the highway boy and the plumber?" inquired mac, in a low tone of voice. "they've both wan, ye see." "that's true!" said carthew aloud.--"amalu and hemstead, count your winnings; tommy and i pay that." it was carried without speech; the pair glad enough to receive their winnings, it mattered not from whence; and tommy, who had lost about five hundred pounds, delighted with the compromise. "and how about mac?" asked hemstead. "is he to lose all?" "i beg your pardon, plumber. i'm sure ye mean well," returned the irishman, "but you'd better shut your face, for i'm not that kind of a man. if i t'ought i had wan that money fair, there's never a soul here could get it from me. but i t'ought it was in fun; that was my mistake, ye see; and there's no man big enough upon this island to give a present to my mother's son. so there's my opinion to ye, plumber, and you can put it in your pockut till required." "well, i will say, mac, you're a gentleman," said carthew, as he helped him to shovel back his winnings into the treasure-chest. "divil a fear of it, sir! a drunken sailor-man," said mac. the captain had sat somewhile with his face in his hands; now he rose mechanically, shaking and stumbling like a drunkard after a debauch. but as he rose, his face was altered, and his voice rang out over the isle, "sail ho!" all turned at the cry, and there, in the wild light of the morning, heading straight for midway reef, was the brig flying scud of hull. chapter xxiv a hard bargain the ship which thus appeared before the castaways had long "tramped" the ocean, wandering from one port to another as freights offered. she was two years out from london, by the cape of good hope, india, and the archipelago; and was now bound for san francisco in the hope of working homeward round the horn. her captain was one jacob trent. he had retired some five years before to a suburban cottage, a patch of cabbages, a gig, and the conduct of what he called a bank. the name appears to have been misleading. borrowers were accustomed to choose works of art and utility in the front shop; loaves of sugar and bolts of broadcloth were deposited in pledge; and it was a part of the manager's duty to dash in his gig on saturday evenings from one small retailer's to another, and to annex in each the bulk of the week's takings. his was thus an active life, and, to a man of the type of a rat, filled with recondite joys. an unexpected loss, a lawsuit, and the unintelligent commentary of the judge upon the bench, combined to disgust him of the business. i was so extraordinarily fortunate as to find, in an old newspaper, a report of the proceedings in lyall v. the cardiff mutual accommodation banking co. "i confess i fail entirely to understand the nature of the business," the judge had remarked, while trent was being examined in chief; a little after, on fuller information--"they call it a bank," he had opined, "but it seems to me to be an unlicensed pawnshop"; and he wound up with this appalling allocution: "mr. trent, i must put you on your guard; you must be very careful, or we shall see you here again." in the inside of a week the captain disposed of the bank, the cottage, and the gig and horse; and to sea again in the flying scud, where he did well, and gave high satisfaction to his owners. but the glory clung to him; he was a plain sailor-man, he said, but he could never long allow you to forget that he had been a banker. his mate, elias goddedaal, was a huge viking of a man, six feet three, and of proportionate mass, strong, sober, industrious, musical, and sentimental. he ran continually over into swedish melodies, chiefly in the minor. he had paid nine dollars to hear patti; to hear nilsson, he had deserted a ship and two months' wages; and he was ready at any time to walk ten miles for a good concert, or seven to a reasonable play. on board he had three treasures: a canary bird, a concertina, and a blinding copy of the works of shakespeare. he had a gift, peculiarly scandinavian, of making friends at sight: an elemental innocence commended him; he was without fear, without reproach, and without money or the hope of making it. holdorsen was second mate, and berthed aft, but messed usually with the hands. of one more of the crew some image lives. this was a foremast hand out of the clyde, of the name of brown. a small, dark, thickset creature, with dog's eyes, of a disposition incomparably mild and harmless, he knocked about seas and cities, the uncomplaining whiptop of one vice. "the drink is my trouble, ye see," he said to carthew shyly; "and it's the more shame to me because i'm come of very good people at bowling, down the wa'er." the letter that so much affected nares, in case the reader should remember it, was addressed to this man brown. such was the ship that now carried joy into the bosoms of the castaways. after the fatigue and the bestial emotions of their night of play, the approach of salvation shook them from all self-control. their hands trembled, their eyes shone, they laughed and shouted like children as they cleared their camp: and some one beginning to whistle "marching through georgia," the remainder of the packing was conducted, amidst a thousand interruptions, to these martial strains. but the strong head of wicks was only partly turned. "boys," he said, "easy all! we're going aboard of a ship of which we don't know nothing; we've got a chest of specie, and seeing the weight, we can't turn to and deny it. now, suppose she was fishy; suppose it was some kind of a bully hayes business! it's my opinion we'd better be on hand with the pistols." every man of the party but hemstead had some kind of a revolver; these were accordingly loaded and disposed about the persons of the castaways, and the packing was resumed and finished in the same rapturous spirit as it was begun. the sun was not yet ten degrees above the eastern sea, but the brig was already close in and hove to, before they had launched the boat and sped, shouting at the oars, towards the passage. it was blowing fresh outside, with a strong send of sea. the spray flew in the oarsmen's faces. they saw the union jack blow abroad from the flying scud, the men clustered at the rail, the cook in the galleydoor, the captain on the quarter-deck with a pith helmet and binoculars. and the whole familiar business, the comfort, company, and safety of a ship, heaving nearer at each stroke, maddened them with joy. wicks was the first to catch the line, and swarm on board, helping hands grabbing him as he came and hauling him across the rail. "captain, sir, i suppose?" he said, turning to the hard old man in the pith helmet. "captain trent, sir," returned the old gentleman. "well, i'm captain kirkup, and this is the crew of the sydney schooner currency lass, dismasted at sea january 28th." "ay, ay," said trent. "well, you're all right now. lucky for you i saw your signal. i didn't know i was so near this beastly island, there must be a drift to the south'ard here; and when i came on deck this morning at eight bells, i thought it was a ship afire." it had been agreed that, while wicks was to board the ship and do the civil, the rest were to remain in the whaleboat and see the treasure safe. a tackle was passed down to them; to this they made fast the invaluable chest, and gave the word to heave. but the unexpected weight brought the hand at the tackle to a stand; two others ran to tail on and help him, and the thing caught the eye of trent. "vast heaving!" he cried sharply; and then to wicks: "what's that? i don't ever remember to have seen a chest weigh like that." "it's money," said wicks. "it's what?" cried trent. "specie," said wicks; "saved from the wreck." trent looked at him sharply. "here, let go that chest again, mr. goddedaal," he commanded, "shove the boat off, and stream her with a line astern." "ay, ay, sir!" from goddedaal. "what the devil's wrong?" asked wicks. "nothing, i daresay," returned trent. "but you'll allow it's a queer thing when a boat turns up in midocean with half a ton of specie and everybody armed," he added, pointing to wicks's pocket. "your boat will lay comfortably astern, while you come below and make yourself satisfactory." "o, if that's all!" said wicks. "my log and papers are as right as the mail; nothing fishy about us." and he hailed his friends in the boat, bidding them have patience, and turned to follow captain trent. "this way, captain kirkup," said the latter. "and don't blame a man for too much caution; no offence intended; and these china rivers shake a fellow's nerve. all i want is just to see you're what you say you are; it's only my duty, sir, and what you would do yourself in the circumstances. i've not always been a ship-captain: i was a banker once, and i tell you that's the trade to learn caution in. you have to keep your weather eye lifting saturday nights." and with a dry, business-like cordiality, he produced a bottle of gin. the captains pledged each other; the papers were overhauled; the tale of topelius and the trade was told in appreciative ears and cemented their acquaintance. trent's suspicions, thus finally disposed of, were succeeded by a fit of profound thought, during which he sat lethargic and stern, looking at and drumming on the table. "anything more?" asked wicks. "what sort of a place is it inside?" inquired trent, sudden as though wicks had touched a spring. "it's a good enough lagoon--a few horses" heads, but nothing to mention," answered wicks. "i've a good mind to go in," said trent. "i was new rigged in china; it's given very bad, and i'm getting frightened for my sticks. we could set it up as good as new in a day. for i daresay your lot would turn to and give us a hand?" "you see if we don't," said wicks. "so be it, then," concluded trent. "a stitch in time saves nine." they returned on deck; wicks cried the news to the currency lasses; the foretopsail was filled again, and the brig ran into the lagoon lively, the whale-boat dancing in her wake, and came to single anchor off middle brooks island before eight. she was boarded by the castaways, breakfast was served, the baggage slung on board and piled in the waist, and all hands turned to upon the rigging. all day the work continued, the two crews rivalling each other in expense of strength. dinner was served on deck, the officers messing aft under the slack of the spanker, the men fraternising forward. trent appeared in excellent spirits, served out grog to all hands, opened a bottle of cape wine for the after-table, and obliged his guests with many details of the life of a financier in cardiff. he had been forty years at sea, had five times suffered shipwreck, was once nine months the prisoner of a pepper rajah, and had seen service under fire in chinese rivers; but the only thing he cared to talk of, the only thing of which he was vain, or with which he thought it possible to interest a stranger, was his career as a money-lender in the slums of a seaport town. the afternoon spell told cruelly on the currency lasses. already exhausted as they were with sleeplessness and excitement, they did the last hours of this violent employment on bare nerves; and, when trent was at last satisfied with the condition of his rigging, expected eagerly the word to put to sea. but the captain seemed in no hurry. he went and walked by himself softly, like a man in thought. presently he hailed wicks. "you're a kind of company, ain't you, captain kirkup?" he inquired. "yes, we're all on board on lays," was the reply. "well, then, you won't mind if i ask the lot of you down to tea in the cabin?" asked trent. wicks was amazed, but he naturally ventured no remark; and a little after, the six currency lasses sat down with trent and goddedaal to a spread of marmalade, butter, toast, sardines, tinned tongue, and steaming tea. the food was not very good, and i have no doubt nares would have reviled it, but it was manna to the castaways. goddedaal waited on them with a kindness far before courtesy, a kindness like that of some old, honest country-woman in her farm. it was remembered afterwards that trent took little share in these attentions, but sat much absorbed in thought, and seemed to remember and forget the presence of his guests alternately. presently he addressed the chinaman. "clear out," said he, and watched him till he had disappeared in the stair.--"now, gentlemen," he went on, "i understand you're a joint-stock sort of crew, and that's why i've had you all down; for there's a point i want made clear. you see what sort of a ship this is--a good ship, though i say it, and you see what the rations are--good enough for sailor-men." there was a hurried murmur of approval, but curiosity for what was coming next prevented an articulate reply. "well," continued trent, making bread pills and looking hard at the middle of the table, "i'm glad of course to be able to give you a passage to 'frisco; one sailorman should help another, that's my motto. but when you want a thing in this world, you generally always have to pay for it." he laughed a brief, joyless laugh. "i have no idea of losing by my kindness." "we have no idea you should, captain," said wicks. "we are ready to pay anything in reason," added carthew. at the words, goddedaal, who sat next to him, touched him with his elbow, and the two mates exchanged a significant look. the character of captain trent was given and taken in that silent second. "in reason?" repeated the captain of the brig. "i was waiting for that. reason's between two people, and there's only one here. i'm the judge; i'm reason. if you want an advance you have to pay for it"--he hastily corrected himself--"if you want a passage in my ship, you have to pay my price," he substituted. "that's business, i believe. i don't want you; you want me." "well, sir," said carthew, "and what is your price?" the captain made bread pills. "if i were like you," he said, "when you got hold of that merchant in the gilberts, i might surprise you. you had your chance then; seems to me it's mine now. turn about's fair play. what kind of mercy did you have on that gilbert merchant?" he cried with a sudden stridency. "not that i blame you. all's fair in love and business," and he laughed again, a little frosty giggle. "well, sir?" said carthew gravely. "well, this ship's mine, i think?" he asked sharply. "well, i'm of that way of thinking meself," observed mac. "i say it's mine, sir!" reiterated trent, like a man trying to be angry. "and i tell you all if i was a driver like what you are, i would take the lot. but there's two thousand pounds there that don't belong to you, and i'm an honest man. give me the two thousand that's yours, and i'll give you a passage to the coast, and land every manjack of you in 'frisco with fifteen pounds in his pocket, and the captain here with twentyfive." goddedaal laid down his head on the table like a man ashamed. "you're joking," said wicks, purple in the face. "am i?" said trent. "please yourselves. you're under no compulsion. this ship's mine, but there's that brooks island don't belong to me, and you can lay there till you die for what i care." "it's more than your blooming brig's worth!" cried wicks. "it's my price anyway," returned trent. "and do you mean to say you would land us there to starve?" cried tommy. captain trent laughed the third time. "starve? i defy you to," said he. "i'll sell you all the provisions you want at a fair profit." "i beg your pardon, sir," said mac, "but my case is by itself i'm working me passage; i got no share in that two thousand pounds, nor nothing in my pockut; and i'll be glad to know what you have to say to me?" "i ain't a hard man," said trent; "that shall make no difference. i'll take you with the rest, only of course you get no fifteen pound." the impudence was so extreme and startling that all breathed deep, and goddedaal raised up his face and looked his superior sternly in the eye. but mac was more articulate. "and you're what ye call a british sayman, i suppose? the sorrow in your guts!" he cried. "one more such word, and i clap you in irons!" said trent, rising gleefully at the face of opposition. "and where would i be the while you were doin' ut?" asked mac. "after you and your rigging, too! ye ould puggy, ye haven't the civility of a bug, and i'll learn ye some." his voice did not even rise as he uttered the threat; no man present, trent least of all, expected that which followed. the irishman's hand rose suddenly from below the table, an open clasp-knife balanced on the palm; there was a movement swift as conjuring; trent started half to his feet, turning a little as he rose so as to escape the table, and the movement was his bane. the missile struck him in the jugular; he fell forward, and his blood flowed among the dishes on the cloth. the suddenness of the attack and the catastrophe, the instant change from peace to war, and from life to death, held all men spellbound. yet a moment they sat about the table staring open-mouthed upon the prostrate captain and the flowing blood. the next, goddedaal had leaped to his feet, caught up the stool on which he had been sitting, and swung it high in air, a man transfigured, roaring (as he stood) so that men's ears were stunned with it. there was no thought of battle in the currency lasses; none drew his weapon; all huddled helplessly from before the face of the baresark scandinavian. his first blow sent mac to ground with a broken arm. his second dashed out the brains of hemstead. he turned from one to another, menacing and trumpeting like a wounded elephant, exulting in his rage. but there was no counsel, no light of reason, in that ecstasy of battle; and he shied from the pursuit of victory to hail fresh blows upon the supine hemstead, so that the stool was shattered and the cabin rang with their violence. the sight of that postmortem cruelty recalled carthew to the life of instinct, and his revolver was in hand and he had aimed and fired before he knew. the ear-bursting sound of the report was accompanied by a yell of pain; the colossus paused, swayed, tottered, and fell headlong on the body of his victim. in the instant silence that succeeded, the sound of feet pounding on the deck and in the companion leaped into hearing; and a face, that of the sailor holdorsen, appeared below the bulkheads in the cabin doorway. carthew shattered it with a second shot, for he was a marksman. "pistols!" he cried, and charged at the companion, wicks at his heels, tommy and amalu following. they trod the body of holdorsen underfoot, and flew upstairs and forth into the dusky blaze of a sunset red as blood. the numbers were still equal, but the flying scuds dreamed not of defence, and fled with one accord for the forecastle scuttle. brown was first in flight; he disappeared below unscathed; the chinaman followed head-foremost with a ball in his side; and the others shinned into the rigging. a fierce composure settled upon wicks and carthew, their fighting second wind. they posted tommy at the fore and amalu at the main to guard the masts and shrouds, and going themselves into the waist, poured out a box of cartridges on deck and filled the chambers. the poor devils aloft bleated aloud for mercy. but the hour of any mercy was gone by; the cup was brewed and must be drunken to the dregs; since so many had fallen all must fall. the light was bad, the cheap revolvers fouled and carried wild, the screaming wretches were swift to flatten themselves against the masts and yards, or find a momentary refuge in the hanging sails. the fell business took long, but it was done at last. hardy the londoner was shot on the foreroyal yard, and hung horribly suspended in the brails. wallen, the other, had his jaw broken on the main-topgallant crosstrees, and exposed himself, shrieking, till a second shot dropped him on the deck. this had been bad enough, but worse remained behind. there was still brown in the forepeak. tommy, with a sudden clamour of weeping, begged for his life. "one man can't hurt us," he sobbed. "we can't go on with this. i spoke to him at dinner. he's an awful decent little cad. it can't be done. nobody can go into that place and murder him. it's too damned wicked." the sound of his supplications was perhaps audible to the unfortunate below. "one left and we all hang," said wicks. "brown must go the same road." the big man was deadly white and trembled like an aspen; and he had no sooner finished speaking than he went to the ship's side and vomited. "we can never do it if we wait," said carthew. "now or never," and he marched towards the scuttle. "no, no, no!" wailed tommy, clutching at his jacket. but carthew flung him off, and stepped down the ladder, his heart rising with disgust and shame. the chinaman lay on the floor, still groaning; the place was pitch dark. "brown!" cried carthew; "brown, where are you?" his heart smote him for the treacherous apostrophe, but no answer came. he groped in the bunks: they were all empty. then he moved towards the forepeak, which was hampered with coils of rope and spare chandlery in general. "brown!" he said again. "here, sir," answered a shaking voice; and the poor invisible caitiff called on him by name, and poured forth out of the darkness an endless, garrulous appeal for mercy. a sense of danger, of daring, had alone nerved carthew to enter the forecastle; and here was the enemy crying and pleading like a frightened child. his obsequious "here, sir," his horrid fluency of obtestation, made the murder tenfold more revolting. twice carthew raised the pistol, once he pressed the trigger (or thought he did) with all his might, but no explosion followed; and with that the lees of his courage ran quite out, and he turned and fled from before his victim. wicks sat on the fore hatch, raised the face of a man of seventy, and looked a wordless question. carthew shook his head. with such composure as a man displays marching towards the gallows, wicks arose, walked to the scuttle, and went down. brown thought it was carthew returning, and discovered himself, halfcrawling from his shelter, with another incoherent burst of pleading. wicks emptied his revolver at the voice, which broke into mouse-like whimperings and groans. silence succeeded, and the murderer ran on deck like one possessed. the other three were now all gathered on the fore hatch, and wicks took his place beside them without question asked or answered. they sat close like children in the dark, and shook each other with their shaking. the dusk continued to fall; and there was no sound but the beating of the surf and the occasional hiccup of a sob from tommy hadden. "god, if there was another ship!" cried carthew of a sudden. wicks started and looked aloft with the trick of all seamen, and shuddered as he saw the hanging figure on the royal-yard. "if i went aloft, i'd fall," he said simply. "i'm done up." it was amalu who volunteered, climbed to the very truck, swept the fading horizon, and announced nothing within sight. "no odds," said wicks. "we can't sleep ..." "sleep!" echoed carthew; and it seemed as if the whole of shakespeare's macbeth thundered at the gallop through his mind. "well, then, we can't sit and chitter here," said wicks, "till we've cleaned ship; and i can't turn to till i've had gin, and the gin's in the cabin, and who's to fetch it?" "i will," said carthew, "if any one has matches." amalu passed him a box, and he went aft and down the companion and into the cabin, stumbling upon bodies. then he struck a match, and his looks fell upon two living eyes. "well?" asked mac, for it was he who still survived in that shambles of a cabin. "it's done; they're all dead," answered carthew. "christ!" said the irishman, and fainted. the gin was found in the dead captain's cabin; it was brought on deck, and all hands had a dram, and attacked their further task. the night was come, the moon would not be up for hours; a lamp was set on the main hatch to light amalu as he washed down decks; and the galley lantern was taken to guide the others in their graveyard business. holdorsen, hemstead, trent, and goddedaal were first disposed of, the last still breathing as he went over the side; wallen followed; and then wicks, steadied by the gin, went aloft with a boathook and succeeded in dislodging hardy. the chinaman was their last task; he seemed to be lightheaded, talked aloud in his unknown language as they brought him up, and it was only with the splash of his sinking body that the gibberish ceased. brown, by common consent, was left alone. flesh and blood could go no further. all this time they had been drinking undiluted gin like water; three bottles stood broached in different quarters; and none passed without a gulp. tommy collapsed against the mainmast; wicks fell on his face on the poop ladder and moved no more; amalu had vanished unobserved. carthew was the last afoot: he stood swaying at the break of the poop, and the lantern, which he still carried, swung with his movement. his head hummed; it swarmed with broken thoughts; memory of that day's abominations flared up and died down within him like the light of a lamp in a strong draught. and then he had a drunkard's inspiration. "there must be no more of this," he thought, and stumbled once more below. the absence of holdorsen's body brought him to a stand. he stood and stared at the empty floor and then remembered and smiled. from the captain's room he took the open case with one dozen and three bottles of gin, put the lantern inside, and walked precariously forth. mac was once more conscious, his eyes haggard, his face drawn with pain and flushed with fever; and carthew remembered he had never been seen to, had lain there helpless, and was so to lie all night, injured, perhaps dying. but it was now too late; reason had now fled from that silent ship. if carthew could get on deck again, it was as much as he could hope; and casting on the unfortunate a glance of pity, the tragic drunkard shouldered his way up the companion, dropped the case overboard, and fell in the scuppers helpless. chapter xxv a bad bargain with the first colour in the east, carthew awoke and sat up. a while he gazed at the scroll of the morning bank and the spars and hanging canvas of the brig, like a man who wakes in a strange bed, with a child's simplicity of wonder. he wondered above all what ailed him, what he had lost, what disfavour had been done him, which he knew he should resent, yet had forgotten. and then, like a river bursting through a dam, the truth rolled on him its instantaneous volume: his memory teemed with speech and pictures that he should never again forget; and he sprang to his feet, stood a moment hand to brow, and began to walk violently to and fro by the companion. as he walked he wrung his hands. "god--god--god," he kept saying, with no thought of prayer, uttering a mere voice of agony. the time may have been long or short, it was perhaps minutes, perhaps only seconds, ere he awoke to find himself observed, and saw the captain sitting up and watching him over the break of the poop, a strange blindness as of fever in his eyes, a haggard knot of corrugations on his brow. cain saw himself in a mirror. for a flash they looked upon each other, and then glanced guiltily aside; and carthew fled from the eye of his accomplice, and stood leaning on the taffrail. an hour went by, while the day came brighter, and the sun rose and drank up the clouds: an hour of silence in the ship, an hour of agony beyond narration for the sufferers. brown's gabbling prayers, the cries of the sailors in the rigging, strains of the dead hemstead's minstrelsy, ran together in carthew's mind with sickening iteration. he neither acquitted nor condemned himself: he did not think he suffered. in the bright water into which he stared, the pictures changed and were repeated: the baresark rage of goddedaal; the blood-red light of the sunset into which they had run forth; the face of the babbling chinaman as they cast him over; the face of the captain, seen a moment since, as he awoke from drunkenness into remorse. and time passed, and the sun swam higher, and his torment was not abated. then were fulfilled many sayings, and the weakest of these condemned brought relief and healing to the others. amalu the drudge awoke (like the rest) to sickness of body and distress of mind; but the habit of obedience ruled in that simple spirit, and, appalled to be so late, he went direct into the galley, kindled the fire, and began to get breakfast. at the rattle of dishes, the snapping of the fire, and the thin smoke that went up straight into the air, the spell was lifted. the condemned felt once more the good dry land of habit under foot; they touched again the familiar guide-ropes of sanity; they were restored to a sense of the blessed revolution and return of all things earthly. the captain drew a bucket of water and began to bathe. tommy sat up, watched him a while, and slowly followed his example; and carthew, remembering his last thoughts of the night before, hastened to the cabin. mac was awake; perhaps had not slept. over his head goddedaal's canary twittered shrilly from its cage. "how are you?" asked carthew. "me arrum's broke," returned mac; "but i can stand that. it's this place i can't aboide. i was coming on deck anyway." "stay where you are, though," said carthew. "it's deadly hot above, and there's no wind. i'll wash out this----" and he paused, seeking a word and not finding one for the grisly foulness of the cabin. "faith, i'll be obloiged to ye, then," replied the irishman. he spoke mild and meek, like a sick child with its mother. there was now no violence in the violent man; and as carthew fetched a bucket and swab and the steward's sponge, and began to cleanse the field of battle, he alternately watched him or shut his eyes and sighed like a man near fainting. "i have to ask all your pardons," he began again presently, "and the more shame to me as i got ye into trouble and couldn't do nothing when it came. ye saved me life, sir; ye're a clane shot." "for god's sake, don't talk of it!" cried carthew. "it can't be talked of; you don't know what it was. it was nothing down here; they fought. on deck--o my god!" and carthew, with the bloody sponge pressed to his face, struggled a moment with hysteria. "kape cool, mr. cart'ew. it's done now," said mac; "and ye may bless god ye're not in pain, and helpless in the bargain." there was no more said by one or other, and the cabin was pretty well cleansed when a stroke on the ship's bell summoned carthew to breakfast. tommy had been busy in the meanwhile; he had hauled the whaleboat close aboard, and already lowered into it a small keg of beef that he found ready broached beside the galley door; it was plain he had but the one idea--to escape. "we have a shipful of stores to draw upon," he said. "well, what are we staying for? let's get off at once for hawaii. i've begun preparing already." "mac has his arm broken," observed carthew; "how would he stand the voyage?" "a broken arm?" repeated the captain. "that all? i'll set it after breakfast. i thought he was dead like the rest. that madman hit out like----" and there, at the evocation of the battle, his voice ceased and the talk died with it. after breakfast the three white men went down into the cabin. "i've come to set your arm," said the captain. "i beg your pardon, captain," replied mac; "but the firrst thing ye got to do is to get this ship to sea. we'll talk of me arrum after that." "o, there's no such blooming hurry," returned wicks. "when the next ship sails in ye'll tell me stories!" retorted mac. "but there's nothing so unlikely in the world," objected carthew. "don't be deceivin' yourself," said mac. "if ye want a ship, divil a one'll look near ye in six year; but if ye don't, ye may take my word for ut, we'll have a squadron layin' here." "that's what i say," cried tommy; "that's what i call sense! let's stock that whaleboat and be off." "and what will captain wicks be thinking of the whaleboat?" asked the irishman. "i don't think of it at all," said wicks. "we've a smart-looking brig under foot; that's all the whaleboat i want." "excuse me!" cried tommy. "that's childish talk. you've got a brig, to be sure, and what use is she? you daren't go anywhere in her. what port are you to sail for?" "for the port of davy jones's locker, my son," replied the captain. "this brig's going to be lost at sea. i'll tell you where, too, and that's about forty miles to windward of kauai. we're going to stay by her till she's down; and once the masts are under, she's the flying scud no more, and we never heard of such a brig; and it's the crew of the schooner currency lass that comes ashore in the boat, and takes the first chance to sydney." "captain, dear, that's the first christian word i've heard of ut!" cried mac. "and now, just let me arrum be, jewel, and get the brig outside." "i'm as anxious as yourself, mac," returned wicks; "but there's not wind enough to swear by. so let's see your arm, and no more talk." the arm was set and splinted; the body of brown fetched from the forepeak, where it lay still and cold, and committed to the waters of the lagoon; and the washing of the cabin rudely finished. all these were done ere mid-day; and it was past three when the first cat's-paw ruffled the lagoon, and the wind came in a dry squall, which presently sobered to a steady breeze. the interval was passed by all in feverish impatience, and by one of the party in secret and extreme concern of mind. captain wicks was a fore-and-aft sailor; he could take a schooner through a scotch reel, felt her mouth and divined her temper like a rider with a horse; she, on her side, recognising her master and following his wishes like a dog. but by a not very unusual train of circumstance, the man's dexterity was partial and circumscribed. on a schooner's deck he was rembrandt, or (at the least) mr. whistler; on board a brig he was pierre grassou. again and again in the course of the morning he had reasoned out his policy and rehearsed his orders; and ever with the same depression and weariness. it was guess-work; it was chance; the ship might behave as he expected, and might not; suppose she failed him, he stood there helpless, beggared of all the proved resources of experience. had not all hands been so weary, had he not feared to communicate his own misgivings, he could have towed her out. but these reasons sufficed, and the most he could do was to take all possible precautions. accordingly he had carthew aft, explained what was to be done with anxious patience, and visited along with him the various sheets and braces. "i hope i'll remember," said carthew. "it seems awfully muddled." "it's the rottenest kind of rig," the captain admitted: "all blooming pocket-handkerchiefs! and not one sailorman on deck! ah, if she'd only been a brigantine now! but it's lucky the passage is so plain; there's no manoeuvring to mention. we get under weigh before the wind, and run right so till we begin to get foul of the island; then we haul our wind and lie as near southeast as may be till we're on that line; 'bout ship there and stand straight out on the port tack. catch the idea?" "yes, i see the idea," replied carthew, rather dismally, and the two incompetents studied for a long time in silence the complicated gear above their heads. but the time came when these rehearsals must be put in practice. the sails were lowered, and all hands heaved the anchor short. the whaleboat was then cut adrift, the upper topsails and the spanker set, the yards braced up, and the spanker sheet hauled out to starboard. "heave away on your anchor, mr. carthew." "anchor's gone, sir." "set jibs." it was done, and the brig still hung enchanted. wicks, his head full of a schooner's mainsail, turned his mind to the spanker. first he hauled in the sheet, and then he hauled it out, with no result. "brail the damned thing up!" he bawled at last, with a red face. "there ain't no sense in it." it was the last stroke of bewilderment for the poor captain, that he had no sooner brailed up the spanker than the vessel came before the wind. the laws of nature seemed to him to be suspended; he was like a man in a world of pantomime tricks; the cause of any result, and the probable result of any action, equally concealed from him. he was the more careful not to shake the nerve of his amateur assistants. he stood there with a face like a torch; but he gave his orders with aplomb, and indeed, now the ship was under weigh, supposed his difficulties over. the lower topsails and courses were then set, and the brig began to walk the water like a thing of life, her fore-foot discoursing music, the birds flying and crying over her spars. bit by bit the passage began to open and the blue sea to show between the flanking breakers on the reef; bit by bit, on the starboard bow, the low land of the islet began to heave closer aboard. the yards were braced up, the spanker sheet hauled aft again; the brig was close hauled, lay down to her work like a thing in earnest, and had soon drawn near to the point of advantage, where she might stay and lie out of the lagoon in a single tack. wicks took the wheel himself, swelling with success. he kept the brig full to give her heels, and began to bark his orders: "ready about. helm's a-lee. tacks and sheets. mainsail haul." and then the fatal words: "that'll do your mainsail; jump for'ard and haul round your foreyards." to stay a square-rigged ship is an affair of knowledge and swift sight: and a man used to the succinct evolutions of a schooner will always tend to be too hasty with a brig. it was so now. the order came too soon; the topsails set flat aback; the ship was in irons. even yet, had the helm been reversed, they might have saved her. but to think of a sternboard at all, far more to think of profiting by one, were foreign to the schooner-sailor's mind. wicks made haste instead to wear ship, a manoeuvre for which room was wanting, and the flying scud took ground on a bank of sand and coral about twenty minutes before five. wicks was no hand with a square-rigger, and he had shown it. but he was a sailor and a born captain of men for all homely purposes, where intellect is not required and an eye in a man's head and a heart under his jacket will suffice. before the others had time to understand the misfortune, he was bawling fresh orders, and had the sails clewed up, and took soundings round the ship. "she lies lovely," he remarked, and ordered out a boat with the starboard anchor. "here! steady!" cried tommy. "you ain't going to turn us to, to warp her off?" "i am though," replied wicks. "i won't set a hand to such tomfoolery for one," replied tommy. "i'm dead beat." he went and sat down doggedly on the main hatch. "you got us on; get us off again," he added. carthew and wicks turned to each other. "perhaps you don't know how tired we are," said carthew. "the tide's flowing!" cried the captain. "you wouldn't have me miss a rising tide?" "o, gammon! there's tides to-morrow!" retorted tommy. "and i'll tell you what," added carthew, "the breeze is failing fast, and the sun will soon be down. we may get into all kinds of fresh mess in the dark and with nothing but light airs." "i don't deny it," answered wicks, and stood a while as if in thought. "but what i can't make out," he began again, with agitation,--"what i can't make out is what you're made of! to stay in this place is beyond me. there's the bloody sun going down--and to stay here is beyond me!" the others looked upon him with horrified surprise. this fall of their chief pillar--this irrational passion in the practical man, suddenly barred out of his true sphere--the sphere of action--shocked and daunted them. but it gave to another and unseen hearer the chance for which he had been waiting. mac, on the striking of the brig, had crawled up the companion, and he now showed himself and spoke up. "captain wicks," said he, "it's me that brought this trouble on the lot of ye. i'm sorry for ut, i ask all your pardons, and if there's any one can say 'i forgive ye,' it'll make my soul the lighter." wicks stared upon the man in amaze; then his selfcontrol returned to him. "we're all in glass houses here," he said; "we ain't going to turn to and throw stones. i forgive you, sure enough; and much good may it do you!" the others spoke to the same purpose. "i thank ye for ut, and 'tis done like gentlemen," said mac. "but there's another thing i have upon my mind. i hope we're all prodestans here?" it appeared they were; it seemed a small thing for the protestant religion to rejoice in! "well, that's as it should be," continued mac. "and why shouldn't we say the lord's prayer? there can't be no hurt in ut." he had the same quiet, pleading, childlike way with him as in the morning; and the others accepted his proposal, and knelt down without a word. "knale if ye like!" said he. "i'll stand." and he covered his eyes. so the prayer was said to the accompaniment of the surf and sea-birds, and all rose refreshed and felt lightened of a load. up to then, they had cherished their guilty memories in private, or only referred to them in the heat of a moment, and fallen immediately silent. now they had faced their remorse in company, and the worst seemed over. nor was it only that. but the petition "forgive us our trespasses," falling in so apposite after they had themselves forgiven the immediate author of their miseries, sounded like an absolution. tea was taken on deck in the time of the sunset, and not long after the five castaways--castaways once more-lay down to sleep. day dawned windless and hot. their slumbers had been too profound to be refreshing, and they woke listless, and sat up, and stared about them with dull eyes. only wicks, smelling a hard day's work ahead, was more alert. he went first to the well, sounded it once, and then a second time, and stood a while with a grim look, so that all could see he was dissatisfied. then he shook himself, stripped to the buff, clambered on the rail, drew himself up and raised his arms to plunge. the dive was never taken. he stood, instead, transfixed, his eyes on the horizon. "hand up that glass," he said. in a trice they were all swarming aloft, the nude captain leading with the glass. on the northern horizon was a finger of grey smoke, straight in the windless air like a point of admiration. "what do you make it?" they asked of wicks. "she's truck down," he replied; "no telling yet. by the way the smoke builds, she must be heading right here." "what can she be?" "she might be a china mail," returned wicks, "and she might be a blooming man-of-war, come to look for castaways. here! this ain't the time to stand staring. on deck, boys!" he was the first on deck, as he had been the first aloft, handed down the ensign, bent it again to the signal halliards, and ran it up union down. "now hear me," he said, jumping into his trousers, "and everything i say you grip on to. if that's a man-ofwar, she'll be in a tearing hurry, all these ships are what don't do nothing and have their expenses paid. that's our chance; for we'll go with them, and they won't take the time to look twice or to ask a question. i'm captain trent; carthew, you're goddedaal; tommy, you're hardy; mac's brown; amalu--hold hard; we can't make a chinaman of him! ah wing must have deserted; amalu stowed away; and i turned him to as cook, and was never at the bother to sign him. catch the idea? say your names." and that pale company recited their lesson earnestly. "what were the names of the other two?" he asked,--"him carthew shot in the companion, and the one i caught in the jaw on the main top-gallant?" "holdorsen and wallen," said some one. "well, they're drowned," continued wicks; "drowned alongside trying to lower a boat. we had a bit of a squall last night; that's how we got ashore." he ran and squinted at the compass. "squall out of nor'-nor'west-half-west; blew hard; every one in a mess, falls jammed, and holdorsen and wallen spilt overboard. see? clear your blooming heads!" he was in his jacket now, and spoke with a feverish impatience and contention that rang like anger. "but is it safe?" asked tommy. "safe?" bellowed the captain. "we're standing on the drop, you moon-calf! if that ship's bound for china (which she don't look to be), we're lost as soon as we arrive; if she's bound the other way, she comes from china, don't she? well, if there's a man on board of her that ever clapped eyes on trent, or any blooming hand out of this brig, we'll all be in irons in two hours. safe! no, it ain't safe; it's a beggarly last chance to shave the gallows, and that's what it is." at this convincing picture fear took hold on all. "hadn't we a hundred times better stay by the brig?" cried carthew. "they would give us a hand to float her off." "you'll make me waste this holy day in chattering!" cried wicks. "look here, when i sounded the well this morning there was two foot of water there against eight inches last night. what's wrong? i don't know; might be nothing; might be the worst kind of smash. and then, there we are in for a thousand miles in an open boat, if that's your taste!" "but it may be nothing, and anyway their carpenters are bound to help us repair her," argued carthew. "moses murphy!" cried the captain. "how did she strike? bows on, i believe. and she's down by the head now. if any carpenter comes tinkering here, where'll he go first? down in the forepeak, i suppose! and then, how about all that blood among the chandlery. you would think you were a lot of members of parliament discussing plimsoll; and you're just a pack of murderers with the halter round your neck. any other ass got any time to waste? no? thank god for that! now, all hands! i'm going below, and i leave you here on deck. you get the boat-cover off that boat; then you turn to and open the specie chest. there are five of us; get five chests, and divide the specie equal among the five--put it at the bottom--and go at it like tigers. get blankets, or canvas, or clothes, so it won't rattle. it'll make five pretty heavy chests, but we can't help that. you, carthew--dash me!--you, mr. goddedaal, come below. we've our share before us." and he cast another glance at the smoke, and hurried below with carthew at his heels. the logs were found in the main cabin behind the canary cage; two of them, one kept by trent, one by goddedaal. wicks looked first at one, then at the other, and his lip stuck out. "can you forge hand of write?" he asked. "no," said carthew. "there's luck for you--no more can i!" cried the captain. "hullo! here's worse yet--here's this goddedaal up to date; he must have filled it in before supper. see for yourself: "smoke observed.--captain kirkup and five hands of the schooner currency lass." ah! this is better," he added, turning to the other log. "the old man ain't written anything for a clear fortnight. we'll dispose of your log altogether, mr. goddedaal, and stick to the old man's--to mine, i mean; only i ain't going to write it up, for reasons of my own. you are. you're going to sit down right here and fill it in the way i tell you." "how to explain the loss of mine?" asked carthew. "you never kept one," replied the captain. "gross neglect of duty. you'll catch it." "and the change of writing?" resumed carthew. "you began; why do you stop and why do i come in? and you'll have to sign anyway." "o! i've met with an accident and can't write," replied wicks. "an accident?" repeated carthew. "it don't sound natural. what kind of an accident?" wicks spread his hand face-up on the table, and drove a knife through his palm. "that kind of an accident," said he. "there's a way to draw to windward of most difficulties, if you've a head on your shoulders." he began to bind up his hand with a handkerchief, glancing the while over goddedaal's log. "hullo!" he said; "this'll never do for us--this is an impossible kind of a yarn. here, to begin with, is this captain trent trying some fancy course, leastways he's a thousand miles to south'ard of the great circle. and here, it seems, he was close up with this island on the 6th, sails all these days and is close up with it again by daylight on the 11th." "goddedaal said they had the deuce's luck," said carthew. "well, it don't look like real life--that's all i can say," returned wicks. "it's the way it was, though," argued carthew. "so it is; and what the better are we for that, if it don't look so?" cried the captain, sounding unwonted depths of art criticism. "here! try and see if you can tie this bandage; i'm bleeding like a pig." as carthew sought to adjust the handkerchief, his patient seemed sunk in a deep muse, his eye veiled, his mouth partly open. the job was yet scarce done when he sprang to his feet. "i have it," he broke out, and ran on deck. "here, boys!" he cried, "we didn't come here on the 11th; we came in here on the evening of the 6th, and lay here ever since becalmed. as soon as you've done with these chests," he added, "you can turn to and roll out beef and water-breakers; it'll look more shipshape--like as if we were getting ready for the boat voyage." and he was back again in a moment, cooking the new log. goddedaal's was then carefully destroyed, and a hunt began for the ship's papers. of all the agonies of that breathless morning this was perhaps the most poignant. here and there the two men searched, cursing, cannoning together, streaming with heat, freezing with terror. news was bawled down to them that the ship was indeed a man-of-war, that she was close up, that she was lowering a boat; and still they sought in vain. by what accident they missed the iron box with the money and accounts is hard to fancy, but they did. and the vital documents were found at last in the pocket of trent's shore-going coat, where he had left them when last he came on board. wicks smiled for the first time that morning. "none too soon," said he. "and now for it! take these others for me; i'm afraid i'll get them mixed if i keep both." "what are they?" carthew asked. "they're the kirkup and currency lass papers," he replied. "pray god we need 'em again!" "boat's inside the lagoon, sir," hailed down mac, who sat by the skylight doing sentry while the others worked. "time we were on deck, then, mr. goddedaal," said wicks. as they turned to leave the cabin, the canary burst into piercing song. "my god!" cried carthew, with a gulp, "we can't leave that wretched bird to starve. it was poor goddedaal's." "bring the bally thing along!" cried the captain. and they went on deck. an ugly brute of a modern man-of-war lay just without the reef, now quite inert, now giving a flap or two with her propeller. nearer hand, and just within, a big white boat came skimming to the stroke of many oars, her ensign blowing at the stern. "one word more," said wicks, after he had taken in the scene. "mac, you've been in china ports? all right; then you can speak for yourself the rest of you i kept on board all the time we were in hong kong, hoping you would desert; but you fooled me and stuck to the brig. that'll make your lying come easier." the boat was now close at hand; a boy in the stern sheets was the only officer, and a poor one plainly, for the men were talking as they pulled. "thank god, they've only sent a kind of a middy!" ejaculated wicks.--"here you, hardy, stand for'ard! i'll have no deck hands on my quarter-deck," he cried, and the reproof braced the whole crew like a cold douche. the boat came alongside with perfect neatness, and the boy officer stepped on board, where he was respectfully greeted by wicks. "you the master of this ship?" he asked. "yes, sir," said wicks. "trent is my name, and this is the flying scud of hull." "you seem to have got into a mess," said the officer. "if you'll step aft with me here, i'll tell you all there is of it," said wicks. "why, man, you're shaking!" cried the officer. "so would you, perhaps, if you had been in the same berth," returned wicks; and he told the whole story of the rotten water, the long calm, the squall, the seamen drowned, glibly and hotly, talking, with his head in the lion's mouth, like one pleading in the dock. i heard the same tale from the same narrator in the saloon in san francisco; and even then his bearing filled me with suspicion. but the officer was no observer. "well, the captain is in no end of a hurry," said he; "but i was instructed to give you all the assistance in my power, and signal back for another boat if more hands were necessary. what can i do for you?" "o, we won't keep you no time," replied wicks cheerily. "we're all ready, bless you--men's chests, chronometer, papers, and all." "do you mean to leave her?" cried the officer. "she seems to me to lie nicely; can't we get your ship off?" "so we could, and no mistake; but how we're to keep her afloat's another question. her bows is stove in," replied wicks. the officer coloured to the eyes. he was incompetent, and knew he was; thought he was already detected, and feared to expose himself again. there was nothing further from his mind than that the captain should deceive him; if the captain was pleased, why, so was he. "all right," he said. "tell your men to get their chests aboard." "mr. goddedaal, turn the hands to to get the chests aboard," said wicks. the four currency lasses had waited the while on tenter-hooks. this welcome news broke upon them like the sun at midnight; and hadden burst into a storm of tears, sobbing aloud as he heaved upon the tackle. but the work went none the less briskly forward; chests, men, and bundles were got over the side with alacrity; the boat was shoved off; it moved out of the long shadow of the flying scud, and its bows were pointed at the passage. so much, then, was accomplished. the sham wreck had passed muster; they were clear of her, they were safe away; and the water widened between them and her damning evidences. on the other hand, they were drawing nearer to the ship of war, which might very well prove to be their prison and a hangman's cart to bear them to the gallows of which they had not yet learned either whence she came or whither she was bound; and the doubt weighed upon their heart like mountains. it was wicks who did the talking. the sound was small in carthew's ears, like the voices of men miles away, but the meaning of each word struck home to him like a bullet. "what did you say your ship was?" inquired wicks. "tempest, don't you know?" returned the officer. "'don't you know?' what could that mean? perhaps nothing: perhaps that the ships had met already. wicks took his courage in both hands. "where is she bound?" he asked. "o, we're just looking in at all these miserable islands here," said the officer. "then we bear up for san francisco." "o yes, you're from china ways, like us?" pursued wicks. "hong kong," said the officer, and spat over the side. hong kong. then the game was up; as soon as they set foot on board they would be seized: the wreck would be examined, the blood found, the lagoon perhaps dredged, and the bodies of the dead would reappear to testify. an impulse almost incontrollable bade carthew rise from the thwart, shriek out aloud, and leap overboard; it seemed so vain a thing to dissemble longer, to dally with the inevitable, to spin out some hundred seconds more of agonised suspense, with shame and death thus visibly approaching. but the indomitable wicks persevered. his face was like a skull, his voice scarce recognisable; the dullest (it seemed) must have remarked that tell-tale countenance and broken utterance. and still he persevered, bent upon certitude. "nice place hong kong?" he said. "i'm sure i don't know," said the officer. "only a day and a half there; called for orders and came straight on here. never heard of such a beastly cruise." and he went on describing and lamenting the untoward fortunes of the tempest. but wicks and carthew heeded him no longer. they lay back on the gunwale, breathing deep, sunk in a stupor of the body; the mind within still nimbly and agreeably at work, measuring the past danger, exulting in the present relief, numbering with ecstasy their ultimate chances of escape. for the voyage in the man-of-war they were now safe, yet a few more days of peril, activity and presence of mind in san francisco, and the whole horrid tale was blotted out; and wicks again became kirkup, and goddedaal became carthew--men beyond all shot of possible suspicion, men who had never heard of the flying scud, who had never been in sight of midway reef. so they came alongside, under many craning heads of seamen and projecting mouths of guns; so they climbed on board somnambulous, and looked blindly about them at the tall spars, the white decks, and the crowding ship's company, and heard men as from far away, and answered them at random. and then a hand fell softly on carthew's shoulder. "why, norrie, old chappie, where have you dropped from? all the world's been looking for you. don't you know you've come into your kingdom?" he turned, beheld the face of his old schoolmate sebright, and fell unconscious at his feet. the doctor was attending him, a while later, in lieutenant sebright's cabin, when he came to himself. he opened his eyes, looked hard in the strange face, and spoke with a kind of solemn vigour. "brown must go the same road," he said, "now or never." and then paused, and his reason coming to him with more clearness, spoke again: "what was i saying? where am i? who are you?" "i am the doctor of the tempest," was the reply. "you are in lieutenant sebright's berth, and you may dismiss all concern from your mind. your troubles are over, mr. carthew." "why do you call me that?" he asked. "ah, i remember-sebright knew me! o!" and he groaned and shook. "send down wicks to me; i must see wicks at once!" he cried, and seized the doctor's wrist with unconscious violence. "all right," said the doctor. "let's make a bargain. you swallow down this draught, and i'll go and fetch wicks." and he gave the wretched man an opiate that laid him out within ten minutes, and in all likelihood preserved his reason. it was the doctor's next business to attend to mac; and he found occasion, while engaged upon his arm, to make the man repeat the names of the rescued crew. it was now the turn of the captain, and there is no doubt he was no longer the man that we have seen; sudden relief, the sense of perfect safety, a square meal, and a good glass of grog, had all combined to relax his vigilance and depress his energy. "when was this done?" asked the doctor, looking at the wound. "more than a week ago," replied wicks, thinking singly of his log. "hey?" cried the doctor, and he raised his hand and looked the captain in the eyes. "i don't remember exactly," faltered wicks. and at this remarkable falsehood the suspicions of the doctor were at once quadrupled. "by the way, which of you is called wicks?" he asked easily. "what's that?" snapped the captain, falling white as paper. "wicks," repeated the doctor; "which of you is he? that's surely a plain question." wicks stared upon his questioner in silence. "which is brown, then?" pursued the doctor. "what are you talking of? what do you mean by this?" cried wicks, snatching his half-bandaged hand away, so that the blood sprinkled in the surgeon's face. he did not trouble to remove it; looking straight at his victim, he pursued his questions. "why must brown go the same way?" he asked. wicks fell trembling on a locker. "carthew told you," he cried. "no," replied the doctor, "he has not. but he and you between you have set me thinking, and i think there's something wrong." "give me some grog," said wicks. "i'd rather tell than have you find out. i'm damned if it's half as bad as what any one would think." and with the help of a couple of strong grogs, the tragedy of the flying scud was told for the first time. it was a fortunate series of accidents that brought the story to the doctor. he understood and pitied the position of these wretched men, and came wholeheartedly to their assistance. he and wicks and carthew (so soon as he was recovered) held a hundred councils and prepared a policy for san francisco. it was he who certified "goddedaal" unfit to be moved, and smuggled carthew ashore under cloud of night; it was he who kept wicks's wound open that he might sign with his left hand; he who took all their chile silver and (in the course of the first day) got it converted for them into portable gold. he used his influence in the wardroom to keep the tongues of the young officers in order, so that carthew's identification was kept out of the papers. and he rendered another service yet more important. he had a friend in san francisco, a millionaire; to this man he privately presented carthew as a young gentleman come newly into a huge estate, but troubled with jew debts which he was trying to settle on the quiet. the millionaire came readily to help; and it was with his money that the wrecker gang was to be fought. what was his name, out of a thousand guesses? it was douglas longhurst. as long as the currency lasses could all disappear under fresh names, it did not greatly matter if the brig were bought, or any small discrepancies should be discovered in the wrecking. the identification of one of their number had changed all that. the smallest scandal must now direct attention to the movements of norris. it would be asked how he who had sailed in a schooner from sydney had turned up so shortly after in a brig out of hong kong; and from one question to another all his original shipmates were pretty sure to be involved. hence arose naturally the idea of preventing danger, profiting by carthew's new-found wealth, and buying the brig under an alias; and it was put in hand with equal energy and caution. carthew took lodgings alone under a false name, picked up bellairs at random, and commissioned him to buy the wreck. "what figure, if you please?" the lawyer asked. "i want it bought," replied carthew. "i don't mind about the price." "any price is no price," said bellairs. "put a name upon it." "call it ten thousand pounds then, if you like!" said carthew. in the meanwhile the captain had to walk the streets, appear in the consulate, be cross-examined by lloyd's agent, be badgered about his lost accounts, sign papers with his left hand, and repeat his lies to every skipper in san francisco, not knowing at what moment he might run into the arms of some old friend who should hail him by the name of wicks, or some new enemy who should be in a position to deny him that of trent. and the latter incident did actually befall him, but was transformed by his stout countenance into an element of strength. it was in the consulate (of all untoward places) that he suddenly heard a big voice inquiring for captain trent. he turned with the customary sinking at his heart. "you ain't captain trent!" said the stranger, falling back. "why, what's all this? they tell me you're passing off as captain trent--captain jacob trent--a man i knew since i was that high." "o, you're thinking of my uncle as had the bank in cardiff," replied wicks, with desperate aplomb. "i declare i never knew he had a nevvy!" said the stranger. "well, you see he has!" says wicks. "and how is the old man?" asked the other. "fit as a fiddle," answered wicks, and was opportunely summoned by the clerk. this alert was the only one until the morning of the sale, when he was once more alarmed by his interview with jim; and it was with some anxiety that he attended the sale, knowing only that carthew was to be represented, but neither who was to represent him nor what were the instructions given. i suppose captain wicks is a good life. in spite of his personal appearance and his own known uneasiness, i suppose he is secure from apoplexy, or it must have struck him there and then, as he looked on at the stages of that insane sale and saw the old brig and her not very valuable cargo knocked down at last to a total stranger for ten thousand pounds. it had been agreed that he was to avoid carthew, and above all carthew's lodging, so that no connection might be traced between the crew and the pseudonymous purchaser. but the hour for caution was gone by, and he caught a tram and made all speed to mission street. carthew met him in the door. "come away, come away from here," said carthew; and when they were clear of the house, "all's up!" he added. "o, you've heard of the sale, then?" said wicks. "the sale!" cried carthew. "i declare i had forgotten it." and he told of the voice in the telephone, and the maddening question: "why did you want to buy the flying scud?" this circumstance, coming on the back of the monstrous improbabilities of the sale, was enough to have shaken the reason of immanuel kant. the earth seemed banded together to defeat them; the stones and the boys on the street appeared to be in possession of their guilty secret. flight was their one thought. the treasure of the currency lass they packed in waist-belts, expressed their chests to an imaginary address in british columbia, and left san francisco the same afternoon, booked for los angeles. the next day they pursued their retreat by the southern pacific route, which carthew followed on his way to england; but the other three branched off for mexico. epilogue to will h. low dear low,--the other day (at manihiki of all places) i had the pleasure to meet dodd. we sat some two hours in the neat little toy-like church, set with pews after the manner of europe, and inlaid with mother-of-pearl in the style (i suppose) of the new jerusalem. the natives, who are decidedly the most attractive inhabitants of this planet, crowded round us in the pew, and fawned upon and patted us; and here it was i put my questions, and dodd answered me. i first carried him back to the night in barbizon when carthew told his story, and asked him what was done about bellairs. it seemed he had put the matter to his friend at once, and that carthew had taken to it with an inimitable lightness. "he's poor and i'm rich," he had said. "i can afford to smile at him. i go somewhere else, that's all--somewhere that's far away and dear to get to. persia would be found to answer, i fancy. no end of a place, persia. why not come with me?" and they had left the next afternoon for constantinople, on their way to teheran. of the shyster, it is only known (by a newspaper paragraph) that he returned somehow to san francisco and died in the hospital. "now there's another point," said i. "there you are off to persia with a millionaire, and rich yourself. how come you here in the south seas, running a trader?" he said, with a smile, that i had not yet heard of jim's last bankruptcy. "i was about cleaned out once more," he said; "and then it was that carthew had this schooner built and put me in as supercargo. it's his yacht and it's my trader; and as nearly all the expenses go to the yacht, i do pretty well. as for jim, he's right again; one of the best businesses, they say, in the west--fruit, cereals, and real estate; and he has a tartar of a partner now--nares, no less. nares will keep him straight, nares has a big head. they have their country places next door at saucelito, and i stayed with them time about, the last time i was on the coast. jim had a paper of his own--i think he has a notion of being senator one of these days--and he wanted me to throw up the schooner and come and write his editorials. he holds strong views on the state constitution, and so does mamie." "and what became of the other three currency lasses after they left carthew?" i inquired. "well, it seems they had a huge spree in the city of mexico," said dodd; "and then hadden and the irishman took a turn at the gold-fields in venezuela, and wicks went on alone to valparaiso. there's a kirkup in the chilean navy to this day; i saw the name in the papers about the balmaceda war. hadden soon wearied of the mines, and i met him the other day in sydney. the last news he had from venezuela, mac had been knocked over in an attack on the gold train. so there's only the three of them left, for amalu scarcely counts. he lives on his own land in maui, at the side of hale-aka-la, where he keeps goddedaal's canary; and they say he sticks to his dollars, which is a wonder in a kanaka. he had a considerable pile to start with, for not only hemstead's share but carthew's was divided equally among the other four--mac being counted." "what did that make for him altogether?" i could not help asking, for i had been diverted by the number of calculations in his narrative. "one hundred and twenty-eight pounds nineteen shillings and elevenpence-halfpenny," he replied with composure; "that's leaving out what little he won at van john. it's something for a kanaka, you know." and about that time we were at last obliged to yield to the solicitations of our native admirers, and go to the pastor's house to drink green cocoa-nuts. the ship i was in was sailing the same night, for dodd had been beforehand and got all the shell in the island; and though he pressed me to desert and return with him to auckland (whither he was now bound to pick up carthew) i was firm in my refusal. the truth is, since i have been mixed up with havens and dodd in the design to publish the latter's narrative, i seem to feel no want for carthew's society. of course, i am wholly modern in sentiment, and think nothing more noble than to publish people's private affairs at so much a line. they like it, and if they don't they ought to. but a still small voice keeps telling me they will not like it always, and perhaps not always stand it. memory besides supplies me with the face of a pressman (in the sacred phrase) who proved altogether too modern for one of his neighbours, and qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum --nos proecedens-as it were, marshalling us our way. i am in no haste to be that man's successor. carthew has a record as "a clane shot," and for some years samoa will be good enough for me. we agreed to separate, accordingly; but he took me on board in his own boat with the hardwood fittings, and entertained me on the way with an account of his late visit to butaritari, whither he had gone on an errand for carthew, to see how topelius was getting along, and, if necessary, to give him a helping hand. but topelius was in great force, and had patronised and-well--out-manoeuvred him. "carthew will be pleased," said dodd; "for there's no doubt they oppressed the man abominably when they were in the currency lass. it's diamond cut diamond now." this, i think, was the most of the news i got from my friend loudon; and i hope i was well inspired, and have put all the questions to which you would be curious to hear an answer. but there is one more that i daresay you are burning to put to myself; and that is, what your own name is doing in this place, cropping up (as it were uncalled for) on the stern of our poor ship? if you were not born in arcadia, you linger in fancy on its margin; your thoughts are busied with the flutes of antiquity, with daffodils, and the classic poplar, and the footsteps of the nymphs, and the elegant and moving aridity of ancient art. why dedicate to you a tale of a cast so modern:--full of details of our barbaric manners and unstable morals; full of the need and the lust of money, so that there is scarce a page in which the dollars do not jingle; full of the unrest and movement of our century, so that the reader is hurried from place to place and sea to sea, and the book is less a romance than a panorama--in the end, as bloodbespattered as an epic? well, you are a man interested in all problems of art, even the most vulgar; and it may amuse you to hear the genesis and growth of the wrecker. on board the schooner equator, almost within sight of the johnstone islands (if anybody knows where these are), and on a moonlit night when it was a joy to be alive, the authors were amused with several stories of the sales of wrecks. the subject tempted them; and they sat apart in the alleyway to discuss its possibilities. "what a tangle it would make," suggested one, "if the wrong crew were aboard. but how to get the wrong crew there?"--"i have it!" cried the other; "the so-and-so affair!" for not so many months before, and not so many hundred miles from where we were then sailing, a proposition almost tantamount to that of captain trent had been made by a british skipper to some british castaways. before we turned in, the scaffolding of the tale had been put together. but the question of treatment was as usual more obscure. we had long been at once attracted and repelled by that very modern form of the police novel or mystery story, which consists in beginning your yarn anywhere but at the beginning, and finishing it anywhere but at the end; attracted by its peculiar interest when done, and the peculiar difficulties that attend its execution; repelled by that appearance of insincerity and shallowness of tone, which seems its inevitable drawback. for the mind of the reader, always bent to pick up clues, receives no impression of reality or life, rather of an airless, elaborate mechanism; and the book remains enthralling, but insignificant, like a game of chess, not a work of human art. it seemed the cause might lie partly in the abrupt attack; and that if the tale were gradually approached, some of the characters introduced (as it were) beforehand, and the book started in the tone of a novel of manners and experience briefly treated, this defect might be lessened and our mystery seem to inhere in life. the tone of the age, its movement, the mingling of races and classes in the dollar hunt, the fiery and not quite unromantic struggle for existence, with its changing trades and scenery, and two types in particular, that of the american handy-man of business and that of the yankee merchant sailor--we agreed to dwell upon at some length, and make the woof to our not very precious warp. hence dodd's father, and pinkerton, and nares, and the dromedary picnics, and the railway work in new south wales--the last an unsolicited testimonial from the powers that be, for the tale was half written before i saw carthew's squad toil in the rainy cutting at south clifton, or heard from the engineer of his "young swell." after we had invented at some expense of time this method of approaching and fortifying our police novel, it occurred to us it had been invented previously by some one else, and was in fact--however painfully different the results may seem--the method of charles dickens in his later work. i see you staring. here, you will say, is a prodigious quantity of theory to our halfpenny-worth of police novel; and withal not a shadow of an answer to your question. well, some of us like theory. after so long a piece of practice, these may be indulged for a few pages. and the answer is at hand. it was plainly desirable, from every point of view of convenience and contrast, that our hero and narrator should partly stand aside from those with whom he mingles, and be but a pressed-man in the dollar hunt. thus it was that loudon dodd became a student of the plastic arts, and that our globetrotting story came to visit paris and look in at barbizon. and thus it is, dear low, that your name appears in the address of this epilogue. for sure, if any person can here appreciate and read between the lines, it must be you--and one other, our friend. all the dominos will be transparent to your better knowledge; the statuary contract will be to you a piece of ancient history; and you will not have now heard for the first time of the dangers of roussillon. dead leaves from the bas breau, echoes from lavenue's and the rue racine, memories of a common past, let these be your bookmarkers as you read. and if you care for naught else in the story, be a little pleased to breathe once more for a moment the airs of our youth. the end. . 1827 the happiest day, the happiest hour by edgar allan poe the happiest daythe happiest hour my sear'd and blighted heart hath known, the highest hope of pride and power, i feel hath flown. of power! said i? yes! such i ween; but they have vanish'd long, alas! the visions of my youth have been but let them pass. and, pride, what have i now with thee? another brow may even inherit the venom thou hast pour'd on me be still, my spirit! the happiest daythe happiest hour mine eyes shall seehave ever seen, the brightest glance of pride and power, i feelhave been: but were that hope of pride and power now offer'd with the pain even then i feltthat brightest hour i would not live again: for on its wing was dark alloy, and, as it flutter'dfell an essencepowerful to destroy a soul that knew it well. -the end. reginald by saki (h. h. munro) [obi/h.h.munro/reginald] this text is in the public domain. text prepared in may 1993 by anders thulin ath@linkoping.trab.se reginald reginald on christmas presents reginald on the academy reginald at the theatre reginald's peace poem reginald's choir treat reginald on worries reginald on house-parties reginald at the carlton reginald on besetting sins reginald's drama reginald on tariffs reginald's christmas revel reginald's rubaiyat the innocence of reginald reginald i did it---i should have known better. i persuaded reginald to go to the mckillops' garden-party against his will. we all make mistakes occasionally. ``they know you're here, and they'll think it so funny if you don't go. and i want particularly to be in with mrs. mckillop just now.'' ``i know, you want one of her smoke persian kittens as a prospective wife for wumples---or a husband, is it?'' (reginald has a magnificent scorn for details, other than sartorial.) ``and i am expected to undergo social martyrdom to suit the connubial exigencies---'' ``reginald! it's nothing of the kind, only i'm sure mrs. mckillop would be pleased if i brought you. young men of your brilliant attractions are rather at a premium at her garden-parties.'' ``should be at a premium in heaven,'' remarked reginald complacently. ``there will be very few of you there, if that is what you mean. but seriously, there won't be any great strain upon your powers of endurance; i promise you that you shan't have to play croquet, or talk to the archdeacon's wife, or do anything that is likely to bring on physical prostration. you can just wear your sweetest clothes and a moderately amiable expression, and eat chocolate-creams with the appetite of a _blas<e'>_ parrot. nothing more is demanded of you.'' reginald shut his eyes. ``there will be the exhaustingly up-to-date young women who will ask me if i have seen _san toy_; a less progressive grade who will yearn to hear about the diamond jubilee---the historic event, not the horse. with a little encouragement, they will inquire if i saw the allies march into paris. why are women so fond of raking up the past? they're as bad as tailors, who invariably remember what you owe them for a suit long after you've ceased to wear it.'' ``i'll order lunch for one o'clock; that will give you two and a half hours to dress in.'' reginald puckered his brow into a tortured frown, and i knew that my point was gained. he was debating what tie would go with which waistcoat. even then i had my misgivings. * during the drive to the mckillops' reginald was possessed with a great peace, which was not wholly to be accounted for by the fact that he had inveigled his feet into shoes a size too small for them. i misgave more than ever, and having once launched reginald on to the mckillops' lawn, i established him near a seductive dish of _marrons glac<e'>s_, and as far from the archdeacon's wife as possible; as i drifted away to a diplomatic distance i heard with painful distinctness the eldest mawkby girl asking him if he had seen _san toy_. it must have been ten minutes later, not more, and i had been having _quite_ an enjoyable chat with my hostess, and had promised to lend her _the eternal city_ and my recipe for rabbit mayonnaise, and was just about to offer a kind home for her third persian kitten, when i perceived, out of the corner of my eye, that reginald was not where i had left him, and that the _marrons glac<e'>s_ were untasted. at the same moment i became aware that old colonel mendoza was essaying to tell his classic story of how he introduced golf into india, and that reginald was in dangerous proximity. there are occasions when reginald is caviare to the colonel. ``when i was at poona in '76---'' ``my dear colonel,'' purred reginald, ``fancy admitting such a thing! such a give-away for one's age! i wouldn't admit being on this planet in '76.'' (reginald in his wildest lapses into veracity never admits to being more than twenty-two.) the colonel went to the colour of a fig that has attained great ripeness, and reginald, ignoring my efforts to intercept him glided away to another part of the lawn. i found him a few minutes later happily engaged in teaching the youngest rampage boy the approved theory of mixing absinthe, within full earshot of his mother. mrs. rampage occupies a prominent place in local temperance movements. as soon as i had broken up this unpromising _t<e^>te-<a`>-t<e^>te_ and settled reginald where he could watch the croquet players losing their tempers, i wandered off to find my hostess and renew the kitten negotiations at the point where they had been interrupted. i did not succeed in running her down at once, and eventually it was mrs. mckillop who sought me out, and her conversation was not of kittens. ``your cousin is discussing _zaza_ with the archdeacon's wife; at least, he is discussing, she is ordering her carriage.'' she spoke in the dry, staccato tone of one who repeats a french exercise, and i knew that as far as millie mckillop was concerned, wumples was devoted to a lifelong celibacy. ``if you don't mind,'' i said hurriedly, ``i think we'd like our carriage ordered too,'' and i made a forced march in the direction of the croquet ground. i found every one talking nervously and feverishly of the weather and the war in south africa, except reginald, who was reclining in a comfortable chair with the dreamy, far-away look that a volcano might wear just after it had desolated entire villages. the archdeacon's wife was buttoning up her gloves with a concentrated deliberation that was fearful to behold. i shall have to treble my subscription to her cheerful sunday evenings fund before i dare set foot in her house again. at that particular moment the croquet players finished their game, which had been going on without a symptom of finality during the whole afternoon. why, i ask, should it have stopped precisely when a counter-attraction was so necessary? every one seemed to drift towards the area of disturbance, of which the chairs of the archdeacon's wife and reginald formed the storm-centre. conversation flagged, and there settled upon the company that expectant hush that precedes the dawn---when your neighbours don't happen to keep poultry. ``what did the caspian sea?'' asked reginald, with appalling suddenness. there were symptoms of a stampede. the archdeacon's wife looked at me. kipling or some one has described somewhere the look a foundered camel gives when the caravan moves on and leaves it to its fate. the peptonized reproach in the good lady's eyes brought the passage vividly to my mind. i played my last card. ``reginald, it's getting late, and a sea-mist is coming on.'' i knew that the elaborate curl over his right eyebrow was not guaranteed to survive a sea-mist. * ``never, never again, will i take you to a garden-party. never.... you behaved abominably.... what did the caspian see?'' a shade of genuine regret for misused opportunities passed over reginald's face. ``after all,'' he said, ``i believe an apricot tie would have gone better with the lilac waistcoat.'' reginald on christmas presents i wish it to be distinctly understood (said reginald) that i don't want a ``george, prince of wales'' prayer-book as a christmas present. the fact cannot be too widely known. there ought (he continued) to be technical education classes on the science of present-giving. no one seems to have the faintest notion of what any one else wants, and the prevalent ideas on the subject are not creditable to a civilized community. there is, for instance, the female relative in the country who ``knows a tie is always useful,'' and sends you some spotted horror that you could only wear in secret or in tottenham court road. it _might_ have been useful had she kept it to tie up currant bushes with, when it would have served the double purpose of supporting the branches and frightening away the birds---for it is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of commerce has a sounder <ae>sthetic taste than the average female relative in the country. then there are aunts. they are always a difficult class to deal with in the matter of presents. the trouble is that one never catches them really young enough. by the time one has educated them to an appreciation of the fact that one does not wear red woollen mittens in the west end, they die, or quarrel with the family, or do something equally inconsiderate. that is why the supply of trained aunts is always so precarious. there is my aunt agatha, _par exemple_, who sent me a pair of gloves last christmas, and even got so far as to choose a kind that was being worn and had the correct number of buttons. but---_they were nines!_ i sent them to a boy whom i hated intimately: he didn't wear them, of course, but he could have---that was where the bitterness of death came in. it was nearly as consoling as sending white flowers to his funeral. of course i wrote and told my aunt that they were the one thing that had been wanting to make existence blossom like a rose; i am afraid she thought me frivolous---she comes from the north, where they live in the fear of heaven and the earl of durham. (reginald affects an exhaustive knowledge of things political, which furnishes an excellent excuse for not discussing them.) aunts with a dash of foreign extraction in them are the most satisfactory in the way of understanding these things; but if you can't choose your aunt, it is wisest in the long run to choose the present and send her the bill. even friends of one's own set, who might be expected to know better, have curious delusions on the subject. i am not collecting copies of the cheaper editions of omar khayy<a'>m. i gave the last four that i received to the lift-boy, and i like to think of him reading them, with fitzgerald's notes, to his aged mother. lift-boys always have aged mothers; shows such nice feeling on their part, i think. personally, i can't see where the difficulty in choosing suitable presents lies. no boy who had brought himself up properly could fail to appreciate one of those decorative bottles of liqueurs that are so reverently staged in morel's window---and it wouldn't in the least matter if one did get duplicates. and there would always be the supreme moment of dreadful uncertainty whether it was _cr<e^>me de menthe_ or chartreuse---like the expectant thrill on seeing your partner's hand turned up at bridge. people may say what they like about the decay of christianity; the religious system that produced green chartreuse can never really die. and then, of course, there are liqueur glasses, and crystallized fruits, and tapestry curtains, and heaps of other necessaries of life that make really sensible presents---not to speak of luxuries, such as having one's bills paid, or getting something quite sweet in the way of jewellery. unlike the alleged good woman of the bible, i'm not above rubies. when found, by the way, she must have been rather a problem at christmas-time; nothing short of a blank cheque would have fitted the situation. perhaps it's as well that she's died out. the great charm about me (concluded reginald) is that i am so easily pleased. but i draw the line at a ``prince of wales'' prayer-book. reginald on the academy ``one goes to the academy in self-defence,'' said reginald. ``it is the one topic one has in common with the country cousins.'' ``it is almost a religious observance with them,'' said the other. ``a kind of artistic mecca, and when the good ones die they go---'' ``to the chantrey bequest. the mystery is _what_ they find to talk about in the country.'' ``there are two subjects of conversation in the country: servants, and can fowls be made to pay? the first, i believe, is compulsory, the second optional.'' ``as a function,'' resumed reginald, ``the academy is a failure.'' ``you think it would be tolerable without the pictures?'' ``the pictures are all right, in their way; after all, one can always _look_ at them if one is bored with one's surroundings, or wants to avoid an imminent acquaintance.'' ``even that doesn't always save one. there is the inevitable female whom you met once in devonshire, or the matoppo hills, or somewhere, who charges up to you with the remark that it's funny how one always meets people one knows at the academy. personally, i _don't_ think it funny.'' ``i suffered in that way just now,'' said reginald plaintively, ``from a woman whose word i had to take that she had met me last summer in brittany.'' ``i hope you were not too brutal?'' ``i merely told her with engaging simplicity that the art of life was the avoidance of the unattainable.'' ``did she try and work it out on the back of her catalogue?'' ``not there and then. she murmured something about being `so clever.' fancy coming to the academy to be clever!'' ``to be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening.'' ``which reminds me that i can't remember whether i accepted an invitation from you to dine at kettner's tonight.'' ``on the other hand, i can remember with startling distinctness not having asked you to.'' ``so much certainty is unbecoming in the young; so we'll consider that settled. what were you talking about? oh, pictures. personally, i rather like them; they are so refreshingly real and probable, they take one away from the unrealities of life.'' ``one likes to escape from oneself occasionally.'' ``that is the disadvantage of a portrait; as a rule, one's bitterest friends can find nothing more to ask than the faithful unlikeness that goes down to posterity as oneself. i hate posterity---it's so fond of having the last word. of course, as regards portraits, there are exceptions.'' ``for instance?'' ``to die before being painted by sargent is to go to heaven prematurely.'' ``with the necessary care and impatience, you may avoid that catastrophe.'' ``if you're going to be rude,'' said reginald, ``i shall dine with you tomorrow night as well. the chief vice of the academy,'' he continued, ``is its nomenclature. why, for instance, should an obvious trout-stream with a palpable rabbit sitting in the foreground be called `an evening dream of unbeclouded peace,' or something of that sort?'' ``you think,'' said the other, ``that a name should economize description rather than stimulate imagination?'' ``properly chosen, it should do both. there is my lady kitten at home, for instance; i've called it derry.'' ``suggests nothing to my imagination but protracted sieges and religious animosities. of course, i don't know your kitten---'' ``oh, you're silly. it's a sweet name, and it answers to it---when it wants to. then, if there are any unseemly noises in the night, they can be explained succinctly: derry and toms.'' ``you might almost charge for the advertisement. but as applied to pictures, don't you think your system would be too subtle, say, for the country cousins?'' ``every reformation must have its victims. you can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigals return. another darling weakness of the academy is that none of its luminaries must `arrive' in a hurry. you can see them coming for years, like a balkan trouble or a street improvement, and by the time they have painted a thousand or so square yards of canvas, their work begins to be recognized.'' ``some one who must not be contradicted said that a man must be a success by the time he's thirty, or never.'' ``to have reached thirty,'' said reginald, ``is to have failed in life.'' reginald at the theatre ``after all,'' said the duchess vaguely, ``there are certain things you can't get away from. right and wrong, good conduct and moral rectitude, have certain well-defined limits.'' ``so, for the matter of that,'' replied reginald, ``has the russian empire. the trouble is that the limits are not always in the same place.'' reginald and the duchess regarded each other with mutual distrust, tempered by a scientific interest. reginald considered that the duchess had much to learn; in particular, not to hurry out of the carlton as though afraid of losing one's last 'bus. a woman, he said, who is careless of disappearances is capable of leaving town before goodwood, and dying at the wrong moment of an unfashionable disease. the duchess thought that reginald did not exceed the ethical standard which circumstances demanded. ``of course,'' she resumed combatively, ``it's the prevailing fashion to believe in perpetual change and mutability, and all that sort of thing, and to say we are all merely an improved form of primeval ape---of course you subscribe to that doctrine?'' ``i think it decidedly premature; in most people i know the process is far from complete.'' ``and equally of course you are quite irreligious?'' ``oh, by no means. the fashion just now is a roman catholic frame of mind with an agnostic conscience: you get the medi<ae>val picturesqueness of the one with the modern conveniences of the other.'' the duchess suppressed a sniff. she was one of those people who regard the church of england with patronizing affection, as if it were something that had grown up in their kitchen garden. ``but there are other things,'' she continued, ``which i suppose are to a certain extent sacred even to you. patriotism, for instance, and empire, and imperial responsibility, and blood-is-thicker-than-water, and all that sort of thing.'' reginald waited for a couple of minutes before replying, while the lord of rimini temporarily monopolized the acoustic possibilities of the theatre. ``that is the worst of a tragedy,'' he observed, ``one can't always hear oneself talk. of course i accept the imperial idea and the responsibility. after all, i would just as soon think in continents as anywhere else. and some day, when the season is over and we have the time, you shall explain to me the exact blood-brotherhood and all that sort of thing that exists between a french canadian and a mild hindoo and a yorkshireman, for instance.'' ``oh, well, `dominion over palm and pine,' you know,'' quoted the duchess hopefully; ``of course we mustn't forget that we're all part of the great anglo-saxon empire.'' ``which for its part is rapidly becoming a suburb of jerusalem. a very pleasant suburb, i admit, and quite a charming jerusalem. but still a suburb.'' ``really, to be told one's living in a suburb when one is conscious of spreading the benefits of civilization all over the world! philanthropy---i suppose you will say _that_ is a comfortable delusion; and yet even you must admit that whenever want or misery or starvation is known to exist, however distant or difficult of access, we instantly organize relief on the most generous scale, and distribute it, if need be, to the uttermost ends of the earth.'' the duchess paused, with a sense of ultimate triumph. she had made the same observation at a drawing-room meeting, and it had been extremely well received. ``i wonder,'' said reginald, ``if you have ever walked down the embankment on a winter night?'' ``gracious, no, child! why do you ask?'' ``i didn't; i only wondered. and even your philanthropy, practised in a world where everything is based on competition, must have a debit as well as a credit account. the young ravens cry for food.'' ``and are fed.'' ``exactly. which presupposes that something else is fed upon.'' ``oh, you're simply exasperating. you've been reading nietzsche till you haven't got any sense of moral proportion left. may i ask if you are governed by _any_ laws of conduct whatever?'' ``there are certain fixed rules that one observes for one's own comfort. for instance, never be flippantly rude to any inoffensive, grey-bearded stranger that you may meet in pine forests or hotel smoking-rooms on the continent. it always turns out to be the king of sweden.'' ``the restraint must be dreadfully irksome to you. when i was younger, boys of your age used to be nice and innocent.'' ``now we are only nice. one must specialize in these days. which reminds me of the man i read of in some sacred book who was given a choice of what he most desired. and because he didn't ask for titles and honours and dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other things came to him also.'' ``i am sure you didn't read about him in any sacred hook.'' ``yes; i fancy you will find him in debrett.'' reginald's peace poem ``i'm writing a poem on peace,'' said reginald, emerging from a sweeping operation through a tin of mixed biscuits, in whose depths a macaroon or two might yet be lurking. ``something of the kind seems to have been attempted already,'' said the other. ``oh, i know; but i may never have the chance again. besides, i've got a new fountain pen. i don't pretend to have gone on any very original lines; in writing about peace the thing is to say what everybody else is saying, only to say it better. it begins with the usual ornithological emotion: `when the widgeon westward winging heard the folk vereeniginging, heard the shouting and the singing---' '' ``vereeniginging is good, but why widgeon?'' ``why not? anything that winged westward would naturally begin with a _w_.'' ``need it wing westward?'' ``the bird must go somewhere. you wouldn't have it hang around and look foolish. then i've brought in something about the heedless hartebeest galloping over the deserted veldt.'' ``of course you know it's practically extinct in those regions?'' ``i can't help that, it gallops so nicely. i make it have all sorts of unexpected yearnings: 'mother, may i go and maffick, tear around and hinder traffic?' of course you'll say there would be no traffic worth bothering about on the bare and sun-scorched veldt, but there's no other word that rhymes with maffick.'' ``seraphic?'' reginald considered. ``it might do, but i've got a lot about angels later on. you must have angels in a peace poem; i know dreadfully little about their habits.'' ``they can do unexpected things, like the hartebeest.'' ``of course. then i turn on london, the city of dreadful nocturnes, resonant with hymns of joy and thanksgiving: 'and the sleeper, eye unlidding, heard a voice for ever bidding much farewell to dolly gray; turning weary on his truckle bed he heard the honeysuckle lauded in apiarian lay.' longfellow at his best wrote nothing like that.'' ``i agree with you.'' ``i wish you wouldn't. i've a sweet temper, but i can't stand being agreed with. and i'm so worried about the aasvogel.'' reginald stared dismally at the biscuit-tin, which now presented an unattractive array of rejected cracknels. ``i believe,`` he murmured , ''if i could find a woman with an unsatisfied craving for cracknels, i should marry her.'' ``what is the tragedy of the aasvogel?'' asked the other sympathetically. ``oh, simply that there's no rhyme for it. i thought about it all the time i was dressing---it's dreadfully bad for one to think whilst one's dressing---and all lunch-time, and i'm still hung up over it. i feel like those unfortunate automobilists who achieve an unenviable notoriety by coming to a hopeless stop with their cars in the most crowded thoroughfares. i'm afraid i shall have to drop the aasvogel, and it did give such lovely local colour to the thing.'' ``still you've got the heedless hartebeest.'' ``and quite a decorative bit of moral admonition---when you've worried the meaning out-- 'cease, war, thy bubbling madness that the wine shares, and bid thy legions turn their swords to mine shares.' mine shares seems to fit the case better than ploughshares. there's lots more about the blessings of peace, shall i go on reading it?'' ``if i must make a choice, i think i would rather they went on with the war.'' reginald's choir treat ``never,'' wrote reginald to his most darling friend, ``be a pioneer. it's the early christian that gets the fattest lion.'' reginald, in his way, was a pioneer. none of the rest of his family had anything approaching titian hair or a sense of humour, and they used primroses as a table decoration. it follows that they never understood reginald, who came down late to breakfast, and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful things about the universe. the family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even the weather forecast. therefore the family was relieved when the vicar's daughter undertook the reformation of reginald. her name was amabel; it was the vicar's one extravagance. amabel was accounted a beauty and intellectually gifted; she never played tennis, and was reputed to have read maeterlinck's _life of the bee_. if you abstain from tennis and read maeterlinck in a small country village, you are of necessity intellectual. also she had been twice to f<e'>camp to pick up a good french accent from the americans staying there; consequently she had a knowledge of the world which might be considered useful in dealings with a worldling. hence the congratulations in the family when amabel undertook the reformation of its wayward member. amabel commenced operations by asking her unsuspecting pupil to tea in the vicarage garden; she believed in the healthy influence of natural surroundings, never having been in sicily, where things are different. and like every woman who has ever preached repentance to unregenerate youth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, which always seems so much more scandalous in the country, where people rise early to see if a new strawberry has happened during the night. reginald recalled the lilies of the field, ``which simply sat and looked beautiful, and defied competition.'' ``but that is not an example for us to follow,'' gasped amabel. ``unfortunately, we can't afford to. you don't know what a world of trouble i take in trying to rival the lilies in their artistic simplicity.'' ``you are really indecently vain of your appearance. a good life is infinitely preferable to good looks.'' ``you agree with me that the two are incompatible. i always say beauty is only sin deep.'' amabel began to realize that the battle is not always to the strong-minded. with the immemorial resource of her sex, she abandoned the frontal attack and laid stress on her unassisted labours in parish work, her mental loneliness, her discouragements---and at the right moment she produced strawberries and cream. reginald was obviously affected by the latter, and when his preceptress suggested that he might begin the strenuous life by helping her to supervise the annual outing of the bucolic infants who composed the local choir, his eyes shone with the dangerous enthusiasm of a convert. reginald entered on the strenuous life alone, as far as amabel was concerned. the most virtuous women are not proof against damp grass, and amabel kept her bed with a cold. reginald called it a dispensation; it had been the dream of his life to stage-manage a choir outing. with strategic insight, he led his shy, bullet-headed charges to the nearest woodland stream and allowed them to bathe; then he seated himself on their discarded garments and discoursed on their immediate future, which, he decreed, was to embrace a bacchanalian procession through the village. forethought had provided the occasion with a supply of tin whistles, but the introduction of a he-goat from a neighbouring orchard was a brilliant afterthought. properly, reginald explained, there should have been an outfit of panther skins; as it was, those who had spotted handkerchiefs were allowed to wear them, which they did with thankfulness. reginald recognized the impossibility, in the time at his disposal, of teaching his shivering neophytes a chant in honour of bacchus, so he started them off with a more familiar, if less appropriate, temperance hymn. after all, he said, it is the spirit of the thing that counts. following the etiquette of dramatic authors on first nights, he remained discreetly in the background while the procession, with extreme diffidence and the goat, wound its way lugubriously towards the village. the singing had died down long before the main street was reached, but the miserable wailing of pipes brought the inhabitants to their doors. reginald said he had seen something like it in pictures; the villagers had seen nothing like it in their lives, and remarked as much freely. reginald's family never forgave him. they had no sense of humour. reginald on worries i have (said reginald) an aunt who worries. she's not really an aunt---a sort of amateur one, and they aren't really worries. she is a social success, and has no domestic tragedies worth speaking of, so she adopts any decorative sorrows that are going, myself included. in that way she's the antithesis, or whatever you call it, to those sweet, uncomplaining women one knows who have seen trouble, and worn blinkers ever since. of course, one just loves them for it, but i must confess they make me uncomfy; they remind one so of a duck that goes flapping about with forced cheerfulness long after its head's been cut off. ducks have no repose. now, my aunt has a shade of hair that suits her, and a cook who quarrels with the other servants, which is always a hopeful sign, and a conscience that's absentee for about eleven months of the year, and only turns up at lent to annoy her husband's people, who are considerably lower than the angels, so to speak: with all these natural advantages---she says her particular tint of bronze is a natural advantage, and there can be no two opinions as to the advantage---of course she has to send out for her afflictions, like those restaurants where they haven't got a licence. the system has this advantage, that you can fit your unhappinesses in with your other engagements, whereas real worries have a way of arriving at meal-times, and when you're dressing, or other solemn moments. i knew a canary once that had been trying for months and years to hatch out a family, and every one looked upon it as a blameless infatuation, like the sale of delagoa bay, which would be an annual loss to the press agencies if it ever came to pass; and one day the bird really did bring it off, in the middle of family prayers. i say the middle, but it was also the end: you can't go on being thankful for daily bread when you are wondering what on earth very new canaries expect to be fed on. at present she's rather in a balkan state of mind about the treatment of the jews in roumania. personally, i think the jews have estimable qualities; they're so kind to their poor---and to our rich. i daresay in roumania the cost of living beyond one's income isn't so great. over here the trouble is that so many people who have money to throw about seem to have such vague ideas where to throw it. that fund, for instance, to relieve the victims of sudden disasters---what is a sudden disaster? there's marion mulciber, who _would_ think she could play bridge, just as she would think she could ride down a hill on a bicycle; on that occasion she went to a hospital, now shes gone into a sisterhood---lost all she had, you know, and gave the rest to heaven. still, you can't call it a sudden calamity; _that_ occurred when poor dear marion was born. the doctors said at the time that she couldn't live more than a fortnight, and she's been trying ever since to see if she could. women are so opinionated. and then there's the education question---not that i can see that there's anything to worry about in that direction. to my mind, education is an absurdly overrated affair. at least, one never took it very seriously at school, where everything was done to bring it prominently under one's notice. anything that is worth knowing one practically teaches oneself, and the rest obtrudes itself sooner or later. the reason one's elders know so comparatively little is because they have to unlearn so much that they acquired by way of education before we were born. of course i'm a believer in nature-study; as i said to lady beauwhistle, if you want a lesson in elaborate artificiality, just watch the studied unconcern of a persian cat entering a crowded salon, and then go and practise it for a fortnight. the beauwhistles weren't born in the purple, you know, but they're getting there on the instalment system---so much down, and the rest when you feel like it. they have kind hearts, and they never forget birthdays. i forget what he was, something in the city, where the patriotism comes from; and she---oh, well, her frocks are built in paris, but she wears them with a strong english accent. so public-spirited of her. i think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly. not that it really matters nowadays, as i told her: i know some perfectly virtuous people who are received everywhere. reginald on house-parties the drawback is, one never really _knows_ one's hosts and hostesses. one gets to know their fox-terriers and their chrysanthemums, and whether the story about the go-cart can be turned loose in the drawing-room, or must be told privately to each member of the party, for fear of shocking public opinion; but one's host and hostess are a sort of human hinterland that one never has the time to explore. there was a fellow i stayed with once in warwickshire who farmed his own land, but was otherwise quite steady. should never have suspected him of having a soul, yet not very long afterwards he eloped with a lion-tamer's widow and set up as a golf-instructor somewhere on the persian gulf; dreadfully immoral of course, because he was only an indifferent player, but still, it showed imagination. his wife was really to be pitied, because he had been the only person in the house who understood how to manage the cooks temper, and now she has to put ``d.v.'' on her dinner invitations. still, that's better than a domestic scandal; a woman who leaves her cook never wholly recovers her position in society. i suppose the same thing holds good with the hosts; they seldom have more than a superficial acquaintance with their guests, and so often just when they do get to know you a bit better, they leave off knowing you altogether. there was _rather_ a breath of winter in the air when i left those dorsetshire people. you see, they had asked me down to shoot, and i'm not particularly immense at that sort of thing. there's such a deadly sameness about partridges; when you've missed one, you've missed the lot---at least, that's been my experience. and they tried to rag me in the smoking-room about not being able to hit a bird at five yards, a sort of bovine ragging that suggested cows buzzing round a gadfly and thinking they were teasing it. so i got up the next morning at early dawn---i know it was dawn, because there were lark-noises in the sky, and the grass looked as if it had been left out all night---and hunted up the most conspicuous thing in the bird line that i could find, and measured the distance, as nearly as it would let me, and shot away all i knew. they said afterwards that it was a tame bird; that's simply _silly_, because it was awfully wild at the first few shots. afterwards it quieted down a bit, and when its legs had stopped waving farewells to the landscape i got a gardener-boy to drag it into the hall, where everybody must see it on their way to the breakfast-room. i breakfasted upstairs myself. i gathered afterwards that the meal was tinged with a very unchristian spirit. i suppose it's unlucky to bring peacock's feathers into a house; anyway, there was a blue-pencilly look in my hostess's eye when i took my departure. some hostesses, of course, will forgive anything, even unto pavonicide (is there such a word?), as long as one is nice-looking and sufficiently unusual to counterbalance some of the others; and there _are_ others---the girl, for instance, who reads meredith, and appears at meals with unnatural punctuality in a frock that's made at home and repented at leisure. she eventually finds her way to india and gets married, and comes home to admire the royal academy, and to imagine that an indifferent prawn curry is for ever an effective substitute for all that we have been taught to believe is luncheon. it's then that she is really dangerous; but at her worst she is never quite so bad as the woman who fires exchange and mart questions at you without the least provocation. imagine the other day, just when i was doing my best to understand half the things i was saying, being asked by one of those seekers after country home truths how many fowls she could keep in a run ten feet by six, or whatever it was! i told her whole crowds, as long as she kept the door shut, and the idea didn't seem to have struck her before; at least, she brooded over it for the rest of dinner. of course, as i say, one never really _knows_ one's ground, and one may make mistakes occasionally. but then one's mistakes sometimes turn out assets in the long-run: if we had never bungled away our american colonies we might never have had the boy from the states to teach us how to wear our hair and cut our clothes, and we must get our ideas from somewhere, i suppose. even the hooligan was probably invented in china centuries before we thought of him. england must wake up, as the duke of devonshire said the other day, wasn't it? oh, well, it was some one else. not that i ever indulge in despair about the future; there always have been men who have gone about despairing of the future, and when the future arrives it says nice, superior things about their having acted according to their lights. it is dreadful to think that other people's grandchildren may one day rise up and call one amiable. there are moments when one sympathizes with herod. reginald at the carlton ``a most variable climate,'' said the duchess; ``and how unfortunate that we should have had that very cold weather at a time when coal was so dear! so distressing for the poor.'' ``some one has observed that providence is always on the side of the big dividends,'' remarked reginald. the duchess ate an anchovy in a shocked manner; she was sufficiently old-fashioned to dislike irreverence towards dividends. reginald had left the selection of a feeding-ground to her womanly intuition, but he chose the wine himself, knowing that womanly intuition stops short at claret. a woman will cheerfully choose husbands for her less attractive friends, or take sides in a political controversy without the least knowledge of the issues involved---but no woman ever cheerfully chose a claret. ``hors d'<oe>uvres have always a pathetic interest for me,'' said reginald: ``they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through, wondering what the next course is going to be like---and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'<oe>vres. don't you love watching the different ways people have of entering a restaurant? there is the woman who races in as though her whole scheme of life were held together by a one-pin despotism which might abdicate its functions at any moment; it's really a relief to see her reach her chair in safety. then there are the people who troop in with an-unpleasant-duty-to-perform air, as if they were angels of death entering a plague city. you see that type of briton very much in hotels abroad. and nowadays there are always the johannes-bourgeois, who bring a cape-to-cairo atmosphere with them---what may be called the rand manner, i suppose.'' ``talking about hotels abroad,'' said the duchess, ``i am preparing notes for a lecture at the club on the educational effects of modern travel, dealing chiefly with the moral side of the question. i was talking to lady beauwhistle's aunt the other day---she's just come back from paris, you know. such a sweet woman---'' ``and so silly. in these days of the overeducation of women she's quite refreshing. they say some people went through the siege of paris without knowing that france and germany were at war; but the beauwhistle aunt is credited with having passed the whole winter in paris under the impression that the humberts were a kind of bicycle.... isn't there a bishop or somebody who believes we shall meet all the animals we have known on earth in another world? how frightfully embarrassing to meet a whole shoal of whitebait you had last known at prince's! i'm sure in my nervousness i should talk of nothing but lemons. still, i daresay they would be quite as offended if one hadn't eaten them. i know if i were served up at a cannibal feast i should be dreadfully annoyed if any one found fault with me for not being tender enough, or having been kept too long.'' ``my idea about the lecture,'' resumed the duchess hurriedly, ``is to inquire whether promiscuous continental travel doesn't tend to weaken the moral fibre of the social conscience. there are people one knows, quite nice people when they are in england, who are so _different_ when they are anywhere the other side of the channel.'' ``the people with what i call tauchnitz morals,'' observed reginald. ``on the whole, i think they get the best of two very desirable worlds. and, after all, they charge so much for excess luggage on some of those foreign lines that it's really an economy to leave one's reputation behind one occasionally.'' ``a scandal, my dear reginald, is as much to be avoided at monaco or any of those places as at exeter, let us say.'' ``scandal, my dear irene---i may call you irene, mayn't i?'' ``i don't know that you have known me long enough for that.'' ``i've known you longer than your god-parents had when they took the liberty of calling you that name. scandal is merely the compassionate allowance which the gay make to the humdrum. think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people. tell me, who is the woman with the old lace at the table on our left? oh, that doesn't matter; it's quite the thing nowadays to stare at people as if they were yearlings at tattersall's.'' ``mrs. spelvexit? quite a charming woman; separated from her husband---'' ``incompatibility of income?'' ``oh, nothing of that sort. by miles of frozen ocean, i was going to say. he explores ice-floes and studies the movements of herrings, and has written a most interesting book on the home-life of the esquimaux; but naturally he has very little home-life of his own.'' ``a husband who comes home with the gulf stream would be rather a tied-up asset.'' ``his wife is exceedingly sensible about it. she collects postage-stamps. such a resource. those people with her are the whimples, very old acquaintances of mine; they're always having trouble, poor things.' ``trouble is not one of those fancies you can take up and drop at any moment; it's like a grouse-moor or the opium-habit---once you start it you've got to keep it up.'' ``their eldest son was such a disappointment to them; they wanted him to be a linguist, and spent no end of money on having him taught to speak---oh, dozens of languages!---and then he became a trappist monk. and the youngest, who was intended for the american marriage market, has developed political tendencies, and writes pamphlets about the housing of the poor. of course it's a most important question, and i devote a good deal of time to it myself in the mornings; but, as laura whimple says, it's as well to have an establishment of one's own before agitating about other people's. she feels it very keenly, but she always maintains a cheerful appetite, which i think is so unselfish of her.'' ``there are different ways of taking disappointment. there was a girl i knew who nursed a wealthy uncle through a long illness, borne by her with christian fortitude, and then he died and left his money to a swine-fever hospital. she found she'd about cleared stock in fortitude by that time, and now she gives drawing-room recitations. that's what i call being vindictive.'' ``life is full of its disappointments,'' observed the duchess, ``and i suppose the art of being happy is to disguise them as illusions. but that, my dear reginald, becomes more difficult as one grows older.'' ``i think it's more generally practised than you imagine. the young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened. it's only the middle-aged who are really conscious of their limitations---that is why one should be so patient with them. but one never is.'' ``after all,'' said the duchess, ``the disillusions of life may depend on our way of assessing it. in the minds of those who come after us we may be remembered for qualities and successes which we quite left out of the reckoning.'' ``it's not always safe to depend on the commemorative tendencies of those who come after us. there may have been disillusionments in the lives of the medi<ae>val saints, but they would scarcely have been better pleased if they could have foreseen that their names would be associated nowadays chiefly with racehorses and the cheaper clarets. and now, if you can tear yourself away from the salted almonds, we'll go and have coffee under the palms that are so necessary for our discomfort.'' reginald on besetting sins the woman who told the truth there was once (said reginald) a woman who told the truth. not all at once, of course, but the habit grew upon her gradually, like lichen on an apparently healthy tree. she had no children---otherwise it might have been different. it began with little things, for no particular reason except that her life was a rather empty one, and it is so easy to slip into the habit of telling the truth in little matters. and then it became difficult to draw the line at more important things, until at last she took to telling the truth about her age; she said she was forty-two and five months---by that time, you see, she was veracious even to months. it may have been pleasing to the angels, but her elder sister was not gratified. on the woman's birthday, instead of the opera-tickets which she had hoped for, her sister gave her a view of jerusalem from the mount of olives, which is not quite the same thing. the revenge of an elder sister may be long in coming, but, like a south-eastern express, it arrives in its own good time. the friends of the woman tried to dissuade her from over-indulgence in the practice, but she said she was wedded to the truth; whereupon it was remarked that it was scarcely logical to be so much together in public. (no really provident woman lunches regularly with her husband if she wishes to burst upon him as a revelation at dinner. he must have time to forget; an afternoon is not enough.) and after a while her friends began to thin out in patches. her passion for the truth was not compatible with a large visiting-list. for instance, she told miriam klopstock _exactly_ how she looked at the ilexes' ball. certainly miriam had asked for her candid opinion, but the woman prayed in church every sunday for peace in our time, and it was not consistent. it was unfortunate, every one agreed, that she had no family; with a child or two in the house, there is an unconscious check upon too free an indulgence in the truth. children are given us to discourage our better emotions. that is why the stage, with all its efforts, can never be as artificial as life; even in an ibsen drama one must reveal to the audience things that one would suppress before the children or servants. fate may have ordained the truth-telling from the commencement and should justly bear some of the blame; but in having no children the woman was guilty, at least, of contributory negligence. little by little she felt she was becoming a slave to what had once been merely an idle propensity; and one day she knew. every woman tells ninety per cent of the truth to her dressmaker; the other ten per cent is the irreducible minimum of deception beyond which no self-respecting client trespasses. madame draga's establishment was a meeting-ground for naked truths and overdressed fictions, and it was here, the woman felt, that she might make a final effort to recall the artless mendacity of past days. madame herself was in an inspiring mood, with the air of a sphinx who knew all things and preferred to forget most of them. as a war minister she might have been celebrated, but she was content to be merely rich. ``if i take it in here, and---miss howard, one moment, if you please---and there, and round like this---so---i really think you will find it quite easy.'' the woman hesitated; it seemed to require such a small effort to simply acquiesce in madame's views. but habit had become too strong. ``i'm afraid,'' she faltered, ``it's just the least little bit in the world too---'' and by that least little bit she measured the deeps and eternities of her thraldom to fact. madame was not best pleased at being contradicted on a professional matter, and when madame lost her temper you usually found it afterwards in the bill. and at last the dreadful thing came, as the woman had foreseen all along that it must; it was one of those paltry little truths with which she harried her waking hours. on a raw wednesday morning, in a few ill-chosen words, she told the cook that she drank. she remembered the scene afterwards as vividly as though it had been painted in her mind by abbey. the cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went. miriam klopstock came to lunch the next day. women and elephants never forget an injury. reginald's drama reginald closed his eyes with the elaborate weariness of one who has rather nice eyelashes and thinks it useless to conceal the fact. ``one of these days,'' he said, ``i shall write a really great drama. no one will understand the drift of it, but every one wiii go back to their homes with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction with their lives and surroundings. then they will put up new wall-papers and forget.'' ``but how about those that have oak panelling all over the house?'' said the other. ``they can always put down new stair-carpets,'' pursued reginald, ``and, anyhow, i'm not responsible for the audience having a happy ending. the play would be quite sufficient strain on one's energies. i should get a bishop to say it was immoral and beautiful---no dramatist has thought of that before, and every one would come to condemn the bishop, and they would stay on out of sheer nervousness. after all, it requires a great deal of moral courage to leave in a marked manner in the middle of the second act, when your carriage isn't ordered till twelve. and it would commence with wolves worrying something on a lonely waste---you wouldn't see them, of course; but you would hear them snarling and scrunching, and i should arrange to have a wolfy fragrance suggested across the footlights. it would look so well on the programmes, `wolves in the first act, by jamrach.' and old lady whortleberry, who never misses a first night, would scream. she's always been nervous since she lost her first husband. he died quite abruptly while watching a county cricket match; two and a half inches of rain had fallen for seven runs, and it was supposed that the excitement killed him. anyhow, it gave her quite a shock; it was the first husband she'd lost, you know, and now she always screams if anything thrilling happens too soon after dinner. and after the audience had heard the whortleberry scream the thing would be fairly launched.'' ``and the plot?'' ``the plot,'' said reginald, ``would be one of those little everyday tragedies that one sees going on all round one. in my mind's eye there is the case of the mudge-jervises, which in an unpretentious way has quite an enoch arden intensity underlying it. they'd only been married some eighteen months or so, and circumstances had prevented their seeing much of each other. with him there was always a foursome or something that had to be played and replayed in different parts of the country, and she went in for slumming quite as seriously as if it was a sport. with her, i suppose, it was. she belonged to the guild of the poor dear souls, and they hold the record for having nearly reformed a washerwoman. no one has ever really reformed a washerwoman, and that is why the competition is so keen. you can rescue charwomen by fifties with a little tea and personal magnetism, but with washerwomen it's different; wages are too high. this particular laundress, who came from bermondsey or some such place, was really rather a hopeful venture, and they thought at last that she might be safely put in the window as a specimen of successful work. so they had her paraded at a drawing-room ``at home'' at agatha camelford's; it was sheer bad luck that some liqueur chocolates had been turned loose by mistake among the refreshments---really liqueur chocolates, with very little chocolate. and of course the old soul found them out, and cornered the entire stock. it was like finding a whelk-stall in a desert, as she afterwards partially expressed herself. when the liqueurs began to take effect, she started to give them imitations of farmyard animals as they know them in bermondsey. she began with a dancing bear, and you know agatha doesn't approve of dancing, except at buckingham palace under proper supervision. and then she got up on the piano and gave them an organ monkey; i gather she went in for realism rather than a maeterlinckian treatment of the subject. finally, she fell into the piano and said she was a parrot in a cage, and for an impromptu performance i believe she was very word-perfect; no one had heard anything like it, except baroness boobelstein who has attended sittings of the austrian reichsrath. agatha is trying the rest-cure at buxton.'' ``but the tragedy?'' ``oh, the mudge-jervises. well, they were getting along quite happily, and their married life was one continuous exchange of picture-postcards; and then one day they were thrown together on some neutral ground where foursomes and washerwomen overlapped, and discovered that they were hopelessly divided on the fiscal question. they have thought it best to separate, and she is to have the custody of the persian kittens for nine months in the year---they go back to him for the winter, when she is abroad. there you have the material for a tragedy drawn straight from life---and the piece could be called `the price they paid for empire.' and of course one would have to work in studies of the struggle of hereditary tendency against environment and all that sort of thing. the woman's father could have been an envoy to some of the smaller german courts; that's where she'd get her passion for visiting the poor, in spite of the most careful upbringing. _c'est le premier pa qui compte_, as the cuckoo said when it swallowed its foster-parent. that, i think, is quite clever.'' ``and the wolves?'' ``oh, the wolves would be a sort of elusive undercurrent in the background that would never be satisfactorily explained. after all, life teems with things that have no earthly reason. and whenever the characters could think of nothing brilliant to say about marriage or the war office, they could open a window and listen to the howling of the wolves. but that would be very seldom.'' reginald on tariffs i'm not going to discuss the fiscal question (said reginald); i wish to be original. at the same time, i think one suffers more than one realizes from the system of free imports. i should like, for instance, a really prohibitive duty put upon the partner who declares on a weak red suit and hopes for the best. even a free outlet for compressed verbiage doesn't balance matters. and i think there should be a sort of bounty-fed export (is that the right expression?) of the people who impress on you that you ought to take life seriously. there are only two classes that really can't help taking life seriously---schoolgirls of thirteen and hohenzollerns; they might be exempt. albanians come under another heading; they take life whenever they get the opportunity. the one albanian that i was ever on speaking terms with was rather a decadent example. he was a christian and a grocer, and i don't fancy he had ever killed anybody. i didn't like to question him on the subject--that showed my delicacy. mrs. nicorax says i have no delicacy; she hasn't forgiven me about the mice. you see, when i was staying down there, a mouse used to cake-walk about my room half the night, and none of their silly patent traps seemed to take its fancy as a bijou residence, so i determined to appeal to the better side of it---which with mice is the inside. so i called it percy, and put little delicacies down near its hole every night, and that kept it quiet while i read max nordau's _degeneration_ and other reproving literature, and went to sleep. and now she says there is a whole colony of mice in that room. that isn't where the indelicacy comes in. she went out riding with me, which was entirely her own suggestion, and as we were coming home through some meadows she made a quite unnecessary attempt to see if her pony would jump a rather messy sort of brook that was there. it wouldn't. it went with her as far as the water's edge, and from that point mrs. nicorax went on alone. of course i had to fish her out from the bank, and my riding-breeches are not cut with a view to salmon-fishing---it's rather an art even to ride in them. her habit-skirt was one of those open questions that need not be adhered to in emergencies, and on this occasion it remained behind in some water-weeds. she wanted me to fish about for that too, but i felt i had done enough pharaoh's daughter business for an october afternoon, and i was beginning to want my tea. so i bundled her up on to her pony, and gave her a lead towards home as fast as i cared to go. what with the wet and the unusual responsibility, her abridged costume did not stand the pace particularly well, and she got quite querulous when i shouted back that i had no pins with me---and no string. some women expect so much from a fellow. when we got into the drive she wanted to go up the back way to the stables, but the ponies know they always get sugar at the front door, and i never attempt to hold a pulling pony; as for mrs. nicorax it took her all she knew to keep a firm hand on her seceding garments, which, as her maid remarked afterwards, were more _tout_ than _ensemble_. of course nearly the whole house-party were out on the lawn watching the sunset---the only day this month that it's occurred to the sun to show itself, as mrs. nic. viciously observed---and i shall never forget the expression on her husband's face as we pulled up. ``my darling, this is too much!'' was his first spoken comment; taking into consideration the state of her toilet, it was the most brilliant thing i had ever heard him say, and i went into the library to be alone and scream. mrs. nicorax says i have no delicacy. talking about tariffs, the lift-boy, who reads extensively between the landings, says it won't do to tax raw commodities. what, exactly, is a raw commodity? mrs. van challaby says men are raw commodities till you marry them; after they've struck mrs. van c., i can fancy they pretty soon become a finished article. certainly she's had a good deal of experience to support her opinion. she lost one husband in a railway accident, and mislaid another in the divorce court, and the current one has just got himself squeezed in a beef trust. ``what was he doing in a beef trust, anyway?'' she asked tearfully, and i suggested that perhaps he had an unhappy home. i only said it for the sake of making conversation; which it did. mrs. van challaby said things about me which in her calmer moments she would have hesitated to spell. it's a pity people can't discuss fiscal matters without getting wild. however, she wrote next day to ask if i could get her a yorkshire terrier of the size and shade that's being worn now, and that's as near as a woman can be expected to get to owning herself in the wrong. and she will tie a salmon-pink bow to its collar, and call it ``reggie,'' and take it with her everywhere---like poor miriam klopstock, who _would_ take her chow with her to the bathroom, and while she was bathing it was playing at she-bears with her garments. miriam is always late for breakfast, and she wasn't really missed till the middle of lunch. however, i'm not going any further into the fiscal question. only i should like to be protected from the partner with a weak red tendency. reginald's christmas revel they say (said reginald) that there's nothing sadder than victory except defeat. if you've ever stayed with dull people during what is alleged to be the festive season, you can probably revise that saying. i shall never forget putting in a christmas at the babwolds'. mrs. babwold is some relation of my father's---a sort of to-be-left-till-called-for cousin---and that was considered sufficient reason for my having to accept her invitation at about the sixth time of asking; though why the sins of the father should be visited by the children---you won't find any notepaper in that drawer; that's where i keep old menus and first-night programmes. mrs. babwold wears a rather solemn personality, and has never been known to smile, even when saying disagreeable things to her friends or making out the stores list. she takes her pleasures sadly. a state elephant at a durbar gives one a very similar impression. her husband gardens in all weathers. when a man goes out in the pouring rain to brush caterpillars off rose trees, i generally imagine his life indoors leaves something to be desired; anyway, it must be very unsettling for the caterpillars. of course there were other people there. there was a major somebody who had shot things in lapland, or somewhere of that sort; i forget what they were, but it wasn't for want of reminding. we had them cold with every meal almost, and he was continually giving us details of what they measured from tip to tip, as though he thought we were going to make them warm under-things for the winter. i used to listen to him with a rapt attention that i thought rather suited me, and then one day i quite modestly gave the dimensions of an okapi i had shot in the lincolnshire fens. the major turned a beautiful tyrian scarlet (i remember thinking at the time that i should like my bathroom hung in that colour), and i think that at that moment he almost found it in his heart to dislike me. mrs. babwold put on a first-aid-to-the-injured expression, and asked him why he didn't publish a book of his sporting reminiscences; it would be so interesting. she didn't remember till afterwards that he had given her two fat volumes on the subject, with his portrait and autograph as a frontispiece and an appendix on the habits of the arctic mussel. it was in the evening that we cast aside the cares and distractions of the day and really lived. cards were thought to be too frivolous and empty a way of passing the time, so most of them played what they called a book game. you went out into the hall---to get an inspiration, i suppose---then you came in again with a muffler tied round your neck and looked silly, and the others were supposed to guess that you were _wee macgreegor_. i held out against the inanity as long as i decently could, but at last, in a lapse of good-nature, i consented to masquerade as a book, only i warned them that it would take some time to carry out. they waited for the best part of forty minutes while i went and played wineglass skittles with the page-boy in the pantry; you play it with a champagne cork, you know, and the one who knocks down the most glasses without breaking them wins. i won, with four unbroken out of seven; i think william suffered from over-anxiousness. they were rather mad in the drawing-room at my not having come back, and they weren't a bit pacified when i told them afterwards that i was _at the end of the passage_. ``i never did like kipling,'' was mrs. babwold's comment, when the situation dawned upon her. ``i couldn't see anything clever in _earthworms out of tuscany_---or is that by darwin?'' of course these games are very educational, but, personally, i prefer bridge. on christmas evening we were supposed to be specially festive in the old english fashion. the hall was horribly draughty, but it seemed to be the proper place to revel in, and it was decorated with japanese fans and chinese lanterns, which gave it a very old english effect. a young lady with a confidential voice favoured us with a long recitation about a little girl who died or did something equally hackneyed, and then the major gave us a graphic account of a struggle he had with a wounded bear. i privately wished that the bears would win sometimes on these occasions; at least they wouldn't go vapouring about it afterwards. before we had time to recover our spirits, we were indulged with some thought-reading by a young man whom one knew instinctively had a good mother and an indifferent tailor---the sort of young man who talks unflaggingly through the thickest soup, and smooths his hair dubiously as though he thought it might hit back. the thought-reading was rather a success; he announced that the hostess was thinking about poetry, and she admitted that her mind was dwelling on one of austin's odes. which was near enough. i fancy she had been really wondering whether a scrag-end of mutton and some cold plum-pudding would do for the kitchen dinner next day. as a crowning dissipation, they all sat down to play progressive halma, with milk-chocolate for prizes. i've been carefully brought up, and i don't like to play games of skill for milk-chocolate, so i invented a headache and retired from the scene. i had been preceded a few minutes earlier by miss langshan-smith, a rather formidable lady, who always got up at some uncomfortable hour in the morning, and gave you the impression that she had been in communication with most of the european governments before breakfast. there was a paper pinned on her door with a signed request that she might be called particularly early on the morrow. such an opportunity does not come twice in a lifetime. i covered up everything except the signature with another notice, to the effect that before these words should meet the eye she would have ended a misspent life, was sorry for the trouble she was giving, and would like a military funeral. a few minutes later i violently exploded an air-filled paper bag on the landing, and gave a stage moan that could have been heard in the cellars. then i pursued my original intention and went to bed. the noise those people made in forcing open the good lady's door was positively indecorous; she resisted gallantly, but i believe they searched her for bullets for about a quarter of an hour, as if she had been a historic battlefield. i hate travelling on boxing day, but one must occasionally do things that one dislikes. reginald's rubaiyat the other day (confided reginald), when i was killing time in the bathroom and making bad resolutions for the new year, it occurred to qme that i would like to be a poet. the chief qualification, i understand, is that you must be born. well, i hunted up my birth certificate, and found that i was all right on that score, and then i got to work on a hymn to the new year, which struck me as having possibilities. it suggested extremely unusual things to absolutely unlikely people, which i believe is the art of first-class catering in any department. quite the best verse in it went something like this: ``have you heard the groan of a gravelled grouse, or the snarl of a snaffled snail (husband or mother, like me, or spouse), have you lain a-creep in the darkened house where the wounded wombats wail?'' it was quite improbable that any one had, you know, and that's where it stimulated the imagination and took people out of their narrow, humdrum selves. no one has ever called me narrow or humdrum, but even i felt worked up now and then at the thought of that house with the stricken wombats in it. it simply wasn't nice. but the editors were unanimous in leaving it alone; they said the thing had been done before and done worse, and that the market for that sort of work was extremely limited. it was just on the top of that discouragement that the duchess wanted me to write something in her album---something persian, you know, and just a little bit decadent---and i thought a quatrain on an unwholesome egg would meet the requirements of the case. so i started in with: ``cackle, cackle, little hen, how i wonder if and when once you laid the egg that i met, alas! too late. amen.'' the duchess objected to the amen, which i thought gave an air of forgiveness and _chose jug<e'>e_ to the whole thing; also she said it wasn't persian enough, as though i were trying to sell her a kitten whose mother had married for love rather than pedigree. so i recast it entirely, and the new version read: ``the hen that laid three moons ago, who knows in what dead yesterday her shades repose; to some election turn thy waning span and rain thy rottenness on fiscal foes.'' i thought there was enough suggestion of decay in that to satisfy a jackal, and to me there was something infinitely pathetic and appealing in the idea of the egg having a sort of st. luke's summer of commercial usefulness. but the duchess begged me to leave out any political allusions; she's the president of a women's something or other, and she said it might be taken as an endorsement of deplorable methods. i never can remember which party irene discourages with her support, but i shan't forget an occasion when i was staying at her place and she gave me a pamphlet to leave at the house of a doubtful voter, and some grapes and things for a woman who was suffering from a chill on the top of a patent medicine. i thought it much cleverer to give the grapes to the former and the political literature to the sick woman, and the duchess was quite absurdly annoyed about it afterwards. it seems the leaflet was addressed ``to those about to wobble''---l wasn't responsible for the silly title of the thing---and the woman never recovered; anyway, the voter was completely won over by the grapes and jellies, and i think that should have balanced matters. the duchess called it bribery, and said it might have compromised the candidate she was supporting; he was expected to subscribe to church funds and chapel funds, and football and cricket clubs and regattas, and bazaars and beanfeasts and bell-ringers, and poultry shows and ploughing matches, and reading-rooms and choir outings, and shooting trophies and testimonials, and anything of that sort; but bribery would not have been tolerated. i fancy i have perhaps more talent for electioneering than for poetry, and i was really getting extended over this quatrain business. the egg began to be unmanageable, and the duchess suggested something with a french literary ring about it. i hunted back in my mind for the most familiar french classic that i could take liberties with, and after a little exercise of memory i turned out the following: ``hast thou the pen that once the gardener had? i have it not; and know, these pears are bad. oh, larger than the horses of the prince are those the general drives in kaikobad.'' even that didn't altogether satisfy irene; i fancy the geography of it puzzled her. she probably thought kaikobad was an unfashionable german spa, where you'd meet matrimonial bargain-hunters and emergency servian kings. my temper was beginning to slip its moorings by that time. i look rather nice when i lose my temper. (i hoped you would say i lose it very often. i mustn't monopolize the conversation.) ``of course, if you want something really persian and passionate, with red wine and bulbuls in it,'' i went on to suggest; but she grabbed the book from me. ``not for worlds. nothing with red wine or passion in it. dear agatha gave me the album, and she would be mortified to the quick---'' i said i didn't believe agatha had a quick, and we got quite heated in arguing the matter. finally, the duchess declared i shouldn't write anything nasty in her book, and i said i shouldn't write anything in her nasty book, so there wasn't a very wide point of difference between us. for the rest of the afternoon i pretended to be sulking, but i was really working back to that quatrain, like a fox-terrier that's buried a deferred lunch in a private flower-bed. when i got an opportunity i hunted up agatha's autograph, which had the front page all to itself, and, copying her prim handwriting as well as i could, i inserted above it the following thibetan fragment: ``with thee, oh, my beloved, to do a d<a^>k (a d<a^>k i believe is a sort of uncomfortable post-journey) on the pack-saddle of a grunting yak, with never room for chilling chaperon, 'twere better than a panhard in the park.'' that agatha would get on to a yak in company with a lover even in the comparative seclusion of thibet is unthinkable. i very much doubt if she'd do it with her own husband in the privacy of the simplon tunnel. but poetry, as i've remarked before, should always stimulate the imagination. by the way, when you asked me the other day to dine with you on the 14th, i said i was dining with the duchess. well, i'm not. i'm dining with you. the innocence of reginald reginald slid a carnation of the newest shade into the buttonhole of his latest lounge coat, and surveyed the result with approval. ``i am just in the mood,'' he observed, ``to have my portrait painted by some one with an unmistakable future. so comforting to go down to posterity as `youth with a pink carnation' in catalogue-company with `child with bunch of primroses,' and all that crowd.'' ``youth,'' said the other, ``should suggest innocence.'' ``but never act on the suggestion. i don't believe the two ever really go together. people talk vaguely about the innocence of a little child, but they take mighty good care not to let it out of their sight for twenty minutes. the watched pot never boils over. i knew a boy once who really was innocent; his parents were in society, but they never gave him a moment's anxiety from his infancy. he believed in company prospectuses, and in the purity of elections, and in women marrying for love, and even in a system for winning at roulette. he never quite lost his faith in it, but he dropped more money than his employers could afford to lose. when last i heard of him, he was believing in his innocence; the jury weren't. all the same, i really am innocent just now of something every one accuses me of having done, and so far as i can see, their accusations will remain unfounded.'' ``rather an unexpected attitude for you.'' ``i love people who do unexpected things. didn't you always adore the man who slew a lion in a pit on a snowy day? but about this unfortunate innocence. well, quite long ago, when i'd been quarrelling with more people than usual, you among the number---it must have been in november, i never quarrel with you too near christmas---i had an idea that i'd like to write a book. it was to be a book of personal reminiscences, and was to leave out nothing.'' ``reginald!'' ``exactly what the duchess said when i mentioned it to her. i was provoking and said nothing, and the next thing, of course, was that every one heard that i'd written the book and got it in the press. after that, i might have been a goldfish in a glass bowl for all the privacy i got. people attacked me about it in the most unexpected places, and implored or commanded me to leave out things that i'd forgotten had ever happened. i sat behind miriam klopstock one night in the dress-circle at his majestys, and she began at once about the incident of the chow dog in the bathroom, which she insisted must be struck out. we had to argue it in a disjointed fashion, because some of the people wanted to listen to the play, and miriam takes nine in voices. they had to stop her playing in the `macaws' hockey club because you could hear what she thought when her shins got mixed up in a scrimmage for half a mile on a still day. they are called the macaws because of their blue-and-yellow costumes, but i understand there was nothing yellow about miriam's language. i agreed to make one alteration, as i pretended i had got it a spitz instead of a chow, but beyond that i was firm. she megaphoned back two minutes later, `you promised you would never mention it; don't you ever keep a promise?' when people had stopped glaring in our direction, i replied that i'd as soon think of keeping white mice. i saw her tearing little bits out of her programme for a minute or two, and then she leaned back and snorted, `you're not the boy i took you for,' as though she were an eagle arriving at olympus with the wrong ganymede. that was her last audible remark, but she went on tearing up her programme and scattering the pieces around her, till one of her neighbours asked with immense dignity whether she should send for a wastepaper-basket. i didn't stay for the last act. ``then there is mrs.---oh, i never can remember her name; she lives in a street that the cabmen have never heard of, and is at home on wednesdays. she frightened me horribly once at a private view by saying mysteriously, `i oughtn't to be here, you know; this is one of my days.' i thought she meant that she was subject to periodical outbreaks and was expecting an attack at any moment. so embarrassing if she had suddenly taken it into her head that she was cesare borgia or st. elizabeth of hungary. that sort of thing would make one unpleasantly conspicuous even at a private view. however, she merely meant to say that it was wednesday, which at the moment was incontrovertible. well, she's on quite a different tack to the klopstock. she doesn't visit anywhere very extensively, and, of course, she's awfully keen for me to drag in an incident that occurred at one of the beauwhistle garden-parties, when she says she accidentally hit the shins of a serene somebody or other with a croquet mallet and that he swore at her in german. as a matter of fact, he went on discoursing on the gordon-bennett affair in french. (i never can remember if it's a new submarine or a divorce. of course, how stupid of me!) to be disagreeably exact, i fancy she missed him by about two inches---overanxiousness, probably---but she likes to think she hit him. i've felt that way with a partridge which i always imagine keeps on flying strong, out of false pride, till it's the other side of the hedge. she said she could tell me everything she was wearing on the occasion. i said i didn't want my book to read like a laundry list, but she explained that she didn't mean those sort of things. ``and there's the chilworth boy, who can be charming as long as he's content to be stupid and wear what he's told to; but he gets the idea now and then that he'd like to be epigrammatic, and the result is like watching a rook trying to build a nest in a gale. since he got wind of the book, he's been persecuting me to work in something of his about the russians and the yalu peril, and is quite sulky because i won't do it. ``altogether, i think it would be rather a brilliant inspiration if you were to suggest a fortnight in paris.'' [end of reginald by h.h.munro] . king richard iii dramatis personae king edward the fourth (king edward iv:) edward prince of wales, (prince edward:) | afterwards king edward v., | sons to | the king. richard duke of york, (york:) | george duke of clarence, (clarence:) | | richard duke of gloucester, (gloucester:) | brothers to afterwards king richard iii., | the king. (king richard iii:) | a young son of clarence. (boy:) henry earl of richmond, (richmond:) afterwards king henry vii. cardinal bourchier archbishop of canterbury. (cardinal:) thomas rotherham archbishop of york. (archbishop of york:) john morton bishop of ely. (bishop of ely:) duke of buckingham (buckingham:) duke of norfolk (norfolk:) earl of surrey his son. (surrey:) earl rivers brother to elizabeth. (rivers:) marquis of dorset (dorset:) | | sons to elizabeth. lord grey (grey:) | earl of oxford (oxford:) lord hastings (hastings:) lord stanley (stanley:) called also earl of derby. (derby:) lord lovel (lovel:) sir thomas vaughan (vaughan:) sir richard ratcliff (ratcliff:) sir william catesby (catesby:) sir james tyrrel (tyrrel:) sir james blount (blount:) sir walter herbert (herbert:) sir robert brakenbury lieutenant of the tower. (brakenbury:) christopher urswick a priest. (christopher:) another priest. (priest:) tressel | | gentlemen attending on the lady anne. berkeley | (gentleman:) lord mayor of london. (lord mayor:) sheriff of wiltshire. (sheriff:) elizabeth queen to king edward iv. (queen elizabeth:) margaret widow of king henry vi. (queen margaret:) duchess of york mother to king edward iv. lady anne widow of edward prince of wales, son to king henry vi.; afterwards married to richard. a young daughter of clarence [margaret plantagenet] (girl:) ghosts of those murdered by richard iii., lords and other attendants; a pursuivant scrivener, citizens, murderers, messengers soldiers, &c. (ghost of prince edward:) (ghost of king henry vi:) (ghost of clarence:) (ghost of rivers:) (ghost of grey:) (ghost of vaughan:) (ghost of hasting:) (ghosts of young princes:) (ghost of lady anne:) (ghost of buckingham:) (pursuivant:) (scrivener:) (first citizen:) (second citizen:) (third citizen:) (first murderer:) (second murderer:) (messenger:) (second messenger:) (third messenger:) (fourth messenger:) scene england. king richard iii act i scene i london. a street. [enter gloucester, solus] gloucester now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of york; and all the clouds that lour'd upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried. now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths; our bruised arms hung up for monuments; our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, our dreadful marches to delightful measures. grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front; and now, instead of mounting barded steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversaries, he capers nimbly in a lady's chamber to the lascivious pleasing of a lute. but i, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; i, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph; i, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature, deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as i halt by them; why, i, in this weak piping time of peace, have no delight to pass away the time, unless to spy my shadow in the sun and descant on mine own deformity: and therefore, since i cannot prove a lover, to entertain these fair well-spoken days, i am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days. plots have i laid, inductions dangerous, by drunken prophecies, libels and dreams, to set my brother clarence and the king in deadly hate the one against the other: and if king edward be as true and just as i am subtle, false and treacherous, this day should clarence closely be mew'd up, about a prophecy, which says that 'g' of edward's heirs the murderer shall be. dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here clarence comes. [enter clarence, guarded, and brakenbury] brother, good day; what means this armed guard that waits upon your grace? clarence his majesty tendering my person's safety, hath appointed this conduct to convey me to the tower. gloucester upon what cause? clarence because my name is george. gloucester alack, my lord, that fault is none of yours; he should, for that, commit your godfathers: o, belike his majesty hath some intent that you shall be new-christen'd in the tower. but what's the matter, clarence? may i know? clarence yea, richard, when i know; for i protest as yet i do not: but, as i can learn, he hearkens after prophecies and dreams; and from the cross-row plucks the letter g. and says a wizard told him that by g his issue disinherited should be; and, for my name of george begins with g, it follows in his thought that i am he. these, as i learn, and such like toys as these have moved his highness to commit me now. gloucester why, this it is, when men are ruled by women: 'tis not the king that sends you to the tower: my lady grey his wife, clarence, 'tis she that tempers him to this extremity. was it not she and that good man of worship, anthony woodville, her brother there, that made him send lord hastings to the tower, from whence this present day he is deliver'd? we are not safe, clarence; we are not safe. clarence by heaven, i think there's no man is secure but the queen's kindred and night-walking heralds that trudge betwixt the king and mistress shore. heard ye not what an humble suppliant lord hastings was to her for his delivery? gloucester humbly complaining to her deity got my lord chamberlain his liberty. i'll tell you what; i think it is our way, if we will keep in favour with the king, to be her men and wear her livery: the jealous o'erworn widow and herself, since that our brother dubb'd them gentlewomen. are mighty gossips in this monarchy. brakenbury i beseech your graces both to pardon me; his majesty hath straitly given in charge that no man shall have private conference, of what degree soever, with his brother. gloucester even so; an't please your worship, brakenbury, you may partake of any thing we say: we speak no treason, man: we say the king is wise and virtuous, and his noble queen well struck in years, fair, and not jealous; we say that shore's wife hath a pretty foot, a cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue; and that the queen's kindred are made gentle-folks: how say you sir? can you deny all this? brakenbury with this, my lord, myself have nought to do. gloucester naught to do with mistress shore! i tell thee, fellow, he that doth naught with her, excepting one, were best he do it secretly, alone. brakenbury what one, my lord? gloucester her husband, knave: wouldst thou betray me? brakenbury i beseech your grace to pardon me, and withal forbear your conference with the noble duke. clarence we know thy charge, brakenbury, and will obey. gloucester we are the queen's abjects, and must obey. brother, farewell: i will unto the king; and whatsoever you will employ me in, were it to call king edward's widow sister, i will perform it to enfranchise you. meantime, this deep disgrace in brotherhood touches me deeper than you can imagine. clarence i know it pleaseth neither of us well. gloucester well, your imprisonment shall not be long; meantime, have patience. clarence i must perforce. farewell. [exeunt clarence, brakenbury, and guard] gloucester go, tread the path that thou shalt ne'er return. simple, plain clarence! i do love thee so, that i will shortly send thy soul to heaven, if heaven will take the present at our hands. but who comes here? the new-deliver'd hastings? [enter hastings] hastings good time of day unto my gracious lord! gloucester as much unto my good lord chamberlain! well are you welcome to the open air. how hath your lordship brook'd imprisonment? hastings with patience, noble lord, as prisoners must: but i shall live, my lord, to give them thanks that were the cause of my imprisonment. gloucester no doubt, no doubt; and so shall clarence too; for they that were your enemies are his, and have prevail'd as much on him as you. hastings more pity that the eagle should be mew'd, while kites and buzzards prey at liberty. gloucester what news abroad? hastings no news so bad abroad as this at home; the king is sickly, weak and melancholy, and his physicians fear him mightily. gloucester now, by saint paul, this news is bad indeed. o, he hath kept an evil diet long, and overmuch consumed his royal person: 'tis very grievous to be thought upon. what, is he in his bed? hastings he is. gloucester go you before, and i will follow you. [exit hastings] he cannot live, i hope; and must not die till george be pack'd with post-horse up to heaven. i'll in, to urge his hatred more to clarence, with lies well steel'd with weighty arguments; and, if i fall not in my deep intent, clarence hath not another day to live: which done, god take king edward to his mercy, and leave the world for me to bustle in! for then i'll marry warwick's youngest daughter. what though i kill'd her husband and her father? the readiest way to make the wench amends is to become her husband and her father: the which will i; not all so much for love as for another secret close intent, by marrying her which i must reach unto. but yet i run before my horse to market: clarence still breathes; edward still lives and reigns: when they are gone, then must i count my gains. [exit] king richard iii act i scene ii the same. another street. [enter the corpse of king henry the sixth, gentlemen with halberds to guard it; lady anne being the mourner] lady anne set down, set down your honourable load, if honour may be shrouded in a hearse, whilst i awhile obsequiously lament the untimely fall of virtuous lancaster. poor key-cold figure of a holy king! pale ashes of the house of lancaster! thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood! be it lawful that i invocate thy ghost, to hear the lamentations of poor anne, wife to thy edward, to thy slaughter'd son, stabb'd by the selfsame hand that made these wounds! lo, in these windows that let forth thy life, i pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes. cursed be the hand that made these fatal holes! cursed be the heart that had the heart to do it! cursed the blood that let this blood from hence! more direful hap betide that hated wretch, that makes us wretched by the death of thee, than i can wish to adders, spiders, toads, or any creeping venom'd thing that lives! if ever he have child, abortive be it, prodigious, and untimely brought to light, whose ugly and unnatural aspect may fright the hopeful mother at the view; and that be heir to his unhappiness! if ever he have wife, let her he made a miserable by the death of him as i am made by my poor lord and thee! come, now towards chertsey with your holy load, taken from paul's to be interred there; and still, as you are weary of the weight, rest you, whiles i lament king henry's corse. [enter gloucester] gloucester stay, you that bear the corse, and set it down. lady anne what black magician conjures up this fiend, to stop devoted charitable deeds? gloucester villains, set down the corse; or, by saint paul, i'll make a corse of him that disobeys. gentleman my lord, stand back, and let the coffin pass. gloucester unmanner'd dog! stand thou, when i command: advance thy halbert higher than my breast, or, by saint paul, i'll strike thee to my foot, and spurn upon thee, beggar, for thy boldness. lady anne what, do you tremble? are you all afraid? alas, i blame you not; for you are mortal, and mortal eyes cannot endure the devil. avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell! thou hadst but power over his mortal body, his soul thou canst not have; therefore be gone. gloucester sweet saint, for charity, be not so curst. lady anne foul devil, for god's sake, hence, and trouble us not; for thou hast made the happy earth thy hell, fill'd it with cursing cries and deep exclaims. if thou delight to view thy heinous deeds, behold this pattern of thy butcheries. o, gentlemen, see, see! dead henry's wounds open their congeal'd mouths and bleed afresh! blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity; for 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood from cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells; thy deed, inhuman and unnatural, provokes this deluge most unnatural. o god, which this blood madest, revenge his death! o earth, which this blood drink'st revenge his death! either heaven with lightning strike the murderer dead, or earth, gape open wide and eat him quick, as thou dost swallow up this good king's blood which his hell-govern'd arm hath butchered! gloucester lady, you know no rules of charity, which renders good for bad, blessings for curses. lady anne villain, thou know'st no law of god nor man: no beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. gloucester but i know none, and therefore am no beast. lady anne o wonderful, when devils tell the truth! gloucester more wonderful, when angels are so angry. vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman, of these supposed-evils, to give me leave, by circumstance, but to acquit myself. lady anne vouchsafe, defused infection of a man, for these known evils, but to give me leave, by circumstance, to curse thy cursed self. gloucester fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have some patient leisure to excuse myself. lady anne fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make no excuse current, but to hang thyself. gloucester by such despair, i should accuse myself. lady anne and, by despairing, shouldst thou stand excused; for doing worthy vengeance on thyself, which didst unworthy slaughter upon others. gloucester say that i slew them not? lady anne why, then they are not dead: but dead they are, and devilish slave, by thee. gloucester i did not kill your husband. lady anne why, then he is alive. gloucester nay, he is dead; and slain by edward's hand. lady anne in thy foul throat thou liest: queen margaret saw thy murderous falchion smoking in his blood; the which thou once didst bend against her breast, but that thy brothers beat aside the point. gloucester i was provoked by her slanderous tongue, which laid their guilt upon my guiltless shoulders. lady anne thou wast provoked by thy bloody mind. which never dreamt on aught but butcheries: didst thou not kill this king? gloucester i grant ye. lady anne dost grant me, hedgehog? then, god grant me too thou mayst be damned for that wicked deed! o, he was gentle, mild, and virtuous! gloucester the fitter for the king of heaven, that hath him. lady anne he is in heaven, where thou shalt never come. gloucester let him thank me, that holp to send him thither; for he was fitter for that place than earth. lady anne and thou unfit for any place but hell. gloucester yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it. lady anne some dungeon. gloucester your bed-chamber. lady anne i'll rest betide the chamber where thou liest! gloucester so will it, madam till i lie with you. lady anne i hope so. gloucester i know so. but, gentle lady anne, to leave this keen encounter of our wits, and fall somewhat into a slower method, is not the causer of the timeless deaths of these plantagenets, henry and edward, as blameful as the executioner? lady anne thou art the cause, and most accursed effect. gloucester your beauty was the cause of that effect; your beauty: which did haunt me in my sleep to undertake the death of all the world, so i might live one hour in your sweet bosom. lady anne if i thought that, i tell thee, homicide, these nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks. gloucester these eyes could never endure sweet beauty's wreck; you should not blemish it, if i stood by: as all the world is cheered by the sun, so i by that; it is my day, my life. lady anne black night o'ershade thy day, and death thy life! gloucester curse not thyself, fair creature thou art both. lady anne i would i were, to be revenged on thee. gloucester it is a quarrel most unnatural, to be revenged on him that loveth you. lady anne it is a quarrel just and reasonable, to be revenged on him that slew my husband. gloucester he that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband, did it to help thee to a better husband. lady anne his better doth not breathe upon the earth. gloucester he lives that loves thee better than he could. lady anne name him. gloucester plantagenet. lady anne why, that was he. gloucester the selfsame name, but one of better nature. lady anne where is he? gloucester here. [she spitteth at him] why dost thou spit at me? lady anne would it were mortal poison, for thy sake! gloucester never came poison from so sweet a place. lady anne never hung poison on a fouler toad. out of my sight! thou dost infect my eyes. gloucester thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine. lady anne would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead! gloucester i would they were, that i might die at once; for now they kill me with a living death. those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears, shamed their aspect with store of childish drops: these eyes that never shed remorseful tear, no, when my father york and edward wept, to hear the piteous moan that rutland made when black-faced clifford shook his sword at him; nor when thy warlike father, like a child, told the sad story of my father's death, and twenty times made pause to sob and weep, that all the standers-by had wet their cheeks like trees bedash'd with rain: in that sad time my manly eyes did scorn an humble tear; and what these sorrows could not thence exhale, thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping. i never sued to friend nor enemy; my tongue could never learn sweet smoothing word; but now thy beauty is proposed my fee, my proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak. [she looks scornfully at him] teach not thy lips such scorn, for they were made for kissing, lady, not for such contempt. if thy revengeful heart cannot forgive, lo, here i lend thee this sharp-pointed sword; which if thou please to hide in this true bosom. and let the soul forth that adoreth thee, i lay it naked to the deadly stroke, and humbly beg the death upon my knee. [he lays his breast open: she offers at it with his sword] nay, do not pause; for i did kill king henry, but 'twas thy beauty that provoked me. nay, now dispatch; 'twas i that stabb'd young edward, but 'twas thy heavenly face that set me on. [here she lets fall the sword] take up the sword again, or take up me. lady anne arise, dissembler: though i wish thy death, i will not be the executioner. gloucester then bid me kill myself, and i will do it. lady anne i have already. gloucester tush, that was in thy rage: speak it again, and, even with the word, that hand, which, for thy love, did kill thy love, shall, for thy love, kill a far truer love; to both their deaths thou shalt be accessary. lady anne i would i knew thy heart. gloucester 'tis figured in my tongue. lady anne i fear me both are false. gloucester then never man was true. lady anne well, well, put up your sword. gloucester say, then, my peace is made. lady anne that shall you know hereafter. gloucester but shall i live in hope? lady anne all men, i hope, live so. gloucester vouchsafe to wear this ring. lady anne to take is not to give. gloucester look, how this ring encompasseth finger. even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart; wear both of them, for both of them are thine. and if thy poor devoted suppliant may but beg one favour at thy gracious hand, thou dost confirm his happiness for ever. lady anne what is it? gloucester that it would please thee leave these sad designs to him that hath more cause to be a mourner, and presently repair to crosby place; where, after i have solemnly interr'd at chertsey monastery this noble king, and wet his grave with my repentant tears, i will with all expedient duty see you: for divers unknown reasons. i beseech you, grant me this boon. lady anne with all my heart; and much it joys me too, to see you are become so penitent. tressel and berkeley, go along with me. gloucester bid me farewell. lady anne 'tis more than you deserve; but since you teach me how to flatter you, imagine i have said farewell already. [exeunt lady anne, tressel, and berkeley] gloucester sirs, take up the corse. gentlemen towards chertsey, noble lord? gloucester no, to white-friars; there attend my coining. [exeunt all but gloucester] was ever woman in this humour woo'd? was ever woman in this humour won? i'll have her; but i will not keep her long. what! i, that kill'd her husband and his father, to take her in her heart's extremest hate, with curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes, the bleeding witness of her hatred by; having god, her conscience, and these bars against me, and i nothing to back my suit at all, but the plain devil and dissembling looks, and yet to win her, all the world to nothing! ha! hath she forgot already that brave prince, edward, her lord, whom i, some three months since, stabb'd in my angry mood at tewksbury? a sweeter and a lovelier gentleman, framed in the prodigality of nature, young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right royal, the spacious world cannot again afford and will she yet debase her eyes on me, that cropp'd the golden prime of this sweet prince, and made her widow to a woful bed? on me, whose all not equals edward's moiety? on me, that halt and am unshapen thus? my dukedom to a beggarly denier, i do mistake my person all this while: upon my life, she finds, although i cannot, myself to be a marvellous proper man. i'll be at charges for a looking-glass, and entertain some score or two of tailors, to study fashions to adorn my body: since i am crept in favour with myself, will maintain it with some little cost. but first i'll turn yon fellow in his grave; and then return lamenting to my love. shine out, fair sun, till i have bought a glass, that i may see my shadow as i pass. [exit] king richard iii act i scene iii the palace. [enter queen elizabeth, rivers, and grey] rivers have patience, madam: there's no doubt his majesty will soon recover his accustom'd health. grey in that you brook it in, it makes him worse: therefore, for god's sake, entertain good comfort, and cheer his grace with quick and merry words. queen elizabeth if he were dead, what would betide of me? rivers no other harm but loss of such a lord. queen elizabeth the loss of such a lord includes all harm. grey the heavens have bless'd you with a goodly son, to be your comforter when he is gone. queen elizabeth oh, he is young and his minority is put unto the trust of richard gloucester, a man that loves not me, nor none of you. rivers is it concluded that he shall be protector? queen elizabeth it is determined, not concluded yet: but so it must be, if the king miscarry. [enter buckingham and derby] grey here come the lords of buckingham and derby. buckingham good time of day unto your royal grace! derby god make your majesty joyful as you have been! queen elizabeth the countess richmond, good my lord of derby. to your good prayers will scarcely say amen. yet, derby, notwithstanding she's your wife, and loves not me, be you, good lord, assured i hate not you for her proud arrogance. derby i do beseech you, either not believe the envious slanders of her false accusers; or, if she be accused in true report, bear with her weakness, which, i think proceeds from wayward sickness, and no grounded malice. rivers saw you the king to-day, my lord of derby? derby but now the duke of buckingham and i are come from visiting his majesty. queen elizabeth what likelihood of his amendment, lords? buckingham madam, good hope; his grace speaks cheerfully. queen elizabeth god grant him health! did you confer with him? buckingham madam, we did: he desires to make atonement betwixt the duke of gloucester and your brothers, and betwixt them and my lord chamberlain; and sent to warn them to his royal presence. queen elizabeth would all were well! but that will never be i fear our happiness is at the highest. [enter gloucester, hastings, and dorset] gloucester they do me wrong, and i will not endure it: who are they that complain unto the king, that i, forsooth, am stern, and love them not? by holy paul, they love his grace but lightly that fill his ears with such dissentious rumours. because i cannot flatter and speak fair, smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive and cog, duck with french nods and apish courtesy, i must be held a rancorous enemy. cannot a plain man live and think no harm, but thus his simple truth must be abused by silken, sly, insinuating jacks? rivers to whom in all this presence speaks your grace? gloucester to thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace. when have i injured thee? when done thee wrong? or thee? or thee? or any of your faction? a plague upon you all! his royal person,- whom god preserve better than you would wish!- cannot be quiet scarce a breathing-while, but you must trouble him with lewd complaints. queen elizabeth brother of gloucester, you mistake the matter. the king, of his own royal disposition, and not provoked by any suitor else; aiming, belike, at your interior hatred, which in your outward actions shows itself against my kindred, brothers, and myself, makes him to send; that thereby he may gather the ground of your ill-will, and so remove it. gloucester i cannot tell: the world is grown so bad, that wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch: since every jack became a gentleman there's many a gentle person made a jack. queen elizabeth come, come, we know your meaning, brother gloucester; you envy my advancement and my friends': god grant we never may have need of you! gloucester meantime, god grants that we have need of you: your brother is imprison'd by your means, myself disgraced, and the nobility held in contempt; whilst many fair promotions are daily given to ennoble those that scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble. queen elizabeth by him that raised me to this careful height from that contented hap which i enjoy'd, i never did incense his majesty against the duke of clarence, but have been an earnest advocate to plead for him. my lord, you do me shameful injury, falsely to draw me in these vile suspects. gloucester you may deny that you were not the cause of my lord hastings' late imprisonment. rivers she may, my lord, for- gloucester she may, lord rivers! why, who knows not so? she may do more, sir, than denying that: she may help you to many fair preferments, and then deny her aiding hand therein, and lay those honours on your high deserts. what may she not? she may, yea, marry, may she- rivers what, marry, may she? gloucester what, marry, may she! marry with a king, a bachelor, a handsome stripling too: i wis your grandam had a worser match. queen elizabeth my lord of gloucester, i have too long borne your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs: by heaven, i will acquaint his majesty with those gross taunts i often have endured. i had rather be a country servant-maid than a great queen, with this condition, to be thus taunted, scorn'd, and baited at: [enter queen margaret, behind] small joy have i in being england's queen. queen margaret and lessen'd be that small, god, i beseech thee! thy honour, state and seat is due to me. gloucester what! threat you me with telling of the king? tell him, and spare not: look, what i have said i will avouch in presence of the king: i dare adventure to be sent to the tower. 'tis time to speak; my pains are quite forgot. queen margaret out, devil! i remember them too well: thou slewest my husband henry in the tower, and edward, my poor son, at tewksbury. gloucester ere you were queen, yea, or your husband king, i was a pack-horse in his great affairs; a weeder-out of his proud adversaries, a liberal rewarder of his friends: to royalize his blood i spilt mine own. queen margaret yea, and much better blood than his or thine. gloucester in all which time you and your husband grey were factious for the house of lancaster; and, rivers, so were you. was not your husband in margaret's battle at saint alban's slain? let me put in your minds, if you forget, what you have been ere now, and what you are; withal, what i have been, and what i am. queen margaret a murderous villain, and so still thou art. gloucester poor clarence did forsake his father, warwick; yea, and forswore himself,--which jesu pardon!- queen margaret which god revenge! gloucester to fight on edward's party for the crown; and for his meed, poor lord, he is mew'd up. i would to god my heart were flint, like edward's; or edward's soft and pitiful, like mine i am too childish-foolish for this world. queen margaret hie thee to hell for shame, and leave the world, thou cacodemon! there thy kingdom is. rivers my lord of gloucester, in those busy days which here you urge to prove us enemies, we follow'd then our lord, our lawful king: so should we you, if you should be our king. gloucester if i should be! i had rather be a pedlar: far be it from my heart, the thought of it! queen elizabeth as little joy, my lord, as you suppose you should enjoy, were you this country's king, as little joy may you suppose in me. that i enjoy, being the queen thereof. queen margaret a little joy enjoys the queen thereof; for i am she, and altogether joyless. i can no longer hold me patient. [advancing] hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out in sharing that which you have pill'd from me! which of you trembles not that looks on me? if not, that, i being queen, you bow like subjects, yet that, by you deposed, you quake like rebels? o gentle villain, do not turn away! gloucester foul wrinkled witch, what makest thou in my sight? queen margaret but repetition of what thou hast marr'd; that will i make before i let thee go. gloucester wert thou not banished on pain of death? queen margaret i was; but i do find more pain in banishment than death can yield me here by my abode. a husband and a son thou owest to me; and thou a kingdom; all of you allegiance: the sorrow that i have, by right is yours, and all the pleasures you usurp are mine. gloucester the curse my noble father laid on thee, when thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper and with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes, and then, to dry them, gavest the duke a clout steep'd in the faultless blood of pretty rutland- his curses, then from bitterness of soul denounced against thee, are all fall'n upon thee; and god, not we, hath plagued thy bloody deed. queen elizabeth so just is god, to right the innocent. hastings o, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe, and the most merciless that e'er was heard of! rivers tyrants themselves wept when it was reported. dorset no man but prophesied revenge for it. buckingham northumberland, then present, wept to see it. queen margaret what were you snarling all before i came, ready to catch each other by the throat, and turn you all your hatred now on me? did york's dread curse prevail so much with heaven? that henry's death, my lovely edward's death, their kingdom's loss, my woful banishment, could all but answer for that peevish brat? can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven? why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses! if not by war, by surfeit die your king, as ours by murder, to make him a king! edward thy son, which now is prince of wales, for edward my son, which was prince of wales, die in his youth by like untimely violence! thyself a queen, for me that was a queen, outlive thy glory, like my wretched self! long mayst thou live to wail thy children's loss; and see another, as i see thee now, deck'd in thy rights, as thou art stall'd in mine! long die thy happy days before thy death; and, after many lengthen'd hours of grief, die neither mother, wife, nor england's queen! rivers and dorset, you were standers by, and so wast thou, lord hastings, when my son was stabb'd with bloody daggers: god, i pray him, that none of you may live your natural age, but by some unlook'd accident cut off! gloucester have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd hag! queen margaret and leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me. if heaven have any grievous plague in store exceeding those that i can wish upon thee, o, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe, and then hurl down their indignation on thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace! the worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul! thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest, and take deep traitors for thy dearest friends! no sleep close up that deadly eye of thine, unless it be whilst some tormenting dream affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils! thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog! thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity the slave of nature and the son of hell! thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb! thou loathed issue of thy father's loins! thou rag of honour! thou detested- gloucester margaret. queen margaret richard! gloucester ha! queen margaret i call thee not. gloucester i cry thee mercy then, for i had thought that thou hadst call'd me all these bitter names. queen margaret why, so i did; but look'd for no reply. o, let me make the period to my curse! gloucester 'tis done by me, and ends in 'margaret.' queen elizabeth thus have you breathed your curse against yourself. queen margaret poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune! why strew'st thou sugar on that bottled spider, whose deadly web ensnareth thee about? fool, fool! thou whet'st a knife to kill thyself. the time will come when thou shalt wish for me to help thee curse that poisonous bunchback'd toad. hastings false-boding woman, end thy frantic curse, lest to thy harm thou move our patience. queen margaret foul shame upon you! you have all moved mine. rivers were you well served, you would be taught your duty. queen margaret to serve me well, you all should do me duty, teach me to be your queen, and you my subjects: o, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty! dorset dispute not with her; she is lunatic. queen margaret peace, master marquess, you are malapert: your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current. o, that your young nobility could judge what 'twere to lose it, and be miserable! they that stand high have many blasts to shake them; and if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces. gloucester good counsel, marry: learn it, learn it, marquess. dorset it toucheth you, my lord, as much as me. gloucester yea, and much more: but i was born so high, our aery buildeth in the cedar's top, and dallies with the wind and scorns the sun. queen margaret and turns the sun to shade; alas! alas! witness my son, now in the shade of death; whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath hath in eternal darkness folded up. your aery buildeth in our aery's nest. o god, that seest it, do not suffer it! as it was won with blood, lost be it so! buckingham have done! for shame, if not for charity. queen margaret urge neither charity nor shame to me: uncharitably with me have you dealt, and shamefully by you my hopes are butcher'd. my charity is outrage, life my shame and in that shame still live my sorrow's rage. buckingham have done, have done. queen margaret o princely buckingham i'll kiss thy hand, in sign of league and amity with thee: now fair befal thee and thy noble house! thy garments are not spotted with our blood, nor thou within the compass of my curse. buckingham nor no one here; for curses never pass the lips of those that breathe them in the air. queen margaret i'll not believe but they ascend the sky, and there awake god's gentle-sleeping peace. o buckingham, take heed of yonder dog! look, when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites, his venom tooth will rankle to the death: have not to do with him, beware of him; sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him, and all their ministers attend on him. gloucester what doth she say, my lord of buckingham? buckingham nothing that i respect, my gracious lord. queen margaret what, dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel? and soothe the devil that i warn thee from? o, but remember this another day, when he shall split thy very heart with sorrow, and say poor margaret was a prophetess! live each of you the subjects to his hate, and he to yours, and all of you to god's! [exit] hastings my hair doth stand on end to hear her curses. rivers and so doth mine: i muse why she's at liberty. gloucester i cannot blame her: by god's holy mother, she hath had too much wrong; and i repent my part thereof that i have done to her. queen elizabeth i never did her any, to my knowledge. gloucester but you have all the vantage of her wrong. i was too hot to do somebody good, that is too cold in thinking of it now. marry, as for clarence, he is well repaid, he is frank'd up to fatting for his pains god pardon them that are the cause of it! rivers a virtuous and a christian-like conclusion, to pray for them that have done scathe to us. gloucester so do i ever: [aside] being well-advised. for had i cursed now, i had cursed myself. [enter catesby] catesby madam, his majesty doth call for you, and for your grace; and you, my noble lords. queen elizabeth catesby, we come. lords, will you go with us? rivers madam, we will attend your grace. [exeunt all but gloucester] gloucester i do the wrong, and first begin to brawl. the secret mischiefs that i set abroach i lay unto the grievous charge of others. clarence, whom i, indeed, have laid in darkness, i do beweep to many simple gulls namely, to hastings, derby, buckingham; and say it is the queen and her allies that stir the king against the duke my brother. now, they believe it; and withal whet me to be revenged on rivers, vaughan, grey: but then i sigh; and, with a piece of scripture, tell them that god bids us do good for evil: and thus i clothe my naked villany with old odd ends stolen out of holy writ; and seem a saint, when most i play the devil. [enter two murderers] but, soft! here come my executioners. how now, my hardy, stout resolved mates! are you now going to dispatch this deed? first murderer we are, my lord; and come to have the warrant that we may be admitted where he is. gloucester well thought upon; i have it here about me. [gives the warrant] when you have done, repair to crosby place. but, sirs, be sudden in the execution, withal obdurate, do not hear him plead; for clarence is well-spoken, and perhaps may move your hearts to pity if you mark him. first murderer tush! fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate; talkers are no good doers: be assured we come to use our hands and not our tongues. gloucester your eyes drop millstones, when fools' eyes drop tears: i like you, lads; about your business straight; go, go, dispatch. first murderer we will, my noble lord. [exeunt] king richard iii act i scene iv london. the tower. [enter clarence and brakenbury] brakenbury why looks your grace so heavily today? clarence o, i have pass'd a miserable night, so full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams, that, as i am a christian faithful man, i would not spend another such a night, though 'twere to buy a world of happy days, so full of dismal terror was the time! brakenbury what was your dream? i long to hear you tell it. clarence methoughts that i had broken from the tower, and was embark'd to cross to burgundy; and, in my company, my brother gloucester; who from my cabin tempted me to walk upon the hatches: thence we looked toward england, and cited up a thousand fearful times, during the wars of york and lancaster that had befall'n us. as we paced along upon the giddy footing of the hatches, methought that gloucester stumbled; and, in falling, struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard, into the tumbling billows of the main. lord, lord! methought, what pain it was to drown! what dreadful noise of waters in mine ears! what ugly sights of death within mine eyes! methought i saw a thousand fearful wrecks; ten thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon; wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, all scatter'd in the bottom of the sea: some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept, as 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems, which woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep, and mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by. brakenbury had you such leisure in the time of death to gaze upon the secrets of the deep? clarence methought i had; and often did i strive to yield the ghost: but still the envious flood kept in my soul, and would not let it forth to seek the empty, vast and wandering air; but smother'd it within my panting bulk, which almost burst to belch it in the sea. brakenbury awaked you not with this sore agony? clarence o, no, my dream was lengthen'd after life; o, then began the tempest to my soul, who pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood, with that grim ferryman which poets write of, unto the kingdom of perpetual night. the first that there did greet my stranger soul, was my great father-in-law, renowned warwick; who cried aloud, 'what scourge for perjury can this dark monarchy afford false clarence?' and so he vanish'd: then came wandering by a shadow like an angel, with bright hair dabbled in blood; and he squeak'd out aloud, 'clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured clarence, that stabb'd me in the field by tewksbury; seize on him, furies, take him to your torments!' with that, methoughts, a legion of foul fiends environ'd me about, and howled in mine ears such hideous cries, that with the very noise i trembling waked, and for a season after could not believe but that i was in hell, such terrible impression made the dream. brakenbury no marvel, my lord, though it affrighted you; i promise, i am afraid to hear you tell it. clarence o brakenbury, i have done those things, which now bear evidence against my soul, for edward's sake; and see how he requites me! o god! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee, but thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds, yet execute thy wrath in me alone, o, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children! i pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me; my soul is heavy, and i fain would sleep. brakenbury i will, my lord: god give your grace good rest! [clarence sleeps] sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours, makes the night morning, and the noon-tide night. princes have but their tides for their glories, an outward honour for an inward toil; and, for unfelt imagination, they often feel a world of restless cares: so that, betwixt their tides and low names, there's nothing differs but the outward fame. [enter the two murderers] first murderer ho! who's here? brakenbury in god's name what are you, and how came you hither? first murderer i would speak with clarence, and i came hither on my legs. brakenbury yea, are you so brief? second murderer o sir, it is better to be brief than tedious. show him our commission; talk no more. [brakenbury reads it] brakenbury i am, in this, commanded to deliver the noble duke of clarence to your hands: i will not reason what is meant hereby, because i will be guiltless of the meaning. here are the keys, there sits the duke asleep: i'll to the king; and signify to him that thus i have resign'd my charge to you. first murderer do so, it is a point of wisdom: fare you well. [exit brakenbury] second murderer what, shall we stab him as he sleeps? first murderer no; then he will say 'twas done cowardly, when he wakes. second murderer when he wakes! why, fool, he shall never wake till the judgment-day. first murderer why, then he will say we stabbed him sleeping. second murderer the urging of that word 'judgment' hath bred a kind of remorse in me. first murderer what, art thou afraid? second murderer not to kill him, having a warrant for it; but to be damned for killing him, from which no warrant can defend us. first murderer i thought thou hadst been resolute. second murderer so i am, to let him live. first murderer back to the duke of gloucester, tell him so. second murderer i pray thee, stay a while: i hope my holy humour will change; 'twas wont to hold me but while one would tell twenty. first murderer how dost thou feel thyself now? second murderer 'faith, some certain dregs of conscience are yet within me. first murderer remember our reward, when the deed is done. second murderer 'zounds, he dies: i had forgot the reward. first murderer where is thy conscience now? second murderer in the duke of gloucester's purse. first murderer so when he opens his purse to give us our reward, thy conscience flies out. second murderer let it go; there's few or none will entertain it. first murderer how if it come to thee again? second murderer i'll not meddle with it: it is a dangerous thing: it makes a man a coward: a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; he cannot swear, but it cheques him; he cannot lie with his neighbour's wife, but it detects him: 'tis a blushing shamefast spirit that mutinies in a man's bosom; it fills one full of obstacles: it made me once restore a purse of gold that i found; it beggars any man that keeps it: it is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing; and every man that means to live well endeavours to trust to himself and to live without it. first murderer 'zounds, it is even now at my elbow, persuading me not to kill the duke. second murderer take the devil in thy mind, and relieve him not: he would insinuate with thee but to make thee sigh. first murderer tut, i am strong-framed, he cannot prevail with me, i warrant thee. second murderer spoke like a tail fellow that respects his reputation. come, shall we to this gear? first murderer take him over the costard with the hilts of thy sword, and then we will chop him in the malmsey-butt in the next room. second murderer o excellent devise! make a sop of him. first murderer hark! he stirs: shall i strike? second murderer no, first let's reason with him. clarence where art thou, keeper? give me a cup of wine. second murderer you shall have wine enough, my lord, anon. clarence in god's name, what art thou? second murderer a man, as you are. clarence but not, as i am, royal. second murderer nor you, as we are, loyal. clarence thy voice is thunder, but thy looks are humble. second murderer my voice is now the king's, my looks mine own. clarence how darkly and how deadly dost thou speak! your eyes do menace me: why look you pale? who sent you hither? wherefore do you come? both to, to, to- clarence to murder me? both ay, ay. clarence you scarcely have the hearts to tell me so, and therefore cannot have the hearts to do it. wherein, my friends, have i offended you? first murderer offended us you have not, but the king. clarence i shall be reconciled to him again. second murderer never, my lord; therefore prepare to die. clarence are you call'd forth from out a world of men to slay the innocent? what is my offence? where are the evidence that do accuse me? what lawful quest have given their verdict up unto the frowning judge? or who pronounced the bitter sentence of poor clarence' death? before i be convict by course of law, to threaten me with death is most unlawful. i charge you, as you hope to have redemption by christ's dear blood shed for our grievous sins, that you depart and lay no hands on me the deed you undertake is damnable. first murderer what we will do, we do upon command. second murderer and he that hath commanded is the king. clarence erroneous vassal! the great king of kings hath in the tables of his law commanded that thou shalt do no murder: and wilt thou, then, spurn at his edict and fulfil a man's? take heed; for he holds vengeance in his hands, to hurl upon their heads that break his law. second murderer and that same vengeance doth he hurl on thee, for false forswearing and for murder too: thou didst receive the holy sacrament, to fight in quarrel of the house of lancaster. first murderer and, like a traitor to the name of god, didst break that vow; and with thy treacherous blade unrip'dst the bowels of thy sovereign's son. second murderer whom thou wert sworn to cherish and defend. first murderer how canst thou urge god's dreadful law to us, when thou hast broke it in so dear degree? clarence alas! for whose sake did i that ill deed? for edward, for my brother, for his sake: why, sirs, he sends ye not to murder me for this for in this sin he is as deep as i. if god will be revenged for this deed. o, know you yet, he doth it publicly, take not the quarrel from his powerful arm; he needs no indirect nor lawless course to cut off those that have offended him. first murderer who made thee, then, a bloody minister, when gallant-springing brave plantagenet, that princely novice, was struck dead by thee? clarence my brother's love, the devil, and my rage. first murderer thy brother's love, our duty, and thy fault, provoke us hither now to slaughter thee. clarence oh, if you love my brother, hate not me; i am his brother, and i love him well. if you be hired for meed, go back again, and i will send you to my brother gloucester, who shall reward you better for my life than edward will for tidings of my death. second murderer you are deceived, your brother gloucester hates you. clarence o, no, he loves me, and he holds me dear: go you to him from me. both ay, so we will. clarence tell him, when that our princely father york bless'd his three sons with his victorious arm, and charged us from his soul to love each other, he little thought of this divided friendship: bid gloucester think of this, and he will weep. first murderer ay, millstones; as be lesson'd us to weep. clarence o, do not slander him, for he is kind. first murderer right, as snow in harvest. thou deceivest thyself: 'tis he that sent us hither now to slaughter thee. clarence it cannot be; for when i parted with him, he hugg'd me in his arms, and swore, with sobs, that he would labour my delivery. second murderer why, so he doth, now he delivers thee from this world's thraldom to the joys of heaven. first murderer make peace with god, for you must die, my lord. clarence hast thou that holy feeling in thy soul, to counsel me to make my peace with god, and art thou yet to thy own soul so blind, that thou wilt war with god by murdering me? ah, sirs, consider, he that set you on to do this deed will hate you for the deed. second murderer what shall we do? clarence relent, and save your souls. first murderer relent! 'tis cowardly and womanish. clarence not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish. which of you, if you were a prince's son, being pent from liberty, as i am now, if two such murderers as yourselves came to you, would not entreat for life? my friend, i spy some pity in thy looks: o, if thine eye be not a flatterer, come thou on my side, and entreat for me, as you would beg, were you in my distress a begging prince what beggar pities not? second murderer look behind you, my lord. first murderer take that, and that: if all this will not do, [stabs him] i'll drown you in the malmsey-butt within. [exit, with the body] second murderer a bloody deed, and desperately dispatch'd! how fain, like pilate, would i wash my hands of this most grievous guilty murder done! [re-enter first murderer] first murderer how now! what mean'st thou, that thou help'st me not? by heavens, the duke shall know how slack thou art! second murderer i would he knew that i had saved his brother! take thou the fee, and tell him what i say; for i repent me that the duke is slain. [exit] first murderer so do not i: go, coward as thou art. now must i hide his body in some hole, until the duke take order for his burial: and when i have my meed, i must away; for this will out, and here i must not stay. king richard iii act ii scene i london. the palace. [flourish. enter king edward iv sick, queen elizabeth, dorset, rivers, hastings, buckingham, grey, and others] king edward iv why, so: now have i done a good day's work: you peers, continue this united league: i every day expect an embassage from my redeemer to redeem me hence; and now in peace my soul shall part to heaven, since i have set my friends at peace on earth. rivers and hastings, take each other's hand; dissemble not your hatred, swear your love. rivers by heaven, my heart is purged from grudging hate: and with my hand i seal my true heart's love. hastings so thrive i, as i truly swear the like! king edward iv take heed you dally not before your king; lest he that is the supreme king of kings confound your hidden falsehood, and award either of you to be the other's end. hastings so prosper i, as i swear perfect love! rivers and i, as i love hastings with my heart! king edward iv madam, yourself are not exempt in this, nor your son dorset, buckingham, nor you; you have been factious one against the other, wife, love lord hastings, let him kiss your hand; and what you do, do it unfeignedly. queen elizabeth here, hastings; i will never more remember our former hatred, so thrive i and mine! king edward iv dorset, embrace him; hastings, love lord marquess. dorset this interchange of love, i here protest, upon my part shall be unviolable. hastings and so swear i, my lord [they embrace] king edward iv now, princely buckingham, seal thou this league with thy embracements to my wife's allies, and make me happy in your unity. buckingham whenever buckingham doth turn his hate on you or yours, [to the queen] but with all duteous love doth cherish you and yours, god punish me with hate in those where i expect most love! when i have most need to employ a friend, and most assured that he is a friend deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile, be he unto me! this do i beg of god, when i am cold in zeal to yours. king edward iv a pleasing cordial, princely buckingham, is this thy vow unto my sickly heart. there wanteth now our brother gloucester here, to make the perfect period of this peace. buckingham and, in good time, here comes the noble duke. [enter gloucester] gloucester good morrow to my sovereign king and queen: and, princely peers, a happy time of day! king edward iv happy, indeed, as we have spent the day. brother, we done deeds of charity; made peace enmity, fair love of hate, between these swelling wrong-incensed peers. gloucester a blessed labour, my most sovereign liege: amongst this princely heap, if any here, by false intelligence, or wrong surmise, hold me a foe; if i unwittingly, or in my rage, have aught committed that is hardly borne by any in this presence, i desire to reconcile me to his friendly peace: 'tis death to me to be at enmity; i hate it, and desire all good men's love. first, madam, i entreat true peace of you, which i will purchase with my duteous service; of you, my noble cousin buckingham, if ever any grudge were lodged between us; of you, lord rivers, and, lord grey, of you; that without desert have frown'd on me; dukes, earls, lords, gentlemen; indeed, of all. i do not know that englishman alive with whom my soul is any jot at odds more than the infant that is born to-night i thank my god for my humility. queen elizabeth a holy day shall this be kept hereafter: i would to god all strifes were well compounded. my sovereign liege, i do beseech your majesty to take our brother clarence to your grace. gloucester why, madam, have i offer'd love for this to be so bouted in this royal presence? who knows not that the noble duke is dead? [they all start] you do him injury to scorn his corse. rivers who knows not he is dead! who knows he is? queen elizabeth all seeing heaven, what a world is this! buckingham look i so pale, lord dorset, as the rest? dorset ay, my good lord; and no one in this presence but his red colour hath forsook his cheeks. king edward iv is clarence dead? the order was reversed. gloucester but he, poor soul, by your first order died, and that a winged mercury did bear: some tardy cripple bore the countermand, that came too lag to see him buried. god grant that some, less noble and less loyal, nearer in bloody thoughts, but not in blood, deserve not worse than wretched clarence did, and yet go current from suspicion! [enter derby] dorset a boon, my sovereign, for my service done! king edward iv i pray thee, peace: my soul is full of sorrow. dorset i will not rise, unless your highness grant. king edward iv then speak at once what is it thou demand'st. dorset the forfeit, sovereign, of my servant's life; who slew to-day a righteous gentleman lately attendant on the duke of norfolk. king edward iv have a tongue to doom my brother's death, and shall the same give pardon to a slave? my brother slew no man; his fault was thought, and yet his punishment was cruel death. who sued to me for him? who, in my rage, kneel'd at my feet, and bade me be advised who spake of brotherhood? who spake of love? who told me how the poor soul did forsake the mighty warwick, and did fight for me? who told me, in the field by tewksbury when oxford had me down, he rescued me, and said, 'dear brother, live, and be a king'? who told me, when we both lay in the field frozen almost to death, how he did lap me even in his own garments, and gave himself, all thin and naked, to the numb cold night? all this from my remembrance brutish wrath sinfully pluck'd, and not a man of you had so much grace to put it in my mind. but when your carters or your waiting-vassals have done a drunken slaughter, and defaced the precious image of our dear redeemer, you straight are on your knees for pardon, pardon; and i unjustly too, must grant it you but for my brother not a man would speak, nor i, ungracious, speak unto myself for him, poor soul. the proudest of you all have been beholding to him in his life; yet none of you would once plead for his life. o god, i fear thy justice will take hold on me, and you, and mine, and yours for this! come, hastings, help me to my closet. oh, poor clarence! [exeunt some with king edward iv and queen margaret] gloucester this is the fruit of rashness! mark'd you not how that the guilty kindred of the queen look'd pale when they did hear of clarence' death? o, they did urge it still unto the king! god will revenge it. but come, let us in, to comfort edward with our company. buckingham we wait upon your grace. [exeunt] king richard iii act ii scene ii the palace. [enter the duchess of york, with the two children of clarence] boy tell me, good grandam, is our father dead? duchess of york no, boy. boy why do you wring your hands, and beat your breast, and cry 'o clarence, my unhappy son!' girl why do you look on us, and shake your head, and call us wretches, orphans, castaways if that our noble father be alive? duchess of york my pretty cousins, you mistake me much; i do lament the sickness of the king. as loath to lose him, not your father's death; it were lost sorrow to wail one that's lost. boy then, grandam, you conclude that he is dead. the king my uncle is to blame for this: god will revenge it; whom i will importune with daily prayers all to that effect. girl and so will i. duchess of york peace, children, peace! the king doth love you well: incapable and shallow innocents, you cannot guess who caused your father's death. boy grandam, we can; for my good uncle gloucester told me, the king, provoked by the queen, devised impeachments to imprison him : and when my uncle told me so, he wept, and hugg'd me in his arm, and kindly kiss'd my cheek; bade me rely on him as on my father, and he would love me dearly as his child. duchess of york oh, that deceit should steal such gentle shapes, and with a virtuous vizard hide foul guile! he is my son; yea, and therein my shame; yet from my dugs he drew not this deceit. boy think you my uncle did dissemble, grandam? duchess of york ay, boy. boy i cannot think it. hark! what noise is this? [enter queen elizabeth, with her hair about her ears; rivers, and dorset after her] queen elizabeth oh, who shall hinder me to wail and weep, to chide my fortune, and torment myself? i'll join with black despair against my soul, and to myself become an enemy. duchess of york what means this scene of rude impatience? queen elizabeth to make an act of tragic violence: edward, my lord, your son, our king, is dead. why grow the branches now the root is wither'd? why wither not the leaves the sap being gone? if you will live, lament; if die, be brief, that our swift-winged souls may catch the king's; or, like obedient subjects, follow him to his new kingdom of perpetual rest. duchess of york ah, so much interest have i in thy sorrow as i had title in thy noble husband! i have bewept a worthy husband's death, and lived by looking on his images: but now two mirrors of his princely semblance are crack'd in pieces by malignant death, and i for comfort have but one false glass, which grieves me when i see my shame in him. thou art a widow; yet thou art a mother, and hast the comfort of thy children left thee: but death hath snatch'd my husband from mine arms, and pluck'd two crutches from my feeble limbs, edward and clarence. o, what cause have i, thine being but a moiety of my grief, to overgo thy plaints and drown thy cries! boy good aunt, you wept not for our father's death; how can we aid you with our kindred tears? girl our fatherless distress was left unmoan'd; your widow-dolour likewise be unwept! queen elizabeth give me no help in lamentation; i am not barren to bring forth complaints all springs reduce their currents to mine eyes, that i, being govern'd by the watery moon, may send forth plenteous tears to drown the world! oh for my husband, for my dear lord edward! children oh for our father, for our dear lord clarence! duchess of york alas for both, both mine, edward and clarence! queen elizabeth what stay had i but edward? and he's gone. children what stay had we but clarence? and he's gone. duchess of york what stays had i but they? and they are gone. queen elizabeth was never widow had so dear a loss! children were never orphans had so dear a loss! duchess of york was never mother had so dear a loss! alas, i am the mother of these moans! their woes are parcell'd, mine are general. she for an edward weeps, and so do i; i for a clarence weep, so doth not she: these babes for clarence weep and so do i; i for an edward weep, so do not they: alas, you three, on me, threefold distress'd, pour all your tears! i am your sorrow's nurse, and i will pamper it with lamentations. dorset comfort, dear mother: god is much displeased that you take with unthankfulness, his doing: in common worldly things, 'tis call'd ungrateful, with dull unwilligness to repay a debt which with a bounteous hand was kindly lent; much more to be thus opposite with heaven, for it requires the royal debt it lent you. rivers madam, bethink you, like a careful mother, of the young prince your son: send straight for him let him be crown'd; in him your comfort lives: drown desperate sorrow in dead edward's grave, and plant your joys in living edward's throne. [enter gloucester, buckingham, derby, hastings, and ratcliff] gloucester madam, have comfort: all of us have cause to wail the dimming of our shining star; but none can cure their harms by wailing them. madam, my mother, i do cry you mercy; i did not see your grace: humbly on my knee i crave your blessing. duchess of york god bless thee; and put meekness in thy mind, love, charity, obedience, and true duty! gloucester [aside] amen; and make me die a good old man! that is the butt-end of a mother's blessing: i marvel why her grace did leave it out. buckingham you cloudy princes and heart-sorrowing peers, that bear this mutual heavy load of moan, now cheer each other in each other's love though we have spent our harvest of this king, we are to reap the harvest of his son. the broken rancour of your high-swoln hearts, but lately splinter'd, knit, and join'd together, must gently be preserved, cherish'd, and kept: me seemeth good, that, with some little train, forthwith from ludlow the young prince be fetch'd hither to london, to be crown'd our king. rivers why with some little train, my lord of buckingham? buckingham marry, my lord, lest, by a multitude, the new-heal'd wound of malice should break out, which would be so much the more dangerous by how much the estate is green and yet ungovern'd: where every horse bears his commanding rein, and may direct his course as please himself, as well the fear of harm, as harm apparent, in my opinion, ought to be prevented. gloucester i hope the king made peace with all of us and the compact is firm and true in me. rivers and so in me; and so, i think, in all: yet, since it is but green, it should be put to no apparent likelihood of breach, which haply by much company might be urged: therefore i say with noble buckingham, that it is meet so few should fetch the prince. hastings and so say i. gloucester then be it so; and go we to determine who they shall be that straight shall post to ludlow. madam, and you, my mother, will you go to give your censures in this weighty business? queen elizabeth | | with all our harts. duchess of york | [exeunt all but buckingham and gloucester] buckingham my lord, whoever journeys to the prince, for god's sake, let not us two be behind; for, by the way, i'll sort occasion, as index to the story we late talk'd of, to part the queen's proud kindred from the king. gloucester my other self, my counsel's consistory, my oracle, my prophet! my dear cousin, i, like a child, will go by thy direction. towards ludlow then, for we'll not stay behind. [exeunt] king richard iii act ii scene iii london. a street. [enter two citizens meeting] first citizen neighbour, well met: whither away so fast? second citizen i promise you, i scarcely know myself: hear you the news abroad? first citizen ay, that the king is dead. second citizen bad news, by'r lady; seldom comes the better: i fear, i fear 'twill prove a troublous world. [enter another citizen] third citizen neighbours, god speed! first citizen give you good morrow, sir. third citizen doth this news hold of good king edward's death? second citizen ay, sir, it is too true; god help the while! third citizen then, masters, look to see a troublous world. first citizen no, no; by god's good grace his son shall reign. third citizen woe to the land that's govern'd by a child! second citizen in him there is a hope of government, that in his nonage council under him, and in his full and ripen'd years himself, no doubt, shall then and till then govern well. first citizen so stood the state when henry the sixth was crown'd in paris but at nine months old. third citizen stood the state so? no, no, good friends, god wot; for then this land was famously enrich'd with politic grave counsel; then the king had virtuous uncles to protect his grace. first citizen why, so hath this, both by the father and mother. third citizen better it were they all came by the father, or by the father there were none at all; for emulation now, who shall be nearest, will touch us all too near, if god prevent not. o, full of danger is the duke of gloucester! and the queen's sons and brothers haught and proud: and were they to be ruled, and not to rule, this sickly land might solace as before. first citizen come, come, we fear the worst; all shall be well. third citizen when clouds appear, wise men put on their cloaks; when great leaves fall, the winter is at hand; when the sun sets, who doth not look for night? untimely storms make men expect a dearth. all may be well; but, if god sort it so, 'tis more than we deserve, or i expect. second citizen truly, the souls of men are full of dread: ye cannot reason almost with a man that looks not heavily and full of fear. third citizen before the times of change, still is it so: by a divine instinct men's minds mistrust ensuing dangers; as by proof, we see the waters swell before a boisterous storm. but leave it all to god. whither away? second citizen marry, we were sent for to the justices. third citizen and so was i: i'll bear you company. [exeunt] king richard iii act ii scene iv london. the palace. [enter the archbishop of york, young york, queen elizabeth, and the duchess of york] archbishop of york last night, i hear, they lay at northampton; at stony-stratford will they be to-night: to-morrow, or next day, they will be here. duchess of york i long with all my heart to see the prince: i hope he is much grown since last i saw him. queen elizabeth but i hear, no; they say my son of york hath almost overta'en him in his growth. york ay, mother; but i would not have it so. duchess of york why, my young cousin, it is good to grow. york grandam, one night, as we did sit at supper, my uncle rivers talk'd how i did grow more than my brother: 'ay,' quoth my uncle gloucester, 'small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace:' and since, methinks, i would not grow so fast, because sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste. duchess of york good faith, good faith, the saying did not hold in him that did object the same to thee; he was the wretched'st thing when he was young, so long a-growing and so leisurely, that, if this rule were true, he should be gracious. archbishop of york why, madam, so, no doubt, he is. duchess of york i hope he is; but yet let mothers doubt. york now, by my troth, if i had been remember'd, i could have given my uncle's grace a flout, to touch his growth nearer than he touch'd mine. duchess of york how, my pretty york? i pray thee, let me hear it. york marry, they say my uncle grew so fast that he could gnaw a crust at two hours old 'twas full two years ere i could get a tooth. grandam, this would have been a biting jest. duchess of york i pray thee, pretty york, who told thee this? york grandam, his nurse. duchess of york his nurse! why, she was dead ere thou wert born. york if 'twere not she, i cannot tell who told me. queen elizabeth a parlous boy: go to, you are too shrewd. archbishop of york good madam, be not angry with the child. queen elizabeth pitchers have ears. [enter a messenger] archbishop of york here comes a messenger. what news? messenger such news, my lord, as grieves me to unfold. queen elizabeth how fares the prince? messenger well, madam, and in health. duchess of york what is thy news then? messenger lord rivers and lord grey are sent to pomfret, with them sir thomas vaughan, prisoners. duchess of york who hath committed them? messenger the mighty dukes gloucester and buckingham. queen elizabeth for what offence? messenger the sum of all i can, i have disclosed; why or for what these nobles were committed is all unknown to me, my gracious lady. queen elizabeth ay me, i see the downfall of our house! the tiger now hath seized the gentle hind; insulting tyranny begins to jet upon the innocent and aweless throne: welcome, destruction, death, and massacre! i see, as in a map, the end of all. duchess of york accursed and unquiet wrangling days, how many of you have mine eyes beheld! my husband lost his life to get the crown; and often up and down my sons were toss'd, for me to joy and weep their gain and loss: and being seated, and domestic broils clean over-blown, themselves, the conquerors. make war upon themselves; blood against blood, self against self: o, preposterous and frantic outrage, end thy damned spleen; or let me die, to look on death no more! queen elizabeth come, come, my boy; we will to sanctuary. madam, farewell. duchess of york i'll go along with you. queen elizabeth you have no cause. archbishop of york my gracious lady, go; and thither bear your treasure and your goods. for my part, i'll resign unto your grace the seal i keep: and so betide to me as well i tender you and all of yours! come, i'll conduct you to the sanctuary. [exeunt] king richard iii act iii scene i london. a street. [the trumpets sound. enter the young prince edward, gloucester, buckingham, cardinal, catesby, and others] buckingham welcome, sweet prince, to london, to your chamber. gloucester welcome, dear cousin, my thoughts' sovereign the weary way hath made you melancholy. prince edward no, uncle; but our crosses on the way have made it tedious, wearisome, and heavy i want more uncles here to welcome me. gloucester sweet prince, the untainted virtue of your years hath not yet dived into the world's deceit nor more can you distinguish of a man than of his outward show; which, god he knows, seldom or never jumpeth with the heart. those uncles which you want were dangerous; your grace attended to their sugar'd words, but look'd not on the poison of their hearts : god keep you from them, and from such false friends! prince edward god keep me from false friends! but they were none. gloucester my lord, the mayor of london comes to greet you. [enter the lord mayor and his train] lord mayor god bless your grace with health and happy days! prince edward i thank you, good my lord; and thank you all. i thought my mother, and my brother york, would long ere this have met us on the way fie, what a slug is hastings, that he comes not to tell us whether they will come or no! [enter hastings] buckingham and, in good time, here comes the sweating lord. prince edward welcome, my lord: what, will our mother come? hastings on what occasion, god he knows, not i, the queen your mother, and your brother york, have taken sanctuary: the tender prince would fain have come with me to meet your grace, but by his mother was perforce withheld. buckingham fie, what an indirect and peevish course is this of hers! lord cardinal, will your grace persuade the queen to send the duke of york unto his princely brother presently? if she deny, lord hastings, go with him, and from her jealous arms pluck him perforce. cardinal my lord of buckingham, if my weak oratory can from his mother win the duke of york, anon expect him here; but if she be obdurate to mild entreaties, god in heaven forbid we should infringe the holy privilege of blessed sanctuary! not for all this land would i be guilty of so deep a sin. buckingham you are too senseless--obstinate, my lord, too ceremonious and traditional weigh it but with the grossness of this age, you break not sanctuary in seizing him. the benefit thereof is always granted to those whose dealings have deserved the place, and those who have the wit to claim the place: this prince hath neither claim'd it nor deserved it; and therefore, in mine opinion, cannot have it: then, taking him from thence that is not there, you break no privilege nor charter there. oft have i heard of sanctuary men; but sanctuary children ne'er till now. cardinal my lord, you shall o'er-rule my mind for once. come on, lord hastings, will you go with me? hastings i go, my lord. prince edward good lords, make all the speedy haste you may. [exeunt cardinal and hastings] say, uncle gloucester, if our brother come, where shall we sojourn till our coronation? gloucester where it seems best unto your royal self. if i may counsel you, some day or two your highness shall repose you at the tower: then where you please, and shall be thought most fit for your best health and recreation. prince edward i do not like the tower, of any place. did julius caesar build that place, my lord? buckingham he did, my gracious lord, begin that place; which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified. prince edward is it upon record, or else reported successively from age to age, he built it? buckingham upon record, my gracious lord. prince edward but say, my lord, it were not register'd, methinks the truth should live from age to age, as 'twere retail'd to all posterity, even to the general all-ending day. gloucester [aside] so wise so young, they say, do never live long. prince edward what say you, uncle? gloucester i say, without characters, fame lives long. [aside] thus, like the formal vice, iniquity, i moralize two meanings in one word. prince edward that julius caesar was a famous man; with what his valour did enrich his wit, his wit set down to make his valour live death makes no conquest of this conqueror; for now he lives in fame, though not in life. i'll tell you what, my cousin buckingham,- buckingham what, my gracious lord? prince edward an if i live until i be a man, i'll win our ancient right in france again, or die a soldier, as i lived a king. gloucester [aside] short summers lightly have a forward spring. [enter young york, hastings, and the cardinal] buckingham now, in good time, here comes the duke of york. prince edward richard of york! how fares our loving brother? york well, my dread lord; so must i call you now. prince edward ay, brother, to our grief, as it is yours: too late he died that might have kept that title, which by his death hath lost much majesty. gloucester how fares our cousin, noble lord of york? york i thank you, gentle uncle. o, my lord, you said that idle weeds are fast in growth the prince my brother hath outgrown me far. gloucester he hath, my lord. york and therefore is he idle? gloucester o, my fair cousin, i must not say so. york then is he more beholding to you than i. gloucester he may command me as my sovereign; but you have power in me as in a kinsman. york i pray you, uncle, give me this dagger. gloucester my dagger, little cousin? with all my heart. prince edward a beggar, brother? york of my kind uncle, that i know will give; and being but a toy, which is no grief to give. gloucester a greater gift than that i'll give my cousin. york a greater gift! o, that's the sword to it. gloucester a gentle cousin, were it light enough. york o, then, i see, you will part but with light gifts; in weightier things you'll say a beggar nay. gloucester it is too heavy for your grace to wear. york i weigh it lightly, were it heavier. gloucester what, would you have my weapon, little lord? york i would, that i might thank you as you call me. gloucester how? york little. prince edward my lord of york will still be cross in talk: uncle, your grace knows how to bear with him. york you mean, to bear me, not to bear with me: uncle, my brother mocks both you and me; because that i am little, like an ape, he thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders. buckingham with what a sharp-provided wit he reasons! to mitigate the scorn he gives his uncle, he prettily and aptly taunts himself: so cunning and so young is wonderful. gloucester my lord, will't please you pass along? myself and my good cousin buckingham will to your mother, to entreat of her to meet you at the tower and welcome you. york what, will you go unto the tower, my lord? prince edward my lord protector needs will have it so. york i shall not sleep in quiet at the tower. gloucester why, what should you fear? york marry, my uncle clarence' angry ghost: my grandam told me he was murdered there. prince edward i fear no uncles dead. gloucester nor none that live, i hope. prince edward an if they live, i hope i need not fear. but come, my lord; and with a heavy heart, thinking on them, go i unto the tower. [a sennet. exeunt all but gloucester, buckingham and catesby] buckingham think you, my lord, this little prating york was not incensed by his subtle mother to taunt and scorn you thus opprobriously? gloucester no doubt, no doubt; o, 'tis a parlous boy; bold, quick, ingenious, forward, capable he is all the mother's, from the top to toe. buckingham well, let them rest. come hither, catesby. thou art sworn as deeply to effect what we intend as closely to conceal what we impart: thou know'st our reasons urged upon the way; what think'st thou? is it not an easy matter to make william lord hastings of our mind, for the instalment of this noble duke in the seat royal of this famous isle? catesby he for his father's sake so loves the prince, that he will not be won to aught against him. buckingham what think'st thou, then, of stanley? what will he? catesby he will do all in all as hastings doth. buckingham well, then, no more but this: go, gentle catesby, and, as it were far off sound thou lord hastings, how doth he stand affected to our purpose; and summon him to-morrow to the tower, to sit about the coronation. if thou dost find him tractable to us, encourage him, and show him all our reasons: if he be leaden, icy-cold, unwilling, be thou so too; and so break off your talk, and give us notice of his inclination: for we to-morrow hold divided councils, wherein thyself shalt highly be employ'd. gloucester commend me to lord william: tell him, catesby, his ancient knot of dangerous adversaries to-morrow are let blood at pomfret-castle; and bid my friend, for joy of this good news, give mistress shore one gentle kiss the more. buckingham good catesby, go, effect this business soundly. catesby my good lords both, with all the heed i may. gloucester shall we hear from you, catesby, ere we sleep? catesby you shall, my lord. gloucester at crosby place, there shall you find us both. [exit catesby] buckingham now, my lord, what shall we do, if we perceive lord hastings will not yield to our complots? gloucester chop off his head, man; somewhat we will do: and, look, when i am king, claim thou of me the earldom of hereford, and the moveables whereof the king my brother stood possess'd. buckingham i'll claim that promise at your grace's hands. gloucester and look to have it yielded with all willingness. come, let us sup betimes, that afterwards we may digest our complots in some form. [exeunt] king richard iii act iii scene ii before lord hastings' house. [enter a messenger] messenger what, ho! my lord! hastings [within] who knocks at the door? messenger a messenger from the lord stanley. [enter hastings] hastings what is't o'clock? messenger upon the stroke of four. hastings cannot thy master sleep these tedious nights? messenger so it should seem by that i have to say. first, he commends him to your noble lordship. hastings and then? messenger and then he sends you word he dreamt to-night the boar had razed his helm: besides, he says there are two councils held; and that may be determined at the one which may make you and him to rue at the other. therefore he sends to know your lordship's pleasure, if presently you will take horse with him, and with all speed post with him toward the north, to shun the danger that his soul divines. hastings go, fellow, go, return unto thy lord; bid him not fear the separated councils his honour and myself are at the one, and at the other is my servant catesby where nothing can proceed that toucheth us whereof i shall not have intelligence. tell him his fears are shallow, wanting instance: and for his dreams, i wonder he is so fond to trust the mockery of unquiet slumbers to fly the boar before the boar pursues, were to incense the boar to follow us and make pursuit where he did mean no chase. go, bid thy master rise and come to me and we will both together to the tower, where, he shall see, the boar will use us kindly. messenger my gracious lord, i'll tell him what you say. [exit] [enter catesby] catesby many good morrows to my noble lord! hastings good morrow, catesby; you are early stirring what news, what news, in this our tottering state? catesby it is a reeling world, indeed, my lord; and i believe twill never stand upright tim richard wear the garland of the realm. hastings how! wear the garland! dost thou mean the crown? catesby ay, my good lord. hastings i'll have this crown of mine cut from my shoulders ere i will see the crown so foul misplaced. but canst thou guess that he doth aim at it? catesby ay, on my life; and hopes to find forward upon his party for the gain thereof: and thereupon he sends you this good news, that this same very day your enemies, the kindred of the queen, must die at pomfret. hastings indeed, i am no mourner for that news, because they have been still mine enemies: but, that i'll give my voice on richard's side, to bar my master's heirs in true descent, god knows i will not do it, to the death. catesby god keep your lordship in that gracious mind! hastings but i shall laugh at this a twelve-month hence, that they who brought me in my master's hate i live to look upon their tragedy. i tell thee, catesby- catesby what, my lord? hastings ere a fortnight make me elder, i'll send some packing that yet think not on it. catesby 'tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord, when men are unprepared and look not for it. hastings o monstrous, monstrous! and so falls it out with rivers, vaughan, grey: and so 'twill do with some men else, who think themselves as safe as thou and i; who, as thou know'st, are dear to princely richard and to buckingham. catesby the princes both make high account of you; [aside] for they account his head upon the bridge. hastings i know they do; and i have well deserved it. [enter stanley] come on, come on; where is your boar-spear, man? fear you the boar, and go so unprovided? stanley my lord, good morrow; good morrow, catesby: you may jest on, but, by the holy rood, i do not like these several councils, i. hastings my lord, i hold my life as dear as you do yours; and never in my life, i do protest, was it more precious to me than 'tis now: think you, but that i know our state secure, i would be so triumphant as i am? stanley the lords at pomfret, when they rode from london, were jocund, and supposed their state was sure, and they indeed had no cause to mistrust; but yet, you see how soon the day o'ercast. this sudden stag of rancour i misdoubt: pray god, i say, i prove a needless coward! what, shall we toward the tower? the day is spent. hastings come, come, have with you. wot you what, my lord? to-day the lords you talk of are beheaded. lord stanley they, for their truth, might better wear their heads than some that have accused them wear their hats. but come, my lord, let us away. [enter a pursuivant] hastings go on before; i'll talk with this good fellow. [exeunt stanley and catesby] how now, sirrah! how goes the world with thee? pursuivant the better that your lordship please to ask. hastings i tell thee, man, 'tis better with me now than when i met thee last where now we meet: then was i going prisoner to the tower, by the suggestion of the queen's allies; but now, i tell thee--keep it to thyself- this day those enemies are put to death, and i in better state than e'er i was. pursuivant god hold it, to your honour's good content! hastings gramercy, fellow: there, drink that for me. [throws him his purse] pursuivant god save your lordship! [exit] [enter a priest] priest well met, my lord; i am glad to see your honour. hastings i thank thee, good sir john, with all my heart. i am in your debt for your last exercise; come the next sabbath, and i will content you. [he whispers in his ear] [enter buckingham] buckingham what, talking with a priest, lord chamberlain? your friends at pomfret, they do need the priest; your honour hath no shriving work in hand. hastings good faith, and when i met this holy man, those men you talk of came into my mind. what, go you toward the tower? buckingham i do, my lord; but long i shall not stay i shall return before your lordship thence. hastings 'tis like enough, for i stay dinner there. buckingham [aside] and supper too, although thou know'st it not. come, will you go? hastings i'll wait upon your lordship. [exeunt] king richard iii act iii scene iii pomfret castle. [enter ratcliff, with halberds, carrying rivers, grey, and vaughan to death] ratcliff come, bring forth the prisoners. rivers sir richard ratcliff, let me tell thee this: to-day shalt thou behold a subject die for truth, for duty, and for loyalty. grey god keep the prince from all the pack of you! a knot you are of damned blood-suckers! vaughan you live that shall cry woe for this after. ratcliff dispatch; the limit of your lives is out. rivers o pomfret, pomfret! o thou bloody prison, fatal and ominous to noble peers! within the guilty closure of thy walls richard the second here was hack'd to death; and, for more slander to thy dismal seat, we give thee up our guiltless blood to drink. grey now margaret's curse is fall'n upon our heads, for standing by when richard stabb'd her son. rivers then cursed she hastings, then cursed she buckingham, then cursed she richard. o, remember, god to hear her prayers for them, as now for us and for my sister and her princely sons, be satisfied, dear god, with our true blood, which, as thou know'st, unjustly must be spilt. ratcliff make haste; the hour of death is expiate. rivers come, grey, come, vaughan, let us all embrace: and take our leave, until we meet in heaven. [exeunt] king richard iii act iii scene iv the tower of london. [enter buckingham, derby, hastings, the bishop of ely, ratcliff, lovel, with others, and take their seats at a table] hastings my lords, at once: the cause why we are met is, to determine of the coronation. in god's name, speak: when is the royal day? buckingham are all things fitting for that royal time? derby it is, and wants but nomination. bishop of ely to-morrow, then, i judge a happy day. buckingham who knows the lord protector's mind herein? who is most inward with the royal duke? bishop of ely your grace, we think, should soonest know his mind. buckingham who, i, my lord i we know each other's faces, but for our hearts, he knows no more of mine, than i of yours; nor i no more of his, than you of mine. lord hastings, you and he are near in love. hastings i thank his grace, i know he loves me well; but, for his purpose in the coronation. i have not sounded him, nor he deliver'd his gracious pleasure any way therein: but you, my noble lords, may name the time; and in the duke's behalf i'll give my voice, which, i presume, he'll take in gentle part. [enter gloucester] bishop of ely now in good time, here comes the duke himself. gloucester my noble lords and cousins all, good morrow. i have been long a sleeper; but, i hope, my absence doth neglect no great designs, which by my presence might have been concluded. buckingham had not you come upon your cue, my lord william lord hastings had pronounced your part,- i mean, your voice,--for crowning of the king. gloucester than my lord hastings no man might be bolder; his lordship knows me well, and loves me well. hastings i thank your grace. gloucester my lord of ely! bishop of ely my lord? gloucester when i was last in holborn, i saw good strawberries in your garden there i do beseech you send for some of them. bishop of ely marry, and will, my lord, with all my heart. [exit] gloucester cousin of buckingham, a word with you. [drawing him aside] catesby hath sounded hastings in our business, and finds the testy gentleman so hot, as he will lose his head ere give consent his master's son, as worshipful as he terms it, shall lose the royalty of england's throne. buckingham withdraw you hence, my lord, i'll follow you. [exit gloucester, buckingham following] derby we have not yet set down this day of triumph. to-morrow, in mine opinion, is too sudden; for i myself am not so well provided as else i would be, were the day prolong'd. [re-enter bishop of ely] bishop of ely where is my lord protector? i have sent for these strawberries. hastings his grace looks cheerfully and smooth to-day; there's some conceit or other likes him well, when he doth bid good morrow with such a spirit. i think there's never a man in christendom that can less hide his love or hate than he; for by his face straight shall you know his heart. derby what of his heart perceive you in his face by any likelihood he show'd to-day? hastings marry, that with no man here he is offended; for, were he, he had shown it in his looks. derby i pray god he be not, i say. [re-enter gloucester and buckingham] gloucester i pray you all, tell me what they deserve that do conspire my death with devilish plots of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail'd upon my body with their hellish charms? hastings the tender love i bear your grace, my lord, makes me most forward in this noble presence to doom the offenders, whatsoever they be i say, my lord, they have deserved death. gloucester then be your eyes the witness of this ill: see how i am bewitch'd; behold mine arm is, like a blasted sapling, wither'd up: and this is edward's wife, that monstrous witch, consorted with that harlot strumpet shore, that by their witchcraft thus have marked me. hastings if they have done this thing, my gracious lord- gloucester if i thou protector of this damned strumpet- tellest thou me of 'ifs'? thou art a traitor: off with his head! now, by saint paul i swear, i will not dine until i see the same. lovel and ratcliff, look that it be done: the rest, that love me, rise and follow me. [exeunt all but hastings, ratcliff, and lovel] hastings woe, woe for england! not a whit for me; for i, too fond, might have prevented this. stanley did dream the boar did raze his helm; but i disdain'd it, and did scorn to fly: three times to-day my foot-cloth horse did stumble, and startled, when he look'd upon the tower, as loath to bear me to the slaughter-house. o, now i want the priest that spake to me: i now repent i told the pursuivant as 'twere triumphing at mine enemies, how they at pomfret bloodily were butcher'd, and i myself secure in grace and favour. o margaret, margaret, now thy heavy curse is lighted on poor hastings' wretched head! ratcliff dispatch, my lord; the duke would be at dinner: make a short shrift; he longs to see your head. hastings o momentary grace of mortal men, which we more hunt for than the grace of god! who builds his hopes in air of your good looks, lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, ready, with every nod, to tumble down into the fatal bowels of the deep. lovel come, come, dispatch; 'tis bootless to exclaim. hastings o bloody richard! miserable england! i prophesy the fearful'st time to thee that ever wretched age hath look'd upon. come, lead me to the block; bear him my head. they smile at me that shortly shall be dead. [exeunt] king richard iii act iii scene v the tower-walls. [enter gloucester and buckingham, in rotten armour, marvellous ill-favoured] gloucester come, cousin, canst thou quake, and change thy colour, murder thy breath in the middle of a word, and then begin again, and stop again, as if thou wert distraught and mad with terror? buckingham tut, i can counterfeit the deep tragedian; speak and look back, and pry on every side, tremble and start at wagging of a straw, intending deep suspicion: ghastly looks are at my service, like enforced smiles; and both are ready in their offices, at any time, to grace my stratagems. but what, is catesby gone? gloucester he is; and, see, he brings the mayor along. [enter the lord mayor and catesby] buckingham lord mayor,- gloucester look to the drawbridge there! buckingham hark! a drum. gloucester catesby, o'erlook the walls. buckingham lord mayor, the reason we have sent- gloucester look back, defend thee, here are enemies. buckingham god and our innocency defend and guard us! gloucester be patient, they are friends, ratcliff and lovel. [enter lovel and ratcliff, with hastings' head] lovel here is the head of that ignoble traitor, the dangerous and unsuspected hastings. gloucester so dear i loved the man, that i must weep. i took him for the plainest harmless creature that breathed upon this earth a christian; made him my book wherein my soul recorded the history of all her secret thoughts: so smooth he daub'd his vice with show of virtue, that, his apparent open guilt omitted, i mean, his conversation with shore's wife, he lived from all attainder of suspect. buckingham well, well, he was the covert'st shelter'd traitor that ever lived. would you imagine, or almost believe, were't not that, by great preservation, we live to tell it you, the subtle traitor this day had plotted, in the council-house to murder me and my good lord of gloucester? lord mayor what, had he so? gloucester what, think you we are turks or infidels? or that we would, against the form of law, proceed thus rashly to the villain's death, but that the extreme peril of the case, the peace of england and our persons' safety, enforced us to this execution? lord mayor now, fair befall you! he deserved his death; and you my good lords, both have well proceeded, to warn false traitors from the like attempts. i never look'd for better at his hands, after he once fell in with mistress shore. gloucester yet had not we determined he should die, until your lordship came to see his death; which now the loving haste of these our friends, somewhat against our meaning, have prevented: because, my lord, we would have had you heard the traitor speak, and timorously confess the manner and the purpose of his treason; that you might well have signified the same unto the citizens, who haply may misconstrue us in him and wail his death. lord mayor but, my good lord, your grace's word shall serve, as well as i had seen and heard him speak and doubt you not, right noble princes both, but i'll acquaint our duteous citizens with all your just proceedings in this cause. gloucester and to that end we wish'd your lord-ship here, to avoid the carping censures of the world. buckingham but since you come too late of our intents, yet witness what you hear we did intend: and so, my good lord mayor, we bid farewell. [exit lord mayor] gloucester go, after, after, cousin buckingham. the mayor towards guildhall hies him in all post: there, at your meet'st advantage of the time, infer the bastardy of edward's children: tell them how edward put to death a citizen, only for saying he would make his son heir to the crown; meaning indeed his house, which, by the sign thereof was termed so. moreover, urge his hateful luxury and bestial appetite in change of lust; which stretched to their servants, daughters, wives, even where his lustful eye or savage heart, without control, listed to make his prey. nay, for a need, thus far come near my person: tell them, when that my mother went with child of that unsatiate edward, noble york my princely father then had wars in france and, by just computation of the time, found that the issue was not his begot; which well appeared in his lineaments, being nothing like the noble duke my father: but touch this sparingly, as 'twere far off, because you know, my lord, my mother lives. buckingham fear not, my lord, i'll play the orator as if the golden fee for which i plead were for myself: and so, my lord, adieu. gloucester if you thrive well, bring them to baynard's castle; where you shall find me well accompanied with reverend fathers and well-learned bishops. buckingham i go: and towards three or four o'clock look for the news that the guildhall affords. [exit buckingham] gloucester go, lovel, with all speed to doctor shaw; [to catesby] go thou to friar penker; bid them both meet me within this hour at baynard's castle. [exeunt all but gloucester] now will i in, to take some privy order, to draw the brats of clarence out of sight; and to give notice, that no manner of person at any time have recourse unto the princes. [exit] king richard iii act iii scene vi the same. [enter a scrivener, with a paper in his hand] scrivener this is the indictment of the good lord hastings; which in a set hand fairly is engross'd, that it may be this day read over in paul's. and mark how well the sequel hangs together: eleven hours i spent to write it over, for yesternight by catesby was it brought me; the precedent was full as long a-doing: and yet within these five hours lived lord hastings, untainted, unexamined, free, at liberty here's a good world the while! why who's so gross, that seeth not this palpable device? yet who's so blind, but says he sees it not? bad is the world; and all will come to nought, when such bad dealings must be seen in thought. [exit] king richard iii act iii scene vii baynard's castle. [enter gloucester and buckingham, at several doors] gloucester how now, my lord, what say the citizens? buckingham now, by the holy mother of our lord, the citizens are mum and speak not a word. gloucester touch'd you the bastardy of edward's children? buckingham i did; with his contract with lady lucy, and his contract by deputy in france; the insatiate greediness of his desires, and his enforcement of the city wives; his tyranny for trifles; his own bastardy, as being got, your father then in france, his resemblance, being not like the duke; withal i did infer your lineaments, being the right idea of your father, both in your form and nobleness of mind; laid open all your victories in scotland, your dicipline in war, wisdom in peace, your bounty, virtue, fair humility: indeed, left nothing fitting for the purpose untouch'd, or slightly handled, in discourse and when mine oratory grew to an end i bid them that did love their country's good cry 'god save richard, england's royal king!' gloucester ah! and did they so? buckingham no, so god help me, they spake not a word; but, like dumb statues or breathing stones, gazed each on other, and look'd deadly pale. which when i saw, i reprehended them; and ask'd the mayor what meant this wilful silence: his answer was, the people were not wont to be spoke to but by the recorder. then he was urged to tell my tale again, 'thus saith the duke, thus hath the duke inferr'd;' but nothing spake in warrant from himself. when he had done, some followers of mine own, at the lower end of the hall, hurl'd up their caps, and some ten voices cried 'god save king richard!' and thus i took the vantage of those few, 'thanks, gentle citizens and friends,' quoth i; 'this general applause and loving shout argues your wisdoms and your love to richard:' and even here brake off, and came away. gloucester what tongueless blocks were they! would not they speak? buckingham no, by my troth, my lord. gloucester will not the mayor then and his brethren come? buckingham the mayor is here at hand: intend some fear; be not you spoke with, but by mighty suit: and look you get a prayer-book in your hand, and stand betwixt two churchmen, good my lord; for on that ground i'll build a holy descant: and be not easily won to our request: play the maid's part, still answer nay, and take it. gloucester i go; and if you plead as well for them as i can say nay to thee for myself, no doubt well bring it to a happy issue. buckingham go, go, up to the leads; the lord mayor knocks. [exit gloucester] [enter the lord mayor and citizens] welcome my lord; i dance attendance here; i think the duke will not be spoke withal. [enter catesby] here comes his servant: how now, catesby, what says he? catesby my lord: he doth entreat your grace; to visit him to-morrow or next day: he is within, with two right reverend fathers, divinely bent to meditation; and no worldly suit would he be moved, to draw him from his holy exercise. buckingham return, good catesby, to thy lord again; tell him, myself, the mayor and citizens, in deep designs and matters of great moment, no less importing than our general good, are come to have some conference with his grace. catesby i'll tell him what you say, my lord. [exit] buckingham ah, ha, my lord, this prince is not an edward! he is not lolling on a lewd day-bed, but on his knees at meditation; not dallying with a brace of courtezans, but meditating with two deep divines; not sleeping, to engross his idle body, but praying, to enrich his watchful soul: happy were england, would this gracious prince take on himself the sovereignty thereof: but, sure, i fear, we shall ne'er win him to it. lord mayor marry, god forbid his grace should say us nay! buckingham i fear he will. [re-enter catesby] how now, catesby, what says your lord? catesby my lord, he wonders to what end you have assembled such troops of citizens to speak with him, his grace not being warn'd thereof before: my lord, he fears you mean no good to him. buckingham sorry i am my noble cousin should suspect me, that i mean no good to him: by heaven, i come in perfect love to him; and so once more return and tell his grace. [exit catesby] when holy and devout religious men are at their beads, 'tis hard to draw them thence, so sweet is zealous contemplation. [enter gloucester aloft, between two bishops. catesby returns] lord mayor see, where he stands between two clergymen! buckingham two props of virtue for a christian prince, to stay him from the fall of vanity: and, see, a book of prayer in his hand, true ornaments to know a holy man. famous plantagenet, most gracious prince, lend favourable ears to our request; and pardon us the interruption of thy devotion and right christian zeal. gloucester my lord, there needs no such apology: i rather do beseech you pardon me, who, earnest in the service of my god, neglect the visitation of my friends. but, leaving this, what is your grace's pleasure? buckingham even that, i hope, which pleaseth god above, and all good men of this ungovern'd isle. gloucester i do suspect i have done some offence that seems disgracious in the city's eyes, and that you come to reprehend my ignorance. buckingham you have, my lord: would it might please your grace, at our entreaties, to amend that fault! gloucester else wherefore breathe i in a christian land? buckingham then know, it is your fault that you resign the supreme seat, the throne majestical, the scepter'd office of your ancestors, your state of fortune and your due of birth, the lineal glory of your royal house, to the corruption of a blemished stock: whilst, in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts, which here we waken to our country's good, this noble isle doth want her proper limbs; her face defaced with scars of infamy, her royal stock graft with ignoble plants, and almost shoulder'd in the swallowing gulf of blind forgetfulness and dark oblivion. which to recure, we heartily solicit your gracious self to take on you the charge and kingly government of this your land, not as protector, steward, substitute, or lowly factor for another's gain; but as successively from blood to blood, your right of birth, your empery, your own. for this, consorted with the citizens, your very worshipful and loving friends, and by their vehement instigation, in this just suit come i to move your grace. gloucester i know not whether to depart in silence, or bitterly to speak in your reproof. best fitteth my degree or your condition if not to answer, you might haply think tongue-tied ambition, not replying, yielded to bear the golden yoke of sovereignty, which fondly you would here impose on me; if to reprove you for this suit of yours, so season'd with your faithful love to me. then, on the other side, i cheque'd my friends. therefore, to speak, and to avoid the first, and then, in speaking, not to incur the last, definitively thus i answer you. your love deserves my thanks; but my desert unmeritable shuns your high request. first if all obstacles were cut away, and that my path were even to the crown, as my ripe revenue and due by birth yet so much is my poverty of spirit, so mighty and so many my defects, as i had rather hide me from my greatness, being a bark to brook no mighty sea, than in my greatness covet to be hid, and in the vapour of my glory smother'd. but, god be thank'd, there's no need of me, and much i need to help you, if need were; the royal tree hath left us royal fruit, which, mellow'd by the stealing hours of time, will well become the seat of majesty, and make, no doubt, us happy by his reign. on him i lay what you would lay on me, the right and fortune of his happy stars; which god defend that i should wring from him! buckingham my lord, this argues conscience in your grace; but the respects thereof are nice and trivial, all circumstances well considered. you say that edward is your brother's son: so say we too, but not by edward's wife; for first he was contract to lady lucy- your mother lives a witness to that vow- and afterward by substitute betroth'd to bona, sister to the king of france. these both put by a poor petitioner, a care-crazed mother of a many children, a beauty-waning and distressed widow, even in the afternoon of her best days, made prize and purchase of his lustful eye, seduced the pitch and height of all his thoughts to base declension and loathed bigamy by her, in his unlawful bed, he got this edward, whom our manners term the prince. more bitterly could i expostulate, save that, for reverence to some alive, i give a sparing limit to my tongue. then, good my lord, take to your royal self this proffer'd benefit of dignity; if non to bless us and the land withal, yet to draw forth your noble ancestry from the corruption of abusing times, unto a lineal true-derived course. lord mayor do, good my lord, your citizens entreat you. buckingham refuse not, mighty lord, this proffer'd love. catesby o, make them joyful, grant their lawful suit! gloucester alas, why would you heap these cares on me? i am unfit for state and majesty; i do beseech you, take it not amiss; i cannot nor i will not yield to you. buckingham if you refuse it,--as, in love and zeal, loath to depose the child, your brother's son; as well we know your tenderness of heart and gentle, kind, effeminate remorse, which we have noted in you to your kin, and egally indeed to all estates,- yet whether you accept our suit or no, your brother's son shall never reign our king; but we will plant some other in the throne, to the disgrace and downfall of your house: and in this resolution here we leave you.- come, citizens: 'zounds! i'll entreat no more. gloucester o, do not swear, my lord of buckingham. [exit buckingham with the citizens] catesby call them again, my lord, and accept their suit. another do, good my lord, lest all the land do rue it. gloucester would you enforce me to a world of care? well, call them again. i am not made of stone, but penetrable to your. kind entreats, albeit against my conscience and my soul. [re-enter buckingham and the rest] cousin of buckingham, and you sage, grave men, since you will buckle fortune on my back, to bear her burthen, whether i will or no, i must have patience to endure the load: but if black scandal or foul-faced reproach attend the sequel of your imposition, your mere enforcement shall acquittance me from all the impure blots and stains thereof; for god he knows, and you may partly see, how far i am from the desire thereof. lord mayor god bless your grace! we see it, and will say it. gloucester in saying so, you shall but say the truth. buckingham then i salute you with this kingly title: long live richard, england's royal king! lord mayor | | amen. citizens | buckingham to-morrow will it please you to be crown'd? gloucester even when you please, since you will have it so. buckingham to-morrow, then, we will attend your grace: and so most joyfully we take our leave. gloucester come, let us to our holy task again. farewell, good cousin; farewell, gentle friends. [exeunt] king richard iii act iv scene i before the tower. [enter, on one side, queen elizabeth, duchess of york, and dorset; on the other, anne, duchess of gloucester, leading lady margaret plantagenet, clarence's young daughter] duchess of york who meets us here? my niece plantagenet led in the hand of her kind aunt of gloucester? now, for my life, she's wandering to the tower, on pure heart's love to greet the tender princes. daughter, well met. lady anne god give your graces both a happy and a joyful time of day! queen elizabeth as much to you, good sister! whither away? lady anne no farther than the tower; and, as i guess, upon the like devotion as yourselves, to gratulate the gentle princes there. queen elizabeth kind sister, thanks: we'll enter all together. [enter brakenbury] and, in good time, here the lieutenant comes. master lieutenant, pray you, by your leave, how doth the prince, and my young son of york? brakenbury right well, dear madam. by your patience, i may not suffer you to visit them; the king hath straitly charged the contrary. queen elizabeth the king! why, who's that? brakenbury i cry you mercy: i mean the lord protector. queen elizabeth the lord protect him from that kingly title! hath he set bounds betwixt their love and me? i am their mother; who should keep me from them? duchess of york i am their fathers mother; i will see them. lady anne their aunt i am in law, in love their mother: then bring me to their sights; i'll bear thy blame and take thy office from thee, on my peril. brakenbury no, madam, no; i may not leave it so: i am bound by oath, and therefore pardon me. [exit] [enter lord stanley] lord stanley let me but meet you, ladies, one hour hence, and i'll salute your grace of york as mother, and reverend looker on, of two fair queens. [to lady anne] come, madam, you must straight to westminster, there to be crowned richard's royal queen. queen elizabeth o, cut my lace in sunder, that my pent heart may have some scope to beat, or else i swoon with this dead-killing news! lady anne despiteful tidings! o unpleasing news! dorset be of good cheer: mother, how fares your grace? queen elizabeth o dorset, speak not to me, get thee hence! death and destruction dog thee at the heels; thy mother's name is ominous to children. if thou wilt outstrip death, go cross the seas, and live with richmond, from the reach of hell go, hie thee, hie thee from this slaughter-house, lest thou increase the number of the dead; and make me die the thrall of margaret's curse, nor mother, wife, nor england's counted queen. lord stanley full of wise care is this your counsel, madam. take all the swift advantage of the hours; you shall have letters from me to my son to meet you on the way, and welcome you. be not ta'en tardy by unwise delay. duchess of york o ill-dispersing wind of misery! o my accursed womb, the bed of death! a cockatrice hast thou hatch'd to the world, whose unavoided eye is murderous. lord stanley come, madam, come; i in all haste was sent. lady anne and i in all unwillingness will go. i would to god that the inclusive verge of golden metal that must round my brow were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brain! anointed let me be with deadly venom, and die, ere men can say, god save the queen! queen elizabeth go, go, poor soul, i envy not thy glory to feed my humour, wish thyself no harm. lady anne no! why? when he that is my husband now came to me, as i follow'd henry's corse, when scarce the blood was well wash'd from his hands which issued from my other angel husband and that dead saint which then i weeping follow'd; o, when, i say, i look'd on richard's face, this was my wish: 'be thou,' quoth i, ' accursed, for making me, so young, so old a widow! and, when thou wed'st, let sorrow haunt thy bed; and be thy wife--if any be so mad- as miserable by the life of thee as thou hast made me by my dear lord's death! lo, ere i can repeat this curse again, even in so short a space, my woman's heart grossly grew captive to his honey words and proved the subject of my own soul's curse, which ever since hath kept my eyes from rest; for never yet one hour in his bed have i enjoy'd the golden dew of sleep, but have been waked by his timorous dreams. besides, he hates me for my father warwick; and will, no doubt, shortly be rid of me. queen elizabeth poor heart, adieu! i pity thy complaining. lady anne no more than from my soul i mourn for yours. queen elizabeth farewell, thou woful welcomer of glory! lady anne adieu, poor soul, that takest thy leave of it! duchess of york [to dorset] go thou to richmond, and good fortune guide thee! [to lady anne] go thou to richard, and good angels guard thee! [to queen elizabeth] go thou to sanctuary, and good thoughts possess thee! i to my grave, where peace and rest lie with me! eighty odd years of sorrow have i seen, and each hour's joy wrecked with a week of teen. queen elizabeth stay, yet look back with me unto the tower. pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes whom envy hath immured within your walls! rough cradle for such little pretty ones! rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow for tender princes, use my babies well! so foolish sorrow bids your stones farewell. [exeunt] king richard iii act iv scene ii london. the palace. [sennet. enter king richard iii, in pomp, crowned; buckingham, catesby, a page, and others] king richard iii stand all apart cousin of buckingham! buckingham my gracious sovereign? king richard iii give me thy hand. [here he ascendeth his throne] thus high, by thy advice and thy assistance, is king richard seated; but shall we wear these honours for a day? or shall they last, and we rejoice in them? buckingham still live they and for ever may they last! king richard iii o buckingham, now do i play the touch, to try if thou be current gold indeed young edward lives: think now what i would say. buckingham say on, my loving lord. king richard iii why, buckingham, i say, i would be king, buckingham why, so you are, my thrice renowned liege. king richard iii ha! am i king? 'tis so: but edward lives. buckingham true, noble prince. king richard iii o bitter consequence, that edward still should live! 'true, noble prince!' cousin, thou wert not wont to be so dull: shall i be plain? i wish the bastards dead; and i would have it suddenly perform'd. what sayest thou? speak suddenly; be brief. buckingham your grace may do your pleasure. king richard iii tut, tut, thou art all ice, thy kindness freezeth: say, have i thy consent that they shall die? buckingham give me some breath, some little pause, my lord before i positively herein: i will resolve your grace immediately. [exit] catesby [aside to a stander by] the king is angry: see, he bites the lip. king richard iii i will converse with iron-witted fools and unrespective boys: none are for me that look into me with considerate eyes: high-reaching buckingham grows circumspect. boy! page my lord? king richard iii know'st thou not any whom corrupting gold would tempt unto a close exploit of death? page my lord, i know a discontented gentleman, whose humble means match not his haughty mind: gold were as good as twenty orators, and will, no doubt, tempt him to any thing. king richard iii what is his name? page his name, my lord, is tyrrel. king richard iii i partly know the man: go, call him hither. [exit page] the deep-revolving witty buckingham no more shall be the neighbour to my counsel: hath he so long held out with me untired, and stops he now for breath? [enter stanley] how now! what news with you? stanley my lord, i hear the marquis dorset's fled to richmond, in those parts beyond the sea where he abides. [stands apart] king richard iii catesby! catesby my lord? king richard iii rumour it abroad that anne, my wife, is sick and like to die: i will take order for her keeping close. inquire me out some mean-born gentleman, whom i will marry straight to clarence' daughter: the boy is foolish, and i fear not him. look, how thou dream'st! i say again, give out that anne my wife is sick and like to die: about it; for it stands me much upon, to stop all hopes whose growth may damage me. [exit catesby] i must be married to my brother's daughter, or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass. murder her brothers, and then marry her! uncertain way of gain! but i am in so far in blood that sin will pluck on sin: tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye. [re-enter page, with tyrrel] is thy name tyrrel? tyrrel james tyrrel, and your most obedient subject. king richard iii art thou, indeed? tyrrel prove me, my gracious sovereign. king richard iii darest thou resolve to kill a friend of mine? tyrrel ay, my lord; but i had rather kill two enemies. king richard iii why, there thou hast it: two deep enemies, foes to my rest and my sweet sleep's disturbers are they that i would have thee deal upon: tyrrel, i mean those bastards in the tower. tyrrel let me have open means to come to them, and soon i'll rid you from the fear of them. king richard iii thou sing'st sweet music. hark, come hither, tyrrel go, by this token: rise, and lend thine ear: [whispers] there is no more but so: say it is done, and i will love thee, and prefer thee too. tyrrel 'tis done, my gracious lord. king richard iii shall we hear from thee, tyrrel, ere we sleep? tyrrel ye shall, my lord. [exit] [re-enter buckingham] buckingham my lord, i have consider'd in my mind the late demand that you did sound me in. king richard iii well, let that pass. dorset is fled to richmond. buckingham i hear that news, my lord. king richard iii stanley, he is your wife's son well, look to it. buckingham my lord, i claim your gift, my due by promise, for which your honour and your faith is pawn'd; the earldom of hereford and the moveables the which you promised i should possess. king richard iii stanley, look to your wife; if she convey letters to richmond, you shall answer it. buckingham what says your highness to my just demand? king richard iii as i remember, henry the sixth did prophesy that richmond should be king, when richmond was a little peevish boy. a king, perhaps, perhaps,- buckingham my lord! king richard iii how chance the prophet could not at that time have told me, i being by, that i should kill him? buckingham my lord, your promise for the earldom,- king richard iii richmond! when last i was at exeter, the mayor in courtesy show'd me the castle, and call'd it rougemont: at which name i started, because a bard of ireland told me once i should not live long after i saw richmond. buckingham my lord! king richard iii ay, what's o'clock? buckingham i am thus bold to put your grace in mind of what you promised me. king richard iii well, but what's o'clock? buckingham upon the stroke of ten. king richard iii well, let it strike. buckingham why let it strike? king richard iii because that, like a jack, thou keep'st the stroke betwixt thy begging and my meditation. i am not in the giving vein to-day. buckingham why, then resolve me whether you will or no. king richard iii tut, tut, thou troublest me; am not in the vein. [exeunt all but buckingham] buckingham is it even so? rewards he my true service with such deep contempt made i him king for this? o, let me think on hastings, and be gone to brecknock, while my fearful head is on! [exit] king richard iii act iv scene iii the same. [enter tyrrel] tyrrel the tyrannous and bloody deed is done. the most arch of piteous massacre that ever yet this land was guilty of. dighton and forrest, whom i did suborn to do this ruthless piece of butchery, although they were flesh'd villains, bloody dogs, melting with tenderness and kind compassion wept like two children in their deaths' sad stories. 'lo, thus' quoth dighton, 'lay those tender babes:' 'thus, thus,' quoth forrest, 'girdling one another within their innocent alabaster arms: their lips were four red roses on a stalk, which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other. a book of prayers on their pillow lay; which once,' quoth forrest, 'almost changed my mind; but o! the devil'--there the villain stopp'd whilst dighton thus told on: 'we smothered the most replenished sweet work of nature, that from the prime creation e'er she framed.' thus both are gone with conscience and remorse; they could not speak; and so i left them both, to bring this tidings to the bloody king. and here he comes. [enter king richard iii] all hail, my sovereign liege! king richard iii kind tyrrel, am i happy in thy news? tyrrel if to have done the thing you gave in charge beget your happiness, be happy then, for it is done, my lord. king richard iii but didst thou see them dead? tyrrel i did, my lord. king richard iii and buried, gentle tyrrel? tyrrel the chaplain of the tower hath buried them; but how or in what place i do not know. king richard iii come to me, tyrrel, soon at after supper, and thou shalt tell the process of their death. meantime, but think how i may do thee good, and be inheritor of thy desire. farewell till soon. [exit tyrrel] the son of clarence have i pent up close; his daughter meanly have i match'd in marriage; the sons of edward sleep in abraham's bosom, and anne my wife hath bid the world good night. now, for i know the breton richmond aims at young elizabeth, my brother's daughter, and, by that knot, looks proudly o'er the crown, to her i go, a jolly thriving wooer. [enter catesby] catesby my lord! king richard iii good news or bad, that thou comest in so bluntly? catesby bad news, my lord: ely is fled to richmond; and buckingham, back'd with the hardy welshmen, is in the field, and still his power increaseth. king richard iii ely with richmond troubles me more near than buckingham and his rash-levied army. come, i have heard that fearful commenting is leaden servitor to dull delay; delay leads impotent and snail-paced beggary then fiery expedition be my wing, jove's mercury, and herald for a king! come, muster men: my counsel is my shield; we must be brief when traitors brave the field. [exeunt] king richard iii act iv scene iv before the palace. [enter queen margaret] queen margaret so, now prosperity begins to mellow and drop into the rotten mouth of death. here in these confines slily have i lurk'd, to watch the waning of mine adversaries. a dire induction am i witness to, and will to france, hoping the consequence will prove as bitter, black, and tragical. withdraw thee, wretched margaret: who comes here? [enter queen elizabeth and the duchess of york] queen elizabeth ah, my young princes! ah, my tender babes! my unblown flowers, new-appearing sweets! if yet your gentle souls fly in the air and be not fix'd in doom perpetual, hover about me with your airy wings and hear your mother's lamentation! queen margaret hover about her; say, that right for right hath dimm'd your infant morn to aged night. duchess of york so many miseries have crazed my voice, that my woe-wearied tongue is mute and dumb, edward plantagenet, why art thou dead? queen margaret plantagenet doth quit plantagenet. edward for edward pays a dying debt. queen elizabeth wilt thou, o god, fly from such gentle lambs, and throw them in the entrails of the wolf? when didst thou sleep when such a deed was done? queen margaret when holy harry died, and my sweet son. duchess of york blind sight, dead life, poor mortal living ghost, woe's scene, world's shame, grave's due by life usurp'd, brief abstract and record of tedious days, rest thy unrest on england's lawful earth, [sitting down] unlawfully made drunk with innocents' blood! queen elizabeth o, that thou wouldst as well afford a grave as thou canst yield a melancholy seat! then would i hide my bones, not rest them here. o, who hath any cause to mourn but i? [sitting down by her] queen margaret if ancient sorrow be most reverend, give mine the benefit of seniory, and let my woes frown on the upper hand. if sorrow can admit society, [sitting down with them] tell o'er your woes again by viewing mine: i had an edward, till a richard kill'd him; i had a harry, till a richard kill'd him: thou hadst an edward, till a richard kill'd him; thou hadst a richard, till a richard killed him; duchess of york i had a richard too, and thou didst kill him; i had a rutland too, thou holp'st to kill him. queen margaret thou hadst a clarence too, and richard kill'd him. from forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept a hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death: that dog, that had his teeth before his eyes, to worry lambs and lap their gentle blood, that foul defacer of god's handiwork, that excellent grand tyrant of the earth, that reigns in galled eyes of weeping souls, thy womb let loose, to chase us to our graves. o upright, just, and true-disposing god, how do i thank thee, that this carnal cur preys on the issue of his mother's body, and makes her pew-fellow with others' moan! duchess of york o harry's wife, triumph not in my woes! god witness with me, i have wept for thine. queen margaret bear with me; i am hungry for revenge, and now i cloy me with beholding it. thy edward he is dead, that stabb'd my edward: thy other edward dead, to quit my edward; young york he is but boot, because both they match not the high perfection of my loss: thy clarence he is dead that kill'd my edward; and the beholders of this tragic play, the adulterate hastings, rivers, vaughan, grey, untimely smother'd in their dusky graves. richard yet lives, hell's black intelligencer, only reserved their factor, to buy souls and send them thither: but at hand, at hand, ensues his piteous and unpitied end: earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray. to have him suddenly convey'd away. cancel his bond of life, dear god, i prey, that i may live to say, the dog is dead! queen elizabeth o, thou didst prophesy the time would come that i should wish for thee to help me curse that bottled spider, that foul bunch-back'd toad! queen margaret i call'd thee then vain flourish of my fortune; i call'd thee then poor shadow, painted queen; the presentation of but what i was; the flattering index of a direful pageant; one heaved a-high, to be hurl'd down below; a mother only mock'd with two sweet babes; a dream of what thou wert, a breath, a bubble, a sign of dignity, a garish flag, to be the aim of every dangerous shot, a queen in jest, only to fill the scene. where is thy husband now? where be thy brothers? where are thy children? wherein dost thou, joy? who sues to thee and cries 'god save the queen'? where be the bending peers that flatter'd thee? where be the thronging troops that follow'd thee? decline all this, and see what now thou art: for happy wife, a most distressed widow; for joyful mother, one that wails the name; for queen, a very caitiff crown'd with care; for one being sued to, one that humbly sues; for one that scorn'd at me, now scorn'd of me; for one being fear'd of all, now fearing one; for one commanding all, obey'd of none. thus hath the course of justice wheel'd about, and left thee but a very prey to time; having no more but thought of what thou wert, to torture thee the more, being what thou art. thou didst usurp my place, and dost thou not usurp the just proportion of my sorrow? now thy proud neck bears half my burthen'd yoke; from which even here i slip my weary neck, and leave the burthen of it all on thee. farewell, york's wife, and queen of sad mischance: these english woes will make me smile in france. queen elizabeth o thou well skill'd in curses, stay awhile, and teach me how to curse mine enemies! queen margaret forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the days; compare dead happiness with living woe; think that thy babes were fairer than they were, and he that slew them fouler than he is: bettering thy loss makes the bad causer worse: revolving this will teach thee how to curse. queen elizabeth my words are dull; o, quicken them with thine! queen margaret thy woes will make them sharp, and pierce like mine. [exit] duchess of york why should calamity be full of words? queen elizabeth windy attorneys to their client woes, airy succeeders of intestate joys, poor breathing orators of miseries! let them have scope: though what they do impart help not all, yet do they ease the heart. duchess of york if so, then be not tongue-tied: go with me. and in the breath of bitter words let's smother my damned son, which thy two sweet sons smother'd. i hear his drum: be copious in exclaims. [enter king richard iii, marching, with drums and trumpets] king richard iii who intercepts my expedition? duchess of york o, she that might have intercepted thee, by strangling thee in her accursed womb from all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done! queen elizabeth hidest thou that forehead with a golden crown, where should be graven, if that right were right, the slaughter of the prince that owed that crown, and the dire death of my two sons and brothers? tell me, thou villain slave, where are my children? duchess of york thou toad, thou toad, where is thy brother clarence? and little ned plantagenet, his son? queen elizabeth where is kind hastings, rivers, vaughan, grey? king richard iii a flourish, trumpets! strike alarum, drums! let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women rail on the lord's enointed: strike, i say! [flourish. alarums] either be patient, and entreat me fair, or with the clamorous report of war thus will i drown your exclamations. duchess of york art thou my son? king richard iii ay, i thank god, my father, and yourself. duchess of york then patiently hear my impatience. king richard iii madam, i have a touch of your condition, which cannot brook the accent of reproof. duchess of york o, let me speak! king richard iii do then: but i'll not hear. duchess of york i will be mild and gentle in my speech. king richard iii and brief, good mother; for i am in haste. duchess of york art thou so hasty? i have stay'd for thee, god knows, in anguish, pain and agony. king richard iii and came i not at last to comfort you? duchess of york no, by the holy rood, thou know'st it well, thou camest on earth to make the earth my hell. a grievous burthen was thy birth to me; tetchy and wayward was thy infancy; thy school-days frightful, desperate, wild, and furious, thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous, thy age confirm'd, proud, subdued, bloody, treacherous, more mild, but yet more harmful, kind in hatred: what comfortable hour canst thou name, that ever graced me in thy company? king richard iii faith, none, but humphrey hour, that call'd your grace to breakfast once forth of my company. if i be so disgracious in your sight, let me march on, and not offend your grace. strike the drum. duchess of york i prithee, hear me speak. king richard iii you speak too bitterly. duchess of york hear me a word; for i shall never speak to thee again. king richard iii so. duchess of york either thou wilt die, by god's just ordinance, ere from this war thou turn a conqueror, or i with grief and extreme age shall perish and never look upon thy face again. therefore take with thee my most heavy curse; which, in the day of battle, tire thee more than all the complete armour that thou wear'st! my prayers on the adverse party fight; and there the little souls of edward's children whisper the spirits of thine enemies and promise them success and victory. bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end; shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend. [exit] queen elizabeth though far more cause, yet much less spirit to curse abides in me; i say amen to all. king richard iii stay, madam; i must speak a word with you. queen elizabeth i have no more sons of the royal blood for thee to murder: for my daughters, richard, they shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens; and therefore level not to hit their lives. king richard iii you have a daughter call'd elizabeth, virtuous and fair, royal and gracious. queen elizabeth and must she die for this? o, let her live, and i'll corrupt her manners, stain her beauty; slander myself as false to edward's bed; throw over her the veil of infamy: so she may live unscarr'd of bleeding slaughter, i will confess she was not edward's daughter. king richard iii wrong not her birth, she is of royal blood. queen elizabeth to save her life, i'll say she is not so. king richard iii her life is only safest in her birth. queen elizabeth and only in that safety died her brothers. king richard iii lo, at their births good stars were opposite. queen elizabeth no, to their lives bad friends were contrary. king richard iii all unavoided is the doom of destiny. queen elizabeth true, when avoided grace makes destiny: my babes were destined to a fairer death, if grace had bless'd thee with a fairer life. king richard iii you speak as if that i had slain my cousins. queen elizabeth cousins, indeed; and by their uncle cozen'd of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life. whose hand soever lanced their tender hearts, thy head, all indirectly, gave direction: no doubt the murderous knife was dull and blunt till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart, to revel in the entrails of my lambs. but that still use of grief makes wild grief tame, my tongue should to thy ears not name my boys till that my nails were anchor'd in thine eyes; and i, in such a desperate bay of death, like a poor bark, of sails and tackling reft, rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom. king richard iii madam, so thrive i in my enterprise and dangerous success of bloody wars, as i intend more good to you and yours, than ever you or yours were by me wrong'd! queen elizabeth what good is cover'd with the face of heaven, to be discover'd, that can do me good? king richard iii the advancement of your children, gentle lady. queen elizabeth up to some scaffold, there to lose their heads? king richard iii no, to the dignity and height of honour the high imperial type of this earth's glory. queen elizabeth flatter my sorrows with report of it; tell me what state, what dignity, what honour, canst thou demise to any child of mine? king richard iii even all i have; yea, and myself and all, will i withal endow a child of thine; so in the lethe of thy angry soul thou drown the sad remembrance of those wrongs which thou supposest i have done to thee. queen elizabeth be brief, lest that be process of thy kindness last longer telling than thy kindness' date. king richard iii then know, that from my soul i love thy daughter. queen elizabeth my daughter's mother thinks it with her soul. king richard iii what do you think? queen elizabeth that thou dost love my daughter from thy soul: so from thy soul's love didst thou love her brothers; and from my heart's love i do thank thee for it. king richard iii be not so hasty to confound my meaning: i mean, that with my soul i love thy daughter, and mean to make her queen of england. queen elizabeth say then, who dost thou mean shall be her king? king richard iii even he that makes her queen who should be else? queen elizabeth what, thou? king richard iii i, even i: what think you of it, madam? queen elizabeth how canst thou woo her? king richard iii that would i learn of you, as one that are best acquainted with her humour. queen elizabeth and wilt thou learn of me? king richard iii madam, with all my heart. queen elizabeth send to her, by the man that slew her brothers, a pair of bleeding-hearts; thereon engrave edward and york; then haply she will weep: therefore present to her--as sometime margaret did to thy father, steep'd in rutland's blood,- a handkerchief; which, say to her, did drain the purple sap from her sweet brother's body and bid her dry her weeping eyes therewith. if this inducement force her not to love, send her a story of thy noble acts; tell her thou madest away her uncle clarence, her uncle rivers; yea, and, for her sake, madest quick conveyance with her good aunt anne. king richard iii come, come, you mock me; this is not the way to win our daughter. queen elizabeth there is no other way unless thou couldst put on some other shape, and not be richard that hath done all this. king richard iii say that i did all this for love of her. queen elizabeth nay, then indeed she cannot choose but hate thee, having bought love with such a bloody spoil. king richard iii look, what is done cannot be now amended: men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes, which after hours give leisure to repent. if i did take the kingdom from your sons, to make amends, ill give it to your daughter. if i have kill'd the issue of your womb, to quicken your increase, i will beget mine issue of your blood upon your daughter a grandam's name is little less in love than is the doting title of a mother; they are as children but one step below, even of your mettle, of your very blood; of an one pain, save for a night of groans endured of her, for whom you bid like sorrow. your children were vexation to your youth, but mine shall be a comfort to your age. the loss you have is but a son being king, and by that loss your daughter is made queen. i cannot make you what amends i would, therefore accept such kindness as i can. dorset your son, that with a fearful soul leads discontented steps in foreign soil, this fair alliance quickly shall call home to high promotions and great dignity: the king, that calls your beauteous daughter wife. familiarly shall call thy dorset brother; again shall you be mother to a king, and all the ruins of distressful times repair'd with double riches of content. what! we have many goodly days to see: the liquid drops of tears that you have shed shall come again, transform'd to orient pearl, advantaging their loan with interest of ten times double gain of happiness. go, then my mother, to thy daughter go make bold her bashful years with your experience; prepare her ears to hear a wooer's tale put in her tender heart the aspiring flame of golden sovereignty; acquaint the princess with the sweet silent hours of marriage joys and when this arm of mine hath chastised the petty rebel, dull-brain'd buckingham, bound with triumphant garlands will i come and lead thy daughter to a conqueror's bed; to whom i will retail my conquest won, and she shall be sole victress, caesar's caesar. queen elizabeth what were i best to say? her father's brother would be her lord? or shall i say, her uncle? or, he that slew her brothers and her uncles? under what title shall i woo for thee, that god, the law, my honour and her love, can make seem pleasing to her tender years? king richard iii infer fair england's peace by this alliance. queen elizabeth which she shall purchase with still lasting war. king richard iii say that the king, which may command, entreats. queen elizabeth that at her hands which the king's king forbids. king richard iii say, she shall be a high and mighty queen. queen elizabeth to wail the tide, as her mother doth. king richard iii say, i will love her everlastingly. queen elizabeth but how long shall that title 'ever' last? king richard iii sweetly in force unto her fair life's end. queen elizabeth but how long fairly shall her sweet lie last? king richard iii so long as heaven and nature lengthens it. queen elizabeth so long as hell and richard likes of it. king richard iii say, i, her sovereign, am her subject love. queen elizabeth but she, your subject, loathes such sovereignty. king richard iii be eloquent in my behalf to her. queen elizabeth an honest tale speeds best being plainly told. king richard iii then in plain terms tell her my loving tale. queen elizabeth plain and not honest is too harsh a style. king richard iii your reasons are too shallow and too quick. queen elizabeth o no, my reasons are too deep and dead; too deep and dead, poor infants, in their grave. king richard iii harp not on that string, madam; that is past. queen elizabeth harp on it still shall i till heart-strings break. king richard iii now, by my george, my garter, and my crown,- queen elizabeth profaned, dishonour'd, and the third usurp'd. king richard iii i swear- queen elizabeth by nothing; for this is no oath: the george, profaned, hath lost his holy honour; the garter, blemish'd, pawn'd his knightly virtue; the crown, usurp'd, disgraced his kingly glory. if something thou wilt swear to be believed, swear then by something that thou hast not wrong'd. king richard iii now, by the world- queen elizabeth 'tis full of thy foul wrongs. king richard iii my father's death- queen elizabeth thy life hath that dishonour'd. king richard iii then, by myself- queen elizabeth thyself thyself misusest. king richard iii why then, by god- queen elizabeth god's wrong is most of all. if thou hadst fear'd to break an oath by him, the unity the king thy brother made had not been broken, nor my brother slain: if thou hadst fear'd to break an oath by him, the imperial metal, circling now thy brow, had graced the tender temples of my child, and both the princes had been breathing here, which now, two tender playfellows to dust, thy broken faith hath made a prey for worms. what canst thou swear by now? king richard iii the time to come. queen elizabeth that thou hast wronged in the time o'erpast; for i myself have many tears to wash hereafter time, for time past wrong'd by thee. the children live, whose parents thou hast slaughter'd, ungovern'd youth, to wail it in their age; the parents live, whose children thou hast butcher'd, old wither'd plants, to wail it with their age. swear not by time to come; for that thou hast misused ere used, by time misused o'erpast. king richard iii as i intend to prosper and repent, so thrive i in my dangerous attempt of hostile arms! myself myself confound! heaven and fortune bar me happy hours! day, yield me not thy light; nor, night, thy rest! be opposite all planets of good luck to my proceedings, if, with pure heart's love, immaculate devotion, holy thoughts, i tender not thy beauteous princely daughter! in her consists my happiness and thine; without her, follows to this land and me, to thee, herself, and many a christian soul, death, desolation, ruin and decay: it cannot be avoided but by this; it will not be avoided but by this. therefore, good mother,--i must can you so- be the attorney of my love to her: plead what i will be, not what i have been; not my deserts, but what i will deserve: urge the necessity and state of times, and be not peevish-fond in great designs. queen elizabeth shall i be tempted of the devil thus? king richard iii ay, if the devil tempt thee to do good. queen elizabeth shall i forget myself to be myself? king richard iii ay, if yourself's remembrance wrong yourself. queen elizabeth but thou didst kill my children. king richard iii but in your daughter's womb i bury them: where in that nest of spicery they shall breed selves of themselves, to your recomforture. queen elizabeth shall i go win my daughter to thy will? king richard iii and be a happy mother by the deed. queen elizabeth i go. write to me very shortly. and you shall understand from me her mind. king richard iii bear her my true love's kiss; and so, farewell. [exit queen elizabeth] relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman! [enter ratcliff; catesby following] how now! what news? ratcliff my gracious sovereign, on the western coast rideth a puissant navy; to the shore throng many doubtful hollow-hearted friends, unarm'd, and unresolved to beat them back: 'tis thought that richmond is their admiral; and there they hull, expecting but the aid of buckingham to welcome them ashore. king richard iii some light-foot friend post to the duke of norfolk: ratcliff, thyself, or catesby; where is he? catesby here, my lord. king richard iii fly to the duke: [to ratcliff] post thou to salisbury when thou comest thither- [to catesby] dull, unmindful villain, why stand'st thou still, and go'st not to the duke? catesby first, mighty sovereign, let me know your mind, what from your grace i shall deliver to him. king richard iii o, true, good catesby: bid him levy straight the greatest strength and power he can make, and meet me presently at salisbury. catesby i go. [exit] ratcliff what is't your highness' pleasure i shall do at salisbury? king richard iii why, what wouldst thou do there before i go? ratcliff your highness told me i should post before. king richard iii my mind is changed, sir, my mind is changed. [enter stanley] how now, what news with you? stanley none good, my lord, to please you with the hearing; nor none so bad, but it may well be told. king richard iii hoyday, a riddle! neither good nor bad! why dost thou run so many mile about, when thou mayst tell thy tale a nearer way? once more, what news? stanley richmond is on the seas. king richard iii there let him sink, and be the seas on him! white-liver'd runagate, what doth he there? stanley i know not, mighty sovereign, but by guess. king richard iii well, sir, as you guess, as you guess? stanley stirr'd up by dorset, buckingham, and ely, he makes for england, there to claim the crown. king richard iii is the chair empty? is the sword unsway'd? is the king dead? the empire unpossess'd? what heir of york is there alive but we? and who is england's king but great york's heir? then, tell me, what doth he upon the sea? stanley unless for that, my liege, i cannot guess. king richard iii unless for that he comes to be your liege, you cannot guess wherefore the welshman comes. thou wilt revolt, and fly to him, i fear. stanley no, mighty liege; therefore mistrust me not. king richard iii where is thy power, then, to beat him back? where are thy tenants and thy followers? are they not now upon the western shore. safe-conducting the rebels from their ships! stanley no, my good lord, my friends are in the north. king richard iii cold friends to richard: what do they in the north, when they should serve their sovereign in the west? stanley they have not been commanded, mighty sovereign: please it your majesty to give me leave, i'll muster up my friends, and meet your grace where and what time your majesty shall please. king richard iii ay, ay. thou wouldst be gone to join with richmond: i will not trust you, sir. stanley most mighty sovereign, you have no cause to hold my friendship doubtful: i never was nor never will be false. king richard iii well, go muster men; but, hear you, leave behind your son, george stanley: look your faith be firm. or else his head's assurance is but frail. stanley so deal with him as i prove true to you. [exit] [enter a messenger] messenger my gracious sovereign, now in devonshire, as i by friends am well advertised, sir edward courtney, and the haughty prelate bishop of exeter, his brother there, with many more confederates, are in arms. [enter another messenger] second messenger my liege, in kent the guildfords are in arms; and every hour more competitors flock to their aid, and still their power increaseth. [enter another messenger] third messenger my lord, the army of the duke of buckingham- king richard iii out on you, owls! nothing but songs of death? [he striketh him] take that, until thou bring me better news. third messenger the news i have to tell your majesty is, that by sudden floods and fall of waters, buckingham's army is dispersed and scatter'd; and he himself wander'd away alone, no man knows whither. king richard iii i cry thee mercy: there is my purse to cure that blow of thine. hath any well-advised friend proclaim'd reward to him that brings the traitor in? third messenger such proclamation hath been made, my liege. [enter another messenger] fourth messenger sir thomas lovel and lord marquis dorset, 'tis said, my liege, in yorkshire are in arms. yet this good comfort bring i to your grace, the breton navy is dispersed by tempest: richmond, in yorkshire, sent out a boat unto the shore, to ask those on the banks if they were his assistants, yea or no; who answer'd him, they came from buckingham. upon his party: he, mistrusting them, hoisted sail and made away for brittany. king richard iii march on, march on, since we are up in arms; if not to fight with foreign enemies, yet to beat down these rebels here at home. [re-enter catesby] catesby my liege, the duke of buckingham is taken; that is the best news: that the earl of richmond is with a mighty power landed at milford, is colder tidings, yet they must be told. king richard iii away towards salisbury! while we reason here, a royal battle might be won and lost some one take order buckingham be brought to salisbury; the rest march on with me. [flourish. exeunt] king richard iii act iv scene v lord derby's house. [enter derby and sir christopher urswick] derby sir christopher, tell richmond this from me: that in the sty of this most bloody boar my son george stanley is frank'd up in hold: if i revolt, off goes young george's head; the fear of that withholds my present aid. but, tell me, where is princely richmond now? christopher at pembroke, or at harford-west, in wales. derby what men of name resort to him? christopher sir walter herbert, a renowned soldier; sir gilbert talbot, sir william stanley; oxford, redoubted pembroke, sir james blunt, and rice ap thomas with a valiant crew; and many more of noble fame and worth: and towards london they do bend their course, if by the way they be not fought withal. derby return unto thy lord; commend me to him: tell him the queen hath heartily consented he shall espouse elizabeth her daughter. these letters will resolve him of my mind. farewell. [exeunt] king richard iii act v scene i salisbury. an open place. [enter the sheriff, and buckingham, with halberds, led to execution] buckingham will not king richard let me speak with him? sheriff no, my good lord; therefore be patient. buckingham hastings, and edward's children, rivers, grey, holy king henry, and thy fair son edward, vaughan, and all that have miscarried by underhand corrupted foul injustice, if that your moody discontented souls do through the clouds behold this present hour, even for revenge mock my destruction! this is all-souls' day, fellows, is it not? sheriff it is, my lord. buckingham why, then all-souls' day is my body's doomsday. this is the day that, in king edward's time, i wish't might fall on me, when i was found false to his children or his wife's allies this is the day wherein i wish'd to fall by the false faith of him i trusted most; this, this all-souls' day to my fearful soul is the determined respite of my wrongs: that high all-seer that i dallied with hath turn'd my feigned prayer on my head and given in earnest what i begg'd in jest. thus doth he force the swords of wicked men to turn their own points on their masters' bosoms: now margaret's curse is fallen upon my head; 'when he,' quoth she, 'shall split thy heart with sorrow, remember margaret was a prophetess.' come, sirs, convey me to the block of shame; wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame. [exeunt] king richard iii act v scene ii the camp near tamworth. [enter richmond, oxford, blunt, herbert, and others, with drum and colours] richmond fellows in arms, and my most loving friends, bruised underneath the yoke of tyranny, thus far into the bowels of the land have we march'd on without impediment; and here receive we from our father stanley lines of fair comfort and encouragement. the wretched, bloody, and usurping boar, that spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful vines, swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough in your embowell'd bosoms, this foul swine lies now even in the centre of this isle, near to the town of leicester, as we learn from tamworth thither is but one day's march. in god's name, cheerly on, courageous friends, to reap the harvest of perpetual peace by this one bloody trial of sharp war. oxford every man's conscience is a thousand swords, to fight against that bloody homicide. herbert i doubt not but his friends will fly to us. blunt he hath no friends but who are friends for fear. which in his greatest need will shrink from him. richmond all for our vantage. then, in god's name, march: true hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings: kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings. [exeunt] king richard iii act v scene iii bosworth field. [enter king richard iii in arms, with norfolk, surrey, and others] king richard iii here pitch our tents, even here in bosworth field. my lord of surrey, why look you so sad? surrey my heart is ten times lighter than my looks. king richard iii my lord of norfolk,- norfolk here, most gracious liege. king richard iii norfolk, we must have knocks; ha! must we not? norfolk we must both give and take, my gracious lord. king richard iii up with my tent there! here will i lie tonight; but where to-morrow? well, all's one for that. who hath descried the number of the foe? norfolk six or seven thousand is their utmost power. king richard iii why, our battalion trebles that account: besides, the king's name is a tower of strength, which they upon the adverse party want. up with my tent there! valiant gentlemen, let us survey the vantage of the field call for some men of sound direction let's want no discipline, make no delay, for, lords, to-morrow is a busy day. [exeunt] [enter, on the other side of the field, richmond, sir william brandon, oxford, and others. some of the soldiers pitch richmond's tent] richmond the weary sun hath made a golden set, and by the bright track of his fiery car, gives signal, of a goodly day to-morrow. sir william brandon, you shall bear my standard. give me some ink and paper in my tent i'll draw the form and model of our battle, limit each leader to his several charge, and part in just proportion our small strength. my lord of oxford, you, sir william brandon, and you, sir walter herbert, stay with me. the earl of pembroke keeps his regiment: good captain blunt, bear my good night to him and by the second hour in the morning desire the earl to see me in my tent: yet one thing more, good blunt, before thou go'st, where is lord stanley quarter'd, dost thou know? blunt unless i have mista'en his colours much, which well i am assured i have not done, his regiment lies half a mile at least south from the mighty power of the king. richmond if without peril it be possible, good captain blunt, bear my good-night to him, and give him from me this most needful scroll. blunt upon my life, my lord, i'll under-take it; and so, god give you quiet rest to-night! richmond good night, good captain blunt. come gentlemen, let us consult upon to-morrow's business in to our tent; the air is raw and cold. [they withdraw into the tent] [enter, to his tent, king richard iii, norfolk, ratcliff, catesby, and others] king richard iii what is't o'clock? catesby it's supper-time, my lord; it's nine o'clock. king richard iii i will not sup to-night. give me some ink and paper. what, is my beaver easier than it was? and all my armour laid into my tent? catesby if is, my liege; and all things are in readiness. king richard iii good norfolk, hie thee to thy charge; use careful watch, choose trusty sentinels. norfolk i go, my lord. king richard iii stir with the lark to-morrow, gentle norfolk. norfolk i warrant you, my lord. [exit] king richard iii catesby! catesby my lord? king richard iii send out a pursuivant at arms to stanley's regiment; bid him bring his power before sunrising, lest his son george fall into the blind cave of eternal night. [exit catesby] fill me a bowl of wine. give me a watch. saddle white surrey for the field to-morrow. look that my staves be sound, and not too heavy. ratcliff! ratcliff my lord? king richard iii saw'st thou the melancholy lord northumberland? ratcliff thomas the earl of surrey, and himself, much about cock-shut time, from troop to troop went through the army, cheering up the soldiers. king richard iii so, i am satisfied. give me a bowl of wine: i have not that alacrity of spirit, nor cheer of mind, that i was wont to have. set it down. is ink and paper ready? ratcliff it is, my lord. king richard iii bid my guard watch; leave me. ratcliff, about the mid of night come to my tent and help to arm me. leave me, i say. [exeunt ratcliff and the other attendants] [enter derby to richmond in his tent, lords and others attending] derby fortune and victory sit on thy helm! richmond all comfort that the dark night can afford be to thy person, noble father-in-law! tell me, how fares our loving mother? derby i, by attorney, bless thee from thy mother who prays continually for richmond's good: so much for that. the silent hours steal on, and flaky darkness breaks within the east. in brief,--for so the season bids us be,- prepare thy battle early in the morning, and put thy fortune to the arbitrement of bloody strokes and mortal-staring war. i, as i may--that which i would i cannot,- with best advantage will deceive the time, and aid thee in this doubtful shock of arms: but on thy side i may not be too forward lest, being seen, thy brother, tender george, be executed in his father's sight. farewell: the leisure and the fearful time cuts off the ceremonious vows of love and ample interchange of sweet discourse, which so long sunder'd friends should dwell upon: god give us leisure for these rites of love! once more, adieu: be valiant, and speed well! richmond good lords, conduct him to his regiment: i'll strive, with troubled thoughts, to take a nap, lest leaden slumber peise me down to-morrow, when i should mount with wings of victory: once more, good night, kind lords and gentlemen. [exeunt all but richmond] o thou, whose captain i account myself, look on my forces with a gracious eye; put in their hands thy bruising irons of wrath, that they may crush down with a heavy fall the usurping helmets of our adversaries! make us thy ministers of chastisement, that we may praise thee in the victory! to thee i do commend my watchful soul, ere i let fall the windows of mine eyes: sleeping and waking, o, defend me still! [sleeps] [enter the ghost of prince edward, son to king henry vi] ghost of prince edward [to king richard iii] let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow! think, how thou stab'dst me in my prime of youth at tewksbury: despair, therefore, and die! [to richmond] be cheerful, richmond; for the wronged souls of butcher'd princes fight in thy behalf king henry's issue, richmond, comforts thee. [enter the ghost of king henry vi] ghost of king henry vi [to king richard iii] when i was mortal, my anointed body by thee was punched full of deadly holes think on the tower and me: despair, and die! harry the sixth bids thee despair, and die! [to richmond] virtuous and holy, be thou conqueror! harry, that prophesied thou shouldst be king, doth comfort thee in thy sleep: live, and flourish! [enter the ghost of clarence] ghost of clarence [to king richard iii] let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow! i, that was wash'd to death with fulsome wine, poor clarence, by thy guile betrayed to death! to-morrow in the battle think on me, and fall thy edgeless sword: despair, and die!- [to richmond] thou offspring of the house of lancaster the wronged heirs of york do pray for thee good angels guard thy battle! live, and flourish! [enter the ghosts of rivers, gray, and vaughan] ghost of rivers [to king richard iii] let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow, rivers. that died at pomfret! despair, and die! ghost of grey [to king richard iii] think upon grey, and let thy soul despair! ghost of vaughan [to king richard iii] think upon vaughan, and, with guilty fear, let fall thy lance: despair, and die! all [to richmond] awake, and think our wrongs in richard's bosom will conquer him! awake, and win the day! [enter the ghost of hastings] ghost of hastings [to king richard iii] bloody and guilty, guiltily awake, and in a bloody battle end thy days! think on lord hastings: despair, and die! [to richmond] quiet untroubled soul, awake, awake! arm, fight, and conquer, for fair england's sake! [enter the ghosts of the two young princes] ghosts of young princes [to king richard iii] dream on thy cousins smother'd in the tower: let us be led within thy bosom, richard, and weigh thee down to ruin, shame, and death! thy nephews' souls bid thee despair and die! [to richmond] sleep, richmond, sleep in peace, and wake in joy; good angels guard thee from the boar's annoy! live, and beget a happy race of kings! edward's unhappy sons do bid thee flourish. [enter the ghost of lady anne] ghost of lady anne [to king richard iii] richard, thy wife, that wretched anne thy wife, that never slept a quiet hour with thee, now fills thy sleep with perturbations to-morrow in the battle think on me, and fall thy edgeless sword: despair, and die! [to richmond] thou quiet soul, sleep thou a quiet sleep dream of success and happy victory! thy adversary's wife doth pray for thee. [enter the ghost of buckingham] ghost of buckingham [to king richard iii] the last was i that helped thee to the crown; the last was i that felt thy tyranny: o, in the battle think on buckingham, and die in terror of thy guiltiness! dream on, dream on, of bloody deeds and death: fainting, despair; despairing, yield thy breath! [to richmond] i died for hope ere i could lend thee aid: but cheer thy heart, and be thou not dismay'd: god and good angel fight on richmond's side; and richard falls in height of all his pride. [the ghosts vanish] [king richard iii starts out of his dream] king richard iii give me another horse: bind up my wounds. have mercy, jesu!--soft! i did but dream. o coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me! the lights burn blue. it is now dead midnight. cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. what do i fear? myself? there's none else by: richard loves richard; that is, i am i. is there a murderer here? no. yes, i am: then fly. what, from myself? great reason why: lest i revenge. what, myself upon myself? alack. i love myself. wherefore? for any good that i myself have done unto myself? o, no! alas, i rather hate myself for hateful deeds committed by myself! i am a villain: yet i lie. i am not. fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter. my conscience hath a thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale, and every tale condemns me for a villain. perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree murder, stem murder, in the direst degree; all several sins, all used in each degree, throng to the bar, crying all, guilty! guilty! i shall despair. there is no creature loves me; and if i die, no soul shall pity me: nay, wherefore should they, since that i myself find in myself no pity to myself? methought the souls of all that i had murder'd came to my tent; and every one did threat to-morrow's vengeance on the head of richard. [enter ratcliff] ratcliff my lord! king richard iii 'zounds! who is there? ratcliff ratcliff, my lord; 'tis i. the early village-cock hath twice done salutation to the morn; your friends are up, and buckle on their armour. king richard iii o ratcliff, i have dream'd a fearful dream! what thinkest thou, will our friends prove all true? ratcliff no doubt, my lord. king richard iii o ratcliff, i fear, i fear,- ratcliff nay, good my lord, be not afraid of shadows. king richard iii by the apostle paul, shadows to-night have struck more terror to the soul of richard than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers armed in proof, and led by shallow richmond. it is not yet near day. come, go with me; under our tents i'll play the eaves-dropper, to see if any mean to shrink from me. [exeunt] [enter the lords to richmond, sitting in his tent] lords good morrow, richmond! richmond cry mercy, lords and watchful gentlemen, that you have ta'en a tardy sluggard here. lords how have you slept, my lord? richmond the sweetest sleep, and fairest-boding dreams that ever enter'd in a drowsy head, have i since your departure had, my lords. methought their souls, whose bodies richard murder'd, came to my tent, and cried on victory: i promise you, my soul is very jocund in the remembrance of so fair a dream. how far into the morning is it, lords? lords upon the stroke of four. richmond why, then 'tis time to arm and give direction. [his oration to his soldiers] more than i have said, loving countrymen, the leisure and enforcement of the time forbids to dwell upon: yet remember this, god and our good cause fight upon our side; the prayers of holy saints and wronged souls, like high-rear'd bulwarks, stand before our faces; richard except, those whom we fight against had rather have us win than him they follow: for what is he they follow? truly, gentlemen, a bloody tyrant and a homicide; one raised in blood, and one in blood establish'd; one that made means to come by what he hath, and slaughter'd those that were the means to help him; abase foul stone, made precious by the foil of england's chair, where he is falsely set; one that hath ever been god's enemy: then, if you fight against god's enemy, god will in justice ward you as his soldiers; if you do sweat to put a tyrant down, you sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain; if you do fight against your country's foes, your country's fat shall pay your pains the hire; if you do fight in safeguard of your wives, your wives shall welcome home the conquerors; if you do free your children from the sword, your children's children quit it in your age. then, in the name of god and all these rights, advance your standards, draw your willing swords. for me, the ransom of my bold attempt shall be this cold corpse on the earth's cold face; but if i thrive, the gain of my attempt the least of you shall share his part thereof. sound drums and trumpets boldly and cheerfully; god and saint george! richmond and victory! [exeunt] [re-enter king richard, ratcliff, attendants and forces] king richard iii what said northumberland as touching richmond? ratcliff that he was never trained up in arms. king richard iii he said the truth: and what said surrey then? ratcliff he smiled and said 'the better for our purpose.' king richard iii he was in the right; and so indeed it is. [clock striketh] ten the clock there. give me a calendar. who saw the sun to-day? ratcliff not i, my lord. king richard iii then he disdains to shine; for by the book he should have braved the east an hour ago a black day will it be to somebody. ratcliff! ratcliff my lord? king richard iii the sun will not be seen to-day; the sky doth frown and lour upon our army. i would these dewy tears were from the ground. not shine to-day! why, what is that to me more than to richmond? for the selfsame heaven that frowns on me looks sadly upon him. [enter norfolk] norfolk arm, arm, my lord; the foe vaunts in the field. king richard iii come, bustle, bustle; caparison my horse. call up lord stanley, bid him bring his power: i will lead forth my soldiers to the plain, and thus my battle shall be ordered: my foreward shall be drawn out all in length, consisting equally of horse and foot; our archers shall be placed in the midst john duke of norfolk, thomas earl of surrey, shall have the leading of this foot and horse. they thus directed, we will follow in the main battle, whose puissance on either side shall be well winged with our chiefest horse. this, and saint george to boot! what think'st thou, norfolk? norfolk a good direction, warlike sovereign. this found i on my tent this morning. [he sheweth him a paper] king richard iii [reads] 'jockey of norfolk, be not too bold, for dickon thy master is bought and sold.' a thing devised by the enemy. go, gentleman, every man unto his charge let not our babbling dreams affright our souls: conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe: our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. march on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell if not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell. [his oration to his army] what shall i say more than i have inferr'd? remember whom you are to cope withal; a sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, a scum of bretons, and base lackey peasants, whom their o'er-cloyed country vomits forth to desperate ventures and assured destruction. you sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest; you having lands, and blest with beauteous wives, they would restrain the one, distain the other. and who doth lead them but a paltry fellow, long kept in bretagne at our mother's cost? a milk-sop, one that never in his life felt so much cold as over shoes in snow? let's whip these stragglers o'er the seas again; lash hence these overweening rags of france, these famish'd beggars, weary of their lives; who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit, for want of means, poor rats, had hang'd themselves: if we be conquer'd, let men conquer us, and not these bastard bretons; whom our fathers have in their own land beaten, bobb'd, and thump'd, and in record, left them the heirs of shame. shall these enjoy our lands? lie with our wives? ravish our daughters? [drum afar off] hark! i hear their drum. fight, gentlemen of england! fight, bold yoemen! draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head! spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood; amaze the welkin with your broken staves! [enter a messenger] what says lord stanley? will he bring his power? messenger my lord, he doth deny to come. king richard iii off with his son george's head! norfolk my lord, the enemy is past the marsh after the battle let george stanley die. king richard iii a thousand hearts are great within my bosom: advance our standards, set upon our foes our ancient word of courage, fair saint george, inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons! upon them! victory sits on our helms. [exeunt] king richard iii act v scene iv another part of the field. [alarum: excursions. enter norfolk and forces fighting; to him catesby] catesby rescue, my lord of norfolk, rescue, rescue! the king enacts more wonders than a man, daring an opposite to every danger: his horse is slain, and all on foot he fights, seeking for richmond in the throat of death. rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost! [alarums. enter king richard iii] king richard iii a horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! catesby withdraw, my lord; i'll help you to a horse. king richard iii slave, i have set my life upon a cast, and i will stand the hazard of the die: i think there be six richmonds in the field; five have i slain to-day instead of him. a horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! [exeunt] king richard iii act v scene v another part of the field. [alarum. enter king richard iii and richmond; they fight. king richard iii is slain. retreat and flourish. re-enter richmond, derby bearing the crown, with divers other lords] richmond god and your arms be praised, victorious friends, the day is ours, the bloody dog is dead. derby courageous richmond, well hast thou acquit thee. lo, here, this long-usurped royalty from the dead temples of this bloody wretch have i pluck'd off, to grace thy brows withal: wear it, enjoy it, and make much of it. richmond great god of heaven, say amen to all! but, tell me, is young george stanley living? derby he is, my lord, and safe in leicester town; whither, if it please you, we may now withdraw us. richmond what men of name are slain on either side? derby john duke of norfolk, walter lord ferrers, sir robert brakenbury, and sir william brandon. richmond inter their bodies as becomes their births: proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled that in submission will return to us: and then, as we have ta'en the sacrament, we will unite the white rose and the red: smile heaven upon this fair conjunction, that long have frown'd upon their enmity! what traitor hears me, and says not amen? england hath long been mad, and scarr'd herself; the brother blindly shed the brother's blood, the father rashly slaughter'd his own son, the son, compell'd, been butcher to the sire: all this divided york and lancaster, divided in their dire division, o, now, let richmond and elizabeth, the true succeeders of each royal house, by god's fair ordinance conjoin together! and let their heirs, god, if thy will be so. enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace, with smiling plenty and fair prosperous days! abate the edge of traitors, gracious lord, that would reduce these bloody days again, and make poor england weep in streams of blood! let them not live to taste this land's increase that would with treason wound this fair land's peace! now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again: that she may long live here, god say amen! [exeunt] 1850 the premature burial by edgar allan poe there are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. these the mere romanticist must eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to disgust. they are with propriety handled only when the severity and majesty of truth sanctify and sustain them. we thrill, for example, with the most intense of "pleasurable pain" over the accounts of the passage of the beresina, of the earthquake at lisbon, of the plague at london, of the massacre of st. bartholomew, or of the stifling of the hundred and twenty-three prisoners in the black hole at calcutta. but in these accounts it is the factit is the realityit is the history which excites. as inventions, we should regard them with simple abhorrence. i have mentioned some few of the more prominent and august calamities on record; but in these it is the extent, not less than the character of the calamity, which so vividly impresses the fancy. i need not remind the reader that, from the long and weird catalogue of human miseries, i might have selected many individual instances more replete with essential suffering than any of these vast generalities of disaster. the true wretchedness, indeedthe ultimate woeis particular, not diffuse. that the ghastly extremes of agony are endured by man the unit, and never by man the massfor this let us thank a merciful god! to be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. that it has frequently, very frequently, so fallen will scarcely be denied by those who think. the boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? we know that there are diseases in which occur total cessations of all the apparent functions of vitality, and yet in which these cessations are merely suspensions, properly so called. they are only temporary pauses in the incomprehensible mechanism. a certain period elapses, and some unseen mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels. the silver cord was not for ever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken. but where, meantime, was the soul? apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion, a priori that such causes must produce such effectsthat the well-known occurrence of such cases of suspended animation must naturally give rise, now and then, to premature intermentsapart from this consideration, we have the direct testimony of medical and ordinary experience to prove that a vast number of such interments have actually taken place. i might refer at once, if necessary to a hundred well authenticated instances. one of very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the neighboring city of baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely-extended excitement. the wife of one of the most respectable citizens-a lawyer of eminence and a member of congresswas seized with a sudden and unaccountable illness, which completely baffled the skill of her physicians. after much suffering she died, or was supposed to die. no one suspected, indeed, or had reason to suspect, that she was not actually dead. she presented all the ordinary appearances of death. the face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline. the lips were of the usual marble pallor. the eyes were lustreless. there was no warmth. pulsation had ceased. for three days the body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity. the funeral, in short, was hastened, on account of the rapid advance of what was supposed to be decomposition. the lady was deposited in her family vault, which, for three subsequent years, was undisturbed. at the expiration of this term it was opened for the reception of a sarcophagus;but, alas! how fearful a shock awaited the husband, who, personally, threw open the door! as its portals swung outwardly back, some white-apparelled object fell rattling within his arms. it was the skeleton of his wife in her yet unmoulded shroud. a careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived within two days after her entombment; that her struggles within the coffin had caused it to fall from a ledge, or shelf to the floor, where it was so broken as to permit her escape. a lamp which had been accidentally left, full of oil, within the tomb, was found empty; it might have been exhausted, however, by evaporation. on the uttermost of the steps which led down into the dread chamber was a large fragment of the coffin, with which, it seemed, that she had endeavored to arrest attention by striking the iron door. while thus occupied, she probably swooned, or possibly died, through sheer terror; and, in failing, her shroud became entangled in some ironwork which projected interiorly. thus she remained, and thus she rotted, erect. in the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in france, attended with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. the heroine of the story was a mademoiselle victorine lafourcade, a young girl of illustrious family, of wealth, and of great personal beauty. among her numerous suitors was julien bossuet, a poor litterateur, or journalist of paris. his talents and general amiability had recommended him to the notice of the heiress, by whom he seems to have been truly beloved; but her pride of birth decided her, finally, to reject him, and to wed a monsieur renelle, a banker and a diplomatist of some eminence. after marriage, however, this gentleman neglected, and, perhaps, even more positively ill-treated her. having passed with him some wretched years, she died,at least her condition so closely resembled death as to deceive every one who saw her. she was buriednot in a vault, but in an ordinary grave in the village of her nativity. filled with despair, and still inflamed by the memory of a profound attachment, the lover journeys from the capital to the remote province in which the village lies, with the romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse, and possessing himself of its luxuriant tresses. he reaches the grave. at midnight he unearths the coffin, opens it, and is in the act of detaching the hair, when he is arrested by the unclosing of the beloved eyes. in fact, the lady had been buried alive. vitality had not altogether departed, and she was aroused by the caresses of her lover from the lethargy which had been mistaken for death. he bore her frantically to his lodgings in the village. he employed certain powerful restoratives suggested by no little medical learning. in fine, she revived. she recognized her preserver. she remained with him until, by slow degrees, she fully recovered her original health. her woman's heart was not adamant, and this last lesson of love sufficed to soften it. she bestowed it upon bossuet. she returned no more to her husband, but, concealing from him her resurrection, fled with her lover to america. twenty years afterward, the two returned to france, in the persuasion that time had so greatly altered the lady's appearance that her friends would be unable to recognize her. they were mistaken, however, for, at the first meeting, monsieur renelle did actually recognize and make claim to his wife. this claim she resisted, and a judicial tribunal sustained her in her resistance, deciding that the peculiar circumstances, with the long lapse of years, had extinguished, not only equitably, but legally, the authority of the husband. the "chirurgical journal" of leipsica periodical of high authority and merit, which some american bookseller would do well to translate and republish, records in a late number a very distressing event of the character in question. an officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature and of robust health, being thrown from an unmanageable horse, received a very severe contusion upon the head, which rendered him insensible at once; the skull was slightly fractured, but no immediate danger was apprehended. trepanning was accomplished successfully. he was bled, and many other of the ordinary means of relief were adopted. gradually, however, he fell into a more and more hopeless state of stupor, and, finally, it was thought that he died. the weather was warm, and he was buried with indecent haste in one of the public cemeteries. his funeral took place on thursday. on the sunday following, the grounds of the cemetery were, as usual, much thronged with visiters, and about noon an intense excitement was created by the declaration of a peasant that, while sitting upon the grave of the officer, he had distinctly felt a commotion of the earth, as if occasioned by some one struggling beneath. at first little attention was paid to the man's asseveration; but his evident terror, and the dogged obstinacy with which he persisted in his story, had at length their natural effect upon the crowd. spades were hurriedly procured, and the grave, which was shamefully shallow, was in a few minutes so far thrown open that the head of its occupant appeared. he was then seemingly dead; but he sat nearly erect within his coffin, the lid of which, in his furious struggles, he had partially uplifted. he was forthwith conveyed to the nearest hospital, and there pronounced to be still living, although in an asphytic condition. after some hours he revived, recognized individuals of his acquaintance, and, in broken sentences spoke of his agonies in the grave. from what he related, it was clear that he must have been conscious of life for more than an hour, while inhumed, before lapsing into insensibility. the grave was carelessly and loosely filled with an exceedingly porous soil; and thus some air was necessarily admitted. he heard the footsteps of the crowd overhead, and endeavored to make himself heard in turn. it was the tumult within the grounds of the cemetery, he said, which appeared to awaken him from a deep sleep, but no sooner was he awake than he became fully aware of the awful horrors of his position. this patient, it is recorded, was doing well and seemed to be in a fair way of ultimate recovery, but fell a victim to the quackeries of medical experiment. the galvanic battery was applied, and he suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms which, occasionally, it superinduces. the mention of the galvanic battery, nevertheless, recalls to my memory a well known and very extraordinary case in point, where its action proved the means of restoring to animation a young attorney of london, who had been interred for two days. this occurred in 1831, and created, at the time, a very profound sensation wherever it was made the subject of converse. the patient, mr. edward stapleton, had died, apparently of typhus fever, accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited the curiosity of his medical attendants. upon his seeming decease, his friends were requested to sanction a post-mortem examination, but declined to permit it. as often happens, when such refusals are made, the practitioners resolved to disinter the body and dissect it at leisure, in private. arrangements were easily effected with some of the numerous corps of body-snatchers, with which london abounds; and, upon the third night after the funeral, the supposed corpse was unearthed from a grave eight feet deep, and deposited in the opening chamber of one of the private hospitals. an incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen, when the fresh and undecayed appearance of the subject suggested an application of the battery. one experiment succeeded another, and the customary effects supervened, with nothing to characterize them in any respect, except, upon one or two occasions, a more than ordinary degree of life-likeness in the convulsive action. it grew late. the day was about to dawn; and it was thought expedient, at length, to proceed at once to the dissection. a student, however, was especially desirous of testing a theory of his own, and insisted upon applying the battery to one of the pectoral muscles. a rough gash was made, and a wire hastily brought in contact, when the patient, with a hurried but quite unconvulsive movement, arose from the table, stepped into the middle of the floor, gazed about him uneasily for a few seconds, and thenspoke. what he said was unintelligible, but words were uttered; the syllabification was distinct. having spoken, he fell heavily to the floor. for some moments all were paralyzed with awebut the urgency of the case soon restored them their presence of mind. it was seen that mr. stapleton was alive, although in a swoon. upon exhibition of ether he revived and was rapidly restored to health, and to the society of his friendsfrom whom, however, all knowledge of his resuscitation was withheld, until a relapse was no longer to be apprehended. their wondertheir rapturous astonishmentmay be conceived. the most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is involved in what mr. s. himself asserts. he declares that at no period was he altogether insensiblethat, dully and confusedly, he was aware of everything which happened to him, from the moment in which he was pronounced dead by his physicians, to that in which he fell swooning to the floor of the hospital. "i am alive," were the uncomprehended words which, upon recognizing the locality of the dissecting-room, he had endeavored, in his extremity, to utter. it were an easy matter to multiply such histories as thesebut i forbearfor, indeed, we have no need of such to establish the fact that premature interments occur. when we reflect how very rarely, from the nature of the case, we have it in our power to detect them, we must admit that they may frequently occur without our cognizance. scarcely, in truth, is a graveyard ever encroached upon, for any purpose, to any great extent, that skeletons are not found in postures which suggest the most fearful of suspicions. fearful indeed the suspicionbut more fearful the doom! it may be asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death. the unendurable oppression of the lungsthe stifling fumes from the damp earththe clinging to the death garmentsthe rigid embrace of the narrow housethe blackness of the absolute nightthe silence like a sea that overwhelmsthe unseen but palpable presence of the conqueror wormthese things, with the thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who would fly to save us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informedthat our hopeless portion is that of the really deadthese considerations, i say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. we know of nothing so agonizing upon earthwe can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost hell. and thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated. what i have now to tell is of my own actual knowledgeof my own positive and personal experience. for several years i had been subject to attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy, in default of a more definitive title. although both the immediate and the predisposing causes, and even the actual diagnosis, of this disease are still mysterious, its obvious and apparent character is sufficiently well understood. its variations seem to be chiefly of degree. sometimes the patient lies, for a day only, or even for a shorter period, in a species of exaggerated lethargy. he is senseless and externally motionless; but the pulsation of the heart is still faintly perceptible; some traces of warmth remain; a slight color lingers within the centre of the cheek; and, upon application of a mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid, unequal, and vacillating action of the lungs. then again the duration of the trance is for weekseven for months; while the closest scrutiny, and the most rigorous medical tests, fail to establish any material distinction between the state of the sufferer and what we conceive of absolute death. very usually he is saved from premature interment solely by the knowledge of his friends that he has been previously subject to catalepsy, by the consequent suspicion excited, and, above all, by the non-appearance of decay. the advances of the malady are, luckily, gradual. the first manifestations, although marked, are unequivocal. the fits grow successively more and more distinctive, and endure each for a longer term than the preceding. in this lies the principal security from inhumation. the unfortunate whose first attack should be of the extreme character which is occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be consigned alive to the tomb. my own case differed in no important particular from those mentioned in medical books. sometimes, without any apparent cause, i sank, little by little, into a condition of hemi-syncope, or half swoon; and, in this condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think, but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence of those who surrounded my bed, i remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation. at other times i was quickly and impetuously smitten. i grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell prostrate at once. then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and silent, and nothing became the universe. total annihilation could be no more. from these latter attacks i awoke, however, with a gradation slow in proportion to the suddenness of the seizure. just as the day dawns to the friendless and houseless beggar who roams the streets throughout the long desolate winter nightjust so tardilyjust so wearilyjust so cheerily came back the light of the soul to me. apart from the tendency to trance, however, my general health appeared to be good; nor could i perceive that it was at all affected by the one prevalent maladyunless, indeed, an idiosyncrasy in my ordinary sleep may be looked upon as superinduced. upon awaking from slumber, i could never gain, at once, thorough possession of my senses, and always remained, for many minutes, in much bewilderment and perplexity;the mental faculties in general, but the memory in especial, being in a condition of absolute abeyance. in all that i endured there was no physical suffering but of moral distress an infinitude. my fancy grew charnel, i talked "of worms, of tombs, and epitaphs." i was lost in reveries of death, and the idea of premature burial held continual possession of my brain. the ghastly danger to which i was subjected haunted me day and night. in the former, the torture of meditation was excessivein the latter, supreme. when the grim darkness overspread the earth, then, with every horror of thought, i shookshook as the quivering plumes upon the hearse. when nature could endure wakefulness no longer, it was with a struggle that i consented to sleepfor i shuddered to reflect that, upon awaking, i might find myself the tenant of a grave. and when, finally, i sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world of phantasms, above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing, hovered, predominant, the one sepulchral idea. from the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in dreams, i select for record but a solitary vision. methought i was immersed in a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and profundity. suddenly there came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering voice whispered the word "arise!" within my ear. i sat erect. the darkness was total. i could not see the figure of him who had aroused me. i could call to mind neither the period at which i had fallen into the trance, nor the locality in which i then lay. while i remained motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect my thought, the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly, while the gibbering voice said again: "arise! did i not bid thee arise?" "and who," i demanded, "art thou?" "i have no name in the regions which i inhabit," replied the voice, mournfully; "i was mortal, but am fiend. i was merciless, but am pitiful. thou dost feel that i shudder.my teeth chatter as i speak, yet it is not with the chilliness of the nightof the night without end. but this hideousness is insufferable. how canst thou tranquilly sleep? i cannot rest for the cry of these great agonies. these sights are more than i can bear. get thee up! come with me into the outer night, and let me unfold to thee the graves. is not this a spectacle of woe?behold!" i looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist, had caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind, and from each issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay, so that i could see into the innermost recesses, and there view the shrouded bodies in their sad and solemn slumbers with the worm. but alas! the real sleepers were fewer, by many millions, than those who slumbered not at all; and there was a feeble struggling; and there was a general sad unrest; and from out the depths of the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling from the garments of the buried. and of those who seemed tranquilly to repose, i saw that a vast number had changed, in a greater or less degree, the rigid and uneasy position in which they had originally been entombed. and the voice again said to me as i gazed: "is it notoh! is it not a pitiful sight?"but, before i could find words to reply, the figure had ceased to grasp my wrist, the phosphoric lights expired, and the graves were closed with a sudden violence, while from out them arose a tumult of despairing cries, saying again: "is it noto, god, is it not a very pitiful sight?" phantasies such as these, presenting themselves at night, extended their terrific influence far into my waking hours. my nerves became thoroughly unstrung, and i fell a prey to perpetual horror. i hesitated to ride, or to walk, or to indulge in any exercise that would carry me from home. in fact, i no longer dared trust myself out of the immediate presence of those who were aware of my proneness to catalepsy, lest, falling into one of my usual fits, i should be buried before my real condition could be ascertained. i doubted the care, the fidelity of my dearest friends. i dreaded that, in some trance of more than customary duration, they might be prevailed upon to regard me as irrecoverable. i even went so far as to fear that, as i occasioned much trouble, they might be glad to consider any very protracted attack as sufficient excuse for getting rid of me altogether. it was in vain they endeavored to reassure me by the most solemn promises. i exacted the most sacred oaths, that under no circumstances they would bury me until decomposition had so materially advanced as to render farther preservation impossible. and, even then, my mortal terrors would listen to no reasonwould accept no consolation. i entered into a series of elaborate precautions. among other things, i had the family vault so remodelled as to admit of being readily opened from within. the slightest pressure upon a long lever that extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portal to fly back. there were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, and convenient receptacles for food and water, within immediate reach of the coffin intended for my reception. this coffin was warmly and softly padded, and was provided with a lid, fashioned upon the principle of the vault-door, with the addition of springs so contrived that the feeblest movement of the body would be sufficient to set it at liberty. besides all this, there was suspended from the roof of the tomb, a large bell, the rope of which, it was designed, should extend through a hole in the coffin, and so be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse. but, alas? what avails the vigilance against the destiny of man? not even these well-contrived securities sufficed to save from the uttermost agonies of living inhumation, a wretch to these agonies foredoomed! there arrived an epochas often before there had arrivedin which i found myself emerging from total unconsciousness into the first feeble and indefinite sense of existence. slowlywith a tortoise gradationapproached the faint gray dawn of the psychal day. a torpid uneasiness. an apathetic endurance of dull pain. no careno hopeno effort. then, after a long interval, a ringing in the ears; then, after a lapse still longer, a prickling or tingling sensation in the extremities; then a seemingly eternal period of pleasurable quiescence, during which the awakening feelings are struggling into thought; then a brief re-sinking into non-entity; then a sudden recovery. at length the slight quivering of an eyelid, and immediately thereupon, an electric shock of a terror, deadly and indefinite, which sends the blood in torrents from the temples to the heart. and now the first positive effort to think. and now the first endeavor to remember. and now a partial and evanescent success. and now the memory has so far regained its dominion, that, in some measure, i am cognizant of my state. i feel that i am not awaking from ordinary sleep. i recollect that i have been subject to catalepsy. and now, at last, as if by the rush of an ocean, my shuddering spirit is overwhelmed by the one grim dangerby the one spectral and ever-prevalent idea. for some minutes after this fancy possessed me, i remained without motion. and why? i could not summon courage to move. i dared not make the effort which was to satisfy me of my fateand yet there was something at my heart which whispered me it was sure. despairsuch as no other species of wretchedness ever calls into beingdespair alone urged me, after long irresolution, to uplift the heavy lids of my eyes. i uplifted them. it was darkall dark. i knew that the fit was over. i knew that the crisis of my disorder had long passed. i knew that i had now fully recovered the use of my visual facultiesand yet it was darkall darkthe intense and utter raylessness of the night that endureth for evermore. i endeavored to shriek-, and my lips and my parched tongue moved convulsively together in the attemptbut no voice issued from the cavernous lungs, which oppressed as if by the weight of some incumbent mountain, gasped and palpitated, with the heart, at every elaborate and struggling inspiration. the movement of the jaws, in this effort to cry aloud, showed me that they were bound up, as is usual with the dead. i felt, too, that i lay upon some hard substance, and by something similar my sides were, also, closely compressed. so far, i had not ventured to stir any of my limbsbut now i violently threw up my arms, which had been lying at length, with the wrists crossed. they struck a solid wooden substance, which extended above my person at an elevation of not more than six inches from my face. i could no longer doubt that i reposed within a coffin at last. and now, amid all my infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub hopefor i thought of my precautions. i writhed, and made spasmodic exertions to force open the lid: it would not move. i felt my wrists for the bell-rope: it was not to be found. and now the comforter fled for ever, and a still sterner despair reigned triumphant; for i could not help perceiving the absence of the paddings which i had so carefully preparedand then, too, there came suddenly to my nostrils the strong peculiar odor of moist earth. the conclusion was irresistible. i was not within the vault. i had fallen into a trance while absent from home-while among strangerswhen, or how, i could not rememberand it was they who had buried me as a dognailed up in some common coffinand thrust deep, deep, and for ever, into some ordinary and nameless grave. as this awful conviction forced itself, thus, into the innermost chambers of my soul, i once again struggled to cry aloud. and in this second endeavor i succeeded. a long, wild, and continuous shriek, or yell of agony, resounded through the realms of the subterranean night. "hillo! hillo, there!" said a gruff voice, in reply. "what the devil's the matter now!" said a second. "get out o' that!" said a third. "what do you mean by yowling in that ere kind of style, like a cattymount?" said a fourth; and hereupon i was seized and shaken without ceremony, for several minutes, by a junto of very rough-looking individuals. they did not arouse me from my slumberfor i was wide awake when i screamedbut they restored me to the full possession of my memory. this adventure occurred near richmond, in virginia. accompanied by a friend, i had proceeded, upon a gunning expedition, some miles down the banks of the james river. night approached, and we were overtaken by a storm. the cabin of a small sloop lying at anchor in the stream, and laden with garden mould, afforded us the only available shelter. we made the best of it, and passed the night on board. i slept in one of the only two berths in the vesseland the berths of a sloop of sixty or twenty tons need scarcely be described. that which i occupied had no bedding of any kind. its extreme width was eighteen inches. the distance of its bottom from the deck overhead was precisely the same. i found it a matter of exceeding difficulty to squeeze myself in. nevertheless, i slept soundly, and the whole of my visionfor it was no dream, and no nightmarearose naturally from the circumstances of my positionfrom my ordinary bias of thoughtand from the difficulty, to which i have alluded, of collecting my senses, and especially of regaining my memory, for a long time after awaking from slumber. the men who shook me were the crew of the sloop, and some laborers engaged to unload it. from the load itself came the earthly smell. the bandage about the jaws was a silk handkerchief in which i had bound up my head, in default of my customary nightcap. the tortures endured, however, were indubitably quite equal for the time, to those of actual sepulture. they were fearfullythey were inconceivably hideous; but out of evil proceeded good; for their very excess wrought in my spirit an inevitable revulsion. my soul acquired toneacquired temper. i went abroad. i took vigorous exercise. i breathed the free air of heaven. i thought upon other subjects than death. i discarded my medical books. "buchan" i burned. i read no "night thoughts"no fustian about churchyardsno bugaboo talessuch as this. in short, i became a new man, and lived a man's life. from that memorable night, i dismissed forever my charnel apprehensions, and with them vanished the cataleptic disorder, of which, perhaps, they had been less the consequence than the cause. there are moments when, even to the sober eye of reason, the world of our sad humanity may assume the semblance of a hellbut the imagination of man is no carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fancifulbut, like the demons in whose company afrasiab made his voyage down the oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour usthey must be suffered to slumber, or we perish. the end . [pg/etext92/hyde10.txt] strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde by robert louis stevenson 1) story of the door mr. utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable. at friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. he was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. but he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. 2) "i incline to, cain's heresy," he used to say. "i let my brother go to the devil in his quaintly: "own way." in this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of down-going men. and to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour. no doubt the feat was easy to mr. utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of good-nature. it is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer's way. his friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object. hence, no doubt, the bond that united him to mr. richard enfield, his distant kinsman, the well-known man about town. it was a nut to crack for many, what these two could see in each other, or what subject they could find in common. it was reported by those who encountered them in their sunday walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull, and would hail with obvious relief the appearance of a friend. for all that, the two men put the greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chief jewel of each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the calls 3) of business, that they might enjoy them uninterrupted. it chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a by-street in a busy quarter of london. the street was small and what is called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on the week-days. the inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed, and all emulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplus of their gains in coquetry; so that the shop fronts stood along that thoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen. even on sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of passage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the passenger. two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east, the line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point, a certain sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street. it was two stories high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower story and a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence. the door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained. tramps slouched into the recess and struck matches on 4) the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the schoolboy had tried his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation, no one had appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their ravages. mr. enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the by-street; but when they came abreast of the entry, the former lifted up his cane and pointed. "did you ever remark that door?" he asked; and when his companion had replied in the affirmative, "it is connected in my mind," added he, "with a very odd story." "indeed?" said mr. utterson, with a slight change of voice, "and what was that?" "well, it was this way," returned mr. enfield: "i was coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o' clock of a black winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was literally nothing to be seen but lamps. street after street, and all the folks asleep -street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a church -till at last i got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman. all at once, i saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the 5) corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the, child's body and left her screaming on the ground. it sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. it wasn't like a man; it was like some damned juggernaut. i gave a view-halloa, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about the screaming child. he was perfectly cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running. the people who had turned out were the girl's own family; and pretty soon, the doctor, for whom she had been sent, put in his appearance. well, the child was not much the worse, more frightened, according to the sawbones; and there you might have supposed would be an end to it. but there was one curious circumstance. i had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight. so had the child's family, which was only natural. but the doctor's case was what struck me. he was the usual cut-and-dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong edinburgh accent, and about as emotional as a bagpipe. well, sir, he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, i saw that sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. i knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being out of the question, we did the next best. we told the man we could 6) and would make such a scandal out of this, as should make his name stink from one end of london to the other. if he had any friends or any credit, we undertook that he should lose them. and all the time, as we were pitching it in red hot, we were keeping the women off him as best we could, for they were as wild as harpies. i never saw a circle of such hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of black, sneering coolness -frightened too, i could see that -but carrying it off, sir, really like satan. 'if you choose to make capital out of this accident,' said he, 'i am naturally helpless. no gentleman but wishes to avoid a scene,' says he. 'name your figure.' well, we screwed him up to a hundred pounds for the child's family; he would have clearly liked to stick out; but there was something about the lot of us that meant mischief, and at last he struck. the next thing was to get the money; and where do you think he carried us but to that place with the door? -whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with the matter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on coutts's, drawn payable to bearer and signed with a name that i can't mention, though it's one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least very well known and often printed. the figure was stiff; but the signature was good for more than that, if it was only genuine. i took the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman that the whole 7) business looked apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a cellar door at four in the morning and come out of it with another man's cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. but he was quite easy and sneering. 'set your mind at rest,' says he, 'i will stay with you till the banks open and cash the cheque myself.' so we all set off, the doctor, and the child's father, and our friend and myself, and passed the rest of the night in my chambers; and next day, when we had breakfasted, went in a body to the bank. i gave in the check myself, and said i had every reason to believe it was a forgery. not a bit of it. the cheque was genuine." "tut-tut," said mr. utterson. "i see you feel as i do," said mr. enfield. "yes, it's a bad story. for my man was a fellow that nobody could have to do with, a really damnable man; and the person that drew the cheque is the very pink of the proprieties, celebrated too, and (what makes it worse) one of your fellows who do what they call good. black-mail, i suppose; an honest man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth. black-mail house is what i call that place with the door, in consequence. though even that, you know, is far from explaining all," he added, and with the words fell into a vein of musing. from this he was recalled by mr. utterson asking rather suddenly:" and you don't know if the drawer of the cheque lives there?" 8) "a likely place, isn't it?" returned mr. enfield. "but i happen to have noticed his address; he lives in some square or other." "and you never asked about the -place with the door?" said mr. utterson. "no, sir: i had a delicacy," was the reply. "i feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. you start a question, and it's like starting a stone. you sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back-garden and the family have to change their name. no, sir, i make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like queer street, the less i ask." " a very good rule, too," said the lawyer. "but i have studied the place for myself," continued mr. enfield." it seems scarcely a house. there is no other door, and nobody goes in or out of that one but, once in a great while, the gentleman of my adventure. there are three windows looking on the court on the first floor; none below; the windows are always shut but they're clean. and then there is a chimney which is generally smoking; so somebody must live there. and yet it's not so sure; for the buildings are so packed together about that court, that it's hard to say where one ends and another begins." 9) the pair walked on again for a while in silence; and then, "enfield," said mr. utterson, "that's a good rule of yours." "yes, i think it is," returned enfield. "but for all that," continued the lawyer, "there's one point i want to ask: i want to ask the name of that man who walked over the child." "well," said mr. enfield, "i can't see what harm it would do. it was a man of the name of hyde." "h'm," said mr. utterson. "what sort of a man is he to see?" "he is not easy to describe. there is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. i never saw a man i so disliked, and yet i scarce know why. he must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although i couldn't specify the point. he's an extraordinary-looking man, and yet i really can name nothing out of the way. no, sir; i can make no hand of it; i can't describe him. and it's not want of memory; for i declare i can see him this moment." mr. utterson again walked some way in silence and obviously under a weight of consideration. "you are sure he used a key?" he inquired at last. "my dear sir..." began enfield, surprised out of himself. 10) "yes, i know," said utterson; "i know it must seem strange. the fact is, if i do not ask you the name of the other party, it is because i know it already. you see, richard, your tale has gone home. if you have been inexact in any point, you had better correct it." "i think you might have warned me," returned the other, with a touch of sullenness. "but i have been pedantically exact, as you call it. the fellow had a key; and what's more, he has it still. i saw him use it, not a week ago. mr. utterson sighed deeply but said never a word; and the young man presently resumed. "here is another lesson to say nothing," said he. "i am ashamed of my long tongue. let us make a bargain never to refer to this again." "with all my heart," said the lawyer. "i shake hands on that, richard." 11) search for mr. hyde that evening mr. utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. it was his custom of a sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of some dry divinity on his reading-desk, until the clock of the neighbouring church rang out the hour of twelve, when he would go soberly and gratefully to bed. on this night, however, as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his business-room. there he opened his safe, took from the most private part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as dr. jekyll's will, and sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents. the will was holograph, for mr. utterson, though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in case of the decease of henry jekyll, m.d., d.c.l., ll.d., f.r.s., etc., all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his "friend and benefactor edward hyde," but that in case of 12) dr. jekyll's "disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months," the said edward hyde should step into the said henry jekyll's shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation, beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor's household. this document had long been the lawyer's eyesore. it offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the immodest. and hitherto it was his ignorance of mr. hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. it was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no more. it was worse when it began to be clothed upon with detestable attributes; and out of the shifting, insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a fiend. "i thought it was madness," he said, as he replaced the obnoxious paper in the safe, "and now i begin to fear it is disgrace." with that he blew out his candle, put on a great-coat, and set forth in the direction of cavendish square, that citadel of medicine, where his friend, the great dr. lanyon, had his house and received his crowding patients. "if any one knows, it will be lanyon," he had thought. the solemn butler knew and welcomed him; 13) he was subjected to no stage of delay, but ushered direct from the door to the dining-room where dr. lanyon sat alone over his wine. this was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner. at sight of mr. utterson, he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands. the geniality, as was the way of the man, was somewhat theatrical to the eye; but it reposed on genuine feeling. for these two were old friends, old mates both at school and college, both thorough respecters of themselves and of each other, and, what does not always follow, men who thoroughly enjoyed each other's company. after a little rambling talk, the lawyer led up to the subject which so disagreeably pre-occupied his mind. "i suppose, lanyon," said he "you and i must be the two oldest friends that henry jekyll has?" "i wish the friends were younger," chuckled dr. lanyon. "but i suppose we are. and what of that? i see little of him now." indeed?" said utterson. "i thought you had a bond of common interest." "we had," was the reply. "but it is more than ten years since henry jekyll became too fanciful for me. he began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though of course i continue to take an interest in him for old sake's sake, as they say, 14) i see and i have seen devilish little of the man. such unscientific balderdash," added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, "would have estranged damon and pythias." this little spirit of temper was somewhat of a relief to mr. utterson. "they have only differed on some point of science," he thought; and being a man of no scientific passions (except in the matter of conveyancing), he even added: "it is nothing worse than that!" he gave his friend a few seconds to recover his composure, and then approached the question he had come to put. "did you ever come across a protege of his -one hyde?" he asked. "hyde?" repeated lanyon. "no. never heard of him. since my time." that was the amount of information that the lawyer carried back with him to the great, dark bed on which he tossed to and fro, until the small hours of the morning began to grow large. it was a night of little ease to his toiling mind, toiling in mere darkness and besieged by questions. six o 'clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently near to mr. utterson's dwelling, and still he was digging at the problem. hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room, mr. enfield's tale went by 15) before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures. he would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the figure of a man walking swiftly; then of a child running from the doctor's; and then these met, and that human juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams. or else he would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay asleep, dreaming and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of that room would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the sleeper recalled, and lo! there would stand by his side a figure to whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding. the figure in these two phases haunted the lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiftly and still the more swiftly, even to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of lamplighted city, and at every street-corner crush a child and leave her screaming. and still the figure had no face by which he might know it; even in his dreams, it had no face, or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes; and thus it was that there sprang up and grew apace in the lawyer's mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate, curiosity to behold the features of the real mr. hyde. if he could but once set eyes on him, he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps roll altogether away, as was the habit of mysterious 16) things when well examined. he might see a reason for his friend's strange preference or bondage (call it which you please) and even for the startling clause of the will. at least it would be a face worth seeing: the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy: a face which had but to show itself to raise up, in the mind of the unimpressionable enfield, a spirit of enduring hatred. from that time forward, mr. utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops. in the morning before office hours, at noon when business was plenty, and time scarce, at night under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post. "if he be mr. hyde," he had thought, "i shall be mr. seek." and at last his patience was rewarded. it was a fine dry night; frost in the air; the streets as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps, unshaken, by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow. by ten o'clock, when the shops were closed, the by-street was very solitary and, in spite of the low growl of london from all round, very silent. small sounds carried far; domestic sounds out of the houses were clearly audible on either side of the roadway; and the rumour of the approach of any passenger preceded him by a long time. mr. utterson had been some minutes at his post, when he was 17) aware of an odd, light footstep drawing near. in the course of his nightly patrols, he had long grown accustomed to the quaint effect with which the footfalls of a single person, while he is still a great way off, suddenly spring out distinct from the vast hum and clatter of the city. yet his attention had never before been so sharply and decisively arrested; and it was with a strong, superstitious prevision of success that he withdrew into the entry of the court. the steps drew swiftly nearer, and swelled out suddenly louder as they turned the end of the street. the lawyer, looking forth from the entry, could soon see what manner of man he had to deal with. he was small and very plainly dressed, and the look of him, even at that distance, went somehow strongly against the watcher's inclination. but he made straight for the door, crossing the roadway to save time; and as he came, he drew a key from his pocket like one approaching home. mr. utterson stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed." mr. hyde, i think?" mr. hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath. but his fear was only momentary; and though he did not look the lawyer in the face, he answered coolly enough: "that is my name. what do you want?" "i see you are going in," returned the lawyer. "i am an old friend of dr. jekyll's -mr. utter18) son of gaunt street -you must have heard my name; and meeting you so conveniently, i thought you might admit me." "you will not find dr. jekyll; he is from home," replied mr. hyde, blowing in the key. and then suddenly, but still without looking up, "how did you know me?" he asked. "on your side," said mr. utterson, "will you do me a favour?" "with pleasure," replied the other. "what shall it be?" "will you let me see your face?" asked the lawyer. mr. hyde appeared to hesitate, and then, as if upon some sudden reflection, fronted about with an air of defiance; and the pair stared at each other pretty fixedly for a few seconds. "now i shall know you again," said mr. utterson." it may be useful." "yes," returned mr. hyde, "it is as well we have, met; and a propos, you should have my address." and he gave a number of a street in soho. "good god!" thought mr. utterson," can he, too, have been thinking of the will?" but he kept his feelings to himself and only grunted in acknowledgment of the address. "and now," said the other, "how did you know me?" "by description," was the reply. "whose description?" 19) "we have common friends, said mr. utterson. "common friends?" echoed mr. hyde, a little hoarsely." who are they?" "jekyll, for instance," said the lawyer. "he never told you," cried mr. hyde, with a flush of anger." i did not think you would have lied." "come," said mr. utterson, "that is not fitting language." the other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the house. the lawyer stood a while when mr. hyde had left him, the picture of disquietude. then he began slowly to mount the street, pausing every step or two and putting his hand to his brow like a man in mental perplexity. the problem he was thus debating as he walked, was one of a class that is rarely solved. mr. hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing, and fear with which mr. utterson regarded him. "there must be some20) thing else," said the perplexed gentleman. "there is something more, if i could find a name for it. god bless me, the man seems hardly human! something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of dr. fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? the last, i think; for, o my poor old harry jekyll, if ever i read satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend." round the corner from the by-street, there was a square of ancient, handsome houses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate and let in flats and chambers to all sorts and conditions of men: map-engravers, architects, shady lawyers, and the agents of obscure enterprises. one house, however, second from the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for the fan-light, mr. utterson stopped and knocked. a well-dressed, elderly servant opened the door. is dr. jekyll at home, poole?" asked the lawyer. "i will see, mr. utterson," said poole, admitting the visitor, as he spoke, into a large, low-roofed, comfortable hall, paved with flags, warmed (after the fashion of a country house) by a bright, open fire, and furnished with costly cabinets of oak. "will you wait here by the 21) fire, sir? or shall i give you a light in the dining room?" "here, thank you," said the lawyer, and he drew near and leaned on the tall fender. this hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy of his friend the doctor's; and utterson himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest room in london. but to-night there was a shudder in his blood; the face of hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what was rare with him) a nausea and distaste of life; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed to read a menace in the flickering of the firelight on the polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the shadow on the roof. he was ashamed of his relief, when poole presently returned to announce that dr. jekyll was gone out. "i saw mr. hyde go in by the old dissecting-room door, poole," he said. "is that right, when dr. jekyll is from home?" "quite right, mr. utterson, sir," replied the servant. "mr. hyde has a key." "your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man, poole," resumed the other musingly. "yes, sir, he do indeed," said poole. "we have all orders to obey him." "i do not think i ever met mr. hyde?" asked utterson. o, dear no, sir. he never dines here," replied the butler. "indeed we see very little of 22) him on this side of the house; he mostly comes and goes by the laboratory." "well, good-night, poole." "good-night, mr. utterson." and the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart." poor harry jekyll," he thought, "my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! he was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of god, there is no statute of limitations. ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming, pede claudo, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault." and the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded a while on his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, lest by chance some jack-in-the-box of an old iniquity should leap to light there. his past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into a sober and fearful gratitude by the many that he had come so near to doing, yet avoided. and then by a return on his former subject, he conceived a spark of hope. "this master hyde, if he were studied," thought he, "must have secrets of his own; black secrets, by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor jekyll's worst would be like sunshine. things cannot continue as they are. it turns me cold to think of this creature stealing like a 23) thief to harry's bedside; poor harry, what a wakening! and the danger of it; for if this hyde suspects the existence of the will, he may grow impatient to inherit. ay, i must put my shoulder to the wheel if jekyll will but let me," he added, "if jekyll will only let me." for once more he saw before his mind's eye, as clear as a transparency, the strange clauses of the will. 24) dr. jekyll was quite at ease a fortnight later, by excellent good fortune, the doctor gave one of his pleasant dinners to some five or six old cronies, all intelligent, reputable men and all judges of good wine; and mr. utterson so contrived that he remained behind after the others had departed. this was no new arrangement, but a thing that had befallen many scores of times. where utterson was liked, he was liked well. hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the light-hearted and the loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit a while in his unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their minds in the man's rich silence after the expense and strain of gaiety. to this rule, dr. jekyll was no exception; and as he now sat on the opposite side of the fire -a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness -you could see by his looks that he cherished for mr. utterson a sincere and warm affection. 25) "i have been wanting to speak to you, jekyll," began the latter. "you know that will of yours?" a close observer might have gathered that the topic was distasteful; but the doctor carried it off gaily. "my poor utterson," said he, "you are unfortunate in such a client. i never saw a man so distressed as you were by my will; unless it were that hide-bound pedant, lanyon, at what he called my scientific heresies. oh, i know he's a good fellow -you needn't frown -an excellent fellow, and i always mean to see more of him; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant pedant. i was never more disappointed in any man than lanyon." "you know i never approved of it," pursued utterson, ruthlessly disregarding the fresh topic. "my will? yes, certainly, i know that," said the doctor, a trifle sharply. "you have told me so." "well, i tell you so again," continued the lawyer. "i have been learning something of young hyde." the large handsome face of dr. jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and there came a blackness about his eyes. "i do not care to hear more," said he. "this is a matter i thought we had agreed to drop." "what i heard was abominable," said utterson. "it can make no change. you do not under26) stand my position," returned the doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner. "i am painfully situated, utterson; my position is a very strange -a very strange one. it is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking." "jekyll," said utterson, "you know me: i am a man to be trusted. make a clean breast of this in confidence; and i make no doubt i can get you out of it." "my good utterson," said the doctor, "this is very good of you, this is downright good of you, and i cannot find words to thank you in. i believe you fully; i would trust you before any man alive, ay, before myself, if i could make the choice; but indeed it isn't what you fancy; it is not so bad as that; and just to put your good heart at rest, i will tell you one thing: the moment i choose, i can be rid of mr. hyde. i give you my hand upon that; and i thank you again and again; and i will just add one little word, utterson, that i'm sure you'll take in good part: this is a private matter, and i beg of you to let it sleep." utterson reflected a little, looking in the fire. "i have no doubt you are perfectly right," he said at last, getting to his feet. "well, but since we have touched upon this business, and for the last time i hope," continued the doctor, "there is one point i should like you to understand. i have really a very great interest in poor hyde. i know you have seen 27) him; he told me so; and i fear he was rude. but, i do sincerely take a great, a very great interest in that young man; and if i am taken away, utterson, i wish you to promise me that you will bear with him and get his rights for him. i think you would, if you knew all; and it would be a weight off my mind if you would promise." "i can't pretend that i shall ever like him," said the lawyer. "i don't ask that," pleaded jekyll, laying his hand upon the other's arm; "i only ask for justice; i only ask you to help him for my sake, when i am no longer here." utterson heaved an irrepressible sigh. "well," said he, "i promise." 28) the carew murder case nearly a year later, in the month of october, 18 -, london was startled by a crime of singular ferocity and rendered all the more notable by the high position of the victim. the details were few and startling. a maid servant living alone in a house not far from the river, had gone up-stairs to bed about eleven. although a fog rolled over the city in the small hours, the early part of the night was cloudless, and the lane, which the maid's window overlooked, was brilliantly lit by the full moon. it seems she was romantically given, for she sat down upon her box, which stood immediately under the window, and fell into a dream of musing. never (she used to say, with streaming tears, when she narrated that experience), never had she felt more at peace with all men or thought more kindly of the world. and as she so sat she became aware of an aged and beautiful gentleman with white hair, drawing near along the lane; and advancing to meet him, another and very small gentleman, to whom at first she 29) paid less attention. when they had come within speech (which was just under the maid's eyes) the older man bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner of politeness. it did not seem as if the subject of his address were of great importance; indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared as if he were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded self-content. presently her eye wandered to the other, and she was surprised to recognise in him a certain mr. hyde, who had once visited her master and for whom she had conceived a dislike. he had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. and then all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. the old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that mr. hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. and next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway. at the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid fainted. 30) it was two o'clock when she came to herself and called for the police. the murderer was gone long ago; but there lay his victim in the middle of the lane, incredibly mangled. the stick with which the deed had been done, although it was of some rare and very tough and heavy wood, had broken in the middle under the stress of this insensate cruelty; and one splintered half had rolled in the neighbouring gutter -the other, without doubt, had been carried away by the murderer. a purse and a gold watch were found upon the victim: but no cards or papers, except a sealed and stamped envelope, which he had been probably carrying to the post, and which bore the name and address of mr. utterson. this was brought to the lawyer the next morning, before he was out of bed; and he had no sooner seen it, and been told the circumstances, than he shot out a solemn lip. "i shall say nothing till i have seen the body," said he; "this may be very serious. have the kindness to wait while i dress." and with the same grave countenance he hurried through his breakfast and drove to the police station, whither the body had been carried. as soon as he came into the cell, he nodded. "yes," said he, "i recognise him. i am sorry to say that this is sir danvers carew." "good god, sir," exclaimed the officer, "is it possible?" and the next moment his eye 31) lighted up with professional ambition. "this will make a deal of noise," he said. "and perhaps you can help us to the man." and he briefly narrated what the maid had seen, and showed the broken stick. mr. utterson had already quailed at the name of hyde; but when the stick was laid before him, he could doubt no longer; broken and battered as it was, he recognised it for one that he had himself presented many years before to henry jekyll. "is this mr. hyde a person of small stature?" he inquired. "particularly small and particularly wicked-looking, is what the maid calls him," said the officer. mr. utterson reflected; and then, raising his head, "if you will come with me in my cab," he said, "i think i can take you to his house." it was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. a great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, mr. utterson beheld a marvellous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft 32) of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. the dismal quarter of soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful re-invasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare. the thoughts of his mind, besides, were of the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive, he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law's officers, which may at times assail the most honest. as the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low french eating-house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings. this was the home of henry jekyll's favourite; of a man who was heir to a quarter of a million sterling. an ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman opened the door. she had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent. yes, she said, this was mr. hyde's, but he was not at home; he had been in that night very late, 33) but had gone away again in less than an hour; there was nothing strange in that; his habits were very irregular, and he was often absent; for instance, it was nearly two months since she had seen him till yesterday. "very well, then, we wish to see his rooms," said the lawyer; and when the woman began to declare it was impossible, "i had better tell you who this person is," he added. "this is inspector newcomen of scotland yard." a flash of odious joy appeared upon the woman's face. "ah!" said she, "he is in trouble! what has he done? "mr. utterson and the inspector exchanged glances. "he don't seem a very popular character," observed the latter. "and now, my good woman, just let me and this gentleman have a look about us." in the whole extent of the house, which but for the old woman remained otherwise empty, mr. hyde had only used a couple of rooms; but these were furnished with luxury and good taste. a closet was filled with wine; the plate was of silver, the napery elegant; a good picture hung upon the walls, a gift (as utterson supposed) from henry jekyll, who was much of a connoisseur; and the carpets were of many plies and agreeable in colour. at this moment, however, the rooms bore every mark of having been recently and hurriedly ransacked; clothes lay about the floor, with their pockets inside out; 34) lock-fast drawers stood open; and on the hearth there lay a pile of grey ashes, as though many papers had been burned. from these embers the inspector disinterred the butt-end of a green cheque-book, which had resisted the action of the fire; the other half of the stick was found behind the door. and as this clinched his suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted. a visit to the bank, where several thousand pounds were found to be lying to the murderer's credit, completed his gratification. "you may depend upon it, sir," he told mr. utterson: "i have him in my hand. he must have lost his head, or he never would have left the stick or, above all, burned the cheque-book. why, money's life to the man. we have nothing to do but wait for him at the bank, and get out the handbills." this last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment; for mr. hyde had numbered few familiars -even the master of the servant-maid had only seen him twice; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been photographed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as common observers will. only on one point, were they agreed; and that was the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed his beholders. 35) incident of the letter it was late in the afternoon, when mr. utterson found his way to dr. jekyll's door, where he was at once admitted by poole, and carried down by the kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden, to the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory or the dissecting-rooms. the doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a celebrated surgeon; and his own tastes being rather chemical than anatomical, had changed the destination of the block at the bottom of the garden. it was the first time that the lawyer had been received in that part of his friend's quarters; and he eyed the dingy, windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of strangeness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing straw, and the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola. at the further end, a flight of stairs mounted to a door covered with red baize; 36) and through this, mr. utterson was at last received into the doctor's cabinet. it was a large room, fitted round with glass presses, furnished, among other things, with a cheval-glass and a business table, and looking out upon the court by three dusty windows barred with iron. a fire burned in the grate; a lamp was set lighted on the chimney shelf, for even in the houses the fog began to lie thickly; and there, close up to the warmth, sat dr. jekyll, looking deadly sick. he did not rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand and bade him welcome in a changed voice. "and now," said mr. utterson, as soon as poole had left them, "you have heard the news?" the doctor shuddered." they were crying it in the square," he said. "i heard them in my dining-room." "one word," said the lawyer. "carew was my client, but so are you, and i want to know what i am doing. you have not been mad enough to hide this fellow?" "utterson, i swear to god, " cried the doctor," i swear to god i will never set eyes on him again. i bind my honour to you that i am done with him in this world. it is all at an end. and indeed he does not want my help; you do not know him as i do; he is safe, he is quite safe; mark my words, he will never more be heard of." the lawyer listened gloomily; he did not like his friend's feverish manner. "you seem pretty 37) sure of him," said he; "and for your sake, i hope you may be right. if it came to a trial, your name might appear." "i am quite sure of him," replied jekyll; "i have grounds for certainty that i cannot share with any one. but there is one thing on which you may advise me. i have -i have received a letter; and i am at a loss whether i should show it to the police. i should like to leave it in your hands, utterson; you would judge wisely, i am sure; i have so great a trust in you." "you fear, i suppose, that it might lead to his detection?" asked the lawyer. "no," said the other." i cannot say that i care what becomes of hyde; i am quite done with him. i was thinking of my own character, which this hateful business has rather exposed." utterson ruminated a while; he was surprised at his friend's selfishness, and yet relieved by it. "well," said he, at last, "let me see the letter." the letter was written in an odd, upright hand and signed "edward hyde": and it signified, briefly enough, that the writer's benefactor, dr. jekyll, whom he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand generosities, need labour under no alarm for his safety, as he had means of escape on which he placed a sure dependence. the lawyer liked this letter well enough; it put a better colour on the intimacy than he had looked for; and he blamed himself for some of his past suspicions. 38) "have you the envelope?" he asked. "i burned it," replied jekyll," before i thought what i was about. but it bore no postmark. the note was handed in." "shall i keep this and sleep upon it?" asked utterson. "i wish you to judge for me entirely," was the reply. "i have lost confidence in myself." "well, i shall consider," returned the lawyer. "and now one word more: it was hyde who dictated the terms in your will about that disappearance?" the doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness: he shut his mouth tight and nodded. "i knew it," said utterson. "he meant to murder you. you have had a fine escape." "i have had what is far more to the purpose," returned the doctor solemnly: "i have had a lesson -o god, utterson, what a lesson i have had!" and he covered his face for a moment with his hands. on his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with poole. "by the by," said he, "there was a letter handed in to-day: what was the messenger like?" but poole was positive nothing had come except by post;" and only circulars by that," he added. this news sent off the visitor with his fears renewed. plainly the letter had come by the laboratory door; possibly, indeed, it had been 39) written in the cabinet; and if that were so, it must be differently judged, and handled with the more caution. the newsboys, as he went, were crying themselves hoarse along the footways: "special edition. shocking murder of an m. p." that was the funeral oration of one friend and client; and he could not help a certain apprehension lest the good name of another should be sucked down in the eddy of the scandal. it was, at least, a ticklish decision that he had to make; and self-reliant as he was by habit, he began to cherish a longing for advice. it was not to be had directly; but perhaps, he thought, it might be fished for. presently after, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with mr. guest, his head clerk, upon the other, and midway between, at a nicely calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a particular old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations of his house. the fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town's life was still rolling in through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. but the room was gay with firelight. in the bottle the acids were long ago resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, as the colour grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards was ready to be set free 40) and to disperse the fogs of london. insensibly the lawyer melted. there was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets than mr. guest; and he was not always sure that he kept as many as he meant. guest had often been on business to the doctor's; he knew poole; he could scarce have failed to hear of mr. hyde's familiarity about the house; he might draw conclusions: was it not as well, then, that he should see a letter which put that mystery to rights? and above all since guest, being a great student and critic of handwriting, would consider the step natural and obliging? the clerk, besides, was a man of counsel; he would scarce read so strange a document without dropping a remark; and by that remark mr. utterson might shape his future course. "this is a sad business about sir danvers," he said. "yes, sir, indeed. it has elicited a great deal of public feeling," returned guest. "the man, of course, was mad." "i should like to hear your views on that," replied utterson. "i have a document here in his handwriting; it is between ourselves, for i scarce know what to do about it; it is an ugly business at the best. but there it is; quite in your way a murderer's autograph." guest's eyes brightened, and he sat down at once and studied it with passion. "no, sir," he said: "not mad; but it is an odd hand." 41) "and by all accounts a very odd writer," added the lawyer. just then the servant entered with a note. "is that from dr. jekyll, sir?" inquired the clerk. "i thought i knew the writing. anything private, mr. utterson?" "only an invitation to dinner. why? do you want to see it?" "one moment. i thank you, sir"; and the clerk laid the two sheets of paper alongside and sedulously compared their contents. "thank you, sir," he said at last, returning both; "it's a very interesting autograph." there was a pause, during which mr. utterson struggled with himself. "why did you compare them, guest?" he inquired suddenly. "well, sir," returned the clerk, "there's a rather singular resemblance; the two hands are in many points identical: only differently sloped." "rather quaint," said utterson. "it is, as you say, rather quaint," returned guest. "i wouldn't speak of this note, you know," said the master. "no, sir," said the clerk. "i understand." but no sooner was mr. utterson alone that night than he locked the note into his safe, where it reposed from that time forward. "what!" he thought." henry jekyll forge for a murderer!" and his blood ran cold in his veins. 42) remarkable incident of dr. lanyon time ran on; thousands of pounds were offered in reward, for the death of sir danvers was resented as a public injury; but mr. hyde had disappeared out of the ken of the police as though he had never existed. much of his past was unearthed, indeed, and all disreputable: tales came out of the man's cruelty, at once so callous and violent; of his vile life, of his strange associates, of the hatred that seemed to have surrounded his career; but of his present whereabouts, not a whisper. from the time he had left the house in soho on the morning of the murder, he was simply blotted out; and gradually, as time drew on, mr. utterson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm, and to grow more at quiet with himself. the death of sir danvers was, to his way of thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of mr. hyde. now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for dr. jekyll. he came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more their familiar guest 43) and entertainer; and whilst he had always been, known for charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion. he was busy, he was much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward consciousness of service; and for more than two months, the doctor was at peace. on the 8th of january utterson had dined at the doctor's with a small party; lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had looked from one to the other as in the old days when the trio were inseparable friends. on the 12th, and again on the 14th, the door was shut against the lawyer. "the doctor was confined to the house," poole said, "and saw no one." on the 15th, he tried again, and was again refused; and having now been used for the last two months to see his friend almost daily, he found this return of solitude to weigh upon his spirits. the fifth night he had in guest to dine with him; and the sixth he betook himself to dr. lanyon's. there at least he was not denied admittance; but when he came in, he was shocked at the change which had taken place in the doctor's appearance. he had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face. the rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder and older; and yet it was not so much, these tokens of a swift physical decay that arrested the lawyer's notice, as a look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed to testify to 44) some deep-seated terror of the mind. it was unlikely that the doctor should fear death; and yet that was what utterson was tempted to suspect. "yes," he thought; "he is a doctor, he must know his own state and that his days are counted; and the knowledge is more than he can bear." and yet when utterson remarked on his ill-looks, it was with an air of greatness that lanyon declared himself a doomed man. "i have had a shock," he said, "and i shall never recover. it is a question of weeks. well, life has been pleasant; i liked it; yes, sir, i used to like it. i sometimes think if we knew all, we should be more glad to get away." "jekyll is ill, too," observed utterson. "have you seen him?" but lanyon's face changed, and he held up a trembling hand. "i wish to see or hear no more of dr. jekyll," he said in a loud, unsteady voice. "i am quite done with that person; and i beg that you will spare me any allusion to one whom i regard as dead." "tut-tut," said mr. utterson; and then after a considerable pause," can't i do anything?" he inquired. "we are three very old friends, lanyon; we shall not live to make others." "nothing can be done," returned lanyon; "ask himself." he will not see me," said the lawyer. "i am not surprised at that," was the reply. "some day, utterson, after i am dead, you may 45) perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. i cannot tell you. and in the meantime, if you can sit and talk with me of other things, for god's sake, stay and do so; but if you cannot keep clear of this accursed topic, then, in god's name, go, for i cannot bear it." as soon as he got home, utterson sat down and wrote to jekyll, complaining of his exclusion from the house, and asking the cause of this unhappy break with lanyon; and the next day brought him a long answer, often very pathetically worded, and sometimes darkly mysterious in drift. the quarrel with lanyon was incurable. "i do not blame our old friend," jekyll wrote, "but i share his view that we must never meet. i mean from henceforth to lead a life of extreme seclusion; you must not be surprised, nor must you doubt my friendship, if my door is often shut even to you. you must suffer me to go my own dark way. i have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that i cannot name. if i am the chief of sinners, i am the chief of sufferers also. i could not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors so unmanning; and you can do but one thing, utterson, to lighten this destiny, and that is to respect my silence." utterson was amazed; the dark influence of hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had returned to his old tasks and amities; a week ago, the prospect had smiled with every promise of a cheerful and an honoured age; 46) and now in a moment, friendship, and peace of mind, and the whole tenor of his life were wrecked. so great and unprepared a change pointed to madness; but in view of lanyon's manner and words, there must lie for it some deeper ground. a week afterwards dr. lanyon took to his bed, and in something less than a fortnight he was dead. the night after the funeral, at which he had been sadly affected, utterson locked the door of his business room, and sitting there by the light of a melancholy candle, drew out and set before him an envelope addressed by the hand and sealed with the seal of his dead friend. "private: for the hands of g. j. utterson alone and in case of his predecease to be destroyed unread," so it was emphatically superscribed; and the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents. "i have buried one friend to-day," he thought: "what if this should cost me another?" and then he condemned the fear as a disloyalty, and broke the seal. within there was another enclosure, likewise sealed, and marked upon the cover as "not to be opened till the death or disappearance of dr. henry jekyll." utterson could not trust his eyes. yes, it was disappearance; here again, as in the mad will which he had long ago restored to its author, here again were the idea of a disappearance and the name of henry jekyll bracketed. but in the will, that idea had sprung from the sinister suggestion of 47) the man hyde; it was set there with a purpose all too plain and horrible. written by the hand of lanyon, what should it mean? a great curiosity came on the trustee, to disregard the prohibition and dive at once to the bottom of these mysteries; but professional honour and faith to his dead friend were stringent obligations; and the packet slept in the inmost corner of his private safe. it is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it; and it may be doubted if, from that day forth, utterson desired the society of his surviving friend with the same eagerness. he thought of him kindly; but his thoughts were disquieted and fearful. he went to call indeed; but he was perhaps relieved to be denied admittance; perhaps, in his heart, he preferred to speak with poole upon the doorstep and surrounded by the air and sounds of the open city, rather than to be admitted into that house of voluntary bondage, and to sit and speak with its inscrutable recluse. poole had, indeed, no very pleasant news to communicate. the doctor, it appeared, now more than ever confined himself to the cabinet over the laboratory, where he would sometimes even sleep; he was out of spirits, he had grown very silent, he did not read; it seemed as if he had something on his mind. utterson became so used to the unvarying character of these reports, that he fell off little by little in the frequency of his visits. 48) incident at the window it chanced on sunday, when mr. utterson was on his usual walk with mr. enfield, that their way lay once again through the by-street; and that when they came in front of the door, both stopped to gaze on it. "well," said enfield, "that story's at an end at least. we shall never see more of mr. hyde." "i hope not," said utterson. "did i ever tell you that i once saw him, and shared your feeling of repulsion?" "it was impossible to do the one without the other," returned enfield. "and by the way, what an ass you must have thought me, not to know that this was a back way to dr. jekyll's! it was partly your own fault that i found it out, even when i did." "so you found it out, did you?" said utterson. "but if that be so, we may step into the court and take a look at the windows. to tell you the truth, i am uneasy about poor jekyll; and even outside, i feel as if the presence of a friend might do him good." 49) the court was very cool and a little damp, and full of premature twilight, although the sky, high up overhead, was still bright with sunset. the middle one of the three windows was half-way open; and sitting close beside it, taking the air with an infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner, utterson saw dr. jekyll. "what! jekyll!" he cried. "i trust you are better." "i am very low, utterson," replied the doctor, drearily, "very low. it will not last long, thank god." "you stay too much indoors," said the lawyer. "you should be out, whipping up the circulation like mr. enfield and me. (this is my cousin -mr. enfield -dr. jekyll.) come, now; get your hat and take a quick turn with us." "you are very good," sighed the other. "i should like to very much; but no, no, no, it is quite impossible; i dare not. but indeed, utterson, i am very glad to see you; this is really a great pleasure; i would ask you and mr. enfield up, but the place is really not fit." "why then," said the lawyer, good-naturedly, "the best thing we can do is to stay down here and speak with you from where we are." "that is just what i was about to venture to propose," returned the doctor with a smite. but the words were hardly uttered, before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded 50) by an expression of such abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below. they saw it but for a glimpse, for the window was instantly thrust down; but that glimpse had been sufficient, and they turned and left the court without a word. in silence, too, they traversed the by-street; and it was not until they had come into a neighbouring thoroughfare, where even upon a sunday there were still some stirrings of life, that mr. utterson at last turned and looked at his companion. they were both pale; and there was an answering horror in their eyes. "god forgive us, god forgive us," said mr. utterson. but mr. enfield only nodded his head very seriously and walked on once more in silence. 51) the last night mr. utterson was sitting by his fireside one evening after dinner, when he was surprised to receive a visit from poole. "bless me, poole, what brings you here?" he cried; and then taking a second look at him, "what ails you?" he added; "is the doctor ill?" "mr. utterson," said the man," there is something wrong." take a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you," said the lawyer. "now, take your time, and tell me plainly what you want." "you know the doctor's ways, sir," replied poole, "and how he shuts himself up. well, he's shut up again in the cabinet; and i don't like it, sir i wish i may die if i like it. mr. utterson, sir, i'm afraid." "now, my good man," said the lawyer, "be explicit. what are you afraid of?" "i've been afraid for about a week," returned poole, doggedly disregarding the question, "and i can bear it no more." the man's appearance amply bore out his 52) words; his manner was altered for the worse; and except for the moment when he had first announced his terror, he had not once looked the lawyer in the face. even now, he sat with the glass of wine untasted on his knee, and his eyes directed to a corner of the floor. "i can bear it no more," he repeated. "come," said the lawyer, "i see you have some good reason, poole; i see there is something seriously amiss. try to tell me what it is." "i think there's been foul play," said poole, hoarsely. "foul play!" cried the lawyer, a good deal frightened and rather inclined to be irritated in consequence. "what foul play? what does the man mean?" "i daren't say, sir" was the answer; "but will you come along with me and see for yourself?" mr. utterson's only answer was to rise and get his hat and great-coat; but he observed with wonder the greatness of the relief that appeared upon the butler's face, and perhaps with no less, that the wine was still untasted when he set it down to follow. it was a wild, cold, seasonable night of march, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. the wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face. it seemed to have swept the 53) streets unusually bare of passengers, besides; for mr. utterson thought he had never seen that part of london so deserted. he could have wished it otherwise; never in his life had he been conscious of so sharp a wish to see and touch his fellow-creatures; for struggle as he might, there was borne in upon his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity. the square, when they got there, was all full of wind and dust, and the thin trees in the garden were lashing themselves along the railing. poole, who had kept all the way a pace or two ahead, now pulled up in the middle of the pavement, and in spite of the biting weather, took off his hat and mopped his brow with a red pocket-handkerchief. but for all the hurry of his cowing, these were not the dews of exertion that he wiped away, but the moisture of some strangling anguish; for his face was white and his voice, when he spoke, harsh and broken. "well, sir," he said, "here we are, and god grant there be nothing wrong." "amen, poole," said the lawyer. thereupon the servant knocked in a very guarded manner; the door was opened on the chain; and a voice asked from within, "is that you, poole?" "it's all right," said poole. "open the door." the hall, when they entered it, was brightly lighted up; the fire was built high; and about the hearth the whole of the servants, men and 54) women, stood huddled together like a flock of sheep. at the sight of mr. utterson, the housemaid broke into hysterical whimpering; and the cook, crying out, "bless god! it's mr. utterson," ran forward as if to take him in her arms. "what, what? are you all here?" said the lawyer peevishly. "very irregular, very unseemly; your master would be far from pleased." "they're all afraid," said poole. blank silence followed, no one protesting; only the maid lifted up her voice and now wept loudly. "hold your tongue!" poole said to her, with a ferocity of accent that testified to his own jangled nerves; and indeed, when the girl had so suddenly raised the note of her lamentation, they had all started and turned toward the inner door with faces of dreadful expectation. "and now," continued the butler, addressing the knife-boy, "reach me a candle, and we'll get this through hands at once." and then he begged mr. utterson to follow him, and led the way to the back-garden. "now, sir," said he, "you come as gently as you can. i want you to hear, and i don't want you to be heard. and see here, sir, if by any chance he was to ask you in, don't go." mr. utterson's nerves, at this unlooked-for termination, gave a jerk that nearly threw him from his balance; but he re-collected his courage 55) and followed the butler into the laboratory building and through the surgical theatre, with its lumber of crates and bottles, to the foot of the stair. here poole motioned him to stand on one side and listen; while he himself, setting down the candle and making a great and obvious call on his resolution, mounted the steps and knocked with a somewhat uncertain hand on the red baize of the cabinet door. "mr. utterson, sir, asking to see you, "he called; and even as he did so, once more violently signed to the lawyer to give ear. a voice answered from within: "tell him i cannot see any one," it said complainingly. "thank you, sir," said poole, with a note of something like triumph in his voice; and taking up his candle, he led mr. utterson back across the yard and into the great kitchen, where the fire was out and the beetles were leaping on the floor. "sir," he said, looking mr. utterson in the eyes," was that my master's voice?" "it seems much changed," replied the lawyer, very pale, but giving look for look. "changed? well, yes, i think so," said the butler. "have i been twenty years in this man's house, to be deceived about his voice? no, sir; master's made away with; he was made, away with eight days ago, when we heard him cry out upon the name of god; and who's in there instead of him, and why it stays there, is a thing that cries to heaven, mr. utterson!" 56) "this is a very strange tale, poole; this is rather a wild tale, my man," said mr. utterson, biting his finger. "suppose it were as you suppose, supposing dr. jekyll to have been -well, murdered, what could induce the murderer to stay? that won't hold water; it doesn't commend itself to reason." "well, mr. utterson, you are a hard man to satisfy, but i'll do it yet," said poole. "all this last week (you must know) him, or it, or whatever it is that lives in that cabinet, has been crying night and day for some sort of medicine and cannot get it to his mind. it was sometimes his way -the master's, that is -to write his orders on a sheet of paper and throw it on the stair. we've had nothing else this week back; nothing but papers, and a closed door, and the very meals left there to be smuggled in when nobody was looking. well, sir, every day, ay, and twice and thrice in the same day, there have been orders and complaints, and i have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists in town. every time i brought the stuff back, there would be another paper telling me to return it, because it was not pure, and another order to a different firm. this drug is wanted bitter bad, sir, whatever for." "have you any of these papers?" asked mr. utterson. poole felt in his pocket and handed out a crumpled note, which the lawyer, bending nearer 57) to the candle, carefully examined. its contents ran thus: "dr. jekyll presents his compliments to messrs. maw. he assures them that their last sample is impure and quite useless for his present purpose. in the year 18 -, dr. j. purchased a somewhat large quantity from messrs. m. he now begs them to search with the most sedulous care, and should any of the same quality be left, to forward it to him at once. expense is no consideration. the importance of this to dr. j. can hardly be exaggerated." so far the letter had run composedly enough, but here with a sudden splutter of the pen, the writer's emotion had broken loose. "for god's sake," he had added, "find me some of the old." "this is a strange note," said mr. utterson; and then sharply, "how do you come to have it open?" "the man at maw's was main angry, sir, and he threw it back to me like so much dirt," returned poole. "this is unquestionably the doctor's hand, do you know?" resumed the lawyer. "i thought it looked like it," said the servant rather sulkily; and then, with another voice, "but what matters hand-of-write? " he said. "i've seen him!" "seen him?" repeated mr. utterson. "well?" "that's it!" said poole. "it was this way. i came suddenly into the theatre from the 58) garden. it seems he had slipped out to look for this drug or whatever it is; for the cabinet door was open, and there he was at the far end of the room digging among the crates. he looked up when i came in, gave a kind of cry, and whipped up-stairs into the cabinet. it was but for one minute that i saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face? if it was my master, why did he cry out like a rat, and run from me? i have served him long enough. and then..." the man paused and passed his hand over his face. "these are all very strange circumstances," said mr. utterson, "but i think i begin to see daylight. your master, poole, is plainly seised with one of those maladies that both torture and deform the sufferer; hence, for aught i know, the alteration of his voice; hence the mask and the avoidance of his friends; hence his eagerness to find this drug, by means of which the poor soul retains some hope of ultimate recovery -god grant that he be not deceived! there is my explanation; it is sad enough, poole, ay, and appalling to consider; but it is plain and natural, hangs well together, and delivers us from all exorbitant alarms." "sir," said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled pallor, "that thing was not my master, and there's the truth. my master" here he looked round him and began to whisper -"is 59) a tall, fine build of a man, and this was more of a dwarf." utterson attempted to protest. "o, sir," cried poole, "do you think i do not know my master after twenty years? do you think i do not know where his head comes to in the cabinet door, where i saw him every morning of my life? no, sir, that thing in the mask was never dr. jekyll -god knows what it was, but it was never dr. jekyll; and it is the belief of my heart that there was murder done." "poole," replied the lawyer, "if you say that, it will become my duty to make certain. much as i desire to spare your master's feelings, much as i am puzzled by this note which seems to prove him to be still alive, i shall consider it my duty to break in that door." ah mr. utterson, that's talking!" cried the butler. "and now comes the second question," resumed utterson: "who is going to do it?" "why, you and me," was the undaunted reply. "that's very well said," returned the lawyer; "and whatever comes of it, i shall make it my business to see you are no loser." "there is an axe in the theatre, continued poole; "and you might take the kitchen poker for yourself." the lawyer took that rude but weighty instrument into his hand, and balanced it. "do you know, poole," he said, looking up, "that 60) you and i are about to place ourselves in a position of some peril?" "you may say so, sir, indeed," returned the butler. "it is well, then, that we should be frank," said the other. "we both think more than we have said; let us make a clean breast. this masked figure that you saw, did you recognise it?" "well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled up, that i could hardly swear to that," was the answer. "but if you mean, was it mr. hyde? -why, yes, i think it was! you see, it was much of the same bigness; and it had the same quick, light way with it; and then who else could have got in by the laboratory door? you have not forgot, sir that at the time of the murder he had still the key with him? but that's not all. i don't know, mr. utterson, if ever you met this mr. hyde?" "yes," said the lawyer, "i once spoke with him." "then you must know as well as the rest of us that there was something queer about that gentleman -something that gave a man a turn -i don't know rightly how to say it, sir, beyond this: that you felt it in your marrow kind of cold and thin." "i own i felt something of what you describe," said mr. utterson. "quite so, sir," returned poole. "well, when 61) that masked thing like a monkey jumped from among the chemicals and whipped into the cabinet, it went down my spine like ice. oh, i know it's not evidence, mr. utterson. i'm book-learned enough for that; but a man has his, feelings, and i give you my bible-word it was mr. hyde!" "ay, ay," said the lawyer. "my fears incline to the same point. evil, i fear, founded -evil was sure to come -of that connection. ay, truly, i believe you; i believe poor harry is killed; and i believe his murderer (for what purpose, god alone can tell) is still lurking in his victim's room. well, let our name be vengeance. call bradshaw." the footman came at the summons, very white and nervous. pull yourself together, bradshaw," said the lawyer. "this suspense, i know, is telling upon all of you; but it is now our intention to make an end of it. poole, here, and i are going to force our way into the cabinet. if all is well, my shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame. meanwhile, lest anything should really be amiss, or any malefactor seek to escape by the back, you and the boy must go round the corner with a pair of good sticks and take your post at the laboratory door. we give you ten minutes to get to your stations." as bradshaw left, the lawyer looked at his watch. "and now, poole, let us get to ours," 62) he said; and taking the poker under his arm, led the way into the yard. the scud had banked over the moon, and it was now quite dark. the wind, which only broke in puffs and draughts into that deep well of building, tossed the light of the candle to and fro about their steps, until they came into the shelter of the theatre, where they sat down silently to wait. london hummed solemnly all around; but nearer at hand, the stillness was only broken by the sounds of a footfall moving to and fro along the cabinet floor. "so it will walk all day, sir," whispered poole; "ay, and the better part of the night. only when a new sample comes from the chemist, there's a bit of a break. ah, it's an ill conscience that's such an enemy to rest! ah, sir, there's blood foully shed in every step of it! but hark again, a little closer -put your heart in your ears, mr. utterson, and tell me, is that the doctor's foot?" the steps fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing, for all they went so slowly; it was different indeed from the heavy creaking tread of henry jekyll. utterson sighed. "is there never anything else?" he asked. poole nodded. "once," he said. "once i heard it weeping!" "weeping? how that?" said the lawyer, conscious of a sudden chill of horror. "weeping like a woman or a lost soul," said 63) the butler. "i came away with that upon my heart, that i could have wept too." but now the ten minutes drew to an end. poole disinterred the axe from under a stack of packing straw; the candle was set upon the nearest table to light them to the attack; and they drew near with bated breath to where that patient foot was still going up and down, up and down, in the quiet of the night. "jekyll," cried utterson, with a loud voice, "i demand to see you." he paused a moment, but there came no reply. "i give you fair warning, our suspicions are aroused, and i must and shall see you," he resumed; "if not by fair means, then by foul! if not of your consent, then by brute force!" "utterson," said the voice, "for god's sake, have mercy!" ah, that's not jekyll's voice -it's hyde's!" cried utterson. "down with the door, poole!" poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shook the building, and the red baise door leaped against the lock and hinges. a dismal screech, as of mere animal terror, rang from the cabinet. up went the axe again, and again the panels crashed and the frame bounded; four times the blow fell; but the wood was tough and the fittings were of excellent workmanship; and it was not until the fifth, that the lock burst in sunder and the wreck of the door fell inwards on the carpet. 64) the besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the stillness that had succeeded, stood back a little and peered in. there lay the cabinet before their eyes in the quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing and chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain, a drawer or two open, papers neatly set forth on the business-table, and nearer the fire, the things laid out for tea: the quietest room, you would have said, and, but for the glased presses full of chemicals, the most commonplace that night in london. right in the midst there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and still twitching. they drew near on tiptoe, turned it on its back and beheld the face of edward hyde. he was dressed in clothes far too large for him, clothes of the doctor's bigness; the cords of his face still moved with a semblance of life, but life was quite gone; and by the crushed phial in the hand and the strong smell of kernels that hung upon the air, utterson knew that he was looking on the body of a self-destroyer. "we have come too late," he said sternly, "whether to save or punish. hyde is gone to his account; and it only remains for us to find the body of your master." the far greater proportion of the building was occupied by the theatre, which filled almost the whole ground story and was lighted from above, and by the cabinet, which formed an upper story at one end and looked upon the 65) court. a corridor joined the theatre to the door on the by-street; and with this the cabinet communicated separately by a second flight of stairs. there were besides a few dark closets and a spacious cellar. all these they now thoroughly examined. each closet needed but a glance, for all were empty, and all, by the dust that fell from their doors, had stood long unopened. the cellar, indeed, was filled with crazy lumber, mostly dating from the times of the surgeon who was jekyll's predecessor; but even as they opened the door they were advertised of the uselessness of further search, by the fall of a perfect mat of cobweb which had for years sealed up the entrance. nowhere was there any trace of henry jekyll, dead or alive. poole stamped on the flags of the corridor. " he must be buried here," he said, hearkening to the sound. "or he may have fled," said utterson, and he turned to examine the door in the by-street. it was locked; and lying near by on the flags, they found the key, already stained with rust. "this does not look like use," observed the lawyer. "use!" echoed poole. "do you not see, sir, it is broken? much as if a man had stamped on it." "ay," continued utterson," and the fractures, too, are rusty." the two men looked at each other with a scare. "this is beyond me, 66) poole," said the lawyer. "let us go back to the cabinet." they mounted the stair in silence, and still with an occasional awe-struck glance at the dead body, proceeded more thoroughly to examine the contents of the cabinet. at one table, there were traces of chemical work, various measured heaps of some white salt being laid on glass saucers, as though for an experiment in which the unhappy man had been prevented. "that is the same drug that i was always bringing him," said poole; and even as he spoke, the kettle with a startling noise boiled over. this brought them to the fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn cosily up, and the teathings stood ready to the sitter's elbow, the very sugar in the cup. there were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea-things open, and utterson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for which jekyll had several times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in his own hand, with startling blasphemies. next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the searchers came to the cheval glass, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary horror. but it was so turned as to show them nothing but the rosy glow playing on the roof, the fire sparkling in a hundred repetitions along the glazed front of the presses, and their own pale and fearful countenances stooping to look in. 67) "this glass have seen some strange things, sir," whispered poole. "and surely none stranger than itself," echoed the lawyer in the same tones. "for what did jekyll" -he caught himself up at the word with a start, and then conquering the weakness -"what could jekyll want with it?" he said. "you may say that!" said poole. next they turned to the business-table. on the desk among the neat array of papers, a large envelope was uppermost, and bore, in the doctor's hand, the name of mr. utterson. the lawyer unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor. the first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as the one which he had returned six months before, to serve as a testament in case of death and as a deed of gift in case of disappearance; but, in place of the name of edward hyde, the lawyer, with indescribable amazement, read the name of gabriel john utterson. he looked at poole, and then back at the paper, and last of all at the dead malefactor stretched upon the carpet. "my head goes round," he said. "he has been all these days in possession; he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to see himself displaced; and he has not destroyed this document." he caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor's hand and dated at the top. 68) "o poole!" the lawyer cried, "he was alive and here this day. he cannot have been disposed of in so short a space, he must be still alive, he must have fled! and then, why fled? and how? and in that case, can we venture to declare this suicide? oh, we must be careful. i foresee that we may yet involve your master in some dire catastrophe." "why don't you read it, sir?" asked poole. "because i fear," replied the lawyer solemnly. " god grant i have no cause for it!" and with that he brought the paper to his eyes and read as follows: "my dear utterson, -when this shall fall into your hands, i shall have disappeared, under what circumstances i have not the penetration to foresee, but my instinct and all the circumstances of my nameless situation tell me that the end is sure and must be early. go then, and first read the narrative which lanyon warned me he was to place in your hands; and if you care to hear more, turn to the confession of your unworthy and unhappy friend, henry jekyll." "there was a third enclosure?" asked utterson. "here, sir," said poole, and gave into his hands a considerable packet sealed in several places. 69) the lawyer put it in his pocket. "i would say nothing of this paper. if your master has fled or is dead, we may at least save his credit. it is now ten; i must go home and read these documents in quiet; but i shall be back before midnight, when we shall send for the police." they went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them; and utterson, once more leaving the servants gathered about the fire in the hall, trudged back to his office to read the two narratives in which this mystery was now to be explained. 70) dr. lanyon's narrative on the ninth of january, now four days ago, i received by the evening delivery a registered envelope, addressed in the hand of my colleague and old school-companion, henry jekyll. i was a good deal surprised by this; for we were by no means in the habit of correspondence; i had seen the man, dined with him, indeed, the night before; and i could imagine nothing in our intercourse that should justify formality of registration. the contents increased my wonder; for this is how the letter ran: "10th december, 18 -"dear lanyon, you are one of my oldest friends; and although we may have differed at times on scientific questions, i cannot remember, at least on my side, any break in our affection. there was never a day when, if you had said to me, 'jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason, depend upon you,' i would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you. lanyon, my life, my honour my reason, are all at your mercy; 71) if you fail me to-night i am lost. you might suppose, after this preface, that i am going to ask you for something dishonourable to grant. judge for yourself. "i want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night -ay, even if you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to take a cab, unless your carriage should be actually at the door; and with this letter in your hand for consultation, to drive straight to my house. poole, my butler, has his orders; you will find, him waiting your arrival with a locksmith. the door of my cabinet is then to be forced: and you are to go in alone; to open the glazed press (letter e) on the left hand, breaking the lock if it be shut; and to draw out, with all its contents as they stand, the fourth drawer from the top or (which is the same thing) the third from the bottom. in my extreme distress of wind, i have a morbid fear of misdirecting you; but even if i am in error, you may know the right drawer by its contents: some powders, a phial and a paper book. this drawer i beg of you to carry back with you to cavendish square exactly as it stands. "that is the first part of the service: now for the second. you should be back, if you set out at once on the receipt of this, long before midnight; but i will leave you that amount of margin, not only in the fear of one of those obstacles that can neither be prevented nor fore72) seen, but because an hour when your servants are in bed is to be preferred for what will then remain to do. at midnight, then, i have to ask you to be alone in your consulting-room, to admit with your own hand into the house a man who will present himself in my name, and to place in his hands the drawer that you will have brought with you from my cabinet. then you will have played your part and earned my gratitude completely. five minutes afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation, you will have understood that these arrangements are of capital importance; and that by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as they must appear, you might have charged your conscience with my death or the shipwreck of my reason. "confident as i am that you will not trifle with this appeal, my heart sinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a possibility. think of me at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware that, if you will but punctually serve me, my troubles will roll away like a story that is told. serve me, my dear lanyon, and save your friend, h. j." "p. s. i had already sealed this up when a fresh terror struck upon my soul. it is possible that the postoffice may fail me, and this letter 73) not come into your hands until to-morrow morning. in that case, dear lanyon, do my errand when it shall be most convenient for you in the course of the day; and once more expect my messenger at midnight. it may then already be too late; and if that night passes without event, you will know that you have seen the last of henry jekyll." upon the reading of this letter, i made sure my colleague was insane; but till that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt, i felt bound to do as he requested. the less i understood of this farrago, the less i was in a position to judge of its importance; and an appeal so worded could not be set aside without a grave responsibility. i rose accordingly from table, got into a hansom, and drove straight to jekyll's house. the butler was awaiting my arrival; he had received by the same post as mine a registered letter of instruction, and had sent at once for a locksmith and a carpenter. the tradesmen came while we were yet speaking; and we moved in a body to old dr. denman's surgical theatre, from which (as you are doubtless aware) jekyll's private cabinet is most conveniently entered. the door was very strong, the lock excellent; the carpenter avowed he would have great trouble and have to do much damage, if force were to be used; and the locksmith was near despair. but this last was a handy fellow, 74) and after two hours' work, the door stood open. the press marked e was unlocked; and i took out the drawer, had it filled up with straw and tied in a sheet, and returned with it to cavendish square. here i proceeded to examine its contents. the powders were neatly enough made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing chemist; so that it was plain they were of jekyll's private manufacture; and when i opened one of the wrappers i found what seemed to me a simple crystalline salt of a white colour. the phial, to which i next turned my attention, might have been about half-full of a blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. at the other ingredients i could make no guess. the book was an ordinary version-book and contained little but a series of dates. these covered a period of many years, but i observed that the entries ceased nearly a year ago and quite abruptly. here and there a brief remark was appended to a date, usually no more than a single word: "double" occurring perhaps six times in a total of several hundred entries; and once very early in the list and followed by several marks of exclamation, "total failure!!!" all this, though it whetted my curiosity, told me little that was definite. here were a phial of some tincture, a paper of some salt, and the record of a series of experi75) ments that had led (like too many of jekyll's investigations) to no end of practical usefulness. how could the presence of these articles in my house affect either the honour, the sanity, or the life of my flighty colleague? if his messenger could go to one place, why could he not go to another? and even granting some impediment, why was this gentleman to be received by me in secret? the more i reflected the more convinced i grew that i was dealing with a case of cerebral disease: and though i dismissed my servants to bed, i loaded an old revolver, that i might be found in some posture of self-defence. twelve o'clock had scarce rung out over london, ere the knocker sounded very gently on the door. i went myself at the summons, and found a small man crouching against the pillars of the portico. "are you come from dr. jekyll?" i asked. he told me "yes" by a constrained gesture; and when i had bidden him enter, he did not obey me without a searching backward glance into the darkness of the square. there was a policeman not far off, advancing with his bull's eye open; and at the sight, i thought my visitor started and made greater haste. these particulars struck me, i confess, disagreeably; and as i followed him into the bright light of the consulting-room, i kept my hand ready on my weapon. here, at last, i had a 76) chance of clearly seeing him. i had never set eyes on him before, so much was certain. he was small, as i have said; i was struck besides with the shocking expression of his face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility of constitution, and -last but not least -with the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. this bore some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked sinking of the pulse. at the time, i set it down to some idiosyncratic, personal distaste, and merely wondered at the acuteness of the symptoms; but i have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the principle of hatred. this person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struck in me what i can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable; his clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement -the trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar sprawling wide upon his shoulders. strange to relate, this ludicrous accoutrement was far from moving me to laughter. rather, as there was something abnormal and misbe77) gotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced me -something seizing, surprising, and revolting -this fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that to my interest in the man's nature and character, there was added a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the world. these observations, though they have taken so great a space to be set down in, were yet the work of a few seconds. my visitor was, indeed, on fire with sombre excitement. "have you got it?" he cried. "have you got it?" and so lively was his impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake me. i put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my blood. "come, sir," said i. "you forget that i have not yet the pleasure of your acquaintance. be seated, if you please." and i showed him an example, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness of the hour, the nature of my pre-occupations, and the horror i had of my visitor, would suffer me to muster. "i beg your pardon, dr. lanyon," he replied civilly enough. "what you say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown its heels to my politeness. i come here at the instance of your colleague, dr. henry jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and i under78) stood..." he paused and put his hand to his throat, and i could see, in spite of his collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria -"i understood, a drawer..." but here i took pity on my visitor's suspense, and some perhaps on my own growing curiosity. "there it is, sir," said i, pointing to the drawer, where it lay on the floor behind a table and still covered with the sheet. he sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart: i could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and his face was so ghastly to see that i grew alarmed both for his life and reason. "compose yourself," said i. he turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision of despair, plucked away the sheet. at sight of the contents, he uttered one loud sob of such immense relief that i sat petrified. and the next moment, in a voice that was already fairly well under control, "have you a graduated glass?" he asked. i rose from my place with something of an effort and gave him what he asked. he thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture and added one of the powders. the mixture, which was at first of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small 79) fumes of vapour. suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to a watery green. my visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a keen eye, smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me with an air of scrutiny. "and now," said he, "to settle what remains. will you be wise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. as you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of satan." "sir," said i, affecting a coolness that i was far from truly possessing," you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that i hear you with no very strong impression of belief. but i have gone too far in the way of inexplicable services to pause before i see the end." "it is well," replied my visitor. "lanyon, 80) you remember your vows: what follows is under the seal of our profession. and now, you who have so long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your superiors -behold!" he put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. a cry followed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as i looked there came, i thought, a change -he seemed to swell -his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter -and the next moment, i had sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arm raised to shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror. "o god!" i screamed, and "o god!" again and again; for there before my eyes -pale and shaken, and half-fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death -there stood henry jekyll! what he told me in the next hour, i cannot bring my mind to set on paper. i saw what i saw, i heard what i heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, i ask myself if i believe it, and i cannot answer. my life is shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day and night; i feel that my days are numbered, and that i 81) must die; and yet i shall die incredulous. as for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, i cannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror. i will say but one thing, utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more than enough. the creature who crept into my house that night was, on jekyll's own confession, known by the name of hyde and hunted for in every corner of the land as the murderer of carew. hastie lanyon. 82) henry jekyll's full statement of the case i was born in the year 18 -to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellow-men, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. and indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as i found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. hence it came about that i concealed my pleasures; and that when i reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, i stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life. many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as i was guilty of; but from the high views that i had set before me, i regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. it was thus rather the exacting 83) nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what i was and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature. in this case, i was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. though so profound a double-dealer, i was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; i was no more myself when i laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when i laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. and it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly toward the mystic and the transcendental, re-acted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my members. with every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, i thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery i have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. i say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and i hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous, and independent denizens. i, for my 84) part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. it was on the moral side, and in my own person, that i learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; i saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if i could rightly be said to be either, it was only because i was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a miracle, i had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved day-dream, on the thought of the separation of these elements. if each, i told myself, could but be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust delivered from the aspirations might go his way, and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil. it was the curse of mankind that these incongruous fagots were thus bound together that in the agonised womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. how, then, were they dissociated? i was so far in my reflections when, as i have said, a side-light began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. i began to perceive 85) more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling immateriality, the mist-like transience of this seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired. certain agents i found to have the power to shake and to pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion. for two good reasons, i will not enter deeply into this scientific branch of my confession. first, because i have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man's shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, my discoveries were incomplete. enough, then, that i not only recognised my natural body for the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted, none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and bore the stamp, of lower elements in my soul. i hesitated long before i put this theory to the test of practice. i knew well that i risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity, might by the least scruple of an overdose or at the least inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which i 86) looked to it to change. but the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound, at last overcame the suggestions of alarm. i had long since prepared my tincture; i purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particular salt which i knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, i compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion. the most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and i came to myself as if out of a great sickness. there was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. i felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within i was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill-race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. i knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. i stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these 87) sensations; and in the act, i was suddenly aware that i had lost in stature. there was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands beside me as i write, was brought there later on and for the very purpose of these transformations. the night, however, was far gone into the morning -the morning, black as it was, was nearly ripe for the conception of the day -the inmates of my house were locked in the most rigorous hours of slumber; and i determined, flushed as i was with hope and triumph, to venture in my new shape as far as to my bedroom. i crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me, i could have thought, with wonder, the first creature of that sort that their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; i stole through the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, i saw for the first time the appearance of edward hyde. i must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which i know, but that which i suppose to be most probable. the evil side of my nature, to which i had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust and less developed than the good which i had just deposed. again, in the course of my life, which had been, after all, nine-tenths a life of effort, virtue, and control, it had been much less exercised and much less exhausted. and hence, as i think, it came about that edward hyde was so much smaller, 88) slighter, and younger than henry jekyll. even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. evil besides (which i must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. and yet when i looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, i was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. this, too, was myself. it seemed natural and human. in my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance i had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. and in so far i was doubtless right. i have observed that when i wore the semblance of edward hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. this, as i take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and edward hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil. i lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusive experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen if i had lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before daylight from a house that was no longer mine; and hurrying back to my cabinet, i once more prepared and drank the cup, once more suffered the pangs of dissolution, and came to myself once more with the character, the stature, and the face of henry jekyll. 89) that night i had come to the fatal cross-roads. had i approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had i risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, i had come forth an angel instead of a fiend. the drug had no discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the prison-house of my disposition; and like the captives of philippi, that which stood within ran forth. at that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was edward hyde. hence, although i had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old henry jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement i had already learned to despair. the movement was thus wholly toward the worse. even at that time, i had not yet conquered my aversion to the dryness of a life of study. i would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and i was not only well known and highly considered, but growing toward the elderly man, this incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. it was on this side that my new power tempted me until i fell in slavery. i had but to drink the cup, to doff at once the body 90) of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of edward hyde. i smiled at the notion; it seemed to me at the time to be humorous; and i made my preparations with the most studious care. i took and furnished that house in soho, to which hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as housekeeper a creature whom i well knew to be silent and unscrupulous. on the other side, i announced to my servants that a mr. hyde (whom i described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square; and to parry mishaps, i even called and made myself a familiar object, in my second character. i next drew up that will to which you so much objected; so that if anything befell me in the person of dr. jekyll, i could enter on that of edward hyde without pecuniary loss. and thus fortified, as i supposed, on every side, i began to profit by the strange immunities of my position. men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. i was the first that ever did so for his pleasures. i was the first that could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. but for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. think of it -i did not even exist! let me but escape into my laboratory door, give me but a second or 91) two to mix and swallow the draught that i had always standing ready; and whatever he had done, edward hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead, quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be henry jekyll. the pleasures which i made haste to seek in my disguise were, as i have said, undignified; i would scarce use a harder term. but in the hands of edward hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. when i would come back from these excursions, i was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity. this familiar that i called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centred on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone. henry jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of edward hyde; but the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. it was hyde, after all, and hyde alone, that was guilty. jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by hyde. and thus his conscience slumbered. into the details of the infamy at which i thus 92) connived (for even now i can scarce grant that i committed it) i have no design of entering; i mean but to point out the warnings and the successive steps with which my chastisement approached. i met with one accident which, as it brought on no consequence, i shall no more than mention. an act of cruelty to a child aroused against me the anger of a passer-by, whom i recognised the other day in the person of your kinsman; the doctor and the child's family joined him; there were moments when i feared for my life; and at last, in order to pacify their too just resentment, edward hyde had to bring them to the door, and pay them in a cheque drawn in the name of henry jekyll. but this danger was easily eliminated from the future, by opening an account at another bank in the name of edward hyde himself; and when, by sloping my own hand backward, i had supplied my double with a signature, i thought i sat beyond the reach of fate. some two months before the murder of sir danvers, i had been out for one of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and woke the next day in bed with somewhat odd sensations. it was in vain i looked about me; in vain i saw the decent furniture and tall proportions of my room in the square; in vain that i recognised the pattern of the bed-curtains and the design of the mahogany frame; something still kept insisting that i was not where i was, 93) that i had not wakened where i seemed to be, but in the little room in soho where i was accustomed to sleep in the body of edward hyde. i smiled to myself, and, in my psychological way began lazily to inquire into the elements of this illusion, occasionally, even as i did so, dropping back into a comfortable morning doze. i was still so engaged when, in one of my more wakeful moments, my eyes fell upon my hand. now the hand of henry jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape and size: it was large, firm, white, and comely. but the hand which i now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-london morning, lying half shut on the bed-clothes, was lean, corded, knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. it was the hand of edward hyde. i must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as i was in the mere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my breast as sudden and startling as the crash of cymbals; and bounding from my bed, i rushed to the mirror. at the sight that met my eyes, my blood was changed into something exquisitely thin and icy. yes, i had gone to bed henry jekyll, i had awakened edward hyde. how was this to be explained? i asked myself, and then, with another bound of terror -how was it to be remedied? it was well on in the morning; the servants were up; all my drugs were in the 94) cabinet -a long journey down two pairs of stairs, through the back passage, across the open court and through the anatomical theatre, from where i was then standing horror-struck. it might indeed be possible to cover my face; but of what use was that, when i was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature? and then with an overpowering sweetness of relief, it came back upon my mind that the servants were already used to the coming and going of my second self. i had soon dressed, as well as i was able, in clothes of my own size: had soon passed through the house, where bradshaw stared and drew back at seeing mr. hyde at such an hour and in such a strange array; and ten minutes later, dr. jekyll had returned to his own shape and was sitting down, with a darkened brow, to make a feint of breakfasting. small indeed was my appetite. this inexplicable incident, this reversal of my previous experience, seemed, like the babylonian finger on the wall, to be spelling out the letters of my judgment; and i began to reflect more seriously than ever before on the issues and possibilities of my double existence. that part of me which i had the power of projecting, had lately been much exercised and nourished; it had seemed to me of late as though the body of edward hyde had grown in stature, as though (when i wore that form) i were conscious of a more generous tide of blood; and i began to spy a danger that, 95) if this were much prolonged, the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown, the power of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character of edward hyde become irrevocably mine. the power of the drug had not been always equally displayed. once, very early in my career, it had totally failed me; since then i had been obliged on more than one occasion to double, and once, with infinite risk of death, to treble the amount; and these rare uncertainties had cast hitherto the sole shadow on my contentment. now, however, and in the light of that morning's accident, i was led to remark that whereas, in the beginning, the difficulty had been to throw off the body of jekyll, it had of late gradually but decidedly transferred itself to the other side. all things therefore seemed to point to this: that i was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse. between these two, i now felt i had to choose. my two natures had memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between them. jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of hyde; but hyde was indifferent to jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuit. jekyll had more than a father's interest; hyde 96) had more than a son's indifference. to cast in my lot with jekyll, was to die to those appetites which i had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. to cast it in with hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and for ever, despised and friendless. the bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had lost. strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that i chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it. yes, i preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that i had enjoyed in the disguise of hyde. i made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for i neither gave up the house in soho, nor destroyed the clothes of edward hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet. for two months, however, i was true to my determination; for two months i led a life of such 97) severity as i had never before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an approving conscience. but time began at last to obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thing of course; i began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, i once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught. i do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had i, long as i had considered my position, made enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the leading characters of edward hyde. yet it was by these that i was punished. my devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. i was conscious, even when i took the draught, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensity to ill. it must have been this, i suppose, that stirred in my soul that tempest of impatience with which i listened to the civilities of my unhappy victim; i declare, at least, before god, no man morally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon so pitiful a provocation; and that i struck in no more reasonable spirit than that in which a sick child may break a plaything. but i had voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancing instincts 98) by which even the worst of us continues to walk with some degree of steadiness among temptations; and in my case, to be tempted, however slightly, was to fall. instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. with a transport of glee, i mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun to succeed, that i was suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium, struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror. a mist dispersed; i saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the scene of these excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust of evil gratified and stimulated, my love of life screwed to the topmost peg. i ran to the house in soho, and (to make assurance doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence i set out through the lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on my crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet still hastening and still hearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger. hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead man. the pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before henry jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to god. the veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot, i saw my life as a whole: i followed it up from the days of childhood, when i had walked 99) with my father's hand, and through the self-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. i could have screamed aloud; i sought with tears and prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory swarmed against me; and still, between the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul. as the acuteness of this remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy. the problem of my conduct was solved. hyde was thenceforth impossible; whether i would or not, i was now confined to the better part of my existence; and oh, how i rejoiced to think it! with what willing humility, i embraced anew the restrictions of natural life! with what sincere renunciation, i locked the door by which i had so often gone and come, and ground the key under my heel! the next day, came the news that the murder had been overlooked, that the guilt of hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim was a man high in public estimation. it was not only a crime, it had been a tragic folly. i think i was glad to know it; i think i was glad to have my better impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the scaffold. jekyll was now my city of refuge; let but hyde peep out an instant, and the hands of all men would be raised to take and slay him. 100) i resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and i can say with honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. you know yourself how earnestly in the last months of last year, i laboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the days passed quietly, almost happily for myself. nor can i truly say that i wearied of this beneficent and innocent life; i think instead that i daily enjoyed it more completely; but i was still cursed with my duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl for licence. not that i dreamed of resuscitating hyde; the bare idea of that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person, that i was once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was as an ordinary secret sinner, that i at last fell before the assaults of temptation. there comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul. and yet i was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before i had made discovery. it was a fine, clear, january day, wet under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the regent's park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with spring odours. i sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the 101) chops of memory; the spiritual side a little, drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. after all, i reflected, i was like my neighbours; and then i smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. and at the very moment of that vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. these passed away, and left me faint; and then as in its turn the faintness subsided, i began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation. i looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. i was once more edward hyde. a moment before i had been safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved -the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now i was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows. my reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. i have more than once observed that, in my second character, my faculties seemed sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came about that, where jekyll perhaps might have succumbed, hyde rose to the importance of the moment. my drugs were in one of the presses of my cabinet; how was i 102) to reach them? that was the problem that (crushing my temples in my hands) i set myself to solve. the laboratory door i had closed. if i sought to enter by the house, my own servants would consign me to the gallows. i saw i must employ another hand, and thought of lanyon. how was he to be reached? how persuaded? supposing that i escaped capture in the streets, how was i to make my way into his presence? and how should i, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague, dr. jekyll? then i remembered that of my original character, one part remained to me: i could write my own hand; and once i had conceived that kindling spark, the way that i must follow became lighted up from end to end. thereupon, i arranged my clothes as best i could, and summoning a passing hansom, drove to an hotel in portland street, the name of which i chanced to remember. at my appearance (which was indeed comical enough, however tragic a fate these garments covered) the driver could not conceal his mirth. i gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury; and the smile withered from his face -happily for him -yet more happily for myself, for in another instant i had certainly dragged him from his perch. at the inn, as i entered, i looked about me with so black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a look did they exchange in my 103) presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led me to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. hyde in danger of his life was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinate anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. yet the creature was astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the will; composed his two important letters, one to lanyon and one to poole; and that he might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent them out with directions that they should be registered. thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears, the waiter visibly quailing before his eye; and thence, when the night was fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of the city. he, i say -i cannot say, i. that child of hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. and when at last, thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he discharged the cab and ventured on foot, attired in his misfitting clothes, an object marked out for observation, into the midst of the nocturnal passengers, these two base passions raged within him like a tempest. he walked fast, hunted by his fears, chattering to himself, skulking through the less-frequented thoroughfares, counting the minutes that still divided him from midnight. once a 104) woman spoke to him, offering, i think, a box of lights. he smote her in the face, and she fled. when i came to myself at lanyon's, the horror of my old friend perhaps affected me somewhat: i do not know; it was at least but a drop in the sea to the abhorrence with which i looked back upon these hours. a change had come over me. it was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being hyde that racked me. i received lanyon's condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that i came home to my own house and got into bed. i slept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. i awoke in the morning shaken, weakened, but refreshed. i still hated and feared the thought of the brute that slept within me, and i had not of course forgotten the appalling dangers of the day before; but i was once more at home, in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape shone so strong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of hope. i was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast, drinking the chill of the air with pleasure, when i was seized again with those indescribable sensations that heralded the change; and i had but the time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before i was once again raging and freezing with the passions of hyde. it took on this occasion a double dose to recall me to 105) myself; and alas! six hours after, as i sat looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be re-administered. in short, from that day forth it seemed only by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation of the drug, that i was able to wear the countenance of jekyll. at all hours of the day and night, i would be taken with the premonitory shudder; above all, if i slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair, it was always as hyde that i awakened. under the strain of this continually-impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which i now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what i had thought possible to man, i became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self. but when i slept, or when the virtue of the medicine wore off, i would leap almost without transition (for the pangs of transformation grew daily less marked) into the possession of a fancy brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging energies of life. the powers of hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of jekyll. and certainly the hate that now divided them was equal on each side. with jekyll, it was a thing of vital instinct. he had now seen the full deformity of that creature that shared with him some of the phenomena of 106) consciousness, and was co-heir with him to death: and beyond these links of community, which in themselves made the most poignant part of his distress, he thought of hyde, for all his energy of life, as of something not only hellish but inorganic. this was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. and this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him and deposed him out of life. the hatred of hyde for jekyll, was of a different order. his tenor of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded. hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin. but his love of life is wonderful; i go further: i, who sicken 107) and freeze at the mere thought of him, when i recall the abjection and passion of this attachment, and when i know how he fears my power to cut him off by suicide, i find it in my heart to pity him. it is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this description; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice; and yet even to these, habit brought -no, not alleviation -but a certain callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of despair; and my punishment might have gone on for years, but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and which has finally severed me from my own face and nature. my provision of the salt, which had never been renewed since the date of the first experiment, began to run low. i sent out for a fresh supply, and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and the first change of colour, not the second; i drank it and it was without efficiency. you will learn from poole how i have had london ransacked; it was in vain; and i am now persuaded that my first supply was impure, and that it was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draught. about a week has passed, and i am now finishing this statement under the influence of the last of the old powders. this, then, is the last time, short of a miracle, that henry jekyll can think his own thoughts or see his own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass. nor must i delay 108) too long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative has hitherto escaped destruction, it has been by a combination of great prudence and great good luck. should the throes of change take me in the act of writing it, hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some time shall have elapsed after i have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness and circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from the action of his ape-like spite. and indeed the doom that is closing on us both, has already changed and crushed him. half an hour from now, when i shall again and for ever re-indue that hated personality, i know how i shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most strained and fear-struck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of menace. will hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to release himself at the last moment? god knows; i am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. here then, as i lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, i bring the life of that unhappy henry jekyll to an end. end. 1850 the island of the fay by edgar allan poe nullus enim locus sine genio est. servius "la musique," says marmontel, in those "contes moraux"* which in all our translations, we have insisted upon calling "moral tales," as if in mockery of their spirit"la musique est le seul des talents qui jouissent de lui-meme; tous les autres veulent des temoins." he here confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacity for creating them. no more than any other talent, is that for music susceptible of complete enjoyment, where there is no second party to appreciate its exercise. and it is only in common with other talents that it produces effects which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. the idea which the raconteur has either failed to entertain clearly, or has sacrificed in its expression to his national love of point, is, doubtless, the very tenable one that the higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone. the proposition, in this form, will be admitted at once by those who love the lyre for its own sake, and for its spiritual uses. but there is one pleasure still within the reach of fallen mortality and perhaps only onewhich owes even more than does music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. i mean the happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. in truth, the man who would behold aright the glory of god upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. to me, at least, the presencenot of human life only, but of life in any other form than that of the green things which grow upon the soil and are voicelessis a stain upon the landscapeis at war with the genius of the scene. i love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the gray rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all,i love to regard these as themselves but the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient wholea whole whose form (that of the sphere) is the most perfect and most inclusive of all; whose path is among associate planets; whose meek handmaiden is the moon, whose mediate sovereign is the sun; whose life is eternity, whose thought is that of a god; whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are lost in immensity, whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own cognizance of the animalculae which infest the braina being which we, in consequence, regard as purely inanimate and material much in the same manner as these animalculae must thus regard us. * moraux is here derived from moeurs, and its meaning is "fashionable" or more strictly "of manners." our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every handnotwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the priesthoodthat space, and therefore that bulk, is an important consideration in the eyes of the almighty. the cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted for the evolution, without collision, of the greatest possible number of bodies. the forms of those bodies are accurately such as, within a given surface, to include the greatest possible amount of matter;while the surfaces themselves are so disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. nor is it any argument against bulk being an object with god, that space itself is infinite; for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it. and since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with vitality is a principleindeed, as far as our judgments extend, the leading principle in the operations of deity,it is scarcely logical to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute, where we daily trace it, and not extending to those of the august. as we find cycle within cycle without end,yet all revolving around one far-distant centre which is the god-head, may we not analogically suppose in the same manner, life within life, the less within the greater, and all within the spirit divine? in short, we are madly erring, through self-esteem, in believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the universe than that vast "clod of the valley" which he tills and contemns, and to which he denies a soul for no more profound reason than that he does not behold it in operation.* * speaking of the tides, pomponius mela, in his treatise "de situ orbis," says "either the world is a great animal, or" etc. these fancies, and such as these, have always given to my meditations among the mountains and the forests, by the rivers and the ocean, a tinge of what the everyday world would not fail to term fantastic. my wanderings amid such scenes have been many, and far-searching, and often solitary; and the interest with which i have strayed through many a dim, deep valley, or gazed into the reflected heaven of many a bright lake, has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought that i have strayed and gazed alone. what flippant frenchman was it who said in allusion to the well-known work of zimmerman, that, "la solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu'un pour vous dire que la solitude est une belle chose?" the epigram cannot be gainsayed; but the necessity is a thing that does not exist. it was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant region of mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarn writhing or sleeping within allthat i chanced upon a certain rivulet and island. i came upon them suddenly in the leafy june, and threw myself upon the turf, beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that i might doze as i contemplated the scene. i felt that thus only should i look upon itsuch was the character of phantasm which it wore. on all sidessave to the west, where the sun was about sinkingarose the verdant walls of the forest. the little river which turned sharply in its course, and was thus immediately lost to sight, seemed to have no exit from its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the eastwhile in the opposite quarter (so it appeared to me as i lay at length and glanced upward) there poured down noiselessly and continuously into the valley, a rich golden and crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains of the sky. about midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the stream. so blended bank and shadow there that each seemed pendulous in airso mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began. my position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and western extremities of the islet; and i observed a singularly-marked difference in their aspects. the latter was all one radiant harem of garden beauties. it glowed and blushed beneath the eyes of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. the grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and asphodel-interspersed. the trees were lithe, mirthful, erectbright, slender, and graceful,of eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. there seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the heavens, yet every thing had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings.* * florem putares nare per liquidum aethera.p. commire. the other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade. a sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded all things. the trees were dark in color, and mournful in form and attitude, wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death. the grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect of graves, but were not; although over and all about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. the shade of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. i fancied that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream; while other shadows issued momently from the trees, taking the place of their predecessors thus entombed. this idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and i lost myself forthwith in revery. "if ever island were enchanted," said i to myself, "this is it. this is the haunt of the few gentle fays who remain from the wreck of the race. are these green tombs theirs?or do they yield up their sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? in dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully, rendering unto god, little by little, their existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance unto dissolution? what the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not the life of the fay be to the death which engulfs it?" as i thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to rest, and eddying currents careered round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of the bark of the sycamore-flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, a quick imagination might have converted into any thing it pleased, while i thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very fays about whom i had been pondering made its way slowly into the darkness from out the light at the western end of the island. she stood erect in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of an oar. while within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joybut sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of light. "the revolution which has just been made by the fay," continued i, musingly, "is the cycle of the brief year of her life. she has floated through her winter and through her summer. she is a year nearer unto death; for i did not fail to see that, as she came into the shade, her shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the dark water, making its blackness more black." and again the boat appeared and the fay, but about the attitude of the latter there was more of care and uncertainty and less of elastic joy. she floated again from out the light and into the gloom (which deepened momently) and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water, and became absorbed into its blackness. and again and again she made the circuit of the island, (while the sun rushed down to his slumbers), and at each issuing into the light there was more sorrow about her person, while it grew feebler and far fainter and more indistinct, and at each passage into the gloom there fell from her a darker shade, which became whelmed in a shadow more black. but at length when the sun had utterly departed, the fay, now the mere ghost of her former self, went disconsolately with her boat into the region of the ebony flood, and that she issued thence at all i cannot say, for darkness fell over an things and i beheld her magical figure no more. the end . the project gutenberg etext of driven from home by horatio alger #6 in our series by horatio alger copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. driven from home by horatio alger may, 1996 [etext #530] the project gutenberg etext of driven from home by horatio alger *****this file should be named drvhm10.txt or drvhm10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, drvhm11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, drvhm10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* scanned by charles keller with omnipage professional ocr software donated by caere corporation, 1-800-535-7226. contact mike lough <mikel@caere.com> driven from home or carl crawford's experience by horatio alger, jr. author of "erie train boy," "young acrobat," "only an irish boy," "bound to rise," "the young outlaw," "hector's inheritance," etc. driven from home. chapter i driven from home. a boy of sixteen, with a small gripsack in his hand, trudged along the country road. he was of good height for his age, strongly built, and had a frank, attractive face. he was naturally of a cheerful temperament, but at present his face was grave, and not without a shade of anxiety. this can hardly be a matter of surprise when we consider that he was thrown upon his own resources, and that his available capital consisted of thirty-seven cents in money, in addition to a good education and a rather unusual amount of physical strength. these last two items were certainly valuable, but they cannot always be exchanged for the necessaries and comforts of life. for some time his steps had been lagging, and from time to time he had to wipe the moisture from his brow with a fine linen handkerchief, which latter seemed hardly compatible with his almost destitute condition. i hasten to introduce my hero, for such he is to be, as carl crawford, son of dr. paul crawford, of edgewood center. why he had set out to conquer fortune single-handed will soon appear. a few rods ahead carl's attention was drawn to a wide-spreading oak tree, with a carpet of verdure under its sturdy boughs. "i will rest here for a little while," he said to himself, and suiting the action to the word, threw down his gripsack and flung himself on the turf. "this is refreshing," he murmured, as, lying upon his back, he looked up through the leafy rifts to the sky above. "i don't know when i have ever been so tired. it's no joke walking a dozen miles under a hot sun, with a heavy gripsack in your hand. it's a good introduction to a life of labor, which i have reason to believe is before me. i wonder how i am coming out--at the big or the little end of the horn?" he paused, and his face grew grave, for he understood well that for him life had become a serious matter. in his absorption he did not observe the rapid approach of a boy somewhat younger than himself, mounted on a bicycle. the boy stopped short in surprise, and leaped from his iron steed. "why, carl crawford, is this you? where in the world are you going with that gripsack?" carl looked up quickly. "going to seek my fortune," he answered, soberly. "well, i hope you'll find it. don't chaff, though, but tell the honest truth." "i have told you the truth, gilbert." with a puzzled look, gilbert, first leaning his bicycle against the tree, seated himself on the ground by carl's side. "has your father lost his property?" he asked, abruptly. "no." "has he disinherited you?" "not exactly." "have you left home for good?" "i have left home--i hope for good." "have you quarreled with the governor?" "i hardly know what to say to that. there is a difference between us." "he doesn't seem like a roman father--one who rules his family with a rod of iron." "no; he is quite the reverse. he hasn't backbone enough." "so it seemed to me when i saw him at the exhibition of the academy. you ought to be able to get along with a father like that, carl." "so i could but for one thing." "what is that?" "i have a stepmother!" said carl, with a significant glance at his companion. "so have i, but she is the soul of kindness, and makes our home the dearest place in the world." "are there such stepmothers? i shouldn't have judged so from my own experience." "i think i love her as much as if she were my own mother." "you are lucky," said carl, sighing. "tell me about yours." "she was married to my father five years ago. up to the time of her marriage i thought her amiable and sweet-tempered. but soon after the wedding she threw off the mask, and made it clear that she disliked me. one reason is that she has a son of her own about my age, a mean, sneaking fellow, who is the apple of her eye. she has been jealous of me, and tried to supplant me in the affection of my father, wishing peter to be the favored son." "how has she succeeded?" "i don't think my father feels any love for peter, but through my stepmother's influence he generally fares better than i do." "why wasn't he sent to school with you?" "because he is lazy and doesn't like study. besides, his mother prefers to have him at home. during my absence she worked upon my father, by telling all sorts of malicious stories about me, till he became estranged from me, and little by little peter has usurped my place as the favorite." "why didn't you deny the stories?" asked gilbert. "i did, but no credit was given to my denials. my stepmother was continually poisoning my father's mind against me." "did you give her cause? did you behave disrespectfully to her?" "no," answered carl, warmly. "i was prepared to give her a warm welcome, and treat her as a friend, but my advances were so coldly received that my heart was chilled." "poor carl! how long has this been so?" "from the beginning--ever since mrs. crawford came into the house." "what are your relations with your stepbrother--what's his name?" "peter cook. i despise the boy, for he is mean, and tyrannical where he dares to be." "i don't think it would be safe for him to bully you, carl." "he tried it, and got a good thrashing. you can imagine what followed. he ran, crying to his mother, and his version of the story was believed. i was confined to my room for a week, and forced to live on bread and water." "i shouldn't think your father was a man to inflict such a punishment." "it wasn't he--it was my stepmother. she insisted upon it, and he yielded. i heard afterwards from one of the servants that he wanted me released at the end of twenty-four hours, but she would not consent." "how long ago was this?" "it happened when i was twelve." "was it ever repeated?" "yes, a month later; but the punishment lasted only for two days." "and you submitted to it?" "i had to, but as soon as i was released i gave peter such a flogging, with the promise to repeat it, if i was ever punished in that manner again, that the boy himself was panicstricken, and objected to my being imprisoned again." "he must be a charming fellow!" "you would think so if you should see him. he has small, insignificant features, a turnup nose, and an ugly scowl that appears whenever he is out of humor." "and yet your father likes him?" "i don't think he does, though peter, by his mother's orders, pays all sorts of small attentions-bringing him his slippers, running on errands, and so on, not because he likes it, but because he wants to supplant me, as he has succeeded in doing." "you have finally broken away, then?" "yes; i couldn't stand it any longer. home had become intolerable." "pardon the question, but hasn't your father got considerable property?" "i have every reason to think so." "won't your leaving home give your stepmother and peter the inside track, and lead, perhaps, to your disinheritance?" "i suppose so," answered carl, wearily; "but no matter what happens, i can't bear to stay at home any longer." "you're badly fixed--that's a fact!" said gilbert, in a tone of sympathy. "what are your plans?" "i don't know. i haven't had time to think." chapter ii. a friend worth having. gilbert wrinkled up his forehead and set about trying to form some plans for carl. "it will be hard for you to support yourself," he said, after a pause; "that is, without help." "there is no one to help me. i expect no help." "i thought your father might be induced to give you an allowance, so that with what you can earn, you may get along comfortably." "i think father would be willing to do this, but my stepmother would prevent him." "then she has a great deal of influence over him?" "yes, she can twist him round her little finger." "i can't understand it." "you see, father is an invalid, and is very nervous. if he were in perfect health he would have more force of character and firmness. he is under the impression that he has heart disease, and it makes him timid and vacillating." "still he ought to do something for you." "i suppose he ought. still, gilbert, i think i can earn my living." "what can you do?" "well, i have a fair education. i could be an entry clerk, or a salesman in some store, or, if the worst came to the worst, i could work on a farm. i believe farmers give boys who work for them their board and clothes." "i don't think the clothes would suit you." "i am pretty well supplied with clothing." gilbert looked significantly at the gripsack. "do you carry it all in there?" he asked, doubtfully. carl laughed. "well, no," he answered. "i have a trunkful of clothes at home, though." "why didn't you bring them with you?" "i would if i were an elephant. being only a boy, i would find it burdensome carrying a trunk with me. the gripsack is all i can very well manage." "i tell you what," said gilbert. "come round to our house and stay overnight. we live only a mile from here, you know. the folks will be glad to see you, and while you are there i will go to your house, see the governor, and arrange for an allowance for you that will make you comparatively independent." "thank you, gilbert; but i don't feel like asking favors from those who have ill-treated me." "nor would i--of strangers; but dr. crawford is your father. it isn't right that peter, your stepbrother, should be supported in ease and luxury, while you, the real son, should be subjected to privation and want." "i don't know but you are right," admitted carl, slowly. "of course i am right. now, will you make me your minister plenipotentiary, armed with full powers?" "yes, i believe i will." "that's right. that shows you are a boy of sense. now, as you are subject to my directions, just get on that bicycle and i will carry your gripsack, and we will seek vance villa, as we call it when we want to be hightoned, by the most direct route." "no, no, gilbert; i will carry my own gripsack. i won't burden you with it," said carl, rising from his recumbent position. "look here, carl, how far have you walked with it this morning?" "about twelve miles." "then, of course, you're tired, and require rest. just jump on that bicycle, and i'll take the gripsack. if you have carried it twelve miles, i can surely carry it one." "you are very kind, gilbert." "why shouldn't i be?" "but it is imposing up on your good nature." but gilbert had turned his head in a backward direction, and nodded in a satisfied way as he saw a light, open buggy rapidly approaching. "there's my sister in that carriage," he said. "she comes in good time. i will put you and your gripsack in with her, and i'll take to my bicycle again." "your sister may not like such an arrangement." "won't she though! she's very fond of beaux, and she will receive you very graciously." "you make me feel bashful, gilbert." "you won't be long. julia will chat away to you as if she'd known you for fifty years." "i was very young fifty years ago," said carl, smiling. "hi, there, jule!" called gilbert, waving his hand. julia vance stopped the horse, and looked inquiringly and rather admiringly at carl, who was a boy of fine appearance. "let me introduce you to my friend and schoolmate, carl crawford." carl took off his hat politely. "i am very glad to make your acquaintance, mr. crawford," said julia, demurely; "i have often heard gilbert speak of you." "i hope he said nothing bad about me, miss vance." "you may be sure he didn't. if he should now-i wouldn't believe him." "you've made a favorable impression, carl," said gilbert, smiling. "i am naturally prejudiced against boys-having such a brother," said julia; "but it is not fair to judge all boys by him." "that is outrageous injustice!" said gilbert; "but then, sisters seldom appreciate their brothers." "some other fellows' sisters may," said carl. "they do, they do!" "did you ever see such a vain, conceited boy, mr. crawford?" "of course you know him better than i do." "come, carl; it's too bad for you, too, to join against me. however, i will forget and forgive. jule, my friend, carl, has accepted my invitation to make us a visit." "i am very glad, i am sure," said julia, sincerely. "and i want you to take him in, bag and baggage, and convey him to our palace, while i speed thither on my wheel." "to be sure i will, and with great pleasure." "can't you get out and assist him into the carriage, jule?" "thank you," said carl; "but though i am somewhat old and quite infirm, i think i can get in without troubling your sister. are you sure, miss vance, you won't be incommoded by my gripsack?" "not at all." "then i will accept your kind offer." in a trice carl was seated next to julia, with his valise at his feet. "won't you drive, mr. crawford?" said the young lady. "don't let me take the reins from you." "i don't think it looks well for a lady to drive when a gentleman is sitting beside her." carl was glad to take the reins, for he liked driving. "now for a race!" said gilbert, who was mounted on his bicycle. "all right!" replied carl. "look out for us!" they started, and the two kept neck and neck till they entered the driveway leading up to a handsome country mansion. carl followed them into the house, and was cordially received by mr. and mrs. vance, who were very kind and hospitable, and were favorably impressed by the gentlemanly appearance of their son's friend. half an hour later dinner was announced, and carl, having removed the stains of travel in his schoolmate's room, descended to the diningroom, and, it must be confessed, did ample justice to the bounteous repast spread before him. in the afternoon julia, gilbert and he played tennis, and had a trial at archery. the hours glided away very rapidly, and six o'clock came before they were aware. "gilbert," said carl, as they were preparing for tea, "you have a charming home." "you have a nice house, too, carl." "true; but it isn't a home--to me. there is no love there." "that makes a great difference." "if i had a father and mother like yours i should be happy." "you must stay here till day after tomorrow, and i will devote to-morrow to a visit in your interest to your home. i will beard the lion in his den--that is, your stepmother. do you consent?" "yes, i consent; but it won't do any good." "we will see." chapter iii. introduces peter cook. gilbert took the morning train to the town of edgewood center, the residence of the crawfords. he had been there before, and knew that carl's home was nearly a mile distant from the station. though there was a hack in waiting, he preferred to walk, as it would give him a chance to think over what he proposed to say to dr. crawford in carl's behalf. he was within a quarter of a mile of his destination when his attention was drawn to a boy of about his own age, who was amusing himself and a smaller companion by firing stones at a cat that had taken refuge in a tree. just as gilbert came up, a stone took effect, and the poor cat moaned in affright, but did not dare to come down from her perch, as this would put her in the power of her assailant. "that must be carl's stepbrother, peter," gilbert decided, as he noted the boy's mean face and turn-up nose. "stoning cats seems to be his idea of amusement. i shall take the liberty of interfering." peter cook laughed heartily at his successful aim. "i hit her, simon," he said. "doesn't she look seared?" "you must have hurt her." "i expect i did. i'll take a bigger stone next time." he suited the action to the word, and picked up a rock which, should it hit the poor cat, would in all probability kill her, and prepared to fire. "put down that rock!" said gilbert, indignantly. peter turned quickly, and eyed gilbert insolently. "who are you?" he demanded. "no matter who i am. put down that rock!" "what business is it of yours?" "i shall make it my business to protect that cat from your cruelty." peter, who was a natural coward, took courage from having a companion to back him up, and retorted: "you'd better clear out of here, or i may fire at you." "do it if you dare!" said gilbert, quietly. peter concluded that it would be wiser not to carry out his threat, but was resolved to keep to his original purpose. he raised his arm again, and took aim; but gilbert rushed in, and striking his arm forcibly, compelled him to drop it. "what do you mean by that, you loafer?" demanded peter, his eyes blazing with anger. "to stop your fun, if that's what you call it." "i've a good mind to give you a thrashing." gilbert put himself in a position of defense. "sail in, if you want to!" he responded. "help me, simon!" said peter. "you grab his legs, and i'll upset him." simon, who, though younger, was braver than peter, without hesitation followed directions. he threw himself on the ground and grasped gilbert by the legs, while peter, doubling up his fists, made a rush at his enemy. but gilbert, swiftly eluding simon, struck out with his right arm, and peter, unprepared for so forcible a defense, tumbled over on his back, and simon ran to his assistance. gilbert put himself on guard, expecting a second attack; but peter apparently thought it wiser to fight with his tongue. "you rascal!" he shrieked, almost foaming at the mouth; "i'll have you arrested." "what for?" asked gilbert, coolly. "for flying at me like a--a tiger, and trying to kill me." gilbert laughed at this curious version of things. "i thought it was you who flew at me," he said. "what business had you to interfere with me?" "i'll do it again unless you give up firing stones at the cat." "i'll do it as long as i like." "she's gone!" said simon. the boys looked up into the tree, and could see nothing of puss. she had taken the opportunity, when her assailant was otherwise occupied, to make good her escape. "i'm glad of it!" said gilbert. "goodmorning, boys! when we meet again, i hope you will be more creditably employed." "you don't get off so easy, you loafer," said peter, who saw the village constable approaching. "here, mr. rogers, i want you to arrest this boy." constable rogers, who was a stout, broadshouldered man, nearly six feet in height, turned from one to the other, and asked: "what has he done?" "he knocked me over. i want him arrested for assault and battery." "and what did you do?" "i? i didn't do anything." "that is rather strange. young man, what is your name?" "gilbert vance." "you don't live in this town?" "no; i live in warren." "what made you attack peter?" "because he flew at me, and i had to defend myself." "is this so, simon? you saw all that happened." "ye--es," admitted simon, unwillingly. "that puts a different face on the matter. i don't see how i can arrest this boy. he had a right to defend himself." "he came up and abused me--the loafer," said peter. "that was the reason you went at him?" "yes." "have you anything to say?" asked the constable, addressing gilbert. "yes, sir; when i came up i saw this boy firing stones at a cat, who had taken refuge in that tree over there. he had just hit her, and had picked up a larger stone to fire when i ordered him to drop it." "it was no business of yours," muttered peter. "i made it my business, and will again." "did the cat have a white spot on her forehead?" asked the constable. "yes, sir." "and was mouse colored?" "yes, sir." "why, it's my little girl's cat. she would be heartbroken if the cat were seriously hurt. you young rascal!" he continued, turning suddenly upon peter, and shaking him vigorously. "let me catch you at this business again, and i'll give you such a warming that you'll never want to touch another cat." "let me go!" cried the terrified boy. "i didn't know it was your cat." "it would have been just as bad if it had been somebody else's cat. i ve a great mind to put you in the lockup." "oh, don't, please don't, mr. rogers!" implored peter, quite panic-stricken. "will you promise never to stone another cat?" "yes, sir." "then go about your business." peter lost no time, but scuttled up the street with his companion. "i am much obliged to you for protecting flora's cat," then said the constable to gilbert. "you are quite welcome, sir. i won't see any animal abused if i can help it." "you are right there." "wasn't that boy peter cook?" "yes. don't you know him?" "no; but i know his stepbrother, carl." "a different sort of boy! have you come to visit him?" "no; he is visiting me. in fact, he has left home, because he could not stand his stepmother's ill-treatment, and i have come to see his father in his behalf." "he has had an uncomfortable home. dr. crawford is an invalid, and very much under the influence of his wife, who seems to have a spite against carl, and is devoted to that young cub to whom you have given a lesson. does carl want to come back?" "no; he wants to strike out for himself, but i told him it was no more than right that he should receive some help from his father." "that is true enough. for nearly all the doctor's money came to him through carl's mother." "i am afraid peter and his mother won't give me a very cordial welcome after what has happened this morning. i wish i could see the doctor alone." "so you can, for there he is coming up the street." gilbert looked in the direction indicated, and his glance fell on a thin, fragile-looking man, evidently an invalid, with a weak, undecided face, who was slowly approaching. the boy advanced to meet him, and, taking off his hat, asked politely: "is this dr. crawford?" chapter iv. an important conference. dr. crawford stopped short, and eyed gilbert attentively. "i don't know you," he said, in a querulous tone. "i am a schoolmate of your son, carl. my name is gilbert vance." "if you have come to see my son you will be disappointed. he has treated me in a shameful manner. he left home yesterday morning, and i don't know where he is." "i can tell you, sir. he is staying--for a day or two--at my father's house." "where is that?" asked dr. crawford, his manner showing that he was confused. "in warren, thirteen miles from here." "i know the town. what induced him to go to your house? have you encouraged him to leave home?" inquired dr. crawford, with a look of displeasure. "no, sir. it was only by chance that i met him a mile from our home. i induced him to stay overnight." "did you bring me any message from him?" "no, sir, except that he is going to strike out for himself, as he thinks his home an unhappy one." "that is his own fault. he has had enough to eat and enough to wear. he has had as comfortable a home as yourself." "i don't doubt that, but he complains that his stepmother is continually finding fault with him, and scolding him." "he provokes her to do it. he is a headstrong, obstinate boy." "he never had that reputation at school, sir. we all liked him." "i suppose you mean to imply that i am in fault?" said the doctor, warmly. "i don't think you know how badly mrs. crawford treats carl, sir." "of course, of course. that is always said of a stepmother." "not always, sir. i have a stepmother myself, and no own mother could treat me better." "you are probably a better boy." "i can't accept the compliment. i hope you'll excuse me saying it, dr. crawford, but if my stepmother treated me as carl says mrs. crawford treats him i wouldn't stay in the house another day." "really, this is very annoying," said dr. crawford, irritably. "have you come here from warren to say this?" "no, sir, not entirely." "perhaps carl wants me to receive him back. i will do so if he promises to obey his stepmother." "that he won't do, i am sure." "then what is the object of your visit?" "to say that carl wants and intends to earn his own living. but it is hard for a boy of his age, who has never worked, to earn enough at first to pay for his board and clothes. he asks, or, rather, i ask for him, that you will allow him a small sum, say three or four dollars a week, which is considerably less than he must cost you at home, for a time until he gets on his feet." "i don't know," said dr. crawford, in a vacillating tone. "i don't think mrs. crawford would approve this." "it seems to me you are the one to decide, as carl is your own son. peter must cost you a good deal more." "do you know peter?" "i have met him," answered gilbert, with a slight smile. "i don't know what to say. you may be right. peter does cost me more." "and carl is entitled to be treated as well as he." "i think i ought to speak to mrs. crawford about it. and, by the way, i nearly forgot to say that she charges carl with taking money from her bureau drawer before he went away. it was a large sum, too--twenty-five dollars." "that is false!" exclaimed gilbert, indignantly. "i am surprised that you should believe such a thing of your own son." "mrs. crawford says she has proof," said the doctor, hesitating. "then what has he done with the money? i know that he has but thirty-seven cents with him at this time, and he only left home yesterday. if the money has really been taken, i think i know who took it." "who?" "peter cook. he looks mean enough for anything." "what right have you to speak so of peter?" "because i caught him stoning a cat this morning. he would have killed the poor thing if i had not interfered. i consider that worse than taking money." "i--i don't know what to say. i can't agree to anything till i have spoken with mrs. crawford. did you say that carl had but thirty seven cents?" "yes, sir; i presume you don't want him to starve?" "no, of course not. he is my son, though he has behaved badly. here, give him that!" and dr. crawford drew a ten-dollar bill from his wallet, and handed it to gilbert "thank you, sir. this money will be very useful. besides, it will show carl that his father is not wholly indifferent to him." "of course not. who says that i am a bad father?" asked dr. crawford, peevishly. "i don't think, sir, there would be any difficulty between you and carl if you had not married again." "carl has no right to vex mrs. crawford. besides, he can't agree with peter." "is that his fault or peter's?" asked gilbert, significantly. "i am not acquainted with the circumstances, but mrs. crawford says that carl is always bullying peter." "he never bullied anyone at school." "is there anything, else you want?" "yes, sir; carl only took away a little underclothing in a gripsack. he would like his woolen clothes put in his trunk, and to have it sent----" "where?" "perhaps it had better be sent to my house. there are one or two things in his room also that he asked me to get." "why didn't he come himself?" "because he thought it would be unpleasant for him to meet mrs. crawford. they would be sure to quarrel." "well, perhaps he is right," said dr. crawford, with an air of relief. "about the allowance, i shall have to consult my wife. will you come with me to the house?" "yes, sir; i should like to have the matter settled to-day, so that carl will know what to depend upon." gilbert rather dreaded the interview he was likely to have with mrs. crawford; but he was acting for carl, and his feelings of friendship were strong. so he walked beside dr. crawford till they reached the tasteful dwelling occupied as a residence by carl and his father. "how happy carl could he here, if he had a stepmother like mine," gilbert thought. they went up to the front door, which was opened for them by a servant. "jane, is mrs. crawford in?" asked the doctor. "no, sir; not just now. she went to the village to do some shopping." "is peter in?" "no, sir." "then you will have to wait till they return." "can't i go up to carl's room and be packing his things?" "yes, i think you may. i don't think mrs. crawford would object." "good heavens! hasn't the man a mind of his own?" thought gilbert. "jane, you may show this young gentleman up to master carl's room, and give him the key of his trunk. he is going to pack his clothes." "when is master carl coming back?" asked jane. "i--i don't know. i think he will be away for a time." "i wish it was peter instead of him," said jane, in a low voice, only audible to gilbert. she showed gilbert the way upstairs, while the doctor went to his study. "are you a friend of master carl's?" asked jane, as soon as they were alone. "yes, jane." "and where is he?" "at my house." "is he goin' to stay there?" "for a short time. he wants to go out into the world and make his own living." "and no wonder--poor boy! it's hard times he had here." "didn't mrs. crawford treat him well?" asked gilbert, with curiosity "is it trate him well? she was a-jawin' an' a-jawin' him from mornin' till night. ugh, but she's an ugly cr'atur'!" "how about peter?" "he's just as bad--the m'anest bye i iver set eyes on. it would do me good to see him flogged." she chatted a little longer with gilbert, helping him to find carl's clothes, when suddenly a shrill voice was heard calling her from below. "shure, it's the madam!" said jane, shrugging her shoulders. "i expect she's in a temper;" and she rose from her knees and hurried downstairs. chapter v. carl's stepmother. five minutes later, as gilbert was closing the trunk, jane reappeared. "the doctor and mrs. crawford would like to see you downstairs," she said. gilbert followed jane into the library, where dr. crawford and his wife were seated. he looked with interest at the woman who had made home so disagreeable to carl, and was instantly prejudiced against her. she was light complexioned, with very light-brown hair, cold, gray eyes, and a disagreeable expression which seemed natural to her. "my dear," said the doctor, "this is the young man who has come from carl." mrs. crawford surveyed gilbert with an expression by no means friendly. "what is your name?" she asked. "gilbert vance." "did carl crawford send you here?" "no; i volunteered to come." "did he tell you that he was disobedient and disrespectful to me?" "no; he told me that you treated him so badly that he was unwilling to live in the same house with you," answered gilbert, boldly. "well, upon my word!" exclaimed mrs. crawford, fanning herself vigorously. "dr. crawford, did you hear that?" "yes." "and what do you think of it?" "well, i think you may have been too hard upon carl." "too hard? why, then, did he not treat me respectfully? this boy seems inclined to be impertinent." "i answered your questions, madam," said gilbert, coldly. "i suppose you side with your friend carl?" "i certainly do." mrs. crawford bit her lip. "what is the object of your coming? does carl wish to return?" "i thought dr. crawford might have told you." "carl wants his clothes sent to him," said the doctor. "he only carried a few with him." "i shall not consent to it. he deserves no favors at our hands." this was too much even for dr. crawford. "you go too far, mrs. crawford," he said. "i am sensible of the boy's faults, but i certainly will not allow his clothes to be withheld from him." "oh, well! spoil him if you choose!" said the lady, sullenly. "take his part against your wife!" "i have never done that, but i will not allow him to be defrauded of his clothes." "i have no more to say," said mrs. crawford, her eyes snapping. she was clearly mortified at her failure to carry her point. "do you wish the trunk to be sent to your house?" asked the doctor. "yes, sir; i have packed the clothes and locked the trunk." "i should like to examine it before it goes," put in mrs. crawford, spitefully. "why?" "to make sure that nothing has been put in that does not belong to carl." "do you mean to accuse me of stealing, madam?" demanded gilbert, indignantly. mrs. crawford tossed her head. "i don't know anything about you," she replied. "dr. crawford, am i to open the trunk?" asked gilbert. "no," answered the doctor, with unwonted decision. "i hate that boy! he has twice subjected me to mortification," thought mrs. crawford. "you know very well," she said, turning to her husband, "that i have grounds for my request. i blush to mention it, but i have reason to believe that your son took a wallet containing twenty-five dollars from my bureau drawer." "i deny it!" said gilbert. "what do you know about it, i should like to ask?" sneered mrs. crawford. "i know that carl is an honorable boy, incapable of theft, and at this moment has but thirty-seven cents in his possession." "so far as you know." "if the money has really disappeared, madam, you had better ask your own boy about it." "this is insufferable!" exclaimed mrs. crawford, her light eyes emitting angry flashes. "who dares to say that peter took the wallet?" she went on, rising to her feet. there was an unexpected reply. jane entered the room at this moment to ask a question. "i say so, ma'am," she rejoined. "what?" ejaculated mrs. crawford, with startling emphasis. "i didn't mean to say anything about it till i found you were charging it on master carl. i saw peter open your bureau drawer, take out the wallet, and put it in his pocket." "it's a lie!" said mrs. crawford, hoarsely. "it's the truth, though i suppose you don't want to believe it. if you want to know what he did with the money ask him how much he paid for the gold ring he bought of the jeweler down at the village." "you are a spy--a base, dishonorable spy!" cried mrs. crawford. "i won't say what you are, ma'am, to bring false charges against master carl, and i wonder the doctor will believe them." "leave the house directly, you hussy!" shrieked mrs. crawford. "if i do, i wonder who'll get the dinner?" remarked jane, not at all disturbed. "i won't stay here to be insulted," said the angry lady. "dr. crawford, you might have spirit enough to defend your wife." she flounced out of the room, not waiting for a reply, leaving the doctor dazed and flurried. "i hope, sir, you are convinced now that carl did not take mrs. crawford's money," said gilbert. "i told you it was probably peter." "are you sure of what you said, jane?" asked the doctor. "yes, sir. i saw peter take the wallet with my own eyes." "it is his mother's money, and they must settle it between them i am glad carl did not take it. really, this has been a very unpleasant scene." "i am sorry for my part in it. carl is my friend, and i feel that i ought to stand up for his rights," remarked gilbert. "certainly, certainly, that is right. but you see how i am placed." "i see that this is no place for carl. if you will allow me, i will send an expressman for the trunk, and take it with me to the station." "yes, i see no objection. i--i would invite you to dinner, but mrs. crawford seems to be suffering from a nervous attack, and it might not be pleasant." "i agree with you, sir." just then peter entered the room, and looked at gilbert with surprise and wrath, remembering his recent discomfiture at the hands of the young visitor. "my stepson, peter," announced dr. crawford. "peter and i have met before," said gilbert, smiling. "what are you here for?" asked peter, rudely. "not to see you," answered gilbert, turning from him. "my mother'll have something to say to you," went on peter, significantly. "she will have something to say to you," retorted gilbert. "she has found out who stole her money." peter's face turned scarlet instantly, and he left the room hurriedly. "perhaps i ought not to have said that, dr crawford," added gilbert, apologetically, "but i dislike that boy very much, and couldn't help giving him as good as he sent." "it is all very unpleasant," responded dr. crawford, peevishly. "i don't see why i can't live in peace and tranquility." "i won't intrude upon you any longer," said gilbert, "if you will kindly tell me whether you will consent to make carl a small weekly allowance." "i can't say now. i want time to think. give me your address, and i will write to carl in your care." "very well, sir." gilbert left the house and made arrangements to have carl's trunk called for. it accompanied him on the next train to warren. chapter vi. mrs. crawford's letter. "how did you like my stepmother?" asked carl, when gilbert returned in the afternoon. "she's a daisy!" answered gilbert, shrugging his shoulders. "i don't think i ever saw a more disagreeable woman." "do you blame me for leaving home?" "i only wonder you have been able to stay so long. i had a long conversation with your father." "mrs. crawford has made a different man of him. i should have no trouble in getting along with him if there was no one to come between us." "he gave me this for you," said gilbert, producing the ten-dollar bill. "did my stepmother know of his sending it?" "no; she was opposed to sending your trunk, but your father said emphatically you should have it." "i am glad he showed that much spirit." "i have some hopes that he will make you an allowance of a few dollars a week." "that would make me all right, but i don't expect it." "you will probably hear from your father to-morrow or next day, so you will have to make yourself contented a little longer." "i hope you are not very homesick, mr. crawford?" said julia, coquettishly. "i would ask nothing better than to stay here permanently," rejoined carl, earnestly. "this is a real home. i have met with more kindness here than in six months at my own home." "you have one staunch friend at home," said gilbert. "you don't allude to peter?" "so far as i can judge, he hates you like poison. i mean jane." "yes, jane is a real friend. she has been in the family for ten years. she was a favorite with my own mother, and feels an interest in me." "by the way, your stepmother's charge that you took a wallet containing money from her drawer has been disproved by jane. she saw peter abstracting the money, and so informed mrs. crawford." "i am not at all surprised. peter is mean enough to steal or do anything else. what did my stepmother say?" "she was very angry, and threatened to discharge jane; but, as no one would be left to attend to the dinner, i presume she is likely to stay." "i ought to be forming some plan," said carl, thoughtfully. "wait till you hear from home. julia will see that your time is well filled up till then. dismiss all care, and enjoy yourself while you may." this seemed to be sensible advice, and carl followed it. in the evening some young people were invited in, and there was a round of amusements that made carl forget that he was an exile from home, with very dubious prospects. "you are all spoiling me," he said, as gilbert and he went upstairs to bed. "i am beginning to understand the charms of home. to go out into the world from here will be like taking a cold shower bath." "never forget, carl, that you will be welcome back, whenever you feel like coming," said gilbert, laying his band affectionately on carl's shoulder. "we all like you here." "thank you, old fellow! i appreciate the kindness i have received here; but i must strike out for myself." "how do you feel about it, carl?" "i hope for the best. i am young, strong and willing to work. there must be an opening for me somewhere." the next morning, just after breakfast, a letter arrived for carl, mailed at edgewood center. "is it from your father?" asked gilbert. "no; it is in the handwriting of my stepmother. i can guess from that that it contains no good news." he opened the letter, and as he read it his face expressed disgust and annoyance. "read it, gilbert," he said, handing him the open sheet. this was the missive: "carl crawford:--as your father has a nervous attack, brought on by your misconduct, he has authorized me to write to you. as you are but sixteen, he could send for you and have you forcibly brought back, but deems it better for you to follow your own course and suffer the punishment of your obstinate and perverse conduct. the boy whom you sent here proved a fitting messenger. he seems, if possible, to be even worse than yourself. he was very impertinent to me, and made a brutal and unprovoked attack on my poor boy, peter, whose devotion to your father and myself forms an agreeable contrast to your studied disregard of our wishes. "your friend had the assurance to ask for a weekly allowance for you while a voluntary exile from the home where you have been only too well treated. in other words, you want to be paid for your disobedience. even if your father were weak enough to think of complying with this extraordinary request, i should do my best to dissuade him." "small doubt of that!" said carl, bitterly. "in my sorrow for your waywardness, i am comforted by the thought that peter is too good and conscientious ever to follow your example. while you are away, he will do his utmost to make up to your father for his disappointment in you. that you may grow wise in time, and turn at length from the error of your ways, is the earnest hope of your stepmother, anastasia crawford." "it makes me sick to read such a letter as that, gilbert," said carl. "and to have that sneak and thief--as he turned out to be--peter, set up as a model for me, is a little too much." "i never knew there were such women in the world!" returned gilbert. "i can understand your feelings perfectly, after my interview of yesterday." "she thinks even worse of you than of me," said carl, with a faint smile. "i have no doubt peter shares her sentiments. i didn't make many friends in your family, it must be confessed." "you did me a service, gilbert, and i shall not soon forget it." "where did your stepmother come from?" asked gilbert, thoughtfully. "i don't know. my father met her at some summer resort. she was staying in the same boarding house, she and the angelic peter. she lost no time in setting her cap for my father, who was doubtless reported to her as a man of property, and she succeeded in capturing him." "i wonder at that. she doesn't seem very fascinating." "she made herself very agreeable to my father, and was even affectionate in her manner to me, though i couldn't get to like her. the end was that she became mrs. crawford. once installed in our house, she soon threw off the mask and showed herself in her true colors, a cold-hearted, selfish and disagreeable woman." "i wonder your father doesn't recognize her for what she is." "she is very artful, and is politic enough to treat him well. she has lost no opportunity of prejudicing him against me. if he were not an invalid she would find her task more difficult." "did she have any property when your father married her?" "not that i have been able to discover. she is scheming to have my father leave the lion's share of his property to her and peter. i dare say she will succeed." "let us hope your father will live till you are a young man, at least, and better able to cope with her." "i earnestly hope so." "your father is not an old man." "he is fifty-one, but he is not strong. i believe he has liver complaint. at any rate, i know that when, at my stepmother's instigation, he applied to an insurance company to insure his life for her benefit, the application was rejected." "you don't know anything of mrs. crawford's antecedents?" "no." "what was her name before she married your father?" "she was a mrs. cook. that, as you know, is peter's name." "perhaps, in your travels, you may learn something of her history." "i should like to do so." "you won't leave us to-morrow?" "i must go to-day. i know now that i must depend wholly upon my own exertions, and i must get to work as soon as possible." "you will write to me, carl?" "yes, when i have anything agreeable to write." "let us hope that will be soon." chapter vii. ends in a tragedy. carl obtained permission to leave his trunk at the vance mansion, merely taking out what he absolutely needed for a change. "when i am settled i will send for it," he said. "now i shouldn't know what to do with it." there were cordial good-bys, and carl started once more on the tramp. he might, indeed, have traveled by rail, for he had ten dollars and thirty-seven cents; but it occurred to him that in walking he might meet with some one who would give him employment. besides, he was not in a hurry to get on, nor had he any definite destination. the day was fine, there was a light breeze, and he experienced a hopeful exhilaration as he walked lightly on, with the world before him, and any number of possibilities in the way of fortunate adventures that might befall him. he had walked five miles, when, to the left, he saw an elderly man hard at work in a hay field. he was leaning on his rake, and looking perplexed and troubled. carl paused to rest, and as he looked over the rail fence, attracted the attention of the farmer. "i say, young feller, where are you goin'?" he asked. "i don't know--exactly." "you don't know where you are goin'?" repeated the farmer, in surprise. carl laughed. "i am going out in the world to seek my fortune," he said. "you be? would you like a job?" asked the farmer, eagerly. "what sort of a job?" "i'd like to have you help me hayin'. my hired man is sick, and he's left me in a hole. it's goin' to rain, and----" "going to rain?" repeated carl, in surprise, as he looked up at the nearly cloudless sky. "yes. it don't look like it, i know, but old job hagar say it'll rain before night, and what he don't know about the weather ain't worth knowin'. i want to get the hay on this meadow into the barn, and then i'll feel safe, rain or shine." "and you want me to help you?" "yes; you look strong and hardy." "yes, i am pretty strong," said carl, complacently. "well, what do you say?" "all right. i'll help you." carl gave a spring and cleared the fence, landing in the hay field, having first thrown his valise over. "you're pretty spry," said the farmer. "i couldn't do that." "no, you're too heavy," said carl, smiling, as he noted the clumsy figure of his employer. "now, what shall i do?" "take that rake and rake up the hay. then we'll go over to the barn and get the hay wagon." "where is your barn?" the farmer pointed across the fields to a story-and-a-half farmhouse, and standing near it a good-sized barn, brown from want of paint and exposure to sun and rain. the buildings were perhaps twenty-five rods distant. "are you used to hayin'?" asked the farmer. "well, no, not exactly; though i've handled a rake before." carl's experience, however, had been very limited. he had, to be sure, had a rake in his hand, but probably he had not worked more than ten minutes at it. however, raking is easily learned, and his want of experience was not detected. he started off with great enthusiasm, but after a while thought it best to adopt the more leisurely movements of the farmer. after two hours his hands began to blister, but still he kept on. "i have got to make my living by hard work," he said to himself, "and it won't do to let such a little thing as a blister interfere." when he had been working a couple of hours, he began to feel hungry. his walk, and the work he had been doing, sharpened his appetite till he really felt uncomfortable. it was at this time--just twelve o'clock--that the farmer's wife came to the front door and blew a fish horn so vigorously that it could probably have been heard half a mile. "the old woman's got dinner ready," said the farmer. "if you don't mind takin' your pay in victuals, you can go along home with me, and take a bite." "i think i could take two or three, sir." "ho, ho! that's a good joke! money's scarce, and i'd rather pay in victuals, if it's all the same to you." "do you generally find people willing to work for their board?" asked carl, who knew that he was being imposed upon. "well, i might pay a leetle more. you work for me till sundown, and i'll give you dinner and supper, and--fifteen cents." carl wanted to laugh. at this rate of compensation he felt that it would take a long time to make a fortune, but he was so hungry that he would have accepted board alone if it had been necessary. "i agree," he said. "shall i leave my rake here?" "yes; it'll be all right." "i'll take along my valise, for i can't afford to run any risk of losing it." "jest as you say." five minutes brought them to the farmhouse. "can i wash my hands?" asked carl. "yes, you can go right to the sink and wash in the tin basin. there's a roll towel behind the door. mis' perkins"--that was the way he addressed his wife--"this is a young chap that i've hired to help me hayin'. you can set a chair for him at the table." "all right, silas. he don't look very old, though." "no, ma'am. i ain't twenty-one yet," answered carl, who was really sixteen. "i shouldn't say you was. you ain't no signs of a mustache." "i keep it short, ma'am, in warm weather," said carl. "it don't dull a razor any to cut it in cold weather, does it?" asked the farmer, chuckling at his joke. "well, no, sir; i can't say it does." it was a boiled dinner that the farmer's wife provided, corned beef and vegetables, but the plebeian meal seemed to carl the best he ever ate. afterwards there was apple pudding, to which he did equal justice. "i never knew work improved a fellow's appetite so," reflected the young traveler. "i never ate with so much relish at home." after dinner they went back to the field and worked till the supper hour, five o'clock. by that time all the hay had been put into the barn. "we've done a good day's work," said the farmer, in a tone of satisfaction, "and only just in time. do you see that dark cloud?" "yes, sir." "in half an hour there'll be rain, or i'm mistaken. old job hagar is right after all." the farmer proved a true prophet. in half an hour, while they were at the supper table, the rain began to come down in large drops --forming pools in the hollows of the ground, and drenching all exposed objects with the largesse of the heavens. "where war you a-goin' to-night?" asked the farmer. "i don't know, sir." "i was thinkin' that i'd give you a night's lodgin' in place of the fifteen cents i agreed to pay you. money's very skeerce with me, and will be till i've sold off some of the crops." "i shall be glad to make that arrangement," said carl, who had been considering how much the farmer would ask for lodging, for there seemed small chance of continuing his journey. fifteen cents was a lower price than he had calculated on. "that's a sensible idea!" said the farmer, rubbing his hands with satisfaction at the thought that he had secured valuable help at no money outlay whatever. the next morning carl continued his tramp, refusing the offer of continued employment on the same terms. he was bent on pursuing his journey, though he did not know exactly where he would fetch up in the end. at twelve o'clock that day he found himself in the outskirts of a town, with the same uncomfortable appetite that he had felt the day before, but with no hotel or restaurant anywhere near. there was, however, a small house, the outer door of which stood conveniently open. through the open window, carl saw a table spread as if for dinner, and he thought it probable that he could arrange to become a boarder for a single meal. he knocked at the door, but no one came. he shouted out: "is anybody at home?" and received no answer. he went to a small barn just outside and peered in, but no one was to be seen. what should he do? he was terribly hungry, and the sight of the food on the table was tantalizing. "i'll go in, as the door is open," he decided, "and sit down to the table and eat. somebody will be along before i get through, and i'll pay whatever is satisfactory, for eat i must." he entered, seated himself, and ate heartily. still no one appeared. "i don't want to go off without paying," thought carl. "i'll see if i can find somebody." he opened the door into the kitchen, but it was deserted. then he opened that of a small bedroom, and started back in terror and dismay. there suspended from a hook--a man of middle age was hanging, with his head bent forward, his eyes wide open, and his tongue protruding from his mouth! chapter viii. carl falls under suspicion. to a person of any age such a sight as that described at the close of the last chapter might well have proved startling. to a boy like carl it was simply overwhelming. it so happened that he had but twice seen a dead person, and never a victim of violence. the peculiar circumstances increased the effect upon his mind. he placed his hand upon the man's face, and found that he was still warm. he could have been dead but a short time. "what shall i do?" thought carl, perplexed. "this is terrible!" then it flashed upon him that as he was alone with the dead man suspicion might fall upon him as being concerned in what night be called a murder. "i had better leave here at once," he reflected. "i shall have to go away without paying for my meal." he started to leave the house, but had scarcely reached the door when two persons --a man and a woman--entered. both looked at carl with suspicion. "what are you doing here?" asked the man. "i beg your pardon," answered carl; "i was very hungry, and seeing no one about, took the liberty to sit down at the table and eat. i am willing to pay for my dinner if you will tell me how much it amounts to." "wasn't my husband here?" asked the woman. "i--i am afraid something has happened to your husband," faltered carl. "what do you mean?" carl silently pointed to the chamber door. the woman opened it, and uttered a loud shriek. "look here, walter!" she cried. her companion quickly came to her side. "my husband is dead!" cried the woman; "basely murdered, and there," pointing fiercely to carl, "there stands the murderer!" "madam, you cannot believe this!" said carl, naturally agitated. "what have you to say for yourself?" demanded the man, suspiciously. "i only just saw--your husband," continued carl, addressing himself to the woman. "i had finished my meal, when i began to search for some one whom i could pay, and so opened this door into the room beyond, when i saw --him hanging there!" "don't believe him, the red-handed murderer!" broke out the woman, fiercely. "he is probably a thief; he killed my poor husband, and then sat down like a cold-blooded villain that he is, and gorged himself." things began to look very serious for poor carl. "your husband is larger and stronger than myself," he urged, desperately. "how could i overpower him?" "it looks reasonable, maria," said the man. "i don't see how the boy could have killed mr. brown, or lifted him upon the hook, even if he did not resist." "he murdered him, i tell you, he murdered him!" shrieked the woman, who seemed bereft of reason. "i call upon you to arrest him." "i am not a constable, maria." "then tie him so he cannot get away, and go for a constable. i wouldn't feel safe with him in the house, unless he were tied fast. he might hang me!" terrible as the circumstances were, carl felt an impulse to laugh. it seemed absurd to hear himself talked of in this way. "tie me if you like!" he said. "i am willing to wait here till some one comes who has a little common sense. just remember that i am only a boy, and haven't the strength of a full-grown man!" "the boy is right, maria! it's a foolish idea of yours." "i call upon you to tie the villain!" insisted the woman. "just as you say! can you give me some rope?" from a drawer mrs. brown drew a quantity of strong cord, and the man proceeded to tie carl's hands. "tie his feet, too, walter!" "even if you didn't tie me, i would promise to remain here. i don't want anybody to suspect me of such a thing," put in carl. "how artful he is!" said mrs. brown. "tie him strong, walter." the two were left alone, carl feeling decidedly uncomfortable. the newly-made widow laid her head upon the table and moaned, glancing occasionally at the body of her husband, as it still hung suspended from the hook. "oh, william, i little expected to find you dead!" she groaned. "i only went to the store to buy a pound of salt, and when i come back, i find you cold and still, the victim of a young ruffian! how could you be so wicked?" she demanded fiercely of carl. "i have told you that i had nothing to do with your husband's death, madam." "who killed him, then?" she cried. "i don't know. he must have committed suicide." "don't think you are going to escape in that way. i won't rest till i see you hung!" "i wish i had never entered the house," thought carl, uncomfortably. "i would rather have gone hungry for twenty four hours longer than find myself in such a position." half an hour passed. then a sound of voices was heard outside, and half a dozen men entered, including besides the messenger, the constable and a physician. "why was he not cut down?" asked the doctor, hastily. "there might have been a chance to resuscitate him." "i didn't think of it," said the messenger. "maria was so excited, and insisted that the boy murdered him." "what boy?" carl was pointed out. "that boy? what nonsense!" exclaimed dr. park. "why, it would be more than you or i could do to overpower and hang a man weighing one hundred and seventy-five pounds." "that's what i thought, but maria seemed crazed like." "i tell you he did it! are you going to let him go, the red-handed murderer?" "loose the cord, and i will question the boy," said dr. park, with an air of authority. carl breathed a sigh of relief, when, freed from his bonds, he stood upright. "i'll tell you all i know," he said, "but it won't throw any light upon the death." dr. park listened attentively, and asked one or two questions. "did you hear any noise when you were sitting at the table?" he inquired. "no, sir." "was the door closed?" "yes, sir." "that of itself would probably prevent your hearing anything. mrs. brown, at what hour did you leave the house?" "at ten minutes of twelve." "it is now five minutes of one. the deed must have been committed just after you left the house. had you noticed anything out of the way in your--husband's manner?" "no, sir, not much. he was always a silent man." "had anything happened to disturb him?" "he got a letter this morning. i don't know what was in it." "we had better search for it." the body was taken down and laid on the bed. dr. park searched the pockets, and found a half sheet of note paper, on which these lines were written: "maria:--i have made up my mind i can ive no longer. i have made a terrible discovery. when i married you, i thought my first wife, who deserted me four years ago, dead. i learn by a letter received this morning that she is still living in a town of illinois. the only thing i can do is to free you both from my presence. when you come back from the store you will find me cold and dead. the little that i leave behind i give to you. if my first wife should come here, as she threatens, you can tell her so. good-by. "william." the reading of this letter made a sensation. mrs. brown went into hysterics, and there was a scene of confusion. "do you think i can go?" carl asked dr. park. "yes. there is nothing to connect you with the sad event." carl gladly left the cottage, and it was only when he was a mile on his way that he remembered that he had not paid for his dinner, after all. chapter ix. a plausible stranger. three days later found carl still on his travels. it was his custom to obtain his meals at a cheap hotel, or, if none were met with, at a farmhouse, and to secure lodgings where he could, and on as favorable terms as possible. he realized the need of economy, and felt that he was practicing it. he had changed his tendollar bill the first day, for a five and several ones. these last were now spent, and the fivedollar bill alone remained to him. he had earned nothing, though everywhere he had been on the lookout for a job. toward the close of the last day he overtook a young man of twenty-five, who was traveling in the same direction. "good-afternoon," said the young man, sociably. "good-afternoon, sir." "where are you bound, may i ask?" "to the next town." "fillmore?" "yes, if that is the name." "so am i. why shouldn't we travel together?" "i have no objection," said carl, who was glad of company. "are you in any business?" "no, but i hope to find a place." "oh, a smart boy like you will soon find employment." "i hope so, i am sure. i haven't much money left, and it is necessary i should do something." "just so. i am a new york salesman, but just now i am on my vacation--taking a pedestrian tour with knapsack and staff, as you see. the beauty of it is that my salary runs on just as if i were at my post, and will nearly pay all my traveling expenses." "you are in luck. besides you have a good place to go back to. there isn't any vacancy, is there? you couldn't take on a boy?" asked carl, eagerly. "well, there might be a chance," said the young man, slowly. "you haven't any recommendations with you, have you?" "no; i have never been employed." "it doesn't matter. i will recommend you myself." "you might be deceived in me," said carl, smiling. "i'll take the risk of that. i know a reliable boy when i see him." "thank you. what is the name of your firm?" "f. brandes & co., commission merchants, pearl street. my own name is chauncy hubbard, at your service." "i am carl crawford." "that's a good name. i predict that we shall be great chums, if i manage to get you a place in our establishment." "is mr. brandes a good man to work for?" "yes, he is easy and good-natured. he is liberal to his clerks. what salary do you think i get?" "i couldn't guess." "forty dollars a week, and i am only twenty-five. went into the house at sixteen, and worked my way up." "you have certainly done well," said carl, respectfully. "well, i'm no slouch, if i do say it myself." "i don't wonder your income pays the expenses of your vacation trip." "it ought to, that's a fact, though i'm rather free handed and like to spend money. my prospects are pretty good in another direction. old fred brandes has a handsome daughter, who thinks considerable of your humble servant." "do you think there is any chance of marrying her?" asked carl, with interest. "i think my chance is pretty good, as the girl won't look at anybody else." "is mr. brandes wealthy?" "yes, the old man's pretty well fixed, worth nearly half a million, i guess." "perhaps he will take you into the firm," suggested carl. "very likely. that's what i'm working for." "at any rate, you ought to save something out of your salary." "i ought, but i haven't. the fact is, carl," said chauncy hubbard, in a burst of confidence, i have a great mind to make a confession to you." "i shall feel flattered, i am sure," said carl, politely. "i have one great fault--i gamble." "do you?" said carl, rather startled, for he had been brought up very properly to have a horror of gambling. "yes, i suppose it's in my blood. my father was a very rich man at one time, but he lost nearly all his fortune at the gaming table." "that ought to have been a warning to you, i should think." "it ought, and may be yet, for i am still a young man." "mr. hubbard," said carl, earnestly, "i feel rather diffident about advising you, for i am only a boy, but i should think you would give up such a dangerous habit." "say no more, carl! you are a true friend. i will try to follow your advice. give me your hand." carl did so, and felt a warm glow of pleasure at the thought that perhaps he had redeemed his companion from a fascinating vice. "i really wish i had a sensible boy like you to be my constant companion. i should feel safer." "do you really have such a passion for gambling, then?" "yes; if at the hotel to-night i should see a party playing poker, i could not resist joining them. odd, isn't it?" "i am glad i have no such temptation." "yes, you are lucky. by the way, how much money have you about you?" "five dollars." "then you can do me a favor. i have a tendollar bill, which i need to get me home. now, i would like to have you keep a part of it for me till i go away in the morning. give me your five, and i will hand you ten. out of that you can pay my hotel bill and hand me the balance due me in the morning." "if you really wish me to do so." "enough said. here is the ten." carl took the bill, and gave mr. hubbard his five-dollar note. "you are placing considerable confidence in me," he said. "i am, it is true, but i have no fear of being deceived. you are a boy who naturally inspires confidence." carl thought mr. chauncy hubbard a very agreeable and sensible fellow, and he felt flattered to think that the young man had chosen him as a guardian, so to speak. "by the way, carl, you haven't told me," said hubbard, as they pursued their journey, "how a boy like yourself is forced to work his own way." "i can tell you the reason very briefly-i have a stepmother." "i understand. is your father living?" "yes." "but he thinks more of the stepmother than of you?" "i am afraid he does." "you have my sympathy, carl. i will do all i can to help you. if you can only get a place in our establishment, you will be all right. step by step you will rise, till you come to stand where i do." "that would satisfy me. has mr. brandes got another daughter?" "no, there is only one." "then i shall have to be content with the forty dollars a week. if i ever get it, i will save half." "i wish i could." "you can if you try. why, you might have two thousand dollars saved up now, if you had only begun to save in time." "i have lost more than that at the gaming table. you will think me very foolish." "yes, i do," said carl, frankly. "you are right. but here we are almost at the village." "is there a good hotel?" "yes--the fillmore. we will take adjoining rooms if you say so." "very well." "and in the morning you will pay the bill?" "certainly." the two travelers had a good supper, and retired early, both being fatigued with the journey. it was not till eight o'clock the next morning that carl opened his eyes. he dressed hastily, and went down to breakfast. he was rather surprised not to see his companion of the day before. "has mr. hubbard come down yet?" he asked at the desk. "yes; he took an early breakfast, and went off by the first train." "that is strange. i was to pay his bill." "he paid it himself." carl did not know what to make of this. had hubbard forgotten that he had five dollars belonging to him? fortunately, carl had his city address, and could refund the money in new york. "very well! i will pay my own bill. how much is it?" "a dollar and a quarter." carl took the ten-dollar bill from his wallet and tendered it to the clerk. instead of changing it at once, the clerk held it up to the light and examined it critically. "i can't take that bill," he said, abruptly. "why not?" "because it is counterfeit." carl turned pale, and the room seemed to whirl round. it was all the money he had. chapter x. the counterfeit bill. "are you sure it is counterfeit?" asked carl, very much disturbed. "i am certain of it. i haven't been handling bank bills for ten years without being able to tell good money from bad. i'll trouble you for another bill." "that's all the money i have," faltered carl. "look here, young man," said the clerk, sternly, "you are trying a bold game, but it won't succeed." "i am trying no game at all," said carl, plucking up spirit. "i thought the bill was good." "where did you get it?" "from the man who came with me last evening-mr. hubbard." "the money he gave me was good." "what did he give you?" "a five-dollar bill." "it was my five-dollar bill," said carl, bitterly. "your story doesn't seem very probable," said the clerk, suspiciously. "how did he happen to get your money, and you his?" "he told me that he would get to gambling, and wished me to take money enough to pay his bill here. he handed me the ten-dollar bill which you say is bad, and i gave him five in return. i think now he only wanted to get good money for bad." "your story may be true, or it may not," said the clerk, whose manner indicated incredulity. "that is nothing to me. all you have to do is to pay your hotel bill, and you can settle with mr. hubbard when you see him." "but i have no other money," said carl, desperately. "then i shall feel justified in ordering your arrest on a charge of passing, or trying to pass, counterfeit money." "don't do that, sir! i will see that you are paid out of the first money i earn." "you must think i am soft," said the clerk, contemptuously. "i have seen persons of your stripe before. i dare say, if you were searched, more counterfeit money would be found in your pockets." "search me, then!" cried carl, indignantly. "i am perfectly willing that you should." "haven't you any relations who will pay your bill?" "i have no one to call upon," answered carl, soberly. "couldn't you let me work it out? i am ready to do any kind of work." "our list of workers is full," said the clerk, coldly. poor carl! he felt that he was decidedly in a tight place. he had never before found himself unable to meet his bills. nor would he have been so placed now but for hubbard's rascality. a dollar and a quarter seems a small sum, but if you are absolutely penniless it might as well be a thousand. suppose he should be arrested and the story get into the papers? how his stepmother would exult in the record of his disgrace! he could anticipate what she would say. peter, too, would rejoice, and between them both his father would be persuaded that he was thoroughly unprincipled. "what have you got in your valise?" asked the clerk. "only some underclothing. if there were anything of any value i would cheerfully leave it as security. wait a minute, though," he said, with a sudden thought. "here is a gold pencil! it is worth five dollars; at any rate, it cost more than that. i can place that in your hands." "let me see it." carl handed the clerk a neat gold pencil, on which his name was inscribed. it was evidently of good quality, and found favor with the clerk. "i'll give you a dollar and a quarter for the pencil," he said, "and call it square." "i wouldn't like to sell it," said carl. "you won't get any more for it." "i wasn't thinking of that; but it was given me by my mother, who is now dead. i would not like to part with anything that she gave me." "you would prefer to get off scot-free, i suppose?" retorted the clerk, with a sneer. "no; i am willing to leave it in your hands, but i should like the privilege of redeeming it when i have the money." "very well," said the clerk, who reflected that in all probability carl would never come back for it. "i'll take it on those conditions." carl passed over the pencil with a sigh. he didn't like to part with it, even for a short time, but there seemed no help for it. "all right. i will mark you paid." carl left the hotel, satchel in hand, and as he passed out into the street, reflected with a sinking heart that he was now quite penniless. where was he to get his dinner, and how was he to provide himself with a lodging that night? at present he was not hungry, having eaten a hearty breakfast at the hotel, but by one o'clock he would feel the need of food. he began to ask himself if, after all, he had not been unwise in leaving home, no matter how badly he had been treated by his stepmother. there, at least, he was certain of living comfortably. now he was in danger of starvation, and on two occasions already he had incurred suspicion, once of being concerned in a murder, and just now of passing counterfeit money. ought he to have submitted, and so avoided all these perils? "no!" he finally decided; "i won't give up the ship yet. i am about as badly off as i can be; i am without a cent, and don't know where my next meal is to come from. but my luck may turn--it must turn--it has turned!" he exclaimed with energy, as his wandering glance suddenly fell upon a silver quarter of a dollar, nearly covered up with the dust of the street. "that shall prove a good omen!" he stooped over and picked up the coin, which he put in his vest pocket. it was wonderful how the possession of this small sum of money restored his courage and raised his spirits. he was sure of a dinner now, at all events. it looked as if providence was smiling on him. two miles farther on carl overtook a boy of about his own age trudging along the road with a rake over his shoulder. he wore overalls, and was evidently a farmer's boy. "good-day!" said carl, pleasantly, noticing that the boy regarded him with interest. "good-day!" returned the country lad, rather bashfully. "can you tell me if there is any place near where i can buy some dinner?" "there ain't no tavern, if that's what you mean. i'm goin' home to dinner myself." "where do you live?" "over yonder." he pointed to a farmhouse about a dozen rods away. "do you think your mother would give me some dinner?" "i guess she would. mam's real accommodatin'." "will you ask her?" "yes; just come along of me." he turned into the yard, and followed a narrow path to the back door. "i'll stay here while you ask," said carl. the boy entered the house, and came out after a brief absence. "mam says you're to come in," he said. carl, glad at heart, and feeling quite prepared to eat fifty cents' worth of dinner, followed the boy inside. a pleasant-looking, matronly woman, plainly but neatly attired, came forward to greet him. "nat says you would like to get some dinner," she said. "yes," answered carl. "i hope you'll excuse my applying to you, but your son tells me there is no hotel near by." "the nearest one is three miles away from here." "i don't think i can hold out so long," said carl, smiling. "sit right down with nat," said the farmer's wife, hospitably. "mr. sweetser won't be home for half an hour. we've got enough, such as it is." evidently mrs. sweetser was a good cook. the dinner consisted of boiled mutton, with several kinds of vegetables. a cup of tea and two kinds of pie followed. it was hard to tell which of the two boys did fuller justice to the meal. nat had the usual appetite of a healthy farm boy, and carl, in spite of his recent anxieties, and narrow escape from serious peril, did not allow himself to fall behind. "your mother's a fine cook!" said carl, between two mouthfuls. "ain't she, though?" answered nat, his mouth full of pie. when carl rose from the table he feared that he had eaten more than his little stock of money would pay for. "how much will it be, mrs. sweetser?" he asked. "oh, you're quite welcome to all you've had," said the good woman, cheerily. "it's plain farmer's fare." "i never tasted a better dinner," said carl. mrs. sweetser seemed pleased with the compliment to her cooking. "come again when you are passing this way," she said. "you will always be welcome to a dinner." carl thanked her heartily, and pressed on his way. two hours later, at a lonely point of the road, an ill-looking tramp, who had been reclining by the wayside, jumped up, and addressed him in a menacing tone: "young feller, shell over all the money you have got, or i'll hurt you! i'm hard up, and i won't stand no nonsense." carl started and looked into the face of the tramp. it seemed to him that he had never seen a man more ill-favored, or villainous-looking. chapter xi. the archery prize. situated as he was, it seemed, on second thought, rather a joke to carl to be attacked by a robber. he had but twenty-five cents in good money about him, and that he had just picked up by the merest chance. "do i look like a banker?" he asked, humorously. "why do you want to rob a boy?" "the way you're togged out, you must have something," growled the tramp, "and i haven't got a penny." "your business doesn't seem to pay, then?" "don't you make fun of me, or i'll wring your neck! just hand over your money and be quick about it! i haven't time to stand fooling here all day." a bright idea came to carl. he couldn't spare the silver coin, which constituted all his available wealth, but he still had the counterfeit note. "you won't take all my money, will you?" he said, earnestly. "how much have you got?" asked the tramp, pricking up his ears. carl, with apparent reluctance, drew out the ten-dollar bill. the tramp's face lighted up. "is your name vanderbilt?" he asked. "i didn't expect to make such a haul." "can't you give me back a dollar out of it? i don't want to lose all i have." "i haven't got a cent. you'll have to wait till we meet again. so long, boy! you've helped me out of a scrape." "or into one," thought carl. the tramp straightened up, buttoned his dilapidated coat, and walked off with the consciousness of being a capitalist. carl watched him with a smile. "i hope i won't meet him after he has discovered that the bill is a counterfeit," he said to himself. he congratulated himself upon being still the possessor of twenty-five cents in silver. it was not much, but it seemed a great deal better than being penniless. a week before he would have thought it impossible that such a paltry sum would have made him feel comfortable, but he had passed through a great deal since then. about the middle of the afternoon he came to a field, in which something appeared to be going on. some forty or fifty young persons, boys and girls, were walking about the grass, and seemed to be preparing for some interesting event. carl stopped to rest and look on. "what's going on here?" he asked of a boy who was sitting on the fence. "it's a meeting of the athletic association," said the boy. "what are they doing?" "they try for prizes in jumping, vaulting, archery and so on." this interested carl, who excelled in all manly exercises. "i suppose i may stay and look on?" he said, inquiringly. "why, of course. jump over the fence and i'll go round with you." it seemed pleasant to carl to associate once more with boys of his own age. thrown unexpectedly upon his own resources, he had almost forgotten that he was a boy. face to face with a cold and unsympathizing world, he seemed to himself twenty-five at least. "those who wish to compete for the archery prize will come forward," announced robert gardiner, a young man of nineteen, who, as carl learned, was the president of the association. "you all understand the conditions. the entry fee to competitors is ten cents. the prize to the most successful archer is one dollar." several boys came forward and paid the entrance fee. "would you like to compete?" asked edward downie, the boy whose acquaintance carl had made. "i am an outsider," said carl. "i don't belong to the association." "i'll speak to the president, if you like." "i don't want to intrude." "it won't be considered an intrusion. you pay the entrance fee and take your chances." edward went to the president and spoke to him in a low voice. the result was that he advanced to carl, and said, courteously: "if you would like to enter into our games, you are quite at liberty to do so." "thank you," responded carl. "i have had a little practice in archery, and will enter my name for that prize." he paid over his quarter and received back fifteen cents in change. it seemed rather an imprudent outlay, considering his small capital; but he had good hopes of carrying off the prize, and that would be a great lift for him. seven boys entered besides carl. the first was victor russell, a lad of fourteen, whose arrow went three feet above the mark. "the prize is mine if none of you do better than that," laughed victor, good-naturedly. "i hope not, for the credit of the club," said the president. "mr. crawford, will you shoot next?" "i would prefer to be the last," said carl, modestly. "john livermore, your turn now." john came a little nearer than his predecessor, but did not distinguish himself. "if that is a specimen of the skill of the clubmen," thought carl, "my chance is a good one." next came frank stockton, whose arrow stuck only three inches from the center of the target. "good for fred!" cried edward downie. "just wait till you see me shoot!" "are you a dangerous rival?" asked carl, smiling. "i can hit a barn door if i am only near enough," replied edward. "edward downie!" called the president. edward took his bow and advanced to the proper place, bent it, and the arrow sped on its way. there was a murmur of surprise when his arrow struck only an inch to the right of the centre. no one was more amazed than edward himself, for he was accounted far from skillful. it was indeed a lucky accident. "what do you say to that?" asked edward, triumphantly. "i think the prize is yours. i had no idea you could shoot like that," said carl. "nor i," rejoined edward, laughing. "carl crawford!" called the president. carl took his position, and bent his bow with the greatest care. he exercised unusual deliberation, for success meant more to him than to any of the others. a dollar to him in his present circumstances would be a small fortune, while the loss of even ten cents would be sensibly felt. his heart throbbed with excitement as he let the arrow speed on its mission. his unusual deliberation, and the fact that he was a stranger, excited strong interest, and all eyes followed the arrow with eager attentiveness. there was a sudden shout of irrepressible excitement. carl's arrow had struck the bull's-eye and the prize was his. "christopher!" exclaimed edward downie, "you've beaten me, after all!" "i'm almost sorry," said carl, apologetically, but the light in his eyes hardly bore out the statement. "never mind. everybody would have called it a fluke if i had won," said edward. "i expect to get the prize for the long jump. i am good at that." "so am i, but i won't compete; i will leave it to you." "no, no. i want to win fair." carl accordingly entered his name. he made the second best jump, but edward's exceeded his by a couple of inches, and the prize was adjudged to him. "i have my revenge," he said, smiling. "i am glad i won, for it wouldn't have been to the credit of the club to have an outsider carry off two prizes." "i am perfectly satisfied," said carl; "i ought to be, for i did not expect to carry off any." carl decided not to compete for any other prize. he had invested twenty cents and got back a dollar, which left him a profit of eighty cents. this, with his original quarter, made him the possessor of a dollar and five cents. "my luck seems to have turned," he said to himself, and the thought gave him fresh courage. it was five o'clock when the games were over, and carl prepared to start again on his journey. "where are you going to take supper?" asked downie. "i--don't--know." "come home with me. if you are in no hurry, you may as well stay overnight, and go on in the morning." "are you sure it won't inconvenience you?" "not at all." "then i'll accept with thanks." chapter xii. an odd acquaintance. after breakfast the next morning carl started again on his way. his new friend, edward downie, accompanied him for a mile, having an errand at that distance. "i wish you good luck, carl," he said, earnestly. "when you come this way again, be sure to stop in and see me." "i will certainly do so, but i hope i may find employment." "at any rate," thought carl, as he resumed his journey alone, "i am better off than i was yesterday morning. then i had but twentyfive cents; now i have a dollar." this was satisfactory as far as it went, but carl was sensible that he was making no progress in his plan of earning a living. he was simply living from hand to mouth, and but for good luck he would have had to go hungry, and perhaps have been obliged to sleep out doors. what he wanted was employment. it was about ten o'clock when, looking along the road, his curiosity was excited by a man of very unusual figure a few rods in advance of him. he looked no taller than a boy of ten; but his frame was large, his shoulders broad, and his arms were of unusual length. he might properly be called a dwarf. "i am glad i am not so small as that," thought carl. "i am richer than he in having a good figure. i should not like to excite attention wherever i go by being unusually large or unusually small." some boys would have felt inclined to laugh at the queer figure, but carl had too much good feeling. his curiosity certainly was aroused, and he thought he would like to get acquainted with the little man, whose garments of fine texture showed that, though short in stature, he was probably long in purse. he didn't quite know how to pave the way for an acquaintance, but circumstances favored him. the little man drew out a handkerchief from the side pocket of his overcoat. with it fluttered out a bank bill, which fell to the ground apparently unobserved by the owner. carl hurried on, and, picking up the bill, said to the small stranger as he touched his arm: "here is some money you just dropped, sir." the little man turned round and smiled pleasantly. "thank you. are you sure it is mine?" "yes, sir; it came out with your handkerchief." "let me see. so it is mine. i was very careless to put it loose in my pocket." "you were rather careless, sir." "of what denomination is it?' "it is a two-dollar note." "if you had been a poor boy," said the little man, eying carl keenly, "you might have been tempted to keep it. i might not have known." carl smiled. "what makes you think i am not a poor boy?" he said. "you are well dressed." "that is true; but all the money i have is a dollar and five cents." "you know where to get more? you have a good home?" "i had a home, but now i am thrown on my own exertions," said carl, soberly. "dear me! that is bad! if i were better acquainted, i might ask more particularly how this happens. are you an orphan?" "no, sir; my father is living." "and your mother is dead?" "yes, sir." "is your father a poor man?" "no, sir; he is moderately rich." "yet you have to fight your own way?" "yes, sir. i have a stepmother." "i see. are you sure you are not unreasonably prejudiced against your stepmother? all stepmothers are not bad or unkind." "i know that, sir." "yours is, i presume?" "you can judge for yourself." carl recited some incidents in his experience with his stepmother. the stranger listened with evident interest. "i am not in general in favor of boys leaving home except on extreme provocation," he said, after a pause; "but in your case, as your father seems to take part against you, i think you may be justified, especially as, at your age, you have a fair chance of making your own living." "i am glad you think that, sir. i have begun to wonder whether i have not acted rashly." "in undertaking to support yourself?" "yes, sir." "how old are you?" "sixteen." "at fourteen i was obliged to undertake what you have now before you." "to support yourself?" "yes; i was left an orphan at fourteen, with no money left me by my poor father, and no relatives who could help me." "how did you make out, sir?" asked carl, feeling very much interested. "i sold papers for a while--in newark, new jersey--then i got a place at three dollars a week, out of which i had to pay for board, lodging and clothes. well, i won't go through my history. i will only say that whatever i did i did as well as i could. i am now a man of about middle age, and i am moderately wealthy." "i am very much encouraged by what you tell me, sir." "perhaps you don't understand what a hard struggle i had. more than once i have had to go to bed hungry. sometimes i have had to sleep out, but one mustn't be afraid to rough it a little when he is young. i shouldn't like to sleep out now, or go to bed without my supper," and the little man laughed softly. "yes, sir; i expect to rough it, but if i could only get a situation, at no matter what income, i should feel encouraged." "you have earned no money yet?" "yes, sir; i earned a dollar yesterday." "at what kind of work?" "archery." the little man looked surprised. "is that a business?" he asked, curiously. "i'll explain how it was," and carl told about the contest. "so you hit the mark?" said the little man, significantly. somehow, there was something in the little man's tone that put new courage into carl, and incited him to fresh effort. "i wonder, sir," he said, after a pause, "that you should be walking, when you can well afford to ride." the little man smiled. "it is by advice of my physician," he said. "he tells me i am getting too stout, and ought to take more or less exercise in the open air. so i am trying to follow his advice " "are you in business near here, sir?" "at a large town six miles distant. i may not walk all the way there, but i have a place to call at near by, and thought i would avail myself of the good chance offered to take a little exercise. i feel repaid. i have made a pleasant acquaintance." "thank you, sir." "there is my card," and the little man took out a business card, reading thus: henry jennings, furniture warehouse, milford. "i manufacture my furniture in the country," he continued, "but i ship it by special arrangements to a house in new york in which i am also interested." "yes, sir, i see. do you employ many persons in your establishment?" "about thirty." "do you think you could make room for me?" "do you think you would like the business?" "i am prepared to like any business in which i can make a living." "that is right. that is the way to look at it. let me think." for two minutes mr. jennings seemed to be plunged in thought. then he turned and smiled encouragingly. "you can come home with me," he said, "and i will consider the matter." "thank you, sir," said carl, gladly. "i have got to make a call at the next house, not on business, though. there is an old schoolmate lying there sick. i am afraid he is rather poor, too. you can walk on slowly, and i will overtake you in a few minutes." "thank you, sir." "after walking half a mile, if i have not overtaken you, you may sit down under a tree and wait for me." "all right, sir." "before i leave you i will tell you a secret." "what is it, sir?" "the two dollars you picked up, i dropped on purpose." "on purpose?" asked carl, in amazement. "yes; i wanted to try you, to see if you were honest." "then you had noticed me?" "yes. i liked your appearance, but i wanted to test you." chapter xiii. an unequal contest. carl walked on slowly. he felt encouraged by the prospect of work, for he was sure that mr. jennings would make a place for him, if possible. "he is evidently a kind-hearted man," carl reflected. "besides, he has been poor himself, and he can sympathize with me. the wages may be small, but i won't mind that, if i only support myself economically, and get on." to most boys brought up in comfort, not to say luxury, the prospect of working hard for small pay would not have seemed inviting. but carl was essentially manly, and had sensible ideas about labor. it was no sacrifice or humiliation to him to become a working boy, for he had never considered himself superior to working boys, as many boys in his position would have done. he walked on in a leisurely manner, and at the end of ten minutes thought he had better sit down and wait for mr. jennings. but he was destined to receive a shock. there, under the tree which seemed to offer the most inviting shelter, reclined a figure only too well-known. it was the tramp who the day before had compelled him to surrender the ten-dollar bill. the ill-looking fellow glanced up, and when his gaze rested upon carl, his face beamed with savage joy. "so it's you, is it?" he said, rising from his seat. "yes," answered carl, doubtfully. "do you remember me?" "yes." "i have cause to remember you, my chicken. that was a mean trick you played upon me," and he nodded his head significantly. "i should think it was you that played the trick on me." "how do you make that out?" growled the tramp. "you took my money." "so i did, and much good it did me." carl was silent. "you know why, don't you?" carl might have denied that he knew the character of the bill which was stolen from him, but i am glad to say that it would have come from him with a very ill grace, for he was accustomed to tell the truth under all circumstances. "you knew that the bill was counterfeit, didn't you?" demanded the tramp, fiercely. "i was told so at the hotel where i offered it in payment for my bill." "yet you passed it on me!" "i didn't pass it on you. you took it from me," retorted carl, with spirit. "that makes no difference." "i think it does. i wouldn't have offered it to anyone in payment of an honest bill." "humph! you thought because i was poor and unfortunate you could pass it off on me!" this seemed so grotesque that carl found it difficult not to laugh. "do you know it nearly got me into trouble?" went on the tramp. "how was that?" "i stopped at a baker's shop to get a lunch. when i got through i offered the bill. the old dutchman put on his spectacles, and he looked first at the bill, then at me. then he threatened to have me arrested for passing bad money. i told him i'd go out in the back yard and settle it with him. i tell you, boy, i'd have knocked him out in one round, and he knew it, so he bade me be gone and never darken his door again. where did you get it?" "it was passed on me by a man i was traveling with." "how much other money have you got?" asked the tramp. "very little." "give it to me, whatever it is." this was a little too much for carl's patience. "i have no money to spare," he said, shortly. "say that over again!" said the tramp, menacingly. "if you don't understand me, i will. i have no money to spare." "you'll spare it to me, i reckon." "look here," said carl, slowly backing. "you've robbed me of ten dollars. you'll have to be satisfied with that." "it was no good. it might have sent me to prison. if i was nicely dressed i might pass it, but when a chap like me offers a tendollar bill it's sure to he looked at sharply. i haven't a cent, and i'll trouble you to hand over all you've got." "why don't you work for a living? you are a strong, able-bodied man." "you'll find i am if you give me any more of your palaver." carl saw that the time of negotiation was past, and that active hostilities were about to commence. accordingly he turned and ran, not forward, but in the reverse direction, hoping in this way to meet with mr. jennings. "ah, that's your game, is it?" growled the tramp. "you needn't expect to escape, for i'll overhaul you in two minutes." so carl ran, and his rough acquaintance ran after him. it could hardly be expected that a boy of sixteen, though stout and strong, could get away from a tall, powerful man like the tramp. looking back over his shoulder, carl saw that the tramp was but three feet behind, and almost able to lay his hand upon his shoulder. he dodged dexterously, and in trying to do the same the tramp nearly fell to the ground. naturally, this did not sweeten his temper. "i'll half murder you when i get hold of you," he growled, in a tone that bodied ill for carl. the latter began to pant, and felt that he could not hold out much longer. should he surrender at discretion? "if some one would only come along," was his inward aspiration. "this man will take my money and beat me, too." as if in reply to his fervent prayer the small figure of mr. jennings appeared suddenly, rounding a curve in the road. "save me, save me, mr. jennings!" cried carl, running up to the little man for protection. "what is the matter? who is this fellow?" asked mr. jennings, in a deep voice for so small a man. "that tramp wants to rob me." "don't trouble yourself! he won't do it," said jennings, calmly. chapter xiv. carl arrives in milford. the tramp stopped short, and eyed carl's small defender, first with curious surprise, and then with derision. "out of my way, you midget!" he cried, "or 'll hurt you." "try it!" said the little man, showing no sign of fear. "why, you're no bigger than a kid. i can upset you with one finger." he advanced contemptuously, and laid his hand on the shoulder of the dwarf. in an instant jennings had swung his flail-like arms, and before the tramp understood what was happening he was lying flat on his back, as much to carl's amazement as his own. he leaped to his feet with an execration, and advanced again to the attack. to be upset by such a pigmy was the height of mortification. "i'm going to crush you, you mannikin!" he threatened. jennings put himself on guard. like many small men, he was very powerful, as his broad shoulders and sinewy arms would have made evident to a teacher of gymnastics. he clearly understood that this opponent was in deadly earnest, and he put out all the strength which he possessed. the result was that his largeframed antagonist went down once more, striking his head with a force that nearly stunned him. it so happened that at this juncture reinforcements arrived. a sheriff and his deputy drove up in an open buggy, and, on witnessing the encounter, halted their carriage and sprang to the ground. "what is the matter, mr. jennings?" asked the sheriff, respectfully, for the little man was a person of importance in that vicinity. "that gentleman is trying to extort a forced loan, mr. clunningham." "ha! a footpad?" "yes." the sheriff sprang to the side of the tramp, who was trying to rise, and in a trice his wrists were confined by handcuffs. "i think i know you, mike frost," he said. "you are up to your old tricks. when did you come out of sing sing?" "three weeks since," answered the tramp, sullenly. "they want you back there. come along with me!" he was assisted into the buggy, and spent that night in the lockup. "did he take anything from you, carl?" asked mr. jennings. "no, sir; but i was in considerable danger. how strong you are!" he added, admiringly. "strength isn't always according to size!" said the little man, quietly. "nature gave me a powerful, though small, frame, and i have increased my strength by gymnastic exercise." mr. jennings did not show the least excitement after his desperate contest. he had attended to it as a matter of business, and when over he suffered it to pass out of his mind. he took out his watch and noted the time. "it is later than i thought," he said. "i think i shall have to give up my plan of walking the rest of the way." "then i shall be left alone," thought carl regretfully. just then a man overtook them in a carriage. he greeted mr. jennings respectfully. "are you out for a long walk?" he said. "yes, but i find time is passing too rapidly with me. are you going to milford?" "yes, sir." "can you take two passengers?" "you and the boy?" "yes; of course i will see that you don't lose by it." "i ought not to charge you anything, mr. jennings. several times you have done me favors." "and i hope to again, but this is business. if a dollar will pay you, the boy and i will ride with you." "it will be so much gain, as i don't go out of my way." "you can take the back seat, carl," said mr. jennings. "i will sit with mr. leach." they were soon seated and on their way. "relative of yours, mr. jennings?" asked leach, with a backward glance at carl. like most country folks, he was curious about people. those who live in cities meet too many of their kind to feel an interest in strangers. "no; a young friend," answered jennings, briefly. "goin' to visit you?" "yes, i think he will stay with me for a time." then the conversation touched upon milford matters in which at present carl was not interested. after his fatiguing walk our hero enjoyed the sensation of riding. the road was a pleasant one, the day was bright with sunshine and the air vocal with the songs of birds. for a time houses were met at rare intervals, but after a while it became evident that they were approaching a town of considerable size. "is this milford, mr. jennings?" asked carl. "yes," answered the little man, turning with a pleasant smile. "how large is it?" "i think there are twelve thousand inhabitants. it is what western people call a `right smart place.' it has been my home for twenty years, and i am much attached to it." "and it to you, mr. jennings," put in the driver. "that is pleasant to hear," said jennings, with a smile. "it is true. there are few people here whom you have not befriended." "that is what we are here for, is it not?" "i wish all were of your opinion. why, mr. jennings, when we get a city charter i think i know who will be the first mayor." "not i, mr. leach. my own business is all i can well attend to. thank you for your compliment, though. carl, do you see yonder building?" he pointed to a three-story structure, a frame building, occupying a prominent position. "yes, sir." "that is my manufactory. what do you think of it?" "i shouldn't think a town of this size would require so large an establishment," answered carl. mr. jennings laughed. "you are right," he said. "if i depended on milford trade, a very small building would be sufficient. my trade is outside. i supply many dealers in new york city and at the west. my retail trade is small. if any of my neighbors want furniture they naturally come to me, and i favor them as to price out of friendly feeling, but i am a manufacturer and wholesale dealer." "i see, sir." "shall i take you to your house, mr. jennings?" asked leach. "yes, if you please." leach drove on till he reached a two-story building of quaker-like simplicity but with a large, pleasant yard in front, with here and there a bed of flowers. here he stopped his horse. "we have reached our destination, carl," said mr. jennings. "you are active. jump out and i will follow." carl needed no second invitation. he sprang from the carriage and went forward to help mr. jennings out. "no, thank you, carl," said the little man. "i am more active than you think. here we are!" he descended nimbly to the ground, and, drawing a one-dollar bill from his pocket, handed it to the driver. "i don't like to take it, mr. jennings," said mr. leach. "why not? the laborer is worthy of his hire. now, carl, let us go into the house." chapter xv. mr. jennings at home. mr. jennings did not need to open the door. he had scarcely set foot on the front step when it was opened from inside, and carl found a fresh surprise in store for him. a woman, apparently six feet in height, stood on the threshold. her figure was spare and ungainly, and her face singularly homely, but the absence of beauty was partially made up by a kindly expression. she looked with some surprise at carl. "this is a young friend of mine, hannah," said her master. "welcome him for my sake." "i am glad to see you," said hannah, in a voice that was another amazement. it was deeper than that of most men. as she spoke, she held out a large masculine hand, which carl took, as seemed to be expected. "thank you," said carl. "what am i to call you?" asked hannah. "carl crawford." "that's a strange name." "it is not common, i believe." "you two will get acquainted by and by," said mr. jennings. "the most interesting question at present is, when will dinner be ready?" "in ten minutes," answered hannah, promptly. "carl and i are both famished. we have had considerable exercise," here he nodded at carl with a comical look, and carl understood that he referred in part to his contest with the tramp. hannah disappeared into the kitchen, and mr. jennings said: "come upstairs, carl. i will show you your room." up an old-fashioned stairway carl followed his host, and the latter opened the door of a side room on the first landing. it was not large, but was neat and comfortable. there was a cottage bedstead, a washstand, a small bureau and a couple of chairs. "i hope you will come to feel at home here," said mr. jennings, kindly. "thank you, sir. i am sure i shall," carl responded, gratefully. "there are some nails to hang your clothing on," went on mr. jennings, and then he stopped short, for it was clear that carl's small gripsack could not contain an extra suit, and he felt delicate at calling up in the boy's mind the thought of his poverty. "thank you, sir," said carl. "i left my trunk at the house of a friend, and if you should succeed in finding me a place, i will send for it." "that is well!" returned mr. jennings, looking relieved. "now i will leave you for a few moments. you will find water and towels, in case you wish to wash before dinner." carl was glad of the opportunity. he was particular about his personal appearance, and he felt hot and dusty. he bathed his face and hands, carefully dusted his suit, brushed his hair, and was ready to descend when he heard the tinkling of a small bell at the foot of the front stairs. he readily found his way into the neat diningroom at the rear of the parlor. mr. jennings sat at the head of the table, a little giant, diminutive in stature, but with broad shoulders, a large head, and a powerful frame. opposite him sat hannah, tall, stiff and upright as a grenadier. she formed a strange contrast to her employer. "i wonder what made him hire such a tall woman?" thought carl. "being so small himself, her size makes him look smaller." there was a chair at one side, placed for carl. "sit down there, carl," said mr. jennings. "i won't keep you waiting any longer than i can help. what have you given us to-day, hannah?" "roast beef," answered hannah in her deep tones. "there is nothing better." the host cut off a liberal slice for carl, and passed the plate to hannah, who supplied potatoes, peas and squash. carl's mouth fairly watered as he watched the hospitable preparations for his refreshment. "i never trouble myself about what we are to have on the table," said mr. jennings. "hannah always sees to that. she's knows just what i want. she is a capital cook, too, hannah is." hannah looked pleased at this compliment. "you are easily pleased, master," she said. "i should be hard to suit if i were not pleased with your cooking. you don't know so well carl's taste, but if there is anything he likes particularly he can tell you." "you are very kind, sir," said carl. "there are not many men who would treat a poor boy so considerately," he thought. "he makes me an honored guest." when dinner was over, mr. jennings invited carl to accompany him on a walk. they passed along the principal street, nearly every person they met giving the little man a cordial greeting. "he seems to be very popular," thought carl. at length they reached the manufactory. mr. jennings went into the office, followed by carl. a slender, dark-complexioned man, about thirty-five years of age, sat on a stool at a high desk. he was evidently the bookkeeper. "any letters, mr. gibbon?" asked mr. jennings. "yes, sir; here are four." "where are they from?" "from new york, chicago, pittsburg and new haven." "what do they relate to?" "orders. i have handed them to mr. potter." potter, as carl afterwards learned, was superintendent of the manufactory, and had full charge of practical details. "is there anything requiring my personal attention?" "no, sir; i don't think so." "by the way, mr. gibbon, let me introduce you to a young friend of mine--carl crawford." the bookkeeper rapidly scanned carl's face and figure. it seemed to carl that the scrutiny was not a friendly one. "i am glad to see you," said mr. gibbon, coldly. "thank you, sir." "by the way, mr. jennings," said the bookkeeper, "i have a favor to ask of you." "go on, mr. gibbon," rejoined his employer, in a cordial tone. "two months since you gave my nephew, leonard craig, a place in the factory." "yes; i remember." "i don't think the work agrees with him." "he seemed a strong, healthy boy." "he has never been used to confinement, and it affects him unpleasantly." "does he wish to resign his place?" "i have been wondering whether you would not be willing to transfer him to the office. i could send him on errands, to the post office, and make him useful in various ways." "i had not supposed an office boy was needed. still, if you desire it, i will try your nephew in the place." "thank you, sir." "i am bound to tell you, however, that his present place is a better one. he is learning a good trade, which, if he masters it, will always give him a livelihood. i learned a trade, and owe all i have to that." "true, mr. jennings, but there are other ways of earning a living." "certainly." "and i thought of giving leonard evening instruction in bookkeeping." "that alters the case. good bookkeepers are always in demand. i have no objection to your trying the experiment." "thank you, sir." "have you mentioned the matter to your nephew?" "i just suggested that i would ask you, but could not say what answer you would give." "it would have been better not to mention the matter at all till you could tell him definitely that he could change his place." "i don't know but you are right, sir. however, it is all right now." "now, carl," said mr. jennings, "i will take you into the workroom." chapter xvi. carl gets a place. "i suppose that is the bookkeeper," said carl. "yes. he has been with me three years. he understands his business well. you heard what he said about his nephew?" "yes, sir." "it is his sister's son--a boy of about your own age. i think he is making a mistake in leaving the factory, and going into the office. he will have little to do, and that not of a character to give him knowledge of business." "still, if he takes lessons in bookkeeping----" mr. jennings smiled. "the boy will never make a bookkeeper," he said. "his reason for desiring the change is because he is indolent. the world has no room for lazy people." "i wonder, sir, that you have had a chance to find him out." "little things betray a boy's nature, or a man's, for that matter. when i have visited the workroom i have noticed leonard, and formed my conclusions. he is not a boy whom i would select for my service, but i have taken him as a favor to his uncle. i presume he is without means, and it is desirable that he should pay his uncle something in return for the home which he gives him." "how much do you pay him, sir, if it is not a secret?" "oh, no; he receives five dollars a week to begin with. i will pay him the same in the office. and that reminds me; how would you like to have a situation in the factory? would you like to take leonard's place?" "yes, sir, if you think i would do." "i feel quite sure of it. have you ever done any manual labor?" "no, sir." "i suppose you have always been to school." "yes, sir." "you are a gentleman's son," proceeded mr. jennings, eying carl attentively. "how will it suit you to become a working boy?" "i shall like it," answered carl, promptly. "don't be too sure! you can tell better after a week in the factory. those in my employ work ten hours a day. leonard craig doesn't like it." "all i ask, mr. jennings, is that you give me a trial." "that is fair," responded the little man, looking pleased. "i will tell you now that, not knowing of any vacancy in the factory, i had intended to give you the place in the office which mr. gibbon has asked for his nephew. it would have been a good deal easier work." "i shall be quite satisfied to take my place in the factory." "come in, then, and see your future scene of employment." they entered a large room, occupying nearly an entire floor of the building. part of the space was filled by machinery. the number employed carl estimated roughly at twenty-five. quite near the door was a boy, who bore some personal resemblance to the bookkeeper. carl concluded that it must be leonard craig. the boy looked round as mr. jennings entered, and eyed carl sharply. "how are you getting on, leonard?" mr. jennings asked. "pretty well, sir; but the machinery makes my head ache." "your uncle tells me that your employment does not agree with you." "no, sir; i don't think it does." "he would like to have you in the office with him. would you like it, also?" "yes, sir," answered leonard, eagerly. "very well. you may report for duty at the office to-morrow morning. this boy will take your place here." leonard eyed carl curiously, not cordially. "i hope you'll like it," he said. "i think i shall." "you two boys must get acquainted," said mr. jennings. "leonard, this is carl crawford." "glad to know you," said leonard, coldly. "i don't think i shall like that boy," thought carl, as he followed mr. jennings to another part of the room. chapter xvii. carl enters the factory. when they left the factory mr. jennings said, with a smile: "now you are one of us, carl. to-morrow you begin work." "i am glad of it, sir." "you don't ask what salary you are to get." "i am willing to leave that to you." "suppose we say two dollars a week and board-to begin with." "that is better than i expected. but where am i to board?" "at my house, for the present, if that will suit you." "i shall like it very much, if it won't inconvenience you." "hannah is the one to be inconvenienced, if anyone. i had a little conversation with her while you were getting ready for dinner. she seems to have taken a liking for you, though she doesn't like boys generally. as for me, it will make the home brighter to have a young person in it. hannah and i are oldfashioned and quiet, and the neighbors don't have much reason to complain of noise." "no, sir; i should think not, ' said carl, with a smile. "there is one thing you must be prepared for, carl," said mr. jennings, after a pause. "what is that, sir?" "your living in my house--i being your employer--may excite jealousy in some. i think i know of one who will be jealous." "leonard craig?" "and his uncle. however, don't borrow any trouble on that score. i hope you won't take advantage of your position, and, thinking yourself a favorite, neglect your duties." "i will not, sir." "business and friendship ought to be kept apart." "that is right, sir." "i am going back to the house, but you may like to take a walk about the village. you will feel interested in it, as it is to be your future home. by the way, it may be well for you to write for your trunk. you can order it sent to my house." "all right, sir; i will do so." he went to the post office, and, buying a postal card, wrote to his friend, gilbert vance, as follows: "dear gilbert:--please send my trunk by express to me at milford, care of henry jennings, esq. he is my employer, and i live at his house. he is proprietor of a furniture factory. will write further particulars soon. "carl crawford." this postal carried welcome intelligence to gilbert, who felt a brotherly interest in carl. he responded by a letter of hearty congratulation, and forwarded the trunk as requested. carl reported for duty the next morning, and, though a novice, soon showed that he was not without mechanical skill. at twelve o'clock all the factory hands had an hour off for dinner. as carl passed into the street he found himself walking beside the boy whom he had succeeded--leonard craig. "good-morning, leonard," said carl, pleasantly. "good-morning. have you taken my place in the factory?" "yes." "do you think you shall like it?" "i think i shall, though, of course, it is rather early to form an opinion." "i didn't like it." "why not?" "i don't want to grow up a workman. i think i am fit for something better." "mr. jennings began as a factory hand." "i suppose he had a taste for it. i haven't." "then you like your present position better?" "oh, yes; it's more genteel. how much does jennings pay you?" "two dollars a week and board." "how is that? where do you board?" "with him." "oh!" said leonard, his countenance changing. "so you are a favorite with the boss, are you?" "i don't know. he gave me warning that he should be just as strict with me as if we were strangers." "how long have you known him?" carl smiled. "i met him for the first time yesterday," he answered. "that's very queer." "well, perhaps it is a little singular." "are you a poor boy?" "i have to earn my own living." "i see. you will grow up a common workman." "i shall try to rise above it. i am not ashamed of the position, but i am ambitious to rise." "i am going to be a bookkeeper," said leonard. "my uncle is going to teach me. i would rather be a bookkeeper than a factory hand." "then you are right in preparing yourself for such a post." here the two boys separated, as they were to dine in different places. leonard was pleased with his new position. he really had very little to do. twice a day he went to the post office, once or twice to the bank, and there was an occasional errand besides. to carl the idleness would have been insupportable, but leonard was naturally indolent. he sat down in a chair by the window, and watched the people go by. the first afternoon he was in luck, for there was a dog fight in the street outside. he seized his hat, went out, and watched the canine warfare with the deepest interest. "i think i will buy you a system of bookkeeping," said his uncle, "and you can study it in the office." "put it off till next week, uncle julius. i want to get rested from the factory work." "it seems to me, leonard, you were born lazy," said his uncle, sharply. "i don't care to work with my hands." "do you care to work at all?" "i should like to be a bookkeeper." "do you know that my work is harder and more exhausting than that of a workman in the factory?" "you don't want to exchange with him, do you?" asked leonard. "no." "that's where i agree with you." mr. jennings took several weekly papers. leonard was looking over the columns of one of them one day, when he saw the advertisement of a gift enterprise of a most attractive character. the first prize was a house and grounds valued at ten thousand dollars. following were minor prizes, among them one thousand dollars in gold. leonard's fancy was captivated by the brilliant prospect of such a prize. "price of tickets--only one dollar!" he read. "think of getting a thousand dollars for one! oh, if i could only be the lucky one!" he took out his purse, though he knew beforehand that his stock of cash consisted only of two dimes and a nickel. "i wonder if i could borrow a dollar of that boy carl!" he deliberated. "i'll speak to him about it." this happened more than a week after carl went to work in the factory. he had already received one week's pay, and it remained untouched in his pocket. leonard joined him in the street early in the evening, and accosted him graciously. "where are you going?" he asked. "nowhere in particular. i am out for a walk." "so am i. shall we walk together?" "if you like." after talking on indifferent matters, leonard said suddenly: "oh, by the way, will you do me a favor?" "what is it?" "lend me a dollar till next week." in former days carl would probably have granted the favor, but he realized the value of money now that he had to earn it by steady work. "i am afraid it won't be convenient," he answered. "does that mean that you haven't got it?" asked leonard. "no, i have it, but i am expecting to use it." "i wouldn't mind paying you interest for it-say twenty-five cents," continued leonard, who had set his heart on buying a ticket in the gift enterprise. "i would be ashamed to take such interest as that." "but i have a chance of making a good deal more out of it myself." "in what way?" "that is my secret." "why don't you borrow it of your uncle?" "he would ask too many questions. however, i see that you're a miser, and i won't trouble you." he left carl in a huff and walked hastily away. he turned into a lane little traveled, and, after walking a few rods, came suddenly upon the prostrate body of a man, whose deep, breathing showed that he was stupefied by liquor. leonard was not likely to feel any special interest in him, but one object did attract his attention. it was a wallet which had dropped out of the man's pocket and was lying on the grass beside him. chapter xviii. leonard's temptation. leonard was not a thief, but the sight of the wallet tempted him, under the circumstances. he had set his heart on buying a ticket in the gift enterprise, and knew of no way of obtaining the requisite sum--except this. it was, indeed, a little shock to him to think of appropriating money not his own; yet who would know it? the owner of the wallet was drunk, and would be quite unconscious of his loss. besides, if he didn't take the wallet, some one else probably would, and appropriate the entire contents. it was an insidious suggestion, and leonard somehow persuaded himself that since the money was sure to be taken, he might as well have the benefit of it as anyone else. so, after turning over the matter in his mind rapidly, he stooped down and picked up the wallet. the man did not move. emboldened by his insensibility, leonard cautiously opened the pocketbook, and his eyes glistened when he saw tucked away in one side, quite a thick roll of bills. "he won't miss one bill," thought leonard. "anyone else might take the whole wallet, but i wouldn't do that. i wonder how much money there is in the roll." he darted another glance at the prostrate form, but there seemed no danger of interruption. he took the roll in his hand, therefore, and a hasty scrutiny showed him that the bills ran from ones to tens. there must have been nearly a hundred dollars in all. "suppose i take a five," thought leonard, whose cupidity increased with the sight of the money. "he won't miss it, and it will be better in my hands than if spent for whiskey." how specious are the arguments of those who seek an excuse for a wrong act that will put money in the purse! "yes, i think i may venture to take a five, and, as i might not be able to change it right away, i will take a one to send for a ticket. then i will put the wallet back in the man's pocket." so far, all went smoothly, and leonard was proceeding to carry out his intention when, taking a precautionary look at the man on the ground, he was dumfounded by seeing his eyes wide open and fixed upon him. leonard flushed painfully, like a criminal detected in a crime, and returned the look of inquiry by one of dismay. "what--you--doing?" inquired the victim of inebriety. "i--is this your wallet, sir?" stammered leonard. "course it is. what you got it for?" "i--i saw it on the ground, and was afraid some one would find it, and rob you," said leonard, fluently. "somebody did find it," rejoined the man, whose senses seemed coming back to him. "how much did you take?" "i? you don't think i would take any of your money?" said leonard, in virtuous surprise. "looked like it! can't tell who to trust." "i assure you, i had only just picked it up, and was going to put it back in your pocket, sir." the man, drunk as he was, winked knowingly. "smart boy!" he said. "you do it well, ol' fella!" "but, sir, it is quite true, i assure you. i will count over the money before you. do you know how much you had?" "nev' mind. help me up!" leonard stooped over and helped the drunkard to a sitting position. "where am i? where is hotel?" leonard answered him. "take me to hotel, and i'll give you a dollar." "certainly, sir," said leonard, briskly. he was to get his dollar after all, and would not have to steal it. i am afraid he is not to be praised for his honesty, as it seemed to be a matter of necessity. "i wish he'd give me five dollars," thought leonard, but didn't see his way clear to make the suggestion. he placed the man on his feet, and guided his steps to the road. as he walked along, the inebriate, whose gait was at first unsteady, recovered his equilibrium and required less help. "how long had you been lying there?" asked leonard. "don't know. i was taken sick," and the inebriate nodded knowingly at leonard, who felt at liberty to laugh, too. "do you ever get sick?" "not that way," answered leonard. "smart boy! better off!" they reached the hotel, and leonard engaged a room for his companion. "has he got money?" asked the landlord, in a low voice. "yes," answered leonard, "he has nearly a hundred dollars. i counted it myself." "that's all right, then," said the landlord. "here, james, show the gentleman up to no. 15." "come, too," said the stranger to leonard. the latter followed the more readily because he had not yet been paid his dollar. the door of no. 15 was opened, and the two entered. "i will stay with the gentleman a short time," said leonard to the boy. "if we want anything we will ring." "all right, sir." "what's your name?" asked the inebriate, as he sank into a large armchair near the window. "leonard craig." "never heard the name before." "what's your name, sir?" "what yon want to know for?" asked the other, cunningly. "the landlord will want to put it on his book." "my name? phil stark." "philip stark?" "yes; who told you?" it will be seen that mr. stark was not yet quite himself. "you told me yourself." "so i did--'scuse me." "certainly, sir. by the way, you told me you would pay me a dollar for bringing you to the hotel." "so i did. take it," and philip stark passed the wallet to leonard. leonard felt tempted to take a two-dollar bill instead of a one, as mr. stark would hardly notice the mistake. still, he might ask to look at the bill, and that would be awkward. so the boy contented himself with the sum promised. "thank you, sir," he said, as he slipped the bill into his vest pocket. "do you want some supper?" "no, i want to sleep." "then you had better lie down on the bed. will you undress?" "no; too much trouble." mr. stark rose from the armchair, and, lurching round to the bed, flung himself on it. "i suppose you don't want me any longer," said leonard. "no. come round to-morrer." "yes, sir." leonard opened the door and left the room. he resolved to keep the appointment, and come round the next day. who knew but some more of mr. stark's money might come into his hands? grown man as he was, he seemed to need a guardian, and leonard was willing to act as such--for a consideration. "it's been a queer adventure!" thought leonard, as he slowly bent his steps towards his uncle's house. "i've made a dollar out of it, anyway, and if he hadn't happened to wake up just as he did i might have done better. however, it may turn out as well in the end." "you are rather late, leonard," said his uncle, in a tone that betrayed some irritation. "i wanted to send you on an errand, and you are always out of the way at such a time." "i'll go now," said leonard, with unusual amiability. "i've had a little adventure." "an adventure! what is it?" mr. gibbon asked, with curiosity. leonard proceeded to give an account of his finding the inebriate in the meadow, and his guiding him to the hotel. it may readily be supposed that he said nothing of his attempt to appropriate a part of the contents of the wallet. "what was his name?" asked gibbon, with languid curiosity. "phil stark, he calls himself." a strange change came over the face of the bookkeeper. there was a frightened look in his eyes, and his color faded. "phil stark!" he repeated, in a startled tone. "yes, sir." "what brings him here?" gibbon asked himself nervously, but no words passed his lips. "do you know the name?" asked leonard, wonderingly. "i--have heard it before, but--no, i don't think it is the same man." chapter xix. an artful scheme. "does this mr. stark intend to remain long in the village!" inquired the bookkeeper, in a tone of assumed indifference. "he didn't say anything on that point," answered leonard. "he did not say what business brought him here, i presume?" "no, he was hardly in condition to say much; he was pretty full," said leonard, with a laugh. "however, he wants me to call upon him to-morrow, and may tell me then." "he wants you to call upon him?" "yes, uncle." "are you going?" "yes; why shouldn't i?" "i see no reason," said gibbon, hesitating. then, after a pause he added: "if you see the way clear, find out what brings him to milford." "yes, uncle, i will." "uncle julius seems a good deal interested in this man, considering that he is a stranger," thought the boy. the bookkeeper was biting his nails, a habit he had when he was annoyed. "and, leonard," he added slowly, "don't mention my name while you are speaking to stark." "no, sir, i won't, if you don't want me to," answered leonard, his face betraying unmistakable curiosity. his uncle noted this, and explained hurriedly: "it is possible that he may be a man whom i once met under disagreeable circumstances, and i would prefer not to meet him again. should he learn that i was living here, he would be sure to want to renew the acquaintance." "yes, sir, i see. i don't think he would want to borrow money, for he seems to be pretty well provided. i made a dollar out of him to-day, and that is one reason why i am willing to call on him again. i may strike him for another bill." "there is no objection to that, provided you don't talk to him too freely. i don't think he will want to stay long in milford." "i wouldn't if i had as much money as he probably has." "do you often meet the new boy?" "carl crawford?" "yes; i see him on the street quite often." "he lives with mr. jennings, i hear." "so he tells me." "it is rather strange. i didn't suppose that jennings would care to receive a boy in his house, or that tall grenadier of a housekeeper, either. i expect she rules the household." "she could tuck him under her arm and walk off with him," said leonard, laughing. "the boy must be artful to have wormed his way into the favor of the strange pair. he seems to be a favorite." "yes, uncle, i think he is. however, i like my position better than his." "he will learn his business from the beginning. i don't know but it was a mistake for you to leave the factory." "i am not at all sorry for it, uncle." "your position doesn't amount to much." "i am paid just as well as i was when i was in the factory." "but you are learning nothing." "you are going to teach me bookkeeping." "even that is not altogether a desirable business. a good bookkeeper can never expect to be in business for himself. he must be content with a salary all his life." "you have done pretty well, uncle." "but there is no chance of my becoming a rich man. i have to work hard for my money. and i haven't been able to lay up much money yet. that reminds me? leonard, i must impress upon you the fact that you have your own way to make. i have procured you a place, and i provide you a home----" "you take my wages," said leonard, bluntly. "a part of them, but on the whole, you are not self-supporting. you must look ahead, leonard, and consider the future. when you are a young man you will want to earn an adequate income." "of course, i shall, uncle, but there is one other course." "what is that?" "i may marry an heiress," suggested leonard, smiling. the bookkeeper winced. "i thought i was marrying an heiress when i married your aunt," he said, "but within six months of our wedding day, her father made a bad failure, and actually had the assurance to ask me to give him a home under my roof." "did you do it?" "no; i told him it would not be convenient." "what became of him?" "he got a small clerkship at ten dollars a week in the counting room of a mercantile friend, and filled it till one day last october, when he dropped dead of apoplexy. i made a great mistake when i married in not asking him to settle a definite sum on his daughter. it would have been so much saved from the wreck." "did aunt want him to come and live here?" "yes, women are always unreasonable. she would have had me support the old man in idleness, but i am not one of that kind. every tub should stand on its own bottom." "i say so, too, uncle. do you know whether this boy, carl crawford, has any father or mother?" "from a word jennings let fall i infer that he has relatives, but is not on good terms with them. i have been a little afraid he might stand in your light." "how so, uncle?" "should there be any good opening for one of your age, i am afraid he would get it rather than you." "i didn't think of that," said leonard, jealously. "living as he does with mr. jennings, he will naturally try to ingratiate himself with him, and stand first in his esteem." "that is true. is mr. jennings a rich man, do you think?" "yes, i think he is. the factory and stock are worth considerable money, but i know he has other investments also. as one item he has over a thousand dollars in the carterville savings bank. he has been very prudent, has met with no losses, and has put aside a great share of his profits every year." "i wonder he don't marry." "marriage doesn't seem to be in his thoughts. hannah makes him so comfortable that he will probably remain a bachelor to the end of his days." "perhaps he will leave his money to her." "he is likely to live as long as she." "she is a good deal longer than he," said leonard, with a laugh. the bookkeeper condescended to smile at this joke, though it was not very brilliant. "before this boy carl came," he resumed thoughtfully, "i hoped he might take a fancy to you. he must die some time, and, having no near blood relative, i thought he might select as heir some boy like yourself, who might grow into his favor and get on his blind side." "is it too late now?" asked leonard, eagerly. "perhaps not, but the appearance of this new boy on the scene makes your chance a good deal smaller." "i wish we could get rid of him," said leonard, frowning. "the only way is to injure him in the estimation of mr. jennings." "i think i know of a way." "mention it." "here is an advertisement of a lottery," said leonard, whose plans, in view of what his uncle had said, had experienced a change. "well?" "i will write to the manager in carl's name, inquiring about tickets, and, of course, he will answer to him, to the care of mr. jennings. this will lead to the suspicion that carl is interested in such matters." "it is a good idea. it will open the way to a loss of confidence on the part of mr. jennings." "i will sit down at your desk and write at once." three days later mr. jennings handed a letter to carl after they reached home in the evening. "a letter for you to my care," he explained. carl opened it in surprise, and read as follows: "office of gift enterprise. "mr. carl crawford:--your letter of inquiry is received. in reply we would say that we will send you six tickets for five dollars. by disposing of them among your friends at one dollar each, you will save the cost of your own. you had better remit at once. "yours respectfully, pitkins & gamp, "agents." carl looked the picture of astonishment when he read this letter. chapter xx. reveals a mystery. "please read this letter, mr. jennings," said carl. his employer took the letter from his hand, and ran his eye over it. "do you wish to ask my advice about the investment?" he said, quietly. "no, sir. i wanted to know how such a letter came to be written to me." "didn't you send a letter of inquiry there?" "no, sir, and i can't understand how these men could have got hold of my name." mr. jennings looked thoughtful. "some one has probably written in your name," he said, after a pause. "but who could have done so?" "if you will leave the letter in my hands, i may be able to obtain some information on that point." "i shall be glad if you can, mr. jennings." "don't mention to anyone having received such a letter, and if anyone broaches the subject, let me know who it is." "yes, sir, i will." mr. jennings quietly put on his hat, and walked over to the post office. the postmaster, who also kept a general variety store, chanced to be alone. "good-evening, mr. jennings," he said, pleasantly. "what can i do for you?" "i want a little information, mr. sweetland, though it is doubtful if you can give it." mr. sweetland assumed the attitude of attention. "do you know if any letter has been posted from this office within a few days, addressed to pitkins & gamp, syracuse, new york?" "yes; two letters have been handed in bearing this address." mr. jennings was surprised, for he had never thought of two letters. "can you tell me who handed them in?" he asked. "both were handed in by the same party." "and that was----" "a boy in your employ." mr. jennings looked grave. was it possible that carl was deceiving him? "the boy who lives at my house?" he asked, anxiously. "no; the boy who usually calls for the factory mail. the nephew of your bookkeeper i think his name is leonard craig." "ah, i see," said mr. jennings, looking very much relieved. "and you say he deposited both letters?" "yes, sir." "do you happen to remember if any other letter like this was received at the office?" here he displayed the envelope of carl's letter. "yes; one was received, addressed to the name of the one who deposited the first letters-leonard craig." "thank you, mr. sweetland. your information has cleared up a mystery. be kind enough not to mention the matter." "i will bear your request in mind." mr. jennings bought a supply of stamps, and then left the office. "well, carl," he said, when he re-entered the house, "i have discovered who wrote in your name to pitkins & gamp." "who, sir?" asked carl, with curiosity. "leonard craig." "but what could induce him to do it?" said carl, perplexed. "he thought that i would see the letter, and would be prejudiced against you if i discovered that you were investing in what is a species of lottery." "would you, sir?" "i should have thought you unwise, and i should have been reminded of a fellow workman who became so infatuated with lotteries that he stole money from his employer to enable him to continue his purchases of tickets. but for this unhappy passion he would have remained honest." "leonard must dislike me," said carl, thoughtfully. "he is jealous of you; i warned you he or some one else might become so. but the most curious circumstance is, he wrote a second letter in his own name. i suspect he has bought a ticket. i advise you to say nothing about the matter unless questioned." "i won't, sir." the next day carl met leonard in the street. "by the way," said leonard, "you got a letter yesterday?" "yes." "i brought it to the factory with the rest of the mail." "thank you." leonard looked at him curiously. "he seems to be close-mouthed," leonard said to himself. "he has sent for a ticket, i'll bet a hat, and don't want me to find out. i wish i could draw the capital prize-i would not mind old jennings finding out then." "do you ever hear from your--friends?" he asked a minute later. "not often." "i thought that letter might be from your home." "no; it was a letter from syracuse." "i remember now, it was postmarked syracuse. have you friends there?" "none that i am aware of." "yet you receive letters from there?" "that was a business letter." carl was quietly amused at leonard's skillful questions, but was determined not to give him any light on the subject. leonard tried another avenue of attack. "oh, dear!" he sighed, "i wish i was rich." "i shouldn't mind being rich myself," said carl, with a smile. "i suppose old jennings must have a lot of money." "mr. jennings, i presume, is very well off," responded carl, emphasizing the title "mr." "if i had his money i wouldn't live in such quaker style." "would you have him give fashionable parties?" asked carl, smiling. "well, i don't know that he would enjoy that; but i'll tell you what i would do. i would buy a fast horse--a two-forty mare--and a bangup buggy, and i'd show the old farmers round here what fast driving is. then i'd have a stylish house, and----" "i don't believe you'd be content to live in milford, leonard." "i don't think i would, either, unless my business were here. i'd go to new york every few weeks and see life." "you may be rich some time, so that you can carry out your wishes." "do you know any easy way of getting money?" asked leonard, pointedly. "the easy ways are not generally the true ways. a man sometimes makes money by speculation, but he has to have some to begin with." "i can't get anything out of him," thought leonard. "well, good-evening." he crossed the street, and joined the man who has already been referred to as boarding at the hotel. mr. stark had now been several days in milford. what brought him there, or what object he had in staying, leonard had not yet ascertained. he generally spent part of his evenings with the stranger, and had once or twice received from him a small sum of money. usually, however, he had met mr. stark in the billiard room, and played a game or two of billiards with him. mr. stark always paid for the use of the table, and that was naturally satisfactory to leonard, who enjoyed amusement at the expense of others. leonard, bearing in mind his uncle's request, had not mentioned his name to mr. stark, and stark, though he had walked about the village more or less, had not chanced to meet mr. gibbon. he had questioned leonard, however, about mr. jennings, and whether he was supposed to be rich. leonard had answered freely that everyone considered him so. "but he doesn't know how to enjoy his money," he added. "we should," said stark, jocularly. "you bet we would," returned leonard; and he was quite sincere in his boast, as we know from his conversation with carl. "by the way," said stark, on this particular evening, "i never asked you about your family, leonard. i suppose you live with your parents." "no, sir. they are dead." "then whom do you live with?" "with my uncle," answered leonard, guardedly. "is his name craig?" "no." "what then?" "i've got to tell him," thought leonard. "well, i don't suppose there will be much harm in it. my uncle is bookkeeper for mr. jennings," he said, "and his name is julius gibbon." philip stark wheeled round, and eyed leonard in blank astonishment. "your uncle is julius gibbon!" he exclaimed. "yes." "well, i'll be blowed." "do you--know my uncle?" asked leonard, hesitating. "i rather think i do. take me round to the house. i want to see him." chapter xxi. an unwelcome guest. when julius gibbon saw the door open and philip stark enter the room where he was smoking his noon cigar, his heart quickened its pulsations and he turned pale. "how are you, old friend?" said stark, boisterously. "funny, isn't it, that i should run across your nephew?" "very strange!" ejaculated gibbon, looking the reverse of joyous. "it's a happy meeting, isn't it? we used to see a good deal of each other," and he laughed in a way that gibbon was far from enjoying. "now, i've come over to have a good, long chat with you. leonard, i think we won't keep you, as you wouldn't be interested in our talk about old times." "yes, leonard, you may leave us," added his uncle. leonard's curiosity was excited, and he would have been glad to remain, but as there was no help for it, he went out. when they were alone, stark drew up his chair close, and laid his hand familiarly on the bookkeeper's knee. "i say, gibbon, do you remember where we last met?" gibbon shuddered slightly. "yes," he answered, feebly. "it was at joliet--joliet penitentiary. your time expired before mine. i envied you the six months' advantage you had of me. when i came out i searched for you everywhere, but heard nothing." "how did you know i was here?" asked the bookkeeper. "i didn't know. i had no suspicion of it. nor did i dream that leonard, who was able to do me a little service, was your nephew. i say, he's a chip of the old block, gibbon," and stark laughed as if he enjoyed it. "what do you mean by that?" "i was lying in a field, overcome by liquor, an old weakness of mine, you know, and my wallet had slipped out of my pocket. i chanced to open my eyes, when i saw it in the hands of your promising nephew, ha! ha!" "he told me that." "but he didn't tell you that he was on the point of appropriating a part of the contents? i warrant you he didn't tell you that." "did he acknowledge it? perhaps you misjudged him." "he didn't acknowledge it in so many words, but i knew it by his change of color and confusion. oh, i didn't lay it up against him. we are very good friends. he comes honestly by it." gibbon looked very much annoyed, but there were reasons why he did not care to express his chagrin. "on my honor, it was an immense surprise to me," proceeded stark, "when i learned that my old friend gibbon was a resident of milford." "i wish you had never found it out," thought gibbon, biting his lip. "no sooner did i hear it than i posted off at once to call on you." "so i see." stark elevated his eyebrows, and looked amused. he saw that he was not a welcome visitor, but for that he cared little. "haven't you got on, though? here i find you the trusted bookkeeper of an important business firm. did you bring recommendations from your last place?" and he burst into a loud guffaw. "i wish you wouldn't make such references," snapped gibbon. "they can do no good, and might do harm." "don't be angry, my dear boy. i rejoice at your good fortune. wish i was equally well fixed. you don't ask how i am getting on." "i hope you are prosperous," said gibbon, coldly. "i might be more so. is there a place vacant in your office?" "no." "and if there were, you might not recommend me, eh?" "there is no need to speak of that. there is no vacancy." "upon my word, i wish there were, as i am getting to the end of my tether. i may have money enough to last me four weeks longer, but no more." "i don't see how i can help you," said gibbon. "how much salary does mr. jennings pay you?" "a hundred dollars a month," answered the bookkeeper, reluctantly. "not bad, in a cheap place like this." "it takes all i make to pay expenses." "i remember--you have a wife. i have no such incumbrance." "there is one question i would like to ask you," said the bookkeeper. "fire away, dear boy. have you an extra cigar?" "here is one," "thanks. now i shall be comfortable. go ahead with your question." "what brought you to milford? you didn't know of my being here, you say." "neither did i. i came on my old business." "what?" "i heard there was a rich manufacturer here --i allude to your respected employer. i thought i might manage to open his safe some dark night." "no, no," protested gibbon in alarm. "don't think of it." "why not?" asked stark, coolly. "because," answered gibbon, in some agitation, "i might be suspected." "well, perhaps you might; but i have got to look out for number one. how do you expect me to live?" "go somewhere else. there are plenty of other men as rich, and richer, where you would not be compromising an old friend." "it's because i have an old friend in the office that i have thought this would be my best opening." "surely, man, you don't expect me to betray my employer, and join with you in robbing him?" "that's just what i do expect. don't tell me you have grown virtuous, gibbon. the tiger doesn't lose his spots or the leopard his stripes. i tell you there's a fine chance for us both. i'll divide with you, if you'll help me." "but i've gone out of the business," protested gibbon. "i haven't. come, old boy, i can't let any sentimental scruples interfere with so good a stroke of business." "i won't help you!" said gibbon, angrily. "you only want to get me into trouble." "you won't help me?" said stark, with slow deliberation. "no, i can't honorably. can't you let me alone?" "sorry to say, i can't. if i was rich, i might; but as it is, it is quite necessary for me to raise some money somewhere. by all accounts, jennings is rich, and can spare a small part of his accumulations for a good fellow that's out of luck." "you'd better give up the idea. it's quite impossible." "is it?" asked stark, with a wicked look. "then do you know what i will do?" "what will you do?" asked gibbon, nervously. "i will call on your employer, and tell him what i know of you." "you wouldn't do that?" said the bookkeeper, much agitated. "why not? you turn your back upon an old friend. you bask in prosperity, and turn from him in his poverty. it's the way of the world, no doubt; but phil stark generally gets even with those who don't treat him well." "tell me what you want me to do," said gibbon, desperately. "tell me first whether your safe contains much of value." "we keep a line of deposit with the milford bank." "do you mean to say that nothing of value is left in the safe overnight?" asked stark, disappointed "there is a box of government bonds usually kept there," the bookkeeper admitted, reluctantly. "ah, that's good!" returned stark, rubbing his hands. "do you know how much they amount to?" "i think there are about four thousand dollars." "good! we must have those bonds, gibbon." chapter xxii. mr. stark is recognized. phil stark was resolved not to release his hold upon his old acquaintance. during the day he spent his time in lounging about the town, but in the evening he invariably fetched up at the bookkeeper's modest home. his attentions were evidently not welcome to mr. gibbon, who daily grew more and more nervous and irritable, and had the appearance of a man whom something disquieted. leonard watched the growing intimacy with curiosity. he was a sharp boy, and he felt convinced that there was something between his uncle and the stranger. there was no chance for him to overhear any conversation, for he was always sent out of the way when the two were closeted together. he still met mr. stark outside, and played billiards with him frequently. once he tried to extract some information from stark. "you've known my uncle a good while," he said, in a tone of assumed indifference. "yes, a good many years," answered stark, as he made a carom. "were you in business together?" "not exactly, but we may be some time," returned stark, with a significant smile. "here?" "well, that isn't decided." "where did you first meet uncle julius?" "the kid's growing curious," said stark to himself. "does he think he can pull wool over the eyes of phil stark? if he does, he thinks a good deal too highly of himself. i will answer his questions to suit myself." "why don't you ask your uncle that?" "i did," said leonard, "but he snapped me up, and told me to mind my own business. he is getting terribly cross lately." "it's his stomach, i presume," said stark, urbanely. "he is a confirmed dyspeptic-that's what's the matter with him. now; i've got the digestion of an ox. nothing ever troubles me, and the result is that i am as calm and good-natured as a may morning." "don't you ever get riled, mr. stark?" asked leonard, laughing. "well, hardly ever. sometimes when i am asked fool questions by one who seems to be prying into what is none of his business, i get wrathy, and when i'm roused look out !" he glanced meaningly at leonard, and the boy understood that the words conveyed a warning and a menace. "is anything the matter with you, mr. gibbon? are you as well as usual?" asked mr. jennings one morning. the little man was always considerate, and he had noticed the flurried and nervous manner of his bookkeeper. "no, sir; what makes you ask?" said gibbon, apologetically. "perhaps you need a vacation," suggested mr. jennings. "oh, no, i think not. besides, i couldn't be spared." "i would keep the books myself for a week to favor you." "you are very kind, but i won't trouble you just yet. a little later on, if i feel more uncomfortable, i will avail myself of your kindness." "do so. i know that bookkeeping is a strain upon the mind, more so than physical labor." there were special reasons why mr. gibbon did not dare to accept the vacation tendered him by his employer. he knew that phil stark would be furious, for it would interfere with his designs. he could not afford to offend this man, who held in his possession a secret affecting his reputation and good name. the presence of a stranger in a small town always attracts public attention, and many were curious about the rakish-looking man who had now for some time occupied a room at the hotel. among others, carl had several times seen him walking with leonard craig "leonard," he asked one day, "who is the gentleman i see you so often walking with?" "it's a man that's boarding at the hotel. i play billiards with him sometimes." "he seems to like milford." "i don't know. he's over at our house every evening." "is he?" asked carl, surprised. "yes; he's an old acquaintance of uncle julius. i don't know where they met each other, for he won't tell. he said he and uncle might go into business together some time. between you and me, i think uncle would like to get rid of him. i know he doesn't like him." this set carl to thinking, but something occurred soon afterwards that impressed him still more. occasionally a customer of the house visited milford, wishing to give a special order for some particular line of goods. about this time a mr. thorndike, from chicago, came to milford on this errand, and put up at the hotel. he had called at the factory during the day, and had some conversation with mr. jennings. after supper a doubt entered the mind of the manufacturer in regard to one point, and he said to carl: "carl, are you engaged this evening?" "no, sir." "will you carry a note for me to the hotel?" "certainly, sir; i shall be glad to do so." "mr. thorndike leaves in the morning, and i am not quite clear as to one of the specifications he gave me with his order. you noticed the gentleman who went through the factory with me?" "yes, sir." "he is mr. thorndike. please hand him this note, and if he wishes you to remain with him for company, you had better do so." "i will, sir." "hannah," said mr. jennings, as his messenger left with the note, "carl is a pleasant addition to our little household?" "yes, indeed he is," responded hannah, emphatically. "if he was twice the trouble i'd be glad to have him here." "he is easy to get along with." "surely." "yet his stepmother drove him from his father's house." "she's a wicked trollop, then!" said hannah, in a deep, stern voice. "i'd like to get hold of her, i would." "what would you do to her?" asked mr. jennings, smiling. "i'd give her a good shaking," answered hannah. "i believe you would, hannah," said mr. jennings, amused. "on the whole, i think she had better keep out of your clutches. still, but for her we would never have met with carl. what is his father's loss is our gain." "what a poor, weak man his father must be," said hannah, contemptuously, "to let a woman like her turn him against his own flesh and blood!" "i agree with you, hannah. i hope some time he may see his mistake." carl kept on his way to the hotel. it was summer and mr. thorndike was sitting on the piazza smoking a cigar. to him carl delivered the note. "it's all right!" he said, rapidly glancing it over. "you may tell mr. jennings," and here he gave an answer to the question asked in the letter. "yes, sir, i will remember." "won't you sit down and keep me company a little while?" asked thorndike, who was sociably inclined. "thank you, sir," and carl sat down in a chair beside him. "will you have a cigar?" "no, thank you, sir. i don't smoke." "that is where you are sensible. i began to smoke at fourteen, and now i find it hard to break off. my doctor tells me it is hurting me, but the chains of habit are strong." "all the more reason for forming good habits, sir." "spoken like a philosopher. are you in the employ of my friend, mr. jennings?" "yes, sir." "learning the business?" "that is my present intention." "if you ever come out to chicago, call on me, and if you are out of a place, i will give you one." "are you not a little rash, mr. thorndike, to offer me a place when you know so little of me?" "i trust a good deal to looks. i care more for them than for recommendations." at that moment phil stark came out of the hotel, and passing them, stepped off the piazza into the street. mr. thorndike half rose from his seat, and looked after him. "who is that?" he asked, in an exciting whisper. "a man named stark, who is boarding at the hotel. do you know him?" "do i know him?" repeated thorndike. "he is one of the most successful burglars in the west." chapter xxiii. preparing for the burglar. carl stared at mr. thorndike in surprise and dismay. "a burglar!" he ejaculated. "yes; i was present in the courtroom when he was convicted of robbing the springfield bank. i sat there for three hours, and his face was impressed upon my memory. i saw him later on in the joliet penitentiary. i was visiting the institution and saw the prisoners file out into the yard. i recognized this man instantly. do you know how long he has been here?" "for two weeks i should think." "he has some dishonest scheme in his head, i have no doubt. have you a bank in milford?" "yes." "he may have some design upon that." "he is very intimate with our bookkeeper, so his nephew tells me." mr. thorndike looked startled. "ha! i scent danger to my friend, mr. jennings. he ought to be apprised." "he shall be, sir," said carl, firmly. "will you see him to-night?" "yes, sir; i am not only in his employ, but i live at his house." "that is well." "perhaps i ought to go home at once." "no attempt will be made to rob the office till late. it is scarcely eight o'clock. i don't know, however, but i will walk around to the house with you, and tell your employer what i know. by the way, what sort of a man is the bookkeeper?" "i don't know him very well, sir. he has a nephew in the office, who was transferred from the factory. i have taken his place." "do you think the bookkeeper would join in a plot to rob his employer?" "i don't like him. to me he is always disagreeable, but i would not like to say that." "how long has he been in the employ of mr. jennings?" "as long as two years, i should think." "you say that this man is intimate with him?" "leonard craig--he is the nephew--says that mr. philip stark is at his uncle's house every evening." "so he calls himself philip stark, does he?" "isn't that his name?" "i suppose it is one of his names. he was convicted under that name, and retains it here on account of its being so far from the place of his conviction. whether it is his real name or not, i do not know. what is the name of your bookkeeper?" "julius gibbon." "i don't remember ever having heard it. evidently there has been some past acquaintance between the two men, and that, i should say, is hardly a recommendation for mr. gibbon. of course that alone is not enough to condemn him, but the intimacy is certainly a suspicious circumstance." the two soon reached the house of mr. jennings, for the distance was only a quarter of a mile. mr. jennings seemed a little surprised, but gave a kindly welcome to his unexpected guest. it occurred to him that he might have come to give some extra order for goods. "you are surprised to see me," said thorndike. "i came on a very important matter." a look of inquiry came over the face of mr. jennings. "there's a thief in the village--a guest at the hotel--whom i recognize as one of the most expert burglars in the country." "i think i know whom you mean, a man of moderate height, rather thick set, with small, black eyes and a slouch hat." "exactly." "what can you tell me about him?" mr. thorndike repeated the statement he had already made to carl. "do you think our bank is in danger?" asked the manufacturer. "perhaps so, but the chief danger threatens you." mr. jennings looked surprised. "what makes you think so?" "because this man appears to be very intimate with your bookkeeper." "how do you know that?" asked the little man, quickly. "i refer you to carl." "leonard craig told me to-night that this man stark spent every evening at his uncle's house." mr. jennings looked troubled. "i am sorry to hear this," he said. "i dislike to lose confidence in any man whom i have trusted." "have you noticed anything unusual in the demeanor of your bookkeeper of late?" asked thorndike. "yes; he has appeared out of spirits and nervous." "that would seem to indicate he is conspiring to rob you." "this very day, noticing the change in him, i offered him a week's vacation. he promptly declined to take it." "of course. it would conflict with the plans of his confederate. i don't know the man, but i do know human nature, and i venture to predict that your safe will be opened within a week. do you keep anything of value in it?" "there are my books, which are of great value to me." "but not to a thief. anything else?" "yes; i have a tin box containing four thousand dollars in government bonds." "coupon or registered?" "coupon." "nothing could be better--for a burglar. what on earth could induce you to keep the bonds in your own safe?" "to tell the truth, i considered them quite as safe there as in the bank. banks are more likely to be robbed than private individuals." "circumstances alter cases. does anyone know that you have the bonds in your safe?" "my bookkeeper is aware of it." "then, my friend, i caution you to remove the bonds from so unsafe a depository as soon as possible. unless i am greatly mistaken, this man, stark, has bought over your bookkeeper, and will have his aid in robbing you." "what is your advice?" "to remove the bonds this very evening," said thorndike. "do you think the danger so pressing?" "of course i don't know that an attempt will be made to-night, but it is quite possible. should it be so, you would have an opportunity to realize that delays are dangerous." "should mr. gibbon find, on opening the safe to-morrow morning, that the box is gone, it may lead to an attack upon my house." "i wish you to leave the box in the safe." "but i understand that you advised me to remove it." "not the box, but the bonds. listen to my plan. cut out some newspaper slips of about the same bulk as the bonds, put them in place of the bonds in the box, and quietly transfer the bonds in your pocket to your own house. to-morrow you can place them in the bank. should no burglary be attempted, let the box remain in the safe, just as if its contents were valuable." "your advice is good, and i will adopt it," said jennings, "and thank you for your valuable and friendly instruction." "if agreeable to you i will accompany you to the office at once. the bonds cannot be removed too soon. then if anyone sees us entering, it will be thought that you are showing me the factory. it will divert suspicion, even if we are seen by stark or your bookkeeper." "may i go, too?" asked carl, eagerly. "certainly," said the manufacturer. "i know, carl, that you are devoted to my interests. it is a comfort to know this, now that i have cause to suspect my bookkeeper." it was only a little after nine. the night was moderately dark, and carl was intrusted with a wax candle, which he put in his pocket for use in the office. they reached the factory without attracting attention, and entered by the office door. mr. jennings opened the safe--he and the bookkeeper alone knew the combination--and with some anxiety took out the tin box. it was possible that the contents had already been removed. but no! on opening it, the bonds were found intact. according to mr. thorndike's advice, he transferred them to his pocket, and substituted folded paper. then, replacing everything, the safe was once more locked, and the three left the office. mr. thorndike returned to the hotel, and mr. jennings to his house, but carl asked permission to remain out a while longer. "it is on my mind that an attempt will be made to-night to rob the safe," he said. "i want to watch near the factory to see if my suspicion is correct." "very well, carl, but don't stay out too long!" said his employer. "suppose i see them entering the office, sir?" "don't interrupt them! they will find themselves badly fooled. notice only if mr. gibbon is of the party. i must know whether my bookkeeper is to be trusted." chapter xxiv. the burglary. carl seated himself behind a stone wall on the opposite side of the street from the factory. the building was on the outskirts of the village, though not more than half a mile from the post office, and there was very little travel in that direction during the evening. this made it more favorable for thieves, though up to the present time no burglarious attempt had been made on it. indeed, milford had been exceptionally fortunate in that respect. neighboring towns had been visited, some of them several times, but milford had escaped. the night was quite dark, but not what is called pitchy dark. as the eyes became accustomed to the obscurity, they were able to see a considerable distance. so it was with carl. from his place of concealment he occasionally raised his head and looked across the way to the factory. an hour passed, and he grew tired. it didn't look as if the attempt were to be made that night. eleven o'clock pealed out from the spire of the baptist church, a quarter of a mile away. carl counted the strokes, and when the last died into silence, he said to himself: "i will stay here about ten minutes longer. then, if no one comes, i will give it up for tonight." the time was nearly up when his quick ear caught a low murmur of voices. instantly he was on the alert. waiting till the sound came nearer, he ventured to raise his head for an instant above the top of the wall. his heart beat with excitement when he saw two figures approaching. though it was so dark, he recognized them by their size and outlines. they were julius gibbon, the bookkeeper, and phil stark, the stranger staying at the hotel. carl watched closely, raising his head for a few seconds at a time above the wall, ready to lower it should either glance in his direction. but neither of the men did so. ignorant that they were suspected, it was the farthest possible from their thoughts that anyone would be on the watch. presently they came so near that carl could hear their voices. "i wish it was over," murmured gibbon, nervously. "don't worry," said his companion. "there is no occasion for haste. everybody in milford is in bed and asleep, and we have several hours at our disposal." "you must remember that my reputation is at stake. this night's work may undo me." "my friend, you can afford to take the chances. haven't i agreed to give you half the bonds?" "i shall be suspected, and shall be obliged to stand my ground, while you will disappear from the scene." "two thousand dollars will pay you for some inconvenience. i don't see why you should be suspected. you will be supposed to be fast asleep on your virtuous couch, while some bad burglar is robbing your worthy employer. of course you will be thunderstruck when in the morning the appalling discovery is made. i'll tell you what will be a good dodge for you." "well?" "offer a reward of a hundred dollars from your own purse for the discovery of the villain who has robbed the safe and abstracted the bonds." phil stark burst out into a loud guffaw as he uttered these words. "hush!" said gibbon, timidly. "i thought i heard some one moving." "what a timid fool you are!" muttered stark, contemptuously. "if i had no more pluck, i'd hire myself out to herd cows." "it's a better business," said gibbon, bitterly. "well, well, each to his taste! if you lose your place as bookkeeper, you might offer your services to some farmer. as for me, the danger, though there isn't much, is just enough to make it exciting." "i don't care for any such excitement," said gibbon, dispiritedly. "why couldn't you have kept away and let me earn an honest living?" "because i must live as well as you, my dear friend. when this little affair is over, you will thank me for helping you to a good thing." of course all this conversation did not take place within carl's hearing. while it was going on, the men had opened the office door and entered. then, as carl watched the window closely he saw a narrow gleam of light from a dark lantern illuminating the interior. "now they are at the safe," thought carl. we, who are privileged, will enter the office and watch the proceedings. gibbon had no difficulty in opening the safe, for he was acquainted with the combination. stark thrust in his hand eagerly and drew out the box. "this is what we want," he said, in a tone of satisfaction. "have you a key that will open it?" "no." "then i shall have to take box and all." "let us get through as soon as possible," said gibbon, uneasily. "you can close the safe, if you want to. there is nothing else worth taking?" "no." "then we will evacuate the premises. is there an old newspaper i can use to wrap up the box in? it might look suspicious if anyone should see it in our possession." "yes, here is one." he handed a copy of a weekly paper to phil stark, who skillfully wrapped up the box, and placing it under his arm, went out of the office, leaving gibbon to follow. "where will you carry it?" asked gibbon. "somewhere out of sight where i can safely open it. i should have preferred to take the bonds, and leave the box in the safe. then the bonds might not have been missed for a week or more." "that would have been better." that was the last that carl heard. the two disappeared in the darkness, and carl, raising himself from his place of concealment, stretched his cramped limbs and made the best of his way home. he thought no one would be up, but mr. jennings came out from the sitting-room, where he had flung himself on a lounge, and met carl in the hall. "well?" he said. "the safe has been robbed." "who did it?" asked the manufacturer, quickly. "the two we suspected." "did you see mr. gibbon, then?" "yes; he was accompanied by mr. stark." "you saw them enter the factory?" "yes, sir; i was crouching behind the stone wall on the other side of the road." "how long were they inside?" "not over fifteen minutes--perhaps only ten." "mr. gibbon knew the combination," said jennings, quietly. "there was no occasion to lose time in breaking open the safe. there is some advantage in having a friend inside. did you see them go out?" "yes, sir." "carrying the tin box with them?" "yes, sir. mr. stark wrapped it in a newspaper after they got outside." "but you saw the tin box?" "yes." "then, if necessary, you can testify to it. i thought it possible that mr. gibbon might have a key to open it." "i overheard stark regretting that he could not open it so as to abstract the bonds and leave the box in the safe. in that case, he said, it might be some time before the robbery was discovered." "he will himself make an unpleasant discovery when he opens the box. i don't think there is any call to pity him, do you, carl?" "no, sir. i should like to be within sight when he opens it." the manufacturer laughed quietly. "yes," he said; "if i could see it i should feel repaid for the loss of the box. let it be a lesson for you, my boy. those who seek to enrich themselves by unlawful means are likely in the end to meet with disappointment." "do you think i need the lesson?" asked carl, smiling. "no, my lad. i am sure you don't. but you do need a good night's rest. let us go to bed at once, and get what sleep we may. i won't allow the burglary to keep me awake." he laughed in high good humor, and carl went up to his comfortable room, where he soon lost all remembrance of the exciting scene of which he had been a witness. mr. jennings went to the factory at the usual time the next morning. as he entered the office the bookkeeper approached him pale and excited. "mr. jennings," he said, hurriedly, "i have bad news for you." "what is it, mr. gibbon?" "when i opened the safe this morning, i discovered that the tin box had been stolen." mr. jennings took the news quietly. "have you any suspicion who took it?" he asked. "no, sir. i--i hope the loss is not a heavy one." "i do not care to make the extent of the loss public. were there any marks of violence? was the safe broken open?" "no, sir." "singular; is it not?" "if you will allow me i will join in offering a reward for the discovery of the thief. i feel in a measure responsible." "i will think of your offer, mr. gibbon." "he suspects nothing," thought gibbon, with a sigh of relief. chapter xxv. stark's disappointment. philip stark went back to the hotel with the tin box under his arm. he would like to have entered the hotel without notice, but this was impossible, for the landlord's nephew was just closing up. though not late for the city, it was very late for the country, and he looked surprised when stark came in. "i am out late," said stark, with a smile. "yes." "that is, late for milford. in the city i never go to bed before midnight." "have you been out walking?" "yes." "you found it rather dark, did you not?" "it is dark as a pocket." "you couldn't have found the walk a very pleasant one." "you are right, my friend; but i didn't walk for pleasure. the fact is, i am rather worried about a business matter. i have learned that i am threatened with a heavy loss--an unwise investment in the west--and i wanted time to think it over and decide how to act." "i see," answered the clerk, respectfully, for stark's words led him to think that his guest was a man of wealth. "i wish i was rich enough to be worried by such a cause," he said, jokingly. "i wish you were. some time i may be able to throw something in your way." "do you think it would pay me to go to the west?" asked the clerk, eagerly. "i think it quite likely--if you know some one out in that section." "but i don't know anyone." "you know me," said stark, significantly. "do you think you could help me to a place, mr. stark?" "i think i could. a month from now write to me col. philip stark, at denver, colorado, and i will see if i can find an opening for you." "you are very kind, mr.--i mean col. stark," said the clerk, gratefully. "oh, never mind about the title," returned stark, smiling good-naturedly. "i only gave it to you just now, because everybody in denver knows me as a colonel, and i am afraid a letter otherwise addressed would not reach me. by the way, i am sorry that i shall probably have to leave you to-morrow." "so soon?" "yes; it's this tiresome business. i should not wonder if i might lose ten thousand dollars through the folly of my agent. i shall probably have to go out to right things." "i couldn't afford to lose ten thousand dollars," said the young man, regarding the capitalist before him with deference. "no, i expect not. at your age i wasn't worth ten thousand cents. now--but that's neither here nor there. give me a light, please, and i will go up to bed." "he was about to say how much he is worth now," soliloquized the clerk. "i wish he had not stopped short. if i can't be rich myself, i like to talk with a rich man. there's hope for me, surely. he says that at my age he was not worth ten thousand cents. that is only a hundred dollars, and i am worth that. i must keep it to pay my expenses to colorado, if he should send for me in a few weeks." the young man had noticed with some curiosity the rather oddly-shaped bundle which stark carried under his arm, but could not see his way clear to asking any questions about it. it seemed queer that stark should have it with him while walking. come to think of it, he remembered seeing him go out in the early evening, and he was quite confident that at that time he had no bundle with him. however, he was influenced only by a spirit of idle curiosity. he had no idea that the bundle was of any importance or value. the next day he changed his opinion on that subject. phil stark went up to his chamber, and setting the lamp on the bureau, first carefully locked the door, and then removed the paper from the tin box. he eyed it lovingly, and tried one by one the keys he had in his pocket, but none exactly fitted. as he was experimenting he thought with a smile of the night clerk from whom he had just parted. "stark," he soliloquized, addressing himself, "you are an old humbug. you have cleverly duped that unsophisticated young man downstairs. he looks upon you as a man of unbounded wealth, evidently, while, as a matter of fact, you are almost strapped. let me see how much i have got left." he took out his wallet, and counted out seven dollars and thirty-eight cents. "that can hardly be said to constitute wealth," he reflected, "but it is all i have over and above the contents of this box. that makes all the difference. gibbon is of opinion that there are four thousand dollars in bonds inside, and he expects me to give him half. shall i do it? not such a fool! i'll give him fifteen hundred and keep the balance myself. that'll pay him handsomely, and the rest will be a good nestegg for me. if gibbon is only half shrewd he will pull the wool over the eyes of that midget of an employer, and retain his place and comfortable salary. there will be no evidence against him, and he can pose as an innocent man. bah! what a lot of humbug there is in the world. well, well, stark, you have your share, no doubt. otherwise how would you make a living? to-morrow i must clear out from milford, and give it a wide berth in future. i suppose there will be a great hueand-cry about the robbery of the safe. it will be just as well for me to be somewhere else. i have already given the clerk a good reason for my sudden departure. confound it, it's a great nuisance that i can't open this box! i would like to know before i go to bed just how much boodle i have acquired. then i can decide how much to give gibbon. if i dared i'd keep the whole, but he might make trouble." phil stark, or col. philip stark, as he had given his name, had a large supply of keys, but none of them seemed to fit the tin box. "i am afraid i shall excite suspicion if i sit up any longer," thought stark. "i will go to bed and get up early in the morning. then i may succeed better in opening this plaguy box." he removed his clothing and got into bed. the evening had been rather an exciting one, but the excitement was a pleasurable one, for he had succeeded in the plan which he and the bookkeeper had so ingeniously formed and carried out, and here within reach was the rich reward after which they had striven. mr. stark was not troubled with a conscience-that he had got rid of years ago--and he was filled with a comfortable consciousness of having retrieved his fortunes when they were on the wane. so, in a short time he fell asleep, and slept peacefully. toward morning, however, he had a disquieting dream. it seemed to him that he awoke suddenly from slumber. and saw gibbon leaving the room with the tin box under his arm. he awoke really with beads of perspiration upon his brow--awoke to see by the sun streaming in at his window that the morning was well advanced, and the tin box was still safe. "thank heaven, it was but a dream!" he murmured. "i must get up and try once more to open the box." the keys had all been tried, and had proved not to fit. mr. stark was equal to the emergency. he took from his pocket a button hook and bent it so as to make a pick, and after a little experimenting succeeded in turning the lock. he lifted the lid eagerly, and with distended eyes prepared to gloat upon the stolen bonds. but over his face there came a startling change. the ashy blue hue of disappointment succeeded the glowing, hopeful look. he snatched at one of the folded slips of paper and opened it. alas! it was valueless, mere waste paper. he sank into a chair in a limp, hopeless posture, quite overwhelmed. then he sprang up suddenly, and his expression changed to one of fury and menace. "if julius gibbon has played this trick upon me," he said, between his set teeth, "he shall repent it--bitterly!" chapter xxvi. a disagreeable surprise. philip stark sat down to breakfast in a savage frame of mind. he wanted to be revenged upon gibbon, whom he suspected of having deceived him by opening and appropriating the bonds, and then arranged to have him carry off the box filled with waste paper. he sat at the table but five minutes, for he had little or no appetite. from the breakfast room he went out on the piazza, and with corrugated brows smoked a cigar, but it failed to have the usual soothing effect. if he had known the truth he would have left milford without delay, but he was far from suspecting that the deception practiced upon him had been arranged by the man whom he wanted to rob. while there seemed little inducement for him to stay in milford, he was determined to seek the bookkeeper, and ascertain whether, as he suspected, his confederate had in his possession the bonds which he had been scheming for. if so, he would compel him by threats to disgorge the larger portion, and then leave town at once. but the problem was, how to see him. he felt that it would be venturesome to go round to the factory, as by this time the loss might have been discovered. if only the box had been left, the discovery might be deferred. then a bright idea occurred to him. he must get the box out of his own possession, as its discovery would compromise him. why could he not arrange to leave it somewhere on the premises of his confederate? he resolved upon the instant to carry out the idea. he went up to his room, wrapped the tin box in a paper, and walked round to the house of the bookkeeper. the coast seemed to be clear, as he supposed it would be. he slipped into the yard, and swiftly entered an outhouse. there was a large wooden chest, or box, which had once been used to store grain. stark lifted the cover, dropped the box inside, and then, with a feeling of relief, walked out of the yard. but he had been observed. mrs. gibbon chanced to be looking out of a side window and saw him. she recognized him as the stranger who had been in the habit of spending recent evenings with her husband. "what can he want here at this time?" she asked herself. she deliberated whether she should go to the door and speak to stark, but decided not to do so. "he will call at the door if he has anything to say," she reflected. phil stark walked on till he reached the factory. he felt that he must see julius gibbon, and satisfy himself as to the meaning of the mysterious substitution of waste paper for bonds. when he reached a point where he could see into the office, he caught the eye of leonard, who was sitting at the window. he beckoned for him to come out, and leonard was glad to do so. "where are you going?" asked the bookkeeper, observing the boy's movement. "mr. stark is just across the street, and he beckoned for me." julius gibbon flushed painfully, and he trembled with nervous agitation, for he feared something had happened. "very well, go out, but don't stay long." leonard crossed the street and walked up to stark, who awaited him, looking grim and stern. "your uncle is inside?" he asked. "yes, sir." "tell him i wish to see him at once-on business of importance." "he's busy," said leonard. "'he doesn't leave the office in business hours." "tell him i must see him--do you hear? he'll come fast enough." "i wonder what it's all about," thought leonard, whose curiosity was naturally excited. "wait a minute!" said stark, as he turned to go. "is jennings in?" "no, sir, he has gone over to the next town." "probably the box has not been missed, then," thought stark. "so much the better! i can find out how matters stand, and then leave town." "very well!" he said, aloud, "let your uncle understand that i must see him." leonard carried in the message. gibbon made no objection, but took his hat and went out, leaving leonard in charge of the office. "well, what is it?" he asked, hurriedly, as he reached stark. "is--is the box all right?" "look here, gibbon," said stark, harshly, "have you been playing any of your infernal tricks upon me?" "i don't know what you mean," responded gibbon, bewildered. stark eyed him sharply, but the bookkeeper was evidently sincere. "is there anything wrong?" continued the latter. "do you mean to tell me you didn't know that wretched box was filled with waste paper?" "you don't mean it?" exclaimed gibbon, in dismay. "yes, i do. i didn't open it till this morning, and in place of government bonds, i found only folded slips of newspaper." by this time gibbon was suspicious. having no confidence in stark, it occurred to him that it was a ruse to deprive him of his share of the bonds. "i don't believe you," he said. "you want to keep all the bonds for yourself, and cheat me out of my share." "i wish to heaven you were right. if there had been any bonds, i would have acted on the square. but somebody had removed them, and substituted paper. i suspected you." "i am ready to swear that this has happened without my knowledge," said gibbon, earnestly. "how, then, could it have occurred?" asked stark. "i don't know, upon my honor. where is the box?" "i--have disposed of it." "you should have waited and opened it before me." "i asked you if you had a key that would open it. i wanted to open it last evening in the office." "true." "you will see after a while that i was acting on the square. you can open it for yourself at your leisure." "how can i? i don't know where it is." "then i can enlighten you," said stark, maliciously. "when you go home, you will find it in a chest in your woodshed." gibbon turned pale. "you don't mean to say you have carried it to my house?" he exclaimed, in dismay. "yes, i do. i had no further use for it, and thought you had the best claim to it." "but, good heavens! if it is found there i shall be suspected." "very probably," answered stark, coolly. "take my advice and put it out of the way." "how could you be so inconsiderate?" "because i suspected you of playing me a trick." "i swear to you, i didn't." "then somebody has tricked both of us. has mr. jennings discovered the disappearance of the box?" "yes, i told him." "when?" "when he came to the office." "what did he say?" "he took the matter coolly. he didn't say much." "where is he?" "gone to winchester on business." "look here! do you think he suspects you?" "i am quite sure not. that is why i told him about the robbery." "he might suspect me." "he said nothing about suspecting anybody." "do you think he removed the bonds and substituted paper?" "i don't think so." "if this were the case we should both be in a serious plight. i think i had better get out of town. you will have to lend me ten dollars." "i don't see how i can, stark." "you must!" said stark, sternly, "or i will reveal the whole thing. remember, the box is on your premises." "heavens! what a quandary i am in," said the bookkeeper, miserably. "that must be attended to at once. why couldn't you put it anywhere else?" "i told you that i wanted to be revenged upon you." "i wish you had never come to milford," groaned the bookkeeper. "i wish i hadn't myself, as things have turned out." they prepared to start for gibbon's house, when mr. jennings drove up. with him were two tall muscular men, whom stark and gibbon eyed uneasily. the two strangers jumped out of the carriage and advanced toward the two confederates. "arrest those men!" said jennings, in a quiet tone. "i charge them with opening and robbing my safe last night about eleven o'clock." chapter xxvii. brought to bay. phil stark made an effort to get away, but the officer was too quick for him. in a trice he was handcuffed. "what is the meaning of this outrage?" demanded stark, boldly. "i have already explained," said the manufacturer, quietly. "you are quite on the wrong tack," continued stark, brazenly. "mr. gibbon was just informing me that the safe had been opened and robbed. it is the first i knew of it." julius gibbon seemed quite prostrated by his arrest. he felt it necessary to say something, and followed the lead of his companion. "you will bear me witness, mr. jennings," he said, "that i was the first to inform you of the robbery. if i had really committed the burglary, i should have taken care to escape during the night." "i should be glad to believe in your innocence," rejoined the manufacturer. "but i know more about this matter than you suppose." "i won't answer for mr. gibbon," said stark, who cared nothing for his confederate, if he could contrive to effect his own escape. "of course he had opportunities, as bookkeeper, which an outsider could not have." gibbon eyed his companion in crime distrustfully. he saw that stark was intending to throw him over. "i am entirely willing to have my room at the hotel searched," continued stark, gathering confidence. "if you find any traces of the stolen property there, you are welcome to make the most of them. i have no doubt mr. gibbon will make you the same offer in regard to his house." gibbon saw at once the trap which had been so craftily prepared for him. he knew that any search of his premises would result in the discovery of the tin box, and had no doubt that stark would he ready to testify to any falsehood likely to fasten the guilt upon him. his anger was roused and he forgot his prudence. "you--scoundrel!" he hissed between his closed teeth. "you seem excited," sneered stark. "is it possible that you object to the search?" "if the missing box is found on my premises," said gibbon, in a white heat, "it is because you have concealed it there." phil stark shrugged his shoulders. "i think, gentlemen," he said, "that settles it. i am afraid mr gibbon is guilty. i shall be glad to assist you to recover the stolen property. did the box contain much that was of value?" "i must caution you both against saying anything that will compromise you," said one of the officers. "i have nothing to conceal," went on stark, brazenly. "i am obliged to believe that this man committed the burglary. it is against me that i have been his companion for the last week or two, but i used to know him, and that will account for it." the unhappy bookkeeper saw the coils closing around him. "i hope you will see your way to release me," said stark, addressing himself to mr. jennings. "i have just received information that my poor mother is lying dangerously sick in cleveland, and i am anxious to start for her bedside to-day." "why did you come round here this morning?" asked mr. jennings. "to ask mr. gibbon to repay me ten dollars which he borrowed of me the other day," returned stark, glibly. "you--liar!" exclaimed gibbon, angrily. "i am prepared for this man's abuse," said stark. "i don't mind admitting now that a few days since he invited me to join him in the robbery of the safe. i threatened to inform you of his plan, and he promised to give it up. i supposed he had done so, but it is clear to me now that he carried out his infamous scheme." mr. jennings looked amused. he admired stark's brazen effrontery. "what have you to say to this charge, mr. gibbon?" he asked. "only this, sir, that i was concerned in the burglary." "he admits it!" said stark, triumphantly. "but this man forced me to it. he threatened to write you some particulars of my past history which would probably have lost me my position if i did not agree to join him in the conspiracy. i was weak, and yielded. now he is ready to betray me to save himself." "mr. jennings," said stark, coldly, "you will know what importance to attach to the story of a self-confessed burglar. gibbon, i hope you will see the error of your ways, and restore to your worthy employer the box of valuable property which you stole from his safe." "this is insufferable!" cried the bookkeeper "you are a double-dyed traitor, phil stark. you were not only my accomplice, but you instigated the crime." "you will find it hard to prove this," sneered stark. "mr. jennings, i demand my liberty. if you have any humanity you will not keep me from the bedside of my dying mother." "i admire your audacity, mr. stark," observed the manufacturer, quietly. "don't suppose for a moment that i give the least credit to your statements." "thank you, sir," said gibbon. "i'm ready to accept the consequences of my act, but i don't want that scoundrel and traitor to go free." "you can't prove anything against me," said stark, doggedly, "unless you accept the word of a self-confessed burglar, who is angry with me because i would not join him." "all these protestations it would be better for you to keep till your trial begins, mr. stark," said the manufacturer. "however, i think it only fair to tell you that i am better informed about you and your conspiracy than you imagine. will you tell me where you were at eleven o'clock last evening?" "i was in my room at the hotel--no, i was taking a walk. i had received news of my mother's illness, and i was so much disturbed and grieved that i could not remain indoors." "you were seen to enter the office of this factory with mr. gibbon, and after ten minutes came out with the tin box under your arm." "who saw me?" demanded stark, uneasily. carl crawford came forward and answered this question. "i did!" he said. "a likely story! you were in bed and asleep." "you are mistaken. i was on watch behind the stone wall just opposite. if you want proof, i can repeat some of the conversation that passed between you and mr. gibbon." without waiting for the request, carl rehearsed some of the talk already recorded in a previous chapter. phil stark began to see that things were getting serious for him, but he was game to the last. "i deny it," he said, in a loud voice. "do you also deny it, mr. gibbon?" asked mr. jennings. "no, sir; i admit it," replied gibbon, with a triumphant glance at his foiled confederate. "this is a conspiracy against an innocent man," said stark, scowling. "you want to screen your bookkeeper, if possible. no one has ever before charged me with crime." "then how does it happen, mr. stark, that you were confined at the joliet penitentiary for a term of years?" "did he tell you this?" snarled stark, pointing to gibbon. "no." "who then?" "a customer of mine from chicago. he saw you at the hotel, and informed carl last evening of your character. carl, of course, brought the news to me. it was in consequence of this information that i myself removed the bonds from the box, early in the evening, and substituted strips of paper. your enterprise, therefore, would have availed you little even if you had succeeded in getting off scot-free." "i see the game is up," said stark, throwing off the mask. "it's true that i have been in the joliet penitentiary. it was there that i became acquainted with your bookkeeper," he added, maliciously. "let him deny it if he dare." "i shall not deny it. it is true," said gibbon. "but i had resolved to live an honest life in future, and would have done so if this man had not pressed me into crime by his threats." "i believe you, mr. gibbon," said the manufacturer, gently, "and i will see that this is counted in your favor. and now, gentlemen, i think there is no occasion for further delay." the two men were carried to the lockup and in due time were tried. stark was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, gibbon to five. at the end of two years, at the intercession of mr. jennings, he was pardoned, and furnished with money enough to go to australia, where, his past character unknown, he was able to make an honest living, and gain a creditable position. chapter xxviii. after a year. twelve months passed without any special incident. with carl it was a period of steady and intelligent labor and progress. he had excellent mechanical talent, and made remarkable advancement. he was not content with attention to his own work, but was a careful observer of the work of others, so that in one year he learned as much of the business as most boys would have done in three. when the year was up, mr. jennings detained him after supper. "do you remember what anniversary this is, carl?" he asked, pleasantly. "yes, sir; it is the anniversary of my going into the factory." "exactly. how are you satisfied with the year and its work?" "i have been contented and happy, mr. jennings; and i feel that i owe my happiness and content to you." mr. jennings looked pleased. "i am glad you say so," he said, "but it is only fair to add that your own industry and intelligence have much to do with the satisfactory results of the year." "thank you, sir." "the superintendent tells me that outside of your own work you have a general knowledge of the business which would make you a valuable assistant to himself in case he needed one." carl's face glowed with pleasure. "i believe in being thorough," he said, "and i am interested in every department of the business." "before you went into the factory you had not done any work." "no, sir; i had attended school." "it was not a bad preparation for business, but in some cases it gives a boy disinclination for manual labor." "yes; i wouldn't care to work with my hands all my life." "i don't blame you for that. you have qualified yourself for something better. how much do i pay you?" "i began on two dollars a week and my board. at the end of six months you kindly advanced me to four dollars." "i dare say you have found it none too much for your wants." carl smiled. "i have saved forty dollars out of it," he answered. mr. jennings looked pleased. "you have done admirably," he said, warmly. "forty dollars is not a large sum, but in laying it by you have formed a habit that will be of great service to you in after years. i propose to raise you to ten dollars a week." "but, sir, shall i earn so much? you are very kind, but i am afraid you will be a loser by your liberality." mr. jennings smiled. "you are partly right," he said. "your services at present are hardly worth the sum i have agreed to pay, that is, in the factory, but i shall probably impose upon you other duties of an important nature soon." "if you do, sir, i will endeavor to meet your expectations." "how would you like to take a journey carl?" "very much, sir." "i think of sending you--to chicago." carl, who had thought perhaps of a fiftymile trip, looked amazed, but his delight was equal to his surprise. he had always wished to see the west, though chicago can hardly be called a western city now, since between it and the pacific there is a broad belt of land two thousand miles in extent. "do you think i am competent?" he asked, modestly. "i cannot say positively, but i think so," answered mr. jennings. "then i shall be delighted to go. will it be very soon?" "yes, very soon. i shall want you to start next monday." "i will be ready, sir." "and i may as well explain what are to be your duties. i am, as you know, manufacturing a special line of chairs which i am desirous of introducing to the trade. i shall give you the names of men in my line in albany, buffalo, cleveland and chicago, and it will be your duty to call upon them, explain the merits of the chair, and solicit orders. in other words, you will be a traveling salesman or drummer. i shall pay your traveling expenses, ten dollars a week, and, if your orders exceed a certain limit, i shall give you a commission on the surplus." "suppose i don't reach that limit?" "i shall at all events feel that you have done your best. i will instruct you a little in your duties between now and the time of your departure. i should myself like to go in your stead, but i am needed here. there are, of course, others in my employ, older than yourself, whom i might send, but i have an idea that you will prove to be a good salesman." "i will try to be, sir." on monday morning carl left milford, reached new york in two hours and a half and, in accordance with the directions of mr. jennings, engaged passage and a stateroom on one of the palatial night lines of hudson river steamers to albany. the boat was well filled with passengers, and a few persons were unable to procure staterooms. carl, however, applied in time, and obtained an excellent room. he deposited his gripsack therein, and then took a seat on deck, meaning to enjoy as long as possible the delightful scenery for which the hudson is celebrated. it was his first long journey, and for this reason carl enjoyed it all the more. he could not but contrast his present position and prospects with those of a year ago, when, helpless and penniless, he left an unhappy home to make his own way. "what a delightful evening!" said a voice at his side. turning, carl saw sitting by him a young man of about thirty, dressed in somewhat pretentious style and wearing eyeglasses. he was tall and thin, and had sandy side whiskers. "yes, it is a beautiful evening," replied carl, politely. "and the scenery is quite charming. have you ever been all the way up the river?" "no, but i hope some day to take a day trip." "just so. i am not sure but i prefer the rhine, with its romantic castles and vineclad hills." "have you visited europe, then?" asked carl. "oh, yes, several times. i have a passion for traveling. our family is wealthy, and i have been able to go where i pleased." "that must be very pleasant." "it is. my name is stuyvesant--one of the old dutch families." carl was not so much impressed, perhaps, as he should have been by this announcement, for he knew very little of fashionable life in new york. "you don't look like a dutchman," he said, smiling. "i suppose you expected a figure like a beer keg," rejoined stuyvesant, laughing. "some of my forefathers may have answered that description, but i am not built that way. are you traveling far?" "i may go as far as chicago." "is anyone with you?" "no." "perhaps you have friends in chicago?" "not that i am aware of. i am traveling on business." "indeed; you are rather young for a business man." "i am sixteen." "well, that cannot exactly be called venerable." "no, i suppose not." "by the way, did you succeed in getting a stateroom?" "yes, i have a very good one." "you're in luck, on my word. i was just too late. the man ahead of me took the last room." "you can get a berth, i suppose." "but that is so common. really, i should not know how to travel without a stateroom. have you anyone with you?" "no." "if you will take me in i will pay the entire expense." carl hesitated. he preferred to be alone, but he was of an obliging disposition, and he knew that there were two berths in the stateroom. "if it will be an accommodation," he said, "i will let you occupy the room with me, mr. stuyvesant." "will you, indeed! i shall esteem it a very great favor. where is your room?" "i will show you." carl led the way to no. 17, followed by his new acquaintance. mr. stuyvesant seemed very much pleased, and insisted on paying for the room at once. carl accepted half the regular charges, and so the bargain was made. at ten o'clock the two travelers retired to bed. carl was tired and went to sleep at once. he slept through the night. when he awoke in the morning the boat was in dock. he heard voices in the cabin, and the noise of the transfer of baggage and freight to the wharf. "i have overslept myself," he said, and jumped up, hurriedly. he looked into the upper berth, but his roommate was gone. something else was gone, too--his valise, and a wallet which he had carried in the pocket of his trousers. chapter xxix. the lost bank book. carl was not long in concluding that he had been robbed by his roommate. it was hard to believe that a stuyvesant--a representative of one of the old dutch families of new amsterdam--should have stooped to such a discreditable act. carl was sharp enough, however, to doubt the genuineness of mr. stuyvesant's claims to aristocratic lineage. meanwhile he blamed himself for being so easily duped by an artful adventurer. to be sure, it was not as bad as it might be. his pocketbook only contained ten dollars in small bills. the balance of his money he had deposited for safe keeping in the inside pocket of his vest. this he had placed under his pillow, and so it had escaped the notice of the thief. the satchel contained a supply of shirts, underclothing, etc., and he was sorry to lose it. the articles were not expensive, but it would cost him from a dozen to fifteen dollars to replace them. carl stepped to the door of his stateroom and called a servant who was standing near. "how long have we been at the pier?" he asked. "about twenty minutes, sir." "did you see my roommate go out?" "a tall young man in a light overcoat?" "yes." "yes, sir. i saw him." "did you notice whether he carried a valise in his hand?" "a gripsack? yes, sir." "a small one?" "yes, sir." "it was mine." "you don't say so, sir! and such a respectablelookin' gemman, sir." "he may have looked respectable, but he was a thief all the same." "you don't say? did he take anything else, sir?" "he took my pocketbook." "well, well! he was a rascal, sure! but maybe it dropped on the floor." carl turned his attention to the carpet, but saw nothing of the lost pocketbook. he did find, however, a small book in a brown cover, which stuyvesant had probably dropped. picking it up, he discovered that it was a bank book on the sixpenny savings bank of albany, standing in the name of rachel norris, and numbered 17,310. "this is stolen property, too," thought carl. "i wonder if there is much in it." opening the book he saw that there were three entries, as follows: 1883. jan. 23. five hundred dollars. " june 10. two hundred dollars. " oct. 21. one hundred dollars. there was besides this interest credited to the amount of seventy-five dollars. the deposits, therefore, made a grand total of $875. no doubt mr. stuyvesant had stolen this book, but had not as yet found an opportunity of utilizing it. "what's dat?" asked the colored servant. "a savings bank book. my roommate must have dropped it. it appears to belong to a lady named rachel norris. i wish i could get it to her." "is she an albany lady, sir?" "i don't know." "you might look in the directory." "so i will. it is a good idea." "i hope the gemman didn't take all your money, sir." "no; he didn't even take half of it. i only wish i had been awake when the boat got to the dock." "i would have called you, sir, if you had asked me." "i am not much used to traveling. i shall know better next time what to do." the finding of the bank book partially consoled carl for the loss of his pocketbook and gripsack. he was glad to be able to defeat stuyvesant in one of his nefarious schemes, and to be the instrument of returning miss norris her savings bank book. when he left the boat he walked along till he reached a modest-looking hotel, where he thought the charges would be reasonable. he entered, and, going to the desk, asked if he could have a room. "large or small?" inquired the clerk. "small." "no. 67. will you go up now?" "yes, sir." "any baggage?" "no; i had it stolen on the boat." the clerk looked a little suspicious. "we must require pay in advance, then," he said. "certainly," answered carl, pulling out a roll of bills. i suppose you make special terms to commercial travelers?" "are you a drummer?" "yes. i represent henry jennings, of milford, new york." "all right, sir. our usual rates are two dollars a day. to you they will be a dollar and a quarter." "very well; i will pay you for two days. is breakfast ready?" "it is on the table, sir." "then i will go in at once. i will go to my room afterwards." in spite of his loss, carl had a hearty appetite, and did justice to the comfortable breakfast provided. he bought a morning paper, and ran his eye over the advertising columns. he had never before read an albany paper, and wished to get an idea of the city in its business aspect. it occurred to him that there might be an advertisement of the lost bank book. but no such notice met his eyes. he went up to his room, which was small and plainly furnished, but looked comfortable. going down again to the office, he looked into the albany directory to see if he could find the name of rachel norris. there was a rebecca norris, who was put down as a dressmaker, but that was as near as he came to rachel norris. then he set himself to looking over the other members of the norris family. finally he picked out norris & wade, furnishing goods, and decided to call at the store and inquire if they knew any lady named rachel norris. the prospect of gaining information in this way did not seem very promising, but no other course presented itself, and carl determined to follow up the clew, slight as it was. though unacquainted with albany streets, he had little difficulty in finding the store of norris & wade. it was an establishment of good size, well supplied with attractive goods. a clerk came forward to wait upon carl. "what can i show you?" he asked. "you may show me mr. norris, if you please," responded carl, with a smile. "he is in the office," said the clerk, with an answering smile. carl entered the office and saw mr. norris, a man of middle age, partially bald, with a genial, business-like manner. "well, young man?" he said, looking at carl inquiringly. "you must excuse me for troubling you, sir," said carl, who was afraid mr. norris would laugh at him, "but i thought you might direct me to rachel norris." mr. norris looked surprised. "what do you want of rachel norris?" he asked, abruptly. "i have a little business with her," answered carl. "of what nature?" "excuse me, but i don't care to mention it at present." "humph! you are very cautious for a young man, or rather boy." "isn't that a good trait, sir?" "good, but unusual. are you a schoolboy?" "no, sir; i am a drummer." mr. norris put on a pair of glasses and scrutinized carl more closely. "i should like to see--just out of curiosity --the man that you travel for," he said. "i will ask him to call whenever he visits albany. there is his card." mr. norris took it. "why, bless my soul!" he exclaimed. "it is henry jennings, an old schoolmate of mine." "and a good business man, even if he has sent out such a young drummer." "i should say so. there must be something in you, or he wouldn't have trusted you. how is jennings?" "he is well, sir--well and prosperous." "that is good news. are you in his employ?" "yes, sir. this is the first time i have traveled for him." "how far are you going?" "as far as chicago." "i don't see what you can have to do with rachel norris. however, i don't mind telling you that she is my aunt, and--well, upon my soul! here she is now." and he ran hastily to greet a tall, thin lady, wearing a black shawl, who at that moment entered the office. chapter xxx. an eccentric woman. miss norris dropped into a chair as if she were fatigued. "well, aunt rachel, how are you feeling this morning?" asked her nephew. "out of sorts," was the laconic reply. "i am very sorry for that. i suppose there is reason for it." "yes; i've been robbed." "indeed!" said mr. norris. "lost your purse? i wonder more ladies are not robbed, carrying their money as carelessly as they do." "that isn't it. i am always careful, as careful as any man." "still you got robbed." "yes, but of a bank book." here carl became attentive. it was clear that he would not have to look any farther for the owner of the book he had found in his stateroom. "what kind of a bank book?" inquired mr. norris. "i had nearly a thousand dollars deposited in the sixpenny savings bank. i called at the bank to make some inquiries about interest, and when i came out i presume some rascal followed me and stole the book----" "have you any idea who took it?" "i got into the horse cars, near the bank; next to me sat a young man in a light overcoat. there was no one on the other side of me. i think he must have taken it." "that was stuyvesant," said carl to himself. "when did this happen, aunt rachel?" "three days since." "why didn't you do something about it before?" "i did. i advertised a reward of twenty-five dollars to anyone who would restore it to me." "there was no occasion for that. by giving notice at the bank, they would give you a new book after a time." "i preferred to recover the old one. besides, i thought i would like to know what became of it." "i can tell you, miss norris," said carl, who thought it time to speak. hitherto miss norris had not seemed aware of carl's presence. she turned abruptly and surveyed him through her glasses. "who are you?" she asked. this might seem rude, but it was only miss rachel's way. "my name is carl crawford." "do i know you?" "no, miss norris, but i hope you will." "humph! that depends. you say you know what became of my bank book?" "yes, miss norris." "well?" "it was taken by the young man who sat next to you." "how do you know?" "he robbed me last night on the way from new york in a hudson river steamboat." "that doesn't prove that he robbed me. i was robbed here in this city." "what do you say to this?" asked carl, displaying the bank book. "bless me! that is my book. where did you get it?" carl told his story briefly, how, on discovering that he had been robbed, he explored the stateroom and found the bank book. "well, well, i am astonished! and how did you know mr. norris was my nephew?" "i didn't know. i didn't know anything about him or you, but finding his name in the directory, i came here to ask if he knew any such person." "you are a smart boy, and a good, honest one," said miss norris. "you have earned the reward, and shall have it." "i don't want any reward, miss norris," rejoined carl. "i have had very little trouble in finding you." "that is of no consequence. i offered the reward, and rachel norris is a woman of her word." she thrust her hand into her pocket, and drew out a wallet, more suitable to a man's use. openings this, she took out three bills, two tens and a five, and extended them toward carl. "i don't think i ought to take this money, miss norris," said carl, reluctantly. "did that rascal rob you, too?" "yes." "of how much?" "ten dollars in money and some underclothing." "very well! this money will go toward making up your loss. you are not rich, i take it?" "not yet." "i am, and can afford to give you this money. there, take it." "thank you, miss norris." "i want to ask one favor of you. if you ever come across that young man in the light overcoat, have him arrested, and let me know." "i will, miss norris." "do you live in albany?" carl explained that he was traveling on business, and should leave the next day if he could get through. "how far are you going?" "to chicago." "can you attend to some business for me there?" "yes, if it won't take too long a time." "good! come round to my house to supper at six o'clock, and i will tell you about it. henry, write my address on a piece of paper, and give it to this young man." henry norris smiled, and did as his aunt requested. "you have considerable confidence in this young man?" he said. "i have." "you may be mistaken." "rachel norris is not often mistaken." "i will accept your invitation with pleasure, miss norris," said carl, bowing politely. "now, as i have some business to attend to, i will bid you both good-morning." as carl went out, miss norris said: "henry, that is a remarkable boy." "i think favorably of him myself. he is in the employ of an old schoolmate of mine, henry jennings, of milford. by the way, what business are you going to put into his hands?" "a young man who has a shoe store on state street has asked me for a loan of two thousand dollars to extend his business. his name is john french, and his mother was an old schoolmate of mine, though some years younger. now i know nothing of him. if he is a sober, steady, industrious young man, i may comply with his request. this boy will investigate and report to me." "and you will be guided by his report?" "probably." "aunt rachel, you are certainly very eccentric." "i may be, but i am not often deceived." "well, i hope you won't be this time. the boy seems to me a very good boy, but you can't put an old head on young shoulders." "some boys have more sense than men twice their age." "you don't mean me, i hope, aunt rachel," said mr. norris, smiling. "indeed, i don't. i shall not flatter you by speaking of you as only twice this boy's age." "i see, aunt rachel, there is no getting the better of you." meanwhile carl was making business calls. he obtained a map of the city, and located the different firms on which he proposed to call. he had been furnished with a list by mr. jennings. he was everywhere pleasantly received --in some places with an expression of surprise at his youth--but when he began to talk he proved to be so well informed upon the subject of his call that any prejudice excited by his age quickly vanished. he had the satisfaction of securing several unexpectedly large orders for the chair, and transmitting them to mr. jennings by the afternoon mail. he got through his business at four o'clock, and rested for an hour or more at his hotel. then he arranged his toilet, and set out for the residence of miss rachel norris. it was rather a prim-looking, three-story house, such as might be supposed to belong to a maiden lady. he was ushered into a sittingroom on the second floor, where miss norris soon joined him. "i am glad to see you, my young friend," she said, cordially. "you are in time." "i always try to be, miss norris." "it is a good way to begin." here a bell rang. "supper is ready," she said. "follow me downstairs." carl followed the old lady to the rear room on the lower floor. a small table was set in the center of the apartment. "take a seat opposite me," said miss norris. there were two other chairs, one on each side--carl wondered for whom they were set. no sooner were he and miss norris seated than two large cats approached the table, and jumped up, one into each chair. carl looked to see them ordered away, but instead, miss norris nodded pleasantly, saying: "that's right, jane and molly, you are punctual at meals." the two cats eyed their mistress gravely, and began to purr contentedly. chapter xxxi. carl takes supper with miss norris. "this is my family," said miss norris, pointing to the cats. "i like cats," said carl. "do you?" returned miss norris, looking pleased. "most boys tease them. do you see poor molly's ear? that wound came from a stone thrown by a bad boy." "many boys are cruel," said carl, "but i remember that my mother was very fond of cats, and i have always protected them from abuse." as he spoke he stroked molly, who purred an acknowledgment of his attention. this completed the conquest of miss norris, who inwardly decided that carl was the finest boy she had ever met. after she had served carl from the dishes on the table, she poured out two saucers of milk and set one before each cat, who, rising upon her hind legs, placed her forepaws on the table, and gravely partook of the refreshments provided. jane and molly were afterwards regaled with cold meat, and then, stretching themselves out on their chairs, closed their eyes in placid content. during the meal miss norris questioned carl closely as to his home experiences. having no reason for concealment carl frankly related his troubles with his stepmother, eliciting expressions of sympathy and approval from his hostess. "your stepmother must be an ugly creature?" she said. "i am afraid i am prejudiced against her," said carl, "but that is my opinion." "your father must be very weak to be influenced against his own son by such a woman." carl winced a little at this outspoken criticism, for he was attached to his father in spite of his unjust treatment. "my father is an invalid," he said, apologetically, "and i think he yielded for the sake of peace." "all the same, he ought not to do it," said miss norris. "do you ever expect to live at home again?" "not while my stepmother is there," answered carl. "but i don't know that i should care to do so under any circumstances, as i am now receiving a business training. i should like to make a little visit home," he added, thoughtfully, "and perhaps i may do so after i return from chicago. i shall have no favors to ask, and shall feel independent." "if you ever need a home," said miss norris, abruptly, "come here. you will be welcome." "thank you very much," said carl, gratefully. "it is all the more kind in you since you have known me so short a time." "i have known you long enough to judge of you," said the maiden lady. "and now if you won't have anything more we will go into the next room and talk business." carl followed her into the adjoining room, and miss norris at once plunged into the subject. she handed him a business card bearing this inscription: john french, boots, shoes and rubber goods, 42a state street, chicago. "this young man wants me to lend him two thousand dollars to extend his business," she said. "he is the son of an old school friend, and i am willing to oblige him if he is a sober, steady and economical business man. i want you to find out whether this is the case and report to me." "won't that be difficult?" asked carl. "are you afraid to undertake anything that is difficult?" "no," answered carl, with a smile. "i was only afraid i might not do the work satisfactorily." "i shall give you no instructions," said miss norris. "i shall trust to your good judgment. i will give you a letter to mr. french, which you can use or not, as you think wise. of course, i shall see that you are paid for your trouble." "thank you," said carl. "i hope my services may be worth compensation." "i don't know how you are situated as to money, but i can give you some in advance," and the old lady opened her pocketbook. "no, thank you, miss norris; i shall not need it. i might have been short if you had not kindly paid me a reward for a slight service." "slight, indeed! if you had lost a bank book like mine you would be glad to get it back at such a price. if you will catch the rascal who stole it i will gladly pay you as much more." "i wish i might for my own sake, but i am afraid it would be too late to recover my money and clothing." at an early hour carl left the house, promising to write to miss norris from chicago. chapter xxxii. a startling discovery. "well," thought carl, as he left the house where he had been so hospitably entertained, "i shall not lack for business. miss norris seems to have a great deal of confidence in me, considering that i am a stranger. i will take care that she does not repent it." "can you give a poor man enough money to buy a cheap meal?" asked a plaintive voice. carl scanned the applicant for charity closely. he was a man of medium size, with a pair of small eyes, and a turnup nose. his dress was extremely shabby, and he had the appearance of one who was on bad terms with fortune. there was nothing striking about his appearance, yet carl regarded him with surprise and wonder. despite the difference in age, he bore a remarkable resemblance to his stepbrother, peter cook. "i haven't eaten anything for twenty-four hours," continued the tramp, as he may properly be called. "it's a hard world to such as me, boy." "i should judge so from your looks," answered carl. "indeed you are right. i was born to ill luck." carl had some doubts about this. those who represent themselves as born to ill luck can usually trace the ill luck to errors or shortcomings of their own. there are doubtless inequalities of fortune, but not as great as many like to represent. of two boys who start alike one may succeed, and the other fail, but in nine cases out of ten the success or failure may be traced to a difference in the qualities of the boys. "here is a quarter if that will do you any good," said carl. the man clutched at it with avidity. "thank you. this will buy me a cup of coffee and a plate of meat, and will put new life into me." he was about to hurry away, but carl felt like questioning him further. the extraordinary resemblance between this man and his stepbrother led him to think it possible that there might be a relationship between them. of his stepmother's family he knew little or nothing. his father had married her on short acquaintance, and she was very reticent about her former life. his father was indolent, and had not troubled himself to make inquiries. he took her on her own representation as the widow of a merchant who had failed in business. on the impulse of the moment--an impulse which he could not explain--carl asked abruptly--"is your name cook?" a look of surprise, almost of stupefaction, appeared on the man's face. "who told you my name?" he asked. "then your name is cook?" "what is your object in asking?" said the man, suspiciously. "i mean you no harm," returned carl, "but i have reasons for asking." "did you ever see me before?" asked the man. "no." "then what makes you think my name is cook? it is not written on my face, is it?" "no." "then how----" carl interrupted him. "i know a boy named peter cook," he said, "who resembles you very strongly." "you know peter cook--little peter?" exclaimed the tramp. "yes. is he a relation of yours?" "i should think so!" responded cook, emphatically. "he is my own son--that is, if he is a boy of about your age." "yes." "where is he? is his mother alive?" "your wife!" exclaimed carl, overwhelmed at the thought. "she was my wife!" said cook, "but while i was in california, some years since, she took possession of my small property, procured a divorce through an unprincipled lawyer, and i returned to find myself without wife, child or money. wasn't that a mean trick?" "i think it was." "can you tell me where she is?" asked cook, eagerly. "yes, i can." "where can i find my wife?" asked cook, with much eagerness. carl hesitated. he did not like his stepmother; he felt that she had treated him meanly, but he was not prepared to reveal her present residence till he knew what course cook intended to pursue. "she is married again," he said, watching cook to see what effect this announcement might have upon him. "i have no objection, i am sure," responded cook, indifferently. "did she marry well?" "she married a man in good circumstances." "she would take good care of that." "then you don't intend to reclaim her?" "how can i? she obtained a divorce, though by false representations. i am glad to be rid of her, but i want her to restore the two thousand dollars of which she robbed me. i left my property in her hands, but when she ceased to be my wife she had no right to take possession of it. i ought not to be surprised, however. it wasn't the first theft she had committed." "can this be true?" asked carl, excited. "yes, i married her without knowing much of her antecedents. two years after marriage i ascertained that she had served a year's term of imprisonment for a theft of jewelry from a lady with whom she was living as housekeeper." "are you sure of this?" "certainly. she was recognized by a friend of mine, who had been an official at the prison. when taxed with it by me she admitted it, but claimed that she was innocent. i succeeded in finding a narrative of the trial in an old file of papers, and came to the conclusion that she was justly convicted." "what did you do?" "i proposed separation, but she begged me to keep the thing secret, and let ourselves remain the same as before. i agreed out of consideration for her, but had occasion to regret it. my business becoming slack, i decided to go to california in the hope of acquiring a competence. i was not fortunate there, and was barely able, after a year, to get home. i found that my wife had procured a divorce, and appropriated the little money i had left. where she had gone, or where she had conveyed our son, i could not learn. you say you know where she is." "i do." "will you tell me?" "mr. cook," said carl, after a pause for reflection, "i will tell you, but not just at present. i am on my way to chicago on business. on my return i will stop here, and take you with me to the present home of your former wife. you will understand my interest in the matter when i tell you that she is now married to a relative of my own." "i pity him whoever he is," said cook. "yes, i think he is to be pitied," said carl, gravely; "but the revelation you will be able to make will enable him to insist upon a separation." "the best thing he can do! how long before you return to albany?" "a week or ten days." "i don't know how i am to live in the meantime," said cook, anxiously. "i am penniless, but for the money you have just given me." "at what price can you obtain board?" "i know of a decent house where i can obtain board and a small room for five dollars a week." "here are twelve dollars. this will pay for two weeks' board, and give you a small sum besides. what is the address?" cook mentioned a number on a street by the river. carl took it down in a notebook with which he had provided himself. "when i return to albany," he said, "i will call there at once." "you won't forget me?" "no; i shall be even more anxious to meet you than you will be to meet me. the one to whom your former wife is married is very near and dear to me, and i cannot bear to think that he has been so wronged and imposed upon!" "very well, sir! i shall wait for you with confidence. if i can get back from my former wife the money she robbed me of, i can get on my feet again, and take a respectable position in society. it is very hard for a man dressed as i am to obtain any employment." looking at his shabby and ragged suit, carl could readily believe this statement. if he had wished to employ anyone he would hardly have been tempted to engage a man so discreditable in appearance. "be of good courage, mr. cook," he said, kindly. "if your story is correct, and i believe it is, there are better days in store for you." "thank you for those words," said cook, earnestly. "they give me new hope." chapter xxxiii. from albany to niagara. carl took the afternoon train on the following day for buffalo. his thoughts were busy with the startling discovery he had made in regard to his stepmother. though he had never liked her, he had been far from imagining that she was under the ban of the law. it made him angry to think that his father had been drawn into a marriage with such a woman--that the place of his idolized mother had been taken by one who had served a term at sing sing. did peter know of his mother's past disgrace? he asked himself. probably not, for it had come before his birth. he only wondered that the secret had never got out before. there must be many persons who had known her as a prisoner, and could identify her now. she had certainly been fortunate with the fear of discovery always haunting her. carl could not understand how she could carry her head so high, and attempt to tyrannize over his father and himself. what the result would be when dr. crawford learned the antecedents of the woman whom he called wife carl did not for a moment doubt. his father was a man of very strict ideas on the subject of honor, and good repute, and the discovery would lead him to turn from mrs. crawford in abhorrence. moreover, he was strongly opposed to divorce, and carl had heard him argue that a divorced person should not be permitted to remarry. yet in ignorance he had married a divorced woman, who had been convicted of theft, and served a term of imprisonment. the discovery would be a great shock to him, and it would lead to a separation and restore the cordial relations between himself and his son. not long after his settlement in milford; carl had written as follows to his father: "dear father:--though i felt obliged to leave home for reasons which we both understand, i am sure that you will feel interested to know how i am getting along. i did not realize till i had started out how difficult it is for a boy, brought up like myself, to support himself when thrown upon his own exertions. a newsboy can generally earn enough money to maintain himself in the style to which he is accustomed, but i have had a comfortable and even luxurious home, and could hardly bring myself to live in a tenement house, or a very cheap boarding place. yet i would rather do either than stay in a home made unpleasant by the persistent hostility of one member. "i will not take up your time by relating the incidents of the first two days after i left home. i came near getting into serious trouble through no fault of my own, but happily escaped. when i was nearly penniless i fell in with a prosperous manufacturer of furniture who has taken me into his employment. he gives me a home in his own house, and pays me two dollars a week besides. this is enough to support me economically, and i shall after a while receive better pay. "i am not in the office, but in the factory, and am learning the business practically, starting in at the bottom. i think i have a taste for it, and the superintendent tells me i am making remarkable progress. the time was when i would have hesitated to become a working boy, but i have quite got over such foolishness. mr. jennings, my employer, who is considered a rich man, began as i did, and i hope some day to occupy a position similar to his. "i trust you are quite well and happy, dear father. my only regret is, that i cannot see you occasionally. while my stepmother and peter form part of your family, i feel that i can never live at home. they both dislike me, and i am afraid i return the feeling. if you are sick or need me, do not fail to send for me, for i can never forget that you are my father, as i am your affectionate son, carl." this letter was handed to dr. crawford at the breakfast table. he colored and looked agitated when he opened the envelope, and mrs. crawford, who had a large share of curiosity, did not fail to notice this. "from whom is your letter, my dear?" she asked, in the soft tone which was habitual with her when she addressed her husband "the handwriting is carl's," answered dr. crawford, already devouring the letter eagerly. "oh!" she answered, in a chilly tone. "i have been expecting you would hear from him. how much money does he send for?" "i have not finished the letter." dr. crawford continued reading. when he had finished he laid it down beside his plate. "well?" said his wife, interrogatively. "what does he have to say? does he ask leave to come home?" "no; he is quite content where he is." "and where is that?" "at milford." "that is not far away?" "no; not more than sixty miles." "does he ask for money?" "no; he is employed." "where?" "in a furniture factory." "oh, a factory boy." "yes; he is learning the business." "he doesn't seem to be very ambitious," sneered mrs. crawford. "on the contrary, he is looking forward to being in business for himself some day." "on your money--i understand." "really, mrs. crawford, you do the boy injustice. he hints nothing of the kind. he evidently means to raise himself gradually as his employer did before him. by the way, he has a home in his employer's family. i think mr. jennings must have taken a fancy to carl." "i hope he will find him more agreeable than i did," said mrs. crawford, sharply. "are you quite sure that you always treated carl considerately, my dear?" "i didn't flatter or fondle him, if that is what you mean. i treated him as well as he could expect." "did you treat him as well as peter, for example?" "no. there is a great difference between the two boys. peter is always respectful and obliging, and doesn't set up his will against mine. he never gives me a moment's uneasiness." "i hope you will continue to find him a comfort, my dear," said dr. crawford, meekly. he looked across the table at the fat, expressionless face of his stepson, and he blamed himself because he could not entertain a warmer regard for peter. somehow he had a slight feeling of antipathy, which he tried to overcome. "no doubt he is a good boy, since his mother says so," reflected the doctor, "but i don't appreciate him. i will take care, however, that neither he nor his mother sees this." when peter heard his mother's encomium upon him, he laughed in his sleeve. "i'll remind ma of that when she scolds me," he said to himself. "i'm glad carl isn't coming back. he was always interferin' with me. now, if ma and i play our cards right we'll get all his father's money. ma thinks he won't live long, i heard her say so the other day. won't it be jolly for ma and me to come into a fortune, and live just as we please! i hope ma will go to new york. it's stupid here, but i s'pose we'll have to stay for the present." "is carl's letter private?" asked mrs. crawford, after a pause. "i--i think he would rather i didn't show it ," returned her husband, remembering the allusion made by carl to his stepmother. "oh, well, i am not curious," said mrs. crawford, tossing her head. none the less, however, she resolved to see and read the letter, if she could get hold of it without her husband's knowledge. he was so careless that she did not doubt soon to find it laid down somewhere. in this she proved correct. before the day was over, she found carl's letter in her husband's desk. she opened and read it eagerly with a running fire of comment. "`reasons which we both understand,'" she repeated, scornfully. "that is a covert attack upon me. of course, i ought to expect that. so he had a hard time. well, it served him right for conducting himself as he did. ah, here is another hit at me--`yet i would rather do either than live in a home made unpleasant by the persistent hostility of one member.' he is trying to set his father against me. well, he won't succeed. i can twist dr. paul crawford round my finger, luckily, and neither his son nor anyone else can diminish my influence over him." she read on for some time till she reached this passage: "while my stepmother and peter form a part of your family i can never live at home. they both dislike me, and i am afraid i return the feeling." "thanks for the information," she muttered. "i knew it before. this letter doesn't make me feel any more friendly to you, carl crawford. i see that you are trying to ingratiate yourself with your father, and prejudice him against me and my poor peter, but i think i can defeat your kind intentions." she folded up the letter, and replaced it in her husband's desk. "i wonder if my husband will answer carl's artful epistle," she said to herself. "he can if he pleases. he is weak as water, and i will see that he goes no farther than words." dr. crawford did answer carl's letter. this is his reply: "dear carl:--i am glad to hear that you are comfortably situated. i regret that you were so headstrong and unreasonable. it seems to me that you might, with a little effort, have got on with your stepmother. you could hardly expect her to treat you in the same way as her own son. he seems to be a good boy, but i own that i have never been able to become attached to him." carl read this part of the letter with satisfaction. he knew how mean and contemptible peter was, and it would have gone to his heart to think that his father had transferred his affection to the boy he had so much reason to dislike. "i am glad you are pleased with your prospects. i think i could have done better for you had your relations with your stepmother been such as to make it pleasant for you to remain at home. you are right in thinking that i am interested in your welfare. i hope, my dear carl, you will become a happy and prosperous man. i do not forget that you are my son, and i am still your affectionate father, "paul crawford." carl was glad to receive this letter. it showed him that his stepmother had not yet succeeded in alienating from him his father's affection. but we must return to the point where we left carl on his journey to buffalo. he enjoyed his trip over the central road during the hours of daylight. he determined on his return to make an all-day trip so that he might enjoy the scenery through which he now rode in the darkness. at buffalo he had no other business except that of mr. jennings, and immediately after breakfast he began to make a tour of the furniture establishments. he met with excellent success, and had the satisfaction of sending home some large orders. in the evening he took train for niagara, wishing to see the falls in the early morning, and resume his journey in the afternoon. he registered at the international hotel on the american side. it was too late to do more than take an evening walk, and see the falls gleaming like silver through the darkness. "i will go to bed early," thought carl, "and get up at six o'clock." he did go to bed early, but he was more fatigued than he supposed, and slept longer than he anticipated. it was eight o'clock before he came downstairs. before going in to breakfast, he took a turn on the piazzas. here he fell in with a sociable gentleman, much addicted to gossip. "good-morning!" he said. "have you seen the falls yet?" "i caught a glimpse of them last evening i am going to visit them after breakfast." "there are a good many people staying here just now--some quite noted persons, too." "indeed!" "yes, what do you say to an english lord?" and carl's new friend nodded with am important air, as if it reflected great credit on the hotel to have so important a guest. "does he look different from anyone else?" asked carl, smiling. "well, to tell the truth, he isn't much to look at," said the other. "the gentleman who is with him looks more stylish. i thought he was the lord at first, but i afterwards learned that he was an american named stuyvesant." carl started at the familiar name. "is he tall and slender, with side whiskers, and does he wear eyeglasses?" he asked, eagerly. "yes; you know him then?" said the other, in surprise. "yes," answered carl, with a smile, "i am slightly acquainted with him. i am very anxious to meet him again." chapter xxxiv. carl makes the acquaintance of an english lord. "there they are now," said the stranger, suddenly pointing out two persons walking slowly along the piazza. "the small man, in the rough suit, and mutton-chop whiskers, is lord bedford." carl eyed the british nobleman with some curiosity. evidently lord bedford was no dude. his suit was of rough cloth and illfitting. he was barely five feet six inches in height, with features decidedly plain, but with an absence of pretension that was creditable to him, considering that he was really what he purported to be. stuyvesant walked by his side, nearly a head taller, and of more distinguished bearing, though of plebeian extraction. his manner was exceedingly deferential, and he was praising england and everything english in a fulsome manner. "yes, my lord," carl overheard him say, "i have often thought that society in england is far superior to our american society." "thanks, you are very kind," drawled the nobleman, "but really i find things very decent in america, upon my word. i had been reading dickens's `notes' before i came over and i expected to find you very uncivilized, and--almost aboriginal; but i assure you i have met some very gentlemanly persons in america, some almost up to our english standard." "really, my lord, such a tribute from a man in your position is most gratifying. may i state this on your authority?" "yes, i don't mind, but i would rather not get into the papers, don't you know. you are not a--reporter, i hope." "i hope not," said mr. stuyvesant, in a lofty tone. "i am a scion of one of the oldest families in new york. of course i know that social position is a very different thing here from what it is in england. it must be a gratifying thing to reflect that you are a lord." "yes, i suppose so. i never thought much about it." "i should like so much to be a lord. i care little for money." "then, by jove, you are a remarkable man." "in comparison with rank, i mean. i would rather be a lord with a thousand pounds a year than a rich merchant with ten times as much." "you'll find it very inconvenient being a lord on a thousand; you might as well be a beggar." "i suppose, of course, high rank requires a large rent roll. in fact, a new york gentleman requires more than a trifle to support him. i can't dress on less than two hundred pounds a year." "your american tailors are high-priced, then?" "those that i employ; we have cheap tailors, of course, but i generally go to bell." mr. stuyvesant was posing as a gentleman of fashion. carl, who followed at a little distance behind the pair, was much amused by his remarks, knowing what he did about him. "i think a little of going to england in a few months," continued stuyvesant. "indeed! you must look me up," said bedford, carelessly. "i should, indeed, be delighted," said stuyvesant, effusively. "that is, if i am in england. i may be on the continent, but you can inquire for me at my club--the piccadilly." "i shall esteem it a great honor, my lord. i have a penchant for good society. the lower orders are not attractive to me." "they are sometimes more interesting," said the englishman; "but do you know, i am surprised to hear an american speak in this way. i thought you were all on a level here in a republic." "oh, my lord!" expostulated stuyvesant, deprecatingly. "you don't think i would associate with shopkeepers and common tradesmen?" "i don't know. a cousin of mine is interested in a wine business in london. he is a younger son with a small fortune, and draws a very tidy income from his city business." "but his name doesn't appear on the sign, i infer." "no, i think not. then you are not in business, mr. stuyvesant?" "no; i inherited an income from my father. it isn't as large as i could wish, and i have abstained from marrying because i could not maintain the mode of living to which i have been accustomed." "you should marry a rich girl." "true! i may do so, since your lordship recommends it. in fact, i have in view a young lady whose father was once lord mayor (i beg pardon, mayor) of new york. her father is worth a million." "pounds?" "well, no, dollars. i should have said two hundred thousand pounds." "if the girl is willing, it may be a good plan." "thank you, my lord. your advice is very kind." "the young man seems on very good terms with lord bedford," said carl's companion, whose name was atwood, with a shade of envy in his voice. "yes," said carl. "i wish he would introduce me," went on mr. atwood. "i should prefer the introduction of a different man," said carl. "why? he seems to move in good society." "without belonging to it." "then you know him?" "better than i wish i did." atwood looked curious. "i will explain later," said carl; "now i must go in to breakfast." "i will go with you." though stuyvesant had glanced at carl, he did not appear to recognize him, partly, no doubt, because he had no expectation of meeting the boy he had robbed, at niagara. besides, his time and attention were so much taken up by his aristocratic acquaintance that he had little notice for anyone else. carl observed with mingled amusement and vexation that mr. stuyvesant wore a new necktie, which he had bought for himself in new york, and which had been in the stolen gripsack. "if i can find lord bedford alone i will put him on his guard," thought carl. "i shall spoil mr. stuyvesant's plans." after breakfast carl prepared to go down to the falls. on the way he overtook lord bedford walking in the same direction, and, as it happened, without a companion. carl quickened his pace, and as he caught up with him, he raised his hat, and said: "lord bedford, i believe." "yes," answered the englishman, inquiringly. "i must apologize for addressing a stranger, but i want to put you on your guard against a young man whom i saw walking with you on the piazza." "is he--what do you know of him?" asked lord bedford, laying aside his air of indifference. "i know that he is an adventurer and a thief. i made his acquaintance on a hudson river steamer, and he walked off with my valise and a small sum of money." "is this true?" asked the englishman, in amazement. "quite true. he is wearing one of my neckties at this moment." "the confounded cad!" ejaculated the englishman, angrily. "i suppose he intended to rob me." "i have no doubt of it. that is why i ventured to put you on your guard." "i am a thousand times obliged to you. why, the fellow told me he belonged to one of the best families in new york." "if he does, he doesn't do much credit to the family." "quite true! why, he was praising everything english. he evidently wanted to gain my confidence." "may i ask where you met him?" asked carl. "on the train. he offered me a light. before i knew it, he was chatting familiarly with me. but his game is spoiled. i will let him know that i see through him and his designs." "then my object is accomplished," said carl. "please excuse my want of ceremony." he turned to leave, but bedford called him back. "if you are going to the falls, remain with me," he said. "we shall enjoy it better in company." "with pleasure. let me introduce myself as carl crawford. i am traveling on business and don't belong to one of the first families." "i see you will suit me," said the englishman, smiling. just then up came stuyvesant, panting and breathless. "my lord," he said, "i lost sight of you. if you will allow me i will join you. "sir!" said the englishman, in a freezing voice, "i have not the honor of knowing you." stuyvesant was overwhelmed. "i--i hope i have not offended you, my lord," he said. "sir, i have learned your character from this young man." this called the attention of stuyvesant to carl. he flushed as he recognized him "mr. stuyvesant," said carl, "i must trouble you to return the valise you took from my stateroom, and the pocketbook which you borrowed. my name is carl crawford, and my room is 71." stuyvesant turned away abruptly. he left the valise at the desk, but carl never recovered his money. chapter xxxv. what carl learned in chicago. as carl walked back from the falls he met mr. atwood, who was surprised to find h*is young acquaintance on such intimate terms with lord bedford. he was about to pass with a bow, when carl, who was good-natured, said: "won't you join us, mr. atwood? if lord bedford will permit, i should like to introduce you." "glad to know any friend of yours, mr. crawford," said the englishman, affably. "i feel honored by the introduction," said atwood, bowing profoundly. "i hope you are not a friend of mr.--ah, mr. stuyvesant," said the nobleman, "the person i was talking with this morning. mr. crawford tells me he is a--what do you call it?--a confidence man." "i have no acquaintance with him, my lord. i saw him just now leaving the hotel." "i am afraid he has gone away with my valise and money," said carl. "if you should be inconvenienced, mr. crawford," said the nobleman, "my purse is at your disposal." "thank you very much, lord bedford," said carl, gratefully. "i am glad to say i am still fairly well provided with money." "i was about to make you the same offer, mr. crawford," said atwood. "thank you! i appreciate your kindness, even if i'm not obliged to avail myself of it." returning to the hotel, lord bedford ordered a carriage, and invited atwood and carl to accompany him on a drive. mr. atwood was in an ecstasy, and anticipated with proud satisfaction telling his family of his intimate friend, lord bedford, of england. the peer, though rather an ordinary-looking man, seemed to him a model of aristocratic beauty. it was a weakness on the part of mr. atwood, but an amiable one, and is shared by many who live under republican institutions. after dinner carl felt obliged to resume his journey. he had found his visit to niagara very agreeable, but his was a business and not a pleasure trip, and loyalty to his employer required him to cut it short. lord bedford shook his hand heartily at parting. "i hope we shall meet again, mr. crawford," he said. "i expect, myself, to reach chicago on saturday, and shall be glad to have you call on me at the palmer house." "thank you, my lord; i will certainly inquire for you there." "he is a very good fellow, even if he is a lord," thought carl. our young hero was a thorough american, and was disposed to think with robert burns, that "the rank is but the guinea, stamp; the man's the gold for a' that!" no incident worth recording befell carl on his trip to chicago. as a salesman he met with excellent success, and surprised mr. jennings by the size of his orders. he was led, on reaching chicago, to register at the sherman house, on clark street, one of the most reliable among the many houses for travelers offered by the great western metropolis. on the second day he made it a point to find out the store of john french, hoping to acquire the information desired by miss norris. it was a store of good size, and apparently well stocked. feeling the need of new footgear, carl entered and asked to be shown some shoes. he was waited upon by a young clerk named gray, with whom he struck up a pleasant acquaintance. "do you live in chicago?" asked gray? sociably. "no; i am from new york state. i am here on business." "staying at a hotel?" "yes, at the sherman. if you are at leisure this evening i shall be glad to have you call on me. i am a stranger here, and likely to find the time hang heavy on my hands." "i shall be free at six o'clock." "then come to supper with me." "thank you, i shall be glad to do so," answered gray, with alacrity. living as he did at a cheap boarding house, the prospect of a supper at a first-class hotel was very attractive. he was a pleasant-faced young man of twenty, who had drifted to chicago from his country home in indiana, and found it hard to make both ends meet on a salary of nine dollars a week. his habits were good, his manner was attractive and won him popularity with customer's, and with patience he was likely to succeed in the end. "i wish i could live like this every day," he said, as he rose from a luxurious supper. "at present my finances won't allow me to board at the sherman." "nor would mine," said carl; "but i am allowed to spend money more freely when i am traveling." "are you acquainted in new york?" asked gray. "i have little or no acquaintance in the city," answered carl. "i should be glad to get a position there." "are you not satisfied with your present place?" "i am afraid i shall not long keep it." "why not? do you think you are in any danger of being discharged?" "it is not that. i am afraid mr. french will be obliged to give up business." "why?" asked carl, with keen interest. "i have reason to think he is embarrassed. i know that he has a good many bills out, some of which have been running a long time. if any pressure is brought to bear upon him, he may have to suspend." carl felt that he was obtaining important information. if mr. french were in such a condition miss norris would be pretty sure to lose her money if she advanced it. "to what do you attribute mr. french's embarrassment?" he asked. "he lives expensively in a handsome house near lincoln park, and draws heavily upon the business for his living expenses. i think that explains it. i only wonder that he has been able to hold out so long." "perhaps if he were assisted he would be able to keep his head above water." "he would need a good deal of assistance. you see that my place isn't very secure, and i shall soon need to be looking up another." "i don't think i shall need to inquire any farther," thought carl. "it seems to me miss norris had better keep her money." before he retired he indited the following letter to his albany employer: miss rachel norris. "dear madam:--i have attended to your commission, and have to report that mr. french appears to be involved in business embarrassments, and in great danger to bankruptcy. the loan he asks of you would no doubt be of service, but probably would not long delay the crash. if you wish to assist him, it would be better to allow him to fail, and then advance him the money to put him on his feet. i am told that his troubles come from living beyond his means. "yours respectfully, "carl crawford." by return mail carl received the following note: "my dear young friend:--your report confirms the confidence i reposed in you. it is just the information i desired. i shall take your advice and refuse the loan. what other action i may take hereafter i cannot tell. when you return, should you stop in albany, please call on me. if unable to do this, write me from milford. your friend, "rachel norris." carl was detained for several days in chicago. he chanced to meet his english friend, lord bedford, upon his arrival, and the nobleman, on learning where he was staying, also registered at the sherman house. in his company carl took a drive over the magnificent boulevard which is the pride of chicago, and rose several degrees in the opinion of those guests who noticed his intimacy with the english guest. carl had just completed his chicago business when, on entering the hotel, he was surprised to see a neighbor of his father's--cyrus robinson--a prominent business man of edgewood center. carl was delighted, for he had not been home, or seen any home friends for over a year. "i am glad to see you, mr. robinson," he said, offering his hand. "what! carl crawford!" exclaimed robinson, in amazement. "how came you in chicago? your father did not tell me you were here." "he does not know it. i am only here on a business visit. tell me, mr. robinson, how is my father?" "i think, carl, that he is not at all well. i am quite sure he misses you, and i don't believe your stepmother's influence over him is beneficial. just before i came away i heard a rumor that troubled me. it is believed in edgewood that she is trying to induce your father to make a will leaving all, or nearly all his property to her and her son." "i don't care so much for that, mr. robinson, as for my father's health." "carl," said robinson, significantly, "if such a will is made i don't believe your father will live long after it." "you don't mean that?" said carl, horror-struck. "i think mrs. crawford, by artful means will worry your father to death. he is of a nervous temperament, and an unscrupulous woman can shorten his life without laying herself open to the law." carl's face grew stern. "i will save my father," he said, "and defeat my stepmother's wicked schemes." "i pray heaven you can. there is no time to be lost." "i shall lose no time, you may be sure. i shall be at edgewood within a week." chapter xxxvi. making a will. in edgewood center events moved slowly. in carl crawford's home dullness reigned supreme. he had been the life of the house, and his absence, though welcome to his stepmother, was seriously felt by his father, who day by day became thinner and weaker, while his step grew listless and his face seldom brightened with a smile. he was anxious to have carl at home again, and the desire became so strong that he finally broached the subject. "my dear," he said one day at the breakfast table, "i have been thinking of carl considerably of late." "indeed!" said mrs. crawford, coldly. "i think i should like to have him at home once more." mrs. crawford smiled ominously. "he is better off where he is," she said, softly. "but he is my only son, and i never see him," pleaded her husband. "you know very well, dr. crawford," rejoined his wife, "that your son only made trouble in the house while he was here." "yet it seems hard that he should be driven from his father's home, and forced to take refuge among strangers." "i don't know what you mean by his being driven from home," said mrs. crawford, tossing her head. "he made himself disagreeable, and, not being able to have his own way, he took french leave." "the house seems very lonely without him," went on dr. crawford, who was too wise to get into an argument with his wife. "it certainly is more quiet. as for company, peter is still here, and would at any time stay with you." peter did not relish this suggestion, and did not indorse it. "i should not care to confine him to the house," said dr. crawford, as his glance rested on the plain and by no means agreeable face of his stepson. "i suppose i need not speak of myself. you know that you can always call upon me." if dr. crawford had been warmly attached to his second wife, this proposal would have cheered him, but the time had gone by when he found any pleasure in her society. there was a feeling of almost repulsion which he tried to conceal, and he was obliged to acknowledge to himself that the presence of his wife gave him rather uneasiness than comfort. "carl is very well off where he is," resumed mrs. crawford. "he is filling a business position, humble, perhaps, but still one that gives him his living and keeps him out of mischief. let well enough alone, doctor, and don't interrupt his plans." "i--i may be foolish," said the doctor, hesitating, "but i have not been feeling as well as usual lately, and if anything should happen to me while carl was absent i should die very unhappy." mrs. crawford regarded her husband with uneasiness. "do you mean that you think you are in any danger?" she asked. "i don't know. i am not an old man, but, on the other hand, i am an invalid. my father died when he was only a year older than i am at present." mrs. crawford drew out her handkerchief, and proceeded to wipe her tearless eyes. "you distress me beyond measure by your words, my dear husband. how can i think of your death without emotion? what should i do without you?" "my dear, you must expect to survive me. you are younger than i, and much stronger." "besides," and mrs. crawford made an artful pause, "i hardly like to mention it, but peter and i are poor, and by your death might be left to the cold mercies of the world." "surely i would not fail to provide for you." mrs. crawford shook her head. "i am sure of your kind intentions, my husband," she said, "but they will not avail unless you provide for me in your will." "yes, it's only right that i should do so. as soon as i feel equal to the effort i will draw up a will." "i hope you will, for i should not care to be dependent on carl, who does not like me. i hope you will not think me mercenary, but to peter and myself this is of vital importance." "no, i don't misjudge you. i ought to have thought of it before." "i don't care so much about myself," said mrs. crawford, in a tone of self-sacrifice, "but i should not like to have peter thrown upon the world without means." "all that you say is wise and reasonable," answered her husband, wearily. "i will attend to the matter to-morrow." the next day mrs. crawford came into her husband's presence with a sheet of legal cap. "my dear husband," she said, in a soft, insinuating tone, "i wished to spare you trouble, and i have accordingly drawn up a will to submit to you, and receive your signature, if you approve it." dr. crawford looked surprised. "where did you learn to write a will?" he asked. "i used in my days of poverty to copy documents for a lawyer," she replied. "in this way i became something of a lawyer myself." "i see. will you read what you have prepared?" mrs. crawford read the document in her hand. it provided in the proper legal phraseology for an equal division of the testator's estate between the widow and carl. "i didn't know, of course, what provision you intended to make for me," she said, meekly. "perhaps you do not care to leave me half the estate." "yes, that seems only fair. you do not mention peter. i ought to do something for him." "your kindness touches me, my dear husband, but i shall be able to provide for him out of my liberal bequest. i do not wish to rob your son, carl. i admit that i do not like him, but that shall not hinder me from being just." dr. crawford was pleased with this unexpected concession from his wife. he felt that he should be more at ease if carl's future was assured. "very well, my dear," he said, cheerfully. "i approve of the will as you have drawn it up, and i will affix my signature at once." "then, shall i send for two of the neighbors to witness it?" "it will be well." two near neighbors were sent for and witnessed dr. crawford's signature to the will. there was a strangely triumphant look in mrs. crawford's eyes as she took the document after it had been duly executed. "you will let me keep this, doctor?" she asked. "it will be important for your son as well as myself, that it should be in safe hands." "yes; i shall be glad to have you do so. i rejoice that it is off my mind." "you won't think me mercenary, my dear husband, or indifferent to your life?" "no; why should i?" "then i am satisfied." mrs. crawford took the will, and carrying it upstairs, opened her trunk, removed the false bottom, and deposited under it the last will and testament of dr. paul crawford. "at last!" she said to herself. "i am secure, and have compassed what i have labored for so long." dr. crawford had not noticed that the will to which he affixed his signature was not the same that had been read to him. mrs. crawford had artfully substituted another paper of quite different tenor. by the will actually executed, the entire estate was left to mrs. crawford, who was left guardian of her son and carl, and authorized to make such provision for each as she might deem suitable. this, of course, made carl entirely dependent on a woman who hated him. "now, dr. paul crawford," said mrs. crawford to herself, with a cold smile, "you may die as soon as you please. peter and i are provided for. your father died when a year older than you are now, you tell me. it is hardly likely that you will live to a greater age than he." she called the next day on the family physician, and with apparent solicitude asked his opinion of dr. crawford's health. "he is all i have," she said, pathetically, "all except my dear peter. tell me what you think of his chances of continued life." "your husband," replied the physician, "has one weak organ. it is his heart. he may live for fifteen or twenty years, but a sudden excitement might carry him off in a moment. the best thing you can do for him is to keep him tranquil and free from any sudden shock." mrs. crawford listened attentively. "i will do my best," she said, "since so much depends on it." when she returned home it was with a settled purpose in her heart. chapter xxxvii. peter lets out a secret. "can you direct me to the house of dr. crawford?" asked a stranger. the inquiry was addressed to peter cook in front of the hotel in edgewood center. "yes, sir; he is my stepfather!" "indeed! i did not know that my old friend was married again. you say you are his stepson?" "yes, sir." "he has an own son, about your age, i should judge." "that's carl! he is a little older than me." "is he at home?" "no," answered peter, pursing up his lips. "is he absent at boarding school?" "no; he's left home." "indeed!" ejaculated the stranger, in surprise. "how is that?" "he was awfully hard to get along with, and didn't treat mother with any respect. he wanted to have his own way, and, of course, ma couldn't stand that." "i see," returned the stranger, and he eyed peter curiously. "what did his father say to his leaving home?" he asked. "oh, he always does as ma wishes." "was carl willing to leave home?" "yes; he said he would rather go than obey ma." "i suppose he receives an allowance from his father?" "no; he wanted one, but ma put her foot down and said he shouldn't have one." "your mother seems to be a woman of considerable firmness." "you bet, she's firm. she don't allow no boy to boss her." "really, this boy is a curiosity," said reuben ashcroft to himself. "he doesn't excel in the amiable and attractive qualities. he has a sort of brutal frankness which can't keep a secret." "how did you and carl get along together?" he asked, aloud. "we didn't get along at all. he wanted to boss me, and ma and i wouldn't have it." "so the upshot was that he had to leave the house and you remained?" "yes, that's the way of it," said peter, laughing. "and carl was actually sent out to earn his own living without help of any kind from his father?" "yes." "what is he doing?" asked ashcroft, in some excitement. "good heavens! he may have suffered from hunger." "are you a friend of his?" asked peter, sharply. "i am a friend of anyone who requires a friend." "carl is getting along well enough. he is at work in some factory in milford, and gets a living." "hasn't he been back since he first left home?" "no." "how long ago is that?" "oh, 'bout a year," answered peter, carelessly. "how is dr. crawford? is he in good health?" "he ain't very well. ma told me the other day she didn't think he would live long. she got him to make a will the other day." "why, this seems to be a conspiracy!" thought ashcroft. "i'd give something to see that will." "i suppose he will provide for you and your mother handsomely?" "yes; ma said she was to have control of the property. i guess carl will have to stand round if he expects any favors." "it is evident this boy can't keep a secret," thought ashcroft. "all the better for me. i hope i am in time to defeat this woman's schemes." "there's the house," said peter, pointing it out. "do you think dr. crawford is at home?" "oh, yes, he doesn't go out much. ma is away this afternoon. she's at the sewing circle, i think." "thank you for serving as my guide," said ashcroft. "there's a little acknowledgment which i hope will be of service to you." he offered a half dollar to peter, who accepted it joyfully and was profuse in his thanks. "now, if you will be kind enough to tell the doctor that an old friend wishes to see him, i shall be still further obliged." "just follow me, then," said peter, and he led the way into the sitting-room. chapter xxxviii. dr. crawford is taken to task. after the first greetings, reuben ashcroft noticed with pain the fragile look of his friend. "are you well?" he asked "i am not very strong," said dr. crawford, smiling faintly, "but mrs. crawford takes good care of me." "and carl, too--he is no doubt a comfort to you?" dr. crawford flushed painfully. "carl has been away from home for a year, he said, with an effort. "that is strange your own son, too! is there anything unpleasant? you may confide in me, as i am the cousin of carl's mother.' "the fact is, carl and mrs. crawford didn't hit it off very well." "and you took sides against your own son, said ashcroft, indignantly. "i begin to think i was wrong, reuben. you don't know how i have missed the boy. "yet you sent him out into the world without a penny." "how do you know that?" asked dr. crawford quickly. "i had a little conversation with your stepson as i came to the house. he spoke very frankly and unreservedly about family affairs; he says you do whatever his mother tells you. dr. crawford looked annoyed and blushed with shame. "did he say that?" he asked. "yes; he said his mother would not allow you to help carl." "he--misunderstood " "paul, i fear he understands the case only too well. i don't want to pain you, but your wife is counting on your speedy death." "i told her i didn't think i should live long." "and she got you to make a will?" "yes; did peter tell you that?" "he said his mother was to have control of the property, and carl would get nothing if he didn't act so as to please her." "there is some mistake here. by my will --made yesterday--carl is to have an equal share, and nothing is said about his being dependent on anyone." "who drew up the will?" "mrs. crawford." "did you read it?" "yes." ashcroft looked puzzled. "i should like to read the will myself," he said, after a pause. "where is it now?" "mrs. crawford has charge of it." reuben ashcroft remained silent, but his mind was busy. "that woman is a genius of craft," he said to himself. "my poor friend is but a child in her hands. i did not know paul would be so pitiably weak." "how do you happen to be here in edgewood, reuben?" asked the doctor. "i had a little errand in the next town, and could not resist the temptation of visiting you." "you can stay a day or two, can you not?" "i will, though i had not expected to do so." "mrs. crawford is away this afternoon. she will be back presently, and then i will introduce you." at five o'clock mrs. crawford returned, and her husband introduced her to his friend. ashcroft fixed his eyes upon her searchingly. "her face looks strangely familiar," he said to himself. "where can i have seen her?" mrs. crawford, like all persons who have a secret to conceal, was distrustful of strangers. she took an instant dislike to reuben ashcroft, and her greeting was exceedingly cold. "i have invited mr. ashcroft to make me a visit of two or three days, my dear," said her husband. "he is a cousin to carl's mother." mrs. crawford made no response, but kept her eyes fixed upon the carpet. she could not have shown more plainly that the invitation was not approved by her. "madam does not want me here," thought ashcroft, as he fixed his gaze once more upon his friend's wife. again the face looked familiar, but he could not place it. "have i not seen you before, mrs. crawford?" he asked, abruptly. "i don't remember you," she answered, slowly. "probably i resemble some one you have met." "perhaps so," answered ashcroft, but he could not get rid of the conviction that somewhere and some time in the past he had met mrs. crawford, and under circumstances that had fixed her countenance in his memory. after supper dr. crawford said: "my dear, i have told our guest that i had, as a prudential measure, made my will. i wish you would get it, and let me read it to him." mrs. crawford looked startled and annoyed. "couldn't you tell him the provisions of it?" she said. "yes, but i should like to show him the document." she turned and went upstairs. she was absent at least ten minutes. when she returned she was empty-handed. "i am sorry to say," she remarked, with a forced laugh, "that i have laid away the will so carefully that i can't find it." ashcroft fixed a searching look upon her, that evidently annoyed her. "i may be able to find it to-morrow," she resumed. "i think you told me, paul," said ashcroft, turning to dr. crawford, "that by the will your estate is divided equally between carl and mrs. crawford." "yes." "and nothing is said of any guardianship on the part of mrs. crawford?" "no; i think it would be better, ashcroft, that you should be carl's guardian. a man can study his interests and control him better." "i will accept the trust," said ashcroft, "though i hope it may be many years before the necessity arises." mrs. crawford bit her lips, and darted an angry glance at the two friends. she foresaw that her plans were threatened with failure. the two men chatted throughout the evening, and dr. crawford had never of late seemed happier. it gave him new life and raised his spirits to chat over old times with his early friend. chapter xxxix. a man of energy. the next morning ashcroft said to his host: "paul, let us take a walk to the village." dr. crawford put on his hat, and went out with his friend. "now, paul," said ashcroft, when they were some rods distant from the house, "is there a lawyer in edgewood?" "certainly, and a good one." "did he indite your will?" "no; mrs. crawford wrote it out. she was at one time copyist for a lawyer." "take my advice and have another drawn up to-day without mentioning the matter to her. she admits having mislaid the one made yesterday." "it may be a good idea." "certainly, it is a prudent precaution. then you will be sure that all is safe. i have, myself, executed a duplicate will. one i keep, the other i have deposited with my lawyer." ashcroft was a man of energy. he saw that dr. crawford, who was of a weak, vacillating temper, executed the will. he and another witnessed it, and the document was left with the lawyer. "you think i had better not mention the matter to mrs. crawford?" he said. "by no means--she might think it was a reflection upon her for carelessly mislaying the first." "true," and the doctor, who was fond of peace, consented to his friend's plan. "by the way," asked ashcroft, "who was your wife what was her name, i mean--before her second marriage?" "she was a mrs. cook." "oh, i see," said ashcroft, and his face lighted up with surprise and intelligence "what do you see?" inquired dr. crawford. "i thought your wife's face was familiar. i met her once when she was mrs. cook." "you knew her, then?" "no, i never exchanged a word with her till i met her under this roof. "how can i tell him that i first saw her when a visitor to the penitentiary among the female prisoners?" ashcroft asked himself. "my poor friend would sink with mortification." they were sitting in friendly chat after their return from their walk, when mrs. crawford burst into the room in evident excitement. "husband," she cried, "peter has brought home a terrible report. he has heard from a person who has just come from milford that carl has been run over on the railroad and instantly killed!" dr. crawford turned pale, his features worked convulsively, and he put his hand to his heart, as he sank back in his chair, his face as pale as the dead. "woman!" said ashcroft, sternly, "i believe you have killed your husband!" "oh, don't say that! how could i be so imprudent?" said mrs. crawford, clasping her hands, and counterfeiting distress. ashcroft set himself at once to save his friend from the result of the shock. "leave the room!" he said, sternly, to mrs. crawford. "why should i? i am his wife." "and have sought to be his murderer. you know that he has heart disease. mrs. --cook, i know more about you than you suppose." mrs. crawford's color receded. "i don't understand you," she said. she had scarcely reached the door, when there was a sound of footsteps outside and carl dashed into the room, nearly upsetting his stepmother. "you here?" she said, frigidly. "what is the matter with my father?" asked carl. "are you carl?" said ashcroft, quickly. "yes." "your father has had a shock. i think i can soon bring him to." a few minutes later dr. crawford opened his eyes. "are you feeling better, paul?" asked ashcroft, anxiously. "didn't i hear something about carl--something terrible?" "carl is alive and well," said he, soothingly; "are you sure of that?" asked dr. crawford, in excitement. "yes, i have the best evidence of it. here is carl himself." carl came forward and was clasped in his father's arms. "thank heaven, you are alive," he said. "why should i not be?" asked carl, bewildered, turning to ashcroft. "your stepmother had the--let me say imprudence, to tell your father that you had been killed on the railroad." "where could she have heard such a report?" "i am not sure that she heard it at all," said ashcroft, in a low voice. "she knew that your father had heart disease." chapter xl. conclusion. at this moment mrs. crawford re-entered the room. "what brings you here?" she demanded, coolly, of carl. "i came here because this is my father's house, madam." "you have behaved badly to me," said mrs. crawford. "you have defied my authority, and brought sorrow and distress to your good father. i thought you would have the good sense to stay away." "do you indorse this, father?" asked carl, turning to dr. crawford. "no!" answered his father, with unwonted energy. "my house will always be your home." "you seem to have changed your mind, dr. crawford," sneered his wife. "where did you pick up the report of carl's being killed on the railroad?" asked the doctor, sternly. "peter heard it in the village," said mrs. crawford, carelessly. "did it occur to you that the sudden news might injure your husband?" asked ashcroft. "i spoke too impulsively. i realize too late my imprudence," said mrs. crawford, coolly. "have you lost your place?" she asked, addressing carl. "no. i have just returned from chicago." his stepmother looked surprised. "we have had a quiet time since you left us," she said. "if you value your father's health and peace of mind, you will not remain here." "is my presence also unwelcome?" asked ashcroft. "you have not treated me with respect," replied mrs. crawford. "if you are a gentleman, you will understand that under the circumstances it will be wise for you to take your, departure." "leaving my old friend to your care?" "yes, that will be best." "mr. ashcroft, can i have a few minutes' conversation with you?" asked carl. "certainly." they left the room together, followed by an uneasy and suspicious glance from mrs. crawford. carl hurriedly communicated to his father's friend what he had learned about his stepmother. "mr. cook, peter's father, is just outside," he said. "shall i call him in?" "i think we had better do so, but arrange that the interview shall take place without your father's knowledge. he must not be excited. call him in, and then summon your stepmother." "mrs. crawford," said carl, re-entering his father's room, "mr. ashcroft would like to have a few words with you. can you come out?" she followed carl uneasily. "what is it you want with me, sir?" she asked, frigidly. "let me introduce an old acquaintance of yours." mr. cook, whom mrs. crawford had not at first observed, came forward. she drew back in dismay. "it is some time since we met, lucy," said cook, quietly. "do you come here to make trouble?" she muttered, hoarsely. "i come to ask for the property you took during my absence in california," he said. "i don't care to have you return to me----" "i obtained a divorce." "precisely; i don't care to annul it. i am thankful that you are no longer my wife." "i--i will see what i can do for you. don't go near my present husband. he is in poor health, and cannot bear a shock." "mrs. crawford," said ashcroft, gravely, "if you have any idea of remaining here, in this house, give it up. i shall see that your husband's eyes are opened to your real character." "sir, you heard this man say that he has no claim upon me." "that may be, but i cannot permit my friend to harbor a woman whose record is as bad as yours." "what do you mean?" she demanded, defiantly. "i mean that you have served a term in prison for larceny." "it is false," she said, with trembling lips. "it is true. i visited the prison during your term of confinement, and saw you there." "i, too, can certify to it," said cook. "i learned it two years after my marriage. you will understand why i am glad of the divorce." mrs. crawford was silent for a moment. she realized that the battle was lost. "well," she said, after a pause, "i am defeated. i thought my secret was safe, but i was mistaken. what do you propose to do with me?" "i will tell you this evening," said ashcroft. "one thing i can say now--you must not expect to remain in this house." "i no longer care to do so." a conference was held during the afternoon, dr crawford being told as much as was essential. it was arranged that mrs. crawford should have an allowance of four hundred dollars for herself and peter if she would leave the house quietly, and never again annoy her husband. mr. cook offered to take peter, but the latter preferred to remain with his mother. a private arrangement was made by which dr. crawford made up to mr. cook one-half of the sum stolen from him by his wife, and through the influence of ashcroft, employment was found for him. he is no longer a tramp, but a man held in respect, and moderately prosperous. carl is still in the employ of mr. jennings, and his father has removed to milford, where he and his son can live together. next september, on his twenty-first birthday, carl will be admitted to a junior partnership in the business, his father furnishing the necessary capital. carl's stepmother is in chicago, and her allowance is paid to her quarterly through a chicago bank. she has considerable trouble with peter, who has become less submissive as he grows older, and is unwilling to settle down to steady work. his prospects do not look very bright. mr. jennings and hannah are as much attached as ever to carl, and it is quite likely the manufacturer will make him his heir. happy in the society of his son, dr. crawford is likely to live to a good old age, in spite of his weakness and tendency to heart disease, for happiness is a great aid to longevity. end of the project gutenberg etext of driven from home by horatio alger 1854 walden or life in the woods by henry david thoreau economy economy when i wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, i lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which i had built myself, on the shore of walden pond, in concord, massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. i lived there two years and two months. at present i am a sojourner in civilized life again. i should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. some have asked what i got to eat; if i did not feel lonesome; if i was not afraid; and the like. others have been curious to learn what portion of my income i devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children i maintained. i will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if i undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. in most books, the i, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. we commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. i should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom i knew as well. unfortunately, i am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. moreover, i, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. as for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. i trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits. i would fain say something, not so much concerning the chinese and sandwich islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in new england; something about your condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as not. i have travelled a good deal in concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. what i have heard of bramins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders "until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach"; or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of pillarseven these forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which i daily witness. the twelve labors of hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but i could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. they have no friend iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up. i see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. who made them serfs of the soil? why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? they have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. how many a poor immortal soul have i met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! the portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh. but men labor under a mistake. the better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. by a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. it is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. it is said that deucalion and pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads behind them: inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum, et documenta damus qua simus origine nati. or, as raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way, "from thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care, approving that our bodies of a stony nature are." so much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell. most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. he has no time to be anything but a machine. how can he remember well his ignorancewhich his growth requireswho has so often to use his knowledge? we should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. the finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. i have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. it is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little. i sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, i may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called negro slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. it is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. talk of a divinity in man! look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? his highest duty to fodder and water his horses! what is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? does not he drive for squire make-a-stir? how godlike, how immortal, is he? see how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. self-emancipation even in the west indian provinces of the fancy and imaginationwhat wilberforce is there to bring that about? think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! as if you could kill time without injuring eternity. the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. what is called resignation is confirmed desperation. from the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. a stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. there is no play in them, for this comes after work. but it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. when we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. yet they honestly think there is no choice left. but alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. it is never too late to give up our prejudices. no way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. what everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. what old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. one may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. i have lived some thirty years on this planet, and i have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. they have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. if i have any experience which i think valuable, i am sure to reflect that this my mentors said nothing about. one farmer says to me, "you cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with"; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown. the whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. according to evelyn, "the wise solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the roman praetors have decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor." hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as adam. but man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?" we might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. if i had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. this was not the light in which i hoed them. the stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! what distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. who shall say what prospect life offers to another? could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? we should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. history, poetry, mythology!i know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be. the greater part of what my neighbors call good i believe in my soul to be bad, and if i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well? you may say the wisest thing you can, old manyou who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kindi hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. one generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels. i think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. we may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. the incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. we are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? how vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. so thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. this is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. all change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. confucius said, "to know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." when one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, i foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis. let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which i have referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or at least careful. it would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. for the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors. by the words, necessary of life, i mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. to many creatures there is in this sense but one necessary of life, food. to the bison of the prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks the shelter of the forest or the mountain's shadow. none of the brute creation requires more than food and shelter. the necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of food, shelter, clothing, and fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. we observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. by proper shelter and clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of tierra del fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting." so, we are told, the new hollander goes naked with impunity, while the european shivers in his clothes. is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? according to liebig, man's body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. in cold weather we eat more, in warm less. the animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy. it appears, therefore, from the above list, that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, animal heat; for while food may be regarded as the fuel which keeps up the fire within usand fuel serves only to prepare that food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from withoutshelter and clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus generated and absorbed. the grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. what pains we accordingly take, not only with our food, and clothing, and shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! the poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. the summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of elysian life. fuel, except to cook his food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and clothing and shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. at the present day, and in this country, as i find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, etc., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may livethat is, keep comfortably warmand die in new england at last. the luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as i implied before, they are cooked, of course a la mode. most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. with respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. the ancient philosophers, chinese, hindoo, persian, and greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. we know not much about them. it is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. the same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. none can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. there are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. to be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. the success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. they make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men. but why do men degenerate ever? what makes families run out? what is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? the philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. he is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. how can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men? when a man is warmed by the several modes which i have described, what does he want next? surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and hotter fires, and the like. when he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced. the soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering season. i do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they liveif, indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and enthusiasm of loversand, to some extent, i reckon myself in this number; i do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not;but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. there are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. i also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters. if i should attempt to tell how i have desired to spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual history; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it. i will only hint at some of the enterprises which i have cherished. in any weather, at any hour of the day or night, i have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. you will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. i would gladly tell all that i know about it, and never paint "no admittance" on my gate. i long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. many are the travellers i have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. i have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves. to anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, nature herself! how many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have i been about mine! no doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. it is true, i never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it. so many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express! i well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, running in the face of it. if it had concerned either of the political parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in the gazette with the earliest intelligence. at other times watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree, to telegraph any new arrival; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall, that i might catch something, though i never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again in the sun. for a long time i was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, i got only my labor for my pains. however, in this case my pains were their own reward. for many years i was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all acrosslot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility. i have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and i have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though i did not always know whether jonas or solomon worked in a particular field today; that was none of my business. i have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons. in short, i went on thus for a long time (i may say it without boasting), faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance. my accounts, which i can swear to have kept faithfully, i have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled. however, i have not set my heart on that. not long since, a strolling indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "no, we do not want any," was the reply. "what!" exclaimed the indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" having seen his industrious white neighbors so well offthat the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followedhe had said to himself: i will go into business; i will weave baskets; it is a thing which i can do. thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. he had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. i too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but i had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. yet not the less, in my case, did i think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, i studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. the life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others? finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any room in the court house, or any curacy or living anywhere else, but i must shift for myself, i turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where i was better known. i determined to go into business at once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using such slender means as i had already got. my purpose in going to walden pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from accomplishing which for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and business talent, appeared not so sad as foolish. i have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. if your trade is with the celestial empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some salem harbor, will be fixture enough. you will export such articles as the country affords, purely native products, much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native bottoms. these will be good ventures. to oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same timeoften the richest freight will be discharged upon a jersey shore;to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilizationtaking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation;charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pierthere is the untold fate of la perouse;universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from hanno and the phoenicians down to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. it is a labor to task the faculties of a mansuch problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge. i have thought that walden pond would be a good place for business, not solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade; it offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge; it is a good port and a good foundation. no neva marshes to be filled; though you must everywhere build on piles of your own driving. it is said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and ice in the neva, would sweep st. petersburg from the face of the earth. as this business was to be entered into without the usual capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where those means, that will still be indispensable to every such undertaking, were to be obtained. as for clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. they are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on. every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate to lay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies. no man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet i am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. but even if the rent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. i sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as thiswho could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. it would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. often if an accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. we know but few men, a great many coats and breeches. dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? passing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, i recognized the owner of the farm. he was only a little more weatherbeaten than when i saw him last. i have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his master's premises with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. it is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. could you, in such a case, tell surely of any company of civilized men which belonged to the most respected class? when madam pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as asiatic russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she "was now in a civilized country, where... people are judged of by their clothes." even in our democratic new england towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. but they yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them. beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless; a woman's dress, at least, is never done. a man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valetif a hero ever has a valetbare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. only they who go to soirees and legislative balls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. but if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship god in, they will do; will they not? who ever saw his old clotheshis old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? i say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. if there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? if you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. all men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. the loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind. we don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by addition without. our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but our shirts are our liber, or true bark, which cannot be removed without girdling and so destroying the man. i believe that all races at some seasons wear something equivalent to the shirt. it is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. while one thick garment is, for most purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really to suit customers; while a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will last as many years, thick pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of his own earning, there will not be found wise men to do him reverence? when i ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely, "they do not make them so now," not emphasizing the "they" at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the fates, and i find it difficult to get made what i want, simply because she cannot believe that i mean what i say, that i am so rash. when i hear this oracular sentence, i am for a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately that i may come at the meaning of it, that i may find out by what degree of consanguinity 'they' are related to me, and what authority they may have in an affair which affects me so nearly; and, finally, i am inclined to answer her with equal mystery, and without any more emphasis of the "they""it is true, they did not make them so recently, but they do now." of what use this measuring of me if she does not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to bang the coat on? we worship not the graces, nor the parcee, but fashion. she spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. the head monkey at paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in america do the same. i sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. they would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again; and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor. nevertheless, we will not forget that some egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy. on the whole, i think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has in this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. at present men make shift to wear what they can get. like shipwrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other's masquerade. every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. we are amused at beholding the costume of henry viii, or queen elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the king and queen of the cannibal islands. all costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. it is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. let harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that mood too. when the soldier is hit by a cannon-ball, rags are as becoming as purple. the childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires today. the manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable. comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. it is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable. i cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. the condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the english; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as i have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. in the long run men hit only what they aim at. therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high. as for a shelter, i will not deny that this is now a necessary of life, though there are instances of men having done without it for long periods in colder countries than this. samuel laing says that "the laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snow... in a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one exposed to it in any woollen clothing." he had seen them asleep thus. yet he adds, "they are not hardier than other people." but, probably, man did not live long on the earth without discovering the convenience which there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family; though these must be extremely partial and occasional in those climates where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary. in our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almost solely a covering at night. in the indian gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day's march, and a row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified that so many times they had camped. man was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world and wall in a space such as fitted him. he was at first bare and out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. adam and eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of warmth, then the warmth of the affections. we may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay outdoors, even in wet and cold. it plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it. who does not remember the interest with which, when young, he looked at shelving rocks, or any approach to a cave? it was the natural yearning of that portion, any portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us. from the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. at last, we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think. from the hearth the field is a great distance. it would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots. however, if one designs to construct a dwelling-house, it behooves him to exercise a little yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. i have seen penobscot indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and i thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately i am become somewhat callous, i used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night; and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. this did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. you could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. i am far from jesting. economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. a comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of such materials as nature furnished ready to their hands. gookin, who was superintendent of the indians subject to the massachusetts colony, writing in 1674, says, "the best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are green.... the meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so good as the former.... some i have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad.... i have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best english houses." he adds that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils. the indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or its apartment in one. in the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but i think that i speak within bounds when i say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter. in the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. the rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. i do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire. but, answers one, by merely paying this tax, the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savage's. an annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars (these are the country rates) entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, rumford fireplace, back plastering, venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. but how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage? if it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of manand i think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantagesit must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what i will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. an average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer's life, even if he is not encumbered with a familyestimating the pecuniary value of every man's labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less;so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam will be earned. if we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms? it may be guessed that i reduce almost the whole advantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses. but perhaps a man is not required to bury himself. nevertheless this points to an important distinction between the civilized man and the savage; and, no doubt, they have designs on us for our benefit, in making the life of a civilized people an institution, in which the life of the individual is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the race. but i wish to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage. what mean ye by saying that the poor ye have always with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? "as i live, saith the lord god, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in israel. "behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die." when i consider my neighbors, the farmers of concord, who are at least as well off as the other classes, i find that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real owners of their farms, which commonly they have inherited with encumbrances, or else bought with hired moneyand we may regard one third of that toil as the cost of their housesbut commonly they have not paid for them yet. it is true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. on applying to the assessors, i am surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own their farms free and clear. if you would know the history of these homesteads, inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. the man who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him. i doubt if there are three such men in concord. what has been said of the merchants, that a very large majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the farmers. with regard to the merchants, however, one of them says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements, because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that breaks down. but this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, and suggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly. bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic plank of famine. yet the middlesex cattle show goes off here with eclat annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine were suent. the farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. to get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. with consummate skill he has set his trap with a hair springe to catch comfort and independence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it. this is the reason he is poor; and for a similar reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. as chapman sings, "the false society of men -for earthly greatness all heavenly comforts rarefies to air." and when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. as i understand it, that was a valid objection urged by momus against the house which minerva made, that she "had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided"; and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. i know one or two families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move into the village, but have not been able to accomplish it, and only death will set them free. granted that the majority are able at last either to own or hire the modern house with all its improvements. while civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. it has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. and if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former? but how do the poor minority fare? perhaps it will be found that just in proportion as some have been placed in outward circumstances above the savage, others have been degraded below him. the luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. on the one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and "silent poor." the myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not decently buried themselves. the mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good as a wigwam. it is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. i refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. to know this i should not need to look farther than to the shanties which everywhere border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization; where i see in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood-pile, and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties is checked. it certainly is fair to look at that class by whose labor the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished. such too, to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in england, which is the great workhouse of the world. or i could refer you to ireland, which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots on the map. contrast the physical condition of the irish with that of the north american indian, or the south sea islander, or any other savage race before it was degraded by contact with the civilized man. yet i have no doubt that that people's rulers are as wise as the average of civilized rulers. their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization. i hardly need refer now to the laborers in our southern states who produce the staple exports of this country, and are themselves a staple production of the south. but to confine myself to those who are said to be in moderate circumstances. most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. as if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or, gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown! it is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for. shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man's providing a certain number of superfluous glowshoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? why should not our furniture be as simple as the arab's or the indian's? when i think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, i do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any carload of fashionable furniture. or what if i were to allowwould it not be a singular allowance?that our furniture should be more complex than the arab's, in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! at present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave her morning's work undone. morning work! by the blushes of aurora and the music of memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world? i had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but i was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. how, then, could i have a furnished house? i would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground. it is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow. the traveller who stops at the best houses, so called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presume him to be a sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself to their tender mercies he would soon be completely emasculated. i think that in the railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on safety and convenience, and it threatens without attaining these to become no better than a modern drawing-room, with its divans, and ottomans, and sun-shades, and a hundred other oriental things, which we are taking west with us, invented for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the celestial empire, which jonathan should be ashamed to know the names of. i would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. i would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way. the very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. when he was refreshed with food and sleep, he contemplated his journey again. he dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain-tops. but lo! men have become the tools of their tools. the man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. we now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. we have adopted christianity merely as an improved method of agriculture. we have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. the best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten. there is actually no place in this village for a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it. there is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or a saint. when i consider how our houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal economy managed and sustained, i wonder that the floor does not give way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the mantelpiece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and honest though earthy foundation. i cannot but perceive that this so-called rich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and i do not get on in the enjoyment of the fine arts which adorn it, my attention being wholly occupied with the jump; for i remember that the greatest genuine leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, is that of certain wandering arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty-five feet on level ground. without factitious support, man is sure to come to earth again beyond that distance. the first question which i am tempted to put to the proprietor of such great impropriety is, who bolsters you? are you one of the ninety-seven who fail, or the three who succeed? answer me these questions, and then perhaps i may look at your bawbles and find them ornamental. the cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper. old johnson, in his "wonder-working providence," speaking of the first settlers of this town, with whom he was contemporary, tells us that "they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter under some hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky fire against the earth, at the highest side." they did not "provide them houses," says he, "till the earth, by the lord's blessing, brought forth bread to feed them," and the first year's crop was so light that "they were forced to cut their bread very thin for a long season." the secretary of the province of new netherland, writing in dutch, in 1650, for the information of those who wished to take up land there, states more particularly that "those in new netherland, and especially in new england, who have no means to build farmhouses at first according to their wishes, dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth; floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their entire families for two, three, and four years, it being understood that partitions are run through those cellars which are adapted to the size of the family. the wealthy and principal men in new england, in the beginning of the colonies, commenced their first dwelling-houses in this fashion for two reasons: firstly, in order not to waste time in building, and not to want food the next season; secondly, in order not to discourage poor laboring people whom they brought over in numbers from fatherland. in the course of three or four years, when the country became adapted to agriculture, they built themselves handsome houses, spending on them several thousands." in this course which our ancestors took there was a show of prudence at least, as if their principle were to satisfy the more pressing wants first. but are the more pressing wants satisfied now? when i think of acquiring for myself one of our luxurious dwellings, i am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yet adapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten. not that all architectural ornament is to be neglected even in the rudest periods; but let our houses first be lined with beauty, where they come in contact with our lives, like the tenement of the shellfish, and not overlaid with it. but, alas! i have been inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined with. though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is better to accept the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the invention and industry of mankind offer. in such a neighborhood as this, boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantities, or even well-tempered clay or flat stones. i speak understandingly on this subject, for i have made myself acquainted with it both theoretically and practically. with a little more wit we might use these materials so as to become richer than the richest now are, and make our civilization a blessing. the civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage. but to make haste to my own experiment. near the end of march, 1845, i borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by walden pond, nearest to where i intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. it is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. the owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but i returned it sharper than i received it. it was a pleasant hillside where i worked, covered with pine woods, through which i looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. the ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it was all dark-colored and saturated with water. there were some slight flurries of snow during the days that i worked there; but for the most part when i came out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand-heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and i heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another year with us. they were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. one day, when my axe had come off and i had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in order to swell the wood, i saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as i stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. it appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life. i had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. on the 1st of april it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day, which was very foggy, i heard a stray goose groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog. so i went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself, men say they know many things; but lo! they have taken wings the arts and sciences, and a thousand appliances; the wind that blows is all that anybody knows. i hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones. each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned by its stump, for i had borrowed other tools by this time. my days in the woods were not very long ones; yet i usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and read the newspaper in which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the green pine boughs which i had cut off, and to my bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands were covered with a thick coat of pitch. before i had done i was more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, though i had cut down some of them, having become better acquainted with it. sometimes a rambler in the wood was attracted by the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips which i had made. by the middle of april, for i made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it, my house was framed and ready for the raising. i had already bought the shanty of james collins, an irishman who worked on the fitchburg railroad, for boards. james collins' shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one. when i called to see it he was not at home. i walked about the outside, at first unobserved from within, the window was so deep and high. it was of small dimensions, with a peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt being raised five feet all around as if it were a compost heap. the roof was the soundest part, though a good deal warped and made brittle by the sun. doorsill there was none, but a perennial passage for the hens under the door-board. mrs. c. came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside. the hens were driven in by my approach. it was dark, and had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and there a board which would not bear removal. she lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. in her own words, they were good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a good window"of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed out that way lately. there was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framed looking-glass, and a patent new coffee-mill nailed to an oak sapling, all told. the bargain was soon concluded, for james had in the meanwhile returned. i to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents tonight, he to vacate at five tomorrow morning, selling to nobody else meanwhile: i to take possession at six. it were well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score of ground rent and fuel. this he assured me was the only encumbrance. at six i passed him and his family on the road. one large bundle held their allbed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, hensall but the cat; she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as i learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last. i took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond-side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun. one early thrush gave me a note or two as i drove along the woodland path. i was informed treacherously by a young patrick that neighbor seeley, an irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred the still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then stood when i came back to pass the time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at the devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he said. he was there to represent spectatordom, and help make this seemingly insignificant event one with the removal of the gods of troy. i dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any winter. the sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sun having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. it was but two hours' work. i took particular pleasure in this breaking of ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for an equable temperature. under the most splendid house in the city is still to be found the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after the superstructure has disappeared posterity remark its dent in the earth. the house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow. at length, in the beginning of may, with the help of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity, i set up the frame of my house. no man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers than i. they are destined, i trust, to assist at the raising of loftier structures one day. i began to occupy my house on the 4th of july, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain, but before boarding i laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. i built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the meanwhile out of doors on the ground, early in the morning: which mode i still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable than the usual one. when it stormed before my bread was baked, i fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way. in those days, when my hands were much employed, i read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the iliad. it would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than i did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. there is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? but alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? what does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? i never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. we belong to the community. it is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? no doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself. true, there are architects so called in this country, and i have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. all very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism. a sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the cornice, not at the foundation. it was only how to put a core of truth within the ornaments, that every sugarplum, in fact, might have an almond or caraway seed in itthough i hold that almonds are most wholesome without the sugarand not how the inhabitant, the indweller, might build truly within and without, and let the ornaments take care of themselves. what reasonable man ever supposed that ornaments were something outward and in the skin merelythat the tortoise got his spotted shell, or the shell-fish its mother-o'-pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of broadway their trinity church? but a man has no more to do with the style of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of its shell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard. the enemy will find it out. he may turn pale when the trial comes. this man seemed to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to the rude occupants who really knew it better than he. what of architectural beauty i now see, i know has gradually grown from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller, who is the only builderout of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance and whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life. the most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen's suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling. a great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a september gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials. they can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar. what if an equal ado were made about the ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our churches do? so are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their professors. much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed upon his box. it would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffinthe architecture of the graveand "carpenter" is but another name for "coffin-maker." one man says, in his despair or indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your house that color. is he thinking of his last and narrow house? toss up a copper for it as well. what an abundance of leisure be must have! why do you take up a handful of dirt? better paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you. an enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture! when you have got my ornaments ready, i will wear them. before winter i built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my house, which were already impervious to rain, with imperfect and sappy shingles made of the first slice of the log, whose edges i was obliged to straighten with a plane. i have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trap-doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. the exact cost of my house, paying the usual price for such materials as i used, but not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, was as follows; and i give the details because very few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various materials which compose them: boards................................$ 8.03 1/2, (mostly shanty boards.) refuse shingles for roof and sides.... 4.00 laths................................. 1.25 two second-hand windows with glass.... 2.43 one thousand old brick................ 4.00 two casks of lime..................... 2.40 (that was high.) hair.................................. 0.31 (more than i needed.) mantle-tree iron...................... 0.15 nails................................. 3.90 hinges and screws..................... 0.14 latch................................. 0.10 chalk................................. 0.01 transportation........................ 1.40 (i carried a good part on my back.) ---- in all................................$ 28.12 1/2 these are all the materials, excepting the timber, stones, and sand, which i claimed by squatter's right. i have also a small woodshed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building the house. i intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street in concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one. i thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. if i seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that i brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement. notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisychaff which i find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which i am as sorry as any mani will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physical system; and i am resolved that i will not through humility become the devil's attorney. i will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth. at cambridge college the mere rent of a student's room, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year, though the corporation had the advantage of building thirty-two side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a residence in the fourth story. i cannot but think that if we had more true wisdom in these respects, not only less education would be needed, because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired, but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a great measure vanish. those conveniences which the student requires at cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life as they would with proper management on both sides. those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made. the mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extremea principle which should never be followed but with circumspectionto call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation, and he employs irishmen or other operatives actually to lay the foundations, while the students that are to be are said to be fitting themselves for it; and for these oversights successive generations have to pay. i think that it would be better than this, for the students, or those who desire to be benefited by it, even to lay the foundation themselves. the student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful. "but," says one, "you do not mean that the students should go to work with their hands instead of their heads?" i do not mean that exactly, but i mean something which he might think a good deal like that; i mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. how could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics. if i wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, i would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where anything is professed and practised but the art of life;to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. which would have advanced the most at the end of a monththe boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for thisor the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the institute in the meanwhile, and had received a rodgers penknife from his father? which would be most likely to cut his fingers?... to my astonishment i was informed on leaving college that i had studied navigation!why, if i had taken one turn down the harbor i should have known more about it. even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. the consequence is, that while he is reading adam smith, ricardo, and say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably. as with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. the devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. they are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to boston or new york. we are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from maine to texas; but maine and texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. as if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. we are eager to tunnel under the atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping american ear will be that the princess adelaide has the whooping cough. after all, the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round eating locusts and wild honey. i doubt if flying childers ever carried a peck of corn to mill. one says to me, "i wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to fitchburg today and see the country." but i am wiser than that. i have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. i say to my friend, suppose we try who will get there first. the distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. that is almost a day's wages. i remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. well, i start now on foot, and get there before night; i have travelled at that rate by the week together. you will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. instead of going to fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. and so, if the railroad reached round the world, i think that i should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, i should have to cut your acquaintance altogether. such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and with regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long. to make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts "all aboard!" when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run overand it will be called, and will be, "a melancholy accident." no doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time. this spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the englishman who went to india to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to england and live the life of a poet. he should have gone up garret at once. "what!" exclaim a million irishmen starting up from all the shanties in the land, "is not this railroad which we have built a good thing?" yes, i answer, comparatively good, that is, you might have done worse; but i wish, as you are brothers of mine, that you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt. before i finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual expenses, i planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. the whole lot contains eleven acres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season for eight dollars and eight cents an acre. one farmer said that it was "good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on." i put no manure whatever on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate so much again, and i did not quite hoe it all once. i got out several cords of stumps in plowing, which supplied me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin mould, easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance of the beans there. the dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the remainder of my fuel. i was obliged to hire a team and a man for the plowing, though i held the plow myself. my farm outgoes for the first season were, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14.72 1/2. the seed corn was given me. this never costs anything to speak of, unless you plant more than enough. i got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen bushels of potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn. the yellow corn and turnips were too late to come to anything. my whole income from the farm was $ 23.44 deducting the outgoes............. 14.72 1/2 ---- there are left....................$ 8.71 1/2 beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was made of the value of $4.50the amount on hand much more than balancing a little grass which i did not raise. all things considered, that is, considering the importance of a man's soul and of today, notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partly even because of its transient character, i believe that that was doing better than any farmer in concord did that year. the next year i did better still, for i spaded up all the land which i required, about a third of an acre, and i learned from the experience of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on husbandry, arthur young among the rest, that if one would live simply and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate, and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and expensive things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to plow it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than to manure the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work as it were with his left hand at odd hours in the summer; and thus he would not be tied to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as at present. i desire to speak impartially on this point, and as one not interested in the success or failure of the present economical and social arrangements. i was more independent than any farmer in concord, for i was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment. beside being better off than they already, if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, i should have been nearly as well off as before. i am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer. men and oxen exchange work; but if we consider necessary work only, the oxen will be seen to have greatly the advantage, their farm is so much the larger. man does some of his part of the exchange work in his six weeks of haying, and it is no boy's play. certainly no nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of philosophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals. true, there never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am i certain it is desirable that there should be. however, i should never have broken a horse or bull and taken him to board for any work he might do for me, for fear i should become a horseman or a herdsman merely; and if society seems to be the gainer by so doing, are we certain that what is one man's gain is not another's loss, and that the stable-boy has equal cause with his master to be satisfied? granted that some public works would not have been constructed without this aid, and let man share the glory of such with the ox and horse; does it follow that he could not have accomplished works yet more worthy of himself in that case? when men begin to do, not merely unnecessary or artistic, but luxurious and idle work, with their assistance, it is inevitable that a few do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in other words, become the slaves of the strongest. man thus not only works for the animal within him, but, for a symbol of this, he works for the animal without him. though we have many substantial houses of brick or stone, the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by the degree to which the barn overshadows the house. this town is said to have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses hereabouts, and it is not behindhand in its public buildings; but there are very few halls for free worship or free speech in this county. it should not be by their architecture, but why not even by their power of abstract thought, that nations should seek to commemorate themselves? how much more admirable the bhagvat-geeta than all the ruins of the east! towers and temples are the luxury of princes. a simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent. to what end, pray, is so much stone hammered? in arcadia, when i was there, i did not see any hammering stone. nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. what if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? one piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. i love better to see stones in place. the grandeur of thebes was a vulgar grandeur. more sensible is a rod of stone wall that bounds an honest man's field than a hundred-gated thebes that has wandered farther from the true end of life. the religion and civilization which are barbaric and heathenish build splendid temples; but what you might call christianity does not. most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. it buries itself alive. as for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the nile, and then given his body to the dogs. i might possibly invent some excuse for them and him, but i have no time for it. as for the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all the world over, whether the building be an egyptian temple or the united states bank. it costs more than it comes to. the mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and butter. mr. balcom, a promising young architect, designs it on the back of his vitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out to dobson & sons, stonecutters. when the thirty centuries begin to look down on it, mankind begin to look up at it. as for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to china, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the chinese pots and kettles rattle; but i think that i shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made. many are concerned about the monuments of the west and the eastto know who built them. for my part, i should like to know who in those days did not build themwho were above such trifling. but to proceed with my statistics. by surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in the village in the meanwhile, for i have as many trades as fingers, i had earned $13.34. the expense of food for eight months, namely, from july 4th to march 1st, the time when these estimates were made, though i lived there more than two yearsnot counting potatoes, a little green corn, and some peas, which i had raised, nor considering the value of what was on hand at the last datewas rice......................$ 1.73 1/2 molasses.................. 1.73 (cheapest form of the saccharine.) rye meal.................. 1.04 3/4 indian meal............... 0.99 3/4 (cheaper than rye.) pork...................... 0.22 (all experiments which failed) flour..................... 0.88 (costs more than indian meal, both money and trouble.) sugar..................... 0.80 lard...................... 0.65 apples.................... 0.25 dried apple............... 0.22 sweet potatoes............ 0.10 one pumpkin............... 0.06 one watermelon............ 0.02 salt...................... 0.03 yes, i did eat $8.74, all told; but i should not thus unblushingly publish my guilt, if i did not know that most of my readers were equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would look no better in print. the next year i sometimes caught a mess of fish for my dinner, and once i went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my bean-fieldeffect his transmigration, as a tartar would sayand devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, i saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher. clothing and some incidental expenses within the same dates, though little can be inferred from this item, amounted to $ 8.40 3/4 oil and some household utensils......... 2.00 so that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and mending, which for the most part were done out of the house, and their bills have not yet been receivedand these are all and more than all the ways by which money necessarily goes out in this part of the worldwere house...................................$ 28.12 1/2 farm one year........................... 14.72 1/2 food eight months....................... 8.74 clothing, etc., eight months............ 8.40 3/4 oil, etc., eight months................. 2.00 ---- in all..................................$ 61.99 3/4 i address myself now to those of my readers who have a living to get. and to meet this i have for farm produce sold $ 23.44 earned by day-labor..................... 13.34 ---- in all..................................$ 36.78 which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance of $25.21 3/4 on the one sidethis being very nearly the means with which i started, and the measure of expenses to be incurredand on the other, beside the leisure and independence and health thus secured, a comfortable house for me as long as i choose to occupy it. these statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive they may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain value also. nothing was given me of which i have not rendered some account. it appears from the above estimate, that my food alone cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a week. it was, for nearly two years after this, rye and indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt; and my drink, water. it was fit that i should live on rice, mainly, who love so well the philosophy of india. to meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, i may as well state, that if i dined out occasionally, as i always had done, and i trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements. but the dining out, being, as i have stated, a constant element, does not in the least affect a comparative statement like this. i learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. i have made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane (portulaca oleracea) which i gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted. i give the latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial name. and pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt? even the little variety which i used was a yielding to the demands of appetite, and not of health. yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries; and i know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water only. the reader will perceive that i am treating the subject rather from an economic than a dietetic point of view, and he will not venture to put my abstemiousness to the test unless he has a well-stocked larder. bread i at first made of pure indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes, which i baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or the end of a stick of timber sawed off in building my house; but it was wont to get smoked and to have a piny flavor, i tried flour also; but have at last found a mixture of rye and indian meal most convenient and agreeable. in cold weather it was no little amusement to bake several small loaves of this in succession, tending and turning them as carefully as an egyptian his hatching eggs. they were a real cereal fruit which i ripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble fruits, which i kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in cloths. i made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of bread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back to the primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind, when from the wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the mildness and refinement of this diet, and travelling gradually down in my studies through that accidental souring of the dough which, it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations thereafter, till i came to "good, sweet, wholesome bread," the staff of life. leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like the vestal firesome precious bottleful, i suppose, first brought over in the mayflower, did the business for america, and its influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian billows over the landthis seed i regularly and faithfully procured from the village, till at length one morning i forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by which accident i discovered that even this was not indispensablefor my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic processand i have gladly omitted it since, though most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. yet i find it not to be an essential ingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the land of the living; and i am glad to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottleful in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and discharge its contents to my discomfiture. it is simpler and more respectable to omit it. man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances. neither did i put any sal-soda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread. it would seem that i made it according to the recipe which marcus porcius cato gave about two centuries before christ. "panem depsticium sic facito. manus mortariumque bene lavato. farinam in mortarium indito, aquae paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. ubi bene subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu." which i take to mean,"make kneaded bread thus. wash your hands and trough well. put the meal into the trough, add water gradually, and knead it thoroughly. when you have kneaded it well, mould it, and bake it under a cover," that is, in a baking-kettle. not a word about leaven. but i did not always use this staff of life. at one time, owing to the emptiness of my purse, i saw none of it for more than a month. every new englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and indian corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating markets for them. yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any. for the most part the farmer gives to his cattle and hogs the grain of his own producing, and buys flour, which is at least no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at the store. i saw that i could easily raise my bushel or two of rye and indian corn, for the former will grow on the poorest land, and the latter does not require the best, and grind them in a hand-mill, and so do without rice and pork; and if i must have some concentrated sweet, i found by experiment that i could make a very good molasses either of pumpkins or beets, and i knew that i needed only to set out a few maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these were growing i could use various substitutes beside those which i have named. "for," as the forefathers sang, "we can make liquor to sweeten our lips of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips." finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to obtain this might be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, or, if i did without it altogether, i should probably drink the less water. i do not learn that the indians ever troubled themselves to go after it. thus i could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to get clothing and fuel. the pantaloons which i now wear were woven in a farmer's familythank heaven there is so much virtue still in man; for i think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer;and in a new country, fuel is an encumbrance. as for a habitat, if i were not permitted still to squat, i might purchase one acre at the same price for which the land i cultivated was soldnamely, eight dollars and eight cents. but as it was, i considered that i enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it. there is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if i think that i can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at oncefor the root is faithi am accustomed to answer such, that i can live on board nails. if they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that i have to say. for my part, i am glad to bear of experiments of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his teeth for all mortar. the squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. the human race is interested in these experiments, though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, or who own their thirds in mills, may be alarmed. my furniture, part of which i made myselfand the rest cost me nothing of which i have not rendered an accountconsisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. none is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. that is shiftlessness. there is a plenty of such chairs as i like best in the village garrets to be had for taking them away. furniture! thank god, i can sit and i can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse. what man but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes? that is spaulding's furniture. i could never tell from inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are. each load looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviae; at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be burned? it is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man's belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are cast without dragging themdragging his trap. he was a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap. the muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free. no wonder man has lost his elasticity. how often he is at a dead set! "sir, if i may be so bold, what do you mean by a dead set?" if you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him, even to his kitchen furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and will not burn, and he will appear to be harnessed to it and making what headway he can. i think that the man is at a dead set who has got through a knot-hole or gateway where his sledge load of furniture cannot follow him. i cannot but feel compassion when i hear some trig, compact-looking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of his "furniture," as whether it is insured or not. "but what shall i do with my furniture?"my gay butterfly is entangled in a spider's web then. even those who seem for a long while not to have any, if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some stored in somebody's barn. i look upon england today as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated from long housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn; great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle. throw away the first three at least. it would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and i should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run. when i have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained his alllooking like an enormous well which had grown out of the nape of his necki have pitied him, not because that was his all, but because he had all that to carry. if i have got to drag my trap, i will take care that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital part. but perchance it would be wisest never to put one's paw into it. i would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for curtains, for i have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and i am willing that they should look in. the moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet; and if he is sometimes too warm a friend, i find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided, than to add a single item to the details of housekeeping. a lady once offered me a mat, but as i had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, i declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. it is best to avoid the beginnings of evil. not long since i was present at the auction of a deacon's effects, for his life had not been ineffectual: "the evil that men do lives after them." as usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate in his father's day. among the rest was a dried tapeworm. and now, after lying half a century in his garret and other dust holes, these things were not burned; instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or increasing of them. the neighbors eagerly collected to view them, bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and dust holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they will start again. when a man dies he kicks the dust. the customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not. would it not be well if we were to celebrate such a "busk," or "feast of first fruits," as bartram describes to have been the custom of the mucclasse indians? "when a town celebrates the busk," says he, "having previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they collect all their worn out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions they cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire. after having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in the town is extinguished. during this fast they abstain from the gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. a general amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors may return to their town." "on the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in the public square, from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new and pure flame." they then feast on the new corn and fruits, and dance and sing for three days, "and the four following days they receive visits and rejoice with their friends from neighboring towns who have in like manner purified and prepared themselves." the mexicans also practised a similar purification at the end of every fifty-two years, in the belief that it was time for the world to come to an end. i have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the dictionary defines it,outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," than this, and i have no doubt that they were originally inspired directly from heaven to do thus, though they have no biblical record of the revelation. for more than five years i maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and i found that, by working about six weeks in a year, i could meet all the expenses of living. the whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, i had free and clear for study. i have thoroughly tried schoolkeeping, and found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, for i was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and i lost my time into the bargain. as i did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. i have tried trade; but i found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then i should probably be on my way to the devil. i was actually afraid that i might by that time be doing what is called a good business. when formerly i was looking about to see what i could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, i thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely i could do, and its small profits might sufficefor my greatest skill has been to want but littleso little capital it required, so little distraction from my wonted moods, i foolishly thought. while my acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, i contemplated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of them; so, to keep the flocks of admetus. i also dreamed that i might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the city, by hay-cart loads. but i have since learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business. as i preferred some things to others, and especially valued my freedom, as i could fare hard and yet succeed well, i did not wish to spend my time in earning rich carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house in the grecian or the gothic style just yet. if there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire these things, and who know how to use them when acquired, i relinquish to them the pursuit. some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such i have at present nothing to say. those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, i might advise to work twice as hard as they dowork till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers. for myself i found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. the laborer's day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other. in short, i am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. it is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than i do. one young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited some acres, told me that he thought he should live as i did, if he had the means. i would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it i may have found out another for myself, i desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but i would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead. the youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do. it is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. we may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course. undoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one is truer still for a thousand, as a large house is not proportionally more expensive than a small one, since one roof may cover, one cellar underlie, and one wall separate several apartments. but for my part, i preferred the solitary dwelling. moreover, it will commonly be cheaper to build the whole yourself than to convince another of the advantage of the common wall; and when you have done this, the common partition, to be much cheaper, must be a thin one, and that other may prove a bad neighbor, and also not keep his side in repair. the only cooperation which is commonly possible is exceedingly partial and superficial; and what little true cooperation there is, is as if it were not, being a harmony inaudible to men. if a man has faith, he will cooperate with equal faith everywhere; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to. to cooperate in the highest as well as the lowest sense, means to get our living together. i heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel together over the world, the one without money, earning his means as he went, before the mast and behind the plow, the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket. it was easy to see that they could not long be companions or cooperate, since one would not operate at all. they would part at the first interesting crisis in their adventures. above all, as i have implied, the man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off. but all this is very selfish, i have heard some of my townsmen say. i confess that i have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic enterprises. i have made some sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among others have sacrificed this pleasure also. there are those who have used all their arts to persuade me to undertake the support of some poor family in the town; and if i had nothing to dofor the devil finds employment for the idlei might try my hand at some such pastime as that. however, when i have thought to indulge myself in this respect, and lay their heaven under an obligation by maintaining certain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as i maintain myself, and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer, they have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor. while my townsmen and women are devoted in so many ways to the good of their fellows, i trust that one at least may be spared to other and less humane pursuits. you must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else. as for doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full. moreover, i have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. probably i should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling to do the good which society demands of me, to save the universe from annihilation; and i believe that a like but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. but i would not stand between any man and his genius; and to him who does this work, which i decline, with his whole heart and soul and life, i would say, persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it is most likely they will. i am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one; no doubt many of my readers would make a similar defence. at doing somethingi will not engage that my neighbors shall pronounce it goodi do not hesitate to say that i should be a capital fellow to hire; but what that is, it is for my employer to find out. what good i do, in the common sense of that word, must be aside from my main path, and for the most part wholly unintended. men say, practically, begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought go about doing good. if i were to preach at all in this strain, i should say rather, set about being good. as if the sun should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the splendor of a moon or a star of the sixth magnitude, and go about like a robin goodfellow, peeping in at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting meats, and making darkness visible, instead of steadily increasing his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness that no mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in the meanwhile too, going about the world in his own orbit, doing it good, or rather, as a truer philosophy has discovered, the world going about him getting good. when phaeton, wishing to prove his heavenly birth by his beneficence, had the sun's chariot but one day, and drove out of the beaten track, he burned several blocks of houses in the lower streets of heaven, and scorched the surface of the earth, and dried up every spring, and made the great desert of sahara, till at length jupiter hurled him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt, and the sun, through grief at his death, did not shine for a year. there is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. it is human, it is divine, carrion. if i knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, i should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the african deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear that i should get some of his good done to mesome of its virus mingled with my blood. noin this case i would rather suffer evil the natural way. a man is not a good man to me because he will feed me if i should be starving, or warm me if i should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if i should ever fall into one. i can find you a newfoundland dog that will do as much. philanthropy is not love for one's fellow-man in the broadest sense. howard was no doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man in his way, and has his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are a hundred howards to us, if their philanthropy do not help us in our best estate, when we are most worthy to be helped? i never heard of a philanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely proposed to do any good to me, or the like of me. the jesuits were quite balked by those indians who, being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of torture to their tormentors. being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for their part, did not care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all they did. be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. if you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. we make curious mistakes sometimes. often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. it is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. if you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. i was wont to pity the clumsy irish laborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while i shivered in my more tidy and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped into the water came to my house to warm him, and i saw him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and that he could afford to refuse the extra garments which i offered him, he had so many intra ones. this ducking was the very thing he needed. then i began to pity myself, and i saw that it would be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop on him. there are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. it is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a sunday's liberty for the rest. some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there? you boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it. society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. is this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the officers of justice? philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it. a robust poor man, one sunny day here in concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he was kind to the poor; meaning himself. the kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers. i once heard a reverend lecturer on england, a man of learning and intelligence, after enumerating her scientific, literary, and political worthies, shakespeare, bacon, cromwell, milton, newton, and others, speak next of her christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. they were penn, howard, and mrs. fry. every one must feel the falsehood and cant of this. the last were not england's best men and women; only, perhaps, her best philanthropists. i would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. i do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. i want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. his goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. this is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. the philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. we should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion. from what southern plains comes up the voice of wailing? under what latitudes reside the heathen to whom we would send light? who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we would redeem? if anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels evenfor that is the seat of sympathyhe forthwith sets about reformingthe world. being a microcosm himself, he discoversand it is a true discovery, and he is the man to make itthat the world has been eating green apples; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself is a great green apple, which there is danger awful to think of that the children of men will nibble before it is ripe; and straightway his drastic philanthropy seeks out the esquimau and the patagonian, and embraces the populous indian and chinese villages; and thus, by a few years of philanthropic activity, the powers in the meanwhile using him for their own ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe, and life loses its crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to live. i never dreamed of any enormity greater than i have committed. i never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself. i believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of god, is his private ail. let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology. my excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that i never chewed it, that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are things enough i have chewed which i could lecture against. if you should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings. take your time, and set about some free labor. our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of god and enduring him forever. one would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. there is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of god. all health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad and does me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or i with it. if, then, we would indeed restore mankind by truly indian, botanic, magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as simple and well as nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our own brows, and take up a little life into our pores. do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world. i read in the gulistan, or flower garden, of sheik sadi of shiraz, that "they asked a wise man, saying: of the many celebrated trees which the most high god has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none azad, or free, excepting the cypress, which bears no fruit; what mystery is there in this? he replied: each has its appropriate produce, and appointed season, during the continuance of which it is fresh and blooming, and during their absence dry and withered; to neither of which states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing; and of this nature are the azads, or religious independents.fix not thy heart on that which is transitory; for the dijlah, or tigris, will continue to flow through bagdad after the race of caliphs is extinct: if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress." complemental verses. the pretensions of poverty. thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch, to claim a station in the firmament because thy humble cottage, or thy tub, nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue in the cheap sunshine or by shady springs, with roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand, tearing those humane passions from the mind, upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish, degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense, and, gorgon-like, turns active men to stone. we not require the dull society of your necessitated temperance, or that unnatural stupidity that knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc'd falsely exalted passive fortitude above the active. this low abject brood, that fix their seats in mediocrity, become your servile minds; but we advance such virtues only as admit excess, brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence, all-seeing prudence, magnanimity that knows no bound, and that heroic virtue for which antiquity hath left no name, but patterns only, such as hercules, achilles, theseus. back to thy loath'd cell; and when thou seest the new enlightened sphere, study to know but what those worthies were. t. carew where i lived, and what i lived for. at a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. i have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where i live. in imagination i have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and i knew their price. i walked over each farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on ittook everything but a deed of ittook his word for his deed, for i dearly love to talkcultivated it, and him too to some extent, i trust, and withdrew when i had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. this experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker by my friends. wherever i sat, there i might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. what is a house but a sedes, a seat?better if a country seat. i discovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from it. well, there i might live, i said; and there i did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how i could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in. the future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. an afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, wood-lot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then i let it lie, fallow, perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. my imagination carried me so far that i even had the refusal of several farmsthe refusal was all i wantedbut i never got my fingers burned by actual possession. the nearest that i came to actual possession was when i bought the hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wifeevery man has such a wifechanged her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. now, to speak the truth, i had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if i was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. however, i let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for i had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, i sold him the farm for just what i gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. i found thus that i had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. but i retained the landscape, and i have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. with respect to landscapes, "i am monarch of all i survey, my right there is none to dispute." i have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk. the real attractions of the hollowell farm, to me, were: its complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, nawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors i should have; but above all, the recollection i had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which i heard the house-dog bark. i was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made any more of his improvements. to enjoy these advantages i was ready to carry it on; like atlas, to take the world on my shouldersi never heard what compensation he received for thatand do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that i might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for i knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind i wanted, if i could only afford to let it alone. but it turned out as i have said. all that i could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scalei have always cultivated a gardenwas, that i had had my seeds ready. many think that seeds improve with age. i have no doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when at last i shall plant, i shall be less likely to be disappointed. but i would say to my fellows, once for all, as long as possible live free and uncommitted. it makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail. old cato, whose "de re rustica" is my "cultivator," saysand the only translation i have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage"when you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. the oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good." i think i shall not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as i live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more at last. the present was my next experiment of this kind, which i purpose to describe more at length, for convenience putting the experience of two years into one. as i have said, i do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. when first i took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on independence day, or the fourth of july, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. the upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that i fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. to my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which i had visited a year before. this was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. the winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. the morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere. the only house i had been the owner of before, if i except a boat, was a tent, which i used occasionally when making excursions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of time. with this more substantial shelter about me, i had made some progress toward settling in the world. this frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. it was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. i did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. it was not so much within doors as behind a door where i sat, even in the rainiest weather. the harivansa says, "an abode without birds is like a meat without seasoning." such was not my abode, for i found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. i was not only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those smaller and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villagerthe wood thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field sparrow, the whip-poor-will, and many others. i was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half south of the village of concord and somewhat higher than it, in the midst of an extensive wood between that town and lincoln, and about two miles south of that our only field known to fame, concord battle ground; but i was so low in the woods that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my most distant horizon. for the first week, whenever i looked out on the pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, i saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. the very dew seemed to hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides of mountains. this small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm in august, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. a lake like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being, shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important. from a hill-top near by, where the wood had been recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. that way i looked between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. indeed, by standing on tiptoe i could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain ranges in the northwest, those true-blue coins from heaven's own mint, and also of some portion of the village. but in other directions, even from this point, i could not see over or beyond the woods which surrounded me. it is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. one value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you see that earth is not continent but insular. this is as important as that it keeps butter cool. when i looked across the pond from this peak toward the sudbury meadows, which in time of flood i distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and floated even by this small sheet of interverting water, and i was reminded that this on which i dwelt was but dry land. though the view from my door was still more contracted, i did not feel crowded or confined in the least. there was pasture enough for my imagination. the low shrub oak plateau to which the opposite shore arose stretched away toward the prairies of the west and the steppes of tartary, affording ample room for all the roving families of men. "there are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon"said damodara, when his herds required new and larger pastures. both place and time were changed, and i dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me. where i lived was as far off as many a region viewed nightly by astronomers. we are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of cassiopeia's chair, far from noise and disturbance. i discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. if it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the pleiades or the hyades, to aldebaran or altair, then i was really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which i had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. such was that part of creation where i had squatted; "there was a shepherd that did live, and held his thoughts as high as were the mounts whereon his flocks did hourly feed him by." what should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts? every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and i may say innocence, with nature herself. i have been as sincere a worshipper of aurora as the greeks. i got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which i did. they say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of king tching-thang to this effect: "renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." i can understand that. morning brings back the heroic ages. i was as much affected by the faint burn of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when i was sitting with door and windows open, as i could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. it was homer's requiem; itself an iliad and odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. there was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. the morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the airto a higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. that man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. after a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his genius tries again what noble life it can make. all memorable events, i should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. the vedas say, "all intelligences awake with the morning." poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. all poets and heroes, like memnon, are the children of aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. to him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. it matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. morning is when i am awake and there is a dawn in me. moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? they are not such poor calculators. if they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed something. the millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. to be awake is to be alive. i have never yet met a man who was quite awake. how could i have looked him in the face? we must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. i know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. it is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. to affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. if we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done. i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if i could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when i came to die, discover that i had not lived. i did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did i wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. i wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. for most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of god, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify god and enjoy him forever." still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. our life is frittered away by detail. an honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! i say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. in the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. simplify, simplify. instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. our life is like a german confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a german cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. the nation itself, with all its socalled internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. it lives too fast. men think that it is essential that the nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. if we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? and if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? but if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? we do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? each one is a man, an irishman, or a yankee man. the rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. they are sound sleepers, i assure you. and every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. and when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. i am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again. why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? we are determined to be starved before we are hungry. men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow. as for work, we haven't any of any consequence. we have the saint vitus' dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still. if i should only give a few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, i might almost say, but would forsake all and follow that sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on fireor to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish church itself. hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "what's the news?" as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. some give directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. after a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. "pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe"and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the wachito river; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself. for my part, i could easily do without the post-office. i think that there are very few important communications made through it. to speak critically, i never received more than one or two letters in my lifei wrote this some years agothat were worth the postage. the penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. and i am sure that i never read any memorable news in a newspaper. if we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the western railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winterwe never need read of another. one is enough. if you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? to a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. there was such a rush, as i hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressurenews which i seriously think a ready wit might write a twelve-month, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy. as for spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in don carlos and the infanta, and don pedro and seville and granada, from time to time in the right proportionsthey may have changed the names a little since i saw the papersand serve up a bull-fight when other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers: and as for england, almost the last significant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. if one may judge who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a french revolution not excepted. what news! how much more important to know what that is which was never old! "kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state of wei) sent a man to khoung-tseu to know his news. khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms: what is your master doing? the messenger answered with respect: my master desires to diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot come to the end of them. the messenger being gone, the philosopher remarked: what a worthy messenger! what a worthy messenger!" the preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the weekfor sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new onewith this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, "pause! avast! why so seeming fast, but deadly slow?" shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. if men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the arabian nights' entertainments. if we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. when we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. this is always exhilarating and sublime. by closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. i have read in a hindoo book, that "there was a king's son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. one of his father's ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. so soul," continues the hindoo philosopher, "from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be brahme." i perceive that we inhabitants of new england live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. we think that that is which appears to be. if a man should walk through this town and see only the reality, where, think you, would the "mill-dam" go to? if he should give us an account of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize the place in his description. look at a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before adam and after the last man. in eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. but all these times and places and occasions are now and here. god himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. and we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. the universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. let us spend our lives in conceiving then. the poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it. let us spend one day as deliberately as nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children crydetermined to make a day of it. why should we knock under and go with the stream? let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. with unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like ulysses. if the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. if the bell rings, why should we run? we will consider what kind of music they are like. let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through paris and london, through new york and boston and concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, this is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a nilometer, but a realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. if you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. be it life or death, we crave only reality. if we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business. time is but the stream i go a-fishing in. i drink at it; but while i drink i see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. i would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. i cannot count one. i know not the first letter of the alphabet. i have always been regretting that i was not as wise as the day i was born. the intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. i do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. my head is hands and feet. i feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. my instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it i would mine and burrow my way through these hills. i think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors i judge; and here i will begin to mine. reading reading. with a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. in accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. the oldest egyptian or hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and i gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was i in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. no dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. that time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future. my residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though i was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, i had more than ever come within the influence of those books which circulate round the world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now merely copied from time to time on to linen paper. says the poet mir camar uddin mast, "being seated, to run through the region of the spiritual world; i have had this advantage in books. to be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; i have experienced this pleasure when i have drunk the liquor of the esoteric doctrines." i kept homer's iliad on my table through the summer, though i looked at his page only now and then. incessant labor with my hands, at first, for i had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more study impossible. yet i sustained myself by the prospect of such reading in future. i read one or two shallow books of travel in the intervals of my work, till that employment made me ashamed of myself, and i asked where it was then that i lived. the student may read homer or aeschylus in the greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. the heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. the modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. they seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. it is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. it is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few latin words which he has heard. men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. for what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? they are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as delphi and dodona never gave. we might as well omit to study nature because she is old. to read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. it requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. it is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. the one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. the other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak. the crowds of men who merely spoke the greek and latin tongues in the middle ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to read the works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written in that greek or latin which they knew, but in the select language of literature. they had not learned the nobler dialects of greece and rome, but the very materials on which they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. but when the several nations of europe had acquired distinct though rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. what the roman and grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars only are still reading it. however much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. there are the stars, and they who can may read them. the astronomers forever comment on and observe them. they are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. what is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. the orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him. no wonder that alexander carried the iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. a written word is the choicest of relics. it is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. it is the work of art nearest to life itself. it may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. the symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. they have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. when the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which be takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family. those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. homer has never yet been printed in english, nor aeschylus, nor virgil evenworks as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. they only talk of forgetting them who never knew them. it will be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them. that age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the vaticans shall be filled with vedas and zendavestas and bibles, with homers and dantes and shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. by such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last. the works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. they have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically. most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to. i think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a-b-abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading. there is a work in several volumes in our circulating library entitled "little reading," which i thought referred to a town of that name which i had not been to. there are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of meats and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted. if others are the machines to provide this provender, they are the machines to read it. they read the nine thousandth tale about zebulon and sophronia, and how they loved as none had ever loved before, and neither did the course of their true love run smoothat any rate, how it did run and stumble, and get up again and go on! how some poor unfortunate got up on to a steeple, who had better never have gone up as far as the belfry; and then, having needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings the bell for all the world to come together and hear, o dear! how he did get down again! for my part, i think that they had better metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of universal noveldom into man weather-cocks, as they used to put heroes among the constellations, and let them swing round there till they are rusty, and not come down at all to bother honest men with their pranks. the next time the novelist rings the bell i will not stir though the meeting-house burn down. "the skip of the tip-toe-hop, a romance of the middle ages, by the celebrated author of 'tittle-tol-tan,' to appear in monthly parts; a great rush; don't all come together." all this they read with saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of cinderellawithout any improvement, that i can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more skill in extracting or inserting the moral. the result is dulness of sight, a stagnation of the vital circulations, and a general deliquium and sloughing off of all the intellectual faculties. this sort of gingerbread is baked daily and more sedulously than pure wheat or rye-and-indian in almost every oven, and finds a surer market. the best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. what does our concord culture amount to? there is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in english literature, whose words all can read and spell. even the college-bred and so-called liberally educated men here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintance with the english classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and bibles, which are accessible to all who will know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to become acquainted with them. i know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a french paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to "keep himself in practice," he being a canadian by birth; and when i ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his english. this is about as much as the college-bred generally do or aspire to do, and they take an english paper for the purpose. one who has just come from reading perhaps one of the best english books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? or suppose he comes from reading a greek or latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so-called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader; and as for the sacred scriptures, or bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? most men do not know that any nation but the hebrews have had a scripture. a man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;and yet we learn to read only as far as easy reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave school, the "little reading," and story-books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins. i aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. or shall i hear the name of plato and never read his book? as if plato were my townsman and i never saw himmy next neighbor and i never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. but how actually is it? his dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet i never read them. we are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect i confess i do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. we should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were. we are a race of tit-men, and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily paper. it is not all books that are as dull as their readers. there are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really bear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. how many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! the book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. the at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. these same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. the solitary hired man on a farm in the outskirts of concord, who has had his second birth and peculiar religious experience, and is driven as he believes into the silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, may think it is not true; but zoroaster, thousands of years ago, travelled the same road and had the same experience; but he, being wise, knew it to be universal, and treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even said to have invented and established worship among men. let him humbly commune with zoroaster then, and through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies, with jesus christ himself, and let "our church" go by the board. we boast that we belong to the nineteenth century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. but consider how little this village does for its own culture. i do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. we need to be provokedgoaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. we have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the state, no school for ourselves. we spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental ailment. it is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. it is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisureif they are, indeed, so well offto pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. shall the world be confined to one paris or one oxford forever? cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies of concord? can we not hire some abelard to lecture to us? alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. in this country, the village should in some respects take the place of the nobleman of europe. it should be the patron of the fine arts. it is rich enough. it wants only the magnanimity and refinement. it can spend money enough on such things as farmers and traders value, but it is thought utopian to propose spending money for things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. this town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a town-house, thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not spend so much on living wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a hundred years. the one hundred and twenty-five dollars annually subscribed for a lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other equal sum raised in the town. if we live in the nineteenth century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the nineteenth century offers? why should our life be in any respect provincial? if we will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once?not be sucking the pap of "neutral family" papers, or browsing "olive branches" here in new england. let the reports of all the learned societies come to us, and we will see if they know anything. why should we leave it to harper & brothers and redding & co. to select our reading? as the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his culturegeniuslearningwitbookspaintingsstatuarymusicphilosophical instruments, and the like; so let the village do-not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with these. to act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions; and i am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman's. new england can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. that is the uncommon school we want. instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. if it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us. sounds sounds. but while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. much is published, but little printed. the rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. no method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. what is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity. i did not read books the first summer; i hoed beans. nay, i often did better than this. there were times when i could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. i love a broad margin to my life. sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, i sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, i was reminded of the lapse of time. i grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. they were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. i realized what the orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. for the most part, i minded not how the hours went. the day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. instead of singing like the birds, i silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. as the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had i my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. my days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for i lived like the puri indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." this was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, i should not have been found wanting. a man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. the natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence. i had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. it was a drama of many scenes and without an end. if we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. housework was a pleasant pastime. when my floor was dirty, i rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had broken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almost uninterupted. it was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy's pack, and my three-legged table, from which i did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. they seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in. i was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat there. it was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. a bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and blackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about. it looked as if this was the way these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, and bedsteadsbecause they once stood in their midst. my house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill. in my front yard grew the strawberry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub oaks and sand cherry, blueberry and groundnut. near the end of may, the sand cherry (cerasus pumila) adorned the sides of the path with its delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about its short stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with goodsized and handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays on every side. i tasted them out of compliment to nature, though they were scarcely palatable. the sumach (rhus glabra) grew luxuriantly about the house, pushing up through the embankment which i had made, and growing five or six feet the first season. its broad pinnate tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. the large buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks which had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in diameter; and sometimes, as i sat at my window, so heedlessly did they grow and tax their weak joints, i heard a fresh and tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of air stirring, broken off by its own weight. in august, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke the tender limbs. as i sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks are circling about my clearing; the tantivy of wild pigeons, flying by two and threes athwart my view, or perching restless on the white pine boughs behind my house, gives a voice to the air; a fish hawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a mink steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by the shore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birds flitting hither and thither; and for the last half-hour i have heard the rattle of railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from boston to the country. for i did not live so out of the world as that boy who, as i hear, was put out to a farmer in the east part of the town, but ere long ran away and came home again, quite down at the heel and homesick. he had never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place; the folks were all gone off; why, you couldn't even hear the whistle! i doubt if there is such a place in massachusetts now: "in truth, our village has become a butt for one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o'er our peaceful plain its soothing sound isconcord." the fitchburg railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where i dwell. i usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. the men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so i am. i too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth. the whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer's yard, informing me that many restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town, or adventurous country traders from the other side. as they come under one horizon, they shout their warning to get off the track to the other, heard sometimes through the circles of two towns. here come your groceries, country; your rations, countrymen! nor is there any man so independent on his farm that he can say them nay. and here's your pay for them! screams the countryman's whistle; timber like long battering-rams going twenty miles an hour against the city's walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy-laden that dwell within them. with such huge and lumbering civility the country hands a chair to the city. all the indian huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry meadows are raked into the city. up comes the cotton, down goes the woven cloth; up comes the silk, down goes the woollen; up come the books, but down goes the wit that writes them. when i meet the engine with its train of cars moving off with planetary motionor, rather, like a comet, for the beholder knows not if with that velocity and with that direction it will ever revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like a returning curvewith its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which i have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the lightas if this traveling demigod, this cloudcompeller, would ere long take the sunset sky for the livery of his train; when i hear the iron horse make the bills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils (what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the new mythology i don't know), it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it. if all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends! if the cloud that hangs over the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as beneficent as that which floats over the farmer's fields, then the elements and nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their errands and be their escort. i watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that i do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. their train of clouds stretching far behind and rising higher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to boston, conceals the sun for a minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train of cars which bugs the earth is but the barb of the spear. the stabler of the iron horse was up early this winter morning by the light of the stars amid the mountains, to fodder and harness his steed. fire, too, was awakened thus early to put the vital beat in him and get him off. if the enterprise were as innocent as it is early! if the snow lies deep, they strap on his snowshoes, and, with the giant plow, plow a furrow from the mountains to the seaboard, in which the cars, like a following drill-barrow, sprinkle all the restless men and floating merchandise in the country for seed. all day the fire-steed flies over the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and i am awakened by his tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in some remote glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and snow; and he will reach his stall only with the morning star, to start once more on his travels without rest or slumber. or perchance, at evening, i hear him in his stable blowing off the superfluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves and cool his liver and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. if the enterprise were as heroic and commanding as it is protracted and unwearied! far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, where once only the hunter penetrated by day, in the darkest night dart these bright saloons without the knowledge of their inhabitants; this moment stopping at some brilliant station-house in town or city, where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the dismal swamp, scaring the owl and fox. the startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day. they go and come with such regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well-conducted institution regulates a whole country. have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office? there is something electrifying in the atmosphere of the former place. i have been astonished at the miracles it has wrought; that some of my neighbors, who, i should have prophesied, once for all, would never get to boston by so prompt a conveyance, are on hand when the bell rings. to do things "railroad fashion" is now the byword; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. there is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case. we have constructed a fate, an atropos, that never turns aside. (let that be the name of your engine.) men are advertised that at a certain hour and minute these bolts will be shot toward particular points of the compass; yet it interferes with no man's business, and the children go to school on the other track. we live the steadier for it. we are all educated thus to be sons of tell. the air is full of invisible bolts. every path but your own is the path of fate. keep on your own track, then. what recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. it does not clasp its hands and pray to jupiter. i see these men every day go about their business with more or less courage and content, doing more even than they suspect, and perchance better employed than they could have consciously devised. i am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at buena vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snowplow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, which bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen. on this morning of the great snow, perchance, which is still raging and chilling men's blood, i bear the muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of their chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming, without long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a new england northeast snow-storm, and i behold the plowmen covered with snow and rime, their heads peering, above the mould-board which is turning down other than daisies and the nests of field mice, like bowlders of the sierra nevada, that occupy an outside place in the universe. commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied. it is very natural in its methods withal, far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental experiments, and hence its singular success. i am refreshed and expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and i smell the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from long wharf to lake champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs, and indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe. i feel more like a citizen of the world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen new england heads the next summer, the manilla hemp and cocoanut husks, the old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. this carload of torn sails is more legible and interesting now than if they should be wrought into paper and printed books. who can write so graphically the history of the storms they have weathered as these rents have done? they are proof-sheets which need no correction. here goes lumber from the maine woods, which did not go out to sea in the last freshet, risen four dollars on the thousand because of what did go out or was split up; pine, spruce, cedarfirst, second, third, and fourth qualities, so lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and moose, and caribou. next rolls thomaston lime, a prime lot, which will get far among the hills before it gets slacked. these rags in bales, of all hues and qualities, the lowest condition to which cotton and linen descend, the final result of dressof patterns which are now no longer cried up, unless it be in milwaukee, as those splendid articles, english, french, or american prints, ginghams, muslins, etc., gathered from all quarters both of fashion and poverty, going to become paper of one color or a few shades only, on which, forsooth, will be written tales of real life, high and low, and founded on fact! this closed car smells of salt fish, the strong new england and commercial scent, reminding me of the grand banks and the fisheries. who has not seen a salt fish, thoroughly cured for this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and putting, the perseverance of the saints to the blush? with which you may sweep or pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster shelter himself and his lading against sun, wind, and rain behind itand the trader, as a concord trader once did, bang it up by his door for a sign when he commences business, until at last his oldest customer cannot tell surely whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake, and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent dunfish for a saturday's dinner. next spanish hides, with the tails still preserving their twist and the angle of elevation they had when the oxen that wore them were careering over the pampas of the spanish maina type of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost hopeless and incurable are all constitutional vices. i confess, that practically speaking, when i have learned a man's real disposition, i have no hopes of changing it for the better or worse in this state of existence. as the orientals say, "a cur's tail may be warmed, and pressed, and bound round with ligatures, and after a twelve years' labor bestowed upon it, still it will retain its natural form." the only effectual cure for such inveteracies as these tails exhibit is to make glue of them, which i believe is what is usually done with them, and then they will stay put and stick. here is a hogshead of molasses or of brandy directed to john smith, cuttingsville, vermont, some trader among the green mountains, who imports for the farmers near his clearing, and now perchance stands over his bulkhead and thinks of the last arrivals on the coast, how they may affect the price for him, telling his customers this moment, as he has told them twenty times before this morning, that he expects some by the next train of prime quality. it is advertised in the cuttingsville times. while these things go up other things come down. warned by the whizzing sound, i look up from my book and see some tall pine, hewn on far northern hills, which has winged its way over the green mountains and the connecticut, shot like an arrow through the township within ten minutes, and scarce another eye beholds it; going "to be the mast of some great ammiral." and hark! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle of a thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards in the air, drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys in the midst of their flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirled along like leaves blown from the mountains by the september gales. the air is filled with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a pastoral valley were going by. when the old bellwether at the head rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like rams and the little hills like lambs. a carload of drovers, too, in the midst, on a level with their droves now, their vocation gone, but still clinging to their useless sticks as their badge of office. but their dogs, where are they? it is a stampede to them; they are quite thrown out; they have lost the scent. methinks i hear them barking behind the peterboro' hills, or panting up the western slope of the green mountains. they will not be in at the death. their vocation, too, is gone. their fidelity and sagacity are below par now. they will slink back to their kennels in disgrace, or perchance run wild and strike a league with the wolf and the fox. so is your pastoral life whirled past and away. but the bell rings, and i must get off the track and let the cars go by; what's the railroad to me? i never go to see where it ends. it fills a few hollows, and makes banks for the swallows, it sets the sand a-blowing, and the blackberries a-growing, but i cross it like a cart-path in the woods. i will not have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing. now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumbling, i am more alone than ever. for the rest of the long afternoon, perhaps, my meditations are interrupted only by the faint rattle of a carriage or team along the distant highway. sometimes, on sundays, i heard the bells, the lincoln, acton, bedford, or concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness. at a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. all sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. there came to me in this case a melody which the air had strained, and which had conversed with every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the sound which the elements had taken up and modulated and echoed from vale to vale. the echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. it is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph. at evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the horizon beyond the woods sounded sweet and melodious, and at first i would mistake it for the voices of certain minstrels by whom i was sometimes serenaded, who might be straying over hill and dale; but soon i was not unpleasantly disappointed when it was prolonged into the cheap and natural music of the cow. i do not mean to be satirical, but to express my appreciation of those youths' singing, when i state that i perceived clearly that it was akin to the music of the cow, and they were at length one articulation of nature. regularly at half-past seven, in one part of the summer, after the evening train had gone by, the whip-poor-wills chanted their vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump by my door, or upon the ridge-pole of the house. they would begin to sing almost with as much precision as a clock, within five minutes of a particular time, referred to the setting of the sun, every evening. i had a rare opportunity to become acquainted with their habits. sometimes i heard four or five at once in different parts of the wood, by accident one a bar behind another, and so near me that i distinguished not only the cluck after each note, but often that singular buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's web, only proportionally louder. sometimes one would circle round and round me in the woods a few feet distant as if tethered by a string, when probably i was near its eggs. they sang at intervals throughout the night, and were again as musical as ever just before and about dawn. when other birds are still, the screech owls take up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. their dismal scream is truly ben jonsonian. wise midnight bags! it is no honest and blunt tu-whit tuwho of the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lovers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love in the infernal groves. yet i love to hear their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the woodside; reminding me sometimes of music and singing birds; as if it were the dark and tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that would fain be sung. they are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their transgressions. they give me a new sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling. oh-o-o-o-o that i never had been bor-r-r-r-n! sighs one on this side of the pond, and circles with the restlessness of despair to some new perch on the gray oaks. thenthat i never had been bor-r-r-r-n! echoes another on the farther side with tremulous sincerity, andbor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly from far in the lincoln woods. i was also serenaded by a hooting owl. near at hand you could fancy it the most melancholy sound in nature, as if she meant by this to stereotype and make permanent in her choir the dying moans of a human beingsome poor weak relic of mortality who has left hope behind, and howls like an animal, yet with human sobs, on entering the dark valley, made more awful by a certain gurgling melodiousnessi find myself beginning with the letters gl when i try to imitate itexpressive of a mind which has reached the gelatinous, mildewy stage in the mortification of all healthy and courageous thought. it reminded me of ghouls and idiots and insane howlings. but now one answers from far woods in a strain made really melodious by distancehoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo: and indeed for the most part it suggested only pleasing associations, whether heard by day or night, summer or winter. i rejoice that there are owls. let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. it is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. they represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. all day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal arid fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of nature there. late in the evening i heard the distant rumbling of wagons over bridgesa sound heard farther than almost any other at nightthe baying of dogs, and sometimes again the lowing of some disconsolate cow in a distant barn-yard. in the meanwhile all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their stygian lakeif the walden nymphs will pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there are frogs therewho would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the mine has lost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and waterloggedness and distention. the most aldermanic, with his chin upon a heart-leaf, which serves for a napkin to his drooling chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a deep draught of the once scorned water, and passes round the cup with the ejaculation tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r--oonk, tr-r-r-oonk! and straightway comes over the water from some distant cove the same password repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped down to his mark; and when this observance has made the circuit of the shores, then ejaculates the master of ceremonies, with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk! and each in his turn repeats the same down to the least distended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, that there be no mistake; and then the howl goes round again and again, until the sun disperses the morning mist, and only the patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly bellowing troonk from time to time, and pausing for a reply. i am not sure that i ever heard the sound of cock-crowing from my clearing, and i thought that it might be worth the while to keep a cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. the note of this once wild indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any bird's, and if they could be naturalized without being domesticated, it would soon become the most famous sound in our woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and the hooting of the owl; and then imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the pauses when their lords' clarions rested! no wonder that man added this bird to his tame stockto say nothing of the eggs and drumsticks. to walk in a winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the feebler notes of other birdsthink of it! it would put nations on the alert. who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier every successive day of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy, and wise? this foreign bird's note is celebrated by the poets of all countries along with the notes of their native songsters. all climates agree with brave chanticleer. he is more indigenous even than the natives. his health is ever good, his lungs are sound, his spirits never flag. even the sailor on the atlantic and pacific is awakened by his voice; but its shrill sound never roused me from my slumbers. i kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so that you would have said there was a deficiency of domestic sounds; neither the chum, nor the spinning-wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor children crying, to comfort one. an old-fashioned man would have lost his senses or died of ennui before this. not even rats in the wall, for they were starved out, or rather were never baited inonly squirrels on the roof and under the floor, a whip-poor-will on the ridge-pole, a blue jay screaming beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck under the house, a screech owl or a cat owl behind it, a flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to bark in the night. not even a lark or an oriole, those mild plantation birds, ever visited my clearing. no cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in the yard. no yard! but unfenced nature reaching up to your very sills. a young forest growing up under your meadows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines breaking through into your cellar; sturdy pitch pines rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under the house. instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the galea pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots behind your house for fuel. instead of no path to the front-yard gate in the great snowno gateno front-yardand no path to the civilized world. solitude solitude. this is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. i go and come with a strange liberty in nature, a part of herself. as i walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and i see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. the bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whip-poor-will is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. these small waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the smooth reflecting surface. though it is now dark, the mind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. the repose is never complete. the wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods without fear. they are nature's watchmenlinks which connect the days of animated life. when i return to my house i find that visitors have been there and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. they who come rarely to the woods take some little piece of the forest into their hands to play with by the way, which they leave, either intentionally or accidentally. one has peeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my table. i could always tell if visitors had called in my absence, either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of what sex or age or quality they were by some slight trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. nay, i was frequently notified of the passage of a traveller along the highway sixty rods off by the scent of his pipe. there is commonly sufficient space about us. our horizon is never quite at our elbows. the thick wood is not just at our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar and worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed from nature. for what reason have i this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men? my nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile of my own. i have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself; a distant view of the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of the fence which skirts the woodland road on the other. but for the most part it is as solitary where i live as on the prairies. it is as much asia or africa as new england. i have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. at night there was never a traveller passed my house, or knocked at my door, more than if i were the first or last man; unless it were in the spring, when at long intervals some came from the village to fish for poutsthey plainly fished much more in the walden pond of their own natures, and baited their hooks with darknessbut they soon retreated, usually with light baskets, and left "the world to darkness and to me," and the black kernel of the night was never profaned by any human neighborhood. i believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and christianity and candles have been introduced. yet i experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. there can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of nature and has his senses still. there was never yet such a storm but it was aeolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. while i enjoy the friendship of the seasons i trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. the gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. if it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me. sometimes, when i compare myself with other men, it seems as if i were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that i am conscious of; as if i had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. i do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. i have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after i came to the woods, when, for an hour, i doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. to be alone was something unpleasant. but i was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. in the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, i was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and i have never thought of them since. every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. i was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that i thought no place could ever be strange to me again. "mourning untimely consumes the sad; few are their days in the land of the living, beautiful daughter of toscar." some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain-storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. in those driving northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, i sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. in one heavy thunder-shower the lightning struck a large pitch pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. i passed it again the other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. men frequently say to me, "i should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially." i am tempted to reply to suchthis whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. how far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? why should i feel lonely? is not our planet in the milky way? this which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. what sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? i have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. what do we want most to dwell near to? not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, beacon hill, or the five points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. this will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar.... i one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called "a handsome property"though i never got a fair view of iton the walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how i could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. i answered that i was very sure i liked it passably well; i was not joking. and so i went home to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to brightonor bright-townwhich place he would reach some time in the morning. any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. the place where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. for the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. they are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. next to us the grandest laws are continually being executed. next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are. "how vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of heaven and of earth!" "we seek to perceive them, and we do not see them; we seek to hear them, and we do not hear them; identified with the substance of things, they cannot be separated from them." "they cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. it is an ocean of subtile intelligences. they are everywhere, above us, on our left, on our right; they environ us on all sides." we are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me. can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these circumstanceshave our own thoughts to cheer us? confucius says truly, "virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors." with thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. by a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. we are not wholly involved in nature. i may be either the driftwood in the stream, or indra in the sky looking down on it. i may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, i may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. i only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which i can stand as remote from myself as from another. however intense my experience, i am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more i than it is you. when the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. it was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. this doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes. i find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. to be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. i love to be alone. i never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. we are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. a man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. the really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert. the farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it. society is commonly too cheap. we meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. we meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. we have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. we meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and i think that we thus lose some respect for one another. certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. consider the girls in a factorynever alone, hardly in their dreams. it would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where i live. the value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him. i have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. so also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone. i have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey an idea of my situation. i am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than walden pond itself. what company has that lonely lake, i pray? and yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. the sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. god is alonebut the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. i am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. i am no more lonely than the mill brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an april shower, or a january thaw, or the first spider in a new house. i have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug walden pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things, even without apples or cidera most wise and humorous friend, whom i love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did goffe or whalley; and though he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. an elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden i love to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. a ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet. the indescribable innocence and beneficence of natureof sun and wind and rain, of summer and wintersuch health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. shall i not have intelligence with the earth? am i not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself? what is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? not my or thy great-grandfather's, but our great-grandmother nature's universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many old parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness. for my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from acheron and the dead sea, which come out of those long shallow black-schooner looking wagons which we sometimes see made to carry bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. morning air! if men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world. but remember, it will not keep quite till noonday even in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that and follow westward the steps of aurora. i am no worshipper of hygeia, who was the daughter of that old herb-doctor esculapius, and who is represented on monuments holding a serpent in one hand, and in the other a cup out of which the serpent sometimes drinks; but rather of hebe, cup-bearer to jupiter, who was the daughter of juno and wild lettuce, and who had the power of restoring gods and men to the vigor of youth. she was probably the only thoroughly sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust young lady that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it was spring. visitors visitors. i think that i love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. i am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither. i had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. when visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. it is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. i have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another. many of our houses, both public and private, with their almost innumerable apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear to be extravagantly large for their inhabitants. they are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only vermin which infest them. i am surprised when the herald blows his summons before some tremont or astor or middlesex house, to see come creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous mouse, which soon again slinks into some hole in the pavement. one inconvenience i sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. you want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. the bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the bearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head. also, our sentences wanted room to unfold and form their columns in the interval. individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them. i have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side. in my house we were so near that we could not begin to bearwe could not speak low enough to be heard; as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that they break each other's undulations. if we are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very near together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other's breath; but if we speak reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that all animal heat and moisture may have a chance to evaporate. if we would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other's voice in any case. referred to this standard, speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout. as the conversation began to assume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wall in opposite corners, and then commonly there was not room enough. my "best" room, however, my withdrawing room, always ready for company, on whose carpet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood behind my house. thither in summer days, when distinguished guests came, i took them, and a priceless domestic swept the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things in order. if one guest came he sometimes partook of my frugal meal, and it was no interruption to conversation to be stirring a hasty-pudding, or watching the rising and maturing of a loaf of bread in the ashes, in the meanwhile. but if twenty came and sat in my house there was nothing said about dinner, though there might be bread enough for two, more than if eating were a forsaken habit; but we naturally practised abstinence; and this was never felt to be an offence against hospitality, but the most proper and considerate course. the waste and decay of physical life, which so often needs repair, seemed miraculously retarded in such a case, and the vital vigor stood its ground. i could entertain thus a thousand as well as twenty; and if any ever went away disappointed or hungry from my house when they found me at home, they may depend upon it that i sympathized with them at least. so easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old. you need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give. for my own part, i was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man's house, by any kind of cerberus whatever, as by the parade one made about dining me, which i took to be a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again. i think i shall never revisit those scenes. i should be proud to have for the motto of my cabin those lines of spenser which one of my visitors inscribed on a yellow walnut leaf for a card: "arrived there, the little house they fill, ne looke for entertainment where none was; rest is their feast, and all things at their will: the noblest mind the best contentment has." when winslow, afterward governor of the plymouth colony, went with a companion on a visit of ceremony to massasoit on foot through the woods, and arrived tired and hungry at his lodge, they were well received by the king, but nothing was said about eating that day. when the night arrived, to quote their own words"he laid us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only planks laid a foot from the ground and a thin mat upon them. two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey." at one o'clock the next day massasoit "brought two fishes that he had shot," about thrice as big as a bream. "these being boiled, there were at least forty looked for a share in them; the most eat of them. this meal only we had in two nights and a day; and had not one of us bought a partridge, we had taken our journey fasting." fearing that they would be light-headed for want of food and also sleep, owing to "the savages' barbarous singing, (for they use to sing themselves asleep,)" and that they might get home while they had strength to travel, they departed. as for lodging, it is true they were but poorly entertained, though what they found an inconvenience was no doubt intended for an honor; but as far as eating was concerned, i do not see how the indians could have done better. they had nothing to eat themselves, and they were wiser than to think that apologies could supply the place of food to their guests; so they drew their belts tighter and said nothing about it. another time when winslow visited them, it being a season of plenty with them, there was no deficiency in this respect. as for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere. i had more visitors while i lived in the woods than at any other period in my life; i mean that i had some. i met several there under more favorable circumstances than i could anywhere else. but fewer came to see me on trivial business. in this respect, my company was winnowed by my mere distance from town. i had withdrawn so far within the great ocean of solitude, into which the rivers of society empty, that for the most part, so far as my needs were concerned, only the finest sediment was deposited around me. beside, there were wafted to me evidences of unexplored and uncultivated continents on the other side. who should come to my lodge this morning but a true homeric or paphlagonian manhe had so suitable and poetic a name that i am sorry i cannot print it herea canadian, a woodchopper and post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught. he, too, has heard of homer, and, "if it were not for books," would "not know what to do rainy days," though perhaps he has not read one wholly through for many rainy seasons. some priest who could pronounce the greek itself taught him to read his verse in the testament in his native parish far away; and now i must translate to him, while he holds the book, achilles' reproof to patroclus for his sad countenance."why are you in tears, patroclus, like a young girl?" "or have you alone heard some news from phthia? they say that menoetius lives yet, son of actor, and peleus lives, son of aeacus, among the myrmidons, either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve." he says, "that's good." he has a great bundle of white oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this sunday morning.i suppose there's no harm in going after such a thing today," says he. to him homer was a great writer, though what his writing was about he did not know. a more simple and natural man it would be hard to find. vice and disease, which cast such a sombre moral hue over the world, seemed to have hardly any existance for him. he was about twenty-eight years old, and had left canada and his father's house a dozen years before to work in the states, and earn money to buy a farm with at last, perhaps in his native country. he was cast in the coarsest mould; a stout but sluggish body, yet gracefully carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair, and dull sleepy blue eyes, which were occasionally lit up with expression. he wore a flat gray cloth cap, a dingy wool-colored greatcoat, and cowhide boots. he was a great consumer of meat, usually carrying his dinner to his work a couple of miles past my housefor he chopped all summerin a tin pail; cold meats, often cold woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle which dangled by a string from his belt; and sometimes he offered me a drink. he came along early, crossing my bean-field, though without anxiety or haste to get to his work, such as yankees exhibit. he wasn't a-going to hurt himself. he didn't care if he only earned his board. frequently he would leave his dinner in the bushes, when his dog had caught a woodchuck by the way, and go back a mile and a half to dress it and leave it in the cellar of the house where he boarded, after deliberating first for half an hour whether he could not sink it in the pond safely till nightfallloving to dwell long upon these themes. he would say, as he went by in the morning, "how thick the pigeons are! if working every day were not my trade, i could get all the meat i should want by hunting-pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, partridgesby gosh! i could get all i should want for a week in one day." he was a skilful chopper, and indulged in some flourishes and ornaments in his art. he cut his trees level and close to the ground, that the sprouts which came up afterward might be more vigorous and a sled might slide over the stumps; and instead of leaving a whole tree to support his corded wood, he would pare it away to a slender stake or splinter which you could break off with your hand at last. he interested me because he was so quiet and solitary and so happy withal; a well of good humor and contentment which overflowed at his eyes. his mirth was without alloy. sometimes i saw him at his work in the woods, felling trees, and he would greet me with a laugh of inexpressible satisfaction, and a salutation in canadian french, though he spoke english as well. when i approached him he would suspend his work, and with half-suppressed mirth lie along the trunk of a pine which he had felled, and, peeling off the inner bark, roll it up into a ball and chew it while he laughed and talked. such an exuberance of animal spirits had he that he sometimes tumbled down and rolled on the ground with laughter at anything which made him think and tickled him. looking round upon the trees he would exclaim "by george! i can enjoy myself well enough here chopping; i want no better sport." sometimes, when at leisure, he amused himself all day in the woods with a pocket pistol, firing salutes to himself at regular intervals as he walked. in the winter he had a fire by which at noon he warmed his coffee in a kettle; and as he sat on a log to eat his dinner the chickadees would sometimes come round and alight on his arm and peck at the potato in his fingers; and he said that he "liked to have the little fellers about him." in him the animal man chiefly was developed. in physical endurance and contentment he was cousin to the pine and the rock. i asked him once if he was not sometimes tired at night, after working all day; and he answered, with a sincere and serious look, "gorrappit, i never was tired in my life." but the intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant. he had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in which the catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child. when nature made him, she gave him a strong body and contentment for his portion, and propped him on every side with reverence and reliance, that he might live out his threescore years and ten a child. he was so genuine and unsophisticated that no introduction would serve to introduce him, more than if you introduced a woodchuck to your neighbor. he had got to find him out as you did. he would not play any part. men paid him wages for work, and so helped to feed and clothe him; but he never exchanged opinions with them. he was so simply and naturally humbleif he can be called humble who never aspiresthat humility was no distinct quality in him, nor could he conceive of it. wiser men were demigods to him. if you told him that such a one was coming, he did as if he thought that anything so grand would expect nothing of himself, but take all the responsibility on itself, and let him be forgotten still. he never heard the sound of praise. he particularly reverenced the writer and the preacher. their performances were miracles. when i told him that i wrote considerably, he thought for a long time that it was merely the handwriting which i meant, for he could write a remarkably good hand himself. i sometimes found the name of his native parish handsomely written in the snow by the highway, with the proper french accent, and knew that he had passed. i asked him if he ever wished to write his thoughts. he said that he had read and written letters for those who could not, but he never tried to write thoughtsno, he could not, he could not tell what to put first, it would kill him, and then there was spelling to be attended to at the same time! i heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer asked him if he did not want the world to be changed; but he answered with a chuckle of surprise in his canadian accent, not knowing that the question had ever been entertained before, "no, i like it well enough." it would have suggested many things to a philosopher to have dealings with him. to a stranger he appeared to know nothing of things in general; yet i sometimes saw in him a man whom i had not seen before, and i did not know whether he was as wise as shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity. a townsman told me that when he met him sauntering through the village in his small close-fitting cap, and whistling to himself, he reminded him of a prince in disguise. his only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, in which last he was considerably expert. the former was a sort of cyclopaedia to him, which he supposed to contain an abstract of human knowledge, as indeed it does to a considerable extent. i loved to sound him on the various reforms of the day, and he never failed to look at them in the most simple and practical light. he had never heard of such things before. could he do without factories? i asked. he had worn the home-made vermont gray, he said, and that was good. could he dispense with tea and coffee? did this country afford any beverage beside water? he had soaked hemlock leaves in water and drank it, and thought that was better than water in warm weather. when i asked him if he could do without money, he showed the convenience of money in such a way as to suggest and coincide with the most philosophical accounts of the origin of this institution, and the very derivation of the word pecunia. if an ox were his property, and he wished to get needles and thread at the store, he thought it would be inconvenient and impossible soon to go on mortgaging some portion of the creature each time to that amount. he could defend many institutions better than any philosopher, because, in describing them as they concerned him, he gave the true reason for their prevalence, and speculation had not suggested to him any other. at another time, hearing plato's definition of a mana biped without feathersand that one exhibited a cock plucked and called it plato's man, he thought it an important difference that the knees bent the wrong way. he would sometimes exclaim, "how i love to talk! by george, i could talk all day!" i asked him once, when i had not seen him for many months, if he had got a new idea this summer. "good lord"said he, "a man that has to work as i do, if he does not forget the ideas he has had, he will do well. may he the man you hoe with is inclined to race; then, by gorry, your mind must be there; you think of weeds." he would sometimes ask me first on such occasions, if i had made any improvement. one winter day i asked him if he was always satisfied with himself, wishing to suggest a substitute within him for the priest without, and some higher motive for living. "satisfied!" said he; "some men are satisfied with one thing, and some with another. one man, perhaps, if he has got enough, will be satisfied to sit all day with his back to the fire and his belly to the table, by george!" yet i never, by any manoeuvring, could get him to take the spiritual view of things; the highest that he appeared to conceive of was a simple expediency, such as you might expect an animal to appreciate; and this, practically, is true of most men. if i suggested any improvement in his mode of life, he merely answered, without expressing any regret, that it was too late. yet he thoroughly believed in honesty and the like virtues. there was a certain positive originality, however slight, to be detected in him, and i occasionally observed that he was thinking for himself and expressing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare that i would any day walk ten miles to observe it, and it amounted to the re-origination of many of the institutions of society. though he hesitated, and perhaps failed to express himself distinctly, he always had a presentable thought behind. yet his thinking was so primitive and immersed in his animal life, that, though more promising than a merely learned man's, it rarely ripened to anything which can be reported. he suggested that there might be men of genius in the lowest grades of life, however permanently humble and illiterate, who take their own view always, or do not pretend to see at all; who are as bottomless even as walden pond was thought to be, though they may be dark and muddy. many a traveller came out of his way to see me and the inside of my house, and, as an excuse for calling, asked for a glass of water. i told them that i drank at the pond, and pointed thither, offering to lend them a dipper. far off as i lived, i was not exempted from the annual visitation which occurs, methinks, about the first of april, when everybody is on the move; and i had my share of good luck, though there were some curious specimens among my visitors. half-witted men from the almshouse and elsewhere came to see me; but i endeavored to make them exercise all the wit they had, and make their confessions to me; in such cases making wit the theme of our conversation; and so was compensated. indeed, i found some of them to be wiser than the so-called overseers of the poor and selectmen of the town, and thought it was time that the tables were turned. with respect to wit, i learned that there was not much difference between the half and the whole. one day, in particular, an inoffensive, simpleminded pauper, whom with others i had often seen used as fencing stuff, standing or sitting on a bushel in the fields to keep cattle and himself from straying, visited me, and expressed a wish to live as i did. he told me, with the utmost simplicity and truth, quite superior, or rather inferior, to anything that is called humility, that he was "deficient in intellect." these were his words. the lord had made him so, yet he supposed the lord cared as much for him as for another. "i have always been so," said he, "from my childhood; i never had much mind; i was not like other children; i am weak in the head. it was the lord's will, i suppose." and there he was to prove the truth of his words. he was a metaphysical puzzle to me. i have rarely met a fellow-man on such promising groundit was so simple and sincere and so true all that he said. and, true enough, in proportion as he appeared to humble himself was he exalted. i did not know at first but it was the result of a wise policy. it seemed that from such a basis of truth and frankness as the poor weak-headed pauper had laid, our intercourse might go forward to something better than the intercourse of sages. i had some guests from those not reckoned commonly among the town's poor, but who should be; who are among the world's poor, at any rate; guests who appeal, not to your hospitality, but to your hospitality; who earnestly wish to be helped, and preface their appeal with the information that they are resolved, for one thing, never to help themselves. i require of a visitor that he be not actually starving, though he may have the very best appetite in the world, however he got it. objects of charity are not guests. men who did not know when their visit had terminated, though i went about my business again, answering them from greater and greater remoteness. men of almost every degree of wit called on me in the migrating season. some who had more wits than they knew what to do with; runaway slaves with plantation manners, who listened from time to time, like the fox in the fable, as if they heard the hounds a-baying on their track, and looked at me beseechingly, as much as to say, "o christian, will you send me back? one real runaway slave, among the rest, whom i helped to forward toward the north star. men of one idea, like a hen with one chicken, and that a duckling; men of a thousand ideas, and unkempt heads, like those hens which are made to take charge of a hundred chickens, all in pursuit of one bug, a score of them lost in every morning's dewand become frizzled and mangy in consequence; men of ideas instead of legs, a sort of intellectual centipede that made you crawl all over. one man proposed a book in which visitors should write their names, as at the white mountains; but, alas! i have too good a memory to make that necessary. i could not but notice some of the peculiarities of my visitors. girls and boys and young women generally seemed glad to be in the woods. they looked in the pond and at the flowers, and improved their time. men of business, even farmers, thought only of solitude and employment, and of the great distance at which i dwelt from something or other; and though they said that they loved a ramble in the woods occasionally, it was obvious that they did not. restless committed men, whose time was an taken up in getting a living or keeping it; ministers who spoke of god as if they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject, who could not bear all kinds of opinions; doctors, lawyers, uneasy housekeepers who pried into my cupboard and bed when i was outhow came mrs.to know that my sheets were not as clean as hers?young men who had ceased to be young, and had concluded that it was safest to follow the beaten track of the professionsall these generally said that it was not possible to do so much good in my position. ay! there was the rub. the old and infirm and the timid, of whatever age or sex, thought most of sickness, and sudden accident and death; to them life seemed full of dangerwhat danger is there if you don't think of any?and they thought that a prudent man would carefully select the safest position, where dr. b. might be on hand at a moment's warning. to them the village was literally a com-munity, a league for mutual defence, and you would suppose that they would not go a-huckleberrying without a medicine chest. the amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. a man sits as many risks as he runs. finally, there were the self-styled reformers, the greatest bores of all, who thought that i was forever singing, this is the house that i built; this is the man that lives in the house that i built; but they did not know that the third line was, these are the folks that worry the man that lives in the house that i built. i did not fear the hen-harriers, for i kept no chickens; but i feared the men-harriers rather. i had more cheering visitors than the last. children come a-berrying, railroad men taking a sunday morning walk in clean shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets and philosophers; in short, all honest pilgrims, who came out to the woods for freedom's sake, and really left the village behind, i was ready to greet with"welcome, englishmen! welcome, englishmen!" for i had had communication with that race. the bean-field. meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off. what was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small herculean labor, i knew not. i came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than i wanted. they attached me to the earth, and so i got strength like antaeus. but why should i raise them? only heaven knows. this was my curious labor all summerto make this portion of the earth's surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. what shall i learn of beans or beans of me? i cherish them, i hoe them, early and late i have an eye to them; and this is my day's work. it is a fine broad leaf to look on. my auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and effete. my enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks. the last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean. but what right had i to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden? soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes. when i was four years old, as i well remember, i was brought from boston to this my native town, through these very woods and this field, to the pond. it is one of the oldest seenes stamped on my memory. and now tonight my flute has waked the echoes over that very water. the pines still stand here older than i; or, if some have fallen, i have cooked my supper with their stumps, and a new growth is rising all around, preparing another aspect for new infant eyes. almost the same johnswort springs from the same perennial root in this pasture, and even i have at length helped to clothe that fabulous landscape of my infant dreams, and one of the results of my presence and influence is seen in these bean leaves, corn blades, and potato vines. i planted about two acres and a half of upland; and as it was only about fifteen years since the land was cleared, and i myself had got out two or three cords of stumps, i did not give it any manure; but in the course of the summer it appeared by the arrowheads which i turned up in hoeing, that an extinct nation had anciently dwelt here and planted corn and beans ere white men came to clear the land, and so, to some extent, had exhausted the soil for this very crop. before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run across the road, or the sun had got above the shrub oaks, while all the dew was on, though the farmers warned me against iti would advise you to do all your work if possible while the dew is oni began to level the ranks of haughty weeds in my bean-field and throw dust upon their heads. early in the morning i worked barefooted, dabbling like a plastic artist in the dewy and crumbling sand, but later in the day the sun blistered my feet. there the sun lighted me to hoe beans, pacing slowly backward and forward over that yellow gravelly upland, between the long green rows, fifteen rods, the one end terminating in a shrub oak copse where i could rest in the shade, the other in a blackberry field where the green berries deepened their tints by the time i had made another bout. removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which i had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grassthis was my daily work. as i had little aid from horses or cattle, or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, i was much slower, and became much more intimate with my beans than usual. but labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. it has a constant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result. a very agricola laboriosus was i to travellers bound westward through lincoln and wayland to nobody knows where; they sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins loosely hanging in festoons; i the home-staying, laborious native of the soil. but soon my homestead was out of their sight and thought. it was the only open and cultivated field for a great distance on either side of the road, so they made the most of it; and sometimes the man in the field heard more of travellers' gossip and comment than was meant for his ear: "beans so late! peas so late!"for i continued to plant when others had begun to hoethe ministerial husbandman had not suspected it. "corn, my boy, for fodder; corn for fodder." "does he live there?" asks the black bonnet of the gray coat; and the hard-featured farmer reins up his grateful dobbin to inquire what you are doing where he sees no manure in the furrow, and recommends a little chip dirt, or any little waste stuff, or it may be ashes or plaster. but here were two acres and a half of furrows, and only a hoe for cart and two hands to draw itthere being an aversion to other carts and horsesand chip dirt far away. fellow-travellers as they rattled by compared it aloud with the fields which they had passed, so that i came to know how i stood in the agricultural world. this was one field not in mr. colman's report. and, by the way, who estimates the value of the crop which nature yields in the still wilder fields unimproved by man? the crop of english hay is carefully weighed, the moisture calculated, the silicates and the potash; but in all dells and pond-holes in the woods and pastures and swamps grows a rich and various crop only unreaped by man. mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. they were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that i cultivated, and my hoe played the ranz des vaches for them. near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings the brown thrasheror red mavis, as some love to call himall the morning, glad of your society, that would find out another farmer's field if yours were not here. while you are planting the seed, he cries"drop it, drop itcover it up, cover it uppull it up, pull it up, pull it up." but this was not corn, and so it was safe from such enemies as he. you may wonder what his rigmarole, his amateur paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. it was a cheap sort of top dressing in which i had entire faith. as i drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, i disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day. they lay mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore the marks of having been burned by indian fires, and some by the sun, and also bits of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators of the soil. when my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. it was no longer beans that i hoed, nor i that hoed beans; and i remembered with as much pity as pride, if i remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. the nighthawk circled overhead in the sunny afternoonsfor i sometimes made a day of itlike a mote in the eye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the tops of hills, where few have found them; graceful and slender like ripples caught up from the pond, as leaves are raised by the wind to float in the heavens; such kindredship is in nature. the hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect airinflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea. or sometimes i watched a pair of henhawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and descending, approaching, and leaving one another, as if they were the embodiment of my own thoughts, or i was attracted by the passage of wild pigeons from this wood to that, with a slight quivering winnowing sound and carrier haste; or from under a rotten stump my hoe turned up a sluggish portentous and outlandish spotted salamander, a trace of egypt and the nile, yet our contemporary. when i paused to lean on my hoe, these sounds and sights i heard and saw anywhere in the row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainment which the country offers. on gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo like popguns to these woods, and some waifs of martial music occasionally penetrate thus far. to me, away there in my bean-field at the other end of the town, the big guns sounded as if a puffball had burst; and when there was a military turnout of which i was ignorant, i have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some sort of itching and disease in the horizon, as if some eruption would break out there soon, either scarlatina or canker-rash, until at length some more favorable puff of wind, making haste over the fields and up the wayland road, brought me information of the "trainers." it seemed by the distant hum as if somebody's bees had swarmed, and that the neighbors, according to virgil's advice, by a faint tintinnabulum upon the most sonorous of their domestic utensils, were endeavoring to call them down into the hive again. and when the sound died quite away, and the hum had ceased, and the most favorable breezes told no tale, i knew that they had got the last drone of them all safely into the middlesex hive, and that now their minds were bent on the honey with which it was smeared. i felt proud to know that the liberties of massachusetts and of our fatherland were in such safe keeping; and as i turned to my hoeing again i was filled with an inexpressible confidence, and pursued my labor cheerfully with a calm trust in the future. when there were several bands of musicians, it sounded as if all the village was a vast bellows and all the buildings expanded and collapsed alternately with a din. but sometimes it was a really noble and inspiring strain that reached these woods, and the trumpet that sings of fame, and i felt as if i could spit a mexican with a good relishfor why should we always stand for trifles?and looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry upon. these martial strains seemed as far away as palestine, and reminded me of a march of crusaders in the horizon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous motion of the elm tree tops which overhang the village. this was one of the great days; though the sky had from my clearing only the same everlastingly great look that it wears daily, and i saw no difference in it. it was a singular experience that long acquaintance which i cultivated with beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking over and selling themthe last was the hardest of alli might add eating, for i did taste. i was determined to know beans. when they were growing, i used to hoe from five o'clock in the morning till noon, and commonly spent the rest of the day about other affairs. consider the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes with various kinds of weedsit will bear some iteration in the account, for there was no little iteration in the labordisturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly, and making such invidious distinctions with his hoe, levelling whole ranks of one species, and sedulously cultivating another. that's roman wormwoodthat's pigweedthat's sorrelthat's piper-grasshave at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don't let him have a fibre in the shade, if you do he'll turn himself t'other side up and be as green as a leek in two days. a long war, not with cranes, but with weeds, those trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side. daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. many a lusty crestwaving hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust. those summer days which some of my contemporaries devoted to the fine arts in boston or rome, and others to contemplation in india, and others to trade in london or new york, i thus, with the other farmers of new england, devoted to husbandry. not that i wanted beans to eat, for i am by nature a pythagorean, so far as beans are concerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, and exchanged them for rice; but, perchance, as some must work in fields if only for the sake of tropes and expression, to serve a parable-maker one day. it was on the whole a rare amusement, which, continued too long, might have become a dissipation. though i gave them no manure, and did not hoe them all once, i hoed them unusualy well as far as i went, and was paid for it in the end, "there being in truth," as evelyn says, "no compost or laetation whatsoever comparable to this continual motion, repastination, and turning of the mould with the spade." "the earth," he adds elsewhere, "especially if fresh, has a certain magnetism in it, by which it attracts the salt, power, or virtue (call it either) which gives it life, and is the logic of all the labor and stir we keep about it, to sustain us; all dungings and other sordid temperings being but the vicars succedaneous to this improvement." moreover, this being one of those "wornout and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath," had perchance, as sir kenelm digby thinks likely, attracted "vital spirits" from the air. i harvested twelve bushels of beans. but to be more particular, for it is complained that mr. colman has reported chiefly the expensive experiments of gentlemen farmers, my outgoes were, for a hoe.....................................$ 0.54 plowing, harrowing, and furrowing............. 7.50 (too much.) beans for seed................................ 3.12 1/2 potatoes for seed............................. 1.33 peas for seed................................. 0.40 turnip seed................................... 0.06 white line for crow fence..................... 0.02 horse cultivator and boy three hours.......... 1.00 horse and cart to get crop.................... 0.75 ---- in all.......................................$ 14.72 1/2 my income was (patremfamilias vendacem, non emacem esse oportet), from nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold..$ 16.94 five bushels large potatoes................... 2.50 nine bushels small potatoes................... 2.25 grass......................................... 1.00 stalks........................................ 0.75 ---- in all......................................$ 23.44 leaving a pecuniary profit, as i have elsewhere said, of..............$ 8.71 1/2 this is the result of my experience in raising beans: plant the common small white bush bean about the first of june, in rows three feet by eighteen inches apart, being careful to select fresh round and unmixed seed. first look out for worms, and supply vacancies by planting anew. then look out for woodchucks, if it is an exposed place, for they will nibble off the earliest tender leaves almost clean as they go; and again, when the young tendrils make their appearance, they have notice of it, and will shear them off with both buds and young pods, sitting erect like a squirrel. but above all harvest as early as possible, if you would escape frosts and have a fair and salable crop; you may save much loss by this means. this further experience also i gained: i said to myself, i will not plant beans and corn with so much industry another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if they will not grow in this soil, even with less toil and manurance, and sustain me, for surely it has not been exhausted for these crops. alas! i said this to myself; but now another summer is gone, and another, and another, and i am obliged to say to you, reader, that the seeds which i planted, if indeed they were the seeds of those virtues, were wormeaten or had lost their vitality, and so did not come up. commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid. this generation is very sure to plant corn and beans each new year precisely as the indians did centuries ago and taught the first settlers to do, as if there were a fate in it. i saw an old man the other day, to my astonishment, making the holes with a hoe for the seventieth time at least, and not for himself to lie down in! but why should not the new englander try new adventures, and not lay so much stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and his orchardsraise other crops than these? why concern ourselves so much about our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about a new generation of men? we should really be fed and cheered if when we met a man we were sure to see that some of the qualities which i have named, which we all prize more than those other productions, but which are for the most part broadcast and floating in the air, had taken root and grown in him. here comes such a subtile and ineffable quality, for instance, as truth or justice, though the slightest amount or new variety of it, along the road. our ambassadors should be instructed to send home such seeds as these, and congress help to distribute them over all the land. we should never stand upon ceremony with sincerity. we should never cheat and insult and banish one another by our meanness, if there were present the kernel of worth and friendliness. we should not meet thus in haste. most men i do not meet at all, for they seem not to have time; they are busy about their beans. we would not deal with a man thus plodding ever, leaning on a hoe or a spade as a staff between his work, not as a mushroom, but partially risen out of the earth, something more than erect, like swallows alighted and walking on the ground: "and as he spake, his mings would now and then spread, as he meant to fly, then close again-" so that we should suspect that we might be conversing with an angel. bread may not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy. ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely. we have no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our cattle-shows and so-called thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. it is the premium and the feast which tempt him. he sacrifices not to ceres and the terrestrial jove, but to the infernal plutus rather. by avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. he knows nature but as a robber. cato says that the profits of agriculture are particularly pious or just (maximeque pius quaestus), and according to varro the old romans "called the same earth mother and ceres, and thought that they who cultivated it led a pious and useful life, and that they alone were left of the race of king saturn." we are wont to forget that the sun looks on our cultivated fields and on the prairies and forests without distinction. they all reflect and absorb his rays alike, and the former make but a small part of the glorious picture which he beholds in his daily course. in his view the earth is all equally cultivated like a garden. therefore we should receive the benefit of his light and beat with a corresponding trust and magnanimity. what though i value the seed of these beans, and harvest that in the fall of the year? this broad field which i have looked at so long looks not to me as the principal cultivator, but away from me to influences more genial to it, which water and make it green. these beans have results which are not harvested by me. do they not grow for woodchucks partly? the ear of wheat (in latin spica, obsoletely speca, from spe, hope) should not be the only hope of the husbandman; its kernel or grain (granum from gerendo, bearing) is not all that it bears. how, then, can our harvest fail? shall i not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds? it matters little comparatively whether the fields fill the farmer's barns. the true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also. village the village. after hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in the forenoon, i usually bathed again in the pond, swimming across one of its coves for a stint, and washed the dust of labor from my person, or smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had made, and for the afternoon was absolutely free. every day or two i strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs. as i walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so i walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines i heard the carts rattle. in one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prairie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. i went there frequently to observe their habits. the village appeared to me a great news room; and on one side, to support it, as once at redding & company's on state street, they kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal and other groceries. some have such a vast appetite for the former commodity, that is, the news, and such sound digestive organs, that they can sit forever in public avenues without stirring, and let it simmer and whisper through them like the etesian winds, or as if inhaling ether, it only producing numbness and insensibility to painotherwise it would often be painful to bearwithout affecting the consciousness. i hardly ever failed, when i rambled through the village, to see a row of such worthies, either sitting on a ladder sunning themselves, with their bodies inclined forward and their eyes glancing along the line this way and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous expression, or else leaning against a barn with their hands in their pockets, like caryatides, as if to prop it up. they, being commonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind. these are the coarsest mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digested or cracked up before it is emptied into finer and more delicate hoppers within doors. i observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery, the bar-room, the post-office, and the bank; and, as a necessary part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a big gun, and a fire-engine, at convenient places; and the houses were so arranged as to make the most of mankind, in lanes and fronting one another, so that every traveller had to run the gauntlet, and every man, woman, and child might get a lick at him. of course, those who were stationed nearest to the head of the line, where they could most see and be seen, and have the first blow at him, paid the highest prices for their places; and the few straggling inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps in the line began to occur, and the traveller could get over walls or turn aside into cow-paths, and so escape, paid a very slight ground or window tax. signs were hung out on all sides to allure him; some to catch him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling cellar; some by the fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweller's; and others by the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, the shoe-maker, or the tailor. besides, there was a still more terrible standing invitation to call at every one of these houses, and company expected about these times. for the most part i escaped wonderfully from these dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without deliberation to the goal, as is recommended to those who run the gauntlet, or by keeping my thoughts on high things, like orpheus, who, "loudly singing the praises of the gods to his lyre, drowned the voices of the sirens, and kept out of danger." sometimes i bolted suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts, for i did not stand much about gracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in a fence. i was even accustomed to make an irruption into some houses, where i was well entertained, and after learning the kernels and very last sieveful of newswhat had subsided, the prospects of war and peace, and whether the world was likely to hold together much longeri was let out through the rear avenues, and so escaped to the woods again. it was very pleasant, when i stayed late in town, to launch myself into the night, especially if it was dark and tempestuous, and set sail from some bright village parlor or lecture room, with a bag of rye or indian meal upon my shoulder, for my snug harbor in the woods, having made all tight without and withdrawn under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer man at the helm, or even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing. i had many a genial thought by the cabin fire "as i sailed." i was never cast away nor distressed in any weather, though i encountered some severe storms. it is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. i frequently had to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to learn my route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint track which i had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees which i felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably, in the darkest night. sometimes, after coming home thus late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path which my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all the way, until i was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch, i have not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and i have thought that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance. several times, when a visitor chanced to stay into evening, and it proved a dark night, i was obliged to conduct him to the cart-path in the rear of the house, and then point out to him the direction he was to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be guided rather by his feet than his eyes. one very dark night i directed thus on their way two young men who had been fishing in the pond. they lived about a mile off through the woods, and were quite used to the route. a day or two after one of them told me that they wandered about the greater part of the night, close by their own premises, and did not get home till toward morning, by which time, as there had been several heavy showers in the meanwhile, and the leaves were very wet, they were drenched to their skins. i have heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife, as the saying is. some who live in the outskirts, having come to town a-shopping in their wagons, have been obliged to put up for the night; and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet, and not knowing when they turned. it is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time. often in a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village. though he knows that he has travelled it a thousand times, he cannot recognize a feature in it, but it is as strange to him as if it were a road in siberia. by night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater. in our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned roundfor a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lostdo we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as be awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. one afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when i went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, i was seized and put into jail, because, as i have elsewhere related, i did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle, at the door of its senate-house. i had gone down to the woods for other purposes. but, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. it is true, i might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" against society; but i preferred that society should run "amok" against me, it being the desperate party. however, i was released the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to get my dinner of huckleberries on fair haven hill. i was never molested by any person but those who represented the state. i had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. i never fastened my door night or day, though i was to be absent several days; not even when the next fall i spent a fortnight in the woods of maine. and yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers. the tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner, and what prospect i had of a supper. yet, though many people of every class came this way to the pond, i suffered no serious inconvenience from these sources, and i never missed anything but one small book, a volume of homer, which perhaps was improperly gilded, and this i trust a soldier of our camp has found by this time. i am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as i then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. these take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough. the pope's homers would soon get properly distributed. "nec bella fuerunt, faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes." "nor wars did men molest, when only beechen bowls were in request." "you who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. the virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grassi the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends." ponds the ponds. sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, i rambled still farther westward than i habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts of the town, "to fresh woods and pastures new," or, while the sun was setting, made my supper of huckleberries and blueberries on fair haven hill, and laid up a store for several days. the fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the market. there is but one way to obtain it, yet few take that way. if you would know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cowboy or the partridge. it is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them. a huckleberry never reaches boston; they have not been known there since they grew on her three hills. the ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and they become mere provender. as long as eternal justice reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither from the country's hills. occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, i joined some impatient companion who had been fishing on the pond since morning, as silent and motionless as a duck or a floating leaf, and, after practising various kinds of philosophy, had concluded commonly, by the time i arrived, that he belonged to the ancient sect of coenobites. there was one older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my house as a building erected for the convenience of fishermen; and i was equally pleased when he sat in my doorway to arrange his lines. once in a while we sat together on the pond, he at one end of the boat, and i at the other; but not many words passed between us, for he had grown deaf in his later years, but he occasionally hummed a psalm, which harmonized well enough with my philosophy. our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far more pleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by speech. when, as was commonly the case, i had none to commune with, i used to raise the echoes by striking with a paddle on the side of my boat, filling the surrounding woods with circling and dilating sound, stirring them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild beasts, until i elicited a growl from every wooded vale and hillside. in warm evenings i frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, and saw the perch, which i seem to have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest. formerly i had come to this pond adventurously, from time to time, in dark summer nights, with a companion, and, making a fire close to the water's edge, which we thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch of worms strung on a thread, and when we had done, far in the night, threw the burning brands high into the air like skyrockets, which, coming down into the pond, were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were suddenly groping in total darkness. through this, whistling a tune, we took our way to the haunts of men again. but now i had made my home by the shore. sometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the family had all retired, i have returned to the woods, and, partly with a view to the next day's dinner, spent the hours of midnight fishing from a boat by moonlight, serenaded by owls and foxes, and hearing, from time to time, the creaking note of some unknown bird close at hand. these experiences were very memorable and valuable to meanchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands of small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with their tails in the moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet of line about the pond as i drifted in the gentle night breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along it, indicative of some life prowling about its extremity, of dull uncertain blundering purpose there, and slow to make up its mind. at length you slowly raise, pulling hand over hand, some horned pout squeaking and squirming to the upper air. it was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to nature again. it seemed as if i might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward into this element, which was scarcely more dense. thus i caught two fishes as it were with one hook. the scenery of walden is on a humble scale, and, though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented it or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a particular description. it is a clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference, and contains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation. the surrounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the height of forty to eighty feet, though on the southeast and east they attain to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet respectively, within a quarter and a third of a mile. they are exclusively woodland. all our concord waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand. the first depends more on the light, and follows the sky. in clear weather, in summer, they appear blue at a little distance, especially if agitated, and at a great distance all appear alike. in stormy weather they are sometimes of a dark slate-color. the sea, however, is said to be blue one day and green another without any perceptible change in the atmosphere. i have seen our river, when, the landscape being covered with snow, both water and ice were almost as green as grass. some consider blue "to be the color of pure water, whether liquid or solid." but, looking directly down into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of very different colors. walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. viewed from a hilltop it reflects the color of the sky; but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond. in some lights, viewed even from a hilltop, it is of a vivid green next the shore. some have referred this to the reflection of the verdure; but it is equally green there against the railroad sandbank, and in the spring, before the leaves are expanded, and it may be simply the result of the prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of the sand. such is the color of its iris. this is that portion, also, where in the spring, the ice being warmed by the heat of the sun reflected from the bottom, and also transmitted through the earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal about the still frozen middle. like the rest of our waters, when much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface of the waves may reflect the sky at the right angle, or because there is more light mixed with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker blue than the sky itself; and at such a time, being on its surface, and looking with divided vision, so as to see the reflection, i have discerned a matchless and indescribable light blue, such as watered or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more cerulean than the sky itself, alternating with the original dark green on the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared but muddy in comparison. it is a vitreous greenish blue, as i remember it, like those patches of the winter sky seen through cloud vistas in the west before sundown. yet a single glass of its water held up to the light is as colorless as an equal quantity of air. it is well known that a large plate of glass will have a green tint, owing, as the makers say, to its "body," but a small piece of the same will be colorless. how large a body of walden water would be required to reflect a green tint i have never proved. the water of our river is black or a very dark brown to one looking directly down on it, and, like that of most ponds, imparts to the body of one bathing in it a yellowish tinge; but this water is of such crystalline purity that the body of the bather appears of an alabaster whiteness, still more unnatural, which, as the limbs are magnified and distorted withal, produces a monstrous effect, making fit studies for a michael angelo. the water is so transparent that the bottom can easily be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet. paddling over it, you may see, many feet beneath the surface, the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only an inch long, yet the former easily distinguished by their transverse bars, and you think that they must be ascetic fish that find a subsistence there. once, in the winter, many years ago, when i had been cutting holes through the ice in order to catch pickerel, as i stepped ashore i tossed my axe back on to the ice, but, as if some evil genius had directed it, it slid four or five rods directly into one of the holes, where the water was twenty-five feet deep. out of curiosity, i lay down on the ice and looked through the hole, until i saw the axe a little on one side, standing on its head, with its helve erect and gently swaying to and fro with the pulse of the pond; and there it might have stood erect and swaying till in the course of time the handle rotted off, if i had not disturbed it. making another hole directly over it with an ice chisel which i had, and cutting down the longest birch which i could find in the neighborhood with my knife, i made a slip-noose, which i attached to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and drew it by a line along the birch, and so pulled the axe out again. the shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones like paving-stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water over your head; and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side. some think it is bottomless. it is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all in it; and of noticeable plants, except in the little meadows recently overflowed, which do not properly belong to it, a closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellow or white, but only a few small heart-leaves and potamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or two; all which however a bather might not perceive; and these plants are clean and bright like the element they grow in. the stones extend a rod or two into the water, and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, where there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay of the leaves which have been wafted on to it so many successive falls, and a bright green weed is brought up on anchors even in midwinter. we have one other pond just like this, white pond, in nine acre corner, about two and a half miles westerly; but, though i am acquainted with most of the ponds within a dozen miles of this centre i do not know a third of this pure and well-like character. successive nations perchance have drank at, admired, and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its water is green and pellucid as ever. not an intermitting spring! perhaps on that spring morning when adam and eve were driven out of eden walden pond was already in existence, and even then breaking up in a gentle spring rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and covered with myriads of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall, when still such pure lakes sufficed them. even then it had commenced to rise and fall, and had clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they now wear, and obtained a patent of heaven to be the only walden pond in the world and distiller of celestial dews. who knows in how many unremembered nations' literatures this has been the castalian fountain? or what nymphs presided over it in the golden age? it is a gem of the first water which concord wears in her coronet. yet perchance the first who came to this well have left some trace of their footsteps. i have been surprised to detect encircling the pond, even where a thick wood has just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the steep hillside, alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding from the water's edge, as old probably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unmittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land. this is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable close at hand. the snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo. the ornamented grounds of villas which will one day be built here may still preserve some trace of this. the pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know. it is commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer, though not corresponding to the general wet and dryness. i can remember when it was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five feet higher, than when i lived by it. there is a narrow sand-bar running into it, with very deep water on one side, on which i helped boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods from the main shore, about the year 1824, which it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years; and, on the other hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity when i told them, that a few years later i was accustomed to fish from a boat in a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen rods from the only shore they knew, which place was long since converted into a meadow. but the pond has risen steadily for two years, and now, in the summer of '52, is just five feet higher than when i lived there, or as high as it was thirty years ago, and fishing goes on again in the meadow. this makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet the water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and this overflow must be referred to causes which affect the deep springs. this same summer the pond has begun to fall again. it is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many years for its accomplishment. i have observed one rise and a part of two falls, and i expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again be as low as i have ever known it. flint's pond, a mile eastward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also, sympathize with walden, and recently attained their greatest height at the same time with the latter. the same is true, as far as my observation goes, of white pond. this rise and fall of walden at long intervals serves this use at least; the water standing at this great height for a year or more, though it makes it difficult to walk round it, kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung up about its edge since the last risepitch pines, birches, alders, aspens, and othersand, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore; for, unlike many ponds and all waters which are subject to a daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water is lowest. on the side of the pond next my house a row of pitch pines, fifteen feet high, has been killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to their encroachments; and their size indicates how many years have elapsed since the last rise to this height. by this fluctuation the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn, and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession. these are the lips of the lake, on which no beard grows. it licks its chaps from time to time. when the water is at its height, the alders, willows, and maples send forth a mass of fibrous red roots several feet long from all sides of their stems in the water, and to the height of three or four feet from the ground, in the effort to maintain themselves; and i have known the high blueberry bushes about the shore, which commonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant crop under these circumstances. some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so regularly paved. my townsmen have all heard the traditionthe oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youththat anciently the indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of which the indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named. it has been conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore. it is very certain, at any rate, that once there was no pond here, and now there is one; and this indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the account of that ancient settler whom i have mentioned, who remembers so well when he first came here with his divining-rod, saw a thin vapor rising from the sward, and the hazel pointed steadily downward, and he concluded to dig a well here. as for the stones, many still think that they are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the waves on these hills; but i observe that the surrounding hills are remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they have been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cut nearest the pond; and, moreover, there are most stones where the shore is most abrupt; so that, unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. i detect the paver. if the name was not derived from that of some english localitysaffron walden, for instanceone might suppose that it was called originally walled-in pond. the pond was my well ready dug. for four months in the year its water is as cold as it is pure at all times; and i think that it is then as good as any, if not the best, in the town. in the winter, all water which is exposed to the air is colder than springs and wells which are protected from it. the temperature of the pond water which had stood in the room where i sat from five o'clock in the afternoon till noon the next day, the sixth of march, 1846, the thermometer having been up to 65' or 70' some of the time, owing partly to the sun on the roof, was 42', or one degree colder than the water of one of the coldest wells in the village just drawn. the temperature of the boiling spring the same day was 45', or the warmest of any water tried, though it is the coldest that i know of in summer, when, beside, shallow and stagnant surface water is not mingled with it. moreover, in summer, walden never becomes so warm as most water which is exposed to the sun, on account of its depth. in the warmest weather i usually placed a pailful in my cellar, where it became cool in the night, and remained so during the day; though i also resorted to a spring in the neighborhood. it was as good when a week old as the day it was dipped, and had no taste of the pump. whoever camps for a week in summer by the shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of water a few feet deep in the shade of his camp to be independent of the luxury of ice. there have been caught in walden pickerel, one weighing seven poundsto say nothing of another which carried off a reel with great velocity, which the fisherman safely set down at eight pounds because he did not see himperch and pouts, some of each weighing over two pounds, shiners, chivins or roach (leuciscus pulchellus), a very few breams, and a couple of eels, one weighing four poundsi am thus particular because the weight of a fish is commonly its only title to fame, and these are the only eels i have heard of here;also, i have a faint recollection of a little fish some five inches long, with silvery sides and a greenish back, somewhat dace-like in its character, which i mention here chiefly to link my facts to fable. nevertheless, this pond is not very fertile in fish. its pickerel, though not abundant, are its chief boast. i have seen at one time lying on the ice pickerel of at least three different kinds: a long and shallow one, steel-colored, most like those caught in the river; a bright golden kind, with greenish reflections and remarkably deep, which is the most common here; and another, golden-colored, and shaped like the last, but peppered on the sides with small dark brown or black spots, intermixed with a few faint blood-red ones, very much like a trout. the specific name reticulatus would not apply to this; it should be guttatus rather. these are all very firm fish, and weigh more than their size promises. the shiners, pouts, and perch also, and indeed all the fishes which inhabit this pond, are much cleaner, handsomer, and firmer-fleshed than those in the river and most other ponds, as the water is purer, and they can easily be distinguished from them. probably many ichthyologists would make new varieties of some of them. there are also a clean race of frogs and tortoises, and a few mussels in it; muskrats and minks leave their traces about it, and occasionally a travelling mud-turtle visits it. sometimes, when i pushed off my boat in the morning, i disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted himself under the boat in the night. ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-bellied swallows (hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets (totanus macularius) "teeter" along its stony shores all summer. i have sometimes disturbed a fish hawk sitting on a white pine over the water; but i doubt if it is ever profaned by the wind of a gull, like fair haven. at most, it tolerates one annual loon. these are all the animals of consequence which frequent it now. you may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the sandy eastern, shore where the water is eight or ten feet deep, and also in some other parts of the pond, some circular heaps half a dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height, consisting of small stones less than a hen's egg in size, where all around is bare sand. at first you wonder if the indians could have formed them on the ice for any purpose, and so, when the ice melted, they sank to the bottom; but they are too regular and some of them plainly too fresh for that. they are similar to those found in rivers; but as there are no suckers nor lampreys here, i know not by what fish they could be made. perhaps they are the nests of the chivin. these lend a pleasing mystery to the bottom. the shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. i have in my mind's eye the western, indented with deep bays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully scalloped southern shore, where successive capes overlap each other and suggest unexplored coves between. the forest has never so good a setting, nor is so distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a small lake amid hills which rise from the water's edge; for the water in which it is reflected not only makes the best foreground in such a case, but, with its winding shore, the most natural and agreeable boundary to it. there is no rawness nor imperfection in its edge there, as where the axe has cleared a part, or a cultivated field abuts on it. the trees have ample room to expand on the water side, and each sends forth its most vigorous branch in that direction. there nature has woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees. there are few traces of man's hand to be seen. the water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago. a lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. it is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. the fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows. standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calm september afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite shore-line indistinct, i have seen whence came the expression, "the glassy surface of a lake." when you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distant pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another. you would think that you could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and that the swallows which skim over might perch on it. indeed, they sometimes dive below this line, as it were by mistake, and are undeceived. as you look over the pond westward you are obliged to employ both your hands to defend your eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, for they are equally bright; and if, between the two, you survey its surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except where the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over its whole extent, by their motions in the sun produce the finest imaginable sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck plumes itself, or, as i have said, a swallow skims so low as to touch it. it may be that in the distance a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there is one bright flash where it emerges, and another where it strikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed; or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface, which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again. it is like molten glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful like the imperfections in glass. you may often detect a yet smoother and darker water, separated from the rest as if by an invisible cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, resting on it. from a hilltop you can see a fish leap in almost any part; for not a pickerel or shiner picks an insect from this smooth surface but it manifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole lake. it is wonderful with what elaborateness this simple fact is advertisedthis piscine murder will outand from my distant perch i distinguish the circling undulations when they are half a dozen rods in diameter. you can even detect a water-bug (gyrinus) ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface a quarter of a mile off; for they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicuous ripple bounded by two diverging lines, but the skaters glide over it without rippling it perceptibly. when the surface is considerably agitated there are no skaters nor water-bugs on it, but apparently, in calm days, they leave their havens and adventurously glide forth from the shore by short impulses till they completely cover it. it is a soothing employment, on one of those fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected skies and trees. over this great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. not a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast. the thrills of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable. how peaceful the phenomena of the lake! again the works of man shine as in the spring. ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a spring morning. every motion of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light; and if an oar falls, how sweet the echo! in such a day, in september or october, walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. sky water. it needs no fence. nations come and go without defiling it. it is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh;a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brushthis the light dust-clothwhich retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and he reflected in its bosom still. a field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. it is continually receiving new life and motion from above. it is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. on land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. i see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light. it is remarkable that we can look down on its surface. we shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it. the skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the latter part of october, when the severe frosts have come; and then and in november, usually, in a calm day, there is absolutely nothing to ripple the surface. one november afternoon, in the calm at the end of a rain-storm of several days' duration, when the sky was still completely overcast and the air was full of mist, i observed that the pond was remarkably smooth, so that it was difficult to distinguish its surface; though it no longer reflected the bright tints of october, but the sombre november colors of the surrounding hills. though i passed over it as gently as possible, the slight undulations produced by my boat extended almost as far as i could see, and gave a ribbed appearance to the reflections. but, as i was looking over the surface, i saw here and there at a distance a faint glimmer, as if some skater insects which had escaped the frosts might be collected there, or, perchance, the surface, being so smooth, betrayed where a spring welled up from the bottom. paddling gently to one of these places, i was surprised to find myself surrounded by myriads of small perch, about five inches long, of a rich bronze color in the green water, sporting there, and constantly rising to the surface and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on it. in such transparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting the clouds, i seemed to be floating through the air as in a balloon, and their swimming impressed me as a kind of flight or hovering, as if they were a compact flock of birds passing just beneath my level on the right or left, their fins, like sails, set all around them. there were many such schools in the pond, apparently improving the short season before winter would draw an icy shutter over their broad skylight, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as if a slight breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. when i approached carelessly and alarmed them, they made a sudden splash and rippling with their tails, as if one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and instantly took refuge in the depths. at length the wind rose, the mist increased, and the waves began to run, and the perch leaped much higher than before, half out of water, a hundred black points, three inches long, at once above the surface. even as late as the fifth of december, one year, i saw some dimples on the surface, and thinking it was going to rain hard immediately, the air being fun of mist, i made haste to take my place at the oars and row homeward; already the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though i felt none on my cheek, and i anticipated a thorough soaking. but suddenly the dimples ceased, for they were produced by the perch, which the noise of my oars had seared into the depths, and i saw their schools dimly disappearing; so i spent a dry afternoon after all. an old man who used to frequent this pond nearly sixty years ago, when it was dark with surrounding forests, tells me that in those days he sometimes saw it all alive with ducks and other water-fowl, and that there were many eagles about it. he came here a-fishing, and used an old log canoe which he found on the shore. it was made of two white pine logs dug out and pinned together, and was cut off square at the ends. it was very clumsy, but lasted a great many years before it became water-logged and perhaps sank to the bottom. he did not know whose it was; it belonged to the pond. he used to make a cable for his anchor of strips of hickory bark tied together. an old man, a potter, who lived by the pond before the revolution, told him once that there was an iron chest at the bottom, and that he had seen it. sometimes it would come floating up to the shore; but when you went toward it, it would go back into deep water and disappear. i was pleased to hear of the old log canoe, which took the place of an indian one of the same material but more graceful construction, which perchance had first been a tree on the bank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there for a generation, the most proper vessel for the lake. i remember that when i first looked into these depths there were many large trunks to be seen indistinctly lying on the bottom, which had either been blown over formerly, or left on the ice at the last cutting, when wood was cheaper; but now they have mostly disappeared. when i first paddled a boat on walden, it was completely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in some of its coves grape-vines had run over the trees next the water and formed bowers under which a boat could pass. the hills which form its shores are so steep, and the woods on them were then so high, that, as you looked down from the west end, it had the appearance of an amphitheatre for some land of sylvan spectacle. i have spent many an hour, when i was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until i was aroused by the boat touching the sand, and i arose to see what shore my fates had impelled me to; days when idleness was the most attractive and productive industry. many a forenoon have i stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for i was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do i regret that i did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk. but since i left those shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many a year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water. my muse may be excused if she is silent henceforth. how can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down? now the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old log canoe, and the dark surrounding woods, are gone, and the villagers, who scarcely know where it lies, instead of going to the pond to bathe or drink, are thinking to bring its water, which should be as sacred as the ganges at least, to the village in a pipe, to wash their dishes with!to earn their walden by the turning of a cock or drawing of a plug! that devilish iron horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the boiling spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on walden shore, that trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary greeks! where is the country's champion, the moore of moore hill, to meet him at the deep cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest? nevertheless, of all the characters i have known, perhaps walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. many men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me. it has not acquired one permanent wrinkle after all its ripples. it is perennially young, and i may stand and see a swallow dip apparently to pick an insect from its surface as of yore. it struck me again tonight, as if i had not seen it almost daily for more than twenty yearswhy, here is walden, the same woodland lake that i discovered so many years ago; where a forest was cut down last winter another is springing up by its shore as lustily as ever; the same thought is welling up to its surface that was then; it is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its maker, ay, and it may be to me. it is the work of a brave man surely, in whom there was no guile! he rounded this water with his hand, deepened and clarified it in his thought, and in his will bequeathed it to concord. i see by its face that it is visited by the same reflection; and i can almost say, walden, is it you? it is no dream of mine, to ornament a line; i cannot come nearer to god and heaven than i live to walden even. i am its stony shore, and the breeze that passes o'er; in the hollow of my hand are its water and its sand, and its deepest resort lies high in my thought. the cars never pause to look at it; yet i fancy that the engineers and firemen and brakemen, and those passengers who have a season ticket and see it often, are better men for the sight. the engineer does not forget at night, or his nature does not, that he has beheld this vision of serenity and purity once at least during the day. though seen but once, it helps to wash out state street and the engine's soot. one proposes that it be called "god's drop." i have said that walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to flint's pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other directly and manifestly to concord river, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds through which in some other geological period it may have flowed, and by a little digging, which god forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. if by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity, who would not regret that the comparatively impure waters of flint's pond should be mingled with it, or itself should ever go to waste its sweetness in the ocean wave? flint's, or sandy pond, in lincoln, our greatest lake and inland sea, lies about a mile east of walden. it is much larger, being said to contain one hundred and ninety-seven acres, and is more fertile in fish; but it is comparatively shallow, and not remarkably pure. a walk through the woods thither was often my recreation. it was worth the while, if only to feel the wind blow on your cheek freely, and see the waves run, and remember the life of mariners. i went achestnutting there in the fall, on windy days, when the nuts were dropping into the water and were washed to my feet; and one day, as i crept along its sedgy shore, the fresh spray blowing in my face, i came upon the mouldering wreck of a boat, the sides gone, and hardly more than the impression of its flat bottom left amid the rushes; yet its model was sharply defined, as if it were a large decayed pad, with its veins. it was as impressive a wreck as one could imagine on the seashore, and had as good a moral. it is by this time mere vegetable mould and undistinguishable pond shore, through which rushes and flags have pushed up. i used to admire the ripple marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end of this pond, made firm and hard to the feet of the wader by the pressure of the water, and the rushes which grew in indian file, in waving lines, corresponding to these marks, rank behind rank, as if the waves had planted them. there also i have found, in considerable quantities, curious balls, composed apparently of fine grass or roots, of pipewort perhaps, from half an inch to four inches in diameter, and perfectly spherical. these wash back and forth in shallow water on a sandy bottom, and are sometimes cast on the shore. they are either solid grass, or have a little sand in the middle. at first you would say that they were formed by the action of the waves, like a pebble; yet the smallest are made of equally coarse materials, half an inch long, and they are produced only at one season of the year. moreover, the waves, i suspect, do not so much construct as wear down a material which has already acquired consistency. they preserve their form when dry for an indefinite period. flint's pond! such is the poverty of our nomenclature. what right had the unclean and stupid farmer, whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it? some skin-flint, who loved better the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks which settled in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and bony talons from the lodge habit of grasping harpy-like;so it is not named for me. i go not there to see him nor to hear of him; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who never loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good word for it, nor thanked god that he had made it. rather let it be named from the fishes that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers which grow by its shores, or some wild man or child the thread of whose history is interwoven with its own; not from him who could show no title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor or legislature gave himhim who thought only of its money value; whose presence perchance cursed all the shores; who exhausted the land around it, and would fain have exhausted the waters within it; who regretted only that it was not english hay or cranberry meadowthere was nothing to redeem it, forsooth, in his eyesand would have drained and sold it for the mud at its bottom. it did not turn his mill, and it was no privilege to him to behold it. i respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his god, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars; who loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to dollars. give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth. farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poorpoor farmers. a model farm! where the house stands like a fungus in a muckheap, chambers for men horses, oxen, and swine, cleansed and uncleansed, all contiguous to one another! stocked with men! a great greasespot, redolent of manures and buttermilk! under a high state of cultivation, being manured with the hearts and brains of men! as if you were to raise your potatoes in the churchyard! such is a model farm. no, no; if the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone. let our lakes receive as true names at least as the icarian sea, where "still the shore" a "brave attempt resounds." goose pond, of small extent, is on my way to flint's; fair haven, an expansion of concord river, said to contain some seventy acres, is a mile southwest; and white pond, of about forty acres, is a mile and a half beyond fair haven. this is my lake country. these, with concord river, are my water privileges; and night and day, year in year out, they grind such grist as i carry to them. since the wood-cutters, and the railroad, and i myself have profaned walden, perhaps the most attractive, if not the most beautiful, of all our lakes, the gem of the woods, is white pond;a poor name from its commonness, whether derived from the remarkable purity of its waters or the color of its sands. in these as in other respects, however, it is a lesser twin of walden. they are so much alike that you would say they must be connected under ground. it has the same stony shore, and its waters are of the same hue. as at walden, in sultry dogday weather, looking down through the woods on some of its bays which are not so deep but that the reflection from the bottom tinges them, its waters are of a misty bluish-green or glaucous color. many years since i used to go there to collect the sand by cartloads, to make sandpaper with, and i have continued to visit it ever since. one who frequents it proposes to call it virid lake. perhaps it might be called yellow pine lake, from the following circumstance. about fifteen years ago you could see the top of a pitch pine, of the kind called yellow pine hereabouts, though it is not a distinct species, projecting above the surface in deep water, many rods from the shore. it was even supposed by some that the pond had sunk, and this was one of the primitive forest that formerly stood there. i find that even so long ago as 1792, in a "topographical description of the town of concord," by one of its citizens, in the collections of the massachusetts historical society, the author, after speaking of walden and white ponds, adds, "in the middle of the latter may be seen, when the water is very low, a tree which appears as if it grew in the place where it now stands, although the roots are fifty feet below the surface of the water; the top of this tree is broken off, and at that place measures fourteen inches in diameter." in the spring of '49 i talked with the man who lives nearest the pond in sudbury, who told me that it was he who got out this tree ten or fifteen years before. as near as he could remember, it stood twelve or fifteen rods from the shore, where the water was thirty or forty feet deep. it was in the winter, and he had been getting out ice in the forenoon, and had resolved that in the afternoon, with the aid of his neighbors, he would take out the old yellow pine. he sawed a channel in the ice toward the shore, and hauled it over and along and out on to the ice with oxen; but, before he had gone far in his work, he was surprised to find that it was wrong end upward, with the stumps of the branches pointing down, and the small end firmly fastened in the sandy bottom. it was about a foot in diameter at the big end, and he had expected to get a good saw-log, but it was so rotten as to be fit only for fuel, if for that. he had some of it in his shed then. there were marks of an axe and of woodpeckers on the butt. he thought that it might have been a dead tree on the shore, but was finally blown over into the pond, and after the top had become water-logged, while the butt-end was still dry and light, had drifted out and sunk wrong end up. his father, eighty years old, could not remember when it was not there. several pretty large logs may still be seen lying on the bottom, where, owing to the undulation of the surface, they look like huge water snakes in motion. this pond has rarely been profaned by a boat, for there is little in it to tempt a fisherman. instead of the white lily, which requires mud, or the common sweet flag, the blue flag (iris versicolor) grows thinly in the pure water, rising from the stony bottom all around the shore, where it is visited by hummingbirds in june; and the color both of its bluish blades and its flowers and especially their reflections, is in singular harmony with the glaucous water. white pond and walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, lakes of light. if they were permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of kohinoor. they are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. how much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are they! we never learned meanness of them. how much fairer than the pool before the farmers door, in which his ducks swim! hither the clean wild ducks come. nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her. the birds with their plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of nature? she flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside. talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth. baker farm. sometimes i rambled to pine groves, standing like temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs, and rippling with light, so soft and green and shady that the druids would have forsaken their oaks to worship in them; or to the cedar wood beyond flint's pond, where the trees, covered with hoary blue berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before valhalla, and the creeping juniper covers the ground with wreaths full of fruit; or to swamps where the usnea lichen hangs in festoons from the white spruce trees, and toadstools, round tables of the swamp gods, cover the ground, and more beautiful fungi adorn the stumps, like butterflies or shells, vegetable winkles; where the swamp-pink and dogwood grow, the red alder berry glows like eyes of imps, the waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest woods in its folds, and the wild holly berries make the beholder forget his home with their beauty, and he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden fruits, too fair for mortal taste. instead of calling on some scholar, i paid many a visit to particular trees, of kinds which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far away in the middle of some pasture, or in the depths of a wood or swamp, or on a hilltop; such as the black birch, of which we have some handsome specimens two feet in diameter; its cousin, the yellow birch, with its loose golden vest, perfumed like the first; the beech, which has so neat a hole and beautifully lichen-painted, perfect in all its details, of which, excepting scattered specimens, i know but one small grove of sizable trees left in the township, supposed by some to have been planted by the pigeons that were once baited with beechnuts near by; it is worth the while to see the silver grain sparkle when you split this wood; the bass; the hornbeam; the celtis occidentalis, or false elm, of which we have but one well-grown; some taller mast of a pine, a shingle tree, or a more perfect hemlock than usual, standing like a pagoda in the midst of the woods; and many others i could mention. these were the shrines i visited both summer and winter. once it chanced that i stood in the very abutment of a rainbow's arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me as if i looked through colored crystal. it was a lake of rainbow light, in which, for a short while, i lived like a dolphin. if it had lasted longer it might have tinged my employments and life. as i walked on the railroad causeway, i used to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect. one who visited me declared that the shadows of some irishmen before him had no halo about them, that it was only natives that were so distinguished. benvenuto cellini tells us in his memoirs, that, after a certain terrible dream or vision which he had during his confinement in the castle of st. angelo a resplendent light appeared over the shadow of his head at morning and evening, whether he was in italy or france, and it was particularly conspicuous when the grass was moist with dew. this was probably the same phenomenon to which i have referred, which is especially observed in the morning, but also at other times, and even by moonlight. though a constant one, it is not commonly noticed, and, in the case of an excitable imagination like cellini's, it would be basis enough for superstition. beside, he tells us that he showed it to very few. but are they not indeed distinguished who are conscious that they are regarded at all? i set out one afternoon to go a-fishing to fair haven, through the woods, to eke out my scanty fare of vegetables. my way led through pleasant meadow, an adjunct of the baker farm, that retreat of which a poet has since sung, beginning, "thy entry is a pleasant field, which some mossy fruit trees yield partly to a ruddy brook, by gliding musquash undertook, and mercurial trout, darting about." i thought of living there before i went to walden. i "hooked" the apples, leaped the brook, and scared the musquash and the trout. it was one of those afternoons which seem indefinitely long before one, in which many events may happen, a large portion of our natural life, though it was already half spent when i started. by the way there came up a shower, which compelled me to stand half an hour under a pine, piling boughs over my head, and wearing my handkerchief for a shed; and when at length i had made one cast over the pickerelweed, standing up to my middle in water, i found myself suddenly in the shadow of a cloud, and the thunder began to rumble with such emphasis that i could do no more than listen to it. the gods must be proud, thought i, with such forked flashes to rout a poor unarmed fisherman. so i made haste for shelter to the nearest hut, which stood half a mile from any road, but so much the nearer to the pond, and had long been uninhabited: "and here a poet builded, in the completed years, for behold a trivial cabin that to destruction steers." so the muse fables. but therein, as i found, dwelt now john field, an irishman, and his wife, and several children, from the broad-faced boy who assisted his father at his work, and now came running by his side from the bog to escape the rain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone-headed infant that sat upon its father's knee as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out from its home in the midst of wet and hunger inquisitively upon the stranger, with the privilege of infancy, not knowing but it was the last of a noble line, and the hope and cynosure of the world, instead of john field's poor starveling brat. there we sat together under that part of the roof which leaked the least, while it showered and thundered without. i had sat there many times of old before the ship was built that floated his family to america. an honest, hard-working, but shiftless man plainly was john field; and his wife, she too was brave to cook so many successive dinners in the recesses of that lofty stove; with round greasy face and bare breast, still thinking to improve her condition one day; with the never absent mop in one hand, and yet no effects of it visible anywhere. the chickens, which had also taken shelter here from the rain, stalked about the room like members of the family, to humanized, methought, to roast well. they stood and looked in my eye or pecked at my shoe significantly. meanwhile my host told me his story, how hard he worked "bogging" for a neighboring farmer, turning up a meadow with a spade or bog hoe at the rate of ten dollars an acre and the use of the land with manure for one year, and his little broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his father's side the while, not knowing how poor a bargain the latter had made. i tried to help him with my experience, telling him that he was one of my nearest neighbors, and that i too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like a loafer, was getting my living like himself; that i lived in a tight, light, and clean house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such a ruin as his commonly amounts to; and how, if he chose, he might in a month or two build himself a palace of his own; that i did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get them; again, as i did not work hard, i did not have to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food; but as he began with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he had to eat hard again to repair the waste of his systemand so it was as broad as it was long, indeed it was broader than it was long, for he was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and yet he had rated it as a gain in coming to america, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. but the only true america is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things. for i purposely talked to him as if he were a philosopher, or desired to be one. i should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves. a man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture. but alas! the culture of an irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. i told him, that as he worked so hard at bogging, he required thick boots and stout clothing, which yet were soon soiled and worn out, but i wore light shoes and thin clothing, which cost not half so much, though he might think that i was dressed like a gentleman (which, however, was not the case), and in an hour or two, without labor, but as a recreation, i could, if i wished, catch as many fish as i should want for two days, or earn enough money to support me a week. if he and his family would live simply, they might all go a-huckleberrying in the summer for their amusement. john heaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared with arms a-kimbo, and both appeared to be wondering if they had capital enough to begin such a course with, or arithmetic enough to carry it through. it was sailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how to make their port so; therefore i suppose they still take life bravely, after their fashion, face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not having skill to split its massive columns with any fine entering wedge, and rout it in detail;thinking to deal with it roughly, as one should handle a thistle. but they fight at an overwhelming disadvantageliving, john field, alas! without arithmetic, and failing so. "do you ever fish?" i asked. "oh yes, i catch a mess now and then when i am lying by; good perch i catch."what's your bait?" "i catch shiners with fishworms, and bait the perch with them." "you'd better go now, john," said his wife, with glistening and hopeful face; but john demurred. the shower was now over, and a rainbow above the eastern woods promised a fair evening; so i took my departure. when i had got without i asked for a drink, hoping to get a sight of the well bottom, to complete my survey of the premises; but there, alas! are shallows and quicksands, and rope broken withal, and bucket irrecoverable. meanwhile the right culinary vessel was selected, water was seemingly distilled, and after consultation and long delay passed out to the thirsty onenot yet suffered to cool, not yet to settle. such gruel sustains life here, i thought; so, shutting my eyes, and excluding the motes by a skilfully directed undercurrent, i drank to genuine hospitality the heartiest draught i could. i am not squeamish in such cases when manners are concerned. as i was leaving the irishman's roof after the rain, bending my steps again to the pond, my haste to catch pickerel, wading in retired meadows, in sloughs and bog-holes, in forlorn and savage places, appeared for an instant trivial to me who had been sent to school and college; but as i ran down the hill toward the reddening west, with the rainbow over my shoulder, and some faint tinkling sounds borne to my ear through the cleansed air, from i know not what quarter, my good genius seemed to saygo fish and hunt far and wide day by dayfarther and widerand rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. remember thy creator in the days of thy youth. rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. there are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played. grow wild according to thy nature, like these sedges and brakes, which will never become english bay. let the thunder rumble; what if it threaten ruin to farmers' crops? that is not its errand to thee. take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. enjoy the land, but own it not. through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs. o baker farm! "landscape where the richest element is a little sunshine innocent."... "no one runs to revel on thy rail-fenced lea."... "debate with no man hast thou, with questions art never perplexed, as tame at the first sight as now, in thy plain russet gabardine dressed." "come ye who love, and ye who hate, children of the holy dove, and guy faux of the state, and hang conspiracies from the tough rafters of the trees!" men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it breathes its own breath over again; their shadows, morning and evening, reach farther than their daily steps. we should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character. before i had reached the pond some fresh impulse had brought out john field, with altered mind, letting go "bogging" ere this sunset. but he, poor man, disturbed only a couple of fins while i was catching a fair string, and he said it was his luck; but when we changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too. poor john field!i trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by itthinking to live by some derivative old-country mode in this primitive new countryto catch perch with shiners. it is good bait sometimes, i allow. with his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited irish poverty or poor life, his adam's grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels. higher laws. as i came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, i caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that i was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented. once or twice, however, while i lived at the pond, i found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which i might devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. the wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. i found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and i reverence them both. i love the wild not less than the good. the wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it to me. i like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. perhaps i have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with nature. they early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance. fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. she is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. the traveller on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the missouri and columbia a trapper, and at the falls of st. mary a fisherman. he who is only a traveller learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. we are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience. they mistake who assert that the yankee has few amusements, because he has not so many public holidays, and men and boys do not play so many games as they do in england, for here the more primitive but solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, and the like have not yet given place to the former. almost every new england boy among my contemporaries shouldered a fowling-piece between the ages of ten and fourteen; and his hunting and fishing grounds were not limited, like the preserves of an english nobleman, but were more boundless even than those of a savage. no wonder, then, that he did not oftener stay to play on the common. but already a change is taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but to an increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the humane society. moreover, when at the pond, i wished sometimes to add fish to my fare for variety. i have actually fished from the same kind of necessity that the first fishers did. whatever humanity i might conjure up against it was all factitious, and concerned my philosophy more than my feelings. i speak of fishing only now, for i had long felt differently about fowling, and sold my gun before i went to the woods. not that i am less humane than others, but i did not perceive that my feelings were much affected. i did not pity the fishes nor the worms. this was habit. as for fowling, during the last years that i carried a gun my excuse was that i was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. but i confess that i am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this. it requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, i have been willing to omit the gun. yet notwithstanding the objection on the score of humanity, i am compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports are ever substituted for these; and when some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, i have answered, yesremembering that it was one of the best parts of my educationmake them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or any vegetable wildernesshunters as well as fishers of men. thus far i am of the opinion of chaucer's nun, who "yave not of the text a pulled hen that saith that hunters ben not holy men." there is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the "best men,as the algonquins called them. we cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected. this was my answer with respect to those youths who were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it. no humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. the hare in its extremity cries like a child. i warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual philanthropic distinctions. such is oftenest the young man's introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. he goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. the mass of men are still and always young in this respect. in some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the good shepherd. i have been surprised to consider that the only obvious employment, except wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or the like business, which ever to my knowledge detained at walden pond for a whole half-day any of my fellow-citizens, whether fathers or children of the town, with just one exception, was fishing. commonly they did not think that they were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got a long string of fish, though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond all the while. they might go there a thousand times before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure; but no doubt such a clarifying process would be going on all the while. the governor and his council faintly remember the pond, for they went a-fishing there when they were boys; but now they are too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so they know it no more forever. yet even they expect to go to heaven at last. if the legislature regards it, it is chiefly to regulate the number of books to be used there; but they know nothing about the book of hooks with which to angle for the pond itself, impaling the legislature for a bait. thus, even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development. i have found repeatedly, of late years, that i cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect. i have tried it again and again. i have skill at it, and, like many of my fellows, a certain instinct for it, which revives from time to time, but always when i have done i feel that it would have been better if i had not fished. i think that i do not mistake. it is a faint intimation, yet so are the first streaks of morning. there is unquestionably this instinct in me which belongs to the lower orders of creation; yet with every year i am less a fisherman, though without more humanity or even wisdom; at present i am no fisherman at all. but i see that if i were to live in a wilderness i should again be tempted to become a fisher and hunter in earnest. beside, there is something essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh, and i began to see where housework commences, and whence the endeavor, which costs so much, to wear a tidy and respectable appearance each day, to keep the house sweet and free from all ill odors and sights. having been my own butcher and scullion and cook, as well as the gentleman for whom the dishes were served up, i can speak from an unusually complete experience. the practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when i had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. it was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. a little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth. like many of my contemporaries, i had rarely for many years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc.; not so much because of any ill effects which i had traced to them, as because they were not agreeable to my imagination. the repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. it appeared more beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects; and though i never did so, i went far enough to please my imagination. i believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind. it is a significant fact, stated by entomologistsi find it in kirby and spencethat "some insects in their perfect state, though furnished with organs of feeding, make no use of them"; and they lay it down as "a general rule, that almost all insects in this state eat much less than in that of larvae. the voracious caterpillar when transformed into a butterfly... and the gluttonous maggot when become a fly" content themselves with a drop or two of honey or some other sweet liquid. the abdomen under the wings of the butterfly stir represents the larva. this is the tidbit which tempts his insectivorous fate. the gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them. it is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination; but this, i think, is to be fed when we feed the body; they should both sit down at the same table. yet perhaps this may be done. the fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. but put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you. it is not worth the while to live by rich cookery. most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. this certainly suggests what change is to be made. it may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to flesh and fat. i am satisfied that it is not. is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? true, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable wayas any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learnand he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. whatever my own practice may be, i have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized. if one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. the faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. no man ever followed his genius till it misled him. though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. if the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortalthat is your success. all nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. the greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. we easily come to doubt if they exist. we soon forget them. they are the highest reality. perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. the true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. it is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which i have clutched. yet, for my part, i was never unusually squeamish; i could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. i am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that i prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. i would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. i believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! ah, how low i fall when i am tempted by them! even music may be intoxicating. such apparently slight causes destroyed greece and rome, and will destroy england and america. of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? i have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. but to tell the truth, i find myself at present somewhat less particular in these respects. i carry less religion to the table, ask no blessing; not because i am wiser than i was, but, i am obliged to confess, because, however much it is to be regretted, with years i have grown more coarse and indifferent. perhaps these questions are entertained only in youth, as most believe of poetry. my practice is "nowhere," my opinion is here. nevertheless i am far from regarding myself as one of those privileged ones to whom the ved refers when it says, that "he who has true faith in the omnipresent supreme being may eat all that exists," that is, is not bound to inquire what is his food, or who prepares it; and even in their case it is to be observed, as a hindoo commentator has remarked, that the vedant limits this privilege to "the time of distress." who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from his food in which appetite had no share? i have been thrilled to think that i owed a mental perception to the commonly gross sense of taste, that i have been inspired through the palate, that some berries which i had eaten on a hillside had fed my genius. "the soul not being mistress of herself," says thseng-tseu, "one looks, and one does not see; one listens, and one does not hear; one eats, and one does not know the savor of food." he who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise. a puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. it is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us. if the hunter has a taste for mud-turtles, muskrats, and other such savage tidbits, the fine lady indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf's foot, or for sardines from over the sea, and they are even. he goes to the mill-pond, she to her preserve-pot. the wonder is how they, how you and i, can live this slimy, beastly life, eating and drinking. our whole life is startlingly moral. there is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. goodness is the only investment that never fails. in the music of the harp which trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which thrills us. the harp is the travelling patterer for the universe's insurance company, recommending its laws, and our little goodness is all the assessment that we pay. though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive. listen to every zephyr for some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate who does not hear it. we cannot touch a string or move a stop but the charming moral transfixes us. many an irksome noise, go a long way off, is heard as music, a proud, sweet satire on the meanness of our lives. we are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. it is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. i fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure. the other day i picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that there was an animal health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. this creature succeeded by other means than temperance and purity. "that in which men differ from brute beasts," says mencius, "is a thing very inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully." who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity? if i knew so wise a man as could teach me purity i would go to seek him forthwith. "a command over our passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the ved to be indispensable in the mind's approximation to god." yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what ill form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. the generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called genius, heroism, holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. man flows at once to god when the channel of purity is open. by turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. he is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established. perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. i fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace. "how happy's he who hath due place assigned to his beasts and disafforested his mind! can use this horse, goat, wolf, and ev'ry beast, and is not ass himself to all the rest! else man not only is the herd of swine, but he's those devils too which did incline them to a headlong rage, and made them worse." all sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. it is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. they are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. the impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. when the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another. if you would be chaste, you must be temperate. what is chastity? how shall a man know if he is chaste? he shall not know it. we have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. we speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. from exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. in the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. an unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. if you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome. what avails it that you are christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? i know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely. i hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the subjecti care not how obscene my words arebut because i cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity. we discourse freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about another. we are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature. in earlier ages, in some countries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by law. nothing was too trivial for the hindoo lawgiver, however offensive it may be to modern taste. he teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles. every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. we are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. john farmer sat at his door one september evening, after a hard day's work, his mind still running on his labor more or less. having bathed, he sat down to re-create his intellectual man. it was a rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors were apprehending a frost. he had not attended to the train of his thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a flute, and that sound harmonized with his mood. still he thought of his work; but the burden of his thought was, that though this kept running in his head, and he found himself planning and contriving it against his will, yet it concerned him very little. it was no more than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. but the notes of the flute came home to his ears out of a different sphere from that he worked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which slumbered in him. they gently did away with the street, and the village, and the state in which he lived. a voice said to himwhy do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? those same stars twinkle over other fields than these.but how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? all that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect. brute neighbors. sometimes i had a companion in my fishing, who came through the village to my house from the other side of the town, and the catching of the dinner was as much a social exercise as the eating of it. hermit. i wonder what the world is doing now. i have not heard so much as a locust over the sweet-fern these three hours. the pigeons are all asleep upon their roostsno flutter from them. was that a farmer's noon horn which sounded from beyond the woods just now? the hands are coming in to boiled salt beef and cider and indian bread. why will men worry themselves so? he that does not eat need not work. i wonder how much they have reaped. who would live there where a body can never think for the barking of bose? and oh, the housekeeping! to keep bright the devil's door-knobs, and scour his tubs this bright day! better not keep a house. say, some hollow tree; and then for morning calls and dinner-parties! only a woodpecker tapping. oh, they swarm; the sun is too warm there; they are born too far into life for me. i have water from the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf.hark! i hear a rustling of the leaves. is it some ill-fed village bound yielding to the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these woods, whose tracks i saw after the rain? it comes on apace; my sumachs and sweetbriers tremble.eh, mr. poet, is it you? how do you like the world today? poet. see those clouds; how they hang! that's the greatest thing i have seen today. there's nothing like it in old paintings, nothing like it in foreign landsunless when we were off the coast of spain. that's a true mediterranean sky. i thought, as i have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that i might go a-fishing. that's the true industry for poets. it is the only trade i have learned. come, let's along. hermit. i cannot resist. my brown bread will soon be gone. i will go with you gladly soon, but i am just concluding a serious meditation. i think that i am near the end of it. leave me alone, then, for a while. but that we may not be delayed, you shall be digging the bait meanwhile. angleworms are rarely to be met with in these parts, where the soil was never fattened with manure; the race is nearly extinct. the sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen; and this you may have all to yourself today. i would advise you to set in the spade down yonder among the groundnuts, where you see the johnswort waving. i think that i may warrant you one worm to every three sods you turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the grass, as if you were weeding. or, if you choose to go farther, it will not be unwise, for i have found the increase of fair bait to be very nearly as the squares of the distances. hermit alone. let me see; where was i? methinks i was nearly in this frame of mind; the world lay about at this angle. shall i go to heaven or a-fishing? if i should soon bring this meditation to an end, would another so sweet occasion be likely to offer? i was as near being resolved into the essence of things as ever i was in my life. i fear my thoughts will not come back to me. if it would do any good, i would whistle for them. when they make us an offer, is it wise to say, we will think of it? my thoughts have left no track, and i cannot find the path again. what was it that i was thinking of? it was a very hazy day. i will just try these three sentences of confutsee; they may fetch that state about again. i know not whether it was the dumps or a budding ecstasy. mem. there never is but one opportunity of a kind. poet. how now, hermit, is it too soon? i have got just thirteen whole ones, beside several which are imperfect or undersized; but they will do for the smaller fry; they do not cover up the hook so much. those village worms are quite too large; a shiner may make a meal off one without finding the skewer. hermit. well, then, let's be off. shall we to the concord? there's good sport there if the water be not too high. why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world? why has man just these species of animals for his neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled this crevice? i suspect that pilpay & co. have put animals to their best use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts. the mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native kind not found in the village. i sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. when i was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before i had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. it probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. it could readily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. at length, as i leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while i kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it; and when at last i held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away. a phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine which grew against the house. in june the partridge (tetrao umbellus), which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. the young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her mings to attract his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. the parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. the young squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mother's directions given from a distance, nor will your approach make them run again and betray themselves. you may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them. i have held them in my open hand at such a time, and still their only care, obedient to their mother and their instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. so perfect is this instinct, that once, when i had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position ten minutes afterward. they are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. the remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. all intelligence seems reflected in them. they suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. the woods do not yield another such a gem. the traveller does not often look into such a limpid well. the ignorant or reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which they so much resemble. it is said that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse on some alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the mother's call which gathers them again. these were my hens and chickens. it is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters only. how retired the otter manages to live here! he grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any human being getting a glimpse of him. i formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my house is built, and probably still heard their whinnering at night. commonly i rested an hour or two in the shade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring which was the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under brister's hill, half a mile from my field. the approach to this was through a succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch pines, into a larger wood about the swamp. there, in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading white pine, there was yet a clean, firm sward to sit on. i had dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray water, where i could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and thither i went for this purpose almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. thither, too, the woodcock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer and nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken wings and legs, to attract my attention, and get off her young, who would already have taken up their march, with faint, wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as she directed. or i heard the peep of the young when i could not see the parent bird. there too the turtle doves sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of the soft white pines over my head; or the red squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough, was particularly familiar and inquisitive. you only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns. i was witness to events of a less peaceful character. one day when i went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, i observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. looking farther, i was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. the legions of these myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my woodyard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. it was the only battle which i have ever witnessed, the only battle-field i ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. on every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that i could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. i watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. the smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as i saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. they fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. it was evident that their battle-cry was "conquer or die." in the meanwhile there came along a single red ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. or perchance he was some achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his patroclus. he saw this unequal combat from afarfor the blacks were nearly twice the size of the redhe drew near with rapid pace till be stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right fore leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. i should not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. i was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. the more you think of it, the less the difference. and certainly there is not the fight recorded in concord history, at least, if in the history of america, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. for numbers and for carnage it was an austerlitz or dresden. concord fight! two killed on the patriots' side, and luther blanchard wounded! why here every ant was a buttrick"fire! for god's sake fire!"and thousands shared the fate of davis and hosmer. there was not one hireling there. i have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of bunker hill, at least. i took up the chip oil which the three i have particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, i saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. they struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when i looked again the black soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and i know not how many other wounds, to divest himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more, he accomplished. i raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his days in some hotel des invalides, i do not know; but i thought that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. i never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; but i felt for the rest of that day as if i had had my feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door. kirby and spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say that huber is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them. "aeneas sylvius," say they, "after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that "'this action was fought in the pontificate of eugenius the fourth, in the presence of nicholas pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole, history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.' a similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by olaus magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. this event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant christiern the second from sweden." the battle which i witnessed took place in the presidency of polk, five years before the passage of webster's fugitive-slave bill. many a village bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, without the knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks' holes; led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood, and might still inspire a natural terror in its denizens;now far behind his guide, barking like a canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed itself for scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining that he is on the track of some stray member of the jerbilla family. once i was surprised to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond, for they rarely wander so far from home. the surprise was mutual. nevertheless the most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants. once, when berrying, i met with a cat with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely spitting at me. a few years before i lived in the woods there was what was called a "winged cat" in one of the farm-houses in lincoln nearest the pond, mr. gilian baker's. when i called to see her in june, 1842, she was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (i am not sure whether it was a male or female, and so use the more common pronoun), but her mistress told me that she came into the neighborhood a little more than a year before, in april, and was finally taken into their house; that she was of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; that in the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides, forming stripes ten or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. they gave me a pair of her "wings," which i keep still. there is no appearance of a membrane about them. some thought it was part flying squirrel or some other wild animal, which is not impossible, for, according to naturalists, prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of the marten and domestic cat. this would have been the right kind of cat for me to keep, if i had kept any; for why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse? in the fall the loon (colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, to moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before i had risen. at rumor of his arrival all the mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. they come rustling through the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon. some station themselves on this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must come up there. but now the kind october wind rises, rustling the leaves and rippling the surface of the water, so that no loon can be heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound with their discharges. the waves generously rise and dash angrily, taking sides with all water-fowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs. but they were too often successful. when i went to get a pail of water early in the morning i frequently saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. if i endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order to see how he would manoeuvre, he would dive and be completely lost, so that i did not discover him again, sometimes, till the latter part of the day. but i was more than a match for him on the surface. he commonly went off in a rain. as i was paddling along the north shore one very calm october afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of me, set up his mild laugh and betrayed himself. i pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up i was nearer than before. he dived again, but i miscalculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface this time, for i had helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed long and loud, and with more reason than before. he manoeuvred so cunningly that i could not get within half a dozen rods of him. each time, when he came to the surface, turning his head this way and that, he cooly surveyed the water and the land, and apparently chose his course so that he might come up where there was the widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance from the boat. it was surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into execution. he led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and could not be driven from it. while he was thinking one thing in his brain, i was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. it was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon. suddenly your adversary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours nearest to where his will appear again. sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly under the boat. so long-winded was he and so unweariable, that when he had swum farthest he would immediately plunge again, nevertheless; and then no wit could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a fish, for he had time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest part. it is said that loons have been caught in the new york lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks set for troutthough walden is deeper than that. how surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools! yet he appeared to know his course as surely under water as on the surface, and swam much faster there. once or twice i saw a ripple where he approached the surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly dived again. i found that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would rise; for again and again, when i was straining my eyes over the surface one way, i would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me. but why, after displaying so much cunning, did he invariably betray himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh? did not his white breast enough betray him? he was indeed a silly loon, i thought. i could commonly hear the splash of the water when he came up, and so also detected him. but after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly, and swam yet farther than at first. it was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. his usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. this was his looningperhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. i concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that i could see where he broke the surface when i did not hear him. his white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. at length having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and i was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me; and so i left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface. for hours, in fall days, i watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman; tricks which they will have less need to practise in louisiana bayous. when compelled to rise they would sometimes circle round and round and over the pond at a considerable height, from which they could easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes in the sky; and, when i thought they had gone off thither long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of walden i do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that i do. house-warming. in october i went a-graping to the river meadows, and loaded myself with clusters more precious for their beauty and fragrance than for food. there, too, i admired, though i did not gather, the cranberries, small waxen gems, pendants of the meadow grass, pearly and red, which the farmer plucks with an ugly rake, leaving the smooth meadow in a snarl, heedlessly measuring them by the bushel and the dollar only, and sells the spoils of the meads to boston and new york; destined to be jammed, to satisfy the tastes of lovers of nature there. so butchers rake the tongues of bison out of the prairie grass, regardless of the torn and drooping plant. the barberry's brilliant fruit was likewise food for my eyes merely; but i collected a small store of wild apples for coddling, which the proprietor and travellers had overlooked. when chestnuts were ripe i laid up half a bushel for winter. it was very exciting at that season to roam the then boundless chestnut woods of lincolnthey now sleep their long sleep under the railroadwith a bag on my shoulder, and a stick to open burs with in my hand, for i did not always wait for the frost, amid the rustling of leaves and the loud reproofs of the red squirrels and the jays, whose half-consumed nuts i sometimes stole, for the burs which they had selected were sure to contain sound ones. occasionally i climbed and shook the trees. they grew also behind my house, and one large tree, which almost overshadowed it, was, when in flower, a bouquet which scented the whole neighborhood, but the squirrels and the jays got most of its fruit; the last coming in flocks early in the morning and picking the nuts out of the burs before they fell, i relinquished these trees to them and visited the more distant woods composed wholly of chestnut. these nuts, as far as they went, were a good substitute for bread. many other substitutes might, perhaps, be found. digging one day for fishworms, i discovered the groundnut (apios tuberosa) on its string, the potato of the aborigines, a sort of fabulous fruit, which i had begun to doubt if i had ever dug and eaten in childhood, as i had told, and had not dreamed it. i had often since seen its crumpled red velvety blossom supported by the stems of other plants without knowing it to be the same. cultivation has well-nigh exterminated it. it has a sweetish taste, much like that of a frost-bitten potato, and i found it better boiled than roasted. this tuber seemed like a faint promise of nature to rear her own children and feed them simply here at some future period. in these days of fatted cattle and waving grain-fields this humble root, which was once the totem of an indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but let wild nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious english grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great cornfield of the indian's god in the southwest, whence he is said to have brought it; but the now almost exterminated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe. some indian ceres or minerva must have been the inventor and bestower of it; and when the reign of poetry commences here, its leaves and string of nuts may be represented on our works of art. already, by the first of september, i had seen two or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where the white stems of three aspens diverged, at the point of a promontory, next the water. ah, many a tale their color told! arid gradually from week to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. each morning the manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls. the wasps came by thousands to my lodge in october, as to winter quarters, and settled on my windows within and on the walls overhead, sometimes deterring visitors from entering. each morning, when they were numbed with cold, i swept some of them out, but i did not trouble myself much to get rid of them; i even felt complimented by their regarding my house as a desirable shelter. they never molested me seriously, though they bedded with me; and they gradually disappeared, into what crevices i do not know, avoiding winter and unspeakable cold. like the wasps, before i finally went into winter quarters in november, i used to resort to the northeast side of walden, which the sun, reflected from the pitch pine woods and the stony shore, made the fireside of the pond; it is so much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by an artificial fire. i thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers which the summer, like a departed hunter, had left. when i came to build my chimney i studied masonry. my bricks, being second-hand ones, required to be cleaned with a trowel, so that i learned more than usual of the qualities of bricks and trowels. the mortar on them was fifty years old, and was said to be still growing harder; but this is one of those sayings which men love to repeat whether they are true or not. such sayings themselves grow harder and adhere more firmly with age, and it would take many blows with a trowel to clean an old wiseacre of them. many of the villages of mesopotamia are built of secondhand bricks of a very good quality, obtained from the ruins of babylon, and the cement on them is older and probably harder still. however that may be, i was struck by the peculiar toughness of the steel which bore so many violent blows without being worn out. as my bricks had been in a chimney before, though i did not read the name of nebuchadnezzar on them, i picked out its many fireplace bricks as i could find, to save work and waste, and i filled the spaces between the bricks about the fireplace with stones from the pond shore, and also made my mortar with the white sand from the same place. i lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house. indeed, i worked so deliberately, that though i commenced at the ground in the morning, a course of bricks raised a few inches above the floor served for my pillow at night; yet i did not get a stiff neck for it that i remember; my stiff neck is of older date. i took a poet to board for a fortnight about those times, which caused me to be put to it for room. he brought his own knife, though i had two, and we used to scour them by thrusting them into the earth. he shared with me the labors of cooking. i was pleased to see my work rising so square and solid by degrees, and reflected, that, if it proceeded slowly, it was calculated to endure a long time. the chimney is to some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground, and rising through the house to the heavens; even after the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent. this was toward the end of summer. it was now november. the north wind had already begun to cool the pond, though it took many weeks of steady blowing to accomplish it, it is so deep. when i began to have a fire at evening, before i plastered my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because of the numerous chinks between the boards. yet i passed some cheerful evenings in that cool and airy apartment, surrounded by the rough brown boards full of knots, and rafters with the bark on high overhead. my house never pleased my eye so much after it was plastered, though i was obliged to confess that it was more comfortable. should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? these forms are more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive furniture. i now first began to inhabit my house, i may say, when i began to use it for warmth as well as shelter. i had got a couple of old fire-dogs to keep the wood from the hearth, and it did me good to see the soot form on the back of the chimney which i had built, and i poked the fire with more right and more satisfaction than usual. my dwelling was small, and i could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. all the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, i enjoyed it all. cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory." i had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and indian meal a peck each. i sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one's head-useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thin, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trapdoor, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. a house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home therein solitary confinement. nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. there is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. i am aware that i have been on many a man's premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but i am not aware that i have been in many men's houses. i might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as i have described, if i were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that i shall desire to learn, if ever i am caught in one. it would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched, through slides and dumbwaiters, as it were; in other words, the parlor is so far from the kitchen and workshop. the dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly. as if only the savage dwelt near enough to nature and truth to borrow a trope from them. how can the scholar, who dwells away in the north west territory or the isle of man, tell what is parliamentary in the kitchen? however, only one or two of my guests were ever bold enough to stay and eat a hasty-pudding with me; but when they saw that crisis approaching they beat a hasty retreat rather, as if it would shake the house to its foundations. nevertheless, it stood through a great many hasty-puddings. i did not plaster till it was freezing weather. i brought over some whiter and cleaner sand for this purpose from the opposite shore of the pond in a boat, a sort of conveyance which would have tempted me to go much farther if necessary. my house had in the meanwhile been shingled down to the ground on every side. in lathing i was pleased to be able to send home each nail with a single blow of the hammer, and it was my ambition to transfer the plaster from the board to the wall neatly and rapidly. i remembered the story of a conceited fellow, who, in fine clothes, was wont to lounge about the village once, giving advice to workmen. venturing one day to substitute deeds for words, he turned up his cuffs, seized a plasterer's board, and having loaded his trowel without mishap, with a complacent look toward the lathing overhead, made a bold gesture thitherward; and straightway, to his complete discomfiture, received the whole contents in his ruffled bosom. i admired anew the economy and convenience of plastering, which so effectually shuts out the cold and takes a handsome finish, and i learned the various casualties to which the plasterer is liable. i was surprised to see how thirsty the bricks were which drank up all the moisture in my plaster before i had smoothed it, and how many pailfuls of water it takes to christen a new hearth. i had the previous winter made a small quantity of lime by burning the shells of the unio fluviatilis, which our river affords, for the sake of the experiment; so that i knew where my materials came from. i might have got good limestone within a mile or two and burned it myself, if i had cared to do so. the pond had in the meanwhile skimmed over in the shadiest and shallowest coves, some days or even weeks before the general freezing. the first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass, and the water is necessarily always smooth then. there are many furrows in the sand where some creature has travelled about and doubled on its tracks; and, for wrecks, it is strewn with the cases of caddis-worms made of minute grains of white quartz. perhaps these have creased it, for you find some of their cases in the furrows, though they are deep and broad for them to make. but the ice itself is the object of most interest, though you must improve the earliest opportunity to study it. if you examine it closely the morning after it freezes, you find that the greater part of the bubbles, which at first appeared to be within it, are against its under surface, and that more are continually rising from the bottom; while the ice is as yet comparatively solid and dark, that is, you see the water through it. these bubbles are from an eightieth to an eighth of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see your face reflected in them through the ice. there may be thirty or forty of them to a square inch. there are also already within the ice narrow oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an inch long, sharp cones with the apex upward; or oftener, if the ice is quite fresh, minute spherical bubbles one directly above another, like a string of beads. but these within the ice are not so numerous nor obvious as those beneath. i sometimes used to cast on stones to try the strength of the ice, and those which broke through carried in air with them, which formed very large and conspicuous white bubbles beneath. one day when i came to the same place forty-eight hours afterward, i found that those large bubbles were still perfect, though an inch more of ice had formed, as i could see distinctly by the seam in the edge of a cake. but as the last two days had been very warm, like an indian summer, the ice was not now transparent, showing the dark green color of the water, and the bottom, but opaque and whitish or gray, and though twice as thick was hardly stronger than before, for the air bubbles had greatly expanded under this heat and run together, and lost their regularity; they were no longer one directly over another, but often like silvery coins poured from a bag, one overlapping another, or in thin flakes, as if occupying slight cleavages. the beauty of the ice was gone, and it was too late to study the bottom. being curious to know what position my great bubbles occupied with regard to the new ice, i broke out a cake containing a middling sized one, and turned it bottom upward. the new ice had formed around and under the bubble, so that it was included between the two ices. it was wholly in the lower ice, but close against the upper, and was flattish, or perhaps slightly lenticular, with a rounded edge, a quarter of an inch deep by four inches in diameter; and i was surprised to find that directly under the bubble the ice was melted with great regularity in the form of a saucer reversed, to the height of five eighths of an inch in the middle, leaving a thin partition there between the water and the bubble, hardly an eighth of an inch thick; and in many places the small bubbles in this partition had burst out downward, and probably there was no ice at all under the largest bubbles, which were a foot in diameter. i inferred that the infinite number of minute bubbles which i had first seen against the under surface of the ice were now frozen in likewise, and that each, in its degree, had operated like a burning-glass on the ice beneath to melt and rot it. these are the little air-guns which contribute to make the ice crack and whoop. at length the winter set in good earnest, just as i had finished plastering, and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had not had permission to do so till then. night after night the geese came lumbering in the dark with a clangor and a whistling of wings, even after the ground was covered with snow, some to alight in walden, and some flying low over the woods toward fair haven, bound for mexico. several times, when returning from the village at ten or eleven o'clock at night, i heard the tread of a flock of geese, or else ducks, on the dry leaves in the woods by a pond-hole behind my dwelling, where they had come up to feed, and the faint honk or quack of their leader as they hurried off. in 1845 walden froze entirely over for the first time on the night of the 22d of december, flint's and other shallower ponds and the river having been frozen ten days or more; in '46, the 16th; in '49, about the 31st; and in '50, about the 27th of december; in '52, the 5th of january; in '53, the 31st of december. the snow had already covered the ground since the 25th of november, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. i withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast. my employment out of doors now was to collect the dead wood in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, or sometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. an old forest fence which had seen its best days was a great haul for me. i sacrificed it to vulcan, for it was past serving the god terminus. how much more interesting an event is that man's supper who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, nay, you might say, steal, the fuel to cook it with! his bread and meat are sweet. there are enough fagots and waste wood of all kinds in the forests of most of our towns to support many fires, but which at present warm none, and, some think, hinder the growth of the young wood. there was also the driftwood of the pond. in the course of the summer i had discovered a raft of pitch pine logs with the bark on, pinned together by the irish when the railroad was built. this i hauled up partly on the shore. after soaking two years and then lying high six months it was perfectly sound, though waterlogged past drying. i amused myself one winter day with sliding this piecemeal across the pond, nearly half a mile, skating behind with one end of a log fifteen feet long on my shoulder, and the other on the ice; or i tied several logs together with a birch withe, and then, with a longer birch or alder which had a book at the end, dragged them across. though completely waterlogged and almost as heavy as lead, they not only burned long, but made a very hot fire; nay, i thought that they burned better for the soaking, as if the pitch, being confined by the water, burned longer, as in a lamp. gilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of england, says that "the encroachments of trespassers, and the houses and fences thus raised on the borders of the forest," were "considered as great nuisances by the old forest law, and were severely punished under the name of purprestures, as tending ad terrorem ferarumad nocumentum forestae, etc.," to the frightening of the game and the detriment of the forest. but i was interested in the preservation of the venison and the vert more than the hunters or woodchoppers, and as much as though i had been the lord warden himself; and if any part was burned, though i burned it myself by accident, i grieved with a grief that lasted longer and was more inconsolable than that of the proprietors; nay, i grieved when it was cut down by the proprietors themselves. i would that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old romans did when they came to thin, or let in the light to, a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare), that is, would believe that it is sacred to some god. the roman made an expiatory offering, and prayed, whatever god or goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me, my family, and children, etc. it is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold. after all our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. it is as precious to us as it was to our saxon and norman ancestors. if they made their bows of it, we make our gun-stocks of it. michaux, more than thirty years ago, says that the price of wood for fuel in new york and philadelphia "nearly equals, and sometimes exceeds, that of the best wood in paris, though this immense capital annually requires more than three hundred thousand cords, and is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles by cultivated plains." in this town the price of wood rises almost steadily, and the only question is, how much higher it is to be this year than it was the last. mechanics and tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no other errand, are sure to attend the wood auction, and even pay a high price for the privilege of gleaning after the woodchopper. it is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the new englander and the new hollander, the parisian and the celt, the farmer and robin hood, goody blake and harry gill; in most parts of the world the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. neither could i do without them. every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. i love to have mine before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. i had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, i played about the stumps which i had got out of my bean-field. as my driver prophesied when i was plowing, they warmed me twiceonce while i was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. as for the axe, i was advised to get the village blacksmith to "jump" it; but i jumped him, and, putting a hickory helve from the woods into it, made it do. if it was dull, it was at least hung true. a few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure. it is interesting to remember how much of this food for fire is still concealed in the bowels of the earth. in previous years i had often gone prospecting over some bare hillside, where a pitch pine wood had formerly stood, and got out the fat pine roots. they are almost indestructible. stumps thirty or forty years old, at least, will still be sound at the core, though the sapwood has all become vegetable mould, as appears by the scales of the thick bark forming a ring level with the earth four or five inches distant from the heart. with axe and shovel you explore this mine, and follow the marrowy store, yellow as beef tallow, or as if you had struck on a vein of gold, deep into the earth. but commonly i kindled my fire with the dry leaves of the forest, which i had stored up in my shed before the snow came. green hickory finely split makes the woodchopper's kindlings, when he has a camp in the woods. once in a while i got a little of this. when the villagers were lighting their fires beyond the horizon, i too gave notice to the various wild inhabitants of walden vale, by a smoky streamer from my chimney, that i was awake. light-winged smoke, icarian bird, melting thy pinions in thy upward flight, lark without song, and messenger of dawn, circling above the hamlets as thy nest; or else, departing dream, and shadowy form of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; by night star-veiling, and by day darkening the light and blotting out the sun; go thou my incense upward from this hearth, and ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. hard green wood just cut, though i used but little of that, answered my purpose better than any other. i sometimes left a good fire when i went to take a walk in a winter afternoon; and when i returned, three or four hours afterward, it would be still alive and glowing. my house was not empty though i was gone. it was as if i had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. it was i and fire that lived there; and commonly my housekeeper proved trustworthy. one day, however, as i was splitting wood, i thought that i would just look in at the window and see if the house was not on fire; it was the only time i remember to have been particularly anxious on this score; so i looked and saw that a spark had caught my bed, and i went in and extinguished it when it had burned a place as big as my hand. but my house occupied so sunny and sheltered a position, and its roof was so low, that i could afford to let the fire go out in the middle of almost any winter day. the moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair left after plastering and of brown paper; for even the wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive the winter only because they are so careful to secure them. some of my friends spoke as if i was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself. the animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light, and with a lamp lengthen out the day. thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts. though, when i had been exposed to the rudest blasts a long time, my whole body began to grow torpid, when i reached the genial atmosphere of my house i soon recovered my faculties and prolonged my life. but the most luxuriously housed has little to boast of in this respect, nor need we trouble ourselves to speculate how the human race may be at last destroyed. it would be easy to cut their threads any time with a little sharper blast from the north. we go on dating from cold fridays and great snows; but a little colder friday, or greater snow would put a period to man's existence on the globe. the next winter i used a small cooking-stove for economy, since i did not own the forest; but it did not keep fire so well as the open fireplace. cooking was then, for the most part, no longer a poetic, but merely a chemic process. it will soon be forgotten, in these days of stoves, that we used to roast potatoes in the ashes, after the indian fashion. the stove not only took up room and scented the house, but it concealed the fire, and i felt as if i had lost a companion. you can always see a face in the fire. the laborer, looking into it at evening, pulifies his thoughts of the dross and earthiness which they have accumulated during the day. but i could no longer sit and look into the fire, and the pertinent words of a poet recurred to me with new force. "never, bright flame, may be denied to me thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy. what but my hopes shot upward e'er so bright? what but my fortunes sunk so low in night? why art thou banished from our hearth and hall, thou who art welcomed and beloved by all? was thy existence then too fanciful for our life's common light, who are so dull? did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold with our congenial souls? secrets too bold? well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit, where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire warms feet and handsnor does to more aspire; by whose compact utilitarian heap the present may sit down and go to sleep, nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked, and with us by the unequal light of the old wood fire talked." former inhabitants; and winter visitors. i weathered some merry snow-storms, and spent some cheerful winter evenings by my fireside, while the snow whirled wildly without, and even the hooting of the owl was hushed. for many weeks i met no one in my walks but those who came occasionally to cut wood and sled it to the village. the elements, however, abetted me in making a path through the deepest snow in the woods, for when i had once gone through the wind blew the oak leaves into my tracks, where they lodged, and by absorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow, and so not only made a my bed for my feet, but in the night their dark line was my guide. for human society i was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods. within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now. in some places, within my own remembrance, the pines would scrape both sides of a chaise at once, and women and children who were compelled to go this way to lincoln alone and on foot did it with fear, and often ran a good part of the distance. though mainly but a humble route to neighboring villages, or for the woodman's team, it once amused the traveller more than now by its variety, and lingered longer in his memory. where now firm open fields stretch from the village to the woods, it then ran through a maple swamp on a foundation of logs, the remnants of which, doubtless, still underlie the present dusty highway, from the stratton, now the alms-house, farm, to brister's hill. east of my bean-field, across the road, lived cato ingraham, slave of duncan ingraham, esquire, gentleman, of concord village, who built his slave a house, and gave him permission to live in walden woods;cato, not uticensis, but concordiensis. some say that he was a guinea negro. there are a few who remember his little patch among the walnuts, which he let row up till he should be old and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last. he too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present. cato's half-obliterated cellar-hole still remains, though known to few, being concealed from the traveller by a fringe of pines. it is now filled with the smooth sumach (rhus glabra), and one of the earliest species of goldenrod (solidago stricta) grows there luxuriantly. here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to town, zilpha, a colored woman, had her little house, where she spun linen for the townsfolk, making the walden woods ring with her shrill singing, for she had a loud and notable voice. at length, in the war of 1812, her dwelling was set on fire by english soldiers, prisoners on parole, when she was away, and her cat and dog and hens were all burned up together. she led a hard life, and somewhat inhumane. one old frequenter of these woods remembers, that as he passed her house one noon he heard her muttering to herself over her gurgling pot"ye are all bones, bones!" i have seen bricks amid the oak copse there. down the road, on the right hand, on brister's hill, lived brister freeman, "a handy negro," slave of squire cummings once-there where grow still the apple trees which brister planted and tended; large old trees now, but their fruit still wild and ciderish to my taste. not long since i read his epitaph in the old lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some british grenadiers who fell in the retreat from concordwhere he is styled "sippio brister"scipio africanus he had some title to be called"a man of color," as if he were discolored. it also told me, with staring emphasis, when he died; which was but an indirect way of informing me that he ever lived. with him dwelt fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet pleasantly-large, round, and black, blacker than any of the children of night, such a dusky orb as never rose on concord before or since. farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road in the woods, are marks of some homestead of the stratton family; whose orchard once covered all the slope of brister's hill, but was long since killed out by pitch pines, excepting a few stumps, whose old roots furnish still the wild stocks of many a thrifty village tree. nearer yet to town, you come to breed's location, on the other side of the way, just on the edge of the wood; ground famous for the pranks of a demon not distinctly named in old mythology, who has acted a prominent and astounding part in our new england life, and deserves, as much as any mythological character, to have his biography written one day; who first comes in the guise of a friend or hired man, and then robs and murders the whole familynew-england rum. but history must not yet tell the tragedies enacted here; let time intervene in some measure to assuage and lend an azure tint to them. here the most indistinct and dubious tradition says that once a tavern stood; the well the same, which tempered the traveller's beverage and refreshed his steed. here then men saluted one another, and heard and told the news, and went their ways again. breed's hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it had long been unoccupied. it was about the size of mine. it was set on fire by mischievous boys, one election night, if i do not mistake. i lived on the edge of the village then, and had just lost myself over davenant's "gondibert," that winter that i labored with a lethargywhich, by the way, i never knew whether to regard as a family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving himself, and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar sundays, in order to keep awake and keep the sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt to read chalmers' collection of english poetry without skipping. it fairly overcame my nervii. i had just sunk my head on this when the bells rung fire, and in hot haste the engines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of men and boys, and i among the foremost, for i had leaped the brook. we thought it was far south over the woodswe who had run to fires beforebarn, shop, or dwelling-house, or all together. "it's baker's barn," cried one. "it is the codman place," affirmed another. and then fresh sparks went up above the wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted "concord to the rescue!" wagons shot past with furious speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the insurance company, who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure; and rearmost of all, as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the alarm. thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard the crackling and actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, and realized, alas! that we were there. the very nearness of the fire but cooled our ardor. at first we thought to throw a frog-pond on to it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so worthless. so we stood round our engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments through speaking-trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the great conflagrations which the world has witnessed, including bascom's shop, and, between ourselves, we thought that, were we there in season with our "tub," and a full frog-pond by, we could turn that threatened last and universal one into another flood. we finally retreated without doing any mischiefreturned to sleep and "gondibert." but as for "gondibert," i would except that passage in the preface about wit being the soul's powder"but most of mankind are strangers to wit, as indians are to powder." it chanced that i walked that way across the fields the following night, about the same hour, and hearing a low moaning at this spot, i drew near in the dark, and discovered the only survivor of the family that i know, the heir of both its virtues and its vices, who alone was interested in this burning, lying on his stomach and looking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. he had been working far off in the river meadows all day, and had improved the first moments that he could call his own to visit the home of his fathers and his youth. he gazed into the cellar from all sides and points of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if there was some treasure, which he remembered, concealed between the stones, where there was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes. the house being gone, he looked at what there was left. he was soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence, implied, and showed me, as well as the darkness permitted, where the well was covered up; which, thank heaven, could never be burned; and he groped long about the wall to find the well-sweep which his father had cut and mounted, feeling for the iron hook or staple by which a burden had been fastened to the heavy endall that he could now cling toto convince me that it was no common "rider." i felt it, and still remark it almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a family. once more, on the left, where are seen the well and lilac bushes by the wall, in the now open field, lived nutting and le grosse. but to return toward lincoln. farther in the woods than any of these, where the road approaches nearest to the pond, wyman the potter squatted, and furnished his townsmen with earthenware, and left descendants to succeed him. neither were they rich in worldly goods, holding the land by sufferance while they lived; and there often the sheriff came in vain to collect the taxes, and "attached a chip," for form's sake, as i have read in his accounts, there being nothing else that he could lay his hands on. one day in midsummer, when i was hoeing, a man who was carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his horse against my field and inquired concerning wyman the younger. he had long ago bought a potter's wheel of him, and wished to know what had become of him. i had read of the potter's clay and wheel in scripture, but it had never occurred to me that the pots we use were not such as had come down unbroken from those days, or grown on trees like gourds somewhere, and i was pleased to hear that so fictile an art was ever practiced in my neighborhood. the last inhabitant of these woods before me was an irishman, hugh quoil (if i have spelt his name with coil enough), who occupied wyman's tenementcol. quoil, he was called. rumor said that he had been a soldier at waterloo. if he had lived i should have made him fight his battles over again. his trade here was that of a ditcher. napoleon went to st. helena; quoil came to walden woods. all i know of him is tragic. he was a man of manners, like one who had seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech than you could well attend to. he wore a greatcoat in midsummer, being affected with the trembling delirium, and his face was the color of carmine. he died in the road at the foot of brister's hill shortly after i came to the woods, so that i have not remembered him as a neighbor. before his house was pulled down, when his comrades avoided it as "an unlucky castle," i visited it. there lay his old clothes curled up by use, as if they were himself, upon his raised plank bed. his pipe lay broken on the hearth, instead of a bowl broken at the fountain. the last could never have been the symbol of his death, for he confessed to me that, though he had heard of brister's spring, he had never seen it; and soiled cards, kings of diamonds, spades, and hearts, were scattered over the floor. one black chicken which the administrator could not catch, black as night and as silent, not even croaking, awaiting reynard, still went to roost in the next apartment. in the rear there was the dim outline of a garden, which had been planted but had never received its first hoeing, owing to those terrible shaking fits, though it was now harvest time. it was overrun with roman wormwood and beggar-ticks, which last stuck to my clothes for all fruit. the skin of a woodchuck was freshly stretched upon the back of the house, a trophy of his last waterloo; but no warm cap or mittens would he want more. now only a dent in the earth marks the site of these dwellings, with buried cellar stones, and strawberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, hazel-bushes, and sumachs growing in the sunny sward there; some pitch pine or gnarled oak occupies what was the chimney nook, and a sweet-scented black birch, perhaps, waves where the door-stone was. sometimes the well dent is visible, where once a spring oozed; now dry and tearless grass; or it was covered deepnot to be discovered till some late daywith a flat stone under the sod, when the last of the race departed. what a sorrowful act must that bethe covering up of wells! coincident with the opening of wells of tears. these cellar dents, like deserted fox burrows, old holes, are all that is left where once were the stir and bustle of human life, and "fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," in some form and dialect or other were by turns discussed. but all i can learn of their conclusions amounts to just this, that "cato and brister pulled wool"; which is about as edifying as the history of more famous schools of philosophy. still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted and tended once by children's hands, hi front-yard plotsnow standing by wallsides in retired pastures, and giving place to newrising forests;the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family. little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and grown man's garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a half-century after they had grown up and diedblossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. i mark its still tender, civil, cheerful lilac colors. but this small village, germ of something more, why did it fail while concord keeps its ground? were there no natural advantagesno water privileges, forsooth? ay, the deep walden pond and cool brister's springprivilege to drink long and healthy draughts at these, all unimproved by these men but to dilute their glass. they were universally a thirsty race. might not the basket, stable-broom, mat-making, corn-parching, linen-spinning, and pottery business have thrived here, making the wilderness to blossom like the rose, and a numerous posterity have inherited the land of their fathers? the sterile soil would at least have been proof against a lowland degeneracy. alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape! again, perhaps, nature will try, with me for a first settler, and my house raised last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet. i am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which i occupy. deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. the soil is blanched and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed. with such reminiscences i repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep. at this season i seldom had a visitor. when the snow lay deepest no wanderer ventured near my house for a week or fortnight at a time, but there i lived as snug as a meadow mouse, or as cattle and poultry which are said to have survived for a long time buried in drifts, even without food; or like that early settler's family in the town of sutton, in this state, whose cottage was completely covered by the great snow of 1717 when he was absent, and an indian found it only by the hole which the chimney's breath made in the drift, and so relieved the family. but no friendly indian concerned himself about me; nor needed he, for the master of the house was at home. the great snow! how cheerful it is to hear of! when the farmers could not get to the woods and swamps with their teams, and were obliged to cut down the shade trees before their houses, and, when the crust was harder, cut off the trees in the swamps, ten feet from the ground, as it appeared the next spring. in the deepest snows, the path which i used from the highway to my house, about half a mile long, might have been represented by a meandering dotted line, with wide intervals between the dots. for a week of even weather i took exactly the same number of steps, and of the same length, coming and going, stepping deliberately and with the precision of a pair of dividers in my own deep tracksto such routine the winter reduces usyet often they were filled with heaven's own blue. but no weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather my going abroad, for i frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines; when the ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir trees; wading to the tops of the highest bills when the show was nearly two feet deep on a level, and shaking down another snow-storm on my head at every step; or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on my hands and knees, when the hunters had gone into winter quarters. one afternoon i amused myself by watching a barred owl (strix nebulosa) sitting on one of the lower dead limbs of a white pine, close to the trunk, in broad daylight, i standing within a rod of him. he could hear me when i moved and cronched the snow with my feet, but could not plainly see me. when i made most noise he would stretch out his neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes wide; but their lids soon fell again, and he began to nod. i too felt a slumberous influence after watching him half an hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open, like a cat, winged brother of the cat. there was only a narrow slit left between their lids, by which be preserved a pennisular relation to me; thus, with half-shut eyes, looking out from the land of dreams, and endeavoring to realize me, vague object or mote that interrupted his visions. at length, on some louder noise or my nearer approach, he would grow uneasy and sluggishly turn about on his perch, as if impatient at having his dreams disturbed; and when he launched himself off and flapped through the pines, spreading his wings to unexpected breadth, i could not hear the slightest sound from them. thus, guided amid the pine boughs rather by a delicate sense of their neighborhood than by sight, feeling his twilight way, as it were, with his sensitive pinions, he found a new perch, where he might in peace await the dawning of his day. as i walked over the long causeway made for the railroad through the meadows, i encountered many a blustering and nipping wind, for nowhere has it freer play; and when the frost had smitten me on one cheek, heathen as i was, i turned to it the other also. nor was it much better by the carriage road from brister's hill. for i came to town still, like a friendly indian, when the contents of the broad open fields were all piled up between the walls of the walden road, and half an hour sufficed to obliterate the tracks of the last traveller. and when i returned new drifts would have formed, through which i floundered, where the busy northwest wind had been depositing the powdery snow round a sharp angle in the road, and not a rabbit's track, nor even the fine print, the small type, of a meadow mouse was to be seen. yet i rarely failed to find, even in midwinter, some warm and springly swamp where the grass and the skunk-cabbage still put forth with perennial verdure, and some hardier bird occasionally awaited the return of spring. sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when i returned from my walk at evening i crossed the deep tracks of a woodchopper leading from my door, and found his pile of whittlings on the hearth, and my house filled with the odor of his pipe. or on a sunday afternoon, if i chanced to be at home, i heard the cronching of the snow made by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from far through the woods sought my house, to have a social "crack"; one of the few of his vocation who are "men on their farms"; who donned a frock instead of a professor's gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. we talked of rude and simple times, when men sat about large fires in cold, bracing weather, with clear heads; and when other dessert failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have the thickest shells are commonly empty. the one who came from farthest to my lodge, through deepest snows and most dismal tempests, was a poet. a farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. who can predict his comings and goings? his business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep. we made that small house ring with boisterous mirth and resound with the murmur of much sober talk, making amends then to walden vale for the long silences. broadway was still and deserted in comparison. at suitable intervals there were regular salutes of laughter, which might have been referred indifferently to the last-uttered or the forth-coming jest. we made many a "bran new" theory of life over a thin dish of gruel, which combined the advantages of conviviality with the clear-headedness which philosophy requires. i should not forget that during my last winter at the pond there was another welcome visitor, who at one time came through the village, through snow and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the trees, and shared with me some long winter evenings. one of the last of the philosophersconnecticut gave him to the worldhe peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he declares, his brains. these he peddles still, prompting god and disgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel. i think that he must be the man of the most faith of any alive. his words and attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed as the ages revolve. he has no venture in the present. but though comparatively disregarded now, when his day comes, laws unsuspected by most will take effect, and masters of families and rulers will come to him for advice. "how blind that cannot see serenity!" a true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress. an old mortality, say rather an immortality, with unwearied patience and faith making plain the image engraven in men's bodies, the god of whom they are but defaced and leaning monuments. with his hospitable intellect he embraces children, beggars, insane, and scholars, and entertains the thought of all, adding to it commonly some breadth and elegance. i think that he should keep a caravansary on the world's highway, where philosophers of all nations might put up, and on his sign should be printed, "entertainment for man, but not for his beast. enter ye that have leisure and a quiet mind, who earnestly seek the right road." he is perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any i chance to know; the same yesterday and tomorrow. of yore we had sauntered and talked, and effectually put the world behind us; for he was pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus. whichever way we turned, it seemed that the heavens and the earth had met together, since he enhanced the beauty of the landscape. a blue-robed man, whose fittest roof is the overarching sky which reflects his serenity. i do not see how he can ever die; nature cannot spare him. having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. we waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not seared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which float through the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there. there we worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable here and there, and building castles in the air for which earth offered no worthy foundation. great looker! great expecter! to converse with whom was a new england night's entertainment. ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler i have spoken ofwe threeit expanded and racked my little house; i should not dare to say how many pounds' weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak;but i had enough of that kind of oakum already picked. there was one other with whom i had "solid seasons," long to be remembered, at his house in the village, and who looked in upon me from time to time; but i had no more for society there. there too, as everywhere, i sometimes expected the visitor who never comes. the vishnu purana says, "the house-holder is to remain at eventide in his courtyard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest." i often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the man approaching from the town. winter animals. when the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. when i crossed flint's pond, after it was covered with snow, though i had often paddled about and skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that i could think of nothing but baffin's bay. the lincoln hills rose up around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which i did not remember to have stood before; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers, or esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, and i did not know whether they were giants or pygmies. i took this course when i went to lecture in lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road and passing no house between my own hut and the lecture room. in goose pond, which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabins high above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when i crossed it. walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard where i could walk freely when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers were confined to their streets. there, far from the village street, and except at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh-bells, i slid and skated, as in a vast moose-yard well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines bent down with snow or bristling with icicles. for sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, i heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of walden wood, and quite familiar to me at last, though i never saw the bird while it was making it. i seldom opened my door in a winter evening without hearing it; hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo, sounded sonorously, and the first three syllables accented somewhat like how der do; or sometimes hoo, hoo only. one night in the beginning of winter, before the pond froze over, about nine o'clock, i was startled by the loud honking of a goose, and, stepping to the door, heard the sound of their wings like a tempest in the woods as they flew low over my house. they passed over the pond toward fair haven, seemingly deterred from settling by my light, their commodore honking all the while with a regular beat. suddenly an unmistakable cat owl from very near me, with the most harsh and tremendous voice i ever heard from any inhabitant of the woods, responded at regular intervals to the goose, as if determined to expose and disgrace this intruder from hudson's bay by exhibiting a greater compass and volume of voice in a native, and boo-hoo him out of concord horizon. what do you mean by alarming the citadel at this time of night consecrated to me? do you think i am ever caught napping at such an hour, and that i have not got lungs and a larynx as well as yourself? boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! it was one of the most thrilling discords i ever heard. and yet, if you had a discriminating ear, there were in it the elements of a concord such as these plains never saw nor heard. i also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and had dreams; or i was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide. sometimes i heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow-crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs outright and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men? they seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation. sometimes one came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated. usually the red squirrel (sciurus hudsonius) waked me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house, as if sent out of the woods for this purpose. in the course of the winter i threw out half a bushel of ears of sweet corn, which had not got ripe, on to the snow-crust by my door, and was amused by watching the motions of the various animals which were baited by it. in the twilight and the night the rabbits came regularly and made a hearty meal. all day long the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much entertainment by their manoeuvres. one would approach at first warily through the shrub oaks, running over the snow-crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were eyed on himfor all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girlwasting more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distancei never saw one walkand then suddenly, before you could say jack robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same timefor no reason that i could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, i suspect. at length he would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable ear, frisk about in the same uncertain trigonometrical way to the topmost stick of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the face, and there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs about; till at length he grew more dainty still and played with his food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his careless grasp and fell to the ground, when he would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it had life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again, or a new one, or be off; now thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in the wind. so the little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in a forenoon; till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one, considerably bigger than himself, and skilfully balancing it, he would set out with it to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, by the same zig-zag course and frequent pauses, scratching along with it as if it were too heavy for him and falling all the while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and horizontal, being determined to put it through at any rate;a singularly frivolous and whimsical fellow;and so he would get off with it to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and i would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woods in various directions. at length the jays arrive, whose discordant screams were heard long before, as they were warily making their approach an eighth of a mile off, and in a stealthy and sneaking manner they flit from tree to tree, nearer and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the squirrels have dropped. then, sitting on a pitch pine bough, they attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel which is too big for their throats and chokes them; and after great labor they disgorge it, and spend an hour in the endeavor to crack it by repeated blows with their bills. they were manifestly thieves, and i had not much respect for them; but the squirrels, though at first shy, went to work as if they were taking what was their own. meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearest twig and, placing them under their claws, hammered away at them with their little bills, as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently reduced for their slender throats. a little flock of these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out of my woodpile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day day day, or more rarely, in springlike days, a wiry summery phebe from the woodside. they were so familiar that at length one alighted on an armful of wood which i was carrying in, and pecked at the sticks without fear. i once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while i was hoeing in a village garden, and i felt that i was more distinguished by that circumstance than i should have been by any epaulet i could have worn. the squirrels also grew at last to be quite familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when that was the nearest way. when the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the end of winter, when the snow was melted on my south hillside and about my wood-pile, the partridges came out of the woods morning and evening to feed there. whichever side you walk in the woods the partridge bursts away on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs on high, which comes sifting down in the sunbeams like golden dust, for this brave bird is not to be scared by winter. it is frequently covered up by drifts, and, it is said, "sometimes plunges from on wing into the soft snow, where it remains concealed for a day or two." i used to start them in the open land also, where they had come out of the woods at sunset to "bud" the wild apple trees. they will come regularly every evening to particular trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, and the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little. i am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any rate. it is nature's own bird which lives on buds and diet-drink. in dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, i sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the hunting-horn at intervals, proving that man was in the rear. the woods ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their actaeon. and perhaps at evening i see the hunters returning with a single brush trailing from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking their inn. they tell me that if the fox would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe, or if be would run in a straight line away no foxhound could overtake him; but, having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till they come up, and when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where the hunters await him. sometimes, however, he will run upon a wall many rods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know that water will not retain his scent. a hunter told me that he once saw a fox pursued by hounds burst out on to walden when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to the same shore. ere long the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent. sometimes a pack hunting by themselves would pass my door, and circle round my house, and yelp and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by a species of madness, so that nothing could divert them from the pursuit. thus they circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, for a wise hound will forsake everything else for this. one day a man came to my hut from lexington to inquire after his hound that made a large track, and had been hunting for a week by himself. but i fear that he was not the wiser for all i told him, for every time i attempted to answer his questions he interrupted me by asking, "what do you do here?" he had lost a dog, but found a man. one old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe in walden once every year when the water was warmest, and at such times looked in upon me, told me that many years ago he took his gun one afternoon and went out for a cruise in walden wood; and as he walked the wayland road he heard the cry of hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped the wall into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other wall out of the road, and his swift bullet had not touched him. some way behind came an old hound and her three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own account, and disappeared again in the woods. late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the thick woods south of walden, he heard the voice of the hounds far over toward fair haven still pursuing the fox; and on they came, their hounding cry which made all the woods ring sounding nearer and nearer, now from well meadow, now from the baker farm. for a long time he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to a hunter's ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemn aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, keeping the round, leaving his pursuers far behind; and, leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he sat erect and listening, with his back to the hunter. for a moment compassion restrained the latter's arm; but that was a short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought his piece was levelled, and whang!the fox, rolling over the rock, lay dead on the ground. the hunter still kept his place and listened to the hounds. still on they came, and now the near woods resounded through all their aisles with their demoniac cry. at length the old hound burst into view with muzzle to the ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran directly to the rock; but, spying the dead fox, she suddenly ceased her hounding as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and round him in silence; and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother, were sobered into silence by the mystery. then the hunter came forward and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. they waited in silence while he skinned the fox, then followed the brush a while, and at length turned off into the woods again. that evening a weston squire came to the concord hunter's cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told how for a week they had been hunting on their own account from weston woods. the concord hunter told him what he knew and offered him the skin; but the other declined it and departed. he did not find his hounds that night, but the next day learned that they had crossed the river and put up at a farmhouse for the night, whence, having been well fed, they took their departure early in the morning. the hunter who told me this could remember one sam nutting, who used to hunt bears on fair haven ledges, and exchange their skins for rum in concord village; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose there. nutting had a famous foxhound named burgoynehe pronounced it buginewhich my informant used to borrow. in the "wast book" of an old trader of this town, who was also a captain, town-clerk, and representative, i find the following entry. jan. 18th, 1742-3, "john melven cr. by 1 grey fox 0-2-3"; they are not now found here; and in his ledger, feb, 7th, 1743, hezekiah stratton has credit "by 1/2 a catt skin 0-1-4 1/2"; of course, a wild-cat, for stratton was a sergeant in the old french war, and would not have got credit for hunting less noble game. credit is given for deerskins also, and they were daily sold. one man still preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told me the particulars of the hunt in which his uncle was engaged. the hunters were formerly a numerous and merry crew here. i remember well one gaunt nimrod who would catch up a leaf by the roadside and play a strain on it wilder and more melodious, if my memory serves me, than any hunting-horn. at midnight, when there was a moon, i sometimes met with hounds in my path prowling about the woods, which would skulk out of my way, as if afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till i had passed. squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts. there were scores of pitch pines around my house, from one to four inches in diameter, which had been gnawed by mice the previous wintera norwegian winter for them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they were obliged to mix a large proportion of pine bark with their other diet. these trees were alive and apparently flourishing at midsummer, and many of them had grown a foot, though completely girdled; but after another winter such were without exception dead. it is remarkable that a single mouse should thus be allowed a whole pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round instead of up and down it; but perhaps it is necessary in order to thin these trees, which are wont to grow up densely. the hares (lepus americanus) were very familiar. one had her form under my house all winter, separated from me only by the flooring, and she startled me each morning by her hasty departure when i began to stirthump, thump, thump, striking her head against the floor timbers in her hurry. they used to come round my door at dusk to nibble the potato parings which i had thrown out, and were so nearly the color of the round that they could hardly be distinguished when still. sometimes in the twilight i alternately lost and recovered sight of one sitting motionless under my window. when i opened my door in the evening, off they would go with a squeak and a bounce. near at hand they only excited my pity. one evening one sat by my door two paces from me, at first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. it looked as if nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes. its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. i took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over the snow-crust, straightening its body and its limbs into graceful length, and soon put the forest between me and itselfthe wild free venison, assenting its vigor and the dignity of nature. not without reason was its slenderness. such then was its nature. (lepus, levipes, light-foot, some think.) what is a country without rabbits and partridges? they are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the groundand to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. it is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves. the partridge and the rabbit are still sure to thrive, like true natives of the soil, whatever revolutions occur. if the forest is cut off, the sprouts and bushes which spring up afford them concealment, and they become more numerous than ever. that must be a poor country indeed that does not support a hare. our woods teem with them both, and around every swamp may be seen the partridge or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and horse-hair snares, which some cow-boy tends. the pond in winter. after a still winter night i awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which i had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as whathowwhenwhere? but there was dawning nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. i awoke to an answered question, to nature and daylight. the snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, forward! nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. she has long ago taken her resolution. "o prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. the night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether." then to my morning work. first i take an axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. after a cold and snowy night it needed a divining-rod to find it. every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more. standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, i cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, i look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads. early in the morning, while all things are crisp with frost, men come with fishing-reels and slender lunch, and let down their fine lines through the snowy field to take pickerel and perch; wild men, who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities than their townsmen, and by their goings and comings stitch towns together in parts where else they would be ripped. they sit and eat their luncheon in stout fearnaughts on the dry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial. they never consulted with books, and know and can tell much less than they have done. the things which they practice are said not yet to be known. here is one fishing for pickerel with grown perch for bait. you look into his pail with wonder as into a summer pond, as if he kept summer locked up at home, or knew where she had retreated. how, pray, did he get these in midwinter? oh, he got worms out of rotten logs since the ground froze, and so he caught them. his life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. the latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. he gets his living by barking trees. such a man has some right to fish, and i love to see nature carried out in him. the perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisher-man swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled. when i strolled around the pond in misty weather i was sometimes amused by the primitive mode which some ruder fisher-man had adopted. he would perhaps have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in the ice, which were four or five rods apart and an equal distance from the shore, and having fastened the end of the line to a stick to prevent its being pulled through, have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being pulled down, would show when he had a bite. these alders loomed through the mist at regular intervals as you walked half way round the pond. ah, the pickerel of walden! when i see them lying on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little hole to admit the water, i am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as arabia to our concord life. they possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. they are not green like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the walden water. they, of course, are walden all over and all through; are themselves small waldens in the animal kingdom, waldenses. it is surprising that they are caught herethat in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims. i never chanced to see its kind in any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of heaven. as i was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of walden pond, i surveyed it carefully, before the ice broke up, early in '46, with compass and chain and sounding line. there have been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly had no foundation for themselves. it is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it. i have visited two such bottomless ponds in one walk in this neighborhood. many have believed that walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe. some who have lain flat on the ice for a long time, looking down through the illusive medium, perchance with watery eyes into the bargain, and driven to hasty conclusions by the fear of catching cold in their breasts, have seen vast holes "into which a load of hay might be drived," if there were anybody to drive it, the undoubted source of the styx and entrance to the infernal regions from these parts. others have gone down from the village with a "fifty-six" and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bottom; for while the "fifty-six" was resting by the way, they were paying out the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly immeasurable capacity for marvellousness. but i can assure my readers that walden has a reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable, though at an unusual, depth. i fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a stone weighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accurately when the stone left the bottom, by having to pull so much harder before the water got underneath to help me. the greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet; to which may be added the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and seven. this is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it can be spared by the imagination. what if all ponds were shallow? would it not react on the minds of men? i am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol. while men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless. a factory-owner, bearing what depth i had found, thought that it could not be true, for, judging from his acquaintance with dams, sand would not lie at so steep an angle. but the deepest ponds are not so deep in proportion to their area as most suppose, and, if drained, would not leave very remarkable valleys. they are not like cups between the hills; for this one, which is so unusually deep for its area, appears in a vertical section through its centre not deeper than a shallow plate. most ponds, emptied, would leave a meadow no more hollow than we frequently see. william gilpin, who is so admirable in all that relates to landscapes, and usually so correct, standing at the head of loch fyne, in scotland, which he describes as "a bay of salt water, sixty or seventy fathoms deep, four miles in breadth, and about fifty miles long, surrounded by mountains, observes, "if we could have seen it immediately after the diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of nature occasioned it, before the waters gushed in, what a horrid chasm must it have appeared! "so high as heaved the tumid hills, so low down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep, capacious bed of waters." but if, using the shortest diameter of loch fyne, we apply these proportions to walden, which, as we have seen, appears already in a vertical section only like a shallow plate, it will appear four times as shallow. so much for the increased horrors of the chasm of loch fyne when emptied. no doubt many a smiling valley with its stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a "horrid chasm," from which the waters have receded, though it requires the insight and the far sight of the geologist to convince the unsuspecting inhabitants of this fact. often an inquisitive eye may detect the shores of a primitive lake in the low horizon hills, and no subsequent elevation of the plain have been necessary to conceal their history. but it is easiest, as they who work on the highways know, to find the hollows by the puddles after a shower. the amount of it is, the imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than nature goes. so, probably, the depth of the ocean will be found to be very inconsiderable compared with its breadth. as i sounded through the ice i could determine the shape of the bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors which do not freeze over, and i was surprised at its general regularity. in the deepest part there are several acres more level than almost any field which is exposed to the sun, wind, and plow. in one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the middle, i could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three or four inches. some are accustomed to speak of deep and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, but the effect of water under these circumstances is to level all inequalities. the regularity of the bottom and its conformity to the shores and the range of the neighboring hills were so perfect that a distant promontory betrayed itself in the soundings quite across the pond, and its direction could be determined by observing the opposite shore. cape becomes bar, and plain shoal, and valley and gorge deep water and channel. when i had mapped the pond by the scale of ten rods to an inch, and put down the soundings, more than a hundred in all, i observed this remarkable coincidence. having noticed that the number indicating the greatest depth was apparently in the centre of the map, i laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and then breadthwise, and found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest length intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth, notwithstanding that the middle is so nearly level, the outline of the pond far from regular, and the extreme length and breadth were got by measuring into the coves; and i said to myself, who knows but this hint would conduct to the deepest part of the ocean as well as of a pond or puddle? is not this the rule also for the height of mountains, regarded as the opposite of valleys? we know that a hill is not highest at its narrowest part. of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, were observed to have a bar quite across their mouths and deeper water within, so that the bay tended to be an expansion of water within the land not only horizontally but vertically, and to form a basin or independent pond, the direction of the two capes showing the course of the bar. every harbor on the sea-coast, also, has its bar at its entrance. in proportion as the mouth of the cove was wider compared with its length, the water over the bar was deeper compared with that in the basin. given, then, the length and breadth of the cove, and the character of the surrounding shore, and you have almost elements enough to make out a formula for all cases. in order to see how nearly i could guess, with this experience, at the deepest point in a pond, by observing the outlines of a surface and the character of its shores alone, i made a plan of white pond, which contains about forty-one acres, and, like this, has no island in it, nor any visible inlet or outlet; and as the line of greatest breadth fell very near the line of least breadth, where two opposite capes approached each other and two opposite bays receded, i ventured to mark a point a short distance from the latter line, but still on the line of greatest length, as the deepest. the deepest part was found to be within one hundred feet of this, still farther in the direction to which i had inclined, and was only one foot deeper, namely, sixty feet. of course, a stream running through, or an island in the pond, would make the problem much more complicated. if we knew all the laws of nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. the particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveller, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness. what i have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. it is the law of average. such a rule of the two diameters not only guides us toward the sun in the system and the heart in man, but draws lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man's particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height or depth of his character. perhaps we need only to know how his shores trend and his adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his depth and concealed bottom. if he is surrounded by mountainous circumstances, an achillean shore, whose peaks overshadow and are reflected in his bosom, they suggest a corresponding depth in him. but a low and smooth shore proves him shallow on that side. in our bodies, a bold projecting brow falls off to and indicates a corresponding depth of thought. also there is a bar across the entrance of our every cove, or particular inclination; each is our harbor for a season, in which we are detained and partially land-locked. these inclinations are not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and direction are determined by the promontories of the shore, the ancient axes of elevation. when this bar is gradually increased by storms, tides, or currents, or there is a subsidence of the waters, so that it reaches to the surface, that which was at first but an inclination in the shore in which a thought was harbored becomes an individual lake, cut off from the ocean, wherein the thought secures its own conditionschanges, perhaps, from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, or a marsh. at the advent of each individual into this life, may we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the surface somewhere? it is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them. as for the inlet or outlet of walden, i have not discovered any but rain and snow and evaporation, though perhaps, with a thermometer and a line, such places may be found, for where the water flows into the pond it will probably be coldest in summer and warmest in winter. when the ice-men were at work here in '46-7, the cakes sent to the shore were one day rejected by those who were stacking them up there, not being thick enough to lie side by side with the rest; and the cutters thus discovered that the ice over a small space was two or three inches thinner than elsewhere, which made them think that there was an inlet there. they also showed me in another place what they thought was a "leach-hole," through which the pond leaked out under a hill into a neighboring meadow, pushing me out on a cake of ice to see it. it was a small cavity under ten feet of water; but i think that i can warrant the pond not to need soldering till they find a worse leak than that. one has suggested, that if such a "leach-hole" should be found, its connection with the meadow, if any existed, might be proved by conveying some, colored powder or sawdust to the mouth of the hole, and then putting a strainer over the spring in the meadow, which would catch some of the particles carried through by the current. while i was surveying, the ice, which was sixteen inches thick, undulated under a slight wind like water. it is well known that a level cannot be used on ice. at one rod from the shore its greatest fluctuation, when observed by means of a level on land directed toward a graduated staff on the ice, was three quarters of an inch, though the ice appeared firmly attached to the shore. it was probably greater in the middle. who knows but if our instruments were delicate enough we might detect an undulation in the crust of the earth? when two legs of my level were on the shore and the third on the ice, and the sights were directed over the latter, a rise or fall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal amount made a difference of several feet on a tree across the pond. when i began to cut holes for sounding there were three or four inches of water on the ice under a deep snow which had sunk it thus far; but the water began immediately to run into these holes, and continued to run for two days in deep streams, which wore away the ice on every side, and contributed essentially, if not mainly, to dry the surface of the pond; for, as the water ran in, it raised and floated the ice. this was somewhat like cutting a hole in the bottom of a ship to let the water out. when such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, it is beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like a spider's web, what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the channels worn by the water flowing from all sides to a centre. sometimes, also, when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, i saw a double shadow of myself, one standing on the head of the other, one on the ice, the other on the trees or hillside. while yet it is cold january, and snow and ice are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to cool his summer drink; impressively, even pathetically, wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of july now in januarywearing a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not provided for. it may be that he lays up no treasures in this world which will cool his summer drink in the next. he cuts and saws the solid pond, unroofs the house of fishes, and carts off their very element and air, held fast by chains and stakes like corded wood, through the favoring winter air, to wintry cellars, to underlie the summer there. it looks like solidified azure, as, far off, it is drawn through the streets. these ice-cutters are a merry race, full of jest and sport, and when i went among them they were wont to invite me to saw pit-fashion with them, i standing underneath. in the winter of '46-7 there came a hundred men of hyperborean extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning, with many carloads of ungainly-looking farming tools-sleds, plows, drill-barrows, turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes, and each man was armed with a double-pointed pike-staff, such as is not described in the new-england farmer or the cultivator. i did not know whether they had come to sow a crop of winter rye, or some other kind of grain recently introduced from iceland. as i saw no manure, i judged that they meant to skim the land, as i had done, thinking the soil was deep and had lain fallow long enough. they said that a gentleman farmer, who was behind the scenes, wanted to double his money, which, as i understood, amounted to half a million already; but in order to cover each one of his dollars with another, he took off the only coat, ay, the skin itself, of walden pond in the midst of a hard winter. they went to work at once, plowing, barrowing, rolling, furrowing, in admirable order, as if they were bent on making this a model farm; but when i was looking sharp to see what kind of seed they dropped into the furrow, a gang of fellows by my side suddenly began to book up the virgin mould itself, with a peculiar jerk, clean down to the sand, or rather the waterfor it was a very springy soilindeed all the terra firma there wasand haul it away on sleds, and then i guessed that they must be cutting peat in a bog. so they came and went every day, with a peculiar shriek from the locomotive, from and to some point of the polar regions, as it seemed to me, like a flock of arctic snow-birds. but sometimes squaw walden had her revenge, and a hired man, walking behind his team, slipped through a crack in the ground down toward tartarus, and he who was so brave before suddenly became but the ninth part of a man, almost gave up his animal heat, and was glad to take refuge in my house, and acknowledged that there was some virtue in a stove; or sometimes the frozen soil took a piece of steel out of a plowshare, or a plow got set in the furrow and had to be cut out. to speak literally, a hundred irishmen, with yankee overseers, came from cambridge every day to get out the ice. they divided it into cakes by methods too well known to require description, and these, being sledded to the shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an ice platform, and raised by grappling irons and block and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so many barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by side, and row upon row, as if they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed to pierce the clouds. they told me that in a good day they could get out a thousand tons, which was the yield of about one acre. deep ruts and "cradle-holes" were worn in the ice, as on terra firma, by the passage of the sleds over the same track, and the horses invariably ate their oats out of cakes of ice hollowed out like buckets. they stacked up the cakes thus in the open air in a pile thirty-five feet high on one side and six or seven rods square, putting hay between the outside layers to exclude the air; for when the wind, though never so cold, finds a passage through, it will wear large cavities, leaving slight supports or studs only here and there, and finally topple it down. at first it looked like a vast blue fort or valhalla; but when they began to tuck the coarse meadow hay into the crevices, and this became covered with rime and icicles, it looked like a venerable moss-grown and hoary ruin, built of azure-tinted marble, the abode of winter, that old man we see in the almanachis shanty, as if he had a design to estivate with us. they calculated that not twenty-five per cent of this would reach its destination, and that two or three per cent would be wasted in the cars. however, a still greater part of this heap had a different destiny from what was intended; for, either because the ice was found not to keep so well as was expected, containing more air than usual, or for some other reason, it never got to market. this heap, made in the winter of '46-7 and estimated to contain ten thousand tons, was finally covered with hay and boards; and though it was unroofed the following july, and a part of it carried off, the rest remaining exposed to the sun, it stood over that summer and the next winter, and was not quite melted till september, 1848. thus the pond recovered the greater part. like the water, the walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. sometimes one of those great cakes slips from the ice-man's sled into the village street, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to all passers. i have noticed that a portion of walden which in the state of water was green will often, when frozen, appear from the same point of view blue. so the hollows about this pond will, sometimes, in the winter, be filled with a greenish water somewhat like its own, but the next day will have frozen blue. perhaps the blue color of water and ice is due to the light and air they contain, and the most transparent is the bluest. ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. they told me that they had some in the ice-houses at fresh pond five years old which was as good as ever. why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? it is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect. thus for sixteen days i saw from my window a hundred men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses and apparently all the implements of farming, such a picture as we see on the first page of the almanac; and as often as i looked out i was reminded of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable of the sower, and the like; and now they are all gone, and in thirty days more, probably, i shall look from the same window on the pure sea-green walden water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees, and sending up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces will appear that a man has ever stood there. perhaps i shall hear a solitary loon laugh as he dives and plumes himself, or shall see a lonely fisher in his boat, like a floating leaf, beholding his form reflected in the waves, where lately a hundred men securely labored. thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of charleston and new orleans, of madras and bombay and calcutta, drink at my well. in the morning i bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the bhagvat-geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and i doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. i lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there i meet the servant of the bramin, priest of brahma and vishnu and indra, who still sits in his temple on the ganges reading the vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. i meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. the pure walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the ganges. with favoring winds it is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of atlantis and the hesperides, makes the periplus of hanno, and, floating by ternate and tidore and the mouth of the persian gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the indian seas, and is landed in ports of which alexander only heard the names. spring spring. the opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. but such was not the effect on walden that year, for she had soon got a thick new garment to take the place of the old. this pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. i never knew it to open in the course of a winter, not excepting that of '52-3, which gave the ponds so severe a trial. it commonly opens about the first of april, a week or ten days later than flint's pond and fair haven, beginning to melt on the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. it indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. a severe cold of it few days duration in march may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of walden increases almost uninterruptedly. a thermometer thrust into the middle of walden on the 6th of march, 1847, stood at 32', or freezing point; near the shore at 33'; in the middle of flint's pond, the same day, at 32 1/2'; at a dozen rods from the shore, in shallow water, under ice a foot thick, at 36'. this difference of three and it half degrees between the temperature of the deep water and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a great proportion of it is comparatively shallow, show why it should break up so much sooner than walden. the ice in the shallowest part was at this time several inches thinner than in the middle. in midwinter the middle had been the warmest and the ice thinnest there. so, also, every one who has waded about the shores of the pond in summer must have perceived how much warmer the water is close to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, than a little distance out, and on the surface where it is deep, than near the bottom. in spring the sun not only exerts an influence through the increased temperature of the air and earth, but its heat passes through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from the bottom in shallow water, and so also warms the water and melts the under side of the ice, at the same time that it is melting it more directly above, making it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which it contains to extend themselves upward and downward until it is completely honeycombed, and at last disappears suddenly in a single spring rain. ice has its grain as well as wood, and when a cake begins to rot or "comb," that is, assume the appearance of honeycomb, whatever may be its position, the air cells are at right angles with what was the water surface. where there is a rock or a log rising near to the surface the ice over it is much thinner, and is frequently quite dissolved by this reflected heat; and i have been told that in the experiment at cambridge to freeze water in a shallow wooden pond, though the cold air circulated underneath, and so had access to both sides, the reflection of the sun from the bottom more than counterbalanced this advantage. when a warm rain in the middle of the winter melts off the snow ice from walden, and leaves a hard dark or transparent ice on the middle, there will be a strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more wide, about the shores, created by this reflected heat. also, as i have said, the bubbles themselves within the ice operate as burning-glasses to melt the ice beneath. the phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water is being warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning, the day is an epitome of the year. the night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. the cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. one pleasant morning after a cold night, february 24th, 1850, having gone to flint's pond to spend the day, i noticed with surprise, that when i struck the ice with the head of my axe, it resounded like a gong for many rods around, or as if i had struck on a tight drum-head. the pond began to boom about an hour after sunrise, when it felt the influence of the sun's rays slanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched itself and yawned like a waking man with a gradually increasing tumult, which was kept up three or four hours. it took a short siesta at noon, and boomed once more toward night, as the sun was withdrawing his influence. in the right stage of the weather a pond fires its evening gun with great regularity. but in the middle of the day, being full of cracks, and the air also being less elastic, it had completely lost its resonance, and probably fishes and muskrats could not then have been stunned by a blow on it. the fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting. the pond does not thunder every evening, and i cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though i may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive? yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should as surely as the buds expand in the spring. the earth is all alive and covered with papillae. the largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube. one attraction in coming to the woods to live was that i should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in. the ice in the pond at length begins to be honeycombed, and i can set my heel in it as i walk. fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; and i see how i shall get through the winter without adding to my woodpile, for large fires are no longer necessary. i am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. on the 13th of march, after i had heard the bluebird, song sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. as the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle was merely honeycombed and saturated with water, so that you could put your foot through it when six inches thick; but by the next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away. one year i went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely. in 1845 walden was first completely open on the 1st of april; in '46, the 25th of march; in '47, the 8th of april; in '51, the 28th of march; in '52, the 18th of april; in '53, the 23d of march; in '54, about the 7th of april. every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. when the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. so the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth. one old man, who has been a close observer of nature, and seems as thoroughly wise in regard to all her operations as if she had been put upon the stocks when he was a boy, and he had helped to lay her keelwho has come to his growth, and can hardly acquire more of natural lore if he should live to the age of methuselahtold meand i was surprised to hear him express wonder at any of nature's operations, for i thought that there were no secrets between themthat one spring day he took his gun and boat, and thought that he would have a little sport with the ducks. there was ice still on the meadows, but it was all gone out of the river, and he dropped down without obstruction from sudbury, where he lived, to fair haven pond, which he found, unexpectedly, covered for the most part with a firm field of ice. it was a warm day, and he was surprised to see so great a body of ice remaining. not seeing any ducks, he hid his boat on the north or back side of an island in the pond, and then concealed himself in the bushes on the south side, to await them. the ice was melted for three or four rods from the shore, and there was a smooth and warm sheet of water, with a muddy bottom, such as the ducks love, within, and he thought it likely that some would be along pretty soon. after he had lain still there about an hour he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound, but singularly grand and impressive, unlike anything he had ever heard, gradually swelling and increasing as if it would have a universal and memorable ending, a sullen rush and roar, which seemed to him all at once like the sound of a vast body of fowl coming in to settle there, and, seizing his gun, he started up in haste and excited; but he found, to his surprise, that the whole body of the ice had started while he lay there, and drifted in to the shore, and the sound he had heard was made by its edge grating on the shoreat first gently nibbled and crumbled off, but at length heaving up and scattering its wrecks along the island to a considerable height before it came to a standstill. at length the sun's rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks, and the sun, dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off. few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad through which i passed on my way to the village, a phenomenon not very common on so large a scale, though the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material must have been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. the material was sand of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors, commonly mixed with a little clay. when the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before. innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of currents, and half way that of vegetation. as it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopard's paws or birds' feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. it is a truly grotesque vegetation, whose forms and color we see imitated in bronze, a sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical than acanthus, chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle to future geologists. the whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light. the various shades of the sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing the different iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish. when the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out flatter into strands, the separate streams losing their semicylindrical form and gradually becoming more flat and broad, running together as they are more moist, till they form an almost flat sand, still variously and beautifully shaded, but in which you call trace the original forms of vegetation; till at length, in the water itself, they are converted into banks, like those formed off the mouths of rivers, and the forms of vegetation are lost in the ripplemarks on the bottom. the whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. what makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. when i see on the one side the inert bankfor the sun acts on one side firstand on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, i am affected as if in a peculiar sense i stood in the laboratory of the artist who made the world and mehad come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. i feel as if i were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. you find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. no wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. the atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. the overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. internally, whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat (leibo, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; lobos, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words); externally a dry thin leaf, even as the f and v are a pressed and dried b. the radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b (single-lobed, or b, double-lobed), with the liquid l behind it pressing it forward. in globe, glb, the guttural g adds to the meaning the capacity of the throat. the feathers and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves. thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. the very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit. even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of waterplants have impressed on the watery mirror. the whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils. when the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, but in the morning the streams will start once more and branch and branch again into a myriad of others. you here see perchance how blood-vessels are formed. if you look closely you observe that first there pushes forward from the thawing mass a stream of softened sand with a drop-like point, like the ball of the finger, feeling its way slowly and blindly downward, until at last with more heat and moisture, as the sun gets higher, the most fluid portion, in its effort to obey the law to which the most inert also yields, separates from the latter and forms for itself a meandering channel or artery within that, in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing like lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another, and ever and anon swallowed up in the sand. it is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its channel. such are the sources of rivers. in the silicious matter which the water deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finer soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. what is man but a mass of thawing clay? the ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. the fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? the ear may be regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, umbilicaria, on the side of the head, with its lobe or drop. the lip-labium, from labor (?)laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. the nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite. the chin is a still larger drop, the confluent dripping of the face. the cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences would have caused it to flow yet farther. thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of nature. the maker of this earth but patented a leaf. what champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last? this phenomenon is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of vineyards. true, it is somewhat excrementitious in its character, and there is no end to the heaps of liver, lights, and bowels, as if the globe were turned wrong side outward; but this suggests at least that nature has some bowels, and there again is mother of humanity. this is the frost coming out of the ground; this is spring. it precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. i know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. it convinces me that earth is still in her swaddling-clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. there is nothing inorganic. these foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that nature is "in full blast" within. the earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruitnot a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. its throes will heave our exuviae from their graves. you may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. and not only it, but the institutions upon it are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter. ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a dormant quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the sea with music, or migrates to other climes in clouds. thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than thor with his hammer. the one melts, the other but breaks in pieces. when the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winter-lifeeverlasting, goldenrods, pinweeds, and graceful wild grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently than in summer even, as if their beauty was not ripe till then; even cotton-grass, cat-tails, mulleins, johnswort, hardhack, meadowsweet, and other strong-stemmed plants, those unexhausted granaries which entertain the earliest birdsdecent weeds, at least, which widowed nature wears. i am particularly attracted by the arching and sheaflike top of the wool-grass; it brings back the summer to our winter memories, and is among the forms which art loves to copy, and which, in the vegetable kingdom, have the same relation to types already in the mind of man that astronomy has. it is an antique style, older than greek or egyptian. many of the phenomena of winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. we are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of summer. at the approach of spring the red squirrels got under my house, two at a time, directly under my feet as i sat reading or writing, and kept up the queerest chuckling and chirruping and vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever were heard; and when i stamped they only chirruped the louder, as if past all fear and respect in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them. no, you don'tchickareechickaree. they were wholly deaf to my arguments, or failed to perceive their force, and fell into a strain of invective that was irresistible. the first sparrow of spring! the year beginning with younger hope than ever! the faint silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the song sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell! what at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations? the brooks sing carols and glees to the spring. the marsh hawk, sailing low over the meadow, is already seeking the first slimy life that awakes. the sinking sound of melting snow is heard in all dells, and the ice dissolves apace in the ponds. the grass flames up on the hillsides like a spring fire"et primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribus evocata"as if the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun; not yellow but green is the color of its flame;the symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year's hay with the fresh life below. it grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground. it is almost identical with that, for in the growing days of june, when the rills are dry, the grass-blades are their channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green stream, and the mower draws from it betimes their winter supply. so our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity. walden is melting apace. there is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still at the east end. a great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. i hear a song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shoreolit, olit, olitchip, chip, chip, che charche wiss, wiss, wiss. he too is helping to crack it. how handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! it is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. but the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface beyond. it is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shorea silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. such is the contrast between winter and spring. walden was dead and is alive again. but this spring it broke up more steadily, as i have said. the change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. it is seemingly instantaneous at last. suddenly an influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain. i looked out the window, and lo! where yesterday was cold gray ice there lay the transparent pond already calm and full of hope as in a summer evening, reflecting a summer evening sky in its bosom, though none was visible overhead, as if it had intelligence with some remote horizon. i heard a robin in the distance, the first i had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note i shall not forget for many a thousand morethe same sweet and powerful song as of yore. o the evening robin, at the end of a new england summer day! if i could ever find the twig he sits upon! i mean he; i mean the twig. this at least is not the turdus migratorius. the pitch pines and shrub oaks about my house, which had so long drooped, suddenly resumed their several characters, looked brighter, greener, and more erect and alive, as if effectually cleansed and restored by the rain. i knew that it would not rain any more. you may tell by looking at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its winter is past or not. as it grew darker, i was startled by the honking of geese flying low over the woods, like weary travellers getting in late from southern lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual consolation. standing at my door, i could bear the rush of their wings; when, driving toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. so i came in, and shut the door, and passed my first spring night in the woods. in the morning i watched the geese from the door through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, so large and tumultuous that walden appeared like an artificial pond for their amusement. but when i stood on the shore they at once rose up with a great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and when they had got into rank circled about over my head, twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight to canada, with a regular honk from the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier pools. a "plump" of ducks rose at the same time and took the route to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins. for a week i heard the circling, groping clangor of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they could sustain. in april the pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks, and in due time i heard the martins twittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed that the township contained so many that it could afford me any, and i fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. in almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of nature. as every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of cosmos out of chaos and the realization of the golden age. "eurus ad auroram nabathaeaque regna recessit, persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis." "the east-wind withdrew to aurora and the nabathean kingdom, and the persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays. man was born. whether that artificer of things, the origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed; or the earth, being recent and lately sundered from the high ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven." a single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. so our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. we should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. we loiter in winter while it is already spring. in a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven. such a day is a truce to vice. while such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. you may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, re-creating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how it is exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. there is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south hillside echoes to no vulgar jest. you see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another year's life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. even he has entered into the joy of his lord. why the jailer does not leave open his prison doorswhy the judge does not dismis his casewhy the preacher does not dismiss his congregation! it is because they do not obey the hint which god gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all. "a return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil and beneficent breath of the morning, causes that in respect to the love of virtue and the hatred of vice, one approaches a little the primitive nature of man, as the sprouts of the forest which has been felled. in like manner the evil which one does in the interval of a day prevents the germs of virtues which began to spring up again from developing themselves and destroys them. "after the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many times from developing themselves, then the beneficent breath of evening does not suffice to preserve them. as soon as the breath of evening does not suffice longer to preserve them, then the nature of man does not differ much from that of the brute. men seeing the nature of this man like that of the brute, think that he has never possessed the innate faculty of reason. are those the true and natural sentiments of man?" "the golden age was first created, which without any avenger spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude. punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read on suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear the words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger. not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended to the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world, and mortals knew no shores but their own. there was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm blasts soothed the flowers born without seed." on the 29th of april, as i was fishing from the bank of the river near the nine-acre-corner bridge, standing on the quaking grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, i heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play with their fingers, when, looking up, i observed a very slight and graceful hawk, like a nighthawk, alternately soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing the under side of its wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell. this sight reminded me of falconry and what nobleness and poetry are associated with that sport. the merlin it seemed to me it might be called: but i care not for its name. it was the most ethereal flight i had ever witnessed. it did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks, but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot on terra firma. it appeared to have no companion in the universe-sporting there aloneand to need none but the morning and the ether with which it played. it was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely beneath it. where was the parent which hatched it, its kindred, and its father in the heavens? the tenant of the air, it seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some time in the crevice of a crag;or was its native nest made in the angle of a cloud, woven of the rainbow's trimmings and the sunset sky, and lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth? its eyry now some cliffy cloud. beside this i got a rare mess of golden and silver and bright cupreous fishes, which looked like a string of jewels. ah! i have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. there needs no stronger proof of immortality. all things must live in such a light. o death, where was thy sting? o grave, where was thy victory, then? our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. we need the tonic of wildnessto wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. at the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. we can never have enough of nature. we must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. we need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. we are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us, and deriving health and strength from the repast. there was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of nature was my compensation for this. i love to see that nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp-tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! with the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. the impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. compassion is a very untenable ground. it must be expeditious. its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped. early in may, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly on the hillsides here and there. on the third or fourth of may i saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month i heard the whip-poor-will, the brown thrasher, the veery, the wood pewee, the chewink, and other birds. i had heard the wood thrush long before. the phoebe had already come once more and looked in at my door and window, to see if my house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining herself on humming winds with clinched talons, as if she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises. the sulphur-like pollen of the pitch pine soon covered the pond and the stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could have collected a barrelful. this is the "sulphur showers" we bear of. even in calidas' drama of sacontala, we read of "rills dyed yellow with the golden dust of the lotus." and so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass. thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. i finally left walden september 6th, 1847. conclusion conclusion. to the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery. thank heaven, here is not all the world. the buckeye does not grow in new england, and the mockingbird is rarely heard here. the wild goose is more of a cosmopolite than we; he breaks his fast in canada, takes a luncheon in the ohio, and plumes himself for the night in a southern bayou. even the bison, to some extent, keeps pace with the seasons cropping the pastures of the colorado only till a greener and sweeter grass awaits him by the yellowstone. yet we think that if rail fences are pulled down, and stone walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided. if you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to tierra del fuego this summer: but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless. the universe is wider than our views of it. yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like curious passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum. the other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. our voyaging is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. one hastens to southern africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after. how long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could? snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sport; but i trust it would be nobler game to shoot one's self. "direct your eye right inward, and you'll find a thousand regions in your mind yet undiscovered. travel them, and be expert in home-cosmography." what does africawhat does the west stand for? is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. is it the source of the nile, or the niger, or the mississippi, or a northwest passage around this continent, that we would find? are these the problems which most concern mankind? is franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? does mr. grinnell know where he himself is? be rather the mungo park, the lewis and clark and frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudeswith shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? nay, be a columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. they love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. patriotism is a maggot in their heads. what was the meaning of that south-sea exploring expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private seal the atlantic and pacific ocean of one's being alone. "erret, et extremos alter scrutetur iberos. plus habet hic vitae, plus habet ille viae." let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish australians. i have more of god, they more of the road. it is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in zanzibar. yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some "symmes' hole" by which to get at the inside at last. england and france, spain and portugal, gold coast and slave coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to india. if you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the sphinx to dash her bead against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and explore thyself. herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. start now on that farthest western way, which does not pause at the mississippi or the pacific, nor conduct toward a wornout china or japan, but leads on direct, a tangent to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too. it is said that mirabeau took to highway robbery "to ascertain what degree of resolution was necessary in order to place one's self in formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society." he declared that "a soldier who fights in the ranks does not require half so much courage as a foot-pad""that honor and religion have never stood in the way of a well-considered and a firm resolve." this was manly, as the world goes; and yet it was idle, if not desperate. a saner man would have found himself often enough "in formal opposition" to what are deemed "the most sacred laws of society," through obedience to yet more sacred laws, and so have tested his resolution without going out of his way. it is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such. i left the woods for as good a reason as i went there. perhaps it seemed to me that i had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. it is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. i had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is eve or six years since i trod it, it is still quite distinct. it is true, i fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. the surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. how worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! i did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there i could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. i do not wish to go below now. i learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. he will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. in proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. if you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. now put the foundations under them. it is a ridiculous demand which england and america make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. neither men nor toadstools grow so. as if that were important, and there were not enough to understand you without them. as if nature could support but one order of understandings, could not sustain birds as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping things, and hush and whoa, which bright can understand, were the best english. as if there were safety in stupidity alone. i fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which i have been convinced. extra vagance! it depends on how you are yarded. the migrating buffalo, which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cowyard fence, and runs after her calf, in milking time. i desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for i am convinced that i cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression. who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever? in view of the future or possible, we should live quite laxly and undefined in front our outlines dim and misty on that side; as our shadows reveal an insensible perspiration toward the sun. the volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement. their truth is instantly translated; its literal monument alone remains. the words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures. why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? the commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring. sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half-witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit. some would find fault with the morning red, if they ever got up early enough. "they pretend," as i hear, "that the verses of kabir have four different senses; illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric doctrine of the vedas"; but in this part of the world it is considered a ground for complaint if a man's writings admit of more than one interpretation. while england endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally? i do not suppose that i have attained to obscurity, but i should be proud if no more fatal fault were found with my pages on this score than was found with the walden ice. southern customers objected to its blue color, which is the evidence of its purity, as if it were muddy, and preferred the cambridge ice, which is white, but tastes of weeds. the purity men love is like the mists which envelop the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond. some are dinning in our ears that we americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or even the elizabethan men. but what is that to the purpose? a living dog is better than a dead lion. shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? if a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. it is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. shall he turn his spring into summer? if the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? we will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not? there was an artist in the city of kouroo who was disposed to strive after perfection. one day it came into his mind to make a staff. having considered that in an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter, he said to himself, it shall be perfect in all respects, though i should do nothing else in my life. he proceeded instantly to the forest for wood, being resolved that it should not be made of unsuitable material; and as he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his friends gradually deserted him, for they grew old in their works and died, but he grew not older by a moment. his singleness of purpose and resolution, and his elevated piety, endowed him, without his knowledge, with perennial youth. as he made no compromise with time, time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance because he could not overcome him. before he had found a stock in all respects suitable the city of kouroo was a hoary ruin, and he sat on one of its mounds to peel the stick. before he had given it the proper shape the dynasty of the candahars was at an end, and with the point of the stick he wrote the name of the last of that race in the sand, and then resumed his work. by the time he had smoothed and polished the staff kalpa was no longer the pole-star; and ere he had put on the ferule and the head adorned with precious stones, brahma had awoke and slumbered many times. but why do i stay to mention these things? when the finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes of the astonished artist into the fairest of all the creations of brahma. he had made a new system in making a staff, a world with fun and fair proportions; in which, though the old cities and dynasties had passed away, fairer and more glorious ones had taken their places. and now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his feet, that, for him and his work, the former lapse of time had been an illusion, and that no more time had elapsed than is required for a single scintillation from the brain of brahma to fall on and inflame the tinder of a mortal brain. the material was pure, and his art was pure; how could the result be other than wonderful? no face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. this alone wears well. for the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. through an infinity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out. in sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is. say what you have to say, not what you ought. any truth is better than make-believe. tom hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "tell the tailors," said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch." his companion's prayer is forgotten. however mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. it is not so bad as you are. it looks poorest when you are richest. the fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. love your life, poor as it is. you may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. the setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. i do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. the town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. maybe they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. turn the old; return to them. things do not change; we change. sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. god will see that you do not want society. if i were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while i had my thoughts about me. the philosopher said: "from an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought." do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. the shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, "and lo! creation widens to our view." we are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of croesus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. it is life near the bone where it is sweetest. you are defended from being a trifler. no man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul. i live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. it is the noise of my contemporaries. my neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but i am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the daily times. the interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. they tell me of california and texas, of england and the indies, of the hon. mr.-of georgia or of massachusetts, all transient and fleeting phenomena, till i am ready to leap from their court-yard like the mameluke bey. i delight to come to my bearingsnot walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the builder of the universe, if i maynot to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial nineteenth century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. what are men celebrating? they are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. god is only the president of the day, and webster is his orator. i love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me;not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh lessnot suppose a case, but take the case that is; to travel the only path i can, and that on which no power can resist me. it affords me no satisfaction to commerce to spring an arch before i have got a solid foundation. let us not play at kittly-benders. there is a solid bottom everywhere. we read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. the boy replied that it had. but presently the traveller's horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, "i thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom." "so it has," answered the latter, "but you have not got half way to it yet." so it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it. only what is thought, said, or done at a certain rare coincidence is good. i would not be one of those who will foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed would keep me awake nights. give me a hammer, and let me feel for the furring. do not depend on the putty. drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfactiona work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the muse. so will help you god, and so only. every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work. rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. i sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and i went away hungry from the inhospitable board. the hospitality was as cold as the ices. i thought that there was no need of ice to freeze them. they talked to me of the age of the wine and the fame of the vintage; but i thought of an older, a newer, and purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they had not got, and could not buy. the style, the house and grounds and "entertainment" pass for nothing with me. i called on the king, but he made me wait in his hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for hospitality. there was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. his manners were truly regal. i should have done better had i called on him. how long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? as if one were to begin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought! consider the china pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. this generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in boston and london and paris and rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction. there are the records of the philosophical societies, and the public eulogies of great men! it is the good adam contemplating his own virtue. "yes, we have done great deeds, and sung divine songs, which shall never die"that is, as long as we can remember them. the learned societies and great men of assyriawhere are they? what youthful philosophers and experimentalists we are! there is not one of my readers who has yet lived a whole human life. these may be but the spring months in the life of the race. if we have had the seven-years' itch, we have not seen the seventeen-year locust yet in concord. we are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. most have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. we know not where we are. beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our time. yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on the surface. truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits! as i stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and bide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, i am reminded of the greater benefactor and intelligence that stands over me the human insect. there is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. i need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. there are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean. we think that we can change our clothes only. it is said that the british empire is very large and respectable, and that the united states are a first-rate power. we do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the british empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind. who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will next come out of the ground? the government of the world i live in was not framed, like that of britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine. the life in us is like the water in the river. it may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. it was not always dry land where we dwell. i see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of new england, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in connecticut, and afterward in massachusettsfrom an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tombheard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive boardmay unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last! i do not say that john or jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. the light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. only that day dawns to which we are awake. there is more day to dawn. the sun is but a morning star. the end . 1842 the pit and the pendulum by edgar allen poe impia tortorum longos hic turba furores sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit. sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro, mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent. (quatrain composed for the gates of a market to he erected upon the site of the jacobin club house at paris.) i was sick --sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and i was permitted to sit, i felt that my senses were leaving me. the sentence --the dread sentence of death --was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. after that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. it conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution --perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill wheel. this only for a brief period; for presently i heard no more. yet, for a while, i saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! i saw the lips of the black-robed judges. they appeared to me white --whiter than the sheet upon which i trace these words --and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness --of immoveable resolution --of stern contempt of human torture. i saw that the decrees of what to me was fate, were still issuing from those lips. i saw them writhe with a deadly locution. i saw them fashion the syllables of my name; and i shuddered because no sound succeeded. i saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment. and then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. at first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white and slender angels who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and i felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if i had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and i saw that from them there would be no help. and then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. the thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into hades. then silence, and stillness, night were the universe. i had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost. what of it there remained i will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all was not lost. in the deepest slumber --no! in delirium --no! in a swoon --no! in death --no! even in the grave all is not lost. else there is no immortality for man. arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. in the return to life from the swoon there are two stages; first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical, existence. it seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could recall the impressions of the first, we should find these impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. and that gulf is --what? how at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? but if the impressions of what i have termed the first stage, are not, at will, recalled, yet, after long interval, do they not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they come? he who has never swooned, is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower --is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested his attention. amid frequent and thoughtful endeavors to remember; amid earnest struggles to regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into which my soul had lapsed, there have been moments when i have dreamed of success; there have been brief, very brief periods when i have conjured up remembrances which the lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only to that condition of seeming unconsciousness. these shadows of memory tell, indistinctly, of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence down --down --still down --till a hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the interminableness of the descent. they tell also of a vague horror at my heart, on account of that heart's unnatural stillness. then comes a sense of sudden motionlessness throughout all things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train!) had outrun, in their descent, the limits of the limitless, and paused from the wearisomeness of their toil. after this i call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness --the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things. very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound --the tumultuous motion of the heart, and, in my ears, the sound of its beating. then a pause in which all is blank. then again sound, and motion, and touch --a tingling sensation pervading my frame. then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought --a condition which lasted long. then, very suddenly, thought, and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavor to comprehend my true state. then a strong desire to lapse into insensibility. then a rushing revival of soul and a successful effort to move. and now a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon. then entire forgetfulness of all that followed; of all that a later day and much earnestness of endeavor have enabled me vaguely to recall. so far, i had not opened my eyes. i felt that i lay upon my back, unbound. i reached out my hand, and it fell heavily upon something damp and hard. there i suffered it to remain for many minutes, while i strove to imagine where and what i could be. i longed, yet dared not to employ my vision. i dreaded the first glance at objects around me. it was not that i feared to look upon things horrible, but that i grew aghast lest there should be nothing to see. at length, with a wild desperation at heart, i quickly unclosed my eyes. my worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. the blackness of eternal night encompassed me. i struggled for breath. the intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. the atmosphere was intolerably close. i still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. i brought to mind the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real condition. the sentence had passed; and it appeared to me that a very long interval of time had since elapsed. yet not for a moment did i suppose myself actually dead. such a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in fiction, is altogether inconsistent with real existence; --but where and in what state was i? the condemned to death, i knew, perished usually at the autos-da-fe, and one of these had been held on the very night of the day of my trial. had i been remanded to my dungeon, to await the next sacrifice, which would not take place for many months? this i at once saw could not be. victims had been in immediate demand. moreover, my dungeon, as well as all the condemned cells at toledo, had stone floors, and light was not altogether excluded. a fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart, and for a brief period, i once more relapsed into insensibility. upon recovering, i at once started to my feet, trembling convulsively in every fibre. i thrust my arms wildly above and around me in all directions. i felt nothing; yet dreaded to move a step, lest i should be impeded by the walls of a tomb. perspiration burst from every pore, and stood in cold big beads upon my forehead. the agony of suspense grew at length intolerable, and i cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended, and my eyes straining from their sockets, in the hope of catching some faint ray of light. i proceeded for many paces; but still all was blackness and vacancy. i breathed more freely. it seemed evident that mine was not, at least, the most hideous of fates. and now, as i still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of toledo. of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated --fables i had always deemed them --but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper. was i left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate, perhaps even more fearful, awaited me? that the result would be death, and a death of more than customary bitterness, i knew too well the character of my judges to doubt. the mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted me. my outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction. it was a wall, seemingly of stone masonry --very smooth, slimy, and cold. i followed it up; stepping with all the careful distrust with which certain antique narratives had inspired me. this process, however, afforded me no means of ascertaining the dimensions of my dungeon; as i might make its circuit, and return to the point whence i set out, without being aware of the fact; so perfectly uniform seemed the wall. i therefore sought the knife which had been in my pocket, when led into the inquisitorial chamber; but it was gone; my clothes had been exchanged for a wrapper of coarse serge. i had thought of forcing the blade in some minute crevice of the masonry, so as to identify my point of departure. the difficulty, nevertheless, was but trivial; although, in the disorder of my fancy, it seemed at first insuperable. i tore a part of the hem from the robe and placed the fragment at full length, and at right angles to the wall. in groping my way around the prison, i could not fail to encounter this rag upon completing the circuit. so, at least i thought: but i had not counted upon the extent of the dungeon, or upon my own weakness. the ground was moist and slippery. i staggered onward for some time, when i stumbled and fell. my excessive fatigue induced me to remain prostrate; and sleep soon overtook me as i lay. upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, i found beside me a loaf and a pitcher with water. i was too much exhausted to reflect upon this circumstance, but ate and drank with avidity. shortly afterward, i resumed my tour around the prison, and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the serge. up to the period when i fell i had counted fifty-two paces, and upon resuming my walk, i had counted forty-eight more; --when i arrived at the rag. there were in all, then, a hundred paces; and, admitting two paces to the yard, i presumed the dungeon to be fifty yards in circuit. i had met, however, with many angles in the wall, and thus i could form no guess at the shape of the vault; for vault i could not help supposing it to be. i had little object --certainly no hope these researches; but a vague curiosity prompted me to continue them. quitting the wall, i resolved to cross the area of the enclosure. at first i proceeded with extreme caution, for the floor, although seemingly of solid material, was treacherous with slime. at length, however, i took courage, and did not hesitate to step firmly; endeavoring to cross in as direct a line as possible. i had advanced some ten or twelve paces in this manner, when the remnant of the torn hem of my robe became entangled between my legs. i stepped on it, and fell violently on my face. in the confusion attending my fall, i did not immediately apprehend a somewhat startling circumstance, which yet, in a few seconds afterward, and while i still lay prostrate, arrested my attention. it was this --my chin rested upon the floor of the prison, but my lips and the upper portion of my head, although seemingly at a less elevation than the chin, touched nothing. at the same time my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my nostrils. i put forward my arm, and shuddered to find that i had fallen at the very brink of a circular pit, whose extent, of course, i had no means of ascertaining at the moment. groping about the masonry just below the margin, i succeeded in dislodging a small fragment, and let it fall into the abyss. for many seconds i hearkened to its reverberations as it dashed against the sides of the chasm in its descent; at length there was a sullen plunge into water, succeeded by loud echoes. at the same moment there came a sound resembling the quick opening, and as rapid closing of a door overhead, while a faint gleam of light flashed suddenly through the gloom, and as suddenly faded away. i saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated myself upon the timely accident by which i had escaped. another step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more. and the death just avoided, was of that very character which i had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the inquisition. to the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. i had been reserved for the latter. by long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until i trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me. shaking in every limb, i groped my way back to the wall; resolving there to perish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now pictured many in various positions about the dungeon. in other conditions of mind i might have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of these abysses; but now i was the veriest of cowards. neither could i forget what i had read of these pits --that the sudden extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible plan. agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long hours; but at length i again slumbered. upon arousing, i found by my side, as before, a loaf and a pitcher of water. a burning thirst consumed me, and i emptied the vessel at a draught. it must have been drugged; for scarcely had i drunk, before i became irresistibly drowsy. a deep sleep fell upon me --a sleep like that of death. how long it lasted of course, i know not; but when, once again, i unclosed my eyes, the objects around me were visible. by a wild sulphurous lustre, the origin of which i could not at first determine, i was enabled to see the extent and aspect of the prison. in its size i had been greatly mistaken. the whole circuit of its walls did not exceed twenty-five yards. for some minutes this fact occasioned me a world of vain trouble; vain indeed! for what could be of less importance, under the terrible circumstances which environed me, then the mere dimensions of my dungeon? but my soul took a wild interest in trifles, and i busied myself in endeavors to account for the error i had committed in my measurement. the truth at length flashed upon me. in my first attempt at exploration i had counted fifty-two paces, up to the period when i fell; i must then have been within a pace or two of the fragment of serge; in fact, i had nearly performed the circuit of the vault. i then slept, and upon awaking, i must have returned upon my steps --thus supposing the circuit nearly double what it actually was. my confusion of mind prevented me from observing that i began my tour with the wall to the left, and ended it with the wall to the right. i had been deceived, too, in respect to the shape of the enclosure. in feeling my way i had found many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great irregularity; so potent is the effect of total darkness upon one arousing from lethargy or sleep! the angles were simply those of a few slight depressions, or niches, at odd intervals. the general shape of the prison was square. what i had taken for masonry seemed now to be iron, or some other metal, in huge plates, whose sutures or joints occasioned the depression. the entire surface of this metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which the charnel superstition of the monks has given rise. the figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms, and other more really fearful images, overspread and disfigured the walls. i observed that the outlines of these monstrosities were sufficiently distinct, but that the colors seemed faded and blurred, as if from the effects of a damp atmosphere. i now noticed the floor, too, which was of stone. in the centre yawned the circular pit from whose jaws i had escaped; but it was the only one in the dungeon. all this i saw indistinctly and by much effort: for my personal condition had been greatly changed during slumber. i now lay upon my back, and at full length, on a species of low framework of wood. to this i was securely bound by a long strap resembling a surcingle. it passed in many convolutions about my limbs and body, leaving at liberty only my head, and my left arm to such extent that i could, by dint of much exertion, supply myself with food from an earthen dish which lay by my side on the floor. i saw, to my horror, that the pitcher had been removed. i say to my horror; for i was consumed with intolerable thirst. this thirst it appeared to be the design of my persecutors to stimulate: for the food in the dish was meat pungently seasoned. looking upward, i surveyed the ceiling of my prison. it was some thirty or forty feet overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. in one of its panels a very singular figure riveted my whole attention. it was the painted figure of time as he is commonly represented, save that, in lieu of a scythe, he held what, at a casual glance, i supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum such as we see on antique clocks. there was something, however, in the appearance of this machine which caused me to regard it more attentively. while i gazed directly upward at it (for its position was immediately over my own) i fancied that i saw it in motion. in an instant afterward the fancy was confirmed. its sweep was brief, and of course slow. i watched it for some minutes, somewhat in fear, but more in wonder. wearied at length with observing its dull movement, i turned my eyes upon the other objects in the cell. a slight noise attracted my notice, and, looking to the floor, i saw several enormous rats traversing it. they had issued from the well, which lay just within view to my right. even then, while i gazed, they came up in troops, hurriedly, with ravenous eyes, allured by the scent of the meat. from this it required much effort and attention to scare them away. it might have been half an hour, perhaps even an hour, (for in cast my i could take but imperfect note of time) before i again cast my eyes upward. what i then saw confounded and amazed me. the sweep of the pendulum had increased in extent by nearly a yard. as a natural consequence, its velocity was also much greater. but what mainly disturbed me was the idea that had perceptibly descended. i now observed --with what horror it is needless to say --that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor. like a razor also, it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from the edge into a solid and broad structure above. it was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole hissed as it swung through the air. i could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity in torture. my cognizance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial agents --the pit whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself --the pit, typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the ultima thule of all their punishments. the plunge into this pit i had avoided by the merest of accidents, i knew that surprise, or entrapment into torment, formed an important portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths. having failed to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss; and thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder destruction awaited me. milder! i half smiled in my agony as i thought of such application of such a term. what boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal, during which i counted the rushing vibrations of the steel! inch by inch --line by line --with a descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed ages --down and still down it came! days passed --it might have been that many days passed --ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. the odor of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. i prayed --i wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. i grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. and then i fell suddenly calm, and lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child at some rare bauble. there was another interval of utter insensibility; it was brief; for, upon again lapsing into life there had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum. but it might have been long; for i knew there were demons who took note of my swoon, and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure. upon my recovery, too, i felt very --oh, inexpressibly sick and weak, as if through long inanition. even amid the agonies of that period, the human nature craved food. with painful effort i outstretched my left arm as far as my bonds permitted, and took possession of the small remnant which had been spared me by the rats. as i put a portion of it within my lips, there rushed to my mind a half formed thought of joy --of hope. yet what business had i with hope? it was, as i say, a half formed thought --man has many such which are never completed. i felt that it was of joy --of hope; but felt also that it had perished in its formation. in vain i struggled to perfect --to regain it. long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. i was an imbecile --an idiot. the vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. i saw that the crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart. it would fray the serge of my robe --it would return and repeat its operations --again --and again. notwithstanding terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more) and the its hissing vigor of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the fraying of my robe would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish. and at this thought i paused. i dared not go farther than this reflection. i dwelt upon it with a pertinacity of attention --as if, in so dwelling, i could arrest here the descent of the steel. i forced myself to ponder upon the sound of the crescent as it should pass across the garment --upon the peculiar thrilling sensation which the friction of cloth produces on the nerves. i pondered upon all this frivolity until my teeth were on edge. down --steadily down it crept. i took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its downward with its lateral velocity. to the right --to the left --far and wide --with the shriek of a damned spirit; to my heart with the stealthy pace of the tiger! i alternately laughed and howled as the one or the other idea grew predominant. down --certainly, relentlessly down! it vibrated within three inches of my bosom! i struggled violently, furiously, to free my left arm. this was free only from the elbow to the hand. i could reach the latter, from the platter beside me, to my mouth, with great effort, but no farther. could i have broken the fastenings above the elbow, i would have seized and attempted to arrest the pendulum. i might as well have attempted to arrest an avalanche! down --still unceasingly --still inevitably down! i gasped and struggled at each vibration. i shrunk convulsively at its every sweep. my eyes followed its outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair; they closed themselves spasmodically at the descent, although death would have been a relief, oh! how unspeakable! still i quivered in every nerve to think how slight a sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen, glistening axe upon my bosom. it was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver --the frame to shrink. it was hope --the hope that triumphs on the rack --that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons of the inquisition. i saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel in actual contact with my robe, and with this observation there suddenly came over my spirit all the keen, collected calmness of despair. for the first time during many hours --or perhaps days --i thought. it now occurred to me that the bandage, or surcingle, which enveloped me, was unique. i was tied by no separate cord. the first stroke of the razorlike crescent athwart any portion of the band, would so detach it that it might be unwound from my person by means of my left hand. but how fearful, in that case, the proximity of the steel! the result of the slightest struggle how deadly! was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had not foreseen and provided for this possibility! was it probable that the bandage crossed my bosom in the track of the pendulum? dreading to find my faint, and, as it seemed, in last hope frustrated, i so far elevated my head as to obtain a distinct view of my breast. the surcingle enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions--save in the path of the destroying crescent. scarcely had i dropped my head back into its original position, when there flashed upon my mind what i cannot better describe than as the unformed half of that idea of deliverance to which i have previously alluded, and of which a moiety only floated indeterminately through my brain when i raised food to my burning lips. the whole thought was now present --feeble, scarcely sane, scarcely definite, --but still entire. i proceeded at once, with the nervous energy of despair, to attempt its execution. for many hours the immediate vicinity of the low framework upon which i lay, had been literally swarming with rats. they were wild, bold, ravenous; their red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited but for motionlessness on my part to make me their prey. "to what food," i thought, "have they been accustomed in the well?" they had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a small remnant of the contents of the dish. i had fallen into an habitual see-saw, or wave of the hand about the platter: and, at length, the unconscious uniformity of the movement deprived it of effect. in their voracity the vermin frequently fastened their sharp fangs in my fingers. with the particles of the oily and spicy viand which now remained, i thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever i could reach it; then, raising my hand from the floor, i lay breathlessly still. at first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change --at the cessation of movement. they shrank alarmedly back; many sought the well. but this was only for a moment. i had not counted in vain upon their voracity. observing that i remained without motion, one or two of the boldest leaped upon the frame-work, and smelt at the surcingle. this seemed the signal for a general rush. forth from the well they hurried in fresh troops. they clung to the wood --they overran it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person. the measured movement of the pendulum disturbed them not at all. avoiding its strokes they busied themselves with the anointed bandage. they pressed --they swarmed upon me in ever accumulating heaps. they writhed upon my throat; their cold lips sought my own; i was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled, with a heavy clamminess, my heart. yet one minute, and i felt that the struggle would be over. plainly i perceived the loosening of the bandage. i knew that in more than one place it must be already severed. with a more than human resolution i lay still. nor had i erred in my calculations --nor had i endured in vain. i at length felt that i was free. the surcingle hung in ribands from my body. but the stroke of the pendulum already pressed upon my bosom. it had divided the serge of the robe. it had cut through the linen beneath. twice again it swung, and a sharp sense of pain shot through every nerve. but the moment of escape had arrived. at a wave of my hand my deliverers hurried tumultuously away. with a steady movement --cautious, sidelong, shrinking, and slow --i slid from the embrace of the bandage and beyond the reach of the scimitar. for the moment, at least, i was free. free! --and in the grasp of the inquisition! i had scarcely stepped from my wooden bed of horror upon the stone floor of the prison, when the motion of the hellish machine ceased and i beheld it drawn up, by some invisible force, through the ceiling. this was a lesson which i took desperately to heart. my every motion was undoubtedly watched. free! --i had but escaped death in one form of agony, to be delivered unto worse than death in some other. with that thought i rolled my eves nervously around on the barriers of iron that hemmed me in. something unusual --some change which, at first, i could not appreciate distinctly --it was obvious, had taken place in the apartment. for many minutes of a dreamy and trembling abstraction, i busied myself in vain, unconnected conjecture. during this period, i became aware, for the first time, of the origin of the sulphurous light which illumined the cell. it proceeded from a fissure, about half an inch in width, extending entirely around the prison at the base of the walls, which thus appeared, and were, completely separated from the floor. i endeavored, but of course in vain, to look through the aperture. as i arose from the attempt, the mystery of the alteration in the chamber broke at once upon my understanding. i have observed that, although the outlines of the figures upon the walls were sufficiently distinct, yet the colors seemed blurred and indefinite. these colors had now assumed, and were momentarily assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that gave to the spectral and fiendish portraitures an aspect that might have thrilled even firmer nerves than my own. demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me in a thousand directions, where none had been visible before, and gleamed with the lurid lustre of a fire that i could not force my imagination to regard as unreal. unreal! --even while i breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the vapour of heated iron! a suffocating odour pervaded the prison! a deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies! a richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. i panted! i gasped for breath! there could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors --oh! most unrelenting! oh! most demoniac of men! i shrank from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell. amid the thought of the fiery destruction that impended, the idea of the coolness of the well came over my soul like balm. i rushed to its deadly brink. i threw my straining vision below. the glare from the enkindled roof illumined its inmost recesses. yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning of what i saw. at length it forced --it wrestled its way into my soul --it burned itself in upon my shuddering reason. --oh! for a voice to speak! --oh! horror! --oh! any horror but this! with a shriek, i rushed from the margin, and buried my face in my hands --weeping bitterly. the heat rapidly increased, and once again i looked up, shuddering as with a fit of the ague. there had been a second change in the cell --and now the change was obviously in the form. as before, it was in vain that i, at first, endeavoured to appreciate or understand what was taking place. but not long was i left in doubt. the inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold escape, and there was to be no more dallying with the king of terrors. the room had been square. i saw that two of its iron angles were now acute --two, consequently, obtuse. the fearful difference quickly increased with a low rumbling or moaning sound. in an instant the apartment had shifted its form into that of a lozenge. but the alteration stopped not here-i neither hoped nor desired it to stop. i could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "death," i said, "any death but that of the pit!" fool! might i have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? could i resist its glow? or, if even that, could i withstand its pressure and now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for contemplation. its centre, and of course, its greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. i shrank back --but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward. at length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. i struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair. i felt that i tottered upon the brink --i averted my eyes - there was a discordant hum of human voices! there was a loud blast as of many trumpets! there was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! the fiery walls rushed back! an outstretched arm caught my own as i fell, fainting, into the abyss. it was that of general lasalle. the french army had entered toledo. the inquisition was in the hands of its enemies. -the end. macbeth dramatis personae duncan king of scotland. malcolm | | his sons. donalbain | macbeth | | generals of the king's army. banquo | macduff | | lennox | | ross | | noblemen of scotland. menteith | | angus | | caithness | fleance son to banquo. siward earl of northumberland, general of the english forces. young siward his son. seyton an officer attending on macbeth. boy, son to macduff. (son:) an english doctor. (doctor:) a scotch doctor. (doctor:) a soldier. a porter. an old man lady macbeth: lady macduff: gentlewoman attending on lady macbeth. (gentlewoman:) hecate: three witches. (first witch:) (second witch:) (third witch:) apparitions. (first apparition:) (second apparition:) (third apparition:) lords, gentlemen, officers, soldiers, murderers, attendants, and messengers. (lord:) (sergeant:) (servant:) (first murderer:) (second murderer:) (third murderer:) (messenger:) scene scotland: england. macbeth act i scene i a desert place. [thunder and lightning. enter three witches] first witch when shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? second witch when the hurlyburly's done, when the battle's lost and won. third witch that will be ere the set of sun. first witch where the place? second witch upon the heath. third witch there to meet with macbeth. first witch i come, graymalkin! second witch paddock calls. third witch anon. all fair is foul, and foul is fair: hover through the fog and filthy air. [exeunt] macbeth act i scene ii a camp near forres. [alarum within. enter duncan, malcolm, donalbain, lennox, with attendants, meeting a bleeding sergeant] duncan what bloody man is that? he can report, as seemeth by his plight, of the revolt the newest state. malcolm this is the sergeant who like a good and hardy soldier fought 'gainst my captivity. hail, brave friend! say to the king the knowledge of the broil as thou didst leave it. sergeant doubtful it stood; as two spent swimmers, that do cling together and choke their art. the merciless macdonwald- worthy to be a rebel, for to that the multiplying villanies of nature do swarm upon him--from the western isles of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied; and fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, show'd like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak: for brave macbeth--well he deserves that name- disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel, which smoked with bloody execution, like valour's minion carved out his passage till he faced the slave; which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps, and fix'd his head upon our battlements. duncan o valiant cousin! worthy gentleman! sergeant as whence the sun 'gins his reflection shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break, so from that spring whence comfort seem'd to come discomfort swells. mark, king of scotland, mark: no sooner justice had with valour arm'd compell'd these skipping kerns to trust their heels, but the norweyan lord surveying vantage, with furbish'd arms and new supplies of men began a fresh assault. duncan dismay'd not this our captains, macbeth and banquo? sergeant yes; as sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion. if i say sooth, i must report they were as cannons overcharged with double cracks, so they doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe: except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds, or memorise another golgotha, i cannot tell. but i am faint, my gashes cry for help. duncan so well thy words become thee as thy wounds; they smack of honour both. go get him surgeons. [exit sergeant, attended] who comes here? [enter ross] malcolm the worthy thane of ross. lennox what a haste looks through his eyes! so should he look that seems to speak things strange. ross god save the king! duncan whence camest thou, worthy thane? ross from fife, great king; where the norweyan banners flout the sky and fan our people cold. norway himself, with terrible numbers, assisted by that most disloyal traitor the thane of cawdor, began a dismal conflict; till that bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof, confronted him with self-comparisons, point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm. curbing his lavish spirit: and, to conclude, the victory fell on us. duncan great happiness! ross that now sweno, the norways' king, craves composition: nor would we deign him burial of his men till he disbursed at saint colme's inch ten thousand dollars to our general use. duncan no more that thane of cawdor shall deceive our bosom interest: go pronounce his present death, and with his former title greet macbeth. ross i'll see it done. duncan what he hath lost noble macbeth hath won. [exeunt] macbeth act i scene iii a heath near forres. [thunder. enter the three witches] first witch where hast thou been, sister? second witch killing swine. third witch sister, where thou? first witch a sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap, and munch'd, and munch'd, and munch'd:- 'give me,' quoth i: 'aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries. her husband's to aleppo gone, master o' the tiger: but in a sieve i'll thither sail, and, like a rat without a tail, i'll do, i'll do, and i'll do. second witch i'll give thee a wind. first witch thou'rt kind. third witch and i another. first witch i myself have all the other, and the very ports they blow, all the quarters that they know i' the shipman's card. i will drain him dry as hay: sleep shall neither night nor day hang upon his pent-house lid; he shall live a man forbid: weary se'nnights nine times nine shall he dwindle, peak and pine: though his bark cannot be lost, yet it shall be tempest-tost. look what i have. second witch show me, show me. first witch here i have a pilot's thumb, wreck'd as homeward he did come. [drum within] third witch a drum, a drum! macbeth doth come. all the weird sisters, hand in hand, posters of the sea and land, thus do go about, about: thrice to thine and thrice to mine and thrice again, to make up nine. peace! the charm's wound up. [enter macbeth and banquo] macbeth so foul and fair a day i have not seen. banquo how far is't call'd to forres? what are these so wither'd and so wild in their attire, that look not like the inhabitants o' the earth, and yet are on't? live you? or are you aught that man may question? you seem to understand me, by each at once her chappy finger laying upon her skinny lips: you should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so. macbeth speak, if you can: what are you? first witch all hail, macbeth! hail to thee, thane of glamis! second witch all hail, macbeth, hail to thee, thane of cawdor! third witch all hail, macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter! banquo good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear things that do sound so fair? i' the name of truth, are ye fantastical, or that indeed which outwardly ye show? my noble partner you greet with present grace and great prediction of noble having and of royal hope, that he seems rapt withal: to me you speak not. if you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear your favours nor your hate. first witch hail! second witch hail! third witch hail! first witch lesser than macbeth, and greater. second witch not so happy, yet much happier. third witch thou shalt get kings, though thou be none: so all hail, macbeth and banquo! first witch banquo and macbeth, all hail! macbeth stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more: by sinel's death i know i am thane of glamis; but how of cawdor? the thane of cawdor lives, a prosperous gentleman; and to be king stands not within the prospect of belief, no more than to be cawdor. say from whence you owe this strange intelligence? or why upon this blasted heath you stop our way with such prophetic greeting? speak, i charge you. [witches vanish] banquo the earth hath bubbles, as the water has, and these are of them. whither are they vanish'd? macbeth into the air; and what seem'd corporal melted as breath into the wind. would they had stay'd! banquo were such things here as we do speak about? or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner? macbeth your children shall be kings. banquo you shall be king. macbeth and thane of cawdor too: went it not so? banquo to the selfsame tune and words. who's here? [enter ross and angus] ross the king hath happily received, macbeth, the news of thy success; and when he reads thy personal venture in the rebels' fight, his wonders and his praises do contend which should be thine or his: silenced with that, in viewing o'er the rest o' the selfsame day, he finds thee in the stout norweyan ranks, nothing afeard of what thyself didst make, strange images of death. as thick as hail came post with post; and every one did bear thy praises in his kingdom's great defence, and pour'd them down before him. angus we are sent to give thee from our royal master thanks; only to herald thee into his sight, not pay thee. ross and, for an earnest of a greater honour, he bade me, from him, call thee thane of cawdor: in which addition, hail, most worthy thane! for it is thine. banquo what, can the devil speak true? macbeth the thane of cawdor lives: why do you dress me in borrow'd robes? angus who was the thane lives yet; but under heavy judgment bears that life which he deserves to lose. whether he was combined with those of norway, or did line the rebel with hidden help and vantage, or that with both he labour'd in his country's wreck, i know not; but treasons capital, confess'd and proved, have overthrown him. macbeth [aside] glamis, and thane of cawdor! the greatest is behind. [to ross and angus] thanks for your pains. [to banquo] do you not hope your children shall be kings, when those that gave the thane of cawdor to me promised no less to them? banquo that trusted home might yet enkindle you unto the crown, besides the thane of cawdor. but 'tis strange: and oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray's in deepest consequence. cousins, a word, i pray you. macbeth [aside] two truths are told, as happy prologues to the swelling act of the imperial theme.--i thank you, gentlemen. [aside] this supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill, why hath it given me earnest of success, commencing in a truth? i am thane of cawdor: if good, why do i yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs, against the use of nature? present fears are less than horrible imaginings: my thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, shakes so my single state of man that function is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is but what is not. banquo look, how our partner's rapt. macbeth [aside] if chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, without my stir. banquo new horrors come upon him, like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould but with the aid of use. macbeth [aside] come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day. banquo worthy macbeth, we stay upon your leisure. macbeth give me your favour: my dull brain was wrought with things forgotten. kind gentlemen, your pains are register'd where every day i turn the leaf to read them. let us toward the king. think upon what hath chanced, and, at more time, the interim having weigh'd it, let us speak our free hearts each to other. banquo very gladly. macbeth till then, enough. come, friends. [exeunt] macbeth act i scene iv forres. the palace. [flourish. enter duncan, malcolm, donalbain, lennox, and attendants] duncan is execution done on cawdor? are not those in commission yet return'd? malcolm my liege, they are not yet come back. but i have spoke with one that saw him die: who did report that very frankly he confess'd his treasons, implored your highness' pardon and set forth a deep repentance: nothing in his life became him like the leaving it; he died as one that had been studied in his death to throw away the dearest thing he owed, as 'twere a careless trifle. duncan there's no art to find the mind's construction in the face: he was a gentleman on whom i built an absolute trust. [enter macbeth, banquo, ross, and angus] o worthiest cousin! the sin of my ingratitude even now was heavy on me: thou art so far before that swiftest wing of recompense is slow to overtake thee. would thou hadst less deserved, that the proportion both of thanks and payment might have been mine! only i have left to say, more is thy due than more than all can pay. macbeth the service and the loyalty i owe, in doing it, pays itself. your highness' part is to receive our duties; and our duties are to your throne and state children and servants, which do but what they should, by doing every thing safe toward your love and honour. duncan welcome hither: i have begun to plant thee, and will labour to make thee full of growing. noble banquo, that hast no less deserved, nor must be known no less to have done so, let me enfold thee and hold thee to my heart. banquo there if i grow, the harvest is your own. duncan my plenteous joys, wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves in drops of sorrow. sons, kinsmen, thanes, and you whose places are the nearest, know we will establish our estate upon our eldest, malcolm, whom we name hereafter the prince of cumberland; which honour must not unaccompanied invest him only, but signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine on all deservers. from hence to inverness, and bind us further to you. macbeth the rest is labour, which is not used for you: i'll be myself the harbinger and make joyful the hearing of my wife with your approach; so humbly take my leave. duncan my worthy cawdor! macbeth [aside] the prince of cumberland! that is a step on which i must fall down, or else o'erleap, for in my way it lies. stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires: the eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. [exit] duncan true, worthy banquo; he is full so valiant, and in his commendations i am fed; it is a banquet to me. let's after him, whose care is gone before to bid us welcome: it is a peerless kinsman. [flourish. exeunt] macbeth act i scene v inverness. macbeth's castle. [enter lady macbeth, reading a letter] lady macbeth 'they met me in the day of success: and i have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. when i burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. whiles i stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all-hailed me 'thane of cawdor;' by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with 'hail, king that shalt be!' this have i thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. lay it to thy heart, and farewell.' glamis thou art, and cawdor; and shalt be what thou art promised: yet do i fear thy nature; it is too full o' the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great; art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly, that wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false, and yet wouldst wrongly win: thou'ldst have, great glamis, that which cries 'thus thou must do, if thou have it; and that which rather thou dost fear to do than wishest should be undone.' hie thee hither, that i may pour my spirits in thine ear; and chastise with the valour of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden round, which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem to have thee crown'd withal. [enter a messenger] what is your tidings? messenger the king comes here to-night. lady macbeth thou'rt mad to say it: is not thy master with him? who, were't so, would have inform'd for preparation. messenger so please you, it is true: our thane is coming: one of my fellows had the speed of him, who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more than would make up his message. lady macbeth give him tending; he brings great news. [exit messenger] the raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of duncan under my battlements. come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between the effect and it! come to my woman's breasts, and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature's mischief! come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry 'hold, hold!' [enter macbeth] great glamis! worthy cawdor! greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter! thy letters have transported me beyond this ignorant present, and i feel now the future in the instant. macbeth my dearest love, duncan comes here to-night. lady macbeth and when goes hence? macbeth to-morrow, as he purposes. lady macbeth o, never shall sun that morrow see! your face, my thane, is as a book where men may read strange matters. to beguile the time, look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't. he that's coming must be provided for: and you shall put this night's great business into my dispatch; which shall to all our nights and days to come give solely sovereign sway and masterdom. macbeth we will speak further. lady macbeth only look up clear; to alter favour ever is to fear: leave all the rest to me. [exeunt] macbeth act i scene vi before macbeth's castle. [hautboys and torches. enter duncan, malcolm, donalbain, banquo, lennox, macduff, ross, angus, and attendants] duncan this castle hath a pleasant seat; the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses. banquo this guest of summer, the temple-haunting martlet, does approve, by his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle: where they most breed and haunt, i have observed, the air is delicate. [enter lady macbeth] duncan see, see, our honour'd hostess! the love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love. herein i teach you how you shall bid god 'ild us for your pains, and thank us for your trouble. lady macbeth all our service in every point twice done and then done double were poor and single business to contend against those honours deep and broad wherewith your majesty loads our house: for those of old, and the late dignities heap'd up to them, we rest your hermits. duncan where's the thane of cawdor? we coursed him at the heels, and had a purpose to be his purveyor: but he rides well; and his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him to his home before us. fair and noble hostess, we are your guest to-night. lady macbeth your servants ever have theirs, themselves and what is theirs, in compt, to make their audit at your highness' pleasure, still to return your own. duncan give me your hand; conduct me to mine host: we love him highly, and shall continue our graces towards him. by your leave, hostess. [exeunt] macbeth act i scene vii macbeth's castle. [hautboys and torches. enter a sewer, and divers servants with dishes and service, and pass over the stage. then enter macbeth] macbeth if it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly: if the assassination could trammel up the consequence, and catch with his surcease success; that but this blow might be the be-all and the end-all here, but here, upon this bank and shoal of time, we'ld jump the life to come. but in these cases we still have judgment here; that we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor: this even-handed justice commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice to our own lips. he's here in double trust; first, as i am his kinsman and his subject, strong both against the deed; then, as his host, who should against his murderer shut the door, not bear the knife myself. besides, this duncan hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been so clear in his great office, that his virtues will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against the deep damnation of his taking-off; and pity, like a naked new-born babe, striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed upon the sightless couriers of the air, shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, that tears shall drown the wind. i have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other. [enter lady macbeth] how now! what news? lady macbeth he has almost supp'd: why have you left the chamber? macbeth hath he ask'd for me? lady macbeth know you not he has? macbeth we will proceed no further in this business: he hath honour'd me of late; and i have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people, which would be worn now in their newest gloss, not cast aside so soon. lady macbeth was the hope drunk wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since? and wakes it now, to look so green and pale at what it did so freely? from this time such i account thy love. art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valour as thou art in desire? wouldst thou have that which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem, letting 'i dare not' wait upon 'i would,' like the poor cat i' the adage? macbeth prithee, peace: i dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none. lady macbeth what beast was't, then, that made you break this enterprise to me? when you durst do it, then you were a man; and, to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man. nor time nor place did then adhere, and yet you would make both: they have made themselves, and that their fitness now does unmake you. i have given suck, and know how tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: i would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, and dash'd the brains out, had i so sworn as you have done to this. macbeth if we should fail? lady macbeth we fail! but screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail. when duncan is asleep- whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey soundly invite him--his two chamberlains will i with wine and wassail so convince that memory, the warder of the brain, shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason a limbeck only: when in swinish sleep their drenched natures lie as in a death, what cannot you and i perform upon the unguarded duncan? what not put upon his spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt of our great quell? macbeth bring forth men-children only; for thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males. will it not be received, when we have mark'd with blood those sleepy two of his own chamber and used their very daggers, that they have done't? lady macbeth who dares receive it other, as we shall make our griefs and clamour roar upon his death? macbeth i am settled, and bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat. away, and mock the time with fairest show: false face must hide what the false heart doth know. [exeunt] macbeth act ii scene i court of macbeth's castle. [enter banquo, and fleance bearing a torch before him] banquo how goes the night, boy? fleance the moon is down; i have not heard the clock. banquo and she goes down at twelve. fleance i take't, 'tis later, sir. banquo hold, take my sword. there's husbandry in heaven; their candles are all out. take thee that too. a heavy summons lies like lead upon me, and yet i would not sleep: merciful powers, restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature gives way to in repose! [enter macbeth, and a servant with a torch] give me my sword. who's there? macbeth a friend. banquo what, sir, not yet at rest? the king's a-bed: he hath been in unusual pleasure, and sent forth great largess to your offices. this diamond he greets your wife withal, by the name of most kind hostess; and shut up in measureless content. macbeth being unprepared, our will became the servant to defect; which else should free have wrought. banquo all's well. i dreamt last night of the three weird sisters: to you they have show'd some truth. macbeth i think not of them: yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve, we would spend it in some words upon that business, if you would grant the time. banquo at your kind'st leisure. macbeth if you shall cleave to my consent, when 'tis, it shall make honour for you. banquo so i lose none in seeking to augment it, but still keep my bosom franchised and allegiance clear, i shall be counsell'd. macbeth good repose the while! banquo thanks, sir: the like to you! [exeunt banquo and fleance] macbeth go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, she strike upon the bell. get thee to bed. [exit servant] is this a dagger which i see before me, the handle toward my hand? come, let me clutch thee. i have thee not, and yet i see thee still. art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? i see thee yet, in form as palpable as this which now i draw. thou marshall'st me the way that i was going; and such an instrument i was to use. mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, or else worth all the rest; i see thee still, and on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not so before. there's no such thing: it is the bloody business which informs thus to mine eyes. now o'er the one halfworld nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates pale hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder, alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. with tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design moves like a ghost. thou sure and firm-set earth, hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear thy very stones prate of my whereabout, and take the present horror from the time, which now suits with it. whiles i threat, he lives: words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. [a bell rings] i go, and it is done; the bell invites me. hear it not, duncan; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell. [exit] macbeth act ii scene ii the same. [enter lady macbeth] lady macbeth that which hath made them drunk hath made me bold; what hath quench'd them hath given me fire. hark! peace! it was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, which gives the stern'st good-night. he is about it: the doors are open; and the surfeited grooms do mock their charge with snores: i have drugg'd their possets, that death and nature do contend about them, whether they live or die. macbeth [within] who's there? what, ho! lady macbeth alack, i am afraid they have awaked, and 'tis not done. the attempt and not the deed confounds us. hark! i laid their daggers ready; he could not miss 'em. had he not resembled my father as he slept, i had done't. [enter macbeth] my husband! macbeth i have done the deed. didst thou not hear a noise? lady macbeth i heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. did not you speak? macbeth when? lady macbeth now. macbeth as i descended? lady macbeth ay. macbeth hark! who lies i' the second chamber? lady macbeth donalbain. macbeth this is a sorry sight. [looking on his hands] lady macbeth a foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. macbeth there's one did laugh in's sleep, and one cried 'murder!' that they did wake each other: i stood and heard them: but they did say their prayers, and address'd them again to sleep. lady macbeth there are two lodged together. macbeth one cried 'god bless us!' and 'amen' the other; as they had seen me with these hangman's hands. listening their fear, i could not say 'amen,' when they did say 'god bless us!' lady macbeth consider it not so deeply. macbeth but wherefore could not i pronounce 'amen'? i had most need of blessing, and 'amen' stuck in my throat. lady macbeth these deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will make us mad. macbeth methought i heard a voice cry 'sleep no more! macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, the death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast,- lady macbeth what do you mean? macbeth still it cried 'sleep no more!' to all the house: 'glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore cawdor shall sleep no more; macbeth shall sleep no more.' lady macbeth who was it that thus cried? why, worthy thane, you do unbend your noble strength, to think so brainsickly of things. go get some water, and wash this filthy witness from your hand. why did you bring these daggers from the place? they must lie there: go carry them; and smear the sleepy grooms with blood. macbeth i'll go no more: i am afraid to think what i have done; look on't again i dare not. lady macbeth infirm of purpose! give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil. if he do bleed, i'll gild the faces of the grooms withal; for it must seem their guilt. [exit. knocking within] macbeth whence is that knocking? how is't with me, when every noise appals me? what hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes. will all great neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? no, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas in incarnadine, making the green one red. [re-enter lady macbeth] lady macbeth my hands are of your colour; but i shame to wear a heart so white. [knocking within] i hear a knocking at the south entry: retire we to our chamber; a little water clears us of this deed: how easy is it, then! your constancy hath left you unattended. [knocking within] hark! more knocking. get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, and show us to be watchers. be not lost so poorly in your thoughts. macbeth to know my deed, 'twere best not know myself. [knocking within] wake duncan with thy knocking! i would thou couldst! [exeunt] macbeth act ii scene iii the same. [knocking within. enter a porter] porter here's a knocking indeed! if a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key. [knocking within] knock, knock, knock! who's there, i' the name of beelzebub? here's a farmer, that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enow about you; here you'll sweat for't. [knocking within] knock, knock! who's there, in the other devil's name? faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for god's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: o, come in, equivocator. [knocking within] knock, knock, knock! who's there? faith, here's an english tailor come hither, for stealing out of a french hose: come in, tailor; here you may roast your goose. [knocking within] knock, knock; never at quiet! what are you? but this place is too cold for hell. i'll devil-porter it no further: i had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire. [knocking within] anon, anon! i pray you, remember the porter. [opens the gate] [enter macduff and lennox] macduff was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed, that you do lie so late? porter 'faith sir, we were carousing till the second cock: and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things. macduff what three things does drink especially provoke? porter marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him. macduff i believe drink gave thee the lie last night. porter that it did, sir, i' the very throat on me: but i requited him for his lie; and, i think, being too strong for him, though he took up my legs sometime, yet i made a shift to cast him. macduff is thy master stirring? [enter macbeth] our knocking has awaked him; here he comes. lennox good morrow, noble sir. macbeth good morrow, both. macduff is the king stirring, worthy thane? macbeth not yet. macduff he did command me to call timely on him: i have almost slipp'd the hour. macbeth i'll bring you to him. macduff i know this is a joyful trouble to you; but yet 'tis one. macbeth the labour we delight in physics pain. this is the door. macduff i'll make so bold to call, for 'tis my limited service. [exit] lennox goes the king hence to-day? macbeth he does: he did appoint so. lennox the night has been unruly: where we lay, our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say, lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death, and prophesying with accents terrible of dire combustion and confused events new hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird clamour'd the livelong night: some say, the earth was feverous and did shake. macbeth 'twas a rough night. lennox my young remembrance cannot parallel a fellow to it. [re-enter macduff] macduff o horror, horror, horror! tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee! macbeth | | what's the matter. lennox | macduff confusion now hath made his masterpiece! most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope the lord's anointed temple, and stole thence the life o' the building! macbeth what is 't you say? the life? lennox mean you his majesty? macduff approach the chamber, and destroy your sight with a new gorgon: do not bid me speak; see, and then speak yourselves. [exeunt macbeth and lennox] awake, awake! ring the alarum-bell. murder and treason! banquo and donalbain! malcolm! awake! shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit, and look on death itself! up, up, and see the great doom's image! malcolm! banquo! as from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites, to countenance this horror! ring the bell. [bell rings] [enter lady macbeth] lady macbeth what's the business, that such a hideous trumpet calls to parley the sleepers of the house? speak, speak! macduff o gentle lady, 'tis not for you to hear what i can speak: the repetition, in a woman's ear, would murder as it fell. [enter banquo] o banquo, banquo, our royal master 's murder'd! lady macbeth woe, alas! what, in our house? banquo too cruel any where. dear duff, i prithee, contradict thyself, and say it is not so. [re-enter macbeth and lennox, with ross] macbeth had i but died an hour before this chance, i had lived a blessed time; for, from this instant, there 's nothing serious in mortality: all is but toys: renown and grace is dead; the wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of. [enter malcolm and donalbain] donalbain what is amiss? macbeth you are, and do not know't: the spring, the head, the fountain of your blood is stopp'd; the very source of it is stopp'd. macduff your royal father 's murder'd. malcolm o, by whom? lennox those of his chamber, as it seem'd, had done 't: their hands and faces were an badged with blood; so were their daggers, which unwiped we found upon their pillows: they stared, and were distracted; no man's life was to be trusted with them. macbeth o, yet i do repent me of my fury, that i did kill them. macduff wherefore did you so? macbeth who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral, in a moment? no man: the expedition my violent love outrun the pauser, reason. here lay duncan, his silver skin laced with his golden blood; and his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature for ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers unmannerly breech'd with gore: who could refrain, that had a heart to love, and in that heart courage to make 's love known? lady macbeth help me hence, ho! macduff look to the lady. malcolm [aside to donalbain] why do we hold our tongues, that most may claim this argument for ours? donalbain [aside to malcolm] what should be spoken here, where our fate, hid in an auger-hole, may rush, and seize us? let 's away; our tears are not yet brew'd. malcolm [aside to donalbain] nor our strong sorrow upon the foot of motion. banquo look to the lady: [lady macbeth is carried out] and when we have our naked frailties hid, that suffer in exposure, let us meet, and question this most bloody piece of work, to know it further. fears and scruples shake us: in the great hand of god i stand; and thence against the undivulged pretence i fight of treasonous malice. macduff and so do i. all so all. macbeth let's briefly put on manly readiness, and meet i' the hall together. all well contented. [exeunt all but malcolm and donalbain. malcolm what will you do? let's not consort with them: to show an unfelt sorrow is an office which the false man does easy. i'll to england. donalbain to ireland, i; our separated fortune shall keep us both the safer: where we are, there's daggers in men's smiles: the near in blood, the nearer bloody. malcolm this murderous shaft that's shot hath not yet lighted, and our safest way is to avoid the aim. therefore, to horse; and let us not be dainty of leave-taking, but shift away: there's warrant in that theft which steals itself, when there's no mercy left. [exeunt] macbeth act ii scene iv outside macbeth's castle. [enter ross and an old man] old man threescore and ten i can remember well: within the volume of which time i have seen hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night hath trifled former knowings. ross ah, good father, thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act, threaten his bloody stage: by the clock, 'tis day, and yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp: is't night's predominance, or the day's shame, that darkness does the face of earth entomb, when living light should kiss it? old man 'tis unnatural, even like the deed that's done. on tuesday last, a falcon, towering in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd. ross and duncan's horses--a thing most strange and certain- beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make war with mankind. old man 'tis said they eat each other. ross they did so, to the amazement of mine eyes that look'd upon't. here comes the good macduff. [enter macduff] how goes the world, sir, now? macduff why, see you not? ross is't known who did this more than bloody deed? macduff those that macbeth hath slain. ross alas, the day! what good could they pretend? macduff they were suborn'd: malcolm and donalbain, the king's two sons, are stol'n away and fled; which puts upon them suspicion of the deed. ross 'gainst nature still! thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up thine own life's means! then 'tis most like the sovereignty will fall upon macbeth. macduff he is already named, and gone to scone to be invested. ross where is duncan's body? macduff carried to colmekill, the sacred storehouse of his predecessors, and guardian of their bones. ross will you to scone? macduff no, cousin, i'll to fife. ross well, i will thither. macduff well, may you see things well done there: adieu! lest our old robes sit easier than our new! ross farewell, father. old man god's benison go with you; and with those that would make good of bad, and friends of foes! [exeunt] macbeth act iii scene i forres. the palace. [enter banquo] banquo thou hast it now: king, cawdor, glamis, all, as the weird women promised, and, i fear, thou play'dst most foully for't: yet it was said it should not stand in thy posterity, but that myself should be the root and father of many kings. if there come truth from them- as upon thee, macbeth, their speeches shine- why, by the verities on thee made good, may they not be my oracles as well, and set me up in hope? but hush! no more. [sennet sounded. enter macbeth, as king, lady macbeth, as queen, lennox, ross, lords, ladies, and attendants] macbeth here's our chief guest. lady macbeth if he had been forgotten, it had been as a gap in our great feast, and all-thing unbecoming. macbeth to-night we hold a solemn supper sir, and i'll request your presence. banquo let your highness command upon me; to the which my duties are with a most indissoluble tie for ever knit. macbeth ride you this afternoon? banquo ay, my good lord. macbeth we should have else desired your good advice, which still hath been both grave and prosperous, in this day's council; but we'll take to-morrow. is't far you ride? banquo as far, my lord, as will fill up the time 'twixt this and supper: go not my horse the better, i must become a borrower of the night for a dark hour or twain. macbeth fail not our feast. banquo my lord, i will not. macbeth we hear, our bloody cousins are bestow'd in england and in ireland, not confessing their cruel parricide, filling their hearers with strange invention: but of that to-morrow, when therewithal we shall have cause of state craving us jointly. hie you to horse: adieu, till you return at night. goes fleance with you? banquo ay, my good lord: our time does call upon 's. macbeth i wish your horses swift and sure of foot; and so i do commend you to their backs. farewell. [exit banquo] let every man be master of his time till seven at night: to make society the sweeter welcome, we will keep ourself till supper-time alone: while then, god be with you! [exeunt all but macbeth, and an attendant] sirrah, a word with you: attend those men our pleasure? attendant they are, my lord, without the palace gate. macbeth bring them before us. [exit attendant] to be thus is nothing; but to be safely thus.--our fears in banquo stick deep; and in his royalty of nature reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares; and, to that dauntless temper of his mind, he hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour to act in safety. there is none but he whose being i do fear: and, under him, my genius is rebuked; as, it is said, mark antony's was by caesar. he chid the sisters when first they put the name of king upon me, and bade them speak to him: then prophet-like they hail'd him father to a line of kings: upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, and put a barren sceptre in my gripe, thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, no son of mine succeeding. if 't be so, for banquo's issue have i filed my mind; for them the gracious duncan have i murder'd; put rancours in the vessel of my peace only for them; and mine eternal jewel given to the common enemy of man, to make them kings, the seed of banquo kings! rather than so, come fate into the list. and champion me to the utterance! who's there! [re-enter attendant, with two murderers] now go to the door, and stay there till we call. [exit attendant] was it not yesterday we spoke together? first murderer it was, so please your highness. macbeth well then, now have you consider'd of my speeches? know that it was he in the times past which held you so under fortune, which you thought had been our innocent self: this i made good to you in our last conference, pass'd in probation with you, how you were borne in hand, how cross'd, the instruments, who wrought with them, and all things else that might to half a soul and to a notion crazed say 'thus did banquo.' first murderer you made it known to us. macbeth i did so, and went further, which is now our point of second meeting. do you find your patience so predominant in your nature that you can let this go? are you so gospell'd to pray for this good man and for his issue, whose heavy hand hath bow'd you to the grave and beggar'd yours for ever? first murderer we are men, my liege. macbeth ay, in the catalogue ye go for men; as hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves, are clept all by the name of dogs: the valued file distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle, the housekeeper, the hunter, every one according to the gift which bounteous nature hath in him closed; whereby he does receive particular addition. from the bill that writes them all alike: and so of men. now, if you have a station in the file, not i' the worst rank of manhood, say 't; and i will put that business in your bosoms, whose execution takes your enemy off, grapples you to the heart and love of us, who wear our health but sickly in his life, which in his death were perfect. second murderer i am one, my liege, whom the vile blows and buffets of the world have so incensed that i am reckless what i do to spite the world. first murderer and i another so weary with disasters, tugg'd with fortune, that i would set my lie on any chance, to mend it, or be rid on't. macbeth both of you know banquo was your enemy. both murderers true, my lord. macbeth so is he mine; and in such bloody distance, that every minute of his being thrusts against my near'st of life: and though i could with barefaced power sweep him from my sight and bid my will avouch it, yet i must not, for certain friends that are both his and mine, whose loves i may not drop, but wail his fall who i myself struck down; and thence it is, that i to your assistance do make love, masking the business from the common eye for sundry weighty reasons. second murderer we shall, my lord, perform what you command us. first murderer though our lives- macbeth your spirits shine through you. within this hour at most i will advise you where to plant yourselves; acquaint you with the perfect spy o' the time, the moment on't; for't must be done to-night, and something from the palace; always thought that i require a clearness: and with him- to leave no rubs nor botches in the work- fleance his son, that keeps him company, whose absence is no less material to me than is his father's, must embrace the fate of that dark hour. resolve yourselves apart: i'll come to you anon. both murderers we are resolved, my lord. macbeth i'll call upon you straight: abide within. [exeunt murderers] it is concluded. banquo, thy soul's flight, if it find heaven, must find it out to-night. [exit] macbeth act iii scene ii the palace. [enter lady macbeth and a servant] lady macbeth is banquo gone from court? servant ay, madam, but returns again to-night. lady macbeth say to the king, i would attend his leisure for a few words. servant madam, i will. [exit] lady macbeth nought's had, all's spent, where our desire is got without content: 'tis safer to be that which we destroy than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. [enter macbeth] how now, my lord! why do you keep alone, of sorriest fancies your companions making, using those thoughts which should indeed have died with them they think on? things without all remedy should be without regard: what's done is done. macbeth we have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it: she'll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice remains in danger of her former tooth. but let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, ere we will eat our meal in fear and sleep in the affliction of these terrible dreams that shake us nightly: better be with the dead, whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy. duncan is in his grave; after life's fitful fever he sleeps well; treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, can touch him further. lady macbeth come on; gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks; be bright and jovial among your guests to-night. macbeth so shall i, love; and so, i pray, be you: let your remembrance apply to banquo; present him eminence, both with eye and tongue: unsafe the while, that we must lave our honours in these flattering streams, and make our faces vizards to our hearts, disguising what they are. lady macbeth you must leave this. macbeth o, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! thou know'st that banquo, and his fleance, lives. lady macbeth but in them nature's copy's not eterne. macbeth there's comfort yet; they are assailable; then be thou jocund: ere the bat hath flown his cloister'd flight, ere to black hecate's summons the shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done a deed of dreadful note. lady macbeth what's to be done? macbeth be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed. come, seeling night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day; and with thy bloody and invisible hand cancel and tear to pieces that great bond which keeps me pale! light thickens; and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood: good things of day begin to droop and drowse; while night's black agents to their preys do rouse. thou marvell'st at my words: but hold thee still; things bad begun make strong themselves by ill. so, prithee, go with me. [exeunt] macbeth act iii scene iii a park near the palace. [enter three murderers] first murderer but who did bid thee join with us? third murderer macbeth. second murderer he needs not our mistrust, since he delivers our offices and what we have to do to the direction just. first murderer then stand with us. the west yet glimmers with some streaks of day: now spurs the lated traveller apace to gain the timely inn; and near approaches the subject of our watch. third murderer hark! i hear horses. banquo [within] give us a light there, ho! second murderer then 'tis he: the rest that are within the note of expectation already are i' the court. first murderer his horses go about. third murderer almost a mile: but he does usually, so all men do, from hence to the palace gate make it their walk. second murderer a light, a light! [enter banquo, and fleance with a torch] third murderer 'tis he. first murderer stand to't. banquo it will be rain to-night. first murderer let it come down. [they set upon banquo] banquo o, treachery! fly, good fleance, fly, fly, fly! thou mayst revenge. o slave! [dies. fleance escapes] third murderer who did strike out the light? first murderer wast not the way? third murderer there's but one down; the son is fled. second murderer we have lost best half of our affair. first murderer well, let's away, and say how much is done. [exeunt] macbeth act iii scene iv the same. hall in the palace. [a banquet prepared. enter macbeth, lady macbeth, ross, lennox, lords, and attendants] macbeth you know your own degrees; sit down: at first and last the hearty welcome. lords thanks to your majesty. macbeth ourself will mingle with society, and play the humble host. our hostess keeps her state, but in best time we will require her welcome. lady macbeth pronounce it for me, sir, to all our friends; for my heart speaks they are welcome. [first murderer appears at the door] macbeth see, they encounter thee with their hearts' thanks. both sides are even: here i'll sit i' the midst: be large in mirth; anon we'll drink a measure the table round. [approaching the door] there's blood on thy face. first murderer 'tis banquo's then. macbeth 'tis better thee without than he within. is he dispatch'd? first murderer my lord, his throat is cut; that i did for him. macbeth thou art the best o' the cut-throats: yet he's good that did the like for fleance: if thou didst it, thou art the nonpareil. first murderer most royal sir, fleance is 'scaped. macbeth then comes my fit again: i had else been perfect, whole as the marble, founded as the rock, as broad and general as the casing air: but now i am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears. but banquo's safe? first murderer ay, my good lord: safe in a ditch he bides, with twenty trenched gashes on his head; the least a death to nature. macbeth thanks for that: there the grown serpent lies; the worm that's fled hath nature that in time will venom breed, no teeth for the present. get thee gone: to-morrow we'll hear, ourselves, again. [exit murderer] lady macbeth my royal lord, you do not give the cheer: the feast is sold that is not often vouch'd, while 'tis a-making, 'tis given with welcome: to feed were best at home; from thence the sauce to meat is ceremony; meeting were bare without it. macbeth sweet remembrancer! now, good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both! lennox may't please your highness sit. [the ghost of banquo enters, and sits in macbeth's place] macbeth here had we now our country's honour roof'd, were the graced person of our banquo present; who may i rather challenge for unkindness than pity for mischance! ross his absence, sir, lays blame upon his promise. please't your highness to grace us with your royal company. macbeth the table's full. lennox here is a place reserved, sir. macbeth where? lennox here, my good lord. what is't that moves your highness? macbeth which of you have done this? lords what, my good lord? macbeth thou canst not say i did it: never shake thy gory locks at me. ross gentlemen, rise: his highness is not well. lady macbeth sit, worthy friends: my lord is often thus, and hath been from his youth: pray you, keep seat; the fit is momentary; upon a thought he will again be well: if much you note him, you shall offend him and extend his passion: feed, and regard him not. are you a man? macbeth ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that which might appal the devil. lady macbeth o proper stuff! this is the very painting of your fear: this is the air-drawn dagger which, you said, led you to duncan. o, these flaws and starts, impostors to true fear, would well become a woman's story at a winter's fire, authorized by her grandam. shame itself! why do you make such faces? when all's done, you look but on a stool. macbeth prithee, see there! behold! look! lo! how say you? why, what care i? if thou canst nod, speak too. if charnel-houses and our graves must send those that we bury back, our monuments shall be the maws of kites. [ghost of banquo vanishes] lady macbeth what, quite unmann'd in folly? macbeth if i stand here, i saw him. lady macbeth fie, for shame! macbeth blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time, ere human statute purged the gentle weal; ay, and since too, murders have been perform'd too terrible for the ear: the times have been, that, when the brains were out, the man would die, and there an end; but now they rise again, with twenty mortal murders on their crowns, and push us from our stools: this is more strange than such a murder is. lady macbeth my worthy lord, your noble friends do lack you. macbeth i do forget. do not muse at me, my most worthy friends, i have a strange infirmity, which is nothing to those that know me. come, love and health to all; then i'll sit down. give me some wine; fill full. i drink to the general joy o' the whole table, and to our dear friend banquo, whom we miss; would he were here! to all, and him, we thirst, and all to all. lords our duties, and the pledge. [re-enter ghost of banquo] macbeth avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee! thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; thou hast no speculation in those eyes which thou dost glare with! lady macbeth think of this, good peers, but as a thing of custom: 'tis no other; only it spoils the pleasure of the time. macbeth what man dare, i dare: approach thou like the rugged russian bear, the arm'd rhinoceros, or the hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble: or be alive again, and dare me to the desert with thy sword; if trembling i inhabit then, protest me the baby of a girl. hence, horrible shadow! unreal mockery, hence! [ghost of banquo vanishes] why, so: being gone, i am a man again. pray you, sit still. lady macbeth you have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, with most admired disorder. macbeth can such things be, and overcome us like a summer's cloud, without our special wonder? you make me strange even to the disposition that i owe, when now i think you can behold such sights, and keep the natural ruby of your cheeks, when mine is blanched with fear. ross what sights, my lord? lady macbeth i pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse; question enrages him. at once, good night: stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once. lennox good night; and better health attend his majesty! lady macbeth a kind good night to all! [exeunt all but macbeth and lady macbeth] macbeth it will have blood; they say, blood will have blood: stones have been known to move and trees to speak; augurs and understood relations have by magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth the secret'st man of blood. what is the night? lady macbeth almost at odds with morning, which is which. macbeth how say'st thou, that macduff denies his person at our great bidding? lady macbeth did you send to him, sir? macbeth i hear it by the way; but i will send: there's not a one of them but in his house i keep a servant fee'd. i will to-morrow, and betimes i will, to the weird sisters: more shall they speak; for now i am bent to know, by the worst means, the worst. for mine own good, all causes shall give way: i am in blood stepp'd in so far that, should i wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er: strange things i have in head, that will to hand; which must be acted ere they may be scann'd. lady macbeth you lack the season of all natures, sleep. macbeth come, we'll to sleep. my strange and self-abuse is the initiate fear that wants hard use: we are yet but young in deed. [exeunt] macbeth act iii scene v a heath. [thunder. enter the three witches meeting hecate] first witch why, how now, hecate! you look angerly. hecate have i not reason, beldams as you are, saucy and overbold? how did you dare to trade and traffic with macbeth in riddles and affairs of death; and i, the mistress of your charms, the close contriver of all harms, was never call'd to bear my part, or show the glory of our art? and, which is worse, all you have done hath been but for a wayward son, spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do, loves for his own ends, not for you. but make amends now: get you gone, and at the pit of acheron meet me i' the morning: thither he will come to know his destiny: your vessels and your spells provide, your charms and every thing beside. i am for the air; this night i'll spend unto a dismal and a fatal end: great business must be wrought ere noon: upon the corner of the moon there hangs a vaporous drop profound; i'll catch it ere it come to ground: and that distill'd by magic sleights shall raise such artificial sprites as by the strength of their illusion shall draw him on to his confusion: he shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear he hopes 'bove wisdom, grace and fear: and you all know, security is mortals' chiefest enemy. [music and a song within: 'come away, come away,' &c] hark! i am call'd; my little spirit, see, sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me. [exit] first witch come, let's make haste; she'll soon be back again. [exeunt] macbeth act iii scene vi forres. the palace. [enter lennox and another lord] lennox my former speeches have but hit your thoughts, which can interpret further: only, i say, things have been strangely borne. the gracious duncan was pitied of macbeth: marry, he was dead: and the right-valiant banquo walk'd too late; whom, you may say, if't please you, fleance kill'd, for fleance fled: men must not walk too late. who cannot want the thought how monstrous it was for malcolm and for donalbain to kill their gracious father? damned fact! how it did grieve macbeth! did he not straight in pious rage the two delinquents tear, that were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep? was not that nobly done? ay, and wisely too; for 'twould have anger'd any heart alive to hear the men deny't. so that, i say, he has borne all things well: and i do think that had he duncan's sons under his key- as, an't please heaven, he shall not--they should find what 'twere to kill a father; so should fleance. but, peace! for from broad words and 'cause he fail'd his presence at the tyrant's feast, i hear macduff lives in disgrace: sir, can you tell where he bestows himself? lord the son of duncan, from whom this tyrant holds the due of birth lives in the english court, and is received of the most pious edward with such grace that the malevolence of fortune nothing takes from his high respect: thither macduff is gone to pray the holy king, upon his aid to wake northumberland and warlike siward: that, by the help of these--with him above to ratify the work--we may again give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights, free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives, do faithful homage and receive free honours: all which we pine for now: and this report hath so exasperate the king that he prepares for some attempt of war. lennox sent he to macduff? lord he did: and with an absolute 'sir, not i,' the cloudy messenger turns me his back, and hums, as who should say 'you'll rue the time that clogs me with this answer.' lennox and that well might advise him to a caution, to hold what distance his wisdom can provide. some holy angel fly to the court of england and unfold his message ere he come, that a swift blessing may soon return to this our suffering country under a hand accursed! lord i'll send my prayers with him. [exeunt] macbeth act iv scene i a cavern. in the middle, a boiling cauldron. [thunder. enter the three witches] first witch thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd. second witch thrice and once the hedge-pig whined. third witch harpier cries 'tis time, 'tis time. first witch round about the cauldron go; in the poison'd entrails throw. toad, that under cold stone days and nights has thirty-one swelter'd venom sleeping got, boil thou first i' the charmed pot. all double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble. second witch fillet of a fenny snake, in the cauldron boil and bake; eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, lizard's leg and owlet's wing, for a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth boil and bubble. all double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble. third witch scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, witches' mummy, maw and gulf of the ravin'd salt-sea shark, root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark, liver of blaspheming jew, gall of goat, and slips of yew silver'd in the moon's eclipse, nose of turk and tartar's lips, finger of birth-strangled babe ditch-deliver'd by a drab, make the gruel thick and slab: add thereto a tiger's chaudron, for the ingredients of our cauldron. all double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble. second witch cool it with a baboon's blood, then the charm is firm and good. [enter hecate to the other three witches] hecate o well done! i commend your pains; and every one shall share i' the gains; and now about the cauldron sing, live elves and fairies in a ring, enchanting all that you put in. [music and a song: 'black spirits,' &c] [hecate retires] second witch by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. open, locks, whoever knocks! [enter macbeth] macbeth how now, you secret, black, and midnight hags! what is't you do? all a deed without a name. macbeth i conjure you, by that which you profess, howe'er you come to know it, answer me: though you untie the winds and let them fight against the churches; though the yesty waves confound and swallow navigation up; though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down; though castles topple on their warders' heads; though palaces and pyramids do slope their heads to their foundations; though the treasure of nature's germens tumble all together, even till destruction sicken; answer me to what i ask you. first witch speak. second witch demand. third witch we'll answer. first witch say, if thou'dst rather hear it from our mouths, or from our masters? macbeth call 'em; let me see 'em. first witch pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten her nine farrow; grease that's sweaten from the murderer's gibbet throw into the flame. all come, high or low; thyself and office deftly show! [thunder. first apparition: an armed head] macbeth tell me, thou unknown power,- first witch he knows thy thought: hear his speech, but say thou nought. first apparition macbeth! macbeth! macbeth! beware macduff; beware the thane of fife. dismiss me. enough. [descends] macbeth whate'er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks; thou hast harp'd my fear aright: but one word more,- first witch he will not be commanded: here's another, more potent than the first. [thunder. second apparition: a bloody child] second apparition macbeth! macbeth! macbeth! macbeth had i three ears, i'ld hear thee. second apparition be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm macbeth. [descends] macbeth then live, macduff: what need i fear of thee? but yet i'll make assurance double sure, and take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live; that i may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, and sleep in spite of thunder. [thunder. third apparition: a child crowned, with a tree in his hand] what is this that rises like the issue of a king, and wears upon his baby-brow the round and top of sovereignty? all listen, but speak not to't. third apparition be lion-mettled, proud; and take no care who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are: macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until great birnam wood to high dunsinane hill shall come against him. [descends] macbeth that will never be who can impress the forest, bid the tree unfix his earth-bound root? sweet bodements! good! rebellion's head, rise never till the wood of birnam rise, and our high-placed macbeth shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath to time and mortal custom. yet my heart throbs to know one thing: tell me, if your art can tell so much: shall banquo's issue ever reign in this kingdom? all seek to know no more. macbeth i will be satisfied: deny me this, and an eternal curse fall on you! let me know. why sinks that cauldron? and what noise is this? [hautboys] first witch show! second witch show! third witch show! all show his eyes, and grieve his heart; come like shadows, so depart! [a show of eight kings, the last with a glass in his hand; ghost of banquo following] macbeth thou art too like the spirit of banquo: down! thy crown does sear mine eye-balls. and thy hair, thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first. a third is like the former. filthy hags! why do you show me this? a fourth! start, eyes! what, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom? another yet! a seventh! i'll see no more: and yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass which shows me many more; and some i see that two-fold balls and treble scepters carry: horrible sight! now, i see, 'tis true; for the blood-bolter'd banquo smiles upon me, and points at them for his. [apparitions vanish] what, is this so? first witch ay, sir, all this is so: but why stands macbeth thus amazedly? come, sisters, cheer we up his sprites, and show the best of our delights: i'll charm the air to give a sound, while you perform your antic round: that this great king may kindly say, our duties did his welcome pay. [music. the witches dance and then vanish, with hecate] macbeth where are they? gone? let this pernicious hour stand aye accursed in the calendar! come in, without there! [enter lennox] lennox what's your grace's will? macbeth saw you the weird sisters? lennox no, my lord. macbeth came they not by you? lennox no, indeed, my lord. macbeth infected be the air whereon they ride; and damn'd all those that trust them! i did hear the galloping of horse: who was't came by? lennox 'tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word macduff is fled to england. macbeth fled to england! lennox ay, my good lord. macbeth time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits: the flighty purpose never is o'ertook unless the deed go with it; from this moment the very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand. and even now, to crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done: the castle of macduff i will surprise; seize upon fife; give to the edge o' the sword his wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line. no boasting like a fool; this deed i'll do before this purpose cool. but no more sights!--where are these gentlemen? come, bring me where they are. [exeunt] macbeth act iv scene ii fife. macduff's castle. [enter lady macduff, her son, and ross] lady macduff what had he done, to make him fly the land? ross you must have patience, madam. lady macduff he had none: his flight was madness: when our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors. ross you know not whether it was his wisdom or his fear. lady macduff wisdom! to leave his wife, to leave his babes, his mansion and his titles in a place from whence himself does fly? he loves us not; he wants the natural touch: for the poor wren, the most diminutive of birds, will fight, her young ones in her nest, against the owl. all is the fear and nothing is the love; as little is the wisdom, where the flight so runs against all reason. ross my dearest coz, i pray you, school yourself: but for your husband, he is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows the fits o' the season. i dare not speak much further; but cruel are the times, when we are traitors and do not know ourselves, when we hold rumour from what we fear, yet know not what we fear, but float upon a wild and violent sea each way and move. i take my leave of you: shall not be long but i'll be here again: things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward to what they were before. my pretty cousin, blessing upon you! lady macduff father'd he is, and yet he's fatherless. ross i am so much a fool, should i stay longer, it would be my disgrace and your discomfort: i take my leave at once. [exit] lady macduff sirrah, your father's dead; and what will you do now? how will you live? son as birds do, mother. lady macduff what, with worms and flies? son with what i get, i mean; and so do they. lady macduff poor bird! thou'ldst never fear the net nor lime, the pitfall nor the gin. son why should i, mother? poor birds they are not set for. my father is not dead, for all your saying. lady macduff yes, he is dead; how wilt thou do for a father? son nay, how will you do for a husband? lady macduff why, i can buy me twenty at any market. son then you'll buy 'em to sell again. lady macduff thou speak'st with all thy wit: and yet, i' faith, with wit enough for thee. son was my father a traitor, mother? lady macduff ay, that he was. son what is a traitor? lady macduff why, one that swears and lies. son and be all traitors that do so? lady macduff every one that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged. son and must they all be hanged that swear and lie? lady macduff every one. son who must hang them? lady macduff why, the honest men. son then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them. lady macduff now, god help thee, poor monkey! but how wilt thou do for a father? son if he were dead, you'ld weep for him: if you would not, it were a good sign that i should quickly have a new father. lady macduff poor prattler, how thou talk'st! [enter a messenger] messenger bless you, fair dame! i am not to you known, though in your state of honour i am perfect. i doubt some danger does approach you nearly: if you will take a homely man's advice, be not found here; hence, with your little ones. to fright you thus, methinks, i am too savage; to do worse to you were fell cruelty, which is too nigh your person. heaven preserve you! i dare abide no longer. [exit] lady macduff whither should i fly? i have done no harm. but i remember now i am in this earthly world; where to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly: why then, alas, do i put up that womanly defence, to say i have done no harm? [enter murderers] what are these faces? first murderer where is your husband? lady macduff i hope, in no place so unsanctified where such as thou mayst find him. first murderer he's a traitor. son thou liest, thou shag-hair'd villain! first murderer what, you egg! [stabbing him] young fry of treachery! son he has kill'd me, mother: run away, i pray you! [dies] [exit lady macduff, crying 'murder!' exeunt murderers, following her] macbeth act iv scene iii england. before the king's palace. [enter malcolm and macduff] malcolm let us seek out some desolate shade, and there weep our sad bosoms empty. macduff let us rather hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men bestride our down-fall'n birthdom: each new morn new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face, that it resounds as if it felt with scotland and yell'd out like syllable of dolour. malcolm what i believe i'll wail, what know believe, and what i can redress, as i shall find the time to friend, i will. what you have spoke, it may be so perchance. this tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues, was once thought honest: you have loved him well. he hath not touch'd you yet. i am young; but something you may deserve of him through me, and wisdom to offer up a weak poor innocent lamb to appease an angry god. macduff i am not treacherous. malcolm but macbeth is. a good and virtuous nature may recoil in an imperial charge. but i shall crave your pardon; that which you are my thoughts cannot transpose: angels are bright still, though the brightest fell; though all things foul would wear the brows of grace, yet grace must still look so. macduff i have lost my hopes. malcolm perchance even there where i did find my doubts. why in that rawness left you wife and child, those precious motives, those strong knots of love, without leave-taking? i pray you, let not my jealousies be your dishonours, but mine own safeties. you may be rightly just, whatever i shall think. macduff bleed, bleed, poor country! great tyranny! lay thou thy basis sure, for goodness dare not cheque thee: wear thou thy wrongs; the title is affeer'd! fare thee well, lord: i would not be the villain that thou think'st for the whole space that's in the tyrant's grasp, and the rich east to boot. malcolm be not offended: i speak not as in absolute fear of you. i think our country sinks beneath the yoke; it weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash is added to her wounds: i think withal there would be hands uplifted in my right; and here from gracious england have i offer of goodly thousands: but, for all this, when i shall tread upon the tyrant's head, or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country shall have more vices than it had before, more suffer and more sundry ways than ever, by him that shall succeed. macduff what should he be? malcolm it is myself i mean: in whom i know all the particulars of vice so grafted that, when they shall be open'd, black macbeth will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state esteem him as a lamb, being compared with my confineless harms. macduff not in the legions of horrid hell can come a devil more damn'd in evils to top macbeth. malcolm i grant him bloody, luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin that has a name: but there's no bottom, none, in my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters, your matrons and your maids, could not fill up the cistern of my lust, and my desire all continent impediments would o'erbear that did oppose my will: better macbeth than such an one to reign. macduff boundless intemperance in nature is a tyranny; it hath been the untimely emptying of the happy throne and fall of many kings. but fear not yet to take upon you what is yours: you may convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty, and yet seem cold, the time you may so hoodwink. we have willing dames enough: there cannot be that vulture in you, to devour so many as will to greatness dedicate themselves, finding it so inclined. malcolm with this there grows in my most ill-composed affection such a stanchless avarice that, were i king, i should cut off the nobles for their lands, desire his jewels and this other's house: and my more-having would be as a sauce to make me hunger more; that i should forge quarrels unjust against the good and loyal, destroying them for wealth. macduff this avarice sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root than summer-seeming lust, and it hath been the sword of our slain kings: yet do not fear; scotland hath foisons to fill up your will. of your mere own: all these are portable, with other graces weigh'd. malcolm but i have none: the king-becoming graces, as justice, verity, temperance, stableness, bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, devotion, patience, courage, fortitude, i have no relish of them, but abound in the division of each several crime, acting it many ways. nay, had i power, i should pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, uproar the universal peace, confound all unity on earth. macduff o scotland, scotland! malcolm if such a one be fit to govern, speak: i am as i have spoken. macduff fit to govern! no, not to live. o nation miserable, with an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd, when shalt thou see thy wholesome days again, since that the truest issue of thy throne by his own interdiction stands accursed, and does blaspheme his breed? thy royal father was a most sainted king: the queen that bore thee, oftener upon her knees than on her feet, died every day she lived. fare thee well! these evils thou repeat'st upon thyself have banish'd me from scotland. o my breast, thy hope ends here! malcolm macduff, this noble passion, child of integrity, hath from my soul wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts to thy good truth and honour. devilish macbeth by many of these trains hath sought to win me into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me from over-credulous haste: but god above deal between thee and me! for even now i put myself to thy direction, and unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure the taints and blames i laid upon myself, for strangers to my nature. i am yet unknown to woman, never was forsworn, scarcely have coveted what was mine own, at no time broke my faith, would not betray the devil to his fellow and delight no less in truth than life: my first false speaking was this upon myself: what i am truly, is thine and my poor country's to command: whither indeed, before thy here-approach, old siward, with ten thousand warlike men, already at a point, was setting forth. now we'll together; and the chance of goodness be like our warranted quarrel! why are you silent? macduff such welcome and unwelcome things at once 'tis hard to reconcile. [enter a doctor] malcolm well; more anon.--comes the king forth, i pray you? doctor ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls that stay his cure: their malady convinces the great assay of art; but at his touch- such sanctity hath heaven given his hand- they presently amend. malcolm i thank you, doctor. [exit doctor] macduff what's the disease he means? malcolm 'tis call'd the evil: a most miraculous work in this good king; which often, since my here-remain in england, i have seen him do. how he solicits heaven, himself best knows: but strangely-visited people, all swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, the mere despair of surgery, he cures, hanging a golden stamp about their necks, put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken, to the succeeding royalty he leaves the healing benediction. with this strange virtue, he hath a heavenly gift of prophecy, and sundry blessings hang about his throne, that speak him full of grace. [enter ross] macduff see, who comes here? malcolm my countryman; but yet i know him not. macduff my ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither. malcolm i know him now. good god, betimes remove the means that makes us strangers! ross sir, amen. macduff stands scotland where it did? ross alas, poor country! almost afraid to know itself. it cannot be call'd our mother, but our grave; where nothing, but who knows nothing, is once seen to smile; where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems a modern ecstasy; the dead man's knell is there scarce ask'd for who; and good men's lives expire before the flowers in their caps, dying or ere they sicken. macduff o, relation too nice, and yet too true! malcolm what's the newest grief? ross that of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker: each minute teems a new one. macduff how does my wife? ross why, well. macduff and all my children? ross well too. macduff the tyrant has not batter'd at their peace? ross no; they were well at peace when i did leave 'em. macduff but not a niggard of your speech: how goes't? ross when i came hither to transport the tidings, which i have heavily borne, there ran a rumour of many worthy fellows that were out; which was to my belief witness'd the rather, for that i saw the tyrant's power a-foot: now is the time of help; your eye in scotland would create soldiers, make our women fight, to doff their dire distresses. malcolm be't their comfort we are coming thither: gracious england hath lent us good siward and ten thousand men; an older and a better soldier none that christendom gives out. ross would i could answer this comfort with the like! but i have words that would be howl'd out in the desert air, where hearing should not latch them. macduff what concern they? the general cause? or is it a fee-grief due to some single breast? ross no mind that's honest but in it shares some woe; though the main part pertains to you alone. macduff if it be mine, keep it not from me, quickly let me have it. ross let not your ears despise my tongue for ever, which shall possess them with the heaviest sound that ever yet they heard. macduff hum! i guess at it. ross your castle is surprised; your wife and babes savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner, were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer, to add the death of you. malcolm merciful heaven! what, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows; give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break. macduff my children too? ross wife, children, servants, all that could be found. macduff and i must be from thence! my wife kill'd too? ross i have said. malcolm be comforted: let's make us medicines of our great revenge, to cure this deadly grief. macduff he has no children. all my pretty ones? did you say all? o hell-kite! all? what, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop? malcolm dispute it like a man. macduff i shall do so; but i must also feel it as a man: i cannot but remember such things were, that were most precious to me. did heaven look on, and would not take their part? sinful macduff, they were all struck for thee! naught that i am, not for their own demerits, but for mine, fell slaughter on their souls. heaven rest them now! malcolm be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it. macduff o, i could play the woman with mine eyes and braggart with my tongue! but, gentle heavens, cut short all intermission; front to front bring thou this fiend of scotland and myself; within my sword's length set him; if he 'scape, heaven forgive him too! malcolm this tune goes manly. come, go we to the king; our power is ready; our lack is nothing but our leave; macbeth is ripe for shaking, and the powers above put on their instruments. receive what cheer you may: the night is long that never finds the day. [exeunt] macbeth act v scene i dunsinane. ante-room in the castle. [enter a doctor of physic and a waiting-gentlewoman] doctor i have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no truth in your report. when was it she last walked? gentlewoman since his majesty went into the field, i have seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon't, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep. doctor a great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of watching! in this slumbery agitation, besides her walking and other actual performances, what, at any time, have you heard her say? gentlewoman that, sir, which i will not report after her. doctor you may to me: and 'tis most meet you should. gentlewoman neither to you nor any one; having no witness to confirm my speech. [enter lady macbeth, with a taper] lo you, here she comes! this is her very guise; and, upon my life, fast asleep. observe her; stand close. doctor how came she by that light? gentlewoman why, it stood by her: she has light by her continually; 'tis her command. doctor you see, her eyes are open. gentlewoman ay, but their sense is shut. doctor what is it she does now? look, how she rubs her hands. gentlewoman it is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands: i have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour. lady macbeth yet here's a spot. doctor hark! she speaks: i will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly. lady macbeth out, damned spot! out, i say!--one: two: why, then, 'tis time to do't.--hell is murky!--fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? what need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?--yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him. doctor do you mark that? lady macbeth the thane of fife had a wife: where is she now?- what, will these hands ne'er be clean?--no more o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting. doctor go to, go to; you have known what you should not. gentlewoman she has spoke what she should not, i am sure of that: heaven knows what she has known. lady macbeth here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of arabia will not sweeten this little hand. oh, oh, oh! doctor what a sigh is there! the heart is sorely charged. gentlewoman i would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body. doctor well, well, well,- gentlewoman pray god it be, sir. doctor this disease is beyond my practise: yet i have known those which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their beds. lady macbeth wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look not so pale.--i tell you yet again, banquo's buried; he cannot come out on's grave. doctor even so? lady macbeth to bed, to bed! there's knocking at the gate: come, come, come, come, give me your hand. what's done cannot be undone.--to bed, to bed, to bed! [exit] doctor will she go now to bed? gentlewoman directly. doctor foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets: more needs she the divine than the physician. god, god forgive us all! look after her; remove from her the means of all annoyance, and still keep eyes upon her. so, good night: my mind she has mated, and amazed my sight. i think, but dare not speak. gentlewoman good night, good doctor. [exeunt] macbeth act v scene ii the country near dunsinane. [drum and colours. enter menteith, caithness, angus, lennox, and soldiers] menteith the english power is near, led on by malcolm, his uncle siward and the good macduff: revenges burn in them; for their dear causes would to the bleeding and the grim alarm excite the mortified man. angus near birnam wood shall we well meet them; that way are they coming. caithness who knows if donalbain be with his brother? lennox for certain, sir, he is not: i have a file of all the gentry: there is siward's son, and many unrough youths that even now protest their first of manhood. menteith what does the tyrant? caithness great dunsinane he strongly fortifies: some say he's mad; others that lesser hate him do call it valiant fury: but, for certain, he cannot buckle his distemper'd cause within the belt of rule. angus now does he feel his secret murders sticking on his hands; now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach; those he commands move only in command, nothing in love: now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief. menteith who then shall blame his pester'd senses to recoil and start, when all that is within him does condemn itself for being there? caithness well, march we on, to give obedience where 'tis truly owed: meet we the medicine of the sickly weal, and with him pour we in our country's purge each drop of us. lennox or so much as it needs, to dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds. make we our march towards birnam. [exeunt, marching] macbeth act v scene iii dunsinane. a room in the castle. [enter macbeth, doctor, and attendants] macbeth bring me no more reports; let them fly all: till birnam wood remove to dunsinane, i cannot taint with fear. what's the boy malcolm? was he not born of woman? the spirits that know all mortal consequences have pronounced me thus: 'fear not, macbeth; no man that's born of woman shall e'er have power upon thee.' then fly, false thanes, and mingle with the english epicures: the mind i sway by and the heart i bear shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear. [enter a servant] the devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon! where got'st thou that goose look? servant there is ten thousand- macbeth geese, villain! servant soldiers, sir. macbeth go prick thy face, and over-red thy fear, thou lily-liver'd boy. what soldiers, patch? death of thy soul! those linen cheeks of thine are counsellors to fear. what soldiers, whey-face? servant the english force, so please you. macbeth take thy face hence. [exit servant] seyton!--i am sick at heart, when i behold--seyton, i say!--this push will cheer me ever, or disseat me now. i have lived long enough: my way of life is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age, as honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, i must not look to have; but, in their stead, curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. seyton! [enter seyton] seyton what is your gracious pleasure? macbeth what news more? seyton all is confirm'd, my lord, which was reported. macbeth i'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack'd. give me my armour. seyton 'tis not needed yet. macbeth i'll put it on. send out more horses; skirr the country round; hang those that talk of fear. give me mine armour. how does your patient, doctor? doctor not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick coming fancies, that keep her from her rest. macbeth cure her of that. canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart? doctor therein the patient must minister to himself. macbeth throw physic to the dogs; i'll none of it. come, put mine armour on; give me my staff. seyton, send out. doctor, the thanes fly from me. come, sir, dispatch. if thou couldst, doctor, cast the water of my land, find her disease, and purge it to a sound and pristine health, i would applaud thee to the very echo, that should applaud again.--pull't off, i say.- what rhubarb, cyme, or what purgative drug, would scour these english hence? hear'st thou of them? doctor ay, my good lord; your royal preparation makes us hear something. macbeth bring it after me. i will not be afraid of death and bane, till birnam forest come to dunsinane. doctor [aside] were i from dunsinane away and clear, profit again should hardly draw me here. [exeunt] macbeth act v scene iv country near birnam wood. [drum and colours. enter malcolm, siward and young siward, macduff, menteith, caithness, angus, lennox, ross, and soldiers, marching] malcolm cousins, i hope the days are near at hand that chambers will be safe. menteith we doubt it nothing. siward what wood is this before us? menteith the wood of birnam. malcolm let every soldier hew him down a bough and bear't before him: thereby shall we shadow the numbers of our host and make discovery err in report of us. soldiers it shall be done. siward we learn no other but the confident tyrant keeps still in dunsinane, and will endure our setting down before 't. malcolm 'tis his main hope: for where there is advantage to be given, both more and less have given him the revolt, and none serve with him but constrained things whose hearts are absent too. macduff let our just censures attend the true event, and put we on industrious soldiership. siward the time approaches that will with due decision make us know what we shall say we have and what we owe. thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate, but certain issue strokes must arbitrate: towards which advance the war. [exeunt, marching] macbeth act v scene v dunsinane. within the castle. [enter macbeth, seyton, and soldiers, with drum and colours] macbeth hang out our banners on the outward walls; the cry is still 'they come:' our castle's strength will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie till famine and the ague eat them up: were they not forced with those that should be ours, we might have met them dareful, beard to beard, and beat them backward home. [a cry of women within] what is that noise? seyton it is the cry of women, my good lord. [exit] macbeth i have almost forgot the taste of fears; the time has been, my senses would have cool'd to hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir as life were in't: i have supp'd full with horrors; direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts cannot once start me. [re-enter seyton] wherefore was that cry? seyton the queen, my lord, is dead. macbeth she should have died hereafter; there would have been a time for such a word. to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. out, out, brief candle! life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. [enter a messenger] thou comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly. messenger gracious my lord, i should report that which i say i saw, but know not how to do it. macbeth well, say, sir. messenger as i did stand my watch upon the hill, i look'd toward birnam, and anon, methought, the wood began to move. macbeth liar and slave! messenger let me endure your wrath, if't be not so: within this three mile may you see it coming; i say, a moving grove. macbeth if thou speak'st false, upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive, till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth, i care not if thou dost for me as much. i pull in resolution, and begin to doubt the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth: 'fear not, till birnam wood do come to dunsinane:' and now a wood comes toward dunsinane. arm, arm, and out! if this which he avouches does appear, there is nor flying hence nor tarrying here. i gin to be aweary of the sun, and wish the estate o' the world were now undone. ring the alarum-bell! blow, wind! come, wrack! at least we'll die with harness on our back. [exeunt] macbeth act v scene vi dunsinane. before the castle. [drum and colours. enter malcolm, siward, macduff, and their army, with boughs] malcolm now near enough: your leafy screens throw down. and show like those you are. you, worthy uncle, shall, with my cousin, your right-noble son, lead our first battle: worthy macduff and we shall take upon 's what else remains to do, according to our order. siward fare you well. do we but find the tyrant's power to-night, let us be beaten, if we cannot fight. macduff make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath, those clamorous harbingers of blood and death. [exeunt] macbeth act v scene vii another part of the field. [alarums. enter macbeth] macbeth they have tied me to a stake; i cannot fly, but, bear-like, i must fight the course. what's he that was not born of woman? such a one am i to fear, or none. [enter young siward] young siward what is thy name? macbeth thou'lt be afraid to hear it. young siward no; though thou call'st thyself a hotter name than any is in hell. macbeth my name's macbeth. young siward the devil himself could not pronounce a title more hateful to mine ear. macbeth no, nor more fearful. young siward thou liest, abhorred tyrant; with my sword i'll prove the lie thou speak'st. [they fight and young siward is slain] macbeth thou wast born of woman but swords i smile at, weapons laugh to scorn, brandish'd by man that's of a woman born. [exit] [alarums. enter macduff] macduff that way the noise is. tyrant, show thy face! if thou be'st slain and with no stroke of mine, my wife and children's ghosts will haunt me still. i cannot strike at wretched kerns, whose arms are hired to bear their staves: either thou, macbeth, or else my sword with an unbatter'd edge i sheathe again undeeded. there thou shouldst be; by this great clatter, one of greatest note seems bruited. let me find him, fortune! and more i beg not. [exit. alarums] [enter malcolm and siward] siward this way, my lord; the castle's gently render'd: the tyrant's people on both sides do fight; the noble thanes do bravely in the war; the day almost itself professes yours, and little is to do. malcolm we have met with foes that strike beside us. siward enter, sir, the castle. [exeunt. alarums] macbeth act v scene viii another part of the field. [enter macbeth] macbeth why should i play the roman fool, and die on mine own sword? whiles i see lives, the gashes do better upon them. [enter macduff] macduff turn, hell-hound, turn! macbeth of all men else i have avoided thee: but get thee back; my soul is too much charged with blood of thine already. macduff i have no words: my voice is in my sword: thou bloodier villain than terms can give thee out! [they fight] macbeth thou losest labour: as easy mayst thou the intrenchant air with thy keen sword impress as make me bleed: let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests; i bear a charmed life, which must not yield, to one of woman born. macduff despair thy charm; and let the angel whom thou still hast served tell thee, macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd. macbeth accursed be that tongue that tells me so, for it hath cow'd my better part of man! and be these juggling fiends no more believed, that palter with us in a double sense; that keep the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope. i'll not fight with thee. macduff then yield thee, coward, and live to be the show and gaze o' the time: we'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, painted on a pole, and underwrit, 'here may you see the tyrant.' macbeth i will not yield, to kiss the ground before young malcolm's feet, and to be baited with the rabble's curse. though birnam wood be come to dunsinane, and thou opposed, being of no woman born, yet i will try the last. before my body i throw my warlike shield. lay on, macduff, and damn'd be him that first cries, 'hold, enough!' [exeunt, fighting. alarums] [retreat. flourish. enter, with drum and colours, malcolm, siward, ross, the other thanes, and soldiers] malcolm i would the friends we miss were safe arrived. siward some must go off: and yet, by these i see, so great a day as this is cheaply bought. malcolm macduff is missing, and your noble son. ross your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt: he only lived but till he was a man; the which no sooner had his prowess confirm'd in the unshrinking station where he fought, but like a man he died. siward then he is dead? ross ay, and brought off the field: your cause of sorrow must not be measured by his worth, for then it hath no end. siward had he his hurts before? ross ay, on the front. siward why then, god's soldier be he! had i as many sons as i have hairs, i would not wish them to a fairer death: and so, his knell is knoll'd. malcolm he's worth more sorrow, and that i'll spend for him. siward he's worth no more they say he parted well, and paid his score: and so, god be with him! here comes newer comfort. [re-enter macduff, with macbeth's head] macduff hail, king! for so thou art: behold, where stands the usurper's cursed head: the time is free: i see thee compass'd with thy kingdom's pearl, that speak my salutation in their minds; whose voices i desire aloud with mine: hail, king of scotland! all hail, king of scotland! [flourish] malcolm we shall not spend a large expense of time before we reckon with your several loves, and make us even with you. my thanes and kinsmen, henceforth be earls, the first that ever scotland in such an honour named. what's more to do, which would be planted newly with the time, as calling home our exiled friends abroad that fled the snares of watchful tyranny; producing forth the cruel ministers of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen, who, as 'tis thought, by self and violent hands took off her life; this, and what needful else that calls upon us, by the grace of grace, we will perform in measure, time and place: so, thanks to all at once and to each one, whom we invite to see us crown'd at scone. [flourish. exeunt] cymbeline dramatis personae cymbeline king of britain. cloten son to the queen by a former husband. posthumus leonatus a gentleman, husband to imogen. belarius a banished lord, disguised under the name of morgan. guiderius | sons to cymbeline, disguised under the names | of polydote and cadwal, supposed sons to arviragus | morgan. philario friend to posthumus, | | italians. iachimo friend to philario, | caius lucius general of the roman forces. pisanio servant to posthumus. cornelius a physician. a roman captain. (captain:) two british captains. (first captain:) (second captain:) a frenchman, friend to philario. (frenchman:) two lords of cymbeline's court. (first lord:) (second lord:) two gentlemen of the same. (first gentleman:) (second gentleman:) two gaolers. (first gaoler:) (second gaoler:) queen wife to cymbeline. imogen daughter to cymbeline by a former queen. helen a lady attending on imogen. lords, ladies, roman senators, tribunes, a soothsayer, a dutchman, a spaniard, musicians, officers, captains, soldiers, messengers, and other attendants. (lord:) (lady:) (first lady:) (first senator:) (second senator:) (first tribune:) (soothsayer:) (messenger:) apparitions. (sicilius leonatus:) (mother:) (first brother:) (second brother:) (jupiter:) scene britain; rome. cymbeline act i scene i britain. the garden of cymbeline's palace. [enter two gentlemen] first gentleman you do not meet a man but frowns: our bloods no more obey the heavens than our courtiers still seem as does the king. second gentleman but what's the matter? first gentleman his daughter, and the heir of's kingdom, whom he purposed to his wife's sole son--a widow that late he married--hath referr'd herself unto a poor but worthy gentleman: she's wedded; her husband banish'd; she imprison'd: all is outward sorrow; though i think the king be touch'd at very heart. second gentleman none but the king? first gentleman he that hath lost her too; so is the queen, that most desired the match; but not a courtier, although they wear their faces to the bent of the king's look's, hath a heart that is not glad at the thing they scowl at. second gentleman and why so? first gentleman he that hath miss'd the princess is a thing too bad for bad report: and he that hath her- i mean, that married her, alack, good man! and therefore banish'd--is a creature such as, to seek through the regions of the earth for one his like, there would be something failing in him that should compare. i do not think so fair an outward and such stuff within endows a man but he. second gentleman you speak him far. first gentleman i do extend him, sir, within himself, crush him together rather than unfold his measure duly. second gentleman what's his name and birth? first gentleman i cannot delve him to the root: his father was call'd sicilius, who did join his honour against the romans with cassibelan, but had his titles by tenantius whom he served with glory and admired success, so gain'd the sur-addition leonatus; and had, besides this gentleman in question, two other sons, who in the wars o' the time died with their swords in hand; for which their father, then old and fond of issue, took such sorrow that he quit being, and his gentle lady, big of this gentleman our theme, deceased as he was born. the king he takes the babe to his protection, calls him posthumus leonatus, breeds him and makes him of his bed-chamber, puts to him all the learnings that his time could make him the receiver of; which he took, as we do air, fast as 'twas minister'd, and in's spring became a harvest, lived in court- which rare it is to do--most praised, most loved, a sample to the youngest, to the more mature a glass that feated them, and to the graver a child that guided dotards; to his mistress, for whom he now is banish'd, her own price proclaims how she esteem'd him and his virtue; by her election may be truly read what kind of man he is. second gentleman i honour him even out of your report. but, pray you, tell me, is she sole child to the king? first gentleman his only child. he had two sons: if this be worth your hearing, mark it: the eldest of them at three years old, i' the swathing-clothes the other, from their nursery were stol'n, and to this hour no guess in knowledge which way they went. second gentleman how long is this ago? first gentleman some twenty years. second gentleman that a king's children should be so convey'd, so slackly guarded, and the search so slow, that could not trace them! first gentleman howsoe'er 'tis strange, or that the negligence may well be laugh'd at, yet is it true, sir. second gentleman i do well believe you. first gentleman we must forbear: here comes the gentleman, the queen, and princess. [exeunt] [enter the queen, posthumus leonatus, and imogen] queen no, be assured you shall not find me, daughter, after the slander of most stepmothers, evil-eyed unto you: you're my prisoner, but your gaoler shall deliver you the keys that lock up your restraint. for you, posthumus, so soon as i can win the offended king, i will be known your advocate: marry, yet the fire of rage is in him, and 'twere good you lean'd unto his sentence with what patience your wisdom may inform you. posthumus leonatus please your highness, i will from hence to-day. queen you know the peril. i'll fetch a turn about the garden, pitying the pangs of barr'd affections, though the king hath charged you should not speak together. [exit] imogen o dissembling courtesy! how fine this tyrant can tickle where she wounds! my dearest husband, i something fear my father's wrath; but nothing- always reserved my holy duty--what his rage can do on me: you must be gone; and i shall here abide the hourly shot of angry eyes, not comforted to live, but that there is this jewel in the world that i may see again. posthumus leonatus my queen! my mistress! o lady, weep no more, lest i give cause to be suspected of more tenderness than doth become a man. i will remain the loyal'st husband that did e'er plight troth: my residence in rome at one philario's, who to my father was a friend, to me known but by letter: thither write, my queen, and with mine eyes i'll drink the words you send, though ink be made of gall. [re-enter queen] queen be brief, i pray you: if the king come, i shall incur i know not how much of his displeasure. [aside] yet i'll move him to walk this way: i never do him wrong, but he does buy my injuries, to be friends; pays dear for my offences. [exit] posthumus leonatus should we be taking leave as long a term as yet we have to live, the loathness to depart would grow. adieu! imogen nay, stay a little: were you but riding forth to air yourself, such parting were too petty. look here, love; this diamond was my mother's: take it, heart; but keep it till you woo another wife, when imogen is dead. posthumus leonatus how, how! another? you gentle gods, give me but this i have, and sear up my embracements from a next with bonds of death! [putting on the ring] remain, remain thou here while sense can keep it on. and, sweetest, fairest, as i my poor self did exchange for you, to your so infinite loss, so in our trifles i still win of you: for my sake wear this; it is a manacle of love; i'll place it upon this fairest prisoner. [putting a bracelet upon her arm] imogen o the gods! when shall we see again? [enter cymbeline and lords] posthumus leonatus alack, the king! cymbeline thou basest thing, avoid! hence, from my sight! if after this command thou fraught the court with thy unworthiness, thou diest: away! thou'rt poison to my blood. posthumus leonatus the gods protect you! and bless the good remainders of the court! i am gone. [exit] imogen there cannot be a pinch in death more sharp than this is. cymbeline o disloyal thing, that shouldst repair my youth, thou heap'st a year's age on me. imogen i beseech you, sir, harm not yourself with your vexation i am senseless of your wrath; a touch more rare subdues all pangs, all fears. cymbeline past grace? obedience? imogen past hope, and in despair; that way, past grace. cymbeline that mightst have had the sole son of my queen! imogen o blest, that i might not! i chose an eagle, and did avoid a puttock. cymbeline thou took'st a beggar; wouldst have made my throne a seat for baseness. imogen no; i rather added a lustre to it. cymbeline o thou vile one! imogen sir, it is your fault that i have loved posthumus: you bred him as my playfellow, and he is a man worth any woman, overbuys me almost the sum he pays. cymbeline what, art thou mad? imogen almost, sir: heaven restore me! would i were a neat-herd's daughter, and my leonatus our neighbour shepherd's son! cymbeline thou foolish thing! [re-enter queen] they were again together: you have done not after our command. away with her, and pen her up. queen beseech your patience. peace, dear lady daughter, peace! sweet sovereign, leave us to ourselves; and make yourself some comfort out of your best advice. cymbeline nay, let her languish a drop of blood a day; and, being aged, die of this folly! [exeunt cymbeline and lords] queen fie! you must give way. [enter pisanio] here is your servant. how now, sir! what news? pisanio my lord your son drew on my master. queen ha! no harm, i trust, is done? pisanio there might have been, but that my master rather play'd than fought and had no help of anger: they were parted by gentlemen at hand. queen i am very glad on't. imogen your son's my father's friend; he takes his part. to draw upon an exile! o brave sir! i would they were in afric both together; myself by with a needle, that i might prick the goer-back. why came you from your master? pisanio on his command: he would not suffer me to bring him to the haven; left these notes of what commands i should be subject to, when 't pleased you to employ me. queen this hath been your faithful servant: i dare lay mine honour he will remain so. pisanio i humbly thank your highness. queen pray, walk awhile. imogen about some half-hour hence, i pray you, speak with me: you shall at least go see my lord aboard: for this time leave me. [exeunt] cymbeline act i scene ii the same. a public place. [enter cloten and two lords] first lord sir, i would advise you to shift a shirt; the violence of action hath made you reek as a sacrifice: where air comes out, air comes in: there's none abroad so wholesome as that you vent. cloten if my shirt were bloody, then to shift it. have i hurt him? second lord [aside] no, 'faith; not so much as his patience. first lord hurt him! his body's a passable carcass, if he be not hurt: it is a thoroughfare for steel, if it be not hurt. second lord [aside] his steel was in debt; it went o' the backside the town. cloten the villain would not stand me. second lord [aside] no; but he fled forward still, toward your face. first lord stand you! you have land enough of your own: but he added to your having; gave you some ground. second lord [aside] as many inches as you have oceans. puppies! cloten i would they had not come between us. second lord [aside] so would i, till you had measured how long a fool you were upon the ground. cloten and that she should love this fellow and refuse me! second lord [aside] if it be a sin to make a true election, she is damned. first lord sir, as i told you always, her beauty and her brain go not together: she's a good sign, but i have seen small reflection of her wit. second lord [aside] she shines not upon fools, lest the reflection should hurt her. cloten come, i'll to my chamber. would there had been some hurt done! second lord [aside] i wish not so; unless it had been the fall of an ass, which is no great hurt. cloten you'll go with us? first lord i'll attend your lordship. cloten nay, come, let's go together. second lord well, my lord. [exeunt] cymbeline act i scene iii a room in cymbeline's palace. [enter imogen and pisanio] imogen i would thou grew'st unto the shores o' the haven, and question'dst every sail: if he should write and not have it, 'twere a paper lost, as offer'd mercy is. what was the last that he spake to thee? pisanio it was his queen, his queen! imogen then waved his handkerchief? pisanio and kiss'd it, madam. imogen senseless linen! happier therein than i! and that was all? pisanio no, madam; for so long as he could make me with this eye or ear distinguish him from others, he did keep the deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief, still waving, as the fits and stirs of 's mind could best express how slow his soul sail'd on, how swift his ship. imogen thou shouldst have made him as little as a crow, or less, ere left to after-eye him. pisanio madam, so i did. imogen i would have broke mine eye-strings; crack'd them, but to look upon him, till the diminution of space had pointed him sharp as my needle, nay, follow'd him, till he had melted from the smallness of a gnat to air, and then have turn'd mine eye and wept. but, good pisanio, when shall we hear from him? pisanio be assured, madam, with his next vantage. imogen i did not take my leave of him, but had most pretty things to say: ere i could tell him how i would think on him at certain hours such thoughts and such, or i could make him swear the shes of italy should not betray mine interest and his honour, or have charged him, at the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight, to encounter me with orisons, for then i am in heaven for him; or ere i could give him that parting kiss which i had set betwixt two charming words, comes in my father and like the tyrannous breathing of the north shakes all our buds from growing. [enter a lady] lady the queen, madam, desires your highness' company. imogen those things i bid you do, get them dispatch'd. i will attend the queen. pisanio madam, i shall. [exeunt] cymbeline act i scene iv rome. philario's house. [enter philario, iachimo, a frenchman, a dutchman, and a spaniard] iachimo believe it, sir, i have seen him in britain: he was then of a crescent note, expected to prove so worthy as since he hath been allowed the name of; but i could then have looked on him without the help of admiration, though the catalogue of his endowments had been tabled by his side and i to peruse him by items. philario you speak of him when he was less furnished than now he is with that which makes him both without and within. frenchman i have seen him in france: we had very many there could behold the sun with as firm eyes as he. iachimo this matter of marrying his king's daughter, wherein he must be weighed rather by her value than his own, words him, i doubt not, a great deal from the matter. frenchman and then his banishment. iachimo ay, and the approbation of those that weep this lamentable divorce under her colours are wonderfully to extend him; be it but to fortify her judgment, which else an easy battery might lay flat, for taking a beggar without less quality. but how comes it he is to sojourn with you? how creeps acquaintance? philario his father and i were soldiers together; to whom i have been often bound for no less than my life. here comes the briton: let him be so entertained amongst you as suits, with gentlemen of your knowing, to a stranger of his quality. [enter posthumus leonatus] i beseech you all, be better known to this gentleman; whom i commend to you as a noble friend of mine: how worthy he is i will leave to appear hereafter, rather than story him in his own hearing. frenchman sir, we have known together in orleans. posthumus leonatus since when i have been debtor to you for courtesies, which i will be ever to pay and yet pay still. frenchman sir, you o'er-rate my poor kindness: i was glad i did atone my countryman and you; it had been pity you should have been put together with so mortal a purpose as then each bore, upon importance of so slight and trivial a nature. posthumus leonatus by your pardon, sir, i was then a young traveller; rather shunned to go even with what i heard than in my every action to be guided by others' experiences: but upon my mended judgment--if i offend not to say it is mended--my quarrel was not altogether slight. frenchman 'faith, yes, to be put to the arbitrement of swords, and by such two that would by all likelihood have confounded one the other, or have fallen both. iachimo can we, with manners, ask what was the difference? frenchman safely, i think: 'twas a contention in public, which may, without contradiction, suffer the report. it was much like an argument that fell out last night, where each of us fell in praise of our country mistresses; this gentleman at that time vouching--and upon warrant of bloody affirmation--his to be more fair, virtuous, wise, chaste, constant-qualified and less attemptable than any the rarest of our ladies in france. iachimo that lady is not now living, or this gentleman's opinion by this worn out. posthumus leonatus she holds her virtue still and i my mind. iachimo you must not so far prefer her 'fore ours of italy. posthumus leonatus being so far provoked as i was in france, i would abate her nothing, though i profess myself her adorer, not her friend. iachimo as fair and as good--a kind of hand-in-hand comparison--had been something too fair and too good for any lady in britain. if she went before others i have seen, as that diamond of yours outlustres many i have beheld. i could not but believe she excelled many: but i have not seen the most precious diamond that is, nor you the lady. posthumus leonatus i praised her as i rated her: so do i my stone. iachimo what do you esteem it at? posthumus leonatus more than the world enjoys. iachimo either your unparagoned mistress is dead, or she's outprized by a trifle. posthumus leonatus you are mistaken: the one may be sold, or given, if there were wealth enough for the purchase, or merit for the gift: the other is not a thing for sale, and only the gift of the gods. iachimo which the gods have given you? posthumus leonatus which, by their graces, i will keep. iachimo you may wear her in title yours: but, you know, strange fowl light upon neighbouring ponds. your ring may be stolen too: so your brace of unprizable estimations; the one is but frail and the other casual; a cunning thief, or a that way accomplished courtier, would hazard the winning both of first and last. posthumus leonatus your italy contains none so accomplished a courtier to convince the honour of my mistress, if, in the holding or loss of that, you term her frail. i do nothing doubt you have store of thieves; notwithstanding, i fear not my ring. philario let us leave here, gentlemen. posthumus leonatus sir, with all my heart. this worthy signior, i thank him, makes no stranger of me; we are familiar at first. iachimo with five times so much conversation, i should get ground of your fair mistress, make her go back, even to the yielding, had i admittance and opportunity to friend. posthumus leonatus no, no. iachimo i dare thereupon pawn the moiety of my estate to your ring; which, in my opinion, o'ervalues it something: but i make my wager rather against your confidence than her reputation: and, to bar your offence herein too, i durst attempt it against any lady in the world. posthumus leonatus you are a great deal abused in too bold a persuasion; and i doubt not you sustain what you're worthy of by your attempt. iachimo what's that? posthumus leonatus a repulse: though your attempt, as you call it, deserve more; a punishment too. philario gentlemen, enough of this: it came in too suddenly; let it die as it was born, and, i pray you, be better acquainted. iachimo would i had put my estate and my neighbour's on the approbation of what i have spoke! posthumus leonatus what lady would you choose to assail? iachimo yours; whom in constancy you think stands so safe. i will lay you ten thousand ducats to your ring, that, commend me to the court where your lady is, with no more advantage than the opportunity of a second conference, and i will bring from thence that honour of hers which you imagine so reserved. posthumus leonatus i will wage against your gold, gold to it: my ring i hold dear as my finger; 'tis part of it. iachimo you are afraid, and therein the wiser. if you buy ladies' flesh at a million a dram, you cannot preserve it from tainting: but i see you have some religion in you, that you fear. posthumus leonatus this is but a custom in your tongue; you bear a graver purpose, i hope. iachimo i am the master of my speeches, and would undergo what's spoken, i swear. posthumus leonatus will you? i shall but lend my diamond till your return: let there be covenants drawn between's: my mistress exceeds in goodness the hugeness of your unworthy thinking: i dare you to this match: here's my ring. philario i will have it no lay. iachimo by the gods, it is one. if i bring you no sufficient testimony that i have enjoyed the dearest bodily part of your mistress, my ten thousand ducats are yours; so is your diamond too: if i come off, and leave her in such honour as you have trust in, she your jewel, this your jewel, and my gold are yours: provided i have your commendation for my more free entertainment. posthumus leonatus i embrace these conditions; let us have articles betwixt us. only, thus far you shall answer: if you make your voyage upon her and give me directly to understand you have prevailed, i am no further your enemy; she is not worth our debate: if she remain unseduced, you not making it appear otherwise, for your ill opinion and the assault you have made to her chastity you shall answer me with your sword. iachimo your hand; a covenant: we will have these things set down by lawful counsel, and straight away for britain, lest the bargain should catch cold and starve: i will fetch my gold and have our two wagers recorded. posthumus leonatus agreed. [exeunt posthumus leonatus and iachimo] frenchman will this hold, think you? philario signior iachimo will not from it. pray, let us follow 'em. [exeunt] cymbeline act i scene v britain. a room in cymbeline's palace. [enter queen, ladies, and cornelius] queen whiles yet the dew's on ground, gather those flowers; make haste: who has the note of them? first lady i, madam. queen dispatch. [exeunt ladies] now, master doctor, have you brought those drugs? cornelius pleaseth your highness, ay: here they are, madam: [presenting a small box] but i beseech your grace, without offence,- my conscience bids me ask--wherefore you have commanded of me those most poisonous compounds, which are the movers of a languishing death; but though slow, deadly? queen i wonder, doctor, thou ask'st me such a question. have i not been thy pupil long? hast thou not learn'd me how to make perfumes? distil? preserve? yea, so that our great king himself doth woo me oft for my confections? having thus far proceeded,- unless thou think'st me devilish--is't not meet that i did amplify my judgment in other conclusions? i will try the forces of these thy compounds on such creatures as we count not worth the hanging, but none human, to try the vigour of them and apply allayments to their act, and by them gather their several virtues and effects. cornelius your highness shall from this practise but make hard your heart: besides, the seeing these effects will be both noisome and infectious. queen o, content thee. [enter pisanio] [aside] here comes a flattering rascal; upon him will i first work: he's for his master, an enemy to my son. how now, pisanio! doctor, your service for this time is ended; take your own way. cornelius [aside] i do suspect you, madam; but you shall do no harm. queen [to pisanio] hark thee, a word. cornelius [aside] i do not like her. she doth think she has strange lingering poisons: i do know her spirit, and will not trust one of her malice with a drug of such damn'd nature. those she has will stupefy and dull the sense awhile; which first, perchance, she'll prove on cats and dogs, then afterward up higher: but there is no danger in what show of death it makes, more than the locking-up the spirits a time, to be more fresh, reviving. she is fool'd with a most false effect; and i the truer, so to be false with her. queen no further service, doctor, until i send for thee. cornelius i humbly take my leave. [exit] queen weeps she still, say'st thou? dost thou think in time she will not quench and let instructions enter where folly now possesses? do thou work: when thou shalt bring me word she loves my son, i'll tell thee on the instant thou art then as great as is thy master, greater, for his fortunes all lie speechless and his name is at last gasp: return he cannot, nor continue where he is: to shift his being is to exchange one misery with another, and every day that comes comes to decay a day's work in him. what shalt thou expect, to be depender on a thing that leans, who cannot be new built, nor has no friends, so much as but to prop him? [the queen drops the box: pisanio takes it up] thou takest up thou know'st not what; but take it for thy labour: it is a thing i made, which hath the king five times redeem'd from death: i do not know what is more cordial. nay, i prethee, take it; it is an earnest of a further good that i mean to thee. tell thy mistress how the case stands with her; do't as from thyself. think what a chance thou changest on, but think thou hast thy mistress still, to boot, my son, who shall take notice of thee: i'll move the king to any shape of thy preferment such as thou'lt desire; and then myself, i chiefly, that set thee on to this desert, am bound to load thy merit richly. call my women: think on my words. [exit pisanio] a sly and constant knave, not to be shaked; the agent for his master and the remembrancer of her to hold the hand-fast to her lord. i have given him that which, if he take, shall quite unpeople her of liegers for her sweet, and which she after, except she bend her humour, shall be assured to taste of too. [re-enter pisanio and ladies] so, so: well done, well done: the violets, cowslips, and the primroses, bear to my closet. fare thee well, pisanio; think on my words. [exeunt queen and ladies] pisanio and shall do: but when to my good lord i prove untrue, i'll choke myself: there's all i'll do for you. [exit] cymbeline act i scene vi the same. another room in the palace. [enter imogen] imogen a father cruel, and a step-dame false; a foolish suitor to a wedded lady, that hath her husband banish'd;--o, that husband! my supreme crown of grief! and those repeated vexations of it! had i been thief-stol'n, as my two brothers, happy! but most miserable is the desire that's glorious: blest be those, how mean soe'er, that have their honest wills, which seasons comfort. who may this be? fie! [enter pisanio and iachimo] pisanio madam, a noble gentleman of rome, comes from my lord with letters. iachimo change you, madam? the worthy leonatus is in safety and greets your highness dearly. [presents a letter] imogen thanks, good sir: you're kindly welcome. iachimo [aside] all of her that is out of door most rich! if she be furnish'd with a mind so rare, she is alone the arabian bird, and i have lost the wager. boldness be my friend! arm me, audacity, from head to foot! or, like the parthian, i shall flying fight; rather directly fly. imogen [reads] 'he is one of the noblest note, to whose kindnesses i am most infinitely tied. reflect upon him accordingly, as you value your trust- leonatus.' so far i read aloud: but even the very middle of my heart is warm'd by the rest, and takes it thankfully. you are as welcome, worthy sir, as i have words to bid you, and shall find it so in all that i can do. iachimo thanks, fairest lady. what, are men mad? hath nature given them eyes to see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop of sea and land, which can distinguish 'twixt the fiery orbs above and the twinn'd stones upon the number'd beach? and can we not partition make with spectacles so precious 'twixt fair and foul? imogen what makes your admiration? iachimo it cannot be i' the eye, for apes and monkeys 'twixt two such shes would chatter this way and contemn with mows the other; nor i' the judgment, for idiots in this case of favour would be wisely definite; nor i' the appetite; sluttery to such neat excellence opposed should make desire vomit emptiness, not so allured to feed. imogen what is the matter, trow? iachimo the cloyed will, that satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub both fill'd and running, ravening first the lamb longs after for the garbage. imogen what, dear sir, thus raps you? are you well? iachimo thanks, madam; well. [to pisanio] beseech you, sir, desire my man's abode where i did leave him: he is strange and peevish. pisanio i was going, sir, to give him welcome. [exit] imogen continues well my lord? his health, beseech you? iachimo well, madam. imogen is he disposed to mirth? i hope he is. iachimo exceeding pleasant; none a stranger there so merry and so gamesome: he is call'd the briton reveller. imogen when he was here, he did incline to sadness, and oft-times not knowing why. iachimo i never saw him sad. there is a frenchman his companion, one an eminent monsieur, that, it seems, much loves a gallian girl at home; he furnaces the thick sighs from him, whiles the jolly briton- your lord, i mean--laughs from's free lungs, cries 'o, can my sides hold, to think that man, who knows by history, report, or his own proof, what woman is, yea, what she cannot choose but must be, will his free hours languish for assured bondage?' imogen will my lord say so? iachimo ay, madam, with his eyes in flood with laughter: it is a recreation to be by and hear him mock the frenchman. but, heavens know, some men are much to blame. imogen not he, i hope. iachimo not he: but yet heaven's bounty towards him might be used more thankfully. in himself, 'tis much; in you, which i account his beyond all talents, whilst i am bound to wonder, i am bound to pity too. imogen what do you pity, sir? iachimo two creatures heartily. imogen am i one, sir? you look on me: what wreck discern you in me deserves your pity? iachimo lamentable! what, to hide me from the radiant sun and solace i' the dungeon by a snuff? imogen i pray you, sir, deliver with more openness your answers to my demands. why do you pity me? iachimo that others do- i was about to say--enjoy your--but it is an office of the gods to venge it, not mine to speak on 't. imogen you do seem to know something of me, or what concerns me: pray you,- since doubling things go ill often hurts more than to be sure they do; for certainties either are past remedies, or, timely knowing, the remedy then born--discover to me what both you spur and stop. iachimo had i this cheek to bathe my lips upon; this hand, whose touch, whose every touch, would force the feeler's soul to the oath of loyalty; this object, which takes prisoner the wild motion of mine eye, fixing it only here; should i, damn'd then, slaver with lips as common as the stairs that mount the capitol; join gripes with hands made hard with hourly falsehood--falsehood, as with labour; then by-peeping in an eye base and unlustrous as the smoky light that's fed with stinking tallow; it were fit that all the plagues of hell should at one time encounter such revolt. imogen my lord, i fear, has forgot britain. iachimo and himself. not i, inclined to this intelligence, pronounce the beggary of his change; but 'tis your graces that from pay mutest conscience to my tongue charms this report out. imogen let me hear no more. iachimo o dearest soul! your cause doth strike my heart with pity, that doth make me sick. a lady so fair, and fasten'd to an empery, would make the great'st king double,--to be partner'd with tomboys hired with that self-exhibition which your own coffers yield! with diseased ventures that play with all infirmities for gold which rottenness can lend nature! such boil'd stuff as well might poison poison! be revenged; or she that bore you was no queen, and you recoil from your great stock. imogen revenged! how should i be revenged? if this be true,- as i have such a heart that both mine ears must not in haste abuse--if it be true, how should i be revenged? iachimo should he make me live, like diana's priest, betwixt cold sheets, whiles he is vaulting variable ramps, in your despite, upon your purse? revenge it. i dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure, more noble than that runagate to your bed, and will continue fast to your affection, still close as sure. imogen what, ho, pisanio! iachimo let me my service tender on your lips. imogen away! i do condemn mine ears that have so long attended thee. if thou wert honourable, thou wouldst have told this tale for virtue, not for such an end thou seek'st,--as base as strange. thou wrong'st a gentleman, who is as far from thy report as thou from honour, and solicit'st here a lady that disdains thee and the devil alike. what ho, pisanio! the king my father shall be made acquainted of thy assault: if he shall think it fit, a saucy stranger in his court to mart as in a romish stew and to expound his beastly mind to us, he hath a court he little cares for and a daughter who he not respects at all. what, ho, pisanio! iachimo o happy leonatus! i may say the credit that thy lady hath of thee deserves thy trust, and thy most perfect goodness her assured credit. blessed live you long! a lady to the worthiest sir that ever country call'd his! and you his mistress, only for the most worthiest fit! give me your pardon. i have spoke this, to know if your affiance were deeply rooted; and shall make your lord, that which he is, new o'er: and he is one the truest manner'd; such a holy witch that he enchants societies into him; half all men's hearts are his. imogen you make amends. iachimo he sits 'mongst men like a descended god: he hath a kind of honour sets him off, more than a mortal seeming. be not angry, most mighty princess, that i have adventured to try your taking a false report; which hath honour'd with confirmation your great judgment in the election of a sir so rare, which you know cannot err: the love i bear him made me to fan you thus, but the gods made you, unlike all others, chaffless. pray, your pardon. imogen all's well, sir: take my power i' the court for yours. iachimo my humble thanks. i had almost forgot to entreat your grace but in a small request, and yet of moment to, for it concerns your lord; myself and other noble friends, are partners in the business. imogen pray, what is't? iachimo some dozen romans of us and your lord- the best feather of our wing--have mingled sums to buy a present for the emperor which i, the factor for the rest, have done in france: 'tis plate of rare device, and jewels of rich and exquisite form; their values great; and i am something curious, being strange, to have them in safe stowage: may it please you to take them in protection? imogen willingly; and pawn mine honour for their safety: since my lord hath interest in them, i will keep them in my bedchamber. iachimo they are in a trunk, attended by my men: i will make bold to send them to you, only for this night; i must aboard to-morrow. imogen o, no, no. iachimo yes, i beseech; or i shall short my word by lengthening my return. from gallia i cross'd the seas on purpose and on promise to see your grace. imogen i thank you for your pains: but not away to-morrow! iachimo o, i must, madam: therefore i shall beseech you, if you please to greet your lord with writing, do't to-night: i have outstood my time; which is material to the tender of our present. imogen i will write. send your trunk to me; it shall safe be kept, and truly yielded you. you're very welcome. [exeunt] cymbeline act ii scene i britain. before cymbeline's palace. [enter cloten and two lords] cloten was there ever man had such luck! when i kissed the jack, upon an up-cast to be hit away! i had a hundred pound on't: and then a whoreson jackanapes must take me up for swearing; as if i borrowed mine oaths of him and might not spend them at my pleasure. first lord what got he by that? you have broke his pate with your bowl. second lord [aside] if his wit had been like him that broke it, it would have run all out. cloten when a gentleman is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths, ha? second lord no my lord; [aside] nor crop the ears of them. cloten whoreson dog! i give him satisfaction? would he had been one of my rank! second lord [aside] to have smelt like a fool. cloten i am not vexed more at any thing in the earth: a pox on't! i had rather not be so noble as i am; they dare not fight with me, because of the queen my mother: every jack-slave hath his bellyful of fighting, and i must go up and down like a cock that nobody can match. second lord [aside] you are cock and capon too; and you crow, cock, with your comb on. cloten sayest thou? second lord it is not fit your lordship should undertake every companion that you give offence to. cloten no, i know that: but it is fit i should commit offence to my inferiors. second lord ay, it is fit for your lordship only. cloten why, so i say. first lord did you hear of a stranger that's come to court to-night? cloten a stranger, and i not know on't! second lord [aside] he's a strange fellow himself, and knows it not. first lord there's an italian come; and, 'tis thought, one of leonatus' friends. cloten leonatus! a banished rascal; and he's another, whatsoever he be. who told you of this stranger? first lord one of your lordship's pages. cloten is it fit i went to look upon him? is there no derogation in't? second lord you cannot derogate, my lord. cloten not easily, i think. second lord [aside] you are a fool granted; therefore your issues, being foolish, do not derogate. cloten come, i'll go see this italian: what i have lost to-day at bowls i'll win to-night of him. come, go. second lord i'll attend your lordship. [exeunt cloten and first lord] that such a crafty devil as is his mother should yield the world this ass! a woman that bears all down with her brain; and this her son cannot take two from twenty, for his heart, and leave eighteen. alas, poor princess, thou divine imogen, what thou endurest, betwixt a father by thy step-dame govern'd, a mother hourly coining plots, a wooer more hateful than the foul expulsion is of thy dear husband, than that horrid act of the divorce he'ld make! the heavens hold firm the walls of thy dear honour, keep unshaked that temple, thy fair mind, that thou mayst stand, to enjoy thy banish'd lord and this great land! [exit] cymbeline act ii scene ii imogen's bedchamber in cymbeline's palace: a trunk in one corner of it. [imogen in bed, reading; a lady attending] imogen who's there? my woman helen? lady please you, madam imogen what hour is it? lady almost midnight, madam. imogen i have read three hours then: mine eyes are weak: fold down the leaf where i have left: to bed: take not away the taper, leave it burning; and if thou canst awake by four o' the clock, i prithee, call me. sleep hath seized me wholly [exit lady] to your protection i commend me, gods. from fairies and the tempters of the night guard me, beseech ye. [sleeps. iachimo comes from the trunk] iachimo the crickets sing, and man's o'er-labour'd sense repairs itself by rest. our tarquin thus did softly press the rushes, ere he waken'd the chastity he wounded. cytherea, how bravely thou becomest thy bed, fresh lily, and whiter than the sheets! that i might touch! but kiss; one kiss! rubies unparagon'd, how dearly they do't! 'tis her breathing that perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' the taper bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids, to see the enclosed lights, now canopied under these windows, white and azure laced with blue of heaven's own tinct. but my design, to note the chamber: i will write all down: such and such pictures; there the window; such the adornment of her bed; the arras; figures, why, such and such; and the contents o' the story. ah, but some natural notes about her body, above ten thousand meaner moveables would testify, to enrich mine inventory. o sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her! and be her sense but as a monument, thus in a chapel lying! come off, come off: [taking off her bracelet] as slippery as the gordian knot was hard! 'tis mine; and this will witness outwardly, as strongly as the conscience does within, to the madding of her lord. on her left breast a mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops i' the bottom of a cowslip: here's a voucher, stronger than ever law could make: this secret will force him think i have pick'd the lock and ta'en the treasure of her honour. no more. to what end? why should i write this down, that's riveted, screw'd to my memory? she hath been reading late the tale of tereus; here the leaf's turn'd down where philomel gave up. i have enough: to the trunk again, and shut the spring of it. swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning may bare the raven's eye! i lodge in fear; though this a heavenly angel, hell is here. [clock strikes] one, two, three: time, time! [goes into the trunk. the scene closes] cymbeline act ii scene iii an ante-chamber adjoining imogen's apartments. [enter cloten and lords] first lord your lordship is the most patient man in loss, the most coldest that ever turned up ace. cloten it would make any man cold to lose. first lord but not every man patient after the noble temper of your lordship. you are most hot and furious when you win. cloten winning will put any man into courage. if i could get this foolish imogen, i should have gold enough. it's almost morning, is't not? first lord day, my lord. cloten i would this music would come: i am advised to give her music o' mornings; they say it will penetrate. [enter musicians] come on; tune: if you can penetrate her with your fingering, so; we'll try with tongue too: if none will do, let her remain; but i'll never give o'er. first, a very excellent good-conceited thing; after, a wonderful sweet air, with admirable rich words to it: and then let her consider. [song] hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, and phoebus 'gins arise, his steeds to water at those springs on chaliced flowers that lies; and winking mary-buds begin to ope their golden eyes: with every thing that pretty is, my lady sweet, arise: arise, arise. cloten so, get you gone. if this penetrate, i will consider your music the better: if it do not, it is a vice in her ears, which horse-hairs and calves'-guts, nor the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend. [exeunt musicians] second lord here comes the king. cloten i am glad i was up so late; for that's the reason i was up so early: he cannot choose but take this service i have done fatherly. [enter cymbeline and queen] good morrow to your majesty and to my gracious mother. cymbeline attend you here the door of our stern daughter? will she not forth? cloten i have assailed her with music, but she vouchsafes no notice. cymbeline the exile of her minion is too new; she hath not yet forgot him: some more time must wear the print of his remembrance out, and then she's yours. queen you are most bound to the king, who lets go by no vantages that may prefer you to his daughter. frame yourself to orderly soliciting, and be friended with aptness of the season; make denials increase your services; so seem as if you were inspired to do those duties which you tender to her; that you in all obey her, save when command to your dismission tends, and therein you are senseless. cloten senseless! not so. [enter a messenger] messenger so like you, sir, ambassadors from rome; the one is caius lucius. cymbeline a worthy fellow, albeit he comes on angry purpose now; but that's no fault of his: we must receive him according to the honour of his sender; and towards himself, his goodness forespent on us, we must extend our notice. our dear son, when you have given good morning to your mistress, attend the queen and us; we shall have need to employ you towards this roman. come, our queen. [exeunt all but cloten] cloten if she be up, i'll speak with her; if not, let her lie still and dream. [knocks] by your leave, ho! i know her women are about her: what if i do line one of their hands? 'tis gold which buys admittance; oft it doth; yea, and makes diana's rangers false themselves, yield up their deer to the stand o' the stealer; and 'tis gold which makes the true man kill'd and saves the thief; nay, sometime hangs both thief and true man: what can it not do and undo? i will make one of her women lawyer to me, for i yet not understand the case myself. [knocks] by your leave. [enter a lady] lady who's there that knocks? cloten a gentleman. lady no more? cloten yes, and a gentlewoman's son. lady that's more than some, whose tailors are as dear as yours, can justly boast of. what's your lordship's pleasure? cloten your lady's person: is she ready? lady ay, to keep her chamber. cloten there is gold for you; sell me your good report. lady how! my good name? or to report of you what i shall think is good?--the princess! [enter imogen] cloten good morrow, fairest: sister, your sweet hand. [exit lady] imogen good morrow, sir. you lay out too much pains for purchasing but trouble; the thanks i give is telling you that i am poor of thanks and scarce can spare them. cloten still, i swear i love you. imogen if you but said so, 'twere as deep with me: if you swear still, your recompense is still that i regard it not. cloten this is no answer. imogen but that you shall not say i yield being silent, i would not speak. i pray you, spare me: 'faith, i shall unfold equal discourtesy to your best kindness: one of your great knowing should learn, being taught, forbearance. cloten to leave you in your madness, 'twere my sin: i will not. imogen fools are not mad folks. cloten do you call me fool? imogen as i am mad, i do: if you'll be patient, i'll no more be mad; that cures us both. i am much sorry, sir, you put me to forget a lady's manners, by being so verbal: and learn now, for all, that i, which know my heart, do here pronounce, by the very truth of it, i care not for you, and am so near the lack of charity- to accuse myself--i hate you; which i had rather you felt than make't my boast. cloten you sin against obedience, which you owe your father. for the contract you pretend with that base wretch, one bred of alms and foster'd with cold dishes, with scraps o' the court, it is no contract, none: and though it be allow'd in meaner parties- yet who than he more mean?--to knit their souls, on whom there is no more dependency but brats and beggary, in self-figured knot; yet you are curb'd from that enlargement by the consequence o' the crown, and must not soil the precious note of it with a base slave. a hilding for a livery, a squire's cloth, a pantler, not so eminent. imogen profane fellow wert thou the son of jupiter and no more but what thou art besides, thou wert too base to be his groom: thou wert dignified enough, even to the point of envy, if 'twere made comparative for your virtues, to be styled the under-hangman of his kingdom, and hated for being preferred so well. cloten the south-fog rot him! imogen he never can meet more mischance than come to be but named of thee. his meanest garment, that ever hath but clipp'd his body, is dearer in my respect than all the hairs above thee, were they all made such men. how now, pisanio! [enter pisanio] cloten 'his garment!' now the devil- imogen to dorothy my woman hie thee presently- cloten 'his garment!' imogen i am sprited with a fool. frighted, and anger'd worse: go bid my woman search for a jewel that too casually hath left mine arm: it was thy master's: 'shrew me, if i would lose it for a revenue of any king's in europe. i do think i saw't this morning: confident i am last night 'twas on mine arm; i kiss'd it: i hope it be not gone to tell my lord that i kiss aught but he. pisanio 'twill not be lost. imogen i hope so: go and search. [exit pisanio] cloten you have abused me: 'his meanest garment!' imogen ay, i said so, sir: if you will make't an action, call witness to't. cloten i will inform your father. imogen your mother too: she's my good lady, and will conceive, i hope, but the worst of me. so, i leave you, sir, to the worst of discontent. [exit] cloten i'll be revenged: 'his meanest garment!' well. [exit] cymbeline act ii scene iv rome. philario's house. [enter posthumus and philario] posthumus leonatus fear it not, sir: i would i were so sure to win the king as i am bold her honour will remain hers. philario what means do you make to him? posthumus leonatus not any, but abide the change of time, quake in the present winter's state and wish that warmer days would come: in these sear'd hopes, i barely gratify your love; they failing, i must die much your debtor. philario your very goodness and your company o'erpays all i can do. by this, your king hath heard of great augustus: caius lucius will do's commission throughly: and i think he'll grant the tribute, send the arrearages, or look upon our romans, whose remembrance is yet fresh in their grief. posthumus leonatus i do believe, statist though i am none, nor like to be, that this will prove a war; and you shall hear the legions now in gallia sooner landed in our not-fearing britain than have tidings of any penny tribute paid. our countrymen are men more order'd than when julius caesar smiled at their lack of skill, but found their courage worthy his frowning at: their discipline, now mingled with their courages, will make known to their approvers they are people such that mend upon the world. [enter iachimo] philario see! iachimo! posthumus leonatus the swiftest harts have posted you by land; and winds of all the comers kiss'd your sails, to make your vessel nimble. philario welcome, sir. posthumus leonatus i hope the briefness of your answer made the speediness of your return. iachimo your lady is one of the fairest that i have look'd upon. posthumus leonatus and therewithal the best; or let her beauty look through a casement to allure false hearts and be false with them. iachimo here are letters for you. posthumus leonatus their tenor good, i trust. iachimo 'tis very like. philario was caius lucius in the britain court when you were there? iachimo he was expected then, but not approach'd. posthumus leonatus all is well yet. sparkles this stone as it was wont? or is't not too dull for your good wearing? iachimo if i had lost it, i should have lost the worth of it in gold. i'll make a journey twice as far, to enjoy a second night of such sweet shortness which was mine in britain, for the ring is won. posthumus leonatus the stone's too hard to come by. iachimo not a whit, your lady being so easy. posthumus leonatus make not, sir, your loss your sport: i hope you know that we must not continue friends. iachimo good sir, we must, if you keep covenant. had i not brought the knowledge of your mistress home, i grant we were to question further: but i now profess myself the winner of her honour, together with your ring; and not the wronger of her or you, having proceeded but by both your wills. posthumus leonatus if you can make't apparent that you have tasted her in bed, my hand and ring is yours; if not, the foul opinion you had of her pure honour gains or loses your sword or mine, or masterless leaves both to who shall find them. iachimo sir, my circumstances, being so near the truth as i will make them, must first induce you to believe: whose strength i will confirm with oath; which, i doubt not, you'll give me leave to spare, when you shall find you need it not. posthumus leonatus proceed. iachimo first, her bedchamber,- where, i confess, i slept not, but profess had that was well worth watching--it was hang'd with tapesty of silk and silver; the story proud cleopatra, when she met her roman, and cydnus swell'd above the banks, or for the press of boats or pride: a piece of work so bravely done, so rich, that it did strive in workmanship and value; which i wonder'd could be so rarely and exactly wrought, since the true life on't was- posthumus leonatus this is true; and this you might have heard of here, by me, or by some other. iachimo more particulars must justify my knowledge. posthumus leonatus so they must, or do your honour injury. iachimo the chimney is south the chamber, and the chimney-piece chaste dian bathing: never saw i figures so likely to report themselves: the cutter was as another nature, dumb; outwent her, motion and breath left out. posthumus leonatus this is a thing which you might from relation likewise reap, being, as it is, much spoke of. iachimo the roof o' the chamber with golden cherubins is fretted: her andirons- i had forgot them--were two winking cupids of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely depending on their brands. posthumus leonatus this is her honour! let it be granted you have seen all this--and praise be given to your remembrance--the description of what is in her chamber nothing saves the wager you have laid. iachimo then, if you can, [showing the bracelet] be pale: i beg but leave to air this jewel; see! and now 'tis up again: it must be married to that your diamond; i'll keep them. posthumus leonatus jove! once more let me behold it: is it that which i left with her? iachimo sir--i thank her--that: she stripp'd it from her arm; i see her yet; her pretty action did outsell her gift, and yet enrich'd it too: she gave it me, and said she prized it once. posthumus leonatus may be she pluck'd it off to send it me. iachimo she writes so to you, doth she? posthumus leonatus o, no, no, no! 'tis true. here, take this too; [gives the ring] it is a basilisk unto mine eye, kills me to look on't. let there be no honour where there is beauty; truth, where semblance; love, where there's another man: the vows of women of no more bondage be, to where they are made, than they are to their virtues; which is nothing. o, above measure false! philario have patience, sir, and take your ring again; 'tis not yet won: it may be probable she lost it; or who knows if one of her women, being corrupted, hath stol'n it from her? posthumus leonatus very true; and so, i hope, he came by't. back my ring: render to me some corporal sign about her, more evident than this; for this was stolen. iachimo by jupiter, i had it from her arm. posthumus leonatus hark you, he swears; by jupiter he swears. 'tis true:--nay, keep the ring--'tis true: i am sure she would not lose it: her attendants are all sworn and honourable:--they induced to steal it! and by a stranger!--no, he hath enjoyed her: the cognizance of her incontinency is this: she hath bought the name of whore thus dearly. there, take thy hire; and all the fiends of hell divide themselves between you! philario sir, be patient: this is not strong enough to be believed of one persuaded well of- posthumus leonatus never talk on't; she hath been colted by him. iachimo if you seek for further satisfying, under her breast- worthy the pressing--lies a mole, right proud of that most delicate lodging: by my life, i kiss'd it; and it gave me present hunger to feed again, though full. you do remember this stain upon her? posthumus leonatus ay, and it doth confirm another stain, as big as hell can hold, were there no more but it. iachimo will you hear more? posthumus leonatus spare your arithmetic: never count the turns; once, and a million! iachimo i'll be sworn- posthumus leonatus no swearing. if you will swear you have not done't, you lie; and i will kill thee, if thou dost deny thou'st made me cuckold. iachimo i'll deny nothing. posthumus leonatus o, that i had her here, to tear her limb-meal! i will go there and do't, i' the court, before her father. i'll do something- [exit] philario quite besides the government of patience! you have won: let's follow him, and pervert the present wrath he hath against himself. iachimo with an my heart. [exeunt] cymbeline act ii scene v another room in philario's house. [enter posthumus leonatus] posthumus leonatus is there no way for men to be but women must be half-workers? we are all bastards; and that most venerable man which i did call my father, was i know not where when i was stamp'd; some coiner with his tools made me a counterfeit: yet my mother seem'd the dian of that time so doth my wife the nonpareil of this. o, vengeance, vengeance! me of my lawful pleasure she restrain'd and pray'd me oft forbearance; did it with a pudency so rosy the sweet view on't might well have warm'd old saturn; that i thought her as chaste as unsunn'd snow. o, all the devils! this yellow iachimo, in an hour,--wast not?- or less,--at first?--perchance he spoke not, but, like a full-acorn'd boar, a german one, cried 'o!' and mounted; found no opposition but what he look'd for should oppose and she should from encounter guard. could i find out the woman's part in me! for there's no motion that tends to vice in man, but i affirm it is the woman's part: be it lying, note it, the woman's; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers; lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers; ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain, nice longing, slanders, mutability, all faults that may be named, nay, that hell knows, why, hers, in part or all; but rather, all; for even to vice they are not constant but are changing still one vice, but of a minute old, for one not half so old as that. i'll write against them, detest them, curse them: yet 'tis greater skill in a true hate, to pray they have their will: the very devils cannot plague them better. [exit] cymbeline act iii scene i britain. a hall in cymbeline's palace. [enter in state, cymbeline, queen, cloten, and lords at one door, and at another, caius lucius and attendants] cymbeline now say, what would augustus caesar with us? caius lucius when julius caesar, whose remembrance yet lives in men's eyes and will to ears and tongues be theme and hearing ever, was in this britain and conquer'd it, cassibelan, thine uncle,- famous in caesar's praises, no whit less than in his feats deserving it--for him and his succession granted rome a tribute, yearly three thousand pounds, which by thee lately is left untender'd. queen and, to kill the marvel, shall be so ever. cloten there be many caesars, ere such another julius. britain is a world by itself; and we will nothing pay for wearing our own noses. queen that opportunity which then they had to take from 's, to resume we have again. remember, sir, my liege, the kings your ancestors, together with the natural bravery of your isle, which stands as neptune's park, ribbed and paled in with rocks unscalable and roaring waters, with sands that will not bear your enemies' boats, but suck them up to the topmast. a kind of conquest caesar made here; but made not here his brag of 'came' and 'saw' and 'overcame: ' with shame- that first that ever touch'd him--he was carried from off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping- poor ignorant baubles!-upon our terrible seas, like egg-shells moved upon their surges, crack'd as easily 'gainst our rocks: for joy whereof the famed cassibelan, who was once at point- o giglot fortune!--to master caesar's sword, made lud's town with rejoicing fires bright and britons strut with courage. cloten come, there's no more tribute to be paid: our kingdom is stronger than it was at that time; and, as i said, there is no moe such caesars: other of them may have crook'd noses, but to owe such straight arms, none. cymbeline son, let your mother end. cloten we have yet many among us can gripe as hard as cassibelan: i do not say i am one; but i have a hand. why tribute? why should we pay tribute? if caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, sir, no more tribute, pray you now. cymbeline you must know, till the injurious romans did extort this tribute from us, we were free: caesar's ambition, which swell'd so much that it did almost stretch the sides o' the world, against all colour here did put the yoke upon 's; which to shake off becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon ourselves to be. cloten | | we do. lords | cymbeline say, then, to caesar, our ancestor was that mulmutius which ordain'd our laws, whose use the sword of caesar hath too much mangled; whose repair and franchise shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed, though rome be therefore angry: mulmutius made our laws, who was the first of britain which did put his brows within a golden crown and call'd himself a king. caius lucius i am sorry, cymbeline, that i am to pronounce augustus caesar- caesar, that hath more kings his servants than thyself domestic officers--thine enemy: receive it from me, then: war and confusion in caesar's name pronounce i 'gainst thee: look for fury not to be resisted. thus defied, i thank thee for myself. cymbeline thou art welcome, caius. thy caesar knighted me; my youth i spent much under him; of him i gather'd honour; which he to seek of me again, perforce, behoves me keep at utterance. i am perfect that the pannonians and dalmatians for their liberties are now in arms; a precedent which not to read would show the britons cold: so caesar shall not find them. caius lucius let proof speak. cloten his majesty bids you welcome. make pastime with us a day or two, or longer: if you seek us afterwards in other terms, you shall find us in our salt-water girdle: if you beat us out of it, it is yours; if you fall in the adventure, our crows shall fare the better for you; and there's an end. caius lucius so, sir. cymbeline i know your master's pleasure and he mine: all the remain is 'welcome!' [exeunt] cymbeline act iii scene ii another room in the palace. [enter pisanio, with a letter] pisanio how? of adultery? wherefore write you not what monster's her accuser? leonatus, o master! what a strange infection is fall'n into thy ear! what false italian, as poisonous-tongued as handed, hath prevail'd on thy too ready hearing? disloyal! no: she's punish'd for her truth, and undergoes, more goddess-like than wife-like, such assaults as would take in some virtue. o my master! thy mind to her is now as low as were thy fortunes. how! that i should murder her? upon the love and truth and vows which i have made to thy command? i, her? her blood? if it be so to do good service, never let me be counted serviceable. how look i, that i should seem to lack humanity so much as this fact comes to? [reading] 'do't: the letter that i have sent her, by her own command shall give thee opportunity.' o damn'd paper! black as the ink that's on thee! senseless bauble, art thou a feodary for this act, and look'st so virgin-like without? lo, here she comes. i am ignorant in what i am commanded. [enter imogen] imogen how now, pisanio! pisanio madam, here is a letter from my lord. imogen who? thy lord? that is my lord, leonatus! o, learn'd indeed were that astronomer that knew the stars as i his characters; he'ld lay the future open. you good gods, let what is here contain'd relish of love, of my lord's health, of his content, yet not that we two are asunder; let that grieve him: some griefs are med'cinable; that is one of them, for it doth physic love: of his content, all but in that! good wax, thy leave. blest be you bees that make these locks of counsel! lovers and men in dangerous bonds pray not alike: though forfeiters you cast in prison, yet you clasp young cupid's tables. good news, gods! [reads] 'justice, and your father's wrath, should he take me in his dominion, could not be so cruel to me, as you, o the dearest of creatures, would even renew me with your eyes. take notice that i am in cambria, at milford-haven: what your own love will out of this advise you, follow. so he wishes you all happiness, that remains loyal to his vow, and your, increasing in love, leonatus posthumus.' o, for a horse with wings! hear'st thou, pisanio? he is at milford-haven: read, and tell me how far 'tis thither. if one of mean affairs may plod it in a week, why may not i glide thither in a day? then, true pisanio,- who long'st, like me, to see thy lord; who long'st,- let me bate,-but not like me--yet long'st, but in a fainter kind:--o, not like me; for mine's beyond beyond--say, and speak thick; love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing, to the smothering of the sense--how far it is to this same blessed milford: and by the way tell me how wales was made so happy as to inherit such a haven: but first of all, how we may steal from hence, and for the gap that we shall make in time, from our hence-going and our return, to excuse: but first, how get hence: why should excuse be born or e'er begot? we'll talk of that hereafter. prithee, speak, how many score of miles may we well ride 'twixt hour and hour? pisanio one score 'twixt sun and sun, madam, 's enough for you: [aside] and too much too. imogen why, one that rode to's execution, man, could never go so slow: i have heard of riding wagers, where horses have been nimbler than the sands that run i' the clock's behalf. but this is foolery: go bid my woman feign a sickness; say she'll home to her father: and provide me presently a riding-suit, no costlier than would fit a franklin's housewife. pisanio madam, you're best consider. imogen i see before me, man: nor here, nor here, nor what ensues, but have a fog in them, that i cannot look through. away, i prithee; do as i bid thee: there's no more to say, accessible is none but milford way. [exeunt] cymbeline act iii scene iii wales: a mountainous country with a cave. [enter, from the cave, belarius; guiderius, and arviragus following] belarius a goodly day not to keep house, with such whose roof's as low as ours! stoop, boys; this gate instructs you how to adore the heavens and bows you to a morning's holy office: the gates of monarchs are arch'd so high that giants may jet through and keep their impious turbans on, without good morrow to the sun. hail, thou fair heaven! we house i' the rock, yet use thee not so hardly as prouder livers do. guiderius hail, heaven! arviragus hail, heaven! belarius now for our mountain sport: up to yond hill; your legs are young; i'll tread these flats. consider, when you above perceive me like a crow, that it is place which lessens and sets off; and you may then revolve what tales i have told you of courts, of princes, of the tricks in war: this service is not service, so being done, but being so allow'd: to apprehend thus, draws us a profit from all things we see; and often, to our comfort, shall we find the sharded beetle in a safer hold than is the full-wing'd eagle. o, this life is nobler than attending for a cheque, richer than doing nothing for a bauble, prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk: such gain the cap of him that makes 'em fine, yet keeps his book uncross'd: no life to ours. guiderius out of your proof you speak: we, poor unfledged, have never wing'd from view o' the nest, nor know not what air's from home. haply this life is best, if quiet life be best; sweeter to you that have a sharper known; well corresponding with your stiff age: but unto us it is a cell of ignorance; travelling a-bed; a prison for a debtor, that not dares to stride a limit. arviragus what should we speak of when we are old as you? when we shall hear the rain and wind beat dark december, how, in this our pinching cave, shall we discourse the freezing hours away? we have seen nothing; we are beastly, subtle as the fox for prey, like warlike as the wolf for what we eat; our valour is to chase what flies; our cage we make a quire, as doth the prison'd bird, and sing our bondage freely. belarius how you speak! did you but know the city's usuries and felt them knowingly; the art o' the court as hard to leave as keep; whose top to climb is certain falling, or so slippery that the fear's as bad as falling; the toil o' the war, a pain that only seems to seek out danger i' the name of fame and honour; which dies i' the search, and hath as oft a slanderous epitaph as record of fair act; nay, many times, doth ill deserve by doing well; what's worse, must court'sy at the censure:--o boys, this story the world may read in me: my body's mark'd with roman swords, and my report was once first with the best of note: cymbeline loved me, and when a soldier was the theme, my name was not far off: then was i as a tree whose boughs did bend with fruit: but in one night, a storm or robbery, call it what you will, shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves, and left me bare to weather. guiderius uncertain favour! belarius my fault being nothing--as i have told you oft- but that two villains, whose false oaths prevail'd before my perfect honour, swore to cymbeline i was confederate with the romans: so follow'd my banishment, and this twenty years this rock and these demesnes have been my world; where i have lived at honest freedom, paid more pious debts to heaven than in all the fore-end of my time. but up to the mountains! this is not hunters' language: he that strikes the venison first shall be the lord o' the feast; to him the other two shall minister; and we will fear no poison, which attends in place of greater state. i'll meet you in the valleys. [exeunt guiderius and arviragus] how hard it is to hide the sparks of nature! these boys know little they are sons to the king; nor cymbeline dreams that they are alive. they think they are mine; and though train'd up thus meanly i' the cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit the roofs of palaces, and nature prompts them in simple and low things to prince it much beyond the trick of others. this polydore, the heir of cymbeline and britain, who the king his father call'd guiderius,--jove! when on my three-foot stool i sit and tell the warlike feats i have done, his spirits fly out into my story: say 'thus, mine enemy fell, and thus i set my foot on 's neck;' even then the princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats, strains his young nerves and puts himself in posture that acts my words. the younger brother, cadwal, once arviragus, in as like a figure, strikes life into my speech and shows much more his own conceiving.--hark, the game is roused! o cymbeline! heaven and my conscience knows thou didst unjustly banish me: whereon, at three and two years old, i stole these babes; thinking to bar thee of succession, as thou reft'st me of my lands. euriphile, thou wast their nurse; they took thee for their mother, and every day do honour to her grave: myself, belarius, that am morgan call'd, they take for natural father. the game is up. [exit] cymbeline act iii scene iv country near milford-haven. [enter pisanio and imogen] imogen thou told'st me, when we came from horse, the place was near at hand: ne'er long'd my mother so to see me first, as i have now. pisanio! man! where is posthumus? what is in thy mind, that makes thee stare thus? wherefore breaks that sigh from the inward of thee? one, but painted thus, would be interpreted a thing perplex'd beyond self-explication: put thyself into a havior of less fear, ere wildness vanquish my staider senses. what's the matter? why tender'st thou that paper to me, with a look untender? if't be summer news, smile to't before; if winterly, thou need'st but keep that countenance still. my husband's hand! that drug-damn'd italy hath out-craftied him, and he's at some hard point. speak, man: thy tongue may take off some extremity, which to read would be even mortal to me. pisanio please you, read; and you shall find me, wretched man, a thing the most disdain'd of fortune. imogen [reads] 'thy mistress, pisanio, hath played the strumpet in my bed; the testimonies whereof lie bleeding in me. i speak not out of weak surmises, but from proof as strong as my grief and as certain as i expect my revenge. that part thou, pisanio, must act for me, if thy faith be not tainted with the breach of hers. let thine own hands take away her life: i shall give thee opportunity at milford-haven. she hath my letter for the purpose where, if thou fear to strike and to make me certain it is done, thou art the pandar to her dishonour and equally to me disloyal.' pisanio what shall i need to draw my sword? the paper hath cut her throat already. no, 'tis slander, whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue outvenoms all the worms of nile, whose breath rides on the posting winds and doth belie all corners of the world: kings, queens and states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave this viperous slander enters. what cheer, madam? imogen false to his bed! what is it to be false? to lie in watch there and to think on him? to weep 'twixt clock and clock? if sleep charge nature, to break it with a fearful dream of him and cry myself awake? that's false to's bed, is it? pisanio alas, good lady! imogen i false! thy conscience witness: iachimo, thou didst accuse him of incontinency; thou then look'dst like a villain; now methinks thy favour's good enough. some jay of italy whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him: poor i am stale, a garment out of fashion; and, for i am richer than to hang by the walls, i must be ripp'd:--to pieces with me!--o, men's vows are women's traitors! all good seeming, by thy revolt, o husband, shall be thought put on for villany; not born where't grows, but worn a bait for ladies. pisanio good madam, hear me. imogen true honest men being heard, like false aeneas, were in his time thought false, and sinon's weeping did scandal many a holy tear, took pity from most true wretchedness: so thou, posthumus, wilt lay the leaven on all proper men; goodly and gallant shall be false and perjured from thy great fall. come, fellow, be thou honest: do thou thy master's bidding: when thou see'st him, a little witness my obedience: look! i draw the sword myself: take it, and hit the innocent mansion of my love, my heart; fear not; 'tis empty of all things but grief; thy master is not there, who was indeed the riches of it: do his bidding; strike thou mayst be valiant in a better cause; but now thou seem'st a coward. pisanio hence, vile instrument! thou shalt not damn my hand. imogen why, i must die; and if i do not by thy hand, thou art no servant of thy master's. against self-slaughter there is a prohibition so divine that cravens my weak hand. come, here's my heart. something's afore't. soft, soft! we'll no defence; obedient as the scabbard. what is here? the scriptures of the loyal leonatus, all turn'd to heresy? away, away, corrupters of my faith! you shall no more be stomachers to my heart. thus may poor fools believe false teachers: though those that are betray'd do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe. and thou, posthumus, thou that didst set up my disobedience 'gainst the king my father and make me put into contempt the suits of princely fellows, shalt hereafter find it is no act of common passage, but a strain of rareness: and i grieve myself to think, when thou shalt be disedged by her that now thou tirest on, how thy memory will then be pang'd by me. prithee, dispatch: the lamb entreats the butcher: where's thy knife? thou art too slow to do thy master's bidding, when i desire it too. pisanio o gracious lady, since i received command to do this business i have not slept one wink. imogen do't, and to bed then. pisanio i'll wake mine eye-balls blind first. imogen wherefore then didst undertake it? why hast thou abused so many miles with a pretence? this place? mine action and thine own? our horses' labour? the time inviting thee? the perturb'd court, for my being absent? whereunto i never purpose return. why hast thou gone so far, to be unbent when thou hast ta'en thy stand, the elected deer before thee? pisanio but to win time to lose so bad employment; in the which i have consider'd of a course. good lady, hear me with patience. imogen talk thy tongue weary; speak i have heard i am a strumpet; and mine ear therein false struck, can take no greater wound, nor tent to bottom that. but speak. pisanio then, madam, i thought you would not back again. imogen most like; bringing me here to kill me. pisanio not so, neither: but if i were as wise as honest, then my purpose would prove well. it cannot be but that my master is abused: some villain, ay, and singular in his art. hath done you both this cursed injury. imogen some roman courtezan. pisanio no, on my life. i'll give but notice you are dead and send him some bloody sign of it; for 'tis commanded i should do so: you shall be miss'd at court, and that will well confirm it. imogen why good fellow, what shall i do the where? where bide? how live? or in my life what comfort, when i am dead to my husband? pisanio if you'll back to the court- imogen no court, no father; nor no more ado with that harsh, noble, simple nothing, that cloten, whose love-suit hath been to me as fearful as a siege. pisanio if not at court, then not in britain must you bide. imogen where then hath britain all the sun that shines? day, night, are they not but in britain? i' the world's volume our britain seems as of it, but not in 't; in a great pool a swan's nest: prithee, think there's livers out of britain. pisanio i am most glad you think of other place. the ambassador, lucius the roman, comes to milford-haven to-morrow: now, if you could wear a mind dark as your fortune is, and but disguise that which, to appear itself, must not yet be but by self-danger, you should tread a course pretty and full of view; yea, haply, near the residence of posthumus; so nigh at least that though his actions were not visible, yet report should render him hourly to your ear as truly as he moves. imogen o, for such means! though peril to my modesty, not death on't, i would adventure. pisanio well, then, here's the point: you must forget to be a woman; change command into obedience: fear and niceness- the handmaids of all women, or, more truly, woman its pretty self--into a waggish courage: ready in gibes, quick-answer'd, saucy and as quarrelous as the weasel; nay, you must forget that rarest treasure of your cheek, exposing it--but, o, the harder heart! alack, no remedy!--to the greedy touch of common-kissing titan, and forget your laboursome and dainty trims, wherein you made great juno angry. imogen nay, be brief i see into thy end, and am almost a man already. pisanio first, make yourself but like one. fore-thinking this, i have already fit- 'tis in my cloak-bag--doublet, hat, hose, all that answer to them: would you in their serving, and with what imitation you can borrow from youth of such a season, 'fore noble lucius present yourself, desire his service, tell him wherein you're happy,--which you'll make him know, if that his head have ear in music,--doubtless with joy he will embrace you, for he's honourable and doubling that, most holy. your means abroad, you have me, rich; and i will never fail beginning nor supplyment. imogen thou art all the comfort the gods will diet me with. prithee, away: there's more to be consider'd; but we'll even all that good time will give us: this attempt i am soldier to, and will abide it with a prince's courage. away, i prithee. pisanio well, madam, we must take a short farewell, lest, being miss'd, i be suspected of your carriage from the court. my noble mistress, here is a box; i had it from the queen: what's in't is precious; if you are sick at sea, or stomach-qualm'd at land, a dram of this will drive away distemper. to some shade, and fit you to your manhood. may the gods direct you to the best! imogen amen: i thank thee. [exeunt, severally] cymbeline act iii scene v a room in cymbeline's palace. [enter cymbeline, queen, cloten, lucius, lords, and attendants] cymbeline thus far; and so farewell. caius lucius thanks, royal sir. my emperor hath wrote, i must from hence; and am right sorry that i must report ye my master's enemy. cymbeline our subjects, sir, will not endure his yoke; and for ourself to show less sovereignty than they, must needs appear unkinglike. caius lucius so, sir: i desire of you a conduct over-land to milford-haven. madam, all joy befal your grace! queen and you! cymbeline my lords, you are appointed for that office; the due of honour in no point omit. so farewell, noble lucius. caius lucius your hand, my lord. cloten receive it friendly; but from this time forth i wear it as your enemy. caius lucius sir, the event is yet to name the winner: fare you well. cymbeline leave not the worthy lucius, good my lords, till he have cross'd the severn. happiness! [exeunt lucius and lords] queen he goes hence frowning: but it honours us that we have given him cause. cloten 'tis all the better; your valiant britons have their wishes in it. cymbeline lucius hath wrote already to the emperor how it goes here. it fits us therefore ripely our chariots and our horsemen be in readiness: the powers that he already hath in gallia will soon be drawn to head, from whence he moves his war for britain. queen 'tis not sleepy business; but must be look'd to speedily and strongly. cymbeline our expectation that it would be thus hath made us forward. but, my gentle queen, where is our daughter? she hath not appear'd before the roman, nor to us hath tender'd the duty of the day: she looks us like a thing more made of malice than of duty: we have noted it. call her before us; for we have been too slight in sufferance. [exit an attendant] queen royal sir, since the exile of posthumus, most retired hath her life been; the cure whereof, my lord, 'tis time must do. beseech your majesty, forbear sharp speeches to her: she's a lady so tender of rebukes that words are strokes and strokes death to her. [re-enter attendant] cymbeline where is she, sir? how can her contempt be answer'd? attendant please you, sir, her chambers are all lock'd; and there's no answer that will be given to the loudest noise we make. queen my lord, when last i went to visit her, she pray'd me to excuse her keeping close, whereto constrain'd by her infirmity, she should that duty leave unpaid to you, which daily she was bound to proffer: this she wish'd me to make known; but our great court made me to blame in memory. cymbeline her doors lock'd? not seen of late? grant, heavens, that which i fear prove false! [exit] queen son, i say, follow the king. cloten that man of hers, pisanio, her old servant, have not seen these two days. queen go, look after. [exit cloten] pisanio, thou that stand'st so for posthumus! he hath a drug of mine; i pray his absence proceed by swallowing that, for he believes it is a thing most precious. but for her, where is she gone? haply, despair hath seized her, or, wing'd with fervor of her love, she's flown to her desired posthumus: gone she is to death or to dishonour; and my end can make good use of either: she being down, i have the placing of the british crown. [re-enter cloten] how now, my son! cloten 'tis certain she is fled. go in and cheer the king: he rages; none dare come about him. queen [aside] all the better: may this night forestall him of the coming day! [exit] cloten i love and hate her: for she's fair and royal, and that she hath all courtly parts more exquisite than lady, ladies, woman; from every one the best she hath, and she, of all compounded, outsells them all; i love her therefore: but disdaining me and throwing favours on the low posthumus slanders so her judgment that what's else rare is choked; and in that point i will conclude to hate her, nay, indeed, to be revenged upon her. for when fools shall- [enter pisanio] who is here? what, are you packing, sirrah? come hither: ah, you precious pander! villain, where is thy lady? in a word; or else thou art straightway with the fiends. pisanio o, good my lord! cloten where is thy lady? or, by jupiter,- i will not ask again. close villain, i'll have this secret from thy heart, or rip thy heart to find it. is she with posthumus? from whose so many weights of baseness cannot a dram of worth be drawn. pisanio alas, my lord, how can she be with him? when was she missed? he is in rome. cloten where is she, sir? come nearer; no further halting: satisfy me home what is become of her. pisanio o, my all-worthy lord! cloten all-worthy villain! discover where thy mistress is at once, at the next word: no more of 'worthy lord!' speak, or thy silence on the instant is thy condemnation and thy death. pisanio then, sir, this paper is the history of my knowledge touching her flight. [presenting a letter] cloten let's see't. i will pursue her even to augustus' throne. pisanio [aside] or this, or perish. she's far enough; and what he learns by this may prove his travel, not her danger. cloten hum! pisanio [aside] i'll write to my lord she's dead. o imogen, safe mayst thou wander, safe return again! cloten sirrah, is this letter true? pisanio sir, as i think. cloten it is posthumus' hand; i know't. sirrah, if thou wouldst not be a villain, but do me true service, undergo those employments wherein i should have cause to use thee with a serious industry, that is, what villany soe'er i bid thee do, to perform it directly and truly, i would think thee an honest man: thou shouldst neither want my means for thy relief nor my voice for thy preferment. pisanio well, my good lord. cloten wilt thou serve me? for since patiently and constantly thou hast stuck to the bare fortune of that beggar posthumus, thou canst not, in the course of gratitude, but be a diligent follower of mine: wilt thou serve me? pisanio sir, i will. cloten give me thy hand; here's my purse. hast any of thy late master's garments in thy possession? pisanio i have, my lord, at my lodging, the same suit he wore when he took leave of my lady and mistress. cloten the first service thou dost me, fetch that suit hither: let it be thy lint service; go. pisanio i shall, my lord. [exit] cloten meet thee at milford-haven!--i forgot to ask him one thing; i'll remember't anon:--even there, thou villain posthumus, will i kill thee. i would these garments were come. she said upon a time--the bitterness of it i now belch from my heart--that she held the very garment of posthumus in more respect than my noble and natural person together with the adornment of my qualities. with that suit upon my back, will i ravish her: first kill him, and in her eyes; there shall she see my valour, which will then be a torment to her contempt. he on the ground, my speech of insultment ended on his dead body, and when my lust hath dined,--which, as i say, to vex her i will execute in the clothes that she so praised,--to the court i'll knock her back, foot her home again. she hath despised me rejoicingly, and i'll be merry in my revenge. [re-enter pisanio, with the clothes] be those the garments? pisanio ay, my noble lord. cloten how long is't since she went to milford-haven? pisanio she can scarce be there yet. cloten bring this apparel to my chamber; that is the second thing that i have commanded thee: the third is, that thou wilt be a voluntary mute to my design. be but duteous, and true preferment shall tender itself to thee. my revenge is now at milford: would i had wings to follow it! come, and be true. [exit] pisanio thou bid'st me to my loss: for true to thee were to prove false, which i will never be, to him that is most true. to milford go, and find not her whom thou pursuest. flow, flow, you heavenly blessings, on her! this fool's speed be cross'd with slowness; labour be his meed! [exit] cymbeline act iii scene vi wales. before the cave of belarius. [enter imogen, in boy's clothes] imogen i see a man's life is a tedious one: i have tired myself, and for two nights together have made the ground my bed. i should be sick, but that my resolution helps me. milford, when from the mountain-top pisanio show'd thee, thou wast within a ken: o jove! i think foundations fly the wretched; such, i mean, where they should be relieved. two beggars told me i could not miss my way: will poor folks lie, that have afflictions on them, knowing 'tis a punishment or trial? yes; no wonder, when rich ones scarce tell true. to lapse in fulness is sorer than to lie for need, and falsehood is worse in kings than beggars. my dear lord! thou art one o' the false ones. now i think on thee, my hunger's gone; but even before, i was at point to sink for food. but what is this? here is a path to't: 'tis some savage hold: i were best not to call; i dare not call: yet famine, ere clean it o'erthrow nature, makes it valiant, plenty and peace breeds cowards: hardness ever of hardiness is mother. ho! who's here? if any thing that's civil, speak; if savage, take or lend. ho! no answer? then i'll enter. best draw my sword: and if mine enemy but fear the sword like me, he'll scarcely look on't. such a foe, good heavens! [exit, to the cave] [enter belarius, guiderius, and arviragus] belarius you, polydote, have proved best woodman and are master of the feast: cadwal and i will play the cook and servant; 'tis our match: the sweat of industry would dry and die, but for the end it works to. come; our stomachs will make what's homely savoury: weariness can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth finds the down pillow hard. now peace be here, poor house, that keep'st thyself! guiderius i am thoroughly weary. arviragus i am weak with toil, yet strong in appetite. guiderius there is cold meat i' the cave; we'll browse on that, whilst what we have kill'd be cook'd. belarius [looking into the cave] stay; come not in. but that it eats our victuals, i should think here were a fairy. guiderius what's the matter, sir? belarius by jupiter, an angel! or, if not, an earthly paragon! behold divineness no elder than a boy! [re-enter imogen] imogen good masters, harm me not: before i enter'd here, i call'd; and thought to have begg'd or bought what i have took: good troth, i have stol'n nought, nor would not, though i had found gold strew'd i' the floor. here's money for my meat: i would have left it on the board so soon as i had made my meal, and parted with prayers for the provider. guiderius money, youth? arviragus all gold and silver rather turn to dirt! as 'tis no better reckon'd, but of those who worship dirty gods. imogen i see you're angry: know, if you kill me for my fault, i should have died had i not made it. belarius whither bound? imogen to milford-haven. belarius what's your name? imogen fidele, sir. i have a kinsman who is bound for italy; he embark'd at milford; to whom being going, almost spent with hunger, i am fall'n in this offence. belarius prithee, fair youth, think us no churls, nor measure our good minds by this rude place we live in. well encounter'd! 'tis almost night: you shall have better cheer ere you depart: and thanks to stay and eat it. boys, bid him welcome. guiderius were you a woman, youth, i should woo hard but be your groom. in honesty, i bid for you as i'd buy. arviragus i'll make't my comfort he is a man; i'll love him as my brother: and such a welcome as i'd give to him after long absence, such is yours: most welcome! be sprightly, for you fall 'mongst friends. imogen 'mongst friends, if brothers. [aside] would it had been so, that they had been my father's sons! then had my prize been less, and so more equal ballasting to thee, posthumus. belarius he wrings at some distress. guiderius would i could free't! arviragus or i, whate'er it be, what pain it cost, what danger. god's! belarius hark, boys. [whispering] imogen great men, that had a court no bigger than this cave, that did attend themselves and had the virtue which their own conscience seal'd them--laying by that nothing-gift of differing multitudes- could not out-peer these twain. pardon me, gods! i'd change my sex to be companion with them, since leonatus's false. belarius it shall be so. boys, we'll go dress our hunt. fair youth, come in: discourse is heavy, fasting; when we have supp'd, we'll mannerly demand thee of thy story, so far as thou wilt speak it. guiderius pray, draw near. arviragus the night to the owl and morn to the lark less welcome. imogen thanks, sir. arviragus i pray, draw near. [exeunt] cymbeline act iii scene vii rome. a public place. [enter two senators and tribunes] first senator this is the tenor of the emperor's writ: that since the common men are now in action 'gainst the pannonians and dalmatians, and that the legions now in gallia are full weak to undertake our wars against the fall'n-off britons, that we do incite the gentry to this business. he creates lucius preconsul: and to you the tribunes, for this immediate levy, he commends his absolute commission. long live caesar! first tribune is lucius general of the forces? second senator ay. first tribune remaining now in gallia? first senator with those legions which i have spoke of, whereunto your levy must be supplyant: the words of your commission will tie you to the numbers and the time of their dispatch. first tribune we will discharge our duty. [exeunt] cymbeline act iv scene i wales: near the cave of belarius. [enter cloten] cloten i am near to the place where they should meet, if pisanio have mapped it truly. how fit his garments serve me! why should his mistress, who was made by him that made the tailor, not be fit too? the rather--saving reverence of the word--for 'tis said a woman's fitness comes by fits. therein i must play the workman. i dare speak it to myself--for it is not vain-glory for a man and his glass to confer in his own chamber--i mean, the lines of my body are as well drawn as his; no less young, more strong, not beneath him in fortunes, beyond him in the advantage of the time, above him in birth, alike conversant in general services, and more remarkable in single oppositions: yet this imperceiverant thing loves him in my despite. what mortality is! posthumus, thy head, which now is growing upon thy shoulders, shall within this hour be off; thy mistress enforced; thy garments cut to pieces before thy face: and all this done, spurn her home to her father; who may haply be a little angry for my so rough usage; but my mother, having power of his testiness, shall turn all into my commendations. my horse is tied up safe: out, sword, and to a sore purpose! fortune, put them into my hand! this is the very description of their meeting-place; and the fellow dares not deceive me. [exit] cymbeline act iv scene ii before the cave of belarius. [enter, from the cave, belarius, guiderius, arviragus, and imogen] belarius [to imogen] you are not well: remain here in the cave; we'll come to you after hunting. arviragus [to imogen] brother, stay here are we not brothers? imogen so man and man should be; but clay and clay differs in dignity, whose dust is both alike. i am very sick. guiderius go you to hunting; i'll abide with him. imogen so sick i am not, yet i am not well; but not so citizen a wanton as to seem to die ere sick: so please you, leave me; stick to your journal course: the breach of custom is breach of all. i am ill, but your being by me cannot amend me; society is no comfort to one not sociable: i am not very sick, since i can reason of it. pray you, trust me here: i'll rob none but myself; and let me die, stealing so poorly. guiderius i love thee; i have spoke it how much the quantity, the weight as much, as i do love my father. belarius what! how! how! arviragus if it be sin to say so, i yoke me in my good brother's fault: i know not why i love this youth; and i have heard you say, love's reason's without reason: the bier at door, and a demand who is't shall die, i'd say 'my father, not this youth.' belarius [aside] o noble strain! o worthiness of nature! breed of greatness! cowards father cowards and base things sire base: nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace. i'm not their father; yet who this should be, doth miracle itself, loved before me. 'tis the ninth hour o' the morn. arviragus brother, farewell. imogen i wish ye sport. arviragus you health. so please you, sir. imogen [aside] these are kind creatures. gods, what lies i have heard! our courtiers say all's savage but at court: experience, o, thou disprovest report! the imperious seas breed monsters, for the dish poor tributary rivers as sweet fish. i am sick still; heart-sick. pisanio, i'll now taste of thy drug. [swallows some] guiderius i could not stir him: he said he was gentle, but unfortunate; dishonestly afflicted, but yet honest. arviragus thus did he answer me: yet said, hereafter i might know more. belarius to the field, to the field! we'll leave you for this time: go in and rest. arviragus we'll not be long away. belarius pray, be not sick, for you must be our housewife. imogen well or ill, i am bound to you. belarius and shalt be ever. [exit imogen, to the cave] this youth, how'er distress'd, appears he hath had good ancestors. arviragus how angel-like he sings! guiderius but his neat cookery! he cut our roots in characters, and sauced our broths, as juno had been sick and he her dieter. arviragus nobly he yokes a smiling with a sigh, as if the sigh was that it was, for not being such a smile; the smile mocking the sigh, that it would fly from so divine a temple, to commix with winds that sailors rail at. guiderius i do note that grief and patience, rooted in him both, mingle their spurs together. arviragus grow, patience! and let the stinking elder, grief, untwine his perishing root with the increasing vine! belarius it is great morning. come, away!- who's there? [enter cloten] cloten i cannot find those runagates; that villain hath mock'd me. i am faint. belarius 'those runagates!' means he not us? i partly know him: 'tis cloten, the son o' the queen. i fear some ambush. i saw him not these many years, and yet i know 'tis he. we are held as outlaws: hence! guiderius he is but one: you and my brother search what companies are near: pray you, away; let me alone with him. [exeunt belarius and arviragus] cloten soft! what are you that fly me thus? some villain mountaineers? i have heard of such. what slave art thou? guiderius a thing more slavish did i ne'er than answering a slave without a knock. cloten thou art a robber, a law-breaker, a villain: yield thee, thief. guiderius to who? to thee? what art thou? have not i an arm as big as thine? a heart as big? thy words, i grant, are bigger, for i wear not my dagger in my mouth. say what thou art, why i should yield to thee? cloten thou villain base, know'st me not by my clothes? guiderius no, nor thy tailor, rascal, who is thy grandfather: he made those clothes, which, as it seems, make thee. cloten thou precious varlet, my tailor made them not. guiderius hence, then, and thank the man that gave them thee. thou art some fool; i am loath to beat thee. cloten thou injurious thief, hear but my name, and tremble. guiderius what's thy name? cloten cloten, thou villain. guiderius cloten, thou double villain, be thy name, i cannot tremble at it: were it toad, or adder, spider, 'twould move me sooner. cloten to thy further fear, nay, to thy mere confusion, thou shalt know i am son to the queen. guiderius i am sorry for 't; not seeming so worthy as thy birth. cloten art not afeard? guiderius those that i reverence those i fear, the wise: at fools i laugh, not fear them. cloten die the death: when i have slain thee with my proper hand, i'll follow those that even now fled hence, and on the gates of lud's-town set your heads: yield, rustic mountaineer. [exeunt, fighting] [re-enter belarius and arviragus] belarius no companies abroad? arviragus none in the world: you did mistake him, sure. belarius i cannot tell: long is it since i saw him, but time hath nothing blurr'd those lines of favour which then he wore; the snatches in his voice, and burst of speaking, were as his: i am absolute 'twas very cloten. arviragus in this place we left them: i wish my brother make good time with him, you say he is so fell. belarius being scarce made up, i mean, to man, he had not apprehension of roaring terrors; for the effect of judgment is oft the cause of fear. but, see, thy brother. [re-enter guiderius, with cloten's head] guiderius this cloten was a fool, an empty purse; there was no money in't: not hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none: yet i not doing this, the fool had borne my head as i do his. belarius what hast thou done? guiderius i am perfect what: cut off one cloten's head, son to the queen, after his own report; who call'd me traitor, mountaineer, and swore with his own single hand he'ld take us in displace our heads where--thank the gods!--they grow, and set them on lud's-town. belarius we are all undone. guiderius why, worthy father, what have we to lose, but that he swore to take, our lives? the law protects not us: then why should we be tender to let an arrogant piece of flesh threat us, play judge and executioner all himself, for we do fear the law? what company discover you abroad? belarius no single soul can we set eye on; but in all safe reason he must have some attendants. though his humour was nothing but mutation, ay, and that from one bad thing to worse; not frenzy, not absolute madness could so far have raved to bring him here alone; although perhaps it may be heard at court that such as we cave here, hunt here, are outlaws, and in time may make some stronger head; the which he hearing- as it is like him--might break out, and swear he'ld fetch us in; yet is't not probable to come alone, either he so undertaking, or they so suffering: then on good ground we fear, if we do fear this body hath a tail more perilous than the head. arviragus let ordinance come as the gods foresay it: howsoe'er, my brother hath done well. belarius i had no mind to hunt this day: the boy fidele's sickness did make my way long forth. guiderius with his own sword, which he did wave against my throat, i have ta'en his head from him: i'll throw't into the creek behind our rock; and let it to the sea, and tell the fishes he's the queen's son, cloten: that's all i reck. [exit] belarius i fear 'twill be revenged: would, polydote, thou hadst not done't! though valour becomes thee well enough. arviragus would i had done't so the revenge alone pursued me! polydore, i love thee brotherly, but envy much thou hast robb'd me of this deed: i would revenges, that possible strength might meet, would seek us through and put us to our answer. belarius well, 'tis done: we'll hunt no more to-day, nor seek for danger where there's no profit. i prithee, to our rock; you and fidele play the cooks: i'll stay till hasty polydote return, and bring him to dinner presently. arviragus poor sick fidele! i'll weringly to him: to gain his colour i'ld let a parish of such clotens' blood, and praise myself for charity. [exit] belarius o thou goddess, thou divine nature, how thyself thou blazon'st in these two princely boys! they are as gentle as zephyrs blowing below the violet, not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough, their royal blood enchafed, as the rudest wind, that by the top doth take the mountain pine, and make him stoop to the vale. 'tis wonder that an invisible instinct should frame them to royalty unlearn'd, honour untaught, civility not seen from other, valour that wildly grows in them, but yields a crop as if it had been sow'd. yet still it's strange what cloten's being here to us portends, or what his death will bring us. [re-enter guiderius] guiderius where's my brother? i have sent cloten's clotpoll down the stream, in embassy to his mother: his body's hostage for his return. [solemn music] belarius my ingenious instrument! hark, polydore, it sounds! but what occasion hath cadwal now to give it motion? hark! guiderius is he at home? belarius he went hence even now. guiderius what does he mean? since death of my dear'st mother it did not speak before. all solemn things should answer solemn accidents. the matter? triumphs for nothing and lamenting toys is jollity for apes and grief for boys. is cadwal mad? belarius look, here he comes, and brings the dire occasion in his arms of what we blame him for. [re-enter arviragus, with imogen, as dead, bearing her in his arms] arviragus the bird is dead that we have made so much on. i had rather have skipp'd from sixteen years of age to sixty, to have turn'd my leaping-time into a crutch, than have seen this. guiderius o sweetest, fairest lily! my brother wears thee not the one half so well as when thou grew'st thyself. belarius o melancholy! who ever yet could sound thy bottom? find the ooze, to show what coast thy sluggish crare might easiliest harbour in? thou blessed thing! jove knows what man thou mightst have made; but i, thou diedst, a most rare boy, of melancholy. how found you him? arviragus stark, as you see: thus smiling, as some fly hid tickled slumber, not as death's dart, being laugh'd at; his right cheek reposing on a cushion. guiderius where? arviragus o' the floor; his arms thus leagued: i thought he slept, and put my clouted brogues from off my feet, whose rudeness answer'd my steps too loud. guiderius why, he but sleeps: if he be gone, he'll make his grave a bed; with female fairies will his tomb be haunted, and worms will not come to thee. arviragus with fairest flowers whilst summer lasts and i live here, fidele, i'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack the flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor the azured harebell, like thy veins, no, nor the leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, out-sweeten'd not thy breath: the ruddock would, with charitable bill,--o bill, sore-shaming those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie without a monument!--bring thee all this; yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none, to winter-ground thy corse. guiderius prithee, have done; and do not play in wench-like words with that which is so serious. let us bury him, and not protract with admiration what is now due debt. to the grave! arviragus say, where shall's lay him? guiderius by good euriphile, our mother. arviragus be't so: and let us, polydore, though now our voices have got the mannish crack, sing him to the ground, as once our mother; use like note and words, save that euriphile must be fidele. guiderius cadwal, i cannot sing: i'll weep, and word it with thee; for notes of sorrow out of tune are worse than priests and fanes that lie. arviragus we'll speak it, then. belarius great griefs, i see, medicine the less; for cloten is quite forgot. he was a queen's son, boys; and though he came our enemy, remember he was paid for that: though mean and mighty, rotting together, have one dust, yet reverence, that angel of the world, doth make distinction of place 'tween high and low. our foe was princely and though you took his life, as being our foe, yet bury him as a prince. guiderius pray you, fetch him hither. thersites' body is as good as ajax', when neither are alive. arviragus if you'll go fetch him, we'll say our song the whilst. brother, begin. [exit belarius] guiderius nay, cadwal, we must lay his head to the east; my father hath a reason for't. arviragus 'tis true. guiderius come on then, and remove him. arviragus so. begin. [song] guiderius fear no more the heat o' the sun, nor the furious winter's rages; thou thy worldly task hast done, home art gone, and ta'en thy wages: golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust. arviragus fear no more the frown o' the great; thou art past the tyrant's stroke; care no more to clothe and eat; to thee the reed is as the oak: the sceptre, learning, physic, must all follow this, and come to dust. guiderius fear no more the lightning flash, arviragus nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone; guiderius fear not slander, censure rash; arviragus thou hast finish'd joy and moan: guiderius | | all lovers young, all lovers must arviragus | consign to thee, and come to dust. guiderius no exorciser harm thee! arviragus nor no witchcraft charm thee! guiderius ghost unlaid forbear thee! arviragus nothing ill come near thee! guiderius | | quiet consummation have; arviragus | and renowned be thy grave! [re-enter belarius, with the body of cloten] guiderius we have done our obsequies: come, lay him down. belarius here's a few flowers; but 'bout midnight, more: the herbs that have on them cold dew o' the night are strewings fitt'st for graves. upon their faces. you were as flowers, now wither'd: even so these herblets shall, which we upon you strew. come on, away: apart upon our knees. the ground that gave them first has them again: their pleasures here are past, so is their pain. [exeunt belarius, guiderius, and arviragus] imogen [awaking] yes, sir, to milford-haven; which is the way?- i thank you.--by yond bush?--pray, how far thither? 'ods pittikins! can it be six mile yet?- i have gone all night. 'faith, i'll lie down and sleep. but, soft! no bedfellow!--o gods and goddesses! [seeing the body of cloten] these flowers are like the pleasures of the world; this bloody man, the care on't. i hope i dream; for so i thought i was a cave-keeper, and cook to honest creatures: but 'tis not so; 'twas but a bolt of nothing, shot at nothing, which the brain makes of fumes: our very eyes are sometimes like our judgments, blind. good faith, i tremble stiff with fear: but if there be yet left in heaven as small a drop of pity as a wren's eye, fear'd gods, a part of it! the dream's here still: even when i wake, it is without me, as within me; not imagined, felt. a headless man! the garments of posthumus! i know the shape of's leg: this is his hand; his foot mercurial; his martial thigh; the brawns of hercules: but his jovial face murder in heaven?--how!--'tis gone. pisanio, all curses madded hecuba gave the greeks, and mine to boot, be darted on thee! thou, conspired with that irregulous devil, cloten, hast here cut off my lord. to write and read be henceforth treacherous! damn'd pisanio hath with his forged letters,--damn'd pisanio- from this most bravest vessel of the world struck the main-top! o posthumus! alas, where is thy head? where's that? ay me! where's that? pisanio might have kill'd thee at the heart, and left this head on. how should this be? pisanio? 'tis he and cloten: malice and lucre in them have laid this woe here. o, 'tis pregnant, pregnant! the drug he gave me, which he said was precious and cordial to me, have i not found it murderous to the senses? that confirms it home: this is pisanio's deed, and cloten's: o! give colour to my pale cheek with thy blood, that we the horrider may seem to those which chance to find us: o, my lord, my lord! [falls on the body] [enter lucius, a captain and other officers, and a soothsayer] captain to them the legions garrison'd in gailia, after your will, have cross'd the sea, attending you here at milford-haven with your ships: they are in readiness. caius lucius but what from rome? captain the senate hath stirr'd up the confiners and gentlemen of italy, most willing spirits, that promise noble service: and they come under the conduct of bold iachimo, syenna's brother. caius lucius when expect you them? captain with the next benefit o' the wind. caius lucius this forwardness makes our hopes fair. command our present numbers be muster'd; bid the captains look to't. now, sir, what have you dream'd of late of this war's purpose? soothsayer last night the very gods show'd me a vision- i fast and pray'd for their intelligence--thus: i saw jove's bird, the roman eagle, wing'd from the spongy south to this part of the west, there vanish'd in the sunbeams: which portends- unless my sins abuse my divination- success to the roman host. caius lucius dream often so, and never false. soft, ho! what trunk is here without his top? the ruin speaks that sometime it was a worthy building. how! a page! or dead, or sleeping on him? but dead rather; for nature doth abhor to make his bed with the defunct, or sleep upon the dead. let's see the boy's face. captain he's alive, my lord. caius lucius he'll then instruct us of this body. young one, inform us of thy fortunes, for it seems they crave to be demanded. who is this thou makest thy bloody pillow? or who was he that, otherwise than noble nature did, hath alter'd that good picture? what's thy interest in this sad wreck? how came it? who is it? what art thou? imogen i am nothing: or if not, nothing to be were better. this was my master, a very valiant briton and a good, that here by mountaineers lies slain. alas! there is no more such masters: i may wander from east to occident, cry out for service, try many, all good, serve truly, never find such another master. caius lucius 'lack, good youth! thou movest no less with thy complaining than thy master in bleeding: say his name, good friend. imogen richard du champ. [aside] if i do lie and do no harm by it, though the gods hear, i hope they'll pardon it.--say you, sir? caius lucius thy name? imogen fidele, sir. caius lucius thou dost approve thyself the very same: thy name well fits thy faith, thy faith thy name. wilt take thy chance with me? i will not say thou shalt be so well master'd, but, be sure, no less beloved. the roman emperor's letters, sent by a consul to me, should not sooner than thine own worth prefer thee: go with me. imogen i'll follow, sir. but first, an't please the gods, i'll hide my master from the flies, as deep as these poor pickaxes can dig; and when with wild wood-leaves and weeds i ha' strew'd his grave, and on it said a century of prayers, such as i can, twice o'er, i'll weep and sigh; and leaving so his service, follow you, so please you entertain me. caius lucius ay, good youth! and rather father thee than master thee. my friends, the boy hath taught us manly duties: let us find out the prettiest daisied plot we can, and make him with our pikes and partisans a grave: come, arm him. boy, he is preferr'd by thee to us, and he shall be interr'd as soldiers can. be cheerful; wipe thine eyes some falls are means the happier to arise. [exeunt] cymbeline act iv scene iii a room in cymbeline's palace. [enter cymbeline, lords, pisanio, and attendants] cymbeline again; and bring me word how 'tis with her. [exit an attendant] a fever with the absence of her son, a madness, of which her life's in danger. heavens, how deeply you at once do touch me! imogen, the great part of my comfort, gone; my queen upon a desperate bed, and in a time when fearful wars point at me; her son gone, so needful for this present: it strikes me, past the hope of comfort. but for thee, fellow, who needs must know of her departure and dost seem so ignorant, we'll enforce it from thee by a sharp torture. pisanio sir, my life is yours; i humbly set it at your will; but, for my mistress, i nothing know where she remains, why gone, nor when she purposes return. beseech your highness, hold me your loyal servant. first lord good my liege, the day that she was missing he was here: i dare be bound he's true and shall perform all parts of his subjection loyally. for cloten, there wants no diligence in seeking him, and will, no doubt, be found. cymbeline the time is troublesome. [to pisanio] we'll slip you for a season; but our jealousy does yet depend. first lord so please your majesty, the roman legions, all from gallia drawn, are landed on your coast, with a supply of roman gentlemen, by the senate sent. cymbeline now for the counsel of my son and queen! i am amazed with matter. first lord good my liege, your preparation can affront no less than what you hear of: come more, for more you're ready: the want is but to put those powers in motion that long to move. cymbeline i thank you. let's withdraw; and meet the time as it seeks us. we fear not what can from italy annoy us; but we grieve at chances here. away! [exeunt all but pisanio] pisanio i heard no letter from my master since i wrote him imogen was slain: 'tis strange: nor hear i from my mistress who did promise to yield me often tidings: neither know i what is betid to cloten; but remain perplex'd in all. the heavens still must work. wherein i am false i am honest; not true, to be true. these present wars shall find i love my country, even to the note o' the king, or i'll fall in them. all other doubts, by time let them be clear'd: fortune brings in some boats that are not steer'd. [exit] cymbeline act iv scene iv wales: before the cave of belarius. [enter belarius, guiderius, and arviragus. guiderius the noise is round about us. belarius let us from it. arviragus what pleasure, sir, find we in life, to lock it from action and adventure? guiderius nay, what hope have we in hiding us? this way, the romans must or for britons slay us, or receive us for barbarous and unnatural revolts during their use, and slay us after. belarius sons, we'll higher to the mountains; there secure us. to the king's party there's no going: newness of cloten's death--we being not known, not muster'd among the bands--may drive us to a render where we have lived, and so extort from's that which we have done, whose answer would be death drawn on with torture. guiderius this is, sir, a doubt in such a time nothing becoming you, nor satisfying us. arviragus it is not likely that when they hear the roman horses neigh, behold their quarter'd fires, have both their eyes and ears so cloy'd importantly as now, that they will waste their time upon our note, to know from whence we are. belarius o, i am known of many in the army: many years, though cloten then but young, you see, not wore him from my remembrance. and, besides, the king hath not deserved my service nor your loves; who find in my exile the want of breeding, the certainty of this hard life; aye hopeless to have the courtesy your cradle promised, but to be still hot summer's tamings and the shrinking slaves of winter. guiderius than be so better to cease to be. pray, sir, to the army: i and my brother are not known; yourself so out of thought, and thereto so o'ergrown, cannot be question'd. arviragus by this sun that shines, i'll thither: what thing is it that i never did see man die! scarce ever look'd on blood, but that of coward hares, hot goats, and venison! never bestrid a horse, save one that had a rider like myself, who ne'er wore rowel nor iron on his heel! i am ashamed to look upon the holy sun, to have the benefit of his blest beams, remaining so long a poor unknown. guiderius by heavens, i'll go: if you will bless me, sir, and give me leave, i'll take the better care, but if you will not, the hazard therefore due fall on me by the hands of romans! arviragus so say i amen. belarius no reason i, since of your lives you set so slight a valuation, should reserve my crack'd one to more care. have with you, boys! if in your country wars you chance to die, that is my bed too, lads, an there i'll lie: lead, lead. [aside] the time seems long; their blood thinks scorn, till it fly out and show them princes born. [exeunt] cymbeline act v scene i britain. the roman camp. [enter posthumus, with a bloody handkerchief] posthumus leonatus yea, bloody cloth, i'll keep thee, for i wish'd thou shouldst be colour'd thus. you married ones, if each of you should take this course, how many must murder wives much better than themselves for wrying but a little! o pisanio! every good servant does not all commands: no bond but to do just ones. gods! if you should have ta'en vengeance on my faults, i never had lived to put on this: so had you saved the noble imogen to repent, and struck me, wretch more worth your vengeance. but, alack, you snatch some hence for little faults; that's love, to have them fall no more: you some permit to second ills with ills, each elder worse, and make them dread it, to the doers' thrift. but imogen is your own: do your best wills, and make me blest to obey! i am brought hither among the italian gentry, and to fight against my lady's kingdom: 'tis enough that, britain, i have kill'd thy mistress; peace! i'll give no wound to thee. therefore, good heavens, hear patiently my purpose: i'll disrobe me of these italian weeds and suit myself as does a briton peasant: so i'll fight against the part i come with; so i'll die for thee, o imogen, even for whom my life is every breath a death; and thus, unknown, pitied nor hated, to the face of peril myself i'll dedicate. let me make men know more valour in me than my habits show. gods, put the strength o' the leonati in me! to shame the guise o' the world, i will begin the fashion, less without and more within. [exit] cymbeline act v scene ii field of battle between the british and roman camps. [enter, from one side, lucius, iachimo, and the roman army: from the other side, the british army; posthumus leonatus following, like a poor soldier. they march over and go out. then enter again, in skirmish, iachimo and posthumus leonatus he vanquisheth and disarmeth iachimo, and then leaves him] iachimo the heaviness and guilt within my bosom takes off my manhood: i have belied a lady, the princess of this country, and the air on't revengingly enfeebles me; or could this carl, a very drudge of nature's, have subdued me in my profession? knighthoods and honours, borne as i wear mine, are titles but of scorn. if that thy gentry, britain, go before this lout as he exceeds our lords, the odds is that we scarce are men and you are gods. [exit] [the battle continues; the britons fly; cymbeline is taken: then enter, to his rescue, belarius, guiderius, and arviragus] belarius stand, stand! we have the advantage of the ground; the lane is guarded: nothing routs us but the villany of our fears. guiderius | | stand, stand, and fight! arviragus | [re-enter posthumus leonatus, and seconds the britons: they rescue cymbeline, and exeunt. then re-enter lucius, and iachimo, with imogen] caius lucius away, boy, from the troops, and save thyself; for friends kill friends, and the disorder's such as war were hoodwink'd. iachimo 'tis their fresh supplies. caius lucius it is a day turn'd strangely: or betimes let's reinforce, or fly. [exeunt] cymbeline act v scene iii another part of the field. [enter posthumus leonatus and a british lord] lord camest thou from where they made the stand? posthumus leonatus i did. though you, it seems, come from the fliers. lord i did. posthumus leonatus no blame be to you, sir; for all was lost, but that the heavens fought: the king himself of his wings destitute, the army broken, and but the backs of britons seen, all flying through a straight lane; the enemy full-hearted, lolling the tongue with slaughtering, having work more plentiful than tools to do't, struck down some mortally, some slightly touch'd, some falling merely through fear; that the straight pass was damm'd with dead men hurt behind, and cowards living to die with lengthen'd shame. lord where was this lane? posthumus leonatus close by the battle, ditch'd, and wall'd with turf; which gave advantage to an ancient soldier, an honest one, i warrant; who deserved so long a breeding as his white beard came to, in doing this for's country: athwart the lane, he, with two striplings-lads more like to run the country base than to commit such slaughter with faces fit for masks, or rather fairer than those for preservation cased, or shame- made good the passage; cried to those that fled, 'our britain s harts die flying, not our men: to darkness fleet souls that fly backwards. stand; or we are romans and will give you that like beasts which you shun beastly, and may save, but to look back in frown: stand, stand.' these three, three thousand confident, in act as many- for three performers are the file when all the rest do nothing--with this word 'stand, stand,' accommodated by the place, more charming with their own nobleness, which could have turn'd a distaff to a lance, gilded pale looks, part shame, part spirit renew'd; that some, turn'd coward but by example--o, a sin in war, damn'd in the first beginners!--gan to look the way that they did, and to grin like lions upon the pikes o' the hunters. then began a stop i' the chaser, a retire, anon a rout, confusion thick; forthwith they fly chickens, the way which they stoop'd eagles; slaves, the strides they victors made: and now our cowards, like fragments in hard voyages, became the life o' the need: having found the backdoor open of the unguarded hearts, heavens, how they wound! some slain before; some dying; some their friends o'er borne i' the former wave: ten, chased by one, are now each one the slaughter-man of twenty: those that would die or ere resist are grown the mortal bugs o' the field. lord this was strange chance a narrow lane, an old man, and two boys. posthumus leonatus nay, do not wonder at it: you are made rather to wonder at the things you hear than to work any. will you rhyme upon't, and vent it for a mockery? here is one: 'two boys, an old man twice a boy, a lane, preserved the britons, was the romans' bane.' lord nay, be not angry, sir. posthumus leonatus 'lack, to what end? who dares not stand his foe, i'll be his friend; for if he'll do as he is made to do, i know he'll quickly fly my friendship too. you have put me into rhyme. lord farewell; you're angry. posthumus leonatus still going? [exit lord] this is a lord! o noble misery, to be i' the field, and ask 'what news?' of me! to-day how many would have given their honours to have saved their carcasses! took heel to do't, and yet died too! i, in mine own woe charm'd, could not find death where i did hear him groan, nor feel him where he struck: being an ugly monster, 'tis strange he hides him in fresh cups, soft beds, sweet words; or hath more ministers than we that draw his knives i' the war. well, i will find him for being now a favourer to the briton, no more a briton, i have resumed again the part i came in: fight i will no more, but yield me to the veriest hind that shall once touch my shoulder. great the slaughter is here made by the roman; great the answer be britons must take. for me, my ransom's death; on either side i come to spend my breath; which neither here i'll keep nor bear again, but end it by some means for imogen. [enter two british captains and soldiers] first captain great jupiter be praised! lucius is taken. 'tis thought the old man and his sons were angels. second captain there was a fourth man, in a silly habit, that gave the affront with them. first captain so 'tis reported: but none of 'em can be found. stand! who's there? posthumus leonatus a roman, who had not now been drooping here, if seconds had answer'd him. second captain lay hands on him; a dog! a leg of rome shall not return to tell what crows have peck'd them here. he brags his service as if he were of note: bring him to the king. [enter cymbeline, belarius, guiderius, arviragus, pisanio, soldiers, attendants, and roman captives. the captains present posthumus leonatus to cymbeline, who delivers him over to a gaoler: then exeunt omnes] cymbeline act v scene iv a british prison. [enter posthumus leonatus and two gaolers] first gaoler you shall not now be stol'n, you have locks upon you; so graze as you find pasture. second gaoler ay, or a stomach. [exeunt gaolers] posthumus leonatus most welcome, bondage! for thou art away, think, to liberty: yet am i better than one that's sick o' the gout; since he had rather groan so in perpetuity than be cured by the sure physician, death, who is the key to unbar these locks. my conscience, thou art fetter'd more than my shanks and wrists: you good gods, give me the penitent instrument to pick that bolt, then, free for ever! is't enough i am sorry? so children temporal fathers do appease; gods are more full of mercy. must i repent? i cannot do it better than in gyves, desired more than constrain'd: to satisfy, if of my freedom 'tis the main part, take no stricter render of me than my all. i know you are more clement than vile men, who of their broken debtors take a third, a sixth, a tenth, letting them thrive again on their abatement: that's not my desire: for imogen's dear life take mine; and though 'tis not so dear, yet 'tis a life; you coin'd it: 'tween man and man they weigh not every stamp; though light, take pieces for the figure's sake: you rather mine, being yours: and so, great powers, if you will take this audit, take this life, and cancel these cold bonds. o imogen! i'll speak to thee in silence. [sleeps] [solemn music. enter, as in an apparition, sicilius leonatus, father to posthumus leonatus, an old man, attired like a warrior; leading in his hand an ancient matron, his wife, and mother to posthumus leonatus, with music before them: then, after other music, follow the two young leonati, brothers to posthumus leonatus, with wounds as they died in the wars. they circle posthumus leonatus round, as he lies sleeping] sicilius leonatus no more, thou thunder-master, show thy spite on mortal flies: with mars fall out, with juno chide, that thy adulteries rates and revenges. hath my poor boy done aught but well, whose face i never saw? i died whilst in the womb he stay'd attending nature's law: whose father then, as men report thou orphans' father art, thou shouldst have been, and shielded him from this earth-vexing smart. mother lucina lent not me her aid, but took me in my throes; that from me was posthumus ript, came crying 'mongst his foes, a thing of pity! sicilius leonatus great nature, like his ancestry, moulded the stuff so fair, that he deserved the praise o' the world, as great sicilius' heir. first brother when once he was mature for man, in britain where was he that could stand up his parallel; or fruitful object be in eye of imogen, that best could deem his dignity? mother with marriage wherefore was he mock'd, to be exiled, and thrown from leonati seat, and cast from her his dearest one, sweet imogen? sicilius leonatus why did you suffer iachimo, slight thing of italy, to taint his nobler heart and brain with needless jealosy; and to become the geck and scorn o' th' other's villany? second brother for this from stiller seats we came, our parents and us twain, that striking in our country's cause fell bravely and were slain, our fealty and tenantius' right with honour to maintain. first brother like hardiment posthumus hath to cymbeline perform'd: then, jupiter, thou king of gods, why hast thou thus adjourn'd the graces for his merits due, being all to dolours turn'd? sicilius leonatus thy crystal window ope; look out; no longer exercise upon a valiant race thy harsh and potent injuries. mother since, jupiter, our son is good, take off his miseries. sicilius leonatus peep through thy marble mansion; help; or we poor ghosts will cry to the shining synod of the rest against thy deity. first brother | help, jupiter; or we appeal, | and from thy justice fly. second brother | [jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. the apparitions fall on their knees] jupiter no more, you petty spirits of region low, offend our hearing; hush! how dare you ghosts accuse the thunderer, whose bolt, you know, sky-planted batters all rebelling coasts? poor shadows of elysium, hence, and rest upon your never-withering banks of flowers: be not with mortal accidents opprest; no care of yours it is; you know 'tis ours. whom best i love i cross; to make my gift, the more delay'd, delighted. be content; your low-laid son our godhead will uplift: his comforts thrive, his trials well are spent. our jovial star reign'd at his birth, and in our temple was he married. rise, and fade. he shall be lord of lady imogen, and happier much by his affliction made. this tablet lay upon his breast, wherein our pleasure his full fortune doth confine: and so, away: no further with your din express impatience, lest you stir up mine. mount, eagle, to my palace crystalline. [ascends] sicilius leonatus he came in thunder; his celestial breath was sulphurous to smell: the holy eagle stoop'd as to foot us: his ascension is more sweet than our blest fields: his royal bird prunes the immortal wing and cloys his beak, as when his god is pleased. all thanks, jupiter! sicilius leonatus the marble pavement closes, he is enter'd his radiant root. away! and, to be blest, let us with care perform his great behest. [the apparitions vanish] posthumus leonatus [waking] sleep, thou hast been a grandsire, and begot a father to me; and thou hast created a mother and two brothers: but, o scorn! gone! they went hence so soon as they were born: and so i am awake. poor wretches that depend on greatness' favour dream as i have done, wake and find nothing. but, alas, i swerve: many dream not to find, neither deserve, and yet are steep'd in favours: so am i, that have this golden chance and know not why. what fairies haunt this ground? a book? o rare one! be not, as is our fangled world, a garment nobler than that it covers: let thy effects so follow, to be most unlike our courtiers, as good as promise. [reads] 'when as a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock and freshly grow; then shall posthumus end his miseries, britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty.' 'tis still a dream, or else such stuff as madmen tongue and brain not; either both or nothing; or senseless speaking or a speaking such as sense cannot untie. be what it is, the action of my life is like it, which i'll keep, if but for sympathy. [re-enter first gaoler] first gaoler come, sir, are you ready for death? posthumus leonatus over-roasted rather; ready long ago. first gaoler hanging is the word, sir: if you be ready for that, you are well cooked. posthumus leonatus so, if i prove a good repast to the spectators, the dish pays the shot. first gaoler a heavy reckoning for you, sir. but the comfort is, you shall be called to no more payments, fear no more tavern-bills; which are often the sadness of parting, as the procuring of mirth: you come in flint for want of meat, depart reeling with too much drink; sorry that you have paid too much, and sorry that you are paid too much; purse and brain both empty; the brain the heavier for being too light, the purse too light, being drawn of heaviness: of this contradiction you shall now be quit. o, the charity of a penny cord! it sums up thousands in a trice: you have no true debitor and creditor but it; of what's past, is, and to come, the discharge: your neck, sir, is pen, book and counters; so the acquittance follows. posthumus leonatus i am merrier to die than thou art to live. first gaoler indeed, sir, he that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache: but a man that were to sleep your sleep, and a hangman to help him to bed, i think he would change places with his officer; for, look you, sir, you know not which way you shall go. posthumus leonatus yes, indeed do i, fellow. first gaoler your death has eyes in 's head then; i have not seen him so pictured: you must either be directed by some that take upon them to know, or do take upon yourself that which i am sure you do not know, or jump the after inquiry on your own peril: and how you shall speed in your journey's end, i think you'll never return to tell one. posthumus leonatus i tell thee, fellow, there are none want eyes to direct them the way i am going, but such as wink and will not use them. first gaoler what an infinite mock is this, that a man should have the best use of eyes to see the way of blindness! i am sure hanging's the way of winking. [enter a messenger] messenger knock off his manacles; bring your prisoner to the king. posthumus leonatus thou bring'st good news; i am called to be made free. first gaoler i'll be hang'd then. posthumus leonatus thou shalt be then freer than a gaoler; no bolts for the dead. [exeunt posthumus leonatus and messenger] first gaoler unless a man would marry a gallows and beget young gibbets, i never saw one so prone. yet, on my conscience, there are verier knaves desire to live, for all he be a roman: and there be some of them too that die against their wills; so should i, if i were one. i would we were all of one mind, and one mind good; o, there were desolation of gaolers and gallowses! i speak against my present profit, but my wish hath a preferment in 't. [exeunt] cymbeline act v scene v cymbeline's tent. [enter cymbeline, belarius, guiderius, arviragus, pisanio, lords, officers, and attendants] cymbeline stand by my side, you whom the gods have made preservers of my throne. woe is my heart that the poor soldier that so richly fought, whose rags shamed gilded arms, whose naked breast stepp'd before larges of proof, cannot be found: he shall be happy that can find him, if our grace can make him so. belarius i never saw such noble fury in so poor a thing; such precious deeds in one that promises nought but beggary and poor looks. cymbeline no tidings of him? pisanio he hath been search'd among the dead and living, but no trace of him. cymbeline to my grief, i am the heir of his reward; [to belarius, guiderius, and arviragus] which i will add to you, the liver, heart and brain of britain, by whom i grant she lives. 'tis now the time to ask of whence you are. report it. belarius sir, in cambria are we born, and gentlemen: further to boast were neither true nor modest, unless i add, we are honest. cymbeline bow your knees. arise my knights o' the battle: i create you companions to our person and will fit you with dignities becoming your estates. [enter cornelius and ladies] there's business in these faces. why so sadly greet you our victory? you look like romans, and not o' the court of britain. cornelius hail, great king! to sour your happiness, i must report the queen is dead. cymbeline who worse than a physician would this report become? but i consider, by medicine life may be prolong'd, yet death will seize the doctor too. how ended she? cornelius with horror, madly dying, like her life, which, being cruel to the world, concluded most cruel to herself. what she confess'd i will report, so please you: these her women can trip me, if i err; who with wet cheeks were present when she finish'd. cymbeline prithee, say. cornelius first, she confess'd she never loved you, only affected greatness got by you, not you: married your royalty, was wife to your place; abhorr'd your person. cymbeline she alone knew this; and, but she spoke it dying, i would not believe her lips in opening it. proceed. cornelius your daughter, whom she bore in hand to love with such integrity, she did confess was as a scorpion to her sight; whose life, but that her flight prevented it, she had ta'en off by poison. cymbeline o most delicate fiend! who is 't can read a woman? is there more? cornelius more, sir, and worse. she did confess she had for you a mortal mineral; which, being took, should by the minute feed on life and lingering by inches waste you: in which time she purposed, by watching, weeping, tendance, kissing, to o'ercome you with her show, and in time, when she had fitted you with her craft, to work her son into the adoption of the crown: but, failing of her end by his strange absence, grew shameless-desperate; open'd, in despite of heaven and men, her purposes; repented the evils she hatch'd were not effected; so despairing died. cymbeline heard you all this, her women? first lady we did, so please your highness. cymbeline mine eyes were not in fault, for she was beautiful; mine ears, that heard her flattery; nor my heart, that thought her like her seeming; it had been vicious to have mistrusted her: yet, o my daughter! that it was folly in me, thou mayst say, and prove it in thy feeling. heaven mend all! [enter lucius, iachimo, the soothsayer, and other roman prisoners, guarded; posthumus leonatus behind, and imogen] thou comest not, caius, now for tribute that the britons have razed out, though with the loss of many a bold one; whose kinsmen have made suit that their good souls may be appeased with slaughter of you their captives, which ourself have granted: so think of your estate. caius lucius consider, sir, the chance of war: the day was yours by accident; had it gone with us, we should not, when the blood was cool, have threaten'd our prisoners with the sword. but since the gods will have it thus, that nothing but our lives may be call'd ransom, let it come: sufficeth a roman with a roman's heart can suffer: augustus lives to think on't: and so much for my peculiar care. this one thing only i will entreat; my boy, a briton born, let him be ransom'd: never master had a page so kind, so duteous, diligent, so tender over his occasions, true, so feat, so nurse-like: let his virtue join with my request, which i make bold your highness cannot deny; he hath done no briton harm, though he have served a roman: save him, sir, and spare no blood beside. cymbeline i have surely seen him: his favour is familiar to me. boy, thou hast look'd thyself into my grace, and art mine own. i know not why, wherefore, to say 'live, boy:' ne'er thank thy master; live: and ask of cymbeline what boon thou wilt, fitting my bounty and thy state, i'll give it; yea, though thou do demand a prisoner, the noblest ta'en. imogen i humbly thank your highness. caius lucius i do not bid thee beg my life, good lad; and yet i know thou wilt. imogen no, no: alack, there's other work in hand: i see a thing bitter to me as death: your life, good master, must shuffle for itself. caius lucius the boy disdains me, he leaves me, scorns me: briefly die their joys that place them on the truth of girls and boys. why stands he so perplex'd? cymbeline what wouldst thou, boy? i love thee more and more: think more and more what's best to ask. know'st him thou look'st on? speak, wilt have him live? is he thy kin? thy friend? imogen he is a roman; no more kin to me than i to your highness; who, being born your vassal, am something nearer. cymbeline wherefore eyest him so? imogen i'll tell you, sir, in private, if you please to give me hearing. cymbeline ay, with all my heart, and lend my best attention. what's thy name? imogen fidele, sir. cymbeline thou'rt my good youth, my page; i'll be thy master: walk with me; speak freely. [cymbeline and imogen converse apart] belarius is not this boy revived from death? arviragus one sand another not more resembles that sweet rosy lad who died, and was fidele. what think you? guiderius the same dead thing alive. belarius peace, peace! see further; he eyes us not; forbear; creatures may be alike: were 't he, i am sure he would have spoke to us. guiderius but we saw him dead. belarius be silent; let's see further. pisanio [aside] it is my mistress: since she is living, let the time run on to good or bad. [cymbeline and imogen come forward] cymbeline come, stand thou by our side; make thy demand aloud. [to iachimo] sir, step you forth; give answer to this boy, and do it freely; or, by our greatness and the grace of it, which is our honour, bitter torture shall winnow the truth from falsehood. on, speak to him. imogen my boon is, that this gentleman may render of whom he had this ring. posthumus leonatus [aside] what's that to him? cymbeline that diamond upon your finger, say how came it yours? iachimo thou'lt torture me to leave unspoken that which, to be spoke, would torture thee. cymbeline how! me? iachimo i am glad to be constrain'd to utter that which torments me to conceal. by villany i got this ring: 'twas leonatus' jewel; whom thou didst banish; and--which more may grieve thee, as it doth me--a nobler sir ne'er lived 'twixt sky and ground. wilt thou hear more, my lord? cymbeline all that belongs to this. iachimo that paragon, thy daughter,- for whom my heart drops blood, and my false spirits quail to remember--give me leave; i faint. cymbeline my daughter! what of her? renew thy strength: i had rather thou shouldst live while nature will than die ere i hear more: strive, man, and speak. iachimo upon a time,--unhappy was the clock that struck the hour!--it was in rome,--accursed the mansion where!--'twas at a feast,--o, would our viands had been poison'd, or at least those which i heaved to head!--the good posthumus- what should i say? he was too good to be where ill men were; and was the best of all amongst the rarest of good ones,--sitting sadly, hearing us praise our loves of italy for beauty that made barren the swell'd boast of him that best could speak, for feature, laming the shrine of venus, or straight-pight minerva. postures beyond brief nature, for condition, a shop of all the qualities that man loves woman for, besides that hook of wiving, fairness which strikes the eye- cymbeline i stand on fire: come to the matter. iachimo all too soon i shall, unless thou wouldst grieve quickly. this posthumus, most like a noble lord in love and one that had a royal lover, took his hint; and, not dispraising whom we praised,--therein he was as calm as virtue--he began his mistress' picture; which by his tongue being made, and then a mind put in't, either our brags were crack'd of kitchen-trolls, or his description proved us unspeaking sots. cymbeline nay, nay, to the purpose. iachimo your daughter's chastity--there it begins. he spake of her, as dian had hot dreams, and she alone were cold: whereat i, wretch, made scruple of his praise; and wager'd with him pieces of gold 'gainst this which then he wore upon his honour'd finger, to attain in suit the place of's bed and win this ring by hers and mine adultery. he, true knight, no lesser of her honour confident than i did truly find her, stakes this ring; and would so, had it been a carbuncle of phoebus' wheel, and might so safely, had it been all the worth of's car. away to britain post i in this design: well may you, sir, remember me at court; where i was taught of your chaste daughter the wide difference 'twixt amorous and villanous. being thus quench'd of hope, not longing, mine italian brain 'gan in your duller britain operate most vilely; for my vantage, excellent: and, to be brief, my practise so prevail'd, that i return'd with simular proof enough to make the noble leonatus mad, by wounding his belief in her renown with tokens thus, and thus; averting notes of chamber-hanging, pictures, this her bracelet,- o cunning, how i got it!--nay, some marks of secret on her person, that he could not but think her bond of chastity quite crack'd, i having ta'en the forfeit. whereupon- methinks, i see him now- posthumus leonatus [advancing] ay, so thou dost, italian fiend! ay me, most credulous fool, egregious murderer, thief, any thing that's due to all the villains past, in being, to come! o, give me cord, or knife, or poison, some upright justicer! thou, king, send out for torturers ingenious: it is i that all the abhorred things o' the earth amend by being worse than they. i am posthumus, that kill'd thy daughter:--villain-like, i lie- that caused a lesser villain than myself, a sacrilegious thief, to do't: the temple of virtue was she; yea, and she herself. spit, and throw stones, cast mire upon me, set the dogs o' the street to bay me: every villain be call'd posthumus leonitus; and be villany less than 'twas! o imogen! my queen, my life, my wife! o imogen, imogen, imogen! imogen peace, my lord; hear, hear- posthumus leonatus shall's have a play of this? thou scornful page, there lie thy part. [striking her: she falls] pisanio o, gentlemen, help! mine and your mistress! o, my lord posthumus! you ne'er kill'd imogen til now. help, help! mine honour'd lady! cymbeline does the world go round? posthumus leonatus how come these staggers on me? pisanio wake, my mistress! cymbeline if this be so, the gods do mean to strike me to death with mortal joy. pisanio how fares thy mistress? imogen o, get thee from my sight; thou gavest me poison: dangerous fellow, hence! breathe not where princes are. cymbeline the tune of imogen! pisanio lady, the gods throw stones of sulphur on me, if that box i gave you was not thought by me a precious thing: i had it from the queen. cymbeline new matter still? imogen it poison'd me. cornelius o gods! i left out one thing which the queen confess'd. which must approve thee honest: 'if pisanio have,' said she, 'given his mistress that confection which i gave him for cordial, she is served as i would serve a rat.' cymbeline what's this, comelius? cornelius the queen, sir, very oft importuned me to temper poisons for her, still pretending the satisfaction of her knowledge only in killing creatures vile, as cats and dogs, of no esteem: i, dreading that her purpose was of more danger, did compound for her a certain stuff, which, being ta'en, would cease the present power of life, but in short time all offices of nature should again do their due functions. have you ta'en of it? imogen most like i did, for i was dead. belarius my boys, there was our error. guiderius this is, sure, fidele. imogen why did you throw your wedded lady from you? think that you are upon a rock; and now throw me again. [embracing him] posthumus leonatus hang there like a fruit, my soul, till the tree die! cymbeline how now, my flesh, my child! what, makest thou me a dullard in this act? wilt thou not speak to me? imogen [kneeling] your blessing, sir. belarius [to guiderius and arviragus] though you did love this youth, i blame ye not: you had a motive for't. cymbeline my tears that fall prove holy water on thee! imogen, thy mother's dead. imogen i am sorry for't, my lord. cymbeline o, she was nought; and long of her it was that we meet here so strangely: but her son is gone, we know not how nor where. pisanio my lord, now fear is from me, i'll speak troth. lord cloten, upon my lady's missing, came to me with his sword drawn; foam'd at the mouth, and swore, if i discover'd not which way she was gone, it was my instant death. by accident, had a feigned letter of my master's then in my pocket; which directed him to seek her on the mountains near to milford; where, in a frenzy, in my master's garments, which he enforced from me, away he posts with unchaste purpose and with oath to violate my lady's honour: what became of him i further know not. guiderius let me end the story: i slew him there. cymbeline marry, the gods forfend! i would not thy good deeds should from my lips pluck a bard sentence: prithee, valiant youth, deny't again. guiderius i have spoke it, and i did it. cymbeline he was a prince. guiderius a most incivil one: the wrongs he did me were nothing prince-like; for he did provoke me with language that would make me spurn the sea, if it could so roar to me: i cut off's head; and am right glad he is not standing here to tell this tale of mine. cymbeline i am sorry for thee: by thine own tongue thou art condemn'd, and must endure our law: thou'rt dead. imogen that headless man i thought had been my lord. cymbeline bind the offender, and take him from our presence. belarius stay, sir king: this man is better than the man he slew, as well descended as thyself; and hath more of thee merited than a band of clotens had ever scar for. [to the guard] let his arms alone; they were not born for bondage. cymbeline why, old soldier, wilt thou undo the worth thou art unpaid for, by tasting of our wrath? how of descent as good as we? arviragus in that he spake too far. cymbeline and thou shalt die for't. belarius we will die all three: but i will prove that two on's are as good as i have given out him. my sons, i must, for mine own part, unfold a dangerous speech, though, haply, well for you. arviragus your danger's ours. guiderius and our good his. belarius have at it then, by leave. thou hadst, great king, a subject who was call'd belarius. cymbeline what of him? he is a banish'd traitor. belarius he it is that hath assumed this age; indeed a banish'd man; i know not how a traitor. cymbeline take him hence: the whole world shall not save him. belarius not too hot: first pay me for the nursing of thy sons; and let it be confiscate all, so soon as i have received it. cymbeline nursing of my sons! belarius i am too blunt and saucy: here's my knee: ere i arise, i will prefer my sons; then spare not the old father. mighty sir, these two young gentlemen, that call me father and think they are my sons, are none of mine; they are the issue of your loins, my liege, and blood of your begetting. cymbeline how! my issue! belarius so sure as you your father's. i, old morgan, am that belarius whom you sometime banish'd: your pleasure was my mere offence, my punishment itself, and all my treason; that i suffer'd was all the harm i did. these gentle princes- for such and so they are--these twenty years have i train'd up: those arts they have as i could put into them; my breeding was, sir, as your highness knows. their nurse, euriphile, whom for the theft i wedded, stole these children upon my banishment: i moved her to't, having received the punishment before, for that which i did then: beaten for loyalty excited me to treason: their dear loss, the more of you 'twas felt, the more it shaped unto my end of stealing them. but, gracious sir, here are your sons again; and i must lose two of the sweet'st companions in the world. the benediction of these covering heavens fall on their heads like dew! for they are worthy to inlay heaven with stars. cymbeline thou weep'st, and speak'st. the service that you three have done is more unlike than this thou tell'st. i lost my children: if these be they, i know not how to wish a pair of worthier sons. belarius be pleased awhile. this gentleman, whom i call polydore, most worthy prince, as yours, is true guiderius: this gentleman, my cadwal, arviragus, your younger princely son; he, sir, was lapp'd in a most curious mantle, wrought by the hand of his queen mother, which for more probation i can with ease produce. cymbeline guiderius had upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star; it was a mark of wonder. belarius this is he; who hath upon him still that natural stamp: it was wise nature's end in the donation, to be his evidence now. cymbeline o, what, am i a mother to the birth of three? ne'er mother rejoiced deliverance more. blest pray you be, that, after this strange starting from your orbs, may reign in them now! o imogen, thou hast lost by this a kingdom. imogen no, my lord; i have got two worlds by 't. o my gentle brothers, have we thus met? o, never say hereafter but i am truest speaker you call'd me brother, when i was but your sister; i you brothers, when ye were so indeed. cymbeline did you e'er meet? arviragus ay, my good lord. guiderius and at first meeting loved; continued so, until we thought he died. cornelius by the queen's dram she swallow'd. cymbeline o rare instinct! when shall i hear all through? this fierce abridgement hath to it circumstantial branches, which distinction should be rich in. where? how lived you? and when came you to serve our roman captive? how parted with your brothers? how first met them? why fled you from the court? and whither? these, and your three motives to the battle, with i know not how much more, should be demanded; and all the other by-dependencies, from chance to chance: but nor the time nor place will serve our long inter'gatories. see, posthumus anchors upon imogen, and she, like harmless lightning, throws her eye on him, her brother, me, her master, hitting each object with a joy: the counterchange is severally in all. let's quit this ground, and smoke the temple with our sacrifices. [to belarius] thou art my brother; so we'll hold thee ever. imogen you are my father too, and did relieve me, to see this gracious season. cymbeline all o'erjoy'd, save these in bonds: let them be joyful too, for they shall taste our comfort. imogen my good master, i will yet do you service. caius lucius happy be you! cymbeline the forlorn soldier, that so nobly fought, he would have well becomed this place, and graced the thankings of a king. posthumus leonatus i am, sir, the soldier that did company these three in poor beseeming; 'twas a fitment for the purpose i then follow'd. that i was he, speak, iachimo: i had you down and might have made you finish. iachimo [kneeling] i am down again: but now my heavy conscience sinks my knee, as then your force did. take that life, beseech you, which i so often owe: but your ring first; and here the bracelet of the truest princess that ever swore her faith. posthumus leonatus kneel not to me: the power that i have on you is, to spare you; the malice towards you to forgive you: live, and deal with others better. cymbeline nobly doom'd! we'll learn our freeness of a son-in-law; pardon's the word to all. arviragus you holp us, sir, as you did mean indeed to be our brother; joy'd are we that you are. posthumus leonatus your servant, princes. good my lord of rome, call forth your soothsayer: as i slept, methought great jupiter, upon his eagle back'd, appear'd to me, with other spritely shows of mine own kindred: when i waked, i found this label on my bosom; whose containing is so from sense in hardness, that i can make no collection of it: let him show his skill in the construction. caius lucius philarmonus! soothsayer here, my good lord. caius lucius read, and declare the meaning. soothsayer [reads] 'when as a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall posthumus end his miseries, britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty.' thou, leonatus, art the lion's whelp; the fit and apt construction of thy name, being leonatus, doth import so much. [to cymbeline] the piece of tender air, thy virtuous daughter, which we call 'mollis aer;' and 'mollis aer' we term it 'mulier:' which 'mulier' i divine is this most constant wife; who, even now, answering the letter of the oracle, unknown to you, unsought, were clipp'd about with this most tender air. cymbeline this hath some seeming. soothsayer the lofty cedar, royal cymbeline, personates thee: and thy lopp'd branches point thy two sons forth; who, by belarius stol'n, for many years thought dead, are now revived, to the majestic cedar join'd, whose issue promises britain peace and plenty. cymbeline well my peace we will begin. and, caius lucius, although the victor, we submit to caesar, and to the roman empire; promising to pay our wonted tribute, from the which we were dissuaded by our wicked queen; whom heavens, in justice, both on her and hers, have laid most heavy hand. soothsayer the fingers of the powers above do tune the harmony of this peace. the vision which i made known to lucius, ere the stroke of this yet scarce-cold battle, at this instant is full accomplish'd; for the roman eagle, from south to west on wing soaring aloft, lessen'd herself, and in the beams o' the sun so vanish'd: which foreshow'd our princely eagle, the imperial caesar, should again unite his favour with the radiant cymbeline, which shines here in the west. cymbeline laud we the gods; and let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils from our blest altars. publish we this peace to all our subjects. set we forward: let a roman and a british ensign wave friendly together: so through lud's-town march: and in the temple of great jupiter our peace we'll ratify; seal it with feasts. set on there! never was a war did cease, ere bloody hands were wash'd, with such a peace. [exeunt] the merchant of venice dramatis personae the duke of venice. (duke:) the prince of | morocco (morocco:) | | suitors to portia. the prince of | arragon (arragon:) | antonio a merchant of venice. bassanio his friend, suitor likewise to portia. salanio | | salarino | | friends to antonio and bassanio. gratiano | | salerio | lorenzo in love with jessica. shylock a rich jew. tubal a jew, his friend. launcelot gobbo the clown, servant to shylock. (launcelot:) old gobbo father to launcelot. (gobbo:) leonardo servant to bassanio. balthasar | | servants to portia. stephano | portia a rich heiress. nerissa her waiting-maid. jessica daughter to shylock. magnificoes of venice, officers of the court of justice, gaoler, servants to portia, and other attendants. (servant:) (clerk:) scene partly at venice, and partly at belmont, the seat of portia, on the continent. the merchant of venice act i scene i venice. a street. [enter antonio, salarino, and salanio] antonio in sooth, i know not why i am so sad: it wearies me; you say it wearies you; but how i caught it, found it, or came by it, what stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born, i am to learn; and such a want-wit sadness makes of me, that i have much ado to know myself. salarino your mind is tossing on the ocean; there, where your argosies with portly sail, like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, or, as it were, the pageants of the sea, do overpeer the petty traffickers, that curtsy to them, do them reverence, as they fly by them with their woven wings. salanio believe me, sir, had i such venture forth, the better part of my affections would be with my hopes abroad. i should be still plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind, peering in maps for ports and piers and roads; and every object that might make me fear misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt would make me sad. salarino my wind cooling my broth would blow me to an ague, when i thought what harm a wind too great at sea might do. i should not see the sandy hour-glass run, but i should think of shallows and of flats, and see my wealthy andrew dock'd in sand, vailing her high-top lower than her ribs to kiss her burial. should i go to church and see the holy edifice of stone, and not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks, which touching but my gentle vessel's side, would scatter all her spices on the stream, enrobe the roaring waters with my silks, and, in a word, but even now worth this, and now worth nothing? shall i have the thought to think on this, and shall i lack the thought that such a thing bechanced would make me sad? but tell not me; i know, antonio is sad to think upon his merchandise. antonio believe me, no: i thank my fortune for it, my ventures are not in one bottom trusted, nor to one place; nor is my whole estate upon the fortune of this present year: therefore my merchandise makes me not sad. salarino why, then you are in love. antonio fie, fie! salarino not in love neither? then let us say you are sad, because you are not merry: and 'twere as easy for you to laugh and leap and say you are merry, because you are not sad. now, by two-headed janus, nature hath framed strange fellows in her time: some that will evermore peep through their eyes and laugh like parrots at a bag-piper, and other of such vinegar aspect that they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, though nestor swear the jest be laughable. [enter bassanio, lorenzo, and gratiano] salanio here comes bassanio, your most noble kinsman, gratiano and lorenzo. fare ye well: we leave you now with better company. salarino i would have stay'd till i had made you merry, if worthier friends had not prevented me. antonio your worth is very dear in my regard. i take it, your own business calls on you and you embrace the occasion to depart. salarino good morrow, my good lords. bassanio good signiors both, when shall we laugh? say, when? you grow exceeding strange: must it be so? salarino we'll make our leisures to attend on yours. [exeunt salarino and salanio] lorenzo my lord bassanio, since you have found antonio, we two will leave you: but at dinner-time, i pray you, have in mind where we must meet. bassanio i will not fail you. gratiano you look not well, signior antonio; you have too much respect upon the world: they lose it that do buy it with much care: believe me, you are marvellously changed. antonio i hold the world but as the world, gratiano; a stage where every man must play a part, and mine a sad one. gratiano let me play the fool: with mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, and let my liver rather heat with wine than my heart cool with mortifying groans. why should a man, whose blood is warm within, sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster? sleep when he wakes and creep into the jaundice by being peevish? i tell thee what, antonio- i love thee, and it is my love that speaks- there are a sort of men whose visages do cream and mantle like a standing pond, and do a wilful stillness entertain, with purpose to be dress'd in an opinion of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit, as who should say 'i am sir oracle, and when i ope my lips let no dog bark!' o my antonio, i do know of these that therefore only are reputed wise for saying nothing; when, i am very sure, if they should speak, would almost damn those ears, which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools. i'll tell thee more of this another time: but fish not, with this melancholy bait, for this fool gudgeon, this opinion. come, good lorenzo. fare ye well awhile: i'll end my exhortation after dinner. lorenzo well, we will leave you then till dinner-time: i must be one of these same dumb wise men, for gratiano never lets me speak. gratiano well, keep me company but two years moe, thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue. antonio farewell: i'll grow a talker for this gear. gratiano thanks, i' faith, for silence is only commendable in a neat's tongue dried and a maid not vendible. [exeunt gratiano and lorenzo] antonio is that any thing now? bassanio gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all venice. his reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search. antonio well, tell me now what lady is the same to whom you swore a secret pilgrimage, that you to-day promised to tell me of? bassanio 'tis not unknown to you, antonio, how much i have disabled mine estate, by something showing a more swelling port than my faint means would grant continuance: nor do i now make moan to be abridged from such a noble rate; but my chief care is to come fairly off from the great debts wherein my time something too prodigal hath left me gaged. to you, antonio, i owe the most, in money and in love, and from your love i have a warranty to unburden all my plots and purposes how to get clear of all the debts i owe. antonio i pray you, good bassanio, let me know it; and if it stand, as you yourself still do, within the eye of honour, be assured, my purse, my person, my extremest means, lie all unlock'd to your occasions. bassanio in my school-days, when i had lost one shaft, i shot his fellow of the self-same flight the self-same way with more advised watch, to find the other forth, and by adventuring both i oft found both: i urge this childhood proof, because what follows is pure innocence. i owe you much, and, like a wilful youth, that which i owe is lost; but if you please to shoot another arrow that self way which you did shoot the first, i do not doubt, as i will watch the aim, or to find both or bring your latter hazard back again and thankfully rest debtor for the first. antonio you know me well, and herein spend but time to wind about my love with circumstance; and out of doubt you do me now more wrong in making question of my uttermost than if you had made waste of all i have: then do but say to me what i should do that in your knowledge may by me be done, and i am prest unto it: therefore, speak. bassanio in belmont is a lady richly left; and she is fair, and, fairer than that word, of wondrous virtues: sometimes from her eyes i did receive fair speechless messages: her name is portia, nothing undervalued to cato's daughter, brutus' portia: nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth, for the four winds blow in from every coast renowned suitors, and her sunny locks hang on her temples like a golden fleece; which makes her seat of belmont colchos' strand, and many jasons come in quest of her. o my antonio, had i but the means to hold a rival place with one of them, i have a mind presages me such thrift, that i should questionless be fortunate! antonio thou know'st that all my fortunes are at sea; neither have i money nor commodity to raise a present sum: therefore go forth; try what my credit can in venice do: that shall be rack'd, even to the uttermost, to furnish thee to belmont, to fair portia. go, presently inquire, and so will i, where money is, and i no question make to have it of my trust or for my sake. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act i scene ii: belmont. a room in portia's house. [enter portia and nerissa] portia by my troth, nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world. nerissa you would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are: and yet, for aught i see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing. it is no mean happiness therefore, to be seated in the mean: superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer. portia good sentences and well pronounced. nerissa they would be better, if well followed. portia if to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. it is a good divine that follows his own instructions: i can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. the brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree: such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the cripple. but this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a husband. o me, the word 'choose!' i may neither choose whom i would nor refuse whom i dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father. is it not hard, nerissa, that i cannot choose one nor refuse none? nerissa your father was ever virtuous; and holy men at their death have good inspirations: therefore the lottery, that he hath devised in these three chests of gold, silver and lead, whereof who chooses his meaning chooses you, will, no doubt, never be chosen by any rightly but one who shall rightly love. but what warmth is there in your affection towards any of these princely suitors that are already come? portia i pray thee, over-name them; and as thou namest them, i will describe them; and, according to my description, level at my affection. nerissa first, there is the neapolitan prince. portia ay, that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of his horse; and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good parts, that he can shoe him himself. i am much afeard my lady his mother played false with a smith. nerissa then there is the county palatine. portia he doth nothing but frown, as who should say 'if you will not have me, choose:' he hears merry tales and smiles not: i fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. i had rather be married to a death's-head with a bone in his mouth than to either of these. god defend me from these two! nerissa how say you by the french lord, monsieur le bon? portia god made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. in truth, i know it is a sin to be a mocker: but, he! why, he hath a horse better than the neapolitan's, a better bad habit of frowning than the count palatine; he is every man in no man; if a throstle sing, he falls straight a capering: he will fence with his own shadow: if i should marry him, i should marry twenty husbands. if he would despise me i would forgive him, for if he love me to madness, i shall never requite him. nerissa what say you, then, to falconbridge, the young baron of england? portia you know i say nothing to him, for he understands not me, nor i him: he hath neither latin, french, nor italian, and you will come into the court and swear that i have a poor pennyworth in the english. he is a proper man's picture, but, alas, who can converse with a dumb-show? how oddly he is suited! i think he bought his doublet in italy, his round hose in france, his bonnet in germany and his behavior every where. nerissa what think you of the scottish lord, his neighbour? portia that he hath a neighbourly charity in him, for he borrowed a box of the ear of the englishman and swore he would pay him again when he was able: i think the frenchman became his surety and sealed under for another. nerissa how like you the young german, the duke of saxony's nephew? portia very vilely in the morning, when he is sober, and most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk: when he is best, he is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast: and the worst fall that ever fell, i hope i shall make shift to go without him. nerissa if he should offer to choose, and choose the right casket, you should refuse to perform your father's will, if you should refuse to accept him. portia therefore, for fear of the worst, i pray thee, set a deep glass of rhenish wine on the contrary casket, for if the devil be within and that temptation without, i know he will choose it. i will do any thing, nerissa, ere i'll be married to a sponge. nerissa you need not fear, lady, the having any of these lords: they have acquainted me with their determinations; which is, indeed, to return to their home and to trouble you with no more suit, unless you may be won by some other sort than your father's imposition depending on the caskets. portia if i live to be as old as sibylla, i will die as chaste as diana, unless i be obtained by the manner of my father's will. i am glad this parcel of wooers are so reasonable, for there is not one among them but i dote on his very absence, and i pray god grant them a fair departure. nerissa do you not remember, lady, in your father's time, a venetian, a scholar and a soldier, that came hither in company of the marquis of montferrat? portia yes, yes, it was bassanio; as i think, he was so called. nerissa true, madam: he, of all the men that ever my foolish eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair lady. portia i remember him well, and i remember him worthy of thy praise. [enter a serving-man] how now! what news? servant the four strangers seek for you, madam, to take their leave: and there is a forerunner come from a fifth, the prince of morocco, who brings word the prince his master will be here to-night. portia if i could bid the fifth welcome with so good a heart as i can bid the other four farewell, i should be glad of his approach: if he have the condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil, i had rather he should shrive me than wive me. come, nerissa. sirrah, go before. whiles we shut the gates upon one wooer, another knocks at the door. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act i scene iii venice. a public place. [enter bassanio and shylock] shylock three thousand ducats; well. bassanio ay, sir, for three months. shylock for three months; well. bassanio for the which, as i told you, antonio shall be bound. shylock antonio shall become bound; well. bassanio may you stead me? will you pleasure me? shall i know your answer? shylock three thousand ducats for three months and antonio bound. bassanio your answer to that. shylock antonio is a good man. bassanio have you heard any imputation to the contrary? shylock oh, no, no, no, no: my meaning in saying he is a good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient. yet his means are in supposition: he hath an argosy bound to tripolis, another to the indies; i understand moreover, upon the rialto, he hath a third at mexico, a fourth for england, and other ventures he hath, squandered abroad. but ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves, i mean pirates, and then there is the peril of waters, winds and rocks. the man is, notwithstanding, sufficient. three thousand ducats; i think i may take his bond. bassanio be assured you may. shylock i will be assured i may; and, that i may be assured, i will bethink me. may i speak with antonio? bassanio if it please you to dine with us. shylock yes, to smell pork; to eat of the habitation which your prophet the nazarite conjured the devil into. i will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but i will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. what news on the rialto? who is he comes here? [enter antonio] bassanio this is signior antonio. shylock [aside] how like a fawning publican he looks! i hate him for he is a christian, but more for that in low simplicity he lends out money gratis and brings down the rate of usance here with us in venice. if i can catch him once upon the hip, i will feed fat the ancient grudge i bear him. he hates our sacred nation, and he rails, even there where merchants most do congregate, on me, my bargains and my well-won thrift, which he calls interest. cursed be my tribe, if i forgive him! bassanio shylock, do you hear? shylock i am debating of my present store, and, by the near guess of my memory, i cannot instantly raise up the gross of full three thousand ducats. what of that? tubal, a wealthy hebrew of my tribe, will furnish me. but soft! how many months do you desire? [to antonio] rest you fair, good signior; your worship was the last man in our mouths. antonio shylock, although i neither lend nor borrow by taking nor by giving of excess, yet, to supply the ripe wants of my friend, i'll break a custom. is he yet possess'd how much ye would? shylock ay, ay, three thousand ducats. antonio and for three months. shylock i had forgot; three months; you told me so. well then, your bond; and let me see; but hear you; methought you said you neither lend nor borrow upon advantage. antonio i do never use it. shylock when jacob grazed his uncle laban's sheep- this jacob from our holy abram was, as his wise mother wrought in his behalf, the third possessor; ay, he was the third- antonio and what of him? did he take interest? shylock no, not take interest, not, as you would say, directly interest: mark what jacob did. when laban and himself were compromised that all the eanlings which were streak'd and pied should fall as jacob's hire, the ewes, being rank, in the end of autumn turned to the rams, and, when the work of generation was between these woolly breeders in the act, the skilful shepherd peel'd me certain wands, and, in the doing of the deed of kind, he stuck them up before the fulsome ewes, who then conceiving did in eaning time fall parti-colour'd lambs, and those were jacob's. this was a way to thrive, and he was blest: and thrift is blessing, if men steal it not. antonio this was a venture, sir, that jacob served for; a thing not in his power to bring to pass, but sway'd and fashion'd by the hand of heaven. was this inserted to make interest good? or is your gold and silver ewes and rams? shylock i cannot tell; i make it breed as fast: but note me, signior. antonio mark you this, bassanio, the devil can cite scripture for his purpose. an evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart: o, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! shylock three thousand ducats; 'tis a good round sum. three months from twelve; then, let me see; the rate- antonio well, shylock, shall we be beholding to you? shylock signior antonio, many a time and oft in the rialto you have rated me about my moneys and my usances: still have i borne it with a patient shrug, for sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. you call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, and spit upon my jewish gaberdine, and all for use of that which is mine own. well then, it now appears you need my help: go to, then; you come to me, and you say 'shylock, we would have moneys:' you say so; you, that did void your rheum upon my beard and foot me as you spurn a stranger cur over your threshold: moneys is your suit what should i say to you? should i not say 'hath a dog money? is it possible a cur can lend three thousand ducats?' or shall i bend low and in a bondman's key, with bated breath and whispering humbleness, say this; 'fair sir, you spit on me on wednesday last; you spurn'd me such a day; another time you call'd me dog; and for these courtesies i'll lend you thus much moneys'? antonio i am as like to call thee so again, to spit on thee again, to spurn thee too. if thou wilt lend this money, lend it not as to thy friends; for when did friendship take a breed for barren metal of his friend? but lend it rather to thine enemy, who, if he break, thou mayst with better face exact the penalty. shylock why, look you, how you storm! i would be friends with you and have your love, forget the shames that you have stain'd me with, supply your present wants and take no doit of usance for my moneys, and you'll not hear me: this is kind i offer. bassanio this were kindness. shylock this kindness will i show. go with me to a notary, seal me there your single bond; and, in a merry sport, if you repay me not on such a day, in such a place, such sum or sums as are express'd in the condition, let the forfeit be nominated for an equal pound of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken in what part of your body pleaseth me. antonio content, i' faith: i'll seal to such a bond and say there is much kindness in the jew. bassanio you shall not seal to such a bond for me: i'll rather dwell in my necessity. antonio why, fear not, man; i will not forfeit it: within these two months, that's a month before this bond expires, i do expect return of thrice three times the value of this bond. shylock o father abram, what these christians are, whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect the thoughts of others! pray you, tell me this; if he should break his day, what should i gain by the exaction of the forfeiture? a pound of man's flesh taken from a man is not so estimable, profitable neither, as flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats. i say, to buy his favour, i extend this friendship: if he will take it, so; if not, adieu; and, for my love, i pray you wrong me not. antonio yes shylock, i will seal unto this bond. shylock then meet me forthwith at the notary's; give him direction for this merry bond, and i will go and purse the ducats straight, see to my house, left in the fearful guard of an unthrifty knave, and presently i will be with you. antonio hie thee, gentle jew. [exit shylock] the hebrew will turn christian: he grows kind. bassanio i like not fair terms and a villain's mind. antonio come on: in this there can be no dismay; my ships come home a month before the day. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act ii scene i belmont. a room in portia's house. [flourish of cornets. enter the prince of morocco and his train; portia, nerissa, and others attending] morocco mislike me not for my complexion, the shadow'd livery of the burnish'd sun, to whom i am a neighbour and near bred. bring me the fairest creature northward born, where phoebus' fire scarce thaws the icicles, and let us make incision for your love, to prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine. i tell thee, lady, this aspect of mine hath fear'd the valiant: by my love i swear the best-regarded virgins of our clime have loved it too: i would not change this hue, except to steal your thoughts, my gentle queen. portia in terms of choice i am not solely led by nice direction of a maiden's eyes; besides, the lottery of my destiny bars me the right of voluntary choosing: but if my father had not scanted me and hedged me by his wit, to yield myself his wife who wins me by that means i told you, yourself, renowned prince, then stood as fair as any comer i have look'd on yet for my affection. morocco even for that i thank you: therefore, i pray you, lead me to the caskets to try my fortune. by this scimitar that slew the sophy and a persian prince that won three fields of sultan solyman, i would outstare the sternest eyes that look, outbrave the heart most daring on the earth, pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear, yea, mock the lion when he roars for prey, to win thee, lady. but, alas the while! if hercules and lichas play at dice which is the better man, the greater throw may turn by fortune from the weaker hand: so is alcides beaten by his page; and so may i, blind fortune leading me, miss that which one unworthier may attain, and die with grieving. portia you must take your chance, and either not attempt to choose at all or swear before you choose, if you choose wrong never to speak to lady afterward in way of marriage: therefore be advised. morocco nor will not. come, bring me unto my chance. portia first, forward to the temple: after dinner your hazard shall be made. morocco good fortune then! to make me blest or cursed'st among men. [cornets, and exeunt] the merchant of venice act ii scene ii venice. a street. [enter launcelot] launcelot certainly my conscience will serve me to run from this jew my master. the fiend is at mine elbow and tempts me saying to me 'gobbo, launcelot gobbo, good launcelot,' or 'good gobbo,' or good launcelot gobbo, use your legs, take the start, run away. my conscience says 'no; take heed,' honest launcelot; take heed, honest gobbo, or, as aforesaid, 'honest launcelot gobbo; do not run; scorn running with thy heels.' well, the most courageous fiend bids me pack: 'via!' says the fiend; 'away!' says the fiend; 'for the heavens, rouse up a brave mind,' says the fiend, 'and run.' well, my conscience, hanging about the neck of my heart, says very wisely to me 'my honest friend launcelot, being an honest man's son,' or rather an honest woman's son; for, indeed, my father did something smack, something grow to, he had a kind of taste; well, my conscience says 'launcelot, budge not.' 'budge,' says the fiend. 'budge not,' says my conscience. 'conscience,' say i, 'you counsel well;' ' fiend,' say i, 'you counsel well:' to be ruled by my conscience, i should stay with the jew my master, who, god bless the mark, is a kind of devil; and, to run away from the jew, i should be ruled by the fiend, who, saving your reverence, is the devil himself. certainly the jew is the very devil incarnal; and, in my conscience, my conscience is but a kind of hard conscience, to offer to counsel me to stay with the jew. the fiend gives the more friendly counsel: i will run, fiend; my heels are at your command; i will run. [enter old gobbo, with a basket] gobbo master young man, you, i pray you, which is the way to master jew's? launcelot [aside] o heavens, this is my true-begotten father! who, being more than sand-blind, high-gravel blind, knows me not: i will try confusions with him. gobbo master young gentleman, i pray you, which is the way to master jew's? launcelot turn up on your right hand at the next turning, but, at the next turning of all, on your left; marry, at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the jew's house. gobbo by god's sonties, 'twill be a hard way to hit. can you tell me whether one launcelot, that dwells with him, dwell with him or no? launcelot talk you of young master launcelot? [aside] mark me now; now will i raise the waters. talk you of young master launcelot? gobbo no master, sir, but a poor man's son: his father, though i say it, is an honest exceeding poor man and, god be thanked, well to live. launcelot well, let his father be what a' will, we talk of young master launcelot. gobbo your worship's friend and launcelot, sir. launcelot but i pray you, ergo, old man, ergo, i beseech you, talk you of young master launcelot? gobbo of launcelot, an't please your mastership. launcelot ergo, master launcelot. talk not of master launcelot, father; for the young gentleman, according to fates and destinies and such odd sayings, the sisters three and such branches of learning, is indeed deceased, or, as you would say in plain terms, gone to heaven. gobbo marry, god forbid! the boy was the very staff of my age, my very prop. launcelot do i look like a cudgel or a hovel-post, a staff or a prop? do you know me, father? gobbo alack the day, i know you not, young gentleman: but, i pray you, tell me, is my boy, god rest his soul, alive or dead? launcelot do you not know me, father? gobbo alack, sir, i am sand-blind; i know you not. launcelot nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of the knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his own child. well, old man, i will tell you news of your son: give me your blessing: truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man's son may, but at the length truth will out. gobbo pray you, sir, stand up: i am sure you are not launcelot, my boy. launcelot pray you, let's have no more fooling about it, but give me your blessing: i am launcelot, your boy that was, your son that is, your child that shall be. gobbo i cannot think you are my son. launcelot i know not what i shall think of that: but i am launcelot, the jew's man, and i am sure margery your wife is my mother. gobbo her name is margery, indeed: i'll be sworn, if thou be launcelot, thou art mine own flesh and blood. lord worshipped might he be! what a beard hast thou got! thou hast got more hair on thy chin than dobbin my fill-horse has on his tail. launcelot it should seem, then, that dobbin's tail grows backward: i am sure he had more hair of his tail than i have of my face when i last saw him. gobbo lord, how art thou changed! how dost thou and thy master agree? i have brought him a present. how 'gree you now? launcelot well, well: but, for mine own part, as i have set up my rest to run away, so i will not rest till i have run some ground. my master's a very jew: give him a present! give him a halter: i am famished in his service; you may tell every finger i have with my ribs. father, i am glad you are come: give me your present to one master bassanio, who, indeed, gives rare new liveries: if i serve not him, i will run as far as god has any ground. o rare fortune! here comes the man: to him, father; for i am a jew, if i serve the jew any longer. [enter bassanio, with leonardo and other followers] bassanio you may do so; but let it be so hasted that supper be ready at the farthest by five of the clock. see these letters delivered; put the liveries to making, and desire gratiano to come anon to my lodging. [exit a servant] launcelot to him, father. gobbo god bless your worship! bassanio gramercy! wouldst thou aught with me? gobbo here's my son, sir, a poor boy,- launcelot not a poor boy, sir, but the rich jew's man; that would, sir, as my father shall specify- gobbo he hath a great infection, sir, as one would say, to serve- launcelot indeed, the short and the long is, i serve the jew, and have a desire, as my father shall specify- gobbo his master and he, saving your worship's reverence, are scarce cater-cousins- launcelot to be brief, the very truth is that the jew, having done me wrong, doth cause me, as my father, being, i hope, an old man, shall frutify unto you- gobbo i have here a dish of doves that i would bestow upon your worship, and my suit is- launcelot in very brief, the suit is impertinent to myself, as your worship shall know by this honest old man; and, though i say it, though old man, yet poor man, my father. bassanio one speak for both. what would you? launcelot serve you, sir. gobbo that is the very defect of the matter, sir. bassanio i know thee well; thou hast obtain'd thy suit: shylock thy master spoke with me this day, and hath preferr'd thee, if it be preferment to leave a rich jew's service, to become the follower of so poor a gentleman. launcelot the old proverb is very well parted between my master shylock and you, sir: you have the grace of god, sir, and he hath enough. bassanio thou speak'st it well. go, father, with thy son. take leave of thy old master and inquire my lodging out. give him a livery more guarded than his fellows': see it done. launcelot father, in. i cannot get a service, no; i have ne'er a tongue in my head. well, if any man in italy have a fairer table which doth offer to swear upon a book, i shall have good fortune. go to, here's a simple line of life: here's a small trifle of wives: alas, fifteen wives is nothing! eleven widows and nine maids is a simple coming-in for one man: and then to 'scape drowning thrice, and to be in peril of my life with the edge of a feather-bed; here are simple scapes. well, if fortune be a woman, she's a good wench for this gear. father, come; i'll take my leave of the jew in the twinkling of an eye. [exeunt launcelot and old gobbo] bassanio i pray thee, good leonardo, think on this: these things being bought and orderly bestow'd, return in haste, for i do feast to-night my best-esteem'd acquaintance: hie thee, go. leonardo my best endeavours shall be done herein. [enter gratiano] gratiano where is your master? leonardo yonder, sir, he walks. [exit] gratiano signior bassanio! bassanio gratiano! gratiano i have a suit to you. bassanio you have obtain'd it. gratiano you must not deny me: i must go with you to belmont. bassanio why then you must. but hear thee, gratiano; thou art too wild, too rude and bold of voice; parts that become thee happily enough and in such eyes as ours appear not faults; but where thou art not known, why, there they show something too liberal. pray thee, take pain to allay with some cold drops of modesty thy skipping spirit, lest through thy wild behavior i be misconstrued in the place i go to, and lose my hopes. gratiano signior bassanio, hear me: if i do not put on a sober habit, talk with respect and swear but now and then, wear prayer-books in my pocket, look demurely, nay more, while grace is saying, hood mine eyes thus with my hat, and sigh and say 'amen,' use all the observance of civility, like one well studied in a sad ostent to please his grandam, never trust me more. bassanio well, we shall see your bearing. gratiano nay, but i bar to-night: you shall not gauge me by what we do to-night. bassanio no, that were pity: i would entreat you rather to put on your boldest suit of mirth, for we have friends that purpose merriment. but fare you well: i have some business. gratiano and i must to lorenzo and the rest: but we will visit you at supper-time. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act ii scene iii the same. a room in shylock's house. [enter jessica and launcelot] jessica i am sorry thou wilt leave my father so: our house is hell, and thou, a merry devil, didst rob it of some taste of tediousness. but fare thee well, there is a ducat for thee: and, launcelot, soon at supper shalt thou see lorenzo, who is thy new master's guest: give him this letter; do it secretly; and so farewell: i would not have my father see me in talk with thee. launcelot adieu! tears exhibit my tongue. most beautiful pagan, most sweet jew! if a christian did not play the knave and get thee, i am much deceived. but, adieu: these foolish drops do something drown my manly spirit: adieu. jessica farewell, good launcelot. [exit launcelot] alack, what heinous sin is it in me to be ashamed to be my father's child! but though i am a daughter to his blood, i am not to his manners. o lorenzo, if thou keep promise, i shall end this strife, become a christian and thy loving wife. [exit] the merchant of venice act ii scene iv the same. a street. [enter gratiano, lorenzo, salarino, and salanio] lorenzo nay, we will slink away in supper-time, disguise us at my lodging and return, all in an hour. gratiano we have not made good preparation. salarino we have not spoke us yet of torchbearers. salanio 'tis vile, unless it may be quaintly order'd, and better in my mind not undertook. lorenzo 'tis now but four o'clock: we have two hours to furnish us. [enter launcelot, with a letter] friend launcelot, what's the news? launcelot an it shall please you to break up this, it shall seem to signify. lorenzo i know the hand: in faith, 'tis a fair hand; and whiter than the paper it writ on is the fair hand that writ. gratiano love-news, in faith. launcelot by your leave, sir. lorenzo whither goest thou? launcelot marry, sir, to bid my old master the jew to sup to-night with my new master the christian. lorenzo hold here, take this: tell gentle jessica i will not fail her; speak it privately. go, gentlemen, [exit launcelot] will you prepare you for this masque tonight? i am provided of a torch-bearer. salanio ay, marry, i'll be gone about it straight. salanio and so will i. lorenzo meet me and gratiano at gratiano's lodging some hour hence. salarino 'tis good we do so. [exeunt salarino and salanio] gratiano was not that letter from fair jessica? lorenzo i must needs tell thee all. she hath directed how i shall take her from her father's house, what gold and jewels she is furnish'd with, what page's suit she hath in readiness. if e'er the jew her father come to heaven, it will be for his gentle daughter's sake: and never dare misfortune cross her foot, unless she do it under this excuse, that she is issue to a faithless jew. come, go with me; peruse this as thou goest: fair jessica shall be my torch-bearer. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act ii scene v the same. before shylock's house. [enter shylock and launcelot] shylock well, thou shalt see, thy eyes shall be thy judge, the difference of old shylock and bassanio:- what, jessica!--thou shalt not gormandise, as thou hast done with me:--what, jessica!- and sleep and snore, and rend apparel out;- why, jessica, i say! launcelot why, jessica! shylock who bids thee call? i do not bid thee call. launcelot your worship was wont to tell me that i could do nothing without bidding. [enter jessica] jessica call you? what is your will? shylock i am bid forth to supper, jessica: there are my keys. but wherefore should i go? i am not bid for love; they flatter me: but yet i'll go in hate, to feed upon the prodigal christian. jessica, my girl, look to my house. i am right loath to go: there is some ill a-brewing towards my rest, for i did dream of money-bags to-night. launcelot i beseech you, sir, go: my young master doth expect your reproach. shylock so do i his. launcelot an they have conspired together, i will not say you shall see a masque; but if you do, then it was not for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on black-monday last at six o'clock i' the morning, falling out that year on ash-wednesday was four year, in the afternoon. shylock what, are there masques? hear you me, jessica: lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum and the vile squealing of the wry-neck'd fife, clamber not you up to the casements then, nor thrust your head into the public street to gaze on christian fools with varnish'd faces, but stop my house's ears, i mean my casements: let not the sound of shallow foppery enter my sober house. by jacob's staff, i swear, i have no mind of feasting forth to-night: but i will go. go you before me, sirrah; say i will come. launcelot i will go before, sir. mistress, look out at window, for all this, there will come a christian boy, will be worth a jewess' eye. [exit] shylock what says that fool of hagar's offspring, ha? jessica his words were 'farewell mistress;' nothing else. shylock the patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder; snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day more than the wild-cat: drones hive not with me; therefore i part with him, and part with him to one that would have him help to waste his borrow'd purse. well, jessica, go in; perhaps i will return immediately: do as i bid you; shut doors after you: fast bind, fast find; a proverb never stale in thrifty mind. [exit] jessica farewell; and if my fortune be not crost, i have a father, you a daughter, lost. [exit] the merchant of venice act ii scene vi the same. [enter gratiano and salarino, masqued] gratiano this is the pent-house under which lorenzo desired us to make stand. salarino his hour is almost past. gratiano and it is marvel he out-dwells his hour, for lovers ever run before the clock. salarino o, ten times faster venus' pigeons fly to seal love's bonds new-made, than they are wont to keep obliged faith unforfeited! gratiano that ever holds: who riseth from a feast with that keen appetite that he sits down? where is the horse that doth untread again his tedious measures with the unbated fire that he did pace them first? all things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoy'd. how like a younker or a prodigal the scarfed bark puts from her native bay, hugg'd and embraced by the strumpet wind! how like the prodigal doth she return, with over-weather'd ribs and ragged sails, lean, rent and beggar'd by the strumpet wind! salarino here comes lorenzo: more of this hereafter. [enter lorenzo] lorenzo sweet friends, your patience for my long abode; not i, but my affairs, have made you wait: when you shall please to play the thieves for wives, i'll watch as long for you then. approach; here dwells my father jew. ho! who's within? [enter jessica, above, in boy's clothes] jessica who are you? tell me, for more certainty, albeit i'll swear that i do know your tongue. lorenzo lorenzo, and thy love. jessica lorenzo, certain, and my love indeed, for who love i so much? and now who knows but you, lorenzo, whether i am yours? lorenzo heaven and thy thoughts are witness that thou art. jessica here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains. i am glad 'tis night, you do not look on me, for i am much ashamed of my exchange: but love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit; for if they could, cupid himself would blush to see me thus transformed to a boy. lorenzo descend, for you must be my torchbearer. jessica what, must i hold a candle to my shames? they in themselves, good-sooth, are too too light. why, 'tis an office of discovery, love; and i should be obscured. lorenzo so are you, sweet, even in the lovely garnish of a boy. but come at once; for the close night doth play the runaway, and we are stay'd for at bassanio's feast. jessica i will make fast the doors, and gild myself with some more ducats, and be with you straight. [exit above] gratiano now, by my hood, a gentile and no jew. lorenzo beshrew me but i love her heartily; for she is wise, if i can judge of her, and fair she is, if that mine eyes be true, and true she is, as she hath proved herself, and therefore, like herself, wise, fair and true, shall she be placed in my constant soul. [enter jessica, below] what, art thou come? on, gentlemen; away! our masquing mates by this time for us stay. [exit with jessica and salarino] [enter antonio] antonio who's there? gratiano signior antonio! antonio fie, fie, gratiano! where are all the rest? 'tis nine o'clock: our friends all stay for you. no masque to-night: the wind is come about; bassanio presently will go aboard: i have sent twenty out to seek for you. gratiano i am glad on't: i desire no more delight than to be under sail and gone to-night. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act ii scene vii belmont. a room in portia's house. [flourish of cornets. enter portia, with the prince of morocco, and their trains] portia go draw aside the curtains and discover the several caskets to this noble prince. now make your choice. morocco the first, of gold, who this inscription bears, 'who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire;' the second, silver, which this promise carries, 'who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves;' this third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt, 'who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.' how shall i know if i do choose the right? portia the one of them contains my picture, prince: if you choose that, then i am yours withal. morocco some god direct my judgment! let me see; i will survey the inscriptions back again. what says this leaden casket? 'who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.' must give: for what? for lead? hazard for lead? this casket threatens. men that hazard all do it in hope of fair advantages: a golden mind stoops not to shows of dross; i'll then nor give nor hazard aught for lead. what says the silver with her virgin hue? 'who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.' as much as he deserves! pause there, morocco, and weigh thy value with an even hand: if thou be'st rated by thy estimation, thou dost deserve enough; and yet enough may not extend so far as to the lady: and yet to be afeard of my deserving were but a weak disabling of myself. as much as i deserve! why, that's the lady: i do in birth deserve her, and in fortunes, in graces and in qualities of breeding; but more than these, in love i do deserve. what if i stray'd no further, but chose here? let's see once more this saying graved in gold 'who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.' why, that's the lady; all the world desires her; from the four corners of the earth they come, to kiss this shrine, this mortal-breathing saint: the hyrcanian deserts and the vasty wilds of wide arabia are as thoroughfares now for princes to come view fair portia: the watery kingdom, whose ambitious head spits in the face of heaven, is no bar to stop the foreign spirits, but they come, as o'er a brook, to see fair portia. one of these three contains her heavenly picture. is't like that lead contains her? 'twere damnation to think so base a thought: it were too gross to rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave. or shall i think in silver she's immured, being ten times undervalued to tried gold? o sinful thought! never so rich a gem was set in worse than gold. they have in england a coin that bears the figure of an angel stamped in gold, but that's insculp'd upon; but here an angel in a golden bed lies all within. deliver me the key: here do i choose, and thrive i as i may! portia there, take it, prince; and if my form lie there, then i am yours. [he unlocks the golden casket] morocco o hell! what have we here? a carrion death, within whose empty eye there is a written scroll! i'll read the writing. [reads] all that glitters is not gold; often have you heard that told: many a man his life hath sold but my outside to behold: gilded tombs do worms enfold. had you been as wise as bold, young in limbs, in judgment old, your answer had not been inscroll'd: fare you well; your suit is cold. cold, indeed; and labour lost: then, farewell, heat, and welcome, frost! portia, adieu. i have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave: thus losers part. [exit with his train. flourish of cornets] portia a gentle riddance. draw the curtains, go. let all of his complexion choose me so. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act ii scene viii venice. a street. [enter salarino and salanio] salarino why, man, i saw bassanio under sail: with him is gratiano gone along; and in their ship i am sure lorenzo is not. salanio the villain jew with outcries raised the duke, who went with him to search bassanio's ship. salarino he came too late, the ship was under sail: but there the duke was given to understand that in a gondola were seen together lorenzo and his amorous jessica: besides, antonio certified the duke they were not with bassanio in his ship. salanio i never heard a passion so confused, so strange, outrageous, and so variable, as the dog jew did utter in the streets: 'my daughter! o my ducats! o my daughter! fled with a christian! o my christian ducats! justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter! a sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats, of double ducats, stolen from me by my daughter! and jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones, stolen by my daughter! justice! find the girl; she hath the stones upon her, and the ducats.' salarino why, all the boys in venice follow him, crying, his stones, his daughter, and his ducats. salanio let good antonio look he keep his day, or he shall pay for this. salarino marry, well remember'd. i reason'd with a frenchman yesterday, who told me, in the narrow seas that part the french and english, there miscarried a vessel of our country richly fraught: i thought upon antonio when he told me; and wish'd in silence that it were not his. salanio you were best to tell antonio what you hear; yet do not suddenly, for it may grieve him. salarino a kinder gentleman treads not the earth. i saw bassanio and antonio part: bassanio told him he would make some speed of his return: he answer'd, 'do not so; slubber not business for my sake, bassanio but stay the very riping of the time; and for the jew's bond which he hath of me, let it not enter in your mind of love: be merry, and employ your chiefest thoughts to courtship and such fair ostents of love as shall conveniently become you there:' and even there, his eye being big with tears, turning his face, he put his hand behind him, and with affection wondrous sensible he wrung bassanio's hand; and so they parted. salanio i think he only loves the world for him. i pray thee, let us go and find him out and quicken his embraced heaviness with some delight or other. salarino do we so. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act ii scene ix belmont. a room in portia's house. [enter nerissa with a servitor] nerissa quick, quick, i pray thee; draw the curtain straight: the prince of arragon hath ta'en his oath, and comes to his election presently. [flourish of cornets. enter the prince of arragon, portia, and their trains] portia behold, there stand the caskets, noble prince: if you choose that wherein i am contain'd, straight shall our nuptial rites be solemnized: but if you fail, without more speech, my lord, you must be gone from hence immediately. arragon i am enjoin'd by oath to observe three things: first, never to unfold to any one which casket 'twas i chose; next, if i fail of the right casket, never in my life to woo a maid in way of marriage: lastly, if i do fail in fortune of my choice, immediately to leave you and be gone. portia to these injunctions every one doth swear that comes to hazard for my worthless self. arragon and so have i address'd me. fortune now to my heart's hope! gold; silver; and base lead. 'who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.' you shall look fairer, ere i give or hazard. what says the golden chest? ha! let me see: 'who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.' what many men desire! that 'many' may be meant by the fool multitude, that choose by show, not learning more than the fond eye doth teach; which pries not to the interior, but, like the martlet, builds in the weather on the outward wall, even in the force and road of casualty. i will not choose what many men desire, because i will not jump with common spirits and rank me with the barbarous multitudes. why, then to thee, thou silver treasure-house; tell me once more what title thou dost bear: 'who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves:' and well said too; for who shall go about to cozen fortune and be honourable without the stamp of merit? let none presume to wear an undeserved dignity. o, that estates, degrees and offices were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour were purchased by the merit of the wearer! how many then should cover that stand bare! how many be commanded that command! how much low peasantry would then be glean'd from the true seed of honour! and how much honour pick'd from the chaff and ruin of the times to be new-varnish'd! well, but to my choice: 'who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.' i will assume desert. give me a key for this, and instantly unlock my fortunes here. [he opens the silver casket] portia too long a pause for that which you find there. arragon what's here? the portrait of a blinking idiot, presenting me a schedule! i will read it. how much unlike art thou to portia! how much unlike my hopes and my deservings! 'who chooseth me shall have as much as he deserves.' did i deserve no more than a fool's head? is that my prize? are my deserts no better? portia to offend, and judge, are distinct offices and of opposed natures. arragon what is here? [reads] the fire seven times tried this: seven times tried that judgment is, that did never choose amiss. some there be that shadows kiss; such have but a shadow's bliss: there be fools alive, i wis, silver'd o'er; and so was this. take what wife you will to bed, i will ever be your head: so be gone: you are sped. still more fool i shall appear by the time i linger here with one fool's head i came to woo, but i go away with two. sweet, adieu. i'll keep my oath, patiently to bear my wroth. [exeunt arragon and train] portia thus hath the candle singed the moth. o, these deliberate fools! when they do choose, they have the wisdom by their wit to lose. nerissa the ancient saying is no heresy, hanging and wiving goes by destiny. portia come, draw the curtain, nerissa. [enter a servant] servant where is my lady? portia here: what would my lord? servant madam, there is alighted at your gate a young venetian, one that comes before to signify the approaching of his lord; from whom he bringeth sensible regreets, to wit, besides commends and courteous breath, gifts of rich value. yet i have not seen so likely an ambassador of love: a day in april never came so sweet, to show how costly summer was at hand, as this fore-spurrer comes before his lord. portia no more, i pray thee: i am half afeard thou wilt say anon he is some kin to thee, thou spend'st such high-day wit in praising him. come, come, nerissa; for i long to see quick cupid's post that comes so mannerly. nerissa bassanio, lord love, if thy will it be! [exeunt] the merchant of venice act iii scene i venice. a street. [enter salanio and salarino] salanio now, what news on the rialto? salarino why, yet it lives there uncheck'd that antonio hath a ship of rich lading wrecked on the narrow seas; the goodwins, i think they call the place; a very dangerous flat and fatal, where the carcasses of many a tall ship lie buried, as they say, if my gossip report be an honest woman of her word. salanio i would she were as lying a gossip in that as ever knapped ginger or made her neighbours believe she wept for the death of a third husband. but it is true, without any slips of prolixity or crossing the plain highway of talk, that the good antonio, the honest antonio,--o that i had a title good enough to keep his name company!- salarino come, the full stop. salanio ha! what sayest thou? why, the end is, he hath lost a ship. salarino i would it might prove the end of his losses. salanio let me say 'amen' betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer, for here he comes in the likeness of a jew. [enter shylock] how now, shylock! what news among the merchants? shylock you know, none so well, none so well as you, of my daughter's flight. salarino that's certain: i, for my part, knew the tailor that made the wings she flew withal. salanio and shylock, for his own part, knew the bird was fledged; and then it is the complexion of them all to leave the dam. shylock she is damned for it. salanio that's certain, if the devil may be her judge. shylock my own flesh and blood to rebel! salanio out upon it, old carrion! rebels it at these years? shylock i say, my daughter is my flesh and blood. salarino there is more difference between thy flesh and hers than between jet and ivory; more between your bloods than there is between red wine and rhenish. but tell us, do you hear whether antonio have had any loss at sea or no? shylock there i have another bad match: a bankrupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the rialto; a beggar, that was used to come so smug upon the mart; let him look to his bond: he was wont to call me usurer; let him look to his bond: he was wont to lend money for a christian courtesy; let him look to his bond. salarino why, i am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh: what's that good for? shylock to bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. he hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? i am a jew. hath not a jew eyes? hath not a jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a christian is? if you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? if we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. if a jew wrong a christian, what is his humility? revenge. if a christian wrong a jew, what should his sufferance be by christian example? why, revenge. the villany you teach me, i will execute, and it shall go hard but i will better the instruction. [enter a servant] servant gentlemen, my master antonio is at his house and desires to speak with you both. salarino we have been up and down to seek him. [enter tubal] salanio here comes another of the tribe: a third cannot be matched, unless the devil himself turn jew. [exeunt salanio, salarino, and servant] shylock how now, tubal! what news from genoa? hast thou found my daughter? tubal i often came where i did hear of her, but cannot find her. shylock why, there, there, there, there! a diamond gone, cost me two thousand ducats in frankfort! the curse never fell upon our nation till now; i never felt it till now: two thousand ducats in that; and other precious, precious jewels. i would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin! no news of them? why, so: and i know not what's spent in the search: why, thou loss upon loss! the thief gone with so much, and so much to find the thief; and no satisfaction, no revenge: nor no in luck stirring but what lights on my shoulders; no sighs but of my breathing; no tears but of my shedding. tubal yes, other men have ill luck too: antonio, as i heard in genoa,- shylock what, what, what? ill luck, ill luck? tubal hath an argosy cast away, coming from tripolis. shylock i thank god, i thank god. is't true, is't true? tubal i spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the wreck. shylock i thank thee, good tubal: good news, good news! ha, ha! where? in genoa? tubal your daughter spent in genoa, as i heard, in one night fourscore ducats. shylock thou stickest a dagger in me: i shall never see my gold again: fourscore ducats at a sitting! fourscore ducats! tubal there came divers of antonio's creditors in my company to venice, that swear he cannot choose but break. shylock i am very glad of it: i'll plague him; i'll torture him: i am glad of it. tubal one of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey. shylock out upon her! thou torturest me, tubal: it was my turquoise; i had it of leah when i was a bachelor: i would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys. tubal but antonio is certainly undone. shylock nay, that's true, that's very true. go, tubal, fee me an officer; bespeak him a fortnight before. i will have the heart of him, if he forfeit; for, were he out of venice, i can make what merchandise i will. go, go, tubal, and meet me at our synagogue; go, good tubal; at our synagogue, tubal. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act iii scene ii belmont. a room in portia's house. [enter bassanio, portia, gratiano, nerissa, and attendants] portia i pray you, tarry: pause a day or two before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong, i lose your company: therefore forbear awhile. there's something tells me, but it is not love, i would not lose you; and you know yourself, hate counsels not in such a quality. but lest you should not understand me well,- and yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought,- i would detain you here some month or two before you venture for me. i could teach you how to choose right, but i am then forsworn; so will i never be: so may you miss me; but if you do, you'll make me wish a sin, that i had been forsworn. beshrew your eyes, they have o'erlook'd me and divided me; one half of me is yours, the other half yours, mine own, i would say; but if mine, then yours, and so all yours. o, these naughty times put bars between the owners and their rights! and so, though yours, not yours. prove it so, let fortune go to hell for it, not i. i speak too long; but 'tis to peize the time, to eke it and to draw it out in length, to stay you from election. bassanio let me choose for as i am, i live upon the rack. portia upon the rack, bassanio! then confess what treason there is mingled with your love. bassanio none but that ugly treason of mistrust, which makes me fear the enjoying of my love: there may as well be amity and life 'tween snow and fire, as treason and my love. portia ay, but i fear you speak upon the rack, where men enforced do speak anything. bassanio promise me life, and i'll confess the truth. portia well then, confess and live. bassanio 'confess' and 'love' had been the very sum of my confession: o happy torment, when my torturer doth teach me answers for deliverance! but let me to my fortune and the caskets. portia away, then! i am lock'd in one of them: if you do love me, you will find me out. nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof. let music sound while he doth make his choice; then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, fading in music: that the comparison may stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream and watery death-bed for him. he may win; and what is music then? then music is even as the flourish when true subjects bow to a new-crowned monarch: such it is as are those dulcet sounds in break of day that creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear, and summon him to marriage. now he goes, with no less presence, but with much more love, than young alcides, when he did redeem the virgin tribute paid by howling troy to the sea-monster: i stand for sacrifice the rest aloof are the dardanian wives, with bleared visages, come forth to view the issue of the exploit. go, hercules! live thou, i live: with much, much more dismay i view the fight than thou that makest the fray. [music, whilst bassanio comments on the caskets to himself] song. tell me where is fancy bred, or in the heart, or in the head? how begot, how nourished? reply, reply. it is engender'd in the eyes, with gazing fed; and fancy dies in the cradle where it lies. let us all ring fancy's knell i'll begin it,--ding, dong, bell. all ding, dong, bell. bassanio so may the outward shows be least themselves: the world is still deceived with ornament. in law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, but, being seasoned with a gracious voice, obscures the show of evil? in religion, what damned error, but some sober brow will bless it and approve it with a text, hiding the grossness with fair ornament? there is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on his outward parts: how many cowards, whose hearts are all as false as stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins the beards of hercules and frowning mars; who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk; and these assume but valour's excrement to render them redoubted! look on beauty, and you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight; which therein works a miracle in nature, making them lightest that wear most of it: so are those crisped snaky golden locks which make such wanton gambols with the wind, upon supposed fairness, often known to be the dowry of a second head, the skull that bred them in the sepulchre. thus ornament is but the guiled shore to a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf veiling an indian beauty; in a word, the seeming truth which cunning times put on to entrap the wisest. therefore, thou gaudy gold, hard food for midas, i will none of thee; nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge 'tween man and man: but thou, thou meagre lead, which rather threatenest than dost promise aught, thy paleness moves me more than eloquence; and here choose i; joy be the consequence! portia [aside] how all the other passions fleet to air, as doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair, and shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy! o love, be moderate; allay thy ecstasy, in measure rein thy joy; scant this excess. i feel too much thy blessing: make it less, for fear i surfeit. bassanio what find i here? [opening the leaden casket] fair portia's counterfeit! what demi-god hath come so near creation? move these eyes? or whether, riding on the balls of mine, seem they in motion? here are sever'd lips, parted with sugar breath: so sweet a bar should sunder such sweet friends. here in her hairs the painter plays the spider and hath woven a golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men, faster than gnats in cobwebs; but her eyes,- how could he see to do them? having made one, methinks it should have power to steal both his and leave itself unfurnish'd. yet look, how far the substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow in underprizing it, so far this shadow doth limp behind the substance. here's the scroll, the continent and summary of my fortune. [reads] you that choose not by the view, chance as fair and choose as true! since this fortune falls to you, be content and seek no new, if you be well pleased with this and hold your fortune for your bliss, turn you where your lady is and claim her with a loving kiss. a gentle scroll. fair lady, by your leave; i come by note, to give and to receive. like one of two contending in a prize, that thinks he hath done well in people's eyes, hearing applause and universal shout, giddy in spirit, still gazing in a doubt whether these pearls of praise be his or no; so, thrice fair lady, stand i, even so; as doubtful whether what i see be true, until confirm'd, sign'd, ratified by you. portia you see me, lord bassanio, where i stand, such as i am: though for myself alone i would not be ambitious in my wish, to wish myself much better; yet, for you i would be trebled twenty times myself; a thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich; that only to stand high in your account, i might in virtue, beauties, livings, friends, exceed account; but the full sum of me is sum of something, which, to term in gross, is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractised; happy in this, she is not yet so old but she may learn; happier than this, she is not bred so dull but she can learn; happiest of all is that her gentle spirit commits itself to yours to be directed, as from her lord, her governor, her king. myself and what is mine to you and yours is now converted: but now i was the lord of this fair mansion, master of my servants, queen o'er myself: and even now, but now, this house, these servants and this same myself are yours, my lord: i give them with this ring; which when you part from, lose, or give away, let it presage the ruin of your love and be my vantage to exclaim on you. bassanio madam, you have bereft me of all words, only my blood speaks to you in my veins; and there is such confusion in my powers, as after some oration fairly spoke by a beloved prince, there doth appear among the buzzing pleased multitude; where every something, being blent together, turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy, express'd and not express'd. but when this ring parts from this finger, then parts life from hence: o, then be bold to say bassanio's dead! nerissa my lord and lady, it is now our time, that have stood by and seen our wishes prosper, to cry, good joy: good joy, my lord and lady! gratiano my lord bassanio and my gentle lady, i wish you all the joy that you can wish; for i am sure you can wish none from me: and when your honours mean to solemnize the bargain of your faith, i do beseech you, even at that time i may be married too. bassanio with all my heart, so thou canst get a wife. gratiano i thank your lordship, you have got me one. my eyes, my lord, can look as swift as yours: you saw the mistress, i beheld the maid; you loved, i loved for intermission. no more pertains to me, my lord, than you. your fortune stood upon the casket there, and so did mine too, as the matter falls; for wooing here until i sweat again, and sweating until my very roof was dry with oaths of love, at last, if promise last, i got a promise of this fair one here to have her love, provided that your fortune achieved her mistress. portia is this true, nerissa? nerissa madam, it is, so you stand pleased withal. bassanio and do you, gratiano, mean good faith? gratiano yes, faith, my lord. bassanio our feast shall be much honour'd in your marriage. gratiano we'll play with them the first boy for a thousand ducats. nerissa what, and stake down? gratiano no; we shall ne'er win at that sport, and stake down. but who comes here? lorenzo and his infidel? what, and my old venetian friend salerio? [enter lorenzo, jessica, and salerio, a messenger from venice] bassanio lorenzo and salerio, welcome hither; if that the youth of my new interest here have power to bid you welcome. by your leave, i bid my very friends and countrymen, sweet portia, welcome. portia so do i, my lord: they are entirely welcome. lorenzo i thank your honour. for my part, my lord, my purpose was not to have seen you here; but meeting with salerio by the way, he did entreat me, past all saying nay, to come with him along. salerio i did, my lord; and i have reason for it. signior antonio commends him to you. [gives bassanio a letter] bassanio ere i ope his letter, i pray you, tell me how my good friend doth. salerio not sick, my lord, unless it be in mind; nor well, unless in mind: his letter there will show you his estate. gratiano nerissa, cheer yon stranger; bid her welcome. your hand, salerio: what's the news from venice? how doth that royal merchant, good antonio? i know he will be glad of our success; we are the jasons, we have won the fleece. salerio i would you had won the fleece that he hath lost. portia there are some shrewd contents in yon same paper, that steals the colour from bassanio's cheek: some dear friend dead; else nothing in the world could turn so much the constitution of any constant man. what, worse and worse! with leave, bassanio: i am half yourself, and i must freely have the half of anything that this same paper brings you. bassanio o sweet portia, here are a few of the unpleasant'st words that ever blotted paper! gentle lady, when i did first impart my love to you, i freely told you, all the wealth i had ran in my veins, i was a gentleman; and then i told you true: and yet, dear lady, rating myself at nothing, you shall see how much i was a braggart. when i told you my state was nothing, i should then have told you that i was worse than nothing; for, indeed, i have engaged myself to a dear friend, engaged my friend to his mere enemy, to feed my means. here is a letter, lady; the paper as the body of my friend, and every word in it a gaping wound, issuing life-blood. but is it true, salerio? have all his ventures fail'd? what, not one hit? from tripolis, from mexico and england, from lisbon, barbary and india? and not one vessel 'scape the dreadful touch of merchant-marring rocks? salerio not one, my lord. besides, it should appear, that if he had the present money to discharge the jew, he would not take it. never did i know a creature, that did bear the shape of man, so keen and greedy to confound a man: he plies the duke at morning and at night, and doth impeach the freedom of the state, if they deny him justice: twenty merchants, the duke himself, and the magnificoes of greatest port, have all persuaded with him; but none can drive him from the envious plea of forfeiture, of justice and his bond. jessica when i was with him i have heard him swear to tubal and to chus, his countrymen, that he would rather have antonio's flesh than twenty times the value of the sum that he did owe him: and i know, my lord, if law, authority and power deny not, it will go hard with poor antonio. portia is it your dear friend that is thus in trouble? bassanio the dearest friend to me, the kindest man, the best-condition'd and unwearied spirit in doing courtesies, and one in whom the ancient roman honour more appears than any that draws breath in italy. portia what sum owes he the jew? bassanio for me three thousand ducats. portia what, no more? pay him six thousand, and deface the bond; double six thousand, and then treble that, before a friend of this description shall lose a hair through bassanio's fault. first go with me to church and call me wife, and then away to venice to your friend; for never shall you lie by portia's side with an unquiet soul. you shall have gold to pay the petty debt twenty times over: when it is paid, bring your true friend along. my maid nerissa and myself meantime will live as maids and widows. come, away! for you shall hence upon your wedding-day: bid your friends welcome, show a merry cheer: since you are dear bought, i will love you dear. but let me hear the letter of your friend. bassanio [reads] sweet bassanio, my ships have all miscarried, my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the jew is forfeit; and since in paying it, it is impossible i should live, all debts are cleared between you and i, if i might but see you at my death. notwithstanding, use your pleasure: if your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter. portia o love, dispatch all business, and be gone! bassanio since i have your good leave to go away, i will make haste: but, till i come again, no bed shall e'er be guilty of my stay, no rest be interposer 'twixt us twain. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act iii scene iii venice. a street. [enter shylock, salarino, antonio, and gaoler] shylock gaoler, look to him: tell not me of mercy; this is the fool that lent out money gratis: gaoler, look to him. antonio hear me yet, good shylock. shylock i'll have my bond; speak not against my bond: i have sworn an oath that i will have my bond. thou call'dst me dog before thou hadst a cause; but, since i am a dog, beware my fangs: the duke shall grant me justice. i do wonder, thou naughty gaoler, that thou art so fond to come abroad with him at his request. antonio i pray thee, hear me speak. shylock i'll have my bond; i will not hear thee speak: i'll have my bond; and therefore speak no more. i'll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool, to shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield to christian intercessors. follow not; i'll have no speaking: i will have my bond. [exit] salarino it is the most impenetrable cur that ever kept with men. antonio let him alone: i'll follow him no more with bootless prayers. he seeks my life; his reason well i know: i oft deliver'd from his forfeitures many that have at times made moan to me; therefore he hates me. salarino i am sure the duke will never grant this forfeiture to hold. antonio the duke cannot deny the course of law: for the commodity that strangers have with us in venice, if it be denied, will much impeach the justice of his state; since that the trade and profit of the city consisteth of all nations. therefore, go: these griefs and losses have so bated me, that i shall hardly spare a pound of flesh to-morrow to my bloody creditor. well, gaoler, on. pray god, bassanio come to see me pay his debt, and then i care not! [exeunt] the merchant of venice act iii scene iv belmont. a room in portia's house. [enter portia, nerissa, lorenzo, jessica, and balthasar] lorenzo madam, although i speak it in your presence, you have a noble and a true conceit of godlike amity; which appears most strongly in bearing thus the absence of your lord. but if you knew to whom you show this honour, how true a gentleman you send relief, how dear a lover of my lord your husband, i know you would be prouder of the work than customary bounty can enforce you. portia i never did repent for doing good, nor shall not now: for in companions that do converse and waste the time together, whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love, there must be needs a like proportion of lineaments, of manners and of spirit; which makes me think that this antonio, being the bosom lover of my lord, must needs be like my lord. if it be so, how little is the cost i have bestow'd in purchasing the semblance of my soul from out the state of hellish misery! this comes too near the praising of myself; therefore no more of it: hear other things. lorenzo, i commit into your hands the husbandry and manage of my house until my lord's return: for mine own part, i have toward heaven breathed a secret vow to live in prayer and contemplation, only attended by nerissa here, until her husband and my lord's return: there is a monastery two miles off; and there will we abide. i do desire you not to deny this imposition; the which my love and some necessity now lays upon you. lorenzo madam, with all my heart; i shall obey you in all fair commands. portia my people do already know my mind, and will acknowledge you and jessica in place of lord bassanio and myself. and so farewell, till we shall meet again. lorenzo fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you! jessica i wish your ladyship all heart's content. portia i thank you for your wish, and am well pleased to wish it back on you: fare you well jessica. [exeunt jessica and lorenzo] now, balthasar, as i have ever found thee honest-true, so let me find thee still. take this same letter, and use thou all the endeavour of a man in speed to padua: see thou render this into my cousin's hand, doctor bellario; and, look, what notes and garments he doth give thee, bring them, i pray thee, with imagined speed unto the tranect, to the common ferry which trades to venice. waste no time in words, but get thee gone: i shall be there before thee. balthasar madam, i go with all convenient speed. [exit] portia come on, nerissa; i have work in hand that you yet know not of: we'll see our husbands before they think of us. nerissa shall they see us? portia they shall, nerissa; but in such a habit, that they shall think we are accomplished with that we lack. i'll hold thee any wager, when we are both accoutred like young men, i'll prove the prettier fellow of the two, and wear my dagger with the braver grace, and speak between the change of man and boy with a reed voice, and turn two mincing steps into a manly stride, and speak of frays like a fine bragging youth, and tell quaint lies, how honourable ladies sought my love, which i denying, they fell sick and died; i could not do withal; then i'll repent, and wish for all that, that i had not killed them; and twenty of these puny lies i'll tell, that men shall swear i have discontinued school above a twelvemonth. i have within my mind a thousand raw tricks of these bragging jacks, which i will practise. nerissa why, shall we turn to men? portia fie, what a question's that, if thou wert near a lewd interpreter! but come, i'll tell thee all my whole device when i am in my coach, which stays for us at the park gate; and therefore haste away, for we must measure twenty miles to-day. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act iii scene v the same. a garden. [enter launcelot and jessica] launcelot yes, truly; for, look you, the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children: therefore, i promise ye, i fear you. i was always plain with you, and so now i speak my agitation of the matter: therefore be of good cheer, for truly i think you are damned. there is but one hope in it that can do you any good; and that is but a kind of bastard hope neither. jessica and what hope is that, i pray thee? launcelot marry, you may partly hope that your father got you not, that you are not the jew's daughter. jessica that were a kind of bastard hope, indeed: so the sins of my mother should be visited upon me. launcelot truly then i fear you are damned both by father and mother: thus when i shun scylla, your father, i fall into charybdis, your mother: well, you are gone both ways. jessica i shall be saved by my husband; he hath made me a christian. launcelot truly, the more to blame he: we were christians enow before; e'en as many as could well live, one by another. this making christians will raise the price of hogs: if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money. [enter lorenzo] jessica i'll tell my husband, launcelot, what you say: here he comes. lorenzo i shall grow jealous of you shortly, launcelot, if you thus get my wife into corners. jessica nay, you need not fear us, lorenzo: launcelot and i are out. he tells me flatly, there is no mercy for me in heaven, because i am a jew's daughter: and he says, you are no good member of the commonwealth, for in converting jews to christians, you raise the price of pork. lorenzo i shall answer that better to the commonwealth than you can the getting up of the negro's belly: the moor is with child by you, launcelot. launcelot it is much that the moor should be more than reason: but if she be less than an honest woman, she is indeed more than i took her for. lorenzo how every fool can play upon the word! i think the best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence, and discourse grow commendable in none only but parrots. go in, sirrah; bid them prepare for dinner. launcelot that is done, sir; they have all stomachs. lorenzo goodly lord, what a wit-snapper are you! then bid them prepare dinner. launcelot that is done too, sir; only 'cover' is the word. lorenzo will you cover then, sir? launcelot not so, sir, neither; i know my duty. lorenzo yet more quarrelling with occasion! wilt thou show the whole wealth of thy wit in an instant? i pray tree, understand a plain man in his plain meaning: go to thy fellows; bid them cover the table, serve in the meat, and we will come in to dinner. launcelot for the table, sir, it shall be served in; for the meat, sir, it shall be covered; for your coming in to dinner, sir, why, let it be as humours and conceits shall govern. [exit] lorenzo o dear discretion, how his words are suited! the fool hath planted in his memory an army of good words; and i do know a many fools, that stand in better place, garnish'd like him, that for a tricksy word defy the matter. how cheerest thou, jessica? and now, good sweet, say thy opinion, how dost thou like the lord bassanio's wife? jessica past all expressing. it is very meet the lord bassanio live an upright life; for, having such a blessing in his lady, he finds the joys of heaven here on earth; and if on earth he do not mean it, then in reason he should never come to heaven why, if two gods should play some heavenly match and on the wager lay two earthly women, and portia one, there must be something else pawn'd with the other, for the poor rude world hath not her fellow. lorenzo even such a husband hast thou of me as she is for a wife. jessica nay, but ask my opinion too of that. lorenzo i will anon: first, let us go to dinner. jessica nay, let me praise you while i have a stomach. lorenzo no, pray thee, let it serve for table-talk; ' then, howso'er thou speak'st, 'mong other things i shall digest it. jessica well, i'll set you forth. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act iv scene i venice. a court of justice. [enter the duke, the magnificoes, antonio, bassanio, gratiano, salerio, and others] duke what, is antonio here? antonio ready, so please your grace. duke i am sorry for thee: thou art come to answer a stony adversary, an inhuman wretch uncapable of pity, void and empty from any dram of mercy. antonio i have heard your grace hath ta'en great pains to qualify his rigorous course; but since he stands obdurate and that no lawful means can carry me out of his envy's reach, i do oppose my patience to his fury, and am arm'd to suffer, with a quietness of spirit, the very tyranny and rage of his. duke go one, and call the jew into the court. salerio he is ready at the door: he comes, my lord. [enter shylock] duke make room, and let him stand before our face. shylock, the world thinks, and i think so too, that thou but lead'st this fashion of thy malice to the last hour of act; and then 'tis thought thou'lt show thy mercy and remorse more strange than is thy strange apparent cruelty; and where thou now exact'st the penalty, which is a pound of this poor merchant's flesh, thou wilt not only loose the forfeiture, but, touch'd with human gentleness and love, forgive a moiety of the principal; glancing an eye of pity on his losses, that have of late so huddled on his back, enow to press a royal merchant down and pluck commiseration of his state from brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flint, from stubborn turks and tartars, never train'd to offices of tender courtesy. we all expect a gentle answer, jew. shylock i have possess'd your grace of what i purpose; and by our holy sabbath have i sworn to have the due and forfeit of my bond: if you deny it, let the danger light upon your charter and your city's freedom. you'll ask me, why i rather choose to have a weight of carrion flesh than to receive three thousand ducats: i'll not answer that: but, say, it is my humour: is it answer'd? what if my house be troubled with a rat and i be pleased to give ten thousand ducats to have it baned? what, are you answer'd yet? some men there are love not a gaping pig; some, that are mad if they behold a cat; and others, when the bagpipe sings i' the nose, cannot contain their urine: for affection, mistress of passion, sways it to the mood of what it likes or loathes. now, for your answer: as there is no firm reason to be render'd, why he cannot abide a gaping pig; why he, a harmless necessary cat; why he, a woollen bagpipe; but of force must yield to such inevitable shame as to offend, himself being offended; so can i give no reason, nor i will not, more than a lodged hate and a certain loathing i bear antonio, that i follow thus a losing suit against him. are you answer'd? bassanio this is no answer, thou unfeeling man, to excuse the current of thy cruelty. shylock i am not bound to please thee with my answers. bassanio do all men kill the things they do not love? shylock hates any man the thing he would not kill? bassanio every offence is not a hate at first. shylock what, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice? antonio i pray you, think you question with the jew: you may as well go stand upon the beach and bid the main flood bate his usual height; you may as well use question with the wolf why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb; you may as well forbid the mountain pines to wag their high tops and to make no noise, when they are fretten with the gusts of heaven; you may as well do anything most hard, as seek to soften that--than which what's harder?- his jewish heart: therefore, i do beseech you, make no more offers, use no farther means, but with all brief and plain conveniency let me have judgment and the jew his will. bassanio for thy three thousand ducats here is six. shylock what judgment shall i dread, doing were in six parts and every part a ducat, i would not draw them; i would have my bond. duke how shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none? shylock what judgment shall i dread, doing no wrong? you have among you many a purchased slave, which, like your asses and your dogs and mules, you use in abject and in slavish parts, because you bought them: shall i say to you, let them be free, marry them to your heirs? why sweat they under burthens? let their beds be made as soft as yours and let their palates be season'd with such viands? you will answer 'the slaves are ours:' so do i answer you: the pound of flesh, which i demand of him, is dearly bought; 'tis mine and i will have it. if you deny me, fie upon your law! there is no force in the decrees of venice. i stand for judgment: answer; shall i have it? duke upon my power i may dismiss this court, unless bellario, a learned doctor, whom i have sent for to determine this, come here to-day. salerio my lord, here stays without a messenger with letters from the doctor, new come from padua. duke bring us the letter; call the messenger. bassanio good cheer, antonio! what, man, courage yet! the jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones and all, ere thou shalt lose for me one drop of blood. antonio i am a tainted wether of the flock, meetest for death: the weakest kind of fruit drops earliest to the ground; and so let me you cannot better be employ'd, bassanio, than to live still and write mine epitaph. [enter nerissa, dressed like a lawyer's clerk] duke came you from padua, from bellario? nerissa from both, my lord. bellario greets your grace. [presenting a letter] bassanio why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly? shylock to cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there. gratiano not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh jew, thou makest thy knife keen; but no metal can, no, not the hangman's axe, bear half the keenness of thy sharp envy. can no prayers pierce thee? shylock no, none that thou hast wit enough to make. gratiano o, be thou damn'd, inexecrable dog! and for thy life let justice be accused. thou almost makest me waver in my faith to hold opinion with pythagoras, that souls of animals infuse themselves into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter, even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, and, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam, infused itself in thee; for thy desires are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous. shylock till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond, thou but offend'st thy lungs to speak so loud: repair thy wit, good youth, or it will fall to cureless ruin. i stand here for law. duke this letter from bellario doth commend a young and learned doctor to our court. where is he? nerissa he attendeth here hard by, to know your answer, whether you'll admit him. duke with all my heart. some three or four of you go give him courteous conduct to this place. meantime the court shall hear bellario's letter. clerk [reads] your grace shall understand that at the receipt of your letter i am very sick: but in the instant that your messenger came, in loving visitation was with me a young doctor of rome; his name is balthasar. i acquainted him with the cause in controversy between the jew and antonio the merchant: we turned o'er many books together: he is furnished with my opinion; which, bettered with his own learning, the greatness whereof i cannot enough commend, comes with him, at my importunity, to fill up your grace's request in my stead. i beseech you, let his lack of years be no impediment to let him lack a reverend estimation; for i never knew so young a body with so old a head. i leave him to your gracious acceptance, whose trial shall better publish his commendation. duke you hear the learn'd bellario, what he writes: and here, i take it, is the doctor come. [enter portia, dressed like a doctor of laws] give me your hand. come you from old bellario? portia i did, my lord. duke you are welcome: take your place. are you acquainted with the difference that holds this present question in the court? portia i am informed thoroughly of the cause. which is the merchant here, and which the jew? duke antonio and old shylock, both stand forth. portia is your name shylock? shylock shylock is my name. portia of a strange nature is the suit you follow; yet in such rule that the venetian law cannot impugn you as you do proceed. you stand within his danger, do you not? antonio ay, so he says. portia do you confess the bond? antonio i do. portia then must the jew be merciful. shylock on what compulsion must i? tell me that. portia the quality of mercy is not strain'd, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown; his sceptre shows the force of temporal power, the attribute to awe and majesty, wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; but mercy is above this sceptred sway; it is enthroned in the hearts of kings, it is an attribute to god himself; and earthly power doth then show likest god's when mercy seasons justice. therefore, jew, though justice be thy plea, consider this, that, in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy. i have spoke thus much to mitigate the justice of thy plea; which if thou follow, this strict court of venice must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there. shylock my deeds upon my head! i crave the law, the penalty and forfeit of my bond. portia is he not able to discharge the money? bassanio yes, here i tender it for him in the court; yea, twice the sum: if that will not suffice, i will be bound to pay it ten times o'er, on forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart: if this will not suffice, it must appear that malice bears down truth. and i beseech you, wrest once the law to your authority: to do a great right, do a little wrong, and curb this cruel devil of his will. portia it must not be; there is no power in venice can alter a decree established: 'twill be recorded for a precedent, and many an error by the same example will rush into the state: it cannot be. shylock a daniel come to judgment! yea, a daniel! o wise young judge, how i do honour thee! portia i pray you, let me look upon the bond. shylock here 'tis, most reverend doctor, here it is. portia shylock, there's thrice thy money offer'd thee. shylock an oath, an oath, i have an oath in heaven: shall i lay perjury upon my soul? no, not for venice. portia why, this bond is forfeit; and lawfully by this the jew may claim a pound of flesh, to be by him cut off nearest the merchant's heart. be merciful: take thrice thy money; bid me tear the bond. shylock when it is paid according to the tenor. it doth appear you are a worthy judge; you know the law, your exposition hath been most sound: i charge you by the law, whereof you are a well-deserving pillar, proceed to judgment: by my soul i swear there is no power in the tongue of man to alter me: i stay here on my bond. antonio most heartily i do beseech the court to give the judgment. portia why then, thus it is: you must prepare your bosom for his knife. shylock o noble judge! o excellent young man! portia for the intent and purpose of the law hath full relation to the penalty, which here appeareth due upon the bond. shylock 'tis very true: o wise and upright judge! how much more elder art thou than thy looks! portia therefore lay bare your bosom. shylock ay, his breast: so says the bond: doth it not, noble judge? 'nearest his heart:' those are the very words. portia it is so. are there balance here to weigh the flesh? shylock i have them ready. portia have by some surgeon, shylock, on your charge, to stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death. shylock is it so nominated in the bond? portia it is not so express'd: but what of that? 'twere good you do so much for charity. shylock i cannot find it; 'tis not in the bond. portia you, merchant, have you any thing to say? antonio but little: i am arm'd and well prepared. give me your hand, bassanio: fare you well! grieve not that i am fallen to this for you; for herein fortune shows herself more kind than is her custom: it is still her use to let the wretched man outlive his wealth, to view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow an age of poverty; from which lingering penance of such misery doth she cut me off. commend me to your honourable wife: tell her the process of antonio's end; say how i loved you, speak me fair in death; and, when the tale is told, bid her be judge whether bassanio had not once a love. repent but you that you shall lose your friend, and he repents not that he pays your debt; for if the jew do cut but deep enough, i'll pay it presently with all my heart. bassanio antonio, i am married to a wife which is as dear to me as life itself; but life itself, my wife, and all the world, are not with me esteem'd above thy life: i would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all here to this devil, to deliver you. portia your wife would give you little thanks for that, if she were by, to hear you make the offer. gratiano i have a wife, whom, i protest, i love: i would she were in heaven, so she could entreat some power to change this currish jew. nerissa 'tis well you offer it behind her back; the wish would make else an unquiet house. shylock these be the christian husbands. i have a daughter; would any of the stock of barrabas had been her husband rather than a christian! [aside] we trifle time: i pray thee, pursue sentence. portia a pound of that same merchant's flesh is thine: the court awards it, and the law doth give it. shylock most rightful judge! portia and you must cut this flesh from off his breast: the law allows it, and the court awards it. shylock most learned judge! a sentence! come, prepare! portia tarry a little; there is something else. this bond doth give thee here no jot of blood; the words expressly are 'a pound of flesh:' take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh; but, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed one drop of christian blood, thy lands and goods are, by the laws of venice, confiscate unto the state of venice. gratiano o upright judge! mark, jew: o learned judge! shylock is that the law? portia thyself shalt see the act: for, as thou urgest justice, be assured thou shalt have justice, more than thou desirest. gratiano o learned judge! mark, jew: a learned judge! shylock i take this offer, then; pay the bond thrice and let the christian go. bassanio here is the money. portia soft! the jew shall have all justice; soft! no haste: he shall have nothing but the penalty. gratiano o jew! an upright judge, a learned judge! portia therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh. shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more but just a pound of flesh: if thou cut'st more or less than a just pound, be it but so much as makes it light or heavy in the substance, or the division of the twentieth part of one poor scruple, nay, if the scale do turn but in the estimation of a hair, thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate. gratiano a second daniel, a daniel, jew! now, infidel, i have you on the hip. portia why doth the jew pause? take thy forfeiture. shylock give me my principal, and let me go. bassanio i have it ready for thee; here it is. portia he hath refused it in the open court: he shall have merely justice and his bond. gratiano a daniel, still say i, a second daniel! i thank thee, jew, for teaching me that word. shylock shall i not have barely my principal? portia thou shalt have nothing but the forfeiture, to be so taken at thy peril, jew. shylock why, then the devil give him good of it! i'll stay no longer question. portia tarry, jew: the law hath yet another hold on you. it is enacted in the laws of venice, if it be proved against an alien that by direct or indirect attempts he seek the life of any citizen, the party 'gainst the which he doth contrive shall seize one half his goods; the other half comes to the privy coffer of the state; and the offender's life lies in the mercy of the duke only, 'gainst all other voice. in which predicament, i say, thou stand'st; for it appears, by manifest proceeding, that indirectly and directly too thou hast contrived against the very life of the defendant; and thou hast incurr'd the danger formerly by me rehearsed. down therefore and beg mercy of the duke. gratiano beg that thou mayst have leave to hang thyself: and yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state, thou hast not left the value of a cord; therefore thou must be hang'd at the state's charge. duke that thou shalt see the difference of our spirits, i pardon thee thy life before thou ask it: for half thy wealth, it is antonio's; the other half comes to the general state, which humbleness may drive unto a fine. portia ay, for the state, not for antonio. shylock nay, take my life and all; pardon not that: you take my house when you do take the prop that doth sustain my house; you take my life when you do take the means whereby i live. portia what mercy can you render him, antonio? gratiano a halter gratis; nothing else, for god's sake. antonio so please my lord the duke and all the court to quit the fine for one half of his goods, i am content; so he will let me have the other half in use, to render it, upon his death, unto the gentleman that lately stole his daughter: two things provided more, that, for this favour, he presently become a christian; the other, that he do record a gift, here in the court, of all he dies possess'd, unto his son lorenzo and his daughter. duke he shall do this, or else i do recant the pardon that i late pronounced here. portia art thou contented, jew? what dost thou say? shylock i am content. portia clerk, draw a deed of gift. shylock i pray you, give me leave to go from hence; i am not well: send the deed after me, and i will sign it. duke get thee gone, but do it. gratiano in christening shalt thou have two god-fathers: had i been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more, to bring thee to the gallows, not the font. [exit shylock] duke sir, i entreat you home with me to dinner. portia i humbly do desire your grace of pardon: i must away this night toward padua, and it is meet i presently set forth. duke i am sorry that your leisure serves you not. antonio, gratify this gentleman, for, in my mind, you are much bound to him. [exeunt duke and his train] bassanio most worthy gentleman, i and my friend have by your wisdom been this day acquitted of grievous penalties; in lieu whereof, three thousand ducats, due unto the jew, we freely cope your courteous pains withal. antonio and stand indebted, over and above, in love and service to you evermore. portia he is well paid that is well satisfied; and i, delivering you, am satisfied and therein do account myself well paid: my mind was never yet more mercenary. i pray you, know me when we meet again: i wish you well, and so i take my leave. bassanio dear sir, of force i must attempt you further: take some remembrance of us, as a tribute, not as a fee: grant me two things, i pray you, not to deny me, and to pardon me. portia you press me far, and therefore i will yield. [to antonio] give me your gloves, i'll wear them for your sake; [to bassanio] and, for your love, i'll take this ring from you: do not draw back your hand; i'll take no more; and you in love shall not deny me this. bassanio this ring, good sir, alas, it is a trifle! i will not shame myself to give you this. portia i will have nothing else but only this; and now methinks i have a mind to it. bassanio there's more depends on this than on the value. the dearest ring in venice will i give you, and find it out by proclamation: only for this, i pray you, pardon me. portia i see, sir, you are liberal in offers you taught me first to beg; and now methinks you teach me how a beggar should be answer'd. bassanio good sir, this ring was given me by my wife; and when she put it on, she made me vow that i should neither sell nor give nor lose it. portia that 'scuse serves many men to save their gifts. an if your wife be not a mad-woman, and know how well i have deserved the ring, she would not hold out enemy for ever, for giving it to me. well, peace be with you! [exeunt portia and nerissa] antonio my lord bassanio, let him have the ring: let his deservings and my love withal be valued against your wife's commandment. bassanio go, gratiano, run and overtake him; give him the ring, and bring him, if thou canst, unto antonio's house: away! make haste. [exit gratiano] come, you and i will thither presently; and in the morning early will we both fly toward belmont: come, antonio. [exeunt] the merchant of venice act iv scene ii the same. a street. [enter portia and nerissa] portia inquire the jew's house out, give him this deed and let him sign it: we'll away to-night and be a day before our husbands home: this deed will be well welcome to lorenzo. [enter gratiano] gratiano fair sir, you are well o'erta'en my lord bassanio upon more advice hath sent you here this ring, and doth entreat your company at dinner. portia that cannot be: his ring i do accept most thankfully: and so, i pray you, tell him: furthermore, i pray you, show my youth old shylock's house. gratiano that will i do. nerissa sir, i would speak with you. [aside to portia] i'll see if i can get my husband's ring, which i did make him swear to keep for ever. portia [aside to nerissa] thou mayst, i warrant. we shall have old swearing that they did give the rings away to men; but we'll outface them, and outswear them too. [aloud] away! make haste: thou knowist where i will tarry. nerissa come, good sir, will you show me to this house? [exeunt] the merchant of venice act v scene i belmont. avenue to portia's house. [enter lorenzo and jessica] lorenzo the moon shines bright: in such a night as this, when the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees and they did make no noise, in such a night troilus methinks mounted the troyan walls and sigh'd his soul toward the grecian tents, where cressid lay that night. jessica in such a night did thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew and saw the lion's shadow ere himself and ran dismay'd away. lorenzo in such a night stood dido with a willow in her hand upon the wild sea banks and waft her love to come again to carthage. jessica in such a night medea gather'd the enchanted herbs that did renew old aeson. lorenzo in such a night did jessica steal from the wealthy jew and with an unthrift love did run from venice as far as belmont. jessica in such a night did young lorenzo swear he loved her well, stealing her soul with many vows of faith and ne'er a true one. lorenzo in such a night did pretty jessica, like a little shrew, slander her love, and he forgave it her. jessica i would out-night you, did no body come; but, hark, i hear the footing of a man. [enter stephano] lorenzo who comes so fast in silence of the night? stephano a friend. lorenzo a friend! what friend? your name, i pray you, friend? stephano stephano is my name; and i bring word my mistress will before the break of day be here at belmont; she doth stray about by holy crosses, where she kneels and prays for happy wedlock hours. lorenzo who comes with her? stephano none but a holy hermit and her maid. i pray you, is my master yet return'd? lorenzo he is not, nor we have not heard from him. but go we in, i pray thee, jessica, and ceremoniously let us prepare some welcome for the mistress of the house. [enter launcelot] launcelot sola, sola! wo ha, ho! sola, sola! lorenzo who calls? launcelot sola! did you see master lorenzo? master lorenzo, sola, sola! lorenzo leave hollaing, man: here. launcelot sola! where? where? lorenzo here. launcelot tell him there's a post come from my master, with his horn full of good news: my master will be here ere morning. [exit] lorenzo sweet soul, let's in, and there expect their coming. and yet no matter: why should we go in? my friend stephano, signify, i pray you, within the house, your mistress is at hand; and bring your music forth into the air. [exit stephano] how sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! here will we sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony. sit, jessica. look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: there's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st but in his motion like an angel sings, still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; such harmony is in immortal souls; but whilst this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. [enter musicians] come, ho! and wake diana with a hymn! with sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear, and draw her home with music. [music] jessica i am never merry when i hear sweet music. lorenzo the reason is, your spirits are attentive: for do but note a wild and wanton herd, or race of youthful and unhandled colts, fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud, which is the hot condition of their blood; if they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, or any air of music touch their ears, you shall perceive them make a mutual stand, their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze by the sweet power of music: therefore the poet did feign that orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, but music for the time doth change his nature. the man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; the motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as erebus: let no such man be trusted. mark the music. [enter portia and nerissa] portia that light we see is burning in my hall. how far that little candle throws his beams! so shines a good deed in a naughty world. nerissa when the moon shone, we did not see the candle. portia so doth the greater glory dim the less: a substitute shines brightly as a king unto the king be by, and then his state empties itself, as doth an inland brook into the main of waters. music! hark! nerissa it is your music, madam, of the house. portia nothing is good, i see, without respect: methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day. nerissa silence bestows that virtue on it, madam. portia the crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark, when neither is attended, and i think the nightingale, if she should sing by day, when every goose is cackling, would be thought no better a musician than the wren. how many things by season season'd are to their right praise and true perfection! peace, ho! the moon sleeps with endymion and would not be awaked. [music ceases] lorenzo that is the voice, or i am much deceived, of portia. portia he knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo, by the bad voice. lorenzo dear lady, welcome home. portia we have been praying for our husbands' healths, which speed, we hope, the better for our words. are they return'd? lorenzo madam, they are not yet; but there is come a messenger before, to signify their coming. portia go in, nerissa; give order to my servants that they take no note at all of our being absent hence; nor you, lorenzo; jessica, nor you. [a tucket sounds] lorenzo your husband is at hand; i hear his trumpet: we are no tell-tales, madam; fear you not. portia this night methinks is but the daylight sick; it looks a little paler: 'tis a day, such as the day is when the sun is hid. [enter bassanio, antonio, gratiano, and their followers] bassanio we should hold day with the antipodes, if you would walk in absence of the sun. portia let me give light, but let me not be light; for a light wife doth make a heavy husband, and never be bassanio so for me: but god sort all! you are welcome home, my lord. bassanio i thank you, madam. give welcome to my friend. this is the man, this is antonio, to whom i am so infinitely bound. portia you should in all sense be much bound to him. for, as i hear, he was much bound for you. antonio no more than i am well acquitted of. portia sir, you are very welcome to our house: it must appear in other ways than words, therefore i scant this breathing courtesy. gratiano [to nerissa] by yonder moon i swear you do me wrong; in faith, i gave it to the judge's clerk: would he were gelt that had it, for my part, since you do take it, love, so much at heart. portia a quarrel, ho, already! what's the matter? gratiano about a hoop of gold, a paltry ring that she did give me, whose posy was for all the world like cutler's poetry upon a knife, 'love me, and leave me not.' nerissa what talk you of the posy or the value? you swore to me, when i did give it you, that you would wear it till your hour of death and that it should lie with you in your grave: though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths, you should have been respective and have kept it. gave it a judge's clerk! no, god's my judge, the clerk will ne'er wear hair on's face that had it. gratiano he will, an if he live to be a man. nerissa ay, if a woman live to be a man. gratiano now, by this hand, i gave it to a youth, a kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy, no higher than thyself; the judge's clerk, a prating boy, that begg'd it as a fee: i could not for my heart deny it him. portia you were to blame, i must be plain with you, to part so slightly with your wife's first gift: a thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger and so riveted with faith unto your flesh. i gave my love a ring and made him swear never to part with it; and here he stands; i dare be sworn for him he would not leave it nor pluck it from his finger, for the wealth that the world masters. now, in faith, gratiano, you give your wife too unkind a cause of grief: an 'twere to me, i should be mad at it. bassanio [aside] why, i were best to cut my left hand off and swear i lost the ring defending it. gratiano my lord bassanio gave his ring away unto the judge that begg'd it and indeed deserved it too; and then the boy, his clerk, that took some pains in writing, he begg'd mine; and neither man nor master would take aught but the two rings. portia what ring gave you my lord? not that, i hope, which you received of me. bassanio if i could add a lie unto a fault, i would deny it; but you see my finger hath not the ring upon it; it is gone. portia even so void is your false heart of truth. by heaven, i will ne'er come in your bed until i see the ring. nerissa nor i in yours till i again see mine. bassanio sweet portia, if you did know to whom i gave the ring, if you did know for whom i gave the ring and would conceive for what i gave the ring and how unwillingly i left the ring, when nought would be accepted but the ring, you would abate the strength of your displeasure. portia if you had known the virtue of the ring, or half her worthiness that gave the ring, or your own honour to contain the ring, you would not then have parted with the ring. what man is there so much unreasonable, if you had pleased to have defended it with any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty to urge the thing held as a ceremony? nerissa teaches me what to believe: i'll die for't but some woman had the ring. bassanio no, by my honour, madam, by my soul, no woman had it, but a civil doctor, which did refuse three thousand ducats of me and begg'd the ring; the which i did deny him and suffer'd him to go displeased away; even he that did uphold the very life of my dear friend. what should i say, sweet lady? i was enforced to send it after him; i was beset with shame and courtesy; my honour would not let ingratitude so much besmear it. pardon me, good lady; for, by these blessed candles of the night, had you been there, i think you would have begg'd the ring of me to give the worthy doctor. portia let not that doctor e'er come near my house: since he hath got the jewel that i loved, and that which you did swear to keep for me, i will become as liberal as you; i'll not deny him any thing i have, no, not my body nor my husband's bed: know him i shall, i am well sure of it: lie not a night from home; watch me like argus: if you do not, if i be left alone, now, by mine honour, which is yet mine own, i'll have that doctor for my bedfellow. nerissa and i his clerk; therefore be well advised how you do leave me to mine own protection. gratiano well, do you so; let not me take him, then; for if i do, i'll mar the young clerk's pen. antonio i am the unhappy subject of these quarrels. portia sir, grieve not you; you are welcome notwithstanding. bassanio portia, forgive me this enforced wrong; and, in the hearing of these many friends, i swear to thee, even by thine own fair eyes, wherein i see myself- portia mark you but that! in both my eyes he doubly sees himself; in each eye, one: swear by your double self, and there's an oath of credit. bassanio nay, but hear me: pardon this fault, and by my soul i swear i never more will break an oath with thee. antonio i once did lend my body for his wealth; which, but for him that had your husband's ring, had quite miscarried: i dare be bound again, my soul upon the forfeit, that your lord will never more break faith advisedly. portia then you shall be his surety. give him this and bid him keep it better than the other. antonio here, lord bassanio; swear to keep this ring. bassanio by heaven, it is the same i gave the doctor! portia i had it of him: pardon me, bassanio; for, by this ring, the doctor lay with me. nerissa and pardon me, my gentle gratiano; for that same scrubbed boy, the doctor's clerk, in lieu of this last night did lie with me. gratiano why, this is like the mending of highways in summer, where the ways are fair enough: what, are we cuckolds ere we have deserved it? portia speak not so grossly. you are all amazed: here is a letter; read it at your leisure; it comes from padua, from bellario: there you shall find that portia was the doctor, nerissa there her clerk: lorenzo here shall witness i set forth as soon as you and even but now return'd; i have not yet enter'd my house. antonio, you are welcome; and i have better news in store for you than you expect: unseal this letter soon; there you shall find three of your argosies are richly come to harbour suddenly: you shall not know by what strange accident i chanced on this letter. antonio i am dumb. bassanio were you the doctor and i knew you not? gratiano were you the clerk that is to make me cuckold? nerissa ay, but the clerk that never means to do it, unless he live until he be a man. bassanio sweet doctor, you shall be my bed-fellow: when i am absent, then lie with my wife. antonio sweet lady, you have given me life and living; for here i read for certain that my ships are safely come to road. portia how now, lorenzo! my clerk hath some good comforts too for you. nerissa ay, and i'll give them him without a fee. there do i give to you and jessica, from the rich jew, a special deed of gift, after his death, of all he dies possess'd of. lorenzo fair ladies, you drop manna in the way of starved people. portia it is almost morning, and yet i am sure you are not satisfied of these events at full. let us go in; and charge us there upon inter'gatories, and we will answer all things faithfully. gratiano let it be so: the first inter'gatory that my nerissa shall be sworn on is, whether till the next night she had rather stay, or go to bed now, being two hours to day: but were the day come, i should wish it dark, that i were couching with the doctor's clerk. well, while i live i'll fear no other thing so sore as keeping safe nerissa's ring. [exeunt] the war of the worlds contents book one -the coming of the martians 1. the eve of the war 2. the falling star 3. on horsell common 4. the cylinder opens 5. the heat-ray 6. the heat-ray in chobham road 7. how i reached home 8. friday night 9. the fighting begins 0. in the storm 1. at the window 2. what i saw of the destruction of weybridge and shepperton 3. how i fell in with the curate 4. in london 5. what had happened in surrey 6. the exodus from london 7. the "thunder child" book two -the earth under the martians 1. under foot 2. what we saw from the ruined house 3. the days of imprisonment 4. the death of the curate 5. the stillness 6. the work of fifteen days 7. the man on putney hill 8. dead london 9. wreckage 0. the epilogue the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 1: the eve of the war no one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. with infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. it is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. no one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. it is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. at most, terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. and early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. the planet mars, i scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. it must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. the fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. it has air and water and all that necessary for the support of animated existence. yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. nor was it generally understood that since mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from life's beginning but nearer its end. the secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbour. its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. that last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of mars. the immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. and looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas. and we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. the intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon mars. their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. to carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them. and before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. the tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by european immigrants, in the space of fifty years. are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the martians warred in the same spirit? the martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety--their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours--and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh perfect unanimity. had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. men like schiaparelli watched the red planet--it is odd, by-the-bye, that for countless centuries mars has been the star of war--but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well. all that time the martians; must have been getting ready. during the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the lick observatory, then by perrotin of nice, and then by other observers. english readers heard of it first in the issue of nature dated august 2. i am inclined to think that this have been the casting of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us. peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak during the next two oppositions. the storm burst upon us six years ago now. as mars approached opposition, lavelle of java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. it had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. this jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. he compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming gases rushed out of a gun." a singularly appropriate phrase it proved. yet the next day there was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the daily telgraph, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest dangers that ever threatened the human race. i might not have heard of the eruption at all had i not met ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at ottershaw. he was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scrutiny of the red planet. in spite of all that has happened since, i still remember that vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof--an oblong profundity with the stardust streaked across it. ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming in the field. it seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and still faintly marked with transverse stripes, and slightly flattened from the perfect round. but so little it was, so silvery warm--a pin's-head of light! it was as if it quivered, but really this was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that kept the planet in view. as i watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. forty millions of miles it was from us--more than forty millions of miles of void. few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims. near it in the field, i remember, were three faint points of light, three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space. you know how that blackness looks on a frosty starlight night in a telescope it seems far profounder. and invisible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the thing they were sending us, the thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the earth. i never dreamed of it then as i watched; no one on earth dreamed of that unerring missile. that night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. i saw it. a reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and at that i told ogilvy and he took my place. the night was warm and i was thirsty, and i went, stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while ogilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out towards us. that night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the first one. i remember how i sat on the table there in the blackness, with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes. i wished i had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam i had seen and all that it would presently bring me. olgivy watched till one, and then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and walked over to his house. down below in the darkness were ottershaw and chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace. he was full of speculation that night about the condition of mars, and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were signalling us. his idea was that meteorites might be falling in a heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in progress. he pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets. "the chances against anything manlike on mars are a million to one," he said. hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. it may be the gases of the firing caused the martians inconvenience. dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little grey, fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features. even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and popular notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the volcanoes upon mars. the serio-comic periodical punch, i remember, made a happy use of it in the political cartoon. and, all unsuspected, those missiles the martians had fired at us drew earthward, rushing now at a pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. it seems to me now almost incredibly wonderful that, with that swift fate hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns as they did. i remember how jubilant markham was at securing a new photograph of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in those days. people in these latter times scarcely realise the abundance and enterprise of our nineteenth-century papers. for my own part, i was much occupied in learning to ride the bicycle, and busy upon a series of papers discussing the fprobable developments of moral ideas as civilisation progressed. one night (the first missile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000 miles away) i went for a walk with my wife. it was starlight, and i explained the signs of the zodiac to her, and pointed out mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which so many telescopes were pointed. it was a warm night. coming home, a party of excursionists from chertsey or isleworth passed us singing and playing music. there were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the people went to bed. from the railway station in the distance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into melody by the distance. my wife pointed out to me the brightness of the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the sky. it seemed so safe and tranquil. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 2: the falling star then came the night of the first falling star. it was seen early in the morning, rushing over winchester eastward, a line of flame high in the atmosphere. hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an ordinary falling star. albin described it as leaving a greenish streak behind it that glowed for some seconds. denning, our greatest authority on meteorites, stated that the height of its first appearance was about ninety or one hundred miles. it seemed to him that it fell to earth about one hundred miles east of him. i was at home at that hour and writing in my study; and although my french windows face towards ottershaw and the blind was up (for i loved in those days to look up at the night sky), i saw nothing of it. yet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer space must have fallen while i was sitting there, visible to me had i only looked up as it passed. some of those who saw its flight say it travelled with a hissing sound. i myself heard nothing of that. many people in berkshire, surrey, and middlesex must have seen the fall of it, and, at most, have thought that another meteorite had descended. no one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night. but very early in the morning poor ogilvy, who had seen the shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common between horsell, ottershaw, and woking, rose early with the idea of finding it. find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from the sand pits. an enormous hole had been made by the impact of the projectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every direction over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half away. the heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke rose against the dawn. the thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its descent. the uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder, caked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured incrustation. it had a diameter of about thirty yards. he approached the mass, surprised at the size and more so at the shape, since most meteorites are rounded more or less completely. it was, however, still so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near approach. a stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the unequal cooling of its surface; for at that time it had not occurred to him that it might be hollow. he remained standing at the edge of the pit that the thing had made for itself, staring at its strange appearance, astonished chiefly at its unusual shape and colour, and dimly perceiving even then some evidence of design in its arrival. the early morning was wonderfully still, and the sun, just clearing the pine trees towards weybridge, was already warm. he did not remember hearing any birds that morning, there was certainly no breeze stirring, and the only sounds were the faint movements from within the cindery cylinder. he was all alone on the common. then suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the grey clinker, the ashy incrustation that covered the meteorite, was falling off the circular edge of the end. it was dropping off in flakes and raining down upon the sand. a large piece suddenly came off and fell with a sharp noise that brought his heart into his mouth. for a minute he scarcely realised what this meant, and, although the heat was excessive, he clambered down into the pit close to the bulk to see the thing more clearly. he fancied even then that the cooling of the body might account for this, but what disturbed that idea was the fact that the ash was failing only from the end of the cylinder. and then he perceived that, very slowly, the circular top of the cylinder was rotating on its body. it was such a gradual movement that he discovered it only through noticing that a black mark that had been near him five minutes ago was now at the other side of the circumference. even then he scarcely understood what this indicated, until he heard a muffled grating sound and saw the black mark jerk forward an inch or so. then the thing came upon him in a flash. the cylinder was artificial--hollow--with an end that screwed out! something within the cylinder was unscrewing the top! "good heavens!" said ogilvy. "there's a man in it--men in it! half roasted to death! trying to escape!" at once, with a quick mental leap, he linked the thing with the flash upon mars. the thought of the confined creature was so dreadful to him that he forgot the heat, and went forward to the cylinder to help turn. but luckily the dull radiation arrested him before he could burn his hands on the still glowing metal. at that he stood irresolute for a moment, then turned, scrambled out of the pit, and set off running wildly into woking. the time then must have been somewhere about six o'clock. he met a waggoner and tried to make him understand, but the tale he told and his appearance were so wild--his hat had fallen off in the pit--that the man simply drove on. he was equally unsuccessful with the pot man who was just unlocking the doors of the public-house by horsell bridge. the fellow thought he was a lunatic at large and made an unsuccessful attempt to shut him into the taproom. that sobered him a little; and when he saw henderson, the london journalist, in his garden, he called over the palings and made himself understood. "henderson," he called, "you saw that shooting star last night?" "well?" said henderson "it's out on horsell common now." "good lord!" said henderson. "fallen meteorite! that's good." "but it's something more than a meteorite. it's a cylinder-an artificial cylinder, man! and there's something inside." henderson stood up with his spade in his hand. "what's that?" he said. he was deaf in one ear. ogilvy told him all that he had seen. henderson was a minute or so taking it in. then he dropped his spade, snatched up his jacket, and came out into the road. the two men hurried back at once to the common, and found the cylinder still lying in the same position. but now the sounds inside had ceased, and a thin circle of bright metal showed between the top and the body of the cylinder. air was either entering or escaping at the rim with a thin, sizzling sound. they listened, rapped on the scaly burnt metal with a stick, and, meeting with no response, they both concluded the man or men inside must be insensible or dead. of course the two were quite unable to do anything. they shouted consolation and promises, and went off back to the town again to get help. one can imagine them, covered with sand, excited and disordered, running up the little street in the bright sunlight just as the shop folks were taking down their shutters and people were opening their bedroom windows. henderson went into the railway station at once, in order to telegraph the news to london. the newspaper articles had prepared men's minds for the reception of the idea. by eight o'clock a number of boys and unemployed men had already started for the common to see the "dead men from mars." that was the form the story took. i heard of it first from my newspaper boy about a quarter to nine when i went out to get my daily chronicle. i was naturally startled, and lost no time in going out and across the ottershaw bridge to the sand pits. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 3: on horsell common i found a little crowd of perhaps twenty people surrounding the huge hole in which the cylinder lay. i have already described the appearance of that colossal bulk, embedded in the ground. the turf and gravel about it seemed charred as if by a sudden explosion. no doubt its impact had caused a flash of fire. henderson and ogilvy were not there. i think they perceived that nothing was to be done for the present, and had gone away to breakfast at henderson's house. there were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the pit, with their feet dangling, and amusing themselves until i stopped them--by throwing stones at the giant mass. after i had spoken to them about it, they began playing at "touch" in and out of the group of bystanders. among these were a couple of cyclists, a jobbing gardener i employed sometimes, a girl carrying a baby, gregg the butcher and his little boy, and two or three loafers and golf caddies who were accustomed to hang about the railway station. there was very little talking. few of the common people in england had anything but the vaguest astronomical ideas in those days. most of them were standing quietly at the big tablelike end of the cylinder, which was still as ogilvy and henderson had left it. i fancy the popular expectation of a heap of charred corpses was disappointed at this inanimate bulk. some went away while i was there, and other people came. i clambered into the pit and fancied i heard a faint movement under my feet. the top had certainly ceased to rotate. it was only when i got thus close to it that the strangeness of this object was at all evident to me. at the first glance it was really no more exciting than an overturned carriage or a tree blown across the road. not so much so, indeed. it looked like a rusty gas float. it required a certain amount of scientific education to perceive that the grey scale of the thing was no common oxide, that the yellowish-white metal that gleamed in the crack between the lid and the cylinder had an unfamiliar hue. "extraterrestrial" had no meaning for most of the onlookers. at that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the thing had come from the planet mars, but i judged it improbable that it contained any living creature. i thought the unscrewing might be automatic. in spite of ogilvy, i still believed that there were men in mars. my mind ran fancifully on the possibilities of its containing manuscript, on the difficulties in translation that might arise, whether we should find coins and models in it, and so forth. yet it was a little too large for assurance on this idea. i felt an impatience to see it opened. about eleven, as nothing seemed happening, i walked back, full of such thought, to my home in maybury. but i found it difficult to get to work upon my abstract investigations. in the afternoon the appearance of the common had altered very much. the early editions of the evening papers had startled london with enormous headlines: a message received from mars remarkable story from woking and so forth. in addition, ogilvy's wire to the astronomical exchange had roused every observatory in the three kingdoms. there were half a dozen flies or more from the woking station standing in the road by the sand pits, a basket-chaise from chobham, and a rather lordly carriage. besides that, there was quite a heap of bicycles. in addition, a large number of people must have walked, in spite of the heat of the day, from woking and chertsey, so that there was altogether quite a considerable crowd--one or two gaily dressed ladies among the others. it was glaringly hot, not a cloud in the sky nor a breath of wind, and the only shadow was that of the few scattered pine trees. the burning heather had been extinguished, but the level ground towards ottershaw was blackened as far as one could see, and still giving off vertical streamers of smoke. an enterprising sweet-stuff dealer in the chobham road had sent up his son with a barrow-load of green apples and ginger beer. going to the edge of the pit, i found it occupied by a group of about half a dozen men--henderson, ogilvy, and a tall, fair-haired man that i afterwards learned was stent, the astronomer royal, with several workmen, wielding spades and pickaxes. stent was giving directions in a clear, high-pitched voice. he was standing on the cylinder, which was now evidently much cooler; his face was crimson and streaming with perspiration, and something seemed to have irritated him. a large portion of the cylinder had been uncovered, though its lower end was still embedded. as soon as ogilvy saw me among the staring crowd on the edge of the pit he called to me to come down, and asked me if i would mind going over to see lord hilton, the lord of the manor. the growing crowd, he said, was becoming a serious impediment to their excavations, especially the boys. they wanted a light railing put up, and help to keep the people back. he told me that a faint stirring was occasionally still audible within the case, but that the workmen had failed to unscrew the top, as it afforded no grip to them. the case appeared to be enormously thick, and it was possible that the faint sounds we heard represented a noisy tumult in the interior. i was very glad to do as he asked, and so become one of the privileged spectators within the contemplated enclosure. i failed to find lord hilton at his house, but i was told he was expected from london by the six o'clock train from waterloo; and as it was then about a quarter past five, i went home, had some tea, and walked up to the station to waylay him. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 4: the cylinder opens when i returned to the common the sun was setting. scattered groups were hurrying from the direction of woking, and one or two persons were returning. the crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out black against the lemon yellow of the sky--a couple of hundred people, perhaps. there were raised voices, and some sort of struggle appeared to be going on about the pit. strange imaginings passed through my mind. as i drew nearer i heard stent's voice: "keep back! keep back!" a boy came running towards me. "its a movin'," he said to me as he passed; "a-screwin' and a-screwin' out. i don't like it. i'm a-goin' home, i am." i went on to the crowd. there were really, i should think, two or three hundred people elbowing and jostling one another, the one or two ladies there being by no means the least active. "he's fallen in the pit!" cried some one. "keep back!" said several. the crowd swayed a little, and i elbowed my way through. every one seemed greatly excited. i heard a peculiar humming sound from the pit. "i say!" said ogilvy; "help keep these idiots back. we don't know what's in the confounded thing, you know!" i saw a young man, a shop assistant in woking i believe he was, standing on the cylinder and trying to scramble out of the hole again. the crowd had pushed him in. the end of the cylinder was being screwed but from within. nearly two feet of shining screw projected. somebody blundered against me, and i narrowly missed being pitched onto the top of the screw. i turned, and as i did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of the cylinder fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion. i stuck my elbow into the person behind me, and turned my head towards the thing again. for a moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black. i had the sunset in my eyes. i think everyone expected to see a man emerge--possibly something a little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man. i know i did. but, looking, i presently saw something stirring within the shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two luminous disks--like eyes. then something resembling a little grey snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me--and then another. a sudden chill came over me. there was a loud shriek from a woman behind. i half turned, keeping my eyes fixed upon the cylinder still, from which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my way back from the edge of the pit. i saw astonishment giving place to horror on the faces of the people about me. i heard inarticulate exclamations on all sides. there was a general movement backwards. i saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit. i found myself alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit running off, stent among them. i looked again at the cylinder, and ungovernable terror gripped me. i stood petrified and staring. a big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. as it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather. two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. the mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. there was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. the whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. a lank tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air. those who have never seen a living martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance. the peculiar v-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth--above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eye--were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. there was something fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty. even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, i was overcome with disgust and dread. suddenly the monster vanished. it had toppled over the brim of the cylinder and fallen into the pit, with a thud like the fall of a great mass of leather. i heard it give a peculiar thick cry, and forthwith another of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the aperture. i turned and, running madly, made for the first group of trees, perhaps a hundred yards away; but i ran slantingly and stumbling, for i could not avert my face from these things. there, among some young pine trees and furze bushes, i stopped, panting, and waited further developments. the common round the sand pits was dotted with people, standing like myself in a half-fascinated terror, staring at these creatures, or rather at the heaped gravel at the edge of the pit in which they lay. and then, with a renewed horror, i saw a round, black object bobbing up and down on the edge of the pit. it was the head of the shopman who had fallen in, but showing as a little black object against the hot western sky. now he got his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed to slip back until only his head was visible. suddenly he vanished, and i could have fancied a faint shriek had reached me. i had a momentary impulse to go back and help him that my fears overruled. everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made. anyone coming along the road from choban or woking would have been amazed at the sight--a dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more standing in a great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes, behind gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in short, excited shouts, and staring, staring hard at a few heaps of sand. the barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black against the burning sky, and in the sand pits was a row of deserted vehicles with their horses feeding out of nosebags or pawing the ground. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 5: the heat-ray after the glimpse i had had of the martians emerging from the cylinder in which they had come to the earth from their planet, a kind of fascination paralysed my actions. i remained standing knee-deep in the heather, staring at the mound that hid them. i was a battleground of fear and curiosity. i did not dare to go back towards the pit, but i felt a passionate longing to peer into it. i began walking, therefore, in a big curve, seeking some point of vantage and continually looking at the sand heaps that hid these newcomers to our earth. once a leash of thin black whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset and was immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up, joint by joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a wobbling motion. what could be going on there? most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups--one a little crowd towards woking, the other a knot of people in the direction of chobham. evidently they shared my mental conflict. there were few near me. one man i approached--he was, i perceived, a neighbour of mine, though i did not know his name-and accosted. but it was scarcely a time for articulate conversation. "what ugly brutes!" he said. "good god! what ugly brutes!" he repeated this over and over again. "did you see a man in the pit?" i said; but he made no answer to that. we became silent, and stood watching for a time side by side, deriving, i fancy, a certain comfort in one another's company. then i shifted my position to a little knoll that gave me the advantage of a yard or more of elevation, and when i looked for him presently he was walking towards woking. the sunset faded to twilight before anything further happened. the crowd far away on the left, towards woking, seemed to grow, and i heard now a faint murmur from it. the little knot of people towards chobham dispersed. there was scarcely an intimation of movement from the pit. it was this, as much as anything, that gave people courage, and i suppose the new arrivals from woking also helped to restore confidence. at any rate, as the dusk came on a slow, intermittent movement upon the sand pits began, a movement that seemed to gather force as the stillness of the evening about the cylinder remained unbroken. vertical black figures in twos and threes would advance, stop, watch, and advance again, spreading out as they did so in a thin irregular crescent that promised to enclose the pit in its attenuated horns. i, too, on my side began to move towards the pit. then i saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly into the sand pits, and heard the clatter of hoofs and the gride of wheels. i saw a lad trundling off the barrow of apples. and then, within thirty yards of the pit, advancing from the direction of horsell, i noted a little black knot of men, the foremost of whom was waving a white flag. this was the deputation. there had been a hasty consultation, and since the martians were evidently, in spite of their repulsive forms, intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to show them, by approaching them with signals, that we too were intelligent. flutter, flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to the left. it was too far for me to recognise anyone there, but afterwards i learned that ogilvy, stent, and henderson were with others in this attempt at communication. this little group had in its advance dragged inward, so to speak, the circumference of the now almost complete circle of people, and a number of dim black figures followed it at discreet distances. suddenly there was a flash of light, and a quantity of luminous greenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct puffs, which drove up, one after the other, straight into the still air. this smoke (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word for it) was so bright that the deep blue sky overhead and the hazy stretches of brown common towards chertsey, set with black pine trees, seemed to darken abruptly as these puffs arose, and to remain the darker after their dispersal. at the same time a faint hissing sound became audible. beyond the pit stood the little wedge of people with the white flag at its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of small vertical black shapes upon the black ground. as the green smoke arose, their faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished. then slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud, droning noise. slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a beam of light seemed to flicker out from it. forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to another, sprang from the scattered group of men. it was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. it was as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire. then, by the light of their own destruction, i saw them staggering and falling, and their supporters turning to run. i stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping from man to man in that little distant crowd. all i felt was that it was something very strange. an almost noiseless and blinding flash of light, and a man fell headlong and lay still; and as the unseen shaft of heat passed over them, pine trees burst into fire and every dry furze bush became with one dull thud a mass of flames. and far away towards knaphill i saw the flashes of trees and hedges and wooden buildings suddenly set alight. it was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death, this invisible, inevitable sword of heat. i perceived it coming towards me by the flashing bushes it touched, and was too astounded and stupefied to stir. i heard the crackle of fire in the sand pits and the sudden squeal of a horse that was as suddenly stilled. then it was as if an invisible yet intensely heated finger were drawn through the heather between me and the martians, and all along a curving line beyond the sand pits the dark ground smoked and crackled. something fell with a crash far away to the left where the road from woking station opens out on the common. forthwith the hissing and humming ceased, and the black, domelike object sank slowly out of sight into the pit. all this had happened with such swiftness that i had stood motionless, dumbfounded and dazzled by the flashes of light. had that death swept through a full circle, it must inevitably have slain me in my surprise. but it passed and spared me, and left the night about me suddenly dark and unfamiliar. the undulating common seemed now dark almost to blackness, except where its roadways lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the early night. it was dark, and suddenly void of men. overhead the stars were mustering, and in the west the sky was still a pale, bright, almost greenish blue. the tops of the pine trees and the roofs of horsell came out sharp and black against the western afterglow. the martians and their appliances were altogether invisible, save for that thin mast upon which their restless mirror wobbled. patches of bush and isolated trees here and there smoked and glowed still, and the houses towards woking station were sending up spires of flame into the stillness of the evening air. nothing was changed save for that and a terrible astonishment. the little group of black specks with the flag of white had been swept out of existence, and the stillness of the evening, so it seemed to me, had scarcely been broken. it came to me that i was upon this dark common, helpless, unprotected, and alone. suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from without, came--fear. with an effort i turned and began a stumbling run through the heather. the fear i felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not only of the martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about me. such an extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that i ran weeping silently as a child might do. once i had turned, i did not dare to look back. i remember i felt an extraordinary persuasion that i was being played with, that presently, when i was upon the very verge of safety, this mysterious death--as swift as the passage of light-would leap after me from the pit about the cylinder and strike me down. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 6: the heat-ray in the chobham road it is still a matter of wonder how the martians are able to slay men so swiftly and so silently. many think that in some way they are able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute non-conductivity. this intense heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they choose, by means of a polished parabolic mirror of unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light. but no one has absolutely proved these details. however it is done, it is certain that a beam of heat is the essence of the matter. heat, and invisible, instead of visible, light. whatever is combustible flashes into flame at its touch, lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks and melts glass, and when it falls upon water, incontinently that explodes into steam. that night nearly forty people lay under the starlight about the pit charred and distorted beyond recognition, and all night long the common from horsell to maybury was deserted and brightly ablaze. the news of the massacre probably reached chobham, woking, and ottershaw about the same time. in woking the shops had closed when the tragedy happened, and a number of people, shop people and so forth, attracted by the stories they had heard, were walking over the horsell bridge and along the road between the hedges that runs out at last upon the common. you may imagine the young people brushed up after the labours of the day, and making this novelty, as they would make any novelty, the excuse for walking together and enjoying a trivial flirtation. you may figure to yourself the hunt of voices along the road in the gloaming.... as yet, of course, few people in woking even knew that the cylinder had opened, though poor henderson had sent a messenger on a bicycle to the post office with a special wire to an evening paper. as these folks came out by twos and threes upon the open, they found little knots of people talking excitedly and peering at the spinning mirror over the sand pits, and the newcomers were, no doubt, soon infected by the excitement of the occasion. by half past eight, when the deputation was destroyed, there may have been a crowd of three hundred people or more at this place, besides those who had left the road to approach the martians nearer. there were three policemen too, one of whom was mounted, doing their best, under instructions from stent, to keep the people back and deter them from approaching the cylinder. there was some booing from those more thoughtless and excitable souls to whom a crowd is always an occasion for noise and horse-play. stent and ogilvy, anticipating some possibilities of a collision, had telegraphed from horsell to the barracks as soon as the martians emerged, for the help of a company of soldiers to protect these strange creatures from violence. after that they returned to lead that ill-fated advance. the description of their death, as it was seen by the crowd, tallies very closely with my own impressions: the three puffs of green smoke, the deep humming note, and the flashes of flame. but that crowd of people had a far narrower escape than mine. only the fact that a hummock of heathery sand intercepted the lower part of the heat-ray saved them. had the elevation of the parabolic mirror been a few yards higher, none could have lived to tell the tale. they saw the flashes and the men falling and an invisible hand, as it were, lit the bushes as it hurried towards them through the twilight. then, with a whistling note that rose above the droning of the pit, the beam swung close over their heads, lighting the tops of the beech trees that line the road, and splitting the bricks, smashing the windows, firing the window frames, and bringing down in crumbling rain a portion of the gable of the house nearest the corner. in the sudden thud, hiss, and glare of the igniting trees, the panic-stricken crowd seems to have swayed hesitatingly for some moments. sparks and burning twigs began to fall into the road, and single leaves like puffs of flame. hats and dresses caught fire. then came a crying from the common. there were shrieks and shouts, and suddenly a mounted policeman came galloping through the confusion with his hands clasped over his head, screaming. "they're coming!" a woman shrieked, and incontinently everyone was turning and pushing at those behind, in order to clear their way to woking again. they must have bolted as blindly as a flock of sheep. where the road grows narrow and black between the high banks the crowd jammed, and a desperate struggle occurred. all that crowd did not escape; three persons at least, two women and a little boy, were crushed and trampled there, and left to die amid the terror and the darkness. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 7: how i reached home for my own part, i remember nothing of my flight except the stress of blundering against trees and stumbling through the heather. all about me gathered the invisible terrors of the martians; that pitiless sword of heat seemed whirling to and fro, flourishing overhead before it descended and smote me out of life. i came into the road between the crossroads and horsell, and ran along this to the crossroads. at last i could go no further; i was exhausted with the violence of my emotion and of my flight, and i staggered and fell by the wayside. that was near the bridge that crosses the canal by the gasworks. i fell and lay still. i must have remained there some time. i sat up, strangely perplexed. for a moment, perhaps, i could not clearly understand how i came there. my terror had fallen from me like a garment. my hat had gone, and my collar had burst away from its fastener. a few minutes before, there had only been three real things before me--the immensity of the night and space and nature, my own feebleness and anguish, and the near approach of death. now it was as if something turned over, and the point of view altered abruptly. there was no sensible transition from one state of mind to the other. i was immediately the self of every day again--a decent ordinary citizen. the silent common, the impulse of my flight, the starting flames, were as if they had been in a dream. i asked myself had these latter things indeed happened? i could not credit it. i rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the bridge. my mind was blank wonder. my muscles and nerves seemed drained of their strength. i dare say i staggered drunkenly. a head rose over the arch, and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared. beside him ran a little boy. he passed me, wishing me good night. i was minded to speak to him, but did not. i answered his greeting with a meaningless mumble and went on over the bridge. over the maybury arch a train, a billowing tumult of white, firelit smoke, and a long caterpillar of lighted windows, went flying south--clatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone. a dim group of people talked in the gate of one of the houses in the pretty little row of gables that was called oriental terrace. it was all so real and so familiar. and that behind me! it was frantic, fantastic! such things, i told myself, could not be. perhaps i am a man of exceptional moods. i do not know how far my experience is common. at times i suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me, i seem to watch it all from the outsider from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. this feeling was very strong upon me that night. here was another side to my dream. but the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the swift death flying yonder, not two miles away. there was a noise of business from the gasworks, and the electric lamps were all alight. i stopped at the group of people. "what news from the common?" said i. there were two men and a woman at the gate. "eh?" said one of the men, turning. "what news from the common?" i said. "ain't yer just been there?" asked the men. "people seem fair silly about the common," said the woman over the gate. "what's it all abart?" "haven't you heard of the men from mars?" said i; "the creatures from mars?" "quite enough," said the woman over the gate. "thenks"; and all three of them laughed. i felt foolish, and angry. i tried and found i could not tell them what i had seen. they laughed again at my broken sentences. "you'll hear more yet," i said, and went on to my home. i startled my wife at the doorway, so haggard was i. i went into the dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and so soon as i could collect myself sufficiently i told her the things i had seen. the dinner, which was a cold one, had already been served, and remained neglected on the table while i told my story. "there is one thing," i said, to allay the fears i had aroused; "they are the most sluggish things i ever saw crawl. they may keep the pit and kill people who come near them, but they cannot get out of it.... but the horror of them!" "don't, dear!" said my wife, knitting her brows and putting her hand on mine. "poor ogilvy!" i said. "to think he may be lying dead there!" my wife at least did not find my experience incredible. when i saw how deadly white her face was, i ceased abruptly. "they may come here," she said again and again. i pressed her to take wine, and tried to reassure her. "they can scarcely move," i said. i began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that ogilvy had told me of the impossibility of the martians establishing themselves on the earth. in particular i laid stress on the gravitational difficulty. on the surface of the earth the force of gravity is three times what it is on the surface of mars. a martian, therefore, would weigh three times more on mars, albeit his muscular strength would be the same. his own body would be a cope of lead to him. that, indeed, was the general opinion. both the times and the daily telegraph, for instance, insisted on it the next morning, and both overlooked, just as i did, two obvious modifying influences. the atmosphere of the earth, we now know, contains far more oxygen or far less argon (whichever way one likes to put it) than does mars. the invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the martians indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their bodies. and, in the second place, we all overlooked the fact that such mechanical intelligence as the martian possessed was quite able to dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch. but i did not consider these points at the time, and so my reasoning was dead against the chances of the invaders. with wine and food, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring my wife, i grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure. "they have done a foolish thing," said i, fingering my wineglass. "they are dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror. perhaps they expected to find no living things-certainly no intelligent living things. "a shell in the pit," said i, "if the worst comes to the worst, will kill them all." the intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erethism. i remember that dinner table with extraordinary vividness even now. my dear wife's sweet anxious face peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white cloth with its silver and glass table furniture--for in those days even philosophical writers had many little luxuries-the crimson purple wine in my glass, are photographically distinct. at the end of it i sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting ogilvy's rashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the martians. so some respectable dodo in the mauritius might have lorded it in his nest and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. "we will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear." i did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner i was to eat for very many strange and terrible days. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 8: friday night the most extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the strange and wonderful things that happened upon that friday, was the dovetailing of the commonplace habits of our social order with the first beginnings of the series of events that was to topple that social order headlong. if on friday night you had taken a pair of compasses and drawn a circle with a radius of five miles round the woking sand pits, i doubt if you would have had one human being outside it, unless it were some relation of stent or of the three or four cyclists or london people lying dead on the common, whose emotions or habits were at all affected by the new-comers. many people had heard of the cylinder, of course, and talked about it in their leisure, but it certainly did not make the sensation that an ultimatum to germany would have done. in london that night poor henderson's telegram describing the gradual unscrewing of the shot was judged to be a canard, and his evening paper, after wiring for authentication from him and receiving no reply--the man was killed--decided not to print a special edition. even within the five-mile circle the great majority of people were inert. i have already described the behaviour of the men and women to whom i spoke. all over the district people were dining and supping; working men were gardening after the labours of the day, children were being put to bed, young people were wandering through the lanes love-making, students sat over their books. maybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and dominant topic in the public-houses, and here and there a messenger, or even an eye-witness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of excitement, a shouting, and a running to and fro; but for the most part the daily routine of working, eating, drinking, sleeping, went on as it had done for countless years--as though no planet mars existed in the sky. even at woking station and horsell and chobham that was the case. in woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and going on, others were shunting on the sidings, passengers were alighting and waiting, and everything was proceeding in the most ordinary way. a boy from the town, trenching on smith's monopoly, was selling papers with the afternoon's news. the ringing impact of trucks, the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction, mingled with their shouts of "men from mars!" excited men came into the station about nine o'clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more disturbance than drunkards might have done. people rattling londonwards peered into the darkness outside the carriage windows, and saw only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark dance up from the direction of horsell, a red glow and a thin veil of smoke driving across the stars, and thought that nothing more serious than a heath fire was happening. it was only round the edge of the common that any disturbance was perceptible. there were half a dozen villas burning on the woking border. there were lights in all the houses on the common side of the three villages, and the people there kept awake till dawn. a curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going but the crowd remaining, both on the chobham and horsell bridges. one or two adventurous souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness and crawled quite near the martians; but they never returned, for now and again a light-ray, like the beam of a warships' searchlight, swept the common, and the heat-ray was ready to follow. save for such, that big area of common was silent and desolate, and the charred bodies lay about on it all night under the stars, and all the next day. a noise of hammering from the pit was heard by many people. so you have the state of things on friday night. in the centre, sticking into the skin of our old planet earth like a poisoned dart, was this cylinder. but the poison was scarcely working yet. around it was a patch of silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few dark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes here and there. here and there was a burning bush or tree. beyond was a fringe of excitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation had not crept as yet. in the rest of the world the stream of life still flowed as it had flowed for immemorial years. the fever of war that would presently clog vein and artery, deaden nerve and destroy brain, had still to develop. all night long the martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless, indefatigable, at work upon the machines they were making ready, and ever and again a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled up to the starlit sky. about eleven a company of soldiers came through horsell, and deployed along the edge of the common to form a cordon. later a second company marched through chobham to deploy on the north side of the common. several officers from the inkerman barracks had been on the common earlier in the day, and one, major eden, was reported to be missing. the colonel of the regiment came to the chobham bridge and was busy questioning the crowd at midnight. the military authorities were certainly alive to the seriousness of the business. about eleven, the next morning's papers were able to say, a squadron of hussars, two maxims, and about four hundred men of the cardigan regiment started from aldershot. a few seconds after midnight the crowd in the chertsey road, woking, saw a star fall from heaven into the pine woods to the northwest. it had a greenish colour, and caused a silent brightness like summer lightning. this was the second cylinder. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 9: the fighting begins saturday lives in my memory as a day of suspense. it was a day of lassitude too, hot and close, with, i am told, a rapidly fluctuating barometer. i had slept but little, though my wife had succeeded in sleeping, and i rose early. i went into my garden before breakfast and stood listening, but towards the common there was nothing stirring but a lark. the milkman came as usual. i heard the rattle of his chariot, and i went round to the side gate to ask the latest news. he told me that during the night the martians had been surrounded by troops, and that guns were expected. then--a familiar, reassuring note--i heard a train running towards woking. "they aren't to be killed," said the milkman, "if that can possibly be avoided." i saw my neighbour gardening, chatted with him for a time, and then strolled in to breakfast. it was a most unexceptional morning. my neighbour was of opinion that the troops would be able to capture or to destroy the martians during the day. "its a pity they make themselves so unapproachable," he said. "it would be curious to know how they live on another planet; we might learn a thing or two." he came up to the fence and extended a handful of strawberries, for his gardening was as generous as it was enthusiastic. at the same time he told me of the burning of the pine woods about the byfleet golf links. "they say," said he, "that there's another of those blessed things fallen there--number two. but one's enough, surely. this lot'll cost the insurance people a pretty penny before everything's settled." he laughed with an air of the greatest good humour as he said this. the woods, he said, were still burning, and pointed out a haze of smoke to me. "they will be hot under foot for days, on account of the thick soil of pine needles and turf," he said, and then grew serious over "poor ogilvy." after breakfast, instead of working, i decided to walk down towards the common. under the railway bridge i found a group of soldiers--sappers, i think, men in small round caps, dirty red jackets unbuttoned, and showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots coming to the calf. they told me no one was allowed over the canal, and, looking along the road towards the bridge, i saw one of the gardigan men standing sentinel there. i talked with these soldiers for a time; i told them of my sight of the martians on the previous evening. none of them had seen the martians, and they had but the vaguest ideas of them, so that they plied me with questions. they said that they did not know who had authorised the movements of the troops; their idea was that a dispute had arisen at the horse guards. the ordinary sapper is a great deal better educated than the common soldier, and they discussed the peculiar conditions of the possible fight with some acuteness. i described the heat-ray to them, and they began to argue among themselves. "crawl up under cover and rush 'em, say i," said one. "get aht!" said another. "what's cover against this 'ere 'eat? sticks to cook yer! what we got to do is to go as near as the ground'll let us, and then drive a trench." "blow yer trenches! you always want trenches; you ought to ha' been born a rabbit, snippy." " 'ain't they got any necks, then?" said a third, abruptly--a little, contemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe. i repeated my description. "octopuses," said he, "that's what i calls `em. talk about fishers of men--fighters of fish it is this time!" "it ain't no murder killing beasts like that," said the first speaker. "why not shell the darned things strite off and finish 'em?" said the little dark man. "you carn tell what they might do." "where's your shells?" said the first speaker. "there ain't no time. do it in a rush, that's my tip, and do it at once." so they discussed it. after a while i left them, and went on to the railway station to get as many morning papers as i could. but i will not weary the reader with a description of that long morning and of the longer afternoon. i did not succeed in getting a glimpse of the common, for even horsell and chobham church towers were in the hands of the military authorities. the soldiers i addressed didn't know anything; the officers were mysterious as well as busy. i found people in the town quite secure again in the presence of the military, and i heard for the first time from marshall, the tobacconist, that his son was among the dead on the common. the soldiers had made the people on the outskirts of horsell lock up and leave their houses. i got back to lunch about two, very tired, for, as i have said, the day was extremely hot and dull; and in order to refresh myself i took a cold bath in the afternoon. about half past four i went up to the railway station to get an evening paper, for the morning papers had contained only a very inaccurate description of the killing of scent, henderson, ogilvy, and the others. but there was little i didn't know. the martians did not show an inch of themselves. they seemed busy in their pit, and there was a sound of hammering and an almost continuous streamer of smoke. apparently they were busy getting ready for a struggle. "fresh attempts have been made to signal, but without success," was the stereotyped formula of the papers. a sapper told me it was done by a man in a ditch with a flag on a long pole. the martians took as much notice of such advances as we should of the lowing of a cow. i must confess the sight of all this armament, all this preparation, greatly excited me. my imagination became belligerent, and defeated the invaders in a dozen striking ways; something of my schoolboy dreams of battle and heroism came back. it hardly seemed a fair fight to me at that time. they seemed very helpless in that pit of theirs. about three o'clock there began the thud of a gun at measured intervals from chertsey or addlerstone. i learned that the smouldering pine wood into which the second cylinder had fallen was being shelled, in the hope of destroying that object before it opened. it was only about five, however, that a field gun reached chobham for use against the first body of martians. about six in the evening, as i sat at tea with my wife in the summerhouse talking vigorously about the battle that was lowering upon us, i heard a muffled detonation from the common, and immediately after a gust of firing. close on the heels of that came a violent, rattling crash, quite close to us, that shook the ground; and, starting out upon the lawn, i saw the tops of the trees about the oriental college burst into smoky red flame, and the tower of the little church beside it slide down into ruin. the pinnacle of the mosque had vanished, and the roof line of the college itself looked as if a hundred-ton gun had been at work upon it. one of our chimneys cracked as if a shot had hit it, flew, and a piece of it came clattering down the tiles and made a heap of broken red fragments upon the flower bed by my study window. i and my wife stood amazed. then i realised that the crest of maybury hill must be within range of the martians' heat-ray now that the college was cleared out of the way. at that i gripped my wife's arm, and without ceremony ran her out into the road. then i fetched out the servant, telling her i would go upstairs myself for the box she was clamouring for. "we can't possibly stay here," i said; and as i spoke the firing reopened for a moment upon the common. "but where are we to go?" said my wife in terror. i thought, perplexed. then i remembered her cousins at leatherhead. "leatherhead!" i shouted above the sudden noise. she looked away from me downhill. the people were coming out of their houses, astonished. "how are we to get to leatherhead?" she said. down the hill i saw a bevy of hussars ride under the railway bridge; three galloped through the open gates of the oriental college; two others dismounted, and began running from house to house. the sun, shining through the smoke that drove up from the tops of the trees, seemed blood red, and threw an unfamiliar lurid light upon everything. "stop here," said i; "you are safe here"; and i started off at once for the spotted dog, for i knew the landlord had a horse and dog cart. i ran, for i perceived that in a moment everyone upon this side of the hill would be moving. i found him in his bar, quite unaware of what was going on behind his house. a man stood with his back to me, talking to him. "i must have a pound," said the landlord, "and i've no one to drive it." "i'll give you two," said i, over the stranger's shoulder. "what for?" "and i'll bring it back by midnight," i said. "lord!" said the landlord; "what's the hurry? i'm selling my bit of a pig. two pounds, and you bring it back? what's going on now?" i explained hastily that i had to leave my home, and so secured the dog cart. at the time it did not seem to me nearly so urgent that the landlord should leave his. i took care to have the cart there and then, drove it off down the road, and, leaving it in charge of my wife and servant, rushed into my house and packed a few valuables, such plate as we had, and so forth. the beech trees below the house were burning while i did this, and the palings up the road glowed red. while i was occupied in this way, one of the dismounted hussars came running up. he was going from house to house, warning people to leave. he was going on as i came out of my front door, lugging my treasures, done up in a tablecloth. i shouted after him: "what news?" he turned, stared, bawled something about "crawling out in a thing like a dish cover," and ran on to the gate of the house at the crest. a sudden whirl of black smoke driving across the road hid him for a moment. i ran to my neighbour's door and rapped to satisfy myself of what i already knew, that his wife had gone to london with him and had locked up their house. i went in again, according to my promise, to get my servant's box, lugged it out, clapped it beside her on the tail of the dog cart, and then caught the reins and jumped up into the driver's seat beside my wife. in another moment we were clear of the smoke and noise, and spanking down the opposite slope of maybury hill towards old woking. in front was a quiet, sunny landscape, a wheat field ahead on either side of the road, and the maybury inn with its swinging sign. i saw the doctor's cart ahead of me. at the bottom of the hill i turned my head to look at the hillside i was leaving. thick streamers of black smoke shot with threads of red fire were driving up into the still air, and throwing dark shadows upon the green treetops eastward. the smoke already extended far away to the east and west--to the byfleet pine woods eastward, and to woking on the west. the road was dotted with people running towards us. and very faint now, but very distinct through the hot, quiet air, one heard the whirr of a machine-gun that, was presently stilled, and an intermittent cracking of rifles. apparently the martians were setting fire to everything within range of their heat-ray. i am not an expert driver, and i had immediately to turn my attention to the horse. when i looked back again the second hill had hidden the black smoke. i slashed the horse with the whip, and gave him a loose rein until woking and send lay between us and that quivering tumult. i overtook and passed the doctor between woking and send. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 10: in the storm leatherhead is about twelve miles from maybury hill. the scent of hay was in the air through the lush meadows beyond pyrford, and the hedges on either side were sweet and gay with multitudes of dog-roses. the heavy firing that had broken out while we were driving down maybury hill ceased as abruptly as it began, leaving the evening very peaceful and still. we got to leatherhead without misadventure about nine o'clock, and the horse had an hour's rest while i took supper with my cousins and commended my wife to their care. my wife was curiously silent throughout the drive, and seemed oppressed with forebodings of evil. i talked to her reassuringly, pointing out that the martians were tied to the pit by sheer heaviness, and at the utmost could but crawl a little out of it; but she answered only in monosyllables. had it not been for my promise to the innkeeper, she would, i think, have urged me to stay in leatherhead that night. would that i had! her face, i remember, was very white as we parted. for my own part, i had been feverishly excited all day. something very like the war fever that occasionally runs through a civilised community had got into my blood and in my heart i was not so very sorry that i had to return to maybury that night. i was even afraid that that last fusillade i had heard might mean the extermination of our invaders from mars. i can best express my state of mind by saying that i wanted to be in at the death. it was nearly eleven when i started to return. the night was unexpectedly dark; to me, walking out of the lighted passage of my cousins' house, it seemed indeed black, and it was as hot and close as the day. overhead the clouds were driving fast, albeit not a breath stirred the shrubs about us. my cousins' man lit both lamps. happily, i knew the road intimately. my wife stood in the light of the doorway, and watched me until i jumped up into the dog cart. then abruptly she turned and went in, leaving my cousins side by side wishing me good hap. i was a little depressed at first, with the contagion of my wife's fears, but very soon my thoughts reverted to the martians. at that time i was absolutely in the dark as to the course of the evening's fighting. i did not know even the circumstances that had precipitated the conflict. as i came through ockham (for that was the way i returned, and not through send and old woking) i saw along the western horizon a blood-red glow, which, as i drew nearer, crept slowly up the sky. the driving clouds of the gathering thunderstorm mingled there with masses of black and red smoke. ripley street was deserted, and except for a lighted window or so the village showed not a sign of life; but i narrowly escaped an accident at the corner of the road to pyrford, where a knot of people stood with their backs to me. they said nothing to me as i passed. i do not know what they knew of the things happening beyond the hill, nor do i know if the silent houses i passed on my way were sleeping securely, or deserted and empty, or harassed and watching against the terror of the night. from ripley until i came through pyrford i was in the valley of the wey, and the red glare was hidden from me. as i ascended the little hill beyond pyrford church the glare came into view again, and the trees about me shivered with the first intimation of the storm that was upon me. then i heard midnight pealing out from pyrford church behind me, and then came the silhouette of maybury hill, with its treetops and roofs black and sharp against the red. even as i beheld this a lurid green glare lit the road about me and showed the distant woods towards addlestone. i felt a tug at the reins. i saw that the driving clouds had been pierced as it were by a thread of green fire, suddenly lighting their confusion and falling into the field to my left. it was the third falling star! close on its apparition, and blindingly violet by contrast, danced out the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the thunder burst like a rocket overhead. the horse took the bit between his teeth and bolted. a moderate incline runs towards the foot of maybury hill, and down this we clattered. once the lightning had begun, it went on in as rapid a succession of flashes as i have ever seen. the thunderclaps, treading one on the heels of another and with a strange crackling accompaniment, sounded more like the working of a gigantic electric machine than the usual detonating reverberations. the flickering light was blinding and confusing, and a thin hail smote gustily at my face as i drove down the slope. at first i regarded little but the road before me, and then abruptly my attention was arrested by something that was moving rapidly down the opposite slope of maybury hill. at first i took it for the wet roof of a house, but one flash following another showed it to be in swift rolling movement. it was an elusive vision--a moment of bewildering darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red masses of the orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops of the pine trees, and this problematical object came out clear and sharp and bright. and this thing i saw! how can i describe it? a monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. a flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer. can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground? that was the impression those instant flashes gave. but instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand. then suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were parted, as brittle reeds are parted by a man thrusting through them; they were snapped off and driven headlong, and a second huge tripod appeared, rushing, as it seemed, headlong towards me. and i was galloping hard to meet it! at the sight of the second monster my nerve went altogether. not stopping to look again, i wrenched the horse's head hard round to the right, and in another moment the dog cart had heeled over upon the horse; the shafts smashed noisily, and i was flung sideways and fell heavily into a shallow pool of water. i crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in the water, under a clump of furze. the horse lay motionless (his neck was broken, poor brute!) and by the lightning flashes i saw the black bulk of the overturned dog cart and the silhouette of the wheel still spinning slowly. in another moment the colossal mechanism went striding by me, and passed uphill towards pyrford. seen nearer, the thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate machine driving on its way. machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange body. it picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking about. behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman's basket, and puffs of green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster swept by me. and in an instant it was gone. so much i saw then, all vaguely for the flickering of the lightning, in blinding highlights and dense black shadows. as it passed it set up an exultant deafening howl that drowned the thunder--"aloo! aloo!"--and in another minute it was with its companion, half a mile away, stooping over something in the field. i have no doubt this thing in the field was the third of the ten cylinders they had fired at us from mars. for some minutes i lay there in the rain and darkness watching, by the intermittent light, these monstrous beings of metal moving about in the distance over the hedge tops. a thin hail was now beginning, and as it came and went their figures grew misty and then flashed into clearness again. now and then came a gap in the lightning, and the night swallowed them up. i was soaked with hail above and puddle water below. it was some time before my blank astonishment would let me struggle up the bank to a drier position, or think at all of my imminent peril. not far from me was a little one-roomed squatter's hut of wood, surrounded by a patch of potato garden. i struggled to my feet at last, and, crouching and making use of every chance of cover, i made a run for this. i hammered at the door, but i could not make the people hear (if there were any people inside), and after a time i desisted, and, availing myself of a ditch for the greater part of the way, succeeded in crawling, unobserved by these monstrous machines, into the pine wood towards maybury. under cover of this i pushed on, wet and shivering now, towards my own house. i walked among the trees trying to find the footpath. it was very dark indeed in the wood, for the lightning was now becoming infrequent, and the hail, which was pouring down in a torrent, fell in columns through the gaps in the heavy foliage. if i had fully realised the meaning of all the things i had seen i should have immediately worked my way round through byfleet to street cobham, and so gone back to rejoin my wife at leatherhead. but that night the strangeness of things about me, and my physical wretchedness, prevented me, for i was bruised, weary, wet to the skin, deafened and blinded by the storm. i had a vague idea of going on to my own house, and that was as much motive as i had. i staggered through the trees, fell into a ditch and bruised my knees against a plant, and finally splashed out into the lane that ran down from the college arms. i say splashed, for the storm water was sweeping the sand down the hill in a muddy torrent. there in the darkness a man blundered into me and sent me reeling back. he gave a cry of terror, sprang sideways, and rushed on before i could gather my wits sufficiently to speak to him. so heavy was the stress of the storm just at this place that i had the hardest task to win my way up the hill. i went close up to the fence on the left and worked my way along its palings. near the top i stumbled upon something soft, and, by a flash of lightning, saw between my feet a heap of black broadcloth and a pair of boots. before i could distinguish clearly how the man lay, the flicker of light had passed. i stood over him waiting for the next flash. when it came, i saw that he was a sturdy man, cheaply but not shabbily dressed; his head was bent under his body, and he lay crumpled up close to the fence, as though he had been flung violently against it. overcoming the repugnance natural to one who had never before touched a dead body, i stooped and turned him over to feel for his heart. he was quite dead. apparently his neck had been broken. the lightning flashed for a third time, and his face leaped upon me. i sprang to my feet. it was the landlord of the spotted dog, whose conveyance i had taken. i stepped over him gingerly and pushed on up the hill. i made my way by the police station and the college arms towards my own house. nothing was burning on the hillside, though from the common there still came a red glare and a rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating up against the drenching hail. so far as i could see by the flashes, the houses about me were mostly uninjured. by the college arms a dark heap lay in the road. down the bad towards maybury bridge there were voices and the sound of feet, but i had not the courage to shout or to go to them. i let myself in with my latchkey, closed, locked and bolted the door, staggered to the foot of the staircase, and sat down. my imagination was full of those striding metallic monsters, and of the dead body smashed against the fence. i crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the wall, shivering violently. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 11: at the window i have already said that my storms of emotion have a trick of exhausting themselves. after a time i discovered that i was cold and wet, and with little pools of water about me on the stair carpet. i got up almost mechanically, vent into the dining room and drank some whiskey, and then i was moved to change my clothes. after i had done that i went upstairs to my study, but why i did so i do not know. the window of my study looks over the trees and the railway towards horsell common. in the hurry of our departure this window had been left open. the passage was dark, and, by contrast with the picture the window frame enclosed, the side of the room seemed impenetrably dark. i stopped short in the doorway. the thunderstorm had passed. the towers of the oriental college and the pine trees about it had gone, and very far away, lit by a vivid red glare, the common about the sand pits was visible. across the light, huge black shapes, grotesque and strange, moved busily to and fro. it seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction was on fire--a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flame, swaying and writhing with the gusts of the dying storm, and throwing a red reflection upon the cloud scud above. every now and then a haze of smoke from some nearer conflagration drove across the window and hid the martian shapes. i could not see what they were doing, nor the clear form of them, nor recognise the black objects they were busied upon. neither could i see the nearer fire, though the reflections of it danced on the wall and ceiling of the study. a sharp, resinous tang of burning was in the air. i closed the door noiselessly and crept towards the window. as i did so, the view opened out until, on the one hand, it reached to the houses about woking station, and on the other to the charred and blackened pine woods of byfleet. there was a light down below the hill, on the railway, near the arch, and several of the houses along the maybury road and the streets near the station were glowing ruins. the light upon the railway puzzled me at first; there were a black heap and a vivid glare, and to the right of that a row of yellow oblongs. then i perceived this was a wrecked train, the fore part smashed and on fire, the hinder carriages still upon the rails. between these three main centres of light--the houses, the train, and the burning country towards chobham stretched irregular patches of dark country, broken here and there by intervals of dimly glowing and smoking ground. it was the strangest spectacle, that black expanse set with fire. it reminded me, more than anything else, of the potteries at night. at first i could distinguish no people at all, though i peered intently for them. later i saw against the light of woking station a number of black figures hurrying one after the other across the line. and this was the little world in which i had been living securely for years, this fiery chaos! what had happened in the last seven hours i still did not know; nor did i know, though i was beginning to guess, the relation between these mechanical colossi and the sluggish lumps i had seen disgorged from the cylinder. with a queer feeling of impersonal interest i turned my desk chair to the window, sat down, and stared at the blackened country, and particularly at the three gigantic black things that were going to and fro in the glare about the sand pits. they seemed amazingly busy. i began to ask myself what they could be. were they intelligent mechanisms? such a thing i felt was impossible. or did a martian sit within each, ruling, directing, directing, much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body? i began to compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal. the storm had left the sky clear, and over the smoke of the burning land the little fading pin point of mars was dropping into the west, when a soldier came into my garden. i heard a slight scraping at the fence, and rousing myself from the lethargy that had fallen upon me, i looked down and saw him dimly, clambering over the palings. at the sight of another human being my torpor passed, and i leaned out of the window eagerly. "hist!" said i, in a whisper. he stopped astride of the fence in doubt. then he came over and across the lawn to the corner of the house. he bent down and stepped softly. "who's there?" he said, also whispering, standing under the window and peering up. "where are you going?" i asked. "god knows." "are you trying to hide?" "that's it." "come into the house," i said. i went down, unfastened the door, and let him in, and locked the door again. i could not see his face. he was hatless, and his coat was unbuttoned. "my god!" he said, as i drew him in. "what has happened?" i asked. "what hasn't?" in the obscurity i could see he made a gesture of despair. "they wiped us out--simply wiped us out," he repeated again and again. he followed me, almost mechanically, into the dining room. "take some whiskey," i said, pouring out a stiff dose. he drank it. then abruptly he sat down before the table, put his head on his arms, and began to sob and weep like a little boy, in a perfect passion of emotion, while i, with a curious forgetfulness of my own recent despair, stood beside him, wondering. it was a long time before he could steady his nerves to answer my questions, and then he answered perplexingly and brokenly. he was a driver in the artillery, and had only come into action about seven. at that time firing was going on across the common, and it was said the first party of martians were crawling slowly towards their second cylinder under cover of a metal shield. later this shield staggered up on tripod legs and became the first of the fighting-machines i had seen. the gun he drove had been unlimbered near horsell, in order to command the sand pits, and its arrival it was that had precipitated the action. as the limber gunners went to the rear, his horse trod in a rabbit hole and came down, throwing him into a depression of the ground. at the same moment the gun exploded behind him, the ammunition blew up, there was fire all about him, and he found himself lying under a heap of charred dead men and dead horses. "i lay still," he said, "scared out of my wits, with the fore quarter of a horse atop of me. we'd been wiped out. and the smell--good lord! like burnt meat! i was hurt across the back by the fall of the horse, and there i had to lie until i felt better. just like parade it had been a minute before--then stumble, bang, swish! "wiped out!" he said. he had hid under the dead horse for a long time, peeping out furtively across the common. the cardigan men had tried a rush, in skirmishing order, at the pit, simply to be swept out of existence. then the monster had risen to its feet, and had begun to walk leisurely to and fro across the common among the few fugitives, with its headlike hood turning about exactly like the head of a cowled human being. a kind of arm carried a complicated metallic case, about which green flashes scintillated, and out of the funnel of this there smoked the heat-ray. in a few minutes there was, so far as the soldier could see, not a living thing left upon the common, and every bush and tree upon it that was not already a blackened skeleton was burning. the hussars had been on the road beyond the curvature of the ground, and he saw nothing of them. he heard the maxims rattle for a time and then become silent. the giant saved woking station and its cluster of houses until the last; then in a moment the heat-ray was brought to bear, and the town became a heap of fiery ruins. then the thing shut off the heat-ray, and, turning its back upon the artilleryman, began to waddle away towards the smouldering pine woods that sheltered the second cylinder. as it did so a second glittering titan built itself up out of the pit. the second monster followed the first, and at that the artilleryman began to crawl very cautiously across the hot heather ash towards horsell. he managed to get alive into the ditch by the side of the road, and so escaped to woking. there his story became ejaculatory. the place was impassable. it seems there were a few people alive there, frantic for the most part, and many burned and scalded. he was turned aside by the fire, and hid among some almost scorching heaps of broken wall as one of the martian giants returned. he saw this one pursue a man, catch him up in one of its steely tentacles, and knock his head against the trunk of a pine tree. at last, after nightfall, the artilleryman made a rush for it and got over the railway embankment. since then he had been skulking along towards maybury, in the hope of getting out of danger londonward. people were hiding in trenches and cellars, and many of the survivors had made off towards woking village and send. he had been consumed with thirst until he found one of the water mains near the railway arch smashed, and the water bubbling out like a spring upon the road. that was the story i got from him, bit by bit. he grew calmer telling me and trying to make me see the things he had seen. he had eaten no food since midday, he told me early in his narrative, and i found some mutton and bread in the pantry and brought it into the room. we lit no lamp for fear of attracting the martians, and ever and again our hands would touch upon bread or meat. as he talked, things about us came darkly out of the darkness, and the trampled bushes and broken rose trees outside the window grew distinct. it would seem that a number of men or animals had rushed across the lawn. i began to see his face, blackened and haggard, as no doubt mine was also. when we had finished eating we went softly upstairs to my study, and i looked again out of the open window. in one night the valley had become a valley of ashes. the fires had dwindled now. where flames had been there were now streamers of smoke; but the countless ruins of shattered and gutted houses and blasted and blackened trees that the night had hidden stood out now gaunt and terrible in the pitiless light of dawn. yet here and there some object had had the luck to escaped--a white railway signal here, the end of a greenhouse there, white and fresh amid the wreckage. never before in the history of warfare had destruction been so indiscriminate and so universal. and shining with the growing light of the east, three of the metallic giants stood about the pit, their cowls rotating as though they were surveying the desolation they had made. it seemed to me that the pit had been enlarged, and ever and again puffs of vivid green vapour streamed up and out of it towards the brightening dawn--streamed up, whirled, broke, and vanished. beyond were the pillars of fire about chobham. they became pillars of bloodshot smoke at the first touch of day. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 12: what i saw of the destruction of weybridge and shepperton as the dawn grew brighter we withdrew from the window from which we had watched the martians, and went very quietly downstairs. the artilleryman agreed with me that the house was no place to stay in. he proposed, he said, to make his way londonward, and thence rejoin his battery--no. 12, of the horse artillery. my plan was to return at once to leatherhead; and so greatly had the strength of the martians impressed me that i had determined to take my wife to newhaven, and go with her out of the country forthwith. for i already perceived clearly that the country about london must inevitably be the scene of a disastrous struggle before such creatures as these could be destroyed. between us and leatherhead, however, lay the third cylinder, with its guarding giants. had i been alone, i think i should have taken my chance and struck across country. but the artilleryman dissuaded me: "its no kindness to the right sort of wife," he said, "to make her a widow"; and in the end i agreed to go with him, under cover of the woods, northward as far as street chobham before i parted with him. thence i would make a big detour by epsom to reach leatherhead. i should have started at once, but my companion had been in active service and he knew better than that. he made me ransack the house for a flask, which he filled with whiskey; and we lined every available pocket with packets of biscuits and slices of meat. then we crept out of the house, and ran as quickly as we could down the ill-made road by which i had come overnight. the houses seemed deserted. in the road lay a group of three charred bodies close together, struck dead by the heat-ray; and here and there were things that people had dropped--a clock, a slipper, a silver spoon, and the like poor valuables. at the corner turning up towards the post office a little cart, filled with boxes and furniture, and horseless, heeled over on a broken wheel. a cash box had been hastily smashed open and thrown under the debris. except the lodge at the orphanage, which was still on fire, none of the houses had suffered very greatly here. the heat-ray had shaved the chimney tops and passed. yet, save ourselves, there did not seem to be a living soul on maybury hill. the majority of the inhabitants had escaped, i suppose, by way of the old woking road--the road i had taken when i drove to leatherhead or they had hidden. we went down the lane, by the body of the man in black, sodden now from the overnight hail, and broke into the woods at the foot of the hill. we pushed through these towards the railway without meeting a soul. the woods across the line were but the scarred and blackened ruins of woods; for the most part the trees had fallen, but a certain proportion still stood, dismal grey stems, with dark brown foliage instead of green. on our side the fire had done no more than scorch the nearer trees; it had failed to secure its footing. in one place the woodmen had been at work on saturday; trees, felled and freshly trimmed, lay in a clearing, with heaps of sawdust by the sawing-machine and its engine. hard by was a temporary hut, deserted. there was not a breath of wind this morning, and everything was strangely still. even the birds were hushed, and as we hurried along i and the artilleryman talked in whispers and looked now and again over our shoulders. once or twice we stopped to listen. after a time we drew near the road, and as we did so we heard the clatter of hoofs and saw through the tree stems three cavalry soldiers riding slowly towards woking. we hailed them, and they halted while we hurried towards them. it was a lieutenant and a couple of privates of the 8th hussars, with a stand like a theodolite, which the artilleryman told me was a heliograph. "you are the first men i've seen coming this way this morning," said the lieutenant. "what's brewing?" his voice and face were eager. the men behind him stared curiously. the artilleryman jumped down the bank into the road and saluted. "gun destroyed last night, sir. have been hiding. trying to rejoin battery, sir. you'll come in sight of the martians, i expect, about half a mile along this road." "what the dickens are they like?" asked the lieutenant. "giants in armour, sir. hundred feet high. three legs and a body like aluminium, with a mighty great head in a hood, sir. "get out!" said the lieutenant. "what confounded nonsense!" "you'll see, sir. they carry a kind of box, sir, that shoots fire and strikes you dead." "what d'ye mean--a gun?" "no, sir," and the artilleryman began a vivid account of the heat-ray. halfway through, the lieutenant interrupted him and looked up at me. i was still standing on the bank by the side of the road. "it's perfectly true," i said. "well," said the lieutenant, "i suppose it's my business to see it too. look here"--to the artilleryman--"we're detailed here clearing people out of their houses. you'd better go along and report yourself to brigadier-general marvin, and tell him all you know. he's at weybridge. know the way?" "i do," i said; and he turned his horse southward again. "half a mile, you say?" said he. "at most," i answered, and pointed over the treetops southward. he thanked me and rode on, and we saw them no more. farther along we came upon a group of three women and two children in the road, busy clearing out a labourer's cottage. they had got hold of a little hand truck, and were piling it up with unclean-looking bundles and shabby furniture. they were all too assiduously engaged to talk to us as we passed. by byfleet station we emerged from the pine trees, and found the country calm and peaceful under the morning sunlight. we were far beyond the range of the heat-ray there, and had it not been for the silent desertion of some of the houses, the stirring movement of packing in others, and the knot of soldiers standing on the bridge over the railway and staring down the line towards woking, the day would have seemed very like any other sunday. several farm waggons and carts were moving creakily along the road to addlestone, and suddenly through the gate of a field we saw, across a stretch of flat meadow, six twelve-pounders standing nearly at equal distances pointing towards woking. the gunners stood by the guns waiting, and the ammunition waggons were at a business-like distance. the men stood almost as if under inspection. "that's, good," said i. "they will get one fair shot, at any rate. the artilleryman hesitated at the gate. "i shall go on," he said. farther on towards weybridge, just over the bridge, there were a number of men in white fatigue jackets throwing up a long rampart, and more guns behind. "it's bows and arrows against the lightning, anyhow," said the artilleryman. "they 'aven't seen that fire-beam yet." the officers who were not actively engaged stood and stared over the treetops southwestward, and the men digging would stop every now and again to stare in the same direction. byfleet was in a tumult; people packing, and a score of hussars, some of them dismounted, some on horseback, were hunting them about. three or four black government waggons, with crosses in white circles, and an old omnibus, among other vehicles, were being loaded in the village street. there were scores of people, most of them sufficiently sabbatical to have assumed their best clothes. the soldiers were having the greatest difficulty in making them realise the gravity of their position. we saw one shrivelled old fellow with a huge box and a score or more of flower pots containing orchids, angrily expostulating with the corporal who would leave them behind. i stopped and gripped his arm. "do you know what's over there?" i said, pointing at the pine tops that hid the martians. "eh?" said he, turning. "i was explainin' these is vallyble." "death!" i shouted. "death is coming! death!" and leaving him to digest that if he could, i hurried on after the artilleryman. at the corner i looked back. the soldier had left him, and he was still standing by his box, with the pots of orchids on the lid of it, and staring vaguely over the trees. no one in weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were established; the whole place was in such confusion as i had never seen in any town before. carts, carriages everywhere, the most astonishing miscellany of conveyances and horseflesh. the respectable inhabitants of the place, men in golf and boating costumes, wives prettily dressed, were packing, river-side loafers energetically helping, children excited, and, for the most part, highly delighted at this astonishing variation of their sunday experiences. in the midst of it all the worthy vicar was very pluckily holding an early celebration, and his bell was jangling out above the excitement. i and the artilleryman, seated on the step of the drinking fountain, made a very passable meal upon what we had brought with us. patrols of soldiers--here no longer hussars, but grenadiers in white--were warning people to move now or to take refuge in their cellars as soon as the firing began. we saw as we crossed the railway bridge that a growing crowd of people had assembled in and about the railway station, and the swarming platform was piled with boxes and packages. the ordinary traffic had been stopped, i believe, in order to allow of the passage of troops and guns to chertsey, and i have heard since that a savage struggle occurred for places in the special trains that were put on at a later hour. we remained at weybridge until midday, and at that hour we found ourselves at the place near shepperton lock where the wey and thames join. part of the time we spent helping two old women to pack a little cart. the wey has a treble mouth, and at this point boats are to be hired, and there was a ferry across the river. on the shepperton side was an inn with a lawn, and beyond that the tower of shepperton church--it has been replaced by a spire--rose above the trees. here we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives. as yet the flight had not grown to a panic, but there were already far more people than all the boats going to and fro could enable to cross. people came panting along under heavy burdens; one husband and wife were even carrying a small outhouse door between them, with some of their household goods piled thereon. one man told us he meant to try to get away from shepperton station. there was a lot of shouting, and one man was even jesting. the idea people seemed to have here was that the martians were simply formidable human beings, who might attack and sack the town, to be certainly destroyed in the end. every now and then people would glance nervously across the wey, at the meadows towards chertsey, but everything over there was still. across the thames, except just where the boats landed, everything was quiet, in vivid contrast with the surrey side. the people who landed there from the boats went tramping off down the lane. the big ferryboat had just made a journey. three or four soldiers stood on the lawn of the inn, staring and jesting at the fugitives, without offering to help. the inn was closed, as it was now within prohibited hours. "what's that?" cried a boatman, and "shut up, you fool!" said a man near me to a yelping dog. then the sound came again, this time from the direction of chertsey, a muffled thud--the sound of a gun. the fighting was beginning. almost immediately unseen batteries across the river to our right, unseen because of the trees, took up the chorus, firing heavily one after the other. a woman screamed. everyone stood arrested by the sudden stir of battle, near us and yet invisible to us. nothing was to be seen save flat meadows, cows feeding unconcernedly for the most part and silvery pollard willows motionless in the warm sunlight. "the sojers'll stop 'em," said a woman beside me, doubtfully. a haziness rose over the treetops. then suddenly we saw a rush of smoke far away up the river, a puff of smoke that jerked up into the air and hung; and forthwith the ground heaved under foot and a heavy explosion shook the air, smashing two or three windows in the houses near, and leaving us astonished. "here they are!" shouted a man in a blue jersey. "yonder! d'yer see them? yonder!" quickly, one after the other, one, two, three, four of the armoured martians appeared, far away over the little trees, across the flat meadows that stretched towards chertsey, and striding hurriedly towards the river. little cowled figures they seemed at first, going with a rolling motion and as fast as flying birds. then, advancing obliquely towards us, came a fifth. their armoured bodies glittered in the sun as they swept swiftly forward upon the guns, growing rapidly larger as they drew nearer. one on the extreme left, the remotest that is, flourished a huge case high in the air, and the ghostly, terrible heat-ray i had already seen on friday night smote towards chertsey, and struck the town. at sight of these strange, swift, and terrible creatures the crowd near the water's edge seemed to me to be for a moment horror-struck. there was no screaming or shouting, but a silence. then a hoarse murmur and a movement of feet--a splashing from the water. a man, too frightened to drop the portmanteau he carried on his shoulder, swung round and sent me staggering with a blow from the corner of his burden. a woman thrust at me with her hand and rushed past me. i turned with the rush of the people, but i was not too terrified for thought. the terrible heat-ray was in my mind. to get under water! that was it! "get under water!" i shouted, unheeded. i faced about again, and rushed towards the approaching martian, rushed right down the gravelly beach and headlong into the water. others did the same. a boatload of people putting back came leaping out as i rushed past. the stones under my feet were muddy and slippery, and the river was so low that i ran perhaps twenty feet scarcely waist-deep. then, as the martian towered overhead scarcely a couple of hundred yards away, i flung myself forward under the surface. the splashes of the people in the boats leaping into the river sounded like thunderclaps in my ears. people were landing hastily on both sides of the river. but the martian machine took no more notice for the moment of the people running this way and that than a man would of the confusion of ants in a nest against which his foot has kicked. when, half suffocated, i raised my head above water, the martian's hood pointed at the batteries that were still firing across the river, and as it advanced it swung loose what must have been the generator of the heat-ray. in another moment it was on the bank, and in a stride wading halfway across. the knees of its foremost legs bent at the farther bank, and in another moment it had raised itself to its full height again, close to the village of shepperton. forthwith the six guns which, unknown to anyone on the right bank, had been hidden behind the outskirts of that village, fired simultaneously. the sudden near concussion, the last close upon the first, made my heart jump. the monster was already raising the case generating the heat-ray as the first shell burst six yards above the hood. i gave a cry of astonishment i saw and thought nothing of the other four martian monsters; my attention was riveted upon the nearer incident. simultaneously two other shells burst in the air near the body as the hood twisted round in time to receive, but not in time to dodge, the fourth shell. the shell burst clean in the face of the thing. the hood bulged, flashed, was whirled off in a dozen tattered fragments of red flesh and glittering metal. "hit!" shouted i, with something between a scream and a cheer. i heard answering shouts from the people in the water about me. i could have leaped out of the water with that momentary exultation. the decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant; but it did not fall over. it recovered its balance by a miracle, and, no longer heeding its steps and with the camera that fired the heat-ray now rigidly upheld, it reeled swiftly upon shepperton. the living intelligence, the martian within the hood, was slain and splashed to the four winds of heaven, and the thing was now but a mere intricate device of metal whirling to destruction. it drove along in a straight line, incapable of guidance. it struck the tower of shepperton church, smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have done, swerved aside, blundered on, and collapsed with tremendous force into the river out of my sight. a violent explosion shook the air, and a spout of water, steam, mud, and shattered metal shot far up into the sky. as the camera of the heat-ray hit the water, the latter had immediately flashed into steam. in another moment a huge wave, like a muddy tidal bore but almost scaldingly hot, came sweeping round the bend upstream. i saw people struggling shorewards, and heard their screaming and shouting faintly above the seething and roar of the martian's collapse. for a moment i heeded nothing of the heat, forgot the patent need of self-preservation. i splashed through the tumultuous water, pushing aside a man in black to do so, until i could see round the bend. half a dozen deserted boats pitched aimlessly upon the confusion of the waves. the fallen martian came into sight downstream, lying across the river, and for the most part submerged. thick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage, and through the tumultuously whirling wisps i could see, intermittently and vaguely, the gigantic limbs churning the water and flinging a splash and spray of mud and froth into the air. the tentacles swayed and struck like living arms, and, save for the helpless purposelessness of these movements, it was as if some wounded thing were struggling for its life amid the waves. enormous quantities of a ruddy-brown fluid were spurting up in noisy jets out of the machine. my attention was diverted from this death flurry by a furious yelling, like that of the thing called a siren in our manufacturing towns. a man, knee-deep near the towing path, shouted inaudibly to me and pointed. looking back, i saw the other martians advancing with gigantic strides down the riverbank from the direction of chertsey. the shepperton guns spoke this time unavailingly. at that i ducked at once under water, and, holding my breath until movement was an agony, blundered painfully ahead under the surface as long as i could. the water was in a tumult about me, and rapidly growing hotter. when for a moment i raised my head to take breath and throw the hair and water from my eyes, the steam was rising in a whirling white fog that at first hid the martians altogether. the noise was deafening. then i saw them dimly, colossal figures of grey, magnified by the mist. they had passed by me, and two were stooping over the frothing, tumultuous ruins of their comrade. the third and fourth stood beside him in the water, one perhaps two hundreds yards from me, the other towards laleham. the generators of the heat-rays waved high, and the hissing beams smote down this way and that. the air was full of sound, a deafening and confusing conflict of noises--the clangorous din of the martians, the crash of falling houses, the thud of trees, fences, sheds flashing into flame, and the crackling and roaring of fire. dense black smoke was leaping up to mingle with the steam from the river, and as the heat-ray went to and fro over weybridge its impact was marked by flashes of incandescent white, that gave place at once to a smoky dance of lurid flames. the nearer houses still stood intact, awaiting their fate, shadowy, faint, and pallid in the steam, with the fire behind them going to and fro. for a moment perhaps i stood there, breast-high in the almost boiling water, dumbfounded at my position, hopeless of escape. through the reek i could see the people who had been with me in the river scrambling out of the water through the reeds, like little frogs hurrying through grass from the advance of a man, or running to and fro in utter dismay on the towing path. then suddenly the white flashes of the heat-ray came leaping towards me. the houses caved in as they dissolved at its touch, and darted out flames; the trees changed to fire with a roar. the ray flickered up and down the towing path, licking off the people who ran this way and that, and came down to the water's edge not fifty yards from where i stood. it swept across the river to shepperton, and the water in its track rose in a boiling weal crested with steam. i turned shoreward. in another moment the huge wave, well-nigh at the boiling-point, had rushed upon me. i screamed aloud, and scalded, half blinded, agonised, i staggered through the leaping, hissing water towards the shore. had my foot stumbled, it would have been the end. i fell helplessly, in full sight of the martians, upon the broad, bare gravelly spit that runs down to mark the angle of the wey and thames. i expected nothing but death. i have a dim memory of the foot of a martian coming down within a score of yards of my head, driving straight into the loose gravel, whirling it this way and that, and lifting again; of a long suspense, and then of the four carrying the debris of their comrade between them, now clear and presently faint through a veil of smoke, receding interminably, as it seemed to me, across a vast space of river and meadow. and then, very slowly; i realised that by a miracle i had escaped. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 14: in london my younger brother was in london when the martians fell at woking. he was a medical student, working for an imminent examination, and he heard nothing of the arrival until saturday morning. the morning papers on saturday contained, in addition to lengthy special articles on the planet mars, on life in the planets, and so forth, a brief and vaguely worded telegram, all the more striking for its brevity. the martians, alarmed by the approach of a crowd had killed a number of people with a quick-firing gun so the story ran. the telegram concluded with the words "formidable as they seem to be, the martians have not moved from the pit into which they have fallen, and, indeed, seem incapable of doing so. probably this is due to the relative strength of the earth's gravitational energy." on that last text their leader-writer expanded very comfortingly. of course all the students in the crammer's biology class, to which my brother went that day, were intensely interested, but there were no signs of any unusual excitement in the streets. the afternoon papers puffed scraps of news under big headlines. they had nothing to tell beyond the movements of troops about the common, and the burning of the pine woods between woking and weybridge, until eight. then the st. james's gazette in an extra-special edition, announced the bare fact of the interruption of telegraphic communication. this was thought to be due to the falling of burning pine trees across the line. nothing more of the fighting was known that night, the night of my drive to leatherhead and back. my brother felt no anxiety about us, as he knew from the description in the papers that the cylinder was a good two miles from my house. he made up his mind to run down that night to me, in order, as he says, to see the things before they were killed. he despatched a telegram, which never reached me, about four o'clock, and spent the evening at a music hall. in london, also, on saturday night there was a thunderstorm, and my brother reached waterloo in a cab. on the platform from which the midnight train usually starts he learned, after some waiting, that an accident prevented trains from reaching woking that night. the nature of the accident he could not ascertain; indeed, the railway authorities did not clearly know at that time. there was very little excitement in the station, as the officials, failing to realise that anything further than a breakdown between byfleet and woking junction had occurred, were running the theatre trains which usually passed through woking round by virginia water or guildford. they were busy making the necessary arrangements to alter the route of the southampton and portsmouth sunday league excursions. a nocturnal newspaper reporter, mistaking my brother for the traffic manager, to whom he bears a slight resemblance, waylaid and tried to interview him. few people, excepting the railway officials, connected the breakdown with the martians. i have read, in another account of these events, that on sunday morning "all london was electrified by the news from woking." as a matter of fact, there was nothing to justify that every extravagant phrase. plenty of londoners did not hear of the martians until the panic of monday morning. those who did took some time to realise all that the hastily worded telegrams in the sunday papers conveyed. the majority of people in london do not read sunday papers. the habit of personal security, moreover, is so deeply fixed in the londoner's mind, and startling intelligence so much a matter of course in the papers, that they could read without any personal tremors: "about seven o'clock last night the martians came out of the cylinder, and, moving about under an armour of metallic shields, have completely wrecked woking station with the adjacent houses, and massacred an entire battalion of the cardigan regiment. no details are known. maxims have been absolutely useless against their armour; the field guns have been disabled by them. flying hussars have been galloping into chertsey. the martians appear to be moving slowly towards chertsey or windsor. great anxiety prevails in west surrey, and earthworks are being thrown up to check the advance londonward." that was how the sunday sun put it, and a clever and remarkably prompt "handbook" article in the referee compared the affair to a menagerie suddenly let loose in a village. no one in london knew positively of the nature of the armoured martians, and there was still a fixed idea that these monsters must be sluggish: "crawling," "creeping painfully"--such expressions occurred in almost all the earlier reports. none of the telegrams could have been written by an eye-witness of their advance. the sunday papers printed separate editions as further news came to hand, some even in default of it. but there was practically nothing more to tell people until late in the afternoon, when the authorities gave the press agencies the news in their possession. it was stated that the people of walton and weybridge, and all the district, were pouring along the roads londonward, and that was all. my brother went to church at the foundling hospital in the morning, still in ignorance of what had happened on the previous night. there he heard allusions made to the invasion, and a special prayer for peace. coming out, he bought a referee. he became alarmed at the news in this, and went again to waterloo station to find out if communication were restored. the omnibuses, carriages, cyclists, and innumerable people walking in their best clothes seemed scarcely affected by the strange intelligence that the news venders were disseminating. people were interested, or, if alarmed, alarmed only on account of the local residents. at the station he heard for the first time that the windsor and chertsey lines were now interrupted. the porters told him that several remarkable telegrams had been received in the morning from byfleet and chertsey stations, but that these had abruptly ceased. my brother could get very little precise detail out of them. "there's fighting going on about weybridge," was the extent of their information. the train service was now very much disorganised. quite a number of people who had been expecting friends from places on the south-western network were standing about the station. one grey-headed old gentleman came and abused the south-western company bitterly to my brother. "it wants showing up," he said. one or two trains came in from richmond, putney, and kingston, containing people who had gone out for a day's boating and found the locks closed and a feeling of panic in the air. a man in a blue and white blazer addressed my brother, full of strange tidings. "there's hosts of people driving into kingston in traps and carts and things, with boxes of valuables and all that," he said. "they come from molesey and weybridge and walton, and they say there's been guns heard at chertsey, heavy firing, and that mounted soldiers have told them to get off at once before the martians are coming. we heard guns firing at hampton court station, but we thought it was thunder. what the dickens does it all mean? the martians can't get out of their pit, can they?" my brother could not tell him. afterwards he found that the vague feeling of alarm had spread to the clients of the underground railway, and that the sunday excursionists began to return from all over the south-western "lung"--barnes, wimbledon, richmond park, kew, and so forth--at unnaturally early hours; but not a soul had anything more than vague hearsay to tell of. everyone connected with the terminus seemed ill-tempered. about five o'clock the gathering crowd in the station was immensely excited by the opening of the line of communication, which is almost invariably closed, between the south-eastern and the south-western stations, and the passage of carriage trucks bearing huge guns and carriages crammed with soldiers. these were the guns that were brought up from woolwich and chatham to cover kingston. there was an exchange of pleasantries: "you'll get eaten!" "we're the beast-tamers!" and so forth. a little while after that a squad of police came into the station and began to clear the public off the platforms, and my brother went out into the street again. the church bells were ringing for evensong, and a squad of salvation army lassies came singing down waterloo road. on the bridge a number of loafers were watching a curious brown scum that came drifting down the stream in patches. the sun was just setting, and the clock tower and the houses of parliament rose against one of the most peaceful skies it is possible to imagine, a sky of gold, barred with long transverse stripes of reddish-purple cloud. there was talk of a floating body. one of the men there, a reservist he said he was, told my brother he had seen the heliograph flickering in the west. in wellington street my brother met a couple of sturdy roughs who had just rushed out of fleet street with still wet newspapers and staring placards. "dreadful catastrophe!" they bawled one to the other down wellington street. "fighting at weybridge! full description! repulse of the martians! london in danger!" he had to give threepence for a copy of that paper. then it was, and then only, that he realised something of the full power and terror of these monsters. he learned that they were not merely a handful of small sluggish creatures, but that they were minds swaying vast mechanical bodies; and that they could move swiftly and smite with such power that even the mightiest guns could not stand against them. they were described as "vast spider like machines, nearly a hundred feet high, capable of the speed of an express train, and able to shoot out a beam of intense heat." masked batteries, chiefly of field guns, had been planted in the country about horsell common, and especially between the woking district and london. five of the machines had been seen moving towards the thames, and one, by a happy chance, had been destroyed. in the other cases the shells had missed, and the batteries had been at once annihilated by the heat-rays. heavy losses of soldiers were mentioned, but the tone of the despatch was optimistic. the martians had been repulsed; they were not invulnerable. they had retreated to their triangle of cylinders again, in the circle about woking. signallers with heliographs were pushing forward upon them from all sides. guns were in rapid transit from windsor, portsmouth, aldershot, woolwich--even from the north; among others, long wire-guns of ninety-five tons from woolwich. altogether one hundred and sixteen were in position or being hastily placed, chiefly covering london. never before in england had there been such a vast or rapid concentration of military material. any further cylinders that fell, it was hoped, could be destroyed at once by high explosives, which were being rapidly manufactured and distributed. no doubt, ran the report, the situation was of the strangest and gravest description, but the public was exhorted to avoid and discourage panic. no doubt the martians were strange and terrible in the extreme, but at the outside there could not be more than twenty of them against our millions. the authorities had reason to suppose, from the size of the cylinders, that at the outside there could not be more than five in each cylinder--fifteen altogether. and one at least was disposed of--perhaps more. the public would be fairly warned of the approach of danger, and elaborate measures were being taken for the protection of the people in the threatened southwestern suburbs. and so, with reiterated assurances of the safety of london and the ability of the authorities to cope with the difficulty, this quasi-proclamation closed. this was printed in enormous type on paper so fresh that it was still wet, and there had been no time to add a word of comment. it was curious, my brother said, to see how ruthlessly the usual contents of the paper had been hacked and taken out to give this place. all down wellington street people could be seen fluttering out the pink sheets and reading, and the strand was suddenly noisy with the voices of an army of hawkers following these pioneers. men came scrambling off buses to secure copies. certainly this news excited people intensely, whatever their previous apathy. the shutters of a map shop in the strand were being taken down, my brother said, and a man in his sunday raiment, lemon-yellow gloves even, was visible inside the window hastily fastening maps of surrey to the glass. going on along the strand to trafalgar square, the paper in his hand, my brother saw some of the fugitives from west surrey. there was a man with his wife and two boys and some articles of furniture in a cart such as greengrocers use. he was driving from the direction of westminster bridge; and close behind him came a hay waggon with five or six respectable-looking people in it, and some boxes and bundles. the faces of these people were haggard, and their entire appearance contrasted conspicuously with the sabbath-best appearance of the people on the omnibuses. people in fashionable clothing peeped at them out of cabs. they stopped at the square as if undecided which way to take, and finally turned eastward along the strand. some way behind these came a man in workday clothes, riding one of those oldfashioned tricycles with a small front wheel. he was dirty and white in the face. my brother turned down towards victoria, and met a number of such people. he had a vague idea that he might see something of me. he noticed an unusual number of police regulating the traffic. some of the refugees were exchanging news with the people on the omnibuses. one was professing to have seen the martians. "boilers on stilts, i tell you, striding along like men." most of them were excited and animated by their strange experience. beyond victoria the public-houses were doing a lively trade with these arrivals. at all the street corners groups of people were reading papers, talking excitedly, or staring at these unusual sunday visitors. they seemed to increase as night drew on, until at last the roads, my brother said, were like epsom high street on a derby day. my brother addressed several of these fugitives and got unsatisfactory answers from most. none of them could tell him any news of woking except one man, who assured him that woking had been entirely destroyed on the previous night. "i come from byfleet," he said; "man on a bicycle came through the place in the early morning, and ran from door to door warning us to come away. then came soldiers. we went out to look, and there were clouds of smoke to the south--nothing but smoke, and not a soul coming that way. then we heard the guns at chertsey, and folks coming from weybridge. so i've locked up my house and come on." at the time there was a strong feeling in the streets that the authorities were to blame for their incapacity to dispose of the invaders without all this inconvenience. about eight o'clock a noise of heavy firing was distinctly audible all over the south of london. my brother could not hear it for the traffic in the main thoroughfares, but by striking through the quiet back streets to the river he was able to distinguish it quite plainly. he walked from westminster to his apartments near regent's park, about two. he was now very anxious on my account, and disturbed at the evident magnitude of the trouble. his mind was inclined to run, even as mine had run on saturday, on military details. he thought of all those silent, expectant guns, of the suddenly nomadic countryside; he tried to imagine "boilers on stilts" a hundred feet high. there were one or two cartloads of refugees passing along oxford street, and several in the marylebone road, but so slowly was the news spreading that regent street and portland place were full of their usual sunday-night promenaders, albeit they talked in groups, and along the edge of regent's park there were as many silent couples "walking out" together under the scattered gas lamps as ever there had been. the night was warm and still, and a little oppressive; the sound of guns continued intermittently, and after midnight there seemed to be sheet lightning in the south. he read and re-read the paper, fearing the worst had happened to me. he was restless, and after supper prowled out again aimlessly. he returned and tried in vain to divert his attention to his examination notes. he went to bed a little after midnight, and was awakened from lurid dreams in the small hours of monday by the sound of door knockers, feet running in the street, distant drumming, and a clamour of bells. red reflections danced on the ceiling. for a moment he lay astonished, wondering whether day had come or the world gone mad. then he jumped out of bed and ran to the window. his room was an attic and as he thrust his head out, up and down the street there were a dozen echoes to the noise of his window sash, and heads in every kind of night disarray appeared. enquiries were being shouted. "they are coming!" bawled a policeman, hammering at the door; "the martians are coming!" and hurried to the next door. the sound of drumming and trumpeting came from the albany street barracks, and every church within earshot was hard at work killing sleep with a vehement disorderly tocsin. there was a noise of doors opening, and window after window in the houses opposite flashed from darkness into yellow illumination. up the street came galloping a closed carriage, bursting abruptly into noise at the corner, rising to a clattering climax under the window, and dying away slowly in the distance. close on the rear of this came a couple of cabs, the forerunners of a long procession of flying vehicles, going for the most part to chalk farm station, where the north-western special trains were loading up, instead of coming down the gradient into euston. for a long time my brother stared out of the window in blank astonishment, watching the policemen hammering at door after door, and delivering their incomprehensible message. then the door behind him opened, and the man who lodged across the landing came in, dressed only in shirt, trousers, and slippers, his braces loose about his waist, his hair, disordered from his pillow. "what the devil is it?" be asked. "a fire? what a devil of a row!" they both craned their heads out of the window, straining to hear what the policemen were shouting. people were coming out of the side streets, and standing in groups at the corners talking. "what the devil is it all about?" said my brother's fellow lodger. my brother answered him vaguely and began to dress, running with each garment to the window in order to miss nothing of the growing excitement. and presently men selling unnaturally early newspapers came bawling into the street: "london in danger of suffocation! the kingston and richmond defences forced! fearful massacres in the thames valley!" and all about him--in the rooms below, in the houses on each side and across the road, and behind in the park terraces and in the hundred other streets of that part of marylebone, and the westbourne park district and st. pancras, and westward and northward in kilburn and st. john's wood and hampstead, and eastward in shoreditch and highbury and haggerston and hoxton, and, indeed, through all the vastness of london from ealing to east ham--people were rubbing their eyes, and opening windows to stare out and ask aimless questions, dressing hastily as the first breath of the coming storm of fear blew through the streets. it was the dawn of the great panic. london, which had gone to bed on sunday night oblivious and inert, was awakened, in the small hours of monday morning, to a vivid sense of danger. unable from his window to learn what was happening, my brother went down and out into the street, just as the sky between the parapets of the houses grew pink with the early dawn. the flying people on foot and in vehicles grew more numerous every moment. "black smoke!" he heard people crying, and again "black smoke!" the contagion of such a unanimous fear was inevitable. as my brother hesitated on the door-step, he saw another news vender approaching, and got a paper forthwith. the man was running away with the rest, and selling his papers for a shilling each as he ran--a grotesque mingling of profit and panic. and from this paper my brother read that catastrophic despatch of the commander-in-chief: "the martians are able to discharge enormous clouds of a black and poisonous vapour by means of rockets. they have smothered our batteries, destroyed richmond, kingston, and wimbledon, and are advancing slowly towards london, destroying everything on the way. it is impossible to stop them. there is no safety from the black smoke but in instant flight." that was all, but it was enough. the whole population of the great six-million city was stirring, slipping, running; presently it would be pouring en masse northward. "black smoke!" the voices cried. "fire!" the bells of the neighbouring church made a jangling tumult, a cart carelessly driven smashed, amid shrieks and curses, against the water trough up the street. sickly yellow lights went to and fro in the houses, and some of the passing cabs flaunted unextinguished lamps. and overhead the dawn was growing brighter, clear and steady and calm. he heard footsteps running to and fro in the rooms, and up and down stairs behind him. his landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in dressing gown and shawl; her husband followed ejaculating. as my brother began to realise the import of all these things, he turned hastily to his own room, put all his available money--some ten pounds altogether--into his pockets, and went out again into the streets. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 15: what had happened in surrey it was while the curate had sat and talked so wildly to me under the hedge in the flat meadow's near halliford, and while my brother was catching the fugitives stream over westminster bridge, that the martians had resumed the offensive. so far as one can ascertain from the conflicting accounts that have been put forth, the majority of them remained busied with preparations in the horsell pit until nine that night, hurrying on some operation that disengaged huge volumes of green smoke. but three certainly came out about eight o'clock and, advancing slowly and cautiously, made their way through byfleet and pyrford towards ripley and weybridge, and so came in sight of the expectant batteries against the setting sun. these martians did not advance in a body, but in a line, each perhaps a mile and a half from his nearest fellow. they communicated with one another by means of sirenlike howls, running up and down the scale from one note to another. it was this howling and firing of the guns at ripley and st. george's hill that we had heard at upper halliford. the ripley gunners, unseasoned artillery volunteers who ought never to have been placed in such a position, fired one wild, premature, ineffectual volley, and bolted on horse and foot through the deserted village, while the martian, without using his heat-ray, walked serenely over their guns, stepped gingerly among them, passed in front of them, and so came unexpectedly upon the guns in painshill park, which he destroyed. the st. george's hill men, however, were better led or of a better mettle. hidden by a pine wood as they were, they seem to have been quite unsuspected by the martian nearest to them. they laid their guns as deliberately as if they had been on parade, and fired at about a thousand yards' range. the shells flashed all round him, and he was seen to advance a few paces, stagger, and go down. everybody yelled together, and the guns were reloaded in frantic haste. the overthrown martian set up a prolonged ululation, and immediately a second glittering giant, answering him appeared over the trees to the south. it would seem that a leg of the tripod had been smashed by one of the shells. the whole of the second volley flew wide of the martian on the ground, and, simultaneously, both his companions brought their heat-rays to bear on the battery. the ammunition blew up, the pine trees all about the guns flashed into fire, and only one or two of the men who were already running over the crest of the hill escaped. after this it would seem that the three took counsel together and halted, and the scouts who were watching them report that they remained absolutely stationary for the next half hour. the martian who bad been overthrown crawled tediously out of his hood, a small brown figure, oddly suggestive from that distance of a speck of blight, and apparently engaged in the repair of his support. about nine he had finished, for his cowl was then seen above the trees again. it was a few minutes past nine that night when these three sentinels were joined by four other martians, each carrying a thick black tube. a similar tube was handed to each of the three, and the seven proceeded to distribute themselves at equal distances along a curved line between st. george's hill, weybridge, and the village of send, southwest of ripley. a dozen rockets sprang out of the hills before them so soon as they began to move, and warned the waiting batteries about ditton and esher. at the same time four of their fighting machines, similarly armed with tubes, crossed the river, and two of them, black against the western sky, came into sight of myself and the curate as we hurried wearily and painfully along the road that runs northward out of halliford. they moved, as it seemed to us, upon a cloud, for a milky mist covered the fields and rose to a third of their height. at this sight the curate cried faintly in his throat, and began running; but i knew it was no good running from a martian, and i turned aside and crawled through dewy nettles and brambles into the broad ditch by the side of the road. he looked back, saw what i was doing, and turned to join me. the two halted, the nearer to us standing and facing sunbury, the remoter being a grey indistinctness towards the evening star, away towards staines. the occasional howling of the martians had ceased; they took up their positions in the huge crescent about their cylinders in absolute silence. it was a crescent with twelve miles between its horns. never since the devising of gunpowder was the beginning of a battle so still. to us and to an observer about ripley it would have had precisely the same effect--the martians seemed in solitary possession of the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the stars, the afterglow of the daylight, and the ruddy glare from st. george's hill and the woods of painshill. but facing that crescent everywhere--at staines, hounslow, ditton, esher, ockham, behind hills and woods south of the river, and across the flat grass meadows to the north of it, wherever a cluster of trees or village houses gave sufficient cover--the guns were waiting. the signal rockets burst and rained their sparks through the night and vanished, and the spirit of all those watching batteries rose to a tense expectation. the martians had but to advance into the line of fire, and instantly those motionless black forms of men, those guns glittering so darkly in the early night, would explode into a thunderous fury of battle. no doubt the thought that was uppermost in a thousand of those vigilant minds, even as it was uppermost in mine, was the riddle--how much they understood of us. did they grasp that we in our millions were organised, disciplined, working together? or did they interpret our spurts of fire, the sudden stinging of our shells, our steady investment of their encampment, as we should the furious unanimity of onslaught in a disturbed hive of bees? did they dream they might exterminate us? (at that time no one knew what food they needed.) a hundred such questions struggled together in my mind as i watched that vast sentinel shape. and in the back of my mind was the sense of all the huge unknown and hidden forces londonward. had they prepared pitfalls? were the powder mills at hounslow ready as a snare? would the londoners have the heart and courage to make a greater moscow of their mighty province of houses? then, after an interminable time, as it seemed to us, crouching and peering through the hedge, came a sound like the distant concussion of a gun. another nearer, and then another. and then the martian beside us raised his tube on high and discharged it, gunwise, with a heavy report that made the ground heave. the one towards staines answered him. there was no flash, no smoke, simply that loaded detonation. i was so excited by these heavy minute-guns following one another that i so far forgot my personal safety and my scalded hands as to clamber up into the hedge and stare towards sunbury. as i did so a second report followed, and a big projectile hurtled overhead towards hounslow. i expected at least to see smoke or fire, or some such evidence of its work. but all i saw was the deep blue sky above, with one solitary star, and the white mist spreading wide and low beneath. and there had been no crash, no answering explosion. the silence was restored; the minute lengthened to three. "what has happened?" said the curate, standing up beside me. "heaven knows!" said i. a bat flickered by and vanished. a distant tumult of shouting began and ceased. i looked again at the martian, and saw he was now moving eastward along the riverbank, with a swift, rolling motion. every moment i expected the fire of some hidden battery to spring upon him; but the evening calm was unbroken. the figure of the martian grew smaller as he receded, and presently the mist and the gathering night had swallowed him up. by a common impulse we clambered higher. towards sunbury was a dark appearance, as though a conical hill had suddenly come into being there, hiding our view of the farther country; and then, remoter across the river, over walton, we saw another such summit. these hill-like forms grew lower and broader even as we stared. moved by a sudden thought, i looked northward, and there i perceived a third of these cloudy black kopjes had risen. everything had suddenly became very still. far away to the southeast, marking the quiet, we heard the martians hooting to one another, and then the air quivered again with the distant thud of their guns. but the earthly artillery made no reply. now at the time we could not understand these things, but later i was to learn the meaning of these ominous kopjes that gathered in the twilight. each of the martians, standing in the great crescent i have described, had discharged, by means of the gunlike tube he carried, a huge canister over whatever hill, copse, cluster of houses, or other possible cover for guns, chanced to be in front of him. some fired only one of these, some two--as in the case of the one we had seen; the one at ripley is said to have discharged no fewer than five at that time. these canisters smashed on striking the ground--they did not explode --and incontinently disengaged an enormous volume of heavy, inky vapour, coiling and pouring upward in a huge and ebony cumulus cloud, a gaseous hill that sank and spread itself slowly over the surrounding country. and the touch of that vapour, the inhaling of its pungent wisps, was death to all that breathes. it was heavy, this vapour, heavier than the densest smoke, so that, after the first tumultuous uprush and outflow of its impact, it sank down through the air and poured over the ground in a manner rather liquid than gaseous, abandoning the hills, and streaming into the valleys and ditches and watercourses even as i have heard the carbonic-acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do. and where it came upon water some chemical action occurred, and the surface would be instantly covered with a powdery scum that sank slowly and made way for more. the scum was absolutely insoluble, and it is a strange thing, seeing the instant effect of the gas, that one could drink without hurt the water from which it had been strained. the vapour did not diffuse as a true gas would do. it hung together in banks, flowing sluggishly down the slope of the land and driving reluctantly before the wind, and very slowly it combined with the mist and moisture of the air, and sank to the earth in the form of dust. save that an unknown element giving a group of four lines in the blue of the spectrum is concerned, we are still entirely ignorant of the nature of this substance. once the tumultuous upheaval of its dispersion was over, the black smoke clung so closely to the ground, even before its precipitation, that fifty feet up in the air, on the roofs and upper stories of high houses and on great trees, there was a chance of escaping its poison altogether, as was proved even that night at street cobham and ditton. the man who escaped at the former place tells a wonderful story of the strangeness of its coiling flow, and how he looked down from the church spire and saw the houses of the village rising like ghosts out of its inky nothingness. for a day and a half he remained there, weary, starving and sun-scorched, the earth under the blue sky and against the prospect of the distant hills a velvet-black expanse, with red roofs, green trees, and, later, black-veiled shrubs and gates, barns, outhouses, and walls, rising here and there into the sunlight. but that was at street cobham, where the black vapour was allowed to remain until it sank of its own accord into the ground as a rule the martians, when it had served its purpose, cleared the air of it again by wading into it and directing a jet of steam upon it. this they did with the vapour banks near us, as we saw in the starlight from the window of a deserted house at upper halliford, whither we had returned. from there we could see the searchlights on richmond hill and kingston hill going to and fro, and about eleven the windows rattled, and we heard the sound of the huge siege guns that had been put in position there. these continued intermittently for the space of a quarter of an hour, sending chance shots at the invisible martians at hampton and ditton, and then the pale beams of the electric light vanished, and were replaced by a bright red glow. then the fourth cylinder fell--a brilliant green meteor--as i learned afterwards, in bushey park. before the guns on the richmond and kingston line of hills began, there was a fitful cannonade far away in the southwest, due, i believe, to guns being fired haphazard before the black vapour could overwhelm the gunners. so, setting about it as methodically as men might smoke out a wasps' nest, the martians spread this strange stifling vapour over the londonward country. the horns of the crescent slowly moved apart, until at last they formed a line front hanwell to coombe and malden. all night through their destructive tubes advanced. never once, after the martian at st. george's hill was brought down, did they give the artillery the ghost of a chance against them. wherever there was a possibility of guns being laid for them unseen, a fresh canister of the black vapour was discharged, and where the guns were openly displayed the heat-ray was brought to bear. by midnight the blazing trees along the slopes of richmond park and the glare of kingston hill threw their light upon a network of black smoke, blotting out the whole valley of the thames and extending as far as the eye could reach. and through this two martians slowly waded, and turned their hissing steam jets this way and that. they were sparing of the heat-ray that night, either because they had but a limited supply of material for its production or because they did not wish to destroy the country but only to crush and overawe the opposition they had aroused. in the latter aim they certainly succeeded. sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to their movements. after that no body of men would stand against them, so hopeless was the enterprise. even the crews of the torpedo-boats and destroyers that had brought their quick-firers up the thames refused to stop, mutinied, and went down again. the only offensive operation men ventured upon after that night was the preparation of mines and pitfalls, and even in that their energies were frantic and spasmodic. one has to imagine, as well as one may, the fate of those batteries towards esher, waiting so tensely in the twilight. survivors there were none. one may picture the orderly expectation, the officers alert and watchful, the gunners ready, the ammunition piled to hand, the limber gunners with their horses and waggons, the groups of civilian spectators standing as near as they were permitted, the evening stillness, the ambulances and hospital tents with the burned and wounded from weybridge; then the dull resonance of the shots the martians fired, and the clumsy projectile whirling over the trees and houses and smashing amid the neighbouring fields. one may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque cone of smoke. and then night and extinction--nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead. before dawn the black vapour was pouring through the streets of richmond, and the disintegrating organism of government was, with a last expiring effort, rousing the population of london to the necessity of flight. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 16: the exodus from london so you understand the roaring wave of fear that swept through the greatest city in the world just as monday was dawning--the stream of flight rising swiftly to a torrent, lashing in a foaming tumult round the railway stations, banked up into a horrible struggle about the shipping in the thames, and hurrying by every available channel northward and eastward. by ten o'clock the police organisation, and by midday even the railway organisations, were losing coherency, losing shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in that swift liquefaction of the social body. all the railway lines north of the thames and the south-eastern people at cannon street had been warned by midnight on sunday, and trains were being filled. people were fighting savagely for standing-room in the carriages even at two o'clock. by three, people were being trampled and crushed even in bishopsgate street, a couple of hundred yards or more from liverpool street station; revolvers were fired, people stabbed, and the policemen who had been sent to direct the traffic, exhausted and infuriated, were breaking the heads of the people they were called out to protect. and as the day advanced and the engine drivers and stokers refused to return to london, the pressure of the flight drove the people in an ever-thickening multitude away from the stations and along the northward-running roads. by midday a martian had been seen at barnes, and a cloud of slowly sinking black vapour drove along the thames and across the flats of lambeth, cutting off all escape over the bridges in its sluggish advance. another bank drove over ealing, and surrounded a little island of survivors on castle hill, alive, but unable to escape. after a fruitless struggle to get aboard a north-western train at chalk farm--the engines of the trains that had loaded in the goods yard there ploughed through shrieking people, and a dozen stalwart men fought to keep the crowd from crushing the driver against his furnace--my brother emerged upon the chalk farm road, dodged across through a hurrying swarm of vehicles, and had the luck to be foremost in the sack of a cycle shop. the front tire of the machine he got was punctured in dragging it through the window, but he got up and off, notwithstanding, with no further injury than a cut wrist. the steep foot of haverstock hill was impassable owing to several overturned horses, and my brother struck into belsize road. so he got out of the fury of the panic, and, skirting the edgware road, reached edgware about seven, fasting and wearied, but well ahead of the crowd. along the road people were standing in the roadway, curious, wondering. he was passed by a number of cyclists, some horsemen, and two motor cars. a mile from edgware the rim of the wheel broke, and the machine became unridable. he left it by the roadside and trudged through the village. there were shops half opened in the main street of the place, and people crowded on the pavement and in the doorways and windows, staring astonished at this extraordinary procession of fugitives that was beginning. he succeeded in getting some food at an inn. for a time he remained in edgware not knowing what next to do. the flying people increased in number. many of them, like my brother, seemed inclined to loiter in the place. there was no fresh news of the invaders from mars. at that time the road was crowded, but as yet far from congested. most of the fugitives at that hour were mounted on cycles, but there were soon motor cars, hansom cabs, and carriages hurrying along, and the dust hung in heavy clouds along the road to st. albans. it was perhaps a vague idea of making his way to chelmsford, where some friends of his lived, that at last induced my brother to strike into a quiet lane running eastward. presently he came upon a stile, and, crossing it, followed a footpath northeastward. he passed near several farmhouses and come little places whose names he did not learn. he saw few fugitives until, in a grass lane towards high barnet, he happened upon two ladies who became his fellow travellers. he came upon them just in time to save them. he heard their screams, and, hurrying round the corner, saw a couple of men struggling to drag them out of the little pony-chaise in which they had been driving, while a third with difficulty held the frightened pony's head. one of the ladies, a short woman dressed in white, was simply screaming; the other, a dark, slender figure, slashed at the man who gripped her arm with a whip she held in her disengaged hand. my brother immediately grasped the situation, shouted, and hurried towards the struggle. one of the men desisted and turned towards him, and my brother, realising from his antagonist's face that a fight was unavoidable, and being an expert boxer, went into him forthwith and sent him down against the wheel of the chaise. it was no time for pugilistic chivalry and my brother laid him quiet with a kick, and gripped the collar of the man who pulled at the slender lady's arm. he heard the clatter of hoofs, the whip stung across his face, a third antagonist struck him between the eyes, and the man he held wrenched himself free and made off down the lane in the direction from which he had come. partly stunned, he found himself facing the man who had held the horse's head, and became aware of the chaise receding from him down the lane, swaying from side to side, and with the women in it looking back. the man before him, a burly rough, tried to close, and he stopped him with a blow in the face. then, realising that he was deserted, he dodged round and made off down the lane after the chaise, with the sturdy man close behind him, and the fugitive, who had turned now, following remotely. suddenly he stumbled and fell; his immediate pursuer went headlong, and he rose to his feet to find himself with a couple of antagonists again. he would have had little chance against them had not the slender lady very pluckily pulled up and returned to his help. it seems she had had a revolver all this time, but it had been under the seat when she and her companion were attacked. she fired at six yards' distance, narrowly missing my brother. the less courageous of the robbers made off, and his companion followed him, cursing his cowardice. they both stopped in sight down the lane, where the third man lay insensible. "take this!" said the slender lady, and she gave my brother her revolver. "go back to the chaise," said my brother, wiping the blood from his split lip. she turned without a word--they were both panting--and they went back to where the lady in white struggled to hold back the frightened pony. the robbers had evidently had enough of it. when my brother looked again they were retreating. "i'll sit here," said my brother, "if i may"; and he got upon the empty front seat. the lady looked over her shoulder. "give me the reins," she said, and laid the whip along the pony's side. in another moment a bend in the road hid the three men from my brother's eyes. so, quite unexpectedly, my brother found himself, panting, with a cut mouth, a bruised jaw, and blood-stained knuckles, driving along an unknown lane with these two women. he learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon living at stanmore, who had come in the small hours from a dangerous case at pinner, and heard at some railway station on his way of the martian advance. he had hurried home, roused the women--their servant had left them two days before--packed some provisions, put his revolver under the seat--luckily for my brother--and told them to drive on to edgware, with the idea of getting a train there. he stopped behind to tell the neighbours. he would overtake them, he said, at about half past four in the morning, and now it was nearly nine and they had seen nothing of him. they could not stop in edgware because of the growing traffic through the place, and so they had come into this side lane. that was the story they told my brother in fragments when presently they stopped again, nearer to new barnet. he promised to stay with them, at least until they could determine what to do, or until the missing man arrived, and professed to be an expert shot with the revolver--a weapon strange to him--in order to give them confidence. they made a sort of encampment by the wayside, and the pony became happy in the hedge. he told them of his own escape out of london, and all that he knew of these martians and their ways. the sun crept higher in the sky, and after a time their talk died out and gave place to an uneasy state of anticipation. several wayfarers came along the lane, and of these my brother gathered such news as he could. every broken answer he had deepened his impression of the great disaster that had come on humanity, deepened his persuasion of the immediate necessity for prosecuting this flight. he urged the matter upon them. "we have money," said the slender woman, and hesitated. her eyes met my brother's, and her hesitation ended. "so have i," said my brother. she explained that they had as much as thirty pounds in gold, besides a five-pound note, and suggested that with that they might get upon a train at st. albans or new barnet. my brother thought that was hopeless, seeing the fury of the londoners to crowd upon the trains, and broached his own idea of striking across essex towards harwich and thence escaping from the country altogether. mrs. elphinstone--that was the name of the woman in white--would listen to no reasoning, and kept calling upon "george"; but her sister-in-law was astonishingly quiet and deliberate, and at last agreed to my brother's suggestion. so, designing to cross the great north road, they went on towards barnet, my brother leading the pony to save it as much as possible. as the sun crept up the sky the day became excessively hot, and under foot a thick, whitish sand grew burning and blinding, so that they travelled only very slowly. the hedges were grey with dust. and as they advanced towards barnet a tumultuous murmuring grew stronger. they began to meet more people. for the most part these were staring before them, murmuring indistinct questions, jaded, haggard, unclean. one man in evening dress passed them on foot, his eyes on the ground. they heard his voice, and, looking back at him, saw one hand clutched in his hair and the other beating invisible things. his paroxysm of rage over, be went on his way without once looking back. as my brother's party went on towards the crossroads to the south of barnet they saw a woman approaching the road across some fields on their left, carrying a child and with two other children; and then passed a man in dirty black, with a thick stick in one hand and a small portmanteau in the other. then round the corner of the lane, from between the villas that guarded it at its confluence with the highroad, came a little, cart drawn by a sweating black pony and driven by a sallow youth in a bowler hat, grey with dust. there were three girls, east end factory girls, and a couple of little children crowded in the cart. "this'll tike us rahnd edgware?" asked the driver, wild-eyed, white-faced; and when my brother told him it would if he turned to the left, he whipped up at once without the formality of thanks. my brother noticed a pale grey smoke or haze rising among the houses in front of them, and veiling the white facade of a terrace beyond the road that appeared between the backs of the villas. mrs. elphinstone suddenly cried out at a number of tongues of smoky red flame leaping up above the houses in front of them against the hot, blue sky. the tumultuous noise resolved itself now into the disorderly mangling of many voices, the gride of many wheels, the creaking of waggons, and the staccato of hoofs. the lane came round sharply not fifty yards from the crossroads. "good heavens!" cried mrs. elphinstone. "what is this you are driving us into?" my brother stopped. for the main road was a boiling stream of people, a torrent of human beings rushing northward, one pressing on another. a great bank of dust, white and luminous in the blaze of the sun, made everything within twenty feet of the ground grey and indistinct and was perpetually renewed by the hurrying feet of a dense crowd of horses and of men and women on foot, and by the wheels of vehicles of every description. "way!" my brother heard voices crying. "make way!" it was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting point of the lane and road; the crowd roared like a fire, and the dust was hot and pungent. and, indeed, a little way up the road a villa was burning and sending rolling masses of black smoke across the road to add to the confusion. two men came past them. then a dirty woman, carrying a heavy bundle and weeping. a lost retriever dog, with hanging tongue, circled dubiously round them, scared and wretched, and fled at my brother's threat. so much as they could see of the road londonward between the houses to the right was a tumultuous stream of dirty, hurrying people, pent in between the villas on either side; the black heads, the crowded forms, grew into distinctness as they rushed towards the corner, hurried past, and merged their individuality again in a receding multitude that was swallowed up at last in a cloud of dust. "go on! go on!" cried the voices. "way! way!" one man's hands pressed on the back of another. my brother stood at the pony's head. irresistibly attracted, he advanced slowly, pace by pace, down the lane. edgware had been a scene of confusion, chalk farm a riotous tumult, but this was a whole population in movement. it is hard to imagine that host. it had no character of its own. the figures poured out past the corner, and receded with their backs to the group in the lane. along the margin came those who were on foot threatened by the wheels, stumbling in the ditches, blundering into one another. the carts and carriages crowded close upon one another, making little way for those swifter and more impatient vehicles that darted forward every now and then when an opportunity showed itself of doing so, sending the people scattering against the fences and gates of the villas. "push on!" was the cry. "push on! they are coming!" in one cart stood a blind man in the uniform of the salvation army, gesticulating with his crooked fingers and bawling, "eternity! eternity!" his voice was hoarse and very loud so that my brother could hear him long after he was lost to sight in the dust. some of the people who crowded in the carts whipped stupidly at their horse; and quarrelled with other drivers; some sat motionless, staring at nothing with miserable eyes; some gnawed their hands with thirst, or lay prostrate in the bottoms of their conveyances. the horses' bits were covered with foam, their eyes bloodshot. there were cabs, carriages, shop cars, waggons, beyond counting; a mail cart, a road-cleaner's cart marked "vestry of st. pancras," a huge timber waggon crowded with roughs. a brewer's dray rumbled by with its two near wheels splashed with fresh blood. "clear the way!" cried the voice "clear the way!" "eter-nity! eter-nity!" came echoing down the road. there were sad, haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with children that cried and stumbled, their dainty clothes smothered in dust, their weary faces smeared with tears. with many of these came men, sometimes helpful, sometimes lowering and savage. fighting side by side with them pushed some weary street outcast in faded black rags, wide-eyed, loud-voiced, and foul-mouthed. there were sturdy workmen thrusting their way along, wretched, unkempt men, clothed like clerks or shopmen, struggling spasmodically; a wounded soldier my brother noticed, men dressed in the clothes of railway potters, one wretched creature in a nightshirt with a coat thrown over it. but varied as its composition was, certain things all that host had in common. there were fear and pain on their faces, and fear behind them. a tumult up the road, a quarrel for a place in a waggon, sent the whole host of them quickening their pace; even a man so scared and broken that his knees bent under him was galvanised for a moment into renewed activity. the heat and dust had already been at work upon this multitude. their skins were dry, their lips black and cracked. they were all thirsty, weary, and footsore. and amid the various cries one heard disputes, reproaches, groans of weariness and fatigue; the voices of most of them were hoarse and weak. through it all ran a refrain: "way! way! the martians are coming!" few stopped and came aside from that flood. the lane opened slantingly into the main road with a narrow opening, and had a delusive appearance of coming from the direction of london. yet a kind of eddy of people drove into its mouth; weaklings elbowed out of the stream, who for the most part rested but a moment before plunging into it again. a little way down the lane, with two friends bending over him, lay a man with a bare leg, wrapped about with bloody rags. he was a lucky man to have friends. a little old man, with a grey military moustache and a filthy black frock coat, limped out and sat down beside the trap, removed his boot--his sock was blood-stained--shook out a pebble, and hobbled on again; and then a little girl of eight or nine, all alone, threw herself under the hedge close by my brother, weeping. "i can't go on! i can't go on!" my brother woke front his torpor of astonishment and lifted her up, speaking gently to her, and carried her to miss elphinstone. so soon as my brother touched her she became quite still, as if frightened. "ellen!" shrieked a woman in the crowd, with tears in her voice--"ellen!" and the child suddenly darted away from my brother, crying "mother!" "they are coming," said a man on horseback, riding past along the lane. out of the way, there!" bawled a coachman, towering high; and my brother saw a closed carriage turning into the lane. the people crushed back on one another to avoid the horse. my brother pushed the pony and chaise hack into the hedge, and the man drove by and stopped at the turn of the way. it was a carriage, with a pole for a pair of horses, but only one was in the traces. my brother saw dimly through the dust that two men lifted out something on a white stretcher and put it gently on the grass beneath the privet hedge. one of the men came running to my brother. "where is there any water?" he said. "he is dying fast, and very thirsty. it is lord garrick." "lord garrick!" said my brother; "the chief justice?" "the water?" he said. "there may be a tap," said my brother, "in some of the houses. we have no water. i dare not leave my people." the man pushed against the crowd towards the gate of the corner house. "go on!" said the people, thrusting at him. "they are coming! go on." then my brother's attention was distracted by a bearded, eagle-faced man lugging a small handbag, which split even as my brother's eyes rested on it and disgorged a mass of sovereigns that seemed to break up into separate coins as it struck the ground. they rolled hither and thither among the struggling feet of men and horses. the man stopped and looked stupidly at the heap, and the shaft of a cab struck his shoulder and sent him reeling. he gave a shriek and dodged back, and a wheel shaved him narrowly. "way!" cried the men all about him. "make way!" so soon as the cab had passed, he flung himself, with both hands open, upon the heap of coins, and began thrusting handfuls in his pocket. a horse rose close upon him, and in another moment, half rising, he had been borne down under the horse's hoofs. "stop!" screamed my brother, and pushing a woman out of his way, tried to clutch the bit of the horse. before he could get to it, he heard a scream under the wheels, and saw through the dust the rim passing over the poor wretch's back. the driver of the cart slashed his whip at my brother, who ran round behind the cart. the multitudinous shouting confused his ears. the man was writhing in the dust among his scattered money, unable to rise, for the wheel had broken his back, and his lower limbs lay limp and dead. my brother stood up and yelled at the next driver, and a man on a black horse came to his assistance. "get him out of the road," said he; and, clutching the man's collar with his free hand, my brother lugged him sideways. but he still clutched after his money, and regarded my brother fiercely, hammering at his arm with a handful of gold. "go on! go on!" shouted angry voices behind. "way! way!" there was a smash as the pole of a carriage crashed into the cart that the man on horseback stopped. my brother looked up, and the man with the gold twisted his head round and bit the wrist that held his collar. there was a concussion, and the black horse came staggering sideways, and the carthorse pushed beside it. a hoof missed my brother's foot by a hair's breadth. he released his grip on the fallen man and jumped back. he saw anger change to terror on the face of the poor wretch on the ground, and in a moment he was hidden and my brother was borne backward and carried past the entrance of the lane, and had to fight hard in the torrent to recover it. he saw miss elphinstone covering her eyes, and a little child, with all a child's want of sympathetic imagination, staring with dilated eyes at a dusty something that lay black and still, ground and crushed under the rolling wheels. "let us go back!" he shouted, and began turning the pony round. "we cannot cross this--hell," he said and they went back a hundred yards the way they had come, until the fighting crowd was hidden. as they passed the bend in the lane my brother saw the face of the dying man in the ditch under the privet, deadly white and drawn, and shining with perspiration. the two women sat silent, crouching in their seat and shivering. then beyond the bend my brother stopped again. miss elphinstone was white and pale, and her sister-in-law sat weeping, too wretched even to call upon "george." my brother was horrified and perplexed. so soon as they had retreated he realized how urgent and unavoidable it was to attempt this crossing. he turned to miss elphinstone, suddenly resolute. "we must go that way," he said, and led the pony round again. for the second time that day this girl proved her quality. to force their way into the torrent of people, my brother plunged into the traffic and held back a cab horse, while she drove the pony across its head. a waggon locked wheels for a moment and ripped a long splinter from the chaise. in another moment they were caught and swept forward by the stream. my brother, with the cabman's whip marks red across his face and hands, scrambled into the chaise and took the reins from her. "point the revolver at the man behind," he said, giving it to her, "if he presses us too hard. no!--point it at his horse." then he began to look out for a chance of edging to the right across the road. but once in the stream he seemed to lose volition, to become a part of that dusty rout. they swept through chipping barnet with the torrent; the were nearly a mile beyond the centre of the town before they had fought across to the opposite side of the way. it was din and confusion indescribable; but in and beyond the town the road forks repeatedly, and this to some extent relieved the stress. they struck eastward through hadley, and there on either side of the road, and at another place farther on they came upon a great multitude of people drinking at the stream, some fighting to come at the water. and farther on, from a hill near east barnet, they saw two trains running slowly one after the other without signal or order--trains swarming with people, with men even among the coals behind the engine--going northward along the great northern railway. my brother supposes they must have filled outside london, for at that time the furious terror of the people had rendered the central termini impossible. near this place they halted for the rest of the afternoon, for the violence of the day had already utterly exhausted all three of them. they began to suffer the beginnings of hunger; the night was cold, and none of them dared to sleep. and in the evening many people came hurrying along the road near by their stopping place, fleeing from unknown dangers before them, and going in the direction from which my brother had come. the war of the worlds -book 1 chapter 17: the "thunder child" had the martians aimed only at destruction, they might on monday have annihilated the entire population of london, as it spread itself slowly through the home counties. not only along the road through barnet, but also through edgware and waltham abbey, and along the roads eastward to southend and shoeburyness, and south of the thames to deal and broadstairs, poured the same frantic rout. if one could have hung that june morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above london every northward and eastward road running out of the tangled maze of streets would have seemed stippled black with the streaming fugitives, each dot a human agony of terror and physical distress. i have set forth at length in the last chapter my brother's account of the road through chipping barnet, in order that my readers may realise how that swarming of black dots appeared to one of those concerned. never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. the legendary hosts of goths and huns, the hugest armies asia has ever seen, would have been but a drop in that current. and this was no disciplined march; it was a stampede--a stampede gigantic and terrible--without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. it was the beginning of the rout of civilisation, of the massacre of mankind. directly below him the balloonist would have seen the network of streets far and wide, houses, churches, squares, crescents, gardens--already derelict--spread out like a huge map, and in the southward blotted. over ealing, richmond, wimbledon, it would have seemed as if some monstrous pen had flung ink upon the chart. steadily, incessantly, each black splash grew and spread, shooting out ramifications this way and that, now banking itself against rising ground, now pouring swiftly over a crest into a new-found valley, exactly as a gout of ink would spread itself upon blotting paper. and beyond, over the blue hills that rise southward of the river, the glittering martians went to and fro, calmly and methodically spreading their poison cloud over this patch of country and then over that, laying it again with their steam jets when it had served its purpose, and taking possession of the conquered country. they do not seem to have aimed at extermination so much as at complete demoralisation and the destruction of any opposition. they exploded any stores of powder they came upon, cut every telegraph, and wrecked the railways here and there. they were hamstringing mankind. they seemed in no hurry to extend the field of their operations, and did not come beyond the central part of london all that day. it is possible that a very considerable number of people in london stuck to their houses through monday morning. certain it is that many died at home suffocated by the black smoke. until about midday the pool of london was an astonishing scene. steamboats and shipping of all sorts lay there, tempted by the enormous sums of money offered by fugitives, and it is said that many who swam out to these vessels were thrust off with boathooks and drowned. about one o'clock in the afternoon the thinning remnant of a cloud of the black vapour appeared between the arches of blackfriars bridge. at that the pool became a scene of mad confusion, fighting, and collision, and for some time a multitude of boats and barges jammed in the northern arch of the tower bridge, and the sailors and lightermen had to fight savagely against the people who swarmed upon them from the riverfront. people were actually clambering down the piers of the bridge from above. when, an hour later, a martian appeared beyond the clock tower and waded down the river, nothing but wreckage floated above limehouse. of the falling of the fifth cylinder i have presently to tell. the sixth star fell at wimbledon. my brother, keeping watch beside the women in the chaise in a meadow, saw the green flash of it far beyond the hills. on tuesday the little party, still set upon getting across the sea, made its way through the swarming country towards colchester. the news that the martians were now in possession of the whole of london was confirmed. they had been seen at highgate, and even, it was said, at neasden. but they did not come into my brother's view until the morrow. that day the scattered multitudes began to realise the urgent need of provisions. as they grew hungry the rights of property ceased to be regarded. farmers went out to defend their cattle-sheds, granaries, and ripening root crops with arms in their hands. a number of people now, like my brother, had their faces eastward, an there were some desperate souls even going back towards london to get food. these were chiefly people from the northern suburbs whose knowledge of the black smoke came by hearsay. he heard that about half the members of the government had gathered at birmingham, and that enormous quantities of high explosives were being prepared to be used in automatic mines across the midland counties. he was also told that the midland railway company had replaced the desertions of the first day's panic, had resumed traffic, and was running northward trains from st. albans to relieve the congestion of the home counties. there was also a placard in chipping ongar announcing that large stores of flour were available in the northern towns and that within twenty-four hours bread would be distributed among the starving people in the neighbourhood. but this intelligence did not deter him from the plan of escape he had formed, and the three pressed eastward all day, and heard no more of the bread distribution than this promise. nor, as a matter of fact, did anyone else hear more of it. that night fell the seventh star, falling upon primrose hill. it fell while miss elphinstone was watching, for she took that duty, alternately with my brother. she saw it. on wednesday the three fugitives--they had passed the night in a field of unripe wheat--reached chelmsford, and there a body of the inhabitants, calling itself the committee of public supply, seized the pony as provisions, and would give nothing in exchange for it but the promise of a share in it the next day. here there were rumours of martians at epping, and news of the destruction of waltham abbey powder mills in a vain attempt to blow up one of the invaders. people were watching for martians here from the church towers. my brother, very luckily for him as it chanced, preferred to push on at once to the coast rather than wait for food, although all three of them were very hungry. by midday they passed through tillingham, which, strangely enough, seemed to be quite silent and deserted, save for a few furtive plunderers hunting for food. near tillingham they suddenly came in sight of the sea, and the most amazing crowd of shipping of all sorts that it is possible to imagine. for after the sailors could no longer come up the thames, they came on to the essex coast, to harwich and walton and clacton, and afterwards to foulness and shoebury, to bring off the people. they lay in a huge sickle-shaped curve that vanished into mist at last towards the naze. close inshore was a multitude of fishing smacks-english, scotch, french, dutch, and swedish; steam launches from the thames, yachts, electric boats; and beyond were ships of large burden, a multitude of filthy colliers, trim merchantmen, cattle ships, passenger boats, petroleum tanks, ocean tramps, an old white transport even, neat white and grey liners from southampton and hamburg; and along the blue coast across the blackwater my brother could make out dimly a dense swarm of boats chaffering with the people on the beach, a swarm which also extended up the blackwater almost to maldon. about a couple of miles out lay an ironclad, very low in the water, almost, to my brother's perception, like a water-logged ship. this was the ram thunder child. it was the only warship in sight, but far away to the right over the smooth surface of the sea--for that day there was a dead calm--lay a serpent of black smoke to mark the next ironclads of the channel fleet, which hovered in an extended line, steam up and ready for action, across the thames estuary during the course of the martian conquest, vigilant and yet powerless to prevent it. at the sight of the sea, mrs. elphinstone, in spite of the assurances of her sister-in-law, gave way to panic. she had never been out of england before, she would rather die than trust herself friendless in a foreign country, and so forth. she seemed, poor woman, to imagine that the french and the martians might prove very similar. she had been growing increasingly hysterical, fearful, and depressed during the two days' journeyings. her great idea was to return to stanmore. things had been always well and safe at stanmore. they would find george at stanmore. it was with the greatest difficulty they could get her down to the beach where presently my brother succeeded in attracting the attention of some men on a paddle steamer from the thames. they sent a boat and drove a bargain for thirty-six pounds for the three. the steamer was going, these men said, to ostend. it was about two o'clock when my brother, having paid their frees at the gangway, found himself safely aboard the steamboat with his charges. there was food aboard, albeit at exorbitant prices, and the three of them contrived to eat a meal on one of the seats forward. there were already a couple of score of passengers aboard, some of whom had expended their last money in securing a passage, but the captain lay off the blackwater until five in the afternoon, picking up passengers until the seated decks were even dangerously crowded. he would probably have remained longer had it not been for the sound of guns that began about that hour in the south. as if in answer, the ironclad seaward fired a small gun and hoisted a string of flags. a jet of smoke sprang out of her funnels. some of the passengers were of opinion that this firing came from shoeburyness, until it was noticed that it was growing louder. at the same time, far away in the southeast the masts and upperworks of three ironclads rose one after the other out of the sea, beneath clouds of black smoke. but my brother's attention speedily reverted to the distant firing in the south. he fancied he saw a column of smoke rising out of the distant grey haze. the little steamer was already flapping her way eastward of the big crescent of shipping, and the low essex coast was growing blue and hazy, when a martian appeared, small and faint in the remote distance, advancing along the muddy coast from the direction of foulness. at that the captain on the bridge swore at the top of his voice with fear and anger at his own delay, and the paddles seemed infected with his terror. every soul aboard stood at the bulwarks or on the seats of the steamer and stared at that distant shape, higher than the trees or church towers inland, and advancing with a leisurely parody of a human stride. it was the first martian my brother had seen, and he stood, more amazed than terrified, watching this titan advancing deliberately towards the shipping, wading farther and farther into the water as the coast fell away. then, far away beyond the crouch, came another, striding over some stunted trees, and then yet another, still farther off, wading deeply through a shiny mudflat that seemed to hang halfway up between sea and sky. they were all stalking seaward, as if to intercept the escape of the multitudinous vessels that were crowded between foulness and the naze. in spite of the throbbing exertions of the engines of the little paddleboat, and the pouring foam that her wheels flung behind her, she receded with terrifying slowness from this ominous advance. glancing northwestward, my brother saw the large crescent of shipping already writhing with the approaching terror; one ship passing behind another, another coming round from broadside to end on, steamships whistling and giving off volumes of steam, sails being let out, launches rushing hither and thither. he was so fascinated by this and by the creeping danger away to the left that he had no eyes for anything seaward. and then a swift movement of the steamboat (she had suddenly come round to avoid being run down) flung him headlong from the seat upon which he was standing. there was a shouting all about him, a trampling of feet, and a cheer that seemed to be answered faintly. the steamboat lurched and rolled him over upon his hands. he sprang to his feet and saw to starboard, and not a hundred yards from their heeling, pitching boat, a vast iron bulk like the blade of a plough tearing through the water, tossing it on either side in huge waves of foam that leaped towards the steamer, flinging her paddles helplessly in the air, and then sucking her deck down almost to the waterline. a douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment. when his eyes were clear again he saw the monster had passed and was rushing landward. big iron upperworks rose out of this headlong structure, and from that twin funnels projected and spat a smoking blast shot with fire. it was the torpedo ram, thunder child, steaming headlong, coming to the rescue of the threatened shipping. keeping his footing on the heaving deck by clutching the bulwarks, my brother looked past this charging leviathan at the martians again, and he saw the three of them now close together, and standing so far out to sea that their tripod supports were almost entirely submerged. thus sunken, and seen in remote perspective, they appeared far less formidable than the huge iron bulk in whose wake the steamer was pitching so helplessly. it would seem they were regarding this new antagonist with astonishment. to their intelligence, it may be, the giant was even such another as themselves. the thunder child fired no gun, but simply drove full speed towards them. it was probably her not firing that enabled her to get so near the enemy as she did. they did not know what to make of her. one shell, and they would have sent her to the bottom forthwith with the heat-ray. she was steaming at such a pace that in a minute she seemed halfway between the steamboat and the martians--a diminishing black bulk against the receding horizontal expanse of the essex coast. suddenly the foremost martian lowered his tube and discharged a canister of the black gas at the ironclad. it hit her larboard side and glanced off in an inky jet that rolled away to seaward, an unfolding torrent of black smoke, from which the ironclad drove clear. to the watchers from the steamer, low in the water and with the sun in their eyes, it seemed as though she were already among the martians. they saw the gaunt figures separating and rising out of the water as they retreated shoreward, and one of them raised the camera-like generator of the heat-ray. he held it pointing obliquely downward, and a bank of steam sprang from the water at its touch. it must have driven through the iron of the ship's side like a white-hot iron rod through paper. a flicker of flame went up through the rising steam, and then the martian reeled and staggered. in another moment he was cut down, and a great body of water and steam shot high in the air. the guns of the thunder child sounded through the reek, going off one after the other, and one shot splashed the water high close by the steamer, ricocheted towards the other flying ships to the north, and smashed a smack to matchwood. but no one heeded that very much. at the sight of the martian's collapse the captain on the bridge yelled inarticulately, and all the crowding passengers on the steamer's stern shouted together. and then they yelled again. for, surging out beyond the white tumult, drove something long and black, the flames streaming from its middle parts, its ventilators and funnels spouting fire. she was alive still; the steering gear, it seems, was intact and her engines working. she headed straight for a second martian, and was within a hundred yards of him when the heat-ray came to bear. then with a violent thud, a blinding flash, her decks, her funnels, leaped upward. the martian staggered with the violence of her explosion, and in another moment the flaming wreckage, still driving forward with the impetus of its pace, had struck him and crumpled him up like a thing of cardboard: my brother shouted involuntarily. a boiling tumult of steam hid everything again. "two!" yelled the captain. everyone was shouting. the whole steamer from end to end rang with frantic cheering that was taken up first by one and then by all in the crowding multitude of ships and boats that was driving out to sea. the steam hung upon the water for many minutes, hiding the third martian and the coast altogether. and all this time the boat was paddling steadily out to sea and away from the fight; and when at last the confusion cleared, the drifting bank of black vapour intervened, and nothing of the thunder child could be made out, nor could the third martian be seen. but the ironclads to seaward were now quite close and standing in towards shore past the steamboat. the little vessel continued to beat its way seaward, and the ironclads receded slowly towards the coast, which was hidden still by a marbled bank of vapour, part steam, part black gas, eddying and combining in the strangest way. the fleet of refugees was scattering to the northeast; several smacks were sailing between the ironclads and the steamboat. after a time, and before they reached the sinking cloud bank, the warships turned northward, and then abruptly went about and passed into the thickening haze of evening southward. the coast grew faint, and at last indistinguishable amid the low banks of clouds that were gathering about the sinking sun. then suddenly out of the golden haze of the sunset came the vibration of guns, and a form of black shadows moving. everyone struggled to the rail of the steamer and peered into the blinding furnace of the west, but nothing was to be distinguished clearly. a mass of smoke rose slanting and barred the face of the sun. the steamboat throbbed on its way through an interminable suspense. the sun sank into grey clouds, the sky flushed and darkened, the evening star trembled into sight. it was deep twilight when the captain cried out and pointed. my brother strained his eyes. something rushed up into the sky out of the greyness--rushed slantingly upward and very swiftly into the luminous clearness above the clouds in the western sky; something flat and broad, and very large, that swept round in a vast curve, grew smaller, sank slowly, and vanished again into the grey mystery of the night. and as it flew it rained down darkness upon the land. the war of the worlds -book 2 chapter 1: under foot in the first book i have wandered so much from my own adventures to tell of the experiences of my brother that all through the last two chapters i and the curate have been lurking in the empty house at halliford whither we fled to escape the black smoke. there i will resume. we stopped there all sunday night and all the next day--the day of the panic--in a little island of daylight, cut off by the black smoke from the rest of the world. we could do nothing but wait in aching inactivity during those two weary days. my mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife. i figured her at leatherhead, terrified, in danger, mourning me already as a dead man. i paced the rooms and cried aloud when i though of how i was cut off from her, of all that might happen to her in my absence. my cousin i knew was brave enough for any emergency, but he was not the sort of man to realise danger quickly, to rise promptly. what was needed now was not bravery, but circumspection. my only consolation was to believe that the martians were moving londonward and away from her. such vague anxieties keep the mind sensitive and painful. i grew very weary and irritable with the curate's perpetual ejaculations; i tired of the sight of his selfish despair. after some ineffectual remonstrance i kept away from him, staying in a room--evidently a children's schoolroom --containing globes, forms, and copybooks. when he followed me thither, i went to a box room at the top of the house and, in order to be alone with my aching miseries, locked myself in. we were hopelessly hemmed in by the black smoke all that day and the morning of the next. there were signs of people in the next house on sunday evening--a face at a window and moving lights, and later the slamming of a door. but i do not know who these people were, nor what became of them. we saw nothing of them next day. the black smoke drifted slowly riverward all through monday morning, creeping nearer and nearer to us, driving at last along the roadway outside the house that hid us. a martian came across the fields about midday, laying the stuff with a jet of superheated steam that hissed against the walls, smashed all the windows it touched, and scalded the curate's hand as he fled out of the front room. when at last we crept across the sodden rooms and looked out again, the country northward was as though a black snowstorm had passed over it. looking towards the river, we were astonished to see an unaccountable redness mingling with the black of the scorched meadows. for a time we did not see how this change affected our situation, save that we were relieved of our fear of the black smoke. but later i perceived that we were no longer hemmed in, that now we might get away. so soon as i realised that the way of escape was open, my dream of action returned. but the curate was lethargic, unreasonable. "we are safe here," he repeated; "safe here." i resolved to leave him--would that i had! wiser now for the artilleryman's teaching, i sought out food and drink. i had found oil and rags for my burns, and i also took a hat and a flannel shirt that i found in one of the bedrooms. when it was clear to him that i meant to go alone--had reconciled myself to going alone--he suddenly roused himself to come. and all being quiet throughout the afternoon, we started about five o'clock, as i should judge, along the blackened road to sunbury. in sunbury, and at intervals along the road, were dead bodies lying in contorted attitudes, horses as well as men, overturned carts and luggage, all covered thickly with black dust. that pall of cindery powder made me think of what i had read of the destruction of pompeii. we got to hampton court without misadventure, our minds full of strange and unfamiliar appearances, and at hampton court our eyes were relieved to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating drift. we went through bushey park, with its deer going to and fro under the chestnuts, and some men and women hurrying in the distance towards hampton, and so we came to twickenham. these were the first people we saw. away across the road the woods beyond ham and petersham were still afire. twickenham was uninjured by either heat-ray or black smoke, and there were more people about here, though none could give us news. for the most part they were like ourselves, taking advantage of a lull to shift their quarters. i have an impression that many of the houses here were still occupied by scared inhabitants, too frightened even for flight. here, too, the evidence of a hasty rout was abundant along the road. i remember most vividly three smashed bicycles in a heap, pounded into the road by the wheels of subsequent carts. we crossed richmond bridge about half past eight. we hurried across the exposed bridge, of course, but i noticed floating down the stream a number of red masses, some many feet across. i did not know what these were--there was no time for scrutiny--and i put a more horrible interpretation on them than they deserved. here again on the surrey side were black dust that had once been smoke, and dead bodies--a heap near the approach to the station; but we had no glimpse of the martians until we were some way towards barnes. we saw in the blackened distance a group of three people running down a side street towards the river, but otherwise it seemed deserted. up the hill richmond town was burning briskly; outside the town of richmond there was no trace of the black smoke. then suddenly, as we approached kew, came a number of people running, and the upperworks of a martian fighting-machine loomed in sight over the housetops, not a hundred yards away from us. we stood aghast at our danger, and had the martian looked down we must immediately have perished. we were so terrified that we dared not go on but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden. there the curate crouched, weeping silently, and refusing to stir again. but my fixed idea of reaching leatherhead would not let me rest, and in the twilight i ventured out again. i went through a shrubbery, and along a passage beside a big house standing in its own grounds, and so emerged upon the road towards kew. the curate i left in the shed, but he came hurrying after me. that second start was the most foolhardy thing i ever did. for it was manifest the martians were about us. no sooner had the curate overtaken me than we saw either the fighting-machine we had seen before or another, far away across the meadows in the direction of kew lodge. four or five little black figures hurried before it across the green-grey of the field, and in a moment it was evident this martian pursued them. in three strides he was among them, and they ran radiating from his feet in all directions. he used no heat-ray to destroy them, but picked them up one by one. apparently he tossed them into the great metallic carrier which projected behind him, much as a workman's basket hangs over his shoulder. it was the first time i realised that the martians might have any other purpose than destruction with defeated humanity. we stood for a moment petrified, then turned and fled through a gate behind us into a walled garden, fell into, rather than found, a fortunate ditch, and lay there, scarce daring to whisper to each other until the stars were out. i suppose it was nearly eleven o'clock before we gathered courage to start again, no longer venturing into the road, but sneaking along hedgerows and through plantations, and watching keenly through the darkness, he on the right and i on the left, for the martians, who seemed to be all about us. in one place we blundered upon a scorched and blackened area, now cooling and ashen, and a number of scattered dead bodies of men, burned horribly about the heads and trunks but with their legs and boots mostly intact; and of dead horses, fifty feet, perhaps, behind a line of four ripped guns and smashed gun carriages. sheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the place was silent and deserted. here we happened on no dead, though the night was too dark for us to see into the side roads of the place. in sheen my companion suddenly complained of faintness and thirst, and we decided to try one of the houses. the first house we entered, after a little difficulty with the window, was a small semi-detached villa, and i found nothing eatable left in the place but some mouldy cheese. there was, however, water to drink; and i took a hatchet, which promised to be useful in our next house-breaking. we then crossed to a place where the road turns towards mortlake. here there stood a white house within a walled garden, and in the pantry of this domicile we found a store of food--two loaves of bread in a pan, an uncooked steak, and the half of a ham. i give this catalogue so precisely because, as it happened, we were destined to subsist upon this store for the next fortnight. bottled beer stood under a shelf, and there were two bags of haricot beans and some limp lettaces. this pantry opened into a kind of wash-up kitchen, and in this was firewood; there was also a cupboard, in which we found nearly a dozen of burgundy, tinned soups and salmon, and two tins of biscuits. we sat in the adjacent kitchen in the dark--for we dared not strike a light--and ate bread and ham, and drank beer out of the same bottle. the curate, who was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly enough, for pushing on, and i was urging him to keep up his strength by eating when the thing happened that was to imprison us. "it can't be midnight yet," i said, and then came a blinding glare of vivid green light. everything in the kitchen leaped out, clearly visible in green and black, and vanished again. and then followed such a concussion as i have never heard before or since. so close on the heels of this as to seem instantaneous came a thud behind me, a clash of glass, a crash and rattle of falling masonry all about us, and the plaster of the ceiling came down upon us, smashing into a multitude of fragments upon our heads. i was knocked headlong across the floor against the oven handle and stunned. i was insensible for a long time, the curate told me, and when i came to we were in darkness again, and he, with a face wet, as i found afterwards, with blood from a cut forehead, was dabbing water over me. for some time i could not recollect what had happened. then things came to me slowly. a bruise on my temple asserted itself. "are you better?" asked the curate in a whisper. at last i answered him. i sat up. "don't move," he said. "the floor is covered with smashed crockery from the dresser. you can't possibly move without making a noise, and i fancy they are outside." we both sat quite silent, so that we could scarcely hear each other breathing. everything seemed deadly still, but once something near us, some plaster or broken brickwork, slid down with a rumbling sound. outside and very near was an intermittent, metallic rattle. "that" said the curate, when presently it happened again. "yes," i said. "but what is it?" "a martian!" said the curate. i listened again. "it was not like the heat-ray," i said, and for a time i was inclined to think one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled against the house, as i had seen one stumble against the tower of shepperton church. our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three or four hours, until the dawn came, we scarcely moved. and then the light filtered in, not through the window, which remained black, but through a triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken bricks in the wall behind us. the interior of the kitchen we now saw greyly for the first time. the window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which flowed over the table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our feet. outside, the soil was banked high against the house. at the top of the window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe. the floor was littered with smashed hardware; the end of the kitchen towards the house was broken into, and since the daylight shone in there, it was evident the greater part of the house had collapsed. contrasting vividly with this ruin was the neat dresser, stained in the fashion, pale green, and with a number of copper and tin vessels below it, the wallpaper imitating blue and white tiles, and a couple of coloured supplements fluttering from the walls above the kitchen range. as the dawn grew clearer, we saw through the gap in the wall the body of a martian, standing sentinel, i suppose, over the still glowing cylinder. at the sight of that we crawled as circumspectly as possible out of the twilight of the kitchen into the darkness of the scullery. abruptly the right interpretation dawned upon my mind. "the fifth cylinder," i whispered, "the fifth shot from mars, has struck this house and buried us under the ruins!" for a time the curate was silent, and then he whispered: "god have mercy upon us!" i heard him presently whimpering to himself. save for that sound we lay quite still in the scullery; i for my part scarce dared breathe, and sat with my eyes fixed on the faint light of the kitchen door. i could just see the curate's face, a dim, oval shape, and his collar and cuffs. outside there began a metallic hammering, then a violent hooting, and then again, after a quiet interval, a hissing like the hissing of an engine. these noises, for the most part problematical, continued intermittently, and seemed if anything to increase in number as time wore on. presently a measured thudding and a vibration that made everything about us quiver and the vessels in the pantry ring and shift, began and continued. once the light was eclipsed, and the ghostly kitchen doorway became absolutely dark. for many hours we must have crouched there, silent and shivering, until our tired attention failed.... at last i found myself awake and very hungry. i am inclined to believe we must have spent the greater portion of a day before that awakening. my hunger was at a stride so insistent that it moved me to action. i told the curate i was going to seek food, and felt my way towards the pantry. he made me no answer, but so soon as i began eating the faint noise i made stirred him up and i heard him crawling after me. the war of the worlds -book 2 chapter 2: what we saw from the ruined house after eating we crept back to the scullery, and there i must have dozed again, for when presently i looked round i was alone. the thudding vibration continued with wearisome persistence. i whispered for the curate several times, and at last felt my way to the door of the kitchen. it was still daylight, and i perceived him across the room, lying against the triangular hole that looked out upon the martians. his shoulders were hunched, so that his head was hidden from me. i could hear a number of noises almost like those in an engine shed; and the place rocked with that beating thud. through the aperture in the wall i could see the top of a tree touched with gold and the warm blue of a tranquil evening sky. for a minute or so i remained watching the curate, and then i advanced, crouching and stepping with extreme care amid the broken crockery that littered the floor. i touched the curate's leg, and he started so violently that a mass of plaster went sliding down outside and fell with a loud impact. i gripped his arm, fearing he might cry out, and for a long time we crouched motionless. then i turned to see how much of our rampart remained. the detachment of the plaster had left a vertical slit open in the debris, and by raising myself cautiously across a beam i was able to see out of this gap into what had been overnight a quiet suburban roadway. vast, indeed, was the change that we beheld. the fifth cylinder must have fallen right into the midst of the house we had first visited. the building had vanished, completely smashed, pulverised, and dispersed by the blow. the cylinder lay now far beneath the original foundations--deep in a hole, already vastly larger than the pit i had looked into at woking. the earth all round it had splashed under that tremendous impact--"splashed" is the only word--and lay in heaped piles that hid the masses of the adjacent houses. it had behaved exactly like mud under the violent blow of a hammer. our house had collapsed backward; the front portion even on the ground floor, had been destroyed completely; by a chance the kitchen and scullery had escaped, and stood buried now under soil and ruins, closed in by tons of earth on every side save towards the cylinder. over that aspect we hung now on the very edge of the great circular pit the martians were engaged in making. the heavy beating sound was evidently just behind us, and ever and again a bright green vapour drove up like a veil across our peephole. the cylinder was already opened in the centre of the pit, and on the farther edge of the pit, amid the smashed and gravel-heaped shrubbery, one of the great fighting machines, deserted by its occupant, stood stiff and tall against the evening sky. at first i scarcely noticed the pit and the cylinder, although it has been convenient to describe them first, on account of the extraordinary glittering mechanism i saw busy in the excavation, and on account of the strange creatures that were crawling slowly and painfully across the heaped mould near it. the mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first. it was one of those complicated fabrics that have since been called handling-machines, and the study of which has already given such an enormous impetus to terrestrial invention. as it dawned upon me first, it presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed, agile legs, and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars, and reaching and clutching tentacles about its body. most of its arms were retracted, but with three long tentacles it was fishing out a number of rods, plates, and bars which lined the covering and apparently strengthened the walls of the cylinder. these, as it extracted them, were lifted out and deposited upon a level surface of earth behind it. its motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first i did not see it as a machine, in spite of its metallic glitter. the fighting-machines were coordinated and animated to an extraordinary pitch, but nothing to compare with this. people who have never seen these structures, and have only the ill-imagined efforts of artists or the imperfect descriptions of such eye-witnesses as myself to go upon, scarcely realise that living quality. i recall particularly the illustration of one of the first pamphlets to give a consecutive account of the war. the artist had evidently made a hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and there his knowledge ended. he presented them as tilted, stiff tripods, without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether misleading monotony of effect. the pamphlet containing these renderings had a considerable vogue, and i mention them here simply to warn the reader against the impression they may have created. they were no more like the martians i saw in action than a dutch doll is like a human being. to my mind, the pamphlet would have been much better without them. at first, i say, the handling-machine did not impress me as a machine, but as a crablike creature with a glittering integument, the controlling martian whose delicate tentacles actuated its movements seeming to be simply the equivalent of the crab's cerebral portion. but then i perceived the resemblance of its grey-brown, shiny, leathery integument to that of the other sprawling bodies beyond, and the true nature of this dexterous workman dawned upon me. with that realization my interest shifted to those other creatures, the real martians. already i had had a transient impression of these, and the first nausea no longer obscured my observation. moreover, i was concealed and motionless, and under no urgency of action. they were, i now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible to conceive. they were huge round bodies--or, rather, heads--about four feet in diameter, each body having in front of it a face. this face had no nostrils--indeed, the martians do not seem to have had any sense of smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured eyes, and just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. in the back of this head or body--i scarcely know how to speak of it--was the single tight tympanic surface, since known to be anatomically an ear, though it must have been almost useless in our dense air. in a group round the mouth were sixteen slender, almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in two bunches of eight each. these bunches have since been named rather aptly, by that distinguished anatomist, professor howes, the hands. even as i saw these martians for the first time they seemed to be endeavouring to raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with the increased weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible. there is reason to suppose that on mars they may have progressed upon them with some facility. the internal anatomy, i may remark here, as dissection has since shown, was almost equally simple. the greater part of the structure was the brain, sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear, and tactile tentacles. besides this were the bulky lungs, into which the mouth opened, and the heart and its vessels. the pulmonary distress caused by the denser atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only too evident in the convulsive movements of the outer skin. and this was the sum of the martian organs. strange as it may seem to a human being, all the complex apparatus of digestion, which makes up the bulk of our bodies, did not exist in the martians. they were heads merely heads. entrails they had none. they did not eat, much less digest. instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures, and injected it into their own veins. i have myself seen this being done, as i shall mention in its place. but, squeamish as i may seem, i cannot bring myself to describe what i could not endure even to continue watching. let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run directly by means of a little pipette into the recipient canal.... the bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, but at the same time i think that we should remember how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit. the physiological advantages of the practice of injection are undeniable, if one thinks of the tremendous waste of human time and energy occasioned by eating and the digestive process. our bodies are half made up of glands and tubes and organs, occupied in turning heterogeneous food into blood. the digestive processes and their reaction upon the nervous system sap our strength and colour our minds. men go happy or miserable as they have healthy or unhealthy livers, or sound gastric glands. but the martians were lifted above all these organic fluctuations of mood and emotion. their undeniable preference for men as their source of nourishment is partly explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they had brought with them as provisions from mars. these creatures, to judge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost like those of the silicious sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all were killed before earth was reached. it was just as well for them, for the mere attempt to stand upright upon our planet would have broken every bone in their bodies. and while i am engaged in this description, i may add in this place certain further details which, although they were not all evident to us at the time, will enable the reader who is unacquainted with them to form a clearer picture of these offensive creatures. in three other points their physiology differed strangely from ours. their organisms did not sleep, any more than the heart of man sleeps. since they had no extensive muscular mechanism to recuperate, that periodical extinction was unknown to them. they had little or no sense of fatigue, it would seem. on earth they could never have moved without effort, yet even to the last they kept in action. in twenty-four hours they did twenty-four hours of work, as even on earth is perhaps the case with the ants. in the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the martians were absolutely without sex, and therefore without any of the tumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men. a young martian, there can now be no dispute, was really born upon earth during the war, and it was found attached to its parent, partially budded off, just as young lilybulbs bud off, or like the young animals in the fresh-water polyp. in man, in all the higher terrestrial animals, such a method of increase has disappeared; but even on this earth it was certainly the primitive method. among the lower animals, up even to those first cousins of the vertebrated animals, the tunicates, the two processes occur side by side, but finally the sexual method superseded its competitor altogether. on mars, however, just the reverse has apparently been the case. it is worthy of remark that a certain speculative writer of quasi-scientific repute, writing long before the martian invasion, did forecast for man a final structure not unlike the actual martian condition. his prophecy, i remember, appeared in november or december, 1893, in a long-defunct publication, the pall mall budget, and i recall a caricature of it in a pre-martian periodical called punch. he pointed out--writing in a foolish, facetious tone--that the perfection of mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede limbs; the perfection of chemical devices, digestion; that such organs as hair, external nose, teeth, ears, and chin were no longer essential parts of the human being, and that the tendency of natural selection would lie in the direction of their steady diminution through the coming ages. the brain alone remained a cardinal necessity. only one other part of the body had a strong case for survival, and that was the hand, "teacher and agent of the brain." while the rest of the body dwindled, the hands would grow larger. there is many a true word written in jest, and here in the martians we have beyond dispute the actual accomplishment of such a suppression of the animal side of the organism by the intelligence. to me it is quite credible that the martians may be descended from beings not unlike ourselves, by a gradual development of brain and hands (the latter giving rise to the two bunches of delicate tentacles at last) at the expense of the rest of the body. without the body the brain would, of course, become a mere selfish intelligence, without any of the emotional substratum of the human being. the last salient point in which the systems of these creatures differed from ours was in what one might have thought a very trivial particular. micro-organisms, which cause so much disease and pain on earth, have either never appeared upon mars or martian sanitary science eliminated them ages ago. a hundred diseases, all the fevers and contagions of human life, consumption, cancers, tumours and such morbidities, never enter the scheme of their life. and speaking of the differences between the life on mars and terrestrial life, i may allude here to the curious suggestions of the red weed. apparently the vegetable kingdom in mars, instead of having green for a dominant colour, is of a vivid blood red tint. at any rate, the seeds which the martians (intentionally or accidentally) brought with then, gave rise in all cases to red-coloured growths. only that known popularly as the red weed, however, gained any footing in competition with terrestrial forms. the red creeper was quite a transitory growth, and few people have seen it growing. for a time, however, the red weed grew with astonishing vigour and luxuriance. it spread up the sides of the pit by the third or fourth day of our imprisonment, an its cactus-like branches formed a carmine fringe to the edges of our triangular window. and afterwards i found it broadcast throughout the country, and especially wherever there was a stream of water. the martians had what appears to have been an auditory organ, a single round drum at the back of the head-body, and eyes with a visual range not very different from ours except that, according to philips, blue and violet were as black to them. it is commonly supposed that they communicated by sounds and tentacular gesticulations; this is asserted, for instance, in the able but hastily compiled pamphlet (written evidently by someone not an eye-witness to martian actions) to which i have already alluded, and which, so far, has been the chief source of information concerning them. now no surviving human being saw so much of the martians in action as i did. i take no credit to myself for an accident, but the fact is so. and i assert that i watched them closely time after time, and that i have seen four, five, and (once) six of them sluggishly performing the most elaborately complicated operations together without either sound or gesture. their peculiar hooting invariably preceded feeding; it had no modulation, and was, i believe, in no sense a signal, but merely the expiration of air preparatory to the suctional operation. i have a certain claim to at least an elementary knowledge of psychology, and in this matter i am convinced--as firmly as i am convinced of anything--that the martians interchanged thoughts without any physical intermediation. and i have been convinced of this in spite of strong preconceptions. before the martian invasion, as an occasional reader here or there may remember, i had written with some little vehemence against the telepathic theory. the martians wore no clothing. their conceptions of ornament and decorum were necessarily different from ours; and not only were they evidently much less sensible of changes of temperature than we are, but changes of pressure do not seem to have affected their health at all seriously. yet though they wore no clothing, it was in the other artificial additions to their bodily resources that their great superiority over man lay. we men, with our bicycles and road-skates, our lilienthal soaring-machines, our guns and sticks and so forth, are just in the beginning of the evolution that the martians have worked out. they have become practically mere brains, wearing different bodies according to their needs just as men wear suits of clothes and take a bicycle in a hurry or an umbrella in the wet. and of their appliances, perhaps nothing is more wonderful to a man than the curious fact that what is the dominant feature of almost all human devices in mechanism is absent--the wheel is absent; among all the things they brought to earth there is no trace or suggestion of their use of wheels. one would have at least expected it in locomotion. and in this connection it is curious to remark that even on this earth nature has never hit upon the wheel, or has preferred other expedients to its development. and not only did the martians either not know of (which is incredible), or abstain from, the wheel, but in their apparatus singularly little use is made of the fixed pivot, or relatively fixed pivot, with circular motions thereabout confined to one plane. almost all the joints of the machinery present a complicated system of sliding parts moving over small but beautifully curved friction bearings. and while upon this matter of detail, it is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature of the disks in an elastic sheath; these disks become polarised and drawn closely and powerfully together when traversed by a current of electricity. in this way the curious parallelism to animal motions, which was so striking and disturbing to the human beholder, was attained. such quasi-muscles abounded in the crablike handling-machine which, on my first peeping out of the slit, i watched unpacking the cylinder. it seemed infinitely more alive than the actual martians lying beyond it in the sunset light, panting, stirring ineffectual tentacles, and moving feebly after their vast journey across space. while i was still watching their sluggish motions in the sunlight, and noting each strange detail of their form, the curate reminded me of his presence by pulling violently at my arm. i turned to a scowling face, and silent, eloquent lips. he wanted the slit, which permitted only one of us to peep through; and so i had to forego watching them for a time while he enjoyed that privilege. when i looked again, the busy handling-machine had already put together several of the pieces of apparatus it had taken out of the cylinder into a shape having an unmistakable likeness to its own; and down on the left a busy little digging mechanism had come into view, emitting jets of green vapour and working its way round the pit, excavating and embarking in a methodical and discriminating manner. this it was which had caused the regular beating noise, and the rhythmic shocks that had kept our ruinous refuge quivering. it piped and whistled as it worked. so far as i could see, the thing was without a directing martian at all. the war of the worlds -book 2 chapter 3: the days of imprisonment the arrival of a second fighting-machine drove us from our peephole into the scullery, for we feared that from his elevation the martian might see down upon us behind our barrier. at a later date we began to feel less in danger of their eyes, for to an eye in the dale of the sunlight outside our refuge must have been blank blackness, but at first the slightest suggestion of approach drove us into the scullery in heart-throbbing retreat. yet terrible as was the danger we incurred, the attraction of peeping was for both of us irresistible. and i recall now with a sort of wonder that, in spite of the infinite danger in which we were between starvation and a still more terrible death, we could yet struggle bitterly for that horrible privilege of sight. we would race across the kitchen in a grotesque way between eagerness and the dread of making a noise, and strike each other, and thrust and kick, within a few inches of exposure. the fact is that we had absolutely incompatible dispositions and habits of thought and action, and our danger and isolation only accentuated the incompatibility. at halliford i had already come to hate the curate's trick of helpless exclamation, his stupid rigidity of mind. his endless muttering monologue vitiated every effort i made to think out a line of action, and drove me at times, thus pent up and intensified, almost to the verge of craziness. he was as lacking in restraint as a silly woman. he would weep for hours together, and i verily believe that to the very end this spoiled child of life thought his weak tears in some way efficacious. and i would sit in the darkness unable to keep my mind off him by reason of his importunities. he ate more than i did, and it was in vain i pointed out that our only chance of life was to stop in the house until the martians had done with their pit, that in that long patience a time might presently come when we should need food. he ate an drank impulsively in heavy meals at long intervals. he slept little. as the days wore on, his utter carelessness of any consideration so intensified our distress and danger that i had, much as i loathed doing it, to resort to threats, and at last to blows. that brought him to reason for a time. but he was one of those weak creatures, void of pride, timorous, anaemic, hateful souls, full of shifty cunning, who face neither god nor man, who face not even themselves. it is disagreeable for me to recall and write these things, but i set them down that my story may lack nothing. those who have escaped the dark and terrible aspects of life will find my brutality, my flash of rage in our final tragedy, easy enough to blame; for they know what is wrong as well as any, but not what is possible to tortured men. but those who have been under the shadow, who have gone down at last to elemental things, will have a wider charity. and while within we fought out our dark, dim contest of whispers, matched food and drink, and gripping hands and blows, without, in the pitiless sunlight of that terrible june, was the strange wonder, the unfamiliar routine of the martians in the pit. let me return to those first new experiences of mine. after a long time i ventured back to the peephole, to find that the new-comers had been reinforced by the occupants of no fewer than three of the fighting-machines. these last had brought with them certain fresh appliances that stood in an orderly manner about the cylinder. the second handling-machine was now completed, and was busied in serving one of the novel contrivances the big machine had brought. this was a body resembling a milk can in its general form, above which oscillated a pear-shaped receptacle, and from which a stream of white powder flowed into a circular basin below. the oscillatory motion was imparted to this by one tentacle of the handling-machine. with two spatulate hands the handling-machine was digging out and flinging masses of clay into the pear-shaped receptacle above, while with another arm it periodically opened a door and removed rusty and blackened clinkers from the middle part of the machine. another steely tentacle directed the powder from the basin along a ribbed channel towards some receiver that was hidden from me by the mound of bluish dust. from this unseen receiver a little thread of green smoke rose vertically into the quiet air. as i looked, the handling-machine, with a faint and musical clinking, extended, telescopic fashion, a tentacle that had been a moment before a mere blunt projection, until its end was hidden behind the mound of clay. in another second it had lifted a bar of white aluminium into sight, untarnished as yet and shining dazzlingly, and deposited it in a growing stack of bars that stood at the side of the pit. between sunset and starlight this dexterous machine must have made more than a hundred such bars out of the crude clay, and the mound of bluish dust rose steadily until it topped the side of the pit. the contrast between the swift and complex movements of these contrivances and the inert, panting clumsiness of their masters was acute, and for days i had to tell myself repeatedly that these latter were indeed the living of the two things. the curate had possession of the slit when the first men were brought to the pit. i was sitting below, huddled up, listening with all my ears. he made a sudden movement backward, and i, fearful that we were observed, crouched in a spasm of terror. he came sliding down the rubbish and crept beside me in the darkness, inarticulate, gesticulating, and for a moment i shared his panic. his gesture suggested a resignation of the slit, and after a little while my curiosity gave me courage, and i rose up, stepped across him, and clambered up to it. at first i could see no reason for his frantic behaviour. the twilight had now come, the stars were little and faint, but the pit was illuminated by the flickering green fire that came from the aluminium-making. the whole picture was a flickering scheme of green gleams and shifting rusty black shadows, strangely trying to the eyes. over and through it all went the bats, heeding it not at all. the sprawling martians were no longer to be seen, the mound of blue-green powder had risen to cover them from sight, and a fighting-machine, with its legs contracted, crumpled, and abbreviated, stood across the corner of the pit. and then, amid the clangour of the machinery, came a drifting suspicion, of human voices, that i entertained at first only to dismiss. i crouched, watching this fighting-machine closely, satisfying myself now for the first time that the hood did indeed contain a martian. as the green flames lifted i could see the oily gleam of his integument and the brightness of his eyes. and suddenly i heard a yell, and saw a long tentacle reaching over the shoulder of the machine to the little cage that hunched upon its back. then something--something struggling violently--was lifted high against the sky, a black, vague enigma against the starlight; and as this black object came down again, i saw by the green brightness that it was a man. for an instant he was clearly visible. he was a stout, ruddy, middle-aged man, well dressed; three days before, he must have been walking the world, a man of considerable consequence. i could see his staring eyes and gleams of light on his studs and watch chain. he vanished behind the mound, and for a moment there was silence. and then began a shrieking and a sustained and cheerful hooting from the martians. i slid down the rubbish, struggled to my feet, clapped my hands over my ears, and bolted into the scullery. the curate, who had been crouching silently with his arms over his head, looked up as i passed, cried out quite loudly at my desertion of him, and came running after me. that night, as we lurked in the scullery, balanced between our horror and the terrible fascination this peeping had, although i felt an urgent need of action i tried in vain to conceive some plan of escape; but afterwards, during the second day, i was able to consider our position with great clearness. the curate, i found, was quite incapable of discussion; this new and culminating atrocity had robbed him of all vestiges of reason or forethought. practically he had already sunk to the level of an animal. but, as the saying goes, i gripped myself with both hands. it grew upon my mind, once i could face the facts, that, terrible as our position was, there was as yet no justification for absolute despair. our chief chance lay in the possibility of the martians making the pit nothing more than a temporary encampment. or even if they kept it permanently, they might not consider it necessary to guard it, and a chance of escape might be afforded us. i also weighed very carefully the possibility of our digging a way out in a direction away from the pit, but the chances of our emerging within sight of some sentinel fighting-machine seemed at first too great. and i should have had to do all the digging myself. the curate would certainly have failed me. it was on the third day, if my memory serves me right, that i saw the lad killed. it was the only occasion on which i actually saw the martians feed. after that experience i avoided the hole in the wall for the better part of a day. i went into the scullery, removed the door, and spent some hours digging with my hatchet as silently as possible; but when i had made a hole about a couple of feet deep the loose earth collapsed noisily, and i did not dare continue. i lost heart, and lay down on the scullery floor for a long time, having no spirit even to move. and after that i abandoned altogether the idea of escaping by excavation. it says much for the impression the martians had made upon me that at first i entertained little or no hope of our escape being brought about by their overthrow through any human effort. but on the fourth or fifth night i heard a sound like heavy guns. it was very late in the night, and the moon was shining brightly. the martians had taken away the excavating machine, and, save for a fighting-machine that stood in the remoter bank of the pit and a handling-machine that was buried out of my sight in a corner of the pit immediately beneath my peephole, the place was deserted by them. except for the pale glow from the handling-machine and the bars and patches of white moonlight, the pit was in darkness, and except for the clinking of the handling-machine, quite still. that night was a beautiful serenity; save for one planet, the moon seemed to have the sky to herself. i heard a dog howling--and that familiar sound it was that made me listen. then i heard quite distinctly a booming exactly like the sound of great guns. six distinct reports i counted, and after a long interval six again. and that was all. the war of the worlds -book 2 chapter 4: the death of the curate it was on the sixth day of our imprisonment that i peeped for the last time, and presently found myself alone. instead of keeping close to me and trying to oust me from the slit, the curate had gone back into the scullery. i was struck by a sudden thought. i went back quickly and quietly into the scullery. in the darkness i heard the curate drinking. i snatched in the darkness, and my fingers caught a bottle of burgundy. for a few minutes there was a tussle. the bottle struck the floor and broke, and i desisted and rose. we stood panting and threatening each other. in the end i planted myself between him and the food, and told him of my determination to begin a discipline. i divided the food in the pantry into rations to last us ten days. i would not let him eat any more that day. in the afternoon he made a feeble effort to get at the food. i had been dozing, but in an instant i was awake. all day and all night we sat face to face, i weary but resolute, and he weeping and complaining of his immediate hunger. it was, i know, a night and a day, but to me it seemed--it seems now--an interminable length of time. and so our widened incompatibility ended at last in open conflict. for two vast days we struggled in undertones and wrestling contests. there were times when i beat and kicked him madly, times when i cajoled and persuaded him, and once i tried to bribe him with the last bottle of burgundy, for there was a rain-water pump from which i could get water. but neither force nor kindness availed; he was indeed beyond reason. he would neither desist from his attacks on the food nor from his noisy babbling to himself. the rudimentary precautions to keep our imprisonment endurable he would not observe. slowly i began to realise the complete overthrow of his intelligence, to perceive that my sole companion in this close and sickly darkness was a man insane. from certain vague memories, i am inclined to think my own mind wandered at times. i had strange and hideous dreams whenever i slept. it sounds paradoxical, but i am inclined to think that the weakness and insanity of the curate warned me, braced me, and kept me a sane man. on the eighth day he began to talk aloud instead of whispering, and nothing i could do would moderate his speech. "it is just, o god!-" he would say, over and over again. "it is just. on me and mine be the punishment laid. we have sinned, we have fallen short. there was poverty, sorrow; the poor were trodden in the dust, and i held my peace. i preached acceptable folly--my god, what folly! --when i should have stood up, though i died for it, and called upon them to repent--repent! ... oppressors of the poor and needy ...! the wine press of god!" then he would suddenly revert to the matter of the food i withheld from him, praying, begging, weeping, at last threatening. he began to raise his voice--i prayed him not to. he perceived a hold on me--he threatened he would shout and bring the martians upon us. for a time that scared me; but any concession would have shortened our chance of escape beyond estimating. i defied him, although i felt no assurance that he might not do this thing. but that day, at any rate, he did not. he talked with his voice rising slowly, through the greater part of the eighth and ninth days--threats, entreaties, mingled with a torrent of half-sane and always frothy repentance for his vacant sham of god's service, such as made me pity him. then he slept awhile, and began again with renewed strength, so loudly that i must needs make him desist. "be still!" i implored. he rose to his knees, for he had been sitting in the darkness near the copper. "i have been still too long," he said, in a tone that must have reached the pit, "and now i must bear my witness. woe unto this unfaithful city! woe! woe! woe! woe! woe! to the inhabitants of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet---" "shut up!" i said, rising to my feet, and in a terror lest the martians should hear us. "for god's sake---" "nay," shouted the curate, at the top of his voice, standing likewise and extending his arms. "speak! the word of the lord is upon me!" in three strides he was at the door leading into the kitchen. "i must bear my witness! i go! it has already been too long delayed." i put out my hand and felt the meat chopper hanging to the wall. in a flash i was after him. i was fierce with fear. before he was halfway across the kitchen i had overtaken him. with one last touch of humanity i turned the blade back and struck him with the butt. he went headlong forward and lay stretched on the ground. i stumbled over him and stood panting. he lay still. suddenly i heard a noise without, the run and smash of slipping plaster, and the triangular aperture in the wall was darkened. i looked up and saw the lower surface of a handling-machine coming slowly across the hole. one of its gripping limbs curled amid the debris; another limb appeared, feeling its way over the fallen beams. i stood petrified, staring. then i saw through a sort of glass plate near the edge of the body the face, as we may call it, and the large dark eyes of a martian, peering, and then a long metallic snake of tentacle came feeling slowly through the hole. i turned by an effort, stumbled over the curate, and stopped at the scullery door. the tentacle was now some way, two yards or more, in the room, and twisting and turning, with queer sudden movements, this way and that. for a while i stood fascinated by that slow, fitful advance. then, with a faint, hoarse cry, i forced myself across the scullery. i trembled violently; i could scarcely stand upright. i opened the door of the coal cellar, and stood there in the darkness staring at the faintly lit doorway into the kitchen, and listening. had the martian seen me? what was it doing now? something was moving to and fro there, very quietly; every now and then it tapped against the wall, or started on its movements with a faint metallic ringing, like the movements of keys on a split-ring. then a heavy body--i knew too well what--was dragged across the floor of the kitchen towards the opening. irresistibly attracted, i crept to the door and peeped into the kitchen. in the triangle of bright outer sunlight i saw, the martian, in its briareus of a handling-machine, scrutinising the curate's head. i thought at once that it would infer my presence from the mark of the blow i had given him. i crept back to the coal cellar, shut the door, and began to cover myself up as much as i could, and as noiselessly as possible in the darkness, among the firewood and coal therein. every now and then i paused, rigid, to hear if the martian had thrust its tentacles through the opening again. then the faint metallic, jingle returned. i traced it slowly feeling over the kitchen. presently i heard it nearer--in the scullery, as i judged. i thought that its length might be insufficient to reach me. i prayed copiously. it passed, scraping faintly across the cellar door. an age of almost intolerable suspense intervened; then i heard it fumbling at the latch! it had found the door. the martians understood doors! it worried at the catch for a minute, perhaps, and then the door opened. in the darkness i could just see the thing--like an elephant's trunk more than anything else--waving towards me and touching and examining the wall, coals, wood and ceiling. it was like a black worm swaying its blind head to and fro. once, even, it touched the heel of my boot. i was on the verge of screaming; i bit my hand. for a time the tentacle was silent. i could have fancied it had been withdrawn. presently, with an abrupt click, it gripped something--i thought it had me!--and seemed to go out of the cellar again. for a minute i was not sure. apparently it had taken a lump of coal to examine. i seized the opportunity of slightly shifting my position, which had become cramped, and then listened. i whispered passionate prayers for safety. then i heard the slow, deliberate sound creeping towards me again. slowly, slowly it drew near, scratching against the walls and tapping the furniture. while i was still doubtful, it rapped smartly against the cellar door and closed it. i heard it go into the pantry, and the biscuit-tins rattled and a bottle smashed, and then came a heavy bump against the cellar door. then silence that passed into an infinity of suspense. had it gone? at last i decided that it had. it came into the scullery no more; but i lay all the tenth day in the close darkness, buried among coals and firewood, not daring even to crawl out for the drink for which i craved. it was the eleventh day before i ventured so far from my security. the war of the worlds -book 2 chapter 5: the stillness my first act before i went into the pantry was to fasten the door between the kitchen and the scullery. but the pantry was empty; every scrap of food had gone. apparently, the martian had taken it all on the previous day. at that discovery i despaired for the first time. i took no food, or no drink either, on the eleventh or the twelfth day. at first my mouth and throat were parched, and my strength ebbed sensibly. i sat about in the darkness of the scullery, in a state of despondent wretchedness. my mind ran on eating. i thought i had become deaf, for the noises of movement i had been accustomed to hear from the pit had ceased absolutely. i did not feel strong enough to crawl noiselessly to the peephole, or i would have gone there. on the twelfth day my throat was so painful that, taking the chance of alarming the martians, i attacked the creaking rain-water pump that stood by the sink, and got a couple of glassfuls of blackened and tainted rain water. i was greatly refreshed by this, and emboldened by the fact that no enquiring tentacle followed the noise of my pumping. during these days, in a rambling, inconclusive way, i thought much of the curate and of the manner of his death. on the thirteenth day i drank some more water, and dozed and thought disjointedly of eating and of vague impossible plans of escape. whenever i dozed i dreamt of horrible phantasms, of the death of the curate, or of sumptuous dinners; but, asleep or awake, i felt a keen pain that urged me to drink again and again. the light that came into the scullery was no longer grey, but red. to my disordered imagination it seemed the colour of blood. on the fourteenth day i went into the kitchen, and i was surprised to find that the fronds of the red weed had grown right across the hole in the wall, turning the half-light of the place into a crimson-coloured obscurity. it was early on the fifteenth day that i heard a curious, familiar sequence of sounds in the kitchen, and, listening, identified it as the snuffing and scratching of a dog. going into the kitchen, i saw a dog's nose peering in through a break among the ruddy fronds. this greatly surprised me. at the scent of me he barked shortly. i thought if i could induce him to come into the place quietly i should be able, perhaps, to kill and eat him; and in any case, it would be advisable to kill him, lest his actions attracted the attention of the martians. i crept forward, saying "good dog!" very softly; but he suddenly withdrew his head and disappeared. i listened--i was not deaf--but certainly the pit was still. i heard a sound like the flutter of a bird's wings, and a hoarse croaking, but that was all. for a long while i lay close to the peephole, but not daring to move aside the red plants that obscured it. once or twice i heard a faint pitter-patter like the feet of the dog going hither and thither on the sand far below me, and there were more birdlike sounds, but that was all. at length, encouraged by the silence, i looked out. except in the corner, where a multitude of crows hopped and fought over the skeletons of the dead the martians had consumed, there was not a living thing in the pit. i stared about me, scarcely believing my eyes. all the machinery had gone. save for the big mound of greyish-blue powder in one corner, certain bars of aluminium in another, the black birds, and the skeletons of the killed, the place was merely an empty circular pit in the sand. slowly i thrust myself out through the red weed, and stood upon the mound of rubble. i could see in any direction save behind me, to the north, and neither martians nor sign of martians were to be seen. the pit dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along the rubbish afforded a practicable slope to the summit of the ruins. my chance of escape had come. i began to tremble. i hesitated for some time, and then, in a gust of desperate resolution, and with a heart that throbbed violently, i scrambled to the top of the mound in which i had been buried so long. i looked about again. to the northward, too, no martian was visible. when i had last seen this part of sheen in the daylight it had been a straggling street of comfortable white and red houses, interspersed with abundant shady trees. now i stood on a mound of smashed brickwork, clay, and gravel, over which spread a multitude of red cactus-shaped plants, knee-high, without a solitary terrestrial growth to dispute their footing. the trees near me were dead and brown, but further a network of red thread scaled the still living stems. the neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been burned; their walls stood, sometimes to the second story, with smashed windows and shattered doors. the red weed grew tumultuously in their roofless rooms. below me was the great pit, with the crows struggling for its refuse. a number of other birds hopped about among the ruins. far away i saw a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along a wall, but traces of men there were none. the day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement, dazzlingly bright, the sky a glowing blue. a gentle breeze kept the red weed that covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying. and oh! the sweetness of the air! the war of the worlds -book 2 chapter 6: the work of fifteen days for some time i stood tottering on the mound regardless of my safety. within that noisome den from which i had emerged i had thought with a narrow intensity only of our immediate security. i had not realised what had been happening to the world, had not anticipated this startling vision of unfamiliar things. i had expected to see sheen in ruins--i found about me the landscape, weird and lurid, of another planet. for that moment i touched an emotion beyond the common range of men, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. i felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. i felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that i was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the martian heel. with us it would be as with them, to lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire of man had passed away. but so soon as this strangeness had been realised it passed, and my dominant motive became the hunger of my long and dismal fast. in the direction away from the pit i saw, beyond a red-covered wall, a patch of garden ground unburied. this gave me a hint, and i went knee-deep, and sometimes neck-deep, in the red weed. the density of the weed gave me a reassuring sense of hiding. the wall was some six feet high, and when i attempted to clamber it i found i could not lift my feet to the crest. so i went along by the side of it, and came to a corner and a rockwork that enabled me to get to the top, and tumble into the garden i coveted. here i found some young onions, a couple of gladiolus bulbs, and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which i secured, and, scrambling over a ruined wall, went on my way through scarlet and crimson trees towards kew--it was like walking through an avenue of gigantic blood drops--possessed with two ideas: to get more food, and to limp, as soon and as far as my strength permitted, out of this accursed unearthly region of the pit. some way farther, in a grassy place, was a group of mushrooms which also i devoured, and then i came upon a brown sheet of flowing shallow water, where meadows used to be. these fragments of nourishment served only to whet my hunger. at first i was surprised at this flood in a hot, dry summer, hut afterwards i discovered that it was caused by the tropical exuberance of the red weed. directly this extraordinary growth encountered water it straightway became gigantic and of unparalleled fecundity. its seeds were simply poured down into the water of the wey and thames, and its swiftly growing and titanic water fronds speedily choked both those rivers. at putney, as i afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a tangle of this weed, and at richmond, too, the thames water poured in a broad and shallow stream across the meadows of hampton and twickerham. as the water spread the weed followed them, until the ruined villas of the thames valley were for a time lost in this red swamp, whose margin i explored, and much of the desolation the martians had caused was concealed. in the end the red weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had spread. a cankering disease, due, it is believed, to the action of certain bacteria, presently seized upon it. now by the action of natural selection, all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting power against bacterial diseases--they never succumb without a severe struggle, but the red weed rotted like a thing already dead. the fronds became bleached, and then shrivelled and brittle. they broke off at the least touch, and the waters that had stimulated their early growth carried their last vestiges out to sea. my first act on coming to this water was, of course, to slake my thirst. i drank a great deal of it and, moved by an impulse, gnawed some fronds of red weed; but they were watery, and had a sickly, metallic taste. i found the water was sufficiently shallow for me to wade securely, although the red weed impeded my feet a little; but the flood evidently got deeper towards the river, and i turned back to mortlake. i managed to make out the road by means of occasional ruins of its villas and fences and lamps, and so presently i got out of this spate and made my way to the hill going up towards roehampton and came out on putney common. here the scenery changed from the strange and unfamiliar to the wreckage of the familiar: patches of ground exhibited the devastation of a cyclone, and in a few score yards i would come upon perfectly undisturbed spaces, houses with their blinds trimly drawn and doors closed, as if they had been left for a day by the owners, or as if their inhabitants slept within. the red weed was less abundant; the tall trees along the lane were free from the red creeper. i hunted for food among the trees, finding nothing, and i also raided a couple of silent houses, but they had already been broken into and ransacked. i rested for the remainder of the daylight in a shrubbery, being, in my enfeebled condition, too fatigued to push on. all this time i saw no human beings, and no signs of the martians. i encountered a couple of hungry-looking dogs, but both hurried circuitously away from the advances i made them. near roehampton i had seen two human skeletons--not bodies, but skeletons, picked clean --and in the wood by me i found the crushed and scattered bones of several cats and rabbits and the skull of a sheep. but though i gnawed parts of these in my mouth, there was nothing to be got from them. after sunset i struggled on along the road towards putney, where i think the heat-ray must have been used for some reason. and in the garden beyond roehampton i got a quantity of immature potatoes, sufficient to stay my hunger. from this garden one looked down upon putney and the river. the aspect of the place in the dusk was singularly desolate: blackened trees, blackened, desolate ruins, and down the hill the sheets of the flooded river, red-tinged with the weed. and over all--silence. it filled me with indescribable terror to think how swiftly that desolating change had come. for a time i believed that mankind had been swept out of existence, and that i stood there alone, the last man left alive. hard by the top of putney hill i came upon another skeleton, with the arms dislocated and removed several yards from the rest of the body. as i proceeded i became more and more convinced that the extermination of mankind was, save for such stragglers as myself, already accomplished in this part of the world. the martians, i thought, had gone on and left the country desolated, seeking food elsewhere. perhaps even now they were destroying berlin or paris, or it might be they had gone northward. the war of the worlds -book 2 chapter 7: the man on putney hill i spent that night in the inn that stands at the top of putney hill, sleeping in a made bed for the first time since my flight to leatherhead. i will not tell the needless trouble i had breaking into that house--afterwards i found the front door was on the latch--nor how i ransacked every room for food, until just on the verge of despair, in what seemed to me to be a servant's bedroom i found a rat-gnawed crust and two tins of pineapple. the place had been already searched and emptied. in the bar i afterwards found some biscuits and sandwiches that had been overlooked. the latter i could not eat, they were too rotten, but the former not only stayed my hunger, but filled my pockets. i lit no lamps, fearing some martian might come beating that part of london for food in the night. before i went to bed i had an interval of restlessness, and prowled from window to window, peering out for some sign of these monsters. i slept little. as i lay in bed i found myself thinking consecutively--a thing i do not remember to have done since my last argument with the curate. during all the intervening time my mental condition had been a hurrying succession of vague emotional states or a sort of stupid receptivity. but in the night my brain, reinforced, i suppose, by the food i had eaten, grew clear again, and i thought. three things struggled for possession of my mind: the killing of the curate, the whereabouts of the martians, and the possible fate of my wife. the former gave me no sensation of horror or remorse to recall; i saw it simply as a thing done, a memory infinitely disagreeable but quite without the quality of remorse. i saw myself then as i see myself now, driven step by step towards that hasty blow, the creature of a sequence of accidents leading inevitably to that. i felt no condemnation; yet the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted me. in the silence of the night, with that sense of the nearness of god that sometimes comes into the stillness and the darkness, i stood my trial, my only trial, for that moment of wrath and fear. i retraced every step of our conversation from the moment when i had found him crouching beside me, heedless of my thirst, and pointing to the fire and smoke that streamed up from the ruins of weybridge. we had been incapable of co-operation--grim chance had taken no heed of that. had i foreseen, i should have left him at halliford. but i did not foresee; and crime is to foresee and do. and i set this down as i have set all this story down, as it was. there were no witnesses--all these things i might have concealed. but i set it down, and the reader must form his judgment as he will. and when, by an effort, i had set aside that picture of a prostrate body, i faced the problem of the martians and the fate of my wife. for the former i had no data; i could imagine a hundred things, and so, unhappily, i could for the latter. and suddenly that night became terrible. i found myself sitting up in bed, staring at the dark. i found myself praying that the heat-ray might have suddenly and painlessly struck her out of being. since the night of my return from leatherhead i had not prayed. i had uttered prayers, fetish prayers, had prayed as heathens mutter charms when i was in extremity; but now i prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the darkness of god. strange night! strangest in this, that so soon as dawn had come, i, who had talked with god, crept out of the house like a rat leaving its hiding place--a creature scarcely larger, an inferior animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be hunted and killed. perhaps they also prayed confidently to god. surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity--pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion. the morning was bright and fine, and the eastern sky flowed pink, and was fretted with little golden clouds. in the road that runs from the top of putney hill to wimbledon was a number of poor vestiges of the panic torrent that must have poured londonward on the sunday night after the fighting began. there was a little two-wheeled cart inscribed with the name of thomas lobb, greengrocer, new maiden, with a smashed wheel and an abandoned tin trunk; there was a straw hat trampled into the now hardened mud, and at the top of west hill a lot of blood-stained glass about the overturned water trough. my movements were languid, my plans of the vaguest. i had idea of going to leatherhead, though i knew that there i had the poorest chance of finding my wife. certainly, unless death had overtaken them suddenly, my cousins and she would have fled thence; but it seemed to me i might find or learn there whither the surrey people had fled. i knew i wanted to find my wife, that my heart ached for her and the world of men, but i had no clear idea how the finding might be done. i was also sharply aware now of my intense loneliness. from the corner i went, under cover of a thicket of trees and bushes, to the edge of wimbledon common, stretching wide and far. that dark expanse was lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom; there was no red weed to be seen, and as i prowled, hesitating, on the verge of the open, the sun rose, flooding it all with light and vitality. i came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place among the trees. i stopped to look at them, drawing a lesson from their stout resolve to live. and presently, turning suddenly, with an odd feeling of being watched, i beheld something crouching amid a clump of bushes. i stood regarding this. i made a step towards it, and it rose up and became a man armed with a cutlass. i approached him slowly. he stood silent and motionless, regarding me. as i drew nearer i perceived he was dressed in clothes as dusty and filthy as my own; he looked, indeed, as though he had been dragged through a culvert. nearer, i distinguished the green slime of ditches mixing with the pale drab of dried clay and shiny, coaly patches. his black hair fell over his eyes, and his face was dark and dirty and sunken, so that at first i did not recognise him. there was a red cut across the lower part of his face. "stop!" he cried, when i was within ten yards of him, and i stopped. his voice was hoarse. "where do you come from?" he said. i thought, surveying him. "i come from mortlake," i said. "i was buried near the pit the martians made about their cylinder. i have worked my way out and escaped." "there is no food about here," he said. "this is my country. all this hill down to the river, and back to clapham, and up to the edge of the common. there is only food for one. which way are you going?" i answered slowly. "i don't know," i said. "i have been buried in the ruins of a house thirteen or fourteen days. i don't know what has happened." he looked at me doubtfully, then started, and looked with a changed expression. "i've no wish to stop about here," said i. "i think i shall go to leatherhead, for my wife was there." he shot out a pointing finger. "it is you," said he; "the man from woking. and you weren't killed at weybridge?" i recognised him at the same moment. "you are the artilleryman who came into my garden." "good luck!" he said. "we are lucky ones! fancy you!" he put out a hand, and i took it. "i crawled up a drain," he said. "but they didn't kill everyone. and after they went away i got off towards walton across the fields. but--it's not sixteen days altogether--and your hair is grey." he looked over his shoulder suddenly. "only a rook," he said. "one gets to know that birds have shadows these days. this is a bit open. let us crawl under those bushes and talk." "have you seen any martians?" i said. "since i crawled out---" "they've gone away across london," he said. "i guess they've got a bigger camp there. of a night, all over there, hampstead way, the sky is alive with their lights. it's like a great city, and in the glare you can just see them moving. by daylight you can't. but nearer--i haven't seen them--" (he counted on his fingers) "five days. then i saw a couple across hammersmith way carrying something big. and the night before last"--he stopped and spoke impressively--"it was just a matter of lights, but it was something up in the air. i believe they've built a flying-machine, and are learning to fly." i stopped, on hands and knees, for we had come to the bushes. "fly!" "yes," he said, "fly." i went on into a little bower, and sat down. "it is all over with humanity," i said. "if they can do that they will simply go round the world." he nodded. "they will. but--it will relieve things over here a bit. and besides--" he looked at me. "aren't you satisfied it is up with humanity? i am. we're down; we're beat." i stared. strange as it may seem, i had not arrived at this fact--a fact perfectly obvious so soon as he spoke. i had still held a vague hope; rather, i had kept a lifelong habit of mind. he repeated his words, "we're beat." they carried absolute conviction. "it's all over," he said. "they've lost one--just one. and they've made their footing good and crippled the greatest power in the world. they've walked over us. the death of that one at weybridge was an accident. and these are only pioneers. they kept on coming. these green stars--i've seen none these five or six days, but i've no doubt they're falling somewhere every night. nothing's to be done. we're under! we're beat!" i made him no answer. i sat staring before me, trying in vain to devise some countervailing thought. "this isn't a war," said the artilleryman. "it never was, a war, any more than there's war between man and ants. suddenly i recalled the night in the observatory. "after the tenth shot, they fired no more--at least, until the first cylinder came." "how do you know?" said the artilleryman. i explained. he thought. "something wrong with the gun," he said. "but what if there is? they'll get it right again. and even if there's a delay, how can it alter the end? it's just men and ants. there's the ants builds their cities, live their lives, have wars, revolutions, until the men want them out of the way, and then they go out of the way. that's what we are now--just ants. only---" "yes," i said. "we're eatable ants." we sat looking at each other. "and what will they do with us?" i said. "that's what i've been thinking," he said; "that's what i've been thinking. after weybridge i went south--thinking. i saw what was up. most of the people were hard at it squealing and exciting themselves. but i'm not so fond of squealing. i've been in sight of death once or twice; i'm not an ornamental soldier, and at the best and worst, death--it's just death. and it's the man that keeps on thinking comes through. i saw everyone tracking away south. says i, `food won't last this way,' and i turned right back. i went for the martians like a sparrow goes for man. all round"--he waved a hand to the horizon--"they're starving in heaps, bolting, treading on each other...." he saw my face, and halted awkwardly. "no doubt lots who had money have gone away to france," he said. he seemed to hesitate whether to apologise, met my eyes, and went on: "there's food all about here. canned things in shops; wines, spirits, mineral waters; and the water mains and drains are empty. well, i was telling you what i was thinking. `here's intelligent things,' i said, `and it seems they want us for food. first, they'll smash us up--ships, machines, guns, cities, all the order and organisation. all that will go. if we were the size of ants we might pull through. but we're not. it's all too bulky to stop. that's the first certainty.' eh?" "it is; i've thought it out. very well, then--next; at present we're caught as we're wanted. a martian has only to go a few miles to get a crowd on the run. and i saw one, one day, out by wandsworth, picking houses to pieces and routing among the wreckage. but they won't keep on doing that. so soon as they've settled all our guns and ships, and smashed our railways, and done all the things they are doing over there, they will begin catching us systematic, picking the best and storing us in cages and things. that's what they will start doing in a bit. lord! they haven't begun on us yet. don't you see that?" "not begun!" i exclaimed. "not begun. all that's happened so far is through our not having the sense to keep quiet--worrying them with guns and such foolery. and losing our heads, and rushing off crowds to where there wasn't any more safety than where we were. they don't want to bother us yet. they're making their things--making all the things they couldn't bring with them, getting things ready for the rest of their people. very likely that's why the cylinders have stopped for a bit, for fear of hitting those who are here. and instead of our rushing about blind, on the howl, or getting dynamite on the chance of busting them up, we've got to fix ourselves up according to the new state of affairs. that's how i figure it out. it isn't quite according to what a man wants for his species, but it's about what the facts point to. and that's the principle i acted upon. cities, nations, civilisation, progress--it's all over. that game's up. we're beat." "but if that is so, what is there to live for?" the artilleryman looked at me for a moment. "there won't be any more blessed concerts for a million years or so; there won't be any royal academy of arts, and no nice little feeds at restaurants. if its amusement you're after, i reckon the game is up. if you've got any drawing-room manners or a dislike to eating peas with a knife or dropping aitches, you'd better chuck `em away. they ain't no further use. "you mean---" "i mean that men like me are going on living--for the sake of the breed. i tell you, i'm grim set on living. and if i'm not mistaken, you'll show what insides you've got, too, before long. we aren't going to be exterminated. and i don't mean to be caught either, and tamed and fattened and bred like a thundering ox. ugh! fancy those brown creepers!" "you don't mean to say---" "i do. i'm going on. under their feet. i've got it planned; i've thought it out. we men are beat. we don't know enough. we've got to learn before we've got a chance. and we've got to live and keep independent while we learn. see! that's what has to be done." i stared, astonished, and stirred profoundly by the man's resolution. "great god!" cried i. "but you are a man indeed!" and suddenly i gripped his hand. "eh!" he said, with his eyes shining. "i've thought it out, eh?" "go on," i said. "well, those who mean to escape their catching must get ready. i'm getting ready. mind you, it isn't all of us that are made for wild beasts; and that's what it's got to be. that's why i watched you. i had my doubts. you're slender. i didn't know that it was you, you see, or just how you'd been buried. all these--the sort of people that lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down that way--they'd be no good. they haven't any spirit in them--no proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn't one or the other--lord! what is he but funk and precautions? they just used to skedaddle off to work--i've seen hundreds of `em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket train for fear they'd get dismissed if they didn't; working at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand; skedaddling back for fear they wouldn't be in time for dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the back streets, and sleeping with the wives they married, not because they wanted them, but because they had a bit of money that would make for safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the world. lives insured and a bit invested for fear of accidents. and on sundays--fear of the hereafter. as if hell was built for rabbits. well, the martians will just be a godsend to these. nice roomy cages, fattening food, careful breeding, no worry. after a week or so chasing about the fields and lands on empty stomachs, they'll come and be caught cheerful. they'll be quite glad after a bit. they'll wonder what people did before there were martians to take care of them. and the bar loafers, and mashers, and singers--i can imagine them. i can imagine them," he said, with a sort of sombre gratification. "there'll be any amount of sentiment and religion loose among them. there's hundreds of things i saw with my eyes that i've only begun to see clearly these last few days. there's lots will take things as they are--fat and stupid; and lots will be worried by a sort of feeling that it's all wrong, and that they ought to be doing something. now whenever things are so that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the weak, and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always make for a sort of do-nothing religion, very pious and superior, and submit to persecution and the will of the lord. very likely you've seen the same thing. it's energy in a gale of funk, and turned clean inside out. these cages will be full of psalms and hymns and piety. and those of a less simple sort will work in a bit of--what it is?--eroticism." he paused. "very likely these martians will make pets of some of them; train them to do tricks--who knows?--get sentimental over the pet boy who grew up and had to be killed. and some, maybe, they will train to hunt us." "no," i cried, "that's impossible! no human being--" "what's the good of going on with such lies?" said the artilleryman. "there's men who'd do it cheerful. what nonsense to pretend there isn't!" and i succumbed to his conviction. "if they come after me," he said; "lord, if they come after me!" and subsided into a grim meditation. i sat contemplating these things. i could find nothing to bring against this man's reasoning. in the days before the invasion no one would have questioned my intellectual superiority to his--i, a professed and recognised writer on philosophical themes, and he, a common soldier; and yet he had already formulated a situation that i had scarcely realised. "what are you doing?" i said, presently. "what plans have you made?" he hesitated. "well, it's like this," he said. "what have we to do? we have to invent a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be sufficiently secure to bring the children up. yes--wait a bit, and i'll make it clearer what i think ought to be done. the tame ones will go like all tame beasts; in a few generations they'll be big, beautiful, richblooded, stupid--rubbish! the risk is that we who keep wild will go savage-degenerate into a sort of big, savage rat.... you see, how i mean to live is underground i've been thinking about the drains. of course those who don't know drains think horrible things; but under this london are miles and miles--hundred of miles--and a few days' rain and london empty will leave them sweet and clean. the main drains are big enough and airy enough for anyone. then there's cellars, vaults, stores, from which bolting passages may be made to the drains. and the railway tunnels and subways. eh? you begin to see? and we form a band--able-bodied, clean-minded men. we're not going to pick up any rubbish that drifts in. weaklings go out again." "as you meant me to go?" "well--i parleyed, didn't i?" "we won't quarrel about that. go on." "those who stop obey orders. able-bodied, clean-minded women we want also--mothers and teachers. no lackadaisical ladies--no blasted rolling eyes. we can't have any weak or silly. life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. they ought to die. they ought to be willing to die. it's a sort of disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race. and they can't be happy. moreover, dying's none so dreadful; it's the funking makes it bad. and in all those places we shall gather. our district will be london. and we may even be able to keep a watch, and run about in the open when the martians keep away. play cricket, perhaps. that's how we shall save the race. eh? it's a possible thing? but saving the race is nothing in itself. as i say, that's only being rats. it's saving our knowledge and adding to it is the thing. there men like you come in. there's books, there's models. we must make great safe places down deep, and get all the books we can; not novels and poetry swipes, but ideas, science hooks. that's where men like you come in. we must go to the british museum and pick all those books through. especially we must keep up our science--learn more. we must watch these martians. some of us must go as spies. when it's all working, perhaps i will. get caught, i mean. and the great thing is, we must leave the martians alone. we mustn't even steal. if we get in their way, we clear out. we must show them we mean no harm. yes, i know. but they're intelligent things, and they won't hunt us down if they have all they want, and think we're just harmless vermin." the artilleryman paused and laid a brown hand upon my arm. "after all, it may not be so much we may have to learn before --just imagine this: four or five of their fighting-machines suddenly starting off--heat-rays right and left, and not a martian in `em. not a martian in `em, but men--men who have learned the way how. it may be in my time, even--those men. fancy having one of them lovely things, with its heat-ray wide and free! fancy having it in control! what would it matter if you smashed to smithereens at the end of the run, after a bust like that? i reckon the martians'll open their beautiful eyes! can't you see them, man? can't you see them hurrying, hurrying--puffing and blowing and hooting to their other mechanical affairs? something out of gear in every case. and swish, bang, rattle, swish! just as they are fumbling over it, swish comes the heat-ray, and, behold! man has come back to his own." for a while the imaginative daring of the artilleryman, and the one of assurance and courage he assumed, completely dominated my mind. i believed unhesitatingly both in his forecast of human destiny and in the practicability of his astonishing scheme, and the reader who thinks me susceptible and foolish must contrast his position, reading steadily with all his thoughts about his subject, and mine, crouching fearfully in the bushes and listening, distracted by apprehension. we talked in this manner through the early morning time, and later crept out of the bushes, and, after scanning the sky for martians, hurried precipitately to the house on putney hill where he had made his lair. it was the coal cellar of the place, and when i saw the work he had spent a week upon--it was a burrow scarcely ten yards long, which he designed to reach to the main drain on putney hill--i had my first inkling between his dreams and his powers. such a hole i could have dug in a day. but i believed in him sufficiently to work with him all that morning until past midday at his digging. we had a garden barrow and shot the earth we removed against the kitchen range. we refreshed ourselves with a tin of mock-turtle soup and wine from the neighbouring pantry. i found a curious relief from the aching strangeness of the world in this steady labour. as we worked, i turned his project over in my mind, and presently objections and doubts began to arise; but i worked there all the morning, so glad was i to find myself with a purpose again. after working an hour i began to speculate on the distance one had to go before the cloaca was reached, the chances we had of missing it altogether. my immediate trouble was why we should dig this long tunnel, when it was possible to get into the drain at once down one of the manholes, and work back to the house. it seemed to me, too, that the house was inconveniently chosen, and required a needless length of tunnel. and just as i was beginning to face these things, the artilleryman stopped digging, and looked at me. "we're working well," he said. he put down his spade. "let us knock off a bit," he said. "i think it's time we reconnoitred from the roof of the house." i was for going on, and after a little hesitation he resumed his spade; and then suddenly i was struck by a thought. i stopped, and so did he at once. "why were you walking about the common," i said, "instead of being here?" "taking the air," he said "i was coming back. it's safer by night." "but the work?" "oh, one can't always work," he said, and in a flash i saw the man plain. he hesitated, holding his spade. "we ought to reconnoitre now," he said, "because if any come near they may bear the spades and drop upon us unawares." i was no longer disposed to object. we went together to the roof and stood on a ladder peeping out of the roof door. no martians were to be seen, and we ventured out on the tiles, and slipped down under shelter of the parapet. from this position a shrubbery hid the greater portion of putney, but we could see the river below, a bubbly mass of red weed, and the low parts of lambeth flooded and red. the red creeper swarmed up the trees about the old palace, and their branches stretched gaunt and dead, and set with shrivelled leaves, from amid its clusters. it was strange how entirely dependent both these things were upon flowing water for their propagation. about us neither had gained a footing; laburnums, pink mays, snowballs, and trees of arborvitae:, rose out of laurels and hydrangeas, green and brilliant into the sunlight. beyond kensington dense smoke was rising, and that and a blue haze hid the northward hills. the artilleryman began to tell me of the sort of people who still remained in london. "one night last week," he said, "some fools got the electric light in order, and there was all regent street and the circus ablaze, crowded with painted and ragged drunkards, men and women, dancing and shouting till dawn. a man who was there told me. and as the day came they became aware of a fighting-machine standing near by the langham and looking down at them. heaven knows how long he had been there. it must have given some of them a nasty turn. he came down the road towards them, and picked up nearly a hundred too drunk or frightened to run away. grotesque gleam of a time no history will ever fully describe! from that, in answer to my questions, he came round to his grandiose plans again. he grew enthusiastic. he talked so eloquently of the possibility of capturing a fighting-machine that i more than half believed in him again. but now that i was beginning to understand something of his quality, i could divine the stress he laid on doing nothing precipitately. and i noted that now there was no question that he personally was to capture and fight the great machine. after a time we went down to the cellar. neither of us seemed disposed to resume digging, and when he suggested a meal, i was nothing loath. he became suddenly very generous, and when we had eaten he went away and returned with some excellent cigars. we lit these, and his optimism glowed. he was inclined to regard my coming as a great occasion. "there's some champagne in the cellar," he said. "we can dig better on this thames-side burgundy," said i. "no," said he; "i am host today. champagne! great god! we've a heavy enough task before us! let us take a rest and gather strength while we may. look at these blistered hands!" and pursuant to this idea of a holiday, he insisted upon playing cards after we had eaten. he taught me euchre, and after dividing london between us, i taking the northern side and he the southern, we played for parish points. grotesque and foolish as this will seem to the sober reader, it is absolutely true, and what is more remarkable, i found the card game and several others we played extremely interesting. strange mind of man! that, with our species upon the edge of extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the "joker" with vivid delight. afterwards he taught me poker, and i beat him at three tough chess games. when dark came we decided to take the risk, and lit a lamp. after an interminable string of games, we supped, and the artilleryman finished the champagne. we went on smoking the cigars. he was no longer the energetic regenerator of his species i had encountered in the morning. he was still optimistic, but it was a less kinetic, a more thoughtful optimism. i remember he wound up with my health proposed in a speech of small variety and considerable intermittence. i took a cigar, and went upstairs to look at the lights of which he had spoken that blazed so greenly along the highgate hills. at first i stared unintelligently across the london valley. the northern hills were shrouded in darkness; the fires near kensington glowed redly, and now and then an orange-red tongue of flame flashed up and vanished in the deep blue night. all the rest of london was black. then, nearer, i perceived a strange light, a pale, violet-purple fluorescent glow, quivering under the night breeze. for a space i could not understand it, and then i knew that it must be the red weed from which this faint irradiation proceeded. with that realisation my dormant sense of wonder, my sense of the proportion of things, awoke again. i glanced from that to mars, red and clear, glowing high in the west, and then gazed long and earnestly at the darkness of hampstead and highgate. i remained a very long time upon the roof, wondering at the grotesque changes of the day. i recalled my mental states from the midnight prayer to the foolish card-playing. i had a violent revulsion of feeling. i remember i flung away the cigar with a certain wasteful symbolism. my folly came to me with glaring exaggeration. i seemed a traitor to my wife and to my kind; i was filled with remorse. i resolved to leave this strange undisciplined dreamer of great things to his drink and gluttony, and to go on into london. there, it seemed to me, i had the best chance of learning what the martians and my fellowmen were doing. i was still upon the roof when the late moon rose. the war of the worlds -book 2 chapter 8: dead london after i had parted from the artilleryman, i went down the hill, and by the high street across the bridge to fulham. the red weed was tumultuous at that time, and nearly choked the bridge roadway; but its fronds were already whitened in patches by the spreading disease that presently removed it so swiftly. at the corner of the lane that runs to putney bridge station i found a man lying. he was as black as a sweep with the black dust, alive, but helplessly and speechlessly drunk. i could get nothing from him but curses and furious lunges at my head. i think i should have stayed by him but for the brutal expression of his face. there was black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards, and it grew thicker in fulham. the streets were horribly quiet. i got food--sour, hard, and mouldy, but quite eatable--in a baker's shop here. some way towards walham green the streets became clear of powder, and i passed a white terrace of houses on fire; the noise of the burning was an absolute relief. going on towards brompton, the streets were quiet again. here i came once more upon the black powder in the streets and upon dead bodies. i saw altogether about a dozen in the length of the fulham road. they had been dead many days, so that i hurried quickly past them. the black powder covered them over, and softened their outlines. one or two had been disturbed by dogs. where there was no black powder, it was curiously like a sunday in the city, with the closed shops, the houses locked up and the blinds drawn, the desertion, and the stillness. in some places plunderers had been at work but rarely at other than the provision and wine shops. a jeweller's window had been broken open in one place, but apparently the thief had been disturbed, and a number of gold chains and a watch lay scattered on the pavement. i did not trouble to touch them. farther on was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep; the hand that hung over her knee was gashed and bled down her rusty brown dress, and a smashed magnum of champagne formed a pool across the pavement. she seemed asleep, but she was dead. the farther i penetrated into london, the profounder grew the stillness. but it was not so much the stillness of death--it was the stillness of suspense, of expectation. at any time the destruction that had already singed the north-western borders of the metropolis, and had annihilated ealing and kilburn, might strike among these houses and leave them smoking ruins. it was a city condemned and derelict.... in south kensington the streets were clear of dead and of black powder. it was near south kensington that i first heard the howling. it crept almost imperceptibly upon my senses. it was a sobbing alternation of two notes, "ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," keeping on perpetually. when i passed streets that ran northward it grew in volume, and houses and buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off again. it came in a full tide down exhibition road. i stopped, staring towards kensington gardens, wondering at this strange, remote wailing. it was as if that mighty desert of houses had found a voice for its fear and solitude. "ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," wailed that superhuman note great waves of sound sweeping down the broad, sunlit roadway, between the tall buildings on each side. i turned northwards, marvelling, towards the iron gates of hyde park. i had half a mind to break into the natural history museum and find my way up to the summits of the towers, in order to see across the park. but i decided to keep to the ground, where quick hiding was possible, and so went on up the exhibition road. all the large mansions on each side of the road were empty and still, and my footsteps echoed against the sides of the houses. at the top, near the park gate, i came upon a strange sight--a bus overturned, and the skeleton of a horse picked clean. i puzzled over this for a time, and then went on to the bridge over the serpentine. the voice grew stronger and stronger, though i could see nothing above the housetops on the north side of the park, save a haze of smoke to the northwest. "ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," cried the voice, coming, as it seemed to me, from the district about regent's park. the desolating cry worked upon my mind. the mood that had sustained me passed. the wailing took possession of me. i found i was intensely weary, footsore, and now again hungry and thirsty. it was already past noon. who was i wandering alone in this city of the dead? why was i alone when all london was lying in state, and in its black shroud? i felt intolerably lonely. my mind ran on old friends that i had forgotten for years. i thought of the poisons in the chemists' shops, of the liquors the wine merchants stored; i recalled the two sodden creatures of despair, who so far as i knew, shared the city with myself.... i came into oxford street by the marble arch, and here again were black powder and several bodies, and an evil, ominous smell from the gratings of the cellars of some of the houses. i grew very thirsty after the heat of my long walk. with infinite trouble i managed to break into a public-house and get food and drink. i was weary after eating, and went into the parlour behind the bar, and slept on a black horsehair sofa i found there. i awoke to find that dismal howling still in my ears, "ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla." it was now dusk, and after i had routed out some biscuits and a cheese in the bar--there was a meat safe, but it contained nothing but maggots--i wandered on through the silent residential squares to baker street--portman square is the only one i can name--and so came out at last upon regent's park. and as i emerged from the top of baker street, i saw far away over the trees in the clearness of the sunset the hood of the martian giant from which this howling proceeded. i was not terrified. i came upon him as if it were a matter of course. i watched him for some time, but he did not move. he appeared to be standing and yelling, for no reason that i could discover. i tried to formulate a plan of action. that perpetual sound of "ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," confused my mind. perhaps i was too tired to be very fearful. certainly i was more curious to know the reason of this monotonous crying than afraid. i turned back away from the park and struck into park road, intending to skirt the park, went along under the shelter of the terraces, and got a view of this stationary, howling martian from the direction of st. john's wood. a couple of hundred yards out of baker street i heard a yelping chorus, and saw, first a dog with a piece of putrescent red meat in his jaws coming headlong towards me, and then a pack of starving mongrels in pursuit of him. he made a wide curve to avoid me, as though he feared i might prove a fresh competitor. as the yelping died away down the silent road, the wailing sound of "ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," reasserted itself. i came upon the wrecked handling-machine halfway to st.john's wood station. at first i thought a house had fallen across the road. it was only as i clambered among the ruins that i saw, with a start, this mechanical samson lying, with its tentacles bent and smashed and twisted, among the ruins it had made. the forepart was shattered. it seemed as if it had driven blindly straight at the house, and had been overwhelmed in its overthrow. it seemed to me then that this might have happened by a handling-machine escaping from the guidance of its martian. i could not clamber among the ruins to see it, and the twilight was now so far advanced that the blood with which its seat was smeared, and the gnawed gristle of the martian that the dogs had left, were invisible to me. wondering still more at all that i had seen, i pushed on towards primrose hill. far away, through a gap in the trees, i saw a second martian, as motionless as the first, standing in the park towards the zoological gardens, and silent. a little beyond the ruins about the smashed handling-machine i came upon the red weed again, and found the regent's canal, a spongy mass of dark-red vegetation. as i crossed the bridge, the sound of "ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," ceased. it was, as it were, cut off. the silence came like a thunderclap. the dusky houses about me stood faint and tall and dim; the trees towards the park were growing black. all about me the red weed clambered among the runs, writhing to get above me in the dimness. night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me. but while that voice sounded the solitude, the desolation had been endurable; by virtue of it london had still seemed alive, and the sense of life about me had upheld me. then suddenly a change, the passing of something--i knew not what--and then a stillness that could be felt. nothing but this gaunt quiet. london about me gazed at me spectrally. the windows in the white houses were like the eye sockets of skulls. about me my imagination found a thousand noiseless enemies moving. terror seized me, a horror of my temerity. in front of me the road became pitchy black as though it was tarred, and i saw a contorted shape lying across the pathway. i could not bring myself to go on. i turned down st. john's wood road, and ran headlong from this unendurable stillness towards kilburn. i hid from the night and the silence, until long after midnight, in a cabmen's shelter in harrow road. but before the dawn my courage returned, and while the stars were still in the sky i turned once more towards regent's park. i missed my way among the streets, and presently saw down a long avenue, in the half-light of the early dawn, the curve of primrose hill. on the summit, towering up to the fading stars, was a third martian, erect and motionless like the other. an insane resolve posed me. i would die and end it. and i would save myself even the trouble of killing myself. i marched on recklessly towards this titan, and then, as i drew nearer and the light grew, i saw that a multitude of black birds was circling and clustering about the hood. at that my heart gave a bound, and i began running along the road. i hurried through the red weed that choked st. edmund's terrace (i waded breast-high across a torrent of water that was rushing down from the waterworks towards the albert road), and emerged upon the grass before the rising of the sun. great mounds had been heaped about the crest of the hill, making a huge redoubt of it--it was the final and largest place the martians had made --and from behind these heaps there rose a thin smoke against the sky. against the sky line an eager dog ran and disappeared. the thought that had flashed into my mind grew real, grew credible. i felt no fear, only a wild, trembling exultation, as i ran up the hill towards the motionless monster. out of the hood hung lank shreds of brown, at which the hungry birds pecked and tore. in another moment i had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. a mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. and scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the martians--dead!,--slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that god, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth. for so it had come about, as indeed i and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. these germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things--taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. but by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many--those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance--our living frames are altogether immune. but there are no bacteria in mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. already when i watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. it was inevitable. by the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the martians ten times as mighty as they are. for neither do men live nor die in vain. here and there they were scattered, nearly fifty altogether, in that great gulf they had made, overtaken by a death that must have seemed to them as incomprehensible as any death could be. to me also at that time this death was incomprehensible. all i knew was that these things that had been alive and so terrible to men were dead. for a moment i believed that the destruction of sennacherib had been repeated, that god had repented, that the angel of death had slain them in the night. i stood staring into the pit, and my heart lightened gloriously, even as the rising sun struck the world to fire about me with his rays. the pit was still in darkness; the mighty engines, so great and wonderful in their power and complexity, so unearthly in their tortuous forms, rose weird and vague and strange out of the shadows towards the light. a multitude of dogs, i could hear, fought over the bodies that lay darkly in the depth of the pit, far below me. across the pit on its farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay the great flying-machine with which they had been experimenting upon our denser atmosphere when decay and death arrested them. death had come not a day too soon. at the sound of a cawing overhead i looked up at the huge fighting-machine that would fight no more for ever, at the tattered red shreds of flesh that dripped down upon the overturned seats on the summit of primrose hill. i turned and looked down the slope of the hill to where, enhaloed now in birds, stood those other two martians that i had seen overnight, just as death had overtaken them. the one had died, even as it had been crying to its companions; perhaps it was the last to die, and its voice had gone on perpetually until the force of its machinery was exhausted. they glittered now, harmless tripod towers of shining metal, in the brightness of the rising sun. all about the pit, and saved as by a miracle from everlasting destruction, stretched the great mother of cities. those who have only seen london veiled in her sombre robes of smoke can scarcely imagine the naked clearness and beauty of the silent wilderness of houses. eastward, over the blackened ruins of the albert terrace and the splintered spire of the church, the sun blazed dazzling in a clear sky, and here and there some facet in the great wilderness of roofs caught the light and glared with a white intensity. northward were kilburn and hampstead, blue and crowded with houses; westward the great city was dimmed; and southward, beyond the martians, the green waves of regent's park, the langham hotel, the dome of the albert hall, the imperial institute, and the giant mansions of the brompton road came out clear and little in the sunrise, the jagged ruins of westminster rising hazily beyond. far away and blue were the surrey hills, and the towers of the crystal palace glittered like two silver rods. the dome of st. paul's was dark against the sunrise, and injured, i saw for the first time, by a huge gaping cavity on its western side. and as i looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and churches, silent and abandoned; as i thought of the multitudinous hopes and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to build this human reef, and of the swift and ruthless destruction that had hung over it all; when i realised that the shadow had been rolled back, and that men might still live in the streets, and this dear vast dead city of mine be once more alive and powerful, i felt a wave of emotion that was near akin to tears. the torment was over. even that day the healing would begin. the survivors of the people scattered over the country-leaderless, lawless, foodless, like sheep without a shepherd--the thousands who had fled by sea, would begin to return; the pulse of life, growing stronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and pour across the vacant squares. whatever destruction was done, the hand of the destroyer was stayed. all the gaunt wrecks, the blackened skeletons of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill, would presently be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and ringing with the tapping of their troweis. at the thought i extended my hands towards the sky and began thanking god. in a year, thought i--in a year ... with overwhelming force came the thought of myself, of my wife, and the old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased for ever. the war of the worlds -book 2 chapter 9: wreckage and now comes the strangest thing in my story. yet, perhaps, it is not altogether strange. i remember, clearly and coldly and vividly, all that i did that day until the time that i stood weeping and praising god upon the summit of primrose hill. and then i forget. of the next three days i know nothing. i have learned since that, so far from my being the first discoverer of the martian overthrow, several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the previous night. one man--the first--had gone to st. martin's-le-grand, and, while i sheltered in the cabmen's hut, had contrived to telegraph to paris. thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world; a thousand cities, chilled by ghastly aprehensions, suddenly flashed into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in dublin, edinburgh, manchester, birmingham, at the time when i stood upon the verge of the pit. already men, weeping with joy, as i have heard, shouting and staying their work to shake hands and shout, were making up trains, even as near as crewe, to descend upon london. the church bells that had ceased a fortnight since suddenly caught the news, until all england was bell-ringing. men on cycles, lean-faced, unkempt, scorched along every country lane shouting of unhoped deliverance, shouting to gaunt, staring figures of despair. and for the food! across the channel, across the irish sea, across the atlantic, corn, bread, and meat were tearing to our relief. all the shipping in the world seemed going londonward in those days. but of all this i have no memory. i drifted--a demented man. i found myself in a house of kindly people, who had found me on the third day wandering, weeping, and raving through the streets of st. john's wood. they have told me since that i was singing some inane doggerel about "the last man left alive! hurrah! the last man left alive!" troubled as they were with their own affairs, these people, whose name, much as i would like to express my gratitude to them, i may not even give here, nevertheless cumbered themselves with me, sheltered me, and protected me from myself. apparently they had learned something of my story from me during the days of my lapse. very gently, when my mind was assured again, did they break to me what they had learned of the fate of leatherhead. two days after i was imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a martian. he had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the mere wantonness of power. i was a lonely man, and they were very kind to me. i was a lonely man and a sad one, and they bore with me. i remained with them four days after my recovery. all that time i felt a vague, a growing craving to look once more on whatever remained of the little life that seemed so happy and bright in my past. it was a mere hopeless desire to feast upon my misery. they dissuaded me. they did all they could to divert me from this morbidity. but at last i could resist the impulse no longer, and, promising faithfully to return to them, and parting, as i will confess, from these four-day friends with tears, i went out again into the streets that had lately been so dark and strange and empty. already they were busy with returning people; in places even there were shops open, and i saw a drinking fountain running water. i remember how mockingly bright the day seemed as i went back on my melancholy pilgrimage to the little house at woking, how busy the streets and vivid the moving life about me. so many people were abroad everywhere, busied in a thousand activities, that it seemed incredible that any great proportion of the population could have been slain. but then i noticed how yellow were the skins of the people i met, how shaggy the hair of the men, how large and bright their eyes, and that every other man still wore his dirty rags. their faces seemed all with one of two expressions--a leaping exultation and energy or a grim resolution. save for the expression of the faces, london seemed a city of tramps. the vestries were indiscriminately distributing bread sent us by the french government. the ribs of the few horses showed dismally. haggard special constables with white badges stood at the corners of every street. i saw little of the mischief wrought by the martians until i reached wellington street, and there i saw the red weed clambering over the buttresses of waterloo bridge. at the corner of the bridge, too, i saw one of the common contrasts of that grotesque time--a sheet of paper flaunting against a thicket of the red weed, transfixed by a stick that kept it in place. it was the placard of the first newspaper to resume publication--the daily mail. i bought a copy for a blackened shilling i found in my pocket. most of it was in blank, but the solitary compositor who did the thing had amused himself by making a grotesque scheme of advertisement stereo on the back page. the matter he printed was emotional; the news organisation had not as yet found its way back. i learned nothing fresh except that already in one week the examination of the martian mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. among other things, the article assured me what i did not believe at the time, that the "secret of flying" was discovered. at waterloo i found the free trains that were taking people to their homes. the first rush was already over. there were few people in the train, and i was in no mood for casual conversation. i got a compartment to myself, and sat with folded arms, looking greyly at the sunlit devastation that flowed past the windows. and just outside the terminus the train jolted over temporary rails, and on either side of the railway the houses were blackened ruins. to clapham junction the face of london was grimy with powder of the black smoke, in spite of two days of thunderstorms and rain, and at clapham junction the line had been wrecked again; there were hundreds of out-of-work clerks and shopmen working side by side with the customary navvies, and we were jolted over a hasty relaying. all down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt and unfamiliar; wimbledon particularly had suffered. walton, by virtue of its unburned pine woods, seemed the least hurt of any place along the line. the wandle, the mole, every little stream, was a heaped mass of red weed, in appearance between butcher's meat and pickled cabbage. the surrey pine woods were too dry, however, for the festoons of the red climber. beyond wimbledon, within sight of the line, in certain nursery grounds, were the heaped masses of earth about the sixth cylinder. a number of people were standing about it, and some sappers were busy in the midst of it. over it flaunted a union jack, flapping cheerfully in the morning breeze. the nursery grounds were everywhere crimson with the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut with purple shadows, and very painful to the eye. one's gaze went with infinite relief from the scorched greys and sullen reds of the foreground to the blue-green softness of the eastward hills. the line on the london side of woking station was still undergoing repair, so i descended at byfleet station and took the road to maybury, past the place where i and the artilleryman had talked to the hussars, and on by the spot where the martian had appeared to me in the thunderstorm. here, moved by curiosity, i turned aside to find, among a tangle of red fronds, the warped and broken dog cart with the whitened bones of the horse scattered and gnawed. for a time i stood regarding these vestiges.... then i returned through the pine wood, neck-high with red weed here and there, to find the landlord of the spotted dog had already found burial, and so came home past the college arms. a man standing at an open cottage door greeted me by name as i passed. i looked at my house with a quick flash of hope that faded immediately. the door had been forced; it was unfast and was opening slowly as i approached. it slammed again. the curtains of my study fluttered out of the open window from which i and the artilleryman had watched the dawn. no one had closed it since. the smashed bushes were just as i had left them nearly four weeks ago. i stumbled into the hall, and the house felt empty. the stair carpet was ruffled and discoloured where i had crouched, soaked to the skin from the thunderstorm the night of the catastrophe. our muddy footsteps i saw still went up the stairs. i followed them to my study, and found lying on my writing-table still, with the selenite paper weight upon it, the sheet of work i had left on the afternoon of the opening of the cylinder. for a space i stood reading over my abandoned arguments. it was a paper on the probable development of moral ideas with the development of the civilising process; and the last sentence was the opening of a prophecy: "in about two hundred years," i had written, "we may expect--" the sentence ended abruptly. i remembered my inability to fix my mind that morning, scarcely a month gone by, and how i had broken off to get my daily chronicle from the newsboy. i remembered how i went down to the garden gate as he came along, and how i had listened to his odd story of "men from mars." i came down and went into the dining room. there were the mutton and the bread, both far gone now in decay, and a beer bottle overturned, just as i and the artilleryman had left them. my home was desolate. i perceived the folly of the faint hope i had cherished so long. and then a strange thing occurred. "it is no use," said a voice. "the house is deserted. no one has been here these ten days. do not stay here to torment yourself. no one escaped but you. i was startled. had i spoken my thought aloud? i turned, and the french window was open behind me. i made a step to it, and stood looking out. and there, amazed and afraid, even as i stood amazed and afraid, were my cousin and my wife--my wife white and tearless. she gave a faint cry. "i came," she said. "i knew--knew--" she put her hand to her throat--swayed. i made a step forward, and caught her in my arms. the war of the worlds -book 2 chapter 10: the epilogue i cannot but regret, now that i am concluding my story, how little i am able to contribute to the discussion of the many debatable questions which are still unsettled. in one respect i shall certainly provoke criticism. my particular province is speculative philosophy. my knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a book or two, but it seems to me that carver's suggestions as to the reason of the rapid death of the martians is so probable as to be regarded almost as a proven conclusion. i have assumed that in the body of my narrative. at any rate, in all the bodies of the martians that were examined after the war, no bacteria except those already known as terrestrial species were found. that they did not bury any of their dead, and the reckless slaughter they perpetrated, point also to an entire ignorance of the putrefactive process. but probable as this seems, it is by no means a proven conclusion. neither is the composition of the black smoke known, which the martians used with such deadly effect, and the generator of the heat-rays remains a puzzle. the terrible disasters at the ealing and south kensington laboratories have disinclined analysts for further investigations upon the latter. spectrum analysis of the black powder points unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element with a brilliant group of three lines in the green, and it is possible that it combines with argon to form a compound which acts at once with deadly effect upon some constituent in the blood. but such unproven speculations will scarcely be of interest to the general reader, to whom this story is addressed. none of the brown scum that drifted down the thames after the destruction of shepperton was examined at the time, and now none is forthcoming. the results of an anatomical examination of the martians, so far as the prowling dogs had left such an examination possible, i have already given. but everyone is familiar with the magnificent and almost complete specimen in spirits at the natural history museum, and the countless drawings that have been made from it; and beyond that the interest of their physiology and structure is purely scientific. a question of graver and universal interest is the possibility of another attack from the martians. i do not think that nearly enough attention is being given to this aspect of the matter. at present the planet mars is in conjunction, but with every return to opposition i, for one, anticipate a renewal of their adventure. in any case, we should be prepared. it seems to me that it should be possible to define the position of the gun from which the shots are discharged, to keep a sustained watch upon this part of the planet, and to anticipate the arrival of the next attack. in that case the cylinder might be destroyed with dynamite or artillery before it was sufficiently cool for the martians to emerge, or they might be butchered by means of guns so soon as the screw opened. it seems to me that they have lost a vast advantage in the failure of their first surprise. possibly they see it in the same light. lessing has advanced excellent reasons for supposing that the martians have actually succeeded in effecting a landing on the planet venus. seven months ago now, venus and mars were in alignment with the sun; that is to say, mars was in opposition from the point of view of an observer on venus. subsequently a peculiar luminous and sinuous marking appeared on the unillumined half of the inner planet, and almost simultaneously a faint dark mark of a similar sinuous character was detected upon a photograph of the martian disk. one needs to see the drawings of these appearances in order to appreciate fully their remarkable resemblance in character. at any rate, whether we expect another invasion or not, our views of the human future must be greatly modified by these events. we have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for man; we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space. it may be that in the larger design of the universe this invasion from mars is not without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence, the gifts to human science it has brought are enormous, and it has done much to promote the conception of the commonweal of mankind. it may be that across the immensity of space the martians have watched the fate of these pioneers of theirs and learned their lesson, and that on the planet venus they have found a securer settlement. be that as it may, for many years yet there will certainly be no relaxation of the eager scrutiny of the martian disk, and those fiery darts of the sky, the shooting stars, will bring with them as they fall an unavoidable apprehension to all the sons of men. the broadening of men's views that has resulted can scarcely be exaggerated. before the cylinder fell there was a general persuasion that through all the deep of space no life existed beyond the petty surface, of our minute sphere. now we see further. if the martians can reach venus, there is no reason to suppose that the thing is impossible for men, and when the slow cooling of the sun makes this earth uninhabitable, as at last it must do, it may be that the thread of life that has begun here will have streamed out and caught our sister planet within its toils. dim and wonderful is the vision i have conjured up in my mind of life spreading slowly from this little seed bed of the solar system throughout the inanimate vastness of sidereal space. but that is a remote dream. it may be, on the other hand, that the destruction of the martians is only a reprieve. to them, and not to us, perhaps is the future ordained. i must confess the stress and danger of the time have left an abiding sense of doubt and insecurity in my mind. i sit in my study writing by lamplight, and suddenly i see again the healing valley below set with writhing flames, and feel the house behind and about me empty and desolate. i go out into the byfleet road, and vehicles pass me, a butcher boy in a cart, a cabful of visitors, a workman on a bicycle, children going to school, and suddenly they become vague and unreal, and i hurry again with the artilleryman through the hot, brooding silence. of a night i see the black powder darkening the silent streets, and the contorted bodies shrouded in that layer; they rise upon me tattered and dog-bitten. they gibber and grow fiercer, paler, uglier, mad distortions of humanity at last, and i wake, cold and wretched, in the darkness of the night. i go to london and see the busy multitudes in fleet street and the strand, and it comes across my mind that they are but the ghosts of the past, haunting the streets that i have seen silent and wretched, going to and fro, phantasms in a dead city, the mockery of life in a galvanised body. and strange, too, it is to stand on primrose hill, as i did but a day before writing this last chapter, to see the great province of houses, dim and blue through the haze of the smoke and mist, vanishing at last into the vague lower sky, to see the people walking to and fro among the flower beds on the hill, to see the sightseers about the martian machine that stands there still, to hear the tumult of playing children, and to recall the time when i saw it all bright and clear-cut, hard and silent, under the dawn of that last great day. ... and strangest of all is it to hold my wife's hand again, and to think that i have counted her, and that she has counted me, among the dead. --the end -. 1829 to -- by edgar allan poe not long ago, the writer of these lines, in the mad pride of intellectuality, maintained "the power of words"denied that ever a thought arose within the human brain beyond the utterance of the human tongue: and now, as if in mockery of that boast, two wordstwo foreign soft dissyllables italian tones, made only to be murmured by angels dreaming in the moonlit "dew that hangs like chains of pearl on hermon hill," have stirred from out the abysses of his heart, unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought, richer, far wilder, far diviner visions than even seraph harper, israfel, (who has "the sweetest voice of all god's creatures,") could hope to utter. and i! my spells are broken. the pen falls powerless from my shivering hand. with thy dear name as text, though bidden by thee, i cannot writei cannot speak or think alas, i cannot feel; for 'tis not feeling, this standing motionless upon the golden threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams. gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista, and thrilling as i see, upon the right, upon the left, and all the way along, amid empurpled vapors, far away to where the prospect terminatesthee only. -the end. 1850 the oval portrait by edgar allan poe the chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of mrs. radcliffe. to all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. we established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. it lay in a remote turret of the building. its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. in these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessaryin these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that i bade pedro to close the heavy shutters of the roomsince it was already nightto light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bedand to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. i wished all this done that i might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticise and describe them. longlong i readand devoutly, devotedly i gazed. rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by and the deep midnight came. the position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valet, i placed it so as to throw its rays more fully upon the book. but the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. the rays of the numerous candles (for there were many) now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bed-posts. i thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. it was the portrait of a young girl just ripening into womanhood. i glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. why i did this was not at first apparent even to my own perception. but while my lids remained thus shut, i ran over in my mind my reason for so shutting them. it was an impulsive movement to gain time for thoughtto make sure that my vision had not deceived meto calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze. in a very few moments i again looked fixedly at the painting. that i now saw aright i could not and would not doubt; for the first flashing of the candles upon that canvas had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to startle me at once into waking life. the portrait, i have already said, was that of a young girl. it was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of sully. the arms, the bosom, and even the ends of the radiant hair melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the back-ground of the whole. the frame was oval, richly gilded and filigreed in moresque. as a thing of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. but it could have been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. least of all, could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person. i saw at once that the peculiarities of the design, of the vignetting, and of the frame, must have instantly dispelled such ideamust have prevented even its momentary entertainment. thinking earnestly upon these points, i remained, for an hour perhaps, half sitting, half reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait. at length, satisfied with the true secret of its effect, i fell back within the bed. i had found the spell of the picture in an absolute life-likeliness of expression, which, at first startling, finally confounded, subdued, and appalled me. with deep and reverent awe i replaced the candelabrum in its former position. the cause of my deep agitation being thus shut from view, i sought eagerly the volume which discussed the paintings and their histories. turning to the number which designated the oval portrait, i there read the vague and quaint words which follow: "she was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. and evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. he, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the art which was her rival; dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover. it was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to pourtray even his young bride. but she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark, high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead. but he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour, and from day to day. and be was a passionate, and wild, and moody man, who became lost in reveries; so that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastly in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the painter (who had high renown) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak. and in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel, and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. but at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his eyes from canvas merely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. and he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him. and when many weeks bad passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp. and then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice, 'this is indeed life itself!' turned suddenly to regard his beloved:she was dead! the end . as you like it dramatis personae duke senior living in banishment. duke frederick his brother, an usurper of his dominions. amiens | | lords attending on the banished duke. jaques | le beau a courtier attending upon frederick. charles wrestler to frederick. oliver | | jaques (jaques de boys:) | sons of sir rowland de boys. | orlando | adam | | servants to oliver. dennis | touchstone a clown. sir oliver martext a vicar. corin | | shepherds. silvius | william a country fellow in love with audrey. a person representing hymen. (hymen:) rosalind daughter to the banished duke. celia daughter to frederick. phebe a shepherdess. audrey a country wench. lords, pages, and attendants, &c. (forester:) (a lord:) (first lord:) (second lord:) (first page:) (second page:) scene oliver's house; duke frederick's court; and the forest of arden. as you like it act i scene i orchard of oliver's house. [enter orlando and adam] orlando as i remember, adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayest, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness. my brother jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit: for my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox? his horses are bred better; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly hired: but i, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth; for the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as i. besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something that nature gave me his countenance seems to take from me: he lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and, as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my education. this is it, adam, that grieves me; and the spirit of my father, which i think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude: i will no longer endure it, though yet i know no wise remedy how to avoid it. adam yonder comes my master, your brother. orlando go apart, adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up. [enter oliver] oliver now, sir! what make you here? orlando nothing: i am not taught to make any thing. oliver what mar you then, sir? orlando marry, sir, i am helping you to mar that which god made, a poor unworthy brother of yours, with idleness. oliver marry, sir, be better employed, and be naught awhile. orlando shall i keep your hogs and eat husks with them? what prodigal portion have i spent, that i should come to such penury? oliver know you where your are, sir? orlando o, sir, very well; here in your orchard. oliver know you before whom, sir? orlando ay, better than him i am before knows me. i know you are my eldest brother; and, in the gentle condition of blood, you should so know me. the courtesy of nations allows you my better, in that you are the first-born; but the same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us: i have as much of my father in me as you; albeit, i confess, your coming before me is nearer to his reverence. oliver what, boy! orlando come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this. oliver wilt thou lay hands on me, villain? orlando i am no villain; i am the youngest son of sir rowland de boys; he was my father, and he is thrice a villain that says such a father begot villains. wert thou not my brother, i would not take this hand from thy throat till this other had pulled out thy tongue for saying so: thou hast railed on thyself. adam sweet masters, be patient: for your father's remembrance, be at accord. oliver let me go, i say. orlando i will not, till i please: you shall hear me. my father charged you in his will to give me good education: you have trained me like a peasant, obscuring and hiding from me all gentleman-like qualities. the spirit of my father grows strong in me, and i will no longer endure it: therefore allow me such exercises as may become a gentleman, or give me the poor allottery my father left me by testament; with that i will go buy my fortunes. oliver and what wilt thou do? beg, when that is spent? well, sir, get you in: i will not long be troubled with you; you shall have some part of your will: i pray you, leave me. orlando i will no further offend you than becomes me for my good. oliver get you with him, you old dog. adam is 'old dog' my reward? most true, i have lost my teeth in your service. god be with my old master! he would not have spoke such a word. [exeunt orlando and adam] oliver is it even so? begin you to grow upon me? i will physic your rankness, and yet give no thousand crowns neither. holla, dennis! [enter dennis] dennis calls your worship? oliver was not charles, the duke's wrestler, here to speak with me? dennis so please you, he is here at the door and importunes access to you. oliver call him in. [exit dennis] 'twill be a good way; and to-morrow the wrestling is. [enter charles] charles good morrow to your worship. oliver good monsieur charles, what's the new news at the new court? charles there's no news at the court, sir, but the old news: that is, the old duke is banished by his younger brother the new duke; and three or four loving lords have put themselves into voluntary exile with him, whose lands and revenues enrich the new duke; therefore he gives them good leave to wander. oliver can you tell if rosalind, the duke's daughter, be banished with her father? charles o, no; for the duke's daughter, her cousin, so loves her, being ever from their cradles bred together, that she would have followed her exile, or have died to stay behind her. she is at the court, and no less beloved of her uncle than his own daughter; and never two ladies loved as they do. oliver where will the old duke live? charles they say he is already in the forest of arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old robin hood of england: they say many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world. oliver what, you wrestle to-morrow before the new duke? charles marry, do i, sir; and i came to acquaint you with a matter. i am given, sir, secretly to understand that your younger brother orlando hath a disposition to come in disguised against me to try a fall. to-morrow, sir, i wrestle for my credit; and he that escapes me without some broken limb shall acquit him well. your brother is but young and tender; and, for your love, i would be loath to foil him, as i must, for my own honour, if he come in: therefore, out of my love to you, i came hither to acquaint you withal, that either you might stay him from his intendment or brook such disgrace well as he shall run into, in that it is a thing of his own search and altogether against my will. oliver charles, i thank thee for thy love to me, which thou shalt find i will most kindly requite. i had myself notice of my brother's purpose herein and have by underhand means laboured to dissuade him from it, but he is resolute. i'll tell thee, charles: it is the stubbornest young fellow of france, full of ambition, an envious emulator of every man's good parts, a secret and villanous contriver against me his natural brother: therefore use thy discretion; i had as lief thou didst break his neck as his finger. and thou wert best look to't; for if thou dost him any slight disgrace or if he do not mightily grace himself on thee, he will practise against thee by poison, entrap thee by some treacherous device and never leave thee till he hath ta'en thy life by some indirect means or other; for, i assure thee, and almost with tears i speak it, there is not one so young and so villanous this day living. i speak but brotherly of him; but should i anatomize him to thee as he is, i must blush and weep and thou must look pale and wonder. charles i am heartily glad i came hither to you. if he come to-morrow, i'll give him his payment: if ever he go alone again, i'll never wrestle for prize more: and so god keep your worship! oliver farewell, good charles. [exit charles] now will i stir this gamester: i hope i shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet i know not why, hates nothing more than he. yet he's gentle, never schooled and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved, and indeed so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that i am altogether misprised: but it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all: nothing remains but that i kindle the boy thither; which now i'll go about. [exit] as you like it act i scene ii lawn before the duke's palace. [enter celia and rosalind] celia i pray thee, rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry. rosalind dear celia, i show more mirth than i am mistress of; and would you yet i were merrier? unless you could teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure. celia herein i see thou lovest me not with the full weight that i love thee. if my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me, i could have taught my love to take thy father for mine: so wouldst thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously tempered as mine is to thee. rosalind well, i will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice in yours. celia you know my father hath no child but i, nor none is like to have: and, truly, when he dies, thou shalt be his heir, for what he hath taken away from thy father perforce, i will render thee again in affection; by mine honour, i will; and when i break that oath, let me turn monster: therefore, my sweet rose, my dear rose, be merry. rosalind from henceforth i will, coz, and devise sports. let me see; what think you of falling in love? celia marry, i prithee, do, to make sport withal: but love no man in good earnest; nor no further in sport neither than with safety of a pure blush thou mayst in honour come off again. rosalind what shall be our sport, then? celia let us sit and mock the good housewife fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally. rosalind i would we could do so, for her benefits are mightily misplaced, and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women. celia 'tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest, and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly. rosalind nay, now thou goest from fortune's office to nature's: fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of nature. [enter touchstone] celia no? when nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by fortune fall into the fire? though nature hath given us wit to flout at fortune, hath not fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument? rosalind indeed, there is fortune too hard for nature, when fortune makes nature's natural the cutter-off of nature's wit. celia peradventure this is not fortune's work neither, but nature's; who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses and hath sent this natural for our whetstone; for always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. how now, wit! whither wander you? touchstone mistress, you must come away to your father. celia were you made the messenger? touchstone no, by mine honour, but i was bid to come for you. rosalind where learned you that oath, fool? touchstone of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were good pancakes and swore by his honour the mustard was naught: now i'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the mustard was good, and yet was not the knight forsworn. celia how prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge? rosalind ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom. touchstone stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that i am a knave. celia by our beards, if we had them, thou art. touchstone by my knavery, if i had it, then i were; but if you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn: no more was this knight swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard. celia prithee, who is't that thou meanest? touchstone one that old frederick, your father, loves. celia my father's love is enough to honour him: enough! speak no more of him; you'll be whipped for taxation one of these days. touchstone the more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly. celia by my troth, thou sayest true; for since the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show. here comes monsieur le beau. rosalind with his mouth full of news. celia which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their young. rosalind then shall we be news-crammed. celia all the better; we shall be the more marketable. [enter le beau] bon jour, monsieur le beau: what's the news? le beau fair princess, you have lost much good sport. celia sport! of what colour? le beau what colour, madam! how shall i answer you? rosalind as wit and fortune will. touchstone or as the destinies decree. celia well said: that was laid on with a trowel. touchstone nay, if i keep not my rank,- rosalind thou losest thy old smell. le beau you amaze me, ladies: i would have told you of good wrestling, which you have lost the sight of. rosalind you tell us the manner of the wrestling. le beau i will tell you the beginning; and, if it please your ladyships, you may see the end; for the best is yet to do; and here, where you are, they are coming to perform it. celia well, the beginning, that is dead and buried. le beau there comes an old man and his three sons,- celia i could match this beginning with an old tale. le beau three proper young men, of excellent growth and presence. rosalind with bills on their necks, 'be it known unto all men by these presents.' le beau the eldest of the three wrestled with charles, the duke's wrestler; which charles in a moment threw him and broke three of his ribs, that there is little hope of life in him: so he served the second, and so the third. yonder they lie; the poor old man, their father, making such pitiful dole over them that all the beholders take his part with weeping. rosalind alas! touchstone but what is the sport, monsieur, that the ladies have lost? le beau why, this that i speak of. touchstone thus men may grow wiser every day: it is the first time that ever i heard breaking of ribs was sport for ladies. celia or i, i promise thee. rosalind but is there any else longs to see this broken music in his sides? is there yet another dotes upon rib-breaking? shall we see this wrestling, cousin? le beau you must, if you stay here; for here is the place appointed for the wrestling, and they are ready to perform it. celia yonder, sure, they are coming: let us now stay and see it. [flourish. enter duke frederick, lords, orlando, charles, and attendants] duke frederick come on: since the youth will not be entreated, his own peril on his forwardness. rosalind is yonder the man? le beau even he, madam. celia alas, he is too young! yet he looks successfully. duke frederick how now, daughter and cousin! are you crept hither to see the wrestling? rosalind ay, my liege, so please you give us leave. duke frederick you will take little delight in it, i can tell you; there is such odds in the man. in pity of the challenger's youth i would fain dissuade him, but he will not be entreated. speak to him, ladies; see if you can move him. celia call him hither, good monsieur le beau. duke frederick do so: i'll not be by. le beau monsieur the challenger, the princesses call for you. orlando i attend them with all respect and duty. rosalind young man, have you challenged charles the wrestler? orlando no, fair princess; he is the general challenger: i come but in, as others do, to try with him the strength of my youth. celia young gentleman, your spirits are too bold for your years. you have seen cruel proof of this man's strength: if you saw yourself with your eyes or knew yourself with your judgment, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more equal enterprise. we pray you, for your own sake, to embrace your own safety and give over this attempt. rosalind do, young sir; your reputation shall not therefore be misprised: we will make it our suit to the duke that the wrestling might not go forward. orlando i beseech you, punish me not with your hard thoughts; wherein i confess me much guilty, to deny so fair and excellent ladies any thing. but let your fair eyes and gentle wishes go with me to my trial: wherein if i be foiled, there is but one shamed that was never gracious; if killed, but one dead that was willing to be so: i shall do my friends no wrong, for i have none to lament me, the world no injury, for in it i have nothing; only in the world i fill up a place, which may be better supplied when i have made it empty. rosalind the little strength that i have, i would it were with you. celia and mine, to eke out hers. rosalind fare you well: pray heaven i be deceived in you! celia your heart's desires be with you! charles come, where is this young gallant that is so desirous to lie with his mother earth? orlando ready, sir; but his will hath in it a more modest working. duke frederick you shall try but one fall. charles no, i warrant your grace, you shall not entreat him to a second, that have so mightily persuaded him from a first. orlando an you mean to mock me after, you should not have mocked me before: but come your ways. rosalind now hercules be thy speed, young man! celia i would i were invisible, to catch the strong fellow by the leg. [they wrestle] rosalind o excellent young man! celia if i had a thunderbolt in mine eye, i can tell who should down. [shout. charles is thrown] duke frederick no more, no more. orlando yes, i beseech your grace: i am not yet well breathed. duke frederick how dost thou, charles? le beau he cannot speak, my lord. duke frederick bear him away. what is thy name, young man? orlando orlando, my liege; the youngest son of sir rowland de boys. duke frederick i would thou hadst been son to some man else: the world esteem'd thy father honourable, but i did find him still mine enemy: thou shouldst have better pleased me with this deed, hadst thou descended from another house. but fare thee well; thou art a gallant youth: i would thou hadst told me of another father. [exeunt duke frederick, train, and le beau] celia were i my father, coz, would i do this? orlando i am more proud to be sir rowland's son, his youngest son; and would not change that calling, to be adopted heir to frederick. rosalind my father loved sir rowland as his soul, and all the world was of my father's mind: had i before known this young man his son, i should have given him tears unto entreaties, ere he should thus have ventured. celia gentle cousin, let us go thank him and encourage him: my father's rough and envious disposition sticks me at heart. sir, you have well deserved: if you do keep your promises in love but justly, as you have exceeded all promise, your mistress shall be happy. rosalind gentleman, [giving him a chain from her neck] wear this for me, one out of suits with fortune, that could give more, but that her hand lacks means. shall we go, coz? celia ay. fare you well, fair gentleman. orlando can i not say, i thank you? my better parts are all thrown down, and that which here stands up is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block. rosalind he calls us back: my pride fell with my fortunes; i'll ask him what he would. did you call, sir? sir, you have wrestled well and overthrown more than your enemies. celia will you go, coz? rosalind have with you. fare you well. [exeunt rosalind and celia] orlando what passion hangs these weights upon my tongue? i cannot speak to her, yet she urged conference. o poor orlando, thou art overthrown! or charles or something weaker masters thee. [re-enter le beau] le beau good sir, i do in friendship counsel you to leave this place. albeit you have deserved high commendation, true applause and love, yet such is now the duke's condition that he misconstrues all that you have done. the duke is humorous; what he is indeed, more suits you to conceive than i to speak of. orlando i thank you, sir: and, pray you, tell me this: which of the two was daughter of the duke that here was at the wrestling? le beau neither his daughter, if we judge by manners; but yet indeed the lesser is his daughter the other is daughter to the banish'd duke, and here detain'd by her usurping uncle, to keep his daughter company; whose loves are dearer than the natural bond of sisters. but i can tell you that of late this duke hath ta'en displeasure 'gainst his gentle niece, grounded upon no other argument but that the people praise her for her virtues and pity her for her good father's sake; and, on my life, his malice 'gainst the lady will suddenly break forth. sir, fare you well: hereafter, in a better world than this, i shall desire more love and knowledge of you. orlando i rest much bounden to you: fare you well. [exit le beau] thus must i from the smoke into the smother; from tyrant duke unto a tyrant brother: but heavenly rosalind! [exit] as you like it act i scene iii a room in the palace. [enter celia and rosalind] celia why, cousin! why, rosalind! cupid have mercy! not a word? rosalind not one to throw at a dog. celia no, thy words are too precious to be cast away upon curs; throw some of them at me; come, lame me with reasons. rosalind then there were two cousins laid up; when the one should be lamed with reasons and the other mad without any. celia but is all this for your father? rosalind no, some of it is for my child's father. o, how full of briers is this working-day world! celia they are but burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday foolery: if we walk not in the trodden paths our very petticoats will catch them. rosalind i could shake them off my coat: these burs are in my heart. celia hem them away. rosalind i would try, if i could cry 'hem' and have him. celia come, come, wrestle with thy affections. rosalind o, they take the part of a better wrestler than myself! celia o, a good wish upon you! you will try in time, in despite of a fall. but, turning these jests out of service, let us talk in good earnest: is it possible, on such a sudden, you should fall into so strong a liking with old sir rowland's youngest son? rosalind the duke my father loved his father dearly. celia doth it therefore ensue that you should love his son dearly? by this kind of chase, i should hate him, for my father hated his father dearly; yet i hate not orlando. rosalind no, faith, hate him not, for my sake. celia why should i not? doth he not deserve well? rosalind let me love him for that, and do you love him because i do. look, here comes the duke. celia with his eyes full of anger. [enter duke frederick, with lords] duke frederick mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste and get you from our court. rosalind me, uncle? duke frederick you, cousin within these ten days if that thou be'st found so near our public court as twenty miles, thou diest for it. rosalind i do beseech your grace, let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me: if with myself i hold intelligence or have acquaintance with mine own desires, if that i do not dream or be not frantic,- as i do trust i am not--then, dear uncle, never so much as in a thought unborn did i offend your highness. duke frederick thus do all traitors: if their purgation did consist in words, they are as innocent as grace itself: let it suffice thee that i trust thee not. rosalind yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor: tell me whereon the likelihood depends. duke frederick thou art thy father's daughter; there's enough. rosalind so was i when your highness took his dukedom; so was i when your highness banish'd him: treason is not inherited, my lord; or, if we did derive it from our friends, what's that to me? my father was no traitor: then, good my liege, mistake me not so much to think my poverty is treacherous. celia dear sovereign, hear me speak. duke frederick ay, celia; we stay'd her for your sake, else had she with her father ranged along. celia i did not then entreat to have her stay; it was your pleasure and your own remorse: i was too young that time to value her; but now i know her: if she be a traitor, why so am i; we still have slept together, rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together, and wheresoever we went, like juno's swans, still we went coupled and inseparable. duke frederick she is too subtle for thee; and her smoothness, her very silence and her patience speak to the people, and they pity her. thou art a fool: she robs thee of thy name; and thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous when she is gone. then open not thy lips: firm and irrevocable is my doom which i have pass'd upon her; she is banish'd. celia pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege: i cannot live out of her company. duke frederick you are a fool. you, niece, provide yourself: if you outstay the time, upon mine honour, and in the greatness of my word, you die. [exeunt duke frederick and lords] celia o my poor rosalind, whither wilt thou go? wilt thou change fathers? i will give thee mine. i charge thee, be not thou more grieved than i am. rosalind i have more cause. celia thou hast not, cousin; prithee be cheerful: know'st thou not, the duke hath banish'd me, his daughter? rosalind that he hath not. celia no, hath not? rosalind lacks then the love which teacheth thee that thou and i am one: shall we be sunder'd? shall we part, sweet girl? no: let my father seek another heir. therefore devise with me how we may fly, whither to go and what to bear with us; and do not seek to take your change upon you, to bear your griefs yourself and leave me out; for, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale, say what thou canst, i'll go along with thee. rosalind why, whither shall we go? celia to seek my uncle in the forest of arden. rosalind alas, what danger will it be to us, maids as we are, to travel forth so far! beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold. celia i'll put myself in poor and mean attire and with a kind of umber smirch my face; the like do you: so shall we pass along and never stir assailants. rosalind were it not better, because that i am more than common tall, that i did suit me all points like a man? a gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh, a boar-spear in my hand; and--in my heart lie there what hidden woman's fear there will- we'll have a swashing and a martial outside, as many other mannish cowards have that do outface it with their semblances. celia what shall i call thee when thou art a man? rosalind i'll have no worse a name than jove's own page; and therefore look you call me ganymede. but what will you be call'd? celia something that hath a reference to my state no longer celia, but aliena. rosalind but, cousin, what if we assay'd to steal the clownish fool out of your father's court? would he not be a comfort to our travel? celia he'll go along o'er the wide world with me; leave me alone to woo him. let's away, and get our jewels and our wealth together, devise the fittest time and safest way to hide us from pursuit that will be made after my flight. now go we in content to liberty and not to banishment. [exeunt] as you like it act ii scene i the forest of arden. [enter duke senior, amiens, and two or three lords, like foresters] duke senior now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, hath not old custom made this life more sweet than that of painted pomp? are not these woods more free from peril than the envious court? here feel we but the penalty of adam, the seasons' difference, as the icy fang and churlish chiding of the winter's wind, which, when it bites and blows upon my body, even till i shrink with cold, i smile and say 'this is no flattery: these are counsellors that feelingly persuade me what i am.' sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head; and this our life exempt from public haunt finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in every thing. i would not change it. amiens happy is your grace, that can translate the stubbornness of fortune into so quiet and so sweet a style. duke senior come, shall we go and kill us venison? and yet it irks me the poor dappled fools, being native burghers of this desert city, should in their own confines with forked heads have their round haunches gored. first lord indeed, my lord, the melancholy jaques grieves at that, and, in that kind, swears you do more usurp than doth your brother that hath banish'd you. to-day my lord of amiens and myself did steal behind him as he lay along under an oak whose antique root peeps out upon the brook that brawls along this wood: to the which place a poor sequester'd stag, that from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, did come to languish, and indeed, my lord, the wretched animal heaved forth such groans that their discharge did stretch his leathern coat almost to bursting, and the big round tears coursed one another down his innocent nose in piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool much marked of the melancholy jaques, stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, augmenting it with tears. duke senior but what said jaques? did he not moralize this spectacle? first lord o, yes, into a thousand similes. first, for his weeping into the needless stream; 'poor deer,' quoth he, 'thou makest a testament as worldlings do, giving thy sum of more to that which had too much:' then, being there alone, left and abandon'd of his velvet friends, ''tis right:' quoth he; 'thus misery doth part the flux of company:' anon a careless herd, full of the pasture, jumps along by him and never stays to greet him; 'ay' quoth jaques, 'sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens; 'tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?' thus most invectively he pierceth through the body of the country, city, court, yea, and of this our life, swearing that we are mere usurpers, tyrants and what's worse, to fright the animals and to kill them up in their assign'd and native dwelling-place. duke senior and did you leave him in this contemplation? second lord we did, my lord, weeping and commenting upon the sobbing deer. duke senior show me the place: i love to cope him in these sullen fits, for then he's full of matter. first lord i'll bring you to him straight. [exeunt] as you like it act ii scene ii a room in the palace. [enter duke frederick, with lords] duke frederick can it be possible that no man saw them? it cannot be: some villains of my court are of consent and sufferance in this. first lord i cannot hear of any that did see her. the ladies, her attendants of her chamber, saw her abed, and in the morning early they found the bed untreasured of their mistress. second lord my lord, the roynish clown, at whom so oft your grace was wont to laugh, is also missing. hisperia, the princess' gentlewoman, confesses that she secretly o'erheard your daughter and her cousin much commend the parts and graces of the wrestler that did but lately foil the sinewy charles; and she believes, wherever they are gone, that youth is surely in their company. duke frederick send to his brother; fetch that gallant hither; if he be absent, bring his brother to me; i'll make him find him: do this suddenly, and let not search and inquisition quail to bring again these foolish runaways. [exeunt] as you like it act ii scene iii before oliver's house. [enter orlando and adam, meeting] orlando who's there? adam what, my young master? o, my gentle master! o my sweet master! o you memory of old sir rowland! why, what make you here? why are you virtuous? why do people love you? and wherefore are you gentle, strong and valiant? why would you be so fond to overcome the bonny priser of the humorous duke? your praise is come too swiftly home before you. know you not, master, to some kind of men their graces serve them but as enemies? no more do yours: your virtues, gentle master, are sanctified and holy traitors to you. o, what a world is this, when what is comely envenoms him that bears it! orlando why, what's the matter? adam o unhappy youth! come not within these doors; within this roof the enemy of all your graces lives: your brother--no, no brother; yet the son- yet not the son, i will not call him son of him i was about to call his father- hath heard your praises, and this night he means to burn the lodging where you use to lie and you within it: if he fail of that, he will have other means to cut you off. i overheard him and his practises. this is no place; this house is but a butchery: abhor it, fear it, do not enter it. orlando why, whither, adam, wouldst thou have me go? adam no matter whither, so you come not here. orlando what, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food? or with a base and boisterous sword enforce a thievish living on the common road? this i must do, or know not what to do: yet this i will not do, do how i can; i rather will subject me to the malice of a diverted blood and bloody brother. adam but do not so. i have five hundred crowns, the thrifty hire i saved under your father, which i did store to be my foster-nurse when service should in my old limbs lie lame and unregarded age in corners thrown: take that, and he that doth the ravens feed, yea, providently caters for the sparrow, be comfort to my age! here is the gold; and all this i give you. let me be your servant: though i look old, yet i am strong and lusty; for in my youth i never did apply hot and rebellious liquors in my blood, nor did not with unbashful forehead woo the means of weakness and debility; therefore my age is as a lusty winter, frosty, but kindly: let me go with you; i'll do the service of a younger man in all your business and necessities. orlando o good old man, how well in thee appears the constant service of the antique world, when service sweat for duty, not for meed! thou art not for the fashion of these times, where none will sweat but for promotion, and having that, do choke their service up even with the having: it is not so with thee. but, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree, that cannot so much as a blossom yield in lieu of all thy pains and husbandry but come thy ways; well go along together, and ere we have thy youthful wages spent, we'll light upon some settled low content. adam master, go on, and i will follow thee, to the last gasp, with truth and loyalty. from seventeen years till now almost fourscore here lived i, but now live here no more. at seventeen years many their fortunes seek; but at fourscore it is too late a week: yet fortune cannot recompense me better than to die well and not my master's debtor. [exeunt] as you like it act ii scene iv the forest of arden. [enter rosalind for ganymede, celia for aliena, and touchstone] rosalind o jupiter, how weary are my spirits! touchstone i care not for my spirits, if my legs were not weary. rosalind i could find in my heart to disgrace my man's apparel and to cry like a woman; but i must comfort the weaker vessel, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat: therefore courage, good aliena! celia i pray you, bear with me; i cannot go no further. touchstone for my part, i had rather bear with you than bear you; yet i should bear no cross if i did bear you, for i think you have no money in your purse. rosalind well, this is the forest of arden. touchstone ay, now am i in arden; the more fool i; when i was at home, i was in a better place: but travellers must be content. rosalind ay, be so, good touchstone. [enter corin and silvius] look you, who comes here; a young man and an old in solemn talk. corin that is the way to make her scorn you still. silvius o corin, that thou knew'st how i do love her! corin i partly guess; for i have loved ere now. silvius no, corin, being old, thou canst not guess, though in thy youth thou wast as true a lover as ever sigh'd upon a midnight pillow: but if thy love were ever like to mine- as sure i think did never man love so- how many actions most ridiculous hast thou been drawn to by thy fantasy? corin into a thousand that i have forgotten. silvius o, thou didst then ne'er love so heartily! if thou remember'st not the slightest folly that ever love did make thee run into, thou hast not loved: or if thou hast not sat as i do now, wearying thy hearer in thy mistress' praise, thou hast not loved: or if thou hast not broke from company abruptly, as my passion now makes me, thou hast not loved. o phebe, phebe, phebe! [exit] rosalind alas, poor shepherd! searching of thy wound, i have by hard adventure found mine own. touchstone and i mine. i remember, when i was in love i broke my sword upon a stone and bid him take that for coming a-night to jane smile; and i remember the kissing of her batlet and the cow's dugs that her pretty chopt hands had milked; and i remember the wooing of a peascod instead of her, from whom i took two cods and, giving her them again, said with weeping tears 'wear these for my sake.' we that are true lovers run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly. rosalind thou speakest wiser than thou art ware of. touchstone nay, i shall ne'er be ware of mine own wit till i break my shins against it. rosalind jove, jove! this shepherd's passion is much upon my fashion. touchstone and mine; but it grows something stale with me. celia i pray you, one of you question yond man if he for gold will give us any food: i faint almost to death. touchstone holla, you clown! rosalind peace, fool: he's not thy kinsman. corin who calls? touchstone your betters, sir. corin else are they very wretched. rosalind peace, i say. good even to you, friend. corin and to you, gentle sir, and to you all. rosalind i prithee, shepherd, if that love or gold can in this desert place buy entertainment, bring us where we may rest ourselves and feed: here's a young maid with travel much oppress'd and faints for succor. corin fair sir, i pity her and wish, for her sake more than for mine own, my fortunes were more able to relieve her; but i am shepherd to another man and do not shear the fleeces that i graze: my master is of churlish disposition and little recks to find the way to heaven by doing deeds of hospitality: besides, his cote, his flocks and bounds of feed are now on sale, and at our sheepcote now, by reason of his absence, there is nothing that you will feed on; but what is, come see. and in my voice most welcome shall you be. rosalind what is he that shall buy his flock and pasture? corin that young swain that you saw here but erewhile, that little cares for buying any thing. rosalind i pray thee, if it stand with honesty, buy thou the cottage, pasture and the flock, and thou shalt have to pay for it of us. celia and we will mend thy wages. i like this place. and willingly could waste my time in it. corin assuredly the thing is to be sold: go with me: if you like upon report the soil, the profit and this kind of life, i will your very faithful feeder be and buy it with your gold right suddenly. [exeunt] as you like it act ii scene v the forest. [enter amiens, jaques, and others] song. amiens under the greenwood tree who loves to lie with me, and turn his merry note unto the sweet bird's throat, come hither, come hither, come hither: here shall he see no enemy but winter and rough weather. jaques more, more, i prithee, more. amiens it will make you melancholy, monsieur jaques. jaques i thank it. more, i prithee, more. i can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs. more, i prithee, more. amiens my voice is ragged: i know i cannot please you. jaques i do not desire you to please me; i do desire you to sing. come, more; another stanzo: call you 'em stanzos? amiens what you will, monsieur jaques. jaques nay, i care not for their names; they owe me nothing. will you sing? amiens more at your request than to please myself. jaques well then, if ever i thank any man, i'll thank you; but that they call compliment is like the encounter of two dog-apes, and when a man thanks me heartily, methinks i have given him a penny and he renders me the beggarly thanks. come, sing; and you that will not, hold your tongues. amiens well, i'll end the song. sirs, cover the while; the duke will drink under this tree. he hath been all this day to look you. jaques and i have been all this day to avoid him. he is too disputable for my company: i think of as many matters as he, but i give heaven thanks and make no boast of them. come, warble, come. song. who doth ambition shun [all together here] and loves to live i' the sun, seeking the food he eats and pleased with what he gets, come hither, come hither, come hither: here shall he see no enemy but winter and rough weather. jaques i'll give you a verse to this note that i made yesterday in despite of my invention. amiens and i'll sing it. jaques thus it goes:- if it do come to pass that any man turn ass, leaving his wealth and ease, a stubborn will to please, ducdame, ducdame, ducdame: here shall he see gross fools as he, an if he will come to me. amiens what's that 'ducdame'? jaques 'tis a greek invocation, to call fools into a circle. i'll go sleep, if i can; if i cannot, i'll rail against all the first-born of egypt. amiens and i'll go seek the duke: his banquet is prepared. [exeunt severally] as you like it act ii scene vi the forest. [enter orlando and adam] adam dear master, i can go no further. o, i die for food! here lie i down, and measure out my grave. farewell, kind master. orlando why, how now, adam! no greater heart in thee? live a little; comfort a little; cheer thyself a little. if this uncouth forest yield any thing savage, i will either be food for it or bring it for food to thee. thy conceit is nearer death than thy powers. for my sake be comfortable; hold death awhile at the arm's end: i will here be with thee presently; and if i bring thee not something to eat, i will give thee leave to die: but if thou diest before i come, thou art a mocker of my labour. well said! thou lookest cheerly, and i'll be with thee quickly. yet thou liest in the bleak air: come, i will bear thee to some shelter; and thou shalt not die for lack of a dinner, if there live any thing in this desert. cheerly, good adam! [exeunt] as you like it act ii scene vii the forest. [a table set out. enter duke senior, amiens, and lords like outlaws] duke senior i think he be transform'd into a beast; for i can no where find him like a man. first lord my lord, he is but even now gone hence: here was he merry, hearing of a song. duke senior if he, compact of jars, grow musical, we shall have shortly discord in the spheres. go, seek him: tell him i would speak with him. [enter jaques] first lord he saves my labour by his own approach. duke senior why, how now, monsieur! what a life is this, that your poor friends must woo your company? what, you look merrily! jaques a fool, a fool! i met a fool i' the forest, a motley fool; a miserable world! as i do live by food, i met a fool who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun, and rail'd on lady fortune in good terms, in good set terms and yet a motley fool. 'good morrow, fool,' quoth i. 'no, sir,' quoth he, 'call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune:' and then he drew a dial from his poke, and, looking on it with lack-lustre eye, says very wisely, 'it is ten o'clock: thus we may see,' quoth he, 'how the world wags: 'tis but an hour ago since it was nine, and after one hour more 'twill be eleven; and so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, and then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot; and thereby hangs a tale.' when i did hear the motley fool thus moral on the time, my lungs began to crow like chanticleer, that fools should be so deep-contemplative, and i did laugh sans intermission an hour by his dial. o noble fool! a worthy fool! motley's the only wear. duke senior what fool is this? jaques o worthy fool! one that hath been a courtier, and says, if ladies be but young and fair, they have the gift to know it: and in his brain, which is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd with observation, the which he vents in mangled forms. o that i were a fool! i am ambitious for a motley coat. duke senior thou shalt have one. jaques it is my only suit; provided that you weed your better judgments of all opinion that grows rank in them that i am wise. i must have liberty withal, as large a charter as the wind, to blow on whom i please; for so fools have; and they that are most galled with my folly, they most must laugh. and why, sir, must they so? the 'why' is plain as way to parish church: he that a fool doth very wisely hit doth very foolishly, although he smart, not to seem senseless of the bob: if not, the wise man's folly is anatomized even by the squandering glances of the fool. invest me in my motley; give me leave to speak my mind, and i will through and through cleanse the foul body of the infected world, if they will patiently receive my medicine. duke senior fie on thee! i can tell what thou wouldst do. jaques what, for a counter, would i do but good? duke senior most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin: for thou thyself hast been a libertine, as sensual as the brutish sting itself; and all the embossed sores and headed evils, that thou with licence of free foot hast caught, wouldst thou disgorge into the general world. jaques why, who cries out on pride, that can therein tax any private party? doth it not flow as hugely as the sea, till that the weary very means do ebb? what woman in the city do i name, when that i say the city-woman bears the cost of princes on unworthy shoulders? who can come in and say that i mean her, when such a one as she such is her neighbour? or what is he of basest function that says his bravery is not of my cost, thinking that i mean him, but therein suits his folly to the mettle of my speech? there then; how then? what then? let me see wherein my tongue hath wrong'd him: if it do him right, then he hath wrong'd himself; if he be free, why then my taxing like a wild-goose flies, unclaim'd of any man. but who comes here? [enter orlando, with his sword drawn] orlando forbear, and eat no more. jaques why, i have eat none yet. orlando nor shalt not, till necessity be served. jaques of what kind should this cock come of? duke senior art thou thus bolden'd, man, by thy distress, or else a rude despiser of good manners, that in civility thou seem'st so empty? orlando you touch'd my vein at first: the thorny point of bare distress hath ta'en from me the show of smooth civility: yet am i inland bred and know some nurture. but forbear, i say: he dies that touches any of this fruit till i and my affairs are answered. jaques an you will not be answered with reason, i must die. duke senior what would you have? your gentleness shall force more than your force move us to gentleness. orlando i almost die for food; and let me have it. duke senior sit down and feed, and welcome to our table. orlando speak you so gently? pardon me, i pray you: i thought that all things had been savage here; and therefore put i on the countenance of stern commandment. but whate'er you are that in this desert inaccessible, under the shade of melancholy boughs, lose and neglect the creeping hours of time if ever you have look'd on better days, if ever been where bells have knoll'd to church, if ever sat at any good man's feast, if ever from your eyelids wiped a tear and know what 'tis to pity and be pitied, let gentleness my strong enforcement be: in the which hope i blush, and hide my sword. duke senior true is it that we have seen better days, and have with holy bell been knoll'd to church and sat at good men's feasts and wiped our eyes of drops that sacred pity hath engender'd: and therefore sit you down in gentleness and take upon command what help we have that to your wanting may be minister'd. orlando then but forbear your food a little while, whiles, like a doe, i go to find my fawn and give it food. there is an old poor man, who after me hath many a weary step limp'd in pure love: till he be first sufficed, oppress'd with two weak evils, age and hunger, i will not touch a bit. duke senior go find him out, and we will nothing waste till you return. orlando i thank ye; and be blest for your good comfort! [exit] duke senior thou seest we are not all alone unhappy: this wide and universal theatre presents more woeful pageants than the scene wherein we play in. jaques all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. at first the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. and then the whining school-boy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school. and then the lover, sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress' eyebrow. then a soldier, full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth. and then the justice, in fair round belly with good capon lined, with eyes severe and beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances; and so he plays his part. the sixth age shifts into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, with spectacles on nose and pouch on side, his youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide for his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, turning again toward childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sound. last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. [re-enter orlando, with adam] duke senior welcome. set down your venerable burthen, and let him feed. orlando i thank you most for him. adam so had you need: i scarce can speak to thank you for myself. duke senior welcome; fall to: i will not trouble you as yet, to question you about your fortunes. give us some music; and, good cousin, sing. song. amiens blow, blow, thou winter wind. thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude; thy tooth is not so keen, because thou art not seen, although thy breath be rude. heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly: most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: then, heigh-ho, the holly! this life is most jolly. freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, that dost not bite so nigh as benefits forgot: though thou the waters warp, thy sting is not so sharp as friend remember'd not. heigh-ho! sing, &c. duke senior if that you were the good sir rowland's son, as you have whisper'd faithfully you were, and as mine eye doth his effigies witness most truly limn'd and living in your face, be truly welcome hither: i am the duke that loved your father: the residue of your fortune, go to my cave and tell me. good old man, thou art right welcome as thy master is. support him by the arm. give me your hand, and let me all your fortunes understand. [exeunt] as you like it act iii scene i a room in the palace. [enter duke frederick, lords, and oliver] duke frederick not see him since? sir, sir, that cannot be: but were i not the better part made mercy, i should not seek an absent argument of my revenge, thou present. but look to it: find out thy brother, wheresoe'er he is; seek him with candle; bring him dead or living within this twelvemonth, or turn thou no more to seek a living in our territory. thy lands and all things that thou dost call thine worth seizure do we seize into our hands, till thou canst quit thee by thy brothers mouth of what we think against thee. oliver o that your highness knew my heart in this! i never loved my brother in my life. duke frederick more villain thou. well, push him out of doors; and let my officers of such a nature make an extent upon his house and lands: do this expediently and turn him going. [exeunt] as you like it act iii scene ii the forest. [enter orlando, with a paper] orlando hang there, my verse, in witness of my love: and thou, thrice-crowned queen of night, survey with thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above, thy huntress' name that my full life doth sway. o rosalind! these trees shall be my books and in their barks my thoughts i'll character; that every eye which in this forest looks shall see thy virtue witness'd every where. run, run, orlando; carve on every tree the fair, the chaste and unexpressive she. [exit] [enter corin and touchstone] corin and how like you this shepherd's life, master touchstone? touchstone truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life, but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. in respect that it is solitary, i like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. now, in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. as is it a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach. hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd? corin no more but that i know the more one sickens the worse at ease he is; and that he that wants money, means and content is without three good friends; that the property of rain is to wet and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep, and that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun; that he that hath learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding or comes of a very dull kindred. touchstone such a one is a natural philosopher. wast ever in court, shepherd? corin no, truly. touchstone then thou art damned. corin nay, i hope. touchstone truly, thou art damned like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side. corin for not being at court? your reason. touchstone why, if thou never wast at court, thou never sawest good manners; if thou never sawest good manners, then thy manners must be wicked; and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. thou art in a parlous state, shepherd. corin not a whit, touchstone: those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court. you told me you salute not at the court, but you kiss your hands: that courtesy would be uncleanly, if courtiers were shepherds. touchstone instance, briefly; come, instance. corin why, we are still handling our ewes, and their fells, you know, are greasy. touchstone why, do not your courtier's hands sweat? and is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? shallow, shallow. a better instance, i say; come. corin besides, our hands are hard. touchstone your lips will feel them the sooner. shallow again. a more sounder instance, come. corin and they are often tarred over with the surgery of our sheep: and would you have us kiss tar? the courtier's hands are perfumed with civet. touchstone most shallow man! thou worms-meat, in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed! learn of the wise, and perpend: civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat. mend the instance, shepherd. corin you have too courtly a wit for me: i'll rest. touchstone wilt thou rest damned? god help thee, shallow man! god make incision in thee! thou art raw. corin sir, i am a true labourer: i earn that i eat, get that i wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck. touchstone that is another simple sin in you, to bring the ewes and the rams together and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether, and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. if thou beest not damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; i cannot see else how thou shouldst 'scape. corin here comes young master ganymede, my new mistress's brother. [enter rosalind, with a paper, reading] rosalind from the east to western ind, no jewel is like rosalind. her worth, being mounted on the wind, through all the world bears rosalind. all the pictures fairest lined are but black to rosalind. let no fair be kept in mind but the fair of rosalind. touchstone i'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners and suppers and sleeping-hours excepted: it is the right butter-women's rank to market. rosalind out, fool! touchstone for a taste: if a hart do lack a hind, let him seek out rosalind. if the cat will after kind, so be sure will rosalind. winter garments must be lined, so must slender rosalind. they that reap must sheaf and bind; then to cart with rosalind. sweetest nut hath sourest rind, such a nut is rosalind. he that sweetest rose will find must find love's prick and rosalind. this is the very false gallop of verses: why do you infect yourself with them? rosalind peace, you dull fool! i found them on a tree. touchstone truly, the tree yields bad fruit. rosalind i'll graff it with you, and then i shall graff it with a medlar: then it will be the earliest fruit i' the country; for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar. touchstone you have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge. [enter celia, with a writing] rosalind peace! here comes my sister, reading: stand aside. celia [reads] why should this a desert be? for it is unpeopled? no: tongues i'll hang on every tree, that shall civil sayings show: some, how brief the life of man runs his erring pilgrimage, that the stretching of a span buckles in his sum of age; some, of violated vows 'twixt the souls of friend and friend: but upon the fairest boughs, or at every sentence end, will i rosalinda write, teaching all that read to know the quintessence of every sprite heaven would in little show. therefore heaven nature charged that one body should be fill'd with all graces wide-enlarged: nature presently distill'd helen's cheek, but not her heart, cleopatra's majesty, atalanta's better part, sad lucretia's modesty. thus rosalind of many parts by heavenly synod was devised, of many faces, eyes and hearts, to have the touches dearest prized. heaven would that she these gifts should have, and i to live and die her slave. rosalind o most gentle pulpiter! what tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried 'have patience, good people!' celia how now! back, friends! shepherd, go off a little. go with him, sirrah. touchstone come, shepherd, let us make an honourable retreat; though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage. [exeunt corin and touchstone] celia didst thou hear these verses? rosalind o, yes, i heard them all, and more too; for some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear. celia that's no matter: the feet might bear the verses. rosalind ay, but the feet were lame and could not bear themselves without the verse and therefore stood lamely in the verse. celia but didst thou hear without wondering how thy name should be hanged and carved upon these trees? rosalind i was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you came; for look here what i found on a palm-tree. i was never so be-rhymed since pythagoras' time, that i was an irish rat, which i can hardly remember. celia trow you who hath done this? rosalind is it a man? celia and a chain, that you once wore, about his neck. change you colour? rosalind i prithee, who? celia o lord, lord! it is a hard matter for friends to meet; but mountains may be removed with earthquakes and so encounter. rosalind nay, but who is it? celia is it possible? rosalind nay, i prithee now with most petitionary vehemence, tell me who it is. celia o wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping! rosalind good my complexion! dost thou think, though i am caparisoned like a man, i have a doublet and hose in my disposition? one inch of delay more is a south-sea of discovery; i prithee, tell me who is it quickly, and speak apace. i would thou couldst stammer, that thou mightst pour this concealed man out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of a narrow mouthed bottle, either too much at once, or none at all. i prithee, take the cork out of thy mouth that may drink thy tidings. celia so you may put a man in your belly. rosalind is he of god's making? what manner of man? is his head worth a hat, or his chin worth a beard? celia nay, he hath but a little beard. rosalind why, god will send more, if the man will be thankful: let me stay the growth of his beard, if thou delay me not the knowledge of his chin. celia it is young orlando, that tripped up the wrestler's heels and your heart both in an instant. rosalind nay, but the devil take mocking: speak, sad brow and true maid. celia i' faith, coz, 'tis he. rosalind orlando? celia orlando. rosalind alas the day! what shall i do with my doublet and hose? what did he when thou sawest him? what said he? how looked he? wherein went he? what makes him here? did he ask for me? where remains he? how parted he with thee? and when shalt thou see him again? answer me in one word. celia you must borrow me gargantua's mouth first: 'tis a word too great for any mouth of this age's size. to say ay and no to these particulars is more than to answer in a catechism. rosalind but doth he know that i am in this forest and in man's apparel? looks he as freshly as he did the day he wrestled? celia it is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the propositions of a lover; but take a taste of my finding him, and relish it with good observance. i found him under a tree, like a dropped acorn. rosalind it may well be called jove's tree, when it drops forth such fruit. celia give me audience, good madam. rosalind proceed. celia there lay he, stretched along, like a wounded knight. rosalind though it be pity to see such a sight, it well becomes the ground. celia cry 'holla' to thy tongue, i prithee; it curvets unseasonably. he was furnished like a hunter. rosalind o, ominous! he comes to kill my heart. celia i would sing my song without a burden: thou bringest me out of tune. rosalind do you not know i am a woman? when i think, i must speak. sweet, say on. celia you bring me out. soft! comes he not here? [enter orlando and jaques] rosalind 'tis he: slink by, and note him. jaques i thank you for your company; but, good faith, i had as lief have been myself alone. orlando and so had i; but yet, for fashion sake, i thank you too for your society. jaques god be wi' you: let's meet as little as we can. orlando i do desire we may be better strangers. jaques i pray you, mar no more trees with writing love-songs in their barks. orlando i pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading them ill-favouredly. jaques rosalind is your love's name? orlando yes, just. jaques i do not like her name. orlando there was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened. jaques what stature is she of? orlando just as high as my heart. jaques you are full of pretty answers. have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths' wives, and conned them out of rings? orlando not so; but i answer you right painted cloth, from whence you have studied your questions. jaques you have a nimble wit: i think 'twas made of atalanta's heels. will you sit down with me? and we two will rail against our mistress the world and all our misery. orlando i will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom i know most faults. jaques the worst fault you have is to be in love. orlando 'tis a fault i will not change for your best virtue. i am weary of you. jaques by my troth, i was seeking for a fool when i found you. orlando he is drowned in the brook: look but in, and you shall see him. jaques there i shall see mine own figure. orlando which i take to be either a fool or a cipher. jaques i'll tarry no longer with you: farewell, good signior love. orlando i am glad of your departure: adieu, good monsieur melancholy. [exit jaques] rosalind [aside to celia] i will speak to him, like a saucy lackey and under that habit play the knave with him. do you hear, forester? orlando very well: what would you? rosalind i pray you, what is't o'clock? orlando you should ask me what time o' day: there's no clock in the forest. rosalind then there is no true lover in the forest; else sighing every minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot of time as well as a clock. orlando and why not the swift foot of time? had not that been as proper? rosalind by no means, sir: time travels in divers paces with divers persons. i'll tell you who time ambles withal, who time trots withal, who time gallops withal and who he stands still withal. orlando i prithee, who doth he trot withal? rosalind marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized: if the interim be but a se'nnight, time's pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven year. orlando who ambles time withal? rosalind with a priest that lacks latin and a rich man that hath not the gout, for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study, and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain, the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning, the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury; these time ambles withal. orlando who doth he gallop withal? rosalind with a thief to the gallows, for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there. orlando who stays it still withal? rosalind with lawyers in the vacation, for they sleep between term and term and then they perceive not how time moves. orlando where dwell you, pretty youth? rosalind with this shepherdess, my sister; here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat. orlando are you native of this place? rosalind as the cony that you see dwell where she is kindled. orlando your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so removed a dwelling. rosalind i have been told so of many: but indeed an old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland man; one that knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love. i have heard him read many lectures against it, and i thank god i am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as he hath generally taxed their whole sex withal. orlando can you remember any of the principal evils that he laid to the charge of women? rosalind there were none principal; they were all like one another as half-pence are, every one fault seeming monstrous till his fellow fault came to match it. orlando i prithee, recount some of them. rosalind no, i will not cast away my physic but on those that are sick. there is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our young plants with carving 'rosalind' on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles, all, forsooth, deifying the name of rosalind: if i could meet that fancy-monger i would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him. orlando i am he that is so love-shaked: i pray you tell me your remedy. rosalind there is none of my uncle's marks upon you: he taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes i am sure you are not prisoner. orlando what were his marks? rosalind a lean cheek, which you have not, a blue eye and sunken, which you have not, an unquestionable spirit, which you have not, a beard neglected, which you have not; but i pardon you for that, for simply your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue: then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation; but you are no such man; you are rather point-device in your accoutrements as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any other. orlando fair youth, i would i could make thee believe i love. rosalind me believe it! you may as soon make her that you love believe it; which, i warrant, she is apter to do than to confess she does: that is one of the points in the which women still give the lie to their consciences. but, in good sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on the trees, wherein rosalind is so admired? orlando i swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of rosalind, i am that he, that unfortunate he. rosalind but are you so much in love as your rhymes speak? orlando neither rhyme nor reason can express how much. rosalind love is merely a madness, and, i tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do: and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too. yet i profess curing it by counsel. orlando did you ever cure any so? rosalind yes, one, and in this manner. he was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and i set him every day to woo me: at which time would i, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles, for every passion something and for no passion truly any thing, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour; would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that i drave my suitor from his mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to forswear the full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely monastic. and thus i cured him; and this way will i take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in't. orlando i would not be cured, youth. rosalind i would cure you, if you would but call me rosalind and come every day to my cote and woo me. orlando now, by the faith of my love, i will: tell me where it is. rosalind go with me to it and i'll show it you and by the way you shall tell me where in the forest you live. will you go? orlando with all my heart, good youth. rosalind nay you must call me rosalind. come, sister, will you go? [exeunt] as you like it act iii scene iii the forest. [enter touchstone and audrey; jaques behind] touchstone come apace, good audrey: i will fetch up your goats, audrey. and how, audrey? am i the man yet? doth my simple feature content you? audrey your features! lord warrant us! what features! touchstone i am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest ovid, was among the goths. jaques [aside] o knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than jove in a thatched house! touchstone when a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. truly, i would the gods had made thee poetical. audrey i do not know what 'poetical' is: is it honest in deed and word? is it a true thing? touchstone no, truly; for the truest poetry is the most feigning; and lovers are given to poetry, and what they swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign. audrey do you wish then that the gods had made me poetical? touchstone i do, truly; for thou swearest to me thou art honest: now, if thou wert a poet, i might have some hope thou didst feign. audrey would you not have me honest? touchstone no, truly, unless thou wert hard-favoured; for honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar. jaques [aside] a material fool! audrey well, i am not fair; and therefore i pray the gods make me honest. touchstone truly, and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut were to put good meat into an unclean dish. audrey i am not a slut, though i thank the gods i am foul. touchstone well, praised be the gods for thy foulness! sluttishness may come hereafter. but be it as it may be, i will marry thee, and to that end i have been with sir oliver martext, the vicar of the next village, who hath promised to meet me in this place of the forest and to couple us. jaques [aside] i would fain see this meeting. audrey well, the gods give us joy! touchstone amen. a man may, if he were of a fearful heart, stagger in this attempt; for here we have no temple but the wood, no assembly but horn-beasts. but what though? courage! as horns are odious, they are necessary. it is said, 'many a man knows no end of his goods:' right; many a man has good horns, and knows no end of them. well, that is the dowry of his wife; 'tis none of his own getting. horns? even so. poor men alone? no, no; the noblest deer hath them as huge as the rascal. is the single man therefore blessed? no: as a walled town is more worthier than a village, so is the forehead of a married man more honourable than the bare brow of a bachelor; and by how much defence is better than no skill, by so much is a horn more precious than to want. here comes sir oliver. [enter sir oliver martext] sir oliver martext, you are well met: will you dispatch us here under this tree, or shall we go with you to your chapel? sir oliver martext is there none here to give the woman? touchstone i will not take her on gift of any man. sir oliver martext truly, she must be given, or the marriage is not lawful. jaques [advancing] proceed, proceed i'll give her. touchstone good even, good master what-ye-call't: how do you, sir? you are very well met: god 'ild you for your last company: i am very glad to see you: even a toy in hand here, sir: nay, pray be covered. jaques will you be married, motley? touchstone as the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires; and as pigeons bill, so wedlock would be nibbling. jaques and will you, being a man of your breeding, be married under a bush like a beggar? get you to church, and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is: this fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot; then one of you will prove a shrunk panel and, like green timber, warp, warp. touchstone [aside] i am not in the mind but i were better to be married of him than of another: for he is not like to marry me well; and not being well married, it will be a good excuse for me hereafter to leave my wife. jaques go thou with me, and let me counsel thee. touchstone 'come, sweet audrey: we must be married, or we must live in bawdry. farewell, good master oliver: not,- o sweet oliver, o brave oliver, leave me not behind thee: but,- wind away, begone, i say, i will not to wedding with thee. [exeunt jaques, touchstone and audrey] sir oliver martext 'tis no matter: ne'er a fantastical knave of them all shall flout me out of my calling. [exit] as you like it act iii scene iv the forest. [enter rosalind and celia] rosalind never talk to me; i will weep. celia do, i prithee; but yet have the grace to consider that tears do not become a man. rosalind but have i not cause to weep? celia as good cause as one would desire; therefore weep. rosalind his very hair is of the dissembling colour. celia something browner than judas's marry, his kisses are judas's own children. rosalind i' faith, his hair is of a good colour. celia an excellent colour: your chestnut was ever the only colour. rosalind and his kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread. celia he hath bought a pair of cast lips of diana: a nun of winter's sisterhood kisses not more religiously; the very ice of chastity is in them. rosalind but why did he swear he would come this morning, and comes not? celia nay, certainly, there is no truth in him. rosalind do you think so? celia yes; i think he is not a pick-purse nor a horse-stealer, but for his verity in love, i do think him as concave as a covered goblet or a worm-eaten nut. rosalind not true in love? celia yes, when he is in; but i think he is not in. rosalind you have heard him swear downright he was. celia 'was' is not 'is:' besides, the oath of a lover is no stronger than the word of a tapster; they are both the confirmer of false reckonings. he attends here in the forest on the duke your father. rosalind i met the duke yesterday and had much question with him: he asked me of what parentage i was; i told him, of as good as he; so he laughed and let me go. but what talk we of fathers, when there is such a man as orlando? celia o, that's a brave man! he writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths and breaks them bravely, quite traverse, athwart the heart of his lover; as a puisny tilter, that spurs his horse but on one side, breaks his staff like a noble goose: but all's brave that youth mounts and folly guides. who comes here? [enter corin] corin mistress and master, you have oft inquired after the shepherd that complain'd of love, who you saw sitting by me on the turf, praising the proud disdainful shepherdess that was his mistress. celia well, and what of him? corin if you will see a pageant truly play'd, between the pale complexion of true love and the red glow of scorn and proud disdain, go hence a little and i shall conduct you, if you will mark it. rosalind o, come, let us remove: the sight of lovers feedeth those in love. bring us to this sight, and you shall say i'll prove a busy actor in their play. [exeunt] as you like it act iii scene v another part of the forest. [enter silvius and phebe] silvius sweet phebe, do not scorn me; do not, phebe; say that you love me not, but say not so in bitterness. the common executioner, whose heart the accustom'd sight of death makes hard, falls not the axe upon the humbled neck but first begs pardon: will you sterner be than he that dies and lives by bloody drops? [enter rosalind, celia, and corin, behind] phebe i would not be thy executioner: i fly thee, for i would not injure thee. thou tell'st me there is murder in mine eye: 'tis pretty, sure, and very probable, that eyes, that are the frail'st and softest things, who shut their coward gates on atomies, should be call'd tyrants, butchers, murderers! now i do frown on thee with all my heart; and if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee: now counterfeit to swoon; why now fall down; or if thou canst not, o, for shame, for shame, lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers! now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee: scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains some scar of it; lean but upon a rush, the cicatrice and capable impressure thy palm some moment keeps; but now mine eyes, which i have darted at thee, hurt thee not, nor, i am sure, there is no force in eyes that can do hurt. silvius o dear phebe, if ever,--as that ever may be near,- you meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy, then shall you know the wounds invisible that love's keen arrows make. phebe but till that time come not thou near me: and when that time comes, afflict me with thy mocks, pity me not; as till that time i shall not pity thee. rosalind and why, i pray you? who might be your mother, that you insult, exult, and all at once, over the wretched? what though you have no beauty,- as, by my faith, i see no more in you than without candle may go dark to bed- must you be therefore proud and pitiless? why, what means this? why do you look on me? i see no more in you than in the ordinary of nature's sale-work. 'od's my little life, i think she means to tangle my eyes too! no, faith, proud mistress, hope not after it: 'tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair, your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream, that can entame my spirits to your worship. you foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her, like foggy south puffing with wind and rain? you are a thousand times a properer man than she a woman: 'tis such fools as you that makes the world full of ill-favour'd children: 'tis not her glass, but you, that flatters her; and out of you she sees herself more proper than any of her lineaments can show her. but, mistress, know yourself: down on your knees, and thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love: for i must tell you friendly in your ear, sell when you can: you are not for all markets: cry the man mercy; love him; take his offer: foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer. so take her to thee, shepherd: fare you well. phebe sweet youth, i pray you, chide a year together: i had rather hear you chide than this man woo. rosalind he's fallen in love with your foulness and she'll fall in love with my anger. if it be so, as fast as she answers thee with frowning looks, i'll sauce her with bitter words. why look you so upon me? phebe for no ill will i bear you. rosalind i pray you, do not fall in love with me, for i am falser than vows made in wine: besides, i like you not. if you will know my house, 'tis at the tuft of olives here hard by. will you go, sister? shepherd, ply her hard. come, sister. shepherdess, look on him better, and be not proud: though all the world could see, none could be so abused in sight as he. come, to our flock. [exeunt rosalind, celia and corin] phebe dead shepherd, now i find thy saw of might, 'who ever loved that loved not at first sight?' silvius sweet phebe,- phebe ha, what say'st thou, silvius? silvius sweet phebe, pity me. phebe why, i am sorry for thee, gentle silvius. silvius wherever sorrow is, relief would be: if you do sorrow at my grief in love, by giving love your sorrow and my grief were both extermined. phebe thou hast my love: is not that neighbourly? silvius i would have you. phebe why, that were covetousness. silvius, the time was that i hated thee, and yet it is not that i bear thee love; but since that thou canst talk of love so well, thy company, which erst was irksome to me, i will endure, and i'll employ thee too: but do not look for further recompense than thine own gladness that thou art employ'd. silvius so holy and so perfect is my love, and i in such a poverty of grace, that i shall think it a most plenteous crop to glean the broken ears after the man that the main harvest reaps: loose now and then a scatter'd smile, and that i'll live upon. phebe know'st now the youth that spoke to me erewhile? silvius not very well, but i have met him oft; and he hath bought the cottage and the bounds that the old carlot once was master of. phebe think not i love him, though i ask for him: 'tis but a peevish boy; yet he talks well; but what care i for words? yet words do well when he that speaks them pleases those that hear. it is a pretty youth: not very pretty: but, sure, he's proud, and yet his pride becomes him: he'll make a proper man: the best thing in him is his complexion; and faster than his tongue did make offence his eye did heal it up. he is not very tall; yet for his years he's tall: his leg is but so so; and yet 'tis well: there was a pretty redness in his lip, a little riper and more lusty red than that mix'd in his cheek; 'twas just the difference between the constant red and mingled damask. there be some women, silvius, had they mark'd him in parcels as i did, would have gone near to fall in love with him; but, for my part, i love him not nor hate him not; and yet i have more cause to hate him than to love him: for what had he to do to chide at me? he said mine eyes were black and my hair black: and, now i am remember'd, scorn'd at me: i marvel why i answer'd not again: but that's all one; omittance is no quittance. i'll write to him a very taunting letter, and thou shalt bear it: wilt thou, silvius? silvius phebe, with all my heart. phebe i'll write it straight; the matter's in my head and in my heart: i will be bitter with him and passing short. go with me, silvius. [exeunt] as you like it act iv scene i the forest. [enter rosalind, celia, and jaques] jaques i prithee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted with thee. rosalind they say you are a melancholy fellow. jaques i am so; i do love it better than laughing. rosalind those that are in extremity of either are abominable fellows and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than drunkards. jaques why, 'tis good to be sad and say nothing. rosalind why then, 'tis good to be a post. jaques i have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation, nor the musician's, which is fantastical, nor the courtier's, which is proud, nor the soldier's, which is ambitious, nor the lawyer's, which is politic, nor the lady's, which is nice, nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry's contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me m a most humorous sadness. rosalind a traveller! by my faith, you have great reason to be sad: i fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's; then, to have seen much and to have nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands. jaques yes, i have gained my experience. rosalind and your experience makes you sad: i had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad; and to travel for it too! [enter orlando] orlando good day and happiness, dear rosalind! jaques nay, then, god be wi' you, an you talk in blank verse. [exit] rosalind farewell, monsieur traveller: look you lisp and wear strange suits, disable all the benefits of your own country, be out of love with your nativity and almost chide god for making you that countenance you are, or i will scarce think you have swam in a gondola. why, how now, orlando! where have you been all this while? you a lover! an you serve me such another trick, never come in my sight more. orlando my fair rosalind, i come within an hour of my promise. rosalind break an hour's promise in love! he that will divide a minute into a thousand parts and break but a part of the thousandth part of a minute in the affairs of love, it may be said of him that cupid hath clapped him o' the shoulder, but i'll warrant him heart-whole. orlando pardon me, dear rosalind. rosalind nay, an you be so tardy, come no more in my sight: i had as lief be wooed of a snail. orlando of a snail? rosalind ay, of a snail; for though he comes slowly, he carries his house on his head; a better jointure, i think, than you make a woman: besides he brings his destiny with him. orlando what's that? rosalind why, horns, which such as you are fain to be beholding to your wives for: but he comes armed in his fortune and prevents the slander of his wife. orlando virtue is no horn-maker; and my rosalind is virtuous. rosalind and i am your rosalind. celia it pleases him to call you so; but he hath a rosalind of a better leer than you. rosalind come, woo me, woo me, for now i am in a holiday humour and like enough to consent. what would you say to me now, an i were your very very rosalind? orlando i would kiss before i spoke. rosalind nay, you were better speak first, and when you were gravelled for lack of matter, you might take occasion to kiss. very good orators, when they are out, they will spit; and for lovers lacking--god warn us!--matter, the cleanliest shift is to kiss. orlando how if the kiss be denied? rosalind then she puts you to entreaty, and there begins new matter. orlando who could be out, being before his beloved mistress? rosalind marry, that should you, if i were your mistress, or i should think my honesty ranker than my wit. orlando what, of my suit? rosalind not out of your apparel, and yet out of your suit. am not i your rosalind? orlando i take some joy to say you are, because i would be talking of her. rosalind well in her person i say i will not have you. orlando then in mine own person i die. rosalind no, faith, die by attorney. the poor world is almost six thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man died in his own person, videlicit, in a love-cause. troilus had his brains dashed out with a grecian club; yet he did what he could to die before, and he is one of the patterns of love. leander, he would have lived many a fair year, though hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night; for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the hellespont and being taken with the cramp was drowned and the foolish coroners of that age found it was 'hero of sestos.' but these are all lies: men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love. orlando i would not have my right rosalind of this mind, for, i protest, her frown might kill me. rosalind by this hand, it will not kill a fly. but come, now i will be your rosalind in a more coming-on disposition, and ask me what you will. i will grant it. orlando then love me, rosalind. rosalind yes, faith, will i, fridays and saturdays and all. orlando and wilt thou have me? rosalind ay, and twenty such. orlando what sayest thou? rosalind are you not good? orlando i hope so. rosalind why then, can one desire too much of a good thing? come, sister, you shall be the priest and marry us. give me your hand, orlando. what do you say, sister? orlando pray thee, marry us. celia i cannot say the words. rosalind you must begin, 'will you, orlando--' celia go to. will you, orlando, have to wife this rosalind? orlando i will. rosalind ay, but when? orlando why now; as fast as she can marry us. rosalind then you must say 'i take thee, rosalind, for wife.' orlando i take thee, rosalind, for wife. rosalind i might ask you for your commission; but i do take thee, orlando, for my husband: there's a girl goes before the priest; and certainly a woman's thought runs before her actions. orlando so do all thoughts; they are winged. rosalind now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her. orlando for ever and a day. rosalind say 'a day,' without the 'ever.' no, no, orlando; men are april when they woo, december when they wed: maids are may when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. i will be more jealous of thee than a barbary cock-pigeon over his hen, more clamorous than a parrot against rain, more new-fangled than an ape, more giddy in my desires than a monkey: i will weep for nothing, like diana in the fountain, and i will do that when you are disposed to be merry; i will laugh like a hyen, and that when thou art inclined to sleep. orlando but will my rosalind do so? rosalind by my life, she will do as i do. orlando o, but she is wise. rosalind or else she could not have the wit to do this: the wiser, the waywarder: make the doors upon a woman's wit and it will out at the casement; shut that and 'twill out at the key-hole; stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney. orlando a man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say 'wit, whither wilt?' rosalind nay, you might keep that cheque for it till you met your wife's wit going to your neighbour's bed. orlando and what wit could wit have to excuse that? rosalind marry, to say she came to seek you there. you shall never take her without her answer, unless you take her without her tongue. o, that woman that cannot make her fault her husband's occasion, let her never nurse her child herself, for she will breed it like a fool! orlando for these two hours, rosalind, i will leave thee. rosalind alas! dear love, i cannot lack thee two hours. orlando i must attend the duke at dinner: by two o'clock i will be with thee again. rosalind ay, go your ways, go your ways; i knew what you would prove: my friends told me as much, and i thought no less: that flattering tongue of yours won me: 'tis but one cast away, and so, come, death! two o'clock is your hour? orlando ay, sweet rosalind. rosalind by my troth, and in good earnest, and so god mend me, and by all pretty oaths that are not dangerous, if you break one jot of your promise or come one minute behind your hour, i will think you the most pathetical break-promise and the most hollow lover and the most unworthy of her you call rosalind that may be chosen out of the gross band of the unfaithful: therefore beware my censure and keep your promise. orlando with no less religion than if thou wert indeed my rosalind: so adieu. rosalind well, time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let time try: adieu. [exit orlando] celia you have simply misused our sex in your love-prate: we must have your doublet and hose plucked over your head, and show the world what the bird hath done to her own nest. rosalind o coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep i am in love! but it cannot be sounded: my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of portugal. celia or rather, bottomless, that as fast as you pour affection in, it runs out. rosalind no, that same wicked bastard of venus that was begot of thought, conceived of spleen and born of madness, that blind rascally boy that abuses every one's eyes because his own are out, let him be judge how deep i am in love. i'll tell thee, aliena, i cannot be out of the sight of orlando: i'll go find a shadow and sigh till he come. celia and i'll sleep. [exeunt] as you like it act iv scene ii the forest. [enter jaques, lords, and foresters] jaques which is he that killed the deer? a lord sir, it was i. jaques let's present him to the duke, like a roman conqueror; and it would do well to set the deer's horns upon his head, for a branch of victory. have you no song, forester, for this purpose? forester yes, sir. jaques sing it: 'tis no matter how it be in tune, so it make noise enough. song. forester what shall he have that kill'd the deer? his leather skin and horns to wear. then sing him home; [the rest shall bear this burden] take thou no scorn to wear the horn; it was a crest ere thou wast born: thy father's father wore it, and thy father bore it: the horn, the horn, the lusty horn is not a thing to laugh to scorn. [exeunt] as you like it act iv scene iii the forest. [enter rosalind and celia] rosalind how say you now? is it not past two o'clock? and here much orlando! celia i warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain, he hath ta'en his bow and arrows and is gone forth to sleep. look, who comes here. [enter silvius] silvius my errand is to you, fair youth; my gentle phebe bid me give you this: i know not the contents; but, as i guess by the stern brow and waspish action which she did use as she was writing of it, it bears an angry tenor: pardon me: i am but as a guiltless messenger. rosalind patience herself would startle at this letter and play the swaggerer; bear this, bear all: she says i am not fair, that i lack manners; she calls me proud, and that she could not love me, were man as rare as phoenix. 'od's my will! her love is not the hare that i do hunt: why writes she so to me? well, shepherd, well, this is a letter of your own device. silvius no, i protest, i know not the contents: phebe did write it. rosalind come, come, you are a fool and turn'd into the extremity of love. i saw her hand: she has a leathern hand. a freestone-colour'd hand; i verily did think that her old gloves were on, but 'twas her hands: she has a huswife's hand; but that's no matter: i say she never did invent this letter; this is a man's invention and his hand. silvius sure, it is hers. rosalind why, 'tis a boisterous and a cruel style. a style for-challengers; why, she defies me, like turk to christian: women's gentle brain could not drop forth such giant-rude invention such ethiope words, blacker in their effect than in their countenance. will you hear the letter? silvius so please you, for i never heard it yet; yet heard too much of phebe's cruelty. rosalind she phebes me: mark how the tyrant writes. [reads] art thou god to shepherd turn'd, that a maiden's heart hath burn'd? can a woman rail thus? silvius call you this railing? rosalind [reads] why, thy godhead laid apart, warr'st thou with a woman's heart? did you ever hear such railing? whiles the eye of man did woo me, that could do no vengeance to me. meaning me a beast. if the scorn of your bright eyne have power to raise such love in mine, alack, in me what strange effect would they work in mild aspect! whiles you chid me, i did love; how then might your prayers move! he that brings this love to thee little knows this love in me: and by him seal up thy mind; whether that thy youth and kind will the faithful offer take of me and all that i can make; or else by him my love deny, and then i'll study how to die. silvius call you this chiding? celia alas, poor shepherd! rosalind do you pity him? no, he deserves no pity. wilt thou love such a woman? what, to make thee an instrument and play false strains upon thee! not to be endured! well, go your way to her, for i see love hath made thee a tame snake, and say this to her: that if she love me, i charge her to love thee; if she will not, i will never have her unless thou entreat for her. if you be a true lover, hence, and not a word; for here comes more company. [exit silvius] [enter oliver] oliver good morrow, fair ones: pray you, if you know, where in the purlieus of this forest stands a sheep-cote fenced about with olive trees? celia west of this place, down in the neighbour bottom: the rank of osiers by the murmuring stream left on your right hand brings you to the place. but at this hour the house doth keep itself; there's none within. oliver if that an eye may profit by a tongue, then should i know you by description; such garments and such years: 'the boy is fair, of female favour, and bestows himself like a ripe sister: the woman low and browner than her brother.' are not you the owner of the house i did inquire for? celia it is no boast, being ask'd, to say we are. oliver orlando doth commend him to you both, and to that youth he calls his rosalind he sends this bloody napkin. are you he? rosalind i am: what must we understand by this? oliver some of my shame; if you will know of me what man i am, and how, and why, and where this handkercher was stain'd. celia i pray you, tell it. oliver when last the young orlando parted from you he left a promise to return again within an hour, and pacing through the forest, chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy, lo, what befell! he threw his eye aside, and mark what object did present itself: under an oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age and high top bald with dry antiquity, a wretched ragged man, o'ergrown with hair, lay sleeping on his back: about his neck a green and gilded snake had wreathed itself, who with her head nimble in threats approach'd the opening of his mouth; but suddenly, seeing orlando, it unlink'd itself, and with indented glides did slip away into a bush: under which bush's shade a lioness, with udders all drawn dry, lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch, when that the sleeping man should stir; for 'tis the royal disposition of that beast to prey on nothing that doth seem as dead: this seen, orlando did approach the man and found it was his brother, his elder brother. celia o, i have heard him speak of that same brother; and he did render him the most unnatural that lived amongst men. oliver and well he might so do, for well i know he was unnatural. rosalind but, to orlando: did he leave him there, food to the suck'd and hungry lioness? oliver twice did he turn his back and purposed so; but kindness, nobler ever than revenge, and nature, stronger than his just occasion, made him give battle to the lioness, who quickly fell before him: in which hurtling from miserable slumber i awaked. celia are you his brother? rosalind wast you he rescued? celia was't you that did so oft contrive to kill him? oliver 'twas i; but 'tis not i i do not shame to tell you what i was, since my conversion so sweetly tastes, being the thing i am. rosalind but, for the bloody napkin? oliver by and by. when from the first to last betwixt us two tears our recountments had most kindly bathed, as how i came into that desert place:- in brief, he led me to the gentle duke, who gave me fresh array and entertainment, committing me unto my brother's love; who led me instantly unto his cave, there stripp'd himself, and here upon his arm the lioness had torn some flesh away, which all this while had bled; and now he fainted and cried, in fainting, upon rosalind. brief, i recover'd him, bound up his wound; and, after some small space, being strong at heart, he sent me hither, stranger as i am, to tell this story, that you might excuse his broken promise, and to give this napkin dyed in his blood unto the shepherd youth that he in sport doth call his rosalind. [rosalind swoons] celia why, how now, ganymede! sweet ganymede! oliver many will swoon when they do look on blood. celia there is more in it. cousin ganymede! oliver look, he recovers. rosalind i would i were at home. celia we'll lead you thither. i pray you, will you take him by the arm? oliver be of good cheer, youth: you a man! you lack a man's heart. rosalind i do so, i confess it. ah, sirrah, a body would think this was well counterfeited! i pray you, tell your brother how well i counterfeited. heigh-ho! oliver this was not counterfeit: there is too great testimony in your complexion that it was a passion of earnest. rosalind counterfeit, i assure you. oliver well then, take a good heart and counterfeit to be a man. rosalind so i do: but, i' faith, i should have been a woman by right. celia come, you look paler and paler: pray you, draw homewards. good sir, go with us. oliver that will i, for i must bear answer back how you excuse my brother, rosalind. rosalind i shall devise something: but, i pray you, commend my counterfeiting to him. will you go? [exeunt] as you like it act v scene i the forest. [enter touchstone and audrey] touchstone we shall find a time, audrey; patience, gentle audrey. audrey faith, the priest was good enough, for all the old gentleman's saying. touchstone a most wicked sir oliver, audrey, a most vile martext. but, audrey, there is a youth here in the forest lays claim to you. audrey ay, i know who 'tis; he hath no interest in me in the world: here comes the man you mean. touchstone it is meat and drink to me to see a clown: by my troth, we that have good wits have much to answer for; we shall be flouting; we cannot hold. [enter william] william good even, audrey. audrey god ye good even, william. william and good even to you, sir. touchstone good even, gentle friend. cover thy head, cover thy head; nay, prithee, be covered. how old are you, friend? william five and twenty, sir. touchstone a ripe age. is thy name william? william william, sir. touchstone a fair name. wast born i' the forest here? william ay, sir, i thank god. touchstone 'thank god;' a good answer. art rich? william faith, sir, so so. touchstone 'so so' is good, very good, very excellent good; and yet it is not; it is but so so. art thou wise? william ay, sir, i have a pretty wit. touchstone why, thou sayest well. i do now remember a saying, 'the fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.' the heathen philosopher, when he had a desire to eat a grape, would open his lips when he put it into his mouth; meaning thereby that grapes were made to eat and lips to open. you do love this maid? william i do, sir. touchstone give me your hand. art thou learned? william no, sir. touchstone then learn this of me: to have, is to have; for it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being poured out of a cup into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other; for all your writers do consent that ipse is he: now, you are not ipse, for i am he. william which he, sir? touchstone he, sir, that must marry this woman. therefore, you clown, abandon,--which is in the vulgar leave,--the society,--which in the boorish is company,--of this female,--which in the common is woman; which together is, abandon the society of this female, or, clown, thou perishest; or, to thy better understanding, diest; or, to wit i kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into death, thy liberty into bondage: i will deal in poison with thee, or in bastinado, or in steel; i will bandy with thee in faction; i will o'errun thee with policy; i will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways: therefore tremble and depart. audrey do, good william. william god rest you merry, sir. [exit] [enter corin] corin our master and mistress seeks you; come, away, away! touchstone trip, audrey! trip, audrey! i attend, i attend. [exeunt] as you like it act v scene ii the forest. [enter orlando and oliver] orlando is't possible that on so little acquaintance you should like her? that but seeing you should love her? and loving woo? and, wooing, she should grant? and will you persever to enjoy her? oliver neither call the giddiness of it in question, the poverty of her, the small acquaintance, my sudden wooing, nor her sudden consenting; but say with me, i love aliena; say with her that she loves me; consent with both that we may enjoy each other: it shall be to your good; for my father's house and all the revenue that was old sir rowland's will i estate upon you, and here live and die a shepherd. orlando you have my consent. let your wedding be to-morrow: thither will i invite the duke and all's contented followers. go you and prepare aliena; for look you, here comes my rosalind. [enter rosalind] rosalind god save you, brother. oliver and you, fair sister. [exit] rosalind o, my dear orlando, how it grieves me to see thee wear thy heart in a scarf! orlando it is my arm. rosalind i thought thy heart had been wounded with the claws of a lion. orlando wounded it is, but with the eyes of a lady. rosalind did your brother tell you how i counterfeited to swoon when he showed me your handkerchief? orlando ay, and greater wonders than that. rosalind o, i know where you are: nay, 'tis true: there was never any thing so sudden but the fight of two rams and caesar's thrasonical brag of 'i came, saw, and overcame:' for your brother and my sister no sooner met but they looked, no sooner looked but they loved, no sooner loved but they sighed, no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason, no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage which they will climb incontinent, or else be incontinent before marriage: they are in the very wrath of love and they will together; clubs cannot part them. orlando they shall be married to-morrow, and i will bid the duke to the nuptial. but, o, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes! by so much the more shall i to-morrow be at the height of heart-heaviness, by how much i shall think my brother happy in having what he wishes for. rosalind why then, to-morrow i cannot serve your turn for rosalind? orlando i can live no longer by thinking. rosalind i will weary you then no longer with idle talking. know of me then, for now i speak to some purpose, that i know you are a gentleman of good conceit: i speak not this that you should bear a good opinion of my knowledge, insomuch i say i know you are; neither do i labour for a greater esteem than may in some little measure draw a belief from you, to do yourself good and not to grace me. believe then, if you please, that i can do strange things: i have, since i was three year old, conversed with a magician, most profound in his art and yet not damnable. if you do love rosalind so near the heart as your gesture cries it out, when your brother marries aliena, shall you marry her: i know into what straits of fortune she is driven; and it is not impossible to me, if it appear not inconvenient to you, to set her before your eyes tomorrow human as she is and without any danger. orlando speakest thou in sober meanings? rosalind by my life, i do; which i tender dearly, though i say i am a magician. therefore, put you in your best array: bid your friends; for if you will be married to-morrow, you shall, and to rosalind, if you will. [enter silvius and phebe] look, here comes a lover of mine and a lover of hers. phebe youth, you have done me much ungentleness, to show the letter that i writ to you. rosalind i care not if i have: it is my study to seem despiteful and ungentle to you: you are there followed by a faithful shepherd; look upon him, love him; he worships you. phebe good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love. silvius it is to be all made of sighs and tears; and so am i for phebe. phebe and i for ganymede. orlando and i for rosalind. rosalind and i for no woman. silvius it is to be all made of faith and service; and so am i for phebe. phebe and i for ganymede. orlando and i for rosalind. rosalind and i for no woman. silvius it is to be all made of fantasy, all made of passion and all made of wishes, all adoration, duty, and observance, all humbleness, all patience and impatience, all purity, all trial, all observance; and so am i for phebe. phebe and so am i for ganymede. orlando and so am i for rosalind. rosalind and so am i for no woman. phebe if this be so, why blame you me to love you? silvius if this be so, why blame you me to love you? orlando if this be so, why blame you me to love you? rosalind who do you speak to, 'why blame you me to love you?' orlando to her that is not here, nor doth not hear. rosalind pray you, no more of this; 'tis like the howling of irish wolves against the moon. [to silvius] i will help you, if i can: [to phebe] i would love you, if i could. to-morrow meet me all together. [to phebe] i will marry you, if ever i marry woman, and i'll be married to-morrow: [to orlando] i will satisfy you, if ever i satisfied man, and you shall be married to-morrow: [to silvius] i will content you, if what pleases you contents you, and you shall be married to-morrow. [to orlando] as you love rosalind, meet: [to silvius] as you love phebe, meet: and as i love no woman, i'll meet. so fare you well: i have left you commands. silvius i'll not fail, if i live. phebe nor i. orlando nor i. [exeunt] as you like it act v scene iii the forest. [enter touchstone and audrey] touchstone to-morrow is the joyful day, audrey; to-morrow will we be married. audrey i do desire it with all my heart; and i hope it is no dishonest desire to desire to be a woman of the world. here comes two of the banished duke's pages. [enter two pages] first page well met, honest gentleman. touchstone by my troth, well met. come, sit, sit, and a song. second page we are for you: sit i' the middle. first page shall we clap into't roundly, without hawking or spitting or saying we are hoarse, which are the only prologues to a bad voice? second page i'faith, i'faith; and both in a tune, like two gipsies on a horse. song. it was a lover and his lass, with a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, that o'er the green corn-field did pass in the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding: sweet lovers love the spring. between the acres of the rye, with a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino these pretty country folks would lie, in spring time, &c. this carol they began that hour, with a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, how that a life was but a flower in spring time, &c. and therefore take the present time, with a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino; for love is crowned with the prime in spring time, &c. touchstone truly, young gentlemen, though there was no great matter in the ditty, yet the note was very untuneable. first page you are deceived, sir: we kept time, we lost not our time. touchstone by my troth, yes; i count it but time lost to hear such a foolish song. god be wi' you; and god mend your voices! come, audrey. [exeunt] as you like it act v scene iv the forest. [enter duke senior, amiens, jaques, orlando, oliver, and celia] duke senior dost thou believe, orlando, that the boy can do all this that he hath promised? orlando i sometimes do believe, and sometimes do not; as those that fear they hope, and know they fear. [enter rosalind, silvius, and phebe] rosalind patience once more, whiles our compact is urged: you say, if i bring in your rosalind, you will bestow her on orlando here? duke senior that would i, had i kingdoms to give with her. rosalind and you say, you will have her, when i bring her? orlando that would i, were i of all kingdoms king. rosalind you say, you'll marry me, if i be willing? phebe that will i, should i die the hour after. rosalind but if you do refuse to marry me, you'll give yourself to this most faithful shepherd? phebe so is the bargain. rosalind you say, that you'll have phebe, if she will? silvius though to have her and death were both one thing. rosalind i have promised to make all this matter even. keep you your word, o duke, to give your daughter; you yours, orlando, to receive his daughter: keep your word, phebe, that you'll marry me, or else refusing me, to wed this shepherd: keep your word, silvius, that you'll marry her. if she refuse me: and from hence i go, to make these doubts all even. [exeunt rosalind and celia] duke senior i do remember in this shepherd boy some lively touches of my daughter's favour. orlando my lord, the first time that i ever saw him methought he was a brother to your daughter: but, my good lord, this boy is forest-born, and hath been tutor'd in the rudiments of many desperate studies by his uncle, whom he reports to be a great magician, obscured in the circle of this forest. [enter touchstone and audrey] jaques there is, sure, another flood toward, and these couples are coming to the ark. here comes a pair of very strange beasts, which in all tongues are called fools. touchstone salutation and greeting to you all! jaques good my lord, bid him welcome: this is the motley-minded gentleman that i have so often met in the forest: he hath been a courtier, he swears. touchstone if any man doubt that, let him put me to my purgation. i have trod a measure; i have flattered a lady; i have been politic with my friend, smooth with mine enemy; i have undone three tailors; i have had four quarrels, and like to have fought one. jaques and how was that ta'en up? touchstone faith, we met, and found the quarrel was upon the seventh cause. jaques how seventh cause? good my lord, like this fellow. duke senior i like him very well. touchstone god 'ild you, sir; i desire you of the like. i press in here, sir, amongst the rest of the country copulatives, to swear and to forswear: according as marriage binds and blood breaks: a poor virgin, sir, an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own; a poor humour of mine, sir, to take that that no man else will: rich honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house; as your pearl in your foul oyster. duke senior by my faith, he is very swift and sententious. touchstone according to the fool's bolt, sir, and such dulcet diseases. jaques but, for the seventh cause; how did you find the quarrel on the seventh cause? touchstone upon a lie seven times removed:--bear your body more seeming, audrey:--as thus, sir. i did dislike the cut of a certain courtier's beard: he sent me word, if i said his beard was not cut well, he was in the mind it was: this is called the retort courteous. if i sent him word again 'it was not well cut,' he would send me word, he cut it to please himself: this is called the quip modest. if again 'it was not well cut,' he disabled my judgment: this is called the reply churlish. if again 'it was not well cut,' he would answer, i spake not true: this is called the reproof valiant. if again 'it was not well cut,' he would say i lied: this is called the counter-cheque quarrelsome: and so to the lie circumstantial and the lie direct. jaques and how oft did you say his beard was not well cut? touchstone i durst go no further than the lie circumstantial, nor he durst not give me the lie direct; and so we measured swords and parted. jaques can you nominate in order now the degrees of the lie? touchstone o sir, we quarrel in print, by the book; as you have books for good manners: i will name you the degrees. the first, the retort courteous; the second, the quip modest; the third, the reply churlish; the fourth, the reproof valiant; the fifth, the countercheque quarrelsome; the sixth, the lie with circumstance; the seventh, the lie direct. all these you may avoid but the lie direct; and you may avoid that too, with an if. i knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an if, as, 'if you said so, then i said so;' and they shook hands and swore brothers. your if is the only peacemaker; much virtue in if. jaques is not this a rare fellow, my lord? he's as good at any thing and yet a fool. duke senior he uses his folly like a stalking-horse and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit. [enter hymen, rosalind, and celia] [still music] hymen then is there mirth in heaven, when earthly things made even atone together. good duke, receive thy daughter hymen from heaven brought her, yea, brought her hither, that thou mightst join her hand with his whose heart within his bosom is. rosalind [to duke senior] to you i give myself, for i am yours. [to orlando] to you i give myself, for i am yours. duke senior if there be truth in sight, you are my daughter. orlando if there be truth in sight, you are my rosalind. phebe if sight and shape be true, why then, my love adieu! rosalind i'll have no father, if you be not he: i'll have no husband, if you be not he: nor ne'er wed woman, if you be not she. hymen peace, ho! i bar confusion: 'tis i must make conclusion of these most strange events: here's eight that must take hands to join in hymen's bands, if truth holds true contents. you and you no cross shall part: you and you are heart in heart you to his love must accord, or have a woman to your lord: you and you are sure together, as the winter to foul weather. whiles a wedlock-hymn we sing, feed yourselves with questioning; that reason wonder may diminish, how thus we met, and these things finish. song. wedding is great juno's crown: o blessed bond of board and bed! 'tis hymen peoples every town; high wedlock then be honoured: honour, high honour and renown, to hymen, god of every town! duke senior o my dear niece, welcome thou art to me! even daughter, welcome, in no less degree. phebe i will not eat my word, now thou art mine; thy faith my fancy to thee doth combine. [enter jaques de boys] jaques de boys let me have audience for a word or two: i am the second son of old sir rowland, that bring these tidings to this fair assembly. duke frederick, hearing how that every day men of great worth resorted to this forest, address'd a mighty power; which were on foot, in his own conduct, purposely to take his brother here and put him to the sword: and to the skirts of this wild wood he came; where meeting with an old religious man, after some question with him, was converted both from his enterprise and from the world, his crown bequeathing to his banish'd brother, and all their lands restored to them again that were with him exiled. this to be true, i do engage my life. duke senior welcome, young man; thou offer'st fairly to thy brothers' wedding: to one his lands withheld, and to the other a land itself at large, a potent dukedom. first, in this forest, let us do those ends that here were well begun and well begot: and after, every of this happy number that have endured shrewd days and nights with us shall share the good of our returned fortune, according to the measure of their states. meantime, forget this new-fall'n dignity and fall into our rustic revelry. play, music! and you, brides and bridegrooms all, with measure heap'd in joy, to the measures fall. jaques sir, by your patience. if i heard you rightly, the duke hath put on a religious life and thrown into neglect the pompous court? jaques de boys he hath. jaques to him will i : out of these convertites there is much matter to be heard and learn'd. [to duke senior] you to your former honour i bequeath; your patience and your virtue well deserves it: [to orlando] you to a love that your true faith doth merit: [to oliver] you to your land and love and great allies: [to silvius] you to a long and well-deserved bed: [to touchstone] and you to wrangling; for thy loving voyage is but for two months victuall'd. so, to your pleasures: i am for other than for dancing measures. duke senior stay, jaques, stay. jaques to see no pastime i what you would have i'll stay to know at your abandon'd cave. [exit] duke senior proceed, proceed: we will begin these rites, as we do trust they'll end, in true delights. [a dance] as you like it epilogue rosalind it is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. if it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue; yet to good wine they do use good bushes, and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. what a case am i in then, that am neither a good epilogue nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play! i am not furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will not become me: my way is to conjure you; and i'll begin with the women. i charge you, o women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you: and i charge you, o men, for the love you bear to women--as i perceive by your simpering, none of you hates them--that between you and the women the play may please. if i were a woman i would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me and breaths that i defied not: and, i am sure, as many as have good beards or good faces or sweet breaths will, for my kind offer, when i make curtsy, bid me farewell. [exeunt] 1890 humanitad by oscar wilde humanitad it is full winter now: the trees are bare, save where the cattle huddle from the cold beneath the pine, for it doth never wear the autumn's gaudy livery whose gold her jealous brother pilfers, but is true to the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew from saturn's cave; a few thin wisps of hay lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain dragged the sweet pillage of a summer's day from the low meadows up the narrow lane; upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep press close against the hurdles, and the shivering housedogs creep from the shut stable to the frozen stream and back again disconsolate, and miss the bawling shepherds and the noisy team; and overhead in circling listlessness the cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack, or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds and flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck, and hoots to see the moon; across the meads limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck; and a stray seamew with its fretful cry flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull gray sky. full winter: and a lusty goodman brings his load of faggots from the chilly byre, and stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings the sappy billets on the waning fire, and laughs to see the sudden lightning scare his children at their play; and yet,the spring is in the air, already the slim crocus stirs the snow, and soon yon blanched fields will bloom again with nodding cowslips for some lad to mow, for with the first warm kisses of the rain the winter's icy, sorrow breaks to tears, and the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers from the dark warren where the fir-cones lie, and treads one snowdrop under foot and runs over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly across our path at evening, and the suns stay longer with us; ah! how good to see grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery dance through the hedges till the early rose, (that sweet repentance of the thorny briar!) burst from its sheathed emerald and disclose the little quivering disk of golden fire which the bees know so well, for with it come pale boy's love, sops-in-wine, and daffodillies all in bloom. then up and down the field the sower goes, while close behind the laughing younker scares, with shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows. and then the chestnut-tree its glory wears, and on the grass the creamy blossom falls in odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals steal from the bluebells' nodding carillons each breezy morn, and then white jessamine, that star of its own heaven, snap-dragons with lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine in dusty velvets clad usurp the bed and woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed red leaf by leaf its folded panoply, and pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes, chrysanthemums from gilded argosy unload their gaudy scentless merchandise and violets getting overbold withdraw from their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw. o happy field! and o thrice happy tree! soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock, and crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea, soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock back to the pasture by the pool, and soon through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at noon. soon will the glade be bright with bellamour, the flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture will tell their bearded pearls, and carnations with mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind, and straggling traveller's joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind. dear bride of nature and most bounteous spring! that can'st give increase to the sweet-breath'd kine, and to the kid its little horns, and bring the soft and silky blossoms to the vine, where is that old nepenthe which of yore man got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore! there was a time when any common bird could make me sing in unison, a time when all the strings of boyish life were stirred to quick response or more melodious rhyme by every forest idyll;do i change? or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range? nay, nay, thou art the same: 'tis i who seek to vex with sighs thy simple solitude, and because fruitless tears bedew my cheek would have thee weep with me in brotherhood; fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare to taint such wine with the salt poison of his own despair! thou art the same: 'tis i whose wretched soul takes discontent to be its paramour, and gives its kingdom to the rude control of what should be its servitor,for sure wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea contain it not, and the huge deep answer "'tis not in me." to burn with one clear flame, to stand erect in natural honor, not to bend the knee in profitless prostrations whose effect is by, itself condemned, what alchemy can teach me this? what herb medea brewed will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued? the minor chord which ends the harmony, and for its answering brother waits in vain, sobbing for incompleted melody dies a swan's death; but i the heir of pain a silent memnon with blank lidless eyes wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise. the quanched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom, the little dust stored in the narrow urn, the gentle xaipe of the attic tomb, were not these better far than to return to my old fitful restless malady, or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery? nay! for perchance that poppy-crowned god is like the watcher by a sick man's bed who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said, death is too rude, too obvious a key to solve one single secret in a life's philosophy. and love! that noble madness, whose august and inextinguishable might can slay the soul with honeyed drugs,alas! i must from such sweet ruin play the runaway, although too constant memory never can forget the arched splendor of those brows olympian which for a little season made my youth so soft a swoon of exquisite indolence that all the chiding of more prudent truth seemed the thin voice of jealousy,o hence thou huntress deadlier than artemis! go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous bliss my lips have drunk enough,no more, no more, though love himself should turn his gilded prow back to the troubled waters of this shore where i am wrecked and stranded, even now the chariot wheels of passion sweep too near, hence! hence! i pass unto a life more barren, more austere. more barrenay, those arms will never lean down through the trellised vines and draw my soul in sweet reluctance through the tangled green; some other head must wear that aureole, for i am hers who loves not any man whose white and stainless bosom bears the sign gorgonian. let venus go and chuck her dainty page, and kiss his mouth, and toss his curly hair, with net and spear and hunting equipage let young adonis to his tryst repair, but me her fond and subtle-fashioned spell delights no more, though i could win her dearest citadel. ay, though i were that laughing shepherd boy who from mount ida saw the little cloud pass over tenedos and lofty troy and knew the coming of the queen, and bowed in wonder at her feet, not for the sake of a new helen would i bid her hand the apple take. then rise supreme athena argent-limbed! and, if my lips be musicless, inspire at least my life: was not thy glory hymned by one who gave to thee his sword and lyre like aeschylus at well-fought marathon, and died to show that milton's england still could bear a son! and yet i cannot tread the portico and live without desire, fear and pain, or nurture that wise calm which long ago the grave athenian master taught to men, self-poised, self-centered, and self-comforted, to watch the world's vain phantasies go by with unbowed head. alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips, those eyes that mirrored all eternity, rest in their own colonos, an eclipse hath come on wisdom, and mnemosyne is childless; in the night which she had made for lofty secure flight athena's owl itself hath strayed. nor much with science do i care to climb, although by strange and subtle witchery she draw the moon from heaven: the muse of time unrolls her gorgeous-colored tapestry to no less eager eyes; often indeed in the great epic of polymnia's scroll i love to read how asia sent her myriad hosts to war against a little town, and panoplied in gilded mail with jewelled scimetar, white-shielded, purple-crested, rode the mede between the waving poplars and the sea which men call artemisium, till he saw thermopylae its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall, and on the nearer side a little brood of careless lions holding festival! and stood amazed at such hardihood, and pitched his tent upon the reedy shore, and stayed two days to wonder, and then crept at midnight o'er some unfrequented height, and coming down the autumn forests treacherously slew what sparta held most dear and was the crown of far eurotas, and passed on, nor knew how god had staked an evil net for him in the small bay of salamis,and yet, the page grows dim. its cadenced greek delights me not, i feel with such a goodly time too out of tune to love it much: for like the dial's wheel that from its blinded darkness strikes the noon yet never sees the sun, so do my eyes restlessly follow that which from my cheated vision flies. o for one grand unselfish simple life to teach us what is wisdom! speak ye hills of lone helvellyn, for this note of strife shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills, where is that spirit which living blamelessly yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century! speak ye ridalian laurels! where is he whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal where love and duty mingle! him at least the most high laws were glad of, he had sat at wisdom's feast, but we are learning's changelings, known by rote the clarion watchword of each grecian school and follow none, the flawless sword which smote the pagan hydra is an effete tool which we ourselves have blunted, what man now shall scale the august ancient heights and to old reverence bow? one such indeed i saw, but, ichabod! gone is that last dear son of italy, who being man died for the sake of god, and whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully. o guard him, guard him well, my giotto's tower, thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lower of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or the arno with its tawny troubled gold o'erleap its marge, no mightier conqueror clomb the high capitol in the days of old when rome was indeed rome, for liberty walked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale mystery fled shrieking to her furthest somberest cell with an old man who grabbled rusty keys, fled shuddering for that immemorial knell with which oblivion buries dynasties swept like a wounded eagle on the blast, as to the holy heart of rome the great triumvir passed. he knew the holiest heart and heights of rome, he drave the base wolf from the lion's lair, and now lies dead by that empyreal dome which overtops valdarno hung in air by brunelleschio melpomene breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody! breathe through the tragic stops such melodies that joy's self may grow jealous, and the nine forget a-while their discreet emperies, mourning for him who on rome's lordliest shrine lit for men's lives the light of marathon, and bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun! o guard him, guard him well, my giotto's tower, let some young florentine each eventide bring coronals of that enchanted flower which the dim woods of vallombrosa hide, and deck the marble tomb wherein he lies whose soul is as some mighty orb unseen of mortal eyes. some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings, being tempest-driven to the furthest rim where chaos meets creation and the wings of the eternal chanting cherubim are pavilioned on nothing, passed away into a moonless voidand yet, though he is dust and clay, he is not dead, the immemorial fates forbid it, and the closing shears refrain, lift up your heads ye everlasting gates! ye argent clarions sound a loftier strain! for the vile thing he hated lurks within its sombre house, alone with god and memories of sin. still what avails it that she sought her cave that murderous mother of red harlotries? at munich on the marble architrave the grecian boys die smiling, but the seas which wash aegina fret in loneliness not mirroring their beauty, so our lives grow colourless for lack of our ideals, if one star flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war can wake to passionate voice the silent dust which was mazzini once! rich niobe for all her stony sorrows hath her sons, but italy! what easter day shall make her children rise, who were not gods yet suffered, what sure feet shall find their graveclothes folded? what clear eyes shall see them bodily? o it were meet to roll the stone from off the sepulchre and kiss the bleeding roses of their wounds, in love of her our italy! our mother visible! most blessed among nations and most sad, for whose dear sake the young calabrian fell that day at aspromonte and was glad that in an age when god was bought and sold one man could die for liberty! but we, burnt out and cold, see honour smitten on the cheek and gyves bind the sweet feet of mercy: poverty creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives cuts the warm throats of children stealthily, and no word said:o we are wretched men unworthy of our great inheritance! where is the pen of austere milton? where the mighty sword which slew its master righteously? the years have lost their ancient leader, and no word breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears; while as a ruined mother in some spasm bears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasm genders unlawful children, anarchy freedom's own judas, the vile prodigal license who steals the gold of liberty and yet nothing, ignorance the real one fratricide since cain, envy the asp that stings itself to anguish, avarice whose palsied grasp is in its extent stiffened, moneyed greed for whose dull appetite men waste away amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed of things which slay their sower, these each day sees rife in england, and the gentle feet of beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street. what even cromwell spared is desecrated by weed and worm, left to the stormy play of wind and beating snow, or renovated by more destructful hands: time's worst decay will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness, but these new vandals can but make a rainproof barrenness. where is that art which bade the angels sing through lincoln's lofty choir, till the air seems from such marble harmonies to ring with sweeter song than common lips can dare to draw from actual reed? ah! where is now the cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn branches bow for southwell's arch, and carved the house of one who loved the lilies of the field with all our dearest english flowers? the same sun rises for us: the season's natural weave the same tapestry of green and gray: the unchanged hills are with us: but that spirit hath passed away. and yet perchance it may be better so, for tyranny is an incestuous queen, murder her brother is her bedfellow, and the plague chambers with her: in obscene and bloody paths her treacherous feet are set; better the empty desert and a soul inviolate! for gentle brotherhood, the harmony of living in the healthful air, the swift clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free and women chaste, these are the things which lift our souls up more than even agnolo's gaunt blinded sibyl poring o'er the scroll of human woes, or titian's little maiden on the stair white as her own sweet lily and as tall, or mona lisa smiling through her hair, ah! somehow life is bigger after all than any painted angel could we see the god that is within us! the old greek serenity which curbs the passion of that level line of marble youths, who with untroubled eyes and chastened limbs ride round athena's shrine and mirror her divine economies, and balanced symmetry of what in man would else wage ceaseless warfare,this at least within the span between our mother's kisses and the grave might so inform our lives, that we could win such mighty empires that from her cave temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid sin would walk ashamed of his adulteries, and passion creep from out the house of lust with startled eyes. to make the body and the spirit one with all right things, till no thing live in vain from morn to noon, but in sweet unison with every pulse of flesh and throb of pain the soul in flawless essence high enthroned, against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned, mark with serene impartiality the strife of things, and yet be comforted, knowing that by the chain causality all separate existences are wed into one supreme whole, whose utterance is joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this were governance of life in most august omnipresence, through which the rational intellect would find in passion its expression, and mere sense ignoble else, lend fire to the mind, and being joined with it in harmony more mystical than that which binds the stars planetary strike from their several tones one octave chord whose cadence being measureless would fly through all the circling spheres, then to its lord return refreshed with its new empery and more exultant power,this indeed could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed. ah! it was easy when the world was young to keep one's life free and inviolate, from our sad lips another song is rung, by our own hands our heads are desecrate, wanderers in drear exile and dispossessed of what should be our own, we can but feed on wild unrest. somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown, and of all men we are most wretched who must live each other's lives and not our own for very pity's sake and then undo all that we live forit was otherwise when soul and body seemed to blend in mystic symphonies. but we have left those gentle haunts to pass with weary feet to the new calvary, where we behold, as one who in a glass sees his own face, self-slain humanity, and in the dumb reproach of that sad gaze learn what an awful phantom the red hand of man can raise. o smitten mouth! o forehead crowned with thorn! o chalice of all common miseries! thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne an agony of endless centuries, and we were vain and ignorant nor knew that when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew. being ourselves the sowers and the seeds, the night that covers and the lights that fade, the spear that pierces and the side that bleeds, the lips betraying and the life betrayed; the deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy. is this the end of all that primal force which, in its changes being still the same, from eyeless chaos cleft its upward course, through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame, till the suns met in heaven and began their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the word was man! nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though the bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain, loosen the nailswe shall come down i know, stanch the red woundswe shall be whole again, no need have we of hyssop-laden rod, that which is purely human that is godlike that is god. the end . a theologico-political treatise part 1 of 4 chapters i to v published 1670 anonymously baruch spinoza 1632 1677 ____________________________________________________________________________ jby notes: 1. text was scanned from benedict de spinoza's "a theologico-political treatise", and "a political treatise" as published in dover's isbn 0-486-20249-6. 2. the text is that of the translation of "a theologico-political treatise" by r. h. m. elwes. this text is "an unabridged and unaltered republication of the bohn library edition originally published by george bell and sons in 1883." 3. jby added sentence numbers and search strings. 4. sentence numbers are shown thus (yy:xx). yy = chapter number when given. xx = sentence number. 5. search strings are enclosed in [square brackets]: a. roman numeral, when given before a search string, indicates part number. if a different part, bring up that part and then search. b. include square brackets in search string. c. do not include part number in search string. d. search down with the same string to facilitate return. 6. please report any errors in the text, search formatting, or sentence numbering to jyselman@erols.com. 7. html version: part 1 http://www.erols.com/jyselman/ttpelws1.htm ____________________________________________________________________________ [p:0] preface [1:0] chapter i [2:0] chapter ii [3:0] chapter iii [4:0] chapter iv [5:0] chapter v ____________________________________________________________________________ table of contents: search strings are shown thus [*:x]. search forward and back with the same string. include square brackets in search string. [p:0] preface. [p:1] origin and consequences of superstition. [p:2] causes that have led the author to write. [p:3] course of his investigation. [p:4] for what readers the treatise is designed. submission of author to the rulers of his country. [1:0] chapter i of prophecy. [1:1] definition of prophecy. [1:2] distinction between revelation to moses and to the other prophets. [1:3] between christ and other recipients of revelation. [1:4] ambiguity of the word "spirit." [1:5] the different senses in which things may be referred to god. [1:6] different senses of "spirit of god." [1:7] prophets perceived revelation by imagination. [2:0] chapter ii of prophets. [2:1] a mistake to suppose that prophecy can give knowledge of phenomena. [2:2] certainty of prophecy based on: (1) vividness of imagination, (2) a sign, (3) goodness of the prophet. [2:3] variation of prophecy with the temperament and opinions of the individual. [3:0] chapter iii of the vocation of the hebrews, and whether the gift of prophecy was peculiar to them. [3:1] happiness of hebrews did not consist in the inferiority of the gentile. [3:2] nor in philosophic knowledge or virtue. [3:3] but in their conduct of affairs of state and escape from political dangers. [3:4] even this distinction did not exist in the time of abraham. [3:5] testimony from the old testament itself to the share of the gentiles in the law and favour of god. [3:6] explanation of apparent discrepancy of the epistle to the romans. [3:7] answer to the arguments for the eternal election of the jews. [4:0] chapter iv of the divine law. [4:1] laws either depend on natural necessity or on human decree. the existence of the latter not inconsistent with the former class of laws. [4:2] divine law a kind of law founded on human decree: called divine from its object. [4:3] divine law: (1) universal; (2) independent of the truth of any historical narrative; (3) independent of rites and ceremonies; (4) its own reward. [4:4] reason does not present god as a law-giver for men. [4:5] such a conception a proof of ignorance in adam in the israelites in christians. [4:6] testimony of the scriptures in favour of reason and the rational view of the divine. [5:0] chapter v. of the ceremonial law. [5:1] ceremonial law of the old testament no part of the divine universal law, but partial and temporary. testimony of the prophets themselves to this. [5:2] testimony of the new testament. [5:3] how the ceremonial law tended to preserve the hebrew kingdom. [5:4] christian rites on a similar footing. [5:5] what part of the scripture narratives is one bound to believe? [author's endnotes] to the treatise. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[p:0] preface. [p:1} (1)men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity. (2) the human mind is readily swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery, though usually it is boastful, over-confident, and vain. (p:3) this as a general fact i suppose everyone knows, though few, i believe, know their own nature; no one can have lived in the world without observing that most people, when in prosperity, are so over-brimming with wisdom (however inexperienced they may be), that they take every offer of advice as a personal insult, whereas in adversity they know not where to turn, but beg and pray for counsel from every passer-by. (p:4) no plan is then too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption; the most frivolous causes will raise them to hope, or plunge them into despair if anything happens during their fright which reminds them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen. (p:5) anything which excites their astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying the anger of the gods or of the supreme being, and, mistaking superstition for religion, account it impious not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice. (6) signs and wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, till one might think nature as mad as themselves, they interpret her so fantastically. (p:7) thus it is brought prominently before us, that superstition's chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore help from god: upbraiding reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phantoms of imagination, dreams, and other childish absurdities, to be the very oracles of heaven. (p:8) as though god had turned away from the wise, and written his decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind! (p:9) superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear. if anyone desire an example, let him take alexander, who only began superstitiously to seek guidance from seers, when he first learnt to fear fortune in the passes of sysis (curtius, v. 4); whereas after he had conquered darius he consulted prophets no more, till a second time frightened by reverses. (10) when the scythians were provoking a battle, the bactrians had deserted, and he himself was lying sick of his wounds, "he once more turned to superstition, the mockery of human wisdom, and bade aristander, to whom he confided his credulity, inquire the issue of affairs with sacrificed victims." (p:11) very numerous examples of a like nature might be cited, clearly showing the fact, that only while under the dominion of fear do men fall a prey to superstition; that all the portents ever invested with the reverence of misguided religion are mere phantoms of dejected and fearful minds; and lastly, that prophets have most power among the people, and are most formidable to rulers, precisely at those times when the state is in most peril. (12) i think this is sufficiently plain to all, and will therefore say no more on the subject. [p:1] (p:13) the origin of superstition above given affords us a clear reason for the fact, that it comes to all men naturally, though some refer its rise to a dim notion of god, universal to mankind, and also tends to show, that it is no less inconsistent and variable than other mental hallucinations and emotional impulses, and further that it can only be maintained by hope, hatred, anger, and deceit; since it springs, not from reason, but solely from the more powerful phases of emotion. (p:14) furthermore, we may readily understand how difficult it is, to maintain in the same course men prone to every form of credulity. (15) for, as the mass of mankind remains always at about the same pitch of misery, it never assents long to any one remedy, but is always best pleased by a novelty which has not yet proved illusive. (p:16) this element of inconsistency has been the cause of many terrible wars and revolutions; for, as curtius well says (lib. iv. chap. 10): "the mob has no ruler more potent than superstition," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them as humanity's common bane. (p:17) immense pains have therefore been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony, that it may rise superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious reverence by the whole people a system which has been brought to great perfection by the turks, for they consider even controversy impious, and so clog men's minds with dogmatic formulas, that they leave no room for sound reason, not even enough to doubt with. (p:18) but if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps them clown, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honour to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more mischievous expedient could be planned or attempted. (p:19) wholly repugnant to the general freedom are such devices as enthralling men's minds with prejudices, forcing their judgment, or employing any of the weapons of quasi-religious sedition; indeed, such seditions only spring up, when law enters the domain of speculative thought, and opinions are put on trial and condemned on the same footing as crimes, while those who defend and follow them are sacrificed, not to public safety, but to their opponents' hatred and cruelty. (p:19a) if deeds only could be made the grounds of criminal charges, and words were always allowed to pass free, such seditions would be divested of every semblance of justification, and would be separated from mere controversies by a hard and fast line. (p:20) now, seeing that we have the rare happiness of living in a republic, where everyone's judgment is free and unshackled, where each may worship god as his conscience dictates, and where freedom is esteemed before all things dear and precious, i have believed that i should be undertaking no ungrateful or unprofitable task, in demonstrating that not only can such freedom be granted without prejudice to the public peace, but also, that without such freedom, piety cannot flourish nor the public peace be secure. [p:2] (21) such is the chief conclusion i seek to establish in this treatise; but, in order to reach it, i must first point out the misconceptions which, like scars of our former bondage, still disfigure our notion of religion, and must expose the false views about the civil authority which many have most impudently advocated, endeavouring to turn the mind of the people, still prone to heathen superstition, away from its legitimate rulers, and so bring us again into slavery. (p:22) as to the order of my treatise i will speak presently, but first i will recount the causes which led me to write. (p:23) i have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith. (24) matters have long since come to such a pass, that one can only pronounce a man christian, turk, jew, or heathen, by his general appearance and attire, by his frequenting this or that place of worship, or employing the phraseology of a particular sect as for manner of life, it is in all cases the same. (25) inquiry into the cause of this anomaly leads me unhesitatingly to ascribe it to the fact, that the ministries of the church are regarded by the masses merely as dignities, her offices as posts of emolument in short, popular religion may be summed up as respect for ecclesiastics. (p:26) the spread of this misconception inflamed every worthless fellow with an intense desire to enter holy orders, and thus the love of diffusing god's religion degenerated into sordid avarice and ambition. (27) every church became a theatre, where orators, instead of church teachers, harangued, caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and to preach only novelties and paradoxes, such as would tickle the ears of their congregation. (p:28) this state of things necessarily stirred up an amount of controversy, envy, and hatred, which no lapse of time could appease; so that we can scarcely wonder that of the old religion nothing survives but its outward forms (even these, in the mouth of the multitude, seem rather adulation than adoration of the deity), and that faith has become a mere compound of credulity and prejudices aye, prejudices too, which degrade man from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the power of judgment between true and false, which seem, in fact, carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark of reason! (p:29) piety, great god! and religion are become a tissue of ridiculous mysteries; men, who flatly despise reason, who reject and turn away from understanding as naturally corrupt, these, i say, these of all men, are thought, 0 lie most horrible! to possess light from on high. (30) verily, if they had but one spark of light from on high, they would not insolently rave, but would learn to worship god more wisely, and would be as marked among their fellows for mercy as they now are for malice; if they were concerned for their opponents' souls, instead of for their own reputations, they would no longer fiercely persecute, but rather be filled with pity and compassion. (p:31) furthermore, if any divine light were in them, it would appear from their doctrine. (32) i grant that they are never tired of professing their wonder at the profound mysteries of holy writ; still i cannot discover that they teach anything but speculations of platonists and aristotelians, to which (in order to save their credit for christianity) they have made holy writ conform; not content to rave with the greeks themselves, they want to make the prophets rave also; showing conclusively, that never even in sleep have they caught a glimpse of scripture's divine nature. (p:33) the very vehemence of their admiration for the mysteries plainly attests, that their belief in the bible is a formal assent rather than a living faith: and the fact is made still more apparent by their laying down beforehand, as a foundation for the study and true interpretation of scripture, the principle that it is in every passage true and divine. (34) such a doctrine should be reached only after strict scrutiny and thorough comprehension of the sacred books (which would teach it much better, for they stand in need no human factions), and not be set up on the threshold, as it were, of inquiry. [p:3] (35) as i pondered over the facts that the light of reason is not only despised, but by many even execrated as a source of impiety, that human commentaries are accepted as divine records, and that credulity is extolled as faith; as i marked the fierce controversies of philosophers raging in church and state, the source of bitter hatred and dissension, the ready instruments of sedition and other ills innumerable, i determined to examine the bible afresh in a careful, impartial, and unfettered spirit, making no assumptions concerning it, and attributing to it no doctrines, which i do not find clearly therein set down. (36) with these precautions i constructed a method of scriptural interpretation, and thus equipped proceeded to inquire what is prophecy? (37) in what sense did god reveal himself to the prophets, and why were these particular men chosen by him? (p:38) was it on account of the sublimity of their thoughts about the deity and nature, or was it solely on account of their piety? (39) these questions being answered, i was easily able to conclude, that the authority of the prophets has weight only in matters of morality, and that their speculative doctrines affect us little. (p:40) next i inquired, why the hebrews were called god's chosen people, and discovering that it was only because god had chosen for them a certain strip of territory, where they might live peaceably and at ease, i learnt that the law revealed by god to moses was merely the law of the individual hebrew state, therefore that it was binding on none but hebrews, and not even on hebrews after the downfall of their nation. (p:41) further, in order to ascertain, whether it could be concluded from scripture, that the human understanding standing is naturally corrupt, i inquired whether the universal religion, the divine law revealed through the prophets and apostles to the whole human race, differs from that which is taught by the light of natural reason, whether miracles can take place in violation of the laws of nature, and if so, whether they imply the existence of god more surely and clearly than events, which we understand plainly and distinctly through their immediate natural causes. (p:42) now, as in the whole course of my investigation i found nothing taught expressly by scripture, which does not agree with our understanding, or which is repugnant thereto, and as i saw that the prophets taught nothing, which is not very simple and easily to be grasped by all, and further, that they clothed their leaching in the style, and confirmed it with the reasons, which would most deeply move the mind of the masses to devotion towards god, i became thoroughly convinced, that the bible leaves reason absolutely free, that it has nothing in common with philosophy, in fact, that revelation and philosophy stand on different footings. in order to set this forth categorically and exhaust the whole question, i point out the way in which the bible should be interpreted, and show that all of spiritual questions should be sought from it alone, and not from the objects of ordinary knowledge. (p:43) thence i pass on to indicate the false notions, which have from the fact that the multitude ever prone to superstition, and caring more for the shreds of antiquity for eternal truths pays homage to the books of the bible, rather than to the word of god. (p:44) i show that the word of god has not been revealed as a certain number of books, was displayed to the prophets as a simple idea of the mind, namely, obedience to god in singleness of heart, and in the practice of justice and charity; and i further point out, that this doctrine is set forth in scripture in accordance with the opinions and understandings of those, among whom the apostles and prophets preached, to the end that men might receive it willingly, and with their whole heart. (p:45) having thus laid bare the bases of belief, i draw the conclusion that revelation has obedience for its sole object, therefore, in purpose no less than in foundation and method, stands entirely aloof from ordinary knowledge; each has its separate province, neither can be called the handmaid of the other. (p:46) furthermore, as men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another only to scoff, i conclude, in accordance with what has gone before, that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits; each would then obey god freely with his whole heart, while nothing would be publicly honoured save justice and charity. (p:47) having thus drawn attention to the liberty conceded to everyone by the revealed law of god, i pass on to another part of my subject, and prove that this same liberty can and should be accorded with safety to the state and the magisterial authority in fact, that it cannot be withheld without great danger to peace and detriment to the community. (p:48) in order to establish my point, i start from the natural rights of the individual, which are co-extensive with his desires and power, and from the fact that no one is bound to live as another pleases, but is the guardian of his own liberty. (49) i show that these rights can only be transferred to those whom we depute to defend us, who acquire with the duties of defence the power of ordering our lives, and i thence infer that rulers possess rights only limited by their power, that they are the sole guardians of justice and liberty, and that their subjects should act in all things as they dictate: nevertheless, since no one can so utterly abdicate his own power of self-defence as to cease to be a man, i conclude that no one can be deprived of his natural rights absolutely, but that subjects, either by tacit agreement, or by social contract, retain a certain number, which cannot be taken from them without great danger to the state. (p:50) from these considerations i pass on to the hebrew state, which i describe at some length, in order to trace the manner in which religion acquired the force of law, and to touch on other noteworthy points. (51) i then prove, that the holders of sovereign power are the depositories and interpreters of religious no less than of civil ordinances, and that they alone have the right to decide what is just or unjust, pious or impious; lastly, i conclude by showing, that they best retain this right and secure safety to their state by allowing every man to think what he likes, and say what he thinks. [p:4] (52) such, philosophical reader, are the questions i submit to your notice, counting on your approval, for the subject matter of the whole book and of the several chapters is important and profitable. (53) i would say more, but i do not want my preface to extend to a volume, especially as i know that its leading propositions are to philosophers but commonplaces. (54) to the rest of mankind i care not to commend my treatise, for i cannot expect that it contains anything to please them: i know how deeply rooted are the prejudices embraced under the name of religion; i am aware that in the mind of the masses superstition is no less deeply rooted than fear; i recognize that their constancy is mere obstinacy, and that they are led to praise or blame by impulse rather than reason. (p:55) therefore the multitude, and those of like passions with the multitude, i ask not to read my book; nay, i would rather that they should utterly neglect it, than that they should misinterpret it after their wont. (56) they would gain no good themselves, and might prove a stumbling-block to others, whose philosophy is hampered by the belief that reason is a mere handmaid to theology, and whom i seek in this work especially to benefit. (p:57) but as there will be many who have neither the leisure, nor, perhaps, the inclination to read through all i have written, i feel bound here, as at the end of my treatise, to declare that i have written nothing, which i do not most willingly submit to the examination and judgment of my country's rulers, and that i am ready to retract anything, which they shall decide to be repugnant to the laws or prejudicial to the public good. (58) i know that i am a man and, as a man, liable to error, but against error i have taken scrupulous care, and striven to keep in entire accordance with the laws of my country, with loyalty, and with morality. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[1:0] chapter i. of prophecy [1:1] (1) prophecy, or revelation is sure knowledge revealed by god to man. (2) a prophet is one who interprets the revelations of god to those who are unable to attain to sure knowledge of the matters revealed, and therefore can only apprehend them by simple faith. (1:3) the hebrew word for prophet is "naw-vee'", strong:5030, [endnote 1] i.e. speaker or interpreter, but in scripture its meaning is restricted to interpreter of god, as we may learn from exodus vii:1, where god says to moses, "see, i have made thee a god to pharaoh, and aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet;" implying that, since in interpreting moses' words to pharaoh, aaron acted the part of a prophet, moses would be to pharaoh as a god, or in the attitude of a god. (1:4) prophets i will treat of in the next chapter, and at present consider prophecy. (1:5) now it is evident, from the definition above given, that prophecy really includes ordinary knowledge; for the knowledge which we acquire by our natural faculties depends on knowledge of god and his eternal laws; but ordinary knowledge is common to all men as men, and rests on foundations which all share, whereas the multitude always strains after rarities and exceptions, and thinks little of the gifts of nature; so that, when prophecy is talked of, ordinary knowledge is not supposed to be included. (1:6) nevertheless it has as much right as any other to be called divine, for god's nature, in so far as we share therein, and god's laws, dictate it to us; nor does it suffer from that to which we give the preeminence, except in so far as the latter transcends its limits and cannot be accounted for by natural laws taken in themselves. (7) in respect to the certainty it involves, and the source from which it is derived, i.e. god, ordinary knowledge is no whit inferior to prophetic, unless indeed we believe, or rather dream, that the prophets had human bodies but superhuman minds, and therefore that their sensations and consciousness were entirely different from our own. (1:8) but, although ordinary knowledge is divine, its professors cannot be called prophets [endnote 2] , for they teach what the rest of mankind could perceive and apprehend, not merely by simple faith, but as surely and honourably as themselves. (1:9) seeing then that our mind subjectively contains in itself and partakes of the nature of god, and solely from this cause is enabled to form notions explaining natural phenomena and inculcating morality, it follows that we may rightly assert the nature of the human mind (in so far as it is thus conceived) to be a primary cause of divine revelation. (1:10) all that we clearly and distinctly understand is dictated to us, as i have just pointed out, by the idea and nature of god; not indeed through words, but in a way far more excellent and agreeing perfectly with the nature of the mind, as all who have enjoyed intellectual certainty will doubtless attest. (11) here, however, my chief purpose is to speak of matters having reference to scripture, so these few words on the light of reason will suffice. (1:12) i will now pass on to, and treat more fully, the other ways and means by which god makes revelations to mankind, both of that which transcends ordinary knowledge, and of that within its scope; for there is no reason why god should not employ other means to communicate what we know already by the power of reason. (1:13) our conclusions on the subject must be drawn solely from scripture; for what can we affirm about matters transcending our knowledge except what is told us by the words or writings of prophets? (14) and since there are, so far as i know, no prophets now alive, we have no alternative but to read the books of prophets departed, taking care the while not to reason from metaphor or to ascribe anything to our authors which they do not themselves distinctly state. (15) i must further premise that the jews never make any mention or account of secondary, or particular causes, but in a spirit of religion, piety, and what is commonly called godliness, refer all things directly to the deity. (1:16) for instance if they make money by a transaction, they say god gave it to them; if they desire anything, they say god has disposed their hearts towards it; if they think anything, they say god told them. (17) hence we must not suppose that everything is prophecy or revelation which is described in scripture as told by god to anyone, but only such things as are expressly announced as prophecy or revelation, or are plainly pointed to as such by the context. (1:18) a perusal of the sacred books will show us that all god's revelations to the prophets were made through words or appearances, or a combination of the two. (19) these words and appearances were of two kinds; 1.real when external to the mind of the prophet who heard or saw them, 2.imaginary when the imagination of the prophet was in a state which led him distinctly to suppose that he heard or saw them. (1:20) with a real voice god revealed to moses the laws which he wished to be transmitted to the hebrews, as we may see from exodus xxv:22, where god says, "and there i will meet with thee and i will commune with thee from the mercy seat which is between the cherubim." (21) some sort of real voice must necessarily have been employed, for moses found god ready to commune with him at any time. this, as i shall shortly show, is the only instance of a real voice. (1:22) we might, perhaps, suppose that the voice with which god called samuel was real, for in 1 sam. iii:21, we read, "and the lord appeared again in shiloh, for the lord revealed himself to samuel in shiloh by the word of the lord;" implying that the appearance of the lord consisted in his making himself known to samuel through a voice; in other words, that samuel heard the lord speaking. [1:2] (23) but we are compelled to distinguish between the prophecies of moses and those of other prophets, and therefore must decide that this voice was imaginary, a conclusion further supported by the voice's resemblance to the voice of eli, which samuel was in the habit of hearing, and therefore might easily imagine; when thrice called by the lord, samuel supposed it to have been eli. (1:24) the voice which abimelech heard was imaginary, for it is written, gen. xx:6, "and god said unto him in a dream." (25) so that the will of god was manifest to him, not in waking, but only in sleep, that is, when the imagination is most active and uncontrolled. (1:26) some of the jews believe that the actual words of the decalogue were not spoken by god, but that the israelites heard a noise only, without any distinct words, and during its continuance apprehended the ten commandments by pure intuition; to this opinion i myself once inclined, seeing that the words of the decalogue in exodus are different from the words of the decalogue in deuteronomy, for the discrepancy seemed to imply (since god only spoke once) that the ten commandments were not intended to convey the actual words of the lord, but only his meaning. (1:27) however, unless we would do violence to scripture, we must certainly admit that the israelites heard a real voice, for scripture expressly says, deut. v:4, "god spake with you face to face," i.e. as two men ordinarily interchange ideas through the instrumentality of their two bodies; and therefore it seems more consonant with holy writ to suppose that god really did create a voice of some kind with which the decalogue was revealed. (28) the discrepancy of the two versions is treated of in chap. viii. (1:29) yet not even thus is all difficulty removed, for it seems scarcely reasonable to affirm that a created thing, depending on god in the same manner as other created things, would be able to express or explain the nature of god either verbally or really by means of its individual organism: for instance, by declaring in the first person, "i am the lord your god." (1:30) certainly when anyone says with his mouth, "i understand," we do not attribute the understanding to the mouth, but to the mind of the speaker; yet this is because the mouth is the natural organ of a man speaking, and the hearer, knowing what understanding is, easily comprehends, by a comparison with himself, that the speaker's mind is meant; but if we knew nothing of god beyond the mere name and wished to commune with him, and be assured of his existence, i fail to see how our wish would be satisfied by the declaration of a created thing (depending on god neither more nor less than ourselves), "i am the lord." (31) if god contorted the lips of moses, or, i will not say moses, but some beast, till they pronounced the words, "i am the lord," should we apprehend the lord's existence therefrom? (1:32) scripture seems clearly to point to the belief that god spoke himself, having descended from heaven to mount sinai for the purpose and not only that the israelites heard him speaking, but that their chief men beheld him (ex:xxiv.) (1:33) further the law of moses, which might neither be added to nor curtailed, and which was set up as a national standard of right, nowhere prescribed the belief that god is without body, or even without form or figure, but only ordained that the jews should believe in his existence and worship him alone: it forbade them to invent or fashion any likeness of the deity, but this was to insure purity of service; because, never having seen god, they could not by means of images recall the likeness of god, but only the likeness of some created thing which might thus gradually take the place of god as the object of their adoration. (34) nevertheless, the bible clearly implies that god has a form, and that moses when he heard god speaking was permitted to behold it, or at least its hinder parts. (1:35) doubtless some mystery lurks in this question which we will discuss more fully below. (36) for the present i will call attention to the passages in scripture indicating the means by which god has revealed his laws to man. (1:37) revelation may be through figures only, as in i chron:xxii., where god displays his anger to david by means of an angel bearing a sword, and also in the story of balaam. (1:38) maimonides and others do indeed maintain that these and every other instance of angelic apparitions (e.g. to manoah and to abraham offering up isaac) occurred during sleep, for that no one with his eyes open ever could see an angel, but this is mere nonsense. (39) the sole object of such commentators seems to be to extort from scripture confirmations of aristotelian quibbles and their own inventions, a proceeding which i regard as the acme of absurdity. (1:40) in figures, not real but existing only in the prophet's imagination, god revealed to joseph his future lordship, and in words and figures he revealed to joshua that he would fight for the hebrews, causing to appear an angel, as it were the captain of the lord's host, bearing a sword, and by this means communicating verbally. (41) the forsaking of israel by providence was portrayed to isaiah by a vision of the lord, the thrice holy, sitting on a very lofty throne, and the hebrews, stained with the mire of their sins, sunk as it were in uncleanness, and thus as far as possible distant from god. (42) the wretchedness of the people at the time was thus revealed, while future calamities were foretold in words. (42a) i could cite from holy writ many similar examples, but i think they are sufficiently well known already. (1:43) however, we get a still more clear confirmation of our position in num xii:6,7, as follows: "if there be any prophet among you, i the lord will make myself known unto him in a vision" (i.e. by appearances and signs, for god says of the prophecy of moses that it was a vision without signs), "and will speak unto him in a dream " (i.e. not with actual words and an actual voice). (1:44) "my servant moses is not so; with him will i speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude of the lord he shall behold," i.e. looking on me as a friend and not afraid, he speaks with me (cf. ex xxxiii:17). (1:45) this makes it indisputable that the other prophets did not hear a real voice, and we gather as much from deut. xxiv:10: "and there arose not a prophet since in israel like unto moses whom the lord knew face to face," which must mean that the lord spoke with none other; for not even moses saw the lord's face. (1:46) these are the only media of communication between god and man which i find mentioned in scripture, and therefore the only ones which may be supposed or invented. (47) we may be able quite to comprehend that god can communicate immediately with man, for without the intervention of bodily means he communicates to our minds his essence; still, a man who can by pure intuition comprehend ideas which are neither contained in nor deducible from the foundations of our natural knowledge, must necessarily possess a mind far superior to those of his fellow men, nor do i believe that any have been so endowed save christ. (1:48) to him the ordinances of god leading men to salvation were revealed directly without words or visions, so that god manifested himself to the apostles through the mind of christ as he formerly did to moses through the supernatural voice. (49) in this sense the voice of christ, like the voice which moses heard, may be called the voice of god, and it may be said that the wisdom of god (,i.e. wisdom more than human) took upon itself in christ human nature, and that christ was the way of salvation. (1:50) i must at this juncture declare that those doctrines which certain churches put forward concerning christ, i neither affirm nor deny, for i freely confess that i do not understand them. (1:51) what i have just stated i gather from scripture, where i never read that god appeared to christ, or spoke to christ, but that god was revealed to the apostles through christ; that christ was the way of life, and that the old law was given through an angel, and not immediately by god; whence it follows that if moses spoke with god face to face as a man speaks with his friend (i.e. by means of their two bodies) christ communed with god mind to mind. [1:3] (52) thus we may conclude that no one except christ received the revelations of god without the aid of imagination, whether in words or vision. (53) therefore the power of prophecy implies not a peculiarly perfect mind, but a peculiarly vivid imagination, as i will show more clearly in the next chapter. [1:4] (54) we will now inquire what is meant in the bible by the spirit of god breathed into the prophets, or by the prophets speaking with the spirit of god; to that end we must determine the exact signification of the hebrew word roo'-akh, strong:7307, commonly translated spirit. (1:55) the word roo'-akh, strong:7307, literally means a wind, e.g. the south wind, but it is frequently employed in other derivative significations. it is used as equivalent to, (56) (1.) breath: "neither is there any spirit in his mouth," ps. cxxxv:17. (57) (2.) life, or breathing: "and his spirit returned to him" 1 sam. xxx:12; i.e. he breathed again. (58) (3.) courage and strength: "neither did there remain any more spirit in any man," josh. ii:11; "and the spirit entered into me, and made me stand on my feet," ezek. ii:2. (59) (4.) virtue and fitness: "days should speak, and multitudes of years should teach wisdom; but there is a spirit in man,"job xxxii:7; i.e. wisdom is not always found among old men for i now discover that it depends on individual virtue and capacity. so, "a man in whom is the spirit," numbers xxvii:18. (1:60)(5) habit of mind: "because he had another spirit with him," numbers xiv:24; i.e. another habit of mind. "behold i will pour out my spirit unto you," prov. i:23. (61) (6.) will, purpose, desire, impulse: "whither the spirit was to go, they went," ezek. 1:12; "that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit," is. xxx:1; "for the lord hath poured out on you the spirit of deep sleep," is. xxix:10; "then was their spirit softened," judges viii:3; "he that ruleth his spirit, is better than he that taketh a city," prov. xvi:32; "he that hath no rule over his own spirit," prov. xxv:28; "your spirit as fire shall devour you," isaiah xxxiii:l. from the meaning of disposition we get (1:62)(7) passions and faculties. a lofty spirit means pride, a lowly spirit humility, an evil spirit hatred and melancholy. so, too, the expressions spirits of jealousy, fornication, wisdom, counsel, bravery, stand for a jealous, lascivious, wise, prudent, or brave mind (for we hebrews use substantives in preference to adjectives), for these various qualities. (63) (8.) the mind itself, or the life: "yea, they have all one spirit," eccles. iii:19 "the spirit shall return to god who gave it." (64) (9.) the quarters of the world (from the winds which blow thence), or even the side of anything turned towards a particular quarter ezek. xxxvii:9; xlii:16, 17, 18, 19, &c. [1:5] (65) i have already alluded to the way in which things are referred to god, and said to be of god. (66) (1.) as belonging to his nature, and being, as it were, part of him; e.g. the power of god, the eyes of god. (67) (2.) as under his dominion, and depending on his pleasure; thus the heavens are called the heavens of the lord, as being his chariot and habitation. so nebuchadnezzar is called the servant of god, assyria the scourge of god, &c. (68) (3.) as dedicated to him, e.g. the temple of god, a nazarene of god, the bread of god. (69) (4.) as revealed through the prophets and not through our natural faculties. in this sense the mosaic law is called the law of god. (70) (5.) as being in the superlative degree. very high mountains are styled the mountains of god, a very deep sleep, the sleep of god, &c. in this sense we must explain amos iv:11: "i have overthrown you as the overthrow of the lord came upon sodom and gomorrah," i.e. that memorable overthrow, for since god himself is the speaker, the passage cannot well be taken otherwise. the wisdom of solomon is called the wisdom of god, or extraordinary. the size of the cedars of lebanon is alluded to in the psalmist's expression, "the cedars of the lord." (1:71) similarly, if the jews were at a loss to understand any phenomenon, or were ignorant of its cause, they referred it to god. (72) thus a storm was termed the chiding of god, thunder and lightning the arrows of god, for it was thought that god kept the winds confined in caves, his treasuries; thus differing merely in name from the greek wind-god eolus. (73) in like manner miracles were called works of god, as being especially marvellous; though in reality, of course, all natural events are the works of god, and take place solely by his power. (74) the psalmist calls the miracles in egypt the works of god, because the hebrews found in them a way of safety which they had not looked for, and therefore especially marvelled at. (1:75) as, then, unusual natural phenomena are called works of god, and trees of unusual size are called trees of god, we cannot wonder that very strong and tall men, though impious robbers and whoremongers, are in genesis called sons of god. (1:76) this reference of things wonderful to god was not peculiar to the jews. (77) pharaoh, on hearing the interpretation of his dream, exclaimed that the mind of the gods was in joseph. (78) nebuchadnezzar told daniel that he possessed the mind of the holy gods; so also in latin anything well made is often said to be wrought with divine hands, which is equivalent to the hebrew phrase, wrought with the hand of god. [1:6] (80) we can now very easily understand and explain those passages of scripture which speak of the spirit of god. (81) in some places the expression merely means a very strong, dry, and deadly wind, as in isaiah xl:7, "the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the spirit of the lord bloweth upon it." (82) similarly in gen. i:2: "the spirit of the lord moved over the face of the waters." (83) at other times it is used as equivalent to a high courage, thus the spirit of gideon and of samson is called the spirit of the lord, as being very bold, and prepared for any emergency. (84) any unusual virtue or power is called the spirit or virtue of the lord, ex. xxxi:3: "i will fill him (bezaleel) with the spirit of the lord," i.e., as the bible itself explains, with talent above man's usual endowment. (85) so isa. xi:2: "and the spirit of the lord shall rest upon him," is explained afterwards in the text to mean the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might. (1:86) the melancholy of saul is called the melancholy of the lord, or a very deep melancholy, the persons who applied the term showing that they understood by it nothing supernatural, in that they sent for a musician to assuage it by harp-playing. (87) again, the "spirit of the lord" is used as equivalent to the mind of man, for instance, job xxvii:3: "and the spirit of the lord in my nostrils," the allusion being to gen. ii:7: "and god breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life." (1:88) ezekiel also, prophesying to the dead, says (xxvii:14), "and i will give to you my spirit, and ye shall live;" i.e. i will restore you to life. (1:89) in job xxxiv:14, we read: "if he gather unto himself his spirit and breath;" in gen. vi:3: "my spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh," i.e. since man acts on the dictates of his body, and not the spirit which i gave him to discern the good, i will let him alone. (90) so, too, ps. li:12: "create in me a clean heart, 0 god, and renew a right spirit within me; cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy spirit from me." (1:91) it was supposed that sin originated only from the body, and that good impulses come from the mind; therefore the psalmist invokes the aid of god against the bodily appetites, but prays that the spirit which the lord, the holy one, had given him might be renewed. (1:92) again, inasmuch as the bible, in concession to popular ignorance, describes god as having a mind, a heart, emotions nay, even a body and breath the expression spirit of the lord is used for god's mind, disposition, emotion, strength, or breath. (93) thus, isa. xl:13: "who hath disposed the spirit of the lord?" i.e. who, save himself, hath caused the mind of the lord to will anything,? and isa. lxiii:10: "but they rebelled, and vexed the holy spirit." (94) the phrase comes to be used of the law of moses, which in a sense expounds god's will, is. lxiii. 11, "where is he that put his holy spirit within him?" meaning, as we clearly gather from the context, the law of moses. (95) nehemiah, speaking of the giving of the law, says, i:20, "thou gavest also thy good spirit to instruct them." (96) this is referred to in deut. iv:6, "this is your wisdom and understanding," and in ps. cxliii:10, "thy good spirit will lead me into the land of uprightness." (1:97) the spirit of the lord may mean the breath of the lord, for breath, no less than a mind, a heart, and a body are attributed to god in scripture, as in ps. xxxiii:6. (98) hence it gets to mean the power, strength, or faculty of god, as in job xxxiii:4, "the spirit of the lord made me," i.e. the power, or, if you prefer, the decree of the lord. (99) so the psalmist in poetic language declares, xxxiii:6, "by the word of the lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth," i.e. by a mandate issued, as it were, in one breath. (100) also ps. cxxxix:7, "wither shall i go from thy spirit, or whither shall i flee from thy presence?" i.e. whither shall i go so as to be beyond thy power and thy presence? (1:101) lastly, the spirit of the lord is used in scripture to express the emotions of god, e.g. his kindness and mercy, micah ii:7, "is the spirit [i.e. the mercy] of the lord straitened? (102) are these cruelties his doings?" (1:103) zech. iv:6, "not by might or by power, but my spirit [i.e. mercy], saith the lord of hosts." (104) the twelfth verse of the seventh chapter of the same prophet must, i think, be interpreted in like manner: "yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the lord of hosts hath sent in his spirit [i.e. in his mercy] by the former prophets." (105) so also haggai ii:5: "so my spirit remaineth among you: fear not." (1:106) the passage in isaiah xlviii:16, "and now the lord and his spirit hath sent me," may be taken to refer to god's mercy or his revealed law; for the prophet says, "from the beginning" (i.e. from the time when i first came to you, to preach god's anger and his sentence forth against you) "i spoke not in secret; from the time that it was, there am i," and now i am sent by the mercy of god as a joyful messenger to preach your restoration. (1:107) or we may understand him to mean by the revealed law that he had before come to warn them by the command of the law (levit. xix:17) in the same manner under the same conditions as moses had warned them, that now, like moses, he ends by preaching their restoration. (108) but the first explanation seems to me the best. (1:109) returning, then, to the main object of our discussion, we find that the scriptural phrases, "the spirit of the lord was upon a prophet," "the lord breathed his spirit into men," "men were filled with the spirit of god, with the holy spirit," &c., are quite clear to us, and mean that prophets were endowed with a peculiar and extraordinary power, and devoted themselves to piety with especial constancy(3); that thus they perceived the mind or the thought of god, for we have shown that god's spirit signifies in hebrew god's mind or thought, and that the law which shows his mind and thought is called his spirit; hence that the imagination of the prophets, inasmuch as through it were revealed the decrees of god, may equally be called the mind of god, and the prophets be said to have possessed the mind of god. (1:109a) on our minds also the mind of god and his eternal thoughts are impressed; but this being the same for all men is less taken into account, especially by the hebrews, who claimed a pre-eminence, and despised other men and other men's knowledge. (110) lastly, the prophets were said to possess the spirit of god because men knew not the cause of prophetic knowledge, and in their wonder referred it with other marvels directly to the deity, styling it divine knowledge. [1:7] (111) we need no longer scruple to affirm that the prophets only perceived god's revelation by the aid of imagination, that is, by words and figures either real or imaginary. (112) we find no other means mentioned in scripture, and therefore must not invent any. (113) as to the particular law of nature by which the communications took place, i confess my ignorance. (114) i might, indeed, say as others do, that they took place by the power of god; but this would be mere trifling, and no better than explaining some unique specimen by a transcendental term. (115) everything takes place by the power of god. (116) nature herself is the power of god under another name, and our ignorance of the power of god is co-extensive with our ignorance of nature. (117) it is absolute folly, therefore, to ascribe an event to the power of god when we know not its natural cause, which is the power of god. (1:118) however, we are not now inquiring into the causes of prophetic knowledge. (119) we are only attempting, as i have said, to examine the scriptural documents, and to draw our conclusions from them as from ultimate natural facts; the causes of the documents do not concern us. iii:[1:120] as the prophets perceived the revelations of god by the aid of imagination, they could indisputably perceive much that is beyond the boundary of the intellect, for many more ideas can be constructed from words and figures than from the principles and notions on which the whole fabric of reasoned knowledge is reared. (1:121) thus we have a clue to the fact that the prophets perceived nearly everything in parables and allegories, and clothed spiritual truths in bodily forms, for such is the usual method of imagination. (122) we need no longer wonder that scripture and the prophets speak so strangely and obscurely of god's spirit or mind (cf. numbers xi:17, 1 kings xxii:21, &c.), that the lord was seen by micah as sitting, by daniel as an old man clothed in white, by ezekiel as a fire, that the holy spirit appeared to those with christ as a descending dove, to the apostles as fiery tongues, to paul on his conversion as a great light. (123) all these expressions are plainly in harmony with the current ideas of god and spirits. (1:124) inasmuch as imagination is fleeting and inconstant, we find that the power of prophecy did not remain with a prophet for long, nor manifest itself frequently, but was very rare; manifesting itself only in a few men, and in them not often. (1:125)we must necessarily inquire how the prophets became assured of the truth of what they perceived by imagination, and not by sure mental laws; but our investigation must be confined to scripture, for the subject is one on which we cannot acquire certain knowledge, and which we cannot explain by the immediate causes. (126) scripture teaching about the assurance of prophets i will treat of in the next chapter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[2:0] chapter ii. of prophets. (2:1) it follows from the last chapter that, as i have said, the prophets were endowed with unusually vivid imaginations, and not with unusually, perfect minds. (2) this conclusion is amply sustained by scripture, for we are told that solomon was the wisest of men, but had no special faculty of prophecy. (3) heman, calcol, and dara, though men of great talent, were not prophets, whereas uneducated countrymen, nay, even women, such as hagar, abraham's handmaid, were thus gifted. (4) nor is this contrary to ordinary experience and reason. (5) men of great imaginative power are less fitted for abstract reasoning, whereas those who excel in intellect and its use keep their imagination more restrained and controlled, holding it in subjection, so to speak, lest it should usurp the place of reason. [2:1] (6) thus to suppose that knowledge of natural and spiritual phenomena can be gained from the prophetic books, is an utter mistake, which i shall endeavour to expose, as i think philosophy, the age, and the question itself demand. (7) i care not for the girdings of superstition, for superstition is the bitter enemy of all true knowledge and true morality. (8) yes; it has come to this! (9) men who openly confess that they can form no idea of god, and only know him through created things, of which they know not the causes, can unblushingly accuse philosophers of atheism. (2:10) treating the question methodically, i will show that prophecies varied, not only according to the imagination and physical temperament of the prophet, but also according to his particular opinions; and further that prophecy never rendered the prophet wiser than he was before. (11) but i will first discuss the assurance of truth which the prophets received, for this is akin to the subject-matter of the chapter, and will serve to elucidate somewhat our present point. (2:12) imagination does not, in its own nature, involve any certainty of truth, such as is implied in every clear and distinct idea, but requires some extrinsic reason to assure us of its objective reality: hence prophecy cannot afford certainty, and the prophets were assured of god's revelation by some sign, and not by the fact of revelation, as we may see from abraham, who, when he had heard the promise of god, demanded a sign, not because he did not believe in god, but because he wished to be sure that it was god who made the promise. (13) the fact is still more evident in the case of gideon: "show me," he says to god, "show me a sign, that i may know that it is thou that talkest with me." (14) god also says to moses: "and let this be a sign that i have sent thee." (2:15) hezekiah, though he had long known isaiah to be a prophet, none the less demanded a sign of the cure which he predicted. (15a) it is thus quite evident that the prophets always received some sign to certify them of their prophetic imaginings; and for this reason moses bids the jews (deut. xviii.) ask of the prophets a sign, namely, the prediction of some coming event. (16) in this respect, prophetic knowledge is inferior to natural knowledge, which needs no sign, and in itself implies certitude. (2:17) moreover, scripture warrants the statement that the certitude of the prophets was not mathematical, but moral. (18) moses lays down the punishment of death for the prophet who preaches new gods, even though he confirm his doctrine by signs and wonders (deut. xiii.); "for," he says, "the lord also worketh signs and wonders to try his people." (19) and jesus christ warns his disciples of the same thing (matt. xxiv:24). (20) furthermore, ezekiel (xiv:9) plainly states that god sometimes deceives men with false revelations; and micaiah bears like witness in the case of the prophets of ahab. (2:21) although these instances go to prove that revelation is open to doubt, it nevertheless contains, as we have said, a considerable element of certainty, for god never deceives the good, nor his chosen, but (according to the ancient proverb, and as appears in the history of abigail and her speech), god uses the good as instruments of goodness, and the wicked as means to execute his wrath. (22) this may be seen from the case of micaiah above quoted; for although god had determined to deceive ahab, through prophets, he made use of lying prophets; to the good prophet he revealed the truth, and did not forbid his proclaiming it. (2:23) still the certitude of prophecy remains, as i have said, merely moral; for no one can justify himself before god, nor boast that he is an instrument for god's goodness. (24) scripture itself teaches and shows that god led away david to number the people, though it bears ample witness to david's piety. [2:2] (25) the whole question of the certitude of prophecy was based on these three considerations: 1. that the things revealed were imagined very vividly, affecting the prophets in the same way as things seen when awake; 2. the presence of a sign; 3. lastly and chiefly, that the mind of the prophet was given wholly to what was right and good. (2:26) although scripture does not always make mention of a sign, we must nevertheless suppose that a sign was always vouchsafed; for scripture does not always relate every condition and circumstance (as many have remarked), but rather takes them for granted. (27) we may, however, admit that no sign was needed when the prophecy declared nothing that was not already contained in the law of moses, because it was confirmed by that law. (28) for instance, jeremiah's prophecy of the destruction of jerusalem was confirmed by the prophecies of other prophets, and by the threats in the law, and, therefore, it needed no sign; whereas hananiah, who, contrary to all the prophets, foretold the speedy restoration of the state, stood in need of a sign, or he would have been in doubt as to the truth of his prophecy, until it was confirmed by facts. (29) "the prophet which prophesieth of peace, when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known that the lord hath truly sent him." (2:30) as, then, the certitude afforded to the prophet by signs was not mathematical (i.e. did not necessarily follow from the perception of the thing perceived or seen), but only moral, and as the signs were only given to convince the prophet, it follows that such signs were given according to the opinions and capacity of each prophet, so that a sign which convince one prophet would fall far short of convincing another who was imbued with different opinions. (31) therefore the signs varied according to the individual prophet. [2:3] (32) so also did the revelation vary, as we have stated, according to individual disposition and temperament, and according to the opinions previously held. (2:33) it varied according to disposition, in this way: if a prophet was cheerful, victories, peace, and events which make men glad, were revealed to him; in that he was naturally more likely to imagine such things. (34) if, on the contrary, he was melancholy, wars, massacres, and calamities were revealed; and so, according as a prophet was merciful, gentle, quick to anger, or severe, he was more fitted for one kind of revelation than another. (35) it varied according to the temper of imagination in this way: if a prophet was cultivated he perceived the mind of god in a cultivated way, if he was confused he perceived it confusedly. (36) and so with revelations perceived through visions. (37) if a prophet was a countryman he saw visions of oxen, cows, and the like; if he was a soldier, he saw generals and armies; if a courtier, a royal throne, and so on. (2:38) lastly, prophecy varied according to the opinions held by the prophets; for instance, to the magi, who believed in the follies of astrology, the birth of christ was revealed through the vision of a star in the east. (39) to the augurs of nebuchadnezzar the destruction of jerusalem was revealed through entrails, whereas the king himself inferred it from oracles and the direction of arrows which he shot into the air. (40) to prophets who believed that man acts from free choice and by his own power, god was revealed as standing apart from and ignorant of future human actions. (41) all of which we will illustrate from scripture. (2:42) the first point is proved from the case of elisha, who, in order to prophecy to jehoram, asked for a harp, and was unable to perceive the divine purpose till he had been recreated by its music; then, indeed, he prophesied to jehoram and to his allies glad tidings, which previously he had been unable to attain to because he was angry with the king, and these who are angry with anyone can imagine evil of him, but not good. (43) the theory that god does not reveal himself to the angry or the sad, is a mere dream: for god revealed to moses while angry, the terrible slaughter of the firstborn, and did so without the intervention of a harp. (2:44) to cain in his rage, god was revealed, and to ezekiel, impatient with anger, was revealed the contumacy and wretchedness of the jews. (45) jeremiah, miserable and weary of life, prophesied the disasters of the hebrews, so that josiah would not consult him, but inquired of a woman, inasmuch as it was more in accordance with womanly nature that god should reveal his mercy thereto. (46) so, micaiah never prophesied good to ahab, though other true prophets had done so, but invariably evil. (46a) thus we see that individual prophets were by temperament more fitted for one sort of revelation than another. (2:47) the style of the prophecy also varied according to the eloquence of the individual prophet. (48) the prophecies of ezekiel and amos are not written in a cultivated style like those of isaiah and nahum, but more rudely. (49) any hebrew scholar who wishes to inquire into this point more closely, and compares chapters of the different prophets treating of the same subject, will find great dissimilarity of style. (2:50) compare, for instance, chap. i. of the courtly isaiah, verse 11 to verse 20, with chap. v. of the countryman amos, verses 21-24. (51) compare also the order and reasoning of the prophecies of jeremiah, written in idumaea (chap. xhx.), with the order and reasoning of obadiah. (52) compare, lastly, isa. xl:19, 20, and xliv:8, with hosea viii:6, and xiii:2. and so on. (2:53) a due consideration of these passage will clearly show us that god has no particular style in speaking, but, according to the learning and capacity of the prophet, is cultivated, compressed, severe, untutored, prolix, or obscure. (2:54) there was, moreover, a certain variation in the visions vouchsafed to the prophets, and in the symbols by which they expressed them, for isaiah saw the glory of the lord departing from the temple in a different form from that presented to ezekiel. (55) the rabbis, indeed, maintain that both visions were really the same, but that ezekiel, being a countryman, was above measure impressed by it, and therefore set it forth in full detail; but unless there is a trustworthy tradition on the subject, which i do not for a moment believe, this theory is plainly an invention. isaiah saw seraphim with six wings, ezekiel beasts with four wings; isaiah saw god clothed and sitting on a royal throne, ezekiel saw him in the likeness of a fire; each doubtless saw god under the form in which he usually imagined him. (2:56) further, the visions varied in clearness as well as in details; for the revelations of zechariah were too obscure to be understood by the prophet without explanation, as appears from his narration of them; the visions of daniel could not be understood by him even after they had been explained, and this obscurity did not arise from the difficulty of the matter revealed (for being merely human affairs, these only transcended human capacity in being future), but solely in the fact that daniel's imagination was not so capable for prophecy while he was awake as while he was asleep; and this is further evident from the fact that at the very beginning of the vision he was so terrified that he almost despaired of his strength. (2:57) thus, on account of the inadequacy of his imagination and his strength, the things revealed were so obscure to him that he could not understand them even after they had been explained. (58) here we may note that the words heard by daniel, were, as we have shown above, simply imaginary, so that it is hardly wonderful that in his frightened state he imagined them so confusedly and obscurely that afterwards he could make nothing of them. (2:59) those who say that god did not wish to make a clear revelation, do not seem to have read the words of the angel, who expressly says that he came to make the prophet understand what should befall his people in the latter days (dan. x:14). (2:60) the revelation remained obscure because no one was found, at that time, with imagination sufficiently strong to conceive it more clearly. (61) lastly, the prophets, to whom it was revealed that god would take away elijah, wished to persuade elisha that he had been taken somewhere where they would find him; showing sufficiently clearly that they had not understood god's revelation aright. (2:62) there is no need to set this out more amply, for nothing is more plain in the bible than that god endowed some prophets with far greater gifts of prophecy than others. (63) but i will show in greater detail and length, for i consider the point more important, that the prophecies varied according to the opinions previously embraced by the prophets, and that the prophets held diverse and even contrary opinions and prejudices. (2:64) (i speak, be it understood, solely of matters speculative, for in regard to uprightness and morality the case is widely different.) (65) from thence i shall conclude that prophecy never rendered the prophets more learned, but left them with their former opinions, and that we are, therefore, not at all bound to trust them in matters of intellect. (2:66) everyone has been strangely hasty in affirming that the prophets knew everything within the scope of human intellect; and, although certain passages of scripture plainly affirm that the prophets were in certain respects ignorant, such persons would rather say that they do not understand the passages than admit that there was anything which the prophets did not know; or else they try to wrest the scriptural words away from their evident meaning. (2:67) if either of these proceedings is allowable we may as well shut our bibles, for vainly shall we attempt to prove anything from them if their plainest passages may be classed among obscure and impenetrable mysteries, or if we may put any interpretation on them which we fancy. (68) for instance, nothing is more clear in the bible than that joshua, and perhaps also the author who wrote his history, thought that the sun revolves round the earth, and that the earth is fixed, and further that the sun for a certain period remained still. (2:69) many, who will not admit any movement in the heavenly bodies, explain away the passage till it seems to mean something quite different; others, who have learned to philosophize more correctly, and understand that the earth moves while the sun is still, or at any rate does not revolve round the earth, try with all their might to wrest this meaning from scripture, though plainly nothing of the sort is intended. (70) such quibblers excite my wonder! (2:71) are we, forsooth, bound to believe that joshua the soldier was a learned astronomer? or that a miracle could not be revealed to him, or that the light of the sun could not remain longer than usual above the horizon, without his knowing the cause? (72) to me both alternatives appear ridiculous, and therefore i would rather say that joshua was ignorant of the true cause of the lengthened day, and that he and the whole host with him thought that the sun moved round the earth every day, and that on that particular occasion it stood still for a time, thus causing the light to remain longer; and i would say, that they did not conjecture that, from the amount of snow in the air (see josh. x:11), the refraction may have been greater than usual, or that there may have been some other cause which we will not now inquire into. (2:73) so also the sign of the shadow going back was revealed to isaiah according to his understanding; that is, as proceeding from a going backwards of the sun; for he, too, thought that the sun moves and that the earth is still; of parhelia he perhaps never even dreamed. (74) we may arrive at this conclusion without any scruple, for the sign could really have come to pass, and have been predicted by isaiah to the king, without the prophet being aware of the real cause. (2:75) with regard to the building of the temple by solomon, if it was really dictate by god we must maintain the same doctrine: namely, that all the measurements were revealed according to the opinions and understanding of the king; for as we are not bound to believe that solomon was a mathematician, we may affirm that he was ignorant of the true ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle, and that, like the generality of workmen, he thought that it was as three to one. (76) but if it is allowable to declare that we do not understand the passage, in good sooth i know nothing in the bible that we can understand; for the process of building is there narrated simply and as a mere matter of history. (2:77) if, again, it is permitted to pretend that the passage has another meaning, and was written as it is from some reason unknown to us, this is no less than a complete subversal of the bible; for every absurd and evil invention of human perversity could thus, without detriment to scriptural authority, be defended and fostered. (78) our conclusion is in no wise impious, for though solomon, isaiah, joshua, &c. were prophets, they were none the less men, and as such not exempt from human shortcomings. (79) according to the understanding of noah it was revealed to him that god as about to destroy the whole human race, for noah thought that beyond the limits of palestine the world was not inhabited. (2:80) not only in matters of this kind, but in others more important, the about the divine attributes, but held quite ordinary notions about god, and to these notions their revelations were adapted, as i will demonstrate by ample scriptural testimony; from all which one may easily see that they were praised and commended, not so much for the sublimity and eminence of their intellect as for their piety and faithfulness. (2:81) adam, the first man to whom god was revealed, did not know that he is omnipotent and omniscient; for he hid himself from him, and attempted to make excuses for his fault before god, as though he had had to do with a man; therefore to him also was god revealed according to his understanding that is, as being unaware of his situation or his sin, for adam heard, or seemed to hear, the lord walling, in the garden, calling him and asking him where he was; and then, on seeing his shamefacedness, asking him whether he had eaten of the forbidden fruit. (82) adam evidently only knew the deity as the creator of all things. (82a) to cain also god was revealed, according to his understanding, as ignorant of human affairs, nor was a higher conception of the deity required for repentance of his sin. (2:83) to laban the lord revealed himself as the god of abraham, because laban believed that each nation had its own special divinity see gen. xxxi:29). (84) abraham also knew not that god is omnipresent, and has foreknowledge of all things; for when he heard the sentence against the inhabitants of sodom, he prayed that the lord should not execute it till he had ascertained whether they all merited such punishment; for he said (see gen. xviii:24), "peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city," and in accordance with this belief god was revealed to him; as abraham imagined, he spake thus: "i will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which is come unto me; and, if not, i will know." (2:85) further, the divine testimony concerning abraham asserts nothing but that he was obedient, and that he "commanded his household after him that they should keep the way of the lord" (gen. xviii:19); it does not state that he held sublime conceptions of the deity. (2:86) moses, also, was not sufficiently aware that god is omniscient, and directs human actions by his sole decree, for although god himself says that the israelites should hearken to him, moses still considered the matter doubtful and repeated, "but if they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice." (87) to him in like manner god was revealed as taking no part in, and as being ignorant of, future human actions: the lord gave him two signs and said, "and it shall come to pass that if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign; but if not, thou shalt take of the water of the river," &c. (2:88) indeed, if any one considers without prejudice the recorded opinions of moses, he will plainly see that moses conceived the deity as a being who has always existed, does exist, and always will exist, and for this cause he calls him by the name jehovah, which in hebrew signifies these three phases of existence: as to his nature, moses only taught that he is merciful, gracious, and exceeding jealous, as appears from many passages in the pentateuch. (89) lastly, he believed and taught that this being was so different from all other beings, that he could not be expressed by the image of any visible thing; also, that he could not be looked upon, and that not so much from inherent impossibility as from human infirmity; further, that by reason of his power he was without equal and unique. (2:90) moses admitted, indeed, that there were beings (doubtless by the plan and command of the lord) who acted as god's vicegerents that is, beings to whom god had given the right, authority, and power to direct nations, and to provide and care for them; but he taught that this being whom they were bound to obey was the highest and supreme god, or (to use the hebrew phrase) god of gods, and thus in the song (exod. xv:11) he exclaims, "who is like unto thee, 0 lord, among the gods?" and jethro says (exod. xviii:11), "now i know that the lord is greater than all gods." (91) that is to say, "i am at length compelled to admit to moses that jehovah is greater than all gods, and that his power is unrivalled." (2:92) we must remain in doubt whether moses thought that these beings who acted as god's vicegerents were created by him, for he has stated nothing, so far as we know, about their creation and origin. (93) he further taught that this being had brought the visible world into order from chaos, and had given nature her germs, and therefore that he possesses supreme right and power over all things; further, that by reason of this supreme right and power he had chosen for himself alone the hebrew nation and a certain strip of territory, and had handed over to the care of other gods substituted by himself the rest of the nations and territories, and that therefore he was called the god of israel and the god of jerusalem, whereas the other gods were called the gods of the gentiles. (2:94) for this reason the jews believed that the strip of territory which god had chosen for himself, demanded a divine worship quite apart and different from the worship which obtained elsewhere, and that the lord would not suffer the worship of other gods adapted to other countries. (95) thus they thought that the people whom the king of assyria had brought into judaea were torn in pieces by lions because they knew not the worship of the national divinity (2 kings xvii:25). (2:96) jacob, according to aben ezra's opinion, therefore admonished his sons when he wished them to seek out a new country, that they should prepare themselves for a new worship, and lay aside the worship of strange, gods that is, of the gods of the land where they were (gen. xxxv:2, 3). (2:97) david, in telling saul that he was compelled by the king's persecution to live away from his country, said that he was driven out from the heritage of the lord, and sent to worship other gods (1 sam. xxvi:19). (98) lastly, he believed that this being or deity had his habitation in the heavens (deut. xxxiii:27), an opinion very common among the gentiles. (2:99) if we now examine the revelations to moses, we shall find that they were accommodated to these opinions; as he believed that the divine nature was subject to the conditions of mercy, graciousness, &c., so god was revealed to him in accordance with his idea and under these attributes (see exodus xxxiv:6, 7, and the second commandment). (100) further it is related (ex. xxxiii:18) that moses asked of god that he might behold him, but as moses (as we have said) had formed no mental image of god, and god (as i have shown) only revealed himself to the prophets in accordance with the disposition of their imagination, he did not reveal himself in any form. (2:101) this, i repeat, was because the imagination of moses was unsuitable, for other prophets bear witness that they saw the lord; for instance, isaiah, ezekiel, daniel, &c. (102) for this reason god answered moses, "thou canst not see my face;" and inasmuch as moses believed that god can be looked upon that is, that no contradiction of the divine nature is therein involved (for otherwise he would never have preferred his request) it is added, "for no one shall look on me and live," thus giving a reason in accordance with moses' idea, for it is not stated that a contradiction of the divine nature would be involved, as was really the case, but that the thing would not come to pass because of human infirmity. (2:103) when god would reveal to moses that the israelites, because they worshipped the calf, were to be placed in the same category as other nations, he said (ch. xxxiii:2, 3), that he would send an angel (that is, a being who should have charge of the israelites, instead of the supreme being), and that he himself would no longer remain among them; thus leaving moses no ground for supposing that the israelites were more beloved by god than the other nations whose guardianship he had entrusted to other beings or angels (vide verse 16). (2:104) lastly, as moses believed that god dwelt in the heavens, god was revealed to him as coming down from heaven on to a mountain, and in order to talk with the lord moses went up the mountain, which he certainly need not have done if he could have conceived of god as omnipresent. (2:105) the israelites knew scarcely anything of god, although he was revealed to them; and this is abundantly evident from their transferring, a few days afterwards, the honour and worship due to him to a calf, which they believed to be the god who had brought them out of egypt. (106) in truth, it is hardly likely that men accustomed to the superstitions of egypt, uncultivated and sunk in most abject slavery, should have held any sound notions about the deity, or that moses should have taught them anything beyond a rule of right living; inculcating it not like a philosopher, as the result of freedom, but like a lawgiver compelling them to be moral by legal authority. (2:107) thus the rule of right living, the worship and love of god, was to them rather a bondage than the true liberty, the gift and grace of the deity. (108) moses bid them love god and keep his law, because they had in the past received benefits from him (such as the deliverance from slavery in egypt), and further terrified them with threats if they transgressed his commands, holding out many promises of good if they should observe them; thus treating them as parents treat irrational children. (108a) it is, therefore, certain that they knew not the excellence of virtue and the true happiness. (2:109) jonah thought that he was fleeing from the sight of god, which seems to show that he too held that god had entrusted the care of the nations outside judaea to other substituted powers. (110) no one in the whole of the old testament speaks more rationally of god than solomon, who in fact surpassed all the men of his time in natural ability. (111) yet he considered himself above the law (esteeming it only to have been given for men without reasonable and intellectual grounds for their actions), and made small account of the laws concerning kings, which are mainly three: nay, he openly violated them (in this he did wrong, and acted in a manner unworthy of a philosopher, by indulging in sensual pleasure), and taught that all fortune's favours to mankind are vanity, that humanity has no nobler gift than wisdom, and no greater punishment than folly. (112) see proverbs xvi:22, 23. (2:113) but let us return to the prophets whose conflicting opinions we have undertaken to note. (114) the expressed ideas of ezekiel seemed so diverse from those of moses to the rabbis who have left us the extant prophetic books (as is told in the treatise of sabbathus, i:13, 2), that they had serious thoughts of omitting his prophecy from the canon, and would doubtless have thus excluded it if a certain hananiah had not undertaken to explain it; a task which (as is there narrated) he with great zeal and labour accomplished. (2:115) how he did so does not sufficiently appear, whether it was by writing a commentary which has now perished, or by altering ezekiel's words and audaciously striking out phrases according to his fancy. (2:116) however this may be, chapter xviii. certainly does not seem to agree with exodus xxxiv:7, jeremiah xxxii:18, &c. (2:117) samuel believed that the lord never repented of anything he had decreed (1 sam. xv:29), for when saul was sorry for his sin, and wished to worship god and ask for forgiveness, samuel said that the lord would not go back from his decree. (2:118) to jeremiah, on the other hand, it was revealed that, "if that nation against whom i (the lord) have pronounced, turn from their evil, i will repent of the evil that i thought to do unto them. (119) if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then i will repent of the good wherewith i said i would benefit them" (jer. xviii:8-10). (120) joel (ii:13) taught that the lord repented him only of evil. (121) lastly, it is clear from gen iv: 7 that a man can overcome the temptations of sin, and act righteously; for this doctrine is told to cain, though, as we learn from josephus and the scriptures, he never did so overcome them. (2:122) and this agrees with the chapter of jeremiah just cited, for it is there said that the lord repents of the good or the evil pronounced, if the men in question change their ways and manner of life. (123) but, on the other hand, paul (rom.ix:10) teaches as plainly as possible that men have no control over the temptations of the flesh save by the special vocation and grace of god. (124) and when (rom. iii:5 and vi:19) he attributes righteousness to man, he corrects himself as speaking merely humanly and through the infirmity of the flesh. (2:125) we have now more than sufficiently proved our point, that god adapted revelations to the understanding and opinions of the prophets, and that in matters of theory without bearing on charity or morality the prophets could be, and, in fact, were, ignorant, and held conflicting opinions. (126) it therefore follows that we must by no means go to the prophets for knowledge, either of natural or of spiritual phenomena. (2:127) we have determined, then, that we are only bound to believe in the prophetic writings, the object and substance of the revelation; with regard to the details, every one may believe or not, as he likes. (128) for instance, the revelation to cain only teaches us that god admonished him to lead the true life, for such alone is the object and substance of the revelation, not doctrines concerning free will and philosophy. (129) hence, though the freedom of the will is clearly implied in the words of the admonition, we are at liberty to hold a contrary opinion, since the words and reasons were adapted to the understanding of cain. (2:130) so, too, the revelation to micaiah would only teach that god revealed to him the true issue of the battle between ahab and aram; and this is all we are bound to believe. (131) whatever else is contained in the revelation concerning the true and the false spirit of god, the army of heaven standing on the right hand and on the left, and all the other details, does not affect us at all. (131a) everyone may believe as much of it as his reason allows. (2:132) the reasonings by which the lord displayed his power to job (if they really were a revelation, and the author of the history is narrating, and not merely, as some suppose, rhetorically adorning his own conceptions), would come under the same category that is, they were adapted to job's understanding, for the purpose of convincing him, and are not universal, or for the convincing of all men. (2:133) we can come to no different conclusion with respect to the reasonings of christ, by which he convicted the pharisees of pride and ignorance, and exhorted his disciples to lead the true life. (134) he adapted them to each man's opinions and principles. (2:135) for instance, when he said to the pharisees (matt. xii:26), "and if satan cast out devils, his house is divided against itself, how then shall his kingdom stand? (136) "he only wished to convince the pharisees according, to their own principles, not to teach that there are devils, or any kingdom of devils. (137) so, too, when he said to his disciples (matt. viii:10), "see that ye despise not one of these little ones, for i say unto you that their angels," &c. (137a) he merely desired to warn them against pride and despising any of their fellows, not to insist on the actual reason given, which was simply adopted in order to persuade them more easily. (2:138) lastly, we should say exactly the same of the apostolic signs and reasonings, but there is no need to go further into the subject. (139) if i were to enumerate all the passages of scripture addressed only to individuals, or to a particular man's understanding, and which cannot, without great danger to philosophy, be defended as divine doctrines, i should go far beyond the brevity at which i aim. (140) let it suffice, then, to have indicated a few instances of general application, and let the curious reader consider others by himself. (141) although the points we have just raised concerning prophets and prophecy are the only ones which have any direct bearing on the end in view, namely, the separation of philosophy from theology, still, as i have touched on the general question, i may here inquire whether the gift of prophecy was peculiar to the hebrews, or whether it was common to all nations. (2:142) i must then come to a conclusion about the vocation of the hebrews, all of which i shall do in the ensuing chapter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[3:0] chapter iii. of the vocation of the hebrews, and whether the gift of prophecy was peculiar to them. (3:1) every man's true happiness and blessedness consist solely in the enjoyment of what is good, not in the pride that he alone is enjoying it, to the exclusion of others. (2) he who thinks himself the more blessed because he is enjoying benefits which others are not, or because he is more blessed or more fortunate than his fellows, is ignorant of true happiness and blessedness, and the joy which he feels is either childish or envious and malicious. (3:3) for instance, a man's true happiness consists only in wisdom, and the knowledge of the truth, not at all in the fact that he is wiser than others, or that others lack such knowledge: such considerations do not increase his wisdom or true happiness. (3:4) whoever, therefore, rejoices for such reasons, rejoices in another's misfortune, and is, so far, malicious and bad, knowing neither true happiness nor the peace of the true life. [3:1] (5) when scripture, therefore, in exhorting the hebrews to obey the law, says that the lord has chosen them for himself before other nations (deut. x:15); that he is near them, but not near others (deut. iv:7); that to them alone he has given just laws (deut. iv:8); and, lastly, that he has marked them out before others (deut. iv:32); it speaks only according to the understanding of its hearers, who, as we have shown in the last chapter, and as moses also testifies (deut. ix:6, 7), knew not true blessedness. (6) for in good sooth they would have been no less blessed if god had called all men equally to salvation, nor would god have been less present to them for being equally present to others; their laws, would have been no less just if they had been ordained for all, and they themselves would have been no less wise. (3:7) the miracles would have shown god's power no less by being wrought for other nations also; lastly, the hebrews would have been just as much bound to worship god if he had bestowed all these gifts equally on all men. (3:8) when god tells solomon (1 kings iii:12) that no one shall be as wise as he in time to come, it seems to be only a manner of expressing surpassing wisdom; it is little to be believed that god would have promised solomon, for his greater happiness, that he would never endow anyone with so much wisdom in time to come; this would in no wise have increased solomon's intellect, and the wise king would have given equal thanks to the lord if everyone had been gifted with the same faculties. (3:9) still, though we assert that moses, in the passages of the pentateuch just cited, spoke only according to the understanding of the hebrews, we have no wish to deny that god ordained the mosaic law for them alone, nor that he spoke to them alone, nor that they witnessed marvels beyond those which happened to any other nation; but we wish to emphasize that moses desired to admonish the hebrews in such a manner, and with such reasonings as would appeal most forcibly to their childish understanding, and constrain them to worship the deity. [3:2] (10) further, we wished to show that the hebrews did not surpass other nations in knowledge, or in piety, but evidently in some attribute different from these; or (to speak like the scriptures, according to their understanding), that the hebrews were not chosen by god before others for the sake of the true life and sublime ideas, though they were often thereto admonished, but with some other object. (11) what that object was, i will duly show. (3:12) but before i begin, i wish in a few words to explain what i mean by the guidance of god, by the help of god, external and inward, and, lastly, what i understand by fortune. (3:13) by the help of god, i mean the fixed and unchangeable order of nature or the chain of natural events: for i have said before and shown elsewhere that the universal laws of nature, according to which all things exist and are determined, are only another name for the eternal decrees of god, which always involve eternal truth and necessity. (3:14) so that to say that everything happens according to natural laws, and to say that everything is ordained by the decree and ordinance of god, is the same thing. (15) now since the power in nature is identical with the power of god, by which alone all things happen and are determined, it follows that whatsoever man, as a part of nature, provides himself with to aid and preserve his existence, or whatsoever nature affords him without his help, is given to him solely by the divine power, acting either through human nature or through external circumstance. (16) so whatever human nature can furnish itself with by its own efforts to preserve its existence, may be fitly called the inward aid of god, whereas whatever else accrues to man's profit from outward causes may be called the external aid of god. (3:17) we can now easily understand what is meant by the election of god. (18) for since no one can do anything save by the predetermined order of nature, that is by god's eternal ordinance and decree, it follows that no one can choose a plan of life for himself, or accomplish any work save by god's vocation choosing him for the work or the plan of life in question, rather than any other. (3:19) lastly, by fortune, i mean the ordinance of god in so far as it directs human life through external and unexpected means. (20) with these preliminaries i return to my purpose of discovering the reason why the hebrews were said to be elected by god before other nations, and with the demonstration i thus proceed. (3:21) all objects of legitimate desire fall, generally speaking, under one of these three categories: 1. the knowledge of things through their primary causes. 2. the government of the passions, or the acquirement of the habit of virtue. 3. secure and healthy life. (3:22) the means which most directly conduce towards the first two of these ends, and which may be considered their proximate an efficient causes are contained in human nature itself, so that their acquisition hinges only on our own power, and on the laws of human nature. (23) it may be concluded that these gifts are not peculiar to any nation, but have always been shared by the whole human race, unless, indeed, we would indulge the dream that nature formerly created men of different kinds. (24) but the means which conduce to security and health are chiefly in external circumstance, and are called the gifts of fortune because they depend chiefly on objective causes of which we are ignorant; for a fool may be almost as liable to happiness or unhappiness as a wise man. (25) nevertheless, human management and watchfulness can greatly assist towards living in security and warding off the injuries of our fellow-men, and even of beasts. (3:26) reason and experience show no more certain means of attaining this object than the formation of a society with fixed laws, the occupation of a strip of territory and the concentration of all forces, as it were, into one body, that is the social body. (27) now for forming and preserving a society, no ordinary ability and care is required: that society will be most secure, most stable, and least liable to reverses, which is founded and directed by far-seeing and careful men; while, on the other hand, a society constituted by men without trained skill, depends in a great measure on fortune, and is less constant. (3:28) if, in spite of all, such a society lasts a long time, it is owing to some other directing influence than its own; if it overcomes great perils and its affairs prosper, it will perforce marvel at and adore the guiding spirit of god (in so far, that is, as god works through hidden means, and not through the nature and mind of man), for everything happens to it unexpectedly and contrary to anticipation, it may even be said and thought to be by miracle. [3:3] (29) nations, then, are distinguished from one another in respect to the social organization and the laws under which they live and are governed; the hebrew nation was not chosen by god in respect to its wisdom nor its tranquillity of mind, but in respect to its social organization and the good fortune with which it obtained supremacy and kept it so many years. (30) this is abundantly clear from scripture. (3:30a) even a cursory perusal will show us that the only respects in which the hebrews surpassed other nations, are in their successful conduct of matters relating to government, and in their surmounting great perils solely by god's external aid; in other ways they were on a par with their fellows, and god was equally gracious to all. (3:31) for in respect to intellect (as we have shown in the last chapter) they held very ordinary ideas about god and nature, so that they cannot have been god's chosen in this respect; nor were they so chosen in respect of virtue and the true life, for here again they, with the exception of a very few elect, were on an equality with other nations: therefore their choice and vocation consisted only in the temporal happiness and advantages of independent rule. (32) in fact, we do not see that god promised anything beyond this to the patriarchs [endnote 4] or their successors; in the law no other reward is offered for obedience than the continual happiness of an independent commonwealth and other goods of this life; while, on the other hand, against contumacy and the breaking of the covenant is threatened the downfall of the commonwealth and great hardships. (33) nor is this to be wondered at; for the ends of every social organization and commonwealth are (as appears from what we have said, and as we will explain more at length hereafter) security and comfort; a commonwealth can only exist by the laws being binding on all. (34) if all the members of a state wish to disregard the law, by that very fact they dissolve the state and destroy the commonwealth. (3:35) thus, the only reward which could be promised to the hebrews for continued obedience to the law was security [endnote 5] and its attendant advantages, while no surer punishment could be threatened for disobedience, than the ruin of the state and the evils which generally follow therefrom, in addition to such further consequences as might accrue to the jews in particular from the ruin of their especial state. (36) but there is no need here to go into this point at more length. (3:37) i will only add that the laws of the old testament were revealed and ordained to the jews only, for as god chose them in respect to the special constitution of their society and government, they must, of course, have had special laws. (38) whether god ordained special laws for other nations also, and revealed himself to their lawgivers prophetically, that is, under the attributes by which the latter were accustomed to imagine him, i cannot sufficiently determine. (39) it is evident from scripture itself that other nations acquired supremacy and particular laws by the external aid of god; witness only the two following passages: [3:4] (40) in genesis xiv:18, 19, 20, it is related that melchisedek was king of jerusalem and priest of the most high god, that in exercise of his priestly functions he blessed abraham, and that abraham the beloved of the lord gave to this priest of god a tithe of all his spoils. (41) this sufficiently shows that before he founded the israelitish nation god constituted kings and priests in jerusalem, and ordained for them rites and laws. (42) whether he did so prophetically is, as i have said, not sufficiently clear; but i am sure of this, that abraham, whilst he sojourned in the city, lived scrupulously according to these laws, for abraham had received no special rites from god; and yet it is stated (gen. xxvi:5), that he observed the worship, the precepts, the statutes, and the laws of god, which must be interpreted to mean the worship, the statutes, the precepts, and the laws of king melchisedek. (43) malachi chides the jews as follows (i:10-11.): "who is there among you that will shut the doors? [of the temple]; neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for nought. (44) i have no pleasure in you, saith the lord of hosts. (3:45) for from the rising of the sun, even until the going down of the same my name shall be great among the gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered in my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the heathen, saith the lord of hosts." (3:46) these words, which, unless we do violence to them, could only refer to the current period, abundantly testify that the jews of that time were not more beloved by god than other nations, that god then favoured other nations with more miracles than he vouchsafed to the jews, who had then partly recovered their empire without miraculous aid; and, lastly, that the gentiles possessed rites and ceremonies acceptable to god. (47) but i pass over these points lightly: it is enough for my purpose to have shown that the election of the jews had regard to nothing but temporal physical happiness and freedom, in other words, autonomous government, and to the manner and means by which they obtained it; consequently to the laws in so far as they were necessary to the preservation of that special government; and, lastly, to the manner in which they were revealed. in regard to other matters, wherein man's true happiness consists, they were on a par with the rest of the nations. [3:5] (48) when, therefore, it is said in scripture (deut. iv:7) that the lord is not so nigh to any other nation as he is to the jews, reference is only made to their government, and to the period when so many miracles happened to them, for in respect of intellect and virtue that is, in respect of blessedness god was, as we have said already, and are now demonstrating, equally gracious to all. (49) scripture itself bears testimony to this fact, for the psalmist says (cxlv:18), "the lord is near unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth." (3:50) so in the same psalm, verse 9, "the lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works." in ps. xxxiii:16, it is clearly stated that god has granted to all men the same intellect, in these words, he fashioneth their hearts alike." (50a) the heart was considered by the hebrews, as i suppose everyone knows, to be the seat of the soul and the intellect. (3:51) lastly, from job xxxviii:28, it is plain that god had ordained for the whole human race the law to reverence god, to keep from evil doing, or to do well, and that job, although a gentile, was of all men most acceptable to god, because he exceeded all in piety and religion. (52) lastly, from jonah iv:2, it is very evident that, not only to the jews but to all men, god was gracious, merciful, long-suffering, and of great goodness, and repented him of the evil, for jonah says: "therefore i determined to flee before unto tarshish, for i know that thou art a gracious god, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness," &c., and that, therefore, god would pardon the ninevites. (3:53) we conclude, therefore (inasmuch as god is to all men equally gracious, and the hebrews were only chosen by him in respect to their social organization and government), that the individual jew, taken apart from his social organization and government, possessed no gift of god above other men, and that there was no difference between jew and gentile. (54) as it is a fact that god is equally gracious, merciful, and the rest, to all men; and as the function of the prophet was to teach men not so much the laws of their country, as true virtue, and to exhort them thereto, it is not to be doubted that all nations possessed prophets, and that the prophetic gift was not peculiar to the jews. (3:55) indeed, history, both profane and sacred, bears witness to the fact. (56) although, from the sacred histories of the old testament, it is not evident that the other nations had as many prophets as the hebrews, or that any gentile prophet was expressly sent by god to the nations, this does not affect the question, for the hebrews were careful to record their own affairs, not those of other nations. (57) it suffices, then, that we find in the old testament gentiles, and uncircumcised, as noah, enoch, abimelech, balaam, &c., exercising prophetic gifts; further, that hebrew prophets were sent by god, not only to their own nation but to many others also. (3:58) ezekiel prophesied to all the nations then known; obadiah to none, that we are ware of, save the idumeans; and jonah was chiefly the prophet to the ninevites. (3:59) isaiah bewails and predicts the calamities, and hails the restoration not only of the jews but also of other nations, for he says (chap. xvi:9), "therefore i will bewail jazer with weeping;" and in chap. xix. he foretells first the calamities and then the restoration of the egyptians (see verses 19, 20, 21, 25), saying that god shall send them a saviour to free them, that the lord shall be known in egypt, and, further, that the egyptians shall worship god with sacrifice and oblation; and, at last, he calls that nation the blessed egyptian people of god; all of which particulars are specially noteworthy. (3:60) jeremiah is called, not the prophet of the hebrew nation, but simply the prophet of the nations (see jer:i.5). (61) he also mournfully foretells the calamities of the nations, and predicts their restoration, for he says (xlviii:31) of the moabites, "therefore will i howl for moab, and i will cry out for all moab" (verse 36), "and therefore mine heart shall sound for moab like pipes;" in the end he prophesies their restoration, as also the restoration of the egyptians, ammonites, and elamites. (62) wherefore it is beyond doubt that other nations also, like the jews, had their prophets, who prophesied to them. (3:63) although scripture only makes mention of one man, balaam, to whom the future of the jews and the other nations was revealed, we must not suppose that balaam prophesied only once, for from the narrative itself it is abundantly clear that he had long previously been famous for prophesy and other divine gifts. (64) for when balak bade him to come to him, he said (num. xxii:6), "for i know that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed." (65) thus we see that he possessed the gift on abraham. further, as accustomed to prophesy, balaam bade the messengers wait for him till the will of the lord was revealed to him. (3:66) when he prophesied, that is, when he interpreted the true mind of god, he was wont to say this of himself: "he hath said, which heard the words of god and knew the knowledge of the most high, which saw the vision of the almighty falling into a trance, but having his eyes open." (3:67) further, after he had blessed the hebrews by the command of god, he began (as was his custom) to prophesy to other nations, and to predict their future; all of which abundantly shows that he had lways been a prophet, or had often prophesied, and (as we may also remark here) possessed that which afforded the chief certainty to prophets of the truth of their prophecy, namely, a mind turned wholly to what is right and good, for he did not bless those whom he wished to bless, nor curse those whom he wished to curse, as balak supposed, but only those whom god wished to be blessed or cursed. (68) thus he answered balak: "if balak should give me his house full of silver and gold, i cannot go beyond the commandment of the lord to do either good or bad of my own mind; but what the lord saith, that will i speak." (3:69) as for god being angry with him in the way, the same happened to moses when he set out to egypt by the command of the lord; and as o his receiving money for prophesying, samuel did the same (1 sam. ix:7, 8); if in anyway he sinned, "there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not," eccles. vii:20. (vide 2 epist. peter ii:15, 16, and jude 5:11.) (3:70) his speeches must certainly have had much weight with god, and his power for cursing must assuredly have been very great from the number of times that we find stated in scripture, in proof of god's great mercy to the jews, that god would not hear balaam, and that he changed the cursing to blessing (see deut. xxiii:6, josh. xxiv:10, neh. xiii:2). (71) wherefore he was without doubt most acceptable to god, for the speeches and cursings of the wicked move god not at all. (3:72) as then he was a true prophet, and nevertheless joshua calls him a soothsayer or augur, it is certain that this title had an honourable signification, and that those whom the gentiles called augurs and soothsayers were true prophets, while those whom scripture often accuses and condemns were false soothsayers, who deceived the gentiles as false prophets deceived the jews; indeed, this is made evident from other passages in the bible, whence we conclude that the gift of prophecy was not peculiar to the jews, but common to all nations. (3:73) the pharisees, however, vehemently contend that this divine gift was peculiar to their nation, and that the other nations foretold the future (what will superstition invent next?) by some unexplained diabolical faculty. (3:74) the principal passage of scripture which they cite, by way of confirming their theory with its authority, is exodus xxxiii:16, where moses says to god, "for wherein shall it be known here that i and thy people have found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, i and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth." (75) from this they would infer that moses asked of god that he should be present to the jews, and should reveal himself to them prophetically; further, that he should grant this favour to no other nation. (3:76) it is surely absurd that moses should have been jealous of god's presence among the gentiles, or that he should have dared to ask any such thing. (77) the act is, as moses knew that the disposition and spirit of his nation was rebellious, he clearly saw that they could not carry out what they had begun without very great miracles and special external aid from god; nay, that without such aid they must necessarily perish: as it was evident that god wished them to be preserved, he asked for this special external aid. (3:78) thus he says (ex. xxxiv:9), "if now i have found grace in thy sight, 0 lord, let my lord, i pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people." (79) the reason, therefore, for his seeking special external aid from god was the stiffneckedness of the people, and it is made still more plain, that he asked for nothing beyond this special external aid by god's answer for god answered at once (verse 10 of the same chapter) "behold, i make a covenant: before all thy people i will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation." (80) therefore moses had in view nothing beyond the special election of the jews, as i have explained it, and made no other request to god. ( 81) i confess that in paul's epistle to the romans, i find another text which carries more weight, namely, where paul seems to teach a different doctrine from that here set down, for he there says (rom. iii:1): "what advantage then hath the jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? (82) much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of god." (3:83) but if we look to the doctrine which paul especially desired to teach, we shall find nothing repugnant to our present contention; on the contrary, his doctrine is the same as ours, for he says (rom. iii:29) "that god is the god of the jews and of the gentiles, and" (ch. ii:25, 26) "but, if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. (84) therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?" (85) further, in chap. iv:verse 9, he says that all alike, jew and gentile, were under sin, and that without commandment and law there is no sin. (3:86) wherefore it is most evident that to all men absolutely was revealed the law under which all lived namely, the law which has regard only to true virtue, not the law established in respect to, and in the formation of a particular state and adapted to the disposition of a particular people. (3:87) lastly, paul concludes that since god is the god of all nations, that is, is equally gracious to all, and since all men equally live under the law and under sin, so also to all nations did god send his christ, to free all men equally from the bondage of the law, that they should no more do right by the command of the law, but by the constant determination of their hearts. (88) so that paul teaches exactly the same as ourselves. [3:6] (89) when, therefore, he says "to the jews only were entrusted the oracles of god," we must either understand that to them only were the laws entrusted in writing, while they were given to other nations merely in revelation and conception, or else (as none but jews would object to the doctrine he desired to advance) that paul was answering only in accordance with the understanding and current ideas of the jews, for in respect to teaching things which he had partly seen, partly heard, he was to the greeks a greek, and to the jews a jew. [3:7] (90) it now only remains to us to answer the arguments of those who would persuade themselves that the election of the jews was not temporal, and merely in respect of their commonwealth, but eternal; for, they say, we see the jews after the loss of their commonwealth, and after being scattered so many years and separated from all other nations, still surviving, which is without parallel among other peoples, and further the scriptures seem to teach that god has chosen for himself the jews for ever, so that though they have lost their commonwealth, they still nevertheless remain god's elect. (3:91) the passages which they think teach most clearly this eternal election, are chiefly: 1. jer. xxxi:36, where the prophet testifies that the seed of israel shall for ever remain the nation of god, comparing them with the stability of the heavens and nature; 2. ezek. xx:32, where the prophet seems to intend that though the jews wanted after the help afforded them to turn their backs on the worship of the lord, that god would nevertheless gather them together again from all the lands in which they were dispersed, and lead them to the wilderness of the peoples as he had led their fathers to the wilderness of the land of egypt and would at length, after purging out from among them the rebels and transgressors, bring them thence to his holy mountain, where the whole house of israel should worship him. other passages are also cited, especially by the pharisees, but i think i shall satisfy everyone if i answer these two, and this i shall easily accomplish after showing from scripture itself that god chose not the hebrews for ever, but only on the condition under which he had formerly chosen the canaanites, for these last, as we have shown, had priests who religiously worshipped god, and whom god at length rejected because of their luxury, pride, and corrupt worship. (3:92) moses (lev. xviii:27) warned the israelites that they be not polluted with whoredoms, lest the land spue them out as it had spued out the nations who had dwelt there before, and in deut. viii:19, 20, in the plainest terms he threatens their total ruin, for he says, "i testify against you that ye shall surely perish. (93) as the nations which the lord destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish." in like manner many other passages are found in the law which expressly show that god chose the hebrews neither absolutely nor for ever. (3:94) if, then, the prophets foretold for them a new covenant of the knowledge of god, love, and grace, such a promise is easily proved to be only made to the elect, for ezekiel in the chapter which we have just quoted expressly says that god will separate from them the rebellious and transgressors, and zephaniah (iii:12, 13), says that "god will take away the proud from the midst of them, and leave the poor." (3:95) now, inasmuch as their election has regard to true virtue, it is not to be thought that it was promised to the jews alone to the exclusion of others, but we must evidently believe that the true gentile prophets (and every nation, as we have shown, possessed such) promised the same to the faithful of their own people, who were thereby comforted. (96) wherefore this eternal covenant of the knowledge of god and love is universal, as is clear, moreover, from zeph. iii:10, 11 : no difference in this respect can be admitted between jew and gentile, nor did the former enjoy any special election beyond that which we have pointed out. (3:97) when the prophets, in speaking of this election which regards only true virtue, mixed up much concerning sacrifices and ceremonies, and the rebuilding of the temple and city, they wished by such figurative expressions, after the manner and nature of prophecy, to expound matters spiritual, so as at the same time to show to the jews, whose prophets they were, the true restoration of the state and of the temple to be expected about the time of cyrus. (3:98) at the present time, therefore, there is absolutely nothing which the jews can arrogate to themselves beyond other people. (3:99) as to their continuance so long after dispersion and the loss of empire, there is nothing marvellous in it, for they so separated themselves from every other nation as to draw down upon themselves universal hate, not only by their outward rites, rites conflicting with those of other nations, but also by the sign of circumcision which they most scrupulously observe. (100) that they have been preserved in great measure by gentile hatred, experience demonstrates. (3:101) when the king of spain formerly compelled the jews to embrace the state religion or to go into exile, a large number of jews accepted catholicism. (102) now, as these renegades were admitted to all the native privileges of spaniards, and deemed worthy of filling all honourable offices, it came to pass that they straightway became so intermingled with the spaniards as to leave of themselves no relic or remembrance. (103) but exactly the opposite happened to those whom the king of portugal compelled to become christians, for they always, though converted, lived apart, inasmuch as they were considered unworthy of any civic honours. (3:104) the sign of circumcision is, as i think, so important, that i could persuade myself that it alone would preserve the nation for ever. (105) nay, i would go so far as to believe that if the foundations of their religion have not emasculated their minds they may even, if occasion offers, so changeable are human affairs, raise up their empire afresh, and that god may a second time elect them. (3:106) of such a possibility we have a very famous example in the chinese. (107) they, too, have some distinctive mark on their heads which they most scrupulously observe, and by which they keep themselves apart from everyone else, and have thus kept themselves during so many thousand years that they far surpass all other nations in antiquity. (108) they have not always retained empire, but they have recovered it when lost, and doubtless will do so again after the spirit of the tartars becomes relaxed through the luxury of riches and pride. (3:109) lastly, if any one wishes to maintain that the jews, from this or from any other cause, have been chosen by god for ever, i will not gainsay him if he will admit that this choice, whether temporary or eternal, has no regard, in so far as it is peculiar to the jews, to aught but dominion and physical advantages (for such alone can one nation be distinguished from another), whereas in regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a with the rest, and god has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[4:0] chapter iv. of the divine law. (4:1) the word law, taken in the abstract, means that by which an individual, or all things, or as many things as belong to a particular species, act in one and the same fixed and definite manner, which manner depends either on natural necessity or on human decree. (2) a law which depends on natural necessity is one which necessarily follows from the nature, or from the definition of the thing in question; a law which depends on human decree, and which is more correctly called an ordinance, is one which men have laid down for themselves and others in order to live more safely or conveniently, or from some similar reason. (4:3) for example, the law that all bodies impinging on lesser bodies, lose as much of their own motion as they communicate to the latter is a universal law of all bodies, and depends on natural necessity. (4) so, too, the law that a man in remembering one thing, straightway remembers another either like it, or which he had perceived simultaneously with it, is a law which necessarily follows from the nature of man. (5) but the law that men must yield, or be compelled to yield, somewhat of their natural right, and that they bind themselves to live in a certain way, depends on human decree. (6) now, though i freely admit that all things are predetermined by universal natural laws to exist and operate in a given, fixed, and definite manner, i still assert that the laws i have just mentioned depend on human decree. [4:1] 1. (4:7)because man, in so far as he is a part of nature, constitutes a part of the power of nature. (8) whatever, therefore, follows necessarily from the necessity of human nature (that is, from nature herself, in so far as we conceive of her as acting through man) follows, even though it be necessarily, from human power. (9) hence the sanction of such laws may very well be said to depend on man's decree, for it principally depends on the power of the human mind; so that the human mind in respect to its perception of things as true and false, can readily be conceived as without such laws, but not without necessary law as we have just defined it. 2. (4:10)i have stated that these laws depend on human decree because it is well to define and explain things by their proximate causes. (11) the general consideration of fate and the concatenation of causes would aid us very little in forming and arranging our ideas concerning particular questions. (12) let us add that as to the actual coordination and concatenation of things, that is how things are ordained and linked together, we are obviously ignorant; therefore, it is more profitable for right living, nay, it is necessary for us to consider things as contingent. (13) so much about law in the abstract. (4:14) now the word law seems to be only applied to natural phenomena by analogy, and is commonly taken to signify a command which men can either obey or neglect, inasmuch as it restrains human nature within certain originally exceeded limits, and therefore lays down no rule beyond human strength. (15) thus it is expedient to define law more particularly as a plan of life laid down by man for himself or others with a certain object. (16) however, as the true object of legislation is only perceived by a few, and most men are almost incapable of grasping it, though they live under its conditions, legislators, with a view to exacting general obedience, have wisely put forward another object, very different from that which necessarily follows from the nature of law: they promise to the observers of the law that which the masses chiefly desire, and threaten its violators with that which they chiefly fear: thus endeavouring to restrain the masses, as far as may be, like a horse with a curb; whence it follows that the word law is chiefly applied to the modes of life enjoined on men by the sway of others; hence those who obey the law are said to live under it and to be under compulsion. (4:17) in truth, a man who renders everyone their due because he fears the gallows, acts under the sway and compulsion of others, and cannot be called just. (18) but a man who does the same from a knowledge of the true reason for laws and their necessity, acts from a firm purpose and of his own accord, and is therefore properly called just. (19) this, i take it, is paul's meaning when he says, that those who live under the law cannot be justified through the law, for justice, as commonly defined, is the constant and perpetual will to render every man his due. (4:20) thus solomon says (prov. xxi:15), "it is a joy to the just to do judgment," but the wicked fear. (ii:[4:2] ) (4:21) law, then, being a plan of living which men have for a certain object laid down for themselves or others, may, as it seems, be divided into human law and divine law. (22) by human law i mean a plan of living which serves only to render life and the state secure. (23) by divine law i mean that which only regards the highest good, in other words, the true knowledge of god and love. (4:24) i call this law divine because of the nature of the highest good, which i will here shortly explain as clearly as i can. (4:25) inasmuch as the intellect is the best part of our being, it is evident that we should make every effort to perfect it as far as possible if we desire to search for what is really profitable to us. (26) for in intellectual perfection the highest good should consist. (27) now, since all our knowledge, and the certainty which removes every doubt, depend solely on the knowledge of god;firstly, because without god nothing can exist or be conceived; secondly, because so long as we have no clear and distinct idea of god we may remain in universal doubt it follows that our highest good and perfection also depend solely on the knowledge of god. (4:28) further, since without god nothing can exist or be conceived, it is evident that all natural phenomena involve and express the conception of god as far as their essence and perfection extend, so that we have greater and more perfect knowledge of god in proportion to our knowledge of natural phenomena: conversely (since the knowledge of an effect through its cause is the same thing as the knowledge of a particular property of a cause) the greater our knowledge of natural phenomena, the more perfect is our knowledge of the essence of god (which is the cause of all things). (4:29) so, then, our highest good not only depends on the knowledge of god, but wholly consists therein; and it further follows that man is perfect or the reverse in proportion to the nature and perfection of the object of his special desire; hence the most perfect and the chief sharer in the highest blessedness is he who prizes above all else, and takes especial delight in, the intellectual knowledge of god, the most perfect being. (4:30) hither, then, our highest good and our highest blessedness aim namely, to the knowledge and love of god; therefore the means demanded by this aim of all human actions, that is, by god in so far as the idea of him is in us, may be called the commands of god, because they proceed, as it were, from god himself, inasmuch as he exists in our minds, and the plan of life which has regard to this aim may be fitly called the law of god. (4:31) the nature of the means, and the plan of life which this aim demands, how the foundations of the best states follow its lines, and how men's life is conducted, are questions pertaining to general ethics. (32) here i only proceed to treat of the divine law in a particular application. (33) as the love of god is man's highest happiness and blessedness, and the ultimate end and aim of all human actions, it follows that he alone lives by the divine law who loves god not from fear of punishment, or from love of any other object, such as sensual pleasure, fame, or the like; but solely because he has knowledge of god, or is convinced that the knowledge and love of god is the highest good. (4:34) the sum and chief precept, then, of the divine law is to love god as the highest good, namely, as we have said, not from fear of any pains and penalties, or from the love of any other object in which we desire to take pleasure. (35) the idea of god lays down the rule that god is our highest good in other words, that the knowledge and love of god is the ultimate aim to which all our actions should be directed. (4:36) the worldling cannot understand these things, they appear foolishness to him. because he has too meager a knowledge of god, and also because in this highest good he can discover nothing which he can handle or eat, or which affects the fleshly appetites wherein he chiefly delights, for it consists solely in thought and the pure reason. (37) they, on the other hand, who know that they possess no greater gift than intellect and sound reason, will doubtless accept what i have said without question. (4:38) we have now explained that wherein the divine law chiefly consists, and what are human laws, namely, all those which have a different aim unless they have been ratified by revelation, for in this respect also things are referred to god (as we have shown above) and in this sense the law of moses, although it was not universal, but entirely adapted to the disposition and particular preservation of a single people, may yet be called a law of god or divine law, inasmuch as we believe that it was ratified by prophetic insight. [4:3] (39) if we consider the nature of natural divine law as we have just explained it, we shall see: i. (4:40) that it is universal or common to all men, for we have deduced it from universal human nature. ii. (4:41) that it does not depend on the truth of any historical narrative whatsoever, for inasmuch as this natural divine law is comprehended solely by the consideration of human nature, it is plain that we can conceive it as existing as well in adam as in any other man, as well in a man living among his fellows, as in a man who lives by himself. (4:42) the truth of a historical narrative, however assured, cannot give us the knowledge nor consequently the love of god, for love of god springs from knowledge of him, and knowledge of him should be derived from general ideas, in themselves and known, so that the truth of a historical narrative is very far from being a necessary requisite for our attaining our highest good. (4:43) still, though the truth of histories cannot give us the knowledge and love of god, i do not deny that reading them is very useful with a view to life in the world, for the more we have observed and known of men's customs and circumstances, which are best revealed by their actions, the more warily we shall be able to order our lives among them, and so far as reason dictates to adapt our actions to their dispositions. iii. (4:44)we see that this natural divine law does not demand the performance of ceremonies that is, actions in themselves indifferent, which are called good from the fact of their institution, or actions symbolizing something for salvation or (if one prefers this definition) actions of which the meaning surpasses human understanding. (45) the natural light of reason does not demand anything which it is itself unable to supply, but only such as it can very clearly show to be good, or a means to our blessedness. (46) such things as are good simply because they have been commanded or instituted, or as being symbols of something good, are mere shadows which cannot be reckoned among actions that are the offsprings as it were, or fruit of a sound mind and of intellect. (47) there is no need for me to go into this now in more detail. iv. (4:48) lastly, we see that the highest reward of the divine law is the law itself, namely, to know god and to love him of our free choice, and with an undivided and fruitful spirit; while its penalty is the absence of these things, and being in bondage to the flesh that is, having an inconstant and wavering spirit. [4:4] (4:49) these points being noted, i must now inquire: i. (50) whether by the natural light of reason we can conceive of god as a law-giver or potentate ordaining laws for men? ii. (51) what is the teaching of holy writ concerning this natural light of reason and natural law? iii. (52) with what objects were ceremonies formerly instituted? iv. (53) lastly, what is the good gained by knowing the sacred histories and believing them? (4:54) of the first two i will treat in this chapter, of the remaining two in the following one. (55) our conclusion about the first is easily deduced from the nature of god's will, which is only distinguished from his understanding in relation to our intellect that is, the will and the understanding of god are in reality one and the same, and are only distinguished in relation to our thoughts which we form concerning god's understanding. (4:56) for instance, if we are only looking to the fact that the nature of a triangle is from eternity contained in the divine nature as an eternal verity, we say that god possesses the idea of a triangle, or that he understands the nature of a triangle; but if afterwards we look to the fact that the nature of a triangle is thus contained in the divine nature, solely by the necessity of the divine nature, and not by the necessity of the nature and essence of a triangle in fact, that the necessity of a triangle's essence and nature, in so far as they are conceived of as eternal verities, depends solely on the necessity of the divine nature and intellect, we then style god's will or decree, that which before we styled his intellect. (57) wherefore we make one and the same affirmation concerning god when we say that he has from eternity decreed that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, as when we say that he has understood it. [4:5] (58) hence the affirmations and the negations of god always involve necessity or truth; so that, for example, if god said to adam that he did not wish him to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it would have involved a contradiction that adam should have been able to eat of it, and would therefore have been impossible that he should have so eaten, for the divine command would have involved an eternal necessity and truth. (4:59) but since scripture nevertheless narrates that god did give this command to adam, and yet that none the less adam ate of the tree, we must perforce say that god revealed to adam the evil which would surely follow if he should eat of the tree, but did not disclose that such evil would of necessity come to pass. (60) thus it was that adam took the revelation to be not an eternal and necessary truth, but a law that is, an ordinance followed by gain or loss, not depending necessarily on the nature of the act performed, but solely on the will and absolute power of some potentate, so that the revelation in question was solely in relation to adam, and solely through his lack of knowledge a law, and god was, as it were, a lawgiver and potentate. (4:61) from the same cause, namely, from lack of knowledge, the decalogue in relation to the hebrews was a law, for since they knew not the existence of god as an eternal truth, they must have taken as a law that which was revealed to them in the decalogue, namely, that god exists, and that god only should be worshipped. (62) but if god had spoken to them without the intervention of any bodily means, immediately they would have perceived it not as a law, but as an eternal truth. (4:63) what we have said about the israelites and adam, applies also to all the prophets who wrote laws in god's name they did not adequately conceive god's decrees as eternal truths. (64) for instance, we must say of moses that from revelation, from the basis of what was revealed to him, he perceived the method by which the israelitish nation could best be united in a particular territory, and could form a body politic or state, and further that he perceived the method by which that nation could best be constrained to obedience; but he did not perceive, nor was it revealed to him, that this method was absolutely the best, nor that the obedience of the people in a certain strip of territory would necessarily imply the end he had in view. (4:65) wherefore he perceived these things not as eternal truths, but as precepts and ordinances, and he ordained them as laws of god, and thus it came to be that he conceived god as a ruler, a legislator, a king, as merciful, just, &c., whereas such qualities are simply attributes of human nature, and utterly alien from the nature of the deity. (64:6)thus much we may affirm of the prophets who wrote laws in the name of god; but we must not affirm it of christ, for christ, although he too seems to have written laws in the name of god, must be taken to have had a clear and adequate perception, for christ was not so much a prophet as the mouthpiece of god. (67) for god made revelations to mankind through christ as he had before done through angels that is, a created voice, visions, &c. (68) it would be as unreasonable to say that god had accommodated his revelations to the opinions of christ as that he had before accommodated them to the opinions of angels (that is, of a created voice or visions) as matters to be revealed to the prophets, a wholly absurd hypothesis. (4:69) moreover, christ was sent to teach not only the jews but the whole human race, and therefore it was not enough that his mind should be accommodated to the opinions the jews alone, but also to the opinion and fundamental teaching common to the whole human race in other words, to ideas universal and true. (70) inasmuch as god revealed himself to christ, or to christ's mind immediately, and not as to the prophets through words and symbols, we must needs suppose that christ perceived truly what was revealed, in other words, he understood it, for a, matter is understood when it is perceived simply by the mind without words or symbols. (4:71) christ, then, perceived (truly and adequately) what was revealed, and if he ever proclaimed such revelations as laws, he did so because of the ignorance and obstinacy of the people, acting in this respect the part of god; inasmuch as he accommodated himself to the comprehension of the people, and though he spoke somewhat more clearly than the other prophets, yet he taught what was revealed obscurely, and generally through parables, especially when he was speaking to those to whom it was not yet given to understand the kingdom of heaven. (see matt. xiii:10, &c.) (72) to those to whom it was given to understand the mysteries of heaven, he doubtless taught his doctrines as eternal truths, and did not lay them down as laws, thus freeing the minds of his hearers from the bondage of that law which he further confirmed and established. (4:73) paul apparently points to this more than once (e.g. rom. vii:6, and iii:28), though he never himself seems to wish to speak openly, but, to quote his own words (rom. iii:6, and vi:19), "merely humanly." (74) this he expressly states when he calls god just, and it was doubtless in concession to human weakness that he attributes mercy, grace, anger, and similar qualities to god, adapting his language to the popular mind, or, as he puts it (1 cor. iii:1, 2), to carnal men. [4:6] (75) in rom. ix:18, he teaches undisguisedly that god's auger and mercy depend not on the actions of men, but on god's own nature or will; further, that no one is justified by the works of the law, but only by faith, which he seems to identify with the full assent of the soul; lastly, that no one is blessed unless he have in him the mind of christ (rom. viii:9), whereby he perceives the laws of god as eternal truths. (76) we conclude, therefore, that god is described as a lawgiver or prince, and styled just, merciful, &c., merely in concession to popular understanding, and the imperfection of popular knowledge; that in reality god acts and directs all things simply by the necessity of his nature and perfection, and that his decrees and volitions are eternal truths, and always involve necessity. (77) so much for the first point which i wished to explain and demonstrate. (4:78) passing on to the second point, let us search the sacred pages for their teaching concerning the light of nature and this divine law. (79) the first doctrine we find in the history of the first man, where it is narrated that god commanded adam not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; this seems to mean that god commanded adam to do and to seek after righteousness because it was good, not because the contrary was evil: that is, to seek the good for its own sake, not from fear of evil. (4:80) we have seen that he who acts rightly from the true knowledge and love of right, acts with freedom and constancy, whereas he who acts from fear of evil, is under the constraint of evil, and acts in bondage under external control. (81) so that this commandment of god to adam comprehends the whole divine natural law, and absolutely agrees with the dictates of the light of nature; nay, it would be easy to explain on this basis the whole history or allegory of the first man. (4:82) but i prefer to pass over the subject in silence, because, in the first place, i cannot be absolutely certain that my explanation would be in accordance with the intention of the sacred writer; and, secondly, because many do not admit that this history is an allegory, maintaining it to be a simple narrative of facts. (83) it will be better, therefore, to adduce other passages of scripture, especially such as were written by him, who speaks with all the strength of his natural understanding, in which he surpassed all his contemporaries, and whose sayings are accepted by the people as of equal weight with those of the prophets. (84) i mean solomon, whose prudence and wisdom are commended in scripture rather than his piety and gift of prophecy. (4:85) life being taken to mean the true life (as is evident from deut. xxx:19), the fruit of the understanding consists only in the true life, and its absence constitutes punishment. (86) all this absolutely agrees with what was set out in our fourth point concerning natural law. (4:87) moreover our position that it is the well-spring of life, and that the intellect alone lays down laws for the wise, is plainly taught by the sage, for he says (prov. xiii14): "the law of the wise is a fountain of life" that is, as we gather from the preceding text, the understanding. (4:88) in chap. iii:13, he expressly teaches that the understanding renders man blessed and happy, and gives him true peace of mind. "happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding," for "wisdom gives length of days, and riches and honour; her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths peace" (xiiii6, 17). (89) according to solomon, therefore, it is only the wise who live in peace and equanimity, not like the wicked whose minds drift hither and thither, and (as isaiah says, chap. ivii:20) "are like the troubled sea, for them there is no peace." (4:90) lastly, we should especially note the passage in chap. ii. of solomon's proverbs which most clearly confirms our contention: "if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding . . . then shalt thou understand the fear of the lord, and find the knowledge of god; for the lord giveth wisdom; out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding." (91) these words clearly enunciate (1), that wisdom or intellect alone teaches us to fear god wisely that is, to worship him truly; (2), that wisdom and knowledge flow from god's mouth, and that god bestows on us this gift; this we have already shown in proving that our understanding and our knowledge depend on, spring from, and are perfected by the idea or knowledge of god, and nothing else. (4:92) solomon goes on to say in so many words that this knowledge contains and involves the true principles of ethics and politics: "when wisdom entereth into thy heart, and knowledge is pleasant to thy soul, discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee, then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity, yea every good path." (93) all of which is in obvious agreement with natural knowledge: for after we have come to the understanding of things, and have tasted the excellence of knowledge, she teaches us ethics and true virtue. (4:94) thus the happiness and the peace of him who cultivates his natural understanding lies, according to solomon also, not so much under the dominion of fortune (or god's external aid) as in inward personal virtue (or god's internal aid), for the latter can to a great extent be preserved by vigilance, right action, and thought. (4:95) lastly, we must by no means pass over the passage in paul's epistle to the romans, i:20, in which he says: "for the invisible things of god from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead; so that they are without excuse, because, when they knew god, they glorified him not as god, neither were they thankful." (4:96) these words clearly show that everyone can by the light of nature clearly understand the goodness and the eternal divinity of god, and can thence know and deduce what they should seek for and what avoid; wherefore the apostle says that they are without excuse and cannot plead ignorance, as they certainly might if it were a question of supernatural light and the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of christ. (97) "wherefore," he goes on to say (ib. 24), "god gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts;" and so on, through the rest of the chapter, he describes the vices of ignorance, and sets them forth as the punishment of ignorance. (98) this obviously agrees with the verse of solomon, already quoted, "the instruction of fools is folly," so that it is easy to understand why paul says that the wicked are without excuse. (4:99) as every man sows so shall he reap: out of evil, evils necessarily spring, unless they be wisely counteracted. (100) thus we see that scripture literally approves of the light of natural reason and the natural divine law, and i have fulfilled the promises made at the beginning of this chapter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[5:0] chapter v. of the ceremonial law. (5:1) in the foregoing chapter we have shown that the divine law, which renders men truly blessed, and teaches them the true life, is universal to all men; nay, we have so intimately deduced it from human nature that it must be esteemed innate, and, as it were, ingrained in the human mind. (5:2) but with regard to the ceremonial observances which were ordained in the old testament for the hebrews only, and were so adapted to their state that they could for the most part only be observed by the society as a whole and not by each individual, it is evident that they formed no part of the divine law, and had nothing to do with blessedness and virtue, but had reference only to the election of the hebrews, that is (as i have shown in chap. ii.), to their temporal bodily happiness and the tranquillity of their kingdom, and that therefore they were only valid while that kingdom lasted. (3) if in the old testament they are spoken of as the law of god, it is only because they were founded on revelation, or a basis of revelation. (4) still as reason, however sound, has little weight with ordinary theologians, i will adduce the authority of scripture for what i here assert, and will further show, for the sake of greater clearness, why and how these ceremonials served to establish and preserve the jewish kingdom. [5:1] (5) isaiah teaches most plainly that the divine law in its strict sense signifies that universal law which consists in a true manner of life, and does not signify ceremonial observances. (6) in chapter i:10, the prophet calls on his countrymen to hearken to the divine law as he delivers it, and first excluding all kinds of sacrifices and all feasts, he at length sums up the law in these few words, "cease to do evil, learn to do well: seek judgment, relieve the oppressed." (5:7) not less striking testimony is given in psalm xl:79, where the psalmist addresses god: "sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened; burnt offering and sin-offering hast thou not required; i delight to do thy will, 0 my god; yea, thy law is within my heart." (8) here the psalmist reckons as the law of god only that which is inscribed in his heart, and excludes ceremonies therefrom, for the latter are good and inscribed on the heart only from the fact of their institution, and not because of their intrinsic value. (5:9) other passages of scripture testify to the same truth, but these two will suffice. (10) we may also learn from the bible that ceremonies are no aid to blessedness, but only have reference to the temporal prosperity of the kingdom; for the rewards promised for their observance are merely temporal advantages and delights, blessedness being reserved for the universal divine law. (11) in all the five books commonly attributed to moses nothing is promised, as i have said, beyond temporal benefits, such as honours, fame, victories, riches, enjoyments, and health. (12) though many moral precepts besides ceremonies are contained in these five books, they appear not as moral doctrines universal to all men, but as commands especially adapted to the understanding and character of the hebrew people, and as having reference only to the welfare of the kingdom. (5:13) for instance, moses does not teach the jews as a prophet not to kill or to steal, but gives these commandments solely as a lawgiver and judge; he does not reason out the doctrine, but affixes for its non-observance a penalty which may and very properly does vary in different nations. (14) so, too, the command not to commit adultery is given merely with reference to the welfare of the state; for if the moral doctrine had been intended, with reference not only to the welfare of the state, but also to the tranquillity and blessedness of the individual, moses would have condemned not merely the outward act, but also the mental acquiescence, as is done by christ, who taught only universal moral precepts, and for this cause promises a spiritual instead of a temporal reward. (5:15) christ, as i have said, was sent into the world, not to preserve the state nor to lay down laws, but solely to teach the universal moral law, so we can easily understand that he wished in nowise to do away with the law of moses, inasmuch as he introduced no new laws of his own his sole care was to teach moral doctrines, and distinguish them from the laws of the state; for the pharisees, in their ignorance, thought that the observance of the state law and the mosaic law was the sum total of morality; whereas such laws merely had reference to the public welfare, and aimed not so much at instructing the jews as at keeping them under constraint. (16) but let us return to our subject, and cite other passages of scripture which set forth temporal benefits as rewards for observing the ceremonial law, and blessedness as reward for the universal law. (5:17) none of the prophets puts the point more clearly than isaiah. (18) after condemning hypocrisy he commends liberty and charity towards one's self and one's neighbours, and promises as a reward: "then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy health shall spring forth speedily, thy righteousness shall go before thee, and the glory of the lord shall be thy reward" (chap. lviii:8). (5:19) shortly afterwards he commends the sabbath, and for a due observance of it, promises: "then shalt thou delight thyself in the lord, and i will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of jacob thy father: for the mouth of the lord has spoken it." (20) thus the prophet for liberty bestowed, and charitable works, promises a healthy mind in a healthy body, and the glory of the lord even after death; whereas, for ceremonial exactitude, he only promises security of rule, prosperity, and temporal happiness. (5:21) in psalms xv. and xxiv. no mention is made of ceremonies, but only of moral doctrines, inasmuch as there is no question of anything but blessedness, and blessedness is symbolically promised: it is quite certain that the expressions, "the hill of god," and "his tents and the dwellers therein," refer to blessedness and security of soul, not to the actual mount of jerusalem and the tabernacle of moses, for these latter were not dwelt in by anyone, and only the sons of levi ministered there. (22) further, all those sentences of solomon to which i referred in the last chapter, for the cultivation of the intellect and wisdom, promise true blessedness, for by wisdom is the fear of god at length understood, and the knowledge of god found. (5:23) that the jews themselves were not bound to practise their ceremonial observances after the destruction of their kingdom is evident from jeremiah. (24) for when the prophet saw and foretold that the desolation of the city was at hand, he said that god only delights in those who know and understand that he exercises loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, and that such persons only are worthy of praise. (jer. ix:23.) (5:25) as though god had said that, after the desolation of the city, he would require nothing special from the jews beyond the natural law by which all men are bound. [5:2] (26) the new testament also confirms this view, for only moral doctrines are therein taught, and the kingdom of heaven is promised as a reward, whereas ceremonial observances are not touched on by the apostles, after they began to preach the gospel to the gentiles. (27) the pharisees certainly continued to practise these rites after the destruction of the kingdom, but more with a view of opposing the christians than of pleasing god: for after the first destruction of the city, when they were led captive to babylon, not being then, so far as i am aware, split up into sects, they straightway neglected their rites, bid farewell to the mosaic law, buried their national customs in oblivion as being plainly superfluous, and began to mingle with other nations, as we may abundantly learn from ezra and nehemiah. (5:28) we cannot, therefore, doubt that they were no more bound by the law of moses, after the destruction of their kingdom, than they had been before it had been begun, while they were still living among other peoples before the exodus from egypt, and were subject to no special law beyond the natural law, and also, doubtless, the law of the state in which they were living in so far as it was consonant with the divine natural law. (5:29) as to the fact that the patriarchs offered sacrifices, i think they did so for the purpose of stimulating their piety, for their minds had been accustomed from childhood to the idea of sacrifice, which we know had been universal from the time of enoch; and thus they found in sacrifice their most powerful incentive. (30) the patriarchs, then, did not sacrifice to god at the bidding of a divine right, or as taught by the basis of the divine law, but simply in accordance with the custom of the time; and, if in so doing they followed any ordinance, it was simply the ordinance of the country they were living in, by which (as we have seen before in the case of melchisedek) they were bound. [5:3] (31) i think that i have now given scriptural authority for my view: it remains to show why and how the ceremonial observances tended to preserve and confirm the hebrew kingdom; and this i can very briefly do on grounds universally accepted. (5:32) the formation of society serves not only for defensive purposes, but is also very useful, and, indeed, absolutely necessary, as rendering possible the division of labour. (33) if men did not render mutual assistance to each other, no one would have either the skill or the time to provide for his own sustenance and preservation: for all men are not equally apt for all work, and no one would be capable of preparing all that he individually stood in need of. (34) strength and time, i repeat, would fail, if every one had in person to plough, to sow, to reap, to grind corn, to cook, to weave, to stitch, and perform the other numerous functions required to keep life going; to say nothing of the arts and sciences which are also entirely necessary to the perfection and blessedness of human nature. (35) we see that peoples living, in uncivilized barbarism lead a wretched and almost animal life, and even they would not be able to acquire their few rude necessaries without assisting one another to a certain extent. (5:36) now if men were so constituted by nature that they desired nothing but what is designated by true reason, society would obviously have no need of laws: it would be sufficient to inculcate true moral doctrines; and men would freely, without hesitation, act in accordance with their true interests. (37) but human nature is framed in a different fashion: every one, indeed, seeks his own interest, but does not do so in accordance with the dictates of sound reason, for most men's ideas of desirability and usefulness are guided by their fleshly instincts and emotions, which take no thought beyond the present and the immediate object. (5:38) therefore, no society can exist without government, and force, and laws to restrain and repress men's desires and immoderate impulses. (39) still human nature will not submit to absolute repression. (40) violent governments, as seneca says, never last long; the moderate governments endure. (41) so long as men act simply from fear they act contrary to their inclinations, taking no thought for the advantages or necessity of their actions, but simply endeavouring to escape punishment or loss of life. (5:42) they must needs rejoice in any evil which befalls their ruler, even if it should involve themselves; and must long for and bring about such evil by every means in their power. (43) again, men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by their equals. (44) lastly, it is exceedingly difficult to revoke liberties once granted. (5:45) from these considerations it follows, firstly, that authority should either be vested in the hands of the whole state in common, so that everyone should be bound to serve, and yet not be in subjection to his equals; or else, if power be in the hands of a few, or one man, that one man should be something above average humanity, or should strive to get himself accepted as such. (5:46) secondly, laws should in every government be so arranged that people should be kept in bounds by the hope of some greatly desired good, rather than by fear, for then everyone will do his duty willingly. (5:47) lastly, as obedience consists in acting at the bidding of external authority, it would have no place in a state where the government is vested in the whole people, and where laws are made by common consent. (48) in such a society the people would remain free, whether the laws were added to or diminished, inasmuch as it would not be done on external authority, but their own free consent. (5:49) the reverse happens when the sovereign power is vested in one man, for all act at his bidding; and, therefore, unless they had been trained from the first to depend on the words of their ruler, the latter would find it difficult, in case of need, to abrogate liberties once conceded, and impose new laws. (5:50) from these universal considerations, let us pass on to the kingdom of the jews. (51) the jews when they first came out of egypt were not bound by any national laws, and were therefore free to ratify any laws they liked, or to make new ones, and were at liberty to set up a government and occupy a territory wherever they chose. (5:52) however, they were entirely unfit to frame a wise code of laws and to keep the sovereign power vested in the community; they were all uncultivated and sunk in a wretched slavery, therefore the sovereignty was bound to remain vested in the hands of one man who would rule the rest and keep them under constraint, make laws and interpret them. (53) this sovereignty was easily retained by moses, because he surpassed the rest in virtue and persuaded the people of the fact, proving it by many testimonies (see exod. chap. xiv., last verse, and chap. xix:9). (5:54) he then, by the divine virtue he possessed, made laws and ordained them for the people, taking the greatest care that they should be obeyed willingly and not through fear, being specially induced to adopt this course by the obstinate nature of the jews, who would not have submitted to be ruled solely by constraint; and also by the imminence of war, for it is always better to inspire soldiers with a thirst for glory than to terrify them with threats; each man will then strive to distinguish himself by valour and courage, instead of merely trying to escape punishment. (55) moses, therefore, by his virtue and the divine command, introduced a religion, so that the people might do their duty from devotion rather than fear. (5:56) further, he bound them over by benefits, and prophesied many advantages in the future; nor were his laws very severe, as anyone may see for himself, especially if he remarks the number of circumstances necessary in order to procure the conviction of an accused person. (5:57) lastly, in order that the people which could not govern itself should be entirely dependent on its ruler, he left nothing to the free choice of individuals (who had hitherto been slaves); the people could do nothing but remember the law, and follow the ordinances laid down at the good pleasure of their ruler; they were not allowed to plough, to sow, to reap, nor even to eat; to clothe themselves, to shave, to rejoice, or in fact to do anything whatever as they liked, but were bound to follow the directions given in the law; and not only this, but they were obliged to have marks on their door-posts, on their hands, and between their eyes to admonish them to perpetual obedience. (5:58) this, then, was the object of the ceremonial law, that men should do nothing of their own free will, but should always act under external authority, and should continually confess by their actions and thoughts that they were not their own masters, but were entirely under the control of others. (5:59) from all these considerations it is clearer than day that ceremonies have nothing to do with a state of blessedness, and that those mentioned in the old testament, i.e. the whole mosaic law, had reference merely to the government of the jews, and merely temporal advantages. [5:6] (60) as for the christian rites, such as baptism, the lord's supper, festivals, public prayers, and any other observances which are, and always have been, common to all christendom, if they were instituted by christ or his apostles (which is open to doubt), they were instituted as external signs of the universal church, and not as having anything to do with blessedness, or possessing any sanctity in themselves. [5:5] (61) therefore, though such ceremonies were not ordained for the sake of upholding a government, they were ordained for the preservation of a society, and accordingly he who lives alone is not bound by them: nay, those who live in a country where the christian religion is forbidden, are bound to abstain from such rites, and can none the less live in a state of blessedness. (62) we have an example of this in japan, where the christian religion is forbidden, and the dutch who live there are enjoined by their east india company not to practise any outward rites of religion. (5:63) i need not cite other examples, though it would be easy to prove my point from the fundamental principles of the new testament, and to adduce many confirmatory instances; but i pass on the more willingly, as i am anxious to proceed to my next proposition. (64) i will now, therefore, pass on to what i proposed to treat of in the second part of this chapter, namely, what persons are bound to believe in the narratives contained in scripture, and how far they are so bound. (65) examining this question by the aid of natural reason, i will proceed as follows. (5:66) if anyone wishes to persuade his fellows for or against anything which is not self-evident, he must deduce his contention from their admissions, and convince them either by experience or by ratiocination; either by appealing to facts of natural experience, or to self-evident intellectual axioms. (67) now unless the experience be of such a kind as to be clearly and distinctly understood, though it may convince a man, it will not have the same effect on his mind and disperse the clouds of his doubt so completely as when the doctrine taught is deduced entirely from intellectual axioms that is, by the mere power of the understanding and logical order, and this is especially the case in spiritual matters which have nothing to do with the senses. (5:68) but the deduction of conclusions from general truths "a priori," usually requires a long chain of arguments, and, moreover, very great caution, acuteness, and self-restraint qualities which are not often met with; therefore people prefer to be taught by experience rather than deduce their conclusion from a few axioms, and set them out in logical order. (5:69) whence it follows, that if anyone wishes to teach a doctrine to a whole nation (not to speak of the whole human race), and to be understood by all men in every particular, he will seek to support his teaching with experience, and will endeavour to suit his reasonings and the definitions of his doctrines as far as possible to the understanding of the common people, who form the majority of mankind, and he will not set them forth in logical sequence nor adduce the definitions which serve to establish them. (5:70) otherwise he writes only for the learned that is, he will be understood by only a small proportion of the human race. (5:71) all scripture was written primarily for an entire people, and secondarily for the whole human race; therefore its contents must necessarily be adapted as far as possible to the understanding of the masses, and proved only by examples drawn from experience. (5:72) we will explain ourselves more clearly. (73) the chief speculative doctrines taught in scripture are the existence of god, or a being who made all things, and who directs and sustains the world with consummate wisdom; furthermore, that god takes the greatest thought for men, or such of them as live piously and honourably, while he punishes, with various penalties, those who do evil, separating them from the good. (74) all this is proved in scripture entirely through experience-that is, through the narratives there related. (5:75) no definitions of doctrine are given, but all the sayings and reasonings are adapted to the understanding of the masses. (76) although experience can give no clear knowledge of these things, nor explain the nature of god, nor how he directs and sustains all things, it can nevertheless teach and enlighten men sufficiently to impress obedience and devotion on their minds. (5:77) it is now, i think, sufficiently clear what persons are bound to believe in the scripture narratives, and in what degree they are so bound, for it evidently follows from what has been said that the knowledge of and belief in them is particularly necessary to the masses whose intellect is not capable of perceiving things clearly and distinctly. (78) further, he who denies them because he does not believe that god exists or takes thought for men and the world, may be accounted impious; but a man who is ignorant of them, and nevertheless knows by natural reason that god exists, as we have said, and has a true plan of life, is altogether blessed yes, more blessed than the common herd of believers, because besides true opinions he possesses also a true and distinct conception. (79) lastly, he who is ignorant of the scriptures and knows nothing by the light of reason, though he may not be impious or rebellious, is yet less than human and almost brutal, having none of god's gifts. (5:80) we must here remark that when we say that the knowledge of the sacred narrative is particularly necessary to the masses, we do not mean the knowledge of absolutely all the narratives in the bible, but only of the principal ones, those which, taken by themselves, plainly display the doctrine we have just stated, and have most effect over men's minds. (5:81) if all the narratives in scripture were necessary for the proof of this doctrine, and if no conclusion could be drawn consideration of every one of the histories contained in the sacred writings, truly the conclusion and demonstration of such doctrine would over-task the understanding and strength not only of the masses, but of humanity; who is there who could give attention to all the narratives at once, and to all the circumstances, and all the scraps of doctrine to be elicited from such a host of diverse histories? (5:82) i cannot believe that the men who have left us the bible as we have it were so abounding in talent that they attempted setting about such a method of demonstration, still less can i suppose that we cannot understand scriptural doctrine till we have given heed to the quarrels of isaac, the advice of achitophel to absalom, the civil war between jews and israelites, and other similar chronicles; nor can i think that it was more difficult to teach such doctrine by means of history to the jews of early times, the contemporaries of moses, than it was to the contemporaries of esdras. (5:83) but more will be said on this point hereafter, we may now only note that the masses are only bound to know those histories which can most powerfully dispose their mind to obedience and devotion. (5:84) however, the masses are not sufficiently skilled to draw conclusions from what they read, they take more delight in the actual stories, and in the strange and unlooked-for issues of events than in the doctrines implied; therefore, besides reading these narratives, they are always in need of pastors or church ministers to explain them to their feeble intelligence. (5:85) but not to wander from our point, let us conclude with what has been our principal object namely, that the truth of narratives, be they what they may, has nothing to do with the divine law, and serves for nothing except in respect of doctrine, the sole element which makes one history better than another. (86) the narratives in the old and new testaments surpass profane history, and differ among themselves in merit simply by reason of the salutary doctrines which they inculcate. (5:87) therefore, if a man were to read the scripture narratives believing the whole of them, but were to give no heed to the doctrines they contain, and make no amendment in his life, he might employ himself just as profitably in reading the koran or the poetic drama, or ordinary chronicles, with the attention usually given to such writings; on the other hand, if a man is absolutely ignorant of the scriptures, and none the less has right opinions and a true plan of life, he is absolutely blessed and truly possesses in himself the spirit of christ. (5:88) the jews are of a directly contrary way of thinking, for they hold that true opinions and a true plan of life are of no service in attaining blessedness, if their possessors have arrived at them by the light of reason only, and not like the documents prophetically revealed to moses. (5:89) maimonides ventures openly to make this assertion: "every man who takes to heart the seven precepts and diligently follows them, is counted with the pious among the nation, and an heir of the world to come; that is to say, if he takes to heart and follows them because god ordained them in the law, and revealed them to us by moses, because they were of aforetime precepts to the sons of noah: but he who follows them as led thereto by reason, is not counted as a dweller among the pious or among the wise of the nations." (5:90) such are the words of maimonides, to which r. joseph, the son of shem job, adds in his book which he calls "kebod elohim, or god's glory," that although aristotle (whom he considers to have written the best ethics and to be above everyone else) has not omitted anything that concerns true ethics, and which he has adopted in his own book, carefully following the lines laid down, yet this was not able to suffice for his salvation, inasmuch as he embraced his doctrines in accordance with the dictates of reason and not as divine documents prophetically revealed. (5:91) however, that these are mere figments, and are not supported by scriptural authority will, i think, be sufficiently evident to the attentive reader, so that an examination of the theory will be sufficient for its refutation. (92) it is not my purpose here to refute the assertions of those who assert that the natural light of reason can teach nothing, of any value concerning the true way of salvation. (93) people who lay no claims to reason for themselves, are not able to prove by reason this their assertion; and if they hawk about something superior to reason, it is a mere figment, and far below reason, as their general method of life sufficiently shows. (94) but there is no need to dwell upon such persons. (5:95) i will merely add that we can only judge of a man by his works. (96) if a man abounds in the fruits of the spirit, charity, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, chastity, against which, as paul says (gal. v:22), there is no law, such an one, whether he be taught by reason only or by the scripture only, has been in very truth taught by god, and is altogether blessed. (97) thus have i said all that i undertook to say concerning divine law. end of part 1 of 4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------author's endnotes to the theologico-political treatise chapters i to v chapter i [endnote 1] (1) the word naw-vee', strong:5030, is rightly interpreted by rabbi salomon jarchi, but the sense is hardly caught by aben ezra, who was not so good a hebraist. (2) we must also remark that this hebrew word for prophecy has a universal meaning and embraces all kinds of prophecy. (3) other terms are more special, and denote this or that sort of prophecy, as i believe is well known to the learned. [endnote 2] (1) "although, ordinary knowledge is divine, its professors cannot be called prophets." that is, interpreters of god. (2) for he alone is an interpreter of god, who interprets the decrees which god has revealed to him, to others who have not received such revelation, and whose belief, therefore, rests merely on the prophet's authority and the confidence reposed in him. (3) if it were otherwise, and all who listen to prophets became prophets themselves, as all who listen to philosophers become philosophers, a prophet would no longer be the interpreter of divine decrees, inasmuch as his hearers would know the truth, not on the, authority of the prophet, but by means of actual divine revelation and inward testimony. (4) thus the sovereign powers are the interpreters of their own rights of sway, because these are defended only by their authority and supported by their testimony. [endnote 3] (1) "prophets were endowed with a peculiar and extraordinary power." (2) though some men enjoy gifts which nature has not bestowed on their fellows, they are not said to surpass the bounds of human nature, unless their special qualities are such as cannot be said to be deducible from the definition of human nature. (3) for instance, a giant is a rarity, but still human. (4) the gift of composing poetry extempore is given to very few, yet it is human. (5) the same may, therefore, be said of the faculty possessed by some of imagining things as vividly as though they saw them before them, and this not while asleep, but while awake. (6) but if anyone could be found who possessed other means and other foundations for knowledge, he might be said to transcend the limits of human nature. chapter iii. [endnote 4] (1) in gen. xv. it is written that god promised abraham to protect him, and to grant him ample rewards. (2) abraham answered that he could expect nothing which could be of any value to him, as he was childless and well stricken in years. [endnote 5] (1) that a keeping of the commandments of the old testament is not sufficient for eternal life, appears from mark x:21. end of endnotes to part 1 of 4. chapters i to v. ____________________________________________________________________________ end of a theologico-political treatise part 1 "joseph b. yesselman" <jyselman@erols.com> august 26, 1997 a theologico-political treatise part 2 of 4 chapters vi to x published 1670 anonymously baruch spinoza 1632 1677 ____________________________________________________________________________ jby notes: 1. text was scanned from benedict de spinoza's "a theologico-political treatise", and "a political treatise" as published in dover's isbn 0-486-20249-6. 2. the text is that of the translation of "a theologico-political treatise" by r. h. m. elwes. this text is "an unabridged and unaltered republication of the bohn library edition originally published by george bell and sons in 1883." 3. jby added sentence numbers and search strings. 4. sentence numbers are shown thus (yy:xx). yy = chapter number when given. xx = sentence number. 5. search strings are enclosed in [square brackets]: a. roman numeral, when given before a search string, indicates part number. if a different part, bring up that part and then search. b. include square brackets in search string. c. do not include part number in search string. d. search down with the same string to facilitate return. 6. please report any errors in the text, search formatting, or sentence numbering to jyselman@erols.com. 7. html versions: part 2 http://www.erols.com/jyselman/ttpelws2.htm ____________________________________________________________________________ [6:0] chapter vi [7:0] chapter vii [8:0] chapter viii [9:0] chapter ix [10:0] chapter x ____________________________________________________________________________ table of contents: search strings are shown thus [*:x]. search forward and back with the same string. include square brackets in search string. [6:0] chapter vi of miracles. [6:1] confused ideas of the vulgar on the subject. [6:2] miracle in the sense of a contravention of natural laws an absurdity. [6:3] in the sense of an event, whose cause is unknown, less edifying than an event better understood. [6:4] god's providence identical with the course of nature. [6:5] how scripture miracles may be interpreted. [7:0] chapter vii of the interpretation of scripture. [7:1] current systems of interpretation erroneous. [7:2] only true system to interpret it by itself. [7:3] reasons why this system cannot now be carried out in its entirety. [7:4] yet these difficulties do not interfere with our understanding the plainest and most important passages. [7:5] rival systems examined that of a supernatural faculty being necessary refuted. [7:6] that of maimonides. [7:7] refuted. [7:8] traditions of the pharisees and the papists rejected. [8:0] chapter viii. of the authorship of the pentateuch, and the other historical books of the old testament. [8:1] the pentateuch not written by moses. [8:2] his actual writings distinct. [8:3] traces of late authorship in the other historical books. [8:4] all the historical books the work of one man. [8:5] probably ezra. [8:6] who compiled first the book of deuteronomy. [8:7] and then a history, distinguishing the books by the names of their subjects. [9:0] chapter ix. other questions about these books. [9:1] that these books have not been thoroughly revised and made to agree. [9:2] that there are many doubtful readings. [9:3] that the existing marginal notes are often such. [9:4] the other explanations of these notes refuted. [9:5] the hiatus. [10:0] chapter x.an examination of the remaining books of the old testament according to the preceding method. [10:1] chronicles, psalms, proverbs. [10:2] isaiah, jeremiah. [10:3] ezekiel, hosea. [10:4] other prophets, jonah, job. [10:5] daniel, ezra, nehemiah, esther. [10:6] the author declines to undertake a similar detailed examination of the new testament. [author's endnotes] to the treatise ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[6:0] chapter vi. of miracles. (6:1) as men are accustomed to call divine the knowledge which transcends human understanding, so also do they style divine, or the work of god, anything of which the cause is not generally known: for the masses think that the power and providence of god are most clearly displayed by events that are extraordinary and contrary to the conception they have formed of nature, especially if such events bring them any profit or convenience: they think that the clearest possible proof of god's existence is afforded when nature, as they suppose, breaks her accustomed order, and consequently they believe that those who explain or endeavour to understand phenomena or miracles through their natural causes are doing away with god and his providence. (6:2) they suppose, forsooth, that god is inactive so long as nature works in her accustomed order, and vice versa, that the power of nature and natural causes are idle so long as god is acting: thus they imagine two powers distinct one from the other, the power of god and the power of nature, though the latter is in a sense determined by god, or (as most people believe now) created by him. (3) what they mean by either, and what they understand by god and nature they do not know, except that they imagine the power of god to be like that of some royal potentate, and nature's power to consist in force and energy. [6:1] (4) the masses then style unusual phenomena, "miracles," and partly from piety, partly for the sake of opposing the students of science, prefer to remain in ignorance of natural causes, and only to hear of those things which they know least, and consequently admire most. (5) in fact, the common people can only adore god, and refer all things to his power by removing natural causes, and conceiving things happening out of their due course, and only admires the power of god when the power of nature is conceived of as in subjection to it. (6:6) this idea seems to have taken its rise among the early jews who saw the gentiles round them worshipping visible gods such as the sun, the moon, the earth, water, air, &c., and in order to inspire the conviction that such divinities were weak and inconstant, or changeable, told how they themselves were under the sway of an invisible god, and narrated their miracles, trying further to show that the god whom they worshipped arranged the whole of nature for their sole benefit: this idea was so pleasing to humanity that men go on to this day imagining miracles, so that they may believe themselves god's favourites, and the final cause for which god created and directs all things. (6:7) what pretension will not people in their folly advance! (8) they have no single sound idea concerning either god or nature, they confound god's decrees with human decrees, they conceive nature as so limited that they believe man to be its chief part! (9) i have spent enough space in setting forth these common ideas and prejudices concerning nature and miracles, but in order to afford a regular demonstration i will show [6:2] i. (6:10) that nature cannot be contravened, but that she preserves a fixed and immutable order, and at the same time i will explain what is meant by a miracle. ii. (6:11) ii. that god's nature and existence, and consequently his providence cannot be known from miracles, the fixed and immutable order of nature. iii. (6:12) that by the decrees and volitions, and consequently the providence of god, scripture (as i will prove by scriptural examples) means nothing but nature's order following necessarily from her eternal laws. iv. (6:13) lastly, i will treat of the method of interpreting scriptural miracles, and the chief points to be noted concerning the narratives of them. (6:14) such are the principal subjects which will be discussed in this chapter, and which will serve, i think, not a little to further the object of this treatise. (15) our first point is easily proved from what we showed in chap. iv. (i:[4:2] ) about divine law namely, that all that god wishes or determines involves eternal necessity and truth, for we demonstrated that god's understanding is identical with his will, and that it is the same thing to say that god wills a thing, as to say that he understands it; hence, as it follows necessarily from the divine nature and perfection that god understands a thing as it is, it follows no less necessarily that he wills it as it is. (6:16) now, as nothing is necessarily true save only by divine decree, it is plain that the universal laws of nature are decrees of god following from the necessity and perfection of the divine nature. (17) hence, any event happening in nature which contravened nature's universal laws, would necessarily also contravene the divine decree, nature, and understanding; or if anyone asserted that god acts in contravention to the laws of nature, he, ipso facto, would be compelled to assert that god acted against his own nature an evident absurdity. (6:18) one might easily show from the same premises that the power and efficiency of nature are in themselves the divine power and efficiency, and that the divine power is the very essence of god, but this i gladly pass over for the present. (6:19) nothing, then, comes to pass in nature (n.b. i do not mean here by "nature," merely matter and its modifications, but infinite other things besides matter.) in contravention to her universal laws, nay, everything agrees with them and follows from them, for whatsoever comes to pass, comes to pass by the will and eternal decree of god; that is, as we have just pointed out, whatever comes to pass, comes to pass according to laws and rules which involve eternal necessity and truth; nature, therefore, always observes laws and rules which involve eternal necessity and truth, although they may not all be known to us, and therefore she keeps a fixed and mutable order. (6:20) nor is there any sound reason for limiting the power and efficacy of nature, and asserting that her laws are fit for certain purposes, but not for all; for as the efficacy and power of nature, are the very efficacy and power of god, and as the laws and rules of nature are the decrees of god, it is in every way to be believed that the power of nature is infinite, and that her laws are broad enough to embrace everything conceived by the divine intellect; the only alternative is to assert that god has created nature so weak, and has ordained for her laws so barren, that he is repeatedly compelled to come afresh to her aid if he wishes that she should be preserved, and that things should happen as he desires: a conclusion, in my opinion, very far removed from reason. (6:21) further, as nothing happens in nature which does not follow from her laws, and as her laws embrace everything conceived by the divine intellect, and lastly, as nature preserves a fixed and immutable order; it most clearly follows that miracles are only intelligible as in relation to human opinions, and merely mean events of which the natural cause cannot be explained by a reference to any ordinary occurrence, either by us, or at any rate, by the writer and narrator of the miracle. [6:3] (22) we may, in fact, say that a miracle is an event of which the causes cannot be explained by the natural reason through a reference to ascertained workings of nature; but since miracles were wrought according to the understanding of the masses, who are wholly ignorant of the workings of nature, it is certain that the ancients took for a miracle whatever they could not explain by the method adopted by the unlearned in such cases, namely, an appeal to the memory, a recalling of something similar, which is ordinarily regarded without wonder; for most people think they sufficiently understand a thing when they have ceased to wonder at it. (6:23) the ancients, then, and indeed most men up to the present day, had no other criterion for a miracle; hence we cannot doubt that many things are narrated in scripture as miracles of which the causes could easily be explained by reference to ascertained workings of nature. (6:24) we have hinted as much in chap. ii., in speaking of the sun standing still in the time of joshua, and to say on the subject when we come to treat of the interpretation of miracles later on in this chapter. (6:25) it is now time to pass on to the second point, and show that we cannot gain an understanding of god's essence, existence, or providence by means of miracles, but that these truths are much better perceived through the fixed and immutable order of nature. (8:26) i thus proceed with the demonstration. (27) as god's existence is not self-evident [endnote 6] it must necessarily be inferred from ideas so firmly and incontrovertibly true, that no power can be postulated or conceived sufficient to impugn them. (6:28) they ought certainly so to appear to us when we infer from them god's existence, if we wish to place our conclusion beyond the reach of doubt; for if we could conceive that such ideas could be impugned by any power whatsoever, we should doubt of their truth, we should doubt of our conclusion, namely, of god's existence, and should never be able to be certain of anything. (6:29) further, we know that nothing either agrees with or is contrary to nature, unless it agrees with or is contrary to these primary ideas; wherefore if we would conceive that anything could be done in nature by any power whatsoever which would be contrary to the laws of nature, it would also be contrary to our primary ideas, and we should have either to reject it as absurd, or else to cast doubt (as just shown) on our primary ideas, and consequently on the existence of god, and on everything howsoever perceived. (6:30) therefore miracles, in the sense of events contrary to the laws of nature, so far from demonstrating to us the existence of god, would, on the contrary, lead us to doubt it, where, otherwise, we might have been absolutely certain of it, as knowing that nature follows a fixed and immutable order. (6:31) let us take miracle as meaning that which cannot be explained through natural causes. (32) this may be interpreted in two senses: either as that which has natural causes, but cannot be examined by the human intellect; or as that which has no cause save god and god's will. (33) but as all things which come to pass through natural causes, come to pass also solely through the will and power of god, it comes to this, that a miracle, whether it has natural causes or not, is a result which cannot be explained by its cause, that is a phenomenon which surpasses human understanding; but from such a phenomenon, and certainly from a result surpassing our understanding, we can gain no knowledge. (6:34) for whatsoever we understand clearly and distinctly should be plain to us either in itself or by means of something else clearly and distinctly understood; wherefore from a miracle or a phenomenon which we cannot understand, we can gain no knowledge of god's essence, or existence, or indeed anything about god or nature; whereas when we know that all things are ordained and ratified by god, that the operations of nature follow from the essence of god, and that the laws of nature are eternal decrees and volitions of god, we must perforce conclude that our knowledge of god, and of god's will increases in proportion to our knowledge and clear understanding of nature, as we see how she depends on her primal cause, and how she works according to eternal law. (6:35) wherefore so far as our understanding goes, those phenomena which we clearly and distinctly understand have much better right to be called works of god, and to be referred to the will of god than those about which we are entirely ignorant, although they appeal powerfully to the imagination, and compel men's admiration. (6:36) it is only phenomena that we clearly and distinctly understand, which heighten our knowledge of god, and most clearly indicate his will and decrees. (37) plainly, they are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of god; this is, truly, a ridiculous way of expressing ignorance. (6:38) again, even supposing that some conclusion could be drawn from miracles, we could not possibly infer from them the existence of god: for a miracle being an event under limitations is the expression of a fixed and limited power; therefore we could not possibly infer from an effect of this kind the existence of a cause whose power is infinite, but at the utmost only of a cause whose power is greater than that of the said effect. (6:39) i say at the utmost, for a phenomenon may be the result of many concurrent causes, and its power may be less than the power of the sum of such causes, but far greater than that of any one of them taken individually. (6:39a) on the other hand, the laws of nature, as we have shown, extend over infinity, and are conceived by us as, after a fashion, eternal, and nature works in accordance with them in a fixed and immutable order; therefore, such laws indicate to us in a certain degree the infinity, the eternity, and the immutability of god. (6:40) we may conclude, then, that we cannot gain knowledge of the existence and providence of god by means of miracles, but that we can far better infer them from the fixed and immutable order of nature. (41) by miracle, i here mean an event which surpasses, or is thought to surpass, human comprehension: for in so far as it is supposed to destroy or interrupt the order of nature or her laws, it not only can give us no knowledge of god, but, contrariwise, takes away that which we naturally have, and makes us doubt of god and everything else. (6:42) neither do i recognize any difference between an event against the laws of nature and an event beyond the laws of nature (that is, according to some, an event which does not contravene nature, though she is inadequate to produce or effect it) for a miracle is wrought in, and not beyond nature, though it may be said in itself to be above nature, and, therefore, must necessarily interrupt the order of nature, which otherwise we conceive of as fixed and unchangeable, according to god's decrees. (6:43) if, therefore, anything should come to pass in nature which does not follow from her laws, it would also be in contravention to the order which god has established in nature for ever through universal natural laws: it would, therefore, be in contravention to god's nature and laws, and, consequently, belief in it would throw doubt upon everything, and lead to atheism. (6:44) i think i have now sufficiently established my second point, so that we can again conclude that a miracle, whether in contravention to, or beyond, nature, is a mere absurdity; and, therefore, that what is meant in scripture by a miracle can only be a work of nature, which surpasses, or is believed to surpass, human comprehension. (45) before passing on to my third point, i will adduce scriptural authority for my assertion that god cannot be known from miracles. (46) scripture nowhere states the doctrine openly, but it can readily be inferred from several passages. (6:47) firstly, that in which moses commands (deut. xiii.) that a false prophet should be put to death, even though he work miracles: "if there arise a prophet among you, and giveth thee a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder come to pass, saying, let us go after other gods . . . thou shalt not hearken unto the voice of that prophet; for the lord your god proveth you, and that prophet shall be put to death." (48) from this it clearly follows that miracles could be wrought even by false prophets; and that, unless men are honestly endowed with the true knowledge and love of god, they may be as easily led by miracles to follow false gods as to follow the true god; for these words are added: "for the lord your god tempts you, that he may know whether you love him with all your heart and with all your mind." (6:49) further, the israelites, from all their miracles, were unable to form a sound conception of god, as their experience testified: for when they had persuaded themselves that moses had departed from among them, they petitioned aaron to give them visible gods; and the idea of god they had formed as the result of all their miracles was a calf! (6:50) asaph, though he had heard of so many miracles, yet doubted of the providence of god, and would have turned himself from the true way, if he had not at last come to understand true blessedness. (see ps. lxxiii.) (51) solomon, too, at a time when the jewish nation was at the height of its prosperity, suspects that all things happen by chance. (see eccles. iii:19, 20, 21; and chap. ix:2, 3, &c.) (6:52) lastly, nearly all the prophets found it very hard to reconcile the order of nature and human affairs with the conception they had formed of god's providence, whereas philosophers who endeavour to understand things by clear conceptions of them, rather than by miracles, have always found the task extremely easy at least, such of them as place true happiness solely in virtue and peace of mind, and who aim at obeying nature, rather than being obeyed by her. (6:53) such persons rest assured that god directs nature according to the requirements of universal laws, not according to the requirements of the particular laws of human nature, and trial, therefore, god's scheme comprehends, not only the human race, but the whole of nature. (6:54) it is plain, then, from scripture itself, that miracles can give no knowledge of god, nor clearly teach us the providence of god. (55) as to the frequent statements in scripture, that god wrought miracles to make himself plain to man as in exodus x:2, where he deceived the egyptians, and gave signs of himself, that the israelites might know that he was god,it does not, therefore, follow that miracles really taught this truth, but only that the jews held opinions which laid them easily open to conviction by miracles. (6:56) we have shown in chap. ii. that the reasons assigned by the prophets, or those which are formed from revelation, are not assigned in accordance with ideas universal and common to all, but in accordance with the accepted doctrines, however absurd, and with the opinions of those to whom the revelation was given, or those whom the holy spirit wished to convince. (6:57) this we have illustrated by many scriptural instances, and can further cite paul, who to the greeks was a greek, and to the jews a jew. (58) but although these miracles could convince the egyptians and jews from their standpoint, they could not give a true idea and knowledge of god, but only cause them to admit that there was a deity more powerful than anything known to them, and that this deity took special care of the jews, who had just then an unexpectedly happy issue of all their affairs. (6:59) they could not teach them that god cares equally for all, for this can be taught only by philosophy: the jews, and all who took their knowledge of god's providence from the dissimilarity of human conditions of life and the inequalities of fortune, persuaded themselves that god loved the jews above all men, though they did not surpass their fellows in true human perfection. [6:4] (60) i now go on to my third point, and show from scripture that the decrees and mandates of god, and consequently his providence, are merely the order of nature that is, when scripture describes an event as accomplished by god or god's will, we must understand merely that it was in accordance with the law and order of nature, not, as most people believe, that nature had for a season ceased to act, or that her order was temporarily interrupted. (6:61) but scripture does not directly teach matters unconnected with its doctrine, wherefore it has no care to explain things by their natural causes, nor to expound matters merely speculative. (62) wherefore our conclusion must be gathered by inference from those scriptural narratives which happen to be written more at length and circumstantially than usual. (63) of these i will cite a few. (6:64) in the first book of samuel, ix:15, 16, it is related that god revealed to samuel that he would send saul to him, yet god did not send saul to samuel as people are wont to send one man to another. (65) his "sending" was merely the ordinary course of nature. (66) saul was looking for the asses he had lost, and was meditating a return home without them, when, at the suggestion of his servant, he went to the prophet samuel, to learn from him where he might find them. (67) from no part of the narrative does it appear that saul had any command from god to visit samuel beyond this natural motive. (6:68) in psalm cv. 24 it is said that god changed the hearts of the egyptians, so that they hated the israelites. (69) this was evidently a natural change, as appears from exodus, chap.i., where we find no slight reason for the egyptians reducing the israelites to slavery. (6:70) in genesis ix:13, god tells noah that he will set his bow in the cloud; this action of god's is but another way of expressing the refraction and reflection which the rays of the sun are subjected to in drops of water. (6:71) in psalm cxlvii:18, the natural action and warmth of the wind, by which hoar frost and snow are melted, are styled the word of the lord, and in verse 15 wind and cold are called the commandment and word of god. (6:72) in psalm civ:4, wind and fire are called the angels and ministers of god, and various other passages of the same sort are found in scripture, clearly showing that the decree, commandment, fiat, and word of god are merely expressions for the action and order of nature. (6:73) thus it is plain that all the events narrated in scripture came to pass naturally, and are referred directly to god because scripture, as we have shown, does not aim at explaining things by their natural causes, but only at narrating what appeals to the popular imagination, and doing so in the manner best calculated to excite wonder, and consequently to impress the minds of the masses with devotion. (6:74) if, therefore, events are found in the bible which we cannot refer to their causes, nay, which seem entirely to contradict the order of nature, we must not come to a stand, but assuredly believe that whatever did really happen happened naturally. (75) this view is confirmed by the fact that in the case of every miracle there were many attendant circumstances, though these were not always related, especially where the narrative was of a poetic character. (6:76) the circumstances of the miracles clearly show, i maintain, that natural causes were needed. (77) for instance, in order to infect the egyptians with blains, it was necessary that moses should scatter ashes in the air (exod. ix: 10); the locusts also came upon the land of egypt by a command of god in accordance with nature, namely, by an east wind blowing for a whole day and night; and they departed by a very strong west wind (exod. x:14, 19). (6:78) by a similar divine mandate the sea opened a way for the jews (exo. xiv:21), namely, by an east wind which blew very strongly all night. (6:79) so, too, when elisha would revive the boy who was believed to be dead, he was obliged to bend over him several times until the flesh of the child waxed warm, and at last he opened his eyes (2 kings iv:34, 35). (6:80) again, in john's gospel (chap. ix.) certain acts are mentioned as performed by christ preparatory to healing the blind man, and there are numerous other instances showing that something further than the absolute fiat of god is required for working a miracle. (6:81) wherefore we may believe that, although the circumstances attending miracles are not related always or in full detail, yet a miracle was never performed without them. (6:82) this is confirmed by exodus xiv:27, where it is simply stated that "moses stretched forth his hand, and the waters of the sea returned to their strength in the morning," no mention being made of a wind; but in the song of moses (exod. xv:10) we read, "thou didst blow with thy wind (i.e. with a very strong wind), and the sea covered them." (83) thus the attendant circumstance is omitted in the history, and the miracle is thereby enhanced. (6:84) but perhaps someone will insist that we find many things in scripture which seem in nowise explicable by natural causes, as for instance, that the sins of men and their prayers can be the cause of rain and of the earth's fertility, or that faith can heal the blind, and so on. (85) but i think i have already made sufficient answer: i have shown that scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and the style which has most power to move men, and especially uneducated men, to devotion; and therefore it speaks inaccurately of god and of events, seeing that its object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and lay hold of the imagination. (6:86) if the bible were to describe the destruction of an empire in the style of political historians, the masses would remain unstirred, whereas the contrary is the case when it adopts the method of poetic description, and refers all things immediately to god. (87) when, therefore, the bible says that the earth is barren because of men's sins, or that the blind were healed by faith, we ought to take no more notice than when it says that god is angry at men's sins, that he is sad, that he repents of the good he has promised and done; or that on seeing a sign he remembers something he had promised, and other similar expressions, which are either thrown out poetically or related according to the opinion and prejudices of the writer. [6:5] (88) we may, then, be absolutely certain that every event which is truly described in scripture necessarily happened, like everything else, according to natural laws; and if anything is there set down which can be proved in set terms to contravene the order of nature, or not to be deducible therefrom, we must believe it to have been foisted into the sacred writings by irreligious hands; for whatsoever is contrary to nature is also contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd, and, ipso facto, to be rejected. (6:89) there remain some points concerning the interpretation of miracles to be noted, or rather to be recapitulated, for most of them have been already stated. (90) these i proceed to discuss in the fourth division of my subject, and i am led to do so lest anyone should, by wrongly interpreting a miracle, rashly suspect that he has found something in scripture contrary to human reason. (6:91) it is very rare for men to relate an event simply as it happened, without adding any element of their own judgment. (92) when they see or hear anything new, they are, unless strictly on their guard, so occupied with their own preconceived opinions that they perceive something quite different from the plain facts seen or heard, especially if such facts surpass the comprehension of the beholder or hearer, and, most of all, if he is interested in their happening in a given way. (6:93) thus men relate in chronicles and histories their own opinions rather than actual events, so that one and the same event is so differently related by two men of different opinions, that it seems like two separate occurrences; and, further, it is very easy from historical chronicles to gather the personal opinions of the historian. (6:94) i could cite many instances in proof of this from the writings both of natural philosophers and historians, but i will content myself with one only from scripture, and leave the reader to judge of the rest. (6:95) in the time of joshua the hebrews held the ordinary opinion that the sun moves with a daily motion, and that the earth remains at rest; to this preconceived opinion they adapted the miracle which occurred during their battle with the five kings. (96) they did not simply relate that that day was longer than usual, but asserted that the sun and moon stood still, or ceased from their motion a statement which would be of great service to them at that time in convincing and proving by experience to the gentiles, who worshipped the sun, that the sun was under the control of another deity who could compel it to change its daily course. (6:97) thus, partly through religious motives, partly through preconceived opinions, they conceived of and related the occurrence as something quite different from what really happened. (6:98) thus in order to interpret the scriptural miracles and understand from the narration of them how they really happened, it is necessary to know the opinions of those who first related them, and have recorded them for us in writing, and to distinguish such opinions from the actual impression made upon their senses, otherwise we shall confound opinions and judgments with the actual miracle as it really occurred: nay, further, we shall confound actual events with symbolical and imaginary ones. (6:99) for many things are narrated in scripture as real, and were believed to be real, which were in fact only symbolical and imaginary. (100) as, for instance, that god came down from heaven (exod. xix:28, deut. v:28), and that mount sinai smoked because god descended upon it surrounded with fire; or, again that elijah ascended into heaven in a chariot of fire, with horses of fire; all these things were assuredly merely symbols adapted to the opinions of those who have handed them down to us as they were represented to them, namely, as real. (101) all who have any education know that god has no right hand nor left; that he is not moved nor at rest, nor in a particular place, but that he is absolutely infinite and contains in himself all perfections. (6:102) these things, i repeat, are known to whoever judges of things by the perception of pure reason, and not according as his imagination is affected by his outward senses. (103) following the example of the masses who imagine a bodily deity, holding a royal court with a throne on the convexity of heaven, above the stars, which are believed to be not very far off from the earth. (6:104) to these and similar opinions very many narrations in scripture are adapted, and should not, therefore, be mistaken by philosophers for realities. (6:105) lastly, in order to understand, in the case of miracles, what actually took place, we ought to be familiar with jewish phrases and metaphors; anyone who did not make sufficient allowance for these, would be continually seeing miracles in scripture where nothing of the kind is intended by the writer; he would thus miss the knowledge not only of what actually happened, but also of the mind of the writers of the sacred text. (6:106) for instance, zechariah speaking of some future war says (chap. xiv;7): "it shall be one day which shall be known to the lord, not day nor night; but at even time it shall be light." (106a) in these words he seems to predict a great miracle, yet he only means that the battle will be doubtful the whole day, that the issue will be known only to god, but that in the evening they will gain the victory: the prophets frequently used to predict victories and defeats of the nations in similar phrases. (6:107) thus isaiah, describing the destruction of babylon, says (chap. xiii.): "the stars of heaven, and the constellations thereof, shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine." (108) now i suppose no one imagines that at the destruction of babylon these phenomena actually occurred any more than that which the prophet adds, "for i will make the heavens to tremble, and remove the earth out of her place." (6:109) so, too, isaiah in foretelling to the jews that they would return from babylon to jerusalem in safety, and would not suffer from thirst on their journey, says: "and they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts; he caused the waters to flow out of the rocks for them; he clave the rocks, and the waters gushed out." (110) these words merely mean that the jews, like other people, found springs in the desert, at which they quenched their thirst; for when the jews returned to jerusalem with the consent of cyrus, it is admitted that no similar miracles befell them. (6:111) in this way many occurrences in the bible are to be regarded merely as jewish expressions. (112) there is no need for me to go through them in detail; but i will call attention generally to the fact that the jews employed such phrases not only rhetorically, but also, and indeed chiefly, from devotional motives. (113) such is the reason for the substitution of "bless god" for "curse god" in 1 kings xxi:10, and job ii:9, and for all things being referred to god, whence it appears that the bible seems to relate nothing but miracles, even when speaking of the most ordinary occurrences, as in the examples given above. (6:114) hence we must believe that when the bible says that the lord hardened pharaoh's heart, it only means that pharaoh was obstinate; when it says that god opened the windows of heaven, it only means that it rained very hard, and so on. (115) when we reflect on these peculiarities, and also on the fact that most things are related very shortly, with very little details and almost in abridgments, we shall see that there is hardly anything in scripture which can be proved contrary to natural reason, while, on the other hand, many things which before seemed obscure, will after a little consideration be understood and easily explained. (6:116) i think i have now very clearly explained all that i proposed to explain, but before i finish this chapter i would call attention to the fact that i have adopted a different method in speaking of miracles to that which i employed in treating of prophecy. (117) of prophecy i have asserted nothing which could not be inferred from promises revealed in scripture, whereas in this chapter i have deduced my conclusions solely from the principles ascertained by the natural light of reason. (6:118) i have proceeded in this way advisedly, for prophecy, in that it surpasses human knowledge, is a purely theological question; therefore, i knew that i could not make any assertions about it, nor learn wherein it consists, except through deductions from premises that have been revealed; therefore i was compelled to collate the history of prophecy, and to draw therefrom certain conclusions which would teach me, in so far as such teaching is possible, the nature and properties of the gift. (6:119) but in the case of miracles, as our inquiry is a question purely philosophical (namely, whether anything can happen which contravenes, or does not follow from the laws of nature), i was not under any such necessity: i therefore thought it wiser to unravel the difficulty through premises ascertained and thoroughly known by the natural light of reason. (119a) i say i thought it wiser, for i could also easily have solved the problem merely from the doctrines and fundamental principles of scripture: in order that everyone may acknowledge this, i will briefly show how it could be done. (6:120) scripture makes the general assertion in several passages that nature's course is fixed and unchangeable. (121) in ps. cxlviii:6, for instance, and jer. xxxi:35. (122) the wise man also, in eccles. i:10, distinctly teaches that "there is nothing new under the sun," and in verses 11, 12, illustrating the same idea, he adds that although something occasionally happens which seems new, it is not really new, but "hath been already of old time, which was before us, whereof there is no remembrance, neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that come after." (123) again in chap. iii:11, he says, "god hath made everything beautiful in his time," and immediately afterwards adds, "i know that whatsoever god doeth, it shall be for ever; nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it." (6:124) now all these texts teach most distinctly that nature preserves a fixed and unchangeable order, and that god in all ages, known and unknown, has been the same; further, that the laws of nature are so perfect, that nothing can be added thereto nor taken therefrom; and, lastly, that miracles only appear as something new because of man's ignorance. (6:125) such is the express teaching of scripture: nowhere does scripture assert that anything happens which contradicts, or cannot follow from the laws of nature; and, therefore, we should not attribute to it such a doctrine. (6:126) to these considerations we must add, that miracles require causes and attendant circumstances, and that they follow, not from some mysterious royal power which the masses attribute to god, but from the divine rule and decree, that is (as we have shown from scripture itself) from the laws and order of nature; lastly, that miracles can be wrought even by false prophets, as is proved from deut. xiii. and matt. xxiv:24. (6:127) the conclusion, then, that is most plainly put before us is, that miracles were natural occurrences, and must therefore be so explained as to appear neither new (in the words of solomon) nor contrary to nature, but, as far as possible, in complete agreement with ordinary events. (128) this can easily be done by anyone, now that i have set forth the rules drawn from scripture. (6:129) nevertheless, though i maintain that scripture teaches this doctrine, i do not assert that it teaches it as a truth necessary to salvation, but only that the prophets were in agreement with ourselves on the point; therefore everyone is free to think on the subject as he likes, according as he thinks it best for himself, and most likely to conduce to the worship of god and to singlehearted religion. (6:130) this is also the opinion of josephus, for at the conclusion of the second book of his "antiquities," he writes: let no man think this story incredible of the sea's dividing to save these people, for we find it in ancient records that this hath been seen before, whether by god's extraordinary will or by the course of nature it is indifferent. (6:131) the same thing happened one time to the macedonians, under the command of alexander, when for want of another passage the pamphylian sea divided to make them way; god's providence making use of alexander at that time as his instrument for destroying the persian empire. (132) this is attested by all the historians who have pretended to write the life of that prince. (133) but people are at liberty to think what they please." (6:134) such are the words of josephus, and such is his opinion on faith in miracles. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[7:0] chapter vii. of the interpretation of scripture (7:1) when people declare, as all are ready to do, that the bible is the word of god teaching man true blessedness and the way of salvation, they evidently do not mean what they say; for the masses take no pains at all to live according to scripture, and we see most people endeavouring to hawk about their own commentaries as the word of god, and giving their best efforts, under the guise of religion, to compelling others to think as they do: we generally see, i say, theologians anxious to learn how to wring their inventions and sayings out of the sacred text, and to fortify them with divine authority. [7:1] (2) such persons never display less scruple or more zeal than when they are interpreting scripture or the mind of the holy ghost; if we ever see them perturbed, it is not that they fear to attribute some error to the holy spirit, and to stray from the right path, but that they are afraid to be convicted of error by others, and thus to overthrow and bring into contempt their own authority. (3) but if men really believed what they verbally testify of scripture, they would adopt quite a different plan of life: their minds would not be agitated by so many contentions, nor so many hatreds, and they would cease to be excited by such a blind and rash passion for interpreting the sacred writings, and excogitating novelties in religion. (7:4) on the contrary, they would not dare to adopt, as the teaching of scripture, anything which they could not plainly deduce therefrom: lastly, those sacrilegious persons who have dared, in several passages, to interpolate the bible, would have shrunk from so great a crime, and would have stayed their sacrilegious hands. (7:5) ambition and unscrupulousness have waxed so powerful, that religion is thought to consist, not so much in respecting the writings of the holy ghost, as in defending human commentaries, so that religion is no longer identified with charity, but with spreading discord and propagating insensate hatred disguised under the name of zeal for the lord, and eager ardour. (7:6) to these evils we must add superstition, which teaches men to despise reason and nature, and only to admire and venerate that which is repugnant to both: whence it is not wonderful that for the sake of increasing the admiration and veneration felt for scripture, men strive to explain it so as to make it appear to contradict, as far as possible, both one and the other: thus they dream that most profound mysteries lie hid in the bible, and weary themselves out in the investigation of these absurdities, to the neglect of what is useful. (7:7) every result of their diseased imagination they attribute to the holy ghost, and strive to defend with the utmost zeal and passion; for it is an observed fact that men employ their reason to defend conclusions arrived at by reason, but conclusions arrived at by the passions are defended by the passions. (7:8) if we would separate ourselves from the crowd and escape from theological prejudices, instead of rashly accepting human commentaries for divine documents, we must consider the true method of interpreting scripture and dwell upon it at some length: for if we remain in ignorance of this we cannot know, certainly, what the bible and the holy spirit wish to teach. (7:9)i may sum up the matter by saying that the method of interpreting scripture does not widely differ from the method of interpreting nature in fact, it is almost the same. (10) for as the interpretation of nature consists in the examination of the history of nature, and therefrom deducing definitions of natural phenomena on certain fixed axioms, so scriptural interpretation proceeds by the examination of scripture, and inferring the intention of its authors as a legitimate conclusion from its fundamental principles. (7:11) by working in this manner everyone will always advance without danger of error that is, if they admit no principles for interpreting scripture, and discussing its contents save such as they find in scripture itself and will be able with equal security to discuss what surpasses our understanding, and what is known by the natural light of reason. [7:2] (12) in order to make clear that such a method is not only correct, but is also the only one advisable, and that it agrees with that employed in interpreting nature, i must remark that scripture very often treats of matters which cannot be deduced from principles known to reason: for it is chiefly made up of narratives and revelation: the narratives generally contain miracles that is, as we have shown in the last chapter, relations of extraordinary natural occurrences adapted to the opinions and judgment of the historians who recorded them: the revelations also were adapted to the opinions of the prophets, as we showed in chap. ii., and in themselves surpassed human comprehension. (7:13) therefore the knowledge of all these that is, of nearly the whole contents of scripture, must be sought from scripture alone, even as the knowledge of nature is sought from nature. (14) as for the moral doctrines which are also contained in the bible, they may be demonstrated from received axioms, but we cannot prove in the same manner that scripture intended to teach them, this can only be learned from scripture itself. (7:15) if we would bear unprejudiced witness to the divine origin of scripture, we must prove solely on its own authority that it teaches true moral doctrines, for by such means alone can its divine origin be demonstrated: we have shown that the certitude of the prophets depended chiefly on their having minds turned towards what is just and good, therefore we ought to have proof of their possessing this quality before we repose faith in them. (7:16) from miracles god's divinity cannot be proved, as i have already shown, and need not now repeat, for miracles could be wrought by false prophets. (17) wherefore the divine origin of scripture must consist solely in its teaching true virtue. (7:18) but we must come to our conclusion simply on scriptural grounds, for if we were unable to do so we could not, unless strongly prejudiced accept the bible and bear witness to its divine origin. (7:19) our knowledge of scripture must then be looked for in scripture only. (7:20) lastly, scripture does not give us definition of things any more than nature does: therefore, such definitions must be sought in the latter case from the diverse workings of nature; in the former case, from the various narratives about the given subject which occur in the bible. (7:21) the universal rule, then, in interpreting scripture is to accept nothing as an authoritative scriptural statement which we do not perceive very clearly when we examine it in the light of its history. (22) what i mean by its history, and what should be the chief points elucidated, i will now explain. (7:23) the history of a scriptural statement comprises (7:23a) i. the nature and properties of the language in which the books of the bible were written, and in which their authors were, accustomed to speak. (24) we shall thus be able to investigate every expression by comparison with common conversational usages. (7:25) now all the writers both of the old testament and the new were hebrews: therefore, a knowledge of the hebrew language is before all things necessary, not only for the comprehension of the old testament, which was written in that tongue, but also of the new: for although the latter was published in other languages, yet its characteristics are hebrew. (7:26) ii. an analysis of each book and arrangement of its contents under heads; so that we may have at hand the various texts which treat of a given subject. (27) lastly, a note of all the passages which are ambiguous or obscure, or which seem mutually contradictory. (7:28) i call passages clear or obscure according as their meaning is inferred easily or with difficulty in relation to the context, not according as their truth is perceived easily or the reverse by reason. (29) we are at work not on the truth of passages, but solely on their meaning. (30) we must take especial care, when we are in search of the meaning of a text, not to be led away by our reason in so far as it is founded on principles of natural knowledge (to say nothing of prejudices): in order not to confound the meaning of a passage with its truth, we must examine it solely by means of the signification of the words, or by a reason acknowledging no foundation but scripture. (7:31) i will illustrate my meaning by an example. (32) the words of moses, "god is a fire" and "god is jealous," are perfectly clear so long as we regard merely the signification of the words, and i therefore reckon them among the clear passages, though in relation to reason and truth they are most obscure: still, although the literal meaning is repugnant to the natural light of reason, nevertheless, if it cannot be clearly overruled on grounds and principles derived from its scriptural "history," it, that is, the literal meaning, must be the one retained: and contrariwise if these passages literally interpreted are found to clash with principles derived from scripture, though such literal interpretation were in absolute harmony with reason, they must be interpreted in a different manner, i.e. metaphorically. (7:33) if we would know whether moses believed god to be a fire or not, we must on no account decide the question on grounds of the reasonableness or the reverse of such an opinion, but must judge solely by the other opinions of moses which are on record. (7:34) in the present instance, as moses says in several passages that god has no likeness to any visible thing, whether in heaven or in earth, or in the water, either all such passages must be taken metaphorically, or else the one before us must be so explained. (35) however, as we should depart as little as possible from the literal sense, we must first ask whether this text, god is a fire, admits of any but the literal meaning that is, whether the word fire ever means anything besides ordinary natural fire. {7:36) if no such second meaning can be found, the text must be taken literally, however repugnant to reason it may be: and all the other passages, though in complete accordance with reason, must be brought into harmony with it. (37) if the verbal expressions would not admit of being thus harmonized, we should have to set them down as irreconcilable, and suspend our judgment concerning them. (38) however, as we find the name fire applied to anger and jealousy (see job xxxi:12) we can thus easily reconcile the words of moses, and legitimately conclude that the two propositions god is a fire, and god is jealous, are in meaning identical. (7:39) further, as moses clearly teaches that god is jealous, and nowhere states that god is without passions or emotions, we must evidently infer that moses held this doctrine himself, or at any rate, that he wished to teach it, nor must we refrain because such a belief seems contrary to reason: for as we have shown, we cannot wrest the meaning of texts to suit the dictates of our reason, or our preconceived opinions. (40) the whole knowledge of the bible must be sought solely from itself. (7:41) iii. lastly, such a history should relate the environment of all the prophetic books extant; that is, the life, the conduct, and the studies of the author of each book, who he was, what was the occasion, and the epoch of his writing, whom did he write for, and in what language. (42) further, it should inquire into the fate of each book: how it was first received, into whose hands it fell, how many different versions there were of it, by whose advice was it received into the bible, and, lastly, how all the books now universally accepted as sacred, were united into a single whole. (7:43) all such information should, as i have said, be contained in the "history" of scripture. (44) for, in order to know what statements are set forth as laws, and what as moral precepts, it is important to be acquainted with the life, the conduct, and the pursuits of their author: moreover, it becomes easier to explain a man's writings in proportion as we have more intimate knowledge of his genius and temperament. (7:45) further, that we may not confound precepts which are eternal with those which served only a temporary purpose, or were only meant for a few, we should know what was the occasion, the time, the age, in which each book was written, and to what nation it was addressed. (7:46) lastly, we should have knowledge on the other points i have mentioned, in order to be sure, in addition to the authenticity of the work, that it has not been tampered with by sacrilegious hands, or whether errors can have crept in, and, if so, whether they have been corrected by men sufficiently skilled and worthy of credence. (7:47) all these things should be known, that we may not be led away by blind impulse to accept whatever is thrust on our notice, instead of only that which is sure and indisputable. (7:48) now when we are in possession of this history of scripture, and have finally decided that we assert nothing as prophetic doctrine which does not directly follow from such history, or which is not clearly deducible from it, then, i say, it will be time to gird ourselves for the task of investigating the mind of the prophets and of the holy spirit. (49) but in this further arguing, also, we shall require a method very like that employed in interpreting nature from her history. (7:50) as in the examination of natural phenomena we try first to investigate what is most universal and common to all nature such, for instance, as motion and rest, and their laws and rules, which nature always observes, and through which she continually works and then we proceed to what is less universal; so, too, in the history of scripture, we seek first for that which is most universal, and serves for the basis and foundation of all scripture, a doctrine, in fact, that is commended by all the prophets as eternal and most profitable to all men. (7:51) for example, that god is one, and that he is omnipotent, that he alone should be worshipped, that he has a care for all men, and that he especially loves those who adore him and love their neighbour as themselves, &c. (52) these and similar doctrines, i repeat, scripture everywhere so clearly and expressly teaches, that no one was ever in doubt of its meaning concerning them. (7:53) the nature of god, his manner of regarding and providing for things, and similar doctrines, scripture nowhere teaches professedly, and as eternal doctrine; on the contrary, we have shown that the prophets themselves did not agree on the subject; therefore, we must not lay down any doctrine as scriptural on such subjects, though it may appear perfectly clear on rational grounds. (7:54) from a proper knowledge of this universal doctrine of scripture, we must then proceed to other doctrines less universal, but which, nevertheless, have regard to the general conduct of life, and flow from the universal doctrine like rivulets from a source; such are all particular external manifestations of true virtue, which need a given occasion for their exercise; whatever is obscure or ambiguous on such points in scripture must be explained and defined by its universal doctrine; with regard to contradictory instances, we must observe the occasion and the time in which they were written. (7:55) for instance, when christ says, "blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted" we do not know, from the actual passage, what sort of mourners are meant; as, however, christ afterwards teaches that we should have care for nothing, save only for the kingdom of god and his righteousness, which is commended as the highest good (see matt. vi;33), it follows that by mourners he only meant those who mourn for the kingdom of god and righteousness neglected by man: for this would be the only cause of mourning to those who love nothing but the divine kingdom and justice, and who evidently despise the gifts of fortune. (56) so, too, when christ says: "but if a man strike you on the right cheek, turn to him the left also," and the words which follow. (7:57) if he had given such a command, as a lawgiver, to judges, he would thereby have abrogated the law of moses, but this he expressly says he did not do (matt. v:17). (58) wherefore we must consider who was the speaker, what was the occasion, and to whom were the words addressed. (59) now christ said that he did not ordain laws as a legislator, but inculcated precepts as a teacher: inasmuch as he did not aim at correcting outward actions so much as the frame of mind. (60) further, these words were spoken to men who were oppressed, who lived in a corrupt commonwealth on the brink of ruin, where justice was utterly neglected. (7:61) the very doctrine inculcated here by christ just before the destruction of the city was also taught by jeremiah before the first destruction of jerusalem, that is, in similar circumstances, as we see from lamentations iii:25-30. (7:62) now as such teaching was only set forth by the prophets in times of oppression, and was even then never laid down as a law; and as, on the other hand, moses (who did not write in times of oppression, but mark this strove to found a well-ordered commonwealth), while condemning envy and hatred of one's neighbour, yet ordained that an eye should be given for an eye, it follows most clearly from these purely scriptural grounds that this precept of christ and jeremiah concerning submission to injuries was only valid in places where justice is neglected, and in a time of oppression, but does not hold good in a well-ordered state. (7:63) in a well-ordered state where justice is administered every one is bound, if he would be accounted just, to demand penalties before the judge (see lev:1), not for the sake of vengeance (lev. xix:17, 18), but in order to defend justice and his country's laws, and to prevent the wicked rejoicing in their wickedness. (64) all this is plainly in accordance with reason. (65) i might cite many other examples in the same manner, but i think the foregoing are sufficient to explain my meaning and the utility of this method, and this is all my present purpose. (7:66) hitherto we have only shown how to investigate those passages of scripture which treat of practical conduct, and which, therefore, are more easily examined, for on such subjects there was never really any controversy among the writers of the bible. (7:67) the purely speculative passages cannot be so easily traced to their real meaning: the way becomes narrower, for as the prophets differed in matters speculative among themselves, and the narratives are in great measure adapted to the prejudices of each age, we must not, on any account infer the intention of one prophet from clearer passages in the writings of another; nor must we so explain his meaning, unless it is perfectly plain that the two prophets were at one in the matter. (7:68) how we are to arrive at the intention of the prophets in such cases i will briefly explain. (69) here, too, we must begin from the most universal proposition, inquiring first from the most clear scriptural statements what is the nature of prophecy or revelation, and wherein does it consist; then we must proceed to miracles, and so on to whatever is most general till we come to the opinions of a particular prophet, and, at last, to the meaning of a particular revelation, prophecy, history, or miracle. (7;70) we have already pointed out that great caution is necessary not to confound the mind of a prophet or historian with the mind of the holy spirit and the truth of the matter; therefore i need not dwell further on the subject. (71) i would, however, here remark concerning the meaning of revelation, that the present method only teaches us what the prophets really saw or heard, not what they desired to signify or represent by symbols. (72) the latter may be guessed at but cannot be inferred with certainty from scriptural premises. (7:73) we have thus shown the plan for interpreting scripture, and have, at the same time, demonstrated that it is the one and surest way of investigating its true meaning. (74) i am willing indeed to admit that those persons (if any such there be) would be more absolutely certainly right, who have received either a trustworthy tradition or an assurance from the prophets themselves, such as is claimed by the pharisees; or who have a pontiff gifted with infallibility in the interpretation of scripture, such as the roman catholics boast. (7:75) but as we can never be perfectly sure, either of such a tradition or of the authority of the pontiff, we cannot found any certain conclusion on either: the one is denied by the oldest sect of christians, the other by the oldest sect of jews. (7:76) indeed, if we consider the series of years (to mention no other point) accepted by the pharisees from their rabbis, during which time they say they have handed down the tradition from moses, we shall find that it is not correct, as i show elsewhere. (77) therefore such a tradition should be received with extreme suspicion; and although, according to our method, we are bound to consider as uncorrupted the tradition of the jews, namely, the meaning of the hebrew words which we received from them, we may accept the latter while retaining our doubts about the former. (7:78) no one has ever been able to change the meaning of a word in ordinary use, though many have changed the meaning of a particular sentence. (79) such a proceeding would be most difficult; for whoever attempted to change the meaning of a word, would be compelled, at the same time, to explain all the authors who employed it, each according to his temperament and intention, or else, with consummate cunning, to falsify them. (7:80) further, the masses and the learned alike preserve language, but it is only the learned who preserve the meaning of particular sentences and books: thus, we may easily imagine that the learned having a very rare book in their power, might change or corrupt the meaning of a sentence in it, but they could not alter the signification of the words; moreover, if anyone wanted to change the meaning of a common word he would not be able to keep up the change among posterity, or in common parlance or writing. (7:81) for these and such-like reasons we may readily conclude that it would never enter into the mind of anyone to corrupt a language, though the intention of a writer may often have been falsified by changing his phrases or interpreting them amiss. (82) as then our method (based on the principle that the knowledge of scripture must be sought from itself alone) is the sole true one, we must evidently renounce any knowledge which it cannot furnish for the complete understanding of scripture. [7:3] (83) i will now point out its difficulties and shortcomings, which prevent our gaining a complete and assured knowledge of the sacred text. (7:84) its first great difficulty consists in its requiring a thorough knowledge of the hebrew language. (85) where is such knowledge to be obtained? (86) the men of old who employed the hebrew tongue have left none of the principles and bases of their language to posterity; we have from them absolutely nothing in the way of dictionary, grammar, or rhetoric. (7:87) now the hebrew nation has lost all its grace and beauty (as one would expect after the defeats and persecutions it has gone through), and has only retained certain fragments of its language and of a few books. (88) nearly all the names of fruits, birds, and fishes, and many other words have perished in the wear and tear of time. (89) further, the meaning of many nouns and verbs which occur in the bible are either utterly lost, or are subjects of dispute. (90) and not only are these gone, but we are lacking in a knowledge of hebrew phraseology. (91) the devouring tooth of time has destroyed turns of expression peculiar to the hebrews, so that we know them no more. (7:92) therefore we cannot investigate as we would all the meanings of a sentence by the uses of the language; and there are many phrases of which the meaning is most obscure or altogether inexplicable, though the component words are perfectly plain. (7:93) to this impossibility of tracing the history of the hebrew language must be added its particular nature and composition: these give rise to so many ambiguities that it is impossible to find a method which would enable us to gain a certain knowledge of all the statements in scripture. [endnote 7] (94) in addition to the sources of ambiguities common to all languages, there are many peculiar to hebrew. (95) these, i think, it worth while to mention. (96) firstly, an ambiguity often arises in the bible from our mistaking one letter for another similar one. (7:97) the hebrews divide the letters of the alphabet into five classes, according to the five organs of the month employed in pronouncing them, namely, the lips, the tongue, the teeth, the palate, and the throat. (98) for instance, alpha, ghet, hgain, he, are called gutturals, and are barely distinguishable, by any sign that we know, one from the other. (99) el, which signifies to, is often taken for hgal, which signifies above, and vice versa. (100) hence sentences are often rendered rather ambiguous or meaningless. (7:101) a second difficulty arises from the multiplied meaning of conjunctions and adverbs. (102) for instance, vau serves promiscuously for a particle of union or of separation, meaning, and, but, because, however, then: ki, has seven or eight meanings, namely, wherefore, although, if, when, inasmuch as, because, a burning, &c., and so on with almost all particles. (7:103) the third very fertile source of doubt is the fact that hebrew verbs in the indicative mood lack the present, the past imperfect, the pluperfect, the future perfect, and other tenses most frequently employed in other languages; in the imperative and infinitive moods they are wanting in all except the present, and a subjunctive mood does not exist. (104) now, although all these defects in moods and tenses may be supplied by certain fundamental rules of the language with ease and even elegance, the ancient writers evidently neglected such rules altogether, and employed indifferently future for present and past, and vice versa past for future, and also indicative for imperative and subjunctive, with the result of considerable confusion. (7:105) besides these sources of ambiguity there are two others, one very important. (106) firstly, there are in hebrew no vowels; secondly, the sentences are not separated by any marks elucidating the meaning or separating the clauses. (107) though the want of these two has generally been supplied by points and accents, such substitutes cannot be accepted by us, inasmuch as they were invented and designed by men of an after age whose authority should carry no weight. (108) the ancients wrote without points (that is, without vowels and accents), as is abundantly testified; their descendants added what was lacking, according to their own ideas of scriptural interpretation; wherefore the existing accents and points are simply current interpretations, and are no more authoritative than any other commentaries. (7:109) those who are ignorant of this fact cannot justify the author of the epistle to the hebrews for interpreting (chap. xi;21) genesis (xlvii:31) very differently from the version given in our hebrew text as at present pointed, as though the apostle had been obliged to learn the meaning of scripture from those who added the points. (110) in my opinion the latter are clearly wrong. (7:111) in order that everyone may judge for himself, and also see how the discrepancy arose simply from the want of vowels, i will give both interpretations. (112)those who pointed our version read, "and israel bent himself over, or (changing hqain into aleph, a similar letter) towards, the head of the bed." (113) the author of the epistle reads, "and israel bent himself over the head of his staff," substituting mate for mita, from which it only differs in respect of vowels. (114) now as in this narrative it is jacob's age only that is in question, and not his illness, which is not touched on till the next chapter, it seems more likely that the historian intended to say that jacob bent over the head of his staff (a thing commonly used by men of advanced age for their support) than that he bowed himself at the head of his bed, especially as for the former reading no substitution of letters is required. (7:115) in this example i have desired not only to reconcile the passage in the epistle with the passage in genesis, but also and chiefly to illustrate how little trust should be placed in the points and accents which are found in our present bible, and so to prove that he who would be without bias in interpreting scripture should hesitate about accepting them, and inquire afresh for himself. (116) such being the nature and structure of the hebrew language, one may easily understand that many difficulties are likely to arise, and that no possible method could solve all of them. (7:117) it is useless to hope for a way out of our difficulties in the comparison of various parallel passages (we have shown that the only method of discovering the true sense of a passage out of many alternative ones is to see what are the usages of the language), for this comparison of parallel passages can only accidentally throw light on a difficult point, seeing that the prophets never wrote with the express object of explaining their own phrases or those of other people, and also because we cannot infer the meaning of one prophet or apostle by the meaning of another, unless on a purely practical question, not when the matter is speculative, or if a miracle, or history is being narrated. (7;118) i might illustrate my point with instances, for there are many inexplicable phrases in scripture, but i would rather pass on to consider the difficulties and imperfections of the method under discussion. (7:119) a further difficulty attends the method, from the fact that it requires the history of all that has happened to every book in the bible; such a history we are often quite unable to furnish. (120) of the authors, or (if the expression be preferred), the writers of many of the books, we are either in complete ignorance, or at any rate in doubt, as i will point out at length. (7:121) further, we do not know either the occasions or the epochs when these books of unknown authorship were written; we cannot say into what hands they fell, nor how the numerous varying versions originated; nor, lastly, whether there were not other versions, now lost. (122) i have briefly shown that such knowledge is necessary, but i passed over certain considerations which i will now draw attention to. (7:123) if we read a book which contains incredible or impossible narratives, or is written in a very obscure style, and if we know nothing of its author, nor of the time or occasion of its being written, we shall vainly endeavour to gain any certain knowledge of its true meaning. (124) for being in ignorance on these points we cannot possibly know the aim or intended aim of the author; if we are fully informed, we so order our thoughts as not to be in any way prejudiced either in ascribing to the author or him for whom the author wrote either more or less than his meaning, and we only take into consideration what the author may have had in his mind, or what the time and occasion demanded. (125) i think this must be tolerably evident to all. (7:126) it often happens that in different books we read histories in themselves similar, but which we judge very differently, according to the opinions we have formed of the authors. (127) i remember once to have read in some book that a man named orlando furioso used to drive a kind of winged monster through the air, fly over any countries he liked, kill unaided vast numbers of men and giants, and such like fancies, which from the point of view of reason are obviously absurd. (128) a very similar story i read in ovid of perseus, and also in the books of judges and kings of samson, who alone and unarmed killed thousands of men, and of elijah, who flew through the air, said at last went up to heaven in a chariot of fire, with horses of fire. (129) all these stories are obviously alike, but we judge them very differently. (130) the first only sought to amuse, the second had a political object, the third a religious object. (7:131) we gather this simply from the opinions we had previously formed of the authors. (132) thus it is evidently necessary to know something of the authors of writings which are obscure or unintelligible, if we would interpret their meaning; and for the same reason, in order to choose the proper reading from among a great variety, we ought to have information as to the versions in which the differences are found, and as to the possibility of other readings having been discovered by persons of greater authority. (7:133) a further difficulty attends this method in the case of some of the books of scripture, namely, that they are no longer extant in their original language. (133a) the gospel according to matthew, and certainly the epistle to the hebrews, were written, it is thought, in hebrew, though they no longer exist in that form. (7:134) aben ezra affirms in his commentaries that the book of job was translated into hebrew out of another language, and that its obscurity arises from this fact. (135) i say nothing of the apocryphal books, for their authority stands on very inferior ground. (7:136) the foregoing difficulties in this method of interpreting scripture from its own history, i conceive to be so great that i do not hesitate to say that the true meaning of scripture is in many places inexplicable, or at best mere subject for guesswork; but i must again point out, on the other hand, that such difficulties only arise when we endeavour to follow the meaning of a prophet in matters which cannot be perceived, but only imagined, not in things, whereof the understanding can give a clear idea, and which are conceivable through themselves: [endnote 8] matters which by their nature are easily perceived cannot be expressed so obscurely as to be unintelligible; as the proverb says, "a word is enough to the wise." (7:137) euclid, who only wrote of matters very simple and easily understood, can easily be comprehended by anyone in any language; we can follow his intention perfectly, and be certain of his true meaning, without having a thorough knowledge of the language in which he wrote; in fact, a quite rudimentary acquaintance is sufficient. (138) we need make no researches concerning the life, the pursuits, or the habits of the author; nor need we inquire in what language, nor when he wrote, nor the vicissitudes of his book, nor its various readings, nor how, nor by whose advice it has been received. [7:4] (139) what we here say of euclid might equally be said of any book which treats of things by their nature perceptible: thus we conclude that we can easily follow the intention of scripture in moral questions, from the history we possess of it, and we can be sure of its true meaning. (7:140) the precepts of true piety are expressed in very ordinary language, and are equally simple and easily understood. (7:141) further, as true salvation and blessedness consist in a true assent of the soul and we truly assent only to what we clearly understand it is most plain that we can follow with certainty the intention of scripture in matters relating to salvation and necessary to blessedness; therefore, we need not be much troubled about what remains: such matters, inasmuch as we generally cannot grasp them with our reason and understanding, are more curious than profitable. (7:142) i think i have now set forth the true method of scriptural interpretation, and have sufficiently explained my own opinion thereon. (143) besides, i do not doubt that everyone will see that such a method only requires the aid of natural reason. (144) the nature and efficacy of the natural reason consists in deducing and proving the unknown from the known, or in carrying premises to their legitimate conclusions; and these are the very processes which our method desiderates. (7:145) though we must admit that it does not suffice to explain everything in the bible, such imperfection does not spring from its own nature, but from the fact that the path which it teaches us, as the true one, has never been tended or trodden by men, and has thus, by the lapse of time, become very difficult, and almost impassable, as, indeed, i have shown in the difficulties i draw attention to. (7:146) there only remains to examine the opinions of those who differ from me. [7:5] (147) the first which comes under our notice is, that the light of nature has no power to interpret scripture, but that a supernatural faculty is required for the task. (148) what is meant by this supernatural faculty i will leave to its propounders to explain. (149) personally, i can only suppose that they have adopted a very obscure way of stating their complete uncertainty about the true meaning of scripture. (150) if we look at their interpretations, they contain nothing supernatural, at least nothing but the merest conjectures. (7:151) let them be placed side by side with the interpretations of those who frankly confess that they have no faculty beyond their natural ones; we shall see that the two are just alike both human, both long pondered over, both laboriously invented. (7:152) to say that the natural reason is insufficient for such results is plainly untrue, firstly, for the reasons above stated, namely, that the difficulty of interpreting scripture arises from no defect in human reason, but simply from the carelessness (not to say malice) of men who neglected the history of the bible while there were still materials for inquiry; secondly, from the fact (admitted, i think, by all) that the supernatural faculty is a divine gift granted only to the faithful. (153) but the prophets and apostles did not preach to the faithful only, but chiefly to the unfaithful and wicked. (7:154) such persons, therefore, were able to understand the intention of the prophets and apostles, otherwise the prophets and apostles would have seemed to be preaching to little boys and infants, not to men endowed with reason. (155) moses, too, would have given his laws in vain, if they could only be comprehended by the faithful, who need no law. (7:156) indeed, those who demand supernatural faculties for comprehending the meaning of the prophets and apostles seem truly lacking in natural faculties, so that we should hardly suppose such persons the possessors of a divine supernatural gift. (7:157) the opinion of maimonides was widely different. (158) he asserted that each passage in scripture admits of various, nay, contrary, meanings; but that we could never be certain of any particular one till we knew that the passage, as we interpreted it, contained nothing contrary or repugnant to reason. (159) if the literal meaning clashes with reason, though the passage seems in itself perfectly clear, it must be interpreted in some metaphorical sense. (160) this doctrine he lays down very plainly in chap. xxv. part ii. of his book, "more nebuchim," for he says: "know that we shrink not from affirming that the world hath existed from eternity, because of what scripture saith concerning the world's creation. (7:161) for the texts which teach that the world was created are not more in number than those which teach that god hath a body; neither are the approaches in this matter of the world's creation closed, or even made hard to us: so that we should not be able to explain what is written, as we did when we showed that god hath no body, nay, peradventure, we could explain and make fast the doctrine of the world's eternity more easily than we did away with the doctrines that god hath a beatified body. (7:162) yet two things hinder me from doing as i have said, and believing that the world is eternal. (163) as it hath been clearly shown that god hath not a body, we must perforce explain all those passages whereof the literal sense agreeth not with the demonstration, for sure it is that they can be so explained. (164) but the eternity of the world hath not been so demonstrated, therefore it is not necessary to do violence to scripture in support of some common opinion, whereof we might, at the bidding of reason, embrace the contrary." [7:7] (165) such are the words of maimonides, and they are evidently sufficient to establish our point: for if he had been convinced by reason that the world is eternal, he would not have hesitated to twist and explain away the words of scripture till he made them appear to teach this doctrine. (166) he would have felt quite sure that scripture, though everywhere plainly denying the eternity of the world, really intends to teach it. (167) so that, however clear the meaning of scripture may be, he would not feel certain of having grasped it, so long as he remained doubtful of the truth of what, was written. (168) for we are in doubt whether a thing is in conformity with reason, or contrary thereto, so long as we are uncertain of its truth, and, consequently, we cannot be sure whether the literal meaning of a passage be true or false. (7:169) if such a theory as this were sound, i would certainly grant that some faculty beyond the natural reason is required for interpreting scripture. (170) for nearly all things that we find in scripture cannot be inferred from known principles of the natural reason, and, therefore, we should be unable to come to any conclusion about their truth, or about the real meaning and intention of scripture, but should stand in need of some further assistance. (7:171) further, the truth of this theory would involve that the masses, having generally no comprehension of, nor leisure for, detailed proofs, would be reduced to receiving all their knowledge of scripture on the authority and testimony of philosophers, and, consequently, would be compelled to suppose that the interpretations given by philosophers were infallible. (7:172) truly this would be a new form of ecclesiastical authority, and a new sort of priests or pontiffs, more likely to excite men's ridicule than their veneration. (173) certainly our method demands a knowledge of hebrew for which the masses have no leisure; but no such objection as the foregoing can be brought against us. (7:174) for the ordinary jews or gentiles, to whom the prophets and apostles preached and wrote, understood the language, and, consequently, the intention of the prophet or apostle addressing them; but they did not grasp the intrinsic reason of what was preached, which, according to maimonides, would be necessary for an understanding of it. (7:175) there is nothing, then, in our method which renders it necessary that the masses should follow the testimony of commentators, for i point to a set of unlearned people who understood the language of the prophets and apostles; whereas maimonides could not point to any such who could arrive at the prophetic or apostolic meaning through their knowledge of the causes of things. (7:176) as to the multitude of our own time, we have shown that whatsoever is necessary to salvation, though its reasons may be unknown, can easily be understood in any language, because it is thoroughly ordinary and usual; it is in such understanding as this that the masses acquiesce, not in the testimony of commentators; with regard to other questions, the ignorant and the learned fare alike. [7:6] (177) but let us return to the opinion of maimonides, and examine it more closely. in the first place, he supposes that the prophets were in entire agreement one with another, and that they were consummate philosophers and theologians; for he would have them to have based their conclusions on the absolute truth. (178) further, he supposes that the sense of scripture cannot be made plain from scripture itself, for the truth of things is not made plain therein (in that it does not prove any thing, nor teach the matters of which it speaks through their definitions and first causes), therefore, according to maimonides, the true sense of scripture cannot be made plain from itself, and must not be there sought. (7:179) the falsity of such a doctrine is shown in this very chapter, for we have shown both by reason and examples that the meaning of scripture is only made plain through scripture itself, and even in questions deducible from ordinary knowledge should be looked for from no other source. (7:180) lastly, such a theory supposes that we may explain the words of scripture according to our preconceived opinions, twisting them about, and reversing or completely changing the literal sense, however plain it may be. (181) such licence is utterly opposed to the teaching of this and the preceding chapters, and, moreover, will be evident to everyone as rash and excessive. (7:182) but if we grant all this licence, what can it effect after all? absolutely nothing. (183) those things which cannot be demonstrated, and which make up the greater part of scripture, cannot be examined by reason, and cannot therefore be explained or interpreted by this rule; whereas, on the contrary, by following our own method, we can explain many questions of this nature, and discuss them on a sure basis, as we have already shown, by reason and example. (184) those matters which are by their nature comprehensible we can easily explain, as has been pointed out, simply by means of the context. (7:185) therefore, the method of maimonides is clearly useless: to which we may add, that it does away with all the certainty which the masses acquire by candid reading, or which is gained by any other persons in any other way. (186) in conclusion, then, we dismiss maimonides' theory as harmful, useless, and absurd. [7:8] (187) as to the tradition of the pharisees, we have already shown that it is not consistent, while the authority of the popes of rome stands in need of more credible evidence; the latter, indeed, i reject simply on this ground, for if the popes could point out to us the meaning of scripture as surely as did the high priests of the jews, i should not be deterred by the fact that there have been heretic and impious roman pontiffs; for among the hebrew high-priests of old there were also heretics and impious men who gained the high-priesthood by improper means, but who, nevertheless, had scriptural sanction for their supreme power of interpreting the law. (see deut. xvii:11, 12, and xxxiii:10, also malachi ii:8.) (7:188) however, as the popes can show no such sanction, their authority remains open to very grave doubt, nor should anyone be deceived by the example of the jewish high-priests and think that the catholic religion also stands in need of a pontiff; he should bear in mind that the laws of moses being also the ordinary laws of the country, necessarily required some public authority to insure their observance; for, if everyone were free to interpret the laws of his country as he pleased, no state could stand, but would for that very reason be dissolved at once, and public rights would become private rights. (7:189) with religion the case is widely different. inasmuch as it consists not so much in outward actions as in simplicity and truth of character, it stands outside the sphere of law and public authority. (190) simplicity and truth of character are not produced by the constraint of laws, nor by the authority of the state, no one the whole world over can be forced or legislated into a state of blessedness; the means required for such a consummation are faithful and brotherly admonition, sound education, and, above all, free use of the individual judgment. (7:191) therefore, as the supreme right of free thinking, even on religion, is in every man's power, and as it is inconceivable that such power could be alienated, it is also in every man's power to wield the supreme right and authority of free judgment in this behalf, and to explain and interpret religion for himself. (192) the only reason for vesting the supreme authority in the interpretation of law, and judgment on public affairs in the hands of the magistrates, is that it concerns questions of public right. (7:193) similarly the supreme authority in explaining religion, and in passing judgment thereon, is lodged with the individual because it concerns questions of individual right. (194) so far, then, from the authority of the hebrew high-priests telling in confirmation of the authority of the roman pontiffs to interpret religion, it would rather tend to establish individual freedom of judgment. (195) thus in this way also, we have shown that our method of interpreting scripture is the best. (196) for as the highest power of scriptural interpretation belongs to every man, the rule for such interpretation should be nothing but the natural light of reason which is common to all not any supernatural light nor any external authority; moreover, such a rule ought not to be so difficult that it can only be applied by very skilful philosophers, but should be adapted to the natural and ordinary faculties and capacity of mankind. (7:197) and such i have shown our method to be, for such difficulties as it has arise from men's carelessness, and are no part of its nature. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[8:0] (chapter viii. of the authorship of the pentateuch and the other historical books of the old testament (8:1) in the former chapter we treated of the foundations and principles of scriptural knowledge, and showed that it consists solely in a trustworthy history of the sacred writings; such a history, in spite of its indispensability, the ancients neglected, or at any rate, whatever they may have written or handed down has perished in the lapse of time, consequently the groundwork for such an investigation is to a great extent, cut from under us. (8:2) this might be put up with if succeeding generations had confined themselves within the limits of truth, and had handed down conscientiously what few particulars they had received or discovered without any additions from their own brains: as it is, the history of the bible is not so much imperfect as untrustworthy: the foundations are not only too scanty for building upon, but are also unsound. (8:3) it is part of my purpose to remedy these defects, and to remove common theological prejudices. (4) but i fear that i am attempting my task too late, for men have arrived at the pitch of not suffering contradiction, but defending obstinately whatever they have adopted under the name of religion. (5) so widely have these prejudices taken possession of men's minds, that very few, comparatively speaking, will listen to reason. (6) however, i will make the attempt, and spare no efforts, for there is no positive reason for despairing of success. [8:1] (7) in order to treat the subject methodically, i will begin with the received opinions concerning the true authors of the sacred ooks, and in the first place, speak of the author of the pentateuch, who is almost universally supposed to have been moses. (8) the pharisees are so firmly convinced of his identity, that they account as a heretic anyone who differs from them on the subject. (8:9) wherefore, aben ezra, a man of enlightened intelligence, and no small learning, who was the first, so far as i know, to treat of this opinion, dared not express his meaning openly, but confined himself to dark hints which i shall not scruple to elucidate, thus throwing, full light on the subject. (8:10) the words of aben ezra which occur in his commentary on deuteronomy are as follows: "beyond jordan, &c . . . if so be that thou understandest the mystery of the twelve . . . moreover moses wrote the law . . . the canaanite was then in the land . . . . it shall be revealed on the mount of god . . . . then also behold his bed, his iron bed, then shalt thou know the truth." (11) in these few words he hints, and also shows that it was not moses who wrote the pentateuch, but someone who lived long after him, and further, that the book which moses wrote was something different from any now extant. (8:12) to prove this, i say, he draws attention to the facts: (8:13) 1. that the preface to deuteronomy could not have been written by moses, inasmuch as he had never crossed the jordan. (8:14) ii. that the whole book of moses was written at full length on the circumference of a single altar (deut. xxvii, and josh. viii:37), which altar, according to the rabbis, consisted of only twelve stones: therefore the book of moses must have been of far less extent than the pentateuch. (8:15) this is what our author means, i think, by the mystery of the twelve, unless he is referring to the twelve curses contained in the chapter of deuteronomy above cited, which he thought could not have been contained in the law, because moses bade the levites read them after the recital of the law, and so bind the people to its observance. (16) or again, he may have had in his mind the last chapter of deuteronomy which treats of the death of moses, and which contains twelve verses. (17) but there is no need to dwell further on these and similar conjectures. (8:18) iii. that in deut. xxxi:9, the expression occurs, "and moses wrote the law:" words that cannot be ascribed to moses, but must be those of some other writer narrating the deeds and writings of moses. (8:19) iv. that in genesis xii:6, the historian, after narrating that abraham journeyed through the and of canaan, adds, "and the canaanite was then in the land," thus clearly excluding the time at which he wrote. (20) so that this passage must have been written after the death of moses, when the canaanites had been driven out, and no longer possessed the land. (8:21) aben ezra, in his commentary on the passage, alludes to the difficulty as follows:"and the canaanite was then in the land: it appears that canaan, the grandson of noah, took from another the land which bears his name; if this be not the true meaning, there lurks some mystery in the passage, and let him who understands it keep silence." (22) that is, if canaan invaded those regions, the sense will be, the canaanite was then in the land, in contradistinction to the time when it had been held by another: but if, as follows from gen. chap. x. canaan was the first to inhabit the land, the text must mean to exclude the time present, that is the time at which it was written; therefore it cannot be the work of moses, in whose time the canaanites still possessed those territories: this is the mystery concerning which silence is recommended. (8:23) v. that in genesis xxii:14 mount moriah is called the mount of god, [endnote 9] , a name which it did not acquire till after the building of the temple; the choice of the mountain was not made in the time of moses, for moses does not point out any spot as chosen by god; on the contrary, he foretells that god will at some future time choose a spot to which this name will be given. (8:24) vi. lastly, that in deut. chap. iii., in the passage relating to og, king of bashan, these words are inserted: "for only og king of bashan remained of the remnant of giants: behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron: is it not in rabbath of the children of ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man." (25) this parenthesis most plainly shows that its writer lived long after moses; for this mode of speaking is only employed by one treating of things long past, and pointing to relics for the sake of gaining credence: moreover, this bed was almost certainly first discovered by david, who conquered the city of rabbath (2 sam. xii:30.) (8:26) again, the historian a little further on inserts after the words of moses, "jair, the son of manasseh, took all the country of argob unto the coasts of geshuri and maachathi; and called them after his own name, bashan-havoth-jair, unto this day." (27) this passage, i say, is inserted to explain the words of moses which precede it. (28) "and the rest of gilead, and all bashan, being the kingdom of og, gave i unto the half tribe of manasseh; all the region of argob, with all bashan, which is called the land of the giants." (29) the hebrews in the time of the writer indisputably knew what territories belonged to the tribe of judah, but did not know them under the name of the jurisdiction of argob, or the land of the giants. (8:30) therefore the writer is compelled to explain what these places were which were anciently so styled, and at the same time to point out why they were at the time of his writing known by the name of jair, who was of the tribe of manasseh, not of judah. (8:31) we have thus made clear the meaning of aben ezra and also the passages of the pentateuch which he cites in proof of his contention. (32) however, aben ezra does not call attention to every instance, or even the chief ones; there remain many of greater importance, which may be cited. (8:33) namely (i.), that the writer of the books in question not only speaks of moses in the third person, but also bears witness to many details concerning him; for instance, "moses talked with god;" "the lord spoke with moses face to face; " "moses was the meekest of men" (numb. xii:3); "moses was wrath with the captains of the host; "moses, the man of god, "moses, the servant of the lord, died;" "there was never a prophet in israel like unto moses," &c. (8:34) on the other hand, in deuteronomy, where the law which moses had expounded to the people and written is set forth, moses speaks and declares what he has done in the first person: "god spake with me " (deut. ii:1, 17, &c.), "i prayed to the lord," &c. (35) except at the end of the book, when the historian, after relating the words of moses, begins again to speak in the third person, and to tell how moses handed over the law which he had expounded to the people in writing, again admonishing them, and further, how moses ended his life. (8:36) all these details, the manner of narration, the testimony, and the context of the whole story lead to the plain conclusion that these books were written by another, and not by moses in person. (8:37) ii. we must also remark that the history relates not only the manner of moses' death and burial, and the thirty days' mourning of the hebrews, but further compares him with all the prophets who came after him, and states that he surpassed them all. (38) "there was never a prophet in israel like unto moses, whom the lord knew face to face." (39) such testimony cannot have been given of moses by himself, nor by any who immediately succeeded him, but it must come from someone who lived centuries afterwards, especially, as the historian speaks of past times. (8:40) "there was never a prophet," &c. (41) and of the place of burial, "no one knows it to this day." (8:42) iii. we must note that some places are not styled by the names they bore during moses' lifetime, but by others which they obtained subsequently. (43) for instance, abraham is said to have pursued his enemies even unto dan, a name not bestowed on the city till long after the death of joshua (gen. xiv;14, judges xviii;29). (8:44) iv. the narrative is prolonged after the death of moses, for in exodus xvi:34 we read that " the children of israel did eat manna forty years until they came to a land inhabited, until they came unto the borders of the land of canaan." (45) in other words, until the time alluded to in joshua vi:12. (8:46) so, too, in genesis xxxvi:31 it is stated, "these are the kings that reigned in edom before there reigned any king over the children of israel." (47) the historian, doubtless, here relates the kings of idumaea before that territory was conquered by david [endnote 10] and garrisoned, as we read in 2 sam. viii:14. (8:48) from what has been said, it is thus clearer than the sun at noonday that the pentateuch was not written by moses, but by someone who lived long after moses. [8:2] (49) let us now our attention to the books which moses actually did write, and which are cited in the pentateuch; thus, also, shall we that they were different from the pentateuch. (50) firstly, it appears from exodus xvii:14 that moses, by the command of god, wrote an account of the war against amalek. (51) the book in which he did so is not named in the chapter just quoted, but in numb. xxi:12 a book is referred to under the title of the wars of god, and doubtless this war against amalek and the castrametations said in numb. xxxiii:2 to have been written by moses are therein described. (8:52) we hear also in exod. xxiv:4 of another book called the book of the covenant, which moses read before the israelites when they first made a covenant with god. (53) but this book or this writing contained very little, namely, the laws or commandments of god which we find in exodus xx:22 to the end of chap. xxiv., and this no one will deny who reads the aforesaid chapter rationally and impartially. (54) it is there stated that as soon as moses had learnt the feeling of the people on the subject of making a covenant with god, he immediately wrote down god's laws and utterances, and in the morning, after some ceremonies had been performed, read out the conditions of the covenant to an assembly of the whole people. (55) when these had been gone through, and doubtless understood by all, the whole people gave their assent. (56) now from the shortness of the time taken in its perusal and also from its nature as a compact, this document evidently contained nothing more than that which we have just described. (57) further, it is clear that moses explained all the laws which he had received in the fortieth year after the exodus from egypt; also that he bound over the people a second time to observe them, and that finally he committed them to writing (deut. i:5; xxix:14; xxxi:9), in a book which contained these laws explained, and the new covenant, and this book was therefore called the book of the law of god: the same which was afterwards added to by joshua when he set forth the fresh covenant with which he bound over the people and which he entered into with god (josh. xxiv:25, 26). (8:58) now, as we have extent no book containing this covenant of moses and also the covenant of joshua, we must perforce conclude that it has perished, unless, indeed, we adopt the wild conjecture of the chaldean paraphrast jonathan, and twist about the words of scripture to our heart's content. (59) this commentator, in the face of our present difficulty, preferred corrupting the sacred text to confessing his own ignorance. (60) the passage in the book of joshua which runs, "and joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of god," he changes into "and joshua wrote these words and kept them with the book of the law of god." (61) what is to be done with persons who will only see what pleases them? (8:62) what is such a proceeding if it is not denying scripture, and inventing another bible out of our own heads? (63) we may therefore conclude that the book of the law of god which moses wrote was not the pentateuch, but something quite different, which the author of the pentateuch duly inserted into his book. (8:64) so much is abundantly plain both from what i have said and from what i am about to add. (65) for in the passage of deuteronomy above quoted, where it is related that moses wrote the book of the law, the historian adds that he handed it over to the priests and bade them read it out at a stated time to the whole people. (8:66) this shows that the work was of much less length than the pentateuch, inasmuch as it could be read through at one sitting so as to be understood by all; further, we must not omit to notice that out of all the books which moses wrote, this one book of the second covenant and the song (which latter he wrote afterwards so that all the people might learn it), was the only one which he caused to be religiously guarded and preserved. (8:67) in the first covenant he had only bound over those who were present, but in the second covenant he bound over all their descendants also (dent. xxix:14), and therefore ordered this covenant with future ages to be religiously preserved, together with the song, which was especially addressed to posterity: as, then, we have no proof that moses wrote any book save this of the covenant, and as he committed no other to the care of posterity; and, lastly, as there are many passages in the pentateuch which moses could not have written, it follows that the belief that moses was the author of the pentateuch is ungrounded and even irrational. (68) someone will perhaps ask whether moses did not also write down other laws when they were first revealed to him in other words, whether, during the course of forty years, he did not write down any of the laws which he promulgated, save only those few which i have stated to be contained in the book of the first covenant. (8:69) to this i would answer, that although it seems reasonable to suppose that moses wrote down the laws at the time when he wished to communicate them to the people, yet we are not warranted to take it as proved, for i have shown above that we must make no assertions in such matters which we do not gather from scripture, or which do not flow as legitimate consequences from its fundamental principles. (70) we must not accept whatever is reasonably probable. (71) however even reason in this case would not force such a conclusion upon us: for it may be that the assembly of elders wrote down the decrees of moses and communicated them to the people, and the historian collected them, and duly set them forth in his narrative of the life of moses. [8:3] (72) so much for the five books of moses: it is now time for us to turn to the other sacred writings. (873) the book of joshua may be proved not to be an autograph by reasons similar to those we have just employed: for it must be some other than joshua who testifies that the fame of joshua was spread over the whole world; that he omitted nothing of what moses had taught (josh. vi:27; viii. last verse; xi:15); that he grew old and summoned an assembly of the whole people, and finally that he departed this life. (8:74) furthermore, events are related which took place after joshua's death. (75) for instance, that the israelites worshipped god, after his death, so long as there were any old men alive who remembered him; and in chap. xvi:10, we read that "ephraim and manasseh did not drive out the canaanites which dwelt in gezer, but the canaanite dwelt in the land of ephraim unto this day, and was tributary to him." (76) this is the same statement as that in judges, chap. i., and the phrase "unto this day" shows that the writer was speaking of ancient times. (77) with these texts we may compare the last verse of chap. xv., concerning the sons of judah, and also the history of caleb in the same chap. v:14. (78) further, the building of an altar beyond jordan by the two tribes and a half, chap. xxii:10, sqq., seems to have taken place after the death of joshua, for in the whole narrative his name is never mentioned, but the people alone held council as to waging war, sent out legates, waited for their return, and finally approved of their answer. (8:79) lastly, from chap. x:14, it is clear that the book was written many generations after the death of joshua, for it bears witness, there was never any day like unto that day, either before or after, that the lord hearkened to the voice of a man," &c. (80) if, therefore, joshua wrote any book at all, it was that which is quoted in the work now before us, chap. x:13. (8:81) with regard to the book of judges, i suppose no rational person persuades himself that it was written by the actual judges. (82) for the conclusion of the whole history contained in chap. ii. clearly shows that it is all the work of a single historian. (83) further, inasmuch as the writer frequently tells us that there was then no king in israel, it is evident that the book was written after the establishment of the monarchy. (8:84) the books of samuel need not detain us long, inasmuch as the narrative in them is continued long after samuel's death; but i should like to draw attention to the fact that it was written many generations after samuel's death. (85) for in book i. chap. ix:9, the historian remarks in a, parenthesis, "beforetime, in israel, when a man went to inquire of god, thus he spake: come, and let us go to the seer; for he that is now called a prophet was beforetime called a seer." (8:86) lastly, the books of kings, as we gather from internal evidence, were compiled from the books of king solomon (i kings xi:41), from the chronicles of the kings of judah (1 kings xiv:19, 29), and the chronicles of the kings of israel. (8:87) we may, therefore, conclude that all the books we have considered hitherto are compilations, and that the events therein are recorded as having happened in old time. (88) now, if we turn our attention to the connection and argument of all these books, we shall easily see that they were all written by a single historian, who wished to relate the antiquities of the jews from their first beginning down to the first destruction of the city. (8:89) the way in which the several books are connected one with the other is alone enough to show us that they form the narrative of one and the same writer. (90) for as soon as he has related the life of moses, the historian thus passes on to the story of joshua: "and it came to pass after that moses the servant of the lord was dead, that god spake unto joshua," &c., so in the same way, after the death of joshua was concluded, he passes with identically the same transition and connection to the history of the judges: "and it came to pass after that joshua was dead, that the children of israel sought from god," &c. (91) to the book of judges he adds the story of ruth, as a sort of appendix, in these words: "now it came to pass in the days that the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land." (8:92) the first book of samuel is introduced with a similar phrase; and so is the second book of samuel. (93) then, before the history of david is concluded, the historian passes in the same way to the first book of kings, and, after david's death, to the second book of kings. [8:4] (94) the putting together, and the order of the narratives, show that they are all the work of one man, writing with a create aim; for the historian begins with relating the first origin of the hebrew nation, and then sets forth in order the times and the occasions in which moses put forth his laws, and made his predictions. (95) he then proceeds to relate how the israelites invaded the promised land in accordance with moses' prophecy (deut. vii.); and how, when the land was subdued, they turned their backs on their laws, and thereby incurred many misfortunes (deut. xxxi:16, 17). (96) he tells how they wished to elect rulers, and how, according as these rulers observed the law, the people flourished or suffered (deut. xxviii:36); finally, how destruction came upon the nation, even as moses had foretold. (97) in regard to other matters, which do not serve to confirm the law, the writer either passes over them in silence, or refers the reader to other books for information. (98) all that is set down in the books we have conduces to the sole object of setting forth the words and laws of moses, and proving them by subsequent events. (8:99) when we put together these three considerations, namely, the unity of the subject of all the books, the connection between them, and the fact that they are compilations made many generations after the events they relate had taken place, we come to the conclusion, as i have just stated, that they are all the work of a single historian. [8:5] (100) who this historian was, it is not so easy to show; but i suspect that he was ezra, and there are several strong reasons for adopting this hypothesis. (8:101) the historian whom we already know to be but one individual brings his history down to the liberation of jehoiakim, and adds that he himself sat at the king's table all his life that is, at the table either of jehoiakim, or of the son of nebuchadnezzar, for the sense of the passage is ambiguous: hence it follows that he did not live before the time of ezra. (102) but scripture does not testify of any except of ezra (ezra vii:10), that he "prepared his heart to seek the law of the lord, and to set it forth, and further that he was a ready scribe in the law of moses." (103) therefore, i can not find anyone, save ezra, to whom to attribute the sacred books. (8:104) further, from this testimony concerning ezra, we see that he prepared his heart, not only to seek the law of the lord, but also to set it forth; and, in nehemiah viii:8, we read that "they read in the book of the law of god distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading." (8:105) as, then, in deuteronomy, we find not only the book of the law of moses, or the greater part of it, but also many things inserted for its better explanation, i conjecture that this deuteronomy is the book of the law of god, written, set forth, and explained by ezra, which is referred to in the text above quoted. (106) two examples of the way matters were inserted parenthetically in the text of deuteronomy, with a view to its fuller explanation, we have already given, in speaking of aben ezra's opinion. (107) many others are found in the course of the work: for instance, in chap. ii:12: "the horims dwelt also in seir beforetime; but the children of esau succeeded them, when they had destroyed them from before them, and dwelt in their stead; as israel did unto the land of his possession, which the lord gave unto them." (8:108) this explains verses 3 and 4 of the same chapter, where it is stated that mount seir, which had come to the children of esau for a possession, did not fall into their hands uninhabited; but that they invaded it, and turned out and destroyed the horims, who formerly dwelt therein, even as the children of israel had done unto the canaanites after the death of moses. (8:109) so, also, verses 6, 7, 8, 9, of the tenth chapter are inserted parenthetically among the words of moses. everyone must see that verse 8, which begins, "at that time the lord separated the tribe of levi," necessarily refers to verse 5, and not to the death of aaron, which is only mentioned here by ezra because moses, in telling of the golden calf worshipped by the people, stated that he had prayed for aaron. (8:110) he then explains that at the time at which moses spoke, god had chosen for himself the tribe of levi in order that he may point out the reason for their election, and for the fact of their not sharing in the inheritance; after this digression, he resumes the thread of moses' speech. (111) to these parentheses we must add the preface to the book, and all the passages in which moses is spoken of in the third person, besides many which we cannot now distinguish, though, doubtless, they would have been plainly recognized by the writer's contemporaries. (8:112) if, i say, we were in possession of the book of the law as moses wrote it, i do not doubt that we should find a great difference in the words of the precepts, the order in which they are given, and the reasons by which they are supported. [8:6] (113) a comparison of the decalogue in deuteronomy with the decalogue in exodus, where its history is explicitly set forth, will be sufficient to show us a wide discrepancy in all these three particulars, for the fourth commandment is given not only in a different form, but at much greater length, while the reason for its observance differs wholly from that stated in exodus. (114) again, the order in which the tenth commandment is explained differs in the two versions. (115) i think that the differences here as elsewhere are the work of ezra, who explained the law of god to his contemporaries, and who wrote this book of the law of god, before anything else; this i gather from the fact that it contains the laws of the country, of which the people stood in most need, and also because it is not joined to the book which precedes it by any connecting phrase, but begins with the independent statement, "these are the words of moses." [8:7] (116) after this task was completed, i think ezra set himself to give a complete account of the history of the hebrew nation from the creation of the world to the entire destruction of the city, and in this account he inserted the book of deuteronomy, and, possibly, he called the first five books by the name of moses, because his life is chiefly contained therein, and forms their principal subject; for the same reason he called the sixth joshua, the seventh judges, the eighth ruth, the ninth, and perhaps the tenth, samuel, and, lastly, the eleventh and twelfth kings. (8:117) whether ezra put the finishing touches to this work and finished it as he intended, we will discuss in the next chapter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[9:0] chapter ix other questions concerning the same books: namely, whether they were completely finished by ezra, and, further, whether the marginal notes which are found in the hebrew texts were various readings. (9:1) how greatly the inquiry we have just made concerning the real writer of the twelve books aids us in attaining a complete understanding of them, may be easily gathered solely from the passages which we have adduced in confirmation of our opinion, and which would be most obscure without it. (2) but besides the question of the writer, there are other points to notice which common superstition forbids the multitude to apprehend. [9:1] (3) of these the chief is, that ezra (whom i will take to be the author of the aforesaid books until some more likely person be suggested) did not put the finishing touches to the narrative contained therein, but merely collected the histories from various writers, and sometimes simply set them down, leaving their examination and arrangement to posterity. (9:4) the cause (if it were not untimely death) which prevented him from completing his work in all its portions, i cannot conjecture, but the fact remains most clear, although we have lost the writings of the ancient hebrew historians, and can only judge from the few fragments which are still extant. (5) for the history of hezekiah (2 kings xviii:17), as written in the vision of isaiah, is related as it is found in the chronicles of the kings of judah. (9:6) we read the same story, told with few exceptions [endnote 11] in the same words, in the book of isaiah which was contained in the chronicles of the kings of judah (2 chron. xxxii:32). (7) from this we must conclude that there were various versions of this narrative of isaiah's, unless, indeed, anyone would dream that in this, too, there lurks a mystery. (8) further, the last chapter of 2 kings 27-30 is repeated in the last chapter of jeremiah, v.31-34. (9:9) again, we find 2 sam. vii. repeated in i chron. xvii., but the expressions in the two passages are so curiously varied [endnote 12] that we can very easily see that these two chapters were taken from two different versions of the history of nathan. (9:10) lastly, the genealogy of the kings of idumaea contained in genesis xxxvi:31, is repeated in the same words in 1 chron. i., though we know that the author of the latter work took his materials from other historians, not from the twelve books we have ascribed to ezra. (10a) we may therefore be sure that if we still possessed the writings of the historians, the matter would be made clear; however, as we have lost them, we can only examine the writings still extant, and from their order and connection, their various repetitions, and, lastly, the contradictions in dates which they contain, judge of the rest. (9:11) these, then, or the chief of them, we will now go through. (12) first, in the story of judah and tamar (gen. xxxviii.) the historian thus begins: "and it came to pass at that time that judah went down from his brethren." (13) this time cannot refer to what immediately precedes [endnote 13] but must necessarily refer to something else, for from the time when joseph was sold into egypt to the time when the patriarch jacob, with all his family, set out thither, cannot be reckoned as more than twenty-two years, for joseph, when he was sold by his brethren, was seventeen years old, and when he was summoned by pharaoh from prison was thirty; if to this we add the seven years of plenty and two of famine, the total amounts to twenty-two years. (14) now, in so short a period, no one can suppose that so many things happened as are described; that judah had three children, one after the other, from one wife, whom he married at the beginning of the period; that the eldest of these, when he was old enough, married tamar, and that after he died his next brother succeeded to her; that, after all this, judah, without knowing it, had intercourse with his daughter-in-law, and that she bore him twins, and, finally, that the eldest of these twins became a father within the aforesaid period. (9:15) as all these events cannot have taken place within the period mentioned in genesis, the reference must necessarily be to something treated of in another book: and ezra in this instance simply related the story, and inserted it without examination among his other writings. (9:16) however, not only this chapter but the whole narrative of joseph and jacob is collected and set forth from various histories, inasmuch as it is quite inconsistent with itself. (17) for in gen. xlvii. we are told that jacob, when he came at joseph's bidding to salute pharaoh, was 130 years old. (18) if from this we deduct the twenty-two years which he passed sorrowing for the absence of joseph and the seventeen years forming joseph's age when he was sold, and, lastly, the seven years for which jacob served for rachel, we find that he was very advanced in life, namely, eighty four, when he took leah to wife, whereas dinah was scarcely seven years old when she was violated by shechem. [endnote 14] (19) simeon and levi were aged respectively eleven and twelve when they spoiled the city and slew all the males therein with the sword. (9:20) there is no need that i should go through the whole pentateuch. (21) if anyone pays attention to the way in which all the histories and precepts in these five books are set down promiscuously and without order, with no regard for dates; and further, how the same story is often repeated, sometimes in a different version, he will easily, i say, discern that all the materials were promiscuously collected and heaped together, in order that they might at some subsequent time be more readily examined and reduced to order. (22) not only these five books, but also the narratives contained in the remaining seven, going down to the destruction of the city, are compiled in the same way. (9:23) for who does not see that in judges ii:6 a new historian is being quoted, who had also written of the deeds of joshua, and that his words are simply copied? (24) for after our historian has stated in the last chapter of the book of joshua that joshua died and was buried, and has promised, in the first chapter of judges, to relate what happened after his death, in what way, if he wished to continue the thread of his history, could he connect the statement here made about joshua with what had gone before? (9:25) so, too, 1 sam. 17, 18, are taken from another historian, who assigns a cause for david's first frequenting saul's court very different from that given in chap. xvi. of the same book. (26) for he did not think that david came to saul in consequence of the advice of saul's servants, as is narrated in chap. xvi., but that being sent by chance to the camp by his father on a message to his brothers, he was for the first time remarked by saul on the occasion of his victory over goliath the philistine, and was retained at his court. (9:27) i suspect the same thing has taken place in chap. xxvi. of the same book, for the historian there seems to repeat the narrative given in chap. xxiv. according to another man's version. (28) but i pass over this, and go on to the computation of dates. (9:29) in i kings, chap. vi., it is said that solomon built the temple in the four hundred and eightieth year after the exodus from egypt; but from the historians themselves we get a much longer period, for: years. moses governed the people in the desert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 joshua, who lived 110 years, did not, according to josephus and others' opinion rule more than . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . 26 cusban rishathaim held the people in subjection . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 othniel, son of kenag, was judge for . . . . . . . . . . . [endnote 15] 40 eglon, king of moab, governed the people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 ehucl and shamgar were judges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 jachin, king of canaan, held the people in subjection . . . . . . . . . 20 the people was at peace subsequently for . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . 40 it was under subjection to median . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 7 it obtained freedom under gideon for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 it fell under the rule of abimelech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 tola, son of puah, was judge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 jair was judge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . 22 the people was in subjection to the philistines and ammonites . . . . . 18 jephthah was judge . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 ibzan, the bethlehemite, was judge . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . 7 elon, the zabulonite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 abclon, the pirathonite . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 the people was again subject to the philistines . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 samson was judge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [endnote 16] 20 eli was judge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 the people again fell into subjection to the philistines, till they were delivered by samuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 david reigned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 solomon reigned before he built the temple . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 4 (9:30) all these periods added together make a total of 580 years. (31) but to these must be added the years during which the hebrew republic flourished after the death of joshua, until it was conquered by cushan rishathaim, which i take to be very numerous, for i cannot bring myself to believe that immediately after the death of joshua all those who had witnessed his miracles died simultaneously, nor that their successors at one stroke bid farewell to their laws, and plunged from the highest virtue into the depth of wickedness and obstinacy. (9:32) nor, lastly, that cushan rishathaim subdued them on the instant; each one of these circumstances requires almost a generation, and there is no doubt that judges ii:7, 9, 10, comprehends a great many years which it passes over in silence. (33) we must also add the years during which samuel was judge, the number of which is not stated in scripture, and also the years during which saul reigned, which are not clearly shown from his history. (34) it is, indeed, stated in 1 sam. xiii:1, that he reigned two years, but the text in that passage is mutilated, and the records of his reign lead us to suppose a longer period. (9:35) that the text is mutilated i suppose no one will doubt who has ever advanced so far as the threshold of the hebrew language, for it runs as follows: "saul was in his -year, when he began to reign, and he reigned two years over israel." (36) who, i say, does not see that the number of the years of saul's age when he began to reign has been omitted? (37) that the record of the reign presupposes a greater number of years is equally beyond doubt, for in the same book, chap. xxvii:7, it is stated that david sojourned among the philistines, to whom he had fled on account of saul, a year and four months; thus the rest of the reign must have been comprised in a space of eight months, which i think no one will credit. (9:38) josephus, at end of the sixth book of his antiquities, thus corrects the text: saul reigned eighteen years while samuel was alive, and two years after his death. (39) however, all the narrative in chap. xiii. is in complete disagreement with what goes before. (40) at the end of chap. vii. it is narrated that the philistines were so crushed by the hebrews that they did not venture, during samuel's life, to invade the borders of israel; but in chap. xiii. we are told that the hebrews were invaded during the life of samuel by the philistines, and reduced by them to such a state of wretchedness and poverty that they were deprived not only of weapons with which to defend themselves, but also of the means of making more. (9:41) i should be at pains enough if i were to try and harmonize all the narratives contained in this first book of samuel so that they should seem to be all written and by a single historian. (42) but i return to my object. (43) the years, then, during which saul reigned must be added to the above computation; and, lastly, i have not counted the years of the hebrew anarchy, for i cannot from scripture gather their number. (44) i cannot, i say, be certain as to the period occupied by the events related in judges chap. xvii. on till the end of the book. (9:45) it is thus abundantly evident that we cannot arrive at a true computation of years from the histories, and, further, that the histories are inconsistent themselves on the subject. (46) we are compelled to confess that these histories were compiled from various writers without previous arrangement and examination. (47) not less discrepancy is found between the dates given in the chronicles of the kings of judah, and those in the chronicles of the kings of israel; in the latter, it is stated that jehoram, the son of ahab, began to reign in the second year of the reign of jehoram, the son of jehoshaphat (2 kings i:17), but in the former we read that jehoram, the son of jehoshaphat, began to reign in the fifth year of jehoram, the son of ahab (2 kings viii:16). (9:48) anyone who compares the narratives in chronicles with the narratives in the books of kings, will find many similar discrepancies. (49) these there is no need for me to examine here, and still less am i called upon to treat of the commentaries of those who endeavour to harmonize them. (50) the rabbis evidently let their fancy run wild. (51) such commentators as i have, read, dream, invent, and as a last resort, play fast and loose with the language. (9:52) for instance, when it is said in 2 chronicles, that ahab was forty-two years old when he began to reign, they pretend that these years are computed from the reign of omri, not from the birth of ahab. (9:52a) if this can be shown to be the real meaning of the writer of the book of chronicles, all i can say is, that he did not know how to state a fact. (53) the commentators make many other assertions of this kind, which if true, would prove that the ancient hebrews were ignorant both of their own language, and of the way to relate a plain narrative. (54) i should in such case recognize no rule or reason in interpreting scripture, but it would be permissible to hypothesize to one's heart's content. (9:55) if anyone thinks that i am speaking too generally, and without sufficient warrant, i would ask him to set himself to showing us some fixed plan in these histories which might be followed without blame by other writers of chronicles, and in his efforts at harmonizing and interpretation, so strictly to observe and explain the phrases and expressions, the order and the connections, that we may be able to imitate these also in our writings. [endnote 17] (9:56) if he succeeds, i will at once give him my hand, and he shall be to me as great apollo; for i confess that after long endeavours i have been unable to discover anything of the kind. (57) i may add that i set down nothing here which i have not long reflected upon, and that, though i was imbued from my boyhood up with the ordinary opinions about the scriptures, i have been unable to withstand the force of what i have urged. (9:58) however, there is no need to detain the reader with this question, and drive him to attempt an impossible task; i merely mentioned the fact in order to throw light on my intention. (9:59) i now pass on to other points concerning the treatment of these books. (60) for we must remark, in addition to what has been shown, that these books were not guarded by posterity with such care that no faults crept in. (61) the ancient scribes draw attention to many doubtful readings, and some mutilated passages, but not to all that exist: whether the faults are of sufficient importance to greatly embarrass the reader i will not now discuss. (9:62) i am inclined to think that they are of minor moment to those, at any rate, who read the scriptures with enlightenment: and i can positively affirm i have not noticed any fault or various reading in doctrinal passages sufficient to render them obscure or doubtful. (9:63) there are some people, however, who will not admit that there is any corruption, even in other passages, but maintain that by some unique exercise of providence god has preserved from corruption every word in the bible: they say that the various readings are the symbols of profoundest mysteries, and that mighty secrets lie hid in the twenty-eight hiatus which occur, nay, even in the very form of the letters. (9:64) whether they are actuated by folly and anile devotion, or whether by arrogance and malice so that they alone may be held to possess the secrets of god, i know not: this much i do know, that i find in their writings nothing which has the air of a divine secret, but only childish lucubrations. (65) i have read and known certain kabbalistic triflers, whose insanity provokes my unceasing as astonishment. (66) that faults have crept in will, i think, be denied by no sensible person who reads the passage about saul, above quoted (1 sam. xiii:1) and also 2 sam. vi:2: "and david arose and went with all the people that were with him from judah, to bring up from thence the ark of god." (9:67) no one can fail to remark that the name of their destination, viz., kirjath-jearim [endnote 18] has been omitted: nor can we deny that 2 sam. xiii:37, has been tampered with and mutilated. (68) "and absalom fled, and went to talmai, the son of ammihud, king of geshur. (68a) and he mourned for his son every day. (68b) so absalom fled, and went to geshur, and was there three years." (69) i know that i have remarked other passages of the same kind, but i cannot recall them at the moment. [9:3] (70) that the marginal notes which are found continually in the hebrew codices are doubtful readings will, i think, be evident to everyone who has noticed that they often arise from the great similarity of some of the hebrew letters, such for instance, as the similarity between kaph and beth, jod and van, daleth and reth, &c. (71) for example, the text in 2 sam. v:24, runs "in the time when thou hearest," and similarly in judges xxi:22, "and it shall be when their fathers or their brothers come unto us often," the marginal version is "come unto us to complain." (9:72) so also many various readings have arisen from the use of the letters named mutes, which are generally not sounded in pronunciation, and are taken promiscuously, one for the other. (73) for example, in levit. xxv:29, it is written, "the house shall be established which is not in the walled city," but the margin has it, "which is in a walled city." [9:4] (74) though these matters are self-evident, it is necessary to answer the reasonings of certain pharisees, by which they endeavour to convince us that the marginal notes serve to indicate some mystery and were added or pointed out by the writers of the sacred books. (75) the first of these reasons, which, in my opinion, carries little weight, is taken from the practice of reading the scriptures aloud. (9:76) if, it is urged, these notes were added to show various readings which could not be decided upon by posterity, why has custom prevailed that the marginal readings should always be retained? (77) why has the meaning which is preferred been set down in the margin when it ought to have been incorporated in the text, and not relegated to a side note? (9:78) the second reason is more specious, and is taken from the nature of the case. (79) it is admitted that faults have crept into the sacred writings by chance and not by design; but they say that in the five books the word for a girl is, with one exception, written without the letter "he," contrary to all grammatical rules, whereas in the margin it is written correctly according to the universal rule of grammar. (9:80) can this have happened by mistake? (80a) is it possible to imagine a clerical error to have been committed every time the word occurs? (81) moreover, it would have been easy to supply the emendation. (82) hence, when these readings are not accidental or corrections of manifest mistakes, it is supposed that they must have been set down on purpose by the original writers, and have a meaning. (83) however, it is easy to answer such arguments; as to the question of custom having prevailed in the reading of the marginal versions, i will not spare much time for its consideration: i know not the promptings of superstition, and perhaps the practice may have arisen from the idea that both readings were deemed equally good or tolerable, and therefore, lest either should be neglected, one was appointed to be written, and the other to be read. (9:84) they feared to pronounce judgment in so weighty a matter lest they should mistake the false for the true, and therefore they would give preference to neither, as they must necessarily have done if they had commanded one only to be both read and written. (9:85) this would be especially the case where the marginal readings were not written down in the sacred books: or the custom may have originated because some things though rightly written down were desired to be read otherwise according to the marginal version, and therefore the general rule was made that the marginal version should be followed in reading the scriptures. (86) the cause which induced the scribes to expressly prescribe certain passages to be read in the marginal version, i will now touch on, for not all the marginal notes are various readings, but some mark expressions which have passed out of common use, obsolete words and terms which current decency did not allow to be read in a public assembly. (87) the ancient writers, without any evil intention, employed no courtly paraphrase, but called things by their plain names. (9:88) afterwards, through the spread of evil thoughts and luxury, words which could be used by the ancients without offence, came to be considered obscene. (9:89) there was no need for this cause to change the text of scripture. (90) still, as a concession to the popular weakness, it became the custom to substitute more decent terms for words denoting sexual intercourse, exereta, &c., and to read them as they were given in the margin. (9:91) at any rate, whatever may have been the origin of the practice of reading scripture according to the marginal version, it was not that the true interpretation is contained therein. (92) for besides that, the rabbins in the talmud often differ from the massoretes, and give other readings which they approve of, as i will shortly show, certain things are found in the margin which appear less warranted by the uses of the hebrew language. (9:93) for example, in 2 samuel xiv:22, we read, "in that the king hath fulfilled the request of his servant," a construction plainly regular, and agreeing with that in chap. xvi. (94) but the margin has it "of thy servant," which does not agree with the person of the verb. (95) so, too, chap. xvi:25 of the same book, we find, "as if one had inquired at the oracle of god," the margin adding "someone" to stand as a nominative to the verb. (96) but the correction is not apparently warranted, for it is a common practice, well known to grammarians in the hebrew language, to use the third person singular of the active verb impersonally. (9:97) the second argument advanced by the pharisees is easily answered from what has just been said, namely, that the scribes besides the various readings called attention to obsolete words. (9:98) for there is no doubt that in hebrew as in other languages, changes of use made many words obsolete and antiquated, and such were found by the later scribes in the sacred books and noted by them with a view to the books being publicly read according to custom. (9:99) for this reason the word nahgar is always found marked because its gender was originally common, and it had the same meaning as the latin juvenis (a young person). (100) so also the hebrew capital was anciently called jerusalem, not jerusalaim. (101) as to the pronouns himself and herself, i think that the later scribes changed vau into jod (a very frequent change in hebrew) when they wished to express the feminine gender, but that the ancients only distinguished the two genders by a change of vowels. (102) i may also remark that the irregular tenses of certain verbs differ in the ancient and modern forms, it being formerly considered a mark of elegance to employ certain letters agreeable to the ear. (9:103) in a word, i could easily multiply proofs of this kind if i were not afraid of abusing the patience of the reader. (104) perhaps i shall be asked how i became acquainted with the fact that all these expressions are obsolete. (105) i reply that i have found them in the most ancient hebrew writers in the bible itself, and that they have not been imitated by subsequent authors, and thus they are recognized as antiquated, though the language in which they occur is dead. (9:106) but perhaps someone may press the question why, if it be true, as i say, that the marginal notes of the bible generally mark various readings, there are never more than two readings of a passage, that in the text and that in the margin, instead of three or more; and further, how the scribes can have hesitated between two readings, one of which is evidently contrary to grammar, and the other a plain correction. (9:107) the answer to these questions also is easy: i will premise that it is almost certain that there once were more various readings than those now recorded. (108) for instance, one finds many in the talmud which the massoretes have neglected, and are so different one from the other that even the superstitious editor of the bomberg bible confesses that he cannot harmonize them. (109) "we cannot say anything," he writes, "except what we have said above, namely, that the talmud is generally in contradiction to the massorete." (110) so that we are nor bound to hold that there never were more than two readings of any passage, yet i am willing to admit, and indeed i believe that more than two readings are never found: and for the following reasons:(9:111) (i.) the cause of the differences of reading only admits of two, being generally the similarity of certain letters, so that the question resolved itself into which should be written beth, or kaf, jod or vau, daleth or reth: cases which are constantly occurring, and frequently yielding a fairly good meaning whichever alternative be adopted. (9:112) sometimes, too, it is a question whether a syllable be long or short, quantity being determined by the letters called mutes. (113) moreover, we never asserted that all the marginal versions, without exception, marked various readings; on the contrary, we have stated that many were due to motives of decency or a desire to explain obsolete words. (9:114) (ii.) i am inclined to attribute the fact that more than two readings are never found to the paucity of exemplars, perhaps not more than two or three, found by the scribes. (115) in the treatise of the scribes, chap. vi., mention is made of three only, pretended to have been found in the time of ezra, in order that the marginal versions might be attributed to him. (9:116) however that may be, if the scribes only had three codices we may easily imagine that in a given passage two of them would be in accord, for it would be extraordinary if each one of the three gave a different reading of the same text. (9:117) the dearth of copies after the time of ezra will surprise no one who has read the 1st chapter of maccabees, or josephus's "antiquities," bk. 12, chap. 5. (118) nay, it appears wonderful considering the fierce and daily persecution, that even these few should have been preserved. (119) this will, i think, be plain to even a cursory reader of the history of those times. (9:120) we have thus discovered the reasons why there are never more than two readings of a passage in the bible, but this is a long way from supposing that we may therefore conclude that the bible was purposely written incorrectly in such passages in order to signify some mystery. (9:121) as to the second argument, that some passages are so faultily written that they are at plain variance with all grammar, and should have been corrected in the text and not in the margin, i attach little weight to it, for i am not concerned to say what religious motive the scribes may have had for acting as they did: possibly they did so from candour, wishing to transmit the few exemplars of the bible which they had found exactly in their original state, marking the differences they discovered in the margin, not as doubtful readings, but as simple variants. (122) i have myself called them doubtful readings, because it would be generally impossible to say which of the two versions is preferable. [9:5] (123) lastly, besides these doubtful readings the scribes have (by leaving a hiatus in the middle of a paragraph) marked several passages as mutilated. (124) the massoretes have counted up such instances, and they amount to eight-and-twenty. (125) i do not know whether any mystery is thought to lurk in the number, at any rate the pharisees religiously preserve a certain amount of empty space. (9:126) one of such hiatus occurs (to give an instance) in gen. iv:8, where it is written, "and cain said to his brother . . . . and it came to pass while they were in the field, &c.," a space being left in which we should expect to hear what it was that cain said. (9:127) similarly there are (besides those points we have noticed) eight-and-twenty hiatus left by the scribes. (128) many of these would not be recognized as mutilated if it were not for the empty space left. (129) but i have said enough on this subject. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[10:0] chapter x. an examination of the remaining books of the old testament according to the preceding method. [10:1] (1) i now pass on to the remaining books of the old testament. (2) concerning the two books of chronicles i have nothing particular or important to remark, except that they were certainly written after the time of ezra, and possibly after the restoration of the temple by judas maccabaeus. [endnote 19] (2) for in chap. ix. of the first book we find a reckoning of the families who were the first to live in jerusalem, and in verse 17 the names of the porters, of which two recur in nehemiah. (3) this shows that the books were certainly compiled after the rebuilding of the city. (4) as to their actual writer, their authority, utility, and doctrine, i come to no conclusion. (5) i have always been astonished that they have been included in the bible by men who shut out from the canon the books of wisdom, tobit, and the others styled apocryphal. (6) i do not aim at disparaging their authority, but as they are universally received i will leave them as they are. (10:7) the psalms were collected and divided into five books in the time of the second temple, for ps. lxxxviii. was published, according to philo-judaeus, while king jehoiachin was still a prisoner in babylon; and ps. lxxxix. when the same king obtained his liberty: i do not think philo would have made the statement unless either it had been the received opinion in his time, or else had been told him by trustworthy persons. (10:8) the proverbs of solomon were, i believe, collected at the same time, or at least in the time of king josiah; for in chap. xxv:1, it is written, "these are also proverbs of solomon which the men of hezekiah, king of judah, copied out." (9) i cannot here pass over in silence the audacity of the rabbis who wished to exclude from the sacred canon both the proverbs and ecclesiastes, and to put them both in the apocrypha. (9a) in fact, they would actually have done so, if they had not lighted on certain passages in which the law of moses is extolled. (9b) it is, indeed, grievous to think that the settling of the sacred canon lay in the hands of such men; however, i congratulate them, in this instance, on their suffering us to see these books in question, though i cannot refrain from doubting whether they have transmitted them in absolute good faith; but i will not now linger on this point. (10:10) i pass on, then, to the prophetic books. (11) an examination of these assures me that the prophecies therein contained have been compiled from other books, and are not always set down in the exact order in which they were spoken or written by the prophets, but are only such as were collected here and there, so that they are but fragmentary. [10:2] (12) isaiah began to prophecy in the reign of uzziah, as the writer himself testifies in the first verse. (13) he not only prophesied at that time, but furthermore wrote the history of that king (see 2 chron. xxvi:22) in a volume now lost. (13a) that which we possess, we have shown to have been taken from the chronicles of the kings of judah and israel. (10:14) we may add that the rabbis assert that this prophet prophesied in the reign of manasseh, by whom he was eventually put to death, and, although this seems to be a myth, it yet shows that they did not think that all isaiah's prophecies are extant. (10:15) the prophecies of jeremiah, which are related historically are also taken from various chronicles; for not only are they heaped together confusedly, without any account being taken of dates, but also the same story is told in them differently in different passages. (16) for instance, in chap. xxi. we are told that the cause of jeremiah's arrest was that he had prophesied the destruction of the city to zedekiah who consulted him. (10:17) this narrative suddenly passes, in chap xxii., to the prophet's remonstrances to jehoiakim (zedekiah's predecessor), and the prediction he made of that king's captivity; then, in chap. xxv., come the revelations granted to the prophet previously, that is in the fourth year of jehoiakim, and, further on still, the revelations received in the first year of the same reign. (18) the continuator of jeremiah goes on heaping prophecy upon prophecy without any regard to dates, until at last, in chap. xxxviii. (as if the intervening chapters had been a parenthesis), he takes up the thread dropped in. chap. xxi. (10:19) in fact, the conjunction with which chap. xxxviii. begins, refers to the 8th, 9th, and 10th verses of chap. xxi. jeremiah's last arrest is then very differently described, and a totally separate cause is given for his daily retention in the court of the prison. (10:20) we may thus clearly see that these portions of the book have been compiled from various sources, and are only from this point of view comprehensible. (21) the prophecies contained in the remaining chapters, where jeremiah speaks in the first person, seem to be taken from a book written by baruch, at jeremiah's dictation. (22) these, however, only comprise (as appears from chap. xxxvi:2) the prophecies revealed to the prophet from the time of josiah to the fourth year of jehoiakim, at which period the book begins. (23) the contents of chap. xlv:2, on to chap. li:59, seem taken from the same volume. [10:3] (24) that the book of ezekiel is only a fragment, is clearly indicated by the first verse. (25) for anyone may see that the conjunction with which it begins, refers to something already said, and connects what follows therewith. (26) however, not only this conjunction, but the whole text of the discourse implies other writings. (27) the fact of the present work beginning the thirtieth year shows that the prophet is continuing, not commencing a discourse; and this is confirmed by the writer, who parenthetically states in verse 3, "the word of the lord came often unto ezekiel the priest, the son of buzi, in the land of the chaldeans," as if to say that the prophecies which he is about to relate are the sequel to revelations formerly received by ezekiel from god. (28) furthermore, josephus, 11 antiq." x:9, says that ezekiel prophesied that zedekiah should not see babylon, whereas the book we now have not only contains no such statement, but contrariwise asserts in chap. xvii. that he should be taken to babylon as a captive. [endnote 20] (10:29) of hosea i cannot positively state that he wrote more than is now extant in the book bearing his name, but i am astonished at the smallness of the quantity we possess, for the sacred writer asserts that the prophet prophesied for more than eighty years. [10:4] (30) we may assert, speaking generally, that the compiler of the prophetic books neither collected all the prophets, nor all the writings of those we have; for of the prophets who are said to have prophesied in the reign of manasseh and of whom general mention is made in 2 chron. xxxiii:10, 18, we have, evidently, no prophecies extant; neither have we all the prophecies of the twelve who give their names to books. (31) of jonah we have only the prophecy concerning the ninevites, though he also prophesied to the children of israel, as we learn in 2 kings xiv:25. (10:32) the book and the personality of job have caused much controversy. (33) some think that the book is the work of moses, and the whole narrative merely allegorical. (34) such is the opinion of the rabbins recorded in the talmud, and they are supported by maimonides in his "more nebuchim." (35) others believe it to be a true history, and some suppose that job lived in the time of jacob, and was married to his daughter dinah. (36) aben ezra, however, as i have already stated, affirms, in his commentaries, that the work is a translation into hebrew from some other language: i could wish that he could advance more cogent arguments than he does, for we might then conclude that the gentiles also had sacred books. (37) i myself leave the matter undecided, but i conjecture job to have been a gentile, and a man of very stable character, who at first prospered, then was assailed with terrible calamities, and finally was restored to great happiness. (38) (he is thus named, among others, by ezekiel, xiv:12.) (39) i take it that he constancy of his mind amid the vicissitudes of his fortune occasioned many men to dispute about god's providence, or at least caused the writer of the book in question to compose his dialogues; for the contents, and also the style, seem to emanate far less from a man wretchedly ill and lying among ashes, than from one reflecting at ease in his study. (10:40) i should also be inclined to agree with aben ezra that the book is a translation, for its poetry seems akin to that of the gentiles; thus the father of gods summons a council, and momus, here called satan, criticizes the divine decrees with the utmost freedom. (41) but these are mere conjectures without any solid foundation. [10:5] (42) i pass on to the book of daniel, which, from chap. viii. onwards, undoubtedly contains the writing of daniel himself. (43) whence the first seven chapters are derived i cannot say; we may, however, conjecture that, as they were first written in chaldean, they are taken from chaldean chronicles. (44) if this could be proved, it would form a very striking proof of the fact that the sacredness of scripture depends on our understanding of the doctrines therein signified, and not on the words, the language, and the phrases in which these doctrines are conveyed to us; and it would further show us that books which teach and speak of whatever is highest and best are equally sacred, whatever be the tongue in which they are written, or the nation to which they belong. (10;45) we can, however, in this case only remark that the chapters in question were written in chaldee, and yet are as sacred as the rest of the bible. (10:46) the first book of ezra is so intimately connected with the book of daniel that both are plainly recognizable as the work of the same author, writing of jewish history from the time of the first captivity onwards. (47) i have no hesitation in joining to this the book of esther, for the conjunction with which it begins can refer to nothing else. (10:48) it cannot be the same work as that written by mordecai, for, in chap. ix:20-22, another person relates that mordecai wrote letters, and tells us their contents; further, that queen esther confirmed the days of purim in their times appointed, and that the decree was written in the book that is (by a hebraism), in a book known to all then living, which, as aben ezra and the rest confess, has now perished. (49) lastly, for the rest of the acts of mordecai, the historian refers us to the chronicles of the kings of persia. (50) thus there is no doubt that this book was written by the same person as he who recounted the history of daniel and ezra, and who wrote nehemiah, [endnote 21] sometimes called the second book of ezra. (51) we may, then, affirm to the personality of the author. (10:52) however, in order to determine whence he, whoever he was, had gained a knowledge of the histories which he had, perchance, in great measure himself written, we may remark that the governors or chiefs of the jews, after the restoration of the temple, kept scribes or historiographers, who wrote annals or chronicles of them. (53) the chronicles of the kings are often quoted in the books of kings, but the chronicles of the chiefs and priests are quoted for the first time in nehemiah xii:23, and again in 1 macc. xvi:24. (10:54) this is undoubtedly the book referred to as containing the decree of esther and the acts of mordecai; and which, as we said with aben ezra, is now lost. (55) from it were taken the whole contents of these four books, for no other authority is quoted by their writer, or is known to us. (10:56) that these books were not written by either ezra or nehemiah is plain from nehemiah xii:9, where the descendants of the high priest, joshua are traced down to jaddua, the sixth high priest, who went to meet alexander the great, when the persian empire was almost subdued (josephus, "ant." ii. 108), or who, according to philo-judaeus, was the sixth and last high priest under the persians. (10:57) in the same chapter of nehemiah, verse 22, this point is clearly brought out: "the levites in the days of eliashib, joiada, and johanan, and jaddua, were recorded chief of the fathers: also the priests, to the reign of darius the persian" that is to say, in the chronicles; and, i suppose, no one thinks [endnote 22] that the lives of nehemiah and ezra were so prolonged that they outlived fourteen kings of persia. (58) cyrus was the first who granted the jews permission to rebuild their temple: the period between his time and darius, fourteenth and last king of persia, extends over 230 years. (10:59) i have, therefore, no doubt that these books were written after judas maccabaeus had restored the worship in the temple, for at that time false books of daniel, ezra, and esther were published by evil-disposed persons, who were almost certainly sadducees, for the writings were never recognized by the pharisees, so far as i am aware; and, although certain myths in the fourth book of ezra are repeated in the talmud, they must not be set down to the pharisees, for all but the most ignorant admit that they have been added by some trifler: in fact, i think, someone must have made such additions with a view to casting ridicule on all the traditions of the sect. (10:60) perhaps these four books were written out and published at the time i have mentioned with a view to showing the people that the prophecies of daniel had been fulfilled, and thus kindling their piety, and awakening a hope of future deliverance in the midst of their misfortunes. (61) in spite of their recent origin, the books before us contain many errors, due, i suppose, to the haste with which they were written. (62) marginal readings, such as i have mentioned in the last chapter, are found here as elsewhere, and in even greater abundance; there are, moreover, certain passages which can only be accounted for by supposing some such cause as hurry. (10:63) however, before calling attention to the marginal readings, i will remark that, if the pharisees are right in supposing them to have been ancient, and the work of the original scribes, we must perforce admit that these scribes (if there were more than one) set them down because they found that the text from which they were copying was inaccurate, and did yet not venture to alter what was written by their predecessors and superiors. (64) i need not again go into the subject at length, and will, therefore, proceed to mention some discrepancies not noticed in the margin. (10:65) i. some error has crept into the text of the second chapter of ezra, for in verse 64 we are told that the total of all those mentioned in the rest of the chapter amounts to 42,360; but, when we come to add up the several items we get as result only 29,818. (66) there must, therefore, be an error, either in the total, or in the details. (67) the total is probably correct, for it would most likely be well known to all as a noteworthy thing; but with the details, the case would be different. (10:68) if, then, any error had crept into the total, it would at once have been remarked, and easily corrected. (69) this view is confirmed by nehemiah vii., where this chapter of ezra is mentioned, and a total is given in plain correspondence thereto; but the details are altogether different some are larger, and some less, than those in ezra, and altogether they amount to 31,089. (10:70) we may, therefore, conclude that both in ezra and in nehemiah the details are erroneously given. (71) the commentators who attempt to harmonize these evident contradictions draw on their imagination, each to the best of his ability; and while professing adoration for each letter and word of scripture, only succeed in holding up the sacred writers to ridicule, as though they knew not how to write or relate a plain narrative. (10:72) such persons effect nothing but to render the clearness of scripture obscure. (73) if the bible could everywhere be interpreted after their fashion, there would be no such thing as a rational statement of which the meaning could be relied on. (74) however, there is no need to dwell on the subject; only i am convinced that if any historian were to attempt to imitate the proceedings freely attributed to the writers of the bible, the commentators would cover him with contempt. (75) if it be blasphemy to assert that there are any errors in scripture, what name shall we apply to those who foist into it their own fancies, who degrade the sacred writers till they seem to write confused nonsense, and who deny the plainest and most evident meanings? (10:76) what in the whole bible can be plainer than the fact that ezra and his companions, in the second chapter of the book attributed to him, have given in detail the reckoning of all the hebrews who set out with them for jerusalem? (77) this is proved by the reckoning being given, not only of those who told their lineage, but also of those who were unable to do so. (78) is it not equally clear from nehemiah vii:5, that the writer merely there copies the list given in ezra? (79) those, therefore, who explain these passages otherwise, deny the plain meaning of scripture nay, they deny scripture itself. (80) they think it pious to reconcile one passage of scripture with another a pretty piety, forsooth, which accommodates the clear passages to the obscure, the correct to the faulty, the sound to the corrupt. (10:81) far be it from me to call such commentators blasphemers, if their motives be pure: for to err is human. but i return to my subject. (10:82) besides these errors in numerical details, there are others in the genealogies, in the history, and, i fear also in the prophecies. (83) the prophecy of jeremiah (chap. xxii.), concerning jechoniah, evidently does not agree with his history as given in i chronicles iii:17-19, and especially with the last words of the chapter, nor do i see how the prophecy, "thou shalt die in peace," can be applied to zedekiah, whose eyes were dug out after his sons had been slain before him. (10:84) if prophecies are to be interpreted by their issue, we must make a change of name, and read jechoniah for zedekiah, and vice versa. (85) this, however, would be too paradoxical a proceeding; so i prefer to leave the matter unexplained, especially as the error, if error there be, must be set down to the historian, and not to any fault in the authorities. (10:86) other difficulties i will not touch upon, as i should only weary the reader, and, moreover, be repeating the remarks of other writers. (87) for r. selomo, in face of the manifest contradiction in the above-mentioned genealogies, is compelled to break forth into these words (see his commentary on 1 chron. viii.): "ezra (whom he supposes to be the author of the book of chronicles) gives different names and a different genealogy to the sons of benjamin from those which we find in genesis, and describes most of the levites differently from joshua, because he found original discrepancies." (10:88) and, again, a little later: "the genealogy of gibeon and others is described twice in different ways, from different tables of each genealogy, and in writing them down ezra adopted the version given in the majority of the texts, and when the authority was equal he gave both." (89) thus granting that these books were compiled from sources originally incorrect and uncertain. (10:90) in fact the commentators, in seeking to harmonize difficulties, generally do no more than indicate their causes: for i suppose no sane person supposes that the sacred historians deliberately wrote with the object of appearing to contradict themselves freely. (10:91) perhaps i shall be told that i am overthrowing the authority of scripture, for that, according to me, anyone may suspect it of error in any passage; but, on the contrary, i have shown that my object has been to prevent the clear and uncorrupted passages being accommodated to and corrupted by the faulty ones; neither does the fact that some passages are corrupt warrant us in suspecting all. (92) no book ever was completely free would ask, who suspects all books to be everywhere faulty? (93) surely no one, especially when the phraseology is clear and intention of the author plain. (10:94) i have now finished the task i set myself with respect to the books of the old testament. (95) we may easily conclude from what has been said, that before the time of the maccabees there was no canon of sacred books, [endnote 23] but that those which we now possess were selected from a multitude of others at the period of the restoration of the temple by the pharisees (who also instituted the set form of prayers), who are alone responsible for their acceptance. (96) those, therefore, who would demonstrate the authority of holy scripture, are bound to show the authority of each separate book; it is not enough to prove the divine origin of a single book in order to infer the divine origin of the rest. (10:97) in that case we should have to assume that the council of pharisees was, in its choice of books, infallible, and this could never be proved. (98) i am led to assert that the pharisees alone selected the books of the old testament, and inserted them in the canon, from the fact that in daniel ii. is proclaimed the doctrine of the resurrection, which the sadducees denied; and, furthermore, the pharisees plainly assert in the talmud that they so selected them. (10:99) for in the treatise of sabbathus, chapter ii., folio 30, page 2, it is written: r. jehuda, surnamed rabbi, reports that the experts wished to conceal the book of ecclesiastes because they found therein words opposed to the law (that is, to the book of the law of moses). (100) why did they not hide it? (101) because it begins in accordance with the law, and ends according to the law;" and a little further on we read: "they sought also to conceal the book of proverbs." (10:102) and in the first chapter of the same treatise, fol. 13, page 2: "verily, name one man for good, even he who was called neghunja, the son of hezekiah: for, save for him, the book of ezekiel would been concealed, because it agreed not with the words of the law." (10:103) it is thus abundantly clear that men expert in the law summoned a council to decide which books should be received into the canon, and which excluded. (104) if any man, therefore, wishes to be certified as to the authority of all the books, let him call a fresh council, and ask every member his reasons. [10:6] (105) the time has now come for examining in the same manner the books in the new testament; but as i learn that the task has been already performed by men highly skilled in science and languages, and as i do not myself possess a knowledge of greek sufficiently exact for the task; lastly, as we have lost the originals of those books which were written in hebrew, i prefer to decline the undertaking. (106) however, i will touch on those points which have most bearing on my subject in the following chapter. end of part 2 of 4. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------author's endnotes to the theologico-political treatise part 2 chapters vi to x chapter vi. [endnote 6] (1) we doubt of the existence of god, and consequently of all else, so long as we have no clear and distinct idea of god, but only a confused one. (2) for as he who knows not rightly the nature of a triangle, knows not that its three angles are equal to two right angles, so he who conceives the divine nature confusedly, does not see that it pertains to the nature of god to exist. (3) now, to conceive the nature of god clearly and distinctly, it is necessary to pay attention to a certain number of very simple notions, called general notions, and by their help to associate the conceptions which we form of the attributes of the divine nature. (4) it then, for the first time, becomes clear to us, that god exists necessarily, that he is omnipresent, and that all our conceptions involve in themselves the nature of god and are conceived through it. (5) lastly, we see that all our adequate ideas are true. (6) compare on this point the prologomena to book, "principles of descartes's philosophy set forth geometrically." chapter vii. [endnote 7] (1) "it is impossible to find a method which would enable us to gain a certain knowledge of all the statements in scripture." (2) i mean impossible for us who have not the habitual use of the language, and have lost the precise meaning of its phraseology. [endnote 8] (1) "not in things whereof the understanding can gain a clear and distinct idea, and which are conceivable through themselves." (2) by things conceivable i mean not only those which are rigidly proved, but also those whereof we are morally certain, and are wont to hear without wonder, though they are incapable of proof. (3) everyone can see the truth of euclid's propositions before they are proved. (4) so also the histories of things both future and past which do not surpass human credence, laws, institutions, manners, i call conceivable and clear, though they cannot be proved mathematically. (5) but hieroglyphics and histories which seem to pass the bounds of belief i call inconceivable; yet even among these last there are many which our method enables us to investigate, and to discover the meaning of their narrator. chapter viii. [endnote 9] (1) "mount moriah is called the mount of god." (2) that is by the historian, not by abraham, for he says that the place now called "in the mount of the lord it shall be revealed," was called by abraham, "the lord shall provide." [endnote 10] (1) "before that territory [idumoea] was conquered by david." (2) from this time to the reign of jehoram when they again separated from the jewish kingdom (2 kings viii:20), the idumaeans had no king, princes appointed by the jews supplied the place of kings (1 kings xxii:48), in fact the prince of idumaea is called a king (2 kings iii:9). (3) it may be doubted whether the last of the idumaean kings had begun to reign before the accession of saul, or whether scripture in this chapter of genesis wished to enumerate only such kings as were independent. (4) it is evidently mere trifling to wish to enrol among hebrew kings the name of moses, who set up a dominion entirely different from a monarchy. chapter ix. [endnote 11] (1) "with few exceptions." (2) one of these exceptions is found in 2 kings xviii:20, where we read, "thou sayest (but they are but vain words), "the second person being used. (3) in isaiah xxxvi:5, we read "i say (but they are but vain words) i have counsel and strength for war," and in the twenty-second verse of the chapter in kings it is written, "but if ye say," the plural number being used, whereas isaiah gives the singular. (4) the text in isaiah does not contain the words found in 2 kings xxxii:32. (5) thus there are several cases of various readings where it is impossible to distinguish the best. [endnote 12] (1) "the expressions in the two passages are so varied." (2) for instance we read in 2 sam. vii:6, "but i have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle." (3) whereas in 1 chron. xvii:5, "but have gone from tent to tent and from one tabernacle to another." (4) in 2 sam. vii:10, we read, "to afflict them,"whereas in 1 chron. vii:9, we find a different expression. (5) i could point out other differences still greater, but a single reading of the chapters in question will suffice to make them manifest to all who are neither blind nor devoid of sense. [endnote 13] (1) "this time cannot refer to what immediately precedes." (2) it is plain from the context that this passage must allude to the time when joseph was sold by his brethren. (3) but this is not all. (4) we may draw the same conclusion from the age of judah, who was than twenty-two years old at most, taking as basis of calculation his own history just narrated. (5) it follows, indeed, from the last verse of gen. xxx., that judah was born in the tenth of the years of jacob's servitude to laban, and joseph in the fourteenth. (6) now, as we know that joseph was seventeen years old when sold by his brethren, judah was then not more than twenty-one. (7) hence, those writers who assert that judah's long absence from his father's house took place before joseph was sold, only seek to delude themselves and to call in question the scriptural authority which they are anxious to protect. [endnote 14] (1) "dinah was scarcely seven years old when she was violated by schechem." (2) the opinion held by some that jacob wandered about eight or ten years between mesopotamia and bethel, savours of the ridiculous; if respect for aben ezra, allows me to say so. (3) for it is clear that jacob had two reasons for haste: first, the desire to see his old parents; secondly, and chiefly to perform, the vow made when he fled from his brother (gen. xxviii:10 and xxxi:13, and xxxv:1). (4) we read (gen. xxxi:3), that god had commanded him to fulfill his vow, and promised him help for returning to his country. (5) if these considerations seem conjectures rather than reasons, i will waive the point and admit that jacob, more unfortunate than ulysses, spent eight or ten years or even longer, in this short journey. (6) at any rate it cannot be denied that benjamin was born in the last year of this wandering, that is by the reckoning of the objectors, when joseph was sixteen or seventeen years old, for jacob left laban seven years after joseph's birth. (7) now from the seventeenth year of joseph's age till the patriarch went into egypt, not more than twenty-two years elapsed, as we have shown in this chapter. (8) consequently benjamin, at the time of the journey to egypt, was twenty-three or twenty-four at the most. (9) he would therefore have been a grandfather in the flower of his age (gen. xlvi:21, cf. numb. xxvi:38, 40, and 1 chron. viii;1), for it is certain that bela, benjamin's eldest son, had at that time, two sons, addai and naaman. (10) this is just as absurd as the statement that dinah was violated at the age of seven, not to mention other impossibilities which would result from the truth of the narrative. (11) thus we see that unskillful endeavours to solve difficulties, only raise fresh ones, and make confusion worse confounded. [endnote 15] (1) "othniel, son of kenag, was judge for forty years." (2) rabbi levi ben gerson and others believe that these forty years which the bible says were passed in freedom, should be counted from the death of joshua, and consequently include the eight years during which the people were subject to kushan rishathaim, while the following eighteen years must be added on to the eighty years of ehud's and shamgar's judgeships. (3) in this case it would be necessary to reckon the other years of subjection among those said by the bible to have been passed in freedom. (4) but the bible expressly notes the number of years of subjection, and the number of years of freedom, and further declares (judges ii:18) that the hebrew state was prosperous during the whole time of the judges. (5) therefore it is evident that levi ben gerson (certainly a very learned man), and those who follow him, correct rather than interpret the scriptures. (6) the same fault is committed by those who assert, that scripture, by this general calculation of years, only intended to mark the period of the regular administration of the hebrew state, leaving out the years of anarchy and subjection as periods of misfortune and interregnum. (7) scripture certainly passes over in silence periods of anarchy, but does not, as they dream, refuse to reckon them or wipe them out of the country's annals. (8) it is clear that ezra, in 1 kings vi., wished to reckon absolutely all the years since the flight from egypt. (9) this is so plain, that no one versed in the scriptures can doubt it. (10) for, without going back to the precise words of the text, we may see that the genealogy of david given at the end of the book of ruth, and i chron. ii., scarcely accounts for so great a number of years. (11) for nahshon, who was prince of the tribe of judah (numb. vii;11), two years after the exodus, died in the desert, and his son salmon passed the jordan with joshua. (12) now this salmon, according to the genealogy, was david's great-grandfather. (13) deducting, then, from the total of 480 years, four years for solomon's reign, seventy for david's life, and forty for the time passed in the desert, we find that david was born 366 years after the passage of the jordan. (14) hence we must believe that david's father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather begat children when they were ninety years old. [endnote 16] (1) "samson was judge for twenty years." (2) samson was born after the hebrews had fallen under the dominion of the philistines. [endnote 17] (1) otherwise, they rather correct than explain scripture. [endnote 18] (1) "kirjath-jearim." kirjath-jearim is also called baale of judah. (2) hence kimchi and others think that the words baale judah, which i have translated "the people of judah," are the name of a town. (3) but this is not so, for the word baale is in the plural. (4) moreover, comparing this text in samuel with i chron. xiii:5, we find that david did not rise up and go forth out of baale, but that he went thither. (5) if the author of the book of samuel had meant to name the place whence david took the ark, he would, if he spoke hebrew correctly, have said, "david rose up, and set forth from baale judah, and took the ark from thence." chapter x. [endnote 19] (1) "after the restoration of the temple by judas maccaboeus." (2) this conjecture, if such it be, is founded on the genealogy of king jeconiah, given in 1 chron. iii., which finishes at the sons of elioenai, the thirteenth in direct descent from him: whereon we must observe that jeconiah, before his captivity, had no children; but it is probable that he had two while he was in prison, if we may draw any inference from the names he gave them. (3) as to his grandchildren, it is evident that they were born after his deliverance, if the names be any guide, for his grandson, pedaiah (a name meaning god hath delivered me), who, according to this chapter, was the father of zerubbabel, was born in the thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth year of jeconiah's life, that is thirty-three years before the restoration of liberty to the jews by cyrus. (4) therefore zerubbabel, to whom cyrus gave the principality of judaea, was thirteen or fourteen years old. (5) but we need not carry the inquiry so far: we need only read attentively the chapter of 1 chron., already quoted, where (v. 17, sqq.) mention is made of all the posterity of jeconiah, and compare it with the septuagint version to see clearly that these books were not published, till after maccabaeus had restored the temple, the sceptre no longer belonging to the house of jeconiah. [endnote 20] (1) "zedekiah should be taken to babylon." (2) no one could then have suspected that the prophecy of ezekiel contradicted that of jeremiah, but the suspicion occurs to everyone who reads the narrative of josephus. (3) the event proved that both prophets were in the right. [endnote 21] (1) "and who wrote nehemiah." (2) that the greater part of the book of nehemiah was taken from the work composed by the prophet nehemiah himself, follows from the testimony of its author. (see chap. i.). (3) but it is obvious that the whole of the passage contained between chap. viii. and chap. xii. verse 26, together with the two last verses of chap. xii., which form a sort of parenthesis to nehemiah's words, were added by the historian himself, who outlived nehemiah. [endnote 22] (1) "i suppose no one thinks" that ezra was the uncle of the first high priest , named joshua (see ezra vii., and 1 chron. vi:14), and went to jerusalem from babylon with zerubbabel (see nehemiah xii:1). (2) but it appears that when he saw, that the jews were in a state of anarchy, he returned to babylon, as also did others (nehem. i;2), and remained there till the reign of artaxerxes, when his requests were granted and he went a second time to jerusalem. (3) nehemiah also went to jerusalem with zerubbabel in the time of cyrus (ezra ii:2 and 63, cf. x:9, and nehemiah x:1). (4) the version given of the hebrew word, translated "ambassador," is not supported by any authority, while it is certain that fresh names were given to those jews who frequented the court. (5) thus daniel was named balteshazzar, and zerubbabel sheshbazzar (dan. i:7). (6) nehemiah was called atirsata, while in virtue of his office he was styled governor, or president. (nehem. v. 24, xii:26.) [endnote 23] (1) "before the time of the maccabees there was no canon of sacred books." (2) the synagogue styled "the great" did not begin before the subjugation of asia by the macedonians. (3) the contention of maimonides, rabbi abraham, ben-david, and others, that the presidents of this synagogue were ezra, daniel, nehemiah, haggai, zechariah, &c., is a pure fiction, resting only on rabbinical tradition. (4) indeed they assert that the dominion of the persians only lasted thirty-four years, and this is their chief reason for maintaining that the decrees of the "great synagogue," or synod (rejected by the sadducees, but accepted by the pharisees) were ratified by the prophets, who received them from former prophets, and so in direct succession from moses, who received them from god himself. (5) such is the doctrine which the pharisees maintain with their wonted obstinacy. (6) enlightened persons, however, who know the reasons for the convoking of councils, or synods, and are no strangers to the differences between pharisees and sadducees, can easily divine the causes which led to the assembling of this great synagogue. (7) it is very certain that no prophet was there present, and that the decrees of the pharisees, which they style their traditions, derive all their authority from it. end of part 2 of 4 endnotes. ____________________________________________________________________________ end of a theologico-political treatise part 2 "joseph b. yesselman" <jyselman@erols.com> august 26, 1997 a theologico-political treatise part 3 of 4 chapters xi to xv published 1670 anonymously baruch spinoza 1632 1677 ____________________________________________________________________________ jby notes: 1. text was scanned from benedict de spinoza's "a theologico-political treatise", and "a political treatise" as published in dover's isbn 0-486-20249-6. 2. the text is that of the translation of "a theologico-political treatise" by r. h. m. elwes. this text is "an unabridged and unaltered republication of the bohn library edition originally published by george bell and sons in 1883." 3. jby added sentence numbers and search strings. 4. sentence numbers are shown thus (yy:xx). yy = chapter number when given. xx = sentence number. 5. search strings are enclosed in [square brackets]: a. roman numeral, when given before a search string, indicates part number. if a different part, bring up that part and then search. b. include square brackets in search string. c. do not include part number in search string. d. search down with the same string to facilitate return. 6. please report any errors in the text, search formatting, or sentence numbering to jyselman@erols.com. 7. html versions: part 3 http://www.erols.com/jyselman/ttpelws3.htm ____________________________________________________________________________ [11:0] chapter xi [12:0] chapter xii [13:0] chapter xiii [14:0] chapter xiv [15:0] chapter xv ____________________________________________________________________________ table of contents: search strings are shown thus [*:x]. search forward and back with the same string. include square brackets in search string. [11:0] chapter xi an inquiry whether the apostles wrote their epistles as apostles and prophets, or merely as teachers, and an explanation of what is meant by an apostle. [11:1] the epistles not in the prophetic style. [11:2] the apostles not commanded to write or preach in particular places. [11:3] different methods of teaching adopted by the apostles. [12:0] chapter xii of the true original of the divine law, and wherefore scripture is called sacred, and the word of god. how that, in so far as it contains the word of god, it has come down to us uncorrupted. [13:0] chapter xiii it is shown, that scripture teaches only very simple doctrines, such as suffice for right conduct. [13:1] error in speculative doctrine not impious nor knowledge pious. piety consists in obedience. [14:0] chapter xiv definitions of faith, the true faith, and the foundations of faith, which is once for all separated from philosophy. [14:1] danger resulting from the vulgar idea of faith. [14:2] the only test of faith obedience and good works. [14:3] as different men are disposed to obedience by different opinions, universal faith can contain only the simplest doctrines. [14:4] fundamental distinction between faith and philosophy the key-stone of the present treatise. [15:0] chapter xv theology is shown not to be subservient to reason, nor reason to theology: a definition of the reason which enables us to accept the authority of the bible. [15:1] theory that scripture must be accommodated to reason maintained by maimonides already refuted in chapter vii. [15:2] theory that reason must be accommodated to scripture maintained by alpakhar examined. [15:3] and refuted. [15:4] scripture and reason independent of one another. [15:5] certainty of fundamental faith not mathematical but moral. [15:6] great utility of revelation. [author's endnotes] to the treatise. ____________________________________________________________________________ [11:0] chapter xi an inquiry whether the apostles wrote their epistles as apostles and prophets, or merely as teachers; and an explanation of what is meant by an apostle. [11:1] (1) no reader of the new testament can doubt that the apostles were prophets; but as a prophet does not always speak by revelation but only at rare intervals, as we showed at the end of chap. i., we may fairly inquire whether the apostles wrote their epistles as prophets, by revelation and express mandate, as moses, jeremiah, and others did, or whether only as private individuals or teachers, especially as paul, in corinthians xiv:6, mentions two sorts of preaching. (11:2) if we examine the style of the epistles, we shall find it totally different from that employed by the prophets. (11:3) the prophets are continually asserting that they speak by the command of god: "thus saith the lord," "the lord of hosts saith," "the command of the lord," &c.; and this was their habit not only in assemblies of the prophets, but also in their epistles containing revelations, as appears from the epistle of elijah to jehoram, 2 chron. xxi:12, which begins, "thus saith the lord." (11:4) in the apostolic epistles we find nothing of the sort. (5) contrariwise, in i cor. vii:40 paul speaks according to his own opinion and in many passages we come across doubtful and perplexed phrase; such as, "we think, therefore," rom. iii:28; "now i think," [endnote 24] rom. viii:18, and so on. (6) besides these, other expressions are met with very different from those used by the prophets. (7) for instance, 1 cor. vii:6, "but i speak this by permission, not by commandment;" "i give my judgment as one that hath obtained mercy of the lord to be faithful" (1 cor. vii:25), and so on in many other passages. (8) we must also remark that in the aforesaid chapter the apostle says that when he states that he has or has not the precept or commandment of god, he does not mean the precept or commandment of god revealed to himself, but only the words uttered by christ in his sermon on the mount. (9) furthermore, if we examine the manner in which the apostles give out evangelical doctrine, we shall see that it differs materially from the method adopted by the prophets. (11:10) the apostles everywhere reason as if they were arguing rather than prophesying; the prophecies, on the other hand, contain only dogmas and commands. (11) god is therein introduced not as speaking to reason, but as issuing decrees by his absolute fiat. (12) the authority of the prophets does not submit to discussion, for whosoever wishes to find rational ground for his arguments, by that very wish submits them to everyone's private judgment. (11:13) this paul, inasmuch as he uses reason, appears to have done, for he says in 1 cor. x:15, "i speak as to wise men, judge ye what i say." (14) the prophets, as we showed at the end of chapter i., did not perceive what was revealed by virtue of their natural reason, and though there are certain passages in the pentateuch which seem to be appeals to induction, they turn out, on nearer examination, to be nothing but peremptory commands. (11:15) for instance, when moses says, deut. xxxi:27, "behold, while i am yet alive with you, this day ye have been rebellious against the lord; and how much more after my death," we must by no means conclude that moses wished to convince the israelites by reason that they would necessarily fall away from the worship of the lord after his death; for the argument would have been false, as scripture itself shows: the israelites continued faithful during the lives of joshua and the elders, and afterwards during the time of samuel, david, and solomon. (16) therefore the words of moses are merely a moral injunction, in which he predicts rhetorically the future backsliding of the people so as to impress it vividly on their imagination. (17) i say that moses spoke of himself in order to lend likelihood to his prediction, and not as a prophet by revelation, because in verse 21 of the same chapter we are told that god revealed the same thing to moses in different words, and there was no need to make moses certain by argument of god's prediction and decree; it was only necessary that it should be vividly impressed on his imagination, and this could not be better accomplished than by imagining the existing contumacy of the people, of which he had had frequent experience, as likely to extend into the future. (11:18) all the arguments employed by moses in the five books are to be understood in a similar manner; they are not drawn from the armoury of reason, but are merely modes of expression calculated to instil with efficacy, and present vividly to the imagination the commands of god. (11:19) however, i do not wish absolutely to deny that the prophets ever argued from revelation; i only maintain that the prophets made more legitimate use of argument in proportion as their knowledge approached more nearly to ordinary knowledge, and by this we know that they possessed a knowledge above the ordinary, inasmuch as they proclaimed absolute dogmas, decrees, or judgments. (11:20) thus moses, the chief of the prophets, never used legitimate argument, and, on the other hand, the long deductions and arguments of paul, such as we find in the epistle to the romans, are in nowise written from supernatural revelation. (11:21) the modes of expression and discourse adopted by the apostles in the epistles, show very clearly that the latter were not written by revelation and divine command, but merely by the natural powers and judgment of the authors. (22) they consist in brotherly admonitions and courteous expressions such as would never be employed in prophecy, as for instance, paul's excuse in romans xv:15, "i have written the more boldly unto you in some sort, my brethren." [11:2] (23) we may arrive at the same conclusion from observing that we never read that the apostles were commanded to write, but only that they went everywhere preaching, and confirmed their words with signs. (24) their personal presence and signs were absolutely necessary for the conversion and establishment in religion of the gentiles; as paul himself expressly states in rom. i:11, "but i long to see you, that i may impart to you some spiritual gift, to the end that ye may be established." (11:25) it may be objected that we might prove in similar fashion that the apostles did not preach as prophets, for they did not go to particular places, as the prophets did, by the command of god. (26) we read in the old testament that jonah went to nineveh to preach, and at the same time that he was expressly sent there, and told that he most preach. (27) so also it is related, at great length, of moses that he went to egypt as the messenger of god, and was told at the same time what he should say to he children of israel and to king pharaoh, and what wonders he should work before them to give credit to his words. (28) isaiah, jeremiah, and ezekiel were expressly commanded to preach to the israelites. (11:29)lastly, the prophets only preached what we are assured by scripture they had received from god, whereas this is hardly ever said of the apostles in the new testament, when they went about to preach. (29a) on the contrary, we find passages expressly implying that the apostles chose the places where they should preach on their own responsibility, for there was a difference amounting to a quarrel between paul and barnabas on the subject (acts xv:37, 38). (11:30) often they wished to go to a place, but were prevented, as paul writes, rom. i:13, "oftentimes i purposed to come to you, but was let hitherto;" and in i cor. xvi:12, "as touching our brother apollos, i greatly desired him to come unto you with the brethren, but his will was not at all to come at this time: but he will come when he shall have convenient time." (11:31) from these expressions and differences of opinion among the apostles, and also from the fact that scripture nowhere testifies of them, as of the ancient prophets, that they went by the command of god, one might conclude that they preached as well as wrote in their capacity of teachers, and not as prophets: but the question is easily solved if we observe the difference between the mission of an apostle and that of an old testament prophet. (32) the latter were not called to preach and prophesy to all nations, but to certain specified ones, and therefore an express and peculiar mandate was required for each of them; the apostles, on the other hand, were called to preach to all men absolutely, and to turn all men to religion. (11:33) therefore, whithersoever they went, they were fulfilling christ's commandment; there was no need to reveal to them beforehand what they should preach, for they were the disciples of christ to whom their master himself said (matt. x:19, 20): "but, when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak." (11:34) we therefore conclude that the apostles were only indebted to special revelation in what they orally preached and confirmed by signs (see the beginning of chap. 11.); that which they taught in speaking or writing without any confirmatory signs and wonders they taught from their natural knowledge. (see i cor. xiv:6.) (11:35) we need not be deterred by the fact that all the epistles begin by citing the imprimatur of the apostleship, for the apostles, as i will shortly show, were granted, not only the faculty of prophecy, but also the authority to teach. (36) we may therefore admit that they wrote their epistles as apostles, and for this cause every one of them began by citing the apostolic imprimatur, possibly with a view to the attention of the reader by asserting that they were the persons who had made such mark among the faithful by their preaching, and had shown bv many marvelous works that they were teaching true religion and the way of salvation. (37) i observe that what is said in the epistles with regard to the apostolic vocation and the holy spirit of god which inspired them, has reference to their former preaching, except in those passages where the expressions of the spirit of god and the holy spirit are used to signify a mind pure, upright, and devoted to god. (11:38) for instance, in 1 cor. vii:40, paul says: but she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment, and i think also that i have the spirit of god." (39) by the spirit of god the apostle here refers to his mind, as we may see from the context: his meaning is as follows: "i account blessed a widow who does not wish to marry a second husband; such is my opinion, for i have settled to live unmarried, and i think that i am blessed." (11:40) there are other similar passages which i need not now quote. (11:41) as we have seen that the apostles wrote their epistles solely by the light of natural reason, we must inquire how they were enabled to teach by natural knowledge matters outside its scope. (42) however, if we bear in mind what we said in chap. vii. of this treatise our difficulty will vanish: for although the contents of the bible entirely surpass our understanding, we may safely discourse of them, provided we assume nothing not told us in scripture: by the same method the apostles, from what they saw and heard, and from what was revealed to them, were enabled to form and elicit many conclusions which they would have been able to teach to men had it been permissible. (11:43) further, although religion, as preached by the apostles, does not come within the sphere of reason, in so far as it consists in the narration of the life of christ, yet its essence, which is chiefly moral, like the whole of christ's doctrine, can readily be apprehended by the natural faculties of all. (11:44) lastly, the apostles had no lack of supernatural illumination for the purpose of adapting the religion they had attested by signs to the understanding of everyone so that it might be readily received; nor for exhortations on the subject: in fact, the object of the epistles is to teach and exhort men to lead that manner of life which each of the apostles judged best for confirming them in religion. (45) we may here repeat our former remark, that the apostles had received not only the faculty of preaching the history of christ as prophets, and confirming it with signs, but also authority for teaching and exhorting according as each thought best. (46) paul (2 tim. i:11), "whereunto i am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the gentiles;" and again (i tim. ii:7), "whereunto i am ordained a preacher and an apostle (i speak the truth in christ and lie not), a teacher of the gentiles in faith and verity." (11:47) these passages, i say, show clearly the stamp both of the apostleship and the teachership: the authority for admonishing whomsoever and wheresoever he pleased is asserted by paul in the epistle to philemon, v:8: "wherefore, though i might be much bold in christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient, yet," &c., where we may remark that if paul had received from god as a prophet what he wished to enjoin philemon, and had been bound to speak in his prophetic capacity, he would not have been able to change the command of god into entreaties. [11:3} (48) we must therefore understand him to refer to the permission to admonish which he had received as a teacher, and not as a prophet. (49) we have not yet made it quite clear that the apostles might each choose his own way of teaching, but only that by virtue of their apostleship they were teachers as well as prophets; however, if we call reason to our aid we shall clearly see that an authority to teach implies authority to choose the method. (50) it will nevertheless be, perhaps, more satisfactory to draw all our proofs from scripture; we are there plainly told that each apostle chose his particular method (rom. xv: 20): "yea, so have i strived to preach the gospel, not where christ was named, lest i should build upon another man's foundation." (11:51) if all the apostles had adopted the same method of teaching, and had all built up the christian religion on the same foundation, paul would have had no reason to call the work of a fellow-apostle "another man's foundation," inasmuch as it would have been identical with his own: his calling it another man's proved that each apostle built up his religious instruction on different foundations, thus resembling other teachers who have each their own method, and prefer instructing quite ignorant people who have never learnt under another master, whether the subject be science, languages, or even the indisputable truths of mathematics. (11:52) furthermore, if we go through the epistles at all attentively, we shall see that the apostles, while agreeing about religion itself, are at variance as to the foundations it rests on. (53) paul, in order to strengthen men's religion, and show them that salvation depends solely on the grace of god, teaches that no one can boast of works, but only of faith, and that no one can be justified by works (rom. iii:27,28); in fact, he preaches the complete doctrine of predestination. (11:54) james, on the other hand, states that man is justified by works, and not by faith only (see his epistle, ii:24), and omitting all the disputations of paul, confines religion to a very few elements. (11:55) lastly, it is indisputable that from these different ground; for religion selected by the apostles, many quarrels and schisms distracted the church, even in the earliest times, and doubtless they will continue so to distract it for ever, or at least till religion is separated from philosophical speculations, and reduced to the few simple doctrines taught by christ to his disciples; such a task was impossible for the apostles, because the gospel was then unknown to mankind, and lest its novelty should offend men's ears it had to be adapted to the disposition of contemporaries (2 cor. ix:19, 20), and built up on the groundwork most familiar and accepted at the time. (56) thus none of the apostles philosophized more than did paul, who was called to preach to the gentiles; other apostles preaching to the jews, who despised philosophy, similarly adapted themselves to the temper of their hearers (see gal. ii. 11), and preached a religion free from all philosophical speculations. (11:57) how blest would our age be if it could witness a religion freed also from all the trammels of superstition! ____________________________________________________________________________ [12:0] chapter xii of the true original of the divine law, and wherefore scripture is called sacred, and the word of god. how that, in so far as it contains the word of god, it has come down to us uncorrupted. (12:1) those who look upon the bible as a message sent down by god from heaven to men, will doubtless cry out that i have committed the sin against the holy ghost because i have asserted that the word of god is faulty, mutilated, tampered with, and inconsistent; that we possess it only in fragments, and that the original of the covenant which god made with the jews has been lost. (12:2) however, i have no doubt that a little reflection will cause them to desist from their uproar: for not only reason but the expressed opinions of prophets and apostles openly proclaim that god's eternal word and covenant, no less than true religion, is divinely inscribed in human hearts, that is, in the human mind, and that this is the true original of god's covenant, stamped with his own seal, namely, the idea of himself, as it were, with the image of his godhood. (12:3) religion was imparted to the early hebrews as a law written down, because they were at that time in the condition of children, but afterwards moses (deut. xxx:6) and jeremiah (xxxi:33) predicted a time coming when the lord should write his law in their hearts. (4) thus only the jews, and amongst them chiefly the sadducees, struggled for the law written on tablets; least of all need those who bear it inscribed on their hearts join in the contest. (5) those, therefore, who reflect, will find nothing in what i have written repugnant either to the word of god or to true religion and faith, or calculated to weaken either one or the other: contrariwise, they will see that i have strengthened religion, as i showed at the end of chapter x.; indeed, had it not been so, i should certainly have decided to hold my peace, nay, i would even have asserted as a way out of all difficulties that the bible contains the most profound hidden mysteries; however, as this doctrine has given rise to gross superstition and other pernicious results spoken of at the beginning of chapter v., i have thought such a course unnecessary, especially as religion stands in no need of superstitious adornments, but is, on the contrary, deprived by such trappings of some of her splendour. (12:6) still, it will be said, though the law of god is written in the heart, the bible is none the less the word of god, and it is no more lawful to say of scripture than of god's word that it is mutilated and corrupted. (7) i fear that such objectors are too anxious to be pious, and that they are in danger of turning religion into superstition, and worshipping paper and ink in place of god's word. (12:8) i am certified of thus much: i have said nothing unworthy of scripture or god's word, and i have made no assertions which i could not prove by most plain argument to be true. (9) i can, therefore, rest assured that i have advanced nothing which is impious or even savours of impiety. (12:10) i confess that some profane men, to whom religion is a burden, may, from what i have said, assume a licence to sin, and without any reason, at the simple dictates of their lusts conclude that scripture is everywhere faulty and falsified, and that herefore its authority is null; but such men are beyond the reach of help, for nothing, as the proverb has it, can be said so rightly that it cannot be twisted into wrong. (12:11) those who wish to give rein to their lusts are at no loss for an excuse, nor were those men of old who possessed the original scriptures, the ark of the covenant, nay, the prophets and apostles in person among them, any better than the people of to-day. (12) human nature, jew as well as gentile, has always been the same, and in every age virtue has been exceedingly rare. (12:13) nevertheless, to remove every scruple, i will here show in what sense the bible or any inanimate thing should be called sacred and divine; also wherein the law of god consists, and how it cannot be contained in a certain number of books; and, lastly, i will show that scripture, in so far as it teaches what is necessary for obedience and salvation, cannot have been corrupted. (11:14) from these considerations everyone will be able to judge that i have neither said anything against the word of god nor given any foothold to impiety. (12:15) a thing is called sacred and divine when it is designed for promoting piety, and continues sacred so long as it is religiously used: if the users cease to be pious, the thing ceases to be sacred: if it be turned to base uses, that which was formerly sacred becomes unclean and profane. (16) for instance, a certain spot was named by the patriarch jacob the house of god, because he worshipped god there revealed to him: by the prophets the same spot was called the house of iniquity (see amos v:5, and hosea x:5), because the israelites were wont, at the instigation of jeroboam, to sacrifice there to idols. (17) another example puts the matter in the plainest light. (12:18) words gain their meaning solely from their usage, and if they are arranged according to their accepted signification so as to move those who read them to devotion, they will become sacred, and the book so written will be sacred also. (19) but if their usage afterwards dies out so that the words have no meaning, or the book becomes utterly neglected, whether from unworthy motives, or because it is no longer needed, then the words and the book will lose both their use and their sanctity: lastly, if these same words be otherwise arranged, or if their customary meaning becomes perverted into its opposite, then both the words and the book containing them become, instead of sacred, impure and profane. (12:20) from this it follows that nothing is in itself absolutely sacred, or profane, and unclean, apart from the mind, but only relatively thereto. (21) thus much is clear from many passages in the bible. (22) jeremiah (to select one case out of many) says (chap. vii:4), that the jews of his time were wrong in calling solomon's temple, the temple of god, for, as he goes on to say in the same chapter, god's name would only be given to the temple so long as it was frequented by men who worshipped him, and defended justice, but that, if it became the resort of murderers, thieves, idolaters, and other wicked persons, it would be turned into a den of malefactors. (12:23) scripture, curiously enough, nowhere tells us what became of the ark of the covenant, though there is no doubt that it was destroyed, or burnt together with the temple; yet there was nothing which the hebrews considered more sacred, or held in greater reverence. (24) thus scripture is sacred, and its words divine so long as it stirs mankind to devotion towards god: but if it be utterly neglected, as it formerly was by the jews, it becomes nothing but paper and ink, and is left to be desecrated or corrupted: still, though scripture be thus corrupted or destroyed, we must not say that the word of god has suffered in like manner, else we shall be like the jews, who said that the temple which would then be the temple of god had perished in the flames. (12:25) jeremiah tells us this in respect to the law, for he thus chides the ungodly of his time, "wherefore, say you we are masters, and the law of the lord is with us? (26) surely it has been given in vain, it is in vain that the pen of the scribes" (has been made) that is, you say falsely that the scripture is in your power, and that you possess the law of god; for ye have made it of none effect. (12:27) so also, when moses broke the first tables of the law, he did not by any means cast the word of god from his hands in anger and shatter it such an action would be inconceivable, either of moses or of god's word he only broke the tables of stone, which, though they had before been holy from containing the covenant wherewith the jews had bound themselves in obedience to god, had entirely lost their sanctity when the covenant had been violated by the worship of the calf, and were, therefore, as liable to perish as the ark of the covenant. (28) it is thus scarcely to be wondered at, that the original documents of moses are no longer extant, nor that the books we possess met with the fate we have described, when we consider that the true original of the divine covenant, the most sacred object of all, has totally perished. (12:29) let them cease, therefore, who accuse us of impiety, inasmuch as we have said nothing against the word of god, neither have we corrupted it, but let them keep their anger, if they would wreak it justly, for the ancients whose malice desecrated the ark, the temple, and the law of god, and all that was held sacred, subjecting them to corruption. (30) furthermore, if, according to the saying of the apostle in 2 cor. iii:3, they possessed "the epistle of christ, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living god, not in tables of stone, but in the fleshy tables of the heart," let them cease to worship the letter, and be so anxious concerning it. (12:31) i think i have now sufficiently shown in what respect scripture should be accounted sacred and divine; we may now see what should rightly be understood by the expression, the word of the lord; debar (the hebrew original) signifies word, speech, command, and thing. (32) the causes for which a thing is in hebrew said to be of god, or is referred to him, have been already detailed in chap. i., and we can therefrom easily gather what meaning scripture attaches to the phrases, the word, the speech, the command, or the thing of god. (12:33) i need not, therefore, repeat what i there said, nor what was shown under the third head in the chapter on miracles. (34) it is enough to mention the repetition for the better understanding of what i am about to say viz., that the word of the lord when it has reference to anyone but god himself, signifies that divine law treated of in chap. iv.; in other words, religion, universal and catholic to the whole human race, as isaiah describes it (chap. i:10), teaching that the true way of life consists, not in ceremonies, but in charity, and a true heart, and calling it indifferently god's law and god's word. (12:35) the expression is also used metaphorically for the order of nature and destiny (which, indeed, actually depend and follow from the eternal mandate of the divine nature), and especially for such parts of such order as were foreseen by the prophets, for the prophets did not perceive future events as the result of natural causes, but as the fiats and decrees of god. (36) lastly, it is employed for the command of any prophet, in so far as he had perceived it by his peculiar faculty or prophetic gift, and not by the natural light of reason; this use springs chiefly from the usual prophetic conception of god as a legislator, which we remarked in chap. iv. (12:36a) there are, then, three causes for the bible's being called the word of god: because it teaches true religion, of which god is the eternal founder; because it narrates predictions of future events as though they were decrees of god; because its actual authors generally perceived things not by their ordinary natural faculties, but by a power peculiar to themselves, and introduced these things perceived, as told them by god. (12:37) although scripture contains much that is merely historical and can be perceived by natural reason, yet its name is acquired from its chief subject matter. (12:38) we can thus easily see how god can be said to be the author of the bible: it is because of the true religion therein contained, and not because he wished to communicate to men a certain number of books. (39) we can also learn from hence the reason for the division into old and new testament. (12:40) it was made because the prophets who preached religion before christ, preached it as a national law in virtue of the covenant entered into under moses; while the apostles who came after christ, preached it to all men as a universal religion solely in virtue of christ's passion: the cause for the division is not that the two parts are different in doctrine, nor that they were written as originals of the covenant, nor, lastly, that the catholic religion (which is in entire harmony with our nature) was new except in relation to those who had not known it: "it was in the world," as john the evangelist says, "and the world knew it not." (12:41) thus, even if we had fewer books of the old and new testament than we have, we should still not be deprived of the word of god (which, as we have said, is identical with true religion), even as we do not now hold ourselves to be deprived of it, though we lack many cardinal writings such as the book of the law, which was religiously guarded in the temple as the original of the covenant, also the book of wars, the book of chronicles, and many others, from whence the extant old testament was taken and compiled. (12:42) the above conclusion may be supported by many reasons. i. (12:43) because the books of both testaments were not written by express command at one place for all ages, but are a fortuitous collection of the works of men, writing each as his period and disposition dictated. (44) so much is clearly shown by the call of the prophets who were bade to admonish the ungodly of their time, and also by the apostolic epistles. ii. (12:45) because it is one thing to understand the meaning of scripture and the prophets, and quite another thing to understand the meaning of god, or the actual truth. (46) this follows from what we said in chap. ii. (47) we showed, in chap. vi., that it applied to historic narratives, and to miracles: but it by no means applies to questions concerning true religion and virtue. iii. (12:48) because the books of the old testament were selected from many, and were collected and sanctioned by a council of the pharisees, as we showed in chap. x. (49) the books of the new testament were also chosen from many by councils which rejected as spurious other books held sacred by many. (50) but these councils, both pharisee and christian, were not composed of prophets, but only of learned men and teachers. (51) still, we must grant that they were guided in their choice by a regard for the word of god; and they must, therefore, have known what the law of god was. iv. (12:52) because the apostles wrote not as prophets, but as teachers (see last chapter), and chose whatever method they thought best adapted for those whom they addressed: and consequently, there are many things in the epistles (as we showed at the end of the last chapter) which are not necessary to salvation. v. (12:53) lastly, because there are four evangelists in the new testament, and it is scarcely credible that god can have designed to narrate the life of christ four times over, and to communicate it thus to mankind. (54) for though there are some details related in one gospel which are not in another, and one often helps us to understand another, we cannot thence conclude that all that is set down is of vital importance to us, and that god chose the four evangelists in order that the life of christ might be better understood; for each one preached his gospel in a separate locality, each wrote it down as he preached it, in simple language, in order that the history of christ might be clearly told, not with any view of explaining his fellow-evangelists. (12:55) if there are some passages which can be better, and more easily understood by comparing the various versions, they are the result of chance, and are not numerous: their continuance in obscurity would have impaired neither the clearness of the narrative nor the blessedness of mankind. (12:56) we have now shown that scripture can only be called the word of god in so far as it affects religion, or the divine law; we must now point out that, in respect to these questions, it is neither faulty, tampered with, nor corrupt. (57) by faulty, tampered with, and corrupt, i here mean written so incorrectly that the meaning cannot be arrived at by a study of the language, nor from the authority of scripture. (58) i will not go to such lengths as to say that the bible, in so far as it contains the divine law, has always preserved the same vowel-points, the same letters, or the same words (i leave this to be proved by the massoretes and other worshippers of the letter), i only maintain that the meaning by which alone an utterance is entitled to be called divine, has come down to us uncorrupted, even though the original wording may have been more often changed than we suppose. (12:59) such alterations, as i have said above, detract nothing from the divinity of the bible, for the bible would have been no less divine had it been written in different words or a different language. (60) that the divine law has in this sense come down to us uncorrupted, is an assertion which admits of no dispute. (12:61) for from the bible itself we learn, without the smallest difficulty or ambiguity, that its cardinal precept is: to love god above all things, and one's neighbour as one's self. (12:62) this cannot be a spurious passage, nor due to a hasty and mistaken scribe, for if the bible had ever put forth a different doctrine it would have had to change the whole of its teaching, for this is the corner-stone of religion, without which the whole fabric would fall headlong to the ground. (63) the bible would not be the work we have been examining, but something quite different. (12:64) we remain, then, unshaken in our belief that this has always been the doctrine of scripture, and, consequently, that no error sufficient to vitiate it can have crept in without being instantly observed by all; nor can anyone have succeeded in tampering with it and escaped the discovery of his malice. (12:65) as this corner-stone is intact, we must perforce admit the same of whatever other passages are indisputably dependent on it, and are also fundamental, as, for instance, that a god exists, that he foresees all things, that he is almighty, that by his decree the good prosper and the wicked come to naught, and, finally, that our salvation depends solely on his grace. (12:66) these are doctrines which scripture plainly teaches throughout, and which it is bound to teach, else all the rest would be empty and baseless; nor can we be less positive about other moral doctrines, which plainly are built upon this universal foundation for instance, to uphold justice, to aid the weak, to do no murder, to covet no man's goods, &c. (12:67) precepts, i repeat, such as these, human malice and the lapse of ages are alike powerless to destroy, for if any part of them perished, its loss would immediately be supplied from the fundamental principle, especially the doctrine of charity, which is everywhere in both testaments extolled above all others. (12:68) moreover, though it be true that there s no conceivable crime so heinous that it has never been committed, still there is no one who would attempt in excuse for his crimes to destroy the law, or introduce an impious doctrine in the place of what is eternal and salutary; men's nature is so constituted that everyone (be he king or subject) who has committed a base action, tries to deck out his conduct with spurious excuses, till he seems to have done nothing but what is just and right. (12:69) we may conclude, therefore, that the whole divine law, as taught by scripture, has come down to us uncorrupted. (70) besides this there are certain facts which we may be sure have been transmitted in good faith. (71) for instance, the main facts of hebrew history, which were perfectly well known to everyone. (72) the jewish people were accustomed in former times to chant the ancient history of their nation in psalms. (12:73) the main facts, also, of christ's life and passion were immediately spread abroad through the whole roman empire. (73a) it is therefore scarcely credible, unless nearly everybody consented thereto, which we cannot suppose, that successive generations have handed down the broad outline of the gospel narrative otherwise than as they received it. (12:74) whatsoever, therefore, is spurious or faulty can only have reference to details some circumstances in one or the other history or prophecy designed to stir the people to greater devotion; or in some miracle, with a view of confounding philosophers; or, lastly, in speculative matters after they had become mixed up with religion, so that some individual might prop up his own inventions with a pretext of divine authority. (12:75) but such matters have little to do with salvation, whether they be corrupted little or much, as i will show in detail in the next chapter, though i think the question sufficiently plain from what i have said already, especially in chapter ii. ____________________________________________________________________________ [13:0] chapter xiii it is shown that scripture teaches only very simple doctrines, such as suffice for right conduct. (13:1) in the second chapter of this treatise we pointed out that the prophets were gifted with extraordinary powers of imagination, but not of understanding; also that god only revealed to them such things as are very simple not philosophic mysteries, and that he adapted his communications to their previous opinions. (13:2) we further showed in chap. v. that scripture only transmits and teaches truths which can readily be comprehended by all; not deducing and concatenating its conclusions from definitions and axioms, but narrating quite simply, and confirming its statements, with a view to inspiring belief, by an appeal to experience as exemplified in miracles and history, and setting forth its truths in the style and phraseology which would most appeal to the popular mind (cf. chap. vi., third division). (13:3) lastly, we demonstrated in chap. viii. that the difficulty of understanding scripture lies in the language only, and not in the abstruseness of the argument. (13:4) to these considerations we may add that the prophets did not preach only to the learned, but to all jews, without exception, while the apostles were wont to teach the gospel doctrine in churches where there were public meetings; whence it follows that scriptural doctrine contains no lofty speculations nor philosophic reasoning, but only very simple matters, such as could be understood by the slowest intelligence. (13:5) i am consequently lost in wonder at the ingenuity of those whom i have already mentioned, who detect in the bible mysteries so profound that they cannot be explained in human language, and who have introduced so many philosophic speculations into religion that the church seems like an academy, and religion like a science, or rather a dispute. (13:6) it is not to be wondered at that men, who boast of possessing supernatural intelligence, should be unwilling to yield the palm of knowledge to philosophers who have only their ordinary faculties; still i should be surprised if i found them teaching any new speculative doctrine, which was not a commonplace to those gentile philosophers whom, in spite of all, they stigmatize as blind; for, if one inquires what these mysteries lurking in scripture may be, one is confronted with nothing but the reflections of plato or aristotle, or the like, which it would often be easier for an ignorant man to dream than for the most accomplished scholar to wrest out of the bible. (13:7) however, i do not wish to affirm absolutely that scripture contains no doctrines in the sphere of philosophy, for in the last chapter i pointed out some of the kind, as fundamental principles; but i go so far as to say that such doctrines are very few and very simple. (8) their precise nature and definition i will now set forth. (9) the task will be easy, for we know that scripture does not aim at imparting scientific knowledge, and, therefore, it demands from men nothing but obedience, and censures obstinacy, but not ignorance. (13:10) furthermore, as obedience to god consists solely in love to our neighbour for whosoever loveth his neighbour, as a means of obeying god, hath, as st. paul says (rom. xiii:8), fulfilled the law, it follows that no knowledge is commended in the bible save that which is necessary for enabling all men to obey god in the manner stated, and without which they would become rebellious, or without the discipline of obedience. (13:11) other speculative questions, which have no direct bearing on this object, or are concerned with the knowledge of natural events, do not affect scripture, and should be entirely separated from religion. (13:12) now, though everyone, as we have said, is now quite able to see this truth for himself, i should nevertheless wish, considering that the whole of religion depends thereon, to explain the entire question more accurately and clearly. (13:13) to this end i must first prove that the intellectual or accurate knowledge of god is not a gift, bestowed upon all good men like obedience; and, further, that the knowledge of god, required by him through his prophets from everyone without exception, as needful to be known, is simply a knowledge of his divine justice and charity. (14) both these points are easily proved from scripture. (15) the first plainly follows from exodus vi:2, where god, in order to show the singular grace bestowed upon moses, says to him: "and i appeared unto abraham, unto isaac, and unto jacob by the name of el sadai (a. v. god almighty); but by my name jehovah was i not known to them" for the better understanding of which passage i may remark that el sadai, in hebrew, signifies the god who suffices, in that he gives to every man that which suffices for him; and, although sadai is often used by itself, to signify god, we cannot doubt that the word el (god) is everywhere understood. (13;16) furthermore, we must note that jehovah is the only word found in scripture with the meaning of the absolute essence of god, without reference to created things. (17) the jews maintain, for this reason, that this is, strictly speaking, the only name of god; that the rest of the words used are merely titles; and, in truth, the other names of god, whether they be substantives or adjectives, are merely attributive, and belong to him, in so far as he is conceived of in relation to created things, or manifested through them. (13:18) thus el, or eloah, signifies powerful, as is well known, and only applies to god in respect to his supremacy, as when we call paul an apostle; the faculties of his power are set forth in an accompanying adjective, as el, great, awful, just, merciful, &c., or else all are understood at once by the use of el in the plural number, with a singular signification, an expression frequently adopted in scripture. (13:19) now, as god tells moses that he was not known to the patriarchs by the name of jehovah, it follows that they were not cognizant of any attribute of god which expresses his absolute essence, but only of his deeds and promises that is, of his power, as manifested in visible things. (20) god does not thus speak to moses in order to accuse the patriarchs of infidelity, but, on the contrary, as a means of extolling their belief and faith, inasmuch as, though they possessed no extraordinary knowledge of god (such as moses had), they yet accepted his promises as fixed and certain; whereas moses, though his thoughts about god were more exalted, nevertheless doubted about the divine promises, and complained to god that, instead of the promised deliverance, the prospects of the israelites had darkened. (13:21) as the patriarchs did not know the distinctive name of god, and as god mentions the fact to moses, in praise of their faith and single-heartedness, and in contrast to the extraordinary grace granted to moses, it follows, as we stated at first, that men are not bound by decree to have knowledge of the attributes of god, such knowledge being only granted to a few of the faithful: it is hardly worth while to quote further examples from scripture, for everyone must recognize that knowledge of god is not equal among all good men. (13:22) moreover, a man cannot be ordered to be wise any more than he can be ordered to live and exist. (23) men, women, and children are all alike able to obey by commandment, but not to be wise. if any tell us that it is not necessary to understand the divine attributes, but that we must believe them simply without proof, he is plainly trifling. (24) for what is invisible and can only be perceived by the mind, cannot be apprehended by any other means than proofs; if these are absent the object remains ungrasped; the repetition of what has been heard on such subjects no more indicates or attains to their meaning than the words of a parrot or a puppet speaking without sense or signification. (13:25) before i proceed i ought to explain how it comes that we are often told in genesis that the patriarchs preached in the name of jehovah, this being in plain contradiction to the text above quoted. (26) a reference to what was said in chap. viii. will readily explain the difficulty. (27) it was there shown that the writer of the pentateuch did not always speak of things and places by the names they bore in the times of which he was writing, but by the names best known to his contemporaries. (28) god is thus said in the pentateuch to have been preached by the patriarchs under the name of jehovah, not because such was the name by which the patriarchs knew him, but because this name was the one most reverenced by the jews. (13:29) this point, i say, must necessarily be noticed, for in exodus it is expressly stated that god was not known to the patriarchs by this name; and in chap. iii:13, it is said that moses desired to know the name of god. (30) now, if this name had been already known it would have been known to moses. (31) we must therefore draw the conclusion indicated, namely, that the faithful patriarchs did not know this name of god, and that the knowledge of god is bestowed and not commanded by the deity. (13:32) it is now time to pass on to our second point, and show that god through his prophets required from men no other knowledge of himself than is contained in a knowledge of his justice and charity that is, of attributes which a certain manner of life will enable men to imitate. (33) jeremiah states this in so many words (xxii:15, 16): "did not thy father eat, and drink, and do judgment and justice? and then it was well with him. (34) he judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well with him: was not this to know me? saith the lord." (35) the words in chap. ix:24 of the same book are equally clear. (36) "but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that i am the lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things i delight, saith the lord." (13:37) the same doctrine maybe gathered from exod. xxxiv:6, where god revealed to moses only those of his attributes which display the divine justice and charity. (38) lastly, we may call attention to a passage in john which we shall discuss at more length hereafter; the apostle explains the nature of god (inasmuch as no one has beheld him) through charity only, and concludes that he who possesses charity possesses, and in very truth knows god. (13:39) we have thus seen that moses, jeremiah, and john sum up in a very short compass the knowledge of god needful for all, and that they state it to consist in exactly what we said, namely, that god is supremely just, and supremely merciful in other words, the one perfect pattern of the true life. (40) we may add that scripture nowhere gives an express definition of god, and does not point out any other of his attributes which should be apprehended save these, nor does it in set terms praise any others. (13:41) wherefore we may draw the general conclusion that an intellectual knowledge of god, which takes cognizance of his nature in so far as it actually is, and which cannot by any manner of living be imitated by mankind or followed as an example, has no bearing whatever on true rules of conduct, on faith, or on revealed religion; consequently that men may be in complete error on the subject without incurring the charge of sinfulness. (13:42) we need now no longer wonder that god adapted himself to the existing opinions and imaginations of the prophets, or that the faithful held different ideas of god, as we showed in chap. ii.; or, again, that the sacred books speak very inaccurately of god, attributing to him hands, feet, eyes, ears, a mind, and motion from one place to another; or that they ascribe to him emotions, such as jealousy, mercy, &c., or, lastly, that they describe him as a judge in heaven sitting on a royal throne with christ on his right hand. (43) such expressions are adapted to the understanding of the multitude, it being the object of the bible to make men not learned but obedient. (13:44) in spite of this the general run of theologians, when they come upon any of these phrases which they cannot rationally harmonize with the divine nature, maintain that they should be interpreted metaphorically, passages they cannot understand they say should be interpreted literally. (45) but if every expression of this kind in the bible is necessarily to be interpreted and understood metaphorically, scripture must have been written, not for the people and the unlearned masses, but chiefly for accomplished experts and philosophers. (13:46) if it were indeed a sin to hold piously and simply the ideas about god we have just quoted, the prophets ought to have been strictly on their guard against the use of such expressions, seeing the weak-mindedness of the people, and ought, on the other hand, to have set forth first of all, duly and clearly, those attributes of god which are needful to be understood. [13:1] (47) this they have nowhere done; we cannot, therefore, think that opinions taken in themselves without respect to actions are either pious or impious, but must maintain that a man is pious or impious in his beliefs only in so far as he is thereby incited to obedience, or derives from them license to sin and rebel. (48) if a man, by believing what is true, becomes rebellious, his creed is impious; if by believing what is false he becomes obedient, his creed is pious; for the true knowledge of god comes not by commandment, but by divine gift. (49) god has required nothing from man but a knowledge of his divine justice and charity, and that not as necessary to scientific accuracy, but to obedience. ____________________________________________________________________________ [14:0] chapter xiv definitions of faith, the faith, and the foundations of faith, which is once for all separated from philosophy. (14:1) for a true knowledge of faith it is above all things necessary to understand that the bible was adapted to the intelligence, not only of the prophets, but also of the diverse and fickle jewish multitude. (2) this will be recognized by all who give any thought to the subject, for they will see that a person who accepted promiscuously everything in scripture as being the universal and absolute teaching of god, without accurately defining what was adapted to the popular intelligence, would find it impossible to escape confounding the opinions of the masses with the divine doctrines, praising the judgments and comments of man as the teaching of god, and making a wrong use of scriptural authority. (14:3) who, i say, does not perceive that this is the chief reason why so many sectaries teach contradictory opinions as divine documents, and support their contentions with numerous scriptural texts, till it has passed in belgium into a proverb, geen ketter sonder letter no heretic without a text? (4) the sacred books were not written by one man, nor for the people of a single period, but by many authors of different temperaments, at times extending from first to last over nearly two thousand years, and perhaps much longer. (14:5) we will not, however, accuse the sectaries of impiety because they have adapted the words of scripture to their own opinions; it is thus that these words were adapted to the understanding of the masses originally, and everyone is at liberty so to treat them if he sees that he can thus obey god in matters relating to justice and charity with a more full consent: but we do accuse those who will not grant this freedom to their fellows, but who persecute all who differ from them, as god's enemies, however honourable and virtuous be their lives; while, on the other hand, they cherish those who agree with them, however foolish they may be, as god's elect. (6) such conduct is as wicked and dangerous to the state as any that can be conceived. [14:1] (7) in order, therefore, to establish the limits to which individual freedom should extend, and to decide what persons, in spite of the diversity of their opinions, are to be looked upon as the faithful, we must define faith and its essentials. (14:8) this task i hope to accomplish in the present chapter, and also to separate faith from philosophy, which is the chief aim of the whole treatise. (14:9) in order to proceed duly to the demonstration let us recapitulate the chief aim and object of scripture; this will indicate a standard by which we may define faith. (14:10) we have said in a former chapter that the aim and object of scripture is only to teach obedience. (11) thus much, i think, no one can question. (12) who does not see that both testaments are nothing else but schools for this object, and have neither of them any aim beyond inspiring mankind with a voluntary obedience? (14:13) for (not to repeat what i said in the last chapter) i will remark that moses did not seek to convince the jews by reason, but bound them by a covenant, by oaths, and by conferring benefits; further, he threatened the people with punishment if they should infringe the law, and promised rewards if they should obey it. (14:14) all these are not means for teaching knowledge, but for inspiring obedience. (15) the doctrine of the gospels enjoins nothing but simple faith, namely, to believe in god and to honour him, which is the same thing as to obey him. (16) there is no occasion for me to throw further light on a question so plain by citing scriptural texts commending obedience, such as may be found in great numbers in both testaments. (14:17) moreover, the bible teaches very clearly in a great many passages what everyone ought to do in order to obey god; the whole duty is summed up in love to one's neighbour. (18) it cannot, therefore, be denied that he who by god's command loves his neighbour as himself is truly obedient and blessed according to the law, whereas he who hates his neighbour or neglects him is rebellious and obstinate. (14:19) lastly, it is plain to everyone that the bible was not written and disseminated only for the learned, but for men of every age and race; wherefore we may rest assured that we are not bound by scriptural command to believe anything beyond what is absolutely necessary for fulfilling its main precept. (14:20) this precept, then, is the only standard of the whole catholic faith, and by it alone all the dogmas needful to be believed should be determined. (21) so much being abundantly manifest, as is also the fact that all other doctrines of the faith can be legitimately deduced therefrom by reason alone, i leave it to every man to decide for himself how it comes to pass that so many divisions have arisen in the church: can it be from any other cause than those suggested at the beginning of chap. viii.? (22) it is these same causes which compel me to explain the method of determining the dogmas of the faith from the foundation we have discovered, for if i neglected to do so, and put the question on a regular basis, i might justly be said to have promised too lavishly, for that anyone might, by my showing, introduce any doctrine he liked into religion, under the pretext that it was a necessary means to obedience: especially would this be the case in questions respecting the divine attributes. (14:23) in order, therefore, to set forth the whole matter methodically, i will begin with a definition of faith, which on the principle above given, should be as follows:(14:24) faith consists in a knowledge of god, without which obedience to him would be impossible, and which the mere fact of obedience to him implies. (25) this definition is so clear, and follows so plainly from what we have already proved, that it needs no explanation. (14:26) the consequences involved therein i will now briefly show. [14:2] (i.) (14:27) faith is not salutary in itself, but only in respect to the obedience it implies, or as james puts it in his epistle, ii:17, "faith without works is dead" (see the whole of the chapter quoted). (ii.) (14:28) he who is truly obedient necessarily possesses true and saving faith; for if obedience be granted, faith must be granted also, as the same apostle expressly says in these words (ii:18), "show me thy faith without thy works, and i will show thee my faith by my works." (29) so also john, i ep. iv:7: "everyone that loveth is born of god, and knoweth god: he that loveth not, knoweth not god; for god is love." (30) from these texts, i repeat, it follows that we can only judge a man faithful or unfaithful by his works. (31) if his works be good, he is faithful, however much his doctrines may differ from those of the rest of the faithful: if his works be evil, though he may verbally conform, he is unfaithful. (32) for obedience implies faith, and faith without works is dead. (14:33) john, in the 13th verse of the chapter above quoted, expressly teaches the same doctrine: "hereby," he says, "know we that we dwell in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his spirit," i.e. love. (34) he had said before that god is love, and therefore he concludes (on his own received principles), that whoso possesses love possesses truly the spirit of god. (35) as no one has beheld god he infers that no one has knowledge or consciousness of god, except from love towards his neighbour, and also that no one can have knowledge of any of god's attributes, except this of love, in so far as we participate therein. (14:36) if these arguments are not conclusive, they, at any rate, show the apostle's meaning, but the words in chap. ii:3, 4, of the same epistle are much clearer, for they state in so many words our precise contention: "and hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. (37) he that saith, i know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." (14:38) from all this, i repeat, it follows that they are the true enemies of christ who persecute honourable and justice-loving men because they differ from them, and do not uphold the same religious dogmas as themselves: for whosoever loves justice and charity we know, by that very fact, to be faithful: whosoever persecutes the faithful, is an enemy to christ. (14:39) lastly, it follows that faith does not demand that dogmas should be true as that they should be pious that is, such as will stir up the heart to obey; though there be many such which contain not a shadow of truth, so long as they be held in good faith, otherwise their adherents are disobedient, for how can anyone, desirous of loving justice and obeying god, adore as divine what he knows to be alien from the divine nature? (14:40) however, men may err from simplicity of mind, and scripture, as we have seen, does not condemn ignorance, but obstinacy. (14:41) this is the necessary result of our definition of faith, and all its branches should spring from the universal rule above given, and from the evident aim and object of the bible, unless we choose to mix our own inventions therewith. (42) thus it is not true doctrines which are expressly required by the bible, so much as doctrines necessary for obedience, and to confirm in our hearts the love of our neighbour, wherein (to adopt the words of john) we are in god, and god in us. [14:3] (43) as, then, each man's faith must be judged pious or impious only in respect of its producing obedience or obstinacy, and not in respect of its truth; and as no one will dispute that men's dispositions are exceedingly varied, that all do not acquiesce in the same things, but are ruled some by one opinion some by another, so that what moves one to devotion moves another to laughter and contempt, it follows that there can be no doctrines in the catholic, or universal, religion, which can give rise to controversy among good men. (44) such doctrines might be pious to some and impious to others, whereas they should be judged solely by their fruits. (14:45) to the universal religion, then, belong only such dogmas as are absolutely required in order to attain obedience to god, and without which such obedience would be impossible; as for the rest, each man seeing that he is the best judge of his own character should adopt whatever he thinks best adapted to strengthen his love of justice. (46) if this were so, i think there would be no further occasion for controversies in the church. (14:47) i have now no further fear in enumerating the dogmas of universal faith or the fundamental dogmas of the whole of scripture, inasmuch as they all tend (as may be seen from what has been said) to this one doctrine, namely, that there exists a god, that is, a supreme being, who loves justice and charity, and who must be obeyed by whosoever would be saved; that the worship of this being consists in the practice of justice and love towards one's neighbour, and that they contain nothing beyond the following doctrines :i. (14:48) that god or a supreme being exists, sovereignly just and merciful, the exemplar of the true life; that whosoever is ignorant of or disbelieves in his existence cannot obey him or know him as a judge. ii. (14:49) that he is one. (50) nobody will dispute that this doctrine is absolutely necessary for entire devotion, admiration, and love towards god. (51) for devotion, admiration, and spring from the superiority of one over all else. iii. (14:52) that he is omnipresent, or that all things are open to him, for if anything could be supposed to be concealed from him, or to be unnoticed by him, we might doubt or be ignorant of the equity of his judgment as directing all things. iv. (14:53) that he has supreme right and dominion over all things, and that he does nothing under compulsion, but by his absolute fiat and grace. (54) all things are bound to obey him, he is not bound to obey any. v. (14:55) that the worship of god consists only in justice and charity, or love towards one's neighbour. vi. (14:56) that all those, and those only, who obey god by their manner of life are saved; the rest of mankind, who live under the sway of their pleasures, are lost. (57) if we did not believe this, there would be no reason for obeying god rather than pleasure. vii. (14:58) lastly, that god forgives the sins of those who repent. (59) no one is free from sin, so that without this belief all would despair of salvation, and there would be no reason for believing in the mercy of god. (60) he who firmly believes that god, out of the mercy and grace with which he directs all things, forgives the sins of men, and who feels his love of god kindled thereby, he, i say, does really know christ according to the spirit, and christ is in him. (14:61) no one can deny that all these doctrines are before all things necessary to be believed, in order that every man, without exception, may be able to obey god according to the bidding of the law above explained, for if one of these precepts be disregarded obedience is destroyed. (62) but as to what god, or the exemplar of the true life, may be, whether fire, or spirit, or light, or thought, or what not, this, i say, has nothing to do with faith any more than has the question how he comes to be the exemplar of the true life, whether it be because he has a just and merciful mind, or because all things exist and act through him, and consequently that we understand through him, and through him see what is truly just and good. (63) everyone may think on such questions as he likes, (14:64) furthermore, faith is not affected, whether we hold that god is omnipresent essentially or potentially; that he directs all things by absolute fiat, or by the necessity of his nature; that he dictates laws like a prince, or that he sets them forth as eternal truths; that man obeys him by virtue of free will, or by virtue of the necessity of the divine decree; lastly, that the reward of the good and the punishment of the wicked is natural or supernatural: these and such like questions have no bearing on faith, except in so far as they are used as means to give us license to sin more, or to obey god less. (14:65) i will go further, and maintain that every man is bound to adapt these dogmas to his own way of thinking, and to interpret them according as he feels that he can give them his fullest and most unhesitating assent, so that he may the more easily obey god with his whole heart. (14:66) such was the manner, as we have already pointed out, in which the faith was in old time revealed and written, in accordance with the understanding and opinions of the prophets and people of the period; so, in like fashion, every man is bound to adapt it to his own opinions, so that he may accept it without any hesitation or mental repugnance. (67) we have shown that faith does not so much re quire truth as piety, and that it is only quickening and pious through obedience, consequently no one is faithful save by obedience alone. (14:68) the best faith is not necessarily possessed by him who displays the best reasons, but by him who displays the best fruits of justice and charity. (69) how salutary and necessary this doctrine is for a state, in order that men may dwell together in peace and concord; and how many and how great causes of disturbance and crime are thereby cut off, i leave everyone to judge for himself! (14:70) before we go further, i may remark that we can, by means of what we have just proved, easily answer the objections raised in chap. i., when we were discussing god's speaking with the israelites on mount sinai. (71) for, though the voice heard by the israelites could not give those men any philosophical or mathematical certitude of god's existence, it was yet sufficient to thrill them with admiration for god, as they already knew him, and to stir them up to obedience: and such was the object of the display. (72) god did not wish to teach the israelites the absolute attributes of his essence (none of which he then revealed), but to break down their hardness of heart, and to draw them to obedience: therefore he did not appeal to them with reasons, but with the sound of trumpets, thunder, and lightnings. (14:73) it remains for me to show that between faith or theology, and philosophy, there is no connection, nor affinity. (74) i think no one will dispute the fact who has knowledge of the aim and foundations of the two subjects, for they are as wide apart as the poles. [14:4] (75) philosophy has no end in view save truth: faith, as we have abundantly proved, looks for nothing but obedience and piety. (76) again, philosophy is based on axioms which must be sought from nature alone: faith is based on history and language, and must be sought for only in scripture and revelation, as we showed in chap. vii. (77) faith, therefore, allows the greatest latitude in philosophic speculation, allowing us without blame to think what we like about anything, and only condemning, as heretics and schismatics, those who teach opinions which tend to produce obstinacy, hatred, strife, and anger; while, on the other hand, only considering as faithful those who persuade us, as far as their reason and faculties will permit, to follow justice and charity. (14:78) lastly, as what we are now setting forth are the most important subjects of my treatise, i would most urgently beg the reader, before i proceed, to read these two chapters with especial attention, and to take the trouble to weigh them well in his mind: let him take for granted that i have not written with a view to introducing novelties, but in order to do away with abuses, such as i hope i may, at some future time, at last see reformed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[15:0] chapter xv theology is shown not to be subservient to reason, nor reason to theology: a definition of the reason which enables us to accept the authority of the bible. (15:1) those who know not that philosophy and reason are distinct, dispute whether scripture should be made subservient to reason, or reason to scripture: that is, whether the meaning of scripture should be made to agreed with reason; or whether reason should be made to agree with scripture: the latter position is assumed by the sceptics who deny the certitude of reason, the former by the dogmatists. (2) both parties are, as i have shown, utterly in the wrong, for either doctrine would require us to tamper with reason or with scripture. (15:3) we have shown that scripture does not teach philosophy, but merely obedience, and that all it contains has been adapted to the understanding and established opinions of the multitude. (4) those, therefore, who wish to adapt it to philosophy, must needs ascribe to the prophets many ideas which they never even dreamed of, and give an extremely forced interpretation to their words: those on the other hand, who would make reason and philosophy subservient to theology, will be forced to accept as divine utterances the prejudices of the ancient jews, and to fill and confuse their mind therewith. (5) in short, one party will run wild with the aid of reason, and the other will run wild without the aid of reason. [15:1] (6) the first among the pharisees who openly maintained that scripture should be made to agree with reason, was maimonides, whose opinion we reviewed, and abundantly refuted in chap. viii.: [15:2] now, although this writer had much authority among his contemporaries, he was deserted on this question by almost all, and the majority went straight over to the opinion of a certain r. jehuda alpakhar, who, in his anxiety to avoid the error of maimonides, fell into another, which was its exact contrary. (15:7) he held that reason should be made subservient, and entirely give way to scripture. (8) he thought that a passage should not be interpreted metaphorically, simply because it was repugnant to reason, but only in the cases when it is inconsistent with scripture itself that is, with its clear doctrines. (15:9) therefore he laid down the universal rule, that whatsoever scripture teaches dogmatically, and affirms expressly, must on its own sole authority be admitted as absolutely true: that there is no doctrine in the bible which directly contradicts the general tenour of the whole: but only some which appear to involve a difference, for the phrases of scripture often seem to imply something contrary to what has been expressly taught. (10) such phrases, and such phrases only, we may interpret metaphorically. (15:11) for instance, scripture clearly teaches the unity of god (see deut. vi:4), nor is there any text distinctly asserting a plurality of gods; but in several passages god speaks of himself, and the prophets speak of him, in the plural number; such phrases are simply a manner of speaking, and do not mean that there actually are several gods: they are to be explained metaphorically, not because a plurality of gods is repugnant to reason, but because scripture distinctly asserts that there is only one. (15:12) so, again, as scripture asserts (as alpakhar thinks) in deut. iv:15, that god is incorporeal, we are bound, solely by the authority of this text, and not by reason, to believe that god has no body: consequently we must explain metaphorically, on the sole authority of scripture, all those passages which attribute to god hands, feet, &c., and take them merely as figures of speech. (13) such is the opinion of alpakhar. (15:13a) in so far as he seeks to explain scripture by scripture, i praise him, but i marvel that a man gifted with reason should wish to debase that faculty. (14) it is true that scripture should be explained by scripture, so long as we are in difficulties about the meaning and intention of the prophets, but when we have elicited the true meaning, we must of necessity make use of our judgment and reason in order to assent thereto. (15:15) if reason, however, much as she rebels, is to be entirely subjected to scripture, i ask, are we to effect her submission by her own aid, or without her, and blindly? (16) if the latter, we shall surely act foolishly and injudiciously; if the former, we assent to scripture under the dominion of reason, and should not assent to it without her. (15:17) moreover, i may ask now, is a man to assent to anything against his reason? (18) what is denial if it be not reason's refusal to assent? (19) in short, i am astonished that anyone should wish to subject reason, the greatest of gifts and a light from on high, to the dead letter which may have been corrupted by human malice; that it should be thought no crime to speak with contempt of mind, the true handwriting of god's word, calling it corrupt, blind, and lost, while it is considered the greatest of crimes to say the same of the letter, which is merely the reflection and image of god's word. (15:20) men think it pious to trust nothing to reason and their own judgment, and impious to doubt the faith of those who have transmitted to us the sacred books. (21) such conduct is not piety, but mere folly. and, after all, why are they so anxious? what are they afraid of? (22) do they think that faith and religion cannot be upheld unless men purposely keep themselves in ignorance, and turn their backs on reason? (22a) if this be so, they have but a timid trust in scripture. [15:3] (23) however, be it far from me to say that religion should seek to enslave reason, or reason religion, or that both should not be able to keep their sovereignty in perfect harmony. (24) i will revert to this question presently, for i wish now to discuss alpakhar's rule. (15:26) he requires, as we have stated, that we should accept as true, or reject as false, everything asserted or denied by scripture, and he further states that scripture never expressly asserts or denies anything which contradicts its assertions or negations elsewhere. (27) the rashness of such a requirement and statement can escape no one. (15:28) for (passing over the act that he does not notice that scripture consists of different books, written at different times, for different people, by different authors: and also that his requirement is made on his own authority without any corroboration from reason or scripture) he would be bound to show that all passages which are indirectly contradictory of the rest, can be satisfactorily explained metaphorically through the nature of the language and the context: further, that scripture has come down to us untampered with. (15:29) however, we will go into the matter at length. (15:30) firstly, i ask what shall we do if reason prove recalcitrant? (31) shall we still be bound to affirm whatever scripture affirms, and to deny whatever scripture denies? (32) perhaps it will be answered that scripture contains nothing repugnant to reason. (33) but i insist that it expressly affirms and teaches that god is jealous (namely, in the decalogue itself, and in exod. xxxiv:14, and in deut. iv:24, and in many other places), and i assert that such a doctrine is repugnant to reason. (34) it must, i suppose, in spite of all, be accepted as true. if there are any passages in scripture which imply that god is not jealous, they must be taken metaphorically as meaning nothing of the kind. (15:35) so, also, scripture expressly states (exod. xix:20, &c.) that god came down to mount sinai, and it attributes to him other movements from place to place, nowhere directly stating that god does not so move. (36) wherefore, we must take the passage literally, and solomon's words (i kings viii:27), "but will god dwell on the earth? (37) behold the heavens and earth cannot contain thee," inasmuch as they do not expressly state that god does not move from place to place, but only imply it, must be explained away till they have no further semblance of denying locomotion to the deity. (15:38) so also we must believe that the sky is the habitation and throne of god, for scripture expressly says so; and similarly many passages expressing the opinions of the prophets or the multitude, which reason and philosophy, but not scripture, tell us to be false, must be taken as true if we are io follow the guidance of our author, for according to him, reason has nothing to do with the matter. (39) further, it is untrue that scripture never contradicts itself directly, but only by implication. (40) for moses says, in so many words (deut. iv:24), "the lord thy god is a consuming fire," and elsewhere expressly denies that god has any likeness to visible things. (deut. iv. 12.) (15:41) if it be decided that the latter passage only contradicts the former by implication, and must be adapted thereto, lest it seem to negative it, let us grant that god is a fire; or rather, lest we should seem to have taken leave of our senses, let us pass the matter over and take another example. (15:42) samuel expressly denies that god ever repents, "for he is not a man that he should repent" (i sam. xv:29). (43) jeremiah, on the other hand, asserts that god does repent, both of the evil and of the good which he had intended to do (jer. xviii:8-10). (44) what? (45) are not these two texts directly contradictory? (15:46) which of the two, then, would our author want to explain metaphorically? (47) both statements are general, and each is the opposite of the other what one flatly affirms, the other flatly denies. (48) so, by his own rule, he would be obliged at once to reject them as false, and to accept them as true. (15:49) again, what is the point of one passage, not being contradicted by another directly, but only by implication, if the implication is clear, and the nature and context of the passage preclude metaphorical interpretation? (15:50) there are many such instances in the bible, as we saw in chap. ii. (where we pointed out that the prophets held different and contradictory opinions), and also in chaps. ix. and x., where we drew attention to the contradictions in the historical narratives. (51) there is no need for me to go through them all again, for what i have said sufficiently exposes the absurdities which would follow from an opinion and rule such as we are discussing, and shows the hastiness of its propounder. (15:52) we may, therefore, put this theory, as well as that of maimonides, entirely out of court; and we may take it for indisputable that theology is not bound to serve reason, nor reason theology, but that each has her own domain. (15:53) the sphere of reason is, as we have said, truth and wisdom; the sphere of theology is piety and obedience. (54) the power of reason does not extend so far as to determine for us that men may be blessed through simple obedience, without understanding. (55) theology tells us nothing else, enjoins on us no command save obedience, and has neither the will nor the power to oppose reason: she defines the dogmas of faith (as we pointed out in the last chapter) only in so far as they may be necessary for obedience, and leaves reason to determine their precise truth: for reason is the light of the mind, and without her all things are dreams and phantoms. (15:56) by theology, i here mean, strictly speaking, revelation, in so far as it indicates the object aimed at by scripture namely, the scheme and manner of obedience, or the true dogmas of piety and faith. (57) this may truly be called the word of god, which does not consist in a certain number of books (see chap. xii.). (15:58) theology thus understood, if we regard its precepts or rules of life, will be found in accordance with reason; and, if we look to its aim and object, will be seen to be in nowise repugnant thereto, wherefore it is universal to all men. (15:59) as for its bearing on scripture, we have shown in chap. vii. that the meaning of scripture should be gathered from its own history, and not from the history of nature in general, which is the basis of philosophy. (15:60) we ought not to be hindered if we find that our investigation of the meaning of scripture thus conducted shows us that it is here and there repugnant to reason; for whatever we may find of this sort in the bible, which men may be in ignorance of, without injury to their charity, has, we may be sure, no bearing on theology or the word of god, and may, therefore, without blame, be viewed by every one as he pleases. [15:4] (61) to sum up, we may draw the absolute conclusion that the bible must not be accommodated to reason, nor reason to the bible. (15:62) now, inasmuch as the basis of theology the doctrine that man may be saved by obedience alone cannot be proved by reason whether it be true or false, we may be asked, why, then, should we believe it? (63) if we do so without the aid of reason, we accept it blindly, and act foolishly and injudiciously; if, on the other hand, we settle that it can be proved by reason, theology becomes a part of philosophy, and inseparable therefrom. (15:64) but i make answer that i have absolutely established that this basis of theology cannot be investigated by the natural light of reason, or, at any rate, that no one ever has proved it by such means, and, therefore, revelation was necessary. (65) we should, however, make use of our reason, in order to grasp with moral certainty what is revealed i say, with moral certainty, for we cannot hope to attain greater certainty than the prophets: yet their certainty was only moral, as i showed in chap. ii. [15:5] (66) those, therefore, who attempt to set forth the authority of scripture with mathematical demonstrations are wholly in error: for the authority of the bible is dependent on the authority of the prophets, and can be supported by no stronger arguments than those employed in old time by the prophets for convincing the people of their own authority. (15:67) our certainty on the same subject can be founded on no other basis than that which served as foundation for the certainty of the prophets. (15:68) now the certainty of the prophets consisted (as we pointed out) in these elements:(i.) (15:69) a distinct and vivid imagination. (ii.) (15:70) a sign. (iii.) (15:71) lastly, and chiefly, a mind turned to what is just and good. (71a) it was based on no other reasons than these, and consequently they cannot prove their authority by any other reasons, either to the multitude whom they addressed orally, nor to us whom they address in writing. (15:72) the first of these reasons, namely, the vivid imagination, could be valid only for the prophets; therefore, our certainty concerning revelation must, and ought to be, based on the remaining two namely, the sign and the teaching. (73) such is the express doctrine of moses, for (in deut. xviii.) he bids the people obey the prophet who should give a true sign in the name of the lord, but if he should predict falsely, even though it were in the name of the lord, he should be put to death, as should also he who strives to lead away the people from the true religion, though he confirm his authority with signs and portents. (74) we may compare with the above deut. xiii. (75) whence it follows that a true prophet could be distinguished from a false one, both by his doctrine and by the miracles he wrought, for moses declares such an one to be a true prophet, and bids the people trust him without fear of deceit. (15:76) he condemns as false, and worthy of death, those who predict anything falsely even in the name of the lord, or who preach false gods, even though their miracles be real. (15:77) the only reason, then, which we have for belief in scripture or the writings of the prophets, is the doctrine we find therein, and the signs by which it is confirmed. (78) for as we see that the prophets extol charity and justice above all things, and have no other object, we conclude that they did not write from unworthy motives, but because they really thought that men might become blessed through obedience and faith: further, as we see that they confirmed their teaching with signs and wonders, we become persuaded that they did not speak at random, nor run riot in their prophecies. (15:79) we are further strengthened in our conclusion by the fact that the morality they teach is in evident agreement with reason, for it is no accidental coincidence that the word of god which we find in the prophets coincides with the word of god written in our hearts. (80) we may, i say, conclude this from the sacred books as certainly as did the jews of old from the living voice of the prophets: for we showed in chap. xii. that scripture has come down to us intact in respect to its doctrine and main narratives. (15:81) therefore this whole basis of theology and scripture, though it does not admit of mathematical proof, may yet be accepted with the approval of our judgment. (82) it would be folly to refuse to accept what is confirmed by such ample prophetic testimony, and what has proved such a comfort to those whose reason s comparatively weak, and such a benefit to the state; a doctrine, moreover, which we may believe in without the slightest peril or hurt, and should reject simply because it cannot be mathematically proved: it is as though we should admit nothing as true, or as a wise rule of life, which could ever, in any possible way, be called in question; or as though most of our actions were not full of uncertainty and hazards. (15:83) i admit that those who believe that theology and philosophy are mutually contradictory, and that therefore either one or the other must be thrust from its throne i admit, i say, that such persons are not unreasonable in attempting to put theology on a firm basis, and to demonstrate its truth mathematically. (84) who, unless he were desperate or mad, would wish to bid an incontinent farewell to reason, or to despise the arts and sciences, or to deny reason's certitude? (85) but, in the meanwhile, we cannot wholly absolve them from blame, inasmuch as they invoke the aid of reason for her own defeat, and attempt infallibly to prove her fallible. (15:86) while they are trying to prove mathematically the authority and truth of theology, and to take away the authority of natural reason, they are in reality only bringing theology under reason's dominion, and proving that her authority has no weight unless natural reason be at the back of it. (15:87) if they boast that they themselves assent because of the inward testimony of the holy spirit, and that they only invoke the aid of reason because of unbelievers, in order to convince them, not even so can this meet with our approval, for we can easily show that they have spoken either from emotion or vain-glory. (15:88) it most clearly follows from the last chapter that the holy spirit only gives its testimony in favour of works, called by paul (in gal. v:22) the fruits of the spirit, and is in itself really nothing but the mental acquiescence which follows a good action in our souls. (89) no spirit gives testimony concerning the certitude of matters within the sphere of speculation, save only reason, who is mistress, as we have shown, of the whole realm of truth. (90) if then they assert that they possess this spirit which makes them certain of truth, they speak falsely, and according to the prejudices of the emotions, or else they are in great dread lest they should be vanquished by philosophers and exposed to public ridicule, and therefore they flee, as it were, to the altar; but their refuge is vain, for what altar will shelter a man who has outraged reason? (15:91) however, i pass such persons over, for i think i have fulfilled my purpose, and shown how philosophy should be separated from theology, and wherein each consists; that neither should be subservient to the other, but that each should keep her unopposed dominion. (92) lastly, as occasion offered, i have pointed out the absurdities, the inconveniences, and the evils following from the extraordinary confusion which has hitherto prevailed between the two subjects, owing to their not being properly distinguished and separated. [15:6] (93) before i go further i would expressly state (though i have said it before) that i consider the utility and the need for holy scripture or revelation to be very great. (15:94) for as we cannot perceive by the natural light of reason that simple obedience is the path of salvation [endnote 25] and are taught by revelation only that it is so by the special grace of god, which our reason cannot attain, it follows that the bible has brought a very great consolation to mankind. (15:95) all are able to obey, whereas there are but very few, compared with the aggregate of humanity, who can acquire the habit of virtue under the unaided guidance of reason. (96) thus if we had not the testimony of scripture, we should doubt of the salvation of nearly all men. end of part 3 of 4 chapters xi to xv. ____________________________________________________________________________ [author's endnotes] to the theologico-political treatise chapter xi. [endnote 24] (1) "now i think." (2) the translators render the greek "i infer", and assert that paul uses it as synonymous with an other greek word. (3) but the former word has, in greek, the same meaning as the hebrew word rendered to think, to esteem, to judge. (4) and this signification would be in entire agreement with the syriac translation. (5) this syriac translation (if it be a translation, which is very doubtful, for we know neither the time of its appearance, nor the translators and syriac was the vernacular of the apostles) renders the text before us in a way well explained by tremellius as "we think, therefore." chapter xv. [endnote 25] (1) "that simple obedience is the path of salvation." (2) in other words, it is enough for salvation or blessedness, that we should embrace the divine decrees as laws or commands; there is no need to conceive them as eternal truths. (3) this can be taught us by revelation, not reason, as appears from the demonstrations given in chapter iv. end of part 3 of 4 endnotes. ____________________________________________________________________________ end of a theologico-political treatise part 3 "joseph b. yesselman" <jyselman@erols.com> august 26, 1997 a theologico-political treatise part 4 of 4 chapters xvi to xx published 1670 anonymously baruch spinoza 1632 1677 ____________________________________________________________________________ jby notes: 1. text was scanned from benedict de spinoza's "a theologico-political treatise", and "a political treatise" as published in dover's isbn 0-486-20249-6. 2. the text is that of the translation of "a theologico-political treatise" by r. h. m. elwes. this text is "an unabridged and unaltered republication of the bohn library edition originally published by george bell and sons in 1883." 3. jby added sentence numbers and search strings. 4. sentence numbers are shown thus (yy:xx). yy = chapter number when given. xx = sentence number. 5. search strings are enclosed in [square brackets]: a. roman numeral, when given before a search string, indicates part number. if a different part, bring up that part and then search. b. include square brackets in search string. c. do not include part number in search string. d. search down with the same string to facilitate return. 6. please report any errors in the text, search formatting, or sentence numbering to jyselman@erols.com. 7. html version: part 4 http://www.erols.com/jyselman/ttpelws4.htm ____________________________________________________________________________ [16:0] chapter xvi [17:0] chapter xvii [18:0] chapter xviii [19:0] chapter xix [20:0] chapter xx ____________________________________________________________________________ table of contents: search strings are shown thus [*:x]. search forward and back with the same string. include square brackets in search string. [16:0] chapter xvi of the foundations of a state; of the natural and civil rights of individuals; and of the rights of the sovereign power. [16:1] in nature right co-extensive with power. [16:2] this principle applies to mankind in the state of nature. [16:3] how a transition from this state to a civil state is possible. [16:4] subjects not slaves. [16:5] definition of private civil right and wrong. [16:6] of alliance. [16:7] of treason. [16:8] in what sense sovereigns are bound by divine law. [16:9] civil government not inconsistent with religion. [17:0] chapter xvii.it is shown, that no one can or need transfer all his rights to the sovereign power. of the hebrew republic, as it was during the lifetime of moses, and after his death till the foundation of the monarchy; and of its excellence. lastly, of the causes why the theocratic republic fell, and why it could hardly have continued without dissension. [17:1] the absolute theory of sovereignty ideal no one can in fact transfer all his rights to the sovereign power. evidence of this. [17:2] the greatest danger in all states from within, not without. [17:3] original independence of the jews after the exodus. [17:4] changed first to a pure democratic theocracy. [17:5] then to subjection to moses. [17:6] then to a theocracy with the power divided between the high priest and the captains. [17:7] the tribes confederate states. [17:8] restraints on the civil power. [17:9] restraints on the people. [17:a] causes of decay involved in the constitution of the levitical priesthood. [18:0] chapter xviii.from the commonwealth of the hebrews and their history certain lessons are deduced. [18:1] the hebrew constitution no longer possible or desirable, yet lessons may be derived from its history. [18:2] as the danger of entrusting any authority in politics to ecclesiastics the danger of identifying religion with dogma. [18:3] the necessity of keeping all judicial power with the sovereign the danger of changes in the form of a state. [18:4] this last danger illustrated from the history of england of rome. [18:5] and of holland. [19:0] chapter xix it is shown that the right over matters spiritual lies wholly with the sovereign, and that the outward forms of religion should be in accordance with public peace, if we would worship god aright. [19:1] difference between external and inward religion. [19:2] positive law established only by agreement. [19:3] piety furthered by peace and obedience. [19:4] position of the apostles exceptional. [19:5] why christian states, unlike the hebrew, suffer from disputes between the civil and ecclesiastical powers. [19:6] absolute power in things spiritual of modern rulers. [20:0] chapter xx that in a free state every man may think what he likes, and say what he thinks. [20:1] the mind not subject to state authority. [20:2] therefore in general language should not be. [20:3] a man who disapproving of a law, submits his adverse opinion to the judgment of the authorities, while acting in accordance with the law, deserves well of the state. [20:4] that liberty of opinion is beneficial, shown from the history of amsterdam. [20:5] danger to the state of withholding it. submission of the author to the judgment of his country's rulers. [author's endnotes] to the treatise. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[16:0] chapter xvi of the foundations of a state; of the natural and civil rights of individuals; and of the rights of the sovereign power. (16:1) hitherto our care has been to separate philosophy from theology, and to show the freedom of thought which such separation insures to both. (2) it is now time to determine the limits to which such freedom of thought and discussion may extend itself in the ideal state. (3) for the due consideration of this question we must examine the foundations of a state, first turning our attention to the natural rights of individuals, and afterwards to religion and the state as a whole. (16:4) by the right and ordinance of nature, i merely mean those natural laws wherewith we conceive every individual to be conditioned by nature, so as to live and act in a given way. (5) for instance, fishes are naturally conditioned for swimming, and the greater for devouring the less; therefore fishes enjoy the water, and the greater devour the less by sovereign natural right. [16:1] (6) for it is certain that nature, taken in the abstract, has sovereign right to do anything, she can; in other words, her right is co-extensive with her power. (7) the power of nature is the power of god, which has sovereign right over all things; and, inasmuch as the power of nature is simply the aggregate of the powers of all her individual components, it follows that every individual has sovereign right to do all that he can; in other words, the rights of an individual extend to the utmost limits of his power as it has been conditioned. (16:8) now it is the sovereign law and right of nature that each individual should endeavour to preserve itself as it is, without regard to anything but itself; therefore this sovereign law and right belongs to every individual, namely, to exist and act according to its natural conditions. (9) we do not here acknowledge any difference between mankind and other individual natural entities, nor between men endowed with reason and those to whom reason is unknown; nor between fools, madmen, and sane men. (16:10) whatsoever an individual does by the laws of its nature it has a sovereign right to do, inasmuch as it acts as it was conditioned by nature, and cannot act otherwise. [16:2] (11) wherefore among men, so long as they are considered as living under the sway of nature, he who does not yet know reason, or who has not yet acquired the habit of virtue, acts solely according to the laws of his desire with as sovereign a right as he who orders his life entirely by the laws of reason. (16:12) that is, as the wise man has sovereign right to do all that reason dictates, or to live according to the laws of reason, so also the ignorant and foolish man has sovereign right to do all that desire dictates, or to live according to the laws of desire. (13) this is identical with the teaching of paul, who acknowledges that previous to the law that is, so long as men are considered of as living under the sway of nature, there is no sin. (16:14) the natural right of the individual man is thus determined, not by sound reason, but by desire and power. (15) all are not naturally conditioned so as to act according to the laws and rules of reason; nay, on the contrary, all men are born ignorant, and before they can learn the right way of life and acquire the habit of virtue, the greater part of their life, even if they have been well brought up, has passed away. (16) nevertheless, they are in the meanwhile bound to live and preserve themselves as far as they can by the unaided impulses of desire. (16:17) nature has given them no other guide, and has denied them the present power of living according to sound reason; so that they are no more bound to live by the dictates of an enlightened mind, than a cat is bound to live by the laws of the nature of a lion. (16:18) whatsoever, therefore, an individual (considered as under the sway of nature) thinks useful for himself, whether led by sound reason or impelled by the passions, that he has a sovereign right to seek and to take for himself as he best can, whether by force, cunning, entreaty, or any other means; consequently he may regard as an enemy anyone who hinders the accomplishment of his purpose. (16:19) it follows from what we have said that the right and ordinance of nature, under which all men are born, and under which they mostly live, only prohibits such things as no one desires, and no one can attain: it does not forbid strife, nor hatred, nor anger, nor deceit, nor, indeed, any of the means suggested by desire. (16:20) this we need not wonder at, for nature is not bounded by the laws of human reason, which aims only at man's true benefit and preservation; her limits are infinitely wider, and have reference to the eternal order of nature, wherein man is but a speck; it is by the necessity of this alone that all individuals are conditioned for living and acting in a particular way. (16:21) if anything, therefore, in nature seems to us ridiculous, absurd, or evil, it is because we only know in part, and are almost entirely ignorant of the order and interdependence of nature as a whole, and also because we want everything to be arranged according to the dictates of our human reason; in reality that which reason considers evil, is not evil in respect to the order and laws of nature as a whole, but only in respect to the laws of our reason. (16:22) nevertheless, no one can doubt that it is much better for us to live according to the laws and assured dictates of reason, for, as we said, they have men's true good for their object. (23) moreover, everyone wishes to live as far as possible securely beyond the reach of fear, and this would be quite impossible so long as everyone did everything he liked, and reason's claim was lowered to a par with those of hatred and anger; there is no one who is not ill at ease in the midst of enmity, hatred, anger, and deceit, and who does not seek to avoid them as much as he can. [16:3] (24) when we reflect that men without mutual help, or the aid of reason, must needs live most miserably, as we clearly proved in chap. v., we shall plainly see that men must necessarily come to an agreement to live together as securely and well as possible if they are to enjoy as a whole the rights which naturally belong to them as individuals, and their life should be no more conditioned by the force and desire of individuals, but by the power and will of the whole body. (16:25) this end they will be unable to attain if desire be their only guide (for by the laws of desire each man is drawn in a different direction); they must, therefore, most firmly decree and establish that they will be guided in everything by reason (which nobody will dare openly to repudiate lest he should be taken for a madman), and will restrain any desire which is injurious to a man's fellows, that they will do to all as they would be done by, and that they will defend their neighbour's rights as their own. (16:26) how such a compact as this should be entered into, how ratified and established, we will now inquire. (16:27) now it is a universal law of human nature that no one ever neglects anything which he judges to be good, except with the hope of gaining a greater good, or from the fear of a greater evil; nor does anyone endure an evil except for the sake of avoiding a greater evil, or gaining a greater good. (28) that is, everyone will, of two goods, choose that which he thinks the greatest; and, of two evils, that which he thinks the least. (29) i say advisedly that which he thinks the greatest or the least, for it does not necessarily follow that he judges right. (30) this law is so deeply implanted in the human mind that it ought to be counted among eternal truths and axioms. (16:31) as a necessary consequence of the principle just enunciated, no one can honestly promise to forego the right which he has over all things [endnote 26] and in general no one will abide by his promises, unless under the fear of a greater evil, or the hope of a greater good. (32) an example will make the matter clearer. (16:33) suppose that a robber forces me to promise that i will give him my goods at his will and pleasure. (34) it is plain (inasmuch as my natural right is, as i have shown, co-extensive with my power) that if i can free myself from this robber by stratagem, by assenting to his demands, i have the natural right to do so, and to pretend to accept his conditions. (16:35) or again, suppose i have genuinely promised someone that for the space of twenty days i will not taste food or any nourishment; and suppose i afterwards find that was foolish, and cannot be kept without very great injury to myself; as i am bound by natural law and right to choose the least of two evils, i have complete right to break my compact, and act as if my promise had never been uttered. (16:36) i say that i should have perfect natural right to do so, whether i was actuated by true and evident reason, or whether i was actuated by mere opinion in thinking i had promised rashly; whether my reasons were true or false, i should be in fear of a greater evil, which, by the ordinance of nature, i should strive to avoid by every means in my power. (16:37) we may, therefore, conclude that a compact is only made valid by its utility, without which it becomes null and void. (38) it is, therefore, foolish to ask a man to keep his faith with us for ever, unless we also endeavour that the violation of the compact we enter into shall involve for the violator more harm than good. (39) this consideration should have very great weight in forming a state. (40) however, if all men could be easily led by reason alone, and could recognize what is best and most useful for a state, there would be no one who would not forswear deceit, for everyone would keep most religiously to their compact in their desire for the chief good, namely, the shield and buckler of the commonwealth. (16:41) however, it is far from being the case that all men can always be easily led by reason alone; everyone is drawn away by his pleasure, while avarice, ambition, envy, hatred, and the like so engross the mind that reason has no place therein. (16:42) hence, though men make promises with all the appearances of good faith, and agree that they will keep to their engagement, no one can absolutely rely on another man's promise unless there is something behind it. (43) everyone has by nature a right to act deceitfully. and to break his compacts, unless he be restrained by the hope of some greater good, or the fear of some greater evil. (16:44) however, as we have shown that the natural right of the individual is only limited by his power, it is clear that by transferring, either willingly or under compulsion, this power into the hands of another, he in so doing necessarily cedes also a part of his right; and further, that the sovereign right over all men belongs to him who has sovereign power, wherewith he can compel men by force, or restrain them by threats of the universally feared punishment of death; such sovereign right he will retain only so long as he can maintain his power of enforcing his will; otherwise he will totter on his throne, and no one who is stronger than he will be bound unwillingly to obey him. (16:45) in this manner a society can be formed without any violation of natural right, and the covenant can always be strictly kept that is, if each individual hands over the whole of his power to the body politic, the latter will then possess sovereign natural right over all things; that is, it will have sole and unquestioned dominion, and everyone will be bound to obey, under pain of the severest punishment. (16:46) a body politic of this kind is called a democracy, which may be defined as a society which wields all its power as a whole. (47) the sovereign power is not restrained by any laws, but everyone is bound to obey it in all things; such is the state of things implied when men either tacitly or expressly handed over to it all their power of self-defence, or in other words, all their right. (16:48) for if they had wished to retain any right for themselves, they ought to have taken precautions for its defence and preservation; as they have not done so, and indeed could not have done so without dividing and consequently ruining the state, they placed themselves absolutely at the mercy of the sovereign power; and, therefore, having acted (as we have shown) as reason and necessity demanded, they are obliged to fulfil the commands of the sovereign power, however absurd these may be, else they will be public enemies, and will act against reason, which urges the preservation of the state as a primary duty. (49) for reason bids us choose the least of two evils. (16:50) furthermore, this danger of submitting absolutely to the dominion and will of another, is one which may be incurred with a light heart: for we have shown that sovereigns only possess this right of imposing their will, so long as they have the full power to enforce it: if such power be lost their right to command is lost also, or lapses to those who have assumed it and can keep it. (16:51) thus it is very rare for sovereigns to impose thoroughly irrational commands, for they are bound to consult their own interests, and retain their power by consulting the public good and acting according to the dictates of reason, as seneca says, "violenta imperia nemo continuit diu." (52) no one can long retain a tyrant's sway. (16:53) in a democracy, irrational commands are still less to be feared: for it is almost impossible that the majority of a people, especially if it be a large one, should agree in an irrational design: and, moreover, the basis and aim of a democracy is to avoid the desires as irrational, and to bring men as far as possible under the control of reason, so that they may live in peace and harmony: if this basis be removed the whole fabric falls to ruin. (16:54) such being the ends in view for the sovereign power, the duty of subjects is, as i have said, to obey its commands, and to recognize no right save that which it sanctions. [16:4] (55) it will, perhaps, be thought that we are turning subjects into slaves: for slaves obey commands and free men live as they like; but this idea is based on a misconception, for the true slave is he who is led away by his pleasures and can neither see what is good for him nor act accordingly: he alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason. (16:56) action in obedience to orders does take away freedom in a certain sense, but it does not, therefore, make a man a slave, all depends on the object of the action. (57) if the object of the action be the good of the state, and not the good of the agent, the latter is a slave and does himself no good: but in a state or kingdom where the weal of the whole people, and not that of the ruler, is the supreme law, obedience to the sovereign power does not make a man a slave, of no use to himself, but a subject. (58) therefore, that state is the freest whose laws are founded on sound reason, so that every member of it may, if he will, be free; [endnote 27] that is, live with full consent under the entire guidance of reason. (16:59) children, though they are bound to obey all the commands of their parents, are yet not slaves: for the commands of parents look generally to the children's benefit. (16:60) we must, therefore, acknowledge a great difference between a slave, a son, and a subject; their positions may be thus defined. (61) a slave is one who is bound to obey his master's orders, though they are given solely in the master's interest: a son is one who obeys his father's orders, given in his own interest; a subject obeys the orders of the sovereign power, given for the common interest, wherein he is included. (16:62) i think i have now shown sufficiently clearly the basis of a democracy: i have especially desired to do so, for i believe it to be of all forms of government the most natural, and the most consonant with individual liberty. (63) in it no one transfers his natural right so absolutely that he has no further voice in affairs, he only hands it over to the majority of a society, whereof he is a unit. thus all men remain as they were in the state of nature, equals. (16:64) this is the only form of government which i have treated of at length, for it is the one most akin to my purpose of showing the benefits of freedom in a state. (16:65) i may pass over the fundamental principles of other forms of government, for we may gather from what has been said whence their right arises without going into its origin. (16:66) the possessor of sovereign power, whether he be one, or many, or the whole body politic, has the sovereign right of imposing any commands he pleases: and he who has either voluntarily, or under compulsion, transferred the right to defend him to another, has, in so doing, renounced his natural right and is therefore bound to obey, in all things, the commands of the sovereign power; and will be bound so to do so as the king, or nobles, or the people preserve the sovereign power which formed the basis of the original transfer. (67) i need add no more. [16:5] (68) the bases and rights of dominion being thus displayed, we shall readily be able to define private civil right, wrong, justice, and injustice, with their relations to the state; and also to determine what constitutes an ally, or an enemy, or the crime of treason. (16:69) by private civil right we can only mean the liberty every man possesses to preserve his existence, a liberty limited by the edicts of the sovereign power, and preserved only by its authority: for when a man has transferred to another his right of living as he likes, which was only limited by his power, that is, has transferred his liberty and power of self-defence, he is bound to live as that other dictates, and to trust to him entirely for his defence. (16:70) wrong takes place when a citizen, or subject, is forced by another to undergo some loss or pain in contradiction to the authority of the law, or the edict of the sovereign power. (16:71) wrong is conceivable only in an organized community: nor can it ever accrue to subjects from any act of the sovereign, who has the right to do what he likes. (72) it can only arise, therefore, between private persons, who are bound by law and right not to injure one another. (73) justice consists in the habitual rendering to every man his lawful due: injustice consists in depriving a man, under the pretence of legality, of what the laws, rightly interpreted, would allow him. (74) these last are also called equity and iniquity, because those who administer the laws are bound to show no respect of persons, but to account all men equal, and to defend every man's right equally, neither envying the rich nor despising the poor. [16:6](75) the men of two states become allies, when for the sake of avoiding war, or for some other advantage, they covenant to do each other no hurt, but on the contrary, to assist each other if necessity arises, each retaining his independence. (76) such a covenant is valid so long as its basis of danger or advantage is in force: no one enters into an engagement, or is bound to stand by his compacts unless there be a hope of some accruing good, or the fear of some evil: if this basis be removed the compact thereby becomes void: this has been abundantly shown by experience. (77) for although different states make treaties not to harm one another, they always take every possible precaution against such treaties being broken by the stronger party, and do not rely on the compact, unless there is a sufficiently obvious object and advantage to both parties in observing it. (16:78) otherwise they would fear a breach of faith, nor would there be any wrong done thereby: for who in his proper senses, and aware of the right of the sovereign power, would trust in the promises of one who has the will and the power to do what he likes, and who aims solely at the safety and advantage of his dominion? (79) moreover, if we consult loyalty and religion, we shall see that no one in possession of power ought to abide by his promises to the injury of his dominion; for he cannot keep such promises without breaking the engagement he made with his subjects, by which both he and they are most solemnly bound. (80) an enemy is one who lives apart from the state, and does not recognize its authority either as a subject or as an ally. it is not hatred which makes a man an enemy, but the rights of the state. (16:81) the rights of the state are the same in regard to him who does not recognize by any compact the state authority, as they are against him who has done the state an injury: it has the right to force him as best it can, either to submit, or to contract an alliance. [16:7] (82) lastly, treason can only be committed by subjects, who by compact, either tacit or expressed, have transferred all their rights to the state: a subject is said to have committed this crime when he has attempted, for whatever reason, to seize the sovereign power, or to place it in different hands. (1:83) i say, has attempted, for if punishment were not to overtake him till he had succeeded, it would often come too late, the sovereign rights would have been acquired or transferred already. (16:84) i also say, has attempted, for whatever reason, to seize the sovereign power, and i recognize no difference whether such an attempt should be followed by public loss or public gain. (85) whatever be his reason for acting, the crime is treason, and he is rightly condemned: in war, everyone would admit the justice of his sentence. (86) if a man does not keep to his post, but approaches the enemy without the knowledge of his commander, whatever may be his motive, so long as he acts on his own motion, even if he advances with the design of defeating the enemy, he is rightly put to death, because he has violated his oath, and infringed the rights of his commander. (87) that all citizens are equally bound by these rights in time of peace, is not so generally recognized, but the reasons for obedience are in both cases identical. (16:88) the state must be preserved and directed by the sole authority of the sovereign, and such authority and right have been accorded by universal consent to him alone: if, therefore, anyone else attempts, without his consent, to execute any public enterprise, even though the state might (as we said) reap benefit therefrom, such person has none the less infringed the sovereigns right, and would be rightly punished for treason. (16:89) in order that every scruple may be removed, we may now answer the inquiry, whether our former assertion that everyone who has not the practice of reason, may, in the state of nature, live by sovereign natural right, according to the laws of his desires, is not in direct opposition to the law and right of god as revealed. (90) for as all men absolutely (whether they be less endowed with reason or more) are equally bound by the divine command to love their neighbour as themselves, it may be said that they cannot, without wrong, do injury to anyone, or live according to their desires. (16:91) this objection, so far as the state of nature is concerned, can be easily answered, for the state of nature is, both in nature and in time, prior to religion. (92) no one knows by nature that he owes any obedience to god [endnote 28] nor can he attain thereto by any exercise of his reason, but solely by revelation confirmed by signs. (93) therefore, previous to revelation, no one is bound by a divine law and right of which he is necessarily in ignorance. (16:94) the state of nature must by no means be confounded with a state of religion, but must be conceived as without either religion or law, and consequently without sin or wrong: this is how we have described it, and we are confirmed by the authority of paul. (16:95) it is not only in respect of ignorance that we conceive the state of nature as prior to, and lacking the divine revealed law and right; but in respect of freedom also, wherewith all men are born endowed. (16:96) if men were naturally bound by the divine law and right, or if the divine law and right were a natural necessity, there would have been no need for god to make a covenant with mankind, and to bind them thereto with an oath and agreement. (16:97) we must, then, fully grant that the divine law and right originated at the time when men by express covenant agreed to obey god in all things, and ceded, as it were, their natural freedom, transferring their rights to god in the manner described in speaking of the formation of a state. (98) however, i will treat of these matters more at length presently. [16:8] (99) it may be insisted that sovereigns are as much bound by the divine law as subjects: whereas we have asserted that they retain their natural rights, and may do whatever they like. (16:100) in order to clear up the whole difficulty, which arises rather concerning the natural right than the natural state, i maintain that everyone is bound, in the state of nature, to live according to divine law, in the same way as he is bound to live according to the dictates of sound reason; namely, inasmuch as it is to his advantage, and necessary for his salvation; but, if he will not so live, he may do otherwise at his own risk. (101) he is thus bound to live according to his own laws, not according to anyone else's, and to recognize no man as a judge, or as a superior in religion. (16:102) such, in my opinion, is the position of a sovereign, for he may take advice from his fellow-men, but he is not bound to recognize any as a judge, nor anyone besides himself as an arbitrator on any question of right, unless it be a prophet sent expressly by god and attesting his mission by indisputable signs. (103) even then he does not recognize a man, but god himself as his judge. [16:9] (104) if a sovereign refuses to obey god as revealed in his law, he does so at his own risk and loss, but without violating any civil or natural right. (105) for the civil right is dependent on his own decree; and natural right is dependent on the laws of nature, which latter are not adapted to religion, whose sole aim is the good of humanity, but to the order of nature that is, to god's eternal decree unknown to us. (16:106) this truth seems to be adumbrated in a somewhat obscurer form by those who maintain that men can sin against god's revelation, but not against the eternal decree by which he has ordained all things. (16:107) we may be asked, what should we do if the sovereign commands anything contrary to religion, and the obedience which we have expressly vowed to god? should we obey the divine law or the human law? (108) i shall treat of this question at length hereafter, and will therefore merely say now, that god should be obeyed before all else, when we have a certain and indisputable revelation of his will: but men are very prone to error on religious subjects, and, according to the diversity of their dispositions, are wont with considerable stir to put forward their own inventions, as experience more than sufficiently attests, so that if no one were bound to obey the state in matters which, in his own opinion concern religion, the rights of the state would be dependent on every man's judgment and passions. (16:109) no one would consider himself bound to obey laws framed against his faith or superstition; and on this pretext he might assume unbounded license. (110) in this way, the rights of the civil authorities would be utterly set at nought, so that we must conclude that the sovereign power, which alone is bound both by divine and natural right to preserve and guard the laws of the state, should have supreme authority for making any laws about religion which it thinks fit; all are bound to obey its behests on the subject in accordance with their promise which god bids them to keep. (16:111) however, if the sovereign power be heathen, we should either enter into no engagements therewith, and yield up our lives sooner than transfer to it any of our rights; or, if the engagement be made, and our rights transferred, we should (inasmuch as we should have ourselves transferred the right of defending ourselves and our religion) be bound to obey them, and to keep our word: we might even rightly be bound so to do, except in those cases where god, by indisputable revelation, has promised his special aid against tyranny, or given us special exemption from obedience. (112) thus we see that, of all the jews in babylon, there were only three youths who were certain of the help of god, and, therefore, refused to obey nebuchadnezzar. (113) all the rest, with the sole exception of daniel, who was beloved by the king, were doubtless compelled by right to obey, perhaps thinking that they had been delivered up by god into the hands of the king, and that the king had obtained and preserved his dominion by god's design. (16:114) on the other hand, eleazar, before his country had utterly fallen, wished to give a proof of his constancy to his compatriots, in order that they might follow in his footsteps, and go to any lengths, rather than allow their right and power to be transferred to the greeks, or brave any torture rather than swear allegiance to the heathen. (115) instances are occurring every day in confirmation of what i here advance. (116) the rulers of christian kingdoms do not hesitate, with a view to strengthening their dominion, to make treaties with turks and heathen, and to give orders to their subjects who settle among such peoples not to assume more freedom, either in things secular or religious, than is set down in the treaty, or allowed by the foreign government. (16:117) we may see this exemplified in the dutch treaty with the japanese, which i have already mentioned. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[17:0] chapter xvii it is shown that no one can, or need, transfer all his rights to the sovereign power. of the hebrew republic, as it was during the lifetime of moses, and after his death, till the foundation of the monarchy; and of its excellence. lastly, of the causes why the theocratic republic fell, and why it could hardly have continued without dissension. [17:1] (1) the theory put forward in the last chapter, of the universal rights of the sovereign power, and of the natural rights of the individual transferred thereto, though it corresponds in many respects with actual practice, and though practice may be so arranged as to conform to it more and more, must nevertheless always remain in many respects purely ideal. (2) no one can ever so utterly transfer to another his power and, consequently, his rights, as to cease to be a man; nor can there ever be a power so sovereign that it can carry out every possible wish. (3) it will always be vain to order a subject to hate what he believes brings him advantage, or to love what brings him loss, or not to be offended at insults, or not to wish to be free from fear, or a hundred other things of the sort, which necessarily follow from the laws of human nature. (17:4) so much, i think, is abundantly shown by experience: for men have never so far ceded their power as to cease to be an object of fear to the rulers who received such power and right; and dominions have always been in as much danger from their own subjects as from external enemies. (5) if it were really the case, that men could be deprived of their natural rights so utterly as never to have any further influence on affairs [endnote 29] except with the permission of the holders of sovereign right, it would then be possible to maintain with impunity the most violent tyranny, which, i suppose, no one would for an instant admit. (17:6) we must, therefore, grant that every man retains some part of his right, in dependence on his own decision, and no one else's. (17:7) however, in order correctly to understand the extent of the sovereign's right and power, we must take notice that it does not cover only those actions to which it can compel men by fear, but absolutely every action which it can induce men to perform: for it is the fact of obedience, not the motive for obedience, which makes a man a subject. (17:8) whatever be the cause which leads a man to obey the commands of the sovereign, whether it be fear or hope, or love of his country, or any other emotion the fact remains that the man takes counsel with himself, and nevertheless acts as his sovereign orders. (9) we must not, therefore, assert that all actions resulting from a man's deliberation with himself are done in obedience to the rights of the individual rather than the sovereign: as a matter of fact, all actions spring from a man's deliberation with himself, whether the determining motive be love or fear of punishment; therefore, either dominion does not exist, and has no rights over its subjects, or else it extends over every instance in which it can prevail on men to decide to obey it. (17:10) consequently, every action which a subject performs in accordance with the commands of the sovereign, whether such action springs from love, or fear, or (as is more frequently the case) from hope and fear together, or from reverence. compounded of fear and admiration, or, indeed, any motive whatever, is performed in virtue of his submission to the sovereign, and not in virtue of his own authority. (17:11) this point is made still more clear by the fact that obedience does not consist so much in the outward act as in the mental state of the person obeying; so that he is most under the dominion of another who with his whole heart determines to obey another's commands; and consequently the firmest dominion belongs to the sovereign who has most influence over the minds of his subjects; if those who are most feared possessed the firmest dominion, the firmest dominion would belong to the subjects of a tyrant, for they are always greatly feared by their ruler. (17:12) furthermore, though it is impossible to govern the mind as completely as the tongue, nevertheless minds are, to a certain extent, under the control of the sovereign, for he can in many ways bring about that the greatest part of his subjects should follow his wishes in their beliefs, their loves, and their hates. (13) though such emotions do not arise at the express command of the sovereign they often result (as experience shows) from the authority of his power, and from his direction; in other words, in virtue of his right; we may, therefore, without doing violence to our understanding, conceive men who follow the instigation of their sovereign in their beliefs, their loves, their hates, their contempt, and all other emotions whatsoever. (17:14) though the powers of government, as thus conceived, are sufficiently ample, they can never become large enough to execute every possible wish of their possessors. (15) this, i think, i have already shown clearly enough. (16) the method of forming a dominion which should prove lasting i do not, as i have said, intend to discuss, but in order to arrive at the object i have in view, i will touch on the teaching of divine revelation to moses in this respect, and we will consider the history and the success of the jews, gathering therefrom what should be the chief concessions made by sovereigns to their subjects with a view to the security and increase of their dominion. [17:2] (17) that the preservation of a state chiefly depends on the subjects' fidelity and constancy in carrying out the orders they receive, is most clearly taught both by reason and experience; how subjects ought to be guided so as best to preserve their fidelity and virtue is not so obvious. (18) all, both rulers and ruled, are men, and prone to follow after their lusts. (17:19) the fickle disposition of the multitude almost reduces those who have experience of it to despair, for it is governed solely by emotions, not by reason: it rushes headlong into every enterprise, and is easily corrupted either by avarice or luxury: everyone thinks himself omniscient and wishes to fashion all things to his liking, judging a thing to be just or unjust, lawful or unlawful, according as he thinks it will bring him profit or loss: vanity leads him to despise his equals, and refuse their guidance: envy of superior fame or fortune (for such gifts are never equally distributed) leads him to desire and rejoice in his neighbour's downfall. (17:20) i need not go through the whole list, everyone knows already how much crime results from disgust at the present desire for change, headlong anger, and contempt for poverty and how men's minds are engrossed and kept in turmoil thereby. (17:21) to guard against all these evils, and form a dominion where no room is left for deceit; to frame our institutions so that every man, whatever his disposition, may prefer public right to private advantage, this is the task and this the toil. (22) necessity is often the mother of invention, but she has never yet succeeded in framing a dominion that was in less danger from its own citizens than from open enemies, or whose rulers did not fear the latter less than the former. (17:23) witness the state of rome, invincible by her enemies, but many times conquered and sorely oppressed by her own citizens, especially in the war between vespasian and vitellius. (24) (see tacitus, hist. bk. iv. for a description of the pitiable state of the city.) (17:25) alexander thought prestige abroad more easy to acquire than prestige at home, and believed that his greatness could be destroyed by his own followers. (26) fearing such a disaster, he thus addressed his friends: "keep me safe from internal treachery and domestic plots, and i will front without fear the dangers of battle and of war. (27) philip was more secure in the battle array than in the theatre: he often escaped from the hands of the enemy, he could not escape from his own subjects. (17:28) if you think over the deaths of kings, you will count up more who have died by the assassin than by the open foe." (q. curtius, chap. vi.) (17:29) for the sake of making themselves secure, kings who seized the throne in ancient times used to try to spread the idea that they were descended from the immortal gods, thinking that if their subjects and the rest of mankind did not look on them as equals, but believed them to be gods, they would willingly submit to their rule, and obey their commands. (17:30) thus augustus persuaded the romans that he was descended from aeneas, who was the son of venus, and numbered among the gods. (31) "he wished himself to be worshipped in temples, like the gods, with flamens and priests." (tacitus, ann. i. 10.) (17:32) alexander wished to be saluted as the son of jupiter, not from motives of pride but of policy, as he showed by his answer to the invective of hermolaus: "it is almost laughable," said he, that hermolaus asked me to contradict jupiter, by whose oracle i am recognized. (33) am i responsible for the answers of the gods? (34) it offered me the name of son; acquiescence was by no means foreign to my present designs. (17:35) would that the indians also would believe me to be a god! (36) wars are carried through by prestige, falsehoods that are believed often gain the force of truth." (curtius, viii,. para, 8.) (37) in these few words he cleverly contrives to palm off a fiction on the ignorant, and at the same time hints at the motive for the deception. (17:38) cleon, in his speech persuading the macedonians to obey their king, adopted a similar device: for after going through the praises of alexander with admiration, and recalling his merits, he proceeds, "the persians are not only pious, but prudent in worshipping their kings as gods: for kingship is the shield of public safety," and he ends thus, "i, myself, when the king enters a banquet hall, should prostrate my body on the ground; other men should do the like, especially those who are wise " (curtius, viii. para. 66). (39) however, the macedonians were more prudent indeed, it is only complete barbarians who can be so openly cajoled, and can suffer themselves to be turned from subjects into slaves without interests of their own. (17:40) others, notwithstanding, have been able more easily to spread the belief that kingship is sacred, and plays the part of god on the earth, that it has been instituted by god, not by the suffrage and consent of men; and that it is preserved and guarded by divine special providence and aid. (41) similar fictions have been promulgated by monarchs, with the object of strengthening their dominion, but these i will pass over, and in order to arrive at my main purpose, will merely recall and discuss the teaching on the subject of divine revelation to moses in ancient times. [17:3] (42) we have said in chap. v. that after the hebrews came up out of egypt they were not bound by the law and right of any other nation, but were at liberty to institute any new rites at their pleasure, and to occupy whatever territory they chose. (43) after their liberation from the intolerable bondage of the egyptians, they were bound by no covenant to any man; and, therefore, every man entered into his natural right, and was free to retain it or to give it up, and transfer it to another. (44) being, then, in the state of nature, they followed the advice of moses, in whom they chiefly trusted, and decided to transfer their right to no human being, but only to god; without further delay they all, with one voice, promised to obey all the commands of the deity, and to acknowledge no right that he did not proclaim as such by prophetic revelation. (17:45) this promise, or transference of right to god, was effected in the same manner as we have conceived it to have been in ordinary societies, when men agree to divest themselves of their natural rights. (46) it is, in fact, in virtue of a set covenant, and an oath (see exod. xxxiv:10), that the jews freely, and not under compulsion or threats, surrendered their rights and transferred them to god. (47) moreover, in order that this covenant might be ratified and settled, and might be free from all suspicion of deceit, god did not enter into it till the jews had had experience of his wonderful power by which alone they had been, or could be, preserved in a state of prosperity (exod. xix:4, 5). (17:48) it is because they believed that nothing but god's power could preserve them that they surrendered to god the natural power of self-preservation, which they formerly, perhaps, thought they possessed, and consequently they surrendered at the same time all their natural right. [17:4] (49) god alone, therefore, held dominion over the hebrews, whose state was in virtue of the covenant called god's kingdom, and god was said to be their king; consequently the enemies of the jews were said to be the enemies of god, and the citizens who tried to seize the dominion were guilty of treason against god; and, lastly, the laws of the state were called the laws and commandments of god. (50) thus in the hebrew state the civil and religious authority, each consisting solely of obedience to god, were one and the same. (51) the dogmas of religion were not precepts, but laws and ordinances; piety was regarded as the same as loyalty, impiety as the same as disaffection. (17:52) everyone who fell away from religion ceased to be a citizen, and was, on that ground alone, accounted an enemy: those who died for the sake of religion, were held to have died for their country; in fact, between civil and religious law and right there was no distinction whatever. (53) for this reason the government could be called a theocracy, inasmuch as the citizens were not bound by anything save the revelations of god. (17:54) however, this state of things existed rather in theory than in practice, for it will appear from what we are about to say, that the hebrews, as a matter of fact, retained absolutely in their own hands the right of sovereignty: this is shown by the method and plan by which the government was carried on, as i will now explain. (17:55) inasmuch as the hebrews did not transfer their rights to any other person but, as in a democracy, all surrendered their rights equally, and cried out with one voice, "whatsoever god hall speak (no mediator or mouthpiece being named) that will we do," it follows that all were equally bound by the covenant, and that all had an equal right to consult the deity, to accept and to interpret his laws, so that all had an exactly equal share in the government. [17:5] (56) thus at first they all approached god together, so that they might learn his commands, but in this first salutation, they were so thoroughly terrified and so astounded to hear god speaking, that they thought their last hour was at hand: full of fear, therefore, they went afresh to moses, and said, "lo, we have heard god speaking in the fire, and there is no cause why we should wish to die: surely this great fire will consume us: if we hear again the voice of god, we shall surely die. (57) thou, therefore, go near, and hear all the words of our god, and thou (not god) shalt speak with us: all that god shall tell us, that will we hearken to and perform." (17:58) they thus clearly abrogated their former covenant, and absolutely transferred to moses their right to consult god and interpret his commands: for they do not here promise obedience to all that god shall tell them, but to all that god shall tell moses (see deut. v:20 after the decalogue, and chap. xviii:15, 16). (17:59) moses, therefore, remained the sole promulgator and interpreter of the divine laws, and consequently also the sovereign judge, who could not be arraigned himself, and who acted among the hebrews the part, of god; in other words, held the sovereign kingship: he alone had the right to consult god, to give the divine answers to the people, and to see that they were carried out. (17:60) i say he alone, for if anyone during the life of moses was desirous of preaching anything in the name of the lord, he was, even if a true prophet, considered guilty and a usurper of the sovereign right (numb. xi:28) [endnote 30]. (61) we may here notice, that though the people had elected moses, they could not rightfully elect moses's successor; for having transferred to moses their right of consulting god, and absolutely promised to regard him as a divine oracle, they had plainly forfeited the whole of their right, and were bound to accept as chosen by god anyone proclaimed by moses as his successor. (17:62) if moses had so chosen his successor, who like him should wield the sole right of government, possessing the sole right of consulting god, and consequently of making and abrogating laws, of deciding on peace or war, of sending ambassadors, appointing judges in fact, discharging all the functions of a sovereign, the state would have become simply a monarchy, only differing from other monarchies in the fact, that the latter are, or should be, carried on in accordance with god's decree, unknown even to the monarch, whereas the hebrew monarch would have been the only person to whom the decree was revealed. (17:63) a difference which increases, rather than diminishes the monarch's authority. (64) as far as the people in both cases are concerned, each would be equally subject, and equally ignorant of the divine decree, for each would be dependent on the monarch's words, and would learn from him alone, what was lawful or unlawful: nor would the fact that the people believed that the monarch was only issuing commands in accordance with god's decree revealed to him, make it less in subjection, but rather more. [17:6] (65) however, moses elected no such successor, but left the dominion to those who came after him in a condition which could not be called a popular government, nor an aristocracy, nor a monarchy, but a theocracy. (66) for the right of interpreting laws was vested in one man, while the right and power of administering the state according to the laws thus interpreted, was vested in another man (see numb. xxvii:21). [endnote 31] (17:67) in order that the question may be thoroughly understood, i will duly set forth the administration of the whole state. (17:68) first, the people were commanded to build a tabernacle, which should be, as it were, the dwelling of god that is, of the sovereign authority of the state. (69) this tabernacle was to be erected at the cost of the whole people, not of one man, in order that the place where god was consulted might be public property. (70) the levites were chosen as courtiers and administrators of this royal abode; while aaron, the brother of moses, was chosen to be their chief and second, as it were, to god their king, being succeeded in the office by his legitimate sons. (17:71) he, as the nearest to god, was the sovereign interpreter of the divine laws; he communicated the answers of the divine oracle to the people, and entreated god's favour for them. (72) if, in addition to these privileges, he had possessed the right of ruling, he would have been neither more nor less than an absolute monarch; but, in respect to government, he was only a private citizen: the whole tribe of levi was so completely divested of governing rights that it did not even take its share with the others in the partition of territory. (73) moses provided for its support by inspiring the common people with great reverence for it, as the only tribe dedicated to god. (17:74) further, the army, formed from the remaining twelve tribes, was commanded to invade the land of canaan, to divide it into twelve portions, and to distribute it among the tribes by lot. (75) for this task twelve captains were chosen, one from every tribe, and were, together with joshua and eleazar, the high priest, empowered to divide the land into twelve equal parts, and distribute it by lot. (76) joshua was chosen for the chief command of the army, inasmuch as none but he had the right to consult god in emergencies, not like moses, alone in his tent, or in the tabernacle, but through the high priest, to whom only the answers of god were revealed. (17:77) furthermore, he was empowered to execute, and cause the people to obey god's commands, transmitted through the high priests; to find, and to make use of, means for carrying them out; to choose as many army captains as he liked; to make whatever choice he thought best; to send ambassadors in his own name; and, in short, to have the entire control of the war. (17:78) to his office there was no rightful successor indeed, the post was only filled by the direct order of the deity, on occasions of public emergency. (79) in ordinary times, all the management of peace and war was vested in the captains of the tribes, as i will shortly point out. (80) lastly, all men between the ages of twenty and sixty were ordered to bear arms, and form a citizen army, owing allegiance, not to its general-in-chief, nor to the high priest, but to religion and to god. (17:81) the army, or the hosts, were called the army of god, or the hosts of god. (82) for this reason god was called by the hebrews the god of armies; and the ark of the covenant was borne in the midst of the army in important battles, when the safety or destruction of the whole people hung upon the issue, so that the people might, as it were, see their king among them, and put forth all their strength. (17:83) from these directions, left by moses to his successors, we plainly see that he chose administrators, rather than despots, to come after him; for he invested no one with the power of consulting god, where he liked and alone, consequently, no one had the power possessed by himself of ordaining and abrogating laws, of deciding on war or peace, of choosing men to fill offices both religious and secular: all these are the prerogatives of a sovereign. (84) the high priest, indeed, had the right of interpreting laws, and communicating the answers of god, but he could not do so when he liked, as moses could, but only when he was asked by the general-in-chief of the army, the council, or some similar authority. (17:85) the general-in-chief and the council could consult god when they liked, but could only receive his answers through the high priest; so that the utterances of god, as reported by the high priest, were not decrees, as they were when reported by moses, but only answers; they were accepted by joshua and the council, and only then had the force of commands and decrees. (17:86) the high priest, both in the case of aaron and of his son eleazar, was chosen by moses; nor had anyone, after moses' death, a right to elect to the office, which became hereditary. (87) the general-in-chief of the army was also chosen by moses, and assumed his functions in virtue of the commands, not of the high priest, but of moses: indeed, after the death of joshua, the high priest did not appoint anyone in his place, and the captains did not consult god afresh about a general-in-chief, but each retained joshua's power in respect to the contingent of his own tribe, and all retained it collectively, in respect to the whole army. (17:88) there seems to have been no need of a general-in-chief, except when they were obliged to unite their forces against a common enemy. (89) this occurred most frequently during the time of joshua, when they had no fixed dwelling. place, and possessed all things in common. [17:7] (90) after all the tribes had gained their territories by right of conquest, and had divided their allotted gains, they became separated, having no longer their possessions in common, so that the need for a single commander ceased, for the different tribes should be considered rather in the light of confederated states than of bodies of fellow-citizens. (17:91) in respect to their god and their religion, they were fellow-citizens; but, in respect to the rights which one possessed with regard to another, they were only confederated: they were, in fact, in much the same position (if one excepts the temple common to all) as the united states of the netherlands. (17:92) the division of property, held in common is only another phrase for the possession of his share by each of the owners singly, and the surrender by the others of their rights over such share. (93) this is why moses elected captains of the tribes namely, that when the dominion was divided, each might take care of his own part; consulting god through the high priest on the affairs of his tribe, ruling over his army, building and fortifying cities, appointing judges, attacking the enemies of his own dominion, and having complete control over all civil and military affairs. (17:94) he was not bound to acknowledge any superior judge save god [endnote 32] or a prophet whom god should expressly send. (95) if he departed from the worship of god, the rest of the tribes did not arraign him as a subject, but attacked him as an enemy. (95a) of this we have examples in scripture. (17:96) when joshua was dead, the children of israel (not a fresh general-in-chief) consulted god; it being decided that the tribe of judah should be the first to attack its enemies, the tribe in question contracted a single alliance with the tribe of simeon, for uniting their forces, and attacking their common enemy, the rest of the tribes not being included in the alliance (judges i:1, 2, 3). (97) each tribe separately made war against its own enemies, and, according to its pleasure, received them as subjects or allies, though it had been commanded not to spare them on any conditions, but to destroy them utterly. (98) such disobedience met with reproof from the rest of the tribes, but did not cause the offending tribe to be arraigned: it was not considered a sufficient reason for proclaiming a civil war, or interfering in one another's affairs. (17:99) but when the tribe of benjamin offended against the others, and so loosened the bonds of peace that none of the confederated tribes could find refuge within its borders, they attacked it as an enemy, and gaining the victory over it after three battles, put to death both guilty and innocent, according to the laws of war: an act which they subsequently bewailed with tardy repentance. (17:100) these examples plainly confirm what we have said concerning the rights of each tribe. (101) perhaps we shall be asked who elected the successors to the captains of each tribe; on this point i can gather no positive information in scripture, but i conjecture that as the tribes were divided into families, each headed by its senior member, the senior of all these heads of families succeeded by right to the office of captain, for moses chose from among these seniors his seventy coadjutors, who formed with himself the supreme council. (17:102) those who administered the government after the death of joshua were called elders, and elder is a very common hebrew expression in the sense of judge, as i suppose everyone knows; however, it is not very important for us to make up our minds on this point. (103) it is enough to have shown that after the death of moses no one man wielded all the power of a sovereign; as affairs were not all managed by one man, nor by a single council, nor by the popular vote, but partly by one tribe, partly by the rest in equal shares, it is most evident that the government, after the death of moses, was neither monarchic, nor aristocratic, nor popular, but, as we have said, theocratic. (104) the reasons for applying this name are: i. (17:105) because the royal seat of government was the temple, and in respect to it alone, as we have shown, all the tribes were fellow-citizens, ii. (17:106) because all the people owed allegiance to god, their supreme judge, to whom only they had promised implicit obedience in all things. iii. (17:107) because the general-in-chief or dictator, when there was need of such, was elected by none save god alone. (108) this was expressly commanded by moses in the name of god (deut. xix:15), and witnessed by the actual choice of gideon, of samson, and of samuel; wherefrom we may conclude that the other faithful leaders were chosen in the same manner, though it is not expressly told us. (17:109) these preliminaries being stated, it is now time to inquire the effects of forming a dominion on this plan, and to see whether it so effectually kept within bounds both rulers and ruled, that the former were never tyrannical and the latter never rebellious. (17:110) those who administer or possess governing power, always try to surround their high-handed actions with a cloak of legality, and to persuade the people that they act from good motives; this they are easily able to effect when they are the sole interpreters of the law; for it is evident that they are thus able to assume a far greater freedom to carry out their wishes and desires than if the interpretation if the law is vested in someone else, or if the laws were so self-evident that no one could be in doubt as to their meaning. [17:8] (111) we thus see that the power of evil-doing was greatly curtailed for the hebrew captains by the fact that the whole interpretation of the law was vested in the levites (deut. xxi:5), who, on their part, had no share in the government, and depended for all their support and consideration on a correct interpretation of the laws entrusted to them. (17:112) moreover, the whole people was commanded to come together at a certain place every seven years and be instructed in the law by the high-priest; further, each individual was bidden to read the book of the law through and through continually with scrupulous care. (deut. xxxi:9, 10, and vi:7.) (113) the captains were thus for their own sakes bound to take great care to administer everything according to the laws laid down, and well known to all, if they wished to be held in high honour by the people, who would regard them as the administrators of god's dominion, and as god's vicegerents; otherwise they could not have escaped all the virulence of theological hatred. (114) there was another very important check on the unbridled license of the captains, in the fact, that the army was formed from the whole body of the citizens, between the ages of twenty and sixty, without exception, and that the captains were not able to hire any foreign soldiery. (17:115) this i say was very important, for it is well known that princes can oppress their peoples with the single aid of the soldiery in their pay; while there is nothing more formidable to them than the freedom of citizen soldiers, who have established the freedom and glory of their country by their valour, their toil, and their blood. (116) thus alexander, when he was about to make war on darius, a second time, after hearing the advice of parmenio, did not chide him who gave the advice, but polysperchon, who was standing by. (17:117) for, as curtius says (iv. para. 13), he did not venture to reproach parmenio again after having shortly before reproved him too sharply. (118) this freedom of the macedonians, which he so dreaded, he was not able to subdue till after the number of captives enlisted in the army surpassed that of his own people: then, but not till then, he gave rein to his anger so long checked by the independence of his chief fellow-countrymen. (17:119) if this independence of citizen soldiers can restrain the princes of ordinary states who are wont to usurp the whole glory of victories, it must have been still more effectual against the hebrew captains, whose soldiers were fighting, not for the glory of a prince, but for the glory of god, and who did not go forth to battle till the divine assent had been given. (17:120) we must also remember that the hebrew captains were associated only by the bonds of religion: therefore, if any one of them had transgressed, and begun to violate the divine right, he might have been treated by the rest as an enemy and lawfully subdued. (17:121) an additional check may be found in the fear of a new prophet arising, for if a man of unblemished life could show by certain signs that he was really a prophet, he ipso facto obtained the sovereign right to rule, which was given to him, as to moses formerly, in the name of god, as revealed to himself alone; not merely through the high priest, as in the case of the captains. (17:122) there is no doubt that such an one would easily be able to enlist an oppressed people in his cause, and by trifling signs persuade them of anything he wished: on the other hand, if affairs were well ordered, the captain would be able to make provision in time; that the prophet should be submitted to his approval, and be examined whether he were really of unblemished life, and possessed indisputable signs of his mission: also, whether the teaching he proposed to set forth in the name of the lord agreed with received doctrines, and the general laws of the country; if his credentials were insufficient, or his doctrines new, he could lawfully be put to death, or else received on the captain's sole responsibility and authority. (17:123) again, the captains were not superior to the others in nobility or birth, but only administered the government in virtue of their age and personal qualities. (124) lastly, neither captains nor army had any reason for preferring war to peace. (125) the army, as we have stated, consisted entirely of citizens, so that affairs were managed by the same persons both in peace and war. (126) the man who was a soldier in the camp was a citizen in the market-place, he who was a leader in the camp was a judge in the law courts, he who was a general in the camp was a ruler in the state. (127) thus no one could desire war for its own sake, but only for the sake of preserving peace and liberty; possibly the captains avoided change as far as possible, so as not to be obliged to consult the high priest and submit to the indignity of standing in his presence. (17:128) so much for the precautions for keeping the captains within bounds. [17:9] (129) we must now look for the restraints upon the people: these, however, are very clearly indicated in the very groundwork of the social fabric. (17:130) anyone who gives the subject the slightest attention, will see that the state was so ordered as to inspire the most ardent patriotism in the hearts of the citizens, so that the latter would be very hard to persuade to betray their country, and be ready to endure anything rather than submit to a foreign yoke. (17:131) after they had transferred their right to god, they thought that their kingdom belonged to god, and that they themselves were god's children. (132) other nations they looked upon as god's enemies, and regarded with intense hatred (which they took to be piety, see psalm cxxxix:21, 22): nothing would have been more abhorrent to them than swearing allegiance to a foreigner, and promising him obedience: nor could they conceive any greater or more execrable crime than the betrayal of their country, the kingdom of the god whom they adored. (17:133) it was considered wicked for anyone to settle outside of the country, inasmuch as the worship of god by which they were bound could not be carried on elsewhere: their own land alone was considered holy, the rest of the earth unclean and profane. (17:134) david, who was forced to live in exile, complained before saul as follows: "but if they be the children of men who have stirred thee up against me, cursed be they before the lord; for they have driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the lord, saying, go, serve other gods." (i sam. xxvi:19.) (17:135) for the same reason no citizen, as we should especially remark, was ever sent into exile: he who sinned was liable to punishment, but not to disgrace. (17:136) thus the love of the hebrews for their country was not only patriotism, but also piety, and was cherished and nurtured by daily rites till, like their hatred of other nations, it must have passed into their nature. (17:137) their daily worship was not only different from that of other nations (as it might well be, considering that they were a peculiar people and entirely apart from the rest), it was absolutely contrary. (138) such daily reprobation naturally gave rise to a lasting hatred, deeply implanted in the heart: for of all hatreds none is more deep and tenacious than that which springs from extreme devoutness or piety, and is itself cherished as pious. (139) nor was a general cause lacking for inflaming such hatred more and more, inasmuch as it was reciprocated; the surrounding nations regarding the jews with a hatred just as intense. (17:140) how great was the effect of all these causes, namely, freedom from man's dominion; devotion to their country; rights over all other men; a hatred not only permitted but pious; a contempt for their fellow-men; the singularity of their customs and religious rites; the effect, i repeat, of all these causes in strengthening the hearts of the jews to bear all things for their country, with extraordinary constancy and valour, will at once be discerned by reason and attested by experience. (17:141) never, so long as the city was standing, could they endure to remain under foreign dominion; and therefore they called jerusalem "a rebellious city" (ezra iv:12). (17:142) their state after its reestablishment (which was a mere shadow of the first, for the high priests had usurped the rights of the tribal captains) was, with great difficulty, destroyed by the romans, as bears witness (hist. ii:4):"vespasian had closed the war against the jews, abandoning the siege of jerusalem as an enterprise difficult and arduous rather from the character of the people and the obstinacy of their superstition, than from the strength left to the besieged for meeting their necessities." (17:143) but besides these characteristics, which are merely ascribed by an individual opinion, there was one feature peculiar to this state and of great importance in retaining the affections of the citizens, and checking all thoughts of desertion, or abandonment of the country: namely, self-interest, the strength and life of all human action. (17:144) this was peculiarly engaged in the hebrew state, for nowhere else did citizens possess their goods so securely as did the subjects of this community, for the latter possessed as large a share in the land and the fields as did their chiefs, and were owners of their plots of ground in perpetuity; for if any man was compelled by poverty to sell his farm or his pasture, he received it back again intact at the year of jubilee: there were other similar enactments against the possibility of alienating real property. (17:145) again, poverty was nowhere more endurable than in a country where duty towards one's neighbour, that is, one's fellow-citizen, was practised with the utmost piety, as a means of gaining the favour of god the king. (146) thus the hebrew citizens would nowhere be so well off as in their own country; outside its limits they met with nothing but loss and disgrace. (17:147) the following considerations were of weight, not only in keeping them at home, but also in preventing civil war and removing causes of strife; no one was bound to serve his equal, but only to serve god, while charity and love towards fellow-citizens was accounted the highest piety; this last feeling was not a little fostered by the general hatred with which they regarded foreign nations and were regarded by them. (17:148) furthermore, the strict discipline of obedience in which they were brought up, was a very important factor; for they were bound to carry on all their actions according to the set rules of the law: a man might not plough when he liked, but only at certain times, in certain years, and with one sort of beast at a time; so too, he might only sow and reap in a certain method and season in fact, his whole life was one long school of obedience (see chap. v. on the use of ceremonies); such a habit was thus engendered, that conformity seemed freedom instead of servitude, and men desired what was commanded rather than what was forbidden. (17:149) this result was not a little aided by the fact that the people were bound, at certain seasons of the year, to give themselves up to rest and rejoicing, not for their own pleasure, but in order that they might worship god cheerfully. (17:150) three times in the year they feasted before the lord; on the seventh day of every week they were bidden to abstain from all work and to rest; besides these, there were other occasions when innocent rejoicing and feasting were not only allowed but enjoined. (151) i do not think any better means of influencing men's minds could be devised; for there is no more powerful attraction than joy springing from devotion, a mixture of admiration and love. (17:152) it was not easy to be wearied by constant repetition, for the rites on the various festivals were varied and recurred seldom. (153) we may add the deep reverence for the temple which all most religiously fostered, on account of the peculiar rites and duties that they were obliged to perform before approaching thither. (17:154) even now, jews cannot read without horror of the crime of manasseh, who dared to place an idol in the temple. (17:155) the laws, scrupulously preserved in the inmost sanctuary, were objects of equal reverence to the people. (17:156) popular reports and misconceptions were, therefore, very little to be feared in this quarter, for no one dared decide on sacred matters, but all felt bound to obey, without consulting their reason, all the commands given by the answers of god received in the temple, and all the laws which god had ordained. (17:157) i think i have now explained clearly, though briefly, the main features of the hebrew commonwealth. (158) i must now inquire into the causes which led the people so often to fall away from the law, which brought about their frequent subjection, and, finally, the complete destruction of their dominion. (17:159) perhaps i shall be told that it sprang from their hardness of heart; but this is childish, for why should this people be more hard of heart than others; was it by nature? [17:a] (160) but nature forms individuals, not peoples; the latter are only distinguishable by the difference of their language, their customs, and their laws; while from the two last i.e., customs and laws, it may arise that they have a peculiar disposition, a peculiar manner of life, and peculiar prejudices. (161) if, then, the hebrews were harder of heart than other nations, the fault lay with their laws or customs. (17:162) this is certainly true, in the sense that, if god had wished their dominion to be more lasting, he would have given them other rites and laws, and would have instituted a different form of government. (163) we can, therefore, only say that their god was angry with them, not only, as jeremiah says, from the building of the city, but even from the founding of their laws. (17:164) this is borne witness to by ezekiel xx:25: "wherefore i gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live; and i polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb; that i might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that i am the lord." (17:165) in order that we may understand these words, and the destruction of the hebrew commonwealth, we must bear in mind that it had at first been intended to entrust the whole duties of the priesthood to the firstborn, and not to the levites (see numb. viii:17). (166) it was only when all the tribes, except the levites, worshipped the golden calf, that the firstborn were rejected and defiled, and the levites chosen in their stead (deut. x:8). (17:167) when i reflect on this change, i feel disposed to break forth with the words of tacitus. (17:168) god's object at that time was not the safety of the jews, but vengeance. (169) i am greatly astonished that the celestial mind was so inflamed with anger that it ordained laws, which always are supposed to promote the honour, well-being, and security of a people, with the purpose of vengeance, for the sake of punishment; so that the laws do not seem so much laws that is, the safeguard of the people as pains and penalties. (17:170) the gifts which the people were obliged to bestow on the levites and priests the redemption of the firstborn, the poll-tax due to the levites, the privilege possessed by the latter of the sole performance of sacred rites all these, i say, were a continual reproach to the people, a continual reminder of their defilement and rejection. (17:171) moreover, we may be sure that the levites were for ever heaping reproaches upon them: for among so many thousands there must have been many importunate dabblers in theology. (172) hence the people got into the way of watching the acts of the levites, who were but human; of accusing the whole body of the faults of one member, and continually murmuring. (17:173) besides this, there was the obligation to keep in idleness men hateful to them, and connected by no ties of blood. (174) especially would this seem grievous when provisions were dear. (174a) what wonder, then, if in times of peace, when striking miracles had ceased, and no men of paramount authority were forthcoming, the irritable and greedy temper of the people began to wax cold, and at length to fall away from a worship, which, though divine, was also humiliating, and even hostile, and to seek after something fresh; or can we be surprised that the captains, who always adopt the popular course, in order to gain the sovereign power for themselves by enlisting the sympathies of the people, and alienating the high priest, should have yielded to their demands, and introduced new worship? (17:175) if the state had been formed according to the original intention, the rights and honour of all the tribes would have been equal, and everything would have rested on a firm basis. (176) who is there who would willingly violate the religious rights of his kindred? (177) what could a man desire more than to support his own brothers and parents, thus fulfilling the duties of religion? (178) who would not rejoice in being taught by them the interpretation of the laws, and receiving through them the answers of god? (17:179) the tribes would thus have been united by a far closer bond, if all alike had possessed the right to the priesthood. (180) all danger would have been obviated, if the choice of the levites had not been dictated by anger and revenge. (181) but, as we have said, the hebrews had offended their god, who, as ezekiel says, polluted them in their own gifts by rejecting all that openeth the womb, so that he might destroy them. (17:182) this passage is also confirmed by their history. (182a) as soon as the people in the wilderness began to live in ease and plenty, certain men of no mean birth began to rebel against the choice of the levites, and to make it a cause for believing that moses had not acted by the commands of god, but for his own good pleasure, inasmuch as he had chosen his own tribe before all the rest, and had bestowed the high priesthood perpetuity on his own brother. (17:183) they, therefore, stirred up a tumult, and came to him crying out that all men were equally sacred, and that he had exalted himself above his fellows wrongfully. (184) moses was not able to pacify them with reasons; but by the intervention of a miracle in proof of the faith, they all perished. (185) a fresh sedition then arose among the whole people, who believed that their champions had not been put to death by the judgment of god, but by the device of moses. (17:186) after a great slaughter, or pestilence, the rising subsided from inanition, but in such a manner that all preferred death to life under such conditions. (17:187) we should rather say that sedition ceased than that harmony was re-established. (188) this is witnessed by scripture (deut. xxxi:21), where god, after predicting to moses that the people after his death will fall away from the divine worship, speaks thus: "for i know their imagination which they go about, even now before i have brought them into the land which i sware;" and, a little while after (xxxi:27), moses says: for i know thy rebellion and thy stiff neck: behold while i am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the lord; and how much more after my death!" (17:189) indeed, it happened according to his words, as we all know. (190) great changes, extreme license, luxury, and hardness of heart grew up; things went from bad to worse, till at last the people, after being frequently conquered, came to an open rupture with divine right, and wished for a mortal king, so that the seat of government might be the court, instead of the temple, and that the tribes might remain fellow-citizens in respect to their king, instead of in respect to divine right and the high priesthood. (17:191) a vast material for new seditions was thus produced, eventually resulting in the ruin of the entire state. (191a) kings are above all things jealous of a precarious rule, and can in nowise brook a dominion within their own. (17:192) the first monarchs, being chosen from the ranks of private citizens, were content with the amount of dignity to which they had risen; but their sons, who obtained the throne by right of inheritance, began gradually to introduce changes, so as to get all the sovereign rights into their own hands. (17:193) this they were generally unable to accomplish, so long as the right of legislation did not rest with them, but with the high priest, who kept the laws in and interpreted them to the people. (194) the kings were thus bound to obey the laws as much as were the subjects, and were unable to abrogate them, or to ordain new laws of equal authority; moreover, they were prevented by the levites from administering the affairs of religion, king and subject being alike unclean. (17:195) lastly, the whole safety of their dominion depended on the will of one man, if that man appeared to be a prophet; and of this they had seen an example, namely, how completely samuel had been able to command saul, and how easily, because of a single disobedience, he had been able to transfer the right of sovereignty to david. (196) thus the kings found a dominion within their own, and wielded a precarious sovereignty. (17:197) in order to surmount these difficulties, they allowed other temples to be dedicated to the gods, so that there might be no further need of consulting the levites; they also sought out many who prophesied in the name of god, so that they might have creatures of their own to oppose to the true prophets. (17:198) however, in spite of all their attempts, they never attained their end. (199) for the prophets, prepared against every emergency, waited for a favourable opportunity, such as the beginning of a new reign, which is always precarious, while the memory of the previous reign remains green. (200) at these times they could easily pronounce by divine authority that the king was tyrannical, and could produce a champion of distinguished virtue to vindicate the divine right, and lawfully to claim dominion, or a share in it. (17:201) still, not even so could the prophets effect much. (202) they could, indeed, remove a tyrant; but there were reasons which prevented them from doing more than setting up, at great cost of civil bloodshed, another tyrant in his stead. (17:203) of discords and civil wars there was no end, for the causes for the violation of divine right remained always the same, and could only be removed by a complete remodelling of the state. (17:204) we have now seen how religion was introduced into the hebrew commonwealth, and how the dominion might have lasted for ever, if the just wrath of the lawgiver had allowed it. (205) as this was impossible, it was bound in time to perish. (206) i am now speaking only of the first commonwealth, for the second was a mere shadow of the first, inasmuch as the people were bound by the rights of the persians to whom they were subject. (207) after the restoration of freedom, the high priests usurped the rights of the secular chiefs, and thus obtained absolute dominion. (208) the priests were inflamed with an intense desire to wield the powers of the sovereignty and the high priesthood at the same time. (209) i have, therefore, no need to speak further of the second commonwealth. (17:210) whether the first, in so far as we deem it to have been durable, is capable of imitation, and whether it would be pious to copy it as far as possible, will appear from what follows. (17:211) i wish only to draw attention, as a crowning conclusion, to the principle indicated already namely, that it is evident, from what we have stated in this chapter, that the divine right, or the right of religion, originates in a compact: without such compact, none but natural rights exist. (17:212) the hebrews were not bound by their religion to evince any pious care for other nations not included in the compact, but only for their own fellow-citizens. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[18:0] chapter xviii from the commonwealth of the hebrews and their history certain political doctrines are deduced. [18:1] (1) although the commonwealth of the hebrews, as we have conceived it, might have lasted for ever, it would be impossible to imitate it at the present day, nor would it be advisable so to do. (2) if a people wished to transfer their rights to god it would be necessary to make an express covenant with him, and for this would be needed not only the consent of those transferring their rights, but also the consent of god. (3) god, however, has revealed through his apostles that the covenant of god is no longer written in ink, or on tables of stone, but with the spirit of god in the fleshy tables of the heart. (18:4) furthermore, such a form of government would only be available for those who desire to have no foreign relations, but to shut themselves up within their own frontiers, and to live apart from the rest of the world; it would be useless to men who must have dealings with other nations; so that the cases where it could be adopted are very few indeed. (18:5) nevertheless, though it could not be copied in its entirety, it possessed many excellent features which might be brought to our notice, and perhaps imitated with advantage. (6) my intention, however, is not to write a treatise on forms of government, so i will pass over most of such points in silence, and will only touch on those which bear upon my purpose. (18:7) god's kingdom is not infringed upon by the choice of an earthly ruler endowed with sovereign rights; for after the hebrews had transferred their rights to god, they conferred the sovereign right of ruling on moses, investing him with the sole power of instituting and abrogating laws in the name of god, of choosing priests, of judging, of teaching, of punishing in fact, all the prerogatives of an absolute monarch. (18:8) again, though the priests were the interpreters of the laws, they had no power to judge the citizens, or to excommunicate anyone: this could only be done by the judges and chiefs chosen from among the people. (9) a consideration of the successes and the histories of the hebrews will bring to light other considerations worthy of note. to wit: i. (18:9) that there were no religious sects, till after the high priests, in the second commonwealth, possessed the authority to make decrees, and transact the business of government. (10) in order that such authority might last for ever, the high priests usurped the rights of secular rulers, and at last wished to be styled kings. (11) the reason for this is ready to hand; in the first commonwealth no decrees could bear the name of the high priest, for he had no right to ordain laws, but only to give the answers of god to questions asked by the captains or the councils: he had, therefore, no motive for making changes in the law, but took care, on the contrary, to administer and guard what had already been received and accepted. (18:12) his only means of preserving his freedom in safety against the will of the captains lay in cherishing the law intact. (18:13) after the high priests had assumed the power of carrying on the government, and added the rights of secular rulers to those they already possessed, each one began both in things religious and in things secular, to seek for the glorification of his own name, settling everything by sacerdotal authority, and issuing every day, concerning ceremonies, faith, and all else, new decrees which he sought to make as sacred and authoritative as the laws of moses. (14) religion thus sank into a degrading superstition, while the true interpretation of the laws became corrupted. (18:15) furthermore, while the high priests were paving their way to the secular rule just after the restoration, they attempted to gain popular favour by assenting to every demand; approving whatever the people did, however impious, and accommodating scripture to the very depraved current morals. (16) malachi bears witness to this in no measured terms: he chides the priests of his time as despisers of the name of god, and then goes on with his invective as follows (mal ii:7, 8): "for the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the lord of hosts. (18:17) but ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law, ye have corrupted the covenant of levi, saith the lord of hosts." (18:18) he further accuses them of interpreting the laws according to their own pleasure, and paying no respect to god but only to persons. (19) it is certain that the high priests were never so cautious in their conduct as to escape the remark of the more shrewd among the people, for the latter were at length emboldened to assert that no laws ought to be kept save those that were written, and that the decrees which the pharisees (consisting, as josephus says in his "antiquities," chiefly of the common people), were deceived into calling the traditions of the fathers, should not be observed at all. (20) however this may be, we can in nowise doubt that flattery of the high priest, the corruption of religion and the laws, and the enormous increase of the extent of the last-named, gave very great and frequent occasion for disputes and altercations impossible to allay. (21) when men begin to quarrel with all the ardour of superstition, and magistracy to back up one side or the other, they can never come to a compromise, but are bound to split into sects. ii. (18:22) it is worthy of remark that the prophets, who were in a private station of life, rather irritated than reformed mankind by their freedom of warning, rebuke, and censure; whereas the kings, by their reproofs and punishments, could always produce an effect. (23) the prophets were often intolerable even to pious kings, on account of the authority they assumed for judging whether an action was right or wrong, or for reproving the kings themselves if they dared to transact any business, whether public or private, without prophetic sanction. (24) king asa who, according to the testimony of scripture, reigned piously, put the prophet hanani into a prison-house because he had ventured freely to chide and reprove him for entering into a covenant with the king of armenia. (18:25) other examples might be cited, tending to prove that religion gained more harm than good by such freedom, not to speak of the further consequence, that if the prophets had retained their rights, great civil wars would have resulted. iii. (18:26) it is remarkable that during all the period, during which the people held the reins of power, there was only civil war, and that one was completely extinguished, the conquerors taking such pity on the conquered, that they endeavoured in every way to reinstate them in their former dignity and power. (27) but after that the people, little accustomed to kings, changed its first form of government into a monarchy, civil war raged almost continuously; and battles were so fierce as to exceed all others recorded; in one engagement (taxing our faith to the utmost) five hundred thousand israelites were slaughtered by the men of judah, and in another the israelites slew great numbers of the men of judah (the figures are not given in scripture), almost razed to the ground the walls of jerusalem, and sacked the temple in their unbridled fury. (18:28) at length, laden with the spoils of their brethren, satiated with blood, they took hostages, and leaving the king in his well-nigh devastated kingdom, laid down their arms, relying on the weakness rather than the good faith of their foes. (29) a few years after, the men of judah, with recruited strength, again took the field, but were a second time beaten by the israelites, and slain to the number of a hundred and twenty thousand, two thousand of their wives and children were led into captivity, and a great booty again seized. (30) worn out with these and similar battles set forth at length in their histories, the jews at length fell a prey to their enemies. (18:31) furthermore, if we reckon up the times during which peace prevailed under each form of government, we shall find a great discrepancy. (32) before the monarchy forty years and more often passed, and once eighty years (an almost unparalleled period), without any war, foreign or civil. (33) after the kings acquired sovereign power, the fighting was no longer for peace and liberty, but for glory; accordingly we find that they all, with the exception of solomon (whose virtue and wisdom would be better displayed in peace than in war) waged war, and finally a fatal desire for power gained ground, which, in many cases, made the path to the throne a bloody one. (18:34) lastly, the laws, during the rule of the people, remained uncorrupted and were studiously observed. (35) before the monarchy there were very few prophets to admonish the people, but after the establishment of kings there were a great number at the same time. (36) obadiah saved a hundred from death and hid them away, lest they should be slain with the rest. (37) the people, so far as we can see, were never deceived by false prophets till after the power had been vested in kings, whose creatures many of the prophets were. (18:38) again, the people, whose heart was generally proud or humble according to its circumstances, easily corrected it-self under misfortune, turned again to god, restored his laws, and so freed itself from all peril; but the kings, whose hearts were always equally puffed up, and who could not be corrected without humiliation, clung pertinaciously to their vices, even till the last overthrow of the city. [18:2] (18:39) we may now clearly see from what i have said:i. (18:40) how hurtful to religion and the state is the concession to ministers of religion of any power of issuing decrees or transacting the business of government: how, on the contrary, far greater stability is afforded, if the said ministers are only allowed to give answers to questions duly put to them, and are, as a rule, obliged to preach and practise the received and accepted doctrines. ii. (18:41)how dangerous it is to refer to divine right matters merely speculative and subject or liable to dispute. (42) the most tyrannical governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right over his thoughts nay, such a state of things leads to the rule of popular passion. (18:43) pontius pilate made concession to the passion of the pharisees in consenting to the crucifixion of christ, whom he knew to be innocent. (44) again, the pharisees, in order to shake the position of men richer than themselves, began to set on foot questions of religion, and accused the sadducees of impiety, and, following their example, the vilest hypocrites, stirred, as they pretended, by the same holy wrath which they called zeal for the lord, persecuted men whose unblemished character and distinguished virtue had excited the popular hatred, publicly denounced their opinions, and inflamed the fierce passions of the people against them. (18:45) this wanton licence being cloaked with the specious garb of religion could not easily be repressed, especially when the sovereign authorities introduced a sect of which they were not the head; they were then regarded not as interpreters of divine right, but as sectarians that is, as persons recognizing the right of divine interpretation assumed by the leaders of the sect. (46) the authority of the magistrates thus became of little account in such matters in comparison with the authority of sectarian leaders before whose interpretations kings were obliged to bow. (18:47) to avoid such evils in a state, there is no safer way than to make piety and religion to consist in acts only that is, in the practice of justice and charity, leaving everyone's judgment in other respects free. (48) but i will speak of this more at length presently. [18:3] iii. (18:49) we see how necessary it is, both in the interests of the state and in the interests of religion, to confer on the sovereign power the right of deciding what is lawful or the reverse. (50) if this right of judging actions could not be given to the very prophets of god without great injury to the state and religion, how much less should it be entrusted to those who can neither foretell future nor work miracles! (51) but this again i will treat of more fully hereafter. iv. (18:52) lastly, we see how disastrous it is for a people unaccustomed to kings, and possessing a complete code of laws, to set up a monarchy. (53) neither can the subjects brook such a sway, nor the royal authority submit to laws and popular rights set up by anyone inferior to itself. (54) still less can a king be expected to defend such laws, for they were not framed to support his dominion, but the dominion of the people, or some council which formerly ruled, so that in guarding the popular rights the king would seem to be a slave rather than a master. (18:55) the representative of a new monarchy will employ all his zeal in attempting to frame new laws, so as to wrest the rights of dominion to his own use, and to reduce the people till they find it easier to increase than to curtail the royal prerogative. (56) i must not, however, omit to state that it is no less dangerous to remove a monarch, though he is on all hands admitted to be a tyrant. (18:57) for his people accustomed to royal authority and will obey no other, despising and mocking at any less august control. (18:58) it is therefore necessary, as the prophets discovered of old, if one king be removed, that he should be replaced by another, who will be a tyrant from necessity rather than choice. (59) for how will he be able to endure the sight of the hands of the citizens reeking with royal blood, and to rejoice in their regicide as a glorious exploit? (60) was not the deed perpetrated as an example and warning for himself? (18:61) if he really wishes to be king, and not to acknowledge the people as the judge of kings and the master of himself, or to wield a precarious sway, he must avenge the death of predecessor, making an example for his own sake, lest the people should venture to repeat a similar crime. (62) he will not, however, be able easily to avenge the death of the tyrant by the slaughter of citizens unless he defends the cause of tyranny and approves the deeds of his predecessor, thus following in his footsteps. (18:63) hence it comes to pass that peoples have often changed their tyrants, but never removed them or changed the monarchical form of government into any other. [18:4] (64) the english people furnish us with a terrible example of this fact. (65) they sought how to depose their monarch under the forms of law, but when he had been removed, they were utterly unable to change the form of government, and after much bloodshed only brought it about, that a new monarch should be hailed under a different name (as though it had been a mere question of names); this new monarch could only consolidate his power by destroying the royal stock, putting to death the king's friends, real or supposed, and disturbing with war the peace which might encourage discontent, in order that the populace might be engrossed with novelties and divert its mind from brooding over the slaughter of the king. (66) at last, however, the people reflected that it had accomplished nothing for the good of the country beyond violating the rights of the lawful king and changing everything for the worse (18:67) it therefore decided to retrace its steps as soon as possible, and never rested till it had seen a complete restoration of the original state of affairs. (18:68) it may perhaps be objected that the roman people was easily able to remove its tyrants, but i gather from its history a strong confirmation of my contention. (18:69) though the roman people was much more than ordinarily capable of removing their tyrants and changing their form of government, inasmuch as it held in its own hands the power of electing its king and his successor, said being composed of rebels and criminals had not long been used to the royal yoke (out of its six kings it had put to death three), nevertheless it could accomplish nothing beyond electing several tyrants in place of one, who kept it groaning under a continual state of war, both foreign and civil, till at last it changed its government again to a form differing from monarchy, as in england, only in name. [18:5] (70) as for the united states of the netherlands, they have never, as we know, had a king, but only counts, who never attained the full rights of dominion. (71) the states of the netherlands evidently acted as principals in the settlement made by them at the time of the earl of leicester's mission: they always reserved for themselves the authority to keep the counts up to their duties, and the power to preserve this authority and the liberty of the citizens. (72) they had ample means of vindicating their rights if their rulers should prove tyrannical, and could impose such restraints that nothing could be done without their consent and approval. (18:73) thus the rights of sovereign power have always been vested in the states, though the last count endeavoured to usurp them. (74) it is therefore little likely that the states should give them up, especially as they have just restored their original dominion, lately almost lost. (18:75) these examples, then, confirm us in our belief, that every dominion should retain its original form, and, indeed, cannot change it without danger of the utter ruin of the whole state. (76) such are the points i have here thought worthy of remark. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[19:0] chapter xix it is shown that the right over matters spiritual lies wholly with the sovereign, and that the outward forms of religion should be in accordance with public peace, if we would obey god aright. (19:1) when i said that the possessors of sovereign power have rights over everything, and that all rights are dependent on their decree, i did not merely mean temporal rights, but also spiritual rights; of the latter, no less than the former, they ought to be the interpreters and the champions. (2) i wish to draw special attention to this point, and to discuss it fully in this chapter, because many persons deny that the right of deciding religious questions belongs to the sovereign power, and refuse to acknowledge it as the interpreter of divine right. (3) they accordingly assume full licence to accuse and arraign it, nay, even to excommunicate it from the church, as ambrosius treated the emperor theodosius in old time. (19:4) however, i will show later on in this chapter that they take this means of dividing the government, and paving the way to their own ascendancy. (5) i wish, however, first to point out that religion acquires its force as law solely from the decrees of the sovereign. (6) god has no special kingdom among men except in so far as he reigns through temporal rulers. [19:1] (7) moreover, the rites of religion and the outward observances of piety should be in accordance with the public peace and well-being, and should therefore be determined by the sovereign power alone. (8) i speak here only of the outward observances of piety and the external rites of religion, not of piety itself, nor of the inward worship of god, nor the means by which the mind is inwardly led to do homage to god in singleness of heart. (19:9) inward worship of god and piety in itself are within the sphere of everyone's private rights, and cannot be alienated (as i showed at the end of chapter vii.). (10) what i here mean by the kingdom of god is, i think, sufficiently clear from what has been said in chapter xiv. (11) i there showed that a man best fulfils gods law who worships him, according to his command, through acts of justice and charity; it follows, therefore, that wherever justice and charity have the force of law and ordinance, there is god's kingdom. (19:12) i recognize no difference between the cases where god teaches and commands the practice of justice and charity through our natural faculties, and those where he makes special revelations; nor is the form of the revelation of importance so long as such practice is revealed and becomes a sovereign and supreme law to men. (19:13) if, therefore, i show that justice and charity can only acquire the force of right and law through the rights of rulers, i shall be able readily to arrive at the conclusion (seeing that the rights of rulers are in the possession of the sovereign), that religion can only acquire the force of right by means of those who have the right to command, and that god only rules among men through the instrumentality of earthly potentates. (19:14) it follows from what has been said, that the practice of justice and charity only acquires the force of law through the rights of the sovereign authority; for we showed in chapter xvi. that in the state of nature reason has no more rights than desire, but that men living either by the laws of the former or the laws of the latter, possess rights co-extensive with their powers. (19:15) for this reason we could not conceive sin to exist in the state of nature, nor imagine god as a judge punishing man's transgressions; but we supposed all things to happen according to the general laws of universal nature, there being no difference between pious and impious, between him that was pure as solomon says) and him that was impure, because there was no possibility either of justice or charity. [19:2] (16) in order that the true doctrines of reason, that is (as we showed in chapter iv.), the true divine doctrines might obtain absolutely the force of law and right, it was necessary that each individual should cede his natural right, and transfer it either to society as a whole, or to a certain body of men, or to one man. (17) then, and not till then, does it first dawn upon us what is justice and what is injustice, what is equity and what is iniquity. (19:18) justice, therefore, and absolutely all the precepts of reason, including love towards one's neighbour, receive the force of laws and ordinances solely through the rights of dominion, that is (as we showed in the same chapter) solely on the decree of those who possess the right to rule. (19) inasmuch as the kingdom of god consists entirely in rights applied to justice and charity or to true religion, it follows that (as we asserted) the kingdom of god can only exist among men through the means of the sovereign powers; nor does it make any difference whether religion be apprehended by our natural faculties or by revelation: the argument is sound in both cases, inasmuch as religion is one and the same, and is equally revealed by god, whatever be the manner in which it becomes known to men. (19:20) thus, in order that the religion revealed by the prophets might have the force of law among the jews, it was necessary that every man of them should yield up his natural right, and that all should, with one accord, agree that they would only obey such commands as god should reveal to them through the prophets. (19:21) just as we have shown to take place in a democracy, where men with one consent agree to live according to the dictates of reason. (22) although the hebrews furthermore transferred their right to god, they were able to do so rather in theory than in practice, for, as a matter of fact (as we pointed out above) they absolutely retained the right of dominion till they transferred it to moses, who in his turn became absolute king, so that it was only through him that god reigned over the hebrews. (19:23) for this reason (namely, that religion only acquires the force of law by means of the sovereign power) moses was not able to punish those who, before the covenant, and consequently while still in possession of their rights, violated the sabbath (exod. xvi:27), but was able to do so after the covenant (numb. xv:36), because everyone had then yielded up his natural rights, and the ordinance of the sabbath had received the force of law. (19:24) lastly, for the same reason, after the destruction of the hebrew dominion, revealed religion ceased to have the force of law; for we cannot doubt that as soon as the jews transferred their right to the king of babylon, the kingdom of god and the divine right forthwith ceased. (25) for the covenant wherewith they promised to obey all the utterances of god was abrogated; god's kingdom, which was based thereupon, also ceased. (19:26) the hebrews could no longer abide thereby, inasmuch as their rights no longer belonged to them but to the king of babylon, whom (as we showed in chapter xvi.) they were bound to obey in all things. (27) jeremiah (chap. xxix:7) expressly admonishes them of this fact: "and seek the peace of the city, whither i have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the lord for it; for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace." (28) now, they could not seek the peace of the city as having a share in its government, but only as slaves, being, as they were, captives; by obedience in all things, with a view to avoiding seditions, and by observing all the laws of the country, however different from their own. (29) it is thus abundantly evident that religion among the hebrews only acquired the form of law through the right of the sovereign rule; when that rule was destroyed, it could no longer be received as the law of a particular kingdom, but only as the universal precept of reason. (30) i say of reason, for the universal religion had not yet become known by revelation. (19:31) we may therefore draw the general conclusion that religion, whether revealed through our natural faculties or through prophets, receives the force of a command through the decrees of the holders of sovereign power; and, further, that god has no special kingdom among men, except in so far as he reigns through earthly potentates. (19:32) we may now see in a clearer light what was stated in chapter iv., namely, that all the decrees of god involve eternal truth and necessity, so that we cannot conceive god as a prince or legislator giving laws to mankind. (33) for this reason the divine precepts, whether revealed through our natural faculties, or through prophets, do not receive immediately from god the force of a command, but only from those, or through the mediation of those, who possess the right of ruling and legislating. (34) it is only through these latter means that god rules among men, and directs human affairs with justice and equity. (19:35) this conclusion is supported by experience, for we find traces of divine justice only in places where just men bear sway; elsewhere the same lot (to repeat, again solomon's words) befalls the just and the unjust, the pure and the impure: a state of things which causes divine providence to be doubted by many who think that god immediately reigns among men, and directs all nature for their benefit. [19:3] (36) as, then, both reason and experience tell us that the divine right is entirely dependent on the decrees of secular rulers, it follows that secular rulers are its proper interpreters. (37) how this is so we shall now see, for it is time to show that the outward observances of religion, and all the external practices of piety should be brought into accordance with the public peace and well-being if we would obey god rightly. (38) when this has been shown we shall easily understand how the sovereign rulers are the proper interpreters of religion and piety. (19:39) it is certain that duties towards one's country are the highest that man can fulfil; for, if government be taken away, no good thing can last, all falls into dispute, anger and anarchy reign unchecked amid universal fear. (40) consequently there can be no duty towards our neighbour which would not become an offence if it involved injury to the whole state, nor can there be any offence against our duty towards our neighbour, or anything but loyalty in what we do for the sake of preserving the state. (19:41) for instance: it is in the abstract my duty when my neighbour quarrels with me and wishes to take my cloak, to give him my coat also; but if it be thought that such conduct is hurtful to the maintenance of the state, i ought to bring him to trial, even at the risk of his being condemned to death. (19:42) for this reason manlius torquatus is held up to honour, inasmuch as the public welfare outweighed with him his duty towards his children. (43) this being so, it follows that the public welfare is the sovereign law to which all others, divine and human, should be made to conform. (44) now, it is the function of the sovereign only to decide what is necessary for the public welfare and the safety of the state, and to give orders accordingly; therefore it is also the function of the sovereign only to decide the limits of our duty towards our neighbour in other words, to determine how we should obey god. (19:45) we can now clearly understand how the sovereign is the interpreter of religion, and further, that no one can obey god rightly, if the practices of his piety do not conform to the public welfare; or, consequently, if he does not implicitly obey all the commands of the sovereign. (46) for as by god's command we are bound to do our duty to all men without exception, and to do no man an injury, we are also bound not to help one man at another's loss, still less at a loss to the whole state. (47) now, no private citizen can know what is good for the state, except he learn it through the sovereign power, who alone has the right to transact public business: therefore no one can rightly practise piety or obedience to god, unless he obey the sovereign power's commands in all things. (19:48) this proposition is confirmed by the facts of experience. (49) for if the sovereign adjudge a man to be worthy of death or an enemy, whether he be a citizen or a foreigner, a private individual or a separate ruler, no subject is allowed to give him assistance. (19:50) so also though the jews were bidden to love their fellow-citizens as themselves (levit. xix:17, 18), they were nevertheless bound, if a man offended against the law, to point him out to the judge (levit. v:1, and deut. xiii:8, 9), and, if he should be condemned to death, to slay him (deut. xvii:7). (19:51) further, in order that the hebrews might preserve the liberty they had gained, and might retain absolute sway over the territory they had conquered, it was necessary, as we showed in chapter xvii., that their religion should be adapted to their particular government, and that they should separate themselves from the rest of the nations: wherefore it was commanded to them, "love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy" (matt. v:43), but after they had lost their dominion and had gone into captivity in babylon, jeremiah bid them take thought for the safety of the state into which they had been led captive; and christ when he saw that they would be spread over the whole world, told them to do their duty by all men without exception; all of which instances show that religion has always been made to conform to the public welfare. [19:4] (52) perhaps someone will ask: by what right, then, did the disciples of christ, being private citizens, preach a new religion? (53) i answer that they did so by the right of the power which they had received from christ against unclean spirits (see matt. x:1). (54) i have already stated in chapter xvi. that all are bound to obey a tyrant, unless they have received from god through undoubted revelation a promise of aid against him; so let no one take example from the apostles unless he too has the power of working miracles. (19:55) the point is brought out more clearly by christ's command to his disciples, "fear not those who kill the body" (matt. x:28). (19:56) if this command were imposed on everyone, governments would be founded in vain, and solomon's words (prov. xxiv:21), "my son, fear god and the king," would be impious, which they certainly are not; we must therefore admit that the authority which christ gave to his disciples was given to them only, and must not be taken as an example for others. (19:57) i do not pause to consider the arguments of those who wish to separate secular rights from spiritual rights, placing the former under the control of the sovereign, and the latter under the control of the universal church; such pretensions are too frivolous to merit refutation. (58) i cannot however, pass over in silence the fact that such persons are woefully deceived when they seek to support their seditious opinions (i ask pardon for the somewhat harsh epithet) by the example of the jewish high priest, who, in ancient times, had the right of administering the sacred offices. (19:59) did not the high priests receive their right by the decree of moses (who, as i have shown, retained the sole right to rule), and could they not by the same means be deprived of it? (60) moses himself chose not only aaron, but also his son eleazar, and his grandson phineas, and bestowed on them the right of administering the office of high priest. (61) this right was retained by the high priests afterwards, but none the less were they delegates of moses that is, of the sovereign power. (19:61a) moses, as we have shown, left no successor to his dominion, but so distributed his prerogatives, that those who came after him seemed, as it were, regents who administer the government when a king is absent but not dead. (19:62) in the second commonwealth the high priests held their right absolutely, after they had obtained the rights of principality in addition. (63) wherefore the rights of the high priesthood always depended on the edict of the sovereign, and the high priests did not possess them till they became sovereigns also. (64) rights in matters spiritual always remained under the control of the kings absolutely (as i will show at the end of this chapter), except in the single particular that they were not allowed to administer in person the sacred duties in the temple, inasmuch as they were not of the family of aaron, and were therefore considered unclean, a reservation which would have no force in a christian community. (19:65) we cannot, therefore, doubt that the daily sacred rites (whose performance does not require a particular genealogy but only a special mode of life, and from which the holders of sovereign power are not excluded as unclean) are under the sole control of the sovereign power; no one, save by the authority or concession of such sovereign, has the right or power of administering them, of choosing others to administer them, of defining or strengthening the foundations of the church and her doctrines; of judging on questions of morality or acts of piety; of receiving anyone into the church or excommunicating him therefrom, or, lastly, of providing for the poor. (19:66) these doctrines are proved to be not only true (as we have already pointed out), but also of primary necessity for the preservation of religion and the state. (67) we all know what weight spiritual right and authority carries in the popular mind: how everyone hangs on the lips, as it were, of those who possess it. (19:68) we may even say that those who wield such authority have the most complete sway over the popular mind. (19:69) whosoever, therefore, wishes to take this right away from the sovereign power, is desirous of dividing the dominion; from such division, contentions, and strife will necessarily spring up, as they did of old between the jewish kings and high priests, and will defy all attempts to allay them. (70) nay, further, he who strives to deprive the sovereign power of such authority, is aiming (as we have said), at gaining dominion for himself. (71) what is left for the sovereign power to decide on, if this right be denied him? (72) certainly nothing concerning either war or peace, if he has to ask another man's opinion as to whether what he believes to be beneficial would be pious or impious. (73) everything would depend on the verdict of him who had the right of deciding and judging what was pious or impious, right or wrong. (19:74) when such a right was bestowed on the pope of rome absolutely, he gradually acquired complete control over the kings, till at last he himself mounted to the summits of dominion; however much monarchs, and especially the german emperors, strove to curtail his authority, were it only by a hairsbreadth, they effected nothing, but on the contrary by their very endeavours largely increased it. (19:75) that which no monarch could accomplish with fire and sword, ecclesiastics could bring about with a stroke of the pen; whereby we may easily see the force and power at the command of the church, and also how necessary it is for sovereigns to reserve such prerogatives for themselves. (19:76) if we reflect on what was said in the last chapter we shall see that such reservation conduced not a little to the increase of religion and piety; for we observed that the prophets themselves, though gifted with divine efficacy, being merely private citizens, rather irritated than reformed the people by their freedom of warning, reproof, and denunciation, whereas the kings by warnings and punishments easily bent men to their will. (77) furthermore, the kings themselves, not possessing the right in question absolutely, very often fell away from religion and took with them nearly the whole people. (78) the same thing has often happened from the same cause in christian states. (19:79) perhaps i shall be asked, "but if the holders of sovereign power choose to be wicked, who will be the rightful champion of piety? (80) should the sovereigns still be its interpreters? (80a) "i meet them with the counter-question, "but if ecclesiastics (who are also human, and private citizens, and who ought to mind only their own affairs), or if others whom it is proposed to entrust with spiritual authority, choose to be wicked, should they still be considered as piety's rightful interpreters?" (81) it is quite certain that when sovereigns wish to follow their own pleasure, whether they have control over spiritual matters or not, the whole state, spiritual and secular, will go to ruin, and it will go much faster if private citizens seditiously assume the championship of the divine rights. (19:82) thus we see that not only is nothing gained by denying such rights to sovereigns, but on the contrary, great evil ensues. (83) for (as happened with the jewish kings who did not possess such rights absolutely) rulers are thus driven into wickedness, and the injury and loss to the state become certain and inevitable, instead of uncertain and possible. (84) whether we look to the abstract truth, or the security of states, or the increase of piety, we are compelled to maintain that the divine right, or the right of control over spiritual matters, depends absolutely on the decree of the sovereign, who is its legitimate interpreter and champion. (85) therefore the true ministers of god's word are those who teach piety to the people in obedience to the authority of the sovereign rulers by whose decree it has been brought into conformity with the public welfare. [19:5] (86) there remains for me to point out the cause for the frequent disputes on the subject of these spiritual rights in christian states; whereas the hebrews, so far as i know, never, had any doubts about the matter. (87) it seems monstrous that a question so plain and vitally important should thus have remained undecided, and that the secular rulers could never obtain the prerogative without controversy, nay, nor without great danger of sedition and injury to religion. (88) if no cause for this state of things were forthcoming, i could easily persuade myself that all i have said in this chapter is mere theorizing, or a kind of speculative reasoning which can never be of any practical use. (89) however, when we reflect on the beginnings of christianity the cause at once becomes manifest. (19:90) the christian religion was not taught at first by kings, but by private persons, who, against the wishes of those in power, whose subjects they were, were for a long time accustomed to hold meetings in secret churches, to institute and perform sacred rites, and on their own authority to settle and decide on their affairs without regard to the state. (91) when, after the lapse of many years, the religion was taken up by the authorities, the ecclesiastics were obliged to teach it to the emperors themselves as they had defined it: wherefore they easily gained recognition as its teachers and interpreters, and the church pastors were looked upon as vicars of god. (92) the ecclesiastics took good care that the christian kings should not assume their authority, by prohibiting marriage to the chief ministers of religion and to its highest interpreter. (19:93) they furthermore elected their purpose by multiplying the dogmas of religion to such an extent and so blending them with philosophy that their chief interpreter was bound to be a skilled philosopher and theologian, and to have leisure for a host of idle speculations: conditions which could only be fulfilled by a private individual with much time on his hands. (19:94) among the hebrews things were very differently arranged: for their church began at the same time as their dominion, and moses, their absolute ruler, taught religion to the people, arranged their spiritual ministers. (95) thus the royal authority carried very great weight with the people, and the kings kept a firm hold on their spiritual prerogatives. (19:96) although, after the death of moses, no one held absolute sway, yet the power of deciding both in matters spiritual and matters temporal was in the hands of the secular chief, as i have already pointed out. (97) further, in order that it might be taught religion and piety, the people was bound to consult the supreme judge no less than the high priest (deut. xvii:9, 11). (19:98) lastly, though the kings had not as much power as moses, nearly the whole arrangement and choice of the sacred ministry depended on their decision. (19:99) thus david arranged the whole service of the temple (see 1 chron. xxviii:11, 12, &c.); from all the levites he chose twenty-four thousand for the sacred psalms; six thousand of these formed the body from which were chosen the judges and proctors, four thousand were porters, and four thousand to play on instruments (see 1 chron. xxiii:4, 5). (19:100) he further divided them into companies (of whom he chose the chiefs), so that each in rotation, at the allotted time, might perform the sacred rites. (101) the priests he also divided into as many companies; i will not go through the whole catalogue, but refer the reader to 2 chron. viii:13, where it is stated, "then solomon offered burnt offerings to the lord . . . . . after a certain rate every day, offering according to the commandments of moses;" and in verse 14, "and he appointed, according to the order of david his father, the courses of the priests to their service . . . . for so had david the man of god commanded." (19:102) lastly, the historian bears witness in verse 15: "and they departed not from the commandment of the king unto the priests and levites concerning any matter, or concerning the treasuries." [19:6] (103) from these and other histories of the kings it is abundantly evident, that the whole practice of religion and the sacred ministry depended entirely on the commands of the king. (19:104) when i said above that the kings had not the same right as moses to elect the high priest, to consult god without intermediaries, and to condemn the prophets who prophesied during their reign; i said so simply because the prophets could, in virtue of their mission, choose a new king and give absolution for regicide, not because they could call a king who offended against the law to judgment, or could rightly act against him. [endnote 33] (19:105) wherefore if there had been no prophets who, in virtue of a special revelation, could give absolution for regicide, the kings would have possessed absolute rights over all matters both spiritual and temporal. (106) consequently the rulers of modern times, who have no prophets and would not rightly be bound in any case to receive them (for they are not subject to jewish law), have absolute possession of the spiritual prerogative, although they are not celibates, and they will always retain it, if they will refuse to allow religious dogmas to be unduly multiplied or confounded with philosophy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[20:0] chapter xx that in a free state every man may think what he likes, and say what he thinks. [20:1] (1) if men's minds were as easily controlled as their tongues, every king would sit safely on his throne, and government by compulsion would cease; for every subject would shape his life according to the intentions of his rulers, and would esteem a thing true or false, good or evil, just or unjust, in obedience to their dictates. (2) however, we have shown already (chapter xvii.) that no man's mind can possibly lie wholly at the disposition of another, for no one can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason and judgment, or be compelled so to do. (20:3) for this reason government which attempts to control minds is accounted tyrannical, and it is considered an abuse of sovereignty and a usurpation of the rights of subjects, to seek to prescribe what shall be accepted as true, or rejected as false, or what opinions should actuate men in their worship of god. (4) all these questions fall within a man's natural right, which he cannot abdicate even with his own consent. (20:5) i admit that the judgment can be biassed in many ways, and to an almost incredible degree, so that while exempt from direct external control it may be so dependent on another man's words, that it may fitly be said to be ruled by him; but although this influence is carried to great lengths, it has never gone so far as to invalidate the statement, that every man's understanding is his own, and that brains are as diverse as palates. (20:6) moses, not by fraud, but by divine virtue, gained such a hold over the popular judgment that he was accounted superhuman, and believed to speak and act through the inspiration of the deity; nevertheless, even he could not escape murmurs and evil interpretations. (7) how much less then can other monarchs avoid them! (8) yet such unlimited power, if it exists at all, must belong to a monarch, and least of all to a democracy, where the whole or a great part of the people wield authority collectively. (20:9) this is a fact which i think everyone can explain for himself. (20:10) however unlimited, therefore, the power of a sovereign may be, however implicitly it is trusted as the exponent of law and religion, it can never prevent men from forming judgments according to their intellect, or being influenced by any given emotion. (11) it is true that it has the right to treat as enemies all men whose opinions do not, on all subjects, entirely coincide with its own; but we are not discussing its strict rights, but its proper course of action. (20:12) i grant that it has the right to rule in the most violent manner, and to put citizens to death for very trivial causes, but no one supposes it can do this with the approval of sound judgment. (13) nay, inasmuch as such things cannot be done without extreme peril to itself, we may even deny that it has the absolute power to do them, or, consequently, the absolute right; for the rights of the sovereign are limited by his power. [20:2] (14) since, therefore, no one can abdicate his freedom of judgment and feeling; since every man is by indefeasible natural right the master of his own thoughts, it follows that men thinking in diverse and contradictory fashions, cannot, without disastrous results, be compelled to speak only according to the dictates of the supreme power. (15) not even the most experienced, to say nothing of the multitude, know how to keep silence. (16) men's common failing is to confide their plans to others, though there be need for secrecy, so that a government would be most harsh which deprived the individual of his freedom of saying and teaching what he thought; and would be moderate if such freedom were granted. (20:17) still we cannot deny that authority may be as much injured by words as by actions; hence, although the freedom we are discussing cannot be entirely denied to subjects, its unlimited concession would be most baneful; we must, therefore, now inquire, how far such freedom can and ought to be conceded without danger to the peace of the state, or the power of the rulers; and this, as i aid at the beginning of chapter xvi., is my principal object. (20:18) it follows, plainly, from the explanation given above, of the foundations of a state, that the ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself or others. (20:19) no, the object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develope their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. (20) in fact, the true aim of government is liberty. (20:21) now we have seen that in forming a state the power of king laws must either be vested in the body of the citizens, or in a portion of them, or in one man. (22) for, although mens free judgments are very diverse, each one thinking that he alone knows everything, and although complete unanimity of feeling and speech is out of the question, it is impossible to preserve peace, unless individuals abdicate their right of acting entirely on their own judgment. [20:3] (23) therefore, the individual justly cedes the right of free action, though not of free reason and judgment; no one can act against the authorities without danger to the state, though his feelings and judgment may be at variance therewith; he may even speak against them, provided that he does so from rational conviction, not from fraud, anger, or hatred, and provided that he does not attempt to introduce any change on his private authority. (20:24) for instance, supposing a man shows that a law is repugnant to sound reason, and should therefore be repealed; if he submits his opinion to the judgment of the authorities (who, alone, have the right of making and repealing laws), and meanwhile acts in nowise contrary to that law, he has deserved well of the state, and has behaved as a good citizen should; but if he accuses the authorities of injustice, and stirs up the people against them, or if he seditiously strives to abrogate the law without their consent, he is a mere agitator and rebel. (20:25) thus we see how an individual may declare and teach what he believes, without injury to the authority of his rulers, or to the public peace; namely, by leaving in their hands the entire power of legislation as it affects action, and by doing nothing against their laws, though he be compelled often to act in contradiction to what he believes, and openly feels, to be best. (20:26) such a course can be taken without detriment to justice and dutifulness, nay, it is the one which a just and dutiful man would adopt. (27) we have shown that justice is dependent on the laws of the authorities, so that no one who contravenes their accepted decrees can be just, while the highest regard for duty, as we have pointed out in the preceding chapter, is exercised in maintaining public peace and tranquillity; these could not be preserved if every man were to live as he pleased; therefore it is no less than undutiful for a man to act contrary to his country's laws, for if the practice became universal the ruin of states would necessarily follow. (20:28) hence, so long as a man acts in obedience to the laws of his rulers, he in nowise contravenes his reason, for in obedience to reason he transferred the right of controlling his actions from his own hands to theirs. (29) this doctrine we can confirm from actual custom, for in a conference of great and small powers, schemes are seldom carried unanimously, yet all unite in carrying out what is decided on, whether they voted for or against. (30) but i return to my proposition. (20:31) from the fundamental notions of a state, we have discovered how a man may exercise free judgment without detriment to the supreme power: from the same premises we can no less easily determine what opinions would be seditious. (32) evidently those which by their very nature nullify the compact by which the right of free action was ceded. (33) for instance, a man who holds that the supreme power has no rights over him, or that promises ought not to be kept, or that everyone should live as he pleases, or other doctrines of this nature in direct opposition to the above-mentioned contract, is seditious, not so much from his actual opinions and judgment, as from the deeds which they involve; for he who maintains such theories abrogates the contract which tacitly, or openly, he made with his rulers. (20:34) other opinions which do not involve acts violating the contract, such as revenge, anger, and t he like, are not seditious, unless it be in some. corrupt state, where superstitious and ambitious persons, unable to endure men of learning, are so popular with the multitude that their word is more valued than the law. (20:35) however, i do not deny that there are some doctrines which, while they are apparently only concerned with abstract truths and falsehoods, are yet propounded and published with unworthy motives. (36) this question we have discussed in chapter xv., and shown that reason should nevertheless remain unshackled. (37) if we hold to the principle that a man's loyalty to the state should be judged, like his loyalty to god, from his actions only namely, from his charity towards his neighbours; we cannot doubt that the best government will allow freedom of philosophical speculation no less than of belief. (20:38) i confess that from such freedom inconveniences may sometimes arise, but what question was ever settled so wisely that no abuses could possibly spring therefrom? (39) he who seeks to regulate everything by law, is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. (40) it is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. (41) how many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness, and the like, yet these are tolerated vices as they are because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments. (20:42) how much more then should free thought be granted, seeing that it is in itself a virtue and that it cannot be crushed! (43) besides the evil results can easily be checked, as i will show, by the secular authorities, not to mention that such freedom is absolutely necessary for progress in science and the liberal arts: for no man follows such pursuits to advantage unless his judgment be entirely free and unhampered. (20:44) but let it be granted that freedom may be crushed, and men be so bound down, that they do not dare to utter a whisper, save at the bidding of their rulers; nevertheless this can never be carried to the pitch of making them think according to authority, so that the necessary consequences would be that men would daily be thinking one thing and saying another, to the corruption of good faith, that mainstay of government, and to the fostering of hateful flattery and perfidy, whence spring stratagems, and the corruption of every good art. (20:45) it is far from possible to impose uniformity of speech, for the more rulers strive to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately are they resisted; not indeed by the avaricious, the flatterers, and other numskulls, who think supreme salvation consists in filling their stomachs and gloating over their money-bags, but by those whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free. (46) men, as generally constituted, are most prone to resent the branding as criminal of opinions which they believe to be true, and the proscription as wicked of that which inspires them with piety towards god and man; hence they are ready to forswear the laws and conspire against the authorities, thinking it not shameful but honourable to stir up seditions and perpetuate any sort of crime with this end in view. (20:47) such being the constitution of human nature, we see that laws directed against opinions affect the generous minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright; so that they cannot be maintained without great peril to the state. (20:48) moreover, such laws are almost always useless, for those who hold that the opinions proscribed are sound, cannot possibly obey the law; whereas those who already reject them as false, accept the law as a kind of privilege, and make such boast of it, that authority is powerless to repeal it, even if such a course be subsequently desired. (20:49) to these considerations may be added what we said in chapter xviii. in treating of the history of the hebrews. (50) and, lastly, how many schisms have arisen in the church from the attempt of the authorities to decide by law the intricacies of theological controversy! (51) if men were not allured by the hope of getting the law and the authorities on their side, of triumphing over their adversaries in the sight of an applauding multitude, and of acquiring honourable distinctions, they would not strive so maliciously, nor would such fury sway their minds. (20:52) this is taught not only by reason but by daily examples, for laws of this kind prescribing what every man shall believe and forbidding anyone to speak or write to the contrary, have often been passed, as sops or concessions to the anger of those who cannot tolerate men of enlightenment, and who, by such harsh and crooked enactments, can easily turn the devotion of the masses into fury and direct it against whom they will. (20:53) how much better would it be to restrain popular anger and fury, instead of passing useless laws, which can only be broken by those who love virtue and the liberal arts, thus paring down the state till it is too small to harbour men of talent. (54) what greater misfortune for a state can be conceived then that honourable men should be sent like criminals into exile, because they hold diverse opinions which they cannot disguise? (20:55) what, i say, can be more hurtful than that men who have committed no crime or wickedness should, simply because they are enlightened, be treated as enemies and put to death, and that the scaffold, the terror of evil-doers, should become the arena where the highest examples of tolerance and virtue are displayed to the people with all the marks of ignominy that authority can devise? (20:56) he that knows himself to be upright does not fear the death of a criminal, and shrinks from no punishment; his mind is not wrung with remorse for any disgraceful deed: he holds that death in a good cause is no punishment, but an honour, and that death for freedom is glory. (20:57) what purpose then is served by the death of such men, what example in proclaimed? the cause for which they die is unknown to the idle and the foolish, hateful to the turbulent, loved by the upright. (57a) the only lesson we can draw from such scenes is to flatter the persecutor, or else to imitate the victim. (20:58) if formal assent is not to be esteemed above conviction, and if governments are to retain a firm hold of authority and not be compelled to yield to agitators, it is imperative that freedom of judgment should be granted, so that men may live together in harmony, however diverse, or even openly contradictory their opinions may be. (20:59) we cannot doubt that such is the best system of government and open to the fewest objections, since it is the one most in harmony with human nature. (60) in a democracy (the most natural form of government, as we have shown in chapter xvi.) everyone submits to the control of authority over his actions, but not over his judgment and reason; that is, seeing that all cannot think alike, the voice of the majority has the force of law, subject to repeal if circumstances bring about a change of opinion. (61) in proportion as the power of free judgment is withheld we depart from the natural condition of mankind, and consequently the government becomes more tyrannical. [20:4] (62) in order to prove that from such freedom no inconvenience arises, which cannot easily be checked by the exercise of the sovereign power, and that men's actions can easily be kept in bounds, though their opinions be at open variance, it will be well to cite an example. (63) such an one is not very far to seek. (64) the city of amsterdam reaps the fruit of this freedom in its own great prosperity and in the admiration of all other people. (65) for in this most flourishing state, and most splendid city, men of every nation and religion live together in the greatest harmony, and ask no questions before trusting their goods to a fellowcitizen, save whether he be rich or poor, and whether he generally acts honestly, or the reverse. (20:66) his religion and sect is considered of no importance: for it has no effect before the judges in gaining or losing a cause, and there is no sect so despised that its followers, provided that they harm no one, pay every man his due, and live uprightly, are deprived of the protection of the magisterial authority. (20:67) on the other hand, when the religious controversy between remonstrants and counter-remonstrants began to be taken up by politicians and the states, it grew into a schism, and abundantly showed that laws dealing with religion and seeking to settle its controversies are much more calculated to irritate than to reform, and that they give rise to extreme licence: further, it was seen that schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy. (20:68) from all these considerations it is clearer than the sun at noonday, that the true schismatics are those who condemn other men's writings, and seditiously stir up the quarrelsome masses against their authors, rather than those authors themselves, who generally write only for the learned, and appeal solely to reason. (20:69) in fact, the real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over. (20:70) i have thus shown:i. (20:71) that it is impossible to deprive men of the liberty of saying what they think. ii. (20:72) that such liberty can be conceded to every man without injury to the rights and authority of the sovereign power, and that every man may retain it without injury to such rights, provided that he does not presume upon it to the extent of introducing any new rights into the state, or acting in any way contrary, to the existing laws. iii. (20:73) that every man may enjoy this liberty without detriment to the public peace, and that no inconveniences arise therefrom which cannot easily be checked. iv. (20:74) that every man may enjoy it without injury to his allegiance. v. (20:75)that laws dealing with speculative problems are entirely useless. vi. (20:76) lastly, that not only may such liberty be granted without prejudice to the public peace, to loyalty, and to the rights of rulers, but that it is even necessary for their preservation. (20:77) for when people try to take it away, and bring to trial, not only the acts which alone are capable of offending, but also the opinions of mankind, they only succeed in surrounding their victims with an appearance of martyrdom, and raise feelings of pity and revenge rather than of terror. (78) uprightness and good faith are thus corrupted, flatterers and traitors are encouraged, and sectarians triumph, inasmuch as concessions have been made to their animosity, and they have gained the state sanction for the doctrines of which they are the interpreters. (20:79) hence they arrogate to themselves the state authority and rights, and do not scruple to assert that they have been directly chosen by god, and that their laws are divine, whereas the laws of the state are human, and should therefore yield obedience to the laws of god in other words, to their own laws. (20:80) everyone must see that this is not a state of affairs conducive to public welfare. (81) wherefore, as we have shown in chapter xviii., the safest way for a state is to lay down the rule that religion is comprised solely in the exercise of charity and justice, and that the rights of rulers in sacred, no less than in secular matters, should merely have to do with actions, but that every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks. (20:82) i have thus fulfilled the task i set myself in this treatise. [20:5] (83) it remains only to call attention to the fact that i have written nothing which i do not most willingly submit to the examination and approval of my country's rulers; and that i am willing to retract anything which they shall decide to be repugnant to the laws, or prejudicial to the public good. (84) i know that i am a man, and as a man liable to error, but against error i have taken scrupulous care, and have striven to keep in entire accordance with the laws of my country, with loyalty, and with morality. end of part 4 of 4. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------[author's endnotes] to the theologico-political treatise chapter xvi. [endnote 26] (1) "no one can honestly promise to forego the right which he has over all things." (2) in the state of social life, where general right determines what is good or evil, stratagem is rightly distinguished as of two kinds, good and evil. (3) but in the state of nature, where every man is his own judge, possessing the absolute right to lay down laws for himself, to interpret them as he pleases, or to abrogate them if he thinks it convenient, it is not conceivable that stratagem should be evil. [endnote 27] (1) "every member of it may, if he will, be free." (2) whatever be the social state a man finds; himself in, he may be free. (3) for certainly a man is free, in so far as he is led by reason. (4) now reason (though hobbes thinks otherwise) is always on the side of peace, which cannot be attained unless the (5) therefore the more he is free, the more constantly will he respect the laws of his country, and obey the commands of the sovereign power to which he is subject. [endnote 28] (1) "no one knows by nature that he owes any obedience to god." (2) when paul says that men have in themselves no refuge, he speaks as a man: for in the ninth chapter of the same epistle he expressly teaches that god has mercy on whom he will, and that men are without excuse, only because they are in god's power like clay in the hands of a potter, who out of the same lump makes vessels, some for honour and some for dishonour, not because they have been forewarned. (3) as regards the divine natural law whereof the chief commandment is, as we have said, to love god, i have called it a law in the same sense, as philosophers style laws those general rules of nature, according to which everything happens. (4) for the love of god is not a state of obedience: it is a virtue which necessarily exists in a man who knows god rightly. (5) obedience has regard to the will of a ruler, not to necessity and truth. (6) now as we are ignorant of the nature of god's will, and on the other hand know that everything happens solely by god's power, we cannot, except through revelation, know whether god wishes in any way to be honoured as a sovereign. (7) again; we have shown that the divine rights appear to us in the light of rights or commands, only so long as we are ignorant of their cause: as soon as their cause is known, they cease to be rights, and we embrace them no longer as rights but as eternal truths; in other words, obedience passes into love of god, which emanates from true knowledge as necessarily as light emanates from the sun. (8) reason then leads us to love god, but cannot lead us to obey him; for we cannot embrace the commands of god as divine, while we are in ignorance of their cause, neither can we rationally conceive god as a sovereign laying down laws as a sovereign. chapter xvii. [endnote 29] (1) "if men could lose their natural rights so as to be absolutely unable for the future to oppose the will of the sovereign" (2) two common soldiers undertook to change the roman dominion, and did change it. (tacitus, hist. i:7.) [endnote 30] (1) see numbers xi. 28. in this passage it is written that two men prophesied in the camp, and that joshua wished to punish them. (2) this he would not have done, if it had been lawful for anyone to deliver the divine oracles to the people without the consent of moses. (3) but moses thought good to pardon the two men, and rebuked joshua for exhorting him to use his royal prerogative, at a time when he was so weary of reigning, that he preferred death to holding undivided sway (numb. xi:14). (4) for he made answer to joshua, "enviest thou for my sake? (5) would god that all the lord's people were prophets, and that the lord would put his spirit upon them." (6) that is to say, would god that the right of taking counsel of god were general, and the power were in the hands of the people. (7) thus joshua was not mistaken as to the right, but only as to the time for using it, for which he was rebuked by moses, in the same way as abishai was rebuked by david for counselling that shimei, who had undoubtedly been guilty of treason, should be put to death. (8) see 2 sam. xix:22, 23. [endnote 31] (1) see numbers xxvii:21. (2) the translators of the bible have rendered incorrectly verses 19 and 23 of this chapter. (3) the passage does not mean that moses gave precepts or advice to joshua, but that he made or established him chief of the hebrews. (4) the phrase is very frequent in scripture (see exodus, xviii:23; 1 sam. xiii:15; joshua i:9; 1 sam. xxv:80). [endnote 32] (1) "there was no judge over each of the captains save god." (2) the rabbis and some christians equally foolish pretend that the sanhedrin, called "the great" was instituted by moses. (3) as a matter of fact, moses chose seventy colleagues to assist him in governing, because he was not able to bear alone the burden of the whole people; but he never passed any law for forming a college of seventy members; on the contrary he ordered every tribe to appoint for itself, in the cities which god had given it, judges to settle disputes according to the laws which he himself had laid down. (4) in cases where the opinions of the judges differed as to the interpretation of these laws, moses bade them take counsel of the high priest (who was the chief interpreter of the law), or of the chief judge, to whom they were then subordinate (who had the right of consulting the high priest), and to decide the dispute in accordance with the answer obtained. (5) if any subordinate judge should assert, that he was not bound by the decision of the high priest, received either directly or through the chief of his state, such an one was to be put to death (deut. xvii:9) by the chief judge, whoever he might be, to whom he was a subordinate. (6) this chief judge would either be joshua, the supreme captain of the whole people, or one of the tribal chiefs who had been entrusted, after the division of the tribes, with the right of consulting the high priest concerning the affairs of his tribe, of deciding on peace or war, of fortifying towns, of appointing inferior judges, &c. (7) or, again, it might be the king, in whom all or some of the tribes had vested their rights. (8) i could cite many instances in confirmation of what i here advance. (9) i will confine myself to one, which appears to me the most important of all. (10) when the shilomitish prophet anointed jeroboam king, he, in so doing, gave him the right of consulting the high priest, of appointing judges, &c. (11) in fact he endowed him with all the rights over the ten tribes, which rehoboam retained over the two tribes. (12) consequently jeroboam could set up a supreme council in his court with as much right as jehoshaphat could at jerusalem (2 chron. xix:8). (13) for it is plain that neither jeroboam, who was king by god's command, nor jeroboam's subjects, were bound by the law of moses to accept the judgments of rehoboam, who was not their king. (14) still less were they under the jurisdiction of the judge, whom rehoboam had set up in jerusalem as subordinate to himself. (5) according, therefore, as the hebrew dominion was divided, so was a supreme council setup in each division. (16) those who neglect the variations in the constitution of the hebrew states, and confuse them all together in one, fall into numerous difficulties. chapter xix. [endnote 33] (1) i must here bespeak special attention for what was said in chap. xvi. concerning rights. end of part 4 of 4 endnotes. ____________________________________________________________________________ end of a theologico-political treatise part 4 "joseph b. yesselman" <jyselman@erols.com> august 26, 1997 the project gutenberg etext of cast upon the breakers, by alger #3 in our series by horatio alger copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. cast upon the breakers by horatio alger january, 1995 [etext #399] the project gutenberg etext of cast upon the breakers, by alger *****this file should be named cubrk10.txt or cubrk10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, cubrk11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, cubrk10a.txt. this etext created by charles keller we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $4 million dollars per hour this year as we release some eight text files per month: thus upping our productivity from $2 million. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* cast upon the breakers by horatio alger, jr. chapter i. a faithless guardian. "well, good by, rodney! i leave school tomorrow. i am going to learn a trade." "i am sorry to part with you, david. couldn't you stay another term?" "no: my uncle says i must be earning my living, and i have a chance to learn the carpenter's trade." "where are you going?" "to duffield, some twenty miles away. i wish i were in your shoes. you have no money cares, and can go on quietly and complete your education." "i don't know how i am situated, david. i only know that my guardian pays my expenses at this boarding school." "yes, you are a star boarder, and have the nicest room in the institution. i am only a poor day scholar. still i feel thankful that i have been allowed to remain as long as i have. who is your guardian?" "a mr. benjamin fielding, of new york." "is he a business man?" "i believe so." "do you know how much you will inherit when you come of age?" asked david, after a short pause. "i haven't an idea." "it seems to me your guardian ought to have told you." "i scarcely know my guardian. five years ago i spent a week at his home. i don't remember much about it except that he lives in a handsome house, and has plenty of servants. since then, as you know, i have passed most of my time here, except that in the summer i was allowed to board at the catkills or any country place i might select," "yes, and i remember one year you took me with you and paid all my expenses. i shall never forget your kindness, and how much i enjoyed that summer." rodney ropes smiled, and his smile made his usually grave face look very attractive. "my dear david," he said, "it was all selfishness on my part. i knew i should enjoy myself much better with a companion." "you may call that selfishness, rodney, but it is a kind of selfishness that makes me your devoted friend. how long do you think you shall remain at school?" "i don't know. my guardian has never told me his plans for me. i wish he would." "i shall miss you, rodney, but we will correspond, won't we?" "surely. you know i shall always feel interested in you and your welfare." david was a plain boy of humble parentage, and would probably be a hard working mechanic. in fact he was looking for nothing better. but rodney ropes looked to be of genteel blood, and had the air of one who had been brought up a gentleman. but different as they were in social position the two boys had always been devoted friends. the boarding school of which rodney was, as his friend expressed himself, a star pupil, was situated about fifty miles from the city of new york. it was under the charge of dr. sampson, a tall, thin man of fair scholarship, keenly alive to his own interest, who showed partiality for his richer pupils, and whenever he had occasion to censure bore most heavily upon boys like david hull, who was poor. rodney occupied alone the finest room in the school. there was a great contrast between his comfortable quarters and the extremely plain dormitories occupied by less favored pupils. in the case of some boys the favoritism of the teacher would have led them to put on airs, and made them unpopular with their school fellows. but rodney had too noble a nature to be influenced by such considerations. he enjoyed his comfortable room, but treated his school fellows with a frank cordiality that made him a general favorite. after david left his room rodney sat down to prepare a lesson in cicero, when he was interrupted by the entrance through the half open door of a younger boy. "rodney," he said, "the doctor would like to see you in his office." "very well, brauner, i will go down at once." he put aside his book and went down to the office of dr. sampson on the first floor. the doctor was sitting at his desk. he turned slightly as rodney entered. "take a seat, ropes," he said curtly. his tone was so different from his usual cordiality that rodney was somewhat surprised. "am i in disgrace?" he asked himself. "dr. sampson doesn't seem as friendly as usual." after a brief interval dr. sampson wheeled round in his office chair. "i have a letter for you from your guardian, ropes," he said. "here it is. do me the favor to read it here." with some wonder rodney took the letter and read as follows: dear rodney--i have bad news to communicate. as you know, i was left by your father in charge of you and your fortune. i have never told you the amount, but i will say now that it was about fifty thousand dollars. until two years since i kept it intact but then began a series of reverses in which my own fortune was swallowed up. in the hope of relieving myself i regret to say that i was tempted to use your money. that went also, and now of the whole sum there remains but enough to pay the balance of your school bills, leaving you penniless. how much i regret this i cannot tell you. i shall leave new york at once. i do not care at present to say where i shall go, but i shall try to make good the loss, and eventually restore to you your lost fortune. i may be successful or i may not. i shall do my best and i hope in time to have better news to communicate. one thing i am glad to say. i have a casket containing your mother's jewels. these are intact. i shall send you the casket by express, knowing that you will wish to keep them out of regard for your mother's memory. in case you are reduced to the necessity of pawning or selling them, i am sure that your mother, could she be consulted, would advise you to do so. this would be better than to have you suffer from want. there is nothing further for me to write except to repeat my regret, and renew my promise to make up your lost fortune if i shall ever to able to do so. your guardian, benjamin fielding. rodney read this like one dazed. in an instant he was reduced from the position of a favorite of fortune to a needy boy, with his living to make. he could not help recalling what had passed between his friend david and himself earlier in the day. now he was as poor as david--poorer, in fact for david had a chance to learn a trade that would yield him a living, while he was utterly without resources, except in having an unusually good education. "well," said dr. sampson, "have you read your letter?" "yes, sir." "your guardian wrote to me also. this is his letter," and he placed the brief epistle in rodney's hands. dr. sampson--i have written my ward, rodney ropes, an important letter which he will show you. the news which it contains will make it necessary for him to leave school. i inclose a check for one hundred and twenty five dollars. keep whatever is due you, and give him the balance. benjamin fielding. "i have read the letter, but i don't know what it means," said dr. sampson. "can you throw any light upon it?" "here is my letter, doctor. you can read it for yourself." dr. sampson's face changed as he read rodney's letter. it changed and hardened, and his expression became quite different from that to which rodney had been accustomed. "this is a bad business, ropes," said the doctor in a hard tone. he had always said rodney before. "yes, sir." "that was a handsome fortune which your father left you." "yes, sir. i never knew before how much it amounted to." "you only learn when you have lost it. mr. fielding has treated you shamefully." "yes, sir, i suppose he has, but he says he will try to make it up to me in the future." "pish! that is all humbug. even if he is favored by fortune you will never get back a cent." "i think i shall, sir." "you are young. you do not know the iniquities of business men. i do." "i prefer to hope for the best." "just as you please." "have you anything more to say to me?" "only that i will figure up your account and see how much money is to come to you out of the check your guardian has sent. you can stay here till monday; then you will find it best to make new arrangements." "very well, sir." rodney left the room, realizing that dr. sampson's feelings had been changed by his pupil's reverse of fortune. it was the way of the world, but it was not a pleasant way, and rodney felt depressed. chapter ii. the casket of jewels. it was not till the latter part of the afternoon that the casket arrived. rodney was occupied with a recitation, and it was only in the evening that he got an opportunity to open it. there was a pearl necklace, very handsome, a pair of bracelets, two gold chains, some minor articles of jewelry and a gold ring. a locket attracted rodney's notice, and he opened it. it contained the pictures of his father and mother. his father he could barely remember, his mother died before he was old enough to have her image impressed upon his memory. he examined the locket and his heart was saddened. he felt how different his life would have been had his parents lived. he had never before realized the sorrow of being alone in the world. misfortune had come upon him, and so far as he knew he had not a friend. even dr. sampson, who had been paid so much money on his account, and who had always professed so great friendship for him, had turned cold. as he was standing with the locket in his hand there was a knock at the door. "come in!" he called out. the door opened and a stout, coarse looking boy, dressed in an expensive manner, entered. "good evening, john," said rodney, but not cordially. next to himself, john bundy, who was the son of a wealthy saloon keeper in the city of new york, had been a favorite with dr. sampson. if there was anything dr. sampson bowed down to and respected it was wealth, and mr. bundy, senior, was reputed to be worth a considerable fortune. in rodney's mood john bundy was about the last person whom he wanted to see. "ha!" said john, espying the open casket, "where did you get all that jewelry?" "it contains my mother's jewels," said rodney gravely. "you never showed it to me before." "i never had it before. it came to me by express this afternoon." "it must be worth a good pile of money," said john, his eyes gleaming with cupidity. "i suppose it is." "have you any idea what it is worth?" "i have no thought about it." "what are you going to do with it? it won't be of use to you, especially the diamond earrings," he added, with a coarse laugh. "no," answered rodney shortly. "my eyes, wouldn't my mother like to own all this jewelry. she's fond of ornament, but pa won't buy them for her." rodney did not answer. "i say, ropes, i mustn't forget my errand. will you do me a favor?" "what is it?" "lend me five dollars till the first of next month. my allowance comes due then. now i haven't but a quarter left." "what makes you apply to me, bundy?" "because you always have money. i don't suppose you are worth as much as my father, but you have more money for yourself than i have." "i have had, perhaps, but i haven't now." "why, what's up? what has happened?" "i have lost my fortune." john whistled. this was his way of expressing amazement. "why, what have you been doing? how could you lose your fortune?" "my guardian has lost it for me. that amount to the same thing." "when did you hear that?" "this morning." "is that true? are you really a poor boy?" "yes." john bundy was astonished, but on the whole he was not saddened. in the estimation of the school rodney had always ranked higher than he, and been looked upon as the star pupil in point of wealth. now that he was dethroned john himself would take his place. this would be gratifying, though just at present, and till the beginning of the next month, he would be distressed for ready money. "well, that's a stunner!" he said. "how do you feel about it? shall you stay in school?" "no; i can't afford it. i must get to work." "isn't there anything left--not a cent?" "there may be a few dollars." "and then," said bundy with a sudden thought, "there is this casket of jewelry. you can sell it for a good deal of money." "i don't mean to sell it." "then you're a fool; that's all i've got to say." "i don't suppose you will understand my feeling in the matter, but these articles belonged to my mother. they are all i have to remind me of her. i do not mean to sell them unless it is absolutely necessary." "i would sell them quicker'n a wink," said bundy. "what's the good of keeping them?" "we won't discuss the matter," said rodney coldly. "do you mind my telling the other boys about your losing your money?" "no; it will be known tomorrow at any rate; there is no advantage in concealing it." a heavy step was heard outside. it stopped before the door. "i must be getting," said bundy, "or i'll get into trouble." it was against the rule at the school for boys to make calls upon each other in the evening unless permission were given. john bundy opened the door suddenly, and to his dismay found himself facing the rigid figure of dr. sampson, the principal. "how do you happen to be here, bundy?" asked the doctor sternly. "please, sir, i was sympathizing with ropes on his losing his money," said bundy with ready wit. "very well! i will excuse you this time." "i'm awful sorry for you, ropes," said bundy effusively. "thank you," responded rodney. "you can go now," said the principal. "i have a little business with master ropes." "all right, sir. good night." "good night." "won't you sit down, dr. sampson?" said rodney politely, and he took the casket from the chair. "yes, i wish to have five minutes' conversation with you. so these are the jewels, are they?" "yes, sir." "they seem to be quite valuable," went on the doctor, lifting the pearl necklace and poising it in his fingers. "it will be well for you to have them appraised by a jeweler." "it would, sir, if i wished to sell them, but i mean to keep them as they are." "i would hardly advise it. you will need the money. probably you do not know how near penniless you are." "no, sir; i don't know." "your guardian, as you are aware, sent me a check for one hundred and twenty five dollars. i have figured up how much of this sum is due to me, and i find it to be one hundred and thirteen dollars and thirty seven cents." "yes, sir," said rodney indifferently. "this leaves for you only eleven dollars and sixty three cents. you follow me, do you not?" "yes, sir." "have you any money saved up from your allowance?" "a few dollars only, sir." "ahem! that is a pity. you will need all you can raise. but of course you did not anticipate what has occurred?" "no, sir." "i will throw off the thirty seven cents," said the principal magnanimously, "and give you back twelve dollars." "i would rather pay you the whole amount of your bill," said rodney. "ahem! well perhaps that would be more business-like. so you don't wish to part with any of the jewelry, ropes?" "no, sir." "i thought, perhaps, by way of helping you, i would take the earrings, and perhaps the necklace, off your hands and present them to mrs. sampson." rodney shuddered with aversion at the idea of these precious articles, which had once belonged to his mother, being transferred to the stout and coarse featured consort of the principal. "i think i would rather keep them," he replied. "oh well, just as you please," said dr. sampson with a shade of disappointment for he had no idea of paying more than half what the articles were worth. "if the time comes when you wish to dispose of them let me know." rodney nodded, but did not answer in words. "of course, ropes," went on the doctor in a perfunctory way, "i am very sorry for you. i shall miss you, and, if i could afford it, i would tell you to stay without charge. but i am a poor man." "yes," said rodney hastily, "i understand. i thank you for your words but would not under any circumstances accept such a favor at your hands." "i am afraid you are proud, ropes. pride is--ahem--a wrong feeling." "perhaps so, dr. sampson, but i wish to earn my own living without being indebted to any one." "perhaps you are right, ropes. i dare say i should feel so myself. when do you propose leaving us?" "some time tomorrow, sir." "i shall feel sad to have you go. you have been here so long that you seem to me like a son. but we must submit to the dispensations of providence--" and dr. sampson blew a vigorous blast upon his red silk handkerchief. "i will give you the balance due in the morning." "very well, sir." rodney was glad to be left alone. he had no faith in dr. sampson's sympathy. the doctor had the reputation of being worth from thirty to forty thousand dollars, and his assumption of being a poor man rodney knew to be a sham. he went to bed early, for tomorrow was to be the beginning of a new life for him. chapter iii. a strange disappearance. when it was generally known in the school that rodney was to leave because he had lost his property much sympathy was felt and expressed for him. though he had received more than ordinary attention from the principal on account of his pecuniary position and expectations, this had not impaired his popularity. he never put on any airs and was on as cordial relations with the poorest student as with the richest. "i'm awfully sorry you're going, rodney," said more than one. "is it really true that you have lost your property?" "yes, it is true." "do you feel bad about it?" "i feel sorry, but not discouraged." "i say, rodney," said ernest rayner, in a low voice, calling rodney aside, "are you very short of money?" "i haven't much left, ernest." "because i received five dollars last week as a birthday present. i haven't spent any of it. you can have it as well as not." rodney was much moved. "my dear ernest," he said, putting his arm caressingly around the neck of the smaller boy, "you are a true friend. i won't forget your generous offer, though i don't need to accept it." "but are you sure you have money enough?" asked ernest. "yes, i have enough for the present. by the time i need more i shall have earned it." there was one boy, already introduced, john bundy, who did not share in the general feeling of sympathy for rodney. this was john bundy. he felt that rodney's departure would leave him the star pupil and give him the chief social position in school. as to scholarship he was not ambitious to stand high in that. "i say, ropes," he said complacently, "i'm to have your room after you're gone." "i congratulate you," returned rodney. "it is an excellent room." "yes, i s'pose it'll make you feel bad. where are you going?" "i hope you will enjoy it as much as i have done." "oh yes, i guess there's no doubt of that. i'm going to get pa to send me some nice pictures to hang on the wall. when you come back here on a visit you'll see how nice it looks." "i think it will be a good while before i come here on a visit." "yes. i s'pose it'll make you feel bad. where are you going?" "to the city of new york." "you'll have to live in a small hall bedroom there." "why will i?" "because you are poor, and it costs a good deal of money to live in new york. it'll be a great come down." "it will indeed, but if i can earn enough to support me in plain style i won't complain. i suppose you'll call and see me when you come to new york?" "perhaps so, if you don't live in a tenement house. pa objects to my going to tenement houses. there's no knowing what disease there may be in them." "it is well to be prudent" said rodney, smiling. it did not trouble him much to think he was not likely to receive a call from his quondan schoolmate. "here is the balance of your money, ropes," said dr. sampson, drawing a small roll of bills from his pocket, later in the day. "i am quite willing to give you the odd thirty seven cents." "thank you, doctor, but i shan't need it." "you are poorly provided. now i would pay you a good sum for some of your mother's jewelry, as i told you last evening." "thank you," said rodney hastily, "but i don't care to sell at present." "let me know when you are ready to dispose of the necklace." here the depot carriage appeared in the street outside and rodney with his gripsack in one hand and the precious casket in the other, climbed to a seat beside the driver. his trunk he left behind, promising to send for it when he had found a new boarding place. there was a chorus of good byes. rodney waved his handkerchief in general farewell, and the carriage started for the depot. "be you goin' for good?" asked joel, the driver, who knew rodney well and felt friendly to him. "yes, joel." "it's kind of sudden, isn't it?" "yes." "what makes you go?" "bad news, joel." "be any of your folks dead?" "it is not death. i haven't any `folks.' i'm alone in the world. it's because i've lost my property and am too poor to remain in school." "that's too bad," said the driver in a tone of sympathy. "where are you goin'?" "to the city." "are you goin' to work?" "yes, i shall have to." "if you was a little older you might get a chance to drive a street car, but i s'pose you're too young." "yes, i don't think they would take me." "i've thought sometimes i should like such a chance myself," said joel. "i've got tired of the country. i should like to live in the city where there's theaters, and shows, and such like. do you know what the drivers on street cars get?" "no, i never heard." "i wish you'd find out and let me know. you can send the letter to joel phipps, groveton. then find out if it's easy to get such a chance." "i will. i shall be glad to oblige you." "you always was obligin', rodney. i've asked jack bundy to do it--you know his folks live in the city--but he never would. he's a mighty disagreeable boy. he never liked you." "didn't he?" "no, i surmise he was jealous of you. he used to say you put on so many airs it made him sick." "i don't think any of the other boys would say that." "no, but they could say it of him. do you think his father is rich?" "i have always heard that he was." "i hope he's better about paying his debt than jack. i lent him twenty five cents a year ago and i never could get it back." the distance from the school to the station was a mile. joel fetched the carriage round with a sweep and then jumped off, opened the door, and then helped the passengers to disembark, if that word is allowable. "how soon does the train start, joel?" asked rodney. "in about five minutes." "then i had better purchase my ticket without delay." "don't forget to ask about horse car drivers!" "no, i won't. i should like to have you come to new york. i know no one there, and i should feel glad to see a familiar face." the train came up in time, and rodney was one of half a dozen passengers who entered the cars. he obtained a place next to a stout man dressed in a pepper and salt suit. "is this seat engaged?" asked rodney. "yes--to you," and his fellow passenger laughed. rodney laughed too, for he saw that the remark was meant to be jocose. he put his gripsack on the floor at his feet, but held the casket in his lap. he did not like to run any risk with that. "are you a drummer?" asked the stout man, with a glance at the casket. "no, sir." "i thought you might be, and that that might contain your samples." "no, sir. that is private property." he had thought of telling what it contained, but checked himself. he knew nothing of his companion, and was not sure how far it might be safe to trust a stranger. "i used to be a drummer myself--in the jewelry line--" continued his companion, "and i carried a box just like that." "ah, indeed! then you are not in that business now?" "no, i got tired of it. i deal in quite a different article now." "indeed?" "suburban lot." "you don't happen to have any of them with you?" the stout man roared with laughter, giving rodney the impression that he had said a very witty thing. "that's a good one," he remarked, "the best i've heard for a long time. no, i haven't any of the lots with me, but i've got a circular. just cast your eye over that," and he drew a large and showy prospectus from his pocket. "if you should be looking for a good investment," he continued, "you can't do any better than buy a lot at morton park. it is only eighteen miles from the city and is rapidly building up. you can buy lot on easy installments, and i will myself pick one out for you that is almost sure to double in value in a year or two." "thank you," said rodney, "but i shall have to invest my money, if i get any, in a different way." "as what for instance?" "in board and lodging." "good. that is even more necessary than real estate." "how long have you been in the business, sir?" "about six months." "and how does it pay?" "very well, if you know how to talk." "i should think you might do well, then." "thank you. i appreciate the compliment. what business are you going into, that is, if you are going to the city?" "i am going to the city, but i have no idea yet what i shall do." "perhaps you may like to become an agent for our lots. i shall be ready to employ you as sub agent if you feel disposed." "thank you, sir. if you will give me your card, i may call upon you." the short man drew from his card case a business card. it bore the name adin woods. royal building. nassau st. morton park lots. "come to see me at any time," he said, "and we will talk the matter over." here the train boy came along and rodney bought a copy of puck, while the agent resumed the perusal of a copy of a magazine. for an hour the cars ran smoothly. then there was a sudden shock causing all the passengers to start to their feet. "we're off the track!" shouted an excitable person in front of rodney. the instinct of self preservation is perhaps stronger than any other. rodney and his seat mate both jumped to their feet and hurried to the door of the car, not knowing what was in store for them. but fortunately the train had not been going rapidly. it was approaching a station and was "slowing up." so, though it had really run off the track, there was not likely to be any injury to the passengers. "we are safe," said adin woods. "the only harm done is the delay. i hope that won't be long. suppose we go back to our seat." they returned to the seat which they had jointly occupied. then rodney made an alarming discovery. "my casket!" he exclaimed. "where is it?" "what did you do with it?" "left it on the seat." "it may have fallen to the floor." rodney searched for it in feverish excitement, but his search was vain. the casket had disappeared! chapter iv. in pursuit of a thief. "were the contents of the casket valuable?" asked the land agent. "yes; it contained my mother's jewels, all the more valuable because she is dead," replied rodney. "were they of much intrinsic worth?" "they must be worth several hundred dollars at least." "then they must be found," said adin woods energetically. "they have evidently been taken by some passenger during the five minutes we were away from our seat." "were you inquiring about the casket?" asked a lady sitting opposite. "yes, madam. can you give any information about it?" "just after you left your seat the man that sat behind you rose and reaching over for it went to the rear end of the car and got out," "i wish you had stopped him, madam." "he was so cool about it that i thought he might be a friend of the young gentleman." "i didn't know him. he must have been a thief." "what was his appearance, madam?" asked the lot agent. "he was a thin, dark complexioned man, with side whiskers coming half way down his cheeks." "and you say he got out of the rear end of the car?" "yes, sir." "he won't get on the train again," said the agent turning to rodney. "he thinks the casket valuable enough to pay him for the interruption of his journey." "what shall i do then?" asked rodney, feeling helpless and at a loss which way to turn. "follow him," said the agent briefly. "he will probably stop over in the village a day and resume his joumey tomorrow." "even if i found him i am afraid i shouldn't know how to deal with him." "then i'll tell you what i'll do. i'll stop over with you and help you make it hot for him. i've had a spite against thieves ever since i had a valuable overcoat stolen in one of my journeys." "i shall feel very much obliged to you, mr. woods, but won't it interfere with your business?" "not materially. if we succeed in overhauling the rascal i shall feel sufficiently repaid for the small interruption. but come on, we can't afford to linger here while he is carrying off the plunder." "i don't know how i can repay you, mr. woods," said rodney gratefully. "you can buy a lot of me when you get rich enough." "i will certainly do so, though i am afraid it will be a long time first." "you don't know what good fortune may be in store for you. did you notice, madam, in which direction the thief went?" "yes, i was looking out of the window. he went over the road to the left." "that leads to the village. you will see, mr. ropes, that i was right about his plans." "don't call me mr. ropes. call me rodney." "i will. it don't seem natural to dub a boy mr. now, rodney, follow me." the two passengers set out on the road that led to the village. they could see the latter easily, for it was not more than a mile away. "he will be surprised to think we have `struck his trail' so quick," said the agent. "where shall we go first?" "to the hotel if there is one." "the village seems small." "yes, there are only a few hundred inhabitant probably. it is not a place where a traveler would be likely to interrupt his journey unless he had a special object in doing so, like our dishonest friend. however, i think we shall be able to balk his little game." ten minutes' walk brought them to the village. looking about they saw a small hotel just across the way from a neat white chapel. "follow me," said the agent. they went into the public room in which there was a small office. the book of arrivals was open, and adin woods went forward and examined it. silently he pointed to a name evidently just written, for the ink was scarcely dry. this was the name: louis wheeler, philadelphia. "this may or may not be his real name," said mr. woods in a low voice. "do you wish to register, gentlemen?" asked the clerk. "we will take dinner, and if we decide to stay will register later. by the way, i recognize this name, but it may not be the man i suppose." "yes, the gentleman just registered." "would you mind describing him?" "he was a tall, dark man as near as i can remember." "and he carried a small casket in his hand?" "yes, and a gripsack." "oh yes," said the agent his face lighting up with satisfaction. "it is the man i mean--where is he now?" "in his room." "did he say how long he intended to stay?" "no, sir. he said nothing about his plans." "did he seem specially careful about the casket?" "yes, sir. he carried that in his hands, but let the servant carry up the gripsack." "my friend," said the agent in an impressive tone, "i am going to surprise you." the country clerk looked all curiosity. "is it about mr. wheeler?" he asked. "yes, the man is a thief. he stole the casket, which contains valuable jewelry, from my young friend here. we are here to demand a return of the property or to arrest him. is there a policeman within call?" "i can summon a constable." "do so, but don't breathe a word of what i have told you." the clerk called a boy in from the street and gave him instructions in a low voice. he went at once on his errand, and in ten minutes a stout broad shouldered man made his appearance. "this gentleman sent for you, mr. barlow," said the clerk. "what can i do for you?" asked the constable. "help me to recover stolen property." "that i will do with pleasure if you will tell me what you want me to do." adin woods held a brief conference with the constable, then he led the way up stairs, followed immediately by rodney, while the constable kept a little behind. "his room is no. 9," said the bell boy. the agent paused before the door of no. 9, and knocked. "come in!" said a voice. the agent opened the door, and entered, accompanied by rodney. a glance showed that the occupant answered the description given by the lady in the car. louis wheeler changed color, for he recognized both the agent and rodney. "what is your business?" he asked in a tone which he tried to make indifferent. "that" answered woods, pointing to the jewel casket on the bureau. it looked to him as if wheeler, if that was his name, had been trying to open it. "i don't understand." "then i will try to make things clear to you. you have, doubtless by accident" he emphasized the last word, "taken from the car a casket belonging to my young friend here." "you are mistaken, sir," said wheeler with brazen hardihood. "that casket belongs to me." "indeed. what does it contain?" "i fail to see how that is any of your business," returned wheeler, determined, if possible, to bluff off his visitors. "i admire your cheek, sir. i really do. but i am too old a traveler to be taken in by such tricks. i propose to have that casket." "well, sir, you are the most impudent thief and burglar i ever met. you break into a gentleman's room, and undertake to carry off his private property. unless you go out at once, i will have you arrested." "that you can do very readily, for i have an officer within call." louis wheeler changed color. he began to see that the situation was getting serious. "there is a great mistake here," he said. "i agree with you." the agent went to the door, and called "constable barlow." the constable promptly presented himself. "do you want me, sir?" he asked. "that depends on this gentleman here. if he will peacefully restore to my young friend here yonder jewel casket i am willing to let him go. otherwise--" and he glanced at wheeler significantly. "perhaps i have made a mistake," admitted the thief. "i had a casket exactly like this. possibly i have taken the wrong one." "i have the key to the casket here," said rodney, "and i can tell you without opening it what it contains." "what did yours contain?" asked the agent. "jewelry," answered wheeler shortly. "what articles?" "never mind. i am inclined to think this casket belongs to the boy." "rodney, you can take it and mr. wheeler will probably find his where he left it." no objection was made, and the discomfited thief was left a prey to mortification and disappointment. rodney handed a dollar to the constable which that worthy official received with thanks, and he and the agent resumed their journey by an afternoon train. they saw nothing further of louis wheeler who sent for dinner to be served in his room. chapter v. a young financial wreck. "you have been very fortunate in recovering your jewels," said the agent. "i owe it to you," replied rodney gratefully. "well, perhaps so. if i have rendered you a service i am very glad." "and i am very glad to have found so good a friend. i hope you will let me pay for your ticket to new york." "it won't be necessary. the interruption of our journey won't invalidate the ticket we have." an hour later they reached new york. "what are your plans, rodney?" asked adin woods, who by this time had become quite intimate with his young companion. "i shall call on my guardian, and perhaps he may give me some advice as to what i do. where would you advise me to go--to a hotel?" "no; it will be too expensive. i know of a plain boarding house on west fourteenth street where you can be accommodated with lodging and two meals--breakfast and supper, or dinner as we call it here--for a dollar a day." "i shall be glad to go there, for the present, at least. i haven't much money, and must find something to do as soon as possible." "we will both go there, and if you don't object we will take a room together. that will give us a larger apartment. mrs. marcy is an old acquaintance of mine, and will give you a welcome." rodney was glad to accept his companion's proposal. they proceeded at once to the boarding house, and fortunately found a good room vacant on the third floor. mr. woods went out in the evening to make a call, but rodney was glad to go to bed at nine o'clock. the next morning after breakfast rodney consulted his companion as to what he should do with the casket. "do you want to raise money on it?" asked the agent. "no; i shall not do this unless i am obliged to." "have you any idea as to the value of the jewels?" "no." "then i will take you first to a jeweler in maiden lane, a friend of mine, who will appraise them. afterwards i advise you to deposit the casket at a storage warehouse, or get tiffany to keep it for you." "i will do as you suggest." maiden lane is a street largely devoted to jewelers, wholesale and retail. rodney followed mr. woods into a store about midway between broadway and nassau street. a pleasant looking man of middle age greeted the agent cordially. "what can i do for you?" he asked. "do you wish to buy a diamond ring for the future mrs. woods?" "not much. i would like to have you appraise some jewelry belonging to my young friend here." the casket was opened, and the jeweler examined the contents admiringly. "this is choice jewelry," he said. "does your friend wish to sell?" "not at present," answered rodney. "when you do give me a call. i will treat you fairly. you wish me to appraise these articles?" "yes, sir, if you will." "it will take me perhaps fifteen minutes." the jeweler retired to the back part of the store with the casket. in about a quarter of an hour he returned. "of course i can't give exact figures," he said, "but i value the jewelry at about twelve hundred dollars." rodney looked surprised. "i didn't think it so valuable," he said. "i don't mean that you could sell it for so much, but if you wish to dispose of it i will venture to give you eleven hundred." "thank you. if i decide to sell i will certainly come to you." "now," said the agent, "i advise you on the whole to store the casket with tiffany." "shall i have to pay storage in advance?" asked rodney anxiously. "i think not. the value of the jewels will be a sufficient guarantee that storage will be paid." rodney accompanied adin woods to the great jewelry store on the corner of fifteenth street and union square, and soon transacted his business. "now, you won't have any anxiety as to the safety of the casket," said the agent. "your friend of the train will find it difficult to get hold of the jewels. now i shall have to leave you, as i have some business to attend to. we will meet at supper." rodney decided to call at the office of his late guardian, benjamin fielding. it was in the lower part of the city. on his way down town he purchased a copy of a morning paper. almost the first article he glanced at proved to be of especial interest to him. it was headed skipped to canada rumors have been rife for some time affecting the busines standing of mr. benjamin fielding, the well known commission merchant. yesterday it was discovered that he had left the city, but where he has gone is unknown. it is believed that he is very deeply involved, and seeing no way out of his embarrassment has skipped to canada, or perhaps taken passage to europe. probably his creditors will appoint a committee to look into his affairs and report what can be done. later--an open letter has been found in mr. fielding's desk, addressed to his creditors. it expresses regret for their losses, and promises, if his life is spared, and fortune favors him, to do all in his power to make them good. no one doubts mr. fielding's integrity, and regrets are expressed that he did not remain in the city and help unravel the tangle in which his affairs are involved. he is a man of ability, and as he is still in the prime of life, it may be that he will be able to redeem his promises and pay his debts in full, if sufficient time is given him. "i can get no help or advice from mr. fielding," thought rodney. "i am thrown upon my own resources, and must fight the battle of life as well as i can alone." he got out in front of the astor house. as he left the car he soiled his shoes with the mud so characteristic of new york streets. "shine your boots?" asked a young arab, glancing with a business eye at rodney's spattered shoes. rodney accepted his offer, not so much because he thought the blacking would last, as for the opportunity of questioning the free and independent young citizen who was doing, what he hoped to do, that is, making a living for himself. "is business good with you?" asked rodney. "it ought to be with the street in this condition." "yes; me and de street commissioner is in league together. he makes business good for me." "and do you pay him a commission?" asked rodney smiling. "i can't tell no official secrets. it might be bad for me." "you are an original genius." "am i? i hope you ain't callin' me names." "oh no. i am only paying you a compliment. what is your name?" "mike flynn." "were do you live, mike?" "at the lodge." "i suppose you mean at the newsboys' `lodge?'" "yes." "how much do you have to pay there?" "six cents for lodgin', and six cents for supper and breakfast." "that is, six cents for each." "yes; you ain't comin' to live there, are you?" asked mike. "i don't know--i may have to." "you're jokin'." "what makes you think i am joking?" "because you're a swell. look at them clo'es!" "i have a good suit of clothes, to be sure, but i haven't much money. you are better off than i am." "how's that?" asked mike incredulously. "you've got work to do, and i am earning nothing." "if you've got money enough to buy a box and brush, you can go in with me." "i don't think i should like it, mike. it would spoil my clothes, and i am afraid i wouldn't have money enough to buy others." "i keep my dress suit at home--the one i wear to parties." "haven't you got any father or mother, mike? how does it happen that you are living in new york alone?" "my farder is dead, and me mudder, she married a man wot ain't no good. he'd bate me till i couldn't stand it. so i just run away." "where does your mother live?" "in albany." "some time when you earn money enough you can ask her to come here and live with you." "they don't take women at the lodge." "no, i suppose not," said rodney, smiling. "besides she's got two little girls by her new husband, and she wouldn't want to leave them." by this time the shine was completed, and rodney paid mike. "if i ever come to the lodge, i'll ask for you," he said. "where do you live now?" "i'm just staying at a place on fourteenth street, but i can't afford to stay there long, for they charge a dollar a day." "geewholliker, that would bust me, and make me a financial wreck as the papers say." "how did you lose your fortune and get reduced to blacking boots?" asked rodney jocosely. "i got scooped out of it in wall street," answered mike. "jay gould cleaned me out." "and i suppose now he has added your fortune to his." "you've hit it boss." "well, good day, mike, i'll see you again some day----" "all right! i'm in my office all de mornin'." chapter vi. an impudent adventurer. while rodney was talking with mike flynn he was an object of attention to a man who stood near the corner of barclay street, and was ostensibly looking in at the window of the drug store. as rodney turned away he recognized him at once as his enterprising fellow traveler who had taken possession of the casket of jewels. he did not care to keep up an acquaintance with him, and started to cross the street. but the other came forward smiling, and with a nod said: "i believe you are the young man i met yesterday in the cars and afterwards at kentville?" "yes, sir." "i just wanted to tell you that i had got back my jewel box, the one for which i mistook yours." "indeed!" said rodney, who did not believe a word the fellow said. "quite an amusing mistake, i made." "it might have proved serious to me." "very true, as i shouldn't have known where to find you to restore your property." "i don't think that would have troubled you much," thought rodney. "where did you find your box?" he asked. "in the car. that is, the conductor picked it up and left it at the depot for me. where are you staying here in the city? at the astor house?" "no, i have found a boarding house on west fourteenth street." "if it is a good place, i should like to go there. what is the number?" "i can't recall it, though i could find it," answered rodney with reserve, for he had no wish to have his railroad acquaintance in the house. "is the gentleman who was traveling with you there also?" "yes, sir." "he is a very pleasant gentleman, though he misjudged me. ha, ha! my friends will be very much amused when i tell them that i was taken for a thief. why, i venture to say that my box is more valuable than yours." "very likely," said rodney coldly. "good morning." "good morning. i hope we may meet again." rodney nodded, but he could not in sincerity echo the wish. he was now confronted by a serious problem. he had less than ten dollars in his pocketbook, and this would soon be swallowed up by the necessary expenses of life in a large city. what would he do when that was gone? it was clear that he must go to work as soon as possible. if his guardian had remained in the city, probably through his influence a situation might have been secured. now nothing was to be looked for in that quarter. he bought a morning paper and looked over the want column. he found two places within a short distance of the astor house, and called at each. one was in a railroad office. "my boy," said the manager, a pleasant looking man, "the place was taken hours since. you don't seem to get up very early in the morning." "i could get up at any hour that was necessary," replied rodney, "but i have only just made up my mind to apply for a position." "you won't meet with any luck today. it is too late. get up bright and early tomorrow morning, buy a paper, and make early application for any place that strikes you as desirable." "thank you, sir. i am sure your advice is good." "if you had been the first to call here, i should have taken you. i like your appearance better than that of the boy i have selected." "thank you, sir." "this boy may not prove satisfactory. call in six days, just before his week expires, and if there is likely to be a vacancy i will let you know." "thank you, sir. you are very kind." "i always sympathize with boys. i have two boys of my own." this conversation quite encouraged rodney. it seemed to promise success in the future. if he had probably impressed one man, he might be equally fortunate with another. it was about half past twelve when he passed through nassau street. all at once his arm was grasped, and a cheery voice said, "where are you going, rodney?" "mr. woods!" he exclaimed, with pleased recognition. "yes, it's your old friend woods." "you are not the only railroad friend i have met this morning." "who was the other?" "the gentleman who obligingly took care of my jewel box for a short time." "you don't mean to say you have met him? where did you come across him?" "in front of the astor house, almost two hours since." "did you speak to him?" "he spoke to me. you will be glad to hear that he has recovered his own casket of jewels." adin woods smiled. "he must think you are easily imposed upon," he said, "to believe any such story. anything more?" "he said his friends would be very much surprised to hear that he had been suspected of theft." "so he wanted to clear himself with you?" "yes; he asked where i was staying." "i hope you didn't tell him." "i only said i was at a boarding house on west fourteenth street, but didn't mention the number." "he thinks you have the casket with you, and that he may get possession of it. it is well that you stored it at tiffany's." "i think so. now i have no anxiety about it. do you think he will find out where we live?" "probably, as you gave him a clew. but, rodney, it is about lunch time, and i confess i have an appetite. come and lunch with me." "but i am afraid, mr. woods, i shall not be able to return the compliment." "there is no occasion for it. i feel in good humor this morning. i have sold one lot, and have hopes of disposing of another. the one lot pays me a commission of twenty dollars." "i wish i could make twenty dollars in a week." "sometimes i only sell one lot in a week. it isn't like a regular business. it is precarious. still, take the year through and i make a pretty good income. come in here. we can get a good lunch here," and he led the way into a modest restaurant, not far from the site of the old post office, which will be remembered by those whose residence in new york dates back twenty years or more. "now we will have a nice lunch," said the agent. "i hope you can do justice to it." "i generally can," responded rodney, smiling. "i am seldom troubled with a poor appetite." "ditto for me. now what have you been doing this morning?" "looking for a place." "with what success?" "pretty good if i had only been earlier." rodney told the story of his application to the manager of the railroad office. "you will know better next time. i think you'll succeed. i did. when i came to new york at the age of twenty two i had only fifty dollars. that small sum had to last me twelve weeks. you can judge that i didn't live on the fat of the land during that time. i couldn't often eat at delmonico's. even beefsteak john's would have been too expensive for me. however, those old days are over." the next day and the two following rodney went about the city making application for positions, but every place seemed full. on the third day mr. woods said, "i shall have to leave you for a week or more, rodney." "where are you going?" "to philadelphia. there's a man there who is a capitalist and likes land investments. i am going to visit him, and hope to sell him several lots. he once lived in this city, so he won't object to new york investments." "i hope you will succeed, mr. woods. i think if you are going away i had better give up the room, and find cheaper accommodations. i am getting near the end of my money." "you are right. it is best to be prudent." that evening rodney found a room which he could rent for two dollars a week. he estimated that by economy he could get along for fifty cents a day for his eating, and that would be a decided saving. he was just leaving the house the next morning, gripsack in hand, when on the steps he met louis wheeler, his acquaintance of the train. "where are you going?" asked wheeler. "i am leaving this house. i have hired a room elsewhere." wheeler's countenance fell, and he looked dismayed. "why, i have just taken a room here for a week," he said. "you will find it a good place." "but--i wouldn't have come here if i hadn't thought i should have company." "i ought to feel complimented." rodney was convinced that wheeler had come in the hopes of stealing the casket of jewels a second time, and he felt amused at the fellow's discomfiture. "you haven't got your jewel box with you?" "no, i can take that another time." "then it's still in the house," thought wheeler with satisfaction. "it won't be my fault if i don't get it in my hands. well, good morning," he said. "come around and call on me." "thank you!" chapter vii. at the newsboy's lodging house. within a week rodney had spent all his money, with the exception of about fifty cents. he had made every effort to obtain a place, but without success. boys born and bred in new york have within my observation tried for months to secure a position in vain, so it is not surprising that rodney who was a stranger proved equally unsuccessful. though naturally hopeful rodney became despondent. "there seems to be no place for me," he said to himself. "when i was at boarding school i had no idea how difficult it is for a boy to earn a living." he had one resource. he could withdraw the box of jewels from tiffany's, and sell some article that it contained. but this he had a great objection to doing. one thing was evident however, he must do something. his friend, the lot agent, was out of town, and he hardly knew whom to advise with. at last mike flynn, the friendly bootblack, whose acquaintance he had made in front of the astor house, occurred to him. mike, humble as he was, was better off than himself. moreover he was a new york boy, and knew more about "hustling" than rodney did. so he sought out mike in his "office." "good morning, mike," said rodney, as the bootblack was brushing off a customer. "oh, its you, rodney," said mike smiling with evident pleasure. "how you're gettin' on?" "not at all." "that's bad. can i help you? just say the word, and i'll draw a check for you on the park bank." "is that where you keep your money?" "it's one of my banks. you don't think i'd put all my spondulics in one bank, do you?" "i won't trouble you to draw a check this morning. i only want to ask some advice." "i've got plenty of that." "i haven't been able to get anything to do, and i have only fifty cents left. i can't go on like that." "that's so." "i've got to give up my room on fourteenth street. i can't pay for it any longer. do you think i could get in at the lodge?" "yes. i'll introduce you to mr. o'connor." "when shall i meet you?" "at five o'clock. we'll be in time for supper." "all right." at five o'clock mike accompanied rodney to the large newsboys' lodging house on new chambers street. mr. o'connor, the popular and efficient superintendent, now dead, looked in surprise at mike's companion. he was a stout man with a kindly face, and rodney felt that he would prove to be a friend. "mr. o'connor, let me introduce me friend, mr. rodney ropes," said mike. "could you give me a lodging?" asked rodney in an embarrassed tone. "yes; but i am surprised to see a boy of your appearance here." "i am surprised to be here myself," admitted rodney. the superintendent fixed upon him a shrewd, but kindly glance. "have you run away from home?" he asked. "no, sir. it is my home that has run away from me." "have you parents?" "no, sir." "do you come from the country?" "yes, sir." "where have you been living?" "at a boarding school a few hours from new york." "why did you leave it?" "because my guardian sent me word that he had lost my fortune, and could no longer pay my bills." "you have been unfortunate truly. what do you propose to do now?" "earn my living if i can. i have been in the city for about two weeks, and have applied at a good many places but in vain." "then you were right in coming here. supper is ready, and although it is not what you are used to, it will satisfy hunger. mike, you can take rodney with you." within five minutes rodney was standing at a long table with a bowl of coffee and a segment of bread before him. it wouldn't have been attractive to one brought up to good living, as was the case with him, but he was hungry. he had eaten nothing since morning except an apple which he had bought at a street stand for a penny, and his stomach urgently craved a fresh supply of food. mike stood next to him. the young bootblack, who was used to nothing better, ate his portion with zest, and glanced askance at rodney to see how he relished his supper. he was surprised to see that his more aristocratic companion seemed to enjoy it quite as much as himself. "i didn't think you'd like it" he said. "anything tastes good when you're hungry, mike." "that's so." "and i haven't eaten anything except an apple, since morning." "is dat so? why didn't you tell me? i'd have stood treat at de boss tweed eatin' house." "i had money, but i didn't dare to spend it. i was afraid of having nothing left." when rodney had eaten his supper he felt that he could have eaten more, but the craving was satisfied and he felt relieved. he looked around him with some curiosity, for he had never been in such a motley gathering before. there were perhaps one hundred and fifty boys recruited from the street, to about all of whom except himself the term street arab might be applied. the majority of them had the shrewd and good humored celtic face. many of them were fun loving and even mischievous, but scarcely any were really bad. naturally rodney, with his good clothes, attracted attention. the boys felt that he was not one of them, and they had a suspicion that he felt above them. "get on to de dude!" remarked one boy, who was loosely attired in a ragged shirt and tattered trousers. "he means me, mike," said rodney with a smile. "i say, patsy glenn, what do you mean by callin' me friend rodney a dude?" demanded mike angrily. "coz he's got a dandy suit on." "what if he has? wouldn't you wear one like it if you could!" "you bet!" "then just let him alone! he's just got back from de inauguration." "where'd you pick him up, mike?" "never mind! he's one of us. how much money have you got in your pocket rodney?" "thirty two cents." "he can't put on no frills wid dat money." "that's so. i take it all back," and patsy offered a begrimed hand to rodney, which the latter shook heartily with a pleasant smile. that turned the tide in favor of rodney, the boys gathered around him and he told his story in a few words. "i used to be rich, boys," he said, "but my guardian spent all my money, and now i am as poor as any of you." "you'd ought to have had me for your guardian, rodney," observed mike. "i wish you had. you wouldn't have lost my money for me." "true for you! i say so, boys, if we can find rodney's guardian, what'll we do to him?" "give him de grand bounce," suggested patsy. "drop him out of a high winder," said another. "what's his name?" "i don't care to tell you, boys. he's written me a letter, saying he will try to pay me back some day. i think he will. he isn't a bad man, but he has been unlucky." mike, at the request of mr. o'connor, showed rodney a locker in which he could store such articles of clothing as he had with him. after that he felt more at home, and as if he were staying at a hotel though an humble one. at eight o'clock some of the boys had already gone to bed, but mike and rodney were among those who remained up. rodney noticed with what kindness yet fairness the superintendent managed his unruly flock. unruly they might have been with a different man, but he had no trouble in keeping them within bounds. it was at this time that two strangers were announced, one a new york merchant named goodnow, the other a tall, slender man with sandy whiskers of the mutton chop pattern. "good evening, mr. goodnow," said the superintendent, who recognized the merchant as a friend of the society. "good evening, mr. o'connor. i have brought my friend and correspondent mr. mulgrave, of london, to see some of your young arabs." "i shall be glad to give him all the opportunity he desires." the englishman looked curiously at the faces of the boys who in turn were examining him with equal interest. "they are not unlike our boys of a similar grade, but seem sharper and more intelligent" he said. "but surely," pointing to rodney, "that boy is not one of the--arabs. why, he looks like a young gentleman." "he is a new comer. he only appeared tonight." "he must have a history. may i speak with him?" "by all means. rodney, this gentleman would like to talk with you." rodney came forward with the ease of a boy who was accustomed to good society, and said: "i shall be very happy to speak with him." chapter viii. rodney finds a place. "surely," said the englishman, "you were not brought up in the street?" "oh, no," answered rodney, "i was more fortunate." "then how does it happen that i find you here--among the needy boys of the city?" "because i am needy, too." "but you were not always poor?" "no; i inherited a moderate fortune from my father. it was only within a short time that i learned from my guardian that it was lost. i left the boarding school where i was being educated, and came to the city to try to make a living." "but surely your guardian would try to provide for you?" "he is no longer in the city." "who was he?" asked otis goodnow. "mr. benjamin fielding." "is it possible? why, i lost three thousand dollars by him. he has treated you shamefully." "it was not intentional, i am sure," said rodney. "he was probably drawn into using my money by the hope of retrieving himself. he wrote me that he hoped at some time to make restitution." "you speak of him generously, my lad," said mr. mulgrave. "yet he has brought you to absolute poverty." "yes, sir, and i won't pretend that it is not a hard trial to me, but if i can get a chance to earn my own living, i will not complain." "goodnow, a word with you," said the englishman, and he drew his friend aside. "can't you make room for this boy in your establishment?" otis goodnow hesitated. "at present there is no vacancy," he said. "make room for him, and draw upon me for his wages for the first six months." "i will do so, but before the end of that time i am sure he will justify my paying him out of my own pocket." there was a little further conference, and then the two gentlemen came up to where rodney was standing with mr. o'connor. "my boy," said mr. mulgrave, "my friend here will give you a place at five dollars a week. will that satisfy you?" rodney's face flushed with pleasure. "it will make me very happy," he said. "come round to my warehouse--here is my business card--tomorrow morning," said the merchant. "ask to see me." "at what time shall i call, sir?" "at half past nine o'clock. that is for the first morning. when you get to work you will have to be there at eight." "there will be no trouble about that, sir." "now it is my turn," said the englishman. "here are five dollars to keep you till your first week's wages come due. i dare say you will find them useful." "thank you very much, sir. i was almost out of money." after the two gentlemen left the lodging house rodney looked at the card and found that his new place of employment was situated on reade street not far from broadway. "it's you that's in luck, rodney," said his friend mike. "who'd think that a gentleman would come to the lodging house to give you a place?" "yes, i am in luck, mike, and now i'm going to make you a proposal." "what is it?" "why can't we take a room together? it will be better than living here." "sure you wouldn't room with a poor boy like me?" "why shouldn't i? you are a good friend, and i should like your company. besides i mean to help you get an education. i suppose you're not a first class scholar, mike?" "about fourth class, i guess, rodney." "then you shall study with me. then when you know a little more you may get a chance to get out of your present business, and get into a store." "that will be bully!" said mike with pleasure. "now we'd better go to bed; i must be up bright and early in the morning. we'll engage a room before i go to work." there was no difficulty about rising early. it is one of the rules of the lodging house for the boys to rise at six o'clock, and after a frugal breakfast of coffee and rolls they are expected to go out to their business whatever it may be. mike and rodney dispensed with the regulation breakfast and went out to a restaurant on park row where they fared better. "now where shall we go for a room?" asked rodney. "there's a feller i know has a good room on bleecker street," said mike. "how far is that?" "a little more'n a mile." "all right! let us go and see." bleecker street once stood in better repute than at present. it is said that a. t. stewart once made his home there. now it is given over to shops and cheap lodging houses. finally the boys found a room decently fumished, about ten feet square, of which the rental was two dollars and a half per week. mike succeeded in beating down the lodging house keeper to two dollars, and at that figure they engaged it. "when will you come?" asked mrs. mccarty. "right off," said mike. "i'll need a little time to put it in order." "me and my partner will be at our business till six o'clock," returned mike. "you can send in your trunks during the day if you like." "my trunk is at the windsor hotel," said mike. "i've lent it to a friend for a few days." mrs. mccarty looked at mike with a puzzled expression. she was one of those women who are slow to comprehend a joke, and she could not quite make it seem natural that her new lodger, who was in rather neglige costume, should be a guest at a fashionable hotel. "i will leave my valise," said rodney, "and will send for my trunk. it is in the country." mike looked at him, not feeling quite certain whether he was in earnest, but rodney was perfectly serious. "you're better off than me," said mike, when they reached the street. "if i had a trunk i wouldn't have anything to put into it." "i'll see if i can't rig you out, mike. i've got a good many clothes, bought when i was rich. you and i are about the same size. i'll give you a suit of clothes to wear on sundays." "will you?" exclaimed mike, his face showing pleasure. "i'd like to see how i look in good clo'es. i never wore any yet. it wouldn't do no good in my business." "you won't want to wear them when at work. but wouldn't you like to change your business?" "yes." "have you ever tried?" "what'd be the use of tryin'? they'd know i was a bootblack in these clo'es." "when you wear a better suit you can go round and try your luck." "i'd like to," said mike wistfully. "i don't want you to tell at the store that you room with a bootblack." "it isn't that i think of, mike. i want you to do better. i'm going to make a man of you." "i hope you are. sometimes i've thought i'd have to be a bootblack always. when do you think you'll get the clo'es?" "i shall write to the principal of the boarding school at once, asking him to forward my trunk by express. i want to economize a little this week, and shall have to pay the express charges." "i'll pay up my part of the rent, rodney, a quarter a day." rodney had advanced the whole sum, as mike was not in funds. "if you can't pay a dollar a week i will pay a little more than half." "there ain't no need. i'll pay my half and be glad to have a nice room." "i've got three or four pictures at the school, and some books. i'll send for them later on, and we'll fix up the room." "will you? we'll have a reg'lar bang up place. i tell you that'll be better than livin' at the lodge." "still that seems a very neat place. it is lucky for poor boys that they can get lodging so cheap." "but it isn't like havin' a room of your own, rodney. i say, when we're all fixed i'll ask some of me friends to come in some evenin' and take a look at us. they'll be s'prised." "certainly, mike. i shall be glad to see any of your friends." it may seem strange that rodney, carefully as he had been brought up, should have made a companion of mike, but he recognized in the warm hearted irish boy, illiterate as he was, sterling qualities, and he felt desirous of helping to educate him. he knew that he could always depend on his devoted friendship, and looked forward with pleasure to their more intimate companionship. after selecting their room and making arrangements to take possession of it, the boys went down town. rodney stepped into the reading room at the astor house and wrote the following letter to dr. sampson: dr. pliny sampson: dear sir--will you be kind enough to send my trunk by express to no. 312 bleecker street? i have taken a room there, and that will be my home for the present. i have obtained a position in a wholesale house on reade street, and hope i may give satisfaction. will you remember me with best wishes to all the boys? i don't expect to have so easy or pleasant a time as i had at school, but i hope to get on, and some time--perhaps in the summer--to make you a short visit. yours truly, rodney ropes. chapter ix. the first day at work. a little before half past nine rodney paused in front of a large five story building on reade street occupied by otis goodnow. he entered and found the first floor occupied by quite a large number of clerks and salesmen, and well filled with goods. "well, young fellow, what can i do for you?" asked a dapper looking clerk. "i would like to see mr. goodnow." "he's reading his letters. he won't see you." rodney was provoked. "do you decide who is to see him?" he asked. "you're impudent, young feller." "am i? perhaps you will allow mr. goodnow to see me, as long as he told me to call here this morning." "that's a different thing," returned the other in a different tone. "if you're sure about that you can go to the office in the back part of the room." rodney followed directions and found himself at the entrance of a room which had been partitioned off for the use of the head of the firm. mr. goodnow was seated at a desk with his back to him, and was employed in opening letters. without turning round he said, "sit down and i will attend to you in a few minutes." rodney seated himself on a chair near the door. in about ten minutes mr. goodnow turned around. "who is it?" he asked. "perhaps you remember telling me to call at half past nine. you saw me at the newsboys' lodging house." "ah, yes, i remember. i promised my friend mulgrave that i would give you a place. what can you do? are you a good writer?" "shall i give you a specimen of my handwriting?" "yes; sit down at that desk." it was a desk adjoining his own. rodney seated himself and wrote in a firm, clear, neat hand: "i will endeavor to give satisfaction, if you are kind enough to give me a place in your establishment." then he passed over the paper to the merchant. "ah, very good!" said mr. goodnow approvingly. "you won't be expected to do any writing yet but i like to take into my store those who are qualified for promotion." he rang a little bell on his desk. a boy about two years older than rodney answered the summons. "send mr. james here," said the merchant. mr. james, a sandy complexioned man, partially bald, made his appearance. "mr. james," said the merchant, "i have taken this boy into my employ. i don't know if one is needed, but it is at the request of a friend. you can send him on errands, or employ him in any other way." "very well, sir. i can find something for him to do today at any rate, as young johnson hasn't shown up." "very well. whats your name, my lad?" "rodney ropes." "make a note of his name, mr. james, and enter it in the books. you may go with mr. james, and put yourself at his disposal." rodney followed the subordinate, who was the head of one of the departments, to the second floor. here mr. james had a desk. "wait a minute," he said, "and i will give you a memorandum of places to call at." in five minutes a memorandum containing a list of three places was given to rodney, with brief instructions as to what he was to do at each. they were places not far away, and fortunately rodney had a general idea as to where they were. in his search for positions he had made a study of the lower part of the city which now stood him in good stead. as he walked towards the door he attracted the attention of the young clerk with whom he had just spoken. "well, did you see mr. goodnow?" asked the young man, stroking a sickly looking mustache. "yes." "has he taken you into the firm?" "not yet, but he has given me a place." the clerk whistled. "so you are one of us?" he said. "yes," answered rodney with a smile. "then you ought to know the rules of the house." "you can tell me later on, but now i am going out on an errand." in about an hour rodney returned. he had been detained at two of the places where he called. "do you remember what i said?" asked the young clerk as he passed. "yes." "the first rule of the establishment is for a new hand to treat me on his first day." "that's pretty good for you," said rodney, laughing; "i shall have to wait till my pay is raised." about the middle of the afternoon, as rodney was helping to unpack a crate of goods, the older boy whom he had already seen in the office below, walked up to him and said, "is your name ropes?" "yes." "you are wanted in mr. goodnow's office." rodney went down stairs, feeling a little nervous. had he done wrong, and was he to be reprimanded? he could think of nothing deserving censure. so far as he knew he had attended faithfully to all the duties required of him. as he entered the office, he saw that mr. goodnow had a visitor, whose face looked familiar to him. he recalled it immediately as the face of the english gentleman who had visited the lodging house the day previous with his employer. "so i find you at work?" he said, offering his hand with a smile. "yes, sir," answered rodney gratefully, "thanks to you." "how do you think you will like it?" "very much, sir. it is so much better than going around the street with nothing to do." "i hope you will try to give satisfaction to my friend, mr. goodnow." "i shall try to do so, sir." "you mustn't expect to rise to be head salesman in a year. festina lente, as the latin poet has it." "i shall be satisfied with hastening slowly, sir." "what! you understand latin?" "pretty well, sir." "upon my word, i didn't expect to find a boy in the news boys' lodging house with classical attainments. perhaps you know something of greek also!" he said doubtfully. in reply rodney repeated the first line of the iliad. "astonishing!" exclaimed mr. mulgrave, putting up his eyeglass, and surveying rodney as if he were a curious specimen. "you don't happen to know anything of sanscrit, do you?" "no, sir; i confess my ignorance." "i apprehend you won't require it in my friend goodnow's establishment." "if i do, i will learn it," said rodney, rather enjoying the joke. "if i write a book about america, i shall certainly put in a paragraph about a learned office boy. i think you are entitled to something for your knowledge of greek and latin--say five dollars apiece," and mr. mulgrave drew from his pocket two gold pieces and handed them to rodney. "thank you very much, sir," said rodney. "i shall find this money very useful, as i have taken a room, and am setting up housekeeping." "then you have left the lodging house?" "yes, sir; i only spent one night there." "you are right. it is no doubt a great blessing to the needy street boys, but you belong to a different class." "it is very fortunate i went there last evening, or i should not have met you and mr. goodnow." "i am glad to have been the means of doing you a service," said the englishman kindly, shaking hands with rodney, who bowed and went back to his work. "i am not sure but you are taking too much notice of that boy, mulgrave," said the merchant. "no fear! he is not a common boy. you won't regret employing him." "i hope not." then they talked of other matters, for mr. mulgrave was to start on his return to england the following day. at five o'clock rodney's day was over, and he went back to bleecker street. he found mike already there, working hard to get his hands clean, soiled as they were by the stains of blacking. "did you have a good day, mike?" asked rodney. "yes; i made a dollar and ten cents. here's a quarter towards the rent." "all right! i see you are prompt in money matters." "i try to be. do you know, rodney, i worked better for feelin' that i had a room of my own to go to after i got through. i hope i'll soon be able to get into a different business." "i hope so, too." two days later rodney's trunk arrived. in the evening he opened it. he took out a dark mixed suit about half worn, and said, "try that on, mike." mike did so. it fitted as if it were made for him. "you can have it, mike," said rodney. "you don't mean it?" exclaimed mike, delighted. "yes, i do. i have plenty of others." rodney supplemented his gift by a present of underclothing, and on the following sunday the two boys went to central park in the afternoon, mike so transformed that some of his street friends passed him without recognition, much to mike's delight. chapter x. mike puts on a uniform. a wonderful change came over mike flynn. until he met rodney he seemed quite destitute of ambition. the ragged and dirty suit which he wore as bootblack were the best he had. his face and hands generally bore the marks of his business, and as long as he made enough to buy three meals a day, two taken at the lodging house, with something over for lodging, and an occasional visit to a cheap theater, he was satisfied. he was fifteen, and had never given a thought to what he would do when he was older. but after meeting rodney, and especially after taking a room with him, he looked at life with different eyes. he began to understand that his business, though honorable because honest, was not a desirable one. he felt, too, that he ought to change it out of regard for rodney, who was now his close companion. "if i had ten dollars ahead," he said one day, "i'd give up blackin' boots." "what else would you do?" "i'd be a telegraph boy. that's more respectable than blackin' boots, and it 'ould be cleaner." "that is true. do you need money to join?" "i would get paid once in two weeks, and i'd have to live till i got my first salary." "i guess i can see you through, mike." "no; you need all your money, rodney. i'll wait and see if i can't save it myself." this, however, would have taken a long time, if mike had not been favored by circumstances. he was standing near the ladies' entrance to the astor house one day, when casting his eyes downward he espied a neat pocketbook of russia leather. he picked it up, and from the feeling judged that it must be well filled. now i must admit that it did occur to mike that he could divert to his own use the contents without detection, as no one had seen him pick it up. but mike was by instinct an honest boy, and he decided that this would not be right. he thrust it into his pocket, however, as he had no objection to receiving a reward if one was offered. while he was standing near the entrance, a tall lady, dressed in brown silk and wearing glasses, walked up from the direction of broadway. she began to peer about like one who was looking for something. "i guess its hers," thought mike. "are you looking for anything, ma'am?" he asked. she turned and glanced at mike. "i think i must have dropped my pocketbook," she said. "i had it in my hand when i left the hotel, but i had something on my mind and i think i must have dropped it without noticing. won't you help me look for it, for i am short sighted?" "is this it?" asked mike, producing the pocketbook. "oh yes!" exclaimed the lady joyfully. "where did you find it?" "just here," answered mike, indicating a place on the sidewalk. "i suppose there is a good deal of money in it?" said mike, with pardonable curiosity. "then you didn't open it?" "no, ma'am, i didn't have a chance. i just found it." "there may be forty or fifty dollars, but it isn't on that account i should have regretted losing it. it contained a receipt for a thousand dollars which i am to use in a law suit. that is very important for it will defeat a dishonest claim for money that i have already paid." "then i'm glad i found it." "you are an honest boy. you seem to be a poor boy also." "that's true, ma'am. if i was rich i wouldn't black boots for a livin'." "dear me, you are one of the young street arabs i've read about," and the lady looked curiously at mike through her glasses. "i expect i am." "and i suppose you haven't much money." "my bank account is very low, ma'am." "i've read a book about a boy named `ragged dick.' i think he was a bootblack, too. do you know him?" "he's my cousin, ma'am," answered mike promptly. it will be observed that i don't represent mike as possessed of all the virtues. "dear me, how interesting. i bought the book for my little nephew. now i can tell him i have seen `ragged dick's' cousin. where is dick now?" "he's reformed, ma'am." "reformed?" "yes, from blackin' boots. he's in better business now." "if i should give you some of the money in this pocketbook, you wouldn't spend it on drinking and gambling, would you?" "no, ma'am. i'd reform like my cousin, ragged dick." "you look like a good truthful boy. here are ten dollars for you." "oh, thank you, ma'am! you're a gentleman," said mike overjoyed. "no, i don't mean that but i hope you'll soon get a handsome husband." "my young friend, i don't care to marry, though i appreciate your good wishes. i am an old maid from principle. i am an officer of the female suffrage association." "is it a good payin' office, ma'am?" asked mike, visibly impressed. "no, but it is a position of responsibility. please tell me your name that i may make a note of it." "my name is michael flynn." "i see. you are of celtic extraction." "i don't know, ma'am. i never heard that i was. it isn't anything bad, is it?" "not at all. i have some celtic blood in my own veins. if you ever come to boston you can inquire for miss pauline peabody." "thank you, ma'am," said mike, who thought the lady rather a "queer lot." "now i must call upon my lawyer, and leave the receipt which i came so near losing." "well, i'm in luck," thought mike. "i'll go home and dress up, and apply for a position as telegraph boy." when rodney came home at supper time he found mike, dressed in his sunday suit. "what's up now, mike?" he asked. "have you retired from business?" "yes, from the bootblack business. tomorrow i shall be a telegraph boy." "that is good. you haven't saved up ten dollars, have you?" "i saved up two, and a lady gave me ten dollars for findin' her pocketbook." "that's fine, mike." there chanced to be a special demand for telegraph boys at that time, and mike, who was a sharp lad, on passing the necessary examination, was at once set to work. he was immensely fond of his blue uniform when he first put it on, and felt that he had risen in the social scale. true, his earnings did not average as much, but he was content with smaller pay, since the duties were more agreeable. in the evenings under rodney's instruction he devoted an hour and sometimes two to the task of making up the deficiencies in his early education. these were extensive, but mike was naturally a smart boy, and after a while began to improve rapidly. so three months passed. rodney stood well in with mr. goodnow, and was promoted to stock clerk. the discipline which he had revived as a student stood him in good stead, and enabled him to make more rapid advancement than some who had been longer in the employ of the firm. in particular he was promoted over the head of jasper redwood, a boy two years older than himself, who was the nephew of an old employee who had been for fifteen years in the house. jasper's jealousy was aroused, and he conceived a great dislike for rodney, of which rodney was only partially aware. for this dislike there was really no cause. rodney stood in his way only because jasper neglected his duties, and failed to inspire confidence. he was a boy who liked to spend money and found his salary insufficient, though he lived with his uncle and paid but two dollars a week for his board. "uncle james," he said one day, "when do you think i will get a raise?" "you might get one now if it were not for the new boy." "you mean ropes." "yes, he has just been promoted to a place which i hoped to get for you." "it is mean," grumbled jasper. "i have been here longer than he." "true, but he seems to be mr. goodnow's pet. it was an unlucky day for you when he got a place in the establishment." "did you ask mr. goodnow to promote me?" "yes, but he said he had decided to give archer's place to ropes." archer was a young clerk who was obliged, on account of pulmonary weakness, to leave new york and go to southern california. "how much does ropes get now?" "seven dollars a week." "and i only get five, and i am two years older. they ought to have more regard for you, uncle james, or i, as your nephew, would get promoted." "i will see what we can do about it." "i wish ropes would get into some scrape and get discharged." it was a new idea, but jasper dwelt upon it, and out of it grew trouble for rodney. chapter xi. missing goods. james redwood was summoned one morning to the counting room of his employer. "mr. redwood," said the merchant "i have reason to think that one of my clerks is dishonest." "who, sir?" "that is what i want you to find out." "what reason have you for suspecting any one?" "some ladies' cloaks and some dress patterns are missing." "are you sure they were not sold?" "yes: the record of sales has been examined, and they are not included." "that is strange, mr. goodnow" said redwood thoughtfully. "i hope i am not under suspicion." "oh, not at all." "the losses seem to have taken place in my department." "true, but that doesn't involve you." "what do you want me to do?" "watch those under you. let nothing in your manner, however, suggest that you are suspicious. i don't want you to put any one on his guard." "all right, sir. i will be guided by your instructions. have you any idea how long this has been going on?" "only a few weeks." mr. redwood turned to go back to his room, but mr. goodnow called him back. "i needn't suggest to you," he said, "that you keep this to yourself. don't let any clerk into the secret." "very well, sir." james redwood, however, did not keep his promise. after supper he called back jasper as he was about putting on his hat to go out, and said, "jasper, i wish to speak with you for five minutes." "won't it do tomorrow morning? i have an engagement." "put it off, then. this is a matter of importance." "very well, sir," and jasper, albeit reluctantly, laid down his hat and sat down. "jasper," said his uncle, "there's a thief in our establishment." jasper started, and his sallow complexion turned yellower than usual. "what do you mean, uncle?" he asked nervously. "what i say. some articles are missing that have not been sold." "such as what?" "ladies' cloaks and dress patterns." "who told you?" asked jasper in a low tone. "mr. goodnow." "what the boss?" "certainly." "how should he know?" "i didn't inquire, and if i had he probably wouldn't have told me. the main thing is that he does know." "he may not be sure." "he is not a man to speak unless he feels pretty sure." "i don't see how any one could steal the articles without being detected." "it seems they are detected." "did--did mr. goodnow mention any names?" "no. he wants to watch and find out the thief. i wish you to help me, though i am acting against instructions. mr. goodnow asked me to take no one into my confidence. you will see, therefore, that it will be necessary for you to say nothing." "i won't breathe a word," said jasper, who seemed to feel more at ease. "now that i have told you so much, can you suggest any person who would be likely to commit the theft?" jasper remained silent for a moment, then with a smile of malicious satisfaction said, "yes, i can suggest a person." "who is it?" "the new boy, rodney ropes." james redwood shook his head. "i can't believe that it is he. i am not in love with the young fellow, who seems to stand in the way of your advancement but he seems straight enough, and i don't think it at all likely that he should be the guilty person." "yes, uncle james, he seems straight but you know that still waters run deep." "have you seen anything that would indicate guilt on his part?" "i have noticed this, that, he is very well dressed for a boy of his small salary, and seems always to have money to spend." "that will count for something. still he might have some outide means. have you noticed anything else?" jasper hesitated. "i noticed one evening when he left the store that he had a sizable parcel under his arm." "and you think it might have contained some article stolen from the stock?" "that's just what i think now. nothing of the kind occurred to me at that time, for i didn't know any articles were missing." "that seems important. when was it that you noticed this?" "one day last week," answered jasper hesitatingly. "can you remember the day?" "no." "couldn't you fix it some way?" "no. you see, i didn't attach any particular importance to it at the time, and probably it would not have occurred to me again, but for your mentioning that articles were missing." "there may be something in what you say," said his uncle thoughtfully. "i will take special notice of young ropes after this." "so will i." "don't let him observe that he is watched. it would defeat our chances of detecting the thief." "i'll be careful. do you want to say anything more, uncle?" "no. by the way, where were you going this evening?" "i was going to meet a friend, and perhaps go to the theater. you couldn't lend me a dollar, could you, uncle james?" "yes, i could, but you are not quite able to pay for your own pleasures. it costs all my salary to live, and its going to be worse next year, for i shall have to pay a higher rent." "when i have my pay raised, i can get along better." "if ropes loses his place, you will probably step into it." "then i hope he'll go, and that soon." when jasper passed through the front door and stood on the sidewalk, he breathed a sigh of relief. "so, they are on to us," he said to himself. "but how was it found out? that's what i'd like to know. i have been very careful. i must see carton at once." a short walk took him to a billiard room not far from broadway. a young man of twenty five, with a slight mustache, and a thin, dark face, was selecting a cue. "ah, jasper!" he said. "come at last. let us have a game of pool." "not just yet. come outide. i want to speak to you." jasper looked serious, and philip carton, observing it, made no remonstrance, but taking his hat, followed him out. "well, what is it?" he asked. "something serious. it is discovered at the store that goods are missing." "you don't mean it? are we suspected?" "no one is suspected--yet." "but how do you know?" "my uncle spoke to me about it this evening--just after supper." "he doesn't think you are in it." "no." "how did he find out?" "through the boss. goodnow spoke to him about it today." "but how should goodnow know anything about it?" "that no one can tell but himself. he asked uncle james to watch the clerks, and see if he could fasten the theft on any of them." "that is pleasant for us. it is well we are informed so that we can be on our guard. i am afraid our game is up." "for the present at any rate we must suspend operations. now, have you some money for me?" "well, a little." "a little? why there are two cloaks and a silk dress pattern to be accounted for." "true, but i have to be very careful. i have to submit to a big discount for the parties i sell to undoubtedly suspect that the articles are stolen." "wouldn't it be better to pawn them?" "it would be more dangerous. besides you know how liberal pawnbrokers are. i'll tell you what would be better. if i had a sufficient number of articles to warrant it, i could take them on to boston or philadelphia, and there would be less risk selling them there." "that is true. i wish we had thought of that before. now we shall have to give up the business for a time. how much money have you got for me?" "seven dollars." "seven dollars!" exclaimed jasper in disgust. "why, that is ridiculous. the articles must have been worth at retail a hundred dollars." "perhaps so, but i only got fourteen for them. if you think you can do any better you may sell them yourself next time." "i thought i should assuredly get fifteen dollars out of it," said jasper, looking deeply disappointed. "i had a use for the money too." "very likely. so had i." "well, i suppose i must make it do. listen and i will tell you how i think i can turn this thing to my advantage." "go ahead!" chapter xii. what was found in rodney's room. "there is a boy who stands between me and promotion," continued jasper, speaking in a low tone. "the boy you mentioned the other day?" "yes, rodney ropes. mr. goodnow got him from i don't know where, and has taken a ridiculous fancy to him. he has been put over my head and his pay raised, though i have been in the store longer than he. my idea is to connect him with the thefts and get him discharged." "do you mean that we are to make him a confederate?" "no," answered jasper impatiently. "he would be just the fellow to peach and get us all into trouble." "then what do you mean?" "to direct suspicion towards him. we won't do it immediately, but within a week or two. it would do me good to have him turned out of the store." jasper proceeded to explain his idea more fully, and his companion pronounced it very clever. meanwhile rodney, not suspecting the conspiracy to deprive him of his place and his good name, worked zealously, encouraged by his promotion, and resolved to make a place for himself which should insure him a permanent connection with the firm. ten days passed, and mr. redwood again received a summons from the office. entering, he found mr. goodnow with a letter in his hand. "well, mr. redwood," he began, "have you got any clew to the party who has stolen our goods?" "no, sir." "has any thing been taken since i spoke with you on the subject?" "not that i am aware of." "has any one of the clerks attracted your attention by suspicious conduct?" "no, sir," answered redwood, puzzled. "humph! cast your eye over this letter." james redwood took the letter, which was written in a fine hand, and read as follow: mr. goodnow: dear sir,--i don't know whether you are aware that articles have been taken from your stock, say, ladies' cloaks and silk dress patterns, and disposed of outside. i will not tell you how it has come to my knowledge, for i do not want to get any one's ill will, but i will say, to begin with, that they were taken by one of your employees, and the one, perhaps, that you would least suspect, for i am told that he is a favorite of yours. i may as well say that it is rodney ropes. i live near him, and last evening i saw him carry a bundle to his room when he went back from the store. i think if you would send round today when he is out, you would find in his room one or more of the stolen articles. i don't want to get him into trouble, but i don't like to see you robbed, and so i tell you what i know. a friend. mr. redwood read this letter attentively, arching his brows, perhaps to indicate his surprise. then he read it again carefully. "what do you think of it?" asked the merchant. "i don't know," answered redwood slowly. "have you ever seen anything suspicious in the conduct of young ropes?" "i can't say i have. on the contrary, he seems to be a very diligent and industrious clerk." "but about his honesty." "i fancied him the soul of honesty." "so did i, but of course we are liable to be deceived. it wouldn't be the first case where seeming honesty has been a cover for flagrant dishonesty." "what do you wish me to do, mr. goodnow? shall i send ropes down to you?" "no; it would only give him a chance, if guilty, to cover up his dishonesty." "i am ready to follow your instructions." "do you know where he lodges?" "yes, sir." "then i will ask you to go around there, and by some means gain admission to his room. if he has any of our goods secreted take possession of them and report to me." "very well, sir." half an hour later mrs. mccarty, rodney's landlady, in response to a ring admitted mr. james redwood. "does a young man named ropes lodge here?" he asked. "yes, sir." "i come from the house where he is employed. he has inadvertently left in his room a parcel belonging to us, and i should be glad if you would allow me to go up to his room and take it." "you see, sir," said mrs. mccarty in a tone of hesitation, "while you look like a perfect gentleman, i don't know you, and i am not sure whether, in justice to mr. ropes, i ought to admit you to his room." "you are quite right my good lady; i am sure. it is just what i should wish my own landlady to do. i will therefore ask you to go up to the room with me to see that all is right." "that seems all right, sir. in that case i don't object. follow me, if you please." as they entered rodney's room mr. redwood looked about him inquisitively. one article at once fixed his attention. it was a parcel wrapped in brown paper lying on the bed. "this is the parcel, i think," he said. "if you will allow me i will open it, to make sure." mrs. mccarty looked undecided, but as she said nothing in opposition mr. redwood unfastened the strings and unrolled the bundle. his eyes lighted up with satisfaction as he disclosed the contents--a lady's cloak. mrs. mccarty looked surprised. "why, it's a lady's cloak," she said, "and a very handsome one. what would mr. ropes want of such a thing as that?" "perhaps he intended to make you a present of it." "no, he can't afford to make such present." "the explanation is simple. it belongs to the store. perhaps mr. ropes left it here inadvertently." "but he hasn't been here since morning." "he has a pass key to the front door?" "yes, sir." "then he may have been here. would you object to my taking it?" "yes, sir, you see i don't know you." "your objection is a proper one. then i will trouble you to take a look at the cloak, so that you would know it again." "certainly, sir. i shall remember it!" "that is all, mrs. ----?" "mccarty, sir." "mrs. mccarty, i won't take up any more of your time," and mr. redwood started to go down stairs. "who shall i tell mr. ropes called to see him." "you needn't say. i will mention the matter to him myself. i am employed in the same store." "all right sir. where is the store? i never thought to ask mr. ropes." "reade street, near broadway. you know where reade street is?" "yes, sir. my husband used to work in chambers street. that is the first street south." "precisely. well, i can't stay longer, so i will leave, apologizing for having taken up so much of your time." "oh, it's of no consequence, sir." "he is a perfect gentleman," she said to herself, as mr. redwood closed the front door, and went out on the street. "i wonder whether he's a widower." being a widow this was quite a natural thought for mrs. mccarty to indulge in, particularly as mr. redwood looked to be a substantial man with a snug income. mr. redwood went back to the store, and went at once to the office. "well, redwood," said mr. goodnow, "did you learn anything?" "yes, sir." "go on." "i went to the lodging of young ropes, and was admitted to his room." "well?" "and there, wrapped in a brown paper, i found one of our missing cloaks lying on his bed." "is it possible?" "i am afraid he is not what we supposed him to be, mr. goodnow." "it looks like it. i am surprised and sorry. do you think he took the other articles that are missing?" "of course i can't say, sir, but it is fair to presume that he did." "i am exceedingly sorry. i don't mind saying, redwood, that i took an especial interest in that boy. i have already told you the circumstances of my meeting him, and the fancy taken to him by my friend mulgrave." "yes, sir, i have heard you say that." "i don't think i am easily taken in, and that boy impressed me as thoroughly honest. but of course i don't pretend to be infallible and it appears that i have been mistaken in him." the merchant looked troubled, for he had come to feel a sincere regard for rodney. he confessed to himself that he would rather have found any of the other clerks dishonest. "you may send ropes to me," he said, "mr. redwood, and you will please come with him. we will investigate this matter at once." "very well, sir." chapter xiii. charged with theft. rodney entered mr. goodnow's office without a suspicion of the serious accusation which had been made against him. the first hint that there was anything wrong came to him when he saw the stern look in the merchants eyes. "perhaps," said mr. goodnow, as he leaned back in his chair and fixed his gaze on the young clerk, "you may have an idea why i have sent for you." "no, sir," answered rodney, looking puzzled. "you can't think of any reason i may have for wishing to see you?" "no, sir," and rodney returned mr. goodnow's gaze with honest unfaltering eyes. "possibly you are not aware that within a few weeks some articles have been missed from our stock." "i have not heard of it. what kind of articles?" "the boy is more artful than i thought!" soliloquized the merchant. "all the articles missed," he proceeded, "have been from the room in charge of mr. redwood, the room in which you, among others, are employed." something in mr. goodnow's tone gave rodney the hint of the truth. if he had been guilty he would have flushed and showed signs of confusion. as it was, he only wished to learn the truth and he in turn became the questioner. "is it supposed," he asked, "that any one in your employ is responsible for these thefts?" "it is." "is any one in particular suspected?" "yes." "will you tell me who, that is if you think i ought to know?" "certainly you ought to know, for it is you who are suspected." then rodney became indignant. "i can only deny the charge in the most emphatic terms," he said. "if any one has brought such a charge against me, it is a lie." "you can say that to mr. redwood, for it is he who accuses you." "what does this mean, mr. redwood?" demanded rodney quickly. "what have you seen in me that leads you to accuse me of theft." "to tell the truth, ropes, you are about the last clerk in my room whom i would have suspected. but early this morning this letter was received," and he placed in rodney's hands the letter given in a preceding chapter. rodney read it through and handed it back scornfully. "i should like to see the person who wrote this letter," he said. "it is a base lie from beginning to end." "i thought it might be when mr. goodnow showed it to me," said redwood in an even tone, "but mr. goodnow and i agreed that it would be well to investigate. therefore i went to your room." "when, sir?" "this morning." "then it is all right, for i am sure you found nothing." "on the contrary, ropes, i found that the statement made in the letter was true. on your bed was a bundle containing one of the cloaks taken from our stock." rodney's face was the picture of amazement. "is this true?" he said. "it certainly is. i hope you don't doubt my word." "did you bring it back with you?" "no; your worthy landlady was not quite sure whether i was what i represented, and i left the parcel there. however i opened it in her presence so that she can testify what i found." "this is very strange," said rodney, looking at his accuser with puzzled eyes. "i know nothing whatever of the cloak and can't imagine how it got into my room." "perhaps it walked there," said mr. goodnow satirically. rodney colored, for he understood that his employer did not believe him. "may i go to my room," he asked, "and bring back the bundle with me?" observing that mr. goodnow hesitated he added, "you can send some one with me to see that i don't spirit away the parcel, and come back with it." "on these conditions you may go. redwood, send some one with ropes." rodney followed the chief of his department back to the cloak room, and the latter, after a moments thought, summoned jasper. "jasper," he said, "ropes is going to his room to get a parcel which belongs to the store. you may go with him." there was a flash of satisfaction in jasper's eyes as he answered with seeming indifference, "all right! i will go. i shall be glad to have a walk." as the two boys passed out of the store, jasper asked, "what does it mean, ropes?" "i don't know myself. i only know that there is said to be a parcel containing a cloak in my room. this cloak came from the store, and i am suspected of having stolen it." "whew! that's a serious matter. of course it is all a mistake?" "yes, it is all a mistake." "but how could it get to your room unless you carried it there?" rodney gave jasper a sharp look. "some one must have taken it there," he said. "how on earth did uncle james find out?" "an anonymous letter was sent to mr. goodnow charging me with theft. did you hear that articles have been missed for some time from the stock?" "never heard a word of it" said jasper with ready falsehood. "it seems the articles are missing from our room, and some one in the room is suspected of being the thief." "good gracious! i hope no one will suspect me," said jasper in pretended alarm. "it seems i am suspected. i hope no other innocent person will have a like misfortune." presently they reached rodney's lodgings. mrs. mccarty was coming up the basement stairs as they entered. "la, mr. ropes!" she said, "what brings you here in the middle of the day?" "i hear there is a parcel in my room." "yes; it contains such a lovely cloak. the gentleman from your store who called a little while ago thought you might have meant it as a present for me." "i am afraid it will be some time before i can afford to make such present. do you know if any one called and left the cloak here?" "no; i didn't let in no one at the door." "was the parcel there when you made the bed?" "well, no, it wasn't. that is curious." "it shows that the parcel has been left here since. now i certainly couldn't have left it, for i have been at work all the morning. come up stairs, jasper." the two boys went up the stairs, and, entering rodney's room, found the parcel, still on the bed. rodney opened it and identified the cloak as exactly like those which they carried in stock. he examined the paper in which it was inclosed, but it seemed to differ from the wrapping paper used at the store. he called jasper's attention to this. "i have nothing to say," remarked jasper, shrugging his shoulders. "i don't understand the matter at all. i suppose you are expected to carry the cloak back to the store." "yes, that is the only thing to do." "i say, ropes, it looks pretty bad for you." jasper said this, but rodney observed that his words were not accompanied by any expressions of sympathy, or any words that indicated his disbelief of rodney's guilt. "do you think i took this cloak from the store?" he demanded, facing round upon jasper. "really, i don't know. it looks bad, finding it in your room." "i needn't ask any further. i can see what you think." "you wouldn't have me tell a lie, would you, ropes? of course such things have been done before, and your salary is small." "you insult me by your words," said rodney, flaming up. "then i had better not speak, but you asked me, you know." "yes, i did. things may look against me, but i am absolutely innocent." "if you can make mr. goodnow think so," said jasper with provoking coolness, "it will be all right. perhaps he will forgive you." "i don't want his forgiveness. i want him to think me honest." "well, i hope you are, i am sure, but it won't do any good our discussing it, and it doesn't make any difference what i think any way." by this time they had reached the store. chapter xiv. rodney is discharged. rodney reported his return to mr. redwood, and in his company went down stairs to the office, with the package under his arm. "well?" said mr. goodnow inquiringly. "this is the package, sir." "and it was found in your room?" "yes, sir, i found it on my bed." "can't you account for it being there?" asked the merchant searchingly. "no, sir." "you must admit that its presence in your room looks bad for you." "i admit it sir; but i had nothing to do with it being there." "have you any theory to account for it?" "only this, that some one must have carried it to my room and placed it where it was found." "did you question your landlady as to whether she had admitted any one during the morning?" "yes, sir. she had not." "this is very unfavorable to you." "in what way, sir?" "it makes it probable that you carried in the parcel yourself." "that i deny," said rodney boldly. "i expected you to deny it" said the merchant coldly. "if this cloak were the only one that had been taken i would drop the matter. but this is by no means the case. mr. redwood, can you give any idea of the extent to which we have been robbed?" "so far as i can estimate we have lost a dozen cloaks and about half a dozen dress patterns." "this is a serious loss, ropes," said mr. goodnow. "i should think it would foot up several hundred dollars. if you can throw any light upon the thefts, or give me information by which i can get back the goods even at considerable expense, i will be as considerate with you as i can." "mr. goodnow," returned rodney hotly, "i know no more about the matter than you do. i hope you will investigate, and if you can prove that i took any of the missing articles i want no consideration. i shall expect you to have me arrested, and, if convicted, punished." "these are brave words, ropes," said mr. goodnow coldly, "but they are only words. the parcel found in your room affords strong ground for suspicion that you are responsible for at least a part of the thefts. under the circumstances there is only one thing for me to do, and that is to discharge you." "very well, sir." "you may go to the cashier and he will pay you to the end of the week, but your connection with the store will end at once." "i don't care to be paid to the end of the week, sir. if you will give me an order for payment up to tonight, that will be sufficient." "it shall be as you say." mr. goodnow wrote a few words on a slip of paper and handed it to rodney. "i will leave my address, sir, and if i change it i will notify you. if you should hear anything as to the real robber i will ask you as a favor to communicate with me." "mr. redwood, you have heard the request of ropes, i will look to you to comply with it." "very well, sir." the merchant turned back to his letters, and rodney left the office, with what feelings of sorrow and humiliation may be imagined. "i am sorry for this occurrence, ropes," said mr. redwood, with a touch of sympathy in his voice. "do you believe me guilty, mr. redwood?" "i cannot do otherwise. i hope you are innocent, and, if so, that the really guilty party will be discovered sooner or later." "thank you, sir." when they entered the room in which rodney had been employed jasper came up, his face alive with curiosity. "well," he said, "how did you come out?" "i am discharged," said rodney bitterly. "well, you couldn't complain of that. things looked pretty dark for you." "if i had committed the theft, i would not complain. indeed, i would submit to punishment without a murmur. but it is hard to suffer while innocent." "uncle james," said jasper, "if ropes is going will you ask mr. goodnow to put me in his place?" even mr. redwood was disgusted by this untimely request. "it would be more becoming," he said sharply, "if you would wait till ropes was fairly out of the store before applying for his position." "i want to be in time. i don't want any one to get ahead of me." james redwood did not deign a reply. "i am sorry you leave us under such circumstances, ropes," he said. "the time may come when you will be able to establish your innocence, and in that case mr. goodnow will probably take you back again." rodney did not answer, but with his order went to the cashier's desk and received the four dollars due him. then, with a heavy heart, he left the store where it had been such a satisfaction to him to work. on broadway he met his room mate, mike flynn, in the uniform of a telegraph boy. "where are you goin', rodney?" asked mike. "you ain't let off so early, are you?" "i am let off for good and all, mike." "what's that?" "i am discharged." "what for?" asked mike in amazement. "i will tell you when you get home tonight." rodney went back to his room, and lay down sad and despondent. some hours later mike came in, and was told the story. the warm hearted telegraph boy was very angry. "that boss of yours must be a stupid donkey," he said. "i don't know. the parcel was found in my room." "anybody'd know to look at you that you wouldn't steal." "some thieves look very innocent. the only way to clear me is to find out who left the bundle at the house." "doesn't mrs. mccarty know anything about it?" "no; i asked her." "some one might have got into the house without her knowing anything about it. the lock is a very common one. there are plenty of keys that will open it." "if we could find some one that saw a person with a bundle go up the steps, that would give us a clew." "that's so. we'll ask." but for several days no one could be found who had seen any such person. meanwhile rodney was at a loss what to do. he was cut off from applying for another place, for no one would engage him if he were refused a recommendation from his late employer. yet he must obtain some employment for he could not live on nothing. "do you think, mike," he asked doubtfully, "that i could make anything selling papers?" "such business isn't for you," answered the telegraph boy. "but it is one of the few things open to me. i can become a newsboy without recommendations. even your business would be closed to me if it were known that i was suspected of theft." "thats so," said mike, scratching his head in perplexity. "then would you recommend my becoming a newsboy?" "i don't know. you couldn't make more'n fifty or sixty cent a day." "that will be better than nothing." "and i can pay the rent, or most of it, as i'll be doin' better than you." "we will wait and see how much i make." so rodney swallowed his pride, and procuring a supply of afternoon papers set about selling them. he knew that it was an honest business, and there was no disgrace in following it. but one day he was subjected to keen mortification. jasper redwood and a friend--it was philip carton, his confederate--were walking along broadway, and their glances fell on rodney. "i say, jasper," said the elder of the two, "isn't that the boy who was in the same store with you?" jasper looked, and his eyes lighted up with malicious satisfaction. "oho!" he said. "well, this is rich!" "give me a paper, boy," he said, pretending not to recognize rodney at first. "why, it's ropes." "yes," answered rodney, his cheek flushing. "you see what i am reduced to. what paper will you buy?" "the mail and express." "here it is." "can't you get another place?" asked jasper curiously. "i might if i could get a recommendation, but probably mr. goodnow wouldn't give me one." "no, i guess not." "so i must take what i can get." "do you make much selling papers?" "very little." "you can't make as much as you did in the store?" "not much more than half as much." "do you live in the same place?" "yes, for the present." "oh, by the way, ropes, i've got your old place," said jasper in exultation. "i thought you would get it," answered rodney, not without a pang. "come into the store some day, ropes. it will seem like old times." "i shall not enter the store till i am able to clear myself of the charge made against me." "then probably you will stay away a long time." "i am afraid so." "well, ta, ta! come along, philip." as rodney followed with his eye the figure of his complacent successor he felt that his fate was indeed a hard one. chapter xv. a rich find. as jasper and his companion moved away, carton said, "i'm sorry for that poor duffer, jasper." "why should you be sorry?" asked jasper, frowning. "because he has lost a good place and good prospects, and all for no fault of his own." "you are getting sentimental, philip," sneered jasper. "no, but i am showing a little humanity. he has lost all this through you----" "through us, you mean." "well, through us. we have made him the scapegoat for our sins." "oh well, he is making a living." "a pretty poor one. i don't think you would like to be reduced to selling papers." "his case and mine are different." "i begin to think also that we have made a mistake in getting him discharged so soon." "we can't take anything more." "why not?" "because there will be no one to lay the blame upon. he is out of the store." "that is true. i didn't think of that. but i invited him to come around and call. if he should, and something else should be missing it would be laid to him." "i don't believe he will call. i am terribly hard up, and our source of income has failed us. haven't you got a dollar or two to spare?" "no," answered jasper coldly. "i only get seven dollars a week." "but you have nearly all that. you only have to hand in two dollars a week to your uncle." "look here, philip carton, i hope you don't expect to live off me. i have all i can do to take care of myself." carton looked at jasper in anger and mortification. "i begin to understand how good a friend you are," he said. "i am not fool enough to pinch myself to keep you," said jasper bluntly. "you are a man of twenty five and i am only a boy. you ought to be able to take care of yourself." "just give me a dollar, or lend it jasper, and i will risk it at play. i may rise from the table with a hundred. if i do i will pay you handsomely for the loan." "i couldn't do it, mr. carton. i have only two dollars in my pocket, and i have none to spare." "humph! what is that?" philip carton's eyes were fixed upon the sidewalk. there was a flimsy piece of paper fluttering about impelled by the wind. he stooped and picked it up. "it is a five dollar bill," he exclaimed in exultation. "my luck has come back." jasper changed his tone at once. now philip was the better off of the two. "that is luck!" he said. "shall we go into delmonico's, and have an ice?" "if it is at your expense, yes." "that wouldn't be fair. you have more money than i." "yes, and i mean to keep it myself. you have set me the example." "come, philip, you are not angry at my refusing you a loan?" "no; i think you were sensible. i shall follow your example. i will bid you good night. i seem to be in luck, and will try my fortune at the gaming table." "i will go with you." "no; i would prefer to go alone." "that fellow is unreasonable," muttered jasper, as he strode off, discontented. "did he expect i would divide my salary with him?" philip carton, after he parted company with jasper, walked back to where rodney was still selling papers. "give me a paper," he said. "which will you have?" "i am not particular. give me the first that comes handy. ah, the evening sun will do." he took the paper and put a quarter into rodney's hand. as he was walking away rodney called out, "stop, here's your change," "never mind," said philip with a wave of the hand. "thank you," said rodney gratefully, for twenty five cents was no trifle to him at this time. "that ought to bring me luck," soliloquized philip carton as he walked on. "it isn't often i do a good deed. it was all the money i had besides the five dollar bill, and i am sure the news boy will make better use of it than i would." "that was the young man that was walking with jasper," reflected rodney. "well, he is certainly a better fellow than he. thanks to this quarter, i shall have made eighty cents today, and still have half a dozen papers. that is encouraging." several days passed that could not be considered lucky. rodney's average profits were only about fifty cent a day, and that was barely sufficient to buy his meals. it left him nothing to put towards paying room rent. he began to consider whether he would not be compelled to pawn some article from his wardrobe, for he was well supplied with clothing, when he had a stroke of luck. on fifteenth street, by the side of tiffany's great jewelry store, he picked up a square box neatly done up in thin paper. opening it, he was dazzled by the gleam of diamonds. the contents were a diamond necklace and pin, which, even to rodney's inexperienced eyes, seemed to be of great value. "some one must have dropped them in coming from the jewelry store," he reflected. "who can it be?" he had not far to seek. there was a card inside on which was engraved: mrs. eliza harvey, with an address on fifth avenue. passing through to fifth avenue rodney began to scan the numbers on the nearest houses. he judged that mrs. harvey must live considerably farther up the avenue, in the direction of central park. "i will go there at once," rodney decided. "no doubt mrs. harvey is very much distressed by her loss. i shall carry her good news." the house he found to be between fortieth and fiftieth street. ascending the steps he rang the bell. the door was opened by a man servant. "does mrs. harvey live here?" asked rodney. "what do you want with her, young man?" demanded the servant in a tone of importance. "that i will tell her." "what's your name?" "i can give you my name, but she won't recognize it." "then you don't know her." "no." "if it's money you want, she don't give to beggars." "you are impudent" said rodney hotly. "if you don't give my message you will get into trouble." the servant opened his eyes. he seemed somewhat impressed by rodney's confident tone. "mrs. harvey doesn't live here," he said. "is she in the house?" "well, yes, she's visiting here." "then why do you waste your time?" said rodney impatiently. he forgot for the time that he was no longer being educated at an expensive boarding school, and spoke in the tone he would have used before his circumstances had changed. "i'll go and ask if she'll see you," said the flunky unwillingly. five minutes later a pleasant looking woman of middle age descended the staircase. "are you the boy that wished to see me?" she asked. "yes, if you are mrs. harvey." "i am. but come in! thomas, why didn't you invite this young gentleman into the parlor?" thomas opened his eyes wide. so the boy whom he had treated so cavalierly was a young gentleman. he privately put down mrs. harvey in his own mind as eccentric. "excuse me, ma'am," he said. "i didn't know as he was parlor company." "well, he is," said mrs. harvey with a cordial smile that won rodney's heart. "follow me!" said the lady. rodney followed her into a handsome apartment and at a signal seated himself on a sofa. "now," she said, "i am ready to listen to your message." "have you lost anything?" asked rodney abruptly. "oh, have you found it?" exclaimed mrs. harvey, clasping her hands. "that depends on what you have lost," answered rodney, who felt that it was necessary to be cautious. "certainly, you are quite right. i have lost a box containing jewelry bought this morning at tiffany's." "what were the articles?" "a diamond necklace and pin. they are intended as a present for my daughter who is to be married. tell me quick have you found them?" "is this the box?" asked rodney. "oh yes, yes! how delightful to recover it. i thought i should never see it again. where did you find it?" "on fifteenth street beside tiffany's store." "and you brought it directly to me?" "yes, madam." "have you any idea of the value of the articles?" "perhaps they may be worth five hundred dollars." "they are worth over a thousand. are you poor?" "yes, madam. i am trying to make a living by selling papers, but find it hard work." "but you don't look like a newsboy." "till a short time since i thought myself moderately rich." "that is strange. tell me your story." chapter xvi. a surprising turn of fortune. rodney told his story frankly. mrs. harvey was very sympathetic by nature, and she listened with the deepest interest, and latterly with indignation when rodney spoke of his dismissal from mr. goodnow's store. "you have been treated shamefully," she said warmly. "i think mr. goodnow really believes me guilty," rejoined rodney. "a dishonest boy would hardly have returned a valuable box of jewelry." "still mr. goodnow didn't know that i would do it." "i see you are disposed to apologize for your late employer." "i do not forget that he treated me kindly till this last occurrence." "your consideration does you credit. so you have really been reduced to earn your living as a newsboy?" "yes, madam." "i must think what i can do for you. i might give you money, but when that was gone you would be no better off." "i would much rather have help in getting a place." mrs. harvey leaned her head on her hand and looked thoughtful. "you are right" she said. "let me think." rodney waited, hoping that the lady would be able to think of something to his advantage. finally she spoke. "i think you said you understood latin and greek?" "i have studied both languages and french also. i should have been ready to enter college next summer." "then perhaps i shall be able to do something for you. i live in philadelphia, but i have a brother living in west fifty eighth street. he has one little boy, arthur, now nine years of age. arthur is quite precocious, but his health is delicate, and my brother has thought of getting a private instructor for him. do you like young children?" "very much. i always wished that i had a little brother." "then i think you would suit my brother better as a tutor for arthur than a young man. being a boy yourself, you would be not only tutor but companion." "i should like such a position very much." "then wait here a moment, and i will write you a letter of introduction." she went up stairs, but soon returned. she put a small perfumed billet into rodney's hands. it was directed to john sargent with an address on west fifty eighth street. "call this evening," she said, "about half past seven o'clock. my brother will be through dinner, and will not have gone out at that hour." "thank you," said rodney gratefully. "here is another envelope which you can open at your leisure. i cannot part from you without thanking you once more for returning my jewelry." "you have thanked me in a very practical way, mrs. harvey." "i hope my letter may lead to pleasant results for you. if you ever come to philadelphia call upon me at no. 1492 walnut street." "thank you." as rodney left the house he felt that his ill fortune had turned, and that a new prospect was opened up before him. he stepped into the windsor hotel, and opened the envelope last given him. it contained five five dollar bills. to one of them was pinned a scrap of paper containing these words: "i hope this money will be useful to you. it is less than the reward i should have offered for the recovery of the jewels." under the circumstances rodney felt that he need not scruple to use the money. he knew that he had rendered mrs. harvey a great service, and that she could well afford to pay him the sum which the envelopes contained. he began to be sensible that he was hungry, not having eaten for some time. he went into a restaurant on sixth avenue, and ordered a sirloin steak. it was some time since he had indulged in anything beyond a common steak, and he greatly enjoyed the more luxurious meal. he didn't go back to selling papers, for he felt that it would hardly be consistent with the position of a classical teacher--the post for which he was about to apply. half past seven found him at the door of mr. john sargent. the house was of brown stone, high stoop, and four stories in height. it was such a house as only a rich man could occupy. he was ushered into the parlor and presently mr. sargent came in from the dining room. "are you mr. ropes?" he asked, looking at rodney's card. it is not usual for newsboys to carry cards, but rodney had some left over from his more prosperous days. "yes, sir. i bring you a note of introduction from mrs. harvey." "ah yes, my sister. let me see it." the note was of some length. that is, it covered three pages of note paper. mr. sargent read it attentively. "my sister recommends you as tutor for my little son, arthur," he said, as he folded up the letter. "yes, sir; she suggested that i might perhaps suit you in that capacity." "she also says that you found and restored to her a valuable box of jewelry which she was careless enough to drop near tiffany's." "yes, sir." "i have a good deal of confidence in my sister's good judgment. she evidently regards you very favorably." "i am glad of that sir," "will you tell me something of your qualifications? arthur is about to commence latin. he is not old enough for greek." "i could teach either, sir." "and of course you are well up in english branches?" "i think i am." "my sister hints that you are poor, and obliged to earn your own living. how, then, have you been able to secure so good an education?" "i have only been poor for a short time. my father left me fifty thousand dollars, but it was lost by my guardian." "who was your guardian?" "mr. benjamin fielding." "i knew him well. i don't think he was an unprincipled man, but he was certainly imprudent, and was led into acts that were reprehensible. did he lose all your money for you?" "yes, sir." "what did you do?" "left the boarding school where i was being educated, and came to this city." "did you obtain any employment?" "yes, sir; i have been employed for a short time by otis goodnow, a merchant of reade street." "and why did you leave?" "because mr. goodnow missed some articles from his stock, and i was charged with taking them." rodney was fearful of the effect of his frank confession upon mr. sargent, but the latter soon reassured him. "your honesty in restoring my sister's jewelry is sufficient proof that the charge was unfounded. i shall not let it influence me." "thank you, sir." "now as to the position of teacher, though very young, i don't see why you should not fill it satisfactorily. i will call arthur." he went to the door and called "arthur." a delicate looking boy with a sweet, intelligent face, came running into the room. "do you want me, papa?" "yes, arthur. i have a new friend for you. will you shake hands with him?" arthur, who was not a shy boy, went up at once to rodney and offered his hand. "i am glad to see you," he said. rodney smiled. he was quite taken with the young boy. "what's your name?" the latter asked. "rodney ropes." "are you going to stay and make us a visit?" mr. sargent answered this question. "would you like to have rodney stay?" he asked. "oh yes." "how would you like to have him give you lessons in latin and other studies?" "i should like it. i am sure he wouldn't be cross. are you a teacher, rodney?" "i will be your teacher if you are willing to have me." "yes, i should like it. and will you go to walk with me in central park?" "yes." "then, papa, you may as well engage him. i was afraid you would get a tiresome old man for my teacher." "that settles it, rodney," said mr. sargent, smiling. "now, arthur, run out and i will speak further with rodney about you." "all right, papa." "as arthur seems to like you, i will give you a trial. as he suggested, i should like to have you become his companion as well as teacher. you will come here at nine o'clock in the morning, and stay till four, taking lunch with your pupil. about the compensation, will you tell me what will be satisfactory to you?" "i prefer to leave that to you, sir." "then we will say fifteen dollars a week--today is thursday. will you present yourself here next monday morning?" "yes, sir." "if you would like an advance of salary, you need only say so." "thank you, sir, but i am fairly provided with money for the present." "then nothing more need be said. as i am to meet a gentleman at the union league club tonight, i will bid you good evening, and expect to see you on monday." rodney rose and mr. sargent accompanied him to the door, shaking hands with him courteously by way of farewell. rodney emerged into the street in a state of joyous excitement. twenty five dollars in his pocket, and fifteen dollars a week! he could hardly credit his good fortune. chapter xvii. jasper's perplexity. mike flynn was overjoyed to hear of rodney's good fortune. "fifteen dollars a week!" he repeated. "why you will be rich." "not exactly that, mike, but it will make me comfortable. by the way, as i have so much more than you, it will only be fair for me to pay the whole rent." "no, rodney, you mustn't do that." "i shall insist upon it, mike. you would do the same in my place." "yes i would." "so you can't object to my doing it." "you are very kind to me, rodney," said mike, who had the warm heart of his race. "it isn't every boy brought up like you who would be willing to room with a bootblack." "but you are not a bootblack now. you are a telegraph boy." "there are plenty that mind me when i blacked boots down in front of the astor house." "you are just as good a boy for all that. how much did you make last week?" "four dollars salary, and a dollar and a half in extra tips." "hereafter you must save your rent money for clothes. we must have you looking respectable." "won't you adopt me, rodney?" asked mike with a laughing face. "that's a good idea. perhaps i will. in that case you must obey all my orders. in the first place, what are you most in want in the way of clothing?" "i haven't got but two shirts." "that is hardly enough for a gentleman of your social position. anything else." "i'm short on collars and socks." "then we'll go out shopping. i'll buy you a supply of each." "but you haven't begun to work yet." "no, but mrs. harvey made me a present of twenty five dollars. we'll go to some of the big stores on sixth avenue where we can get furnishing goods cheap." rodney carried out his purpose, and at the cost of four dollars supplied his room mate with all he needed for the present. "see what it is to be rich, mike," he said. "it seems odd for me to be buying clothes for my adopted son." "you're in luck, rodney, and so am i. i hope some time i can do you a favor." "perhaps you can, mike. if i should get sick, you might take my place as tutor." "you must know an awful lot, rodney," said mike, regarding his companion with new respect. "thank you for the compliment, mike. i hope mr. sargent will have the same opinion." the next day it is needless to say that rodney did not resume the business of newsboy. he was very glad to give it up. he dressed with unusual care and took a walk down town. as he passed reade street by chance jasper was coming around the corner. his face lighted up first with pleasure at seeing rodney, for it gratified his mean nature to triumph over the boy whom he had ousted from his position, and next with surprise at his unusually neat and well dressed appearance. rodney looked far from needing help. he might readily have been taken for a boy of aristocratic lineage. "hallo!" said jasper, surveying rodney curiously. "how are you this morning, jasper?" returned rodney quietly. "why ain't you selling papers?" "i don't like the business." "but you've got to make a living." "quite true." "are you going to black boots?" "why should i? is it a desirable business?" "how should i know?" asked jasper, coloring. "i didn't know but you might have had some experience at it. i haven't." "do you mean to insult me?" demanded jasper hotly. "i never insult anybody. i will only say that you are as likely to take up the business as i." "i've got a place." "how do you know but i have?" "because you were selling papers yesterday and are walking the street today." "that is true. but i have a place engaged for all that. i shall go to work on monday." jasper pricked up his ears. "where is it?" he asked. "i don't care to tell at present." "is it true? have you got a place?" "yes." "i don't see how you could. mr. goodnow wouldn't give you a recommendation." "there is no reason why he should not." "what, after your taking cloaks and dress patterns from the store?" "i did nothing of the kind. sooner or later mr. goodnow will find out his mistake. probably the real thief is still in his employ." jasper turned pale and regarded rodney searchingly, but there was nothing in his manner or expression to indicate that his remark had been personal. he thought it best to turn the conversation. "how much pay do you get--four dollars?" "more than that." "you don't get as much as you did at our store?" "yes; i get more." now it was jasper's turn to show surprise. he did not know whether to believe rodney or not, but there was something in his face which commanded belief. "how much do you get?" he asked. "you would not believe me if i told you." "try me," returned jasper, whose curiosity was aroused. "i am to get fifteen dollars a week." jasper would not have looked more surprised if rodney had informed him that he was to become a cabinet minister. "you're joking!" he ejaculated. "not at all." "how could you have the face to ask such a price. did you pass yourself off as an experienced salesman?" "no." "i don't understand it at all, that is, if you are telling the truth." "i have told you the truth, jasper. i have no object in deceiving you. the salary was fixed by my employer." "who did you say it was?" "i didn't say." jasper's cunning scheme was defeated. he felt disturbed to hear of rodney's good fortune, but he had a shot in reserve. "i don't think you will keep your place long," he said in a malicious tone. "why not?" "your employer will hear under what circumstances you left our store, and then of course he will discharge you." "you will be sorry for that won't you?" asked rodney pointedly. "why of course i don't want you to have bad luck." "thank you. you are very considerate." "suppose you lose your place, shall you go back to selling papers?" "i hope to find something better to do." "where are you going now?" "to get some lunch." "so am i. suppose we go together." "very well, providing you will lunch with me." "i don't want to impose upon you." "you won't. we may not meet again for some time, and we shall have this meal to remind us of each other." they went to a well known restaurant on park row. rodney ordered a liberal dinner for himself, and jasper followed his example nothing loath. he was always ready to dine at the expense of others, but even as he ate he could not help wondering at the strange chance that had made him the guest of a boy who was selling papers the day before. he had nearly finished eating when a disturbing thought occurred to him. suppose rodney didn't have money enough to settle the bill, and threw it upon him. when rodney took the checks and walked up to the cashier's desk he followed him with some anxiety. but his companion quietly took out a five dollar bill, from his pocket and tendered it to the cashier. the latter gave him back the right change and the two boys went out into the street. "you seem to have plenty of money," said jasper. "there are very few who would admit having that," smiled rodney. "i don't see why you sold papers if you have five dollar bills in your pocket." "i don't want to be idle." "may i tell my uncle and mr. goodnow that you have got a place?" "if you like." "well, good by, i must be hurrying back to the store." rodney smiled. he rather enjoyed jasper's surprise and perplexity. chapter xviii. rodney's secret is discovered. jasper lost no time in acquainting his uncle with rodney's extraordinary good fortune. james redwood was surprised, but not all together incredulous. "i don't understand it" he said, "but ropes appears to be a boy of truth. perhaps he may have exaggerated the amount of his salary." "i hardly think so, uncle. he gave me a tip top dinner down on park row." "he may have been in funds from selling the articles taken from the store." "that's so!" assented jasper, who had the best possible reason for knowing that it was not so. "i wish the boy well," said his uncle. "he always treated me respectfully, and i never had anything against him except the loss of stock, and it is not certain that he is the thief." "i guess there isn't any doubt about that." "yet, believing him to be a thief, you did not hesitate to accept a dinner from him." "i didn't want to hurt his feelings," replied jasper, rather sheepishly. "do you know what sort of a place he has got, or with what house?" "no; he wouldn't tell me." "he thought perhaps you would inform the new firm of the circumstances under which he left us. i don't blame him, but i am surprised that he should have been engaged without a recommendation." "shall you tell mr. goodnow?" "not unless he asks about ropes. i don't want to interfere with the boy in any way." in the store, as has already been stated, jasper succeeded to rodney's place, and in consequence his pay was raised to seven dollars a week. still it was not equal to what it had been when he was receiving additional money from the sale of the articles stolen by philip carton and himself. the way in which they had operated was this: philip would come in and buy a cloak or a dress pattern from jasper, and the young salesman would pack up two or three instead of one. there was a drawback to the profit in those cases, as carton would be obliged to sell both at a reduced price. still they had made a considerable sum from these transactions, though not nearly as much as mr. goodnow had lost. after the discovery of the theft and the discharge of rodney, the two confederates felt that it would be imprudent to do any more in that line. this suspension entailed heavier loss on carton than on jasper. the latter had a fixed income and a home at his uncle's house, while philip had no regular income, though he occasionally secured a little temporary employment. in the meantime rodney had commenced his tutorship. his young pupil became very fond of him, and being a studious boy, made rapid progress in his lessons. mr. sargent felt that his experiment, rash as it might be considered, vindicated his wisdom by its success. at the end of a month he voluntarily raised rodney's salary to twenty dollars a week. "i am afraid you are overpaying me, mr. sargent," said rodney. "that's my lookout. good service is worth a good salary, and i am perfectly satisfied with you." "thank you, sir. i prize that even more than the higher salary." only a portion of rodney's time was spent in teaching. in the afternoon he and his charge went on little excursions, generally to central park. one holiday, about four months after the commencement of rodney's engagement, he was walking in the park when he fell in with jasper. jasper's attention was at once drawn to the little boy, whose dress and general appearance indicated that he belonged to a wealthy family. this excited jasper's curiosity. "how are you, rodney?" said jasper adroitly. "it is a good while since i met you." "yes." "who is the little boy with you?" "his name is arthur sargent." rodney gave this information unwillingly, for he saw that his secret was likely to be discovered. "how do you do, arthur?" asked jasper, with unwonted affability, for he did not care for children. "pretty well," answered arthur politely. "have you known rodney long?" "why, he is my teacher," answered arthur in some surprise. jasper's eyes gleamed with sudden intelligence. so this was rodney's secret, and this was the position for which he was so well paid. rodney bit his lip in vexation, but made no remark. "does he ever punish you for not getting your lessons?" asked jasper without much tact. "of course not" answered arthur indignantly. "arthur always does get his lessons," said rodney. "i suppose you have a holiday from work today, jasper." "yes; i am glad to get away now and then." "i must bid you good morning now." "won't you let me call on you? where do you live, arthur?" the boy gave the number of his house. jasper asked arthur, thinking rightly that he would be more likely to get an answer from him than from rodney. he walked away triumphantly, feeling that he had made a discovery that might prove of advantage to him. "is that a friend of yours, rodney?" asked little arthur. "i have known him for some time." "i don't like him very much." "why?" asked rodney with some curiosity. "i don't know," answered the little boy slowly. "i can't like everybody." "quite true, arthur. jasper is not a special friend of mine, and i am not particular about your liking him. i hope you like me." "you know i do, rodney," and he gave rodney's hand an assuring pressure. ten minutes after he left rodney, jasper fell in with carton. the intimacy between them had perceptibly fallen off. it had grown out of business considerations. now that it was no longer safe to abstract articles from the store, jasper felt that he had no more use for his late confederate. when they met he treated him with marked coldness. on this particular day carton was looking quite shabby. in fact, his best suit was in pawn, and he had fallen back on one half worn and soiled. "hello!" exclaimed jasper, and was about to pass on with a cool nod. "stop!" said philip, looking offended. "i am in a hurry," returned jasper. "i can't stop today." "you are in a hurry, and on a holiday?" "yes; i am to meet a friend near the lake." "i'll go along with you." jasper had to submit though with an ill grace. "wouldn't another day do?" "no; the fact is, jasper, i am in trouble," "you usually are," sneered jasper. "that is so. i have been out of luck lately." "i am sorry, but i can't help it as i see." "how much money do you think i have in my pocket?" "i don't know, i am sure. i am not good at guessing conundrums." "just ten cents." "that isn't much," said jasper, indifferently. "let me have a dollar, thats a good fellow!" "you seem to think i am made of money," said jasper sharply. "i haven't got much more myself." "then you might have. you get a good salary." "only seven dollars." "you are able to keep most of it for yourself." "suppose i am? you seem to know a good deal of my affairs." "haven't you any pity for an old friend?" "yes, i'll give you all the pity you want, but when it comes to money it's a different matter. here you are, a man of twenty six, ten years older than me, and yet you expect me to help support you." "you didn't use to talk to me like that." "well, i do now. you didn't use to try to get money out of me." "look here, jasper! i am poor, but i don't want you to talk to me as you are doing." "indeed!" sneered jasper. "and i won't have it," said carton firmly. "listen to me, and i will propose a plan that will help us both." "what is it?" "you can easily secrete articles, if you are cautious, without attracting notice, and i will dispose of them and share the money with you." jasper shook his head. "i wouldn't dare to do it" he said. "somebody might spy on me." "not if you are careful." "if it were found out i would be bounced like ropes." "what is he doing? have you seen him lately?" "he is getting on finely. he is earning fifteen dollars a week." "you don't mean it?" "yes i do." "what firm is he working for?" "for none at all. he is tutor to a young kid." "i didn't know he was scholar enough." "oh yes, he knows greek and latin and a lot of other stuff." "who is the boy?" "i don't feel at liberty to tell. i don't think he would care to have you know." "i'll tell you what you can do. borrow five dollars of him for me." "i don't know about that. if i were to borrow it would be for myself." "you can do as you please. if you don't do something for me i will write to mr. goodnow that you are the thief who stole the cloaks and dress patterns." "you wouldn't do that?" exclaimed jasper in consternation. "wouldn't i? i am desperate enough to do anything." after a little further conference jasper agreed to do what was asked of him. he did not dare to refuse. chapter xix. jasper's revenge rodney was considerably surprised one evening to receive a call from jasper in his room. he was alone, as mike had been detailed about a week ago for night duty. the room looked more attractive than formerly. rodney had bought a writing desk, which stood in the corner, and had put up three pictures, which, though cheap, were attractive. "good evening, jasper," he said. "it is quite friendly of you to call." "i hadn't anything else on hand this evening, and thought i would come round see how you were getting along." "take a seat and make yourself at home." "do you object to cigarettes?" asked jasper, producing one from a case in his pocket. "i object to smoking them myself, but i don't want to dictate to my friends." "you look quite comfortable here," continued jasper in a patronizing tone. "we try to be comfortable, though our room is not luxurious." "who do you mean by `we'? have you a room mate?" "yes. mike flynn rooms with me." "who is he--a newsboy?" "no. he is a telegraph boy." "you don't seem to very particular," said jasper, shrugging his shoulders. "i am very particular." "yet you room with an irish telegraph boy." "he is a nice boy of good habit, and a devoted friend. what could i want more?" "oh, well, you have a right to consult your own taste." "you have a nice home, no doubt." "i live with my uncle. yes, he has a good house, but i am not so independent as if i had a room outide." "how are things going on at the store?" "about the same as usual. why don't you come in some day?" "for two reasons; i am occupied during the day, and i don't want to go where i am considered a thief." "i wish i was getting your income. it is hard to get along on seven dollars a week." "still you have a nice home, and i suppose you have most of your salary to yourself." "yes, but there isn't much margin in seven dollars. my uncle expects me to buy my own clothes. you were lucky to get out of the store. old goodnow ought to give me ten dollars." "don't let him hear you speak of him as old goodnow, jasper." "oh, i'm smart enough for that. i mean to keep on the right side of the old chap. what sort of a man are you working for?" "mr. sargent is a fine man." "he isn't mean certainly. i should like to be in your shoes." "if i hear of any similar position shall i mention your name?" asked rodney, smiling. "no; i could not take care of a kid. i hate them." "still arthur is a nice boy." "you are welcome to him. what do you have to teach?" "he is studying latin and french, besides english branches." "i know about as much of latin and french as a cow. i couldn't be a teacher. i say, rodney," and jasper cleared his throat, "i want you to do me a favor." "what is it?" "i want you to lend me ten dollars." rodney was not mean, but he knew very well that a loan to jasper would be a permanent one. had jasper been his friend even this consideration would not have inspired a refusal, but he knew very well that jasper had not a particle of regard for him. "i don't think i can oblige you, jasper," he said. "why not? you get fifteen dollars a week." "my expenses are considerable. besides i am helping mike, whose salary is very small. i pay the whole of the rent and i have paid for some clothes for him." "you are spending your money very foolishly," said jasper frowning. "would i spend it any less foolishly if i should lend you ten dollars?" "there is some difference between mike flynn and me. i am a gentleman." "so is mike." "a queer sort of gentleman! he is only a poor telegraph boy." "still he is a gentleman." "i should think you might have money enough for both of us." "i might but i want to save something from my salary. i don't know how long i shall be earning as much. i might lose my place." "so you might." "and i could hardly expect to get another where the pay would be as good." "i would pay you on installment--a dollar a week," urged jasper. "i don't see how you could, as you say your pay is too small for you now." "oh, well, i could manage." "i am afraid i can't oblige you, jasper," said rodney in a decided tone. "i didn't think you were so miserly," answered jasper in vexation. "you may call it so, if you like. you must remember that i am not situated like you. you have your uncle to fall back upon in case you lose your position, but i have no one. i have to hustle for myself." "oh, you needn't make any more excuses. i suppose ten dollars is rather a large sum to lend. can you lend me five?" "i am sorry, but i must refuse you." jasper rose from the chair on which he had been sitting. "then i may as well go," he said. "i am disappointed in you, ropes. i thought you were a good, whole souled fellow, and not a miser." "you must think of me as you please, jasper. i feel that i have a right to regulate my own affairs." "all i have to say is this, if you lose your place as you may very soon, don't come round to the store and expect to be taken back." "i won't" answered rodney, smiling. "i wouldn't go back at any rate unless the charge of theft was withdrawn." "that will never be!" "let it be so, as long as i am innocent." jasper left the room abruptly, not even having the politeness to bid rodney good evening. rodney felt that he was quite justified in refusing to lend jasper money. had he been in need he would have obliged him, though he had no reason to look upon him as a friend. no one who knew rodney could regard him as mean or miserly. could he have read jasper's thoughts as he left the house he would have felt even less regret at disappointing him. about two days afterward when rodney went up to meet his pupil, mr. sargent handed him a letter. "here is something that concerns you, rodney," he said. "it doesn't appear to be from a friend of yours." with some curiosity rodney took the letter and read it. it ran thus: mr. john sargent: dear sir--i think it my duty to write and tell you something about your son's tutor--something that will surprise and shock you. before he entered your house he was employed by a firm on reade street. he was quite a favorite with his employer, mr. otis goodnow, who promoted him in a short time. all at once it was found that articles were missing from the stock. of course it was evident that some one of the clerks was dishonest. a watch was set, and finally it was found that rodney ropes had taken the articles, and one--a lady's cloak--was found in his room by a detective. he was discharged at once without a recommendation. for a time he lived by selling papers, but at last he managed to get into your house. i am sure you won't regard him as fit to educate your little son, though i have no doubt he is a good scholar. but his character is bad--i don't think he ought to have concealed this from you out of friendship for you, and because i think it is my duty, i take the liberty of writing. if you doubt this i will refer to mr. goodnow, or mr. james redwood, who had charge of the room in which ropes was employed. yours very respectually, a friend. "you knew all this before, mr. sargent" said rodney, as he handed back the letter. "yes. have you any idea who wrote it?" "i feel quite sure that it was a boy about two years older than myself, jasper redwood." "is he related to the man of the same name whom he mentions?" "yes, he is his nephew." "has he any particular reason for disliking you, rodney?" "yes, sir. he came round to my room wednesday evening, and asked me to lend him ten dollars." "i presume you refused." "yes, sir. he is not in need. he succeeded to my place, and he has a home at the house of his uncle." "he appears to be a very mean boy. anonymous letters are always cowardly, and generally malicious. this seems to be no exception to the general rule." "i hope it won't affect your feelings towards me, mr. sargent." "don't trouble yourself about that rodney. i am not so easily prejudiced against one of whom i have a good opinion." "i suppose this is jasper's revenge," thought rodney. chapter xx. rodney loses his pupil. jasper had little doubt that his letter would lead to rodney's loss of position. it was certainly a mean thing to plot another's downfall, but jasper was quite capable of it. had he secured the loan he asked he would have been willing to leave rodney alone, but it would only have been the first of a series of similar applications. it was several days before jasper had an opportunity of learning whether his malicious plan had succeeded or not. on sunday forenoon he met rodney on fifth avenue just as the church services were over. he crossed the street and accosted the boy he had tried to injure. "good morning, ropes," he said, examining rodney's face curiously to see whether it indicated trouble of any kind. "good morning!" responded rodney coolly. "how are you getting along in your place?" "very well, thank you." "shall i find you at your pupil's house if i call there some afternoon?" "yes, unless i am out walking with arthur." "i wonder whether he's bluffing," thought jasper. "i daresay he wouldn't tell me if he had been discharged. he takes it pretty coolly." "how long do you think your engagement will last?" he asked. "i don't know. i never had a talk with mr. sargent on that point." "do you still give satisfaction?" rodney penetrated jasper's motives for asking all these questions, and was amused. "i presume if i fail to satisfy mr. sargent he will tell me so." "it would be a nice thing if you could stay there three or four years." "yes: but i don't anticipate it. when arthur get a little older he will be sent to school." "what will you do then?" "i haven't got so far as that." "i can't get anything out of him," said jasper to himself. "i shouldn't be a bit surprised if he were already discharged." they had now reached madison square, and jasper left rodney. the latter looked after him with a smile. "i think i have puzzled jasper," he said to himself. "he was anxious to know how his scheme had worked. he will have to wait a little longer." "if mr. sargent keeps ropes after my letter he must be a fool," jasper decided. "i wonder if ropes handles the mail. he might have suppressed the letter." but rodney was not familiar with his handwriting, and would have no reason to suspect that the particular letter contained anything likely to injure him in the eyes of mr. sargent. later in his walk jasper met philip carton. his former friend was sitting on a bench in madison square. he called out to jasper as he passed. "come here, jasper, i want to talk with you." jasper looked at him in a manner far from friendly. "i am in a hurry," he said. "what hurry can you be in? come and sit down here. i must speak to you." jasper did not like his tone, but it impressed him, and he did not dare to refuse. he seated himself beside philip, but looked at him askance. carton was undeniably shabby. he had the look of a man who was going down hill and that rapidly. "i shall be late for dinner," grumbled jasper. "i wish i had any dinner to look forward to," said carton. "do you see this money?" and he produced a nickel from his pocket. "what is there remarkable about it?" "it is the last money i have. it won't buy me a dinner." "i am sorry, but it is none of my business," said jasper coolly. "you are old enough to attend to your own affairs." "and i once thought you were my friend," murmured philip bitterly. "yes, we were friends in a way." "now you are up and i am down-jasper, i want a dollar." "i dare say you do. plenty want that." "i want it from you." "i can't spare it." "you can spare it better than you can spare your situation." "what do you mean by that?" asked jasper, growing nervous. "i'll tell you what i mean. how long do you think you would stay in the store if mr. goodnow knew that you were concerned in the theft from which he has suffered?" "was i the only one?" "no; i am equally guilty." "i am glad you acknowledge it. you see you had better keep quiet for your own sake." "if i keep quiet i shall starve." "do you want to go to prison?" "i shouldn't mind so much if you went along, too." "are you crazy, philip carton?" "no, i am not, but i am beinning to get sensible. if i go to prison i shall at least have enough to eat, and now i haven't." "what do you mean by all this foolish talk?" "i mean that if you won't give me any money i will go to the store and tell mr. goodnow something that will surprise him." jasper was getting thoroughly frightened. "come, philip." he said, "listen to reason. you know how poor i am." "no doubt. i know you have a good home and enough to eat." "i only get seven dollars a week." "and i get nothing." "i have already been trying to help you. i went to ropes the other day, and asked him to lend me five dollars. i meant it for you." "did he give it to you?" "he wouldn't give me a cent. he is mean and miserly!" "i don't know. he knows very well that you are no friend of his, though he doesn't know how much harm you have done him." "he's rolling in money. however, i've put a spoke in his wheel, i hope." "how?" "i wrote an anonymous letter to mr. sargent telling him that ropes was discharged from the store on suspicion of theft." "you are a precious scamp, jasper." "what do you mean?" "you are not content with getting ropes discharged for something which you yourself did----" "and you too." "and i too. i accept the amendment. not content with that, you try to get him discharged from his present position." "then he might have lent me the money," said jasper sullenly. "it wouldn't have been a loan. it would have been a gift. but no matter about that. i want a dollar." "i can't give it to you." "then i shall call at the store tomorrow morning and tell mr. goodnow about the stolen goods." finding that carton was in earnest jasper finally, but with great reluctance, drew out a dollar and handed it to his companion. "there, i hope that will satisfy you," he said spitefully. "it will--for the present." "i wish he'd get run over or something," thought jasper. "he seems to expect me to support him, and that on seven dollars a week." fortunately for jasper, philip carton obtained employment the next day which lasted for some time, and as he was paid ten dollars a week he was not under the necessity of troubling his old confederate for loans. now and then jasper and rodney met, but there were no cordial relations between them. jasper could not forgive rodney for refusing to lend him money, and rodney was not likely to forget the anonymous letter by which jasper had tried to injure him. so three months passed. one day mr. sargent arrived at home before it was time for rodney to leave. "i am glad to see you, rodney," said his employer. "i have some news for you which i am afraid will not be entirely satisfactory to you." "what is it, sir?" "for the last three years i have been wishing to go to europe with my wife and arthur. the plan has been delayed, because i could not make satisfactory business arrangements. now, however, that difficulty has been overcome, and i propose to sail in about two weeks." "i hope you'll enjoy your trip, sir." "thank you. of course it will terminate, for a time at least your engagement to teach arthur." "i shall be sorry for that, sir, but i am not selfish enough to want you to stay at home on that account." "i thought you would feel that way. i wish i could procure you another position before i go, but that is uncertain. i shall, however, pay you a month's salary in advance in lieu of a notice." "that is very liberal, sir." "i think it only just. i have been very well pleased with your attention to arthur, and i know he has profited by your instructions as well as enjoyed your companionship. i hope you have been able to save something." "yes, sir, i have something in the union dime savings bank." "that's well. you will remain with me one week longer, but the last week arthur will need for preparations." two weeks later rodney stood on the pier and watched the stately etruria steam out into the river. arthur and his father were on deck, and the little boy waved his handkerchief to his tutor as long as he could see him. rodney turned away sadly. "i have lost a good situation," he soliloquized. "when shall i get another?" chapter xxi. continued ill luck. rodney set himself to work searching for a new situation. but wherever he called he found some one ahead of him. at length he saw an advertisement for an entry clerk in a wholesale house in church street. he applied and had the good fortune to please the superintendent. "where have you worked before?" he asked. "at otis goodnow's, on reade street." "how much were you paid there?" "seven dollars a week." "very well, we will start you on that salary, and see if you earn it." rodney was surprised and relieved to find that he was not asked for a recommendation from mr. goodnow, knowing that he could not obtain one. he went to work on a monday morning, and found his duties congenial and satisfactory. seven dollars a week was small, compared with what he had received as a tutor, but he had about two hundred and fifty dollars in the union dime savings bank and drew three dollars from this fund every week in order that he might still assist mike, whose earnings were small. one of his new acquaintances in the store was james hicks, a boy about a year older than himself. "didn't you use to work at otis goodnow's?" asked james one day when they were going to lunch. "yes." "i know a boy employed there. he is older than either of us." "who is it?" "jasper redwood. of course you know him." "yes," answered rodney with a presentiment of evil. he felt that it would be dangerous to have jasper know of his present position, but did not venture to give a hint of this to james. his fears were not groundless. only the day after james met jasper on the street. "anything new?" asked jasper. "yes; we've got one of your old friends in our store." "who is it?" "rodney ropes." jasper stopped short, and whistled. he was excessively surprised, as he supposed rodney still to be arthur sargent's tutor. "you don't mean it?" he ejaculated. "why not? is there anything so strange about it?" "yes. did ropes bring a recommendation from mr. goodnow?" "i suppose so. i don't know." "if he did, it's forged." "why should it be?" "goodnow wouldn't give him a recommendation." "why wouldn't he?" "because he discharged ropes. do you want to know why?" "yes." "for stealing articles from the store." it was the turn of james hicks to be surprised. "i can't believe it," he said. "its true. just mention the matter to ropes, and you'll see he won't deny it." "i think there must be some mistake about it. rodney doesn't look like a fellow that would steal." "oh, you can't tell from appearances--rogues are always plausible." "still mistakes are sometimes made. i'd trust rodney ropes sooner than any boy i know." "you don't know him as well as i do." "you don't like him?" said james shrewdly. "no i don't. i can't like a thief." "you talk as if you had a grudge against him." "nothing but his being a thief. well, what are you going to do about it?" "about what?" "what i have just told you." "i don't feel that i have any call to do anything." "you ought to tell your employer." "i am no telltale," said james scornfully. "then you will let him stay in the store, knowing him to be a thief?" "i don't know him to be a thief. if he steals anything it will probably be found out." jasper urged james to give information about rodney, but he steadily refused. "i leave others to do such dirty work," he said, "and i don't think any better of you, let me tell you, for your eagerness to turn the boy out of his position." "you are a queer boy." "think so if you like," retorted hicks. "i might give my opinion of you." at this point jasper thought it best to let the conversation drop. he was much pleased to learn that rodney had lost his fine position as tutor, and was now in a place from which he might more easily be ousted. as he could not prevail upon james hicks to betray rodney he decided to write an anonymous letter to the firm that employed him. the result was that the next afternoon rodney was summoned to the office. "sit down ropes," said the superintendent. "for what store did you work before you came into our house?" "otis goodnow's." "under what circumstances did you leave?" "i was accused of theft." "you did not mention this matter when you applied for a situation here." "no, sir. i ought perhaps to have done so, but i presumed in that case you would not have given me a place." "you are right he would not." "nor would i have applied had the charge been a true one. articles were certainly missing from mr. goodnow's stock, but in accusing me they did me a great injustice." "how long since you left mr. goodnow's?" "four months." "what have you been doing since?" "i was acting as tutor to the son of mr. sargent, of west fifty eighth street." "a well known citizen. then you are a scholar?" "yes, sir, i am nearly prepared for college." "of course he did not know you were suspected of dishonesty." "on the contrary he did know it. i told him, and later he received an anonymous letter, notifying him of the fact." "we also have received an anonymous letter. here it is. do you recognize the hand writing?" "yes," answered rodney after examining the letter. "it was written by jasper redwood." "who is he?" "a boy employed by mr. goodnow. for some reason he seems to have a spite against me." "i admit that it is pretty small business to write an anonymous letter calculated to injure another. still we shall have to take notice of this." "yes, sir, i suppose so." "i shall have to bring it to the notice of the firm. what they may do i don't know. if the matter was to be decided by me i would let you stay." "thank you, sir," said rodney gratefully. "but i am not mr. hall. you can go now and i will see you again." rodney left the office fully persuaded that his engagement would speedily terminate. he was right; the next day he was sent for again. "i am sorry to tell you, ropes," said the superintendent kindly "that mr. hall insists upon your being discharged. he is a nervous man and rather suspicious. i spoke in your favor but i could not turn him." "at any rate i am grateful to you for your friendly effort." the superintendent hesitated a moment, and then said: "will this discharge seriously embarrass you? are you short of money?" "no, sir. i was very liberally paid by mr. sargent, and i saved money. i have enough in the savings bank to last me several months, should i be idle so long." "i am glad of it. i hope you will remember, my boy, that this is none of my doing. i would gladly retain you. i will say one thing more, should jasper redwood ever apply for a situation here, his name will not be considered." so rodney found himself again without a position. it seemed hard in view of his innocence, but he had confidence to believe that something would turn up for him as before. at any rate he had enough money to live on for some time. when mike flynn learned the circumstances of his discharge he was very angry. "i'd like to meet jasper redwood," he said, his eyes flashing. "if i didn't give him a laying out then my name isn't mike flynn." "i think he will get his desert some time, mickey, without any help from you or me." "should hope he will. and what'll you do now, rodney?" "i don't know. sometimes i think it would be well to go to some other city, boston or philadelphia, where jasper can't get on my track." "should hope you won't do it. i can't get along widout you." "i will stay here for a few weeks, mike, and see if anything turns up." "i might get you in as a telegraph boy." "that wouldn't suit me. it doesn't pay enough." rodney began to hunt for a situation again, but four weeks passed and brought him no success. one afternoon about four o'clock he was walking up broadway when, feeling tired, he stepped into the continental hotel at the corner of twentieth street. he took a seat at some distance back from the door, and in a desultory way began to look about him. all at once he started in surprise, for in a man sitting in one of the front row of chairs he recognized louis wheeler, the railroad thief who had stolen his box of jewelry. wheeler was conversing with a man with a large flapping sombrero, and whose dress and general appearance indicated that he was a westerner. rodney left his seat and going forward sat down in the chair behind wheeler. he suspected that the western man was in danger of being victimized. chapter xxii. an old acquaintance turns up. in his new position rodney could easily hear the conversation which took place between the western man and his old railroad acquaintance. "i am quite a man of leisure," said wheeler, "and it will give me great pleasure to go about with you and show you our city." "you are very obliging." "oh, don't mention it. i shall really be glad to have my time occupied. you see i am a man of means--my father left me a fortune--and so i am not engaged in any business." "you are in luck. i was brought up on a farm in vermont, and had to borrow money to take me to montana four years ago." "i hope you prospered in your new home?" "i did. i picked up twenty five thousand dollars at the mines, and doubled it by investment in lots in helena." "very neat, indeed. i inherited a fortune from my father--a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars--but i never made a cent myself. i don't know whether i am smart enough." "come out to montana and i'll put you in a way of making some money." "really, now, that suggestion strikes me favorably. i believe i will follow your advice. when shall you return to your western home?" "in about a fortnight i think." "you must go to the theater tonight. there is a good play on at the madison square." "i don't mind. when can i get ticket?" "i'll go and secure some. it is only a few blocks away." "do so. how much are the tickets?" "a dollar and a half or two dollars each." "here are five dollars, if it won't trouble you too much." "my dear friend, i meant to pay for the tickets. however, i will pay next time. if you will remain here i will be back in twenty minutes." louis wheeler left the hotel with the five dollars tucked away in his vest pocket. he had no sooner disappeared than rodney went forward and occupied his seat. "excuse me, sir," he said to the miner, "but do you know much of the man who has just left you?" "i only met him here. he seems a good natured fellow. what of him?" "he said he was a man of independent means." "isn't he?" "he is a thief and an adventurer." the miner was instantly on the alert. "how do you know this?" he asked. "because he stole a box of jewelry from me in the cars some months ago." "did you get it again?" "yes; he left the train, but i followed him up and reclaimed the jewelry." "was it of much value?" "they were family jewels, and were worth over a thousand dollars." "do you think he wants to bunco me?" "i have no doubt of it." "i have given him money to buy theater tickets. do you think he will come back?" "yes. he wouldn't be satisfied with that small sum." "tell me about your adventure with him." "i will do it later. the theater is so near that he might come back and surprise us together. i think he would recognize me." "do you advise me to go to the theater?" "yes, but be on your guard." "where can i see you again?" "are you staying at this hotel?" "yes. here is my card." rodney read this name on the card: jefferson pettrigrew. "i wish you were going to the theater with us." "it wouldn't do. mr. wheeler would remember me." "then come round and breakfast with me tomorrow--at eight o'clock, sharp." "i will, sir. now i will take a back seat, and leave you to receive your friend." "don't call him my friend. he seems to be a mean scoundrel." "don't let him suspect anything from your manner." "i won't. i want to see him expose his plans." five minutes afterwards louis wheeler entered the hotel. "i've got the tickets," he said, "but i had to buy them of a speculator, and they cost me more than i expected." "how much?" "two and a half apiece. so there is no change coming back to you." "never mind! as long as you had enough money to pay for them it is all right." as a matter of fact wheeler bought the tickets at the box office at one dollar and fifty cent each, which left him a profit of two dollars. when he saw how easily the western man took it he regretted not having represented that the tickets cost three dollars each. however, he decided that there would be other ways of plundering his new acquaintance. he took his seat again next to the miner. "it is not very late," he said. "would you like a run out to central park or to grant's tomb?" "not today. i feel rather tired. by the way, you did not mention your name." "i haven't a card with me, but my name is louis wheeler." "where do you live, mr. wheeler?" "i am staying with an aunt on fifth avenue, but i think of taking board at the windsor hotel. it is a very high toned house, and quite a number of my friends board there." "is it an expensive hotel?" "oh, yes, but my income is large and----" "i understand. now, mr. wheeler, i must excuse myself, as i feel tired. come at half past seven and we can start for the theater together." "very well." wheeler rose reluctantly, for he had intended to secure a dinner from his new acquaintance, but he was wise enough to take the hint. after he left the room rodney again joined mr. pettigrew. "he didn't give me back any change," said the western man. "he said he bought the tickets of a speculator at two dollars and a half each." "then he made two dollars out of you." "i suppose that is the beginning. well, that doesn't worry me. but i should like to know how he expects to get more money out of me. i don't understand the ways of this gentry." "nor i very well. if you are on your guard i think you won't be in any danger." "i will remember what you say. you seem young to act as adviser to a man like me. are you in business?" "at present i am out of work, but i have money enough to last me three months." "are you, like my new acquaintance, possessed of independent means?" "not now, but i was six months ago." "how did you lose your money?" "i did not lose it. my guardian lost it for me." "what is your name?" "rodney ropes." "you've had some pretty bad luck. come up to my room and tell me about it." "i shall be glad to do so, sir." mr. pettigrew called for his key and led the way up to a plain room on the third floor. "come in," he said. "the room is small, but i guess it will hold us both. now go ahead with your story." in a short time rodney had told his story in full to his new acquaintance, encouraged to do so by his sympathetic manner. mr. pettigrew was quite indignant, when told of jasper's mean and treacherous conduct. "that boy jasper is a snake in the grass," he said. "i'd like to give him a good thrashing." "there isn't any love lost between us, mr. pettigrew, but i think it will turn out right in the end. still i find it hard to get a place in new york with him circulating stories about me." "then why do you stay in new york?" "i have thought it might be better to go to philadelphia or boston." "i can tell you of a better place than either." "what is that?" "montana." "do you really think it would be wise for me to go there?" "think? i haven't a doubt about it." "i have money enough to get there, but not much more. i should soon have to find work, or i might get stranded." "come back with me, and i'll see you through. i'll make a bargain with you. go round with me here, and i'll pay your fare out to montana." "if you are really in earnest i will do so, and thank you for the offer." "jefferson pettigrew means what he says. i'll see you through, rodney." "but i may be interfering with your other friend, louis wheeler." "i shall soon be through with him. you needn't worry yourself about that." mr. pettigrew insisted upon rodney's taking supper with him. fifteen minutes after rodney left him mr. wheeler made his appearance. chapter xxiii. mr. wheeler has a set back. louis wheeler had not seen rodney in the hotel office, and probably would not have recognized him if he had, as rodney was quite differently dressed from the time of their first meeting. he had no reason to suppose, therefore, that mr. pettigrew had been enlightened as to his real character. it was therefore with his usual confidence that he accosted his acquaintance from montana after supper. "it is time to go to the theater, mr. pettigrew," he said. jefferson pettigrew scanned his new acquaintance with interest. he had never before met a man of his type and he looked upon him as a curiosity. he was shrewd, however, and did not propose to let wheeler know that he understood his character. he resolved for the present to play the part of the bluff and unsuspecting country visitor. "you are very kind, mr. wheeler," he said, "to take so much trouble for a stranger." "my dear sir," said wheeler effusively, "i wouldn't do it for many persons, but i have taken a fancy to you." "you don't mean so?" said pettigrew, appearing pleased? "yes, i do, on my honor." "but i don't see why you should. you are a polished city gentleman and i am an ignorant miner from montana." louis wheeler looked complacent when he was referred to as a polished city gentleman. "you do yourself injustice, my dear pettigrew," he said in a patronizing manner. "you do indeed. you may not be polished, but you are certainly smart, as you have shown by accumulating a fortune." "but i am not as rich as you." "perhaps not, but if i should lose my money, i could not make another fortune, while i am sure you could. don't you think it would be a good plan for us to start a business together in new york?" "would you really be willing to go into business with me?" jefferson pettigrew asked this question with so much apparent sincerity that wheeler was completely deceived. "i've got him dead!" he soliloquized complacently. he hooked his arm affectionately in the montana miner's and said, "my dear friend, i have never met a man with whom i would rather be associated in business than with you. how much capital could you contribute?" "i will think it over, mr. wheeler. by the way what business do you propose that we shall go into?" "i will think it over and report to you." by this time they had reached the theater. the play soon commenced. mr. pettigrew enjoyed it highly, for he had not had much opportunity at the west of attending a high class theatrical performance. when the play ended, louis wheeler said, "suppose we go to delmonico's and have a little refreshment." "very well." they adjourned to the well known restaurant, and mr. pettigrew ordered an ice and some cakes, but his companion made a hearty supper. when the bill came, louis wheeler let it lie on the table, but mr. pettigrew did not appear to see it. "i wonder if he expects me to pay for it," wheeler asked himself anxiously. "thank you for this pleasant little supper," said pettigrew mischievously. "delmonico's is certainly a fine place." wheeler changed color. he glanced at the check. it was for two dollars and seventy five cents, and this represented a larger sum than he possessed. he took the check and led the way to the cashier's desk. then he examined his pockets. "by jove," he said, "i left my wallet in my other coat. may i borrow five dollars till tomorrow?" jefferson pettigrew eyed him shrewdly. "never mind," he said, "i will pay the check." "i am very much ashamed of having put you to this expense." "if that is all you have to be ashamed of mr. wheeler," said the miner pointedly, "you can rest easy." "what do you mean?" stammered wheeler. "wait till we get into the street, and i will tell you." they went out at the broadway entrance, and then mr. pettigrew turned to his new acquaintance. "i think i will bid you good night and good by at the same time, mr. wheeler," he said. "my dear sir, i hoped you won't misjudge me on account of my unfortunately leaving my money at home." "i only wish to tell you that i have not been taken in by your plausible statement, mr. wheeler, if that is really your name. before we started for the theater i had gauged you and taken your measure." "sir, i hope you don't mean to insult me!" blustered wheeler. "not at all. you have been mistaken in me, but i am not mistaken in you. i judge you to be a gentlemanly adventurer, ready to take advantage of any who have money and are foolish enough to be gulled by your tricks. you are welcome to the profit you made out of the theater tickets, also to the little supper to which you have done so much justice. i must request you, now, however, to devote yourself to some one else, as i do not care to meet you again." louis wheeler slunk away, deciding that he had made a great mistake in setting down his montana acquaintance as an easy victim. "i didn't think he'd get on to my little game so quick," he reflected. "he's sharper than he looks," rodney took breakfast with mr. pettigrew the next morning. when breakfast was over, the montana man said: "i'm going to make a proposal to you, rodney. how much pay did you get at your last place?" "seven dollars a week." "i'll pay you that and give you your meals. in return i want you to keep me company and go about with me." "i shall not be apt to refuse such an offer as that, mr. pettigrew, but are you sure you prefer me to mr. wheeler?" laughed rodney. "wheeler be--blessed!" returned the miner. "how long are you going to stay in new york?" "about two weeks. then i shall go back to montana and take you with me." "thank you. there is nothing i should like better." two days later, as the two were walking along broadway, they met mr. wheeler. the latter instantly recognized his friend from montana, and scrutinized closely his young companion. rodney's face looked strangely familiar to him, but somehow he could not recollect when or under what circumstances he had met him. he did not, however, like to give up his intended victim, but had the effrontery to address the man from montana. "i hope you are well, mr. pettigrew." "thank you, i am very well." "i hope you are enjoying yourself. i should be glad to show you the sights. have you been to grants tomb?" "not yet." "i should like to take you there." "thank you, but i have a competent guide." "won't you introduce me to the young gentleman?" "i don't require any introduction to you, mr. wheeler," said rodney. "where have i met you before?" asked wheeler abruptly. "in the cars. i had a box of jewelry with me," answered rodney significantly. louis wheeler changed color. now he remembered rodney, and he was satisfied that he owed to him the coolness with which the western man had treated him. "i remember you had," he said spitefully, "but i don't know how you came by it." "it isn't necessary that you should know. i remember i had considerable difficulty in getting it out of your hands." "mr. pettigrew," said wheeler angrily, "i feel interested in you, and i want to warn you against the boy who is with you. he is a dangerous companion." "i dare say you are right," said pettigrew in a quizzical tone. "i shall look after him sharply, and i thank you for your kind and considerate warning. i don't care to take up any more of your valuable time. rodney, let us be going." "it must have been the kid that exposed me," muttered wheeler, as he watched the two go down the street. "i will get even with him some time. that man would have been good for a thousand dollars to me if i had not been interfered with." "you have been warned against me, mr. pettigrew," said rodney, laughing. "mr. wheeler has really been very unkind in interfering with my plans." "i shan't borrow any trouble, or lie awake nights thinking about it, rodney. i don't care to see or think of that rascal again." the week passed, and the arrangement between mr. pettigrew and rodney continued to their mutual satisfaction. one morning, when rodney came to the continental as usual, his new friend said: "i received a letter last evening from my old home in vermont." "i hope it contained good news." "on the contrary it contained bad news. my parents are dead, but i have an old uncle and aunt living. when i left burton he was comfortably fixed, with a small farm of his own, and two thousand dollars in bank. now i hear that he is in trouble. he has lost money, and a knavish neighbor has threatened to foreclose a mortgage on the farm and turn out the old people to die or go to the poorhouse." "is the mortgage a large one?" "it is much less than the value of the farm, but ready money is scarce in the town, and that old sheldon calculates upon. now i think of going to burton to look up the matter." "you must save your uncle, if you can, mr. pettigrew." "i can and i will. i shall start for boston this afternoon by the fall river boat and i want you to go with me." "i should enjoy the journey, mr. pettigrew." "then it is settled. go home and pack your gripsack. you may be gone three or four days." chapter xxiv. a change of scene. "now," said mr. pettigrew, when they were sitting side by side on the upper deck of the puritan, the magnificent steamer on the fall river line. "i want you to consent to a little plan that will mystify my old friends and neighbors." "what is it, mr. pettigrew?" "i have never written home about my good fortune; so far as they know i am no better off than when i went away." "i don't think i could have concealed my success." "it may seem strange, but i'll explain--i want to learn who are my friends and who are not. i am afraid i wasn't very highly thought of when i left burton. i was considered rather shiftless. "i was always in for a good time, and never saved a cent. everybody predicted that i would fail, and i expect most wanted me to fail. there were two or three, including my uncle, aunt and the friend who lent me money, who wished me well. "i mustn't forget to mention the old minister who baptized me when i was an infant. the good old man has been preaching thirty or forty years on a salary of four hundred dollars, and has had to run a small farm to make both ends meet. he believed in me and gave me good advice. outside of these i don't remember any one who felt an interest in jefferson pettigrew." "you will have the satisfaction of letting them see that they did not do you justice." "yes, but i may not tell them--that is none except my true friends. if i did, they would hover round me and want to borrow money, or get me to take them out west with me. so i have hit upon a plan. i shall want to use money, but i will pretend it is yours." rodney opened his eyes in surprise. "i will pass you off as a rich friend from new york, who feels an interest in me and is willing to help me." rodney smiled. "i don't know if i can look the character," he said. "oh yes you can. you are nicely dressed, while i am hardly any better dressed than when i left burton." "i have wondered why you didn't buy some new clothes when you were able to afford it." "you see we western miners don't care much for style, perhaps not enough. still i probably shall buy a suit or two, but not till i have made my visit home. i want to see how people will receive me, when they think i haven't got much money. i shall own up to about five hundred dollars, but that isn't enough to dazzle people even in a small country village." "i am wiling to help you in any way you wish, mr. pettigrew." "then i think we shall get some amusement out of it. i shall represent you as worth about a hundred thousand dollars." "i wish i were." "very likely you will be some time if you go out to montana with me." "how large a place is burton?" "it has not quite a thousand inhabitants. it is set among the hills, and has but one rich man, lemuel sheldon, who is worth perhaps fifty thousand dollars, but put on the airs of a millionaire." "you are as rich as he, then." "yes, and shall soon be richer. however, i don't want him to know it. it is he who holds the mortgage on my uncle's farm." "do you know how large the mortgage is?" "it is twelve hundred dollars. i shall borrow the money of you to pay it." "i understand," said rodney, smiling. "i shall enjoy the way the old man will look down upon me very much as a millionaire looks down upon a town pauper." "how will he look upon me?" "he will be very polite to you, for he will think you richer than himself." "on the whole, we are going to act a comedy, mr. pettigrew. what is the name of the man who lent you money to go to montana?" "a young carpenter, frank dobson. he lent me a hundred dollars, which was about all the money he had saved up." "he was a true friend." "you are right. he was. everybody told frank that he would never see his money again, but he did. as soon as i could get together enough to repay him i sent it on, though i remember it left me with less than ten dollars in my pocket. "i couldn't bear to think that frank would lose anything by me. you see we were chums at school and always stood by each other. he is married and has two children." "while you are an old bachelor." "yes; i ain't in a hurry to travel in double harness. i'll wait till i am ready to leave montana, with money enough to live handsomely at home." "you have got enough now." "but i may as well get more. i am only thirty years old, and i can afford to work a few years longer." "i wish i could be sure of being worth fifty thousand dollars when i am your age." "you have been worth that, you tell me." "yes, but i should value more money that i had made myself." above five o'clock on monday afternoon mr. pettigrew and rodney reached burton. it was a small village about four miles from the nearest railway station. an old fashioned concord stage connected burton with the railway. the driver was on the platform looking out for passengers when jefferson pettigrew stepped out of the car. "how are you, hector?" said the miner, in an off hand way. "why, bless my soul if it isn't jeff!" exclaimed the driver, who had been an old schoolmate of mr. pettigrew's. "i reckon it is," said the miner, his face lighting up with the satisfaction he felt at seeing a home face. "why, you ain't changed a mite, jeff. you look just as you did when you went away. how long have you been gone?" "four years!" "made a fortune? but you don't look like it. that's the same suit you wore when you went away, isn't it?" mr. pettigrew laughed. "well no, it isn't the same, but it's one of the same kind." "i thought maybe you'd come home in a dress suit." "it isn't so easy to make a fortune, hector." "but you have made something, ain't you?" "oh, yes, when i went away i hadn't a cent except what i borrowed. now i've got five hundred dollars." "that ain't much." "no, but it's better than nothing. how much more have you got, hector?" "well, you see i married last year. i haven't had a chance to lay by." "so you see i did as well as if i had stayed at home." "are you going to stay home now?" "for a little while. i may go back to montana after a bit." "is it a good place to make money?" "i made five hundred dollars." "thats only a little more than a hundred dollars a year. frank dobson has saved as much as that and he's stayed right here in burton." "i'm glad of that," said pettigrew heartily. "frank is a rousing good fellow. if it hadn't been for him i couldn't have gone to montana." "it doesn't seem to have done you much good, as i can see." "oh, well, i am satisfied. let me introduce my friend, mr. rodney ropes of new york." "glad to meet you," said hector with a jerk of the head. "rodney, won't you sit inside? i want to sit outide with hector." "all right, mr. pettigrew." "who is that boy?" asked hector with characteristic yankee curiosity, as he seized the lines and started the horses. "a rich young fellow from new york. i got acquainted with him there." "rich is he?" jefferson pettigrew nodded. "how rich do you think?" "shouldn't wonder if he might be worth a hundred thousand." "you don't say! why, he beat squire sheldon." "oh, yes, squire sheldon wouldn't be considered rich in new york." "how did he get his money?" "his father left him a fortune." "is that so? i wish my father had left me a fortune." "he did, didn't he?" "yes, he did! when his estate was settled i got seventy five dollars, if you call that a fortune. but i say, what brings the boy to burton?" "his friendship for me, i expect. besides he may invest in a place." "there's the old morse place for sale. do you think he'd buy that?" "it wouldn't be nice enough for him. i don't know any place that would be good enough except the squire's." "the squire wouldn't sell." "oh, well, i don't know as rodney would care to locate in burton." "you're in luck to get such a friend. say, do you think he would lend you a hundred dollars if you were hard up?" "i know he would. by the way, hector, is there any news? how is my uncle?" "i think the old man is worrying on account of his mortgage." "who holds it?" "the squire. they do say he is goin' to foreclose. that'll be bad for the old man. it'll nigh about break his heart i expect." "can't uncle raise the money to pay him?" "who is there round here who has got any money except the squire?" "that's so." "where are you goin' to stop, jeff?" "i guess i'll stop at the tavern tonight, but i'll go over and call on uncle this evening." chapter xxv. jefferson pettigrew's home. news spreads fast in a country village. scarcely an hour had passed when it was generally known that jefferson pettigrew had come home from montana with a few hundred dollars in money, bringing with him a rich boy who could buy out all burton. at least that is the way the report ran. when the two new arrivals had finished supper and come out on the hotel veranda there were a dozen of jefferson pettigrew's friends ready to welcome him. "how are you, jefferson, old boy?" said one and another. "pretty well, thank you. it seems good to be home." "i hear you've brought back some money." "yes, a few hundred dollars." "that's better than nothing. i reckon you'll stay home now." "i can't afford it, boys." "are ye goin' back to montany?" "yes. i know the country, and i can make a middlin' good livin' there." "i say, is that boy thats with you as rich as they say?" "i don't know what they say." "they say he's worth a million." "oh no, not so much as that. he's pretty well fixed." "hasn't he got a father livin'?" "no, it's his father that left the money." "how did you happen to get in with him?" "oh, we met promiscuous. he took a sort of fancy to me, and that's the way of it." "do you expect to keep him with you?" "he talks of goin' back to montana with me. i'll be sort of guardian to him." "you're in luck, jeff." "yes, i'm in luck to have pleasant company. maybe we'll join together and buy a mine." "would you mind introducin' him?" "not at all," and thus rodney became acquainted with quite a number of the burton young men. he was amused to see with what deference they treated him, but preserved a sober face and treated all cordially, so that he made a favorable impression on those he met. among those who made it in their way to call on the two travelers was lemuel sheldon, the rich man of the village. "how do you do, jefferson?" he said condescendingly. "very well, sir." "you have been quite a traveler." "yes, sir; i have been to the far west." "and met with some success, i am told." "yes, sir; i raised money enough to get home." "i hear you brought home a few hundred dollars." "yes, sir." "oh, well," said the squire patronizingly, "that's good beginning." "it must seem very little to a rich man like you, squire." "oh, no!" said the squire patronizingly. "you are a young man. i shouldn't wonder if by the time you get as old as i am you might be worth five thousand dollars." "i hope so," answered mr. pettigrew demurely. "by the way, you have brought a young man with you, i am told." "yes." "i should like to make his acquaintance. he is rich, is he not?" "i wish i was as rich." "you don't say so! about how much do you estimate he is worth?" "i don't think it amounts to quite as much as a quarter of a million. still, you know it is not always easy to tell how much a person is worth." "he is certainly a very fortunate young man," said the squire, impressed. "what is his name?" "rodney ropes." "the name sounds aristocratic. i shall be glad to know him." "rodney," said mr. pettigrew. "i want to introduce you to squire sheldon, our richest and most prominent citizen." "i am glad to meet you, squire sheldon," said rodney, offering his hand. "i quite reciprocate the feeling, mr. ropes, but mr. pettigrew should not call me a rich man. i am worth something, to be sure." "i should say you were, squire," said jefferson. "rodney, he is as rich as you are." "oh no," returned the squire, modestly, "not as rich as that. indeed, i hardly know how much i am worth. as mr. pettigrew very justly observed it is not easy to gauge a man's possessions. but there is one difference between us. you, mr. ropes, i take it, are not over eighteen." "only sixteen, sir." "and yet you are wealthy. i am rising fifty. when you come to my age you will be worth much more." "perhaps i may have lost all i now possess," said rodney. "within a year i have lost fifty thousand dollars." "you don't say so." "yes; it was through a man who had charge of my property. i think now i shall manage my money matters myself." "doubtless you are right. that was certainly a heavy loss. i shouldn't like to lose so much. i suppose, however, you had something left?" "oh yes," answered rodney in an indifferent tone. "he must be rich to make so little account of fifty thousand dollars," thought the squire. "how long do you propose to stay in town, mr. pettigrew?" he asked. "i can't tell, sir, but i don't think i can spare more than three or four days." "may i hope that you and mr. ropes will take supper with me tomorrow evening?" "say the next day and we'll come. tomorrow i must go to my uncle's." "oh very well!" squire sheldon privately resolved to pump rodney as to the investment of his property. he was curious to learn first how much the boy was worth, for if there was anything that the squire worshiped it was wealth. he was glad to find that mr. pettigrew had only brought home five hundred dollars, as it was not enough to lift the mortgage on his uncle's farm. after they were left alone jefferson pettigrew turned to rodney and said, "do you mind my leaving you a short time and calling at my uncle's?" "not at all, mr. pettigrew. i can pass my time very well." jefferson pettigrew directed his steps to an old fashioned farmhouse about half a mile from the village. in the rear the roof sloped down so that the eaves were only five feet from the ground. the house was large though the rooms were few in number. in the sitting room sat an old man and his wife, who was nearly as old. it was not a picture of cheerful old age, for each looked sad. the sadness of old age is pathetic for there is an absence of hope, and courage, such as younger people are apt to feel even when they are weighed down by trouble. cyrus hooper was seventy one, his wife two years younger. during the greater part of their lives they had been well to do, if not prosperous, but now their money was gone, and there was a mortgage on the old home which they could not pay. "i don't know whats goin' to become of us, nancy," said cyrus hooper. "we'll have to leave the old home, and when the farm's been sold there won't be much left over and above the mortgage which louis sheldon holds." "don't you think the squire will give you a little more time, cyrus?" "no; i saw him yesterday, and he's sot on buyin' in the farm for himself. he reckons it won't fetch more'n eighteen hundred dollars." "thats only six hundred over the mortgage." "it isn't that nancy. there's about a hundred dollars due in interest. we won't get more'n five hundred dollars." "surely, cyrus, the farm is worth three thousand dollars." "so it is, nancy, but that won't do us any good, as long as no one wants it more'n the squire." "i wish jefferson were at home." "what good would it do? i surmise he hasn't made any money. he never did have much enterprise, that boy." "he was allus a good boy, cyrus." "that's so, nancy, but he didn't seem cut out for makin' money. still it would do me good to see him. maybe we might have a home together, and manage to live." just then a neighbor entered. "have you heard the news?" she asked. "no; what is it?" "your nephew jefferson pettigrew has got back." "you don't mean so. there, jefferson, that's one comfort." "and they say he has brought home five hundred dollars." "that's more'n i thought he'd bring. where is he?" "over at the tavern. he's brought a young man with him, leastways a boy, that's got a lot of money." "the boy?" "yes; he's from new york, and is a friend of jefferson's." "well, i'm glad he's back. why didn't he come here?" "it's likely he would if the boy wasn't with him." "perhaps he heard of my misfortune." "i hope it'll all come right, mr. hooper. my, if there ain't jefferson comin' to see you now. i see him through the winder. i guess i'll be goin'. you'll want to see him alone." chapter xxvi. the boy capitalist. "how are you, uncle cyrus?" said jefferson pettigrew heartily, as he clasped his uncle's toil worn hand. "and aunt nancy, too! it pays me for coming all the way from montana just to see you." "i'm glad to see you, jefferson," said his uncle. "it seems a long time since you went away. i hope you've prospered." "well, uncle, i've brought myself back well and hearty, and i've got a few hundred dollars." "i'm glad to hear it, jefferson. you're better off than when you went away." "yes, uncle. i couldn't be much worse off. then i hadn't a cent that i could call my own. but how are you and aunt nancy?" "we're gettin' old, jefferson, and misfortune has come to us. squire sheldon has got a mortgage on the farm and it's likely we'll be turned out. you've come just in time to see it." "is it so bad as that, uncle cyrus? why, when i went away you were prosperous." "yes, jefferson, i owned the farm clear, and i had money in the bank, but now the money's gone and there's a twelve hundred dollar mortgage on the old place," and the old man sighed. "but how did it come about uncle? you and aunt nancy haven't lived extravagantly, have you? aunt nancy, you haven't run up a big bill at the milliner's and dressmaker's?" "you was always for jokin', jefferson," said the old lady, smiling faintly; "but that is not the way our losses came." "how then?" "you see i indorsed notes for sam sherman over at canton, and he failed, and i had to pay. then i bought some wild cat minin' stock on sam's recommendation, and that went down to nothin'. so between the two i lost about three thousand dollars. i've been a fool, jefferson, and it would have been money in my pocket if i'd had a guardeen." "so you mortgaged the place to squire sheldon, uncle?" "yes; i had to. i was obliged to meet my notes." "but surely the squire will extend the mortgage." "no, he won't. i've asked him. he says he must call in the money, and so the old place will have to be sold, and nancy and i must turn out in our old age." again the old man sighed, and tears came into nancy hooper's eyes. "there'll be something left, won't there, uncle cyrus?" "yes, the place should bring six hundred dollars over and above the mortgage. that's little enough, for it's worth three thousand." "so it is, uncle cyrus. but what can you do with six hundred dollars? it won't support you and aunt nancy?" "i thought mebbe, jefferson, i could hire a small house and you could board with us, so that we could still have a home together." "i'll think it over, uncle, if there is no other way. but are you sure squire sheldon won't give you more time?" "no, jefferson. i surmise he wants the place himself. there's talk of a railroad from sherborn, and that'll raise the price of land right around here. it'll probably go right through the farm just south of the three acre lot." "i see, uncle cyrus. you ought to have the benefit of the rise in value." "yes, jefferson, it would probably rise enough to pay off the mortgage, but its no use thinkin' of it. the old farm has got to go." "i don't know about that, uncle cyrus." "why, jefferson, you haven't money enough to lift the mortgage!" said the old man, with faint hope. "if i haven't i may get it for you. tell me just how much money is required." "thirteen hundred dollars, includin' interest." "perhaps you have heard that i have a boy with me--a boy from new york, named rodney ropes. he has money, and perhaps i might get him to advance the sum you want." "oh, jefferson, if you only could!" exclaimed aunt nancy, clasping her thin hands. "it would make us very happy." "i'll see rodney tonight and come over tomorrow morning and tell you what he says. on account of the railroad i shall tell him that it is a good investment. i suppose you will be willing to mortgage the farm to him for the same money that he pays to lift the present mortgage?" "yes, jefferson, i'll be willin' and glad. it'll lift a great burden from my shoulders. i've been worryin' at the sorrow i've brought upon poor nancy, for she had nothing to do with my foolish actions. i was old enough to know better, jefferson, and i'm ashamed of what i did." "well, uncle cyrus, i'll do what i can for you. now let us forget all about your troubles and talk over the village news. you know i've been away for four years, and i haven't had any stiddy correspondence, so a good deal must have happened that i don't know anything about. i hear frank dobson has prospered?" "yes, frank's pretty forehanded. he's got a good economical wife, and they've laid away five or six hundred dollars in the savings bank." "i am glad of it. frank is a good fellow. if it hadn't been for him i couldn't have gone to montana. when he lent me the money everybody said he'd lose it, but i was bound to pay it if i had to live on one meal a day. he was the only man in town who believed in me at that time." "you was a littless shif'less, jefferson. you can't blame people. i wasn't quite sure myself how you'd get along." "no doubt you are right, uncle cyrus. it did me good to leave town. i didn't drink, but i had no ambition. when a man goes to a new country it's apt to make a new man of him. that was the case with me." "are you goin' back again, jefferson?" "yes, uncle. i'm going to stay round here long enough to fix up your affairs and get you out of your trouble. then i'll go back to the west. i have a little mining interest there and i can make more money there than i can here." "if you can get me out of my trouble, jefferson, i'll never forget it. nancy and i have been so worried that we couldn't sleep nights, but now i'm beginnin' to be a little more cheerful." jefferson pettigrew spent another hour at his uncle's house, and then went back to the tavern, where he found rodney waiting for him. he explained briefly the part he wished his boy friend to take in his plan for relieving his uncle. "i shall be receiving credit to which i am not entitled," said rodney. "still, if it will oblige you i am willing to play the part of the boy capitalist." the next morning after breakfast the two friends walked over to the house of cyrus hooper. aunt nancy came to the door and gave them a cordial welcome. "cyrus is over at the barn, jefferson," she said. "i'll ring the bell and he'll come in." "no, aunt nancy, i'll go out and let him know i am here." presently cyrus hooper came in, accompanied by jefferson. "uncle cyrus," said the miner, "let me introduce you to my friend rodney ropes, of new york." "i'm glad to see you," said cyrus heartily. "i'm glad to see any friend of jefferson's," "thank you, sir. i am pleased to meet you." "jefferson says you are goin' to montany with him." "i hope to do so. i am sure i shall enjoy myself in his company." "how far is montany, jefferson?" "it is over two thousand miles away, uncle cyrus." "it must be almost at the end of the world. i don't see how you can feel at home so far away from vermont." jefferson smiled. "i can content myself wherever i can make a good living," he said. "wouldn't you like to go out and make me a visit?" "no, jefferson, i should feel that it was temptin' providence to go so far at my age." "you never were very far from burton, uncle cyrus?" "i went to montpelier once," answered the old man with evident pride. "it is a nice sizable place. i stopped at the tavern, and had a good time." it was the only journey the old man had ever made, and he would never forget it. "uncle cyrus," said jefferson, "this is the young man who i thought might advance you money on a new mortgage. suppose we invite him to go over the farm, and take a look at it so as to see what he thinks of the investment." "sartain, jefferson, sartain! i do hope mr. ropes you'll look favorable on the investment. it is jefferson's idea, but it would be doin' me a great favor." "mr. pettigrew will explain the advantages of the farm as we go along," said rodney. so they walked from field to field, jefferson expatiating to his young friend upon the merits of the investment, rodney asking questions now and then to carry out his part of the shrewd and careful boy capitalist. when they had made a tour of the farm jefferson said: "well, rodney, what do you think of the investment?" "i am satisfied with it," answered rodney. "mr. hooper, i will advance you the money on the conditions mentioned by my friend, mr. pettigrew." tears of joy came into the eyes of cyrus hooper and his worn face showed relief. "i am very grateful, young man," he said. "i will see that you don't regret your kindness." "when will squire sheldon be over to settle matters, uncle cyrus?" asked jefferson. "he is comin' this afternoon at two o'clock." "then rodney and i will be over to take part in the business." chapter xxvii. the failure of squire sheldon's plot. on the morning of the same day squire sheldon sat in his study when the servant came in and brought a card. "it's a gentleman thats come to see you, sir," she said. lemuel sheldon's eye brightened when he saw the name, for it was that of a railroad man who was interested in the proposed road from sherborn. "i am glad to see you, mr. caldwell," he said cordially, rising to receive his guest. "what is the prospect as regards the railroad?" "i look upon it as a certainty," answered enoch caldwell, a grave, portly man of fifty. "and it is sure to pass through our town?" "yes, i look upon that as definitely decided." "the next question is as to the route it will take," went on the squire. "upon that point i should like to offer a few suggestions." "i shall be glad to receive them. in fact, i may say that my report will probably be accepted, and i shall be glad to consult you." "thank you. i appreciate the compliment you pay me, and, though i say it, i don't think you could find any one more thoroughly conversant with the lay of the land and the most advisable route to follow. if you will put on your hat we will go out together and i will give you my views." "i shall be glad to do so." the two gentlemen took a leisurely walk through the village, going by cyrus hooper's house on the way. "in my view," said the squire, "the road should go directly through this farm a little to the north of the house." the squire proceeded to explain his reasons for the route he recommended. "to whom does the farm belong?" asked caldwell, with a shrewd glance at the squire. "to an old man named cyrus hooper." "ahem! perhaps he would be opposed to the road passing so near his house." "i apprehend that he will not have to be consulted," said the squire with a crafty smile. "why not?" "because i hold a mortgage on the farm which i propose to foreclose this afternoon." "i see. so that you will be considerably benefited by the road." "yes, to a moderate extent." "but if a different course should be selected, how then?" "if the road goes through the farm i would be willing to give a quarter of the damages awarded to me to--you understand?" "i think i do. after all it seems the most natural route." "i think there can be no doubt on that point. of course the corporation will be willing to pay a reasonable sum for land taken." "i think i can promise that, as i shall have an important voice in the matter." "i see you are a thorough business man," said the squire. "i hold that it is always best to pursue a liberal policy." "quite so. you have no doubt of obtaining the farm?" "not the slightest." "but suppose the present owner meets the mortgage?" "he can't. he is a poor man, and he has no moneyed friends. i confess i was a little afraid that a nephew of his just returned from montana might be able to help him, but i learn that he has only brought home five hundred dollars while the mortgage, including interest, calls for thirteen hundred." "then you appear to be safe. when did you say the matter would be settled?" "this afternoon at two o'clock. you had better stay over and take supper with me. i shall be prepared to talk with you at that time." "very well." from a window of the farmhouse cyrus hooper saw squire sheldon and his guest walking by the farm, and noticed the interest which they seemed to feel in it. but for the assurance which he had received of help to pay the mortgage he would have felt despondent, for he guessed the subject of their conversation. as it was, he felt an excusable satisfaction in the certain defeat of the squire's hopes of gain. "it seems that the more a man has the more he wants, jefferson," he said to his nephew. "the squire is a rich man--the richest man in burton--but he wants to take from me the little property that i have." "it's the way of the world, uncle cyrus. in this case the squire is safe to be disappointed, thanks to my young friend, rodney." "its lucky for me, jefferson, that you came home just the time you did. if you had come a week later it would have been too late." "then you don't think the squire would have relented?" "i know he wouldn't. i went over a short time since and had a talk with him on the subject. i found he was sot on gettin' the farm into his own hands." "if he were willing to pay a fair value it wouldn't be so bad." "he wasn't. he wanted to get it as cheap as he could." "i wonder," said jefferson pettigrew reflectively, "whether i shall be as hard and selfish if ever i get rich." "i don't believe you will, jefferson. i don't believe you will. it doesn't run in the blood." "i hope not uncle cyrus. how long have you known the squire?" "forty years, jefferson. he is about ten years younger than i am. i was a young man when he was a boy." "and you attend the same church?" "yes." "and still he is willing to take advantage of you and reduce you to poverty. i don't see much religion in that." "when a man's interest is concerned religion has to stand to one side with some people." it was in a pleasant frame of mind that squire sheldon left his house and walked over to the farmhouse which he hoped to own. he had decided to offer eighteen hundred dollars for the farm, which would be five hundred over and above the face of the mortgage with the interest added. this of itelf would give him an excellent profit, but he expected also, as we know, to drive a stiff bargain with the new railroad company, for such land as they would require to use. "stay here till i come back, mr. caldwell," he said. "i apprehend it won't take me long to get through my business." squire sheldon knocked at the door of the farmhouse, which was opened to him by nancy hooper. "walk in, squire," she said. "is your husband at home, mrs. hooper?" "yes; he is waiting for you." mrs. hooper led the way into the sitting room, where her husband was sitting in a rocking chair. "good afternoon, mr. hooper," said the squire. "i hope i see you well." "as well as i expect to be. i'm gettin' to be an old man." "we must all grow old," said the squire vaguely. "and sometimes a man's latter years are his most sorrowful years." "that means that he can't pay the mortgage," thought squire sheldon. "well, ahem! yes, it does sometimes happen so," he said aloud. "still if a man's friends stand by him, that brings him some comfort." "i suppose you know what i've come about, mr. hooper," said the squire, anxious to bring his business to a conclusion. "i suppose it's about the mortgage." "yes, its about the mortgage." "will you be willing to extend it another year?" "i thought," said the squire, frowning, "i had given you to understand that i cannot do this. you owe me a large sum in accrued interest." "but if i make shift to pay this?" "i should say the same. it may as well come first as last. you can't hold the place, and there is no chance of your being better off by waiting." "i understand that the new railroad might go through my farm. that would put me on my feet." "there is no certainty that the road will ever be built. even if it were, it would not be likely to cross your farm." "i see, squire sheldon, you are bound to have the place." "there is no need to put it that way, mr. hooper. i lent you money on mortgage. you can't pay the mortgage, and of course i foreclose. however, i will buy the farm and allow you eighteen hundred dollars for it. that will give you five hundred dollars over and above the money you owe me." "the farm is worth three thousand dollars." "nonsense, mr. hooper. still if you get an offer of that sum today i will advise you to sell." "i certainly won't take eighteen hundred." "you won't? then i shall foreclose, and you may have to take less." "then there is only one thing to do." "as you say, there is only one thing to do." "and that is, to pay off the mortgage and clear the farm." "you can't do it!" exclaimed the squire uneasily. cyrus hooper's only answer was to call "jefferson." jefferson pettigrew entered the room, followed by rodney. "what does this mean?" asked the squire. "it means, squire sheldon," said mr. pettigrew, "that you won't turn my uncle out of his farm this time. my young friend, rodney ropes, has advanced uncle cyrus money enough to pay off the mortgage." "i won't take a check," said the squire hastily. "you would have to if we insisted upon it, but i have the money here in bills. give me a release and surrender the mortgage, and you shall have your money." it was with a crestfallen look that squire sheldon left the farmhouse, though his pockets were full of money. "it's all up," he said to his friend caldwell in a hollow voice. "they have paid the mortgage." after all the railway did cross the farm, and uncle cyrus was paid two thousand dollars for the right of way, much to the disappointment of his disinterested friend lemuel sheldon, who felt that this sum ought to have gone into his own pocket. chapter xxviii. a minister's good fortune. "i have another call to make, rodney," said mr. pettigrew, as they were on their way back to the hotel, "and i want you to go with me." "i shall be glad to accompany you anywhere, mr. pettigrew." "you remember i told you of the old minister whose church i attended as a boy. he has never received but four hundred dollars a year, yet he has managed to rear a family, but has been obliged to use the strictest economy." "yes, i remember." "i am going to call on him, and i shall take the opportunity to make him a handsome present. it will surprise him, and i think it will be the first present of any size that he has received in his pastorate of over forty years. "there he lives!" continued jefferson, pointing out a very modest cottage on the left hand side of the road. it needed painting badly, but it looked quite as well as the minister who came to the door in a ragged dressing gown. he was venerable looking, for his hair was quite white, though he was only sixty five years old. but worldly cares which had come upon him from the difficulty of getting along on his scanty salary had whitened his hair and deepened the wrinkles on his kindly face. "i am glad to see you, jefferson," he said, his face lighting up with pleasure. "i heard you were in town and i hoped you wouldn't fail to call upon me." "i was sure to call, for you were always a good friend to me as well as many others." "i always looked upon you as one of my boys, jefferson. i hear that you have been doing well." "yes, mr. canfield. i have done better than i have let people know." "have you been to see your uncle? poor man, he is in trouble." "he is no longer in trouble. the mortgage is paid off, and as far as squire sheldon is concerned he is independent." "indeed, that is good news," said the old minister with beaming face. "you must surely have done well if you could furnish money enough to clear the farm. it was over a thousand dollars, wasn't it?" "yes, thirteen hundred. my young friend, rodney ropes, and myself managed it between us." "i am glad to see you, mr. ropes. come in both of you. mrs. canfield will be glad to welcome you." they followed him into the sitting room, the floor of which was covered by an old and faded carpet. the furniture was of the plainest description. but it looked pleasant and homelike, and the papers and books that were scattered about made it more attractive to a visitor than many showy city drawing rooms. "and how are all your children, mr. canfield?" asked jefferson. "maria is married to a worthy young man in the next town. benjamin is employed in a book store, and austin wants to go to college, but i don't see any way to send him, poor boy!" and the minister sighed softly. "does it cost much to keep a boy in college?" "not so much as might be supposed. there are beneficiary funds for deserving students, and then there is teaching to eke out a poor young man's income, so that i don't think it would cost over a hundred and fifty dollars a year." "that isn't a large sum." "not in itelf, but you know, jefferson, my salary is only four hundred dollars a year. it would take nearly half my income, so i think austin will have to give up his hopes of going to college and follow in his brother's steps." "how old is austin now?" "he is eighteen." "is he ready for college?" "yes, he could enter at the next commencement but for the financial problem." "i never had any taste for college, or study, as you know, mr. canfield. it is different with my friend rodney, who is a latin and greek scholar." the minister regarded rodney with new interest. "do you think of going to college, mr. ropes?" he asked. "not at present. i am going back to montana with mr. pettigrew. perhaps he and i will both go to college next year." "excuse me," said jefferson pettigrew. "latin and greek ain't in my line. i should make a good deal better miner than minister." "it is not desirable that all should become ministers or go to college," said mr. canfield. "i suspect from what i know of you, jefferson, that you judge yourself correctly. how long shall you stay in burton?" "i expect to go away tomorrow." "your visit is a brief one." "yes, i intended to stay longer, but i begin to be homesick after the west." "do you expect to make your permanent home there?" "i can't tell as to that. for the present i can do better there than here." the conversation lasted for some time. then jefferson pettigrew rose to go. "won't you call again, jefferson?" asked the minister hospitably. "i shall not have time, but before i go i want to make you a small present" and he put into the hands of the astonished minister four fifty dollar bills. "two hundred dollars!" ejaculated the minister. "why, i heard you only brought home a few hundred." "i prefer to leave that impression. to you i will say that i am worth a great deal more than that." "but you mustn't give me so much. i am sure you are too generous for your own interest. why, it's munificent, princely." "don't be troubled about me. i can spare it. send your boy to college, and next year i will send you another sum equally large." "how can i thank you, jefferson?" said mr. canfield, the tears coming into his eyes. "never in forty years have i had such a gift." "not even from squire sheldon?" "the squire is not in the habit of bestowing gifts, but he pays a large parish tax. may i--am i at liberty to say from whom i received this liberal donation?" "please don't! you can say that you have had a gift from a friend." "you have made me very happy, jefferson. your own conscience will reward you." jefferson pettigrew changed the subject, for it embarrassed him to be thanked. "that pays me for hard work and privation," he said to rodney as they walked back to the tavern. "after all there is a great pleasure in making others happy." "squire sheldon hadn't found that out." "and he never will." on the way they met the gentleman of whom they had been speaking. he bowed stiffly, for he could not feel cordial to those whom had snatched from him the house for which he had been scheming so long. "squire sheldon," said jefferson, "you were kind enough to invite rodney and myself to supper some evening. i am sorry to say that we must decline, as we leave burton tomorrow." "use your own pleasure, mr. pettigrew," said the squire coldly. "it doesn't seem to disappoint the squire very much," remarked jefferson, laughing, when the great man of the village had passed on. "it certainly is no disappointment to me." "nor to me. the little time i have left i can use more pleasantly than in going to see the squire. i have promised to supper at my uncle's tonight--that is, i have promised for both of us." returning to new york, jefferson and rodney set about getting ready for their western journey. rodney gave some of his wardrobe to mike flynn, and bought some plain suits suitable for his new home. while walking on broadway the day before the one fixed for his departure he fell in with jasper redwood. "have you got a place yet ropes?" asked jasper. "i am not looking for any." "how is that?" asked jasper in some surprise. "i am going to leave the city." "that is a good idea. all cannot succeed in the city. you may find a chance to work on a farm in the country." "i didn't say i was going to the country." "where are you going, then?" "to montana." "isn't that a good way off?" "yes." "what are you going to do there?" "i may go to mining." "but how can you afford to go so far?" "really, jasper, you show considerable curiosity about my affairs. i have money enough to buy my ticket, and i think i can find work when i get out there." "it seems to me a crazy idea." "it might be--for you." "and why for me?" asked jasper suspiciously. "because you might not be willing to rough it as i am prepared to do." "i guess you are right. i have always been used to living like a gentleman." "i hope you will always be able to do so. now i must bid you good by, as i am busy getting ready for my journey." jasper looked after rodney, not without perplexity. "i can't make out that boy," he said. "so he is going to be a common miner! well, that may suit him, but it wouldn't suit me. there is no chance now of his interfering with me, so i am glad he is going to leave the city." chapter xxix. a mining town in montana. the scene changes. three weeks later among the miners who were sitting on the narrow veranda of the "miners' rest" in oreville in montana we recognize two familiar faces and figures--those of jefferson pettigrew and rodney ropes. both were roughly clad, and if jasper could have seen rodney he would have turned up his nose in scorn, for rodney had all the look of a common miner. it was in oreville that mr. pettigrew had a valuable mining property, on which he employed quite a number of men who preferred certain wages to a compensation depending on the fluctuations of fortune. rodney was among those employed, but although he was well paid he could not get to like the work. of this, however, he said nothing to mr. pettigrew whose company he enjoyed, and whom he held in high esteem. on the evening in question jefferson rose from his seat and signed to rodney to follow him. "well, rodney, how do you like montana?" he asked. "well enough to be glad i came here," answered rodney. "still you are not partial to the work of a miner!" "i can think of other things i would prefer to do." "how would you like keeping a hotel?" "is there any hotel in search of a manager?" asked rodney smiling. "i will explain. yesterday i bought the `miners' rest.'" "what--the hotel where we board?" "exactly. i found that mr. bailey, who has made a comfortable sum of money, wants to leave montana and go east and i bought the hotel." "so that hereafter i shall board with you?" "not exactly. i propose to put you in charge, and pay you a salary. i can oversee, and give you instructions. how will that suit you?" "so you think i am competent, mr. pettigrew?" "yes, i think so. there is a good man cook, and two waiters. the cook will also order supplies and act as steward under you." "what then will be my duties?" "you will act as clerk and cashier, and pay the bills. you will have to look after all the details of management. if there is anything you don't understand you will have me to back you up, and advise you. what do you say?" "that i shall like it much better than mining. my only doubt is as to whether i shall suit you." "it is true that it takes a smart man to run a hotel, but i think we can do it between us. now what will you consider a fair salary?" "i leave that to you, mr. pettigrew." "then we will call it a hundred and fifty dollars a month and board." "but, mr. pettigrew," said rodney in surprise, "how can i possibly earn that much?" "you know we charge big prices, and have about fifty steady boarders. i expect to make considerable money after deducting all the expenses of management." "my friend jasper would be very much surprised if he could know the salary i am to receive. in the store i was only paid seven dollars a week." "the duties were different. almost any boy could discharge the duties of an entry clerk while it takes peculiar qualities to run a hotel." "i was certainly very fortunate to fall in with you, mr. pettigrew." "i expect it will turn out fortunate for me too, rodney." "when do you want me to start in?" "next monday morning. it is now thursday evening. mr. bailey will turn over the hotel to me on saturday night. you needn't go to the mines tomorrow, but may remain in the hotel, and he will instruct you in the details of management." "that will be quite a help to me, and i am at present quite ignorant on the subject." rodney looked forward with pleasure to his new employment. he had good executive talent, though thus far he had had no occasion to exercise it. it was with unusual interest that he set about qualifying himself for his new position. "young man," said the veteran landlord, "i think you'll do. i thought at first that jefferson was foolish to put a young boy in my place, but you've got a head on your shoulders, you have! i guess you'll fill the bill." "i hope to do so, mr. bailey." "jefferson tells me that you understand latin and greek?" "i know something of them." "thats what prejudiced me against you. i hired a college boy once as a clerk and he was the worst failure i ever came across. he seemed to have all kinds of sense except common sense. i reckon he was a smart scholar, and he could have made out the bills for the boarders in latin or greek if it had been necessary, but he was that soft that any one could cheat him. things got so mixed up in the department that i had to turn him adrift in a couple of weeks. i surmised you might be the same sort of a chap. if you were it would be a bad lookout for jefferson." in oreville mr. pettigrew was so well known that nearly everyone called him by his first name. mr. pettigrew did not care about this as he had no false pride or artificial dignity. "do you consider this hotel a good property, mr. bailey?" "i'll tell you this much. i started here four years ago, and i've made fifty thousand dollars which i shall take back with me to new hampshire." "that certainly is satisfactory." "i shouldn't wonder if you could improve upon it." "how does it happen that you sell out such a valuable property, mr. bailey? are you tired of making money?" "no, but i must tell you that there's a girl waiting for me at home, an old schoolmate, who will become mrs. bailey as soon as possible after i get back. if she would come out here i wouldn't sell, but she has a mother that she wouldn't leave, and so i must go to her." "that is a good reason, mr. bailey." "besides with fifty thousand dollars i can live as well as i want to in new hampshire, and hold up my head with the best. you will follow my example some day." "it will be a long day first, mr. bailey, for i am only sixteen." on monday morning the old landlord started for his eastern home and rodney took his place. it took him some little time to become familiar with all the details of hotel management, but he spared no pains to insure success. he had some trouble at first with the cook who presumed upon his position and rodney's supposed ignorance to run things as he chose. rodney complained to mr. pettigrew. "i think i can fix things, rodney," he said. "there's a man working for me who used to be cook in a restaurant in new york. i found out about him quietly, for i wanted to be prepared for emergencies. the next time gordon act contrary and threatens to leave, tell him he can do as he pleases. then report to me." the next day there came another conflict of authority. "if you don't like the way i manage you can get somebody else," said the cook triumphantly. "perhaps you'd like to cook the dinner yourself. you're nothing but a boy, and i don't see what jefferson was thinking of to put you in charge." "that is his business, mr. gordon." "i advise you not to interfere with me, for i won't stand it." "why didn't you talk in this way to mr. bailey?" "that's neither here nor there. he wasn't a boy for one thing." "then you propose to have your own way, mr. gordon?" "yes, i do." "very well, then you can leave me at the end of this week." "what!" exclaimed the cook in profound astonishment. "are you going crazy?" "no, i know what i am about." "perhaps you intend to cook yourself." "no, i don't. that would close up the hotel." "look here, young feller, you're gettin' too independent! i've a great mind to leave you tonight." "you can do so if you want to," said rodney indifferently. "then i will!" retorted gordon angrily, bringing down his fist upon the table in vigorous emphasis. oreville was fifty miles from helena, and that was the nearest point, as he supposed, where a new cook could be obtained. after supper rodney told jefferson pettigrew what had happened. "have i done right?" he asked. "yes; we can't have any insubordination here. there can't be two heads of one establishment. send gordon to me." the cook with a defiant look answered the summons. "i understand you want to leave, gordon," said jefferson pettigrew. "that depends. i ain't goin' to have no boy dictatin' to me." "then you insist upon having your own way without interference." "yes, i do." "very well, i accept your resignation. do you wish to wait till the end of the week, or to leave tonight?" "i want to give it up tonight." "very well, go to rodney and he will pay you what is due you." "are you goin' to get along without a cook?" inquired gordon in surprise. "no." "what are you going to do, then?" "i shall employ parker in your place." "what does he know about cookin'?" "he ran a restaurant in new york for five years, the first part of the time having charge of the cooking. we shan't suffer even if you do leave us." "i think i will stay," said gordon in a submissive tone. "it is too late. you have discharged yourself. you can't stay here on any terms." gordon left oreville the next day a sorely disappointed man, for he had received more liberal pay than he was likely to command elsewhere. the young landlord had triumphed. chapter xxx. the mysterious robbery. at the end of a month jefferson pettigrew said: "i've been looking over the books, rodney, and i find the business is better than i expected. how much did i agree to pay you?" "a hundred and fifty dollars a month, but if you think that it is too much----" "too much? why i am going to advance you to two hundred and fifty." "you can't be in earnest, mr. pettigrew?" "i am entirely so." "that is at the rate of three thousand dollars a year!" "yes, but you are earning it." "you know i am only a boy." "that doesn't make any difference as long as you understand your business." "i am very grateful to you, mr. pettigrew. my, i can save two hundred dollars a month." "do so, and i will find you a paying investment for the money." "what would jasper say to my luck?" thought rodney. three months passed without any incident worth recording. one afternoon a tall man wearing a high hat and a prince albert coat with a paste diamond of large size in his shirt bosom entered the public room of the miners' rest and walking up to the bar prepared to register his name. as he stood with his pen in his hand rodney recognized him not without amazement. it was louis wheeler--the railroad thief, whom he had last seen in new york. as for wheeler he had not taken any notice of the young clerk, not suspecting that it was an old acquaintance who was familiar with his real character. "have you just arrived in montana, mr. wheeler?" asked rodney quietly. as rodney had not had an opportunity to examine his signature in the register wheeler looked up in quiet surprise. "do you know me?" he asked. "yes; don't you know me?" "i'll be blowed if it isn't the kid," ejaculated wheeler. "as i run this hotel, i don't care to be called a kid." "all right mr.----" "ropes." "mr. ropes, you are the most extraordinary boy i ever met." "am i?" "who would have thought of your turning up as a montana landlord." "i wouldn't have thought of it myself four months ago. but what brings you out here?" "business," answered wheeler in an important tone. "are you going to become a miner?" "i may buy a mine if i find one to suit me." "i am glad you seem to be prospering." "can you give me a good room?" "yes, but i must ask a week's advance payment." "how much?" "twenty five dollars." "all right. here's the money." louis wheeler pulled out a well filled wallet and handed over two ten dollar bills and a five. "is that satisfactory?" he asked. "quite so. you seem better provided with money than when i saw you last." "true. i was then in temporary difficulty. but i made a good turn in stocks and i am on my feet again." rodney did not believe a word of this, but as long as wheeler was able to pay his board he had no good excuse for refusing him accommodation. "that rascal here!" exclaimed jefferson, when rodney informed him of wheeler's arrival. "well, thats beat all! what has brought him out here?" "business, he says." "it may be the same kind of business that he had with me. he will bear watching." "i agree with you, mr. pettigrew." louis wheeler laid himself out to be social and agreeable, and made himself quite popular with the other boarders at the hotel. as jefferson and rodney said nothing about him, he was taken at his own valuation, and it was reported that he was a heavy capitalist from chicago who had come to montana to buy a mine. this theory received confirmation both from his speech and actions. on the following day he went about in oreville and examined the mines. he expressed his opinion freely in regard to what he saw, and priced one that was for sale at fifty thousand dollars. "i like this mine," he said, "but i don't know enough about it to make an offer. if it comes up to my expectations i will try it." "he must have been robbing a bank," observed jefferson pettigrew. nothing could exceed the cool assurance with which wheeler greeted jefferson and recalled their meeting in new york. "you misjudged me then, mr. pettigrew," he said. "i believe upon my soul you looked upon me as an adventurer--a confidence man." "you are not far from the truth, mr. wheeler," answered jefferson bluntly. "well, i forgive you. our acquaintance was brief and you judged from superficial impressions." "perhaps so, mr. wheeler. have you ever been west before?" "no." "when you came to oreville had you any idea that i was here?" "no; if i had probably i should not have struck the town, as i knew that you didn't have a favorable opinion of me." "i can't make out much of that fellow, rodney," said jefferson. "i can't understand his object in coming here." "he says he wants to buy a mine." "that's all a pretext. he hasn't money enough to buy a mine or a tenth part of it." "he seems to have money." "yes; he may have a few hundred dollars, but mark my words, he hasn't the slightest intention of buying a mine." "he has some object in view." "no doubt! what it is is what i want to find out." there was another way in which louis wheeler made himself popular among the miners of oreville. he had a violin with him, and in the evening he seated himself on the veranda and played popular tunes. he had only a smattering in the way of musical training, but the airs he played took better than classical music would have done. even jefferson pettigrew enjoyed listening to "home, sweet home" and "the last rose of summer," while the miners were captivated by merry dance tunes, which served to enliven them after a long day's work at the mines. one day there was a sensation. a man named john o'donnell came down stairs from his room looking pale and agitated. "boys," he said, "i have been robbed." instantly all eyes were turned upon him. "of what have you been robbed, o'donnell?" asked jefferson. "of two hundred dollars in gold. i was going to send it home to my wife in connecticut next week." "when did you miss it?" "just now." "where did you keep it?" "in a box under my bed." "when do you think it was taken?" "last night." "what makes you think so?" "i am a sound sleeper, and last night you know was very dark. i awoke with a start, and seemed to hear footsteps. i looked towards the door, and saw a form gliding from the room." "why didn't you jump out of bed and seize the intruder whoever he was?" "because i was not sure but it was all a dream. i think now it was some thief who had just robbed me." "i think so too. could you make out anything of his appearance?" "i could only see the outlines of his figure. he was a tall man. he must have taken the money from under my bed." "did any one know that you had money concealed there?" "i don't think i ever mentioned it." "it seems we have a thief among us," said jefferson, and almost unconsciously his glance rested on louis wheeler who was seated near john o'donnell, "what do you think, mr. wheeler?" "i think you are right, mr. pettigrew." "have you any suggestion to make?" asked jefferson. "have you by chance lost anything?" "not that i am aware of." "is there any one else here who has been robbed?" no one spoke. "you asked me if i had any suggestions to make, mr. pettigrew," said louis wheeler after a pause. "i have. "our worthy friend mr. o'donnell has met with a serious loss. i move that we who are his friends make it up to him. here is my contribution," and he laid a five dollar bill on the table. it was a happy suggestion and proved popular. every one present came forward, and tendered his contributions including jefferson, who put down twenty five dollars. mr. wheeler gathered up the notes and gold and sweeping them to his hat went forward and tendered them to john o'donnell. "take this money, mr. o'donnell," he said. "it is the free will offering of your friends. i am sure i may say for them, as for myself, that it gives us all pleasure to help a comrade in trouble." louis wheeler could have done nothing that would have so lifted him in the estimation of the miners. "and now," he said, "as our friend is out of his trouble i will play you a few tunes on my violin, and will end the day happily." "i can't make out that fellow, rodney," said jefferson when they were alone. "i believe he is the thief, but he has an immense amount of nerve." chapter xxxi. mr. wheeler explains. probably there was no one at the hotel who suspected louis wheeler of being a thief except rodney and mr. pettigrew. his action in starting a contribution for john o'donnell helped to make him popular. he was establishing a reputation quite new to him, and it was this fact probably that made him less prudent than he would otherwise have been. as the loss had been made up, the boarders at the miners' rest ceased to talk of it. but jefferson and his young assistant did not forget it. "i am sure wheeler is the thief, but i don't know how to bring it home to him," said jefferson one day, when alone with rodney. "you might search him." "yes, but what good would that do? it might be found that he had money, but one gold coin is like another and it would be impossible to identify it as the stolen property. if o'donnell had lost anything else except money it would be different. i wish he would come to my chamber." "perhaps he would if he thought you were a sound sleeper." "that is an idea. i think i can make use of it.". that evening when wheeler was present mr. pettigrew managed to turn the conversation to the subject of sleeping. "i am a very sound sleeper," he said. "i remember when i was at home sleeping many a time through a severe thunder storm." "don't you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night?" asked rodney. "very seldom, if i am in good health." "its different with me," said another of the company. "a step on the floor or the opening of the door will wake me up at any time." "i am glad i am not so easily roused." "if i had a fish horn," said rodney, laughing, "i should be tempted to come up in the night and give it a blast before your door." "that might wake me up," said mr. pettigrew. "i wouldn't advise you to try it or the other boarders might get up an indignation meeting." the same evening jefferson pettigrew took out a bag of gold and carelessly displayed it. "are you not afraid of being robbed, mr. pettigrew?" asked rodney. "oh no. i never was robbed in my life." "how much money have you there?" "i don't know exactly. perhaps six hundred dollars," said pettigrew in an indifferent tone. among those who listened to this conversation with interest was louis wheeler. rodney did not fail to see the covetous gleam of his eyes when the gold was displayed. the fact was, that wheeler was getting short of cash and at the time he took john o'donnell's money--for he was the thief--he had but about twenty dollars left, and of this he contributed five to the relief of the man he had robbed. his theft realized him two hundred dollars, but this would not last him long, as the expenses of living at the miners' rest were considerable. he was getting tired of oreville, but wanted to secure some additional money before he left it. the problem was whom to make his second victim. it would not have occurred to him to rob jefferson pettigrew, of whom he stood in wholesome fear, but for the admission that he was an unusually sound sleeper; even then he would have felt uncertain whether it would pay. but the display of the bag of money, and the statement that it contained six hundred dollars in gold proved a tempting bait. "if i can capture that bag of gold," thought wheeler, "i shall have enough money to set me up in some new place. there won't be much risk about it, for pettigrew sleeps like a top. i will venture it." jefferson pettigrew's chamber was on the same floor as his own. it was the third room from no. 17 which mr. wheeler occupied. as a general thing the occupants of the miners' rest went to bed early. mining is a fatiguing business, and those who follow it have little difficulty in dropping off to sleep. the only persons who were not engaged in this business were louis wheeler and rodney ropes. as a rule the hotel was closed at half past ten and before this all were in bed and sleeping soundly. when wheeler went to bed he said to himself, "this will probably be my last night in this tavern. i will go from here to helena, and if things turn out right i may be able to make my stay there profitable. i shan't dare to stay here long after relieving pettigrew of his bag of gold." unlike jefferson pettigrew, wheeler was a light sleeper. he had done nothing to induce fatigue, and had no difficulty in keeping awake till half past eleven. then lighting a candle, he examined his watch, and ascertained the time. "it will be safe enough now," he said to himself. he rose from his bed, and drew on his trousers. then in his stocking feet he walked along the corridor till he stood in front of jefferson pettigrew's door. he was in doubt as to whether he would not be obliged to pick the lock, but on trying the door he found that it was not fastened. he opened it and stood within the chamber. cautiously he glanced at the bed. mr. pettigrew appeared to be sleeping soundly. "it's all right" thought louis wheeler. "now where is the bag of gold?" it was not in open view, but a little search showed that the owner had put it under the bed. "he isn't very sharp," thought wheeler. "he is playing right into my hands. door unlocked, and bag of gold under the bed. he certainly is a very unsuspicious man. however, that is all the better for me. really there isn't much credit in stealing where all is made easy for you." there seemed to be nothing to do but to take the gold from its place of deposit and carry it back to his own room. while there were a good many lodgers in the hotel, there seemed to be little risk about this, as every one was asleep. of course should the bag be found in his room that would betray him, but mr. wheeler proposed to empty the gold coins into his gripsack, and throw the bag out of the window into the back yard. "well, here goes!" said wheeler cheerfully, as he lifted the bag, and prepared to leave the chamber. but at this critical moment an unexpected sound struck terror into his soul. it was the sound of a key being turned in the lock. nervously wheeler hastened to the door and tried it. it would not open. evidently it had been locked from the outside. what could it mean? at the same time there was a series of knocks on the outside of the door. it was the signal that had been agreed upon between mr. pettigrew and rodney. jefferson had given his key to rodney, who had remained up and on the watch for mr. wheeler's expected visit. he, too, was in his stocking feet. as soon as he saw wheeler enter his friend's chamber he stole up and locked the door on the outide. then when he heard the thief trying to open the door he rained a shower of knocks on the panel. instantly jefferson pettigrew sprang out of bed and proceeded to act. "what are you doing here?" he demanded, seizing wheeler in his powerful grasp. "where am i?" asked wheeler in a tone of apparent bewilderment. "oh, it's you, mr. wheeler?" said jefferson. "don't you know where you are?" "oh, it is my friend, mr. pettigrew. is it possible i am in your room?" "it is very possible. now tell me why you are here?" "i am really ashamed to find myself in this strange position. it is not the first time that i have got into trouble from walking in my sleep." "oh, you were walking in your sleep!" "yes, friend petttigrew. it has been a habit of mine since i was a boy. but it seems very strange that i should have been led to your room. how could i get in? wasn't the door locked?" "it is locked now?" "it is strange! i don't understand it," said wheeler, passing his hand over his forehead. "perhaps you understand why you have that bag of gold in your hand." "can it be possible?" ejaculated wheeler in well counterfeited surprise. "i don't know how to account for it." "i think i can. rodney, unlock the door and come in." the key was turned in the lock, and rodney entered with a lighted candle in his hand. "you see, rodney, that i have a late visitor. you will notice also that my bag of gold seems to have had an attraction for him." "i am ashamed. i don't really know how to explain it except in this way. when you displayed the gold last night it drew my attention and i must have dreamed of it. it was this which drew me unconsciously to your door. it is certainly an interesting fact in mental science." "it would have been a still more interesting fact if you had carried off the gold." "i might even have done that in my unconsciousness, but of course i should have discovered it tomorrow morning and would have returned it to you." "i don't feel by any means sure of that. look here, mr. wheeler, if that is your name, you can't pull the wool over my eyes. you are a thief, neither more nor less." "how can you misjudge me so, mr. pettigrew?" "because i know something of your past history. it is clear to me now that you were the person that stole john o'donnell's money." "indeed, mr. pettigrew." "it is useless to protest. how much of it have you left?" louis wheeler was compelled to acknowledge the theft, and returned one hundred dollars to jefferson pettigrew. "now," said jefferson, "i advise you to leave the hotel at once. if the boys find out that you are a thief you will stand a chance of being lynched. get out!" the next morning jefferson pettigrew told the other boarders that louis wheeler had had a sudden call east, and it was not for a week that he revealed to them the real reason of wheeler's departure. chapter xxxii. rodney falls into a trap. rodney had reason to be satisfied with his position as landlord of the miners' rest. his pay was large, and enabled him to put away a good sum every month, but his hours were long and he was too closely confined for a boy of his age. at the end of three months he showed this in his appearance. his good friend pettigrew saw it and said one day, "rodney, you are looking fagged out. you need a change." "does that mean that you are going to discharge me?" asked rodney, with a smile. "it means that i am going to give you a vacation." "but what can i do if i take a vacation? i should not like lounging around oreville with nothing to do." "such a vacation would do you no good. i'll tell you the plan i have for you. i own a small mine in babcock, about fifty miles north of oreville. i will send you up to examine it, and make a report to me. can you ride on horseback?" "yes." "that is well, for you will have to make your trip in that way. there are no railroads in that direction, nor any other way of travel except on foot or on horseback. a long ride like that with hours daily in the open air, will do you good. what do you say to it?" "i should like nothing better," replied rodney, with his eyes sparkling. "only, how will you get along without me?" "i have a man in my employ at the mines who will do part of your work, and i will have a general oversight of things. so you need not borrow any trouble on that account. do you think you can find your way?" "give me the general direction, and i will guarantee to do so. when shall i start?" "day after tomorrow. that will give me one day for making arrangements." at nine the appointed morning mr. pettigrew's own horse stood saddled at the door, and rodney in traveling costume with a small satchel in his hand, mounted and rode away, waving a smiling farewell to his friend and employer. rodney did not hurry, and so consumed two days and a half in reaching babcock. here he was cordially received by the superintendent whom jefferson pettigrew had placed in charge of the mine. every facility was afforded him to examine into the management of things and he found all satisfactory. this part of his journey, therefore, may be passed over. but his return trip was destined to be more exciting. riding at an easy jog rodney had got within fifteen miles of oreville, when there was an unexpected interruption. two men started out from the roadside, or rather from one side of the bridle path for there was no road, and advanced to meet him with drawn revolvers. "halt there!" one of them exclaimed in a commanding tone. rodney drew bridle, and gazed at the two men in surprise. "what do you want of me?" he asked. "dismount instantly!" "why should i? what right have you to interfere with my journey?" "might gives right," said one of the men sententiously. "it will be best for you to do as we bid you without too much back talk." "what are you--highwaymen?" asked rodney. "you'd better not talk too much. get off that horse!" rodney saw that remonstrance was useless, and obeyed the order. one of the men seized the horse by the bridle, and led him. "walk in front!" he said. "where are you going to take me?" asked rodney. "you will know in due time." "i hope you will let me go," urged rodney, beginning to be uneasy. "i am expected home this evening, or at all event i want to get there." "no doubt you do, but the miners' rest will have to get along without you for a while." "do you know me then?" "yes; you are the boy clerk at the miners' rest." "you both put up there about two weeks since," said rodney, examining closely the faces of the two men. "right you are, kid!" "what can you possibly want of me?" "don't be too curious. you will know in good time." rodney remembered that the two men had remained at the hotel for a day and night. they spent the day in wandering around oreville. he had supposed when they came that they were in search of employment, but they had not applied for work and only seemed actuated by curiosity. what could be their object in stopping him now he could not understand. it would have been natural to suppose they wanted money, but they had not asked for any as yet. he had about fifty dollars in his pocketbook and he would gladly have given them this if it would have insured his release. but not a word had been said about money. they kept on their journey. montana is a mountainous state, and they were now in the hilly regions. they kept on for perhaps half an hour, gradually getting upon higher ground, until they reached a precipitous hill composed largely of rock. here the two men stopped as if they had reached their journey's end. one of them advanced to the side of the hill and unlocked a thick wooden door which at first had failed to attract rodney's attention. the door swung open, revealing a dark passage, cut partly through stone and partly through earth. inside on the floor was a bell of good size. one of the men lifted the bell and rang it loudly. "what does that mean?" thought rodney, who felt more curious than apprehensive. he soon learned. a curious looking negro, stunted in growth, for he was no taller than a boy of ten, came out from the interior and stood at the entrance of the cave, if such it was. his face was large and hideous, there was a hump on his back, and his legs were not a match, one being shorter than the other, so that as he walked, his motion was a curious one. he bent a scrutinizing glance on rodney. "well, caesar, is dinner ready?" asked one of the men. "no, massa, not yet." "let it be ready then as soon as possible. but first lead the way. we are coming in." he started ahead, leading the horse, for the entrance was high enough to admit the passage of the animal. "push on!" said the other, signing to rodney to precede him. rodney did so, knowing remonstrance to be useless. his curiosity was excited. he wondered how long the passage was and whither it led. the way was dark, but here and there in niches was a kerosene lamp that faintly relieved the otherwise intense blackness. "i have read about such places," thought rodney, "but i never expected to get into one. the wonder is, that they should bring me here. i can't understand their object." rodney followed his guide for perhaps two hundred and fifty feet when they emerged into a large chamber of irregular shape, lighted by four large lamps set on a square wooden table. there were two rude cots in one corner, and it was here apparently that his guides made their home. there was a large cooking stove in one part of the room, and an appetizing odor showed that caesar had the dinner under way. rodney looked about him in curiosity. he could not decide whether the cave was natural or artificial. probably it was a natural cave which had been enlarged by the hand of man. "now hurry up the dinner, caesar," said one of the guides. "we are all hungry." "yes, massa," responded the obedient black. rodney felt hungry also, and hoped that he would have a share of the dinner. later he trusted to find out the object of his new acquaintances in kidnaping him. dinner was soon ready. it was simple, but rodney thoroughly enjoyed it. during the meal silence prevailed. after it his new acquaintances produced pipes and began to smoke. they offered rodney a cigarette, but he declined it. "i don't smoke," he said. "are you a sunday school kid?" asked one in a sneering tone. "well, perhaps so." "how long have you lived at oreville?" "about four months." "who is the head of the settlement there?" "jefferson pettigrew." "he is the moneyed man, is he?" "yes." "is he a friend of yours?" "he is my best friend," answered rodney warmly. "he thinks a good deal of you, then?" "i think he does." "where have you been--on a journey?" "yes, to the town of babcock." "did he send you?" "yes." "what interest has he there?" "he is chief owner of a mine there." "humph! i suppose you would like to know why we brought you here." "i would very much." "we propose to hold you for ransom." "but why should you? i am only a poor boy." "you are the friend of jefferson pettigrew. he is a rich man. if he wants you back he must pay a round sum." it was all out now! these men were emulating a class of outlaws to be found in large numbers in italy and sicily, and were trading upon human sympathy and levying a tax upon human friendship. chapter xxxiii. underground. rodney realized his position. the alternative was not a pleasant one. either he must remain in the power of these men, or cost his friend mr. pettigrew a large sum as ransom. there was little hope of changing the determination of his captors, but he resolved to try what he could do. "mr. pettigrew is under no obligations to pay money out for me," he said. "i am not related to him, and have not yet known him six months." "that makes no difference. you are his friend, and he likes you." "that is the very reason why i should not wish him to lose money on my account." "oh, very well! it will be bad for you is he doesn't come to your help." "why? what do you propose to do to me?" asked rodney boldly. "better not ask!" was the significant reply. "but i want to know. i want to realize my position." "the least that will happen to you is imprisonment in this cave for a term of years." "i don't think i should like it but you would get tired of standing guard over me." "we might, and in that case there is the other thing." "what other thing?" "if we get tired of keeping you here, we shall make short work with you." "would you murder me?" asked rodney, horror struck, as he might well be, for death seems terrible to a boy just on the threshold of life. "we might be obliged to do so." rodney looked in the faces of his captors, and he saw nothing to encourage him. they looked like desperate men, who would stick at nothing to carry out their designs. "i don't see why you should get hold of me," he said. "if you had captured mr. pettigrew himself you would stand a better chance of making it pay." "there is no chance of capturing pettigrew. if there were we would prefer him to you. a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." "how much ransom do you propose to ask?" this rodney said, thinking that if it were a thousand dollars he might be able to make it good to his friend jefferson. but he was destined to be disappointed. "five thousand dollars," answered the chief speaker. "five thousand dollars!" ejaculated rodney in dismay. "five thousand dollars for a boy like me!" "that is the sum we want." "if it were one thousand i think you might get it." "one thousand!" repeated the other scornfully. "that wouldn't half pay us." "then suppose you call it two thousand?" "it won't do." "then i suppose i must make up my mind to remain a prisoner." "five thousand dollars wouldn't be much to a rich man like pettigrew. we have inquired, and found out that he is worth at least a hundred thousand dollars. five thousand is only a twentieth part of this sum." "you can do as you please, but you had better ask a reasonable amount if you expect to get it." "we don't want advice. we shall manage things in our own way." convinced that further discussion would be unavailing, rodney relapsed into silence, but now his captors proceeded to unfold their plans. one of them procured a bottle of ink, some paper and a pen, and set them on the table. "come up here, boy, and write to mr. pettigrew," he said in a tone of authority. "what shall i write?" "tell him that you are a prisoner, and that you will not be released unless he pays five thousand dollars." "i don't want to write that. it will be the same as asking him to pay it for me." "that is what we mean him to understand." "i won't write it." rodney knew his danger, but he looked resolutely into the eyes of the men who held his life in their hands. his voice did not waver, for he was a manly and courageous boy. "the boy's got grit!" said one of the men to the other. "yes, but it won't save him. boy, are you going to write what i told you?" "no." "are you not afraid that we will kill you?" "you have power to do it." "don't you want to live?" "yes. life is sweet to a boy of sixteen." "then why don't you write?" "because i think it would be taking a mean advantage of mr. pettigrew." "you are a fool. roderick, what shall we do with him?" "tell him simply to write that he is in our hands." "well thought of. boy, will you do that?" "yes." rodney gave his consent for he was anxious that mr. pettigrew should know what had prevented him from coming home when he was expected. "very well, write! you will know what to say." rodney drew the paper to him, and wrote as follows: dear mr. pettigrew, on my way home i was stopped by two men who have confined me in a cave, and won't let me go unless a sum of money is paid for my ransom. i don't know what to do. you will know better than i. rodney ropes. his chief captor took the note and read it aloud. "that will do," he said. "now he will believe us when we say that you are in our hands." he signed to rodney to rise from the table and took his place. drawing a pile of paper to him, he penned the following note: rodney ropes is in our hands. he wants his liberty and we want money. send us five thousand dollars, or arrange a meeting at which it can be delivered to us, and he shall go free. otherwise his death be on your hands. his captors. rodney noticed that this missive was written in a handsome business hand. "you write a handsome hand," he said. "i ought to," was the reply. "i was once bookkeeper in a large business house." "and what--" here rodney hesitated. "what made me an outlaw you mean to ask?" "yes." "my nature, i suppose. i wasn't cut out for sober, humdrum life." "don't you think you would have been happier?" "no preaching, kid! i had enough of that when i used to go to church in my old home in missouri. here, caesar!" "yes, massa." "you know oreville?" "yes, massa." "go over there and take this letter with you. ask for jefferson pettigrew, and mind you don't tell him where we live. only if he asks about me and my pal say we are desperate men, have each killed a round dozen of fellows that stood in our way and will stick at nothing." "all right, massa," said caesar with an appreciative grin. "how shall i go, massa?" "you can take the kid's horse. ride to within a mile of oreville, then tether the horse where he won't easily be found, and walk over to the mines. do you understand?" "yes, massa." "he won't probably give you any money, but he may give you a letter. bring it safely to me." caesar nodded and vanished. for an hour the two men smoked their pipes and chatted. then they rose, and the elder said: "we are going out, kid, for a couple of hours. are you afraid to stay alone?" "why should i be?" "that's the way to talk. i won't caution you not to escape, for it would take a smarter lad then you to do it. if you are tired you can lie down on the bed and rest." "all right!" "i am sorry we haven't got the morning paper for you to look over," said his captor with a smile. "the carrier didn't leave it this morning." "i can get along without it. i don't feel much like reading." "you needn't feel worried. you'll be out of this tomorrow if jefferson pettigrew is as much your friend as you think he is." "the only thing that troubles me is the big price you charge at your hotel." "good! the kid has a good wit of his own. after all, we wouldn't mind keeping you with us. it might pay you better than working for pettigrew." "i hope you'll excuse my saying it, but i don't like the business." "you may change your mind. at your age we wouldn't either of us like the sort of life we are leading. come, john." the two men went out but did not allow rodney to accompany them to the place of exit. left to himself, rodney could think soberly of his plight. he could not foresee whether his captivity would be brief or prolonged. after a time the spirit of curiosity seized him. he felt tempted to explore the cavern in which he was confined. he took a lamp, and followed in a direction opposite to that taken by his captors. the cave he found was divided into several irregularly shaped chambers. he walked slowly, holding up the lamp to examine the walls of the cavern. in one passage he stopped short, for something attracted his attention--something the sight of which made his heart beat quicker and filled him with excitement. chapter xxxiv. rodney's discovery. there was a good reason for rodney's excitement. the walls of the subterranean passage revealed distinct and rich indications of gold. there was a time, and that not long before, when they would have revealed nothing to rodney, but since his residence at oreville he had more than once visited the mines and made himself familiar with surface indications of mineral deposit. he stopped short and scanned attentively the walls of the passage. "if i am not mistaken," he said to himself, "this will make one of the richest mines in montana. but after all what good will it do me? here am i a prisoner, unable to leave the cave, or communicate with my friends. if mr. pettigrew knew what i do he would feel justified in paying the ransom these men want." rodney wondered how these rich deposits had failed to attract the attention of his captors, but he soon settled upon the conclusion that they had no knowledge of mines or mining, and were ignorant of the riches that were almost in their grasp. "shall i enlighten them?" he asked himself. it was a question which he could not immediately answer. he resolved to be guided by circumstances. in order not to excite suspicion he retraced his steps to the apartment used by his captors as a common sitting room--carefully fixing in his mind the location of the gold ore. we must now follow the messenger who had gone to oreville with a letter from rodney's captors. as instructed, he left his horse, or rather rodney's, tethered at some distance from the settlement and proceeded on foot to the miners' rest. his strange appearance excited attention and curiosity. both these feelings would have been magnified had it been known on what errand he came. "where can i find mr. jefferson pettigrew?" he asked of a man whom he saw on the veranda. "at the griffin mine," answered the other, removing the pipe from his mouth. "where is that?" "over yonder. are you a miner?" "no. i know nothing about mines." "then why do you want to see jefferson? i thought you might want a chance to work in the mine." "no; i have other business with him--business of importance," added the black dwarf emphatically. "if that is the case i'll take you to him. i am always glad to be of service to jefferson." "thank you. he will thank you, too." the man walked along with a long, swinging gait which made it difficult for caesar to keep up with him. "so you have business with jefferson?" said the man with the pipe, whose curiosity had been excited. "yes." "of what sort?" "i will tell him," answered caesar shortly. "so its private, is it?" "yes. if he wants to tell you he will." "that's fair. well, come along! am i walking too fast for you?" "your legs are much longer than mine." "that's so. you are a little shrimp. i declare." a walk of twenty minutes brought them to the griffin mine. jefferson pettigrew was standing near, giving directions to a party of miners. "jefferson," said the man with the pipe, "here's a chap that wants to see you on business of importance. that is, he says it is." jefferson pettigrew wheeled round and looked at caesar. "well," he said, "what is it?" "i have a letter for you, massa." "give it to me." jefferson took the letter and cast his eye over it. as he read it his countenance changed and became stern and severe. "do you know what is in this letter?" he asked. "yes." "come with me." he led caesar to a place out of earshot. "what fiend's game is this?" he demanded sternly. "i can't tell you, massa; i'm not in it." "who are those men that have written to me?" "i don't know their right names. i calls 'em massa john and massa dick." "it seems they have trapped a boy friend of mine, rodney ropes. did you see him?" "yes; i gave him a good dinner." "that is well. if they should harm a hair of his head i wouldn't rest till i had called them to account. where have they got the boy concealed?" "i couldn't tell you, massa." "you mean, you won't tell me." "yes. it would be as much as my life is worth." "humph, well! i suppose you must be faithful to your employer. do you know that these men want me to pay five thousand dollars for the return of the boy?" "yes, i heard them talking about it." "that is a new kind of rascality. do they expect you to bring back an answer?" "yes, massa." "i must think. what will they do to the boy if i don't give them the money?" "they might kill him." "if they do--but i must have time to think the matter over. are you expected to go back this afternoon?" "yes." "can you get back? it must be a good distance." "i can get back." "stay here. i will consult some of my friends and see if i can raise the money." "very well, massa." one of those whom jefferson called into consultation was the person who had guided caesar to the griffin mine. quickly the proprietor of the miners' rest unfolded the situation. "now," he said, "i want two of you to follow this misshapen dwarf, and find out where he comes from. i want to get hold of the scoundrels who sent him to me." "i will be one," said the man with the pipe. "very well, fred." "and i will go with fred," said a long limbed fellow who had been a kansas cowboy. "i accept you, otto. go armed, and don't lose sight of him." "shall you send the money?" "not i. i will send a letter that will encourage them to hope for it. i want to gain time." "any instructions, jefferson?" "only this, if you see these men, capture or kill them." "all right." chapter xxxv. a bloody conflict. this was the letter that was handed to caesar: i have received your note. i must have time to think, and time perhaps to get hold of the gold. don't harm a hair of the boy's head. if so, i will hunt you to death. jefferson pettigrew. p.s.--meet me tomorrow morning at the rocky gorge at the foot of black mountain. ten o'clock. caesar took the letter, and bent his steps in the direction of the place where he had tethered his horse. he did not observe that he was followed by two men, who carefully kept him in sight, without attracting attention to themselves. when caesar reached the place where he had tethered the horse, he was grievously disappointed at not finding him. one of the miners in roaming about had come upon the animal, and knowing him to be jefferson pettigrew's property, untied him and rode him back to oreville. the dwarf threw up his hands in dismay. "the horse is gone!" he said in his deep bass voice, "and now i must walk back, ten long miles, and get a flogging at the end for losing time. it's hard luck," he groaned. the loss was fortunate for fred and otto who would otherwise have found it hard to keep up with the dwarf. caesar breathed a deep sigh, and then started on his wearisome journey. had the ground been even it would have troubled him less, but there was a steep upward grade, and his short legs were soon weary. not so with his pursuers, both of whom were long limbed and athletic. we will go back now to the cave and the captors of rodney. they waited long and impatiently for the return of their messenger. having no knowledge of the loss of the horse, they could not understand what detained caesar. "do you think the rascal has played us false?" said roderick. "he would be afraid to." "this man pettigrew might try to bribe him. it would be cheaper than to pay five thousand dollars." "he wouldn't dare. he knows what would happen to him," said john grimly. "then why should he be so long?" "that i can't tell." "suppose we go out to meet him. i begin to feel anxious lest we have trusted him too far." "i am with you!" the two outlaws took the path which led to oreville, and walked two miles before they discovered caesar coming towards them at a slow and melancholy gait. "there he is, and on foot! what does it mean?" "he will tell us." "here now, you black imp! where is the horse?" demanded roderick. "i done lost him, massa." "lost him? you'll get a flogging for this, unless you bring good news. did you see jefferson pettigrew?" "yes, massa." "did he give you any money?" "no; he gave me this letter." roderick snatched it from his hand, and showed it to john. "it seems satisfactory," he said. "now how did you lose the horse?" caesar told him. "you didn't fasten him tight." "beg your pardon, massa, but i took good care of that." "well, he's gone; was probably stolen. that is unfortunate; however you may not have been to blame." luckily for caesar the letter which he brought was considered satisfactory, and this palliated his fault in losing the horse. the country was so uneven that the two outlaws did not observe that they were followed, until they came to the entrance of the cave. then, before opening the door, john looked round and caught sight of fred and otto eying them from a little distance. he instantly took alarm. "look," he said, "we are followed. look behind you!" his brother turned and came to the same conclusion. "caesar," said roderick, "did you ever see those men before?" "no, massa." "they must have followed you from oreville. hello, you two!" he added striding towards the miners. "what do you want here?" fred and otto had accomplished their object in ascertaining the place where rodney was confined, and no longer cared for concealment. "none of your business!" retorted fred independently. "the place is as free to us as to you." "are you spies?" "i don't intend to answer any of your questions." "clear out of here!" commanded roderick in a tone of authority. "suppose we don't?" roderick was a man of quick temper, and had never been in the habit of curbing it. he was provoked by the independent tone of the speaker, and without pausing to think of the imprudence of his actions, he raised his rifle and pointing at fred shot him in the left arm. the two miners were both armed, and were not slow in accepting the challenge. simultaneously they raised their rifles and fired at the two men. the result was that both fell seriously wounded and caesar set up a howl of dismay, not so much for his masters as from alarm for himself. fred and otto came forward, and stood looking down upon the outlaws, who were in the agonies of death. "it was our lives or theirs," said fred coolly, for he had been long enough in montana to become used to scenes of bloodshed. "yes," answered otto. "i think these two men are the notorious dixon brothers who are credited with a large number of murders. the country will be well rid of them." roderick turned his glazing eyes upon the tall miner. "i wish i had killed you," he muttered. "no doubt you do. it wouldn't have been your first murder." "don't kill me, massa!" pleaded caesar in tones of piteous entreaty. "i don't know," answered fred. "that depends on yourself. if you obey us strictly we will spare you." "try me, massa!" "you black hound!" said roderick hoarsely. "if i were not disabled i'd kill you myself." here was a new danger for poor caesar, for he knew roderick's fierce temper. "don't let him kill me!" he exclaimed, affrighted. "he shall do you no harm. will you obey me?" "tell me what you want, massa." "is the boy these men captured inside?" "yes, massa." "open the cave, then. we want him." "don't do it," said roderick, but caesar saw at a glance that his old master, of whom he stood in wholesome fear, was unable to harm him, and he proceeded to unlock the door. "go and call the boy!" said fred. caesar disappeared within the cavern, and soon emerged with rodney following him. "are you unhurt?" asked fred anxiously. "yes, and overjoyed to see you. how came you here?" "we followed the nigger from oreville." what happened afterwards rodney did not need to inquire, for the two outstretched figures, stiffening in death, revealed it to him. "they are the dixon brothers, are they not?" asked fred, turning to caesar. "yes, massa." "then we are entitled to a thousand dollars each for their capture. i have never before shed blood, but i don't regret ending the career of these scoundrels." half an hour later the two outlaws were dead and rodney and his friends were on their way back to oreville. chapter xxxvi. the rodney mine. rodney was received by jefferson pettigrew with open arms. "welcome home, boy!" he said. "i was very much worried about you." "i was rather uneasy about myself," returned rodney. "well, it's all over, and all's well that ends well. you are free and there has been no money paid out. fred and otto have done a good thing in ridding the world of the notorious dixon brothers. they will be well paid, for i understand there is a standing reward of one thousand dollars for each of them dead or alive. i don't know but you ought to have a share of this, for it was through you that the outlaws were trapped." "no, mr. pettigrew, they are welcome to the reward. if i am not mistaken i shall make a good deal more out of it than they." "what do you mean?" upon this rodney told the story of what he had seen in the cavern. "when i said i, i meant we, mr. pettigrew. i think if the gold there is as plentiful as i think it is we shall do well to commence working it." "it is yours, rodney, by right of first discovery." "i prefer that you should share it with me." "we will go over tomorrow and make an examination. was there any one else who seemed to have a claim to the cave except the dixons?" "no. the negro, caesar, will still be there, perhaps." "we can easily get rid of him." the next day the two friends went over to the cavern. caesar was still there, but he had an unsettled, restless look, and seemed undecided what to do. "what are you going to do, caesar?" asked pettigrew. "are you going to stay here?" "i don't know, massa. i don't want to lib here. i'm afraid i'll see the ghostes of my old massas. but i haven't got no money." "if you had money where would you go?" "i'd go to chicago. i used to be a whitewasher, and i reckon i'd get work at my old trade." "that's where you are sensible, caesar. this is no place for you. now i'll tell you what i'll do. i'll give you a hundred dollars, and you can go where you like. but i shall want you to go away at once." "i'll go right off, massa," said caesar, overjoyed. "i don't want to come here no more." "have you got anything belonging to you in the cave?" "no, massa, only a little kit of clothes." "take them and go." in fifteen minutes caesar had bidden farewell to his home, and rodney and jefferson were left in sole possession of the cavern. "now, mr. pettigrew, come and let me show you what i saw. i hope i have made no mistake." rodney led the way to the narrow passage already described. by the light of a lantern mr. pettigrew examined the walls. for five minutes not a word was said. "well, what do you think of it?" asked rodney anxiously. "only this: that you have hit upon the richest gold deposits in montana. here is a mining prospect that will make us both rich." "i am glad i was not mistaken," said rodney simply. "your capture by the dixon brothers will prove to have been the luckiest event in your life. i shall lose no time in taking possession in our joint name." there was great excitement when the discovery of the gold deposit was made known. in connection with the killing of the outlaws, it was noised far and wide. the consequence was that there was an influx of mining men, and within a week rodney and jefferson were offered a hundred thousand dollars for a half interest in the mine by a chicago syndicate. "say a hundred and fifty thousand, and we accept the offer," said jefferson pettigrew. after a little haggling this offer was accepted, and rodney found himself the possessor of seventy five thousand dollars in cash. "it was fortunate for me when i fell in with you, mr. pettigrew," he said. "and no less fortunate for me, rodney. this mine will bring us in a rich sum for our share, besides the cash we already have in hand." "if you don't object, mr. pettigrew, i should like to go to new york and continue my education. you can look after my interest here, and i shall be willing to pay you anything you like for doing so." "there won't be any trouble about that, rodney. i don't blame you for wanting to obtain an education. it isn't in my line. you can come out once a year, and see what progress we are making. the mine will be called the rodney mine after you." the miners' rest was sold to the steward, as mr. pettigrew was too busy to attend to it, and in a week rodney was on his way to new york. chapter xxxxvii. conclusion. otis goodnow arrived at his place of business a little earlier than usual, and set himself to looking over his mail. among other letters was one written on paper bearing the name of the fifth avenue hotel. he came to this after a time and read it. it ran thus: dear sir: i was once in your employ, though you may not remember my name. i was in the department of mr. redwood, and there i became acquainted with jasper redwood, his nephew. i was discharged, it is needless to recall why. i had saved nothing, and of course i was greatly embarrassed. i could not readily obtain another place, and in order to secure money to pay living expenses i entered into an arrangement with jasper redwood to sell me articles, putting in more than i paid for. these i was enabled to sell at a profit to smaller stores. this was not as profitable as it might have been to me, as i was obliged to pay jasper a commission for his agency. well, after a time it was ascertained that articles were missing, and search was made for the thief. through a cunningly devised scheme of jasper's the theft was ascribed to rodney ropes, a younger clerk, and he was discharged. ropes was a fine young fellow, and i have always been sorry that he got into trouble through our agency, but there seeemed no help for it. it must rest on him or us. he protested his innocence, but was not believed. i wish to say now that he was absolutely innocent, and only jasper and myself were to blame. if you doubt my statement i will call today, and you may confront me with jasper. i desire that justice should be done. philip carton. "call mr. redwood," said the merchant, summoning a boy. in five minutes mr. redwood entered the office of his employer. "you sent for me, sir?" "yes, mr. redwood; cast your eye over this letter." james redwood read the letter, and his face showed the agitation he felt. "i don't know anything about this, mr. goodnow," he said at last. "it ought to be inquired into." "i agree with you. if my nephew is guilty i want to know it." "we will wait till the writer of this letter calls. do you remember him?" "yes, sir; he was discharged for intemperance." at twelve o'clock philip carton made his appearance, and asked to be conducted to mr. goodnow's private office. "you are the writer of this letter?" asked the merchant. "yes sir." "and you stand by the statement it contains?" "yes, sir." "why, at this late day, have you made a confession?" "because i wish to do justice to rodney ropes, who has been unjustly accused, and also because i have been meanly treated by jasper redwood, who has thrown me over now that he has no further use for me." "are you willing to repeat your statement before him?" "i wish to do so." "call jasper redwood, sherman," said the merchant, addressing himself to sherman white, a boy recently taken into his employ. jasper entered the office, rather surprised at the summons. when he saw his accomplice, he changed color, and looked confused. "jasper," said the merchant, "read this letter and tell me what you have to say in reply." jasper ran his eye over the letter, while his color came and went. "well?" "it's a lie," said jasper hoarsely. "do you still insist that the articles taken from my stock were taken by rodney ropes?" "yes, sir." "what do you say, mr. carton?" "not one was taken by rodney ropes. jasper and i are responsible for them all." "what proof can you bring?" "mr. james redwood will recall the purchase i made at the time of the thefts. he will recall that i always purchased of jasper." "that is true," said mr. redwood in a troubled voice. "do you confess, jasper redwood?" "no, sir." "if you will tell the truth, i will see that no harm comes to you. i want to clear this matter up." jasper thought the matter over. he saw that the game was up--and decided rapidly that confession was the best policy. "very well, sir, if i must i will do so, but that man put me up to it." "you did not need any putting up to it. i wish young ropes were here, that i might clear him." as if in answer to the wish a bronzed and manly figure appeared at the office door. it was rodney, but taller and more robust than when he left the store nearly a year before. "rodney ropes!" ejaculated jasper in great surprise. "yes, jasper, i came here to see you, and beg you to free me from the false charge which was brought against me when i was discharged from this store. i didn't find you in your usual places, and was directed here." "ropes," said mr. goodnow, "your innocence has been established. this man," indicating philip carton, "has confessed that it was he and jasper who stole the missing articles." "i am thankful that my character has been cleared." "i am ready to take you back into my employ." "thank you, sir, but i have now no need of a position. i shall be glad if you will retain jasper." "you are very generous to one who has done so much to injure you." "indirectly he put me in the way of making a fortune. if you will retain him, mr. goodnow, i will guarantee to make up any losses you may incur from him." "how is this? are you able to make this guarantee?" "i am worth seventy five thousand dollars in money, besides being owner of a large mining property in montana." "this is truly wonderful! and you have accumulated all this since you left my store?" "yes, sir." "rodney," said jasper, going up to his old rival, and offering his hand. "i am sorry i tried to injure you. it was to save myself, but i see now how meanly i acted." "that speech has saved you," said the merchant. "go back to your work. i will give you another chance." "will you take me back also, mr. goodnow?" asked philip carton. the merchant hesitated. "no, mr. carton," said rodney. "i will look out for you. i will send you to montana with a letter to my partner. you can do better there than here." tears came into the eyes of the ex-clerk. "thank you," he said gratefully. "i should prefer it. i will promise to turn over a new leaf; and justify your recommendation." "come to see me this evening at the fifth avenue hotel, and i will arrange matters." "shall you stay in the city long, ropes?" asked the merchant. "about a week." "come and dine with me on tuesday evening." "thank you, sir." later in the day rodney sought out his old room mate mike flynn. he found mike in a bad case. he had a bad cold, but did not dare to give up work, because he wouldn't be able to meet his bills. he was still in the employ of the district telegraph company. "give the company notice, mike," said rodney. "henceforth i will take care of you. you can look upon me as your rich uncle," he added with a smile. "i will be your servant, rodney." "not a bit of it. you will be my friend. but you must obey me implicitly. i am going to send you to school, and give you a chance to learn something. next week i shall return to dr. sampson's boarding school and you will go with me as my friend and room mate." "but, rodney, you will be ashamed of me. i am awfully shabby." "you won't be long. you shall be as well dressed as i am." a week later the two boys reached the school. it would have been hard for any of mike's old friends to recognize him in the handsomely dressed boy who accompanied rodney. "really, mike, you are quite good looking, now that you are well dressed," said rodney. "oh, go away with you, rodney? it's fooling me you are!" "not a bit of it. now i want you to improve your time and learn as fast as you can." "i will, rodney." a year later rodney left school, but he kept mike there two years longer. there had been a great change in the telegraph boy, who was quick to learn. he expects, when he leaves school, to join rodney in montana. i will not attempt to estimate rodney's present wealth, but he is already prominent in financial circles in his adopted state. philip carton is prospering, and is respected by his new friends, who know nothing of his earlier life. as i write, rodney has received a letter from his old guardian, benjamin fielding. the letter came from montreal. "my dear rodney," he wrote. "i have worked hard to redeem the past, and restore to you your fortune. i have just succeeded, and send you the amount with interest. it leaves me little or nothing, but my mind is relieved. i hope you have not had to suffer severely from my criminal carelessness, and that you will live long to enjoy what rightfully belongs to you." in reply rodney wrote: "please draw on me for fifty thousand dollars. i do not need it, and you do. five years from now, if you can spare the money you may send it to me. till then use it without interest. i am worth much more than the sum my father intrusted to you for me." this offer was gratefully accepted, and mr. fielding is now in new york, where he is likely to experience a return of his former prosperity. as for rodney, his trials are over. they made a man of him, and proved a blessing in disguise. end of the project gutenberg etext of cast upon the breakers #3 in our series by horatio alger 1850 x-ing a paragrab by edgar allan poe as it is well known that the 'wise men' came 'from the east,' and as mr. touch-and-go bullet-head came from the east, it follows that mr. bullet-head was a wise man; and if collateral proof of the matter be needed, here we have itmr. b. was an editor. irascibility was his sole foible, for in fact the obstinacy of which men accused him was anything but his foible, since he justly considered it his forte. it was his strong pointhis virtue; and it would have required all the logic of a brownson to convince him that it was 'anything else.' i have shown that touch-and-go bullet-head was a wise man; and the only occasion on which he did not prove infallible, was when, abandoning that legitimate home for all wise men, the east, he migrated to the city of alexander-the-great-o-nopolis, or some place of a similar title, out west. i must do him the justice to say, however, that when he made up his mind finally to settle in that town, it was under the impression that no newspaper, and consequently no editor, existed in that particular section of the country. in establishing 'the tea-pot' he expected to have the field all to himself. i feel confident he never would have dreamed of taking up his residence in alexander-the-great-o-nopolis had he been aware that, in alexander-the-great-o-nopolis, there lived a gentleman named john smith (if i rightly remember), who for many years had there quietly grown fat in editing and publishing the 'alexander-the-great-o-nopolis gazette.' it was solely, therefore, on account of having been misinformed, that mr. bullet-head found himself in alex-suppose we call it nopolis, 'for short'but, as he did find himself there, he determined to keep up his character for obstfor firmness, and remain. so remain he did; and he did more; he unpacked his press, type, etc., etc., rented an office exactly opposite to that of the 'gazette,' and, on the third morning after his arrival, issued the first number of 'the alexan'that is to say, of 'the nopolis tea-pot'as nearly as i can recollect, this was the name of the new paper. the leading article, i must admit, was brilliantnot to say severe. it was especially bitter about things in generaland as for the editor of 'the gazette,' he was torn all to pieces in particular. some of bullethead's remarks were really so fiery that i have always, since that time, been forced to look upon john smith, who is still alive, in the light of a salamander. i cannot pretend to give all the 'tea-pot's' paragraphs verbatim, but one of them runs thus: 'oh, yes!oh, we perceive! oh, no doubt! the editor over the way is a geniuso, my! oh, goodness, gracious!what is this world coming to? oh, tempora! oh, moses!' a philippic at once so caustic and so classical, alighted like a bombshell among the hitherto peaceful citizens of nopolis. groups of excited individuals gathered at the corners of the streets. every one awaited, with heartfelt anxiety, the reply of the dignified smith. next morning it appeared as follows: 'we quote from "the tea-pot" of yesterday the subjoined paragraph: "oh, yes! oh, we perceive! oh, no doubt! oh, my! oh, goodness! oh, tempora! oh, moses!" why, the fellow is all o! that accounts for his reasoning in a circle, and explains why there is neither beginning nor end to him, nor to anything he says. we really do not believe the vagabond can write a word that hasn't an o in it. wonder if this o-ing is a habit of his? by-the-by, he came away from down-east in a great hurry. wonder if he o's as much there as he does here? "o! it is pitiful."' the indignation of mr. bullet-head at these scandalous insinuations, i shall not attempt to describe. on the eel-skinning principle, however, he did not seem to be so much incensed at the attack upon his integrity as one might have imagined. it was the sneer at his style that drove him to desperation. what!he touch-and-go bullet-head!not able to write a word without an o in it! he would soon let the jackanapes see that he was mistaken. yes! he would let him see how much he was mistaken, the puppy! he, touch-and-go bullet-head, of frogpondium, would let mr. john smith perceive that he, bullet-head, could indite, if it so pleased him, a whole paragraphaye! a whole articlein which that contemptible vowel should not oncenot even oncemake its appearance. but no;that would be yielding a point to the said john smith. he, bullet-head, would make no alteration in his style, to suit the caprices of any mr. smith in christendom. perish so vile a thought! the o forever; he would persist in the o. he would be as o-wy as o-wy could be. burning with the chivalry of this determination, the great touch-and-go, in the next 'tea-pot,' came out merely with this simple but resolute paragraph, in reference to this unhappy affair: 'the editor of the "tea-pot" has the honor of advising the editor of the "gazette" that he (the "tea-pot") will take an opportunity in tomorrow morning's paper, of convincing him (the "gazette") that he (the "tea-pot") both can and will be his own master, as regards style; he (the "tea-pot") intending to show him (the "gazette") the supreme, and indeed the withering contempt with which the criticism of him (the "gazette") inspires the independent bosom of him (the "teapot") by composing for the especial gratification (?) of him (the "gazette") a leading article, of some extent, in which the beautiful vowelthe emblem of eternityyet so offensive to the hyper-exquisite delicacy of him (the "gazette") shall most certainly not be avoided by his (the "gazette's") most obedient, humble servant, the "tea-pot." "so much for buckingham!"' in fulfilment of the awful threat thus darkly intimated rather than decidedly enunciated, the great bullet-head, turning a deaf ear to all entreaties for 'copy,' and simply requesting his foreman to 'go to the d-l,' when he (the foreman) assured him (the 'tea-pot'!) that it was high time to 'go to press': turning a deaf ear to everything, i say, the great bullet-head sat up until day-break, consuming the midnight oil, and absorbed in the composition of the really unparalleled paragraph, which follows: 'so ho, john! how now? told you so, you know. don't crow, another time, before you're out of the woods! does your mother know you're out? oh, no, no!so go home at once, now, john, to your odious old woods of concord! go home to your woods, old owlgo! you won't! oh, poh, poh, don't do so! you've got to go, you know! so go at once, and don't go slow, for nobody owns you here, you know! oh! john, john, if you don't go you're no homono! you're only a fowl, an owl, a cow, a sow,a doll, a poll; a poor, old, good-for-nothing-to-nobody, log, dog, hog, or frog, come out of a concord bog. cool, nowcool! do be cool, you fool! none of your crowing, old cock! don't frown sodon't! don't hollo, nor howl nor growl, nor bow-wow-wow! good lord, john, how you do look! told you so, you knowbut stop rolling your goose of an old poll about so, and go and drown your sorrows in a bowl!' exhausted, very naturally, by so stupendous an effort, the great touch-and-go could attend to nothing farther that night. firmly, composedly, yet with an air of conscious power, he handed his ms. to the devil in waiting, and then, walking leisurely home, retired, with ineffable dignity to bed. meantime the devil, to whom the copy was entrusted, ran up stairs to his 'case,' in an unutterable hurry, and forthwith made a commencement at 'setting' the ms. 'up.' in the first place, of course,as the opening word was 'so,'he made a plunge into the capital s hole and came out in triumph with a capital s. elated by this success, he immediately threw himself upon the little-o box with a blindfold impetuositybut who shall describe his horror when his fingers came up without the anticipated letter in their clutch? who shall paint his astonishment and rage at perceiving, as he rubbed his knuckles, that he had been only thumping them to no purpose, against the bottom of an empty box. not a single little-o was in the little-o hole; and, glancing fearfully at the capital-o partition, he found that to his extreme terror, in a precisely similar predicament. awestricken, his first impulse was to rush to the foreman. 'sir!' said he, gasping for breath, 'i can't never set up nothing without no o's.' 'what do you mean by that?' growled the foreman, who was in a very ill humor at being kept so late. 'why, sir, there beant an o in the office, neither a big un nor a little un!' 'whatwhat the d-l has become of all that were in the case?' 'i don't know, sir,' said the boy, 'but one of them ere "g'zette" devils is bin prowling 'bout here all night, and i spect he's gone and cabbaged 'em every one.' 'dod rot him! i haven't a doubt of it,' replied the foreman, getting purple with rage 'but i tell you what you do, bob, that's a good boyyou go over the first chance you get and hook every one of their i's and (d-n them!) their izzards.' 'jist so,' replied bob, with a wink and a frown'i'll be into 'em, i'll let 'em know a thing or two; but in de meantime, that ere paragrab? mus go in to-night, you knowelse there'll be the d-l to pay, and-' 'and not a bit of pitch hot,' interrupted the foreman, with a deep sigh, and an emphasis on the 'bit.' 'is it a long paragraph, bob?' 'shouldn't call it a wery long paragrab,' said bob. 'ah, well, then! do the best you can with it! we must get to press," said the foreman, who was over head and ears in work; 'just stick in some other letter for o; nobody's going to read the fellow's trash anyhow.' 'wery well,' replied bob, 'here goes it!' and off he hurried to his case, muttering as he went: 'considdeble vell, them ere expressions, perticcler for a man as doesn't swar. so i's to gouge out all their eyes, eh? and d-n all their gizzards! vell! this here's the chap as is just able for to do it.' the fact is that although bob was but twelve years old and four feet high, he was equal to any amount of fight, in a small way. the exigency here described is by no means of rare occurrence in printing-offices; and i cannot tell how to account for it, but the fact is indisputable, that when the exigency does occur, it almost always happens that x is adopted as a substitute for the letter deficient. the true reason, perhaps, is that x is rather the most superabundant letter in the cases, or at least was so in the old timeslong enough to render the substitution in question an habitual thing with printers. as for bob, he would have considered it heretical to employ any other character, in a case of this kind, than the x to which he had been accustomed. 'i shell have to x this ere paragrab,' said he to himself, as he read it over in astonishment, 'but it's jest about the awfulest o-wy paragrab i ever did see': so x it he did, unflinchingly, and to press it went x-ed. next morning the population of nopolis were taken all aback by reading in 'the tea-pot,' the following extraordinary leader: 'sx hx, jxhn! hxw nxw? txld yxu sx, yxu knxw. dxn't crxw, anxther time, befxre yxu're xut xf the wxxds! dxes yxur mxther knxw yxu're xut? xh, nx, nx!sx gx hxme at xnce, nxw, jxhn, tx yxur xdixus xld wxxds xf cxncxrd! gx hxme tx yxur wxxds, xld xwl,gx! yxu wxn't? xh, pxh, pxh, jxhn, dxn't dx sx! yxu've gxt tx gx, yxu knxw, sx gx at xnce, and dxn't gx slxw; fxr nxbxdy xwns yxu here, yxu knxw. xh, jxhn, jxhn, jxhn, if yxu dxn't gx yxu're nx hxmxnx! yxu're xnly a fxwl, an xwl; a cxw, a sxw; a dxll, a pxll; a pxxr xld gxxd-fxr-nxthing-tx-nxbxdy, lxg, dxg, hxg, xr frxg, cxme xut xf a cxncxrd bxg. cxxl, nxwcxxl! dx be cxxl, yxu fxxl! nxne xf yxur crxwing, xld cxck! dxn't frxwn sxdxn't! dxn't hxllx, nxr hxwl, nxr grxwl, nxr bxw-wxw-wxw! gxxd lxrd, jxhn, hxw yxu dx lxxk! txld yxu sx, yxu knxw,but stxp rxlling yxur gxxse xf an xld pxll abxut sx, and gx and drxwn yxur sxrrxws in a bxwl!' the uproar occasioned by this mystical and cabalistical article, is not to be conceived. the first definite idea entertained by the populace was, that some diabolical treason lay concealed in the hieroglyphics; and there was a general rush to bullet-head's residence, for the purpose of riding him on a rail; but that gentleman was nowhere to be found. he had vanished, no one could tell how; and not even the ghost of him has ever been seen since. unable to discover its legitimate object, the popular fury at length subsided; leaving behind it, by way of sediment, quite a medley of opinion about this unhappy affair. one gentleman thought the whole an x-ellent joke. another said that, indeed, bullet-head had shown much x-uberance of fancy. a third admitted him x-entric, but no more. a fourth could only suppose it the yankee's design to x-press, in a general way, his x-asperation. 'say, rather, to set an x-ample to posterity,' suggested a fifth. that bullet-head had been driven to an extremity, was clear to all; and in fact, since that editor could not be found, there was some talk about lynching the other one. the more common conclusion, however, was that the affair was, simply, x-traordinary and in-x-plicable. even the town mathematician confessed that he could make nothing of so dark a problem. x, every. body knew, was an unknown quantity; but in this case (as he properly observed), there was an unknown quantity of x. the opinion of bob, the devil (who kept dark about his having 'x-ed the paragrab'), did not meet with so much attention as i think it deserved, although it was very openly and very fearlessly expressed. he said that, for his part, he had no doubt about the matter at all, that it was a clear case, that mr. bullet-head 'never could be persuaded fur to drink like other folks, but vas continually a-svigging o' that ere blessed xxx ale, and as a naiteral consekvence, it just puffed him up savage, and made him x (cross) in the x-treme.' the end . 1850 the duc de l'omlette by edgar allan poe and stepped at once into a cooler clime. cowper keats fell by a criticism. who was it died of "the andromache"?* ignoble souls!de l'omelette perished of an ortolan. l'histoire en est breve. assist me, spirit of apicius! *montfleury. the author of the parnasse reforme makes him thus speak in hades:"l'homme donc qui voudrait savoir ce dont je suis morte, qu'il ne demande pas si'l fut de fievre ou de podagre ou d'autre chose, mais qui'l entende que ce fut de 'l'andromache.'" a golden cage bore the little winged wanderer, enamored, melting, indolent, to the chaussee d'antin, from its home in far peru. from its queenly possessor la bellissima, to the duc de l'omelette, six peers of the empire conveyed the happy bird. that night the duc was to sup alone. in the privacy of his bureau he reclined languidly on that ottoman for which he sacrificed his loyalty in outbidding his kingthe notorious ottoman of cadet. he buries his face in the pillow. the clock strikes! unable to restrain his feelings, his grace swallows an olive. at this moment the door gently opens to the sound of soft music, and lo! the most delicate of birds is before the most enamored of men! but what inexpressible dismay now overshadows the countenance of the duc?"horreur!chien!baptiste!l'oiseau! ah, bon dieu! cet oiseau modeste que tu as deshabille de ses plumes, et que tu as servi sans papier!" it is superfluous to say more:the duc expired in a paroxysm of disgust. "ha! ha! ha!" said his grace on the third day after his decease. "he! he! he!" replied the devil faintly, drawing himself up with an air of hauteur. "why, surely you are not serious," retorted de l'omelette. "i have sinnedc'est vraibut, my good sir, consider!you have no actual intention of putting suchsuch barbarous threats into execution." "no what?" said his majesty"come, sir, strip!" "strip, indeed! very pretty i' faith! no, sir, i shall not strip. who are you, pray, that i, duc de l'omelette, prince de foie-gras, just come of age, author of the 'mazurkiad,' and member of the academy, should divest myself at your bidding of the sweetest pantaloons ever made by bourdon, the daintiest robe-de-chambre ever put together by rombertto say nothing of the taking my hair out of papernot to mention the trouble i should have in drawing off my gloves?" "who am i?ah, true! i am baal-zebub, prince of the fly. i took thee, just now, from a rose-wood coffin inlaid with ivory. thou wast curiously scented, and labelled as per invoice. belial sent thee,my inspector of cemeteries. the pantaloons, which thou sayest were made by bourdon, are an excellent pair of linen drawers, and thy robe-de-chambre is a shroud of no scanty dimensions." "sir!" replied the duc, "i am not to be insulted with impunity!sir! i shall take the earliest opportunity of avenging this insult!sir! you shall hear from me! in the meantime au revoir!"and the duc was bowing himself out of the satanic presence, when he was interrupted and brought back by a gentleman in waiting. hereupon his grace rubbed his eyes, yawned, shrugged his shoulders, reflected. having become satisfied of his identity, he took a bird's eye view of his whereabouts. the apartment was superb. even de l'omelette pronounced it bien comme il faut. it was not its length nor its breadth,but its heightah, that was appalling!there was no ceilingcertainly nonebut a dense whirling mass of fiery-colored clouds. his grace's brain reeled as he glanced upward. from above, hung a chain of an unknown blood-red metalits upper end lost, like the city of boston, parmi les nues. from its nether extremity swung a large cresset. the duc knew it to be a ruby; but from it there poured a light so intense, so still, so terrible, persia never worshipped suchgheber never imagined suchmussulman never dreamed of such when, drugged with opium, he has tottered to a bed of poppies, his back to the flowers, and his face to the god apollo. the duc muttered a slight oath, decidedly approbatory. the corners of the room were rounded into niches. three of these were filled with statues of gigantic proportions. their beauty was grecian, their deformity egyptian, their tout ensemble french. in the fourth niche the statue was veiled; it was not colossal. but then there was a taper ankle, a sandalled foot. de l'omelette pressed his hand upon his heart, closed his eyes, raised them, and caught his satanic majestyin a blush. but the paintings!kupris! astarte! astoreth!a thousand and the same! and rafaelle has beheld them! yes, rafaelle has been here, for did he not paint the ---? and was he not consequently damned? the paintingsthe paintings! o luxury! o love!who, gazing on those forbidden beauties, shall have eyes for the dainty devices of the golden frames that besprinkled, like stars, the hyacinth and the porphyry walls? but the duc's heart is fainting within him. he is not, however, as you suppose, dizzy with magnificence, nor drunk with the ecstatic breath of those innumerable censers. c'est vrai que de toutes ces choses il a pense beaucoupmais! the duc de l'omelette is terror-stricken; for, through the lurid vista which a single uncurtained window is affording, lo! gleams the most ghastly of all fires! le pauvre duc! he could not help imagining that the glorious, the voluptuous, the never-dying melodies which pervaded that hall, as they passed filtered and transmuted through the alchemy of the enchanted window-panes, were the wailings and the howlings of the hopeless and the damned! and there, too!there!upon the ottoman!who could he be?he, the petitmaitreno, the deitywho sat as if carved in marble, et qui sourit, with his pale countenance, si amerement? mais il faut agirthat is to say, a frenchman never faints outright. besides, his grace hated a scenede l'omelette is himself again. there were some foils upon a tablesome points also. the duc s'echapper. he measures two points, and, with a grace inimitable, offers his majesty the choice. horreur! his majesty does not fence! mais il joue!how happy a thought!but his grace had always an excellent memory. he had dipped in the "diable" of abbe gualtier. therein it is said "que le diable n'ose pas refuser un jeu d'ecarte." but the chancesthe chances! truedesperate: but scarcely more desperate than the duc. besides, was he not in the secret?had he not skimmed over pere le brun?was he not a member of the club vingt-un? "si je perds," said he, "je serai deux fois perdui shall be doubly dammedvoila tout! (here his grace shrugged his shoulders.) si je gagne, je reviendrai a mes ortolansque les cartes soient preparees!" his grace was all care, all attentionhis majesty all confidence. a spectator would have thought of francis and charles. his grace thought of his game. his majesty did not think; he shuffled. the duc cut. the cards were dealt. the trump is turnedit isit isthe king! noit was the queen. his majesty cursed her masculine habiliments. de l'omelette placed his hand upon his heart. they play. the duc counts. the hand is out. his majesty counts heavily, smiles, and is taking wine. the duc slips a card. "c'est a vous a faire," said his majesty, cutting. his grace bowed, dealt, and arose from the table en presentant le roi. his majesty looked chagrined. had alexander not been alexander, he would have been diogenes; and the duc assured his antagonist in taking leave, "que s'il n'eut ete de l'omelette il n'aurait point d'objection d'etre le diable." -the end. 1843 the gold-bug by edgar allan poe the gold-bug what ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad! he hath been bitten by the tarantula. all in the wrong. many years ago, i contracted an intimacy with a mr. william legrand. he was of an ancient huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. to avoid the mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left new orleans, the city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at sullivan's island, near charleston, south carolina. this island is a very singular one. it consists of little else than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. it is separated from the main land by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. the vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. no trees of any magnitude are to be seen. near the western extremity, where fort moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard, white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of england. the shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its fragrance. in the inmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or more remote end of the island, legrand had built himself a small hut, which he occupied when i first, by mere accident, made his acquaintance. this soon ripened into friendship --for there was much in the recluse to excite interest and esteem. i found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. he had with him many books, but rarely employed them. his chief amusements were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological specimens;-his collection of the latter might have been envied by a swammerdamm. in these excursions he was usually accompanied by an old negro, called jupiter, who had been manumitted before the reverses of the family, but who could be induced, neither by threats nor by promises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance upon the footsteps of his young "massa will." it is not improbable that the relatives of legrand, conceiving him to be somewhat unsettled in intellect, had contrived to instil this obstinacy into jupiter, with a view to the supervision and guardianship of the wanderer. the winters in the latitude of sullivan's island are seldom very severe, and in the fall of the year it is a rare event indeed when a fire is considered necessary. about the middle of october, 18--, there occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. just before sunset i scrambled my way through the evergreens to the hut of my friend, whom i had not visited for several weeks --my residence being, at that time, in charleston, a distance of nine my miles from the island, while the facilities of passage and re-passage were very far behind those of the present day. upon reaching the hut i rapped, as was my custom, and getting no reply, sought for the key where i knew it was secreted, unlocked the door and went in. a fine fire was blazing upon the hearth. it was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. i threw off an overcoat, took an arm-chair by the crackling logs, and awaited patiently the arrival of my hosts. soon after dark they arrived, and gave me a most cordial welcome. jupiter, grinning from ear to ear, bustled about to prepare some marsh-hens for supper. legrand was in one of his fits --how else shall i term them? --of enthusiasm. he had found an unknown bivalve, forming a new genus, and, more than this, he had hunted down and secured, with jupiter's assistance, a scarabaeus which he believed to be totally new, but in respect to which he wished to have my opinion on the morrow. "and why not to-night?" i asked, rubbing my hands over the blaze, and wishing the whole tribe of scarabaei at the devil. "ah, if i had only known you were here!" said legrand, "but it's so long since i saw you; and how could i foresee that you would pay me a visit this very night of all others? as i was coming home i met lieutenant g--, from the fort, and, very foolishly, i lent him the bug; so it will be impossible for you to see it until morning. stay here to-night, and i will send jup down for it at sunrise. it is the loveliest thing in creation!" "what? --sunrise?" "nonsense! no! --the bug. it is of a brilliant gold color --about the size of a large hickory-nut --with two jet black spots near one extremity of the back, and another, somewhat longer, at the other. the antennae are --" "dey aint no tin in him, massa will, i keep a tellin on you," here interrupted jupiter; "de bug is a goole bug, solid, ebery bit of him, inside and all, sep him wing --neber feel half so hebby a bug in my life." "well, suppose it is, jup," replied legrand, somewhat more earnestly, it seemed to me, than the case demanded, "is that any reason for your letting the birds burn? the color" --here he turned to me --"is really almost enough to warrant jupiter's idea. you never saw a more brilliant metallic lustre than the scales emit --but of this you cannot judge till tomorrow. in the mean time i can give you some idea of the shape." saying this, he seated himself at a small table, on which were a pen and ink, but no paper. he looked for some in a drawer, but found none. "never mind," said he at length, "this will answer"; and he drew from his waistcoat pocket a scrap of what i took to be very dirty foolscap, and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen. while he did this, i retained my seat by the fire, for i was still chilly. when the design was complete, he handed it to me without rising. as i received it, a loud growl was heard, succeeded by a scratching at the door. jupiter opened it, and a large newfoundland, belonging to legrand, rushed in, leaped upon my shoulders, and loaded me with caresses; for i had shown him much attention during previous visits. when his gambols were over, i looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a little puzzled at what my friend had depicted. "well!" i said, after contemplating it for some minutes, "this is a strange scarabaeus, i must confess: new to me: never saw anything like it before --unless it was a skull, or a death's-head --which it more nearly resembles than anything else that has come under my observation." "a death's-head!" echoed legrand --"oh --yes --well, it has something of that appearance upon paper, no doubt. the two upper black spots look like eyes, eh? and the longer one at the bottom like a mouth --and then the shape of the whole is oval." "perhaps so," said i; "but, legrand, i fear you are no artist. i must wait until i see the beetle itself, if i am to form any idea of its personal appearance." "well, i don't know," said he, a little nettled, "i draw tolerably --should do it at least --have had good masters, and flatter myself that i am not quite a blockhead." "but, my dear fellow, you are joking then," said i, "this is a very passable skull --indeed, i may say that it is a very excellent skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of physiology --and your scarabaeus must be the queerest scarabaeus in the world if it resembles it. why, we may get up a very thrilling bit of superstition upon this hint. i presume you will call the bug scarabaeus caput hominis, or something of that kind --there are many titles in the natural histories. but where are the antennae you spoke of?" "the antennae!" said legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably warm upon the subject; "i am sure you must see the antennae. i made them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and i presume that is sufficient." "well, well," i said, "perhaps you have --still i don't see them;" and i handed him the paper without additional remark, not wishing to ruffle his temper; but i was much surprised at the turn affairs had taken; his ill humor puzzled me --and, as for the drawing of the beetle, there were positively no antennae visible, and the whole did bear a very close resemblance to the ordinary cuts of a death's-head. he received the paper very peevishly, and was about to crumple it, apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at the design seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. in an instant his face grew violently red --in another as excessively pale. for some minutes he continued to scrutinize the drawing minutely where he sat. at length he arose, took a candle from the table, and proceeded to seat himself upon a sea-chest in the farthest corner of the room. here again he made an anxious examination of the paper; turning it in all directions. he said nothing, however, and his conduct greatly astonished me; yet i thought it prudent not to exacerbate the growing moodiness of his temper by any comment. presently he took from his coat pocket a wallet, placed the paper carefully in it, and deposited both in a writing-desk, which he locked. he now grew more composed in his demeanor; but his original air of enthusiasm had quite disappeared. yet he seemed not so much sulky as abstracted. as the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from which no sallies of mine could arouse him. it had been my to pass the night at the hut, as i had frequently done before, but, seeing my host in this mood, i deemed it proper to take leave. he did not press me to remain, but, as i departed, he shook my hand with even more than his usual cordiality. it was about a month after this (and during the interval i had seen nothing of legrand) when i received a visit, at charleston, from his man, jupiter. i had never seen the good old negro look so dispirited, and i feared that some serious disaster had befallen my friend. "well, jup," said i, "what is the matter now? --how is your master?" "why, to speak de troof, massa, him not so berry well as mought be." "not well! i am truly sorry to hear it. what does he complain of?" dar! dat's it! --him neber plain of notin --but him berry sick for all dat." "very sick, jupiter! --why didn't you say so at once? is he confined to bed?" "no, dat he ain't! --he ain't find nowhar --dat's just whar de shoe pinch --my mind is got to be berry hebby bout poor massa will." "jupiter, i should like to understand what it is you are talking about. you say your master is sick. hasn't he told you what ails him?" "why, massa, taint worf while for to git mad bout de matter --massa will say noffin at all ain't de matter wid him --but den what make him go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up, and as white as a gose? and den he keep a syphon all de time --" "keeps a what, jupiter?" "keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate --de queerest figgurs i ebber did see. ise gittin to be skeered, i tell you. hab for to keep mighty tight eye pon him noovers. todder day he gib me slip fore de sun up and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. i had a big stick ready cut for to gib him d--d good beating when he did come --but ise sich a fool dat i hadn't de heart arter all --he look so berry poorly." "eh? --what? --ah yes! --upon the whole i think you had better not be too severe with the poor fellow --don't flog him, jupiter --he can't very well stand it --but can you form no idea of what has occasioned this illness, or rather this change of conduct? has anything unpleasant happened since i saw you?" "no, massa, dey ain't bin noffin onpleasant since den --'t was fore den i'm feared --'t was de berry day you was dare." "how? what do you mean?" "why, massa, i mean de bug --dare now." "the what?" "de bug --i'm berry sartain dat massa will bin bit somewhere bout de head by dat goole-bug." "and what cause have you, jupiter, for such a supposition?" "claws enoff, massa, and mouff too. i nabber did see sich a d--d bug --he kick and he bite ebery ting what cum near him. massa will cotch him fuss, but had for to let him go gin mighty quick, i tell you --den was de time he must ha got de bite. i didn't like de look ob de bug mouff, myself, no how, so i wouldn't take hold ob him wid my finger, but i cotch him wid a piece ob paper dat i found. i rap him up in de paper and stuff piece ob it in he mouff --dat was de way." "and you think, then, that your master was really bitten by the beetle, and that the bite made him sick?" "i don't tink noffin about it --i nose it. what make him dream bout de goole so much, if tain't cause he bit by de goole-bug? ise heerd bout dem goole-bugs fore dis." "but how do you know he dreams about gold?" "how i know? why cause he talk about it in he sleep --dat's how i nose." "well, jup, perhaps you are right; but to what fortunate circumstance am i to attribute the honor of a visit from you to-day?" "what de matter, massa?" "did you bring any message from mr. legrand?" "no, massa, i bring dis here pissel;" and here jupiter handed me a note which ran thus: my dear - why have i not seen you for so long a time? i hope you have not been so foolish as to take offence at any little brusquerie of mine; but no, that is improbable. since i saw you i have had great cause for anxiety. i have something to tell you, yet scarcely know how to tell it, or whether i should tell it at all. i have not been quite well for some days past, and poor old jup annoys me, almost beyond endurance, by his well-meant attentions. would you believe it? --he had prepared a huge stick, the other day, with which to chastise me for giving him the slip, and spending the day, solus, among the hills on the main land. i verily believe that my ill looks alone saved me a flogging. i have made no addition to my cabinet since we met. if you can, in any way, make it convenient, come over with jupiter. do come. i wish to see you tonight, upon business of importance. i assure you that it is of the highest importance. ever yours, william legrand. there was something in the tone of this note which gave me great uneasiness. its whole style differed materially from that of legrand. what could he be dreaming of? what new crotchet possessed his excitable brain? what "business of the highest importance" could he possibly have to transact? jupiter's account of him boded no good. i dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length, fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. without a moment's hesitation, therefore, i prepared to accompany the negro. upon reaching the wharf, i noticed a scythe and three spades, all apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which we were to embark. "what is the meaning of all this, jup?" i inquired. "him syfe, massa, and spade." "very true; but what are they doing here?" "him de syfe and de spade what massa will sis pon my buying for him in de town, and de debbil's own lot of money i had to gib for em." but what, in the name of all that is mysterious, is your 'massa will' going to do with scythes and spades?" "dat's more dan i know, and debbil take me if i don't blieve 'tis more dan he know, too. but it's all cum ob de bug." finding that no satisfaction was to be obtained of jupiter, whose whole intellect seemed to be absorbed by "de bug," i now stepped into the boat and made sail. with a fair and strong breeze we soon ran into the little cove to the northward of fort moultrie, and a walk of some two miles brought us to the hut. it was about three in the afternoon when we arrived. legrand had been awaiting us in eager expectation. he grasped my hand with a nervous empressement which alarmed me and strengthened the suspicions already entertained. his countenance was pale even to ghastliness, and his deep-set eyes glared with unnatural lustre. after some inquiries respecting his health, i asked him, not knowing what better to say, if he had yet obtained the scarabaeus from lieutenant g--. "oh, yes," he replied, coloring violently, "i got it from him the next morning. nothing should tempt me to part with that scarabaeus. do you know that jupiter is quite right about it?" "in what way?" i asked, with a sad foreboding at heart. "in supposing it to be a bug of real gold." he said this with an air of profound seriousness, and i felt inexpressibly shocked. "this bug is to make my fortune," he continued, with a triumphant smile, "to reinstate me in my family possessions. is it any wonder, then, that i prize it? since fortune has thought fit to bestow it upon me, i have only to use it properly and i shall arrive at the gold of which it is the index. jupiter, bring me that scarabaeus!" "what! de bug, massa? i'd rudder not go fer trubble dat bug --you mus git him for your own self." hereupon legrand arose, with a grave and stately air, and brought me the beetle from a glass case in which it was enclosed. it was a beautiful scarabaeus, and, at that time, unknown to naturalists --of course a great prize in a scientific point of view. there were two round, black spots near one extremity of the back, and a long one near the other. the scales were exceedingly hard and glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold. the weight of the insect was very remarkable, and, taking all things into consideration, i could hardly blame jupiter for his opinion respecting it; but what to make of legrand's agreement with that opinion, i could not, for the life of me, tell. "i sent for you," said he, in a grandiloquent tone, when i had completed my examination of the beetle, "i sent for you, that i might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of fate and of the bug"- "my dear legrand," i cried, interrupting him, "you are certainly unwell, and had better use some little precautions. you shall go to bed, and i will remain with you a few days, until you get over this. you are feverish and"- "feel my pulse," said he. i felt it, and, to say the truth, found not the slightest indication of fever. "but you may be ill and yet have no fever. allow me this once to prescribe for you. in the first place, go to bed. in the next"- "you are mistaken," he interposed, "i am as well as i can expect to be under the excitement which i suffer. if you really wish me well, you will relieve this excitement." "and how is this to be done?" "very easily. jupiter and myself are going upon an expedition into the hills, upon the main land, and, in this expedition, we shall need the aid of some person in whom we can confide. you are the only one we can trust. whether we succeed or fail, the excitement which you now perceive in me will be equally allayed." "i am anxious to oblige you in any way," i replied; "but do you mean to say that this infernal beetle has any connection with your expedition into the hills?" "it has." "then, legrand, i can become a party to no such absurd proceeding. "i am sorry --very sorry --for we shall have to try it by ourselves." "try it by yourselves! the man is surely mad! --but stay! --how long do you propose to be absent?" "probably all night. we shall start immediately, and be back, at all events, by sunrise." "and will you promise me, upon your honor, that when this freak of yours is over, and the bug business (good god!) settled to your satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice implicitly, as that of your physician?" "yes; i promise; and now let us be off, for we have no time to lose." with a heavy heart i accompanied my friend. we started about four o'clock --legrand, jupiter, the dog, and myself. jupiter had with him the scythe and spades --the whole of which he insisted upon carrying --more through fear, it seemed to me, of trusting either of the implements within reach of his master, than from any excess of industry or complaisance. his demeanor was dogged in the extreme, and "dat d--d bug" were the sole words which escaped his lips during the journey. for my own part, i had charge of a couple of dark lanterns, while legrand contented himself with the scarabaeus, which he carried attached to the end of a bit of whip-cord; twirling it to and fro, with the air of a conjuror, as he went. when i observed this last, plain evidence of my friend's aberration of mind, i could scarcely refrain from tears. i thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at least for the present, or until i could adopt some more energetic measures with a chance of success. in the mean time i endeavored, but all in vain, to sound him in regard to the object of the expedition. having succeeded in inducing me to accompany him, he seemed unwilling to hold conversation upon any topic of minor importance, and to all my questions vouchsafed no other reply than "we shall see!" we crossed the creek at the head of the island by means of a skiff, and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the mainland, proceeded in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was to be seen. legrand led the way with decision; pausing only for an instant, here and there, to consult what appeared to be certain landmarks of his own contrivance upon a former occasion. in this manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet seen. it was a species of table land, near the summit of an almost inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves into the valleys below, merely by the support of the trees against which they reclined. deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air of still sterner solemnity to the scene. the natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it would have been impossible to force our way but for the scythe; and jupiter, by direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees which i had then ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its appearance. when we reached this tree, legrand turned to jupiter, and asked him if he thought he could climb it. the old man seemed a little staggered by the question, and for some moments made no reply. at length he approached the huge trunk, walked slowly around it, and examined it with minute attention. when he had completed his scrutiny, he merely said, "yes, massa, jup climb any tree he ebber see in he life." "then up with you as soon as possible, for it will soon be too dark to see what we are about." "how far mus go up, massa?" inquired jupiter. "get up the main trunk first, and then i will tell you which way to go --and here --stop! take this beetle with you." "de bug, massa will! --de goole bug!" cried the negro, drawing back in dismay --"what for mus tote de bug way up de tree? --d--n if i do!" "if you are afraid, jup, a great big negro like you, to take hold of a harmless little dead beetle, why you can carry it up by this string --but, if you do not take it up with you in some way, i shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel." "what de matter now, massa?" said jup, evidently shamed into compliance; "always want for to raise fuss wid old nigger. was only funnin' anyhow. me feered de bug! what i keer for de bug?" here he took cautiously hold of the extreme end of the string, and, maintaining the insect as far from his person as circumstances would permit, prepared to ascend the tree. in youth, the tulip-tree, or liriodendron tulipiferum, the most magnificent of american foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but, in its riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs make their appearance on the stem. thus the difficulty of ascension, in the present case, lay more in semblance than in reality. embracing the huge cylinder, as closely as possible, with his arms and knees, seizing with his hands some projections, and resting his naked toes upon others, jupiter, after one or two narrow escapes from falling, at length wriggled himself into the first great fork, and seemed to consider the whole business as virtually accomplished. the risk of the achievement was, in fact, now over, although the climber was some sixty or seventy feet from the ground. "which way mus go now, massa will?" he asked. keep up the largest branch --the one on this side," said legrand. the negro obeyed him promptly, and apparently with but little trouble; ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his squat figure could be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it. presently his voice was heard in a sort of halloo. "how much fudder is got for go?" "how high up are you?" asked legrand. "ebber so fur," replied the negro; "can see de sky fru de top ob de tree." "never mind the sky, but attend to what i say. look down the trunk and count the limbs below you on this side. how many limbs have you passed?" "one, two, tree, four, fibe --i done pass fibe big limb, massa, 'pon dis side." "then go one limb higher." in a few minutes the voice was heard again, announcing that the seventh limb was attained. "now, jup," cried legrand, evidently much excited, "i want you to work your way out upon that limb as far as you can. if you see anything strange, let me know." by this time what little doubt i might have entertained of my poor friend's insanity, was put finally at rest. i had no alternative but to conclude him stricken with lunacy, and i became seriously anxious about getting him home. while i was pondering upon what was best to be done, jupiter's voice was again heard. "mos' feerd for to ventur 'pon dis limb berry far --'tis dead limb putty much all de way." "did you say it was a dead limb, jupiter?" cried legrand in a quavering voice. "yes, massa, him dead as de door-nail --done up for sartain --done departed dis here life." "what in the name of heaven shall i do?" asked legrand, seemingly in the greatest distress. "do!" said i, glad of an opportunity to interpose a word, "why come home and go to bed. come now! --that's a fine fellow. it's getting late, and, besides, you remember your promise." "jupiter," cried he, without heeding me in the least, "do you hear me?" "yes, massa will, hear you ebber so plain." "try the wood well, then, with your knife, and see if you think it very rotten." "him rotten, massa, sure nuff," replied the negro in a few moments, "but not so berry rotten as mought be. mought ventur out leetle way pon de limb by myself, dat's true." "by yourself! --what do you mean?" "why i mean de bug. 'tis berry hebby bug. spose i drop him down fuss, and den de limb won't break wid just de weight ob one nigger." "you infernal scoundrel!" cried legrand, apparently much relieved, "what do you mean by telling me such nonsense as that? as sure as you let that beetle fall! --i'll break your neck. look here, jupiter! do you hear me?" "yes, massa, needn't hollo at poor nigger dat style." "well! now listen! --if you will venture out on the limb as far as you think safe, and not let go the beetle, i'll make you a present of a silver dollar as soon as you get down." "i'm gwine, massa will --deed i is," replied the negro very promptly --"mos out to the eend now." "out to the end!" here fairly screamed legrand, "do you say you are out to the end of that limb?" "soon be to de eend, massa, --o-o-o-o-oh! lor-gol-a-marcy! what is dis here pon de tree?" "well!" cried legrand, highly delighted, "what is it?" "why taint noffin but a skull --somebody bin lef him head up de tree, and de crows done gobble ebery bit ob de meat off." "a skull, you say! --very well! --how is it fastened to the limb? --what holds it on?" "sure nuff, massa; mus look. why dis berry curous sarcumstance, pon my word --dare's a great big nail in de skull, what fastens ob it on to de tree." "well now, jupiter, do exactly as i tell you --do you hear?" "yes, massa." "pay attention, then! --find the left eye of the skull." "hum! hoo! dat's good! why dar ain't no eye lef' at all." "curse your stupidity! do you know your right hand from your left?" "yes, i nose dat --nose all bout dat --'tis my left hand what i chops de wood wid." "to be sure! you are left-handed; and your left eye is on the same side as your left hand. now, i suppose, you can find the left eye of the skull, or the place where the left eye has been. have you found it?" here was a long pause. at length the negro asked, "is de lef' eye of de skull pon de same side as de lef' hand of de skull, too? --cause de skull ain't got not a bit ob a hand at all --nebber mind! i got de lef' eye now --here de lef' eye! what mus do wid it?" "let the beetle drop through it, as far as the string will reach --but be careful and not let go your hold of the string." "all dat done, massa will; mighty easy ting for to put de bug fru de hole --look out for him dar below?" during this colloquy no portion of jupiter's person could be seen; but the beetle, which he had suffered to descend, was now visible at the end of the string, and glistened, like a globe of burnished gold, in the last rays of the setting sun, some of which still faintly illumined the eminence upon which we stood. the scarabaeus hung quite clear of any branches, and, if allowed to fall, would have fallen at our feet. legrand immediately took the scythe, and cleared with it a circular space, three or four yards in diameter, just beneath the insect, and, having accomplished this, ordered jupiter to let go the string and come down from the tree. driving a peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a tape-measure. fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the peg, and thence farther unrolled it, in the direction already established by the two points of the tree and the peg, for the distance of fifty feet --jupiter clearing away the brambles with the scythe. at the spot thus attained a second peg was driven, and about this, as a centre, a rude circle, about four feet in diameter, described. taking now a spade himself, and giving one to jupiter and one to me, legrand begged us to set about one to digging as quickly as possible. to speak the truth, i had no especial relish for such amusement at any time, and, at that particular moment, would most willingly have declined it; for the night was coming on, and i felt much fatigued with the exercise already taken; but i saw no mode of escape, and was fearful of disturbing my poor friend's equanimity by a refusal. could i have depended, indeed, upon jupiter's aid, i would have had no hesitation in attempting to get the lunatic home by force; but i was too well assured of the old negro's disposition, to hope that he would assist me, under any circumstances, in a personal contest with his master. i made no doubt that the latter had been infected with some of the innumerable southern superstitions about money buried, and that his phantasy had received confirmation by the finding of the scarabaeus, or, perhaps, by jupiter's obstinacy in maintaining it to be "a bug of real gold." a mind disposed to lunacy would readily be led away by such suggestions --especially if chiming in with favorite preconceived ideas --and then i called to mind the poor fellow's speech about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." upon the whole, i was sadly vexed and puzzled, but, at length, i concluded to make a virtue of necessity --to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the opinions he entertained. the lanterns having been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a more rational cause; and, as the glare fell upon our persons and implements, i could not help thinking how picturesque a group we composed, and how strange and suspicious our labors must have appeared to any interloper who, by chance, might have stumbled upon our whereabouts. we dug very steadily for two hours. little was said; and our chief embarrassment lay in the yelpings of the dog, who took exceeding interest in our proceedings. he, at length, became so obstreperous that we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the vicinity; --or, rather, this was the apprehension of legrand; --for myself, i should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have enabled me to get the wanderer home. the noise was, at length, very effectually silenced by jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a dogged air of deliberation, tied the brute's mouth up with one of his suspenders, and then returned, with a grave chuckle, to his task. when the time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. a general pause ensued, and i began to hope that the farce was at an end. legrand, however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow thoughtfully and recommenced. we had excavated the entire circle of four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went to the farther depth of two feet. still nothing appeared. the gold-seeker, whom i sincerely pitied, at length clambered from the pit, with the bitterest disappointment imprinted upon every feature, and proceeded, slowly and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had thrown off at the beginning of his labor. in the mean time i made no remark. jupiter, at a signal from his master, began to gather up his tools. this done, and the dog having been unmuzzled, we turned in profound silence towards home. we had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when, with a loud oath, legrand strode up to jupiter, and seized him by the collar. the astonished negro opened his eyes and mouth to the fullest extent, let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees. "you scoundrel," said legrand, hissing out the syllables from between his clenched teeth --"you infernal black villain! --speak, i tell you! --answer me this instant, without prevarication! which --which is your left eye?" "oh, my golly, massa will! ain't dis here my lef' eye for sartain?" roared the terrified jupiter, placing his hand upon his right organ of vision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if in immediate dread of his master's attempt at a gouge. "i thought so! --i knew it! --hurrah!" vociferated legrand, letting the negro go, and executing a series of curvets and caracols, much to the astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his knees, looked, mutely, from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master. "come! we must go back," said the latter, "the game's not up yet;" and he again led the way to the tulip-tree. "jupiter," said he, when we reached its foot, come here! was the skull nailed to the limb with the face outward, or with the face to the limb?" "de face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good, widout any trouble." "well, then, was it this eye or that through which you let the beetle fall?" --here legrand touched each of jupiter's eyes. "'twas dis eye, massa --de lef' eye --jis as you tell me," and here it was his right eye that the negro indicated. "that will do --we must try it again." here my friend, about whose madness i now saw, or fancied that i saw, certain indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of its former position. taking, now, the tape-measure from the nearest point of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension in a straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was indicated, removed, by several yards, from the point at which we had been digging. around the new position a circle, somewhat larger than in the former instance, was now described, and we again set to work with the spades. i was dreadfully weary, but, scarcely understanding what had occasioned the change in my thoughts, i felt no longer any great aversion from the labor imposed. i had become most unaccountably interested --nay, even excited. perhaps there was something, amid all the extravagant demeanor of legrand --some air of forethought, or of deliberation, which impressed me. i dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself actually looking, with something that very much resembled expectation, for the fancied treasure, the vision of which had demented my unfortunate companion. at a period when such vagaries of thought most fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog. his uneasiness, in the first instance, had been, evidently, but the result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. upon jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his claws. in a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with several buttons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of decayed woollen. one or two strokes of a spade upturned the blade of a large spanish knife, and, as we dug farther, three or four loose pieces of gold and silver coin came to light. at sight of these the joy of jupiter could scarcely be restrained, but the countenance of his master wore an air of extreme disappointment. he urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and the words were hardly uttered when i stumbled and fell forward, having caught the toe of my boot in a large ring of iron that lay half buried in the loose earth. we now worked in earnest, and never did i pass ten minutes of more intense excitement. during this interval we had fairly unearthed an oblong chest of wood, which, from its perfect preservation, and wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing process --perhaps that of the bi-chloride of mercury. this box was three feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep. it was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a kind of trellis-work over the whole. on each side of the chest, near the top, were three rings of iron --six in all --by means of which a firm hold could be obtained by six persons. our utmost united endeavors served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed. we at once saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight. luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding bolts. these we drew back --trembling and panting with anxiety. in an instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before us. as the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upwards, from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, a glow and a glare that absolutely dazzled our eyes. i shall not pretend to describe the feelings with which i gazed. amazement was, of course, predominant. legrand appeared exhausted with excitement, and spoke very few words. jupiter's countenance wore, for some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is possible, in the nature of things, for any negro's visage to assume. he seemed stupefied --thunder-stricken. presently he fell upon his knees in the pit, and, burying his naked arms up to the elbows in gold, let them there remain, as if enjoying the luxury of a bath. at length, with a deep sigh, he exclaimed, as if in a soliloquy. "and dis all cum ob de goole-bug! de putty goole-bug! de poor little goole-bug, what i boosed in dat sabage kind ob style! ain't you shamed ob yourself, nigger? --answer me dat!" it became necessary, at last, that i should arouse both master and valet to the expediency of removing the treasure. it was growing late, and it behooved us to make exertion, that we might get every thing housed before daylight. it was difficult to say what should be done; and much time was spent in deliberation --so confused were the ideas of all. we, finally, lightened the box by removing two thirds of its contents, when we were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from the hole. the articles taken out were deposited among the brambles, and the dog left to guard them, with strict orders from jupiter neither, upon any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his mouth until our return. we then hurriedly made for home with the chest; reaching the hut in safety, but after excessive toil, at one o'clock in the morning. worn out as we were, it was not in human nature to do more just then. we rested until two, and had supper; starting for the hills immediately afterwards, armed with three stout sacks, which, by good luck, were upon the premises. a little before four we arrived at the pit, divided the remainder of the booty, as equally as might be, among us, and, leaving the holes unfilled, again set out for the hut, at which, for the second time, we deposited our golden burthens, just as the first streaks of the dawn gleamed from over the tree-tops in the east. we were now thoroughly broken down; but the intense excitement of the time denied us repose. after an unquiet slumber of some three or four hours' duration, we arose, as if by preconcert, to make examination of our treasure. the chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole day, and the greater part of the next night, in a scrutiny of its contents. there had been nothing like order or arrangement. every thing had been heaped in promiscuously. having assorted all with care, we found ourselves possessed of even vaster wealth than we had at first supposed. in coin there was rather more than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars --estimating the value of the pieces, as accurately as we could, by the tables of the period. there was not a particle of silver. all was gold of antique date and of great variety --french, spanish, and german money, with a few english guineas, and some counters, of which we had never seen specimens before. there were several very large and heavy coins, so worn that we could make nothing of their inscriptions. there was no american money. the value of the jewels we found more difficulty in estimating. there were diamonds --some of them exceedingly large and fine --a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small; eighteen rubies of remarkable brilliancy; --three hundred and ten emeralds, all very beautiful; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. these stones had all been broken from their settings and thrown loose in the chest. the settings themselves, which we picked out from among the other gold, appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent identification. besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid gold ornaments; --nearly two hundred massive finger and ear rings; --rich chains --thirty of these, if i remember; --eighty-three very large and heavy crucifixes; --five gold censers of great value; --a prodigious golden punch-bowl, ornamented with richly chased vine-leaves and bacchanalian figures; with two sword-handles exquisitely embossed, and many other smaller articles which i cannot recollect. the weight of these valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois; and in this estimate i have not included one hundred and ninety-seven superb gold watches; three of the number being worth each five hundred dollars, if one. many of them were very old, and as time keepers valueless; the works having suffered, more or less, from corrosion --but all were richly jewelled and in cases of great worth. we estimated the entire contents of the chest, that night, at a million and a half of dollars; and, upon the subsequent disposal of the trinkets and jewels (a few being retained for our own use), it was found that we had greatly undervalued the treasure. when, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense excitement of the time had, in some measure, subsided, legrand, who saw that i was dying with impatience for a solution of this most extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the circumstances connected with it. "you remember," said he, "the night when i handed you the rough sketch i had made of the scarabaeus. you recollect also, that i became quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a death's-head. when you first made this assertion i thought you were jesting; but afterwards i called to mind the peculiar spots on the back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some little foundation in fact. still, the sneer at my graphic powers irritated me --for i am considered a good artist --and, therefore, when you handed me the scrap of parchment, i was about to crumple it up and throw it angrily into the fire." "the scrap of paper, you mean," said i. "no; it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first i supposed it to be such, but when i came to draw upon it, i discovered it, at once, to be a piece of very thin parchment. it was quite dirty, you remember. well, as i was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance fell upon the sketch at which you had been looking, and you may imagine my astonishment when i perceived, in fact, the figure of a death's-head just where, it seemed to me, i had made the drawing of the beetle. for a moment i was too much amazed to think with accuracy. i knew that my design was very different in detail from this --although there was a certain similarity in general outline. presently i took a candle, and seating myself at the other end of the room, proceeded to scrutinize the parchment more closely. upon turning it over, i saw my own sketch upon the reverse, just as i had made it. my first idea, now, was mere surprise at the really remarkable similarity of outline --at the singular coincidence involved in the fact, that unknown to me, there should have been a skull upon the other side of the parchment, immediately beneath my figure of the scarabaeus and that this skull, not only in outline, but in size, should so closely resemble my drawing. i say the singularity of this coincidence absolutely stupefied me for a time. this is the usual effect of such coincidences. the mind struggles to establish a connection --a sequence of cause and effect --and, being unable to do so, suffers a species of temporary paralysis. but, when i recovered from this stupor, there dawned upon me gradually a conviction which startled me even far more than the coincidence. i began distinctly, positively, to remember that there had been no drawing on the parchment when i made my sketch of the scarabaeus. i became perfectly certain of this; for i recollected turning up first one side and then the other, in search of the cleanest spot. had the skull been then there, of course i could not have failed to notice it. here was indeed a mystery which i felt it impossible to explain; but, even at that early moment, there it seemed to glimmer, faintly, within the most remote and secret chambers of my intellect, a glow-worm-like conception of that truth which last night's adventure brought to so magnificent a demonstration. i arose at once, and putting the parchment securely away, dismissed all farther reflection until i should be alone. "when you had gone, and when jupiter was fast asleep, i betook myself to a more methodical investigation of the affair. in the first place i considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my possession. the spot where we discovered the scarabaeus was on the coast of the main land, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a short distance above high water mark. upon my taking hold of it, it gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. jupiter, with his accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature, by which to take hold of it. it was at this moment that his eyes, and mine also, fell upon the scrap of parchment, which i then supposed to be paper. it was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up. near the spot where we found it, i observed the remnants of the hull of what appeared to have been a ship's long boat. the wreck seemed to have been there for a very great while; for the resemblance to boat timbers could scarcely be traced. "well, jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle in it, and gave it to me. soon afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way met lieutenant g--. i showed him the insect, and he begged me to let him take it to the fort. on my consenting, he thrust it forthwith into his waistcoat pocket, without the parchment in which it had been wrapped, and which i had continued to hold in my hand during his inspection. perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it best to make sure of the prize at once --you know how enthusiastic he is on all subjects connected with natural history. at the same time without being conscious of it, i must have deposited the parchment in my own pocket. "you remember that when i went to the table, for the purpose of making a sketch of the beetle, i found no paper where it was usually kept. i looked in the drawer, and found none there. i searched my pockets, hoping to find an old letter --and then my hand fell upon the parchment. i thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession; for the circumstances impressed me with peculiar force. "no doubt you will think me fanciful --but i had already established a kind of connexion. i had put together two links of a great chain. there was a boat lying on a sea-coast, and not far from the boat was a parchment --not a paper --with a skull depicted on it. you will, of course, ask 'where is the connexion?' i reply that the skull, or death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. the flag of the death's-head is hoisted in all engagements. "i have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. parchment is durable --almost imperishable. matters of little moment are rarely consigned to parchment; since, for the mere ordinary purposes of drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. this reflection suggested some meaning --some relevancy --in the death's-head. i did not fail to observe, also, the form of the parchment. although one of its corners had been, by some accident, destroyed, it could be seen that the original form was oblong. it was just such a slip, indeed, as might have been chosen for a memorandum --for a record of something to be long remembered and carefully preserved." "but," i interposed, "you say that the skull was not upon the parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. how then do you trace any connexion between the boat and the skull --since this latter, according to your own admission, must have been designed (god only knows how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching the scarabaeus?" "ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret, at this point, i had comparatively little difficulty in solving. my steps were sure, and could afford but a single result. i reasoned, for example, thus: when i drew the scarabaeus, there was no skull apparent on the parchment. when i had completed the drawing, i gave it to you, and observed you narrowly until you returned it. you, therefore, did not design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. then it was not done by human agency. and nevertheless it was done. "at this stage of my reflections i endeavored to remember, and did remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred about the period in question. the weather was chilly (oh rare and happy accident!), and a fire was blazing on the hearth. i was heated with exercise and sat near the table. you, however, had drawn a chair close to the chimney. just as i placed the parchment in your hand, and as you were in the act of inspecting it, wolf, the newfoundland, entered, and leaped upon your shoulders. with your left hand you caressed him and kept him off, while your right, holding the parchment, was permitted to fall listlessly between your knees, and in close proximity to the fire. at one moment i thought the blaze had caught it, and was about to caution you, but, before i could speak, you had withdrawn it, and were engaged in its examination. when i considered all these particulars, i doubted not for a moment that heat had been the agent in bringing to light, on the parchment, the skull which i saw designed on it. you are well aware that chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out of mind, by means of which it is possible to write on either paper or vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the action of fire. zaire, digested in aqua regia, and diluted with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed; a green tint results. the regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre, gives a red. these colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals after the material written on cools, but again become apparent upon the re-application of heat. "i now scrutinized the death's-head with care. its outer edges --the edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum --were far more distinct than the others. it was clear that the action of the caloric had been imperfect or unequal. i immediately kindled a fire, and subjected every portion of the parchment to a glowing heat. at first, the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the skull; but, on persevering in the experiment, there became visible, at the corner of the slip, diagonally opposite to the spot in which the death's-head was delineated, the figure of what i at first supposed to be a goat. a closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was intended for a kid." "ha! ha!" said i, "to be sure i have no right to laugh at you --a million and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth --but you are not about to establish a third link in your chain --you will not find any especial connexion between your pirates and goat --pirates, you know, have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming interest." "but i have just said that the figure was not that of a goat." "well, a kid then --pretty much the same thing." "pretty much, but not altogether," said legrand. "you may have heard of one captain kidd. i at once looked on the figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature. i say signature; because its position on the vellum suggested this idea. the death's-head at the corner diagonally opposite, had, in the same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. but i was sorely put out by the absence of all else --of the body to my imagined instrument --of the text for my context." "i presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the signature." "something of that kind. the fact is, i felt irresistibly impressed with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. i can scarcely say why. perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an actual belief; --but do you know that jupiter's silly words, about the bug being of solid gold, had a remarkable effect on my fancy? and then the series of accidents and coincidences --these were so very extraordinary. do you observe how mere an accident it was that these events should have occurred on the sole day of all the year in which it has been, or may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that without the fire, or without the intervention of the dog at the precise moment in which he appeared, i should never have become aware of the death's-head, and so never the possessor of the treasure?" "but proceed --i am all impatience." "well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current --the thousand vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere on the atlantic coast, by kidd and his associates. these rumors must have had some foundation in fact. and that the rumors have existed so long and so continuously could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the circumstance of the buried treasure still remaining entombed. had kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it, the rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying form. you will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about money-finders. had the pirate recovered his money, there the affair would have dropped. it seemed to me that some accident --say the loss of a memorandum indicating its locality --had deprived him of the means of recovering it, and that this accident had become known to is followers, who otherwise might never have heard that treasure had been concealed at all, and who, busying themselves in vain, because unguided attempts, to regain it, had given first birth, and then universal currency, to the reports which are now so common. have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along the coast?" "never." "but that kidd's accumulations were immense, is well known. i took it for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and you will scarcely be surprised when i tell you that i felt a hope, nearly amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found, involved a lost record of the place of deposit." "but how did you proceed?" "i held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat; but nothing appeared. i now thought it possible that the coating of dirt might have something to do with the failure; so i carefully rinsed the parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, i placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon a furnace of lighted charcoal. in a few minutes, the pan having become thoroughly heated, i removed the slip, and, to my inexpressible joy, found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures arranged in lines. again i placed it in the pan, and suffered it to remain another minute. on taking it off, the whole was just as you see it now." here legrand, having re-heated the parchment, submitted it my inspection. the following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint, between the death's-head and the goat: 53++!305))6*;4826)4+.)4+);806*;48!8`60))85;]8*:+*8!83(88)5*!; 46(;88*96*?;8)*+(;485);5*!2:*+(;4956*2(5*-4)8`8*; 4069285);)6 !8)4++;1(+9;48081;8:8+1;48!85;4)485!528806*81(+9;48;(88;4(+?3 4;48)4+;161;:188;+?; "but," said i, returning him the slip, "i am as much in the dark as ever. were all the jewels of golconda awaiting me on my solution of this enigma, i am quite sure that i should be unable to earn them." "and yet," said legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the characters. these characters, as any one might readily guess, form a cipher --that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is known of kidd, i could not suppose him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse cryptographs. i made up my mind, at once, that this was of a simple species --such, however, as would appear, to the crude intellect of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key." "and you really solved it?" "readily; i have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times greater. circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. in fact, having once established connected and legible characters, i scarcely gave a thought to the mere difficulty of developing their import. "in the present case --indeed in all cases of secret writing --the first question regards the language of the cipher; for the principles of solution, so far, especially, as the more simple ciphers are concerned, depend on, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. in general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. but, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty is removed by the signature. the pun on the word 'kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the english. but for this consideration i should have begun my attempts with the spanish and french, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the spanish main. as it was, i assumed the cryptograph to be english. "you observe there are no divisions between the words. had there been divisions, the task would have been comparatively easy. in such case i should have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter words, and, had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely, (a or i, for example,) i should have considered the solution as assured. but, there being no division, my first step was to ascertain the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent. counting all, i constructed a table, thus: of the character 8 there are 33. ; " 26. 4 " 19. + ) " 16. * " 13. 5 " 12. 6 " 11. ! 1 " 8. 0 " 6. 9 2 " 5. : 3 " 4. ? " 3. ` " 2. . " 1. "now, in english, the letter which most frequently occurs is e. afterwards, the succession runs thus: a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m w b k p q x z. e however predominates so remarkably that an individual sentence of any length is rarely seen, in which it is not the prevailing character. "here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for something more than a mere guess. the general use which may be made of the table is obvious --but, in this particular cipher, we shall only very partially require its aid. as our predominant character is 8, we will commence by assuming it as the e of the natural alphabet. to verify the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in couples --for e is doubled with great frequency in english --in such words, for example, as 'meet,' 'fleet,' 'speed, 'seen,' 'been,' 'agree,' &c. in the present instance we see it doubled less than five times, although the cryptograph is brief. "let us assume 8, then, as e. now, of all words in the language, 'the' is the most usual; let us see, therefore, whether they are not repetitions of any three characters in the same order of collocation, the last of them being 8. if we discover repetitions of such letters, so arranged, they will most probably represent the word 'the.' on inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the characters being ;48. we may, therefore, assume that the semicolon represents t, that 4 represents h, and that 8 represents e --the last being now well confirmed. thus a great step has been taken. "but, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish a vastly important point; that is to say, several commencements and terminations of other words. let us refer, for example, to the last instance but one, in which the combination ;48 occurs --not far from the end of the cipher. we know that the semicolon immediately ensuing is the commencement of a word, and, of the six characters succeeding this 'the,' we are cognizant of no less than five. let us set these characters down, thus, by the letters we know them to represent, leaving a space for the unknown- t eeth. "here we are enabled, at once, to discard the 'th,' as forming no portion of the word commencing with the first t; since, by experiment of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy we perceive that no word can be formed of which this th can be a part. we are thus narrowed into t ee, and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we arrive at the word 'tree,' as the sole possible reading. we thus gain another letter, r, represented by (, with the words 'the tree' in juxtaposition. "looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see the combination ;48, and employ it by way of termination to what immediately precedes. we have thus this arrangement: the tree ;4(+?34 the, or substituting the natural letters, where known, it reads thus: the tree thr+?3h the. "now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces, or substitute dots, we read thus: the tree thr...h the, when the word 'through' makes itself evident at once. but this discovery gives us three new letters, o, u and g, represented by + ? and 3. "looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this arrangement, 83(88, or egree, which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word 'degree,' and gives us another letter, d, represented by !. "four letters beyond the word 'degree,' we perceive the combination ;46(;88*. "translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by dots, as before, we read thus: th.rtee. an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word 'thirteen,' and again furnishing us with two new characters, i and n, represented by 6 and *. "referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the combination, 53++!. "translating, as before, we obtain .good, which assures us that the first letter is a, and that the first two words are 'a good.' "to avoid confusion, it is now time that we arrange our key, as far as discovered, in a tabular form. it will stand thus: 5 represents a ! " d 8 " e 3 " g 4 " h 6 " i * " n + " o ( " r ; " t "we have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details of the solution. i have said enough to convince you that ciphers of this nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the rationale of their development. but be assured that the specimen before us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. it now only remains to give you the full translation of the characters upon the parchment, as unriddled. here it is: 'a good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death's-head a bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.'" "but," said i, "the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever. how is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about 'devil's seats,' 'death's-heads,' and 'bishop's hostel'?" "i confess," replied legrand, "that the matter still wears a serious aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. my first endeavor was to divide the sentence into the natural division intended by the cryptographist." "you mean, to punctuate it?" "something of that kind." "but how was it possible to effect this?" "i reflected that it had been a point with the writer to run his words together without division, so as to increase the difficulty of solution. now, a not overacute man, in pursuing such an object, would be nearly certain to overdo the matter. when, in the course of his composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would naturally require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to run his characters, at this place, more than usually close together. if you will observe the ms., in the present instance, you will easily detect five such cases of unusual crowding. acting on this hint, i made the division thus: 'a good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's --twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes --northeast and by north --main branch seventh limb east side --shoot from the left eye of the death's-head --a bee-line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.'" "even this division," said i, "leaves me still in the dark." "it left me also in the dark," replied legrand, "for a few days; during which i made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of sullivan's island, for any building which went by the name of the 'bishop's hotel'; for, of course, i dropped the obsolete word 'hostel.' gaining no information on the subject, i was on the point of extending my sphere of search, and proceeding in a more systematic manner, when, one morning, it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this 'bishop's hostel' might have some reference to an old family, of the name of bessop, which, time out of mind, had held possession of an ancient manor-house, about four miles to the northward of the island. i accordingly went over to the plantation, and reinstituted my inquiries among the older negroes of the place. at length one of the most aged of the women said that she had heard of such a place as bessop's castle, and thought that she could guide me to it, but that it was not a castle, nor a tavern, but a high rock. "i offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she consented to accompany me to the spot. we found it without much difficulty, when, dismissing her, i proceeded to examine the place. the 'castle' consisted of an irregular assemblage of cliffs and rocks --one of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well as for its insulated and artificial appearance. i clambered to its apex, and then felt much at a loss as to what should be next done. "while i was busied in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit on which i stood. this ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it, gave it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our ancestors. i made no doubt that here was the 'devil's-seat' alluded to in the ms., and now i seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle. "the 'good glass,' i knew, could have reference to nothing but a telescope; for the word 'glass' is rarely employed in any other sense by seamen. now here, i at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a definite point of view, admitting no variation, from which to use it. nor did i hesitate to believe that the phrases, 'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes,' and northeast and by north,' were intended as directions for the levelling of the glass. greatly excited by these discoveries, i hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the rock. "i let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to retain a seat on it unless in one particular position. this fact confirmed my preconceived idea. i proceeded to use the glass. of course, the 'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude to nothing but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal direction was clearly indicated by the words, 'northeast and by north.' this latter direction i at once established by means of a pocket-compass; then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of twenty-one degrees of elevation as i could do it by guess, i moved it cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance. in the centre of this rift i perceived a white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was. adjusting the focus of the telescope, i again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull. "on this discovery i was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved; for the phrase 'main branch, seventh limb, east side,' could refer only to the position of the skull on the tree, while shoot from the left eye of the death's-head' admitted, also, of but one interpretation, in regard to a search for buried treasure. i perceived that the design was to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a bee-line, or, in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest point of the trunk through 'the shot,' (or the spot where the bullet fell,) and thence extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate a definite point --and beneath this point i thought it at least possible that a deposit of value lay concealed." "all this," i said, "is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious, still simple and explicit. when you left the bishop's hotel, what then?" "why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, i turned homewards. the instant that i left 'the devil's seat,' however, the circular rift vanished; nor could i get a glimpse of it afterwards, turn as i would. what seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole business, is the fact (for repeated experiment has convinced me it is a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge on the face of the rock. "in this expedition to the 'bishop's hotel' i had been attended by jupiter, who had, no doubt, observed, for some weeks past, the abstraction of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me alone. but, on the next day, getting up very early, i contrived to give him the slip, and went into the hills in search of the tree. after much toil i found it. when i came home at night my valet proposed to give me a flogging. with the rest of the adventure i believe you are as well acquainted as myself." "i suppose," said i, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at digging through jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall through the right instead of the left of the skull." "precisely. this mistake made a difference of about two inches and a half in the 'shot' --that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest the tree; and had the treasure been beneath the 'shot,' the error would have been of little moment; but the 'shot,' together with the nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the establishment of a line of direction; of course the error, however trivial in the beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. but for my deep-seated convictions that treasure was here somewhere actually buried, we might have had all our labor in vain." "i presume the fancy of the skull, of letting fall a bullet through the skull's eye --was suggested to kidd by the piratical flag. no doubt he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through this ominous insignium." "perhaps so; still i cannot help thinking that common-sense had quite as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. to be visible from the devil's-seat, it was necessary that the object, if small, should be white; and there is nothing like your human skull for retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all vicissitudes of weather." "but your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle --how excessively odd! i was sure you were mad. and why did you insist on letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?" "why, to be frank, i felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own way, by a little bit of sober mystification. for this reason i swung the beetle, and for this reason i let it fall from the tree. an observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter idea." "yes, i perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me. what are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?" "that is a question i am no more able to answer than yourself. there seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them --and yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would imply. it is clear that kidd --if kidd indeed secreted this treasure, which i doubt not --it is clear that he must have had assistance in the labor. but, the worst of this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to remove all participants in his secret. perhaps a couple of blows with a mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit; perhaps it required a dozen --who shall tell?" -the end. 1890 impressions de theatre by oscar wilde fabien dei franchi to my friend henry irving the silent room, the heavy creeping shade, the dead that travel fast, the opening door, the murdered brother rising through the floor, the ghost's white fingers on thy shoulders laid, and then the lonely duel in the glade, the broken swords, the stifled scream, the gore, thy grand revengeful eyes when all is o'er, these things are well enough,but thou wert made for more august creation! frenzied lear should at thy bidding wander on the heath with the shrill fool to mock him, romeo for thee should lure his love, and desperate fear pluck richard's recreant dagger from its sheath thou trumpet set for shakespeare's lips to blow! phedre to sarah bernhardt how vain and dull this common world must seem to such a one as thou, who should'st have talked at florence with mirandola, or walked through the cool olives of the academe: thou should'st have gathered reeds from a green stream for goat-foot pan's shrill piping, and have played with the white girls in that phaeacian glade where grave odysseus wakened from his dream. ah! surely once some urn of attic clay held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again back to this common world so dull and vain, for thou wert weary of the sunless day, the heavy fields of scentless asphodel, the loveless lips with which men kiss in hell. i. portia to ellen terry i marvel not bassanio was so bold to peril all he had upon the lead, or that proud aragon bent low his head, or that morocco's fiery heart grew cold: for in that gorgeous dress of beaten gold which is more golden than the golden sun, no woman veronese looked upon was half so fair as thou whom i behold. yet fairer when with wisdom as your shield the sober-suited lawyer's gown you donned and would not let the laws of venice yield antonio's heart to that accursed jew o portia! take my heart; it is thy due: i think i will not quarrel with bond. written at the lyceum theatre ii. queen henrietta maria to ellen terry in the lone tent, waiting for victory, she stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain, like some wan lily overdrenched with rain; the clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky, war's ruin, and the wreck of chivalry, to her proud soul no common fear can bring: bravely she tarrieth for her lord the king, her soul a-flame with passionate ecstasy. o hair of gold! o crimson lips! o face made for the luring and the love of man! with thee i do forget the toil and stress. the loveless road that knows no resting place, time's straitened pulse, the soul's dread weariness, my freedom and my life republican! written at the lyceum theatre iii. camma to ellen terry as one who poring on a grecian urn scans the fair shapes some attic hand hath made, god with slim goddess, goodly man with maid, and for their beauty's sake is loath to turn and face the obvious day, must i not yearn for many a secret moon of indolent bliss, when is the midmost shrine of artemis i see thee standing, antique-limbed, and stern? and yetmethinks i'd rather see thee play that serpent of old nile, whose witchery made emperors drunken,come, great egypt, shake our stage with all thy mimic pageants! nay, i am growing sick of unreal passions, make the world thine actium, me thine anthony! written at the lyceum theatre the end . the devil in the belfry by edgar allan poe what o'clock is it? old saying. everybody knows, in a general way, that the finest place in the world isor, alas, wasthe dutch borough of vondervotteimittiss. yet as it lies some distance from any of the main roads, being in a somewhat out-of-the-way situation, there are perhaps very few of my readers who have ever paid it a visit. for the benefit of those who have not, therefore, it will be only proper that i should enter into some account of it. and this is indeed the more necessary, as with the hope of enlisting public sympathy in behalf of the inhabitants, i design here to give a history of the calamitous events which have so lately occurred within its limits. no one who knows me will doubt that the duty thus self-imposed will be executed to the best of my ability, with all that rigid impartiality, all that cautious examination into facts, and diligent collation of authorities, which should ever distinguish him who aspires to the title of historian. by the united aid of medals, manuscripts, and inscriptions, i am enabled to say, positively, that the borough of vondervotteimittiss has existed, from its origin, in precisely the same condition which it at present preserves. of the date of this origin, however, i grieve that i can only speak with that species of indefinite definiteness which mathematicians are, at times, forced to put up with in certain algebraic formulae. the date, i may thus say, in regard to the remoteness of its antiquity, cannot be less than any assignable quantity whatsoever. touching the derivation of the name vondervotteimittiss, i confess myself, with sorrow, equally at fault. among a multitude of opinions upon this delicate pointsome acute, some learned, some sufficiently the reversei am able to select nothing which ought to be considered satisfactory. perhaps the idea of grogswiggnearly coincident with that of kroutaplentteyis to be cautiously preferred.it runs:vondervotteimittisvonder, lege dondervotteimittis, quasi und bleitzizbleitziz obsol:pro blitzen." this derivative, to say the truth, is still countenanced by some traces of the electric fluid evident on the summit of the steeple of the house of the town-council. i do not choose, however, to commit myself on a theme of such importance, and must refer the reader desirous of information to the "oratiunculae de rebus praeter-veteris," of dundergutz. see, also, blunderbuzzard "de derivationibus," pp. 27 to 5010, folio, gothic edit., red and black character, catch-word and no cypher; wherein consult, also, marginal notes in the autograph of stuffundpuff, with the sub-commentaries of gruntundguzzell. notwithstanding the obscurity which thus envelops the date of the foundation of vondervotteimittis, and the derivation of its name, there can be no doubt, as i said before, that it has always existed as we find it at this epoch. the oldest man in the borough can remember not the slightest difference in the appearance of any portion of it; and, indeed, the very suggestion of such a possibility is considered an insult. the site of the village is in a perfectly circular valley, about a quarter of a mile in circumference, and entirely surrounded by gentle hills, over whose summit the people have never yet ventured to pass. for this they assign the very good reason that they do not believe there is anything at all on the other side. round the skirts of the valley (which is quite level, and paved throughout with flat tiles), extends a continuous row of sixty little houses. these, having their backs on the hills, must look, of course, to the centre of the plain, which is just sixty yards from the front door of each dwelling. every house has a small garden before it, with a circular path, a sun-dial, and twenty-four cabbages. the buildings themselves are so precisely alike, that one can in no manner be distinguished from the other. owing to the vast antiquity, the style of architecture is somewhat odd, but it is not for that reason the less strikingly picturesque. they are fashioned of hard-burned little bricks, red, with black ends, so that the walls look like a chess-board upon a great scale. the gables are turned to the front, and there are cornices, as big as all the rest of the house, over the eaves and over the main doors. the windows are narrow and deep, with very tiny panes and a great deal of sash. on the roof is a vast quantity of tiles with long curly ears. the woodwork, throughout, is of a dark hue and there is much carving about it, with but a trifling variety of pattern for, time out of mind, the carvers of vondervotteimittiss have never been able to carve more than two objectsa time-piece and a cabbage. but these they do exceedingly well, and intersperse them, with singular ingenuity, wherever they find room for the chisel. the dwellings are as much alike inside as out, and the furniture is all upon one plan. the floors are of square tiles, the chairs and tables of black-looking wood with thin crooked legs and puppy feet. the mantelpieces are wide and high, and have not only time-pieces and cabbages sculptured over the front, but a real time-piece, which makes a prodigious ticking, on the top in the middle, with a flower-pot containing a cabbage standing on each extremity by way of outrider. between each cabbage and the time-piece, again, is a little china man having a large stomach with a great round hole in it, through which is seen the dial-plate of a watch. the fireplaces are large and deep, with fierce crooked-looking fire-dogs. there is constantly a rousing fire, and a huge pot over it, full of sauer-kraut and pork, to which the good woman of the house is always busy in attending. she is a little fat old lady, with blue eyes and a red face, and wears a huge cap like a sugar-loaf, ornamented with purple and yellow ribbons. her dress is of orange-colored linsey-woolsey, made very full behind and very short in the waistand indeed very short in other respects, not reaching below the middle of her leg. this is somewhat thick, and so are her ankles, but she has a fine pair of green stockings to cover them. her shoesof pink leatherare fastened each with a bunch of yellow ribbons puckered up in the shape of a cabbage. in her left hand she has a little heavy dutch watch; in her right she wields a ladle for the sauerkraut and pork. by her side there stands a fat tabby cat, with a gilt toy-repeater tied to its tail, which "the boys" have there fastened by way of a quiz. the boys themselves are, all three of them, in the garden attending the pig. they are each two feet in height. they have three-cornered cocked hats, purple waistcoats reaching down to their thighs, buckskin knee-breeches, red stockings, heavy shoes with big silver buckles, long surtout coats with large buttons of mother-of-pearl. each, too, has a pipe in his mouth, and a little dumpy watch in his right hand. he takes a puff and a look, and then a look and a puff. the pigwhich is corpulent and lazyis occupied now in picking up the stray leaves that fall from the cabbages, and now in giving a kick behind at the gilt repeater, which the urchins have also tied to his tail in order to make him look as handsome as the cat. right at the front door, in a high-backed leather-bottomed armed chair, with crooked legs and puppy feet like the tables, is seated the old man of the house himself. he is an exceedingly puffy little old gentleman, with big circular eyes and a huge double chin. his dress resembles that of the boysand i need say nothing farther about it. all the difference is, that his pipe is somewhat bigger than theirs and he can make a greater smoke. like them, he has a watch, but he carries his watch in his pocket. to say the truth, he has something of more importance than a watch to attend toand what that is, i shall presently explain. he sits with his right leg upon his left knee, wears a grave countenance, and always keeps one of his eyes, at least, resolutely bent upon a certain remarkable object in the centre of the plain. this object is situated in the steeple of the house of the town council. the town council are all very little, round, oily, intelligent men, with big saucer eyes and fat double chins, and have their coats much longer and their shoe-buckles much bigger than the ordinary inhabitants of vondervotteimittiss. since my sojourn in the borough, they have had several special meetings, and have adopted these three important resolutions: "that it is wrong to alter the good old course of things:" "that there is nothing tolerable out of vondervotteimittiss:" and "that we will stick by our clocks and our cabbages." above the session-room of the council is the steeple, and in the steeple is the belfry, where exists, and has existed time out of mind, the pride and wonder of the villagethe great clock of the borough of vondervotteimittiss. and this is the object to which the eyes of the old gentlemen are turned who sit in the leather-bottomed arm-chairs. the great clock has seven facesone in each of the seven sides of the steepleso that it can be readily seen from all quarters. its faces are large and white, and its hands heavy and black. there is a belfry-man whose sole duty is to attend to it; but this duty is the most perfect of sinecuresfor the clock of vondervotteimittis was never yet known to have anything the matter with it. until lately, the bare supposition of such a thing was considered heretical. from the remotest period of antiquity to which the archives have reference, the hours have been regularly struck by the big bell. and, indeed the case was just the same with all the other clocks and watches in the borough. never was such a place for keeping the true time. when the large clapper thought proper to say "twelve o'clock!" all its obedient followers opened their throats simultaneously, and responded like a very echo. in short, the good burghers were fond of their sauer-kraut, but then they were proud of their clocks. all people who hold sinecure offices are held in more or less respect, and as the belfryman of vondervotteimittiss has the most perfect of sinecures, he is the most perfectly respected of any man in the world. he is the chief dignitary of the borough, and the very pigs look up to him with a sentiment of reverence. his coat-tail is very far longerhis pipe, his shoebuckles, his eyes, and his stomach, very far biggerthan those of any other old gentleman in the village; and as to his chin, it is not only double, but triple. i have thus painted the happy estate of vondervotteimittiss: alas, that so fair a picture should ever experience a reverse! there has been long a saying among the wisest inhabitants, that "no good can come from over the hills"; and it really seemed that the words had in them something of the spirit of prophecy. it wanted five minutes of noon, on the day before yesterday, when there appeared a very odd-looking object on the summit of the ridge of the eastward. such an occurrence, of course, attracted universal attention, and every little old gentleman who sat in a leather-bottomed arm-chair turned one of his eyes with a stare of dismay upon the phenomenon, still keeping the other upon the clock in the steeple. by the time that it wanted only three minutes to noon, the droll object in question was perceived to be a very diminutive foreign-looking young man. he descended the hills at a great rate, so that every body had soon a good look at him. he was really the most finicky little personage that had ever been seen in vondervotteimittiss. his countenance was of a dark snuff-color, and he had a long hooked nose, pea eyes, a wide mouth, and an excellent set of teeth, which latter he seemed anxious of displaying, as he was grinning from ear to ear. what with mustachios and whiskers, there was none of the rest of his face to be seen. his head was uncovered, and his hair neatly done up in papillotes. his dress was a tight-fitting swallow-tailed black coat (from one of whose pockets dangled a vast length of white handkerchief), black kerseymere knee-breeches, black stockings, and stumpy-looking pumps, with huge bunches of black satin ribbon for bows. under one arm he carried a huge chapeau-de-bras, and under the other a fiddle nearly five times as big as himself. in his left hand was a gold snuff-box, from which, as he capered down the hill, cutting all manner of fantastic steps, he took snuff incessantly with an air of the greatest possible self-satisfaction. god bless me!here was a sight for the honest burghers of vondervotteimittiss! to speak plainly, the fellow had, in spite of his grinning, an audacious and sinister kind of face; and as he curvetted right into the village, the old stumpy appearance of his pumps excited no little suspicion; and many a burgher who beheld him that day would have given a trifle for a peep beneath the white cambric handkerchief which hung so obtrusively from the pocket of his swallow-tailed coat. but what mainly occasioned a righteous indignation was, that the scoundrelly popinjay, while he cut a fandango here, and a whirligig there, did not seem to have the remotest idea in the world of such a thing as keeping time in his steps. the good people of the borough had scarcely a chance, however, to get their eyes thoroughly open, when, just as it wanted half a minute of noon, the rascal bounced, as i say, right into the midst of them; gave a chassez here, and a balancez there; and then, after a pirouette and a pas-de-zephyr, pigeon-winged himself right up into the belfry of the house of the town council, where the wonder-stricken belfry-man sat smoking in a state of dignity and dismay. but the little chap seized him at once by the nose; gave it a swing and a pull; clapped the big chapeau de-bras upon his head; knocked it down over his eyes and mouth; and then, lifting up the big fiddle, beat him with it so long and so soundly, that what with the belfry-man being so fat, and the fiddle being so hollow, you would have sworn that there was a regiment of double-bass drummers all beating the devil's tattoo up in the belfry of the steeple of vondervotteimittiss. there is no knowing to what desperate act of vengeance this unprincipled attack might have aroused the inhabitants, but for the important fact that it now wanted only half a second of noon. the bell was about to strike, and it was a matter of absolute and pre-eminent necessity that every body should look well at his watch. it was evident, however, that just at this moment the fellow in the steeple was doing something that he had no business to do with the clock. but as it now began to strike, nobody had any time to attend to his manoeuvres, for they had all to count the strokes of the bell as it sounded. "one!" said the clock. "von!" echoed every little old gentleman in every leather-bottomed arm-chair in vondervotteimittiss. "von!" said his watch also; "von!" said the watch of his vrow; and "von!" said the watches of the boys, and the little gilt repeaters on the tails of the cat and pig. "two!" continued the big bell; and "doo!" repeated all the repeaters. "three! four! five! six! seven! eight! nine! ten!" said the bell. "dree! vour! fibe! sax! seben! aight! noin! den!" answered the others. "eleven!" said the big one. "eleben!" assented the little ones. "twelve!" said the bell. "dvelf!" they replied perfectly satisfied, and dropping their voices. "und dvelf it is!" said all the little old gentlemen, putting up their watches. but the big bell had not done with them yet. "thirteen!" said he. "der teufel!" gasped the little old gentlemen, turning pale, dropping their pipes, and putting down all their right legs from over their left knees. "der teufel!" groaned they, "dirteen! dirteen!!mein gott, it is dirteen o'clock!!" why attempt to describe the terrible scene which ensued? all vondervotteimittiss flew at once into a lamentable state of uproar. "vot is cum'd to mein pelly?" roared all the boys"i've been ongry for dis hour!" "vot is com'd to mein kraut?" screamed all the vrows, "it has been done to rags for this hour!" "vot is cum'd to mein pipe?" swore all the little old gentlemen, "donder and blitzen; it has been smoked out for dis hour!"and they filled them up again in a great rage, and sinking back in their arm-chairs, puffed away so fast and so fiercely that the whole valley was immediately filled with impenetrable smoke. meantime the cabbages all turned very red in the face, and it seemed as if old nick himself had taken possession of every thing in the shape of a timepiece. the clocks carved upon the furniture took to dancing as if bewitched, while those upon the mantel-pieces could scarcely contain themselves for fury, and kept such a continual striking of thirteen, and such a frisking and wriggling of their pendulums as was really horrible to see. but, worse than all, neither the cats nor the pigs could put up any longer with the behavior of the little repeaters tied to their tails, and resented it by scampering all over the place, scratching and poking, and squeaking and screeching, and caterwauling and squalling, and flying into the faces, and running under the petticoats of the people, and creating altogether the most abominable din and confusion which it is possible for a reasonable person to conceive. and to make matters still more distressing, the rascally little scape-grace in the steeple was evidently exerting himself to the utmost. every now and then one might catch a glimpse of the scoundrel through the smoke. there he sat in the belfry upon the belfry-man, who was lying flat upon his back. in his teeth the villain held the bell-rope, which he kept jerking about with his head, raising such a clatter that my ears ring again even to think of it. on his lap lay the big fiddle, at which he was scraping, out of all time and tune, with both hands, making a great show, the nincompoop! of playing "judy o'flannagan and paddy o'rafferty." affairs being thus miserably situated, i left the place in disgust, and now appeal for aid to all lovers of correct time and fine kraut. let us proceed in a body to the borough, and restore the ancient order of things in vondervotteimittiss by ejecting that little fellow from the steeple. the end . reginald in russia by saki (h. h. munro) [obi/h.h.munro/reginald.in.russia] this text is in the public domain. text prepared in may 1993 by anders thulin ath@linkoping.trab.se reginald in russia the reticence of lady anne the lost sanjak the sex that doesn't shop the blood-feud of toad-water a young turkish catastrophe judkin of the parcels gabriel-ernest the saint and the goblin the soul of laploshka the bag the strategist cross currents the baker's dozen the mouse reginald in russia reginald sat in a corner of the princess's salon and tried to forgive the furniture, which started out with an obvious intention of being louis quinze, but relapsed at frequent intervals into wilhelm ii. he classified the princess with that distinct type of woman that looks as if it habitually went out to feed hens in the rain. her name was olga; she kept what she hoped and believed to be a fox-terrier, and professed what she thought were socialist opinions. it is not necessary to be called olga if you are a russian princess; in fact, reginald knew quite a number who were called vera; but the fox-terrier and the socialism are essential. ``the countess lomshen keeps a bull-dog,'' said the princess suddenly. ``in england is it more chic to have a bull-dog than a fox-terrier?'' reginald threw his mind back over the canine fashions of the last ten years and gave an evasive answer. ``do you think her handsome, the countess lomshen?'' asked the princess. reginald thought the countess's complexion suggested an exclusive diet of macaroons and pale sherry. he said so. ``but that cannot be possible,'' said the princess triumphantly; ``i've seen her eating fish-soup at donon's.'' the princess always defended a friend's complexion if it was really bad. with her, as with a great many of her sex, charity began at homeliness and did not generally progress much farther. reginald withdrew his macaroon and sherry theory, and became interested in a case of miniatures. ``that?'' said the princess; ``that is the old princess lorikoff. she lived in millionaya street, near the winter palace, and was one of the court ladies of the old russian school. her knowledge of people and events was extremely limited; but she used to patronize every one who came in contact with her. there was a story that when she died and left the millionaya for heaven she addressed st. peter in her formal staccato french: `je suis la princesse lor-i-koff. il me donne grand plaisir <a`> faire votre connaissance. je vous en prie me pr<e'>senter au bon dieu.' st. peter made the desired introduction, and the princess addressed le bon dieu: `je suis la princesse lor-i-koff. il me donne grand plaisir <a`> faire votre connaissance. on a souvent parl<e'> de vous <a`> l'<e'>glise de la rue million.' '' ``only the old and the clergy of established churches know how to be flippant gracefully,'' commented reginald; ``which reminds me that in the anglican church in a certain foreign capital, which shall be nameless, i was present the other day when one of the junior chaplains was preaching in aid of distressed somethings or other, and he brought a really eloquent passage to a close with the remark, `the tears of the afflicted, to what shall i liken them---to diamonds?' the other junior chaplain, who had been dozing out of professional jealousy, awoke with a start and asked hurriedly, `shall i play to diamonds, partner?' it didn't improve matters when the senior chaplain remarked dreamily but with painful distinctness, `double diamonds.' every one looked at the preacher, half expecting him to redouble, but be contented himself with scoring what points he could under the circumstances.'' ``you english are always so frivolous,'' said the princess. ``in russia we have too many troubles to permit of our being light-hearted.'' reginald gave a delicate shiver, such as an italian greyhound might give in contemplating the approach of an ice age of which he personally disapproved, and resigned himself to the inevitable political discussion. ``nothing that you hear about us in england is true,'' was the princess's hopeful beginning. ``i always refused to learn russian geography at school,'' observed reginald; ``i was certain some of the names must be wrong.'' ``everything is wrong with our system of government,'' continued the princess placidly. ``the bureaucrats think only of their pockets, and the people are exploited and plundered in every direction, and everything is mismanaged.'' ``with us,'' said reginald, ``a cabinet usually gets the credit of being depraved and worthless beyond the bounds of human conception by the time it has been in office about four years.'' ``but if it is a bad government you can turn it out at the election,'' argued the princess. ``as far as i remember, we generally do,'' said reginald. ``but here it is dreadful, every one goes to such extremes. in england you never go to extremes.'' ``we go to the albert hall,'' explained reginald. ``there is always a see-saw with us between repression and violence,'' continued the princess; ``and the pity of it is the people are really not in the least inclined to be anything but peaceable. nowhere will you find people more good-natured, or family circles where there is more affection.'' ``there i agree with you,'' said reginald. ``i know a boy who lives somewhere on the french quay who is a case in point. his hair curls naturally, especially on sundays, and he plays bridge well, even for a russian, which is saying much. i don't think he has any other accomplishments, but his family affection is really of a very high order. when his maternal grandmother died he didn't go as far as to give up bridge altogether but be declared on nothing but black suits for the next three months. that, i think, was really beautiful.'' the princess was not impressed. ``i think you must be very self-indulgent and live only for amusement,'' she said. ``a life of pleasure-seeking and card-playing and dissipation brings only dissatisfaction. you will find that out some day.'' ``oh, i know it turns out that way sometimes,'' assented reginald. ``forbidden fizz is often the sweetest.'' but the remark was wasted on the princess, who preferred champagne that had at least a suggestion of dissolved barley-sugar. ``i hope you will come and see me again,'' she said in a tone that prevented the hope from becoming too infectious; adding as a happy after-thought, ``you must come to stay with us in the country.'' her particular part of the country was a few hundred versts the other side of tamboff, with some fifteen miles of agrarian disturbance between her and the nearest neighbour. reginald felt that there is some privacy which should be sacred from intrusion. the reticence of lady anne egbert came into the large, dimly lit drawing-room with the air of a man who is not certain whether he is entering a dovecote or a bomb factory, and is prepared for either eventuality. the little domestic quarrel over the luncheon-table had not been fought to a definite finish, and the question was how far lady anne was in a mood to renew or forgo hostilities. her pose in the arm-chair by the tea-table was rather elaborately rigid; in the gloom of a december afternoon egbert's pince-nez did not materially help him to discern the expression of her face. by way of breaking whatever ice might be floating on the surface he made a remark about a dim religious light. he or lady anne were accustomed to make that remark between 4.30 and 6 on winter and late autumn evenings; it was a part of their married life. there was no recognized rejoinder to it, and lady anne made none. don tarquinio lay astretch on the persian rug, basking in the firelight with superb indifference to the possible ill-humour of lady anne. his pedigree was as flawlessly persian as the rug, and his ruff was coming into the glory of its second winter. the page-boy, who had renaissance tendencies, had christened him don tarquinio. left to themselves, egbert and lady anne would unfailingly have called him fluff, but they were not obstinate. egbert poured himself out some tea. as the silence gave no sign of breaking on lady anne's initiative, he braced himself for another yermak effort. ``my remark at lunch had a purely academic application,'' he announced; ``you seem to put an unnecessarily personal significance into it.'' lady anne maintained her defensive barrier of silence. the bullfinch lazily filled in the interval with an air from _iphig<e'>nie en tauride_. egbert recognized it immediately, because it was the only air the bullfinch whistled, and he had come to them with the reputation for whistling it. both egbert and lady anne would have preferred something from _the yeoman of the guard_, which was their favourite opera. in matters artistic they had a similarity of taste. they leaned toward the honest and explicit in art, a picture, for instance, that told its own story, with generous assistance from its title. a riderless warhorse with harness in obvious disarray, staggering into a courtyard full of pale swooning women, and marginally noted ``bad news,'' suggested to their minds a distinct interpretation of some military catastrophe. they could see what it was meant to convey, and explain it to friends of duller intelligence. the silence continued. as a rule lady anne's displeasure became articulate and markedly voluble after four minutes of introductory muteness. egbert seized the milk-jug and poured some of its contents into don tarquinio's saucer; as the saucer was already full to the brim an unsightly overflow was the result. don tarquinio looked on with a surprised interest that evanesced into elaborate unconsciousness when he was appealed to by egbert to come and drink up some of the spilt matter. don tarquinio was prepared to play many r<o^>les in life, but a vacuum carpet-cleaner was not one of them. ``don't you think we're being rather foolish?'' said egbert cheerfully. if lady anne thought so she didn't say so. ``i daresay the fault has been partly on my side,'' continued egbert, with evaporating cheerfulness. ``after all, i'm only human, you know. you seem to forget that i'm only human.'' he insisted on the point, as if there had been unfounded suggestions that he was built on satyr lines, with goat continuations where the human left off. the bullfinch recommenced its air from _iphig<e'>nie en tauride_. egbert began to feel depressed. lady anne was not drinking her tea. perhaps she was feeling unwell. but when lady anne felt unwell she was not wont to be reticent on the subject. ``no one knows what i suffer from indigestion'' was one of her favourite statements; but the lack of knowledge can only have been caused by defective listening; the amount of information available on the subject would have supplied material for a monograph. evidently lady anne was not feeling unwell. egbert began to think he was being unreasonably dealt with; naturally he began to make concessions. ``i daresay,'' be observed, taking as central a position on the hearth-rug as don tarquinio could be persuaded to concede him, ``i may have been to blame. i am willing, if i can thereby restore things to a happier standpoint, to undertake to lead a better life.'' he wondered vaguely how it would be possible. temptations came to him, in middle age, tentatively and without insistence, like a neglected butcher-boy who asks for a christmas box in february for no more hopeful reason than that he didn't get one in december. he had no more idea of succumbing to them than he had of purchasing the fish-knives and fur boas that ladies are impelled to sacrifice through the medium of advertisement columns during twelve months of the year. still, there was something impressive in this unasked-for renunciation of possibly latent enormities. lady anne showed no sign of being impressed. egbert looked at her nervously through his glasses. to get the worst of an argument with her was no new experience. to get the worst of a monologue was a humiliating novelty. ``i shall go and dress for dinner,'' he announced in a voice into which he intended some shade of sternness to creep. at the door a final access of weakness impelled him to make a further appeal. ``aren't we being very silly?'' ``a fool,'' was don tarquinio's mental comment as the door closed on egbert's retreat. then he lifted his velvet forepaws in the air and leapt lightly on to a bookshelf immediately under the bullfinch's cage. it was the first time he had seemed to notice the bird's existence, but he was carrying out a long-formed theory of action with the precision of mature deliberation. the bullfinch, who had fancied himself something of a despot, depressed himself of a sudden into a third of his normal displacement; then he fell to a helpless wingbeating and shrill cheeping. he had cost twenty-seven shillings without the cage, but lady anne made no sign of interfering. she had been dead for two hours. the lost sanjak the prison chaplain entered the condemneds cell for the last time, to give such consolation as he might. ``the only consolation i crave for,'' said the condemned, ``is to tell my story in its entirety to some one who will at least give it a respectful hearing.'' ``we must not be too long over it,'' said the chaplain, looking at his watch. the condemned repressed a shiver and commenced. ``most people will be of opinion that i am paying the penalty of my own violent deeds. in reality i am a victim to a lack of specialization in my education and character.'' ``lack of specialization!'' said the chaplain. ``yes. if i had been known as one of the few men in england familiar with the fauna of the outer hebrides, or able to repeat stanzas of camo<e:>ns' poetry in the original, i should have had no difficulty in proving my identity in the crisis when my identity became a matter of life and death for me. but my education was merely a moderately good one, and my temperament was of the general order that avoids specialization. i know a little in a general way about gardening and history and old masters, but i could never tell you off-hand whether `stella van der loopen' was a chrysanthemum or a heroine of the american war of independence, or something by romney in the louvre.'' the chaplain shifted uneasily in his seat. now that the alternatives had been suggested they all seemed dreadfully possible. ``i fell in love, or thought i did, with the local doctor's wife,'' continued the condemned. ``why i should have done so, i cannot say, for i do not remember that she possessed any particular attractions of mind or body. on looking back at past events it seems to me that she must have been distinctly ordinary, but i suppose the doctor had fallen in love with her once, and what man has done man can do. she appeared to be pleased with the attentions which i paid her, and to that extent i suppose i might say she encouraged me, but i think she was honestly unaware that i meant anything more than a little neighbourly interest. when one is face to face with death one wishes to be just.'' the chaplain murmured approval. ``at any rate, she was genuinely horrified when i took advantage of the doctor's absence one evening to declare what i believed to be my passion. she begged me to pass out of her life and i could scarcely do otherwise than agree, though i hadn't the dimmest idea of how it was to be done. in novels and plays i knew it was a regular occurrence, and if you mistook a lady's sentiments or intentions you went off to india and did things on the frontier as a matter of course. as i stumbled along the doctor's carriage-drive i had no very clear idea as to what my line of action was to be, but i had a vague feeling that i must look at the _times_ atlas before going to bed. then, on the dark and lonely highway, i came suddenly on a dead body.'' the chaplain's interest in the story visibly quickened. ``judging by the clothes it wore the corpse was that of a salvation army captain. some shocking accident seemed to have struck him down, and the head was crushed and battered out of all human semblance. probably, i thought, a motor-car fatality; and then, with a sudden overmastering insistence, came another thought, that here was a remarkable opportunity for losing my identity and passing out of the life of the doctor's wife for ever. no tiresome and risky voyage to distant lands, but a mere exchange of clothes and identity with the unknown victim of an unwitnessed accident. with considerable difficulty i undressed the corpse, and clothed it anew in my own garments. any one who has valeted a dead salvation army captain in an uncertain light will appreciate the difficulty. with the idea, presumably, of inducing the doctor's wife to leave her husband's roof-tree for some habitation which would be run at my expense, i had crammed my pockets with a store of banknotes, which represented a good deal of my immediate worldly wealth. when, therefore, i stole away into the world in the guise of a nameless salvationist, i was not without resources which would easily support so humble a r<o^>le for a considerable period. i tramped to a neighbouring market-town, and, late as the hour was, the production of a few shillings procured me supper and a night's lodging in a cheap coffee-house. the next day i started forth on an aimless course of wandering from one small town to another. i was already somewhat disgusted with the upshot of my sudden freak; in a few hours' time i was considerably more so. in the contents-bill of a local news sheet i read the announcement of my own murder at the hands of some person unknown; on buying a copy of the paper for a detailed account of the tragedy, which at first had aroused in me a certain grim amusement, i found that the deed was ascribed to a wandering salvationist of doubtful antecedents, who had been seen lurking in the roadway near the scene of the crime. i was no longer amused. the matter promised to be embarrassing. what i had mistaken for a motor accident was evidently a case of savage assault and murder, and, until the real culprit was found, i should have much difficulty in explaining my intrusion into the affair. of course i could establish my own identity; but how, without disagreeably involving the doctor's wife, could i give any adequate reason for changing clothes with the murdered man? while my brain worked feverishly at this problem, i subconsciously obeyed a secondary instinct---to get as far away as possible from the scene of the crime, and to get rid at all costs of my incriminating uniform. there i found a difficulty. i tried two or three obscure clothes shops, but my entrance invariably aroused an attitude of hostile suspicion in the proprietors, and on one excuse or another they avoided serving me with the now ardently desired change of clothing. the uniform that i had so thoughtlessly donned seemed as difficult to get out of as the fatal shirt of---you know, i forget the creature's name.'' ``yes, yes,'' said the chaplain hurriedly. ``go on with your story.'' ``somehow, until i could get out of those compromising garments, i felt it would not be safe to surrender myself to the police. the thing that puzzled me was why no attempt was made to arrest me, since there was no question as to the suspicion which followed me, like an inseparable shadow, wherever i went. stares, nudgings, whisperings, and even loud-spoken remarks of `that's 'im' greeted my every appearance, and the meanest and most deserted eating-house that i patronized soon became filled with a crowd of furtively watching customers. i began to sympathize with the feelings of royal personages trying to do a little private shopping under the unsparing scrutiny of an irrepressible public. and still, with all this inarticulate shadowing, which weighed on my nerves almost worse than open hostility would have done, no attempt was made to interfere with my liberty. later on i discovered the reason. at the time of the murder on the lonely highway a series of important blood-hound trials had been taking place in the near neighbourhood, and some dozen and a half couples of trained animals had been put on the track of the supposed murderer---on my track. one of our most public-spirited london dailies had offered a princely prize to the owner of the pair that should first track me down, and betting on the chances of the respective competitors became rife throughout the land. the dogs ranged far and wide over about thirteen counties, and though my own movements had become by this time perfectly well known to police and public alike, the sporting instincts of the nation stepped in to prevent my premature arrest. `give the dogs a chance,' was the prevailing sentiment, whenever some ambitious local constable wished to put an end to my drawn-out evasion of justice. my final capture by the winning pair was not a very dramatic episode, in fact, i'm not sure that they would have taken any notice of me if i hadn't spoken to them and patted them, but the event gave rise to an extraordinary amount of partisan excitement. the owner of the pair who were next nearest up at the finish was an american, and he lodged a protest on the ground that an otterhound had married into the family of the winning pair six generations ago, and that the prize had been offered to the first pair of bloodhounds to capture the murderer, and that a dog that had one sixty-fourth part of otterhound blood in it couldn't technically be considered a bloodhound. i forget how the matter was ultimately settled, but it aroused a tremendous amount of acrimonious discussion on both sides of the atlantic. my own contribution to the controversy consisted in pointing out that the whole dispute was beside the mark, as the actual murderer had not yet been captured; but i soon discovered that on this point there was not the least divergence of public or expert opinion. i had looked forward apprehensively to the proving of my identity and the establishment of my motives as a disagreeable necessity; i speedily found out that the most disagreeable part of the business was that it couldn't be done. when i saw in the glass the haggard and hunted expression which the experiences of the past few weeks had stamped on my erstwhile placid countenance, i could scarcely feel surprised that the few friends and relations i possessed refused to recognize me in my altered guise, and persisted in their obstinate but widely shared belief that it was i who had been done to death on the highway. to make matters worse, infinitely worse, an aunt of the really murdered man, an appalling female of an obviously low order of intelligence, identified me as her nephew, and gave the authorities a lurid account of my depraved youth and of her laudable but unavailing efforts to spank me into a better way. i believe it was even proposed to search me for finger-prints.'' ``but,'' said the chaplain, ``surely your educational attainments---'' ``that was just the crucial point,'' said the condemned; ``that was where my lack of specialization told so fatally against me. the dead salvationist, whose identity i had so lightly and so disastrously adopted, had possessed a veneer of cheap modern education. it should have been easy to demonstrate that my learning was on altogether another plane to his, but in my nervousness i bungled miserably over test after test that was put to me. the little french i had ever known deserted me; i could not render a simple phrase about the gooseberry of the gardener into that language, because i had forgotten the french for gooseberry.'' the chaplain again wriggled uneasily in his seat. ``and then,'' resumed the condemned, ``came the final discomfiture. in our village we had a modest little debating club, and i remembered having promised, chiefly, i suppose, to please and impress the doctor's wife, to give a sketchy kind of lecture on the balkan crisis. i had relied on being able to get up my facts from one or two standard works, and the back-numbers of certain periodicals. the prosecution had made a careful note of the circumstance that the man whom i claimed to be---and actually was---had posed locally as some sort of second-hand authority on balkan affairs, and, in the midst of a string of questions on indifferent topics, the examining counsel asked me with a diabolical suddenness if i could tell the court the whereabouts of novibazar. i felt the question to be a crucial one; something told me that the answer was st. petersburg or baker street. i hesitated, looked helplessly round at the sea of tensely expectant faces, pulled myself together, and chose baker street. and then i knew that everything was lost. the prosecution had no difficulty in demonstrating that an individual, even moderately versed in the affairs of the near east, could never have so unceremoniously dislocated novibazar from its accustomed corner of the map. it was an answer which the salvation army captain might conceivably have made---and i had made it. the circumstantial evidence connecting the salvationist with the crime was overwhelmingly convincing, and i had inextricably identified myself with the salvationist. and thus it comes to pass that in ten minutes' time i shall be hanged by the neck until i am dead in expiation of the murder of myself, which murder never took place, and of which, in any case, i am necessarily innocent.'' * when the chaplain returned to his quarters, some fifteen minutes later, the black flag was floating over the prison tower. breakfast was waiting for him in the dining-room, but he first passed into his library, and, taking up the _times_ atlas, consulted a map of the balkan peninsula. ``a thing like that,'' he observed, closing the volume with a snap, ``might happen to any one.'' the sex that doesn't shop the opening of a large new centre for west end shopping, particularly feminine shopping, suggests the reflection, do women ever really shop? of course, it is a well-attested fact that they go forth shopping as assiduously as a bee goes flower-visiting, but do they shop in the practical sense of the word? granted the money, time, and energy, a resolute course of shopping transactions would naturally result in having one's ordinary domestic needs unfailingly supplied, whereas it is notorious that women servants (and housewives of all classes) make it almost a point of honour not to be supplied with everyday necessities. ``we shall be out of starch by thursday,'' they say with fatalistic foreboding, and by thursday they are out of starch. they have predicted almost to a minute the moment when their supply would give out, and if thursday happens to be early closing day their triumph is complete. a shop where starch is stored for retail purposes possibly stands at their very door, but the feminine mind has rejected such an obvious source for replenishing a dwindling stock. ``we don't deal there'' places it at once beyond the pale of human resort. and it is noteworthy that just as a sheep-worrying dog seldom molests the flocks in his near neighbourhood, so a woman rarely deals with shops in her immediate vicinity. the more remote the source of supply the more fixed seems to be the resolve to run short of the commodity. the ark had probably not quitted its last moorings five minutes before some feminine voice gloatingly recorded a shortage of bird-seed. a few days ago two lady acquaintances of mine were confessing to some mental uneasiness because a friend had called just before lunch-time, and they had been unable to ask her to stop and share their meat as (with a touch of legitimate pride) ``there was nothing in the house.'' i pointed out that they lived in a street that bristled with provision shops and that it would have been easy to mobilize a very passable luncheon in less than five minutes. ``that,'' they said, with quiet dignity, ``would not have occurred to us,'' and i felt that i had suggested something bordering on the indecent. but it is in catering for her literary wants that a woman's shopping capacity breaks down most completely. if you have perchance produced a book which has met with some little measure of success, you are certain to get a letter from some lady whom you scarcely know to bow to, asking you ``how it can be got.'' she knows the name of the book, its author, and who published it, but how to get into actual contact with it is still an unsolved problem to her. you write back pointing out that to have recourse to an ironmonger or a corn-dealer will only entail delay and disappointment, and suggest an application to a bookseller as the most hopeful thing you can think of. in a day or two she writes again: ``it is all right; i have borrowed it from your aunt.'' here, of course, we have an example of the beyond-shopper, one who has learned the better way, but the helplessness exists even when such bypaths of relief are closed. a lady who lives in the west end was expressing to me the other day her interest in west highland terriers, and her desire to know more about the breed, so when, a few days later, i came across an exhaustive article on that subject in the current number of one of our best known outdoor-weeklies, i mentioned the circumstance in a letter, giving the date of that number. ``i cannot get the paper,'' was her telephoned response. and she couldn't. she lived in a city where news-agents are numbered, i suppose, by the thousand, and she must have passed dozens of such shops in her daily shopping excursions, but as far as she was concerned that article on west highland terriers might as well have been written in a missal stored away in some buddhist monastery in eastern thibet. the brutal directness of the masculine shopper arouses a certain combative derision in the feminine onlooker. a cat that spreads one shrew-mouse over the greater part of a long summer afternoon, and then possibly loses him, doubtless feels the same contempt for the terrier who compresses his rat into ten seconds of the strenuous life. i was finishing off a short list of purchases a few afternoons ago when i was discovered by a lady of my acquaintance whom, swerving aside from the lead given us by her god-parents thirty years ago, we will call agatha. ``you're surely not buying blotting-paper here?'' she exclaimed in an agitated whisper, and she seemed so genuinely concerned that i stayed my hand. ``let me take you to winks and pinks,'' she said as soon as we were out of the building: ``they've got such lovely shades of blotting-paper---pearl and heliotrope and _momie_ and crushed---!'' ``but i want ordinary white blotting-paper,'' i said. ``never mind. they know me at winks and pinks,'' she replied inconsequently. agatha apparently has an idea that blotting-paper is only sold in small quantities to persons of known reputation, who may be trusted not to put it to dangerous or improper uses. after walking some two hundred yards she began to feel that her tea was of more immediate importance than my blotting-paper. ``what do you want blotting-paper for?'' she asked suddenly. i explained patiently. ``i use it to dry up the ink of wet manuscript without smudging the writing. probably a chinese invention of the second century before christ, but i'm not sure. the only other use for it that i can think of is to roll it into a ball for a kitten to play with.'' ``but you haven't got a kitten,'' said agatha, with a feminine desire for stating the entire truth on most occasions. ``a stray one might come in at any moment,'' i replied. anyway i didn't get the blotting-paper. the blood-feud of toad-water a west-country epic the cricks lived at toad-water; and in the same lonely upland spot fate had pitched the home of the saunderses, and for miles around these two dwellings there was never a neighbour or a chimney or even a burying-ground to bring a sense of cheerful communion or social intercourse. nothing but fields and spinneys and barns, lanes and waste-lands. such was toad-water; and, even so, toad-water had its history. thrust away in the benighted hinterland of a scattered market district, it might have been supposed that these two detached items of the great human family would have leaned towards one another in a fellowship begotten of kindred circumstances and a common isolation from the outer world. and perhaps it had been so once, but the way of things had brought it otherwise. indeed, otherwise. fate, which had linked the two families in such unavoidable association of habitat, had ordained that the crick household should nourish and maintain among its earthly possessions sundry head of domestic fowls, while to the saunderses was given a disposition towards the cultivation of garden crops. herein lay the material, ready to hand, for the coming of feud and ill-blood. for the grudge between the man of herbs and the man of live stock is no new thing; you will find traces of it in the fourth chapter of genesis. and one sunny afternoon in late spring-time the feud came---came, as such things mostly do come, with seeming aimlessness and triviality. one of the crick hens, in obedience to the nomadic instincts of her kind, wearied of her legitimate scratching-grounds, and flew over the low wall that divided the holdings of the neighbours. and there, on the yonder side, with a hurried consciousness that her time and opportunities might be limited, the misguided bird scratched and scraped and beaked and delved in the soft yielding bed that had been prepared for the solace and well-being of a colony of seedling onions. little showers of earth-mould and root-fibres went spraying before the hen and behind her, and every minute the area of her operations widened. the onions suffered considerably. mrs. saunders, sauntering at this luckless moment down the garden path, in order to fill her soul with reproaches at the iniquity of the weeds, which grew faster than she or her good man cared to remove them, stopped in mute discomfiture before the presence of a more magnificent grievance. and then, in the hour of her calamity, she turned instinctively to the great mother, and gathered in her capacious hands large clods of the hard brown soil that lay at her feet. with a terrible sincerity of purpose, though with a contemptible inadequacy of aim, she rained her earth bolts at the marauder, and the bursting pellets called forth a flood of cackling protest and panic from the hastily departing fowl. calmness under misfortune is not an attribute of either menfolk or womenkind, and while mrs. saunders declaimed over her onion bed such portions of the slang dictionary as are permitted by the nonconformist conscience to be said or sung, the vasco da gama fowl was waking the echoes of toad-water with crescendo bursts of throat music which compelled attention to her griefs. mrs. crick had a long family, and was therefore licensed, in the eyes of her world, to have a short temper, and when some of her ubiquitous offspring had informed her, with the authority of eye-witnesses, that her neighbour had so far forgotten herself as to heave stones at her hen---her best hen, the best layer in the countryside---her thoughts clothed themselves in language ``unbecoming to a christian woman''---so at least said mrs. saunders, to whom most of the language was applied. nor was she, on her part, surprised at mrs. crick's conduct in letting her hens stray into other body's gardens, and then abusing of them, seeing as how she remembered things against mrs. crick---and the latter simultaneously had recollections of lurking episodes in the past of susan saunders that were nothing to her credit. ``fond memory, when all things fade we fly to thee,'' and in the paling light of an april afternoon the two women confronted each other from their respective sides of the party wall, recalling with shuddering breath the blots and blemishes of their neighbour's family record. there was that aunt of mrs. crick's who had died a pauper in exeter workhouse---every one knew that mrs. saunders' uncle on her mother's side drank himself to death ---then there was that bristol cousin of mrs. crick's! from the shrill triumph with which his name was dragged in, his crime must have been pilfering from a cathedral at least, but as both remembrancers were speaking at once it was difficult to distinguish his infamy from the scandal which beclouded the memory of mrs. saunders' brother's wife's mother---who may have been a regicide, and was certainly not a nice person as mrs. crick painted her. and then, with an air of accumulating and irresistible conviction, each belligerent informed the other that she was no lady---after which they withdrew in a great silence, feeling that nothing further remained to be said. the chaffinches clinked in the apple trees and the bees droned round the berberis bushes, and the waning sunlight slanted pleasantly across the garden plots, but between the neighbour households had sprung up a barrier of hate, permeating and permanent. the male heads of the families were necessarily drawn into the quarrel, and the children on either side were forbidden to have anything to do with the unhallowed offspring of the other party. as they had to travel a good three miles along the same road to school every day, this was awkward, but such things have to be. thus all communication between the households was sundered. except the cats. much as mrs. saunders might deplore it, rumour persistently pointed to the crick he-cat as the presumable father of sundry kittens of which the saunders she-cat was indisputably the mother. mrs. saunders drowned the kittens, but the disgrace remained. summer succeeded spring, and winter summer, but the feud outlasted the waning seasons. once, indeed, it seemed as though the healing influences of religion might restore to toad-water its erstwhile peace; the hostile families found themselves side by side in the soul-kindling atmosphere of a revival tea, where hymns were blended with a beverage that came of tea-leaves and hot water and took after the latter parent, and where ghostly counsel was tempered by garnishings of solidly fashioned buns---and here, wrought up by the environment of festive piety, mrs. saunders so far unbent as to remark guardedly to mrs. crick that the evening had been a fine one. mrs. crick, under the influence of her ninth cup of tea and her fourth hymn, ventured on the hope that it might continue fine, but a maladroit allusion on the part of the saunders good man to the backwardness of garden crops brought the feud stalking forth from its comer with all its old bitterness. mrs. saunders joined heartily in the singing of the final hymn, which told of peace and joy and archangels and golden glories; but her thoughts were dwelling on the pauper aunt of exeter. years have rolled away, and some of the actors in this wayside drama have passed into the unknown; other onions have arisen, have flourished, have gone their way, and the offending hen has long since expiated her misdeeds and lain with trussed feet and look of ineffable peace under the arched roof of barnstaple market. but the blood-feud of toad-water survives to this day. a young turkish catastrophe in two scenes the minister for fine arts (to whose department had been lately added the new subsection of electoral engineering) paid a business visit to the grand vizier. according to eastern etiquette they discoursed for a while on indifferent subjects. the minister only checked himself in time from making a passing reference to the marathon race, remembering that the vizier had a persian grandmother and might consider any allusion to marathon as somewhat tactless. presently the minister touched the subject of his interview. ``under the new constitution are women to have votes?'' he asked suddenly. ``to have votes? women?'' exclaimed the vizier in some astonishment. ``my dear pasha, the new departure has a flavour of the absurd as it is; don't let's try and make it altogether ridiculous. women have no souls and no intelligence; why on earth should they have votes?'' ``i know it sounds absurd,'' said the minister, ``but they are seriously considering the idea in the west.'' ``then they must have a larger equipment of seriousness than i gave them credit for. after a lifetime of specialized effort in maintaining my gravity i can scarcely restrain an inclination to smile at the suggestion. why, our womenfolk in most cases don't know how to read or write. how could they perform the operation of voting?'' ``they could be shown the names of the candidates and where to make their cross.'' ``i beg your pardon?'' interrupted the vizier. ``their crescent, i mean,'' corrected the minister, ``it would be to the liking of the young turkish party,'' he added. ``oh, well,'' said the vizier, ``if we are to do the thing at all we may as well go the whole h---'' he pulled up just as he was uttering the name of an unclean animal, and continued, ``the complete camel. i will issue instructions that womenfolk are to have votes.'' * the poll was drawing to a close in the lakoumistan division. the candidate of the young turkish party was known to be three or four hundred votes ahead, and he was already drafting his address, returning thanks to the electors. his victory had been almost a foregone conclusion, for he had set in motion all the approved electioneering machinery of the west. he had even employed motor-cars. few of his supporters had gone to the poll in these vehicles, but, thanks to the intelligent driving of his chauffeurs, many of his opponents had gone to their graves or to the local hospitals, or otherwise abstained from voting. and then something unlooked-for happened. the rival candidate, ali the blest, arrived on the scene with his wives and womenfolk, who numbered, roughly, six hundred. ali had wasted little effort on election literature, but had been heard to remark that every vote given to his opponent meant another sack thrown into the bosporus. the young turkish candidate, who had conformed to the western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses, stood by helplessly while his adversary's poll swelled to a triumphant majority. ``cristabel columbus!'' he exclaimed, invoking in some confusion the name of a distinguished pioneer; ``who would have thought it?'' ``strange,'' mused ali, ``that one who harangued so clamorously about the secret ballot should have overlooked the veiled vote.'' and, walking homeward with his constituents, he murmured in his beard an improvisation on the heretic poet of persia: ``one, rich in metaphors, his cause contrives to urge with edg<e`>d words, like kabul knives; and i, who worst him in this sorry game, was never rich in anything but---wives.'' judkin of the parcels a figure in an indefinite tweed suit, carrying brown-paper parcels. that is what we met suddenly, at the bend of a muddy dorsetshire lane, and the roan mare stared and obviously thought of a curtsy. the mare is road-shy, with intervals of stolidity, and there is no telling what she will pass and what she won't. we call her redford. that was my first meeting with judkin, and the next time the circumstances were the same; the same muddy lane, the same rather apologetic figure in the tweed suit, the same---or very similar---parcels. only this time the roan looked straight in front of her. whether i asked the groom or whether he advanced the information, i forget; but someway i gradually reconstructed the life-history of this trudger of the lanes. it was much the same, no doubt, as that of many others who are from time to time pointed out to one as having been aforetime in crack cavalry regiments and noted performers in the saddle; men who have breathed into their lungs the wonder of the east, have romped through life as through a cotillon, have had a thrust perhaps at the viceroy's cup, and done fantastic horsefleshy things around the gulf of aden. and then a golden stream has dried up, the sunlight has faded suddenly out of things, and the gods have nodded ``go.'' and they have not gone. they have turned instead to the muddy lanes and cheap villas and the marked-down ills of life, to watch pear trees growing and to encourage hens for their eggs. and judkin was even as these others; the wine had been suddenly spilt from his cup of life, and he had stayed to suck at the dregs which the wise throw away. in the days of his scorn for most things he would have stared the roan mare and her turn-out out of all pretension to smartness, as he would have frozen a cheap claret behind its cork, or a plain woman behind her veil; and now he was walking stoically through the mud, in a tweed suit that would eventually go on to the gardener's boy, and would perhaps fit him. the dear gods, who know the end before the beginning, were perhaps growing a gardener's boy somewhere to fit the garments, and judkin was only a caretaker, inhabiting a portion of them. that is what i like to think, and i am probably wrong. and judkin, whose clothes had been to him once more than a religion, scarcely less sacred than a family quarrel, would carry those parcels back to his villa and to the wife who awaited him and them---a wife who may, for all we know to the contrary, have had a figure once, and perhaps has yet a heart of gold---of nine-carat gold, let us say at the least---but assuredly a soul of tape. and he that has fetched and carried will explain how it had fared with him in his dealings, and if he has brought the wrong sort of sugar or thread he will wheedle away the displeasure from that leaden face as a pastrycook girl will drive bluebottles off a stale bun. and that man has known what it was to coax the fret of a thoroughbred, to soothe its toss and sweat as it danced beneath him in the glee and chafe of its pulses and the glory of its thews. he has been in the raw places of the earth, where the desert beasts have whimpered their unthinkable psalmody, and their eyes have shone back the reflex of the midnight stars---and he can immerse himself in the tending of an incubator. it is horrible and wrong, and yet when i have met him in the lanes his face has worn a look of tedious cheerfulness that might pass for happiness. has judkin of the parcels found something in the lees of life that i have missed in going to and fro over many waters? is there more wisdom in his perverseness than in the madness of the wise? the dear gods know. i don't think i saw judkin more than three times all told, and always the lane was our point of contact; but as the roan mare was taking me to the station one heavy, cloud-smeared day, i passed a dull-looking villa that the groom, or instinct, told me was judkin's home. from beyond a hedge of ragged elder-bushes could be heard the thud, thud of a spade, with an occasional clink and pause, as if some one had picked out a stone and thrown it to a distance, and i knew that he was doing nameless things to the roots of a pear tree. near by him, i felt sure, would be lying a large and late vegetable marrow, and its largeness and lateness would be a theme of conversation at luncheon. it would be suggested that it should grace the harvest thanksgiving service; the harvest having been so generally unsatisfactory, it would be unfair to let the fanners supply all the material for rejoicing. and while i was speeding townwards along the rails judkin would be plodding his way to the vicarage bearing a vegetable marrow and a basketful of dahlias. the basket to be returned. gabriel-ernest ``there is a wild beast in your woods,'' said the artist cunningham, as he was being driven to the station. it was the only remark he had made during the drive, but as van cheele had talked incessantly his companion's silence had not been noticeable. ``a stray fox or two and some resident weasels. nothing more formidable,'' said van cheele. the artist said nothing. ``what did you mean about a wild beast?'' said van cheele later, when they were on the platform. ``nothing. my imagination. here is the train,'' said cunningham. that afternoon van cheele went for one of his frequent rambles through his woodland property. he had a stuffed bittern in his study, and knew the names of quite a number of wild flowers, so his aunt had possibly some justification in describing him as a great naturalist. at any rate, he was a great walker. it was his custom to take mental notes of everything he saw during his walks, not so much for the purpose of assisting contemporary science as to provide topics for conversation afterwards. when the bluebells began to show themselves in flower he made a point of informing every one of the fact; the season of the year might have warned his hearers of the likelihood of such an occurrence, but at least they felt that he was being absolutely frank with them. what van cheele saw on this particular afternoon was, however, something far removed from his ordinary range of experience. on a shelf of smooth stone overhanging a deep pool in the hollow of an oak coppice a boy of about sixteen lay asprawl, drying his wet brown limbs luxuriously in the sun. his wet hair, parted by a recent dive, lay close to his head, and his light-brown eyes, so light that there was an almost tigerish gleam in them, were turned towards van cheele with a certain lazy watchfulness. it was an unexpected apparition, and van cheele found himself engaged in the novel process of thinking before he spoke. where on earth could this wild-looking boy hail from? the miller's wife had lost a child some two months ago, supposed to have been swept away by the mill-race, but that had been a mere baby, not a half-grown lad. ``what are you doing there?'' he demanded. ``obviously, sunning myself,'' replied the boy. ``where do you live?'' ``here, in these woods.'' ``you can't live in the woods,'' said van cheele. ``they are very nice woods,'' said the boy, with a touch of patronage in his voice. ``but where do you sleep at night?'' ``i don't sleep at night; that's my busiest time.'' van cheele began to have an irritated feeling that he was grappling with a problem that was eluding him. ``what do you feed on?'' he asked. ``flesh,'' said the boy, and he pronounced the word with slow relish, as though he were tasting it. ``flesh! what flesh?'' ``since it interests you, rabbits, wild-fowl, hares, poultry, lambs in their season, children when i can get any; they're usually too well locked in at night, when i do most of my hunting. it's quite two months since i tasted child-flesh.'' ignoring the chaffing nature of the last remark van cheele tried to draw the boy on the subject of possible poaching operations. ``you're talking rather through your hat when you speak of feeding on hares.'' (considering the nature of the boys toilet the simile was hardly an apt one.) ``our hillside hares aren't easily caught.'' ``at night i hunt on four feet,'' was the somewhat cryptic response. ``i suppose you mean that you hunt with a dog?'' hazarded van cheele. the boy rolled slowly over on to his back, and laughed a weird low laugh, that was pleasantly like a chuckle and disagreeably like a snarl. ``i don't fancy any dog would be very anxious for my company, especially at night.'' van cheele began to feel that there was something positively uncanny about the strange-eyed, strange-tongued youngster. ``i can't have you staying in these woods,'' he declared authoritatively. ``i fancy you'd rather have me here than in your house,'' said the boy. the prospect of this wild, nude animal in van cheele's primly ordered house was certainly an alarming one. ``if you don't go i shall have to make you,'' said van cheele. the boy turned like a flash, plunged into the pool, and in a moment had flung his wet and glistening body half-way up the bank where van cheele was standing. in an otter the movement would not have been remarkable; in a boy van cheele found it sufficiently startling. his foot slipped as he made an involuntary backward movement, and he found himself almost prostrate on the slippery weed-grown bank, with those tigerish yellow eyes not very far from his own. almost instinctively he half raised his hand to his throat. the boy laughed again, a laugh in which the snarl had nearly driven out the chuckle, and then, with another of his astonishing lightning movements, plunged out of view into a yielding tangle of weed and fern. ``what an extraordinary wild animal!'' said van cheele as he picked himself up. and then be recalled cunningham's remark, ``there is a wild beast in your woods.'' walking slowly homeward, van cheele began to turn over in his mind various local occurrences which might be traceable to the existence of this astonishing young savage. something had been thinning the game in the woods lately, poultry had been missing from the farms, hares were growing unaccountably scarcer, and complaints had reached him of lambs being carried off bodily from the hills. was it possible that this wild boy was really hunting the countryside in company with some clever poacher dog? he had spoken of hunting ``four-footed'' by night, but then, again, he had hinted strangely at no dog caring to come near him, ``especially at night.'' it was certainly puzzling. and then, as van cheele ran his mind over the various depredations that had been committed during the last month or two, he came suddenly to a dead stop, alike in hiss walk and his speculations. the child missing from the mill two months ago---the accepted theory was that it had tumbled into the mill-race and been swept away; but the mother had always declared she had heard a shriek on the hill side of the house, in the opposite direction from the water. it was unthinkable, of course, but he wished that the boy had not made that uncanny remark about childflesh eaten two months ago. such dreadful things should not be said even in fun. van cheele, contrary to his usual wont, did not feel disposed to be communicative about his discovery in the wood. his position as a parish councillor and justice of the peace seemed somehow compromised by the fact that he was harbouring a personality of such doubtful repute on his property; there was even a possibility that a heavy bill of damages for raided lambs and poultry might be laid at his door. at dinner that night he was quite unusually silent. ``where's your voice gone to?'' said his aunt. ``one would think you had seen a wolf.'' van cheele, who was not familiar with the old saying, thought the remark rather foolish; if he _had_ seen a wolf on his property his tongue would have been extraordinarily busy with the subject. at breakfast next morning van cheele was conscious that his feeling of uneasiness regarding yesterday's episode had not wholly disappeared, and he resolved to go by train to the neighbouring cathedral town, hunt up cunningham, and learn from him what he had really seen that had prompted the remark about a wild beast in the woods. with this resolution taken, his usual cheerfulness partially returned, and he hummed a bright little melody as he sauntered to the morning-room for his customary cigarette. as he entered the room the melody made way abruptly for a pious invocation. gracefully asprawl on the ottoman, in an attitude of almost exaggerated repose, was the boy of the woods. he was drier than when van cheele had last seen him, but no other alteration was noticeable in his toilet. ``how dare you come here?'' asked van cheele furiously. ``you told me i was not to stay in the woods,'' said the boy calmly. ``but not to come here. supposing my aunt should see you!'' and with a view to minimizing that catastrophe van cheele hastily obscured as much of his unwelcome guest as possible under the folds of a _morning post_. at that moment his aunt entered the room. ``this is a poor boy who has lost his way---and lost his memory. he doesn't know who he is or where he comes from,'' explained van cheele desperately, glancing apprehensively at the waif's face to see whether he was going to add inconvenient candour to his other savage propensities. miss van cheele was enormously interested. ``perhaps his underlinen is marked,'' she suggested. ``he seems to have lost most of that, too,'' said van cheele, making frantic little grabs at the _morning post_ to keep it in its place. a naked homeless child appealed to miss van cheele as warmly as a stray kitten or derelict puppy would have done. ``we must do all we can for him,'' she decided, and in a very short time a messenger, dispatched to the rectory, where a page-boy was kept, had returned with a suit of pantry clothes, and the necessary accessories of shirt, shoes, collar, etc. clothed, clean, and groomed, the boy lost none of his uncanniness in van cheele's eyes, but his aunt found him sweet. ``we must call him something till we know who he really is,'' she said. ``gabriel-ernest, i think; those are nice suitable names.' van cheele agreed, but he privately doubted whether they were being grafted on to a nice suitable child. his misgivings were not diminished by the fact that his staid and elderly spaniel had bolted out of the house at the first incoming of the boy, and now obstinately remained shivering and yapping at the farther end of the orchard, while the canary, usually as vocally industrious as van cheele himself, had put itself on an allowance of frightened cheeps. more than ever he was resolved to consult cunningham without loss of time. as he drove off to the station his aunt was arranging that gabriel-ernest should help her to entertain the infant members of her sunday-school class at tea that afternoon. cunningham was not at first disposed to be communicative. ``my mother died of some brain trouble,'' he explained, ``so you will understand why i am averse to dwelling on anything of an impossibly fantastic nature that i may see or think that i have seen.'' ``but what _did_ you see?'' persisted van cheele. ``what i thought i saw was something so extraordinary that no really sane man could dignify it with the credit of having actually happened. i was standing, the last evening i was with you, half-hidden in the hedgegrowth by the orchard gate, watching the dying glow of the sunset. suddenly i became aware of a naked boy, a bather from some neighbouring pool, i took him to be, who was standing out on the bare hillside also watching the sunset. his pose was so suggestive of some wild faun of pagan myth that i instantly wanted to engage him as a model, and in another moment i think i should have hailed him. but just then the sun dipped out of view, and all the orange and pink slid out of the landscape, leaving it cold and grey. and at the same moment an astounding thing happened---the boy vanished too!'' ``what! vanished away into nothing?'' asked van cheele excitedly. ``no; that is the dreadful part of it,'' answered the artist; ``on the open hillside where the boy had been standing a second ago, stood a large wolf, blackish in colour, with gleaming fangs and cruel, yellow eyes. you may think---'' but van cheele did not stop for anything as futile as thought. already he was tearing at top speed towards the station. he dismissed the idea of a telegram. ``gabriel-ernest is a werewolf'' was a hopelessly inadequate effort at conveying the situation, and his aunt would think it was a code message to which he had omitted to give her the key. his one hope was that he might reach home before sundown. the cab which he chartered at the other end of the railway journey bore him with what seemed exasperating slowness along the country roads, which were pink and mauve with the flush of the sinking sun. his aunt was putting away some unfinished jams and cake when he arrived. ``where is gabriel-ernest?'' he almost screamed. ``he is taking the little toop child home,'' said his aunt. ``it was getting so late, i thought it wasn't safe to let it go back alone. what a lovely sunset, isn't it?'' but van cheele, although not oblivious of the glow in the western sky, did not stay to discuss its beauties. at a speed for which he was scarcely geared he raced along the narrow lane that led to the home of the toops. on one side ran the swift current of the mill-stream, on the other rose the stretch of bare hillside. a dwindling rim of red sun showed still on the skyline, and the next turning must bring him in view of the ill-assorted couple he was pursuing. then the colour went suddenly out of things, and a grey light settled itself with a quick shiver over the landscape. van cheele heard a shrill wail of fear, and stopped running. nothing was ever seen again of the toop child or gabriel-ernest, but the latter's discarded garments were found lying in the road, so it was assumed that the child had fallen into the water, and that the boy had stripped and jumped in, in a vain endeavour to save it. van cheele and some workmen who were near by at the time testified to having heard a child scream loudly just near the spot where the clothes were found. mrs. toop, who had eleven other children, was decently resigned to her bereavement, but miss van cheele sincerely mourned her lost foundling. it was on her initiative that a memorial brass was put up in the parish church to ``gabriel-ernest, an unknown boy, who bravely sacrificed his life for another.'' van cheele gave way to his aunt in most things, but he flatly refused to subscribe to the gabriel-ernest memorial. the saint and the goblin the little stone saint occupied a retired niche in a side aisle of the old cathedral. no one quite remembered who he had been, but that in a way was a guarantee of respectability. at least so the goblin said. the goblin was a very fine specimen of quaint stone carving, and lived up in the corbel on the wall opposite the niche of the little saint. he was connected with some of the best cathedral folk, such as the queer carvings in the choir stalls and chancel screen, and even the gargoyles high up on the roof. all the fantastic beasts and manikins that sprawled and twisted in wood or stone or lead overhead in the arches or away down in the crypt were in some way akin to him; consequently he was a person of recognized importance in the cathedral world. the little stone saint and the goblin got on very well together, though they looked at most things from different points of view. the saint was a philanthropist in an old-fashioned way; he thought the world, as he saw it, was good, but might be improved. in particular he pitied the church mice, who were miserably poor. the goblin, on the other hand, was of opinion that the world, as he knew it, was bad, but had better be let alone. it was the function of the church mice to be poor. ``all the same,'' said the saint, ``i feel very sorry for them.'' ``of course you do,'' said the goblin; ``it's _your_ function to feel sorry for them. if they were to leave off being poor you couldn't fulfil your functions. you'd be a sinecure.'' he rather hoped that the saint would ask him what a sinecure meant, but the latter took refuge in a stony silence. the goblin might be right, but still, he thought, he would like to do something for the church mice before winter came on; they were so very poor. whilst he was thinking the matter over he was startled by something falling between his feet with a hard metallic clatter. it was a bright new thaler; one of the cathedral jackdaws, who collected such things, had flown in with it to a stone cornice just above his niche, and the banging of the sacristy door had startled him into dropping it. since the invention of gun powder the family nerves were not what they had been. ``what have you got there?'' asked the goblin. ``a silver thaler,'' said the saint. ``really,' he continued, ``it is most fortunate; now i can do something for the church mice.'' ``how will you manage it?'' asked the goblin. the saint considered. ``i will appear in a vision to the vergeress who sweeps the floors. i will tell her that she will find a silver thaler between my feet, and that she must take it and buy a measure of corn and put it on my shrine. when she finds the money she will know that it was a true dream, and she will take care to follow my directions. then the mice will have food all winter.'' ``of course you can do that,'' observed the goblin. ``now, i can only appear to people after they have had a heavy supper of indigestible things. my opportunities with the vergeress would be limited. there is some advantage in being a saint after all.'' all this while the coin was lying at the saint's feet. it was clean and glittering and had the elector's arms beautifully stamped upon it. the saint began to reflect that such an opportunity was too rare to be hastily disposed of. perhaps indiscriminate charity might be harmful to the church mice. after all, it was their function to be poor; the goblin had said so, and the goblin was generally right. ``i've been thinking,'' he said to that personage, ``that perhaps it would be really better if i ordered a thaler's worth of candles to be placed on my shrine instead of the corn.'' he often wished, for the look of the thing, that people would sometimes burn candles at his shrine; but as they had forgotten who he was it was not considered a profitable speculation to pay him that attention. ``candles would be more orthodox,'' said the goblin. ``more orthodox, certainly,' agreed the saint, ``and the mice could have the ends to eat; candle-ends are most fattening.'' the goblin was too well bred to wink; besides, being a stone goblin, it was out of the question. * ``well, if it ain't there, sure enough!'' said the vergeress next morning. she took the shining coin down from the gusty niche and turned it over and over in her grimy hands. then she put it to her mouth and bit it. ``she can't be going to eat it,'' thought the saint, and fixed her with his stoniest stare. ``well,' said the woman, in a somewhat shriller key, ``who'd have thought it! a saint, too!'' then she did an unaccountable thing. she hunted an old piece of tape out of her pocket, and tied it crosswise, with a big loop, round the thaler, and hung it round the neck of the little saint. then she went away. ``the only possible explanation,'' said the goblin, ``is that it's a bad one.'' * ``what is that decoration your neighbour is wearing?'' asked a wyvern that was wrought into the capital of an adjacent pillar. the saint was ready to cry with mortification, only, being of stone, he couldn't. ``it's a coin of---ahem---fabulous value,'' replied the goblin tactfully. and the news went round the cathedral that the shrine of the little stone saint had been enriched by a priceless offering. ``after all, it's something to have the conscience of a goblin,'' said the saint to himself. the church mice were as poor as ever. but that was their function. the soul of laploshka laploshka was one of the meanest men i have ever met, and quite one of the most entertaining. he said horrid things about other people in such a charming way that one forgave him for the equally horrid things he said about oneself behind one's back. hating anything in the way of ill-natured gossip ourselves, we are always grateful to those who do it for us and do it well. and laploshka did it really well. naturally laploshka had a large circle of acquaintances, and as he exercised some care in their selection it followed that an appreciable proportion were men whose bank balances enabled them to acquiesce indulgently in his rather one-sided views on hospitality. thus, although possessed of only moderate means, he was able to live comfortably within his income, and still more comfortably within those of various tolerantly disposed associates. but towards the poor or to those of the same limited resources as himself his attitude was one of watchful anxiety; he seemed to be haunted by a besetting fear lest some fraction of a shilling or franc, or whatever the prevailing coinage might be, should be diverted from his pocket or service into that of a hard-up companion. a two-franc cigar would be cheerfully offered to a wealthy patron, on the principle of doing evil that good may come, but i have known him indulge in agonies of perjury rather than admit the incriminating possession of a copper coin when change was needed to tip a waiter. the coin would have been duly returned at the earliest opportunity---he would have taken means to ensure against forgetfulness on the part of the borrower---but accidents might happen, and even the temporary estrangement from his penny or sou was a calamity to be avoided. the knowledge of this amiable weakness offered a perpetual temptation to play upon laploshka's fears of involuntary generosity. to offer him a lift in a cab and pretend not to have enough money to pay the fare, to fluster him with a request for a sixpence when his hand was full of silver just received in change, these were a few of the petty torments that ingenuity prompted as occasion afforded. to do justice to laploshka's resourcefulness it must be admitted that he always emerged somehow or other from the most embarrassing dilemma without in any way compromising his reputation for saying ``no.'' but the gods send opportunities at some time to most men, and mine came one evening when laploshka and i were supping together in a cheap boulevard restaurant. (except when he was the bidden guest of some one with an irreproachable income, laploshka was wont to curb his appetite for high living; on such fortunate occasions he let it go on an easy snaffle.) at the conclusion of the meal a somewhat urgent message called me away, and without heeding my companion's agitated protest, i called back cruelly, ``pay my share; i'll settle with you tomorrow.'' early on the morrow laploshka hunted me down by instinct as i walked along a side street that i hardly ever frequented. he had the air of a man who had not slept. ``you owe me two francs from last night,'' was his breathless greeting. i spoke evasively of the situation in portugal, where more trouble seemed brewing. but laploshka listened with the abstraction of the deaf adder, and quickly returned to the subject of the two francs. ``i'm afraid i must owe it to you,'' i said lightly and brutally. ``i haven't a sou in the world,'' and i added mendaciously, ``i'm going away for six months or perhaps longer.'' laploshka said nothing, but his eyes bulged a little and his cheeks took on the mottled hues of an ethnographical map of the balkan peninsula. that same day, at sundown, he died. ``failure of the heart's action'' was the doctor's verdict; but i, who knew better, knew that be had died of grief. there arose the problem of what to do with his two francs. to have killed laploshka was one thing; to have kept his beloved money would have argued a callousness of feeling of which i am not capable. the ordinary solution, of giving it to the poor, would by no means fit the present situation, for nothing would have distressed the dead man more than such a misuse of his property. on the other hand, the bestowal of two francs on the rich was an operation which called for some tact. an easy way out of the difficulty seemed, however, to present itself the following sunday, as i was wedged into the cosmopolitan crowd which fined the side-aisle of one of the most popular paris churches. a collecting-bag, for ``the poor of monsieur le cur<e'>,'' was buffeting its tortuous way across the seemingly impenetrable human sea, and a german in front of me, who evidently did not wish his appreciation of the magnificent music to be marred by a suggestion of payment, made audible criticisms to his companion on the claims of the said charity. ``they do not want money,'' he said; ``they have too much money. they have no poor. they are all pampered.'' if that were really the case my way seemed clear. i dropped laploshka's two francs into the bag with a murmured blessing on the rich of monsieur le cur<e'>. some three weeks later chance had taken me to vienna, and i sat one evening regaling myself in a humble but excellent little gasthaus up in the w<a:>hringer quarter. the appointments were primitive, but the schnitzel, the beer, and the cheese could not have been improved on. good cheer brought good custom, and with the exception of one small table near the door every place was occupied. half-way through my meal i happened to glance in the direction of that empty seat, and saw that it was no longer empty. poring over the bill of fare with the absorbed scrutiny of one who seeks the cheapest among the cheap was laploshka. once he looked across at me, with a comprehensive glance at my repast, as though to say, ``it is my two francs you are eating,'' and then looked swiftly away. evidently the poor of monsieur le cur<e'> had been genuine poor. the schnitzel turned to leather in my mouth, the beer seemed tepid; i left the ementhaler untasted. my one idea was to get away from the room, away from the table where that was seated; and as i fled i felt laploshka's reproachful eyes watching the amount that i gave to the piccolo--out of his two francs. i lunched next day at an expensive restaurant which i felt sure that the living laploshka would never have entered on his own account, and i hoped that the dead laploshka would observe the same barriers. i was not mistaken but as i came out i found him miserably studying the bill of fare stuck up on the portals. then he slowly made his way over to a milk-hall. for the first time in my experience i missed the charm and gaiety of vienna life. after that, in paris or london or wherever i happened to be, i continued to see a good deal of laploshka. if i had a seat in a box at a theatre i was always conscious of his eyes furtively watching me from the dim recesses of the gallery. as i turned into my club on a rainy afternoon i would see him taking inadequate shelter in a doorway opposite. even if i indulged in the modest luxury of a penny chair in the park he generally confronted me from one of the free benches, never staring at me, but always elaborately conscious of my presence. my friends began to comment on my changed looks, and advised me to leave off heaps of things. i should have liked to have left off laploshka. on a certain sunday---it was probably easter, for the crush was worse than ever---i was again wedged into the crowd listening to the music in the fashionable paris church, and again the collection-bag was buffeting its way across the human sea. an english lady behind me was making ineffectual efforts to convey a coin into the still distant bag, so i took the money at her request and helped it forward to its destination. it was a two-franc piece. a swift inspiration came to me, and i merely dropped my own sou into the bag and slid the silver coin into my pocket. i had withdrawn laploshka's two francs from the poor, who should never have had that legacy. as i backed away from the crowd i heard a woman's voice say, ``i don't believe he put my money in the bag. there are swarms of people in paris like that!'' but my mind was lighter than it had been for a long time. the delicate mission of bestowing the retrieved sum on the deserving rich still confronted me. again i trusted to the inspiration of accident, and again fortune favoured me. a shower drove me, two days later, into one of the historic churches on the left bank of the seine, and there i found, peering at the old wood-carvings, the baron r., one of the wealthiest and most shabbily dressed men in paris. it was now or never. putting a strong american inflection into the french which i usually talked with an unmistakable british accent, i catechized the baron as to the date of the church's building, its dimensions, and other details which an american tourist would be certain to want to know. having acquired such information as the baron was able to impart on short notice, i solemnly placed the two-franc piece in his hand, with the hearty assurance that it was ``pour vous,'' and turned to go. the baron was slightly taken aback, but accepted the situation with a good grace. walking over to a small box fixed in the wall, he dropped laploshka's two francs into the slot over the box was the inscription, ``pour les pauvres de m. le cur<e'>.'' that evening, at the crowded corner by the caf<e'> de la paix, i caught a fleeting glimpse of laploshka. he smiled, slightly raised his hat, and vanished. i never saw him again. after all, the money had been given to the deserving rich, and the soul of laploshka was at peace. the bag ``the major is coming in to tea,'' said mrs. hoopington to her niece. he's just gone round to the stables with his horse. be as bright and lively as you can; the poor man's got a fit of the glooms.'' major pallaby was a victim of circumstances, over which he had no control, and of his temper, over which he had very little. he had taken on the mastership of the pexdale hounds in succession to a highly popular man who had fallen foul of his committee, and the major found himself confronted with the overt hostility of at least half the hunt, while his lack of tact and amiability had done much to alienate the remainder. hence subscriptions were beginning to fall off, foxes grew provokingly scarcer, and wire obtruded itself with increasing frequency. the major could plead reasonable excuse for his fit of the glooms. in ranging herself as a partisan on the side of major pallaby mrs. hoopington had been largely influenced by the fact that she had made up her mind to marry him at an early date. against his notorious bad temper she set his three thousand a year, and his prospective succession to a baronetcy gave a casting vote in his favour. the major's plans on the subject of matrimony were not at present in such an advanced stage as mrs. hoopington's, but he was beginning to find his way over to hoopington hall with a frequency that was already being commented on. ``he had a wretchedly thin field out again yesterday,'' said mrs. hoopington. ``why you didn't bring one or two hunting men down with you, instead of that stupid russian boy, i can't think.'' ``vladimir isn't stupid,'' protested her niece; ``he's one of the most amusing boys i ever met. just compare him for a moment with some of your heavy hunting men---'' ``anyhow, my dear norah, he can't ride.'' ``russians never can; but he shoots.'' ``yes; and what does he shoot? yesterday he brought home a woodpecker in his game-bag.'' ``but he'd shot three pheasants and some rabbits as well.'' ``that's no excuse for including a woodpecker in his game-bag.'' ``foreigners go in for mixed bags more than we do. a grand duke pots a vulture just as seriously as we should stalk a bustard. anyhow, i've explained to vladimir that certain birds are beneath his dignity as a sportsman. and as he's only nineteen, of course, his dignity is a sure thing to appeal to.'' mrs. hoopington sniffed. most people with whom vladimir came in contact found his high spirits infectious, but his present hostess was guaranteed immune against infection of that sort. ``i hear him coming in now,'' she observed. ``i shall go and get ready for tea. we're going to have it here in the hall. entertain the major if he comes in before i'm down, and, above all, be bright.'' norah was dependent on her aunt's good graces for many little things that made life worth living, and she was conscious of a feeling of discomfiture because the russian youth whom she had brought down as a welcome element of change in the country-house routine was not making a good impression. that young gentleman, however, was supremely unconscious of any shortcomings, and burst into the hall, tired, and less sprucely groomed than usual, but distinctly radiant. his game-bag looked comfortably full. ``guess what i have shot,'' he demanded. ``pheasants, wood-pigeons, rabbits,'' hazarded norah. ``no; a large beast; i don't know what you call it in english. brown, with a darkish tail.'' norah changed colour. ``does it live in a tree and eat nuts?'' she asked, hoping that the use of the adjective ``large'' might be an exaggeration. vladimir laughed. ``oh, no; not a _biyelka_.'' ``does it swim and eat fish?'' asked norah, with a fervent prayer in her heart that it might turn out to be an otter. ``no,'' said vladimir, busy with the straps of his game-bag; ``it lives in the woods, and eats rabbits and chickens.'' norah sat down suddenly, and hid her face in her hands. ``merciful heaven!'' she wailed; ``he's shot a fox!'' vladimir looked up at her in consternation. in a torrent of agitated words she tried to explain the horror of the situation. the boy understood nothing, but was thoroughly alarmed. ``hide it, hide it!'' said norah frantically, pointing to the still unopened bag. ``my aunt and the major will be here in a moment. throw it on the top of that chest; they won't see it there.'' vladimir swung the bag with fair aim; but the strap caught in its flight on the outstanding point of an antler fixed in the wall, and the bag, with its terrible burden, remained suspended just above the alcove where tea would presently be laid. at that moment mrs. hoopington and the major entered the hall. ``the major is going to draw our covers tomorrow,'' announced the lady, with a certain heavy satisfaction. ``smithers is confident that we'll be able to show him some sport; he swears he's seen a fox in the nut copse three times this week.'' ``i'm sure i hope so; i hope so,'' said the major moodily. ``i must break this sequence of blank days. one hears so often that a fox has settled down as a tenant for life in certain covers, and then when you go to turn him out there isn't a trace of him. i'm certain a fox was shot or trapped in lady widden's woods the very day before we drew them.'' ``major, if any one tried that game on in my woods they'd get short shrift,'' said mrs. hoopington. norah found her way mechanically to the tea-table and made her fingers frantically busy in rearranging the parsley round the sandwich dish. on one side of her loomed the morose countenance of the major, on the other she was conscious of the seared, miserable eyes of vladimir. and above it all hung that. she dared not raise her eyes above the level of the tea-table, and she almost expected to see a spot of accusing vulpine blood drip down and stain the whiteness of the cloth. her aunt's manner signalled to her the repeated message to ``be bright''; for the present she was fully occupied in keeping her teeth from chattering. ``what did you shoot today?'' asked mrs. hoopington suddenly of the unusually silent vladimir. ``nothing---nothing worth speaking of,'' said the boy. norah's heart, which had stood still for a space, made up for lost time with a most disturbing bound. ``i wish you'd find something that was worth speaking about,'' said the hostess; ``every one seems to have lost their tongues.'' ``when did smithers last see that fox?'' said the major. ``yesterday morning; a fine dog-fox, with a dark brush,'' confided mrs. hoopington. ``aha, we'll have a good gallop after that brush tomorrow,'' said the major, with a transient gleam of good humour. and then gloomy silence settled again round the tea-table, a silence broken only by despondent munchings and the occasional feverish rattle of a teaspoon in its saucer. a diversion was at last afforded by mrs. hoopington's fox-terrier, which had jumped on to a vacant chair, the better to survey the delicacies of the table, and was now sniffing in an upward direction at something apparently more interesting than cold tea-cake. ``what is exciting him?'' asked his mistress, as the dog suddenly broke into short, angry barks, with a running accompaniment of tremulous whines. ``why,'' she continued, ``it's your game-bag, vladimir! what have you got in it?'' ``by gad,'' said the major, who was now standing up; ``there's a pretty warm scent!'' and then a simultaneous idea flashed on himself and mrs. hoopington. their faces flushed to distinct but harmonious tones of purple, and with one accusing voice they screamed, ``you've shot the fox!'' norah tried hastily to palliate vladimir's misdeed in their eyes, but it is doubtful whether they heard her. the major's fury clothed and reclothed itself in words as frantically as a woman up in town for one day's shopping tries on a succession of garments. he reviled and railed at fate and the general scheme of things, he pitied himself with a strong, deep pity too poignant for tears, he condemned every one with whom he had ever come in contact to endless and abnormal punishments. in fact, he conveyed the impression that if a destroying angel had been lent to him for a week it would have had very little time for private study. in the lulls of his outcry could be heard the querulous monotone of mrs. hoopington and the sharp staccato barking of the fox-terrier. vladimir, who did not understand a tithe of what was being said, sat fondling a cigarette and repeating under his breath from time to time a vigorous english adjective which he had long ago taken affectionately into his vocabulary. his mind strayed back to the youth in the old russian folk-tale who shot an enchanted bird with dramatic results. meanwhile, the major, roaming round the hall like an imprisoned cyclone, had caught sight of and joyfully pounced on the telephone apparatus, and lost no time in ringing up the hunt secretary and announcing his resignation of the mastership. a servant had by this time brought his horse round to the door, and in a few seconds mrs. hoopington's shrill monotone had the field to itself. but after the major's display her best efforts at vocal violence missed their full effect; it was as though one had come straight out from a wagner opera into a rather tame thunderstorm. realizing, perhaps, that her tirades were something of an anticlimax, mrs. hoopington broke suddenly into some rather necessary tears and marched out of the room, leaving behind her a silence almost as terrible as the turmoil which had preceded it. ``what shall i do with---_that?_'' asked vladimir at last. ``bury it,'' said norah. ``just plain burial?'' said vladimir, rather relieved. he had almost expected that some of the local clergy would have insisted on being present, or that a salute might have to be fired over the grave. and thus it came to pass that in the dusk of a november evening the russian boy, murmuring a few of the prayers of his church for luck, gave hasty but decent burial to a large polecat under the lilac trees at hoopington. the strategist mrs. jallatt's young people's parties were severely exclusive; it came cheaper that way, because you could ask fewer to them. mrs. jallatt didn't study cheapness, but somehow she generally attained it. ``there'll be about ten girls,'' speculated rollo, as he drove to the function, ``and i suppose four fellows, unless the wrotsleys bring their cousin, which heaven forbid. that would mean jack and me against three of them.'' rollo and the wrotsley brethren had maintained an undying feud almost from nursery days. they only met now and then in the holidays, and the meeting was usually tragic for whichever happened to have the fewest backers on hand. rollo was counting tonight on the presence of a devoted and muscular partisan to hold an even balance. as he arrived he heard his prospective champion's sister apologizing to the hostess for the unavoidable absence of her brother; a moment later he noted that the wrotsleys had brought their cousin. two against three would have been exciting and possibly unpleasant; one against three promised to be about as amusing as a visit to a dentist. rollo ordered his carriage for as early as was decently possible, and faced the company with a smile that he imagined the better sort of aristocrat would have worn when mounting to the guillotine. ``so glad you were able to come,'' said the elder wrotsley heartily. ``now, you children will like to play games, i suppose,'' said mrs. jallatt, by way of giving things a start, and as they were too well-bred to contradict her there only remained the question of what they were to play at. ``i know of a good game,'' said the elder wrotsley innocently. ``the fellows leave the room and think of a word, then they come back again, and the girls have to find out what the word is.'' rollo knew that game. he would have suggested it himself if his faction had been in the majority. ``it doesn't promise to be very exciting,'' sniffed the superior dolores sneep as the boys filed out of the room. rollo thought differently. he trusted to providence that wrotsley had nothing worse than knotted handkerchiefs at his disposal. the word-choosers locked themselves in the library to ensure that their deliberations should not be interrupted. providence turned out to be not even decently neutral; on a rack on the library wall were a dog-whip and a whalebone riding switch. rollo thought it criminal negligence to leave such weapons of precision lying about. he was given a choice of evils, and chose the dog-whip; the next minute or so he spent in wondering how he could have made such a stupid selection. then they went back to the languidly expectant females. ``the word's `camel,' '' announced the wrotsley cousin blunderingly. ``you stupid!'' screamed the girls, ``we've got to _guess_ the word. now you'll have to go back and think of another.'' ``not for worlds,'' said rollo; ``i mean, the word isn't really camel; we were rotting. pretend it's dromedary!'' he whispered to the others. ``i heard them say `dromedary'! i heard them. i don't care what you say; i heard them,'' squealed the odious dolores. ``with ears as long as hers one would hear anything,'' thought rollo savagely. ``we shall have to go back, i suppose,'' said the elder wrotsley resignedly. the conclave locked itself once more into the library. ``look here, i'm not going through that dog-whip business again,'' protested rollo. ``certainly not, dear,'' said the elder wrotsley; ``we'll try the whalebone switch this time, and then you'll know which hurts most. it's only by personal experience that one finds out these things.'' it was swiftly borne in upon rollo that his earlier selection of the dog-whip had been a really sound one. the conclave gave his under-lip time to steady itself while it debated the choice of the necessary word. ``mustang'' was no good, as half the girls wouldn't know what it meant; finally ``quagga'' was pitched on. ``you must come and sit down over here,'' chorused the investigating committee on their return; but rollo was obdurate in insisting that the questioned person always stood up. on the whole, it was a relief when the game ended and supper was announced. mrs. jallatt did not stint her young guests, but the more expensive delicacies of her supper-table were never unnecessarily duplicated, and it was usually good policy to take what you wanted while it was still there. on this occasion she had provided sixteen peaches to ``go round'' among fourteen children; it was really not her fault that the two wrotsleys and their cousin, foreseeing the long foodless drive home, had each quietly pocketed an extra peach, but it was distinctly trying for dolores and the fat and good-natured agnes blaik to be left with one peach between them. ``i suppose we had better halve it,'' said dolores sourly. but agnes was fat first and good-natured afterwards; those were her guiding principles in life. she was profuse in her sympathy for dolores, but she hastily devoured the peach, explaining that it would spoil it to divide it; the juice ran out so. ``now what would you all like to do?'' demanded mrs. jallatt by way of a diversion. ``the professional conjurer whom i had engaged has failed me at the last moment. can any of you recite?'' there were symptoms of a general panic. dolores was known to recite ``locksley hall'' on the least provocation. there had been occasions when her opening line, ``comrades, leave me here a little,'' had been taken as a literal injunction by a large section of her hearers. there was a murmur of relief when rollo hastily declared that he could do a few conjuring tricks. he had never done one in his life, but those two visits to the library had goaded him to unusual recklessness. ``you've seen conjuring chaps take coins and cards out of people,'' he announced; ``well, i'm going to take more interesting things out of some of you. mice, for instance.'' ``not mice!'' a shrill protest rose, as he had foreseen, from the majority of his audience. ``well, fruit, then.'' the amended proposal was received with approval. agnes positively beamed. without more ado rollo made straight for his trio of enemies, plunged his hand successively into their breast-pockets, and produced three peaches. there was no applause, but no amount of hand-clapping would have given the performer as much pleasure as the silence which greeted his coup. ``of course, we were in the know,'' said the wrotsley cousin lamely. ``that's done it,'' chuckled rollo to himself. ``if they had been confederates they would have sworn they knew nothing about it,'' said dolores, with piercing conviction. ``do you know any more tricks?'' asked mrs. jallatt hurriedly. rollo did not. he hinted that he might have changed the three peaches into something else, but agnes had already converted one into girl-food, so nothing more could be done in that direction. ``i know a game,'' said the elder wrotsley heavily, ``where the fellows go out of the room, and think of some character in history; then they come back and act him, and the girls have to guess who it's meant for.'' ``i'm afraid i must be going,'' said rollo to his hostess. ``your carriage won't be here for another twenty minutes,'' said mrs. jallatt. ``it's such a fine evening i think i'll walk and meet it.'' ``it's raining rather steadily at present. you've just time to play that historical game.'' ``we haven't heard dolores recite,'' said rollo desperately; as soon as he had said it he realized his mistake. confronted with the alternative of ``locksley hall,'' public opinion declared unanimously for the history game. rollo played his last card. in an undertone meant apparently for the wrotsley boy, but carefully pitched to reach agnes, he observed: ``all right, old man; we'll go and finish those chocolates we left in the library.'' ``i think it's only fair that the girls should take their turn in going out,'' exclaimed agnes briskly. she was great on fairness. ``nonsense,'' said the others; ``there are too many of us.'' ``well, four of us can go. i'll be one of them.'' and agnes darted off towards the library, followed by three less eager damsels. rollo sank into a chair and smiled ever so faintly at the wrotsleys, just a momentary baring of the teeth; an otter, escaping from the fangs of the hounds into the safety of a deep pool, might have given a similar demonstration of its feelings. from the library came the sound of moving furniture. agnes was leaving nothing unturned in her quest for the mythical chocolates. and then came a more blessed sound, wheels crunching wet gravel. ``it has been a most enjoyable evening,'' said rollo to his hostess. cross currents vanessa pennington had a husband who was poor, with few extenuating circumstances, and an admirer who, though comfortably rich, was cumbered with a sense of honour. his wealth made him welcome in vanessa's eyes, but his code of what was right impelled him to go away and forget her, or at the most to think of her in the intervals of doing a great many other things. and although alaric clyde loved vanessa, and thought he should always go on loving her, he gradually and unconsciously allowed himself to be wooed and won by a more alluring mistress; he fancied that his continued shunning of the haunts of men was a self-imposed exile, but his heart was caught in the spell of the wilderness, and the wilderness was kind and beautiful to him. when one is young and strong and unfettered the wild earth can be very kind and very beautiful. witness the legion of men who were once young and unfettered and now eat out their souls in dustbins, because, having erstwhile known and loved the wilderness, they broke from her thrall and turned aside into beaten paths. in the high waste places of the world clyde roamed and hunted and dreamed, death-dealing and gracious as some god of hellas, moving with his horses and servants and four-footed camp followers from one dwelling ground to another, a welcome guest among wild primitive village folk and nomads, a friend and slayer of the fleet, shy beasts around him. by the shores of misty upland lakes he shot the wild fowl that had winged their way to him across half the old world; beyond bokhara he watched the wild aryan horsemen at their gambols; watched, too, in some dim-lit tea-house one of those beautiful uncouth dances that one can never wholly forget; or, making a wide cast down to the valley of the tigris, swam and rolled in its snow-cooled racing waters. vanessa, meanwhile, in a bayswater back street, was making out the weekly laundry list, attending bargain sales, and, in her more adventurous moments, trying new ways of cooking whiting. occasionally she went to bridge parties, where, if the play was not illuminating, at least one learned a great deal about the private life of some of the royal and imperial houses. vanessa, in a way, was glad that clyde had done the proper thing. she had a strong natural bias towards respectability, though she would have preferred to have been respectable in smarter surroundings, where her example would have done more good. to be beyond reproach was one thing, but it would have been nicer to have been nearer to the park. and then of a sudden her regard for respectability and clyde's sense of what was right were thrown on the scrapheap of unnecessary things. they had been useful and highly important in their time, but the death of vanessa's husband made them of no immediate moment. the news of the altered condition of things followed clyde with leisurely persistence from one place of call to another, and at last ran him to a standstill somewhere in the orenburg steppe. he would have found it exceedingly difficult to analyze his feelings on receipt of the tidings. the fates had unexpectedly (and perhaps just a little officiously) removed an obstacle from his path. he supposed he was overjoyed, but he missed the feeling of elation which he had experienced some four months ago when he had bagged a snow-leopard with a lucky shot after a day's fruitless stalking. of course he would go back and ask vanessa to marry him, but he was determined on enforcing a condition: on no account would he desert his newer love. vanessa would have to agree to come out into the wilderness with him. the lady hailed the return of her lover with even more relief than had been occasioned by his departure. the death of john pennington had left his widow in circumstances which were more straitened than ever, and the park had receded even from her note-paper, where it had long been retained as a courtesy title on the principle that addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts. certainly she was more independent now than heretofore, but independence, which means so much to many women, was of little account to vanessa, who came under the heading of the mere female. she made little ado about accepting clyde's condition, and announced herself ready to follow him to the end of the world; as the world was round she nourished a complacent idea that in the ordinary course of things one would find oneself in the neighbourhood of hyde park corner sooner or later no matter how far afield one wandered. east of budapest her complacency began to filter away, and when she saw her husband treating the black sea with a familiarity which she had never been able to assume towards the english channel, misgivings began to crowd in upon her. adventures which would have presented an amusing and enticing aspect to a better-bred woman aroused in vanessa only the twin sensations of fright and discomfort. flies bit her, and she was persuaded that it was only sheer boredom that prevented camels from doing the same. clyde did his best, and a very good best it was, to infuse something of the banquet into their prolonged desert picnics, but even snow-cooled heidsieck lost its flavour when you were convinced that the dusky cupbearer who served it with such reverent elegance was only waiting a convenient opportunity to cut your throat. it was useless for clyde to give yussuf a character for devotion such as is rarely found in any western servant. vanessa was well enough educated to know that all dusky-skinned people take human life as unconcernedly as bayswater folk take singing lessons. and with a growing irritation and querulousness on her part came a further disenchantment, born of the inability of husband and wife. to find a common ground of interest. the habits and migrations of the sand grouse, the folklore and customs of tartars and turkomans, the points of a cossack pony---these were matters which evoked only a bored indifference in vanessa. on the other hand, clyde was not thrilled on being informed that the queen of spain detested mauve, or that a certain royal duchess, for whose tastes he was never likely to be called on to cater, nursed a violent but perfectly respectable passion for beef olives. vanessa began to arrive at the conclusion that a husband who added a roving disposition to a settled income was a mixed blessing. it was one thing to go to the end of the world; it was quite another thing to make oneself at home there. even respectability seemed to lose some of its virtue when one practised it in a tent. bored and disillusioned with the drift of her new life, vanessa was undisguisedly glad when distraction offered itself in the person of mr. dobrinton, a chance acquaintance whom they had first run against in the primitive hostelry of a benighted caucasian town. dobrinton was elaborately british, in deference perhaps to the memory of his mother, who was said to have derived part of her origin from an english governess who had come to lemberg a long way back in the last century. if you had called him dobrinski when off his guard he would probably have responded readily enough; holding, no doubt, that the end crowns all, he had taken a slight liberty with the family patronymic. to look at, mr. dobrinton was not a very attractive specimen of masculine humanity, but in vanessa's eyes he was a link with that civilization which clyde seemed so ready to ignore and forgo. he could sing ``yip-i-addy'' and spoke of several duchesses as if he knew them---in his more inspired moments almost as if they knew him. he even pointed out blemishes in the cuisine or cellar departments of some of the more august london restaurants, a species of higher criticism which was listened to by vanessa in awestricken admiration. and, above all, he sympathized, at first discreetly, afterwards with more latitude, with her fretful discontent at clyde's nomadic instincts. business connected with oil-wells had brought dobrinton to the neighbourhood of baku; the pleasure of appealing to an appreciative female audience induced him to deflect his return journey so as to coincide a good deal with his new acquaintances' line of march. and while clyde trafficked with persian horse-dealers or hunted the wild grey pigs in their lairs and added to his notes on central asian game-fowl, dobrinton and the lady discussed the ethics of desert respectability from points of view that showed a daily tendency to converge. and one evening clyde dined alone, reading between the courses a long letter from vanessa, justifying her action in flitting to more civilized lands with a more congenial companion. it was distinctly evil luck for vanessa, who really was thoroughly respectable at heart, that she and her lover should run into the hands of kurdish brigands on the first day of their flight. to be mewed up in a squalid kurdish village in close companionship with a man who was only your husband by adoption, and to have the attention of all europe drawn to your plight, was about the least respectable thing that could happen. and there were international complications, which made things worse. ``english lady and her husband, of foreign nationality, held by kurdish brigands who demand ransom'' had been the report of the nearest consul. although dobrinton was british at heart, the other portions of him belonged to the habsburgs, and though the habsburgs took no great pride or pleasure in this particular unit of their wide and varied possessions, and would gladly have exchanged him for some interesting bird or mammal for the schoenbrunn park, the code of international dignity demanded that they should display a decent solicitude for his restoration. and while the foreign offices of the two countries were taking the usual steps to secure the release of their respective subjects a further horrible complication ensued. clyde, following on the track of the fugitives, not with any special desire to overtake them, but with a dim feeling that it was expected of him, fell into the hands of the same community of brigands. diplomacy, while anxious to do its best for a lady in misfortune, showed signs of becoming restive at this expansion of its task; as a frivolous young gentleman in downing street remarked, ``any husband of mrs. dobrinton's we shall be glad to extricate, but let us know how many there are of them.'' for a woman who valued respectability vanessa really had no luck. meanwhile the situation of the captives was not free from embarrassment. when clyde explained to the kurdish headmen the nature of his relationship with the runaway couple they were gravely sympathetic, but vetoed any idea of summary vengeance, since the habsburgs would be sure to insist on the delivery of dobrinton alive, and in a reasonably undamaged condition. they did not object to clyde administering a beating to his rival for half an hour every monday and thursday, but dobrinton turned such a sickly green when he heard of this arrangement that the chief was obliged to withdraw the concession. and so, in the cramped quarters of a mountain hut, the ill-assorted trio watched the insufferable hours crawl slowly by. dobrinton was too frightened to be conversational, vanessa was too mortified to open her lips, and clyde was moodily silent. the little lemberg _n<e'>gociant_ plucked up heart once to give a quavering rendering of ``yip-i-addy,'' but when he reached the statement ``home was never like this'' vanessa tearfully begged him to stop. and silence fastened itself with growing insistence on the three captives who were so tragically herded together; thrice a day they drew near to one another to swallow the meal that had been prepared for them, like desert beasts meeting in mute suspended hostility at the drinking-pool, and then drew back to resume the vigil of waiting. clyde was less carefully watched than the others. ``jealousy will keep him to the woman's side,'' thought his kurdish captors. they did not know that his wilder, truer love was calling to him with a hundred voices from beyond the village bounds. and one evening, finding that he was not getting the attention to which he was entitled, clyde slipped away down the mountain side and resumed his study of central asian game-fowl. the remaining captives were guarded henceforth with greater rigour, but dobrinton at any rate scarcely regretted clyde's departure. the long arm, or perhaps one might better say the long purse, of diplomacy at last effected the release of the prisoners, but the habsburgs were never to enjoy the guerdon of their outlay. on the quay of the little black sea port, where the rescued pair came once more into contact with civilization, dobrinton was bitten by a dog which was assumed to be mad, though it may only have been indiscriminating. the victim did not wait for symptoms of rabies to declare themselves, but died forthwith of fright, and vanessa made the homeward journey alone, conscious somehow of a sense of slightly restored respectability. clyde, in the intervals of correcting the proofs of his book on the game-fowl of central asia, found time to press a divorce suit through the courts, and as soon as possible hied him away to the congenial solitudes of the gobi desert to collect material for a work on the fauna of that region. vanessa, by virtue perhaps of her earlier intimacy with the cooking rites of the whiting, obtained a place on the kitchen staff of a west end club. it was not brilliant, but at least it was within two minutes of the park. the baker's dozen _characters:_ major richard dumbarton mrs. carewe mrs. paly-paget _scene_---deck of eastward-bound steamer. major dumbarton seated on deck-chair, another chair by his side, with the name ``mrs. carewe'' painted on it, a third near by. (enter, r., mrs. carewe, seats herself leisurely in her deck-chair, the major affecting to ignore her presence.) _major_ (turning suddenly): emily! after all these years! this is fate! _em._: fate! nothing of the sort; it's only me. you men are always such fatalists. i deferred my departure three whole weeks, in order to come out in the same boat that i saw you were travelling by. i bribed the steward to put our chairs side by side in an unfrequented corner, and i took enormous pains to be looking particularly attractive this morning, and then you say, ``this is fate.'' i am looking particularly attractive, am i not? _maj._: more than ever. time has only added a ripeness to your charms. _em._: i knew you'd put it exactly in those words. the phraseology of love-making is awfully limited, isn't it? after all, the chief charm is in the fact of being made love to. you are making love to me, aren't you? _maj._: emily dearest, i had already begun making advances, even before you sat down here. i also bribed the steward to put our seats together in a secluded corner. ``you may consider it done, sir,'' was his reply. that was immediately after breakfast. _em._: how like a man to have his breakfast first. i attended to the seat business as soon as i left my cabin. _maj._: don't be unreasonable. it was only at breakfast that i discovered your blessed presence on the boat. i paid violent and unusual attention to a flapper all through the meal in order to make you jealous. she's probably in her cabin writing reams about me to a fellow-flapper at this very moment. _em._: you needn't have taken all that trouble to make me jealous, dickie. you did that years ago, when you married another woman. _maj._: well, you had gone and married another man---a widower, too, at that. _em._: well, there's no particular harm in marrying a widower, i suppose. i'm ready to do it again, if i meet a really nice one. _maj._: look here, emily, it's not fair to go at that rate. you're a lap ahead of me the whole time. it's my place to propose to you; all you've got to do is to say ``yes.'' _em._: well, i've practically said it already, so we needn't dawdle over that part. _maj._: oh, well-- (they look at each other, then suddenly embrace with considerable energy.) _maj._: we dead-heated it that time. (suddenly jumping to his feet.) oh, d----i'd forgotten! _em._: forgotten what? _maj._: the children. i ought to have told you. do you mind children? _em._: not in moderate quantities. how many have you got? _maj._ (counting hurriedly on his fingers): five. _em._: five! _maj._ (anxiously): is that too many? _em._: it's rather a number. the worst of it is, i've some myself. _maj._: many? _em._: eight. _maj._: eight in six years! oh, emily! _em._: only four were my own. the other four were by my husband's first marriage. still, that practically makes eight. _maj._: and eight and five make thirteen. we can't start our married life with thirteen children; it would be most unlucky. (walks up and down in agitation.) some way must be found out of this. if we could only bring them down to twelve. thirteen is so horribly unlucky. _em._: isn't there some way by which we could part with one or two? don't the french want more children? i've often seen articles about it in the _figaro_. _maj._: i fancy they want french children. mine don't even speak french. _em._: there's always a chance that one of them might turn out depraved and vicious, and then you could disown him. i've heard of that being done. _maj._: but, good gracious, you've got to educate him first. you can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school. _em._: why couldn't he be naturally depraved? lots of boys are. _maj._: only when they inherit it from depraved parents. you don't suppose there's any depravity in me, do you? _em._: it sometimes skips a generation, you know. weren't any of your family bad? _maj._: there was an aunt who was never spoken of. _em._: there you are! _maj._: but one can't build too much on that. in mid-victorian days they labelled all sorts of things as unspeakable that we should speak about quite tolerantly. i daresay this particular aunt had only married a unitarian, or rode to hounds on both sides of her horse, or something of that sort. anyhow, we can't wait indefinitely for one of the children to take after a doubtfully depraved great aunt. something else must be thought of. _em._: don't people ever adopt children from other families? _maj._: i've heard of it being done by childless couples, and those sort of people-- _em._: hush! some one's coming. who is it? _maj._: mrs. paly-paget. _em._: the very person! _maj._: what, to adopt a child? hasn't she got any? _em._: only one miserable hen-baby. _maj._: let's sound her on the subject. (enter mrs. paly-paget, r.) ah, good morning, mrs. paly-paget. i was just wondering at breakfast where did we meet last? _mrs. p.-p._: at the criterion, wasn't it? (drops into vacant chair.) _maj._: at the criterion, of course. _mrs. p.-p._: i was dining with lord and lady slugford. charming people, but so mean. they took us afterwards to the velodrome, to see some dancer interpreting mendelssohn's ``songs without clothes.'' we were all packed up in a little box near the roof, and you may imagine how hot it was. it was like a turkish bath. and, of course, one couldn't see anything. _maj._: then it was not like a turkish bath. _mrs. p.-p._: major! _em._: we were just talking of you when you joined us. _mrs. p.-p._: really! nothing very dreadful, i hope. _em._: oh, dear, no! it's too early on the voyage for that sort of thing. we were feeling rather sorry for you. _mrs. p.-p._: sorry for me? whatever for? _maj._: your childless hearth and all that, you know. no little pattering feet. _mrs. p.-p._: major! how dare you? i've got my little girl, i suppose you know. her feet can patter as well as other childrens. _maj._: only one pair of feet. _mrs. p.-p._: certainly. my child isn't a centipede. considering the way they move us about in those horrid jungle stations, without a decent bungalow to set one's foot in, i consider i've got a hearthless child, rather than a childless hearth. thank you for your sympathy all the same. i daresay it was well meant. impertinence often is. _em._: dear mrs. paly-paget, we were only feeling sorry for your sweet little girl when she grows older, you know. no little brothers and sisters to play with. _mrs. p.-p._: mrs. carewe, this conversation strikes me as being indelicate, to say the least of it. i've only been married two and a half years, and my family is naturally a small one. _maj._: isn't it rather an exaggeration to talk of one little female child as a family? a family suggests numbers. _mrs. p.-p._: really, major, your language is extraordinary. i daresay i've only got a little female child, as you call it, at present-- _maj._: oh, it won't change into a boy later on, if that's what you're counting on. take our word for it; we've had so much more experience in these affairs than you have. once a female, always a female. nature is not infallible, but she always abides by her mistakes. _mrs. p.-p._ (rising): major dumbarton, these boats are uncomfortably small, but i trust we shall find ample accommodation for avoiding each other's society during the rest of the voyage. the same wish applies to you, mrs. carewe. (exit mrs. paly-paget, l.) _maj._: what an unnatural mother! (sinks into chair.) _em._: i wouldn't trust a child with any one who had a temper like hers. oh, dickie, why did you go and have such a large family? you always said you wanted me to be the mother of your children. _maj._: i wasn't going to wait while you were founding and fostering dynasties in other directions. why you couldn't be content to have children of your own, without collecting them like batches of postage stamps i can't think. the idea of marrying a man with four children! _em._: well, you're asking me to marry one with five. _maj._: five! (springing to his feet.) did i say five? _em._: you certainly said five. _maj._: oh, emily, supposing i've miscounted them! listen now, keep count with me. richard---that's after me, of course. _em._: one. _maj._: albert-victor---that must have been in coronation year. _em._: two! _maj._: maud. she's called after-- _em._: never mind who she's called after. three! _maj._: and gerald. _em._: four! _maj._: that's the lot. _em._: are you sure? _maj._: i swear that's the lot. i must have counted albert-victor as two. _em._: richard! _maj._: emily! (they embrace.) the mouse theodoric voler had been brought up, from infancy to the confines of middle age, by a fond mother whose chief solicitude had been to keep him screened from what she called the coarser realities of life. when she died she left theodoric alone in a world that was as real as ever, and a good deal coarser than he considered it had any need to be. to a man of his temperament and upbringing even a simple railway journey was crammed with petty annoyances and minor discords, and as he settled himself down in a second-class compartment one september morning he was conscious of ruffled feelings and general mental discomposure. he had been staying at a country vicarage, the inmates of which had been certainly neither brutal nor bacchanalian, but their supervision of the domestic establishment had been of that lax order which invites disaster. the pony carriage that was to take him to the station had never been properly ordered, and when the moment for his departure drew near the handyman who should have produced the required article was nowhere to be found. in this emergency theodoric, to his mute but very intense disgust, found himself obliged to collaborate with the vicar's daughter in the task of harnessing the pony, which necessitated groping about in an ill-lighted outhouse called a stable, and smelling very like one---except in patches where it smelt of mice. without being actually afraid of mice, theodoric classed them among the coarser incidents of life, and considered that providence, with a little exercise of moral courage, might long ago have recognized that they were not indispensable, and have withdrawn them from circulation. as the train glided out of the station theodoric's nervous imagination accused himself of exhaling a weak odour of stableyard, and possibly of displaying a mouldy straw or two on his usually well-brushed garments. fortunately the only other occupant of the compartment, a lady of about the same age as himself, seemed inclined for slumber rather than scrutiny; the train was not due to stop till the terminus was reached, in about an hour's time, and the carriage was of the old-fashioned sort, that held no communication with a corridor, therefore no further travelling companions were likely to intrude on theodoric's semi-privacy. and yet the train had scarcely attained its normal speed before he became reluctantly but vividly aware that he was not alone with the slumbering lady; he was not even alone in his own clothes. a warm, creeping movement over his flesh betrayed the unwelcome and highly resented presence, unseen but poignant, of a strayed mouse, that had evidently dashed into its present retreat during the episode of the pony harnessing. furtive stamps and shakes and wildly directed pinches failed to dislodge the intruder, whose motto, indeed, seemed to be excelsior; and the lawful occupant of the clothes lay back against the cushions and endeavoured rapidly to evolve some means for putting an end to the dual ownership. it was unthinkable that he should continue for the space of a whole hour in the horrible position of a rowton house for vagrant mice (already his imagination had at least doubled the numbers of the alien invasion). on the other hand, nothing less drastic than partial disrobing would ease him of his tormentor, and to undress in the presence of a lady, even for so laudable a purpose, was an idea that made his eartips tingle in a blush of abject shame. he had never been able to bring himself even to the mild exposure of open-work socks in the presence of the fair sex. and yet---the lady in this case was to all appearances soundly and securely asleep; the mouse, on the other hand, seemed to be trying to crowd a wanderjahr into a few strenuous minutes. if there is any truth in the theory of transmigration, this particular mouse must certainly have been in a former state a member of the alpine club. sometimes in its eagerness it lost its footing and slipped for half an inch or so; and then, in fright, or more probably temper, it bit. theodoric was goaded into the most audacious undertaking of his life. crimsoning to the hue of a beetroot and keeping an agonized watch on his slumbering fellow-traveller, he swiftly and noiselessly secured the ends of his railway-rug to the racks on either side of the carriage, so that a substantial curtain hung athwart the compartment. in the narrow dressing-room that he had thus improvised he proceeded with violent haste to extricate himself partially and the mouse entirely from the surrounding casings of tweed and half-wool. as the unravelled mouse gave a wild leap to the floor, the rug, slipping its fastening at either end, also came down with a heart-curdling flop, and almost simultaneously the awakened sleeper opened her eyes. with a movement almost quicker than the mouse's, theodoric pounced on the rug, and hauled its ample folds chin-high over his dismantled person as he collapsed into the further corner of the carriage. the blood raced and beat in the veins of his neck and forehead, while he waited dumbly for the communication-cord to be pulled. the lady, however, contented herself with a silent stare at her strangely muffled companion. how much had she seen, theodoric queried to himself, and in any case what on earth must she think of his present posture? ``i think i have caught a chill,'' he ventured desperately. ``really, i'm sorry,'' she replied. ``i was just going to ask you if you would open this window.'' ``i fancy it's malaria,' he added, his teeth chattering slightly, as much from fright as from a desire to support his theory. ``i've got some brandy in my hold-all, if you'll kindly reach it down for me,'' said his companion. ``not for worlds---i mean, i never take anything for it,'' be assured her earnestly. ``i suppose you caught it in the tropics?'' theodoric, whose acquaintance with the tropics was limited to an annual present of a chest of tea from an uncle in ceylon, felt that even the malaria was slipping from him. would it be possible, he wondered, to disclose the real state of affairs to her in small instalments? ``are you afraid of mice?'' he ventured, growing, if possible, more scarlet in the face. ``not unless they came in quantities, like those that ate up bishop hatto. why do you ask?'' ``i had one crawling inside my clothes just now,'' said theodoric in a voice that hardly seemed his own. ``it was a most awkward situation.'' ``it must have been, if you wear your clothes at all tight,'' she observed; ``but mice have strange ideas of comfort.'' ``i had to got rid of it while you were asleep,'' he continued; then, with a gulp, he added, ``it was getting rid of it that brought me to---to this.'' ``surely leaving off one small mouse wouldn't bring on a chill,'' she exclaimed, with a levity that theodoric accounted abominable. evidently she had detected something of his predicament, and was enjoying his confusion. all the blood in his body seemed to have mobilized in one concentrated blush, and an agony of abasement, worse than a myriad mice, crept up and down over his soul. and then, as reflection began to assert itself, sheer terror took the place of humiliation. with every minute that passed the train was rushing nearer to the crowded and bustling terminus where dozens of prying eyes would be exchanged for the one paralyzing pair that watched him from the further corner of the carriage. there was one slender despairing chance, which the next few minutes must decide. his fellow-traveller might relapse into a blessed slumber. but as the minutes throbbed by that chance ebbed away. the furtive glance which theodoric stole at her from time to time disclosed only an unwinking wakefulness. ``i think we must be getting near now,'' she presently observed. theodoric had already noted with growing terror the recurring stacks of small, ugly dwellings that heralded the journey's end. the words acted as a signal. like a hunted beast breaking cover and dashing madly towards some other haven of momentary safety he threw aside his rug, and struggled frantically into his dishevelled garments. he was conscious of dull suburban stations racing past the window, of a choking, hammering sensation in his throat and heart, and of an icy silence in that corner towards which he dared not look. then as he sank back in his seat, clothed and almost delirious, the train slowed down to a final crawl, and the woman spoke. ``would you be so kind,'' she asked, ``as to get me a porter to put me into a cab? it's a shame to trouble you when you're feeling unwell, but being blind makes one so helpless at a railway station.'' [end of h.h.munro's reginald in russia] . 1835 to f- by edgar allan poe beloved! amid the earnest woes that crowd around my earthly path (drear path, alas! where grows not even one lonely rose) my soul at least a solace hath in dreams of thee, and therein knows an eden of bland repose. and thus thy memory is to me like some enchanted far-off isle in some tumultuous sea some ocean throbbing far and free with stormsbut where meanwhile serenest skies continually just o'er that one bright island smile. -the end. 1848 to helen by edgar allan poe i saw thee onceonce onlyyears ago: i must not say how manybut not many. it was a july midnight; and from out a full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, there fell a silvery-silken veil of light, with quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, upon the upturned faces of a thousand roses that grew in an enchanted garden, where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses that gave out, in return for the love-light, their odorous souls in an ecstatic death fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses that smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted by thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. clad all in white, upon a violet bank i saw thee half reclining; while the moon fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses, and on thine own, upturn'dalas, in sorrow! was it not fate, that, on this july midnight was it not fate, (whose name is also sorrow,) that bade me pause before that garden-gate, to breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? no footstep stirred: the hated world an slept, save only thee and me. (oh, heaven!oh, god! how my heart beats in coupling those two words!) save only thee and me. i pausedi looked and in an instant all things disappeared. (ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) the pearly lustre of the moon went out: the mossy banks and the meandering paths, the happy flowers and the repining trees, were seen no more: the very roses' odors died in the arms of the adoring airs. allall expired save theesave less than thou: save only the divine light in thine eyes save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. i saw but themthey were the world to me! i saw but themsaw only them for hours, saw only them until the moon went down. what wild heart-histories seemed to he enwritten upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! how dark a woe, yet how sublime a hope! how silently serene a sea of pride! how daring an ambition; yet how deep how fathomless a capacity for love! but now, at length, dear dian sank from sight, into a western couch of thunder-cloud; and thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees didst glide away. only thine eyes remained; they would not gothey never yet have gone; lighting my lonely pathway home that night, they have not left me (as my hopes have) since; they follow methey lead me through the years. they are my ministersyet i their slave. their office is to illumine and enkindle my duty, to be saved by their bright light, and purified in their electric fire, and sanctified in their elysian fire. they fill my soul with beauty (which is hope), and are far up in heaventhe stars i kneel to in the sad, silent watches of my night; while even in the meridian glare of day i see them stilltwo sweetly scintillant venuses, unextinguished by the sun! -the end. **the project gutenberg etext of catriona, by r. l. stevenson** catriona is a sequel to kidnapped #25 in our series by robert louis stevenson copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. catriona by robert louis stevenson july, 1996 [etext #589] **the project gutenberg etext of catriona, by r. l. stevenson** *****this file should be named ctrna10.txt or ctrna10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, ctrna11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, ctrna10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / benedictine university" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / benedictine university". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* catriona (a sequel to "kidnapped") by robert louis stevenson scanned and proofed by david price ccx074@coventry.ac.uk catriona dedication. to charles baxter, writer to the signet. my dear charles, it is the fate of sequels to disappoint those who have waited for them; and my david, having been left to kick his heels for more than a lustre in the british linen company's office, must expect his late reappearance to be greeted with hoots, if not with missiles. yet, when i remember the days of our explorations, i am not without hope. there should be left in our native city some seed of the elect; some longlegged, hot-headed youth must repeat to-day our dreams and wanderings of so many years ago; he will relish the pleasure, which should have been ours, to follow among named streets and numbered houses the country walks of david balfour, to identify dean, and silvermills, and broughton, and hope park, and pilrig, and poor old lochend if it still be standing, and the figgate whins if there be any of them left; or to push (on a long holiday) so far afield as gillane or the bass. so, perhaps, his eye shall be opened to behold the series of the generations, and he shall weigh with surprise his momentous and nugatory gift of life. you are still as when first i saw, as when i last addressed you in the venerable city which i must always think of as my home. and i have come so far; and the sights and thoughts of my youth pursue me; and i see like a vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and the whole stream of lives flowing down there far in the north, with the sound of laughter and tears, to cast me out in the end, as by a sudden freshet, on these ultimate islands. and i admire and bow my head before the romance of destiny. r. l. s. vailima, upolu, samoa, 1892. catriona part i the lord advocate chapter i a beggar on horseback the 25th day of august, 1751, about two in the afternoon, i, david balfour, came forth of the british linen company, a porter attending me with a bag of money, and some of the chief of these merchants bowing me from their doors. two days before, and even so late as yestermorning, i was like a beggar-man by the wayside, clad in rags, brought down to my last shillings, my companion a condemned traitor, a price set on my own head for a crime with the news of which the country rang. to-day i was served heir to my position in life, a landed laird, a bank porter by me carrying my gold, recommendations in my pocket, and (in the words of the saying) the ball directly at my foot. there were two circumstances that served me as ballast to so much sail. the first was the very difficult and deadly business i had still to handle; the second, the place that i was in. the tall, black city, and the numbers and movement and noise of so many folk, made a new world for me, after the moorland braes, the sea-sands and the still countrysides that i had frequented up to then. the throng of the citizens in particular abashed me. rankeillor's son was short and small in the girth; his clothes scarce held on me; and it was plain i was ill qualified to strut in the front of a bank-porter. it was plain, if i did so, i should but set folk laughing, and (what was worse in my case) set them asking questions. so that i behooved to come by some clothes of my own, and in the meanwhile to walk by the porter's side, and put my hand on his arm as though we were a pair of friends. at a merchant's in the luckenbooths i had myself fitted out: none too fine, for i had no idea to appear like a beggar on horseback; but comely and responsible, so that servants should respect me. thence to an armourer's, where i got a plain sword, to suit with my degree in life. i felt safer with the weapon, though (for one so ignorant of defence) it might be called an added danger. the porter, who was naturally a man of some experience, judged my accoutrement to be well chosen. "naething kenspeckle," said he; "plain, dacent claes. as for the rapier, nae doubt it sits wi' your degree; but an i had been you, i would has waired my siller better-gates than that." and he proposed i should buy winter-hosen from a wife in the cowgate-back, that was a cousin of his own, and made them "extraordinar endurable." but i had other matters on my hand more pressing. here i was in this old, black city, which was for all the world like a rabbit-warren, not only by the number of its indwellers, but the complication of its passages and holes. it was, indeed, a place where no stranger had a chance to find a friend, let be another stranger. suppose him even to hit on the right close, people dwelt so thronged in these tall houses, he might very well seek a day before he chanced on the right door. the ordinary course was to hire a lad they called a caddie, who was like a guide or pilot, led you where you had occasion, and (your errands being done) brought you again where you were lodging. but these caddies, being always employed in the same sort of services, and having it for obligation to be well informed of every house and person in the city, had grown to form a brotherhood of spies; and i knew from tales of mr. campbell's how they communicated one with another, what a rage of curiosity they conceived as to their employer's business, and how they were like eyes and fingers to the police. it would be a piece of little wisdom, the way i was now placed, to take such a ferret to my tails. i had three visits to make, all immediately needful: to my kinsman mr. balfour of pilrig, to stewart the writer that was appin's agent, and to william grant esquire of prestongrange, lord advocate of scotland. mr. balfour's was a non-committal visit; and besides (pilrig being in the country) i made bold to find the way to it myself, with the help of my two legs and a scots tongue. but the rest were in a different case. not only was the visit to appin's agent, in the midst of the cry about the appin murder, dangerous in itself, but it was highly inconsistent with the other. i was like to have a bad enough time of it with my lord advocate grant, the best of ways; but to go to him hot-foot from appin's agent, was little likely to mend my own affairs, and might prove the mere ruin of friend alan's. the whole thing, besides, gave me a look of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds that was little to my fancy. i determined, therefore, to be done at once with mr. stewart and the whole jacobitical side of my business, and to profit for that purpose by the guidance of the porter at my side. but it chanced i had scarce given him the address, when there came a sprinkle of rain nothing to hurt, only for my new clothes and we took shelter under a pend at the head of a close or alley. being strange to what i saw, i stepped a little farther in. the narrow paved way descended swiftly. prodigious tall houses sprang upon each side and bulged out, one storey beyond another, as they rose. at the top only a ribbon of sky showed in. by what i could spy in the windows, and by the respectable persons that passed out and in, i saw the houses to be very well occupied; and the whole appearance of the place interested me like a tale. i was still gazing, when there came a sudden brisk tramp of feet in time and clash of steel behind me. turning quickly, i was aware of a party of armed soldiers, and, in their midst, a tall man in a great coat. he walked with a stoop that was like a piece of courtesy, genteel and insinuating: he waved his hands plausibly as he went, and his face was sly and handsome. i thought his eye took me in, but could not meet it. this procession went by to a door in the close, which a serving-man in a fine livery set open; and two of the soldier-lads carried the prisoner within, the rest lingering with their firelocks by the door. there can nothing pass in the streets of a city without some following of idle folk and children. it was so now; but the more part melted away incontinent until but three were left. one was a girl; she was dressed like a lady, and had a screen of the drummond colours on her head; but her comrades or (i should say) followers were ragged gillies, such as i had seen the matches of by the dozen in my highland journey. they all spoke together earnestly in gaelic, the sound of which was pleasant in my ears for the sake of alan; and, though the rain was by again, and my porter plucked at me to be going, i even drew nearer where they were, to listen. the lady scolded sharply, the others making apologies and cringeing before her, so that i made sure she was come of a chief's house. all the while the three of them sought in their pockets, and by what i could make out, they had the matter of half a farthing among the party; which made me smile a little to see all highland folk alike for fine obeisances and empty sporrans. it chanced the girl turned suddenly about, so that i saw her face for the first time. there is no greater wonder than the way the face of a young woman fits in a man's mind, and stays there, and he could never tell you why; it just seems it was the thing he wanted. she had wonderful bright eyes like stars, and i daresay the eyes had a part in it; but what i remember the most clearly was the way her lips were a trifle open as she turned. and, whatever was the cause, i stood there staring like a fool. on her side, as she had not known there was anyone so near, she looked at me a little longer, and perhaps with more surprise, than was entirely civil. it went through my country head she might be wondering at my new clothes; with that, i blushed to my hair, and at the sight of my colouring it is to be supposed she drew her own conclusions, for she moved her gillies farther down the close, and they fell again to this dispute, where i could hear no more of it. i had often admired a lassie before then, if scarce so sudden and strong; and it was rather my disposition to withdraw than to come forward, for i was much in fear of mockery from the womenkind. you would have thought i had now all the more reason to pursue my common practice, since i had met this young lady in the city street, seemingly following a prisoner, and accompanied with two very ragged indecentlike highlandmen. but there was here a different ingredient; it was plain the girl thought i had been prying in her secrets; and with my new clothes and sword, and at the top of my new fortunes, this was more than i could swallow. the beggar on horseback could not bear to be thrust down so low, or, at least of it, not by this young lady. i followed, accordingly, and took off my new hat to her the best that i was able. "madam," said i, "i think it only fair to myself to let you understand i have no gaelic. it is true i was listening, for i have friends of my own across the highland line, and the sound of that tongue comes friendly; but for your private affairs, if you had spoken greek, i might have had more guess at them." she made me a little, distant curtsey. "there is no harm done," said she, with a pretty accent, most like the english (but more agreeable). "a cat may look at a king." "i do not mean to offend," said i. "i have no skill of city manners; i never before this day set foot inside the doors of edinburgh. take me for a country lad it's what i am; and i would rather i told you than you found it out." "indeed, it will be a very unusual thing for strangers to be speaking to each other on the causeway," she replied. "but if you are landward bred it will be different. i am as landward as yourself; i am highland, as you see, and think myself the farther from my home." "it is not yet a week since i passed the line," said i. "less than a week ago i was on the braes of balwhidder." "balwhither?" she cries. "come ye from balwhither! the name of it makes all there is of me rejoice. you will not have been long there, and not known some of our friends or family?" "i lived with a very honest, kind man called duncan dhu maclaren," i replied. "well, i know duncan, and you give him the true name!" she said; "and if he is an honest man, his wife is honest indeed." "ay," said i, "they are fine people, and the place is a bonny place." "where in the great world is such another!" she cries; "i am loving the smell of that place and the roots that grow there." i was infinitely taken with the spirit of the maid. "i could be wishing i had brought you a spray of that heather," says i. "and, though i did ill to speak with you at the first, now it seems we have common acquaintance, i make it my petition you will not forget me. david balfour is the name i am known by. this is my lucky day, when i have just come into a landed estate, and am not very long out of a deadly peril. i wish you would keep my name in mind for the sake of balwhidder," said i, "and i will yours for the sake of my lucky day." "my name is not spoken," she replied, with a great deal of haughtiness. "more than a hundred years it has not gone upon men's tongues, save for a blink. i am nameless, like the folk of peace. catriona drummond is the one i use." now indeed i knew where i was standing. in all broad scotland there was but the one name proscribed, and that was the name of the macgregors. yet so far from fleeing this undesirable acquaintancy, i plunged the deeper in. "i have been sitting with one who was in the same case with yourself," said i, "and i think he will be one of your friends. they called him robin oig." "did ye so?" cries she. "ye met rob?" "i passed the night with him," said i. "he is a fowl of the night," said she. "there was a set of pipes there," i went on, "so you may judge if the time passed." "you should be no enemy, at all events," said she. "that was his brother there a moment since, with the red soldiers round him. it is him that i call father." "is it so?" cried i. "are you a daughter of james more's?" "all the daughter that he has," says she: "the daughter of a prisoner; that i should forget it so, even for one hour, to talk with strangers!" here one of the gillies addressed her in what he had of english, to know what "she" (meaning by that himself) was to do about "ta sneeshin." i took some note of him for a short, bandy-legged, redhaired, big-headed man, that i was to know more of to my cost. "there can be none the day, neil," she replied. "how will you get 'sneeshin,' wanting siller! it will teach you another time to be more careful; and i think james more will not be very well pleased with neil of the tom." "miss drummond," i said, "i told you i was in my lucky day. here i am, and a bank-porter at my tail. and remember i have had the hospitality of your own country of balwhidder." "it was not one of my people gave it," said she. "ah, well." said i, "but i am owing your uncle at least for some springs upon the pipes. besides which, i have offered myself to be your friend, and you have been so forgetful that you did not refuse me in the proper time." "if it had been a great sum, it might have done you honour," said she; "but i will tell you what this is. james more lies shackled in prison; but this time past they will be bringing him down here daily to the advocate's. . . ." "the advocate's!" i cried. "is that . . . ?" "it is the house of the lord advocate grant of prestongrange," said she. "there they bring my father one time and another, for what purpose i have no thought in my mind; but it seems there is some hope dawned for him. all this same time they will not let me be seeing him, nor yet him write; and we wait upon the king's street to catch him; and now we give him his snuff as he goes by, and now something else. and here is this son of trouble, neil, son of duncan, has lost my fourpenny piece that was to buy that snuff, and james more must go wanting, and will think his daughter has forgotten him." i took sixpence from my pocket, gave it to neil, and bade him go about his errand. then to her, "that sixpence came with me by balwhidder," said i. "ah!" she said, "you are a friend to the gregara!" "i would not like to deceive you, either," said i. "i know very little of the gregara and less of james more and his doings, but since the while i have been standing in this close, i seem to know something of yourself; and if you will just say 'a friend to miss catriona' i will see you are the less cheated." "the one cannot be without the other," said she. "i will even try," said i. "and what will you be thinking of myself!" she cried, "to be holding my hand to the first stranger!" "i am thinking nothing but that you are a good daughter," said i. "i must not be without repaying it," she said; "where is it you stop!" "to tell the truth, i am stopping nowhere yet," said i, "being not full three hours in the city; but if you will give me your direction, i will he no bold as come seeking my sixpence for myself." "will i can trust you for that?" she asked. "you need have little fear," said i. "james more could not bear it else," said she. "i stop beyond the village of dean, on the north side of the water, with mrs. drummondogilvy of allardyce, who is my near friend and will be glad to thank you." "you are to see me, then, so soon as what i have to do permits," said i; and, the remembrance of alan rolling in again upon my mind, i made haste to say farewell. i could not but think, even as i did so, that we had made extraordinary free upon short acquaintance, and that a really wise young lady would have shown herself more backward. i think it was the bank-porter that put me from this ungallant train of thought. "i thoucht ye had been a lad of some kind o' sense," he began, shooting out his lips. "ye're no likely to gang far this gate. a fule and his siller's shune parted. eh, but ye're a green callant!" he cried, "an' a veecious, tae! cleikin' up wi' baubeejoes!" "if you dare to speak of the young lady. . . " i began. "leddy!" he cried. "haud us and safe us, whatten leddy? ca' thon a leddy? the toun's fu' o' them. leddies! man, its weel seen ye're no very acquant in embro!" a clap of anger took me. "here," said i, "lead me where i told you, and keep your foul mouth shut!" he did not wholly obey me, for, though he no more addressed me directly, he very impudent sang at me as he went in a manner of innuendo, and with an exceedingly ill voice and ear "as mally lee cam doun the street, her capuchin did flee, she cuist a look ahint her to see her negligee. and we're a' gaun east and wast, we're a' gann ajee, we're a' gaun east and wast courtin' mally lee." chapter ii the highland writer mr. charles stewart the writer dwelt at the top of the longest stair ever mason set a hand to; fifteen flights of it, no less; and when i had come to his door, and a clerk had opened it, and told me his master was within, i had scarce breath enough to send my porter packing. "awa' east and west wi' ye!" said i, took the money bag out of his hands, and followed the clerk in. the outer room was an office with the clerk's chair at a table spread with law papers. in the inner chamber, which opened from it, a little brisk man sat poring on a deed, from which he scarce raised his eyes on my entrance; indeed, he still kept his finger in the place, as though prepared to show me out and fall again to his studies. this pleased me little enough; and what pleased me less, i thought the clerk was in a good posture to overhear what should pass between us. i asked if he was mr. charles stewart the writer. "the same," says he; "and, if the question is equally fair, who may you be yourself?" "you never heard tell of my name nor of me either," said i, "but i bring you a token from a friend that you know well. that you know well," i repeated, lowering my voice, "but maybe are not just so keen to hear from at this present being. and the bits of business that i have to propone to you are rather in the nature of being confidential. in short, i would like to think we were quite private." he rose without more words, casting down his paper like a man illpleased, sent forth his clerk of an errand, and shut to the house-door behind him. "now, sir," said he, returning, "speak out your mind and fear nothing; though before you begin," he cries out, "i tell you mine misgives me! i tell you beforehand, ye're either a stewart or a stewart sent ye. a good name it is, and one it would ill-become my father's son to lightly. but i begin to grue at the sound of it." "my name is called balfour," said i, "david balfour of shaws. as for him that sent me, i will let his token speak." and i showed the silver button. "put it in your pocket, sir!" cries he. "ye need name no names. the deevil's buckie, i ken the button of him! and de'il hae't! where is he now!" i told him i knew not where alan was, but he had some sure place (or thought he had) about the north side, where he was to lie until a ship was found for him; and how and where he had appointed to be spoken with. "it's been always my opinion that i would hang in a tow for this family of mine," he cried, "and, dod! i believe the day's come now! get a ship for him, quot' he! and who's to pay for it? the man's daft!" "that is my part of the affair, mr. stewart," said i. "here is a bag of good money, and if more be wanted, more is to be had where it came from." "i needn't ask your politics," said he. "ye need not," said i, smiling, "for i'm as big a whig as grows." "stop a bit, stop a bit," says mr. stewart. "what's all this? a whig? then why are you here with alan's button? and what kind of a black-foot traffic is this that i find ye out in, mr. whig? here is a forfeited rebel and an accused murderer, with two hundred pounds on his life, and ye ask me to meddle in his business, and then tell me ye're a whig! i have no mind of any such whigs before, though i've kent plenty of them." "he's a forfeited rebel, the more's the pity," said i, "for the man's my friend. i can only wish he had been better guided. and an accused murderer, that he is too, for his misfortune; but wrongfully accused." "i hear you say so," said stewart. "more than you are to hear me say so, before long," said i. "alan breck is innocent, and so is james." "oh!" says he, "the two cases hang together. if alan is out, james can never be in." hereupon i told him briefly of my acquaintance with alan, of the accident that brought me present at the appin murder, and the various passages of our escape among the heather, and my recovery of my estate. "so, sir, you have now the whole train of these events," i went on, "and can see for yourself how i come to be so much mingled up with the affairs of your family and friends, which (for all of our sakes) i wish had been plainer and less bloody. you can see for yourself, too, that i have certain pieces of business depending, which were scarcely fit to lay before a lawyer chosen at random. no more remains, but to ask if you will undertake my service?" "i have no great mind to it; but coming as you do with alan's button, the choice is scarcely left me," said he. "what are your instructions?" he added, and took up his pen. "the first point is to smuggle alan forth of this country," said i, "but i need not be repeating that." "i am little likely to forget it," said stewart. "the next thing is the bit money i am owing to cluny," i went on. "it would be ill for me to find a conveyance, but that should be no stick to you. it was two pounds five shillings and three-halfpence farthing sterling." he noted it. "then," said i, "there's a mr. henderland, a licensed preacher and missionary in ardgour, that i would like well to get some snuff into the hands of; and, as i daresay you keep touch with your friends in appin (so near by), it's a job you could doubtless overtake with the other." "how much snuff are we to say?" he asked. "i was thinking of two pounds," said i. "two," said he. "then there's the lass alison hastie, in lime kilns," said i. "her that helped alan and me across the forth. i was thinking if i could get her a good sunday gown, such as she could wear with decency in her degree, it would be an ease to my conscience; for the mere truth is, we owe her our two lives." "i am glad so see you are thrifty, mr. balfour," says he, making his notes. "i would think shame to be otherwise the first day of my fortune," said i. "and now, if you will compute the outlay and your own proper charges, i would be glad to know if i could get some spending-money back. it's not that i grudge the whole of it to get alan safe; it's not that i lack more; but having drawn so much the one day, i think it would have a very ill appearance if i was back again seeking, the next. only be sure you have enough," i added, "for i am very undesirous to meet with you again." "well, and i'm pleased to see you're cautious, too," said the writer. "but i think ye take a risk to lay so considerable a sum at my discretion." he said this with a plain sneer. "i'll have to run the hazard," i replied. "o, and there's another service i would ask, and that's to direct me to a lodging, for i have no roof to my head. but it must be a lodging i may seem to have hit upon by accident, for it would never do if the lord advocate were to get any jealousy of our acquaintance." "ye may set your weary spirit at rest," said he. "i will never name your name, sir; and it's my belief the advocate is still so much to be sympathised with that he doesnae ken of your existence." i saw i had got to the wrong side of the man. "there's a braw day coming for him, then," said i, "for he'll have to learn of it on the deaf side of his head no later than to-morrow, when i call on him." "when ye call on him!" repeated mr. stewart. "am i daft, or are you! what takes ye near the advocate!" "o, just to give myself up," said i. "mr. balfour," he cried, "are ye making a mock of me?" "no, sir," said i, "though i think you have allowed yourself some such freedom with myself. but i give you to understand once and for all that i am in no jesting spirit." "nor yet me," says stewart. "and i give yon to understand (if that's to be the word) that i like the looks of your behaviour less and less. you come here to me with all sorts of propositions, which will put me in a train of very doubtful acts and bring me among very undesirable persons this many a day to come. and then you tell me you're going straight out of my office to make your peace with the advocate! alan's button here or alan's button there, the four quarters of alan wouldnae bribe me further in." "i would take it with a little more temper," said i, "and perhaps we can avoid what you object to. i can see no way for it but to give myself up, but perhaps you can see another; and if you could, i could never deny but what i would be rather relieved. for i think my traffic with his lordship is little likely to agree with my health. there's just the one thing clear, that i have to give my evidence; for i hope it'll save alan's character (what's left of it), and james's neck, which is the more immediate." he was silent for a breathing-space, and then, "my man," said he, "you'll never be allowed to give such evidence." "we'll have to see about that," said i; "i'm stiff-necked when i like." "ye muckle ass!" cried stewart, "it's james they want; james has got to hang alan, too, if they could catch him but james whatever! go near the advocate with any such business, and you'll see! he'll find a way to muzzle, ye." "i think better of the advocate than that," said i. "the advocate be dammed!" cries he. "it's the campbells, man! you'll have the whole clanjamfry of them on your back; and so will the advocate too, poor body! it's extraordinar ye cannot see where ye stand! if there's no fair way to stop your gab, there's a foul one gaping. they can put ye in the dock, do ye no see that?" he cried, and stabbed me with one finger in the leg. "ay," said i, "i was told that same no further back than this morning by another lawyer." "and who was he?" asked stewart, "he spoke sense at least." i told i must be excused from naming him, for he was a decent stout old whig, and had little mind to be mixed up in such affairs. "i think all the world seems to be mixed up in it!" cries stewart. "but what said you?" "i told him what had passed between rankeillor and myself before the house of shaws. "well, and so ye will hang!" said he. "ye'll hang beside james stewart. there's your fortune told." "i hope better of it yet than that," said i; "but i could never deny there was a risk." "risk!" says he, and then sat silent again. "i ought to thank you for you staunchness to my friends, to whom you show a very good spirit," he says, "if you have the strength to stand by it. but i warn you that you're wading deep. i wouldn't put myself in your place (me that's a stewart born!) for all the stewarts that ever there were since noah. risk? ay, i take over-many; but to be tried in court before a campbell jury and a campbell judge, and that in a campbell country and upon a campbell quarrel think what you like of me, balfour, it's beyond me." "it's a different way of thinking, i suppose," said i; "i was brought up to this one by my father before me." "glory to his bones! he has left a decent son to his name," says he. "yet i would not have you judge me over-sorely. my case is dooms hard. see, sir, ye tell me ye're a whig: i wonder what i am. no whig to be sure; i couldnae be just that. but laigh in your ear, man i'm maybe no very keen on the other side." "is that a fact?" cried i. "it's what i would think of a man of your intelligence." "hut! none of your whillywhas!" cries he. "there's intelligence upon both sides. but for my private part i have no particular desire to harm king george; and as for king james, god bless him! he does very well for me across the water. i'm a lawyer, ye see: fond of my books and my bottle, a good plea, a well-drawn deed, a crack in the parliament house with other lawyer bodies, and perhaps a turn at the golf on a saturday at e'en. where do ye come in with your hieland plaids and claymores?" "well," said i, "it's a fact ye have little of the wild highlandman." "little?" quoth he. "nothing, man! and yet i'm hieland born, and when the clan pipes, who but me has to dance! the clan and the name, that goes by all. it's just what you said yourself; my father learned it to me, and a bonny trade i have of it. treason and traitors, and the smuggling of them out and in; and the french recruiting, weary fall it! and the smuggling through of the recruits; and their pleas a sorrow of their pleas! here have i been moving one for young ardsheil, my cousin; claimed the estate under the marriage contract a forfeited estate! i told them it was nonsense: muckle they cared! and there was i cocking behind a yadvocate that liked the business as little as myself, for it was fair ruin to the pair of us a black mark, disaffected, branded on our hurdies, like folk's names upon their kye! and what can i do? i'm a stewart, ye see, and must fend for my clan and family. then no later by than yesterday there was one of our stewart lads carried to the castle. what for? i ken fine: act of 1736: recruiting for king lewie. and you'll see, he'll whistle me in to be his lawyer, and there'll be another black mark on my chara'ter! i tell you fair: if i but kent the heid of a hebrew word from the hurdies of it, be dammed but i would fling the whole thing up and turn minister!" "it's rather a hard position," said i. "dooms hard!" cries he. "and that's what makes me think so much of ye you that's no stewart to stick your head so deep in stewart business. and for what, i do not know: unless it was the sense of duty." "i hope it will be that," said i. "well," says he, "it's a grand quality. but here is my clerk back; and, by your leave, we'll pick a bit of dinner, all the three of us. when that's done, i'll give you the direction of a very decent man, that'll be very fain to have you for a lodger. and i'll fill your pockets to ye, forbye, out of your ain bag. for this business'll not be near as dear as ye suppose not even the ship part of it." i made him a sign that his clerk was within hearing. "hoot, ye neednae mind for robbie," cries he. "a stewart, too, puir deevil! and has smuggled out more french recruits and trafficking papists than what he has hairs upon his face. why, it's robin that manages that branch of my affairs. who will we have now, rob, for across the water!" "there'll be andie scougal, in the thristle," replied rob. "i saw hoseason the other day, but it seems he's wanting the ship. then there'll be tam stobo; but i'm none so sure of tam. i've seen him colloguing with some gey queer acquaintances; and if was anybody important, i would give tam the go-by." "the head's worth two hundred pounds, robin," said stewart. "gosh, that'll no be alan breck!" cried the clerk. "just alan," said his master. "weary winds! that's sayrious," cried robin. "i'll try andie, then; andie'll be the best." "it seems it's quite a big business," i observed. "mr. balfour, there's no end to it," said stewart. "there was a name your clerk mentioned," i went on: "hoseason. that must be my man, i think: hoseason, of the brig covenant. would you set your trust on him?" "he didnae behave very well to you and alan," said mr. stewart; "but my mind of the man in general is rather otherwise. if he had taken alan on board his ship on an agreement, it's my notion he would have proved a just dealer. how say ye, rob?" "no more honest skipper in the trade than eli," said the clerk. "i would lippen to eli's word ay, if it was the chevalier, or appin himsel'," he added. "and it was him that brought the doctor, wasnae't?" asked the master. "he was the very man," said the clerk. "and i think he took the doctor back?" says stewart. "ay, with his sporran full!" cried robin. "and eli kent of that!" "well, it seems it's hard to ken folk rightly," said i. "that was just what i forgot when ye came in, mr. balfour!" says the writer. chapter iii i go to pilrig the next morning, i was no sooner awake in my new lodging than i was up and into my new clothes; and no sooner the breakfast swallowed, than i was forth on my adventurers. alan, i could hope, was fended for; james was like to be a more difficult affair, and i could not but think that enterprise might cost me dear, even as everybody said to whom i had opened my opinion. it seemed i was come to the top of the mountain only to cast myself down; that i had clambered up, through so many and hard trials, to be rich, to be recognised, to wear city clothes and a sword to my side, all to commit mere suicide at the last end of it, and the worst kind of suicide, besides, which is to get hanged at the king's charges. what was i doing it for? i asked, as i went down the high street and out north by leith wynd. first i said it was to save james stewart; and no doubt the memory of his distress, and his wife's cries, and a word or so i had let drop on that occasion worked upon me strongly. at the same time i reflected that it was (or ought to be) the most indifferent matter to my father's son, whether james died in his bed or from a scaffold. he was alan's cousin, to be sure; but so far as regarded alan, the best thing would be to lie low, and let the king, and his grace of argyll, and the corbie crows, pick the bones of his kinsman their own way. nor could i forget that, while we were all in the pot together, james had shown no such particular anxiety whether for alan or me. next it came upon me i was acting for the sake of justice: and i thought that a fine word, and reasoned it out that (since we dwelt in polities, at some discomfort to each one of us) the main thing of all must still be justice, and the death of any innocent man a wound upon the whole community. next, again, it was the accuser of the brethren that gave me a turn of his argument; bade me think shame for pretending myself concerned in these high matters, and told me i was but a prating vain child, who had spoken big words to rankeillor and to stewart, and held myself bound upon my vanity to make good that boastfulness. nay, and he hit me with the other end of the stick; for he accused me of a kind of artful cowardice, going about at the expense of a little risk to purchase greater safety. no doubt, until i had declared and cleared myself, i might any day encounter mungo campbell or the sheriff's officer, and be recognised, and dragged into the appin murder by the heels; and, no doubt, in case i could manage my declaration with success, i should breathe more free for ever after. but when i looked this argument full in the face i could see nothing to be ashamed of. as for the rest, "here are the two roads," i thought, "and both go to the same place. it's unjust that james should hang if i can save him; and it would be ridiculous in me to have talked so much and then do nothing. it's lucky for james of the glens that i have boasted beforehand; and none so unlucky for myself, because now i'm committed to do right. i have the name of a gentleman and the means of one; it would be a poor duty that i was wanting in the essence." and then i thought this was a pagan spirit, and said a prayer in to myself, asking for what courage i might lack, and that i might go straight to my duty like a soldier to battle, and come off again scatheless, as so many do. this train of reasoning brought me to a more resolved complexion; though it was far from closing up my sense of the dangers that surrounded me, nor of how very apt i was (if i went on) to stumble on the ladder of the gallows. it was a plain, fair morning, but the wind in the east. the little chill of it sang in my blood, and gave me a feeling of the autumn, and the dead leaves, and dead folks' bodies in their graves. it seemed the devil was in it, if i was to die in that tide of my fortunes and for other folks' affairs. on the top of the calton hill, though it was not the customary time of year for that diversion, some children were crying and running with their kites. these toys appeared very plain against the sky; i remarked a great one soar on the wind to a high altitude and then plump among the whins; and i thought to myself at sight of it, "there goes davie." my way lay over mouter's hill, and through an end of a clachan on the braeside among fields. there was a whirr of looms in it went from house to house; bees bummed in the gardens; the neighbours that i saw at the doorsteps talked in a strange tongue; and i found out later that this was picardy, a village where the french weavers wrought for the linen company. here i got a fresh direction for pilrig, my destination; and a little beyond, on the wayside, came by a gibbet and two men hanged in chains. they were dipped in tar, as the manner is; the wind span them, the chains clattered, and the birds hung about the uncanny jumping-jacks and cried. the sight coming on me suddenly, like an illustration of my fears, i could scarce be done with examining it and drinking in discomfort. and, as i thus turned and turned about the gibbet, what should i strike on, but a weird old wife, that sat behind a leg of it, and nodded, and talked aloud to herself with becks and courtesies. "who are these two, mother?" i asked, and pointed to the corpses. "a blessing on your precious face!" she cried. "twa joes o'mine: just two o' my old joes, my hinny dear." "what did they suffer for?" i asked. "ou, just for the guid cause," said she. "aften i spaed to them the way that it would end. twa shillin' scots: no pickle mair; and there are twa bonny callants hingin' for 't! they took it frae a wean belanged to brouchton." "ay!" said i to myself, and not to the daft limmer, "and did they come to such a figure for so poor a business? this is to lose all indeed." "gie's your loof, hinny," says she, "and let me spae your weird to ye." "no, mother," said i, "i see far enough the way i am. it's an unco thing to see too far in front." "i read it in your bree," she said. "there's a bonnie lassie that has bricht een, and there's a wee man in a braw coat, and a big man in a pouthered wig, and there's the shadow of the wuddy, joe, that lies braid across your path. gie's your loof, hinny, and let auld merren spae it to ye bonny." the two chance shots that seemed to point at alan and the daughter of james more struck me hard; and i fled from the eldritch creature, casting her a baubee, which she continued to sit and play with under the moving shadows of the hanged. my way down the causeway of leith walk would have been more pleasant to me but for this encounter. the old rampart ran among fields, the like of them i had never seen for artfulness of agriculture; i was pleased, besides, to be so far in the still countryside; but the shackles of the gibbet clattered in my head; and the mope and mows of the old witch, and the thought of the dead men, hag-rode my spirits. to hang on a gallows, that seemed a hard case; and whether a man came to hang there for two shillings scots, or (as mr. stewart had it) from the sense of duty, once he was tarred and shackled and hung up, the difference seemed small. there might david balfour hang, and other lads pass on their errands and think light of him; and old daft limmers sit at a leg-foot and spae their fortunes; and the clean genty maids go by, and look to the other aide, and hold a nose. i saw them plain, and they had grey eyes, and their screens upon their heads were of the drummed colours. i was thus in the poorest of spirits, though still pretty resolved, when i came in view of pilrig, a pleasant gabled house set by the walkside among some brave young woods. the laird's horse was standing saddled at the door as i came up, but himself was in the study, where he received me in the midst of learned works and musical instruments, for he was not only a deep philosopher but much of a musician. he greeted me at first pretty well, and when he had read rankeillor's letter, placed himself obligingly at my disposal. "and what is it, cousin david!" said he "since it appears that we are cousins what is this that i can do for you! a word to prestongrange! doubtless that is easily given. but what should be the word?" "mr. balfour," said i, "if i were to tell you my whole story the way it fell out, it's my opinion (and it was rankeillor's before me) that you would be very little made up with it." "i am sorry to hear this of you, kinsman," says he. "i must not take that at your hands, mr. balfour," said i; "i have nothing to my charge to make me sorry, or you for me, but just the common infirmities of mankind. 'the guilt of adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of my whole nature,' so much i must answer for, and i hope i have been taught where to look for help," i said; for i judged from the look of the man he would think the better of me if i knew my questions. "but in the way of worldly honour i have no great stumble to reproach myself with; and my difficulties have befallen me very much against my will and (by all that i can see) without my fault. my trouble is to have become dipped in a political complication, which it is judged you would be blythe to avoid a knowledge of." "why, very well, mr. david," he replied, "i am pleased to see you are all that rankeillor represented. and for what you say of political complications, you do me no more than justice. it is my study to be beyond suspicion, and indeed outside the field of it. the question is," says he, "how, if i am to know nothing of the matter, i can very well assist you?" "why sir," said i, "i propose you should write to his lordship, that i am a young man of reasonable good family and of good means: both of which i believe to be the case." "i have rankeillor's word for it," said mr. balfour, "and i count that a warran-dice against all deadly." "to which you might add (if you will take my word for so much) that i am a good churchman, loyal to king george, and so brought up," i went on. "none of which will do you any harm," said mr. balfour. "then you might go on to say that i sought his lordship on a matter of great moment, connected with his majesty's service and the administration of justice," i suggested. "as i am not to hear the matter," says the laird, "i will not take upon myself to qualify its weight. 'great moment' therefore falls, and 'moment' along with it. for the rest i might express myself much as you propose." "and then, sir," said i, and rubbed my neck a little with my thumb, "then i would be very desirous if you could slip in a word that might perhaps tell for my protection." "protection?" says he, "for your protection! here is a phrase that somewhat dampens me. if the matter be so dangerous, i own i would be a little loath to move in it blindfold." "i believe i could indicate in two words where the thing sticks," said i. "perhaps that would be the best," said he. "well, it's the appin murder," said i. he held up both his hands. "sirs! sirs!" cried he. i thought by the expression of his face and voice that i had lost my helper. "let me explain. . ." i began. "i thank you kindly, i will hear no more of it," says he. "i decline in toto to hear more of it. for your name's sake and rankeillor's, and perhaps a little for your own, i will do what i can to help you; but i will hear no more upon the facts. and it is my first clear duty to warn you. these are deep waters, mr. david, and you are a young man. be cautious and think twice." "it is to be supposed i will have thought oftener than that, mr. balfour," said i, "and i will direct your attention again to rankeillor's letter, where (i hope and believe) he has registered his approval of that which i design." "well, well," said he; and then again, "well, well! i will do what i can for you." there with he took a pen and paper, sat a while in thought, and began to write with much consideration. "i understand that rankeillor approved of what you have in mind?" he asked presently. "after some discussion, sir, he bade me to go forward in god's name," said i. "that is the name to go in," said mr. balfour, and resumed his writing. presently, he signed, re-read what he had written, and addressed me again. "now here, mr. david," said he, "is a letter of introduction, which i will seal without closing, and give into your hands open, as the form requires. but, since i am acting in the dark, i will just read it to you, so that you may see if it will secure your end "pilrig, august 26th, 1751. "my lord, this is to bring to your notice my namesake and cousin, david balfour esquire of shaws, a young gentleman of unblemished descent and good estate. he has enjoyed, besides, the more valuable advantages of a godly training, and his political principles are all that your lordship can desire. i am not in mr. balfour's confidence, but i understand him to have a matter to declare, touching his majesty's service and the administration of justice; purposes for which your lordship's zeal is known. i should add that the young gentleman's intention is known to and approved by some of his friends, who will watch with hopeful anxiety the event of his success or failure. "whereupon," continued mr. balfour, "i have subscribed myself with the usual compliments. you observe i have said 'some of your friends'; i hope you can justify my plural?" "perfectly, sir; my purpose is known and approved by more than one," said i. "and your letter, which i take a pleasure to thank you for, is all i could have hoped." "it was all i could squeeze out," said he; "and from what i know of the matter you design to meddle in, i can only pray god that it may prove sufficient." chapter iv lord advocate prestongrange my kinsman kept me to a meal, "for the honour of the roof," he said; and i believe i made the better speed on my return. i had no thought but to be done with the next stage, and have myself fully committed; to a person circumstanced as i was, the appearance of closing a door on hesitation and temptation was itself extremely tempting; and i was the more disappointed, when i came to prestongrange's house, to be informed he was abroad. i believe it was true at the moment, and for some hours after; and then i have no doubt the advocate came home again, and enjoyed himself in a neighbouring chamber among friends, while perhaps the very fact of my arrival was forgotten. i would have gone away a dozen times, only for this strong drawing to have done with my declaration out of hand and be able to lay me down to sleep with a free conscience. at first i read, for the little cabinet where i was left contained a variety of books. but i fear i read with little profit; and the weather falling cloudy, the dusk coming up earlier than usual, and my cabinet being lighted with but a loophole of a window, i was at last obliged to desist from this diversion (such as it was), and pass the rest of my time of waiting in a very burthensome vacuity. the sound of people talking in a near chamber, the pleasant note of a harpsichord, and once the voice of a lady singing, bore me a kind of company. i do not know the hour, but the darkness was long come, when the door of the cabinet opened, and i was aware, by the light behind him, of a tall figure of a man upon the threshold. i rose at once. "is anybody there?" he asked. "who in that?" "i am bearer of a letter from the laird of pilrig to the lord advocate," said i. "have you been here long?" he asked. "i would not like to hazard an estimate of how many hours," said i. "it is the first i hear of it," he replied, with a chuckle. "the lads must have forgotten you. but you are in the bit at last, for i am prestongrange." so saying, he passed before me into the next room, whither (upon his sign) i followed him, and where he lit a candle and took his place before a business-table. it was a long room, of a good proportion, wholly lined with books. that small spark of light in a corner struck out the man's handsome person and strong face. he was flushed, his eye watered and sparkled, and before he sat down i observed him to sway back and forth. no doubt, he had been supping liberally; but his mind and tongue were under full control. "well, sir, sit ye down," said he, "and let us see pilrig's letter." he glanced it through in the beginning carelessly, looking up and bowing when he came to my name; but at the last words i thought i observed his attention to redouble, and i made sure he read them twice. all this while you are to suppose my heart was beating, for i had now crossed my rubicon and was come fairly on the field of battle. "i am pleased to make your acquaintance, mr. balfour," he said, when he had done. "let me offer you a glass of claret." "under your favour, my lord, i think it would scarce be fair on me," said i. "i have come here, as the letter will have mentioned, on a business of some gravity to myself; and, as i am little used with wine, i might be the sooner affected." "you shall be the judge," said he. "but if you will permit, i believe i will even have the bottle in myself." he touched a bell, and a footman came, as at a signal, bringing wine and glasses. "you are sure you will not join me?" asked the advocate. "well, here is to our better acquaintance! in what way can i serve you?" "i should, perhaps, begin by telling you, my lord, that i am here at your own pressing invitation," said i. "you have the advantage of me somewhere," said he, "for i profess i think i never heard of you before this evening." "right, my lord; the name is, indeed, new to you," said i. "and yet you have been for some time extremely wishful to make my acquaintance, and have declared the same in public." "i wish you would afford me a clue," says he. "i am no daniel." "it will perhaps serve for such," said i, "that if i was in a jesting humour which is far from the case i believe i might lay a claim on your lordship for two hundred pounds." "in what sense?" he inquired. "in the sense of rewards offered for my person," said i. he thrust away his glass once and for all, and sat straight up in the chair where he had been previously lolling. "what am i to understand?" said he. "a tall strong lad of about eighteen," i quoted, "speaks like a lowlander and has no beard." "i recognise those words," said he, "which, if you have come here with any ill-judged intention of amusing yourself, are like to prove extremely prejudicial to your safety." "my purpose in this," i replied, "is just entirely as serious as life and death, and you have understood me perfectly. i am the boy who was speaking with glenure when he was shot." "i can only suppose (seeing you here) that you claim to be innocent," said he. "the inference is clear," i said. "i am a very loyal subject to king george, but if i had anything to reproach myself with, i would have had more discretion than to walk into your den." "i am glad of that," said he. "this horrid crime, mr. balfour, is of a dye which cannot permit any clemency. blood has been barbarously shed. it has been shed in direct opposition to his majesty and our whole frame of laws, by those who are their known and public oppugnants. i take a very high sense of this. i will not deny that i consider the crime as directly personal to his majesty." "and unfortunately, my lord," i added, a little drily, "directly personal to another great personage who may be nameless." "if you mean anything by those words, i must tell you i consider them unfit for a good subject; and were they spoke publicly i should make it my business to take note of them," said he. "you do not appear to me to recognise the gravity of your situation, or you would be more careful not to pejorate the same by words which glance upon the purity of justice. justice, in this country, and in my poor hands, is no respecter of persons." "you give me too great a share in my own speech, my lord," said i. "i did but repeat the common talk of the country, which i have heard everywhere, and from men of all opinions as i came along." "when you are come to more discretion you will understand such talk in not to be listened to, how much less repeated," says the advocate. "but i acquit you of an ill intention. that nobleman, whom we all honour, and who has indeed been wounded in a near place by the late barbarity, sits too high to be reached by these aspersions. the duke of argyle you see that i deal plainly with you takes it to heart as i do, and as we are both bound to do by our judicial functions and the service of his majesty; and i could wish that all hands, in this ill age, were equally clean of family rancour. but from the accident that this is a campbell who has fallen martyr to his duty as who else but the campbells have ever put themselves foremost on that path? i may say it, who am no campbell and that the chief of that great house happens (for all our advantages) to be the present head of the college of justice, small minds and disaffected tongues are set agog in every changehouse in the country; and i find a young gentleman like mr. balfour so ill-advised as to make himself their echo." so much he spoke with a very oratorical delivery, as if in court, and then declined again upon the manner of a gentleman. "all this apart," said he. "it now remains that i should learn what i am to do with you." "i had thought it was rather i that should learn the same from your lordship," said i. "ay, true," says the advocate. "but, you see, you come to me well recommended. there is a good honest whig name to this letter," says he, picking it up a moment from the table. "and extra-judicially, mr, balfour there is always the possibility of some arrangement, i tell you, and i tell you beforehand that you may be the more upon your guard, your fate lies with me singly. in such a matter (be it said with reverence) i am more powerful than the king's majesty; and should you please me and of course satisfy my conscience in what remains to be held of our interview, i tell you it may remain between ourselves." "meaning how?" i asked. "why, i mean it thus, mr. balfour," said he, "that if you give satisfaction, no soul need know so much as that you visited my house; and you may observe that i do not even call my clerk." i saw what way he was driving. "i suppose it is needless anyone should be informed upon my visit," said i, "though the precise nature of my gains by that i cannot see. i am not at all ashamed of coming here." "and have no cause to be," says he, encouragingly. "nor yet (if you are careful) to fear the consequences." "my lord," said i, "speaking under your correction, i am not very easy to be frightened." "and i am sure i do not seek to frighten you," says he. "but to the interrogation; and let me warn you to volunteer nothing beyond the questions i shall ask you. it may consist very immediately with your safety. i have a great discretion, it is true, but there are bounds to it." "i shall try to follow your lordship's advice," said i. he spread a sheet of paper on the table and wrote a heading. "it appears you were present, by the way, in the wood of lettermore at the moment of the fatal shot," he began. "was this by accident?" "by accident," said i. "how came you in speech with colin campbell?" he asked. "i was inquiring my way of him to aucharn," i replied. i observed he did not write this answer down. "h'm, true," said he, "i had forgotten that. and do you know, mr. balfour, i would dwell, if i were you, as little as might be on your relations with these stewarts. it might be found to complicate our business. i am not yet inclined to regard these matters as essential." "i had thought, my lord, that all points of fact were equally material in such a case," said i. "you forget we are now trying these stewarts," he replied, with great significance. "if we should ever come to be trying you, it will be very different; and i shall press these very questions that i am now willing to glide upon. but to resume: i have it here in mr. mungo campbell's precognition that you ran immediately up the brae. how came that?" "not immediately, my lord, and the cause was my seeing of the murderer." "you saw him, then?" "as plain as i see your lordship, though not so near hand." "you know him?" "i should know him again." "in your pursuit you were not so fortunate, then, as to overtake him?" "i was not." "was he alone?" "he was alone." "there was no one else in that neighbourhood?" "alan breck stewart was not far off, in a piece of a wood." the advocate laid his pen down. "i think we are playing at cross purposes," said he, "which you will find to prove a very ill amusement for yourself." "i content myself with following your lordship's advice, and answering what i am asked," said i. "be so wise as to bethink yourself in time," said he, "i use you with the most anxious tenderness, which you scarce seem to appreciate, and which (unless you be more careful) may prove to be in vain." "i do appreciate your tenderness, but conceive it to be mistaken," i replied, with something of a falter, for i saw we were come to grips at last. "i am here to lay before you certain information, by which i shall convince you alan had no hand whatever in the killing of glenure." the advocate appeared for a moment at a stick, sitting with pursed lips, and blinking his eyes upon me like an angry cat. "mr. balfour," he said at last, "i tell you pointedly you go an ill way for your own interests." "my lord," i said, "i am as free of the charge of considering my own interests in this matter as your lordship. as god judges me, i have but the one design, and that is to see justice executed and the innocent go clear. if in pursuit of that i come to fall under your lordship's displeasure, i must bear it as i may." at this he rose from his chair, lit a second candle, and for a while gazed upon me steadily. i was surprised to see a great change of gravity fallen upon his face, and i could have almost thought he was a little pale. "you are either very simple, or extremely the reverse, and i see that i must deal with you more confidentially," says he. "this is a political case ah, yes, mr. balfour! whether we like it or no, the case is political and i tremble when i think what issues may depend from it. to a political case, i need scarce tell a young man of your education, we approach with very different thoughts from one which is criminal only. salus populi suprema lex is a maxim susceptible of great abuse, but it has that force which we find elsewhere only in the laws of nature: i mean it has the force of necessity. i will open this out to you, if you will allow me, at more length. you would have me believe " "under your pardon, my lord, i would have you to believe nothing but that which i can prove," said i. "tut! tut; young gentleman," says he, "be not so pragmatical, and suffer a man who might be your father (if it was nothing more) to employ his own imperfect language, and express his own poor thoughts, even when they have the misfortune not to coincide with mr. balfour's. you would have me to believe breck innocent. i would think this of little account, the more so as we cannot catch our man. but the matter of breck's innocence shoots beyond itself. once admitted, it would destroy the whole presumptions of our case against another and a very different criminal; a man grown old in treason, already twice in arms against his king and already twice forgiven; a fomentor of discontent, and (whoever may have fired the shot) the unmistakable original of the deed in question. i need not tell you that i mean james stewart." "and i can just say plainly that the innocence of alan and of james is what i am here to declare in private to your lordship, and what i am prepared to establish at the trial by my testimony," said i. "to which i can only answer by an equal plainness, mr. balfour," said he, "that (in that case) your testimony will not be called by me, and i desire you to withhold it altogether." "you are at the head of justice in this country," i cried, "and you propose to me a crime!" "i am a man nursing with both hands the interests of this country," he replied, "and i press on you a political necessity. patriotism is not always moral in the formal sense. you might be glad of it, i think: it is your own protection; the facts are heavy against you; and if i am still trying to except you from a very dangerous place, it is in part of course because i am not insensible to your honesty in coming here; in part because of pilrig's letter; but in part, and in chief part, because i regard in this matter my political duty first and my judicial duty only second. for the same reason i repeat it to you in the same frank words i do not want your testimony." "i desire not to be thought to make a repartee, when i express only the plain sense of our position," said i. "but if your lordship has no need of my testimony, i believe the other side would be extremely blythe to get it." prestongrange arose and began to pace to and fro in the room. "you are not so young," he said, "but what you must remember very clearly the year '45 and the shock that went about the country. i read in pilrig's letter that you are sound in kirk and state. who saved them in that fatal year? i do not refer to his royal highness and his ramrods, which were extremely useful in their day; but the country had been saved and the field won before ever cumberland came upon drummossie. who saved it? i repeat; who saved the protestant religion and the whole frame of our civil institutions? the late lord president culloden, for one; he played a man's part, and small thanks he got for it even as i, whom you see before you, straining every nerve in the same service, look for no reward beyond the conscience of my duties done. after the president, who else? you know the answer as well as i do; 'tis partly a scandal, and you glanced at it yourself, and i reproved you for it, when you first came in. it was the duke and the great clan of campbell. now here is a campbell foully murdered, and that in the king's service. the duke and i are highlanders. but we are highlanders civilised, and it is not so with the great mass of our clans and families. they have still savage virtues and defects. they are still barbarians, like these stewarts; only the campbells were barbarians on the right side, and the stewarts were barbarians on the wrong. now be you the judge. the campbells expect vengeance. if they do not get it if this man james escape there will be trouble with the campbells. that means disturbance in the highlands, which are uneasy and very far from being disarmed: the disarming is a farce. . ." "i can bear you out in that," said i. "disturbance in the highlands makes the hour of our old watchful enemy," pursued his lordship, holding out a finger as he paced; "and i give you my word we may have a '45 again with the campbells on the other side. to protect the life of this man stewart which is forfeit already on half-a-dozen different counts if not on this do you propose to plunge your country in war, to jeopardise the faith of your fathers, and to expose the lives and fortunes of how many thousand innocent persons? . . . these are considerations that weigh with me, and that i hope will weigh no less with yourself, mr. balfour, as a lover of your country, good government, and religious truth." "you deal with me very frankly, and i thank you for it," said i. "i will try on my side to be no less honest. i believe your policy to be sound. i believe these deep duties may lie upon your lordship; i believe you may have laid them on your conscience when you took the oath of the high office which you hold. but for me, who am just a plain man or scarce a man yet the plain duties must suffice. i can think but of two things, of a poor soul in the immediate and unjust danger of a shameful death, and of the cries and tears of his wife that still tingle in my head. i cannot see beyond, my lord. it's the way that i am made. if the country has to fall, it has to fall. and i pray god, if this be wilful blindness, that he may enlighten me before too late." he had heard me motionless, and stood so a while longer. "this is an unexpected obstacle," says he, aloud, but to himself. "and how is your lordship to dispose of me?" i asked. "if i wished," said he, "you know that you might sleep in gaol?" "my lord," said i, "i have slept in worse places." "well, my boy," said he, "there is one thing appears very plainly from our interview, that i may rely on your pledged word. give me your honour that you will be wholly secret, not only on what has passed tonight, but in the matter of the appin case, and i let you go free." "i will give it till to-morrow or any other near day that you may please to set," said i. "i would not be thought too wily; but if i gave the promise without qualification your lordship would have attained his end." "i had no thought to entrap you," said he. "i am sure of that," said i. "let me see," he continued. "to-morrow is the sabbath. come to me on monday by eight in the morning, and give me our promise until then." "freely given, my lord," said i. "and with regard to what has fallen from yourself, i will give it for an long as it shall please god to spare your days." "you will observe," he said next, "that i have made no employment of menaces." "it was like your lordship's nobility," said i. "yet i am not altogether so dull but what i can perceive the nature of those you have not uttered." "well," said he, "good-night to you. may you sleep well, for i think it is more than i am like to do." with that he sighed, took up a candle, and gave me his conveyance as far as the street door. chapter v in the advocate's house the next day, sabbath, august 27th, i had the occasion i had long looked forward to, to hear some of the famous edinburgh preachers, all well known to me already by the report of mr campbell. alas! and i might just as well have been at essendean, and sitting under mr. campbell's worthy self! the turmoil of my thoughts, which dwelt continually on the interview with prestongrange, inhibiting me from all attention. i was indeed much less impressed by the reasoning of the divines than by the spectacle of the thronged congregation in the churches, like what i imagined of a theatre or (in my then disposition) of an assize of trial; above all at the west kirk, with its three tiers of galleries, where i went in the vain hope that i might see miss drummond. on the monday i betook me for the first time to a barber's, and was very well pleased with the result. thence to the advocate's, where the red coats of the soldiers showed again about his door, making a bright place in the close. i looked about for the young lady and her gillies: there was never a sign of them. but i was no sooner shown into the cabinet or antechamber where i had spent so wearyful a time upon the saturday, than i was aware of the tall figure of james more in a corner. he seemed a prey to a painful uneasiness, reaching forth his feet and hands, and his eyes speeding here and there without rest about the walls of the small chamber, which recalled to me with a sense of pity the man's wretched situation. i suppose it was partly this, and partly my strong continuing interest in his daughter, that moved me to accost him. "give you a good-morning, sir," said i. "and a good-morning to you, sir," said he. "you bide tryst with prestongrange?" i asked. "i do, sir, and i pray your business with that gentleman be more agreeable than mine," was his reply. "i hope at least that yours will be brief, for i suppose you pass before me," said i. "all pass before me," he said, with a shrug and a gesture upward of the open hands. "it was not always so, sir, but times change. it was not so when the sword was in the scale, young gentleman, and the virtues of the soldier might sustain themselves." there came a kind of highland snuffle out of the man that raised my dander strangely. "well, mr. macgregor," said i, "i understand the main thing for a soldier is to be silent, and the first of his virtues never to complain." "you have my name, i perceive" he bowed to me with his arms crossed "though it's one i must not use myself. well, there is a publicity i have shown my face and told my name too often in the beards of my enemies. i must not wonder if both should be known to many that i know not." "that you know not in the least, sir," said i, "nor yet anybody else; but the name i am called, if you care to hear it, is balfour." "it is a good name," he replied, civilly; "there are many decent folk that use it. and now that i call to mind, there was a young gentleman, your namesake, that marched surgeon in the year '45 with my battalion." "i believe that would be a brother to balfour of baith," said i, for i was ready for the surgeon now. "the same, sir," said james more. "and since i have been fellowsoldier with your kinsman, you must suffer me to grasp your hand." he shook hands with me long and tenderly, beaming on me the while as though he had found a brother. "ah!" says he, "these are changed days since your cousin and i heard the balls whistle in our lugs." "i think he was a very far-away cousin," said i, drily, "and i ought to tell you that i never clapped eyes upon the man." "well, well," said he, "it makes no change. and you i do not think you were out yourself, sir i have no clear mind of your face, which is one not probable to be forgotten." "in the year you refer to, mr. macgregor, i was getting skelped in the parish school," said i. "so young!" cries he. "ah, then, you will never be able to think what this meeting is to me. in the hour of my adversity, and here in the house of my enemy, to meet in with the blood of an old brother-in-arms it heartens me, mr. balfour, like the skirting of the highland pipes! sir, this is a sad look back that many of us have to make: some with falling tears. i have lived in my own country like a king; my sword, my mountains, and the faith of my friends and kinsmen sufficed for me. now i lie in a stinking dungeon; and do you know, mr. balfour," he went on, taking my arm and beginning to lead me about, "do you know, sir, that i lack mere necessaries? the malice of my foes has quite sequestered my resources. i lie, as you know, sir, on a trumped-up charge, of which i am as innocent as yourself. they dare not bring me to my trial, and in the meanwhile i am held naked in my prison. i could have wished it was your cousin i had met, or his brother baith himself. either would, i know, have been rejoiced to help me; while a comparative stranger like yourself " i would be ashamed to set down all he poured out to me in this beggarly vein, or the very short and grudging answers that i made to him. there were times when i was tempted to stop his mouth with some small change; but whether it was from shame or pride whether it was for my own sake or catriona's whether it was because i thought him no fit father for his daughter, or because i resented that grossness of immediate falsity that clung about the man himself the thing was clean beyond me. and i was still being wheedled and preached to, and still being marched to and fro, three steps and a turn, in that small chamber, and had already, by some very short replies, highly incensed, although not finally discouraged, my beggar, when prestongrange appeared in the doorway and bade me eagerly into his big chamber. "i have a moment's engagements," said he; "and that you may not sit empty-handed i am going to present you to my three braw daughters, of whom perhaps you may have heard, for i think they are more famous than papa. this way." he led me into another long room above, where a dry old lady sat at a frame of embroidery, and the three handsomest young women (i suppose) in scotland stood together by a window. "this is my new friend, mr balfour," said he, presenting me by the arm, "david, here is my sister, miss grant, who is so good as keep my house for me, and will be very pleased if she can help you. and here," says he, turning to the three younger ladies, "here are my three braw dauchters. a fair question to ye, mr. davie: which of the three is the best favoured? and i wager he will never have the impudence to propound honest alan ramsay's answer!" hereupon all three, and the old miss grant as well, cried out against this sally, which (as i was acquainted with the verses he referred to) brought shame into my own check. it seemed to me a citation unpardonable in a father, and i was amazed that these ladies could laugh even while they reproved, or made believe to. under cover of this mirth, prestongrange got forth of the chamber, and i was left, like a fish upon dry land, in that very unsuitable society. i could never deny, in looking back upon what followed, that i was eminently stockish; and i must say the ladies were well drilled to have so long a patience with me. the aunt indeed sat close at her embroidery, only looking now and again and smiling; but the misses, and especially the eldest, who was besides the most handsome, paid me a score of attentions which i was very ill able to repay. it was all in vain to tell myself i was a young follow of some worth as well as a good estate, and had no call to feel abashed before these lasses, the eldest not so much older than myself, and no one of them by any probability half as learned. reasoning would not change the fact; and there were times when the colour came into my face to think i was shaved that day for the first time. the talk going, with all their endeavours, very heavily, the eldest took pity on my awkwardness, sat down to her instrument, of which she was a passed mistress, and entertained me for a while with playing and singing, both in the scots and in the italian manners; this put me more at my ease, and being reminded of alan's air that he had taught me in the hole near carriden, i made so bold as to whistle a bar or two, and ask if she knew that. she shook her head. "i never heard a note of it," said she. "whistle it all through. and now once again," she added, after i had done so. then she picked it out upon the keyboard, and (to my surprise) instantly enriched the same with well-sounding chords, and sang, as she played, with a very droll expression and broad accent "haenae i got just the lilt of it? isnae this the tune that ye whustled?" "you see," she says, "i can do the poetry too, only it won't rhyme. and then again: "i am miss grant, sib to the advocate: you, i believe, are dauvit balfour." i told her how much astonished i was by her genius. "and what do you call the name of it?" she asked. "i do not know the real name," said i. "i just call it alan's air." she looked at me directly in the face. "i shall call it david's air," said she; "though if it's the least like what your namesake of israel played to saul i would never wonder that the king got little good by it, for it's but melancholy music. your other name i do not like; so if you was ever wishing to hear your tune again you are to ask for it by mine." this was said with a significance that gave my heart a jog. "why that, miss grant?" i asked. "why," says she, "if ever you should come to get hanged, i will set your last dying speech and confession to that tune and sing it." this put it beyond a doubt that she was partly informed of my story and peril. how, or just how much, it was more difficult to guess. it was plain she knew there was something of danger in the name of alan, and thus warned me to leave it out of reference; and plain she knew that i stood under some criminal suspicion. i judged besides that the harshness of her last speech (which besides she had followed up immediately with a very noisy piece of music) was to put an end to the present conversation. i stood beside her, affecting to listen and admire, but truly whirled away by my own thoughts. i have always found this young lady to be a lover of the mysterious; and certainly this first interview made a mystery that was beyond my plummet. one thing i learned long after, the hours of the sunday had been well employed, the bank porter had been found and examined, my visit to charles stewart was discovered, and the deduction made that i was pretty deep with james and alan, and most likely in a continued correspondence with the last. hence this broad hint that was given me across the harpsichord. in the midst of the piece of music, one of the younger misses, who was at a window over the close, cried on her sisters to come quick, for there was "grey eyes again." the whole family trooped there at once, and crowded one another for a look. the window whither they ran was in an odd corner of that room, gave above the entrance door, and flanked up the close. "come, mr. balfour," they cried, "come and see. she is the most beautiful creature! she hangs round the close-head these last days, always with some wretched-like gillies, and yet seems quite a lady." i had no need to look; neither did i look twice, or long. i was afraid she might have seen me there, looking down upon her from that chamber of music, and she without, and her father in the same house, perhaps begging for his life with tears, and myself come but newly from rejecting his petitions. but even that glance set me in a better conceit of myself and much less awe of the young ladies. they were beautiful, that was beyond question, but catriona was beautiful too, and had a kind of brightness in her like a coal of fire. as much as the others cast me down, she lifted me up. i remembered i had talked easily with her. if i could make no hand of it with these fine maids, it was perhaps something their own fault. my embarrassment began to be a little mingled and lightened with a sense of fun; and when the aunt smiled at me from her embroidery, and the three daughters unbent to me like a baby, all with "papa's orders" written on their faces, there were times when i could have found it in my heart to smile myself. presently papa returned, the same kind, happy-like, pleasant-spoken man. "now, girls," said he, "i must take mr. balfour away again; but i hope you have been able to persuade him to return where i shall be always gratified to find him." so they each made me a little farthing compliment, and i was led away. if this visit to the family had been meant to soften my resistance, it was the worst of failures. i was no such ass but what i understood how poor a figure i had made, and that the girls would be yawning their jaws off as soon as my stiff back was turned. i felt i had shown how little i had in me of what was soft and graceful; and i longed for a chance to prove that i had something of the other stuff, the stern and dangerous. well, i was to be served to my desire, for the scene to which he was conducting me was of a different character. chapter vi umquile the master of lovat there was a man waiting us in prestongrange's study, whom i distasted at the first look, as we distaste a ferret or an earwig. he was bitter ugly, but seemed very much of a gentleman; had still manners, but capable of sudden leaps and violences; and a small voice, which could ring out shrill and dangerous when he so desired. the advocate presented us in a familiar, friendly way. "here, fraser," said he, "here is mr. balfour whom we talked about. mr. david, this is mr. simon fraser, whom we used to call by another title, but that is an old song. mr. fraser has an errand to you." with that he stepped aside to his book-shelves, and made believe to consult a quarto volume in the far end. i was thus left (in a sense) alone with perhaps the last person in the world i had expected. there was no doubt upon the terms of introduction; this could be no other than the forfeited master of lovat and chief of the great clan fraser. i knew he had led his men in the rebellion; i knew his father's head my old lord's, that grey fox of the mountains to have fallen on the block for that offence, the lands of the family to have been seized, and their nobility attainted. i could not conceive what he should be doing in grant's house; i could not conceive that he had been called to the bar, had eaten all his principles, and was now currying favour with the government even to the extent of acting advocate-depute in the appin murder. "well, mr. balfour," said he, "what is all this i hear of ye?" "it would not become me to prejudge," said i, "but if the advocate was your authority he is fully possessed of my opinions." "i may tell you i am engaged in the appin case," he went on; "i am to appear under prestongrange; and from my study of the precognitions i can assure you your opinions are erroneous. the guilt of breck is manifest; and your testimony, in which you admit you saw him on the hill at the very moment, will certify his hanging." "it will be rather ill to hang him till you catch him," i observed. "and for other matters i very willingly leave you to your own impressions." "the duke has been informed," he went on. "i have just come from his grace, and he expressed himself before me with an honest freedom like the great nobleman he is. he spoke of you by name, mr. balfour, and declared his gratitude beforehand in case you would be led by those who understand your own interests and those of the country so much better than yourself. gratitude is no empty expression in that mouth: experto-crede. i daresay you know something of my name and clan, and the damnable example and lamented end of my late father, to say nothing of my own errata. well, i have made my peace with that good duke; he has intervened for me with our friend prestongrange; and here i am with my foot in the stirrup again and some of the responsibility shared into my hand of prosecuting king george's enemies and avenging the late daring and barefaced insult to his majesty." "doubtless a proud position for your father's son," says i. he wagged his bald eyebrows at me. "you are pleased to make experiments in the ironical, i think," said he. "but i am here upon duty, i am here to discharge my errand in good faith, it is in vain you think to divert me. and let me tell you, for a young fellow of spirit and ambition like yourself, a good shove in the beginning will do more than ten years' drudgery. the shove is now at your command; choose what you will to be advanced in, the duke will watch upon you with the affectionate disposition of a father." "i am thinking that i lack the docility of the son," says i. "and do you really suppose, sir, that the whole policy of this country is to be suffered to trip up and tumble down for an ill-mannered colt of a boy?" he cried. "this has been made a test case, all who would prosper in the future must put a shoulder to the wheel. look at me! do you suppose it is for my pleasure that i put myself in the highly invidious position of persecuting a man that i have drawn the sword alongside of? the choice is not left me." "but i think, sir, that you forfeited your choice when you mixed in with that unnatural rebellion," i remarked. "my case is happily otherwise; i am a true man, and can look either the duke or king george in the face without concern." "is it so the wind sits?" says he. "i protest you are fallen in the worst sort of error. prestongrange has been hitherto so civil (he tells me) as not to combat your allegations; but you must not think they are not looked upon with strong suspicion. you say you are innocent. my dear sir, the facts declare you guilty." "i was waiting for you there," said i. "the evidence of mungo campbell; your flight after the completion of the murder; your long course of secresy my good young man!" said mr. simon, "here is enough evidence to hang a bullock, let be a david balfour! i shall be upon that trial; my voice shall be raised; i shall then speak much otherwise from what i do to-day, and far less to your gratification, little as you like it now! ah, you look white!" cries he. "i have found the key of your impudent heart. you look pale, your eyes waver, mr. david! you see the grave and the gallows nearer by than you had fancied." "i own to a natural weakness," said i. "i think no shame for that. shame. . ." i was going on. "shame waits for you on the gibbet," he broke in. "where i shall but be even'd with my lord your father," said i. "aha, but not so!" he cried, "and you do not yet see to the bottom of this business. my father suffered in a great cause, and for dealing in the affairs of kings. you are to hang for a dirty murder about boddlepieces. your personal part in it, the treacherous one of holding the poor wretch in talk, your accomplices a pack of ragged highland gillies. and it can be shown, my great mr. balfour it can be shown, and it will be shown, trust me that has a finger in the pie it can be shown, and shall be shown, that you were paid to do it. i think i can see the looks go round the court when i adduce my evidence, and it shall appear that you, a young man of education, let yourself be corrupted to this shocking act for a suit of cast clothes, a bottle of highland spirits, and three-and-fivepence-halfpenny in copper money." there was a touch of the truth in these words that knocked me like a blow: clothes, a bottle of usquebaugh, and three-and-fivepencehalfpenny in change made up, indeed, the most of what alan and i had carried from auchurn; and i saw that some of james's people had been blabbing in their dungeons. "you see i know more than you fancied," he resumed in triumph. "and as for giving it this turn, great mr. david, you must not suppose the government of great britain and ireland will ever be stuck for want of evidence. we have men here in prison who will swear out their lives as we direct them; as i direct, if you prefer the phrase. so now you are to guess your part of glory if you choose to die. on the one hand, life, wine, women, and a duke to be your handgun: on the other, a rope to your craig, and a gibbet to clatter your bones on, and the lousiest, lowest story to hand down to your namesakes in the future that was ever told about a hired assassin. and see here!" he cried, with a formidable shrill voice, "see this paper that i pull out of my pocket. look at the name there: it is the name of the great david, i believe, the ink scarce dry yet. can you guess its nature? it is the warrant for your arrest, which i have but to touch this bell beside me to have executed on the spot. once in the tolbooth upon this paper, may god help you, for the die is cast!" i must never deny that i was greatly horrified by so much baseness, and much unmanned by the immediacy and ugliness of my danger. mr. simon had already gloried in the changes of my hue; i make no doubt i was now no ruddier than my shirt; my speech besides trembled. "there is a gentleman in this room," cried i. "i appeal to him. i put my life and credit in his hands." prestongrange shut his book with a snap. "i told you so, simon," said he; "you have played your hand for all it was worth, and you have lost. mr. david," he went on, "i wish you to believe it was by no choice of mine you were subjected to this proof. i wish you could understand how glad i am you should come forth from it with so much credit. you may not quite see how, but it is a little of a service to myself. for had our friend here been more successful than i was last night, it might have appeared that he was a better judge of men than i; it might have appeared we were altogether in the wrong situations, mr. simon and myself. and i know our friend simon to be ambitious," says he, striking lightly on fraser's shoulder. "as for this stage play, it is over; my sentiments are very much engaged in your behalf; and whatever issue we can find to this unfortunate affair, i shall make it my business to see it is adopted with tenderness to you." these were very good words, and i could see besides that there was little love, and perhaps a spice of genuine ill-will, between these two who were opposed to me. for all that, it was unmistakable this interview had been designed, perhaps rehearsed, with the consent of both; it was plain my adversaries were in earnest to try me by all methods; and now (persuasion, flattery, and menaces having been tried in vain) i could not but wonder what would be their next expedient. my eyes besides were still troubled, and my knees loose under me, with the distress of the late ordeal; and i could do no more than stammer the same form of words: "i put my life and credit in your hands." "well, well," said he, "we must try to save them. and in the meanwhile let us return to gentler methods. you must not bear any grudge upon my friend, mr. simon, who did but speak by his brief. and even if you did conceive some malice against myself, who stood by and seemed rather to hold a candle, i must not let that extend to innocent members of my family. these are greatly engaged to see more of you, and i cannot consent to have my young womenfolk disappointed. to-morrow they will be going to hope park, where i think it very proper you should make your bow. call for me first, when i may possibly have something for your private hearing; then you shall be turned abroad again under the conduct of my misses; and until that time repeat to me your promise of secrecy." i had done better to have instantly refused, but in truth i was beside the power of reasoning; did as i was bid; took my leave i know not how; and when i was forth again in the close, and the door had shut behind me, was glad to lean on a house wall and wipe my face. that horrid apparition (as i may call it) of mr. simon rang in my memory, as a sudden noise rings after it is over in the ear. tales of the man's father, of his falseness, of his manifold perpetual treacheries, rose before me from all that i had heard and read, and joined on with what i had just experienced of himself. each time it occurred to me, the ingenious foulness of that calumny he had proposed to nail upon my character startled me afresh. the case of the man upon the gibbet by leith walk appeared scarce distinguishable from that i was now to consider as my own. to rob a child of so little more than nothing was certainly a paltry enterprise for two grown men; but my own tale, as it was to be represented in a court by simon fraser, appeared a fair second in every possible point of view of sordidness and cowardice. the voices of two of prestongrange's liveried men upon his doorstep recalled me to myself. "ha'e," said the one, "this billet as fast as ye can link to the captain." "is that for the cateran back again?" asked the other. "it would seem sae," returned the first. "him and simon are seeking him." "i think prestongrange is gane gyte," says the second. "he'll have james more in bed with him next." "weel, it's neither your affair nor mine's," said the first. and they parted, the one upon his errand, and the other back into the house. this looked as ill as possible. i was scarce gone and they were sending already for james more, to whom i thought mr. simon must have pointed when he spoke of men in prison and ready to redeem their lives by all extremities. my scalp curdled among my hair, and the next moment the blood leaped in me to remember catriona. poor lass! her father stood to be hanged for pretty indefensible misconduct. what was yet more unpalatable, it now seemed he was prepared to save his four quarters by the worst of shame and the most foul of cowardly murders murder by the false oath; and to complete our misfortunes, it seemed myself was picked out to be the victim. i began to walk swiftly and at random, conscious only of a desire for movement, air, and the open country. chapter vii i make a fault in honour i came forth, i vow i know not how, on the lang dykes. this is a rural road which runs on the north side over against the city. thence i could see the whole black length of it tail down, from where the castle stands upon its crags above the loch in a long line of spires and gable ends, and smoking chimneys, and at the sight my heart swelled in my bosom. my youth, as i have told, was already inured to dangers; but such danger as i had seen the face of but that morning, in the midst of what they call the safety of a town, shook me beyond experience. peril of slavery, peril of shipwreck, peril of sword and shot, i had stood all of these without discredit; but the peril there was in the sharp voice and the fat face of simon, property lord lovat, daunted me wholly. i sat by the lake side in a place where the rushes went down into the water, and there steeped my wrists and laved my temples. if i could have done so with any remains of self-esteem, i would now have fled from my foolhardy enterprise. but (call it courage or cowardice, and i believe it was both the one and the other) i decided i was ventured out beyond the possibility of a retreat. i had out-faced these men, i would continue to out-face them; come what might, i would stand by the word spoken. the sense of my own constancy somewhat uplifted my spirits, but not much. at the best of it there was an icy place about my heart, and life seemed a black business to be at all engaged in. for two souls in particular my pity flowed. the one was myself, to be so friendless and lost among dangers. the other was the girl, the daughter of james more. i had seen but little of her; yet my view was taken and my judgment made. i thought her a lass of a clean honour, like a man's; i thought her one to die of a disgrace; and now i believed her father to be at that moment bargaining his vile life for mine. it made a bond in my thoughts betwixt the girl and me. i had seen her before only as a wayside appearance, though one that pleased me strangely; i saw her now in a sudden nearness of relation, as the daughter of my blood foe, and i might say, my murderer. i reflected it was hard i should be so plagued and persecuted all my days for other folks' affairs, and have no manner of pleasure myself. i got meals and a bed to sleep in when my concerns would suffer it; beyond that my wealth was of no help to me. if i was to hang, my days were like to be short; if i was not to hang but to escape out of this trouble, they might yet seem long to me ere i was done with them. of a sudden her face appeared in my memory, the way i had first seen it, with the parted lips; at that, weakness came in my bosom and strength into my legs; and i set resolutely forward on the way to dean. if i was to hang to-morrow, and it was sure enough i might very likely sleep that night in a dungeon, i determined i should hear and speak once more with catriona. the exercise of walking and the thought of my destination braced me yet more, so that i began to pluck up a kind of spirit. in the village of dean, where it sits in the bottom of a glen beside the river, i inquired my way of a miller's man, who sent me up the hill upon the farther side by a plain path, and so to a decent-like small house in a garden of lawns and apple-trees. my heart beat high as i stepped inside the garden hedge, but it fell low indeed when i came face to face with a grim and fierce old lady, walking there in a white mutch with a man's hat strapped upon the top of it. "what do ye come seeking here?" she asked. i told her i was after miss drummond. "and what may be your business with miss drummond?" says she. i told her i had met her on saturday last, had been so fortunate as to render her a trifling service, and was come now on the young lady's invitation. "o, so you're saxpence!" she cried, with a very sneering manner. "a braw gift, a bonny gentleman. and hae ye ony ither name and designation, or were ye bapteesed saxpence?" she asked. i told my name. "preserve me!" she cried. "has ebenezer gotten a son?" "no, ma'am," said i. "i am a son of alexander's. it's i that am the laird of shaws." "ye'll find your work cut out for ye to establish that," quoth she. "i perceive you know my uncle," said i; "and i daresay you may be the better pleased to hear that business is arranged." "and what brings ye here after miss drummond?" she pursued. "i'm come after my saxpence, mem," said i. "it's to be thought, being my uncle's nephew, i would be found a careful lad." "so ye have a spark of sleeness in ye?" observed the old lady, with some approval. "i thought ye had just been a cuif you and your saxpence, and your lucky day and your sake of balwhidder" from which i was gratified to learn that catriona had not forgotten some of our talk. "but all this is by the purpose," she resumed. "am i to understand that ye come here keeping company?" "this is surely rather an early question," said i. "the maid is young, so am i, worse fortune. i have but seen her the once. i'll not deny," i added, making up my mind to try her with some frankness, "i'll not deny but she has run in my head a good deal since i met in with her. that is one thing; but it would be quite another, and i think i would look very like a fool, to commit myself." "you can speak out of your mouth, i see," said the old lady. "praise god, and so can i! i was fool enough to take charge of this rogue's daughter: a fine charge i have gotten; but it's mine, and i'll carry it the way i want to. do ye mean to tell me, mr. balfour of shaws, that you would marry james more's daughter, and him hanged! well, then, where there's no possible marriage there shall be no manner of carryings on, and take that for said. lasses are bruckle things," she added, with a nod; "and though ye would never think it by my wrunkled chafts, i was a lassie mysel', and a bonny one." "lady allardyce," said i, "for that i suppose to be your name, you seem to do the two sides of the talking, which is a very poor manner to come to an agreement. you give me rather a home thrust when you ask if i would marry, at the gallow's foot, a young lady whom i have seen but once. i have told you already i would never be so untenty as to commit myself. and yet i'll go some way with you. if i continue to like the lass as well as i have reason to expect, it will be something more than her father, or the gallows either, that keeps the two of us apart. as for my family, i found it by the wayside like a lost bawbee! i owe less than nothing to my uncle and if ever i marry, it will be to please one person: that's myself." "i have heard this kind of talk before ye were born," said mrs. ogilvy, "which is perhaps the reason that i think of it so little. there's much to be considered. this james more is a kinsman of mine, to my shame be it spoken. but the better the family, the mair men hanged or headed, that's always been poor scotland's story. and if it was just the hanging! for my part i think i would be best pleased with james upon the gallows, which would be at least an end to him. catrine's a good lass enough, and a good-hearted, and lets herself be deaved all day with a runt of an auld wife like me. but, ye see, there's the weak bit. she's daft about that long, false, fleeching beggar of a father of hers, and red-mad about the gregara, and proscribed names, and king james, and a wheen blethers. and you might think ye could guide her, ye would find yourself sore mista'en. ye say ye've seen her but the once. . ." "spoke with her but the once, i should have said," i interrupted. "i saw her again this morning from a window at prestongrange's." this i daresay i put in because it sounded well; but i was properly paid for my ostentation on the return. "what's this of it?" cries the old lady, with a sudden pucker of her face. "i think it was at the advocate's door-cheek that ye met her first." i told her that was so. "h'm," she said; and then suddenly, upon rather a scolding tone, "i have your bare word for it," she cries, "as to who and what you are. by your way of it, you're balfour of the shaws; but for what i ken you may be balfour of the deevil's oxter. it's possible ye may come here for what ye say, and it's equally possible ye may come here for deil care what! i'm good enough whig to sit quiet, and to have keepit all my men-folk's heads upon their shoulders. but i'm not just a good enough whig to be made a fool of neither. and i tell you fairly, there's too much advocate's door and advocate's window here for a man that comes taigling after a macgregor's daughter. ye can tell that to the advocate that sent ye, with my fond love. and i kiss my loof to ye, mr. balfour," says she, suiting the action to the word; "and a braw journey to ye back to where ye cam frae." "if you think me a spy," i broke out, and speech stuck in my throat. i stood and looked murder at the old lady for a space, then bowed and turned away. "here! hoots! the callant's in a creel!" she cried. "think ye a spy? what else would i think ye me that kens naething by ye? but i see that i was wrong; and as i cannot fight, i'll have to apologise. a bonny figure i would be with a broadsword. ay! ay!" she went on, "you're none such a bad lad in your way; i think ye'll have some redeeming vices. but, o! davit balfour, ye're damned countryfeed. ye'll have to win over that, lad; ye'll have to soople your back-bone, and think a wee pickle less of your dainty self; and ye'll have to try to find out that women-folk are nae grenadiers. but that can never be. to your last day you'll ken no more of women-folk than what i do of sow-gelding." i had never been used with such expressions from a lady's tongue, the only two ladies i had known, mrs. campbell and my mother, being most devout and most particular women; and i suppose my amazement must have been depicted in my countenance, for mrs. ogilvy burst forth suddenly in a fit of laughter. "keep me!" she cried, struggling with her mirth, "you have the finest timber face and you to marry the daughter of a hieland cateran! davie, my dear, i think we'll have to make a match of it if it was just to see the weans. and now," she went on, "there's no manner of service in your daidling here, for the young woman is from home, and it's my fear that the old woman is no suitable companion for your father's son. forbye that i have nobody but myself to look after my reputation, and have been long enough alone with a sedooctive youth. and come back another day for your saxpence!" she cried after me as i left. my skirmish with this disconcerting lady gave my thoughts a boldness they had otherwise wanted. for two days the image of catriona had mixed in all my meditations; she made their background, so that i scarce enjoyed my own company without a glint of her in a corner of my mind. but now she came immediately near; i seemed to touch her, whom i had never touched but the once; i let myself flow out to her in a happy weakness, and looking all about, and before and behind, saw the world like an undesirable desert, where men go as soldiers on a march, following their duty with what constancy they have, and catriona alone there to offer me some pleasure of my days. i wondered at myself that i could dwell on such considerations in that time of my peril and disgrace; and when i remembered my youth i was ashamed. i had my studies to complete: i had to be called into some useful business; i had yet to take my part of service in a place where all must serve; i had yet to learn, and know, and prove myself a man; and i had so much sense as blush that i should be already tempted with these further-on and holier delights and duties. my education spoke home to me sharply; i was never brought up on sugar biscuits but on the hard food of the truth. i knew that he was quite unfit to be a husband who was not prepared to be a father also; and for a boy like me to play the father was a mere derision. when i was in the midst of these thoughts and about half-way back to town i saw a figure coming to meet me, and the trouble of my heart was heightened. it seemed i had everything in the world to say to her, but nothing to say first; and remembering how tongue-tied i had been that morning at the advocate's i made sure that i would find myself struck dumb. but when she came up my fears fled away; not even the consciousness of what i had been privately thinking disconcerted me the least; and i found i could talk with her as easily and rationally as i might with alan. "o!" she cried, "you have been seeking your sixpence; did you get it?" i told her no; but now i had met with her my walk was not in vain. "though i have seen you to-day already," said i, and told her where and when. "i did not see you," she said. "my eyes are big, but there are better than mine at seeing far. only i heard singing in the house." "that was miss grant," said i, "the eldest and the bonniest." "they say they are all beautiful," said she. "they think the same of you, miss drummond," i replied, "and were all crowding to the window to observe you." "it is a pity about my being so blind," said she, "or i might have seen them too. and you were in the house? you must have been having the fine time with the fine music and the pretty ladies." "there is just where you are wrong," said i; "for i was as uncouth as a sea-fish upon the brae of a mountain. the truth is that i am better fitted to go about with rudas men than pretty ladies." "well, i would think so too, at all events!" said she, at which we both of us laughed. "it is a strange thing, now," said i. "i am not the least afraid with you, yet i could have run from the miss grants. and i was afraid of your cousin too." "o, i think any man will be afraid of her," she cried. "my father is afraid of her himself." the name of her father brought me to a stop. i looked at her as she walked by my side; i recalled the man, and the little i knew and the much i guessed of him; and comparing the one with the other, felt like a traitor to be silent. "speaking of which," said i, "i met your father no later than this morning." "did you?" she cried, with a voice of joy that seemed to mock at me. "you saw james more? you will have spoken with him then?" "i did even that," said i. then i think things went the worst way for me that was humanly possible. she gave me a look of mere gratitude. "ah, thank you for that!" says she. "you thank me for very little," said i, and then stopped. but it seemed when i was holding back so much, something at least had to come out. "i spoke rather ill to him," said i; "i did no like him very much; i spoke him rather ill, and he was angry." "i think you had little to do then, and less to tell it to his daughter!" she cried out. "but those that do not love and cherish him i will not know." "i will take the freedom of a word yet," said i, beginning to tremble. "perhaps neither your father nor i are in the best of spirits at prestongrange's. i daresay we both have anxious business there, for it's a dangerous house. i was sorry for him too, and spoke to him the first, if i could but have spoken the wiser. and for one thing, in my opinion, you will soon find that his affairs are mending." "it will not be through your friendship, i am thinking," said she; "and he is much made up to you for your sorrow." "miss drummond," cried i, "i am alone in this world." "and i am not wondering at that," said she. "o, let me speak!" said i. "i will speak but the once, and then leave you, if you will, for ever. i came this day in the hopes of a kind word that i am sore in want of. i know that what i said must hurt you, and i knew it then. it would have been easy to have spoken smooth, easy to lie to you; can you not think how i was tempted to the same? cannot you see the truth of my heart shine out?" "i think here is a great deal of work, mr. balfour," said she. "i think we will have met but the once, and will can part like gentle folk." "o, let me have one to believe in me!" i pleaded, "i cannae bear it else. the whole world is clanned against me. how am i to go through with my dreadful fate? if there's to be none to believe in me i cannot do it. the man must just die, for i cannot do it." she had still looked straight in front of her, head in air; but at my words or the tone of my voice she came to a stop. "what is this you say?" she asked. "what are you talking of?" "it is my testimony which may save an innocent life," said i, "and they will not suffer me to bear it. what would you do yourself? you know what this is, whose father lies in danger. would you desert the poor soul? they have tried all ways with me. they have sought to bribe me; they offered me hills and valleys. and to-day that sleuth-hound told me how i stood, and to what a length he would go to butcher and disgrace me. i am to be brought in a party to the murder; i am to have held glenure in talk for money and old clothes; i am to be killed and shamed. if this is the way i am to fall, and me scarce a man if this is the story to be told of me in all scotland if you are to believe it too, and my name is to be nothing but a by-word catriona, how can i go through with it? the thing's not possible; it's more than a man has in his heart." i poured my words out in a whirl, one upon the other; and when i stopped i found her gazing on me with a startled face. "glenure! it is the appin murder," she said softly, but with a very deep surprise. i had turned back to bear her company, and we were now come near the head of the brae above dean village. at this word i stepped in front of her like one suddenly distracted. "for god's sake!" i cried, "for god's sake, what is this that i have done?" and carried my fists to my temples. "what made me do it? sure, i am bewitched to say these things!" "in the name of heaven, what ails you now!" she cried. "i gave my honour," i groaned, "i gave my honour and now i have broke it. o, catriona!" "i am asking you what it is," she said; "was it these things you should not have spoken? and do you think i have no honour, then? or that i am one that would betray a friend? i hold up my right hand to you and swear." "o, i knew you would be true!" said i. "it's me it's here. i that stood but this morning and out-faced them, that risked rather to die disgraced upon the gallows than do wrong and a few hours after i throw my honour away by the roadside in common talk! 'there is one thing clear upon our interview,' says he, 'that i can rely on your pledged word.' where is my word now? who could believe me now? you could not believe me. i am clean fallen down; i had best die!" all this i said with a weeping voice, but i had no tears in my body. "my heart is sore for you," said she, "but be sure you are too nice. i would not believe you, do you say? i would trust you with anything. and these men? i would not be thinking of them! men who go about to entrap and to destroy you! fy! this is no time to crouch. look up! do you not think i will be admiring you like a great hero of the good and you a boy not much older than myself? and because you said a word too much in a friend's ear, that would die ere she betrayed you to make such a matter! it is one thing that we must both forget." "catriona," said i, looking at her, hang-dog, "is this true of it? would ye trust me yet?" "will you not believe the tears upon my face?" she cried. "it is the world i am thinking of you, mr. david balfour. let them hang you; i will never forget, i will grow old and still remember you. i think it is great to die so: i will envy you that gallows." "and maybe all this while i am but a child frighted with bogles," said i. "maybe they but make a mock of me." "it is what i must know," she said. "i must hear the whole. the harm is done at all events, and i must hear the whole." i had sat down on the wayside, where she took a place beside me, and i told her all that matter much as i have written it, my thoughts about her father's dealings being alone omitted. "well," she said, when i had finished, "you are a hero, surely, and i never would have thought that same! and i think you are in peril, too. o, simon fraser! to think upon that man! for his life and the dirty money, to be dealing in such traffic!" and just then she called out aloud with a queer word that was common with her, and belongs, i believe, to her own language. "my torture!" says she, "look at the sun!" indeed, it was already dipping towards the mountains. she bid me come again soon, gave me her hand, and left me in a turmoil of glad spirits. i delayed to go home to my lodging, for i had a terror of immediate arrest; but got some supper at a change house, and the better part of that night walked by myself in the barley-fields, and had such a sense of catriona's presence that i seemed to bear her in my arms. chapter viii the bravo the next day, august 29th, i kept my appointment at the advocate's in a coat that i had made to my own measure, and was but newly ready, "aha," says prestongrange, "you are very fine to-day; my misses are to have a fine cavalier. come, i take that kind of you. i take that kind of you, mr. david. o, we shall do very well yet, and i believe your troubles are nearly at an end." "you have news for me?" cried i. "beyond anticipation," he replied. "your testimony is after all to be received; and you may go, if you will, in my company to the trial, which in to be held at inverary, thursday, 21st proximo." i was too much amazed to find words. "in the meanwhile," he continued, "though i will not ask you to renew your pledge, i must caution you strictly to be reticent. to-morrow your precognition must be taken; and outside of that, do you know, i think least said will be soonest mended." "i shall try to go discreetly,' said i. "i believe it is yourself that i must thank for this crowning mercy, and i do thank you gratefully. after yesterday, my lord, this is like the doors of heaven. i cannot find it in my heart to get the thing believed." "ah, but you must try and manage, you must try and manage to believe it," says he, soothing-like, "and i am very glad to hear your acknowledgment of obligation, for i think you may be able to repay me very shortly" he coughed "or even now. the matter is much changed. your testimony, which i shall not trouble you for to-day, will doubtless alter the complexion of the case for all concerned, and this makes it less delicate for me to enter with you on a side issue." "my lord," i interrupted, "excuse me for interrupting you, but how has this been brought about? the obstacles you told me of on saturday appeared even to me to be quite insurmountable; how has it been contrived?" "my dear mr. david," said he, "it would never do for me to divulge (even to you, as you say) the councils of the government; and you must content yourself, if you please, with the gross fact." he smiled upon me like a father as he spoke, playing the while with a new pen; methought it was impossible there could be any shadow of deception in the man: yet when he drew to him a sheet of paper, dipped his pen among the ink, and began again to address me, i was somehow not so certain, and fell instinctively into an attitude of guard. "there is a point i wish to touch upon," he began. "i purposely left it before upon one side, which need be now no longer necessary. this is not, of course, a part of your examination, which is to follow by another hand; this is a private interest of my own. you say you encountered alan breck upon the hill?" "i did, my lord," said i "this was immediately after the murder?" "it was." "did you speak to him?" "i did." "you had known him before, i think?" says my lord, carelessly. "i cannot guess your reason for so thinking, my lord," i replied, "but such in the fact." "and when did you part with him again?" said he. "i reserve my answer," said i. "the question will be put to me at the assize." "mr. balfour," said he, "will you not understand that all this is without prejudice to yourself? i have promised you life and honour; and, believe me, i can keep my word. you are therefore clear of all anxiety. alan, it appears, you suppose you can protect; and you talk to me of your gratitude, which i think (if you push me) is not illdeserved. there are a great many different considerations all pointing the same way; and i will never be persuaded that you could not help us (if you chose) to put salt on alan's tail." "my lord," said i, "i give you my word i do not so much as guess where alan is." he paused a breath. "nor how he might be found?" he asked. i sat before him like a log of wood. "and so much for your gratitude, mr. david!" he observed. again there was a piece of silence. "well," said he, rising, "i am not fortunate, and we are a couple at cross purposes. let us speak of it no more; you will receive notice when, where, and by whom, we are to take your precognition. and in the meantime, my misses must be waiting you. they will never forgive me if i detain their cavalier." into the hands of these graces i was accordingly offered up, and found them dressed beyond what i had thought possible, and looking fair as a posy. as we went forth from the doors a small circumstance occurred which came afterwards to look extremely big. i heard a whistle sound loud and brief like a signal, and looking all about, spied for one moment the red head of neil of the tom, the son of duncan. the next moment he was gone again, nor could i see so much as the skirt-tail of catriona, upon whom i naturally supposed him to be then attending. my three keepers led me out by bristo and the bruntsfield links; whence a path carried us to hope park, a beautiful pleasance, laid with gravel-walks, furnished with seats and summer-sheds, and warded by a keeper. the way there was a little longsome; the two younger misses affected an air of genteel weariness that damped me cruelly, the eldest considered me with something that at times appeared like mirth; and though i thought i did myself more justice than the day before, it was not without some effort. upon our reaching the park i was launched on a bevy of eight or ten young gentlemen (some of them cockaded officers, the rest chiefly advocates) who crowded to attend upon these beauties; and though i was presented to all of them in very good words, it seemed i was by all immediately forgotten. young folk in a company are like to savage animals: they fall upon or scorn a stranger without civility, or i may say, humanity; and i am sure, if i had been among baboons, they would have shown me quite as much of both. some of the advocates set up to be wits, and some of the soldiers to be rattles; and i could not tell which of these extremes annoyed me most. all had a manner of handling their swords and coat-skirts, for the which (in mere black envy) i could have kicked them from the park. i daresay, upon their side, they grudged me extremely the fine company in which i had arrived; and altogether i had soon fallen behind, and stepped stiffly in the rear of all that merriment with my own thoughts. from these i was recalled by one of the officers, lieutenant hector duncansby, a gawky, leering highland boy, asking if my name was not "palfour." i told him it was, not very kindly, for his manner was scant civil. "ha, palfour," says he, and then, repeating it, "palfour, palfour!" "i am afraid you do not like my name, sir," says i, annoyed with myself to be annoyed with such a rustical fellow. "no," says he, "but i wass thinking." "i would not advise you to make a practice of that, sir," says i. "i feel sure you would not find it to agree with you." "tit you effer hear where alan grigor fand the tangs?" said he. i asked him what he could possibly mean, and he answered, with a heckling laugh, that he thought i must have found the poker in the same place and swallowed it. there could be no mistake about this, and my cheek burned. "before i went about to put affronts on gentlemen," said i, "i think i would learn the english language first." he took me by the sleeve with a nod and a wink and led me quietly outside hope park. but no sooner were we beyond the view of the promenaders, than the fashion of his countenance changed. "you tam lowland scoon'rel!" cries he, and hit me a buffet on the jaw with his closed fist. i paid him as good or better on the return; whereupon he stepped a little back and took off his hat to me decorously. "enough plows i think," says he. "i will be the offended shentleman, for who effer heard of such suffeeciency as tell a shentlemans that is the king's officer he cannae speak cot's english? we have swords at our hurdles, and here is the king's park at hand. will ye walk first, or let me show ye the way?" i returned his bow, told him to go first, and followed him. as he went i heard him grumble to himself about cot's english and the king's coat, so that i might have supposed him to be seriously offended. but his manner at the beginning of our interview was there to belie him. it was manifest he had come prepared to fasten a quarrel on me, right or wrong; manifest that i was taken in a fresh contrivance of my enemies; and to me (conscious as i was of my deficiencies) manifest enough that i should be the one to fall in our encounter. as we came into that rough rocky desert of the king's park i was tempted half-a-dozen times to take to my heels and run for it, so loath was i to show my ignorance in fencing, and so much averse to die or even to be wounded. but i considered if their malice went as far as this, it would likely stick at nothing; and that to fall by the sword, however ungracefully, was still an improvement on the gallows. i considered besides that by the unguarded pertness of my words and the quickness of my blow i had put myself quite out of court; and that even if i ran, my adversary would probably pursue and catch me, which would add disgrace to my misfortune. so that, taking all in all, i continued marching behind him, much as a man follows the hangman, and certainly with no more hope. we went about the end of the long craigs, and came into the hunter's bog. here, on a piece of fair turf, my adversary drew. there was nobody there to see us but some birds; and no resource for me but to follow his example, and stand on guard with the best face i could display. it seems it was not good enough for mr. dancansby, who spied some flaw in my manoeuvres, paused, looked upon me sharply, and came off and on, and menaced me with his blade in the air. as i had seen no such proceedings from alan, and was besides a good deal affected with the proximity of death, i grew quite bewildered, stood helpless, and could have longed to run away. "fat deil ails her?" cries the lieutenant. and suddenly engaging, he twitched the sword out of my grasp and sent it flying far among the rushes. twice was this manoeuvre repeated; and the third time when i brought back my humiliated weapon, i found he had returned his own to the scabbard, and stood awaiting me with a face of some anger, and his hands clasped under his skirt. "pe tamned if i touch you!" he cried, and asked me bitterly what right i had to stand up before "shentlemans" when i did not know the back of a sword from the front of it. i answered that was the fault of my upbringing; and would he do me the justice to say i had given him all the satisfaction it was unfortunately in my power to offer, and had stood up like a man? "and that is the truth," said he. "i am fery prave myself, and pold as a lions. but to stand up there and you ken naething of fence! the way that you did, i declare it was peyond me. and i am sorry for the plow; though i declare i pelief your own was the elder brother, and my heid still sings with it. and i declare if i had kent what way it wass, i would not put a hand to such a piece of pusiness." "that is handsomely said," i replied, "and i am sure you will not stand up a second time to be the actor for my private enemies." "indeed, no, palfour," said he; "and i think i was used extremely suffeeciently myself to be set up to fecht with an auld wife, or all the same as a bairn whateffer! and i will tell the master so, and fecht him, by cot, himself!" "and if you knew the nature of mr. simon's quarrel with me," said i, "you would be yet the more affronted to be mingled up with such affairs." he swore he could well believe it; that all the lovats were made of the same meal and the devil was the miller that ground that; then suddenly shaking me by the hand, he vowed i was a pretty enough fellow after all, that it was a thousand pities i had been neglected, and that if he could find the time, he would give an eye himself to have me educated. "you can do me a better service than even what you propose," said i; and when he had asked its nature "come with me to the house of one of my enemies, and testify how i have carried myself this day," i told him. "that will be the true service. for though he has sent me a gallant adversary for the first, the thought in mr. simon's mind is merely murder. there will be a second and then a third; and by what you have seen of my cleverness with the cold steel, you can judge for yourself what is like to be the upshot." "and i would not like it myself, if i was no more of a man than what you wass!" he cried. "but i will do you right, palfour. lead on!" if i had walked slowly on the way into that accursed park my heels were light enough on the way out. they kept time to a very good old air, that is as ancient as the bible, and the words of it are: "surely the bitterness of death is passed." i mind that i was extremely thirsty, and had a drink at saint margaret's well on the road down, and the sweetness of that water passed belief. we went through the sanctuary, up the canongate, in by the netherbow, and straight to prestongrange's door, talking as we came and arranging the details of our affair. the footman owned his master was at home, but declared him engaged with other gentlemen on very private business, and his door forbidden. "my business is but for three minutes, and it cannot wait," said i. "you may say it is by no means private, and i shall be even glad to have some witnesses." as the man departed unwillingly enough upon this errand, we made so bold as to follow him to the ante-chamber, whence i could hear for a while the murmuring of several voices in the room within. the truth is, they were three at the one table prestongrange, simon fraser, and mr. erskine, sheriff of perth; and as they were met in consultation on the very business of the appin murder, they were a little disturbed at my appearance, but decided to receive me. "well, well, mr. balfour, and what brings you here again? and who is this you bring with you?" says prestongrange. as for fraser, he looked before him on the table. "he is here to bear a little testimony in my favour, my lord, which i think it very needful you should hear," said i, and turned to duncansby. "i have only to say this," said the lieutenant, "that i stood up this day with palfour in the hunter's pog, which i am now fery sorry for, and he behaved himself as pretty as a shentlemans could ask it. and i have creat respects for palfour," he added. "i thank you for your honest expressions," said i. whereupon duncansby made his bow to the company, and left the chamber, as we had agreed upon before. "what have i to do with this?" says prestongrange. "i will tell your lordship in two words," said i. "i have brought this gentleman, a king's officer, to do me so much justice. now i think my character in covered, and until a certain date, which your lordship can very well supply, it will be quite in vain to despatch against me any more officers. i will not consent to fight my way through the garrison of the castle." the veins swelled on prestongrange's brow, and he regarded me with fury. "i think the devil uncoupled this dog of a lad between my legs!" he cried; and then, turning fiercely on his neighbour, "this is some of your work, simon," he said. "i spy your hand in the business, and, let me tell you, i resent it. it is disloyal, when we are agreed upon one expedient, to follow another in the dark. you are disloyal to me. what! you let me send this lad to the place with my very daughters! and because i let drop a word to you..... fy, sir, keep your dishonours to yourself!" simon was deadly pale. "i will be a kick-ball between you and the duke no longer," he exclaimed. "either come to an agreement, or come to a differ, and have it out among yourselves. but i will no longer fetch and carry, and get your contrary instructions, and be blamed by both. for if i were to tell you what i think of all your hanover business it would make your head sing." but sheriff erskine had preserved his temper, and now intervened smoothly. "and in the meantime," says he, "i think we should tell mr. balfour that his character for valour is quite established. he may sleep in peace. until the date he was so good as to refer to it shall be put to the proof no more." his coolness brought the others to their prudence; and they made haste, with a somewhat distracted civility, to pack me from the house. chapter ix the heather on fire when i left prestongrange that afternoon i was for the first time angry. the advocate had made a mock of me. he had pretended my testimony was to be received and myself respected; and in that very hour, not only was simon practising against my life by the hands of the highland soldier, but (as appeared from his own language) prestongrange himself had some design in operation. i counted my enemies; prestongrange with all the king's authority behind him; and the duke with the power of the west highlands; and the lovat interest by their side to help them with so great a force in the north, and the whole clan of old jacobite spies and traffickers. and when i remembered james more, and the red head of neil the son of duncan, i thought there was perhaps a fourth in the confederacy, and what remained of rob roy's old desperate sept of caterans would be banded against me with the others. one thing was requisite some strong friend or wise adviser. the country must be full of such, both able and eager to support me, or lovat and the duke and prestongrange had not been nosing for expedients; and it made me rage to think that i might brush against my champions in the street and be no wiser. and just then (like an answer) a gentleman brushed against me going by, gave me a meaning look, and turned into a close. i knew him with the tail of my eye it was stewart the writer; and, blessing my good fortune, turned in to follow him. as soon as i had entered the close i saw him standing in the mouth of a stair, where he made me a signal and immediately vanished. seven storeys up, there he was again in a house door, the which he looked behind us after we had entered. the house was quite dismantled, with not a stick of furniture; indeed, it was one of which stewart had the letting in his hands. "we'll have to sit upon the floor," said he; "but we're safe here for the time being, and i've been wearying to see ye, mr. balfour." "how's it with alan?" i asked. "brawly," said he. "andie picks him up at gillane sands to-morrow, wednesday. he was keen to say good-bye to ye, but the way that things were going, i was feared the pair of ye was maybe best apart. and that brings me to the essential: how does your business speed?" "why," said i, "i was told only this morning that my testimony was accepted, and i was to travel to inverary with the advocate, no less." "hout awa!" cried stewart. "i'll never believe that." "i have maybe a suspicion of my own," says i, "but i would like fine to hear your reasons." "well, i tell ye fairly, i'm horn-mad," cries stewart. "if my one hand could pull their government down i would pluck it like a rotten apple. i'm doer for appin and for james of the glens; and, of course, it's my duty to defend my kinsman for his life. hear how it goes with me, and i'll leave the judgment of it to yourself. the first thing they have to do is to get rid of alan. they cannae bring in james as art and part until they've brought in alan first as principal; that's sound law: they could never put the cart before the horse." "and how are they to bring in alan till they can catch him?" says i. "ah, but there is a way to evite that arrestment," said he. "sound law, too. it would be a bonny thing if, by the escape of one ill-doer another was to go scatheless, and the remeid is to summon the principal and put him to outlawry for the non-compearance. now there's four places where a person can be summoned: at his dwelling-house; at a place where he has resided forty days; at the head burgh of the shire where he ordinarily resorts; or lastly (if there be ground to think him forth of scotland) at the cross of edinburgh, and the pier and shore of leith, for sixty days. the purpose of which last provision is evident upon its face: being that outgoing ships may have time to carry news of the transaction, and the summonsing be something other than a form. now take the case of alan. he has no dwelling-house that ever i could hear of; i would be obliged if anyone would show me where he has lived forty days together since the '45; there is no shire where he resorts whether ordinarily or extraordinarily; if he has a domicile at all, which i misdoubt, it must be with his regiment in france; and if he is not yet forth of scotland (as we happen to know and they happen to guess) it must be evident to the most dull it's what he's aiming for. where, then, and what way should he be summoned? i ask it at yourself, a layman." "you have given the very words," said i. "here at the cross, and at the pier and shore of leith, for sixty days." "ye're a sounder scots lawyer than prestongrange, then!" cries the writer. "he has had alan summoned once; that was on the twenty-fifth, the day that we first met. once, and done with it. and where? where, but at the cross of inverary, the head burgh of the campbells? a word in your ear, mr. balfour they're not seeking alan." "what do you mean?" i cried. "not seeking him?" "by the best that i can make of it," said he. "not wanting to find him, in my poor thought. they think perhaps he might set up a fair defence, upon the back of which james, the man they're really after, might climb out. this is not a case, ye see, it's a conspiracy." "yet i can tell you prestongrange asked after alan keenly," said i; "though, when i come to think of it, he was something of the easiest put by." "see that!" says he. "but there! i may be right or wrong, that's guesswork at the best, and let me get to my facts again. it comes to my ears that james and the witnesses the witnesses, mr. balfour! lay in close dungeons, and shackled forbye, in the military prison at fort william; none allowed in to them, nor they to write. the witnesses, mr. balfour; heard ye ever the match of that? i assure ye, no old, crooked stewart of the gang ever out-faced the law more impudently. it's clean in the two eyes of the act of parliament of 1700, anent wrongous imprisonment. no sooner did i get the news than i petitioned the lord justice clerk. i have his word to-day. there's law for ye! here's justice!" he put a paper in my hand, that same mealy-mouthed, false-faced paper that was printed since in the pamphlet "by a bystander," for behoof (as the title says) of james's "poor widow and five children." "see," said stewart, "he couldn't dare to refuse me access to my client, so he recommends the commanding officer to let me in. recommends! the lord justice clerk of scotland recommends. is not the purpose of such language plain? they hope the officer may be so dull, or so very much the reverse, as to refuse the recommendation. i would have to make the journey back again betwixt here and fort william. then would follow a fresh delay till i got fresh authority, and they had disavowed the officer military man, notoriously ignorant of the law, and that i ken the cant of it. then the journey a third time; and there we should be on the immediate heels of the trial before i had received my first instruction. am i not right to call this a conspiracy?" "it will bear that colour," said i. "and i'll go on to prove it you outright," said he. "they have the right to hold james in prison, yet they cannot deny me to visit him. they have no right to hold the witnesses; but am i to get a sight of them, that should be as free as the lord justice clerk himself! see read: for the rest, refuses to give any orders to keepers of prisons who are not accused as having done anything contrary to the duties of their office. anything contrary! sirs! and the act of seventeen hunner? mr. balfour, this makes my heart to burst; the heather is on fire inside my wame." "and the plain english of that phrase," said i, "is that the witnesses are still to lie in prison and you are not to see them?" "and i am not to see them until inverary, when the court is set!" cries he, "and then to hear prestongrange upon the anxious responsibilities of his office and the great facilities afforded the defence! but i'll begowk them there, mr. david. i have a plan to waylay the witnesses upon the road, and see if i cannae get i a little harle of justice out of the military man notoriously ignorant of the law that shall command the party." it was actually so it was actually on the wayside near tynedrum, and by the connivance of a soldier officer, that mr. stewart first saw the witnesses upon the case. "there is nothing that would surprise me in this business," i remarked. "i'll surprise you ere i'm done!" cries he. "do ye see this?" producing a print still wet from the press. "this is the libel: see, there's prestongrange's name to the list of witnesses, and i find no word of any balfour. but here is not the question. who do ye think paid for the printing of this paper?" "i suppose it would likely be king george," said i. "but it happens it was me!" he cried. "not but it was printed by and for themselves, for the grants and the erskines, and yon thief of the black midnight, simon fraser. but could i win to get a copy! no! i was to go blindfold to my defence; i was to hear the charges for the first time in court alongst the jury." "is not this against the law?" i asked "i cannot say so much," he replied. "it was a favour so natural and so constantly rendered (till this nonesuch business) that the law has never looked to it. and now admire the hand of providence! a stranger is in fleming's printing house, spies a proof on the floor, picks it up, and carries it to me. of all things, it was just this libel. whereupon i had it set again printed at the expense of the defence: sumptibus moesti rei; heard ever man the like of it? and here it is for anybody, the muckle secret out all may see it now. but how do you think i would enjoy this, that has the life of my kinsman on my conscience?" "troth, i think you would enjoy it ill," said i. "and now you see how it is," he concluded, "and why, when you tell me your evidence is to be let in, i laugh aloud in your face." it was now my turn. i laid before him in brief mr. simon's threats and offers, and the whole incident of the bravo, with the subsequent scene at prestongrange's. of my first talk, according to promise, i said nothing, nor indeed was it necessary. all the time i was talking stewart nodded his head like a mechanical figure; and no sooner had my voice ceased, than he opened his mouth and gave me his opinion in two words, dwelling strong on both of them. "disappear yourself," said he. "i do not take you," said i. "then i'll carry you there," said he. "by my view of it you're to disappear whatever. o, that's outside debate. the advocate, who is not without some spunks of a remainder decency, has wrung your lifesafe out of simon and the duke. he has refused to put you on your trial, and refused to have you killed; and there is the clue to their ill words together, for simon and the duke can keep faith with neither friend nor enemy. ye're not to be tried then, and ye're not to be murdered; but i'm in bitter error if ye're not to be kidnapped and carried away like the lady grange. bet me what ye please there was their expedient!" "you make me think," said i, and told him of the whistle and the redheaded retainer, neil. "wherever james more is there's one big rogue, never be deceived on that," said he. "his father was none so ill a man, though a kenning on the wrong side of the law, and no friend to my family, that i should waste my breath to be defending him! but as for james he's a brock and a blagyard. i like the appearance of this red-headed neil as little as yourself. it looks uncanny: fiegh! it smells bad. it was old lovat that managed the lady grange affair; if young lovat is to handle yours, it'll be all in the family. what's james more in prison for? the same offence: abduction. his men have had practice in the business. he'll be to lend them to be simon's instruments; and the next thing we'll be hearing, james will have made his peace, or else he'll have escaped; and you'll be in benbecula or applecross." "ye make a strong case," i admitted. "and what i want," he resumed, "is that you should disappear yourself ere they can get their hands upon ye. lie quiet until just before the trial, and spring upon them at the last of it when they'll be looking for you least. this is always supposing mr. balfour, that your evidence is worth so very great a measure of both risk and fash." "i will tell you one thing," said i. "i saw the murderer and it was not alan." "then, by god, my cousin's saved!" cried stewart. "you have his life upon your tongue; and there's neither time, risk, nor money to be spared to bring you to the trial." he emptied his pockets on the floor. "here is all that i have by me," he went on, "take it, ye'll want it ere ye're through. go straight down this close, there's a way out by there to the lang dykes, and by my will of it! see no more of edinburgh till the clash is over." "where am i to go, then?" i inquired. "and i wish that i could tell ye!" says he, "but all the places that i could send ye to, would be just the places they would seek. no, ye must fend for yourself, and god be your guiding! five days before the trial, september the sixteen, get word to me at the king arms in stirling; and if ye've managed for yourself as long as that, i'll see that ye reach inverary." "one thing more," said i. "can i no see alan?" he seemed boggled. "hech, i would rather you wouldnae," said he. "but i can never deny that alan is extremely keen of it, and is to lie this night by silvermills on purpose. if you're sure that you're not followed, mr. balfour but make sure of that lie in a good place and watch your road for a clear hour before ye risk it. it would be a dreadful business if both you and him was to miscarry!" chapter x the red-headed man it was about half-past three when i came forth on the lang dykes. dean was where i wanted to go. since catriona dwelled there, and her kinsfolk the glengyle macgregors appeared almost certainly to be employed against me, it was just one of the few places i should have kept away from; and being a very young man, and beginning to be very much in love, i turned my face in that direction without pause. as a slave to my conscience and common sense, however, i took a measure of precaution. coming over the crown of a bit of a rise in the road, i clapped down suddenly among the barley and lay waiting. after a while, a man went by that looked to be a highlandman, but i had never seen him till that hour. presently after came neil of the red head. the next to go past was a miller's cart, and after that nothing but manifest country people. here was enough to have turned the most foolhardy from his purpose, but my inclination ran too strong the other way. i argued it out that if neil was on that road, it was the right road to find him in, leading direct to his chief's daughter; as for the other highlandman, if i was to be startled off by every highlandman i saw, i would scarce reach anywhere. and having quite satisfied myself with this disingenuous debate, i made the better speed of it, and came a little after four to mrs. drumond-ogilvy's. both ladies were within the house; and upon my perceiving them together by the open door, i plucked off my hat and said, "here was a lad come seeking saxpence," which i thought might please the dowager. catriona ran out to greet me heartily, and, to my surprise, the old lady seemed scarce less forward than herself. i learned long afterwards that she had despatched a horseman by daylight to rankeillor at the queensferry, whom she knew to be the doer for shaws, and had then in her pocket a letter from that good friend of mine, presenting, in the most favourable view, my character and prospects. but had i read it i could scarce have seen more clear in her designs. maybe i was countryfeed; at least, i was not so much so as she thought; and it was even to my homespun wits, that she was bent to hammer up a match between her cousin and a beardless boy that was something of a laird in lothian. "saxpence had better take his broth with us, catrine," says she. "run and tell the lasses." and for the little while we were alone was at a good deal of pains to flatter me; always cleverly, always with the appearance of a banter, still calling me saxpence, but with such a turn that should rather uplift me in my own opinion. when catriona returned, the design became if possible more obvious; and she showed off the girl's advantages like a horse-couper with a horse. my face flamed that she should think me so obtuse. now i would fancy the girl was being innocently made a show of, and then i could have beaten the old carline wife with a cudgel; and now, that perhaps these two had set their heads together to entrap me, and at that i sat and gloomed betwixt them like the very image of ill-will. at last the matchmaker had a better device, which was to leave the pair of us alone. when my suspicions are anyway roused it is sometimes a little the wrong side of easy to allay them. but though i knew what breed she was of, and that was a breed of thieves, i could never look in catriona's face and disbelieve her. "i must not ask?" says she, eagerly, the same moment we were left alone. "ah, but to-day i can talk with a free conscience," i replied. "i am lightened of my pledge, and indeed (after what has come and gone since morning) i would not have renewed it were it asked." "tell me," she said. "my cousin will not be so long." so i told her the tale of the lieutenant from the first step to the last of it, making it as mirthful as i could, and, indeed, there was matter of mirth in that absurdity. "and i think you will be as little fitted for the rudas men as for the pretty ladies, after all!" says she, when i had done. "but what was your father that he could not learn you to draw the sword! it is most ungentle; i have not heard the match of that in anyone." "it is most misconvenient at least," said i; "and i think my father (honest man!) must have been wool-gathering to learn me latin in the place of it. but you see i do the best i can, and just stand up like lot's wife and let them hammer at me." "do you know what makes me smile?" said she. "well, it is this. i am made this way, that i should have been a man child. in my own thoughts it is so i am always; and i go on telling myself about this thing that is to befall and that. then it comes to the place of the fighting, and it comes over me that i am only a girl at all events, and cannot hold a sword or give one good blow; and then i have to twist my story round about, so that the fighting is to stop, and yet me have the best of it, just like you and the lieutenant; and i am the boy that makes the fine speeches all through, like mr. david balfour." "you are a bloodthirsty maid," said i. "well, i know it is good to sew and spin, and to make samplers," she said, "but if you were to do nothing else in the great world, i think you will say yourself it is a driech business; and it is not that i want to kill, i think. did ever you kill anyone?" "that i have, as it chances. two, no less, and me still a lad that should be at the college," said i. "but yet, in the look-back, i take no shame for it." "but how did you feel, then after it?" she asked. '"deed, i sat down and grat like a bairn," said i. "i know that, too," she cried. "i feel where these tears should come from. and at any rate, i would not wish to kill, only to be catherine douglas that put her arm through the staples of the bolt, where it was broken. that is my chief hero. would you not love to die so for your king?" she asked. "troth," said i, "my affection for my king, god bless the puggy face of him, is under more control; and i thought i saw death so near to me this day already, that i am rather taken up with the notion of living." "right," she said, "the right mind of a man! only you must learn arms; i would not like to have a friend that cannot strike. but it will not have been with the sword that you killed these two?" "indeed, no," said i, "but with a pair of pistols. and a fortunate thing it was the men were so near-hand to me, for i am about as clever with the pistols as i am with the sword." so then she drew from me the story of our battle in the brig, which i had omitted in my first account of my affairs. "yes," said she, "you are brave. and your friend, i admire and love him." "well, and i think anyone would!" said i. "he has his faults like other folk; but he is brave and staunch and kind, god bless him! that will be a strange day when i forget alan." and the thought of him, and that it was within my choice to speak with him that night, had almost overcome me. "and where will my head be gone that i have not told my news!" she cried, and spoke of a letter from her father, bearing that she might visit him to-morrow in the castle whither he was now transferred, and that his affairs were mending. "you do not like to hear it," said she. "will you judge my father and not know him?" "i am a thousand miles from judging," i replied. "and i give you my word i do rejoice to know your heart is lightened. if my face fell at all, as i suppose it must, you will allow this is rather an ill day for compositions, and the people in power extremely ill persons to be compounding with. i have simon fraser extremely heavy on my stomach still." "ah!" she cried, "you will not be evening these two; and you should bear in mind that prestongrange and james more, my father, are of the one blood." "i never heard tell of that," said i. "it is rather singular how little you are acquainted with," said she. "one part may call themselves grant, and one macgregor, but they are still of the same clan. they are all the sons of alpin, from whom, i think, our country has its name." "what country is that?" i asked. "my country and yours," said she "this is my day for discovering i think," said i, "for i always thought the name of it was scotland." "scotland is the name of what you call ireland," she replied. "but the old ancient true name of this place that we have our foot-soles on, and that our bones are made of, will be alban. it was alban they called it when our forefathers will be fighting for it against rome and alexander; and it is called so still in your own tongue that you forget." "troth," said i, "and that i never learned!" for i lacked heart to take her up about the macedonian. "but your fathers and mothers talked it, one generation with another," said she. "and it was sung about the cradles before you or me were ever dreamed of; and your name remembers it still. ah, if you could talk that language you would find me another girl. the heart speaks in that tongue." i had a meal with the two ladies, all very good, served in fine old plate, and the wine excellent, for it seems that mrs. ogilvy was rich. our talk, too, was pleasant enough; but as soon as i saw the sun decline sharply and the shadows to run out long, i rose to take my leave. for my mind was now made up to say farewell to alan; and it was needful i should see the trysting wood, and reconnoitre it, by daylight. catriona came with me as far as to the garden gate. "it is long till i see you now?" she asked. "it is beyond my judging," i replied. "it will be long, it may be never." "it may be so," said she. "and you are sorry?" i bowed my head, looking upon her. "so am i, at all events," said she. "i have seen you but a small time, but i put you very high. you are true, you are brave; in time i think you will be more of a man yet. i will be proud to hear of that. if you should speed worse, if it will come to fall as we are afraid o well! think you have the one friend. long after you are dead and me an old wife, i will be telling the bairns about david balfour, and my tears running. i will be telling how we parted, and what i said to you, and did to you. god go with you and guide you, prays your little friend: so i said i will be telling them and here is what i did." she took up my hand and kissed it. this so surprised my spirits that i cried out like one hurt. the colour came strong in her face, and she looked at me and nodded. "o yes, mr. david," said she, "that is what i think of you. the head goes with the lips." i could read in her face high spirit, and a chivalry like a brave child's; not anything besides. she kissed my hand, as she had kissed prince charlie's, with a higher passion than the common kind of clay has any sense of. nothing before had taught me how deep i was her lover, nor how far i had yet to climb to make her think of me in such a character. yet i could tell myself i had advanced some way, and that her heart had beat and her blood flowed at thoughts of me. after that honour she had done me i could offer no more trivial civility. it was even hard for me to speak; a certain lifting in her voice had knocked directly at the door of my own tears. "i praise god for your kindness, dear," said i. "farewell, my little friend!" giving her that name which she had given to herself; with which i bowed and left her. my way was down the glen of the leith river, towards stockbridge and silvermills. a path led in the foot of it, the water bickered and sang in the midst; the sunbeams overhead struck out of the west among long shadows and (as the valley turned) made like a new scene and a new world of it at every corner. with catriona behind and alan before me, i was like one lifted up. the place besides, and the hour, and the talking of the water, infinitely pleased me; and i lingered in my steps and looked before and behind me as i went. this was the cause, under providence, that i spied a little in my rear a red head among some bushes. anger sprang in my heart, and i turned straight about and walked at a stiff pace to where i came from. the path lay close by the bushes where i had remarked the head. the cover came to the wayside, and as i passed i was all strung up to meet and to resist an onfall. no such thing befell, i went by unmeddled with; and at that fear increased upon me. it was still day indeed, but the place exceeding solitary. if my haunters had let slip that fair occasion i could but judge they aimed at something more than david balfour. the lives of alan and james weighed upon my spirit with the weight of two grown bullocks. catriona was yet in the garden walking by herself. "catriona," said i, "you see me back again." "with a changed face," said she. "i carry two men's lives besides my own," said i. "it would be a sin and shame not to walk carefully. i was doubtful whether i did right to come here. i would like it ill, if it was by that means we were brought to harm." "i could tell you one that would be liking it less, and will like little enough to hear you talking at this very same time," she cried. "what have i done, at all events?" "o, you i you are not alone," i replied. "but since i went off i have been dogged again, and i can give you the name of him that follows me. it is neil, son of duncan, your man or your father's." "to be sure you are mistaken there," she said, with a white face. "neil is in edinburgh on errands from my father." "it is what i fear," said i, "the last of it. but for his being in edinburgh i think i can show you another of that. for sure you have some signal, a signal of need, such as would bring him to your help, if he was anywhere within the reach of ears and legs?" "why, how will you know that?" says she. "by means of a magical talisman god gave to me when i was born, and the name they call it by is common-sense," said i. "oblige me so far as make your signal, and i will show you the red head of neil." no doubt but i spoke bitter and sharp. my heart was bitter. i blamed myself and the girl and hated both of us: her for the vile crew that she was come of, myself for my wanton folly to have stuck my head in such a byke of wasps. catriona set her fingers to her lips and whistled once, with an exceeding clear, strong, mounting note, as full as a ploughman's. a while we stood silent; and i was about to ask her to repeat the same, when i heard the sound of some one bursting through the bushes below on the braeside. i pointed in that direction with a smile, and presently neil leaped into the garden. his eyes burned, and he had a black knife (as they call it on the highland side) naked in his hand; but, seeing me beside his mistress, stood like a man struck. "he has come to your call," said i; "judge how near he was to edinburgh, or what was the nature of your father's errands. ask himself. if i am to lose my life, or the lives of those that hang by me, through the means of your clan, let me go where i have to go with my eyes open." she addressed him tremulously in the gaelic. remembering alan's anxious civility in that particular, i could have laughed out loud for bitterness; here, sure, in the midst of these suspicions, was the hour she should have stuck by english. twice or thrice they spoke together, and i could make out that neil (for all his obsequiousness) was an angry man. then she turned to me. "he swears it is not," she said. "catriona," said i, "do you believe the man yourself?" she made a gesture like wringing the hands. "how will i can know?" she cried. but i must find some means to know," said i. "i cannot continue to go dovering round in the black night with two men's lives at my girdle! catriona, try to put yourself in my place, as i vow to god i try hard to put myself in yours. this is no kind of talk that should ever have fallen between me and you; no kind of talk; my heart is sick with it. see, keep him here till two of the morning, and i care not. try him with that." they spoke together once more in the gaelic. "he says he has james more my father's errand," said she. she was whiter than ever, and her voice faltered as she said it. "it is pretty plain now," said i, "and may god forgive the wicked!" she said never anything to that, but continued gazing at me with the same white face. "this is a fine business," said i again. "am i to fall, then, and those two along with me?" "o, what am i to do?" she cried. "could i go against my father's orders, him in prison, in the danger of his life!" "but perhaps we go too fast," said i. "this may be a lie too. he may have no right orders; all may be contrived by simon, and your father knowing nothing." she burst out weeping between the pair of us; and my heart smote me hard, for i thought this girl was in a dreadful situation. "here," said i, "keep him but the one hour; and i'll chance it, and may god bless you." she put out her hand to me, "i will he needing one good word," she sobbed. "the full hour, then?" said i, keeping her hand in mine. "three lives of it, my lass!" "the full hour!" she said, and cried aloud on her redeemer to forgive her. i thought it no fit place for me, and fled. chapter xi the wood by silvermills i lost no time, but down through the valley and by stockbridge and silvermills as hard as i could stave. it was alan's tryst to be every night between twelve and two "in a bit scrog of wood by east of silvermills and by south the south mill-lade." this i found easy enough, where it grew on a steep brae, with the mill-lade flowing swift and deep along the foot of it; and here i began to walk slower and to reflect more reasonably on my employment. i saw i had made but a fool's bargain with catriona. it was not to be supposed that neil was sent alone upon his errand, but perhaps he was the only man belonging to james more; in which case i should have done all i could to hang catriona's father, and nothing the least material to help myself. to tell the truth, i fancied neither one of these ideas. suppose by holding back neil, the girl should have helped to hang her father, i thought she would never forgive herself this side of time. and suppose there were others pursuing me that moment, what kind of a gift was i come bringing to alan? and how would i like that? i was up with the west end of that wood when these two considerations struck me like a cudgel. my feet stopped of themselves and my heart along with them. "what wild game is this that i have been playing?" thought i; and turned instantly upon my heels to go elsewhere. this brought my face to silvermills; the path came past the village with a crook, but all plainly visible; and, highland or lowland, there was nobody stirring. here was my advantage, here was just such a conjuncture as stewart had counselled me to profit by, and i ran by the side of the mill-lade, fetched about beyond the east corner of the wood, threaded through the midst of it, and returned to the west selvage, whence i could again command the path, and yet be myself unseen. again it was all empty, and my heart began to rise. for more than an hour i sat close in the border of the trees, and no hare or eagle could have kept a more particular watch. when that hour began the sun was already set, but the sky still all golden and the daylight clear; before the hour was done it had fallen to be half mirk, the images and distances of things were mingled, and observation began to be difficult. all that time not a foot of man had come east from silvermills, and the few that had gone west were honest countryfolk and their wives upon the road to bed. if i were tracked by the most cunning spies in europe, i judged it was beyond the course of nature they could have any jealousy of where i was: and going a little further home into the wood i lay down to wait for alan. the strain of my attention had been great, for i had watched not the path only, but every bush and field within my vision. that was now at an end. the moon, which was in her first quarter, glinted a little in the wood; all round there was a stillness of the country; and as i lay there on my back, the next three or four hours, i had a fine occasion to review my conduct. two things became plain to me first: that i had no right to go that day to dean, and (having gone there) had now no right to be lying where i was. this (where alan was to come) was just the one wood in all broad scotland that was, by every proper feeling, closed against me; i admitted that, and yet stayed on, wondering at myself. i thought of the measure with which i had meted to catriona that same night; how i had prated of the two lives i carried, and had thus forced her to enjeopardy her father's; and how i was here exposing them again, it seemed in wantonness. a good conscience is eight parts of courage. no sooner had i lost conceit of my behaviour, than i seemed to stand disarmed amidst a throng of terrors. of a sudden i sat up. how if i went now to prestongrange, caught him (as i still easily might) before he slept, and made a full submission? who could blame me? not stewart the writer; i had but to say that i was followed, despaired of getting clear, and so gave in. not catriona: here, too, i had my answer ready; that i could not bear she should expose her father. so, in a moment, i could lay all these troubles by, which were after all and truly none of mine; swim clear of the appin murder; get forth out of hand-stroke of all the stewarts and campbells, all the whigs and tories, in the land; and live henceforth to my own mind, and be able to enjoy and to improve my fortunes, and devote some hours of my youth to courting catriona, which would be surely a more suitable occupation than to hide and run and be followed like a hunted thief, and begin over again the dreadful miseries of my escape with alan. at first i thought no shame of this capitulation; i was only amazed i had not thought upon the thing and done it earlier; and began to inquire into the causes of the change. these i traced to my lowness of spirits, that back to my late recklessness, and that again to the common, old, public, disconsidered sin of self-indulgence. instantly the text came in my head, "how can satan cast out satan?" what? (i thought) i had, by self-indulgence; and the following of pleasant paths, and the lure of a young maid, cast myself wholly out of conceit with my own character, and jeopardised the lives of james and alan? and i was to seek the way out by the same road as i had entered in? no; the hurt that had been caused by self-indulgence must be cured by self-denial; the flesh i had pampered must be crucified. i looked about me for that course which i least liked to follow: this was to leave the wood without waiting to see alan, and go forth again alone, in the dark and in the midst of my perplexed and dangerous fortunes. i have been the more careful to narrate this passage of my reflections, because i think it is of some utility, and may serve as an example to young men. but there is reason (they say) in planting kale, and even in ethic and religion, room for common sense. it was already close on alan's hour, and the moon was down. if i left (as i could not very decently whistle to my spies to follow me) they might miss me in the dark and tack themselves to alan by mistake. if i stayed, i could at the least of it set my friend upon his guard which might prove his mere salvation. i had adventured other peoples' safety in a course of selfindulgence; to have endangered them again, and now on a mere design of penance, would have been scarce rational. accordingly, i had scarce risen from my place ere i sat down again, but already in a different frame of spirits, and equally marvelling at my past weakness and rejoicing in my present composure. presently after came a crackling in the thicket. putting my mouth near down to the ground, i whistled a note or two, of alan's air; an answer came in the like guarded tone, and soon we had knocked together in the dark. "is this you at last, davie?" he whispered. "just myself," said i. "god, man, but i've been wearying to see ye!" says he. "i've had the longest kind of a time. a' day, i've had my dwelling into the inside of a stack of hay, where i couldnae see the nebs of my ten fingers; and then two hours of it waiting here for you, and you never coming! dod, and ye're none too soon the way it is, with me to sail the morn! the morn? what am i saying? the day, i mean." "ay, alan, man, the day, sure enough," said i. "it's past twelve now, surely, and ye sail the day. this'll be a long road you have before you." "we'll have a long crack of it first," said he. "well, indeed, and i have a good deal it will be telling you to hear," said i. and i told him what behooved, making rather a jumble of it, but clear enough when done. he heard me out with very few questions, laughing here and there like a man delighted: and the sound of his laughing (above all there, in the dark, where neither one of us could see the other) was extraordinary friendly to my heart. "ay, davie, ye're a queer character," says he, when i had done: "a queer bitch after a', and i have no mind of meeting with the like of ye. as for your story, prestongrange is a whig like yoursel', so i'll say the less of him; and, dod! i believe he was the best friend ye had, if ye could only trust him. but simon fraser and james more are my ain kind of cattle, and i'll give them the name that they deserve. the muckle black deil was father to the frasers, a'body kens that; and as for the gregara, i never could abye the reek of them since i could stotter on two feet. i bloodied the nose of one, i mind, when i was still so wambly on my legs that i cowped upon the top of him. a proud man was my father that day, god rest him! and i think he had the cause. i'll never can deny but what robin was something of a piper," he added; "but as for james more, the deil guide him for me!" "one thing we have to consider," said i. "was charles stewart right or wrong? is it only me they're after, or the pair of us?" "and what's your ain opinion, you that's a man of so much experience?" said he. "it passes me," said i. "and me too," says alan. "do ye think this lass would keep her word to ye?" he asked. "i do that," said i. "well, there's nae telling," said he. "and anyway, that's over and done: he'll be joined to the rest of them lang syne." "how many would ye think there would be of them?" i asked. "that depends," said alan. "if it was only you, they would likely send two-three lively, brisk young birkies, and if they thought that i was to appear in the employ, i daresay ten or twelve," said he. it was no use, i gave a little crack of laughter. "and i think your own two eyes will have seen me drive that number, or the double of it, nearer hand!" cries he. "it matters the less," said i, "because i am well rid of them for this time." "nae doubt that's your opinion," said he; "but i wouldnae be the least surprised if they were hunkering this wood. ye see, david man; they'll be hieland folk. there'll be some frasers, i'm thinking, and some of the gregara; and i would never deny but what the both of them, and the gregara in especial, were clever experienced persons. a man kens little till he's driven a spreagh of neat cattle (say) ten miles through a throng lowland country and the black soldiers maybe at his tail. it's there that i learned a great part of my penetration. and ye need nae tell me: it's better than war; which is the next best, however, though generally rather a bauchle of a business. now the gregara have had grand practice." "no doubt that's a branch of education that was left out with me," said i. "and i can see the marks of it upon ye constantly," said alan. "but that's the strange thing about you folk of the college learning: ye're ignorat, and ye cannae see 't. wae's me for my greek and hebrew; but, man, i ken that i dinnae ken them there's the differ of it. now, here's you. ye lie on your wame a bittie in the bield of this wood, and ye tell me that ye've cuist off these frasers and macgregors. why? because i couldnae see them, says you. ye blockhead, that's their livelihood." "take the worst of it," said i, "and what are we to do?" "i am thinking of that same," said he. "we might twine. it wouldnae be greatly to my taste; and forbye that, i see reasons against it. first, it's now unco dark, and it's just humanly possible we might give them the clean slip. if we keep together, we make but the ae line of it; if we gang separate, we make twae of them: the more likelihood to stave in upon some of these gentry of yours. and then, second, if they keep the track of us, it may come to a fecht for it yet, davie; and then, i'll confess i would be blythe to have you at my oxter, and i think you would be none the worse of having me at yours. so, by my way of it, we should creep out of this wood no further gone than just the inside of next minute, and hold away east for gillane, where i'm to find my ship. it'll be like old days while it lasts, davie; and (come the time) we'll have to think what you should be doing. i'm wae to leave ye here, wanting me." "have with ye, then!" says i. "do ye gang back where you were stopping?" "deil a fear!" said alan. "they were good folks to me, but i think they would be a good deal disappointed if they saw my bonny face again. for (the way times go) i amnae just what ye could call a walcome guest. which makes me the keener for your company, mr. david balfour of the shaws, and set ye up! for, leave aside twa cracks here in the wood with charlie stewart, i have scarce said black or white since the day we parted at corstorphine." with which he rose from his place, and we began to move quietly eastward through the wood. chapter xii on the march again with alan it was likely between one and two; the moon (as i have said) was down; a strongish wind, carrying a heavy wrack of cloud, had set in suddenly from the west; and we began our movement in as black a night as ever a fugitive or a murderer wanted. the whiteness of the path guided us into the sleeping town of broughton, thence through picardy, and beside my old acquaintance the gibbet of the two thieves. a little beyond we made a useful beacon, which was a light in an upper window of lochend. steering by this, but a good deal at random, and with some trampling of the harvest, and stumbling and falling down upon the banks, we made our way across country, and won forth at last upon the linky, boggy muirland that they call the figgate whins. here, under a bush of whin, we lay down the remainder of that night and slumbered. the day called us about five. a beautiful morning it was, the high westerly wind still blowing strong, but the clouds all blown away to europe. alan was already sitting up and smiling to himself. it was my first sight of my friend since we were parted, and i looked upon him with enjoyment. he had still the same big great-coat on his back; but (what was new) he had now a pair of knitted boot-hose drawn above the knee. doubtless these were intended for disguise; but, as the day promised to be warm, he made a most unseasonable figure. "well, davie," said he, "is this no a bonny morning? here is a day that looks the way that a day ought to. this is a great change of it from the belly of my haystack; and while you were there sottering and sleeping i have done a thing that maybe i do very seldom." "and what was that?" said i. "o, just said my prayers," said he. "and where are my gentry, as ye call them?" i asked. "gude kens," says he; "and the short and the long of it is that we must take our chance of them. up with your foot-soles, davie! forth, fortune, once again of it! and a bonny walk we are like to have." so we went east by the beach of the sea, towards where the salt-pans were smoking in by the esk mouth. no doubt there was a by-ordinary bonny blink of morning sun on arthur's seat and the green pentlands; and the pleasantness of the day appeared to set alan among nettles. "i feel like a gomeral," says he, "to be leaving scotland on a day like this. it sticks in my head; i would maybe like it better to stay here and hing." "ay, but ye wouldnae, alan," said i. "no, but what france is a good place too," he explained; "but it's some way no the same. it's brawer i believe, but it's no scotland. i like it fine when i'm there, man; yet i kind of weary for scots divots and the scots peat-reek." "if that's all you have to complain of, alan, it's no such great affair," said i. "and it sets me ill to be complaining, whatever," said he, "and me but new out of yon deil's haystack." "and so you were unco weary of your haystack?" i asked. "weary's nae word for it," said he. "i'm not just precisely a man that's easily cast down; but i do better with caller air and the lift above my head. i'm like the auld black douglas (wasnae't?) that likit better to hear the laverock sing than the mouse cheep. and yon place, ye see, davie whilk was a very suitable place to hide in, as i'm free to own was pit mirk from dawn to gloaming. there were days (or nights, for how would i tell one from other?) that seemed to me as long as a long winter." "how did you know the hour to bide your tryst?" i asked. "the goodman brought me my meat and a drop brandy, and a candle-dowp to eat it by, about eleeven," said he. "so, when i had swallowed a bit, it would he time to be getting to the wood. there i lay and wearied for ye sore, davie," says he, laying his hand on my shoulder "and guessed when the two hours would be about by unless charlie stewart would come and tell me on his watch and then back to the dooms haystack. na, it was a driech employ, and praise the lord that i have warstled through with it!" "what did you do with yourself?" i asked. "faith," said he, "the best i could! whiles i played at the knucklebones. i'm an extraordinar good hand at the knucklebones, but it's a poor piece of business playing with naebody to admire ye. and whiles i would make songs." "what were they about?" says i. "o, about the deer and the heather," says he, "and about the ancient old chiefs that are all by with it lang syne, and just about what songs are about in general. and then whiles i would make believe i had a set of pipes and i was playing. i played some grand springs, and i thought i played them awful bonny; i vow whiles that i could hear the squeal of them! but the great affair is that it's done with." with that he carried me again to my adventures, which he heard all over again with more particularity, and extraordinary approval, swearing at intervals that i was "a queer character of a callant." "so ye were frich'ened of sim fraser?" he asked once. "in troth was i!" cried i. "so would i have been, davie," said he. "and that is indeed a driedful man. but it is only proper to give the deil his due: and i can tell you he is a most respectable person on the field of war." "is he so brave?" i asked. "brave!" said he. "he is as brave as my steel sword." the story of my duel set him beside himself. "to think of that!" he cried. "i showed ye the trick in corrynakiegh too. and three times three times disarmed! it's a disgrace upon my character that learned ye! here, stand up, out with your airn; ye shall walk no step beyond this place upon the road till ye can do yoursel' and me mair credit." "alan," said i, "this is midsummer madness. here is no time for fencing lessons." "i cannae well say no to that," he admitted. "but three times, man! and you standing there like a straw bogle and rinning to fetch your ain sword like a doggie with a pocket-napkin! david, this man duncansby must be something altogether by-ordinar! he maun be extraordinar skilly. if i had the time, i would gang straight back and try a turn at him mysel'. the man must be a provost." "you silly fellow," said i, "you forget it was just me." "na," said he, "but three times!" "when ye ken yourself that i am fair incompetent," i cried. "well, i never heard tell the equal of it," said he. "i promise you the one thing, alan," said i. "the next time that we forgather, i'll be better learned. you shall not continue to bear the disgrace of a friend that cannot strike." "ay, the next time!" says he. "and when will that be, i would like to ken?" "well, alan, i have had some thoughts of that, too," said i; "and my plan is this. it's my opinion to be called an advocate." "that's but a weary trade, davie," says alan, "and rather a blagyard one forby. ye would be better in a king's coat than that." "and no doubt that would be the way to have us meet," cried i. "but as you'll be in king lewie's coat, and i'll be in king geordie's, we'll have a dainty meeting of it." "there's some sense in that," he admitted "an advocate, then, it'll have to be," i continued, "and i think it a more suitable trade for a gentleman that was three times disarmed. but the beauty of the thing is this: that one of the best colleges for that kind of learning and the one where my kinsman, pilrig, made his studies is the college of leyden in holland. now, what say you, alan? could not a cadet of royal ecossais get a furlough, slip over the marches, and call in upon a leyden student?" "well, and i would think he could!" cried he. "ye see, i stand well in with my colonel, count drummond-melfort; and, what's mair to the purpose i have a cousin of mine lieutenant-colonel in a regiment of the scots-dutch. naething could be mair proper than what i would get a leave to see lieutenant-colonel stewart of halkett's. and lord melfort, who is a very scienteefic kind of a man, and writes books like caesar, would be doubtless very pleased to have the advantage of my observes." "is lord meloort an author, then?" i asked, for much as alan thought of soldiers, i thought more of the gentry that write books. "the very same, davie," said he. "one would think a colonel would have something better to attend to. but what can i say that make songs?" "well, then," said i, "it only remains you should give me an address to write you at in france; and as soon as i am got to leyden i will send you mine." "the best will be to write me in the care of my chieftain," said he, "charles stewart, of ardsheil, esquire, at the town of melons, in the isle of france. it might take long, or it might take short, but it would aye get to my hands at the last of it." we had a haddock to our breakfast in musselburgh, where it amused me vastly to hear alan. his great-coat and boot-hose were extremely remarkable this warm morning, and perhaps some hint of an explanation had been wise; but alan went into that matter like a business, or i should rather say, like a diversion. he engaged the goodwife of the house with some compliments upon the rizzoring of our haddocks; and the whole of the rest of our stay held her in talk about a cold he had taken on his stomach, gravely relating all manner of symptoms and sufferings, and hearing with a vast show of interest all the old wives' remedies she could supply him with in return. we left musselburgh before the first ninepenny coach was due from edinburgh for (as alan said) that was a rencounter we might very well avoid. the wind although still high, was very mild, the sun shone strong, and alan began to suffer in proportion. from prestonpans he had me aside to the field of gladsmuir, where he exerted himself a great deal more than needful to describe the stages of the battle. thence, at his old round pace, we travelled to cockenzie. though they were building herring-busses there at mrs. cadell's, it seemed a desert-like, back-going town, about half full of ruined houses; but the ale-house was clean, and alan, who was now in a glowing heat, must indulge himself with a bottle of ale, and carry on to the new luckie with the old story of the cold upon his stomach, only now the symptoms were all different. i sat listening; and it came in my mind that i had scarce ever heard him address three serious words to any woman, but he was always drolling and fleering and making a private mock of them, and yet brought to that business a remarkable degree of energy and interest. something to this effect i remarked to him, when the good-wife (as chanced) was called away. "what do ye want?" says he. "a man should aye put his best foot forrit with the womankind; he should aye give them a bit of a story to divert them, the poor lambs! it's what ye should learn to attend to, david; ye should get the principles, it's like a trade. now, if this had been a young lassie, or onyways bonnie, she would never have heard tell of my stomach, davie. but aince they're too old to be seeking joes, they a' set up to be apotecaries. why? what do i ken? they'll be just the way god made them, i suppose. but i think a man would be a gomeral that didnae give his attention to the same." and here, the luckie coming back, he turned from me as if with impatience to renew their former conversation. the lady had branched some while before from alan's stomach to the case of a goodbrother of her own in aberlady, whose last sickness and demise she was describing at extraordinary length. sometimes it was merely dull, sometimes both dull and awful, for she talked with unction. the upshot was that i fell in a deep muse, looking forth of the window on the road, and scarce marking what i saw. presently had any been looking they might have seen me to start. "we pit a fomentation to his feet," the good-wife was saying, "and a het stane to his wame, and we gied him hyssop and water of pennyroyal, and fine, clean balsam of sulphur for the hoast. . . " "sir," says i, cutting very quietly in, "there's a friend of mine gone by the house." "is that e'en sae?" replies alan, as though it were a thing of small account. and then, "ye were saying, mem?" says he; and the wearyful wife went on. presently, however, he paid her with a half-crown piece, and she must go forth after the change. "was it him with the red head?" asked alan. "ye have it," said i. "what did i tell you in the wood?" he cried. "and yet it's strange he should be here too! was he his lane?" "his lee-lane for what i could see," said i. "did he gang by?" he asked. "straight by," said i, "and looked neither to the right nor left." "and that's queerer yet," said alan. "it sticks in my mind, davie, that we should be stirring. but where to? deil hae't! this is like old days fairly," cries he. "there is one big differ, though," said i, "that now we have money in our pockets." "and another big differ, mr. balfour," says he, "that now we have dogs at our tail. they're on the scent; they're in full cry, david. it's a bad business and be damned to it." and he sat thinking hard with a look of his that i knew well. "i'm saying, luckie," says he, when the goodwife returned, "have ye a back road out of this change house?" she told him there was and where it led to. "then, sir," says he to me, "i think that will be the shortest road for us. and here's good-bye to ye, my braw woman; and i'll no forget thon of the cinnamon water." we went out by way of the woman's kale yard, and up a lane among fields. alan looked sharply to all sides, and seeing we were in a little hollow place of the country, out of view of men, sat down. "now for a council of war, davie," said he. "but first of all, a bit lesson to ye. suppose that i had been like you, what would yon old wife have minded of the pair of us! just that we had gone out by the back gate. and what does she mind now? a fine, canty, friendly, cracky man, that suffered with the stomach, poor body! and was real ta'en up about the goodbrother. o man, david, try and learn to have some kind of intelligence!" "i'll try, alan," said i. "and now for him of the red head," says he; "was he gaun fast or slow?" "betwixt and between," said i. "no kind of a hurry about the man?" he asked. "never a sign of it," said i. "nhm!" said alan, "it looks queer. we saw nothing of them this morning on the whins; he's passed us by, he doesnae seem to be looking, and yet here he is on our road! dod, davie, i begin to take a notion. i think it's no you they're seeking, i think it's me; and i think they ken fine where they're gaun." "they ken?" i asked. "i think andie scougal's sold me him or his mate wha kent some part of the affair or else charlie's clerk callant, which would be a pity too," says alan; "and if you askit me for just my inward private conviction, i think there'll be heads cracked on gillane sands." "alan," i cried, "if you're at all right there'll be folk there and to spare. it'll be small service to crack heads." "it would aye be a satisfaction though," says alan. but bide a bit; bide a bit; i'm thinking and thanks to this bonny westland wind, i believe i've still a chance of it. it's this way, davie. i'm no trysted with this man scougal till the gloaming comes. but," says he, "if i can get a bit of a wind out of the west i'll be there long or that," he says, "and lie-to for ye behind the isle of fidra. now if your gentry kens the place, they ken the time forbye. do ye see me coming, davie? thanks to johnnie cope and other red-coat gomerals, i should ken this country like the back of my hand; and if ye're ready for another bit run with alan breck, we'll can cast back inshore, and come to the seaside again by dirleton. if the ship's there, we'll try and get on board of her. if she's no there, i'll just have to get back to my weary haystack. but either way of it, i think we will leave your gentry whistling on their thumbs." "i believe there's some chance in it," said i. "have on with ye, alan!" chapter xiii gillane sands i did not profit by alan's pilotage as he had done by his marchings under general cope; for i can scarce tell what way we went. it is my excuse that we travelled exceeding fast. some part we ran, some trotted, and the rest walked at a vengeance of a pace. twice, while we were at top speed, we ran against country-folk; but though we plumped into the first from round a corner, alan was as ready as a loaded musket. "has ye seen my horse?" he gasped. "na, man, i haenae seen nae horse the day," replied the countryman. and alan spared the time to explain to him that we were travelling "ride and tie"; that our charger had escaped, and it was feared he had gone home to linton. not only that, but he expended some breath (of which he had not very much left) to curse his own misfortune and my stupidity which was said to be its cause. "them that cannae tell the truth," he observed to myself as we went on again, "should be aye mindful to leave an honest, handy lee behind them. if folk dinnae ken what ye're doing, davie, they're terrible taken up with it; but if they think they ken, they care nae mair for it than what i do for pease porridge." as we had first made inland, so our road came in the end to lie very near due north; the old kirk of aberlady for a landmark on the left; on the right, the top of the berwick law; and it was thus we struck the shore again, not far from dirleton. from north berwick west to gillane ness there runs a string of four small islets, craiglieth, the lamb, fidra, and eyebrough, notable by their diversity of size and shape. fidra is the most particular, being a strange grey islet of two humps, made the more conspicuous by a piece of ruin; and i mind that (as we drew closer to it) by some door or window of these ruins the sea peeped through like a man's eye. under the lee of fidra there is a good anchorage in westerly winds, and there, from a far way off, we could see the thistle riding. the shore in face of these islets is altogether waste. here is no dwelling of man, and scarce any passage, or at most of vagabond children running at their play. gillane is a small place on the far side of the ness, the folk of dirleton go to their business in the inland fields, and those of north berwick straight to the sea-fishing from their haven; so that few parts of the coast are lonelier. but i mind, as we crawled upon our bellies into that multiplicity of heights and hollows, keeping a bright eye upon all sides, and our hearts hammering at our ribs, there was such a shining of the sun and the sea, such a stir of the wind in the bent grass, and such a bustle of downpopping rabbits and up-flying gulls, that the desert seemed to me, like a place alive. no doubt it was in all ways well chosen for a secret embarcation, if the secret had been kept; and even now that it was out, and the place watched, we were able to creep unperceived to the front of the sandhills, where they look down immediately on the beach and sea. but here alan came to a full stop. "davie," said he, "this is a kittle passage! as long as we lie here we're safe; but i'm nane sae muckle nearer to my ship or the coast of france. and as soon as we stand up and signal the brig, it's another matter. for where will your gentry be, think ye?" "maybe they're no come yet," said i. "and even if they are, there's one clear matter in our favour. they'll be all arranged to take us, that's true. but they'll have arranged for our coming from the east and here we are upon their west." "ay," says alan, "i wish we were in some force, and this was a battle, we would have bonnily out-manoeuvred them! but it isnae, davit; and the way it is, is a wee thing less inspiring to alan breck. i swither, davie." "time flies, alan," said i. "i ken that," said alan. "i ken naething else, as the french folk say. but this is a dreidful case of heids or tails. o! if i could but ken where your gentry were!" "alan," said i, "this is no like you. it's got to be now or never." "this is no me, quo' he," sang alan, with a queer face betwixt shame and drollery. "neither you nor me, quo' he, neither you nor me. wow, na, johnnie man! neither you nor me." and then of a sudden he stood straight up where he was, and with a handkerchief flying in his right hand, marched down upon the beach. i stood up myself, but lingered behind him, scanning the sand-hills to the east. his appearance was at first unremarked: scougal not expecting him so early, and my gentry watching on the other side. then they awoke on board the thistle, and it seemed they had all in readiness, for there was scarce a second's bustle on the deck before we saw a skiff put round her stern and begin to pull lively for the coast. almost at the same moment of time, and perhaps half a mile away towards gillane ness, the figure of a man appeared for a blink upon a sandhill, waving with his arms; and though he was gone again in the same flash, the gulls in that part continued a little longer to fly wild. alan had not seen this, looking straight to seaward at the ship and skiff. "it maun be as it will!" said he, when i had told him, "weel may yon boatie row, or my craig'll have to thole a raxing." that part of the beach was long and flat, and excellent walking when the tide was down; a little cressy burn flowed over it in one place to the sea; and the sandhills ran along the head of it like the rampart of a town. no eye of ours could spy what was passing behind there in the bents, no hurry of ours could mend the speed of the boat's coming: time stood still with us through that uncanny period of waiting. "there is one thing i would like to ken," say alan. "i would like to ken these gentry's orders. we're worth four hunner pound the pair of us: how if they took the guns to us, davie! they would get a bonny shot from the top of that lang sandy bank." "morally impossible," said i. "the point is that they can have no guns. this thing has been gone about too secret; pistols they may have, but never guns." "i believe ye'll be in the right," says alan. "for all which i am wearing a good deal for yon boat." and he snapped his fingers and whistled to it like a dog. it was now perhaps a third of the way in, and we ourselves already hard on the margin of the sea, so that the soft sand rose over my shoes. there was no more to do whatever but to wait, to look as much as we were able at the creeping nearer of the boat, and as little as we could manage at the long impenetrable front of the sandhills, over which the gulls twinkled and behind which our enemies were doubtless marshalling. "this is a fine, bright, caller place to get shot in," says alan suddenly; "and, man, i wish that i had your courage!" "alan!" i cried, "what kind of talk is this of it! you're just made of courage; it's the character of the man, as i could prove myself if there was nobody else." "and you would be the more mistaken," said he. "what makes the differ with me is just my great penetration and knowledge of affairs. but for auld, cauld, dour, deadly courage, i am not fit to hold a candle to yourself. look at us two here upon the sands. here am i, fair hotching to be off; here's you (for all that i ken) in two minds of it whether you'll no stop. do you think that i could do that, or would? no me! firstly, because i havenae got the courage and wouldnae daur; and secondly, because i am a man of so much penetration and would see ye damned first." "it's there ye're coming, is it?" i cried. "ah, man alan, you can wile your old wives, but you never can wile me." remembrance of my temptation in the wood made me strong as iron. "i have a tryst to keep," i continued. "i am trysted with your cousin charlie; i have passed my word." "braw trysts that you'll can keep," said alan. "ye'll just mistryst aince and for a' with the gentry in the bents. and what for?" he went on with an extreme threatening gravity. "just tell me that, my mannie! are ye to be speerited away like lady grange? are they to drive a dirk in your inside and bury ye in the bents? or is it to be the other way, and are they to bring ye in with james? are they folk to be trustit? would ye stick your head in the mouth of sim fraser and the ither whigs?" he added with extraordinary bitterness. "alan," cried i, "they're all rogues and liars, and i'm with ye there. the more reason there should be one decent man in such a land of thieves! my word in passed, and i'll stick to it. i said long syne to your kinswoman that i would stumble at no risk. do ye mind of that? the night red colin fell, it was. no more i will, then. here i stop. prestongrange promised me my life: if he's to be mansworn, here i'll have to die." "aweel aweel," said alan. all this time we had seen or heard no more of our pursuers. in truth we had caught them unawares; their whole party (as i was to learn afterwards) had not yet reached the scene; what there was of them was spread among the bents towards gillane. it was quite an affair to call them in and bring them over, and the boat was making speed. they were besides but cowardly fellows: a mere leash of highland cattle-thieves, of several clans, no gentleman there to be the captain and the more they looked at alan and me upon the beach, the less (i must suppose) they liked the look of us. whoever had betrayed alan it was not the captain: he was in the skiff himself, steering and stirring up his oarsmen, like a man with his heart in his employ. already he was near in, and the boat securing already alan's face had flamed crimson with the excitement of his deliverance, when our friends in the bents, either in their despair to see their prey escape them or with some hope of scaring andie, raised suddenly a shrill cry of several voices. this sound, arising from what appeared to be a quite deserted coast, was really very daunting, and the men in the boat held water instantly. "what's this of it?" sings out the captain, for he was come within an easy hail. "freens o'mine," says alan, and began immediately to wade forth in the shallow water towards the boat. "davie," he said, pausing, "davie, are ye no coming? i am swier to leave ye." "not a hair of me," said i. "he stood part of a second where he was to his knees in the salt water, hesitating. "he that will to cupar, maun to cupar," said he, and swashing in deeper than his waist, was hauled into the skiff, which was immediately directed for the ship. i stood where he had left me, with my hands behind my back; alan sat with his head turned watching me; and the boat drew smoothly away. of a sudden i came the nearest hand to shedding tears, and seemed to myself the most deserted solitary lad in scotland. with that i turned my back upon the sea and faced the sandhills. there was no sight or sound of man; the sun shone on the wet sand and the dry, the wind blew in the bents, the gulls made a dreary piping. as i passed higher up the beach, the sand-lice were hopping nimbly about the stranded tangles. the devil any other sight or sound in that unchancy place. and yet i knew there were folk there, observing me, upon some secret purpose. they were no soldiers, or they would have fallen on and taken us ere now; doubtless they were some common rogues hired for my undoing, perhaps to kidnap, perhaps to murder me outright. from the position of those engaged, the first was the more likely; from what i knew of their character and ardency in this business, i thought the second very possible; and the blood ran cold about my heart. i had a mad idea to loosen my sword in the scabbard; for though i was very unfit to stand up like a gentleman blade to blade, i thought i could do some scathe in a random combat. but i perceived in time the folly of resistance. this was no doubt the joint "expedient" on which prestongrange and fraser were agreed. the first, i was very sure, had done something to secure my life; the second was pretty likely to have slipped in some contrary hints into the ears of neil and his companions; and it i were to show bare steel i might play straight into the hands of my worst enemy and seal my own doom. these thoughts brought me to the head of the beach. i cast a look behind, the boat was nearing the brig, and alan flew his handkerchief for a farewell, which i replied to with the waving of my hand. but alan himself was shrunk to a small thing in my view, alongside of this pass that lay in front of me. i set my hat hard on my head, clenched my teeth, and went right before me up the face of the sand-wreath. it made a hard climb, being steep, and the sand like water underfoot. but i caught hold at last by the long bent-grass on the brae-top, and pulled myself to a good footing. the same moment men stirred and stood up here and there, six or seven of them, ragged-like knaves, each with a dagger in his hand. the fair truth is, i shut my eyes and prayed. when i opened them again, the rogues were crept the least thing nearer without speech or hurry. every eye was upon mine, which struck me with a strange sensation of their brightness, and of the fear with which they continued to approach me. i held out my hands empty; whereupon one asked, with a strong highland brogue, if i surrendered. "under protest," said i, "if ye ken what that means, which i misdoubt." at that word, they came all in upon me like a flight of birds upon a carrion, seized me, took my sword, and all the money from my pockets, bound me hand and foot with some strong line, and cast me on a tussock of bent. there they sat about their captive in a part of a circle and gazed upon him silently like something dangerous, perhaps a lion or a tiger on the spring. presently this attention was relaxed. they drew nearer together, fell to speech in the gaelic, and very cynically divided my property before my eyes. it was my diversion in this time that i could watch from my place the progress of my friend's escape. i saw the boat come to the brig and be hoisted in, the sails fill, and the ship pass out seaward behind the isles and by north berwick. in the course of two hours or so, more and more ragged highlandmen kept collecting. neil among the first, until the party must have numbered near a score. with each new arrival there was a fresh bout of talk, that sounded like complaints and explanations; but i observed one thing, none of those who came late had any share in the division of my spoils. the last discussion was very violent and eager, so that once i thought they would have quarrelled; on the heels of which their company parted, the bulk of them returning westward in a troop, and only three, neil and two others, remaining sentries on the prisoner. "i could name one who would be very ill pleased with your day's work, neil duncanson," said i, when the rest had moved away. he assured me in answer i should be tenderly used, for he knew he was "acquent wi' the leddy." this was all our talk, nor did any other son of man appear upon that portion of the coast until the sun had gone down among the highland mountains, and the gloaming was beginning to grow dark. at which hour i was aware of a long, lean, bony-like lothian man of a very swarthy countenance, that came towards us among the bents on a farm horse. "lads," cried he, "has ye a paper like this?" and held up one in his hand. neil produced a second, which the newcomer studied through a pair of horn spectacles, and saying all was right and we were the folk he was seeking, immediately dismounted. i was then set in his place, my feet tied under the horse's belly, and we set forth under the guidance of the lowlander. his path must have been very well chosen, for we met but one pair a pair of lovers the whole way, and these, perhaps taking us to be free-traders, fled on our approach. we were at one time close at the foot of berwick law on the south side; at another, as we passed over some open hills, i spied the lights of a clachan and the old tower of a church among some trees not far off, but too far to cry for help, if i had dreamed of it. at last we came again within sound of the sea. there was moonlight, though not much; and by this i could see the three huge towers and broken battlements of tantallon, that old chief place of the red douglases. the horse was picketed in the bottom of the ditch to graze, and i was led within, and forth into the court, and thence into the tumble-down stone hall. here my conductors built a brisk fire in the midst of the pavement, for there was a chill in the night. my hands were loosed, i was set by the wall in the inner end, and (the lowlander having produced provisions) i was given oatmeal bread and a pitcher of french brandy. this done, i was left once more alone with my three highlandmen. they sat close by the fire drinking and talking; the wind blew in by the breaches, cast about the smoke and flames, and sang in the tops of the towers; i could hear the sea under the cliffs, and, my mind being reassured as to my life, and my body and spirits wearied with the day's employment, i turned upon one side and slumbered. i had no means of guessing at what hour i was wakened, only the moon was down and the fire was low. my feet were now loosed, and i was carried through the ruins and down the cliff-side by a precipitous path to where i found a fisher's boat in a haven of the rocks. this i was had on board of, and we began to put forth from the shore in a fine starlight chapter xiv the bass i had no thought where they were taking me; only looked here and there for the appearance of a ship; and there ran the while in my head a word of ransome's the twenty-pounders. if i were to be exposed a second time to that same former danger of the plantations, i judged it must turn ill with me; there was no second alan; and no second shipwreck and spare yard to be expected now; and i saw myself hoe tobacco under the whip's lash. the thought chilled me; the air was sharp upon the water, the stretchers of the boat drenched with a cold dew: and i shivered in my place beside the steersman. this was the dark man whom i have called hitherto the lowlander; his name was dale, ordinarily called black andie. feeling the thrill of my shiver, he very kindly handed me a rough jacket full of fish-scales, with which i was glad to cover myself. "i thank you for this kindness," said i, "and will make so free as to repay it with a warning. you take a high responsibility in this affair. you are not like these ignorant, barbarous highlanders, but know what the law is and the risks of those that break it." "i am no just exactly what ye would ca' an extremist for the law," says he, "at the best of times; but in this business i act with a good warranty." "what are you going to do with me?" i asked. "nae harm," said he, "nae harm ava'. ye'll have strong freens, i'm thinking. ye'll be richt eneuch yet." there began to fall a greyness on the face of the sea; little dabs of pink and red, like coals of slow fire, came in the east; and at the same time the geese awakened, and began crying about the top of the bass. it is just the one crag of rock, as everybody knows, but great enough to carve a city from. the sea was extremely little, but there went a hollow plowter round the base of it. with the growing of the dawn i could see it clearer and clearer; the straight crags painted with sea-birds' droppings like a morning frost, the sloping top of it green with grass, the clan of white geese that cried about the sides, and the black, broken buildings of the prison sitting close on the sea's edge. at the sight the truth came in upon me in a clap. "it's there you're taking me!" i cried. "just to the bass, mannie," said he: "whaur the auld saints were afore ye, and i misdoubt if ye have come so fairly by your preeson." "but none dwells there now," i cried; "the place is long a ruin." "it'll be the mair pleisand a change for the solan geese, then," quoth andie dryly. the day coming slowly brighter i observed on the bilge, among the big stones with which fisherfolk ballast their boats, several kegs and baskets, and a provision of fuel. all these were discharged upon the crag. andie, myself, and my three highlanders (i call them mine, although it was the other way about), landed along with them. the sun was not yet up when the boat moved away again, the noise of the oars on the thole-pins echoing from the cliffs, and left us in our singular reclusion: andie dale was the prefect (as i would jocularly call him) of the bass, being at once the shepherd and the gamekeeper of that small and rich estate. he had to mind the dozen or so of sheep that fed and fattened on the grass of the sloping part of it, like beasts grazing the roof of a cathedral. he had charge besides of the solan geese that roosted in the crags; and from these an extraordinary income is derived. the young are dainty eating, as much as two shillings a-piece being a common price, and paid willingly by epicures; even the grown birds are valuable for their oil and feathers; and a part of the minister's stipend of north berwick is paid to this day in solan geese, which makes it (in some folks' eyes) a parish to be coveted. to perform these several businesses, as well as to protect the geese from poachers, andie had frequent occasion to sleep and pass days together on the crag; and we found the man at home there like a farmer in his steading. bidding us all shoulder some of the packages, a matter in which i made haste to bear a hand, he led us in by a looked gate, which was the only admission to the island, and through the ruins of the fortress, to the governor's house. there we saw by the ashes in the chimney and a standing bed-place in one corner, that he made his usual occupation. this bed he now offered me to use, saying he supposed i would set up to be gentry. "my gentrice has nothing to do with where i lie," said i. "i bless god i have lain hard ere now, and can do the same again with thankfulness. while i am here, mr. andie, if that be your name, i will do my part and take my place beside the rest of you; and i ask you on the other hand to spare me your mockery, which i own i like ill." he grumbled a little at this speech, but seemed upon reflection to approve it. indeed, he was a long-headed, sensible man, and a good whig and presbyterian; read daily in a pocket bible, and was both able and eager to converse seriously on religion, leaning more than a little towards the cameronian extremes. his morals were of a more doubtful colour. i found he was deep in the free trade, and used the rains of tantallon for a magazine of smuggled merchandise. as for a gauger, i do not believe he valued the life of one at half-a-farthing. but that part of the coast of lothian is to this day as wild a place, and the commons there as rough a crew, as any in scotland. one incident of my imprisonment is made memorable by a consequence it had long after. there was a warship at this time stationed in the firth, the seahorse, captain palliser. it chanced she was cruising in the month of september, plying between fife and lothian, and sounding for sunk dangers. early one fine morning she was seen about two miles to east of us, where she lowered a boat, and seemed to examine the wildfire rocks and satan's bush, famous dangers of that coast. and presently after having got her boat again, she came before the wind and was headed directly for the base. this was very troublesome to andie and the highlanders; the whole business of my sequestration was designed for privacy, and here, with a navy captain perhaps blundering ashore, it looked to become public enough, if it were nothing worse. i was in a minority of one, i am no alan to fall upon so many, and i was far from sure that a warship was the least likely to improve my condition. all which considered, i gave andie my parole of good behaviour and obedience, and was had briskly to the summit of the rock, where we all lay down, at the cliff's edge, in different places of observation and concealment. the seahorse came straight on till i thought she would have struck, and we (looking giddily down) could see the ship's company at their quarters and hear the leadsman singing at the lead. then she suddenly wore and let fly a volley of i know not how many great guns. the rock was shaken with the thunder of the sound, the smoke flowed over our heads, and the geese rose in number beyond computation or belief. to hear their screaming and to see the twinkling of their wings, made a most inimitable curiosity; and i suppose it was after this somewhat childish pleasure that captain palliser had come so near the bass. he was to pay dear for it in time. during his approach i had the opportunity to make a remark upon the rigging of that ship by which i ever after knew it miles away; and this was a means (under providence) of my averting from a friend a great calamity, and inflicting on captain palliser himself a sensible disappointment. all the time of my stay on the rock we lived well. we had small ale and brandy, and oatmeal, of which we made our porridge night and morning. at times a boat came from the castleton and brought us a quarter of mutton, for the sheep upon the rock we must not touch, these being specially fed to market. the geese were unfortunately out of season, and we let them be. we fished ourselves, and yet more often made the geese to fish for us: observing one when he had made a capture and searing him from his prey ere he had swallowed it. the strange nature of this place, and the curiosities with which it abounded, held me busy and amused. escape being impossible, i was allowed my entire liberty, and continually explored the surface of the isle wherever it might support the foot of man. the old garden of the prison was still to be observed, with flowers and pot-herbs running wild, and some ripe cherries on a bush. a little lower stood a chapel or a hermit's cell; who built or dwelt in it, none may know, and the thought of its age made a ground of many meditations. the prison, too, where i now bivouacked with highland cattle-thieves, was a place full of history, both human and divine. i thought it strange so many saints and martyrs should have gone by there so recently, and left not so much as a leaf out of their bibles, or a name carved upon the wall, while the rough soldier lads that mounted guard upon the battlements had filled the neighbourhood with their mementoes broken tobacco-pipes for the most part, and that in a surprising plenty, but also metal buttons from their coats. there were times when i thought i could have heard the pious sound of psalms out of the martyr's dungeons, and seen the soldiers tramp the ramparts with their glinting pipes, and the dawn rising behind them out of the north sea. no doubt it was a good deal andie and his tales that put these fancies in my head. he was extraordinarily well acquainted with the story of the rock in all particulars, down to the names of private soldiers, his father having served there in that same capacity. he was gifted besides with a natural genius for narration, so that the people seemed to speak and the things to be done before your face. this gift of his and my assiduity to listen brought us the more close together. i could not honestly deny but what i liked him; i soon saw that he liked me; and indeed, from the first i had set myself out to capture his goodwill. an odd circumstance (to be told presently) effected this beyond my expectation; but even in early days we made a friendly pair to be a prisoner and his gaoler. i should trifle with my conscience if i pretended my stay upon the bass was wholly disagreeable. it seemed to me a safe place, as though i was escaped there out of my troubles. no harm was to be offered me; a material impossibility, rock and the deep sea, prevented me from fresh attempts; i felt i had my life safe and my honour safe, and there were times when i allowed myself to gloat on them like stolen waters. at other times my thoughts were very different, i recalled how strong i had expressed myself both to rankeillor and to stewart; i reflected that my captivity upon the bass, in view of a great part of the coasts of fife and lothian, was a thing i should be thought more likely to have invented than endured; and in the eyes of these two gentlemen, at least, i must pass for a boaster and a coward. now i would take this lightly enough; tell myself that so long as i stood well with catriona drummond, the opinion of the rest of man was but moonshine and spilled water; and thence pass off into those meditations of a lover which are so delightful to himself and must always appear so surprisingly idle to a reader. but anon the fear would take me otherwise; i would be shaken with a perfect panic of self-esteem, and these supposed hard judgments appear an injustice impossible to be supported. with that another train of thought would he presented, and i had scarce begun to be concerned about men's judgments of myself, than i was haunted with the remembrance of james stewart in his dungeon and the lamentations of his wife. then, indeed, passion began to work in me; i could not forgive myself to sit there idle: it seemed (if i were a man at all) that i could fly or swim out of my place of safety; and it was in such humours and to amuse my self-reproaches that i would set the more particularly to win the good side of andie dale. at last, when we two were alone on the summit of the rock on a bright morning, i put in some hint about a bribe. he looked at me, cast back his head, and laughed out loud. "ay, you're funny, mr. dale," said i, "but perhaps if you'll glance an eye upon that paper you may change your note." the stupid highlanders had taken from me at the time of my seizure nothing but hard money, and the paper i now showed andie was an acknowledgment from the british linen company for a considerable sum. he read it. "troth, and ye're nane sae ill aff," said he. "i thought that would maybe vary your opinions," said i. "hout!" said he. "it shows me ye can bribe; but i'm no to be bribit." "we'll see about that yet a while," says i. "and first, i'll show you that i know what i am talking. you have orders to detain me here till after thursday, 21st september." "ye're no a'thegether wrong either," says andie. "i'm to let you gang, bar orders contrair, on saturday, the 23rd." i could not but feel there was something extremely insidious in this arrangement. that i was to re-appear precisely in time to be too late would cast the more discredit on my tale, if i were minded to tell one; and this screwed me to fighting point. "now then, andie, you that kens the world, listen to me, and think while ye listen," said i. "i know there are great folks in the business, and i make no doubt you have their names to go upon. i have seen some of them myself since this affair began, and said my say into their faces too. but what kind of a crime would this be that i had committed? or what kind of a process is this that i am fallen under? to be apprehended by some ragged john-hielandman on august 30th, carried to a rickle of old stones that is now neither fort nor gaol (whatever it once was) but just the gamekeeper's lodge of the bass rock, and set free again, september 23rd, as secretly as i was first arrested does that sound like law to you? or does it sound like justice? or does it not sound honestly like a piece of some low dirty intrigue, of which the very folk that meddle with it are ashamed?" "i canna gainsay ye, shaws. it looks unco underhand," says andie. "and werenae the folk guid sound whigs and true-blue presbyterians i would has seen them ayont jordan and jeroozlem or i would have set hand to it." "the master of lovat'll be a braw whig," says i, "and a grand presbyterian." "i ken naething by him," said he. "i hae nae trokings wi' lovats." "no, it'll be prestongrange that you'll be dealing with," said i. "ah, but i'll no tell ye that," said andie. "little need when i ken," was my retort. "there's just the ae thing ye can be fairly sure of, shaws," says andie. "and that is that (try as ye please) i'm no dealing wi' yoursel'; nor yet i amnae goin' to," he added. "well, andie, i see i'll have to be speak out plain with you," i replied. and told him so much as i thought needful of the facts. he heard me out with some serious interest, and when i had done, seemed to consider a little with himself. "shaws," said he at last, "i'll deal with the naked hand. it's a queer tale, and no very creditable, the way you tell it; and i'm far frae minting that is other than the way that ye believe it. as for yoursel', ye seem to me rather a dacent-like young man. but me, that's aulder and mair judeecious, see perhaps a wee bit further forrit in the job than what ye can dae. and here the maitter clear and plain to ye. there'll be nae skaith to yoursel' if i keep ye here; far free that, i think ye'll be a hantle better by it. there'll be nae skaith to the kintry just ae mair hielantman hangit gude kens, a guid riddance! on the ither hand, it would be considerable skaith to me if i would let you free. sae, speakin' as a guid whig, an honest freen' to you, and an anxious freen' to my ainsel', the plain fact is that i think ye'll just have to bide here wi' andie an' the solans." "andie," said i, laying my hand upon his knee, "this hielantman's innocent." "ay, it's a peety about that," said he. "but ye see, in this warld, the way god made it, we cannae just get a'thing that we want." chapter xv black andie's tale of tod lapraik i have yet said little of the highlanders. they were all three of the followers of james more, which bound the accusation very tight about their master's neck. all understood a word or two of english, but neil was the only one who judged he had enough of it for general converse, in which (when once he got embarked) his company was often tempted to the contrary opinion. they were tractable, simple creatures; showed much more courtesy than might have been expected from their raggedness and their uncouth appearance, and fell spontaneously to be like three servants for andie and myself. dwelling in that isolated place, in the old falling ruins of a prison, and among endless strange sounds of the sea and the sea-birds, i thought i perceived in them early the effects of superstitious fear. when there was nothing doing they would either lie and sleep, for which their appetite appeared insatiable, or neil would entertain the others with stories which seemed always of a terrifying strain. if neither of these delights were within reach if perhaps two were sleeping and the third could find no means to follow their example i would see him sit and listen and look about him in a progression of uneasiness, starting, his face blenching, his hands clutched, a man strung like a bow. the nature of these fears i had never an occasion to find out, but the sight of them was catching, and the nature of the place that we were in favourable to alarms. i can find no word for it in the english, but andie had an expression for it in the scots from which he never varied. "ay," he would say, "its an unco place, the bass." it is so i always think of it. it was an unco place by night, unco by day; and these were unco sounds, of the calling of the solans, and the plash of the sea and the rock echoes, that hung continually in our ears. it was chiefly so in moderate weather. when the waves were anyway great they roared about the rock like thunder and the drums of armies, dreadful but merry to hear; and it was in the calm days that a man could daunt himself with listening not a highlandman only, as i several times experimented on myself, so many still, hollow noises haunted and reverberated in the porches of the rock. this brings me to a story i heard, and a scene i took part in, which quite changed our terms of living, and had a great effect on my departure. it chanced one night i fell in a muse beside the fire and (that little air of alan's coming back to my memory) began to whistle. a hand was laid upon my arm, and the voice of neil bade me to stop, for it was not "canny musics." "not canny?" i asked. "how can that be?" "na," said he; "it will be made by a bogle and her wanting ta heid upon his body." "well," said i, "there can be no bogles here, neil; for it's not likely they would fash themselves to frighten geese." "ay?" says andie, "is that what ye think of it! but i'll can tell ye there's been waur nor bogles here." "what's waur than bogles, andie?" said i. "warlocks," said he. "or a warlock at the least of it. and that's a queer tale, too," he added. "and if ye would like, i'll tell it ye." to be sure we were all of the one mind, and even the highlander that had the least english of the three set himself to listen with all his might. the tale of tod lapraik my faither, tam dale, peace to his banes, was a wild, sploring lad in his young days, wi' little wisdom and little grace. he was fond of a lass and fond of a glass, and fond of a ran-dan; but i could never hear tell that he was muckle use for honest employment. frae ae thing to anither, he listed at last for a sodger and was in the garrison of this fort, which was the first way that ony of the dales cam to set foot upon the bass. sorrow upon that service! the governor brewed his ain ale; it seems it was the warst conceivable. the rock was proveesioned free the shore with vivers, the thing was ill-guided, and there were whiles when they but to fish and shoot solans for their diet. to crown a', thir was the days of the persecution. the perishin' cauld chalmers were all occupeed wi' sants and martyrs, the saut of the yearth, of which it wasnae worthy. and though tam dale carried a firelock there, a single sodger, and liked a lass and a glass, as i was sayin,' the mind of the man was mair just than set with his position. he had glints of the glory of the kirk; there were whiles when his dander rase to see the lord's sants misguided, and shame covered him that he should be haulding a can'le (or carrying a firelock) in so black a business. there were nights of it when he was here on sentry, the place a' wheesht, the frosts o' winter maybe riving in the wa's, and he would hear ane o' the prisoners strike up a psalm, and the rest join in, and the blessed sounds rising from the different chalmers or dungeons, i would raither say so that this auld craig in the sea was like a pairt of heev'n. black shame was on his saul; his sins hove up before him muckle as the bass, and above a', that chief sin, that he should have a hand in hagging and hashing at christ's kirk. but the truth is that he resisted the spirit. day cam, there were the rousing compainions, and his guid resolves depairtit. in thir days, dwalled upon the bass a man of god, peden the prophet was his name. ye'll have heard tell of prophet peden. there was never the wale of him sinsyne, and it's a question wi' mony if there ever was his like afore. he was wild's a peat-hag, fearsome to look at, fearsome to hear, his face like the day of judgment. the voice of him was like a solan's and dinnle'd in folks' lugs, and the words of him like coals of fire. now there was a lass on the rock, and i think she had little to do, for it was nae place far decent weemen; but it seems she was bonny, and her and tam dale were very well agreed. it befell that peden was in the gairden his lane at the praying when tam and the lass cam by; and what should the lassie do but mock with laughter at the sant's devotions? he rose and lookit at the twa o' them, and tam's knees knoitered thegether at the look of him. but whan he spak, it was mair in sorrow than in anger. 'poor thing, poor thing!" says he, and it was the lass he lookit at, "i hear you skirl and laugh," he says, "but the lord has a deid shot prepared for you, and at that surprising judgment ye shall skirl but the ae time!" shortly thereafter she was daundering on the craigs wi' twa-three sodgers, and it was a blawy day. there cam a gowst of wind, claught her by the coats, and awa' wi' her bag and baggage. and it was remarked by the sodgers that she gied but the ae skirl. nae doubt this judgment had some weicht upon tam dale; but it passed again and him none the better. ae day he was flyting wi' anither sodger-lad. "deil hae me!" quo' tam, for he was a profane swearer. and there was peden glowering at him, gash an' waefu'; peden wi' his lang chafts an' luntin' een, the maud happed about his kist, and the hand of him held out wi' the black nails upon the finger-nebs for he had nae care of the body. "fy, fy, poor man!" cries he, "the poor fool man! deil hae me, quo' he; an' i see the deil at his oxter." the conviction of guilt and grace cam in on tam like the deep sea; he flang doun the pike that was in his hands "i will nae mair lift arms against the cause o' christ!" says he, and was as gude's word. there was a sair fyke in the beginning, but the governor, seeing him resolved, gied him his discharge, and he went and dwallt and merried in north berwick, and had aye a gude name with honest folk free that day on. it was in the year seeventeen hunner and sax that the bass cam in the hands o' the da'rymples, and there was twa men soucht the chairge of it. baith were weel qualified, for they had baith been sodgers in the garrison, and kent the gate to handle solans, and the seasons and values of them. forby that they were baith or they baith seemed earnest professors and men of comely conversation. the first of them was just tam dale, my faither. the second was ane lapraik, whom the folk ca'd tod lapraik maistly, but whether for his name or his nature i could never hear tell. weel, tam gaed to see lapraik upon this business, and took me, that was a toddlin' laddie, by the hand. tod had his dwallin' in the lang loan benorth the kirkyaird. it's a dark uncanny loan, forby that the kirk has aye had an ill name since the days o' james the saxt and the deevil's cantrips played therein when the queen was on the seas; and as for tod's house, it was in the mirkest end, and was little liked by some that kenned the best. the door was on the sneck that day, and me and my faither gaed straucht in. tod was a wabster to his trade; his loom stood in the but. there he sat, a muckle fat, white hash of a man like creish, wi' a kind of a holy smile that gart me scunner. the hand of him aye cawed the shuttle, but his een was steeked. we cried to him by his name, we skirted in the deid lug of him, we shook him by the shou'ther. nae mainner o' service! there he sat on his dowp, an' cawed the shuttle and smiled like creish. "god be guid to us," says tam dale, "this is no canny?" he had jimp said the word, when tod lapraik cam to himsel'. "is this you, tam?" says he. "haith, man! i'm blythe to see ye. i whiles fa' into a bit dwam like this," he says; "its frae the stamach." weel, they began to crack about the bass and which of them twa was to get the warding o't, and little by little cam to very ill words, and twined in anger. i mind weel that as my faither and me gaed hame again, he cam ower and ower the same expression, how little he likit tod lapraik and his dwams. "dwam!" says he. "i think folk hae brunt for dwams like yon." aweel, my faither got the bass and tod had to go wantin'. it was remembered sinsyne what way he had ta'en the thing. "tam," says he, "ye hae gotten the better o' me aince mair, and i hope," says he, "ye'll find at least a' that ye expeckit at the bass." which have since been thought remarkable expressions. at last the time came for tam dale to take young solans. this was a business he was weel used wi', he had been a craigsman frae a laddie, and trustit nane but himsel'. so there was he hingin' by a line an' speldering on the craig face, whaur its hieest and steighest. fower tenty lads were on the tap, hauldin' the line and mindin' for his signals. but whaur tam hung there was naething but the craig, and the sea belaw, and the solans skirlin and flying. it was a braw spring morn, and tam whustled as he claught in the young geese. mony's the time i've heard him tell of this experience, and aye the swat ran upon the man. it chanced, ye see, that tam keeked up, and he was awaur of a muckle solan, and the solan pyking at the line. he thocht this by-ordinar and outside the creature's habits. he minded that ropes was unco saft things, and the solan's neb and the bass rock unco hard, and that twa hunner feet were raither mair than he would care to fa'. "shoo!" says tam. "awa', bird! shoo, awa' wi' ye!" says he. the solan keekit doon into tam's face, and there was something unco in the creature's ee. just the ae keek it gied, and back to the rope. but now it wroucht and warstl't like a thing dementit. there never was the solan made that wroucht as that solan wroucht; and it seemed to understand its employ brawly, birzing the saft rope between the neb of it and a crunkled jag o' stane. there gaed a cauld stend o' fear into tam's heart. "this thing is nae bird," thinks he. his een turnt backward in his heid and the day gaed black aboot him. "if i get a dwam here," he toucht, "it's by wi' tam dale." and he signalled for the lads to pu' him up. and it seemed the solan understood about signals. for nae sooner was the signal made than he let be the rope, spried his wings, squawked out loud, took a turn flying, and dashed straucht at tam dale's een. tam had a knife, he gart the cauld steel glitter. and it seemed the solan understood about knives, for nae suner did the steel glint in the sun than he gied the ae squawk, but laighter, like a body disappointit, and flegged aff about the roundness of the craig, and tam saw him nae mair. and as sune as that thing was gane, tam's heid drapt upon his shouther, and they pu'd him up like a deid corp, dadding on the craig. a dram of brandy (which he went never without) broucht him to his mind, or what was left of it. up he sat. "rin, geordie, rin to the boat, mak' sure of the boat, man rin!" he cries, "or yon solan'll have it awa'," says he. the fower lads stared at ither, an' tried to whilly-wha him to be quiet. but naething would satisfy tam dale, till ane o' them had startit on aheid to stand sentry on the boat. the ithers askit if he was for down again. "na," says he, "and niether you nor me," says he, "and as sune as i can win to stand on my twa feet we'll be aff frae this craig o' sawtan." sure eneuch, nae time was lost, and that was ower muckle; for before they won to north berwick tam was in a crying fever. he lay a' the simmer; and wha was sae kind as come speiring for him, but tod lapraik! folk thocht afterwards that ilka time tod cam near the house the fever had worsened. i kenna for that; but what i ken the best, that was the end of it. it was about this time o' the year; my grandfaither was out at the white fishing; and like a bairn, i but to gang wi' him. we had a grand take, i mind, and the way that the fish lay broucht us near in by the bass, whaur we foregaithered wi' anither boat that belanged to a man sandie fletcher in castleton. he's no lang deid neither, or ye could speir at himsel'. weel, sandie hailed. "what's yon on the bass?" says he. "on the bass?" says grandfaither. "ay," says sandie, "on the green side o't." "whatten kind of a thing?" says grandfaither. "there cannae be naething on the bass but just the sheep." "it looks unco like a body," quo' sandie, who was nearer in. "a body!" says we, and we none of us likit that. for there was nae boat that could have brought a man, and the key o' the prison yett hung ower my faither's at hame in the press bed. we keept the twa boats close for company, and crap in nearer hand. grandfaither had a gless, for he had been a sailor, and the captain of a smack, and had lost her on the sands of tay. and when we took the glass to it, sure eneuch there was a man. he was in a crunkle o' green brae, a wee below the chaipel, a' by his lee lane, and lowped and flang and danced like a daft quean at a waddin'. "it's tod," says grandfather, and passed the gless to sandie. "ay, it's him," says sandie. "or ane in the likeness o' him," says grandfaither. "sma' is the differ," quo' sandie. "de'il or warlock, i'll try the gun at him," quo' he, and broucht up a fowling-piece that he aye carried, for sandie was a notable famous shot in all that country. "haud your hand, sandie," says grandfaither; "we maun see clearer first," says he, "or this may be a dear day's wark to the baith of us." "hout!" says sandie, "this is the lord's judgment surely, and be damned to it," says he. "maybe ay, and maybe no," says my grandfaither, worthy man! "but have you a mind of the procurator fiscal, that i think ye'll have foregaithered wi' before," says he. this was ower true, and sandie was a wee thing set ajee. "aweel, edie," says he, "and what would be your way of it?" "ou, just this," says grandfaither. "let me that has the fastest boat gang back to north berwick, and let you bide here and keep an eye on thon. if i cannae find lapraik, i'll join ye and the twa of us'll have a crack wi' him. but if lapraik's at hame, i'll rin up the flag at the harbour, and ye can try thon thing wi' the gun." aweel, so it was agreed between them twa. i was just a bairn, an' clum in sandie's boat, whaur i thoucht i would see the best of the employ. my grandsire gied sandie a siller tester to pit in his gun wi' the leid draps, bein mair deidly again bogles. and then the as boat set aff for north berwick, an' the tither lay whaur it was and watched the wanchancy thing on the brae-side. a' the time we lay there it lowped and flang and capered and span like a teetotum, and whiles we could hear it skelloch as it span. i hae seen lassies, the daft queans, that would lowp and dance a winter's nicht, and still be lowping and dancing when the winter's day cam in. but there would be fowk there to hauld them company, and the lads to egg them on; and this thing was its lee-lane. and there would be a fiddler diddling his elbock in the chimney-side; and this thing had nae music but the skirling of the solans. and the lassies were bits o' young things wi' the reid life dinnling and stending in their members; and this was a muckle, fat, creishy man, and him fa'n in the vale o' years. say what ye like, i maun say what i believe. it was joy was in the creature's heart, the joy o' hell, i daursay: joy whatever. mony a time i have askit mysel' why witches and warlocks should sell their sauls (whilk are their maist dear possessions) and be auld, duddy, wrunkl't wives or auld, feckless, doddered men; and then i mind upon tod lapraik dancing a' the hours by his lane in the black glory of his heart. nae doubt they burn for it muckle in hell, but they have a grand time here of it, whatever! and the lord forgie us! weel, at the hinder end, we saw the wee flag yirk up to the mast-heid upon the harbour rocks. that was a' sandie waited for. he up wi' the gun, took a deleeberate aim, an' pu'd the trigger. there cam' a bang and then ae waefu' skirl frae the bass. and there were we rubbin' our een and lookin' at ither like daft folk. for wi' the bang and the skirl the thing had clean disappeared. the sun glintit, the wund blew, and there was the bare yaird whaur the wonder had been lowping and flinging but ae second syne. the hale way hame i roared and grat wi' the terror o' that dispensation. the grawn folk were nane sae muckle better; there was little said in sandie's boat but just the name of god; and when we won in by the pier, the harbour rocks were fair black wi' the folk waitin' us. it seems they had fund lapraik in ane of his dwams, cawing the shuttle and smiling. ae lad they sent to hoist the flag, and the rest abode there in the wabster's house. you may be sure they liked it little; but it was a means of grace to severals that stood there praying in to themsel's (for nane cared to pray out loud) and looking on thon awesome thing as it cawed the shuttle. syne, upon a suddenty, and wi' the ae dreidfu' skelloch, tod sprang up frae his hinderlands and fell forrit on the wab, a bluidy corp. when the corp was examined the leid draps hadnae played buff upon the warlock's body; sorrow a leid drap was to be fund! but there was grandfaither's siller tester in the puddock's heart of him. andie had scarce done when there befell a mighty silly affair that had its consequence. neil, as i have said, was himself a great narrator. i have heard since that he knew all the stories in the highlands; and thought much of himself, and was thought much of by others on the strength of it. now andie's tale reminded him of one he had already heard. "she would ken that story afore," he said. "she was the story of uistean more m'gillie phadrig and the gavar vore." "it is no sic a thing," cried andie. "it is the story of my faither (now wi' god) and tod lapraik. and the same in your beard," says he; "and keep the tongue of ye inside your hielant chafts!" in dealing with highlanders it will be found, and has been shown in history, how well it goes with lowland gentlefolk; but the thing appears scarce feasible for lowland commons. i had already remarked that andie was continually on the point of quarrelling with our three macgregors, and now, sure enough, it was to come. "thir will be no words to use to shentlemans," says neil. "shentlemans!" cries andie. "shentlemans, ye hielant stot! if god would give ye the grace to see yoursel' the way that ithers see ye, ye would throw your denner up." there came some kind of a gaelic oath from neil, and the black knife was in his hand that moment. there was no time to think; and i caught the highlander by the leg, and had him down, and his armed hand pinned out, before i knew what i was doing. his comrades sprang to rescue him, andie and i were without weapons, the gregara three to two. it seemed we were beyond salvation, when neil screamed in his own tongue, ordering the others back, and made his submission to myself in a manner the most abject, even giving me up his knife which (upon a repetition of his promises) i returned to him on the morrow. two things i saw plain: the first, that i must not build too high on andie, who had shrunk against the wall and stood there, as pale as death, till the affair was over; the second, the strength of my own position with the highlanders, who must have received extraordinary charges to be tender of my safety. but if i thought andie came not very well out in courage, i had no fault to find with him upon the account of gratitude. it was not so much that he troubled me with thanks, as that his whole mind and manner appeared changed; and as he preserved ever after a great timidity of our companions, he and i were yet more constantly together. chapter xvi the missing witness on the seventeenth, the day i was trysted with the writer, i had much rebellion against fate. the thought of him waiting in the king's arms, and of what he would think, and what he would say when next we met, tormented and oppressed me. the truth was unbelievable, so much i had to grant, and it seemed cruel hard i should be posted as a liar and a coward, and have never consciously omitted what it was possible that i should do. i repeated this form of words with a kind of bitter relish, and re-examined in that light the steps of my behaviour. it seemed i had behaved to james stewart as a brother might; all the past was a picture that i could be proud of, and there was only the present to consider. i could not swim the sea, nor yet fly in the air, but there was always andie. i had done him a service, he liked me; i had a lever there to work on; if it were just for decency, i must try once more with andie. it was late afternoon; there was no sound in all the bass but the lap and bubble of a very quiet sea; and my four companions were all crept apart, the three macgregors higher on the rock, and andie with his bible to a sunny place among the ruins; there i found him in deep sleep, and, as soon as he was awake, appealed to him with some fervour of manner and a good show of argument. "if i thoucht it was to do guid to ye, shaws!" said he, staring at me over his spectacles. "it's to save another," said i, "and to redeem my word. what would be more good than that? do ye no mind the scripture, andie? and you with the book upon your lap! what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world?" "ay," said he, "that's grand for you. but where do i come in! i have my word to redeem the same's yoursel'. and what are ye asking me to do, but just to sell it ye for siller?" "andie! have i named the name of siller?" cried i. "ou, the name's naething", said he; "the thing is there, whatever. it just comes to this; if i am to service ye the way that you propose, i'll lose my lifelihood. then it's clear ye'll have to make it up to me, and a pickle mair, for your ain credit like. and what's that but just a bribe? and if even i was certain of the bribe! but by a' that i can learn, it's far frae that; and if you were to hang, where would i be? na: the thing's no possible. and just awa' wi' ye like a bonny lad! and let andie read his chapter." i remember i was at bottom a good deal gratified with this result; and the next humour i fell into was one (i had near said) of gratitude to prestongrange, who had saved me, in this violent, illegal manner, out of the midst of my dangers, temptations, and perplexities. but this was both too flimsy and too cowardly to last me long, and the remembrance of james began to succeed to the possession of my spirits. the 21st, the day set for the trial, i passed in such misery of mind as i can scarce recall to have endured, save perhaps upon isle earraid only. much of the time i lay on a brae-side betwixt sleep and waking, my body motionless, my mind full of violent thoughts. sometimes i slept indeed; but the court-house of inverary and the prisoner glancing on all sides to find his missing witness, followed me in slumber; and i would wake again with a start to darkness of spirit and distress of body. i thought andie seemed to observe me, but i paid him little heed. verily, my bread was bitter to me, and my days a burthen. early the next morning (friday, 22nd) a boat came with provisions, and andie placed a packet in my hand. the cover was without address but sealed with a government seal. it enclosed two notes. "mr. balfour can now see for himself it is too late to meddle. his conduct will be observed and his discretion rewarded." so ran the first, which seemed to be laboriously writ with the left hand. there was certainly nothing in these expressions to compromise the writer, even if that person could be found; the seal, which formidably served instead of signature, was affixed to a separate sheet on which there was no scratch of writing; and i had to confess that (so far) my adversaries knew what they were doing, and to digest as well as i was able the threat that peeped under the promise. but the second enclosure was by far the more surprising. it was in a lady's hand of writ. "maister dauvit balfour is informed a friend was speiring for him and her eyes were of the grey," it ran and seemed so extraordinary a piece to come to my hands at such a moment and under cover of a government seal, that i stood stupid. catriona's grey eyes shone in my remembrance. i thought, with a bound of pleasure, she must be the friend. but who should the writer be, to have her billet thus enclosed with prestongrange's? and of all wonders, why was it thought needful to give me this pleasing but most inconsequent intelligence upon the bass? for the writer, i could hit upon none possible except miss grant. her family, i remembered, had remarked on catriona's eyes and even named her for their colour; and she herself had been much in the habit to address me with a broad pronunciation, by way of a sniff, i supposed, at my rusticity. no doubt, besides, but she lived in the same house as this letter came from. so there remained but one step to be accounted for; and that was how prestongrange should have permitted her at all in an affair so secret, or let her daft-like billet go in the same cover with his own. but even here i had a glimmering. for, first of all, there was something rather alarming about the young lady, and papa might be more under her domination than i knew. and, second, there was the man's continual policy to be remembered, how his conduct had been continually mingled with caresses, and he had scarce ever, in the midst of so much contention, laid aside a mask of friendship. he must conceive that my imprisonment had incensed me. perhaps this little jesting, friendly message was intended to disarm my rancour? i will be honest and i think it did. i felt a sudden warmth towards that beautiful miss grant, that she should stoop to so much interest in my affairs. the summoning up of catriona moved me of itself to milder and more cowardly counsels. if the advocate knew of her and our acquaintance if i should please him by some of that "discretion" at which his letter pointed to what might not this lead! in vain is the net prepared in the sight of any fowl, the scripture says. well, fowls must be wiser than folk! for i thought i perceived the policy, and yet fell in with it. i was in this frame, my heart beating, the grey eyes plain before me like two stars, when andie broke in upon my musing. "i see ye has gotten guid news," said he. i found him looking curiously in my face; with that there came before me like a vision of james stewart and the court of inverary; and my mind turned at once like a door upon its hinges. trials, i reflected, sometimes draw out longer than is looked for. even if i came to inverary just too late, something might yet be attempted in the interests of james and in those of my own character, the best would be accomplished. in a moment, it seemed without thought, i had a plan devised. "andie," said i, "is it still to be to-morrow?" he told me nothing was changed. "was anything said about the hour?" i asked. he told me it was to be two o'clock afternoon. "and about the place?" i pursued. "whatten place?" says andie. "the place i am to be landed at?" said i. he owned there was nothing as to that. "very well, then," i said, "this shall be mine to arrange. the wind is in the east, my road lies westward: keep your boat, i hire it; let us work up the forth all day; and land me at two o'clock to-morrow at the westmost we'll can have reached." "ye daft callant!" he cried; "ye would try for inverary after a'!" "just that, andie," says i. "weel, ye're ill to beat!" says he. "and i was a kind o' sorry for ye a' day yesterday," he added. "ye see, i was never entirely sure till then, which way of it ye really wantit." here was a spur to a lame horse! "a word in your ear, andie," said i. "this plan of mine has another advantage yet. we can leave these hielandman behind us on the rock, and one of your boats from the castleton can bring them off to-morrow. yon neil has a queer eye when he regards you; maybe, if i was once out of the gate there might be knives again; these red-shanks are unco grudgeful. and if there should come to be any question, here is your excuse. our lives were in danger by these savages; being answerable for my safety, you chose the part to bring me from their neighbourhood and detain me the rest of the time on board your boat: and do you know, andie?" says i, with a smile, "i think it was very wisely chosen," "the truth is i have nae goo for neil," says andie, "nor he for me, i'm thinking; and i would like ill to come to my hands wi' the man. tam anster will make a better hand of it with the cattle onyway." (for this man, anster, came from fife, where the gaelic is still spoken.) "ay, ay!" says andie, "tam'll can deal with them the best. and troth! the mair i think of it, the less i see we would be required. the place ay, feggs! they had forgot the place. eh, shaws, ye're a lang-heided chield when ye like! forby that i'm awing ye my life," he added, with more solemnity, and offered me his hand upon the bargain. whereupon, with scarce more words, we stepped suddenly on board the boat, cast off, and set the lug. the gregara were then busy upon breakfast, for the cookery was their usual part; but, one of them stepping to the battlements, our flight was observed before we were twenty fathoms from the rock; and the three of them ran about the ruins and the landing-shelf, for all the world like ants about a broken nest, hailing and crying on us to return. we were still in both the lee and the shadow of the rock, which last lay broad upon the waters, but presently came forth in almost the same moment into the wind and sunshine; the sail filled, the boat heeled to the gunwale, and we swept immediately beyond sound of the men's voices. to what terrors they endured upon the rock, where they were now deserted without the countenance of any civilised person or so much as the protection of a bible, no limit can be set; nor had they any brandy left to be their consolation, for even in the haste and secrecy of our departure andie had managed to remove it. it was our first care to set anster ashore in a cove by the glenteithy rocks, so that the deliverance of our maroons might be duly seen to the next day. thence we kept away up firth. the breeze, which was then so spirited, swiftly declined, but never wholly failed us. all day we kept moving, though often not much more; and it was after dark ere we were up with the queensferry. to keep the letter of andie's engagement (or what was left of it) i must remain on board, but i thought no harm to communicate with the shore in writing. on prestongrange's cover, where the government seal must have a good deal surprised my correspondent, i writ, by the boat's lantern, a few necessary words, aboard and andie carried them to rankeillor. in about an hour he came again, with a purse of money and the assurance that a good horse should be standing saddled for me by two to-morrow at clackmannan pool. this done, and the boat riding by her stone anchor, we lay down to sleep under the sail. we were in the pool the next day long ere two; and there was nothing left for me but to sit and wait. i felt little alacrity upon my errand. i would have been glad of any passable excuse to lay it down; but none being to be found, my uneasiness was no less great than if i had been running to some desired pleasure. by shortly after one the horse was at the waterside, and i could see a man walking it to and fro till i should land, which vastly swelled my impatience. andie ran the moment of my liberation very fine, showing himself a man of his bare word, but scarce serving his employers with a heaped measure; and by about fifty seconds after two i was in the saddle and on the full stretch for stirling. in a little more than an hour i had passed that town, and was already mounting alan water side, when the weather broke in a small tempest. the rain blinded me, the wind had nearly beat me from the saddle, and the first darkness of the night surprised me in a wilderness still some way east of balwhidder, not very sure of my direction and mounted on a horse that began already to be weary. in the press of my hurry, and to be spared the delay and annoyance of a guide, i had followed (so far as it was possible for any horseman) the line of my journey with alan. this i did with open eyes, foreseeing a great risk in it, which the tempest had now brought to a reality. the last that i knew of where i was, i think it must have been about uam var; the hour perhaps six at night. i must still think it great good fortune that i got about eleven to my destination, the house of duncan dhu. where i had wandered in the interval perhaps the horse could tell. i know we were twice down, and once over the saddle and for a moment carried away in a roaring burn. steed and rider were bemired up to the eyes. from duncan i had news of the trial. it was followed in all these highland regions with religious interest; news of it spread from inverary as swift as men could travel; and i was rejoiced to learn that, up to a late hour that saturday it was not yet concluded; and all men began to suppose it must spread over the monday. under the spur of this intelligence i would not sit to eat; but, duncan having agreed to be my guide, took the road again on foot, with the piece in my hand and munching as i went. duncan brought with him a flask of usquebaugh and a hand-lantern; which last enlightened us just so long as we could find houses where to rekindle it, for the thing leaked outrageously and blew out with every gust. the more part of the night we walked blindfold among sheets of rain, and day found us aimless on the mountains. hard by we struck a hut on a burn-side, where we got bite and a direction; and, a little before the end of the sermon, came to the kirk doors of inverary. the rain had somewhat washed the upper parts of me, but i was still bogged as high as to the knees; i streamed water; i was so weary i could hardly limp, and my face was like a ghost's. i stood certainly more in need of a change of raiment and a bed to lie on, than of all the benefits in christianity. for all which (being persuaded the chief point for me was to make myself immediately public) i set the door of the church with the dirty duncan at my tails, and finding a vacant place sat down. "thirteently, my brethren, and in parenthesis, the law itself must be regarded as a means of grace," the minister was saying, in the voice of one delighting to pursue an argument. the sermon was in english on account of the assize. the judges were present with their armed attendants, the halberts glittered in a corner by the door, and the seats were thronged beyond custom with the array of lawyers. the text was in romans 5th and 13th the minister a skilled hand; and the whole of that able churchful from argyle, and my lords elchies and kilkerran, down to the halbertmen that came in their attendance was sunk with gathered brows in a profound critical attention. the minister himself and a sprinkling of those about the door observed our entrance at the moment and immediately forgot the same; the rest either did not hear or would not hear or would not be heard; and i sat amongst my friends and enemies unremarked. the first that i singled out was prestongrange. he sat well forward, like an eager horseman in the saddle, his lips moving with relish, his eyes glued on the minister; the doctrine was clearly to his mind. charles stewart, on the other hand, was half asleep, and looked harassed and pale. as for simon fraser, he appeared like a blot, and almost a scandal, in the midst of that attentive congregation, digging his hands in his pockets, shifting his legs, clearing his throat, and rolling up his bald eyebrows and shooting out his eyes to right and left, now with a yawn, now with a secret smile. at times, too, he would take the bible in front of him, run it through, seem to read a bit, run it through again, and stop and yawn prodigiously: the whole as if for exercise. in the course of this restlessness his eye alighted on myself. he sat a second stupefied, then tore a half-leaf out of the bible, scrawled upon it with a pencil, and passed it with a whispered word to his next neighbour. the note came to prestongrange, who gave me but the one look; thence it voyaged to the hands of mr. erskine; thence again to argyle, where he sat between the other two lords of session, and his grace turned and fixed me with an arrogant eye. the last of those interested in my presence was charlie stewart, and he too began to pencil and hand about dispatches, none of which i was able to trace to their destination in the crowd. but the passage of these notes had aroused notice; all who were in the secret (or supposed themselves to be so) were whispering information the rest questions; and the minister himself seemed quite discountenanced by the flutter in the church and sudden stir and whispering. his voice changed, he plainly faltered, nor did he again recover the easy conviction and full tones of his delivery. it would be a puzzle to him till his dying day, why a sermon that had gone with triumph through four parts, should this miscarry in the fifth. as for me, i continued to sit there, very wet and weary, and a good deal anxious as to what should happen next, but greatly exulting in my success. chapter xvii the memorial the last word of the blessing was scarce out of the minister's mouth before stewart had me by the arm. we were the first to be forth of the church, and he made such extraordinary expedition that we were safe within the four walls of a house before the street had begun to be thronged with the home-going congregation. "am i yet in time?" i asked. "ay and no," said he. "the case is over; the jury is enclosed, and will so kind as let us ken their view of it to-morrow in the morning, the same as i could have told it my own self three days ago before the play began. the thing has been public from the start. the panel kent it, 'ye may do what ye will for me,' whispers he two days ago. 'ye ken my fate by what the duke of argyle has just said to mr. macintosh.' o, it's been a scandal! "the great agyle he gaed before, he gart the cannons and guns to roar," and the very macer cried 'cruachan!' but now that i have got you again i'll never despair. the oak shall go over the myrtle yet; we'll ding the campbells yet in their own town. praise god that i should see the day!" he was leaping with excitement, emptied out his mails upon the floor that i might have a change of clothes, and incommoded me with his assistance as i changed. what remained to be done, or how i was to do it, was what he never told me nor, i believe, so much as thought of. "we'll ding the campbells yet!" that was still his overcome. and it was forced home upon my mind how this, that had the externals of a sober process of law, was in its essence a clan battle between savage clans. i thought my friend the writer none of the least savage. who that had only seen him at a counsel's back before the lord ordinary or following a golf ball and laying down his clubs on bruntsfield links, could have recognised for the same person this voluble and violent clansman? james stewart's counsel were four in number sheriffs brown of colstoun and miller, mr. robert macintosh, and mr. stewart younger of stewart hall. these were covenanted to dine with the writer after sermon, and i was very obligingly included of the party. no sooner the cloth lifted, and the first bowl very artfully compounded by sheriff miller, than we fell to the subject in hand. i made a short narration of my seizure and captivity, and was then examined and re-examined upon the circumstances of the murder. it will be remembered this was the first time i had had my say out, or the matter at all handled, among lawyers; and the consequence was very dispiriting to the others and (i must own) disappointing to myself. "to sum up," said colstoun, "you prove that alan was on the spot; you have heard him proffer menaces against glenure; and though you assure us he was not the man who fired, you leave a strong impression that he was in league with him, and consenting, perhaps immediately assisting, in the act. you show him besides, at the risk of his own liberty, actively furthering the criminal's escape. and the rest of your testimony (so far as the least material) depends on the bare word of alan or of james, the two accused. in short, you do not at all break, but only lengthen by one personage, the chain that binds our client to the murderer; and i need scarcely say that the introduction of a third accomplice rather aggravates that appearance of a conspiracy which has been our stumbling block from the beginning." "i am of the same opinion," said sheriff miller. "i think we may all be very much obliged to prestongrange for taking a most uncomfortable witness out of our way. and chiefly, i think, mr. balfour himself might be obliged. for you talk of a third accomplice, but mr. balfour (in my view) has very much the appearance of a fourth." "allow me, sirs!" interposed stewart the writer. "there is another view. here we have a witness never fash whether material or not a witness in this cause, kidnapped by that old, lawless, bandit crew of the glengyle macgregors, and sequestered for near upon a month in a bourock of old ruins on the bass. move that and see what dirt you fling on the proceedings! sirs, this is a tale to make the world ring with! it would be strange, with such a grip as this, if we couldnae squeeze out a pardon for my client." "and suppose we took up mr. balfour's cause to-morrow?" said stewart hall. "i am much deceived or we should find so many impediments thrown in our path, as that james should have been hanged before we had found a court to hear us. this is a great scandal, but i suppose we have none of us forgot a greater still, i mean the matter of the lady grange. the woman was still in durance; my friend mr. hope of rankeillor did what was humanly possible; and how did he speed? he never got a warrant! well, it'll be the same now; the same weapons will be used. this is a scene, gentleman, of clan animosity. the hatred of the name which i have the honour to bear, rages in high quarters. there is nothing here to be viewed but naked campbell spite and scurvy campbell intrigue." you may be sure this was to touch a welcome topic, and i sat for some time in the midst of my learned counsel, almost deaved with their talk but extremely little the wiser for its purport. the writer was led into some hot expressions; colstoun must take him up and set him right; the rest joined in on different sides, but all pretty noisy; the duke of argyle was beaten like a blanket; king george came in for a few digs in the by-going and a great deal of rather elaborate defence; and there was only one person that seemed to be forgotten, and that was james of the glens. through all this mr. miller sat quiet. he was a slip of an oldish gentleman, ruddy and twinkling; he spoke in a smooth rich voice, with an infinite effect of pawkiness, dealing out each word the way an actor does, to give the most expression possible; and even now, when he was silent, and sat there with his wig laid aside, his glass in both hands, his mouth funnily pursed, and his chin out, he seemed the mere picture of a merry slyness. it was plain he had a word to say, and waited for the fit occasion. it came presently. colstoun had wound up one of his speeches with some expression of their duty to their client. his brother sheriff was pleased, i suppose, with the transition. he took the table in his confidence with a gesture and a look. "that suggests to me a consideration which seems overlooked," said he. "the interest of our client goes certainly before all, but the world does not come to an end with james stewart." whereat he cocked his eye. "i might condescend, exempli gratia, upon a mr. george brown, a mr. thomas miller, and a mr. david balfour. mr. david balfour has a very good ground of complaint, and i think, gentlemen if his story was properly redd out i think there would be a number of wigs on the green." the whole table turned to him with a common movement. "properly handled and carefully redd out, his is a story that could scarcely fail to have some consequence," he continued. "the whole administration of justice, from its highest officer downward, would be totally discredited; and it looks to me as if they would need to be replaced." he seemed to shine with cunning as he said it. "and i need not point out to ye that this of mr. balfour's would be a remarkable bonny cause to appear in," he added. well, there they all were started on another hare; mr. balfour's cause, and what kind of speeches could be there delivered, and what officials could be thus turned out, and who would succeed to their positions. i shall give but the two specimens. it was proposed to approach simon fraser, whose testimony, if it could be obtained, would prove certainly fatal to argyle and to prestongrange. miller highly approved of the attempt. "we have here before us a dreeping roast," said he, "here is cut-and-come-again for all." and methought all licked their lips. the other was already near the end. stewart the writer was out of the body with delight, smelling vengeance on his chief enemy, the duke. "gentlemen," cried he, charging his glass, "here is to sheriff miller. his legal abilities are known to all. his culinary, this bowl in front of us is here to speak for. but when it comes to the poleetical!" cries he, and drains the glass. "ay, but it will hardly prove politics in your meaning, my friend," said the gratified miller. "a revolution, if you like, and i think i can promise you that historical writers shall date from mr. balfour's cause. but properly guided, mr. stewart, tenderly guided, it shall prove a peaceful revolution." "and if the damned campbells get their ears rubbed, what care i?" cries stewart, smiting down his fist. it will be thought i was not very well pleased with all this, though i could scarce forbear smiling at a kind of innocency in these old intriguers. but it was not my view to have undergone so many sorrows for the advancement of sheriff miller or to make a revolution in the parliament house: and i interposed accordingly with as much simplicity of manner as i could assume. "i have to thank you, gentlemen, for your advice," said i. "and now i would like, by your leave, to set you two or three questions. there is one thing that has fallen rather on one aide, for instance: will this cause do any good to our friend james of the glens?" they seemed all a hair set back, and gave various answers, but concurring practically in one point, that james had now no hope but in the king's mercy. "to proceed, then," said i, "will it do any good to scotland? we have a saying that it is an ill bird that fouls his own nest. i remember hearing we had a riot in edinburgh when i was an infant child, which gave occasion to the late queen to call this country barbarous; and i always understood that we had rather lost than gained by that. then came the year 'forty-five, which made scotland to be talked of everywhere; but i never heard it said we had anyway gained by the 'forty-five. and now we come to this cause of mr. balfour's, as you call it. sheriff miller tells us historical writers are to date from it, and i would not wonder. it is only my fear they would date from it as a period of calamity and public reproach." the nimble-witted miller had already smelt where i was travelling to, and made haste to get on the same road. "forcibly put, mr. balfour," says he. "a weighty observe, sir." "we have next to ask ourselves if it will be good for king george," i pursued. "sheriff miller appears pretty easy upon this; but i doubt you will scarce be able to pull down the house from under him, without his majesty coming by a knock or two, one of which might easily prove fatal." i have them a chance to answer, but none volunteered. "of those for whom the case was to be profitable," i went on, "sheriff miller gave us the names of several, among the which he was good enough to mention mine. i hope he will pardon me if i think otherwise. i believe i hung not the least back in this affair while there was life to be saved; but i own i thought myself extremely hazarded, and i own i think it would be a pity for a young man, with some idea of coming to the bar, to ingrain upon himself the character of a turbulent, factious fellow before he was yet twenty. as for james, it seems at this date of the proceedings, with the sentence as good as pronounced he has no hope but in the king's mercy. may not his majesty, then, be more pointedly addressed, the characters of these high officers sheltered from the public, and myself kept out of a position which i think spells ruin for me?" they all sat and gazed into their glasses, and i could see they found my attitude on the affair unpalatable. but miller was ready at all events. "if i may be allowed to put my young friend's notion in more formal shape," says he, "i understand him to propose that we should embody the fact of his sequestration, and perhaps some heads of the testimony he was prepared to offer, in a memorial to the crown. this plan has elements of success. it is as likely as any other (and perhaps likelier) to help our client. perhaps his majesty would have the goodness to feel a certain gratitude to all concerned in such a memorial, which might be construed into an expression of a very delicate loyalty; and i think, in the drafting of the same, this view might be brought forward." they all nodded to each other, not without sighs, for the former alternative was doubtless more after their inclination. "paper, then, mr. stewart, if you please," pursued miller; "and i think it might very fittingly be signed by the five of us here present, as procurators for the condemned man."' "it can do none of us any harm, at least," says colstoun, heaving another sigh, for he had seen himself lord advocate the last ten minutes. thereupon they set themselves, not very enthusiastically, to draft the memorial a process in the course of which they soon caught fire; and i had no more ado but to sit looking on and answer an occasional question. the paper was very well expressed; beginning with a recitation of the facts about myself, the reward offered for my apprehension, my surrender, the pressure brought to bear upon me; my sequestration; and my arrival at inverary in time to be too late; going on to explain the reasons of loyalty and public interest for which it was agreed to waive any right of action; and winding up with a forcible appeal to the king's mercy on behalf of james. methought i was a good deal sacrificed, and rather represented in the light of a firebrand of a fellow whom my cloud of lawyers had restrained with difficulty from extremes. but i let it pass, and made but the one suggestion, that i should be described as ready to deliver my own evidence and adduce that of others before any commission of inquiry and the one demand, that i should be immediately furnished with a copy. colstoun hummed and hawed. "this is a very confidential document," said he. "and my position towards prestongrange is highly peculiar," i replied. "no question but i must have touched his heart at our first interview, so that he has since stood my friend consistently. but for him, gentlemen, i must now be lying dead or awaiting my sentence alongside poor james. for which reason i choose to communicate to him the fact of this memorial as soon as it is copied. you are to consider also that this step will make for my protection. i have enemies here accustomed to drive hard; his grace is in his own country, lovat by his side; and if there should hang any ambiguity over our proceedings i think i might very well awake in gaol." not finding any very ready answer to these considerations, my company of advisers were at the last persuaded to consent, and made only this condition that i was to lay the paper before prestongrange with the express compliments of all concerned. the advocate was at the castle dining with his grace. by the hand of one of colstoun's servants i sent him a billet asking for an interview, and received a summons to meet him at once in a private house of the town. here i found him alone in a chamber; from his face there was nothing to be gleaned; yet i was not so unobservant but what i spied some halberts in the hall, and not so stupid but what i could gather he was prepared to arrest me there and then, should it appear advisable. "so, mr. david, this is you?" said he. "where i fear i am not overly welcome, my lord," said i. "and i would like before i go further to express my sense of your lordship's good offices, even should they now cease." "i have heard of your gratitude before," he replied drily, "and i think this can scarce be the matter you called me from my wine to listen to. i would remember also, if i were you, that you still stand on a very boggy foundation." "not now, my lord, i think," said i; "and if your lordship will but glance an eye along this, you will perhaps think as i do." he read it sedulously through, frowning heavily; then turned back to one part and another which he seemed to weigh and compare the effect of. his face a little lightened. "this is not so bad but what it might be worse," said he; "though i am still likely to pay dear for my acquaintance with mr. david balfour." "rather for your indulgence to that unlucky young man, my lord," said i. he still skimmed the paper, and all the while his spirits seemed to mend. "and to whom am i indebted for this?" he asked presently. "other counsels must have been discussed, i think. who was it proposed this private method? was it miller?" "my lord, it was myself," said i. "these gentlemen have shown me no such consideration, as that i should deny myself any credit i can fairly claim, or spare them any responsibility they should properly bear. and the mere truth is, that they were all in favour of a process which should have remarkable consequences in the parliament house, and prove for them (in one of their own expressions) a dripping roast. before i intervened, i think they were on the point of sharing out the different law appointments. our friend mr. simon was to be taken in upon some composition." prestongrange smiled. "these are our friends," said he. "and what were your reasons for dissenting, mr. david?" i told them without concealment, expressing, however, with more force and volume those which regarded prestongrange himself. "you do me no more than justice," said he. "i have fought as hard in your interest as you have fought against mine. and how came you here to-day?" he asked. "as the case drew out, i began to grow uneasy that i had clipped the period so fine, and i was even expecting you tomorrow. but to-day i never dreamed of it." i was not of course, going to betray andie. "i suspect there is some very weary cattle by the road," said i "if i had known you were such a mosstrooper you should have tasted longer of the bass," says he. "speaking of which, my lord, i return your letter." and i gave him the enclosure in the counterfeit hand. "there was the cover also with the seal," said he. "i have it not," said i. "it bore not even an address, and could not compromise a cat. the second enclosure i have, and with your permission, i desire to keep it." i thought he winced a little, but he said nothing to the point. "tomorrow," he resumed, "our business here is to be finished, and i proceed by glasgow. i would be very glad to have you of my party, mr david." "my lord . . ." i began. "i do not deny it will be of service to me," he interrupted. "i desire even that, when we shall come to edinburgh, you should alight at my house. you have very warm friends in the miss grants, who will be overjoyed to have you to themselves. if you think i have been of use to you, you can thus easily repay me, and so far from losing, may reap some advantage by the way. it is not every strange young man who is presented in society by the king's advocate." often enough already (in our brief relations) this gentleman had caused my head to spin; no doubt but what for a moment he did so again now. here was the old fiction still maintained of my particular favour with his daughters, one of whom had been so good as to laugh at me, while the other two had scarce deigned to remark the fact of my existence. and now i was to ride with my lord to glasgow; i was to dwell with him in edinburgh; i was to be brought into society under his protection! that he should have so much good-nature as to forgive me was surprising enough; that he could wish to take me up and serve me seemed impossible; and i began to seek some ulterior meaning. one was plain. if i became his guest, repentance was excluded; i could never think better of my present design and bring any action. and besides, would not my presence in his house draw out the whole pungency of the memorial? for that complaint could not be very seriously regarded, if the person chiefly injured was the guest of the official most incriminated. as i thought upon this i could not quite refrain from smiling. "this is in the nature of a countercheck to the memorial?" said i. "you are cunning, mr. david," said he, "and you do not wholly guess wrong the fact will be of use to me in my defence. perhaps, however, you underrate friendly sentiments, which are perfectly genuine. i have a respect for you, david, mingled with awe," says he, smiling. "i am more than willing, i am earnestly desirous to meet your wishes," said i. "it is my design to be called to the bar, where your lordship's countenance would be invaluable; and i am besides sincerely grateful to yourself and family for different marks of interest and of indulgence. the difficulty is here. there is one point in which we pull two ways. you are trying to hang james stewart, i am trying to save him. in so far as my riding with you would better your lordship's defence, i am at your lordships orders; but in so far as it would help to hang james stewart, you see me at a stick." i thought he swore to himself. "you should certainly be called; the bar is the true scene for your talents," says he, bitterly, and then fell a while silent. "i will tell you," he presently resumed, "there is no question of james stewart, for or against, james is a dead man; his life is given and taken bought (if you like it better) and sold; no memorial can help no defalcation of a faithful mr. david hurt him. blow high, blow low, there will be no pardon for james stewart: and take that for said! the question is now of myself: am i to stand or fall? and i do not deny to you that i am in some danger. but will mr. david balfour consider why? it is not because i pushed the case unduly against james; for that, i am sure of condonation. and it is not because i have sequestered mr. david on a rock, though it will pass under that colour; but because i did not take the ready and plain path, to which i was pressed repeatedly, and send mr. david to his grave or to the gallows. hence the scandal hence this damned memorial," striking the paper on his leg. "my tenderness for you has brought me in this difficulty. i wish to know if your tenderness to your own conscience is too great to let you help me out of it." no doubt but there was much of the truth in what he said; if james was past helping, whom was it more natural that i should turn to help than just the man before me, who had helped myself so often, and was even now setting me a pattern of patience? i was besides not only weary, but beginning to be ashamed, of my perpetual attitude of suspicion and refusal "if you will name the time and place, i will be punctually ready to attend your lordship," said i. he shook hands with me. "and i think my misses have some news for you," says he, dismissing me. i came away, vastly pleased to have my peace made, yet a little concerned in conscience; nor could i help wondering, as i went back, whether, perhaps, i had not been a scruple too good-natured. but there was the fact, that this was a man that might have been my father, an able man, a great dignitary, and one that, in the hour of my need, had reached a hand to my assistance. i was in the better humour to enjoy the remainder of that evening, which i passed with the advocates, in excellent company no doubt, but perhaps with rather more than a sufficiency of punch: for though i went early to bed i have no clear mind of how i got there. chapter xviii the tee'd ball on the morrow, from the justices' private room, where none could see me, i heard the verdict given in and judgment rendered upon james. the duke's words i am quite sure i have correctly; and since that famous passage has been made a subject of dispute, i may as well commemorate my version. having referred to the year '45, the chief of the campbells, sitting as justice-general upon the bench, thus addressed the unfortunate stewart before him: "if you had been successful in that rebellion, you might have been giving the law where you have now received the judgment of it; we, who are this day your judges, might have been tried before one of your mock courts of judicature; and then you might have been satiated with the blood of any name or clan to which you had an aversion." "this is to let the cat out of the bag, indeed," thought i. and that was the general impression. it was extraordinary how the young advocate lads took hold and made a mock of this speech, and how scarce a meal passed but what someone would get in the words: "and then you might have been satiated." many songs were made in time for the hour's diversion, and are near all forgot. i remember one began: "what do ye want the bluid of, bluid of? is it a name, or is it a clan, or is it an aefauld hielandman, that ye want the bluid of, bluid of?" another went to my old favourite air, the house of airlie, and began thus: "it fell on a day when argyle was on the bench, that they served him a stewart for his denner." and one of the verses ran: "then up and spak' the duke, and flyted on his cook, i regard it as a sensible aspersion, that i would sup ava', an' satiate my maw, with the bluid of ony clan of my aversion." james was as fairly murdered as though the duke had got a fowling-piece and stalked him. so much of course i knew: but others knew not so much, and were more affected by the items of scandal that came to light in the progress of the cause. one of the chief was certainly this sally of the justice's. it was run hard by another of a juryman, who had struck into the midst of coulston's speech for the defence with a "pray, sir, cut it short, we are quite weary," which seemed the very excess of impudence and simplicity. but some of my new lawyer friends were still more staggered with an innovation that had disgraced and even vitiated the proceedings. one witness was never called. his name, indeed, was printed, where it may still be seen on the fourth page of the list: "james drummond, alias macgregor, alias james more, late tenant in inveronachile"; and his precognition had been taken, as the manner is, in writing. he had remembered or invented (god help him) matter which was lead in james stewart's shoes, and i saw was like to prove wings to his own. this testimony it was highly desirable to bring to the notice of the jury, without exposing the man himself to the perils of cross-examination; and the way it was brought about was a matter of surprise to all. for the paper was handed round (like a curiosity) in court; passed through the jury-box, where it did its work; and disappeared again (as though by accident) before it reached the counsel for the prisoner. this was counted a most insidious device; and that the name of james more should be mingled up with it filled me with shame for catriona and concern for myself. the following day, prestongrange and i, with a considerable company, set out for glasgow, where (to my impatience) we continued to linger some time in a mixture of pleasure and affairs. i lodged with my lord, with whom i was encouraged to familiarity; had my place at entertainments; was presented to the chief guests; and altogether made more of than i thought accorded either with my parts or station; so that, on strangers being present, i would often blush for prestongrange. it must be owned the view i had taken of the world in these last months was fit to cast a gloom upon my character. i had met many men, some of them leaders in israel whether by their birth or talents; and who among them all had shown clean hands? as for the browns and millers, i had seen their self-seeking, i could never again respect them. prestongrange was the best yet; he had saved me, spared me rather, when others had it in their minds to murder me outright; but the blood of james lay at his door; and i thought his present dissimulation with myself a thing below pardon. that he should affect to find pleasure in my discourse almost surprised me out of my patience. i would sit and watch him with a kind of a slow fire of anger in my bowels. "ah, friend, friend," i would think to myself, "if you were but through with this affair of the memorial, would you not kick me in the streets?" here i did him, as events have proved, the most grave injustice; and i think he was at once far more sincere, and a far more artful performer, than i supposed. but i had some warrant for my incredulity in the behaviour of that court of young advocates that hung about in the hope of patronage. the sudden favour of a lad not previously heard of troubled them at first out of measure; but two days were not gone by before i found myself surrounded with flattery and attention. i was the same young man, and neither better nor bonnier, that they had rejected a month before; and now there was no civility too fine for me! the same, do i say? it was not so; and the by-name by which i went behind my back confirmed it. seeing me so firm with the advocate, and persuaded that i was to fly high and far, they had taken a word from the golfing green, and called me the tee'd ball. i was told i was now "one of themselves"; i was to taste of their soft lining, who had already made my own experience of the roughness of the outer husk; and one, to whom i had been presented in hope park, was so aspired as even to remind me of that meeting. i told him i had not the pleasure of remembering it. "why" says he, "it was miss grant herself presented me! my name is soand-so." "it may very well be, sir," said i; "but i have kept no mind of it." at which he desisted; and in the midst of the disgust that commonly overflowed my spirits i had a glisk of pleasure. but i have not patience to dwell upon that time at length. when i was in company with these young politics i was borne down with shame for myself and my own plain ways, and scorn for them and their duplicity. of the two evils, i thought prestongrange to be the least; and while i was always as stiff as buckram to the young bloods, i made rather a dissimulation of my hard feelings towards the advocate, and was (in old mr. campbell's word) "soople to the laird." himself commented on the difference, and bid me be more of my age, and make friends with my young comrades. i told him i was slow of making friends. "i will take the word back," said he. "but there is such a thing as fair gude s'en and fair gude day, mr. david. these are the same young men with whom you are to pass your days and get through life: your backwardness has a look of arrogance; and unless you can assume a little more lightness of manner, i fear you will meet difficulties in the path." "it will be an ill job to make a silk purse of a sow's ear," said i. on the morning of october 1st i was awakened by the clattering in of an express; and getting to my window almost before he had dismounted, i saw the messenger had ridden hard. somewhile after i was called to prestongrange, where he was sitting in his bedgown and nightcap, with his letters round him. "mr. david," add he, "i have a piece of news for you. it concerns some friends of yours, of whom i sometimes think you are a little ashamed, for you have never referred to their existence." i suppose i blushed. "see you understand, since you make the answering signal," said he. "and i must compliment you on your excellent taste in beauty. but do you know, mr. david? this seems to me a very enterprising lass. she crops up from every side. the government of scotland appears unable to proceed for mistress katrine drummond, which was somewhat the case (no great while back) with a certain mr. david balfour. should not these make a good match? her first intromission in politics but i must not tell you that story, the authorities have decided you are to hear it otherwise and from a livelier narrator. this new example is more serious, however; and i am afraid i must alarm you with the intelligence that she is now in prison." i cried out. "yes," said he, "the little lady is in prison. but i would not have you to despair. unless you (with your friends and memorials) shall procure my downfall, she is to suffer nothing." "but what has she done? what is her offence?" i cried. "it might be almost construed a high treason," he returned, "for she has broke the king's castle of edinburgh." "the lady is much my friend," i said. "i know you would not mock me if the thing were serious." "and yet it is serious in a sense," said he; "for this rogue of a katrine or cateran, as we may call her has set adrift again upon the world that very doubtful character, her papa." here was one of my previsions justified: james more was once again at liberty. he had lent his men to keep me a prisoner; he had volunteered his testimony in the appin case, and the same (no matter by what subterfuge) had been employed to influence the jury. now came his reward, and he was free. it might please the authorities to give to it the colour of an escape; but i knew better i knew it must be the fulfilment of a bargain. the same course of thought relieved me of the least alarm for catriona. she might be thought to have broke prison for her father; she might have believed so herself. but the chief hand in the whole business was that of prestongrange; and i was sure, so far from letting her come to punishment, he would not suffer her to be even tried. whereupon thus came out of me the not very politic ejaculation: "ah! i was expecting that!" "you have at times a great deal of discretion, too!" says prestongrange. "and what is my lord pleased to mean by that?" i asked. "i was just marvelling", he replied, "that being so clever as to draw these inferences, you should not be clever enough to keep them to yourself. but i think you would like to hear the details of the affair. i have received two versions: and the least official is the more full and far the more entertaining, being from the lively pen of my eldest daughter. 'here is all the town bizzing with a fine piece of work,' she writes, 'and what would make the thing more noted (if it were only known) the malefactor is a protegee of his lordship my papa. i am sure your heart is too much in your duty (if it were nothing else) to have forgotten grey eyes. what does she do, but get a broad hat with the flaps open, a long hairy-like man's greatcoat, and a big gravatt; kilt her coats up to gude kens whaur, clap two pair of boothose upon her legs, take a pair of clouted brogues in her hand, and off to the castle! here she gives herself out to be a soutar in the employ of james more, and gets admitted to his cell, the lieutenant (who seems to have been full of pleasantry) making sport among his soldiers of the soutar's greatcoat. presently they hear disputation and the sound of blows inside. out flies the cobbler, his coat flying, the flaps of his hat beat about his face, and the lieutenant and his soldiers mock at him as he runs off. they laughed no so hearty the next time they had occasion to visit the cell and found nobody but a tall, pretty, greyeyed lass in the female habit! as for the cobbler, he was 'over the hills ayout dumblane,' and it's thought that poor scotland will have to console herself without him. i drank catriona's health this night in public. indeed, the whole town admires her; and i think the beaux would wear bits of her garters in their button-holes if they could only get them. i would have gone to visit her in prison too, only i remembered in time i was papa's daughter; so i wrote her a billet instead, which i entrusted to the faithful doig, and i hope you will admit i can be political when i please. the same faithful gomeral is to despatch this letter by the express along with those of the wiseacres, so that you may hear tom fool in company with solomon. talking of gomerals, do tell dauvit balfour. i would i could see the face of him at the thought of a long-legged lass in such a predicament; to say nothing of the levities of your affectionate daughter, and his respectful friend.' so my rascal signs herself!" continued prestongrange. "and you see, mr. david, it is quite true what i tell you, that my daughters regard you with the most affectionate playfulness." "the gomeral is much obliged," said i. "and was not this prettily done!" he went on. "is not this highland maid a piece of a heroine?" "i was always sure she had a great heart," said i. "and i wager she guessed nothing . . . but i beg your pardon, this is to tread upon forbidden subjects." "i will go bail she did not," he returned, quite openly. "i will go bail she thought she was flying straight into king george's face." remembrance of catriona and the thought of her lying in captivity, moved me strangely. i could see that even prestongrange admired, and could not withhold his lips from smiling when he considered her behaviour. as for miss grant, for all her ill habit of mockery, her admiration shone out plain. a kind of a heat came on me. "i am not your lordship's daughter. . . " i began. "that i know of!" he put in, smiling. "i speak like a fool," said i; "or rather i began wrong. it would doubtless be unwise in mistress grant to go to her in prison; but for me, i think i would look like a half-hearted friend if i did not fly there instantly." "so-ho, mr. david," says he; "i thought that you and i were in a bargain?" "my lord," i said, "when i made that bargain i was a good deal affected by your goodness, but i'll never can deny that i was moved besides by my own interest. there was self-seeking in my heart, and i think shame of it now. it may be for your lordship's safety to say this fashious davie balfour is your friend and housemate. say it then; i'll never contradict you. but as for your patronage, i give it all back. i ask but the one thing let me go, and give me a pass to see her in her prison." he looked at me with a hard eye. "you put the cart before the horse, i think," says he. "that which i had given was a portion of my liking, which your thankless nature does not seem to have remarked. but for my patronage, it is not given, nor (to be exact) is it yet offered." he paused a bit. "and i warn you, you do not know yourself," he added. "youth is a hasty season; you will think better of all this before a year." "well, and i would like to be that kind of youth!" i cried. "i have seen too much of the other party in these young advocates that fawn upon your lordship and are even at the pains to fawn on me. and i have seen it in the old ones also. they are all for by-ends, the whole clan of them! it's this that makes me seem to misdoubt your lordship's liking. why would i think that you would like me? but ye told me yourself ye had an interest!" i stopped at this, confounded that i had run so far; he was observing me with an unfathomable face. "my lord, i ask your pardon," i resumed. "i have nothing in my chafts but a rough country tongue. i think it would be only decent-like if i would go to see my friend in her captivity; but i'm owing you my life i'll never forget that; and if it's for your lordship's good, here i'll stay. that's barely gratitude." "this might have been reached in fewer words," says prestongrange grimly. "it is easy, and it is at times gracious, to say a plain scots 'ay'." "ah, but, my lord, i think ye take me not yet entirely!" cried i. "for your sake, for my life-safe, and the kindness that ye say ye bear to me for these, i'll consent; but not for any good that might be coming to myself. if i stand aside when this young maid is in her trial, it's a thing i will be noways advantaged by; i will lose by it, i will never gain. i would rather make a shipwreck wholly than to build on that foundation." he was a minute serious, then smiled. "you mind me of the man with the long nose," said he; "was you to see the moon by a telescope you would see david balfour there! but you shall have your way of it. i will ask at you one service, and then set you free: my clerks are overdriven; be so good as copy me these few pages, and when that is done, i shall bid you god speed! i would never charge myself with mr. david's conscience; and if you could cast some part of it (as you went by) in a moss hag, you would find yourself to ride much easier without it." "perhaps not just entirely in the same direction though, my lord!" says i. "and you shall have the last word, too!" cries he gaily. indeed, he had some cause for gaiety, having now found the means to gain his purpose. to lessen the weight of the memorial, or to have a readier answer at his hand, he desired i should appear publicly in the character of his intimate. but if i were to appear with the same publicity as a visitor to catriona in her prison the world would scarce stint to draw conclusions, and the true nature of james more's escape must become evident to all. this was the little problem i had to set him of a sudden, and to which he had so briskly found an answer. i was to be tethered in glasgow by that job of copying, which in mere outward decency i could not well refuse; and during these hours of employment catriona was privately got rid of. i think shame to write of this man that loaded me with so many goodnesses. he was kind to me as any father, yet i ever thought him as false as a cracked bell. chapter xix i am much in the hands of the ladies the copying was a weary business, the more so as i perceived very early there was no sort of urgency in the matters treated, and began very early to consider my employment a pretext. i had no sooner finished than i got to horse, used what remained of daylight to the best purpose, and being at last fairly benighted, slept in a house by almond-water side. i was in the saddle again before the day, and the edinburgh booths were just opening when i clattered in by the west bow and drew up a smoking horse at my lord advocate's door. i had a written word for doig, my lord's private hand that was thought to be in all his secrets a worthy little plain man, all fat and snuff and self-sufficiency. him i found already at his desk and already bedabbled with maccabaw, in the same anteroom where i rencountered with james more. he read the note scrupulously through like a chapter in his bible. "h'm," says he; "ye come a wee thing ahint-hand, mr. balfour. the bird's flaen we hae letten her out." "miss drummond is set free?" i cried. "achy!" said he. "what would we keep her for, ye ken? to hae made a steer about the bairn would has pleased naebody." "and where'll she be now?" says i. "gude kens!" says doig, with a shrug. "she'll have gone home to lady allardyce, i'm thinking," said i. "that'll be it," said he. "then i'll gang there straight," says i. "but ye'll be for a bite or ye go?" said he. "neither bite nor sup," said i. "i had a good wauch of milk in by ratho." "aweel, aweel," says doig. "but ye'll can leave your horse here and your bags, for it seems we're to have your up-put." "na, na", said i. "tamson's mear would never be the thing for me this day of all days." doig speaking somewhat broad, i had been led by imitation into an accent much more countrified than i was usually careful to affect a good deal broader, indeed, than i have written it down; and i was the more ashamed when another voice joined in behind me with a scrap of a ballad: "gae saddle me the bonny black, gae saddle sune and mak' him ready for i will down the gatehope-slack, and a' to see my bonny leddy." the young lady, when i turned to her, stood in a morning gown, and her hands muffled in the same, as if to hold me at a distance. yet i could not but think there was kindness in the eye with which she saw me. "my best respects to you, mistress grant," said i, bowing. "the like to yourself, mr. david," she replied with a deep courtesy. "and i beg to remind you of an old musty saw, that meat and mass never hindered man. the mass i cannot afford you, for we are all good protestants. but the meat i press on your attention. and i would not wonder but i could find something for your private ear that would be worth the stopping for." "mistress grant," said i, "i believe i am already your debtor for some merry words and i think they were kind too on a piece of unsigned paper." "unsigned paper?" says she, and made a droll face, which was likewise wondrous beautiful, as of one trying to remember. "or else i am the more deceived," i went on. "but to be sure, we shall have the time to speak of these, since your father is so good as to make me for a while your inmate; and the gomeral begs you at this time only for the favour of his liberty," "you give yourself hard names," said she. "mr. doig and i would be blythe to take harder at your clever pen," says i. "once more i have to admire the discretion of all men-folk," she replied. "but if you will not eat, off with you at once; you will be back the sooner, for you go on a fool's errand. off with you, mr. david," she continued, opening the door. "he has lowpen on his bonny grey, he rade the richt gate and the ready i trow he would neither stint nor stay, for he was seeking his bonny leddy." i did not wait to be twice bidden, and did justice to miss grant's citation on the way to dean. old lady allardyce walked there alone in the garden, in her hat and mutch, and having a silver-mounted staff of some black wood to lean upon. as i alighted from my horse, and drew near to her with congees, i could see the blood come in her face, and her head fling into the air like what i had conceived of empresses. "what brings you to my poor door?" she cried, speaking high through her nose. "i cannot bar it. the males of my house are dead and buried; i have neither son nor husband to stand in the gate for me; any beggar can pluck me by the baird and a baird there is, and that's the worst of it yet?" she added partly to herself. i was extremely put out at this reception, and the last remark, which seemed like a daft wife's, left me near hand speechless. "i see i have fallen under your displeasure, ma'am," said i. "yet i will still be so bold as ask after mistress drummond." she considered me with a burning eye, her lips pressed close together into twenty creases, her hand shaking on her staff. "this cows all!" she cried. "ye come to me to speir for her? would god i knew!" "she is not here?" i cried. she threw up her chin and made a step and a cry at me, so that i fell back incontinent. "out upon your leeing throat!" she cried. "what! ye come and speir at me! she's in jyle, whaur ye took her to that's all there is to it. and of a' the beings ever i beheld in breeks, to think it should be to you! ye timmer scoun'rel, if i had a male left to my name i would have your jaicket dustit till ye raired." i thought it not good to delay longer in that place, because i remarked her passion to be rising. as i turned to the horse-post she even followed me; and i make no shame to confess that i rode away with the one stirrup on and scrambling for the other. as i knew no other quarter where i could push my inquiries, there was nothing left me but to return to the advocate's. i was well received by the four ladies, who were now in company together, and must give the news of prestongrange and what word went in the west country, at the most inordinate length and with great weariness to myself; while all the time that young lady, with whom i so much desired to be alone again, observed me quizzically and seemed to find pleasure in the sight of my impatience. at last, after i had endured a meal with them, and was come very near the point of appealing for an interview before her aunt, she went and stood by the music-case, and picking out a tune, sang to it on a high key "he that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay." but this was the end of her rigours, and presently, after making some excuse of which i have no mind, she carried me away in private to her father's library. i should not fail to say she was dressed to the nines, and appeared extraordinary handsome. "now, mr. david, sit ye down here and let us have a two-handed crack," said she. "for i have much to tell you, and it appears besides that i have been grossly unjust to your good taste." "in what manner, mistress grant?" i asked. "i trust i have never seemed to fail in due respect." "i will be your surety, mr, david," said she. "your respect, whether to yourself or your poor neighbours, has been always and most fortunately beyond imitation. but that is by the question. you got a note from me?" she asked. "i was so bold as to suppose so upon inference," said i, "and it was kindly thought upon." "it must have prodigiously surprised you," said she. "but let us begin with the beginning. you have not perhaps forgot a day when you were so kind as to escort three very tedious misses to hope park? i have the less cause to forget it myself, because you was so particular obliging as to introduce me to some of the principles of the latin grammar, a thing which wrote itself profoundly on my gratitude." "i fear i was sadly pedantical," said i, overcome with confusion at the memory. "you are only to consider i am quite unused with the society of ladies." "i will say the less about the grammar then," she replied. "but how came you to desert your charge? 'he has thrown her out, overboard, his ain dear annie!'" she hummed; "and his ain dear annie and her two sisters had to taigle home by theirselves like a string of green geese! it seems you returned to my papa's, where you showed yourself excessively martial, and then on to realms unknown, with an eye (it appears) to the bass rock; solan geese being perhaps more to your mind than bonny lasses." through all this raillery there was something indulgent in the lady's eye which made me suppose there might be better coming. "you take a pleasure to torment me," said i, "and i make a very feckless plaything; but let me ask you to be more merciful. at this time there is but the one thing that i care to hear of, and that will be news of catriona." "do you call her by that name to her face, mr. balfour?" she asked. "in troth, and i am not very sure," i stammered. "i would not do so in any case to strangers," said miss grant. "and why are you so much immersed in the affairs of this young lady?" "i heard she was in prison," said i. "well, and now you hear that she is out of it," she replied, "and what more would you have? she has no need of any further champion." "i may have the greater need of her, ma'am," said i. "come, this is better!" says miss grant. "but look me fairly in the face; am i not bonnier than she?" "i would be the last to be denying it," said i. "there is not your marrow in all scotland." "well, here you have the pick of the two at your hand, and must needs speak of the other," said she. "this is never the way to please the ladies, mr. balfour." "but, mistress," said i, "there are surely other things besides mere beauty." "by which i am to understand that i am no better than i should be, perhaps?" she asked. "by which you will please understand that i am like the cock in the midden in the fable book," said i. "i see the braw jewel and i like fine to see it too but i have more need of the pickle corn." "bravissimo!" she cried. "there is a word well said at last, and i will reward you for it with my story. that same night of your desertion i came late from a friend's house where i was excessively admired, whatever you may think of it and what should i hear but that a lass in a tartan screen desired to speak with me? she had been there an hour or better, said the servant-lass, and she grat in to herself as she sat waiting. i went to her direct; she rose as i came in, and i knew her at a look. 'grey eyes!' says i to myself, but was more wise than to let on. you will be miss grant at last? she says, rising and looking at me hard and pitiful. ay, it was true he said, you are bonny at all events. the way god made me, my dear, i said, but i would be gey and obliged if you could tell me what brought you here at such a time of the night. lady, she said, we are kinsfolk, we are both come of the blood of the sons of alpin. my dear, i replied, i think no more of alpin or his sons than what i do of a kalestock. you have a better argument in these tears upon your bonny face. and at that i was so weak-minded as to kiss her, which is what you would like to do dearly, and i wager will never find the courage of. i say it was weakminded of me, for i knew no more of her than the outside; but it was the wisest stroke i could have hit upon. she is a very staunch, brave nature, but i think she has been little used with tenderness; and at that caress (though to say the truth, it was but lightly given) her heart went out to me. i will never betray the secrets of my sex, mr. davie; i will never tell you the way she turned me round her thumb, because it is the same she will use to twist yourself. ay, it is a fine lass! she is as clean as hill well water." "she is e'en't!" i cried. "well, then, she told me her concerns," pursued miss grant, "and in what a swither she was in about her papa, and what a taking about yourself, with very little cause, and in what a perplexity she had found herself after you was gone away. and then i minded at long last, says she, that we were kinswomen, and that mr. david should have given you the name of the bonniest of the bonny, and i was thinking to myself 'if she is so bonny she will be good at all events'; and i took up my foot soles out of that. that was when i forgave yourself, mr. davie. when you was in my society, you seemed upon hot iron: by all marks, if ever i saw a young man that wanted to be gone, it was yourself, and i and my two sisters were the ladies you were so desirous to be gone from; and now it appeared you had given me some notice in the by-going, and was so kind as to comment on my attractions! from that hour you may date our friendship, and i began to think with tenderness upon the latin grammar." "you will have many hours to rally me in," said i; "and i think besides you do yourself injustice. i think it was catriona turned your heart in my direction. she is too simple to perceive as you do the stiffness of her friend." "i would not like to wager upon that, mr. david," said she. "the lasses have clear eyes. but at least she is your friend entirely, as i was to see. i carried her in to his lordship my papa; and his advocacy being in a favourable stage of claret, was so good as to receive the pair of us. here is grey eyes that you have been deaved with these days past, said i, she is come to prove that we spoke true, and i lay the prettiest lass in the three lothians at your feet making a papistical reservation of myself. she suited her action to my words: down she went upon her knees to him i would not like to swear but he saw two of her, which doubtless made her appeal the more irresistible, for you are all a pack of mahomedans told him what had passed that night, and how she had withheld her father's man from following of you, and what a case she was in about her father, and what a flutter for yourself; and begged with weeping for the lives of both of you (neither of which was in the slightest danger), till i vow i was proud of my sex because it was done so pretty, and ashamed for it because of the smallness of the occasion. she had not gone far, i assure you, before the advocate was wholly sober, to see his inmost politics ravelled out by a young lass and discovered to the most unruly of his daughters. but we took him in hand, the pair of us, and brought that matter straight. properly managed and that means managed by me there is no one to compare with my papa." "he has been a good man to me," said i. "well, he was a good man to katrine, and i was there to see to it," said she. "and she pled for me?" say i. "she did that, and very movingly," said miss grant. "i would not like to tell you what she said i find you vain enough already." "god reward her for it!" cried i. "with mr. david balfour, i suppose?" says she. "you do me too much injustice at the last!" i cried. "i would tremble to think of her in such hard hands. do you think i would presume, because she begged my life? she would do that for a new whelped puppy! i have had more than that to set me up, if you but ken'd. she kissed that hand of mine. ay, but she did. and why? because she thought i was playing a brave part and might be going to my death. it was not for my sake but i need not be telling that to you, that cannot look at me without laughter. it was for the love of what she thought was bravery. i believe there is none but me and poor prince charlie had that honour done them. was this not to make a god of me? and do you not think my heart would quake when i remember it?" "i do laugh at you a good deal, and a good deal more than is quite civil," said she; "but i will tell you one thing: if you speak to her like that, you have some glimmerings of a chance." "me?" i cried, "i would never dare. i can speak to you, miss grant, because it's a matter of indifference what ye think of me. but her? no fear!" said i. "i think you have the largest feet in all broad scotland," says she. "troth they are no very small," said i, looking down. "ah, poor catriona!" cries miss grant. and i could but stare upon her; for though i now see very well what she was driving at (and perhaps some justification for the same), i was never swift at the uptake in such flimsy talk. "ah well, mr. david," she said, "it goes sore against my conscience, but i see i shall have to be your speaking board. she shall know you came to her straight upon the news of her imprisonment; she shall know you would not pause to eat; and of our conversation she shall hear just so much as i think convenient for a maid of her age and inexperience. believe me, you will be in that way much better served than you could serve yourself, for i will keep the big feet out of the platter." "you know where she is, then?" i exclaimed. "that i do, mr. david, and will never tell," said she. "why that?" i asked. "well," she said, "i am a good friend, as you will soon discover; and the chief of those that i am friend to is my papa. i assure you, you will never heat nor melt me out of that, so you may spare me your sheep's eyes; and adieu to your david-balfourship for the now." "but there is yet one thing more," i cried. "there is one thing that must be stopped, being mere ruin to herself, and to me too." "well," she said, "be brief; i have spent half the day on you already." "my lady allardyce believes," i began "she supposes she thinks that i abducted her." the colour came into miss grant's face, so that at first i was quite abashed to find her ear so delicate, till i bethought me she was struggling rather with mirth, a notion in which i was altogether confirmed by the shaking of her voice as she replied "i will take up the defence of your reputation," she said. "you may leave it in my hands." and with that she withdrew out of the library. chapter xx i continue to move in good society for about exactly two months i remained a guest in prestongrange's family, where i bettered my acquaintance with the bench, the bar, and the flower of edinburgh company. you are not to suppose my education was neglected; on the contrary, i was kept extremely busy. i studied the french, so as to be more prepared to go to leyden; i set myself to the fencing, and wrought hard, sometimes three hours in the day, with notable advancement; at the suggestion of my cousin, pilrig, who was an apt musician, i was put to a singing class; and by the orders of my miss grant, to one for the dancing, at which i must say i proved far from ornamental. however, all were good enough to say it gave me an address a little more genteel; and there is no question but i learned to manage my coat skirts and sword with more dexterity, and to stand in a room as though the same belonged to me. my clothes themselves were all earnestly re-ordered; and the most trifling circumstance, such as where i should tie my hair, or the colour of my ribbon, debated among the three misses like a thing of weight. one way with another, no doubt i was a good deal improved to look at, and acquired a bit of modest air that would have surprised the good folks at essendean. the two younger misses were very willing to discuss a point of my habiliment, because that was in the line of their chief thoughts. i cannot say that they appeared any other way conscious of my presence; and though always more than civil, with a kind of heartless cordiality, could not hide how much i wearied them. as for the aunt, she was a wonderful still woman; and i think she gave me much the same attention as she gave the rest of the family, which was little enough. the eldest daughter and the advocate himself were thus my principal friends, and our familiarity was much increased by a pleasure that we took in common. before the court met we spent a day or two at the house of grange, living very nobly with an open table, and here it was that we three began to ride out together in the fields, a practice afterwards maintained in edinburgh, so far as the advocate's continual affairs permitted. when we were put in a good frame by the briskness of the exercise, the difficulties of the way, or the accidents of bad weather, my shyness wore entirely off; we forgot that we were strangers, and speech not being required, it flowed the more naturally on. then it was that they had my story from me, bit by bit, from the time that i left essendean, with my voyage and battle in the covenant, wanderings in the heather, etc.; and from the interest they found in my adventures sprung the circumstance of a jaunt we made a little later on, on a day when the courts were not sitting, and of which i will tell a trifle more at length. we took horse early, and passed first by the house of shaws, where it stood smokeless in a great field of white frost, for it was yet early in the day. here prestongrange alighted down, gave me his horse, an proceeded alone to visit my uncle. my heart, i remember, swelled up bitter within me at the sight of that bare house and the thought of the old miser sitting chittering within in the cold kitchen! "there is my home," said i; "and my family." "poor david balfour!" said miss grant. what passed during the visit i have never heard; but it would doubtless not be very agreeable to ebenezer, for when the advocate came forth again his face was dark. "i think you will soon be the laird indeed, mr. davie," says he, turning half about with the one foot in the stirrup. "i will never pretend sorrow," said i; and, to say the truth, during his absence miss grant and i had been embellishing the place in fancy with plantations, parterres, and a terrace much as i have since carried out in fact. thence we pushed to the queensferry, where rankeillor gave us a good welcome, being indeed out of the body to receive so great a visitor. here the advocate was so unaffectedly good as to go quite fully over my affairs, sitting perhaps two hours with the writer in his study, and expressing (i was told) a great esteem for myself and concern for my fortunes. to while this time, miss grant and i and young rankeillor took boat and passed the hope to limekilns. rankeillor made himself very ridiculous (and, i thought, offensive) with his admiration for the young lady, and to my wonder (only it is so common a weakness of her sex) she seemed, if anything, to be a little gratified. one use it had: for when we were come to the other side, she laid her commands on him to mind the boat, while she and i passed a little further to the alehouse. this was her own thought, for she had been taken with my account of alison hastie, and desired to see the lass herself. we found her once more alone indeed, i believe her father wrought all day in the fields and she curtsied dutifully to the gentry-folk and the beautiful young lady in the riding-coat. "is this all the welcome i am to get?" said i, holding out my hand. "and have you no more memory of old friends?" "keep me! wha's this of it?" she cried, and then, "god's truth, it's the tautit laddie!" "the very same," says "mony's the time i've thocht upon you and your freen, and blythe am i to see in your braws," she cried. "though i kent ye were come to your ain folk by the grand present that ye sent me and that i thank ye for with a' my heart." "there," said miss grant to me, "run out by with ye, like a guid bairn. i didnae come here to stand and haud a candle; it's her and me that are to crack." i suppose she stayed ten minutes in the house, but when she came forth i observed two things that her eyes were reddened, and a silver brooch was gone out of her bosom. this very much affected me. "i never saw you so well adorned," said i. "o davie man, dinna be a pompous gowk!" said she, and was more than usually sharp to me the remainder of the day. about candlelight we came home from this excursion. for a good while i heard nothing further of catriona my miss grant remaining quite impenetrable, and stopping my mouth with pleasantries. at last, one day that she returned from walking and found me alone in the parlour over my french, i thought there was something unusual in her looks; the colour heightened, the eyes sparkling high, and a bit of a smile continually bitten in as she regarded me. she seemed indeed like the very spirit of mischief, and, walking briskly in the room, had soon involved me in a kind of quarrel over nothing and (at the least) with nothing intended on my side. i was like christian in the slough the more i tried to clamber out upon the side, the deeper i became involved; until at last i heard her declare, with a great deal of passion, that she would take that answer from the hands of none, and i must down upon my knees for pardon. the causelessness of all this fuff stirred my own bile. "i have said nothing you can properly object to," said i, "and as for my knees, that is an attitude i keep for god." "and as a goddess i am to be served!" she cried, shaking her brown locks at me and with a bright colour. "every man that comes within waft of my petticoats shall use me so!" "i will go so far as ask your pardon for the fashion's sake, although i vow i know not why," i replied. "but for these play-acting postures, you can go to others." "o davie!" she said. "not if i was to beg you?" i bethought me i was fighting with a woman, which is the same as to say a child, and that upon a point entirely formal. "i think it a bairnly thing," i said, "not worthy in you to ask, or me to render. yet i will not refuse you, neither," said i; "and the stain, if there be any, rests with yourself." and at that i kneeled fairly down. "there!" she cried. "there is the proper station, there is where i have been manoeuvring to bring you." and then, suddenly, "kep," said she, flung me a folded billet, and ran from the apartment laughing. the billet had neither place nor date. "dear mr. david," it began, "i get your news continually by my cousin, miss grant, and it is a pleisand hearing. i am very well, in a good place, among good folk, but necessitated to be quite private, though i am hoping that at long last we may meet again. all your friendships have been told me by my loving cousin, who loves us both. she bids me to send you this writing, and oversees the same. i will be asking you to do all her commands, and rest your affectionate friend, catriona macgregordrummond. p.s. will you not see my cousin, allardyce?" i think it not the least brave of my campaigns (as the soldiers say) that i should have done as i was here bidden and gone forthright to the house by dean. but the old lady was now entirely changed and supple as a glove. by what means miss grant had brought this round i could never guess; i am sure, at least, she dared not to appear openly in the affair, for her papa was compromised in it pretty deep. it was he, indeed, who had persuaded catriona to leave, or rather, not to return, to her cousin's, placing her instead with a family of gregorys decent people, quite at the advocate's disposition, and in whom she might have the more confidence because they were of his own clan and family. these kept her private till all was ripe, heated and helped her to attempt her father's rescue, and after she was discharged from prison received her again into the same secrecy. thus prestongrange obtained and used his instrument; nor did there leak out the smallest word of his acquaintance with the daughter of james more. there was some whispering, of course, upon the escape of that discredited person; but the government replied by a show of rigour, one of the cell porters was flogged, the lieutenant of the guard (my poor friend, duncansby) was broken of his rank, and as for catriona, all men were well enough pleased that her fault should be passed by in silence. i could never induce miss grant to carry back an answer. "no," she would say, when i persisted, "i am going to keep the big feet out of the platter." this was the more hard to bear, as i was aware she saw my little friend many times in the week, and carried her my news whenever (as she said) i "had behaved myself." at last she treated me to what she called an indulgence, and i thought rather more of a banter. she was certainly a strong, almost a violent, friend to all she liked, chief among whom was a certain frail old gentlewoman, very blind and very witty, who dwelt on the top of a tall land on a strait close, with a nest of linnets in a cage, and thronged all day with visitors. miss grant was very fond to carry me there and put me to entertain her friend with the narrative of my misfortunes: and miss tibbie ramsay (that was her name) was particular kind, and told me a great deal that was worth knowledge of old folks and past affairs in scotland. i should say that from her chamber window, and not three feet away, such is the straitness of that close, it was possible to look into a barred loophole lighting the stairway of the opposite house. here, upon some pretext, miss grant left me one day alone with miss ramsay. i mind i thought that lady inattentive and like one preoccupied. i was besides very uncomfortable, for the window, contrary to custom, was left open and the day was cold. all at once the voice of miss grant sounded in my ears as from a distance. "here, shaws!" she cried, "keek out of the window and see what i have broughten you." i think it was the prettiest sight that ever i beheld. the well of the close was all in clear shadow where a man could see distinctly, the walls very black and dingy; and there from the barred loophole i saw two faces smiling across at me miss grant's and catriona's. "there!" says miss grant, "i wanted her to see you in your braws like the lass of limekilns. i wanted her to see what i could make of you, when i buckled to the job in earnest!" it came in my mind that she had been more than common particular that day upon my dress; and i think that some of the same care had been bestowed upon catriona. for so merry and sensible a lady, miss grant was certainly wonderful taken up with duds. "catriona!" was all i could get out. as for her, she said nothing in the world, but only waved her hand and smiled to me, and was suddenly carried away again from before the loophole. that vision was no sooner lost than i ran to the house door, where i found i was locked in; thence back to miss ramsay, crying for the key, but might as well have cried upon the castle rock. she had passed her word, she said, and i must be a good lad. it was impossible to burst the door, even if it had been mannerly; it was impossible i should leap from the window, being seven storeys above ground. all i could do was to crane over the close and watch for their reappearance from the stair. it was little to see, being no more than the tops of their two heads each on a ridiculous bobbin of skirts, like to a pair of pincushions. nor did catriona so much as look up for a farewell; being prevented (as i heard afterwards) by miss grant, who told her folk were never seen to less advantage than from above downward. on the way home, as soon as i was set free, i upbraided miss grant with her cruelty. "i am sorry you was disappointed," says she demurely. "for my part i was very pleased. you looked better than i dreaded; you looked if it will not make you vain a mighty pretty young man when you appeared in the window. you are to remember that she could not see your feet," says she, with the manner of one reassuring me. "o!" cried i, "leave my feet be they are no bigger than my neighbours'." "they are even smaller than some," said she, "but i speak in parables like a hebrew prophet." "i marvel little they were sometimes stoned!" says i. "but, you miserable girl, how could you do it? why should you care to tantalise me with a moment?" "love is like folk," says she; "it needs some kind of vivers." "oh, barbara, let me see her properly!" i pleaded. "you can you see her when you please; let me have half an hour." "who is it that is managing this love affair! you! or me?" she asked, and as i continued to press her with my instances, fell back upon a deadly expedient: that of imitating the tones of my voice when i called on catriona by name; with which, indeed, she held me in subjection for some days to follow. there was never the least word heard of the memorial, or none by me. prestongrange and his grace the lord president may have heard of it (for what i know) on the deafest sides of their heads; they kept it to themselves, at least the public was none the wiser; and in course of time, on november 8th, and in the midst of a prodigious storm of wind and rain, poor james of the glens was duly hanged at lettermore by ballachulish. so there was the final upshot of my politics! innocent men have perished before james, and are like to keep on perishing (in spite of all our wisdom) till the end of time. and till the end of time young folk (who are not yet used with the duplicity of life and men) will struggle as i did, and make heroical resolves, and take long risks; and the course of events will push them upon the one side and go on like a marching army. james was hanged; and here was i dwelling in the house of prestongrange, and grateful to him for his fatherly attention. he was hanged; and behold! when i met mr. simon in the causeway, i was fain to pull off my beaver to him like a good little boy before his dominie. he had been hanged by fraud and violence, and the world wagged along, and there was not a pennyweight of difference; and the villains of that horrid plot were decent, kind, respectable fathers of families, who went to kirk and took the sacrament! but i had had my view of that detestable business they call politics i had seen it from behind, when it is all bones and blackness; and i was cured for life of any temptations to take part in it again. a plain, quiet, private path was that which i was ambitious to walk in, when i might keep my head out of the way of dangers and my conscience out of the road of temptation. for, upon a retrospect, it appeared i had not done so grandly, after all; but with the greatest possible amount of big speech and preparation, had accomplished nothing. the 25th of the same month a ship was advertised to sail from leith; and i was suddenly recommended to make up my mails for leyden. to prestongrange i could, of course, say nothing; for i had already been a long while sorning on his house and table. but with his daughter i was more open, bewailing my fate that i should be sent out of the country, and assuring her, unless she should bring me to farewell with catriona, i would refuse at the last hour. "have i not given you my advice?" she asked. "i know you have," said i, "and i know how much i am beholden to you already, and that i am bidden to obey your orders. but you must confess you are something too merry a lass at times to lippen to entirely." "i will tell you, then," said she. "be you on board by nine o'clock forenoon; the ship does not sail before one; keep your boat alongside; and if you are not pleased with my farewells when i shall send them, you can come ashore again and seek katrine for yourself." since i could make no more of her, i was fain to be content with this. the day came round at last when she and i were to separate. we had been extremely intimate and familiar; i was much in her debt; and what way we were to part was a thing that put me from my sleep, like the vails i was to give to the domestic servants. i knew she considered me too backward, and rather desired to rise in her opinion on that head. besides which, after so much affection shown and (i believe) felt upon both sides, it would have looked cold-like to be anyways stiff. accordingly, i got my courage up and my words ready, and the last chance we were like to be alone, asked pretty boldly to be allowed to salute her in farewell. "you forget yourself strangely, mr. balfour," said she. "i cannot call to mind that i have given you any right to presume on our acquaintancy." i stood before her like a stopped clock, and knew not what to think, far less to say, when of a sudden she cast her arms about my neck and kissed me with the best will in the world. "you inimitable bairn?" she cried. "did you think that i would let us part like strangers? because i can never keep my gravity at you five minutes on end, you must not dream i do not love you very well: i am all love and laughter, every time i cast an eye on you! and now i will give you an advice to conclude your education, which you will have need of before it's very long. never ask womenfolk. they're bound to answer 'no'; god never made the lass that could resist the temptation. it's supposed by divines to be the curse of eve: because she did not say it when the devil offered her the apple, her daughters can say nothing else." "since i am so soon to lose my bonny professor," i began. "this is gallant, indeed," says she curtseying. "i would put the one question," i went on. "may i ask a lass to marry to me?" "you think you could not marry her without!" she asked. "or else get her to offer?" "you see you cannot be serious," said i. "i shall be very serious in one thing, david," said she: "i shall always be your friend." as i got to my horse the next morning, the four ladies were all at that same window whence we had once looked down on catriona, and all cried farewell and waved their pocket napkins as i rode away. one out of the four i knew was truly sorry; and at the thought of that, and how i had come to the door three months ago for the first time, sorrow and gratitude made a confusion in my mind. part ii father and daughter chapter xxi the voyage into holland the ship lay at a single anchor, well outside the pier of leith, so that all we passengers must come to it by the means of skiffs. this was very little trouble-some, for the reason that the day was a flat calm, very frosty and cloudy, and with a low shifting fog upon the water. the body of the vessel was thus quite hid as i drew near, but the tall spars of her stood high and bright in a sunshine like the flickering of a fire. she proved to be a very roomy, commodious merchant, but somewhat blunt in the bows, and loaden extraordinary deep with salt, salted salmon, and fine white linen stockings for the dutch. upon my coming on board, the captain welcomed me one sang (out of lesmahago, i believe), a very hearty, friendly tarpaulin of a man, but at the moment in rather of a bustle. there had no other of the passengers yet appeared, so that i was left to walk about upon the deck, viewing the prospect and wondering a good deal what these farewells should be which i was promised. all edinburgh and the pentland hills glinted above me in a kind of smuisty brightness, now and again overcome with blots of cloud; of leith there was no more than the tops of chimneys visible, and on the face of the water, where the haar lay, nothing at all. out of this i was presently aware of a sound of oars pulling, and a little after (as if out of the smoke of a fire) a boat issued. there sat a grave man in the stern sheets, well muffled from the cold, and by his side a tall, pretty, tender figure of a maid that brought my heart to a stand. i had scarce the time to catch my breath in, and be ready to meet her, as she stepped upon the deck, smiling, and making my best bow, which was now vastly finer than some months before, when first i made it to her ladyship. no doubt we were both a good deal changed: she seemed to have shot up like a young, comely tree. she had now a kind of pretty backwardness that became her well as of one that regarded herself more highly and was fairly woman; and for another thing, the hand of the same magician had been at work upon the pair of us, and miss grant had made us both braw, if she could make but the one bonny. the same cry, in words not very different, came from both of us, that the other was come in compliment to say farewell, and then we perceived in a flash we were to ship together. "o, why will not baby have been telling me!" she cried; and then remembered a letter she had been given, on the condition of not opening it till she was well on board. within was an enclosure for myself, and ran thus: "dear davie, what do you think of my farewell? and what do you say to your fellow passenger? did you kiss, or did you ask? i was about to have signed here, but that would leave the purport of my question doubtful, and in my own case i ken the answer. so fill up here with good advice. do not be too blate, and for god's sake do not try to be too forward; nothing acts you worse. i am "your affectionate friend and governess, "barbara grant." i wrote a word of answer and compliment on a leaf out of my pocketbook, put it in with another scratch from catriona, sealed the whole with my new signet of the balfour arms, and despatched it by the hand of prestongrange's servant that still waited in my boat. then we had time to look upon each other more at leisure, which we had not done for a piece of a minute before (upon a common impulse) we shook hands again. "catriona?" said i. it seemed that was the first and last word of my eloquence. "you will be glad to see me again?" says she. "and i think that is an idle word," said i. "we are too deep friends to make speech upon such trifles." "is she not the girl of all the world?" she cried again. "i was never knowing such a girl so honest and so beautiful." "and yet she cared no more for alpin than what she did for a kalestock," said i. "ah, she will say so indeed!" cries catriona. "yet it was for the name and the gentle kind blood that she took me up and was so good to me." "well, i will tell you why it was," said i. "there are all sorts of people's faces in this world. there is barbara's face, that everyone must look at and admire, and think her a fine, brave, merry girl. and then there is your face, which is quite different i never knew how different till to-day. you cannot see yourself, and that is why you do not understand; but it was for the love of your face that she took you up and was so good to you. and everybody in the world would do the same." "everybody?" says she. "every living soul?" said i. "ah, then, that will be why the soldiers at the castle took me up!" she cried, "barbara has been teaching you to catch me," said i. "she will have taught me more than that at all events. she will have taught me a great deal about mr. david all the ill of him, and a little that was not so ill either, now and then," she said, smiling. "she will have told me all there was of mr. david, only just that he would sail upon this very same ship. and why it is you go?" i told her. "ah, well," said she, "we will be some days in company and then (i suppose) good-bye for altogether! i go to meet my father at a place of the name of helvoetsluys, and from there to france, to be exiles by the side of our chieftain." i could say no more than just "o!" the name of james more always drying up my very voice. she was quick to perceive it, and to guess some portion of my thought. "there is one thing i must be saying first of all, mr. david," said she. "i think two of my kinsfolk have not behaved to you altogether very well. and the one of them two is james more, my father, and the other is the laird of prestongrange. prestongrange will have spoken by himself, or his daughter in the place of him. but for james more, my father, i have this much to say: he lay shackled in a prison; he is a plain honest soldier and a plain highland gentleman; what they would be after he would never be guessing; but if he had understood it was to be some prejudice to a young gentleman like yourself, he would have died first. and for the sake of all your friendships, i will be asking you to pardon my father and family for that same mistake." "catriona," said i, "what that mistake was i do not care to know. i know but the one thing that you went to prestongrange and begged my life upon your knees. o, i ken well enough it was for your father that you went, but when you were there you pleaded for me also. it is a thing i cannot speak of. there are two things i cannot think of into myself: and the one is your good words when you called yourself my little friend, and the other that you pleaded for my life. let us never speak more, we two, of pardon or offence." we stood after that silent, catriona looking on the deck and i on her; and before there was more speech, a little wind having sprung up in the nor'-west, they began to shake out the sails and heave in upon the anchor. there were six passengers besides our two selves, which made of it a full cabin. three were solid merchants out of leith, kirkcaldy, and dundee, all engaged in the same adventure into high germany. one was a hollander returning; the rest worthy merchants' wives, to the charge of one of whom catriona was recommended. mrs. gebbie (for that was her name) was by great good fortune heavily incommoded by the sea, and lay day and night on the broad of her back. we were besides the only creatures at all young on board the rose, except a white-faced boy that did my old duty to attend upon the table; and it came about that catriona and i were left almost entirely to ourselves. we had the next seats together at the table, where i waited on her with extraordinary pleasure. on deck, i made her a soft place with my cloak; and the weather being singularly fine for that season, with bright frosty days and nights, a steady, gentle wind, and scarce a sheet started all the way through the north sea, we sat there (only now and again walking to and fro for warmth) from the first blink of the sun till eight or nine at night under the clear stars. the merchants or captain sang would sometimes glance and smile upon us, or pass a merry word or two and give us the go-by again; but the most part of the time they were deep in herring and chintzes and linen, or in computations of the slowness of the passage, and left us to our own concerns, which were very little important to any but ourselves. at the first, we had a great deal to say, and thought ourselves pretty witty; and i was at a little pains to be the beau, and she (i believe) to play the young lady of experience. but soon we grew plainer with each other. i laid aside my high, clipped english (what little there was left of it) and forgot to make my edinburgh bows and scrapes; she, upon her side, fell into a sort of kind familiarity; and we dwelt together like those of the same household, only (upon my side) with a more deep emotion. about the same time the bottom seemed to fall out of our conversation, and neither one of us the less pleased. whiles she would tell me old wives' tales, of which she had a wonderful variety, many of them from my friend red-headed niel. she told them very pretty, and they were pretty enough childish tales; but the pleasure to myself was in the sound of her voice, and the thought that she was telling and i listening. whiles, again, we would sit entirely silent, not communicating even with a look, and tasting pleasure enough in the sweetness of that neighbourhood. i speak here only for myself. of what was in the maid's mind, i am not very sure that ever i asked myself; and what was in my own, i was afraid to consider. i need make no secret of it now, either to myself or to the reader; i was fallen totally in love. she came between me and the sun. she had grown suddenly taller, as i say, but with a wholesome growth; she seemed all health, and lightness, and brave spirits; and i thought she walked like a young deer, and stood like a birch upon the mountains. it was enough for me to sit near by her on the deck; and i declare i scarce spent two thoughts upon the future, and was so well content with what i then enjoyed that i was never at the pains to imagine any further step; unless perhaps that i would be sometimes tempted to take her hand in mine and hold it there. but i was too like a miser of what joys i had, and would venture nothing on a hazard. what we spoke was usually of ourselves or of each other, so that if anyone had been at so much pains as overhear us, he must have supposed us the most egotistical persons in the world. it befell one day when we were at this practice, that we came on a discourse of friends and friendship, and i think now that we were sailing near the wind. we said what a fine thing friendship was, and how little we had guessed of it, and how it made life a new thing, and a thousand covered things of the same kind that will have been said, since the foundation of the world, by young folk in the same predicament. then we remarked upon the strangeness of that circumstance, that friends came together in the beginning as if they were there for the first time, and yet each had been alive a good while, losing time with other people. "it is not much that i have done," said she, "and i could be telling you the five-fifths of it in two-three words. it is only a girl i am, and what can befall a girl, at all events? but i went with the clan in the year '45. the men marched with swords and fire-locks, and some of them in brigades in the same set of tartan; they were not backward at the marching, i can tell you. and there were gentlemen from the low country, with their tenants mounted and trumpets to sound, and there was a grant skirling of war-pipes. i rode on a little highland horse on the right hand of my father, james more, and of glengyle himself. and here is one fine thing that i remember, that glengyle kissed me in the face, because (says he) 'my kinswoman, you are the only lady of the clan that has come out,' and me a little maid of maybe twelve years old! i saw prince charlie too, and the blue eyes of him; he was pretty indeed! i had his hand to kiss in front of the army. o, well, these were the good days, but it is all like a dream that i have seen and then awakened. it went what way you very well know; and these were the worst days of all, when the red-coat soldiers were out, and my father and uncles lay in the hill, and i was to be carrying them their meat in the middle night, or at the short sight of day when the cocks crow. yes, i have walked in the night, many's the time, and my heart great in me for terror of the darkness. it is a strange thing i will never have been meddled with by a bogle; but they say a maid goes safe. next there was my uncle's marriage, and that was a dreadful affair beyond all. jean kay was that woman's name; and she had me in the room with her that night at inversnaid, the night we took her from her friends in the old, ancient manner. she would and she wouldn't; she was for marrying rob the one minute, and the next she would be for none of him. i will never have seen such a feckless creature of a woman; surely all there was of her would tell her ay or no. well, she was a widow; and i can never be thinking a widow a good woman." "catriona!" says i, "how do you make out that?" "i do not know," said she; "i am only telling you the seeming in my heart. and then to marry a new man! fy! but that was her; and she was married again upon my uncle robin, and went with him awhile to kirk and market; and then wearied, or else her friends got claught of her and talked her round, or maybe she turned ashamed; at the least of it, she ran away, and went back to her own folk, and said we had held her in the lake, and i will never tell you all what. i have never thought much of any females since that day. and so in the end my father, james more, came to be cast in prison, and you know the rest of it an well as me." "and through all you had no friends?" said i. "no," said she; "i have been pretty chief with two-three lasses on the braes, but not to call it friends." "well, mine is a plain tale," said i. "i never had a friend to my name till i met in with you." "and that brave mr. stewart?" she asked. "o, yes, i was forgetting him," i said. "but he in a man, and that in very different." "i would think so," said she. "o, yes, it is quite different." "and then there was one other," said i. "i once thought i had a friend, but it proved a disappointment." she asked me who she was? "it was a he, then," said i. "we were the two best lads at my father's school, and we thought we loved each other dearly. well, the time came when he went to glasgow to a merchant's house, that was his second cousin once removed; and wrote me two-three times by the carrier; and then he found new friends, and i might write till i was tired, he took no notice. eh, catriona, it took me a long while to forgive the world. there is not anything more bitter than to lose a fancied friend." then she began to question me close upon his looks and character, for we were each a great deal concerned in all that touched the other; till at last, in a very evil hour, i minded of his letters and went and fetched the bundle from the cabin. "here are his letters," said i, "and all the letters that ever i got. that will be the last i'll can tell of myself; ye know the lave as well as i do." "will you let me read them, then?" says she. i told her, if she would be at the pains; and she bade me go away and she would read them from the one end to the other. now, in this bundle that i gave her, there were packed together not only all the letters of my false friend, but one or two of mr. campbell's when he was in town at the assembly, and to make a complete roll of all that ever was written to me, catriona's little word, and the two i had received from miss grant, one when i was on the bass and one on board that ship. but of these last i had no particular mind at the moment. i was in that state of subjection to the thought of my friend that it mattered not what i did, nor scarce whether i was in her presence or out of it; i had caught her like some kind of a noble fever that lived continually in my bosom, by night and by day, and whether i was waking or asleep. so it befell that after i was come into the fore-part of the ship where the broad bows splashed into the billows, i was in no such hurry to return as you might fancy; rather prolonged my absence like a variety in pleasure. i do not think i am by nature much of an epicurean: and there had come till then so small a share of pleasure in my way that i might be excused perhaps to dwell on it unduly. when i returned to her again, i had a faint, painful impression as of a buckle slipped, so coldly she returned the packet. "you have read them?" said i; and i thought my voice sounded not wholly natural, for i was turning in my mind for what could ail her. "did you mean me to read all?" she asked. i told her "yes," with a drooping voice. "the last of them as well?" said she. i knew where we were now; yet i would not lie to her either. "i gave them all without afterthought," i said, "as i supposed that you would read them. i see no harm in any." "i will be differently made," said she. "i thank god i am differently made. it was not a fit letter to be shown me. it was not fit to be written." "i think you are speaking of your own friend, barbara grant?" said i. "there will not be anything as bitter as to lose a fancied friend," said she, quoting my own expression. "i think it is sometimes the friendship that was fancied!" i cried. "what kind of justice do you call this, to blame me for some words that a tomfool of a madcap lass has written down upon a piece of paper? you know yourself with what respect i have behaved and would do always." "yet you would show me that same letter!" says she. "i want no such friends. i can be doing very well, mr. balfour, without her or you." "this is your fine gratitude!" says i. "i am very much obliged to you," said she. "i will be asking you to take away your letters." she seemed to choke upon the word, so that it sounded like an oath. "you shall never ask twice," said i; picked up that bundle, walked a little way forward and cast them as far as possible into the sea. for a very little more i could have cast myself after them. the rest of the day i walked up and down raging. there were few names so ill but what i gave her them in my own mind before the sun went down. all that i had ever heard of highland pride seemed quite outdone; that a girl (scarce grown) should resent so trifling an allusion, and that from her next friend, that she had near wearied me with praising of! i had bitter, sharp, hard thoughts of her, like an angry boy's. if i had kissed her indeed (i thought), perhaps she would have taken it pretty well; and only because it had been written down, and with a spice of jocularity, up she must fuff in this ridiculous passion. it seemed to me there was a want of penetration in the female sex, to make angels weep over the case of the poor men. we were side by side again at supper, and what a change was there! she was like curdled milk to me; her face was like a wooden doll's; i could have indifferently smitten her or grovelled at her feet, but she gave me not the least occasion to do either. no sooner the meal done than she betook herself to attend on mrs. gebbie, which i think she had a little neglected heretofore. but she was to make up for lost time, and in what remained of the passage was extraordinary assiduous with the old lady, and on deck began to make a great deal more than i thought wise of captain sang. not but what the captain seemed a worthy, fatherly man; but i hated to behold her in the least familiarity with anyone except myself. altogether, she was so quick to avoid me, and so constant to keep herself surrounded with others, that i must watch a long while before i could find my opportunity; and after it was found, i made not much of it, as you are now to hear. "i have no guess how i have offended," said i; "it should scarce be beyond pardon, then. o, try if you can pardon me." "i have no pardon to give," said she; and the words seemed to come out of her throat like marbles. "i will be very much obliged for all your friendships." and she made me an eighth part of a curtsey. but i had schooled myself beforehand to say more, and i was going to say it too. "there is one thing," said i. "if i have shocked your particularity by the showing of that letter, it cannot touch miss grant. she wrote not to you, but to a poor, common, ordinary lad, who might have had more sense than show it. if you are to blame me " "i will advise you to say no more about that girl, at all events!" said catriona. "it is her i will never look the road of, not if she lay dying." she turned away from me, and suddenly back. "will you swear you will have no more to deal with her?" she cried. "indeed, and i will never be so unjust then," said i; "nor yet so ungrateful." and now it was i that turned away. chapter xxii helvoetsluys the weather in the end considerably worsened; the wind sang in the shrouds, the sea swelled higher, and the ship began to labour and cry out among the billows. the song of the leadsman in the chains was now scarce ceasing, for we thrid all the way among shoals. about nine in the morning, in a burst of wintry sun between two squalls of hail, i had my first look of holland a line of windmills birling in the breeze. it was besides my first knowledge of these daft-like contrivances, which gave me a near sense of foreign travel and a new world and life. we came to an anchor about half-past eleven, outside the harbour of helvoetsluys, in a place where the sea sometimes broke and the ship pitched outrageously. you may be sure we were all on deck save mrs. gebbie, some of us in cloaks, others mantled in the ship's tarpaulins, all clinging on by ropes, and jesting the most like old sailor-folk that we could imitate. presently a boat, that was backed like a partancrab, came gingerly alongside, and the skipper of it hailed our master in the dutch. thence captain sang turned, very troubled-like, to catriona; and the rest of us crowding about, the nature of the difficulty was made plain to all. the rose was bound to the port of rotterdam, whither the other passengers were in a great impatience to arrive, in view of a conveyance due to leave that very evening in the direction of the upper germany. this, with the present half-gale of wind, the captain (if no time were lost) declared himself still capable to save. now james more had trysted in helvoet with his daughter, and the captain had engaged to call before the port and place her (according to the custom) in a shore boat. there was the boat, to be sure, and here was catriona ready: but both our master and the patroon of the boat scrupled at the risk, and the first was in no humour to delay. "your father," said he, "would be gey an little pleased if we was to break a leg to ye, miss drummond, let-a-be drowning of you. take my way of it," says he, "and come on-by with the rest of us here to rotterdam. ye can get a passage down the maes in a sailing scoot as far as to the brill, and thence on again, by a place in a rattelwaggon, back to helvoet." but catriona would hear of no change. she looked white-like as she beheld the bursting of the sprays, the green seas that sometimes poured upon the fore-castle, and the perpetual bounding and swooping of the boat among the billows; but she stood firmly by her father's orders. "my father, james more, will have arranged it so," was her first word and her last. i thought it very idle and indeed wanton in the girl to be so literal and stand opposite to so much kind advice; but the fact is she had a very good reason, if she would have told us. sailing scoots and rattel-waggons are excellent things; only the use of them must first be paid for, and all she was possessed of in the world was just two shillings and a penny halfpenny sterling. so it fell out that captain and passengers, not knowing of her destitution and she being too proud to tell them spoke in vain. "but you ken nae french and nae dutch neither," said one. "it is very true," says she, "but since the year '46 there are so many of the honest scotch abroad that i will be doing very well. i thank you." there was a pretty country simplicity in this that made some laugh, others looked the more sorry, and mr. gebbie fall outright in a passion. i believe he knew it was his duty (his wife having accepted charge of the girl) to have gone ashore with her and seen her safe: nothing would have induced him to have done so, since it must have involved the lose of his conveyance; and i think he made it up to his conscience by the loudness of his voice. at least he broke out upon captain sang, raging and saying the thing was a disgrace; that it was mere death to try to leave the ship, and at any event we could not cast down an innocent maid in a boatful of nasty holland fishers, and leave her to her fate. i was thinking something of the same; took the mate upon one side, arranged with him to send on my chests by track-scoot to an address i had in leyden, and stood up and signalled to the fishers. "i will go ashore with the young lady, captain sang," said i. "it is all one what way i go to leyden;" and leaped at the same time into the boat, which i managed not so elegantly but what i fell with two of the fishers in the bilge. from the boat the business appeared yet more precarious than from the ship, she stood so high over us, swung down so swift, and menaced us so perpetually with her plunging and passaging upon the anchor cable. i began to think i had made a fool's bargain, that it was merely impossible catriona should be got on board to me, and that i stood to be set ashore at helvoet all by myself and with no hope of any reward but the pleasure of embracing james more, if i should want to. but this was to reckon without the lass's courage. she had seen me leap with very little appearance (however much reality) of hesitation; to be sure, she was not to be beat by her discarded friend. up she stood on the bulwarks and held by a stay, the wind blowing in her petticoats, which made the enterprise more dangerous, and gave us rather more of a view of her stockings than would be thought genteel in cities. there was no minute lost, and scarce time given for any to interfere if they had wished the same. i stood up on the other side and spread my arms; the ship swung down on us, the patroon humoured his boat nearer in than was perhaps wholly safe, and catriona leaped into the air. i was so happy as to catch her, and the fishers readily supporting us, escaped a fall. she held to me a moment very tight, breathing quick and deep; thence (she still clinging to me with both hands) we were passed aft to our places by the steersman; and captain sang and all the crew and passengers cheering and crying farewell, the boat was put about for shore. as soon as catriona came a little to herself she unhanded me suddenly, but said no word. no more did i; and indeed the whistling of the wind and the breaching of the sprays made it no time for speech; and our crew not only toiled excessively but made extremely little way, so that the rose had got her anchor and was off again before we had approached the harbour mouth. we were no sooner in smooth water than the patroon, according to their beastly hollands custom, stopped his boat and required of us our fares. two guilders was the man's demand between three and four shillings english money for each passenger. but at this catriona began to cry out with a vast deal of agitation. she had asked of captain sang, she said, and the fare was but an english shilling. "do you think i will have come on board and not ask first?" cries she. the patroon scolded back upon her in a lingo where the oaths were english and the rest right hollands; till at last (seeing her near tears) i privately slipped in the rogue's hand six shillings, whereupon he was obliging enough to receive from her the other shilling without more complaint. no doubt i was a good deal nettled and ashamed. i like to see folk thrifty, but not with so much passion; and i daresay it would be rather coldly that i asked her, as the boat moved on again for shore, where it was that she was trysted with her father. "he is to be inquired of at the house of one sprott, an honest scotch merchant," says she; and then with the same breath, "i am wishing to thank you very much you are a brave friend to me." "it will be time enough when i get you to your father," said i, little thinking that i spoke so true. "i can tell him a fine tale of a loyal daughter." "o, i do not think i will be a loyal girl, at all events," she cried, with a great deal of painfulness in the expression. "i do not think my heart is true." "yet there are very few that would have made that leap, and all to obey a father's orders," i observed. "i cannot have you to be thinking of me so," she cried again. "when you had done that same, how would i stop behind? and at all events that was not all the reasons." whereupon, with a burning face, she told me the plain truth upon her poverty. "good guide us!" cried i, "what kind of daft-like proceeding is this, to let yourself be launched on the continent of europe with an empty purse i count it hardly decent scant decent!" i cried. "you forget james more, my father, is a poor gentleman," said she. "he is a hunted exile." "but i think not all your friends are hunted exiles," i exclaimed. "and was this fair to them that care for you? was it fair to me? was it fair to miss grant that counselled you to go, and would be driven fair horn-mad if she could hear of it? was it even fair to these gregory folk that you were living with, and used you lovingly? it's a blessing you have fallen in my hands! suppose your father hindered by an accident, what would become of you here, and you your lee-lone in a strange place? the thought of the thing frightens me," i said. "i will have lied to all of them," she replied. "i will have told them all that i had plenty. i told her too. i could not be lowering james more to them." i found out later on that she must have lowered him in the very dust, for the lie was originally the father's, not the daughter's, and she thus obliged to persevere in it for the man's reputation. but at the time i was ignorant of this, and the mere thought of her destitution and the perils in which see must have fallen, had ruffled me almost beyond reason. "well, well, well," said i, "you will have to learn more sense." i left her mails for the moment in an inn upon the shore, where i got a direction for sprott's house in my new french, and we walked there it was some little way beholding the place with wonder as we went. indeed, there was much for scots folk to admire: canals and trees being intermingled with the houses; the houses, each within itself, of a brave red brick, the colour of a rose, with steps and benches of blue marble at the cheek of every door, and the whole town so clean you might have dined upon the causeway. sprott was within, upon his ledgers, in a low parlour, very neat and clean, and set out with china and pictures, and a globe of the earth in a brass frame. he was a bigchafted, ruddy, lusty man, with a crooked hard look to him; and he made us not that much civility as offer us a seat. "is james more macgregor now in helvoet, sir?" says i. "i ken nobody by such a name," says he, impatient-like. "since you are so particular," says i, "i will amend my question, and ask you where we are to find in helvoet one james drummond, alias macgregor, alias james more, late tenant in inveronachile?" "sir," says he, "he may be in hell for what i ken, and for my part i wish he was." "the young lady is that gentleman's daughter, sir," said i, "before whom, i think you will agree with me, it is not very becoming to discuss his character." "i have nothing to make either with him, or her, or you!" cries he in his gross voice. "under your favour, mr. sprott," said i, "this young lady is come from scotland seeking him, and by whatever mistake, was given the name of your house for a direction. an error it seems to have been, but i think this places both you and me who am but her fellow-traveller by accident under a strong obligation to help our countrywoman." "will you ding me daft?" he cries. "i tell ye i ken naething and care less either for him or his breed. i tell ye the man owes me money." "that may very well be, sir," said i, who was now rather more angry than himself. "at least, i owe you nothing; the young lady is under my protection; and i am neither at all used with these manners, nor in the least content with them." as i said this, and without particularly thinking what i did, i drew a step or two nearer to his table; thus striking, by mere good fortune, on the only argument that could at all affect the man. the blood left his lusty countenance. "for the lord's sake dinna be hasty, sir!" he cried. "i am truly wishfu' no to be offensive. but ye ken, sir, i'm like a wheen guidnatured, honest, canty auld fellows my bark is waur nor my bite. to hear me, ye micht whiles fancy i was a wee thing dour; but na, na! it's a kind auld fallow at heart, sandie sprott! and ye could never imagine the fyke and fash this man has been to me." "very good, sir," said i. "then i will make that much freedom with your kindness as trouble you for your last news of mr. drummond." "you're welcome, sir!" said he. "as for the young leddy (my respects to her!), he'll just have clean forgotten her. i ken the man, ye see; i have lost siller by him ere now. he thinks of naebody but just himsel'; clan, king, or dauchter, if he can get his wameful, he would give them a' the go-by! ay, or his correspondent either. for there is a sense in whilk i may be nearly almost said to be his correspondent. the fact is, we are employed thegether in a business affair, and i think it's like to turn out a dear affair for sandie sprott. the man's as guid's my pairtner, and i give ye my mere word i ken naething by where he is. he micht be coming here to helvoet; he micht come here the morn, he michtnae come for a twalmouth; i would wonder at naething or just at the ae thing, and that's if he was to pay me my siller. ye see what way i stand with it; and it's clear i'm no very likely to meddle up with the young leddy, as ye ca' her. she cannae stop here, that's ae thing certain sure. dod, sir, i'm a lone man! if i was to tak her in, its highly possible the hellicat would try and gar me marry her when he turned up." "enough of this talk," said i. "i will take the young leddy among better friends. give me, pen, ink, and paper, and i will leave here for james more the address of my correspondent in leyden. he can inquire from me where he is to seek his daughter." this word i wrote and sealed; which while i was doing, sprott of his own motion made a welcome offer, to charge himself with miss drummond's mails, and even send a porter for them to the inn. i advanced him to that effect a dollar or two to be a cover, and he gave me an acknowledgment in writing of the sum. whereupon (i giving my arm to catriona) we left the house of this unpalatable rascal. she had said no word throughout, leaving me to judge and speak in her place; i, upon my side, had been careful not to embarrass her by a glance; and even now, although my heart still glowed inside of me with shame and anger, i made it my affair to seem quite easy. "now," said i, "let us get back to yon same inn where they can speak the french, have a piece of dinner, and inquire for conveyances to rotterdam. i will never be easy till i have you safe again in the hands of mrs. gebbie." "i suppose it will have to be," said catriona, "though whoever will be pleased, i do not think it will be her. and i will remind you this once again that i have but one shilling, and three baubees." "and just this once again," said i, "i will remind you it was a blessing that i came alongst with you." "what else would i be thinking all this time?" says she, and i thought weighed a little on my arm. "it is you that are the good friend to me." chapter xxiii travels in holland the rattel-waggon, which is a kind of a long waggon set with benches, carried us in four hours of travel to the great city of rotterdam. it was long past dark by then, but the streets were pretty brightly lighted and thronged with wild-like, outlandish characters bearded hebrews, black men, and the hordes of courtesans, most indecently adorned with finery and stopping seamen by their very sleeves; the clash of talk about us made our heads to whirl; and what was the most unexpected of all, we appeared to be no more struck with all these foreigners than they with us. i made the best face i could, for the lass's sake and my own credit; but the truth is i felt like a lost sheep, and my heart beat in my bosom with anxiety. once or twice i inquired after the harbour or the berth of the ship rose: but either fell on some who spoke only hollands, or my own french failed me. trying a street at a venture, i came upon a lane of lighted houses, the doors and windows thronged with wauf-like painted women; these jostled and mocked upon us as we passed, and i was thankful we had nothing of their language. a little after we issued forth upon an open place along the harbour. "we shall be doing now," cries i, as soon as i spied masts. "let us walk here by the harbour. we are sure to meet some that has the english, and at the best of it we may light upon that very ship." we did the next best, as happened; for, about nine of the evening, whom should we walk into the arms of but captain sang? he told us they had made their run in the most incredible brief time, the wind holding strong till they reached port; by which means his passengers were all gone already on their further travels. it was impossible to chase after the gebbies into the high germany, and we had no other acquaintance to fall back upon but captain sang himself. it was the more gratifying to find the man friendly and wishful to assist. he made it a small affair to find some good plain family of merchants, where catriona might harbour till the rose was loaden; declared he would then blithely carry her back to leith for nothing and see her safe in the hands of mr. gregory; and in the meanwhile carried us to a late ordinary for the meal we stood in need of. he seemed extremely friendly, as i say, but what surprised me a good deal, rather boisterous in the bargain; and the cause of this was soon to appear. for at the ordinary, calling for rhenish wine and drinking of it deep, he soon became unutterably tipsy. in this case, as too common with all men, but especially with those of his rough trade, what little sense or manners he possessed deserted him; and he behaved himself so scandalous to the young lady, jesting most ill-favouredly at the figure she had made on the ship's rail, that i had no resource but carry her suddenly away. she came out of the ordinary clinging to me close. "take me away, david," she said. "you keep me. i am not afraid with you." "and have no cause, my little friend!" cried i, and could have found it in my heart to weep. "where will you be taking me?" she said again. "don't leave me at all events never leave me." "where am i taking you to?" says i stopping, for i had been staving on ahead in mere blindness. "i must stop and think. but i'll not leave you, catriona; the lord do so to me, and more also, if i should fail or fash you." she crept close into me by way of a reply. "here," i said, "is the stillest place we have hit on yet in this busy byke of a city. let us sit down here under yon tree and consider of our course." that tree (which i am little like to forget) stood hard by the harbour side. it was like a black night, but lights were in the houses, and nearer hand in the quiet ships; there was a shining of the city on the one hand, and a buzz hung over it of many thousands walking and talking; on the other, it was dark and the water bubbled on the sides. i spread my cloak upon a builder's stone, and made her sit there; she would have kept her hold upon me, for she still shook with the late affronts; but i wanted to think clear, disengaged myself, and paced to and fro before her, in the manner of what we call a smuggler's walk, belabouring my brains for any remedy. by the course of these scattering thoughts i was brought suddenly face to face with a remembrance that, in the heat and haste of our departure, i had left captain sang to pay the ordinary. at this i began to laugh out loud, for i thought the man well served; and at the same time, by an instinctive movement, carried my hand to the pocket where my money was. i suppose it was in the lane where the women jostled us; but there is only the one thing certain, that my purse was gone. "you will have thought of something good," said she, observing me to pause. at the pinch we were in, my mind became suddenly clear as a perspective glass, and i saw there was no choice of methods. i had not one doit of coin, but in my pocket-book i had still my letter on the leyden merchant; and there was now but the one way to get to leyden, and that was to walk on our two feet. "catriona," said i, "i know you're brave and i believe you're strong do you think you could walk thirty miles on a plain road?" we found it, i believe, scarce the two-thirds of that, but such was my notion of the distance. "david," she said, "if you will just keep near, i will go anywhere and do anything. the courage of my heart, it is all broken. do not be leaving me in this horrible country by myself, and i will do all else." "can you start now and march all night?" said i. "i will do all that you can ask of me," she said, "and never ask you why. i have been a bad ungrateful girl to you; and do what you please with me now! and i think miss barbara grant is the best lady in the world," she added, "and i do not see what she would deny you for at all events." this was greek and hebrew to me; but i had other matters to consider, and the first of these was to get clear of that city on the leyden road. it proved a cruel problem; and it may have been one or two at night ere we had solved it. once beyond the houses, there was neither moon nor stars to guide us; only the whiteness of the way in the midst and a blackness of an alley on both hands. the walking was besides made most extraordinary difficult by a plain black frost that fell suddenly in the small hours and turned that highway into one long slide. "well, catriona," said i, "here we are like the king's sons and the old wives' daughters in your daft-like highland tales. soon we'll be going over the 'seven bens, the seven glens and the seven mountain moors'." which was a common byword or overcome in those tales of hers that had stuck in my memory. "ah," says she, "but here are no glens or mountains! though i will never be denying but what the trees and some of the plain places hereabouts are very pretty. but our country is the best yet." "i wish we could say as much for our own folk," says i, recalling sprott and sang, and perhaps james more himself. "i will never complain of the country of my friend," said she, and spoke it out with an accent so particular that i seemed to see the look upon her face. i caught in my breath sharp and came near falling (for my pains) on the black ice. "i do not know what you think, catriona," said i, when i was a little recovered, "but this has been the best day yet! i think shame to say it, when you have met in with such misfortunes and disfavours; but for me, it has been the best day yet." "it was a good day when you showed me so much love," said she. "and yet i think shame to be happy too," i went on, "and you here on the road in the black night." "where in the great world would i be else?" she cried. "i am thinking i am safest where i am with you." "i am quite forgiven, then?" i asked. "will you not forgive me that time so much as not to take it in your mouth again?" she cried. "there is nothing in this heart to you but thanks. but i will be honest too," she added, with a kind of suddenness, "and i'll never can forgive that girl." "is this miss grant again?" said i. "you said yourself she was the best lady in the world." "so she will be, indeed!" says catriona. "but i will never forgive her for all that. i will never, never forgive her, and let me hear tell of her no more." "well," said i, "this beats all that ever came to my knowledge; and i wonder that you can indulge yourself in such bairnly whims. here is a young lady that was the best friend in the world to the both of us, that learned us how to dress ourselves, and in a great manner how to behave, as anyone can see that knew us both before and after." but catriona stopped square in the midst of the highway. "it is this way of it," said she. "either you will go on to speak of her, and i will go back to yon town, and let come of it what god pleases! or else you will do me that politeness to talk of other things." i was the most nonplussed person in this world; but i bethought me that she depended altogether on my help, that she was of the frail sex and not so much beyond a child, and it was for me to be wise for the pair of us. "my dear girl," said i, "i can make neither head nor tails of this; but god forbid that i should do anything to set you on the jee. as for talking of miss grant, i have no such a mind to it, and i believe it was yourself began it. my only design (if i took you up at all) was for your own improvement, for i hate the very look of injustice. not that i do not wish you to have a good pride and a nice female delicacy; they become you well; but here you show them to excess." "well, then, have you done?" said she. "i have done," said i. "a very good thing," said she, and we went on again, but now in silence. it was an eerie employment to walk in the gross night, beholding only shadows and hearing nought but our own steps. at first, i believe our hearts burned against each other with a deal of enmity; but the darkness and the cold, and the silence, which only the cocks sometimes interrupted, or sometimes the farmyard dogs, had pretty soon brought down our pride to the dust; and for my own particular, i would have jumped at any decent opening for speech. before the day peeped, came on a warmish rain, and the frost was all wiped away from among our feet. i took my cloak to her and sought to hap her in the same; she bade me, rather impatiently, to keep it. "indeed and i will do no such thing," said i. "here am i, a great, ugly lad that has seen all kinds of weather, and here are you a tender, pretty maid! my dear, you would not put me to a shame?" without more words she let me cover her; which as i was doing in the darkness, i let my hand rest a moment on her shoulder, almost like an embrace. "you must try to be more patient of your friend," said i. i thought she seemed to lean the least thing in the world against my bosom, or perhaps it was but fancy. "there will be no end to your goodness," said she. and we went on again in silence; but now all was changed; and the happiness that was in my heart was like a fire in a great chimney. the rain passed ere day; it was but a sloppy morning as we came into the town of delft. the red gabled houses made a handsome show on either hand of a canal; the servant lassies were out slestering and scrubbing at the very stones upon the public highway; smoke rose from a hundred kitchens; and it came in upon me strongly it was time to break our fasts. "catriona," said i, "i believe you have yet a shilling and three baubees?" "are you wanting it?" said she, and passed me her purse. "i am wishing it was five pounds! what will you want it for?" "and what have we been walking for all night, like a pair of waif egyptians!" says i. "just because i was robbed of my purse and all i possessed in that unchancy town of rotterdam. i will tell you of it now, because i think the worst is over, but we have still a good tramp before us till we get to where my money is, and if you would not buy me a piece of bread, i were like to go fasting." she looked at me with open eyes. by the light of the new day she was all black and pale for weariness, so that my heart smote me for her. but as for her, she broke out laughing. "my torture! are we beggars then!" she cried. "you too? o, i could have wished for this same thing! and i am glad to buy your breakfast to you. but it would be pleisand if i would have had to dance to get a meal to you! for i believe they are not very well acquainted with our manner of dancing over here, and might be paying for the curiosity of that sight." i could have kissed her for that word, not with a lover's mind, but in a heat of admiration. for it always warms a man to see a woman brave. we got a drink of milk from a country wife but new come to the town, and in a baker's, a piece of excellent, hot, sweet-smelling bread, which we ate upon the road as we went on. that road from delft to the hague is just five miles of a fine avenue shaded with trees, a canal on the one hand, on the other excellent pastures of cattle. it was pleasant here indeed. "and now, davie," said she, "what will you do with me at all events?" "it is what we have to speak of," said i, "and the sooner yet the better. i can come by money in leyden; that will be all well. but the trouble is how to dispose of you until your father come. i thought last night you seemed a little sweir to part from me?" "it will be more than seeming then," said she. "you are a very young maid," said i, "and i am but a very young callant. this is a great piece of difficulty. what way are we to manage? unless indeed, you could pass to be my sister?" "and what for no?" said she, "if you would let me!" "i wish you were so, indeed," i cried. "i would be a fine man if i had such a sister. but the rub is that you are catriona drummond." "and now i will be catriona balfour," she said. "and who is to ken? they are all strange folk here." "if you think that it would do," says i. "i own it troubles me. i would like it very ill, if i advised you at all wrong." "david, i have no friend here but you," she said. "the mere truth is, i am too young to be your friend," said i. "i am too young to advise you, or you to be advised. i see not what else we are to do, and yet i ought to warn you." "i will have no choice left," said she. "my father james more has not used me very well, and it is not the first time, i am cast upon your hands like a sack of barley meal, and have nothing else to think of but your pleasure. if you will have me, good and well. if you will not" she turned and touched her hand upon my arm "david, i am afraid," said she. "no, but i ought to warn you," i began; and then bethought me i was the bearer of the purse, and it would never do to seem too churlish. "catriona," said i, "don't misunderstand me: i am just trying to do my duty by you, girl! here am i going alone to this strange city, to be a solitary student there; and here is this chance arisen that you might dwell with me a bit, and be like my sister; you can surely understand this much, my dear, that i would just love to have you?" "well, and here i am," said she. "so that's soon settled." i know i was in duty bounden to have spoke more plain. i know this was a great blot on my character, for which i was lucky that i did not pay more dear. but i minded how easy her delicacy had been startled with a word of kissing her in barbara's letter; now that she depended on me, how was i to be more bold? besides, the truth is, i could see no other feasible method to dispose of her. and i daresay inclination pulled me very strong. a little beyond the hague she fell very lame and made the rest of the distance heavily enough. twice she must rest by the wayside, which she did with pretty apologies, calling herself a shame to the highlands and the race she came of, and nothing but a hindrance to myself. it was her excuse, she said, that she was not much used with walking shod. i would have had her strip off her shoes and stockings and go barefoot. but she pointed out to me that the women of that country, even in the landward roads, appeared to be all shod. "i must not be disgracing my brother," said she, and was very merry with it all, although her face told tales of her. there is a garden in that city we were bound to, sanded below with clean sand, the trees meeting overhead, some of them trimmed, some preached, and the whole place beautified with alleys and arbours. here i left catriona, and went forward by myself to find my correspondent. there i drew on my credit, and asked to be recommended to some decent, retired lodging. my baggage being not yet arrived, i told him i supposed i should require his caution with the people of the house; and explained that, my sister being come for a while to keep house with me, i should be wanting two chambers. this was all very well; but the trouble was that mr. balfour in his letter of recommendation had condescended on a great deal of particulars, and never a word of any sister in the case. i could see my dutchman was extremely suspicious; and viewing me over the rims of a great pair of spectacles he was a poor, frail body, and reminded me of an infirm rabbit he began to question me close. here i fell in a panic. suppose he accept my tale (thinks i), suppose he invite my sister to his house, and that i bring her. i shall have a fine ravelled pirn to unwind, and may end by disgracing both the lassie and myself. thereupon i began hastily to expound to him my sister's character. she was of a bashful disposition, it appeared, and be extremely fearful of meeting strangers that i had left her at that moment sitting in a public place alone. and then, being launched upon the stream of falsehood, i must do like all the rest of the world in the same circumstance, and plunge in deeper than was any service; adding some altogether needless particulars of miss balfour's illhealth and retirement during childhood. in the midst of which i awoke to a sense of my behaviour, and was turned to one blush. the old gentleman was not so much deceived but what he discovered a willingness to be quit of me. but he was first of all a man of business; and knowing that my money was good enough, however it might be with my conduct, he was so far obliging as to send his son to be my guide and caution in the matter of a lodging. this implied my presenting of the young man to catriona. the poor, pretty child was much recovered with resting, looked and behaved to perfection, and took my arm and gave me the name of brother more easily than i could answer her. but there was one misfortune: thinking to help, she was rather towardly than otherwise to my dutchman. and i could not but reflect that miss balfour had rather suddenly outgrown her bashfulness. and there was another thing, the difference of our speech. i had the low country tongue and dwelled upon my words; she had a hill voice, spoke with something of an english accent, only far more delightful, and was scarce quite fit to be called a deacon in the craft of talking english grammar; so that, for a brother and sister, we made a most uneven pair. but the young hollander was a heavy dog, without so much spirit in his belly as to remark her prettiness, for which i scorned him. and as soon as he had found a cover to our heads, he left us alone, which was the greater service of the two. chapter xxiv full story of a copy of heineccius the place found was in the upper part of a house backed on a canal. we had two rooms, the second entering from the first; each had a chimney built out into the floor in the dutch manner; and being alongside, each had the same prospect from the window of the top of a tree below us in a little court, of a piece of the canal, and of houses in the hollands architecture and a church spire upon the further side. a full set of bells hung in that spire and made delightful music; and when there was any sun at all, it shone direct in our two chambers. from a tavern hard by we had good meals sent in. the first night we were both pretty weary, and she extremely so. there was little talk between us, and i packed her off to her bed as soon as she had eaten. the first thing in the morning i wrote word to sprott to have her mails sent on, together with a line to alan at his chief's; and had the same despatched, and her breakfast ready, ere i waked her. i was a little abashed when she came forth in her one habit, and the mud of the way upon her stockings. by what inquiries i had made, it seemed a good few days must pass before her mails could come to hand in leyden, and it was plainly needful she must have a shift of things. she was unwilling at first that i should go to that expense; but i reminded her she was now a rich man's sister and must appear suitably in the part, and we had not got to the second merchant's before she was entirely charmed into the spirit of the thing, and her eyes shining. it pleased me to see her so innocent and thorough in this pleasure. what was more extraordinary was the passion into which i fell on it myself; being never satisfied that i had bought her enough or fine enough, and never weary of beholding her in different attires. indeed, i began to understand some little of miss grant's immersion in the interest of clothes; for the truth is, when you have the ground of a beautiful person to adorn, the whole business becomes beautiful. the dutch chintzes i should say were extraordinary cheap and fine; but i would be ashamed to set down what i paid for stockings to her. altogether i spent so great a sum upon this pleasuring (as i may call it) that i was ashamed for a great while to spend more; and by way of a set-off, i left our chambers pretty bare. if we had beds, if catriona was a little braw, and i had light to see her by, we were richly enough lodged for me. by the end of this merchandising i was glad to leave her at the door with all our purchases, and go for a long walk alone in which to read myself a lecture. here had i taken under my roof, and as good as to my bosom, a young lass extremely beautiful, and whose innocence was her peril. my talk with the old dutchman, and the lies to which i was constrained, had already given me a sense of how my conduct must appear to others; and now, after the strong admiration i had just experienced and the immoderacy with which i had continued my vain purchases, i began to think of it myself as very hazarded. i bethought me, if i had a sister indeed, whether i would so expose her; then, judging the case too problematical, i varied my question into this, whether i would so trust catriona in the hands of any other christian being; the answer to which made my face to burn. the more cause, since i had been entrapped and had entrapped the girl into an undue situation, that i should behave in it with scrupulous nicety. she depended on me wholly for her bread and shelter; in case i should alarm her delicacy, she had no retreat. besides i was her host and her protector; and the more irregularly i had fallen in these positions, the less excuse for me if i should profit by the same to forward even the most honest suit; for with the opportunities that i enjoyed, and which no wise parent would have suffered for a moment, even the most honest suit would be unfair. i saw i must be extremely hold-off in my relations; and yet not too much so neither; for if i had no right to appear at all in the character of a suitor, i must yet appear continually, and if possible agreeably, in that of host. it was plain i should require a great deal of tact and conduct, perhaps more than my years afforded. but i had rushed in where angels might have feared to tread, and there was no way out of that position save by behaving right while i was in it. i made a set of rules for my guidance; prayed for strength to be enabled to observe them, and as a more human aid to the same end purchased a study-book in law. this being all that i could think of, i relaxed from these grave considerations; whereupon my mind bubbled at once into an effervescency of pleasing spirits, and it was like one treading on air that i turned homeward. as i thought that name of home, and recalled the image of that figure awaiting me between four walls, my heart beat upon my bosom. my troubles began with my return. she ran to greet me with an obvious and affecting pleasure. she was clad, besides, entirely in the new clothes that i had bought for her; looked in them beyond expression well; and must walk about and drop me curtseys to display them and to be admired. i am sure i did it with an ill grace, for i thought to have choked upon the words. "well," she said, "if you will not be caring for my pretty clothes, see what i have done with our two chambers." and she showed me the place all very finely swept, and the fires glowing in the two chimneys. i was glad of a chance to seem a little more severe than i quite felt. "catriona," said i, "i am very much displeased with you, and you must never again lay a hand upon my room. one of us two must have the rule while we are here together; it is most fit it should be i who am both the man and the elder; and i give you that for my command." she dropped me one of her curtseys; which were extraordinary taking. "if you will be cross," said she, "i must be making pretty manners at you, davie. i will be very obedient, as i should be when every stitch upon all there is of me belongs to you. but you will not be very cross either, because now i have not anyone else." this struck me hard, and i made haste, in a kind of penitence, to blot out all the good effect of my last speech. in this direction progress was more easy, being down hill; she led me forward, smiling; at the sight of her, in the brightness of the fire and with her pretty becks and looks, my heart was altogether melted. we made our meal with infinite mirth and tenderness; and the two seemed to be commingled into one, so that our very laughter sounded like a kindness. in the midst of which i awoke to better recollections, made a lame word of excuse, and set myself boorishly to my studies. it was a substantial, instructive book that i had bought, by the late dr. heineccius, in which i was to do a great deal reading these next few days, and often very glad that i had no one to question me of what i read. methought she bit her lip at me a little, and that cut me. indeed it left her wholly solitary, the more as she was very little of a reader, and had never a book. but what was i to do? so the rest of the evening flowed by almost without speech. i could have beat myself. i could not lie in my bed that night for rage and repentance, but walked to and fro on my bare feet till i was nearly perished, for the chimney was gone out and the frost keen. the thought of her in the next room, the thought that she might even hear me as i walked, the remembrance of my churlishness and that i must continue to practise the same ungrateful course or be dishonoured, put me beside my reason. i stood like a man between scylla and charybdis: what must she think of me? was my one thought that softened me continually into weakness. what is to become of us? the other which steeled me again to resolution. this was my first night of wakefulness and divided counsels, of which i was now to pass many, pacing like a madman, sometimes weeping like a childish boy, sometimes praying (i fain would hope) like a christian. but prayer is not very difficult, and the hitch comes in practice. in her presence, and above all if i allowed any beginning of familiarity, i found i had very little command of what should follow. but to sit all day in the same room with her, and feign to be engaged upon heineccius, surpassed my strength. so that i fell instead upon the expedient of absenting myself so much as i was able; taking out classes and sitting there regularly, often with small attention, the test of which i found the other day in a note-book of that period, where i had left off to follow an edifying lecture and actually scribbled in my book some very ill verses, though the latinity is rather better than i thought that i could ever have compassed. the evil of this course was unhappily near as great as its advantage. i had the less time of trial, but i believe, while the time lasted, i was tried the more extremely. for she being so much left to solitude, she came to greet my return with an increasing fervour that came nigh to overmaster me. these friendly offers i must barbarously cast back; and my rejection sometimes wounded her so cruelly that i must unbend and seek to make it up to her in kindness. so that our time passed in ups and downs, tiffs and disappointments, upon the which i could almost say (if it may be said with reverence) that i was crucified. the base of my trouble was catriona's extraordinary innocence, at which i was not so much surprised as filled with pity and admiration. she seemed to have no thought of our position, no sense of my struggles; welcomed any mark of my weakness with responsive joy; and when i was drove again to my retrenchments, did not always dissemble her chagrin. there were times when i have thought to myself, "if she were over head in love, and set her cap to catch me, she would scarce behave much otherwise;" and then i would fall again into wonder at the simplicity of woman, from whom i felt (in these moments) that i was not worthy to be descended. there was one point in particular on which our warfare turned, and of all things, this was the question of her clothes. my baggage had soon followed me from rotterdam, and hers from helvoet. she had now, as it were, two wardrobes; and it grew to be understood between us (i could never tell how) that when she was friendly she would wear my clothes, and when otherwise her own. it was meant for a buffet, and (as it were) the renunciation of her gratitude; and i felt it so in my bosom, but was generally more wise than to appear to have observed the circumstance. once, indeed, i was betrayed into a childishness greater than her own; it fell in this way. on my return from classes, thinking upon her devoutly with a great deal of love and a good deal of annoyance in the bargain, the annoyance began to fade away out of my mind; and spying in a window one of those forced flowers, of which the hollanders are so skilled in the artifice, i gave way to an impulse and bought it for catriona. i do not know the name of that flower, but it was of the pink colour, and i thought she would admire the same, and carried it home to her with a wonderful soft heart. i had left her in my clothes, and when i returned to find her all changed and a face to match, i cast but the one look at her from head to foot, ground my teeth together, flung the window open, and my flower into the court, and then (between rage and prudence) myself out of that room again, of which i slammed she door as i went out. on the steep stair i came near falling, and this brought me to myself, so that i began at once to see the folly of my conduct. i went, not into the street as i had purposed, but to the house court, which was always a solitary place, and where i saw my flower (that had cost me vastly more than it was worth) hanging in the leafless tree. i stood by the side of the canal, and looked upon the ice. country people went by on their skates, and i envied them. i could see no way out of the pickle i was in no way so much as to return to the room i had just left. no doubt was in my mind but i had now betrayed the secret of my feelings; and to make things worse, i had shown at the same time (and that with wretched boyishness) incivility to my helpless guest. i suppose she must have seen me from the open window. it did not seem to me that i had stood there very long before i heard the crunching of footsteps on the frozen snow, and turning somewhat angrily (for i was in no spirit to be interrupted) saw catriona drawing near. she was all changed again, to the clocked stockings. "are we not to have our walk to-day?" said she. i was looking at her in a maze. "where is your brooch?" says i. she carried her hand to her bosom and coloured high. "i will have forgotten it," said she. "i will run upstairs for it quick, and then surely we'll can have our walk?" there was a note of pleading in that last that staggered me; i had neither words nor voice to utter them; i could do no more than nod by way of answer; and the moment she had left me, climbed into the tree and recovered my flower, which on her return i offered her. "i bought it for you, catriona," said i. she fixed it in the midst of her bosom with the brooch, i could have thought tenderly. "it is none the better of my handling," said i again, and blushed. "i will be liking it none the worse, you may be sure of that," said she. we did not speak so much that day; she seemed a thought on the reserve, though not unkindly. as for me, all the time of our walking, and after we came home, and i had seen her put my flower into a pot of water, i was thinking to myself what puzzles women were. i was thinking, the one moment, it was the most stupid thing on earth she should not have perceived my love; and the next, that she had certainly perceived it long ago, and (being a wise girl with the fine female instinct of propriety) concealed her knowledge. we had our walk daily. out in the streets i felt more safe; i relaxed a little in my guardedness; and for one thing, there was no heineccius. this made these periods not only a relief to myself, but a particular pleasure to my poor child. when i came back about the hour appointed, i would generally find her ready dressed, and glowing with anticipation. she would prolong their duration to the extreme, seeming to dread (as i did myself) the hour of the return; and there is scarce a field or waterside near leyden, scarce a street or lane there, where we have not lingered. outside of these, i bade her confine herself entirely to our lodgings; this in the fear of her encountering any acquaintance, which would have rendered our position very difficult. from the same apprehension i would never suffer her to attend church, nor even go myself; but made some kind of shift to hold worship privately in our own chamber i hope with an honest, but i am quite sure with a very much divided mind. indeed, there was scarce anything that more affected me, than thus to kneel down alone with her before god like man and wife. one day it was snowing downright hard. i had thought it not possible that we should venture forth, and was surprised to find her waiting for me ready dressed. "i will not be doing without my walk," she cried. "you are never a good boy, davie, in the house; i will never be caring for you only in the open air. i think we two will better turn egyptian and dwell by the roadside." that was the best walk yet of all of them; she clung near to me in the falling snow; it beat about and melted on us, and the drops stood upon her bright cheeks like tears and ran into her smiling mouth. strength seemed to come upon me with the sight like a giant's; i thought i could have caught her up and run with her into the uttermost places in the earth; and we spoke together all that time beyond belief for freedom and sweetness. it was the dark night when we came to the house door. she pressed my arm upon her bosom. "thank you kindly for these same good hours," said she, on a deep note of her voice. the concern in which i fell instantly on this address, put me with the same swiftness on my guard; and we were no sooner in the chamber, and the light made, than she beheld the old, dour, stubborn countenance of the student of heineccius. doubtless she was more than usually hurt; and i know for myself, i found it more than usually difficult to maintain any strangeness. even at the meal, i durst scarce unbuckle and scarce lift my eyes to her; and it was no sooner over than i fell again to my civilian, with more seeming abstraction and less understanding than before. methought, as i read, i could hear my heart strike like an eight-day clock. hard as i feigned to study, there was still some of my eyesight that spilled beyond the book upon catriona. she sat on the floor by the side of my great mail, and the chimney lighted her up, and shone and blinked upon her, and made her glow and darken through a wonder of fine hues. now she would be gazing in the fire, and then again at me; and at that i would be plunged in a terror of myself, and turn the pages of heineccius like a man looking for the text in church. suddenly she called out aloud. "o, why does not my father come?" she cried, and fell at once into a storm of tears. i leaped up, flung heineccius fairly in the fire, ran to her side, and cast an arm around her sobbing body. she put me from her sharply, "you do not love your friend," says she. "i could be so happy too, if you would let me!" and then, "o, what will i have done that you should hate me so?" "hate you!" cries i, and held her firm. "you blind less, can you not see a little in my wretched heart? do you not think when i sit there, reading in that fool-book that i have just burned and be damned to it, i take ever the least thought of any stricken thing but just yourself? night after night i could have grat to see you sitting there your lone. and what was i to do? you are here under my honour; would you punish me for that? is it for that that you would spurn a loving servant?" at the word, with a small, sudden motion, she clung near to me. i raised her face to mine, i kissed it, and she bowed her brow upon my bosom, clasping me tight. i saw in a mere whirl like a man drunken. then i heard her voice sound very small and muffled in my clothes. "did you kiss her truly?" she asked. there went through me so great a heave of surprise that i was all shook with it. "miss grant?" i cried, all in a disorder. "yes, i asked her to kiss me good-bye, the which she did." "ah, well!" said she, "you have kissed me too, at all events." at the strangeness and sweetness of that word, i saw where we had fallen; rose, and set her on her feet. "this will never do," said i. "this will never, never do. o catrine, catrine!" then there came a pause in which i was debarred from any speaking. and then, "go away to your bed," said i. "go away to your bed and leave me." she turned to obey me like a child, and the next i knew of it, had stopped in the very doorway. "good night, davie!" said she. "and o, good night, my love!" i cried, with a great outbreak of my soul, and caught her to me again, so that it seemed i must have broken her. the next moment i had thrust her from the room, shut to the door even with violence, and stood alone. the milk was spilt now, the word was out and the truth told. i had crept like an untrusty man into the poor maid's affections; she was in my hand like any frail, innocent thing to make or mar; and what weapon of defence was left me? it seemed like a symbol that heineccius, my old protection, was now burned. i repented, yet could not find it in my heart to blame myself for that great failure. it seemed not possible to have resisted the boldness of her innocence or that last temptation of her weeping. and all that i had to excuse me did but make my sin appear the greater it was upon a nature so defenceless, and with such advantages of the position, that i seemed to have practised. what was to become of us now? it seemed we could no longer dwell in the one place. but where was i to go? or where she? without either choice or fault of ours, life had conspired to wall us together in that narrow place. i had a wild thought of marrying out of hand; and the next moment put it from me with revolt. she was a child, she could not tell her own heart; i had surprised her weakness, i must never go on to build on that surprisal; i must keep her not only clear of reproach, but free as she had come to me. down i sat before the fire, and reflected, and repented, and beat my brains in vain for any means of escape. about two of the morning, there were three red embers left and the house and all the city was asleep, when i was aware of a small sound of weeping in the next room. she thought that i slept, the poor soul; she regretted her weakness and what perhaps (god help her!) she called her forwardness and in the dead of the night solaced herself with tears. tender and bitter feelings, love and penitence and pity, struggled in my soul; it seemed i was under bond to heal that weeping. "o, try to forgive me!" i cried out, "try, try to forgive me. let us forget it all, let us try if we'll no can forget it!" there came no answer, but the sobbing ceased. i stood a long while with my hands still clasped as i had spoken; then the cold of the night laid hold upon me with a shudder, and i think my reason reawakened. "you can make no hand of this, davie," thinks i. "to bed with you like a wise lad, and try if you can sleep. to-morrow you may see your way." chapter xxv the return of james more i was called on the morrow out of a late and troubled slumber by a knocking on my door, ran to open it, and had almost swooned with the contrariety of my feelings, mostly painful; for on the threshold, in a rough wraprascal and an extraordinary big laced hat, there stood james more. i ought to have been glad perhaps without admixture, for there was a sense in which the man came like an answer to prayer. i had been saying till my head was weary that catriona and i must separate, and looking till my head ached for any possible means of separation. here were the means come to me upon two legs, and joy was the hindmost of my thoughts. it is to be considered, however, that even if the weight of the future were lifted off me by the man's arrival, the present heaved up the more black and menacing; so that, as i first stood before him in my shirt and breeches, i believe i took a leaping step backward like a person shot. "ah," said he, "i have found you, mr, balfour." and offered me his large, fine hand, the which (recovering at the same time my post in the doorway, as if with some thought of resistance) i took him by doubtfully. "it is a remarkable circumstance how our affairs appear to intermingle," he continued. "i am owing you an apology for an unfortunate intrusion upon yours, which i suffered myself to be entrapped into by my confidence in that false-face, prestongrange; i think shame to own to you that i was ever trusting to a lawyer." he shrugged his shoulders with a very french air. "but indeed the man is very plausible," says he. "and now it seems that you have busied yourself handsomely in the matter of my daughter, for whose direction i was remitted to yourself." "i think, sir," said i, with a very painful air, "that it will be necessary we two should have an explanation." "there is nothing amiss?" he asked. "my agent, mr. sprott " "for god's sake moderate your voice!" i cried. "she must not hear till we have had an explanation." "she is in this place?" cries he. "that is her chamber door," said i. "you are here with her alone?" he asked. "and who else would i have got to stay with us?" cries i. i will do him the justice to admit that he turned pale. "this is very unusual," said he. "this is a very unusual circumstance. you are right, we must hold an explanation." so saying he passed me by, and i must own the tall old rogue appeared at that moment extraordinary dignified. he had now, for the first time, the view of my chamber, which i scanned (i may say) with his eyes. a bit of morning sun glinted in by the window pane, and showed it off; my bed, my mails, and washing dish, with some disorder of my clothes, and the unlighted chimney, made the only plenishing; no mistake but it looked bare and cold, and the most unsuitable, beggarly place conceivable to harbour a young lady. at the same time came in on my mind the recollection of the clothes that i had bought for her; and i thought this contrast of poverty and prodigality bore an ill appearance. he looked all about the chamber for a seat, and finding nothing else to his purpose except my bed, took a place upon the side of it; where, after i had closed the door, i could not very well avoid joining him. for however this extraordinary interview might end, it must pass if possible without waking catriona; and the one thing needful was that we should sit close and talk low. but i can scarce picture what a pair we made; he in his great coat which the coldness of my chamber made extremely suitable; i shivering in my shirt and breeks; he with very much the air of a judge; and i (whatever i looked) with very much the feelings of a man who has heard the last trumpet. "well?" says he. and "well," i began, but found myself unable to go further. "you tell me she is here?" said he again, but now with a spice of impatience that seemed to brace me up. "she is in this house," said i, "and i knew the circumstance would be called unusual. but you are to consider how very unusual the whole business was from the beginning. here is a young lady landed on the coast of europe with two shillings and a penny halfpenny. she is directed to yon man sprott in helvoet. i hear you call him your agent. all i can say is he could do nothing but damn and swear at the mere mention of your name, and i must fee him out of my own pocket even to receive the custody of her effects. you speak of unusual circumstances, mr. drummond, if that be the name you prefer. here was a circumstance, if you like, to which it was barbarity to have exposed her." "but this is what i cannot understand the least," said james. "my daughter was placed into the charge of some responsible persons, whose names i have forgot." "gebbie was the name," said i; "and there is no doubt that mr. gebbie should have gone ashore with her at helvoet. but he did not, mr. drummond; and i think you might praise god that i was there to offer in his place." "i shall have a word to say to mr. gebbie before long," said he. "as for yourself, i think it might have occurred that you were somewhat young for such a post." "but the choice was not between me and somebody else, it was between me and nobody," cried i. "nobody offered in my place, and i must say i think you show a very small degree of gratitude to me that did." "i shall wait until i understand my obligation a little more in the particular," says he. "indeed, and i think it stares you in the face, then," said i. "your child was deserted, she was clean flung away in the midst of europe, with scarce two shillings, and not two words of any language spoken there: i must say, a bonny business! i brought her to this place. i gave her the name and the tenderness due to a sister. all this has not gone without expense, but that i scarce need to hint at. they were services due to the young lady's character which i respect; and i think it would be a bonny business too, if i was to be singing her praises to her father." "you are a young man," he began. "so i hear you tell me," said i, with a good deal of heat. "you are a very young man," he repeated, "or you would have understood the significancy of the step." "i think you speak very much at your ease," cried i. "what else was i to do? it is a fact i might have hired some decent, poor woman to be a third to us, and i declare i never thought of it until this moment! but where was i to find her, that am a foreigner myself? and let me point out to your observation, mr. drummond, that it would have cost me money out of my pocket. for here is just what it comes to, that i had to pay through the nose for your neglect; and there is only the one story to it, just that you were so unloving and so careless as to have lost your daughter." "he that lives in a glass house should not be casting stones," says he; "and we will finish inquiring into the behaviour of miss drummond before we go on to sit in judgment on her father." "but i will be entrapped into no such attitude," said i. "the character of miss drummond is far above inquiry, as her father ought to know. so is mine, and i am telling you that. there are but the two ways of it open. the one is to express your thanks to me as one gentleman to another, and to say no more. the other (if you are so difficult as to be still dissatisfied) is to pay me, that which i have expended and be done." he seemed to soothe me with a hand in the air. "there, there," said he. "you go too fast, you go too fast, mr. balfour. it is a good thing that i have learned to be more patient. and i believe you forget that i have yet to see my daughter." i began to be a little relieved upon this speech and a change in the man's manner that i spied in him as soon as the name of money fell between us. "i was thinking it would be more fit if you will excuse the plainness of my dressing in your presence that i should go forth and leave you to encounter her alone?" said i. "what i would have looked for at your hands!" says he; and there was no mistake but what he said it civilly. i thought this better and better still, and as i began to pull on my hose, recalling the man's impudent mendicancy at prestongrange's, i determined to pursue what seemed to be my victory. "if you have any mind to stay some while in leyden," said i, "this room is very much at your disposal, and i can easy find another for myself: in which way we shall have the least amount of flitting possible, there being only one to change." "why, sir," said he, making his bosom big, "i think no shame of a poverty i have come by in the service of my king; i make no secret that my affairs are quite involved; and for the moment, it would be even impossible for me to undertake a journey." "until you have occasion to communicate with your friends," said i, "perhaps it might be convenient for you (as of course it would be honourable to myself) if you were to regard yourself in the light of my guest?" "sir," said he, "when an offer is frankly made, i think i honour myself most to imitate that frankness. your hand, mr. david; you have the character that i respect the most; you are one of those from whom a gentleman can take a favour and no more words about it. i am an old soldier," he went on, looking rather disgusted-like around my chamber, "and you need not fear i shall prove burthensome. i have ate too often at a dyke-side, drank of the ditch, and had no roof but the rain." "i should be telling you," said i, "that our breakfasts are sent customarily in about this time of morning. i propose i should go now to the tavern, and bid them add a cover for yourself and delay the meal the matter of an hour, which will give you an interval to meet your daughter in." methought his nostrils wagged at this. "o, an hour" says he. "that is perhaps superfluous. half an hour, mr. david, or say twenty minutes; i shall do very well in that. and by the way," he adds, detaining me by the coat, "what is it you drink in the morning, whether ale or wine?" "to be frank with you, sir," says i, "i drink nothing else but spare, cold water." "tut-tut," says he, "that is fair destruction to the stomach, take an old campaigner's word for it. our country spirit at home is perhaps the most entirely wholesome; but as that is not come-at-able, rhenish or a white wine of burgundy will be next best." "i shall make it my business to see you are supplied," said i. "why, very good," said he, "and we shall make a man of you yet, mr. david." by this time, i can hardly say that i was minding him at all, beyond an odd thought of the kind of father-in-law that he was like to prove; and all my cares centred about the lass his daughter, to whom i determined to convey some warning of her visitor. i stepped to the door accordingly, and cried through the panels, knocking thereon at the same time: "miss drummond, here is your father come at last." with that i went forth upon my errand, having (by two words) extraordinarily damaged my affairs. chapter xxvi the threesome whether or not i was to be so much blamed, or rather perhaps pitied, i must leave others to judge. my shrewdness (of which i have a good deal, too) seems not so great with the ladies. no doubt, at the moment when i awaked her, i was thinking a good deal of the effect upon james more; and similarly when i returned and we were all sat down to breakfast, i continued to behave to the young lady with deference and distance; as i still think to have been most wise. her father had cast doubts upon the innocence of my friendship; and these, it was my first business to allay. but there is a kind of an excuse for catriona also. we had shared in a scene of some tenderness and passion, and given and received caresses: i had thrust her from me with violence; i had called aloud upon her in the night from the one room to the other; she had passed hours of wakefulness and weeping; and it is not to be supposed i had been absent from her pillow thoughts. upon the back of this, to be awaked, with unaccustomed formality, under the name of miss drummond, and to be thenceforth used with a great deal of distance and respect, led her entirely in error on my private sentiments; and she was indeed so incredibly abused as to imagine me repentant and trying to draw off! the trouble betwixt us seems to have been this: that whereas i (since i had first set eyes on his great hat) thought singly of james more, his return and suspicions, she made so little of these that i may say she scarce remarked them, and all her troubles and doings regarded what had passed between us in the night before. this is partly to be explained by the innocence and boldness of her character; and partly because james more, having sped so ill in his interview with me, or had his mouth closed by my invitation, said no word to her upon the subject. at the breakfast, accordingly, it soon appeared we were at cross purposes. i had looked to find her in clothes of her own: i found her (as if her father were forgotten) wearing some of the best that i had bought for her, and which she knew (or thought) that i admired her in. i had looked to find her imitate my affectation of distance, and be most precise and formal; instead i found her flushed and wild-like, with eyes extraordinary bright, and a painful and varying expression, calling me by name with a sort of appeal of tenderness, and referring and deferring to my thoughts and wishes like an anxious or a suspected wife. but this was not for long. as i behold her so regardless of her own interests, which i had jeopardised and was now endeavouring to recover, i redoubled my own coldness in the manner of a lesson to the girl. the more she came forward, the farther i drew back; the more she betrayed the closeness of our intimacy, the more pointedly civil i became, until even her father (if he had not been so engrossed with eating) might have observed the opposition. in the midst of which, of a sudden, she became wholly changed, and i told myself, with a good deal of relief, that she had took the hint at last. all day i was at my classes or in quest of my new lodging; and though the hour of our customary walk hung miserably on my hands, i cannot say but i was happy on the whole to find my way cleared, the girl again in proper keeping, the father satisfied or at least acquiescent, and myself free to prosecute my love with honour. at supper, as at all our meals, it was james more that did the talking. no doubt but he talked well if anyone could have believed him. but i will speak of him presently more at large. the meal at an end, he rose, got his great coat, and looking (as i thought) at me, observed he had affairs abroad. i took this for a hint that i was to be going also, and got up; whereupon the girl, who had scarce given me greeting at my entrance, turned her eyes upon me wide open with a look that bade me stay. i stood between them like a fish out of water, turning from one to the other; neither seemed to observe me, she gazing on the floor, he buttoning his coat: which vastly swelled my embarrassment. this appearance of indifference argued, upon her side, a good deal of anger very near to burst out. upon his, i thought it horribly alarming; i made sure there was a tempest brewing there; and considering that to be the chief peril, turned towards him and put myself (so to speak) in the man's hands. "can i do anything for you, mr. drummond?" says i. he stifled a yawn, which again i thought to be duplicity. "why, mr. david," said he, "since you are so obliging as to propose it, you might show me the way to a certain tavern" (of which he gave the name) "where i hope to fall in with some old companions in arms." there was no more to say, and i got my hat and cloak to bear him company. "and as for you," say he to his daughter, "you had best go to your bed. i shall be late home, and early to bed and early to rise, gars bonny lasses have bright eyes." whereupon he kissed her with a good deal of tenderness, and ushered me before him from the door. this was so done (i thought on purpose) that it was scarce possible there should be any parting salutation; but i observed she did not look at me, and set it down to terror of james more. it was some distance to that tavern. he talked all the way of matters which did not interest me the smallest, and at the door dismissed me with empty manners. thence i walked to my new lodging, where i had not so much as a chimney to hold me warm, and no society but my own thoughts. these were still bright enough; i did not so much as dream that catriona was turned against me; i thought we were like folk pledged; i thought we had been too near and spoke too warmly to be severed, least of all by what were only steps in a most needful policy. and the chief of my concern was only the kind of father-in-law that i was getting, which was not at all the kind i would have chosen: and the matter of how soon i ought to speak to him, which was a delicate point on several sides. in the first place, when i thought how young i was i blushed all over, and could almost have found it in my heart to have desisted; only that if once i let them go from leyden without explanation, i might lose her altogether. and in the second place, there was our very irregular situation to be kept in view, and the rather scant measure of satisfaction i had given james more that morning. i concluded, on the whole, that delay would not hurt anything, yet i would not delay too long neither; and got to my cold bed with a full heart. the next day, as james more seemed a little on the complaining hand in the matter of my chamber, i offered to have in more furniture; and coming in the afternoon, with porters bringing chairs and tables, found the girl once more left to herself. she greeted me on my admission civilly, but withdrew at once to her own room, of which she shut the door. i made my disposition, and paid and dismissed the men so that she might hear them go, when i supposed she would at once come forth again to speak to me. i waited yet awhile, then knocked upon her door. "catriona!" said i. the door was opened so quickly, even before i had the word out, that i thought she must have stood behind it listening. she remained there in the interval quite still; but she had a look that i cannot put a name on, as of one in a bitter trouble. "are we not to have our walk to-day either?" so i faltered. "i am thanking you," said she. "i will not be caring much to walk, now that my father is come home." "but i think he has gone out himself and left you here alone," said i. "and do you think that was very kindly said?" she asked. "it was not unkindly meant," i replied. "what ails you, catriona? what have i done to you that you should turn from me like this?" "i do not turn from you at all," she said, speaking very carefully. "i will ever be grateful to my friend that was good to me; i will ever be his friend in all that i am able. but now that my father james more is come again, there is a difference to be made, and i think there are some things said and done that would be better to be forgotten. but i will ever be your friend in all that i am able, and if that is not all that . . . . if it is not so much . . . . not that you will be caring! but i would not have you think of me too hard. it was true what you said to me, that i was too young to be advised, and i am hoping you will remember i was just a child. i would not like to lose your friendship, at all events." she began this very pale; but before she was done, the blood was in her face like scarlet, so that not her words only, but her face and the trembling of her very hands, besought me to be gentle. i saw, for the first time, how very wrong i had done to place the child in that position, where she had been entrapped into a moment's weakness, and now stood before me like a person shamed. "miss drummond," i said, and stuck, and made the same beginning once again, "i wish you could see into my heart," i cried. "you would read there that my respect is undiminished. if that were possible, i should say it was increased. this is but the result of the mistake we made; and had to come; and the less said of it now the better. of all of our life here, i promise you it shall never pass my lips; i would like to promise you too that i would never think of it, but it's a memory that will be always dear to me. and as for a friend, you have one here that would die for you." "i am thanking you," said she. we stood awhile silent, and my sorrow for myself began to get the upper hand; for here were all my dreams come to a sad tumble, and my love lost, and myself alone again in the world as at the beginning. "well," said i, "we shall be friends always, that's a certain thing. but this is a kind of farewell, too: it's a kind of a farewell after all; i shall always ken miss drummond, but this is a farewell to my catriona." i looked at her; i could hardly say i saw her, but she seemed to grow great and brighten in my eyes; and with that i suppose i must have lost my head, for i called out her name again and made a step at her with my hands reached forth. she shrank back like a person struck, her face flamed; but the blood sprang no faster up into her cheeks, than what it flowed back upon my own heart, at sight of it, with penitence and concern. i found no words to excuse myself, but bowed before her very deep, and went my ways out of the house with death in my bosom. i think it was about five days that followed without any change. i saw her scarce ever but at meals, and then of course in the company of james more. if we were alone even for a moment, i made it my devoir to behave the more distantly and to multiply respectful attentions, having always in my mind's eye that picture of the girl shrinking and flaming in a blush, and in my heart more pity for her than i could depict in words. i was sorry enough for myself, i need not dwell on that, having fallen all my length and more than all my height in a few seconds; but, indeed, i was near as sorry for the girl, and sorry enough to be scarce angry with her save by fits and starts. her plea was good; she had been placed in an unfair position; if she had deceived herself and me, it was no more than was to have been looked for. and for another thing she was now very much alone. her father, when he was by, was rather a caressing parent; but he was very easy led away by his affairs and pleasures, neglected her without compunction or remark, spent his nights in taverns when he had the money, which was more often than i could at all account for; and even in the course of these few days, failed once to come to a meal, which catriona and i were at last compelled to partake of without him. it was the evening meal, and i left immediately that i had eaten, observing i supposed she would prefer to be alone; to which she agreed and (strange as it may seem) i quite believed her. indeed, i thought myself but an eyesore to the girl, and a reminder of a moment's weakness that she now abhorred to think of. so she must sit alone in that room where she and i had been so merry, and in the blink of that chimney whose light had shone upon our many difficult and tender moments. there she must sit alone, and think of herself as of a maid who had most unmaidenly proffered her affections and had the same rejected. and in the meanwhile i would be alone some other place, and reading myself (whenever i was tempted to be angry) lessons upon human frailty and female delicacy. and altogether i suppose there were never two poor fools made themselves more unhappy in a greater misconception. as for james, he paid not so much heed to us, or to anything in nature but his pocket, and his belly, and his own prating talk. before twelve hours were gone he had raised a small loan of me; before thirty, he had asked for a second and been refused. money and refusal he took with the same kind of high good nature. indeed, he had an outside air of magnanimity that was very well fitted to impose upon a daughter; and the light in which he was constantly presented in his talk, and the man's fine presence and great ways went together pretty harmoniously. so that a man that had no business with him, and either very little penetration or a furious deal of prejudice, might almost have been taken in. to me, after my first two interviews, he was as plain as print; i saw him to be perfectly selfish, with a perfect innocency in the same; and i would hearken to his swaggering talk (of arms, and "an old soldier," and "a poor highland gentleman," and "the strength of my country and my friends") as i might to the babbling of a parrot. the odd thing was that i fancy he believed some part of it himself, or did at times; i think he was so false all through that he scarce knew when he was lying; and for one thing, his moments of dejection must have been wholly genuine. there were times when he would be the most silent, affectionate, clinging creature possible, holding catriona's hand like a big baby, and begging of me not to leave if i had any love to him; of which, indeed, i had none, but all the more to his daughter. he would press and indeed beseech us to entertain him with our talk, a thing very difficult in the state of our relations; and again break forth in pitiable regrets for his own land and friends, or into gaelic singing. "this is one of the melancholy airs of my native land," he would say. "you may think it strange to see a soldier weep, and indeed it is to make a near friend of you," says he. "but the notes of this singing are in my blood, and the words come out of my heart. and when i mind upon my red mountains and the wild birds calling there, and the brave streams of water running down, i would scarce think shame to weep before my enemies." then he would sing again, and translate to me pieces of the song, with a great deal of boggling and much expressed contempt against the english language. "it says here," he would say, "that the sun is gone down, and the battle is at an end, and the brave chiefs are defeated. and it tells here how the stars see them fleeing into strange countries or lying dead on the red mountain; and they will never more shout the call of battle or wash their feet in the streams of the valley. but if you had only some of this language, you would weep also because the words of it are beyond all expression, and it is mere mockery to tell you it in english." well, i thought there was a good deal of mockery in the business, one way and another; and yet, there was some feeling too, for which i hated him, i think, the worst of all. and it used to cut me to the quick to see catriona so much concerned for the old rogue, and weeping herself to see him weep, when i was sure one half of his distress flowed from his last night's drinking in some tavern. there were times when i was tempted to lend him a round sum, and see the last of him for good; but this would have been to see the last of catriona as well, for which i was scarcely so prepared; and besides, it went against my conscience to squander my good money on one who was so little of a husband. chapter xxvii a twosome i believe it was about the fifth day, and i know at least that james was in one of his fits of gloom, when i received three letters. the first was from alan, offering to visit me in leyden; the other two were out of scotland and prompted by the same affair, which was the death of my uncle and my own complete accession to my rights. rankeillor's was, of course, wholly in the business view; miss grant's was like herself, a little more witty than wise, full of blame to me for not having written (though how was i to write with such intelligence?) and of rallying talk about catriona, which it cut me to the quick to read in her very presence. for it was of course in my own rooms that i found them, when i came to dinner, so that i was surprised out of my news in the very first moment of reading it. this made a welcome diversion for all three of us, nor could any have foreseen the ill consequences that ensued. it was accident that brought the three letters the same day, and that gave them into my hand in the same room with james more; and of all the events that flowed from that accident, and which i might have prevented if i had held my tongue, the truth is that they were preordained before agricola came into scotland or abraham set out upon his travels. the first that i opened was naturally alan's; and what more natural than that i should comment on his design to visit me? but i observed james to sit up with an air of immediate attention. "is that not alan breck that was suspected of the appin accident?" he inquired. i told him, "ay," it was the same; and he withheld me some time from my other letters, asking of our acquaintance, of alan's manner of life in france, of which i knew very little, and further of his visit as now proposed. "all we forfeited folk hang a little together," he explained, "and besides i know the gentleman: and though his descent is not the thing, and indeed he has no true right to use the name of stewart, he was very much admired in the day of drummossie. he did there like a soldier; if some that need not be named had done as well, the upshot need not have been so melancholy to remember. there were two that did their best that day, and it makes a bond between the pair of us," says he. i could scarce refrain from shooting out my tongue at him, and could almost have wished that alan had been there to have inquired a little further into that mention of his birth. though, they tell me, the same was indeed not wholly regular. meanwhile, i had opened miss grant's, and could not withhold an exclamation. "catriona," i cried, forgetting, the first time since her father was arrived, to address her by a handle, "i am come into my kingdom fairly, i am the laird of shaws indeed my uncle is dead at last." she clapped her hands together leaping from her seat. the next moment it must have come over both of us at once what little cause of joy was left to either, and we stood opposite, staring on each other sadly. but james showed himself a ready hypocrite. "my daughter," says he, "is this how my cousin learned you to behave? mr. david has lost a new friend, and we should first condole with him on his bereavement." "troth, sir," said i, turning to him in a kind of anger, "i can make no such great faces. his death is as blithe news as ever i got." "it's a good soldier's philosophy," says james. "'tis the way of flesh, we must all go, all go. and if the gentleman was so far from your favour, why, very well! but we may at least congratulate you on your accession to your estates." "nor can i say that either," i replied, with the same heat. "it is a good estate; what matters that to a lone man that has enough already? i had a good revenue before in my frugality; and but for the man's death which gratifies me, shame to me that must confess it! i see not how anyone is to be bettered by this change." "come, come," said he, "you are more affected than you let on, or you would never make yourself out so lonely. here are three letters; that means three that wish you well; and i could name two more, here in this very chamber. i have known you not so very long, but catriona, when we are alone, is never done with the singing of your praises." she looked up at him, a little wild at that; and he slid off at once into another matter, the extent of my estate, which (during the most of the dinner time) he continued to dwell upon with interest. but it was to no purpose he dissembled; he had touched the matter with too gross a hand: and i knew what to expect. dinner was scarce ate when he plainly discovered his designs. he reminded catriona of an errand, and bid her attend to it. "i do not see you should be one beyond the hour," he added, "and friend david will be good enough to bear me company till you return." she made haste to obey him without words. i do not know if she understood, i believe not; but i was completely satisfied, and sat strengthening my mind for what should follow. the door had scarce closed behind her departure, when the man leaned back in his chair and addressed me with a good affectation of easiness. only the one thing betrayed him, and that was his face; which suddenly shone all over with fine points of sweat. "i am rather glad to have a word alone with you," says he, "because in our first interview there were some expressions you misapprehended and i have long meant to set you right upon. my daughter stands beyond doubt. so do you, and i would make that good with my sword against all gainsayers. but, my dear david, this world is a censorious place as who should know it better than myself, who have lived ever since the days of my late departed father, god sain him! in a perfect spate of calumnies? we have to face to that; you and me have to consider of that; we have to consider of that." and he wagged his head like a minister in a pulpit. "to what effect, mr. drummond?" said i. "i would be obliged to you if you would approach your point." "ay, ay," said he, laughing, "like your character, indeed! and what i most admire in it. but the point, my worthy fellow, is sometimes in a kittle bit." he filled a glass of wine. "though between you and me, that are such fast friends, it need not bother us long. the point, i need scarcely tell you, is my daughter. and the first thing is that i have no thought in my mind of blaming you. in the unfortunate circumstances, what could you do else? 'deed, and i cannot tell." "i thank you for that," said i, pretty close upon my guard. "i have besides studied your character," he went on; "your talents are fair; you seem to have a moderate competence, which does no harm; and one thing with another, i am very happy to have to announce to you that i have decided on the latter of the two ways open." "i am afraid i am dull," said i. "what ways are these?" he bent his brows upon me formidably and uncrossed his legs. "why, sir," says he, "i think i need scarce describe them to a gentleman of your condition; either that i should cut your throat or that you should marry my daughter." "you are pleased to be quite plain at last," said i. "and i believe i have been plain from the beginning!" cries he robustiously. "i am a careful parent, mr. balfour; but i thank god, a patient and deleeborate man. there is many a father, sir, that would have hirsled you at once either to the altar or the field. my esteem for your character " "mr. drummond," i interrupted, "if you have any esteem for me at all, i will beg of you to moderate your voice. it is quite needless to rowt at a gentleman in the same chamber with yourself and lending you his best attention." "why, very true," says he, with an immediate change. "and you must excuse the agitations of a parent." "i understand you then," i continued "for i will take no note of your other alternative, which perhaps it was a pity you let fall i understand you rather to offer me encouragement in case i should desire to apply for your daughter's hand?" "it is not possible to express my meaning better," said he, "and i see we shall do well together." "that remains to be yet seen," said i. "but so much i need make no secret of, that i bear the lady you refer to the most tender affection, and i could not fancy, even in a dream, a better fortune than to get her." "i was sure of it, i felt certain of you, david," he cried, and reached out his hand to me. i put it by. "you go too fast, mr. drummond," said i. "there are conditions to be made; and there is a difficulty in the path, which i see not entirely how we shall come over. i have told you that, upon my side, there is no objection to the marriage, but i have good reason to believe there will be much on the young lady's." "this is all beside the mark," says he. "i will engage for her acceptance." "i think you forget, mr. drummond," said i, "that, even in dealing with myself, you have been betrayed into two-three unpalatable expressions. i will have none such employed to the young lady. i am here to speak and think for the two of us; and i give you to understand that i would no more let a wife be forced upon myself, than what i would let a husband be forced on the young lady." he sat and glowered at me like one in doubt and a good deal of temper. "so that is to be the way of it," i concluded. "i will marry miss drummond, and that blithely, if she is entirely willing. but if there be the least unwillingness, as i have reason to fear marry her will i never." "well well," said he, "this is a small affair. as soon as she returns i will sound her a bit, and hope to reassure you " but i cut in again. "not a finger of you, mr. drummond, or i cry off, and you can seek a husband to your daughter somewhere else," said i. "it is i that am to be the only dealer and the only judge. i shall satisfy myself exactly; and none else shall anyways meddle you the least of all." "upon my word, sir!" he exclaimed, "and who are you to be the judge?" "the bridegroom, i believe," said i. "this is to quibble," he cried. "you turn your back upon the fact. the girl, my daughter, has no choice left to exercise. her character is gone." "and i ask your pardon," said i, "but while this matter lies between her and you and me, that is not so." "what security have i!" he cried. "am i to let my daughter's reputation depend upon a chance?" "you should have thought of all this long ago," said i, "before you were so misguided as to lose her; and not afterwards when it is quite too late. i refuse to regard myself as any way accountable for your neglect, and i will be browbeat by no man living. my mind is quite made up, and come what may, i will not depart from it a hair's breadth. you and me are to sit here in company till her return: upon which, without either word or look from you, she and i are to go forth again to hold our talk. if she can satisfy me that she is willing to this step, i will then make it; and if she cannot, i will not." he leaped out of his chair like a man stung. "i can spy your manoeuvre," he cried; "you would work upon her to refuse!" "maybe ay, and maybe no," said i. "that is the way it is to be, whatever." "and if i refuse?" cries he. "then, mr. drummond, it will have to come to the throat-cutting," said i. what with the size of the man, his great length of arm in which he came near rivalling his father, and his reputed skill at weapons, i did not use this word without trepidation, to say nothing at all of the circumstance that he was catriona's father. but i might have spared myself alarms. from the poorness of my lodging he does not seem to have remarked his daughter's dresses, which were indeed all equally new to him and from the fact that i had shown myself averse to lend, he had embraced a strong idea of my poverty. the sudden news of my estate convinced him of his error, and he had made but the one bound of it on this fresh venture, to which he was now so wedded, that i believe he would have suffered anything rather than fall to the alternative of fighting. a little while longer he continued to dispute with me, until i hit upon a word that silenced him. "if i find you so averse to let me see the lady by herself," said i, "i must suppose you have very good grounds to think me in the right about her unwillingness." he gabbled some kind of an excuse. "but all this is very exhausting to both of our tempers," i added, "and i think we would do better to preserve a judicious silence." the which we did until the girl returned, and i must suppose would have cut a very ridiculous figure had there been any there to view us. chapter xxviii in which i am left alone i opened the door to catriona and stopped her on the threshold. "your father wishes us to take our walk," said i. she looked to james more, who nodded, and at that, like a trained soldier, she turned to go with me. we took one of our old ways, where we had gone often together, and been more happy than i can tell of in the past. i came a half a step behind, so that i could watch her unobserved. the knocking of her little shoes upon the way sounded extraordinary pretty and sad; and i thought it a strange moment that i should be so near both ends of it at once, and walk in the midst between two destinies, and could not tell whether i was hearing these steps for the last time, or whether the sound of them was to go in and out with me till death should part us. she avoided even to look at me, only walked before her, like one who had a guess of what was coming. i saw i must speak soon before my courage was run out, but where to begin i knew not. in this painful situation, when the girl was as good as forced into my arms and had already besought my forbearance, any excess of pressure must have seemed indecent; yet to avoid it wholly would have a very cold-like appearance. between these extremes i stood helpless, and could have bit my fingers; so that, when at last i managed to speak at all, it may be said i spoke at random. "catriona," said i, "i am in a very painful situation; or rather, so we are both; and i would be a good deal obliged to you if you would promise to let me speak through first of all, and not to interrupt me till i have done." she promised me that simply. "well," said i, "this that i have got to say is very difficult, and i know very well i have no right to be saying it. after what passed between the two of us last friday, i have no manner of right. we have got so ravelled up (and all by my fault) that i know very well the least i could do is just to hold my tongue, which was what i intended fully, and there was nothing further from my thoughts than to have troubled you again. but, my dear, it has become merely necessary, and no way by it. you see, this estate of mine has fallen in, which makes of me rather a better match; and the the business would not have quite the same ridiculous-like appearance that it would before. besides which, it's supposed that our affairs have got so much ravelled up (as i was saying) that it would be better to let them be the way they are. in my view, this part of the thing is vastly exagerate, and if i were you i would not wear two thoughts on it. only it's right i should mention the same, because there's no doubt it has some influence on james more. then i think we were none so unhappy when we dwelt together in this town before. i think we did pretty well together. if you would look back, my dear " "i will look neither back nor forward," she interrupted. "tell me the one thing: this is my father's doing?" "he approves of it," said i. "he approved i that i should ask your hand in marriage," and was going on again with somewhat more of an appeal upon her feelings; but she marked me not, and struck into the midst. "he told you to!" she cried. "it is no sense denying it, you said yourself that there was nothing farther from your thoughts. he told you to." "he spoke of it the first, if that is what you mean," i began. she was walking ever the faster, and looking fain in front of her; but at this she made a little noise in her head, and i thought she would have run. "without which," i went on, "after what you said last friday, i would never have been so troublesome as make the offer. but when he as good as asked me, what was i to do?" she stopped and turned round upon me. "well, it is refused at all events," she cried, "and there will be an end of that." and she began again to walk forward. "i suppose i could expect no better," said i, "but i think you might try to be a little kind to me for the last end of it. i see not why you should be harsh. i have loved you very well, catriona no harm that i should call you so for the last time. i have done the best that i could manage, i am trying the same still, and only vexed that i can do no better. it is a strange thing to me that you can take any pleasure to be hard to me." "i am not thinking of you," she said, "i am thinking of that man, my father." "well, and that way, too!" said i. "i can be of use to you that way, too; i will have to be. it is very needful, my dear, that we should consult about your father; for the way this talk has gone, an angry man will be james more." she stopped again. "it is because i am disgraced?" she asked. "that is what he is thinking," i replied, "but i have told you already to make nought of it." "it will be all one to me," she cried. "i prefer to be disgraced!" i did not know very well what to answer, and stood silent. there seemed to be something working in her bosom after that last cry; presently she broke out, "and what is the meaning of all this? why is all this shame loundered on my head? how could you dare it, david balfour?" "my dear," said i, "what else was i to do?" "i am not your dear," she said, "and i defy you to be calling me these words." "i am not thinking of my words," said i. "my heart bleeds for you, miss drummond. whatever i may say, be sure you have my pity in your difficult position. but there is just the one thing that i wish you would bear in view, if it was only long enough to discuss it quietly; for there is going to be a collieshangie when we two get home. take my word for it, it will need the two of us to make this matter end in peace." "ay," said she. there sprang a patch of red in either of her cheeks. "was he for fighting you?" said she. "well, he was that," said i. she gave a dreadful kind of laugh. "at all events, it is complete!" she cried. and then turning on me. "my father and i are a fine pair," said she, "but i am thanking the good god there will be somebody worse than what we are. i am thanking the good god that he has let me see you so. there will never be the girl made that will not scorn you." i had borne a good deal pretty patiently, but this was over the mark. "you have no right to speak to me like that," said i. "what have i done but to be good to you, or try to be? and here is my repayment! o, it is too much." she kept looking at me with a hateful smile. "coward!" said she. "the word in your throat and in your father's!" i cried. "i have dared him this day already in your interest. i will dare him again, the nasty pole-cat; little i care which of us should fall! come," said i, "back to the house with us; let us be done with it, let me be done with the whole hieland crew of you! you will see what you think when i am dead." she shook her head at me with that same smile i could have struck her for. "o, smile away!" i cried. "i have seen your bonny father smile on the wrong side this day. not that i mean he was afraid, of course," i added hastily, "but he preferred the other way of it." "what is this?" she asked. "when i offered to draw with him," said i. "you offered to draw upon james more!" she cried. "and i did so," said i, "and found him backward enough, or how would we be here?" "there is a meaning upon this," said she. "what is it you are meaning?" "he was to make you take me," i replied, "and i would not have it. i said you should be free, and i must speak with you alone; little i supposed it would be such a speaking! 'and what if i refuse?' said he. 'then it must come to the throat-cutting,' says i, 'for i will no more have a husband forced on that young lady, than what i would have a wife forced upon myself.' these were my words, they were a friend's words; bonnily have i paid for them! now you have refused me of your own clear free will, and there lives no father in the highlands, or out of them, that can force on this marriage. i will see that your wishes are respected; i will make the same my business, as i have all through. but i think you might have that decency as to affect some gratitude. 'deed, and i thought you knew me better! i have not behaved quite well to you, but that was weakness. and to think me a coward, and such a coward as that o, my lass, there was a stab for the last of it!" "davie, how would i guess?" she cried. "o, this is a dreadful business! me and mine," she gave a kind of a wretched cry at the word "me and mine are not fit to speak to you. o, i could be kneeling down to you in the street, i could be kissing your hands for forgiveness!" "i will keep the kisses i have got from you already," cried i. "i will keep the ones i wanted and that were something worth; i will not be kissed in penitence." "what can you be thinking of this miserable girl?" says she. "what i am trying to tell you all this while!" said i, "that you had best leave me alone, whom you can make no more unhappy if you tried, and turn your attention to james more, your father, with whom you are like to have a queer pirn to wind." "o, that i must be going out into the world alone with such a man!" she cried, and seemed to catch herself in with a great effort. "but trouble yourself no more for that," said she. "he does not know what kind of nature is in my heart. he will pay me dear for this day of it; dear, dear, will he pay." she turned, and began to go home and i to accompany her. at which she stopped. "i will be going alone," she said. "it is alone i must be seeing him." some little time i raged about the streets, and told myself i was the worst used lad in christendom. anger choked me; it was all very well for me to breathe deep; it seemed there was not air enough about leyden to supply me, and i thought i would have burst like a man at the bottom of the sea. i stopped and laughed at myself at a street corner a minute together, laughing out loud, so that a passenger looked at me, which brought me to myself. "well," i thought, "i have been a gull and a ninny and a soft tommy long enough. time it was done. here is a good lesson to have nothing to do with that accursed sex, that was the ruin of the man in the beginning and will be so to the end. god knows i was happy enough before ever i saw her; god knows i can be happy enough again when i have seen the last of her." that seemed to me the chief affair: to see them go. i dwelled upon the idea fiercely; and presently slipped on, in a kind of malevolence, to consider how very poorly they were likely to fare when davie balfour was no longer by to be their milk-cow; at which, to my very own great surprise, the disposition of my mind turned bottom up. i was still angry; i still hated her; and yet i thought i owed it to myself that she should suffer nothing. this carried me home again at once, where i found the mails drawn out and ready fastened by the door, and the father and daughter with every mark upon them of a recent disagreement. catriona was like a wooden doll; james more breathed hard, his face was dotted with white spots, and his nose upon one side. as soon as i came in, the girl looked at him with a steady, clear, dark look that might have been followed by a blow. it was a hint that was more contemptuous than a command, and i was surprised to see james more accept it. it was plain he had had a master talking-to; and i could see there must be more of the devil in the girl than i had guessed, and more good humour about the man than i had given him the credit of. he began, at least, calling me mr. balfour, and plainly speaking from a lesson; but he got not very far, for at the first pompous swell of his voice, catriona cut in. "i will tell you what james more is meaning," said she. "he means we have come to you, beggar-folk, and have not behaved to you very well, and we are ashamed of our ingratitude and ill-behaviour. now we are wanting to go away and be forgotten; and my father will have guided his gear so ill, that we cannot even do that unless you will give us some more alms. for that is what we are, at an events, beggar-folk and sorners." "by your leave, miss drummond," said i, "i must speak to your father by myself." she went into her own room and shut the door, without a word or a look. "you must excuse her, mr. balfour," says james more. "she has no delicacy." "i am not here to discuss that with you," said i, "but to be quit of you. and to that end i must talk of your position. now, mr. drummond, i have kept the run of your affairs more closely than you bargained for. i know you had money of your own when you were borrowing mine. i know you have had more since you were here in leyden, though you concealed it even from your daughter." "i bid you beware. i will stand no more baiting," he broke out. "i am sick of her and you. what kind of a damned trade is this to be a parent! i have had expressions used to me " there he broke off. "sir, this is the heart of a soldier and a parent," he went on again, laying his hand on his bosom, "outraged in both characters and i bid you beware." "if you would have let me finish," says i, "you would have found i spoke for your advantage." "my dear friend," he cried, "i know i might have relied upon the generosity of your character." "man! will you let me speak?" said i. "the fact is that i cannot win to find out if you are rich or poor. but it is my idea that your means, as they are mysterious in their source, so they are something insufficient in amount; and i do not choose your daughter to be lacking. if i durst speak to herself, you may be certain i would never dream of trusting it to you; because i know you like the back of my hand, and all your blustering talk is that much wind to me. however, i believe in your way you do still care something for your daughter after all; and i must just be doing with that ground of confidence, such as it is." whereupon, i arranged with him that he was to communicate with me, as to his whereabouts and catriona's welfare, in consideration of which i was to serve him a small stipend. he heard the business out with a great deal of eagerness; and when it was done, "my dear fellow, my dear son," he cried out, "this is more like yourself than any of it yet! i will serve you with a soldier's faithfulness " "let me hear no more of it!" says i. "you have got me to that pitch that the bare name of soldier rises on my stomach. our traffic is settled; i am now going forth and will return in one half-hour, when i expect to find my chambers purged of you." i gave them good measure of time; it was my one fear that i might see catriona again, because tears and weakness were ready in my heart, and i cherished my anger like a piece of dignity. perhaps an hour went by; the sun had gone down, a little wisp of a new moon was following it across a scarlet sunset; already there were stars in the east, and in my chambers, when at last i entered them, the night lay blue. i lit a taper and reviewed the rooms; in the first there remained nothing so much as to awake a memory of those who were gone; but in the second, in a corner of the floor, i spied a little heap that brought my heart into my mouth. she had left behind at her departure all that she had ever had of me. it was the blow that i felt sorest, perhaps because it was the last; and i fell upon that pile of clothing and behaved myself more foolish than i care to tell of. late in the night, in a strict frost, and my teeth chattering, i came again by some portion of my manhood and considered with myself. the sight of these poor frocks and ribbons, and her shifts, and the clocked stockings, was not to be endured; and if i were to recover any constancy of mind, i saw i must be rid of them ere the morning. it was my first thought to have made a fire and burned them; but my disposition has always been opposed to wastery, for one thing; and for another, to have burned these things that she had worn so close upon her body seemed in the nature of a cruelty. there was a corner cupboard in that chamber; there i determined to bestow them. the which i did and made it a long business, folding them with very little skill indeed but the more care; and sometimes dropping them with my tears. all the heart was gone out of me, i was weary as though i had run miles, and sore like one beaten; when, as i was folding a kerchief that she wore often at her neck, i observed there was a corner neatly cut from it. it was a kerchief of a very pretty hue, on which i had frequently remarked; and once that she had it on, i remembered telling her (by way of a banter) that she wore my colours. there came a glow of hope and like a tide of sweetness in my bosom; and the next moment i was plunged back in a fresh despair. for there was the corner crumpled in a knot and cast down by itself in another part of the floor. but when i argued with myself, i grew more hopeful. she had cut that corner off in some childish freak that was manifestly tender; that she had cast it away again was little to he wondered at; and i was inclined to dwell more upon the first than upon the second, and to be more pleased that she had ever conceived the idea of that keepsake, than concerned because she had flung it from her in an hour of natural resentment. chapter xxix we meet in dunkirk. altogether, then, i was scare so miserable the next days but what i had many hopeful and happy snatches; threw myself with a good deal of constancy upon my studies; and made out to endure the time till alan should arrive, or i might hear word of catriona by the means of james more. i had altogether three letters in the time of our separation. one was to announce their arrival in the town of dunkirk in france, from which place james shortly after started alone upon a private mission. this was to england and to see lord holderness; and it has always been a bitter thought that my good money helped to pay the charges of the same. but he has need of a long spoon who soups with the de'il, or james more either. during this absence, the time was to fall due for another letter; and as the letter was the condition of his stipend, he had been so careful as to prepare it beforehand and leave it with catriona to be despatched. the fact of our correspondence aroused her suspicions, and he was no sooner gone than she had burst the seal. what i received began accordingly in the writing of james more: "my dear sir, your esteemed favour came to hand duly, and i have to acknowledge the inclosure according to agreement. it shall be all faithfully expended on my daughter, who is well, and desires to be remembered to her dear friend. i find her in rather a melancholy disposition, but trust in the mercy of god to see her re-established. our manner of life is very much alone, but we solace ourselves with the melancholy tunes of our native mountains, and by walking up the margin of the sea that lies next to scotland. it was better days with me when i lay with five wounds upon my body on the field of gladsmuir. i have found employment here in the haras of a french nobleman, where my experience is valued. but, my dear sir, the wages are so exceedingly unsuitable that i would be ashamed to mention them, which makes your remittances the more necessary to my daughter's comfort, though i daresay the sight of old friends would be still better. "my dear sir, "your affectionate, obedient servant, "james macgregor drummond." below it began again in the hand of catriona:"do not be believing him, it is all lies together, c. m. d." not only did she add this postscript, but i think she must have come near suppressing the letter; for it came long after date, and was closely followed by the third. in the time betwixt them, alan had arrived, and made another life to me with his merry conversation; i had been presented to his cousin of the scots-dutch, a man that drank more than i could have thought possible and was not otherwise of interest; i had been entertained to many jovial dinners and given some myself, all with no great change upon my sorrow; and we two (by which i mean alan and myself, and not at all the cousin) had discussed a good deal the nature of my relations with james more and his daughter. i was naturally diffident to give particulars; and this disposition was not anyway lessened by the nature of alan's commentary upon those i gave. "i cannae make heed nor tail of it," he would say, "but it sticks in my mind ye've made a gowk of yourself. there's few people that has had more experience than alan breck: and i can never call to mind to have heard tell of a lassie like this one of yours. the way that you tell it, the thing's fair impossible. ye must have made a terrible hash of the business, david." "there are whiles that i am of the same mind," said i. "the strange thing is that ye seem to have a kind of fancy for her too!" said alan. "the biggest kind, alan," said i, "and i think i'll take it to my grave with me." "well, ye beat me, whatever!" he would conclude. i showed him the letter with catriona's postscript. "and here again!" he cried. "impossible to deny a kind of decency to this catriona, and sense forby! as for james more, the man's as boss as a drum; he's just a wame and a wheen words; though i'll can never deny that he fought reasonably well at gladsmuir, and it's true what he says here about the five wounds. but the loss of him is that the man's boss." "ye see, alan," said i, "it goes against the grain with me to leave the maid in such poor hands." "ye couldnae weel find poorer," he admitted. "but what are ye to do with it? it's this way about a man and a woman, ye see, davie: the weemenfolk have got no kind of reason to them. either they like the man, and then a' goes fine; or else they just detest him, and ye may spare your breath ye can do naething. there's just the two sets of them them that would sell their coats for ye, and them that never look the road ye're on. that's a' that there is to women; and you seem to be such a gomeral that ye cannae tell the tane frae the tither." "well, and i'm afraid that's true for me," said i. "and yet there's naething easier!" cried alan. "i could easy learn ye the science of the thing; but ye seem to me to be born blind, and there's where the deefficulty comes in." "and can you no help me?" i asked, "you that are so clever at the trade?" "ye see, david, i wasnae here," said he. "i'm like a field officer that has naebody but blind men for scouts and eclaireurs; and what would he ken? but it sticks in my mind that ye'll have made some kind of bauchle; and if i was you i would have a try at her again." "would ye so, man alan?" said i. "i would e'en't," says he. the third letter came to my hand while we were deep in some such talk: and it will be seen how pat it fell to the occasion. james professed to be in some concern upon his daughter's health, which i believe was never better; abounded in kind expressions to myself; and finally proposed that i should visit them at dunkirk. "you will now be enjoying the society of my old comrade mr. stewart," he wrote. "why not accompany him so far in his return to france? i have something very particular for mr. stewart's ear; and, at any rate, i would be pleased to meet in with an old fellow-soldier and one so mettle as himself. as for you, my dear sir, my daughter and i would be proud to receive our benefactor, whom we regard as a brother and a son. the french nobleman has proved a person of the most filthy avarice of character, and i have been necessitate to leave the haras. you will find us in consequence a little poorly lodged in the auberge of a man bazin on the dunes; but the situation is caller, and i make no doubt but we might spend some very pleasant days, when mr. stewart and i could recall our services, and you and my daughter divert yourselves in a manner more befitting your age. i beg at least that mr. stewart would come here; my business with him opens a very wide door." "what does the man want with me?" cried alan, when he had read. "what he wants with you in clear enough it's siller. but what can he want with alan breck?" "o, it'll be just an excuse," said i. "he is still after this marriage, which i wish from my heart that we could bring about. and he asks you because he thinks i would be less likely to come wanting you." "well, i wish that i kent," says alan. "him and me were never onyways pack; we used to girn at ither like a pair of pipers. 'something for my ear,' quo' he! i'll maybe have something for his hinder-end, before we're through with it. dod, i'm thinking it would be a kind of divertisement to gang and see what he'll be after! forby that i could see your lassie then. what say ye, davie? will ye ride with alan?" you may be sure i was not backward, and alan's furlough running towards an end, we set forth presently upon this joint adventure. it was near dark of a january day when we rode at last into the town of dunkirk. we left our horses at the post, and found a guide to bazin's inn, which lay beyond the walls. night was quite fallen, so that we were the last to leave that fortress, and heard the doors of it close behind us as we passed the bridge. on the other side there lay a lighted suburb, which we thridded for a while, then turned into a dark lane, and presently found ourselves wading in the night among deep sand where we could hear a bullering of the sea. we travelled in this fashion for some while, following our conductor mostly by the sound of his voice; and i had begun to think he was perhaps misleading us, when we came to the top of a small brae, and there appeared out of the darkness a dim light in a window. "voila l'auberge a bazin," says the guide. alan smacked his lips. "an unco lonely bit," said he, and i thought by his tone he was not wholly pleased. a little after, and we stood in the lower storey of that house, which was all in the one apartment, with a stairs leading to the chambers at the side, benches and tables by the wall, the cooking fire at the one end of it, and shelves of bottles and the cellar-trap at the other. here bazin, who was an ill-looking, big man, told us the scottish gentleman was gone abroad he knew not where, but the young lady was above, and he would call her down to us. i took from my breast that kerchief wanting the corner, and knotted it about my throat. i could hear my heart go; and alan patting me on the shoulder with some of his laughable expressions, i could scarce refrain from a sharp word. but the time was not long to wait. i heard her step pass overhead, and saw her on the stair. this she descended very quietly, and greeted me with a pale face and a certain seeming of earnestness, or uneasiness, in her manner that extremely dashed me. "my father, james more, will be here soon. he will be very pleased to see you," she said. and then of a sudden her face flamed, her eyes lightened, the speech stopped upon her lips; and i made sure she had observed the kerchief. it was only for a breath that she was discomposed; but methought it was with a new animation that she turned to welcome alan. "and you will be his friend, alan breck?" she cried. "many is the dozen times i will have heard him tell of you; and i love you already for all your bravery and goodness." "well, well," says alan, holding her hand in his and viewing her, "and so this is the young lady at the last of it! david, ye're an awful poor hand of a description." i do not know that ever i heard him speak so straight to people's hearts; the sound of his voice was like song. "what? will he have been describing me?" she cried. "little else of it since i ever came out of france!" says he, "forby a bit of a speciment one night in scotland in a shaw of wood by silvermills. but cheer up, my dear! ye're bonnier than what he said. and now there's one thing sure; you and me are to be a pair of friends. i'm a kind of a henchman to davie here; i'm like a tyke at his heels; and whatever he cares for, i've got to care for too and by the holy airn! they've got to care for me! so now you can see what way you stand with alan breck, and ye'll find ye'll hardly lose on the transaction. he's no very bonnie, my dear, but he's leal to them he loves." "i thank you from my heart for your good words," said she. "i have that honour for a brave, honest man that i cannot find any to be answering with." using travellers' freedom, we spared to wait for james more, and sat down to meat, we threesome. alan had catriona sit by him and wait upon his wants: he made her drink first out of his glass, he surrounded her with continual kind gallantries, and yet never gave me the most small occasion to be jealous; and he kept the talk so much in his own hand, and that in so merry a note, that neither she nor i remembered to be embarrassed. if any had seen us there, it must have been supposed that alan was the old friend and i the stranger. indeed, i had often cause to love and to admire the man, but i never loved or admired him better than that night; and i could not help remarking to myself (what i was sometimes rather in danger of forgetting) that he had not only much experience of life, but in his own way a great deal of natural ability besides. as for catriona, she seemed quite carried away; her laugh was like a peal of bells, her face gay as a may morning; and i own, although i was well pleased, yet i was a little sad also, and thought myself a dull, stockish character in comparison of my friend, and very unfit to come into a young maid's life, and perhaps ding down her gaiety. but if that was like to be my part, i found that at least i was not alone in it; for, james more returning suddenly, the girl was changed into a piece of stone. through the rest of that evening, until she made an excuse and slipped to bed, i kept an eye upon her without cease; and i can bear testimony that she never smiled, scarce spoke, and looked mostly on the board in front of her. so that i really marvelled to see so much devotion (as it used to be) changed into the very sickness of hate. of james more it is unnecessary to say much; you know the man already, what there was to know of him; and i am weary of writing out his lies. enough that he drank a great deal, and told us very little that was to any possible purpose. as for the business with alan, that was to be reserved for the morrow and his private hearing. it was the more easy to be put off, because alan and i were pretty weary with four day's ride, and sat not very late after catriona. we were soon alone in a chamber where we were to make-shift with a single bed. alan looked on me with a queer smile. "ye muckle ass!" said he. "what do ye mean by that?" i cried. "mean? what do i mean! it's extraordinar, david man," say he, "that you should be so mortal stupit." again i begged him to speak out. "well, it's this of it," said he. "i told ye there were the two kinds of women them that would sell their shifts for ye, and the others. just you try for yoursel, my bonny man! but what's that neepkin at your craig?" i told him. "i thocht it was something thereabout" said he. nor would he say another word though i besieged him long with importunities. chapter xxx the letter from the ship daylight showed us how solitary the inn stood. it was plainly hard upon the sea, yet out of all view of it, and beset on every side with scabbit hills of sand. there was, indeed, only one thing in the nature of a prospect, where there stood out over a brae the two sails of a windmill, like an ass's ears, but with the ass quite hidden. it was strange (after the wind rose, for at first it was dead calm) to see the turning and following of each other of these great sails behind the hillock. scarce any road came by there; but a number of footways travelled among the bents in all directions up to mr. bazin's door. the truth is, he was a man of many trades, not any one of them honest, and the position of his inn was the best of his livelihood. smugglers frequented it; political agents and forfeited persons bound across the water came there to await their passages; and i daresay there was worse behind, for a whole family might have been butchered in that house and nobody the wiser. i slept little and ill. long ere it was day, i had slipped from beside my bedfellow, and was warming myself at the fire or walking to and fro before the door. dawn broke mighty sullen; but a little after, sprang up a wind out of the west, which burst the clouds, let through the sun, and set the mill to the turning. there was something of spring in the sunshine, or else it was in my heart; and the appearing of the great sails one after another from behind the hill, diverted me extremely. at times i could hear a creak of the machinery; and by half-past eight of the day, and i thought this dreary, desert place was like a paradise. for all which, as the day drew on and nobody came near, i began to be aware of an uneasiness that i could scarce explain. it seemed there was trouble afoot; the sails of the windmill, as they came up and went down over the hill, were like persons spying; and outside of all fancy, it was surely a strange neighbourhood and house for a young lady to be brought to dwell in. at breakfast, which we took late, it was manifest that james more was in some danger or perplexity; manifest that alan was alive to the same, and watched him close; and this appearance of duplicity upon the one side, and vigilance upon the other, held me on live coals. the meal was no sooner over than james seemed to come began to make apologies. he had an appointment of a private nature in the town (it was with the french nobleman, he told me), and we would please excuse him till about noon. meanwhile he carried his daughter aside to the far end of the room, where he seemed to speak rather earnestly and she to listen with much inclination. "i am caring less and less about this man james," said alan. "there's something no right with the man james, and i shouldnae wonder but what alan breck would give an eye to him this day. i would like fine to see yon french nobleman, davie; and i daresay you could find an employ to yoursel, and that would be to speir at the lassie for some news o' your affair. just tell it to her plainly tell her ye're a muckle ass at the off-set; and then, if i were you, and ye could do it naitural, i would just mint to her i was in some kind of a danger; a' weemenfolk likes that." "i cannae lee, alan, i cannae do it naitural," says i, mocking him. "the more fool you!" says he. "then ye'll can tell her that i recommended it; that'll set her to the laughing; and i wouldnae wonder but what that was the next best. but see to the pair of them! if i didnae feel just sure of the lassie, and that she was awful pleased and chief with alan, i would think there was some kind of hocus-pocus about you." "and is she so pleased with ye, then, alan?" i asked. "she thinks a heap of me," says he. "and i'm no like you: i'm one that can tell. that she does she thinks a heap of alan. and troth! i'm thinking a good deal of him mysel; and with your permission, shaws, i'll be getting a wee yont amang the bents, so that i can see what way james goes." one after another went, till i was left alone beside the breakfast table; james to dunkirk, alan dogging him, catriona up the stairs to her own chamber. i could very well understand how she should avoid to be alone with me; yet was none the better pleased with it for that, and bent my mind to entrap her to an interview before the men returned. upon the whole, the best appeared to me to do like alan. if i was out of view among the sandhills, the fine morning would decoy her forth; and once i had her in the open, i could please myself. no sooner said than done; nor was i long under the bield of a hillock before she appeared at the inn door, looked here and there, and (seeing nobody) set out by a path that led directly seaward, and by which i followed her. i was in no haste to make my presence known; the further she went i made sure of the longer hearing to my suit; and the ground being all sandy it was easy to follow her unheard. the path rose and came at last to the head of a knowe. thence i had a picture for the first time of what a desolate wilderness that inn stood hidden in; where was no man to be seen, nor any house of man, except just bazin's and the windmill. only a little further on, the sea appeared and two or three ships upon it, pretty as a drawing. one of these was extremely close in to be so great a vessel; and i was aware of a shock of new suspicion, when i recognised the trim of the seahorse. what should an english ship be doing so near in to france? why was alan brought into her neighbourhood, and that in a place so far from any hope of rescue? and was it by accident, or by design, that the daughter of james more should walk that day to the seaside? presently i came forth behind her in the front of the sandhills and above the beach. it was here long and solitary; with a man-o'-war's boat drawn up about the middle of the prospect, and an officer in charge and pacing the sands like one who waited. i sat down where the rough grass a good deal covered me, and looked for what should follow. catriona went straight to the boat; the officer met her with civilities; they had ten words together; i saw a letter changing hands; and there was catriona returning. at the same time, as if this were all her business on the continent, the boat shoved off and was headed for the seahorse. but i observed the officer to remain behind and disappear among the bents. i liked the business little; and the more i considered of it, liked it less. was it alan the officer was seeking? or catriona? she drew near with her head down, looking constantly on the sand, and made so tender a picture that i could not bear to doubt her innocence. the next, she raised her face and recognised me; seemed to hesitate, and then came on again, but more slowly, and i thought with a changed colour. and at that thought, all else that was upon my bosom fears, suspicions, the care of my friend's life was clean swallowed up; and i rose to my feet and stood waiting her in a drunkenness of hope. i gave her "good morning" as she came up, which she returned with a good deal of composure. "will you forgive my having followed you?" said i. "i know you are always meaning kindly," she replied; and then, with a little outburst, "but why will you be sending money to that man! it must not be." "i never sent it for him," said i, "but for you, as you know well." "and you have no right to be sending it to either one of us," she said. "david, it is not right." "it is not, it is all wrong," said i, "and i pray god he will help this dull fellow (if it be at all possible) to make it better. catriona, this is no kind of life for you to lead; and i ask your pardon for the word, but yon man is no fit father to take care of you." "do not be speaking of him, even!" was her cry. "and i need speak of him no more; it is not of him that i am thinking, o, be sure of that!" says i. "i think of the one thing. i have been alone now this long time in leyden; and when i was by way of at my studies, still i was thinking of that. next alan came, and i went among soldier-men to their big dinners; and still i had the same thought. and it was the same before, when i had her there beside me. catriona, do you see this napkin at my throat! you cut a corner from it once and then cast it from you. they're your colours now; i wear them in my heart. my dear, i cannot be wanting you. o, try to put up with me!" i stepped before her so as to intercept her walking on. "try to put up with me," i was saying, "try and bear me with a little." still she had never the word, and a fear began to rise in me like a fear of death. "catriona," i cried, gazing on her hard, "is it a mistake again? am i quite lost?" she raised her face to me, breathless. "do you want me, davie, truly?" said she, and i scarce could hear her say it. "i do that," said i. "o, sure you know it i do that." "i have nothing left to give or to keep back," said she. "i was all yours from the first day, if you would have had a gift of me!" she said, this was on the summit of a brae; the place was windy and conspicuous, we were to be seen there even from the english ship; but i kneeled down before her in the sand, and embraced her knees, and burst into that storm of weeping that i thought it must have broken me. all thought was wholly beaten from my mind by the vehemency of my discomposure. i knew not where i was. i had forgot why i was happy; only i knew she stooped, and i felt her cherish me to her face and bosom, and heard her words out of a whirl. "davie," she was saying, "o, davie, is this what you think of me! is it so that you were caring for poor me! o, davie, davie!" with that she wept also, and our tears were commingled in a perfect gladness. it might have been ten in the day before i came to a clear sense of what a mercy had befallen me; and sitting over against her, with her hands in mine, gazed in her face, and laughed out loud for pleasure like a child, and called her foolish and kind names. i have never seen the place that looked so pretty as those bents by dunkirk; and the windmill sails, as they bobbed over the knowe, were like a tune of music. i know not how much longer we might have continued to forget all else besides ourselves, had i not chanced upon a reference to her father, which brought us to reality. "my little friend," i was calling her again and again, rejoicing to summon up the past by the sound of it, and to gaze across on her, and to be a little distant "my little friend, now you are mine altogether; mine for good, my little friend and that man's no longer at all." there came a sudden whiteness in her face, she plucked her hands from mine. "davie, take me away from him!" she cried. "there's something wrong; he's not true. there will be something wrong; i have a dreadful terror here at my heart. what will he be wanting at all events with that king's ship? what will this word be saying?" and she held the letter forth. "my mind misgives me, it will be some ill to alan. open it, davie open it and see." i took it, and looked at it, and shook my head. "no," said i, "it goes against me, i cannot open a man's letter." "not to save your friend?" she cried. "i cannae tell," said i. "i think not. if i was only sure!" "and you have but to break the seal!" said she. "i know it," said i, "but the thing goes against me." "give it here," said she, "and i will open it myself." "nor you neither," said i. "you least of all. it concerns your father, and his honour, dear, which we are both misdoubting. no question but the place is dangerous-like, and the english ship being here, and your father having word from it, and yon officer that stayed ashore. he would not be alone either; there must be more along with him; i daresay we are spied upon this minute. ay, no doubt, the letter should be opened; but somehow, not by you nor me." i was about thus far with it, and my spirit very much overcome with a sense of danger and hidden enemies, when i spied alan, come back again from following james and walking by himself among the sand-hills. he was in his soldier's coat, of course, and mighty fine; but i could not avoid to shudder when i thought how little that jacket would avail him, if he were once caught and flung in a skiff, and carried on board of the seahorse, a deserter, a rebel, and now a condemned murderer. "there," said i, "there is the man that has the best right to open it: or not, as he thinks fit." with which i called upon his name, and we both stood up to be a mark for him. "if it is so if it be more disgrace will you can bear it?" she asked, looking upon me with a burning eye. "i was asked something of the same question when i had seen you but the once," said i. "what do you think i answered? that if i liked you as i thought i did and o, but i like you better! i would marry you at his gallows' foot." the blood rose in her face; she came close up and pressed upon me, holding my hand: and it was so that we awaited alan. he came with one of his queer smiles. "what was i telling ye, david?" says he. "there is a time for all things, alan," said i, "and this time is serious. how have you sped? you can speak out plain before this friend of ours." "i have been upon a fool's errand," said he. "i doubt we have done better than you, then," said i; "and, at least, here is a great deal of matter that you must judge of. do you see that?" i went on, pointing to the ship. "that is the seahorse, captain palliser." "i should ken her, too," says alan. "i had fyke enough with her when she was stationed in the forth. but what ails the man to come so close?" "i will tell you why he came there first," said i. "it was to bring this letter to james more. why he stops here now that it's delivered, what it's likely to be about, why there's an officer hiding in the bents, and whether or not it's probable that he's alone i would rather you considered for yourself." "a letter to james more?" said he. "the same," said i. "well, and i can tell ye more than that," said alan. "for the last night, when you were fast asleep, i heard the man colloguing with some one in the french, and then the door of that inn to be opened and shut." "alan!" cried i, "you slept all night, and i am here to prove it." "ay, but i would never trust alan whether he was asleep or waking!" says he. "but the business looks bad. let's see the letter." i gave it him. "catriona," said he, "you have to excuse me, my dear; but there's nothing less than my fine bones upon the cast of it, and i'll have to break this seal." "it is my wish," said catriona. he opened it, glanced it through, and flung his hand in the air. "the stinking brock!" says he, and crammed the paper in his pocket. "here, let's get our things together. this place is fair death to me." and he began to walk towards the inn. it was catriona that spoke the first. "he has sold you?" she asked. "sold me, my dear," said alan. "but thanks to you and davie, i'll can jink him yet. just let me win upon my horse," he added. "catriona must come with us," said i. "she can have no more traffic with that man. she and i are to be married." at which she pressed my hand to her side. "are ye there with it?" says alan, looking back. "the best day's work that ever either of you did yet! and i'm bound to say, my dawtie, ye make a real, bonny couple." the way that he was following brought us close in by the windmill, where i was aware of a man in seaman's trousers, who seemed to be spying from behind it. only, of course, we took him in the rear. "see, alan!" "wheesht!" said, he, "this is my affairs." the man was, no doubt, a little deafened by the clattering of the mill, and we got up close before he noticed. then he turned, and we saw he was a big fellow with a mahogany face. "i think, sir," says alan, "that you speak the english?" "non, monsieur," says he, with an incredible bad accent. "non, monsieur," cries alan, mocking him. "is that how they learn you french on the seahorse? ye muckle, gutsey hash, here's a scots boot to your english hurdies!" and bounding on him before he could escape, he dealt the man a kick that laid him on his nose. then he stood, with a savage smile, and watched him scramble to his feet and scamper off into the sand-hills. "but it's high time i was clear of these empty bents!" said alan; and continued his way at top speed, and we still following, to the backdoor of bazin's inn. it chanced that as we entered by the one door we came face to face with james more entering by the other. "here!" said i to catriona, "quick! upstairs with you and make your packets; this is no fit scene for you." in the meanwhile james and alan had met in the midst of the long room. she passed them close by to reach the stairs; and after she was some way up i saw her turn and glance at them again, though without pausing. indeed, they were worth looking at. alan wore as they met one of his best appearances of courtesy and friendliness, yet with something eminently warlike, so that james smelled danger off the man, as folk smell fire in a house, and stood prepared for accidents. time pressed. alan's situation in that solitary place, and his enemies about him, might have daunted caesar. it made no change in him; and it was in his old spirit of mockery and daffing that he began the interview. "a braw good day to ye again, mr. drummond," said he. "what'll yon business of yours be just about?" "why, the thing being private, and rather of a long story," says james, "i think it will keep very well till we have eaten." "i'm none so sure of that," said alan. "it sticks in my mind it's either now or never; for the fact is me and mr. balfour here have gotten a line, and we're thinking of the road." i saw a little surprise in james's eye; but he held himself stoutly. "i have but the one word to say to cure you of that," said he, "and that is the name of my business." "say it then," says alan. "hout! wha minds for davie?" "it is a matter that would make us both rich men," said james. "do you tell me that?" cries alan. "i do, sir," said james. "the plain fact is that it is cluny's treasure." "no!" cried alan. "have ye got word of it?" "i ken the place, mr. stewart, and can take you there," said james. "this crowns all!" says alan. "well, and i'm glad i came to dunkirk. and so this was your business, was it? halvers, i'm thinking?" "that is the business, sir," said james. "well, well," said alan; and then in the same tone of childlike interest, "it has naething to do with the seahorse, then?" he asked, "with what?" says james. "or the lad that i have just kicked the bottom of behind yon windmill?" pursued alan. "hut, man! have done with your lees! i have palliser's letter here in my pouch. you're by with it, james more. you can never show your face again with dacent folk." james was taken all aback with it. he stood a second, motionless and white, then swelled with the living anger. "do you talk to me, you bastard?" he roared out. "ye glee'd swine!" cried alan, and hit him a sounding buffet on the mouth, and the next wink of time their blades clashed together. at the first sound of the bare steel i instinctively leaped back from the collision. the next i saw, james parried a thrust so nearly that i thought him killed; and it lowed up in my mind that this was the girl's father, and in a manner almost my own, and i drew and ran in to sever them. "keep back, davie! are ye daft! damn ye, keep back!" roared alan. "your blood be on your ain heid then!" i beat their blades down twice. i was knocked reeling against the wall; i was back again betwixt them. they took no heed of me, thrusting at each other like two furies. i can never think how i avoided being stabbed myself or stabbing one of these two rodomonts, and the whole business turned about me like a piece of a dream; in the midst of which i heard a great cry from the stair, and catriona sprang before her father. in the same moment the point of my sword encountered some thing yielding. it came back to me reddened. i saw the blood flow on the girl's kerchief, and stood sick. "will you be killing him before my eyes, and me his daughter after all!" she cried. "my dear, i have done with him," said alan, and went, and sat on a table, with his arms crossed and the sword naked in his hand. awhile she stood before the man, panting, with big eyes, then swung suddenly about and faced him. "begone!" was her word, "take your shame out of my sight; leave me with clean folk. i am a daughter of alpin! shame of the sons of alpin, begone!" it was said with so much passion as awoke me from the horror of my own bloodied sword. the two stood facing, she with the red stain on her kerchief, he white as a rag. i knew him well enough i knew it must have pierced him in the quick place of his soul; but he betook himself to a bravado air. "why," says he, sheathing his sword, though still with a bright eye on alan, "if this brawl is over i will but get my portmanteau " "there goes no pockmantie out of this place except with me," says alan. "sir!" cries james. "james more," says alan, "this lady daughter of yours is to marry my friend davie, upon the which account i let you pack with a hale carcase. but take you my advice of it and get that carcase out of harm's way or ower late. little as you suppose it, there are leemits to my temper." "be damned, sir, but my money's there!" said james. "i'm vexed about that, too," says alan, with his funny face, "but now, ye see, it's mines." and then with more gravity, "be you advised, james more, you leave this house." james seemed to cast about for a moment in his mind; but it's to be thought he had enough of alan's swordsmanship, for he suddenly put off his hat to us and (with a face like one of the damned) bade us farewell in a series. with which he was gone. at the same time a spell was lifted from me. "catriona," i cried, "it was me it was my sword. o, are you much hurt?" "i know it, davie, i am loving you for the pain of it; it was done defending that bad man, my father. see!" she said, and showed me a bleeding scratch, "see, you have made a man of me now. i will carry a wound like an old soldier." joy that she should be so little hurt, and the love of her brave nature, supported me. i embraced her, i kissed the wound. "and am i to be out of the kissing, me that never lost a chance?" says alan; and putting me aside and taking catriona by either shoulder, "my dear," he said, "you're a true daughter of alpin. by all accounts, he was a very fine man, and he may weel be proud of you. if ever i was to get married, it's the marrow of you i would be seeking for a mother to my sons. and i bear's a king's name and speak the truth." he said it with a serious heat of admiration that was honey to the girl, and through her, to me. it seemed to wipe us clean of all james more's disgraces. and the next moment he was just himself again. "and now by your leave, my dawties," said he, "this is a' very bonny; but alan breck'll be a wee thing nearer to the gallows than he's caring for; and dod! i think this is a grand place to be leaving." the word recalled us to some wisdom. alan ran upstairs and returned with our saddle-bags and james more's portmanteau; i picked up catriona's bundle where she had dropped it on the stair; and we were setting forth out of that dangerous house, when bazin stopped the way with cries and gesticulations. he had whipped under a table when the swords were drawn, but now he was as bold as a lion. there was his bill to be settled, there was a chair broken, alan had sat among his dinner things, james more had fled. "here," i cried, "pay yourself," and flung him down some lewie d'ors; for i thought it was no time to be accounting. he sprang upon that money, and we passed him by, and ran forth into the open. upon three sides of the house were seamen hasting and closing in; a little nearer to us james more waved his hat as if to hurry them; and right behind him, like some foolish person holding up his hands, were the sails of the windmill turning. alan gave but one glance, and laid himself down to run. he carried a great weight in james more's portmanteau; but i think he would as soon have lost his life as cast away that booty which was his revenge; and he ran so that i was distressed to follow him, and marvelled and exulted to see the girl bounding at my side. as soon as we appeared, they cast off all disguise upon the other side; and the seamen pursued us with shouts and view-hullohs. we had a start of some two hundred yards, and they were but bandy-legged tarpaulins after all, that could not hope to better us at such an exercise. i suppose they were armed, but did not care to use their pistols on french ground. and as soon as i perceived that we not only held our advantage but drew a little away, i began to feel quite easy of the issue. for all which, it was a hot, brisk bit of work, so long as it lasted; dunkirk was still far off; and when we popped over a knowe, and found a company of the garrison marching on the other side on some manoeuvre, i could very well understand the word that alan had. he stopped running at once; and mopping at his brow, "they're a real bonny folk, the french nation," says he. conclusion no sooner were we safe within the walls of dunkirk than we held a very necessary council-of-war on our position. we had taken a daughter from her father at the sword's point; any judge would give her back to him at once, and by all likelihood clap me and alan into jail; and though we had an argument upon our side in captain palliser's letter, neither catriona nor i were very keen to be using it in public. upon all accounts it seemed the most prudent to carry the girl to paris to the hands of her own chieftain, macgregor of bohaldie, who would be very willing to help his kinswoman, on the one hand, and not at all anxious to dishonour james upon other. we made but a slow journey of it up, for catriona was not so good at the riding as the running, and had scarce sat in the saddle since the 'forty-five. but we made it out at last, reached paris early of a sabbath morning, and made all speed, under alan's guidance, to find bohaldie. he was finely lodged, and lived in a good style, having a pension on the scots fund, as well as private means; greeted catriona like one of his own house, and seemed altogether very civil and discreet, but not particularly open. we asked of the news of james more. "poor james!" said he, and shook his head and smiled, so that i thought he knew further than he meant to tell. then we showed him palliser's letter, and he drew a long face at that. "poor james!" said he again. "well, there are worse folk than james more, too. but this is dreadful bad. tut, tut, he must have forgot himself entirely! this is a most undesirable letter. but, for all that, gentlemen, i cannot see what we would want to make it public for. it's an ill bird that fouls his own nest, and we are all scots folk and all hieland." upon this we all agreed, save perhaps alan; and still more upon the question of our marriage, which bohaldie took in his own hands, as though there had been no such person as james more, and gave catriona away with very pretty manners and agreeable compliments in french. it was not till all was over, and our healths drunk, that he told us james was in that city, whither he had preceded us some days, and where he now lay sick, and like to die. i thought i saw by my wife's face what way her inclination pointed. "and let us go see him, then," said i. "if it is your pleasure," said catriona. these were early days. he was lodged in the same quarter of the city with his chief, in a great house upon a corner; and we were guided up to the garret where he lay by the sound of highland piping. it seemed he had just borrowed a set of them from bohaldie to amuse his sickness; though he was no such hand as was his brother rob, he made good music of the kind; and it was strange to observe the french folk crowding on the stairs, and some of them laughing. he lay propped in a pallet. the first look of him i saw he was upon his last business; and, doubtless, this was a strange place for him to die in. but even now i find i can scarce dwell upon his end with patience. doubtless, bohaldie had prepared him; he seemed to know we were married, complimented us on the event, and gave us a benediction like a patriarch. "i have been never understood," said he. "i forgive you both without an after-thought;" after which he spoke for all the world in his old manner, was so obliging as to play us a tune or two upon his pipes, and borrowed a small sum before i left. i could not trace even a hint of shame in any part of his behaviour; but he was great upon forgiveness; it seemed always fresh to him. i think he forgave me every time we met; and when after some four days he passed away in a kind of odour of affectionate sanctity, i could have torn my hair out for exasperation. i had him buried; but what to put upon his tomb was quite beyond me, till at last i considered the date would look best alone. i thought it wiser to resign all thoughts of leyden, where we had appeared once as brother and sister, and it would certainly look strange to return in a new character. scotland would be doing for us; and thither, after i had recovered that which i had left behind, we sailed in a low country ship. and now, miss barbara balfour (to set the ladies first), and mr. alan balfour younger of shaws, here is the story brought fairly to an end. a great many of the folk that took a part in it, you will find (if you think well) that you have seen and spoken with. alison hastie in limekilns was the lass that rocked your cradle when you were too small to know of it, and walked abroad with you in the policy when you were bigger. that very fine great lady that is miss barbara's name-mamma is no other than the same miss grant that made so much a fool of david balfour in the house of the lord advocate. and i wonder whether you remember a little, lean, lively gentleman in a scratch-wig and a wraprascal, that came to shaws very late of a dark night, and whom you were awakened out of your beds and brought down to the dining-hall to be presented to, by the name of mr. jamieson? or has alan forgotten what he did at mr. jamieson's request a most disloyal act for which, by the letter of the law, he might be hanged no less than drinking the king's health across the water? these were strange doings in a good whig house! but mr. jamieson is a man privileged, and might set fire to my corn-barn; and the name they know him by now in france is the chevalier stewart. as for davie and catriona, i shall watch you pretty close in the next days, and see if you are so bold as to be laughing at papa and mamma. it is true we were not so wise as we might have been, and made a great deal of sorrow out of nothing; but you will find as you grow up that even the artful miss barbara, and even the valiant mr. alan, will be not so very much wiser than their parents. for the life of man upon this world of ours is a funny business. they talk of the angels weeping; but i think they must more often be holding their sides as they look on; and there was one thing i determined to do when i began this long story, and that was to tell out everything as it befell. end of the project gutenberg etext catriona 1842 the masque of the red death by edgar allan poe the masque of the red death the "red death" had long devastated the country. no pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. blood was its avatar and its seal --the redness and the horror of blood. there were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. the scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. and the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour. but the prince prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. when his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. this was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. a strong and lofty wall girdled it in. this wall had gates of iron. the courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. they resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. the abbey was amply provisioned. with such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. the external world could take care of itself. in the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. the prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. there were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was beauty, there was wine. all these and security were within. without was the "red death." it was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the prince prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence. it was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. but first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. there were seven --an imperial suite. in many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. here the case was very different; as might have been expected from the duke's love of the bizarre. the apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. there was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. to the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. these windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. that at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue --and vividly blue were its windows. the second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. the third was green throughout, and so were the casements. the fourth was furnished and lighted with orange --the fifth with white --the sixth with violet. the seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. but in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. the panes here were scarlet --a deep blood color. now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. there was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. but in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that protected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. and thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. but in the western or black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all. it was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. but when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before. but, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. the tastes of the duke were peculiar. he had a fine eye for colors and effects. he disregarded the decora of mere fashion. his plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. there are some who would have thought him mad. his followers felt that he was not. it was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not. he had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. be sure they were grotesque. there were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm --much of what has been since seen in "hernani." there were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. there were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. there was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. to and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. and these --the dreams --writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. and, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. and then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. the dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. but the echoes of the chime die away --they have endured but an instant --and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. and now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. but to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments. but these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. and the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. and then the music ceased, as i have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. but now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. and thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. and the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise --then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust. in an assembly of phantasms such as i have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. in truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-heroded herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum. there are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. the whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. the figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. the mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. and yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. but the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the red death. his vesture was dabbled in blood --and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror. when the eyes of prince prospero fell upon this spectral image (which with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage. "who dares?" he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him --"who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? seize him and unmask him --that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!" it was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the prince prospero as he uttered these words. they rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly --for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand. it was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. at first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. but from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince's person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple --through the purple to the green --through the green to the orange --through this again to the white --and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. it was then, however, that the prince prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. he bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. there was a sharp cry --and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the prince prospero. then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form. and now was acknowledged the presence of the red death. he had come like a thief in the night. and one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. and the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. and the flames of the tripods expired. and darkness and decay and the red death held illimitable dominion over all. -the end. 1850 the oblong box by edgar allan poe some years ago, i engaged passage from charleston, s. c, to the city of new york, in the fine packet-ship "independence," captain hardy. we were to sail on the fifteenth of the month (june), weather permitting; and on the fourteenth, i went on board to arrange some matters in my state-room. i found that we were to have a great many passengers, including a more than usual number of ladies. on the list were several of my acquaintances, and among other names, i was rejoiced to see that of mr. cornelius wyatt, a young artist, for whom i entertained feelings of warm friendship. he had been with me a fellow-student at cuniversity, where we were very much together. he had the ordinary temperament of genius, and was a compound of misanthropy, sensibility, and enthusiasm. to these qualities he united the warmest and truest heart which ever beat in a human bosom. i observed that his name was carded upon three state-rooms; and, upon again referring to the list of passengers, i found that he had engaged passage for himself, wife, and two sistershis own. the state-rooms were sufficiently roomy, and each had two berths, one above the other. these berths, to be sure, were so exceedingly narrow as to be insufficient for more than one person; still, i could not comprehend why there were three state-rooms for these four persons. i was, just at that epoch, in one of those moody frames of mind which make a man abnormally inquisitive about trifles: and i confess, with shame, that i busied myself in a variety of ill-bred and preposterous conjectures about this matter of the supernumerary state-room. it was no business of mine, to be sure, but with none the less pertinacity did i occupy myself in attempts to resolve the enigma. at last i reached a conclusion which wrought in me great wonder why i had not arrived at it before. "it is a servant of course," i said; "what a fool i am, not sooner to have thought of so obvious a solution!" and then i again repaired to the listbut here i saw distinctly that no servant was to come with the party, although, in fact, it had been the original design to bring onefor the words "and servant" had been first written and then overscored. "oh, extra baggage, to be sure," i now said to myself"something he wishes not to be put in the holdsomething to be kept under his own eyeah, i have ita painting or soand this is what he has been bargaining about with nicolino, the italian jew." this idea satisfied me, and i dismissed my curiosity for the nonce. wyatt's two sisters i knew very well, and most amiable and clever girls they were. his wife he had newly married, and i had never yet seen her. he had often talked about her in my presence, however, and in his usual style of enthusiasm. he described her as of surpassing beauty, wit, and accomplishment. i was, therefore, quite anxious to make her acquaintance. on the day in which i visited the ship (the fourteenth), wyatt and party were also to visit itso the captain informed meand i waited on board an hour longer than i had designed, in hope of being presented to the bride, but then an apology came. "mrs. w. was a little indisposed, and would decline coming on board until to-morrow, at the hour of sailing." the morrow having arrived, i was going from my hotel to the wharf, when captain hardy met me and said that, "owing to circumstances" (a stupid but convenient phrase), "he rather thought the 'independence' would not sail for a day or two, and that when all was ready, he would send up and let me know." this i thought strange, for there was a stiff southerly breeze; but as "the circumstances" were not forthcoming, although i pumped for them with much perseverance, i had nothing to do but to return home and digest my impatience at leisure. i did not receive the expected message from the captain for nearly a week. it came at length, however, and i immediately went on board. the ship was crowded with passengers, and every thing was in the bustle attendant upon making sail. wyatt's party arrived in about ten minutes after myself. there were the two sisters, the bride, and the artistthe latter in one of his customary fits of moody misanthropy. i was too well used to these, however, to pay them any special attention. he did not even introduce me to his wifethis courtesy devolving, per force, upon his sister mariana very sweet and intelligent girl, who, in a few hurried words, made us acquainted. mrs. wyatt had been closely veiled; and when she raised her veil, in acknowledging my bow, i confess that i was very profoundly astonished. i should have been much more so, however, had not long experience advised me not to trust, with too implicit a reliance, the enthusiastic descriptions of my friend, the artist, when indulging in comments upon the loveliness of woman. when beauty was the theme, i well knew with what facility he soared into the regions of the purely ideal. the truth is, i could not help regarding mrs. wyatt as a decidedly plain-looking woman. if not positively ugly, she was not, i think, very far from it. she was dressed, however, in exquisite tasteand then i had no doubt that she had captivated my friend's heart by the more enduring graces of the intellect and soul. she said very few words, and passed at once into her state-room with mr. w. my old inquisitiveness now returned. there was no servantthat was a settled point. i looked, therefore, for the extra baggage. after some delay, a cart arrived at the wharf, with an oblong pine box, which was every thing that seemed to be expected. immediately upon its arrival we made sail, and in a short time were safely over the bar and standing out to sea. the box in question was, as i say, oblong. it was about six feet in length by two and a half in breadth; i observed it attentively, and like to be precise. now this shape was peculiar; and no sooner had i seen it, than i took credit to myself for the accuracy of my guessing. i had reached the conclusion, it will be remembered, that the extra baggage of my friend, the artist, would prove to be pictures, or at least a picture; for i knew he had been for several weeks in conference with nicolino:and now here was a box, which, from its shape, could possibly contain nothing in the world but a copy of leonardo's "last supper;" and a copy of this very "last supper," done by rubini the younger, at florence, i had known, for some time, to be in the possession of nicolino. this point, therefore, i considered as sufficiently settled. i chuckled excessively when i thought of my acumen. it was the first time i had ever known wyatt to keep from me any of his artistical secrets; but here he evidently intended to steal a march upon me, and smuggle a fine picture to new york, under my very nose; expecting me to know nothing of the matter. i resolved to quiz him well, now and hereafter. one thing, however, annoyed me not a little. the box did not go into the extra state-room. it was deposited in wyatt's own; and there, too, it remained, occupying very nearly the whole of the floorno doubt to the exceeding discomfort of the artist and his wife;this the more especially as the tar or paint with which it was lettered in sprawling capitals, emitted a strong, disagreeable, and, to my fancy, a peculiarly disgusting odor. on the lid were painted the words"mrs. adelaide curtis, albany, new york. charge of cornelius wyatt, esq. this side up. to be handled with care." now, i was aware that mrs. adelaide curtis, of albany, was the artist's wife's mother,but then i looked upon the whole address as a mystification, intended especially for myself. i made up my mind, of course, that the box and contents would never get farther north than the studio of my misanthropic friend, in chambers street, new york. for the first three or four days we had fine weather, although the wind was dead ahead; having chopped round to the northward, immediately upon our losing sight of the coast. the passengers were, consequently, in high spirits and disposed to be social. i must except, however, wyatt and his sisters, who behaved stiffly, and, i could not help thinking, uncourteously to the rest of the party. wyatt's conduct i did not so much regard. he was gloomy, even beyond his usual habitin fact he was morosebut in him i was prepared for eccentricity. for the sisters, however, i could make no excuse. they secluded themselves in their staterooms during the greater part of the passage, and absolutely refused, although i repeatedly urged them, to hold communication with any person on board. mrs. wyatt herself was far more agreeable. that is to say, she was chatty; and to be chatty is no slight recommendation at sea. she became excessively intimate with most of the ladies; and, to my profound astonishment, evinced no equivocal disposition to coquet with the men. she amused us all very much. i say "amused"and scarcely know how to explain myself. the truth is, i soon found that mrs. w. was far oftener laughed at than with. the gentlemen said little about her; but the ladies, in a little while, pronounced her "a good-hearted thing, rather indifferent looking, totally uneducated, and decidedly vulgar." the great wonder was, how wyatt had been entrapped into such a match. wealth was the general solutionbut this i knew to be no solution at all; for wyatt had told me that she neither brought him a dollar nor had any expectations from any source whatever. "he had married," he said, "for love, and for love only; and his bride was far more than worthy of his love." when i thought of these expressions, on the part of my friend, i confess that i felt indescribably puzzled. could it be possible that he was taking leave of his senses? what else could i think? he, so refined, so intellectual, so fastidious, with so exquisite a perception of the faulty, and so keen an appreciation of the beautiful! to be sure, the lady seemed especially fond of himparticularly so in his absencewhen she made herself ridiculous by frequent quotations of what had been said by her "beloved husband, mr. wyatt." the word "husband" seemed foreverto use one of her own delicate expressionsforever "on the tip of her tongue." in the meantime, it was observed by all on board, that he avoided her in the most pointed manner, and, for the most part, shut himself up alone in his state-room, where, in fact, he might have been said to live altogether, leaving his wife at full liberty to amuse herself as she thought best, in the public society of the main cabin. my conclusion, from what i saw and heard, was, that, the artist, by some unaccountable freak of fate, or perhaps in some fit of enthusiastic and fanciful passion, had been induced to unite himself with a person altogether beneath him, and that the natural result, entire and speedy disgust, had ensued. i pitied him from the bottom of my heartbut could not, for that reason, quite forgive his incommunicativeness in the matter of the "last supper." for this i resolved to have my revenge. one day he came upon deck, and, taking his arm as had been my wont, i sauntered with him backward and forward. his gloom, however (which i considered quite natural under the circumstances), seemed entirely unabated. he said little, and that moodily, and with evident effort. i ventured a jest or two, and he made a sickening attempt at a smile. poor fellow!as i thought of his wife, i wondered that he could have heart to put on even the semblance of mirth. i determined to commence a series of covert insinuations, or innuendoes, about the oblong boxjust to let him perceive, gradually, that i was not altogether the butt, or victim, of his little bit of pleasant mystification. my first observation was by way of opening a masked battery. i said something about the "peculiar shape of that box-," and, as i spoke the words, i smiled knowingly, winked, and touched him gently with my forefinger in the ribs. the manner in which wyatt received this harmless pleasantry convinced me, at once, that he was mad. at first he stared at me as if he found it impossible to comprehend the witticism of my remark; but as its point seemed slowly to make its way into his brain, his eyes, in the same proportion, seemed protruding from their sockets. then he grew very redthen hideously palethen, as if highly amused with what i had insinuated, he began a loud and boisterous laugh, which, to my astonishment, he kept up, with gradually increasing vigor, for ten minutes or more. in conclusion, he fell flat and heavily upon the deck. when i ran to uplift him, to all appearance he was dead. i called assistance, and, with much difficulty, we brought him to himself. upon reviving he spoke incoherently for some time. at length we bled him and put him to bed. the next morning he was quite recovered, so far as regarded his mere bodily health. of his mind i say nothing, of course. i avoided him during the rest of the passage, by advice of the captain, who seemed to coincide with me altogether in my views of his insanity, but cautioned me to say nothing on this head to any person on board. several circumstances occurred immediately after this fit of wyatt which contributed to heighten the curiosity with which i was already possessed. among other things, this: i had been nervousdrank too much strong green tea, and slept ill at nightin fact, for two nights i could not be properly said to sleep at all. now, my state-room opened into the main cabin, or dining-room, as did those of all the single men on board. wyatt's three rooms were in the after-cabin, which was separated from the main one by a slight sliding door, never locked even at night. as we were almost constantly on a wind, and the breeze was not a little stiff, the ship heeled to leeward very considerably; and whenever her starboard side was to leeward, the sliding door between the cabins slid open, and so remained, nobody taking the trouble to get up and shut it. but my berth was in such a position, that when my own state-room door was open, as well as the sliding door in question (and my own door was always open on account of the heat,) i could see into the after-cabin quite distinctly, and just at that portion of it, too, where were situated the state-rooms of mr. wyatt. well, during two nights (not consecutive) while i lay awake, i clearly saw mrs. w., about eleven o'clock upon each night, steal cautiously from the state-room of mr. w., and enter the extra room, where she remained until daybreak, when she was called by her husband and went back. that they were virtually separated was clear. they had separate apartmentsno doubt in contemplation of a more permanent divorce; and here, after all i thought was the mystery of the extra state-room. there was another circumstance, too, which interested me much. during the two wakeful nights in question, and immediately after the disappearance of mrs. wyatt into the extra state-room, i was attracted by certain singular cautious, subdued noises in that of her husband. after listening to them for some time, with thoughtful attention, i at length succeeded perfectly in translating their import. they were sounds occasioned by the artist in prying open the oblong box, by means of a chisel and malletthe latter being apparently muffled, or deadened, by some soft woollen or cotton substance in which its head was enveloped. in this manner i fancied i could distinguish the precise moment when he fairly disengaged the lidalso, that i could determine when he removed it altogether, and when he deposited it upon the lower berth in his room; this latter point i knew, for example, by certain slight taps which the lid made in striking against the wooden edges of the berth, as he endeavored to lay it down very gentlythere being no room for it on the floor. after this there was a dead stillness, and i heard nothing more, upon either occasion, until nearly daybreak; unless, perhaps, i may mention a low sobbing, or murmuring sound, so very much suppressed as to be nearly inaudibleif, indeed, the whole of this latter noise were not rather produced by my own imagination. i say it seemed to resemble sobbing or sighingbut, of course, it could not have been either. i rather think it was a ringing in my own ears. mr. wyatt, no doubt, according to custom, was merely giving the rein to one of his hobbiesindulging in one of his fits of artistic enthusiasm. he had opened his oblong box, in order to feast his eyes on the pictorial treasure within. there was nothing in this, however, to make him sob. i repeat, therefore, that it must have been simply a freak of my own fancy, distempered by good captain hardy's green tea. just before dawn, on each of the two nights of which i speak, i distinctly heard mr. wyatt replace the lid upon the oblong box, and force the nails into their old places by means of the muffled mallet. having done this, he issued from his state-room, fully dressed, and proceeded to call mrs. w. from hers. we had been at sea seven days, and were now off cape hatteras, when there came a tremendously heavy blow from the southwest. we were, in a measure, prepared for it, however, as the weather had been holding out threats for some time. every thing was made snug, alow and aloft; and as the wind steadily freshened, we lay to, at length, under spanker and foretopsail, both double-reefed. in this trim we rode safely enough for forty-eight hoursthe ship proving herself an excellent sea-boat in many respects, and shipping no water of any consequence. at the end of this period, however, the gale had freshened into a hurricane, and our aftersail split into ribbons, bringing us so much in the trough of the water that we shipped several prodigious seas, one immediately after the other. by this accident we lost three men overboard with the caboose, and nearly the whole of the larboard bulwarks. scarcely had we recovered our senses, before the foretopsail went into shreds, when we got up a storm staysail and with this did pretty well for some hours, the ship heading the sea much more steadily than before. the gale still held on, however, and we saw no signs of its abating. the rigging was found to be ill-fitted, and greatly strained; and on the third day of the blow, about five in the afternoon, our mizzen-mast, in a heavy lurch to windward, went by the board. for an hour or more, we tried in vain to get rid of it, on account of the prodigious rolling of the ship; and, before we had succeeded, the carpenter came aft and announced four feet of water in the hold. to add to our dilemma, we found the pumps choked and nearly useless. all was now confusion and despairbut an effort was made to lighten the ship by throwing overboard as much of her cargo as could be reached, and by cutting away the two masts that remained. this we at last accomplishedbut we were still unable to do any thing at the pumps; and, in the meantime, the leak gained on us very fast. at sundown, the gale had sensibly diminished in violence, and as the sea went down with it, we still entertained faint hopes of saving ourselves in the boats. at eight p. m., the clouds broke away to windward, and we had the advantage of a full moona piece of good fortune which served wonderfully to cheer our drooping spirits. after incredible labor we succeeded, at length, in getting the longboat over the side without material accident, and into this we crowded the whole of the crew and most of the passengers. this party made off immediately, and, after undergoing much suffering, finally arrived, in safety, at ocracoke inlet, on the third day after the wreck. fourteen passengers, with the captain, remained on board, resolving to trust their fortunes to the jolly-boat at the stern. we lowered it without difficulty, although it was only by a miracle that we prevented it from swamping as it touched the water. it contained, when afloat, the captain and his wife, mr. wyatt and party, a mexican officer, wife, four children, and myself, with a negro valet. we had no room, of course, for any thing except a few positively necessary instruments, some provisions, and the clothes upon our backs. no one had thought of even attempting to save any thing more. what must have been the astonishment of all, then, when having proceeded a few fathoms from the ship, mr. wyatt stood up in the stern-sheets, and coolly demanded of captain hardy that the boat should be put back for the purpose of taking in his oblong box! "sit down, mr. wyatt," replied the captain, somewhat sternly, "you will capsize us if you do not sit quite still. our gunwhale is almost in the water now." "the box!" vociferated mr. wyatt, still standing"the box, i say! captain hardy, you cannot, you will not refuse me. its weight will be but a trifleit is nothingmere nothing. by the mother who bore youfor the love of heavenby your hope of salvation, i implore you to put back for the box!" the captain, for a moment, seemed touched by the earnest appeal of the artist, but he regained his stern composure, and merely said: "mr. wyatt, you are mad. i cannot listen to you. sit down, i say, or you will swamp the boat. stayhold himseize him!he is about to spring overboard! therei knew ithe is over!" as the captain said this, mr. wyatt, in fact, sprang from the boat, and, as we were yet in the lee of the wreck, succeeded, by almost superhuman exertion, in getting hold of a rope which hung from the fore-chains. in another moment he was on board, and rushing frantically down into the cabin. in the meantime, we had been swept astern of the ship, and being quite out of her lee, were at the mercy of the tremendous sea which was still running. we made a determined effort to put back, but our little boat was like a feather in the breath of the tempest. we saw at a glance that the doom of the unfortunate artist was sealed. as our distance from the wreck rapidly increased, the madman (for as such only could we regard him) was seen to emerge from the companionway, up which by dint of strength that appeared gigantic, he dragged, bodily, the oblong box. while we gazed in the extremity of astonishment, he passed, rapidly, several turns of a three-inch rope, first around the box and then around his body. in another instant both body and box were in the seadisappearing suddenly, at once and forever. we lingered awhile sadly upon our oars, with our eyes riveted upon the spot. at length we pulled away. the silence remained unbroken for an hour. finally, i hazarded a remark. "did you observe, captain, how suddenly they sank? was not that an exceedingly singular thing? i confess that i entertained some feeble hope of his final deliverance, when i saw him lash himself to the box, and commit himself to the sea." "they sank as a matter of course," replied the captain, "and that like a shot. they will soon rise again, howeverbut not till the salt melts." "the salt!" i ejaculated. "hush!" said the captain, pointing to the wife and sisters of the deceased. "we must talk of these things at some more appropriate time." we suffered much, and made a narrow escape, but fortune befriended us, as well as our mates in the long-boat. we landed, in fine, more dead than alive, after four days of intense distress, upon the beach opposite roanoke island. we remained here a week, were not ill-treated by the wreckers, and at length obtained a passage to new york. about a month after the loss of the "independence," i happened to meet captain hardy in broadway. our conversation turned, naturally, upon the disaster, and especially upon the sad fate of poor wyatt. i thus learned the following particulars. the artist had engaged passage for himself, wife, two sisters and a servant. his wife was, indeed, as she had been represented, a most lovely, and most accomplished woman. on the morning of the fourteenth of june (the day in which i first visited the ship), the lady suddenly sickened and died. the young husband was frantic with griefbut circumstances imperatively forbade the deferring his voyage to new york. it was necessary to take to her mother the corpse of his adored wife, and, on the other hand, the universal prejudice which would prevent his doing so openly was well known. nine-tenths of the passengers would have abandoned the ship rather than take passage with a dead body. in this dilemma, captain hardy arranged that the corpse, being first partially embalmed, and packed, with a large quantity of salt, in a box of suitable dimensions, should be conveyed on board as merchandise. nothing was to be said of the lady's decease; and, as it was well understood that mr. wyatt had engaged passage for his wife, it became necessary that some person should personate her during the voyage. this the deceased lady's-maid was easily prevailed on to do. the extra state-room, originally engaged for this girl during her mistress' life, was now merely retained. in this state-room the pseudo-wife, slept, of course, every night. in the daytime she performed, to the best of her ability, the part of her mistresswhose person, it had been carefully ascertained, was unknown to any of the passengers on board. my own mistake arose, naturally enough, through too careless, too inquisitive, and too impulsive a temperament. but of late, it is a rare thing that i sleep soundly at night. there is a countenance which haunts me, turn as i will. there is an hysterical laugh which will forever ring within my ears. the end . 1843 the tell-tale heart by edgar allan poe true! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous i had been and am; but why will you say that i am mad? the disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. above all was the sense of hearing acute. i heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. i heard many things in hell. how, then, am i mad? hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly i can tell you the whole story. it is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. object there was none. passion there was none. i loved the old man. he had never wronged me. he had never given me insult. for his gold i had no desire. i think it was his eye! yes, it was this! he had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --i made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever. now this is the point. you fancy me mad. madmen know nothing. but you should have seen me. you should have seen how wisely i proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation i went to work! i was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before i killed him. and every night, about midnight, i turned the latch of his door and opened it --oh so gently! and then, when i had made an opening sufficient for my head, i put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then i thrust in my head. oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly i thrust it in! i moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so that i might not disturb the old man's sleep. it took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that i could see him as he lay upon his bed. ha! would a madman have been so wise as this, and then, when my head was well in the room, i undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously --cautiously (for the hinges creaked) --i undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. and this i did for seven long nights --every night just at midnight --but i found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his evil eye. and every morning, when the day broke, i went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. so you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, i looked in upon him while he slept. upon the eighth night i was more than usually cautious in opening the door. a watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. never before that night had i felt the extent of my own powers --of my sagacity. i could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. to think that there i was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. i fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. now you may think that i drew back --but no. his room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so i knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and i kept pushing it on steadily, steadily. i had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"who's there?" i kept quite still and said nothing. for a whole hour i did not move a muscle, and in the meantime i did not hear him lie down. he was still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as i have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall. presently i heard a slight groan, and i knew it was the groan of mortal terror. it was not a groan of pain or of grief --oh, no! --it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. i knew the sound well. many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. i say i knew it well. i knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although i chuckled at heart. i knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. his fears had been ever since growing upon him. he had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. he had been saying to himself --"it is nothing but the wind in the chimney --it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "it is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. all in vain; because death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. and it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel --although he neither saw nor heard --to feel the presence of my head within the room. when i had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, i resolved to open a little --a very, very little crevice in the lantern. so i opened it --you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily --until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye. it was open --wide, wide open --and i grew furious as i gazed upon it. i saw it with perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but i could see nothing else of the old man's face or person: for i had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot. and have i not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? --now, i say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. i knew that sound well, too. it was the beating of the old man's heart. it increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. but even yet i refrained and kept still. i scarcely breathed. i held the lantern motionless. i tried how steadily i could maintain the ray upon the eve. meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. it grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. the old man's terror must have been extreme! it grew louder, i say, louder every moment! --do you mark me well i have told you that i am nervous: so i am. and now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. yet, for some minutes longer i refrained and stood still. but the beating grew louder, louder! i thought the heart must burst. and now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a neighbour! the old man's hour had come! with a loud yell, i threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. he shrieked once --once only. in an instant i dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. i then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. but, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. this, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. at length it ceased. the old man was dead. i removed the bed and examined the corpse. yes, he was stone, stone dead. i placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. there was no pulsation. he was stone dead. his eve would trouble me no more. if still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when i describe the wise precautions i took for the concealment of the body. the night waned, and i worked hastily, but in silence. first of all i dismembered the corpse. i cut off the head and the arms and the legs. i then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. i then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye --not even his --could have detected any thing wrong. there was nothing to wash out --no stain of any kind --no blood-spot whatever. i had been too wary for that. a tub had caught all --ha! ha! when i had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock --still dark as midnight. as the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. i went down to open it with a light heart, --for what had i now to fear? there entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. a shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises. i smiled, --for what had i to fear? i bade the gentlemen welcome. the shriek, i said, was my own in a dream. the old man, i mentioned, was absent in the country. i took my visitors all over the house. i bade them search --search well. i led them, at length, to his chamber. i showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. in the enthusiasm of my confidence, i brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while i myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim. the officers were satisfied. my manner had convinced them. i was singularly at ease. they sat, and while i answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. but, ere long, i felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. my head ached, and i fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. the ringing became more distinct: --it continued and became more distinct: i talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness --until, at length, i found that the noise was not within my ears. no doubt i now grew very pale; --but i talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. yet the sound increased --and what could i do? it was a low, dull, quick sound --much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. i gasped for breath --and yet the officers heard it not. i talked more quickly --more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. i arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. why would they not be gone? i paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men --but the noise steadily increased. oh god! what could i do? i foamed --i raved --i swore! i swung the chair upon which i had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. it grew louder --louder --louder! and still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. was it possible they heard not? almighty god! --no, no! they heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this i thought, and this i think. but anything was better than this agony! anything was more tolerable than this derision! i could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! i felt that i must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder! "villains!" i shrieked, "dissemble no more! i admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --it is the beating of his hideous heart!" -the end. 1850 the domain of arnheim by edgar allan poe the garden like a lady fair was cut, that lay as if she slumbered in delight, and to the open skies her eyes did shut. the azure fields of heaven were 'sembled right in a large round, set with the flowers of light. the flowers de luce, and the round sparks of dew. that hung upon their azure leaves did shew like twinkling stars that sparkle in the evening blue. giles fletcher. from his cradle to his grave a gale of prosperity bore my friend ellison along. nor do i use the word prosperity in its mere worldly sense. i mean it as synonymous with happiness. the person of whom i speak seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of turgot, price, priestley, and condorcetof exemplifying by individual instance what has been deemed the chimera of the perfectionists. in the brief existence of ellison i fancy that i have seen refuted the dogma, that in man's very nature lies some hidden principle, the antagonist of bliss. an anxious examination of his career has given me to understand that in general, from the violation of a few simple laws of humanity arises the wretchedness of mankindthat as a species we have in our possession the as yet unwrought elements of contentand that, even now, in the present darkness and madness of all thought on the great question of the social condition, it is not impossible that man, the individual, under certain unusual and highly fortuitous conditions, may be happy. with opinions such as these my young friend, too, was fully imbued, and thus it is worthy of observation that the uninterrupted enjoyment which distinguished his life was, in great measure, the result of preconcert. it is indeed evident that with less of the instinctive philosophy which, now and then, stands so well in the stead of experience, mr. ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary success of his life, into the common vortex of unhappiness which yawns for those of pre-eminent endowments. but it is by no means my object to pen an essay on happiness. the ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words. he admitted but four elementary principles, or more strictly, conditions of bliss. that which he considered chief was (strange to say!) the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. "the health," he said, "attainable by other means is scarcely worth the name." he instanced the ecstasies of the fox-hunter, and pointed to the tillers of the earth, the only people who, as a class, can be fairly considered happier than others. his second condition was the love of woman. his third, and most difficult of realization, was the contempt of ambition. his fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other things being equal, the extent of attainable happiness was in proportion to the spirituality of this object. ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion of good gifts lavished upon him by fortune. in personal grace and beauty he exceeded all men. his intellect was of that order to which the acquisition of knowledge is less a labor than an intuition and a necessity. his family was one of the most illustrious of the empire. his bride was the loveliest and most devoted of women. his possessions had been always ample; but on the attainment of his majority, it was discovered that one of those extraordinary freaks of fate had been played in his behalf which startle the whole social world amid which they occur, and seldom fail radically to alter the moral constitution of those who are their objects. it appears that about a hundred years before mr. ellison's coming of age, there had died, in a remote province, one mr. seabright ellison. this gentleman had amassed a princely fortune, and, having no immediate connections, conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a century after his decease. minutely and sagaciously directing the various modes of investment, he bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest of blood, bearing the name of ellison, who should be alive at the end of the hundred years. many attempts had been made to set aside this singular bequest; their ex post facto character rendered them abortive; but the attention of a jealous government was aroused, and a legislative act finally obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations. this act, however, did not prevent young ellison from entering into possession, on his twenty-first birthday, as the heir of his ancestor seabright, of a fortune of four hundred and fifty millions of dollars.* * an incident, similar in outline to the one here imagined, occurred, not very long ago, in england. the name of the fortunate heir was thelluson. i first saw an account of this matter in the "tour" of prince puckler muskau, who makes the sum inherited ninety millions of pounds, and justly observes that "in the contemplation of so vast a sum, and of the services to which it might be applied, there is something even of the sublime." to suit the views of this article i have followed the prince's statement, although a grossly exaggerated one. the germ, and in fact, the commencement of the present paper was published many years agoprevious to the issue of the first number of sue's admirable "juif errant," which may possibly have been suggested to him by muskau's account. when it had become known that such was the enormous wealth inherited, there were, of course, many speculations as to the mode of its disposal. the magnitude and the immediate availability of the sum bewildered all who thought on the topic. the possessor of any appreciable amount of money might have been imagined to perform any one of a thousand things. with riches merely surpassing those of any citizen, it would have been easy to suppose him engaging to supreme excess in the fashionable extravagances of his timeor busying himself with political intrigueor aiming at ministerial poweror purchasing increase of nobilityor collecting large museums of virtuor playing the munificent patron of letters, of science, of artor endowing, and bestowing his name upon extensive institutions of charity. but for the inconceivable wealth in the actual possession of the heir, these objects and all ordinary objects were felt to afford too limited a field. recourse was had to figures, and these but sufficed to confound. it was seen that, even at three per cent., the annual income of the inheritance amounted to no less than thirteen millions and five hundred thousand dollars; which was one million and one hundred and twenty-five thousand per month; or thirty-six thousand nine hundred and eighty-six per day; or one thousand five hundred and forty-one per hour; or six and twenty dollars for every minute that flew. thus the usual track of supposition was thoroughly broken up. men knew not what to imagine. there were some who even conceived that mr. ellison would divest himself of at least one-half of his fortune, as of utterly superfluous opulenceenriching whole troops of his relatives by division of his superabundance. to the nearest of these he did, in fact, abandon the very unusual wealth which was his own before the inheritance. i was not surprised, however, to perceive that he had long made up his mind on a point which had occasioned so much discussion to his friends. nor was i greatly astonished at the nature of his decision. in regard to individual charities he had satisfied his conscience. in the possibility of any improvement, properly so called, being effected by man himself in the general condition of man, he had (i am sorry to confess it) little faith. upon the whole, whether happily or unhappily, he was thrown back, in very great measure, upon self. in the widest and noblest sense he was a poet. he comprehended, moreover, the true character, the august aims, the supreme majesty and dignity of the poetic sentiment. the fullest, if not the sole proper satisfaction of this sentiment he instinctively felt to lie in the creation of novel forms of beauty. some peculiarities, either in his early education, or in the nature of his intellect, had tinged with what is termed materialism all his ethical speculations; and it was this bias, perhaps, which led him to believe that the most advantageous at least, if not the sole legitimate field for the poetic exercise, lies in the creation of novel moods of purely physical loveliness. thus it happened he became neither musician nor poetif we use this latter term in its every-day acceptation. or it might have been that he neglected to become either, merely in pursuance of his idea that in contempt of ambition is to be found one of the essential principles of happiness on earth. is it not indeed, possible that, while a high order of genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is above that which is termed ambition? and may it not thus happen that many far greater than milton have contentedly remained "mute and inglorious?" i believe that the world has never seenand that, unless through some series of accidents goading the noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion, the world will never seethat full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer domains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable. ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man lived more profoundly enamored of music and poetry. under other circumstances than those which invested him, it is not impossible that he would have become a painter. sculpture, although in its nature rigorously poetical was too limited in its extent and consequences, to have occupied, at any time, much of his attention. and i have now mentioned all the provinces in which the common understanding of the poetic sentiment has declared it capable of expatiating. but ellison maintained that the richest, the truest, and most natural, if not altogether the most extensive province, had been unaccountably neglected. no definition had spoken of the landscape-gardener as of the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the landscape-garden offered to the proper muse the most magnificent of opportunities. here, indeed, was the fairest field for the display of imagination in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty; the elements to enter into combination being, by a vast superiority, the most glorious which the earth could afford. in the multiform and multicolor of the flowers and the trees, he recognised the most direct and energetic efforts of nature at physical loveliness. and in the direction or concentration of this effortor, more properly, in its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earthhe perceived that he should be employing the best meanslaboring to the greatest advantagein the fulfilment, not only of his own destiny as poet, but of the august purposes for which the deity had implanted the poetic sentiment in man. "its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth." in his explanation of this phraseology, mr. ellison did much toward solving what has always seemed to me an enigma:i mean the fact (which none but the ignorant dispute) that no such combination of scenery exists in nature as the painter of genius may produce. no such paradises are to be found in reality as have glowed on the canvas of claude. in the most enchanting of natural landscapes, there will always be found a defect or an excessmany excesses and defects. while the component parts may defy, individually, the highest skill of the artist, the arrangement of these parts will always be susceptible of improvement. in short, no position can be attained on the wide surface of the natural earth, from which an artistical eye, looking steadily, will not find matter of offence in what is termed the "composition" of the landscape. and yet how unintelligible is this! in all other matters we are justly instructed to regard nature as supreme. with her details we shrink from competition. who shall presume to imitate the colors of the tulip, or to improve the proportions of the lily of the valley? the criticism which says, of sculpture or portraiture, that here nature is to be exalted or idealized rather than imitated, is in error. no pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human liveliness do more than approach the living and breathing beauty. in landscape alone is the principle of the critic true; and, having felt its truth here, it is but the headlong spirit of generalization which has led him to pronounce it true throughout all the domains of art. having, i say, felt its truth here; for the feeling is no affectation or chimera. the mathematics afford no more absolute demonstrations than the sentiments of his art yields the artist. he not only believes, but positively knows, that such and such apparently arbitrary arrangements of matter constitute and alone constitute the true beauty. his reasons, however, have not yet been matured into expression. it remains for a more profound analysis than the world has yet seen, fully to investigate and express them. nevertheless he is confirmed in his instinctive opinions by the voice of all his brethren. let a "composition" be defective; let an emendation be wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let this emendation be submitted to every artist in the world; by each will its necessity be admitted. and even far more than this:in remedy of the defective composition, each insulated member of the fraternity would have suggested the identical emendation. i repeat that in landscape arrangements alone is the physical nature susceptible of exaltation, and that, therefore, her susceptibility of improvement at this one point, was a mystery i had been unable to solve. my own thoughts on the subject had rested in the idea that the primitive intention of nature would have so arranged the earth's surface as to have fulfilled at all points man's sense of perfection in the beautiful, the sublime, or the picturesque; but that this primitive intention had been frustrated by the known geological disturbancesdisturbances of form and colorgrouping, in the correction or allaying of which lies the soul of art. the force of this idea was much weakened, however, by the necessity which it involved of considering the disturbances abnormal and unadapted to any purpose. it was ellison who suggested that they were prognostic of death. he thus explained:admit the earthly immortality of man to have been the first intention. we have then the primitive arrangement of the earth's surface adapted to his blissful estate, as not existent but designed. the disturbances were the preparations for his subsequently conceived deathful condition. "now," said my friend, "what we regard as exaltation of the landscape may be really such, as respects only the moral or human point of view. each alteration of the natural scenery may possibly effect a blemish in the picture, if we can suppose this picture viewed at largein massfrom some point distant from the earth's surface, although not beyond the limits of its atmosphere. it is easily understood that what might improve a closely scrutinized detail, may at the same time injure a general or more distantly observed effect. there may be a class of beings, human once, but now invisible to humanity, to whom, from afar, our disorder may seem orderour unpicturesqueness picturesque, in a word, the earth-angels, for whose scrutiny more especially than our own, and for whose deathrefined appreciation of the beautiful, may have been set in array by god the wide landscape-gardens of the hemispheres." in the course of discussion, my friend quoted some passages from a writer on landscape-gardening who has been supposed to have well treated his theme: "there are properly but two styles of landscape-gardening, the natural and the artificial. one seeks to recall the original beauty of the country, by adapting its means to the surrounding scenery, cultivating trees in harmony with the hills or plain of the neighboring land; detecting and bringing into practice those nice relations of size, proportion, and color which, hid from the common observer, are revealed everywhere to the experienced student of nature. the result of the natural style of gardening, is seen rather in the absence of all defects and incongruitiesin the prevalence of a healthy harmony and orderthan in the creation of any special wonders or miracles. the artificial style has as many varieties as there are different tastes to gratify. it has a certain general relation to the various styles of building. there are the stately avenues and retirements of versailles; italian terraces; and a various mixed old english style, which bears some relation to the domestic gothic or english elizabethan architecture. whatever may be said against the abuses of the artificial landscapegardening, a mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty. this is partly pleasing to the eye, by the show of order and design, and partly moral. a terrace, with an old mosscovered balustrade, calls up at once to the eye the fair forms that have passed there in other days. the slightest exhibition of art is an evidence of care and human interest." "from what i have already observed," said ellison, "you will understand that i reject the idea, here expressed, of recalling the original beauty of the country. the original beauty is never so great as that which may be introduced. of course, every thing depends on the selection of a spot with capabilities. what is said about detecting and bringing into practice nice relations of size, proportion, and color, is one of those mere vaguenesses of speech which serve to veil inaccuracy of thought. the phrase quoted may mean any thing, or nothing, and guides in no degree. that the true result of the natural style of gardening is seen rather in the absence of all defects and incongruities than in the creation of any special wonders or miracles, is a proposition better suited to the grovelling apprehension of the herd than to the fervid dreams of the man of genius. the negative merit suggested appertains to that hobbling criticism which, in letters, would elevate addison into apotheosis. in truth, while that virtue which consists in the mere avoidance of vice appeals directly to the understanding, and can thus be circumscribed in rule, the loftier virtue, which flames in creation, can be apprehended in its results alone. rule applies but to the merits of denialto the excellencies which refrain. beyond these, the critical art can but suggest. we may be instructed to build a "cato," but we are in vain told how to conceive a parthenon or an "inferno." the thing done, however; the wonder accomplished; and the capacity for apprehension becomes universal. the sophists of the negative school who, through inability to create, have scoffed at creation, are now found the loudest in applause. what, in its chrysalis condition of principle, affronted their demure reason, never fails, in its maturity of accomplishment, to extort admiration from their instinct of beauty. "the author's observations on the artificial style," continued ellison, "are less objectionable. a mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty. this is just; as also is the reference to the sense of human interest. the principle expressed is incontrovertiblebut there may be something beyond it. there may be an object in keeping with the principlean object unattainable by the means ordinarily possessed by individuals, yet which, if attained, would lend a charm to the landscape-garden far surpassing that which a sense of merely human interest could bestow. a poet, having very unusual pecuniary resources, might, while retaining the necessary idea of art or culture, or, as our author expresses it, of interest, so imbue his designs at once with extent and novelty of beauty, as to convey the sentiment of spiritual interference. it will be seen that, in bringing about such result, he secures all the advantages of interest or design, while relieving his work of the harshness or technicality of the worldly art. in the most rugged of wildernessesin the most savage of the scenes of pure naturethere is apparent the art of a creator; yet this art is apparent to reflection only; in no respect has it the obvious force of a feeling. now let us suppose this sense of the almighty design to be one step depressedto be brought into something like harmony or consistency with the sense of human artto form an intermedium between the two:let us imagine, for example, a landscape whose combined vastness and definitivenesswhose united beauty, magnificence, and strangeness, shall convey the idea of care, or culture, or superintendence, on the part of beings superior, yet akin to humanitythen the sentiment of interest is preserved, while the art intervolved is made to assume the air of an intermediate or secondary naturea nature which is not god, nor an emanation from god, but which still is nature in the sense of the handiwork of the angels that hover between man and god." it was in devoting his enormous wealth to the embodiment of a vision such as thisin the free exercise in the open air ensured by the personal superintendence of his plansin the unceasing object which these plans affordedin the high spirituality of the objectin the contempt of ambition which it enabled him truly to feelin the perennial springs with which it gratified, without possibility of satiating, that one master passion of his soul, the thirst for beauty, above all, it was in the sympathy of a woman, not unwomanly, whose loveliness and love enveloped his existence in the purple atmosphere of paradise, that ellison thought to find, and found, exemption from the ordinary cares of humanity, with a far greater amount of positive happiness than ever glowed in the rapt day-dreams of de stael. i despair of conveying to the reader any distinct conception of the marvels which my friend did actually accomplish. i wish to describe, but am disheartened by the difficulty of description, and hesitate between detail and generality. perhaps the better course will be to unite the two in their extremes. mr. ellison's first step regarded, of course, the choice of a locality, and scarcely had he commenced thinking on this point, when the luxuriant nature of the pacific islands arrested his attention. in fact, he had made up his mind for a voyage to the south seas, when a night's reflection induced him to abandon the idea. "were i misanthropic," he said, "such a locale would suit me. the thoroughness of its insulation and seclusion, and the difficulty of ingress and egress, would in such case be the charm of charms; but as yet i am not timon. i wish the composure but not the depression of solitude. there must remain with me a certain control over the extent and duration of my repose. there will be frequent hours in which i shall need, too, the sympathy of the poetic in what i have done. let me seek, then, a spot not far from a populous citywhose vicinity, also, will best enable me to execute my plans." in search of a suitable place so situated, ellison travelled for several years, and i was permitted to accompany him. a thousand spots with which i was enraptured he rejected without hesitation, for reasons which satisfied me, in the end, that he was right. we came at length to an elevated table-land of wonderful fertility and beauty, affording a panoramic prospect very little less in extent than that of aetna, and, in ellison's opinion as well as my own, surpassing the far-famed view from that mountain in all the true elements of the picturesque. "i am aware," said the traveller, as he drew a sigh of deep delight after gazing on this scene, entranced, for nearly an hour, "i know that here, in my circumstances, nine-tenths of the most fastidious of men would rest content. this panorama is indeed glorious, and i should rejoice in it but for the excess of its glory. the taste of all the architects i have ever known leads them, for the sake of 'prospect,' to put up buildings on hill-tops. the error is obvious. grandeur in any of its moods, but especially in that of extent, startles, excitesand then fatigues, depresses. for the occasional scene nothing can be betterfor the constant view nothing worse. and, in the constant view, the most objectionable phase of grandeur is that of extent; the worst phase of extent, that of distance. it is at war with the sentiment and with the sense of seclusionthe sentiment and sense which we seek to humor in 'retiring to the country.' in looking from the summit of a mountain we cannot help feeling abroad in the world. the heart-sick avoid distant prospects as a pestilence." it was not until toward the close of the fourth year of our search that we found a locality with which ellison professed himself satisfied. it is, of course, needless to say where was the locality. the late death of my friend, in causing his domain to be thrown open to certain classes of visiters, has given to arnheim a species of secret and subdued if not solemn celebrity, similar in kind, although infinitely superior in degree, to that which so long distinguished fonthill. the usual approach to arnheim was by the river. the visiter left the city in the early morning. during the forenoon he passed between shores of a tranquil and domestic beauty, on which grazed innumerable sheep, their white fleeces spotting the vivid green of rolling meadows. by degrees the idea of cultivation subsided into that of merely pastoral care. this slowly became merged in a sense of retirementthis again in a consciousness of solitude. as the evening approached, the channel grew more narrow, the banks more and more precipitous; and these latter were clothed in rich, more profuse, and more sombre foliage. the water increased in transparency. the stream took a thousand turns, so that at no moment could its gleaming surface be seen for a greater distance than a furlong. at every instant the vessel seemed imprisoned within an enchanted circle, having insuperable and impenetrable walls of foliage, a roof of ultramarine satin, and no floorthe keel balancing itself with admirable nicety on that of a phantom bark which, by some accident having been turned upside down, floated in constant company with the substantial one, for the purpose of sustaining it. the channel now became a gorgealthough the term is somewhat inapplicable, and i employ it merely because the language has no word which better represents the most strikingnot the most distinctive-feature of the scene. the character of gorge was maintained only in the height and parallelism of the shores; it was lost altogether in their other traits. the walls of the ravine (through which the clear water still tranquilly flowed) arose to an elevation of a hundred and occasionally of a hundred and fifty feet, and inclined so much toward each other as, in a great measure, to shut out the light of day; while the long plume-like moss which depended densely from the intertwining shrubberies overhead, gave the whole chasm an air of funereal gloom. the windings became more frequent and intricate, and seemed often as if returning in upon themselves, so that the voyager had long lost all idea of direction. he was, moreover, enwrapt in an exquisite sense of the strange. the thought of nature still remained, but her character seemed to have undergone modification, there was a weird symmetry, a thrilling uniformity, a wizard propriety in these her works. not a dead branchnot a withered leafnot a stray pebblenot a patch of the brown earth was anywhere visible. the crystal water welled up against the clean granite, or the unblemished moss, with a sharpness of outline that delighted while it bewildered the eye. having threaded the mazes of this channel for some hours, the gloom deepening every moment, a sharp and unexpected turn of the vessel brought it suddenly, as if dropped from heaven, into a circular basin of very considerable extent when compared with the width of the gorge. it was about two hundred yards in diameter, and girt in at all points but onethat immediately fronting the vessel as it enteredby hills equal in general height to the walls of the chasm, although of a thoroughly different character. their sides sloped from the water's edge at an angle of some forty-five degrees, and they were clothed from base to summitnot a perceptible point escapingin a drapery of the most gorgeous flower-blossoms; scarcely a green leaf being visible among the sea of odorous and fluctuating color. this basin was of great depth, but so transparent was the water that the bottom, which seemed to consist of a thick mass of small round alabaster pebbles, was distinctly visible by glimpsesthat is to say, whenever the eye could permit itself not to see, far down in the inverted heaven, the duplicate blooming of the hills. on these latter there were no trees, nor even shrubs of any size. the impressions wrought on the observer were those of richness, warmth, color, quietude, uniformity, softness, delicacy, daintiness, voluptuousness, and a miraculous extremeness of culture that suggested dreams of a new race of fairies, laborious, tasteful, magnificent, and fastidious; but as the eye traced upward the myriad-tinted slope, from its sharp junction with the water to its vague termination amid the folds of overhanging cloud, it became, indeed, difficult not to fancy a panoramic cataract of rubies, sapphires, opals, and golden onyxes, rolling silently out of the sky. the visiter, shooting suddenly into this bay from out the gloom of the ravine, is delighted but astounded by the full orb of the declining sun, which he had supposed to be already far below the horizon, but which now confronts him, and forms the sole termination of an otherwise limitless vista seen through another chasmlike rift in the hills. but here the voyager quits the vessel which has borne him so far, and descends into a light canoe of ivory, stained with arabesque devices in vivid scarlet, both within and without. the poop and beak of this boat arise high above the water, with sharp points, so that the general form is that of an irregular crescent. it lies on the surface of the bay with the proud grace of a swan. on its ermined floor reposes a single feathery paddle of satin-wood; but no oarsmen or attendant is to be seen. the guest is bidden to be of good cheerthat the fates will take care of him. the larger vessel disappears, and he is left alone in the canoe, which lies apparently motionless in the middle of the lake. while he considers what course to pursue, however, he becomes aware of a gentle movement in the fairy bark. it slowly swings itself around until its prow points toward the sun. it advances with a gentle but gradually accelerated velocity, while the slight ripples it creates seem to break about the ivory side in divinest melody-seem to offer the only possible explanation of the soothing yet melancholy music for whose unseen origin the bewildered voyager looks around him in vain. the canoe steadily proceeds, and the rocky gate of the vista is approached, so that its depths can be more distinctly seen. to the right arise a chain of lofty hills rudely and luxuriantly wooded. it is observed, however, that the trait of exquisite cleanness where the bank dips into the water, still prevails. there is not one token of the usual river debris. to the left the character of the scene is softer and more obviously artificial. here the bank slopes upward from the stream in a very gentle ascent, forming a broad sward of grass of a texture resembling nothing so much as velvet, and of a brilliancy of green which would bear comparison with the tint of the purest emerald. this plateau varies in width from ten to three hundred yards; reaching from the river-bank to a wall, fifty feet high, which extends, in an infinity of curves, but following the general direction of the river, until lost in the distance to the westward. this wall is of one continuous rock, and has been formed by cutting perpendicularly the once rugged precipice of the stream's southern bank, but no trace of the labor has been suffered to remain. the chiselled stone has the hue of ages, and is profusely overhung and overspread with the ivy, the coral honeysuckle, the eglantine, and the clematis. the uniformity of the top and bottom lines of the wall is fully relieved by occasional trees of gigantic height, growing singly or in small groups, both along the plateau and in the domain behind the wall, but in close proximity to it; so that frequent limbs (of the black walnut especially) reach over and dip their pendent extremities into the water. farther back within the domain, the vision is impeded by an impenetrable screen of foliage. these things are observed during the canoe's gradual approach to what i have called the gate of the vista. on drawing nearer to this, however, its chasm-like appearance vanishes; a new outlet from the bay is discovered to the leftin which direction the wall is also seen to sweep, still following the general course of the stream. down this new opening the eye cannot penetrate very far; for the stream, accompanied by the wall, still bends to the left, until both are swallowed up by the leaves. the boat, nevertheless, glides magically into the winding channel; and here the shore opposite the wall is found to resemble that opposite the wall in the straight vista. lofty hills, rising occasionally into mountains, and covered with vegetation in wild luxuriance, still shut in the scene. floating gently onward, but with a velocity slightly augmented, the voyager, after many short turns, finds his progress apparently barred by a gigantic gate or rather door of burnished gold, elaborately carved and fretted, and reflecting the direct rays of the now fast-sinking sun with an effulgence that seems to wreath the whole surrounding forest in flames. this gate is inserted in the lofty wall; which here appears to cross the river at right angles. in a few moments, however, it is seen that the main body of the water still sweeps in a gentle and extensive curve to the left, the wall following it as before, while a stream of considerable volume, diverging from the principal one, makes its way, with a slight ripple, under the door, and is thus hidden from sight. the canoe falls into the lesser channel and approaches the gate. its ponderous wings are slowly and musically expanded. the boat glides between them, and commences a rapid descent into a vast amphitheatre entirely begirt with purple mountains, whose bases are laved by a gleaming river throughout the full extent of their circuit. meantime the whole paradise of arnheim bursts upon the view. there is a gush of entrancing melody; there is an oppressive sense of strange sweet odor,there is a dreamlike intermingling to the eye of tall slender eastern treesbosky shrubberiesflocks of golden and crimson birdslily-fringed lakesmeadows of violets, tulips, poppies, hyacinths, and tuberoseslong intertangled lines of silver streamletsand, upspringing confusedly from amid all, a mass of semi-gothic, semi-saracenic architecture sustaining itself by miracle in mid-air, glittering in the red sunlight with a hundred oriels, minarets, and pinnacles; and seeming the phantom handiwork, conjointly, of the sylphs, of the fairies, of the genii and of the gnomes. the end . 1839 the fall of the house of usher by edgar allan poe son coeur est un luth suspendu; sitot qu'on le touche il resonne. de beranger. during the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy house of usher. i know not how it was --but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. i say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. i looked upon the scene before me --upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain --upon the bleak walls --upon the vacant eye-like windows --upon a few rank sedges --and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees --with an utter depression of soul which i can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium --the bitter lapse into everyday life-the hideous dropping off of the reveller upon opium --the bitter lapse into everyday life --the hideous dropping off of the veil. there was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart --an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. what was it --i paused to think --what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the house of usher? it was a mystery all insoluble; nor could i grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as i pondered. i was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. it was possible, i reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, i reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down --but with a shudder even more thrilling than before --upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows. nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom i now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. its proprietor, roderick usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. a letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country --a letter from him --which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. the ms. gave evidence of nervous agitation. the writer spoke of acute bodily illness --of a mental disorder which oppressed him --and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. it was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said --it the apparent heart that went with his request --which allowed me no room for hesitation; and i accordingly obeyed forthwith what i still considered a very singular summons. although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet really knew little of my friend. his reserve had been always excessive and habitual. i was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. i had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. it was this deficiency, i considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other --it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "house of usher" --an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion. i have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment --that of looking down within the tarn --had been to deepen the first singular impression. there can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition --for why should i not so term it? --served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. such, i have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. and it might have been for this reason only, that, when i again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy --a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that i but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. i had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity-an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn --a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued. shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, i scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. the discoloration of ages had been great. minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. no portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. in this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. perhaps the eye of a scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn. noticing these things, i rode over a short causeway to the house. a servant in waiting took my horse, and i entered the gothic archway of the hall. a valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. much that i encountered on the way contributed, i know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which i have already spoken. while the objects around me --while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as i strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, i had been accustomed from my infancy --while i hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this --i still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. on one of the staircases, i met the physician of the family. his countenance, i thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. he accosted me with trepidation and passed on. the valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master. the room in which i found myself was very large and lofty. the windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. dark draperies hung upon the walls. the general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. i felt that i breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. an air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all. upon my entrance, usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, i at first thought, of an overdone cordiality --of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of the world. a glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. we sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, i gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had roderick usher! it was with difficulty that i could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. a cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. and now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that i doubted to whom i spoke. the now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eve, above all things startled and even awed me. the silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, i could not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity. in the manner of my friend i was at once struck with an incoherence --an inconsistency; and i soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy --an excessive nervous agitation. for something of this nature i had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. his action was alternately vivacious and sullen. his voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision --that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation --that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement. it was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. he entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. it was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy --a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. it displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. he suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror. to an anomalous species of terror i found him a bounden slave. "i shall perish," said he, "i must perish in this deplorable folly. thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall i be lost. i dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. i shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. i have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect --in terror. in this unnerved-in this pitiable condition --i feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when i must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, fear." i learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. he was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth --in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated --an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit-an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence. he admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin --to the severe and long-continued illness --indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution-of a tenderly beloved sister --his sole companion for long years --his last and only relative on earth. "her decease," he said, with a bitterness which i can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the ushers." while he spoke, the lady madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. i regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread --and yet i found it impossible to account for such feelings. a sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. when a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother --but he had buried his face in his hands, and i could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears. the disease of the lady madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and i learned that the glimpse i had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last i should obtain --that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more. for several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either usher or myself: and during this period i was busied in earnest endeavours to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. we painted and read together; or i listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. and thus, as a closer and still intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did i perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom. i shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours i thus spent alone with the master of the house of usher. yet i should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. an excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. his long improvised dirges will ring forever in my cars. among other things, i hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of von weber. from the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which i shuddered the more thrillingly, because i shuddered knowing not why; --from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) i would in vain endeavour to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words. by the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. if ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was roderick usher. for me at least --in the circumstances then surrounding me --there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt i ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of fuseli. one of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. a small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. no outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendour. i have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. it was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. but the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. they must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which i have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. the words of one of these rhapsodies i have easily remembered. i was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, i fancied that i perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. the verses, which were entitled "the haunted palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus: i. in the greenest of our valleys, by good angels tenanted, once fair and stately palace - radiant palace --reared its head. in the monarch thought's dominion - it stood there! never seraph spread a pinion over fabric half so fair. ii. banners yellow, glorious, golden, on its roof did float and flow; (this --all this --was in the olden time long ago) and every gentle air that dallied, in that sweet day, along the ramparts plumed and pallid, a winged odour went away. iii. wanderers in that happy valley through two luminous windows saw spirits moving musically to a lute's well-tuned law, round about a throne, where sitting (porphyrogene!) in state his glory well befitting, the ruler of the realm was seen. iv. and all with pearl and ruby glowing was the fair palace door, through which came flowing, flowing, flowing and sparkling evermore, a troop of echoes whose sweet duty was but to sing, in voices of surpassing beauty, the wit and wisdom of their king. v. but evil things, in robes of sorrow, assailed the monarch's high estate; (ah, let us mourn, for never morrow shall dawn upon him, desolate!) and, round about his home, the glory that blushed and bloomed is but a dim-remembered story of the old time entombed. vi. and travellers now within that valley, through the red-litten windows, see vast forms that move fantastically to a discordant melody; while, like a rapid ghastly river, through the pale door, a hideous throng rush out forever, and laugh --but smile no more. i well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of usher's which i mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. this opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. but, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. i lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. the belief, however, was connected (as i have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. the conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones --in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around --above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. its evidence --the evidence of the sentience --was to be seen, he said, (and i here started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. the result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him what i now saw him --what he was. such opinions need no comment, and i will make none. our books --the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid --were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. we pored together over such works as the ververt et chartreuse of gresset; the belphegor of machiavelli; the heaven and hell of swedenborg; the subterranean voyage of nicholas klimm by holberg; the chiromancy of robert flud, of jean d'indagine, and of de la chambre; the journey into the blue distance of tieck; and the city of the sun of campanella. one favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the directorium inquisitorum, by the dominican eymeric de gironne; and there were passages in pomponius mela, about the old african satyrs and aegipans, over which usher would sit dreaming for hours. his chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto gothic --the manual of a forgotten church --the vigilae mortuorum secundum chorum ecclesiae maguntinae. i could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. the worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which i did not feel at liberty to dispute. the brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. i will not deny that when i called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom i met upon the stair case, on the day of my arrival at the house, i had no desire to oppose what i regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution. at the request of usher, i personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. the body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. the vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. it had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. the door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges. having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. a striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which i learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead --for we could not regard her unawed. the disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. we replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toll, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house. and now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. his ordinary manner had vanished. his ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. he roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. the pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue --but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. the once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. there were times, indeed, when i thought his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. at times, again, i was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for i beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. it was no wonder that his condition terrified-that it infected me. i felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions. it was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady madeline within the donjon, that i experienced the full power of such feelings. sleep came not near my couch --while the hours waned and waned away. i struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. i endeavoured to believe that much, if not all of what i felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room --of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. but my efforts were fruitless. an irrepressible tremour gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, i uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened --i know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me --to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, i knew not whence. overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, i threw on my clothes with haste (for i felt that i should sleep no more during the night), and endeavoured to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which i had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment. i had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. i presently recognised it as that of usher. in an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. his countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan --but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes --an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour. his air appalled me --but anything was preferable to the solitude which i had so long endured, and i even welcomed his presence as a relief. "and you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in silence --"you have not then seen it? --but, stay! you shall." thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm. the impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. it was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. a whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each other, without passing away into the distance. i say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this --yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars --nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. but the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapour, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion. "you must not --you shall not behold this!" said i, shudderingly, to usher, as i led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat. "these appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon --or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. let us close this casement; --the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. here is one of your favourite romances. i will read, and you shall listen; --and so we will pass away this terrible night together." the antique volume which i had taken up was the "mad trist" of sir launcelot canning; but i had called it a favourite of usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. it was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and i indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which i should read. could i have judged, indeed, by the wild over-strained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, i might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design. i had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where ethelred, the hero of the trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus: "and ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling there-with sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarumed and reverberated throughout the forest. at the termination of this sentence i started, and for a moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although i at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me) --it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which sir launcelot had so particularly described. it was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. i continued the story: "but the good champion ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten - who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin; who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win; and ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard." here again i paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement --for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, i did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded i found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound --the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer. oppressed, as i certainly was, upon the occurrence of the second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, i still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. i was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanour. from a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus i could but partially perceive his features, although i saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. his head had dropped upon his breast --yet i knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as i caught a glance of it in profile. the motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea --for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. having rapidly taken notice of all this, i resumed the narrative of sir launcelot, which thus proceeded: "and now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound." no sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than --as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. completely unnerved, i leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of usher was undisturbed. i rushed to the chair in which he sat. his eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. but, as i placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and i saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. bending closely over him, i at length drank in the hideous import of his words. "not hear it? --yes, i hear it, and have heard it. long --long --long --many minutes, many hours, many days, have i heard it --yet i dared not --oh, pity me, miserable wretch that i am! --i dared not --i dared not speak! we have put her living in the tomb! said i not that my senses were acute? i now tell you that i heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. i heard them --many, many days ago --yet i dared not --i dared not speak! and now --to-night --ethelred --ha! ha! --the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield! --say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! oh whither shall i fly? will she not be here anon? is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? have i not heard her footstep on the stair? do i not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? madman!" here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul --"madman! i tell you that she now stands without the door!" as if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell --the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, ponderous and ebony jaws. it was the work of the rushing gust --but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady madeline of usher. there was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. for a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold, then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated. from that chamber, and from that mansion, i fled aghast. the storm was still abroad in all its wrath as i found myself crossing the old causeway. suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and i turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could wi have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. the radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure of which i have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. while i gazed, this fissure rapidly widened --there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind --the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight --my brain reeled as i saw the mighty walls rushing asunder --there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters --and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "house of usher." -the end. 1843 the conqueror worm by edgar allan poe lo! 'tis a gala night within the lonesome latter years! an angel throng, bewinged, bedight in veils, and drowned in tears, sit in a theatre, to see a play of hopes and fears, while the orchestra breathes fitfully the music of the spheres. mimes, in the form of god on high, mutter and mumble low, and hither and thither fly mere puppets they, who come and go at bidding of vast formless things that shift the scenery to and fro, flapping from out their condor wings invisible woe! that motley dramaoh, be sure it shall not be forgot! with its phantom chased for evermore, by a crowd that seize it not, through a circle that ever returneth in to the self-same spot, and much of madness, and more of sin, and horror the soul of the plot. but see, amid the mimic rout a crawling shape intrude! a blood-red thing that writhes from out the scenic solitude! it writhes!it writhes!with mortal pangs the mimes become its food, and seraphs sob at vermin fangs in human gore imbued. outout are the lightsout all! and, over each quivering form, the curtain, a funeral pall, comes down with the rush of a storm, while the angels, all pallid and wan, uprising, unveiling, affirm that the play is the tragedy, "man," and its hero the conqueror worm. -the end. 1831 the valley of unrest by edgar allan poe once it smiled a silent dell where the people did not dwell; they had gone unto the wars, trusting to the mild-eyed stars, nightly, from their azure towers, to keep watch above the flowers, in the midst of which all day the red sunlight lazily lay. now each visitor shall confess the sad valley's restlessness. nothing there is motionless nothing save the airs that brood over the magic solitude. ah, by no wind are stirred those trees that palpitate like the chill seas around the misty hebrides! ah, by no wind those clouds are driven that rustle through the unquiet heaven uneasily, from morn till even, over the violets there that lie in myriad types of the human eye over the lilies there that wave and weep above a nameless grave! they wave:from out their fragrant tops eternal dews come down in drops. they weep:from off their delicate stems perennial tears descend in gems. -the end. 1850 the thousand-and-second tale of scheherazade by edgar allan poe truth is stranger than fiction. old saying. having had occasion, lately, in the course of some oriental investigations, to consult the tellmenow isitsoornot, a work which (like the zohar of simeon jochaides) is scarcely known at all, even in europe; and which has never been quoted, to my knowledge, by any americanif we except, perhaps, the author of the "curiosities of american literature";having had occasion, i say, to turn over some pages of the firstmentioned very remarkable work, i was not a little astonished to discover that the literary world has hitherto been strangely in error respecting the fate of the vizier's daughter, scheherazade, as that fate is depicted in the "arabian nights"; and that the denouement there given, if not altogether inaccurate, as far as it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much farther. for full information on this interesting topic, i must refer the inquisitive reader to the "isitsoornot" itself, but in the meantime, i shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what i there discovered. it will be remembered, that, in the usual version of the tales, a certain monarch having good cause to be jealous of his queen, not only puts her to death, but makes a vow, by his beard and the prophet, to espouse each night the most beautiful maiden in his dominions, and the next morning to deliver her up to the executioner. having fulfilled this vow for many years to the letter, and with a religious punctuality and method that conferred great credit upon him as a man of devout feeling and excellent sense, he was interrupted one afternoon (no doubt at his prayers) by a visit from his grand vizier, to whose daughter, it appears, there had occurred an idea. her name was scheherazade, and her idea was, that she would either redeem the land from the depopulating tax upon its beauty, or perish, after the approved fashion of all heroines, in the attempt. accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap-year (which makes the sacrifice more meritorious), she deputes her father, the grand vizier, to make an offer to the king of her hand. this hand the king eagerly accepts(he had intended to take it at all events, and had put off the matter from day to day, only through fear of the vizier),but, in accepting it now, he gives all parties very distinctly to understand, that, grand vizier or no grand vizier, he has not the slightest design of giving up one iota of his vow or of his privileges. when, therefore, the fair scheherazade insisted upon marrying the king, and did actually marry him despite her father's excellent advice not to do any thing of the kindwhen she would and did marry him, i say, will i, nill i, it was with her beautiful black eyes as thoroughly open as the nature of the case would allow. it seems, however, that this politic damsel (who had been reading machiavelli, beyond doubt), had a very ingenious little plot in her mind. on the night of the wedding, she contrived, upon i forget what specious pretence, to have her sister occupy a couch sufficiently near that of the royal pair to admit of easy conversation from bed to bed; and, a little before cock-crowing, she took care to awaken the good monarch, her husband (who bore her none the worse will because he intended to wring her neck on the morrow),she managed to awaken him, i say, (although on account of a capital conscience and an easy digestion, he slept well) by the profound interest of a story (about a rat and a black cat, i think) which she was narrating (all in an undertone, of course) to her sister. when the day broke, it so happened that this history was not altogether finished, and that scheherazade, in the nature of things could not finish it just then, since it was high time for her to get up and be bowstrunga thing very little more pleasant than hanging, only a trifle more genteel. the king's curiosity, however, prevailing, i am sorry to say, even over his sound religious principles, induced him for this once to postpone the fulfilment of his vow until next morning, for the purpose and with the hope of hearing that night how it fared in the end with the black cat (a black cat, i think it was) and the rat. the night having arrived, however, the lady scheherazade not only put the finishing stroke to the black cat and the rat (the rat was blue) but before she well knew what she was about, found herself deep in the intricacies of a narration, having reference (if i am not altogether mistaken) to a pink horse (with green wings) that went, in a violent manner, by clockwork, and was wound up with an indigo key. with this history the king was even more profoundly interested than with the otherand, as the day broke before its conclusion (notwithstanding all the queen's endeavors to get through with it in time for the bowstringing), there was again no resource but to postpone that ceremony as before, for twenty-four hours. the next night there happened a similar accident with a similar result; and then the nextand then again the next; so that, in the end, the good monarch, having been unavoidably deprived of all opportunity to keep his vow during a period of no less than one thousand and one nights, either forgets it altogether by the expiration of this time, or gets himself absolved of it in the regular way, or (what is more probable) breaks it outright, as well as the head of his father confessor. at all events, scheherazade, who, being lineally descended from eve, fell heir, perhaps, to the whole seven baskets of talk, which the latter lady, we all know, picked up from under the trees in the garden of eden-scheherazade, i say, finally triumphed, and the tariff upon beauty was repealed. now, this conclusion (which is that of the story as we have it upon record) is, no doubt, excessively proper and pleasantbut alas! like a great many pleasant things, is more pleasant than true, and i am indebted altogether to the "isitsoornot" for the means of correcting the error. "le mieux," says a french proverb, "est l'ennemi du bien," and, in mentioning that scheherazade had inherited the seven baskets of talk, i should have added that she put them out at compound interest until they amounted to seventy-seven. "my dear sister," said she, on the thousand-and-second night, (i quote the language of the "isitsoornot" at this point, verbatim) "my dear sister," said she, "now that all this little difficulty about the bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is so happily repealed, i feel that i have been guilty of great indiscretion in withholding from you and the king (who i am sorry to say, snoresa thing no gentleman would do) the full conclusion of sinbad the sailor. this person went through numerous other and more interesting adventures than those which i related; but the truth is, i felt sleepy on the particular night of their narration, and so was seduced into cutting them shorta grievous piece of misconduct, for which i only trust that allah will forgive me. but even yet it is not too late to remedy my great neglectand as soon as i have given the king a pinch or two in order to wake him up so far that he may stop making that horrible noise, i will forthwith entertain you (and him if he pleases) with the sequel of this very remarkable story. hereupon the sister of scheherazade, as i have it from the "isitsoornot," expressed no very particular intensity of gratification; but the king, having been sufficiently pinched, at length ceased snoring, and finally said, "hum!" and then "hoo!" when the queen, understanding these words (which are no doubt arabic) to signify that he was all attention, and would do his best not to snore any morethe queen, i say, having arranged these matters to her satisfaction, re-entered thus, at once, into the history of sinbad the sailor: "'at length, in my old age, [these are the words of sinbad himself, as retailed by scheherazade]'at length, in my old age, and after enjoying many years of tranquillity at home, i became once more possessed of a desire of visiting foreign countries; and one day, without acquainting any of my family with my design, i packed up some bundles of such merchandise as was most precious and least bulky, and, engaged a porter to carry them, went with him down to the sea-shore, to await the arrival of any chance vessel that might convey me out of the kingdom into some region which i had not as yet explored. "'having deposited the packages upon the sands, we sat down beneath some trees, and looked out into the ocean in the hope of perceiving a ship, but during several hours we saw none whatever. at length i fancied that i could hear a singular buzzing or humming sound; and the porter, after listening awhile, declared that he also could distinguish it. presently it grew louder, and then still louder, so that we could have no doubt that the object which caused it was approaching us. at length, on the edge of the horizon, we discovered a black speck, which rapidly increased in size until we made it out to be a vast monster, swimming with a great part of its body above the surface of the sea. it came toward us with inconceivable swiftness, throwing up huge waves of foam around its breast, and illuminating all that part of the sea through which it passed, with a long line of fire that extended far off into the distance. "'as the thing drew near we saw it very distinctly. its length was equal to that of three of the loftiest trees that grow, and it was as wide as the great hall of audience in your palace, o most sublime and munificent of the caliphs. its body, which was unlike that of ordinary fishes, was as solid as a rock, and of a jetty blackness throughout all that portion of it which floated above the water, with the exception of a narrow blood-red streak that completely begirdled it. the belly, which floated beneath the surface, and of which we could get only a glimpse now and then as the monster rose and fell with the billows, was entirely covered with metallic scales, of a color like that of the moon in misty weather. the back was flat and nearly white, and from it there extended upwards of six spines, about half the length of the whole body. "'the horrible creature had no mouth that we could perceive, but, as if to make up for this deficiency, it was provided with at least four score of eyes, that protruded from their sockets like those of the green dragon-fly, and were arranged all around the body in two rows, one above the other, and parallel to the blood-red streak, which seemed to answer the purpose of an eyebrow. two or three of these dreadful eyes were much larger than the others, and had the appearance of solid gold. "'although this beast approached us, as i have before said, with the greatest rapidity, it must have been moved altogether by necromancyfor it had neither fins like a fish nor web-feet like a duck, nor wings like the seashell which is blown along in the manner of a vessel; nor yet did it writhe itself forward as do the eels. its head and its tail were shaped precisely alike, only, not far from the latter, were two small holes that served for nostrils, and through which the monster puffed out its thick breath with prodigious violence, and with a shrieking, disagreeable noise. "'our terror at beholding this hideous thing was very great, but it was even surpassed by our astonishment, when upon getting a nearer look, we perceived upon the creature's back a vast number of animals about the size and shape of men, and altogether much resembling them, except that they wore no garments (as men do), being supplied (by nature, no doubt) with an ugly uncomfortable covering, a good deal like cloth, but fitting so tight to the skin, as to render the poor wretches laughably awkward, and put them apparently to severe pain. on the very tips of their heads were certain square-looking boxes, which, at first sight, i thought might have been intended to answer as turbans, but i soon discovered that they were excessively heavy and solid, and i therefore concluded they were contrivances designed, by their great weight, to keep the heads of the animals steady and safe upon their shoulders. around the necks of the creatures were fastened black collars, (badges of servitude, no doubt,) such as we keep on our dogs, only much wider and infinitely stiffer, so that it was quite impossible for these poor victims to move their heads in any direction without moving the body at the same time; and thus they were doomed to perpetual contemplation of their nosesa view puggish and snubby in a wonderful, if not positively in an awful degree. "'when the monster had nearly reached the shore where we stood, it suddenly pushed out one of its eyes to a great extent, and emitted from it a terrible flash of fire, accompanied by a dense cloud of smoke, and a noise that i can compare to nothing but thunder. as the smoke cleared away, we saw one of the odd man-animals standing near the head of the large beast with a trumpet in his hand, through which (putting it to his mouth) he presently addressed us in loud, harsh, and disagreeable accents, that, perhaps, we should have mistaken for language, had they not come altogether through the nose. "'being thus evidently spoken to, i was at a loss how to reply, as i could in no manner understand what was said; and in this difficulty i turned to the porter, who was near swooning through affright, and demanded of him his opinion as to what species of monster it was, what it wanted, and what kind of creatures those were that so swarmed upon its back. to this the porter replied, as well as he could for trepidation, that he had once before heard of this sea-beast; that it was a cruel demon, with bowels of sulphur and blood of fire, created by evil genii as the means of inflicting misery upon mankind; that the things upon its back were vermin, such as sometimes infest cats and dogs, only a little larger and more savage; and that these vermin had their uses, however evilfor, through the torture they caused the beast by their nibbling and stingings, it was goaded into that degree of wrath which was requisite to make it roar and commit ill, and so fulfil the vengeful and malicious designs of the wicked genii. "this account determined me to take to my heels, and, without once even looking behind me, i ran at full speed up into the hills, while the porter ran equally fast, although nearly in an opposite direction, so that, by these means, he finally made his escape with my bundles, of which i have no doubt he took excellent carealthough this is a point i cannot determine, as i do not remember that i ever beheld him again. "'for myself, i was so hotly pursued by a swarm of the men-vermin (who had come to the shore in boats) that i was very soon overtaken, bound hand and foot, and conveyed to the beast, which immediately swam out again into the middle of the sea. "'i now bitterly repented my folly in quitting a comfortable home to peril my life in such adventures as this; but regret being useless, i made the best of my condition, and exerted myself to secure the goodwill of the man-animal that owned the trumpet, and who appeared to exercise authority over his fellows. i succeeded so well in this endeavor that, in a few days, the creature bestowed upon me various tokens of his favor, and in the end even went to the trouble of teaching me the rudiments of what it was vain enough to denominate its language; so that, at length, i was enabled to converse with it readily, and came to make it comprehend the ardent desire i had of seeing the world. "'washish squashish squeak, sinbad, hey-diddle diddle, grunt unt grumble, hiss, fiss, whiss,' said he to me, one day after dinnerbut i beg a thousand pardons, i had forgotten that your majesty is not conversant with the dialect of the cock-neighs (so the man-animals were called; i presume because their language formed the connecting link between that of the horse and that of the rooster). with your permission, i will translate. 'washish squashish,' and so forth:that is to say, 'i am happy to find, my dear sinbad, that you are really a very excellent fellow; we are now about doing a thing which is called circumnavigating the globe; and since you are so desirous of seeing the world, i will strain a point and give you a free passage upon back of the beast.'" when the lady scheherazade had proceeded thus far, relates the "isitsoornot," the king turned over from his left side to his right, and said: "it is, in fact, very surprising, my dear queen, that you omitted, hitherto, these latter adventures of sinbad. do you know i think them exceedingly entertaining and strange?" the king having thus expressed himself, we are told, the fair scheherazade resumed her history in the following words: "sinbad went on in this manner with his narrative to the caliph'i thanked the man-animal for its kindness, and soon found myself very much at home on the beast, which swam at a prodigious rate through the ocean; although the surface of the latter is, in that part of the world, by no means flat, but round like a pomegranate, so that we wentso to sayeither up hill or down hill all the time.' "that i think, was very singular," interrupted the king. "nevertheless, it is quite true," replied scheherazade. "i have my doubts," rejoined the king; "but, pray, be so good as to go on with the story." "i will," said the queen. "'the beast,' continued sinbad to the caliph, 'swam, as i have related, up hill and down hill until, at length, we arrived at an island, many hundreds of miles in circumference, but which, nevertheless, had been built in the middle of the sea by a colony of little things like caterpillars'"* * the coralites. "hum!" said the king. "'leaving this island,' said sinbad(for scheherazade, it must be understood, took no notice of her husband's ill-mannered ejaculation) 'leaving this island, we came to another where the forests were of solid stone, and so hard that they shivered to pieces the finest-tempered axes with which we endeavoured to cut them down."'* * "one of the most remarkable natural curiosities in texas is a petrified forest, near the head of pasigno river. it consists of several hundred trees, in an erect position, all turned to stone. some trees, now growing, are partly petrified. this is a startling fact for natural philosophers, and must cause them to modify the existing theory of petrification.kennedy. this account, at first discredited, has since been corroborated by the discovery of a completely petrified forest, near the head waters of the cheyenne, or chienne river, which has its source in the black hills of the rocky chain. there is scarcely, perhaps, a spectacle on the surface of the globe more remarkable, either in a geological or picturesque point of view than that presented by the petrified forest, near cairo. the traveller, having passed the tombs of the caliphs, just beyond the gates of the city, proceeds to the southward, nearly at right angles to the road across the desert to suez, and after having travelled some ten miles up a low barren valley, covered with sand, gravel, and sea shells, fresh as if the tide had retired but yesterday, crosses a low range of sandhills, which has for some distance run parallel to his path. the scene now presented to him is beyond conception singular and desolate. a mass of fragments of trees, all converted into stone, and when struck by his horse's hoof ringing like cast iron, is seen to extend itself for miles and miles around him, in the form of a decayed and prostrate forest. the wood is of a dark brown hue, but retains its form in perfection, the pieces being from one to fifteen feet in length, and from half a foot to three feet in thickness, strewed so closely together, as far as the eye can reach, that an egyptian donkey can scarcely thread its way through amongst them, and so natural that, were it in scotland or ireland, it might pass without remark for some enormous drained bog, on which the exhumed trees lay rotting in the sun. the roots and rudiments of the branches are, in many cases, nearly perfect, and in some the worm-holes eaten under the bark are readily recognizable. the most delicate of the sap vessels, and all the finer portions of the centre of the wood, are perfectly entire, and bear to be examined with the strongest magnifiers. the whole are so thoroughly silicified as to scratch glass and are capable of receiving the highest polish.asiatic magazine. "hum!" said the king, again; but scheherazade, paying him no attention, continued in the language of sinbad. "'passing beyond this last island, we reached a country where there was a cave that ran to the distance of thirty or forty miles within the bowels of the earth, and that contained a greater number of far more spacious and more magnificent palaces than are to be found in all damascus and bagdad. from the roofs of these palaces there hung myriads of gems, liked diamonds, but larger than men; and in among the streets of towers and pyramids and temples, there flowed immense rivers as black as ebony, and swarming with fish that had no eyes.'"* * the mammoth cave of kentucky. "hum!" said the king. "'we then swam into a region of the sea where we found a lofty mountain, down whose sides there streamed torrents of melted metal, some of which were twelve miles wide and sixty miles long*; while from an abyss on the summit, issued so vast a quantity of ashes that the sun was entirely blotted out from the heavens, and it became darker than the darkest midnight; so that when we were even at the distance of a hundred and fifty miles from the mountain, it was impossible to see the whitest object, however close we held it to our eyes.'"*(2) * in iceland, 1783. *(2) "during the eruption of hecla, in 1766, clouds of this kind produced such a degree of darkness that, at glaumba, which is more than fifty leagues from the mountain, people could only find their way by groping. during the eruption of vesuvius, in 1794, at caserta, four leagues distant, people could only walk by the light of torches. on the first of may, 1812, a cloud of volcanic ashes and sand, coming from a volcano in the island of st. vincent, covered the whole of barbadoes, spreading over it so intense a darkness that, at mid-day, in the open air, one could not perceive the trees or other objects near him, or even a white handkerchief placed at the distance of six inches from the eye."murray, p. 215, phil. edit. "hum!" said the king. "'after quitting this coast, the beast continued his voyage until we met with a land in which the nature of things seemed reversedfor we here saw a great lake, at the bottom of which, more than a hundred feet beneath the surface of the water, there flourished in full leaf a forest of tall and luxuriant trees.'"* * in the year 1790, in the caraccas during an earthquake a portion of the granite soil sank and left a lake eight hundred yards in diameter, and from eighty to a hundred feet deep. it was a part of the forest of aripao which sank, and the trees remained green for several months under the water."murray, p. 221 "hoo!" said the king. "some hundred miles farther on brought us to a climate where the atmosphere was so dense as to sustain iron or steel, just as our own does feather.'"* * the hardest steel ever manufactured may, under the action of a blowpipe, be reduced to an impalpable powder, which will float readily in the atmospheric air. "fiddle de dee," said the king. "proceeding still in the same direction, we presently arrived at the most magnificent region in the whole world. through it there meandered a glorious river for several thousands of miles. this river was of unspeakable depth, and of a transparency richer than that of amber. it was from three to six miles in width; and its banks which arose on either side to twelve hundred feet in perpendicular height, were crowned with ever-blossoming trees and perpetual sweet-scented flowers, that made the whole territory one gorgeous garden; but the name of this luxuriant land was the kingdom of horror, and to enter it was inevitable death'"* * the region of the niger. see simmona's "colonial magazine." "humph!" said the king. "'we left this kingdom in great haste, and, after some days, came to another, where we were astonished to perceive myriads of monstrous animals with horns resembling scythes upon their heads. these hideous beasts dig for themselves vast caverns in the soil, of a funnel shape, and line the sides of them with, rocks, so disposed one upon the other that they fall instantly, when trodden upon by other animals, thus precipitating them into the monster's dens, where their blood is immediately sucked, and their carcasses afterwards hurled contemptuously out to an immense distance from "the caverns of death."'"* * the myrmeleon-lion-ant. the term "monster" is equally applicable to small abnormal things and to great, while such epithets as "vast" are merely comparative. the cavern of the myrmeleon is vast in comparison with the hole of the common red ant. a grain of silex is also a "rock." "pooh!" said the king. "'continuing our progress, we perceived a district with vegetables that grew not upon any soil but in the air.* there were others that sprang from the substance of other vegetables;*(2) others that derived their substance from the bodies of living animals;*(3) and then again, there were others that glowed all over with intense fire;*(4) others that moved from place to place at pleasure,*(5) and what was still more wonderful, we discovered flowers that lived and breathed and moved their limbs at will and had, moreover, the detestable passion of mankind for enslaving other creatures, and confining them in horrid and solitary prisons until the fulfillment of appointed tasks.'"*(6) * the epidendron, flos aeris, of the family of the orchideae, grows with merely the surface of its roots attached to a tree or other object, from which it derives no nutrimentsubsisting altogether upon air. *(2) the parasites, such as the wonderful rafflesia arnaldii. *(3) schouw advocates a class of plants that grow upon living animalsthe plantae epizoae. of this class are the fuci and algae. mr. j. b. williams, of salem, mass., presented the "national institute," with an insect from new zealand, with the following description:"'the hotte,' a decided caterpillar, or worm, is found growing at the foot of the rata tree, with a plant growing out of its head. this most peculiar and most extraordinary insect travels up both the rata and perriri trees, and entering into the top, eats its way, perforating the trunk of the tree until it reaches the root, it then comes out of the root, and dies, or remains dormant, and the plant propagates out of its head; the body remains perfect and entire, of a harder substance than when alive. from this insect the natives making a coloring for tattooing." *(4) in mines and natural caves we find a species of cryptogamous fungus that emits an intense phosphorescence. *(5) the orchis, scabius and valisneria. *(6) the corolla of this flower (aristolochia clematitis), which is tubular, but terminating upwards in a ligulate limb, is inflated into a globular figure at the base. the tubular part is internally beset with stiff hairs, pointing downwards. the globular part contains the pistil, which consists merely of a germen and stigma, together with the surrounding stamens. but the stamens, being shorter than the germen, cannot discharge the pollen so as to throw it upon the stigma, as the flower stands always upright till after impregnation. and hence, without some additional and peculiar aid, the pollen must necessarily fan down to the bottom of the flower. now, the aid that nature has furnished in this case, is that of the tiputa pennicornis, a small insect, which entering the tube of the corrolla in quest of honey, descends to the bottom, and rummages about till it becomes quite covered with pollen; but not being able to force its way out again, owing to the downward position of the hairs, which converge to a point like the wires of a mouse-trap, and being somewhat impatient of its confinement it brushes backwards and forwards, trying every corner, till, after repeatedly traversing the stigma, it covers it with pollen sufficient for its impregnation, in consequence of which the flower soon begins to droop, and the hairs to shrink to the sides of the tube, effecting an easy passage for the escape of the insect." rev. p. keith-system of physiological botany. "pshaw!" said the king. "'quitting this land, we soon arrived at another in which the bees and the birds are mathematicians of such genius and erudition, that they give daily instructions in the science of geometry to the wise men of the empire. the king of the place having offered a reward for the solution of two very difficult problems, they were solved upon the spotthe one by the bees, and the other by the birds; but the king keeping their solution a secret, it was only after the most profound researches and labor, and the writing of an infinity of big books, during a long series of years, that the men-mathematicians at length arrived at the identical solutions which had been given upon the spot by the bees and by the birds.'"* * the beesever since bees werehave been constructing their cells with just such sides, in just such number, and at just such inclinations, as it has been demonstrated (in a problem involving the profoundest mathematical principles) are the very sides, in the very number, and at the very angles, which will afford the creatures the most room that is compatible with the greatest stability of structure. during the latter part of the last century, the question arose among mathematicians"to determine the best form that can be given to the sails of a windmill, according to their varying distances from the revolving vanes, and likewise from the centres of the revolution." this is an excessively complex problem, for it is, in other words, to find the best possible position at an infinity of varied distances, and at an infinity of points on the arm. there were a thousand futile attempts to answer the query on the part of the most illustrious mathematicians; and when, at length, an undeniable solution was discovered, men found that the wing of a bird had given it with absolute precision ever since the first bird had traversed the air. "oh my!" said the king. "'we had scarcely lost sight of this empire when we found ourselves close upon another, from whose shores there flew over our heads a flock of fowls a mile in breadth, and two hundred and forty miles long; so that, although they flew a mile during every minute, it required no less than four hours for the whole flock to pass over usin which there were several millions of millions of fowl.'"* * he observed a flock of pigeons passing betwixt frankfort and the indian territory, one mile at least in breadth; it took up four hours in passing, which, at the rate of one mile per minute, gives a length of 240 miles; and, supposing three pigeons to each square yard, gives 2,230,272,000 pigeons."travels in canada and the united states," by lieut. f. hall. "oh fy!" said the king. "'no sooner had we got rid of these birds, which occasioned us great annoyance, than we were terrified by the appearance of a fowl of another kind, and infinitely larger than even the rocs which i met in my former voyages; for it was bigger than the biggest of the domes on your seraglio, oh, most munificent of caliphs. this terrible fowl had no head that we could perceive, but was fashioned entirely of belly, which was of a prodigious fatness and roundness, of a soft-looking substance, smooth, shining and striped with various colors. in its talons, the monster was bearing away to his eyrie in the heavens, a house from which it had knocked off the roof, and in the interior of which we distinctly saw human beings, who, beyond doubt, were in a state of frightful despair at the horrible fate which awaited them. we shouted with all our might, in the hope of frightening the bird into letting go of its prey, but it merely gave a snort or puff, as if of rage and then let fall upon our heads a heavy sack which proved to be filled with sand!'" "stuff!" said the king. "'it was just after this adventure that we encountered a continent of immense extent and prodigious solidity, but which, nevertheless, was supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue cow that had no fewer than four hundred horns.'"* * the earth is upheld by a cow of a blue color, having horns four hundred in number."sale's koran. "that, now, i believe," said the king, "because i have read something of the kind before, in a book." "'we passed immediately beneath this continent, (swimming in between the legs of the cow, and, after some hours, found ourselves in a wonderful country indeed, which, i was informed by the man-animal, was his own native land, inhabited by things of his own species. this elevated the man-animal very much in my esteem, and in fact, i now began to feel ashamed of the contemptuous familiarity with which i had treated him; for i found that the man-animals in general were a nation of the most powerful magicians, who lived with worms in their brain,* which, no doubt, served to stimulate them by their painful writhings and wrigglings to the most miraculous efforts of imagination!'" * "the entozoa, or intestinal worms, have repeatedly been observed in the muscles, and in the cerebral substance of men."see wyatt's physiology, p. 143. "nonsense!" said the king. "'among the magicians, were domesticated several animals of very singular kinds; for example, there was a huge horse whose bones were iron and whose blood was boiling water. in place of corn, he had black stones for his usual food; and yet, in spite of so hard a diet, he was so strong and swift that he would drag a load more weighty than the grandest temple in this city, at a rate surpassing that of the flight of most birds.'"* * on the great western railway, between london and exeter, a speed of 71 miles per hour has been attained. a train weighing 90 tons was whirled from paddington to didcot (53 miles) in 51 minutes. "twattle!" said the king. "'i saw, also, among these people a hen without feathers, but bigger than a camel; instead of flesh and bone she had iron and brick; her blood, like that of the horse, (to whom, in fact, she was nearly related,) was boiling water; and like him she ate nothing but wood or black stones. this hen brought forth very frequently, a hundred chickens in the day; and, after birth, they took up their residence for several weeks within the stomach of their mother.'"* * the eccalobeion "fa! lal!" said the king. "'one of this nation of mighty conjurors created a man out of brass and wood, and leather, and endowed him with such ingenuity that he would have beaten at chess, all the race of mankind with the exception of the great caliph, haroun alraschid.* another of these magi constructed (of like material) a creature that put to shame even the genius of him who made it; for so great were its reasoning powers that, in a second, it performed calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required the united labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year.*(2) but a still more wonderful conjuror fashioned for himself a mighty thing that was neither man nor beast, but which had brains of lead, intermixed with a black matter like pitch, and fingers that it employed with such incredible speed and dexterity that it would have had no trouble in writing out twenty thousand copies of the koran in an hour, and this with so exquisite a precision, that in all the copies there should not be found one to vary from another by the breadth of the finest hair. this thing was of prodigious strength, so that it erected or overthrew the mightiest empires at a breath; but its powers were exercised equally for evil and for good.'" * maelzel's automaton chess-player. *(2) babbage's calculating machine. "ridiculous!" said the king. "'among this nation of necromancers there was also one who had in his veins the blood of the salamanders; for he made no scruple of sitting down to smoke his chibouc in a red-hot oven until his dinner was thoroughly roasted upon its floor.* another had the faculty of converting the common metals into gold, without even looking at them during the process.*(2) another had such a delicacy of touch that he made a wire so fine as to be invisible.*(3) another had such quickness of perception that he counted all the separate motions of an elastic body, while it was springing backward and forward at the rate of nine hundred millions of times in a second.'"*(4) * chabert, and since him, a hundred others. *(2) the electrotype. *(3) wollaston made of platinum for the field of views in a telescope a wire one eighteen-thousandth part of an inch in thickness. it could be seen only by means of the microscope. *(4) newton demonstrated that the retina beneath the influence of the violet ray of the spectrum, vibrated 900,000,000 of times in a second. "absurd!" said the king. "'another of these magicians, by means of a fluid that nobody ever yet saw, could make the corpses of his friends brandish their arms, kick out their legs, fight, or even get up and dance at his will.* another had cultivated his voice to so great an extent that he could have made himself heard from one end of the world to the other.*(2) another had so long an arm that he could sit down in damascus and indite a letter at bagdador indeed at any distance whatsoever.*(3) another commanded the lightning to come down to him out of the heavens, and it came at his call; and served him for a plaything when it came. another took two loud sounds and out of them made a silence. another constructed a deep darkness out of two brilliant lights.*(4) another made ice in a red-hot furnace.*(5) another directed the sun to paint his portrait, and the sun did.*(6) another took this luminary with the moon and the planets, and having first weighed them with scrupulous accuracy, probed into their depths and found out the solidity of the substance of which they were made. but the whole nation is, indeed, of so surprising a necromantic ability, that not even their infants, nor their commonest cats and dogs have any difficulty in seeing objects that do not exist at all, or that for twenty millions of years before the birth of the nation itself had been blotted out from the face of creation."'*(7) * voltaic pile. *(2) the electro telegraph printing apparatus. *(3) the electro telegraph transmits intelligence instantaneouslyat least at so far as regards any distance upon the earth. *(4) common experiments in natural philosophy. if two red rays from two luminous points be admitted into a dark chamber so as to fall on a white surface, and differ in their length by 0.0000258 of an inch, their intensity is doubled. so also if the difference in length be any whole-number multiple of that fraction. a multiple by 2 1/4, 3 1/4, &c., gives an intensity equal to one ray only; but a multiple by 2 1/2, 3 1/2, &c., gives the result of total darkness. in violet rays similar effects arise when the difference in length is 0.000157 of an inch; and with all other rays the results are the samethe difference varying with a uniform increase from the violet to the red. analogous experiments in respect to sound produce analogous results. *(5) place a platina crucible over a spirit lamp, and keep it a red heat; pour in some sulphuric acid, which, though the most volatile of bodies at a common temperature, will be found to become completely fixed in a hot crucible, and not a drop evaporatesbeing surrounded by an atmosphere of its own, it does not, in fact, touch the sides. a few drops of water are now introduced, when the acid, immediately coming in contact with the heated sides of the crucible, flies off in sulphurous acid vapor, and so rapid is its progress, that the caloric of the water passes off with it, which falls a lump of ice to the bottom; by taking advantage of the moment before it is allowed to remelt, it may be turned out a lump of ice from a red-hot vessel. *(6) the daguerreotype. *(7) although light travels 167,000 miles in a second, the distance of 61 cygni (the only star whose distance is ascertained) is so inconceivably great, that its rays would require more than ten years to reach the earth. for stars beyond this, 20or even 1000 yearswould be a moderate estimate. thus, if they had been annihilated 20, or 1000 years ago, we might still see them to-day by the light which started from their surfaces 20 or 1000 years in the past time. that many which we see daily are really extinct, is not impossiblenot even improbable. "preposterous!" said the king. "'the wives and daughters of these incomparably great and wise magi,'" continued scheherazade, without being in any manner disturbed by these frequent and most ungentlemanly interruptions on the part of her husband"'the wives and daughters of these eminent conjurers are every thing that is accomplished and refined; and would be every thing that is interesting and beautiful, but for an unhappy fatality that besets them, and from which not even the miraculous powers of their husbands and fathers has, hitherto, been adequate to save. some fatalities come in certain shapes, and some in othersbut this of which i speak has come in the shape of a crotchet.'" "a what?" said the king. "'a crotchet'" said scheherazade. "'one of the evil genii, who are perpetually upon the watch to inflict ill, has put it into the heads of these accomplished ladies that the thing which we describe as personal beauty consists altogether in the protuberance of the region which lies not very far below the small of the back. perfection of loveliness, they say, is in the direct ratio of the extent of this lump. having been long possessed of this idea, and bolsters being cheap in that country, the days have long gone by since it was possible to distinguish a woman from a dromedary-'" "stop!" said the king"i can't stand that, and i won't. you have already given me a dreadful headache with your lies. the day, too, i perceive, is beginning to break. how long have we been married?my conscience is getting to be troublesome again. and then that dromedary touchdo you take me for a fool? upon the whole, you might as well get up and be throttled." these words, as i learn from the "isitsoornot," both grieved and astonished scheherazade; but, as she knew the king to be a man of scrupulous integrity, and quite unlikely to forfeit his word, she submitted to her fate with a good grace. she derived, however, great consolation, (during the tightening of the bowstring,) from the reflection that much of the history remained still untold, and that the petulance of her brute of a husband had reaped for him a most righteous reward, in depriving him of many inconceivable adventures. the end . 1850 serenade by edgar allan poe serenade so sweet the hour, so calm the time, i feel it more than half a crime, when nature sleeps and stars are mute, to mar the silence ev'n with lute. at rest on ocean's brilliant dyes an image of elysium lies: seven pleiades entranced in heaven, form in the deep another seven: endymion nodding from above sees in the sea a second love. within the valleys dim and brown, and on the spectral mountain's crown, the wearied light is dying down, and earth, and stars, and sea, and sky are redolent of sleep, as i am redolent of thee and thine enthralling love, my adeline. but list, o list,so soft and low thy lover's voice tonight shall flow, that, scarce awake, thy soul shall deem my words the music of a dream. thus, while no single sound too rude upon thy slumber shall intrude, our thoughts, our soulso god above! in every deed shall mingle, love. the end . 1850 shadowa parable by edgar allan poe yea, though i walk through the valley of the shadow: psalm of david. ye who read are still among the living; but i who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. for indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men. and, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron. the year had been a year of terror, and of feelings more intense than terror for which there is no name upon the earth. for many prodigies and signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the black wings of the pestilence were spread abroad. to those, nevertheless, cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the greek oinos, among others, it was evident that now had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the entrance of aries, the planet jupiter is conjoined with the red ring of the terrible saturnus. the peculiar spirit of the skies, if i mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls, imaginations, and meditations of mankind. over some flasks of the red chian wine, within the walls of a noble hall, in a dim city called ptolemais, we sat, at night, a company of seven. and to our chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door of brass: and the door was fashioned by the artisan corinnos, and, being of rare workmanship, was fastened from within. black draperies, likewise, in the gloomy room, shut out from our view the moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless streetsbut the boding and the memory of evil they would not be so excluded. there were things around us and about of which i can render no distinct accountthings material and spiritualheaviness in the atmospherea sense of suffocationanxietyand, above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. a dead weight hung upon us. it hung upon our limbsupon the household furnitureupon the goblets from which we drank; and all things were depressed, and borne down therebyall things save only the flames of the seven lamps which illumined our revel. uprearing themselves in tall slender lines of light, they thus remained burning all pallid and motionless; and in the mirror which their lustre formed upon the round table of ebony at which we sat, each of us there assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his companions. yet we laughed and were merry in our proper waywhich was hysterical; and sang the songs of anacreonwhich are madness; and drank deeplyalthough the purple wine reminded us of blood. for there was yet another tenant of our chamber in the person of young zoilus. dead, and at full length he lay, enshrouded; the genius and the demon of the scene. alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance, distorted with the plague, and his eyes, in which death had but half extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest in our merriment as the dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are to die. but although i, oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me, still i forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their expression, and gazing down steadily into the depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice the songs of the son of teios. but gradually my songs they ceased, and their echoes, rolling afar off among the sable draperies of the chamber, became weak, and undistinguishable, and so faded away. and lo! from among those sable draperies where the sounds of the song departed, there came forth a dark and undefined shadowa shadow such as the moon, when low in heaven, might fashion from the figure of a man: but it was the shadow neither of man nor of god, nor of any familiar thing. and quivering awhile among the draperies of the room, it at length rested in full view upon the surface of the door of brass. but the shadow was vague, and formless, and indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor of godneither god of greece, nor god of chaldaea, nor any egyptian god. and the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and under the arch of the entablature of the door, and moved not, nor spoke any word, but there became stationary and remained. and the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if i remember aright, over against the feet of the young zoilus enshrouded. but we, the seven there assembled, having seen the shadow as it came out from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually into the depths of the mirror of ebony. and at length i, oinos, speaking some low words, demanded of the shadow its dwelling and its appellation. and the shadow answered, "i am shadow, and my dwelling is near to the catacombs of ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of helusion which border upon the foul charonian canal." and then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast, for the tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable fell duskly upon our ears in the well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends. the end . king henry v dramatis personae king henry the fifth. (king henry v) duke of gloucester (gloucester:) | | brothers to the king. duke of bedford (bedford:) | duke of exeter uncle to the king. (exeter:) duke of york cousin to the king. (york:) earl of salisbury (salisbury:) earl of westmoreland (westmoreland:) earl of warwick (warwick:) bishop of canterbury (canterbury:) bishop of ely (ely:) earl of cambridge (cambridge:) lord scroop (scroop:) sir thomas grey (grey:) sir thomas erpingham (erpingham:) | | gower | | fluellen | officers in king henry's army. | macmorris | | jamy | bates | | court | soldiers in the same. | williams | pistol: nym: bardolph: boy a herald. charles the sixth king of france. (king of france:) (french king:) lewis the dauphin. (dauphin:) duke of burgundy (burgundy:) duke of orleans (orleans:) duke of bourbon (bourbon:) the constable of france. (constable:) rambures | | french lords. grandpre | governor of harfleur. montjoy a french herald. ambassadors to the king of england. isabel queen of france. (queen isabel:) katharine daughter to charles and isabel. alice a lady attending on her. hostess of a tavern in eastcheap formerly mistress quickly, and now married to pistol. lords, ladies, officers, soldiers, citizens, messengers, and attendants. chorus. (hostess:) (first ambassador:) (messenger:) (french soldier:) scene england; afterwards france. king henry v prologue [enter chorus] chorus o for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention, a kingdom for a stage, princes to act and monarchs to behold the swelling scene! then should the warlike harry, like himself, assume the port of mars; and at his heels, leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire crouch for employment. but pardon, and gentles all, the flat unraised spirits that have dared on this unworthy scaffold to bring forth so great an object: can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of france? or may we cram within this wooden o the very casques that did affright the air at agincourt? o, pardon! since a crooked figure may attest in little place a million; and let us, ciphers to this great accompt, on your imaginary forces work. suppose within the girdle of these walls are now confined two mighty monarchies, whose high upreared and abutting fronts the perilous narrow ocean parts asunder: piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; into a thousand parts divide on man, and make imaginary puissance; think when we talk of horses, that you see them printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth; for 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, carry them here and there; jumping o'er times, turning the accomplishment of many years into an hour-glass: for the which supply, admit me chorus to this history; who prologue-like your humble patience pray, gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. [exit] king henry v act i scene i london. an ante-chamber in the king's palace. [enter the archbishop of canterbury, and the bishop of ely] canterbury my lord, i'll tell you; that self bill is urged, which in the eleventh year of the last king's reign was like, and had indeed against us pass'd, but that the scambling and unquiet time did push it out of farther question. ely but how, my lord, shall we resist it now? canterbury it must be thought on. if it pass against us, we lose the better half of our possession: for all the temporal lands which men devout by testament have given to the church would they strip from us; being valued thus: as much as would maintain, to the king's honour, full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights, six thousand and two hundred good esquires; and, to relief of lazars and weak age, of indigent faint souls past corporal toil. a hundred almshouses right well supplied; and to the coffers of the king beside, a thousand pounds by the year: thus runs the bill. ely this would drink deep. canterbury 'twould drink the cup and all. ely but what prevention? canterbury the king is full of grace and fair regard. ely and a true lover of the holy church. canterbury the courses of his youth promised it not. the breath no sooner left his father's body, but that his wildness, mortified in him, seem'd to die too; yea, at that very moment consideration, like an angel, came and whipp'd the offending adam out of him, leaving his body as a paradise, to envelop and contain celestial spirits. never was such a sudden scholar made; never came reformation in a flood, with such a heady currance, scouring faults nor never hydra-headed wilfulness so soon did lose his seat and all at once as in this king. ely we are blessed in the change. canterbury hear him but reason in divinity, and all-admiring with an inward wish you would desire the king were made a prelate: hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, you would say it hath been all in all his study: list his discourse of war, and you shall hear a fearful battle render'd you in music: turn him to any cause of policy, the gordian knot of it he will unloose, familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks, the air, a charter'd libertine, is still, and the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, to steal his sweet and honey'd sentences; so that the art and practic part of life must be the mistress to this theoric: which is a wonder how his grace should glean it, since his addiction was to courses vain, his companies unletter'd, rude and shallow, his hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports, and never noted in him any study, any retirement, any sequestration from open haunts and popularity. ely the strawberry grows underneath the nettle and wholesome berries thrive and ripen best neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality: and so the prince obscured his contemplation under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt, grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, unseen, yet crescive in his faculty. canterbury it must be so; for miracles are ceased; and therefore we must needs admit the means how things are perfected. ely but, my good lord, how now for mitigation of this bill urged by the commons? doth his majesty incline to it, or no? canterbury he seems indifferent, or rather swaying more upon our part than cherishing the exhibiters against us; for i have made an offer to his majesty, upon our spiritual convocation and in regard of causes now in hand, which i have open'd to his grace at large, as touching france, to give a greater sum than ever at one time the clergy yet did to his predecessors part withal. ely how did this offer seem received, my lord? canterbury with good acceptance of his majesty; save that there was not time enough to hear, as i perceived his grace would fain have done, the severals and unhidden passages of his true titles to some certain dukedoms and generally to the crown and seat of france derived from edward, his great-grandfather. ely what was the impediment that broke this off? canterbury the french ambassador upon that instant craved audience; and the hour, i think, is come to give him hearing: is it four o'clock? ely it is. canterbury then go we in, to know his embassy; which i could with a ready guess declare, before the frenchman speak a word of it. ely i'll wait upon you, and i long to hear it. [exeunt] king henry v act i scene ii the same. the presence chamber. [enter king henry v, gloucester, bedford, exeter, warwick, westmoreland, and attendants] king henry v where is my gracious lord of canterbury? exeter not here in presence. king henry v send for him, good uncle. westmoreland shall we call in the ambassador, my liege? king henry v not yet, my cousin: we would be resolved, before we hear him, of some things of weight that task our thoughts, concerning us and france. [enter the archbishop of canterbury, and the bishop of ely] canterbury god and his angels guard your sacred throne and make you long become it! king henry v sure, we thank you. my learned lord, we pray you to proceed and justly and religiously unfold why the law salique that they have in france or should, or should not, bar us in our claim: and god forbid, my dear and faithful lord, that you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading, or nicely charge your understanding soul with opening titles miscreate, whose right suits not in native colours with the truth; for god doth know how many now in health shall drop their blood in approbation of what your reverence shall incite us to. therefore take heed how you impawn our person, how you awake our sleeping sword of war: we charge you, in the name of god, take heed; for never two such kingdoms did contend without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops are every one a woe, a sore complaint 'gainst him whose wrong gives edge unto the swords that make such waste in brief mortality. under this conjuration, speak, my lord; for we will hear, note and believe in heart that what you speak is in your conscience wash'd as pure as sin with baptism. canterbury then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers, that owe yourselves, your lives and services to this imperial throne. there is no bar to make against your highness' claim to france but this, which they produce from pharamond, 'in terram salicam mulieres ne succedant:' 'no woman shall succeed in salique land:' which salique land the french unjustly gloze to be the realm of france, and pharamond the founder of this law and female bar. yet their own authors faithfully affirm that the land salique is in germany, between the floods of sala and of elbe; where charles the great, having subdued the saxons, there left behind and settled certain french; who, holding in disdain the german women for some dishonest manners of their life, establish'd then this law; to wit, no female should be inheritrix in salique land: which salique, as i said, 'twixt elbe and sala, is at this day in germany call'd meisen. then doth it well appear that salique law was not devised for the realm of france: nor did the french possess the salique land until four hundred one and twenty years after defunction of king pharamond, idly supposed the founder of this law; who died within the year of our redemption four hundred twenty-six; and charles the great subdued the saxons, and did seat the french beyond the river sala, in the year eight hundred five. besides, their writers say, king pepin, which deposed childeric, did, as heir general, being descended of blithild, which was daughter to king clothair, make claim and title to the crown of france. hugh capet also, who usurped the crown of charles the duke of lorraine, sole heir male of the true line and stock of charles the great, to find his title with some shows of truth, 'through, in pure truth, it was corrupt and naught, convey'd himself as heir to the lady lingare, daughter to charlemain, who was the son to lewis the emperor, and lewis the son of charles the great. also king lewis the tenth, who was sole heir to the usurper capet, could not keep quiet in his conscience, wearing the crown of france, till satisfied that fair queen isabel, his grandmother, was lineal of the lady ermengare, daughter to charles the foresaid duke of lorraine: by the which marriage the line of charles the great was re-united to the crown of france. so that, as clear as is the summer's sun. king pepin's title and hugh capet's claim, king lewis his satisfaction, all appear to hold in right and title of the female: so do the kings of france unto this day; howbeit they would hold up this salique law to bar your highness claiming from the female, and rather choose to hide them in a net than amply to imbar their crooked titles usurp'd from you and your progenitors. king henry v may i with right and conscience make this claim? canterbury the sin upon my head, dread sovereign! for in the book of numbers is it writ, when the man dies, let the inheritance descend unto the daughter. gracious lord, stand for your own; unwind your bloody flag; look back into your mighty ancestors: go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire's tomb, from whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit, and your great-uncle's, edward the black prince, who on the french ground play'd a tragedy, making defeat on the full power of france, whiles his most mighty father on a hill stood smiling to behold his lion's whelp forage in blood of french nobility. o noble english. that could entertain with half their forces the full pride of france and let another half stand laughing by, all out of work and cold for action! ely awake remembrance of these valiant dead and with your puissant arm renew their feats: you are their heir; you sit upon their throne; the blood and courage that renowned them runs in your veins; and my thrice-puissant liege is in the very may-morn of his youth, ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises. exeter your brother kings and monarchs of the earth do all expect that you should rouse yourself, as did the former lions of your blood. westmoreland they know your grace hath cause and means and might; so hath your highness; never king of england had nobles richer and more loyal subjects, whose hearts have left their bodies here in england and lie pavilion'd in the fields of france. canterbury o, let their bodies follow, my dear liege, with blood and sword and fire to win your right; in aid whereof we of the spiritualty will raise your highness such a mighty sum as never did the clergy at one time bring in to any of your ancestors. king henry v we must not only arm to invade the french, but lay down our proportions to defend against the scot, who will make road upon us with all advantages. canterbury they of those marches, gracious sovereign, shall be a wall sufficient to defend our inland from the pilfering borderers. king henry v we do not mean the coursing snatchers only, but fear the main intendment of the scot, who hath been still a giddy neighbour to us; for you shall read that my great-grandfather never went with his forces into france but that the scot on his unfurnish'd kingdom came pouring, like the tide into a breach, with ample and brim fulness of his force, galling the gleaned land with hot assays, girding with grievous siege castles and towns; that england, being empty of defence, hath shook and trembled at the ill neighbourhood. canterbury she hath been then more fear'd than harm'd, my liege; for hear her but exampled by herself: when all her chivalry hath been in france and she a mourning widow of her nobles, she hath herself not only well defended but taken and impounded as a stray the king of scots; whom she did send to france, to fill king edward's fame with prisoner kings and make her chronicle as rich with praise as is the ooze and bottom of the sea with sunken wreck and sunless treasuries. westmoreland but there's a saying very old and true, 'if that you will france win, then with scotland first begin:' for once the eagle england being in prey, to her unguarded nest the weasel scot comes sneaking and so sucks her princely eggs, playing the mouse in absence of the cat, to tear and havoc more than she can eat. exeter it follows then the cat must stay at home: yet that is but a crush'd necessity, since we have locks to safeguard necessaries, and pretty traps to catch the petty thieves. while that the armed hand doth fight abroad, the advised head defends itself at home; for government, though high and low and lower, put into parts, doth keep in one consent, congreeing in a full and natural close, like music. canterbury therefore doth heaven divide the state of man in divers functions, setting endeavour in continual motion; to which is fixed, as an aim or butt, obedience: for so work the honey-bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom. they have a king and officers of sorts; where some, like magistrates, correct at home, others, like merchants, venture trade abroad, others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, make boot upon the summer's velvet buds, which pillage they with merry march bring home to the tent-royal of their emperor; who, busied in his majesty, surveys the singing masons building roofs of gold, the civil citizens kneading up the honey, the poor mechanic porters crowding in their heavy burdens at his narrow gate, the sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, delivering o'er to executors pale the lazy yawning drone. i this infer, that many things, having full reference to one consent, may work contrariously: as many arrows, loosed several ways, come to one mark; as many ways meet in one town; as many fresh streams meet in one salt sea; as many lines close in the dial's centre; so may a thousand actions, once afoot. end in one purpose, and be all well borne without defeat. therefore to france, my liege. divide your happy england into four; whereof take you one quarter into france, and you withal shall make all gallia shake. if we, with thrice such powers left at home, cannot defend our own doors from the dog, let us be worried and our nation lose the name of hardiness and policy. king henry v call in the messengers sent from the dauphin. [exeunt some attendants] now are we well resolved; and, by god's help, and yours, the noble sinews of our power, france being ours, we'll bend it to our awe, or break it all to pieces: or there we'll sit, ruling in large and ample empery o'er france and all her almost kingly dukedoms, or lay these bones in an unworthy urn, tombless, with no remembrance over them: either our history shall with full mouth speak freely of our acts, or else our grave, like turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth, not worshipp'd with a waxen epitaph. [enter ambassadors of france] now are we well prepared to know the pleasure of our fair cousin dauphin; for we hear your greeting is from him, not from the king. first ambassador may't please your majesty to give us leave freely to render what we have in charge; or shall we sparingly show you far off the dauphin's meaning and our embassy? king henry v we are no tyrant, but a christian king; unto whose grace our passion is as subject as are our wretches fetter'd in our prisons: therefore with frank and with uncurbed plainness tell us the dauphin's mind. first ambassador thus, then, in few. your highness, lately sending into france, did claim some certain dukedoms, in the right of your great predecessor, king edward the third. in answer of which claim, the prince our master says that you savour too much of your youth, and bids you be advised there's nought in france that can be with a nimble galliard won; you cannot revel into dukedoms there. he therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit, this tun of treasure; and, in lieu of this, desires you let the dukedoms that you claim hear no more of you. this the dauphin speaks. king henry v what treasure, uncle? exeter tennis-balls, my liege. king henry v we are glad the dauphin is so pleasant with us; his present and your pains we thank you for: when we have march'd our rackets to these balls, we will, in france, by god's grace, play a set shall strike his father's crown into the hazard. tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler that all the courts of france will be disturb'd with chaces. and we understand him well, how he comes o'er us with our wilder days, not measuring what use we made of them. we never valued this poor seat of england; and therefore, living hence, did give ourself to barbarous licence; as 'tis ever common that men are merriest when they are from home. but tell the dauphin i will keep my state, be like a king and show my sail of greatness when i do rouse me in my throne of france: for that i have laid by my majesty and plodded like a man for working-days, but i will rise there with so full a glory that i will dazzle all the eyes of france, yea, strike the dauphin blind to look on us. and tell the pleasant prince this mock of his hath turn'd his balls to gun-stones; and his soul shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance that shall fly with them: for many a thousand widows shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands; mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down; and some are yet ungotten and unborn that shall have cause to curse the dauphin's scorn. but this lies all within the will of god, to whom i do appeal; and in whose name tell you the dauphin i am coming on, to venge me as i may and to put forth my rightful hand in a well-hallow'd cause. so get you hence in peace; and tell the dauphin his jest will savour but of shallow wit, when thousands weep more than did laugh at it. convey them with safe conduct. fare you well. [exeunt ambassadors] exeter this was a merry message. king henry v we hope to make the sender blush at it. therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour that may give furtherance to our expedition; for we have now no thought in us but france, save those to god, that run before our business. therefore let our proportions for these wars be soon collected and all things thought upon that may with reasonable swiftness add more feathers to our wings; for, god before, we'll chide this dauphin at his father's door. therefore let every man now task his thought, that this fair action may on foot be brought. [exeunt. flourish] king henry v act ii prologue [enter chorus] chorus now all the youth of england are on fire, and silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies: now thrive the armourers, and honour's thought reigns solely in the breast of every man: they sell the pasture now to buy the horse, following the mirror of all christian kings, with winged heels, as english mercuries. for now sits expectation in the air, and hides a sword from hilts unto the point with crowns imperial, crowns and coronets, promised to harry and his followers. the french, advised by good intelligence of this most dreadful preparation, shake in their fear and with pale policy seek to divert the english purposes. o england! model to thy inward greatness, like little body with a mighty heart, what mightst thou do, that honour would thee do, were all thy children kind and natural! but see thy fault! france hath in thee found out a nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills with treacherous crowns; and three corrupted men, one, richard earl of cambridge, and the second, henry lord scroop of masham, and the third, sir thomas grey, knight, of northumberland, have, for the gilt of france,--o guilt indeed! confirm'd conspiracy with fearful france; and by their hands this grace of kings must die, if hell and treason hold their promises, ere he take ship for france, and in southampton. linger your patience on; and we'll digest the abuse of distance; force a play: the sum is paid; the traitors are agreed; the king is set from london; and the scene is now transported, gentles, to southampton; there is the playhouse now, there must you sit: and thence to france shall we convey you safe, and bring you back, charming the narrow seas to give you gentle pass; for, if we may, we'll not offend one stomach with our play. but, till the king come forth, and not till then, unto southampton do we shift our scene. [exit] king henry v act ii scene i london. a street. [enter corporal nym and lieutenant bardolph] bardolph well met, corporal nym. nym good morrow, lieutenant bardolph. bardolph what, are ancient pistol and you friends yet? nym for my part, i care not: i say little; but when time shall serve, there shall be smiles; but that shall be as it may. i dare not fight; but i will wink and hold out mine iron: it is a simple one; but what though? it will toast cheese, and it will endure cold as another man's sword will: and there's an end. bardolph i will bestow a breakfast to make you friends; and we'll be all three sworn brothers to france: let it be so, good corporal nym. nym faith, i will live so long as i may, that's the certain of it; and when i cannot live any longer, i will do as i may: that is my rest, that is the rendezvous of it. bardolph it is certain, corporal, that he is married to nell quickly: and certainly she did you wrong; for you were troth-plight to her. nym i cannot tell: things must be as they may: men may sleep, and they may have their throats about them at that time; and some say knives have edges. it must be as it may: though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod. there must be conclusions. well, i cannot tell. [enter pistol and hostess] bardolph here comes ancient pistol and his wife: good corporal, be patient here. how now, mine host pistol! pistol base tike, call'st thou me host? now, by this hand, i swear, i scorn the term; nor shall my nell keep lodgers. hostess no, by my troth, not long; for we cannot lodge and board a dozen or fourteen gentlewomen that live honestly by the prick of their needles, but it will be thought we keep a bawdy house straight. [nym and pistol draw] o well a day, lady, if he be not drawn now! we shall see wilful adultery and murder committed. bardolph good lieutenant! good corporal! offer nothing here. nym pish! pistol pish for thee, iceland dog! thou prick-ear'd cur of iceland! hostess good corporal nym, show thy valour, and put up your sword. nym will you shog off? i would have you solus. pistol 'solus,' egregious dog? o viper vile! the 'solus' in thy most mervailous face; the 'solus' in thy teeth, and in thy throat, and in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy, and, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth! i do retort the 'solus' in thy bowels; for i can take, and pistol's cock is up, and flashing fire will follow. nym i am not barbason; you cannot conjure me. i have an humour to knock you indifferently well. if you grow foul with me, pistol, i will scour you with my rapier, as i may, in fair terms: if you would walk off, i would prick your guts a little, in good terms, as i may: and that's the humour of it. pistol o braggart vile and damned furious wight! the grave doth gape, and doting death is near; therefore exhale. bardolph hear me, hear me what i say: he that strikes the first stroke, i'll run him up to the hilts, as i am a soldier. [draws] pistol an oath of mickle might; and fury shall abate. give me thy fist, thy fore-foot to me give: thy spirits are most tall. nym i will cut thy throat, one time or other, in fair terms: that is the humour of it. pistol 'couple a gorge!' that is the word. i thee defy again. o hound of crete, think'st thou my spouse to get? no; to the spital go, and from the powdering tub of infamy fetch forth the lazar kite of cressid's kind, doll tearsheet she by name, and her espouse: i have, and i will hold, the quondam quickly for the only she; and--pauca, there's enough. go to. [enter the boy] boy mine host pistol, you must come to my master, and you, hostess: he is very sick, and would to bed. good bardolph, put thy face between his sheets, and do the office of a warming-pan. faith, he's very ill. bardolph away, you rogue! hostess by my troth, he'll yield the crow a pudding one of these days. the king has killed his heart. good husband, come home presently. [exeunt hostess and boy] bardolph come, shall i make you two friends? we must to france together: why the devil should we keep knives to cut one another's throats? pistol let floods o'erswell, and fiends for food howl on! nym you'll pay me the eight shillings i won of you at betting? pistol base is the slave that pays. nym that now i will have: that's the humour of it. pistol as manhood shall compound: push home. [they draw] bardolph by this sword, he that makes the first thrust, i'll kill him; by this sword, i will. pistol sword is an oath, and oaths must have their course. bardolph corporal nym, an thou wilt be friends, be friends: an thou wilt not, why, then, be enemies with me too. prithee, put up. nym i shall have my eight shillings i won of you at betting? pistol a noble shalt thou have, and present pay; and liquor likewise will i give to thee, and friendship shall combine, and brotherhood: i'll live by nym, and nym shall live by me; is not this just? for i shall sutler be unto the camp, and profits will accrue. give me thy hand. nym i shall have my noble? pistol in cash most justly paid. nym well, then, that's the humour of't. [re-enter hostess] hostess as ever you came of women, come in quickly to sir john. ah, poor heart! he is so shaked of a burning quotidian tertian, that it is most lamentable to behold. sweet men, come to him. nym the king hath run bad humours on the knight; that's the even of it. pistol nym, thou hast spoke the right; his heart is fracted and corroborate. nym the king is a good king: but it must be as it may; he passes some humours and careers. pistol let us condole the knight; for, lambkins we will live. king henry v act ii scene ii southampton. a council-chamber. [enter exeter, bedford, and westmoreland] bedford 'fore god, his grace is bold, to trust these traitors. exeter they shall be apprehended by and by. westmoreland how smooth and even they do bear themselves! as if allegiance in their bosoms sat, crowned with faith and constant loyalty. bedford the king hath note of all that they intend, by interception which they dream not of. exeter nay, but the man that was his bedfellow, whom he hath dull'd and cloy'd with gracious favours, that he should, for a foreign purse, so sell his sovereign's life to death and treachery. [trumpets sound. enter king henry v, scroop, cambridge, grey, and attendants] king henry v now sits the wind fair, and we will aboard. my lord of cambridge, and my kind lord of masham, and you, my gentle knight, give me your thoughts: think you not that the powers we bear with us will cut their passage through the force of france, doing the execution and the act for which we have in head assembled them? scroop no doubt, my liege, if each man do his best. king henry v i doubt not that; since we are well persuaded we carry not a heart with us from hence that grows not in a fair consent with ours, nor leave not one behind that doth not wish success and conquest to attend on us. cambridge never was monarch better fear'd and loved than is your majesty: there's not, i think, a subject that sits in heart-grief and uneasiness under the sweet shade of your government. grey true: those that were your father's enemies have steep'd their galls in honey and do serve you with hearts create of duty and of zeal. king henry v we therefore have great cause of thankfulness; and shall forget the office of our hand, sooner than quittance of desert and merit according to the weight and worthiness. scroop so service shall with steeled sinews toil, and labour shall refresh itself with hope, to do your grace incessant services. king henry v we judge no less. uncle of exeter, enlarge the man committed yesterday, that rail'd against our person: we consider it was excess of wine that set him on; and on his more advice we pardon him. scroop that's mercy, but too much security: let him be punish'd, sovereign, lest example breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind. king henry v o, let us yet be merciful. cambridge so may your highness, and yet punish too. grey sir, you show great mercy, if you give him life, after the taste of much correction. king henry v alas, your too much love and care of me are heavy orisons 'gainst this poor wretch! if little faults, proceeding on distemper, shall not be wink'd at, how shall we stretch our eye when capital crimes, chew'd, swallow'd and digested, appear before us? we'll yet enlarge that man, though cambridge, scroop and grey, in their dear care and tender preservation of our person, would have him punished. and now to our french causes: who are the late commissioners? cambridge i one, my lord: your highness bade me ask for it to-day. scroop so did you me, my liege. grey and i, my royal sovereign. king henry v then, richard earl of cambridge, there is yours; there yours, lord scroop of masham; and, sir knight, grey of northumberland, this same is yours: read them; and know, i know your worthiness. my lord of westmoreland, and uncle exeter, we will aboard to night. why, how now, gentlemen! what see you in those papers that you lose so much complexion? look ye, how they change! their cheeks are paper. why, what read you there that hath so cowarded and chased your blood out of appearance? cambridge i do confess my fault; and do submit me to your highness' mercy. grey | | to which we all appeal. scroop | king henry v the mercy that was quick in us but late, by your own counsel is suppress'd and kill'd: you must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy; for your own reasons turn into your bosoms, as dogs upon their masters, worrying you. see you, my princes, and my noble peers, these english monsters! my lord of cambridge here, you know how apt our love was to accord to furnish him with all appertinents belonging to his honour; and this man hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspired, and sworn unto the practises of france, to kill us here in hampton: to the which this knight, no less for bounty bound to us than cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. but, o, what shall i say to thee, lord scroop? thou cruel, ingrateful, savage and inhuman creature! thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels, that knew'st the very bottom of my soul, that almost mightst have coin'd me into gold, wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use, may it be possible, that foreign hire could out of thee extract one spark of evil that might annoy my finger? 'tis so strange, that, though the truth of it stands off as gross as black and white, my eye will scarcely see it. treason and murder ever kept together, as two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose, working so grossly in a natural cause, that admiration did not whoop at them: but thou, 'gainst all proportion, didst bring in wonder to wait on treason and on murder: and whatsoever cunning fiend it was that wrought upon thee so preposterously hath got the voice in hell for excellence: all other devils that suggest by treasons do botch and bungle up damnation with patches, colours, and with forms being fetch'd from glistering semblances of piety; but he that temper'd thee bade thee stand up, gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason, unless to dub thee with the name of traitor. if that same demon that hath gull'd thee thus should with his lion gait walk the whole world, he might return to vasty tartar back, and tell the legions 'i can never win a soul so easy as that englishman's.' o, how hast thou with 'jealousy infected the sweetness of affiance! show men dutiful? why, so didst thou: seem they grave and learned? why, so didst thou: come they of noble family? why, so didst thou: seem they religious? why, so didst thou: or are they spare in diet, free from gross passion or of mirth or anger, constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood, garnish'd and deck'd in modest complement, not working with the eye without the ear, and but in purged judgment trusting neither? such and so finely bolted didst thou seem: and thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot, to mark the full-fraught man and best indued with some suspicion. i will weep for thee; for this revolt of thine, methinks, is like another fall of man. their faults are open: arrest them to the answer of the law; and god acquit them of their practises! exeter i arrest thee of high treason, by the name of richard earl of cambridge. i arrest thee of high treason, by the name of henry lord scroop of masham. i arrest thee of high treason, by the name of thomas grey, knight, of northumberland. scroop our purposes god justly hath discover'd; and i repent my fault more than my death; which i beseech your highness to forgive, although my body pay the price of it. cambridge for me, the gold of france did not seduce; although i did admit it as a motive the sooner to effect what i intended: but god be thanked for prevention; which i in sufferance heartily will rejoice, beseeching god and you to pardon me. grey never did faithful subject more rejoice at the discovery of most dangerous treason than i do at this hour joy o'er myself. prevented from a damned enterprise: my fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign. king henry v god quit you in his mercy! hear your sentence. you have conspired against our royal person, join'd with an enemy proclaim'd and from his coffers received the golden earnest of our death; wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter, his princes and his peers to servitude, his subjects to oppression and contempt and his whole kingdom into desolation. touching our person seek we no revenge; but we our kingdom's safety must so tender, whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws we do deliver you. get you therefore hence, poor miserable wretches, to your death: the taste whereof, god of his mercy give you patience to endure, and true repentance of all your dear offences! bear them hence. [exeunt cambridge, scroop and grey, guarded] now, lords, for france; the enterprise whereof shall be to you, as us, like glorious. we doubt not of a fair and lucky war, since god so graciously hath brought to light this dangerous treason lurking in our way to hinder our beginnings. we doubt not now but every rub is smoothed on our way. then forth, dear countrymen: let us deliver our puissance into the hand of god, putting it straight in expedition. cheerly to sea; the signs of war advance: no king of england, if not king of france. [exeunt] king henry v act ii scene iii london. before a tavern. [enter pistol, hostess, nym, bardolph, and boy] hostess prithee, honey-sweet husband, let me bring thee to staines. pistol no; for my manly heart doth yearn. bardolph, be blithe: nym, rouse thy vaunting veins: boy, bristle thy courage up; for falstaff he is dead, and we must yearn therefore. bardolph would i were with him, wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell! hostess nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in arthur's bosom, if ever man went to arthur's bosom. a' made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child; a' parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o' the tide: for after i saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers' ends, i knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields. 'how now, sir john!' quoth i 'what, man! be o' good cheer.' so a' cried out 'god, god, god!' three or four times. now i, to comfort him, bid him a' should not think of god; i hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. so a' bade me lay more clothes on his feet: i put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then i felt to his knees, and they were as cold as any stone, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone. nym they say he cried out of sack. hostess ay, that a' did. bardolph and of women. hostess nay, that a' did not. boy yes, that a' did; and said they were devils incarnate. hostess a' could never abide carnation; 'twas a colour he never liked. boy a' said once, the devil would have him about women. hostess a' did in some sort, indeed, handle women; but then he was rheumatic, and talked of the whore of babylon. boy do you not remember, a' saw a flea stick upon bardolph's nose, and a' said it was a black soul burning in hell-fire? bardolph well, the fuel is gone that maintained that fire: that's all the riches i got in his service. nym shall we shog? the king will be gone from southampton. pistol come, let's away. my love, give me thy lips. look to my chattels and my movables: let senses rule; the word is 'pitch and pay:' trust none; for oaths are straws, men's faiths are wafer-cakes, and hold-fast is the only dog, my duck: therefore, caveto be thy counsellor. go, clear thy crystals. yoke-fellows in arms, let us to france; like horse-leeches, my boys, to suck, to suck, the very blood to suck! boy and that's but unwholesome food they say. pistol touch her soft mouth, and march. bardolph farewell, hostess. [kissing her] nym i cannot kiss, that is the humour of it; but, adieu. pistol let housewifery appear: keep close, i thee command. hostess farewell; adieu. [exeunt] king henry v act ii scene iv france. the king's palace. [flourish. enter the french king, the dauphin, the dukes of berri and bretagne, the constable, and others] king of france thus comes the english with full power upon us; and more than carefully it us concerns to answer royally in our defences. therefore the dukes of berri and of bretagne, of brabant and of orleans, shall make forth, and you, prince dauphin, with all swift dispatch, to line and new repair our towns of war with men of courage and with means defendant; for england his approaches makes as fierce as waters to the sucking of a gulf. it fits us then to be as provident as fear may teach us out of late examples left by the fatal and neglected english upon our fields. dauphin my most redoubted father, it is most meet we arm us 'gainst the foe; for peace itself should not so dull a kingdom, though war nor no known quarrel were in question, but that defences, musters, preparations, should be maintain'd, assembled and collected, as were a war in expectation. therefore, i say 'tis meet we all go forth to view the sick and feeble parts of france: and let us do it with no show of fear; no, with no more than if we heard that england were busied with a whitsun morris-dance: for, my good liege, she is so idly king'd, her sceptre so fantastically borne by a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth, that fear attends her not. constable o peace, prince dauphin! you are too much mistaken in this king: question your grace the late ambassadors, with what great state he heard their embassy, how well supplied with noble counsellors, how modest in exception, and withal how terrible in constant resolution, and you shall find his vanities forespent were but the outside of the roman brutus, covering discretion with a coat of folly; as gardeners do with ordure hide those roots that shall first spring and be most delicate. dauphin well, 'tis not so, my lord high constable; but though we think it so, it is no matter: in cases of defence 'tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems: so the proportions of defence are fill'd; which of a weak or niggardly projection doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting a little cloth. king of france think we king harry strong; and, princes, look you strongly arm to meet him. the kindred of him hath been flesh'd upon us; and he is bred out of that bloody strain that haunted us in our familiar paths: witness our too much memorable shame when cressy battle fatally was struck, and all our princes captiv'd by the hand of that black name, edward, black prince of wales; whiles that his mountain sire, on mountain standing, up in the air, crown'd with the golden sun, saw his heroical seed, and smiled to see him, mangle the work of nature and deface the patterns that by god and by french fathers had twenty years been made. this is a stem of that victorious stock; and let us fear the native mightiness and fate of him. [enter a messenger] messenger ambassadors from harry king of england do crave admittance to your majesty. king of france we'll give them present audience. go, and bring them. [exeunt messenger and certain lords] you see this chase is hotly follow'd, friends. dauphin turn head, and stop pursuit; for coward dogs most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten runs far before them. good my sovereign, take up the english short, and let them know of what a monarchy you are the head: self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting. [re-enter lords, with exeter and train] king of france from our brother england? exeter from him; and thus he greets your majesty. he wills you, in the name of god almighty, that you divest yourself, and lay apart the borrow'd glories that by gift of heaven, by law of nature and of nations, 'long to him and to his heirs; namely, the crown and all wide-stretched honours that pertain by custom and the ordinance of times unto the crown of france. that you may know 'tis no sinister nor no awkward claim, pick'd from the worm-holes of long-vanish'd days, nor from the dust of old oblivion raked, he sends you this most memorable line, in every branch truly demonstrative; willing to overlook this pedigree: and when you find him evenly derived from his most famed of famous ancestors, edward the third, he bids you then resign your crown and kingdom, indirectly held from him the native and true challenger. king of france or else what follows? exeter bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown even in your hearts, there will he rake for it: therefore in fierce tempest is he coming, in thunder and in earthquake, like a jove, that, if requiring fail, he will compel; and bids you, in the bowels of the lord, deliver up the crown, and to take mercy on the poor souls for whom this hungry war opens his vasty jaws; and on your head turning the widows' tears, the orphans' cries the dead men's blood, the pining maidens groans, for husbands, fathers and betrothed lovers, that shall be swallow'd in this controversy. this is his claim, his threatening and my message; unless the dauphin be in presence here, to whom expressly i bring greeting too. king of france for us, we will consider of this further: to-morrow shall you bear our full intent back to our brother england. dauphin for the dauphin, i stand here for him: what to him from england? exeter scorn and defiance; slight regard, contempt, and any thing that may not misbecome the mighty sender, doth he prize you at. thus says my king; an' if your father's highness do not, in grant of all demands at large, sweeten the bitter mock you sent his majesty, he'll call you to so hot an answer of it, that caves and womby vaultages of france shall chide your trespass and return your mock in second accent of his ordnance. dauphin say, if my father render fair return, it is against my will; for i desire nothing but odds with england: to that end, as matching to his youth and vanity, i did present him with the paris balls. exeter he'll make your paris louvre shake for it, were it the mistress-court of mighty europe: and, be assured, you'll find a difference, as we his subjects have in wonder found, between the promise of his greener days and these he masters now: now he weighs time even to the utmost grain: that you shall read in your own losses, if he stay in france. king of france to-morrow shall you know our mind at full. exeter dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king come here himself to question our delay; for he is footed in this land already. king of france you shall be soon dispatch's with fair conditions: a night is but small breath and little pause to answer matters of this consequence. [flourish. exeunt] king henry v act iii prologue. [enter chorus] chorus thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies in motion of no less celerity than that of thought. suppose that you have seen the well-appointed king at hampton pier embark his royalty; and his brave fleet with silken streamers the young phoebus fanning: play with your fancies, and in them behold upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing; hear the shrill whistle which doth order give to sounds confused; behold the threaden sails, borne with the invisible and creeping wind, draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea, breasting the lofty surge: o, do but think you stand upon the ravage and behold a city on the inconstant billows dancing; for so appears this fleet majestical, holding due course to harfleur. follow, follow: grapple your minds to sternage of this navy, and leave your england, as dead midnight still, guarded with grandsires, babies and old women, either past or not arrived to pith and puissance; for who is he, whose chin is but enrich'd with one appearing hair, that will not follow these cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to france? work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege; behold the ordnance on their carriages, with fatal mouths gaping on girded harfleur. suppose the ambassador from the french comes back; tells harry that the king doth offer him katharine his daughter, and with her, to dowry, some petty and unprofitable dukedoms. the offer likes not: and the nimble gunner with linstock now the devilish cannon touches, [alarum, and chambers go off] and down goes all before them. still be kind, and eke out our performance with your mind. [exit] king henry v act iii scene i france. before harfleur. [alarum. enter king henry, exeter, bedford, gloucester, and soldiers, with scaling-ladders] king henry v once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our english dead. in peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility: but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage; then lend the eye a terrible aspect; let pry through the portage of the head like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it as fearfully as doth a galled rock o'erhang and jutty his confounded base, swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean. now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit to his full height. on, on, you noblest english. whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof! fathers that, like so many alexanders, have in these parts from morn till even fought and sheathed their swords for lack of argument: dishonour not your mothers; now attest that those whom you call'd fathers did beget you. be copy now to men of grosser blood, and teach them how to war. and you, good yeoman, whose limbs were made in england, show us here the mettle of your pasture; let us swear that you are worth your breeding; which i doubt not; for there is none of you so mean and base, that hath not noble lustre in your eyes. i see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start. the game's afoot: follow your spirit, and upon this charge cry 'god for harry, england, and saint george!' [exeunt. alarum, and chambers go off] king henry v act iii scene ii the same. [enter nym, bardolph, pistol, and boy] bardolph on, on, on, on, on! to the breach, to the breach! nym pray thee, corporal, stay: the knocks are too hot; and, for mine own part, i have not a case of lives: the humour of it is too hot, that is the very plain-song of it. pistol the plain-song is most just: for humours do abound: knocks go and come; god's vassals drop and die; and sword and shield, in bloody field, doth win immortal fame. boy would i were in an alehouse in london! i would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety. pistol and i: if wishes would prevail with me, my purpose should not fail with me, but thither would i hie. boy as duly, but not as truly, as bird doth sing on bough. [enter fluellen] fluellen up to the breach, you dogs! avaunt, you cullions! [driving them forward] pistol be merciful, great duke, to men of mould. abate thy rage, abate thy manly rage, abate thy rage, great duke! good bawcock, bate thy rage; use lenity, sweet chuck! nym these be good humours! your honour wins bad humours. [exeunt all but boy] boy as young as i am, i have observed these three swashers. i am boy to them all three: but all they three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man. for bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced; by the means whereof a' faces it out, but fights not. for pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof a' breaks words, and keeps whole weapons. for nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men; and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest a' should be thought a coward: but his few bad words are matched with as few good deeds; for a' never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk. they will steal any thing, and call it purchase. bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three half pence. nym and bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in calais they stole a fire-shovel: i knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals. they would have me as familiar with men's pockets as their gloves or their handkerchers: which makes much against my manhood, if i should take from another's pocket to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. i must leave them, and seek some better service: their villany goes against my weak stomach, and therefore i must cast it up. [exit] [re-enter fluellen, gower following] gower captain fluellen, you must come presently to the mines; the duke of gloucester would speak with you. fluellen to the mines! tell you the duke, it is not so good to come to the mines; for, look you, the mines is not according to the disciplines of the war: the concavities of it is not sufficient; for, look you, the athversary, you may discuss unto the duke, look you, is digt himself four yard under the countermines: by cheshu, i think a' will plough up all, if there is not better directions. gower the duke of gloucester, to whom the order of the siege is given, is altogether directed by an irishman, a very valiant gentleman, i' faith. fluellen it is captain macmorris, is it not? gower i think it be. fluellen by cheshu, he is an ass, as in the world: i will verify as much in his beard: be has no more directions in the true disciplines of the wars, look you, of the roman disciplines, than is a puppy-dog. [enter macmorris and captain jamy] gower here a' comes; and the scots captain, captain jamy, with him. fluellen captain jamy is a marvellous falourous gentleman, that is certain; and of great expedition and knowledge in th' aunchient wars, upon my particular knowledge of his directions: by cheshu, he will maintain his argument as well as any military man in the world, in the disciplines of the pristine wars of the romans. jamy i say gud-day, captain fluellen. fluellen god-den to your worship, good captain james. gower how now, captain macmorris! have you quit the mines? have the pioneers given o'er? macmorris by chrish, la! tish ill done: the work ish give over, the trompet sound the retreat. by my hand, i swear, and my father's soul, the work ish ill done; it ish give over: i would have blowed up the town, so chrish save me, la! in an hour: o, tish ill done, tish ill done; by my hand, tish ill done! fluellen captain macmorris, i beseech you now, will you voutsafe me, look you, a few disputations with you, as partly touching or concerning the disciplines of the war, the roman wars, in the way of argument, look you, and friendly communication; partly to satisfy my opinion, and partly for the satisfaction, look you, of my mind, as touching the direction of the military discipline; that is the point. jamy it sall be vary gud, gud feith, gud captains bath: and i sall quit you with gud leve, as i may pick occasion; that sall i, marry. macmorris it is no time to discourse, so chrish save me: the day is hot, and the weather, and the wars, and the king, and the dukes: it is no time to discourse. the town is beseeched, and the trumpet call us to the breach; and we talk, and, be chrish, do nothing: 'tis shame for us all: so god sa' me, 'tis shame to stand still; it is shame, by my hand: and there is throats to be cut, and works to be done; and there ish nothing done, so chrish sa' me, la! jamy by the mess, ere theise eyes of mine take themselves to slomber, ay'll de gud service, or ay'll lig i' the grund for it; ay, or go to death; and ay'll pay 't as valourously as i may, that sall i suerly do, that is the breff and the long. marry, i wad full fain hear some question 'tween you tway. fluellen captain macmorris, i think, look you, under your correction, there is not many of your nation- macmorris of my nation! what ish my nation? ish a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal. what ish my nation? who talks of my nation? fluellen look you, if you take the matter otherwise than is meant, captain macmorris, peradventure i shall think you do not use me with that affability as in discretion you ought to use me, look you: being as good a man as yourself, both in the disciplines of war, and in the derivation of my birth, and in other particularities. macmorris i do not know you so good a man as myself: so chrish save me, i will cut off your head. gower gentlemen both, you will mistake each other. jamy a! that's a foul fault. [a parley sounded] gower the town sounds a parley. fluellen captain macmorris, when there is more better opportunity to be required, look you, i will be so bold as to tell you i know the disciplines of war; and there is an end. [exeunt] king henry v act iii scene iii the same. before the gates. [the governor and some citizens on the walls; the english forces below. enter king henry and his train] king henry v how yet resolves the governor of the town? this is the latest parle we will admit; therefore to our best mercy give yourselves; or like to men proud of destruction defy us to our worst: for, as i am a soldier, a name that in my thoughts becomes me best, if i begin the battery once again, i will not leave the half-achieved harfleur till in her ashes she lie buried. the gates of mercy shall be all shut up, and the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart, in liberty of bloody hand shall range with conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants. what is it then to me, if impious war, array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends, do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats enlink'd to waste and desolation? what is't to me, when you yourselves are cause, if your pure maidens fall into the hand of hot and forcing violation? what rein can hold licentious wickedness when down the hill he holds his fierce career? we may as bootless spend our vain command upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil as send precepts to the leviathan to come ashore. therefore, you men of harfleur, take pity of your town and of your people, whiles yet my soldiers are in my command; whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace o'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds of heady murder, spoil and villany. if not, why, in a moment look to see the blind and bloody soldier with foul hand defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters; your fathers taken by the silver beards, and their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls, your naked infants spitted upon pikes, whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused do break the clouds, as did the wives of jewry at herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen. what say you? will you yield, and this avoid, or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd? governor our expectation hath this day an end: the dauphin, whom of succors we entreated, returns us that his powers are yet not ready to raise so great a siege. therefore, great king, we yield our town and lives to thy soft mercy. enter our gates; dispose of us and ours; for we no longer are defensible. king henry v open your gates. come, uncle exeter, go you and enter harfleur; there remain, and fortify it strongly 'gainst the french: use mercy to them all. for us, dear uncle, the winter coming on and sickness growing upon our soldiers, we will retire to calais. to-night in harfleur we will be your guest; to-morrow for the march are we addrest. [flourish. the king and his train enter the town] king henry v act iii scene iv the french king's palace. [enter katharine and alice] katharine alice, tu as ete en angleterre, et tu parles bien le langage. alice un peu, madame. katharine je te prie, m'enseignez: il faut que j'apprenne a parler. comment appelez-vous la main en anglois? alice la main? elle est appelee de hand. katharine de hand. et les doigts? alice les doigts? ma foi, j'oublie les doigts; mais je me souviendrai. les doigts? je pense qu'ils sont appeles de fingres; oui, de fingres. katharine la main, de hand; les doigts, de fingres. je pense que je suis le bon ecolier; j'ai gagne deux mots d'anglois vitement. comment appelez-vous les ongles? alice les ongles? nous les appelons de nails. katharine de nails. ecoutez; dites-moi, si je parle bien: de hand, de fingres, et de nails. alice c'est bien dit, madame; il est fort bon anglois. katharine dites-moi l'anglois pour le bras. alice de arm, madame. katharine et le coude? alice de elbow. katharine de elbow. je m'en fais la repetition de tous les mots que vous m'avez appris des a present. alice il est trop difficile, madame, comme je pense. katharine excusez-moi, alice; ecoutez: de hand, de fingres, de nails, de arma, de bilbow. alice de elbow, madame. katharine o seigneur dieu, je m'en oublie! de elbow. comment appelez-vous le col? alice de neck, madame. katharine de nick. et le menton? alice de chin. katharine de sin. le col, de nick; de menton, de sin. alice oui. sauf votre honneur, en verite, vous prononcez les mots aussi droit que les natifs d'angleterre. katharine je ne doute point d'apprendre, par la grace de dieu, et en peu de temps. alice n'avez vous pas deja oublie ce que je vous ai enseigne? katharine non, je reciterai a vous promptement: de hand, de fingres, de mails- alice de nails, madame. katharine de nails, de arm, de ilbow. alice sauf votre honneur, de elbow. katharine ainsi dis-je; de elbow, de nick, et de sin. comment appelez-vous le pied et la robe? alice de foot, madame; et de coun. katharine de foot et de coun! o seigneur dieu! ce sont mots de son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et non pour les dames d'honneur d'user: je ne voudrais prononcer ces mots devant les seigneurs de france pour tout le monde. foh! le foot et le coun! neanmoins, je reciterai une autre fois ma lecon ensemble: de hand, de fingres, de nails, de arm, de elbow, de nick, de sin, de foot, de coun. alice excellent, madame! katharine c'est assez pour une fois: allons-nous a diner. [exeunt] king henry v act iii scene v the same. [enter the king of france, the dauphin, the duke of bourbon, the constable of france, and others] king of france 'tis certain he hath pass'd the river somme. constable and if he be not fought withal, my lord, let us not live in france; let us quit all and give our vineyards to a barbarous people. dauphin o dieu vivant! shall a few sprays of us, the emptying of our fathers' luxury, our scions, put in wild and savage stock, spirt up so suddenly into the clouds, and overlook their grafters? bourbon normans, but bastard normans, norman bastards! mort de ma vie! if they march along unfought withal, but i will sell my dukedom, to buy a slobbery and a dirty farm in that nook-shotten isle of albion. constable dieu de batailles! where have they this mettle? is not their climate foggy, raw and dull, on whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale, killing their fruit with frowns? can sodden water, a drench for sur-rein'd jades, their barley-broth, decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat? and shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, seem frosty? o, for honour of our land, let us not hang like roping icicles upon our houses' thatch, whiles a more frosty people sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields! poor we may call them in their native lords. dauphin by faith and honour, our madams mock at us, and plainly say our mettle is bred out and they will give their bodies to the lust of english youth to new-store france with bastard warriors. bourbon they bid us to the english dancing-schools, and teach lavoltas high and swift corantos; saying our grace is only in our heels, and that we are most lofty runaways. king of france where is montjoy the herald? speed him hence: let him greet england with our sharp defiance. up, princes! and, with spirit of honour edged more sharper than your swords, hie to the field: charles delabreth, high constable of france; you dukes of orleans, bourbon, and of berri, alencon, brabant, bar, and burgundy; jaques chatillon, rambures, vaudemont, beaumont, grandpre, roussi, and fauconberg, foix, lestrale, bouciqualt, and charolois; high dukes, great princes, barons, lords and knights, for your great seats now quit you of great shames. bar harry england, that sweeps through our land with pennons painted in the blood of harfleur: rush on his host, as doth the melted snow upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat the alps doth spit and void his rheum upon: go down upon him, you have power enough, and in a captive chariot into rouen bring him our prisoner. constable this becomes the great. sorry am i his numbers are so few, his soldiers sick and famish'd in their march, for i am sure, when he shall see our army, he'll drop his heart into the sink of fear and for achievement offer us his ransom. king of france therefore, lord constable, haste on montjoy. and let him say to england that we send to know what willing ransom he will give. prince dauphin, you shall stay with us in rouen. dauphin not so, i do beseech your majesty. king of france be patient, for you shall remain with us. now forth, lord constable and princes all, and quickly bring us word of england's fall. [exeunt] king henry v act iii scene vi the english camp in picardy. [enter gower and fluellen, meeting] gower how now, captain fluellen! come you from the bridge? fluellen i assure you, there is very excellent services committed at the bridge. gower is the duke of exeter safe? fluellen the duke of exeter is as magnanimous as agamemnon; and a man that i love and honour with my soul, and my heart, and my duty, and my life, and my living, and my uttermost power: he is not-god be praised and blessed!--any hurt in the world; but keeps the bridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline. there is an aunchient lieutenant there at the pridge, i think in my very conscience he is as valiant a man as mark antony; and he is a man of no estimation in the world; but did see him do as gallant service. gower what do you call him? fluellen he is called aunchient pistol. gower i know him not. [enter pistol] fluellen here is the man. pistol captain, i thee beseech to do me favours: the duke of exeter doth love thee well. fluellen ay, i praise god; and i have merited some love at his hands. pistol bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart, and of buxom valour, hath, by cruel fate, and giddy fortune's furious fickle wheel, that goddess blind, that stands upon the rolling restless stone- fluellen by your patience, aunchient pistol. fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you that fortune is blind; and she is painted also with a wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and mutability, and variation: and her foot, look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls: in good truth, the poet makes a most excellent description of it: fortune is an excellent moral. pistol fortune is bardolph's foe, and frowns on him; for he hath stolen a pax, and hanged must a' be: a damned death! let gallows gape for dog; let man go free and let not hemp his wind-pipe suffocate: but exeter hath given the doom of death for pax of little price. therefore, go speak: the duke will hear thy voice: and let not bardolph's vital thread be cut with edge of penny cord and vile reproach: speak, captain, for his life, and i will thee requite. fluellen aunchient pistol, i do partly understand your meaning. pistol why then, rejoice therefore. fluellen certainly, aunchient, it is not a thing to rejoice at: for if, look you, he were my brother, i would desire the duke to use his good pleasure, and put him to execution; for discipline ought to be used. pistol die and be damn'd! and figo for thy friendship! fluellen it is well. pistol the fig of spain! [exit] fluellen very good. gower why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal; i remember him now; a bawd, a cutpurse. fluellen i'll assure you, a' uttered as brave words at the bridge as you shall see in a summer's day. but it is very well; what he has spoke to me, that is well, i warrant you, when time is serve. gower why, 'tis a gull, a fool, a rogue, that now and then goes to the wars, to grace himself at his return into london under the form of a soldier. and such fellows are perfect in the great commanders' names: and they will learn you by rote where services were done; at such and such a sconce, at such a breach, at such a convoy; who came off bravely, who was shot, who disgraced, what terms the enemy stood on; and this they con perfectly in the phrase of war, which they trick up with new-tuned oaths: and what a beard of the general's cut and a horrid suit of the camp will do among foaming bottles and ale-washed wits, is wonderful to be thought on. but you must learn to know such slanders of the age, or else you may be marvellously mistook. fluellen i tell you what, captain gower; i do perceive he is not the man that he would gladly make show to the world he is: if i find a hole in his coat, i will tell him my mind. [drum heard] hark you, the king is coming, and i must speak with him from the pridge. [drum and colours. enter king henry, gloucester, and soldiers] god pless your majesty! king henry v how now, fluellen! camest thou from the bridge? fluellen ay, so please your majesty. the duke of exeter has very gallantly maintained the pridge: the french is gone off, look you; and there is gallant and most prave passages; marry, th' athversary was have possession of the pridge; but he is enforced to retire, and the duke of exeter is master of the pridge: i can tell your majesty, the duke is a prave man. king henry v what men have you lost, fluellen? fluellen the perdition of th' athversary hath been very great, reasonable great: marry, for my part, i think the duke hath lost never a man, but one that is like to be executed for robbing a church, one bardolph, if your majesty know the man: his face is all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o' fire: and his lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue and sometimes red; but his nose is executed and his fire's out. king henry v we would have all such offenders so cut off: and we give express charge, that in our marches through the country, there be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the french upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner. [tucket. enter montjoy] montjoy you know me by my habit. king henry v well then i know thee: what shall i know of thee? montjoy my master's mind. king henry v unfold it. montjoy thus says my king: say thou to harry of england: though we seemed dead, we did but sleep: advantage is a better soldier than rashness. tell him we could have rebuked him at harfleur, but that we thought not good to bruise an injury till it were full ripe: now we speak upon our cue, and our voice is imperial: england shall repent his folly, see his weakness, and admire our sufferance. bid him therefore consider of his ransom; which must proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we have lost, the disgrace we have digested; which in weight to re-answer, his pettiness would bow under. for our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for the effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person, kneeling at our feet, but a weak and worthless satisfaction. to this add defiance: and tell him, for conclusion, he hath betrayed his followers, whose condemnation is pronounced. so far my king and master; so much my office. king henry v what is thy name? i know thy quality. montjoy montjoy. king henry v thou dost thy office fairly. turn thee back. and tell thy king i do not seek him now; but could be willing to march on to calais without impeachment: for, to say the sooth, though 'tis no wisdom to confess so much unto an enemy of craft and vantage, my people are with sickness much enfeebled, my numbers lessened, and those few i have almost no better than so many french; who when they were in health, i tell thee, herald, i thought upon one pair of english legs did march three frenchmen. yet, forgive me, god, that i do brag thus! this your air of france hath blown that vice in me: i must repent. go therefore, tell thy master here i am; my ransom is this frail and worthless trunk, my army but a weak and sickly guard; yet, god before, tell him we will come on, though france himself and such another neighbour stand in our way. there's for thy labour, montjoy. go bid thy master well advise himself: if we may pass, we will; if we be hinder'd, we shall your tawny ground with your red blood discolour: and so montjoy, fare you well. the sum of all our answer is but this: we would not seek a battle, as we are; nor, as we are, we say we will not shun it: so tell your master. montjoy i shall deliver so. thanks to your highness. [exit] gloucester i hope they will not come upon us now. king henry v we are in god's hand, brother, not in theirs. march to the bridge; it now draws toward night: beyond the river we'll encamp ourselves, and on to-morrow, bid them march away. [exeunt] king henry v act iii scene vii the french camp, near agincourt: [enter the constable of france, the lord rambures, orleans, dauphin, with others] constable tut! i have the best armour of the world. would it were day! orleans you have an excellent armour; but let my horse have his due. constable it is the best horse of europe. orleans will it never be morning? dauphin my lord of orleans, and my lord high constable, you talk of horse and armour? orleans you are as well provided of both as any prince in the world. dauphin what a long night is this! i will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. ca, ha! he bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs; le cheval volant, the pegasus, chez les narines de feu! when i bestride him, i soar, i am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of hermes. orleans he's of the colour of the nutmeg. dauphin and of the heat of the ginger. it is a beast for perseus: he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him: he is indeed a horse; and all other jades you may call beasts. constable indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse. dauphin it is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch and his countenance enforces homage. orleans no more, cousin. dauphin nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey: it is a theme as fluent as the sea: turn the sands into eloquent tongues, and my horse is argument for them all: 'tis a subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign's sovereign to ride on; and for the world, familiar to us and unknown to lay apart their particular functions and wonder at him. i once writ a sonnet in his praise and began thus: 'wonder of nature,'- orleans i have heard a sonnet begin so to one's mistress. dauphin then did they imitate that which i composed to my courser, for my horse is my mistress. orleans your mistress bears well. dauphin me well; which is the prescript praise and perfection of a good and particular mistress. constable nay, for methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly shook your back. dauphin so perhaps did yours. constable mine was not bridled. dauphin o then belike she was old and gentle; and you rode, like a kern of ireland, your french hose off, and in your straight strossers. constable you have good judgment in horsemanship. dauphin be warned by me, then: they that ride so and ride not warily, fall into foul bogs. i had rather have my horse to my mistress. constable i had as lief have my mistress a jade. dauphin i tell thee, constable, my mistress wears his own hair. constable i could make as true a boast as that, if i had a sow to my mistress. dauphin 'le chien est retourne a son propre vomissement, et la truie lavee au bourbier;' thou makest use of any thing. constable yet do i not use my horse for my mistress, or any such proverb so little kin to the purpose. rambures my lord constable, the armour that i saw in your tent to-night, are those stars or suns upon it? constable stars, my lord. dauphin some of them will fall to-morrow, i hope. constable and yet my sky shall not want. dauphin that may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and 'twere more honour some were away. constable even as your horse bears your praises; who would trot as well, were some of your brags dismounted. dauphin would i were able to load him with his desert! will it never be day? i will trot to-morrow a mile, and my way shall be paved with english faces. constable i will not say so, for fear i should be faced out of my way: but i would it were morning; for i would fain be about the ears of the english. rambures who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners? constable you must first go yourself to hazard, ere you have them. dauphin 'tis midnight; i'll go arm myself. [exit] orleans the dauphin longs for morning. rambures he longs to eat the english. constable i think he will eat all he kills. orleans by the white hand of my lady, he's a gallant prince. constable swear by her foot, that she may tread out the oath. orleans he is simply the most active gentleman of france. constable doing is activity; and he will still be doing. orleans he never did harm, that i heard of. constable nor will do none to-morrow: he will keep that good name still. orleans i know him to be valiant. constable i was told that by one that knows him better than you. orleans what's he? constable marry, he told me so himself; and he said he cared not who knew it orleans he needs not; it is no hidden virtue in him. constable by my faith, sir, but it is; never any body saw it but his lackey: 'tis a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate. orleans ill will never said well. constable i will cap that proverb with 'there is flattery in friendship.' orleans and i will take up that with 'give the devil his due.' constable well placed: there stands your friend for the devil: have at the very eye of that proverb with 'a pox of the devil.' orleans you are the better at proverbs, by how much 'a fool's bolt is soon shot.' constable you have shot over. orleans 'tis not the first time you were overshot. [enter a messenger] messenger my lord high constable, the english lie within fifteen hundred paces of your tents. constable who hath measured the ground? messenger the lord grandpre. constable a valiant and most expert gentleman. would it were day! alas, poor harry of england! he longs not for the dawning as we do. orleans what a wretched and peevish fellow is this king of england, to mope with his fat-brained followers so far out of his knowledge! constable if the english had any apprehension, they would run away. orleans that they lack; for if their heads had any intellectual armour, they could never wear such heavy head-pieces. rambures that island of england breeds very valiant creatures; their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage. orleans foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a russian bear and have their heads crushed like rotten apples! you may as well say, that's a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion. constable just, just; and the men do sympathize with the mastiffs in robustious and rough coming on, leaving their wits with their wives: and then give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils. orleans ay, but these english are shrewdly out of beef. constable then shall we find to-morrow they have only stomachs to eat and none to fight. now is it time to arm: come, shall we about it? orleans it is now two o'clock: but, let me see, by ten we shall have each a hundred englishmen. [exeunt] king henry v act iv prologue. [enter chorus] chorus now entertain conjecture of a time when creeping murmur and the poring dark fills the wide vessel of the universe. from camp to camp through the foul womb of night the hum of either army stilly sounds, that the fixed sentinels almost receive the secret whispers of each other's watch: fire answers fire, and through their paly flames each battle sees the other's umber'd face; steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs piercing the night's dull ear, and from the tents the armourers, accomplishing the knights, with busy hammers closing rivets up, give dreadful note of preparation: the country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll, and the third hour of drowsy morning name. proud of their numbers and secure in soul, the confident and over-lusty french do the low-rated english play at dice; and chide the cripple tardy-gaited night who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp so tediously away. the poor condemned english, like sacrifices, by their watchful fires sit patiently and inly ruminate the morning's danger, and their gesture sad investing lank-lean; cheeks and war-worn coats presenteth them unto the gazing moon so many horrid ghosts. o now, who will behold the royal captain of this ruin'd band walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent, let him cry 'praise and glory on his head!' for forth he goes and visits all his host. bids them good morrow with a modest smile and calls them brothers, friends and countrymen. upon his royal face there is no note how dread an army hath enrounded him; nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour unto the weary and all-watched night, but freshly looks and over-bears attaint with cheerful semblance and sweet majesty; that every wretch, pining and pale before, beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks: a largess universal like the sun his liberal eye doth give to every one, thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all, behold, as may unworthiness define, a little touch of harry in the night. and so our scene must to the battle fly; where--o for pity!--we shall much disgrace with four or five most vile and ragged foils, right ill-disposed in brawl ridiculous, the name of agincourt. yet sit and see, minding true things by what their mockeries be. [exit] king henry v act iv scene i the english camp at agincourt. [enter king henry, bedford, and gloucester] king henry v gloucester, 'tis true that we are in great danger; the greater therefore should our courage be. good morrow, brother bedford. god almighty! there is some soul of goodness in things evil, would men observingly distil it out. for our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers, which is both healthful and good husbandry: besides, they are our outward consciences, and preachers to us all, admonishing that we should dress us fairly for our end. thus may we gather honey from the weed, and make a moral of the devil himself. [enter erpingham] good morrow, old sir thomas erpingham: a good soft pillow for that good white head were better than a churlish turf of france. erpingham not so, my liege: this lodging likes me better, since i may say 'now lie i like a king.' king henry v 'tis good for men to love their present pains upon example; so the spirit is eased: and when the mind is quicken'd, out of doubt, the organs, though defunct and dead before, break up their drowsy grave and newly move, with casted slough and fresh legerity. lend me thy cloak, sir thomas. brothers both, commend me to the princes in our camp; do my good morrow to them, and anon desire them an to my pavilion. gloucester we shall, my liege. erpingham shall i attend your grace? king henry v no, my good knight; go with my brothers to my lords of england: i and my bosom must debate awhile, and then i would no other company. erpingham the lord in heaven bless thee, noble harry! [exeunt all but king henry] king henry v god-a-mercy, old heart! thou speak'st cheerfully. [enter pistol] pistol qui va la? king henry v a friend. pistol discuss unto me; art thou officer? or art thou base, common and popular? king henry v i am a gentleman of a company. pistol trail'st thou the puissant pike? king henry v even so. what are you? pistol as good a gentleman as the emperor. king henry v then you are a better than the king. pistol the king's a bawcock, and a heart of gold, a lad of life, an imp of fame; of parents good, of fist most valiant. i kiss his dirty shoe, and from heart-string i love the lovely bully. what is thy name? king henry v harry le roy. pistol le roy! a cornish name: art thou of cornish crew? king henry v no, i am a welshman. pistol know'st thou fluellen? king henry v yes. pistol tell him, i'll knock his leek about his pate upon saint davy's day. king henry v do not you wear your dagger in your cap that day, lest he knock that about yours. pistol art thou his friend? king henry v and his kinsman too. pistol the figo for thee, then! king henry v i thank you: god be with you! pistol my name is pistol call'd. [exit] king henry v it sorts well with your fierceness. [enter fluellen and gower] gower captain fluellen! fluellen so! in the name of jesu christ, speak lower. it is the greatest admiration of the universal world, when the true and aunchient prerogatifes and laws of the wars is not kept: if you would take the pains but to examine the wars of pompey the great, you shall find, i warrant you, that there is no tiddle toddle nor pibble pabble in pompey's camp; i warrant you, you shall find the ceremonies of the wars, and the cares of it, and the forms of it, and the sobriety of it, and the modesty of it, to be otherwise. gower why, the enemy is loud; you hear him all night. fluellen if the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb? in your own conscience, now? gower i will speak lower. fluellen i pray you and beseech you that you will. [exeunt gower and fluellen] king henry v though it appear a little out of fashion, there is much care and valour in this welshman. [enter three soldiers, john bates, alexander court, and michael williams] court brother john bates, is not that the morning which breaks yonder? bates i think it be: but we have no great cause to desire the approach of day. williams we see yonder the beginning of the day, but i think we shall never see the end of it. who goes there? king henry v a friend. williams under what captain serve you? king henry v under sir thomas erpingham. williams a good old commander and a most kind gentleman: i pray you, what thinks he of our estate? king henry v even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be washed off the next tide. bates he hath not told his thought to the king? king henry v no; nor it is not meet he should. for, though i speak it to you, i think the king is but a man, as i am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me: the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions: his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. therefore when he sees reason of fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are: yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army. bates he may show what outward courage he will; but i believe, as cold a night as 'tis, he could wish himself in thames up to the neck; and so i would he were, and i by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here. king henry v by my troth, i will speak my conscience of the king: i think he would not wish himself any where but where he is. bates then i would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men's lives saved. king henry v i dare say you love him not so ill, to wish him here alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men's minds: methinks i could not die any where so contented as in the king's company; his cause being just and his quarrel honourable. williams that's more than we know. bates ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the kings subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us. williams but if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'we died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. i am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection. king henry v so, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a servant, under his master's command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant's damnation: but this is not so: the king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death, when they purpose their services. besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from god: war is his beadle, war is vengeance; so that here men are punished for before-breach of the king's laws in now the king's quarrel: where they feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish: then if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own. therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained: and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making god so free an offer, he let him outlive that day to see his greatness and to teach others how they should prepare. williams 'tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his own head, the king is not to answer it. bates but i do not desire he should answer for me; and yet i determine to fight lustily for him. king henry v i myself heard the king say he would not be ransomed. williams ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully: but when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed, and we ne'er the wiser. king henry v if i live to see it, i will never trust his word after. williams you pay him then. that's a perilous shot out of an elder-gun, that a poor and private displeasure can do against a monarch! you may as well go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather. you'll never trust his word after! come, 'tis a foolish saying. king henry v your reproof is something too round: i should be angry with you, if the time were convenient. williams let it be a quarrel between us, if you live. king henry v i embrace it. williams how shall i know thee again? king henry v give me any gage of thine, and i will wear it in my bonnet: then, if ever thou darest acknowledge it, i will make it my quarrel. williams here's my glove: give me another of thine. king henry v there. williams this will i also wear in my cap: if ever thou come to me and say, after to-morrow, 'this is my glove,' by this hand, i will take thee a box on the ear. king henry v if ever i live to see it, i will challenge it. williams thou darest as well be hanged. king henry v well. i will do it, though i take thee in the king's company. williams keep thy word: fare thee well. bates be friends, you english fools, be friends: we have french quarrels enow, if you could tell how to reckon. king henry v indeed, the french may lay twenty french crowns to one, they will beat us; for they bear them on their shoulders: but it is no english treason to cut french crowns, and to-morrow the king himself will be a clipper. [exeunt soldiers] upon the king! let us our lives, our souls, our debts, our careful wives, our children and our sins lay on the king! we must bear all. o hard condition, twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath of every fool, whose sense no more can feel but his own wringing! what infinite heart's-ease must kings neglect, that private men enjoy! and what have kings, that privates have not too, save ceremony, save general ceremony? and what art thou, thou idle ceremony? what kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? what are thy rents? what are thy comings in? o ceremony, show me but thy worth! what is thy soul of adoration? art thou aught else but place, degree and form, creating awe and fear in other men? wherein thou art less happy being fear'd than they in fearing. what drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, but poison'd flattery? o, be sick, great greatness, and bid thy ceremony give thee cure! think'st thou the fiery fever will go out with titles blown from adulation? will it give place to flexure and low bending? canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, command the health of it? no, thou proud dream, that play'st so subtly with a king's repose; i am a king that find thee, and i know 'tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball, the sword, the mace, the crown imperial, the intertissued robe of gold and pearl, the farced title running 'fore the king, the throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp that beats upon the high shore of this world, no, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony, not all these, laid in bed majestical, can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave, who with a body fill'd and vacant mind gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread; never sees horrid night, the child of hell, but, like a lackey, from the rise to set sweats in the eye of phoebus and all night sleeps in elysium; next day after dawn, doth rise and help hyperion to his horse, and follows so the ever-running year, with profitable labour, to his grave: and, but for ceremony, such a wretch, winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, had the fore-hand and vantage of a king. the slave, a member of the country's peace, enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots what watch the king keeps to maintain the peace, whose hours the peasant best advantages. [enter erpingham] erpingham my lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence, seek through your camp to find you. king henry v good old knight, collect them all together at my tent: i'll be before thee. erpingham i shall do't, my lord. [exit] king henry v o god of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts; possess them not with fear; take from them now the sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers pluck their hearts from them. not to-day, o lord, o, not to-day, think not upon the fault my father made in compassing the crown! i richard's body have interred anew; and on it have bestow'd more contrite tears than from it issued forced drops of blood: five hundred poor i have in yearly pay, who twice a-day their wither'd hands hold up toward heaven, to pardon blood; and i have built two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests sing still for richard's soul. more will i do; though all that i can do is nothing worth, since that my penitence comes after all, imploring pardon. [enter gloucester] gloucester my liege! king henry v my brother gloucester's voice? ay; i know thy errand, i will go with thee: the day, my friends and all things stay for me. [exeunt] king henry v act iv scene ii the french camp. [enter the dauphin, orleans, rambures, and others] orleans the sun doth gild our armour; up, my lords! dauphin montez a cheval! my horse! varlet! laquais! ha! orleans o brave spirit! dauphin via! les eaux et la terre. orleans rien puis? l'air et la feu. dauphin ciel, cousin orleans. [enter constable] now, my lord constable! constable hark, how our steeds for present service neigh! dauphin mount them, and make incision in their hides, that their hot blood may spin in english eyes, and dout them with superfluous courage, ha! rambures what, will you have them weep our horses' blood? how shall we, then, behold their natural tears? [enter messenger] messenger the english are embattled, you french peers. constable to horse, you gallant princes! straight to horse! do but behold yon poor and starved band, and your fair show shall suck away their souls, leaving them but the shales and husks of men. there is not work enough for all our hands; scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins to give each naked curtle-axe a stain, that our french gallants shall to-day draw out, and sheathe for lack of sport: let us but blow on them, the vapour of our valour will o'erturn them. 'tis positive 'gainst all exceptions, lords, that our superfluous lackeys and our peasants, who in unnecessary action swarm about our squares of battle, were enow to purge this field of such a hilding foe, though we upon this mountain's basis by took stand for idle speculation: but that our honours must not. what's to say? a very little little let us do. and all is done. then let the trumpets sound the tucket sonance and the note to mount; for our approach shall so much dare the field that england shall couch down in fear and yield. [enter grandpre] grandpre why do you stay so long, my lords of france? yon island carrions, desperate of their bones, ill-favouredly become the morning field: their ragged curtains poorly are let loose, and our air shakes them passing scornfully: big mars seems bankrupt in their beggar'd host and faintly through a rusty beaver peeps: the horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks, with torch-staves in their hand; and their poor jades lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips, the gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes and in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit lies foul with chew'd grass, still and motionless; and their executors, the knavish crows, fly o'er them, all impatient for their hour. description cannot suit itself in words to demonstrate the life of such a battle in life so lifeless as it shows itself. constable they have said their prayers, and they stay for death. dauphin shall we go send them dinners and fresh suits and give their fasting horses provender, and after fight with them? constable i stay but for my guidon: to the field! i will the banner from a trumpet take, and use it for my haste. come, come, away! the sun is high, and we outwear the day. [exeunt] king henry v act iv scene iii the english camp. [enter gloucester, bedford, exeter, erpingham, with all his host: salisbury and westmoreland] gloucester where is the king? bedford the king himself is rode to view their battle. westmoreland of fighting men they have full three score thousand. exeter there's five to one; besides, they all are fresh. salisbury god's arm strike with us! 'tis a fearful odds. god be wi' you, princes all; i'll to my charge: if we no more meet till we meet in heaven, then, joyfully, my noble lord of bedford, my dear lord gloucester, and my good lord exeter, and my kind kinsman, warriors all, adieu! bedford farewell, good salisbury; and good luck go with thee! exeter farewell, kind lord; fight valiantly to-day: and yet i do thee wrong to mind thee of it, for thou art framed of the firm truth of valour. [exit salisbury] bedford he is full of valour as of kindness; princely in both. [enter the king] westmoreland o that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in england that do no work to-day! king henry v what's he that wishes so? my cousin westmoreland? no, my fair cousin: if we are mark'd to die, we are enow to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honour. god's will! i pray thee, wish not one man more. by jove, i am not covetous for gold, nor care i who doth feed upon my cost; it yearns me not if men my garments wear; such outward things dwell not in my desires: but if it be a sin to covet honour, i am the most offending soul alive. no, faith, my coz, wish not a man from england: god's peace! i would not lose so great an honour as one man more, methinks, would share from me for the best hope i have. o, do not wish one more! rather proclaim it, westmoreland, through my host, that he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart; his passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse: we would not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship to die with us. this day is called the feast of crispian: he that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, and rouse him at the name of crispian. he that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, and say 'to-morrow is saint crispian:' then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. and say 'these wounds i had on crispin's day.' old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, but he'll remember with advantages what feats he did that day: then shall our names. familiar in his mouth as household words harry the king, bedford and exeter, warwick and talbot, salisbury and gloucester, be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd. this story shall the good man teach his son; and crispin crispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remember'd; we few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition: and gentlemen in england now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon saint crispin's day. [re-enter salisbury] salisbury my sovereign lord, bestow yourself with speed: the french are bravely in their battles set, and will with all expedience charge on us. king henry v all things are ready, if our minds be so. westmoreland perish the man whose mind is backward now! king henry v thou dost not wish more help from england, coz? westmoreland god's will! my liege, would you and i alone, without more help, could fight this royal battle! king henry v why, now thou hast unwish'd five thousand men; which likes me better than to wish us one. you know your places: god be with you all! [tucket. enter montjoy] montjoy once more i come to know of thee, king harry, if for thy ransom thou wilt now compound, before thy most assured overthrow: for certainly thou art so near the gulf, thou needs must be englutted. besides, in mercy, the constable desires thee thou wilt mind thy followers of repentance; that their souls may make a peaceful and a sweet retire from off these fields, where, wretches, their poor bodies must lie and fester. king henry v who hath sent thee now? montjoy the constable of france. king henry v i pray thee, bear my former answer back: bid them achieve me and then sell my bones. good god! why should they mock poor fellows thus? the man that once did sell the lion's skin while the beast lived, was killed with hunting him. a many of our bodies shall no doubt find native graves; upon the which, i trust, shall witness live in brass of this day's work: and those that leave their valiant bones in france, dying like men, though buried in your dunghills, they shall be famed; for there the sun shall greet them, and draw their honours reeking up to heaven; leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime, the smell whereof shall breed a plague in france. mark then abounding valour in our english, that being dead, like to the bullet's grazing, break out into a second course of mischief, killing in relapse of mortality. let me speak proudly: tell the constable we are but warriors for the working-day; our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd with rainy marching in the painful field; there's not a piece of feather in our host- good argument, i hope, we will not fly- and time hath worn us into slovenry: but, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim; and my poor soldiers tell me, yet ere night they'll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck the gay new coats o'er the french soldiers' heads and turn them out of service. if they do this,- as, if god please, they shall,--my ransom then will soon be levied. herald, save thou thy labour; come thou no more for ransom, gentle herald: they shall have none, i swear, but these my joints; which if they have as i will leave 'em them, shall yield them little, tell the constable. montjoy i shall, king harry. and so fare thee well: thou never shalt hear herald any more. [exit] king henry v i fear thou'lt once more come again for ransom. [enter york] york my lord, most humbly on my knee i beg the leading of the vaward. king henry v take it, brave york. now, soldiers, march away: and how thou pleasest, god, dispose the day! [exeunt] king henry v act iv scene iv the field of battle. [alarum. excursions. enter pistol, french soldier, and boy] pistol yield, cur! french soldier je pense que vous etes gentilhomme de bonne qualite. pistol qualtitie calmie custure me! art thou a gentleman? what is thy name? discuss. french soldier o seigneur dieu! pistol o, signieur dew should be a gentleman: perpend my words, o signieur dew, and mark; o signieur dew, thou diest on point of fox, except, o signieur, thou do give to me egregious ransom. french soldier o, prenez misericorde! ayez pitie de moi! pistol moy shall not serve; i will have forty moys; or i will fetch thy rim out at thy throat in drops of crimson blood. french soldier est-il impossible d'echapper la force de ton bras? pistol brass, cur! thou damned and luxurious mountain goat, offer'st me brass? french soldier o pardonnez moi! pistol say'st thou me so? is that a ton of moys? come hither, boy: ask me this slave in french what is his name. boy ecoutez: comment etes-vous appele? french soldier monsieur le fer. boy he says his name is master fer. pistol master fer! i'll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him: discuss the same in french unto him. boy i do not know the french for fer, and ferret, and firk. pistol bid him prepare; for i will cut his throat. french soldier que dit-il, monsieur? boy il me commande de vous dire que vous faites vous pret; car ce soldat ici est dispose tout a cette heure de couper votre gorge. pistol owy, cuppele gorge, permafoy, peasant, unless thou give me crowns, brave crowns; or mangled shalt thou be by this my sword. french soldier o, je vous supplie, pour l'amour de dieu, me pardonner! je suis gentilhomme de bonne maison: gardez ma vie, et je vous donnerai deux cents ecus. pistol what are his words? boy he prays you to save his life: he is a gentleman of a good house; and for his ransom he will give you two hundred crowns. pistol tell him my fury shall abate, and i the crowns will take. french soldier petit monsieur, que dit-il? boy encore qu'il est contre son jurement de pardonner aucun prisonnier, neanmoins, pour les ecus que vous l'avez promis, il est content de vous donner la liberte, le franchisement. french soldier sur mes genoux je vous donne mille remercimens; et je m'estime heureux que je suis tombe entre les mains d'un chevalier, je pense, le plus brave, vaillant, et tres distingue seigneur d'angleterre. pistol expound unto me, boy. boy he gives you, upon his knees, a thousand thanks; and he esteems himself happy that he hath fallen into the hands of one, as he thinks, the most brave, valorous, and thrice-worthy signieur of england. pistol as i suck blood, i will some mercy show. follow me! boy suivez-vous le grand capitaine. [exeunt pistol, and french soldier] i did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true 'the empty vessel makes the greatest sound.' bardolph and nym had ten times more valour than this roaring devil i' the old play, that every one may pare his nails with a wooden dagger; and they are both hanged; and so would this be, if he durst steal any thing adventurously. i must stay with the lackeys, with the luggage of our camp: the french might have a good prey of us, if he knew of it; for there is none to guard it but boys. [exit] king henry v act iv scene v another part of the field. [enter constable, orleans, bourbon, dauphin, and rambures] constable o diable! orleans o seigneur! le jour est perdu, tout est perdu! dauphin mort de ma vie! all is confounded, all! reproach and everlasting shame sits mocking in our plumes. o merchante fortune! do not run away. [a short alarum] constable why, all our ranks are broke. dauphin o perdurable shame! let's stab ourselves. be these the wretches that we play'd at dice for? orleans is this the king we sent to for his ransom? bourbon shame and eternal shame, nothing but shame! let us die in honour: once more back again; and he that will not follow bourbon now, let him go hence, and with his cap in hand, like a base pander, hold the chamber-door whilst by a slave, no gentler than my dog, his fairest daughter is contaminated. constable disorder, that hath spoil'd us, friend us now! let us on heaps go offer up our lives. orleans we are enow yet living in the field to smother up the english in our throngs, if any order might be thought upon. bourbon the devil take order now! i'll to the throng: let life be short; else shame will be too long. [exeunt] king henry v act iv scene vi another part of the field. [alarums. enter king henry and forces, exeter, and others] king henry v well have we done, thrice valiant countrymen: but all's not done; yet keep the french the field. exeter the duke of york commends him to your majesty. king henry v lives he, good uncle? thrice within this hour i saw him down; thrice up again and fighting; from helmet to the spur all blood he was. exeter in which array, brave soldier, doth he lie, larding the plain; and by his bloody side, yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds, the noble earl of suffolk also lies. suffolk first died: and york, all haggled over, comes to him, where in gore he lay insteep'd, and takes him by the beard; kisses the gashes that bloodily did spawn upon his face; and cries aloud 'tarry, dear cousin suffolk! my soul shall thine keep company to heaven; tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast, as in this glorious and well-foughten field we kept together in our chivalry!' upon these words i came and cheer'd him up: he smiled me in the face, raught me his hand, and, with a feeble gripe, says 'dear my lord, commend my service to me sovereign.' so did he turn and over suffolk's neck he threw his wounded arm and kiss'd his lips; and so espoused to death, with blood he seal'd a testament of noble-ending love. the pretty and sweet manner of it forced those waters from me which i would have stopp'd; but i had not so much of man in me, and all my mother came into mine eyes and gave me up to tears. king henry v i blame you not; for, hearing this, i must perforce compound with mistful eyes, or they will issue too. [alarum] but, hark! what new alarum is this same? the french have reinforced their scatter'd men: then every soldier kill his prisoners: give the word through. [exeunt] king henry v act iv scene vii another part of the field. [enter fluellen and gower] fluellen kill the poys and the luggage! 'tis expressly against the law of arms: 'tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offer't; in your conscience, now, is it not? gower 'tis certain there's not a boy left alive; and the cowardly rascals that ran from the battle ha' done this slaughter: besides, they have burned and carried away all that was in the king's tent; wherefore the king, most worthily, hath caused every soldier to cut his prisoner's throat. o, 'tis a gallant king! fluellen ay, he was porn at monmouth, captain gower. what call you the town's name where alexander the pig was born! gower alexander the great. fluellen why, i pray you, is not pig great? the pig, or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phrase is a little variations. gower i think alexander the great was born in macedon; his father was called philip of macedon, as i take it. fluellen i think it is in macedon where alexander is porn. i tell you, captain, if you look in the maps of the 'orld, i warrant you sall find, in the comparisons between macedon and monmouth, that the situations, look you, is both alike. there is a river in macedon; and there is also moreover a river at monmouth: it is called wye at monmouth; but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but 'tis all one, 'tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both. if you mark alexander's life well, harry of monmouth's life is come after it indifferent well; for there is figures in all things. alexander, god knows, and you know, in his rages, and his furies, and his wraths, and his cholers, and his moods, and his displeasures, and his indignations, and also being a little intoxicates in his prains, did, in his ales and his angers, look you, kill his best friend, cleitus. gower our king is not like him in that: he never killed any of his friends. fluellen it is not well done, mark you now take the tales out of my mouth, ere it is made and finished. i speak but in the figures and comparisons of it: as alexander killed his friend cleitus, being in his ales and his cups; so also harry monmouth, being in his right wits and his good judgments, turned away the fat knight with the great belly-doublet: he was full of jests, and gipes, and knaveries, and mocks; i have forgot his name. gower sir john falstaff. fluellen that is he: i'll tell you there is good men porn at monmouth. gower here comes his majesty. [alarum. enter king henry, and forces; warwick, gloucester, exeter, and others] king henry v i was not angry since i came to france until this instant. take a trumpet, herald; ride thou unto the horsemen on yon hill: if they will fight with us, bid them come down, or void the field; they do offend our sight: if they'll do neither, we will come to them, and make them skirr away, as swift as stones enforced from the old assyrian slings: besides, we'll cut the throats of those we have, and not a man of them that we shall take shall taste our mercy. go and tell them so. [enter montjoy] exeter here comes the herald of the french, my liege. gloucester his eyes are humbler than they used to be. king henry v how now! what means this, herald? know'st thou not that i have fined these bones of mine for ransom? comest thou again for ransom? montjoy no, great king: i come to thee for charitable licence, that we may wander o'er this bloody field to look our dead, and then to bury them; to sort our nobles from our common men. for many of our princes--woe the while!- lie drown'd and soak'd in mercenary blood; so do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs in blood of princes; and their wounded steeds fret fetlock deep in gore and with wild rage yerk out their armed heels at their dead masters, killing them twice. o, give us leave, great king, to view the field in safety and dispose of their dead bodies! king henry v i tell thee truly, herald, i know not if the day be ours or no; for yet a many of your horsemen peer and gallop o'er the field. montjoy the day is yours. king henry v praised be god, and not our strength, for it! what is this castle call'd that stands hard by? montjoy they call it agincourt. king henry v then call we this the field of agincourt, fought on the day of crispin crispianus. fluellen your grandfather of famous memory, an't please your majesty, and your great-uncle edward the plack prince of wales, as i have read in the chronicles, fought a most prave pattle here in france. king henry v they did, fluellen. fluellen your majesty says very true: if your majesties is remembered of it, the welshmen did good service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their monmouth caps; which, your majesty know, to this hour is an honourable badge of the service; and i do believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon saint tavy's day. king henry v i wear it for a memorable honour; for i am welsh, you know, good countryman. fluellen all the water in wye cannot wash your majesty's welsh plood out of your pody, i can tell you that: god pless it and preserve it, as long as it pleases his grace, and his majesty too! king henry v thanks, good my countryman. fluellen by jeshu, i am your majesty's countryman, i care not who know it; i will confess it to all the 'orld: i need not to be ashamed of your majesty, praised be god, so long as your majesty is an honest man. king henry v god keep me so! our heralds go with him: bring me just notice of the numbers dead on both our parts. call yonder fellow hither. [points to williams. exeunt heralds with montjoy] exeter soldier, you must come to the king. king henry v soldier, why wearest thou that glove in thy cap? williams an't please your majesty, 'tis the gage of one that i should fight withal, if he be alive. king henry v an englishman? williams an't please your majesty, a rascal that swaggered with me last night; who, if alive and ever dare to challenge this glove, i have sworn to take him a box o' th' ear: or if i can see my glove in his cap, which he swore, as he was a soldier, he would wear if alive, i will strike it out soundly. king henry v what think you, captain fluellen? is it fit this soldier keep his oath? fluellen he is a craven and a villain else, an't please your majesty, in my conscience. king henry v it may be his enemy is a gentleman of great sort, quite from the answer of his degree. fluellen though he be as good a gentleman as the devil is, as lucifer and belzebub himself, it is necessary, look your grace, that he keep his vow and his oath: if he be perjured, see you now, his reputation is as arrant a villain and a jacksauce, as ever his black shoe trod upon god's ground and his earth, in my conscience, la! king henry v then keep thy vow, sirrah, when thou meetest the fellow. williams so i will, my liege, as i live. king henry v who servest thou under? williams under captain gower, my liege. fluellen gower is a good captain, and is good knowledge and literatured in the wars. king henry v call him hither to me, soldier. williams i will, my liege. [exit] king henry v here, fluellen; wear thou this favour for me and stick it in thy cap: when alencon and myself were down together, i plucked this glove from his helm: if any man challenge this, he is a friend to alencon, and an enemy to our person; if thou encounter any such, apprehend him, an thou dost me love. fluellen your grace doo's me as great honours as can be desired in the hearts of his subjects: i would fain see the man, that has but two legs, that shall find himself aggrieved at this glove; that is all; but i would fain see it once, an please god of his grace that i might see. king henry v knowest thou gower? fluellen he is my dear friend, an please you. king henry v pray thee, go seek him, and bring him to my tent. fluellen i will fetch him. [exit] king henry v my lord of warwick, and my brother gloucester, follow fluellen closely at the heels: the glove which i have given him for a favour may haply purchase him a box o' th' ear; it is the soldier's; i by bargain should wear it myself. follow, good cousin warwick: if that the soldier strike him, as i judge by his blunt bearing he will keep his word, some sudden mischief may arise of it; for i do know fluellen valiant and, touched with choler, hot as gunpowder, and quickly will return an injury: follow and see there be no harm between them. go you with me, uncle of exeter. [exeunt] king henry v act iv scene viii before king henry's pavilion. [enter gower and williams] williams i warrant it is to knight you, captain. [enter fluellen] fluellen god's will and his pleasure, captain, i beseech you now, come apace to the king: there is more good toward you peradventure than is in your knowledge to dream of. williams sir, know you this glove? fluellen know the glove! i know the glove is glove. williams i know this; and thus i challenge it. [strikes him] fluellen 'sblood! an arrant traitor as any is in the universal world, or in france, or in england! gower how now, sir! you villain! williams do you think i'll be forsworn? fluellen stand away, captain gower; i will give treason his payment into ploughs, i warrant you. williams i am no traitor. fluellen that's a lie in thy throat. i charge you in his majesty's name, apprehend him: he's a friend of the duke alencon's. [enter warwick and gloucester] warwick how now, how now! what's the matter? fluellen my lord of warwick, here is--praised be god for it! --a most contagious treason come to light, look you, as you shall desire in a summer's day. here is his majesty. [enter king henry and exeter] king henry v how now! what's the matter? fluellen my liege, here is a villain and a traitor, that, look your grace, has struck the glove which your majesty is take out of the helmet of alencon. williams my liege, this was my glove; here is the fellow of it; and he that i gave it to in change promised to wear it in his cap: i promised to strike him, if he did: i met this man with my glove in his cap, and i have been as good as my word. fluellen your majesty hear now, saving your majesty's manhood, what an arrant, rascally, beggarly, lousy knave it is: i hope your majesty is pear me testimony and witness, and will avouchment, that this is the glove of alencon, that your majesty is give me; in your conscience, now? king henry v give me thy glove, soldier: look, here is the fellow of it. 'twas i, indeed, thou promised'st to strike; and thou hast given me most bitter terms. fluellen an please your majesty, let his neck answer for it, if there is any martial law in the world. king henry v how canst thou make me satisfaction? williams all offences, my lord, come from the heart: never came any from mine that might offend your majesty. king henry v it was ourself thou didst abuse. williams your majesty came not like yourself: you appeared to me but as a common man; witness the night, your garments, your lowliness; and what your highness suffered under that shape, i beseech you take it for your own fault and not mine: for had you been as i took you for, i made no offence; therefore, i beseech your highness, pardon me. king henry v here, uncle exeter, fill this glove with crowns, and give it to this fellow. keep it, fellow; and wear it for an honour in thy cap till i do challenge it. give him the crowns: and, captain, you must needs be friends with him. fluellen by this day and this light, the fellow has mettle enough in his belly. hold, there is twelve pence for you; and i pray you to serve got, and keep you out of prawls, and prabbles' and quarrels, and dissensions, and, i warrant you, it is the better for you. williams i will none of your money. fluellen it is with a good will; i can tell you, it will serve you to mend your shoes: come, wherefore should you be so pashful? your shoes is not so good: 'tis a good silling, i warrant you, or i will change it. [enter an english herald] king henry v now, herald, are the dead number'd? herald here is the number of the slaughter'd french. king henry v what prisoners of good sort are taken, uncle? exeter charles duke of orleans, nephew to the king; john duke of bourbon, and lord bouciqualt: of other lords and barons, knights and squires, full fifteen hundred, besides common men. king henry v this note doth tell me of ten thousand french that in the field lie slain: of princes, in this number, and nobles bearing banners, there lie dead one hundred twenty six: added to these, of knights, esquires, and gallant gentlemen, eight thousand and four hundred; of the which, five hundred were but yesterday dubb'd knights: so that, in these ten thousand they have lost, there are but sixteen hundred mercenaries; the rest are princes, barons, lords, knights, squires, and gentlemen of blood and quality. the names of those their nobles that lie dead: charles delabreth, high constable of france; jaques of chatillon, admiral of france; the master of the cross-bows, lord rambures; great master of france, the brave sir guichard dolphin, john duke of alencon, anthony duke of brabant, the brother of the duke of burgundy, and edward duke of bar: of lusty earls, grandpre and roussi, fauconberg and foix, beaumont and marle, vaudemont and lestrale. here was a royal fellowship of death! where is the number of our english dead? [herald shews him another paper] edward the duke of york, the earl of suffolk, sir richard ketly, davy gam, esquire: none else of name; and of all other men but five and twenty. o god, thy arm was here; and not to us, but to thy arm alone, ascribe we all! when, without stratagem, but in plain shock and even play of battle, was ever known so great and little loss on one part and on the other? take it, god, for it is none but thine! exeter 'tis wonderful! king henry v come, go we in procession to the village. and be it death proclaimed through our host to boast of this or take the praise from god which is his only. fluellen is it not lawful, an please your majesty, to tell how many is killed? king henry v yes, captain; but with this acknowledgement, that god fought for us. fluellen yes, my conscience, he did us great good. king henry v do we all holy rites; let there be sung 'non nobis' and 'te deum;' the dead with charity enclosed in clay: and then to calais; and to england then: where ne'er from france arrived more happy men. [exeunt] king henry v act v prologue. [enter chorus] chorus vouchsafe to those that have not read the story, that i may prompt them: and of such as have, i humbly pray them to admit the excuse of time, of numbers and due course of things, which cannot in their huge and proper life be here presented. now we bear the king toward calais: grant him there; there seen, heave him away upon your winged thoughts athwart the sea. behold, the english beach pales in the flood with men, with wives and boys, whose shouts and claps out-voice the deep mouth'd sea, which like a mighty whiffler 'fore the king seems to prepare his way: so let him land, and solemnly see him set on to london. so swift a pace hath thought that even now you may imagine him upon blackheath; where that his lords desire him to have borne his bruised helmet and his bended sword before him through the city: he forbids it, being free from vainness and self-glorious pride; giving full trophy, signal and ostent quite from himself to god. but now behold, in the quick forge and working-house of thought, how london doth pour out her citizens! the mayor and all his brethren in best sort, like to the senators of the antique rome, with the plebeians swarming at their heels, go forth and fetch their conquering caesar in: as, by a lower but loving likelihood, were now the general of our gracious empress, as in good time he may, from ireland coming, bringing rebellion broached on his sword, how many would the peaceful city quit, to welcome him! much more, and much more cause, did they this harry. now in london place him; as yet the lamentation of the french invites the king of england's stay at home; the emperor's coming in behalf of france, to order peace between them; and omit all the occurrences, whatever chanced, till harry's back-return again to france: there must we bring him; and myself have play'd the interim, by remembering you 'tis past. then brook abridgment, and your eyes advance, after your thoughts, straight back again to france. [exit] king henry v act v scene i france. the english camp. [enter fluellen and gower] gower nay, that's right; but why wear you your leek today? saint davy's day is past. fluellen there is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things: i will tell you, asse my friend, captain gower: the rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, pragging knave, pistol, which you and yourself and all the world know to be no petter than a fellow, look you now, of no merits, he is come to me and prings me pread and salt yesterday, look you, and bid me eat my leek: it was in place where i could not breed no contention with him; but i will be so bold as to wear it in my cap till i see him once again, and then i will tell him a little piece of my desires. [enter pistol] gower why, here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock. fluellen 'tis no matter for his swellings nor his turkey-cocks. god pless you, aunchient pistol! you scurvy, lousy knave, god pless you! pistol ha! art thou bedlam? dost thou thirst, base trojan, to have me fold up parca's fatal web? hence! i am qualmish at the smell of leek. fluellen i peseech you heartily, scurvy, lousy knave, at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you, this leek: because, look you, you do not love it, nor your affections and your appetites and your digestions doo's not agree with it, i would desire you to eat it. pistol not for cadwallader and all his goats. fluellen there is one goat for you. [strikes him] will you be so good, scauld knave, as eat it? pistol base trojan, thou shalt die. fluellen you say very true, scauld knave, when god's will is: i will desire you to live in the mean time, and eat your victuals: come, there is sauce for it. [strikes him] you called me yesterday mountain-squire; but i will make you to-day a squire of low degree. i pray you, fall to: if you can mock a leek, you can eat a leek. gower enough, captain: you have astonished him. fluellen i say, i will make him eat some part of my leek, or i will peat his pate four days. bite, i pray you; it is good for your green wound and your ploody coxcomb. pistol must i bite? fluellen yes, certainly, and out of doubt and out of question too, and ambiguities. pistol by this leek, i will most horribly revenge: i eat and eat, i swear- fluellen eat, i pray you: will you have some more sauce to your leek? there is not enough leek to swear by. pistol quiet thy cudgel; thou dost see i eat. fluellen much good do you, scauld knave, heartily. nay, pray you, throw none away; the skin is good for your broken coxcomb. when you take occasions to see leeks hereafter, i pray you, mock at 'em; that is all. pistol good. fluellen ay, leeks is good: hold you, there is a groat to heal your pate. pistol me a groat! fluellen yes, verily and in truth, you shall take it; or i have another leek in my pocket, which you shall eat. pistol i take thy groat in earnest of revenge. fluellen if i owe you any thing, i will pay you in cudgels: you shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing of me but cudgels. god b' wi' you, and keep you, and heal your pate. [exit] pistol all hell shall stir for this. gower go, go; you are a counterfeit cowardly knave. will you mock at an ancient tradition, begun upon an honourable respect, and worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased valour and dare not avouch in your deeds any of your words? i have seen you gleeking and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. you thought, because he could not speak english in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an english cudgel: you find it otherwise; and henceforth let a welsh correction teach you a good english condition. fare ye well. [exit] pistol doth fortune play the huswife with me now? news have i, that my nell is dead i' the spital of malady of france; and there my rendezvous is quite cut off. old i do wax; and from my weary limbs honour is cudgelled. well, bawd i'll turn, and something lean to cutpurse of quick hand. to england will i steal, and there i'll steal: and patches will i get unto these cudgell'd scars, and swear i got them in the gallia wars. [exit] king henry v act v scene ii france. a royal palace. [enter, at one door king henry, exeter, bedford, gloucester, warwick, westmoreland, and other lords; at another, the french king, queen isabel, the princess katharine, alice and other ladies; the duke of burgundy, and his train] king henry v peace to this meeting, wherefore we are met! unto our brother france, and to our sister, health and fair time of day; joy and good wishes to our most fair and princely cousin katharine; and, as a branch and member of this royalty, by whom this great assembly is contrived, we do salute you, duke of burgundy; and, princes french, and peers, health to you all! king of france right joyous are we to behold your face, most worthy brother england; fairly met: so are you, princes english, every one. queen isabel so happy be the issue, brother england, of this good day and of this gracious meeting, as we are now glad to behold your eyes; your eyes, which hitherto have borne in them against the french, that met them in their bent, the fatal balls of murdering basilisks: the venom of such looks, we fairly hope, have lost their quality, and that this day shall change all griefs and quarrels into love. king henry v to cry amen to that, thus we appear. queen isabel you english princes all, i do salute you. burgundy my duty to you both, on equal love, great kings of france and england! that i have labour'd, with all my wits, my pains and strong endeavours, to bring your most imperial majesties unto this bar and royal interview, your mightiness on both parts best can witness. since then my office hath so far prevail'd that, face to face and royal eye to eye, you have congreeted, let it not disgrace me, if i demand, before this royal view, what rub or what impediment there is, why that the naked, poor and mangled peace, dear nurse of arts and joyful births, should not in this best garden of the world our fertile france, put up her lovely visage? alas, she hath from france too long been chased, and all her husbandry doth lie on heaps, corrupting in its own fertility. her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach'd, like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair, put forth disorder'd twigs; her fallow leas the darnel, hemlock and rank fumitory doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts that should deracinate such savagery; the even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth the freckled cowslip, burnet and green clover, wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, conceives by idleness and nothing teems but hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs, losing both beauty and utility. and as our vineyards, fallows, meads and hedges, defective in their natures, grow to wildness, even so our houses and ourselves and children have lost, or do not learn for want of time, the sciences that should become our country; but grow like savages,--as soldiers will that nothing do but meditate on blood,- to swearing and stern looks, diffused attire and every thing that seems unnatural. which to reduce into our former favour you are assembled: and my speech entreats that i may know the let, why gentle peace should not expel these inconveniences and bless us with her former qualities. king henry v if, duke of burgundy, you would the peace, whose want gives growth to the imperfections which you have cited, you must buy that peace with full accord to all our just demands; whose tenors and particular effects you have enscheduled briefly in your hands. burgundy the king hath heard them; to the which as yet there is no answer made. king henry v well then the peace, which you before so urged, lies in his answer. king of france i have but with a cursorary eye o'erglanced the articles: pleaseth your grace to appoint some of your council presently to sit with us once more, with better heed to re-survey them, we will suddenly pass our accept and peremptory answer. king henry v brother, we shall. go, uncle exeter, and brother clarence, and you, brother gloucester, warwick and huntingdon, go with the king; and take with you free power to ratify, augment, or alter, as your wisdoms best shall see advantageable for our dignity, any thing in or out of our demands, and we'll consign thereto. will you, fair sister, go with the princes, or stay here with us? queen isabel our gracious brother, i will go with them: haply a woman's voice may do some good, when articles too nicely urged be stood on. king henry v yet leave our cousin katharine here with us: she is our capital demand, comprised within the fore-rank of our articles. queen isabel she hath good leave. [exeunt all except henry, katharine, and alice] king henry v fair katharine, and most fair, will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms such as will enter at a lady's ear and plead his love-suit to her gentle heart? katharine your majesty shall mock at me; i cannot speak your england. king henry v o fair katharine, if you will love me soundly with your french heart, i will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your english tongue. do you like me, kate? katharine pardonnez-moi, i cannot tell vat is 'like me.' king henry v an angel is like you, kate, and you are like an angel. katharine que dit-il? que je suis semblable a les anges? alice oui, vraiment, sauf votre grace, ainsi dit-il. king henry v i said so, dear katharine; and i must not blush to affirm it. katharine o bon dieu! les langues des hommes sont pleines de tromperies. king henry v what says she, fair one? that the tongues of men are full of deceits? alice oui, dat de tongues of de mans is be full of deceits: dat is de princess. king henry v the princess is the better englishwoman. i' faith, kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding: i am glad thou canst speak no better english; for, if thou couldst, thou wouldst find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think i had sold my farm to buy my crown. i know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say 'i love you:' then if you urge me farther than to say 'do you in faith?' i wear out my suit. give me your answer; i' faith, do: and so clap hands and a bargain: how say you, lady? katharine sauf votre honneur, me understand vell. king henry v marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance for your sake, kate, why you undid me: for the one, i have neither words nor measure, and for the other, i have no strength in measure, yet a reasonable measure in strength. if i could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken. i should quickly leap into a wife. or if i might buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her favours, i could lay on like a butcher and sit like a jack-an-apes, never off. but, before god, kate, i cannot look greenly nor gasp out my eloquence, nor i have no cunning in protestation; only downright oaths, which i never use till urged, nor never break for urging. if thou canst love a fellow of this temper, kate, whose face is not worth sun-burning, that never looks in his glass for love of any thing he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook. i speak to thee plain soldier: if thou canst love me for this, take me: if not, to say to thee that i shall die, is true; but for thy love, by the lord, no; yet i love thee too. and while thou livest, dear kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places: for these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies' favours, they do always reason themselves out again. what! a speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. a good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow: but a good heart, kate, is the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly. if thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king. and what sayest thou then to my love? speak, my fair, and fairly, i pray thee. katharine is it possible dat i sould love de enemy of france? king henry v no; it is not possible you should love the enemy of france, kate: but, in loving me, you should love the friend of france; for i love france so well that i will not part with a village of it; i will have it all mine: and, kate, when france is mine and i am yours, then yours is france and you are mine. katharine i cannot tell vat is dat. king henry v no, kate? i will tell thee in french; which i am sure will hang upon my tongue like a new-married wife about her husband's neck, hardly to be shook off. je quand sur le possession de france, et quand vous avez le possession de moi,--let me see, what then? saint denis be my speed!--donc votre est france et vous etes mienne. it is as easy for me, kate, to conquer the kingdom as to speak so much more french: i shall never move thee in french, unless it be to laugh at me. katharine sauf votre honneur, le francois que vous parlez, il est meilleur que l'anglois lequel je parle. king henry v no, faith, is't not, kate: but thy speaking of my tongue, and i thine, most truly-falsely, must needs be granted to be much at one. but, kate, dost thou understand thus much english, canst thou love me? katharine i cannot tell. king henry v can any of your neighbours tell, kate? i'll ask them. come, i know thou lovest me: and at night, when you come into your closet, you'll question this gentlewoman about me; and i know, kate, you will to her dispraise those parts in me that you love with your heart: but, good kate, mock me mercifully; the rather, gentle princess, because i love thee cruelly. if ever thou beest mine, kate, as i have a saving faith within me tells me thou shalt, i get thee with scambling, and thou must therefore needs prove a good soldier-breeder: shall not thou and i, between saint denis and saint george, compound a boy, half french, half english, that shall go to constantinople and take the turk by the beard? shall we not? what sayest thou, my fair flower-de-luce? katharine i do not know dat king henry v no; 'tis hereafter to know, but now to promise: do but now promise, kate, you will endeavour for your french part of such a boy; and for my english moiety take the word of a king and a bachelor. how answer you, la plus belle katharine du monde, mon tres cher et devin deesse? katharine your majestee ave fausse french enough to deceive de most sage demoiselle dat is en france. king henry v now, fie upon my false french! by mine honour, in true english, i love thee, kate: by which honour i dare not swear thou lovest me; yet my blood begins to flatter me that thou dost, notwithstanding the poor and untempering effect of my visage. now, beshrew my father's ambition! he was thinking of civil wars when he got me: therefore was i created with a stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron, that, when i come to woo ladies, i fright them. but, in faith, kate, the elder i wax, the better i shall appear: my comfort is, that old age, that ill layer up of beauty, can do no more, spoil upon my face: thou hast me, if thou hast me, at the worst; and thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me, better and better: and therefore tell me, most fair katharine, will you have me? put off your maiden blushes; avouch the thoughts of your heart with the looks of an empress; take me by the hand, and say 'harry of england i am thine:' which word thou shalt no sooner bless mine ear withal, but i will tell thee aloud 'england is thine, ireland is thine, france is thine, and harry plantagenet is thine;' who though i speak it before his face, if he be not fellow with the best king, thou shalt find the best king of good fellows. come, your answer in broken music; for thy voice is music and thy english broken; therefore, queen of all, katharine, break thy mind to me in broken english; wilt thou have me? katharine dat is as it sall please de roi mon pere. king henry v nay, it will please him well, kate it shall please him, kate. katharine den it sall also content me. king henry v upon that i kiss your hand, and i call you my queen. katharine laissez, mon seigneur, laissez, laissez: ma foi, je ne veux point que vous abaissiez votre grandeur en baisant la main d'une de votre seigeurie indigne serviteur; excusez-moi, je vous supplie, mon tres-puissant seigneur. king henry v then i will kiss your lips, kate. katharine les dames et demoiselles pour etre baisees devant leur noces, il n'est pas la coutume de france. king henry v madam my interpreter, what says she? alice dat it is not be de fashion pour les ladies of france,--i cannot tell vat is baiser en anglish. king henry v to kiss. alice your majesty entendre bettre que moi. king henry v it is not a fashion for the maids in france to kiss before they are married, would she say? alice oui, vraiment. king henry v o kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. dear kate, you and i cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion: we are the makers of manners, kate; and the liberty that follows our places stops the mouth of all find-faults; as i will do yours, for upholding the nice fashion of your country in denying me a kiss: therefore, patiently and yielding. [kissing her] you have witchcraft in your lips, kate: there is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the french council; and they should sooner persuade harry of england than a general petition of monarchs. here comes your father. [re-enter the french king and his queen, burgundy, and other lords] burgundy god save your majesty! my royal cousin, teach you our princess english? king henry v i would have her learn, my fair cousin, how perfectly i love her; and that is good english. burgundy is she not apt? king henry v our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not smooth; so that, having neither the voice nor the heart of flattery about me, i cannot so conjure up the spirit of love in her, that he will appear in his true likeness. burgundy pardon the frankness of my mirth, if i answer you for that. if you would conjure in her, you must make a circle; if conjure up love in her in his true likeness, he must appear naked and blind. can you blame her then, being a maid yet rosed over with the virgin crimson of modesty, if she deny the appearance of a naked blind boy in her naked seeing self? it were, my lord, a hard condition for a maid to consign to. king henry v yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and enforces. burgundy they are then excused, my lord, when they see not what they do. king henry v then, good my lord, teach your cousin to consent winking. burgundy i will wink on her to consent, my lord, if you will teach her to know my meaning: for maids, well summered and warm kept, are like flies at bartholomew-tide, blind, though they have their eyes; and then they will endure handling, which before would not abide looking on. king henry v this moral ties me over to time and a hot summer; and so i shall catch the fly, your cousin, in the latter end and she must be blind too. burgundy as love is, my lord, before it loves. king henry v it is so: and you may, some of you, thank love for my blindness, who cannot see many a fair french city for one fair french maid that stands in my way. french king yes, my lord, you see them perspectively, the cities turned into a maid; for they are all girdled with maiden walls that war hath never entered. king henry v shall kate be my wife? french king so please you. king henry v i am content; so the maiden cities you talk of may wait on her: so the maid that stood in the way for my wish shall show me the way to my will. french king we have consented to all terms of reason. king henry v is't so, my lords of england? westmoreland the king hath granted every article: his daughter first, and then in sequel all, according to their firm proposed natures. exeter only he hath not yet subscribed this: where your majesty demands, that the king of france, having any occasion to write for matter of grant, shall name your highness in this form and with this addition in french, notre trescher fils henri, roi d'angleterre, heritier de france; and thus in latin, praeclarissimus filius noster henricus, rex angliae, et haeres franciae. french king nor this i have not, brother, so denied, but your request shall make me let it pass. king henry v i pray you then, in love and dear alliance, let that one article rank with the rest; and thereupon give me your daughter. french king take her, fair son, and from her blood raise up issue to me; that the contending kingdoms of france and england, whose very shores look pale with envy of each other's happiness, may cease their hatred, and this dear conjunction plant neighbourhood and christian-like accord in their sweet bosoms, that never war advance his bleeding sword 'twixt england and fair france. all amen! king henry v now, welcome, kate: and bear me witness all, that here i kiss her as my sovereign queen. [flourish] queen isabel god, the best maker of all marriages, combine your hearts in one, your realms in one! as man and wife, being two, are one in love, so be there 'twixt your kingdoms such a spousal, that never may ill office, or fell jealousy, which troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage, thrust in between the paction of these kingdoms, to make divorce of their incorporate league; that english may as french, french englishmen, receive each other. god speak this amen! all amen! king henry v prepare we for our marriage--on which day, my lord of burgundy, we'll take your oath, and all the peers', for surety of our leagues. then shall i swear to kate, and you to me; and may our oaths well kept and prosperous be! [sennet. exeunt] king henry v epilogue [enter chorus] chorus thus far, with rough and all-unable pen, our bending author hath pursued the story, in little room confining mighty men, mangling by starts the full course of their glory. small time, but in that small most greatly lived this star of england: fortune made his sword; by which the world's best garden be achieved, and of it left his son imperial lord. henry the sixth, in infant bands crown'd king of france and england, did this king succeed; whose state so many had the managing, that they lost france and made his england bleed: which oft our stage hath shown; and, for their sake, in your fair minds let this acceptance take. [exit] 1850 why the little frenchman wears his hand in a sling by edgar allan poe it's on my visiting cards sure enough (and it's them that's all o' pink satin paper) that inny gintleman that plases may behould the intheristhin words, "sir pathrick o'grandison, barronitt, 39 southampton row, russell square, parrish o' bloomsbury." and shud ye be wantin' to diskiver who is the pink of purliteness quite, and the laider of the hot tun in the houl city o' lononwhy it's jist mesilf. and fait that same is no wonder at all at all (so be plased to stop curlin your nose), for every inch o' the six wakes that i've been a gintleman, and left aff wid the bogthrothing to take up wid the barronissy, it's pathrick that's been living like a houly imperor, and gitting the iddication and the graces. och! and wouldn't it be a blessed thing for your spirrits if ye cud lay your two peepers jist, upon sir pathrick o'grandison, barronitt, when he is all riddy drissed for the hopperer, or stipping into the brisky for the drive into the hyde park. but it's the illigant big figgur that i ave, for the rason o' which all the ladies fall in love wid me. isn't it my own swate silf now that'll missure the six fut, and the three inches more nor that, in me stockins, and that am excadingly will proportioned all over to match? and it is ralelly more than three fut and a bit that there is, inny how, of the little ould furrener frinchman that lives jist over the way, and that's a oggling and a goggling the houl day, (and bad luck to him,) at the purty widdy misthress tracle that's my own nixt-door neighbor, (god bliss her!) and a most particuller frind and acquaintance? you percave the little spalpeen is summat down in the mouth, and wears his lift hand in a sling, and it's for that same thing, by yur lave, that i'm going to give you the good rason. the truth of the houl matter is jist simple enough; for the very first day that i com'd from connaught, and showd my swate little silf in the strait to the widdy, who was looking through the windy, it was a gone case althegither with the heart o' the purty misthress tracle. i percaved it, ye see, all at once, and no mistake, and that's god's truth. first of all it was up wid the windy in a jiffy, and thin she threw open her two peepers to the itmost, and thin it was a little gould spy-glass that she clapped tight to one o' them and divil may burn me if it didn't spake to me as plain as a peeper cud spake, and says it, through the spy-glass: "och! the tip o' the mornin' to ye, sir pathrick o'grandison, barronitt, mavourneen; and it's a nate gintleman that ye are, sure enough, and it's mesilf and me forten jist that'll be at yur sarvice, dear, inny time o' day at all at all for the asking." and it's not mesilf ye wud have to be bate in the purliteness; so i made her a bow that wud ha' broken yur heart altegither to behould, and thin i pulled aff me hat with a flourish, and thin i winked at her hard wid both eyes, as much as to say, "true for you, yer a swate little crature, mrs. tracle, me darlint, and i wish i may be drownthed dead in a bog, if it's not mesilf, sir pathrick o'grandison, barronitt, that'll make a houl bushel o' love to yur leddyship, in the twinkling o' the eye of a londonderry purraty." and it was the nixt mornin', sure, jist as i was making up me mind whither it wouldn't be the purlite thing to sind a bit o' writin' to the widdy by way of a love-litter, when up com'd the delivery servant wid an illigant card, and he tould me that the name on it (for i niver could rade the copperplate printin on account of being lift handed) was all about mounseer, the count, a goose, lookaisy, maiter-di-dauns, and that the houl of the divilish lingo was the spalpeeny long name of the little ould furrener frinchman as lived over the way. and jist wid that in cum'd the little willian himself, and then he made me a broth of a bow, and thin he said he had ounly taken the liberty of doing me the honor of the giving me a call, and thin he went on to palaver at a great rate, and divil the bit did i comprehind what he wud be afther the tilling me at all at all, excipting and saving that he said "pully wou, woolly wou," and tould me, among a bushel o' lies, bad luck to him, that he was mad for the love o' my widdy misthress tracle, and that my widdy mrs. tracle had a puncheon for him. at the hearin' of this, ye may swear, though, i was as mad as a grasshopper, but i remimbered that i was sir pathrick o'grandison, barronitt, and that it wasn't althegither gentaal to lit the anger git the upper hand o' the purliteness, so i made light o' the matter and kipt dark, and got quite sociable wid the little chap, and afther a while what did he do but ask me to go wid him to the widdy's, saying he wud give me the feshionable inthroduction to her leddyship. "is it there ye are?" said i thin to mesilf, "and it's thrue for you, pathrick, that ye're the fortunittest mortal in life. we'll soon see now whither it's your swate silf, or whither it's little mounseer maiter-di-dauns, that misthress tracle is head and ears in the love wid." wid that we wint aff to the widdy's, next door, and ye may well say it was an illigant place; so it was. there was a carpet all over the floor, and in one corner there was a forty-pinny and a jew's harp and the divil knows what ilse, and in another corner was a sofy, the beautifullest thing in all natur, and sitting on the sofy, sure enough, there was the swate little angel, misthress tracle. "the tip o' the mornin' to ye," says i, "mrs. tracle," and thin i made sich an illigant obaysance that it wud ha quite althegither bewildered the brain o' ye. "wully woo, pully woo, plump in the mud," says the little furrenner frinchman, "and sure mrs. tracle," says he, that he did, "isn't this gintleman here jist his reverence sir pathrick o'grandison, barronitt, and isn't he althegither and entirely the most particular frind and acquaintance that i have in the houl world?" and wid that the widdy, she gits up from the sofy, and makes the swatest curthchy nor iver was seen; and thin down she sits like an angel; and thin, by the powers, it was that little spalpeen mounseer maiter-di-dauns that plumped his silf right down by the right side of her. och hon! i ixpicted the two eyes o' me wud ha cum'd out of my head on the spot, i was so dispirate mad! howiver, "bait who!" says i, after awhile. "is it there ye are, mounseer maiter-di-dauns?" and so down i plumped on the lift side of her leddyship, to be aven with the willain. botheration! it wud ha done your heart good to percave the illigant double wink that i gived her jist thin right in the face with both eyes. but the little ould frinchman he niver beginned to suspict me at all at all, and disperate hard it was he made the love to her leddyship. "woully wou," says he, pully wou," says he, "plump in the mud," says he. "that's all to no use, mounseer frog, mavourneen," thinks i; and i talked as hard and as fast as i could all the while, and throth it was mesilf jist that divarted her leddyship complately and intirely, by rason of the illigant conversation that i kipt up wid her all about the dear bogs of connaught. and by and by she gived me such a swate smile, from one ind of her mouth to the ither, that it made me as bould as a pig, and i jist took hould of the ind of her little finger in the most dillikitest manner in natur, looking at her all the while out o' the whites of my eyes. and then ounly percave the cuteness of the swate angel, for no sooner did she obsarve that i was afther the squazing of her flipper, than she up wid it in a jiffy, and put it away behind her back, jist as much as to say, "now thin, sir pathrick o'grandison, there's a bitther chance for ye, mavourneen, for it's not altogether the gentaal thing to be afther the squazing of my flipper right full in the sight of that little furrenner frinchman, mounseer maiter-di-dauns." wid that i giv'd her a big wink jist to say, "lit sir pathrick alone for the likes o' them thricks," and thin i wint aisy to work, and you'd have died wid the divarsion to behould how cliverly i slipped my right arm betwane the back o' the sofy, and the back of her leddyship, and there, sure enough, i found a swate little flipper all a waiting to say, "the tip o' the mornin' to ye, sir pathrick o'grandison, barronitt." and wasn't it mesilf, sure, that jist giv'd it the laste little bit of a squaze in the world, all in the way of a commincement, and not to be too rough wid her leddyship? and och, botheration, wasn't it the gentaalest and dilikittest of all the little squazes that i got in return? "blood and thunder, sir pathrick, mavourneen," thinks i to mesilf, "fait it's jist the mother's son of you, and nobody else at all at all, that's the handsomest and the fortunittest young bog-throtter that ever cum'd out of connaught!" and with that i givd the flipper a big squaze, and a big squaze it was, by the powers, that her leddyship giv'd to me back. but it would ha split the seven sides of you wid the laffin' to behould, jist then all at once, the consated behavior of mounseer maiter-di-dauns. the likes o' sich a jabbering, and a smirking, and a parley-wouing as he begin'd wid her leddyship, niver was known before upon arth; and divil may burn me if it wasn't me own very two peepers that cotch'd him tipping her the wink out of one eye. och, hon! if it wasn't mesilf thin that was mad as a kilkenny cat i shud like to be tould who it was! "let me infarm you, mounseer maiter-di-dauns," said i, as purlite as iver ye seed, "that it's not the gintaal thing at all at all, and not for the likes o' you inny how, to be afther the oggling and a goggling at her leddyship in that fashion," and jist wid that such another squaze as it was i giv'd her flipper, all as much as to say, "isn't it sir pathrick now, my jewel, that'll be able to the proticting o' you, my darlint?" and then there cum'd another squaze back, all by way of the answer. "thrue for you, sir pathrick," it said as plain as iver a squaze said in the world, "thrue for you, sir pathrick, mavourneen, and it's a proper nate gintleman ye arethat's god's truth," and with that she opened her two beautiful peepers till i belaved they wud ha' cum'd out of her hid althegither and intirely, and she looked first as mad as a cat at mounseer frog, and thin as smiling as all out o' doors at mesilf. "thin," says he, the willian, "och hon! and a wolly-wou, pully-wou," and then wid that he shoved up his two shoulders till the divil the bit of his hid was to be diskivered, and then he let down the two corners of his purraty-trap, and thin not a haporth more of the satisfaction could i git out o' the spalpeen. belave me, my jewel, it was sir pathrick that was unreasonable mad thin, and the more by token that the frinchman kipt an wid his winking at the widdy; and the widdy she kept an wid the squazing of my flipper, as much as to say, "at him again, sir pathrick o'grandison, mavourneen:" so i just ripped out wid a big oath, and says i; "ye little spalpeeny frog of a bog-throtting son of a bloody noun!"and jist thin what d'ye think it was that her leddyship did? troth she jumped up from the sofy as if she was bit, and made off through the door, while i turned my head round afther her, in a complate bewilderment and botheration, and followed her wid me two peepers. you percave i had a reason of my own for knowing that she couldn't git down the stares althegither and intirely; for i knew very well that i had hould of her hand, for the divil the bit had i iver lit it go. and says i; "isn't it the laste little bit of a mistake in the world that ye've been afther the making, yer leddyship? come back now, that's a darlint, and i'll give ye yur flipper." but aff she wint down the stairs like a shot, and thin i turned round to the little frinch furrenner. och hon! if it wasn't his spalpeeny little paw that i had hould of in my ownwhy thinthin it wasn'tthat's all. and maybe it wasn't mesilf that jist died then outright wid the laffin', to behold the little chap when he found out that it wasn't the widdy at all at all that he had had hould of all the time, but only sir pathrick o'grandison. the ould divil himself niver behild sich a long face as he pet an! as for sir pathrick o'grandison, barronitt, it wasn't for the likes of his riverence to be afther the minding of a thrifle of a mistake. ye may jist say, though (for it's god's thruth), that afore i left hould of the flipper of the spalpeen (which was not till afther her leddyship's futman had kicked us both down the stairs, i giv'd it such a nate little broth of a squaze as made it all up into raspberry jam. "woully wou," says he, "pully wou," says he"cot tam!" and that's jist the thruth of the rason why he wears his lift hand in a sling. littleton barry. the end . 1849 the bells by edgar allan poe i hear the sledges with the bells silver bells! what a world of merriment their melody foretells! how they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, in the icy air of night! while the stars that oversprinkle all the heavens, seem to twinkle with a crystalline delight; keeping time, time, time, in a sort of runic rhyme, to the tintinnabulation that so musically wells from the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells from the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. ii hear the mellow wedding bells, golden bells! what a world of happiness their harmony foretells! through the balmy air of night how they ring out their delight! from the molten-golden notes, and all in tune, what a liquid ditty floats to the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats on the moon! oh, from out the sounding cells, what a gush of euphony voluminously wells! how it swells! how it dwells on the future! how it tells of the rapture that impels to the swinging and the ringing of the bells, bells, bells, of the bells, bells, bells,bells, bells, bells, bells to the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! iii hear the loud alarum bells brazen bells! what a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! in the startled ear of night how they scream out their affright! too much horrified to speak, they can only shriek, shriek, out of tune, in a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, in a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, leaping higher, higher, higher, with a desperate desire, and a resolute endeavor, nownow to sit or never, by the side of the pale-faced moon. oh, the bells, bells, bells! what a tale their terror tells of despair! how they clang, and clash, and roar! what a horror they outpour on the bosom of the palpitating air! yet the ear it fully knows, by the twanging, and the clanging, how the danger ebbs and flows: yet the ear distinctly tells, in the jangling, and the wrangling, how the danger sinks and swells, by the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells of the bells of the bells, bells, bells,bells, bells, bells, bells in the clamor and the clangor of the bells! iv hear the tolling of the bells iron bells! what a world of solemn thought their monody compels! in the silence of the night, how we shiver with affright at the melancholy menace of their tone! for every sound that floats from the rust within their throats is a groan. and the peopleah, the people they that dwell up in the steeple, all alone and who, tolling, tolling, tolling, in that muffled monotone, feel a glory in so rolling on the human heart a stone they are neither man nor woman they are neither brute nor human they are ghouls: and their king it is who tolls; and he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls a paean from the bells! and his merry bosom swells with the paean of the bells! and he dances, and he yells; keeping time, time, time, in a sort of runic rhyme, to the paean of the bells of the bells: keeping time, time, time, in a sort of runic rhyme, to the throbbing of the bells of the bells, bells, bells to the sobbing of the bells; keeping time, time, time, as he knells, knells, knells, in a happy runic rhyme, to the rolling of the bells of the bells, bells, bells: to the tolling of the bells, of the bells, bells, bells, bells bells, bells, bells to the moaning and the groaning of the bells. -the end. project gutenberg etext of the unbearable bassington, by "saki" #2 in our series by "saki" [h. h. munro] copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! 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francesca bassington sat in the drawing-room of her house in blue street, w., regaling herself and her estimable brother henry with china tea and small cress sandwiches. the meal was of that elegant proportion which, while ministering sympathetically to the desires of the moment, is happily reminiscent of a satisfactory luncheon and blessedly expectant of an elaborate dinner to come. in her younger days francesca had been known as the beautiful miss greech; at forty, although much of the original beauty remained, she was just dear francesca bassington. no one would have dreamed of calling her sweet, but a good many people who scarcely knew her were punctilious about putting in the "dear." her enemies, in their honester moments, would have admitted that she was svelte and knew how to dress, but they would have agreed with her friends in asserting that she had no soul. when one's friends and enemies agree on any particular point they are usually wrong. francesca herself, if pressed in an unguarded moment to describe her soul, would probably have described her drawing-room. not that she would have considered that the one had stamped the impress of its character on the other, so that close scrutiny might reveal its outstanding features, and even suggest its hidden places, but because she might have dimly recognised that her drawing-room was her soul. francesca was one of those women towards whom fate appears to have the best intentions and never to carry them into practice. with the advantages put at her disposal she might have been expected to command a more than average share of feminine happiness. so many of the things that make for fretfulness, disappointment and discouragement in a woman's life were removed from her path that she might well have been considered the fortunate miss greech, or later, lucky francesca bassington. and she was not of the perverse band of those who make a rock-garden of their souls by dragging into them all the stoney griefs and unclaimed troubles they can find lying around them. francesca loved the smooth ways and pleasant places of life; she liked not merely to look on the bright side of things but to live there and stay there. and the fact that things had, at one time and another, gone badly with her and cheated her of some of her early illusions made her cling the closer to such good fortune as remained to her now that she seemed to have reached a calmer period of her life. to undiscriminating friends she appeared in the guise of a rather selfish woman, but it was merely the selfishness of one who had seen the happy and unhappy sides of life and wished to enjoy to the utmost what was left to her of the former. the vicissitudes of fortune had not soured her, but they had perhaps narrowed her in the sense of making her concentrate much of her sympathies on things that immediately pleased and amused her, or that recalled and perpetuated the pleasing and successful incidents of other days. and it was her drawing-room in particular that enshrined the memorials or tokens of past and present happiness. into that comfortable quaint-shaped room of angles and bays and alcoves had sailed, as into a harbour, those precious personal possessions and trophies that had survived the buffetings and storms of a not very tranquil married life. wherever her eyes might turn she saw the embodied results of her successes, economies, good luck, good management or good taste. the battle had more than once gone against her, but she had somehow always contrived to save her baggage train, and her complacent gaze could roam over object after object that represented the spoils of victory or the salvage of honourable defeat. the delicious bronze fremiet on the mantelpiece had been the outcome of a grand prix sweepstake of many years ago; a group of dresden figures of some considerable value had been bequeathed to her by a discreet admirer, who had added death to his other kindnesses; another group had been a self-bestowed present, purchased in blessed and unfading memory of a wonderful nine-days' bridge winnings at a country-house party. there were old persian and bokharan rugs and worcester teaservices of glowing colour, and little treasures of antique silver that each enshrined a history or a memory in addition to its own intrinsic value. it amused her at times to think of the bygone craftsmen and artificers who had hammered and wrought and woven in far distant countries and ages, to produce the wonderful and beautiful things that had come, one way and another, into her possession. workers in the studios of medieval italian towns and of later paris, in the bazaars of baghdad and of central asia, in old-time english workshops and german factories, in all manner of queer hidden corners where craft secrets were jealously guarded, nameless unremembered men and men whose names were world-renowned and deathless. and above all her other treasures, dominating in her estimation every other object that the room contained, was the great van der meulen that had come from her father's home as part of her wedding dowry. it fitted exactly into the central wall panel above the narrow buhl cabinet, and filled exactly its right space in the composition and balance of the room. from wherever you sat it seemed to confront you as the dominating feature of its surroundings. there was a pleasing serenity about the great pompous battle scene with its solemn courtly warriors bestriding their heavily prancing steeds, grey or skewbald or dun, all gravely in earnest, and yet somehow conveying the impression that their campaigns were but vast serious picnics arranged in the grand manner. francesca could not imagine the drawing-room without the crowning complement of the stately well-hung picture, just as she could not imagine herself in any other setting than this house in blue street with its crowded pantheon of cherished household gods. and herein sprouted one of the thorns that obtruded through the rose-leaf damask of what might otherwise have been francesca's peace of mind. one's happiness always lies in the future rather than in the past. with due deference to an esteemed lyrical authority one may safely say that a sorrow's crown of sorrow is anticipating unhappier things. the house in blue street had been left to her by her old friend sophie chetrof, but only until such time as her niece emmeline chetrof should marry, when it was to pass to her as a wedding present. emmeline was now seventeen and passably good-looking, and four or five years were all that could be safely allotted to the span of her continued spinsterhood. beyond that period lay chaos, the wrenching asunder of francesca from the sheltering habitation that had grown to be her soul. it is true that in imagination she had built herself a bridge across the chasm, a bridge of a single span. the bridge in question was her schoolboy son comus, now being educated somewhere in the southern counties, or rather one should say the bridge consisted of the possibility of his eventual marriage with emmeline, in which case francesca saw herself still reigning, a trifle squeezed and incommoded perhaps, but still reigning in the house in blue street. the van der meulen would still catch its requisite afternoon light in its place of honour, the fremiet and the dresden and old worcester would continue undisturbed in their accustomed niches. emmeline could have the japanese snuggery, where francesca sometimes drank her after-dinner coffee, as a separate drawingroom, where she could put her own things. the details of the bridge structure had all been carefully thought out. only it was an unfortunate circumstance that comus should have been the span on which everything balanced. francesca's husband had insisted on giving the boy that strange pagan name, and had not lived long enough to judge as to the appropriateness, or otherwise, of its significance. in seventeen years and some odd months francesca had had ample opportunity for forming an opinion concerning her son's characteristics. the spirit of mirthfulness which one associates with the name certainly ran riot in the boy, but it was a twisted wayward sort of mirth of which francesca herself could seldom see the humorous side. in her brother henry, who sat eating small cress sandwiches as solemnly as though they had been ordained in some immemorial book of observances, fate had been undisguisedly kind to her. he might so easily have married some pretty helpless little woman, and lived at notting hill gate, and been the father of a long string of pale, clever useless children, who would have had birthdays and the sort of illnesses that one is expected to send grapes to, and who would have painted fatuous objects in a south kensington manner as christmas offerings to an aunt whose cubic space for lumber was limited. instead of committing these unbrotherly actions, which are so frequent in family life that they might almost be called brotherly, henry had married a woman who had both money and a sense of repose, and their one child had the brilliant virtue of never saying anything which even its parents could consider worth repeating. then he had gone into parliament, possibly with the idea of making his home life seem less dull; at any rate it redeemed his career from insignificance, for no man whose death can produce the item "another by-election" on the news posters can be wholly a nonentity. henry, in short, who might have been an embarrassment and a handicap, had chosen rather to be a friend and counsellor, at times even an emergency bank balance; francesca on her part, with the partiality which a clever and lazily-inclined woman often feels for a reliable fool, not only sought his counsel but frequently followed it. when convenient, moreover, she repaid his loans. against this good service on the part of fate in providing her with henry for a brother, francesca could well set the plaguy malice of the destiny that had given her comus for a son. the boy was one of those untameable young lords of misrule that frolic and chafe themselves through nursery and preparatory and public-school days with the utmost allowance of storm and dust and dislocation and the least possible amount of collar-work, and come somehow with a laugh through a series of catastrophes that has reduced everyone else concerned to tears or cassandra-like forebodings. sometimes they sober down in after-life and become uninteresting, forgetting that they were ever lords of anything; sometimes fate plays royally into their hands, and they do great things in a spacious manner, and are thanked by parliaments and the press and acclaimed by gala-day crowds. but in most cases their tragedy begins when they leave school and turn themselves loose in a world that has grown too civilised and too crowded and too empty to have any place for them. and they are very many. henry greech had made an end of biting small sandwiches, and settled down like a dust-storm refreshed, to discuss one of the fashionably prevalent topics of the moment, the prevention of destitution. "it is a question that is only being nibbled at, smelt at, one might say, at the present moment," he observed, "but it is one that will have to engage our serious attention and consideration before long. the first thing that we shall have to do is to get out of the dilettante and academic way of approaching it. we must collect and assimilate hard facts. it is a subject that ought to appeal to all thinking minds, and yet, you know, i find it surprisingly difficult to interest people in it." francesca made some monosyllabic response, a sort of sympathetic grunt which was meant to indicate that she was, to a certain extent, listening and appreciating. in reality she was reflecting that henry possibly found it difficult to interest people in any topic that he enlarged on. his talents lay so thoroughly in the direction of being uninteresting, that even as an eye-witness of the massacre of st. bartholomew he would probably have infused a flavour of boredom into his descriptions of the event. "i was speaking down in leicestershire the other day on this subject," continued henry, "and i pointed out at some length a thing that few people ever stop to consider " francesca went over immediately but decorously to the majority that will not stop to consider. "did you come across any of the barnets when you were down there?" she interrupted; "eliza barnet is rather taken up with all those subjects." in the propagandist movements of sociology, as in other arenas of life and struggle, the fiercest competition and rivalry is frequently to be found between closely allied types and species. eliza barnet shared many of henry greech's political and social views, but she also shared his fondness for pointing things out at some length; there had been occasions when she had extensively occupied the strictly limited span allotted to the platform oratory of a group of speakers of whom henry greech had been an impatient unit. he might see eye to eye with her on the leading questions of the day, but he persistently wore mental blinkers as far as her estimable qualities were concerned, and the mention of her name was a skilful lure drawn across the trail of his discourse; if francesca had to listen to his eloquence on any subject she much preferred that it should be a disparagement of eliza barnet rather than the prevention of destitution. "i've no doubt she means well," said henry, "but it would be a good thing if she could be induced to keep her own personality a little more in the background, and not to imagine that she is the necessary mouthpiece of all the progressive thought in the countryside. i fancy canon besomley must have had her in his mind when he said that some people came into the world to shake empires and others to move amendments." francesca laughed with genuine amusement. "i suppose she is really wonderfully well up in all the subjects she talks about," was her provocative comment. henry grew possibly conscious of the fact that he was being drawn out on the subject of eliza barnet, and he presently turned on to a more personal topic. "from the general air of tranquillity about the house i presume comus has gone back to thaleby," he observed. "yes," said francesca, "he went back yesterday. of course, i'm very fond of him, but i bear the separation well. when he's here it's rather like having a live volcano in the house, a volcano that in its quietest moments asks incessant questions and uses strong scent." "it is only a temporary respite," said henry; "in a year or two he will be leaving school, and then what?" francesca closed her eyes with the air of one who seeks to shut out a distressing vision. she was not fond of looking intimately at the future in the presence of another person, especially when the future was draped in doubtfully auspicious colours. "and then what?" persisted henry. "then i suppose he will be upon my hands." "exactly." "don't sit there looking judicial. i'm quite ready to listen to suggestions if you've any to make." "in the case of any ordinary boy," said henry, "i might make lots of suggestions as to the finding of suitable employment. from what we know of comus it would be rather a waste of time for either of us to look for jobs which he wouldn't look at when we'd got them for him." "he must do something," said francesca. "i know he must; but he never will. at least, he'll never stick to anything. the most hopeful thing to do with him will be to marry him to an heiress. that would solve the financial side of his problem. if he had unlimited money at his disposal, he might go into the wilds somewhere and shoot big game. i never know what the big game have done to deserve it, but they do help to deflect the destructive energies of some of our social misfits." henry, who never killed anything larger or fiercer than a trout, was scornfully superior on the subject of big game shooting. francesca brightened at the matrimonial suggestion. "i don't know about an heiress," she said reflectively. "there's emmeline chetrof of course. one could hardly call her an heiress, but she's got a comfortable little income of her own and i suppose something more will come to her from her grandmother. then, of course, you know this house goes to her when she marries." "that would be very convenient," said henry, probably following a line of thought that his sister had trodden many hundreds of times before him. "do she and comus hit it off at all well together?" "oh, well enough in boy and girl fashion," said francesca. "i must arrange for them to see more of each other in future. by the way, that little brother of hers that she dotes on, lancelot, goes to thaleby this term. i'll write and tell comus to be specially kind to him; that will be a sure way to emmeline's heart. comus has been made a prefect, you know. heaven knows why." "it can only be for prominence in games," sniffed henry; "i think we may safely leave work and conduct out of the question." comus was not a favourite with his uncle. francesca had turned to her writing cabinet and was hastily scribbling a letter to her son in which the delicate health, timid disposition and other inevitable attributes of the new boy were brought to his notice, and commanded to his care. when she had sealed and stamped the envelope henry uttered a belated caution. "perhaps on the whole it would be wiser to say nothing about the boy to comus. he doesn't always respond to directions you know." francesca did know, and already was more than half of her brother's opinion; but the woman who can sacrifice a clean unspoiled penny stamp is probably yet unborn. chapter ii lancelot chetrof stood at the end of a long bare passage, restlessly consulting his watch and fervently wishing himself half an hour older with a certain painful experience already registered in the past; unfortunately it still belonged to the future, and what was still more horrible, to the immediate future. like many boys new to a school he had cultivated an unhealthy passion for obeying rules and requirements, and his zeal in this direction had proved his undoing. in his hurry to be doing two or three estimable things at once he had omitted to study the notice-board in more than a perfunctory fashion and had thereby missed a football practice specially ordained for newly-joined boys. his fellow juniors of a term's longer standing had graphically enlightened him as to the inevitable consequences of his lapse; the dread which attaches to the unknown was, at any rate, deleted from his approaching doom, though at the moment he felt scarcely grateful for the knowledge placed at his disposal with such lavish solicitude. "you'll get six of the very best, over the back of a chair," said one. "they'll draw a chalk line across you, of course you know," said another. "a chalk line?" "rather. so that every cut can be aimed exactly at the same spot. it hurts much more that way." lancelot tried to nourish a wan hope that there might be an element of exaggeration in this uncomfortably realistic description. meanwhile in the prefects' room at the other end of the passage, comus bassington and a fellow prefect sat also waiting on time, but in a mood of far more pleasurable expectancy. comus was one of the most junior of the prefect caste, but by no means the least wellknown, and outside the masters' common-room he enjoyed a certain fitful popularity, or at any rate admiration. at football he was too erratic to be a really brilliant player, but he tackled as if the act of bringing his man headlong to the ground was in itself a sensuous pleasure, and his weird swear-words whenever he got hurt were eagerly treasured by those who were fortunate enough to hear them. at athletics in general he was a showy performer, and although new to the functions of a prefect he had already established a reputation as an effective and artistic caner. in appearance he exactly fitted his fanciful pagan name. his large green-grey eyes seemed for ever asparkle with goblin mischief and the joy of revelry, and the curved lips might have been those of some wickedly-laughing faun; one almost expected to see embryo horns fretting the smoothness of his sleek dark hair. the chin was firm, but one looked in vain for a redeeming touch of ill-temper in the handsome, half-mocking, half-petulant face. with a strain of sourness in him comus might have been leavened into something creative and masterful; fate had fashioned him with a certain whimsical charm, and left him all unequipped for the greater purposes of life. perhaps no one would have called him a lovable character, but in many respects he was adorable; in all respects he was certainly damned. rutley, his companion of the moment, sat watching him and wondering, from the depths of a very ordinary brain, whether he liked or hated him; it was easy to do either. "it's not really your turn to cane," he said. "i know it's not," said comus, fingering a very serviceable-looking cane as lovingly as a pious violinist might handle his strad. "i gave greyson some mint-chocolate to let me toss whether i caned or him, and i won. he was rather decent over it and let me have half the chocolate back." the droll lightheartedness which won comus bassington such measure of popularity as he enjoyed among his fellows did not materially help to endear him to the succession of masters with whom he came in contact during the course of his schooldays. he amused and interested such of them as had the saving grace of humour at their disposal, but if they sighed when he passed from their immediate responsibility it was a sigh of relief rather than of regret. the more enlightened and experienced of them realised that he was something outside the scope of the things that they were called upon to deal with. a man who has been trained to cope with storms, to foresee their coming, and to minimise their consequences, may be pardoned if he feels a certain reluctance to measure himself against a tornado. men of more limited outlook and with a correspondingly larger belief in their own powers were ready to tackle the tornado had time permitted. "i think i could tame young bassington if i had your opportunities," a form-master once remarked to a colleague whose house had the embarrassing distinction of numbering comus among its inmates. "heaven forbid that i should try," replied the housemaster. "but why?" asked the reformer. "because nature hates any interference with her own arrangements, and if you start in to tame the obviously untameable you are taking a fearful responsibility on yourself." "nonsense; boys are nature's raw material." "millions of boys are. there are just a few, and bassington is one of them, who are nature's highly finished product when they are in the schoolboy stage, and we, who are supposed to be moulding raw material, are quite helpless when we come in contact with them." "but what happens to them when they grow up?" "they never do grow up," said the housemaster; "that is their tragedy. bassington will certainly never grow out of his present stage." "now you are talking in the language of peter pan," said the formmaster. "i am not thinking in the manner of peter pan," said the other. "with all reverence for the author of that masterpiece i should say he had a wonderful and tender insight into the child mind and knew nothing whatever about boys. to make only one criticism on that particular work, can you imagine a lot of british boys, or boys of any country that one knows of, who would stay contentedly playing children's games in an underground cave when there were wolves and pirates and red indians to be had for the asking on the other side of the trap door?" the form-master laughed. "you evidently think that the 'boy who would not grow up' must have been written by a 'grown-up who could never have been a boy.' perhaps that is the meaning of the 'nevernever land.' i daresay you're right in your criticism, but i don't agree with you about bassington. he's a handful to deal with, as anyone knows who has come in contact with him, but if one's hands weren't full with a thousand and one other things i hold to my opinion that he could be tamed." and he went his way, having maintained a form-master's inalienable privilege of being in the right. * * * * * in the prefects' room, comus busied himself with the exact position of a chair planted out in the middle of the floor. "i think everything's ready," he said. rutley glanced at the clock with the air of a roman elegant in the circus, languidly awaiting the introduction of an expected christian to an expectant tiger. "the kid is due in two minutes," he said. "he'd jolly well better not be late," said comus. comus had gone through the mill of many scorching castigations in his earlier school days, and was able to appreciate to the last ounce the panic that must be now possessing his foredoomed victim, probably at this moment hovering miserably outside the door. after all, that was part of the fun of the thing, and most things have their amusing side if one knows where to look for it. there was a knock at the door, and lancelot entered in response to a hearty friendly summons to "come in." "i've come to be caned," he said breathlessly; adding by way of identification, "my name's chetrof." "that's quite bad enough in itself," said comus, "but there is probably worse to follow. you are evidently keeping something back from us." "i missed a footer practice," said lancelot "six," said comus briefly, picking up his cane. "i didn't see the notice on the board," hazarded lancelot as a forlorn hope. "we are always pleased to listen to excuses, and our charge is two extra cuts. that will be eight. get over." and comus indicated the chair that stood in sinister isolation in the middle of the room. never had an article of furniture seemed more hateful in lancelot's eyes. comus could well remember the time when a chair stuck in the middle of a room had seemed to him the most horrible of manufactured things. "lend me a piece of chalk," he said to his brother prefect. lancelot ruefully recognised the truth of the chalk-line story. comus drew the desired line with an anxious exactitude which he would have scorned to apply to a diagram of euclid or a map of the russo-persian frontier. "bend a little more forward," he said to the victim, "and much tighter. don't trouble to look pleasant, because i can't see your face anyway. it may sound unorthodox to say so, but this is going to hurt you much more than it will hurt me." there was a carefully measured pause, and then lancelot was made vividly aware of what a good cane can be made to do in really efficient hands. at the second cut he projected himself hurriedly off the chair. "now i've lost count," said comus; "we shall have to begin all over again. kindly get back into the same position. if you get down again before i've finished rutley will hold you over and you'll get a dozen." lancelot got back on to the chair, and was re-arranged to the taste of his executioner. he stayed there somehow or other while comus made eight accurate and agonisingly effective shots at the chalk line. "by the way," he said to his gasping and gulping victim when the infliction was over, "you said chetrof, didn't you? i believe i've been asked to be kind to you. as a beginning you can clean out my study this afternoon. be awfully careful how you dust the old china. if you break any don't come and tell me but just go and drown yourself somewhere; it will save you from a worse fate." "i don't know where your study is," said lancelot between his chokes. "you'd better find it or i shall have to beat you, really hard this time. here, you'd better keep this chalk in your pocket, it's sure to come in handy later on. don't stop to thank me for all i've done, it only embarrasses me." as comus hadn't got a study lancelot spent a feverish half-hour in looking for it, incidentally missing another footer practice. "everything is very jolly here," wrote lancelot to his sister emmeline. "the prefects can give you an awful hot time if they like, but most of them are rather decent. some are beasts. bassington is a prefect though only a junior one. he is the limit as beasts go. at least i think so." schoolboy reticence went no further, but emmeline filled in the gaps for herself with the lavish splendour of feminine imagination. francesca's bridge went crashing into the abyss. chapter iii on the evening of a certain november day, two years after the events heretofore chronicled, francesca bassington steered her way through the crowd that filled the rooms of her friend serena golackly, bestowing nods of vague recognition as she went, but with eyes that were obviously intent on focussing one particular figure. parliament had pulled its energies together for an autumn session, and both political parties were fairly well represented in the throng. serena had a harmless way of inviting a number of more or less public men and women to her house, and hoping that if you left them together long enough they would constitute a salon. in pursuance of the same instinct she planted the flower borders at her week-end cottage retreat in surrey with a large mixture of bulbs, and called the result a dutch garden. unfortunately, though you may bring brilliant talkers into your home, you cannot always make them talk brilliantly, or even talk at all; what is worse you cannot restrict the output of those starling-voiced dullards who seem to have, on all subjects, so much to say that was well worth leaving unsaid. one group that francesca passed was discussing a spanish painter, who was forty-three, and had painted thousands of square yards of canvas in his time, but of whom no one in london had heard till a few months ago; now the starling-voices seemed determined that one should hear of very little else. three women knew how his name was pronounced, another always felt that she must go into a forest and pray whenever she saw his pictures, another had noticed that there were always pomegranates in his later compositions, and a man with an indefensible collar knew what the pomegranates "meant." "what i think so splendid about him," said a stout lady in a loud challenging voice, "is the way he defies all the conventions of art while retaining all that the conventions stand for." "ah, but have you noticed " put in the man with the atrocious collar, and francesca pushed desperately on, wondering dimly as she went, what people found so unsupportable in the affliction of deafness. her progress was impeded for a moment by a couple engaged in earnest and voluble discussion of some smouldering question of the day; a thin spectacled young man with the receding forehead that so often denotes advanced opinions, was talking to a spectacled young woman with a similar type of forehead, and exceedingly untidy hair. it was her ambition in life to be taken for a russian girl-student, and she had spent weeks of patient research in trying to find out exactly where you put the tea-leaves in a samovar. she had once been introduced to a young jewess from odessa, who had died of pneumonia the following week; the experience, slight as it was, constituted the spectacled young lady an authority on all things russian in the eyes of her immediate set. "talk is helpful, talk is needful," the young man was saying, "but what we have got to do is to lift the subject out of the furrow of indisciplined talk and place it on the threshing-floor of practical discussion." the young woman took advantage of the rhetorical full-stop to dash in with the remark which was already marshalled on the tip of her tongue. "in emancipating the serfs of poverty we must be careful to avoid the mistakes which russian bureaucracy stumbled into when liberating the serfs of the soil." she paused in her turn for the sake of declamatory effect, but recovered her breath quickly enough to start afresh on level terms with the young man, who had jumped into the stride of his next sentence. "they got off to a good start that time," said francesca to herself; "i suppose it's the prevention of destitution they're hammering at. what on earth would become of these dear good people if anyone started a crusade for the prevention of mediocrity?" midway through one of the smaller rooms, still questing for an elusive presence, she caught sight of someone that she knew, and the shadow of a frown passed across her face. the object of her faintly signalled displeasure was courtenay youghal, a political spur-winner who seemed absurdly youthful to a generation that had never heard of pitt. it was youghal's ambition or perhaps his hobby to infuse into the greyness of modern political life some of the colour of disraelian dandyism, tempered with the correctness of anglo-saxon taste, and supplemented by the flashes of wit that were inherent from the celtic strain in him. his success was only a half-measure. the public missed in him that touch of blatancy which it looks for in its rising public men; the decorative smoothness of his chestnut-golden hair, and the lively sparkle of his epigrams were counted to him for good, but the restrained sumptuousness of his waistcoats and cravats were as wasted efforts. if he had habitually smoked cigarettes in a pink coral mouthpiece, or worn spats of mackenzie tartan, the great heart of the votingman, and the gush of the paragraph-makers might have been unreservedly his. the art of public life consists to a great extent of knowing exactly where to stop and going a bit further. it was not youghal's lack of political sagacity that had brought the momentary look of disapproval into francesca's face. the fact was that comus, who had left off being a schoolboy and was now a social problem, had lately enrolled himself among the young politician's associates and admirers, and as the boy knew and cared nothing about politics, and merely copied youghal's waistcoats, and, less successfully, his conversation, francesca felt herself justified in deploring the intimacy. to a woman who dressed well on comparatively nothing a year it was an anxious experience to have a son who dressed sumptuously on absolutely nothing. the cloud that had passed over her face when she caught sight of the offending youghal was presently succeeded by a smile of gratified achievement, as she encountered a bow of recognition and welcome from a portly middle-aged gentleman, who seemed genuinely anxious to include her in the rather meagre group that he had gathered about him. "we were just talking about my new charge," he observed genially, including in the "we" his somewhat depressed-looking listeners, who in all human probability had done none of the talking. "i was just telling them, and you may be interested to hear this " francesca, with spartan stoicism, continued to wear an ingratiating smile, though the character of the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear and will not hearken, seemed to her at that moment a beautiful one. sir julian jull had been a member of a house of commons distinguished for its high standard of well-informed mediocrity, and had harmonised so thoroughly with his surroundings that the most attentive observer of parliamentary proceedings could scarcely have told even on which side of the house he sat. a baronetcy bestowed on him by the party in power had at least removed that doubt; some weeks later he had been made governor of some west indian dependency, whether as a reward for having accepted the baronetcy, or as an application of a theory that west indian islands get the governors they deserve, it would have been hard to say. to sir julian the appointment was, doubtless, one of some importance; during the span of his governorship the island might possibly be visited by a member of the royal family, or at the least by an earthquake, and in either case his name would get into the papers. to the public the matter was one of absolute indifference; "who is he and where is it?" would have correctly epitomised the sum total of general information on the personal and geographical aspects of the case. francesca, however, from the moment she had heard of the likelihood of the appointment, had taken a deep and lively interest in sir julian. as a member of parliament he had not filled any very pressing social want in her life, and on the rare occasions when she took tea on the terrace of the house she was wont to lapse into rapt contemplation of st. thomas's hospital whenever she saw him within bowing distance. but as governor of an island he would, of course, want a private secretary, and as a friend and colleague of henry greech, to whom he was indebted for many little acts of political support (they had once jointly drafted an amendment which had been ruled out of order), what was more natural and proper than that he should let his choice fall on henry's nephew comus? while privately doubting whether the boy would make the sort of secretary that any public man would esteem as a treasure, henry was thoroughly in agreement with francesca as to the excellence and desirability of an arrangement which would transplant that troublesome' young animal from the too restricted and conspicuous area that centres in the parish of st. james's to some misty corner of the british dominion overseas. brother and sister had conspired to give an elaborate and at the same time cosy little luncheon to sir julian on the very day that his appointment was officially announced, and the question of the secretaryship had been mooted and sedulously fostered as occasion permitted, until all that was now needed to clinch the matter was a formal interview between his excellency and comus. the boy had from the first shewn very little gratification at the prospect of his deportation. to live on a remote shark-girt island, as he expressed it, with the jull family as his chief social mainstay, and sir julian's conversation as a daily item of his existence, did not inspire him with the same degree of enthusiasm as was displayed by his mother and uncle, who, after all, were not making the experiment. even the necessity for an entirely new outfit did not appeal to his imagination with the force that might have been expected. but, however lukewarm his adhesion to the project might be, francesca and her brother were clearly determined that no lack of deft persistence on their part should endanger its success. it was for the purpose of reminding sir julian of his promise to meet comus at lunch on the following day, and definitely settle the matter of the secretaryship that francesca was now enduring the ordeal of a long harangue on the value of the west indian group as an imperial asset. other listeners dexterously detached themselves one by one, but francesca's patience outlasted even sir julian's flow of commonplaces, and her devotion was duly rewarded by a renewed acknowledgment of the lunch engagement and its purpose. she pushed her way back through the throng of starling-voiced chatterers fortified by a sense of well-earned victory. dear serena's absurd salons served some good purpose after all. francesca was not an early riser and her breakfast was only just beginning to mobilise on the breakfast-table next morning when a copy of the times, sent by special messenger from her brother's house, was brought up to her room. a heavy margin of blue pencilling drew her attention to a prominently-printed letter which bore the ironical heading: "julian jull, proconsul." the matter of the letter was a cruel dis-interment of some fatuous and forgotten speeches made by sir julian to his constituents not many years ago, in which the value of some of our colonial possessions, particularly certain west indian islands, was decried in a medley of pomposity, ignorance and amazingly cheap humour. the extracts given sounded weak and foolish enough, taken by themselves, but the writer of the letter had interlarded them with comments of his own, which sparkled with an ironical brilliance that was cervantes-like in its polished cruelty. remembering her ordeal of the previous evening francesca permitted herself a certain feeling of amusement as she read the merciless stabs inflicted on the newly-appointed governor; then she came to the signature at the foot of the letter, and the laughter died out of her eyes. "comus bassington" stared at her from above a thick layer of blue pencil lines marked by henry greech's shaking hand. comus could no more have devised such a letter than he could have written an episcopal charge to the clergy of any given diocese. it was obviously the work of courtenay youghal, and comus, for a palpable purpose of his own, had wheedled him into foregoing for once the pride of authorship in a clever piece of political raillery, and letting his young friend stand sponsor instead. it was a daring stroke, and there could be no question as to its success; the secretaryship and the distant shark-girt island faded away into the horizon of impossible things. francesca, forgetting the golden rule of strategy which enjoins a careful choosing of ground and opportunity before entering on hostilities, made straight for the bathroom door, behind which a lively din of splashing betokened that comus had at least begun his toilet. "you wicked boy, what have you done?" she cried, reproachfully. "me washee," came a cheerful shout; "me washee from the neck all the way down to the merrythought, and now washee down from the merrythought to " "you have ruined your future. the times has printed that miserable letter with your signature." a loud squeal of joy came from the bath. "oh, mummy! let me see!" there were sounds as of a sprawling dripping body clambering hastily out of the bath. francesca fled. one cannot effectively scold a moist nineteen-year old boy clad only in a bath-towel and a cloud of steam. another messenger arrived before francesca's breakfast was over. this one brought a letter from sir julian jull, excusing himself from fulfilment of the luncheon engagement. chapter iv francesca prided herself on being able to see things from other people's points of view, which meant, as it usually does, that she could see her own point of view from various aspects. as regards comus, whose doings and non-doings bulked largely in her thoughts at the present moment, she had mapped out in her mind so clearly what his outlook in life ought to be, that she was peculiarly unfitted to understand the drift of his feelings or the impulses that governed them. fate had endowed her with a son; in limiting the endowment to a solitary offspring fate had certainly shown a moderation which francesca was perfectly willing to acknowledge and be thankful for; but then, as she pointed out to a certain complacent friend of hers who cheerfully sustained an endowment of half-a-dozen male offsprings and a girl or two, her one child was comus. moderation in numbers was more than counterbalanced in his case by extravagance in characteristics. francesca mentally compared her son with hundreds of other young men whom she saw around her, steadily, and no doubt happily, engaged in the process of transforming themselves from nice boys into useful citizens. most of them had occupations, or were industriously engaged in qualifying for such; in their leisure moments they smoked reasonably-priced cigarettes, went to the cheaper seats at music-halls, watched an occasional cricket match at lord's with apparent interest, saw most of the world's spectacular events through the medium of the cinematograph, and were wont to exchange at parting seemingly superfluous injunctions to "be good." the whole of bond street and many of the tributary thoroughfares of piccadilly might have been swept off the face of modern london without in any way interfering with the supply of their daily wants. they were doubtless dull as acquaintances, but as sons they would have been eminently restful. with a growing sense of irritation francesca compared these deserving young men with her own intractable offspring, and wondered why fate should have singled her out to be the parent of such a vexatious variant from a comfortable and desirable type. as far as remunerative achievement was concerned, comus copied the insouciance of the field lily with a dangerous fidelity. like his mother he looked round with wistful irritation at the example afforded by contemporary youth, but he concentrated his attention exclusively on the richer circles of his acquaintance, young men who bought cars and polo ponies as unconcernedly as he might purchase a carnation for his buttonhole, and went for trips to cairo or the tigris valley with less difficulty and finance-stretching than he encountered in contriving a week-end at brighton. gaiety and good-looks had carried comus successfully and, on the whole, pleasantly, through schooldays and a recurring succession of holidays; the same desirable assets were still at his service to advance him along his road, but it was a disconcerting experience to find that they could not be relied on to go all distances at all times. in an animal world, and a fiercely competitive animal world at that, something more was needed than the decorative abandon of the field lily, and it was just that something more which comus seemed unable or unwilling to provide on his own account; it was just the lack of that something more which left him sulking with fate over the numerous breakdowns and stumbling-blocks that held him up on what he expected to be a triumphal or, at any rate, unimpeded progress. francesca was, in her own way, fonder of comus than of anyone else in the world, and if he had been browning his skin somewhere east of suez she would probably have kissed his photograph with genuine fervour every night before going to bed; the appearance of a cholera scare or rumour of native rising in the columns of her daily news-sheet would have caused her a flutter of anxiety, and she would have mentally likened herself to a spartan mother sacrificing her best-beloved on the altar of state necessities. but with the best-beloved installed under her roof, occupying an unreasonable amount of cubic space, and demanding daily sacrifices instead of providing the raw material for one, her feelings were tinged with irritation rather than affection. she might have forgiven comus generously for misdeeds of some gravity committed in another continent, but she could never overlook the fact that out of a dish of five plovers' eggs he was certain to take three. the absent may be always wrong, but they are seldom in a position to be inconsiderate. thus a wall of ice had grown up gradually between mother and son, a barrier across which they could hold converse, but which gave a wintry chill even to the sparkle of their lightest words. the boy had the gift of being irresistibly amusing when he chose to exert himself in that direction, and after a long series of moody or jangling meal-sittings he would break forth into a torrential flow of small talk, scandal and malicious anecdote, true or more generally invented, to which francesca listened with a relish and appreciation, that was all the more flattering from being so unwillingly bestowed. "if you chose your friends from a rather more reputable set you would be doubtless less amusing, but there would be compensating advantages." francesca snapped the remark out at lunch one day when she had been betrayed into a broader smile than she considered the circumstances of her attitude towards comus warranted. "i'm going to move in quite decent society to-night," replied comus with a pleased chuckle; "i'm going to meet you and uncle henry and heaps of nice dull god-fearing people at dinner." francesca gave a little gasp of surprise and annoyance. "you don't mean to say caroline has asked you to dinner to-night?" she said; "and of course without telling me. how exceedingly like her!" lady caroline benaresq had reached that age when you can say and do what you like in defiance of people's most sensitive feelings and most cherished antipathies. not that she had waited to attain her present age before pursuing that line of conduct; she came of a family whose individual members went through life, from the nursery to the grave, with as much tact and consideration as a cactus-hedge might show in going through a crowded bathing tent. it was a compensating mercy that they disagreed rather more among themselves than they did with the outside world; every known variety and shade of religion and politics had been pressed into the family service to avoid the possibility of any agreement on the larger essentials of life, and such unlooked-for happenings as the home rule schism, the tariff-reform upheaval and the suffragette crusade were thankfully seized on as furnishing occasion for further differences and sub-divisions. lady caroline's favourite scheme of entertaining was to bring jarring and antagonistic elements into close contact and play them remorselessly one against the other. "one gets much better results under those circumstances" she used to observe, "than by asking people who wish to meet each other. few people talk as brilliantly to impress a friend as they do to depress an enemy." she admitted that her theory broke down rather badly if you applied it to parliamentary debates. at her own dinner table its success was usually triumphantly vindicated. "who else is to be there?" francesca asked, with some pardonable misgiving. "courtenay youghal. he'll probably sit next to you, so you'd better think out a lot of annihilating remarks in readiness. and elaine de frey." "i don't think i've heard of her. who is she?" "nobody in particular, but rather nice-looking in a solemn sort of way, and almost indecently rich." "marry her" was the advice which sprang to francesca's lips, but she choked it back with a salted almond, having a rare perception of the fact that words are sometimes given to us to defeat our purposes. "caroline has probably marked her down for toby or one of the grand-nephews," she said, carelessly; "a little money would be rather useful in that quarter, i imagine." comus tucked in his underlip with just the shade of pugnacity that she wanted to see. an advantageous marriage was so obviously the most sensible course for him to embark on that she scarcely dared to hope that he would seriously entertain it; yet there was just a chance that if he got as far as the flirtation stage with an attractive (and attracted) girl who was also an heiress, the sheer perversity of his nature might carry him on to more definite courtship, if only from the desire to thrust other more genuinely enamoured suitors into the background. it was a forlorn hope; so forlorn that the idea even crossed her mind of throwing herself on the mercy of her bete noire, courtenay youghal, and trying to enlist the influence which he seemed to possess over comus for the purpose of furthering her hurriedly conceived project. anyhow, the dinner promised to be more interesting than she had originally anticipated. lady caroline was a professed socialist in politics, chiefly, it was believed, because she was thus enabled to disagree with most of the liberals and conservatives, and all the socialists of the day. she did not permit her socialism, however, to penetrate below stairs; her cook and butler had every encouragement to be individualists. francesca, who was a keen and intelligent food critic, harboured no misgivings as to her hostess's kitchen and cellar departments; some of the human side-dishes at the feast gave her more ground for uneasiness. courtenay youghal, for instance, would probably be brilliantly silent; her brother henry would almost certainly be the reverse. the dinner party was a large one and francesca arrived late with little time to take preliminary stock of the guests; a card with the name, "miss de frey," immediately opposite her own place at the other side of the table, indicated, however, the whereabouts of the heiress. it was characteristic of francesca that she first carefully read the menu from end to end, and then indulged in an equally careful though less open scrutiny of the girl who sat opposite her, the girl who was nobody in particular, but whose income was everything that could be desired. she was pretty in a restrained nut-brown fashion, and had a look of grave reflective calm that probably masked a speculative unsettled temperament. her pose, if one wished to be critical, was just a little too elaborately careless. she wore some excellently set rubies with that indefinable air of having more at home that is so difficult to improvise. francesca was distinctly pleased with her survey. "you seem interested in your vis-a-vis," said courtenay youghal. "i almost think i've seen her before," said francesca; "her face seems familiar to me." "the narrow gallery at the louvre; attributed to leonardo da vinci," said youghal. "of course," said francesca, her feelings divided between satisfaction at capturing an elusive impression and annoyance that youghal should have been her helper. a stronger tinge of annoyance possessed her when she heard the voice of henry greech raised in painful prominence at lady caroline's end of the table. "i called on the trudhams yesterday," he announced; "it was their silver wedding, you know, at least the day before was. such lots of silver presents, quite a show. of course there were a great many duplicates, but still, very nice to have. i think they were very pleased to get so many." "we must not grudge them their show of presents after their twentyfive years of married life," said lady caroline, gently; "it is the silver lining to their cloud." a third of the guests present were related to the trudhams. "lady caroline is beginning well," murmured courtenay youghal. "i should hardly call twenty-five years of married life a cloud," said henry greech, lamely. "don't let's talk about married life," said a tall handsome woman, who looked like some modern painter's conception of the goddess bellona; "it's my misfortune to write eternally about husbands and wives and their variants. my public expects it of me. i do so envy journalists who can write about plagues and strikes and anarchist plots, and other pleasing things, instead of being tied down to one stale old topic." "who is that woman and what has she written?" francesca asked youghal; she dimly remembered having seen her at one of serena golackly's gatherings, surrounded by a little court of admirers. "i forget her name; she has a villa at san remo or mentone, or somewhere where one does have villas, and plays an extraordinary good game of bridge. also she has the reputation, rather rare in your sex, of being a wonderfully sound judge of wine." "but what has she written?" "oh, several novels of the thinnish ice order. her last one, 'the woman who wished it was wednesday,' has been banned at all the libraries. i expect you've read it." "i don't see why you should think so," said francesca, coldly. "only because comus lent me your copy yesterday," said youghal. he threw back his handsome head and gave her a sidelong glance of quizzical amusement. he knew that she hated his intimacy with comus, and he was secretly rather proud of his influence over the boy, shallow and negative though he knew it to be. it had been, on his part, an unsought intimacy, and it would probably fall to pieces the moment he tried seriously to take up the role of mentor. the fact that comus's mother openly disapproved of the friendship gave it perhaps its chief interest in the young politician's eyes. francesca turned her attention to her brother's end of the table. henry greech had willingly availed himself of the invitation to leave the subject of married life, and had launched forthwith into the equally well-worn theme of current politics. he was not a person who was in much demand for public meetings, and the house showed no great impatience to hear his views on the topics of the moment; its impatience, indeed, was manifested rather in the opposite direction. hence he was prone to unburden himself of accumulated political wisdom as occasion presented itself sometimes, indeed, to assume an occasion that was hardly visible to the naked intelligence. "our opponents are engaged in a hopelessly uphill struggle, and they know it," he chirruped, defiantly; "they've become possessed, like the gadarene swine, with a whole legion of " "surely the gadarene swine went downhill," put in lady caroline in a gently enquiring voice. henry greech hastily abandoned simile and fell back on platitude and the safer kinds of fact. francesca did not regard her brother's views on statecraft either in the light of gospel or revelation; as comus once remarked, they more usually suggested exodus. in the present instance she found distraction in a renewed scrutiny of the girl opposite her, who seemed to be only moderately interested in the conversational efforts of the diners on either side of her. comus who was looking and talking his best, was sitting at the further end of the table, and francesca was quick to notice in which direction the girl's glances were continually straying. once or twice the eyes of the young people met and a swift flush of pleasure and a half-smile that spoke of good understanding came to the heiress's face. it did not need the gift of the traditional intuition of her sex to enable francesca to guess that the girl with the desirable banking account was already considerably attracted by the lively young pagan who had, when he cared to practise it, such an art of winning admiration. for the first time for many, many months francesca saw her son's prospects in a rose-coloured setting, and she began, unconsciously, to wonder exactly how much wealth was summed up in the expressive label "almost indecently rich." a wife with a really large fortune and a correspondingly big dower of character and ambition, might, perhaps, succeed in turning comus's latent energies into a groove which would provide him, if not with a career, at least with an occupation, and the young serious face opposite looked as if its owner lacked neither character or ambition. francesca's speculations took a more personal turn. out of the well-filled coffers with which her imagination was toying, an inconsiderable sum might eventually be devoted to the leasing, or even perhaps the purchase of, the house in blue street when the present convenient arrangement should have come to an end, and francesca and the van der meulen would not be obliged to seek fresh quarters. a woman's voice, talking in a discreet undertone on the other side of courtenay youghal, broke in on her bridge-building. "tons of money and really very presentable. just the wife for a rising young politician. go in and win her before she's snapped up by some fortune hunter." youghal and his instructress in worldly wisdom were looking straight across the table at the leonardo da vinci girl with the grave reflective eyes and the over-emphasised air of repose. francesca felt a quick throb of anger against her match-making neighbour; why, she asked herself, must some women, with no end or purpose of their own to serve, except the sheer love of meddling in the affairs of others, plunge their hands into plots and schemings of this sort, in which the happiness of more than one person was concerned? and more clearly than ever she realised how thoroughly she detested courtenay youghal. she had disliked him as an evil influence, setting before her son an example of showy ambition that he was not in the least likely to follow, and providing him with a model of extravagant dandyism that he was only too certain to copy. in her heart she knew that comus would have embarked just as surely on his present course of idle self-indulgence if he had never known of the existence of youghal, but she chose to regard that young man as her son's evil genius, and now he seemed likely to justify more than ever the character she had fastened on to him. for once in his life comus appeared to have an idea of behaving sensibly and making some use of his opportunities, and almost at the same moment courtenay youghal arrived on the scene as a possible and very dangerous rival. against the good looks and fitful powers of fascination that comus could bring into the field, the young politician could match half-a-dozen dazzling qualities which would go far to recommend him in the eyes of a woman of the world, still more in those of a young girl in search of an ideal. good-looking in his own way, if not on such showy lines as comus, always well turned-out, witty, self-confident without being bumptious, with a conspicuous parliamentary career alongside him, and heaven knew what else in front of him, courtenay youghal certainly was not a rival whose chances could be held very lightly. francesca laughed bitterly to herself as she remembered that a few hours ago she had entertained the idea of begging for his good offices in helping on comus's wooing. one consolation, at least, she found for herself: if youghal really meant to step in and try and cut out his young friend, the latter at any rate had snatched a useful start. comus had mentioned miss de frey at luncheon that day, casually and dispassionately; if the subject of the dinner guests had not come up he would probably not have mentioned her at all. but they were obviously already very good friends. it was part and parcel of the state of domestic tension at blue street that francesca should only have come to know of this highly interesting heiress by an accidental sorting of guests at a dinner party. lady caroline's voice broke in on her reflections; it was a gentle purring voice, that possessed an uncanny quality of being able to make itself heard down the longest dinner table. "the dear archdeacon is getting so absent-minded. he read a list of box-holders for the opera as the first lesson the other sunday, instead of the families and lots of the tribes of israel that entered canaan. fortunately no one noticed the mistake." chapter v on a conveniently secluded bench facing the northern pheasantry in the zoological society's gardens, regent's park, courtenay youghal sat immersed in mature flirtation with a lady, who, though certainly young in fact and appearance, was some four or five years his senior. when he was a schoolboy of sixteen, molly mcquade had personally conducted him to the zoo and stood him dinner afterwards at kettner's, and whenever the two of them happened to be in town on the anniversary of that bygone festivity they religiously repeated the programme in its entirety. even the menu of the dinner was adhered to as nearly as possible; the original selection of food and wine that schoolboy exuberance, tempered by schoolboy shyness, had pitched on those many years ago, confronted youghal on those occasions, as a drowning man's past life is said to rise up and parade itself in his last moments of consciousness. the flirtation which was thus perennially restored to its old-time footing owed its longevity more to the enterprising solicitude of miss mcquade than to any conscious sentimental effort on the part of youghal himself. molly mcquade was known to her neighbours in a minor hunting shire as a hard-riding conventionally unconventional type of young woman, who came naturally into the classification, "a good sort." she was just sufficiently good-looking, sufficiently reticent about her own illnesses, when she had any, and sufficiently appreciative of her neighbours' gardens, children and hunters to be generally popular. most men liked her, and the percentage of women who disliked her was not inconveniently high. one of these days, it was assumed, she would marry a brewer or a master of otter hounds, and, after a brief interval, be known to the world as the mother of a boy or two at malvern or some similar seat of learning. the romantic side of her nature was altogether unguessed by the country-side. her romances were mostly in serial form and suffered perhaps in fervour from their disconnected course what they gained in length of days. her affectionate interest in the several young men who figured in her affairs of the heart was perfectly honest, and she certainly made no attempt either to conceal their separate existences, or to play them off one against the other. neither could it be said that she was a husband hunter; she had made up her mind what sort of man she was likely to marry, and her forecast did not differ very widely from that formed by her local acquaintances. if her married life were eventually to turn out a failure, at least she looked forward to it with very moderate expectations. her love affairs she put on a very different footing and apparently they were the all-absorbing element in her life. she possessed the happily constituted temperament which enables a man or woman to be a "pluralist," and to observe the sage precaution of not putting all one's eggs into one basket. her demands were not exacting; she required of her affinity that he should be young, good-looking, and at least, moderately amusing; she would have preferred him to be invariably faithful, but, with her own example before her, she was prepared for the probability, bordering on certainty, that he would be nothing of the sort. the philosophy of the "garden of kama" was the compass by which she steered her barque and thus far, if she had encountered some storms and buffeting, she had at least escaped being either shipwrecked or becalmed. courtenay youghal had not been designed by nature to fulfil the role of an ardent or devoted lover, and he scrupulously respected the limits which nature had laid down. for molly, however, he had a certain responsive affection. she had always obviously admired him, and at the same time she never beset him with crude flattery; the principal reason why the flirtation had stood the test of so many years was the fact that it only flared into active existence at convenient intervals. in an age when the telephone has undermined almost every fastness of human privacy, and the sanctity of one's seclusion depends often on the ability for tactful falsehood shown by a club pageboy, youghal was duly appreciative of the circumstance that his lady fair spent a large part of the year pursuing foxes, in lieu of pursuing him. also the honestly admitted fact that, in her human hunting, she rode after more than one quarry, made the inevitable break-up of the affair a matter to which both could look forward without a sense of coming embarrassment and recrimination. when the time for gathering ye rosebuds should be over, neither of them could accuse the other of having wrecked his or her entire life. at the most they would only have disorganised a week-end. on this particular afternoon, when old reminiscences had been gone through, and the intervening gossip of past months duly recounted, a lull in the conversation made itself rather obstinately felt. molly had already guessed that matters were about to slip into a new phase; the affair had reached maturity long ago, and a new phase must be in the nature of a wane. "you're a clever brute," she said, suddenly, with an air of affectionate regret; "i always knew you'd get on in the house, but i hardly expected you to come to the front so soon." "i'm coming to the front," admitted youghal, judicially; "the problem is, shall i be able to stay there. unless something happens in the financial line before long, i don't see how i'm to stay in parliament at all. economy is out of the question. it would open people's eyes, i fancy, if they knew how little i exist on as it is. and i'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart." "it will have to be a rich wife, i suppose," said molly, slowly; "that's the worst of success, it imposes so many conditions. i rather knew, from something in your manner, that you were drifting that way." youghal said nothing in the way of contradiction; he gazed steadfastly at the aviary in front of him as though exotic pheasants were for the moment the most absorbing study in the world. as a matter of fact, his mind was centred on the image of elaine de frey, with her clear untroubled eyes and her leonardo da vinci air. he was wondering whether he was likely to fall into a frame of mind concerning her which would be in the least like falling in love. "i shall mind horribly," continued molly, after a pause, "but, of course, i have always known that something of the sort would have to happen one of these days. when a man goes into politics he can't call his soul his own, and i suppose his heart becomes an impersonal possession in the same way." "most people who know me would tell you that i haven't got a heart," said youghal. "i've often felt inclined to agree with them," said molly; "and then, now and again, i think you have a heart tucked away somewhere." "i hope i have," said youghal, "because i'm trying to break to you the fact that i think i'm falling in love with somebody." molly mcquade turned sharply to look at her companion, who still fixed his gaze on the pheasant run in front of him. "don't tell me you're losing your head over somebody useless, someone without money," she said; "i don't think i could stand that." for the moment she feared that courtenay's selfishness might have taken an unexpected turn, in which ambition had given way to the fancy of the hour; he might be going to sacrifice his parliamentary career for a life of stupid lounging in momentarily attractive company. he quickly undeceived her. "she's got heaps of money." molly gave a grunt of relief. her affection for courtenay had produced the anxiety which underlay her first question; a natural jealousy prompted the next one. "is she young and pretty and all that sort of thing, or is she just a good sort with a sympathetic manner and nice eyes? as a rule that's the kind that goes with a lot of money." "young and quite good-looking in her way, and a distinct style of her own. some people would call her beautiful. as a political hostess i should think she'd be splendid. i imagine i'm rather in love with her." "and is she in love with you?" youghal threw back his head with the slight assertive movement that molly knew and liked. "she's a girl who i fancy would let judgment influence her a lot. and without being stupidly conceited, i think i may say she might do worse than throw herself away on me. i'm young and quite goodlooking, and i'm making a name for myself in the house; she'll be able to read all sorts of nice and horrid things about me in the papers at breakfast-time. i can be brilliantly amusing at times, and i understand the value of silence; there is no fear that i shall ever degenerate into that fearsome thing a cheerful talkative husband. for a girl with money and social ambitions i should think i was rather a good thing." "you are certainly in love, courtenay," said molly, "but it's the old love and not a new one. i'm rather glad. i should have hated to have you head-over-heels in love with a pretty woman, even for a short time. you'll be much happier as it is. and i'm going to put all my feelings in the background, and tell you to go in and win. you've got to marry a rich woman, and if she's nice and will make a good hostess, so much the better for everybody. you'll be happier in your married life than i shall be in mine, when it comes; you'll have other interests to absorb you. i shall just have the garden and dairy and nursery and lending library, as like as two peas to all the gardens and dairies and nurseries for hundreds of miles round. you won't care for your wife enough to be worried every time she has a finger-ache, and you'll like her well enough to be pleased to meet her sometimes at your own house. i shouldn't wonder if you were quite happy. she will probably be miserable, but any woman who married you would be." there was a short pause; they were both staring at the pheasant cages. then molly spoke again, with the swift nervous tone of a general who is hurriedly altering the disposition of his forces for a strategic retreat. "when you are safely married and honey-mooned and all that sort of thing, and have put your wife through her paces as a political hostess, some time, when the house isn't sitting, you must come down by yourself, and do a little hunting with us. will you? it won't be quite the same as old times, but it will be something to look forward to when i'm reading the endless paragraphs about your fashionable political wedding." "you're looking forward pretty far," laughed youghal; "the lady may take your view as to the probable unhappiness of a future shared with me, and i may have to content myself with penurious political bachelorhood. anyhow, the present is still with us. we dine at kettner's to-night, don't we?" "rather," said molly, "though it will be more or less a throatlumpy feast as far as i am concerned. we shall have to drink to the health of the future mrs. youghal. by the way, it's rather characteristic of you that you haven't told me who she is, and of me that i haven't asked. and now, like a dear boy, trot away and leave me. i haven't got to say good-bye to you yet, but i'm going to take a quiet farewell of the pheasantry. we've had some jolly good talks, you and i, sitting on this seat, haven't we? and i know, as well as i know anything, that this is the last of them. eight o'clock to-night, as punctually as possible." she watched his retreating figure with eyes that grew slowly misty; he had been such a jolly comely boy-friend, and they had had such good times together. the mist deepened on her lashes as she looked round at the familiar rendezvous where they had so often kept tryst since the day when they had first come there together, he a schoolboy and she but lately out of her teens. for the moment she felt herself in the thrall of a very real sorrow. then, with the admirable energy of one who is only in town for a fleeting fortnight, she raced away to have tea with a world-faring naval admirer at his club. pluralism is a merciful narcotic. chapter vi elaine de frey sat at ease at bodily ease at any rate in a low wicker chair placed under the shade of a group of cedars in the heart of a stately spacious garden that had almost made up its mind to be a park. the shallow stone basin of an old fountain, on whose wide ledge a leaden-moulded otter for ever preyed on a leaden salmon, filled a conspicuous place in the immediate foreground. around its rim ran an inscription in latin, warning mortal man that time flows as swiftly as water and exhorting him to make the most of his hours; after which piece of jacobean moralising it set itself shamelessly to beguile all who might pass that way into an abandonment of contemplative repose. on all sides of it a stretch of smooth turf spread away, broken up here and there by groups of dwarfish chestnut and mulberry trees, whose leaves and branches cast a laced pattern of shade beneath them. on one side the lawn sloped gently down to a small lake, whereon floated a quartette of swans, their movements suggestive of a certain mournful listlessness, as though a weary dignity of caste held them back from the joyous bustling life of the lesser waterfowl. elaine liked to imagine that they re-embodied the souls of unhappy boys who had been forced by family interests to become high ecclesiastical dignitaries and had grown prematurely right reverend. a low stone balustrade fenced part of the shore of the lake, making a miniature terrace above its level, and here roses grew in a rich multitude. other rose bushes, carefully pruned and tended, formed little oases of colour and perfume amid the restful green of the sward, and in the distance the eye caught the variegated blaze of a many-hued hedge of rhododendron. with these favoured exceptions flowers were hard to find in this well-ordered garden; the misguided tyranny of staring geranium beds and beflowered archways leading to nowhere, so dear to the suburban gardener, found no expression here. magnificent amherst pheasants, whose plumage challenged and almost shamed the peacock on his own ground, stepped to and fro over the emerald turf with the assured self-conscious pride of reigning sultans. it was a garden where summer seemed a part-proprietor rather than a hurried visitor. by the side of elaine's chair under the shadow of the cedars a wicker table was set out with the paraphernalia of afternoon tea. on some cushions at her feet reclined courtenay youghal, smoothly preened and youthfully elegant, the personification of decorative repose; equally decorative, but with the showy restlessness of a dragonfly, comus disported his flannelled person over a considerable span of the available foreground. the intimacy existing between the two young men had suffered no immediate dislocation from the circumstance that they were tacitly paying court to the same lady. it was an intimacy founded not in the least on friendship or community of tastes and ideas, but owed its existence to the fact that each was amused and interested by the other. youghal found comus, for the time being at any rate, just as amusing and interesting as a rival for elaine's favour as he had been in the role of scapegrace boy-about-town; comus for his part did not wish to lose touch with youghal, who among other attractions possessed the recommendation of being under the ban of comus's mother. she disapproved, it is true, of a great many of her son's friends and associates, but this particular one was a special and persistent source of irritation to her from the fact that he figured prominently and more or less successfully in the public life of the day. there was something peculiarly exasperating in reading a brilliant and incisive attack on the government's rash handling of public expenditure delivered by a young man who encouraged her son in every imaginable extravagance. the actual extent of youghal's influence over the boy was of the slightest; comus was quite capable of deriving encouragement to rash outlay and frivolous conversation from an anchorite or an east-end parson if he had been thrown into close companionship with such an individual. francesca, however, exercised a mother's privilege in assuming her son's bachelor associates to be industrious in labouring to achieve his undoing. therefore the young politician was a source of unconcealed annoyance to her, and in the same degree as she expressed her disapproval of him comus was careful to maintain and parade the intimacy. its existence, or rather its continued existence, was one of the things that faintly puzzled the young lady whose sought-for favour might have been expected to furnish an occasion for its rapid dissolution. with two suitors, one of whom at least she found markedly attractive, courting her at the same moment, elaine should have had reasonable cause for being on good terms with the world, and with herself in particular. happiness was not, however, at this auspicious moment, her dominant mood. the grave calm of her face masked as usual a certain degree of grave perturbation. a succession of well-meaning governesses and a plentiful supply of moralising aunts on both sides of her family, had impressed on her young mind the theoretical fact that wealth is a great responsibility. the consciousness of her responsibility set her continually wondering, not as to her own fitness to discharge her "stewardship," but as to the motives and merits of people with whom she came in contact. the knowledge that there was so much in the world that she could buy, invited speculation as to how much there was that was worth buying. gradually she had come to regard her mind as a sort of appeal court before whose secret sittings were examined and judged the motives and actions, the motives especially, of the world in general. in her schoolroom days she had sat in conscientious judgment on the motives that guided or misguided charles and cromwell and monck, wallenstein and savonarola. in her present stage she was equally occupied in examining the political sincerity of the secretary for foreign affairs, the good-faith of a honey-tongued but possibly loyalhearted waiting-maid, and the disinterestedness of a whole circle of indulgent and flattering acquaintances. even more absorbing, and in her eyes, more urgently necessary, was the task of dissecting and appraising the characters of the two young men who were favouring her with their attentions. and herein lay cause for much thinking and some perturbation. youghal, for example, might have baffled a more experienced observer of human nature. elaine was too clever to confound his dandyism with foppishness or selfadvertisement. he admired his own toilet effect in a mirror from a genuine sense of pleasure in a thing good to look upon, just as he would feel a sensuous appreciation of the sight of a well-bred, well-matched, well-turned-out pair of horses. behind his careful political flippancy and cynicism one might also detect a certain careless sincerity, which would probably in the long run save him from moderate success, and turn him into one of the brilliant failures of his day. beyond this it was difficult to form an exact appreciation of courtenay youghal, and elaine, who liked to have her impressions distinctly labelled and pigeon-holed, was perpetually scrutinising the outer surface of his characteristics and utterances, like a baffled art critic vainly searching beneath the varnish and scratches of a doubtfully assigned picture for an enlightening signature. the young man added to her perplexities by his deliberate policy of never trying to show himself in a favourable light even when most anxious to impart a favourable impression. he preferred that people should hunt for his good qualities, and merely took very good care that as far as possible they should never draw blank; even in the matter of selfishness, which was the anchor-sheet of his existence, he contrived to be noted, and justly noted, for doing remarkably unselfish things. as a ruler he would have been reasonably popular; as a husband he would probably be unendurable. comus was to a certain extent as great a mystification as youghal, but here elaine was herself responsible for some of the perplexity which enshrouded his character in her eyes. she had taken more than a passing fancy for the boy for the boy as he might be, that was to say and she was desperately unwilling to see him and appraise him as he really was. thus the mental court of appeal was constantly engaged in examining witnesses as to character, most of whom signally failed to give any testimony which would support the favourable judgment which the tribunal was so anxious to arrive at. a woman with wider experience of the world's ways and shortcomings would probably have contented herself with an endeavour to find out whether her liking for the boy out-weighed her dislike of his characteristics; elaine took her judgments too seriously to approach the matter from such a simple and convenient standpoint. the fact that she was much more than half in love with comus made it dreadfully important that she should discover him to have a lovable soul, and comus, it must be confessed, did little to help forward the discovery. "at any rate he is honest," she would observe to herself, after some outspoken admission of unprincipled conduct on his part, and then she would ruefully recall certain episodes in which he had figured, from which honesty had been conspicuously absent. what she tried to label honesty in his candour was probably only a cynical defiance of the laws of right and wrong. "you look more than usually thoughtful this afternoon," said comus to her, "as if you had invented this summer day and were trying to think out improvements." "if i had the power to create improvements anywhere i think i should begin with you," retorted elaine. "i'm sure it's much better to leave me as i am," protested comus; "you're like a relative of mine up in argyllshire, who spends his time producing improved breeds of sheep and pigs and chickens. so patronising and irritating to the almighty i should think, to go about putting superior finishing touches to creation." elaine frowned, and then laughed, and finally gave a little sigh. "it's not easy to talk sense to you," she said. "whatever else you take in hand," said youghal, "you must never improve this garden. it's what our idea of heaven might be like if the jews hadn't invented one for us on totally different lines. it's dreadful that we should accept them as the impresarios of our religious dreamland instead of the greeks." "you are not very fond of the jews," said elaine. "i've travelled and lived a good deal in eastern europe," said youghal. "it seems largely a question of geography," said elaine; "in england no one really is anti-semitic." youghal shook his head. "i know a great many jews who are." servants had quietly, almost reverently, placed tea and its accessories on the wicker table, and quietly receded from the landscape. elaine sat like a grave young goddess about to dispense some mysterious potion to her devotees. her mind was still sitting in judgment on the jewish question. comus scrambled to his feet. "it's too hot for tea," he said; "i shall go and feed the swans." and he walked off with a little silver basket-dish containing brown bread-and-butter. elaine laughed quietly. "it's so like comus," she said, "to go off with our one dish of bread-and-butter." youghal chuckled responsively. it was an undoubted opportunity for him to put in some disparaging criticism of comus, and elaine sat alert in readiness to judge the critic and reserve judgment on the criticised. "his selfishness is splendid but absolutely futile," said youghal; "now my selfishness is commonplace, but always thoroughly practical and calculated. he will have great difficulty in getting the swans to accept his offering, and he incurs the odium of reducing us to a bread-and-butterless condition. incidentally he will get very hot." elaine again had the sense of being thoroughly baffled. if youghal had said anything unkind it was about himself. "if my cousin suzette had been here," she observed, with the shadow of a malicious smile on her lips, "i believe she would have gone into a flood of tears at the loss of her bread-and-butter, and comus would have figured ever after in her mind as something black and destroying and hateful. in fact i don't really know why we took our loss so unprotestingly." "for two reasons," said youghal; "you are rather fond of comus. and i am not very fond of bread-and-butter." the jesting remark brought a throb of pleasure to elaine's heart. she had known full well that she cared for comus, but now that courtenay youghal had openly proclaimed the fact as something unchallenged and understood matters seemed placed at once on a more advanced footing. the warm sunlit garden grew suddenly into a heaven that held the secret of eternal happiness. youth and comeliness would always walk here, under the low-boughed mulberry trees, as unchanging as the leaden otter that for ever preyed on the leaden salmon on the edge of the old fountain, and somehow the lovers would always wear the aspect of herself and the boy who was talking to the four white swans by the water steps. youghal was right; this was the real heaven of one's dreams and longings, immeasurably removed from that rue de la paix paradise about which one professed utterly insincere hankerings in places of public worship. elaine drank her tea in a happy silence; besides being a brilliant talker youghal understood the rarer art of being a nontalker on occasion. comus came back across the grass swinging the empty basket-dish in his hand. "swans were very pleased," he cried, gaily, "and said they hoped i would keep the bread-and-butter dish as a souvenir of a happy teaparty. i may really have it, mayn't i?" he continued in an anxious voice; "it will do to keep studs and things in. you don't want it." "it's got the family crest on it," said elaine. some of the happiness had died out of her eyes. "i'll have that scratched off and my own put on," said comus. "it's been in the family for generations," protested elaine, who did not share comus's view that because you were rich your lesser possessions could have no value in your eyes. "i want it dreadfully," said comus, sulkily, "and you've heaps of other things to put bread-and-butter in." for the moment he was possessed by an overmastering desire to keep the dish at all costs; a look of greedy determination dominated his face, and he had not for an instant relaxed his grip of the coveted object. elaine was genuinely angry by this time, and was busily telling herself that it was absurd to be put out over such a trifle; at the same moment a sense of justice was telling her that comus was displaying a good deal of rather shabby selfishness. and somehow her chief anxiety at the moment was to keep courtenay youghal from seeing that she was angry. "i know you don't really want it, so i'm going to keep it," persisted comus. "it's too hot to argue," said elaine. "happy mistress of your destinies," laughed youghal; "you can suit your disputations to the desired time and temperature. i have to go and argue, or what is worse, listen to other people's arguments, in a hot and doctored atmosphere suitable to an invalid lizard." "you haven't got to argue about a bread-and-butter dish," said elaine. "chiefly about bread-and-butter," said youghal; "our great preoccupation is other people's bread-and-butter. they earn or produce the material, but we busy ourselves with making rules how it shall be cut up, and the size of the slices, and how much butter shall go on how much bread. that is what is called legislation. if we could only make rules as to how the bread-and-butter should be digested we should be quite happy." elaine had been brought up to regard parliaments as something to be treated with cheerful solemnity, like illness or family re-unions. youghal's flippant disparagement of the career in which he was involved did not, however, jar on her susceptibilities. she knew him to be not only a lively and effective debater but an industrious worker on committees. if he made light of his labours, at least he afforded no one else a loophole for doing so. and certainly, the parliamentary atmosphere was not inviting on this hot afternoon. "when must you go?" she asked, sympathetically. youghal looked ruefully at his watch. before he could answer, a cheerful hoot came through the air, as of an owl joyously challenging the sunlight with a foreboding of the coming night. he sprang laughing to his feet. "listen! my summons back to my galley," he cried. "the gods have given me an hour in this enchanted garden, so i must not complain." then in a lower voice he almost whispered, "it's the persian debate to-night," it was the one hint he had given in the midst of his talking and laughing that he was really keenly enthralled in the work that lay before him. it was the one little intimate touch that gave elaine the knowledge that he cared for her opinion of his work. comus, who had emptied his cigarette-case, became suddenly clamorous at the prospect of being temporarily stranded without a smoke. youghal took the last remaining cigarette from his own case and gravely bisected it. "friendship could go no further," he observed, as he gave one-half to the doubtfully appeased comus, and lit the other himself. "there are heaps more in the hall," said elaine. "it was only done for the saint martin of tours effect," said youghal; "i hate smoking when i'm rushing through the air. goodbye." the departing galley-slave stepped forth into the sunlight, radiant and confident. a few minutes later elaine could see glimpses of his white car as it rushed past the rhododendron bushes. he woos best who leaves first, particularly if he goes forth to battle or the semblance of battle. somehow elaine's garden of eternal youth had already become clouded in its imagery. the girl-figure who walked in it was still distinctly and unchangingly herself, but her companion was more blurred and undefined, as a picture that has been superimposed on another. youghal sped townward well satisfied with himself. to-morrow, he reflected, elaine would read his speech in her morning paper, and he knew in advance that it was not going to be one of his worst efforts. he knew almost exactly where the punctuations of laughter and applause would burst in, he knew that nimble fingers in the press gallery would be taking down each gibe and argument as he flung it at the impassive minister confronting him, and that the fair lady of his desire would be able to judge what manner of young man this was who spent his afternoon in her garden, lazily chaffing himself and his world. and he further reflected, with an amused chuckle, that she would be vividly reminded of comus for days to come, when she took her afternoon tea, and saw the bread-and-butter reposing in an unaccustomed dish. chapter vii towards four o'clock on a hot afternoon francesca stepped out from a shop entrance near the piccadilly end of bond street and ran almost into the arms of merla blathlington. the afternoon seemed to get instantly hotter. merla was one of those human flies that buzz; in crowded streets, at bazaars and in warm weather, she attained to the proportions of a human bluebottle. lady caroline benaresq had openly predicted that a special fly-paper was being reserved for her accommodation in another world; others, however, held the opinion that she would be miraculously multiplied in a future state, and that four or more merla blathlingtons, according to deserts, would be in perpetual and unremitting attendance on each lost soul. "here we are," she cried, with a glad eager buzz, "popping in and out of shops like rabbits; not that rabbits do pop in and out of shops very extensively." it was evidently one of her bluebottle days. "don't you love bond street?" she gabbled on. "there's something so unusual and distinctive about it; no other street anywhere else is quite like it. don't you know those ikons and images and things scattered up and down europe, that are supposed to have been painted or carved, as the case may be, by st. luke or zaccheus, or somebody of that sort; i always like to think that some notable person of those times designed bond street. st. paul, perhaps. he travelled about a lot." "not in middlesex, though," said francesca. "one can't be sure," persisted merla; "when one wanders about as much as he did one gets mixed up and forgets where one has been. i can never remember whether i've been to the tyrol twice and st. moritz once, or the other way about; i always have to ask my maid. and there's something about the name bond that suggests st. paul; didn't he write a lot about the bond and the free?" "i fancy he wrote in hebrew or greek," objected francesca; "the word wouldn't have the least resemblance." "so dreadfully non-committal to go about pamphleteering in those bizarre languages," complained merla; "that's what makes all those people so elusive. as soon as you try to pin them down to a definite statement about anything you're told that some vitally important word has fifteen other meanings in the original. i wonder our cabinet ministers and politicians don't adopt a sort of dog-latin or esperanto jargon to deliver their speeches in; what a lot of subsequent explaining away would be saved. but to go back to bond street not that we've left it " "i'm afraid i must leave it now," said francesca, preparing to turn up grafton street; "good-bye." "must you be going? come and have tea somewhere. i know of a cosy little place where one can talk undisturbed." francesca repressed a shudder and pleaded an urgent engagement. "i know where you're going," said merla, with the resentful buzz of a bluebottle that finds itself thwarted by the cold unreasoning resistance of a windowpane. "you're going to play bridge at serena golackly's. she never asks me to her bridge parties." francesca shuddered openly this time; the prospect of having to play bridge anywhere in the near neighbourhood of merla's voice was not one that could be contemplated with ordinary calmness. "good-bye," she said again firmly, and passed out of earshot; it was rather like leaving the machinery section of an exhibition. merla's diagnosis of her destination had been a correct one; francesca made her way slowly through the hot streets in the direction of serena golackly's house on the far side of berkeley square. to the blessed certainty of finding a game of bridge, she hopefully added the possibility of hearing some fragments of news which might prove interesting and enlightening. and of enlightenment on a particular subject, in which she was acutely and personally interested, she stood in some need. comus of late had been provokingly reticent as to his movements and doings; partly, perhaps, because it was his nature to be provoking, partly because the daily bickerings over money matters were gradually choking other forms of conversation. francesca had seen him once or twice in the park in the desirable company of elaine de frey, and from time to time she heard of the young people as having danced together at various houses; on the other hand, she had seen and heard quite as much evidence to connect the heiress's name with that of courtenay youghal. beyond this meagre and conflicting and altogether tantalising information, her knowledge of the present position of affairs did not go. if either of the young men was seriously "making the running," it was probable that she would hear some sly hint or open comment about it from one of serena's gossipladen friends, without having to go out of her way to introduce the subject and unduly disclose her own state of ignorance. and a game of bridge, played for moderately high points, gave ample excuse for convenient lapses into reticence; if questions took an embarrassingly inquisitive turn, one could always find refuge in a defensive spade. the afternoon was too warm to make bridge a generally popular diversion, and serena's party was a comparatively small one. only one table was incomplete when francesca made her appearance on the scene; at it was seated serena herself, confronted by ada spelvexit, whom everyone was wont to explain as "one of the cheshire spelvexits," as though any other variety would have been intolerable. ada spelvexit was one of those naturally stagnant souls who take infinite pleasure in what are called "movements." "most of the really great lessons i have learned have been taught me by the poor," was one of her favourite statements. the one great lesson that the poor in general would have liked to have taught her, that their kitchens and sickrooms were not unreservedly at her disposal as private lecture halls, she had never been able to assimilate. she was ready to give them unlimited advice as to how they should keep the wolf from their doors, but in return she claimed and enforced for herself the penetrating powers of an east wind or a dust storm. her visits among her wealthier acquaintances were equally extensive and enterprising, and hardly more welcome; in country-house parties, while partaking to the fullest extent of the hospitality offered her, she made a practice of unburdening herself of homilies on the evils of leisure and luxury, which did not particularly endear her to her fellow guests. hostesses regarded her philosophically as a form of social measles which everyone had to have once. the third prospective player, francesca noted without any special enthusiasm, was lady caroline benaresq. lady caroline was far from being a remarkably good bridge player, but she always managed to domineer mercilessly over any table that was favoured with her presence, and generally managed to win. a domineering player usually inflicts the chief damage and demoralisation on his partner; lady caroline's special achievement was to harass and demoralise partner and opponents alike. "weak and weak," she announced in her gentle voice, as she cut her hostess for a partner; "i suppose we had better play only five shillings a hundred." francesca wondered at the old woman's moderate assessment of the stake, knowing her fondness for highish play and her usual good luck in card holding. "i don't mind what we play," said ada spelvexit, with an incautious parade of elegant indifference; as a matter of fact she was inwardly relieved and rejoicing at the reasonable figure proposed by lady caroline, and she would certainly have demurred if a higher stake had been suggested. she was not as a rule a successful player, and money lost at cards was always a poignant bereavement to her. "then as you don't mind we'll make it ten shillings a hundred," said lady caroline, with the pleased chuckle of one who has spread a net in the sight of a bird and disproved the vanity of the proceeding. it proved a tiresome ding-dong rubber, with the strength of the cards slightly on francesca's side, and the luck of the table going mostly the other way. she was too keen a player not to feel a certain absorption in the game once it had started, but she was conscious to-day of a distracting interest that competed with the momentary importance of leads and discards and declarations. the little accumulations of talk that were unpent during the dealing of the hands became as noteworthy to her alert attention as the play of the hands themselves. "yes, quite a small party this afternoon," said serena, in reply to a seemingly casual remark on francesca's part; "and two or three non-players, which is unusual on a wednesday. canon besomley was here just before you came; you know, the big preaching man." "i've been to hear him scold the human race once or twice," said francesca. "a strong man with a wonderfully strong message," said ada spelvexit, in an impressive and assertive tone. "the sort of popular pulpiteer who spanks the vices of his age and lunches with them afterwards," said lady caroline. "hardly a fair summary of the man and his work," protested ada. "i've been to hear him many times when i've been depressed or discouraged, and i simply can't tell you the impression his words leave " "at least you can tell us what you intend to make trumps," broke in lady caroline, gently. "diamonds," pronounced ada, after a rather flurried survey of her hand. "doubled," said lady caroline, with increased gentleness, and a few minutes later she was pencilling an addition of twenty-four to her score. "i stayed with his people down in herefordshire last may," said ada, returning to the unfinished theme of the canon; "such an exquisite rural retreat, and so restful and healing to the nerves. real country scenery; apple blossom everywhere." "surely only on the apple trees," said lady caroline. ada spelvexit gave up the attempt to reproduce the decorative setting of the canon's homelife, and fell back on the small but practical consolation of scoring the odd trick in her opponent's declaration of hearts. "if you had led your highest club to start with, instead of the nine, we should have saved the trick," remarked lady caroline to her partner in a tone of coldly, gentle reproof; "it's no use, my dear," she continued, as serena flustered out a halting apology, "no earthly use to attempt to play bridge at one table and try to see and hear what's going on at two or three other tables." "i can generally manage to attend to more than one thing at a time," said serena, rashly; "i think i must have a sort of double brain." "much better to economise and have one really good one," observed lady caroline. "la belle dame sans merci scoring a verbal trick or two as usual," said a player at another table in a discreet undertone. "did i tell you sir edward roan is coming to my next big evening," said serena, hurriedly, by way, perhaps, of restoring herself a little in her own esteem. "poor dear, good sir edward. what have you made trumps?" asked lady caroline, in one breath. "clubs," said francesca; "and pray, why these adjectives of commiseration?" francesca was a ministerialist by family interest and allegiance, and was inclined to take up the cudgels at the suggested disparagement aimed at the foreign secretary. "he amuses me so much," purred lady caroline. her amusement was usually of the sort that a sporting cat derives from watching the swedish exercises of a well-spent and carefully thought-out mouse. "really? he has been rather a brilliant success at the foreign office, you know," said francesca. "he reminds one so of a circus elephant infinitely more intelligent than the people who direct him, but quite content to go on putting his foot down or taking it up as may be required, quite unconcerned whether he steps on a meringue or a hornet's nest in the process of going where he's expected to go." "how can you say such things?" protested francesca. "i can't," said lady caroline; "courtenay youghal said it in the house last night. didn't you read the debate? he was really rather in form. i disagree entirely with his point of view, of course, but some of the things he says have just enough truth behind them to redeem them from being merely smart; for instance, his summing up of the government's attitude towards our embarrassing colonial empire in the wistful phrase 'happy is the country that has no geography.'" "what an absurdly unjust thing to say," put in francesca; "i daresay some of our party at some time have taken up that attitude, but every one knows that sir edward is a sound imperialist at heart." "most politicians are something or other at heart, but no one would be rash enough to insure a politician against heart failure. particularly when he happens to be in office." "anyhow, i don't see that the opposition leaders would have acted any differently in the present case," said francesca. "one should always speak guardedly of the opposition leaders," said lady caroline, in her gentlest voice; "one never knows what a turn in the situation may do for them." "you mean they may one day be at the head of affairs?" asked serena, briskly. "i mean they may one day lead the opposition. one never knows." lady caroline had just remembered that her hostess was on the opposition side in politics. francesca and her partner scored four tricks in clubs; the game stood irresolutely at twenty-four all. "if you had followed the excellent lyrical advice given to the maid of athens and returned my heart we should have made two more tricks and gone game," said lady caroline to her partner. "mr. youghal seems pushing himself to the fore of late," remarked francesca, as serena took up the cards to deal. since the young politician's name had been introduced into their conversation the opportunity for turning the talk more directly on him and his affairs was too good to be missed. "i think he's got a career before him," said serena; "the house always fills when he's speaking, and that's a good sign. and then he's young and got rather an attractive personality, which is always something in the political world." "his lack of money will handicap him, unless he can find himself a rich wife or persuade someone to die and leave him a fat legacy," said francesca; "since m.p.'s have become the recipients of a salary rather more is expected and demanded of them in the expenditure line than before." "yes, the house of commons still remains rather at the opposite pole to the kingdom of heaven as regards entrance qualifications," observed lady caroline. "there ought to be no difficulty about youghal picking up a girl with money," said serena; "with his prospects he would make an excellent husband for any woman with social ambitions." and she half sighed, as though she almost regretted that a previous matrimonial arrangement precluded her from entering into the competition on her own account. francesca, under an assumption of languid interest, was watching lady caroline narrowly for some hint of suppressed knowledge of youghal's courtship of miss de frey. "whom are you marrying and giving in marriage?" the question came from george st. michael, who had strayed over from a neighbouring table, attracted by the fragments of small-talk that had reached his ears. st. michael was one of those dapper bird-like illusorily-active men, who seem to have been in a certain stage of middle-age for as long as human memory can recall them. a close-cut peaked beard lent a certain dignity to his appearance a loan which the rest of his features and mannerisms were continually and successfully repudiating. his profession, if he had one, was submerged in his hobby, which consisted of being an advance-agent for small happenings or possible happenings that were or seemed imminent in the social world around him; he found a perpetual and unflagging satisfaction in acquiring and retailing any stray items of gossip or information, particularly of a matrimonial nature, that chanced to come his way. given the bare outline of an officially announced engagement he would immediately fill it in with all manner of details, true or, at any rate, probable, drawn from his own imagination or from some equally exclusive source. the morning post might content itself with the mere statement of the arrangement which would shortly take place, but it was st. michael's breathless little voice that proclaimed how the contracting parties had originally met over a salmon-fishing incident, why the guards' chapel would not be used, why her aunt mary had at first opposed the match, how the question of the children's religious upbringing had been compromised, etc., etc., to all whom it might interest and to many whom it might not. beyond his industriously-earned pre-eminence in this special branch of intelligence, he was chiefly noteworthy for having a wife reputed to be the tallest and thinnest woman in the home counties. the two were sometimes seen together in society, where they passed under the collective name of st. michael and all angles. "we are trying to find a rich wife for courtenay youghal," said serena, in answer to st. michael's question. "ah, there i'm afraid you're a little late," he observed, glowing with the importance of pending revelation; "i'm afraid you're a little late," he repeated, watching the effect of his words as a gardener might watch the development of a bed of carefully tended asparagus. "i think the young gentleman has been before you and already found himself a rich mate in prospect." he lowered his voice as he spoke, not with a view to imparting impressive mystery to his statement, but because there were other table groups within hearing to whom he hoped presently to have the privilege of re-disclosing his revelation. "do you mean ?" began serena. "miss de frey," broke in st. michael, hurriedly, fearful lest his revelation should be forestalled, even in guesswork; "quite an ideal choice, the very wife for a man who means to make his mark in politics. twenty-four thousand a year, with prospects of more to come, and a charming place of her own not too far from town. quite the type of girl, too, who will make a good political hostess, brains without being brainy, you know. just the right thing. of course, it would be premature to make any definite announcement at present " "it would hardly be premature for my partner to announce what she means to make trumps," interrupted lady caroline, in a voice of such sinister gentleness that st. michael fled headlong back to his own table. "oh, is it me? i beg your pardon. i leave it," said serena. "thank you. no trumps," declared lady caroline. the hand was successful, and the rubber ultimately fell to her with a comfortable margin of honours. the same partners cut together again, and this time the cards went distinctly against francesca and ada spelvexit, and a heavily piled-up score confronted them at the close of the rubber. francesca was conscious that a certain amount of rather erratic play on her part had at least contributed to the result. st. michael's incursion into the conversation had proved rather a powerful distraction to her ordinarily sound bridge-craft. ada spelvexit emptied her purse of several gold pieces and infused a corresponding degree of superiority into her manner. "i must be going now," she announced; "i'm dining early. i have to give an address to some charwomen afterwards." "why?" asked lady caroline, with a disconcerting directness that was one of her most formidable characteristics. "oh, well, i have some things to say to them that i daresay they will like to hear," said ada, with a thin laugh. her statement was received with a silence that betokened profound unbelief in any such probability. "i go about a good deal among working-class women," she added. "no one has ever said it," observed lady caroline, "but how painfully true it is that the poor have us always with them." ada spelvexit hastened her departure; the marred impressiveness of her retreat came as a culminating discomfiture on the top of her ill-fortune at the card-table. possibly, however, the multiplication of her own annoyances enabled her to survey charwomen's troubles with increased cheerfulness. none of them, at any rate, had spent an afternoon with lady caroline. francesca cut in at another table and with better fortune attending on her, succeeded in winning back most of her losses. a sense of satisfaction was distinctly dominant as she took leave of her hostess. st. michael's gossip, or rather the manner in which it had been received, had given her a clue to the real state of affairs, which, however slender and conjectural, at least pointed in the desired direction. at first she had been horribly afraid lest she should be listening to a definite announcement which would have been the death-blow to her hopes, but as the recitation went on without any of those assured little minor details which st. michael so loved to supply, she had come to the conclusion that it was merely a piece of intelligent guesswork. and if lady caroline had really believed in the story of elaine de frey's virtual engagement to courtenay youghal she would have taken a malicious pleasure in encouraging st. michael in his confidences, and in watching francesca's discomfiture under the recital. the irritated manner in which she had cut short the discussion betrayed the fact, that, as far as the old woman's information went, it was comus and not courtenay youghal who held the field. and in this particular case lady caroline's information was likely to be nearer the truth than st. michael's confident gossip. francesca always gave a penny to the first crossing-sweeper or match-seller she chanced across after a successful sitting at bridge. this afternoon she had come out of the fray some fifteen shillings to the bad, but she gave two pennies to a crossingsweeper at the north-west corner of berkeley square as a sort of thank-offering to the gods. chapter viii it was a fresh rain-repentant afternoon, following a morning that had been sultry and torrentially wet by turns; the sort of afternoon that impels people to talk graciously of the rain as having done a lot of good, its chief merit in their eyes probably having been its recognition of the art of moderation. also it was an afternoon that invited bodily activity after the convalescent languor of the earlier part of the day. elaine had instinctively found her way into her riding-habit and sent an order down to the stables a blessed oasis that still smelt sweetly of horse and hay and cleanliness in a world that reeked of petrol, and now she set her mare at a smart pace through a succession of long-stretching country lanes. she was due some time that afternoon at a gardenparty, but she rode with determination in an opposite direction. in the first place neither comus or courtenay would be at the party, which fact seemed to remove any valid reason that could be thought of for inviting her attendance thereat; in the second place about a hundred human beings would be gathered there, and human gatherings were not her most crying need at the present moment. since her last encounter with her wooers, under the cedars in her own garden, elaine realised that she was either very happy or cruelly unhappy, she could not quite determine which. she seemed to have what she most wanted in the world lying at her feet, and she was dreadfully uncertain in her more reflective moments whether she really wanted to stretch out her hand and take it. it was all very like some situation in an arabian nights tale or a story of pagan hellas, and consequently the more puzzling and disconcerting to a girl brought up on the methodical lines of victorian christianity. her appeal court was in permanent session these last few days, but it gave no decisions, at least none that she would listen to. and the ride on her fast light-stepping little mare, alone and unattended, through the fresh-smelling leafy lanes into unexplored country, seemed just what she wanted at the moment. the mare made some small delicate pretence of being roadshy, not the staring dolt-like kind of nervousness that shows itself in an irritating hanging-back as each conspicuous wayside object presents itself, but the nerve-flutter of an imaginative animal that merely results in a quick whisk of the head and a swifter bound forward. she might have paraphrased the mental attitude of the immortalised peter bell into a basket underneath a tree a yellow tiger is to me, if it is nothing more. the more really alarming episodes of the road, the hoot and whir of a passing motor-car or the loud vibrating hum of a wayside threshing-machine, were treated with indifference. on turning a corner out of a narrow coppice-bordered lane into a wider road that sloped steadily upward in a long stretch of hill elaine saw, coming toward her at no great distance, a string of yellow-painted vans, drawn for the most part by skewbald or speckled horses. a certain rakish air about these oncoming roadcraft proclaimed them as belonging to a travelling wild-beast show, decked out in the rich primitive colouring that one's taste in childhood would have insisted on before it had been schooled in the artistic value of dulness. it was an unlooked-for and distinctly unwelcome encounter. the mare had already commenced a sixfold scrutiny with nostrils, eyes and daintily-pricked ears; one ear made hurried little backward movements to hear what elaine was saying about the eminent niceness and respectability of the approaching caravan, but even elaine felt that she would be unable satisfactorily to explain the elephants and camels that would certainly form part of the procession. to turn back would seem rather craven, and the mare might take fright at the manoeuvre and try to bolt; a gate standing ajar at the entrance to a farmyard lane provided a convenient way out of the difficulty. as elaine pushed her way through she became aware of a man standing just inside the lane, who made a movement forward to open the gate for her. "thank you. i'm just getting out of the way of a wild-beast show," she explained; "my mare is tolerant of motors and traction-engines, but i expect camels hullo," she broke off, recognising the man as an old acquaintance, "i heard you had taken rooms in a farmhouse somewhere. fancy meeting you in this way." in the not very distant days of her little-girlhood, tom keriway had been a man to be looked upon with a certain awe and envy; indeed the glamour of his roving career would have fired the imagination, and wistful desire to do likewise, of many young englishmen. it seemed to be the grown-up realisation of the games played in dark rooms in winter fire-lit evenings, and the dreams dreamed over favourite books of adventure. making vienna his headquarters, almost his home, he had rambled where he listed through the lands of the near and middle east as leisurely and thoroughly as tamer souls might explore paris. he had wandered through hungarian horse-fairs, hunted shy crafty beasts on lonely balkan hillsides, dropped himself pebble-wise into the stagnant human pool of some bulgarian monastery, threaded his way through the strange racial mosaic of salonika, listened with amused politeness to the shallow ultra-modern opinions of a voluble editor or lawyer in some wayside russian town, or learned wisdom from a chance tavern companion, one of the atoms of the busy ant-stream of men and merchandise that moves untiringly round the shores of the black sea. and far and wide as he might roam he always managed to turn up at frequent intervals, at ball and supper and theatre, in the gay hauptstadt of the habsburgs, haunting his favourite cafes and wine-vaults, skimming through his favourite news-sheets, greeting old acquaintances and friends, from ambassadors down to cobblers in the social scale. he seldom talked of his travels, but it might be said that his travels talked of him; there was an air about him that a german diplomat once summed up in a phrase: "a man that wolves have sniffed at." and then two things happened, which he had not mapped out in his route; a severe illness shook half the life and all the energy out of him, and a heavy money loss brought him almost to the door of destitution. with something, perhaps, of the impulse which drives a stricken animal away from its kind, tom keriway left the haunts where he had known so much happiness, and withdrew into the shelter of a secluded farmhouse lodging; more than ever he became to elaine a hearsay personality. and now the chance meeting with the caravan had flung her across the threshold of his retreat. "what a charming little nook you've got hold of," she exclaimed with instinctive politeness, and then looked searchingly round, and discovered that she had spoken the truth; it really was charming. the farmhouse had that intensely english look that one seldom sees out of normandy. over the whole scene of rickyard, garden, outbuildings, horsepond and orchard, brooded that air which seems rightfully to belong to out-of-the-way farmyards, an air of wakeful dreaminess which suggests that here, man and beast and bird have got up so early that the rest of the world has never caught them up and never will. elaine dismounted, and keriway led the mare round to a little paddock by the side of a great grey barn. at the end of the lane they could see the show go past, a string of lumbering vans and great striding beasts that seemed to link the vast silences of the desert with the noises and sights and smells, the naphtha-flares and advertisement hoardings and trampled orange-peel, of an endless succession of towns. "you had better let the caravan pass well on its way before you get on the road again," said keriway; "the smell of the beasts may make your mare nervous and restive going home." then he called to a boy who was busy with a hoe among some defiantly prosperous weeds, to fetch the lady a glass of milk and a piece of currant loaf. "i don't know when i've seen anything so utterly charming and peaceful," said elaine, propping herself on a seat that a pear-tree had obligingly designed in the fantastic curve of its trunk. "charming, certainly," said keriway, "but too full of the stress of its own little life struggle to be peaceful. since i have lived here i've learnt, what i've always suspected, that a country farmhouse, set away in a world of its own, is one of the most wonderful studies of interwoven happenings and tragedies that can be imagined. it is like the old chronicles of medieval europe in the days when there was a sort of ordered anarchy between feudal lords and overlords, and burg-grafs, and mitred abbots, and princebishops, robber barons and merchant guilds, and electors and so forth, all striving and contending and counter-plotting, and interfering with each other under some vague code of looselyapplied rules. here one sees it reproduced under one's eyes, like a musty page of black-letter come to life. look at one little section of it, the poultry-life on the farm. villa poultry, dull egg-machines, with records kept of how many ounces of food they eat, and how many pennyworths of eggs they lay, give you no idea of the wonder-life of these farm-birds; their feuds and jealousies, and carefully maintained prerogatives, their unsparing tyrannies and persecutions, their calculated courage and bravado or sedulously hidden cowardice, it might all be some human chapter from the annals of the old rhineland or medieval italy. and then, outside their own bickering wars and hates, the grim enemies that come up against them from the woodlands; the hawk that dashes among the coops like a moss-trooper raiding the border, knowing well that a charge of shot may tear him to bits at any moment. and the stoat, a creeping slip of brown fur a few inches long, intently and unstayably out for blood. and the hunger-taught master of craft, the red fox, who has waited perhaps half the afternoon for his chance while the fowls were dusting themselves under the hedge, and just as they were turning supper-ward to the yard one has stopped a moment to give her feathers a final shake and found death springing upon her. do you know," he continued, as elaine fed herself and the mare with morsels of currant-loaf, "i don't think any tragedy in literature that i have ever come across impressed me so much as the first one, that i spelled out slowly for myself in words of three letters: the bad fox has got the red hen. there was something so dramatically complete about it; the badness of the fox, added to all the traditional guile of his race, seemed to heighten the horror of the hen's fate, and there was such a suggestion of masterful malice about the word 'got.' one felt that a countryside in arms would not get that hen away from the bad fox. they used to think me a slow dull reader for not getting on with my lesson, but i used to sit and picture to myself the red hen, with its wings beating helplessly, screeching in terrified protest, or perhaps, if he had got it by the neck, with beak wide agape and silent, and eyes staring, as it left the farm-yard for ever. i have seen blood-spillings and down-crushings and abject defeat here and there in my time, but the red hen has remained in my mind as the type of helpless tragedy." he was silent for a moment as if he were again musing over the three-letter drama that had so dwelt in his childhood's imagination. "tell me some of the things you have seen in your time," was the request that was nearly on elaine's lips, but she hastily checked herself and substituted another. "tell me more about the farm, please." and he told her of a whole world, or rather of several intermingled worlds, set apart in this sleepy hollow in the hills, of beast lore and wood lore and farm craft, at times touching almost the border of witchcraft passing lightly here, not with the probing eagerness of those who know nothing, but with the averted glance of those who fear to see too much. he told her of those things that slept and those that prowled when the dusk fell, of strange hunting cats, of the yard swine and the stalled cattle, of the farm folk themselves, as curious and remote in their way, in their ideas and fears and wants and tragedies, as the brutes and feathered stock that they tended. it seemed to elaine as if a musty store of oldworld children's books had been fetched down from some cobwebbed lumber-room and brought to life. sitting there in the little paddock, grown thickly with tall weeds and rank grasses, and shadowed by the weather-beaten old grey barn, listening to this chronicle of wonderful things, half fanciful, half very real, she could scarcely believe that a few miles away there was a gardenparty in full swing, with smart frocks and smart conversation, fashionable refreshments and fashionable music, and a fevered undercurrent of social strivings and snubbings. did vienna and the balkan mountains and the black sea seem as remote and hard to believe in, she wondered, to the man sitting by her side, who had discovered or invented this wonderful fairyland? was it a true and merciful arrangement of fate and life that the things of the moment thrust out the after-taste of the things that had been? here was one who had held much that was priceless in the hollow of his hand and lost it all, and he was happy and absorbed and well-content with the little wayside corner of the world into which he had crept. and elaine, who held so many desirable things in the hollow of her hand, could not make up her mind to be even moderately happy. she did not even know whether to take this hero of her childhood down from his pedestal, or to place him on a higher one; on the whole she was inclined to resent rather than approve the idea that ill-health and misfortune could so completely subdue and tame an erstwhile bold and roving spirit. the mare was showing signs of delicately-hinted impatience; the paddock, with its teasing insects and very indifferent grazing, had not thrust out the image of her own comfortable well-foddered loose-box. elaine divested her habit of some remaining crumbs of bun-loaf and jumped lightly on to her saddle. as she rode slowly down the lane, with keriway escorting her as far as its gate, she looked round at what had seemed to her, a short while ago, just a picturesque old farmstead, a place of bee-hives and hollyhocks and gabled cart-sheds; now it was in her eyes a magic city, with an under-current of reality beneath its magic. "you are a person to be envied," she said to keriway; "you have created a fairyland, and you are living in it yourself." "envied?" he shot the question out with sudden bitterness. she looked down and saw the wistful misery that had come into his face. "once," he said to her, "in a german paper i read a short story about a tame crippled crane that lived in the park of some small town. i forget what happened in the story, but there was one line that i shall always remember: 'it was lame, that is why it was tame.'" he had created a fairyland, but assuredly he was not living in it. chapter ix in the warmth of a late june morning the long shaded stretch of raked earth, gravel-walk and rhododendron bush that is known affectionately as the row was alive with the monotonous movement and alert stagnation appropriate to the time and place. the seekers after health, the seekers after notoriety and recognition, and the lovers of good exercise were all well represented on the galloping ground; the gravel-walk and chairs and long seats held a population whose varied instincts and motives would have baffled a social catalogue-maker. the children, handled or in perambulators, might be excused from instinct or motive; they were brought. pleasingly conspicuous among a bunch of indifferent riders pacing along by the rails where the onlookers were thickest was courtenay youghal, on his handsome plum-roan gelding anne de joyeuse. that delicately stepping animal had taken a prize at islington and nearly taken the life of a stable-boy of whom he disapproved, but his strongest claims to distinction were his good looks and his high opinion of himself. youghal evidently believed in thorough accord between horse and rider. "please stop and talk to me," said a quiet beckoning voice from the other side of the rails, and youghal drew rein and greeted lady veula croot. lady veula had married into a family of commercial solidity and enterprising political nonentity. she had a devoted husband, some blonde teachable children, and a look of unutterable weariness in her eyes. to see her standing at the top of an expensively horticultured staircase receiving her husband's guests was rather like watching an animal performing on a music-hall stage. one always tells oneself that the animal likes it, and one always knows that it doesn't. "lady veula is an ardent free trader, isn't she?" someone once remarked to lady caroline. "i wonder," said lady caroline, in her gently questioning voice; "a woman whose dresses are made in paris and whose marriage has been made in heaven might be equally biassed for and against free imports." lady veula looked at youghal and his mount with slow critical appraisement, and there was a note of blended raillery and wistfulness in her voice. "you two dear things, i should love to stroke you both, but i'm not sure how joyeuse would take it. so i'll stroke you down verbally instead. i admired your attack on sir edward immensely, though of course i don't agree with a word of it. your description of him building a hedge round the german cuckoo and hoping he was isolating it was rather sweet. seriously though, i regard him as one of the pillars of the administration." "so do i," said youghal; "the misfortune is that he is merely propping up a canvas roof. it's just his regrettable solidity and integrity that makes him so expensively dangerous. the average briton arrives at the same judgment about roan's handling of foreign affairs as omar does of the supreme being in his dealings with the world: he's a good fellow and 'twill all be well.'" lady veula laughed lightly. "my party is in power so i may exercise the privilege of being optimistic. who is that who bowed to you?" she continued, as a dark young man with an inclination to stoutness passed by them on foot; "i've seen him about a good deal lately. he's been to one or two of my dances." "andrei drakoloff," said youghal; "he's just produced a play that has had a big success in moscow and is certain to be extremely popular all over russia. in the first three acts the heroine is supposed to be dying of consumption; in the last act they find she is really dying of cancer." "are the russians really such a gloomy people?" "gloom-loving but not in the least gloomy. they merely take their sadness pleasurably, just as we are accused of taking our pleasures sadly. have you noticed that dreadful klopstock youth has been pounding past us at shortening intervals. he'll come up and talk if he half catches your eye." "i only just know him. isn't he at an agricultural college or something of the sort?" "yes, studying to be a gentleman farmer, he told me. i didn't ask if both subjects were compulsory." "you're really rather dreadful," said lady veula, trying to look as if she thought so; "remember, we are all equal in the sight of heaven." for a preacher of wholesome truths her voice rather lacked conviction. "if i and ernest klopstock are really equal in the sight of heaven," said youghal, with intense complacency, "i should recommend heaven to consult an eye specialist." there was a heavy spattering of loose earth, and a squelching of saddle-leather, as the klopstock youth lumbered up to the rails and delivered himself of loud, cheerful greetings. joyeuse laid his ears well back as the ungainly bay cob and his appropriately matched rider drew up beside him; his verdict was reflected and endorsed by the cold stare of youghal's eyes. "i've been having a nailing fine time," recounted the newcomer with clamorous enthusiasm; "i was over in paris last month and had lots of strawberries there, then i had a lot more in london, and now i've been having a late crop of them in herefordshire, so i've had quite a lot this year." and he laughed as one who had deserved well and received well of fate. "the charm of that story," said youghal, "is that it can be told in any drawing-room." and with a sweep of his wide-brimmed hat to lady veula he turned the impatient joyeuse into the moving stream of horse and horsemen. "that woman reminds me of some verse i've read and liked," thought youghal, as joyeuse sprang into a light showy canter that gave full recognition to the existence of observant human beings along the side walk. "ah, i have it." and he quoted almost aloud, as one does in the exhilaration of a canter: "how much i loved that way you had of smiling most, when very sad, a smile which carried tender hints of sun and spring, and yet, more than all other thing, of weariness beyond all words." and having satisfactorily fitted lady veula on to a quotation he dismissed her from his mind. with the constancy of her sex she thought about him, his good looks and his youth and his railing tongue, till late in the afternoon. while youghal was putting joyeuse through his paces under the elm trees of the row a little drama in which he was directly interested was being played out not many hundred yards away. elaine and comus were indulging themselves in two pennyworths of park chair, drawn aside just a little from the serried rows of sitters who were set out like bedded plants over an acre or so of turf. comus was, for the moment, in a mood of pugnacious gaiety, disbursing a fund of pointed criticism and unsparing anecdote concerning those of the promenaders or loungers whom he knew personally or by sight. elaine was rather quieter than usual, and the grave serenity of the leonardo da vinci portrait seemed intensified in her face this morning. in his leisurely courtship comus had relied almost exclusively on his physical attraction and the fitful drollery of his wit and high spirits, and these graces had gone far to make him seem a very desirable and rather lovable thing in elaine's eyes. but he had left out of account the disfavour which he constantly risked and sometimes incurred from his frank and undisguised indifference to other people's interests and wishes, including, at times, elaine's. and the more that she felt that she liked him the more she was irritated by his lack of consideration for her. without expecting that her every wish should become a law to him she would at least have liked it to reach the formality of a second reading. another important factor he had also left out of his reckoning, namely the presence on the scene of another suitor, who also had youth and wit to recommend him, and who certainly did not lack physical attractions. comus, marching carelessly through unknown country to effect what seemed already an assured victory, made the mistake of disregarding the existence of an unbeaten army on his flank. to-day elaine felt that, without having actually quarrelled, she and comus had drifted a little bit out of sympathy with one another. the fault she knew was scarcely hers, in fact from the most good-natured point of view it could hardly be denied that it was almost entirely his. the incident of the silver dish had lacked even the attraction of novelty; it had been one of a series, all bearing a strong connecting likeness. there had been small unrepaid loans which elaine would not have grudged in themselves, though the application for them brought a certain qualm of distaste; with the perversity which seemed inseparable from his doings, comus had always flung away a portion of his borrowings in some ostentatious piece of glaring and utterly profitless extravagance, which outraged all the canons of her upbringing without bringing him an atom of understandable satisfaction. under these repeated discouragements it was not surprising that some small part of her affection should have slipped away, but she had come to the park that morning with an unconfessed expectation of being gently wooed back to the mood of gracious forgetfulness that she was only too eager to assume. it was almost worth while being angry with comus for the sake of experiencing the pleasure of being coaxed into friendliness again with the charm which he knew so well how to exert. it was delicious here under the trees on this perfect june morning, and elaine had the blessed assurance that most of the women within range were envying her the companionship of the handsome merry-hearted youth who sat by her side. with special complacence she contemplated her cousin suzette, who was self-consciously but not very elatedly basking in the attentions of her fiance, an earnest-looking young man who was superintendent of a people's something-or-other on the south side of the river, and whose clothes comus had described as having been made in southwark rather than in anger. most of the pleasures in life must be paid for, and the chairticket vendor in due time made his appearance in quest of pennies. comus paid him from out of a varied assortment of coins and then balanced the remainder in the palm of his hand. elaine felt a sudden foreknowledge of something disagreeable about to happen and a red spot deepened in her cheeks. "four shillings and fivepence and a half-penny," said comus, reflectively. "it's a ridiculous sum to last me for the next three days, and i owe a card debt of over two pounds." "yes?" commented elaine dryly and with an apparent lack of interest in his exchequer statement. surely, she was thinking hurriedly to herself, he could not be foolish enough to broach the matter of another loan. "the card debt is rather a nuisance," pursued comus, with fatalistic persistency. "you won seven pounds last week, didn't you?" asked elaine; "don't you put by any of your winnings to balance losses?" "the four shillings and the fivepence and the halfpenny represent the rearguard of the seven pounds," said comus; "the rest have fallen by the way. if i can pay the two pounds to-day i daresay i shall win something more to go on with; i'm holding rather good cards just now. but if i can't pay it of course i shan't show up at the club. so you see the fix i am in." elaine took no notice of this indirect application. the appeal court was assembling in haste to consider new evidence, and this time there was the rapidity of sudden determination about its movement. the conversation strayed away from the fateful topic for a few moments and then comus brought it deliberately back to the danger zone. "it would be awfully nice if you would let me have a fiver for a few days, elaine," he said quickly; "if you don't i really don't know what i shall do." "if you are really bothered about your card debt i will send you the two pounds by messenger boy early this afternoon." she spoke quietly and with great decision. "and i shall not be at the connor's dance to-night," she continued; "it's too hot for dancing. i'm going home now; please don't bother to accompany me, i particularly wish to go alone." comus saw that he had overstepped the mark of her good nature. wisely he made no immediate attempt to force himself back into her good graces. he would wait till her indignation had cooled. his tactics would have been excellent if he had not forgotten that unbeaten army on his flank. elaine de frey had known very clearly what qualities she had wanted in comus, and she had known, against all efforts at self-deception, that he fell far short of those qualities. she had been willing to lower her standard of moral requirements in proportion as she was fond of the boy, but there was a point beyond which she would not go. he had hurt her pride besides alarming her sense of caution. suzette, on whom she felt a thoroughly justified tendency to look down, had at any rate an attentive and considerate lover. elaine walked towards the park gates feeling that in one essential suzette possessed something that had been denied to her, and at the gates she met joyeuse and his spruce young rider preparing to turn homeward. "get rid of joyeuse and come and take me out to lunch somewhere," demanded elaine. "how jolly," said youghal. "let's go to the corridor restaurant. the head waiter there is an old viennese friend of mine and looks after me beautifully. i've never been there with a lady before, and he's sure to ask me afterwards, in his fatherly way, if we're engaged." the lunch was a success in every way. there was just enough orchestral effort to immerse the conversation without drowning it, and youghal was an attentive and inspired host. through an open doorway elaine could see the cafe reading-room, with its imposing array of neue freie presse, berliner tageblatt, and other exotic newspapers hanging on the wall. she looked across at the young man seated opposite her, who gave one the impression of having centred the most serious efforts of his brain on his toilet and his food, and recalled some of the flattering remarks that the press had bestowed on his recent speeches. "doesn't it make you conceited, courtenay," she asked, "to look at all those foreign newspapers hanging there and know that most of them have got paragraphs and articles about your persian speech?" youghal laughed. "there's always a chastening corrective in the thought that some of them may have printed your portrait. when once you've seen your features hurriedly reproduced in the matin, for instance, you feel you would like to be a veiled turkish woman for the rest of your life." and youghal gazed long and lovingly at his reflection in the nearest mirror, as an antidote against possible incitements to humility in the portrait gallery of fame. elaine felt a certain soothed satisfaction in the fact that this young man, whose knowledge of the middle east was an embarrassment to ministers at question time and in debate, was showing himself equally well-informed on the subject of her culinary likes and dislikes. if suzette could have been forced to attend as a witness at a neighbouring table she would have felt even happier. "did the head waiter ask if we were engaged?" asked elaine, when courtenay had settled the bill, and she had finished collecting her sunshade and gloves and other impedimenta from the hands of obsequious attendants. "yes," said youghal, "and he seemed quite crestfallen when i had to say 'no.'" "it would be horrid to disappoint him when he's looked after us so charmingly," said elaine; "tell him that we are." chapter x the rutland galleries were crowded, especially in the neighbourhood of the tea-buffet, by a fashionable throng of art-patrons which had gathered to inspect mervyn quentock's collection of society portraits. quentock was a young artist whose abilities were just receiving due recognition from the critics; that the recognition was not overdue he owed largely to his perception of the fact that if one hides one's talent under a bushel one must be careful to point out to everyone the exact bushel under which it is hidden. there are two manners of receiving recognition: one is to be discovered so long after one's death that one's grandchildren have to write to the papers to establish their relationship; the other is to be discovered, like the infant moses, at the very outset of one's career. mervyn quentock had chosen the latter and happier manner. in an age when many aspiring young men strive to advertise their wares by imparting to them a freakish imbecility, quentock turned out work that was characterised by a pleasing delicate restraint, but he contrived to herald his output with a certain fanfare of personal eccentricity, thereby compelling an attention which might otherwise have strayed past his studio. in appearance he was the ordinary cleanly young englishman, except, perhaps, that his eyes rather suggested a library edition of the arabian nights; his clothes matched his appearance and showed no taint of the sartorial disorder by which the bourgeois of the garden-city and the latin quarter anxiously seeks to proclaim his kinship with art and thought. his eccentricity took the form of flying in the face of some of the prevailing social currents of the day, but as a reactionary, never as a reformer. he produced a gasp of admiring astonishment in fashionable circles by refusing to paint actresses except, of course, those who had left the legitimate drama to appear between the boards of debrett. he absolutely declined to execute portraits of americans unless they hailed from certain favoured states. his "water-colour-line," as a new york paper phrased it, earned for him a crop of angry criticisms and a shoal of transatlantic commissions, and criticism and commissions were the things that quentock most wanted. "of course he is perfectly right," said lady caroline benaresq, calmly rescuing a piled-up plate of caviare sandwiches from the neighbourhood of a trio of young ladies who had established themselves hopefully within easy reach of it. "art," she continued, addressing herself to the rev. poltimore vardon, "has always been geographically exclusive. london may be more important from most points of view than venice, but the art of portrait painting, which would never concern itself with a lord mayor, simply grovels at the feet of the doges. as a socialist i'm bound to recognise the right of ealing to compare itself with avignon, but one cannot expect the muses to put the two on a level." "exclusiveness," said the reverend poltimore, "has been the salvation of art, just as the lack of it is proving the downfall of religion. my colleagues of the cloth go about zealously proclaiming the fact that christianity, in some form or other, is attracting shoals of converts among all sorts of races and tribes, that one had scarcely ever heard of, except in reviews of books of travel that one never read. that sort of thing was all very well when the world was more sparsely populated, but nowadays, when it simply teems with human beings, no one is particularly impressed by the fact that a few million, more or less, of converts, of a low stage of mental development, have accepted the teachings of some particular religion. it not only chills one's enthusiasm, it positively shakes one's convictions when one hears that the things one has been brought up to believe as true are being very favourably spoken of by buriats and samoyeds and kanakas." the rev. poltimore vardon had once seen a resemblance in himself to voltaire, and had lived alongside the comparison ever since. "no modern cult or fashion," he continued, "would be favourably influenced by considerations based on statistics; fancy adopting a certain style of hat or cut of coat, because it was being largely worn in lancashire and the midlands; fancy favouring a certain brand of champagne because it was being extensively patronised in german summer resorts. no wonder that religion is falling into disuse in this country under such ill-directed methods." "you can't prevent the heathen being converted if they choose to be," said lady caroline; "this is an age of toleration." "you could always deny it," said the rev. poltimore, "like the belgians do with regrettable occurrences in the congo. but i would go further than that. i would stimulate the waning enthusiasm for christianity in this country by labelling it as the exclusive possession of a privileged few. if one could induce the duchess of pelm, for instance, to assert that the kingdom of heaven, as far as the british isles are concerned, is strictly limited to herself, two of the under-gardeners at pelmby, and, possibly, but not certainly, the dean of dunster, there would be an instant reshaping of the popular attitude towards religious convictions and observances. once let the idea get about that the christian church is rather more exclusive than the lawn at ascot, and you would have a quickening of religious life such as this generation has never witnessed. but as long as the clergy and the religious organisations advertise their creed on the lines of 'everybody ought to believe in us: millions do,' one can expect nothing but indifference and waning faith." "time is just as exclusive in its way as art," said lady caroline. "in what way?" said the reverend poltimore. "your pleasantries about religion would have sounded quite clever and advanced in the early 'nineties. to-day they have a dreadfully warmed-up flavour. that is the great delusion of you would-be advanced satirists; you imagine you can sit down comfortably for a couple of decades saying daring and startling things about the age you live in, which, whatever other defects it may have, is certainly not standing still. the whole of the sherard blaw school of discursive drama suggests, to my mind, early victorian furniture in a travelling circus. however, you will always have relays of people from the suburbs to listen to the mocking bird of yesterday, and sincerely imagine it is the harbinger of something new and revolutionising." "would you mind passing that plate of sandwiches," asked one of the trio of young ladies, emboldened by famine. "with pleasure," said lady caroline, deftly passing her a nearly empty plate of bread-and-butter. "i meant the place of caviare sandwiches. so sorry to trouble you," persisted the young lady her sorrow was misapplied; lady caroline had turned her attention to a newcomer. "a very interesting exhibition," ada spelvexit was saying; "faultless technique, as far as i am a judge of technique, and quite a master-touch in the way of poses. but have you noticed how very animal his art is? he seems to shut out the soul from his portraits. i nearly cried when i saw dear winifred depicted simply as a good-looking healthy blonde." "i wish you had," said lady caroline; "the spectacle of a strong, brave woman weeping at a private view in the rutland galleries would have been so sensational. it would certainly have been reproduced in the next drury lane drama. and i'm so unlucky; i never see these sensational events. i was ill with appendicitis, you know, when lulu braminguard dramatically forgave her husband, after seventeen years of estrangement, during a state luncheon party at windsor. the old queen was furious about it. she said it was so disrespectful to the cook to be thinking of such a thing at such a time." lady caroline's recollections of things that hadn't happened at the court of queen victoria were notoriously vivid; it was the very widespread fear that she might one day write a book of reminiscences that made her so universally respected. "as for his full-length picture of lady brickfield," continued ada, ignoring lady caroline's commentary as far as possible, "all the expression seems to have been deliberately concentrated in the feet; beautiful feet, no doubt, but still, hardly the most distinctive part of a human being." "to paint the right people at the wrong end may be an eccentricity, but it is scarcely an indiscretion," pronounced lady caroline. one of the portraits which attracted more than a passing flutter of attention was a costume study of francesca bassington. francesca had secured some highly desirable patronage for the young artist, and in return he had enriched her pantheon of personal possessions with a clever piece of work into which he had thrown an unusual amount of imaginative detail. he had painted her in a costume of the great louis's brightest period, seated in front of a tapestry that was so prominent in the composition that it could scarcely be said to form part of the background. flowers and fruit, in exotic profusion, were its dominant note; quinces, pomegranates, passionflowers, giant convolvulus, great mauve-pink roses, and grapes that were already being pressed by gleeful cupids in a riotous arcadian vintage, stood out on its woven texture. the same note was struck in the beflowered satin of the lady's kirtle, and in the pomegranate pattern of the brocade that draped the couch on which she was seated. the artist had called his picture "recolte." and after one had taken in all the details of fruit and flower and foliage that earned the composition its name, one noted the landscape that showed through a broad casement in the left-hand corner. it was a landscape clutched in the grip of winter, naked, bleak, black-frozen; a winter in which things died and knew no rewakening. if the picture typified harvest, it was a harvest of artificial growth. "it leaves a great deal to the imagination, doesn't it?" said ada spelvexit, who had edged away from the range of lady caroline's tongue. "at any rate one can tell who it's meant for," said serena golackly. "oh, yes, it's a good likeness of dear francesca," admitted ada; "of course, it flatters her." "that, too, is a fault on the right side in portrait painting," said serena; "after all, if posterity is going to stare at one for centuries it's only kind and reasonable to be looking just a little better than one's best." "what a curiously unequal style the artist has," continued ada, almost as if she felt a personal grievance against him; "i was just noticing what a lack of soul there was in most of his portraits. dear winifred, you know, who speaks so beautifully and feelingly at my gatherings for old women, he's made her look just an ordinary dairy-maidish blonde; and francesca, who is quite the most soulless woman i've ever met, well, he's given her quite " "hush," said serena, "the bassington boy is just behind you." comus stood looking at the portrait of his mother with the feeling of one who comes suddenly across a once-familiar half-forgotten acquaintance in unfamiliar surroundings. the likeness was undoubtedly a good one, but the artist had caught an expression in francesca's eyes which few people had ever seen there. it was the expression of a woman who had forgotten for one short moment to be absorbed in the small cares and excitements of her life, the money worries and little social plannings, and had found time to send a look of half-wistful friendliness to some sympathetic companion. comus could recall that look, fitful and fleeting, in his mother's eyes when she had been a few years younger, before her world had grown to be such a committee-room of ways and means. almost as a re-discovery he remembered that she had once figured in his boyish mind as a "rather good sort," more ready to see the laughable side of a piece of mischief than to labour forth a reproof. that the bygone feeling of good fellowship had been stamped out was, he knew, probably in great part his own doing, and it was possible that the old friendliness was still there under the surface of things, ready to show itself again if he willed it, and friends were becoming scarcer with him than enemies in these days. looking at the picture with its wistful hint of a long ago comradeship, comus made up his mind that he very much wanted things to be back on their earlier footing, and to see again on his mother's face the look that the artist had caught and perpetuated in its momentary flitting. if the projected elaine-marriage came off, and in spite of recent maladroit behaviour on his part he still counted it an assured thing, much of the immediate cause for estrangement between himself and his mother would be removed, or at any rate, easily removable. with the influence of elaine's money behind him he promised himself that he would find some occupation that would remove from himself the reproach of being a waster and idler. there were lots of careers, he told himself, that were open to a man with solid financial backing and good connections. there might yet be jolly times ahead, in which his mother would have her share of the good things that were going, and carking thin-lipped henry greech and other of comus's detractors could take their sour looks and words out of sight and hearing. thus, staring at the picture as though he were studying its every detail, and seeing really only that wistful friendly smile, comus made his plans and dispositions for a battle that was already fought and lost. the crowd grew thicker in the galleries, cheerfully enduring an amount of overcrowding that would have been fiercely resented in a railway carriage. near the entrance mervyn quentock was talking to a serene highness, a lady who led a life of obtrusive usefulness, largely imposed on her by a good-natured inability to say "no." "that woman creates a positive draught with the number of bazaars she opens," a frivolously-spoken ex-cabinet minister had once remarked. at the present moment she was being whimsically apologetic. "when i think of the legions of well-meaning young men and women to whom i've given away prizes for proficiency in art-school curriculum, i feel that i ought not to show my face inside a picture gallery. i always imagine that my punishment in another world will be perpetually sharpening pencils and cleaning palettes for unending relays of misguided young people whom i deliberately encouraged in their artistic delusions." "do you suppose we shall all get appropriate punishments in another world for our sins in this?" asked quentock. "not so much for our sins as for our indiscretions; they are the things which do the most harm and cause the greatest trouble. i feel certain that christopher columbus will undergo the endless torment of being discovered by parties of american tourists. you see i am quite old fashioned in my ideas about the terrors and inconveniences of the next world. and now i must be running away; i've got to open a free library somewhere. you know the sort of thing that happens one unveils a bust of carlyle and makes a speech about ruskin, and then people come in their thousands and read 'rabid ralph, or should he have bitten her?' don't forget, please, i'm going to have the medallion with the fat cupid sitting on a sundial. and just one thing more perhaps i ought not to ask you, but you have such nice kind eyes, you embolden one to make daring requests, would you send me the recipe for those lovely chestnut-and-chicken-liver sandwiches? i know the ingredients of course, but it's the proportions that make such a difference just how much liver to how much chestnut, and what amount of red pepper and other things. thank you so much. i really am going now." staring round with a vague half-smile at everybody within nodding distance, her serene highness made one of her characteristic exits, which lady caroline declared always reminded her of a scrambled egg slipping off a piece of toast. at the entrance she stopped for a moment to exchange a word or two with a young man who had just arrived. from a corner where he was momentarily hemmed in by a group of tea-consuming dowagers, comus recognised the newcomer as courtenay youghal, and began slowly to labour his way towards him. youghal was not at the moment the person whose society he most craved for in the world, but there was at least the possibility that he might provide an opportunity for a game of bridge, which was the dominant desire of the moment. the young politician was already surrounded by a group of friends and acquaintances, and was evidently being made the recipient of a salvo of congratulation presumably on his recent performances in the foreign office debate, comus concluded. but youghal himself seemed to be announcing the event with which the congratulations were connected. had some dramatic catastrophe overtaken the government, comus wondered. and then, as he pressed nearer, a chance word, the coupling of two names, told him the news. chapter xi after the momentous lunch at the corridor restaurant elaine had returned to manchester square (where she was staying with one of her numerous aunts) in a frame of mind that embraced a tangle of competing emotions. in the first place she was conscious of a dominant feeling of relief; in a moment of impetuosity, not wholly uninfluenced by pique, she had settled the problem which hours of hard thinking and serious heart-searching had brought no nearer to solution, and, although she felt just a little inclined to be scared at the headlong manner of her final decision, she had now very little doubt in her own mind that the decision had been the right one. in fact the wonder seemed rather that she should have been so long in doubt as to which of her wooers really enjoyed her honest approval. she had been in love, these many weeks past with an imaginary comus, but now that she had definitely walked out of her dreamland she saw that nearly all the qualities that had appealed to her on his behalf had been absent from, or only fitfully present in, the character of the real comus. and now that she had installed youghal in the first place of her affections he had rapidly acquired in her eyes some of the qualities which ranked highest in her estimation. like the proverbial buyer she had the happy feminine tendency of magnifying the worth of her possession as soon as she had acquired it. and courtenay youghal gave elaine some justification for her sense of having chosen wisely. above all other things, selfish and cynical though he might appear at times, he was unfailingly courteous and considerate towards her. that was a circumstance which would always have carried weight with her in judging any man; in this case its value was enormously heightened by contrast with the behaviour of her other wooer. and youghal had in her eyes the advantage which the glamour of combat, even the combat of words and wire-pulling, throws over the fighter. he stood well in the forefront of a battle which however carefully stage-managed, however honeycombed with personal insincerities and overlaid with calculated mock-heroics, really meant something, really counted for good or wrong in the nation's development and the world's history. shrewd parliamentary observers might have warned her that youghal would never stand much higher in the political world than he did at present, as a brilliant opposition freelance, leading lively and rather meaningless forays against the dull and rather purposeless foreign policy of a government that was scarcely either to be blamed for or congratulated on its handling of foreign affairs. the young politician had not the strength of character or convictions that keeps a man naturally in the forefront of affairs and gives his counsels a sterling value, and on the other hand his insincerity was not deep enough to allow him to pose artificially and successfully as a leader of men and shaper of movements. for the moment, however, his place in public life was sufficiently marked out to give him a secure footing in that world where people are counted individually and not in herds. the woman whom he would make his wife would have the chance, too, if she had the will and the skill, to become an individual who counted. there was balm to elaine in this reflection, yet it did not wholly suffice to drive out the feeling of pique which comus had called into being by his slighting view of her as a convenient cash supply in moments of emergency. she found a certain satisfaction in scrupulously observing her promise, made earlier on that eventful day, and sent off a messenger with the stipulated loan. then a reaction of compunction set in, and she reminded herself that in fairness she ought to write and tell her news in as friendly a fashion as possible to her dismissed suitor before it burst upon him from some other quarter. they had parted on more or less quarrelling terms it was true, but neither of them had foreseen the finality of the parting nor the permanence of the breach between them; comus might even now be thinking himself half-forgiven, and the awakening would be rather cruel. the letter, however, did not prove an easy one to write; not only did it present difficulties of its own but it suffered from the competing urgency of a desire to be doing something far pleasanter than writing explanatory and valedictory phrases. elaine was possessed with an unusual but quite over-mastering hankering to visit her cousin suzette brankley. they met but rarely at each other's houses and very seldom anywhere else, and elaine for her part was never conscious of feeling that their opportunities for intercourse lacked anything in the way of adequacy. suzette accorded her just that touch of patronage which a moderately well-off and immoderately dull girl will usually try to mete out to an acquaintance who is known to be wealthy and suspected of possessing brains. in return elaine armed herself with that particular brand of mock humility which can be so terribly disconcerting if properly wielded. no quarrel of any description stood between them and one could not legitimately have described them as enemies, but they never disarmed in one another's presence. a misfortune of any magnitude falling on one of them would have been sincerely regretted by the other, but any minor discomfiture would have produced a feeling very much akin to satisfaction. human nature knows millions of these inconsequent little feuds, springing up and flourishing apart from any basis of racial, political, religious or economic causes, as a hint perhaps to crass unseeing altruists that enmity has its place and purpose in the world as well as benevolence. elaine had not personally congratulated suzette since the formal announcement of her engagement to the young man with the dissentient tailoring effects. the impulse to go and do so now, overmastered her sense of what was due to comus in the way of explanation. the letter was still in its blank unwritten stage, an unmarshalled sequence of sentences forming in her brain, when she ordered her car and made a hurried but well-thought-out change into her most sumptuously sober afternoon toilette. suzette, she felt tolerably sure, would still be in the costume that she had worn in the park that morning, a costume that aimed at elaboration of detail, and was damned with overmuch success. suzette's mother welcomed her unexpected visitor with obvious satisfaction. her daughter's engagement, she explained, was not so brilliant from the social point of view as a girl of suzette's attractions and advantages might have legitimately aspired to, but egbert was a thoroughly commendable and dependable young man, who would very probably win his way before long to membership of the county council. "from there, of course, the road would be open to him to higher things." "yes," said elaine, "he might become an alderman." "have you seen their photographs, taken together?" asked mrs. brankley, abandoning the subject of egbert's prospective career. "no, do show me," said elaine, with a flattering show of interest; "i've never seen that sort of thing before. it used to be the fashion once for engaged couples to be photographed together, didn't it?" "it's very much the fashion now," said mrs. brankley assertively, but some of the complacency had filtered out of her voice. suzette came into the room, wearing the dress that she had worn in the park that morning. "of course, you've been hearing all about the engagement from mother," she cried, and then set to work conscientiously to cover the same ground. "we met at grindelwald, you know. he always calls me his ice maiden because we first got to know each other on the skating rink. quite romantic, wasn't it? then we asked him to tea one day, and we got to be quite friendly. then he proposed." "he wasn't the only one who was smitten with suzette," mrs. brankley hastened to put in, fearful lest elaine might suppose that egbert had had things all his own way. "there was an american millionaire who was quite taken with her, and a polish count of a very old family. i assure you i felt quite nervous at some of our tea-parties." mrs. brankley had given grindelwald a sinister but rather alluring reputation among a large circle of untravelled friends as a place where the insolence of birth and wealth was held in precarious check from breaking forth into scenes of savage violence. "my marriage with egbert will, of course, enlarge the sphere of my life enormously," pursued suzette. "yes," said elaine; her eyes were rather remorselessly taking in the details of her cousin's toilette. it is said that nothing is sadder than victory except defeat. suzette began to feel that the tragedy of both was concentrated in the creation which had given her such unalloyed gratification, till elaine had come on the scene. "a woman can be so immensely helpful in the social way to a man who is making a career for himself. and i'm so glad to find that we've a great many ideas in common. we each made out a list of our idea of the hundred best books, and quite a number of them were the same." "he looks bookish," said elaine, with a critical glance at the photograph. "oh, he's not at all a bookworm," said suzette quickly, "though he's tremendously well-read. he's quite the man of action." "does he hunt?" asked elaine. "no, he doesn't get much time or opportunity for riding." "what a pity," commented elaine; "i don't think i could marry a man who wasn't fond of riding." "of course that's a matter of taste," said suzette, stiffly; "horsey men are not usually gifted with overmuch brains, are they?" "there is as much difference between a horseman and a horsey man as there is between a well-dressed man and a dressy one," said elaine, judicially; "and you may have noticed how seldom a dressy woman really knows how to dress. as an old lady of my acquaintance observed the other day, some people are born with a sense of how to clothe themselves, others acquire it, others look as if their clothes had been thrust upon them." she gave lady caroline her due quotation marks, but the sudden tactfulness with which she looked away from her cousin's frock was entirely her own idea. a young man entering the room at this moment caused a diversion that was rather welcome to suzette. "here comes egbert," she announced, with an air of subdued triumph; it was at least a satisfaction to be able to produce the captive of her charms, alive and in good condition, on the scene. elaine might be as critical as she pleased, but a live lover outweighed any number of well-dressed straight-riding cavaliers who existed only as a distant vision of the delectable husband. egbert was one of those men who have no small talk, but possess an inexhaustible supply of the larger variety. in whatever society he happened to be, and particularly in the immediate neighbourhood of an afternoon-tea table, with a limited audience of womenfolk, he gave the impression of someone who was addressing a public meeting, and would be happy to answer questions afterwards. a suggestion of gas-lit mission-halls, wet umbrellas, and discreet applause seemed to accompany him everywhere. he was an exponent, among other things, of what he called new thought, which seemed to lend itself conveniently to the employment of a good deal of rather stale phraseology. probably in the course of some thirty odd years of existence he had never been of any notable use to man, woman, child or animal, but it was his firmly-announced intention to leave the world a better, happier, purer place than he had found it; against the danger of any relapse to earlier conditions after his disappearance from the scene, he was, of course, powerless to guard. 'tis not in mortals to insure succession, and egbert was admittedly mortal. elaine found him immensely entertaining, and would certainly have exerted herself to draw him out if such a proceeding had been at all necessary. she listened to his conversation with the complacent appreciation that one bestows on a stage tragedy, from whose calamities one can escape at any moment by the simple process of leaving one's seat. when at last he checked the flow of his opinions by a hurried reference to his watch, and declared that he must be moving on elsewhere, elaine almost expected a vote of thanks to be accorded him, or to be asked to signify herself in favour of some resolution by holding up her hand. when the young man had bidden the company a rapid business-like farewell, tempered in suzette's case by the exact degree of tender intimacy that it would have been considered improper to omit or overstep, elaine turned to her expectant cousin with an air of cordial congratulation. "he is exactly the husband i should have chosen for you, suzette." for the second time that afternoon suzette felt a sense of waning enthusiasm for one of her possessions. mrs. brankley detected the note of ironical congratulation in her visitor's verdict. "i suppose she means he's not her idea of a husband, but, he's good enough for suzette," she observed to herself, with a snort that expressed itself somewhere in the nostrils of the brain. then with a smiling air of heavy patronage she delivered herself of her one idea of a damaging counter-stroke. "and when are we to hear of your engagement, my dear?" "now," said elaine quietly, but with electrical effect; "i came to announce it to you but i wanted to hear all about suzette first. it will be formally announced in the papers in a day or two." "but who is it? is it the young man who was with you in the park this morning?" asked suzette. "let me see, who was i with in the park this morning? a very goodlooking dark boy? oh no, not comus bassington. someone you know by name, anyway, and i expect you've seen his portrait in the papers." "a flying-man?" asked mrs. brankley. "courtenay youghal," said elaine. mrs. brankley and suzette had often rehearsed in the privacy of their minds the occasion when elaine should come to pay her personal congratulations to her engaged cousin. it had never been in the least like this. on her return from her enjoyable afternoon visit elaine found an express messenger letter waiting for her. it was from comus, thanking her for her loan and returning it. "i suppose i ought never to have asked you for it," he wrote, "but you are always so deliciously solemn about money matters that i couldn't resist. just heard the news of your engagement to courtenay. congrats. to you both. i'm far too stoney broke to buy you a wedding present so i'm going to give you back the bread-andbutter dish. luckily it still has your crest on it. i shall love to think of you and courtenay eating bread-and-butter out of it for the rest of your lives." that was all he had to say on the matter about which elaine had been preparing to write a long and kindly-expressed letter, closing a rather momentous chapter in her life and his. there was not a trace of regret or upbraiding in his note; he had walked out of their mutual fairyland as abruptly as she had, and to all appearances far more unconcernedly. reading the letter again and again elaine could come to no decision as to whether this was merely a courageous gibe at defeat, or whether it represented the real value that comus set on the thing that he had lost. and she would never know. if comus possessed one useless gift to perfection it was the gift of laughing at fate even when it had struck him hardest. one day, perhaps, the laughter and mockery would be silent on his lips, and fate would have the advantage of laughing last. chapter xii a door closed and francesca bassington sat alone in her wellbeloved drawing-room. the visitor who had been enjoying the hospitality of her afternoon-tea table had just taken his departure. the tete-a-tete had not been a pleasant one, at any rate as far as francesca was concerned, but at least it had brought her the information for which she had been seeking. her role of looker-on from a tactful distance had necessarily left her much in the dark concerning the progress of the all-important wooing, but during the last few hours she had, on slender though significant evidence, exchanged her complacent expectancy for a conviction that something had gone wrong. she had spent the previous evening at her brother's house, and had naturally seen nothing of comus in that uncongenial quarter; neither had he put in an appearance at the breakfast table the following morning. she had met him in the hall at eleven o'clock, and he had hurried past her, merely imparting the information that he would not be in till dinner that evening. he spoke in his sulkiest tone, and his face wore a look of defeat, thinly masked by an air of defiance; it was not the defiance of a man who is losing, but of one who has already lost. francesca's conviction that things had gone wrong between comus and elaine de frey grew in strength as the day wore on. she lunched at a friend's house, but it was not a quarter where special social information of any importance was likely to come early to hand. instead of the news she was hankering for, she had to listen to trivial gossip and speculation on the flirtations and "cases" and "affairs" of a string of acquaintances whose matrimonial projects interested her about as much as the nesting arrangements of the wildfowl in st. james's park. "of course," said her hostess, with the duly impressive emphasis of a privileged chronicler, "we've always regarded claire as the marrying one of the family, so when emily came to us and said, 'i've got some news for you,' we all said, 'claire's engaged!' 'oh, no,' said emily, 'it's not claire this time, it's me.' so then we had to guess who the lucky man was. 'it can't be captain parminter,' we all said, 'because he's always been sweet on joan.' and then emily said " the recording voice reeled off the catalogue of inane remarks with a comfortable purring complacency that held out no hope of an early abandoning of the topic. francesca sat and wondered why the innocent acceptance of a cutlet and a glass of indifferent claret should lay one open to such unsparing punishment. a stroll homeward through the park after lunch brought no further enlightenment on the subject that was uppermost in her mind; what was worse, it brought her, without possibility of escape, within hailing distance of merla blathington, who fastened on to her with the enthusiasm of a lonely tsetse fly encountering an outpost of civilisation. "just think," she buzzed inconsequently, "my sister in cambridgeshire has hatched out thirty-three white orpington chickens in her incubator!" "what eggs did she put in it?" asked francesca. "oh, some very special strain of white orpington." "then i don't see anything remarkable in the result. if she had put in crocodile's eggs and hatched out white orpingtons, there might have been something to write to country life about." "what funny fascinating things these little green park-chairs are," said merla, starting off on a fresh topic; "they always look so quaint and knowing when they're stuck away in pairs by themselves under the trees, as if they were having a heart-to-heart talk or discussing a piece of very private scandal. if they could only speak, what tragedies and comedies they could tell us of, what flirtations and proposals." "let us be devoutly thankful that they can't," said francesca, with a shuddering recollection of the luncheon-table conversation. "of course, it would make one very careful what one said before them or above them rather," merla rattled on, and then, to francesca's infinite relief, she espied another acquaintance sitting in unprotected solitude, who promised to supply a more durable audience than her present rapidly moving companion. francesca was free to return to her drawing-room in blue street to await with such patience as she could command the coming of some visitor who might be able to throw light on the subject that was puzzling and disquieting her. the arrival of george st. michael boded bad news, but at any rate news, and she gave him an almost cordial welcome. "well, you see i wasn't far wrong about miss de frey and courtenay youghal, was i?" he chirruped, almost before he had seated himself. francesca was to be spared any further spinning-out of her period of uncertainty. "yes, it's officially given out," he went on, "and it's to appear in the morning post to-morrow. i heard it from colonel deel this morning, and he had it direct from youghal himself. yes, please, one lump; i'm not fashionable, you see." he had made the same remark about the sugar in his tea with unfailing regularity for at least thirty years. fashions in sugar are apparently stationary. "they say," he continued, hurriedly, "that he proposed to her on the terrace of the house, and a division bell rang, and he had to hurry off before she had time to give her answer, and when he got back she simply said, 'the ayes have it.'" st. michael paused in his narrative to give an appreciative giggle. "just the sort of inanity that would go the rounds," remarked francesca, with the satisfaction of knowing that she was making the criticism direct to the author and begetter of the inanity in question. now that the blow had fallen and she knew the full extent of its weight, her feeling towards the bringer of bad news, who sat complacently nibbling at her tea-cakes and scattering crumbs of tiresome small-talk at her feet, was one of wholehearted dislike. she could sympathise with, or at any rate understand, the tendency of oriental despots to inflict death or ignominious chastisement on messengers bearing tidings of misfortune and defeat, and st. michael, she perfectly well knew, was thoroughly aware of the fact that her hopes and wishes had been centred on the possibility of having elaine for a daughter-in-law; every purring remark that his mean little soul prompted him to contribute to the conversation had an easily recognizable undercurrent of malice. fortunately for her powers of polite endurance, which had been put to such searching and repeated tests that day, st. michael had planned out for himself a busy little time-table of afternoon visits, at each of which his self-appointed task of forestalling and embellishing the newspaper announcements of the youghal-de frey engagement would be hurriedly but thoroughly performed. "they'll be quite one of the best-looking and most interesting couples of the season, won't they?" he cried, by way of farewell. the door closed and francesca bassington sat alone in her drawingroom. before she could give way to the bitter luxury of reflection on the downfall of her hopes, it was prudent to take precautionary measures against unwelcome intrusion. summoning the maid who had just speeded the departing st. michael, she gave the order: "i am not at home this afternoon to lady caroline benaresq." on second thoughts she extended the taboo to all possible callers, and sent a telephone message to catch comus at his club, asking him to come and see her as soon as he could manage before it was time to dress for dinner. then she sat down to think, and her thinking was beyond the relief of tears. she had built herself a castle of hopes, and it had not been a castle in spain, but a structure well on the probable side of the pyrenees. there had been a solid foundation on which to build. miss de frey's fortune was an assured and unhampered one, her liking for comus had been an obvious fact; his courtship of her a serious reality. the young people had been much together in public, and their names had naturally been coupled in the matchmaking gossip of the day. the only serious shadow cast over the scene had been the persistent presence, in foreground or background, of courtenay youghal. and now the shadow suddenly stood forth as the reality, and the castle of hopes was a ruin, a hideous mortification of dust and debris, with the skeleton outlines of its chambers still standing to make mockery of its discomfited architect. the daily anxiety about comus and his extravagant ways and intractable disposition had been gradually lulled by the prospect of his making an advantageous marriage, which would have transformed him from a ne'er-do-well and adventurer into a wealthy idler. he might even have been moulded, by the resourceful influence of an ambitious wife, into a man with some definite purpose in life. the prospect had vanished with cruel suddenness, and the anxieties were crowding back again, more insistent than ever. the boy had had his one good chance in the matrimonial market and missed it; if he were to transfer his attentions to some other well-dowered girl he would be marked down at once as a fortune-hunter, and that would constitute a heavy handicap to the most plausible of wooers. his liking for elaine had evidently been genuine in its way, though perhaps it would have been rash to read any deeper sentiment into it, but even with the spur of his own inclination to assist him he had failed to win the prize that had seemed so temptingly within his reach. and in the dashing of his prospects, francesca saw the threatening of her own. the old anxiety as to her precarious tenure of her present quarters put on again all its familiar terrors. one day, she foresaw, in the horribly near future, george st. michael would come pattering up her stairs with the breathless intelligence that emmeline chetrof was going to marry somebody or other in the guards or the record office as the case might be, and then there would be an uprooting of her life from its home and haven in blue street and a wandering forth to some cheap unhappy far-off dwelling, where the stately van der meulen and its companion host of beautiful and desirable things would be stuffed and stowed away in soulless surroundings, like courtly emigres fallen on evil days. it was unthinkable, but the trouble was that it had to be thought about. and if comus had played his cards well and transformed himself from an encumbrance into a son with wealth at his command, the tragedy which she saw looming in front of her might have been avoided or at the worst whittled down to easily bearable proportions. with money behind one, the problem of where to live approaches more nearly to the simple question of where do you wish to live, and a rich daughter-in-law would have surely seen to it that she did not have to leave her square mile of mecca and go out into the wilderness of bricks and mortar. if the house in blue street could not have been compounded for there were other desirable residences which would have been capable of consoling francesca for her lost eden. and now the detested courtenay youghal, with his mocking eyes and air of youthful cynicism, had stepped in and overthrown those golden hopes and plans whose non-fulfilment would make such a world of change in her future. assuredly she had reason to feel bitter against that young man, and she was not disposed to take a very lenient view of comus's own mismanagement of the affair; her greeting when he at last arrived, was not couched in a sympathetic strain. "so you have lost your chance with the heiress," she remarked abruptly. "yes," said comus, coolly; "courtenay youghal has added her to his other successes." "and you have added her to your other failures," pursued francesca, relentlessly; her temper had been tried that day beyond ordinary limits. "i thought you seemed getting along so well with her," she continued, as comus remained uncommunicative. "we hit it off rather well together," said comus, and added with deliberate bluntness, "i suppose she got rather sick at my borrowing money from her. she thought it was all i was after." "you borrowed money from her!" said francesca; "you were fool enough to borrow money from a girl who was favourably disposed towards you, and with courtenay youghal in the background waiting to step in and oust you!" francesca's voice trembled with misery and rage. this great stroke of good luck that had seemed about to fall into their laps had been thrust aside by an act or series of acts of wanton paltry folly. the good ship had been lost for the sake of the traditional ha'porth of tar. comus had paid some pressing tailor's or tobacconist's bill with a loan unwillingly put at his disposal by the girl he was courting, and had flung away his chances of securing a wealthy and in every way desirable bride. elaine de frey and her fortune might have been the making of comus, but he had hurried in as usual to effect his own undoing. calmness did not in this case come with reflection; the more francesca thought about the matter, the more exasperated she grew. comus threw himself down in a low chair and watched her without a trace of embarrassment or concern at her mortification. he had come to her feeling rather sorry for himself, and bitterly conscious of his defeat, and she had met him with a taunt and without the least hint of sympathy; he determined that she should be tantalised with the knowledge of how small and stupid a thing had stood between the realisation and ruin of her hopes for him. "and to think she should be captured by courtenay youghal," said francesca, bitterly; "i've always deplored your intimacy with that young man." "it's hardly my intimacy with him that's made elaine accept him," said comus. francesca realised the futility of further upbraiding. through the tears of vexation that stood in her eyes, she looked across at the handsome boy who sat opposite her, mocking at his own misfortune, perversely indifferent to his folly, seemingly almost indifferent to its consequences. "comus," she said quietly and wearily, "you are an exact reversal of the legend of pandora's box. you have all the charm and advantages that a boy could want to help him on in the world, and behind it all there is the fatal damning gift of utter hopelessness." "i think," said comus, "that is the best description that anyone has ever given of me." for the moment there was a flush of sympathy and something like outspoken affection between mother and son. they seemed very much alone in the world just now, and in the general overturn of hopes and plans, there flickered a chance that each might stretch out a hand to the other, and summon back to their lives an old dead love that was the best and strongest feeling either of them had known. but the sting of disappointment was too keen, and the flood of resentment mounted too high on either side to allow the chance more than a moment in which to flicker away into nothingness. the old fatal topic of estrangement came to the fore, the question of immediate ways and means, and mother and son faced themselves again as antagonists on a well-disputed field. "what is done is done," said francesca, with a movement of tragic impatience that belied the philosophy of her words; "there is nothing to be gained by crying over spilt milk. there is the present and the future to be thought about, though. one can't go on indefinitely as a tenant-for-life in a fools' paradise." then she pulled herself together and proceeded to deliver an ultimatum which the force of circumstances no longer permitted her to hold in reserve. "it's not much use talking to you about money, as i know from long experience, but i can only tell you this, that in the middle of the season i'm already obliged to be thinking of leaving town. and you, i'm afraid, will have to be thinking of leaving england at equally short notice. henry told me the other day that he can get you something out in west africa. you've had your chance of doing something better for yourself from the financial point of view, and you've thrown it away for the sake of borrowing a little ready money for your luxuries, so now you must take what you can get. the pay won't be very good at first, but living is not dear out there." "west africa," said comus, reflectively; "it's a sort of modern substitute for the old-fashioned oubliette, a convenient depository for tiresome people. dear uncle henry may talk lugubriously about the burden of empire, but he evidently recognises its uses as a refuse consumer." "my dear comus, you are talking of the west africa of yesterday. while you have been wasting your time at school, and worse than wasting your time in the west end, other people have been grappling with the study of tropical diseases, and the west african coast country is being rapidly transformed from a lethal chamber into a sanatorium." comus laughed mockingly. "what a beautiful bit of persuasive prose; it reminds one of the psalms and even more of a company prospectus. if you were honest you'd confess that you lifted it straight out of a rubber or railway promotion scheme. seriously, mother, if i must grub about for a living, why can't i do it in england? i could go into a brewery for instance." francesca shook her head decisively; she could foresee the sort of steady work comus was likely to accomplish, with the lodestone of town and the minor attractions of race-meetings and similar festivities always beckoning to him from a conveniently attainable distance, but apart from that aspect of the case there was a financial obstacle in the way of his obtaining any employment at home. "breweries and all those sort of things necessitate money to start with; one has to pay premiums or invest capital in the undertaking, and so forth. and as we have no money available, and can scarcely pay our debts as it is, it's no use thinking about it." "can't we sell something?" asked comus. he made no actual suggestion as to what should be sacrificed, but he was looking straight at the van der meulen. for a moment francesca felt a stifling sensation of weakness, as though her heart was going to stop beating. then she sat forward in her chair and spoke with energy, almost fierceness. "when i am dead my things can be sold and dispersed. as long as i am alive i prefer to keep them by me." in her holy place, with all her treasured possessions around her, this dreadful suggestion had been made. some of her cherished household gods, souvenirs and keepsakes from past days, would, perhaps, not have fetched a very considerable sum in the auctionroom, others had a distinct value of their own, but to her they were all precious. and the van der meulen, at which comus had looked with impious appraising eyes, was the most sacred of them all. when francesca had been away from her town residence or had been confined to her bedroom through illness, the great picture with its stately solemn representation of a long-ago battle-scene, painted to flatter the flattery-loving soul of a warrior-king who was dignified even in his campaigns this was the first thing she visited on her return to town or convalescence. if an alarm of fire had been raised it would have been the first thing for whose safety she would have troubled. and comus had almost suggested that it should be parted with, as one sold railway shares and other soulless things. scolding, she had long ago realised, was a useless waste of time and energy where comus was concerned, but this evening she unloosed her tongue for the mere relief that it gave to her surcharged feelings. he sat listening without comment, though she purposely let fall remarks that she hoped might sting him into self-defence or protest. it was an unsparing indictment, the more damaging in that it was so irrefutably true, the more tragic in that it came from perhaps the one person in the world whose opinion he had ever cared for. and he sat through it as silent and seemingly unmoved as though she had been rehearsing a speech for some drawing-room comedy. when she had had her say his method of retort was not the soft answer that turneth away wrath but the inconsequent one that shelves it. "let's go and dress for dinner." the meal, like so many that francesca and comus had eaten in each other's company of late, was a silent one. now that the full bearings of the disaster had been discussed in all its aspects there was nothing more to be said. any attempt at ignoring the situation, and passing on to less controversial topics would have been a mockery and pretence which neither of them would have troubled to sustain. so the meal went forward with its dragged-out dreary intimacy of two people who were separated by a gulf of bitterness, and whose hearts were hard with resentment against one another. francesca felt a sense of relief when she was able to give the maid the order to serve her coffee upstairs. comus had a sullen scowl on his face, but he looked up as she rose to leave the room, and gave his half-mocking little laugh. "you needn't look so tragic," he said, "you're going to have your own way. i'll go out to that west african hole." chapter xiii comus found his way to his seat in the stalls of the straw exchange theatre and turned to watch the stream of distinguished and distinguishable people who made their appearance as a matter of course at a first night in the height of the season. pit and gallery were already packed with a throng, tense, expectant and alert, that waited for the rise of the curtain with the eager patience of a terrier watching a dilatory human prepare for outdoor exercises. stalls and boxes filled slowly and hesitatingly with a crowd whose component units seemed for the most part to recognise the probability that they were quite as interesting as any play they were likely to see. those who bore no particular face-value themselves derived a certain amount of social dignity from the near neighbourhood of obvious notabilities; if one could not obtain recognition oneself there was some vague pleasure in being able to recognise notoriety at intimately close quarters. "who is that woman with the auburn hair and a rather effective belligerent gleam in her eyes?" asked a man sitting just behind comus; "she looks as if she might have created the world in six days and destroyed it on the seventh." "i forget her name," said his neighbour; "she writes. she's the author of that book, 'the woman who wished it was wednesday,' you know. it used to be the convention that women writers should be plain and dowdy; now we have gone to the other extreme and build them on extravagantly decorative lines." a buzz of recognition came from the front rows of the pit, together with a craning of necks on the part of those in less favoured seats. it heralded the arrival of sherard blaw, the dramatist who had discovered himself, and who had given so ungrudgingly of his discovery to the world. lady caroline, who was already directing little conversational onslaughts from her box, gazed gently for a moment at the new arrival, and then turned to the silver-haired archdeacon sitting beside her. "they say the poor man is haunted by the fear that he will die during a general election, and that his obituary notices will be seriously curtailed by the space taken up by the election results. the curse of our party system, from his point of view, is that it takes up so much room in the press." the archdeacon smiled indulgently. as a man he was so exquisitely worldly that he fully merited the name of the heavenly worldling bestowed on him by an admiring duchess, and withal his texture was shot with a pattern of such genuine saintliness that one felt that whoever else might hold the keys of paradise he, at least, possessed a private latchkey to that abode. "is it not significant of the altered grouping of things," he observed, "that the church, as represented by me, sympathises with the message of sherard blaw, while neither the man nor his message find acceptance with unbelievers like you, lady caroline." lady caroline blinked her eyes. "my dear archdeacon," she said, "no one can be an unbeliever nowadays. the christian apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve." the archdeacon rose with a delighted chuckle. "i must go and tell that to de la poulett," he said, indicating a clerical figure sitting in the third row of the stalls; "he spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of christianity consists in the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessary to invent it." the door of the box opened and courtenay youghal entered, bringing with him subtle suggestion of chaminade and an atmosphere of political tension. the government had fallen out of the good graces of a section of its supporters, and those who were not in the know were busy predicting a serious crisis over a forthcoming division in the committee stage of an important bill. this was saturday night, and unless some successful cajolery were effected between now and monday afternoon, ministers would be, seemingly, in danger of defeat. "ah, here is youghal," said the archdeacon; "he will be able to tell us what is going to happen in the next forty-eight hours. i hear the prime minister says it is a matter of conscience, and they will stand or fall by it." his hopes and sympathies were notoriously on the ministerial side. youghal greeted lady caroline and subsided gracefully into a chair well in the front of the box. a buzz of recognition rippled slowly across the house. "for the government to fall on a matter of conscience," he said, "would be like a man cutting himself with a safety razor." lady caroline purred a gentle approval. "i'm afraid it's true, archdeacon," she said. no one can effectively defend a government when it's been in office several years. the archdeacon took refuge in light skirmishing. "i believe lady caroline sees the makings of a great socialist statesman in you, youghal," he observed. "great socialist statesmen aren't made, they're stillborn," replied youghal. "what is the play about to-night?" asked a pale young woman who had taken no part in the talk. "i don't know," said lady caroline, "but i hope it's dull. if there is any brilliant conversation in it i shall burst into tears." in the front row of the upper circle a woman with a restless starling-voice was discussing the work of a temporarily fashionable composer, chiefly in relation to her own emotions, which she seemed to think might prove generally interesting to those around her. "whenever i hear his music i feel that i want to go up into a mountain and pray. can you understand that feeling?" the girl to whom she was unburdening herself shook her head. "you see, i've heard his music chiefly in switzerland, and we were up among the mountains all the time, so it wouldn't have made any difference." "in that case," said the woman, who seemed to have emergency emotions to suit all geographical conditions, "i should have wanted to be in a great silent plain by the side of a rushing river." "what i think is so splendid about his music " commenced another starling-voice on the further side of the girl. like sheep that feed greedily before the coming of a storm the starling-voices seemed impelled to extra effort by the knowledge of four imminent intervals of acting during which they would be hushed into constrained silence. in the back row of the dress circle a late-comer, after a cursory glance at the programme, had settled down into a comfortable narrative, which was evidently the resumed thread of an unfinished taxi-drive monologue. "we all said 'it can't be captain parminter, because he's always been sweet on joan,' and then emily said " the curtain went up, and emily's contribution to the discussion had to be held over till the entr'acte. the play promised to be a success. the author, avoiding the pitfall of brilliancy, had aimed at being interesting and as far as possible, bearing in mind that his play was a comedy, he had striven to be amusing. above all he had remembered that in the laws of stage proportions it is permissible and generally desirable that the part should be greater than the whole; hence he had been careful to give the leading lady such a clear and commanding lead over the other characters of the play that it was impossible for any of them ever to get on level terms with her. the action of the piece was now and then delayed thereby, but the duration of its run would be materially prolonged. the curtain came down on the first act amid an encouraging instalment of applause, and the audience turned its back on the stage and began to take a renewed interest in itself. the authoress of "the woman who wished it was wednesday" had swept like a convalescent whirlwind, subdued but potentially tempestuous, into lady caroline's box. "i've just trodden with all my weight on the foot of an eminent publisher as i was leaving my seat," she cried, with a peal of delighted laughter. "he was such a dear about it; i said i hoped i hadn't hurt him, and he said, 'i suppose you think, who drives hard bargains should himself be hard.' wasn't it pet-lamb of him?" "i've never trodden on a pet lamb," said lady caroline, "so i've no idea what its behaviour would be under the circumstances." "tell me," said the authoress, coming to the front of the box, the better to survey the house, and perhaps also with a charitable desire to make things easy for those who might pardonably wish to survey her, "tell me, please, where is the girl sitting whom courtenay youghal is engaged to?" elaine was pointed out to her, sitting in the fourth row of the stalls, on the opposite side of the house to where comus had his seat. once during the interval she had turned to give him a friendly nod of recognition as he stood in one of the side gangways, but he was absorbed at the moment in looking at himself in the glass panel. the grave brown eyes and the mocking greengrey ones had looked their last into each other's depths. for comus this first-night performance, with its brilliant gathering of spectators, its groups and coteries of lively talkers, even its counterfoil of dull chatterers, its pervading atmosphere of stage and social movement, and its intruding undercurrent of political flutter, all this composed a tragedy in which he was the chief character. it was the life he knew and loved and basked in, and it was the life he was leaving. it would go on reproducing itself again and again, with its stage interest and social interest and intruding outside interests, with the same lively chattering crowd, the people who had done things being pointed out by people who recognised them to people who didn't it would all go on with unflagging animation and sparkle and enjoyment, and for him it would have stopped utterly. he would be in some unheard-of sunblistered wilderness, where natives and pariah dogs and raucousthroated crows fringed round mockingly on one's loneliness, where one rode for sweltering miles for the chance of meeting a collector or police officer, with whom most likely on closer acquaintance one had hardly two ideas in common, where female society was represented at long intervals by some climate-withered woman missionary or official's wife, where food and sickness and veterinary lore became at last the three outstanding subjects on which the mind settled or rather sank. that was the life he foresaw and dreaded, and that was the life he was going to. for a boy who went out to it from the dulness of some country rectory, from a neighbourhood where a flower show and a cricket match formed the social landmarks of the year, the feeling of exile might not be very crushing, might indeed be lost in the sense of change and adventure. but comus had lived too thoroughly in the centre of things to regard life in a backwater as anything else than stagnation, and stagnation while one is young he justly regarded as an offence against nature and reason, in keeping with the perverted mockery that sends decrepit invalids touring painfully about the world and shuts panthers up in narrow cages. he was being put aside, as a wine is put aside, but to deteriorate instead of gaining in the process, to lose the best time of his youth and health and good looks in a world where youth and health and good looks count for much and where time never returns lost possessions. and thus, as the curtain swept down on the close of each act, comus felt a sense of depression and deprivation sweep down on himself; bitterly he watched his last evening of social gaiety slipping away to its end. in less than an hour it would be over; in a few months' time it would be an unreal memory. in the third interval, as he gazed round at the chattering house, someone touched him on the arm. it was lady veula croot. "i suppose in a week's time you'll be on the high seas," she said. "i'm coming to your farewell dinner, you know; your mother has just asked me. i'm not going to talk the usual rot to you about how much you will like it and so on. i sometimes think that one of the advantages of hell will be that no one will have the impertinence to point out to you that you're really better off than you would be anywhere else. what do you think of the play? of course one can foresee the end; she will come to her husband with the announcement that their longed-for child is going to be born, and that will smooth over everything. so conveniently effective, to wind up a comedy with the commencement of someone else's tragedy. and every one will go away saying 'i'm glad it had a happy ending.'" lady veula moved back to her seat, with her pleasant smile on her lips and the look of infinite weariness in her eyes. the interval, the last interval, was drawing to a close and the house began to turn with fidgetty attention towards the stage for the unfolding of the final phase of the play. francesca sat in serena golackly's box listening to colonel springfield's story of what happened to a pigeon-cote in his compound at poona. everyone who knew the colonel had to listen to that story a good many times, but lady caroline had mitigated the boredom of the infliction, and in fact invested it with a certain sporting interest, by offering a prize to the person who heard it oftenest in the course of the season, the competitors being under an honourable understanding not to lead up to the subject. ada spelvexit and a boy in the foreign office were at present at the top of the list with five recitals each to their score, but the former was suspected of doubtful adherence to the rules and spirit of the competition. "and there, dear lady," concluded the colonel, "were the eleven dead pigeons. what had become of the bandicoot no one ever knew." francesca thanked him for his story, and complacently inscribed the figure 4 on the margin of her theatre programme. almost at the same moment she heard george st. michael's voice pattering out a breathless piece of intelligence for the edification of serena golackly and anyone else who might care to listen. francesca galvanised into sudden attention. "emmeline chetrof to a fellow in the indian forest department. he's got nothing but his pay and they can't be married for four or five years; an absurdly long engagement, don't you think so? all very well to wait seven years for a wife in patriarchal times, when you probably had others to go on with, and you lived long enough to celebrate your own tercentenary, but under modern conditions it seems a foolish arrangement." st. michael spoke almost with a sense of grievance. a marriage project that tied up all the small pleasant nuptial gossip-items about bridesmaids and honeymoon and recalcitrant aunts and so forth, for an indefinite number of years seemed scarcely decent in his eyes, and there was little satisfaction or importance to be derived from early and special knowledge of an event which loomed as far distant as a presidential election or a change of viceroy. but to francesca, who had listened with startled apprehension at the mention of emmeline chetrof's name, the news came in a flood of relief and thankfulness. short of entering a nunnery and taking celibate vows, emmeline could hardly have behaved more conveniently than in tying herself up to a lover whose circumstances made it necessary to relegate marriage to the distant future. for four or five years francesca was assured of undisturbed possession of the house in blue street, and after that period who knew what might happen? the engagement might stretch on indefinitely, it might even come to nothing under the weight of its accumulated years, as sometimes happened with these protracted affairs. emmeline might lose her fancy for her absentee lover, and might never replace him with another. a golden possibility of perpetual tenancy of her present home began to float once more through francesca's mind. as long as emmeline had been unbespoken in the marriage market there had always been the haunting likelihood of seeing the dreaded announcement, "a marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place," in connection with her name. and now a marriage had been arranged and would not shortly take place, might indeed never take place. st. michael's information was likely to be correct in this instance; he would never have invented a piece of matrimonial intelligence which gave such little scope for supplementary detail of the kind he loved to supply. as francesca turned to watch the fourth act of the play, her mind was singing a paean of thankfulness and exultation. it was as though some artificer sent by the gods had reinforced with a substantial cord the horsehair thread that held up the sword of damocles over her head. her love for her home, for her treasured household possessions, and her pleasant social life was able to expand once more in present security, and feed on future hope. she was still young enough to count four or five years as a long time, and to-night she was optimistic enough to prophesy smooth things of the future that lay beyond that span. of the fourth act, with its carefully held back but obviously imminent reconciliation between the leading characters, she took in but little, except that she vaguely understood it to have a happy ending. as the lights went up she looked round on the dispersing audience with a feeling of friendliness uppermost in her mind; even the sight of elaine de frey and courtenay youghal leaving the theatre together did not inspire her with a tenth part of the annoyance that their entrance had caused her. serena's invitation to go on to the savoy for supper fitted in exactly with her mood of exhilaration. it would be a fit and appropriate wind-up to an auspicious evening. the cold chicken and modest brand of chablis waiting for her at home should give way to a banquet of more festive nature. in the crush of the vestibule, friends and enemies, personal and political, were jostled and locked together in the general effort to rejoin temporarily estranged garments and secure the attendance of elusive vehicles. lady caroline found herself at close quarters with the estimable henry greech, and experienced some of the joy which comes to the homeward wending sportsman when a chance shot presents itself on which he may expend his remaining cartridges. "so the government is going to climb down, after all," she said, with a provocative assumption of private information on the subject. "i assure you the government will do nothing of the kind," replied the member of parliament with befitting dignity; "the prime minister told me last night that under no circumstances " "my dear mr. greech," said lady caroline, "we all know that prime ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other wedded couples they sometimes live apart." for her, at any rate, the comedy had had a happy ending. comus made his way slowly and lingeringly from the stalls, so slowly that the lights were already being turned down and great shroud-like dust-cloths were being swaythed over the ornamental gilt-work. the laughing, chattering, yawning throng had filtered out of the vestibule, and was melting away in final groups from the steps of the theatre. an impatient attendant gave him his coat and locked up the cloak room. comus stepped out under the portico; he looked at the posters announcing the play, and in anticipation he could see other posters announcing its 200th performance. two hundred performances; by that time the straw exchange theatre would be to him something so remote and unreal that it would hardly seem to exist or to have ever existed except in his fancy. and to the laughing chattering throng that would pass in under that portico to the 200th performance, he would be, to those that had known him, something equally remote and non-existent. "the good-looking bassington boy? oh, dead, or rubber-growing or sheep-farming or something of that sort." chapter xiv the farewell dinner which francesca had hurriedly organised in honour of her son's departure threatened from the outset to be a doubtfully successful function. in the first place, as he observed privately, there was very little of comus and a good deal of farewell in it. his own particular friends were unrepresented. courtenay youghal was out of the question; and though francesca would have stretched a point and welcomed some of his other male associates of whom she scarcely approved, he himself had been opposed to including any of them in the invitations. on the other hand, as henry greech had provided comus with this job that he was going out to, and was, moreover, finding part of the money for the necessary outfit, francesca had felt it her duty to ask him and his wife to the dinner; the obtuseness that seems to cling to some people like a garment throughout their life had caused mr. greech to accept the invitation. when comus heard of the circumstance he laughed long and boisterously; his spirits, francesca noted, seemed to be rising fast as the hour for departure drew near. the other guests included serena golackly and lady veula, the latter having been asked on the inspiration of the moment at the theatrical first-night. in the height of the season it was not easy to get together a goodly selection of guests at short notice, and francesca had gladly fallen in with serena's suggestion of bringing with her stephen thorle, who was alleged, in loose feminine phrasing, to "know all about" tropical africa. his travels and experiences in those regions probably did not cover much ground or stretch over any great length of time, but he was one of those individuals who can describe a continent on the strength of a few days' stay in a coast town as intimately and dogmatically as a paleontologist will reconstruct an extinct mammal from the evidence of a stray shin bone. he had the loud penetrating voice and the prominent penetrating eyes of a man who can do no listening in the ordinary way and whose eyes have to perform the function of listening for him. his vanity did not necessarily make him unbearable, unless one had to spend much time in his society, and his need for a wide field of audience and admiration was mercifully calculated to spread his operations over a considerable human area. moreover, his craving for attentive listeners forced him to interest himself in a wonderful variety of subjects on which he was able to discourse fluently and with a certain semblance of special knowledge. politics he avoided; the ground was too well known, and there was a definite no to every definite yes that could be put forward. moreover, argument was not congenial to his disposition, which preferred an unchallenged flow of dissertation modified by occasional helpful questions which formed the starting point for new offshoots of word-spinning. the promotion of cottage industries, the prevention of juvenile street trading, the extension of the borstal prison system, the furtherance of vague talkative religious movements the fostering of inter-racial ententes, all found in him a tireless exponent, a fluent and entertaining, though perhaps not very convincing, advocate. with the real motive power behind these various causes he was not very closely identified; to the spade-workers who carried on the actual labours of each particular movement he bore the relation of a trowel-worker, delving superficially at the surface, but able to devote a proportionately far greater amount of time to the advertisement of his progress and achievements. such was stephen thorle, a governess in the nursery of chelsea-bred religions, a skilled window-dresser in the emporium of his own personality, and needless to say, evanescently popular amid a wide but shifting circle of acquaintances. he improved on the record of a socially much-travelled individual whose experience has become classical, and went to most of the best houses twice. his inclusion as a guest at this particular dinner-party was not a very happy inspiration. he was inclined to patronise comus, as well as the african continent, and on even slighter acquaintance. with the exception of henry greech, whose feelings towards his nephew had been soured by many years of overt antagonism, there was an uncomfortable feeling among those present that the topic of the black-sheep export trade, as comus would have himself expressed it, was being given undue prominence in what should have been a festive farewell banquet. and comus, in whose honour the feast was given, did not contribute much towards its success; though his spirits seemed strung up to a high pitch his merriment was more the merriment of a cynical and amused onlooker than of one who responds to the gaiety of his companions. sometimes he laughed quietly to himself at some chance remark of a scarcely mirth-provoking nature, and lady veula, watching him narrowly, came to the conclusion that an element of fear was blended with his seemingly buoyant spirits. once or twice he caught her eye across the table, and a certain sympathy seemed to grow up between them, as though they were both consciously watching some lugubrious comedy that was being played out before them. an untoward little incident had marked the commencement of the meal. a small still-life picture that hung over the sideboard had snapped its cord and slid down with an alarming clatter on to the crowded board beneath it. the picture itself was scarcely damaged, but its fall had been accompanied by a tinkle of broken glass, and it was found that a liqueur glass, one out of a set of seven that would be impossible to match, had been shivered into fragments. francesca's almost motherly love for her possessions made her peculiarly sensible to a feeling of annoyance and depression at the accident, but she turned politely to listen to mrs. greech's account of a misfortune in which four soup-plates were involved. mrs. henry was not a brilliant conversationalist, and her flank was speedily turned by stephen thorle, who recounted a slum experience in which two entire families did all their feeding out of one damaged soup-plate. "the gratitude of those poor creatures when i presented them with a set of table crockery apiece, the tears in their eyes and in their voices when they thanked me, would be impossible to describe." "thank you all the same for describing it," said comus. the listening eyes went swiftly round the table to gather evidence as to how this rather disconcerting remark had been received, but thorle's voice continued uninterruptedly to retail stories of eastend gratitude, never failing to mention the particular deeds of disinterested charity on his part which had evoked and justified the gratitude. mrs. greech had to suppress the interesting sequel to her broken-crockery narrative, to wit, how she subsequently matched the shattered soup-plates at harrod's. like an imported plant species that sometimes flourishes exceedingly, and makes itself at home to the dwarfing and overshadowing of all native species, thorle dominated the dinner-party and thrust its original purport somewhat into the background. serena began to look helplessly apologetic. it was altogether rather a relief when the filling of champagne glasses gave francesca an excuse for bringing matters back to their intended footing. "we must all drink a health," she said; "comus, my own dear boy, a safe and happy voyage to you, much prosperity in the life you are going out to, and in due time a safe and happy return " her hand gave an involuntary jerk in the act of raising the glass, and the wine went streaming across the tablecloth in a froth of yellow bubbles. it certainly was not turning out a comfortable or auspicious dinner party. "my dear mother," cried comus, "you must have been drinking healths all the afternoon to make your hand so unsteady." he laughed gaily and with apparent carelessness, but again lady veula caught the frightened note in his laughter. mrs. henry, with practical sympathy, was telling francesca two good ways for getting wine stains out of tablecloths. the smaller economies of life were an unnecessary branch of learning for mrs. greech, but she studied them as carefully and conscientiously as a stay-at-home plaindwelling english child commits to memory the measurements and altitudes of the world's principal mountain peaks. some women of her temperament and mentality know by heart the favourite colours, flowers and hymn-tunes of all the members of the royal family; mrs. greech would possibly have failed in an examination of that nature, but she knew what to do with carrots that have been over-long in storage. francesca did not renew her speech-making; a chill seemed to have fallen over all efforts at festivity, and she contented herself with refilling her glass and simply drinking to her boy's good health. the others followed her example, and comus drained his glass with a brief "thank you all very much." the sense of constraint which hung over the company was not, however, marked by any uncomfortable pause in the conversation. henry greech was a fluent thinker, of the kind that prefer to do their thinking aloud; the silence that descended on him as a mantle in the house of commons was an official livery of which he divested himself as thoroughly as possible in private life. he did not propose to sit through dinner as a mere listener to mr. thorle's personal narrative of philanthropic movements and experiences, and took the first opportunity of launching himself into a flow of satirical observations on current political affairs. lady veula was inured to this sort of thing in her own home circle, and sat listening with the stoical indifference with which an esquimau might accept the occurrence of one snowstorm the more, in the course of an arctic winter. serena golackly felt a certain relief at the fact that her imported guest was not, after all, monopolising the conversation. but the latter was too determined a personality to allow himself to be thrust aside for many minutes by the talkative m.p. henry greech paused for an instant to chuckle at one of his own shafts of satire, and immediately thorle's penetrating voice swept across the table. "oh, you politicians!" he exclaimed, with pleasant superiority; "you are always fighting about how things should be done, and the consequence is you are never able to do anything. would you like me to tell you what a unitarian horsedealer said to me at brindisi about politicians?" a unitarian horsedealer at brindisi had all the allurement of the unexpected. henry greech's witticisms at the expense of the front opposition bench were destined to remain as unfinished as his wife's history of the broken soup-plates. thorle was primed with an ample succession of stories and themes, chiefly concerning poverty, thriftlessness, reclamation, reformed characters, and so forth, which carried him in an almost uninterrupted sequence through the remainder of the dinner. "what i want to do is to make people think," he said, turning his prominent eyes on to his hostess; "it's so hard to make people think." "at any rate you give them the opportunity," said comus, cryptically. as the ladies rose to leave the table comus crossed over to pick up one of lady veula's gloves that had fallen to the floor. "i did not know you kept a dog," said lady veula. "we don't," said comus, "there isn't one in the house." "i could have sworn i saw one follow you across the hall this evening," she said. "a small black dog, something like a schipperke?" asked comus in a low voice. "yes, that was it." "i saw it myself to-night; it ran from behind my chair just as i was sitting down. don't say anything to the others about it; it would frighten my mother." "have you ever seen it before?" lady veula asked quickly. "once, when i was six years old. it followed my father downstairs." lady veula said nothing. she knew that comus had lost his father at the age of six. in the drawing-room serena made nervous excuses for her talkative friend. "really, rather an interesting man, you know, and up to the eyes in all sorts of movements. just the sort of person to turn loose at a drawing-room meeting, or to send down to a mission-hall in some unheard-of neighbourhood. given a sounding-board and a harmonium, and a titled woman of some sort in the chair, and he'll be perfectly happy; i must say i hadn't realised how overpowering he might be at a small dinner-party." "i should say he was a very good man," said mrs. greech; she had forgiven the mutilation of her soup-plate story. the party broke up early as most of the guests had other engagements to keep. with a belated recognition of the farewell nature of the occasion they made pleasant little good-bye remarks to comus, with the usual predictions of prosperity and anticipations of an ultimate auspicious return. even henry greech sank his personal dislike of the boy for the moment, and made hearty jocular allusions to a home-coming, which, in the elder man's eyes, seemed possibly pleasantly remote. lady veula alone made no reference to the future; she simply said, "good-bye, comus," but her voice was the kindest of all and he responded with a look of gratitude. the weariness in her eyes was more marked than ever as she lay back against the cushions of her carriage. "what a tragedy life is," she said, aloud to herself. serena and stephen thorle were the last to leave, and francesca stood alone for a moment at the head of the stairway watching comus laughing and chatting as he escorted the departing guests to the door. the ice-wall was melting under the influence of coming separation, and never had he looked more adorably handsome in her eyes, never had his merry laugh and mischief-loving gaiety seemed more infectious than on this night of his farewell banquet. she was glad enough that he was going away from a life of idleness and extravagance and temptation, but she began to suspect that she would miss, for a little while at any rate, the high-spirited boy who could be so attractive in his better moods. her impulse, after the guests had gone, was to call him to her and hold him once more in her arms, and repeat her wishes for his happiness and good-luck in the land he was going to, and her promise of his welcome back, some not too distant day, to the land he was leaving. she wanted to forget, and to make him forget, the months of irritable jangling and sharp discussions, the months of cold aloofness and indifference and to remember only that he was her own dear comus as in the days of yore, before he had grown from an unmanageable pickle into a weariful problem. but she feared lest she should break down, and she did not wish to cloud his light-hearted gaiety on the very eve of his departure. she watched him for a moment as he stood in the hall, settling his tie before a mirror, and then went quietly back to her drawing-room. it had not been a very successful dinner party, and the general effect it had left on her was one of depression. comus, with a lively musical-comedy air on his lips, and a look of wretchedness in his eyes, went out to visit the haunts that he was leaving so soon. chapter xv elaine youghal sat at lunch in the speise saal of one of vienna's costlier hotels. the double-headed eagle, with its "k.u.k." legend, everywhere met the eye and announced the imperial favour in which the establishment basked. some several square yards of yellow bunting, charged with the image of another double-headed eagle, floating from the highest flag-staff above the building, betrayed to the initiated the fact that a russian grand duke was concealed somewhere on the premises. unannounced by heraldic symbolism but unconcealable by reason of nature's own blazonry, were several citizens and citizenesses of the great republic of the western world. one or two cobdenite members of the british parliament engaged in the useful task of proving that the cost of living in vienna was on an exorbitant scale, flitted with restrained importance through a land whose fatness they had come to spy out; every fancied over-charge in their bills was welcome as providing another nail in the coffin of their fiscal opponents. it is the glory of democracies that they may be misled but never driven. here and there, like brave deeds in a dust-patterned world, flashed and glittered the sumptuous uniforms of representatives of the austrian military caste. also in evidence, at discreet intervals, were stray units of the semetic tribe that nineteen centuries of european neglect had been unable to mislay. elaine sitting with courtenay at an elaborately appointed luncheon table, gay with high goblets of bohemian glassware, was mistress of three discoveries. first, to her disappointment, that if you frequent the more expensive hotels of europe you must be prepared to find, in whatever country you may chance to be staying, a depressing international likeness between them all. secondly, to her relief, that one is not expected to be sentimentally amorous during a modern honeymoon. thirdly, rather to her dismay, that courtenay youghal did not necessarily expect her to be markedly affectionate in private. someone had described him, after their marriage, as one of nature's bachelors, and she began to see how aptly the description fitted him. "will those germans on our left never stop talking?" she asked, as an undying flow of teutonic small talk rattled and jangled across the intervening stretch of carpet. "not one of those three women has ceased talking for an instant since we've been sitting here." "they will presently, if only for a moment," said courtenay; "when the dish you have ordered comes in there will be a deathly silence at the next table. no german can see a plat brought in for someone else without being possessed with a great fear that it represents a more toothsome morsel or a better money's worth than what he has ordered for himself." the exuberant teutonic chatter was balanced on the other side of the room by an even more penetrating conversation unflaggingly maintained by a party of americans, who were sitting in judgment on the cuisine of the country they were passing through, and finding few extenuating circumstances. "what mr. lonkins wants is a real deep cherry pie," announced a lady in a tone of dramatic and honest conviction. "why, yes, that is so," corroborated a gentleman who was apparently the mr. lonkins in question; "a real deep cherry pie." "we had the same trouble way back in paris," proclaimed another lady; "little jerome and the girls don't want to eat any more creme renversee. i'd give anything if they could get some real cherry pie." "real deep cherry pie," assented mr. lonkins. "way down in ohio we used to have peach pie that was real good," said mrs. lonkins, turning on a tap of reminiscence that presently flowed to a cascade. the subject of pies seemed to lend itself to indefinite expansion. "do those people think of nothing but their food?" asked elaine, as the virtues of roasted mutton suddenly came to the fore and received emphatic recognition, even the absent and youthful jerome being quoted in its favour. "on the contrary," said courtenay, "they are a widely-travelled set, and the man has had a notably interesting career. it is a form of home-sickness with them to discuss and lament the cookery and foods that they've never had the leisure to stay at home and digest. the wandering jew probably babbled unremittingly about some breakfast dish that took so long to prepare that he had never time to eat it." a waiter deposited a dish of wiener nierenbraten in front of elaine. at the same moment a magic hush fell upon the three german ladies at the adjoining table, and the flicker of a great fear passed across their eyes. then they burst forth again into tumultuous chatter. courtenay had proved a reliable prophet. almost at the same moment as the luncheon-dish appeared on the scene, two ladies arrived at a neighbouring table, and bowed with dignified cordiality to elaine and courtenay. they were two of the more worldly and travelled of elaine's extensive stock of aunts, and they happened to be making a short stay at the same hotel as the young couple. they were far too correct and rationally minded to intrude themselves on their niece, but it was significant of elaine's altered view as to the sanctity of honeymoon life that she secretly rather welcomed the presence of her two relatives in the hotel, and had found time and occasion to give them more of her society than she would have considered necessary or desirable a few weeks ago. the younger of the two she rather liked, in a restrained fashion, as one likes an unpretentious watering-place or a restaurant that does not try to give one a musical education in addition to one's dinner. one felt instinctively about her that she would never wear rather more valuable diamonds than any other woman in the room, and would never be the only person to be saved in a steamboat disaster or hotel fire. as a child she might have been perfectly well able to recite "on linden when the sun was low," but one felt certain that nothing ever induced her to do so. the elder aunt, mrs. goldbrook, did not share her sister's character as a human rest-cure; most people found her rather disturbing, chiefly, perhaps, from her habit of asking unimportant questions with enormous solemnity. her manner of enquiring after a trifling ailment gave one the impression that she was more concerned with the fortunes of the malady than with oneself, and when one got rid of a cold one felt that she almost expected to be given its postal address. probably her manner was merely the defensive outwork of an innate shyness, but she was not a woman who commanded confidences. "a telephone call for courtenay," commented the younger of the two women as youghal hurriedly flashed through the room; "the telephone system seems to enter very largely into that young man's life." "the telephone has robbed matrimony of most of its sting," said the elder; "so much more discreet than pen and ink communications which get read by the wrong people." elaine's aunts were conscientiously worldly; they were the natural outcome of a stock that had been conscientiously straight-laced for many generations. elaine had progressed to the pancake stage before courtenay returned. "sorry to be away so long," he said, "but i've arranged something rather nice for to-night. there's rather a jolly masquerade ball on. i've 'phoned about getting a costume for you and it's alright. it will suit you beautifully, and i've got my harlequin dress with me. madame kelnicort, excellent soul, is going to chaperone you, and she'll take you back any time you like; i'm quite unreliable when i get into fancy dress. i shall probably keep going till some unearthly hour of the morning." a masquerade ball in a strange city hardly represented elaine's idea of enjoyment. carefully to disguise one's identity in a neighbourhood where one was entirely unknown seemed to her rather meaningless. with courtenay, of course, it was different; he seemed to have friends and acquaintances everywhere. however, the matter had progressed to a point which would have made a refusal to go seem rather ungracious. elaine finished her pancake and began to take a polite interest in her costume. "what is your character?" asked madame kelnicort that evening, as they uncloaked, preparatory to entering the already crowded ballroom. "i believe i'm supposed to represent marjolaine de montfort, whoever she may have been," said elaine. "courtenay declares he only wanted to marry me because i'm his ideal of her." "but what a mistake to go as a character you know nothing about. to enjoy a masquerade ball you ought to throw away your own self and be the character you represent. now courtenay has been harlequin since half-way through dinner; i could see it dancing in his eyes. at about six o'clock to-morrow morning he will fall asleep and wake up a member of the british house of parliament on his honeymoon, but to-night he is unrestrainedly harlequin." elaine stood in the ball-room surrounded by a laughing jostling throng of pierrots, jockeys, dresden-china shepherdesses, roumanian peasant-girls and all the lively make-believe creatures that form the ingredients of a fancy-dress ball. as she stood watching them she experienced a growing feeling of annoyance, chiefly with herself. she was assisting, as the french say, at one of the gayest scenes of europe's gayest capital, and she was conscious of being absolutely unaffected by the gaiety around her. the costumes were certainly interesting to look at, and the music good to listen to, and to that extent she was amused, but the abandon of the scene made no appeal to her. it was like watching a game of which you did not know the rules, and in the issue of which you were not interested. elaine began to wonder what was the earliest moment at which she could drag madame kelnicort away from the revel without being guilty of sheer cruelty. then courtenay wriggled out of the crush and came towards her, a joyous laughing courtenay, looking younger and handsomer than she had ever seen him. she could scarcely recognise in him to-night the rising young debater who made embarrassing onslaughts on the government's foreign policy before a crowded house of commons. he claimed her for the dance that was just starting, and steered her dexterously into the heart of the waltzing crowd. "you look more like marjolaine than i should have thought a mortal woman of these days could look," he declared, "only marjolaine did smile sometimes. you have rather the air of wondering if you'd left out enough tea for the servants' breakfast. don't mind my teasing; i love you to look like that, and besides, it makes a splendid foil to my harlequin my selfishness coming to the fore again, you see. but you really are to go home the moment you're bored; the excellent kelnicort gets heaps of dances throughout the winter, so don't mind sacrificing her." a little later in the evening elaine found herself standing out a dance with a grave young gentleman from the russian embassy. "monsieur courtenay enjoys himself, doesn't he?" he observed, as the youthful-looking harlequin flashed past them, looking like some restless gorgeous-hued dragonfly; "why is it that the good god has given your countrymen the boon of eternal youth? some of your countrywomen, too, but all of the men." elaine could think of many of her countrymen who were not and never could have been youthful, but as far as courtenay was concerned she recognised the fitness of the remark. and the recognition carried with it a sense of depression. would he always remain youthful and keen on gaiety and revelling while she grew staid and retiring? she had thrust the lively intractable comus out of her mind, as by his perverseness he had thrust himself out of her heart, and she had chosen the brilliant young man of affairs as her husband. he had honestly let her see the selfish side of his character while he was courting her, but she had been prepared to make due sacrifices to the selfishness of a public man who had his career to consider above all other things. would she also have to make sacrifices to the harlequin spirit which was now revealing itself as an undercurrent in his nature? when one has inured oneself to the idea of a particular form of victimisation it is disconcerting to be confronted with another. many a man who would patiently undergo martyrdom for religion's sake would be furiously unwilling to be a martyr to neuralgia. "i think that is why you english love animals so much," pursued the young diplomat; "you are such splendid animals yourselves. you are lively because you want to be lively, not because people are looking on at you. monsieur courtenay is certainly an animal. i mean it as a high compliment." "am i an animal?" asked elaine. "i was going to say you are an angel," said the russian, in some embarrassment, "but i do not think that would do; angels and animals would never get on together. to get on with animals you must have a sense of humour, and i don't suppose angels have any sense of humour; you see it would be no use to them as they never hear any jokes." "perhaps," said elaine, with a tinge of bitterness in her voice, "perhaps i am a vegetable." "i think you most remind me of a picture," said the russian. it was not the first time elaine had heard the simile. "i know," she said, "the narrow gallery at the louvre; attributed to leonardo da vinci." evidently the impression she made on people was solely one of externals. was that how courtenay regarded her? was that to be her function and place in life, a painted background, a decorative setting to other people's triumphs and tragedies? somehow to-night she had the feeling that a general might have who brought imposing forces into the field and could do nothing with them. she possessed youth and good looks, considerable wealth, and had just made what would be thought by most people a very satisfactory marriage. and already she seemed to be standing aside as an onlooker where she had expected herself to be taking a leading part. "does this sort of thing appeal to you?" she asked the young russian, nodding towards the gay scrimmage of masqueraders and rather prepared to hear an amused negative." "but yes, of course," he answered; "costume balls, fancy fairs, cafe chantant, casino, anything that is not real life appeals to us russians. real life with us is the sort of thing that maxim gorki deals in. it interests us immensely, but we like to get away from it sometimes." madame kelnicort came up with another prospective partner, and elaine delivered her ukase: one more dance and then back to the hotel. without any special regret she made her retreat from the revel which courtenay was enjoying under the impression that it was life and the young russian under the firm conviction that it was not. elaine breakfasted at her aunts' table the next morning at much her usual hour. courtenay was sleeping the sleep of a happy tired animal. he had given instructions to be called at eleven o'clock, from which time onward the neue freie presse, the zeit, and his toilet would occupy his attention till he appeared at the luncheon table. there were not many people breakfasting when elaine arrived on the scene, but the room seemed to be fuller than it really was by reason of a penetrating voice that was engaged in recounting how far the standard of viennese breakfast fare fell below the expectations and desires of little jerome and the girls. "if ever little jerome becomes president of the united states," said elaine, "i shall be able to contribute quite an informing article on his gastronomic likes and dislikes to the papers." the aunts were discreetly inquisitive as to the previous evening's entertainment. "if elaine would flirt mildly with somebody it would be such a good thing," said mrs. goldbrook; "it would remind courtenay that he's not the only attractive young man in the world." elaine, however, did not gratify their hopes; she referred to the ball with the detachment she would have shown in describing a drawing-room show of cottage industries. it was not difficult to discern in her description of the affair the confession that she had been slightly bored. from courtenay, later in the day, the aunts received a much livelier impression of the festivities, from which it was abundantly clear that he at any rate had managed to amuse himself. neither did it appear that his good opinion of his own attractions had suffered any serious shock. he was distinctly in a very good temper. "the secret of enjoying a honeymoon," said mrs. goldbrook afterwards to her sister, "is not to attempt too much." "you mean ?" "courtenay is content to try and keep one person amused and happy, and he thoroughly succeeds." "i certainly don't think elaine is going to be very happy," said her sister, "but at least courtenay saved her from making the greatest mistake she could have made marrying that young bassington." "he has also," said mrs. goldbrook, "helped her to make the next biggest mistake of her life marrying courtenay youghal. chapter xvi it was late afternoon by the banks of a swiftly rushing river, a river that gave back a haze of heat from its waters as though it were some stagnant steaming lagoon, and yet seemed to be whirling onward with the determination of a living thing, perpetually eager and remorseless, leaping savagely at any obstacle that attempted to stay its course; an unfriendly river, to whose waters you committed yourself at your peril. under the hot breathless shade of the trees on its shore arose that acrid all-pervading smell that seems to hang everywhere about the tropics, a smell as of some monstrous musty still-room where herbs and spices have been crushed and distilled and stored for hundreds of years, and where the windows have seldom been opened. in the dazzling heat that still held undisputed sway over the scene, insects and birds seemed preposterously alive and active, flitting their gay colours through the sunbeams, and crawling over the baked dust in the full swing and pursuit of their several businesses; the flies engaged in heaven knows what, and the fly-catchers busy with the flies. beasts and humans showed no such indifference to the temperature; the sun would have to slant yet further downward before the earth would become a fit arena for their revived activities. in the sheltered basement of a wayside rest-house a gang of native hammock-bearers slept or chattered drowsily through the last hours of the long mid-day halt; wide awake, yet almost motionless in the thrall of a heavy lassitude, their european master sat alone in an upper chamber, staring out through a narrow window-opening at the native village, spreading away in thick clusters of huts girt around with cultivated vegetation. it seemed a vast human anthill, which would presently be astir with its teeming human life, as though the sun god in his last departing stride had roused it with a careless kick. even as comus watched he could see the beginnings of the evening's awakening. women, squatting in front of their huts, began to pound away at the rice or maize that would form the evening meal, girls were collecting their water pots preparatory to a walk down to the river, and enterprising goats made tentative forays through gaps in the ill-kept fences of neighbouring garden plots; their hurried retreats showed that here at least someone was keeping alert and wakeful vigil. behind a hut perched on a steep hill-side, just opposite to the rest-house, two boys were splitting wood with a certain languid industry; further down the road a group of dogs were leisurely working themselves up to quarrelling pitch. here and there, bands of evil-looking pigs roamed about, busy with foraging excursions that came unpleasantly athwart the border-line of scavenging. and from the trees that bounded and intersected the village rose the horrible, tireless, spiteful-sounding squawking of the iron-throated crows. comus sat and watched it all with a sense of growing aching depression. it was so utterly trivial to his eyes, so devoid of interest, and yet it was so real, so serious, so implacable in its continuity. the brain grew tired with the thought of its unceasing reproduction. it had all gone on, as it was going on now, by the side of the great rushing swirling river, this tilling and planting and harvesting, marketing and store-keeping, feast-making and fetish-worship and love-making, burying and giving in marriage, child-bearing and child-rearing, all this had been going on, in the shimmering, blistering heat and the warm nights, while he had been a youngster at school, dimly recognising africa as a division of the earth's surface that it was advisable to have a certain nodding acquaintance with. it had been going on in all its trifling detail, all its serious intensity, when his father and his grandfather in their day had been little boys at school, it would go on just as intently as ever long after comus and his generation had passed away, just as the shadows would lengthen and fade under the mulberry trees in that far away english garden, round the old stone fountain where a leaden otter for ever preyed on a leaden salmon. comus rose impatiently from his seat, and walked wearily across the hut to another window-opening which commanded a broad view of the river. there was something which fascinated and then depressed one in its ceaseless hurrying onward sweep, its tons of water rushing on for all time, as long as the face of the earth should remain unchanged. on its further shore could be seen spread out at intervals other teeming villages, with their cultivated plots and pasture clearings, their moving dots which meant cattle and goats and dogs and children. and far up its course, lost in the forest growth that fringed its banks, were hidden away yet more villages, human herding-grounds where men dwelt and worked and bartered, squabbled and worshipped, sickened and perished, while the river went by with its endless swirl and rush of gleaming waters. one could well understand primitive early races making propitiatory sacrifices to the spirit of a great river on whose shores they dwelt. time and the river were the two great forces that seemed to matter here. it was almost a relief to turn back to that other outlook and watch the village life that was now beginning to wake in earnest. the procession of water-fetchers had formed itself in a long chattering line that stretched river-wards. comus wondered how many tens of thousands of times that procession had been formed since first the village came into existence. they had been doing it while he was playing in the cricket-fields at school, while he was spending christmas holidays in paris, while he was going his careless round of theatres, dances, suppers and card-parties, just as they were doing it now; they would be doing it when there was no one alive who remembered comus bassington. this thought recurred again and again with painful persistence, a morbid growth arising in part from his loneliness. staring dumbly out at the toiling sweltering human ant-hill comus marvelled how missionary enthusiasts could labour hopefully at the work of transplanting their religion, with its homegrown accretions of fatherly parochial benevolence, in this heat-blistered, feverscourged wilderness, where men lived like groundbait and died like flies. demons one might believe in, if one did not hold one's imagination in healthy check, but a kindly all-managing god, never. somewhere in the west country of england comus had an uncle who lived in a rose-smothered rectory and taught a wholesome gentlehearted creed that expressed itself in the spirit of "little lamb, who made thee?" and faithfully reflected the beautiful homely christ-child sentiment of saxon europe. what a far away, unreal fairy story it all seemed here in this west african land, where the bodies of men were of as little account as the bubbles that floated on the oily froth of the great flowing river, and where it required a stretch of wild profitless imagination to credit them with undying souls. in the life he had come from comus had been accustomed to think of individuals as definite masterful personalities, making their several marks on the circumstances that revolved around them; they did well or ill, or in most cases indifferently, and were criticised, praised, blamed, thwarted or tolerated, or given way to. in any case, humdrum or outstanding, they had their spheres of importance, little or big. they dominated a breakfast table or harassed a government, according to their capabilities or opportunities, or perhaps they merely had irritating mannerisms. at any rate it seemed highly probable that they had souls. here a man simply made a unit in an unnumbered population, an inconsequent dot in a loosely-compiled deathroll. even his own position as a white man exalted conspicuously above a horde of black natives did not save comus from the depressing sense of nothingness which his first experience of fever had thrown over him. he was a lost, soulless body in this great uncaring land; if he died another would take his place, his few effects would be inventoried and sent down to the coast, someone else would finish off any tea or whisky that he left behind that would be all. it was nearly time to be starting towards the next halting place where he would dine or at any rate eat something. but the lassitude which the fever had bequeathed him made the tedium of travelling through interminable forest-tracks a weariness to be deferred as long as possible. the bearers were nothing loth to let another half-hour or so slip by, and comus dragged a battered paper-covered novel from the pocket of his coat. it was a story dealing with the elaborately tangled love affairs of a surpassingly uninteresting couple, and even in his almost bookless state comus had not been able to plough his way through more than two-thirds of its dull length; bound up with the cover, however, were some pages of advertisement, and these the exile scanned with a hungry intentness that the romance itself could never have commanded. the name of a shop, of a street, the address of a restaurant, came to him as a bitter reminder of the world he had lost, a world that ate and drank and flirted, gambled and made merry, a world that debated and intrigued and wire-pulled, fought or compromised political battles and recked nothing of its outcasts wandering through forest paths and steamy swamps or lying in the grip of fever. comus read and re-read those few lines of advertisement, just as he treasured a much-crumpled programme of a first-night performance at the straw exchange theatre; they seemed to make a little more real the past that was already so shadowy and so utterly remote. for a moment he could almost capture the sensation of being once again in those haunts that he loved; then he looked round and pushed the book wearily from him. the steaming heat, the forest, the rushing river hemmed him in on all sides. the two boys who had been splitting wood ceased from their labours and straightened their backs; suddenly the smaller of the two gave the other a resounding whack with a split lath that he still held in his hand, and flew up the hillside with a scream of laughter and simulated terror, the bigger lad following in hot pursuit. up and down the steep bush-grown slope they raced and twisted and dodged, coming sometimes to close quarters in a hurricane of squeals and smacks, rolling over and over like fighting kittens, and breaking away again to start fresh provocation and fresh pursuit. now and again they would lie for a time panting in what seemed the last stage of exhaustion, and then they would be off in another wild scamper, their dusky bodies flitting through the bushes, disappearing and reappearing with equal suddenness. presently two girls of their own age, who had returned from the water-fetching, sprang out on them from ambush, and the four joined in one joyous gambol that lit up the hillside with shrill echoes and glimpses of flying limbs. comus sat and watched, at first with an amused interest, then with a returning flood of depression and heart-ache. those wild young human kittens represented the joy of life, he was the outsider, the lonely alien, watching something in which he could not join, a happiness in which he had no part or lot. he would pass presently out of the village and his bearers' feet would leave their indentations in the dust; that would be his most permanent memorial in this little oasis of teeming life. and that other life, in which he once moved with such confident sense of his own necessary participation in it, how completely he had passed out of it. amid all its laughing throngs, its card parties and racemeetings and country-house gatherings, he was just a mere name, remembered or forgotten, comus bassington, the boy who went away. he had loved himself very well and never troubled greatly whether anyone else really loved him, and now he realised what he had made of his life. and at the same time he knew that if his chance were to come again he would throw it away just as surely, just as perversely. fate played with him with loaded dice; he would lose always. one person in the whole world had cared for him, for longer than he could remember, cared for him perhaps more than he knew, cared for him perhaps now. but a wall of ice had mounted up between him and her, and across it there blew that cold-breath that chills or kills affection. the words of a well-known old song, the wistful cry of a lost cause, rang with insistent mockery through his brain: "better loved you canna be, will ye ne'er come back again?" if it was love that was to bring him back he must be an exile for ever. his epitaph in the mouths of those that remembered him would be, comus bassington, the boy who never came back. and in his unutterable loneliness he bowed his head on his arms, that he might not see the joyous scrambling frolic on yonder hillside. chapter xvii the bleak rawness of a grey december day held sway over st. james's park, that sanctuary of lawn and tree and pool, into which the bourgeois innovator has rushed ambitiously time and again, to find that he must take the patent leather from off his feet, for the ground on which he stands is hallowed ground. in the lonely hour of early afternoon, when the workers had gone back to their work, and the loiterers were scarcely yet gathered again, francesca bassington made her way restlessly along the stretches of gravelled walk that bordered the ornamental water. the overmastering unhappiness that filled her heart and stifled her thinking powers found answering echo in her surroundings. there is a sorrow that lingers in old parks and gardens that the busy streets have no leisure to keep by them; the dead must bury their dead in whitehall or the place de la concorde, but there are quieter spots where they may still keep tryst with the living and intrude the memory of their bygone selves on generations that have almost forgotten them. even in tourist-trampled versailles the desolation of a tragedy that cannot die haunts the terraces and fountains like a bloodstain that will not wash out; in the saxon garden at warsaw there broods the memory of long-dead things, coeval with the stately trees that shade its walks, and with the carp that swim to-day in its ponds as they doubtless swam there when "lieber augustin" was a living person and not as yet an immortal couplet. and st. james's park, with its lawns and walks and waterfowl, harbours still its associations with a bygone order of men and women, whose happiness and sadness are woven into its history, dim and grey as they were once bright and glowing, like the faded pattern worked into the fabric of an old tapestry. it was here that francesca had made her way when the intolerable inaction of waiting had driven her forth from her home. she was waiting for that worst news of all, the news which does not kill hope, because there has been none to kill, but merely ends suspense. an early message had said that comus was ill, which might have meant much or little; then there had come that morning a cablegram which only meant one thing; in a few hours she would get a final message, of which this was the preparatory forerunner. she already knew as much as that awaited message would tell her. she knew that she would never see comus again, and she knew now that she loved him beyond all things that the world could hold for her. it was no sudden rush of pity or compunction that clouded her judgment or gilded her recollection of him; she saw him as he was, the beautiful, wayward, laughing boy, with his naughtiness, his exasperating selfishness, his insurmountable folly and perverseness, his cruelty that spared not even himself, and as he was, as he always had been, she knew that he was the one thing that the fates had willed that she should love. she did not stop to accuse or excuse herself for having sent him forth to what was to prove his death. it was, doubtless, right and reasonable that he should have gone out there, as hundreds of other men went out, in pursuit of careers; the terrible thing was that he would never come back. the old cruel hopelessness that had always chequered her pride and pleasure in his good looks and high spirits and fitfully charming ways had dealt her a last crushing blow; he was dying somewhere thousands of miles away without hope of recovery, without a word of love to comfort him, and without hope or shred of consolation she was waiting to hear of the end. the end; that last dreadful piece of news which would write "nevermore" across his life and hers. the lively bustle in the streets had been a torture that she could not bear. it wanted but two days to christmas and the gaiety of the season, forced or genuine, rang out everywhere. christmas shopping, with its anxious solicitude or self-centred absorption, overspread the west end and made the pavements scarcely passable at certain favoured points. proud parents, parcel-laden and surrounded by escorts of their young people, compared notes with one another on the looks and qualities of their offspring and exchanged loud hurried confidences on the difficulty or success which each had experienced in getting the right presents for one and all. shouted directions where to find this or that article at its best mingled with salvos of christmas good wishes. to francesca, making her way frantically through the carnival of happiness with that lonely deathbed in her eyes, it had seemed a callous mockery of her pain; could not people remember that there were crucifixions as well as joyous birthdays in the world? every mother that she passed happy in the company of a fresh-looking clean-limbed schoolboy son sent a fresh stab at her heart, and the very shops had their bitter memories. there was the tea-shop where he and she had often taken tea together, or, in the days of their estrangement, sat with their separate friends at separate tables. there were other shops where extravagantly-incurred bills had furnished material for those frequently recurring scenes of recrimination, and the colonial outfitters, where, as he had phrased it in whimsical mockery, he had bought grave-clothes for his burying-alive. the "oubliette!" she remembered the bitter petulant name he had flung at his destined exile. there at least he had been harder on himself than the fates were pleased to will; never, as long as francesca lived and had a brain that served her, would she be able to forget. that narcotic would never be given to her. unrelenting, unsparing memory would be with her always to remind her of those last days of tragedy. already her mind was dwelling on the details of that ghastly farewell dinner-party and recalling one by one the incidents of ill-omen that had marked it; how they had sat down seven to table and how one liqueur glass in the set of seven had been shivered into fragments; how her glass had slipped from her hand as she raised it to her lips to wish comus a safe return; and the strange, quiet hopelessness of lady veula's "good-bye"; she remembered now how it had chilled and frightened her at the moment. the park was filling again with its floating population of loiterers, and francesca's footsteps began to take a homeward direction. something seemed to tell her that the message for which she waited had arrived and was lying there on the hall table. her brother, who had announced his intention of visiting her early in the afternoon would have gone by now; he knew nothing of this morning's bad news the instinct of a wounded animal to creep away by itself had prompted her to keep her sorrow from him as long as possible. his visit did not necessitate her presence; he was bringing an austrian friend, who was compiling a work on the franco-flemish school of painting, to inspect the van der meulen, which henry greech hoped might perhaps figure as an illustration in the book. they were due to arrive shortly after lunch, and francesca had left a note of apology, pleading an urgent engagement elsewhere. as she turned to make her way across the mall into the green park a gentle voice hailed her from a carriage that was just drawing up by the sidewalk. lady caroline benaresq had been favouring the victoria memorial with a long unfriendly stare. "in primitive days," she remarked, "i believe it was the fashion for great chiefs and rulers to have large numbers of their relatives and dependents killed and buried with them; in these more enlightened times we have invented quite another way of making a great sovereign universally regretted. my dear francesca," she broke off suddenly, catching the misery that had settled in the other's eyes, "what is the matter? have you had bad news from out there?" "i am waiting for very bad news," said francesca, and lady caroline knew what had happened. "i wish i could say something; i can't." lady caroline spoke in a harsh, grunting voice that few people had ever heard her use. francesca crossed the mall and the carriage drove on. "heaven help that poor woman," said lady caroline; which was, for her, startlingly like a prayer. as francesca entered the hall she gave a quick look at the table; several packages, evidently an early batch of christmas presents, were there, and two or three letters. on a salver by itself was the cablegram for which she had waited. a maid, who had evidently been on the lookout for her, brought her the salver. the servants were well aware of the dreadful thing that was happening, and there was pity on the girl's face and in her voice. "this came for you ten minutes ago, ma'am, and mr. greech has been here, ma'am, with another gentleman, and was sorry you weren't at home. mr. greech said he would call again in about half-an-hour." francesca carried the cablegram unopened into the drawing-room and sat down for a moment to think. there was no need to read it yet, for she knew what she would find written there. for a few pitiful moments comus would seem less hopelessly lost to her if she put off the reading of that last terrible message. she rose and crossed over to the windows and pulled down the blinds, shutting out the waning december day, and then reseated herself. perhaps in the shadowy half-light her boy would come and sit with her again for awhile and let her look her last upon his loved face; she could never touch him again or hear his laughing, petulant voice, but surely she might look on her dead. and her starving eyes saw only the hateful soulless things of bronze and silver and porcelain that she had set up and worshipped as gods; look where she would they were there around her, the cold ruling deities of the home that held no place for her dead boy. he had moved in and out among them, the warm, living, breathing thing that had been hers to love, and she had turned her eyes from that youthful comely figure to adore a few feet of painted canvas, a musty relic of a long departed craftsman. and now he was gone from her sight, from her touch, from her hearing for ever, without even a thought to flash between them for all the dreary years that she should live, and these things of canvas and pigment and wrought metal would stay with her. they were her soul. and what shall it profit a man if he save his soul and slay his heart in torment? on a small table by her side was mervyn quentock's portrait of her the prophetic symbol of her tragedy; the rich dead harvest of unreal things that had never known life, and the bleak thrall of black unending winter, a winter in which things died and knew no re-awakening. francesca turned to the small envelope lying in her lap; very slowly she opened it and read the short message. then she sat numb and silent for a long, long time, or perhaps only for minutes. the voice of henry greech in the hall, enquiring for her, called her to herself. hurriedly she crushed the piece of paper out of sight; he would have to be told, of course, but just yet her pain seemed too dreadful to be laid bare. "comus is dead" was a sentence beyond her power to speak. "i have bad news for you, francesca, i'm sorry to say," henry announced. had he heard, too? "henneberg has been here and looked at the picture," he continued, seating himself by her side, "and though he admired it immensely as a work of art he gave me a disagreeable surprise by assuring me that it's not a genuine van der meulen. it's a splendid copy, but still, unfortunately, only a copy." henry paused and glanced at his sister to see how she had taken the unwelcome announcement. even in the dim light he caught some of the anguish in her eyes. "my dear francesca," he said soothingly, laying his hand affectionately on her arm, "i know that this must be a great disappointment to you, you've always set such store by this picture, but you mustn't take it too much to heart. these disagreeable discoveries come at times to most picture fanciers and owners. why, about twenty per cent. of the alleged old masters in the louvre are supposed to be wrongly attributed. and there are heaps of similar cases in this country. lady dovecourt was telling me the other day that they simply daren't have an expert in to examine the van dykes at columbey for fear of unwelcome disclosures. and besides, your picture is such an excellent copy that it's by no means without a value of its own. you must get over the disappointment you naturally feel, and take a philosophical view of the matter. . . " francesca sat in stricken silence, crushing the folded morsel of paper tightly in her hand and wondering if the thin, cheerful voice with its pitiless, ghastly mockery of consolation would never stop. end of the project gutenberg etext the unbearable bassington 1850 the man that was used up a tale of the late bugaboo and kickapoo campaign by edgar allan poe pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez vous en eau! la moitie de ma vie a mis l'autre au tombeau. corneille i cannot just now remember when or where i first made the acquaintance of that truly fine-looking fellow, brevet brigadier general john a. b. c. smith. some one did introduce me to the gentleman, i am sureat some public meeting, i know very wellheld about something of great importance, no doubtat some place or other, i feel convinced, whose name i have unaccountably forgotten. the truth isthat the introduction was attended, upon my part, with a degree of anxious embarrassment which operated to prevent any definite impressions of either time or place. i am constitutionally nervousthis, with me, is a family failing, and i can't help it. in especial, the slightest appearance of mysteryof any point i cannot exactly comprehendputs me at once into a pitiable state of agitation. there was something, as it were, remarkableyes, remarkable, although this is but a feeble term to express my full meaningabout the entire individuality of the personage in question. he was, perhaps, six feet in height, and of a presence singularly commanding. there was an air distingue pervading the whole man, which spoke of high breeding, and hinted at high birth. upon this topicthe topic of smith's personal appearancei have a kind of melancholy satisfaction in being minute. his head of hair would have done honor to a brutus,nothing could be more richly flowing, or possess a brighter gloss. it was of a jetty black,which was also the color, or more properly the no-color of his unimaginable whiskers. you perceive i cannot speak of these latter without enthusiasm; it is not too much to say that they were the handsomest pair of whiskers under the sun. at all events, they encircled, and at times partially overshadowed, a mouth utterly unequalled. here were the most entirely even, and the most brilliantly white of all conceivable teeth. from between them, upon every proper occasion, issued a voice of surpassing clearness, melody, and strength. in the matter of eyes, also, my acquaintance was pre-eminently endowed. either one of such a pair was worth a couple of the ordinary ocular organs. they were of a deep hazel exceedingly large and lustrous; and there was perceptible about them, ever and anon, just that amount of interesting obliquity which gives pregnancy to expression. the bust of the general was unquestionably the finest bust i ever saw. for your life you could not have found a fault with its wonderful proportion. this rare peculiarity set off to great advantage a pair of shoulders which would have called up a blush of conscious inferiority into the countenance of the marble apollo. i have a passion for fine shoulders, and may say that i never beheld them in perfection before. the arms altogether were admirably modelled. nor were the lower limbs less superb. these were, indeed, the ne plus ultra of good legs. every connoisseur in such matters admitted the legs to be good. there was neither too much flesh nor too little,neither rudeness nor fragility. i could not imagine a more graceful curve than that of the os femoris, and there was just that due gentle prominence in the rear of the fibula which goes to the conformation of a properly proportioned calf. i wish to god my young and talented friend chiponchipino, the sculptor, had but seen the legs of brevet brigadier general john a. b. c. smith. but although men so absolutely fine-looking are neither as plenty as reasons or blackberries, still i could not bring myself to believe that the remarkable something to which i alluded just now,that the odd air of je ne sais quoi which hung about my new acquaintance,lay altogether, or indeed at all, in the supreme excellence of his bodily endowments. perhaps it might be traced to the manner,yet here again i could not pretend to be positive. there was a primness, not to say stiffness, in his carriagea degree of measured and, if i may so express it, of rectangular precision attending his every movement, which, observed in a more diminutive figure, would have had the least little savor in the world of affectation, pomposity, or constraint, but which, noticed in a gentleman of his undoubted dimensions, was readily placed to the account of reserve, hauteurof a commendable sense, in short, of what is due to the dignity of colossal proportion. the kind friend who presented me to general smith whispered in my ear some few words of comment upon the man. he was a remarkable mana very remarkable manindeed one of the most remarkable men of the age. he was an especial favorite, too, with the ladieschiefly on account of his high reputation for courage. "in that point he is unrivalledindeed he is a perfect desperadoa downright fire-eater, and no mistake," said my friend, here dropping his voice excessively low, and thrilling me with the mystery of his tone. "a downright fire-eater, and no mistake. showed that, i should say, to some purpose, in the late tremendous swamp-fight, away down south, with the bugaboo and kickapoo indians." [here my friend opened his eyes to some extent.] "bless my soul!blood and thunder, and all that!prodigies of valor!heard of him of course?you know he's the man-" "man alive, how do you do? why, how are ye? very glad to see ye, indeed!" here interrupted the general himself, seizing my companion by the hand as he drew near, and bowing stiffly but profoundly, as i was presented. i then thought (and i think so still) that i never heard a clearer nor a stronger voice, nor beheld a finer set of teeth: but i must say that i was sorry for the interruption just at that moment, as, owing to the whispers and insinuations aforesaid, my interest had been greatly excited in the hero of the bugaboo and kickapoo campaign. however, the delightfully luminous conversation of brevet brigadier general john a. b. c. smith soon completely dissipated this chagrin. my friend leaving us immediately, we had quite a long tete-a-tete, and i was not only pleased but really-instructed. i never heard a more fluent talker, or a man of greater general information. with becoming modesty, he forebore, nevertheless, to touch upon the theme i had just then most at hearti mean the mysterious circumstances attending the bugaboo warand, on my own part, what i conceive to be a proper sense of delicacy forbade me to broach the subject; although, in truth, i was exceedingly tempted to do so. i perceived, too, that the gallant soldier preferred topics of philosophical interest, and that he delighted, especially, in commenting upon the rapid march of mechanical invention. indeed, lead him where i would, this was a point to which he invariably came back. "there is nothing at all like it," he would say, "we are a wonderful people, and live in a wonderful age. parachutes and rail-roads-mantraps and spring-guns! our steam-boats are upon every sea, and the nassau balloon packet is about to run regular trips (fare either way only twenty pounds sterling) between london and timbuctoo. and who shall calculate the immense influence upon social lifeupon artsupon commerceupon literaturewhich will be the immediate result of the great principles of electro-magnetics! nor, is this all, let me assure you! there is really no end to the march of invention. the most wonderfulthe most ingeniousand let me add, mr.mr.thompson, i believe, is your namelet me add, i say the most usefulthe most truly usefulmechanical contrivances are daily springing up like mushrooms, if i may so express myself, or, more figuratively, likeahgrasshopperslike grasshoppers, mr. thompsonabout us and ahahaharound us!" thompson, to be sure, is not my name; but it is needless to say that i left general smith with a heightened interest in the man, with an exalted opinion of his conversational powers, and a deep sense of the valuable privileges we enjoy in living in this age of mechanical invention. my curiosity, however, had not been altogether satisfied, and i resolved to prosecute immediate inquiry among my acquaintances, touching the brevet brigadier general himself, and particularly respecting the tremendous events quorum pars magna fuit, during the bugaboo and kickapoo campaign. the first opportunity which presented opportunity which presented itself, and which (horresco referens) i did not in the least scruple to seize, occurred at the church of the reverend doctor drummummupp, where i found myself established, one sunday, just at sermon time, not only in the pew, but by the side of that worthy and communicative little friend of mine, miss tabitha t. thus seated, i congratulated myself, and with much reason, upon the very flattering state of affairs. if any person knew any thing about brevet brigadier general john a. b. c. smith, that person it was clear to me, was miss tabitha t. we telegraphed a few signals and then commenced, soto voce, a brisk tete-a-tete. "smith!" said she in reply to my very earnest inquiry: "smith!why, not general john a. b. c.? bless me, i thought you knew all about him! this is a wonderfully inventive age! horrid affair that!a bloody set of wretches, those kickapoos!fought like a heroprodigies of valorimmortal renown. smith!brevet brigadier general john a. b. c.! why, you know he's the man "man," here broke in doctor drummummupp, at the top of his voice, and with a thump that came near knocking the pulpit about our ears; "man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live; he cometh up and is cut down like a flower!" i started to the extremity of the pew, and perceived by the animated looks of the divine, that the wrath which had nearly proved fatal to the pulpit had been excited by the whispers of the lady and myself. there was no help for it; so i submitted with a good grace, and listened, in all the martyrdom of dignified silence, to the balance of that very capital discourse. next evening found me a somewhat late visitor at the rantipole theatre, where i felt sure of satisfying my curiosity at once, by merely stepping into the box of those exquisite specimens of affability and omniscience, the misses arabella and miranda cognoscenti. that fine tragedian, climax, was doing iago to a very crowded house, and i experienced some little difficulty in making my wishes understood; especially as our box was next the slips, and completely overlooked the stage. "smith!" said miss arabella, as she at comprehended the purport of my query; "smith?why, not general john a. b. c.?" "smith!" inquired miranda, musingly. "god bless me, did you ever behold a finer figure?" "never, madam, but do tell me-" "or so inimitable grace?" "never, upon my word!but pray, inform me-" "or so just an appreciation of stage effect?" "madam!" "or a more delicate sense of the true beauties of shakespeare? be so good as to look at that leg!" "the devil!" and i turned again to her sister. "smith!" said she, "why, not general john a. b. c.? horrid affair that, wasn't it?great wretches, those bugaboossavage and so onbut we live in a wonderfully inventive age!smith!o yes! great man!perfect desperadoimmortal renownprodigies of valor! never heard!" [this was given in a scream.] "bless my soul! why, he's the man-" "-mandragora nor all the drowsy syrups of the world shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep which thou ow'dst yesterday!" here roared our climax just in my ear, and shaking his fist in my face all the time, in a way that i couldn't stand, and i wouldn't. i left the misses cognoscenti immediately, went behind the scenes forthwith, and gave the beggarly scoundrel such a thrashing as i trust he will remember till the day of his death. at the soiree of the lovely widow, mrs. kathleen o'trump, i was confident that i should meet with no similar disappointment. accordingly, i was no sooner seated at the card-table, with my pretty hostess for a vis-a-vis, than i propounded those questions the solution of which had become a matter so essential to my peace. "smith!" said my partner, "why, not general john a. b. c.? horrid affair that, wasn't it?diamonds did you say?terrible wretches those kickapoos!we are playing whist, if you please, mr. tattlehowever, this is the age of invention, most certainly the age, one may saythe age par excellencespeak french?oh, quite a heroperfect desperado!no hearts, mr. tattle? i don't believe it!immortal renown and all that!prodigies of valor! never heard!!why, bless me, he's the man-" "mann?captain mann!" here screamed some little feminine interloper from the farthest corner of the room. "are you talking about captain mann and the duel?oh, i must heardo tellgo on, mrs. o'trump!do now go on!" and go on mrs. o'trump didall about a certain captain mann, who was either shot or hung, or should have been both shot and hung. yes! mrs. o'trump, she went on, and ii went off. there was no chance of hearing any thing farther that evening in regard to brevet brigadier general john a. b. c. smith. still i consoled myself with the reflection that the tide of ill-luck would not run against me forever, and so determined to make a bold push for information at the rout of that bewitching little angel, the graceful mrs. pirouette. "smith!" said mrs. p., as we twirled about together in a pas de zephyr, "smith?why, not general john a. b. c.? dreadful business that of the bugaboos, wasn't it?dreadful creatures, those indians!do turn out your toes! i really am ashamed of youman of great courage, poor fellow!but this is a wonderful age for inventiono dear me, i'm out of breathquite a desperadoprodigies of valornever heard!!can't believe iti shall have to sit down and enlighten yousmith! why, he's the man-" "man-fred, i tell you!" here bawled out miss bas-bleu, as i led mrs. pirouette to a seat. "did ever anybody hear the like? it's man-fred, i say, and not at all by any means man-friday." here miss bas-bleu beckoned to me in a very peremptory manner; and i was obliged, will i nill i, to leave mrs. p. for the purpose of deciding a dispute touching the title of a certain poetical drama of lord byron's. although i pronounced, with great promptness, that the true title was man-friday, and not by any means man-fred yet when i returned to seek mrs. pirouette she was not to be discovered, and i made my retreat from the house in a very bitter spirit of animosity against the whole race of the bas-bleus. matters had now assumed a really serious aspect, and i resolved to call at once upon my particular friend, mr. theodore sinivate; for i knew that here at least i should get something like definite information. "smith!" said he, in his well known peculiar way of drawling out his syllables; "smith!why, not general john a. b. c.? savage affair that with the kickapo-o-o-os, wasn't it? say, don't you think so?perfect despera-a-adogreat pity, 'pon my honor!wonderfully inventive age!pro-o-digies of valor! by the by, did you ever hear about captain ma-a-a-a-n?" "captain mann be d-d!" said i; "please to go on with your story." "hem!oh well!quite la meme cho-o-ose, as we say in france. smith, eh? brigadier-general john a. b. c.? i say"[here mr. s. thought proper to put his finger to the side of his nose]"i say, you don't mean to insinuate now, really and truly, and conscientiously, that you don't know all about that affair of smith's, as well as i do, eh? smith? john a-b-c.? why, bless me, he's the ma-a-an-" "mr. sinivate," said i, imploringly, "is he the man in the mask?" "no-o-o!" said he, looking wise, "nor the man in the mo-o-on." this reply i considered a pointed and positive insult, and so left the house at once in high dudgeon, with a firm resolve to call my friend, mr. sinivate, to a speedy account for his ungentlemanly conduct and ill breeding. in the meantime, however, i had no notion of being thwarted touching the information i desired. there was one resource left me yet. i would go to the fountain head. i would call forthwith upon the general himself, and demand, in explicit terms, a solution of this abominable piece of mystery. here, at least, there should be no chance for equivocation. i would be plain, positive, peremptoryas short as pie-crustas concise as tacitus or montesquieu. it was early when i called, and the general was dressing, but i pleaded urgent business, and was shown at once into his bedroom by an old negro valet, who remained in attendance during my visit. as i entered the chamber, i looked about, of course, for the occupant, but did not immediately perceive him. there was a large and exceedingly odd looking bundle of something which lay close by my feet on the floor, and, as i was not in the best humor in the world, i gave it a kick out of the way. "hem! ahem! rather civil that, i should say!" said the bundle, in one of the smallest, and altogether the funniest little voices, between a squeak and a whistle, that i ever heard in all the days of my existence. "ahem! rather civil that i should observe." i fairly shouted with terror, and made off, at a tangent, into the farthest extremity of the room. "god bless me, my dear fellow!" here again whistled the bundle, "whatwhatwhatwhy, what is the matter? i really believe you don't know me at all." what could i say to all thiswhat could i? i staggered into an armchair, and, with staring eyes and open mouth, awaited the solution of the wonder. "strange you shouldn't know me though, isn't it?" presently resqueaked the nondescript, which i now perceived was performing upon the floor some inexplicable evolution, very analogous to the drawing on of a stocking. there was only a single leg, however, apparent. "strange you shouldn't know me though, isn't it? pompey, bring me that leg!" here pompey handed the bundle a very capital cork leg, already dressed, which it screwed on in a trice; and then it stood upright before my eyes. "and a bloody action it was," continued the thing, as if in a soliloquy; "but then one mustn't fight with the bugaboos and kickapoos, and think of coming off with a mere scratch. pompey, i'll thank you now for that arm. thomas" [turning to me] "is decidedly the best hand at a cork leg; but if you should ever want an arm, my dear fellow, you must really let me recommend you to bishop." here pompey screwed on an arm. "we had rather hot work of it, that you may say. now, you dog, slip on my shoulders and bosom. pettit makes the best shoulders, but for a bosom you will have to go to ducrow." "bosom!" said i. "pompey, will you never be ready with that wig? scalping is a rough process, after all; but then you can procure such a capital scratch at de l'orme's." "scratch!" "now, you nigger, my teeth! for a good set of these you had better go to parmly's at once; high prices, but excellent work. i swallowed some very capital articles, though, when the big bugaboo rammed me down with the butt end of his rifle." "butt end! ram down!! my eye!!" "o yes, by the way, my eyehere, pompey, you scamp, screw it in! those kickapoos are not so very slow at a gouge; but he's a belied man, that dr. williams, after all; you can't imagine how well i see with the eyes of his make." i now began very clearly to perceive that the object before me was nothing more nor less than my new acquaintance, brevet brigadier general john a. b. c. smith. the manipulations of pompey had made, i must confess, a very striking difference in the appearance of the personal man. the voice, however, still puzzled me no little; but even this apparent mystery was speedily cleared up. "pompey, you black rascal," squeaked the general, "i really do believe you would let me go out without my palate." hereupon, the negro, grumbling out an apology, went up to his master, opened his mouth with the knowing air of a horse-jockey, and adjusted therein a somewhat singular-looking machine, in a very dexterous manner, that i could not altogether comprehend. the alteration, however, in the entire expression of the general's countenance was instantaneous and surprising. when he again spoke, his voice had resumed all that rich melody and strength which i had noticed upon our original introduction. "d-n the vagabonds!" said he, in so clear a tone that i positively started at the change, "d-n the vagabonds! they not only knocked in the roof of my mouth, but took the trouble to cut off at least seven-eighths of my tongue. there isn't bonfanti's equal, however, in america, for really good articles of this description. i can recommend you to him with confidence," [here the general bowed,] "and assure you that i have the greatest pleasure in so doing." i acknowledged his kindness in my best manner, and took leave of him at once, with a perfect understanding of the true state of affairswith a full comprehension of the mystery which had troubled me so long. it was evident. it was a clear case. brevet brigadier general john a. b. c. smith was the manthe man that was used up. the end . 1830 to m- by edgar allan poe o! i care not that my earthly lot hath little of earth in it, that years of love have been forgot in the fever of a minute: i heed not that the desolate are happier, sweet, than i, but that you meddle with my fate who am a passer by. it is not that my founts of bliss are gushingstrange! with tears or that the thrill of a single kiss hath palsied many years 'tis not that the flowers of twenty springs which have wither'd as they rose lie dead on my heart-strings with the weight of an age of snows. not that the grasso! may it thrive! on my grave is growing or grown but that, while i am dead yet alive i cannot be, lady, alone. -the end. 1850 the colloquy of monos and una by edgar allan poe these things are in the future. sophoclesantig. una. "born again?" monos. yes, fairest and best beloved una, "born again." these were the words upon whose mystical meaning i had so long pondered, rejecting the explanations of the priesthood, until death itself resolved for me the secret. una. death! monos. how strangely, sweet una, you echo my words! i observe, too, a vacillation in your step, a joyous inquietude in your eyes. you are confused and oppressed by the majestic novelty of the life eternal. yes, it was of death i spoke. and here how singularly sounds that word which of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts, throwing a mildew upon all pleasures! una. ah, death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! how often, monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! how mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss, saying unto it "thus far and no further!" that earnest mutual love, my own monos, which burned within our bosomshow vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy in its first upspringing, that our happiness would strengthen with its strength! alas! as it grew, so grew in our hearts the dread of that evil hour which was hurrying to separate us forever! thus, in time, it became painful to love. hate would have been mercy then. monos. speak not here of these griefs, dear unamine, mine, forever now! una. but the memory of past sorrowis it not present joy? i have much to say yet of the things which have been. above all, i burn to know the incidents of your own passage through the dark valley and shadow. monos. and when did the radiant una ask any thing of her monos in vain? i will be minute in relating allbut at what point shall the weird narrative begin? una. at what point? monos. you have said. una. monos, i comprehend you. in death we have both learned the propensity of man to define the indefinable. i will not say, then, commence with the moment of life's cessationbut commence with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having abandoned you, you sank into a breathless and motionless torpor, and i pressed down your pallid eyelids with the passionate fingers of love. monos. one word first, my una, in regard to man's general condition at this epoch. you will remember that one or two of the wise among our forefatherswise in fact, although not in the world's esteemhad ventured to doubt the propriety of the term "improvement," as applied to the progress of our civilization. there were periods in each of the five or six centuries immediately preceding our dissolution, when arose some vigorous intellect, boldly contending for those principles whose truth appears now, to our disenfranchised reason, so utterly obviousprinciples which should have taught our race to submit to the guidance of the natural laws, rather than attempt their control. at long intervals some master-minds appeared, looking upon each advance in practical science as a retro-gradation in the true utility. occasionally the poetic intellectthat intellect which we now feel to have been the most exalted of allsince those truths which to us were of the most enduring importance could only be reached by that analogy which speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone, and to the unaided reason bears no weightoccasionally did this poetic intellect proceed a step farther in the evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in the mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in the infant condition of his soul. and these men, the poets, living and perishing amid the scorn of the "utilitarians"or rough pedants, who arrogated to themselves a title which could have been properly applied only to the scornedthese men, the poets, ponder piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when our wants were not more simple than our enjoyments were keendays when mirth was a word unknown, so solemnly deep-toned was happinessholy, august and blissful days, when blue rivers ran undammed, between hills unhewn, into far forest solitudes, primeval, odorous, and unexplored. yet these noble exceptions from the general misrule served but to strengthen it by opposition. alas! we had fallen upon the most evil of all our evil days. the great "movement"that was the cant termwent on: a diseased commotion, moral and physical. artthe artsarose supreme, and, once enthroned, cast chains upon the intellect which had elevated them to power. man, because he could not but acknowledge the majesty of nature, fell into childish exultation at his acquired and still increasing dominion over her elements. even while he stalked a god in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over him. as might be supposed from the origin of his disorder, he grew infected with system, and with abstraction. he enwrapped himself in generalities. among other odd ideas, that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of analogy and of godin despite of the loud warning voice of the laws of gradation so visibly pervading all things in earth and heavenwild attempts at an omni-prevalent democracy were made. yet this evil sprang necessarily from the leading evilknowledge. man could not both know and succumb. meantime huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. green leaves shrank before the hot breath of furnaces. the fair face of nature was deformed as with the ravages of some loathsome disease. and methinks, sweet una, even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the farfetched might have arrested us here. but now it appears that we had worked out our own destruction in the perversion of our taste, or rather in the blind neglect of its culture in the schools. for, in truth, it was at this crisis that taste alonethat faculty which, holding a middle position between the pure intellect and the moral sense, could never safely have been disregardedit was now that taste alone could have led us gently back to beauty, to nature, and to life. but alas for the pure contemplative spirit and majestic intuition of plato! alas for the mousika which he justly regarded as an all sufficient education for the soul! alas for him and for it!since both were most desperately needed when both were most entirely forgotten or despised.* * it will be hard to discover a better [method of education] than that which the experience of so many ages has already discovered; and this may be summed up as consisting in gymnastics for the body and music for the soul."repub. lib. 2. "for this reason is a musical education most essential; since it causes rhythm and harmony to penetrate most intimately into the soul, taking the strangest hold upon it, filling it with beauty and making the man beautiful-minded... he will praise and admire the beautiful; will receive it with joy into his soul, will feed upon it, and assimilate his own condition with it." ibid. lib. 3. music mousika had, among the athenians, a far more comprehensive signification than with us. it included not only the harmonies of time and of tune, but the poetic diction, sentiment and creation each in its widest sense. the study of music was with them in fact, the general cultivation of the tasteof that which recognizes the beautifulin contra-distinction from reason, which deals only with the true. pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, how truly!"que tout notre raisonnement se reduit a ceder au sentiment," and it is not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time permitted it, would have regained its old ascendancy over the harsh mathematical reason of the schools. but this thing was not to be. prematurely induced by intemperance of knowledge, the old age of the world drew on. this the mass of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily, affected not to see. but, for myself, the earth's records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization. i had imbibed a prescience of our fate from comparison of china the simple and enduring, with assyria the architect, with egypt the astrologer, with nubia, more crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all arts. in history* of these regions i met with a ray from the future. the individual artificialities of the three latter were local diseases of the earth, and in their individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied; but for the infected world at large i could anticipate no regeneration save in death. that man, as a race, should not become extinct, i saw that he must be "born again." * "history," from istorein, to contemplate. and now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our spirits, daily, in dreams, now it was that, in twilight, we discoursed of the days to come, when the art-scarred surface of the earth, having undergone that purification* which alone could efface its rectangular obscenities, should clothe itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the smiling waters of paradise, and be rendered at length a fit dwelling-place for man:for man the death-purgedfor man to whose now exalted intellect there should be poison in knowledge no morefor the redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still for the material, man. * the word "purification" seems here to be used with reference to its root in the greek, pur, fire. una. well do i remember these conversations, dear monos; but the epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely warrant us in believing. men lived; and died individually. you yourself sickened, and passed into the grave; and thither your constant una speedily followed you. and though the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion brings us thus together once more, tortured our slumbering senses with no impatience of duration, yet, my monos, it was a century still. monos. say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. unquestionably, it was in the earth's dotage that i died. wearied at heart with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil and decay, i succumbed to the fierce fever. after some few days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook for pain, while i longed but was impotent to undeceive youafter some days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and motionless torpor; and this was termed death by those who stood around me. words are vague things. my condition did not deprive me of sentience. it appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying motionless and fully prostrate in a midsummer noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness, through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without being awakened by external disturbances. i breathed no longer. the pulses were still. the heart had ceased to beat. volition had not departed, but was powerless. the senses were unusually active, although eccentrically soassuming often each other's functions at random. the taste and the smell were inextricably confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense. the rosewater with which your tenderness had moistened my lips to the last, affected me with sweet fancies of flowersfantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of the old earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming around us. the eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered no complete impediment to vision. as volition was in abeyance the balls could not roll in their socketsbut all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the eye, producing a more vivid effect than those which struck the front or anterior surface. yet, in the former instance, this effect was so far anomalous that i appreciated it only as soundsound sweet or discordant as the matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark in shadecurved or angular in outline. the hearing at the same time, although excited in degree, was not irregular in actionestimating real sounds with an extravagance of precision, not less than of sensibility. touch had undergone a modification more peculiar. its impressions were tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted always in the highest physical pleasure. thus the pressure of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first only recognized through vision, at length, long after their removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight immeasurable. i say with a sensual delight. all my perceptions were purely sensual. the materials furnished the passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. of pain there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or pleasure none at all. thus your wild sobs floated into my ears with all their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave them birth; while the large and constant tears which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke, thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. and this was in truth the death of which these bystanders spoke reverently, in low whispersyou, sweet una, gaspingly, with loud cries. they attired me for the coffinthree or four dark figures which flitted busily to and fro. as these crossed the direct line of my vision they affected me as forms; but upon passing to my side their images impressed me with the idea of shrieks, groans, and other dismal expressions of terror, of horror, or of wo. you alone, habited in a white robe, passed in all directions musically about me. the day waned; and, as its light faded away, i became possessed by a vague uneasinessan anxiety such as the sleeper feels when sad real sounds fall continuously within his earlow distant bell tones, solemn, at long but equal intervals, and commingling with melancholy dreams. night arrived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. it oppressed my limbs with the oppression of some dull weight, and was palpable. there was also a moaning sound, not unlike the distant reverberation of surf, but more continuous, which beginning with the first twilight, had grown in strength with the darkness. suddenly lights were brought into the room, and this reverberation became forthwith interrupted into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound, but less dreary and less distinct. the ponderous oppression was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame of each lamp, (for there were many,) there flowed unbrokenly into my ears a strain of melodious monotone. and when now, dear una, approaching the bed upon which i lay outstretched, you sat gently by my side, breathing odor from your sweet lips, and pressing them upon my brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, and mingling with the merely physical sensations which circumstances had called forth, a something akin to sentiment itselfa feeling that, half appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and sorrow,but this feeling took no root in the pulseless heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and faded quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then into a purely sensual pleasure as before. and now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses, there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. in its exercise i found a wild delight yet a delight still physical, inasmuch as the understanding had in it no part. motion in the animal frame had fully ceased. no muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. but there seemed to have sprung up in the brain, that of which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence even an indistinct conception. let me term it a mental pendulous pulsation. it was the moral embodiment of man's abstract idea of time. by the absolute equalization of this movementor of such as thishad the cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves, been adjusted. by its aid i measured the irregularities of the clock upon the mantel, and of the watches of the attendants. their tickings came sonorously to my ears. the slightest deviation from the true proportionand these deviations were omni-prevalentaffected me just as violations of abstract truth were wont, on earth, to affect the moral sense. although no two of the time-pieces in the chamber struck individual seconds accurately together, yet i had no difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the respective momentary errors of each. and thisthis keen, perfect, self-existing sentiment of durationthis sentiment existing (as man could not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently of any succession of eventsthis ideathis sixth sense, upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first obvious and certain step of the intemporal soul upon the threshold of the temporal eternity. it was midnight; and you still sat by my side. all others had departed from the chamber of death. they had deposited me in the coffin. the lamps burned flickeringly; for this i knew by the tremulousness of the monotonous strains. but, suddenly these strains diminished in distinctness and in volume. finally they ceased. the perfume in my nostrils died away. forms affected my vision no longer. the oppression of the darkness uplifted itself from my bosom. a dull shock like that of electricity pervaded my frame, and was followed by total loss of the idea of contact. all of what man has termed sense was merged in the sole consciousness of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment of duration. the mortal body had been at length stricken with the hand of the deadly decay. yet had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic intuition. i appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet una, i still dully felt that you sat by my side. so, too, when the noon of the second day came, i was not unconscious of those movements which displaced you from my side, which confined me within the coffin, which deposited me within the hearse, which bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which heaped heavily the mould upon me, and which thus left me, in blackness and corruption, to my sad and solemn slumbers with the worm. and here, in the prison-house which has few secrets to disclose, they rolled away days and weeks and months; and the soul watched narrowly each second as it flew, and, without effort, took record of its flightwithout effort and without object. a year passed. the consciousness of being had grown hourly more indistinct, and that of mere locality had, in great measure, usurped its position. the idea of entity was becoming merged in that of place. the narrow space immediately surrounding what had been the body, was now growing to be the body itself. at length, as often happens to the sleeper (by sleep and its world alone is death imaged)at length, as sometimes happened on earth to the deep slumberer, when some flitting light half startled him into awaking, yet left him half enveloped in dreamsso to me, in the strict embrace of the shadow, came that light which alone might have had power to startlethe light of enduring love. men toiled at the grave in which i lay darkling. they upthrew the damp earth. upon my mouldering bones there descended the coffin of una. and now again all was void. that nebulous light had been extinguished. that feeble thrill had vibrated itself into quiescence. many lustra had supervened. dust had returned to dust. the worm had food no more. the sense of being at length utterly departed, and there reigned in its steadinstead of all thingsdominant and perpetualthe autocrats place and time. for that which was notfor that which had no formfor that which had no thoughtfor that which had no sentiencefor that which was soulless, yet of which matter formed no portionfor all this nothingness, yet for all this immortality, the grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours, co-mates. the end . 1855 leaves of grass by walt whitman come, said my soul, such verses for my body let us write, (for we are one,) that should i after death invisibly return, or, long, long hence, in other spheres, there to some group of mates the chants resuming, (tallying earth's soil, trees, winds, tumultous waves,) ever with pleas'd smile i may keep on, ever and ever yet the verses owning -as, first, i here and now, signing for soul and body, set to them my name, walt whitman one's-self i sing one's-self i sing, a simple separate person, yet utter the word democratic, the word en-masse. of physiology from top to toe i sing, not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the muse, i say the form complete is worthier far, the female equally with the male i sing. of life immense in passion, pulse, and power, cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine, the modern man i sing. as i ponder'd in silence as i ponder'd in silence, returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, a phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect, terrible in beauty, age, and power, the genius of poets of old lands, as to me directing like flame its eyes, with finger pointing to many immortal songs, and menacing voice, what singest thou? it said, know'st thou not there is hut one theme for ever-enduring bards? and that is the theme of war, the fortune of battles, the making of perfect soldiers. be it so, then i answer'd, i too haughty shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any, waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering, (yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the field the world, for life and death, for the body and for the eternal soul, lo, i too am come, chanting the chant of battles, i above all promote brave soldiers. in cabin'd ships at sea in cabin'd ships at sea, the boundless blue on every side expanding, with whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious waves, or some lone bark buoy'd on the dense marine, where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails, she cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star at night, by sailors young and old haply will i, a reminiscence of the land, be read, in full rapport at last. here are our thoughts, voyagers' thoughts, here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said, the sky o'erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet, we feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion, the tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables, the perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm, the boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here, and this is ocean's poem. then falter not o book, fulfil your destiny, you not a reminiscence of the land alone, you too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd i know not whither, yet ever full of faith, consort to every ship that sails, sail you! bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you i fold it here in every leaf;) speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the imperious waves, chant on, sail on, bear o'er the boundless blue from me to every sea, this song for mariners and all their ships. to foreign lands i heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the new world, and to define america, her athletic democracy, therefore i send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted. to a historian you who celebrate bygones, who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life that has exhibited itself, who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers and priests, i, habitan of the alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself in his own rights, pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, (the great pride of man in himself,) chanter of personality, outlining what is yet to be, i project the history of the future. to thee old cause to thee old cause! thou peerless, passionate, good cause, thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea, deathless throughout the ages, races, lands, after a strange sad war, great war for thee, (i think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be really fought, for thee,) these chants for thee, the eternal march of thee. (a war o soldiers not for itself alone, far, far more stood silently waiting behind, now to advance in this book.) thou orb of many orbs! thou seething principle! thou well-kept, latent germ! thou centre! around the idea of thee the war revolving, with all its angry and vehement play of causes, (with vast results to come for thrice a thousand years,) these recitatives for thee, -my book and the war are one, merged in its spirit i and mine, as the contest hinged on thee, as a wheel on its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself, around the idea of thee. eidolons eidolons i met a seer, passing the hues and objects of the world, the fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, to glean eidolons. put in thy chants said he, no more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in, put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all, that of eidolons. ever the dim beginning, ever the growth, the rounding of the circle, ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,) eidolons! eidolons! ever the mutable, ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering, ever the ateliers, the factories divine, issuing eidolons. lo, i or you, or woman, man, or state, known or unknown, we seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build, but really build eidolons. the ostent evanescent, the substance of an artist's mood or savan's studies long, or warrior's, martyr's, hero's toils, to fashion his eidolon. of every human life, (the units gather'd, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed, left out,) the whole or large or small summ'd, added up, in its eidolon. the old, old urge, based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles, from science and the modern still impell'd, the old, old urge, eidolons. the present now and here, america's busy, teeming, intricate whirl, of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing, to-day's eidolons. these with the past, of vanish'd lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea, old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors' voyages, joining eidolons. densities, growth, facades, strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees, far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave, eidolons everlasting. exalte, rapt, ecstatic, the visible but their womb of birth, of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape, the mighty earth-eidolon. all space, all time, (the stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns, swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,) fill'd with eidolons only. the noiseless myriads, the infinite oceans where the rivers empty, the separate countless free identities, like eyesight, the true realities, eidolons. not this the world, nor these the universes, they the universes, purport and end, ever the permanent life of life, eidolons, eidolons. beyond thy lectures learn'd professor, beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics, beyond the doctor's surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry, the entities of entities, eidolons. unfix'd yet fix'd, ever shall be, ever have been and are, sweeping the present to the infinite future, eidolons, eidolons, eidolons. the prophet and the bard, shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet, shall mediate to the modern, to democracy, interpret yet to them, god and eidolons. and thee my soul, joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations, thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet, thy mates, eidolons. thy body permanent, the body lurking there within thy body, the only purport of the form thou art, the real i myself, an image, an eidolon. thy very songs not in thy songs, no special strains to sing, none for itself, but from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating, a round full-orb'd eidolon. for him i sing for him i sing, i raise the present on the past, (as some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the past,) with time and space i him dilate and fuse the immortal laws, to make himself by them the law unto himself. when i read the book when i read the book, the biography famous, and is this then (said i) what the author calls a man's life? and so will some one when i am dead and gone write my life? (as if any man really knew aught of my life, why even i myself i often think know little or nothing of my real life, only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections i seek for my own use to trace out here.) beginning my studies beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much, the mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion, the least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love, the first step i say awed me and pleas'd me so much, i have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther, but stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs. beginners beginners how they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,) how dear and dreadful they are to the earth, how they inure to themselves as much as to any -what a paradox appears their age, how people respond to them, yet know them not, how there is something relentless in their fate all times, how all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward, and how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase. to the states to the states or any one of them, or any city of the states, resist much, obey little, once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty. on journeys through the states on journeys through the states we start, (ay through the world, urged by these songs, sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,) we willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all. we have watch'd the seasons dispensing themselves and passing on, and have said, why should not a man or woman do as much as the seasons, and effuse as much? we dwell a while in every city and town, we pass through kanada, the north-east, the vast valley of the mississippi, and the southern states, we confer on equal terms with each of the states, we make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to hear, we say to ourselves, remember, fear not, be candid, promulge the body and the soul, dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic, and what you effuse may then return as the seasons return, and may be just as much as the seasons. to a certain cantatrice here, take this gift, i was reserving it for some hero, speaker, or general, one who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress and freedom of the race, some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel; but i see that what i was reserving belongs to you just as much as to any. me imperturbe me imperturbe, standing at ease in nature, master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things, imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they, finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than i thought, me toward the mexican sea, or in the mannahatta or the tennessee, or far north or inland, a river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these states or of the coast, or the lakes or kanada, me wherever my life is lived, o to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do. savantism savantism thither as i look i see each result and glory retracing itself and nestling close, always obligated, thither hours, months, years -thither trades, compacts, establishments, even the most minute, thither every-day life, speech, utensils, politics, persons, estates; thither we also, i with my leaves and songs, trustful, admirant, as a father to his father going takes his children along with him. the ship starting lo, the unbounded sea, on its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying even her moonsails. the pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so stately below emulous waves press forward, they surround the ship with shining curving motions and foam. i hear america singing i hear america singing, the varied carols i hear, those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, the carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, the mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, the boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, the shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, the wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, the delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, the day what belongs to the dayat night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs. what place is besieged? what place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege? lo, i send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal, and with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery, and artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun. still though the one i sing still though the one i sing, (one, yet of contradictions made,) i dedicate to nationality, i leave in him revolt, (o latent right of insurrection! o quenchless, indispensable fire!) shut not your doors shut not your doors to me proud libraries, for that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, i bring, forth from the war emerging, a book i have made, the words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing, a book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect, but you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page. poets to come poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! not to-day is to justify me and answer what i am for, but you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, arouse! for you must justify me. i myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, i but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness. i am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face, leaving it to you to prove and define it, expecting the main things from you. to you stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? and why should i not speak to you? thou reader thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as i, therefore for thee the following chants. starting from paumanok 1 starting from fish-shape paumanok where i was born, well-begotten, and rais'd by a perfect mother, after roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements, dweller in mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas, or a soldier camp'd or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a miner in california, or rude in my home in dakota's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the spring, or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess, far from the clank of crowds intervals passing rapt and happy, aware of the fresh free giver the flowing missouri, aware of mighty niagara, aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute and strong-breasted bull, of earth, rocks, fifth-month flowers experienced, stars, rain, snow, my amaze, having studied the mocking-bird's tones and the flight of the mountain-hawk, and heard at dawn the unrivall'd one, the hermit thrush from the swamp-cedars, solitary, singing in the west, i strike up for a new world. 2 victory, union, faith, identity, time, the indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery, eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports. this then is life, here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions. how curious! how real! underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun. see revolving the globe, the ancestor-continents away group'd together, the present and future continents north and south, with the isthmus between. see, vast trackless spaces, as in a dream they change, they swiftly fill, countless masses debouch upon them, they are now cover'd with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known. see, projected through time, for me an audience interminable. with firm and regular step they wend, they never stop, successions of men, americanos, a hundred millions, one generation playing its part and passing on, another generation playing its part and passing on in its turn, with faces turn'd sideways or backward towards me to listen, with eyes retrospective towards me. 3 americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian! foremost! century marches! libertad! masses! for you a programme of chants. chants of the prairies, chants of the long-running mississippi, and down to the mexican sea, chants of ohio, indiana, illinois, iowa, wisconsin and minnesota, chants going forth from the centre from kansas, and thence equidistant, shooting in pulses of fire ceaseless to vivify all. 4 take my leaves america, take them south and take them north, make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own off-spring, surround them east and west, for they would surround you, and you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovingly with you. i conn'd old times, i sat studying at the feet of the great masters, now if eligible o that the great masters might return and study me. in the name of these states shall i scorn the antique? why these are the children of the antique to justify it. 5 dead poets, philosophs, priests, martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since, language-shapers on other shores, nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate, i dare not proceed till i respectfully credit what you have left waited hither, i have perused it, own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it,) think nothing can ever be greater, nothing can ever deserve more than it deserves, regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it, i stand in my place with my own day here. here lands female and male, here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world, here the flame of materials, here spirituality the translatress, the openly-avow'd, the ever-tending, the finale of visible forms, the satisfier, after due long-waiting now advancing, yes here comes my mistress the soul. 6 the soul, forever and foreverlonger than soil is brown and solidlonger than water ebbs and flows. i will make the poems of materials, for i think they are to be the most spiritual poems, and i will make the poems of my body and of mortality, for i think i shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul and of immortality. i will make a song for these states that no one state may under any circumstances be subjected to another state, and i will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by night between all the states, and between any two of them, and i will make a song for the ears of the president, full of weapons with menacing points, and behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces; and a song make i of the one form'd out of all, the fang'd and glittering one whose head is over all, resolute warlike one including and over all, (however high the head of any else that head is over all.) i will acknowledge contemporary lands, i will trail the whole geography of the globe and salute courteously every city large and small, and employments! i will put in my poems that with you is heroism upon land and sea, and i will report all heroism from an american point of view. i will sing the song of companionship, i will show what alone must finally compact these, i believe these are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it in me, i will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening to consume me, i will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires, i will give them complete abandonment, i will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love, for who but i should understand love with all its sorrow and joy? and who but i should be the poet of comrades? 7 i am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races, i advance from the people in their own spirit, here is what sings unrestricted faith. omnes! omnes! let others ignore what they may, i make the poem of evil also, i commemorate that part also, i am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation isand i say there is in fact no evil, (or if there is i say it is just as important to you, to the land or to me, as any thing else.) i too, following many and follow'd by many, inaugurate a religion, i descend into the arena, (it may be i am destin'd to utter the loudest cries there, the winner's pealing shouts, who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every thing.) each is not for its own sake, i say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake. i say no man has ever yet been half devout enough, none has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough, none has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is. i say that the real and permanent grandeur of these states must be their religion, otherwise there is just no real and permanent grandeur; (nor character nor life worthy the name without religion, nor land nor man or woman without religion.) 8 what are you doing young man? are you so earnest, so given up to literature, science, art, amours? these ostensible realities, politics, points? your ambition or business whatever it may be? it is wellagainst such i say not a word, i am their poet also, but behold! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion's sake, for not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of the earth, any more than such are to religion. 9 what do you seek so pensive and silent? what do you need camerado? dear son do you think it is love? listen dear sonlisten america, daughter or son, it is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess, and yet it satisfies, it is great, but there is something else very great, it makes the whole coincide, it, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands sweeps and provides for all. 10 know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion, the following chants each for its kind i sing. my comrade! for you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising inclusive and more resplendent, the greatness of love and democracy, and the greatness of religion. melange mine own, the unseen and the seen, mysterious ocean where the streams empty, prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me, living beings, identities now doubtless near us in the air that we know not of, contact daily and hourly that will not release me, these selecting, these in hints demanded of me. not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me, has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him, any more than i am held to the heavens and all the spiritual world, after what they have done to me, suggesting themes. o such themesequalities! o divine average! warblings under the sun, usher'd as now, or at noon, or setting, strains musical flowing through ages, now reaching hither, i take to your reckless and composite chords, add to them, and cheerfully pass them forward. 11 as i have walk'd in alabama my morning walk, i have seen where the she-bird the mocking-bird sat on her nest in the briers hatching her brood. i have seen the he-bird also, i have paus'd to hear him near at hand inflating his throat and joyfully singing. and while i paus'd it came to me that what he really sang for was not there only, nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes, but subtle, clandestine, away beyond, a charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born. 12 democracy! near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing. ma femme! for the brood beyond us and of us, for those who belong here and those to come, i exultant to be ready for them will now shake out carols stronger and haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth. i will make the songs of passion to give them their way, and your songs outlaw'd offenders, for i scan you with kindred eyes, and carry you with me the same as any. i will make the true poem of riches, to earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres and goes forward and is not dropt by death; i will effuse egotism and show it underlying all, and i will be the bard of personality, and i will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the other, and sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me, for i am determin'd to tell you with courageous clear voice to prove you illustrious, and i will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and can be none in the future, and i will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn'd to beautiful results, and i will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death, and i will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact, and that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any. i will not make poems with reference to parts, but i will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to ensemble, and i will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all days, and i will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has reference to the soul, because having look'd at the objects of the universe, i find there is no one nor any particle of one but has reference to the soul. 13 was somebody asking to see the soul? see, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances, beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands. all hold spiritual joys and afterwards loosen them; how can the real body ever die and be buried? of your real body and any man's or woman's real body, item for item it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners and pass to fitting spheres, carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the moment of death. not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the meaning, the main concern, any more than a man's substance and life or a woman's substance and life return in the body and the soul, indifferently before death and after death. behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern and includes and is the soul; whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it! 14 whoever you are, to you endless announcements! daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet? did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand? toward the male of the states, and toward the female of the states, exulting words, words to democracy's lands. interlink'd, food-yielding lands! land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice! land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp! land of the apple and the grape! land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! land of those sweet-air'd interminable plateaus! land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie! lands where the north-west columbia winds, and where the south-west colorado winds! land of the eastern chesapeake! land of the delaware! land of ontario, erie, huron, michigan! land of the old thirteen! massachusetts land! land of vermont and connecticut! land of the ocean shores! land of sierras and peaks! land of boatmen and sailors! fishermen's land! inextricable lands! the clutch'd together! the passionate ones! the side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limb'd! the great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the inexperienced sisters! far breath'd land! arctic braced! mexican breez'd! the diverse! the compact! the pennsylvanian! the virginian! the double carolinian! o all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! o i at any rate include you all with perfect love! i cannot be discharged from you! not from one any sooner than another! o death! o for all that, i am yet of you unseen this hour with irrepressible love, walking new england, a friend, a traveler, splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples on paumanok's sands, crossing the prairies, dwelling again in chicago, dwelling in every town, observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts, listening to orators and oratresses in public halls, of and through the states as during life, each man and woman my neighbor, the louisianian, the georgian, as near to me, and i as near to him and her, the mississippian and arkansian yet with me, and i yet with any of them, yet upon the plains west of the spinal river, yet in my house of adobie, yet returning eastward, yet in the seaside state or in maryland, yet kanadian cheerily braving the winter, the snow and ice welcome to me, yet a true son either of maine or of the granite state, or the narragansett bay state, or the empire state, yet sailing to other shores to annex the same, yet welcoming every new brother, hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour they unite with the old ones, coming among the new ones myself to be their companion and equal, coming personally to you now, enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me. 15 with me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on. for your life adhere to me, (i may have to be persuaded many times before i consent to give myself really to you, but what of that? must not nature be persuaded many times?) no dainty dolce affettuoso i, bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, i have arrived, to be wrestled with as i pass for the solid prizes of the universe, for such i afford whoever can persevere to win them. 16 on my way a moment i pause, here for you! and here for america! still the present i raise aloft, still the future of the states i harbinge glad and sublime, and for the past i pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines. the red aborigines, leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names, okonee, koosa, ottawa, monongahela, sauk, natchez, chattahoochee, kaqueta, oronoco, wabash, miami, saginaw, chippewa, oshkosh, walla-walla, leaving such to the states they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names. 17 expanding and swift, henceforth, elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick and audacious, a world primal again, vistas of glory incessant and branching, a new race dominating previous ones and grander far, with new contests, new politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts. these, my voice announcingi will sleep no more but arise, you oceans that have been calm within me! how i feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms. 18 see, steamers steaming through my poems, see, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing, see, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat-boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village, see, on the one side the western sea and on the other the eastern sea, how they advance and retreat upon my poems as upon their own shores, see, pastures and forests in my poems -see, animals wild and tame see, beyond the kaw, countless herds of buffalo feeding on short curly grass, see, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets, with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce, see, the many-cylinder'd steam printing-presssee, the electric telegraph stretching across the continent, see, through atlantica's depths pulses american europe reaching, pulses of europe duly return'd, see, the strong and quick locomotive as it departs, panting, blowing the steam-whistle, see, ploughmen ploughing farmssee, miners digging minessee, the numberless factories, see, mechanics busy at their benches with toolssee from among them superior judges, philosophs, presidents, emerge, drest in working dresses, see, lounging through the shops and fields of the states, me well-belov'd, close-held by day and night, hear the loud echoes of my songs thereread the hints come at last. 19 o camerado close! o you and me at last, and us two only. o a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly! o something ecstatic and undemonstrable! o music wild! o now i triumphand you shall also; o hand in hando wholesome pleasureo one more desirer and lover! o to haste firm holdingto haste, haste on with me. song of myself 1 i celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what i assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. i loafe and invite my soul, i lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. my tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, i, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, hoping to cease not till death. creeds and schools in abeyance, retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, i harbor for good or bad, i permit to speak at every hazard, nature without check with original energy. 2 houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, i breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, the distillation would intoxicate me also, but i shall not let it. the atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, it is for my mouth forever, i am in love with it, i will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, i am mad for it to be in contact with me. the smoke of my own breath, echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, my respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, the sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, the sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of the wind, a few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, the play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, the delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides, the feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much? have you practis'd so long to learn to read? have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, you shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) you shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, you shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, you shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. 3 i have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, but i do not talk of the beginning or the end. there was never any more inception than there is now, nor any more youth or age than there is now, and will never be any more perfection than there is now, nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. urge and urge and urge, always the procreant urge of the world. out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex, always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life. to elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so. sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams, stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, i and this mystery here we stand. clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul. lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen, till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn. showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age, knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss i am silent, and go bathe and admire myself. welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean, not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest. i am satisfiedi see, dance, laugh, sing; as the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread, leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the house with their plenty, shall i postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes, that they turn from gazing after and down the road, and forthwith cipher and show me to a cent, exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead? 4 trippers and askers surround me, people i meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city i live in, or the nation, the latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new, my dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues, the real or fancied indifference of some man or woman i love, the sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations, battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events; these come to me days and nights and go from me again, but they are not the me myself. apart from the pulling and hauling stands what i am, stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it. backward i see in my own days where i sweated through fog with linguists and contenders, i have no mockings or arguments, i witness and wait. 5 i believe in you my soul, the other i am must not abase itself to you, and you must not be abased to the other. loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, not words, not music or rhyme i want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, only the lull i like, the hum of your valved voice. i mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, how you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, and parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, and reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet. swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, and i know that the hand of god is the promise of my own, and i know that the spirit of god is the brother of my own, and that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, and that a kelson of the creation is love, and limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields, and brown ants in the little wells beneath them, and mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed. 6 a child said what is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; how could i answer the child? i do not know what it is any more than he. i guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. or i guess it is the handkerchief of the lord, a scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say whose? or i guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. or i guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, and it means, sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, growing among black folks as among white, kanuck, tuckahoe, congressman, cuff, i give them the same, i receive them the same. and now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. tenderly will i use you curling grass, it may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, it may be if i had known them i would have loved them, it may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps, and here you are the mothers' laps. this grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, darker than the colorless beards of old men, dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. o i perceive after all so many uttering tongues, and i perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. i wish i could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, and the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. what do you think has become of the young and old men? and what do you think has become of the women and children? they are alive and well somewhere, the smallest sprout shows there is really no death, and if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, and ceas'd the moment life appear'd. all goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. 7 has any one supposed it lucky to be born? i hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and i know it. i pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contain'd between my hat and boots, and peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good, the earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. i am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth, i am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself, (they do not know how immortal, but i know.) every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female, for me those that have been boys and that love women, for me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted, for me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the mothers of mothers, for me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears, for me children and the begetters of children. undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded, i see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no, and am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away. 8 the little one sleeps in its cradle, i lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand. the youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill, i peeringly view them from the top. the suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom, i witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, i note where the pistol has fallen. the blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders, the heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor, the snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls, the hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous'd mobs, the flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital, the meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall, the excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the centre of the crowd, the impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes, what groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall sunstruck or in fits, what exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and give birth to babes, what living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls restrain'd by decorum, arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections with convex lips, i mind them or the show or resonance of them-i come and i depart. 9 the big doors of the country barn stand open and ready, the dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon, the clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged, the armfuls are pack'd to the sagging mow. i am there, i help, i came stretch'd atop of the load, i felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other, i jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy, and roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps. 10 alone far in the wilds and mountains i hunt, wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee, in the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night, kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game, falling asleep on the gather'd leaves with my dog and gun by my side. the yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud, my eyes settle the land, i bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck. the boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me, i tuck'd my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time; you should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle. i saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west, the bride was a red girl, her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders, on a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride by the hand, she had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach'd to her feet. the runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside, i heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile, through the swung half-door of the kitchen i saw him limpsy and weak, and went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him, and brought water and fill'd a tub for his sweated body and bruis'd feet, and gave him a room that enter'd from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes, and remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness, and remember putting piasters on the galls of his neck and ankles; he staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass'd north, i had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean'd in the corner. 11 twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore, twenty-eight young men and all so friendly; twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome. she owns the fine house by the rise of the bank, she hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window. which of the young men does she like the best? ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her. where are you off to, lady? for i see you, you splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room. dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather, the rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them. the beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long hair, little streams pass'd all over their bodies. an unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies, it descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs. the young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them, they do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, they do not think whom they souse with spray. 12 the butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market, i loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down. blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil, each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat in the fire. from the cinder-strew'd threshold i follow their movements, the lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms, overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure, they do not hasten, each man hits in his place. 13 the negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags underneath on its tied-over chain, the negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and tall he stands pois'd on one leg on the string-piece, his blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hip-band, his glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead, the sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polish'd and perfect limbs. i behold the picturesque giant and love him, and i do not stop there, i go with the team also. in me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as forward sluing, to niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing, absorbing all to myself and for this song. oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that you express in your eyes? it seems to me more than all the print i have read in my life. my tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and day-long ramble, they rise together, they slowly circle around. i believe in those wing'd purposes, and acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me, and consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional, and do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else, and the in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me, and the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me. 14 the wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation, the pert may suppose it meaningless, but i listening close, find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky. the sharp-hoof'd moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog, the litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats, the brood of the turkey-hen and she with her half-spread wings, i see in them and myself the same old law. the press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, they scorn the best i can do to relate them. i am enamour'd of growing out-doors, of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods, of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and mauls, and the drivers of horses, i can eat and sleep with them week in and week out. what is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is me, me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, not asking the sky to come down to my good will, scattering it freely forever. 15 the pure contralto sings in the organ loft, the carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp, the married and unmarried children ride home to their thanksgiving dinner, the pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm, the mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready, the duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches, the deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar, the spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel, the farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a first-day loafe and looks at the oats and rye, the lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case, (he will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bed-room;) the jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, he turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript; the malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table, what is removed drops horribly in a pail; the quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove, the machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, the gate-keeper marks who pass, the young fellow drives the express-wagon, (i love him, though i do not know him;) the half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race, the western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs, out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece; the groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee, as the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle, the bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other, the youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to the musical rain, the wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the huron, the squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm'd cloth is offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale, the connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways, as the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers, the young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots, the one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne her first child, the clean-hair'd yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the factory or mill, the paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter's lead flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign-painter is lettering with blue and gold, the canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread, the conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him, the child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions, the regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the white sails sparkle!) the drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray, the pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling about the odd cent;) the bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly, the opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open'd lips, the prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck, the crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other, (miserable! i do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;) the president holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great secretaries, on the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms, the crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold, the missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle, as the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by the jingling of loose change, the floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the roof, the masons are calling for mortar, in single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers; seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gather'd, it is the fourth of seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!) seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground; off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface, the stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe, flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton-wood or pecan-trees, coon-seekers go through the regions of the red river or through those drain'd by the tennessee, or through those of the arkansas, torches shine in the dark that hangs on the chattahooche or altamahaw, patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them, in walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day's sport, the city sleeps and the country sleeps, the living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, the old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; and these tend inward to me, and i tend outward to them, and such as it is to be of these more or less i am, and of these one and all i weave the song of myself. 16 i am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, regardless of others, ever regardful of others, maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine, one of the nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same, a southerner soon as a northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the oconee i live, a yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth, a kentuckian walking the vale of the elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings, a louisianian or georgian, a boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a hoosier, badger, buckeye; at home on kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen off newfoundland, at home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking, at home on the hills of vermont or in the woods of maine, or the texan ranch, comrade of californians, comrade of free north-westerners, (loving their big proportions,) comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meat, a learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest, a novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons, of every hue and caste am i, of every rank and religion, a farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker, prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest. i resist any thing better than my own diversity, breathe the air but leave plenty after me, and am not stuck up, and am in my place. (the moth and the fish-eggs are in their place, the bright suns i see and the dark suns i cannot see are in their place, the palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.) 17 these are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, if they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing, if they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing, if they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing. this is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, this the common air that bathes the globe. 18 with music strong i come, with my cornets and my drums, i play not marches for accepted victors only, i play marches for conquer'd and slain persons. have you heard that it was good to gain the day? i also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. i beat and pound for the dead, i blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them. vivas to those who have fail'd! and to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea! and to those themselves who sank in the sea! and to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes! and the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known! 19 this is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger, it is for the wicked just same as the righteous, i make appointments with all, i will not have a single person slighted or left away, the kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited, the heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited; there shall be no difference between them and the rest. this is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair, this the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning, this the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face, this the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again. do you guess i have some intricate purpose? well i have, for the fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has. do you take it i would astonish? does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering through the woods? do i astonish more than they? this hour i tell things in confidence, i might not tell everybody, but i will tell you. 20 who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude; how is it i extract strength from the beef i eat? what is a man anyhow? what am i? what are you? all i mark as my own you shall offset it with your own, else it were time lost listening to me. i do not snivel that snivel the world over, that months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth. whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, conformity goes to the fourth-remov'd, i wear my hat as i please indoors or out. why should i pray? why should i venerate and be ceremonious? having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel'd with doctors and calculated close, i find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. in all people i see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less, and the good or bad i say of myself i say of them. i know i am solid and sound, to me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, all are written to me, and i must get what the writing means. i know i am deathless, i know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass, i know i shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night. i know i am august, i do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, i see that the elementary laws never apologize, (i reckon i behave no prouder than the level i plant my house by, after all.) i exist as i am, that is enough, if no other in the world be aware i sit content, and if each and all be aware i sit content. one world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, and whether i come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years, i can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness i can wait. my foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite, i laugh at what you call dissolution, and i know the amplitude of time. 21 i am the poet of the body and i am the poet of the soul, the pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, the first i graft and increase upon myself, the latter i translate into new tongue. i am the poet of the woman the same as the man, and i say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, and i say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. i chant the chant of dilation or pride, we have had ducking and deprecating about enough, i show that size is only development. have you outstript the rest? are you the president? it is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on. i am he that walks with the tender and growing night, i call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. press close bare-bosom'd nightpress close magnetic nourishing night! night of south windsnight of the large few stars! still nodding nightmad naked summer night. smile o voluptuous cool-breath'd earth! earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! earth of departed sunsetearth of the mountains misty-topt! earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! far-swooping elbow'd earthrich apple-blossom'd earth! smile, for your lover comes. prodigal, you have given me lovetherefore i to you give love! o unspeakable passionate love. 22 you sea! i resign myself to you alsoi guess what you mean, i behold from the beach your crooked fingers, i believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me, we must have a turn together, i undress, hurry me out of sight of the land, cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, dash me with amorous wet, i can repay you. sea of stretch'd ground-swells, sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths, sea of the brine of life and of unshovell'd yet always-ready graves, howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea, i am integral with you, i too am of one phase and of all phases. partaker of influx and efflux i, extoller of hate and conciliation, extoller of amies and those that sleep in each others' arms. i am he attesting sympathy, (shall i make my list of things in the house and skip the house that supports them?) i am not the poet of goodness only, i do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also. what blurt is this about virtue and about vice? evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, i stand indifferent, my gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait, i moisten the roots of all that has grown. did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy? did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and rectified? i find one side a balance and the antipedal side a balance, soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine, thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start. this minute that comes to me over the past decillions, there is no better than it and now. what behaved well in the past or behaves well to-day is not such wonder, the wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel. 23 endless unfolding of words of ages! and mine a word of the modern, the word en-masse. a word of the faith that never balks, here or henceforward it is all the same to me, i accept time absolutely. it alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, that mystic baffling wonder alone completes all. i accept reality and dare not question it, materialism first and last imbuing. hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration! fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac, this is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of the old cartouches, these mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas. this is the geologist, this works with the scalper, and this is a mathematician. gentlemen, to you the first honors always! your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling, i but enter by them to an area of my dwelling. less the reminders of properties told my words, and more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication, and make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipt, and beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire. 24 walt whitman, a kosmos, of manhattan the son, turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, no sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest. unscrew the locks from the doors! unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! whoever degrades another degrades me, and whatever is done or said returns at last to me. through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index. i speak the pass-word primeval, i give the sign of democracy, by god! i will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms. through me many long dumb voices, voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, and of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff, and of the rights of them the others are down upon, of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised, fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung. through me forbidden voices, voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and i remove the veil, voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd. i do not press my fingers across my mouth, i keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart, copulation is no more rank to me than death is. i believe in the flesh and the appetites, seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. divine am i inside and out, and i make holy whatever i touch or am touch'd from, the scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, this head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds. if i worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it, translucent mould of me it shall be you! shaded ledges and rests it shall be you! firm masculine colter it shall be you! whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you! you my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life! breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you! my brain it shall be your occult convolutions! root of wash'd sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you! mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you! sun so generous it shall be you! vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you! you sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you! winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you! broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you! hands i have taken, face i have kiss'd, mortal i have ever touch'd, it shall be you. i dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious, each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy, i cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish, nor the cause of the friendship i emit, nor the cause of the friendship i take again. that i walk up my stoop, i pause to consider if it really be, a morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. to behold the day-break! the little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows, the air tastes good to my palate. hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising freshly exuding, scooting obliquely high and low. something i cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs, seas of bright juice suffuse heaven. the earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction, the heav'd challenge from the east that moment over my head, the mocking taunt, see then whether you shall be master! 25 dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, if i could not now and always send sun-rise out of me. we also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun, we found our own o my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak. my voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, with the twirl of my tongue i encompass worlds and volumes of worlds. speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then? come now i will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation, do you not know o speech how the buds beneath you are folded? waiting in gloom, protected by frost, the dirt receding before my prophetical screams, i underlying causes to balance them at last, my knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things, happiness, (which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this day.) my final merit i refuse you, i refuse putting from me what i really am, encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me, i crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. writing and talk do not prove me, i carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face, with the hush of my lips i wholly confound the skeptic. 26 now i will do nothing but listen, to accrue what i hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it. i hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals, i hear the sound i love, the sound of the human voice, i hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following, sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night, talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals, the angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick, the judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death-sentence, the heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters, the ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color'd lights, the steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars, the slow march play'd at the head of the association marching two and two, (they go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.) i hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's complaint,) i hear the key'd cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears, it shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast. i hear the chorus, it is a grand opera, ah this indeed is musicthis suits me. a tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me, the orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full. i hear the train'd soprano (what work with hers is this?) the orchestra whirls me wider than uranus flies, it wrenches such ardors from me i did not know i possess'd them, it sails me, i dab with bare feet, they are lick'd by the indolent waves, i am cut by bitter and angry hail, i lose my breath, steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death, at length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles, and that we call being. 27 to be in any form, what is that? (round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,) if nothing lay more develop'd the quahaug in its callous shell were enough. mine is no callous shell, i have instant conductors all over me whether i pass or stop, they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me. i merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy, to touch my person to some one else's is about as much as i can stand. 28 is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity, flames and ether making a rush for my veins, treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them, my flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself, on all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs, straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip, behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial, depriving me of my best as for a purpose, unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields, immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away, they bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me, no consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger, fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while, then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me. the sentries desert every other part of me, they have left me helpless to a red marauder, they all come to the headland to witness and assist against me. i am given up by traitors, i talk wildly, i have lost my wits, i and nobody else am the greatest traitor, i went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there. you villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat, unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me. 29 blind loving wrestling touch, sheath'd hooded sharp-tooth'd touch! did it make you ache so, leaving me? parting track'd by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan, rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward. sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital, landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden. 30 all truths wait in all things, they neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, they do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, the insignificant is as big to me as any, (what is less or more than a touch?) logic and sermons never convince, the damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. (only what proves itself to every man and woman is so, only what nobody denies is so.) a minute and a drop of me settle my brain, i believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps, and a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman, and a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other, and they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific, and until one and all shall delight us, and we them. 31 i believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars, and the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, and the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, and the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, and the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, and the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, and a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. i find i incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, and am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over, and have distanced what is behind me for good reasons, but call any thing back again when i desire it. in vain the speeding or shyness, in vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach, in vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones, in vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes, in vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low, in vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky, in vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs, in vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods, in vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to labrador, i follow quickly, i ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff. 32 i think i could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, i stand and look at them long and long. they do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to god, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. so they show their relations to me and i accept them, they bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession. i wonder where they get those tokens, did i pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them? myself moving forward then and now and forever, gathering and showing more always and with velocity, infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them, not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers, picking out here one that i love, and now go with him on brotherly terms. a gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses, head high in the forehead, wide between the ears, limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground, eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving. his nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him, his well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return. i but use you a minute, then i resign you, stallion, why do i need your paces when i myself out-gallop them? even as i stand or sit passing faster than you. 33 space and time! now i see it is true, what i guess'd at, what i guess'd when i loaf'd on the grass, what i guess'd while i lay alone in my bed, and again as i walk'd the beach under the paling stars of the morning. my ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps, i skirt sierras, my palms cover continents, i am afoot with my vision. by the city's quadrangular housesin log huts, camping with lumber-men, along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed, weeding my onion-patch or hosing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests, prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase, scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the shallow river, where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the buck turns furiously at the hunter, where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the otter is feeding on fish, where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou, where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tall; over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower'd cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist field, over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum and slender shoots from the gutters, over the western persimmon, over the long-leav'd corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax, over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest, over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze; scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs, walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush, where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot, where the bat flies in the seventh-month eve, where the great goldbug drops through the dark, where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow, where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides, where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters; where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders, wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs, where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, (floating in it myself and looking composedly down,) where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand, where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it, where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke, where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water, where the half-burn'd brig is riding on unknown currents, where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupting below; where the dense-starr'd flag is borne at the head of the regiments, approaching manhattan up by the long-stretching island, under niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance, upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood outside, upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of base-ball, at he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license, bull-dances, drinking, laughter, at the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice through a straw, at apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit i find, at musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings; where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps, where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks are scatter'd, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel, where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the stud to the mare, where the cock is treading the hen, where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks, where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie, where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near, where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding, where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh, where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the high weeds, where band-neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out, where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates of a cemetery, where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees, where the yellow-crown'd heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs, where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon, where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well, through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves, through the salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs, through the gymnasium, through the curtain'd saloon, through the office or public hall; pleas'd with the native and pleas'd with the foreign, pleas'd with the new and old, pleas'd with the homely woman as well as the handsome, pleas'd with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously, pleas'd with the tune of the choir of the whitewash'd church, pleas'd with the earnest words of the sweating methodist preacher, impress'd seriously at the camp-meeting; looking in at the shop-windows of broadway the whole forenoon, flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate glass, wandering the same afternoon with my face turn'd up to the clouds, or down a lane or along the beach, my right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and i in the middle; coming home with the silent and dark-cheek'd bush-boy, (behind me he rides at the drape of the day,) far from the settlements studying the print of animals' feet, or the moccasin print, by the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient, nigh the coffin'd corpse when all is still, examining with a candle; voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure, hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any, hot toward one i hate, ready in my madness to knife him, solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while, walking the old hills of judaea with the beautiful gentle god by my side, speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars, speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and the diameter of eighty thousand miles, speeding with tail'd meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest, carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly, storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, backing and filling, appearing and disappearing, i tread day and night such roads. i visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product, and look at quintillions ripen'd and look at quintillions green. i fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul, my course runs below the soundings of plummets. i help myself to material and immaterial, no guard can shut me off, no law prevent me. i anchor my ship for a little while only, my messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me. i go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue. i ascend to the foretruck, i take my place late at night in the crow's-nest, we sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough, through the clear atmosphere i stretch around on the wonderful beauty, the enormous masses of ice pass me and i pass them, the scenery is plain in all directions, the white-topt mountains show in the distance, i fling out my fancies toward them, we are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon to be engaged, we pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we pass with still feet and caution, or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin'd city, the blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe. i am a free companion, i bivouac by invading watchfires, i turn the bridgroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself, i tighten her all night to my thighs and lips. my voice is the wife's voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs, they fetch my man's body up dripping and drown'd. i understand the large hearts of heroes, the courage of present times and all times, how the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and death chasing it up and down the storm, how he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights, and chalk'd in large letters on a board, be of good cheer, we will not desert you; how he follow'd with them and tack'd with them three days and would not give it up, how he saved the drifting company at last, how the lank loose-gown'd women look'd when boated from the side of their prepared graves, how the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp'd unshaved men; all this i swallow, it tastes good, i like it well, it becomes mine, i am the man, i suffer'd, i was there. the disdain and calmness of martyrs, the mother of old, condemn'd for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on, the hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence, blowing, cover'd with sweat, the twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the murderous buckshot and the bullets, all these i feel or am. i am the hounded slave, i wince at the bite of the dogs, hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen, i clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the ooze of my skin, i fall on the weeds and stones, the riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close, taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks. agonies are one of my changes of garments, i do not ask the wounded person how he feels, i myself become the wounded person, my hurts turn livid upon me as i lean on a cane and observe. i am the mash'd fireman with breast-bone broken, tumbling walls buried me in their debris, heat and smoke i inspired, i heard the yelling shouts of my comrades, i heard the distant click of their picks and shovels, they have clear'd the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth. i lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake, painless after all i lie exhausted but not so unhappy, white and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps, the kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches. distant and dead resuscitate, they show as the dial or move as the hands of me, i am the clock myself. i am an old artillerist, i tell of my fort's bombardment, i am there again. again the long roll of the drummers, again the attacking cannon, mortars, again to my listening ears the cannon responsive. i take part, i see and hear the whole, the cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aim'd shots, the ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip, workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs, the fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped explosion, the whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air. again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves with his hand, he gasps through the clot mind not memindthe entrenchments. 34 now i tell what i knew in texas in my early youth, (i tell not the fall of alamo, not one escaped to tell the fall of alamo, the hundred and fifty are dumb yet at alamo,) 'tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men. retreating they had form'd in a hollow square with their baggage for breastworks, nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemies, nine times their number, was the price they took in advance, their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone, they treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv'd writing and seal, gave up their arms and march'd back prisoners of war. they were the glory of the race of rangers, matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship, large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate, bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters, not a single one over thirty years of age. the second first-day morning they were brought out in squads and massacred, it was beautiful early summer, the work commenced about five o'clock and was over by eight. none obey'd the command to kneel, some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and straight, a few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead lay together, the maim'd and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw them there, some half-kill'd attempted to crawl away, these were despatch'd with bayonets or batter'd with the blunts of muskets, a youth not seventeen years old seiz'd his assassin till two more came to release him, the three were all torn and cover'd with the boy's blood. at eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies; that is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men. 35 would you hear of an old-time sea-fight? would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? list to the yarn, as my grandmother's father the sailor told it to me. our foe was no sulk in his ship i tell you, (said he,) his was the surly english pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be; along the lower'd eve he came horribly raking us. we closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch'd, my captain lash'd fast with his own hands. we had receiv'd some eighteen pound shots under the water, on our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead. fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark, ten o'clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported, the master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a chance for themselves. the transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels, they see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust. our frigate takes fire, the other asks if we demand quarter? if our colors are struck and the fighting done? now i laugh content, for i hear the voice of my little captain, we have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting. only three guns are in use, one is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's main-mast, two well serv'd with grape and canister silence his musketry and clear his decks. the tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the main-top, they hold out bravely during the whole of the action. not a moment's cease, the leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder-magazine. one of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking. serene stands the little captain, he is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low, his eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns. toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us. 36 stretch'd and still lies the midnight, two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness, our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the one we have conquer'd, the captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as a sheet, near by the corpse of the child that serv'd in the cabin, the dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curl'd whiskers, the flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and below, the husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty, formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars, cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves, black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent, a few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining, delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors, the hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw, wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan, these so, these irretrievable. 37 you laggards there on guard! look to your arms! in at the conquer'd doors they crowd! i am possess'd! embody all presences outlaw'd or suffering, see myself in prison shaped like another man, and feel the dull unintermitted pain. for me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch, it is i let out in the morning and barr'd at night. not a mutineer walks handcuff'd to jail but i am handcuff'd to him and walk by his side, (i am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips.) not a youngster is taken for larceny but i go up too, and am tried and sentenced. not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but i also lie at the last gasp, my face is ash-color'd, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat. askers embody themselves in me and i am embodied in them, i project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg. 38 enough! enough! enough! somehow i have been stunn'd. stand back! give me a little time beyond my cuff'd head, slumbers, dreams, gaping, i discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake. that i could forget the mockers and insults! that i could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers! that i could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning. i remember now, i resume the overstaid fraction, the grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves, corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me. i troop forth replenish'd with supreme power, one of an average unending procession, inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines, our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth, the blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years. eleves, i salute you! come forward! continue your annotations, continue your questionings. 39 the friendly and flowing savage, who is he? is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it? is he some southwesterner rais'd out-doors? is he kanadian? is he from the mississippi country? iowa, oregon, california? the mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea? wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him, they desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them. behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncomb'd head, laughter, and naivete, slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations, they descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers, they are waited with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of the glance of his eyes. 40 flaunt of the sunshine i need not your basklie over! you light surfaces only, i force surfaces and depths also. earth! you seem to look for something at my hands, say, old top-knot, what do you want? man or woman, i might tell how i like you, but cannot, and might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot, and might tell that pining i have, that pulse of my nights and days. behold, i do not give lectures or a little charity, when i give i give myself. you there, impotent, loose in the knees, open your scarf'd chops till i blow grit within you, spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets, i am not to be denied, i compel, i have stores plenty and to spare, and any thing i have i bestow. i do not ask who you are, that is not important to me, you can do nothing and be nothing but what i will infold you. to cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies i lean, on his right cheek i put the family kiss, and in my soul i swear i never will deny him. on women fit for conception i start bigger and nimbler babes. (this day i am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.) to any one dying, thither i speed and twist the knob of the door. turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed, let the physician and the priest go home. i seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will, o despairer, here is my neck, by god, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me. i dilate you with tremendous breath, i buoy you up, every room of the house do i fill with an arm'd force, lovers of me, bafflers of graves. sleepi and they keep guard all night, not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you, i have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself, and when you rise in the morning you will find what i tell you is so. 41 i am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs, and for strong upright men i bring yet more needed help. i heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goesbut is that all? magnifying and applying come i, outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters, taking myself the exact dimensions of jehovah, lithographing kronos, zeus his son, and hercules his grandson, buying drafts of osiris, isis, belus, brahma, buddha, in my portfolio placing manito loose, allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved, with odin and the hideous-faced mexitli and every idol and image, taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more, admitting they were alive and did the work of their days, (they bore mites as for unfledg'd birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,) accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman i see, discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house, putting higher claims for him there with his roll'd-up sleeves driving the mallet and chisel, not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation, lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars, minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction, their brawny limbs passing safe over charr'd laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames; by the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born, three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagg'd out at their waists, the snag-tooth'd hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come, selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery; what was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square rod then, the bull and the bug never worshipp'd half enough, dung and dirt more admirable than was dream'd, the supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes, the day getting ready for me when i shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious; by my life-lumps! becoming already a creator, putting myself here and now to the ambush'd womb of the shadows. 42 a call in the midst of the crowd, my own voice, orotund sweeping and final. come my children, come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates, now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass'd his prelude on the reeds within. easily written loose-finger'd chordsi feel the thrum of your climax and close. my head slues round on my neck, music rolls, but not from the organ, folks are around me, but they are no household of mine. ever the hard unsunk ground, ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever the air and the ceaseless tides, ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real, ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn'd thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts, ever the vexer's hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides and bring him forth, ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life, ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death. here and there with dimes on the eyes walking, to feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning, tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going, many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving, a few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming. this is the city and i am one of the citizens, whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools, the mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate. the little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and tail'd coats i am aware who they are, (they are positively not worms or fleas,) i acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest is deathless with me, what i do and say the same waits for them, every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them. i know perfectly well my own egotism, know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less, and would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself. not words of routine this song of mine, but abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring; this printed and bound bookbut the printer and the printing-office boy? the well-taken photographsbut your wife or friend close and solid in your arms? the black ship mail'd with iron, her mighty guns in her turretsbut the pluck of the captain and engineers? in the houses the dishes and fare and furniturebut the host and hostess, and the look out of their eyes? the sky up thereyet here or next door, or across the way? the saints and sages in historybut you yourself? sermons, creeds, theologybut the fathomless human brain, and what is reason? and what is love? and what is life? 43 i do not despise you priests, all time, the world over, my faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths, enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern, believing i shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years, waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun, making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the circle of obis, helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols, dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and austere in the woods a gymnosophist, drinking mead from the skull-cap, to shastas and vedas admirant, minding the koran, walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skin drum, accepting the gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine, to the mass kneeling or the puritan's prayer rising, or sitting patiently in a pew, ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me, looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land, belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits. one of that centripetal and centrifugal gang i turn and talk like man leaving charges before a journey. down-hearted doubters dull and excluded, frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten'd, atheistical, i know every one of you, i know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief. how the flukes splash! how they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood! be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers, i take my place among you as much as among any, the past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same, and what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, precisely the same. i do not know what is untried and afterward, but i know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail. each who passes is consider'd, each who stops is consider'd, not single one can it fall. it cannot fall the young man who died and was buried, nor the young woman who died and was put by his side, nor the little child that peep'd in at the door, and then drew back and was never seen again, nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness worse than gall, nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder, nor the numberless slaughter'd and wreck'd, nor the brutish koboo call'd the ordure of humanity, nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in, nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth, nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads that inhabit them, nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known. 44 it is time to explain myselflet us stand up. what is known i strip away, i launch all men and women forward with me into the unknown. the clock indicates the momentbut what does eternity indicate? we have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, there are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them. births have brought us richness and variety, and other births will bring us richness and variety. i do not call one greater and one smaller, that which fills its period and place is equal to any. were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister? i am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me, all has been gentle with me, i keep no account with lamentation, (what have i to do with lamentation?) i am an acme of things accomplish'd, and i an encloser of things to be. my feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs, on every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps, all below duly travel'd, and still i mount and mount. rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me, afar down i see the huge first nothing, i know i was even there, i waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, and took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. long i was hugg'd closelong and long. immense have been the preparations for me, faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me. cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen, for room to me stars kept aside in their own rings, they sent influences to look after what was to hold me. before i was born out of my mother generations guided me, my embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it. for it the nebula cohered to an orb, the long slow strata piled to rest it on, vast vegetables gave it sustenance, monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care. all forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me, now on this spot i stand with my robust soul. 45 o span of youth! ever-push'd elasticity! o manhood, balanced, florid and full. my lovers suffocate me, crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin, jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night, crying by day, ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging and chirping over my head, calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush, lighting on every moment of my life, bussing my body with soft balsamic busses, noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine. old age superbly rising! o welcome, ineffable grace of dying days! every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows after and out of itself, and the dark hush promulges as much as any. i open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, and all i see multiplied as high as i can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems. wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, outward and outward and forever outward. my sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels, he joins with his partners a group of superior circuit, and greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them. there is no stoppage and never can be stoppage, if i, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail the long run, we should surely bring up again where we now stand, and surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther. a few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span or make it impatient, they are but parts, any thing is but a part. see ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. my rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, the lord will be there and wait till i come on perfect terms, the great camerado, the lover true for whom i pine will be there. 46 i know i have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured. i tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!) my signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods, no friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, i have no chair, no church, no philosophy, i lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange, but each man and each woman of you i lead upon a knoll, my left hand hooking you round the waist, my right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road. not i, not any one else can travel that road for you, you must travel it for yourself. it is not far, it is within reach, perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know, perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land. shoulder your duds dear son, and i will mine, and let us hasten forth, wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go. if you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip, and in due time you shall repay the same service to me, for after we start we never lie by again. this day before dawn i ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded heaven, and i said to my spirit when we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be fill'd and satisfied then? and my spirit said no, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond. you are also asking me questions and i hear you, i answer that i cannot answer, you must find out for yourself. sit a while dear son, here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink, but as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, i kiss you with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence. long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams, now i wash the gum from your eyes, you must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life. long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore, now i will you to be a bold swimmer, to jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair. 47 i am the teacher of athletes, he that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own, he most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher. the boy i love, the same becomes a man not through derived power, but in his own right, wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear, fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak, unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than sharp steel cuts, first-rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo, preferring scars and the beard and faces pitted with small-pox over all latherers, and those well-tann'd to those that keep out of the sun. i teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me? i follow you whoever you are from the present hour, my words itch at your ears till you understand them. i do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up the time while i wait for a boat, (it is you talking just as much as myself, i act as the tongue of you, tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen'd.) i swear i will never again mention love or death inside a house, and i swear i will never translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air. if you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore, the nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves key, the maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words. no shutter'd room or school can commune with me, but roughs and little children better than they. the young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well, the woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me with him all day, the farm-boy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of my voice, in vessels that sail my words sail, i go with fishermen and seamen and love them. the soldier camp'd or upon the march is mine, on the night ere the pending battle many seek me, and i do not fail them, on that solemn night (it may be their last) those that know me seek me. my face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his blanket, the driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon, the young mother and old mother comprehend me, the girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are, they and all would resume what i have told them. 48 i have said that the soul is not more than the body, and i have said that the body is not more than the soul, and nothing, not god, is greater to one than one's self is, and whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud, and i or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, and to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, and there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, and there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe, and i say to any man or woman, let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. and i say to mankind, be not curious about god, for i who am curious about each am not curious about god, (no array of terms can say how much i am at peace about god and about death.) i hear and behold god in every object, yet understand god not in the least, nor do i understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. why should i wish to see god better than this day? i see something of god each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, in the faces of men and women i see god, and in my own face in the glass, i find letters from god dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by god's name, and i leave them where they are, for i know that wheresoe'er i go, others will punctually come for ever and ever. 49 and as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me. to his work without flinching the accoucheur comes, i see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting, i recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors, and mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape. and as to you corpse i think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, i smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, i reach to the leafy lips, i reach to the polish'd breasts of melons. and as to you life i reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, (no doubt i have died myself ten thousand times before.) i hear you whispering there o stars of heaven, o sunso grass of graveso perpetual transfers and promotions, if you do not say any thing how can i say any thing? of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest, of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight, toss, sparkles of day and dusktoss on the black stems that decay in the muck, toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs. i ascend from the moon, i ascend from the night, i perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected, and debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small. 50 there is that in mei do not know what it isbut i know it is in me. wrench'd and sweatycalm and cool then my body becomes, i sleepi sleep long. i do not know itit is without nameit is a word unsaid, it is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol. something it swings on more than the earth i swing on, to it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me. perhaps i might tell more. outlines! i plead for my brothers and sisters. do you see o my brothers and sisters? it is not chaos or deathit is form, union, planit is eternal lifeit is happiness. 51 the past and present wilti have fill'd them, emptied them. and proceed to fill my next fold of the future. listener up there! what have you to confide to me? look in my face while i snuff the sidle of evening, (talk honestly, no one else hears you, and i stay only a minute longer.) do i contradict myself? very well then i contradict myself, (i am large, i contain multitudes.) i concentrate toward them that are nigh, i wait on the door-slab. who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper? who wishes to walk with me? will you speak before i am gone? will you prove already too late? 52 the spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. i too am not a bit tamed, i too am untranslatable, i sound my barbaric yaws over the roofs of the world. the last scud of day holds back for me, it flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, it coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. i depart as air, i shake my white locks at the runaway sun, i effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. i bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass i love, if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. you will hardly know who i am or what i mean, but i shall be good health to you nevertheless, and filter and fibre your blood. failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, missing me one place search another, i stop somewhere waiting for you. to the garden the world to the garden the world anew ascending, potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding, the love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being, curious here behold my resurrection after slumber, the revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again, amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous, my limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons, most wondrous, existing i peer and penetrate still, content with the present, content with the past, by my side or back of me eve following, or in front, and i following her just the same. from pent-up aching rivers from pent-up aching rivers, from that of myself without which i were nothing, from what i am determin'd to make illustrious, even if i stand sole among men, from my own voice resonant, singing the phallus, singing the song of procreation, singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown people, singing the muscular urge and the blending, singing the bedfellow's song, (o resistless yearning! o for any and each the body correlative attracting! o for you whoever you are your correlative body! o it, more than all else, you delighting!) from the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day, from native moments, from bashful pains, singing them, seeking something yet unfound though i have diligently sought it many a long year, singing the true song of the soul fitful at random, renascent with grossest nature or among animals, of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing, of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds, of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves, of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, i them chanting, the overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating, the welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body, the swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his back lying and floating, the female form approaching, i pensive, love-flesh tremulous aching, the divine list for myself or you or for any one making, the face, the limbs, the index from head to foot, and what it arouses, the mystic deliria, the madness amorous, the utter abandonment, (hark close and still what i now whisper to you, i love you, o you entirely possess me, o that you and i escape from the rest and go utterly off, free and lawless, two hawks in the air, two fishes swimming in the sea not more lawless than we;) the furious storm through me careering, i passionately trembling. the oath of the inseparableness of two together, of the woman that loves me and whom i love more than my life, that oath swearing, (o i willingly stake all for you, o let me be lost if it must be so! o you and i! what is it to us what the rest do or think? what is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and exhaust each other if it must be so;) from the master, the pilot i yield the vessel to, the general commanding me, commanding all, from him permission taking, from time the programme hastening, (i have loiter'd too long as it is,) from sex, from the warp and from the woof, from privacy, from frequent repinings alone, from plenty of persons near and yet the right person not near, from the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers through my hair and beard, from the long sustain'd kiss upon the mouth or bosom, from the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk, fainting with excess, from what the divine husband knows, from the work of fatherhood, from exultation, victory and relief, from the bedfellow's embrace in the night, from the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms, from the cling of the trembling arm, from the bending curve and the clinch, from side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing, from the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as unwilling to leave, (yet a moment o tender waiter, and i return,) from the hour of shining stars and dropping dews, from the night a moment i emerging flitting out, celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for, and you stalwart loins. i sing the body electric 1 i sing the body electric, the armies of those i love engirth me and i engirth them, they will not let me off till i go with them, respond to them, and discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul. was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? and if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead? and if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? and if the body were not the soul, what is the soul? 2 the love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account, that of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect. the expression of the face balks account, but the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face, it is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists, it is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not hide him, the strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth, to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more, you linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side. the sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards, the swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and from the heave of the water, the bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the horse-man in his saddle, girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances, the group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting, the female soothing a child, the farmer's daughter in the garden or cow-yard, the young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six horses through the crowd, the wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work, the coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance, the upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes; the march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps, the slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the listening on the alert, the natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv'd neck and the counting; such-like i lovei loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother's breast with the little child, swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, count. 3 i knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons, and in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons. this man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person, the shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness and breadth of his manners, these i used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also, he was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome, they and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him, they did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love, he drank water only, the blood show'd like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face, he was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail'd his boat himself, he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him, when he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang, you would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other. 4 i have perceiv'd that to be with those i like is enough, to stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, to be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, to pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then? i do not ask any more delight, i swim in it as in a sea. there is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well, all things please the soul, but these please the soul well. 5 this is the female form, a divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot, it attracts with fierce undeniable attraction, i am drawn by its breath as if i were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it, books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are now consumed, mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response likewise ungovernable, hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused, mine too diffused, ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching, limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious nice, bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn, undulating into the willing and yielding day, lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day. this the nucleusafter the child is born of woman, man is born of woman, this the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the outlet again. be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest, you are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul. the female contains all qualities and tempers them, she is in her place and moves with perfect balance, she is all things duly veil'd, she is both passive and active, she is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters. as i see my soul reflected in nature, as i see through a mist, one with inexpressible completeness, sanity, beauty, see the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the female i see. 6 the male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place, he too is all qualities, he is action and power, the flush of the known universe is in him, scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well, the wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is utmost become him well, pride is for him, the full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul, knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to the test of himself, whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes soundings at last only here, (where else does he strike soundings except here?) the man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred, no matter who it is, it is sacredis it the meanest one in the laborers' gang? is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf? each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you, each has his or her place in the procession. (all is a procession, the universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.) do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant? do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has no right to a sight? do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts, for you only, and not for him and her? 7 a man's body at auction, (for before the war i often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,) i help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business. gentlemen look on this wonder, whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it, for it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant, for it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll'd. in this head the all-baffling brain, in it and below it the makings of heroes. examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve, they shall be stript that you may see them. exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition, flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized arms and legs, and wonders within there yet. within there runs blood, the same old blood! the same red-running blood! there swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings, aspirations, (do you think they are not there because they are not express'd in parlors and lecture-rooms?) this is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers in their turns, in him the start of populous states and rich republics, of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments. how do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring through the centuries? (who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace back through the centuries?) 8 a woman's body at auction, she too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers, she is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers. have you ever loved the body of a woman? have you ever loved the body of a man? do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and times all over the earth? if any thing is sacred the human body is sacred, and the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted, and in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful than the most beautiful face. have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool that corrupted her own live body? for they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves. 9 o my body! i dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you, i believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,) i believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems, man's, woman's, child, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's, father's, young man's, young woman's poems, head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears, eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids, mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges, nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition, cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue, strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest, upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones, wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails, broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side, ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone, hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root, strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above, leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg, ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel; all attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one's body, male or female, the lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean, the brain in its folds inside the skull-frame, sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity, womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman, the womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings, the voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud, food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming, poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening, the continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes, the skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair, the curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body, the circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out, the beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees, the thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones, the exquisite realization of health; o i say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, o i say now these are the soul! a woman waits for me a woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking, yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking. sex contains all, bodies, souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk, all hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, all the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth, these are contain'd in sex as parts of itself and justifications of itself. without shame the man i like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex, without shame the woman i like knows and avows hers. now i will dismiss myself from impassive women, i will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women that are warm-blooded and sufficient for me, i see that they understand me and do not deny me, i see that they are worthy of me, i will be the robust husband of those women. they are not one jot less than i am, they are tann'd in the face by shining suns and blowing winds, their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength, they know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves, they are ultimate in their own rightthey are calm, clear, well-possess'd of themselves. i draw you close to me, you women, i cannot let you go, i would do you good, i am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for others' sakes, envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards, they refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me. it is i, you women, i make my way, i am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but i love you, i do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you, i pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for these states, i press with slow rude muscle, i brace myself effectually, i listen to no entreaties, i dare not withdraw till i deposit what has so long accumulated within me. through you i drain the pent-up rivers of myself, in you i wrap a thousand onward years, on you i graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and america, the drops i distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, new artists, musicians, and singers, the babes i beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn, i shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings, i shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as i and you inter-penetrate now, i shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as i count on the fruits of the gushing showers i give now, i shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality, i plant so lovingly now. spontaneous me spontaneous me, nature, the loving day, the mounting sun, the friend i am happy with, the arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder, the hillside whiten'd with blossoms of the mountain ash, the same late in autumn, the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green, the rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, the private untrimm'd bank, the primitive apples, the pebble-stones, beautiful dripping fragments, the negligent list of one after another as i happen to call them to me or think of them, the real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,) the poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me, this poem drooping shy and unseen that i always carry, and that all men carry, (know once for all, avow'd on purpose, wherever are men like me, are our lusty lurking masculine poems,) love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers, and the climbing sap, arms and hands of love, lips of love, phallic thumb of love, breasts of love, bellies press'd and glued together with love, earth of chaste love, life that is only life after love, the body of my love, the body of the woman i love, the body of the man, the body of the earth, soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west, the hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and down, that gripes the full-grown lady-flower, curves upon her with amorous firm legs, takes his will of her, and holds himself tremulous and tight till he is satisfied; the wet of woods through the early hours, two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one with an arm slanting down across and below the waist of the other, the smell of apples, aromas from crush'd sage-plant, mint, birch-bark, the boy's longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what he was dreaming, the dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl and falling still and content to the ground, the no-form'd stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with, the hubb'd sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can any one, the sensitive, orbic, underlapp'd brothers, that only privileged feelers may be intimate where they are, the curious roamer the hand roaming all over the body, the bashful withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves, the limpid liquid within the young man, the vex'd corrosion so pensive and so painful, the torment, the irritable tide that will not be at rest, the like of the same i feel, the like of the same in others, the young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that flushes and flushes, the young man that wakes deep at night, the hot hand seeking to repress what would master him, the mystic amorous night, the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats, the pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers, the young man all color'd, red, ashamed, angry; the souse upon me of my lover the sea, as i lie willing and naked, the merriment of the twin babes that crawl over the grass in the sun, the mother never turning her vigilant eyes from them, the walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen'd long-round walnuts, the continence of vegetables, birds, animals, the consequent meanness of me should i skulk or find myself indecent, while birds and animals never once skulk or find themselves indecent, the great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of maternity, the oath of procreation i have sworn, my adamic and fresh daughters, the greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till i saturate what shall produce boys to fill my place when i am through, the wholesome relief, repose, content, and this bunch pluck'd at random from myself, it has done its worki toss it carelessly to fall where it may. one hour to madness and joy one hour to madness and joy! o furious! o confine me not! (what is this that frees me so in storms? what do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?) o to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man! o savage and tender achings! (i bequeath them to you my children, i tell them to you, for reasons, o bridegroom and bride.) o to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me in defiance of the world! o to return to paradise! o bashful and feminine! o to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determin'd man. o the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all untied and illumin'd! o to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last! to be absolv'd from previous ties and conventions, i from mine and you from yours! to find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of nature! to have the gag remov'd from one's mouth! to have the feeling to-day or any day i am sufficient as i am. o something unprov'd! something in a trance! to escape utterly from others' anchors and holds! to drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous! to court destruction with taunts, with invitations! to ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me! to rise thither with my inebriate soul! to be lost if it must be so! to feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom! with one brief hour of madness and joy. out of the rolling ocean the crowd out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me, whispering i love you, before long i die, i have travel'd a long way merely to look on you to touch you, for i could not die till i once look'd on you, for i fear'd i might afterward lose you. now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe, return in peace to the ocean my love, i too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated, behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect! but as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us, as for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever; be not impatienta little spaceknow you i salute the air, the ocean and the land, every day at sundown for your dear sake my love. ages and ages returning at intervals ages and ages returning at intervals, undestroy'd, wandering immortal, lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet, i, chanter of adamic songs, through the new garden the west, the great cities calling, deliriate, thus prelude what is generated, offering these, offering myself, bathing myself, bathing my songs in sex, offspring of my loins. we two, how long we were fool'd we two, how long we were fool'd, now transmuted, we swiftly escape as nature escapes, we are nature, long have we been absent, but now we return, we become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark, we are bedded in the ground, we are rocks, we are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side, we browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any, we are two fishes swimming in the sea together, we are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings and evenings, we are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals, we are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down, we are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic and stellar, we are as two comets, we prowl fang'd and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey, we are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead, we are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling over each other and interwetting each other, we are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious, we are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence of the globe, we have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two, we have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy. o hymen! o hymenee! o hymen! o hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus? o why sting me for a swift moment only? why can you not continue? o why do you now cease? is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you would soon certainly kill me? i am he that aches with love i am he that aches with amorous love; does the earth gravitate? does not all matter, aching, attract all matter? so the body of me to all i meet or know. native moments native momentswhen you come upon meah you are here now, give me now libidinous joys only, give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank, to-day i go consort with nature's darlings, to-night too, i am for those who believe in loose delights, i share the midnight orgies of young men, i dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers, the echoes ring with our indecent calls, i pick out some low person for my dearest friend, he shall be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be one condemn'd by others for deeds done, i will play a part no longer, why should i exile myself from my companions? o you shunn'd persons, i at least do not shun you, i come forthwith in your midst, i will be your poet, i will be more to you than to any of the rest. once i pass'd through a populous city once i pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions, yet now of all that city i remember only a woman i casually met there who detain'd me for love of me, day by day and night by night we were together-all else has long been forgotten by me, i remember i say only that woman who passionately clung to me, again we wander, we love, we separate again, again she holds me by the hand, i must not go, i see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous. i heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ i heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last sunday morn i pass'd the church, winds of autumn, as i walk'd the woods at dusk i heard your long stretch'd sighs up above so mournful, i heard the perfect italian tenor singing at the opera, i heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing; heart of my love! you too i heard murmuring low through one of the wrists around my head, heard the pulse of you when all was still ringing little bells last night under my ear. facing west from california's shores facing west from california's shores, inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound, i, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar, look off the shores of my western sea, the circle almost circled; for starting westward from hindustan, from the vales of kashmere, from asia, from the north, from the god, the sage, and the hero, from the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands, long having wander'd since, round the earth having wander'd, now i face home again, very pleas'd and joyous, (but where is what i started for so long ago? and why is it yet unfound?) as adam early in the morning as adam early in the morning, walking forth from the bower refresh'd with sleep, behold me where i pass, hear my voice, approach, touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as i pass, be not afraid of my body. in paths untrodden in paths untrodden, in the growth by margins of pond-waters, escaped from the lite that exhibits itself, from all the standards hitherto publish'd, from the pleasures, profits, conformities, which too long i was offering to feed my soul, clear to me now standards not yet publish'd, clear to me that my soul, that the soul of the man i speak for rejoices in comrades, here by myself away from the clank of the world, tallying and talk'd to here by tongues aromatic, no longer abash'd, (for in this secluded spot i can respond as i would not dare elsewhere,) strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains all the rest, resolv'd to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment, projecting them along that substantial life, bequeathing hence types of athletic love, afternoon this delicious ninth-month in my forty-first year, i proceed for all who are or have been young men, to tell the secret my nights and days, to celebrate the need of comrades. scented herbage of my breast scented herbage of my breast, leaves from you i glean, i write, to be perused best afterwards, tomb-leaves, body-leaves growing up above me above death, perennial roots, tall leaves, o the winter shall not freeze you delicate leaves, every year shall you bloom again, out from where you retired you shall emerge again; o i do not know whether many passing by will discover you or inhale your faint odor, but i believe a few will; o slender leaves! o blossoms of my blood! i permit you to tell in your own way of the heart that is under you, o i do not know what you mean there underneath yourselves, you are not happiness, you are often more bitter than i can bear, you burn and sting me, yet you are beautiful to me you faint tinged roots, you make me think of death, death is beautiful from you, (what indeed is finally beautiful except death and love?) o i think it is not for life i am chanting here my chant of lovers, i think it must be for death, for how calm, how solemn it grows to ascend to the atmosphere of lovers, death or life i am then indifferent, my soul declines to prefer, (i am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death most,) indeed o death, i think now these leaves mean precisely the same as you mean, grow up taller sweet leaves that i may see! grow up out of my breast! spring away from the conceal'd heart there! do not fold yourself so in your pink-tinged roots timid leaves! do not remain down there so ashamed, herbage of my breast! come i am determin'd to unbare this broad breast of mine, i have long enough stifled and choked; emblematic and capricious blades i leave you, now you serve me not, i will say what i have to say by itself, i will sound myself and comrades only, i will never again utter a call only their call, i will raise with it immortal reverberations through the states, i will give an example to lovers to take permanent shape and will through the states, through me shall the words be said to make death exhilarating, give me your tone therefore o death, that i may accord with it, give me yourself, for i see that you belong to me now above all, and are folded inseparably together, you love and death are, nor will i allow you to balk me any more with what i was calling life, for now it is convey'd to me that you are the purports essential, that you hide in these shifting forms of life, for reasons, and that they are mainly for you, that you beyond them come forth to remain, the real reality, that behind the mask of materials you patiently wait, no matter how long, that you will one day perhaps take control of all, that you will perhaps dissipate this entire show of appearance, that may-be you are what it is all for, but it does not last so very long, but you will last very long. whoever you are holding me now in hand whoever you are holding me now in hand, without one thing all will be useless, i give you fair warning before you attempt me further, i am not what you supposed, but far different. who is he that would become my follower? who would sign himself a candidate for my affections? the way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive, you would have to give up all else, i alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard, your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting, the whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to be abandon'd, therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let go your hand from my shoulders, put me down and depart on your way. or else by stealth in some wood for trial, or back of a rock in the open air, (for in any roof'd room of a house i emerge not, nor in company, and in libraries i lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,) but just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any person for miles around approach unawares, or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or some quiet island, here to put your lips upon mine i permit you, with the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss, for i am the new husband and i am the comrade. or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing, where i may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip, carry me when you go forth over land or sea; for thus merely touching you is enough, is best, and thus touching you would i silently sleep and be carried eternally. but these leaves conning you con at peril, for these leaves and me you will not understand, they will elude you at first and still more afterward, i will certainly elude you. even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold! already you see i have escaped from you. for it is not for what i have put into it that i have written this book, nor is it by reading it you will acquire it, nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me, nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove victorious, nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps more, for all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which i hinted at; therefore release me and depart on your way. for you o democracy come, i will make the continent indissoluble, i will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon, i will make divine magnetic lands, with the love of comrades, with the life-long love of comrades. i will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of america, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies, i will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's necks, by the love of comrades, by the manly love of comrades. for you these from me, o democracy, to serve you ma femme! for you, for you i am trilling these songs. these i singing in spring these i singing in spring collect for lovers, (for who but i should understand lovers and all their sorrow and joy? and who but i should be the poet of comrades?) collecting i traverse the garden the world, but soon i pass the gates, now along the pond-side, now wading in a little, fearing not the wet, now by the post-and-rail fences where the old stones thrown there, pick'd from the fields, have accumulated, (wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones and partly cover them, beyond these i pass,) far, far in the forest, or sauntering later in summer, before i think where i go, solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence, alone i had thought, yet soon a troop gathers around me, some walk by my side and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck, they the spirits of dear friends dead or alive, thicker they come, a great crowd, and i in the middle, collecting, dispensing, singing, there i wander with them, plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is near me, here, lilac, with a branch of pine, here, out of my pocket, some moss which i pull'd off a live-oak in florida as it hung trailing down, here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage, and here what i now draw from the water, wading in the pondside, (o here i last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns again never to separate from me, and this, o this shall henceforth be the token of comrades, this calamus-root shall, interchange it youths with each other! let none render it back!) and twigs of maple and a bunch of wild orange and chestnut, and stems of currants and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar, these i compass'd around by a thick cloud of spirits, wandering, point to or touch as i pass, or throw them loosely from me, indicating to each one what he shall have, giving something to each; but what i drew from the water by the pond-side, that i reserve, i will give of it, but only to them that love as i myself am capable of loving. not heaving from my ribb'd breast only not heaving from my ribb'd breast only, not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself, not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs, not in many an oath and promise broken, not in my wilful and savage soul's volition, not in the subtle nourishment of the air, not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists, not in the curious systole and diastole within which will one day cease, not in many a hungry wish told to the skies only, not in cries, laughter, defiancies, thrown from me when alone far in the wilds, not in husky pantings through clinch'd teeth, not in sounded and resounded words, chattering words, echoes, dead words, not in the murmurs of my dreams while i sleep, nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day, nor in the limbs and senses of my body that take you and dismiss you continuallynot there, not in any or all of them o adhesiveness! o pulse of my life! need i that you exist and show yourself any more than in these songs. of the terrible doubt of appearances of the terrible doubt of appearances, of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded, that may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all, that may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only, may-be the things i perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters, the skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known, (how often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and mock me! how often i think neither i know, nor any man knows, aught of them,) may-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem) as from my present point of view, and might prove (as of course they would) nought of what they appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely changed points of view; to me these and the like of these are curiously answer'd by my lovers, my dear friends, when he whom i love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand, when the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us, then i am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, i am silent, i require nothing further, i cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave, but i walk or sit indifferent, i am satisfied, he ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me. the base of all metaphysics and now gentlemen, a word i give to remain in your memories and minds, as base and finale too for all metaphysics. (so to the students the old professor, at the close of his crowded course.) having studied the new and antique, the greek and germanic systems, kant having studied and stated, fichte and schelling and hegel, stated the lore of plato, and socrates greater than plato, and greater than socrates sought and stated, christ divine having studied long, i see reminiscent to-day those greek and germanic systems, see the philosophies all, christian churches and tenets see, yet underneath socrates clearly see, and underneath christ the divine i see, the dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend, of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents, of city for city and land for land. recorders ages hence recorders ages hence, come, i will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, i will tell you what to say of me, publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover, the friend the lover's portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest, who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him, and freely pour'd it forth, who often walk'd lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers, who pensive away from one he lov'd often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night, who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov'd might secretly be indifferent to him, whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another wandering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men, who oft as he saunter'd the streets curv'd with his arm the shoulder of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also. when i heard at the close of the day when i heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv'd with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow'd, and else when i carous'd, or when my plans were accomplish'd, still i was not happy, but the day when i rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh'd, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn, when i saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light, when i wander'd alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise, and when i thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, o then i was happy, o then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish'd me more, and the beautiful day pass'd well, and the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend, and that night while all was still i heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores, i heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me, for the one i love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night, in the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me, and his arm lay lightly around my breastand that night i was happy. are you the new person drawn toward me? are you the new person drawn toward me? to begin with take warning, i am surely far different from what you suppose; do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? do you think it so easy to have me become your lover? do you think the friendship me would be unalloy'd satisfaction? do you think i am trusty and faithful? do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me? do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man? have you no thought o dreamer that it may be all maya, illusion? roots and leaves themselves alone roots and leaves themselves alone are these, scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and pond-side, breast-sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter than vines, gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the sun is risen, breezes of land and love set from living shores to you on the living sea, to you o sailors! frost-mellow'd berries and third-month twigs offer'd fresh to young persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up, love-buds put before you and within you whoever you are, buds to be unfolded on the old terms, if you bring the warmth of the sun to them they will open and bring form, color, perfume, to you, if you become the aliment and the wet they will become flowers, fruits, tall branches and trees. not heat flames up and consumes not heat flames up and consumes, not sea-waves hurry in and out, not the air delicious and dry, the air of ripe summer, bears lightly along white down-balls of myriads of seeds, waited, sailing gracefully, to drop where they may; not these, o none of these more than the flames of me, consuming, burning for his love whom i love, o none more than i hurrying in and out; does the tide hurry, seeking something, and never give up? o i the same, o nor down-balls nor perfumes, nor the high rain-emitting clouds, are borne through the open air, any more than my soul is borne through the open air, waited in all directions o love, for friendship, for you. trickle drops trickle drops! my blue veins leaving! o drops of me! trickle, slow drops, candid from me falling, drip, bleeding drops, from wounds made to free you whence you were prison'd, from my face, from my forehead and lips, from my breast, from within where i was conceal'd, press forth red drops, confession drops, stain every page, stain every song i sing, every word i say, bloody drops, let them know your scarlet heat, let them glisten, saturate them with yourself all ashamed and wet, glow upon all i have written or shall write, bleeding drops, let it all be seen in your light, blushing drops. city of orgies city of orgies, walks and joys, city whom that i have lived and sung in your midst will one day make not the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, your spectacles, repay me, not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships at the wharves, nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows with goods in them, nor to converse with learn'd persons, or bear my share in the soiree or feast; not those, but as i pass o manhattan, your frequent and swift flash of eyes offering me love, offering response to my ownthese repay me, lovers, continual lovers, only repay me. behold this swarthy face behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes, this beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck, my brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm; yet comes one a manhattanese and ever at parting kisses me lightly on the lips with robust love, and i on the crossing of the street or on the ship's deck give a kiss in return, we observe that salute of american comrades land and sea, we are those two natural and nonchalant persons. i saw in louisiana a live-oak growing i saw in louisiana a live-oak growing, all alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches, without any companion it grew there uttering joyous of dark green, and its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself, but i wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for i knew i could not, and i broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it and twined around it a little moss, and brought it away, and i have placed it in sight in my room, it is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends, (for i believe lately i think of little else than of them,) yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love; for all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in louisiana solitary in a wide in a wide flat space, uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near, i know very well i could not. to a stranger passing stranger! you do not know how longingly i look upon you, you must be he i was seeking, or she i was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,) i have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you, all is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured, you grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me, i ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only, you give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return, i am not to speak to you, i am to think of you when i sit alone or wake at night alone, i am to wait, i do not doubt i am to meet you again, i am to see to it that i do not lose you. this moment yearning and thoughtful this moment yearning and thoughtful sitting alone, it seems to me there are other men in other lands yearning and thoughtful, it seems to me i can look over and behold them in germany, italy, france, spain, or far, far away, in china, or in russia or talking other dialects, and it seems to me if i could know those men i should become attached to them as i do to men in my own lands, o i know we should be brethren and lovers, i know i should be happy with them. i hear it was charged against me i hear it was charged against me that i sought to destroy institutions, but really i am neither for nor against institutions, (what indeed have i in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?) only i will establish in the mannahatta and in every city of these states inland and seaboard, and in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the water, without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, the institution of the dear love of comrades. the prairie-grass dividing the prairie-grass dividing, its special odor breathing, i demand of it the spiritual corresponding, demand the most copious and close companionship of men, demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings, those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious, those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and command, leading not following, those with a never-quell'd audacity, those with sweet and lusty flesh clear of taint, those that look carelessly in the faces of presidents and governors, as to say who are you? those of earth-born passion, simple, never constrain'd, never obedient, those of inland america. when i persue the conquer'd fame when i peruse the conquer'd fame of heroes and the victories of mighty generals, i do not envy the generals, nor the president in his presidency, nor the rich in his great house, but when i hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them, how together through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long, through youth and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful they were, then i am pensive-i hastily walk away fill'd with the bitterest envy. we two boys together clinging we two boys together clinging, one the other never leaving, up and down the roads going, north and south excursions making, power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching, arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving. no law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening, misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing, cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing, fulfilling our foray. a promise to california a promise to california, or inland to the great pastoral plains, and on to puget sound and oregon; sojourning east a while longer, soon i travel toward you, to remain, to teach robust american love, for i know very well that i and robust love belong among you, inland, and along the western sea; for these states tend inland and toward the western sea, and i will also. here the frailest leaves of me here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, here i shade and hide my thoughts, i myself do not expose them, and yet they expose me more than all my other poems. no labor-saving machine no labor-saving machine, nor discovery have i made, nor will i be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to found hospital or library, nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for america, nor literary success nor intellect; nor book for the book-shelf, but a few carols vibrating through the air i leave, for comrades and lovers. a glimpse a glimpse through an interstice caught, of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and i unremark'd seated in a corner, of a youth who loves me and whom i love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand, a long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest, there we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word. a leaf for hand in hand a leaf for hand in hand; you natural persons old and young! you on the mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of the mississippi! you friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs! you twain! and all processions moving along the streets! i wish to infuse myself among you till i see it common for you to walk hand in hand. earth, my likeness earth, my likeness, though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there, i now suspect that is not all; i now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to burst forth, for an athlete is enamour'd of me, and i of him, but toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me eligible to burst forth, i dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs. i dream'd in a dream i dream'd in a dream i saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth, i dream'd that was the new city of friends, nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest, it was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, and in all their looks and words. what think you i take my pen in hand? what think you i take my pen in hand to record? the battle-ship, perfect-model'd, majestic, that i saw pass the offing to-day under full sail? the splendors of the past day? or the splendor of the night that envelops me? or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me? -no; but merely of two simple men i saw to-day on the pier in the midst of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends, the one to remain hung on the other's neck and passionately kiss'd him, while the one to depart tightly prest the one to remain in his arms. to the east and to the west to the east and to the west, to the man of the seaside state and of pennsylvania, to the kanadian of the north, to the southerner i love, these with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs are in all men, i believe the main purport of these states is to found a superb friendship, exalte, previously unknown, because i perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all men. sometimes with one i love sometimes with one i love i fill myself with rage for fear i effuse unreturn'd love, but now i think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is certain one way or another, (i loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd, yet out of that i have written these songs.) to a western boy many things to absorb i teach to help you become eleve of mine; yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins, if you be not silently selected by lovers and do not silently select lovers, of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine? fast anchor'd eternal o love! fast-anchor'd eternal o love! o woman i love! o bride! o wife! more resistless than i can tell, the thought of you! then separate, as disembodied or another born, ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation, i ascend, i float in the regions of your love o man, o sharer of my roving life. among the multitude among the multitude among the men and women the multitude, i perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs, acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than i am, some are baffled, but that one is not-that one knows me. ah lover and perfect equal, i meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections, and i when i meet you mean to discover you by the like in you. o you whom i often and silently come o you whom i often and silently come where you are that i may be with you, as i walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room with you, little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me. that shadow my likeness that shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood, chattering, chaffering, how often i find myself standing and looking at it where it flits, how often i question and doubt whether that is really me; but among my lovers and caroling these songs, o i never doubt whether that is really me. full of life now full of life now, compact, visible, i, forty years old the eighty-third year of the states, to one a century hence or any number of centuries hence, to you yet unborn these, seeking you. when you read these i that was visible am become invisible, now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me, fancying how happy you were if i could be with you and become your comrade; be it as if i were with you. (be not too certain but i am now with you.) salut au monde! 1 o take my hand walt whitman! such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds! such join'd unended links, each hook'd to the next, each answering all, each sharing the earth with all. what widens within you walt whitman? what waves and soils exuding? what climes? what persons and cities are here? who are the infants, some playing, some slumbering? who are the girls? who are the married women? who are the groups of old men going slowly with their arms about each other's necks? what rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these? what are the mountains call'd that rise so high in the mists? what myriads of dwellings are they fill'd with dwellers? 2 within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens, asia, africa, europe, are to the eastamerica is provided for in the west, banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator, curiously north and south turn the axis-ends, within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it does not set for months, stretch'd in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the horizon and sinks again, within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes, groups, malaysia, polynesia, and the great west indian islands. 3 what do you hear walt whitman? i hear the workman singing and the farmer's wife singing, i hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals early in the day, i hear emulous shouts of australians pursuing the wild horse, i hear the spanish dance with castanets in the chestnut shade, to the rebeck and guitar, i hear continual echoes from the thames, i hear fierce french liberty songs, i hear of the italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems, i hear the locusts in syria as they strike the grain and grass with the showers of their terrible clouds, i hear the coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling on the breast of the black venerable vast mother the nile, i hear the chirp of the mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule, i hear the arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque, i hear the christian priests at the altars of their churches, i hear the responsive base and soprano, i hear the cry of the cossack, and the sailor's voice putting to sea at okotsk, i hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle as the slaves march on, as the husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fasten'd together with wrist-chains and ankle-chains, i hear the hebrew reading his records and psalms, i hear the rhythmic myths of the greeks, and the strong legends of the romans, i hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful god the christ, i hear the hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars, adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three thousand years ago. 4 what do you see walt whitman? who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you? i see a great round wonder rolling through space, i see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, graveyards, jails, factories, palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads upon the surface, i see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping, and the sunlit part on the other side, i see the curious rapid change of the light and shade, i see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as my land is to me. i see plenteous waters, i see mountain peaks, i see the sierras of andes where they range, i see plainly the himalayas, chian shahs, altays, ghauts, i see the giant pinnacles of elbruz, kazbek, bazardjusi, i see the styrian alps, and the karnac alps, i see the pyrenees, balks, carpathians, and to the north the dofrafields, and off at sea mount hecla, i see vesuvius and etna, the mountains of the moon, and the red mountains of madagascar, i see the lybian, arabian, and asiatic deserts, i see huge dreadful arctic and antarctic icebergs, i see the superior oceans and the inferior ones, the atlantic and pacific, the sea of mexico, the brazilian sea, and the sea of peru, the waters of hindustan, the china sea, and the gulf of guinea, the japan waters, the beautiful bay of nagasaki land-lock'd in its mountains, the spread of the baltic, caspian, bothnia, the british shores, and the bay of biscay, the clear-sunn'd mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands, the white sea, and the sea around greenland. i behold the mariners of the world, some are in storms, some in the night with the watch on the lookout, some drifting helplessly, some with contagious diseases. i behold the sail and steamships of the world, some in clusters in port, some on their voyages, some double the cape of storms, some cape verde, others capes guardafui, bon, or bajadore, others dondra head, others pass the straits of sunda, others cape lopatka, others behring's straits, others cape horn, others sail the gulf of mexico or along cuba or hayti, others hudson's bay or baffin's bay, others pass the straits of dover, others enter the wash, others the firth of solway, others round cape clear, others the land's end, others traverse the zuyder zee or the scheld, others as comers and goers at gibraltar or the dardanelles, others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs, others descend or ascend the obi or the lena, others the niger or the congo, others the indus, the burampooter and cambodia, others wait steam'd up ready to start in the ports of australia, wait at liverpool, glasgow, dublin, marseilles, lisbon, naples, hamburg, bremen, bordeaux, the hague, copenhagen, wait at valparaiso, rio janeiro, panama. 5 i see the tracks of the railroads of the earth, i see them in great britain, i see them in europe, i see them in asia and in africa. i see the electric telegraphs of the earth, i see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains, passions, of my race. i see the long river-stripes of the earth, i see the amazon and the paraguay, i see the four great rivers of china, the amour, the yellow river, the yiang-tse, and the pearl, i see where the seine flows, and where the danube, the loire, the rhone, and the guadalquiver flow, i see the windings of the volga, the dnieper, the oder, i see the tuscan going down the arno, and the venetian along the po, i see the greek seaman sailing out of egina bay. 6 i see the site of the old empire of assyria, and that of persia, and that of india, i see the falling of the ganges over the high rim of saukara. i see the place of the idea of the deity incarnated by avatars in human forms, i see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth, oracles, sacrificers, brahmins, sabians, llamas, monks, muftis, exhorters, i see where druids walk'd the groves of mona, i see the mistletoe and vervain, i see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of gods, i see the old signifiers. i see christ eating the bread of his last supper in the midst of youths and old persons, i see where the strong divine young man the hercules toil'd faithfully and long and then died, i see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limb'd bacchus, i see kneph, blooming, drest in blue, with the crown of feathers on his head, i see hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-belov'd, saying to the people do not weep for me, this is not my true country, i have lived banish'd from my true country, i now go back there, i return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn. 7 i see the battle-fields of the earth, grass grows upon them and blossoms and corn, i see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions. i see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown events, heroes, records of the earth. i see the places of the sagas, i see pine-trees and fir-trees torn by northern blasts, i see granite bowlders and cliffs, i see green meadows and lakes, i see the burial-cairns of scandinavian warriors, i see them raised high with stones by the marge of restless oceans, that the dead men's spirits when they wearied of their quiet graves might rise up through the mounds and gaze on the tossing billows, and be refresh'd by storms, immensity, liberty, action. i see the steppes of asia, i see the tumuli of mongolia, i see the tents of kalmucks and baskirs, i see the nomadic tribes with herds of oxen and cows, i see the table-lands notch'd with ravines, i see the jungles and deserts, i see the camel, the wild steed, the bustard, the fat-tail'd sheep, the antelope, and the burrowing wolf i see the highlands of abyssinia, i see flocks of goats feeding, and see the fig-tree, tamarind, date, and see fields of teff-wheat and places of verdure and gold. i see the brazilian vaquero, i see the bolivian ascending mount sorata, i see the wacho crossing the plains, i see the incomparable rider of horses with his lasso on his arm, i see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides. 8 i see the regions of snow and ice, i see the sharp-eyed samoiede and the finn, i see the seal-seeker in his boat poising his lance, i see the siberian on his slight-built sledge drawn by dogs, i see the porpoise-hunters, i see the whale-crews of the south pacific and the north atlantic, i see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of switzerlandi mark the long winters and the isolation. i see the cities of the earth and make myself at random a part of them, i am a real parisian, i am a habitan of vienna, st. petersburg, berlin, constantinople, i am of adelaide, sidney, melbourne, i am of london, manchester, bristol, edinburgh, limerick, i am of madrid, cadiz, barcelona, oporto, lyons, brussels, berne, frankfort, stuttgart, turin, florence, i belong in moscow, cracow, warsaw, or northward in christiania or stockholm, or in siberian irkutsk, or in some street in iceland, i descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again. 10 i see vapors exhaling from unexplored countries, i see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poison'd splint, the fetich, and the obi. i see african and asiatic towns, i see algiers, tripoli, derne, mogadore, timbuctoo, monrovia, i see the swarms of pekin, canton, benares, delhi, calcutta, tokio, i see the kruman in his hut, and the dahoman and ashantee-man in their huts, i see the turk smoking opium in aleppo, i see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of khiva and those of herat, i see teheran, i see muscat and medina and the intervening sands, see the caravans toiling onward, i see egypt and the egyptians, i see the pyramids and obelisks. i look on chisell'd histories, records of conquering kings, dynasties, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks, i see at memphis mummy-pits containing mummies embalm'd, swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries, i look on the fall'n theban, the large-ball'd eyes, the side-drooping neck, the hands folded across the breast. i see all the menials of the earth, laboring, i see all the prisoners in the prisons, i see the defective human bodies of the earth, the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics, the pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth, the helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women. i see male and female everywhere, i see the serene brotherhood of philosophs, i see the constructiveness of my race, i see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race, i see ranks, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, i go among them, i mix indiscriminately, and i salute all the inhabitants of the earth. 11 you whoever you are! you daughter or son of england! you of the mighty slavic tribes and empires! you russ in russia! you dim-descended, black, divine-soul'd african, large, fine-headed, nobly-form'd, superbly destin'd, on equal terms with me! you norwegian! swede! dane! icelander! you prussian! you spaniard of spain! you portuguese! you frenchwoman and frenchman of france! you belge! you liberty-lover of the netherlands! (you stock whence i myself have descended;) you sturdy austrian! you lombard! hun! bohemian! farmer of styria! you neighbor of the danube! you working-man of the rhine, the elbe, or the weser! you working-woman too! you sardinian! you bavarian! swabian! saxon! wallachian! bulgarian! you roman! neapolitan! you greek! you lithe matador in the arena at seville! you mountaineer living lawlessly on the taurus or caucasus! you bokh horse-herd watching your mares and stallions feeding! you beautiful-bodied persian at full speed in the saddle shooting arrows to the mark! you chinaman and chinawoman of china! you tartar of tartary! you women of the earth subordinated at your tasks! you jew journeying in your old age through every risk to stand once on syrian ground! you other jews waiting in all lands for your messiah! you thoughtful armenian pondering by some stream of the euphrates! you peering amid the ruins of nineveh! you ascending mount ararat! you foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets of mecca! you sheiks along the stretch from suez to bab-el-mandeb ruling your families and tribes! you olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of nazareth, damascus, or lake tiberias! you thibet trader on the wide inland or bargaining in the shops of lassa! you japanese man or woman! you liver in madagascar, ceylon, sumatra, borneo! all you continentals of asia, africa, europe, australia, indifferent of place! all you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea! and you of centuries hence when you listen to me! and you each and everywhere whom i specify not, but include just the same! health to you! good will to you all, from me and america sent! each of us inevitable, each of us limitless-each of us with his or her right upon the earth, each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth, each of us here as divinely as any is here. 12 you hottentot with clicking palate! you woolly-hair'd hordes! you own'd persons dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops! you human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes! you poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon for all your glimmering language and spirituality! you dwarf'd kamtschatkan, greenlander, lapp! you austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip, groveling, seeking your food! you caffre, berber, soudanese! you haggard, uncouth, untutor'd bedowee! you plague-swarms in madras, nankin, kaubul, cairo! you benighted roamer of amazonia! you patagonian! you feejeeman! i do not prefer others so very much before you either, i do not say one word against you, away back there where you stand, (you will come forward in due time to my side.) 13 my spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth, i have look'd for equals and lovers and found them ready for me in all lands, i think some divine rapport has equalized me with them. you vapors, i think i have risen with you, moved away to distant continents, and fallen down there, for reasons, i think i have blown with you you winds; you waters i have finger'd every shore with you, i have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run through, i have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas and on the high embedded rocks, to cry thence: what cities the light or warmth penetrates i penetrate those cities myself, all islands to which birds wing their way i wing my way myself. toward you all, in america's name, i raise high the perpendicular hand, i make the signal, to remain after me in sight forever, for all the haunts and homes of men. song of the open road 1 afoot and light-hearted i take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me leading wherever i choose. henceforth i ask not good-fortune, i myself am good-fortune, henceforth i whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, strong and content i travel the open road. the earth, that is sufficient, i do not want the constellations any nearer, i know they are very well where they are, i know they suffice for those who belong to them. (still here i carry my old delicious burdens, i carry them, men and women, i carry them with me wherever i go, i swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them, i am fill'd with them, and i will fill them in return.) 2 you road i enter upon and look around, i believe you are not all that is here, i believe that much unseen is also here. here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial, the black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas'd, the illiterate person, are not denied; the birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar's tramp, the drunkard's stagger, the laughing party of mechanics, the escaped youth, the rich person's carriage, the fop, the eloping couple, the early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town, they pass, i also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted, none but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me. 3 you air that serves me with breath to speak! you objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape! you light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers! you paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides! i believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me. you flagg'd walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges! you ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined side! you distant ships! you rows of houses! you window-pierc'd facades! you roofs! you porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards! you windows whose transparent shells might expose so much! you doors and ascending steps! you arches! you gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings! from all that has touch'd you i believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me, from the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me. 4 the earth expanding right hand and left hand, the picture alive, every part in its best light, the music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted, the cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road. o highway i travel, do you say to me do not leave me? do you say venture not-if you leave me you are lost? do you say i am already prepared, i am well-beaten and undenied, adhere to me? o public road, i say back i am not afraid to leave you, yet i love you, you express me better than i can express myself, you shall be more to me than my poem. i think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air, and all free poems also, i think i could stop here myself and do miracles, i think whatever i shall meet on the road i shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me, i think whoever i see must be happy. 5 from this hour i ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, going where i list, my own master total and absolute, listening to others, considering well what they say, pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me. i inhale great draughts of space, the east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. i am larger, better than i thought, i did not know i held so much goodness. all seems beautiful to me, can repeat over to men and women you have done such good to me i would do the same to you, i will recruit for myself and you as i go, i will scatter myself among men and women as i go, i will toss a new gladness and roughness among them, whoever denies me it shall not trouble me, whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me. 6 now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me, now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear'd it would not astonish me. now i see the secret of the making of the best persons, it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth. here a great personal deed has room, (such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men, its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it.) here is the test of wisdom, wisdom is not finally tested in schools, wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul. now i re-examine philosophies and religions, they may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents. here is realization, here is a man tallied-he realizes here what he has in him, the past, the future, majesty, love-if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them. only the kernel of every object nourishes; where is he who tears off the husks for you and me? where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me? here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion'd, it is apropos; do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers? do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls? 7 here is the efflux of the soul, the efflux of the soul comes from within through embower'd gates, ever provoking questions, these yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they? why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank? why are there trees i never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me? (i think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always drop fruit as i pass;) what is it i interchange so suddenly with strangers? what with some driver as i ride on the seat by his side? what with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as i walk by and pause? what gives me to be free to a woman's and man's good-will? what gives them to be free to mine? 8 the efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness, i think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times, now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged. here rises the fluid and attaching character, the fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman, (the herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually out of itself.) toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old, from it falls distill'd the charm that mocks beauty and attainments, toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact. 9 allons! whoever you are come travel with me! traveling with me you find what never tires. the earth never tires, the earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, nature is rude and incomprehensible at first, be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd, i swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell. allons! we must not stop here, however sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here, however shelter'd this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here, however welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while. 10 allons! the inducements shall be greater, we will sail pathless and wild seas, we will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the yankee clipper speeds by under full sail. allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements, health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity; allons! from all formules! from your formules, o bat-eyed and materialistic priests. the stale cadaver blocks up the passage-the burial waits no longer. allons! yet take warning! he traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance, none may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health, come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself, only those may come who come in sweet and determin'd bodies, no diseas'd person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here. (i and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes, we convince by our presence.) 11 listen! i will be honest with you, i do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes, these are the days that must happen to you: you shall not heap up what is call'd riches, you shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve, you but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call'd by an irresistible call to depart, you shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you, what beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting, you shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands toward you. 12 allons! after the great companions, and to belong to them! they too are on the roadthey are the swift and majestic menthey are the greatest women, enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas, sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land, habitues of many distant countries, habitues of far-distant dwellings, trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers, pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore, dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children, soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins, journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each emerging from that which preceded it, journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases, forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days, journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and well-grain'd manhood, journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass'd, content, journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood, old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death. 13 allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless, to undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights, to merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to, again to merge them in the start of superior journeys, to see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it, to conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it, to look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but it stretches and waits for you, to see no being, not god's or any, but you also go thither, to see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it, to take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens, to take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through, to carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go, to gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to gather the love out of their hearts, to take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you, to know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls. all parts away for the progress of souls, all religion, all solid things, arts, governments-all that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe. of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance. forever alive, forever forward, stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied, desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men, they go! they go! i know that they go, but i know not where they go, but i know that they go toward the besttoward something great. whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth! you must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though it has been built for you. out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen! it is useless to protest, i know all and expose it. behold through you as bad as the rest, through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people, inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash'd and trimm'd faces, behold a secret silent loathing and despair. no husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession, another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes, formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the parlors, in the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly, home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom, everywhere, smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones, under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers, keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself, speaking of any thing else but never of itself. 14 allons! through struggles and wars! the goal that was named cannot be countermanded. have the past struggles succeeded? what has succeeded? yourself? your nation? nature? now understand me wellit is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary. my call is the call of battle, i nourish active rebellion, he going with me must go well arm'd, he going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions. 15 allons! the road is before us! it is safei have tried itmy own feet have tried it wellbe not detain'd! let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen'd! let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn'd! let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher! let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law. camerado, i give you my hand! i give you my love more precious than money, i give you myself before preaching or law; will you give me yourselp. will you come travel with me? shall we stick by each other as long as we live? crossing brooklyn ferry 1 flood-tide below me! i see you face to face! clouds of the west-sun there half an hour highi see you also face to face. crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me! on the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose, and you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose. 2 the impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day, the simple, compact, well-join'd scheme, myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme, the similitudes of the past and those of the future, the glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river, the current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away, the others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them, the certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others. others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore, others will watch the run of the flood-tide, others will see the shipping of manhattan north and west, and the heights of brooklyn to the south and east, others will see the islands large and small; fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high, a hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them, will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide. 3 it avails not, time nor placedistance avails not, i am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so i felt, just as any of you is one of a living crowd, i was one of a crowd, just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, i was refresh'd, just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, i stood yet was hurried, just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, i look'd. i too many and many a time cross'd the river of old, watched the twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies, saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong shadow, saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south, saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water, had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams, look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the sunlit water, look'd on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward, look'd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet, look'd toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving, saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me, saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor, the sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars, the round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants, the large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilothouses, the white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels, the flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset, the scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolic-some crests and glistening, the stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite storehouses by the docks, on the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank'd on each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter, on the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night, casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets. 4 these and all else were to me the same as they are to you, i loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river, the men and women i saw were all near to me, others the same-others who look back on me because i look'd forward to them, (the time will come, though i stop here to-day and to-night.) 5 what is it then between us? what is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? whatever it is, it avails notdistance avails not, and place avails not, i too lived, brooklyn of ample hills was mine, i too walk'd the streets of manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it, i too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me, in the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me, in my walks home late at night or as i lay in my bed they came upon me, i too had been struck from the float forever held in solution, i too had receiv'd identity by my body, that i was i knew was of my body, and what i should be i knew i should be of my body. 6 it is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, the dark threw its patches down upon me also, the best i had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious, my great thoughts as i supposed them, were they not in reality meagre? nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil, i am he who knew what it was to be evil, i too knitted the old knot of contrariety, blabb'd, blush'd, resented, lied, stole, grudg'd, had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes i dared not speak, was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant, the wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me. the cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting, refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting, was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest, was call'd by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing, felt their arms on my neck as i stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as i sat, saw many i loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet never told them a word, lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping, play'd the part that still looks back on the actor or actress, the same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like, or as small as we like, or both great and small. 7 closer yet i approach you, what thought you have of me now, i had as much of youi laid in my stores in advance, i consider'd long and seriously of you before you were born. who was to know what should come home to me? who knows but i am enjoying this? who knows, for all the distance, but i am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me? 8 ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm'd manhattan? river and sunset and scallop-edg'd waves of flood-tide? the sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter? what gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices i love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as approach? what is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face? which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you? we understand then do we not? what i promis'd without mentioning it, have you not accepted? what the study could not teach-what the preaching could not accomplish is accomplish'd, is it not? 9 flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide! frolic on, crested and scallop-edg'd waves! gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me! cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers! stand up, tall masts of mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of brooklyn! throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers! suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution! gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly! sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name! live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress! play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one makes it! consider, you who peruse me, whether i may not in unknown ways be looking upon you; be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current; fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air; receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you! diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one's head, in the sunlit water! come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail'd schooners, sloops, lighters! flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower'd at sunset! burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses! appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are, you necessary film, continue to envelop the soul, about my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas, thrive, cities-bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers, expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual, keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting. you have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers, we receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward, not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us, we use you, and do not cast you aside-we plant you permanently within us, we fathom you notwe love youthere is perfection in you also, you furnish your parts toward eternity, great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul. song of the answerer 1 now list to my morning's romanza, i tell the signs of the answerer, to the cities and farms i sing as they spread in the sunshine before me. a young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother, how shall the young man know the whether and when of his brother? tell him to send me the signs. and i stand before the young man face to face, and take his right hand in my left hand and his left hand in my right hand, and i answer for his brother and for men, and i answer for him that answers for all, and send these signs. him all wait for, him all yield up to, his word is decisive and final, him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves as amid light, him they immerse and he immerses them. beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people, animals, the profound earth and its attributes and the unquiet ocean, (so tell i my morning's romanza,) all enjoyments and properties and money, and whatever money will buy, the best farms, others toiling and planting and he unavoidably reaps, the noblest and costliest cities, others grading and building and he domiciles there, nothing for any one but what is for him, near and far are for him, the ships in the offing, the perpetual shows and marches on land are for him if they are for anybody. he puts things in their attitudes, he puts to-day out of himself with plasticity and love, he places his own times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them. he is the answerer, what can be answer'd he answers, and what cannot be answer'd he shows how it cannot be answer'd. a man is a summons and challenge, (it is vain to skulkdo you hear that mocking and laughter? do you hear the ironical echoes?) books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat up and down seeking to give satisfaction, he indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down also. whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and gently and safely by day or by night, he has the pass-key of hearts, to him the response of the prying of hands on the knobs. his welcome is universal, the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he is, the person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed. every existence has its idiom, every thing has an idiom and tongue, he resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men, and any man translates, and any man translates himself also, one part does not counteract another part, he is the joiner, he sees how they join. he says indifferently and alike how are you friend? to the president at his levee, and he says good-day my brother, to cudge that hoes in the sugar-field, and both understand him and know that his speech is right. he walks with perfect ease in the capitol, he walks among the congress, and one representative says to another, here is our equal appearing and new. then the mechanics take him for a mechanic, and the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that he has follow'd the sea, and the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist, and the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them, no matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it or has follow'd it, no matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters there. the english believe he comes of their english stock, a jew to the jew he seems, a russ to the russ, usual and near, removed from none. whoever he looks at in the traveler's coffee-house claims him, the italian or frenchman is sure, the german is sure, the spaniard is sure, and the island cuban is sure, the engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the mississippi or st. lawrence or sacramento, or hudson or paumanok sound, claims him. the gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood, the insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them, they are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they are so grown. 2 the indications and tally of time, perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs, time, always without break, indicates itself in parts, what always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant company of singers, and their words, the words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark, but the words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark, the maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality, his insight and power encircle things and the human race, he is the glory and extract thus far of things and of the human race. the singers do not beget, only the poet begets, the singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of poems, the answerer, (not every century nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day, for all its names.) the singers of successive hours of centuries may have ostensible names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers, the name of each is, eye-singer, ear-singer, head-singer, sweet-singer, night-singer, parlor-singer, love-singer, weird-singer, or something else. all this time and at all times wait the words of true poems, the words of true poems do not merely please, the true poets are not followers of beauty but the august masters of beauty; the greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers, the words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science. divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness of body, withdrawnness, gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems. the sailor and traveler underlie the maker of poems, the answerer, the builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all these underlie the maker of poems, the answerer. the words of the true poems give you more than poems, they give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and every thing else, they balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes, they do not seek beauty, they are sought, forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick. they prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset, they bring none to his or her terminus or to be content and full, whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings, to launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again. our old feuillage always our old feuillage! always florida's green peninsulaalways the priceless delta of louisianaalways the cotton-fields of alabama and texas, always california's golden hills and hollows, and the silver mountains of new mexicoalways soft-breath'd cuba, always the vast slope drain'd by the southern sea, inseparable with the slopes drain'd by the eastern and western seas, the area the eighty-third year of these states, the three and a half millions of square miles, the eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main, the thirty thousand miles of river navigation, the seven millions of distinct families and the same number of dwellings-always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches, always the free range and diversityalways the continent of democracy; always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers, kanada, the snows; always these compact lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes; always the west with strong native persons, the increasing density there, the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders; all sights, south, north, east-all deeds, promiscuously done at all times, all characters, movements, growths, a few noticed, myriads unnoticed, through mannahatta's streets i walking, these things gathering, on interior rivers by night in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up, sunlight by day on the valley of the susquehanna, and on the valleys of the potomac and rappahannock, and the valleys of the roanoke and delaware, in their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the adirondacks the hills, or lapping the saginaw waters to drink, in a lonesome inlet a sheldrake lost from the flock, sitting on the water rocking silently, in farmers' barns oxen in the stable, their harvest labor done, they rest standing, they are too tired, afar on arctic ice the she-walrus lying drowsily while her cubs play around, the hawk sailing where men have not yet sail'd, the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes, white drift spooning ahead where the ship in the tempest dashes, on solid land what is done in cities as the bells strike midnight together, in primitive woods the sounds there also sounding, the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk, in winter beneath the hard blue ice of moosehead lake, in summer visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming, in lower latitudes in warmer air in the carolinas the large black buzzard floating slowly high beyond the tree tops, below, the red cedar festoon'd with tylandria, the pines and cypresses growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat, rude boats descending the big pedee, climbing plants, parasites with color'd flowers and berries enveloping huge trees, the waving drapery on the live-oak trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind, the camp of georgia wagoners just after dark, the supper-fires and the cooking and eating by whites and negroes, thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from troughs, the shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees, the flames with the black smoke from the pitch-pine curling and rising; southern fishermen fishing, the sounds and inlets of north carolina's coast, the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery, the large sweep-seines, the windlasses on shore work'd by horses, the clearing, curing, and packing-houses; deep in the forest in piney woods turpentine dropping from the incisions in the trees, there are the turpentine works, there are the negroes at work in good health, the ground in all directions is cover'd with pine straw; in tennessee and kentucky slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking, in virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcom'd and kiss'd by the aged mulatto nurse, on rivers boatmen safely moor'd at nightfall in their boats under shelter of high banks, some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle, others sit on the gunwale smoking and talking; late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the american mimic, singing in the great dismal swamp, there are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree; northward, young men of mannahatta, the target company from an excursion returning home at evening, the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women; children at play, or on his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!) the scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the mississippi, he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eyes around; california life, the miner, bearded, dress'd in his rude costume, the stanch california friendship, the sweet air, the graves one in passing meets solitary just aside the horse-path; down in texas the cotton-field, the negro-cabins, drivers driving mules or oxen before rude carts, cotton bales piled on banks and wharves; encircling all, vast-darting up and wide, the american soul, with equal hemispheres, one love, one dilation or pride; in arriere the peace-talk with the iroquois the aborigines, the calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and indorsement, the sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth, the drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural exclamations, the setting out of the war-party, the long and stealthy march, the single file, the swinging hatchets, the surprise and slaughter of enemies; all the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of these states, reminiscences, institutions, all these states compact, every square mile of these states without excepting a particle; me pleas'd, rambling in lanes and country fields, paumanok's fields, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air, the darting swallow, the destroyer of insects, the fall traveler southward but returning northward early in the spring, the country boy at the close of the day driving the herd of cows and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the roadside, the city wharf, boston, philadelphia, baltimore, charleston, new orleans, san francisco, the departing ships when the sailors heave at the capstan; evening-me in my roomthe setting sun, the setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on the opposite wall where the shine is; the athletic american matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners, males, females, immigrants, combinations, the copiousness, the individuality of the states, each for itselfthe moneymakers, factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever, pulley, all certainties, the certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, in space the sporades, the scatter'd islands, the starson the firm earth, the lands, my lands, o lands! all so dear to mewhat you are, (whatever it is,) i putting it at random in these songs, become a part of that, whatever it is, southward there, i screaming, with wings slow flapping, with the myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of florida, otherways there atwixt the banks of the arkansaw, the rio grande, the nueces, the brazos, the tombigbee, the red river, the saskatchawan or the osage, i with the spring waters laughing and skipping and running, northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of paumanok, i with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants, retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill, for amusement-and i triumphantly twittering, the migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh themselves, the body of the flock feed, the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time reliev'd by other sentinelsand i feeding and taking turns with the rest, in kanadian forests the moose, large as an ox, corner'd by hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives-and i, plunging at the hunters, corner'd and desperate, in the mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the countless workmen working in the shops, and i too of the mannahatta, singing thereof-and no less in myself than the whole of the mannahatta in itself, singing the song of these, my ever-united lands-my body no more inevitably united, part to part, and made out of a thousand diverse contributions one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united and made one identity; nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral plains, cities, labors, death, animals, products, war, good and evilthese me, these affording, in all their particulars, the old feuillage to me and to america, how can i do less than pass the clew of the union of them, to afford the like to you? whoever you are! how can i but offer you divine leaves, that you also be eligible as i am? how can i but as here chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these states? a song of joys o to make the most jubilant song! full of music-full of manhood, womanhood, infancy! full of common employments-full of grain and trees. o for the voices of animals-o for the swiftness and balance of fishes! o for the dropping of raindrops in a song! o for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song! o the joy of my spirit-it is uncaged-it darts like lightning! it is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, i will have thousands of globes and all time. o the engineer's joys! to go with a locomotive! to hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the laughing locomotive! to push with resistless way and speed off in the distance. o the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides! the leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh stillness of the woods, the exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the forenoon. o the horseman's and horsewoman's joys! the saddle, the gallop, the pressure upon the seat, the cool gurgling by the ears and hair. o the fireman's joys! i hear the alarm at dead of night, i hear bells, shouts! i pass the crowd, i run! the sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure. o the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent. o the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods. o the mother's joys! the watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the patiently yielded life. o the of increase, growth, recuperation, the joy of soothing and pacifying, the joy of concord and harmony. o to go back to the place where i was born, to hear the birds sing once more, to ramble about the house and barn and over the fields once more, and through the orchard and along the old lanes once more. o to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast, to continue and be employ'd there all my life, the briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at low water, the work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher; i come with my clam-rake and spade, i come with my eel-spear, is the tide out? i join the group of clam-diggers on the flats, i laugh and work with them, i joke at my work like a mettlesome young man; in winter i take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot on the ice-i have a small axe to cut holes in the ice, behold me well-clothed going gayly or returning in the afternoon, my brood of tough boys accompanying me, my brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no one else so well as they love to be with me, by day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me. another time in warm weather out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots where they are sunk with heavy stones, (i know the buoys,) o the sweetness of the fifth-month morning upon the water as i row just before sunrise toward the buoys, i pull the wicker pots up slantingly, the dark green lobsters are desperate with their claws as i take them out, i insert wooden pegs in the 'oints of their pincers, i go to all the places one after another, and then row back to the shore, there in a huge kettle of boiling water the lobsters shall be boil'd till their color becomes scarlet. another time mackerel-taking, voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the water for miles; another time fishing for rock-fish in chesapeake bay, i one of the brown-faced crew; another time trailing for blue-fish off paumanok, i stand with braced body, my left foot is on the gunwale, my right arm throws far out the coils of slender rope, in sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my companions. o boating on the rivers, the voyage down the st. lawrence, the superb scenery, the steamers, the ships sailing, the thousand islands, the occasional timber-raft and the raftsmen with long-reaching sweep-oars, the little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook supper at evening. (o something pernicious and dread! something far away from a puny and pious life! something unproved! something in a trance! something escaped from the anchorage and driving free.) o to work in mines, or forging iron, foundry casting, the foundry itself, the rude high roof, the ample and shadow'd space, the furnace, the hot liquid pour'd out and running. o to resume the joys of the soldier! to feel the presence of a brave commanding officer-to feel his sympathy! to behold his calmness-to be warm'd in the rays of his smile! to go to battle-to hear the bugles play and the drums beat! to hear the crash of artillery-to see the glittering of the bayonets and musket-barrels in the sun! to see men fall and die and not complain! to taste the savage taste of blood-to be so devilish! to gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy. o the whaleman's joys! o i cruise my old cruise again! i feel the ship's motion under me, i feel the atlantic breezes fanning me, i hear the cry again sent down from the mast-head, thereshe blows! again i spring up the rigging to look with the restwe descend, wild with excitement, i leap in the lower'd boat, we row toward our prey where he lies, we approach stealthy and silent, i see the mountainous mass, lethargic, basking, i see the harpooneer standing up, i see the weapon dart from his vigorous arm; o swift again far out in the ocean the wounded whale, settling, running to windward, tows me, again i see him rise to breathe, we row close again, i see a lance driven through his side, press'd deep, turn'd in the wound, again we back off, i see him settle again, the life is leaving him fast, as he rises he spouts blood, i see him swim in circles narrower and narrower, swiftly cutting the water-i see him die, he gives one convulsive leap in the centre of the circle, and then falls flat and still in the bloody foam. o the old manhood of me, my noblest joy of all! my children and grand-children, my white hair and beard, my largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the long stretch of my life. o ripen'd joy of womanhood! o happiness at last! i am more than eighty years of age, i am the most venerable mother, how clear is my mind-how all people draw nigh to me! what attractions are these beyond any before? what bloom more than the bloom of youth? what beauty is this that descends upon me and rises out of me? o the orator's joys! to inflate the chest, to roll the thunder of the voice out from the ribs and throat, to make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, with yourself, to lead america-to quell america with a great tongue. o the joy of my soul leaning pois'd on itself, receiving identity through materials and loving them, observing characters and absorbing them, my soul vibrated back to me from them, from sight, hearing, touch, reason, articulation, comparison, memory, and the like, the real life of my senses and flesh transcending my senses and flesh, my body done with materials, my sight done with my material eyes, proved to me this day beyond cavil that it is not my material eyes which finally see, nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts, embraces, procreates. o the farmer's joys! ohioan's, illinoisian's, wisconsinese', kanadian's, iowan's, kansian's, missourian's, oregonese' joys! to rise at peep of day and pass forth nimbly to work, to plough land in the fall for winter-sown crops, to plough land in the spring for maize, to train orchards, to graft the trees, to gather apples in the fall. o to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore, to splash the water! to walk ankle-deep, or race naked along the shore. o to realize space! the plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds, to emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying clouds, as one with them. o the joy a manly self-hood! to be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown, to walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic, to look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye, to speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest, to confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth. knowist thou the excellent joys of youth? joys of the dear companions and of the merry word and laughing face? joy of the glad light-beaming day, joy of the wide-breath'd games? joy of sweet music, joy of the lighted ball-room and the dancers? joy of the plenteous dinner, strong carouse and drinking? yet o my soul supreme! knowist thou the joys of pensive thought? joys of the free and lonesome heart, the tender, gloomy heart? joys of the solitary walk, the spirit bow'd yet proud, the suffering and the struggle? the agonistic throes, the ecstasies, joys of the solemn musings day or night? joys of the thought of death, the great spheres time and space? prophetic joys of better, loftier love's ideals, the divine wife, the sweet, eternal, perfect comrade? joys all thine own undying one, joys worthy thee o soul. o while i live to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, no fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms, to these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving my interior soul impregnable, and nothing exterior shall ever take command of me. for not life's joys alone i sing, repeating-the joy of death! the beautiful touch of death, soothing and benumbing a few moments, for reasons, myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn'd, or render'd to powder, or buried, my real body doubtless left to me for other spheres, my voided body nothing more to me, returning to the purifications, further offices, eternal uses of the earth. o to attract by more than attraction! how it is i know not-yet behold! the something which obeys none of the rest, it is offensive, never defensive-yet how magnetic it draws. o to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted! to be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand! to look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face! to mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! to be indeed a god! o to sail to sea in a ship! to leave this steady unendurable land, to leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses, to leave you o you solid motionless land, and entering a ship, to sail and sail and sail! o to have life henceforth a poem of new joys! to dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on! to be a sailor of the world bound for all ports, a ship itself, (see indeed these sails i spread to the sun and air,) a swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys. song of the broad-axe 1 weapon shapely, naked, wan, head from the mother's bowels drawn, wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one, gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown, resting the grass amid and upon, to be lean'd and to lean on. strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes, masculine trades, sights and sounds. long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music, fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ. 2 welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind, welcome are lands of pine and oak, welcome are lands of the lemon and fig, welcome are lands of gold, welcome are lands of wheat and maize, welcome those of the grape, welcome are lands of sugar and rice, welcome the cotton-lands, welcome those of the white potato and sweet potato, welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies, welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings, welcome the measureless grazing-lands, welcome the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey, hemp; welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands, lands rich as lands of gold or wheat and fruit lands, lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores, lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc, lands of iron-lands of the make of the axe. 3 the log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it, the sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear'd for garden, the irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves after the storm is lull'd, the walling and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea, the thought of ships struck in the storm and put on their beam ends, and the cutting away of masts, the sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashion'd houses and barns, the remember'd print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men, families, goods, the disembarkation, the founding of a new city, the voyage of those who sought a new england and found it, the outset anywhere, the settlements of the arkansas, colorado, ottawa, willamette, the slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags; the beauty of all adventurous and daring persons, the beauty of wood-boys and wood-men with their clear untrimm'd faces, the beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves, the american contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless impatience of restraint, the loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the solidification; the butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer, lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping, the glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods, the strong day's work, the blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock-boughs and the bear-skin; the house-builder at work in cities or anywhere, the preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising, the hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying them regular, setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises according as they were prepared, the blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their curv'd limbs, bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by posts and braces, the hook'd arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe, the floor-men forcing the planks close to be nail'd, their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers, the echoes resounding through the vacant building: the huge storehouse carried up in the city well under way, the six framing-men, two in the middle and two at each end, carefully bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam, the crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands rapidly laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front to rear, the flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels striking the bricks, the bricks one after another each laid so workmanlike in its place, and set with a knock of the trowel-handle, the piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men; spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, the swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log shaping it toward the shape of a mast, the brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, the butter-color'd chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, the limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes, the constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays against the sea; the city fireman, the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-pack'd square, the arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring, the strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line, the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water, the slender, spasmic, blue-white jets, the bringing to bear of the hooks and ladders and their execution, the crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or through floors if the fire smoulders under them, the crowd with their lit faces watching, the glare and dense shadows; the forger at his forge-furnace and the user of iron after him, the maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer, the chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel and trying the edge with his thumb, the one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in the socket; the shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also, the primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers, the far-off assyrian edifice and mizra edifice, the roman lictors preceding the consuls, the antique european warrior with his axe in combat, the uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head, the death-howl, the limpsy tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe thither, the siege of revolted lieges determin'd for liberty, the summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce and parley, the sack of an old city in its time, the bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly, roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness, goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands, craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing, the hell of war, the cruelties of creeds, the list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust, the power of personality just or unjust. 4 muscle and pluck forever! what invigorates life invigorates death, and the dead advance as much as the living advance, and the future is no more uncertain than the present, for the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man, and nothing endures but personal qualities. what do you think endures? do you think a great city endures? or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the best built steamships? or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d'oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments? away! these are not to be cherish'd for themselves, they fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them, the show passes, all does well enough of course, all does very well till one flash of defiance. a great city is that which has the greatest men and women, if it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world. 5 the place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch'd wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely, nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the anchor-lifters of the departing, nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth, nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place where money is plentiest, nor the place of the most numerous population. where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards, where the city stands that is belov'd by these, and loves them in return and understands them, where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds, where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place, where the men and women think lightly of the laws, where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases, where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons, where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and unript waves, where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority, where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and president, mayor, governor and what not, are agents for pay, where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on themselves, where equanimity is illustrated in affairs, where speculations on the soul are encouraged, where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men, where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men; where the city of the faithfulest friends stands, where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands, where the city of the healthiest fathers stands, where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands, there the great city stands. 6 how beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed! how the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man's or woman's look! all waits or goes by default till a strong being appears; a strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the universe, when he or she appears materials are overaw'd, the dispute on the soul stops, the old customs and phrases are confronted, turn'd back, or laid away. what is your money-making now? what can it do now? what is your respectability now? what are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books, now? where are your jibes of being now? where are your cavils about the soul now? 7 a sterile landscape covers the ore, there is as good as the best for all the forbidding appearance, there is the mine, there are the miners, the forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish'd, the hammersmen are at hand with their tongs and hammers, what always served and always serves is at hand. than this nothing has better served, it has served all, served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed greek, and long ere the greek, served in building the buildings that last longer than any, served the hebrew, the persian, the most ancient hindustanee, served the mound-raiser on the mississippi, served those whose relics remain in central america, served albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars and the druids, served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-cover'd hills of scandinavia, served those who time out of mind made on the granite walls rough sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean waves, served the paths of the irruptions of the goths, served the pastoral tribes and nomads, served the long distant kelt, served the hardy pirates of the baltic, served before any of those the venerable and harmless men of ethiopia, served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure and the making of those for war, served all great works on land and all great works on the sea, for the mediaeval ages and before the mediaeval ages, served not the living only then as now, but served the dead. 8 i see the european headsman, he stands mask'd, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms, and leans on a ponderous axe. (whom have you slaughter'd lately european headsman? whose is that blood upon you so wet and sticky?) i see the clear sunsets of the martyrs, i see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts, ghosts of dead lords, uncrown'd ladies, impeach'd ministers, rejected kings, rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains and the rest. i see those who in any land have died for the good cause, the seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out, (mind you o foreign kings, o priests, the crop shall never run out.) i see the blood wash'd entirely away from the axe, both blade and helve are clean, they spirt no more the blood of european nobles, they clasp no more the necks of queens. i see the headsman withdraw and become useless, i see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy, i see no longer any axe upon it, i see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race, the newest, largest race. 9 (america! i do not vaunt my love for you, i have what i have.) the axe leaps! the solid forest gives fluid utterances, they tumble forth, they rise and form, hut, tent, landing, survey, flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, lamb, lath, panel, gable, citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library, cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch, hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge, rounce, chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor, work-box, chest, string'd instrument, boat, frame, and what not, capitols of states, and capitol of the nation of states, long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans or for the poor or sick, manhattan steamboats and clippers taking the measure of all seas. the shapes arise! shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users and all that neighbors them, cutters down of wood and haulers of it to the penobscot or kenebec, dwellers in cabins among the californian mountains or by the little lakes, or on the columbia, dwellers south on the banks of the gila or rio grande, friendly gatherings, the characters and fun, dwellers along the st. lawrence, or north in kanada, or down by the yellowstone, dwellers on coasts and off coasts, seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice. the shapes arise! shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets, shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads, shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches, shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake and canal craft, river craft, ship-yards and dry-docks along the eastern and western seas, and in many a bay and by-place, the live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the hackmatack-roots for knees, the ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the workmen busy outside and inside, the tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze, bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane. 10 the shapes arise! the shape measur'd, saw'd, jack'd, join'd, stain'd, the coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud, the shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of the bride's bed, the shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath, the shape of the babe's cradle, the shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers' feet, the shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the friendly parents and children, the shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and woman, the roof over the well-married young man and woman, the roof over the supper joyously cook'd by the chaste wife, and joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day's work. the shapes arise! the shape of the prisoner's place in the court-room, and of him or her seated in the place, the shape of the liquor-bar lean'd against by the young rum-drinker and the old rum-drinker, the shape of the shamed and angry stairs trod by sneaking foot steps, the shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome couple, the shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and losings, the shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinion'd arms, the sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipp'd crowd, the dangling of the rope. the shapes arise! shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances, the door passing the dissever'd friend flush'd and in haste, the door that admits good news and bad news, the door whence the son left home confident and puff'd up, the door he enter'd again from a long and scandalous absence, diseas'd, broken down, without innocence, without means. 11 her shape arises, she less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever, the gross and soil'd she moves among do not make her gross and soil'd, she knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is conceal'd from her, she is none the less considerate or friendly therefor, she is the best belov'd, it is without exception, she has no reason to fear and she does not fear, oaths, quarrels, hiccupp'd songs, smutty expressions, are idle to her as she passes, she is silent, she is possess'd of herself, they do not offend her, she receives them as the laws of nature receive them, she is strong, she too is a law of nature-there is no law stronger than she is. 12 the main shapes arise! shapes of democracy total, result of centuries, shapes ever projecting other shapes, shapes of turbulent manly cities, shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth, shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth. song of the exposition 1 (ah little recks the laborer, how near his work is holding him to god, the loving laborer through space and time.) after all not to create only, or found only, but to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded, to give it our own identity, average, limitless, free, to fill the gross the torpid bulk with vital religious fire, not to repel or destroy so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate, to obey as well as command, to follow more than to lead, these also are the lessons of our new world; while how little the new after all, how much the old, old world! long and long has the grass been growing, long and long has the rain been falling, long has the globe been rolling round. 2 come muse migrate from greece and ionia, cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts, that matter of troy and achilles' wrath, and aeneas', odysseus' wanderings, placard "removed" and "to let" on the rocks of your snowy parnassus, repeat at jerusalem, place the notice high on jaffa's gate and on mount moriah, the same on the walls of your german, french and spanish castles, and italian collections, for know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain awaits, demands you. 3 responsive to our summons, or rather to her long-nurs'd inclination, join'd with an irresistible, natural gravitation, she comes! i hear the rustling of her gown, i scent the odor of her breath's delicious fragrance, i mark her step divine, her curious eyes a-turning, rolling, upon this very scene. the dame of dames! can i believe then, those ancient temples, sculptures classic, could none of them retain her? nor shades of virgil and dante, nor myriad memories, poems, old associations, magnetize and hold on to her? but that she's left them alland here? yes, if you will allow me to say so, i, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see her, the same undying soul of earth's, activity's, beauty's, heroism's expression, out from her evolutions hither come, ended the strata of her former themes, hidden and cover'd by to-day's, foundation of to-day's, ended, deceas'd through time, her voice by castaly's fountain, silent the broken-lipp'd sphynx in egypt, silent all those century baffling tombs, ended for aye the epics of asia's, europe's helmeted warriors, ended the primitive call of the muses, calliope's call forever closed, clio, melpomene, thalia dead, ended the stately rhythmus of una and oriana, ended the quest of the holy graal, jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind, extinct, the crusaders' streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the sunrise, amadis, tancred, utterly gone, charlemagne, roland, oliver gone, palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish'd the turrets that usk from its waters reflected, arthur vanish'd with all his knights, merlin and lancelot and galahad, all gone, dissolv'd utterly like an exhalation; pass'd! pass'd! for us, forever pass'd, that once so mighty world, now void, inanimate, phantom world, embroider'd, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous legends, myths, its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and courtly dames, pass'd to its charnel vault, coffin'd with crown and armor on, blazon'd with shakspere's purple page, and dirged by tennyson's sweet sad rhyme. i say i see, my friends, if you do not, the illustrious emigre, (having it is true in her day, although the same, changed, journey'd considerable,) making directly for this rendezvous, vigorously clearing a path for herself, striding through the confusion, by thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay'd, bluff'd not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers, smiling and pleas'd with palpable intent to stay, she's here, install'd amid the kitchen ware! 4 but holddon't i forget my manners? to introduce the stranger, (what else indeed do i live to chant for?) to thee columbia; in liberty's name welcome immortal! clasp hands, and ever henceforth sisters dear be both. fear not o muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you, i candidly confess a queer, queer race, of novel fashion, and yet the same old human race, the same within, without, faces and hearts the same, feelings the same, yearnings the same, the same old love, beauty and use the same. 5 we do not blame thee elder world, nor really separate ourselves from thee, (would the son separate himself from the father?) looking back on thee, seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs, through past ages bending, building, we build to ours to-day. mightier than egypt's tombs, fairer than grecia's, roma's temples, prouder than milan's statued, spired cathedral, more picturesque than rhenish castle-keeps, we plan even now to raise, beyond them all, thy great cathedral sacred industry, no tomb, a keep for life for practical invention. as in a waking vision, e'en while i chant i see it rise, i scan and prophesy outside and in, its manifold ensemble. around a palace, loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet, earth's modern wonder, history's seven outstripping, high rising tier on tier with glass and iron facades, gladdening the sun and sky, enhued in cheerfulest hues, bronze, lilac, robin's-egg, marine and crimson, over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy banner freedom, the banners of the states and flags of every land, a brood of lofty, fair, but lesser palaces shall cluster. somewhere within their walls shall all that forwards perfect human life be started, tried, taught, advanced, visibly exhibited. not only all the world of works, trade, products, but all the workmen of the world here to be represented. here shall you trace in flowing operation, in every state of practical, busy movement, the rills of civilization, materials here under your eye shall change their shape as if by magic, the cotton shall be pick'd almost in the very field, shall be dried, clean'd, ginn'd, baled, spun into thread and cloth before you, you shall see hands at work at all the old processes and all the new ones, you shall see the various grains and how flour is made and then bread baked by the bakers, you shall see the crude ores of california and nevada passing on and on till they become bullion, you shall watch how the printer sets type, and learn what a composing-stick is, you shall mark in amazement the hoe press whirling its cylinders, shedding the printed leaves steady and fast, the photograph, model, watch, pin, nail, shall be created before you. in large calm halls, a stately museum shall teach you the infinite lessons of minerals, in another, woods, plants, vegetation shall be illustratedin another animals, animal life and development. one stately house shall be the music house, others for other arts-learning, the sciences, shall all be here, none shall be slighted, none but shall here be honor'd, help'd, exampled. 6 (this, this and these, america, shall be your pyramids and obelisks, your alexandrian pharos, gardens of babylon, your temple at olympia.) the male and female many laboring not, shall ever here confront the laboring many, with precious benefits to both, glory to all, to thee america, and thee eternal muse. and here shall ye inhabit powerful matrons! in your vast state vaster than all the old, echoed through long, long centuries to come, to sound of different, prouder songs, with stronger themes, practical, peaceful life, the people's life, the people themselves, lifted, illumin'd, bathed in peace-elate, secure in peace. 7 away with themes of war! away with war itself! hence from my shuddering sight to never more return that show of blacken'd, mutilated corpses! that hell unpent and raid of blood, fit for wild tigers or for lop-tongued wolves, not reasoning men, and in its stead speed industry's campaigns, with thy undaunted armies, engineering, thy pennants labor, loosen'd to the breeze, thy bugles sounding loud and clear. away with old romance! away with novels, plots and plays of foreign courts, away with love-verses sugar'd in rhyme, the intrigues, amours of idlers, fitted for only banquets of the night where dancers to late music slide, the unhealthy pleasures, extravagant dissipations of the few, with perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers. to you ye reverent sane sisters, i raise a voice for far superber themes for poets and for art, to exalt the present and the real, to teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade, to sing in songs how exercise and chemical life are never to be baffled, to manual work for each and all, to plough, hoe, dig, to plant and tend the tree, the berry, vegetables, flowers, for every man to see to it that he really do something, for every woman too; to use the hammer and the saw, (rip, or cross-cut,) to cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting, to work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter, to invent a little, something ingenious, to aid the washing, cooking, cleaning, and hold it no disgrace to take a hand at them themselves. i say i bring thee muse to-day and here, all occupations, duties broad and close, toil, healthy toil and sweat, endless, without cessation, the old, old practical burdens, interests, joys, the family, parentage, childhood, husband and wife, the house-comforts, the house itself and all its belongings, food and its preservation, chemistry applied to it, whatever forms the average, strong, complete, sweet-blooded man or woman, the perfect longeve personality, and helps its present life to health and happiness, and shapes its soul, for the eternal real life to come. with latest connections, works, the inter-transportation of the world, steam-power, the great express lines, gas, petroleum, these triumphs of our time, the atlantic's delicate cable, the pacific railroad, the suez canal, the mont cenis and gothard and hoosac tunnels, the brooklyn bridge, this earth all spann'd with iron rails, with lines of steamships threading in every sea, our own rondure, the current globe i bring. 8 and thou america, thy offspring towering e'er so high, yet higher thee above all towering, with victory on thy left, and at thy right hand law; thou union holding all, fusing, absorbing, tolerating all, thee, ever thee, i sing. thou, also thou, a world, with all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant, rounded by thee in one-one common orbic language, one common indivisible destiny for all. and by the spells which ye vouchsafe to those your ministers in earnest, i here personify and call my themes, to make them pass before ye. behold, america! (and thou, ineffable guest and sister!) for thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands; behold! thy fields and farms, thy far-off woods and mountains, as in procession coming. behold, the sea itself, and on its limitless, heaving breast, the ships; see, where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the green and blue, see, the steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port, see, dusky and undulating, the long pennants of smoke. behold, in oregon, far in the north and west, or in maine, far in the north and east, thy cheerful axemen, wielding all day their axes. behold, on the lakes, thy pilots at their wheels, thy oarsmen, how the ash writhes under those muscular arms! there by the furnace, and there by the anvil, behold thy sturdy blacksmiths swinging their sledges, overhand so steady, overhand they turn and fall with joyous clank, like a tumult of laughter. mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents, thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising, see, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream. mark, thy interminable farms, north, south, thy wealthy daughter-states, eastern and western, the varied products of ohio, pennsylvania, missouri, georgia, texas, and the rest, thy limitless crops, grass, wheat, sugar, oil, corn, rice, hemp, hops, thy barns all fill'd, the endless freight-train and the bulging store-house, the grapes that ripen on thy vines, the apples in thy orchards, thy incalculable lumber, beef, pork, potatoes, thy coal, thy gold and silver, the inexhaustible iron in thy mines. all thine o sacred union! ships, farms, shops, barns, factories, mines, city and state, north, south, item and aggregate, we dedicate, dread mother, all to thee! protectress absolute, thou! bulwark of all! for well we know that while thou givest each and all, (generous as god,) without thee neither all nor each, nor land, home, nor ship, nor mine, nor any here this day secure, nor aught, nor any day secure. 9 and thou, the emblem waving over all! delicate beauty, a word to thee, (it may be salutary,) remember thou hast not always been as here to-day so comfortably ensovereign'd, in other scenes than these have i observ'd thee flag, not quite so trim and whole and freshly blooming in folds of stainless silk, but i have seen thee bunting, to tatters torn upon thy splinter'd staff, or clutch'd to some young color-bearer's breast with desperate hands, savagely struggled for, for life or death, fought over long, 'mid cannons' thunder-crash and many a curse and groan and yell, and rifle-volleys cracking sharp, and moving masses as wild demons surging, and lives as nothing risk'd, for thy mere remnant grimed with dirt and smoke and sopp'd in blood, for sake of that, my beauty, and that thou might'st dally as now secure up there, many a good man have i seen go under. now here and these and hence in peace, all thine o flag! and here and hence for thee, o universal muse! and thou for them! and here and hence o union, all the work and workmen thine! none separate from thee-henceforth one only, we and thou, (for the blood of the children, what is it, only the blood maternal? and lives and works, what are they all at last, except the roads to faith and death?) while we rehearse our measureless wealth, it is for thee, dear mother, we own it all and several to-day indissoluble in thee; think not our chant, our show, merely for products gross or lucre it is for thee, the soul in thee, electric, spiritual! our farms, inventions, crops, we own in thee! cities and states in thee! our freedom all in thee! our very lives in thee! song of the redwood-tree 1 a california song, a prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air, a chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing, a murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense. farewell my brethren, farewell o earth and sky, farewell ye neighboring waters, my time has ended, my term has come. along the northern coast, just back from the rock-bound shore and the caves, in the saline air from the sea in the mendocino country, with the surge for base and accompaniment low and hoarse, with crackling blows of axes sounding musically driven by strong arms, riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in the redwood forest dense, i heard the might tree its death-chant chanting. the choppers heard not, the camp shanties echoed not, the quick-ear'd teamsters and chain and jack-screw men heard not, as the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years to join the refrain, but in my soul i plainly heard. murmuring out of its myriad leaves, down from its lofty top rising two hundred feet high, out of its stalwart trunk and limbs, out of its foot-thick bark, that chant of the seasons and time, chant not of the past only but the future. you untold life of me, and all you venerable and innocent joys, perennial hardy life of me with joys 'mid rain and many a summer sun, and the white snows and night and the wild winds; o the great patient rugged joys, my soul's strong joys unreck'd by man, (for know i bear the soul befitting me, i too have consciousness, identity, and all the rocks and mountains have, and all the earth,) joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine, our time, our term has come. nor yield we mournfully majestic brothers, we who have grandly fill'd our time, with nature's calm content, with tacit huge delight, we welcome what we wrought for through the past, and leave the field for them. for them predicted long, for a superber race, they too to grandly fill their time, for them we abdicate, in them ourselves ye forest kings.' in them these skies and airs, these mountain peaks, shasta, nevadas, these huge precipitous cliffs, this amplitude, these valleys, far yosemite, to be in them absorb'd, assimilated. then to a loftier strain, still prouder, more ecstatic rose the chant, as if the heirs, the deities of the west, joining with master-tongue bore part. not wan from asia's fetiches, nor red from europe's old dynastic slaughter-house, (area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and scaffolds everywhere, but come from nature's long and harmless throes, peacefully builded thence, these virgin lands, lands of the western shore, to the new culminating man, to-you, the empire new, you promis'd long, we pledge, we dedicate. you occult deep volitions, you average spiritual manhood, purpose of all, pois'd on yourself, giving not taking law, you womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life and love and aught that comes from life and love, you unseen moral essence of all the vast materials of america, age upon age working in death the same as life,) you that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really shape and mould the new world, adjusting it to time and space, you hidden national will lying in your abysms, conceal'd but ever alert, you past and present purposes tenaciously pursued, may-be unconscious of yourselves, unswerv'd by all the passing errors, perturbations of the surface; you vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts, statutes, literatures, here build your homes for good, establish here, these areas entire, lands of the western shore, we pledge, we dedicate to you. for man of you, your characteristic race, here may he hardy, sweet, gigantic grow, here tower proportionate to nature, here climb the vast pure spaces unconfined, uncheck'd by wall or roof, here laugh with storm or sun, here joy, here patiently inure, here heed himself, unfold himself, (not others' formulas heed,) here fill his time, to duly fall, to aid, unreck'd at last, to disappear, to serve. thus on the northern coast, in the echo of teamsters' calls and the clinking chains, and the music of choppers' axes, the falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled shriek, the groan, such words combined from the redwood-tree, as of voices ecstatic, ancient and rustling, the century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing, all their recesses of forests and mountains leaving, from the cascade range to the wahsatch, or idaho far, or utah, to the deities of the modern henceforth yielding, the chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity, the settlements, features all, in the mendocino woods i caught. 2 the flashing and golden pageant of california, the sudden and gorgeous drama, the sunny and ample lands, the long and varied stretch from puget sound to colorado south, lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air, valleys and mountain cliffs, the fields of nature long prepared and fallow, the silent, cyclic chemistry, the slow and steady ages plodding, the unoccupied surface ripening, the rich ores forming beneath; at last the new arriving, assuming, taking possession, a swarming and busy race settling and organizing everywhere, ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to the whole world, to india and china and australia and the thousand island paradises of the pacific, populous cities, the latest inventions, the steamers on the rivers, the railroads, with many a thrifty farm, with machinery, and wool and wheat and the grape, and diggings of yellow gold. 3 but more in you than these, lands of the western shore, (these but the means, the implements, the standing-ground,) i see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years, till now deferr'd, promis'd to be fulfill'd, our common kind, the race. the new society at last, proportionate to nature, in man of you, more than your mountain peaks or stalwart trees imperial, in woman more, far more, than all your gold or vines, or even vital air. fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared, i see the genius of the modern, child of the real and ideal, clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true america, heir of the past so grand, to build a grander future. a song for occupations 1 a song for occupations! in the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields i find the developments, and find the eternal meanings. workmen and workwomen! were all educations practical and ornamental well display'd out of me, what would it amount to? were i as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what would it amount to? were i to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you? the learn'd, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms, a man like me and never the usual terms. neither a servant nor a master i, i take no sooner a large price than a small price, i will have my own whoever enjoys me, i will be even with you and you shall be even with me. if you stand at work in a shop i stand as nigh as the nighest in the same shop, if you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend i demand as good as your brother or dearest friend, if your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, i must be personally as welcome, if you become degraded, criminal, ill, then i become so for your sake, if you remember your foolish and outlaw'd deeds, do you think i cannot remember my own foolish and outlaw'd deeds? if you carouse at the table i carouse at the opposite side of the table, if you meet some stranger in the streets and love him or her, why i often meet strangers in the street and love them. why what have you thought of yourself? is it you then that thought yourself less? is it you that thought the president greater than you? or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you? (because you are greasy or pimpled, or were once drunk, or a thief, or that you are diseas'd, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar and never saw your name in print, do you give in that you are any less immortal?) 2 souls of men and women! it is not you i call unseen, unheard, untouchable and untouching, it is not you i go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are alive or no, i own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns. grown, half-grown and babe, of this country and every country, in-doors and out-doors, one just as much as the other, i see, and all else behind or through them. the wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband, the daughter, and she is just as good as the son, the mother, and she is every bit as much as the father. offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades, young fellows working on farms and old fellows working on farms, sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants, all these i see, but nigher and farther the same i see, none shall escape me and none shall wish to escape me. i bring what you much need yet always have, not money, amours, dress, eating, erudition, but as good, i send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but offer the value itself. there is something that comes to one now and perpetually, it is not what is printed, preach'd, discussed, it eludes discussion and print, it is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book, it is for you whoever you are, it is no farther from you than your hearing and sight are from you, it is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest, it is ever provoked by them. you may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it, you may read the president's message and read nothing about it there, nothing in the reports from the state department or treasury department, or in the daily papers or weekly papers, or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts of stock. 3 the sun and stars that float in the open air, the apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them is something grand, i do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is happiness, and that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation or bon-mot or reconnoissance, and that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us, and without luck must be a failure for us, and not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency. the light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the greed that with perfect complaisance devours all things, the endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows, the wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the wonders that fill each minute of time forever, what have you reckon'd them for, camerado? have you reckon'd them for your trade or farm-work? or for the profits of your store? or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman's leisure, or a lady's leisure? have you reckon'd that the landscape took substance and form that it might be painted in a picture? or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung? or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious combinations and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the savans? or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts? or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names? or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or agriculture itself? old institutions, these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and the practice handed along in manufactures, will we rate them so high? will we rate our cash and business high? i have no objection, i rate them as high as the highest-then a child born of a woman and man i rate beyond all rate. we thought our union grand, and our constitution grand, i do not say they are not grand and good, for they are, i am this day just as much in love with them as you, then i am in love with you, and with all my fellows upon the earth. we consider bibles and religions divine-i do not say they are not divine, i say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still, it is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life, leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they are shed out of you. 4 the sum of all known reverence i add up in you whoever you are, the president is there in the white house for you, it is not you who are here for him, the secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them, the congress convenes every twelfth-month for you, laws, courts, the forming of states, the charters of cities, the going and coming of commerce and malls, are all for you. list close my scholars dear, doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you, sculpture and monuments and any thing inscribed anywhere are tallied in you, the gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records reach is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same, if you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be? the most renown'd poems would be ashes, orations and plays would be vacuums. all architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it, (did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines of the arches and cornices?) all music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments, it is not the violins and the cornets, it is not the oboe nor the beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet romanza, nor that of the men's chorus, nor that of the women's chorus, it is nearer and farther than they. 5 will the whole come back then? can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is there nothing greater or more? does all sit there with you, with the mystic unseen soul? strange and hard that paradox true i give, objects gross and the unseen soul are one. house-building, measuring, sawing the boards, blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing, shingle-dressing, ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, flagging of sidewalks by flaggers, the pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brickkiln, coal-mines and all that is down there, the lamps in the darkness, echoes, songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts looking through smutch'd faces, iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains or by river-banks, men around feeling the melt with huge crowbars, lumps of ore, the due combining of ore, limestone, coal, the blast-furnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the bottom of the melt at last, the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars of pig-iron, the strong clean-shaped trail for railroads, oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-saws, the great mills and factories, stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for facades or window or door-lintels, the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb, the calking-iron, the kettle of boiling vault-cement, and the fire under the kettle, the cotton-bale, the stevedore's hook, the saw and buck of the sawyer, the mould of the moulder, the working-knife of the butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice, the work and tools of the rigger, grappler, sail-maker, block-maker, goods of gutta-percha, papier-mache, colors, brushes, brush-making, glazier's implements, the veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner's ornaments, the decanter and glasses, the shears and flat-iron, the awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the counter and stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal, the making of all sorts of edged tools, the brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, every thing that is done by brewers, wine-makers, vinegar-makers, leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting, distilling, sign-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking, electroplating, electrotyping, stereotyping, stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines, ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam wagons, the cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray, pyrotechny, letting off color'd fireworks at night, fancy figures and jets; beef on the butcher's stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the butcher in his killing-clothes, the pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the scalder's tub, gutting, the cutter's cleaver, the packer's maul, and the plenteous winterwork of pork-packing, flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice, the barrels and the half and quarter barrels, the loaded barges, the high piles on wharves and levees, the men and the work of the men on ferries, railroads, coasters, fish-boats, canals; the hourly routine of your own or any man's life, the shop, yard, store, or factory, these shows all near you by day and night-workman! whoever you are, your daily life! in that and them the heft of the heaviest-in that and them far more than you estimated, (and far less also,) in them realities for you and me, in them poems for you and me, in them, not yourself-you and your soul enclose all things, regardless of estimation, in them the development good-in them all themes, hints, possibilities. i do not affirm that what you see beyond is futile, i do not advise you to stop, i do not say leadings you thought great are not great, but i say that none lead to greater than these lead to. 6 will you seek afar off-? you surely come back at last, in things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best, in folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest, happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place, not for another hour but this hour, man in the first you see or touch, always in friend, brother, nighest neighbor-woman in mother, sister, wife, the popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or anywhere, you workwomen and workmen of these states having your own divine and strong life, and all else giving place to men and women like you. when the psalm sings instead of the singer, when the script preaches instead of the preacher, when the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved the supporting desk, when i can touch the body of books by night or by day, and when they touch my body back again, when a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convince, when the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman's daughter, when warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly companions, i intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as i do of men and women like you. a song of the rolling earth 1 a song of the rolling earth, and of words according, were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots? no, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground and sea, they are in the air, they are in you. were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious sounds out of your friends' mouths? no, the real words are more delicious than they. human bodies are words, myriads of words, (in the best poems re-appears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped, natural, gay, every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.) air, soil, water, fire-those are words, i myself am a word with them-my qualities interpenetrate with theirs-my name is nothing to them, though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would air, soil, water, fire, know of my name? a healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words, sayings, meanings, the charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women, are sayings and meanings also. the workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the earth, the masters know the earth's words and use them more than audible words. amelioration is one of the earth's words, the earth neither lags nor hastens, it has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump, it is not half beautiful only, defects and excrescences show just as much as perfections show. the earth does not withhold, it is generous enough, the truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so conceal'd either, they are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print, they are imbued through all things conveying themselves willingly, conveying a sentiment and invitation, i utter and utter, i speak not, yet if you hear me not of what avail am i to you? to bear, to better, lacking these of what avail am i? (accouche! accouchez! will you rot your own fruit in yourself there? will you squat and stifle there?) the earth does not argue, is not pathetic, has no arrangements, does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise, makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures, closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out, of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out. the earth does not exhibit itself nor refuse to exhibit itself, possesses still underneath, underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves, persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of bargainers, underneath these possessing words that never fall. to her children the words of the eloquent dumb great mother never fail, the true words do not fail, for motion does not fail and reflection does not fall, also the day and night do not fall, and the voyage we pursue does not fall. of the interminable sisters, of the ceaseless cotillons of sisters, of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger sisters, the beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest. with her ample back towards every beholder, with the fascinations of youth and the equal fascinations of age, sits she whom i too love like the rest, sits undisturb'd, holding up in her hand what has the character of a mirror, while her eyes glance back from it, glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none, holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face. seen at hand or seen at a distance, duly the twenty-four appear in public every day, duly approach and pass with their companions or a companion, looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances of those who are with them, from the countenances of children or women or the manly countenance, from the open countenances of animals or from inanimate things, from the landscape or waters or from the exquisite apparition of the sky, from our countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning them, every day in public appearing without fall, but never twice with the same companions. embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and sixty-five resistlessly round the sun; embracing all, soothing, supporting, follow close three hundred and sixty-five offsets of the first, sure and necessary as they. tumbling on steadily, nothing dreading, sunshine, storm, cold, heat, forever withstanding, passing, carrying, the soul's realization and determination still inheriting, the fluid vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing, no balk retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking, swift, glad, content, unbereav'd, nothing losing, of all able and ready at any time to give strict account, the divine ship sails the divine sea. 2 whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you, the divine ship sails the divine sea for you. whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid, you are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky, for none more than you are the present and the past, for none more than you is immortality. each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the past and present, and the true word of immortality; no one can acquire for another-not one, not one can grow for another-not one. the song is to the singer, and comes back most to him, the teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him, the murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him, the theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him, the love is to the lover, and comes back most to him, the gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him-it cannot fail, the oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress not to the audience, and no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the indication of his own. 3 i swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete, the earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken. i swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth, there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the theory of the earth, no politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account, unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth, unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the earth. i swear i begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds love, it is that which contains itself, which never invites and never refuses. i swear i begin to see little or nothing in audible words, all merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth, toward him who sings the songs of the body and of the truths of the earth, toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch. i swear i see what is better than to tell the best, it is always to leave the best untold. when i undertake to tell the best i find i cannot, my tongue is ineffectual on its pivots, my breath will not be obedient to its organs, i become a dumb man. the best of the earth cannot be told anyhow, all or any is best, it is not what you anticipated, it is cheaper, easier, nearer, things are not dismiss'd from the places they held before, the earth is just as positive and direct as it was before, facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before, but the soul is also real, it too is positive and direct, no reasoning, no proof has establish'd it, undeniable growth has establish'd it. 4 these to echo the tones of souls and the phrases of souls, (if they did not echo the phrases of souls what were they then? if they had not reference to you in especial what were they then?) i swear i will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best, i will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold. say on, sayers! sing on, singers! delve! mould! pile the words of the earth! work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost, it may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use, when the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects shall appear. i swear to you the architects shall appear without fall, i swear to you they will understand you and justify you, the greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses all and is faithful to all, he and the rest shall not forget you, they shall perceive that you are not an iota less than they, you shall be fully glorified in them. youth, day, old age and night youth, large, lusty, loving-youth full of grace, force, fascination, do you know that old age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination? day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, the night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness. song of the universal 1 come said the muse, sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, sing me the universal. in this broad earth of ours, amid the measureless grossness and the slag, enclosed and safe within its central heart, nestles the seed perfection. by every life a share or more or less, none born but it is born, conceal'd or unconceal'd the seed is waiting. 2 lo! keen-eyed towering science, as from tall peaks the modern overlooking, successive absolute fiats issuing. yet again, lo! the soul, above all science, for it has history gather'd like husks around the globe, for it the entire star-myriads roll through the sky. in spiral routes by long detours, (as a much-tacking ship upon the sea,) for it the partial to the permanent flowing, for it the real to the ideal tends. for it the mystic evolution, not the right only justified, what we call evil also justified. forth from their masks, no matter what, from the huge festering trunk, from craft and guile and tears, health to emerge and joy, joy universal. out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow, out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and states, electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all, only the good is universal. 3 over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow, an uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, high in the purer, happier air. from imperfection's murkiest cloud, darts always forth one ray of perfect light, one flash of heaven's glory. to fashion's, custom's discord, to the mad babel-din, the deafening orgies, soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard, from some far shore the final chorus sounding. o the blest eyes, the happy hearts, that see, that know the guiding thread so fine, along the mighty labyrinth. 4 and thou america, for the scheme's culmination, its thought and its reality, for these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived. thou too surroundest all, embracing carrying welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad and new, to the ideal tendest. the measure'd faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past, are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own, deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all, all eligible to all. all, all for immortality, love like the light silently wrapping all, nature's amelioration blessing all, the blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain, forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening. give me o god to sing that thought, give me, give him or her i love this quenchless faith, in thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us, belief in plan of thee enclosed in time and space, health, peace, salvation universal. is it a dream? nay but the lack of it the dream, and failing it life's lore and wealth a dream, and all the world a dream. pioneers! o pioneers! come my tan-faced children, follow well in order, get your weapons ready, have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? pioneers! o pioneers! for we cannot tarry here, we must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, we the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, pioneers! o pioneers! o you youths, western youths, so impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, plain i see you western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, pioneers! o pioneers! have the elder races halted? do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas? we take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, pioneers! o pioneers! all the past we leave behind, we debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world, fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, pioneers! o pioneers! we detachments steady throwing, down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways, pioneers! o pioneers! we primeval forests felling, we the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within, we the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, pioneers! o pioneers! colorado men are we, from the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus, from the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, pioneers! o pioneers! from nebraska, from arkansas, central inland race are we, from missouri, with the continental blood intervein'd, all the hands of comrades clasping, all the southern, all the northern, pioneers! o pioneers! o resistless restless race! o beloved race in all! o my breast aches with tender love for all! o i mourn and yet exult, i am rapt with love for all, pioneers! o pioneers! raise the mighty mother mistress, waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your heads all,) raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress, pioneers! o pioneers! see my children, resolute children, by those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter, ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging, pioneers! o pioneers! on and on the compact ranks, with accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd, through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, pioneers! o pioneers! o to die advancing on! are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come? then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill'd. pioneers! o pioneers! all the pulses of the world, falling in they beat for us, with the western movement beat, holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us, pioneers! o pioneers! life's involv'd and varied pageants, all the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work, all the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves, pioneers! o pioneers! all the hapless silent lovers, all the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked, all the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, pioneers! o pioneers! i too with my soul and body, we, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way, through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing, pioneers! o pioneers! lo, the darting bowling orb! lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets, all the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, pioneers! o pioneers! these are of us, they are with us, all for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind, we to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, pioneers! o pioneers! o you daughters of the west! o you young and elder daughters! o you mothers and you wives! never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united, pioneers! o pioneers! minstrels latent on the prairies! (shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work,) soon i hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, pioneers! o pioneers! not for delectations sweet, not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious, not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, pioneers! o pioneers! do the feasters gluttonous feast? do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors? still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, pioneers! o pioneers! has the night descended? was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding on our way? yet a passing hour i yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious, pioneers! o pioneers! till with sound of trumpet, far, far off the daybreak call-hark! how loud and clear i hear it wind, swift! to the head of the army!-swift! spring to your places, pioneers! o pioneers! to you whoever you are, i fear you are walking the walks of dreams, i fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands, even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you, your true soul and body appear before me. they stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying. whoever you are, now i place my hand upon you, that you be my poem, i whisper with my lips close to your ear. i have loved many women and men, but i love none better than you. o i have been dilatory and dumb, i should have made my way straight to you long ago, i should have blabb'd nothing but you, i should have chanted nothing but you. i will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, none has understood you, but i understand you, none has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself, none but has found you imperfect, i only find no imperfection in you, none but would subordinate you, i only am he who will never consent to subordinate you, i only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, god, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure of all, from the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color'd light, but i paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color'd light, from my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever. o i could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! you have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life, your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time, what you have done returns already in mockeries, (your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?) the mockeries are not you, underneath them and within them i see you lurk, i pursue you where none else has pursued you, silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me, the shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others they do not balk me, the pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these i part aside. there is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you, there is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you, no pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you, no pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you. as for me, i give nothing to any one except i give the like carefully to you, i sing the songs of the glory of none, not god, sooner than i sing the songs of the glory of you. whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! these shows of the east and west are tame compared to you, these immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they, these furies, elements, storms, motions of nature, throes of apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, master or mistress in your own right over nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution. the hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency, old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself, through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted, through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way. france france, the 18th year of these states. a great year and place a harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother's heart closer than any yet. i walk'd the shores of my eastern sea, heard over the waves the little voice, saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings, was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils, was not so desperate at the battues of death-was not so shock'd at the repeated fusillades of the guns. pale, silent, stern, what could i say to that long-accrued retribution? could i wish humanity different? could i wish the people made of wood and stone? or that there be no justice in destiny or time? o liberty! o mate for me! here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to fetch them out in case of need, here too, though long represt, can never be destroy'd, here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic, here too demanding full arrears of vengeance. hence i sign this salute over the sea, and i do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism, but remember the little voice that i heard wailing, and wait with perfect trust, no matter how long, and from to-day sad and cogent i maintain the bequeath'd cause, as for all lands, and i send these words to paris with my love, and i guess some chansonniers there will understand them, for i guess there is latent music yet in france, floods of it, o i hear already the bustle of instruments, they will soon be drowning all that would interrupt them, o i think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march, it reaches hither, it swells me to joyful madness, i will run transpose it in words, to justify i will yet sing a song for you ma femme. myself and mine myself and mine gymnastic ever, to stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a boat, to manage horses, to beget superb children, to speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people, and to hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea. not for an embroiderer, (there will always be plenty of embroiderers, i welcome them also,) but for the fibre of things and for inherent men and women. not to chisel ornaments, but to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous supreme gods, that the states may realize them walking and talking. let me have my own way, let others promulge the laws, i will make no account of the laws, let others praise eminent men and hold up peace, i hold up agitation and conflict, i praise no eminent man, i rebuke to his face the one that was thought most worthy. (who are you? and what are you secretly guilty of all your life? will you turn aside all your life? will you grub and chatter all your life? and who are you, blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages, reminiscences, unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly a single word?) let others finish specimens, i never finish specimens, i start them by exhaustless laws as nature does, fresh and modern continually. i give nothing as duties, what others give as duties i give as living impulses, (shall i give the heart's action as a duty?) let others dispose of questions, i dispose of nothing, i arouse unanswerable questions, who are they i see and touch, and what about them? what about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender directions and indirections? i call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen to my enemies, as i myself do, i charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for i cannot expound myself, i charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me, i charge you to leave all free, as i have left all free. after me, vista! o i see life is not short, but immeasurably long, i henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower, every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries. i must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth, i perceive i have no time to lose. year of meteors (1859-60) year of meteors! brooding year! i would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs, i would sing your contest for the 19th presidentiad, i would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in virginia, (i was at hand, silent i stood with teeth shut close, i watch'd, i stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds you mounted the scaffold;) i would sing in my copious song your census returns of the states, the tables of population and products, i would sing of your ships and their cargoes, the proud black ships of manhattan arriving, some fill'd with immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold, songs thereof would i sing, to all that hitherward comes would welcome give, and you would i sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me, young prince of england! (remember you surging manhattan's crowds as you pass'd with your cortege of nobles? there in the crowds stood i, and singled you out with attachment;) nor forget i to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay, well-shaped and stately the great eastern swam up my bay, she was 600 feet long, her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft i forget not to sing; nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven, nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our heads, (a moment, a moment long it sail'd its balls of unearthly light over our heads, then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;) of such, and fitful as they, i sing-with gleams from them would gleam and patch these chants, your chants, o year all mottled with evil and good-year of forebodings! year of comets and meteors transient and strange-lo! even here one equally transient and strange! as i flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant, what am i myself but one of your meteors? with antecedents 1 with antecedents, with my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past ages, with all which, had it not been, i would not now be here, as i am, with egypt, india, phenicia, greece and rome, with the kelt, the scandinavian, the alb and the saxon, with antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and journeys, with the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle, with the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the crusader, and the monk, with those old continents whence we have come to this new continent, with the fading kingdoms and kings over there, with the fading religions and priests, with the small shores we look back to from our own large and present shores, with countless years drawing themselves onward and arrived at these years, you and me arrived-america arrived and making this year, this year! sending itself ahead countless years to come. 2 o but it is not the years-it is i, it is you, we touch all laws and tally all antecedents, we are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily include them and more, we stand amid time beginningless and endless, we stand amid evil and good, all swings around us, there is as much darkness as light, the very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us, its sun, and its again, all swing around us. as for me, (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days,) i have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all, i believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, i reject no part. (have i forgotten any part? any thing in the past? come to me whoever and whatever, till i give you recognition.) i respect assyria, china, teutonia, and the hebrews, i adopt each theory, myth, god, and demigod, i see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception, i assert that all past days were what they must have been, and that they could no-how have been better than they were, and that to-day is what it must be, and that america is, and that to-day and america could no-how be better than they are. 3 in the name of these states and in your and my name, the past, and in the name of these states and in your and my name, the present time. i know that the past was great and the future will be great, and i know that both curiously conjoint in the present time, (for the sake of him i typify, for the common average man's sake, your sake if you are he,) and that where i am or you are this present day, there is the centre of all days, all races, and there is the meaning to us of all that has ever come of races and days, or ever will come. a broadway pageant 1 over the western sea hither from niphon come, courteous, the swart-cheek'd two-sworded envoys, leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, ride to-day through manhattan. libertad! i do not know whether others behold what i behold, in the procession along with the nobles of niphon, the errand-bearers, bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching, but i will sing you a song of what i behold libertad. when million-footed manhattan unpent descends to her pavements, when the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar love, when the round-mouth'd guns out of the smoke and smell i love spit their salutes, when the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me, and heaven-clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze, when gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the wharves, thicken with colors, when every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak, when pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows, when broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot-standers, when the mass is densest, when the facades of the houses are alive with people, when eyes gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time, when the guests from the islands advance, when the pageant moves forward visible, when the summons is made, when the answer that waited thousands of years answers, i too arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd, and gaze with them. 2 superb-faced manhattan! comrade americanos! to us, then at last the orient comes. to us, my city, where our tall-topt marble and iron beauties range on opposite sides, to walk in the space between, to-day our antipodes comes. the originatress comes, the nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld, florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion, sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments, with sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes, the race of brahma comes. see my cantabile! these and more are flashing to us from the procession, as it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing before us. for not the envoys nor the tann'd japanee from his island only, lithe and silent the hindoo appears, the asiatic continent itself appears, the past, the dead, the murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable, the envelop'd mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees, the north, the sweltering south, eastern assyria, the hebrews, the ancient of ancients, vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more are in the pageant-procession. geography, the world, is in it, the great sea, the brood of islands, polynesia, the coast beyond, the coast you henceforth are facing-you libertad! from your western golden shores, the countries there with their populations, the millions en-masse are curiously here, the swarming market-places, the temples with idols ranged along the sides or at the end, bonze, brahmin, and llama, mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman, the singing-girl and the dancing-girl, the ecstatic persons, the secluded emperors, confucius himself, the great poets and heroes, the warriors, the castes, all, trooping up, crowding from all directions, from the altay mountains, from thibet, from the four winding and far-flowing rivers of china, from the southern peninsulas and the demi-continental islands, from malaysia, these and whatever belongs to them palpable show forth to me, and are seiz'd by me, and i am seiz'd by them, and friendlily held by them, till as here them all i chant, libertad! for themselves and for you. for i too raising my voice join the ranks of this pageant, i am the chanter, i chant aloud over the pageant, i chant the world on my western sea, i chant copious the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky, i chant the new empire grander than any before, as in a vision it comes to me, i chant america the mistress, i chant a greater supremacy, i chant projected a thousand blooming cities yet in time on those groups of sea-islands, my sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes, my stars and stripes fluttering in the wind, commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work, races reborn, refresh'd, lives, works resumed-the object i know not-but the old, the asiatic renew'd as it must be, commencing from this day surrounded by the world. 3 and you libertad of the world! you shall sit in the middle well-pois'd thousands and thousands of years, as to-day from one side the nobles of asia come to you, as to-morrow from the other side the queen of england sends her eldest son to you. the sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed, the ring is circled, the journey is done, the box-lid is but perceptibly open'd, nevertheless the perfume pours copiously out of the whole box. young libertad! with the venerable asia, the all-mother, be considerate with her now and ever hot libertad, for you are all, bend your proud neck to the long-off mother now sending messages over the archipelagoes to you, bend your proud neck low for once, young libertad. here the children straying westward so long? so wide the tramping? were the precedent dim ages debouching westward from paradise so long? were the centuries steadily footing it that way, all the while unknown, for you, for reasons? they are justified, they are accomplish'd, they shall now be turn'd the other way also, to travel toward you thence, they shall now also march obediently eastward for your sake libertad. out of the cradle endlessly rocking out of the cradle endlessly rocking, out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle, out of the ninth-month midnight, over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot, down from the shower'd halo, up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive, out from the patches of briers and blackberries, from the memories of the bird that chanted to me, from your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings i heard, from under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears, from those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist, from the thousand responses of my heart never to cease, from the myriad thence-arous'd words, from the word stronger and more delicious than any, from such as now they start the scene revisiting, as a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing, borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly, a man, yet by these tears a little boy again, throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves, i, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter, taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them, a reminiscence sing. once paumanok, when the lilac-scent was in the air and fifth-month grass was growing, up this seashore in some briers, two feather'd guests from alabama, two together, and their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown, and every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand, and every day the she-bird crouch'd on her nest, silent, with bright eyes, and every day i, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. shine! shine! shine! pour down your warmth, great sun.' while we bask, we two together. two together! winds blow south, or winds blow north, day come white, or night come black, home, or rivers and mountains from home, singing all time, minding no time, while we two keep together. till of a sudden, may-be kill'd, unknown to her mate, one forenoon the she-bird crouch'd not on the nest, nor return'd that afternoon, nor the next, nor ever appear'd again. and thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea, and at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather, over the hoarse surging of the sea, or flitting from brier to brier by day, i saw, i heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird, the solitary guest from alabama. blow! blow! blow! blow up sea-winds along paumanok's shore, i wait and i wait till you blow my mate to me. yes, when the stars glisten'd, all night long on the prong of a moss-scallop'd stake, down almost amid the slapping waves, sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears. he call'd on his mate, he pour'd forth the meanings which i of all men know. yes my brother i know, the rest might not, but i have treasur'd every note, for more than once dimly down to the beach gliding, silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows, recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights after their sorts, the white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing, i, with bare feet, a child, the wind waiting my hair, listen'd long and long. listen'd to keep, to sing, now translating the notes, following you my brother. soothe! soothe! soothe! close on its wave soothes the wave behind, and again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close, but my love soothes not me, not me. low hangs the moon, it rose late, it is lagging-o i think it is heavy with love, with love. o madly the sea pushes upon the land, with love, with love. o night! do i not see my love fluttering out among the breakers? what is that little black thing i see there in the white? loud! loud! loud! loud i call to you, my love! high and clear i shoot my voice over the waves, surely you must know who is here, is here, you must know who i am, my love. low-hanging moon! what is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? o it is the shape, the shape of my mate.' o moon do not keep her from me any longer. land! land! o land! whichever way i turn, o i think you could give me my mate back again if you only would, for i am almost sure i see her dimly whichever way i look. o rising stars! perhaps the one i want so much will rise, will rise with some of you. o throat! o trembling throat! sound clearer through the atmosphere! pierce the woods, the earth, somewhere listening to catch you must be the one i want. shake out carols! solitary here, the night's carols! carols of lonesome love! death's carols! carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon! o under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea! o reckless despairing carols. but soft! sink low! soft! let me just murmur, and do you wait a moment you husky-nois'd sea, for somewhere i believe i heard my mate responding to me, so faint, i must be still, be still to listen, but not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me. hither my love! here i am! here! with this just-sustain'd note i announce myself to you, this gentle call is for you my love, for you. do not be decoy'd elsewhere, that is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice, that is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray, those are the shadows of leaves. o darkness! o in vain! o i am very sick and sorrowful o brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea! o troubled reflection in the sea! o throat! o throbbing heart! and i singing uselessly, uselessly all the night. o past! o happy life! o songs of joy! in the air, in the woods, over fields, loved! loved! loved! loved! loved! but my mate no more, no more with me! we two together no more. the aria sinking, all else continuing, the stars shining, the winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing, with angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning, on the sands of paumanok's shore gray and rustling, the yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching, the boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the atmosphere dallying, the love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously bursting, the aria's meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing, the strange tears down the cheeks coursing, the colloquy there, the trio, each uttering, the undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying, to the boy's soul's questions sullenly timing, some drown'd secret hissing, to the outsetting bard. demon or bird! (said the boy's soul,) is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me? for i, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, now i have heard you, now in a moment i know what i am for, i awake, and already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours, a thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die. o you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me, o solitary me listening, never more shall i cease perpetuating you, never more shall i escape, never more the reverberations, never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me, never again leave me to be the peaceful child i was before what there in the night, by the sea under the yellow and sagging moon, the messenger there arous'd, the fire, the sweet hell within, the unknown want, the destiny of me. o give me the clew! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,) o if i am to have so much, let me have more! a word then, (for i will conquer it,) the word final, superior to all, subtle, sent up-what is it?-i listen; are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves? is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands? whereto answering, the sea, delaying not, hurrying not, whisper'd me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak, lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death, and again death, death, death, death hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous'd child's heart, but edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet, creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over, death, death, death, death, death. which i do not forget. but fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother, that he sang to me in the moonlight on paumanok's gray beach, with the thousand responsive songs at random, my own songs awaked from that hour, and with them the key, the word up from the waves, the word of the sweetest song and all songs, that strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet, (or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet garments, bending aside,) the sea whisper'd me. as i ebb'd with the ocean of life 1 as i ebb'd with the ocean of life, as i wended the shores i know, as i walk'd where the ripples continually wash you paumanok, where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant, where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, i musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, held by this electric self out of the pride of which i utter poems, was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, the rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe. fascinated, my eyes reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender windrows, chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide, miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me, paumanok there and then as i thought the old thought of likenesses, these you presented to me you fish-shaped island, as i wended the shores i know, as i walk'd with that electric self seeking types. 2 as i wend to the shores i know not, as i list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck'd, as i inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me, as the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer, i too but signify at the utmost a little wash'd-up drift, a few sands and dead leaves to gather, gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift. o baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth, oppress'd with myself that i have dared to open my mouth, aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me i have not once had the least idea who or what i am, but that before all my arrogant poems the real me stands yet untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd, withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows, with peals of distant ironical laughter at every word i have written, pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath. i perceive i have not really understood any thing, not a single object, and that no man ever can, nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon me and sting me, because i have dared to open my mouth to sing at all. 3 you oceans both, i close with you, we murmur alike reproachfully rolling sands and drift, knowing not why, these little shreds indeed standing for you and me and all. you friable shore with trails of debris, you fish-shaped island, i take what is underfoot, what is yours is mine my father. i too paumanok, i too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been wash'd on your shores, i too am but a trail of drift and debris, i too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island. i throw myself upon your breast my father, i cling to you so that you cannot unloose me, i hold you so firm till you answer me something. kiss me my father, touch me with your lips as i touch those i love, breathe to me while i hold you close the secret of the murmuring i envy. 4 ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,) cease not your moaning you fierce old mother, endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me, rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet as i touch you or gather from you. i mean tenderly by you and all, i gather for myself and for this phantom looking down where we lead, and following me and mine. me and mine, loose windrows, little corpses, froth, snowy white, and bubbles, (see, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last, see, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,) tufts of straw, sands, fragments, buoy'd hither from many moods, one contradicting another, from the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell, musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil, up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown, a limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random, just as much for us that sobbing dirge of nature, just as much whence we come that blare of the cloud-trumpets, we, capricious, brought hither we know not whence, spread out before you, you up there walking or sitting, whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet. tears tears tears! tears! tears! in the night, in solitude, tears, on the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand, tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate, moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head; o who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears? what shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the sand? streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries; o storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach! o wild and dismal night storm, with wind-o belching and desperate! o shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace, but away at night as you fly, none looking-o then the unloosen'd ocean, of tears! tears! tears! to the man-of-war-bird thou who hast slept all night upon the storm, waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions, (burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st, and rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,) now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating, as to the light emerging here on deck i watch thee, (myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.) far, far at sea, after the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks, with re-appearing day as now so happy and serene, the rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun, the limpid spread of air cerulean, thou also re-appearest. thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,) to cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails, days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating, at dusk that lookist on senegal, at morn america, that sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, in them, in thy experiences, had'st thou my soul, what joys! what joys were thine! aboard at a ship's helm aboard at a ship's helm, a young steersman steering with care. through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing, an ocean-bell-o a warning bell, rock'd by the waves. o you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing, ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place. for as on the alert o steersman, you mind the loud admonition, the bows turn, the freighted ship tacking speeds away under her gray sails, the beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth speeds away gayly and safe. but o the ship, the immortal ship! o ship aboard the ship! ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging. on the beach at night on the beach at night, stands a child with her father, watching the east, the autumn sky. up through the darkness, while ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky, amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, ascends large and calm the lord-star jupiter, and nigh at hand, only a very little above, swim the delicate sisters the pleiades. from the beach the child holding the hand of her father, those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all, watching, silently weeps. weep not, child, weep not, my darling, with these kisses let me remove your tears, the ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, they shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition, jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the pleiades shall emerge, they are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again, the great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure, the vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine. then dearest child mournest thou only for jupiter? considerest thou alone the burial of the stars? something there is, (with my lips soothing thee, adding i whisper, i give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,) something there is more immortal even than the stars, (many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) something that shall endure longer even than lustrous jupiter longer than sun or any revolving satellite, or the radiant sisters the pleiades. the world below the brine the world below the brine, forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves, sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle openings, and pink turf, different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the play of light through the water, dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, and the aliment of the swimmers, sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom, the sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes, the leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray, passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths, breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do, the change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us who walk this sphere, the change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres. on the beach at night alone on the beach at night alone, as the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, as i watch the bright stars shining, i think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future. a vast similitude interlocks all, all spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, all distances of place however wide, all distances of time, all inanimate forms, all souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, all gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes, all nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages, all identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe, all lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future, this vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd, and shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them. song for all seas, all ships 1 to-day a rude brief recitative, of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal, of unnamed heroes in the ships-of waves spreading and spreading far as the eye can reach, of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing, and out of these a chant for the sailors of all nations, fitful, like a surge. of sea-captains young or old, and the mates, and of all intrepid sailors, of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise nor death dismay. pick'd sparingly without noise by thee old ocean, chosen by thee, thou sea that pickest and cullest the race in time, and unitest nations, suckled by thee, old husky nurse, embodying thee, indomitable, untamed as thee. (ever the heroes on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing, ever the stock preserv'd and never lost, though rare, enough for seed preserv'd.) 2 flaunt out o sea your separate flags of nations! flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals! but do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of man one flag above all the rest, a spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death, token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates, and all that went down doing their duty, reminiscent of them, twined from all intrepid captains young or old, a pennant universal, subtly waving all time, o'er all brave sailors, all seas, all ships. patroling barnegat wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running, steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering, shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing, waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing, out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering, on beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting, where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting, through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing, (that in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?) slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending, steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting, along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering, a group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting, that savage trinity warily watching. after the sea-ship after the sea-ship, after the whistling winds, after the white-gray sails taut to their spars and ropes, below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks, tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship, waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying, waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves, toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves, where the great vessel sailing and tacking displaced the surface, larger and smaller waves in the spread of the ocean yearnfully flowing, the wake of the sea-ship after she passes, flashing and frolicsome under the sun, a motley procession with many a fleck of foam and many fragments, following the stately and rapid ship, in the wake following. a boston ballad (1854) to get betimes in boston town i rose this morning early, here's a good place at the corner, i must stand and see the show. clear the way there jonathan! way for the president's marshal-way for the government cannon! way for the federal foot and dragoons, (and the apparitions copiously tumbling.) i love to look on the stars and stripes, i hope the fifes will play yankee doodle. how bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops! every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through boston town. a fog follows, antiques of the same come limping, some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless. why this is indeed a show-it has called the dead out of the earth! the old graveyards of the hills have hurried to see! phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear! cock'd hats of mothy mould-crutches made of mist! arms in slings-old men leaning on young men's shoulders. what troubles you yankee phantoms? what is all this chattering of bare gums? does the ague convulse your limbs? do you mistake your crutches for firelocks and level them? if you blind your eyes with tears you will not see the president's marshal, if you groan such groans you might balk the government cannon. for shame old maniacs-bring down those toss'd arms, and let your white hair be, here gape your great grandsons, their wives gaze at them from the windows, see how well dress'd, see how orderly they conduct themselves. worse and worse-can't you stand it? are you retreating? is this hour with the living too dead for you? retreat then-pell-mell! to your graves-back-back to the hills old limpers! i do not think you belong here anyhow. but there is one thing that belongs here-shall i tell you what it is, gentlemen of boston? i will whisper it to the mayor, he shall send a committee to england, they shall get a grant from the parliament, go with a cart to the royal vault, dig out king george's coffin, unwrap him quick from the graveclothes, box up his bones for a journey, find a swift yankee clipper-here is freight for you, black-bellied clipper, up with your anchor-shake out your sails-steer straight toward boston bay. now call for the president's marshal again, bring out the government cannon, fetch home the roarers from congress, make another procession, guard it with foot and dragoons. this centre-piece for them; look, all orderly citizens-look from the windows, women! the committee open the box, set up the regal ribs, glue those that will not stay, clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull. you have got your revenge, old buster-the crown is come to its own, and more than its own. stick your hands in your pockets, jonathan-youare a made man from this day, you are mighty cute-and here is one of your bargains. europe europe, the 72d and 73d years of these states suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, like lightning it le'pt forth half startled at itself, its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hands tight to the throats of kings. o hope and faith! o aching close of exiled patriots' lives! o many a sicken'd heart! turn back unto this day and make yourselves afresh. and you, paid to defile the people-you liars, mark! not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts, for court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity the poor man's wages, for many a promise sworn by royal lips and broken and laugh'd at in the breaking, then in their power not for all these did the blows strike revenge, or the heads of the nobles fall; the people scorn'd the ferocity of kings. but the sweetness of mercy brew'd bitter destruction, and the frighten'd monarchs come back, each comes in state with his train, hangman, priest, tax-gatherer, soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant. yet behind all lowering stealing, lo, a shape, vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front and form, in scarlet folds, whose face and eyes none may see, out of its robes only this, the red robes lifted by the arm, one finger crook'd pointed high over the top, like the head of a snake appears. meanwhile corpses lie in new-made graves, bloody corpses of young men, the rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud, and all these things bear fruits, and they are good. those corpses of young men, those martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts pierc'd by the gray lead, cold and motionless as they seem live elsewhere with unslaughter'd vitality. they live in other young men o kings! they live in brothers again ready to defy you, they were purified by death, they were taught and exalted. not a grave of the murder'd for freedom but grows seed for freedom, in its turn to bear seed, which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish. not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose, but it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counseling, cautioning. liberty, let others despair of you-i never despair of you. is the house shut? is the master away? nevertheless, be ready, be not weary of watching, he will soon return, his messengers come anon. a hand-mirror hold it up sternly-see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?) outside fair costume, within ashes and filth, no more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step, now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step, a drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh, lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, words babble, hearing and touch callous, no brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex; such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, such a result so soon-and from such a beginning! gods gods lover divine and perfect comrade, waiting content, invisible yet, but certain, be thou my god. thou, thou, the ideal man, fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving, complete in body and dilate in spirit, be thou my god. o death, (for life has served its turn,) opener and usher to the heavenly mansion, be thou my god. aught, aught of mightiest, best i see, conceive, or know, (to break the stagnant tie-thee, thee to free, o soul,) be thou my god. all great ideas, the races' aspirations, all heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts, be ye my gods. or time and space, or shape of earth divine and wondrous, or some fair shape i viewing, worship, or lustrous orb of sun or star by night, be ye my gods. germs germs forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts, the ones known, and the ones unknown, the ones on the stars, the stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped, wonders as of those countries, the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants, whatever they may be, splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations and effects, such-like, and as good as such-like, visible here or anywhere, stand provided for a handful of space, which i extend my arm and half enclose with my hand, that containing the start of each and all, the virtue, the germs of all. thoughts thoughts of ownership-as if one fit to own things could not at pleasure enter upon all, and incorporate them into himself or herself; of vista-suppose some sight in arriere through the formative chaos, presuming the growth, fulness, life, now attain'd on the journey, (but i see the road continued, and the journey ever continued;) of what was once lacking on earth, and in due time has become supplied-and of what will yet be supplied, because all i see and know i believe to have its main purport in what will yet be supplied. when i heard the learn'd astronomer when i heard the learn'd astronomer, when the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, when i was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, when i sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, how soon unaccountable i became tired and sick, till rising and gliding out i wander'd off by myself, in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. perfections perfections only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves, as souls only understand souls. o me! o life! o me! o life! of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish, of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than i, and who more faithless?) of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew'd, of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds i see around me, of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined, the question, o me! so sad, recurring-what good amid these, o me, o life? answer. that you are here-that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. to a president all you are doing and saying is to america dangled mirages, you have not learn'd of nature-of the politics of nature you have not learn'd the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality, you have not seen that only such as they are for these states, and that what is less than they must sooner or later lift off from these states. i sit and look out i sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame, i hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done, i see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate, i see the wife misused by her husband, i see the treacherous seducer of young women, i mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be hid, i see these sights on the earth, i see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, i see martyrs and prisoners, i observe a famine at sea, i observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd to preserve the lives of the rest, i observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; all these-all the meanness and agony without end i sitting look out upon, see, hear, and am silent. to rich givers what you give me i cheerfully accept, a little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as i rendezvous with my poems, a traveler's lodging and breakfast as journey through the states, why should i be ashamed to own such gifts? why to advertise for them? for i myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman, for i bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts of the universe. the dalliance of the eagles skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,) skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles, the rushing amorous contact high in space together, the clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel, four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling, in tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling, till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull, a motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing, upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight, she hers, he his, pursuing. roaming in thought (after reading hegel) roaming in thought over the universe, i saw the little that is good steadily hastening towards immortality, and the vast all that is call'd evil i saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead. a farm picture through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, a sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding, and haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away. a child's amaze silent and amazed even when a little boy, i remember i heard the preacher every sunday put god in his statements, as contending against some being or influence. the runner on a flat road runs the well-train'd runner, he is lean and sinewy with muscular legs, he is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs, with lightly closed fists and arms partially rais'd. beautiful women women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, the young are beautiful-but the old are more beautiful than the young. mother and babe i see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother, the sleeping mother and babe-hush'd, i study them long and long. thought thought of obedience, faith, adhesiveness; as i stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who do not believe in men. visord visor'd a mask, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself, concealing her face, concealing her form, changes and transformations every hour, every moment, falling upon her even when she sleeps. thought thought of justice-as if could be any thing but the same ample law, expounded by natural judges and saviors, as if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions. gliding o'er all gliding o'er all, through all, through nature, time, and space, as a ship on the waters advancing, the voyage of the soul-not life alone, death, many deaths i'll sing. hast never come to thee an hour hast never come to thee an hour, a sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles, fashions, wealth? these eager business aims-books, politics, art, amours, to utter nothingness? thought thought of equality-as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself-as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same. to old age i see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours in the great sea. locations and times locations and times-what is it in me that meets them all, whenever and wherever, and makes me at home? forms, colors, densities, odors-what is it in me that corresponds with them? offerings offerings a thousand perfect men and women appear, around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings. to the states, to identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th presidentiad. why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing? what deepening twilight-scum floating atop of the waters, who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol? what a filthy presidentiad! (o south, your torrid suns! o north, your arctic freezings!) are those really congressmen? are those the great judges? is that the president? then i will sleep awhile yet, for i see that these states sleep, for reasons; (with gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent shoots we all duly awake, south, north, east, west, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.) first o songs for a prelude first o songs for a prelude, lightly strike on the stretch'd tympanum pride and joy in my city, how she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue, how at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she sprang, (o superb! o manhattan, my own, my peerless! o strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! o truer than steel!) how you sprang-how you threw off the costumes of peace with indifferent hand, how your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard in their stead, how you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of soldiers,) how manhattan drum-taps led. forty years had i in my city seen soldiers parading, forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and turbulent city, sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth, with her million children around her, suddenly, at dead of night, at news from the south, incens'd struck with clinch'd hand the pavement. a shock electric, the night sustain'd it, till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour'd out its myriads. from the houses then and the workshops, and through all the doorways, leapt they tumultuous, and lo! manhattan arming. to the drum-taps prompt, the young men falling in and arming, the mechanics arming, (the trowel, the jack-plane, the blacksmith's hammer, tost aside with precipitation,) the lawyer leaving his office and arming, the judge leaving the court, the driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down, throwing the reins abruptly down on the horses' backs, the salesman leaving the store, the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving; squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm, the new recruits, even boys, the old men show them how to wear their accoutrements, they buckle the straps carefully, outdoors arming, indoors arming, the flash of the musket-barrels, the white tents cluster in camps, the arm'd sentries around, the sunrise cannon and again at sunset, arm'd regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark from the wharves, (how good they look as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with their guns on their shoulders! how i love them! how i could hug them, with their brown faces and their clothes and knapsacks cover'd with dust!) the blood of the city up-arm'd! arm'd! the cry everywhere, the flags flung out from the steeples of churches and from all the public buildings and stores, the tearful parting, the mother kisses her son, the son kisses his mother, (loth is the mother to part, yet not a word does she speak to detain him,) the tumultuous escort, the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing the way, the unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their favorites, the artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along, rumble lightly over the stones, (silent cannons, soon to cease your silence, soon unlimber'd to begin the red business;) all the mutter of preparation, all the determin'd arming, the hospital service, the lint, bandages and medicines, the women volunteering for nurses, the work begun for in earnest, no mere parade now; war! an arm'd race is advancing! the welcome for battle, no turning away! war! be it weeks, months, or years, an arm'd race is advancing to welcome it. mannahatta a-march-and it's o to sing it well! it's o for a manly life in the camp. and the sturdy artillery, the guns bright as gold, the work for giants, to serve well the guns, unlimber them! (no more as the past forty years for salutes for courtesies merely, put in something now besides powder and wadding.) and you lady of ships, you mannahatta, old matron of this proud, friendly, turbulent city, often in peace and wealth you were pensive or covertly frown'd amid all your children, but now you smile with joy exulting old mannahatta. eighteen sixty-one arm'd year-year of the struggle, no dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you terrible year, not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping cadenzas piano, but as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying rifle on your shoulder, with well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands, with a knife in the belt at your side, as i heard you shouting loud, your sonorous voice ringing across the continent, your masculine voice o year, as rising amid the great cities, amid the men of manhattan i saw you as one of the workmen, the dwellers in manhattan, or with large steps crossing the prairies out of illinois and indiana, rapidly crossing the west with springy gait and descending the allghanies, or down from the great lakes or in pennsylvania, or on deck along the ohio river, or southward along the tennessee or cumberland rivers, or at chattanooga on the mountain top, saw i your gait and saw i your sinewy limbs clothed in blue, bearing weapons, robust year, heard your determin'd voice launch'd forth again and again, year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp'd cannon, i repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year. beat! beat! drums! beat! beat! drums!-blow! bugles! blow! through the windows-through doors-burst like a ruthless force, into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation, into the school where the scholar is studying; leave not the bridegroom quiet-no happiness must he have now with his bride, nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain, so fierce you whirr and pound you drums-so shrill you bugles blow. beat! beat! drums!-blow! bugles! blow! over the traffic of cities-over the rumble of wheels in the streets; are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must sleep in those beds, no bargainers' bargains by day-no brokers or speculators-would they continue? would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing? would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge? then rattle quicker, heavier drums-you bugles wilder blow. beat! beat! drums!-blow! bugles! blow! make no parley-stop for no expostulation, mind not the timid-mind not the weeper or prayer, mind not the old man beseeching the young man, let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties, make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses, so strong you thump o terrible drums-so loud you bugles blow. from paumanok starting i fly like a bird from paumanok starting i fly like a bird, around and around to soar to sing the idea of all, to the north betaking myself to sing there arctic songs, to kanada till i absorb kanada in myself, to michigan then, to wisconsin, iowa, minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;) then to ohio and indiana to sing theirs, to missouri and kansas and arkansas to sing theirs, to tennessee and kentucky, to the carolinas and georgia to sing theirs, to texas and so along up toward california, to roam accepted everywhere; to sing first, (to the tap of the war-drum if need be,) the idea of all, of the western world one and inseparable, and then the song of each member of these states. song of the banner at daybreak poet. o a new song, a free song, flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer, by the wind's voice and that of the drum, by the banner's voice and child's voice and sea's voice and father's voice, low on the ground and high in the air, on the ground where father and child stand, in the upward air where their eyes turn, where the banner at daybreak is flapping. words! book-words! what are you? words no more, for hearken and see, my song is there in the open air, and i must sing, with the banner and pennant a-flapping. i'll weave the chord and twine in, man's desire and babe's desire, i'll twine them in, i'll put in life, i'll put the bayonet's flashing point, i'll let bullets and slugs whizz, (as one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future, crying with trumpet voice, arouse and beware! beware and arouse!) i'll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy, then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete, with the banner and pennant a-flapping. pennant. come up here, bard, bard, come up here, soul, soul, come up here, dear little child, to fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the measureless light. child. father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger? and what does it say to me all the while? father. nothing my babe you see in the sky, and nothing at all to you it says-but look you my babe, look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money shops opening, and see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods; these, ah these, how valued and toil'd for these! how envied by all the earth. poet. fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high, on floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels, on floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land, the great steady wind from west or west-by-south, floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters. but i am not the sea nor the red sun, i am not the wind with girlish laughter, not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes, not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death, but i am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings, which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land, which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings, and the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant, aloft there flapping and flapping. child. o father it is alive-it is full of people-it has children, o now it seems to me it is talking to its children, i hear it-it talks to me-o it is wonderful! o it stretches-it spreads and runs so fast-o my father, it is so broad it covers the whole sky. father. cease, cease, my foolish babe, what you are saying is sorrowful to me, much 't displeases me; behold with the rest again i say, behold not banners and pennants aloft, but the well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid-wall'd houses. banner and pennant. speak to the child o bard out of manhattan, to our children all, or north or south of manhattan, point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all-and yet we know not why, for what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing, only flapping in the wind? poet. i hear and see not strips of cloth alone, i hear the tramp of armies, i hear the challenging sentry, i hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, i hear liberty! i hear the drums beat and the trumpets blowing, i myself move abroad swift-rising flying then, i use the wings of the land-bird and use the wings of the sea-bird, and look down as from a height, i do not deny the precious results of peace, i see populous cities with wealth incalculable, i see numberless farms, i see the farmers working in their fields or barns, i see mechanics working, i see buildings everywhere founded, going up, or finish'd, i see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks drawn by the locomotives, i see the stores, depots, of boston, baltimore, charleston, new orleans, i see far in the west the immense area of grain, i dwell awhile hovering, i pass to the lumber forests of the north, and again to the southern plantation, and again to california; sweeping the whole i see the countless profit, the busy gatherings, earn'd wages, see the identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty states, (and many more to come,) see forts on the shores of harbors, see ships sailing in and out; then over all, (aye! aye!) my little and lengthen'd pennant shaped like a sword, runs swiftly up indicating war and defiance-and now the halyards have rais'd it, side of my banner broad and blue, side of my starry banner, discarding peace over all the sea and land. banner and pennant. yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave! no longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone, we may be terror and carnage, and are so now, not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty states, (nor any five, nor ten,) nor market nor depot we, nor money-bank in the city, but these and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines below, are ours, and the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and small, and the fields they moisten, and the crops and the fruits are ours, bays and channels and ships sailing in and out are ours-while we over all, over the area spread below, the three or four millions of square miles, the capitals, the forty millions of people,-o bard! in life and death supreme, we, even we, henceforth flaunt out masterful, high up above, not for the present alone, for a thousand years chanting through you, this song to the soul of one poor little child. child. o my father i like not the houses, they will never to me be any thing, nor do i like money, but to mount up there i would like, o father dear, that banner i like, that pennant i would be and must be. father. child of mine you fill me with anguish, to be that pennant would be too fearful, little you know what it is this day, and after this day, forever, it is to gain nothing, but risk and defy every thing, forward to stand in front of wars-and o, such wars!-what have you to do with them? with passions of demons, slaughter, premature death? banner. demons and death then i sing, put in all, aye all will i, sword-shaped pennant for war, and a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of children, blent with the sounds of the peaceful land and the liquid wash of the sea, and the black ships fighting on the sea envelop'd in smoke, and the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines, and the whirr of drums and the sound of soldiers marching, and the hot sun shining south, and the beach-waves combing over the beach on my eastern shore, and my western shore the same, and all between those shores, and my ever running mississippi with bends and chutes, and my illinois fields, and my kansas fields, and my fields of missouri, the continent, devoting the whole identity without reserving an atom, pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all and the yield of all, fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole, no more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound, but out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no more, croaking like crows here in the wind. poet. my limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last, banner so broad advancing out of the night, i sing you haughty and resolute, i burst through where i waited long, too long, deafen'd and blinded, my hearing and tongue are come to me, (a little child taught me,) i hear from above o pennant of war your ironical call and demand, insensate! insensate! (yet i at any rate chant you,) o banner! not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their prosperity, (if need be, you shall again have every one of those houses to destroy them, you thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of comfort, built with money, may they stand fast, then? not an hour except you above them and all stand fast;) o banner, not money so precious are you, not farm produce you, nor the material good nutriment, nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships, not the superb ships with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and carrying cargoes, nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues-but you as henceforth i see you, running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars, (ever-enlarging stars,) divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touch'd by the sun, measuring the sky, (passionately seen and yearn'd for by one poor little child, while others remain busy or smartly talking, forever teaching thrift, thrift;) o you up there! o pennant! where you undulate like a snake hissing so curious, out of reach, an idea only, yet furiously fought for, risking bloody death, loved by me, so loved-o you banner leading the day with stars brought from the night! valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all-(absolute owner of all)-o banner and pennant! i too leave the rest-great as it is, it is nothing-houses, machines are nothing-i see them not, i see but you, o warlike pennant! o banner so broad, with stripes, sing you only, flapping up there in the wind. rise o days from your fathomless deeps 1 rise o days from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep, long for my soul hungering gymnastic i devour'd what the earth gave me, long i roam'd amid the woods of the north, long i watch'd niagara pouring, i travel'd the prairies over and slept on their breast, i cross'd the nevadas, i cross'd the plateaus, i ascended the towering rocks along the pacific, i sail'd out to sea, i sail'd through the storm, i was refresh'd by the storm, i watch'd with joy the threatening maws of the waves, i mark'd the white combs where they career'd so high, curling over, i heard the wind piping, i saw the black clouds, saw from below what arose and mounted, (o superb! o wild as my heart, and powerful!) heard the continuous thunder as it bellow'd after the lightning, noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning as sudden and fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky; these, and such as these, i, elate, saw-saw with wonder, yet pensive and masterful, all the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me, yet there with my soul i fed, i fed content, supercilious. 2 'twas well, o soul-'twas a good preparation you gave me, now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill, now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us, not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities, something for us is pouring now more than niagara pouring, torrents of men, (sources and rills of the northwest are you indeed inexhaustible?) what, to pavements and homesteads here, what were those storms of the mountains and sea? what, to passions i witness around me to-day? was the sea risen? was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds? lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage, manhattan rising, advancing with menacing front-cincinnati, chicago, unchain'd; what was that swell i saw on the ocean? behold what comes here, how it climbs with daring feet and hands-how it dashes! how the true thunder bellows after the lightning-how bright the flashes of lightning! how democracy with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown through the dark by those flashes of lightning! (yet a mournful wall and low sob i fancied i heard through the dark, in a lull of the deafening confusion.) 3 thunder on! stride on, democracy! strike with vengeful stroke! and do you rise higher than ever yet o days, o cities! crash heavier, heavier yet o storms! you have done me good, my soul prepared in the mountains absorbs your immortal strong nutriment, long had i walk'd my cities, my country roads through farms, only half satisfied, one doubt nauseous undulating like a snake, crawl'd on the ground before me, continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low; the cities i loved so well i abandon'd and left, i sped to the certainties suitable to me, hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies and nature's dauntlessness, i refresh'd myself with it only, i could relish it only, i waited the bursting forth of the pent fire-on the water and air waited long; but now i no longer wait, i am fully satisfied, i am glutted, i have witness'd the true lightning, i have witness'd my cities electric, i have lived to behold man burst forth and warlike america rise, hence i will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds, no more the mountains roam or sail the stormy sea. virginia the west the noble sire fallen on evil days, i saw with hand uplifted, menacing, brandishing, (memories of old in abeyance, love and faith in abeyance,) the insane knife toward the mother of all. the noble son on sinewy feet advancing, i saw, out of the land of prairies, land of ohio's waters and of indiana, to the rescue the stalwart giant hurry his plenteous offspring, drest in blue, bearing their trusty rifles on their shoulders. then the mother of all with calm voice speaking, as to you rebellious, (i seemed to hear her say,) why strive against me, and why seek my life? when you yourself forever provide to defend me? for you provided me washingtonand now these also. city of ships city of ships! (o the black ships! o the fierce ships! o the beautiful sharp-bow'd steam-ships and sail-ships!) city of the world! (for all races are here, all the lands of the earth make contributions here;) city of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides! city whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and out with eddies and foam! city of wharves and storescity of tall facades of marble and iron! proud and passionate citymettlesome, mad, extravagant city! spring up o citynot for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike! fear notsubmit to no models but your own o city! behold meincarnate me as i have incarnated you! i have rejected nothing you offer'd me-whom you adopted i have adopted, good or bad i never question youi love alli do not condemn any thing, i chant and celebrate all that is yours-yet peace no more, in peace i chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine, war, red war is my song through your streets, o city! the centenarian's story volunteer of 1861-2, (at washington park, brooklyn, assisting the centenarian.) give me your hand old revolutionary, the hill-top is nigh, but a few steps, (make room gentlemen,) up the path you have follow'd me well, spite of your hundred and extra years, you can walk old man, though your eyes are almost done, your faculties serve you, and presently i must have them serve me. rest, while i tell what the crowd around us means, on the plain below recruits are drilling and exercising, there is the camp, one regiment departs to-morrow, do you hear the officers giving their orders? do you hear the clank of the muskets? why what comes over you now old man? why do you tremble and clutch my hand so convulsively? the troops are but drilling, they are yet surrounded with smiles, around them at hand the well-drest friends and the women, while splendid and warm the afternoon sun shines down, green the midsummer verdure and fresh blows the dallying breeze, o'er proud and peaceful cities and arm of the sea between. but drill and parade are over, they march back to quarters, only hear that approval of hands! hear what a clapping! as wending the crowds now part and dispersebut we old man, not for nothing have i brought you hitherwe must remain, you to speak in your turn, and i to listen and tell. the centenarian when i clutch'd your hand it was not with terror, but suddenly pouring about me here on every side, and below there where the boys were drilling, and up the slopes they ran, and where tents are pitch'd, and wherever you see south and south east and south-west, over hills, across lowlands, and in the skirts of woods, and along the shores, in mire (now fill'd over) came again and suddenly raged, as eighty-five years agone no mere parade receiv'd with applause of friends, but a battle which i took part in myselfaye, long ago as it is, i took part in it, walking then this hilltop, this same ground. aye, this is the ground, my blind eyes even as i speak behold it re-peopled from graves, the years recede, pavements and stately houses disappear, rude forts appear again, the old hoop'd guns are mounted, i see the lines of rais'd earth stretching from river to bay, i mark the vista of waters, i mark the uplands and slopes; here we lay encamp'd, it was this time in summer also. as i talk i remember all, i remember the declaration, it was read here, the whole army paraded, it was read to us here, by his staff surrounded the general stood in the middle, he held up his unsheath'd sword, it glitter'd in the sun in full sight of the army. twas a bold act thenthe english war-ships had just arrived, we could watch down the lower bay where they lay at anchor, and the transports swarming with soldiers. a few days more and they landed, and then the battle. twenty thousand were brought against us, a veteran force furnish'd with good artillery. i tell not now the whole of the battle, but one brigade early in the forenoon order'd forward to engage the red-coats, of that brigade i tell, and how steadily it march'd, and how long and well it stood confronting death. who do you think that was marching steadily sternly confronting death? it was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong, rais'd in virginia and maryland, and most of them known personally to the general. jauntily forward they went with quick step toward gowanus' waters, till of a sudden unlook'd for by defiles through the woods, gain'd at night, the british advancing, rounding in from the east, fiercely playing their guns, that brigade of the youngest was cut off and at the enemy's mercy. the general watch'd them from this hill, they made repeated desperate attempts to burst their environment, then drew close together, very compact, their flag flying in the middle, but o from the hills how the cannon were thinning and thinning them! it sickens me yet, that slaughter! i saw the moisture gather in drops on the face of the general. i saw how he wrung his hands in anguish. meanwhile the british manoeuvr'd to draw us out for a pitch'd battle, but we dared not trust the chances of a pitch'd battle. we fought the fight in detachments, sallying forth we fought at several points, but in each the luck was against us, our foe advancing, steadily getting the best of it, push'd us back to the works on this hill, till we turn'd menacing here, and then he left us. that was the going out of the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong, few return'd, nearly all remain in brooklyn. that and here my general's first battle, no women looking on nor sunshine to bask in, it did not conclude with applause, nobody clapp'd hands here then. but in darkness in mist on the ground under a chill rain, wearied that night we lay foil'd and sullen, while scornfully laugh'd many an arrogant lord off against us encamp'd, quite within hearing, feasting, clinking wineglasses together over their victory. so dull and damp and another day, but the night of that, mist lifting, rain ceasing, silent as a ghost while they thought they were sure of him, my general retreated. i saw him at the river-side, down by the ferry lit by torches, hastening the embarcation; my general waited till the soldiers and wounded were all pass'd over, and then, (it was just ere sunrise,) these eyes rested on him for the last time. every one else seem'd fill'd with gloom, many no doubt thought of capitulation. but when my general pass'd me, as he stood in his boat and look'd toward the coming sun, i saw something different from capitulation. terminus enough, the centenarian's story ends, the two, the past and present, have interchanged, i myself as connecter, as chansonnier of a great future, am now speaking. and is this the ground washington trod? and these waters i listlessly daily cross, are these the waters he cross'd, as resolute in defeat as other generals in their proudest triumphs? i must copy the story, and send it eastward and westward, i must preserve that look as it beam'd on you rivers of brooklyn. seeas the annual round returns the phantoms return, it is the 27th of august and the british have landed, the battle begins and goes against us, behold through the smoke washington's face, the brigade of virginia and maryland have march'd forth to intercept the enemy, they are cut off, murderous artillery from the hills plays upon them, rank after rank falls, while over them silently droops the flag, baptized that day in many a young man's bloody wounds. in death, defeat, and sisters', mothers' tears. ah, hills and slopes of brooklyn! i perceive you are more valuable than your owners supposed; in the midst of you stands an encampment very old, stands forever the camp of that dead brigade. cavalry crossing a ford a line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands, they take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun-hark to the musical clank, behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop to drink, behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the negligent rest on the saddles, some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the ford while, scarlet and blue and snowy white, the guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind. bivouac on a mountain side i see before me now a traveling army halting, below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of summer, behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising high, broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes dingily seen, the numerous camp-fires scatter'd near and far, some away up on the mountain, the shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering, and over all the sky-the sky! far, far out of reach, studded, breaking out, the eternal stars. an army corps on the march with its cloud of skirmishers in advance, with now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip, and now an irregular volley, the swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on, glittering dimly, toiling under the sunthe dust-cover'd men, in columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground, with artillery interspers'dthe wheels rumble, the horses sweat, as the army corps advances. by the bivouac's fitful flame by the bivouac's fitful flame, a procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slowbut first i note, the tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and woods' dim outline, the darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, the silence, like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving, the shrubs and trees, (as i lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me,) while wind in procession thoughts, o tender and wondrous thoughts, of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away; a solemn and slow procession there as i sit on the ground, by the bivouac's fitful flame. come up from the fields father come up from the fields father, here's a letter from our pete, and come to the front door mother, here's a letter from thy dear son. lo, 'tis autumn, lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, cool and sweeten ohio's villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind, where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis'd vines, (smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines? smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?) above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds, below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well. down in the fields all prospers well, but now from the fields come father, come at the daughter's call. and come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away. fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling, she does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap. open the envelope quickly, o this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd, o a strange hand writes for our dear son, o stricken mother's soul! all swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only, sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital, at present low, but will soon be better. ah now the single figure to me, amid all teeming and wealthy ohio with all its cities and farms, sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint, by the jamb of a door leans. grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs, the little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd,) see, dearest mother, the letter says pete will soon be better. alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul,) while they stand at home at the door he is dead already, the only son is dead. but the mother needs to be better, she with thin form presently drest in black, by day her meals untouch'd, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking, in the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing, o that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw, to follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son. vigil strange i kept on the field one night vigil strange i kept on the field one night; when you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day, one look i but gave which your dear eyes return'd with a look i shall never forget, one touch of your hand to mine o boy, reach'd up as you lay on the ground, then onward i sped in the battle, the even-contested battle, till late in the night reliev'd to the place at last again i made my way, found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind, long there and then in vigil i stood, dimly around me the battlefield spreading, vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night, but not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long i gazed, then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin in my hands, passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest comradenot a tear, not a word, vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier, as onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole, vigil final for you brave boy, (i could not save you, swift was your death, i faithfully loved you and cared for you living, i think we shall surely meet again,) till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear'd, my comrade i wrapt in his blanket, envelop'd well his form, folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully under feet, and there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave i deposited, ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-field dim, vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil i never forget, how as day brighten'd, i rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket, and buried him where he fell. a march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown a march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown, a route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness, our army foil'd with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating, till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building, we come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building, 'tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu hospital, entering but for a minute i see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made, shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps, and by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and clouds of smoke, by these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely i see on the floor, some in the pews laid down, at my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen,) i stanch the blood temporarily, (the youngster's face is white as a lily,) then before i depart i sweep my eyes o'er the scene fain to absorb it all, faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead, surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, odor of blood, the crowd, o the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also fill'd, some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating, an occasional scream or cry, the doctor's shouted orders or calls, the glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches, these i resume as i chant, i see again the forms, i smell the odor, then hear outside the orders given, fall in, my men, fall in; but first i bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half-smile gives he me, then the eyes close, calmly close, and i speed forth to the darkness, resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks, the unknown road still marching. a sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim a sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim, as from my tent i emerge so early sleepless, as slow i walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent, three forms i see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying, over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket, gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all. curious i halt and silent stand, then with light fingers i from the face of the nearest the first just lift the blanket; who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes? who are you my dear comrade? then to the second i stepand who are you my child and darling? who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming? then to the thirda face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory; young man i think i know youi think this face is the face of the christ himself, dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies. as toilsome i wander'd virginia's woods as toilsome i wander'd virginia's woods, to the music of rustling leaves kick'd by my feet, (for 'twas autumn,) i mark'd at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier; mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat, (easily all could understand,) the halt of a mid-day hour, when up! no time to lose-yet this sign left, on a tablet scrawl'd and nail'd on the tree by the grave, bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade. long, long i muse, then on my way go wandering, many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life, yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt, alone, or in the crowded street, comes before me the unknown soldier's grave, comes the inscription rude in virginia's woods, bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade. not the pilot not the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port, though beaten back and many times baffled; not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary and long, by deserts parch'd, snows chill'd, rivers wet, perseveres till he reaches his destination, more than i have charged myself, heeded or unheeded, to compose march for these states, for a battle-call, rousing to arms if need be, years, centuries hence. year that trembled and reel'd beneath me year that trembled and reel'd beneath me! your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air i breathed froze me, a thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken'd me, must i change my triumphant songs? said i to myself, must i indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled? and sullen hymns of defeat? the wound-dresser 1 an old man bending i come among new faces, years looking backward resuming in answer to children, come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me, (arous'd and angry, i'd thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war, but soon my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd and i resign'd myself, to sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;) years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances, of unsurpass'd heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;) now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth, of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us? what stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains? 2 o maidens and young men i love and that love me, what you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, soldier alert i arrive after a long march cover'd with sweat and dust, in the nick of time i come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge, enter the captur'd works-yet lo, like a swift-running river they fade, pass and are gone they fade-i dwell not on soldiers' perils or soldiers' joys, (both i remember well-many the hardships, few the joys, yet i was content.) but in silence, in dreams' projections, while the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on, so soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand, with hinged knees returning i enter the doors, (while for you up there, whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.) bearing the bandages, water and sponge, straight and swift to my wounded i go, where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in, where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground, or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof'd hospital, to the long rows of cots up and down each side i return, to each and all one after another i draw near, not one do i miss, an attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail, soon to be fill'd with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill'd again. i onward go, i stop, with hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds, i am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable, one turns to me his appealing eyespoor boy! i never knew you, yet i think i could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you. 3 on, on i go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!) the crush'd head i dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,) the neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through examine, hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard, (come sweet death! be persuaded o beautiful death! in mercy come quickly.) from the stump of the arm, the amputated hand, i undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood, back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv'd neck and side falling head, his eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump, and has not yet look'd on it. i dress a wound in the side, deep, deep, but a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking, and the yellow-blue countenance see. i dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound, cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive, while the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail. i am faithful, i do not give out, the fractur'd thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen, these and more i dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame.) 4 thus in silence in dreams' projections, returning, resuming, i thread my way through the hospitals, the hurt and wounded i pacify with soothing hand, i sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young, some suffer so much, i recall the experience sweet and sad, (many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have cross'd and rested, many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips.) long, too long america long, too long america, traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only, but now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not, and now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are, (for who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?) give me the splendid silent sun 1 give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling, give me autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard, give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows, give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape, give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching content, give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the mississippi, and i looking up at the stars, give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where i can walk undisturb'd, give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom i should never tire, give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the world a rural domestic life, give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears only, give me solitude, give me nature, give me again o nature your primal sanities! these demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and rack'd by the war-strife,) these to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, while yet incessantly asking still i adhere to my city, day upon day and year upon year o city, walking your streets, where you hold me enchain'd a certain time refusing to give me up, yet giving to make me glutted, enrich'd of soul, you give me forever faces; (o i see what i sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries, see my own soul trampling down what it ask'd for.) 2 keep your splendid silent sun, keep your woods o nature, and the quiet places by the woods, keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards, keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the ninth-month bees hum; give me faces and streetsgive me these phantoms incessant and endless along the trottoirs! give me interminable eyesgive me womengive me comrades and lovers by the thousand! let me see new ones every daylet me hold new ones by the hand every day! give me such showsgive me the streets of manhattan! give me broadway, with the soldiers marching-give me the sound of the trumpets and drums! (the soldiers in companies or regimentssome starting away, flush'd and reckless, some, their time up, returning with thinn'd ranks, young, yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;) give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships! o such for me! o an intense life, full to repletion and varied! the life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me! the saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torchlight procession! the dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagons following; people, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants, manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now, the endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even the sight of the wounded,) manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus! manhattan faces and eyes forever for me. dirge for two veterans the last sunbeam lightly falls from the finish'd sabbath, on the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking, down a new-made double grave. lo, the moon ascending, up from the east the silvery round moon, beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon, immense and silent moon. i see a sad procession, and i hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles, all the channels of the city streets they're flooding, as with voices and with tears. i hear the great drums pounding, and the small drums steady whirring, and every blow of the great convulsive drums, strikes me through and through. for the son is brought with the father, (in the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell, two veterans son and father dropt together, and the double grave awaits them.) now nearer blow the bugles, and the drums strike more convulsive, and the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded, and the strong dead-march enwraps me. in the eastern sky up-buoying, the sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd, ('tis some mother's large transparent face, in heaven brighter growing.) o strong dead-march you please me! o moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me! o my soldiers twain! o my veterans passing to burial! what i have i also give you. the moon gives you light, and the bugles and the drums give you music, and my heart, o my soldiers, my veterans, my heart gives you love. over the carnage rose prophetic a voice over the carnage rose prophetic a voice, be not dishearten'd, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet, those who love each other shall become invincible, they shall yet make columbia victorious. sons of the mother of all, you shall yet be victorious, you shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the earth. no danger shall balk columbia's lovers, if need be a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one. one from massachusetts shall be a missourian's comrade, from maine and from hot carolina, and another an oregonese, shall be friends triune, more precious to each other than all the riches of the earth. to michigan, florida perfumes shall tenderly come, not the perfumes of flowers, but sweeter, and waited beyond death. it shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly affection, the most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly, the dependence of liberty shall be lovers, the continuance of equality shall be comrades. these shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron, i, ecstatic, o partners! o lands! with the love of lovers tie you. (were you looking to be held together by lawyers? or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms? nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.) i saw old general at bay i saw old general at bay, (old as he was, his gray eyes yet shone out in battle like stars,) his small force was now completely hemm'd in, in his works, he call'd for volunteers to run the enemy's lines, a desperate emergency, i saw a hundred and more step forth from the ranks, but two or three were selected, i saw them receive their orders aside, they listen'd with care, the adjutant was very grave, i saw them depart with cheerfulness, freely risking their lives. the artilleryman's vision while my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long, and my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes, and through the stillness, through the dark, i hear, just hear, the breath of my infant, there in the room as i wake from sleep this vision presses upon me; the engagement opens there and then in fantasy unreal, the skirmishers begin, they crawl cautiously ahead, i hear the irregular snap! snap! i hear the sounds of the different missiles, the short t-h-t! t-h-t! of the rifle-balls, i see the shells exploding leaving small white clouds, i hear the great shells shrieking as they pass, the grape like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (tumultuous now the contest rages,) all the scenes at the batteries rise in detail before me again, the crashing and smoking, the pride of the men in their pieces, the chief-gunner ranges and sights his piece and selects a fuse of the right time, after firing i see him lean aside and look eagerly off to note the effect; elsewhere i hear the cry of a regiment charging, (the young colonel leads himself this time with brandish'd sword,) i see the gaps cut by the enemy's volleys, (quickly fill'd up, no delay,) i breathe the suffocating smoke, then the flat clouds hover low concealing all; now a strange lull for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either side, then resumed the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls and orders of officers, while from some distant part of the field the wind waits to my ears a shout of applause, (some special success,) and ever the sound of the cannon far or near, (rousing even in dreams a devilish exultation and all the old mad joy in the depths of my soul,) and ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions, batteries, cavalry, moving hither and thither, (the falling, dying, i heed not, the wounded dripping and red heed not, some to the rear are hobbling,) grime, heat, rush, aide-de-camps galloping by or on a full run, with the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles, (these in my vision i hear or see,) and bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-color'd rockets. ethiopia saluting the colors who are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human, with your woolly-white and turban'd head, and bare bony feet? why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet? ('tis while our army lines carolina's sands and pines, forth from thy hovel door thou ethiopia comist to me, as under doughty sherman i march toward the sea.) me master years a hundred since from my parents sunder'd, a little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught, then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver brought. no further does she say, but lingering all the day, her high-borne turban'd head she wags, and rolls her darkling eye, and courtesies to the regiments, the guidons moving by. what is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human? why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green? are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have seen? not youth pertains to me not youth pertains to me, nor delicatesse, i cannot beguile the time with talk, awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant, in the learn'd coterie sitting constrain'd and still, for learning inures not to me, beauty, knowledge, inure not to me-yet there are two or three things inure to me, i have nourish'd the wounded and sooth'd many a dying soldier, and at intervals waiting or in the midst of camp, composed these songs. race of veterans race of veteransrace of victors! race of the soil, ready for conflictrace of the conquering march! (no more credulity's race, abiding-temper'd race,) race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself, race of passion and the storm. world take good notice world take good notice, silver stars fading, milky hue ript, wet of white detaching, coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning, scarlet, significant, hands off warning, now and henceforth flaunt from these shores. o tan-faced prairie-boy o tan-faced prairie-boy, before you came to camp came many a welcome gift, praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among the recruits, you came, taciturn, with nothing to give-we but look'd on each other, when lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me. look down fair moon look down fair moon and bathe this scene, pour softly down night's nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen, purple, on the dead on their backs with arms toss'd wide, pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon. reconciliation reconciliation word over all, beautiful as the sky, beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, that the hands of the sisters death and night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this solid world; for my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead, i look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffini draw near, bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin. how solemn as one by one (washington city, 1865) how solemn as one by one, as the ranks returning worn and sweaty, as the men file by where stand, as the faces the masks appear, as i glance at the faces studying the masks, (as i glance upward out of this page studying you, dear friend, whoever you are,) how solemn the thought of my whispering soul to each in the ranks, and to you, i see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul, o the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend, nor the bayonet stab what you really are; the soul! yourself i see, great as any, good as the best, waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill, nor the bayonet stab o friend. as i lay with my head in your lap camerado as i lay with my head in your lap camerado, the confession i made i resume, what i said to you and the open air i resume, i know i am restless and make others so, i know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death, for i confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them, i am more resolute because all have denied me than i could ever have been had all accepted me, i heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule, and the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me, and the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me; dear camerado! i confess i have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination, or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated. delicate cluster delicate cluster! flag of teeming life! covering all my landsall my seashores lining! flag of death! (how i watch'd you through the smoke of battle pressing! how i heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!) flag ceruleansunny flag, with the orbs of night dappled! ah my silvery beautyah my woolly white and crimson! ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty! my sacred one, my mother. to a certain civilian did you ask dulcet rhymes from me? did you seek the civilian's peaceful and languishing rhymes? did you find what i sang erewhile so hard to follow? why i was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understandnor am i now; (i have been born of the same as the war was born, the drum-corps' rattle is ever to me sweet music, i love well the martial dirge, with slow wail and convulsive throb leading the officer's funeral;) what to such as you anyhow such a poet as i? therefore leave my works, and go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with piano-tunes, for i lull nobody, and you will never understand me. lo, victress on the peaks lo, victress on the peaks, where thou with mighty brow regarding the world, (the world o libertad, that vainly conspired against thee,) out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all, dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee, flauntest now unharm'd in immortal soundness and bloomlo, in these hours supreme, no poem proud, i chanting bring to thee, nor mastery's rapturous verse, but a cluster containing night's darkness and blood-dripping wounds, and psalms of the dead. spirit whose work is done (washington city, 1865) spirit whose work is donespirit of dreadful hours! ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets; spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering pressing,) spirit of many a solemn day and many a savage sceneelectric spirit, that with muttering voice through the war now closed, like a tireless phantom flitted, rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the drum, now as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last, reverberates round me, as your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles, as the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders, as i look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders, as those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them appearing in the distance, approach and pass on, returning homeward, moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro to the right and left, evenly lightly rising and falling while the steps keep time; spirit of hours i knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death next day, touch my mouth ere you depart, press my lips close, leave me your pulses of ragebequeath them to mefill me with currents convulsive, let them scorch and blister out of my chants when you are gone, let them identify you to the future in these songs. adieu to a soldier adieu o soldier, you of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,) the rapid march, the life of the camp, the hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre, red battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific game, spell of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you and like of you all fill'd, with war and war's expression. adieu dear comrade, your mission is fulfill'dbut i, more warlike, myself and this contentious soul of mine, still on our own campaigning bound, through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined, through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled, here marching, ever marching on, a war fight outaye here, to fiercer, weightier battles give expression. turn o libertad turn o libertad, for the war is over, from it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute, sweeping the world, turn from lands retrospective recording proofs of the past, from the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past, from the chants of the feudal world, the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste, turn to the world, the triumphs reserv'd and to comegive up that backward world, leave to the singers of hitherto, give them the trailing past, but what remains remains for singers for you-wars to come are for you, (lo, how the wars of the past have duly inured to you, and the wars of the present also inure;) then turn, and be not alarm'd o libertadturn your undying face, to where the future, greater than all the past, is swiftly, surely preparing for you. to the leaven'd soil they trod to the leaven'd soil they trod calling i sing for the last, (forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the tent-ropes,) in the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and vistas again to peace restored, to the fiery fields emanative and the endless vistas beyond, to the south and the north, to the leaven'd soil of the general western world to attest my songs, to the alleghanian hills and the tireless mississippi, to the rocks i calling sing, and all the trees in the woods, to the plains of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spreading wide, to the far-off sea and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable air; and responding they answer all, (but not in words,) the average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely, the prairie draws me close, as the father to bosom broad the son, the northern ice and rain that began me nourish me to the end, but the hot sun of the south is to fully ripen my songs. when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd 1 when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, and the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, i mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, and thought of him i love. 2 o powerful western fallen star! o shades of nighto moody, tearful night! o great star disappear'do the black murk that hides the star! o cruel hands that hold me powerlesso helpless soul of me! o harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul. 3 in the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd palings, stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, with many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong i love, with every leaf a miracleand from this bush in the dooryard, with delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, a sprig with its flower i break. 4 in the swamp in secluded recesses, a shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. solitary the thrush, the hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, sings by himself a song. song of the bleeding throat, death's outlet song of life, (for well dear brother i know, if thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldist surely die.) 5 over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep'd from the ground, spotting the gray debris, amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass, passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen, passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards, carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, night and day journeys a coffin. 6 coffin that passes through lanes and streets, through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, with the pomp of the inloop'd flags with the cities draped in black, with the show of the states themselves as of crape-veil'd women standing, with processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night, with the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads, with the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces, with dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn, with all the mournful voices of the dirges pour'd around the coffin, the dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs-where amid these you journey, with the tolling tolling bells' perpetual clang, here, coffin that slowly passes, i give you my sprig of lilac. 7 (nor for you, for one alone, blossoms and branches green to coffins all i bring, for fresh as the morning, thus would i chant a song for you o sane and sacred death. all over bouquets of roses, o death, i cover you over with roses and early lilies, but mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first, copious i break, i break the sprigs from the bushes, with loaded arms i come, pouring for you, for you and the coffins all of you o death.) 8 o western orb sailing the heaven, now i know what you must have meant as a month since i walk'd, as i walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night, as i saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night, as you droop'd from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other stars all look'd on,) as we wander'd together the solemn night, (for something i know not what kept me from sleep,) as the night advanced, and i saw on the rim of the west how full you were of woe, as i stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night, as i watch'd where you pass'd and was lost in the netherward black of the night, as my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb, concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone. 9 sing on there in the swamp, o singer bashful and tender, i hear your notes, i hear your call, i hear, i come presently, i understand you, but a moment i linger, for the lustrous star has detain'd me, the star my departing comrade holds and detains me. 10 o how shall i warble myself for the dead one there i loved? and how shall i deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? and what shall my perfume be for the grave of him i love? sea-winds blown from east and west, blown from the eastern sea and blown from the western sea, till there on the prairies meeting, these and with these and the breath of my chant, i'll perfume the grave of him i love. 11 o what shall i hang on the chamber walls? and what shall the pictures be that i hang on the walls, to adorn the burial-house of him i love? pictures of growing spring and farms and homes, with the fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright, with floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air, with the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific, in the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there, with ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows, and the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys, and all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning. 12 lo, body and soulthis land, my own manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships, the varied and ample land, the south and the north in the light, ohio's shores and flashing missouri, and ever the far-spreading prairies cover'd with grass and corn. lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty, the violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes, the gentle soft-born measureless light, the miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd noon, the coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars, over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land. 13 sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird, sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes, limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines. sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song, loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe. o liquid and free and tender! o wild and loose to my soulo wondrous singer! you only i hearyet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,) yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me. 14 now while i sat in the day and look'd forth, in the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops, in the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests, in the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb'd winds and the storms,) under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women, the many-moving sea-tides, and i saw the ships how they sail'd, and the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor, and the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages, and the streets how their throbbings throbb'd, and the cities pent lo, then and there, falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest, appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long black trail, and i knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death. then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, and the thought of death close-walking the other side of me, and i in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions, i fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not, down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, to the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still. and the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd me, the gray-brown bird i know receiv'd us comrades three, and he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him i love. from deep secluded recesses, from the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still, came the carol of the bird. and the charm of the carol rapt me, as i held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, and the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird. come lovely and soothing death, undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, in the day, in the night, to all, to each, sooner or later delicate death. prais'd be the fathomless universe, for life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, and for love, sweet lovebut praise! praise! praise! for the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death. dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? then i chant it for thee, i glorify thee above all, i bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly. approach strong deliveress, when it is so, when thou hast taken them i joyously sing the dead, lost in the loving floating ocean of thee, laved in the flood of thy bliss o death. from me to thee glad serenades, dances for thee i propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee, and the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread shy are fitting, and life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night. the night in silence under many a star, the ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice i know, and the soul turning to thee o vast and well-veil'd death, and the body gratefully nestling close to thee. over the tree-tops i float thee a song, over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, over the dense-pack'd cities all and the teeming wharves and ways, i float this carol with joy, with joy to thee o death. 15 to the tally of my soul, loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird, with pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night. loud in the pines and cedars dim, clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume, and i with my comrades there in the night. while my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed, as to long panoramas of visions. and i saw askant the armies, i saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags, borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc'd with missiles i saw them, and carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody, and at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,) and the staffs all splinter'd and broken. i saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, and the white skeletons of young men, i saw them, i saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war, but i saw they were not as was thought, they themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not, the living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd, and the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd, and the armies that remain'd suffer'd. 16 passing the visions, passing the night, passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands, passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul, victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song, as low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night, sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy, covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven, as that powerful psalm in the night i heard from recesses, passing, i leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves, i leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring. i cease from my song for thee, from my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee, o comrade lustrous with silver face in the night. yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night, the song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird, and the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul, with the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe, with the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird, comrades mine and i in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead i loved so well, for the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands-and this for his dear sake, lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul, there in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim. o captain! my captain! o captain! my captain! our fearful trip is done, the ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, the port is near, the bells i hear, the people all exulting, while follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; but o heart! heart! heart! o the bleeding drops of red, where on the deck my captain lies, fallen cold and dead. o captain! my captain! rise up and hear the bells; rise upfor you the flag is flungfor you the bugle trills, for you bouquets and ribbon'd wreathsfor you the shores a-crowding, for you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; here captain! dear father! this arm beneath your head! it is some dream that on the deck, you've fallen cold and dead. my captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, my father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, the ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, from fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; exult o shores, and ring o bells! but i with mournful tread, walk the deck my captain lies, fallen cold and dead. hush'd be the camps to-day (may 4, 1865) hush'd be the camps to-day, and soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons, and each with musing soul retire to celebrate, our dear commander's death. no more for him life's stormy conflicts, nor victory, nor defeatno more time's dark events, charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky. but sing poet in our name, sing of the love we bore himbecause you, dweller in camps, know it truly. as they invault the coffin there, singas they close the doors of earth upon himone verse, for the heavy hearts of soldiers. this dust was once the man this dust was once the man, gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand, against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, was saved the union of these states. by blue ontario's shore by blue ontario's shore, as i mused of these warlike days and of peace return'd, and the dead that return no more, a phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me, chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of america, chant me the carol of victory, and strike up the marches of libertad, marches more powerful yet, and sing me before you go the song of the throes of democracy. (democracy, the destin'd conqueror, yet treacherous lip-smiles everywhere, and death and infidelity at every step.) 2 a nation announcing itself, i myself make the only growth by which i can be appreciated, i reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms. a breed whose proof is in time and deeds, what we are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections, we wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded, we are powerful and tremendous in ourselves, we are executive in ourselves, we are sufficient in the variety of ourselves, we are the most beautiful to ourselves and in ourselves, we stand self-pois'd in the middle, branching thence over the world, from missouri, nebraska, or kansas, laughing attacks to scorn. nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves, whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in ourselves only. (o mother-o sisters dear! if we are lost, no victor else has destroy'd us, it is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.) 3 have you thought there could be but a single supreme? there can be any number of supremes-one does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or one life countervails another. all is eligible to all, all is for individuals, all is for you, no condition is prohibited, not god's or any. all comes by the body, only health puts you rapport with the universe. produce great persons, the rest follows. 4 piety and conformity to them that like, peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like, i am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, crying, leap from your seats and contend for your lives! i am he who walks the states with a barb'd tongue, questioning every one i meet, who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before? who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense? (with pangs and cries as thine own o bearer of many children, these clamors wild to a race of pride i give.) o lands, would you be freer than all that has ever been before? if you would be freer than all that has been before, come listen to me. fear grace, elegance, civilization, delicatesse, fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey -juice, beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature, beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men. 5 ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials, america brings builders, and brings its own styles. the immortal poets of asia and europe have done their work and pass'd to other spheres, a work remains, the work of surpassing all they have done. america, curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at all hazards, stands removed, spacious, composite, sound, initiates the true use of precedents, does not repel them or the past or what they have produced under their forms, takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne from the house, perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was fittest for its days, that its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches, and that he shall be fittest for his days. any period one nation must lead, one land must be the promise and reliance of the future. these states are the amplest poem, here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations, here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night, here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars, here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the soul loves, here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul loves. 6 land of lands and bards to corroborate! of them standing among them, one lifts to the light a west-bred face, to him the hereditary countenance bequeath'd both mother's and father's, his first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees, built of the common stock, having room for far and near, used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land, attracting it body and soul to himself, hanging on its neck with incomparable love, plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits, making its cities, beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him, making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him, mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes, columbia, niagara, hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him, if the atlantic coast stretch or the pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them north or south, spanning between them east and west, and touching whatever is between them, growths growing from him to offset the growths of pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust, chestnut, hickory, cottonwood, orange, magnolia, tangles as tangled in him as any canebrake or swamp, he likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with northern transparent ice, off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie, through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the fish-hawk, mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle, his spirit surrounding his country's spirit, unclosed to good and evil, surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times, surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines, weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle, the haughty defiance of the year one, war, peace, the formation of the constitution, the separate states, the simple elastic scheme, the immigrants, the union always swarming with blatherers and always sure and impregnable, the unsurvey'd interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals, hunters, trappers, surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the gestation of new states, congress convening every twelfth-month, the members duly coming up from the uttermost parts, surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers, especially the young men, responding their manners, speech, dress, friendships, the gait they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors, the freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the copiousness and decision of their phrenology, the picturesque looseness of their carriage, their fierceness when wrong'd, the fluency of their speech, their delight in music, their curiosity, good temper and open-handedness, the whole composite make, the prevailing ardor and enterprise, the large amativeness, the perfect equality of the female with the male, the fluid movement of the population, the superior marine, free commerce, fisheries, whaling, gold-digging, wharf-hemm'd cities, railroad and steamboat lines intersecting all points, factories, mercantile life, labor-saving machinery, the northeast, northwest, southwest, manhattan firemen, the yankee swap, southern plantation life, slaverythe murderous, treacherous conspiracy to raise it upon the ruins of all the rest, on and on to the grapple with itassassin! then your life or ours be the stake, and respite no more. 7 (lo, high toward heaven, this day, libertad, from the conqueress' field return'd, i mark the new aureola around your head, no more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce, with war's flames and the lambent lightnings playing, and your port immovable where you stand, with still the inextinguishable glance and the clinch'd and lifted fist, and your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner utterly crush'd beneath you, the menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife, the wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yesterday do so much, to-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of all the earth, an offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spurn'd.) 8 others take finish, but the republic is ever constructive and ever keeps vista, others adorn the past, but you o days of the present, i adorn you, o days of the future i believe in youi isolate myself for your sake, o america because you build for mankind i build for you, o well-beloved stone-cutters, i lead them who plan with decision and science, lead the present with friendly hand toward the future. (bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age! but damn that which spends itself with no thought of the stain, pains, dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing.) 9 i listened to the phantom by ontario's shore, i heard the voice arising demanding bards, by them all native and grand, by them alone can these states be fused into the compact organism of a nation. to hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no account, that only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres of plants. of all races and eras these states with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets, and are to have the greatest, and use them the greatest, their presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall. (soul of love and tongue of fire! eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world! ah mother, prolific and full in all besides, yet how long barren, barren?) 10 of these states the poet is the equable man, not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns, nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad, he bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less, he is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key, he is the equalizer of his age and land, he supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking, in peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality, government, in war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood, the years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith, he is no arguer, he is judgment, (nature accepts him absolutely,) he judges not as the judge judges but as the sun failing round helpless thing, as he sees the farthest he has the most faith, his thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things, in the dispute on god and eternity he is silent, he sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement, he sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women as dreams or dots. for the great idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals, for that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders, the attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots. without extinction is liberty, without retrograde is equality, they live in the feelings of young men and the best women, (not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always ready to fall for liberty.) 11 for the great idea, that, o my brethren, that is the mission of poets. songs of stern defiance ever ready, songs of the rapid arming and the march, the flag of peace quick-folded, and instead the flag we know, warlike flag of the great idea. (angry cloth i saw there leaping! i stand again in leaden rain your flapping folds saluting, i sing you over all, flying beckoning through the fighto the hard-contested fight! the cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles-the hurtled balls scream, the battle-front forms amid the smoke-the volleys pour incessant from the line, hark, the ringing word charge!-now the tussle and the furious maddening yells, now the corpses tumble curl'd upon the ground, cold, cold in death, for precious life of you, angry cloth i saw there leaping.) 12 are you he who would assume a place to teach or be a poet here in the states? the place is august, the terms obdurate. who would assume to teach here may well prepare himself body and mind, he may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe himself, he shall surely be question'd beforehand by me with many and stern questions. who are you indeed who would talk or sing to america? have you studied out the land, its idioms and men? have you learn'd the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography, pride, freedom, friendship of the land? its substratums and objects? have you consider'd the organic compact of the first day of the first year of independence, sign'd by the commissioners, ratified by the states, and read by washington at the head of the army? have you possess'd yourself of the federal constitution? do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind them, and assumed the poems and processes of democracy? are you faithful to things? do you teach what the land and sea, the bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach? have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities? can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the whole people? are you not of some coterie? some school or mere religion? are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to life itself? have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these states? have you too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality? do you hold the like love for those hardening to maturity? for the last-born? little and big? and for the errant? what is this you bring my america? is it uniform with my country? is it not something that has been better told or done before? have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship? is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness?is the good old cause in it? has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians, literats, of enemies' lands? does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here? does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners? does it sound with trumpet-voice the proud victory of the union in that secession war? can your performance face the open fields and the seaside? will it absorb into me as i absorb food, air, to appear again in my strength, gait, face? have real employments contributed to it? original makers, not mere amanuenses? does it meet modern discoveries, calibres, facts, face to face? what does it mean to american persons, progresses, cities? chicago, kanada, arkansas? does it see behind the apparent custodians the real custodians standing, menacing, silent, the mechanics, manhattanese, western men, southerners, significant alike in their apathy, and in the promptness of their love? does it see what finally befalls, and has always finally befallen, each temporizer, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist, infidel, who has ever ask'd any thing of america? what mocking and scornful negligence? the track strew'd with the dust of skeletons, by the roadside others disdainfully toss'd. 13 rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from poems pass away, the swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes, admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature, america justifies itself, give it time, no disguise can deceive it or conceal from it, it is impassive enough, only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them, if its poets appear it will in due time advance to meet them, there is no fear of mistake, (the proof of a poet shall be sternly deferr'd till his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorb'd it.) he masters whose spirit masters, he tastes sweetest who results sweetest in the long run, the blood of the brawn beloved of time is unconstraint; in the need of songs, philosophy, an appropriate native grand-opera, shipcraft, any craft, he or she is greatest who contributes the greatest original practical example. already a nonchalant breed, silently emerging, appears on the streets, people's lips salute only doers, lovers, satisfiers, positive knowers, there will shortly be no more priests, i say their work is done, death is without emergencies here, but life is perpetual emergencies here, are your body, days, manners, superb? after death you shall be superb, justice, health, self-esteem, clear the way with irresistible power; how dare you place any thing before a man? 14 fall behind me states! a man before allmyself, typical, before all. give me the pay i have served for, give me to sing the songs of the great idea, take all the rest, i have loved the earth, sun, animals, i have despised riches, i have given aims to every one that ask'd, stood up for the stupid and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others, hated tyrants, argued not concerning god, had patience and indulgence toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown, gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young, and with the mothers of families, read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees, stars, rivers, dismiss'd whatever insulted my own soul or defiled my body, claim'd nothing to myself which i have not carefully claim'd for others on the same terms, sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from every state, (upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean'd to breathe his last, this arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish'd, rais'd, restored, to life recalling many a prostrate form;) i am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of myself, rejecting none, permitting all. (say o mother, have i not to your thought been faithful? have i not through life kept you and yours before me?) 15 i swear i begin to see the meaning of these things, it is not the earth, it is not america who is so great, it is i who am great or to be great, it is you up there, or any one, it is to walk rapidly through civilizations, governments, theories, through poems, pageants, shows, to form individuals. underneath all, individuals, i swear nothing is good to me now that ignores individuals, the american compact is altogether with individuals, the only government is that which makes minute of individuals, the whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individualnamely to you. (mother! with subtle sense severe, with the naked sword in your hand, i saw you at last refuse to treat but directly with individuals.) 16 underneath all, nativity, i swear i will stand by my own nativity, pious or impious so be it; i swear i am charm'd with nothing except nativity, men, women, cities, nations, are only beautiful from nativity. underneath all is the expression of love for men and women, (i swear i have seen enough of mean and impotent modes of expressing love for men and women, after this day i take my own modes of expressing love for men and women.) in myself, i swear i will have each quality of my race in myself, (talk as you like, he only suits these states whose manners favor the audacity and sublime turbulence of the states.) underneath the lessons of things, spirits, nature, governments, ownerships, i swear i perceive other lessons, underneath all to me is myself, to you yourself, (the same monotonous old song.) 17 o i see flashing that this america is only you and me, its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me, its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, are you and me, its congress is you and me, the officers, capitols, armies, ships, are you and me, its endless gestations of new states are you and me, the war, (that war so bloody and grim, the war i will henceforth forget), was you and me, natural and artificial are you and me, freedom, language, poems, employments, are you and me, past, present, future, are you and me. i dare not shirk any part of myself, not any part of america good or bad, not to build for that which builds for mankind, not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes, not to justify science nor the march of equality, nor to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn belov'd of time. i am for those that have never been master'd, for men and women whose tempers have never been master'd, for those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master. i am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth, who inaugurate one to inaugurate all. i will not be outfaced by irrational things, i will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me, i will make cities and civilizations defer to me, this is what i have learnt from americait is the amount, and it i teach again. (democracy, while weapons were everywhere aim'd at your breast, i saw you serenely give birth to immortal children, saw in dreams your dilating form, saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.) 18 i will confront these shows of the day and night, i will know if i am to be less than they, i will see if i am not as majestic as they, i will see if i am not as subtle and real as they, i will see if i am to be less generous than they, i will see if i have no meaning, while the houses and ships have meaning, i will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves, and i am not to be enough for myself. i match my spirit against yours you orbs, growths, mountains, brutes, copious as you are i absorb you all in myself, and become the master myself, america isolated yet embodying all, what is it finally except myself? these states, what are they except myself? i know now why the earth is gross, tantalizing, wicked, it is for my sake, i take you specially to be mine, you terrible, rude forms. (mother, bend down, bend close to me your face, i know not what these plots and wars and deferments are for, i know not fruition's success, but i know that through war and crime your work goes on, and must yet go on.) 19 thus by blue ontario's shore, while the winds fann'd me and the waves came trooping toward me, i thrill'd with the power's pulsations, and the charm of my theme was upon me, till the tissues that held me parted their ties upon me. and i saw the free souls of poets, the loftiest bards of past ages strode before me, strange large men, long unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed to me. 20 o my rapt verse, my call, mock me not! not for the bards of the past, not to invoke them have i launch'd you forth, not to call even those lofty bards here by ontario's shores, have i sung so capricious and loud my savage song. bards for my own land only i invoke, (for the war the war is over, the field is clear'd,) till they strike up marches henceforth triumphant and onward, to cheer o mother your boundless expectant soul. bards of the great idea! bards of the peaceful inventions! (for the war, the war is over!) yet bards of latent armies, a million soldiers waiting ever-ready, bards with songs as from burning coals or the lightning's fork'd stripes! ample ohio's, kanada's bardsbards of california! inland bards bards of the war! you by my charm i invoke. reversals reversals let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed, let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself, let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself as consequent, etc. as consequent from store of summer rains, or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing, or many a herb-lined brook's reticulations, or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea, songs of continued years i sing. life's ever-modern rapids first, (soon, soon to blend, with the old streams of death.) some threading ohio's farm-fields or the woods, some down colorado's canons from sources of perpetual snow, some half-hid in oregon, or away southward in texas, some in the north finding their way to erie, niagara, ottawa, some to atlantica's bays, and so to the great salt brine. in you whoe'er you are my book perusing, in i myself, in all the world, these currents flowing, all, all toward the mystic ocean tending. currents for starting a continent new, overtures sent to the solid out of the liquid, fusion of ocean and land, tender and pensive waves, (not safe and peaceful only, waves rous'd and ominous too, out of the depths the storm's abysmic waves, who knows whence? raging over the vast, with many a broken spar and tatter'd sail.) or from the sea of time, collecting vasting all, i bring, a windrow-drift of weeds and shells. o little shells, so curious-convolute, so limpid-cold and voiceless, will you not little shells to the tympans of temples held, murmurs and echoes still call up, eternity's music faint and far, waited inland, sent from atlantica's rim, strains for the soul of the prairies, whisper'd reverberations, chords for the ear of the west joyously sounding, your tidings old, yet ever new and untranslatable, infinitesimals out of my life, and many a life, (for not my life and years alone i give-all, all i give,) these waifs from the deep, cast high and dry, wash'd on america's shores? the return of the heroes 1 for the lands and for these passionate days and for myself, now i awhile retire to thee o soil of autumn fields, reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart, turning a verse for thee. o earth that hast no voice, confide to me a voice, o harvest of my landso boundless summer growths, o lavish brown parturient eartho infinite teeming womb, a song to narrate thee. 2 ever upon this stage, is acted god's calm annual drama, gorgeous processions, songs of birds, sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, the heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves, the woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees, the liliput countless armies of the grass, the heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages, the scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra, the stretching light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and the silvery fringes, the high-dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars, the moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows, the shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products. 3 fecund americatoday, thou art all over set in births and joys! thou groan'st with riches, thy wealth clothes thee as a swathing-garment, thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions, a myriad-twining life like interlacing vines binds all thy vast demesne, as some huge ship freighted to water's edge thou ridest into port, as rain falls from the heaven and vapors rise from earth, so have the precious values fallen upon thee and risen out of thee; thou envy of the globe! thou miracle! thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty, thou lucky mistress of the tranquil barns, thou prairie dame that sittest in the middle and lookest out upon thy world, and lookest east and lookest west, dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles, a million farms, and missest nothing, thou all-acceptressthou hospitable, (thou only art hospitable as god is hospitable.) 4 when late i sang sad was my voice, sad were the shows around me with deafening noises of hatred and smoke of war; in the midst of the conflict, the heroes, i stood, or pass'd with slow step through the wounded and dying. but now i sing not war, nor the measur'd march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps, nor the regiments hastily coming up deploying in line of battle; no more the sad, unnatural shows of war. ask'd room those flush'd immortal ranks, the first forth-stepping armies? ask room alas the ghastly ranks, the armies dread that follow'd. (pass, pass, ye proud brigades, with your tramping sinewy legs, with your shoulders young and strong, with your knapsacks and your muskets; how elate i stood and watch'd you, where starting off you march'd. passthen rattle drums again, for an army heaves in sight, o another gathering army, swarming, trailing on the rear, o you dread accruing army, o you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea, with your fever, o my land's maim'd darlings, with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch, lo, your pallid army follows.) 5 but on these days of brightness, on the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes the high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns, should the dead intrude? ah the dead to me mar not, they fit well in nature, they fit very well in the landscape under the trees and grass, and along the edge of the sky in the horizon's far margin. nor do i forget you departed, nor in winter or summer my lost ones, but most in the open air as now when my soul is rapt and at peace, like pleasing phantoms, your memories rising glide silently by me. 6 i saw the day the return of the heroes, (yet the heroes never surpass'd shall never return, them that day i saw not.) i saw the interminable corps, i saw the processions of armies, i saw them approaching, defiling by with divisions, streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters of mighty camps. no holiday soldiersyouthful, yet veterans, worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop, harden'd of many a long campaign and sweaty march, inured on many a hard-fought bloody field. a pausethe armies wait, a million flush'd embattled conquerors wait, the world too waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as dawn, they melt, they disappear. exult o lands! victorious lands! not there your victory on those red shuddering fields, but here and hence your victory. melt, melt away ye armiesdisperse ye blue-clad soldiers, resolve ye back again, give up for good your deadly arms, other the arms the fields henceforth for you, or south or north, with saner wars, sweet wars, life-giving wars. 7 loud o my throat, and clear o soul! the season of thanks and the voice of full-yielding, the chant of joy and power for boundless fertility. all till'd and untill'd fields expand before me, i see the true arenas of my race, or first or last, man's innocent and strong arenas. i see the heroes at other toils, i see well-wielded in their hands the better weapons. i see where the mother of all, with full-spanning eye gazes forth, dwells long, and counts the varied gathering of the products. busy the far, the sunlit panorama, prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the north, cotton and rice of the south and louisianian cane, open unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy, kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine, and many a stately river flowing and many a jocund brook, and healthy uplands with herby-perfumed breezes, and the good green grass, that delicate miracle the ever-recurring grass. 8 toil on heroes! harvest the products! not alone on those warlike fields the mother of all, with dilated form and lambent eyes watch'd you. toil on heroes! toil well! handle the weapons well! the mother of all, yet here as ever she watches you. well-pleased america thou beholdest, over the fields of the west those crawling monsters, the human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements; beholdest moving in every direction imbued as with life the revolving hay-rakes, the steam-power reaping-machines and the horse-power machines the engines, thrashers of grain and cleaners of grain, well separating the straw, the nimble work of the patent pitchfork, beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the rice cleanser. beneath thy look o maternal, with these and else and with their own strong hands the heroes harvest. all gather and all harvest, yet but for thee o powerful, not a scythe might swing as now in security, not a maize-stalk dangle as now its silken tassels in peace. under thee only they harvest, even but a wisp of hay under thy great face only, harvest the wheat of ohio, illinois, wisconsin, every barbed spear under thee, harvest the maize of missouri, kentucky, tennessee, each ear in its light-green sheath, gather the hay to its myriad mows in the odorous tranquil barns, oats to their bins, the white potato, the buckwheat of michigan, to theirs; gather the cotton in mississippi or alabama, dig and hoard the golden the sweet potato of georgia and the carolinas, clip the wool of california or pennsylvania, cut the flax in the middle states, or hemp or tobacco in the borders, pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees or bunches of grapes from the vines, or aught that ripens in all these states or north or south, under the beaming sun and under thee. there was a child went forth there was a child went forth every day, and the first object he look'd upon, that object he became, and that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, or for many years or stretching cycles of years. the early lilacs became part of this child, and grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird, and the third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal and the cow's calf, and the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side, and the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious liquid, and the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him. the field-sprouts of fourth-month and fifth-month became part of him, winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden, and the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road, and the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern whence he had lately risen, and the schoolmistress that pass'd on her way to the school, and the friendly boys that pass'd, and the quarrelsome boys, and the tidy and fresh-cheek'd girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl, and all the changes of city and country wherever he went. his own parents, he that had father'd him and she that had conceiv'd him in her womb and birth'd him, they gave this child more of themselves than that, they gave him afterward every day, they became part of him. the mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table, the mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by, the father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust, the blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure, the family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling heart, affection that will not be gainsay'd, the sense of what is real, the thought if after all it should prove unreal, the doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious whether and how, whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks? men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes and specks what are they? the streets themselves and the facades of houses, and goods in the windows, vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank'd wharves, the huge crossing at the ferries, the village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river between, shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown two miles off, the schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little boat slack-tow'd astern, the hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping, the strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in, the horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud, these became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day. old ireland far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty, crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother, once a queen, now lean and tatter'd seated on the ground, her old white hair drooping dishevel'd round her shoulders, at her feet fallen an unused royal harp, long silent, she too long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and heir, of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love. yet a word ancient mother, you need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead between your knees, o you need not sit there veil'd in your old white hair so dishevel'd, for know you the one you mourn is not in that grave, it was an illusion, the son you love was not really dead, the lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another country, even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave, what you wept for was translated, pass'd from the grave, the winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it, and now with rosy and new blood, moves to-day in a new country. the city dead-house by the city dead-house by the gate, as idly sauntering wending my way from the clangor, i curious pause, for lo, an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute brought, her corpse they deposit unclaim'd, it lies on the damp brick pavement, the divine woman, her body, i see the body, i look on it alone, that house once full of passion and beauty, all else i notice not, nor stillness so cold, nor running water from faucet, nor odors morbific impress me, but the house alone-that wondrous housethat delicate fair house -that ruin! that immortal house more than all the rows of dwellings ever built! or white-domed capitol with majestic figure surmounted, or all the old high-spired cathedrals, that little house alone more than them all-poor, desperate house! fair, fearful wrecktenement of a soulitself a soul, unclaim'd, avoided house-take one breath from my tremulous lips, take one tear dropt aside as i go for thought of you, dead house of love-house of madness and sin, crumbled, crush'd, house of life, erewhile talking and laughing-but ah, poor house, dead even then, months, years, an echoing, garnish'd house-but dead, dead, dead. this compost 1 something startles me where i thought i was safest, i withdraw from the still woods i loved, i will not go now on the pastures to walk, i will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea, i will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me. o how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken? how can you be alive you growths of spring? how can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you? is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead? where have you disposed of their carcasses? those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations? where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? i do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps i am deceiv'd, i will run a furrow with my plough, i will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath, i am sure i shall expose some of the foul meat. 2 behold this compost! behold it well! perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick personyet behold! the grass of spring covers the prairies, the bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden, the delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, the apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, the resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, the tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, the he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests, the young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs, the new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare, out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves, out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards, the summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead. what chemistry! that the winds are really not infectious, that this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me, that it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, that it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, that all is clean forever and forever, that the cool drink from the well tastes so good, that blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, that the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, that when i recline on the grass i do not catch any disease, though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once catching disease. now i am terrified at the earth, it is that calm and patient, it grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, it turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses, it distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, it renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, it gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last. to a foil'd european revolutionaire courage yet, my brother or my sister! keep onliberty is to be subserv'd whatever occurs; that is nothing that is quell'd by one or two failures, or any number of failures, or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any unfaithfulness, or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes. what we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows no discouragement, waiting patiently, waiting its time. (not songs of loyalty alone are these, but songs of insurrection also, for i am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over, and he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him, and stakes his life to be lost at any moment.) the battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat, the infidel triumphs, or supposes he triumphs, the prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and leadballs do their work, the named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres, the great speakers and writers are exiled, they lie sick in distant lands, the cause is asleep, the strongest throats are choked with their own blood, the young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet; but for all this liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the infidel enter'd into full possession. when liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go, it waits for all the rest to go, it is the last. when there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs, and when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth, then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth, and the infidel come into full possession. then courage european revolter, revoltress! for till all ceases neither must you cease. i do not know what you are for, (i do not know what i am for myself, nor what any thing is for,) but i will search carefully for it even in being foil'd, in defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment-for they too are great. did we think victory great? so it isbut now it seems to me, when it cannot be help'd, that defeat is great, and that death and dismay are great. unnamed land nations ten thousand years before these states, and many times ten thousand years before these states, garner'd clusters of ages that men and women like us grew up and travel'd their course and pass'd on, what vast-built cities, what orderly republics, what pastoral tribes and nomads, what histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others, what laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions, what sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and phrenology, what of liberty and slavery among them, what they thought of death and the soul, who were witty and wise, who beautiful and poetic, who brutish and undevelop'd, not a mark, not a record remainsand yet all remains. o i know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more than we are for nothing, i know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much as we now belong to it. afar they stand, yet near to me they stand, some with oval countenances learn'd and calm, some naked and savage, some like huge collections of insects, some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen, some prowling through woods, some living peaceably on farms, laboring, reaping, filling barns, some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories, libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments. are those billions of men really gone? are those women of the old experience of the earth gone? do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us? did they achieve nothing for good for themselves? i believe of all those men and women that fill'd the unnamed lands, every one exists this hour here or elsewhere, invisible to us. in exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn'd, in life. i believe that was not the end of those nations or any person of them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me; of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products, games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets, i suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world, counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world, i suspect i shall meet them there, i suspect i shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands. song of prudence manhattan's streets i saunter'd pondering, on time, space, reality-on such as these, and abreast with them prudence. the last explanation always remains to be made about prudence, little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that suits immortality. the soul is of itself, all verges to it, all has reference to what ensues, all that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence, not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day, month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect lifetime. the indirect is just as much as the direct, the spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body, if not more. not one word or deed, not venereal sore, discoloration, privacy of the onanist, putridity of gluttons or rum-drinkers, peculation, cunning, betrayal, murder, seduction, prostitution, but has results beyond death as really as before death. charity and personal force are the only investments worth any thing. no specification is necessary, all that a male or female does, that is vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to him or her, in the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole scope of it forever. who has been wise receives interest, savage, felon, president, judge, farmer, sailor, mechanic, literat, young, old, it is the same, the interest will come roundall will come round. singly, wholly, to affect now, affected their time, will forever affect, all of the past and all of the present and all of the future, all the brave actions of war and peace, all help given to relatives, strangers, the poor, old, sorrowful, young children, widows, the sick, and to shunn'd persons, all self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw others fill the seats of the boats, all offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend's sake, or opinion's sake, all pains of enthusiasts scoff'd at by their neighbors, all the limitless sweet love and precious suffering of mothers, all honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded, all the grandeur and good of ancient nations whose fragments we inherit, all the good of the dozens of ancient nations unknown to us by name, date, location, all that was ever manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no, all suggestions of the divine mind of man or the divinity of his mouth, or the shaping of his great hands, all that is well thought or said this day on any part of the globe, or on any of the wandering stars, or on any of the fix'd stars, by those there as we are here, all that is henceforth to be thought or done by you whoever you are, or by any one, these inure, have inured, shall inure, to the identities from which they sprang, or shall spring. did you guess any thing lived only its moment? the world does not so exist, no parts palpable or impalpable so exist, no consummation exists without being from some long previous consummation, and that from some other, without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer the beginning than any. whatever satisfies souls is true; prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of souls, itself only finally satisfies the soul, the soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every lesson but its own. now i breathe the word of the prudence that walks abreast with time, space, reality, that answers the pride which refuses every lesson but its own. what is prudence is indivisible, declines to separate one part of life from every part, divides not the righteous from the unrighteous or the living from the dead, matches every thought or act by its correlative, knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement, knows that the young man who composedly peril'd his life and lost it has done exceedingly well for himself without doubt, that he who never peril'd his life, but retains it to old age in riches and ease, has probably achiev'd nothing for himself worth mentioning, knows that only that person has really learn'd who has learn'd to prefer results, who favors body and soul the same, who perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct, who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries nor avoids death. the singer in the prison 1 o sight of pity, shame and dole! o fearful thought-a convict soul rang the refrain along the hall, the prison, rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above, pouring in floods of melody in tones so pensive sweet and strong the like whereof was never heard, reaching the far-off sentry and the armed guards, who ceas'd their pacing, making the hearer's pulses stop for ecstasy and awe. 2 the sun was low in the west one winter day, when down a narrow aisle amid the thieves and outlaws of the land, (there by the hundreds seated, sear-faced murderers, wily counterfeiters, gather'd to sunday church in prison walls, the keepers round, plenteous, well-armed, watching with vigilant eyes,) calmly a lady walk'd holding a little innocent child by either hand, whom seating on their stools beside her on the platform, she, first preluding with the instrument a low and musical prelude, in voice surpassing all, sang forth a quaint old hymn. a soul confined by bars and bands, cries, help! o help! and wrings her hands, blinded her eyes, bleeding her breast, nor pardon finds, nor balm of rest. ceaseless she paces to and fro, o heart-sick days! o nights of woe! nor hand of friend, nor loving face, nor favor comes, nor word of grace. it was not i that sinn'd the sin, the ruthless body dragg'd me in; though long i strove courageously, the body was too much for me. dear prison'd soul bear up a space, for soon or late the certain grace; to set thee free and bear thee home, the heavenly pardoner death shall come. convict no more, nor shame, nor dole! departa god-enfranchis'd soul! 3 the singer ceas'd, one glance swept from her clear calm eyes o'er all those upturn'd faces, strange sea of prison faces, a thousand varied, crafty, brutal, seam'd and beauteous faces, then rising, passing back along the narrow aisle between them, while her gown touch'd them rustling in the silence, she vanish'd with her children in the dusk. while upon all, convicts and armed keepers ere they stirr'd, (convict forgetting prison, keeper his loaded pistol,) a hush and pause fell down a wondrous minute, with deep half-stifled sobs and sound of bad men bow'd and moved to weeping, and youth's convulsive breathings, memories of home, the mother's voice in lullaby, the sister's care, the happy childhood, the long-pent spirit rous'd to reminiscence; a wondrous minute thenbut after in the solitary night, to many, many there, years after, even in the hour of death, the sad refrain, the tune, the voice, the words, resumed, the large calm lady walks the narrow aisle, the wailing melody again, the singer in the prison sings, o sight of pity, shame and dole! o fearful thought-a convict soul warble for lilac-time warble me now for joy of lilac-time, (returning in reminiscence,) sort me o tongue and lips for nature's sake, souvenirs of earliest summer, gather the welcome signs, (as children with pebbles or stringing shells,) put in april and may, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air, bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes, blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his golden wings, the tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor, shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean above, all that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running, the maple woods, the crisp february days and the sugar-making, the robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted, with musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset, or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest of his mate, the melted snow of march, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts, for spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it and from it? thou, soul, unloosen'dthe restlessness after i know not what; come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away! o if one could but fly like a bird! o to escape, to sail forth as in a ship! to glide with thee o soul, o'er all, in all, as a ship o'er the waters; gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the morning drops of dew, the lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves, wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence, samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere, to grace the bush i loveto sing with the birds, a warble for joy of returning in reminiscence. outlines for a tomb (g. p., buried 1870) 1 what may we chant, o thou within this tomb? what tablets, outlines, hang for thee, o millionnaire? the life thou lived'st we know not, but that thou walk'dst thy years in barter, 'mid the haunts of brokers, nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory. 2 silent, my soul, with drooping lids, as waiting, ponder'd, turning from all the samples, monuments of heroes. while through the interior vistas, noiseless uprose, phantasmic, (as by night auroras of the north,) lambent tableaus, prophetic, bodiless scenes, spiritual projections. in one, among the city streets a laborer's home appear'd, after his day's work done, cleanly, sweet-air'd, the gaslight burning, the carpet swept and a fire in the cheerful stove. in one, the sacred parturition scene, a happy painless mother birth'd a perfect child. in one, at a bounteous morning meal, sat peaceful parents with contented sons. in one, by twos and threes, young people, hundreds concentring, walk'd the paths and streets and roads, toward a tall-domed school. in one a trio beautiful, grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughter's daughter, sat, chatting and sewing. in one, along a suite of noble rooms, 'mid plenteous books and journals, paintings on the walls, fine statuettes, were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics young and old, reading, conversing. all, all the shows of laboring life, city and country, women's, men's and children's, their wants provided for, hued in the sun and tinged for once with joy, marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-room, labor and toll, the bath, gymnasium, playground, library, college, the student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught, the sick cared for, the shoeless shod, the orphan father'd and mother'd, the hungry fed, the houseless housed; (the intentions perfect and divine, the workings, details, haply human.) 3 o thou within this tomb, from thee such scenes, thou stintless, lavish giver, tallying the gifts of earth, large as the earth, thy name an earth, with mountains, fields and tides. nor by your streams alone, you rivers, by you, your banks connecticut, by you and all your teeming life old thames, by you potomac laving the ground washington trod, by you patapsco, you hudson, you endless mississippi-nor you alone, but to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory. out from behind this mash (to confront a portrait) 1 out from behind this bending rough-cut mask, these lights and shades, this drama of the whole, this common curtain of the face contain'd in me for me, in you for you, in each for each, (tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears-0 heaven! the passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!) this glaze of god's serenest purest sky, this film of satan's seething pit, this heart's geography's map, this limitless small continent, this soundless sea; out from the convolutions of this globe, this subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than jupiter, venus, mars, this condensation of the universe, (nay here the only universe, here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt;) these burin'd eyes, flashing to you to pass to future time, to launch and spin through space revolving sideling, from these to emanate, to you whoe'er you area look. 2 a traveler of thoughts and years, of peace and war, of youth long sped and middle age declining, (as the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second, songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close,) lingering a moment here and now, to you i opposite turn, as on the road or at some crevice door by chance, or open'd window, pausing, inclining, baring my head, you specially i greet, to draw and clinch your soul for once inseparably with mine, then travel travel on. vocalism vocalism 1 vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine power to speak words; are you full-lung'd and limber-lipp'd from long trial? from vigorous practice? from physique? do you move in these broad lands as broad as they? come duly to the divine power to speak words? for only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship, procreation, prudence, and nakedness, after treading ground and breasting river and lake, after a loosen'd throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races, after knowledge, freedom, crimes, after complete faith, after clarifyings, elevations, and removing obstructions, after these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man, woman, the divine power to speak words; then toward that man or that woman swiftly hasten allnone refuse, all attend, armies, ships, antiquities, libraries, paintings, machines, cities, hate, despair, amity, pain, theft, murder, aspiration, form in close ranks, they debouch as they are wanted to march obediently through the mouth of that man or that woman. 2 o what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices? surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her i shall follow, as the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere around the globe. all waits for the right voices; where is the practis'd and perfect organ? where is the develop'd soul? for i see every word utter'd thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds, impossible on less terms. i see brains and lips closed, tympans and temples unstruck, until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose, until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering forever ready in all words. to him that was crucified my spirit to yours dear brother, do not mind because many sounding your name do not understand you, i do not sound your name, but i understand you, i specify you with joy o my comrade to salute you, and to salute those who are with you, before and since, and those to come also, that we all labor together transmitting the same charge and succession, we few equals indifferent of lands, indifferent of times, we, enclosers of all continents, all castes, allowers of all theologies, compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men, we walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the disputers nor any thing that is asserted, we hear the bawling and din, we are reach'd at by divisions, jealousies, recriminations on every side, they close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my comrade, yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and down till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras, till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races, ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers as we are. you felons on trial in courts you felons on trial in courts, you convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd and handcuff'd with iron, who am i too that i am not on trial or in prison? me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with iron, or my ankles with iron? you prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in your rooms, who am i that i should call you more obscene than myself? o culpable! i acknowledgei expose! (o admirers, praise not mecompliment not meyou make me wince, i see what you do noti know what you do not.) inside these breast-bones i lie smutch'd and choked, beneath this face that appears so impassive hell's tides continually run, lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me, i walk with delinquents with passionate love, i feel i am of themi belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself, and henceforth i will not deny them-for how can i deny myself? laws for creations laws for creations, for strong artists and leaders, for fresh broods of teachers and perfect literats for america, for noble savans and coming musicians. all must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the compact truth of the world, there shall be no subject too pronounced-all works shall illustrate the divine law of indirections. what do you suppose creation is? what do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior? what do you suppose i would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as god? and that there is no god any more divine than yourself? and that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean? and that you or any one must approach creations through such laws? to a common prostitute be composedbe at ease with mei am walt whitman, liberal and lusty as nature, not till the sun excludes you do i exclude you, not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you. my girl i appoint with you an appointment, and i charge you that you make preparation to be worthy to meet me, and i charge you that you be patient and perfect till i come. till then i salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me. i was looking a long while i was looking a long while for intentions, for a clew to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants -and now i have found it, it is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them i neither accept nor reject,) it is no more in the legends than in all else, it is in the presentit is this earth to-day, it is in democracy(the purport and aim of all the past,) it is the life of one man or one woman to-day-the average man of to-day, it is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts, it is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations, all for the modernall for the average man of to-day. thought thought of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarships, and the like; (to me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them, except as it results to their bodies and souls, so that often to me they appear gaunt and naked, and often to me each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself, and of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the rotten excrement of maggots, and often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, and go toward false realities, and often to me they are alive after what custom has served them, but nothing more, and often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules walking the dusk.) miracles miracles why, who makes much of a miracle? as to me i know of nothing else but miracles, whether i walk the streets of manhattan, or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, or stand under trees in the woods, or talk by day with any one i love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one i love, or sit at table at dinner with the rest, or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon, or animals feeding in the fields, or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright, or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; these with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, the whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place. to me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every cubic inch of space is a miracle, every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, every foot of the interior swarms with the same. to me the sea is a continual miracle, the fishes that swimthe rocksthe motion of the wavesthe ships with men in them, what stranger miracles are there? sparkles from the wheel where the city's ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day, withdrawn i join a group of children watching, i pause aside with them. by the curb toward the edge of the flagging, a knife-grinder works at his wheel sharpening a great knife, bending over he carefully holds it to the stone, by foot and knee, with measur'd tread he turns rapidly, as he presses with light but firm hand, forth issue then in copious golden jets, sparkles from the wheel. the scene and all its belongings, how they seize and affect me, the sad sharp-chinn'd old man with worn clothes and broad shoulder-band of leather, myself effusing and fluid, a phantom curiously floating, now here absorb'd and arrested, the group, (an unminded point set in a vast surrounding,) the attentive, quiet children, the loud, proud, restive base of the streets, the low hoarse purr of the whirling stone, the light-press'd blade, diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold, sparkles from the wheel. to a pupil is reform needed? is it through you? the greater the reform needed, the greater the personality you need to accomplish it. you! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet? do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and soul that when you enter the crowd an atmosphere of desire and command enters with you, and every one is impress'd with your personality? o the magnet! the flesh over and over! go, dear friend, if need be give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness, rest not till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality. unfolded out of the folds unfolded out of the folds of the woman man comes unfolded, and is always to come unfolded, unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth is to come the superbest man of the earth, unfolded out of the friendliest woman is to come the friendliest man, unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman can a man be form'd of perfect body, unfolded only out of the inimitable poems of woman can come the poems of man, (only thence have my poems come;) unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman i love, only thence can appear the strong and arrogant man i love, unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man, unfolded out of the folds of the woman's brain come all the folds of the man's brain, duly obedient, unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded, unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy; a man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but every of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman; first the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself. what am i after all what am i after all but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over; i stand apart to hear-it never tires me. to you your name also; did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in the sound of your name? kosmos kosmos who includes diversity and is nature, who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth, and the equilibrium also, who has not look'd forth from the windows the eyes for nothing, or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing, who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most majestic lover, who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism, spiritualism, and of the aesthetic or intellectual, who having consider'd the body finds all its organs and parts good, who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body understands by subtle analogies all other theories, the theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of these states; who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but in other globes with their suns and moons, who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations, the past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together. others may praise what they like others may praise what they like; but i, from the banks of the running missouri, praise nothing in art or aught else, till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river, also the western prairie-scent, and exudes it all again. who learns my lesson complete? who learns my lesson complete? boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist, the stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant, clerk, porter and customer, editor, author, artist, and schoolboydraw nigh and commence; it is no lessonit lets down the bars to a good lesson, and that to another, and every one to another still. the great laws take and effuse without argument, i am of the same style, for i am their friend, i love them quits and quits, i do not halt and make salaams. i lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of things, they are so beautiful i nudge myself to listen. i cannot say to any person what i hear-i cannot say it to myself it is very wonderful. it is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so exactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt or the untruth of a single second, i do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten billions of years, nor plann'd and built one thing after another as an architect plans and builds a house. i do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else. is it wonderful that i should be immortal? as every one is immortal; i know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and how i was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful, and pass'd from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of summers and winters to articulate and walk-all this is equally wonderful. and that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful. and that i can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful, and that i can remind you, and you think them and know them to be true, is just as wonderful. and that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is equally wonderful, and that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally wonderful. tests tests all submit to them where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to analysis in the soul, not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges, they are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions, they corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates themselves, and touches themselves; for all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far and near without one exception. the torch on my northwest coast in the midst of the night a fishermen's group stands watching, out on the lake that expands before them, others are spearing salmon, the canoe, a dim shadowy thing, moves across the black water, bearing a torch ablaze at the prow. o star of france 1870-71 o star of france, the brightness of thy hope and strength and fame, like some proud ship that led the fleet so long, beseems to-day a wreck driven by the gale, a mastless hulk, and 'mid its teeming madden'd half-drown'd crowds, nor helm nor helmsman. dim smitten star, orb not of france alone, pale symbol of my soul, its dearest hopes, the struggle and the daring, rage divine for liberty, of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast's dreams of brotherhood, of terror to the tyrant and the priest. star crucifiedby traitors sold, star panting o'er a land of death, heroic land, strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land. miserable! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, i will not now rebuke thee, thy unexampled woes and pangs have quell'd them all, and left thee sacred. in that amid thy many faults thou ever aimedst highly, in that thou wouldst not really sell thyself however great the price, in that thou surely wakedst weeping from thy drugg'd sleep, in that alone among thy sisters thou, giantess, didst rend the ones that shamed thee, in that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear the usual chains, this cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands and feet, the spear thrust in thy side. o star! o ship of france, beat back and baffled long! bear up o smitten orb! o ship continue on! sure as the ship of all, the earth itself, product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos, forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons, issuing at last in perfect power and beauty, onward beneath the sun following its course, so thee o ship of france! finish'd the days, the clouds dispel'd the travail o'er, the long-sought extrication, when lo! reborn, high o'er the european world, (in gladness answering thence, as face afar to face, reflecting ours columbia,) again thy star o france, fair lustrous star, in heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever, shall beam immortal. the ox-tamer in a far-away northern county in the placid pastoral region, lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous tamer of oxen, there they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds to break them, he will take the wildest steer in the world and break him and tame him, he will go fearless without any whip where the young bullock chafes up and down the yard, the bullock's head tosses restless high in the air with raging eyes, yet see you! how soon his rage subsideshow soon this tamer tames him; see you! on the farms hereabout a hundred oxen young and old, and he is the man who has tamed them, they all know him, all are affectionate to him; see you! some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking; some are buff-color'd, some mottled, one has a white line running along his back, some are brindled, some have wide flaring horns (a good sign)see you! the bright hides, see, the two with stars on their foreheadssee, the round bodies and broad backs, how straight and square they stand on their legswhat fine sagacious eyes! how straight they watch their tamer-they wish him near themhow they turn to look after him! what yearning expression! how uneasy they are when he moves away from them; now i marvel what it can be he appears to them, (books, politics, poems, departall else departs,) i confess i envy only his fascinationmy silent, illiterate friend, whom a hundred oxen love there in his life on farms, in the northern county far, in the placid pastoral region. an old man's thought of school for the inauguration of a public school, camden, new jersey, 1874. an old man's thought of school, an old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot. now only do i know you, o fair auroral skieso morning dew upon the grass! and these i see, these sparkling eyes, these stores of mystic meaning, these young lives, building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships, soon to sail out over the measureless seas, on the soul's voyage. only a lot of boys and girls? only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes? only a public school? ah more, infinitely more; (as george fox rais'd his warning cry, "is it this pile of brick and mortar, these dead floors, windows, rails, you call the church? why this is not the church at all-the church is living, ever living souls.") and you america, cast you the real reckoning for your present? the lights and shadows of your future, good or evil? to girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school. wandering at morn wandering at morn, emerging from the night from gloomy thoughts, thee in my thoughts, yearning for thee harmonious union! thee, singing bird divine! thee coil'd in evil times my country, with craft and black dismay, with every meanness, treason thrust upon thee, this common marvel i beheldthe parent thrush i watch'd feeding its young, the singing thrush whose tones of joy and faith ecstatic, fail not to certify and cheer my soul. there ponder'd, felt i, if worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be turn'd, if vermin so transposed, so used and bless'd may be, then may i trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country; who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you? from these your future song may rise with joyous trills, destin'd to fill the world. italian music in dakota ["the seventeenththe finest regimental band i ever heard."] through the soft evening air enwinding all, rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds, in dulcet streams, in flutes' and cornets' notes, electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial, (yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before, subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here, not to the city's fresco'd rooms, not to the audience of the opera house, sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home, sonnambula's innocent love, trios with norma's anguish, and thy ecstatic chorus poliuto;) ray'd in the limpid yellow slanting sundown, music, italian music in dakota. while nature, sovereign of this gnarl'd realm, lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses, acknowledging rapport however far remov'd, (as some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,) listens well pleas'd. with all thy gifts with all thy gifts america, standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world, power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to theewith these and like of these vouchsafed to thee, what if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem never solving,) the gift of perfect women fit for theewhat if that gift of gifts thou lackest? the towering feminine of thee? the beauty, health, completion, fit for thee? the mothers fit for thee? my picture-gallery in a little house keep i pictures suspended, it is not a fix'd house, it is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other; yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all memories! here the tableaus of life, and here the groupings of death; here, do you know this? this is cicerone himself, with finger rais'd he points to the prodigal pictures. the prairie states a newer garden of creation, no -primal solitude, dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms, with iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one, by all the world contributedfreedom's and law's and thrift's society, the crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time's accumulations, to justify the past. proud music of the storm 1 proud music of the storm, blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies, strong hum of forest tree-topswind of the mountains, personified dim shapesyou hidden orchestras, you serenades of phantoms with instruments alert, blending with nature's rhythmus all the tongues of nations; you chords left as by vast composersyou choruses, you formless, free, religious dancesyou from the orient, you undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts, you sounds from distant guns with galloping cavalry, echoes of camps with all the different bugle-calls, trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me powerless, entering my lonesome slumber-chamber, why have you seiz'd me? 2 come forward o my soul, and let the rest retire, listen, lose not, it is toward thee they tend, parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber, for thee they sing and dance o soul. a festival song, the duet of the bridegroom and the bride, a marriage-march, with lips of love, and hearts of lovers fill'd to the brim with love, the red-flush'd cheeks and perfumes, the cortege swarming full of friendly faces young and old, to flutes' clear notes and sounding harps' cantabile. now loud approaching drums, victoria! seest thou in powder-smoke the banners torn but flying? the rout of the baffled? hearest those shouts of a conquering army? (ah soul, the sobs of women, the wounded groaning in agony, the hiss and crackle of flames, the blacken'd ruins, the embers of cities, the dirge and desolation of mankind.) now airs antique and mediaeval fill me, i see and hear old harpers with their harps at welsh festivals, i hear the minnesingers singing their lays of love, i hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the middle ages. now the great organ sounds, tremulous, while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth, on which arising rest, and leaping forth depend, all shapes of beauty, grace and strength, all hues we know, green blades of grass and warbling birds, children that gambol and play, the clouds of heaven above,) the strong base stands, and its pulsations intermits not, bathing, supporting, merging all the rest, maternity of all the rest, and with it every instrument in multitudes, the players playing, all the world's musicians, the solemn hymns and masses rousing adoration, all passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals, the measureless sweet vocalists of ages, and for their solvent setting earth's own diapason, of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves, a new composite orchestra, binder of years and climes, ten-fold renewer, as of the far-back days the poets tell, the paradiso, the straying thence, the separation long, but now the wandering done, the journey done, the journeyman come home, and man and art with nature fused again. tutti! for earth and heaven; (the almighty leader now for once has signal'd with his wand.) the manly strophe of the husbands of the world, and all the wives responding. the tongues of violins, (i think o tongues ye tell this heart, that cannot tell itself, this brooding yearning heart, that cannot tell itself.) 3 ah from a little child, thou knowest soul how to me all sounds became music, my mother's voice in lullaby or hymn, (the voice, o tender voices, memory's loving voices, last miracle of all, o dearest mother's, sister's, voices;) the rain, the growing corn, the breeze among the long-leav'd corn, the measur'd sea-surf beating on the sand, the twittering bird, the hawk's sharp scream, the wild-fowl's notes at night as flying low migrating north or south, the psalm in the country church or mid the clustering trees, the open air camp-meeting, the fiddler in the tavern, the glee, the long-strung sailor-song, the lowing cattle, bleating sheep, the crowing cock at dawn. all songs of current lands come sounding round me, the german airs of friendship, wine and love, irish ballads, merry jigs and dances, english warbles, chansons of france, scotch tunes, and o'er the rest, italia's peerless compositions. across the stage with pallor on her face, yet lurid passion, stalks norma brandishing the dagger in her hand. i see poor crazed lucia's eyes' unnatural gleam, her hair down her back falls loose and dishevel'd. i see where ernani walking the bridal garden, amid the scent of night-roses, radiant, holding his bride by the hand, hears the infernal call, the death-pledge of the horn. to crossing swords and gray hairs bared to heaven, the clear electric base and baritone of the world, the trombone duo, libertad forever! from spanish chestnut trees' dense shade, by old and heavy convent walls a wailing song, song of lost love, the torch of youth and life quench'd in despair, song of the dying swan, fernando's heart is breaking. awaking from her woes at last retriev'd amina sings, copious as stars and glad as morning light the torrents of her joy. (the teeming lady comes, the lustrious orb, venus contralto, the blooming mother, sister of loftiest gods, alboni's self i hear.) 4 i hear those odes, symphonies, operas, i hear in the william tell the music of an arous'd and angry people, i hear meyerbeer's huguenots, the prophet, or robert, gounod's faust, or mozart's don juan. i hear the dance-music of all nations, the waltz, some delicious measure, lapsing, bathing me in bliss, the bolero to tinkling guitars and clattering castanets. i see religious dances old and new, i hear the sound of the hebrew lyre, i see the crusaders marching bearing the cross on high, to the martial clang of cymbals, i hear dervishes monotonously chanting, interspers'd with frantic shouts, as they spin around turning always towards mecca, i see the rapt religious dances of the persians and the arabs, again, at eleusis, home of ceres, i see the modern greeks dancing, i hear them clapping their hands as they bend their bodies, i hear the metrical shuffling of their feet. i see again the wild old corybantian dance, the performers wounding each other, i see the roman youth to the shrill sound of flageolets throwing and catching their weapons, as they fall on their knees and rise again. i hear from the mussulman mosque the muezzin calling, i see the worshippers within, nor form nor sermon, argument nor word, but silent, strange, devout, rais'd, glowing heads, ecstatic faces. i hear the egyptian harp of many strings, the primitive chants of the nile boatmen, the sacred imperial hymns of china, to the delicate sounds of the king, (the stricken wood and stone,) or to hindu flutes and the fretting twang of the vina, a band of bayaderes. 5 now asia, africa leave me, europe seizing inflates me, to organs huge and bands i hear as from vast concourses of voices, luther's strong hymn eine feste burg ist unser gott, rossini's stabat mater dolorosa, or floating in some high cathedral dim with gorgeous color'd windows, the passionate agnus dei or gloria in excelsis. composers! mighty maestros! and you, sweet singers of old lands, soprani, tenori, bassi! to you a new bard caroling in the west, obeisant sends his love. (such led to thee o soul, all senses, shows and objects, lead to thee, but now it seems to me sound leads o'er all the rest.) i hear the annual singing of the children in st. paul's cathedral, or, under the high roof of some colossal hall, the symphonies, oratorios of beethoven, handel, or haydn, the creation in billows of godhood laves me. give me to hold all sounds, (i madly struggling cry,) fill me with all the voices of the universe, endow me with their throbbings, nature's also, the tempests, waters, winds, operas and chants, marches and dances, utter, pour in, for i would take them all! 6 then i woke softly, and pausing, questioning awhile the music of my dream, and questioning all those reminiscences, the tempest in its fury, and all the songs of sopranos and tenors, and those rapt oriental dances of religious fervor, and the sweet varied instruments, and the diapason of organs, and all the artless plaints of love and grief and death, i said to my silent curious soul out of the bed of the slumber-chamber, come, for i have found the clew i sought so long, let us go forth refresh'd amid the day, cheerfully tallying life, walking the world, the real, nourish'd henceforth by our celestial dream. and i said, moreover, haply what thou hast heard o soul was not the sound of winds, nor dream of raging storm, nor sea-hawk's flapping wings nor harsh scream, nor vocalism of sun-bright italy, nor german organ majestic, nor vast concourse of voices, nor layers of harmonies, nor strophes of husbands and wives, nor sound of marching soldiers, nor flutes, nor harps, nor the bugle-calls of camps, but to a new rhythmus fitted for thee, poems bridging the way from life to death, vaguely waited in night air, uncaught, unwritten, which let us go forth in the bold day and write. passage to india 1 singing my days, singing the great achievements of the present, singing the strong light works of engineers, our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous seven outvied,) in the old world the east the suez canal, the new by its mighty railroad spann'd, the seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires; yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee o soul, the past! the past! the past! the pastthe dark unfathom'd retrospect! the teeming gulfthe sleepers and the shadows! the pastthe infinite greatness of the past! for what is the present after all but a growth out of the past? (as a projectile form'd, impell'd, passing a certain line, still keeps on, so the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.) 2 passage o soul to india! eclaircise the myths asiatic, the primitive fables. not you alone proud truths of the world, nor you alone ye facts of modern science, but myths and fables of eld, asia's, africa's fables, the far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos'd dreams, the deep diving bibles and legends, the daring plots of the poets, the elder religions; o you temples fairer than lilies pour'd over by the rising sun! o you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven! you lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish'd with gold! towers of fables immortal fashion'd from mortal dreams! you too i welcome and fully the same as the rest! you too with joy i sing. passage to india! lo, soul, seest thou not god's purpose from the first? the earth to be spann'd, connected by network, the races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, the oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near, the lands to be welded together. a worship new i sing, you captains, voyagers, explorers, yours, you engineers, you architects, machinists, yours, you, not for trade or transportation only, but in god's name, and for thy sake o soul. 3 passage to india! lo soul for thee of tableaus twain, i see in one the suez canal initiated, open'd, i see the procession of steamships, the empress engenie's leading the van, i mark from on deck the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level sand in the distance, i pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather'd, the gigantic dredging machines. in one again, different, (yet thine, all thine, o soul, the same,) i see over my own continent the pacific railroad surmounting every barrier, i see continual trains of cars winding along the platte carrying freight and passengers, i hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle, i hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world, i cross the laramie plains, i note the rocks in grotesque shapes, the buttes, i see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless, sage-deserts, i see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great mountains, i see the wind river and the wahsatch mountains, i see the monument mountain and the eagle's nest, i pass the promontory, i ascend the nevadas, i scan the noble elk mountain and wind around its base, i see the humboldt range, i thread the valley and cross the river, i see the clear waters of lake tahoe, i see forests of majestic pines, or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, i behold enchanting mirages of waters and meadows, marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines, bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel, tying the eastern to the western sea, the road between europe and asia. (ah genoese thy dream! thy dream! centuries after thou art laid in thy grave, the shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.) 4 passage to india! struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead, over my mood stealing and spreading they come, like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach'd sky. along all history, down the slopes, as a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising, a ceaseless thought, a varied trainlo, soul, to thee, thy sight, they rise, the plans, the voyages again, the expeditions; again vasco de gama sails forth, again the knowledge gain'd, the mariner's compass, lands found and nations born, thou born america, for purpose vast, man's long probation fill'd, thou rondure of the world at last accomplish'd. 5 o vast rondure, swimming in space, cover'd all over with visible power and beauty, alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness, unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above, below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees, with inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention, now first it seems my thought begins to span thee. down from the gardens of asia descending radiating, adam and eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them, wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations, with questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts, with that sad incessant refrain, wherefore unsatisfied soul? and whither o mocking life? ah who shall soothe these feverish children? who justify these restless explorations? who speak the secret of impassive earth? who bind it to us? what is this separate nature so unnatural? what is this earth to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours, cold earth, the place of graves.) yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out, perhaps even now the time has arrived. after the seas are all cross'd, (as they seem already cross'd,) after the great captains and engineers have accomplish'd their work, after the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist, finally shall come the poet worthy that name, the true son of god shall come singing his songs. then not your deeds only o voyagers, o scientists and inventors, shall be justified, all these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth'd, all affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told, all these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook'd and link'd together, the whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be completely justified, trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish'd and compacted by the true son of god, the poet, (he shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains, he shall double the cape of good hope to some purpose,) nature and man shall be disjoin'd and diffused no more, the true son of god shall absolutely fuse them. 6 year at whose wide-flung door i sing! year of the purpose accomplish'd! year of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans! (no mere doge of venice now wedding the adriatic,) i see o year in you the vast terraqueous globe given and giving all, europe to asia, africa join'd, and they to the new world, the lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival garland, as brides and bridegrooms hand in hand. passage to india! cooling airs from caucasus far, soothing cradle of man, the river euphrates flowing, the past lit up again. lo soul, the retrospect brought forward, the old, most populous, wealthiest of earth's lands, the streams of the indus and the ganges and their many affluents, (i my shores of america walking to-day behold, resuming all,) the tale of alexander on his warlike marches suddenly dying, on one side china and on the other side persia and arabia, to the south the great seas and the bay of bengal, the flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes, old occult brahma interminably far back, the tender and junior buddha, central and southern empires and all their belongings, possessors, the wars of tamerlane,the reign of aurungzebe, the traders, rulers, explorers, moslems, venetians, byzantium, the arabs, portuguese, the first travelers famous yet, marco polo, batouta the moor, doubts to be solv'd, the map incognita, blanks to be fill'd, the foot of man unstay'd, the hands never at rest, thyself o soul that will not brook a challenge. the mediaeval navigators rise before me, the world of 1492, with its awaken'd enterprise, something swelling in humanity now like the sap of the earth in spring, the sunset splendor of chivalry declining. and who art thou sad shade? gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary, with majestic limbs and pious beaming eyes, spreading around with every look of thine a golden world, enhuing it with gorgeous hues. as the chief histrion, down to the footlights walks in some great scena, dominating the rest i see the admiral himself, (history's type of courage, action, faith,) behold him sail from palos leading his little fleet, his voyage behold, his return, his great fame, his misfortunes, calumniators, behold him a prisoner, chain'd, behold his dejection, poverty, death. (curious in time i stand, noting the efforts of heroes, is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty, death? lies the seed unreck'd for centuries in the ground? lo, to god's due occasion, uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms, and fills the earth with use and beauty.) 7 passage indeed o soul to primal thought, not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness, the young maturity of brood and bloom, to realms of budding bibles. o soul, repressless, i with thee and thou with me, thy circumnavigation of the world begin, of man, the voyage of his mind's return, to reason's early paradise, back, back to wisdom's birth, to innocent intuitions, again with fair creation. 8 o we can wait no longer, we too take ship o soul, joyous we too launch out on trackless seas, fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail, amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, i thee to me, o soul,) caroling free, singing our song of god, chanting our chant of pleasant exploration. with laugh and many a kiss, (let others deprecate, let others weep for sin, remorse, humiliation,) o soul thou pleasest me, i thee. ah more than any priest o soul we too believe in god, but with the mystery of god we dare not dally. o soul thou pleasest me, i thee, sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night, thoughts, silent thoughts, of time and space and death, like waters flowing, bear me indeed as through the regions infinite, whose air i breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over, bathe me o god in thee, mounting to thee, i and my soul to range in range of thee. o thou transcendent, nameless, the fibre and the breath, light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them, thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving, thou moral, spiritual fountainaffection's sourcethou reservoir, (o pensive soul of meo thirst unsatisfiedwaitest not there? waitest not haply for us somewhere there the comrade perfect?) thou pulsethou motive of the stars, suns, systems, that, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space, how should i think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if, out of myself, i could not launch, to those, superior universes? swiftly i shrivel at the thought of god, at nature and its wonders, time and space and death, but that i, turning, call to thee o soul, thou actual me, and lo, thou gently masterest the orbs, thou matest time, smilest content at death, and fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of space. greater than stars or suns, bounding o soul thou journeyest forth; what love than thine and ours could wider amplify? what aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours o soul? what dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength? what cheerful willingness for others' sake to give up all? for others' sake to suffer all? reckoning ahead o soul, when thou, the time achiev'd, the seas all cross'd, weather'd the capes, the voyage done, surrounded, copest, frontest god, yieldest, the aim attain'd, as fill'd with friendship, love complete, the elder brother found, the younger melts in fondness in his arms. 9 passage to more than india! are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights? o soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those? disportest thou on waters such as those? soundest below the sanscrit and the vedas? then have thy bent unleash'd. passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas! passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems! you, strew'd with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living, never reach'd you. passage to more than india! o secret of the earth and sky! of you o waters of the sea! o winding creeks and rivers! of you o woods and fields! of you strong mountains of my land! of you o prairies! of you gray rocks! o morning red! o clouds! o rain and snows! o day and night, passage to you! o sun and moon and all you stars! sirius and jupiter! passage to you! passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins! away o soul! hoist instantly the anchor! cut the hawsershaul outshake out every sail! have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? have we not grovel'd here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes? have we not darken'd and dazed ourselves with books long enough? sail forthsteer for the deep waters only, reckless o soul, exploring, i with thee, and thou with me, for we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, and we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. o my brave soul! o farther farther sail! o daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of god? o farther, farther, farther sail! prayer of columbus a batter'd, wreck'd old man, thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home, pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months, sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd and nigh to death, i take my way along the island's edge, venting a heavy heart. i am too full of woe! haply i may not live another day; i cannot rest o god, i cannot eat or drink or sleep, till i put forth myself, my prayer, once more to thee, breathe, bathe myself once more in thee, commune with thee, report myself once more to thee. thou knowest my years entire, my life, my long and crowded life of active work, not adoration merely; thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth, thou knowest my manhood's solemn and visionary meditations, thou knowest how before i commenced i devoted all to come to thee, thou knowest i have in age ratified all those vows and strictly kept them, thou knowest i have not once lost nor faith nor ecstasy in thee, in shackles, prison'd, in disgrace, repining not, accepting all from thee, as duly come from thee. all my emprises have been fill'd with thee, my speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of thee, sailing the deep or journeying the land for thee; intentions, purports, aspirations mine, leaving results to thee. o i am sure they really came from thee, the urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will, the potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words, a message from the heavens whispering to me even in sleep, these sped me on. by me and these the work so far accomplish'd, by me earth's elder cloy'd and stifled lands uncloy'd, unloos'd, by me the hemispheres rounded and tied, the unknown to the known. the end i know not, it is all in thee, or small or great i know nothaply what broad fields, what lands, haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth i know, transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy thee, haply the swords i know may there indeed be turn'd to reaping-tools, haply the lifeless cross i know, europe's dead cross, may bud and blossom there. one effort more, my altar this bleak sand; that thou o god my life hast lighted, with ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of thee, light rare untellable, lighting the very light, beyond all signs, descriptions, languages; for that o god, be it my latest word, here on my knees, old, poor, and paralyzed, i thank thee. my terminus near, the clouds already closing in upon me, the voyage balk'd, the course disputed, lost, i yield my ships to thee. my hands, my limbs grow nerveless, my brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd, let the old timbers part, i will not part, i will cling fast to thee, o god, though the waves buffet me, thee, thee at least i know. is it the prophet's thought i speak, or am i raving? what do i know of life? what of myself-.d i know not even my own work past or present, dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me, of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition, mocking, perplexing me. and these things i see suddenly, what mean they? as if some miracle, some hand divine unseal'd my eyes, shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky, and on the distant waves sail countless ships, and anthems in new tongues i hear saluting me. the sleepers 1 i wander all night in my vision, stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers, wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory, pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping. how solemn they look there, stretch'd and still, how quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles. the wretched features of ennuyes, the white features of corpses, the livid faces of drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists, the gash'd bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their strong-door'd rooms, the sacred idiots, the new-born emerging from gates, and the dying emerging from gates, the night pervades them and infolds them. the married couple sleep calmly in their bed, he with his palm on the hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the husband, the sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed, the men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs, and the mother sleeps with her little child carefully wrapt. the blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep, the prisoner sleeps well in the prison, the runaway son sleeps, the murderer that is to be hung next day, how does he sleep? and the murder'd person, how does he sleep? the female that loves unrequited sleeps, and the male that loves unrequited sleeps, the head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps, and the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all sleep. i stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and the most restless, i pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them, the restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep. now i pierce the darkness, new beings appear, the earth recedes from me into the night, i saw that it was beautiful, and i see that what is not the earth is beautiful. i go from bedside to bedside, i sleep close with the other sleepers each in turn, i dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers, and i become the other dreamers. i am a danceplay up there! the fit is whirling me fast! i am the ever-laughingit is new moon and twilight, i see the hiding of douceurs, i see nimble ghosts whichever way look, cache and cache again deep in the ground and sea, and where it is neither ground nor sea. well do they do their jobs those journeymen divine, only from me can they hide nothing, and would not if they could, i reckon i am their boss and they make me a pet besides, and surround me and lead me and run ahead when i walk, to lift their cunning covers to signify me with stretch'd arms, and resume the way; onward we move, a gay gang of blackguards! with mirth-shouting music and wild-flapping pennants of joy! i am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician, the emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box, he who has been famous and he who shall be famous after to-day, the stammerer, the well-form'd person, the wasted or feeble person. i am she who adorn'd herself and folded her hair expectantly, my truant lover has come, and it is dark. double yourself and receive me darkness, receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go without him. i roll myself upon you as upon a bed, i resign myself to the dusk. he whom i call answers me and takes the place of my lover, he rises with me silently from the bed. darkness, you are gentler than my lover, his flesh was sweaty and panting, i feel the hot moisture yet that he left me. my hands are spread forth, i pass them in all directions, i would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying. be careful darkness! already what was it touch'd me? i thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one, i hear the heart-beat, i follow, i fade away. 2 i descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid, perfume and youth course through me and i am their wake. it is my face yellow and wrinkled instead of the old woman's, i sit low in a straw-bottom chair and carefully darn my grandson's stockings. it is i too, the sleepless widow looking out on the winter midnight, i see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth. a shroud i see and i am the shroud, i wrap a body and lie in the coffin, it is dark here under ground, it is not evil or pain here, it is blank here, for reasons. (it seems to me that every thing in the light and air ought to be happy, whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough.) 3 i see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the eddies of the sea, his brown hair lies close and even to his head, he strikes out with courageous arms, he urges himself with his legs, i see his white body, i see his undaunted eyes, i hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him head-foremost on the rocks. what are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves? will you kill the courageous giant? will you kill him in the prime of his middle age? steady and long he struggles, he is baffled, bang'd, bruis'd, he holds out while his strength holds out, the slapping eddies are spotted with his blood, they bear him away, they roll him, swing him, turn him, his beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is continually bruis'd on rocks, swiftly and ought of sight is borne the brave corpse. 4 i turn but do not extricate myself, confused, a past-reading, another, but with darkness yet. the beach is cut by the razory ice-wind, the wreck-guns sound, the tempest lulls, the moon comes floundering through the drifts. i look where the ship helplessly heads end on, i hear the burst as she strikes, i hear the howls of dismay, they grow fainter and fainter. i cannot aid with my wringing fingers, i can but rush to the surf and let it drench me and freeze upon me. i search with the crowd, not one of the company is wash'd to us alive, in the morning i help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a barn. 5 now of the older war-days, the defeat at brooklyn, washington stands inside the lines, he stands on the intrench'd hills amid a crowd of officers. his face is cold and damp, he cannot repress the weeping drops, he lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes, the color is blanch'd from his cheeks, he sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by their parents. the same at last and at last when peace is declared, he stands in the room of the old tavern, the well-belov'd soldiers all pass through, the officers speechless and slow draw near in their turns, the chief encircles their necks with his arm and kisses them on the cheek, he kisses lightly the wet cheeks one after another, he shakes hands and bids good-by to the army. 6 now what my mother told me one day as we sat at dinner together, of when she was a nearly grown girl living home with her parents on the old homestead. a red squaw came one breakfast-time to the old homestead, on her back she carried a bundle of rushes for rush-bottoming chairs, her hair, straight, shiny, coarse, black, profuse, half-envelop'd her face, her step was free and elastic, and her voice sounded exquisitely as she spoke. my mother look'd in delight and amazement at the stranger, she look'd at the freshness of her tall-borne face and full and pliant limbs, the more she look'd upon her she loved her, never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and purity, she made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the fireplace, she cook'd food for her, she had no work to give her, but she gave her remembrance and fondness. the red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward the middle of the afternoon she went away, o my mother was loth to have her go away, all the week she thought of her, she watch'd for her many a month, she remember'd her many a winter and many a summer, but the red squaw never came nor was heard of there again. 7 a show of the summer softness-a contact of something unseen-an amour of the light and air, i am jealous and overwhelm'd with friendliness, and will go gallivant with the light and air myself. o love and summer, you are in the dreams and in me, autumn and winter are in the dreams, the farmer goes with his thrift, the droves and crops increase, the barns are well-fill'd. elements merge in the night, ships make tacks in the dreams, the sailor sails, the exile returns home, the fugitive returns unharm'd, the immigrant is back beyond months and years, the poor irishman lives in the simple house of his childhood with the well known neighbors and faces, they warmly welcome him, he is barefoot again, he forgets he is well off, the dutchman voyages home, and the scotchman and welshman voyage home, and the native of the mediterranean voyages home, to every port of england, france, spain, enter well-fill'd ships, the swiss foots it toward his hills, the prussian goes his way, the hungarian his way, and the pole his way, the swede returns, and the dane and norwegian return. the homeward bound and the outward bound, the beautiful lost swimmer, the ennuye, the onanist, the female that loves unrequited, the money-maker, the actor and actress, those through with their parts and those waiting to commence, the affectionate boy, the husband and wife, the voter, the nominee that is chosen and the nominee that has fail'd, the great already known and the great any time after to-day, the stammerer, the sick, the perfect-form'd, the homely, the criminal that stood in the box, the judge that sat and sentenced him, the fluent lawyers, the jury, the audience, the laugher and weeper, the dancer, the midnight widow, the red squaw, the consumptive, the erysipalite, the idiot, he that is wrong'd, the antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark, i swear they are averaged now-one is no better than the other, the night and sleep have liken'd them and restored them. i swear they are all beautiful, every one that sleeps is beautiful, every thing in the dim light is beautiful, the wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace. peace is always beautiful, the myth of heaven indicates peace and night. the myth of heaven indicates the soul, the soul is always beautiful, it appears more or it appears less, it comes or it lags behind, it comes from its embower'd garden and looks pleasantly on itself and encloses the world, perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting,and perfect and clean the womb cohering, the head well-grown proportion'd and plumb, and the bowels and joints proportion'd and plumb. the soul is always beautiful, the universe is duly in order, every thing is in its place, what has arrived is in its place and what waits shall be in its place, the twisted skull waits, the watery or rotten blood waits, the child of the glutton or venerealee waits long, and the child of the drunkard waits long, and the drunkard himself waits long, the sleepers that lived and died wait, the far advanced are to go on in their turns, and the far behind are to come on in their turns, the diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and unite theyunite now. 8 the sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed, they flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west as they lie unclothed, the asiatic and african are hand in hand, the european and american are hand in hand, learn'd and unlearn'd are hand in hand, and male and female are hand in hand, the bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of her lover, they press close without lust, his lips press her neck, the father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with measureless love, and the son holds the father in his arms with measureless love, the white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the daughter, the breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is inarm'd by friend, the scholar kisses the teacher and the teacher kisses the scholar, the wrong 'd made right, the call of the slave is one with the master's call, and the master salutes the slave, the felon steps forth from the prison, the insane becomes sane, the suffering of sick persons is reliev'd, the sweatings and fevers stop, the throat that was unsound is sound, the lungs of the consumptive are resumed, the poor distress'd head is free, the joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother than ever, stiflings and passages open, the paralyzed become supple, the swell'd and convuls'd and congested awake to themselves in condition, they pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the night, and awake. i too pass from the night, i stay a while away o night, but i return to you again and love you. why should i be afraid to trust myself to you? i am not afraid, i have been well brought forward by you, i love the rich running day, but i do not desert her in whom i lay so long, i know not how i came of you and i know not where i go with you, but i know i came well and shall go well. i will stop only a time with the night, and rise betimes, i will duly pass the day o my mother, and duly return to you. transpositions transpositions let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever bawling-let an idiot or insane person appear on each of the stands; let judges and criminals be transposed-let the prison-keepers be put in prison-let those that were prisoners take the keys; let them that distrust birth and death lead the rest. to think of time 1 to think of timeof all that retrospection, to think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward. have you guess'd you yourself would not continue? have you dreaded these earth-beetles? have you fear'd the future would be nothing to you? is to-day nothing? is the beginningless past nothing? if the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing. to think that the sun rose in the eastthat men and women were flexible, real, alivethat every thing was alive, to think that you and i did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part, to think that we are now here and bear our part. 2 not a day passes, not a minute or second without an accouchement, not a day passes, not a minute or second without a corpse. the dull nights go over and the dull days also, the soreness of lying so much in bed goes over, the physician after long putting off gives the silent and terrible look for an answer, the children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters are sent for, medicines stand unused on the shelf, (the camphor-smell has long pervaded the rooms,) the faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying, the twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying, the breath ceases and the pulse of the heart ceases, the corpse stretches on the bed and the living look upon it, it is palpable as the living are palpable. the living look upon the corpse with their eyesight, but without eyesight lingers a different living and looks curiously on the corpse. 3 to think the thought of death merged in the thought of materials, to think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking great interest in them, and we taking no interest in them. to think how eager we are in building our houses, to think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent. (i see one building the house that serves him a few years, or seventy or eighty years at most, i see one building the house that serves him longer than that.) slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth-they never ceasethey are the burial lines, he that was president was buried, and he that is now president shall surely be buried. 4 a reminiscence of the vulgar fate, a frequent sample of the life and death of workmen, each after his kind. cold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf, posh and ice in the river, half-frozen mud in the streets, a gray discouraged sky overhead, the short last daylight of december, a hearse and stages, the funeral of an old broadway stage-driver, the cortege mostly drivers. steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, the gate is pass'd, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses, the coffin is pass'd out, lower'd and settled, the whip is laid on the coffin, the earth is swiftly shovel'd in, the mound above is flatted with the spadessilence, a minuteno one moves or speaksit is done, he is decently put away-i s there any thing more? he was a good fellow, free-mouth'd, quick-temper'd, not bad-looking, ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate hearty, drank hearty, had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward the last, sicken'd, was help'd by a contribution, died, aged forty-one yearsand that was his funeral. thumb extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap, wet-weather clothes, whip carefully chosen, boss, spotter, starter, hostler, somebody loafing on you, you loafing on somebody, headway, man before and man behind, good day's work, bad day's work, pet stock, mean stock, first out, last out, turning-in at night, to think that these are so much and so nigh to other drivers, and he there takes no interest in them. 5 the markets, the government, the working-man's wages, to think what account they are through our nights and days, to think that other working-men will make just as great account of them, yet we make little or no account. the vulgar and the refined, what you call sin and what you call goodness, to think how wide a difference, to think the difference will still continue to others, yet we lie beyond the difference. to think how much pleasure there is, do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or planning a nomination and election? or with your wife and family? or with your mother and sisters? or in womanly housework? or the beautiful maternal cares? these also flow onward to others, you and i flow onward, but in due time you and i shall take less interest in them. your farm, profits, crops-to think how engross'd you are, to think there will still be farms, profits, crops, yet for you of what avail? 6 what will be will be well, for what is is well, to take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well. the domestic joys, the dally housework or business, the building of houses, are not phantasms, they have weight, form, location, farms, profits, crops, markets, wages, government, are none of them phantasms, the difference between sin and goodness is no delusion, the earth is not an echo, man and his life and all the things of his life are well-consider'd. you are not thrown to the winds, you gather certainly and safely around yourself, yourself! yourself!. yourself, for ever and ever! 7 it is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father, it is to identify you, it is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided, something long preparing and formless is arrived and form'd in you, you are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes. the threads that were spun are gather'd, the wet crosses the warp, the pattern is systematic. the preparations have every one been justified, the orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments, the baton has given the signal. the guest that was coming, he waited long, he is now housed, he is one of those who are beautiful and happy, he is one of those that to look upon and be with is enough. the law of the past cannot be eluded, the law of the present and future cannot be eluded, the law of the living cannot be eluded, it is eternal, the law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded, the law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded, the law of drunkards, informers, mean persons, not one iota thereof can be eluded. 8 slow moving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth, northerner goes carried and southerner goes carried, and they on the atlantic side and they on the pacific, and they between, and all through the mississippi country, and all over the earth. the great masters and kosmos are well as they go, the heroes and good-doers are well, the known leaders and inventors and the rich owners and pious and distinguish'd may be well, but there is more account than that, there is strict account of all. the interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing, the barbarians of africa and asia are not nothing, the perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go. of and in all these things, i have dream'd that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us changed, i have dream'd that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present and past law, and that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and past law, for i have dream'd that the law they are under now is enough. and i have dream'd that the purpose and essence of the known life, the transient, is to form and decide identity for the unknown life, the permanent. if all came but to ashes of dung, if maggots and rats ended us, then alarum! for we are betray'd, then indeed suspicion of death. do you suspect death? if i were to suspect death i should die now, do you think i could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation? pleasantly and well-suited i walk, whither i walk i cannot define, but i know it is good, the whole universe indicates that it is good, the past and the present indicate that it is good. how beautiful and perfect are the animals! how perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it! what is called good is perfect, and what is called bad is just as perfect, the vegetables and minerals are all perfect, and the imponderable fluids perfect; slowly and surely they have pass'd on to this, and slowly and surely they yet pass on. 9 i swear i think now that every thing without exception has an eternal soul! the trees have, rooted in the ground! the weeds of the sea have! the animals! i swear i think there is nothing but immortality! that the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and the cohering is for it! and all preparation is for itand identity is for itand life and materials are altogether for it! darest thou now o soul darest thou now o soul, walk out with me toward the unknown region, where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow? no map there, nor guide, nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand, nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land. i know it not o soul, nor dost thou, all is a blank before us, all waits undream'd of in that region, that inaccessible land. till when the ties loosen, all but the ties eternal, time and space, nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us. then we burst forth, we float, in time and space o soul, prepared for them, equal, equipt at last, (o joy! o fruit of all!) them to fulfil o soul. whispers of heavenly death whispers of heavenly death murmur'd i hear, labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals, footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes waited soft and low, ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing, (or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?) i see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses, mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing, with at times a half-dimm'd sadden'd far-off star, appearing and disappearing. (some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth; on the frontiers to eyes impenetrable, some soul is passing over.) chanting the square deific 1 chanting the square deific, out of the one advancing, out of the sides, out of the old and new, out of the square entirely divine, solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed,) from this side jehovah am i, old brahm i, and i saturnius am; not time affects mei am time, old, modern as any, unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments, as the earth, the father, the brown old kronos, with laws, aged beyond computation, yet never new, ever with those mighty laws rolling, relentless i forgive no manwhoever sins diesi will have that man's life; therefore let none expect mercy-have the seasons, gravitation, the appointed days, mercy? no more have i, but as the seasons and gravitation, and as all the appointed days that forgive not, i dispense from this side judgments inexorable without the least remorse. 2 consolator most mild, the promis'd one advancing, with gentle hand extended, the mightier god am i, foretold by prophets and poets in their most rapt prophecies and poems, from this side, lo! the lord christ gazeslo! hermes ilo! mine is hercules' face, all sorrow, labor, suffering, i, tallying it, absorb in myself, many times have i been rejected, taunted, put in prison, and crucified, and many times shall be again, all the world have i given up for my dear brothers' and sisters' sake, for the soul's sake, wanding my way through the homes of men, rich or poor, with the kiss of affection, for i am affection, i am the cheer-bringing god, with hope and all-enclosing charity, with indulgent words as to children, with fresh and sane words, mine only, young and strong i pass knowing well i am destin'd myself to an early death; but my charity has no deathmy wisdom dies not, neither early nor late, and my sweet love bequeath'd here and elsewhere never dies. 3 aloof, dissatisfied, plotting revolt, comrade of criminals, brother of slaves, crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant, with sudra face and worn brow, black, but in the depths of my heart, proud as any, lifted now and always against whoever scorning assumes to rule me, morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, brooding, with many wiles, (though it was thought i was baffled, and dispel'd, and my wiles done, but that will never be,) defiant, i, satan, still live, still utter words, in new lands duly appearing, (and old ones also,) permanent here from my side, warlike, equal with any, real as any, nor time nor change shall ever change me or my words. 4 santa spirita, breather, life, beyond the light, lighter than light, beyond the flames of hell, joyous, leaping easily above hell, beyond paradise, perfumed solely with mine own perfume, including all life on earth, touching, including god, including saviour and satan, ethereal, pervading all, (for without me what were all? what were god?) essence of forms, life of the real identities, permanent, positive, (namely the unseen,) life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man, i, the general soul, here the square finishing, the solid, i the most solid, breathe my breath also through these songs. of him i love day and night of him i love day and night i dream'd i heard he was dead, and i dream'd i went where they had buried him i love, but he was not in that place, and i dream'd i wander'd searching among burial-places to find him, and i found that every place was a burial-place; the houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now,) the streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the chicago, boston, philadelphia, the mannahatta, were as full of the dead as of the living, and fuller, o vastly fuller of the dead than of the living; and what i dream'd i will henceforth tell to every person and age, and i stand henceforth bound to what i dream'd, and now i am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with them, and if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere, even in the room where i eat or sleep, i should be satisfied, and if the corpse of any one i love, or if my own corpse, be duly render'd to powder and pour'd in the sea, i shall be satisfied, or if it be distributed to the winds i shall be satisfied. yet, yet, ye downcast hours yet, yet, ye downcast hours, i know ye also, weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles, earth to a chamber of mourning turns-i hear the o'erweening, mocking voice, matter is conquerormatter, triumphant only, continues onward. despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me, the call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarm'd, uncertain, the sea i am quickly to sail, come tell me, come tell me where i am speeding, tell me my destination. i understand your anguish, but i cannot help you, i approach, hear, behold, the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes, your mute inquiry, whither i go from the bed i recline on, come tell me, old age, alarm'd, uncertaina young woman's voice, appealing to me for comfort; a young man's voice, shall i not escape? as if a phantom caress'd me as if a phantom caress'd me, i thought i was not alone walking here by the shore; but the one i thought was with me as now i walk by the shore, the one i loved that caress'd me, as i lean and look through the glimmering light, that one has utterly disappear'd. and those appear that are hateful to me and mock me. assurances assurances i need no assurances, i am a man who is preoccupied of his own soul; i do not doubt that from under the feet and beside the hands and face i am cognizant of, are now looking faces i am not cognizant of, calm and actual faces, i do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the world, i do not doubt i am limitless, and that the universes are limitless, in vain i try to think how limitless, i do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their swift sports through the air on purpose, and that i shall one day be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they, i do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of years, i do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice, i do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the deaths of little children are provided for, (did you think life was so well provided for, and death, the purport of all life, is not well provided for?) i do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points, i do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at any time, is provided for in the inherences of things, i do not think life provides for all and for time and space, but i believe heavenly death provides for all. quicksand years quicksand years that whirl me i know not whither, your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me, only the theme i sing, the great and strong-possess'd soul, eludes not, one's-self must never give waythat is the final substancethat out of all is sure, out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains? when shows break up what but one's-self is sure? that music always round me that music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long untaught i did not hear, but now the chorus i hear and am elated, a tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of daybreak i hear, a soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves, a transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe, the triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and violins, all these i fill myself with, i hear not the volumes of sound merely, i am moved by the exquisite meanings, i listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving, contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion; i do not think the performers know themselvesbut now i think begin to know them. what ship puzzled at sea what ship puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning? or coming in, to avoid the bars and follow the channel a perfect pilot needs? here, sailor! here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot, whom, in a little boat, putting off and rowing, i hailing you offer. a noiseless patient spider a noiseless patient spider, i mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated, mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, it launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself, ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. and you o my soul where you stand, surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold, till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, o my soul. o living always, always dying o living always, always dying! o the burials of me past and present, o me while i stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever; o me, what i was for years, now dead, (i lament not, i am content;) o to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which i turn and look at where i cast them, to pass on, (o living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind. to one shortly to die from all the rest i single out you, having a message for you, you are to dielet others tell you what they please, i cannot prevaricate, i am exact and merciless, but i love youthere is no escape for you. softly i lay my right hand upon you, you 'ust feel it, i do not argue, i bend my head close and half envelop it, i sit quietly by, i remain faithful, i am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor, i absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that is eternal, you yourself will surely escape, the corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious. the sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions, strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile, you forget you are sick, as i forget you are sick, you do not see the medicines, you do not mind the weeping friends, i am with you, i exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated, i do not commiserate, i congratulate you. night on the prairies night on the prairies, the supper is over, the fire on the ground burns low, the wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets; i walk by myself-i stand and look at the stars, which i think now never realized before. now i absorb immortality and peace, i admire death and test propositions. how plenteous! how spiritual! how resume! the same old man and soul-the same old aspirations, and the same content. i was thinking the day most splendid till i saw what the not-day exhibited, i was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of other globes. now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me i will measure myself by them, and now touch'd with the lives of other globes arrived as far along as those of the earth, or waiting to arrive, or pass'd on farther than those of the earth, i henceforth no more ignore them than i ignore my own life, or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive. o i see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot, i see that i am to wait for what will be exhibited by death. thought thought as i sit with others at a great feast, suddenly while the music is playing, to my mind, (whence it comes i know not,) spectral in mist of a wreck at sea, of certain ships, how they sail from port with flying streamers and waited kisses, and that is the last of them, of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the president, of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations founder'd off the northeast coast and going down-of the steamship arctic going down, of the veil'd tableau-women gather'd together on deck, pale, heroic, waiting the moment that draws so closeo the moment! a huge soba few bubblesthe white foam spirting upand then the women gone, sinking there while the passionless wet flows onand i now pondering, are those women indeed gone? are souls drown'd and destroy'd so? is only matter triumphant? the last invocation at the last, tenderly, from the walls of the powerful fortress'd house, from the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors, let me be wafted. let me glide noiselessly forth; with the key of softness unlock the lockswith a whisper, set ope the doors o soul. tenderlybe not impatient, (strong is your hold o mortal flesh, strong is your hold o love.) as i watch the ploughman ploughing as i watch'd the ploughman ploughing, or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting, i saw there too, o life and death, your analogies; (life, life is the tillage, and death is the harvest according.) pensive and faltering pensive and faltering, the words the dead i write, for living are the dead, (haply the only living, only real, and i the apparition, i the spectre.) thou mother with thy equal brood 1 thou mother with thy equal brood, thou varied chain of different states, yet one identity only, a special song before i go i'd sing o'er all the rest, for thee, the future. i'd sow a seed for thee of endless nationality, i'd fashion thy ensemble including body and soul, i'd show away ahead thy real union, and how it may be accomplish'd. the paths to the house i seek to make, but leave to those to come the house itself. belief i sing, and preparation; as life and nature are not great with reference to the present only, but greater still from what is yet to come, out of that formula for thee i sing. 2 as a strong bird on pinions free, joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving, such be the thought i'd think of thee america, such be the recitative i'd bring for thee. the conceits of the poets of other lands i'd bring thee not, nor the compliments that have served their turn so long, nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or indoor library; but an odor i'd bring as from forests of pine in maine, or breath of an illinois prairie, with open airs of virginia or georgia or tennessee, or from texas uplands, or florida's glades, or the saguenay's black stream, or the wide blue spread of huron, with presentment of yellowstone's scenes, or yosemite, and murmuring under, pervading all, i'd bring the rustling sea-sound, that endlessly sounds from the two great seas of the world. and for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread mother, preludes of intellect tallying these and thee, mind-formulas fitted for thee, real and sane and large as these and thee, thou! mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew, thou transcendental union! by thee fact to be justified, blended with thought, thought of man justified, blended with god, through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality! through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea! 3 brain of the new world, what a task is thine, to formulate the modernout of the peerless grandeur of the modern, out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, art, (recast, may-be discard them, end themmaybe their work is done, who knows?) by vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty past, the dead, to limn with absolute faith the mighty living present. and yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the old world brain, thou that lay folded like an unborn babe within its folds so long, thou carefully prepared by it so long-haply thou but unfoldest it, only maturest it, it to eventuate in theethe essence of the by-gone time contain'd in thee, its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with reference to thee; thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing, the fruit of all the old ripening to-day in thee. 4 sail, sail thy best, ship of democracy, of value is thy freight, 'tis not the present only, the past is also stored in thee, thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the western continent alone, earth's resume entire floats on thy keel o ship, is steadied by thy spars, with thee time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee, with all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other continents, theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant; steer then with good strong hand and wary eye o helmsman, thou carriest great companions, venerable priestly asia sails this day with thee, and royal feudal europe sails with thee. 5 beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes, like a limitless golden cloud filling the westernr sky, emblem of general maternity lifted above all, sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons, out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless procession issuing, acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength and life, world of the realworld of the twain in one, world of the soul, born by the world of the real alone, led to identity, body, by it alone, yet in beginning only, incalculable masses of composite precious materials, by history's cycles forwarded, by every nation, language, hither sent, ready, collected here, a freer, vast, electric world, to be constructed here, (the true new world, the world of orbic science, morals, literatures to come,) thou wonder world yet undefined, unform'd, neither do i define thee, how can i pierce the impenetrable blank of the future? i feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good, i watch thee advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the past, i see thy light lighting, and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire globe, but i do not undertake to define thee, hardly to comprehend thee, i but thee name, thee prophesy, as now, i merely thee ejaculate! thee in thy future, thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosen'd mind, thy soaring spirit, thee as another equally needed sun, radiant, ablaze, swift-moving, fructifying all, thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, in endless great hilarity, scattering for good the cloud that hung so long, that weigh'd so long upon the mind of man, the doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence of man; thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, malethee in thy athletes, moral, spiritual, south, north, west, east, (to thy immortal breasts, mother of all, thy every daughter, son, endear'd alike, forever equal,) thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but certain, thee in thy moral wealth and civilization, (until which thy proudest material civilization must remain in vain,) thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing worshipthee in no single bible, saviour, merely, thy saviours countless, latent within thyself, thy bibles incessant within thyself, equal to any, divine as any, (thy soaring course thee formulating, not in thy two great wars, nor in thy century's visible growth, but far more in these leaves and chants, thy chants, great mother!) thee in an education grown of thee, in teachers, studies, students, born of thee, thee in thy democratic fetes en-masse, thy high original festivals, operas, lecturers, preachers, thee in thy ultimate, (the preparations only now completed, the edifice on sure foundations tied,) thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost rational joys, thy love and godlike aspiration, in thy resplendent coming literati, thy full-lung'd orators, thy sacerdotal bards, kosmic savans, these! these in thee, (certain to come,) to-day i prophesy. 6 land tolerating all, accepting all, not for the good alone, all good for thee, land in the realms of god to be a realm unto thyself, under the rule of god to be a rule unto thyself. (lo, where arise three peerless stars, to be thy natal stars my country, ensemble, evolution, freedom, set in the sky of law.) land of unprecedented faith, god's faith, thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd, the general inner earth so long so sedulously draped over, now hence for what it is boldly laid bare, open'd by thee to heaven's light for benefit or bale. not for success alone, not to fair-sail unintermitted always, the storm shall dash thy face, the murk of war and worse than war shall cover thee all over, (wert capable of war, its tug and trials? be capable of peace, its trials, for the tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in prosperous peace, not war;) in many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling thee, thou in disease shalt swelter, the livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within, consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge thy face with hectic, but thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them all, whatever they are to-day and whatever through time they may be, they each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee, while thou, time's spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself still extricating, fusing, equable, natural, mystical union thou, (the mortal with immortal blent,) shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future, the spirit of the body and the mind, the soul, its destinies. the soul, its destinies, the real real, (purport of all these apparitions of the real;) in thee america, the soul, its destinies, thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous! by many a throe of heat and cold convuls'd, (by these thyself solidifying,) thou mental, moral orbthou new, indeed new, spiritual world! the present holds thee notfor such vast growth as thine, for such unparallel'd flight as thine, such brood as thine, the future only holds thee and can hold thee. a paumanok picture two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, ten fishermen waitingthey discover a thick school of mossbonkers -they drop the join'd seine-ends in the water, the boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers, the net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore, some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankle deep in the water, pois'd on strong legs, the boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them, strew'd on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water, the green-back'd spotted mossbonkers. thou orb aloft full-dazzling thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot october noon! flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand, the sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam, and tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue; o sun of noon refulgent! my special word to thee. hear me illustrious! thy lover me, for always i have loved thee, even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge, thy touching-distant beams enough, or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee i launch my invocation. (thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive, i know before the fitting man all nature yields, though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice-and thou o sun, as for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of flame gigantic, i understand them, i know those flames, those perturbations well.) thou that with fructifying heat and light, o'er myriad farms, o'er lands and waters north and south, o'er mississippi's endless course, o'er texas' grassy plains, kanada's woods, o'er all the globe that turns its face to thee shining in space, thou that impartially enfoldest all, not only continents, seas, thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so liberally, shed, shed thyself on mine and me, with but a fleeting ray out of thy million millions, strike through these chants. nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these, prepare the later afternoon of me myself-prepare my lengthening shadows, prepare my starry nights. faces faces 1 sauntering the pavement or riding the country by-road, faces! faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality, the spiritual-prescient face, the always welcome common benevolent face, the face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges broad at the back-top, the faces of hunters and fishers bulged at the brows, the shaved blanch'd faces of orthodox citizens, the pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist's face, the ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or despised face, the sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of many children, the face of an amour, the face of veneration, the face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock, the face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face, a wild hawk, his wings clipp'd by the clipper, a stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder. sauntering the pavement thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces and faces and faces, i see them and complain not, and am content with all. 2 do you suppose i could be content with all if i thought them their own finale? this now is too lamentable a face for a man, some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it, some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole. this face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, i hear the sibilant threat. this face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea, its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go. this is a face of bitter herbs, this an emetic, they need no label, and more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog's-lard. this face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry, its veins down the neck distend, its eyes roll till they show nothing but their whites, its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn'd-in nails, the man falls struggling and foaming to the ground, while he speculates well. this face is bitten by vermin and worms, and this is some murderer's knife with a half-pull'd scabbard. this face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee, an unceasing death-bell tolls there. 3 features of my equals would you trick me with your creas'd and cadaverous march? well, you cannot trick me. i see your rounded never-erased flow, i see 'neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises. splay and twist as you like, poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats, you'll be unmuzzled, you certainly will. i saw the face of the most smear'd and slobbering idiot they had at the asylum, and i knew for my consolation what they knew not, i knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother, the same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement, and i shall look again in a score or two of ages, and i shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharm'd, every inch as good as myself. 4 the lord advances, and yet advances, always the shadow in front, always the reach'd hand bringing up the laggards. out of this face emerge banners and horses-o superb! i see what is coming, i see the high pioneer-caps, see staves of runners clearing the way, i hear victorious drums. this face is a life-boat, this is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest, this face is flavor'd fruit ready for eating, this face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good. these faces bear testimony slumbering or awake, they show their descent from the master himself. off the word i have spoken i except not one-red, white, black, are all deific, in each house is the ovum, it comes forth after a thousand years. spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me, tall and sufficient stand behind and make signs to me, i read the promise and patiently wait. this is a full-grown lily's face, she speaks to the limber-hipp'd man near the garden pickets, come here she blushingly cries, come nigh to me limber-hipp'd man, stand at my side till i lean as high as i can upon you, fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me, rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and shoulders. 5 the old face of the mother of many children, whist! i am fully content. lull'd and late is the smoke of the first-day morning, it hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences, it hangs thin by the sassafras and wild-cherry and cat-brier under them. i saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree, i heard what the singers were singing so long, heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the water-blue. behold a woman! she looks out from her quaker cap, her face is clearer and more beautiful than the sky. she sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the farmhouse, the sun just shines on her old white head. her ample gown is of cream-hued linen, her grandsons raised the flax, and her grand-daughters spun it with the distaff and the wheel. the melodious character of the earth, the finish beyond which philosophy cannot go and does not wish to go, the justified mother of men. the mystic trumpeter 1 hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange musician, hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night. i hear thee trumpeter, listening alert i catch thy notes, now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me, now low, subdued, now in the distance lost. 2 come nearer bodiless one, haply in thee resounds some dead composer, haply thy pensive life was fill'd with aspirations high, unform'd ideals, waves, oceans musical, chaotically surging, that now ecstatic ghost, close to me bending, thy cornet echoing, pealing, gives out to no one's ears but mine, but freely gives to mine, that i may thee translate. 3 blow trumpeter free and clear, i follow thee, while at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene, the fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day withdraw, a holy calm descends like dew upon me, i walk in cool refreshing night the walks of paradise, i scent the grass, the moist air and the roses; thy song expands my numb'd imbonded spirit, thou freest, launchest me, floating and basking upon heaven's lake. 4 blow again trumpeter! and for my sensuous eyes, bring the old pageants, show the feudal world. what charm thy music works! thou makest pass before me, ladies and cavaliers long dead, barons are in their castle halls, the troubadours are singing, arm'd knights go forth to redress wrongs, some in quest of the holy graal; i see the tournament, i see the contestants incased in heavy armor seated on stately champing horses, i hear the shouts, the sounds of blows and smiting steel; i see the crusaders' tumultuous armieshark, how the cymbals clang, lo, where the monks walk in advance, bearing the cross on high. 5 blow again trumpeter! and for thy theme, take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the setting, love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang, the heart of man and woman all for love, no other theme but loveknitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love. o how the immortal phantoms crowd around me! i see the vast alembic ever working, i see and know the flames that heat the world, the glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers, so blissful happy some, and some so silent, dark, and nigh to death; love, that is all the earth to loverslove, that mocks time and space, love, that is day and nightlove, that is sun and moon and stars, love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume, no other words but words of love, no other thought but love. 6 blow again trumpeterconjure war's alarums. swift to thy spell a shuddering hum like distant thunder rolls, lo, where the arm'd men hastenlo, mid the clouds of dust the glint of bayonets, i see the grime-faced cannoneers, i mark the rosy flash amid the smoke, i hear the cracking of the guns; nor war alonethy fearful music-song, wild player, brings every sight of fear, the deeds of ruthless brigands, rapine, murder-i hear the cries for help! i see ships foundering at sea, i behold on deck and below deck the terrible tableaus. 7 o trumpeter, methinks i am myself the instrument thou playest, thou melt'st my heart, my brainthou movest, drawest, changest them at will; and now thy sullen notes send darkness through me, thou takest away all cheering light, all hope, i see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, the opprest of the whole earth, i feel the measureless shame and humiliation of my race, it becomes all mine, mine too the revenges of humanity, the wrongs of ages, baffled feuds and hatreds, utter defeat upon me weighsall lostthe foe victorious, (yet 'mid the ruins pride colossal stands unshaken to the last, endurance, resolution to the last.) 8 now trumpeter for thy close, vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet, sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope, rouse up my slow belief, give me some vision of the future, give me for once its prophecy and joy. o glad, exulting, culminating song! a vigor more than earth's is in thy notes, marches of victoryman disenthral'dthe conqueror at last, hymns to the universal god from universal manall joy! a reborn race appearsa perfect world, all joy! women and men in wisdom innocence and healthall joy! riotous laughing bacchanals fill'd with joy! war, sorrow, suffering gone-the rank earth purgednothing but joy left! the ocean fill'd with joythe atmosphere all joy! joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of life! enough to merely be! enough to breathe! joy! joy! all over joy! to a locomotive in winter thee for my recitative, thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining, thee in thy panoply, thy measur'd dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive, thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel, thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides, thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance, thy great protruding head-light fix'd in front, thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple, the dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack, thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels, thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following, through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering; type of the modernemblem of motion and powerpulse of the continent, for once come serve the muse and merge in verse, even as here i see thee, with storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow, by day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes, by night thy silent signal lamps to swing. fierce-throated beauty! roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night, thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all, law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding, (no sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,) thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd, launch'd o'er the prairies wide, across the lakes, to the free skies unpent and glad and strong. o magnet-south o magnet-south! o glistening perfumed south! my south! o quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil! o all dear to me! o dear to me my birth-thingsall moving things and the trees where i was bornthe grains, plants, rivers, dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of slivery sands or through swamps, dear to me the roanoke, the savannah, the altamahaw, the pedee, the tombigbee, the santee, the coosa and the sabine, o pensive, far away wandering, i return with my soul to haunt their banks again, again in florida i float on transparent lakes, i float on the okeechobee, i cross the hummock-land or through pleasant openings or dense forests, i see the parrots in the woods, i see the papaw-tree and the blossoming titi; again, sailing in my coaster on deck, i coast off georgia, i coast up the carolinas, i see where the live-oak is growing, i see where the yellow-pine, the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto, i pass rude sea-headlands and enter pamlico sound through an inlet, and dart my vision inland; o the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp! the cactus guarded with thorns, the laurel-tree with large white flowers, the range afar, the richness and barrenness, the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss, the piney odor and the gloom, the awful natural stillness, (here in these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive has his conceal'd hut;) o the strange fascination of these half-known half-impassable swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake, the mocking-bird, the american mimic, singing all the forenoon, singing through the moon-lit night, the humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum; a kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav'd corn, slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels, with beautiful ears each well-sheath'd in its husk; o my heart! o tender and fierce pangs, i can stand them not, i will depart; o to be a virginian where i grew up! o to be a carolinian! o longings irrepressible! o i will go back to old tennessee and never wander more. mannahatta mannahatta i was asking for something specific and perfect for my city, whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name. now i see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient, i see that the word of my city is that word from of old, because i see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb, rich, hemm'd thick all around with sailships and steamships, an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded, numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies, tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown, the flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the villas, the countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model'd, the down-town streets, the jobbers' houses of business, the houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets, immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week, the carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the brown-faced sailors, the summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft, the winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river, passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide, the mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form'd, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes, trottoirs throng'd, vehicles, broadway, the women, the shops and shows, a million peoplemanners free and superbopen voiceshospitality the most courageous and friendly young men, city of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts! city nested in bays! my city! all is truth o me, man of slack faith so long, standing aloof, denying portions so long, only aware to-day of compact all-diffused truth, discovering to-day there is no lie or form of lie, and can be none, but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon itself, or as any law of the earth or any natural production of the earth does. (this is curious and may not be realized immediately, but it must be realized, i feel in myself that i represent falsehoods equally with the rest, and that the universe does.) where has fail'd a perfect return indifferent of lies or the truth? is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man? or in the meat and blood? meditating among liars and retreating sternly into myself, i see that there are really no liars or lies after all, and that nothing fails its perfect return, and that what are called lies are perfect returns, and that each thing exactly represents itself and what has preceded it, and that the truth includes all, and is compact just as much as space is compact, and that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truthbut that all is truth without exception; and henceforth i will go celebrate any thing i see or am, and sing and laugh and deny nothing. a riddle song that which eludes this verse and any verse, unheard by sharpest ear, unform'd in clearest eye or cunningest mind, nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth, and yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly, which you and i and all pursuing ever ever miss, open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion, costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner, which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose, which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted, which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter'd, invoking here and now i challenge for my song. indifferently, 'mid public, private haunts, in solitude, behind the mountain and the wood, companion of the city's busiest streets, through the assemblage, it and its radiations constantly glide. in looks of fair unconscious babes, or strangely in the coffin'd dead, or show of breaking dawn or stars by night, as some dissolving delicate film of dreams, hiding yet lingering. two little breaths of words comprising it, two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it. how ardently for it! how many ships have sail'd and sunk for it! how many travelers started from their homes and neer return'd! how much of genius boldly staked and lost for it! what countless stores of beauty, love, ventur'd for it! how all superbest deeds since time began are traceable to itand shall be to the end! how all heroic martyrdoms to it! how, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the earth! how the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every age and land, have drawn men's eyes, rich as a sunset on the norway coast, the sky, the islands, and the cliffs, or midnight's silent glowing northern lights unreachable. haply god's riddle it, so vague and yet so certain, the soul for it, and all the visible universe for it, and heaven at last for it. excelsior excelsior who has gone farthest? for i would go farther, and who has been just? for i would be the most just person of the earth, and who most cautious? for i would be more cautious, and who has been happiest? o i think it is ii think no one was ever happier than i, and who has lavish'd all? for i lavish constantly the best i have, and who proudest? for i think i have reason to be the proudest son alive-for i am the son of the brawny and tall-topt city, and who has been bold and true? for i would be the boldest and truest being of the universe, and who benevolent? for i would show more benevolence than all the rest, and who has receiv'd the love of the most friends? for i know what it is to receive the passionate love of many friends, and who possesses a perfect and enamour'd body? for i do not believe any one possesses a more perfect or enamour'd body than mine, and who thinks the amplest thoughts? for i would surround those thoughts, and who has made hymns fit for the earth? for i am mad with devouring ecstasy to make joyous hymns for the whole earth. ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats, ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me, (for what is my life or any man's life but a conflict with foes, the old, the incessant war?) you degradations, you tussle with passions and appetites, you smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds the sharpest of all!) you toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses, you shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;) you broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother'd ennuis! ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come forth, it shall yet march forth o'ermastering, till all lies beneath me, it shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory. thoughts thoughts of public opinion, of a calm and cool fiat sooner or later, (how impassive! how certain and final!) of the president with pale face asking secretly to himself, what will the people say at last? of the frivolous judgeof the corrupt congressman, governor, mayorof such as these standing helpless and exposed, of the mumbling and screaming priest, (soon, soon deserted,) of the lessening year by year of venerableness, and of the dicta of officers, statutes, pulpits, schools, of the rising forever taller and stronger and broader of the intuitions of men and women, and of self-esteem and personality; of the true new worldof the democracies resplendent en-masse, of the conformity of politics, armies, navies, to them, of the shining sun by themof the inherent light, greater than the rest, of the envelopment of all by them, and the effusion of all from them. mediums mediums they shall arise in the states, they shall report nature, laws, physiology, and happiness, they shall illustrate democracy and the kosmos, they shall be alimentive, amative, perceptive, they shall be complete women and men, their pose brawny and supple, their drink water, their blood clean and clear, they shall fully enjoy materialism and the sight of products, they shall enjoy the sight of the beef, lumber, bread-stuffs, of chicago the great city. they shall train themselves to go in public to become orators and oratresses, strong and sweet shall their tongues be, poems and materials of poems shall come from their lives, they shall be makers and finders, of them and of their works shall emerge divine conveyers, to convey gospels, characters, events, retrospections, shall be convey'd in gospels, trees, animals, waters, shall be convey'd, death, the future, the invisible faith, shall all be convey'd. weave in, my hardy life weave in, weave in, my hardy life, weave yet a soldier strong and full for great campaigns to come, weave in red blood, weave sinews in like ropes, the senses, sight weave in, weave lasting sure, weave day and night the wet, the warp, incessant weave, tire not, (we know not what the use o life, nor know the aim, the end, nor really aught we know, but know the work, the need goes on and shall go on, the death-envelop'd march of peace as well as war goes on,) for great campaigns of peace the same the wiry threads to weave, we know not why or what, yet weave, forever weave. spain spain, 1873-74 out of the murk of heaviest clouds, out of the feudal wrecks and heap'd-up skeletons of kings, out of that old entire european debris, the shatter'd mummeries, ruin'd cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests, lo, freedom's features fresh undimm'd look forththe same immortal face looks forth; (a glimpse as of thy mother's face columbia, a flash significant as of a sword, beaming towards thee.) nor think we forget thee maternal; lag'd'st thou so long? shall the clouds close again upon thee? ah, but thou hast thyself now appear'd to us-we know thee, thou hast given us a sure proof, the glimpse of thyself, thou waitest there as everywhere thy time. by broad potomac's shore by broad potomac's shore, again old tongue, (still uttering, still ejaculating, canst never cease this babble?) again old heart so gay, again to you, your sense, the full flush spring returning, again the freshness and the odors, again virginia's summer sky, pellucid blue and silver, again the forenoon purple of the hills, again the deathless grass, so noiseless soft and green, again the blood-red roses blooming. perfume this book of mine o blood-red roses! lave subtly with your waters every line potomac! give me of you o spring, before i close, to put between its pages! o forenoon purple of the hills, before i close, of you! o deathless grass, of you! from far dakota's canons june 25, 1876 from far dakota's cations, lands of the wild ravine, the dusky sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence, haply to-day a mournful wall, haply a trumpet-note for heroes. the battle-bulletin, the indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment, the cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism, in the midst of their little circle, with their slaughter'd horses for breastworks, the fall of custer and all his officers and men. continues yet the old, old legend of our race, the loftiest of life upheld by death, the ancient banner perfectly maintain'd, o lesson opportune, o how i welcome thee! as sitting in dark days, lone, sulky, through the time's thick murk looking in vain for light, for hope, from unsuspected parts a fierce and momentary proof, (the sun there at the centre though conceal'd, electric life forever at the centre,) breaks forth a lightning flash. thou of the tawny flowing hair in battle, i erewhile saw, with erect head, pressing ever in front, bearing a bright sword in thy hand, now ending well in death the splendid fever of thy deeds, (i bring no dirge for it or thee, i bring a glad triumphal sonnet,) desperate and glorious, aye in defeat most desperate, most glorious, after thy many battles in which never yielding up a gun or a color, leaving behind thee a memory sweet to soldiers, thou yieldest up thyself. old war-dreams in midnight sleep of many a face of anguish, of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look,) of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide, i dream, i dream, i dream. of scenes of nature, fields and mountains, of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so unearthly bright, shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather the heaps, i dream, i dream, i dream. long have they pass'd, faces and trenches and fields, where through the carnage i moved with a callous composure, or away from the fallen, onward i sped at the timebut now of their forms at night, i dream, i dream, i dream. thick-sprinkled bunting thick-sprinkled bunting! flag of stars! long yet your road, fateful flaglong yet your road, and lined with bloody death, for the prize i see at issue at last is the world, all its ships and shores i see interwoven with your threads greedy banner; dream'd again the flags of kings, highest borne to flaunt unrival'd? o hasten flag of mano with sure and steady step, passing highest flags of kings, walk supreme to the heavens mighty symbol-run up above them all, flag of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting! what best i see in thee to u. s. g. return'd from his world's tour what best i see in thee, is not that where thou mov'st down history's great highways, ever undimm'd by time shoots warlike victory's dazzle, or that thou sat'st where washington sat, ruling the land in peace, or thou the man whom feudal europe feted, venerable asia swarm'd upon, who walk'd with kings with even pace the round world's promenade; but that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings, those prairie sovereigns of the west, kansas, missouri, illinois, ohio's, indiana's millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the front, invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round world's promenade, were all so justified. spirit that form'd this scene written in platte canon, colorado. spirit that form'd this scene, these tumbled rock-piles grim and red, these reckless heaven-ambitious peaks, these gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness, these formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own, i know thee, savage spiritwe have communed together, mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own; wast charged against my chants they had forgotten art? to fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse? the lyrist's measur'd beat, the wrought-out temple's gracecolumn and polish'd arch forgot? but thou that revelest herespirit that form'd this scene, they have remember'd thee. as i walk these broad majestic days as i walk these broad majestic days of peace, (for the war, the struggle of blood finish'd, wherein, o terrific ideal, against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won, now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars, perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers, longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others,) around me i hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce, the announcements of recognized things, science, the approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions. i see the ships, (they will last a few years,) the vast factories with their foremen and workmen, and hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it. but i too announce solid things, science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing, like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring, triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight, they stand for realitiesall is as it should be. then my realities; what else is so real as mine? libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face of the earth, the rapt promises and lumine of seers, the spiritual world, these centuries-lasting songs, and our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any. a clear midnight this is thy hour o soul, thy free flight into the wordless, away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best, night, sleep, death and the stars. as the time draws nigh as the time draws nigh glooming a cloud, a dread beyond of i know not what darkens me. i shall go forth, i shall traverse the states awhile, but i cannot tell whither or how long, perhaps soon some day or night while i am singing my voice will suddenly cease. o book, o chants! must all then amount to but this? must we barely arrive at this beginning of us? -and yet it is enough, o soul; o soul, we have positively appear'dthat is enough. years of the modern years of the modern! years of the unperform'd! your horizon rises, i see it parting away for more august dramas, i see not america only, not only liberty's nation but other nations preparing, i see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations, the solidarity of races, i see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world's stage, (have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts suitable to them closed?) i see freedom, completely arm'd and victorious and very haughty, with law on one side and peace on the other, a stupendous trio all issuing forth against the idea of caste; what historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach? i see men marching and countermarching by swift millions, i see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken, i see the landmarks of european kings removed, i see this day the people beginning their landmarks, (all others give way;) never were such sharp questions ask'd as this day, never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a god, lo, how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest! his daring foot is on land and sea everywhere, he colonizes the pacific, the archipelagoes, with the steamship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale engines of war, with these and the world-spreading factories he interlinks all geography, all lands; what whispers are these o lands, running ahead of you, passing under the seas? are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe? is humanity forming en-masse? for lo, tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim, the earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war, no one knows what will happen next, such portents fill the days and nights; years prophetical! the space ahead as i walk, as i vainly try to pierce it, is full of phantoms, unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me, this incredible rush and heat, this strange ecstatic fever of dreams o years! your dreams o years, how they penetrate through me! (i know not whether i sleep or wake;) the perform'd america and europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me, the unperform'd, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me. ashes of soldiers ashes of soldiers south or north, as i muse retrospective murmuring a chant in thought, the war resumes, again to my sense your shapes, and again the advance of the armies. noiseless as mists and vapors, from their graves in the trenches ascending, from cemeteries all through virginia and tennessee, from every point of the compass out of the countless graves, in waited clouds, in myriads large, or squads of twos or threes or single ones they come, and silently gather round me. now sound no note o trumpeters, not at the head of my cavalry parading on spirited horses, with sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs, (ah my brave horsemen! my handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride, with all the perils were yours.) nor you drummers, neither at reveille at dawn, nor the long roll alarming the camp, nor even the muffled beat for burial, nothing from you this time o drummers bearing my warlike drums. but aside from these and the marts of wealth and the crowded promenade, admitting around me comrades close unseen by the rest and voiceless, the slain elate and alive again, the dust and debris alive, i chant this chant of my silent soul in the name of all dead soldiers. faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet, draw close, but speak not. phantoms of countless lost, invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions, follow me everdesert me not while i live. sweet are the blooming cheeks of the livingsweet are the musical voices sounding, but sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with their silent eyes. dearest comrades, all is over and long gone, but love is not overand what love, o comrades! perfume from battle-fields rising, up from the foetor arising. perfume therefore my chant, o love, immortal love, give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers, shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride. perfume allmake all wholesome, make these ashes to nourish and blossom, o love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry. give me exhaustless, make me a fountain, that i exhale love from me wherever i go like a moist perennial dew, for the ashes of all dead soldiers south or north. thoughts thoughts 1 of these years i sing, how they pass and have pass'd through convuls'd pains, as through parturitions, how america illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure fulfilment, the absolute success, despite of peopleillustrates evil as well as good, the vehement struggle so fierce for unity in one's-self, how many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity, how few see the arrived models, the athletes, the western states, or see freedom or spirituality, or hold any faith in results, (but i see the athletes, and i see the results of the war glorious and inevitable, and they again leading to other results.) how the great cities appearhow the democratic masses, turbulent, willful, as i love them, how the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on, how society waits unform'd, and is for a while between things ended and things begun, how america is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom and of the democracies, and of the fruits of society, and of all that is begun, and how the states are complete in themselvesand how all triumphs and glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward, and how these of mine and of the states will in their turn be convuls'd, and serve other parturitions and transitions, and how all people, sights, combinations, the democratic masses too, serveand how every fact, and war itself, with all its horrors, serves, and how now or at any time each serves the exquisite transition of death. 2 of seeds dropping into the ground, of births, of the steady concentration of america, inland, upward, to impregnable and swarming places, of what indiana, kentucky, arkansas, and the rest, are to be, of what a few years will show there in nebraska, colorado, nevada, and the rest, (or afar, mounting the northern pacific to sitka or aliaska,) of what the feuillage of america is the preparation forand of what all sights, north, south, east and west, are, of this union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of the unnamed lost ever present in my mind; of the temporary use of materials for identity's sake, of the present, passing, departingof the growth of completer men than any yet, of all sloping down there where the fresh free giver the mother, the mississippi flows, of mighty inland cities yet unsurvey'd and unsuspected, of the new and good names, of the modern developments, of inalienable homesteads, of a free and original life there, of simple diet and clean and sweet blood, of litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes, and perfect physique there, of immense spiritual results future years far west, each side of the anahuacs, of these songs, well understood there, (being made for that area,) of the native scorn of grossness and gain there, (o it lurks in me night and day-what is gain after all to savageness and freedom?) song at sunset splendor of ended day floating and filling me, hour prophetic, hour resuming the past, inflating my throat, you divine average, you earth and life till the last ray gleams i sing. open mouth of my soul uttering gladness, eyes of my soul seeing perfection, natural life of me faithfully praising things, corroborating forever the triumph of things. illustrious every one! illustrious what we name space, sphere of unnumber'd spirits, illustrious the mystery of motion in all beings, even the tiniest insect, illustrious the attribute of speech, the senses, the body, illustrious the passing lightillustrious the pale reflection on the new moon in the western sky, illustrious whatever i see or hear or touch, to the last. good in all, in the satisfaction and aplomb of animals, in the annual return of the seasons, in the hilarity of youth, in the strength and flush of manhood, in the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age, in the superb vistas of death. wonderful to depart! wonderful to be here! the heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood! to breathe the air, how delicious! to speakto walkto seize something by the hand! to prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color'd flesh! to be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large! to be this incredible god i am! to have gone forth among other gods, these men and women i love. wonderful how i celebrate you and myself how my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around! how the clouds pass silently overhead! how the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on! how the water sports and sings! (surely it is alive!) how the trees rise and stand up, with strong trunks, with branches and leaves! (surely there is something more in each of the trees, some living soul.) o amazement of things-even the least particle! o spirituality of things! o strain musical flowing through ages and continents, now reaching me and america! i take your strong chords, intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them forward. i too carol the sun, usher'd or at noon, or as now, setting, i too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the growths of the earth, i too have felt the resistless call of myself. as i steam'd down the mississippi, as i wander'd over the prairies, as i have lived, as i have look'd through my windows my eyes, as i went forth in the morning, as i beheld the light breaking in the east, as i bathed on the beach of the eastern sea, and again on the beach of the western sea, as i roam'd the streets of inland chicago, whatever streets i have roam'd, or cities or silent woods, or even amid the sights of war, wherever i have been i have charged myself with contentment and triumph. i sing to the last the equalities modern or old, i sing the endless finales of things, i say nature continues, glory continues, i praise with electric voice, for i do not see one imperfection in the universe, and i do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe. o setting sun! though the time has come, i still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration. as at thy portals also death as at thy portals also death, entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds, to memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity, to her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me, (i see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still, i sit by the form in the coffin, i kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks, the closed eyes in the coffin;) to her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth, life, love, to me the best, i grave a monumental line, before i go, amid these songs, and set a tombstone here. my legacy the business man the acquirer vast, after assiduous years surveying results, preparing for departure, devises houses and lands to his children, bequeaths stocks, goods, funds for a school or hospital, leaves money to certain companions to buy tokens, souvenirs of gems and gold. but i, my life surveying, closing, with nothing to show to devise from its idle years, nor houses nor lands, nor tokens of gems or gold for my friends, yet certain remembrances of the war for you, and after you, and little souvenirs of camps and soldiers, with my love, i bind together and bequeath in this bundle of songs. pensive on her dead gazing pensive on her dead gazing i heard the mother of all, desperate on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields gazing, (as the last gun ceased, but the scent of the powder-smoke linger'd,) as she call'd to her earth with mournful voice while she stalk'd, absorb them well o my earth, she cried, i charge you lose not my sons, lose not an atom, and you streams absorb them well, taking their dear blood, and you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly impalpable, and all you essences of soil and growth, and you my rivers' depths, and you mountain sides, and the woods where my dear children's blood trickling redden'd, and you trees down in your roots to bequeath to all future trees, my dead absorb or south or north-my young men's bodies absorb, and their precious precious blood, which holding in trust for me faithfully back again give me many a year hence, in unseen essence and odor of surface and grass, centuries hence, in blowing airs from the fields back again give me my darlings, give my immortal heroes, exhale me them centuries hence, breathe me their breath, let not an atom be lost, o years and graves! o air and soil! o my dead, an aroma sweet! exhale them perennial sweet death, years, centuries hence. camps of green nor alone those camps of white, old comrades of the wars, when as order'd forward, after a long march, footsore and weary, soon as the light lessens we halt for the night, some of us so fatigued carrying the gun and knapsack, dropping asleep in our tracks, others pitching the little tents, and the fires lit up begin to sparkle, outposts of pickets posted surrounding alert through the dark, and a word provided for countersign, careful for safety, till to the call of the drummers at daybreak loudly beating the drums, we rise up refresh'd, the night and sleep pass'd over, and resume our journey, or proceed to battle. lo, the camps of the tents of green, which the days of peace keep filling, and the days of war keep filling, with a mystic army, (is it too order'd forward? is it too only halting awhile, till night and sleep pass over?) now in those camps of green, in their tents dotting the world, in the parents, children, husbands, wives, in them, in the old and young, sleeping under the sunlight, sleeping under the moonlight, content and silent there at last, behold the mighty bivouac-field and waiting-camp of all, of the corps and generals all, and the president over the corps and generals all, and of each of us o soldiers, and of each and all in the ranks we fought, (there without hatred we all, all meet.) for presently o soldiers, we too camp in our place in the bivouac-camps of green, but we need not provide for outposts, nor word for the countersign, nor drummer to beat the morning drum. the sobbing of the bells (midnight, sept. 19-20, 1881) the sobbing of the bells, the sudden death-news everywhere, the slumberers rouse, the rapport of the people, (full well they know that message in the darkness, full well return, respond within their breasts, their brains, the sad reverberations,) the passionate toll and clangcity to city, joining, sounding, passing, those heart-beats of a nation in the night. as they draw to a close as they draw to a close, of what underlies the precedent songsof my aims in them, of the seed i have sought to plant in them, of joy, sweet joy, through many a year, in them, (for them, for them have i lived, in them my work is done,) of many an aspiration fond, of many a dream and plan; through space and time fused in a chant, and the flowing eternal identity, to nature encompassing these, encompassing godto the joyous, electric all, to the sense of death, and accepting exulting in death in its turn the same as life, the entrance of man to sing; to compact you, ye parted, diverse lives, to put rapport the mountains and rocks and streams, and the winds of the north, and the forests of oak and pine, with you o soul. joy, shipmate, joy! joy, shipmate, joy! (pleas'd to my soul at death i cry,) our life is closed, our life begins, the long, long anchorage we leave, the ship is clear at last, she leaps! she swiftly courses from the shore, joy, shipmate, joy. the untold want the untold want by life and land neer granted, now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find. portals portals what are those of the known but to ascend and enter the unknown? and what are those of life but for death? these carols these carols sung to cheer my passage through the world i see, for completion i dedicate to the invisible world. now finale to the shore now finale to the shore, now land and life final& and farewell, now voyager depart, (much, much for thee is yet in store,) often enough hast thou adventur'd o'er the seas, cautiously cruising, studying the charts, duly again to port and hawser's tie returning; but now obey thy cherish'd secret wish, embrace thy friends, leave all in order, to port and hawser's tie no more returning, depart upon thy endless cruise old sailor. so long! to conclude, i announce what comes after me. i remember i said before my leaves sprang at all, i would raise my voice jocund and strong with reference to consummations. when america does what was promis'd, when through these states walk a hundred millions of superb persons, when the rest part away for superb persons and contribute to them, when breeds of the most perfect mothers denote america, then to me and mine our due fruition. i have press'd through in my own right, i have sung the body and the soul, war and peace have i sung, and the songs of life and death, and the songs of birth, and shown that there are many births. i have offer'd my style to every one, i have journey'd with confident step; while my pleasure is yet at the full i whisper so long! and take the young woman's hand and the young man's hand for the last time. i announce natural persons to arise, i announce justice triumphant, i announce uncompromising liberty and equality, i announce the justification of candor and the justification of pride. i announce that the identity of these states is a single identity only, i announce the union more and more compact, indissoluble, i announce splendors and majesties to make all the previous politics of the earth insignificant. i announce adhesiveness, i say it shall be limitless, unloosen'd, i say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for. i announce a man or woman coming, perhaps you are the one, (so long!) i announce the great individual, fluid as nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully arm'd. i announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, i announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation. i announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded, i announce a race of splendid and savage old men. o thicker and faster(so long!) o crowding too close upon me, i foresee too much, it means more than i thought, it appears to me i am dying. hasten throat and sound your last, salute mesalute the days once more. peal the old cry once more. screaming electric, the atmosphere using, at random glancing, each as i notice absorbing, swiftly on, but a little while alighting, curious envelop'd messages delivering, sparkles hot, seed ethereal down in the dirt dropping, myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never daring, to ages and ages yet the growth of the seed leaving, to troops out of the war arising, they the tasks i have set promulging, to women certain whispers of myself bequeathing, their affection me more clearly explaining, to young men my problems offeringno dallier ii the muscle of their brains trying, so i pass, a little time vocal, visible, contrary, afterward a melodious echo, passionately bent for, (death making me really undying,) the best of me then when no longer visible, for toward that i have been incessantly preparing. what is there more, that i lag and pause and crouch extended with unshut mouth? is there a single final farewell? my songs cease, i abandon them, from behind the screen where i hid i advance personally solely to you. camerado, this is no book, who touches this touches a man, (is it night? are we here together alone?) it is i you hold and who holds you, i spring from the pages into your armsdecease calls me forth. o how your fingers drowse me, your breath falls around me like dew, your pulse lulls the tympans of my ears, i feel immerged from head to foot, delicious, enough. enough o deed impromptu and secret, enough o gliding presentenough o summ'd-up past. dear friend whoever you are take this kiss, i give it especially to you, do not forget me, i feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile, i receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras ascending, while others doubtless await me, an unknown sphere more real than i dream'd, more direct, darts awakening rays about me, so long! remember my words, i may again return, i love you, i depart from materials, i am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead. mannahatta mannahatta my city's fit and noble name resumed, choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning, a rocky founded island-shores where ever gayly dash the coming, going, hurrying sea waves. paumanok paumanok sea-beauty! stretch'd and basking! one side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce, steamers, sails, and one the atlantic's wind caressing, fierce or gentle-mighty hulls dark-gliding in the distance. isle of sweet brooks of drinking-waterhealthy air and soil! isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine! from montauk point i stand as on some mighty eagle's beak, eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,) the tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance, the wild unrest, the snowy, curling capsthat enbound urge and urge of waves, seeking the shores forever. to those who've fail'd to those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast, to unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead, to calm, devoted engineersto over-ardent travelersto pilots on their ships, to many a lofty song and picture without recognitioni'd rear laurel-cover'd monument, high, high above the restto all cut off before their time, possess'd by some strange spirit of fire, quench'd by an early death. a carol closing sixty-nine a carol closing sixty-ninea resumea repetition, my lines in joy and hope continuing on the same, of ye, o god, life, nature, freedom, poetry; of you, my landyour rivers, prairies, statesyou, mottled flag love, your aggregate retain'd entireof north, south, east and west, your items all; of me myselfthe jocund heart yet beating in my breast, the body wreck'd, old, poor and paralyzedthe strange inertia falling pall-like round me, the burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct, the undiminish'd faiththe groups of loving friends. the bravest soldiers brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through the fight; but the bravest press'd to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown. a font of type this latent minethese unlaunch'd voicespassionate powers, wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout, (not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,) these ocean waves arousable to fury and to death, or sooth'd to ease and sheeny sun and sleep, within the pallid slivers slumbering. as i sit writing here as i sit writing here, sick and grown old, not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities, ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui, may filter in my dally songs. my canary bird did we count great, o soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty books, absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations? but now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous warble, filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon, is it not just as great, o soul? queries to my seventieth year approaching, nearing, curious, thou dim, uncertain spectrabringest thou life or death? strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier? or placid skies and sun? wilt stir the waters yet? or haply cut me short for good? or leave me here as now, dull, parrot-like and old, with crack'd voice harping, screeching? the wallabout martyrs [in brooklyn, in an old vault, mark'd by no special recognition, lie huddled at this moment the undoubtedly authentic remains of the stanchest and earliest revolutionary patriots from the british prison ships and prisons of the times of 1776-83, in and around new york, and from all over long island; originally buriedmany thousands of themin trenches in the wallabout sands.] greater than memory of achilles or ulysses, more, more by far to thee than tomb of alexander, those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy bones, once living menonce resolute courage, aspiration, strength, the stepping stones to thee to-day and here, america. the first dandelion simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging, as if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been, forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grassinnocent, golden, calm as the dawn, the spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face. america america centre of equal daughters, equal sons, all, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old, strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, perennial with the earth, with freedom, law and love, a grand, sane, towering, seated mother, chair'd in the adamant of time. memories memories how sweet the silent backward tracings! the wanderings as in dreamsthe meditation of old times resumed -their loves, joys, persons, voyages. to-day and thee the appointed winners in a long-stretch'd game; the course of time and nationsegypt, india, greece and rome; the past entire, with all its heroes, histories, arts, experiments, its store of songs, inventions, voyages, teachers, books, garner'd for now and theeto think of it! the heirdom all converged in thee! after the dazzle of day after the dazzle of day is gone, only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars; after the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band, silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true. abraham lincoln, born feb. 12, 1809 to-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer-a pulse of thought, to memory of himto birth of him. publish'd feb. 12, 1888. out of may's shows selected apple orchards, the trees all cover'd with blossoms; wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green; the eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning; the yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun; the aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers. halcyon days not from successful love alone, nor wealth, nor honor'd middle age, nor victories of politics or war; but as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm, as gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky, as softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air, as the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs really finish'd and indolent-ripe on the tree, then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all! the brooding and blissful halcyon days! fancies at navesink the pilot in the mist steaming the northern rapids(an old st. lawrence reminiscence, a sudden memory-flash comes back, i know not why, here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;)* again 'tis just at morninga heavy haze contends with daybreak, again the trembling, laboring vessel veers mei press through foam-dash'd rocks that almost touch me, again i mark where aft the small thin indian helmsman looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand. *navesink a sea-side mountain, lower entrance of new york bay. had i the choice had i the choice to tally greatest bards, to limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will, homer with all his wars and warriorshector, achilles, ajax, or shakspere's woe-entangled hamlet, lear, othellotennyson's fair ladies, metre or wit the best, or choice conceit to wield in perfect rhyme, delight of singers; these, these, o sea, all these i'd gladly barter, would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer, or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse, and leave its odor there. you tides with ceaseless swell you tides with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work! you unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space's spread, rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations, what are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what sirius'? what capella's? what central heartand you the pulsevivifies all? what boundless aggregate of all? what subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to all in you? what fluid, vast identity, holding the universe with all its parts as oneas sailing in a ship? last of ebb, and daylight wanting last of ebb, and daylight waning, sented sea-cool landward making, smells of sedge and salt incoming, with many a half-caught voice sent up from the eddies, many a muffled confessionmany a sob and whisper'd word, as of speakers far or hid. how they sweep down and out! how they mutter! poets unnamedartists greatest of any, with cherish'd lost designs, love's unresponsea chorus of age's complaintshope's last words, some suicide's despairing cry, away to the boundless waste, and never again return. on to oblivion then! on, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide! on for your time, ye furious debouche! and yet not you alone and yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb, nor you, ye lost designs alonenor failures, aspirations; i know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour's seeming; duly by you, from you, the tide and light againduly the hinges turning, duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending, weaving from you, from sleep, night, death itself, the rhythmus of birth eternal. proudly the flood comes in proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing, long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling, all throbs, dilatesthe farms, woods, streets of citiesworkmen at work, mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing-steamers' pennants of smoke-and under the forenoon sun, freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the inward bound, flaunting from many a spar the flag i love. by that long scan of waves by that long scan of waves, myself call'd back, resumed upon myself, in every crest some undulating light or shadesome retrospect, joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas-scenes ephemeral, the long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead, myself through every by-gone phasemy idle youthold age at hand, my three-score years of life summ'd up, and more, and past, by any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing, and haply yet some drop within god's scheme's ensemblesome wave, or part of wave, like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean. then last of all then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill, of you o tides, the mystic human meaning: only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same, the brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song. election day, november, 1884 if i should need to name, o western world, your powerfulest scene and show, 'twould not be you, niagaranor you, ye limitless prairiesnor your huge rifts of canyons, colorado, nor you, yosemitenor yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing, nor oregon's white conesnor huron's belt of mighty lakesnor mississippi's stream: -this seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, i'd namethe still small voice vibratingamerica's choosing day, (the heart of it not in the chosenthe act itself the main, the quadriennial choosing,) the stretch of north and south arous'dsea-board and inland texas to mainethe prairie statesvermont, virginia, california, the final ballot-shower from east to westthe paradox and conflict, the countless snow-flakes falling(a swordless conflict, yet more than all rome's wars of old, or modern napoleon's:) the peaceful choice of all, or good or ill humanitywelcoming the darker odds, the dross: -foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purifywhile the heart pants, life glows: these stormy gusts and winds wait precious ships, swell'd washington's, jefferson's, lincoln's sails. with husky-haughty lips, o sea! with husky-haughty lips, o sea! where day and night i wend thy surf-beat shore, imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, (i see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,) thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the sun, thy brooding scowl and murkthy unloos'd hurricanes, thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears-a lack from all eternity in thy content, (naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatestno less could make thee,) thy lonely statesomething thou ever seekist and seekist, yet never gain surely some right withheld-some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of freedom-lover pent, some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and chafing in those breakers, by lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and panting breath, and rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves, and serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter, and undertones of distant lion roar, (sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear-but now, rapport for once, a phantom in the night thy confidant for once,) the first and last confession of the globe, outsurging, muttering from thy soul's abysms, the tale of cosmic elemental passion, thou tellest to a kindred soul. death of general grant as one by one withdraw the lofty actors, from that great play on history's stage eterne, that lurid, partial act of war and peace-o f old and new contending, fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many a long suspense; all pastand since, in countless graves receding, mellowing. victor's and vanquish'dlincoln's and lee'snow thou with them, man of the mighty daysand equal to the days! thou from the prairies!tangled and many-vein'd and hard has been thy part, to admiration has it been enacted! red jacket (from aloft) [impromptu on buffalo city's monument to, and re-burial of the old iroquois orator, october 9, 1884] upon this scene, this show, yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth, (nor in caprice alonesome grains of deepest meaning,) haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds' blended shapes, as some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill'd with its soul, product of nature's sun, stars, earth directa towering human form, in hunting-shirt of film, arm'd with the rifle, a half-ironical smile curving its phantom lips, like one of ossian's ghosts looks down. washington's monument february, 1885 ah, not this marble, dead and cold: far from its base and shaft expanding-the round zones circling, comprehending, thou, washington, art all the world's, the continents entirenot yours alone, america, europe's as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer's cot, or frozen north, or sultry souththe african'sthe arab's in his tent, old asia's there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins; (greets the antique the hero new? 'tis but the samethe heir legitimate, continued ever, the indomitable heart and armproofs of the never-broken line, courage, alertness, patience, faith, the samee'en in defeat defeated not, the same:) wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night, through teeming cities' streets, indoors or out, factories or farms, now, or to come, or pastwhere patriot wills existed or exist, wherever freedom, pois'd by toleration, sway'd by law, stands or is rising thy true monument. of that blithe throat of thine [more than eighty-three degrees northabout a good day's steaming distance to the pole by one of our fast oceaners in clear water-greely the explorer heard the song of a single snow-bird merrily sounding over the desolation.] of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank, i'll mind the lesson, solitary birdlet me too welcome chilling drifts, e'en the profoundest chill, as nowa torpid pulse, a brain unnerv'd, old age land-lock'd within its winter bay(cold, cold, o cold!) these snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet, for them thy faith, thy rule i take, and grave it to the last; not summer's zones alonenot chants of youth, or south's warm tides alone, but held by sluggish floes, pack'd in the northern ice, the cumulus of years, these with gay heart i also sing. broadway broadway what hurrying human tides, or day or night! what passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters! what whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee! what curious questioning glancesglints of love! leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration! thou portalthou arenathou of the myriad long-drawn lines and groups! (could but thy flagstones, curbs, facades, tell their inimitable tales; thy windows rich, and huge hotelsthy side-walks wide;) thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet! thou, like the parti-colored world itselflike infinite, teeming, mocking life! thou visor'd, vast, unspeakable show and lesson! to get the final lilt of songs to get the final lilt of songs, to penetrate the inmost lore of poetsto know the mighty ones, job, homer, eschylus, dante, shakespere, tennyson, emerson; to diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt to truly understand, to encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price, old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences. old salt kossabone far back, related on my mother's side, old salt kossabone, i'll tell you how he died: (had been a sailor all his lifewas nearly golived with his married grandchild, jenny; house on a hill, with view of bay at hand, and distant cape, and stretch to open sea;) the last of afternoons, the evening hours, for many a year his regular custom, in his great arm chair by the window seated, (sometimes, indeed, through half the day,) watching the coming, going of the vessels, he mutters to himself and now the close of all: one struggling outbound brig, one day, baffled for longcross-tides and much wrong going, at last at nightfall strikes the breeze aright, her whole luck veering, and swiftly bending round the cape, the darkness proudly entering, cleaving, as he watches, "she's freeshe's on her destination"these the last wordswhen jenny came, he sat there dead, dutch kossabone, old salt, related on my mother's side, far back. the dead tenor as down the stage again, with spanish hat and plumes, and gait inimitable, back from the fading lessons of the past, i'd call, i'd tell and own, how much from thee! the revelation of the singing voice from thee! (so firmso liquid-soft-again that tremulous, manly timbre! the perfect singing voicedeepest of all to me the lessontrial and test of all:) how through those strains distill'd-how the rapt ears, the soul of me, absorbing fernando's heart, manrico's passionate call, ernani's, sweet gennaro's. i fold thenceforth, or seek to fold, within my chants transmuting, freedom's and love's and faith's unloos'd cantabile, (as perfume's, color's, sunlight's correlation:) from these, for these, with these, a hurried line, dead tenor, a waited autumn leaf, dropt in the closing grave, the shovel'd earth, to memory of thee. continuities continuities [from a talk i had lately with a german spiritualist.] nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, no birth, identity, formno object of the world. nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. ample are time and spaceample the fields of nature. the body, sluggish, aged, coldthe embers left from earlier fires, the light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again; the sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual; to frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns, with grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn. yonnondio yonnondio [the sense of the word is lament for the aborigines. it is an iroquois term; and has been used for a personal name.] a song, a poem of itselfthe word itself a dirge, amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry night, to me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables calling up; yonnondioi see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with plains and mountains dark, i see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine-men, and warriors, as flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in the twilight, (race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the falls! no picture, poem, statement, passing them to the future:) yonnondio! yonnondio!unlimn'd they disappear; to-day gives place, and fadesthe cities, farms, factories fade; a muffled sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne through the air for a moment, then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost. life life ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man; (have former armies fail'd? then we send fresh armiesand fresh again;) ever the grappled mystery of all earth's ages old or new; ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping hands, the loud applause; ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last; struggling to-day the samebattling the same. "going somewhere" my science-friend, my noblest woman-friend, (now buried in an english graveand this a memory-leaf for her dear sake,) ended our talk"the sum, concluding all we know of old or modern learning, intuitions deep, "of all geologieshistoriesof all astronomyof evolution, metaphysics all, "is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering, "life, life an endless march, an endless army, (no halt, but it is duly over,) "the world, the race, the soulin space and time the universes, "all bound as is befitting eachall surely going somewhere." from the 1867 edition of l. of g. small the theme of my chant small the theme of my chant, yet the greatestnamely, one's-self a simple, separate person. that, for the use of the new world, i sing. man's physiology complete, from top to toe, i sing. not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the muse;i say the form complete is worthier far. the female equally with the male, i sing. nor cease at the theme of one's-self. i speak the word of the modern, the word en-masse. my days i sing, and the landswith interstice i knew of hapless war. (o friend, whoe'er you are, at last arriving hither to commence, i feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which i return. and thus upon outjourney, footing the road, and more than once, and link'd together let us go.) true conquerors old farmers, travelers, workmen (no matter how crippled or bent,) old sailors, out of many a perilous voyage, storm and wreck, old soldiers from campaigns, with all their wounds, defeats and scars; enough that they've survived at alllong life's unflinching ones! forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged at all in that alone, true conquerors o'er all the rest. the united states to old world critics here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete, wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty; as of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice, whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps, the solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars. the calming thought of all that coursing on, whate'er men's speculations, amid the changing schools, theologies, philosophies, amid the bawling presentations new and old, the round earth's silent vital laws, facts, modes continued. thanks in old age thanks in old agethanks ere i go, for health, the midday sun, the impalpable airfor life, mere life, for precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dearyou, fatheryou, brothers, sisters, friends,) for all my daysnot those of peace alonethe days of war the same, for gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands, for shelter, wine and meatfor sweet appreciation, (you distant, dim unknownor young or oldcountless, unspecified, readers belov'd, we never met, and neer shall meetand yet our souls embrace, long, close and long;) for beings, groups, love, deeds, words, booksfor colors, forms, for all the brave strong mendevoted, hardy menwho've forward sprung in freedom's help, all years, all lands for braver, stronger, more devoted men(a special laurel ere i go, to life's war's chosen ones, the cannoneers of song and thought-the great artilleriststhe foremost leaders, captains of the soul:) as soldier from an ended war return'das traveler out of myriads, to the long procession retrospective, thanksjoyful thanks!a soldier's, traveler's thanks. life and death the two old, simple problems ever intertwined, close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled. by each successive age insoluble, pass'd on, to ours to-dayand we pass on the same. the voice of the rain and who art thou? said i to the soft-falling shower, which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated: i am the poem of earth, said the voice of the rain, eternal i rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea, upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed, and yet the same, i descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe, and all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn; and forever, by day and night, i give back life to my own origin, and make pure and beautify it (for song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering, reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.) soon shall the winter's foil be here soon shall the winter's foil be here; soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melta little while, and air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and growtha thousand forms shall rise from these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves. thine eyes, earsall thy best attributesall that takes cognizance of natural beauty, shall wake and fill. thou shalt perceive the simple shows, the delicate miracles of earth, dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the early scents and flowers, the arbutus under foot, the willow's yellow-green, the blossoming plum and cherry; with these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songsthe flitting bluebird; for such the scenes the annual play brings on. while not the past forgetting while not the past forgetting, to-day, at least, contention sunk entirepeace, brotherhood uprisen; for sign reciprocal our northern, southern hands, lay on the graves of all dead soldiers, north or south, (nor for the past alonefor meanings to the future,) wreaths of roses and branches of palm. publish'd may 30, 1888. the dying veteran [a long island incidentearly part of the present century.] amid these days of order, ease, prosperity, amid the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum, i cast a reminiscence(likely 'twill offend you, i heard it in my boyhood;)more than a generation since, a queer old savage man, a fighter under washington himself, (large, brave, cleanly, hot-blooded, no talker, rather spiritualistic, had fought in the ranksfought well-had been all through the revolutionary war,) lay dyingsons, daughters, church-deacons, lovingly tending him, sharping their sense, their ears, towards his murmuring, half-caught words: "let me return again to my war-days, to the sights and scenesto forming the line of battle, to the scouts ahead reconnoitering, to the cannons, the grim artillery, to the galloping aids, carrying orders, to the wounded, the fallen, the heat, the suspense, the perfume strong, the smoke, the deafening noise; away with your life of peace!your joys of peace! give me my old wild battle-life again!" stronger lessons have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you? a prairie sunset shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn, the earth's whole amplitude and nature's multiform power consign'd for once to colors; the light, the general air possess'd by them-colors till now unknown, no limit, confinenot the western sky alonethe high meridian north, south, all, pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last. twenty years down on the ancient wharf, the sand, i sit, with a new-comer chatting: he shipp'd as green-hand boy, and sail'd away, (took some sudden, vehement notion;) since, twenty years and more have circled round and round, while he the globe was circling round and round, -and now returns: how changed the placeall the old land-marks gonethe parents dead; (yes, he comes back to lay in port for goodto settlehas a well-fill'd purseno do but this;) the little boat that scull'd him from the sloop, now held in leash see, i hear the slapping waves, the restless keel, the rocking in the sand, i see the sailor kit, the canvas bag, the great box bound with brass, i scan the face all berry-brown and beardedthe stout-strong frame, dress'd in its russet suit of good scotch cloth: (then what the told-out story of those twenty years? what of the future?) orange buds by mail from florida [voltaire closed a famous argument by claiming that a ship of war and the grand opera were proof's enough of civilization's and france's progress, in his day.] a lesser proof than old voltaire's, yet greater, proof of this present time, and thee, thy broad expanse, america, to my plain northern hut, in outside clouds and snow, brought safely for a thousand miles o'er land and tide, some three days since on their own soil live-sprouting, now here their sweetness through my room unfolding, a bunch of orange buds by mall from florida. twilight twilight the soft voluptuous opiate shades, the sun just gone, the eager light dispell'd(i too will soon be gone, dispell'd.) a hazenirwanarest and nightoblivion. you lingering sparse leaves of me you lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs, and i some well-shorn tree of field or orchard-row; you tokens diminute and lorn(not now the flush of may, or july clover-bloomno grain of august now;) you pallid banner-stavesyou pennants valuelessyou overstay'd of time, yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest, the faithfulesthardiestlast. not meagre, latent boughs alone not meagre, latent boughs alone, o songs! (scaly and bare, like eagles' talons,) but haply for some sunny day (who knows?) some future spring, some summerbursting forth, to verdant leaves, or sheltering shadeto nourishing fruit, apples and grapesthe stalwart limbs of trees emergingthe fresh, free, open air, and love and faith, like scented roses blooming. the dead emperor to-day, with bending head and eyes, thou, too, columbia, less for the mighty crown laid low in sorrowless for the emperor, thy true condolence breathest, sendest out o'er many a salt sea mile, mourning a good old mana faithful shepherd, patriot. publish'd march 10, 1888. as the greek's signal flame [for whitier's eightieth birthday, december 17, 1887] as the greek's signal flame, by antique records told, rose from the hill-top, like applause and glory, welcoming in fame some special veteran, hero, with rosy tinge reddening the land he'd served, so i aloft from mannahatta's ship-fringed shore, lift high a kindled brand for thee, old poet. the dismantled ship in some unused lagoon, some nameless bay, on sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor'd near the shore, an old, dismasted, gray and batter'd ship, disabled, done, after free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul'd up at last and hawser'd tight, lies rusting, mouldering. now precedent songs, farewell now precedent songs, farewellby every name farewell, (trains of a staggering line in many a strange procession, waggons, from ups and downswith intervalsfrom elder years, mid-age, or youth,) "in cabin'd ships," or "thee old cause" or "poets to come" or "paumanok," "song of myself," "calamus," or "adam," or "beat! beat! drums!" or "to the leaven'd soil they trod," or "captain! my captain!" "kosmos," "quicksand years," or "thoughts," "thou mother with thy equal brood," and many, many more unspecified, from fibre heart of minefrom throat and tongue(my life's hot pulsing blood, the personal urge and form for menot merely paper, automatic type and ink,) each song of mineeach utterance in the past-having its long, long history, of life or death, or soldier's wound, of country's loss or safety, (o heaven! what flash and started endless train of all! compared indeed to that! what wretched shred e'en at the best of all!)* *the song on this page was eked out during an afternoon, june, 1888, in my seventieth year, at a critical spell of illness. of course no reader and probably no human being at any time will ever have such phases of emotional and solemn action as these involve to me. i feel in them an end and close of all. an evening lull after a week of physical anguish, unrest and pain, and feverish heat, toward the ending day a calm and lull comes on, three hours of peace and soothing rest of brain.* *the song on this page was eked out during an afternoon, june, 1888, in my seventieth year, at a critical spell of illness. of course no reader and probably no human being at any time will ever have such phases of emotional and solemn action as these involve to me. i feel in them an end and close of all. old age's lambent peaks the touch of flamethe illuminating firethe loftiest look at last, o'er city, passion, seao'er prairie, mountain, woodthe earth itself, the airy, different, changing hues of all, in failing twilight, objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences; the calmer sightthe golden setting, clear and broad: so much i' the atmosphere, the points of view, the situations whence we scan, brought out by them aloneso much (perhaps the best) unreck'd before; the lights indeed from themold age's lambent peaks. after the supper and talk after the supper and talkafter the day is done, as a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging, good-bye and good-bye with emotional lips repeating, (so hard for his hand to release those handsno more will they meet, no more for communion of sorrow and joy, of old and young, a far-stretching journey awaits him, to return no more,) shunning, postponing severanceseeking to ward off the last word ever so little, e'en at the exit-door turningcharges superfluous calling back e'en as he descends the steps, something to eke out a minute additional-shadows of nightfall deepening, farewells, messages lesseningdimmer the forthgoer's visage and form, soon to be lost for aye in the darknessloth, o so loth to depart! garrulous to the very last. preface note to 2d annex concluding l. of g. 1891. had i not better withhold (in this old age and paralysis of me) such little tags and fringe-dots (maybe specks, stains,) as follow a long dusty journey, and witness it afterward? i have probably not been enough afraid of careless touches, from the firstand am not nownor of parrot-like repetitionsnor platitudes and the commonplace. perhaps i am too democratic for such avoidances. besides, is not the verse-field, as originally plann'd by my theory, now sufficiently illustratedand full time for me to silently retire?(indeed amid no loud call or market for my sort of poetic utterance.) in answer, or rather defiance, to that kind of well-put interrogation, here comes this little cluster, and conclusion of my preceding clusters. though not at all clear that, as here collated, it is worth printing (certainly i have nothing fresh to write)i while away the hours of my 72d yearhours of forced confinement in my denby putting in shape this small old age collation: last droplets of and after spontaneous rain, from many limpid distillations and past showers; (will they germinate anything? mere exhalations as they all are the land's and sea's-america's; will they filter to any deep emotion? any heart and brain?) however that may be, i feel like improving to-day's opportunity and wind up. during the last two years i have sent out, in the lulls of illness and exhaustion, certain chirpslingering-dying ones probably (undoubtedly)which now i may as well gather and put in fair type while able to see correctly(for my eyes plainly warn me they are dimming, and my brain more and more palpably neglects or refuses, month after month, even slight tasks or revisions.) in fact, here i am these current years 1890 and '91, (each successive fortnight getting stiffer and stuck deeper) much like some hard-cased dilapidated grim ancient shell-fish or time-bang'd conch (no legs, utterly non-locomotive) cast up high and dry on the shore-sands, helpless to move anywherenothing left but behave myself quiet, and while away the days yet assign'd, and discover if there is anything for the said grim and time-bang'd conch to be got at last out of inherited good spirits and primal buoyant centre-pulses down there deep somewhere within his gray-blurr'd old shell...........(reader, you must allow a little fun herefor one reason there are too many of the following poemets about death, &c., and for another the passing hours (july 5, 1890) are so sunny-fine. and old as i am feel to-day almost a part of some frolicsome wave, or for sporting yet like a kid or kittenprobably a streak of physical adjustment and perfection here and now. i believe i have it in me perennially anyhow.) then behind all, the deep-down consolation (it is a glum one, but i dare not be sorry for the fact of it in the past, nor refrain from dwelling, even vaunting here at the end) that this late-years palsied old shorn and shell-fish condition of me is the indubitable outcome and growth, now near for 20 years along, of too overzealous, over-continued bodily and emotional excitement and action through the times of 1862, '3, '4 and '5, visiting and waiting on wounded and sick army volunteers, both sides, in campaigns or contests, or after them, or in hospitals or fields south of washington city, or in that place and elsewherethose hot, sad, wrenching timesthe army volunteers, all states, -or north or souththe wounded, suffering, dyingthe exhausting, sweating summers, marches, battles, carnagethose trenches hurriedly heap'd by the corpse-thousands, mainly unknownwill the america of the future -will this vast rich union ever realize what itself cost, back there after all? -those hecatombs of battle-deathsthose times of which, o far-off reader, this whole book is indeed finally but a reminiscent memorial from thence by me to you? sail out for good, eidolon yacht! heave the anchor short! raise main-sail and jibsteer forth, o little white-hull'd sloop, now speed on really deep waters, (i will not call it our concluding voyage, but outset and sure entrance to the truest, best, maturest;) depart, depart from solid earthno more returning to these shores, now on for aye our infinite free venture wending, spurning all yet tried ports, seas, hawsers, densities, gravitation, sail out for good, eidolon yacht of me! lingering last drops and whence and why come you? we know not whence, (was the answer,) we only know that we drift here with the rest, that we linger'd and lagg'dbut were waited at last, and are now here, to make the passing shower's concluding drops. good-bye my fancy good-bye* my fancy(i had a word to say, but 'tis not quite the timethe best of any man's word or say, is when its proper place arrivesand for its meaning, i keep mine till the last.) *behind a good-bye there lurks much of the salutation of another beginningto me, development continuity, immortality, transformation, are the chiefest life-meanings of nature and humanity, and are the sine qua non of all facts, and each fact. why do folks dwell so fondly on the last words, advice, appearance, of the departing? those last words are not samples of the best, which involve vitality at its full, and balance, and perfect control and scope. but they are valuable beyond measure to confirm and endorse the varied train, facts, theories and faith of the whole preceding life. on, on the same, ye jocund twain! on, on the same, ye jocund twain! my life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age years, fitful as motley-tongues of flame, inseparably twined and merged in onecombining all, my single soulaims, confirmations, failures, joysnor single soul alone, i chant my nation's crucial stage, (america's, haply humanity's) the trial great, the victory great, a strange eclaircissement of all the masses past, the eastern world, the ancient, medieval, here, here from wanderings, strayings, lessons, wars, defeatshere at the west a voice triumphantjustifying all, a gladsome pealing crya song for once of utmost pride and satisfaction; i chant from it the common bulk, the general average horde, (the best sooner than the worst)and now i chant old age, (my verses, written first for forenoon life, and for the summer's, autumn's spread, i pass to snow-white hairs the same, and give to pulses winter-cool'd the same;) as here in careless trill, i and my recitatives, with faith and love, waiting to other work, to unknown songs, conditions, on, on ye jocund twain! continue on the same! my 71st year after surmounting three-score and ten, with all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows, my parents' deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing passions of me, the war of '63 and '4, as some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or haply after battle, to-day at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call, here, with vital voice, reporting yet, saluting yet the officer over all. apparitions a vague mist hanging 'round half the pages: (sometimes how strange and clear to the soul, that all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts, non-realities.) the pallid wreath somehow i cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is, let it remain back there on its nail suspended, with pink, blue, yellow, all blanch'd, and the white now gray and ashy, one wither'd rose put years ago for thee, dear friend; but i do not forget thee. hast thou then faded? is the odor exhaled? are the colors, vitalities, dead? no, while memories subtly playthe past vivid as ever; for but last night i woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee, thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever: so let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach, it is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid. an ended day the soothing sanity and blitheness of completion, the pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done; now triumph! transformation! jubilate!* *note.summer country life.several years.in my rambles and explorations i found a woody place near the creek, where for some reason the birds in happy mood seem'd to resort in unusual numbers. especially at the beginning of the day, and again at the ending, i was sure to get there the most copious bird-concerts. i repair'd there frequently at sunrise-and also at sunset, or just before... once the question arose in me: which is the best singing, the first or the lattermost? the first always exhilarated, and perhaps seem'd more joyous and stronger; but i always felt the sunset or late afternoon sounds more penetrating and sweeterseem'd to touch the souloften the evening thrushes, two or three of them, responding and perhaps blending. though i miss'd some of the mornings, i found myself getting to be quite strictly punctual at the evening utterances. another note."he went out with the tide and the sunset," was a phrase i heard from a surgeon describing an old sailor's death under peculiarly gentle conditions. during the secession war, 1863 and '4, visiting the army hospitals around washington, d.c., i form'd the habit, and continued it to the end, whenever the ebb or flood tide began the latter part of day, of punctually visiting those at that time populous wards of suffering men. somehow (or i thought so) the effect of the hour was palpable. the badly wounded would get some ease, and would like to talk a little, or be talk'd to. intellectual and emotional natures would be at their best: deaths were always easier; medicines seem'd to have better effect when given then, and a lulling atmosphere would pervade the wards. similar influences, similar circumstances and hours, day-close, after great battles, even with all their horrors. i had more than once the same experience on the fields cover'd with fallen or dead. old, age ship & crafty death's from east and west across the horizon's edge, two mighty masterful vessels sailers steal upon us: but we'll make race a-time upon the seasa battle-contest yet! bear lively there! (our joys of strife and derring-do to the last!) put on the old ship all her power to-day! crowd top-sail, top-gallant and royal studding-sails, out challenge and defianceflags and flaunting pennants added, as we take to the opentake to the deepest, freest waters. to the pending year have i no weapon-word for theesome message brief and fierce? (have i fought out and done indeed the battle?) is there no shot left, for all thy affectations, lisps, scorns, manifold silliness? nor for myselfmy own rebellious self in thee? down, down, proud gorge!though choking thee; thy bearded throat and high-borne forehead to the gutter; crouch low thy neck to eleemosynary gifts. shakspere-bacon's cipher i doubt it notthen more, far more; in each old song bequeath'din every noble page or text, (differentsomething unreck'd beforesome unsuspected author,) in every object, mountain, tree, and starin every birth and life, as part of eachevolv'd from eachmeaning, behind the ostent, a mystic cipher waits infolded. long, long hence after a long, long course, hundreds of years, denials, accumulations, rous'd love and joy and thought, hopes, wishes, aspirations, ponderings, victories, myriads of readers, coating, compassing, coveringafter ages' and ages' encrustations, then only may these songs reach fruition. bravo, paris exposition! add to your show, before you close it, france, with all the rest, visible, concrete, temples, towers, goods, machines and ores, our sentiment waited from many million heart-throbs, ethereal but solid, (we grand-sons and great-grandsons do not forget your grandsires,) from fifty nations and nebulous nations, compacted, sent oversea to-day, america's applause, love, memories and good-will. interpolation sounds [general philip sheridan was buried at the cathedral, washington, august, 1888, with all the pomp, music and ceremonies of the roman catholic service.] over and through the burial chant, organ and solemn service, sermon, bending priests, to me come interpolation sounds not in the showplainly to me, crowding up the aisle and from the window, of sudden battle's hurry and harsh noiseswar's grim game to sight and ear in earnest; the scout call'd up and forwardthe general mounted and his aids around himthe new-brought wordthe instantaneous order issued; the rifle crackthe cannon thudthe rushing forth men from their tents; the clank of cavalrythe strange celerity of forming ranksthe slender bugle note; the sound of horses' hoofs departingsaddles, arms, accoutrements.* *note.camden, n.j., august 7, 1888.walt whitman asks the new york herald "to add his tribute to sheridan:" "in the grand constellation of five or six names, under lincoln's presidency, that history will bear for ages in her firmament as marking the last life-throbs of secession, and beaming on its dying gasps, sheridan's will be bright. one consideration soldier's example as it passes my mind, is worth taking notice of. if the war had continued any long time these states, in my opinion, would have shown and proved the most conclusive military talents ever evinced by any nation on earth. that they possess'd a rank and file ahead of all other known in points of quality and limitlessness of number are easily admitted. but we have, too, the eligibility of organizing, handling and officering equal to the other. these two, with modern arms, transportation, and inventive american genius, would make the united states, with earnestness, not only able to stand the whole world, but conquer that world united against us." to the sun-set breeze ah, whispering, something again, unseen, where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door, thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat; thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better than talk, book, art, (thou hast, o nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond the rest -and this is of them,) so sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within-thy soothing fingers my face and hands, thou, messenger-magical strange bringer to body and spirit of me, (distances balk'doccult medicines penetrating me from head to foot,) i feel the sky, the prairies vasti feel the mighty northern lakes, i feel the ocean and the forest-somehow i feel the globe itself swift-swimming in space; thou blown from lips so loved, now gonehaply from endless store, god-sent, (for thou art spiritual, godly, most of all known to my sense,) minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told, and cannot tell, art thou not universal concrete's distillation? law's, all astronomy's last refinement? hast thou no soul? can i not know, identify thee? old chants an ancient song, reciting, ending, once gazing toward thee, mother of all, musing, seeking themes fitted for thee, accept me, thou saidst, the elder ballads, and name for me before thou goest each ancient poet. (of many debts incalculable, haply our new world's chieftest debt is to old poems.) ever so far back, preluding thee, america, old chants, egyptian priests, and those of ethiopia, the hindu epics, the grecian, chinese, persian, the biblic books and prophets, and deep idyls of the nazarene, the iliad, odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of eneas, hesiod, eschylus, sophocles, merlin, arthur, the cid, roland at roncesvalles, the nibelungen, the troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, skalds, chaucer, dante, flocks of singing birds, the border minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays, plays, shakespere, schiller, walter scott, 'tennyson, as some vast wondrous weird dream-presences, the great shadowy groups gathering around, darting their mighty masterful eyes forward at thee, thou! with as now thy bending neck and head, with courteous hand and word, ascending, thou! pausing a moment, drooping thine eyes upon them, blent with their music, well pleased, accepting all, curiously prepared for by them, thou enterest at thy entrance porch. a christmas greeting from a northern star-group to a southern. 1889-'90 welcome, brazilian brotherthy ample place is ready; a loving handa smile from the northa sunny instant hall! (let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles, impedimentas, ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the acceptance and the faith;) to thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neckto thee from us the expectant eye, thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning well, the true lesson of a nation's light in the sky, (more shining than the cross, more than the crown,) the height to be superb humanity. sounds of the winter sounds of the winter too, sunshine upon the mountainsmany a distant strain from cheery railroad trainfrom nearer field, barn, house, the whispering aireven the mute crops, garner'd apples, corn, children's and women's tonesrhythm of many a farmer and of flail, an old man's garrulous lips among the rest, think not we give out yet, forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt. a twilight song as i sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame, musing on long-pass'd war-scenesof the countless buried unknown soldiers, of the vacant names, as unindented air's and sea'sthe unreturn'd, the brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the deep-fill'd trenches of gather'd from dead all america, north, south, east, west, whence they came up, from wooded maine, new-england's farms, from fertile pennsylvania, illinois, ohio, from the measureless west, virginia, the south, the carolinas, texas, (even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noiseless flickering flames, again i see the stalwart ranks on-filing, risingi hear the rhythmic tramp of the armies;) you million unwrit names all, allyou dark bequest from all the war, a special verse for you-a flash of duty long neglectedyour mystic roll strangely gather'd here, each name recall'd by me from out the darkness and death's ashes, henceforth to be, deep, deep within my heart recording, for many future year, your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or north or south, embalm'd with love in this twilight song. when the full-grown poet came when the full-grown poet came, out spake pleased nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying, he is mine; but out spake too the soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled, nay he is mine alone; -then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand; and to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands, which he will never release until he reconciles the two, and wholly and joyously blends them. osceola [when i was nearly grown to manhood in brooklyn, new york, (middle of 1838,) i met one of the return'd u. s. marines from fort moultrie, s.c., and had long talks with himlearn'd the occurrence below describeddeath of osceola. the latter was a young, brave, leading seminole in the florida war of that timewas surrender'd to our troops, imprison'd and literally died of "a broken heart," at fort moultrie. he sicken'd of his confinement-the doctor and officers made every allowance and kindness possible for him; then the close:] when his hour for death had come, he slowly rais'd himself from the bed on the floor, drew on his war-dress, shirt, leggings, and girdled the belt around his waist, call'd for vermilion paint (his looking-glass was held before him,) painted half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands. put the scalp-knife carefully in his beltthen lying down, resting moment, rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand to each and all, sank faintly low to the floor (tightly grasping the tomahawk handle,) fix'd his look on wife and little children-the last: (and here a line in memory of his name and death.) a voice from death (the johnstown, penn., cataclysm, may 31, 1889.) a voice from death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and power, with sudden, indescribable blowtowns drown'dhumanity by thousands slain, the vaunted work of thrift, goods, dwellings, forge, street, iron bridge, dash'd pell-mell by the blowyet usher'd life continuing on, (amid the rest, amid the rushing, whirling, wild debris, a suffering woman saveda baby safely born!) although i come and unannounc'd, in horror and in pang, in pouring flood and fire, and wholesale elemental crash, (this voice so solemn, strange,) i too a minister of deity. yea, death, we bow our faces, veil our eyes to thee, we mourn the old, the young untimely drawn to thee, the fair, the strong, the good, the capable, the household wreck'd, the husband and the wife, the engulfed forger in his forge, the corpses in the whelming waters and the mud, the gather'd thousands to their funeral mounds, and thousands never found or gather'd. then after burying, mourning the dead, (faithful to them found or unfound, forgetting not, bearing the past, here new musing,) a daya passing moment or an houramerica itself bends low, silent, resign'd, submissive. war, death, cataclysm like this, america, take deep to thy proud prosperous heart. e'en as i chant, lo! out of death, and out of ooze and slime, the blossoms rapidly blooming, sympathy, help, love, from west and east, from south and north and over sea, its hot-spurr'd hearts and hands humanity to human aid moves on; and from within a thought and lesson yet. thou ever-darting globe! through space and air! thou waters that encompass us! thou that in all the life and death of us, in action or in sleep! thou laws invisible that permeate them and all, thou that in all, and over all, and through and under all, incessant! thou! thou! the vital, universal, giant force resistless, sleepless, calm, holding humanity as in thy open hand, as some ephemeral toy, how ill to e'er forget thee! for i too have forgotten, (wrapt in these little potencies of progress, politics, culture, wealth, inventions, civilization,) have lost my recognition of your silent ever-swaying power, ye mighty, elemental throes, in which and upon which we float, and every one of us is buoy'd. a persian lesson for his o'erarching and last lesson the greybeard sufi, in the fresh scent of the morning in the open air, on the slope of a teeming persian rose-garden, under an ancient chestnut-tree wide spreading its branches, spoke to the young priests and students. "finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest, allah is all, all,allimmanent in every life and object, may-be at many and many-a-more removesyet allah, allah, allah is there. "has the estray wander'd far? is the reasonwhy strangely hidden? would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world? would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur of every life; the something never still'dnever entirely gone? the invisible need of every seed? "it is the central urge in every atom, (often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,) to return to its divine source and origin, however distant, latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception." the commonplace the commonplace i sing; how cheap is health! how cheap nobility! abstinence, no falsehood, no gluttony, lust; the open air i sing, freedom, toleration, (take here the mainest lessonless from booksless from the schools,) the common day and nightthe common earth and waters, your farmyour work, trade, occupation, the democratic wisdom underneath, like solid ground for all. "the rounded catalogue divine complete" [sunday---went this forenoon to church. a college professor, rev. dr.--, gave us a fine sermon, during which i caught the above words; but the minister included in his "rounded catalogue" letter and spirit, only the esthetic things, and entirely ignored what i name in the following:] the devilish and the dark, the dying and diseas'd, the countless (nineteen-twentieths) low and evil, crude and savage, the crazed, prisoners in jail, the horrible, rank, malignant, venom and filth, serpents, the ravenous sharks, liars, the dissolute; (what is the part the wicked and the loathesome bear within earth's orbic scheme?) newts, crawling things in slime and mud, poisons, the barren soil, the evil men, the slag and hideous rot. mirages (noted verbatin after a supper-talk outdoors in nevada with two old miners.) more experiences and sights, stranger, than you'd think for; times again, now mostly just after sunrise or before sunset, sometimes in spring, oftener in autumn, perfectly clear weather, in plain sight, camps far or near, the crowded streets of cities and the shopfronts, (account for it or notcredit or notit is all true, and my mate there could tell you the likewe have often confab'd about it,) people and scenes, animals, trees, colors and lines, plain as could be, farms and dooryards of home, paths border'd with box, lilacs in corners, weddings in churches, thanksgiving dinners, returns of long-absent sons, glum funerals, the crape-veil'd mother and the daughters, trials in courts, jury and judge, the accused in the box, contestants, battles, crowds, bridges, wharves, now and then mark'd faces of sorrow or joy, (i could pick them out this moment if i saw them again,) show'd to me-just to the right in the sky-edge, or plainly there to the left on the hill-tops. l. of g.'s purport not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their formidable masses (even to expose them,) but add, fuse, complete, extendand celebrate the immortal and the good. haughty this song, its words and scope, to span vast realms of space and time, evolutionthe cumulativegrowths and generations. begun in ripen'd youth and steadily pursued, wandering, peering, dallying with allwar, peace, day and night absorbing, never even for one brief hour abandoning my task, i end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age. i sing of life, yet mind me well of death: to-day shadowy death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and has for years draws sometimes close to me, as face to face. the unexpress'd how dare one say it? after the cycles, poems, singers, plays, vaunted ionia's, india'shomer, shaksperethe long, long times' thick dotted roads, areas, the shining clusters and the milky ways of starsnature's pulses reap'd, all retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration, all ages' plummets dropt to their utmost depths, all human lives, throats, wishes, brainsall experiences' utterance; after the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands, still something not yet told in poesy's voice or printsomething lacking, (who knows? the best yet unexpress'd and lacking.) grand is the seen grand is the seen, the light, to megrand are the sky and stars, grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space, and grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary; but grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those, lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea, (what were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what amount without thee?) more evolutionary, vast, puzzling, o my soul! more multiform farmore lasting thou than they. unseen buds unseen buds, infinite, hidden well, under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or cubic inch, germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn, like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping; billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them waiting, (on earth and in the seathe universethe stars there in the heavens,) urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless, and waiting ever more, forever more behind. good-bye my fancy! good-bye my fancy! farewell dear mate, dear love! i'm going away, i know not where, or to what fortune, or whether i may ever see you again, so good-bye my fancy. now for my lastlet me look back a moment; the slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me, exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping. long have we lived, joy'd, caress'd together; delightful!now separationgood-bye my fancy. yet let me not be too hasty, long indeed have we lived, slept, filter'd, become really blended into one; then if we die we die together, (yes, we'll remain one,) if we go anywhere we'll go together to meet what happens, may-be we'll be better off and blither, and learn something, may-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who knows?) may-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning-so now finally, good-bye-and hail! my fancy. the end . 1850 the business man by edgar allan poe method is the soul of business. old saying. i am a business man. i am a methodical man. method is the thing, after all. but there are no people i more heartily despise than your eccentric fools who prate about method without understanding it; attending strictly to its letter, and violating its spirit. these fellows are always doing the most out-of-the-way things in what they call an orderly manner. now here, i conceive, is a positive paradox. true method appertains to the ordinary and the obvious alone, and cannot be applied to the outre. what definite idea can a body attach to such expressions as "methodical jack o' dandy," or "a systematical will o' the wisp"? my notions upon this head might not have been so clear as they are, but for a fortunate accident which happened to me when i was a very little boy. a good-hearted old irish nurse (whom i shall not forget in my will) took me up one day by the heels, when i was making more noise than was necessary, and swinging me round two or knocked my head into a cocked hat against the bedpost. this, i say, decided my fate, and made my fortune. a bump arose at once on my sinciput, and turned out to be as pretty an organ of order as one shall see on a summer's day. hence that positive appetite for system and regularity which has made me the distinguished man of business that i am. if there is any thing on earth i hate, it is a genius. your geniuses are all arrant assesthe greater the genius the greater the assand to this rule there is no exception whatever. especially, you cannot make a man of business out of a genius, any more than money out of a jew, or the best nutmegs out of pine-knots. the creatures are always going off at a tangent into some fantastic employment, or ridiculous speculation, entirely at variance with the "fitness of things," and having no business whatever to be considered as a business at all. thus you may tell these characters immediately by the nature of their occupations. if you ever perceive a man setting up as a merchant or a manufacturer, or going into the cotton or tobacco trade, or any of those eccentric pursuits; or getting to be a drygoods dealer, or soap-boiler, or something of that kind; or pretending to be a lawyer, or a blacksmith, or a physicianany thing out of the usual wayyou may set him down at once as a genius, and then, according to the rule-of-three, he's an ass. now i am not in any respect a genius, but a regular business man. my day-book and ledger will evince this in a minute. they are well kept, though i say it myself; and, in my general habits of accuracy and punctuality, i am not to be beat by a clock. moreover, my occupations have been always made to chime in with the ordinary habitudes of my fellowmen. not that i feel the least indebted, upon this score, to my exceedingly weak-minded parents, who, beyond doubt, would have made an arrant genius of me at last, if my guardian angel had not come, in good time, to the rescue. in biography the truth is every thing, and in autobiography it is especially soyet i scarcely hope to be believed when i state, however solemnly, that my poor father put me, when i was about fifteen years of age, into the counting-house of what be termed "a respectable hardware and commission merchant doing a capital bit of business!" a capital bit of fiddlestick! however, the consequence of this folly was, that in two or three days, i had to be sent home to my button-headed family in a high state of fever, and with a most violent and dangerous pain in the sinciput, all around about my organ of order. it was nearly a gone case with me thenjust touch-and-go for six weeksthe physicians giving me up and all that sort of thing. but, although i suffered much, i was a thankful boy in the main. i was saved from being a "respectable hardware and commission merchant, doing a capital bit of business," and i felt grateful to the protuberance which had been the means of my salvation, as well as to the kindhearted female who had originally put these means within my reach. the most of boys run away from home at ten or twelve years of age, but i waited till i was sixteen. i don't know that i should have gone even then, if i had not happened to hear my old mother talk about setting me up on my own hook in the grocery way. the grocery way!only think of that! i resolved to be off forthwith, and try and establish myself in some decent occupation, without dancing attendance any longer upon the caprices of these eccentric old people, and running the risk of being made a genius of in the end. in this project i succeeded perfectly well at the first effort, and by the time i was fairly eighteen, found myself doing an extensive and profitable business in the tailor's walking-advertisement line. i was enabled to discharge the onerous duties of this profession, only by that rigid adherence to system which formed the leading feature of my mind. a scrupulous method characterized my actions as well as my accounts. in my case it was methodnot moneywhich made the man: at least all of him that was not made by the tailor whom i served. at nine, every morning, i called upon that individual for the clothes of the day. ten o'clock found me in some fashionable promenade or other place of public amusement. the precise regularity with which i turned my handsome person about, so as to bring successively into view every portion of the suit upon my back, was the admiration of all the knowing men in the trade. noon never passed without my bringing home a customer to the house of my employers, messrs. cut & comeagain. i say this proudly, but with tears in my eyesfor the firm proved themselves the basest of ingrates. the little account, about which we quarreled and finally parted, cannot, in any item, be thought overcharged, by gentlemen really conversant with the nature of the business. upon this point, however, i feel a degree of proud satisfaction in permitting the reader to judge for himself. my bill ran thus: messrs. cut & comeagain, merchant tailors. to peter proffit, walking advertiser, drs. july 10.to promenade, as usual and customer brought home... $00 25 july 11.to do do do 25 july 12.to one lie, second class; damaged black cloth sold for invisible green............................................... 25 july 13.to one lie, first class, extra quality and size; recommended milled satinet as broadcloth...................... 75 july 20.to purchasing bran new paper shirt collar or dickey, to set off gray petersham..................................... 02 aug. 15.to wearing double-padded bobtail frock, (thermometer 106 in the shade)............................................. 25 aug. 16.standing on one leg three hours, to show off new-style strapped pants at 12 1/2 cents per leg per hour............. 37 1/2 aug. 17.to promenade, as usual, and large customer brought (fat man)..................................................... 50 aug. 18.to do do (medium size)................. 25 aug. 19.to do do (small man and bad pay)....... 06 total [sic] $2 96 1/2 the item chiefly disputed in this bill was the very moderate charge of two pennies for the dickey. upon my word of honor, this was not an unreasonable price for that dickey. it was one of the cleanest and prettiest little dickeys i ever saw; and i have good reason to believe that it effected the sale of three petershams. the elder partner of the firm, however, would allow me only one penny of the charge, and took it upon himself to show in what manner four of the same sized conveniences could be got out of a sheet of foolscap. but it is needless to say that i stood upon the principle of the thing. business is business, and should be done in a business way. there was no system whatever in swindling me out of a pennya clear fraud of fifty per centno method in any respect. i left at once the employment of messrs. cut & comeagain, and set up in the eye-sore line by myselfone of the most lucrative, respectable, and independent of the ordinary occupations. my strict integrity, economy, and rigorous business habits, here again came into play. i found myself driving a flourishing trade, and soon became a marked man upon 'change. the truth is, i never dabbled in flashy matters, but jogged on in the good old sober routine of the callinga calling in which i should, no doubt, have remained to the present hour, but for a little accident which happened to me in the prosecution of one of the usual business operations of the profession. whenever a rich old hunks or prodigal heir or bankrupt corporation gets into the notion of putting up a palace, there is no such thing in the world as stopping either of them, and this every intelligent person knows. the fact in question is indeed the basis of the eye-sore trade. as soon, therefore, as a building-project is fairly afoot by one of these parties, we merchants secure a nice corner of the lot in contemplation, or a prime little situation just adjoining, or tight in front. this done, we wait until the palace is half-way up, and then we pay some tasty architect to run us up an ornamental mud hovel, right against it; or a down-east or dutch pagoda, or a pig-sty, or an ingenious little bit of fancy work, either esquimau, kickapoo, or hottentot. of course we can't afford to take these structures down under a bonus of five hundred per cent upon the prime cost of our lot and plaster. can we? i ask the question. i ask it of business men. it would be irrational to suppose that we can. and yet there was a rascally corporation which asked me to do this very thingthis very thing! i did not reply to their absurd proposition, of course; but i felt it a duty to go that same night, and lamp-black the whole of their palace. for this the unreasonable villains clapped me into jail; and the gentlemen of the eye-sore trade could not well avoid cutting my connection when i came out. the assault-and-battery business, into which i was now forced to adventure for a livelihood, was somewhat ill-adapted to the delicate nature of my constitution; but i went to work in it with a good heart, and found my account here, as heretofore, in those stern habits of methodical accuracy which had been thumped into me by that delightful old nursei would indeed be the basest of men not to remember her well in my will. by observing, as i say, the strictest system in all my dealings, and keeping a well-regulated set of books, i was enabled to get over many serious difficulties, and, in the end, to establish myself very decently in the profession. the truth is, that few individuals, in any line, did a snugger little business than i. i will just copy a page or so out of my day-book; and this will save me the necessity of blowing my own trumpeta contemptible practice of which no high-minded man will be guilty. now, the day-book is a thing that don't lie. "jan. 1.new year's day. met snap in the street, groggy. memhe'll do. met gruff shortly afterward, blind drunk. memhe'll answer, too. entered both gentlemen in my ledger, and opened a running account with each. "jan. 2.saw snap at the exchange, and went up and trod on his toe. doubled his fist and knocked me down. good!got up again. some trifling difficulty with bag, my attorney. i want the damages at a thousand, but he says that for so simple a knock down we can't lay them at more than five hundred. memmust get rid of bagno system at all. "jan. 3went to the theatre, to look for gruff. saw him sitting in a side box, in the second tier, between a fat lady and a lean one. quizzed the whole party through an opera-glass, till i saw the fat lady blush and whisper to g. went round, then, into the box, and put my nose within reach of his hand. wouldn't pull itno go. blew it, and tried againno go. sat down then, and winked at the lean lady, when i had the high satisfaction of finding him lift me up by the nape of the neck, and fling me over into the pit. neck dislocated, and right leg capitally splintered. went home in high glee, drank a bottle of champagne, and booked the young man for five thousand. bag says it'll do. "feb. 15compromised the case of mr. snap. amount entered in journalfifty centswhich see. "feb. 16.cast by that ruffian, gruff, who made me a present of five dollars. costs of suit, four dollars and twenty-five cents. nett profit,see journal,seventy-five cents." now, here is a clear gain, in a very brief period, of no less than one dollar and twenty-five centsthis is in the mere cases of snap and gruff; and i solemnly assure the reader that these extracts are taken at random from my day-book. it's an old saying, and a true one, however, that money is nothing in comparison with health. i found the exactions of the profession somewhat too much for my delicate state of body; and, discovering, at last, that i was knocked all out of shape, so that i didn't know very well what to make of the matter, and so that my friends, when they met me in the street, couldn't tell that i was peter proffit at all, it occurred to me that the best expedient i could adopt was to alter my line of business. i turned my attention, therefore, to mud-dabbling, and continued it for some years. the worst of this occupation is, that too many people take a fancy to it, and the competition is in consequence excessive. every ignoramus of a fellow who finds that he hasn't brains in sufficient quantity to make his way as a walking advertiser, or an eye-sore prig, or a salt-and-batter man, thinks, of course, that he'll answer very well as a dabbler of mud. but there never was entertained a more erroneous idea than that it requires no brains to mud-dabble. especially, there is nothing to be made in this way without method. i did only a retail business myself, but my old habits of system carried me swimmingly along. i selected my street-crossing, in the first place, with great deliberation, and i never put down a broom in any part of the town but that. i took care, too, to have a nice little puddle at hand, which i could get at in a minute. by these means i got to be well known as a man to be trusted; and this is one-half the battle, let me tell you, in trade. nobody ever failed to pitch me a copper, and got over my crossing with a clean pair of pantaloons. and, as my business habits, in this respect, were sufficiently understood, i never met with any attempt at imposition. i wouldn't have put up with it, if i had. never imposing upon any one myself, i suffered no one to play the possum with me. the frauds of the banks of course i couldn't help. their suspension put me to ruinous inconvenience. these, however, are not individuals, but corporations; and corporations, it is very well known, have neither bodies to be kicked nor souls to be damned. i was making money at this business when, in an evil moment, i was induced to merge it in the cur-spatteringa somewhat analogous, but, by no means, so respectable a profession. my location, to be sure, was an excellent one, being central, and i had capital blacking and brushes. my little dog, too, was quite fat and up to all varieties of snuff. he had been in the trade a long time, and, i may say, understood it. our general routine was this:pompey, having rolled himself well in the mud, sat upon end at the shop door, until he observed a dandy approaching in bright boots. he then proceeded to meet him, and gave the wellingtons a rub or two with his wool. then the dandy swore very much, and looked about for a boot-black. there i was, full in his view, with blacking and brushes. it was only a minute's work, and then came a sixpence. this did moderately well for a time;in fact, i was not avaricious, but my dog was. i allowed him a third of the profit, but he was advised to insist upon half. this i couldn't standso we quarrelled and parted. i next tried my hand at the organ-grinding for a while, and may say that i made out pretty well. it is a plain, straightforward business, and requires no particular abilities. you can get a music-mill for a mere song, and to put it in order, you have but to open the works, and give them three or four smart raps with a hammer. in improves the tone of the thing, for business purposes, more than you can imagine. this done, you have only to stroll along, with the mill on your back, until you see tanbark in the street, and a knocker wrapped up in buckskin. then you stop and grind; looking as if you meant to stop and grind till doomsday. presently a window opens, and somebody pitches you a sixpence, with a request to "hush up and go on," etc. i am aware that some grinders have actually afforded to "go on" for this sum; but for my part, i found the necessary outlay of capital too great to permit of my "going on" under a shilling. at this occupation i did a good deal; but, somehow, i was not quite satisfied, and so finally abandoned it. the truth is, i labored under the disadvantage of having no monkeyand american streets are so muddy, and a democratic rabble is so obstrusive, and so full of demnition mischievous little boys. i was now out of employment for some months, but at length succeeded, by dint of great interest, in procuring a situation in the sham-post. the duties, here, are simple, and not altogether unprofitable. for example:very early in the morning i had to make up my packet of sham letters. upon the inside of each of these i had to scrawl a few lines on any subject which occurred to me as sufficiently mysterioussigning all the epistles tom dobson, or bobby tompkins, or anything in that way. having folded and sealed all, and stamped them with sham postmarksnew orleans, bengal, botany bay, or any other place a great way offi set out, forthwith, upon my daily route, as if in a very great hurry. i always called at the big houses to deliver the letters, and receive the postage. nobody hesitates at paying for a letterespecially for a double onepeople are such foolsand it was no trouble to get round a corner before there was time to open the epistles. the worst of this profession was, that i had to walk so much and so fast; and so frequently to vary my route. besides, i had serious scruples of conscience. i can't bear to hear innocent individuals abusedand the way the whole town took to cursing tom dobson and bobby tompkins was really awful to hear. i washed my hands of the matter in disgust. my eighth and last speculation has been in the cat-growing way. i have found that a most pleasant and lucrative business, and, really, no trouble at all. the country, it is well known, has become infested with catsso much so of late, that a petition for relief, most numerously and respectably signed, was brought before the legislature at its late memorable session. the assembly, at this epoch, was unusually well-informed, and, having passed many other wise and wholesome enactments, it crowned all with the cat-act. in its original form, this law offered a premium for cat-heads (fourpence a-piece), but the senate succeeded in amending the main clause, so as to substitute the word "tails" for "heads." this amendment was so obviously proper, that the house concurred in it nem. con. as soon as the governor had signed the bill, i invested my whole estate in the purchase of toms and tabbies. at first i could only afford to feed them upon mice (which are cheap), but they fulfilled the scriptural injunction at so marvellous a rate, that i at length considered it my best policy to be liberal, and so indulged them in oysters and turtle. their tails, at a legislative price, now bring me in a good income; for i have discovered a way, in which, by means of macassar oil, i can force three crops in a year. it delights me to find, too, that the animals soon get accustomed to the thing, and would rather have the appendages cut off than otherwise. i consider myself, therefore, a made man, and am bargaining for a country seat on the hudson. the end . 1841 the murders in the rue morgue by edgar allan poe the murders in the rue morgue what song the syrens sang, or what name achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions are not beyond all conjecture. --sir thomas browne, urn-burial. the mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. we appreciate them only in their effects. we know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. as the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. he derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talents into play. he is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. his results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition. the faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. yet to calculate is not in itself to analyze. a chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. it follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. i am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; i will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. in this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. the attention is here called powerfully into play. if it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed, resulting in injury or defeat. the possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. in draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. to be less abstract --let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. it is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherche movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation. whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed the calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous. beyond doubt there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. the best chess-player in christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind. when i say proficiency, i mean that perfection in the game which includes a comprehension of all the sources whence legitimate advantage may be derived. these are not only manifold but multiform, and lie frequently among recesses of thought altogether inaccessible to the ordinary understanding. to observe attentively is to remember distinctly; and, so far, the concentrative chess-player will do very well at whist; while the rules of hoyle (themselves based upon the mere mechanism of the game) are sufficiently and generally comprehensible. thus to have a retentive memory, and to proceed by "the book," are points commonly regarded as the sum total of good playing. but it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced. he makes, in silence, a host of observations and inferences. so, perhaps, do his companions; and the difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation. the necessary knowledge is that of what to observe. our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the object, does he reject deductions from things external to the game. he examines the countenance of his partner, comparing it carefully with that of each of his opponents. he considers the mode of assorting the cards in each hand; often counting trump by trump, and honor by honor, through the glances bestowed by their holders upon each. he notes every variation of face as the play progresses, gathering a fund of thought from the differences in the expression of certainty, of surprise, of triumph, or chagrin. from the manner of gathering up a trick he judges whether the person taking it can make another in the suit. he recognizes what is played through feint, by the air with which it is thrown upon the table. a casual or inadvertent word; the accidental dropping or turning of a card, with the accompanying anxiety or carelessness in regard to its concealment; the counting of the tricks, with the order of their arrangement; embarrassment, hesitation, eagerness or trepidation --all afford, to his apparently intuitive perception, indications of the true state of affairs. the first two or three rounds having been played, he is in full possession of the contents of each hand, and thenceforward puts down his cards with as absolute a precision of purpose as if the rest of the party had turned outward the faces of their own. the analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man often remarkably incapable of analysis. the constructive or combining power, by which ingenuity is usually manifested, and which the phrenologists (i believe erroneously) have assigned a separate organ, supposing it a primitive faculty, has been so frequently seen in those whose intellect bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as to have attracted general observation among writers on morals. between ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination, but of a character very strictly analogous. it will found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic. the narrative which follows will appear to the reader somewhat in the light of a commentary upon the propositions just advanced. residing in paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18--, i there became acquainted with a monsieur c. auguste dupin. this young gentleman was of an excellent --indeed of an illustrious family, but, by a variety of untoward events, had been reduced to such poverty that the energy of his character succumbed beneath it, and he ceased to bestir himself in the world, or to care for the retrieval of his fortunes. by courtesy of his creditors, there still remained in his possession a small remnant of his patrimony; and, upon the income arising from this, he managed, by means of a rigorous economy, to procure the necessaries of life, without troubling himself about its superfluities. books, indeed, were his sole luxuries, and in paris these are easily obtained. our first meeting was at an obscure library in the rue montmartre, where the accident of our both being in search of the same very rare and very remarkable volume, brought us into closer communion. we saw each other again and again. i was deeply interested in the little family history which he detailed to me with all that candor which a frenchman indulges whenever mere self is the theme. i was astonished, too, at the vast extent of his reading; and, above all, i felt my soul enkindled within me by the wild fervor, and the vivid freshness of his imagination. seeking in paris the objects i then sought, i felt that the society of such a man would be to me a treasure beyond price; and this feeling i frankly confided to him. it was at length arranged that we should live together during my stay in the city; and as my worldly circumstances were somewhat less embarrassed than his own, i was permitted to be at the expense of renting, and furnishing in a style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of our common temper, a time-eaten and grotesque mansion, long deserted through superstitions into which we did not inquire, and tottering to its fall in a retired and desolate portion of the faubourg st. germain. had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen --although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature. our seclusion was perfect. we admitted no visitors. indeed the locality of our retirement had been carefully kept a secret from my own former associates; and it had been many years since dupin had ceased to know or be known in paris. we existed within ourselves alone. it was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall i call it?) to be enamored of the night for her own sake; and into this bizarrerie, as into all his others, i quietly fell; giving myself up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon. the sable divinity would not herself dwell with us always; but we could counterfeit her presence. at the first dawn of the morning we closed all the massy shutters of our old building; lighted a couple of tapers which, strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest of rays. by the aid of these we then busied our souls in dreams --reading, writing, or conversing, until warned by the clock of the advent of the true darkness. then we sallied forth into the streets, arm and arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford. at such times i could not help remarking and admiring (although from his rich ideality i had been prepared to expect it) a peculiar analytic ability in dupin. he seemed, too, to take an eager delight in its exercise --if not exactly in its display --and did not hesitate to confess the pleasure thus derived. he boasted to me, with a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms, and was wont to follow up such assertions by direct and very startling proofs of his intimate knowledge of my own. his manner at these moments was frigid and abstract; his eyes were vacant in expression; while his voice, usually a rich tenor, rose into a treble which would have sounded petulantly but for the deliberateness and entire distinctness of the enunciation. observing him in these moods, i often dwelt meditatively upon the old philosophy of the bi-part soul, and amused myself with the fancy of a double dupin --the creative and the resolvent. let it not be supposed, from what i have just said, that i am detailing any mystery, or penning any romance. what i have described in the frenchman, was merely the result of an excited, or perhaps of a diseased intelligence. but of the character of his remarks at the periods in question an example will best convey the idea. we were strolling one night down a long dirty street, in the vicinity of the palais royal. being both, apparently, occupied with thought, neither of us had spoken a syllable for fifteen minutes at least. all at once dupin broke forth with these words: "he is a very little fellow, that's true, and would do better for the theatre des varietes." "there can be no doubt of that," i replied unwittingly, and not at first observing (so much had i been absorbed in reflection) the extraordinary manner in which the speaker had chimed in with my meditations. in an instant afterward i recollected myself, and my astonishment was profound. "dupin," said i, gravely, "this is beyond my comprehension. i do not hesitate to say that i am amazed, and can scarcely credit my senses. how was it possible you should know i was thinking of --?" here i paused, to ascertain beyond a doubt whether he really knew of whom i thought. --"of chantilly," said he, "why do you pause? you were remarking to yourself that his diminutive figure unfitted him for tragedy." this was precisely what had formed the subject of my reflections. chantilly was a quondam cobbler of the rue st. denis, who, becoming stage-mad, had attempted the role of xerxes, in crebillon's tragedy so called, and been notoriously pasquinaded for his pains. "tell me, for heaven's sake," i exclaimed, "the method --if method there is --by which you have been enabled to fathom my soul in this matter." in fact i was even more startled than i would have been willing to express. "it was the fruiterer," replied my friend, "who brought you to the conclusion that the mender of soles was not of sufficient height for xerxes et id genus omne." "the fruiterer! --you astonish me --i know no fruiterer whomsoever." "the man who ran up against you as we entered the street --it may have been fifteen minutes ago." i now remembered that, in fact, a fruiterer, carrying upon his head a large basket of apples, had nearly thrown me down, by accident, as we passed from the rue c-into the thoroughfare where we stood; but what this had to do with chantilly i could not possibly understand. there was not a particle of charlatanerie about dupin. "i will explain," he said, "and that you may comprehend all clearly, we will explain," he said, "and that you may comprehend all clearly, we will first retrace the course of your meditations, from the moment in which i spoke to you until that of the rencontre with the fruiterer in question. the larger links of the chain run thus --chantilly, orion, dr. nichols, epicurus, stereotomy, the street stones, the fruiterer." there are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. the occupation is often full of interest; and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal. what, then, must have been my amazement when i heard the frenchman speak what he had just spoken, and when i could not help acknowledging that he had spoken the truth. he continued: "we had been talking of horses, if i remember aright, just before leaving the rue c--. this was the last subject we discussed. as we crossed into this street, a fruiterer, with a large basket upon his head, brushing quickly past us, thrust you upon a pile of paving-stones collected at a spot where the causeway is undergoing repair. you stepped upon one of the loose fragments) slipped, slightly strained your ankle, appeared vexed or sulky, muttered a few words, turned to look at the pile, and then proceeded in silence. i was not particularly attentive to what you did; but observation has become with me, of late, a species of necessity. "you kept your eyes upon the ground --glancing, with a petulant expression, at the holes and ruts in the pavement, (so that i saw you were still thinking of the stones,) until we reached the little alley called lamartine, which has been paved, by way of experiment, with the overlapping and riveted blocks. here your countenance brightened up, and, perceiving your lips move, i could not doubt that you murmured the word 'stereotomy,' a term very affectedly applied to this species of pavement. i knew that you could not say to yourself 'stereotomy' without being brought to think of atomies, and thus of the theories of epicurus; and since, when we discussed this subject not very long ago, i mentioned to you how singularly, yet with how little notice, the vague guesses of that noble greek had met with confirmation in the late nebular cosmogony, i felt that you could not avoid casting your eyes upward to the great nebula in orion, and i certainly expected that you would do so. you did look up; and i was now assured that i had correctly followed your steps. but in that bitter tirade upon chantilly, which appeared in yesterday's 'musee,' the satirist, making some disgraceful allusions to the cobbler's change of name upon assuming the buskin, quoted a latin line about which we have often conversed. i mean the line perdidit antiquum litera prima sonum. i had told you that this was in reference to orion, formerly written urion; and, from certain pungencies connected with this explanation, i was aware that you could not have forgotten it. it was clear, therefore, that you would not fall to combine the ideas of orion and chantilly. that you did combine them i say by the character of the smile which passed over your lips. you thought of the poor cobbler's immolation. so far, you had been stooping in your gait; but now i saw you draw yourself up to your full height. i was then sure that you reflected upon the diminutive figure of chantilly. at this point i interrupted your meditations to remark that as, in fact, he was a very little fellow --that chantilly --he would do better at the theatre des varietes." not long after this, we were looking over an evening edition of the "gazette des tribunaux," when the following paragraphs arrested our attention. "extraordinary murders. --this morning, about three o'clock, the inhabitants of the quartier st. roch were aroused from sleep by a succession of terrific shrieks, issuing, apparently, from the fourth story of a house in the rue morgue, known to be in the sole occupancy of one madame l'espanaye, and her daughter, mademoiselle camille l'espanaye. after some delay, occasioned by a fruitless attempt to procure admission in the usual manner, the gateway was broken in with a crowbar, and eight or ten of the neighbors entered, accompanied by two gendarmes. by this time the cries had ceased; but, as the party rushed up the first flight of stairs, two or more rough voices, in angry contention, were distinguished, and seemed to proceed from the upper part of the house. as the second landing was reached, these sounds, also, had ceased, and everything remained perfectly quiet. the party spread themselves, and hurried from room to room. upon arriving at a large back chamber in the fourth story, (the door of which, being found locked, with the key inside, was forced open,) a spectacle presented itself which struck every one present not less with horror than with astonishment. "the apartment was in the wildest disorder --the furniture broken and thrown about in all directions. there was only one bedstead; and from this the bed had been removed, and thrown into the middle of the floor. on a chair lay a razor, besmeared with blood. on the hearth were two or three long and thick tresses of grey human hair, also dabbled in blood, and seeming to have been pulled out by the roots. upon the floor were found four napoleons, an ear-ring of topaz, three large silver spoons, three smaller of metal d'alger, and two bags, containing nearly four thousand francs in gold. the drawers of a bureau, which stood in one corner, were open, and had been, apparently, rifled, although many articles still remained in them. a small iron safe was discovered under the bed (not under the bedstead). it was open, with the key still in the door. it had no contents beyond a few old letters, and other papers of little consequence. "of madame l'espanaye no traces were here seen; but an unusual quantity of soot being observed in the fire-place, a search was made in the chimney, and (horrible to relate!) the corpse of the daughter, head downward, was dragged therefrom; it having been thus forced up the narrow aperture for a considerable distance. the body was quite warm. upon examining it, many excoriations were perceived, no doubt occasioned by the violence with which it had been thrust up and disengaged. upon the face were many severe scratches, and, upon the throat, dark bruises, and deep indentations of finger nails, as if the deceased had been throttled to death. "after a thorough investigation of every portion of the house, without farther discovery, the party made its way into a small paved yard in the rear of the building, where lay the corpse of the old lady, with her throat so entirely cut that, upon an attempt to raise her, the head fell off. the body, as well as the head, was fearfully mutilated --the former so much so as scarcely to retain any semblance of humanity. "to this horrible mystery there is not as yet, we believe, the slightest clew." the next day's paper had these additional particulars. "the tragedy in the rue morgue. many individuals have been examined in relation to this most extraordinary and frightful affair," [the word 'affaire' has not yet, in france, that levity of import which it conveys with us] "but nothing whatever has transpired to throw light upon we give below all the material testimony elicited. "pauline dubourg, laundress, deposes that she has known both the deceased for three years, having washed for them during that period. the old lady and her daughter seemed on good terms-very affectionate towards each other. they were excellent pay. could not speak in regard to their mode or means of living. believed that madame l. told fortunes for a living. was reputed to have money put by. never met any persons in the house when she called for the clothes or took them home. was sure that they had no servant in employ. there appeared to be no furniture in any part of the building except in the fourth story. "pierre moreau, tobacconist, deposes that he has been in the habit of selling small quantities of tobacco and snuff to madame l'espanaye for nearly four years. was born in the neighborhood, and has always resided there. the deceased and her daughter had occupied the house in which the corpses were found, for more than six years. it was formerly occupied by a jeweller, who under-let the upper rooms to various persons. the house was the property of madame l. she became dissatisfied with the abuse of the premises by her tenant, and moved into them herself, refusing to let any portion. the old lady was childish. witness had seen the daughter some five or six times during the six years. the two lived an exceedingly retired life --were reputed to have money. had heard it said among the neighbors that madame l. told fortunes --did not believe it. had never seen any person enter the door except the old lady and her daughter, a porter once or twice, and a physician some eight or ten times. "many other persons, neighbors, gave evidence to the same effect. no one was spoken of as frequenting the house. it was not known whether there were any living connexions of madame l. and her daughter. the shutters of the front windows were seldom opened. those in the rear were always closed, with the exception of the large back room, fourth story. the house was a good house --not very old. "isidore muset, gendarme, deposes that he was called to the house about three o'clock in the morning, and found some twenty or thirty persons at the gateway, endeavoring to gain admittance. forced it open, at length, with a bayonet --not with a crowbar. had but little difficulty in getting it open, on account of its being a double or folding gate, and bolted neither at bottom nor top. the shrieks were continued until the gate was forced --and then suddenly ceased. they seemed to be screams of some person (or persons) in great agony --were loud and drawn out, not short and quick. witness led the way up stairs. upon reaching the first landing, heard two voices in loud and angry contention-the one a gruff voice, the other much shriller --a very strange voice. could distinguish some words of the former, which was that of a frenchman. was positive that it was not a woman's voice. could distinguish the words 'sacre' and 'diable.' the shrill voice was that of a foreigner. could not be sure whether it was the voice of a man or of a woman. could not make out what was said, but believed the language to be spanish. the state of the room and of the bodies was described by this witness as we described them yesterday. "henri duval, a neighbor, and by trade a silversmith, deposes that he was one of the party who first entered the house. corroborates the testimony of muset in general. as soon as they forced an entrance, they reclosed the door, to keep out the crowd, which collected very fast, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour. the shrill voice, the witness thinks, was that of an italian. was certain it was not french. could not be sure that it was a man's voice. it might have been a woman's. was not acquainted with the italian language. could not distinguish the words, but was convinced by the intonation that the speaker was an italian. knew madame l. and her daughter. had conversed with both frequently. was sure that the shrill voice was not that of either of the deceased. "--odenheimer, restaurateur. this witness volunteered his testimony. not speaking french, was examined through an interpreter. is a native of amsterdam. was passing the house at the time of the shrieks. they lasted for several minutes --probably ten. they were long and loud --very awful and distressing. was one of those who entered the building. corroborated the previous evidence in every respect but one. was sure that the shrill voice was that of a man --of a frenchman. could not distinguish the words uttered. they were loud and quick --unequal --spoken apparently in fear as well as in anger. the voice was harsh --not so much shrill as harsh. could not call it a shrill voice. the gruff voice said repeatedly 'sacre,' 'diable' and once 'mon dieu.' "jules mignaud, banker, of the firm of mignaud et fils, rue deloraine. is the elder mignaud. madame l'espanaye had some property. had opened an account with his baking house in the spring of the year --(eight years previously). made frequent deposits in small sums. had checked for nothing until the third day before her death, when she took out in person the sum of 4000 francs. this sum was paid in gold, and a clerk sent home with the money. "adolphe le bon, clerk to mignaud et fils, deposes that on the day in question, about noon, he accompanied madame l'espanaye to her residence with the 4000 francs, put up in two bags. upon the door being opened, mademoiselle l. appeared and took from his hands one of the bags, while the old lady relieved him of the other. he then bowed and departed. did not see any person in the street at the time. it is a bye-street --very lonely. william bird, tailor, deposes that he was one of the party who entered the house. is an englishman. has lived in paris two years. was one of the first to ascend the stairs. heard the voices in contention. the gruff voice was that of a frenchman. could make out several words, but cannot now remember all. heard distinctly 'sacre' and 'mon dieu.' there was a sound at the moment as if of several persons struggling --a scraping and scuffling sound. the shrill voice was very loud --louder than the gruff one. is sure that it was not the voice of an englishman. appeared to be that of a german. might have been a woman's voice. does not understand german. "four of the above-named witnesses, being recalled, deposed that the door of the chamber in which was found the body of mademoiselle l. was locked on the inside when the party reached it. every thing was perfectly silent --no groans or noises of any kind. upon forcing the door no person was seen. the windows, both of the back and front room, were down and firmly fastened from within. a door between the two rooms was closed, but not locked. the door leading from the front room into the passage was locked, with the key on the inside. a small room in the front of the house, on the fourth story, at the head of the passage, was open, the door being ajar. this room was crowded with old beds, boxes, and so forth. these were carefully removed and searched. there was not an inch of any portion of the house which was not carefully searched. sweeps were sent up and down the chimneys. the house was a four story one, with garrets (mansardes). a trap-door on the roof was nailed down very securely --did not appear to have been opened for years. the time elapsing between the hearing of the voices in contention and the breaking open of the room door, was variously stated by the witnesses. some made it as short as three minutes --some as long as five. the door was opened with difficulty. "alfonzo garcio, undertaker, deposes that he resides in the rue morgue. is a native of spain. was one of the party who entered the house. did not proceed up stairs. is nervous, and was apprehensive of the consequences of agitation. heard the voices in contention. the gruff voice was that of a frenchman. could not distinguish what was said. the shrill voice was that of an englishman --is sure of this. does not understand the english language, but judges by the intonation. "alberto montani, confectioner, deposes that he was among the first to ascend the stairs. heard the voices in question. the gruff voice was that of a frenchman. distinguished several words. the speaker appeared to be expostulating. could not make out the words of the shrill voice. spoke quick and unevenly. thinks it the voice of a russian. corroborates the general testimony. is an italian. never conversed with a native of russia. "several witnesses, recalled, here testified that the chimneys of all the rooms on the fourth story were too narrow to admit the passage of a human being. by 'sweeps' were meant cylindrical sweeping-brushes, such as are employed by those who clean chimneys. these brushes were passed up and down every flue in the house. there is no back passage by which any one could have descended while the party proceeded up stairs. the body of mademoiselle l'espanaye was so firmly wedged in the chimney that it could not be got down until four or five of the party united their strength. "paul dumas, physician, deposes that he was called to view the bodies about day-break. they were both then lying on the sacking of the bedstead in the chamber where mademoiselle l. was found. the corpse of the young lady was much bruised and excoriated. the fact that it had been thrust up the chimney would sufficiently account for these appearances. the throat was greatly chafed. there were several deep scratches just below the chin, together with a series of livid spots which were evidently the impression of fingers. the face was fearfully discolored, and the eye-balls protruded. the tongue had been partially bitten through. a large bruise was discovered upon the pit of the stomach, produced, apparently, by the pressure of a knee. in the opinion of m. dumas, mademoiselle l'espanaye had been throttled to death by some person or persons unknown. the corpse of the mother was horribly mutilated. all the bones of the right leg and arm were more or less shattered. the left tibia much splintered, as well as all the ribs of the left side. whole body dreadfully bruised and discolored. it was not possible to say how the injuries had been inflicted. a heavy club of wood, or a broad bar of iron --a chair --any large, heavy, and obtuse weapon have produced such results, if wielded by the hands of a very powerful man. no woman could have inflicted the blows with any weapon. the head of the deceased, when seen by witness, was entirely separated from the body, and was also greatly shattered. the throat had evidently been cut with some very sharp instrument --probably with a razor. "alexandre etienne, surgeon, was called with m. dumas to view the bodies. corroborated the testimony, and the opinions of m. dumas. "nothing farther of importance was elicited, although several other persons were examined. a murder so mysterious, and so perplexing in all its particulars, was never before committed in paris --if indeed a murder has been committed at all. the police are entirely at fault --an unusual occurrence in affairs of this nature. there is not, however, the shadow of a clew apparent." the evening edition of the paper stated that the greatest excitement continued in the quartier st. roch --that the premises in question had been carefully re-searched, and fresh examinations of witnesses instituted, but all to no purpose. a postscript, however mentioned that adolphe le bon had been arrested and imprisoned --although nothing appeared to criminate him, beyond the facts already detailed. dupin seemed singularly interested in the progress of this affair --at least so i judged from his manner, for he made no comments. it was only after the announcement that le bon had been imprisoned, that he asked me my opinion respecting the murders. i could merely agree with all paris in considering them an insoluble mystery. i saw no means by which it would be possible to trace the murderer. "we must not judge of the means," said dupin, "by this shell of an examination. the parisian police, so much extolled for acumen, are cunning, but no more. there is no method in their proceedings, beyond the method of the moment. they make a vast parade of measures; but, not unfrequently, these are so ill adapted to the objects proposed, as to put us in mind of monsieur jourdain's calling for his robe-de-chambre --pour mieux entendre la musique. the results attained by them are not unfrequently surprising, but, for the most part, are brought about by simple diligence and activity. when these qualities are unavailing, their schemes fall. vidocq, for example, was a good guesser, and a persevering man. but, without educated thought, he erred continually by the very intensity of his investigations. he impaired his vision by holding the object too close. he might see, perhaps, one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily, lost sight of the matter as a whole. thus there is such a thing as being too profound. truth is not always in a well. in fact, as regards the more important knowledge, i do believe that she is invariably superficial. the depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found. the modes and sources of this kind of error are well typified in the contemplation of the heavenly bodies. to look at a star by glances --to view it in a side-long way, by turning toward it the exterior portions of the retina (more susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the interior), is to behold the star distinctly --is to have the best appreciation of its lustre --a lustre which grows dim just in proportion as we turn our vision fully upon it. a greater number of rays actually fall upon the eye in the latter case, but, in the former, there is the more refined capacity for comprehension. by undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct. "as for these murders, let us enter into some examinations for ourselves, before we make up an opinion respecting them. an inquiry will afford us amusement," (i thought this an odd term, so applied, but said nothing) "and, besides, le bon once rendered me a service for which i am not ungrateful. we will go and see the premises with our own eyes. i know g--, the prefect of police, and shall have no difficulty in obtaining the necessary permission." the permission was obtained, and we proceeded at once to the rue morgue. this is one of those miserable thoroughfares which intervene between the rue richelieu and the rue st. roch. it was late in the afternoon when we reached it; as this quarter is at a great distance from that in which we resided. the house was readily found; for there were still many persons gazing up at the closed shutters, with an objectless curiosity, from the opposite side of the way. it was an ordinary parisian house, with a gateway, on one side of which was a glazed watch-box, with a sliding way, on one si panel in the window, indicating a loge de concierge. before going in we walked up the street, turned down an alley, and then, again turning, passed in the rear of the building-dupin, meanwhile, examining the whole neighborhood, as well as the house, with a minuteness of attention for which i could see no possible object. retracing our steps, we came again to the front of the dwelling, rang, and, having shown our credentials, were admitted by the agents in charge. we went up stairs --into the chamber where the body of mademoiselle l'espanaye had been found, and where both the deceased still lay. the disorders of the room had, as usual, been suffered to exist. i saw nothing beyond what had been stated in the "gazette des tribunaux." dupin scrutinized every thing-not excepting the bodies of the victims. we then went into the other rooms, and into the yard; a gendarme accompanying us throughout. the examination occupied us until dark, when we took our departure. on our way home my companion stopped in for a moment at the office of one of the dally papers. i have said that the whims of my friend were manifold, and that fe les menageais: --for this phrase there is no english equivalent. it was his humor, now, to decline all conversation on the subject of the murder, until about noon the next day. he then asked me, suddenly, if i had observed any thing peculiar at the scene of the atrocity. there was something in his manner of emphasizing the word "peculiar," which caused me to shudder, without knowing why. "no, nothing peculiar," i said; "nothing more, at least, than we both saw stated in the paper." "the 'gazette,'" he replied, "has not entered, i fear, into the unusual horror of the thing. but dismiss the idle opinions of this print. it appears to me that this mystery is considered insoluble, for the very reason which should cause it to be regarded as easy of solution --i mean for the outre character of its features. the police are confounded by the seeming absence of motive --not for the murder itself --but for the atrocity of the murder. they are puzzled, too, by the seeming impossibility of reconciling the voices heard in contention, with the facts that no one was discovered up stairs but the assassinated mademoiselle l'espanaye, and that there were no means of egress without the notice of the party ascending. the wild disorder of the room; the corpse thrust, with the head downward, up the chimney; the frightful mutilation of the body of the old lady; these considerations with those just mentioned, and others which i need not mention, have sufficed to paralyze the powers, by putting completely at fault the boasted acumen, of the government agents. they have fallen into the gross but common error of confounding the unusual with the abstruse. but it is by these deviations from the plane of the ordinary, that reason feels its way, if at all, in its search for the true. in investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked 'what has occurred,' as 'what has occurred that has never occurred before.' in fact, the facility with which i shall arrive, or have arrived, at the solution of this mystery, is in the direct ratio of its apparent insolubility in the eyes of the police." i stared at the speaker in mute astonishment. "i am now awaiting," continued he, looking toward the door of our apartment --"i am now awaiting a person who, although perhaps not the perpetrator of these butcheries, must have been in some measure implicated in their perpetration. of the worst portion of the crimes committed, it is probable that he is innocent. i hope that i am right in this supposition; for upon it i build my expectation of reading the entire riddle. i look for the man here --in this room --every moment. it is true that he may not arrive; but the probability is that he will. should he come, it will be necessary to detain him. here are pistols; and we both know how to use them when occasion demands their use." i took the pistols, scarcely knowing what i did, or believing what i heard, while dupin went on, very much as if in a soliloquy. i have already spoken of his abstract manner at such times. his discourse was addressed to myself; but his voice, although by no means loud, had that intonation which is commonly employed in speaking to some one at a great distance. his eyes, vacant in expression, regarded only the wall. "that the voices heard in contention," he said, "by the party upon the stairs, were not the voices of the women themselves, was fully proved by the evidence. this relieves us of all doubt upon the question whether the old lady could have first destroyed the daughter, and afterward have committed suicide. i speak of this point chiefly for the sake of method; for the strength of madame l'espanaye would have been utterly unequal to the task of thrusting her daughter's corpse up the chimney as it was found; and the nature of the wounds upon her own person entirely preclude the idea of self-destruction. murder, then, has been committed by some third party; and the voices of this third party were those heard in contention. let me now advert --not to the whole testimony respecting these voices --but to what was peculiar in that testimony. did you observe anything peculiar about it?" i remarked that, while all the witnesses agreed in supposing the gruff voice to be that of a frenchman, there was much disagreement in regard to the shrill, or, as one individual termed it, the harsh voice. "that was the evidence itself," said dupin, "but it was not the peculiarity of the evidence. you have observed nothing distinctive. yet there was something to be observed. the witnesses, as you remark, agreed about the gruff voice; they were here unanimous. but in regard to the shrill voice, the peculiarity is not that they disagreed --but that, while an italian, an englishman, a spaniard, a hollander, and a frenchman attempted to describe it, each one spoke of it as that of a foreigner. each is sure that it was not the voice of one of his own countrymen. each likens it --not to the voice of an individual of any nation with whose language he is conversant --but the converse. the frenchman supposes it the voice of a spaniard, and 'might have distinguished some words had he been acquainted with the spanish.' the dutchman maintains it to have been that of a frenchman; but we find it stated that 'not understanding french this witness was examined through an interpreter.' the englishman thinks it the voice of a german, and 'does not understand german.' the spaniard 'is sure' that it was that of an englishman, but 'judges by the intonation' altogether, 'as he has no knowledge of the english.' the italian believes it the voice of a russian, but 'has never conversed with a native of russia.' a second frenchman differs, moreover, with the first, and is positive that the voice was that of an italian; but, not being cognizant of that tongue, is, like the spaniard, 'convinced by the intonation.' now, how strangely unusual must that voice have really been, about which such testimony as this could have been elicited! --in whose tones, even, denizens of the five great divisions of europe could recognise nothing familiar! you will say that it might have been the voice of an asiatic --of an african. neither asiatics nor africans abound in paris; but, without denying the inference, i will now merely call your attention to three points. the voice is termed by one witness 'harsh rather than shrill.' it is represented by two others to have been 'quick and unequal' no words --no sounds resembling words --were by any witness mentioned as distinguishable. "i know not," continued dupin, "what impression i may have made, so far, upon your own understanding; but i do not hesitate to say that legitimate deductions even from this portion of the testimony --the portion respecting the gruff and shrill voices --are in themselves sufficient to engender a suspicion which should give direction to all farther progress in the investigation of the mystery. i said 'legitimate deductions;' but my meaning is not thus fully expressed. i designed to imply that the deductions are the sole proper ones, and that the suspicion arises inevitably from them as the single result. what the suspicion is, however, i will not say just yet. i merely wish you to bear in mind that, with myself, it was sufficiently forcible to give a definite form --a certain tendency --to my inquiries in the chamber. "let us now transport ourselves, in fancy, to this chamber. what shall we first seek here? the means of egress employed by the murderers. it is not too much to say that neither of us believe in praeternatural events. madame and mademoiselle l'espanaye were not destroyed by spirits. the doers of the deed were material, and escaped materially. then how? fortunately, there is but one mode of reasoning upon the point, and that mode must lead us to a definite decision. --let us examine, each by each, the possible means of egress. it is clear that the assassins were in the room where mademoiselle l'espanaye was found, or at least in the room adjoining, when the party ascended the stairs. it is then only from these two apartments that we have to seek issues. the police have laid bare the floors, the ceilings, and the masonry of the walls, in every direction. no secret issues could have escaped their vigilance. but, not trusting to their eyes, i examined with my own. there were, then, no secret issues. both doors leading from the rooms into the passage were securely locked, with the keys inside. let us turn to the chimneys. these, although of ordinary width for some eight or ten feet above the hearths, will not admit, throughout their extent, the body of a large cat. the impossibility of egress, by means already stated, being thus absolute, we are reduced to the windows. through those of the front room no one could have escaped without notice from the crowd in the street. the murderers must have passed, then, through those of the back room. now, brought to this conclusion in so unequivocal a manner as we are, it is not our part, as reasoners, to reject it on account of apparent impossibilities. it is only left for us to prove that these apparent 'impossibilities' are, in reality, not such. "there are two windows in the chamber. one of them is unobstructed by furniture, and is wholly visible. the lower portion of the other is hidden from view by the head of the unwieldy bedstead which is thrust close up against it. the former was found securely fastened from within. it resisted the utmost force of those who endeavored to raise it. a large gimlet-hole had been pierced in its frame to the left, and a very stout nail was found fitted therein, nearly to the head. upon examining the other window, a similar nail was seen similarly fitted in it; and a vigorous attempt to raise this sash, failed also. the police were now entirely satisfied that egress had not been in these directions. and, therefore, it was thought a matter of supererogation to withdraw the nails and open the windows. "my own examination was somewhat more particular, and was so for the reason i have just given --because here it was, i knew, that all apparent impossibilities must be proved to be not such in reality. "i proceeded to think thus --a posteriori. the murderers did escape from one of these windows. this being so, they could not have re-fastened the sashes from the inside, as they were found fastened; --the consideration which put a stop, through its obviousness, to the scrutiny of the police in this quarter. yet the sashes were fastened. they must, then, have the power of fastening themselves. there was no escape from this conclusion. i stepped to the unobstructed casement, withdrew the nail with some difficulty, and attempted to raise the sash. it resisted all my efforts, as i had anticipated. a concealed spring must, i now knew, exist; and this corroboration of my idea convinced me that my premises, at least, were correct, however mysterious still appeared the circumstances attending the nails. a careful search soon brought to light the hidden spring. i pressed it, and, satisfied with the discovery, forebore to upraise the sash. "i now replaced the nail and regarded it attentively. a person passing out through this window might have reclosed it, and the spring would have caught --but the nail could not have been replaced. the conclusion was plain, and again narrowed in the field of my investigations. the assassins must have escaped through the other window. supposing, then, the springs upon each sash to be the same, as was probable, there must be found a difference between the nails, or at least between the modes of their fixture. getting upon the sacking of the bedstead, i looked over the headboard minutely at the second casement. passing my hand down behind the board, i readily discovered and pressed the spring, which was, as i had supposed, identical in character with its neighbor. i now looked at the nail. it was as stout as the other, and apparently fitted in the same manner --driven in nearly up to the head. "you will say that i was puzzled; but, if you think so, you must have misunderstood the nature of the inductions. to use a sporting phrase, i had not been once 'at fault.' the scent had never for an instant been lost. there was no flaw in any link of the chain. i had traced the secret to its ultimate result, --and that result was the nail. it had, i say, in every respect, the appearance of its fellow in the other window; but this fact was an absolute nullity (conclusive as it might seem to be) when compared with the consideration that here, at this point, terminated the clew. 'there must be something wrong,' i said, 'about the nail.' i touched it; and the head, with about a quarter of an inch of the shank, came off in my fingers. the rest of the shank was in the gimlet-hole, where it had been broken off. the fracture was an old one (for its edges were incrusted with rust), and had apparently been accomplished by the blow of a hammer, which had partially imbedded, in the top of the bottom sash, the head portion of the nail. now carefully replaced this head portion in the indentation whence i had taken it, and the resemblance to a perfect nail was complete-the fissure was invisible. pressing the spring, i gently raised the sash for a few inches; the head went up with it, remaining firm in its bed. i closed the window, and the semblance of the whole nail was again perfect. "the riddle, so far, was now unriddled. the assassin had escaped through the window which looked upon the bed. dropping of its own accord upon his exit (or perhaps purposely closed) it had become fastened by the spring; and it was the retention of this spring which had been mistaken by the police for that of the nail, --farther inquiry being thus considered unnecessary. "the next question is that of the mode of descent. upon this point i had been satisfied in my walk with you around the building. about five feet and a half from the casement in question there runs a lightning-rod. from this rod it would have been impossible for any one to reach the window itself, to say nothing of entering it. i observed, however, that shutters of the fourth story were of the peculiar kind called by parisian carpenters ferrades --a kind rarely employed at the present day, but frequently seen upon very old mansions at lyons and bordeaux. they are in the form of an ordinary door, (a single, not a folding door) except that the upper half is latticed or worked in open trellis --thus affording an excellent hold for the hands. in the present instance these shutters are fully three feet and a half broad. when we saw them from the rear of the house, they were both about half open --that is to say, they stood off at right angles from the wall. it is probable that the police, as well as myself, examined the back of the tenement; but, if so, in looking at these ferrades in the line of their breadth (as they must have done), they did not perceive this great breadth itself, or, at all events, failed to take it into due consideration. in fact, having once satisfied themselves that no egress could have been made in this quarter, they would naturally bestow here a very cursory examination. it was clear to me, however, that the shutter belonging to the window at the head of the bed, would, if swung fully back to the wall, reach to within two feet of the lightning-rod. it was also evident that, by exertion of a very unusual degree of activity and courage, an entrance into the window, from the rod, might have been thus effected. --by reaching to the distance of two feet and a half (we now suppose the shutter open to its whole extent) a robber might have taken a firm grasp upon the trellis-work. letting go, then, his hold upon the rod, placing his feet securely against the wall, and springing boldly from it, he might have swung the shutter so as to close it, and, if we imagine the window open at the time, might have swung himself into the room. "i wish you to bear especially in mind that i have spoken of a very unusual degree of activity as requisite to success in so hazardous and so difficult a feat. it is my design to show you, first, that the thing might possibly have been accomplished: --but, secondly and chiefly, i wish to impress upon your understanding the very extraordinary --the almost praeternatural character of that agility which could have accomplished it. "you will say, no doubt, using the language of the law, that 'to make out my case' i should rather undervalue, than insist upon a full estimation of the activity required in this matter. this may be the practice in law, but it is not the usage of reason. my ultimate object is only the truth. my immediate purpose is to lead you to place in juxta-position that very unusual activity of which i have just spoken, with that very peculiar shrill (or harsh) and unequal voice, about whose nationality no two persons could be found to agree, and in whose utterance no syllabification could be detected." at these words a vague and half-formed conception of the meaning of dupin flitted over my mind. i seemed to be upon the verge of comprehension, without power to comprehend --as men, at times, find themselves upon the brink of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. my friend went on with his discourse. "you will see," he said, "that i have shifted the question from the mode of egress to that of ingress. it was my design to suggest that both were effected in the same manner, at the same point. let us now revert to the interior of the room. let us survey the appearances here. the drawers of the bureau, it is said, had been rifled, although many articles of apparel still remained within them. the conclusion here is absurd. it is a mere guess --a very silly one --and no more. how are we to know that the articles found in the drawers were not all these drawers had originally contained? madame l'espanaye and her daughter lived an exceedingly retired life --saw no company --seldom went out --had little use for numerous changes of habiliment. those found were at least of as good quality as any likely to be possessed by these ladies. if a thief had taken any, why did he not take the best --why did he not take all? in a word, why did he abandon four thousand francs in gold to encumber himself with a bundle of linen? the gold was abandoned. nearly the whole sum mentioned by monsieur mignaud, the banker, was discovered, in bags, upon the floor. i wish you, therefore, to discard from your thoughts the blundering idea of motive, engendered in the brains of the police by that portion of the evidence which speaks of money delivered at the door of the house. coincidences ten times as remarkable as this (the delivery of the money, and murder committed within three days upon the party receiving it), happen to all of us every hour of our lives, without attracting even momentary notice. coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities --that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration. in the present instance, had the gold been gone, the fact of its delivery three days before would have formed something more than a coincidence. it would have been corroborative of this idea of motive. but, under the real circumstances of the case, if we are to suppose gold the motive of this outrage, we must also imagine the perpetrator so vacillating an idiot as to have abandoned his gold and his motive together. "keeping now steadily in mind the points to which i have drawn your attention --that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as this --let us glance at the butchery itself. here is a woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a chimney, head downward. ordinary assassins employ no such modes of murder as this. least of all, do they thus dispose of the murdered. in the manner of thrusting the corpse up the chimney, you will that there was something excessively outre --something altogether irreconcilable with our common notions of human action, even when we suppose the actors the most depraved of men. think, too, how great must have been that strength which could have thrust the body up such an aperture so forcibly that the united vigor of several persons was found barely sufficient to drag it down! "turn, now, to other indications of the employment of a vigor most marvellous. on the hearth were thick tresses --very thick tresses --of grey human hair. these had been torn out by the roots. you are aware of the great force necessary in tearing thus from the head even twenty or thirty hairs together. you saw the locks in question as well as myself. their roots (a hideous sight!) were clotted with fragments of the flesh of the scalp --sure token of the prodigious power which had been exerted in uprooting perhaps half a million of hairs at a time. the throat of the old lady was not merely cut, but the head absolutely severed from the body: the instrument was a mere razor. i wish you also to look at the brutal ferocity of these deeds. of the bruises upon the body of madame l'espanaye i do not speak. monsieur dumas, and his worthy coadjutor monsieur etienne, have pronounced that they were inflicted by some obtuse instrument; and so far these gentlemen are very correct. the obtuse instrument was clearly the stone pavement in the yard, upon which the victim had fallen from the window which looked in upon the bed. this idea, however simple it may now seem, escaped the police for the same reason that the breadth of the shutters escaped them --because, by the affair of the nails, their perceptions had been hermetically sealed against the possibility of the windows have ever been opened at all. if now, in addition to all these things, you have properly reflected upon the odd disorder of the chamber, we have gone so far as to combine the ideas of an agility astounding, a strength superhuman, a ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a voice foreign in tone to the ears of men of many nations, and devoid of all distinct or intelligible syllabification. what result, then, has ensued? what impression have i made upon your fancy?" i felt a creeping of the flesh as dupin asked me the question. "a madman," i said, "has done this deed --some raving maniac, escaped from a neighboring maison de sante." "in some respects," he replied, "your idea is not irrelevant. but the voices of madmen, even in their wildest paroxysms, are never found to tally with that peculiar voice heard upon the stairs. madmen are of some nation, and their language, however incoherent in its words, has always the coherence of syllabification. besides, the hair of a madman is not such as i now hold in my hand. i disentangled this little tuft from the rigidly clutched fingers of madame l'espanaye. tell me what you can make of it." "dupin!" i said, completely unnerved; "this hair is most unusual --this is no human hair." "i have not asserted that it is," said he; "but, before we decide this point, i wish you to glance at the little sketch i have here traced upon this paper. it is a fac-simile drawing of what has been described in one portion of the testimony as 'dark bruises, and deep indentations of finger nails,' upon the throat of mademoiselle l'espanaye, and in another, (by messrs. dumas and etienne,) as a 'series of livid spots, evidently the impression of fingers.' "you will perceive," continued my friend, spreading out the paper upon the table before us, "that this drawing gives the idea of a firm and fixed hold. there is no slipping apparent. each finger has retained --possibly until the death of the victim --the fearful grasp by which it originally imbedded itself. attempt, now, to place all your fingers, at the same time, in the respective impressions as you see them." i made the attempt in vain. "we are possibly not giving this matter a fair trial," he said. "the paper is spread out upon a plane surface; but the human throat is cylindrical. here is a billet of wood, the circumference of which is about that of the throat. wrap the drawing around it, and try the experiment again." i did so; but the difficulty was even more obvious than before. "this," i said, "is the mark of no human hand." "read now," replied dupin, "this passage from cuvier." it was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of the large fulvous ourang-outang of the east indian islands. the gigantic stature, the prodigious strength and activity, the wild ferocity, and the imitative propensities of these mammalia are sufficiently well known to all. i understood the full horrors of the murder at once. "the description of the digits," said i, as i made an end of reading, "is in exact accordance with this drawing, i see that no animal but an ourang-outang, of the species here mentioned, could have impressed the indentations as you have traced them. this tuft of tawny hair, too, is identical in character with that of the beast of cuvier. but i cannot possibly comprehend the particulars of this frightful mystery. besides, there were two voices heard in contention, and one of them was unquestionably the voice of a frenchman." true; and you will remember an expression attributed almost unanimously, by the evidence, to this voice, --the expression, 'mon dieu!' this, under the circumstances, has been justly characterized by one of the witnesses (montani, the confectioner,) as an expression of remonstrance or expostulation. upon these two words, therefore, i have mainly built my hopes of a full solution of the riddle. a frenchman was cognizant of the murder. it is possible --indeed it is far more than probable --that he was innocent of all participation in the bloody transactions which took place. the ourang-outang may have escaped from him. he may have traced it to the chamber; but, under the agitating circumstances which ensued, he could never have re-captured it. it is still at large. i will not pursue these guesses-for i have no right to call them more --since the shades of reflection upon which they are based are scarcely of sufficient depth to be appreciable by my own intellect, and since i could not pretend to make them intelligible to the understanding of another. we will call them guesses then, and speak of them as such. if the frenchman in question is indeed, as i suppose, innocent of this atrocity, this advertisement, which i left last night, upon our return home, at the office of 'le monde,' (a paper devoted to the shipping interest, and much sought by sailors,) will bring him to our residence." he handed me a paper, and i read thus: caught --in the bois de boulogne, early in the morning of the --inst., (the morning of the murder,) a very large, tawny ourang-outang of the bornese species. the owner, (who is ascertained to be a sailor, belonging to a maltese vessel,) may have the animal again, upon identifying it satisfactorily, and paying a few charges arising from its capture and keeping. call at no.--, rue --, faubourg st. germain --au troisieme. "how was it possible," i asked, "that you should know the man to be a sailor, and belonging to a maltese vessel?" "i do not know it," said dupin. "i am not sure of it. here, however, is a small piece of ribbon, which from its form, and from its greasy appearance, has evidently been used in tying the hair in one of those long queues of which sailors are so fond. moreover, this knot is one which few besides sailors can tie, and is peculiar to the maltese. i picked the ribbon up at the foot of the lightning-rod. it could not have belonged to either of the deceased. now if, after all, i am wrong in my induction from this ribbon, that the frenchman was a sailor belonging to a maltese vessel, still i can have done no harm in saying what i did in the advertisement. if i am in error, he will merely suppose that i have been misled by some circumstance into which he will not take the trouble to inquire. but if i am right, a great point is gained. cognizant although innocent of the murder, the frenchman will naturally hesitate about replying to the advertisement --about demanding the ourang-outang. he will reason thus: --'i am innocent; i am poor; my ourang-outang is of great value --to one in my circumstances a fortune of itself --why should i lose it through idle apprehensions of danger? here it is, within my grasp. it was found in the bois de boulogne --at a vast distance from the scene of that butchery. how can it ever be suspected that a brute beast should have done the deed? the police are at fault --they have failed to procure the slightest clew. should they even trace the animal, it would be impossible to prove me cognizant of the murder, or to implicate me in guilt on account of that cognizance. above all, i am known. the advertiser designates me as the possessor of the beast. i am not sure to what limit his knowledge may extend. should i avoid claiming a property of so great value, which it is known that i possess, i will render the animal, at least, liable to suspicion. it is not my policy to attract attention either to myself or to the beast. i will answer the advertisement, get the ourang-outang, and keep it close until this matter has blown over. at this moment we heard a step upon the stairs. "be ready," said dupin, "with your pistols, but neither use them nor show them until at a signal from myself." the front door of the house had been left open, and the visitor had entered, without ringing, and advanced several steps upon the staircase. now, however, he seemed to hesitate. presently we heard him descending. dupin was moving quickly to the door, when we again heard him coming up. he did not turn back a second time, but stepped up with decision and rapped at the door of our chamber. "come in," said dupin, in a cheerful and hearty tone. a man entered. he was a sailor, evidently, --a tall, stout, and muscular-looking person, with a certain dare-devil expression of countenance, not altogether unprepossessing. his face, greatly sunburnt, was more than half hidden by whisker and mustachio. he had with him a huge oaken cudgel, but appeared to be otherwise unarmed. he bowed awkwardly, and bade us "good evening," in french accents, which, although somewhat neufchatelish, were still sufficiently indicative of a parisian origin. sit down, my friend," said dupin. "i suppose you have called about the ourang-outang. upon my word, i almost envy you the possession of him; a remarkably fine, and no doubt a very valuable animal. how old do you suppose him to be?" the sailor drew a long breath, with the air of a man relieved of some intolerable burden, and then replied, in an assured tone: "i have no way of telling --but he can't be more than four or five years old. have you got him here?" "oh no; we had no conveniences for keeping him here. he is at a livery stable in the rue dubourg, just by. you can get him in the morning. of course you are prepared to identify the property?" "to be sure i am, sir." "i shall be sorry to part with him," said dupin. "i don't mean that you should be at all this trouble for nothing, sir," said the man. "couldn't expect it. am very willing to pay a reward for the finding of the animal --that is to say, any thing in reason." "well," replied my friend, "that is all very fair, to be sure. let me think! --what should i have? oh! i will tell you. my reward shall be this. you shall give me all the information in your power about these murders in the rue morgue." dupin said the last words in a very low tone, and very quietly. just as quietly, too, he walked toward the door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket. he then drew a pistol from his bosom and placed it, without the least flurry, upon the table. the sailor's face flushed up as if he were struggling with suffocation. he started to his feet and grasped his cudgel; but the next moment he fell back into his seat, trembling violently, and with the countenance of death itself. he spoke not a word. i pitied him from the bottom of my heart. "my friend," said dupin, in a kind tone, "you are alarming yourself unnecessarily --you are indeed. we mean you no harm whatever. i pledge you the honor of a gentleman, and of a frenchman, that we intend you no injury. i perfectly well know that you are innocent of the atrocities in the rue morgue. it will not do, however, to deny that you are in some measure implicated in them. from what i have already said, you must know that i have had means of information about this matter --means of which you could never have dreamed. now the thing stands thus. you have done nothing which you could have avoided --nothing, certainly, which renders you culpable. you were not even guilty of robbery, when you might have robbed with impunity. you have nothing to conceal. you have no reason for concealment. on the other hand, you are bound by every principle of honor to confess all you know. an innocent man is now imprisoned, charged with that crime of which you can point out the perpetrator." the sailor had recovered his presence of mind, in a great measure, while dupin uttered these words; but his original boldness of bearing was all gone. "so help me god," said he, after a brief pause, "i will tell you all i know about this affair; --but i do not expect you to believe one half i say --i would be a fool indeed if i did. still, i am innocent, and i will make a clean breast if i die for it." what he stated was, in substance, this. he had lately made a voyage to the indian archipelago. a party, of which he formed one, landed at borneo, and passed into the interior on an excursion of pleasure. himself and a companion had captured the ourang-outang. this companion dying, the animal fell into his own exclusive possession. after great trouble, occasioned by the intractable ferocity of his captive during the home voyage, he at length succeeded in lodging it safely at his own residence in paris, where, not to attract toward himself the unpleasant curiosity of his neighbors, he kept it carefully secluded, until such time as it should recover from a wound in the foot, received from a splinter on board ship. his ultimate design was to sell it. returning home from some sailors' frolic on the night, or rather in the morning of the murder, he found the beast occupying his own bed-room, into which it had broken from a closet adjoining, where it had been, as was thought, securely confined. razor in hand, and fully lathered, it was sitting before a looking-glass, attempting the operation of shaving, in which it had no doubt previously watched its master through the key-hole of the closet. terrified at the sight of so dangerous a weapon in the possession of an animal so ferocious, and so well able to use it, the man, for some moments, was at a loss what to do. he had been accustomed, however, to quiet the creature, even in its fiercest moods, by the use of a whip, and to this he now resorted. upon sight of it, the ourang-outang sprang at once through the door of the chamber, down the stairs, and thence, through a window, unfortunately open, into the street. the frenchman followed in despair; the ape, razor still in hand, occasionally stopping to look back and gesticulate at its pursuer, until the latter had nearly come up with it. it then again made off. in this manner the chase continued for a long time. the streets were profoundly quiet, as it was nearly three o'clock in the morning. in passing down an alley in the rear of the rue morgue, the fugitive's attention was arrested by a light gleaming from the open window of madame l'espanaye's chamber, in the fourth story of her house. rushing to the building, it perceived the lightning-rod, clambered up with inconceivable agility, grasped the shutter, which was thrown fully back against the wall, and, by its means, swung itself directly upon the headboard of the bed. the whole feat did not occupy a minute. the shutter was kicked open again by the ourang-outang as it entered the room. the sailor, in the meantime, was both rejoiced and perplexed. he had strong hopes of now recapturing the brute, as it could scarcely escape from the trap into which it had ventured, except by the rod, where it might be intercepted as it came down. on the other hand, there was much cause for anxiety as to what it might do in the house. this latter reflection urged the man still to follow the fugitive. a lightning-rod is ascended without difficulty, especially by a sailor; but, when he had arrived as high as the window, which lay far to his left, his career was stopped; the most that he could accomplish was to reach over so as to obtain a glimpse of the interior of the room. at this glimpse he nearly fell from his hold through excess of horror. now it was that those hideous shrieks arose upon the night, which had startled from slumber the inmates of the rue morgue. madame l'espanaye and her daughter, habited in their night clothes, had apparently been arranging some papers in the iron chest already mentioned, which had been wheeled into the middle of the room. it was open, and its contents lay beside it on the floor. the victims must have been sitting with their backs toward the window; and, from the time elapsing between the ingress of the beast and the screams, it seems probable that it was not immediately perceived. the flapping-to of the shutter would naturally have been attributed to the wind. as the sailor looked in, the gigantic animal had seized madame l'espanaye by the hair, (which was loose, as she had been combing it,) and was flourishing the razor about her face, in imitation of the motions of a barber. the daughter lay prostrate and motionless; she had swooned. the screams and struggles of the old lady (during which the hair was torn from her head) had the effect of changing the probably pacific purposes of the ourang-outang into those of wrath. with one determined sweep of its muscular arm it nearly severed her head from her body. the sight of blood inflamed its anger into phrenzy. gnashing its teeth, and flashing fire from its eves, it flew upon the body of the girl, and imbedded its fearful talons in her throat, retaining its grasp until she expired. its wandering and wild glances fell at this moment upon the head of the bed, over which the face of its master, rigid with horror, was just discernible. the fury of the beast, who no doubt bore still in mind the dreaded whip, was instantly converted into fear. conscious of having deserved punishment, it seemed desirous of concealing its bloody deeds, and skipped about the chamber in an agony of nervous agitation; throwing down and breaking the furniture as it moved, and dragging the bed from the bedstead. in conclusion, it seized first the corpse of the daughter, and thrust it up the chimney, as it was found; then that of the old lady, which it immediately hurled through the window headlong. as the ape approached the casement with its mutilated burden, the sailor shrank aghast to the rod, and, rather gliding than clambering down it, hurried at once home --dreading the consequences of the butchery, and gladly abandoning, in his terror, all solicitude about the fate of the ourang-outang. the words heard by the party upon the staircase were the frenchman's exclamations of horror and affright, commingled with the fiendish jabberings of the brute. i have scarcely anything to add. the ourang-outang must have escaped from the chamber, by the rod, just before the breaking of the door. it must have closed the window as it passed through it. it was subsequently caught by the owner himself, who obtained for it a very large sum at the jardin des plantes. le bon was instantly released, upon our narration of the circumstances (with some comments from dupin) at the bureau of the prefect of police. this functionary, however well disposed to my friend, could not altogether conceal his chagrin at the turn which affairs had taken, and was fain to indulge in a sarcasm or two, about the propriety of every person minding his own business. "let them talk," said dupin, who had not thought it necessary to reply. "let him discourse; it will ease his conscience. i am satisfied with having defeated him in his own castle. nevertheless, that he failed in the solution of this mystery, is by no means that matter for wonder which he supposes it; for, in truth, our friend the prefect is somewhat too cunning to be profound. in his wisdom is no stamen. it is all head and no body, like the pictures of the goddess laverna, --or, at best, all head and shoulders, like a codfish. but he is a good creature after all. i like him especially for one master stroke of cant, by which he has attained his reputation for ingenuity. i mean the way he has 'de nier ce qui est, et d'expliquer ce qui n'est pas.'"* * rousseau, nouvelle heloise. -the end. 1850 the man of the crowd by edgar allan poe ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir etre seul. la bruyere. it was well said of a certain german book that "er lasst sich nicht lesen"it does not permit itself to be read. there are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyesdie with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed. now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burden so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the grave. and thus the essence of all crime is undivulged. not long ago, about the closing in of an evening in autumn, i sat at the large bowwindow of the d-coffee-house in london. for some months i had been ill in health, but was now convalescent, and, with returning strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which are so precisely the converse of ennui-moods of the keenest appetency, when the film from the mental vision departsachlus os prin epeenand the intellect, electrified, surpasses as greatly its everyday condition, as does the vivid yet candid reason of leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of gorgias. merely to breathe was enjoyment; and i derived positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. i felt a calm but inquisitive interest in every thing. with a cigar in my mouth and a newspaper in my lap, i had been amusing myself for the greater part of the afternoon, now in poring over advertisements, now in observing the promiscuous company in the room, and now in peering through the smoky panes into the street. this latter is one of the principal thoroughfares of the city, and had been very much crowded during the whole day. but, as the darkness came on, the throng momently increased; and, by the time the lamps were well lighted, two dense and continuous tides of population were rushing past the door. at this particular period of the evening i had never before been in a similar situation, and the tumultuous sea of human heads filled me, therefore, with a delicious novelty of emotion. i gave up, at length, all care of things within the hotel, and became absorbed in contemplation of the scene without. at first my observations took an abstract and generalizing turn. i looked at the passengers in masses, and thought of them in their aggregate relations. soon, however, i descended to details, and regarded with minute interest the innumerable varieties of figure, dress, air, gait, visage, and expression of countenance. by far the greater number of those who went by had a satisfied, business-like demeanor, and seemed to be thinking only of making their way through the press. their brows were knit, and their eyes rolled quickly; when pushed against by fellow-wayfarers they evinced no symptom of impatience, but adjusted their clothes and hurried on. others, still a numerous class, were restless in their movements, had flushed faces, and talked and gesticulated to themselves, as if feeling in solitude on account of the very denseness of the company around. when impeded in their progress, these people suddenly ceased muttering; but redoubled their gesticulations, and awaited, with an absent and overdone smile upon their lips, the course of the persons impeding them. if jostled, they bowed profusely to the jostlers, and appeared overwhelmed with confusion. there was nothing very distinctive about these two large classes beyond what i have noted. their habiliments belonged to that order which is pointedly termed the decent. they were undoubtedly noblemen, merchants, attorneys, tradesmen, stock-jobbersthe eupatrids and the common-places of societymen of leisure and men actively engaged in affairs of their ownconducting business upon their own responsibility. they did not greatly excite my attention. the tribe of clerks was an obvious one; and here i discerned two remarkable divisions. there were the junior clerks of flash housesyoung gentlemen with tight coats, bright boots, well-oiled hair, and supercilious lips. setting aside a certain dapperness of carriage, which may be termed deskism for want of a better word, the manner of these persons seemed to be an exact facsimile of what had been the perfection of bon ton about twelve or eighteen months before. they wore the castoff graces of the gentry;and this, i believe, involves the best definition of the class. the division of the upper clerks of staunch firms, or of the "steady old fellows," it was not possible to mistake. these were known by their coats and pantaloons of black or brown, made to sit comfortably, with white cravats and waistcoats, broad solid-looking shoes, and thick hose or gaiters. they had all slightly bald heads, from which the right ears, long used to pen-holding, had an odd habit of standing off on end. i observed that they always removed or settled their hats with both bands, and wore watches, with short gold chains of a substantial and ancient pattern. theirs was the affectation of respectabilityif indeed there be an affectation so honorable. there were many individuals of dashing appearance, whom i easily understood as belonging to the race of swell pick-pockets, with which all great cities are infested. i watched these gentry with much inquisitiveness, and found it difficult to imagine how they should ever be mistaken for gentlemen by gentlemen themselves. their voluminousness of wristband, with an air of excessive frankness, should betray them at once. the gamblers, of whom i descried not a few, were still more easily recognizable. they wore every variety of dress, from that of the desperate thimble-rig bully, with velvet waistcoat, fancy neckerchief, gilt chains, and filagreed buttons, to that of the scrupulously inornate clergyman, than which nothing could be less liable to suspicion. still all were distinguished by a certain sodden swarthiness of complexion, a filmy dimness of eye, and pallor and compression of lip. there were two other traits, moreover, by which i could always detect them: a guarded lowness of tone in conversation, and a more than ordinary extension of the thumb in a direction at right angles with the fingers. very often, in company with these sharpers, i observed an order of men somewhat different in habits, but still birds of a kindred feather. they may be defined as the gentlemen who live by their wits. they seem to prey upon the public in two battalionsthat of the dandies and that of the military men. of the first grade the leading features are long locks and smiles; of the second, frogged coats and frowns. descending in the scale of what is termed gentility, i found darker and deeper themes for speculation. i saw jew pedlars, with hawk eyes flashing from countenances whose every other feature wore only an expression of abject humility; sturdy professional street beggars scowling upon mendicants of a better stamp, whom despair alone had driven forth into the night for charity; feeble and ghastly invalids, upon whom death had placed a sure hand, and who sidled and tottered through the mob, looking every one beseechingly in the face, as if in search of some chance consolation, some lost hope; modest young girls returning from long and late labor to a cheerless home, and shrinking more tearfully than indignantly from the glances of ruffians, whose direct contact, even, could not be avoided; women of the town of all kinds and of all agesthe unequivocal beauty in the prime of her womanhood, putting one in mind of the statue in lucian, with the surface of parian marble, and the interior filled with filththe loathsome and utterly lost leper in ragsthe wrinkled, bejewelled, and paint-begrimed beldame, making a last effort at youththe mere child of immature form, yet, from long association, an adept in the dreadful coquetries of her trade, and burning with a rabid ambition to be ranked the equal of her elders in vice; drunkards innumerable and indescribablesome in shreds and patches, reeling, inarticulate, with bruised visage and lack-lustre eyessome in whole although filthy garments, with a slightly unsteady swagger, thick sensual lips, and hearty-looking rubicund facesothers clothed in materials which had once been good, and which even now were scrupulously well brushed-men who walked with a more than naturally firm and springy step, but whose countenances were fearfully pale, and whose eyes were hideously wild and red; and who clutched with quivering fingers, as they strode through the crowd, at every object which came within their reach; beside these, pic-men, porters, coal-heavers, sweeps; organ-grinders, monkey-exhibitors, and ballad-mongers, those who vended with those who sang; ragged artizans and exhausted laborers of every description, and all full of a noisy and inordinate vivacity which jarred discordantly upon the ear, and gave an aching sensation to the eye. as the night deepened, so deepened to me the interest of the scene; for not only did the general character of the crowd materially alter (its gentler features retiring in the gradual withdrawal of the more orderly portion of the people, and its harsher ones coming out into bolder relief, as the late hour brought forth every species of infamy from its den), but the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy, and threw over every thing a fitful and garish lustre. all was dark yet splendidas that ebony to which has been likened the style of tertullian. the wild effects of the light enchained me to an examination of individual faces; and although the rapidity with which the world of light flitted before the window prevented me from casting more than a glance upon each visage, still it seemed that, in my then peculiar mental state, i could frequently read, even in that brief interval of a glance, the history of long years. with my brow to the glass, i was thus occupied in scrutinizing the mob, when suddenly there came into view a countenance (that of a decrepid old man, some sixty-five or seventy years of age)a countenance which at once arrested and absorbed my whole attention, on account of the absolute idiosyncrasy of its expression. any thing even remotely resembling that expression i had never seen before. i well remember that my first thought, upon beholding it, was that retszch, had he viewed it, would have greatly preferred it to his own pictural incarnations of the fiend. as i endeavored, during the brief minute of my original survey, to form some analysis of the meaning conveyed, there arose confusedly and paradoxically within my mind, the ideas of vast mental power, of caution, of penuriousness, of avarice, of coolness, of malice, of blood-thirstiness, of triumph, of merriment, of excessive terror, of intenseof supreme despair. i felt singularly aroused, startled, fascinated. "how wild a history," i said to myself, "is written within that bosom!" then came a craving desire to keep the man in viewto know more of him. hurriedly putting on all overcoat, and seizing my hat and cane, i made my way into the street, and pushed through the crowd in the direction which i had seen him take; for he had already disappeared. with some little difficulty i at length came within sight of him, approached, and followed him closely, yet cautiously, so as not to attract his attention. i had now a good opportunity of examining his person. he was short in stature, very thin, and apparently very feeble. his clothes, generally, were filthy and ragged; but as he came, now and then, within the strong glare of a lamp, i perceived that his linen, although dirty, was of beautiful texture; and my vision deceived me, or, through a rent in a closely buttoned and evidently second-handed roquelaire which enveloped him, i caught a glimpse both of a diamond and of a dagger. these observations heightened my curiosity, and i resolved to follow the stranger whithersoever he should go. it was now fully night-fall, and a thick humid fog hung over the city, soon ending in a settled and heavy rain. this change of weather had an odd effect upon the crowd, the whole of which was at once put into new commotion, and overshadowed by a world of umbrellas. the waver, the jostle, and the hum increased in a tenfold degree. for my own part i did not much regard the rainthe lurking of an old fever in my system rendering the moisture somewhat too dangerously pleasant. tying a handkerchief about my mouth, i kept on. for half an hour the old man held his way with difficulty along the great thoroughfare; and i here walked close at his elbow through fear of losing sight of him. never once turning his head to look back, he did not observe me. by and by he passed into a cross street, which, although densely filled with people, was not quite so much thronged as the main one he had quitted. here a change in his demeanor became evident. he walked more slowly and with less object than beforemore hesitatingly. he crossed and re-crossed the way repeatedly, without apparent aim; and the press was still so thick, that, at every such movement, i was obliged to follow him closely. the street was a narrow and long one, and his course lay within it for nearly an hour, during which the passengers had gradually diminished to about that number which is ordinarily seen at noon in broadway near the parkso vast a difference is there between a london populace and that of the most frequented american city. a second turn brought us into a square, brilliantly lighted, and overflowing with life. the old manner of the stranger reappeared. his chin fell upon his breast, while his eyes rolled wildly from under his knit brows, in every direction, upon those who hemmed him in. he urged his way steadily and perseveringly. i was surprised, however, to find, upon his having made the circuit of the square, that he turned and retraced his steps. still more was i astonished to see him repeat the same walk several timesonce nearly detecting me as he came around with a sudden movement. in this exercise he spent another hour, at the end of which we met with far less interruption from passengers than at first. the rain fell fast, the air grew cool; and the people were retiring to their homes. with a gesture of impatience, the wanderer passed into a by-street comparatively deserted. down this, some quarter of a mile long, he rushed with an activity i could not have dreamed of seeing in one so aged, and which put me to much trouble in pursuit. a few minutes brought us to a large and busy bazaar, with the localities of which the stranger appeared well acquainted, and where his original demeanor again became apparent, as he forced his way to and fro, without aim, among the host of buyers and sellers. during the hour and a half, or thereabouts, which we passed in this place, it required much caution on my part to keep him within reach without attracting his observation. luckily i wore a pair of caoutchouc overshoes, and could move about in perfect silence. at no moment did he see that i watched him. he entered shop after shop, priced nothing, spoke no word, and looked at all objects with a wild and vacant stare. i was now utterly amazed at his behavior, and firmly resolved that we should not part until i had satisfied myself in some measure respecting him. a loud-toned clock struck eleven, and the company were fast deserting the bazaar. a shop-keeper, in putting up a shutter, jostled the old man, and at the instant i saw a strong shudder come over his frame. he hurried into the street, looked anxiously around him for an instant, and then ran with incredible swiftness through many crooked and peopleless lanes, until we emerged once more upon the great thoroughfare whence we had startedthe street of the d---hotel. it no longer wore, however, the same aspect. it was still brilliant with gas; but the rain fell fiercely, and there were few persons to be seen. the stranger grew pale. he walked moodily some paces up the once populous avenue, then, with a heavy sigh, turned in the direction of the river, and, plunging through a great variety of devious ways, came out, at length, in view of one of the principal theatres. it was about being closed, and the audience were thronging from the doors. i saw the old man gasp as if for breath while he threw himself amid the crowd; but i thought that the intense agony of his countenance had, in some measure, abated. his head again fell upon his breast; he appeared as i had seen him at first. i observed that he now took the course in which had gone the greater number of the audience but, upon the whole, i was at a loss to comprehend the waywardness of his actions. as he proceeded, the company grew more scattered, and his old uneasiness and vacillation were resumed. for some time he followed closely a party of some ten or twelve roisterers; but from this number one by one dropped off, until three only remained together, in a narrow and gloomy lane, little frequented. the stranger paused, and, for a moment, seemed lost in thought; then, with every mark of agitation, pursued rapidly a route which brought us to the verge of the city, amid regions very different from those we had hitherto traversed. it was the most noisome quarter of london, where every thing wore the worst impress of the most deplorable poverty, and of the most desperate crime. by the dim light of an accidental lamp, tall, antique, worm-eaten, wooden tenements were seen tottering to their fall, in directions so many and capricious, that scarce the semblance of a passage was discernible between them. the paving-stones lay at random, displaced from their beds by the rankly-growing grass. horrible filth festered in the dammed-up gutters. the whole atmosphere teemed with desolation. yet, as we proceeded, the sounds of human life revived by sure degrees, and at length large bands of the most abandoned of a london populace were seen reeling to and fro. the spirits of the old man again flickered up, as a lamp which is near its death-hour. once more he strode onward with elastic tread. suddenly a corner was turned, a blaze of light burst upon our sight, and we stood before one of the huge suburban temples of intemperanceone of the palaces of the fiend, gin. it was now nearly daybreak; but a number of wretched inebriates still pressed in and out of the flaunting entrance. with a half shriek of joy the old man forced a passage within, resumed at once his original bearing, and stalked backward and forward, without apparent object, among the throng. he had not been thus long occupied, however, before a rush to the doors gave token that the host was closing them for the night. it was something even more intense than despair that i then observed upon the countenance of the singular being whom i had watched so pertinaciously. yet he did not hesitate in his career, but, with a mad energy, retraced his steps at once, to the heart of the mighty london. long and swiftly he fled, while i followed him in the wildest amazement, resolute not to abandon a scrutiny in which i now felt an interest all-absorbing. the sun arose while we proceeded, and, when we had once again reached that most thronged mart of the populous town, the street of the d-hotel, it presented an appearance of human bustle and activity scarcely inferior to what i had seen on the evening before. and here, long, amid the momently increasing confusion, did i persist in my pursuit of the stranger. but, as usual, he walked to and fro, and during the day did not pass from out the turmoil of that street. and, as the shades of the second evening came on, i grew wearied unto death, and, stopping fully in front of the wanderer, gazed at him steadfastly in the face. he noticed me not, but resumed his solemn walk, while i, ceasing to follow, remained absorbed in contemplation. "the old man," i said at length, "is the type and the genius of deep crime. he refuses to be alone. he is the man of the crowd. it will be in vain to follow, for i shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds. the worst heart of the world is a grosser book than the 'hortulus animae,'* and perhaps it is but one of the great mercies of god that "er lasst sich nicht lesen." * the "hortulus animae cum oratiunculis aliquibus superadditis" of grunninger. the end . 1850 the balloon-hoax by edgar allan poe astounding news by express, via norfolk!the atlantic crossed in three days!signal triumph of mr. monck mason's flying machine!arrival at sullivan's island, near charlestown, s. c., of mr. mason, mr. robert holland, mr. henson, mr. harrison ainsworth, and four others, in the steering balloon, victoria, after a passage of seventy-five hours from land to land! full particulars of the voyage! the subjoined jeu d'esprit with the preceding heading in magnificent capitals, well interspersed with notes of admiration, was originally published, as matter of fact, in the new york sun, a daily newspaper, and therein fully subserved the purpose of creating indigestible aliment for the quidnuncs during the few hours intervening between a couple of the charleston mails. the rush for the "sole paper which had the news" was something beyond even the prodigious; and, in fact, if (as some assert) the victoria did not absolutely accomplish the voyage recorded it will be difficult to assign a reason why she should not have accomplished it. e. a. p. the great problem is at length solved! the air, as well as the earth and the ocean, has been subdued by science, and will become a common and convenient highway for mankind. the atlantic has been actually crossed in a balloon! and this too without difficultywithout any great apparent dangerwith thorough control of the machineand in the inconceivably brief period of seventy-five hours from shore to shore! by the energy of an agent at charleston, s. c., we are enabled to be the first to furnish the public with a detailed account of this most extraordinary voyage, which was performed between saturday, the 6th instant, at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., on tuesday, the 9th instant, by sir everard bringhurst; mr. osborne, a nephew of lord bentinck's; mr. monck mason and mr. robert holland, the well-known aeronauts; mr. harrison ainsworth, author of "jack sheppard," etc.; and mr. henson the projector of the late unsuccessful flying machinewith two seamen from woolwichin all, eight persons. the particulars furnished below may be relied on as authentic and accurate in every respect, as, with a slight exception, they are copied verbatim from the joint diaries of mr. monck mason and mr. harrison ainsworth, to whose politeness our agent is also indebted for much verbal information respecting the balloon itself, its construction, and other matters of interest. the only alteration in the ms. received, has been made for the purpose of throwing the hurried account of our agent, mr. forsyth, into a connected and intelligible form. the balloon two very decided failures, of late,those of mr. henson and sir george cayley,had much weakened the public interest in the subject of aerial navigation. mr. henson's scheme (which at first was considered very feasible even by men of science) was founded upon the principle of an inclined plane, started from an eminence by an extrinsic force, applied and continued by the revolution of impinging vanes, in form and number resembling the vanes of a windmill. but, in all the experiments made with models at the adelaide gallery, it was found that the operation of these fins not only did not propel the machine, but actually impeded its flight. the only propelling force it ever exhibited, was the mere impetus acquired from the descent of the inclined plane, and this impetus carried the machine farther when the vanes were at rest, than when they were in motiona fact which sufficiently demonstrates their inutility, and in the absence of the propelling, which was also the sustaining power, the whole fabric would necessarily descend. this consideration led sir george cayley to think only of adapting a propeller to some machine having of itself an independent power of supportin a word, to a balloon; the idea, however, being novel, or original, with sir george, only so far as regards the mode of its application to practice. he exhibited a model of his invention at the polytechnic institution. the propelling principle, or power, was here, also, applied to interrupted surfaces, or vanes, put in revolution. these vanes were four in number, but were found entirely ineffectual in moving the balloon, or in aiding its ascending power. the whole project was thus a complete failure. it was at this juncture that mr. monck mason (whose voyage from dover to weilburg in the balloon nassau occasioned so much excitement in 1837) conceived the idea of employing the principle of the archimedean screw for the purpose of propulsion through the airrightly attributing the failure of mr. henson's scheme, and of sir george cayley's to the interruption of surface in the independent vanes. he made the first public experiment at willis's rooms, but afterward removed his model to the adelaide gallery. like sir george cayley's balloon, his own was an ellipsoid. its length was 13 feet 6 inchesheight, 6 feet 8 inches. it contained about 320 cubic feet of gas, which, if pure hydrogen, would support 21 pounds upon its first inflation, before the gas has time to deteriorate or escape. the weight of the whole machine and apparatus was 17 poundsleaving about 4 pounds to spare. beneath the centre of the balloon, was a frame of light wood, about 9 feet long, and rigged on to the balloon itself with a net-work in the customary manner. from this framework was suspended a wicker basket or car. the screw consists of an axis of hollow brass tube, 18 inches in length, through which, upon a semi-spiral inclined at 15 degrees, pass a series of steel-wire radii, 2 feet long, and thus projecting a foot on either side. these radii are connected at the outer extremities by 2 bands of flattened wire; the whole in this manner forming the framework of the screw, which is completed by a covering of oiled silk cut into gores, and tightened so as to present a tolerably uniform surface. at each end of its axis this screw is supported by pillars of hollow brass tube descending from the hoop. in the lower ends of these tubes are holes in which the pivots of the axis revolve. from the end of the axis which is next the car, proceeds a shaft of steel, connecting the screw with the pinion of a piece of spring machinery fixed in the car. by the operation of this spring, the screw is made to revolve with great rapidity, communicating a progressive motion to the whole. by means of the rudder, the machine was readily turned in any direction. the spring was of great power, compared with its dimensions, being capable of raising 45 pounds upon a barrel of 4 inches diameter, after the first turn, and gradually increasing as it was wound up. it weighed, altogether, eight pounds six ounces. the rudder was a light frame of cane covered with silk, shaped somewhat like a battledoor, and was about 3 feet long, and at the widest, one foot. its weight was about 2 ounces. it could be turned flat, and directed upward or downward, as well as to the right or left-, and thus enabled the aeronaut to transfer the resistance of the air which in an inclined position it must generate in its passage, to any side upon which he might desire to act; thus determining the balloon in the opposite direction. this model (which, through want of time, we have necessarily described in an imperfect manner) was put in action at the adelaide gallery, where it accomplished a velocity of 5 miles per hour; although, strange to say, it excited very little interest in comparison with the previous complex machine of mr. hensonso resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity. to accomplish the great desideratum of aerial navigation, it was very generally supposed that some exceedingly complicated application must be made of some unusually profound principle in dynamics. so well satisfied, however, was mr. mason of the ultimate success of his invention, that he determined to construct immediately, if possible, a balloon of sufficient capacity to test the question by a voyage of some extent; the original design being to cross the british channel, as before, in the nassau balloon. to carry out his views, he solicited and obtained the patronage of sir everard bringhurst and mr. osborne, two gentlemen well known for scientific acquirement, and especially for the interest they have exhibited in the progress of aerostation. the project, at the desire of mr. osborne, was kept a profound secret from the publicthe only persons entrusted with the design being those actually engaged in the construction of the machine, which was built (under the superintendence of mr. mason, mr. holland, sir everard bringhurst, and mr. osborne) at the seat of the latter gentleman near penstruthal, in wales. mr. henson, accompanied by his friend mr. ainsworth, was admitted to a private view of the balloon, on saturday last; when the two gentlemen made final arrangements to be included in the adventure. we are not informed for what reason the two seamen were also included in the partybut in the course of a day or two, we shall put our readers in possession of the minutest particulars respecting this extraordinary voyage. the balloon is composed of silk, varnished with the liquid gum caoutchouc. it is of vast dimensions, containing more than 40,000 cubic feet of gas; but as coal gas was employed in place of the more expensive and inconvenient hydrogen, the supporting power of the machine, when fully inflated, and immediately after inflation, is not more than about 2500 pounds. the coal gas is not only much less costly, but is easily procured and managed. for its introduction into common use for purposes of aerostation, we are indebted to mr. charles green. up to his discovery, the process of inflation was not only exceedingly expensive, but uncertain. two and even three days have frequently been wasted in futile attempts to procure a sufficiency of hydrogen to fill a balloon, from which it had great tendency to escape, owing to its extreme subtlety, and its affinity for the surrounding atmosphere. in a balloon sufficiently perfect to retain its contents of coal gas unaltered, in quantity or amount, for six months, an equal quantity of hydrogen could not be maintained in equal purity for six weeks. the supporting power being estimated at 2500 pounds, and the united weights of the party amounting only to about 1200, there was left a surplus of 1300, of which again 1200 was exhausted by ballast, arranged in bags of different sizes, with their respective weights marked upon themby cordage, barometers, telescopes, barrels containing provision for a fortnight, water-casks, cloaks, carpet-bags, and various other indispensable matters, including a coffee-warmer, contrived for warming coffee by means of slack-lime, so as to dispense altogether with fire, if it should be judged prudent to do so. all these articles, with the exception of the ballast, and a few trifles, were suspended from the hoop overhead. the car is much smaller and lighter, in proportion, than the one appended to the model. it is formed of a light wicker, and is wonderfully strong for so frail looking a machine. its rim is about 4 feet deep. the rudder is also very much larger, in proportion, than that of the model; and the screw is considerably smaller. the balloon is furnished besides with a grapnel, and a guide-rope, which latter is of the most indispensable importance. a few words, in explanation, will here be necessary for such of our readers as are not conversant with the details of aerostation. as soon as the balloon quits the earth, it is subjected to the influence of many circumstances tending to create a difference in its weight; augmenting or diminishing its ascending power. for example, there may be a deposition of dew upon the silk, to the extent, even, of several hundred pounds; ballast has then to be thrown out, or the machine may descend. this ballast being discarded, and a clear sunshine evaporating the dew, and at the same time expanding the gas in the silk, the whole will again rapidly ascend. to check this ascent, the only recourse is (or rather was, until mr. green's invention of the guide-rope) the permission of the escape of gas from the valve; but, in the loss of gas, is a proportionate general loss of ascending power; so that, in a comparatively brief period, the best-constructed balloon must necessarily exhaust all its resources, and come to the earth. this was the great obstacle to voyages of length. the guide-rope remedies the difficulty in the simplest manner conceivable. it is merely a very long rope which is suffered to trail from the car, and the effect of which is to prevent the balloon from changing its level in any material degree. if, for example, there should be a deposition of moisture upon, the silk, and the machine begins to descend in consequence, there will be no necessity for discharging ballast to remedy the increase of weight, for it is remedied, or counteracted, in an exactly just proportion, by the deposit on the ground of just so much of the end of the rope as is necessary. if, on the other hand, any circumstances should cause undue levity, and consequent ascent, this levity is immediately counteracted by the additional weight of rope upraised from the earth. thus, the balloon can neither ascend nor descend, except within very narrow limits, and its resources, either in gas or ballast, remain comparatively unimpaired. when passing over an expanse of water, it becomes necessary to employ small kegs of copper or wood, filled with liquid ballast of a lighter nature than water. these float, and serve all the purposes of a mere rope on land. another most important office of the guide-rope, is to point out the direction of the balloon. the rope drags, either on land or sea, while the balloon is free; the latter, consequently, is always in advance, when any progress whatever is made, a comparison, therefore, by means of the compass, of the relative positions of the two objects, will always indicate the course. in the same way, the angle formed by the rope with the vertical axis of the machine, indicates the velocity. when there is no anglein other words, when the rope hangs perpendicularly, the whole apparatus is stationary; but the larger the angle, that is to say, the farther the balloon precedes the end of the rope, the greater the velocity; and the converse. as the original design was to cross the british channel, and alight as near paris as possible, the voyagers had taken the precaution to prepare themselves with passports directed to all parts of the continent, specifying the nature of the expedition, as in the case of the nassau voyage, and entitling the adventurers to exemption from the usual formalities of office; unexpected events, however, rendered these passports superfluous. the inflation was commenced very quietly at day-break, on saturday morning, the 6th instant in the courtyard of wheal-vor house, mr. osborne's seat, about a mile from penstruthal, in north wales; and at 7 minutes past 11, everything being ready for departure, the balloon was set free, rising gently but steadily, in a direction nearly south; no use being made, for the first half hour, of either the screw or the rudder. we proceed now with the journal, as transcribed by mr. forsyth from the joint mss. of mr. monck mason and mr. ainsworth. the body of the journal, as given, is in the handwriting of mr. mason, and a p. s. is appended, each day, by mr. ainsworth, who has in preparation, and will shortly give the public a more minute and, no doubt, a thrillingly interesting account of the voyage. the journal saturday, april the 6th.every preparation likely to embarrass us having been made overnight, we commenced the inflation this morning at daybreak; but owing to a thick fog which encumbered the folds of the silk and rendered it unmanageable, we did not get through before nearly eleven o'clock. cut loose, then, in high spirits, and rose gently but steadily, with a light breeze at north, which bore us in the direction of the bristol channel. found the ascending force greater than we had expected; and as we arose higher and so got clear of the cliffs, and more in the sun's rays, our ascent became very rapid. i did not wish, however, to lose gas at so early a period of the adventure, and so concluded to ascend for the present. we soon ran out our guide-rope; but even when we had raised it clear of the earth, we still went up very rapidly. the balloon was unusually steady, and looked beautifully. in about 10 minutes after starting, the barometer indicated an altitude of 15,000 feet. the weather was remarkably fine, and the view of the subjacent countrya most romantic one when seen from any pointwas now especially sublime. the numerous deep gorges presented the appearance of lakes, on account of the dense vapors with which they were filled, and the pinnacles and crags to the south east, piled in inextricable confusion, resembling nothing so much as the giant cities of eastern fable. we were rapidly approaching the mountains in the south, but our elevation was more than sufficient to enable us to pass them in safety. in a few minutes we soared over them in fine style; and mr. ainsworth, with the seamen, was surprised at their apparent want of altitude when viewed from the car, the tendency of great elevation in a balloon being to reduce inequalities of the surface below, to nearly a dead level. at half-past eleven still proceeding nearly south, we obtained our first view of the bristol channel; and, in fifteen minutes afterward, the line of breakers on the coast appeared immediately beneath us, and we were fairly out at sea. we now resolved to let off enough gas to bring our guide-rope, with the buoys affixed, into the water. this was immediately done, and we commenced a gradual descent. in about 20 minutes our first buoy dipped, and at the touch of the second soon afterward, we remained stationary as to elevation. we were all now anxious to test the efficiency of the rudder and screw, and we put them both into requisition forthwith, for the purpose of altering our direction more to the eastward, and in a line for paris. by means of the rudder we instantly effected the necessary change of direction, and our course was brought nearly at right angles to that of the wind; when we set in motion the spring of the screw, and were rejoiced to find it propel us readily as desired. upon this we gave nine hearty cheers, and dropped in the sea a bottle, inclosing a slip of parchment with a brief account of the principle of the invention. hardly, however, had we done with our rejoicings, when an unforeseen accident occurred which discouraged us in no little degree. the steel rod connecting the spring with the propeller was suddenly jerked out of place, at the car end, (by a swaying of the car through some movement of one of the two seamen we had taken up,) and in an instant hung dangling out of reach, from the pivot of the axis of the screw. while we were endeavoring to regain it, our attention being completely absorbed, we became involved in a strong current of wind from the east, which bore us, with rapidly increasing force, toward the atlantic. we soon found ourselves driving out to sea at the rate of not less, certainly, than 50 or 60 miles an hour, so that we came up with cape clear, at some 40 miles to our north, before we had secured the rod, and had time to think what we were about. it was now that mr. ainsworth made an extraordinary but, to my fancy, a by no means unreasonable or chimerical proposition, in which he was instantly seconded by mr. holland-viz.: that we should take advantage of the strong gale which bore us on, and in place of beating back to paris, make an attempt to reach the coast of north america. after slight reflection, i gave a willing assent to this bold proposition, which (strange to say) met with objection from the two seamen only. as the stronger party, however, we overruled their fears, and kept resolutely upon our course. we steered due west; but as the trailing of the buoys materially impeded our progress, and we had the balloon abundantly at command, either for ascent or descent, we first threw out fifty pounds of ballast, and then wound up (by means of a windlass) so much of the rope as brought it quite clear of the sea. we perceived the effect of this manoeuvre immediately, in a vastly increased rate of progress; and, as the gale freshened, we flew with a velocity nearly inconceivable; the guide-rope flying out behind the car, like a streamer from a vessel. it is needless to say that a very short time sufficed us to lose sight of the coast. we passed over innumerable vessels of all kinds, a few of which were endeavoring to beat up, but the most of them lying to. we occasioned the greatest excitement on board allan excitement greatly relished by ourselves, and especially by our two men, who, now under the influence of a dram of geneva, seemed resolved to give all scruple, or fear, to the wind. many of the vessels fired signal guns; and in all we were saluted with loud cheers (which we heard with surprising distinctness) and the waving of caps and handkerchiefs. we kept on in this manner throughout the day with no material incident, and, as the shades of night closed around us, we made a rough estimate of the distance traversed. it could not have been less than 500 miles, and was probably much more. the propeller was kept in constant operation, and, no doubt, aided our progress materially. as the sun went down, the gale freshened into an absolute hurricane, and the ocean beneath was clearly visible on account of its phosphorescence. the wind was from the east all night, and gave us the brightest omen of success. we suffered no little from cold, and the dampness of the atmosphere was most unpleasant; but the ample space in the car enabled us to lie down, and by means of cloaks and a few blankets we did sufficiently well. p.s. [by mr. ainsworth.] the last nine hours have been unquestionably the most exciting of my life. i can conceive nothing more sublimating than the strange peril and novelty of an adventure such as this. may god grant that we succeed! i ask not success for mere safety to my insignificant person, but for the sake of human knowledge andfor the vastness of the triumph. and yet the feat is only so evidently feasible that the sole wonder is why men have scrupled to attempt it before. one single gale such as now befriends uslet such a tempest whirl forward a balloon for 4 or 5 days (these gales often last longer) and the voyager will be easily borne, in that period, from coast to coast. in view of such a gale the broad atlantic becomes a mere lake. i am more struck, just now, with the supreme silence which reigns in the sea beneath us, notwithstanding its agitation, than with any other phenomenon presenting itself. the waters give up no voice to the heavens. the immense flaming ocean writhes and is tortured uncomplainingly. the mountainous surges suggest the idea of innumerable dumb gigantic fiends struggling in impotent agony. in a night such as is this to me, a man liveslives a whole century of ordinary lifenor would i forego this rapturous delight for that of a whole century of ordinary existence. sunday, the 7th. [mr. mason's ms.] this morning the gale, by 10, had subsided to an eightor nineknot breeze (for a vessel at sea), and bears us, perhaps, 30 miles per hour, or more. it has veered, however, very considerably to the north; and now, at sundown, we are holding our course due west, principally by the screw and rudder, which answer their purposes to admiration. i regard the project as thoroughly successful, and the easy navigation of the air in any direction (not exactly in the teeth of a gale) as no longer problematical. we could not have made head against the strong wind of yesterday, but, by ascending, we might have got out of its influence, if requisite. against a pretty stiff breeze, i feel convinced, we can make our way with the propeller. at noon, today, ascended to an elevation of nearly 25,000 feet, (about the height of cotopaxi) by discharging ballast. did this to search for a more direct current, but found none so favorable as the one we are now in. we have an abundance of gas to take us across this small pond, even should the voyage last 3 weeks. i have not the slightest fear for the result. the difficulty has been strangely exaggerated and misapprehended. i can choose my current, and should i find all currents against me, i can make very tolerable headway with the propeller. we have had no incidents worth recording. the night promises fair. p.s. [by mr. ainsworth.] i have little to record, except the fact (to me quite a surprising one) that, at an elevation equal to that of cotopaxi, i experienced neither very intense cold, nor headache, nor difficulty of breathing; neither, i find, did mr. mason, nor mr. holland, nor sir everard. mr. osborne complained of constriction of the chestbut this soon wore off. we have flown at a great rate during the day, and we must be more than half way across the atlantic. we have passed over some 20 or 30 vessels of various kinds, and all seem to be delightfully astonished. crossing the ocean in a balloon is not so difficult a feat after all. omne ignotum pro magnifico. mem.: at 25,000 feet elevation the sky appears nearly black, and the stars are distinctly visible; while the sea does not seem convex (as one might suppose) but absolutely and most unequivocally concave.* * "mr. ainsworth has not attempted to account for this phenomenon, which however, is quite susceptible of explanation. a line dropped from an elevation of 25,000 feet, perpendicularly to the surface of the earth (or sea), would form the perpendicular of a right-angled triangle, of which the base would extend from the right angle to the horizon, and the hypothenuse from the horizon to the balloon. but the 25,000 feet of altitude is little or nothing, in comparison with the extent of the prospect. in other words, the base and hypothenuse of the supposed triangle would be so long, when compared with the perpendicular, that the two former may be regarded as nearly parallel. in this manner the horizon of the aeronaut would appear to be on a level with the car. but, as the point immediately beneath him seems, and is, at a great distance below him, it seems, of course, also, at a great distance below the horizon. hence the impression of concavity; and this impression must remain, until the elevation shall bear so great a proportion to the extent of prospect, that the apparent parallelism of the base and hypothenuse disappearswhen the earth's real convexity must appear. monday, the 8th. [mr. mason's ms.] this morning we had again some little trouble with the rod of the propeller, which must be entirely remodelled, for fear of serious accidenti mean the steel rod, not the vanes. the latter could not be improved. the wind has been blowing steadily and strongly from the north-east all day; and so far fortune seems bent upon favoring us. just before day, we were all somewhat alarmed at some odd noises and concussions in the balloon, accompanied with the apparent rapid subsidence of the whole machine. these phenomena were occasioned by the expansion of the gas, through increase of heat in the atmosphere, and the consequent disruption of the minute particles of ice with which the network had become encrusted during the night. threw down several bottles to the vessels below. saw one of them picked up by a large shipseemingly one of the new york line packets. endeavored to make out her name, but could not be sure of it. mr. osbornes telescope made it out something like "atalanta." it is now 12 at night, and we are still going nearly west, at a rapid pace. the sea is peculiarly phosphorescent. p.s. [by mr. ainsworth.] it is now 2 a.m., and nearly calm, as well as i can judgebut it is very difficult to determine this point since we move with the air so completely. i have not slept since quitting wheal-vor, but can stand it no longer, and must take a nap. we cannot be far from the american coast. tuesday, the 9th. [mr. ainsworth's ms.] one, p.m. we are in full view of the low coast of south carolina. the great problem is accomplished. we have crossed the atlanticfairly and easily crossed it in a balloon! god be praised! who shall say that anything is impossible hereafter? the journal here ceases. some particulars of the descent were communicated, however, by mr. ainsworth to mr. forsyth. it was nearly dead calm when the voyagers first came in view of the coast, which was immediately recognized by both the seamen, and by mr. osborne. the latter gentleman having acquaintances at fort moultrie, it was immediately resolved to descend in its vicinity. the balloon was brought over the beach (the tide being out and the sand hard, smooth, and admirably adapted for a descent), and the grapnel let go, which took firm hold at once. the inhabitants of the island, and of the fort, thronged out, of course, to see the balloon; but it was with the greatest difficulty that any one could be made to credit the actual voyagethe crossing of the atlantic. the grapnel caught at 2 p.m. precisely; and thus the whole voyage was completed in 75 hours; or rather less, counting from shore to shore. no serious accident occurred. no real danger was at any time apprehended. the balloon was exhausted and secured without trouble; and when the ms. from which this narrative is compiled was despatched from charleston, the party were still at fort moultrie. their further intentions were not ascertained; but we can safely promise our readers some additional information either on monday or in the course of the next day, at furthest. this is unquestionably the most stupendous, the most interesting, and the most important undertaking ever accomplished or even attempted by man. what magnificent events may ensue, it would be useless now to think of determining. the end . 1833 the coliseum by edgar allan poe type of the antique rome! rich reliquary of lofty contemplation left to time by buried centuries of pomp and power! at lengthat lengthafter so many days of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, (thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,) i kneel, an altered and an humble man, amid thy shadows, and so drink within my very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory! vastness! and age! and memories of eld! silence! and desolation! and dim night! i feel ye nowi feel ye in your strength o spells more sure than e'er judaean king taught in the gardens of gethsemane! o charms more potent than the rapt chaldee ever drew down from out the quiet stars! here, where a hero fell, a column falls! here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, a midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat! here, where the dames of rome their gilded hair waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle! here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled, glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home, lit by the wan light of the horned moon, the swift and silent lizard of the stones! but stay! these wallsthese ivy-clad arcades these moldering plinthsthese sad and blackened shafts these vague entablaturesthis crumbling frieze these shattered cornicesthis wreckthis ruin these stonesalas! these grey stonesare they all all of the famed, and the colossal left by the corrosive hours to fate and me? "not all"the echoes answer me"not all! prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever from us, and from all ruin, unto the wise, as melody from memnon to the sun. we rule the hearts of mightiest menwe rule with a despotic sway all giant minds. we are not impotentwe pallid stones. not all our power is gonenot all our fame not all the magic of our high renown not all the wonder that encircles us not all the mysteries that in us lie not all the memories that hang upon and cling around about us as a garment, clothing us in a robe of more than glory." -the end. internet wiretap edition of a ghost story by mark twain from "sketches new and old", copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain (may 1993). a ghost story i took a large room, far up broadway, in a huge old building whose upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years, until i came. the place had long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and silence. i seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead, that first night i climbed up to my quarters. for the first time in my life a superstitious dread came over me; and as i turned a dark angle of the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung its slazy woof in my face and clung there, i shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom. i was glad enough when i reached my room and locked out the mould and the darkness. a cheery fire was burning in the grate, and i sat down before it with a comforting sense of relief. for two hours i sat there, thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy, to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar songs that nobody sings now. and as my reverie softened down to a sadder and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail, the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the distance and left no sound behind. the fire had burned low. a sense of loneliness crept over me. i arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what i had to do, as if i were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it would be fatal to break. i covered up in bed, and lay listening to the rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they lulled me to sleep. i slept profoundly, but how long i do not know. all at once i found myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. all was still. all but my own heart -i could hear it beat. presently the bedclothes began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if some one were pulling them! i could not stir; i could not speak. still the blankets slipped deliberately away, till my breast was uncovered. then with a great effort i seized them and drew them over my head. i waited, listened, waited. once more that steady pull began, and once more i lay torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. at last i roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place and held them with a strong grip. i waited. by and by i felt a faint tug, and took a fresh grip. the tug strengthened to a steady strain -it grew stronger and stronger. my hold parted, and for the third time the blankets slid away. i groaned. an answering groan came from the foot of the bed! beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. i was more dead than alive. presently i heard a heavy footstep in my room -the step of an elephant, it seemed to me -it was not like anything human. but it was moving from me -there was relief in that. i heard it approach the door -pass out without moving bolt or lock -and wander away among the dismal corridors, straining the floors and joists till they creaked again as it passed -and then silence reigned once more. when my excitement had calmed, i said to myself, "this is a dream -simply a hideous dream." and so i lay thinking it over until i convinced myself that it was a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips and i was happy again. i got up and struck a light; and when i found that the locks and bolts were just as i had left them, another soothing laugh welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. i took my pipe and lit it, and was just sitting down before the fire, when -down went the pipe out of my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid breathing was cut short with a gasp! in the ashes on the hearth, side by side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison mine was but an infant's'! then i had had a visitor, and the elephant tread was explained. i put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. i lay a long time, peering into the darkness, and listening. then i heard a grating noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response to the concussion. in distant parts of the building i heard the muffled slamming of doors. i heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. sometimes these noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. i heard the clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the clanking grew nearer -while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. i heard muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently; and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. then i became conscious that my chamber was invaded -that i was not alone. i heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped -two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. they spattered, liquidly, and felt warm. intuition told me they had turned to gouts of blood as they fell -i needed no light to satisfy myself of that. then i saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted hands, floating bodiless in the air -floating a moment and then disappearing. the whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, and a solemn stillness followed. i waited and listened. i felt that i must have light or die. i was weak with fear. i slowly raised myself toward a sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy hand! all strength went from me apparently, and i fell back like a stricken invalid. then i heard the rustle of a garment -it seemed to pass to the door and go out. when everything was still once more, i crept out of bed, sick and feeble, and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a hundred years. the light brought some little cheer to my spirits. i sat down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that great footprint in the ashes. by and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. i glanced up and the broad gas flame was slowly wilting away. in the same moment i heard that elephantine tread again. i noted its approach, nearer and nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned. the tread reached my very door and paused -the light had dwindled to a sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight. the door did not open, and yet i felt a faint gust of air fan my cheek, and presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. i watched it with fascinated eyes. a pale glow stole over the thing; gradually its cloudy folds took shape -an arm appeared, then legs, then a body, and last a great sad face looked out of the vapor. stripped of its filmy housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic cardiff giant loomed above me! all my misery vanished -for a child might know that no harm could come with that benignant countenance. my cheerful spirits returned at once, and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. never a lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as i was to greet the friendly giant. i said: "why, is it nobody but you? do you know, i have been scared to death for the last two or three hours? i am most honestly glad to see you. i wish i had a chair -here, here, don't try to sit down in that thing! but it was too late. he was in it before i could stop him, and down he went -i never saw a chair shivered so in my life. "stop, stop, you'll ruin ev--" too late again. there was another crash, and another chair was resolved into its original elements. "confound it, haven't you got any judgment at all? do you want to ruin all the furniture on the place? here, here, you petrified fool--" but it was no use. before i could arrest him he had sat down on the bed, and it was a melancholy ruin. "now what sort of a way is that to do? first you come lumbering about the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry me to death, and then when i overlook an indelicacy of costume which would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of your sex, you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on. and why will you? you damage yourself as much as you do me. you have broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard. you ought to be ashamed of yourself -you are big enough to know better." "well, i will not break any more furniture. but what am i to do? i have not had a chance to sit down for a century." and the tears came into his eyes. "poor devil," i said, "i should not have been so harsh with you. and you are an orphan, too, no doubt. but sit down on the floor here -nothing else can stand your weight -and besides, we cannot be sociable with you away up there above me; i want you down where i can perch on this high counting-house stool and gossip with you face to face." so he sat down on the floor, and lit a pipe which i gave him, threw one of my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable. then he crossed his ankles, while i renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honey-combed bottoms of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth. "what is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your legs, that they are gouged up so?" "infernal chillblains -i caught them clear up to the back of my head, roosting out there under newell's farm. but i love the place; i love it as one loves his old home. there is no peace for me like the peace i feel when i am there." we talked along for half an hour, and then i noticed that he looked tired, and spoke of it. "tired?" he said. "well, i should think so. and now i will tell you all about it, since you have treated me so well. i am the spirit of the petrified man that lies across the street there in the museum. i am the ghost of the cardiff giant. i can have no rest, no peace, till they have given that poor body burial again. now what was the most natural thing for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish? terrify them into it! -haunt the place where the body lay! so i haunted the museum night after night. i even got other spirits to help me. but it did no good, for nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. then it occurred to me to come over the way and haunt this place a little. i felt that if i ever got a hearing i must succeed, for i had the most efficient company that perdition could furnish. night after night we have shivered around through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering, tramping up and down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, i am almost worn out. but when i saw a light in your room to-night i roused my energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. but i am tired out -entirely fagged out. give me, i beseech you, give me some hope!" i lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed: "this transcends everything -everything that ever did occur! why you poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing -you have been haunting a plaster cast of yourself -the real cardiff giant is in albany! [footnote by twain: a fact. the original fraud was ingeniously and fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in new york as the "only genuine" cardiff giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at a museum in albany.] confound it, don't you know your own remains?" i never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation, overspread a countenance before. the petrified man rose slowly to his feet, and said: "honestly, is that true?" "as true as i am sitting here." he took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood irresolute a moment (uncon sciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands where his pantaloons pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping his chin on his breast), and finally said: "well -i never felt so absurd before. the petrified man has sold everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own ghost! my son, if there is any charity left in your heart for a poor friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out. think how you would feel if you had made such an ass of yourself." i heard his, stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow -and sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket and my bath tub. end. . 1839 william wilson by edgar allan poe what say of it? what say (of) conscience grim, that spectre in my path? chamberlayne's pharronida. let me call myself, for the present, william wilson. the fair page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real appellation. this has been already too much an object for the scorn --for the horror --for the detestation of my race. to the uttermost regions of the globe have not the indignant winds bruited its unparalleled infamy? oh, outcast of all outcasts most abandoned! --to the earth art thou not forever dead? to its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations? --and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven? i would not, if i could, here or to-day, embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery, and unpardonable crime. this epoch --these later years --took unto themselves a sudden elevation in turpitude, whose origin alone it is my present purpose to assign. men usually grow base by degrees. from me, in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily as a mantle. from comparatively trivial wickedness i passed, with the stride of a giant, into more than the enormities of an elah-gabalus. what chance --what one event brought this evil thing to pass, bear with me while i relate. death approaches; and the shadow which foreruns him has thrown a softening influence over my spirit. i long, in passing through the dim valley, for the sympathy --i had nearly said for the pity --of my fellow men. i would fain have them believe that i have been, in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control. i would wish them to seek out for me, in the details i am about to give, some little oasis of fatality amid a wilderness of error. i would have them allow --what they cannot refrain from allowing --that, although temptation may have erewhile existed as great, man was never thus, at least, tempted before --certainly, never thus fell. and is it therefore that he has never thus suffered? have i not indeed been living in a dream? and am i not now dying a victim to the horror and the mystery of the wildest of all sublunary visions? i am the descendant of a race whose imaginative and easily excitable temperament has at all times rendered them remarkable; and, in my earliest infancy, i gave evidence of having fully inherited the family character. as i advanced in years it was more strongly developed; becoming, for many reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to my friends, and of positive injury to myself. i grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions. weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own, my parents could do but little to check the evil propensities which distinguished me. some feeble and ill-directed efforts resulted in complete failure on their part, and, of course, in total triumph on mine. thenceforward my voice was a household law; and at an age when few children have abandoned their leading-strings, i was left to the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions. my earliest recollections of a school-life, are connected with a large, rambling, elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of england, where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were excessively ancient. in truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. at this moment, in fancy, i feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep hollow note of the church-bell, breaking, each hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted gothic steeple lay imbedded and asleep. it gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure as i can now in any manner experience, to dwell upon minute recollections of the school and its concerns. steeped in misery as i am --misery, alas! only too real --i shall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary, in the weakness of a few rambling details. these, moreover, utterly trivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality when and where i recognise the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which afterwards so fully overshadowed me. let me then remember. the house, i have said, was old and irregular. the grounds were extensive, and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass, encompassed the whole. this prison-like rampart formed the limit of our domain; beyond it we saw but thrice a week --once every saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take brief walks in a body through some of the neighbouring fields --and twice during sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. of this church the principal of our school was pastor. with how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was i wont to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! this reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast, ---could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the draconian laws of the academy? oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous for solution! at an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. it was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron spikes. what impressions of deep awe did it inspire! it was never opened save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already mentioned; then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a plenitude of mystery --a world of matter for solemn remark, or for more solemn meditation. the extensive enclosure was irregular in form, having many capacious recesses. of these, three or four of the largest constituted the play-ground. it was level, and covered with fine hard gravel. i well remember it had no trees, nor benches, nor anything similar within it. of course it was in the rear of the house. in front lay a small parterre, planted with box and other shrubs; but through this sacred division we passed only upon rare occasions indeed --such as a first advent to school or final departure thence, or perhaps, when a parent or friend having called for us, we joyfully took our way home for the christmas or midsummer holy-days. but the house! --how quaint an old building was this! --to me how veritably a palace of enchantment! there was really no end to its windings --to its incomprehensible subdivisions. it was difficult, at any given time, to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be. from each room to every other there were sure to be found three or four steps either in ascent or descent. then the lateral branches were innumerable --inconceivable --and so returning in upon themselves, that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered upon infinity. during the five years of my residence here, i was never able to ascertain with precision, in what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to myself and some eighteen or twenty other scholars. the school-room was the largest in the house --i could not help thinking, in the world. it was very long, narrow, and dismally low, with pointed gothic windows and a celling of oak. in a remote and terror-inspiring angle was a square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, "during hours," of our principal, the reverend dr. bransby. it was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in the absence of the "dominic," we would all have willingly perished by the peine forte et dure. in other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. one of these was the pulpit of the "classical" usher, one of the "english and mathematical." interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in endless irregularity, were innumerable benches and desks, black, ancient, and time-worn, piled desperately with much-bethumbed books, and so beseamed with initial letters, names at full length, grotesque figures, and other multiplied efforts of the knife, as to have entirely lost what little of original form might have been their portion in days long departed. a huge bucket with water stood at one extremity of the room, and a clock of stupendous dimensions at the other. encompassed by the massy walls of this venerable academy, i passed, yet not in tedium or disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life. the teeming brain of childhood requires no external world of incident to occupy or amuse it; and the apparently dismal monotony of a school was replete with more intense excitement than my riper youth has derived from luxury, or my full manhood from crime. yet i must believe that my first mental development had in it much of the uncommon --even much of the outre. upon mankind at large the events of very early existence rarely leave in mature age any definite impression. all is gray shadow --a weak and irregular remembrance --an indistinct regathering of feeble pleasures and phantasmagoric pains. with me this is not so. in childhood i must have felt with the energy of a man what i now find stamped upon memory in lines as vivid, as deep, and as durable as the exergues of the carthaginian medals. yet in fact --in the fact of the world's view --how little was there to remember! the morning's awakening, the nightly summons to bed; the connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays, and perambulations; the play-ground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues; --these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and spirit-stirring. "oh, le bon temps, que ce siecle de fer!" in truth, the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my disposition, soon rendered me a marked character among my schoolmates, and by slow, but natural gradations, gave me an ascendancy over all not greatly older than myself; --over all with a single exception. this exception was found in the person of a scholar, who, although no relation, bore the same christian and surname as myself; --a circumstance, in fact, little remarkable; for, notwithstanding a noble descent, mine was one of those everyday appellations which seem, by prescriptive right, to have been, time out of mind, the common property of the mob. in this narrative i have therefore designated myself as william wilson, --a fictitious title not very dissimilar to the real. my namesake alone, of those who in school phraseology constituted "our set," presumed to compete with me in the studies of the class --in the sports and broils of the play-ground --to refuse implicit belief in my assertions, and submission to my will --indeed, to interfere with my arbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever. if there is on earth a supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a master mind in boyhood over the less energetic spirits of its companions. wilson's rebellion was to me a source of the greatest embarrassment; --the more so as, in spite of the bravado with which in public i made a point of treating him and his pretensions, i secretly felt that i feared him, and could not help thinking the equality which he maintained so easily with myself, a proof of his true superiority; since not to be overcome cost me a perpetual struggle. yet this superiority --even this equality --was in truth acknowledged by no one but myself; our associates, by some unaccountable blindness, seemed not even to suspect it. indeed, his competition, his resistance, and especially his impertinent and dogged interference with my purposes, were not more pointed than private. he appeared to be destitute alike of the ambition which urged, and of the passionate energy of mind which enabled me to excel. in his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when i could not help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of manner. i could only conceive this singular behavior to arise from a consummate self-conceit assuming the vulgar airs of patronage and protection. perhaps it was this latter trait in wilson's conduct, conjoined with our identity of name, and the mere accident of our having entered the school upon the same day, which set afloat the notion that we were brothers, among the senior classes in the academy. these do not usually inquire with much strictness into the affairs of their juniors. i have before said, or should have said, that wilson was not, in the most remote degree, connected with my family. but assuredly if we had been brothers we must have been twins; for, after leaving dr. bransby's, i casually learned that my namesake was born on the nineteenth of january, 1813 --and this is a somewhat remarkable coincidence; for the day is precisely that of my own nativity. it may seem strange that in spite of the continual anxiety occasioned me by the rivalry of wilson, and his intolerable spirit of contradiction, i could not bring myself to hate him altogether. we had, to be sure, nearly every day a quarrel in which, yielding me publicly the palm of victory, he, in some manner, contrived to make me feel that it was he who had deserved it; yet a sense of pride on my part, and a veritable dignity on his own, kept us always upon what are called "speaking terms," while there were many points of strong congeniality in our tempers, operating to awake me in a sentiment which our position alone, perhaps, prevented from ripening into friendship. it is difficult, indeed, to define,or even to describe, my real feelings towards him. they formed a motley and heterogeneous admixture; --some petulant animosity, which was not yet hatred, some esteem, more respect, much fear, with a world of uneasy curiosity. to the moralist it will be unnecessary to say, in addition, that wilson and myself were the most inseparable of companions. it was no doubt the anomalous state of affairs existing between us, which turned all my attacks upon him, (and they were many, either open or covert) into the channel of banter or practical joke (giving pain while assuming the aspect of mere fun) rather than into a more serious and determined hostility. but my endeavours on this head were by no means uniformly successful, even when my plans were the most wittily concocted; for my namesake had much about him, in character, of that unassuming and quiet austerity which, while enjoying the poignancy of its own jokes, has no heel of achilles in itself, and absolutely refuses to be laughed at. i could find, indeed, but one vulnerable point, and that, lying in a personal peculiarity, arising, perhaps, from constitutional disease, would have been spared by any antagonist less at his wit's end than myself; --my rival had a weakness in the faucal or guttural organs, which precluded him from raising his voice at any time above a very low whisper. of this defect i did not fall to take what poor advantage lay in my power. wilson's retaliations in kind were many; and there was one form of his practical wit that disturbed me beyond measure. how his sagacity first discovered at all that so petty a thing would vex me, is a question i never could solve; but, having discovered, he habitually practised the annoyance. i had always felt aversion to my uncourtly patronymic, and its very common, if not plebeian praenomen. the words were venom in my ears; and when, upon the day of my arrival, a second william wilson came also to the academy, i felt angry with him for bearing the name, and doubly disgusted with the name because a stranger bore it, who would be the cause of its twofold repetition, who would be constantly in my presence, and whose concerns, in the ordinary routine of the school business, must inevitably, on account of the detestable coincidence, be often confounded with my own. the feeling of vexation thus engendered grew stronger with every circumstance tending to show resemblance, moral or physical, between my rival and myself. i had not then discovered the remarkable fact that we were of the same age; but i saw that we were of the same height, and i perceived that we were even singularly alike in general contour of person and outline of feature. i was galled, too, by the rumor touching a relationship, which had grown current in the upper forms. in a word, nothing could more seriously disturb me, although i scrupulously concealed such disturbance,) than any allusion to a similarity of mind, person, or condition existing between us. but, in truth, i had no reason to believe that (with the exception of the matter of relationship, and in the case of wilson himself,) this similarity had ever been made a subject of comment, or even observed at all by our schoolfellows. that he observed it in all its bearings, and as fixedly as i, was apparent; but that he could discover in such circumstances so fruitful a field of annoyance, can only be attributed, as i said before, to his more than ordinary penetration. his cue, which was to perfect an imitation of myself, lay both in words and in actions; and most admirably did he play his part. my dress it was an easy matter to copy; my gait and general manner were, without difficulty, appropriated; in spite of his constitutional defect, even my voice did not escape him. my louder tones were, of course, unattempted, but then the key, it was identical; and his singular whisper, it grew the very echo of my own. how greatly this most exquisite portraiture harassed me, (for it could not justly be termed a caricature,) i will not now venture to describe. i had but one consolation --in the fact that the imitation, apparently, was noticed by myself alone, and that i had to endure only the knowing and strangely sarcastic smiles of my namesake himself. satisfied with having produced in my bosom the intended effect, he seemed to chuckle in secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was characteristically disregardful of the public applause which the success of his witty endeavours might have so easily elicited. that the school, indeed, did not feel his design, perceive its accomplishment, and participate in his sneer, was, for many anxious months, a riddle i could not resolve. perhaps the gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily perceptible; or, more possibly, i owed my security to the master air of the copyist, who, disdaining the letter, (which in a painting is all the obtuse can see,) gave but the full spirit of his original for my individual contemplation and chagrin. i have already more than once spoken of the disgusting air of patronage which he assumed toward me, and of his frequent officious interference withy my will. this interference often took the ungracious character of advice; advice not openly given, but hinted or insinuated. i received it with a repugnance which gained strength as i grew in years. yet, at this distant day, let me do him the simple justice to acknowledge that i can recall no occasion when the suggestions of my rival were on the side of those errors or follies so usual to his immature age and seeming inexperience; that his moral sense, at least, if not his general talents and worldly wisdom, was far keener than my own; and that i might, to-day, have been a better, and thus a happier man, had i less frequently rejected the counsels embodied in those meaning whispers which i then but too cordially hated and too bitterly despised. as it was, i at length grew restive in the extreme under his distasteful supervision, and daily resented more and more openly what i considered his intolerable arrogance. i have said that, in the first years of our connexion as schoolmates, my feelings in regard to him might have been easily ripened into friendship: but, in the latter months of my residence at the academy, although the intrusion of his ordinary manner had, beyond doubt, in some measure, abated, my sentiments, in nearly similar proportion, partook very much of positive hatred. upon one occasion he saw this, i think, and afterwards avoided, or made a show of avoiding me. it was about the same period, if i remember aright, that, in an altercation of violence with him, in which he was more than usually thrown off his guard, and spoke and acted with an openness of demeanor rather foreign to his nature, i discovered, or fancied i discovered, in his accent, his air, and general appearance, a something which first startled, and then deeply interested me, by bringing to mind dim visions of my earliest infancy --wild, confused and thronging memories of a time when memory herself was yet unborn. i cannot better describe the sensation which oppressed me than by saying that i could with difficulty shake off the belief of my having been acquainted with the being who stood before me, at some epoch very long ago --some point of the past even infinitely remote. the delusion, however, faded rapidly as it came; and i mention it at all but to define the day of the last conversation i there held with my singular namesake. the huge old house, with its countless subdivisions, had several large chambers communicating with each other, where slept the greater number of the students. there were, however, (as must necessarily happen in a building so awkwardly planned,) many little nooks or recesses, the odds and ends of the structure; and these the economic ingenuity of dr. bransby had also fitted up as dormitories; although, being the merest closets, they were capable of accommodating but a single individual. one of these small apartments was occupied by wilson. one night, about the close of my fifth year at the school, and immediately after the altercation just mentioned, finding every one wrapped in sleep, i arose from bed, and, lamp in hand, stole through a wilderness of narrow passages from my own bedroom to that of my rival. i had long been plotting one of those ill-natured pieces of practical wit at his expense in which i had hitherto been so uniformly unsuccessful. it was my intention, now, to put my scheme in operation, and i resolved to make him feel the whole extent of the malice with which i was imbued. having reached his closet, i noiselessly entered, leaving the lamp, with a shade over it, on the outside. i advanced a step, and listened to the sound of his tranquil breathing. assured of his being asleep, i returned, took the light, and with it again approached the bed. close curtains were around it, which, in the prosecution of my plan, i slowly and quietly withdrew, when the bright rays fell vividly upon the sleeper, and my eyes, at the same moment, upon his countenance. i looked; --and a numbness, an iciness of feeling instantly pervaded my frame. my breast heaved, my knees tottered, my whole spirit became possessed with an objectless yet intolerable horror. gasping for breath, i lowered the lamp in still nearer proximity to the face. were these --these the lineaments of william wilson? i saw, indeed, that they were his, but i shook as if with a fit of the ague in fancying they were not. what was there about them to confound me in this manner? i gazed; --while my brain reeled with a multitude of incoherent thoughts. not thus he appeared --assuredly not thus --in the vivacity of his waking hours. the same name! the same contour of person! the same day of arrival at the academy! and then his dogged and meaningless imitation of my gait, my voice, my habits, and my manner! was it, in truth, within the bounds of human possibility, that what i now saw was the result, merely, of the habitual practice of this sarcastic imitation? awe-stricken, and with a creeping shudder, i extinguished the lamp, passed silently from the chamber, and left, at once, the halls of that old academy, never to enter them again. after a lapse of some months, spent at home in mere idleness, i found myself a student at eton. the brief interval had been sufficient to enfeeble my remembrance of the events at dr. bransby's, or at least to effect a material change in the nature of the feelings with which i remembered them. the truth --the tragedy --of the drama was no more. i could now find room to doubt the evidence of my senses; and seldom called up the subject at all but with wonder at extent of human credulity, and a smile at the vivid force of the imagination which i hereditarily possessed. neither was this species of scepticism likely to be diminished by the character of the life i led at eton. the vortex of thoughtless folly into which i there so immediately and so recklessly plunged, washed away all but the froth of my past hours, engulfed at once every solid or serious impression, and left to memory only the veriest levities of a former existence. i do not wish, however, to trace the course of my miserable profligacy here --a profligacy which set at defiance the laws, while it eluded the vigilance of the institution. three years of folly, passed without profit, had but given me rooted habits of vice, and added, in a somewhat unusual degree, to my bodily stature, when, after a week of soulless dissipation, i invited a small party of the most dissolute students to a secret carousal in my chambers. we met at a late hour of the night; for our debaucheries were to be faithfully protracted until morning. the wine flowed freely, and there were not wanting other and perhaps more dangerous seductions; so that the gray dawn had already faintly appeared in the east, while our delirious extravagance was at its height. madly flushed with cards and intoxication, i was in the act of insisting upon a toast of more than wonted profanity, when my attention was suddenly diverted by the violent, although partial unclosing of the door of the apartment, and by the eager voice of a servant from without. he said that some person, apparently in great haste, demanded to speak with me in the hall. wildly excited with wine, the unexpected interruption rather delighted than surprised me. i staggered forward at once, and a few steps brought me to the vestibule of the building. in this low and small room there hung no lamp; and now no light at all was admitted, save that of the exceedingly feeble dawn which made its way through the semi-circular window. as i put my foot over the threshold, i became aware of the figure of a youth about my own height, and habited in a white kerseymere morning frock, cut in the novel fashion of the one i myself wore at the moment. this the faint light enabled me to perceive; but the features of his face i could not distinguish. upon my entering he strode hurriedly up to me, and, seizing me by. the arm with a gesture of petulant impatience, whispered the words "william wilson!" in my ear. i grew perfectly sober in an instant. there was that in the manner of the stranger, and in the tremulous shake of his uplifted finger, as he held it between my eyes and the light, which filled me with unqualified amazement; but it was not this which had so violently moved me. it was the pregnancy of solemn admonition in the singular, low, hissing utterance; and, above all, it was the character, the tone, the key, of those few, simple, and familiar, yet whispered syllables, which came with a thousand thronging memories of bygone days, and struck upon my soul with the shock of a galvanic battery. ere i could recover the use of my senses he was gone. although this event failed not of a vivid effect upon my disordered imagination, yet was it evanescent as vivid. for some weeks, indeed, i busied myself in earnest inquiry, or was wrapped in a cloud of morbid speculation. i did not pretend to disguise from my perception the identity of the singular individual who thus perseveringly interfered with my affairs, and harassed me with his insinuated counsel. but who and what was this wilson? --and whence came he? --and what were his purposes? upon neither of these points could i be satisfied; merely ascertaining, in regard to him, that a sudden accident in his family had caused his removal from dr. bransby's academy on the afternoon of the day in which i myself had eloped. but in a brief period i ceased to think upon the subject; my attention being all absorbed in a contemplated departure for oxford. thither i soon went; the uncalculating vanity of my parents furnishing me with an outfit and annual establishment, which would enable me to indulge at will in the luxury already so dear to my heart, --to vie in profuseness of expenditure with the haughtiest heirs of the wealthiest earldoms in great britain. excited by such appliances to vice, my constitutional temperament broke forth with redoubled ardor, and i spurned even the common restraints of decency in the mad infatuation of my revels. but it were absurd to pause in the detail of my extravagance. let it suffice, that among spendthrifts i out-heroded herod, and that, giving name to a multitude of novel follies, i added no brief appendix to the long catalogue of vices then usual in the most dissolute university of europe. it could hardly be credited, however, that i had, even here, so utterly fallen from the gentlemanly estate, as to seek acquaintance with the vilest arts of the gambler by profession, and, having become an adept in his despicable science, to practise it habitually as a means of increasing my already enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded among my fellow-collegians. such, nevertheless, was the fact. and the very enormity of this offence against all manly and honourable sentiment proved, beyond doubt, the main if not the sole reason of the impunity with which it was committed. who, indeed, among my most abandoned associates, would not rather have disputed the clearest evidence of his senses, than have suspected of such courses, the gay, the frank, the generous william wilson --the noblest and most commoner at oxford --him whose follies (said his parasites) were but the follies of youth and unbridled fancy --whose errors but inimitable whim --whose darkest vice but a careless and dashing extravagance? i had been now two years successfully busied in this way, when there came to the university a young parvenu nobleman, glendinning --rich, said report, as herodes atticus --his riches, too, as easily acquired. i soon found him of weak intellect, and, of course, marked him as a fitting subject for my skill. i frequently engaged him in play, and contrived, with the gambler's usual art, to let him win considerable sums, the more effectually to entangle him in my snares. at length, my schemes being ripe, i met him (with the full intention that this meeting should be final and decisive) at the chambers of a fellow-commoner, (mr. preston,) equally intimate with both, but who, to do him justice, entertained not even a remote suspicion of my design. to give to this a better colouring, i had contrived to have assembled a party of some eight or ten, and was solicitously careful that the introduction of cards should appear accidental, and originate in the proposal of my contemplated dupe himself. to be brief upon a vile topic, none of the low finesse was omitted, so customary upon similar occasions that it is a just matter for wonder how any are still found so besotted as to fall its victim. we had protracted our sitting far into the night, and i had at length effected the manoeuvre of getting glendinning as my sole antagonist. the game, too, was my favorite ecarte!. the rest of the company, interested in the extent of our play, had abandoned their own cards, and were standing around us as spectators. the parvenu, who had been induced by my artifices in the early part of the evening, to drink deeply, now shuffled, dealt, or played, with a wild nervousness of manner for which his intoxication, i thought, might partially, but could not altogether account. in a very short period he had become my debtor to a large amount, when, having taken a long draught of port, he did precisely what i had been coolly anticipating --he proposed to double our already extravagant stakes. with a well-feigned show of reluctance, and not until after my repeated refusal had seduced him into some angry words which gave a color of pique to my compliance, did i finally comply. the result, of course, did but prove how entirely the prey was in my toils; in less than an hour he had quadrupled his debt. for some time his countenance had been losing the florid tinge lent it by the wine; but now, to my astonishment, i perceived that it had grown to a pallor truly fearful. i say to my astonishment. glendinning had been represented to my eager inquiries as immeasurably wealthy; and the sums which he had as yet lost, although in themselves vast, could not, i supposed, very seriously annoy, much less so violently affect him. that he was overcome by the wine just swallowed, was the idea which most readily presented itself; and, rather with a view to the preservation of my own character in the eyes of my associates, than from any less interested motive, i was about to insist, peremptorily, upon a discontinuance of the play, when some expressions at my elbow from among the company, and an ejaculation evincing utter despair on the part of glendinning, gave me to understand that i had effected his total ruin under circumstances which, rendering him an object for the pity of all, should have protected him from the ill offices even of a fiend. what now might have been my conduct it is difficult to say. the pitiable condition of my dupe had thrown an air of embarrassed gloom over all; and, for some moments, a profound silence was maintained, during which i could not help feeling my cheeks tingle with the many burning glances of scorn or reproach cast upon me by the less abandoned of the party. i will even own that an intolerable weight of anxiety was for a brief instant lifted from my bosom by the sudden and extraordinary interruption which ensued. the wide, heavy folding doors of the apartment were all at once thrown open, to their full extent, with a vigorous and rushing impetuosity that extinguished, as if by magic, every candle in the room. their light, in dying, enabled us just to perceive that a stranger had entered, about my own height, and closely muffled in a cloak. the darkness, however, was now total; and we could only feel that he was standing in our midst. before any one of us could recover from the extreme astonishment into which this rudeness had thrown all, we heard the voice of the intruder. "gentlemen," he said, in a low, distinct, and never-to-be-forgotten whisper which thrilled to the very marrow of my bones, "gentlemen, i make no apology for this behaviour, because in thus behaving, i am but fulfilling a duty. you are, beyond doubt, uninformed of the true character of the person who has to-night won at ecarte a large sum of money from lord glendinning. i will therefore put you upon an expeditious and decisive plan of obtaining this very necessary information. please to examine, at your leisure, the inner linings of the cuff of his left sleeve, and the several little packages which may be found in the somewhat capacious pockets of his embroidered morning wrapper." while he spoke, so profound was the stillness that one might have heard a pin drop upon the floor. in ceasing, he departed at once, and as abruptly as he had entered. can i --shall i describe my sensations? --must i say that i felt all the horrors of the damned? most assuredly i had little time given for reflection. many hands roughly seized me upon the spot, and lights were immediately reprocured. a search ensued. in the lining of my sleeve were found all the court cards essential in ecarte, and, in the pockets of my wrapper, a number of packs, facsimiles of those used at our sittings, with the single exception that mine were of the species called, technically, arrondees; the honours being slightly convex at the ends, the lower cards slightly convex at the sides. in this disposition, the dupe who cuts, as customary, at the length of the pack, will invariably find that he cuts his antagonist an honor; while the gambler, cutting at the breadth, will, as certainly, cut nothing for his victim which may count in the records of the game. any burst of indignation upon this discovery would have affected me less than the silent contempt, or the sarcastic composure, with which it was received. "mr. wilson," said our host, stooping to remove from beneath his feet an exceedingly luxurious cloak of rare furs, "mr. wilson, this is your property." (the weather was cold; and, upon quitting my own room, i had thrown a cloak over my dressing wrapper, putting it off upon reaching the scene of play.) "i presume it is supererogatory to seek here (eyeing the folds of the garment with a bitter smile) for any farther evidence of your skill. indeed, we have had enough. you will see the necessity, i hope, of quitting oxford --at all events, of quitting instantly my chambers." abased, humbled to the dust as i then was, it is probable that i should have resented this galling language by immediate personal violence, had not my whole attention been at the moment arrested by a fact of the most startling character. the cloak which i had worn was of a rare description of fur; how rare, how extravagantly costly, i shall not venture to say. its fashion, too, was of my own fantastic invention; for i was fastidious to an absurd degree of coxcombry, in matters of this frivolous nature. when, therefore, mr. preston reached me that which he had picked up upon the floor, and near the folding doors of the apartment, it was with an astonishment nearly bordering upon terror, that i perceived my own already hanging on my arm, (where i had no doubt unwittingly placed it,) and that the one presented me was but its exact counterpart in every, in even the minutest possible particular. the singular being who had so disastrously exposed me, had been muffled, i remembered, in a cloak; and none had been worn at all by any of the members of our party with the exception of myself. retaining some presence of mind, i took the one offered me by preston; placed it, unnoticed, over my own; left the apartment with a resolute scowl of defiance; and, next morning ere dawn of day, commenced a hurried journey from oxford to the continent, in a perfect agony of horror and of shame. i fled in vain. my evil destiny pursued me as if in exultation, and proved, indeed, that the exercise of its mysterious dominion had as yet only begun. scarcely had i set foot in paris ere i had fresh evidence of the detestable interest taken by this wilson in my concerns. years flew, while i experienced no relief. villain! --at rome, with how untimely, yet with how spectral an officiousness, stepped he in between me and my ambition! at vienna, too --at berlin --and at moscow! where, in truth, had i not bitter cause to curse him within my heart? from his inscrutable tyranny did i at length flee, panic-stricken, as from a pestilence; and to the very ends of the earth i fled in vain. and again, and again, in secret communion with my own spirit, would i demand the questions "who is he? --whence came he? --and what are his objects?" but no answer was there found. and then i scrutinized, with a minute scrutiny, the forms, and the methods, and the leading traits of his impertinent supervision. but even here there was very little upon which to base a conjecture. it was noticeable, indeed, that, in no one of the multiplied instances in which he had of late crossed my path, had he so crossed it except to frustrate those schemes, or to disturb those actions, which, if fully carried out, might have resulted in bitter mischief. poor justification this, in truth, for an authority so imperiously assumed! poor indemnity for natural rights of self-agency so pertinaciously, so insultingly denied! i had also been forced to notice that my tormentor, for a very long period of time, (while scrupulously and with miraculous dexterity maintaining his whim of an identity of apparel with myself,) had so contrived it, in the execution of his varied interference with my will, that i saw not, at any moment, the features of his face. be wilson what he might, this, at least, was but the veriest of affectation, or of folly. could he, for an instant, have supposed that, in my admonisher at eton --in the destroyer of my honor at oxford, --in him who thwarted my ambition at rome, my revenge at paris, my passionate love at naples, or what he falsely termed my avarice in egypt, --that in this, my arch-enemy and evil genius, could fall to recognise the william wilson of my school boy days, --the namesake, the companion, the rival, --the hated and dreaded rival at dr. bransby's? impossible! --but let me hasten to the last eventful scene of the drama. thus far i had succumbed supinely to this imperious domination. the sentiment of deep awe with which i habitually regarded the elevated character, the majestic wisdom, the apparent omnipresence and omnipotence of wilson, added to a feeling of even terror, with which certain other traits in his nature and assumptions inspired me, had operated, hitherto, to impress me with an idea of my own utter weakness and helplessness, and to suggest an implicit, although bitterly reluctant submission to his arbitrary will. but, of late days, i had given myself up entirely to wine; and its maddening influence upon my hereditary temper rendered me more and more impatient of control. i began to murmur, --to hesitate, --to resist. and was it only fancy which induced me to believe that, with the increase of my own firmness, that of my tormentor underwent a proportional diminution? be this as it may, i now began to feel the inspiration of a burning hope, and at length nurtured in my secret thoughts a stern and desperate resolution that i would submit no longer to be enslaved. it was at rome, during the carnival of 18--, that i attended a masquerade in the palazzo of the neapolitan duke di broglio. i had indulged more freely than usual in the excesses of the wine-table; and now the suffocating atmosphere of the crowded rooms irritated me beyond endurance. the difficulty, too, of forcing my way through the mazes of the company contributed not a little to the ruffling of my temper; for i was anxiously seeking, (let me not say with what unworthy motive) the young, the gay, the beautiful wife of the aged and doting di broglio. with a too unscrupulous confidence she had previously communicated to me the secret of the costume in which she would be habited, and now, having caught a glimpse of her person, i was hurrying to make my way into her presence. --at this moment i felt a light hand placed upon my shoulder, and that ever-remembered, low, damnable whisper within my ear. in an absolute phrenzy of wrath, i turned at once upon him who had thus interrupted me, and seized him violently by tile collar. he was attired, as i had expected, in a costume altogether similar to my own; wearing a spanish cloak of blue velvet, begirt about the waist with a crimson belt sustaining a rapier. a mask of black silk entirely covered his face. "scoundrel!" i said, in a voice husky with rage, while every syllable i uttered seemed as new fuel to my fury, "scoundrel! impostor! accursed villain! you shall not --you shall not dog me unto death! follow me, or i stab you where you stand!" --and i broke my way from the ball-room into a small ante-chamber adjoining --dragging him unresistingly with me as i went. upon entering, i thrust him furiously from me. he staggered against the wall, while i closed the door with an oath, and commanded him to draw. he hesitated but for an instant; then, with a slight sigh, drew in silence, and put himself upon his defence. the contest was brief indeed. i was frantic with every species of wild excitement, and felt within my single arm the energy and power of a multitude. in a few seconds i forced him by sheer strength against the wainscoting, and thus, getting him at mercy, plunged my sword, with brute ferocity, repeatedly through and through his bosom. at that instant some person tried the latch of the door. i hastened to prevent an intrusion, and then immediately returned to my dying antagonist. but what human language can adequately portray that astonishment, that horror which possessed me at the spectacle then presented to view? the brief moment in which i averted my eyes had been sufficient to produce, apparently, a material change in the arrangements at the upper or farther end of the room. a large mirror, --so at first it seemed to me in my confusion --now stood where none had been perceptible before; and, as i stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble and tottering gait. thus it appeared, i say, but was not. it was my antagonist --it was wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution. his mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them, upon the floor. not a thread in all his raiment --not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not, even in the most absolute identity, mine own! it was wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and i could have fancied that i myself was speaking while he said: "you have conquered, and i yield. yet, henceforward art thou also dead --dead to the world, to heaven and to hope! in me didst thou exist --and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself." -the end. 1850 landor's cottage a pendant to "the domain of arnheim" by edgar allan poe during a pedestrian trip last summer, through one or two of the river counties of new york, i found myself, as the day declined, somewhat embarrassed about the road i was pursuing. the land undulated very remarkably; and my path, for the last hour, had wound about and about so confusedly, in its effort to keep in the valleys, that i no longer knew in what direction lay the sweet village of b-, where i had determined to stop for the night. the sun had scarcely shonestrictly speakingduring the day, which nevertheless, had been unpleasantly warm. a smoky mist, resembling that of the indian summer, enveloped all things, and of course, added to my uncertainty. not that i cared much about the matter. if i did not hit upon the village before sunset, or even before dark, it was more than possible that a little dutch farmhouse, or something of that kind, would soon make its appearancealthough, in fact, the neighborhood (perhaps on account of being more picturesque than fertile) was very sparsely inhabited. at all events, with my knapsack for a pillow, and my hound as a sentry, a bivouac in the open air was just the thing which would have amused me. i sauntered on, therefore, quite at easeponto taking charge of my gununtil at length, just as i had begun to consider whether the numerous little glades that led hither and thither, were intended to be paths at all, i was conducted by one of them into an unquestionable carriage track. there could be no mistaking it. the traces of light wheels were evident; and although the tall shrubberies and overgrown undergrowth met overhead, there was no obstruction whatever below, even to the passage of a virginian mountain wagonthe most aspiring vehicle, i take it, of its kind. the road, however, except in being open through the woodif wood be not too weighty a name for such an assemblage of light treesand except in the particulars of evident wheel-tracksbore no resemblance to any road i had before seen. the tracks of which i speak were but faintly perceptiblehaving been impressed upon the firm, yet pleasantly moist surface ofwhat looked more like green genoese velvet than any thing else. it was grass, clearlybut grass such as we seldom see out of englandso short, so thick, so even, and so vivid in color. not a single impediment lay in the wheel-routenot even a chip or dead twig. the stones that once obstructed the way had been carefully placednot thrown-along the sides of the lane, so as to define its boundaries at bottom with a kind of half-precise, half-negligent, and wholly picturesque definition. clumps of wild flowers grew everywhere, luxuriantly, in the interspaces. what to make of all this, of course i knew not. here was art undoubtedlythat did not surprise meall roads, in the ordinary sense, are works of art; nor can i say that there was much to wonder at in the mere excess of art manifested; all that seemed to have been done, might have been done herewith such natural "capabilities" (as they have it in the books on landscape gardening)with very little labor and expense. no; it was not the amount but the character of the art which caused me to take a seat on one of the blossomy stones and gaze up and down this fairylike avenue for half an hour or more in bewildered admiration. one thing became more and more evident the longer i gazed: an artist, and one with a most scrupulous eye for form, had superintended all these arrangements. the greatest care had been taken to preserve a due medium between the neat and graceful on the one hand, and the pittoresque, in the true sense of the italian term, on the other. there were few straight, and no long uninterrupted lines. the same effect of curvature or of color appeared twice, usually, but not oftener, at any one point of view. everywhere was variety in uniformity. it was a piece of "composition," in which the most fastidiously critical taste could scarcely have suggested an emendation. i had turned to the right as i entered this road, and now, arising, i continued in the same direction. the path was so serpentine, that at no moment could i trace its course for more than two or three paces in advance. its character did not undergo any material change. presently the murmur of water fell gently upon my earand in a few moments afterward, as i turned with the road somewhat more abruptly than hitherto, i became aware that a building of some kind lay at the foot of a gentle declivity just before me. i could see nothing distinctly on account of the mist which occupied all the little valley below. a gentle breeze, however, now arose, as the sun was about descending; and while i remained standing on the brow of the slope, the fog gradually became dissipated into wreaths, and so floated over the scene. as it came fully into viewthus gradually as i describe itpiece by piece, here a tree, there a glimpse of water, and here again the summit of a chimney, i could scarcely help fancying that the whole was one of the ingenious illusions sometimes exhibited under the name of "vanishing pictures." by the time, however, that the fog had thoroughly disappeared, the sun had made its way down behind the gentle hills, and thence, as it with a slight chassez to the south, had come again fully into sight, glaring with a purplish lustre through a chasm that entered the valley from the west. suddenly, thereforeand as if by the hand of magicthis whole valley and every thing in it became brilliantly visible. the first coup d'oeil, as the sun slid into the position described, impressed me very much as i have been impressed, when a boy, by the concluding scene of some well-arranged theatrical spectacle or melodrama. not even the monstrosity of color was wanting; for the sunlight came out through the chasm, tinted all orange and purple; while the vivid green of the grass in the valley was reflected more or less upon all objects from the curtain of vapor that still hung overhead, as if loth to take its total departure from a scene so enchantingly beautiful. the little vale into which i thus peered down from under the fog canopy could not have been more than four hundred yards long; while in breadth it varied from fifty to one hundred and fifty or perhaps two hundred. it was most narrow at its northern extremity, opening out as it tended southwardly, but with no very precise regularity. the widest portion was within eighty yards of the southern extreme. the slopes which encompassed the vale could not fairly be called hills, unless at their northern face. here a precipitous ledge of granite arose to a height of some ninety feet; and, as i have mentioned, the valley at this point was not more than fifty feet wide; but as the visiter proceeded southwardly from the cliff, he found on his right hand and on his left, declivities at once less high, less precipitous, and less rocky. all, in a word, sloped and softened to the south; and yet the whole vale was engirdled by eminences, more or less high, except at two points. one of these i have already spoken of. it lay considerably to the north of west, and was where the setting sun made its way, as i have before described, into the amphitheatre, through a cleanly cut natural cleft in the granite embankment; this fissure might have been ten yards wide at its widest point, so far as the eye could trace it. it seemed to lead up, up like a natural causeway, into the recesses of unexplored mountains and forests. the other opening was directly at the southern end of the vale. here, generally, the slopes were nothing more than gentle inclinations, extending from east to west about one hundred and fifty yards. in the middle of this extent was a depression, level with the ordinary floor of the valley. as regards vegetation, as well as in respect to every thing else, the scene softened and sloped to the south. to the northon the craggy precipicea few paces from the vergeup sprang the magnificent trunks of numerous hickories, black walnuts, and chestnuts, interspersed with occasional oak, and the strong lateral branches thrown out by the walnuts especially, spread far over the edge of the cliff. proceeding southwardly, the explorer saw, at first, the same class of trees, but less and less lofty and salvatorish in character; then he saw the gentler elm, succeeded by the sassafras and locustthese again by the softer linden, red-bud, catalpa, and maplethese yet again by still more graceful and more modest varieties. the whole face of the southern declivity was covered with wild shrubbery alonean occasional silver willow or white poplar excepted. in the bottom of the valley itself(for it must be borne in mind that the vegetation hitherto mentioned grew only on the cliffs or hillsides)were to be seen three insulated trees. one was an elm of fine size and exquisite form: it stood guard over the southern gate of the vale. another was a hickory, much larger than the elm, and altogether a much finer tree, although both were exceedingly beautiful: it seemed to have taken charge of the northwestern entrance, springing from a group of rocks in the very jaws of the ravine, and throwing its graceful body, at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, far out into the sunshine of the amphitheatre. about thirty yards east of this tree stood, however, the pride of the valley, and beyond all question the most magnificent tree i have ever seen, unless, perhaps, among the cypresses of the itchiatuckanee. it was a triplestemmed tulip-treethe liriodendron tulipiferumone of the natural order of magnolias. its three trunks separated from the parent at about three feet from the soil, and diverging very slightly and gradually, were not more than four feet apart at the point where the largest stem shot out into foliage: this was at an elevation of about eighty feet. the whole height of the principal division was one hundred and twenty feet. nothing can surpass in beauty the form, or the glossy, vivid green of the leaves of the tulip-tree. in the present instance they were fully eight inches wide; but their glory was altogether eclipsed by the gorgeous splendor of the profuse blossoms. conceive, closely congregated, a million of the largest and most resplendent tulips! only thus can the reader get any idea of the picture i would convey. and then the stately grace of the clean, delicatelygranulated columnar stems, the largest four feet in diameter, at twenty from the ground. the innumerable blossoms, mingling with those of other trees scarcely less beautiful, although infinitely less majestic, filled the valley with more than arabian perfumes. the general floor of the amphitheatre was grass of the same character as that i had found in the road; if anything, more deliciously soft, thick, velvety, and miraculously green. it was hard to conceive how all this beauty had been attained. i have spoken of two openings into the vale. from the one to the northwest issued a rivulet, which came, gently murmuring and slightly foaming, down the ravine, until it dashed against the group of rocks out of which sprang the insulated hickory. here, after encircling the tree, it passed on a little to the north of east, leaving the tulip tree some twenty feet to the south, and making no decided alteration in its course until it came near the midway between the eastern and western boundaries of the valley. at this point, after a series of sweeps, it turned off at right angles and pursued a generally southern direction meandering as it wentuntil it became lost in a small lake of irregular figure (although roughly oval), that lay gleaming near the lower extremity of the vale. this lakelet was, perhaps, a hundred yards in diameter at its widest part. no crystal could be clearer than its waters. its bottom, which could be distinctly seen, consisted altogether, of pebbles brilliantly white. its banks, of the emerald grass already described, rounded, rather than sloped, off into the clear heaven below; and so clear was this heaven, so perfectly, at times, did it reflect all objects above it, that where the true bank ended and where the mimic one commenced, it was a point of no little difficulty to determine. the trout, and some other varieties of fish, with which this pond seemed to be almost inconveniently crowded, had all the appearance of veritable flying-fish. it was almost impossible to believe that they were not absolutely suspended in the air. a light birch canoe that lay placidly on the water, was reflected in its minutest fibres with a fidelity unsurpassed by the most exquisitely polished mirror. a small island, fairly laughing with flowers in full bloom, and affording little more space than just enough for a picturesque little building, seemingly a fowl-housearose from the lake not far from its northern shoreto which it was connected by means of an inconceivably lightlooking and yet very primitive bridge. it was formed of a single, broad and thick plank of the tulip wood. this was forty feet long, and spanned the interval between shore and shore with a slight but very perceptible arch, preventing all oscillation. from the southern extreme of the lake issued a continuation of the rivulet, which, after meandering for, perhaps, thirty yards, finally passed through the "depression" (already described) in the middle of the southern declivity, and tumbling down a sheer precipice of a hundred feet, made its devious and unnoticed way to the hudson. the lake was deepat some points thirty feetbut the rivulet seldom exceeded three, while its greatest width was about eight. its bottom and banks were as those of the pondif a defect could have been attributed, in point of picturesqueness, it was that of excessive neatness. the expanse of the green turf was relieved, here and there, by an occasional showy shrub, such as the hydrangea, or the common snowball, or the aromatic seringa; or, more frequently, by a clump of geraniums blossoming gorgeously in great varieties. these latter grew in pots which were carefully buried in the soil, so as to give the plants the appearance of being indigenous. besides all this, the lawn's velvet was exquisitely spotted with sheepa considerable flock of which roamed about the vale, in company with three tamed deer, and a vast number of brilliantlyplumed ducks. a very large mastiff seemed to be in vigilant attendance upon these animals, each and all. along the eastern and western cliffswhere, toward the upper portion of the amphitheatre, the boundaries were more or less precipitousgrew ivy in great profusionso that only here and there could even a glimpse of the naked rock be obtained. the northern precipice, in like manner, was almost entirely clothed by grape-vines of rare luxuriance; some springing from the soil at the base of the cliff, and others from ledges on its face. the slight elevation which formed the lower boundary of this little domain, was crowned by a neat stone wall, of sufficient height to prevent the escape of the deer. nothing of the fence kind was observable elsewhere; for nowhere else was an artificial enclosure needed:any stray sheep, for example, which should attempt to make its way out of the vale by means of the ravine, would find its progress arrested, after a few yards' advance, by the precipitous ledge of rock over which tumbled the cascade that had arrested my attention as i first drew near the domain. in short, the only ingress or egress was through a gate occupying a rocky pass in the road, a few paces below the point at which i stopped to reconnoitre the scene. i have described the brook as meandering very irregularly through the whole of its course. its two general directions, as i have said, were first from west to east, and then from north to south. at the turn, the stream, sweeping backward, made an almost circular loop, so as to form a peninsula which was very nearly an island, and which included about the sixteenth of an acre. on this peninsula stood a dwelling-houseand when i say that this house, like the infernal terrace seen by vathek, "etait d'une architecture inconnue dans les annales de la terre," i mean, merely, that its tout ensemble struck me with the keenest sense of combined novelty and proprietyin a word, of poetry(for, than in the words just employed, i could scarcely give, of poetry in the abstract, a more rigorous definition)and i do not mean that merely outre was perceptible in any respect. in fact nothing could well be more simplemore utterly unpretending than this cottage. its marvellous effect lay altogether in its artistic arrangement as a picture. i could have fancied, while i looked at it, that some eminent landscape-painter had built it with his brush. the point of view from which i first saw the valley, was not altogether, although it was nearly, the best point from which to survey the house. i will therefore describe it as i afterwards saw itfrom a position on the stone wall at the southern extreme of the amphitheatre. the main building was about twenty-four feet long and sixteen broadcertainly not more. its total height, from the ground to the apex of the roof, could not have exceeded eighteen feet. to the west end of this structure was attached one about a third smaller in all its proportions:the line of its front standing back about two yards from that of the larger house, and the line of its roof, of course, being considerably depressed below that of the roof adjoining. at right angles to these buildings, and from the rear of the main onenot exactly in the middleextended a third compartment, very smallbeing, in general, one-third less than the western wing. the roofs of the two larger were very steepsweeping down from the ridge-beam with a long concave curve, and extending at least four feet beyond the walls in front, so as to form the roofs of two piazzas. these latter roofs, of course, needed no support; but as they had the air of needing it, slight and perfectly plain pillars were inserted at the corners alone. the roof of the northern wing was merely an extension of a portion of the main roof. between the chief building and western wing arose a very tall and rather slender square chimney of hard dutch bricks, alternately black and red:a slight cornice of projecting bricks at the top. over the gables the roofs also projected very much:in the main building about four feet to the east and two to the west. the principal door was not exactly in the main division, being a little to the eastwhile the two windows were to the west. these latter did not extend to the floor, but were much longer and narrower than usualthey had single shutters like doorsthe panes were of lozenge form, but quite large. the door itself had its upper half of glass, also in lozenge panesa movable shutter secured it at night. the door to the west wing was in its gable, and quite simplea single window looked out to the south. there was no external door to the north wing, and it also had only one window to the east. the blank wall of the eastern gable was relieved by stairs (with a balustrade) running diagonally across itthe ascent being from the south. under cover of the widely projecting eave these steps gave access to a door leading to the garret, or rather loftfor it was lighted only by a single window to the north, and seemed to have been intended as a store-room. the piazzas of the main building and western wing had no floors, as is usual; but at the doors and at each window, large, flat irregular slabs of granite lay imbedded in the delicious turf, affording comfortable footing in all weather. excellent paths of the same materialnot nicely adapted, but with the velvety sod filling frequent intervals between the stones, led hither and thither from the house, to a crystal spring about five paces off, to the road, or to one or two outhouses that lay to the north, beyond the brook, and were thoroughly concealed by a few locusts and catalpas. not more than six steps from the main door of the cottage stood the dead trunk of a fantastic pear-tree, so clothed from head to foot in the gorgeous bignonia blossoms that one required no little scrutiny to determine what manner of sweet thing it could be. from various arms of this tree hung cages of different kinds. in one, a large wicker cylinder with a ring at top, revelled a mocking bird; in another an oriole; in a third the impudent bobolinkwhile three or four more delicate prisons were loudly vocal with canaries. the pillars of the piazza were enwreathed in jasmine and sweet honeysuckle; while from the angle formed by the main structure and its west wing, in front, sprang a grape-vine of unexampled luxuriance. scorning all restraint, it had clambered first to the lower roofthen to the higher; and along the ridge of this latter it continued to writhe on, throwing out tendrils to the right and left, until at length it fairly attained the east gable, and fell trailing over the stairs. the whole house, with its wings, was constructed of the old-fashioned dutch shinglesbroad, and with unrounded corners. it is a peculiarity of this material to give houses built of it the appearance of being wider at bottom than at topafter the manner of egyptian architecture; and in the present instance, this exceedingly picturesque effect was aided by numerous pots of gorgeous flowers that almost encompassed the base of the buildings. the shingles were painted a dull gray; and the happiness with which this neutral tint melted into the vivid green of the tulip tree leaves that partially overshadowed the cottage, can readily be conceived by an artist. from the position near the stone wall, as described, the buildings were seen at great advantagefor the southeastern angle was thrown forwardso that the eye took in at once the whole of the two fronts, with the picturesque eastern gable, and at the same time obtained just a sufficient glimpse of the northern wing, with parts of a pretty roof to the spring-house, and nearly half of a light bridge that spanned the brook in the near vicinity of the main buildings. i did not remain very long on the brow of the hill, although long enough to make a thorough survey of the scene at my feet. it was clear that i had wandered from the road to the village, and i had thus good traveller's excuse to open the gate before me, and inquire my way, at all events; so, without more ado, i proceeded. the road, after passing the gate, seemed to lie upon a natural ledge, sloping gradually down along the face of the north-eastern cliffs. it led me on to the foot of the northern precipice, and thence over the bridge, round by the eastern gable to the front door. in this progress, i took notice that no sight of the out-houses could be obtained. as i turned the corner of the gable, the mastiff bounded towards me in stern silence, but with the eye and the whole air of a tiger. i held him out my hand, however, in token of amityand i never yet knew the dog who was proof against such an appeal to his courtesy. he not only shut his mouth and wagged his tail, but absolutely offered me his paw-afterward extending his civilities to ponto. as no bell was discernible, i rapped with my stick against the door, which stood half open. instantly a figure advanced to the thresholdthat of a young woman about twenty-eight years of ageslender, or rather slight, and somewhat above the medium height. as she approached, with a certain modest decision of step altogether indescribable. i said to myself, "surely here i have found the perfection of natural, in contradistinction from artificial grace." the second impression which she made on me, but by far the more vivid of the two, was that of enthusiasm. so intense an expression of romance, perhaps i should call it, or of unworldliness, as that which gleamed from her deep-set eyes, had never so sunk into my heart of hearts before. i know not how it is, but this peculiar expression of the eye, wreathing itself occasionally into the lips, is the most powerful, if not absolutely the sole spell, which rivets my interest in woman. "romance, provided my readers fully comprehended what i would here imply by the word"romance" and "womanliness" seem to me convertible terms: and, after all, what man truly loves in woman, is simply her womanhood. the eyes of annie (i heard some one from the interior call her "annie, darling!") were "spiritual grey;" her hair, a light chestnut: this is all i had time to observe of her. at her most courteous of invitations, i enteredpassing first into a tolerably wide vestibule. having come mainly to observe, i took notice that to my right as i stepped in, was a window, such as those in front of the house; to the left, a door leading into the principal room; while, opposite me, an open door enabled me to see a small apartment, just the size of the vestibule, arranged as a study, and having a large bow window looking out to the north. passing into the parlor, i found myself with mr. landorfor this, i afterwards found, was his name. he was civil, even cordial in his manner, but just then, i was more intent on observing the arrangements of the dwelling which had so much interested me, than the personal appearance of the tenant. the north wing, i now saw, was a bed-chamber, its door opened into the parlor. west of this door was a single window, looking toward the brook. at the west end of the parlor, were a fireplace, and a door leading into the west wingprobably a kitchen. nothing could be more rigorously simple than the furniture of the parlor. on the floor was an ingrain carpet, of excellent texturea white ground, spotted with small circular green figures. at the windows were curtains of snowy white jaconet muslin: they were tolerably full, and hung decisively, perhaps rather formally in sharp, parallel plaits to the floorjust to the floor. the walls were prepared with a french paper of great delicacy, a silver ground, with a faint green cord running zig-zag throughout. its expanse was relieved merely by three of julien's exquisite lithographs a trois crayons, fastened to the wall without frames. one of these drawings was a scene of oriental luxury, or rather voluptuousness; another was a "carnival piece," spirited beyond compare; the third was a greek female heada face so divinely beautiful, and yet of an expression so provokingly indeterminate, never before arrested my attention. the more substantial furniture consisted of a round table, a few chairs (including a large rocking-chair), and a sofa, or rather "settee;" its material was plain maple painted a creamy white, slightly interstriped with green; the seat of cane. the chairs and table were "to match," but the forms of all had evidently been designed by the same brain which planned "the grounds;" it is impossible to conceive anything more graceful. on the table were a few books, a large, square, crystal bottle of some novel perfume, a plain groundglass astral (not solar) lamp with an italian shade, and a large vase of resplendently-blooming flowers. flowers, indeed, of gorgeous colours and delicate odour formed the sole mere decoration of the apartment. the fire-place was nearly filled with a vase of brilliant geranium. on a triangular shelf in each angle of the room stood also a similar vase, varied only as to its lovely contents. one or two smaller bouquets adorned the mantel, and late violets clustered about the open windows. it is not the purpose of this work to do more than give in detail, a picture of mr. landor's residenceas i found it. how he made it what it wasand whywith some particulars of mr. landor himselfmay, possibly form the subject of another article. the end . 1829 romance by edgar allan poe romance romance, who loves to nod and sing, with drowsy head and folded wing, among the green leaves as they shake far down within some shadowy lake, to me a painted paroquet hath beena most familiar bird taught me my alphabet to say to lisp my very earliest word while in the wild wood i did lie, a childwith a most knowing eye. of late, eternal condor years so shake the very heaven on high with tumult as they thunder by, i have no time for idle cares through gazing on the unquiet sky. and when an hour with calmer wings its down upon my spirit flings that little time with lyre and rhyme to while awayforbidden things! my heart would feel to be a crime unless it trembled with the strings. -the end. 1846 the cask of amontillado by edgar allan poe the thousand injuries of fortunato i had borne as i best could, but when he ventured upon insult i vowed revenge. you, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. at length i would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled --but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. i must not only punish but punish with impunity. a wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. it is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. it must be understood that neither by word nor deed had i given fortunato cause to doubt my good will. i continued, as was my in to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my to smile now was at the thought of his immolation. he had a weak point --this fortunato --although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. he prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. few italians have the true virtuoso spirit. for the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity, to practise imposture upon the british and austrian millionaires. in painting and gemmary, fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack, but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. in this respect i did not differ from him materially; --i was skilful in the italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever i could. it was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that i encountered my friend. he accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. the man wore motley. he had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. i was so pleased to see him that i thought i should never have done wringing his hand. i said to him --"my dear fortunato, you are luckily met. how remarkably well you are looking to-day. but i have received a pipe of what passes for amontillado, and i have my doubts." "how?" said he. "amontillado, a pipe? impossible! and in the middle of the carnival!" "i have my doubts," i replied; "and i was silly enough to pay the full amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. you were not to be found, and i was fearful of losing a bargain." "amontillado!" "i have my doubts." "amontillado!" "and i must satisfy them." "amontillado!" "as you are engaged, i am on my way to luchresi. if any one has a critical turn it is he. he will tell me --" "luchresi cannot tell amontillado from sherry." "and yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own. "come, let us go." "whither?" "to your vaults." "my friend, no; i will not impose upon your good nature. i perceive you have an engagement. luchresi--" "i have no engagement; --come." "my friend, no. it is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which i perceive you are afflicted. the vaults are insufferably damp. they are encrusted with nitre." "let us go, nevertheless. the cold is merely nothing. amontillado! you have been imposed upon. and as for luchresi, he cannot distinguish sherry from amontillado." thus speaking, fortunato possessed himself of my arm; and putting on a mask of black silk and drawing a roquelaire closely about my person, i suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo. there were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in honour of the time. i had told them that i should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. these orders were sufficient, i well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned. i took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to fortunato, bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway that led into the vaults. i passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. we came at length to the foot of the descent, and stood together upon the damp ground of the catacombs of the montresors. the gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as he strode. "the pipe," he said. "it is farther on," said i; "but observe the white web-work which gleams from these cavern walls." he turned towards me, and looked into my eves with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication. "nitre?" he asked, at length. "nitre," i replied. "how long have you had that cough?" "ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh!" my poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes. "it is nothing," he said, at last. "come," i said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is precious. you are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once i was. you are a man to be missed. for me it is no matter. we will go back; you will be ill, and i cannot be responsible. besides, there is luchresi --" "enough," he said; "the cough's a mere nothing; it will not kill me. i shall not die of a cough." "true --true," i replied; "and, indeed, i had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily --but you should use all proper caution. a draught of this medoc will defend us from the damps. here i knocked off the neck of a bottle which i drew from a long row of its fellows that lay upon the mould. "drink," i said, presenting him the wine. he raised it to his lips with a leer. he paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled. "i drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us." "and i to your long life." he again took my arm, and we proceeded. "these vaults," he said, "are extensive." "the montresors," i replied, "were a great and numerous family." "i forget your arms." "a huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel." "and the motto?" "nemo me impune lacessit." "good!" he said. the wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. my own fancy grew warm with the medoc. we had passed through long walls of piled skeletons, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs. i paused again, and this time i made bold to seize fortunato by an arm above the elbow. "the nitre!" i said; "see, it increases. it hangs like moss upon the vaults. we are below the river's bed. the drops of moisture trickle among the bones. come, we will go back ere it is too late. your cough --" "it is nothing," he said; "let us go on. but first, another draught of the medoc." i broke and reached him a flagon of de grave. he emptied it at a breath. his eyes flashed with a fierce light. he laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation i did not understand. i looked at him in surprise. he repeated the movement --a grotesque one. "you do not comprehend?" he said. "not i," i replied. "then you are not of the brotherhood." "how?" "you are not of the masons." "yes, yes," i said; "yes, yes." "you? impossible! a mason?" "a mason," i replied. "a sign," he said, "a sign." "it is this," i answered, producing from beneath the folds of my roquelaire a trowel. "you jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "but let us proceed to the amontillado." "be it so," i said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak and again offering him my arm. he leaned upon it heavily. we continued our route in search of the amontillado. we passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame. at the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of paris. three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. from the fourth side the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived a still interior crypt or recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. it seemed to have been constructed for no especial use within itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite. it was in vain that fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavoured to pry into the depth of the recess. its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see. "proceed," i said; "herein is the amontillado. as for luchresi --" "he is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while i followed immediately at his heels. in niche, and finding an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. a moment more and i had fettered him to the granite. in its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. from one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. he was too much astounded to resist. withdrawing the key i stepped back from the recess. "pass your hand," i said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. indeed, it is very damp. once more let me implore you to return. no? then i must positively leave you. but i must first render you all the little attentions in my power." "the amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment. "true," i replied; "the amontillado." as i said these words i busied myself among the pile of bones of which i have before spoken. throwing them aside, i soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. with these materials and with the aid of my trowel, i began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche. i had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when i discovered that the intoxication of fortunato had in a great measure worn off. the earliest indication i had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess. it was not the cry of a drunken man. there was then a long and obstinate silence. i laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth; and then i heard the furious vibrations of the chain. the noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that i might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, i ceased my labours and sat down upon the bones. when at last the clanking subsided, i resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. the wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. i again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason-work, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within. a succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. for a brief moment i hesitated, i trembled. unsheathing my rapier, i began to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. i placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. i reapproached the wall; i replied to the yells of him who clamoured. i re-echoed, i aided, i surpassed them in volume and in strength. i did this, and the clamourer grew still. it was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. i had completed the eighth, the ninth and the tenth tier. i had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in. i struggled with its weight; i placed it partially in its destined position. but now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. it was succeeded by a sad voice, which i had difficulty in recognizing as that of the noble fortunato. the voice said- "ha! ha! ha! --he! he! he! --a very good joke, indeed --an excellent jest. we will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo --he! he! he! --over our wine --he! he! he!" "the amontillado!" i said. "he! he! he! --he! he! he! --yes, the amontillado. but is it not getting late? will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the lady fortunato and the rest? let us be gone." "yes," i said, "let us be gone." "for the love of god, montresor!" "yes," i said, "for the love of god!" but to these words i hearkened in vain for a reply. i grew impatient. i called aloud - "fortunato!" no answer. i called again - "fortunato!" no answer still. i thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. there came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. my heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so. i hastened to make an end of my labour. i forced the last stone into its position; i plastered it up. against the new masonry i re-erected the old rampart of bones. for the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. in pace requiescat! -the end. 1835 scenes from "politian" by edgar allan poe dramatis personae politian, earl of leicester. a monk. di broglio, a roman duke. lalage count castiglione, his son. alessandra, betrothed to baldazzar, duke of surrey, castiglione. friend to politian. jacinta, maid to lalage. the scene lies in rome i. romea hall in a palace alessandra and castiglione. alessandra thou art sad, castiglione. castiglione sad!not i. oh, i'm the happiest, happiest man in rome! a few days more, thou knowest, my alessandra, will make thee mine. oh, i am very happy! alessandra. methinks thou hast a singular way of showing thy happiness!what ails thee, cousin of mine? why didst thou sigh so deeply? castiglione i was not conscious of it. it is a fashion, a sillya most silly fashion i have when i am very happy. did i sigh? (sighing) alessandra thou didst. thou art not well. thou hast indulged too much of late, and i am vexed to see it. late hours and wine, castiglione,these will ruin thee! thou art already altered thy looks are haggardnothing so wears away the constitution as late hours and wine. castiglione (musing) nothing, fair cousin, nothingnot even deep sorrow wears it away like evil hours and wine. i will amend. alessandra do it! i would have thee drop thy riotous company, toofellows low born ill suit the like with old di broglio's heir and alessandra's husband. castiglione i will drop them. alessandra thou wiltthou must. attend thou also more to thy dress and equippagethey are over plain for thy lofty rank and fashionmuch depends upon appearances. castiglione i'll see to it. alessandra then see to it!pay more attention, sir, to a becoming carriagemuch thou wantest in dignity. castiglione much, much, oh! much i want in proper dignity. alessandra (haughtily) thou mockest me, sir. castiglione (abstractedly) sweet, gentle lalage! alessandra heard i aright? speak to himhe speaks of lalage! sir count! (places her hand on his shoulder) what art thou dreaming? (aside) he's not well! what ails thee, sir? castiglione (starting) cousin! fair cousin!madam! i crave thy pardonindeed i am not well your hand from off my shoulder, if you please. this air is most oppressive!madamthe duke! (enter di broglio) di broglio my son, i've news for thee!hey?what's the matter? (observing alessandra) i' the pouts? kiss her, castiglione! kiss her, you dog! and make it up, i say, this minute! i've news for you both. politian is expected hourly in romepolitian, earl of leicester! we'll have him at the wedding. 'tis his first visit to the imperial city. alessandra what! politian of britain, earl of leicester? di broglio the same, my love. we'll have him at the wedding. a man quite young in years, but grey in fame. i have not seen him, but rumour speaks of him as of a prodigy preeminent in arts and arms, and wealth, as of one who entered madly into life, drinking the cup of pleasure to the dregs. and high descent. we'll have him at the wedding. alessandra i have heard much of this politian. gay, volatile and giddyis he not? and little given to thinking. di broglio far from it, love. no branch, they say, of all philosophy so deep abstruse he has not mastered it. learned as few are learned. alessandra 'tis very strange! i have known men have seen politian and sought his company. they speak of him as of one who entered madly into life, drinking the cup of pleasure to the dregs. castiglione ridiculous! now i have seen politian and know him wellnor learned nor he. he is a dreamer, and a man shut out from common passions. di broglio children, we disagree. let us go forth and taste the fragrant air of the garden. did i dream, or did i hear politian was a melancholy man? (exeunt) ii romea lady's apartment, with a window open and looking into a garden. lalage, in deep mourning, reading at a table on which lie some books and a hand mirror. in the background jacinta (a servant maid) leans carelessly upon a chair. lalage. jacinta, is it thou? jacinta (pertly) yes, ma'am, i'm here. lalage. i did not know, jacinta, you were in waiting. sit down!let not my presence trouble you sit down!for i am humble, most humble. jacinta (aside) 'tis time. (jacinta seats herself in a side-long manner upon the chair, resting her elbows upon the back, and regarding her mistress with a contemptuous look. lalage continues to read.) lalage "it in another climate, so he said, "bore a bright golden flower, but not this soil!" (pausesturns over some leaves, and resumes) "no lingering winters there, nor snow, nor shower "but ocean ever to refresh mankind "breathes the shrill spirit of the western wind." o, beautiful!most beautifulhow like to what my fevered soul doth dream of heaven! o happy land (pauses) she died!the maiden died! a still more happy maiden who couldst die! jacinta! (jacinta returns no answer, and lalage presently resumes) again!a similar tale told of a beauteous dame beyond the sea! thus speaketh one ferdinand in the words of the play "she died full young"one bossola answers him "i think not soher infelicity "seemed to have years too many"ah luckless lady! jacinta! (still no answer) here 's a far sterner story, but likeoh, very like in its despair of that egyptian queen, winning so easily a thousand heartslosing at length her own. she died. thus endeth the historyand her maids lean over and weeptwo gentle maids with gentle nameseiros and charmion! rainbow and dove!jacinta! jacinta (pettishly) madam, what is it? lalage wilt thou, my good jacinta, be so kind as go down in the library and bring me the holy evangelists? jacinta pshaw! (exit) lalage if there be balm for the wounded spirit in gilead it is there! dew in the night-time of my bitter trouble will there be found"dew sweeter far than that which hangs like chains of pearl on hermon hill." (re-enter jacinta, and throws a volume on the table) there, ma'am, 's the book. indeed she is very troublesome. (aside) lalage (astonished) what didst thou say, jacinta? have i done aught to grieve thee or to vex thee?i am sorry. for thou hast served me long and ever been trustworthy and respectful. (resumes her reading) jacinta (aside) i can't believe she has any more jewelsnonoshe gave me all. lalage what didst thou say, jacinta? now i bethink me thou hast not spoken lately of thy wedding. how fares good ugo?and when is it to be? can i do aught?is there no farther aid thou needest, jacinta? jacinta is there no farther aid! that's meant for me (aside). i'm sure, madam, you need not be always throwing those jewels in my teeth. lalage jewels! jacinta,now indeed, jacinta, i thought not of the jewels. jacinta oh! perhaps not! but then i might have sworn it. after all, there 's ugo says the ring is only paste, for he 's sure the count castiglione never would have given a real diamond to such as you; and at the best i'm certain, madam, you cannot have use for jewels now. but i might have sworn it. (exit) (lalage bursts into tears and leans her head upon the tableafter a short pause raises it) lalage poor lalage!and is it come to this? thy servant maid!but courage!'tis but a viper whom thou hast cherished to sting thee to the soul! (taking up the mirror) ha! here at least 's a friendtoo much a friend in earlier daya friend will not deceive thee. fair mirror and true! now tell me (for thou canst) a talea pretty taleand heed thou not though it be rife with woe. it answers me. it speaks of sunken eyes, and wasted cheeks, and beauty long deceasedremembers me of joy departedhope, the seraph hope, inurned and entombed:now, in a tone low, sad, and solemn, but most audible, whispers of early grave untimely yawning for ruined maid. fair mirror and truethou liest not! thou hast no end to gainno heart to break castiglione lied who said he loved thou truehe false!false!false! (while she speaks, a monk enters her apartment, and approaches unobserved) monk refuge thou hast, sweet daughter, in heaven. think of eternal things! give up thy soul to penitence, and pray! lalage (arising hurriedly) i cannot pray!my soul is at war with god! the frightful sounds of merriment below disturb my sensesgo! i cannot pray the sweet airs from the garden worry me! thy presence grieves mego!thy priestly raiment fills me with dreadthy ebony crucifix with horror and awe! monk think of thy precious soul! lalage think of my early days!think of my father and mother in heaven think of our quiet home, and the rivulet that ran before the door! think of my little sisters!think of them! and think of me!think of my trusting love and confidencehis vowsmy ruinthinkthink of my unspeakable misery!begone! yet stay! yet stay!what was it thou saidst of prayer and penitence? didst thou not speak of faith and vows before the throne? monk i did. lalage 'tis well. there is a vow were fitting should be made a sacred vow, imperative, and urgent, a solemn vow! monk daughter, this zeal is well. lalage father, this zeal is anything but well! hast thou a crucifix fit for this thing? a crucifix whereon to register this sacred vow? (he hands her his own) not thatoh! no!no!no! (shuddering) not that! not that!i tell thee, holy man, thy raiments and thy ebony cross affright me! stand back! i have a crucifix myself, i have a crucifix methinks 'twere fitting the deedthe vowthe symbol of the deed and the deed's register should tally, father! (draws a cross-handled dagger, and raises it on high) behold the cross wherewith a vow like mine is written in heaven! monk thy words are madness, daughter, and speak a purpose unholythy lips are livid thine eyes are wildtempt not the wrath divine! pause ere too late!oh, be notbe not rash! swear not the oathoh, swear it not! lalage 'tis sworn! iii. an apartment in a palace. politian and baldazzar baldazzar -arouse thee now, politian! thou must notnay indeed, indeed, shalt not give away unto these humors. be thyself! shake off the idle fancies that beset thee, and live, for now thou diest! politian not so, baldazzar surely i live. baldazzar politian, it doth grieve me to see thee thus. politian baldazzar, it doth grieve me to give thee cause for grief, my honored friend. command me, sir! what wouldst thou have me do? at thy behest i will shake off that nature which from my, forefathers i did inherit, which with my mother's milk i did imbibe, and be no more politician, but some other. command me, sir! baldazzar to the field, thento the field to the senate or the field. politian. alas! alas! there is an imp would follow me even there! there is an imp hath followed me even there! there iswhat voice was that? baldazzar i heard it not. i heard not any voice except thine own, and the echo of thine own. politian then i but dreamed. baldazzar give not thy soul to dreams: the campthe court, befit theefame awaits theeglory calls and her, the trumpet-tongued, thou wilt not hear in hearkening to imaginary sounds and phantom voices. politian it is a phantom voice! didst thou not hear it then? baldazzar i heard it not. politian thou heardst it not!baldazaar, speak no more to me, politian, of thy camps and courts. oh i am sick, sick, even unto death, of the hollow and high-sounding vanities of the populous earth! bear with me yet awhile! we have been boys togetherschoolfellows and now are friendsyet shall not be so long for in the eternal city thou shalt do me a kind and gentle office, and a power a power august, benignant and supreme shall then absolve thee of all further duties unto thy friend. baldazzar thou speakest a fearful riddle i will not understand. politian yet now as fate approaches, and the hours are breathing low, the sands of time are changed to golden grains, and dazzle me, baldazzar. alas! alas! i cannot die, having within my heart so keen a relish for the beautiful as hath been kindled within it. methinks the air is balmier now than it was wont to be, rich melodies are floating in the winds a rarer loveliness bedecks the earth and with a holier lustre the quiet moon sitteth in heaven.hist! hist! thou canst not say thou hearest not now, baldazzar? baldazzar indeed i hear not. politian not hear it!listen now!listen!the faintest sound and yet the sweetest that ear ever heard! a lady's voice!and sorrow in the tone! baldazzar, it oppresses me like a spell! again!again!how solemnly it falls into my heart of hearts! that eloquent voice surely i never heardyet it were well had i but heard it with its thrilling tones in earlier days! baldazzar i myself hear it now. be still!the voice, if i mistake not greatly, proceeds from yonder latticewhich you may see very plainly through the windowit belongs, does it not? unto this palace of the duke? the singer is undoubtedly beneath the roof of his excellencyand perhaps is even that alessandra of whom he spoke as the betrothed of castiglione, his son and heir. politian be still!it comes again! voice (very faintly) "and is thy heart so strong as for to leave me thus who hath loved thee so long in wealth and woe among? and is thy heart so strong as for to leave me thus? say naysay nay!" baldazzar the song is english, and i oft have heard it in merry englandnever so plaintively hist! hist! it comes again! voice (more loudly) "is it so strong as for to leave me thus who hath loved thee so long in wealth and woe among? and is thy heart so strong as for to leave me thus? say naysay nay!" baldazzar 'tis hushed and all is still! politian all is not still! baldazzar let us go down. politian go down, baldazzar, go! baldazzar the hour is growing latethe duke awaits use thy presence is expected in the hall below. what ails thee, earl politian? voice (distinctly) "who hath loved thee so long in wealth and woe among, and is thy heart so strong? say naysay nay!" baldazzar let us descend'tis time. politian, give these fancies to the wind. remember, pray, your bearing lately savored much of rudeness unto the duke. arouse thee! and remember politian remember? i do. lead on! i do remember. (going) let us descend. believe me i would give, freely would give the broad lands of my earldom to look upon the face hidden by yon lattice "to gaze upon that veiled face, and hear once more that silent tongue." baldazzar let me beg you, sir, descend with methe duke may be offended. let us go down, i pray you. voice (loudly) say nay!say nay! politian (aside) 'tis strange!'tis very strangemethought the voice chimed in with my desires, and bade me stay! (approaching the window) sweet voice! i heed thee, and will surely stay. now be this fancy, by heaven or be it fate, still will i not descend. baldazzar make apology unto the duke for me; i go not down to-night. baldazzar your lordship's pleasure shall be attended to. good-night, politian. politian good-night, my friend, good-night. iv. the gardens of a palacemoonlight lalage, and politian lalage and dost thou speak of love to me, politian?dost thou speak of love to lalage?ah, woeah, woe is me! this mockery is most cruelmost cruel indeed! politian weep not! oh, sob not thus!thy bitter tears will madden me. oh, mourn not, lalage be comforted! i knowi know it all, and still i speak of love. look at me, brightest and beautiful lalage!turn here thine eyes! thou askest me if i could speak of love, knowing what i know, and seeing what i have seen. thou askest me thatand thus i answer thee thus on my bended knee i answer thee. (kneeling) sweet lalage, i love theelove theelove thee; thro' good and illthro' weal and woe i love thee. not mother, with her first-born on her knee, thrills with intenser love than i for thee. not on god's altar, in any time or clime, burned there a holier fire than burneth now within my spirit for thee. and do i love? (arising) even for thy woes i love theeeven for thy woes thy beauty and thy woes. lalage alas, proud earl, thou dost forget thyself, remembering me! how, in thy father's halls, among the maidens pure and reproachless of thy princely line, could the dishonored lalage abide? thy wife, and with a tainted memory my seared and blighted name, how would it tally with the ancestral honors of thy house, and with thy glory? politian speak not to me of glory! i hatei loathe the name; i do abhor the unsatisfactory and ideal thing. art thou not lalage and i politian? do i not loveart thou not beautiful what need we more? ha! glory!now speak not of it. by all i hold most sacred and most solemn by all my wishes nowmy fears hereafter by all i scorn on earth and hope in heaven there is no deed i would more glory in, than in thy cause to scoff at this same glory and trample it under foot. what matters it what matters it, my fairest, and my best, that we go down unhonored and forgotten into the dustso we descend together. descend togetherand thenand then, perchance lalage why dost thou pause, politian? politian and then, perchance arise together, lalage, and roam the starry and quiet dwellings of the blest, and still lalage why dost thou pause, politian? politian and still togethertogether. lalage now earl of leicester! thou lovest me, and in my heart of hearts i feel thou lovest me truly. politian oh, lalage! (throwing himself upon his knee) and lovest thou me? lalage hist! hush! within the gloom of yonder trees methought a figure passed a spectral figure, solemn, and slow, and noiseless like the grim shadow conscience, solemn and noiseless. (walks across and returns) i was mistaken'twas but a giant bough stirred by the autumn wind. politian! politian my lalagemy love! why art thou moved? why dost thou turn so pale? not conscience' self, far less a shadow which thou likenest to it, should shake the firm spirit thus. but the night wind is chillyand these melancholy boughs throw over all things a gloom. lalage politian! thou speakest to me of love. knowest thou the land with which all tongues are busya land new found miraculously found by one of genoa a thousand leagues within the golden west? a fairy land of flowers, and fruit, and sunshine, and crystal lakes, and over-arching forests, and mountains, around whose towering summits the winds of heaven untrammelled flowwhich air to breathe is happiness now, and will be freedom hereafter in days that are to come? politian o, wilt thouwilt thou fly to that paradisemy lalage, wilt thou fly thither with me? there care shall be forgotten, and sorrow shall be no more, and eros be all. and life shall then be mine, for i will live for thee, and in thine eyesand thou shalt be no more a mournerbut the radiant joys shall wait upon thee, and the angel hope attend thee ever; and i will kneel to thee and worship thee, and call thee my beloved, my own, my beautiful, my love, my wife, my all;oh, wilt thouwilt thou, lalage, fly thither with me? lalage a deed is to be done castiglione lives! politian and he shall die! (exit) lalage (after a pause) andheshalldie!alas! castiglione die? who spoke the words? where am i?what was it he said?politian! thou art not gonethou are not gone, politian! i feel thou art not goneyet dare not look, lest i behold thee not; thou couldst not go with those words upon thy lipso, speak to me! and let me hear thy voiceone wordone word, to say thou art not gone,one little sentence, to say how thou dost scornhow thou dost hate my womanly weakness. ha! ha! thou art not gone o speak to me! i knew thou wouldst not go! i knew thou wouldst not, couldst not, durst not go. villain, thou art not gonethou mockest me! and thus i clutch theethus!he is gone, he is gone gonegone. where am i?'tis well'tis very well! so that the blade be keenthe blow be sure, 'tis well, 'tis very wellalas! alas! v the suburbs. politian alone politian this weakness grows upon me. i am faint, and much i fear me illit will not do to die ere i have lived!stay, stay thy hand, o azrael, yet awhile!prince of the powers of darkness and the tomb, o pity me! o pity me! let me not perish now, in the budding of my paradisal hope! give me to live yetyet a little while: 'tis i who pray for lifei who so late demanded but to die!what sayeth the count? (enter baldazzar) baldazzar that knowing no cause of quarrel or of feud between the earl politian and himself. he doth decline your cartel. politian what didst thou say? what answer was it you brought me, good baldazzar? with what excessive fragrance the zephyr comes laden from yonder bowers!a fairer day, or one more worthy italy, methinks no mortal eyes have seen!what said the count? baldazzar that he, castiglione' not being aware of any feud existing, or any cause of quarrel between your lordship and himself, cannot accept the challenge. politian it is most true all this is very true. when saw you, sir, when saw you now, baldazzar, in the frigid ungenial britain which we left so lately, a heaven so calm as thisso utterly free from the evil taint of clouds?and he did say? baldazzar no more, my lord, than i have told you, sir: the count castiglione will not fight, having no cause for quarrel. politian now this is true all very true. thou art my friend, baldazzar, and i have not forgotten itthou'lt do me a piece of service; wilt thou go back and say unto this man, that i, the earl of leicester, hold him a villain?thus much, i prythee, say unto the countit is exceeding just he should have cause for quarrel. baldazzar my lord!my friend! politian (aside) 'tis he!he comes himself? (aloud) thou reasonest well. i know what thou wouldst saynot send the message well!i will think of iti will not send it. now prythee, leave mehither doth come a person with whom affairs of a most private nature i would adjust. baldazzar i goto-morrow we meet, do we not?at the vatican. politian at the vatican. (exit baldazzar) enter castiglione castiglione the earl of leicester here! politian i am the earl of leicester, and thou seest, dost thou not? that i am here. castiglione my lord, some strange, some singular mistakemisunderstanding hath without doubt arisen: thou hast been urged thereby, in heat of anger, to address some words most unaccountable, in writing, to me, castiglione; the bearer being baldazzar, duke of surrey. i am aware of nothing which might warrant thee in this thing, having given thee no offence. ha!am i right? 'twas a mistake?undoubtedlywe all do err at times. politian draw, villain, and prate no more! castiglione ha!draw?and villain? have at thee then at once, proud earl! (draws) politian (drawing) thus to the expiatory tomb, untimely sepulchre, i do devote thee in the name of lalage! castiglione (letting fall his sword and recoiling to the extremity of the stage) of lalage! hold offthy sacred hand!avaunt, i say! avaunti will not fight theeindeed i dare not. politian thou wilt not fight with me didst say, sir count? shall i be baffled thus?now this is well; didst say thou darest not? ha! castiglione i dare notdare not hold off thy handwith that beloved name so fresh upon thy lips i will not fight thee i cannotdare not. politian now by my halidom i do believe thee!coward, i do believe thee! castiglione ha!coward!this may not be! (clutches his sword and staggers towards politian, but his purpose is changed before reaching him, and he falls upon his knee at the feet of the earl) alas! my lord, it isit ismost true. in such a cause i am the veriest coward. o pity me! politian (greatly softened) alas!i doindeed i pity thee. castiglione and lalage politian scoundrel!arise and die! castiglione it needeth not bethusthuso let me die thus on my bended knee. it were most fitting that in this deep humiliation i perish. for in the fight i will not raise a hand against thee, earl of leicester. strike thou home (baring his bosom) here is no let or hindrance to thy weapon strike home. i will not fight thee. politian now, s' death and hell! am i notam i not sorelygrievously tempted to take thee at thy word? but mark me, sir, think not to fly me thus. do thou prepare for public insult in the streetsbefore the eyes of the citizens. i'll follow thee like an avenging spirit i'll follow thee even unto death. before those whom thou lovest before all rome i'll taunt thee, villain,i'll taunt thee, dost hear? with cowardicethou will not fight me? thou liest! thou shalt! (exit) castiglione now this indeed is just! most righteous, and most just, avenging heaven! -the end. 1843 the black cat by edgar allan poe for the most wild, yet most homely narrative which i am about to pen, i neither expect nor solicit belief. mad indeed would i be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. yet, mad am i not --and very surely do i not dream. but to-morrow i die, and to-day i would unburthen my soul. my immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. in their consequences, these events have terrified --have tortured --have destroyed me. yet i will not attempt to expound them. to me, they have presented little but horror --to many they will seem less terrible than baroques. hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place --some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances i detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects. from my infancy i was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. my tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. i was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. with these i spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them. this peculiar of character grew with my growth, and in my manhood, i derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. to those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, i need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. there is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere man. i married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. we had birds, gold fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat. this latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. in speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. not that she was ever serious upon this point --and i mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered. pluto --this was the cat's name --was my favorite pet and playmate. i alone fed him, and he attended me wherever i went about the house. it was even with difficulty that i could prevent him from following me through the streets. our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character --through the instrumentality of the fiend intemperance --had (i blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. i grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. i suffered myself to use intemperate language to my at length, i even offered her personal violence. my pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. i not only neglected, but ill-used them. for pluto, however, i still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as i made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through affection, they came in my way. but my disease grew upon me --for what disease is like alcohol! --and at length even pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish --even pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper. one night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, i fancied that the cat avoided my presence. i seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. the fury of a demon instantly possessed me. i knew myself no longer. my original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. i took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! i blush, i burn, i shudder, while i pen the damnable atrocity. when reason returned with the morning --when i had slept off the fumes of the night's debauch --i experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which i had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. i again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed. in the meantime the cat slowly recovered. the socket of the lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. he went about the house as usual, but, as might be expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. i had so much of my old heart left, as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. but this feeling soon gave place to irritation. and then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of perverseness. of this spirit philosophy takes no account. yet i am not more sure that my soul lives, than i am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart --one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of man. who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is law, merely because we understand it to be such? this spirit of perverseness, i say, came to my final overthrow. it was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself --to offer violence to its own nature --to do wrong for the wrong's sake only --that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury i had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. one morning, in cool blood, i slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; --hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; --hung it because i knew that it had loved me, and because i felt it had given me no reason of offence; --hung it because i knew that in so doing i was committing a sin --a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it --if such a thing were possible --even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the most merciful and most terrible god. on the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, i was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. the curtains of my bed were in flames. the whole house was blazing. it was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. the destruction was complete. my entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and i resigned myself thenceforward to despair. i am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. but i am detailing a chain of facts --and wish not to leave even a possible link imperfect. on the day succeeding the fire, i visited the ruins. the walls, with one exception, had fallen in. this exception was found in a compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house, and against which had rested the head of my bed. the plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action of the fire --a fact which i attributed to its having been recently spread. about this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with every minute and eager attention. the words "strange!" "singular!" and other similar expressions, excited my curiosity. i approached and saw, as if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. the impression was given with an accuracy truly marvellous. there was a rope about the animal's neck. when i first beheld this apparition --for i could scarcely regard it as less --my wonder and my terror were extreme. but at length reflection came to my aid. the cat, i remembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent to the house. upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been immediately filled by the crowd --by some one of whom the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber. this had probably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep. the falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, had then with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, accomplished the portraiture as i saw it. although i thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the startling fact 'just detailed, it did not the less fall to make a deep impression upon my fancy. for months i could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came back into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse. i went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me, among the vile haunts which i now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place. one night as i sat, half stupefied, in a den of more than infamy, my attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the head of one of the immense hogsheads of gin, or of rum, which constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. i had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that i had not sooner perceived the object thereupon. i approached it, and touched it with my hand. it was a black cat --a very large one --fully as large as pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the breast. upon my touching him, he immediately arose, purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. this, then, was the very creature of which i was in search. i at once offered to purchase it of the landlord; but this person made no claim to it --knew nothing of it --had never seen it before. i continued my caresses, and, when i prepared to go home, the animal evinced a disposition to accompany me. i permitted it to do so; occasionally stooping and patting it as i proceeded. when it reached the house it domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great favorite with my wife. for my own part, i soon found a dislike to it arising within me. this was just the reverse of what i had anticipated; but i know not how or why it was --its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. by slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. i avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it. i did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually --very gradually --i came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence. what added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning after i brought it home, that, like pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. this circumstance, however, only endeared it to my wife, who, as i have already said, possessed, in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait, and the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures. with my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. it followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. whenever i sat, it would crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome caresses. if i arose to walk it would get between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast. at such times, although i longed to destroy it with a blow, i was yet withheld from so doing, partly it at by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly --let me confess it at once --by absolute dread of the beast. this dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil-and yet i should be at a loss how otherwise to define it. i am almost ashamed to own --yes, even in this felon's cell, i am almost ashamed to own --that the terror and horror with which the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one of the merest chimaeras it would be possible to conceive. my wife had called my attention, more than once, to the character of the mark of white hair, of which i have spoken, and which constituted the sole visible difference between the strange beast and the one i had y si destroyed. the reader will remember that this mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite; but, by slow degrees --degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long time my reason struggled to reject as fanciful --it had, at length, assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. it was now the representation of an object that i shudder to name --and for this, above all, i loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had i dared --it was now, i say, the image of a hideous --of a ghastly thing --of the gallows! --oh, mournful and terrible engine of horror and of crime --of agony and of death! and now was i indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere humanity. and a brute beast --whose fellow i had contemptuously destroyed --a brute beast to work out for me --for me a man, fashioned in the image of the high god --so much of insufferable wo! alas! neither by day nor by night knew i the blessing of rest any more! during the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, i started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight --an incarnate night-mare that i had no power to shake off --incumbent eternally upon my heart! beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. evil thoughts became my sole intimates --the darkest and most evil of thoughts. the moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which i now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers. one day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. the cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness. uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, i aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as i wished. but this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, i withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. she fell dead upon the spot, without a groan. this hideous murder accomplished, i set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. i knew that i could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without the risk of being observed by the neighbors. many projects entered my mind. at one period i thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and destroying them by fire. at another, i resolved to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. again, i deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard --about packing it in a box, as if merchandize, with the usual arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from the house. finally i hit upon what i considered a far better expedient than either of these. i determined to wall it up in the cellar --as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to have walled up their victims. for a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. its walls were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from hardening. moreover, in one of the walls was a projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up, and made to resemble the rest of the cellar. i made no doubt that i could readily displace the at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could detect anything suspicious. and in this calculation i was not deceived. by means of a crow-bar i easily dislodged the bricks, and, having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, i propped it in that position, while, with little trouble, i re-laid the whole structure as it originally stood. having procured mortar, sand, and hair, with every possible precaution, i prepared a plaster could not every poss be distinguished from the old, and with this i very carefully went over the new brick-work. when i had finished, i felt satisfied that all was right. the wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. the rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care. i looked around triumphantly, and said to myself --"here at least, then, my labor has not been in vain." my next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much wretchedness; for i had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to death. had i been able to meet with it, at the moment, there could have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and forebore to present itself in my present mood. it is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. it did not make its appearance during the night --and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, i soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul! the second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not. once again i breathed as a free-man. the monster, in terror, had fled the premises forever! i should behold it no more! my happiness was supreme! the guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. some few inquiries had been made, but these had been readily answered. even a search had been instituted --but of course nothing was to be discovered. i looked upon my future felicity as secured. upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came, very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous investigation of the premises. secure, however, in the inscrutability of my place of concealment, i felt no embarrassment whatever. the officers bade me accompany them in their search. they left no nook or corner unexplored. at length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into the cellar. i quivered not in a muscle. my heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence. i walked the cellar from end to end. i folded my arms upon my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro. the police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart. the glee at my heart was too strong to be restrained. i burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness. "gentlemen," i said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "i delight to have allayed your suspicions. i wish you all health, and a little more courtesy. by the bye, gentlemen, this --this is a very well constructed house." (in the rabid desire to say something easily, i scarcely knew what i uttered at all.) --"i may say an excellently well constructed house. these walls --are you going, gentlemen? --these walls are solidly put together"; and here, through the mere phrenzy of bravado, i rapped heavily, with a cane which i held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom. but may god shield and deliver me from the fangs of the arch-fiend! no sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence than i was answered by a voice from within the tomb! --by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman --a howl --a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation. of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. swooning, i staggered to the opposite wall. for one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. in the next, a dozen stout arms were tolling at the wall. it fell bodily. the corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. i had walled the monster up within the tomb! --the end-. 1835 hymn by edgar allan poe hymn at mornat noonat twilight dim maria! thou hast heard my hymn! in joy and woein good and ill mother of god, be with me still! when the hours flew brightly by, and not a cloud obscured the sky, my soul, lest it should truant be, thy grace did guide to thine and thee; now, when storms of fate o'ercast darkly my present and my past, let my future radiant shine with sweet hopes of thee and thine! -the end. 1850 the angel of the oddan extravaganza by edgar allan poe it was a chilly november afternoon. i had just consummated an unusually hearty dinner, of which the dyspeptic truffe formed not the least important item, and was sitting alone in the dining-room, with my feet upon the fender, and at my elbow a small table which i had rolled up to the fire, and upon which were some apologies for dessert, with some miscellaneous bottles of wine, spirit, and liqueur. in the morning i had been reading glover's "leonidas," wilkies "epigoniad," lamartine's "pilgrimage," barlow's "columbiad," tuckermann's "sicily," and griswold's "curiosities"; i am willing to confess, therefore, that i now felt a little stupid. i made effort to arouse myself by aid of frequent lafitte, and, all failing, i betook myself to a stray newspaper in despair. having carefully perused the column of "houses to let," and the column of "dogs lost," and then the two columns of "wives and apprentices runaway," i attacked with great resolution the editorial matter, and, reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable, conceived the possibility of its being chinese, and so re-read it from the end to the beginning, but with no more satisfactory result. i was about throwing away, in disgust, this folio of four pages, happy work which not even poets criticise, when i felt my attention somewhat aroused by the paragraph which follows: "the avenues to death are numerous and strange. a london paper mentions the decease of a person from a singular cause. he was playing at 'puff the dart,' which is played with a long needle inserted in some worsted, and blown at a target through a tin tube. he placed the needle at the wrong end of the tube, and drawing his breath strongly to puff the dart forward with force, drew the needle into his throat. it entered the lungs, and in a few days killed him." upon seeing this i fell into a great rage, without exactly knowing why. "this thing," i exclaimed, "is a contemptible falsehooda poor hoaxthe lees of the invention of some pitiable penny-a-linerof some wretched concoctor of accidents in cocaigne. these fellows, knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age, set their wits to work in the imagination of improbable possibilitiesof odd accidents, as they term them; but to a reflecting intellect (like mine," i added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger unconsciously to the side of my nose), "to a contemplative understanding such as i myself possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. for my own part, i intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of the 'singular' about it. "mein gott, den, vat a vool you bees for dat!" replied one of the most remarkable voices i ever heard. at first i took it for a rumbling in my earssuch as man sometimes experiences when getting very drunkbut, upon second thought, i considered the sound as more nearly resembling that which proceeds from an empty barrel beaten with a big stick; and, in fact, this i should have concluded it to be, but for the articulation of the syllables and words. i am by no means naturally nervous, and the very few glasses of lafitte which i had sipped served to embolden me a little, so that i felt nothing of trepidation, but merely uplifted my eyes with a leisurely movement, and looked carefully around the room for the intruder. i could not, however, perceive any one at all. "humph!" resumed the voice, as i continued my survey, "you mus pe so dronk as de pig, den, for not zee me as i zit here at your zide." hereupon i bethought me of looking immediately before my nose, and there, sure enough, confronting me at the table sat a personage nondescript, although not altogether indescribable. his body was a wine-pipe, or a rum-puncheon, or something of that character, and had a truly falstaffian air. in its nether extremity were inserted two kegs, which seemed to answer all the purposes of legs. for arms there dangled from the upper portion of the carcass two tolerably long bottles, with the necks outward for hands. all the head that i saw the monster possessed of was one of those hessian canteens which resemble a large snuff-box with a hole in the middle of the lid. this canteen (with a funnel on its top, like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes) was set on edge upon the puncheon, with the hole toward myself; and through this hole, which seemed puckered up like the mouth of a very precise old maid, the creature was emitting certain rumbling and grumbling noises which he evidently intended for intelligible talk. "i zay," said he, "you mos pe dronk as de pig, vor zit dare and not zee me zit ere; and i zay, doo, you most pe pigger vool as de goose, vor to dispelief vat iz print in de print. 'tiz de troof-dat it izeberry vord ob it." "who are you, pray?" said i, with much dignity, although somewhat puzzled; "how did you get here? and what is it you are talking about?" "az vor ow i com'd ere," replied the figure, "dat iz none of your pizzness; and as vor vat i be talking apout, i be talk apout vot i tink proper; and as vor who i be, vy dat is de very ting i com'd here for to let you zee for yourzelf." "you are a drunken vagabond," said i, "and i shall ring the bell and order my footman to kick you into the street." "he! he! he!" said the fellow, "hu! hu! hu! dat you can't do." "can't do!" said i, "what do you mean?can't do what?" "ring de pell," he replied, attempting a grin with his little villainous mouth. upon this i made an effort to get up, in order to put my threat into execution; but the ruffian just reached across the table very deliberately, and hitting me a tap on the forehead with the neck of one of the long bottles, knocked me back into the arm-chair from which i had half arisen. i was utterly astounded; and, for a moment, was quite at a loss what to do. in the meantime, he continued his talk. "you zee," said he, "it iz te bess vor zit still; and now you shall know who i pe. look at me! zee! i am te angel ov te odd!" "and odd enough, too," i ventured to reply; "but i was always under the impression that an angel had wings." "te wing!" he cried, highly incensed, "vat i pe do mit te wing? mein gott! do you take me vor a shicken?" "nooh, no!" i replied, much alarmed, "you are no chickencertainly not." "well, den, zit still and pehabe yourself, or i'll rap you again mid me vist. it iz te shicken ab te wing, und te owl ab te wing, und te imp ab te wing, und te headteuffel ab te wing. te angel ab not te wing, and i am te angel ov te odd." "and your business with me at present isis-" "my pizzness!" ejaculated the thing, "vy vot a low bred puppy you mos pe vor to ask a gentleman und an angel apout his pizzness!" this language was rather more than i could bear, even from an angel; so, plucking up courage, i seized a salt-cellar which lay within reach, and hurled it at the head of the intruder. either he dodged, however, or my aim was inaccurate; for all i accomplished was the demolition of the crystal which protected the dial of the clock upon the mantelpiece. as for the angel, he evinced his sense of my assault by giving me two or three hard consecutive raps upon the forehead as before. these reduced me at once to submission, and i am almost ashamed to confess that, either through pain or vexation, there came a few tears into my eyes. "mein gott!" said the angel of the odd, apparently much softened at my distress; "mein gott, te man is eder ferry dronck or ferry sorry. you mos not trink it so strongyou mos put de water in te wine. here, trink dis, like a goot veller, und don't gry nowdon't!" hereupon the angel of the odd replenished my goblet (which was about a third full of port) with a colorless fluid that he poured from one of his hand bottles. i observed that these bottles had labels about their necks, and that these labels were inscribed "kirschenwasser." the considerate kindness of the angel mollified me in no little measure; and, aided by the water with which he diluted my port more than once, i at length regained sufficient temper to listen to his very extraordinary discourse. i cannot pretend to recount all that he told me, but i gleaned from what he said that he was the genius who presided over the contre temps of mankind, and whose business it was to bring about the odd accidents which are continually astonishing the skeptic. once or twice, upon my venturing to express my total incredulity in respect to his pretensions, he grew very angry indeed, so that at length i considered it the wiser policy to say nothing at all, and let him have his own way. he talked on, therefore, at great length, while i merely leaned back in my chair with my eyes shut, and amused myself with munching raisins and flipping the stems about the room. but, by and bye, the angel suddenly construed this behavior of mine into contempt. he arose in a terrible passion, slouched his funnel down over his eyes, swore a vast oath, uttered a threat of some character which i did not precisely comprehend, and finally made me a low bow and departed, wishing me, in the language of the archbishop in gil-blas, "beaucoup de bonheur et un peu plus de bon sens." his departure afforded me relief. the very few glasses of lafitte that i had sipped had the effect of rendering me drowsy, and i felt inclined to take a nap of some fifteen or twenty minutes, as is my custom after dinner. at six i had an appointment of consequence, which it was quite indispensable that i should keep. the policy of insurance for my dwelling house had expired the day before; and, some dispute having arisen, it was agreed that, at six, i should meet the board of directors of the company and settle the terms of a renewal. glancing upward at the clock on the mantel-piece (for i felt too drowsy to take out my watch), i had the pleasure to find that i had still twenty-five minutes to spare. it was half past five; i could easily walk to the insurance office in five minutes; and my usual post prandian siestas had never been known to exceed five and twenty. i felt sufficiently safe, therefore, and composed myself to my slumbers forthwith. having completed them to my satisfaction, i again looked toward the time-piece, and was half inclined to believe in the possibility of odd accidents when i found that, instead of my ordinary fifteen or twenty minutes, i had been dozing only three; for it still wanted seven and twenty of the appointed hour. i betook myself again to my nap, and at length a second time awoke, when, to my utter amazement, it still wanted twenty-seven minutes of six. i jumped up to examine the clock, and found that it had ceased running. my watch informed me that it was half past seven; and, of course, having slept two hours, i was too late for my appointment "it will make no difference," i said; "i can call at the office in the morning and apologize; in the meantime what can be the matter with the clock?" upon examining it i discovered that one of the raisin-stems which i had been flipping about the room during the discourse of the angel of the odd had flown through the fractured crystal, and lodging, singularly enough, in the key-hole, with an end projecting outward, had thus arrested the revolution of the minute-hand. "ah!" said i; "i see how it is. this thing speaks for itself. a natural accident, such as will happen now and then!" i gave the matter no further consideration, and at my usual hour retired to bed. here, having placed a candle upon a reading-stand at the bed-head, and having made an attempt to peruse some pages of the "omnipresence of the deity," i unfortunately fell asleep in less than twenty seconds, leaving the light burning as it was. my dreams were terrifically disturbed by visions of the angel of the odd. methought he stood at the foot of the couch, drew aside the curtains, and, in the hollow, detestable tones of a rum-puncheon, menaced me with the bitterest vengeance for the contempt with which i had treated him. he concluded a long harrangue by taking off his funnelcap, inserting the tube into my gullet, and thus deluging me with an ocean of kirschenwasser, which he poured, in a continuous flood, from one of the long-necked bottles that stood him instead of an arm. my agony was at length insufferable, and i awoke just in time to perceive that a rat had ran off with the lighted candle from the stand, but not in season to prevent his making his escape with it through the hole. very soon, a strong suffocating odor assailed my nostrils; the house, i clearly perceived, was on fire. in a few minutes the blaze broke forth with violence, and in an incredibly brief period the entire building was wrapped in flames. all egress from my chamber, except through a window, was cut off. the crowd, however, quickly procured and raised a long ladder. by means of this i was descending rapidly, and in apparent safety, when a huge hog, about whose rotund stomach, and indeed about whose whole air and physiognomy, there was something which reminded me of the angel of the odd,when this hog, i say, which hitherto had been quietly slumbering in the mud, took it suddenly into his head that his left shoulder needed scratching, and could find no more convenient rubbing post than that afforded by the foot of the ladder. in an instant i was precipitated, and had the misfortune to fracture my arm. this accident, with the loss of my insurance, and with the more serious loss of my hair, the whole of which had been singed off by the fire, predisposed me to serious impressions, so that, finally, i made up my mind to take a wife. there was a rich widow disconsolate for the loss of her seventh husband, and to her wounded spirit i offered the balm of my vows. she yielded a reluctant consent to my prayers. i knelt at her feet in gratitude and adoration. she blushed, and bowed her luxuriant tresse into close contact with those supplied me, temporarily, by grandjean. i know not how the entanglement took place, but so it was. i arose with a shining pate, wigless, she in disdain and wrath, half buried in alien hair. thus ended my hopes of the widow by an accident which could not have been anticipated, to be sure, but which the natural sequence of events had brought about. without despairing, however, i undertook the siege of a less implacable heart. the fates were again propitious for a brief period; but again a trivial incident interfered. meeting my betrothed in an avenue thronged with the elite of the city, i was hastening to greet her with one of my best considered bows, when a small particle of some foreign matter lodging in the corner of my eye, rendered me, for the moment, completely blind. before i could recover my sight, the lady of my love had disappearedirreparably affronted at what she chose to consider my premeditated rudeness in passing her by ungreeted. while i stood bewildered at the suddenness of this accident (which might have happened, nevertheless, to any one under the sun), and while i still continued incapable of sight, i was accosted by the angel of the odd, who proffered me his aid with a civility which i had no reason to expect. he examined my disordered eye with much gentleness and skill, informed me that i had a drop in it, and (whatever a "drop" was) took it out, and afforded me relief. i now considered it time to die, (since fortune had so determined to persecute me,) and accordingly made my way to the nearest river. here, divesting myself of my clothes, (for there is no reason why we cannot die as we were born,) i threw myself headlong into the current; the sole witness of my fate being a solitary crow that had been seduced into the eating of brandy-saturated corn, and so had staggered away from his fellows. no sooner had i entered the water than this bird took it into its head to fly away with the most indispensable portion of my apparel. postponing, therefore, for the present, my suicidal design, i just slipped my nether extremities into the sleeves of my coat, and betook myself to a pursuit of the felon with all the nimbleness which the case required and its circumstances would admit. but my evil destiny attended me still. as i ran at full speed, with my nose up in the atmosphere, and intent only upon the purloiner of my property, i suddenly perceived that my feet rested no longer upon terre firma; the fact is, i had thrown myself over a precipice, and should inevitably have been dashed to pieces, but for my good fortune in grasping the end of a long guide-rope, which descended from a passing balloon. as soon as i sufficiently recovered my senses to comprehend the terrific predicament in which i stood or rather hung, i exerted all the power of my lungs to make that predicament known to the aeronaut overhead. but for a long time i exerted myself in vain. either the fool could not, or the villain would not perceive me. meantime the machine rapidly soared, while my strength even more rapidly failed. i was soon upon the point of resigning myself to my fate, and dropping quietly into the sea, when my spirits were suddenly revived by hearing a hollow voice from above, which seemed to be lazily humming an opera air. looking up, i perceived the angel of the odd. he was leaning with his arms folded, over the rim of the car, and with a pipe in his mouth, at which he puffed leisurely, seemed to be upon excellent terms with himself and the universe. i was too much exhausted to speak, so i merely regarded him with an imploring air. for several minutes, although he looked me full in the face, he said nothing. at length removing carefully his meerschaum from the right to the left corner of his mouth, he condescended to speak. "who pe you?" he asked, "und what der teuffel you pe do dare?" to this piece of impudence, cruelty, and affectation, i could reply only by ejaculating the monosyllable "help!" "elp!" echoed the ruffian"not i. dare iz te pottleelp yourself, und pe tam'd!" with these words he let fall a heavy bottle of kirschenwasser which, dropping precisely upon the crown of my head, caused me to imagine that my brains were entirely knocked out. impressed with this idea, i was about to relinquish my hold and give up the ghost with a good grace, when i was arrested by the cry of the angel, who bade me hold on. "old on!" he said; "don't pe in te urrydon't. will you pe take de odder pottle, or ave you pe got zober yet and come to your zenzes?" i made haste, hereupon, to nod my head twiceonce in the negative, meaning thereby that i would prefer not taking the other bottle at presentand once in the affirmative, intending thus to imply that i was sober and had positively come to my senses. by these means i somewhat softened the angel. "und you pelief, ten," he inquired, "at te last? you pelief, ten, in te possibilty of te odd?" i again nodded my head in assent. "und you ave pelief in me, te angel of te odd?" i nodded again. "und you acknowledge tat you pe te blind dronk and te vool?" i nodded once more. "put your right hand into your left hand preeches pocket, ten, in token oy your vull zubmission unto te angel ov te odd." this thing, for very obvious reasons, i found it quite impossible to do. in the first place, my left arm had been broken in my fall from the ladder, and, therefore, had i let go my hold with the right hand, i must have let go altogether. in the second place, i could have no breeches until i came across the crow. i was therefore obliged, much to my regret, to shake my head in the negativeintending thus to give the angel to understand that i found it inconvenient, just at that moment, to comply with his very reasonable demand! no sooner, however, had i ceased shaking my head than "go to der teuffel ten!" roared the angel of the odd. in pronouncing these words, he drew a sharp knife across the guide. rope by which i was suspended, and as we then happened to be precisely over my own house, (which, during my peregrinations, had been handsomely rebuilt,) it so occurred that i tumbled headlong down the ample chimney and alit upon the dining-room hearth. upon coming to my senses, (for the fall had very thoroughly stunned me,) i found it about four o'clock in the morning. i lay outstretched where i had fallen from the balloon. my head grovelled in the ashes of an extinguished fire, while my feet reposed upon the wreck of a small table, overthrown, and amid the fragments of a miscellaneous dessert, intermingled with a newspaper, some broken glass and shattered bottles, and an empty jug of the schiedam kirschenwasser. thus revenged himself the angel of the odd. the end . 1850 the conversation of eiros and charmion by edgar allan poe i will bring fire to thee. euripides andiom. eiros. why do you call me eiros? charmion. so henceforth will you always be called. you must forget, too, my earthly name, and speak to me as charmion. eiros. this is indeed no dream! charmion. dreams are with us no more; but of these mysteries anon. i rejoice to see you looking like-life and rational. the film of the shadow has already passed from off your eyes. be of heart and fear nothing. your allotted days of stupor have expired; and, to-morrow, i will myself induct you into the full joys and wonders of your novel existence. eiros. true, i feel no stupor, none at all. the wild sickness and the terrible darkness have left me, and i hear no longer that mad, rushing, horrible sound, like the "voice of many waters." yet my senses are bewildered, charmion, with the keenness of their perception of the new. charmion. a few days will remove all this;but i fully understand you, and feel for you. it is now ten earthly years since i underwent what you undergo, yet the remembrance of it hangs by me still. you have now suffered all of pain, however, which you will suffer in aidenn. eiros. in aidenn? charmion. in aidenn. eiros. oh, god!pity me, charmion!i am overburthened with the majesty of all thingsof the unknown now knownof the speculative future merged in the august and certain present. charmion. grapple not now with such thoughts. tomorrow we will speak of this. your mind wavers, and its agitation will find relief in the exercise of simple memories. look not around, nor forwardbut back. i am burning with anxiety to hear the details of that stupendous event which threw you among us. tell me of it. let us converse of familiar things, in the old familiar language of the world which has so fearfully perished. eiros. most fearfully, fearfully!this is indeed no dream. charmion. dreams are no more. was i much mourned, my eiros? eiros. mourned, charmion?oh deeply. to that last hour of all, there hung a cloud of intense gloom and devout sorrow over your household. charmion. and that last hourspeak of it. remember that, beyond the naked fact of the catastrophe itself, i know nothing. when, coming out from among mankind, i passed into night through the graveat that period, if i remember aright, the calamity which overwhelmed you was utterly unanticipated. but, indeed, i knew little of the speculative philosophy of the day. eiros. the individual calamity was, as you say, entirely unanticipated; but analogous misfortunes had been long a subject of discussion with astronomers. i need scarce tell you, my friend, that, even when you left us, men had agreed to understand those passages in the most holy writings which speak of the final destruction of all things by fire, as having reference to the orb of the earth alone. but in regard to the immediate agency of the ruin, speculation had been at fault from that epoch in astronomical knowledge in which the comets were divested of the terrors of flame. the very moderate density of these bodies had been well established. they had been observed to pass among the satellites of jupiter, without bringing about any sensible alteration either in the masses or in the orbits of these secondary planets. we had long regarded the wanderers as vapory creations of inconceivable tenuity, and as altogether incapable of doing injury to our substantial globe, even in the event of contact. but contact was not in any degree dreaded; for the elements of all the comets were accurately known. that among them we should look for the agency of the threatened fiery destruction had been for many years considered an inadmissible idea. but wonders and wild fancies had been, of late days, strangely rife among mankind; and although it was only with a few of the ignorant that actual apprehension prevailed, upon the announcement by astronomers of a new comet, yet this announcement was generally received with i know not what of agitation and mistrust. the elements of the strange orb were immediately calculated, and it was at once conceded by all observers, that its path, at perihelion, would bring it into very close proximity with the earth. there were two or three astronomers, of secondary note, who resolutely maintained that a contact was inevitable. i cannot very well express to you the effect of this intelligence upon the people. for a few short days they would not believe an assertion which their intellect, so long employed among worldly considerations, could not in any manner grasp. but the truth of a vitally important fact soon makes its way into the understanding of even the most stolid. finally, all men saw that astronomical knowledge lied not, and they awaited the comet. its approach was not, at first, seemingly rapid; nor was its appearance of very unusual character. it was of a dull red, and had little perceptible train. for seven or eight days we saw no material increase in its apparent diameter, and but a partial alteration in its color. meantime the ordinary affairs of men were discarded, and all interests absorbed in a growing discussion, instituted by the philosophic, in respect to the cometary nature. even the grossly ignorant aroused their sluggish capacities to such considerations. the learned now gave their intellecttheir soulto no such points as the allaying of fear, or to the sustenance of loved theory. they soughtthey panted for right views. they groaned for perfected knowledge. truth arose in the purity of her strength and exceeding majesty, and the wise bowed down and adored. that material injury to our globe or to its inhabitants would result from the apprehended contact, was an opinion which hourly lost ground among the wise; and the wise were now freely permitted to rule the reason and the fancy of the crowd. it was demonstrated, that the density of the comet's nucleus was far less than that of our rarest gas; and the harmless passage of a similar visitor among the satellites of jupiter was a point strongly insisted upon, and which served greatly to allay terror. theologists, with an earnestness fear-enkindled, dwelt upon the biblical prophecies, and expounded them to the people with a directness and simplicity of which no previous instance had been known. that the final destruction of the earth must be brought about by the agency of fire, was urged with a spirit that enforced everywhere conviction; and that the comets were of no fiery nature (as all men now knew) was a truth which relieved all, in a great measure, from the apprehension of the great calamity foretold. it is noticeable that the popular prejudices and vulgar errors in regard to pestilences and warserrors which were wont to prevail upon every appearance of a cometwere now altogether unknown. as if by some sudden convulsive exertion, reason had at once hurled superstition from her throne. the feeblest intellect had derived vigor from excessive interest. what minor evils might arise from the contact were points of elaborate question. the learned spoke of slight geological disturbances, of probable alterations in climate, and consequently in vegetation; of possible magnetic and electric influences. many held that no visible or perceptible effect would in any manner be produced. while such discussions were going on, their subject gradually approached, growing larger in apparent diameter, and of a more brilliant lustre. mankind grew paler as it came. all human operations were suspended. there was an epoch in the course of the general sentiment when the comet had attained, at length, a size surpassing that of any previously recorded visitation. the people now, dismissing any lingering hope that the astronomers were wrong, experienced all the certainty of evil. the chimerical aspect of their terror was gone. the hearts of the stoutest of our race beat violently within their bosoms. a very few days sufficed, however, to merge even such feelings in sentiments more unendurable. we could no longer apply to the strange orb any accustomed thoughts. its historical attributes had disappeared. it oppressed us with a hideous novelty of emotion. we saw it not as an astronomical phenomenon in the heavens, but as an incubus upon our hearts, and a shadow upon our brains. it had taken, with inconceivable rapidity, the character of a gigantic mantle of rare flame, extending from horizon to horizon. yet a day, and men breathed with greater freedom. it was clear that we were already within the influence of the comet; yet we lived. we even felt an unusual elasticity of frame and vivacity of mind. the exceeding tenuity of the object of our dread was apparent; for all heavenly objects were plainly visible through it. meantime, our vegetation had perceptibly altered; and we gained faith, from this predicted circumstance, in the foresight of the wise. a wild luxuriance of foliage, utterly unknown before, burst out upon every vegetable thing. yet another dayand the evil was not altogether upon us. it was now evident that its nucleus would first reach us. a wild change had come over all men; and the first sense of pain was the wild signal for general lamentation and horror. this first sense of pain lay in a rigorous constriction of the breast and lungs, and an insufferable dryness of the skin. it could not be denied that our atmosphere was radically affected; the conformation of this atmosphere and the possible modifications to which it might be subjected, were now the topics of discussion. the result of investigation sent an electric thrill of the intensest terror through the universal heart of man. it had been long known that the air which encircled us was a compound of oxygen and nitrogen gases, in the proportion of twenty-one measures of oxygen, and seventy-nine of nitrogen, in every one hundred of the atmosphere. oxygen, which was the principle of combustion, and the vehicle of heat, was absolutely necessary to the support of animal life, and was the most powerful and energetic agent in nature. nitrogen, on the contrary, was incapable of supporting either animal life or flame. an unnatural excess of oxygen would result, it had been ascertained, in just such an elevation of the animal spirits as we had latterly experienced. it was the pursuit, the extension of the idea, which had engendered awe. what would be the result of a total extraction of the nitrogen? a combustion irresistible, all-devouring, omni-prevalent, immediate; the entire fulfillment, in all their minute and terrible details, of the fiery and horror-inspiring denunciations of the prophecies of the holy book. why need i paint, charmion, the now disenchained frenzy of mankind? that tenuity in the comet which had previously inspired us with hope, was now the source of the bitterness of despair. in its impalpable gaseous character we clearly perceived the consummation of fate. meantime a day again passed, bearing away with it the last shadow of hope. we gasped in the rapid modification of the air. the red blood bounded tumultuously through its strict channels. a furious delirium possessed all men; and, with arms rigidly outstretched toward the threatening heavens, they trembled and shrieked aloud. but the nucleus of the destroyer was now upon us; even here in aidenn, i shudder while i speak. let me be briefbrief as the ruin that overwhelmed. for a moment there was a wild lurid light alone, visiting and penetrating all things. thenlet us bow down, charmion, before the excessive majesty of the great god!then, there came a shouting and pervading sound, as if from the mouth itself of him; while the whole incumbent mass of ether in which we existed, burst at once into a species of intense flame, for whose surpassing brilliancy and all-fervid heat even the angels in the high heaven of pure knowledge have no name. thus ended all. the end . 1837 bridal ballad by edgar allan poe the ring is on my hand, and the wreath is on my brow; satin and jewels grand are all at my command, and i am happy now. and my lord he loves me well; but, when first he breathed his vow, i felt my bosom swell for the words rang as a knell, and the voice seemed his who fell in the battle down the dell, and who is happy now. but he spoke to re-assure me, and he kissed my pallid brow, while a reverie came o'er me, and to the church-yard bore me, and i sighed to him before me, thinking him dead d'elormie, "oh, i am happy now!" and thus the words were spoken, and this the plighted vow, and, though my faith be broken, and, though my heart be broken, here is a ring, as token that i am happy now! would god i could awaken! for i dream i know not how! and my soul is sorely shaken lest an evil step be taken, lest the dead who is forsaken may not be happy now. -the end. 1835 king pest by edgar allan poe king pest a tale containing an allegory the gods do bear and will allow in kings the things which they abhor in rascal routes. buckhurst's tragedy of ferrex and porrex. about twelve o'clock, one night in the month of october, and during the chivalrous reign of the third edward, two seamen belonging to the crew of the "free and easy," a trading schooner plying between sluys and the thames, and then at anchor in that river, were much astonished to find themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house in the parish of st. andrews, london --which ale-house bore for sign the portraiture of a "jolly tar." the room, although ill-contrived, smoke-blackened, low-pitched, and in every other respect agreeing with the general character of such places at the period --was, nevertheless, in the opinion of the grotesque groups scattered here and there within it, sufficiently well adapted to its purpose. of these groups our two seamen formed, i think, the most interesting, if not the most conspicuous. the one who appeared to be the elder, and whom his companion addressed by the characteristic appellation of "legs," was at the same time much the taller of the two. he might have measured six feet and a half, and an habitual stoop in the shoulders seemed to have been the necessary consequence of an altitude so enormous.--superfluities in height were, however, more than accounted for by deficiencies in other respects. he was exceedingly thin; and might, as his associates asserted, have answered, when drunk, for a pennant at the mast-head, or, when sober, have served for a jib-boom. but these jests, and others of a similar nature, had evidently produced, at no time, any effect upon the cachinnatory muscles of the tar. with high cheek-bones, a large hawk-nose, retreating chin, fallen under-jaw, and huge protruding white eyes, the expression of his countenance, although tinged with a species of dogged indifference to matters and things in general, was not the less utterly solemn and serious beyond all attempts at imitation or description. the younger seaman was, in all outward appearance, the converse of his companion. his stature could not have exceeded four feet. a pair of stumpy bow-legs supported his squat, unwieldy figure, while his unusually short and thick arms, with no ordinary fists at their extremities, swung off dangling from his sides like the fins of a sea-turtle. small eyes, of no particular color, twinkled far back in his head. his nose remained buried in the mass of flesh which enveloped his round, full, and purple face; and his thick upper-lip rested upon the still thicker one beneath with an air of complacent self-satisfaction, much heightened by the owner's habit of licking them at intervals. he evidently regarded his tall shipmate with a feeling half-wondrous, half-quizzical; and stared up occasionally in his face as the red setting sun stares up at the crags of ben nevis. various and eventful, however, had been the peregrinations of the worthy couple in and about the different tap-houses of the neighbourhood during the earlier hours of the night. funds even the most ample, are not always everlasting: and it was with empty pockets our friends had ventured upon the present hostelrie. at the precise period, then, when this history properly commences, legs, and his fellow hugh tarpaulin, sat, each with both elbows resting upon the large oaken table in the middle of the floor, and with a hand upon either cheek. they were eyeing, from behind a huge flagon of unpaid-for "humming-stuff," the portentous words, "no chalk," which to their indignation and astonishment were scored over the doorway by means of that very mineral whose presence they purported to deny. not that the gift of decyphering written characters --a gift among the commonalty of that day considered little less cabalistical than the art of inditing --could, in strict justice, have been laid to the charge of either disciple of the sea; but there was, to say the truth, a certain twist in the formation of the letters --an indescribable lee-lurch about the whole ---which foreboded, in the opinion of both seamen, a long run of dirty weather; and determined them at once, in the allegorical words of legs himself, to "pump ship, clew up all sail, and scud before the wind." having accordingly disposed of what remained of the ale, and looped up the points of their short doublets, they finally made a bolt for the street. although tarpaulin rolled twice into the fire-place, mistaking it for the door, yet their escape was at length happily effected --and half after twelve o'clock found our heroes ripe for mischief, and running for life down a dark alley in the direction of st. andrew's stair, hotly pursued by the landlady of the "jolly tar." at the epoch of this eventful tale, and periodically, for many years before and after, all england, but more especially the metropolis, resounded with the fearful cry of "plague!" the city was in a great measure depopulated --and in those horrible regions, in the vicinity of the thames, where amid the dark, narrow, and filthy lanes and alleys, the demon of disease was supposed to have had his nativity, awe, terror, and superstition were alone to be found stalking abroad. by authority of the king such districts were placed under ban, and all persons forbidden, under pain of death, to intrude upon their dismal solitude. yet neither the mandate of the monarch, nor the huge barriers erected at the entrances of the streets, nor the prospect of that loathsome death which, with almost absolute certainty, overwhelmed the wretch whom no peril could deter from the adventure, prevented the unfurnished and untenanted dwellings from being stripped, by the hand of nightly rapine, of every article, such as iron, brass, or lead-work, which could in any manner be turned to a profitable account. above all, it was usually found, upon the annual winter opening of the barriers, that locks, bolts, and secret cellars, had proved but slender protection to those rich stores of wines and liquors which, in consideration of the risk and trouble of removal, many of the numerous dealers having shops in the neighbourhood had consented to trust, during the period of exile, to so insufficient a security. but there were very few of the terror-stricken people who attributed these doings to the agency of human hands. pest-spirits, plague-goblins, and fever-demons, were the popular imps of mischief; and tales so blood-chilling were hourly told, that the whole mass of forbidden buildings was, at length, enveloped in terror as in a shroud, and the plunderer himself was often scared away by the horrors his own depreciations had created; leaving the entire vast circuit of prohibited district to gloom, silence, pestilence, and death. it was by one of the terrific barriers already mentioned, and which indicated the region beyond to be under the pest-ban, that, in scrambling down an alley, legs and the worthy hugh tarpaulin found their progress suddenly impeded. to return was out of the question, and no time was to be lost, as their pursuers were close upon their heels. with thorough-bred seamen to clamber up the roughly fashioned plank-work was a trifle; and, maddened with the twofold excitement of exercise and liquor, they leaped unhesitatingly down within the enclosure, and holding on their drunken course with shouts and yellings, were soon bewildered in its noisome and intricate recesses. had they not, indeed, been intoxicated beyond moral sense, their reeling footsteps must have been palsied by the horrors of their situation. the air was cold and misty. the paving-stones, loosened from their beds, lay in wild disorder amid the tall, rank grass, which sprang up around the feet and ankles. fallen houses choked up the streets. the most fetid and poisonous smells everywhere prevailed; --and by the aid of that ghastly light which, even at midnight, never fails to emanate from a vapory and pestilential at atmosphere, might be discerned lying in the by-paths and alleys, or rotting in the windowless habitations, the carcass of many a nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the plague in the very perpetration of his robbery. --but it lay not in the power of images, or sensations, or impediments such as these, to stay the course of men who, naturally brave, and at that time especially, brimful of courage and of "humming-stuff!" would have reeled, as straight as their condition might have permitted, undauntedly into the very jaws of death. onward --still onward stalked the grim legs, making the desolate solemnity echo and re-echo with yells like the terrific war-whoop of the indian: and onward, still onward rolled the dumpy tarpaulin, hanging on to the doublet of his more active companion, and far surpassing the latter's most strenuous exertions in the way of vocal music, by bull-roarings in basso, from the profundity of his stentorian lungs. they had now evidently reached the strong hold of the pestilence. their way at every step or plunge grew more noisome and more horrible --the paths more narrow and more intricate. huge stones and beams falling momently from the decaying roofs above them, gave evidence, by their sullen and heavy descent, of the vast height of the surrounding houses; and while actual exertion became necessary to force a passage through frequent heaps of rubbish, it was by no means seldom that the hand fell upon a skeleton or rested upon a more fleshly corpse. suddenly, as the seamen stumbled against the entrance of a tall and ghastly-looking building, a yell more than usually shrill from the throat of the excited legs, was replied to from within, in a rapid succession of wild, laughter-like, and fiendish shrieks. nothing daunted at sounds which, of such a nature, at such a time, and in such a place, might have curdled the very blood in hearts less irrevocably on fire, the drunken couple rushed headlong against the door, burst it open, and staggered into the midst of things with a volley of curses. the room within which they found themselves proved to be the shop of an undertaker; but an open trap-door, in a corner of the floor near the entrance, looked down upon a long range of wine-cellars, whose depths the occasional sound of bursting bottles proclaimed to be well stored with their appropriate contents. in the middle of the room stood a table --in the centre of which again arose a huge tub of what appeared to be punch. bottles of various wines and cordials, together with jugs, pitchers, and flagons of every shape and quality, were scattered profusely upon the board. around it, upon coffin-tressels, was seated a company of six. this company i will endeavor to delineate one by one. fronting the entrance, and elevated a little above his companions, sat a personage who appeared to be the president of the table. his stature was gaunt and tall, and legs was confounded to behold in him a figure more emaciated than himself. his face was as yellow as saffron --but no feature excepting one alone, was sufficiently marked to merit a particular description. this one consisted in a forehead so unusually and hideously lofty, as to have the appearance of a bonnet or crown of flesh superadded upon the natural head. his mouth was puckered and dimpled into an expression of ghastly affability, and his eyes, as indeed the eyes of all at table, were glazed over with the fumes of intoxication. this gentleman was clothed from head to foot in a richly-embroidered black silk-velvet pall, wrapped negligently around his form after the fashion of a spanish cloak. --his head was stuck full of sable hearse-plumes, which he nodded to and fro with a jaunty and knowing air; and, in his right hand, he held a huge human thigh-bone, with which he appeared to have been just knocking down some member of the company for a song. opposite him, and with her back to the door, was a lady of no whit the less extraordinary character. although quite as tall as the person just described, she had no right to complain of his unnatural emaciation. she was evidently in the last stage of a dropsy; and her figure resembled nearly that of the huge puncheon of october beer which stood, with the head driven in, close by her side, in a corner of the chamber. her face was exceedingly round, red, and full; and the same peculiarity, or rather want of peculiarity, attached itself to her countenance, which i before mentioned in the case of the president --that is to say, only one feature of her face was sufficiently distinguished to need a separate characterization: indeed the acute tarpaulin immediately observed that the same remark might have applied to each individual person of the party; every one of whom seemed to possess a monopoly of some particular portion of physiognomy. with the lady in question this portion proved to be the mouth. commencing at the right ear, it swept with a terrific chasm to the left --the short pendants which she wore in either auricle continually bobbing into the aperture. she made, however, every exertion to keep her mouth closed and look dignified, in a dress consisting of a newly starched and ironed shroud coming up close under her chin, with a crimpled ruffle of cambric muslin. at her right hand sat a diminutive young lady whom she appeared to patronise. this delicate little creature, in the trembling of her wasted fingers, in the livid hue of her lips, and in the slight hectic spot which tinged her otherwise leaden complexion, gave evident indications of a galloping consumption. an air of gave extreme haut ton, however, pervaded her whole appearance; she wore in a graceful and degage manner, a large and beautiful winding-sheet of the finest india lawn; her hair hung in ringlets over her neck; a soft smile played about her mouth; but her nose, extremely long, thin, sinuous, flexible and pimpled, hung down far below her under lip, and in spite of the delicate manner in which she now and then moved it to one side or the other with her tongue, gave to her countenance a somewhat equivocal expression. over against her, and upon the left of the dropsical lady, was seated a little puffy, wheezing, and gouty old man, whose cheeks reposed upon the shoulders of their owner, like two huge bladders of oporto wine. with his arms folded, and with one bandaged leg deposited upon the table, he seemed to think himself entitled to some consideration. he evidently prided himself much upon every inch of his personal appearance, but took more especial delight in calling attention to his gaudy-colored surtout. this, to say the truth, must have cost him no little money, and was made to fit him exceedingly well --being fashioned from one of the curiously embroidered silken covers appertaining to those glorious escutcheons which, in england and elsewhere, are customarily hung up, in some conspicuous place, upon the dwellings of departed aristocracy. next to him, and at the right hand of the president, was a gentleman in long white hose and cotton drawers. his frame shook, in a ridiculous manner, with a fit of what tarpaulin called "the horrors." his jaws, which had been newly shaved, were tightly tied up by a bandage of muslin; and his arms being fastened in a similar way at the wrists, i i prevented him from helping himself too freely to the liquors upon the table; a precaution rendered necessary, in the opinion of legs, by the peculiarly sottish and wine-bibbing cast of his visage. a pair of prodigious ears, nevertheless, which it was no doubt found impossible to confine, towered away into the atmosphere of the apartment, and were occasionally pricked up in a spasm, at the sound of the drawing of a cork. fronting him, sixthly and lastly, was situated a singularly stiff-looking personage, who, being afflicted with paralysis, must, to speak seriously, have felt very ill at ease in his unaccommodating habiliments. he was habited, somewhat uniquely, in a new and handsome mahogany coffin. its top or head-piece pressed upon the skull of the wearer, and extended over it in the fashion of a hood, giving to the entire face an air of indescribable interest. arm-holes had been cut in the sides, for the sake not more of elegance than of convenience; but the dress, nevertheless, prevented its proprietor from sitting as erect as his associates; and as he lay reclining against his tressel, at an angle of forty-five degrees, a pair of huge goggle eyes rolled up their awful whites towards the celling in absolute amazement at their own enormity. before each of the party lay a portion of a skull, which was used as a drinking cup. overhead was suspended a human skeleton, by means of a rope tied round one of the legs and fastened to a ring in the ceiling. the other limb, confined by no such fetter, stuck off from the body at right angles, causing the whole loose and rattling frame to dangle and twirl about at the caprice of every occasional puff of wind which found its way into the apartment. in the cranium of this hideous thing lay quantity of ignited charcoal, which threw a fitful but vivid light over the entire scene; while coffins, and other wares appertaining to the shop of an undertaker, were piled high up around the room, and against the windows, preventing any ray from escaping into the street. at sight of this extraordinary assembly, and of their still more extraordinary paraphernalia, our two seamen did not conduct themselves with that degree of decorum which might have been expected. legs, leaning against the wall near which he happened to be standing, dropped his lower jaw still lower than usual, and spread open his eyes to their fullest extent: while hugh tarpaulin, stooping down so as to bring his nose upon a level with the table, and spreading out a palm upon either knee, burst into a long, loud, and obstreperous roar of very ill-timed and immoderate laughter. without, however, taking offence at behaviour so excessively rude, the tall president smiled very graciously upon the intruders --nodded to them in a dignified manner with his head of sable plumes --and, arising, took each by an arm, and led him to a seat which some others of the company had placed in the meantime for his accommodation. legs to all this offered not the slightest resistance, but sat down as he was directed; while tile gallant hugh, removing his coffin tressel from its station near the head of the table, to the vicinity of the little consumptive lady in the winding sheet, plumped down by her side in high glee, and pouring out a skull of red wine, quaffed it to their better acquaintance. but at this presumption the stiff gentleman in the coffin seemed exceedingly nettled; and serious consequences might have ensued, had not the president, rapping upon the table with his truncheon, diverted the attention of all present to the following speech: "it becomes our duty upon the present happy occasion"- "avast there!" interrupted legs, looking very serious, "avast there a bit, i say, and tell us who the devil ye all are, and what business ye have here, rigged off like the foul fiends, and swilling the snug blue ruin stowed away for the winter by my honest shipmate, will wimble the undertaker!" at this unpardonable piece of ill-breeding, all the original company half started to their feet, and uttered the same rapid succession of wild fiendish shrieks which had before caught the attention of the seamen. the president, however, was the first to recover his composure, and at length, turning to legs with great dignity, recommenced: "most willingly will we gratify any reasonable curiosity on the part of guests so illustrious, unbidden though they be. know then that in these dominions i am monarch, and here rule with undivided empire under the title of 'king pest the first.' "this apartment, which you no doubt profanely suppose to be the shop of will wimble the undertaker --a man whom we know not, and whose plebeian appellation has never before this night thwarted our royal ears --this apartment, i say, is the dais-chamber of our palace, devoted to the councils of our kingdom, and to other sacred and lofty purposes. "the noble lady who sits opposite is queen pest, our serene consort. the other exalted personages whom you behold are all of our family, and wear the insignia of the blood royal under the respective titles of 'his grace the arch duke pest-iferous' --'his grace the duke pest-ilential' --'his grace the duke tem-pest' --and 'her serene highness the arch duchess ana-pest.' "as regards," continued he, "your demand of the business upon which we sit here in council, we might be pardoned for replying that it concerns, and concerns alone, our own private and regal interest, and is in no manner important to any other than ourself. but in consideration of those rights to which as guests and strangers you may feel yourselves entitled, we will furthermore explain that we are here this night, prepared by deep research and accurate investigation, to examine, analyze, and thoroughly determine the indefinable spirit --the incomprehensible qualities and nature --of those inestimable treasures of the palate, the wines, ales, and liqueurs of this goodly metropolis: by so doing to advance not more our own designs than the true welfare of that unearthly sovereign whose reign is over us all, whose dominions are unlimited, and whose name is 'death.' "whose name is davy jones!" ejaculated tarpaulin, helping the lady by his side to a skull of liqueur, and pouring out a second for himself. "profane varlet!" said the president, now turning his attention to the worthy hugh, "profane and execrable wretch! --we have said, that in consideration of those rights which, even in thy filthy person, we feel no inclination to violate, we have condescended to make reply to thy rude and unseasonable inquiries. we nevertheless, for your unhallowed intrusion upon our councils, believe it our duty to mulct thee and thy companion in each a gallon of black strap --having imbibed which to the prosperity of our kingdom --at a single draught --and upon your bended knees --ye shall be forthwith free either to proceed upon your way, or remain and be admitted to the privileges of our table, according to your respective and individual pleasures." "it would be a matter of utter impossibility," replied legs, whom the assumptions and dignity of king pest the first had evidently inspired some feelings of respect, and who arose and steadied himself by the table as he spoke --"it would, please your majesty, be a matter of utter impossibility to stow away in my hold even one-fourth part of the same liquor which your majesty has just mentioned. to say nothing of the stuffs placed on board in the forenoon by way of ballast, and not to mention the various ales and liqueurs shipped this evening at different sea-ports, i have, at present, a full cargo of 'humming stuff' taken in and duly paid for at the sign of the 'jolly tar.' you will, therefore, please your majesty, be so good as to take the will for the deed --for by no manner of means either can i or will i swallow another drop --least of all a drop of that villainous bilge-water that answers to the hall of 'black strap.'" "belay that!" interrupted tarpaulin, astonished not more at the length of his companion's speech than at the nature of his refusal --"belay that you tubber! --and i say, legs, none of your palaver! my hull is still light, although i confess you yourself seem to be a little top-heavy; and as for the matter of your share of the cargo, why rather than raise a squall i would find stowageroom for it myself, but" - "this proceeding," interposed the president, "is by no means in accordance with the terms of the mulct or sentence, which is in its nature median, and not to be altered or recalled. the conditions we have imposed must be fulfilled to the letter, and that without a moment's hesitation --in failure of which fulfilment we decree that you do here be tied neck and heels together, and duly drowned as rebels in yon hogshead of october beer!" "a sentence! --a sentence! --a righteous and just sentence! --a glorious decree! --a most worthy and upright, and holy condemnation!" shouted the pest family altogether. the king elevated his forehead into innumerable wrinkles; the gouty little old man puffed like a pair of bellows; the lady of the winding sheet waved her nose to and fro; the gentleman in the cotton drawers pricked up his ears; she of the shroud gasped like a dying fish; and he of the coffin looked stiff and rolled up his eyes. "ugh! ugh! ugh!" chuckled tarpaulin without heeding the general excitation, "ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --i was saying," said he, "i was saying when mr. king pest poked in his marlin-spike, that as for the matter of two or three gallons more or less of black strap, it was a trifle to a tight sea-boat like myself not overstowed --but when it comes to drinking the health of the devil (whom god assoilzie) and going down upon my marrow bones to his ill-favored majesty there, whom i know, as well as i know myself to be a sinner, to be nobody in the whole world, but tim hurlygurly the stage-player --why! it's quite another guess sort of a thing, and utterly and altogether past my comprehension." he was not allowed to finish this speech in tranquillity. at the name tim hurlygurly the whole assembly leaped from their name seats. "treason!" shouted his majesty king pest the first. "treason!" said the little man with the gout. "treason!" screamed the arch duchess ana-pest. "treason!" muttered the gentleman with his jaws tied up. "treason!" growled he of the coffin. "treason! treason!" shrieked her majesty of the mouth; and, seizing by the hinder part of his breeches the unfortunate tarpaulin, who had just commenced pouring out for himself a skull of liqueur, she lifted him high into the air, and let him fall without ceremony into the huge open puncheon of his beloved ale. bobbing up and down, for a few seconds, like an apple in a bowl of toddy, he, at length, finally disappeared amid the whirlpool of foam which, in the already effervescent liquor, his struggles easily succeeded in creating. not tamely, however, did the tall seaman behold the discomfiture of his companion. jostling king pest through the open trap, the valiant legs slammed the door down upon him with an oath, and strode towards the centre of the room. here tearing down the skeleton which swung over the table, he laid it about him with so much energy and good will, that, as the last glimpses of light died away within the apartment, he succeeded in knocking out the brains of the little gentleman with the gout. rushing then with all his force against the fatal hogshead full of october ale and hugh tarpaulin, he rolled it over and over in an instant. out burst a deluge of liquor so fierce --so impetuous --so overwhelming --that the room was flooded from wall to wall --the loaded table was overturned --the tressels were thrown upon their backs --the tub of punch into the fire-place --and the ladies into hysterics. piles of death-furniture floundered about. jugs, pitchers, and carboys mingled promiscuously in the melee, and wicker flagons encountered desperately with bottles of junk. the man with the horrors was drowned upon the spot-the little stiff gentleman floated off in his coffin --and the victorious legs, seizing by the waist the fat lady in the shroud, rushed out with her into the street, and made a bee-line for the "free and easy," followed under easy sail by the redoubtable hugh tarpaulin, who, having sneezed three or four times, panted and puffed after him with the arch duchess ana-pest. -the end. 1834 the assignation by edgar allan poe (the visionary) stay for me there! i will not fail to meet thee in that hollow vale. [exequy on the death of his wife, by henry king, bishop of chichester.] ill-fated and mysterious man! --bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own and fallen in the flames of thine own youth! again in fancy i behold thee! once more thy form hath risen before me! --not --oh not as thou art --in the cold valley and shadow --but as thou shouldst be --squandering away a life of magnificent meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own venice --which is a star-beloved elysium of the sea, and the wide windows of whose palladian palaces look down with a deep and bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. yes! i repeat it-as thou shouldst be. there are surely other worlds than this --other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude --other speculations than the speculations of the sophist. who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies? it was at venice, beneath the covered archway there called the ponte di sospiri, that i met for the third or fourth time the person of whom i speak. it is with a confused recollection that i bring to mind the circumstances of that meeting. yet i remember --aah! how should i forget? --the deep midnight, the bridge of sighs, the beauty of woman, and the genius of romance that stalked up and down the narrow canal. it was a night of unusual gloom. the great clock of the piazza had sounded the fifth hour of the italian evening. the square of the campanile lay silent and deserted, and the lights in the old ducal palace were dying fast away. i was returning home from the piazetta, by way of the grand canal. but as my gondola arrived opposite the mouth of the canal san marco, a female voice from its recesses broke suddenly upon the night, in one hysterical, and long continued shriek. startled at the sound, i sprang upon my feet: while the gondolier, letting slip his single oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness beyond a chance of recovery, and we were consequently left to the guidance of the current which here sets from the greater into the smaller channel. like some huge and sable-feathered condor, we were slowly drifting down towards the bridge of sighs, when a thousand flambeaux flashing from the windows, and down the staircases of the ducal palace, turned all at once that deep gloom into a livid and preternatural day. a child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen from an upper window of the lofty structure into the deep and dim canal. the quiet waters had closed placidly over their victim; and, although my own gondola was the only one in sight, many a stout swimmer, already in the stream, was seeking in vain upon the surface, the treasure which was to be found, alas! only within the abyss. upon the broad black marble flagstones at the entrance of the palace, and a few steps above the water, stood a figure which none who then saw can have ever since forgotten. it was the marchesa aphrodite --the adoration of all venice --the gayest of the gay --the most lovely where all were beautiful --but still the young wife of the old and intriguing mentoni, and the mother of that fair child, her first and only one, who now deep beneath the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of heart upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to call upon her name. she stood alone. her small, bare, and silvery feet gleamed in the black mirror of marble beneath her. her hair, not as yet more than half loosened for the night from its ball-room array, clustered, amid a shower of diamonds, round and round her classical head, in curls like those of the young hyacinth. a snowy-white and gauze-like drapery seemed to be nearly the sole covering to her delicate form; but the mid-summer and midnight air was hot, sullen, and still, and no motion in the statue-like form itself, stirred even the folds of that raiment of very vapor which hung around it as the heavy marble hangs around the niobe. yet --strange to say! --her large lustrous eyes were not turned downwards upon that grave wherein her brightest hope lay buried --but riveted in a widely different direction! the prison of the old republic is, i think, the stateliest building in all venice --but how could that lady gaze so fixedly upon it, when beneath her lay stifling her only child? yon dark, gloomy niche, too, yawns right opposite her chamber window --what, then, could there be in its shadows --in its architecture --in its ivy-wreathed and solemn cornices --that the marchesa di mentoni had not wondered at a thousand times before? nonsense! --who does not remember that, at such a time as this, the eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees in innumerable far-off places, the wo which is close at hand? many steps above the marchesa, and within the arch of the water-gate, stood, in full dress, the satyr-like figure of mentoni himself. he was occasionally occupied in thrumming a guitar, and seemed ennuye to the very death, as at intervals he gave directions for the recovery of his child. stupefied and aghast, i had myself no power to move from the upright position i had assumed upon first hearing the shriek, and must have presented to the eyes of the agitated group a spectral and ominous appearance, as with pale countenance and rigid limbs, i floated down among them in that funereal gondola. all efforts proved in vain. many of the most energetic in the search were relaxing their exertions, and yielding to a gloomy sorrow. there seemed but little hope for the child; (how much less than for the mother!) but now, from the interior of that dark niche which has been already mentioned as forming a part of the old republican prison, and as fronting the lattice of the marchesa, a figure muffled in a cloak, stepped out within reach of the light, and, pausing a moment upon the verge of the giddy descent, plunged headlong into the canal. as, in an instant afterwards, he stood with the still living and breathing child within his grasp, upon the marble flagstones by the side of the marchesa, his cloak, heavy with the drenching water, became unfastened, and, falling in folds about his feet, discovered to the wonder-stricken spectators the graceful person of a very young man, with the sound of whose name the greater part of europe was then ringing. no word spoke the deliverer. but the marchesa! she will now receive her child --she will press it to her heart --she will cling to its little form, and smother it with her caresses. alas! another's arms have taken it from the stranger --another's arms have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into the palace! and the marchesa! her lip --her beautiful lip trembles: tears are gathering in her eyes --those eyes which, like pliny's acanthus, are "soft and almost liquid." yes! tears are gathering in those eyes-and see! the entire woman thrills throughout the soul, and the statue has started into life! the pallor of the marble countenance, the swelling of the marble bosom, the very purity of the marble feet, we behold suddenly flushed over with a tide of ungovernable crimson; and a slight shudder quivers about her delicate frame, as a gentle air at napoli about the rich silver lilies in the grass. why should that lady blush! to this demand there is no answer --except that, having left, in the eager haste and terror of a mother's heart, the privacy of her own boudoir, she has neglected to enthrall her tiny feet in their slippers, and utterly forgotten to throw over her venetian shoulders that drapery which is their due. what other possible reason could there have been for her so blushing? --for the glance of those wild appealing eyes? for the unusual tumult of that throbbing bosom? --for the convulsive pressure of that trembling hand? --that hand which fell, as mentoni turned into the palace, accidentally, upon the hand of the stranger. what reason could there have been for the low --the singularly low tone of those unmeaning words which the lady uttered hurriedly in bidding him adieu? "thou hast conquered --" she said, or the murmurs of the water deceived me-"thou hast conquered --one hour after sunrise --we shall meet --so let it be!" the tumult had subsided, the lights had died away within the palace, and the stranger, whom i now recognized, stood alone upon the flags. he shook with inconceivable agitation, and his eye glanced around in search of a gondola. i could not do less than offer him the service of my own; and he accepted the civility. having obtained an oar at the water-gate, we proceeded together to his residence, while he rapidly recovered his self-possession, and spoke of our former slight acquaintance in terms of great apparent cordiality. there are some subjects upon which i take pleasure in being minute. the person of the stranger --let me call him by this title, who to all the world was still a stranger --the person of the stranger is one of these subjects. in height he might have been below rather than above the medium size: although there were moments of intense passion when his frame actually expanded and belled the assertion. the light, almost slender symmetry of his figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at the bridge of sighs, than of that herculean strength which he has been known to wield without an effort, upon occasions of more dangerous emergency. with the mouth and chin of a deity --singular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shadows varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant jet --and a profusion of curling, black hair, from which a forehead of unusual breadth gleamed forth at intervals all light and ivory --his were features than which i have seen none more classically regular, except, perhaps, the marble ones of the emperor commodus. yet his countenance was, nevertheless, one of those which all men have seen at some period of their lives, and have never afterwards seen again. it had no peculiar --it had no settled predominant expression to be fastened upon the memory; a countenance seen and instantly forgotten --but forgotten with a vague and never-ceasing desire of recalling it to mind. not that the spirit of each rapid passion failed, at any time, to throw its own distinct image upon the mirror of that face --but that the mirror, mirror-like, retained no vestige of the passion, when the passion had departed. upon leaving him on the night of our adventure, he solicited me, in what i thought an urgent manner, to call upon him very early the next morning. shortly after sunrise, i found myself accordingly at his palazzo, one of those huge structures of gloomy, yet fantastic pomp, which tower above the waters of the grand canal in the vicinity of the rialto. i was shown up a broad winding staircase of mosaics, into an apartment whose unparalleled splendor burst through the opening door with an actual glare, making me blind and dizzy with luxuriousness. i knew my acquaintance to be wealthy. report had spoken of his possessions in terms which i had even ventured to call terms of ridiculous exaggeration. but as i gazed about me, i could not bring myself to believe that the wealth of any subject in europe could have supplied the princely magnificence which burned and blazed around. although, as i say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still brilliantly lighted up. i judge from this circumstance, as well as from an air of exhaustion in the countenance of my friend, that he had not retired to bed during the whole of the preceding night. in the architecture and embellishments of the chamber, the evident design had been to dazzle and astound. little attention had been paid to the decora of what is technically called keeping, or to the proprieties of nationality. the eye wandered from object to object, and rested upon none --neither the grotesques of the greek painters, nor the sculptures of the best italian days, nor the huge carvings of untutored egypt. rich draperies in every part of the room trembled to the vibration of low, melancholy music, whose origin was not to be discovered. the senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting perfumes, reeking up from strange convolute censers, together with multitudinous flaring and flickering tongues of emerald and violet fire. the rays of the newly, risen sun poured in upon the whole, through windows formed each of a single pane of crimson-tinted glass. glancing to and fro, in a thousand reflections, from curtains which rolled from their cornices like cataracts of molten silver, the beams of natural glory mingled at length fitfully with the artificial light, and lay weltering in subdued masses upon a carpet of rich, liquid-looking cloth of chili gold. "ha! ha! ha! --ha! ha! ha!" --laughed the proprietor, motioning me to a seat as i entered the room, and throwing himself back at full length upon an ottoman. "i see," said he, perceiving that i could not immediately reconcile myself to the bienseance of so singular a welcome --"i see you are astonished at my apartment --at my statues --my pictures --my originality of conception in architecture and upholstery --absolutely drunk, eh? with my magnificence? but pardon me, my dear sir, (here his tone of voice dropped to the very spirit of cordiality,) pardon me for my uncharitable laughter. you appeared so utterly astonished. besides, some things are so completely ludicrous that a man must laugh or die. to die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! sir thomas more --a very fine man was sir thomas more --sir thomas more died laughing, you remember. also in the absurdities of ravisius textor, there is a long list of characters who came to the same magnificent end. do you know, however," continued he musingly, "that at sparta (which is now palaeochori,) at sparta, i say, to the west of the citadel, among a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle, upon which are still legible the letters 'lasm'. they are undoubtedly part of 'gelasma'. now at sparta were a thousand temples and shrines to a thousand different divinities. how exceedingly strange that the altar of laughter should have survived all the others! but in the present instance," he resumed, with a singular alteration of voice and manner, "i have no right to be merry at your expense. you might well have been amazed. europe cannot produce anything so fine as this, my little regal cabinet. my other apartments are by no means of the same order; mere ultras of fashionable insipidity. this is better than fashion --is it not? yet this has but to be seen to become the rage --that is, with those who could afford it at the cost of their entire patrimony. i have guarded, however, against any such profanation. with one exception you are the only human being besides myself and my valet, who has been admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts, since they have been bedizened as you see!" i bowed in acknowledgment; for the overpowering sense of splendor and perfume, and music, together with the unexpected eccentricity of his address and manner, prevented me from expressing, in words, my appreciation of what i might have construed into a compliment. "here," he resumed, arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered around the apartment, "here are paintings from the greeks to cimabue, and from cimabue to the present hour. many are chosen, as you see, with little deference to the opinions of virtu. they are all, however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. here too, are some chefs d'oeuvre of the unknown great --and here unfinished designs by men, celebrated in their day, whose very names the perspicacity of the academies has left to silence and to me. what think you," said he, turning abruptly as he spoke --"what think you of this madonna della pieta?" it is guido's own!" i said with all the enthusiasm of my nature, for i had been poring intently over its surpassing loveliness. "it is guido's own! --how could you have obtained it? --she is undoubtedly in painting what the venus is in sculpture." "ha!" said he thoughtfully, "the venus --the beautiful venus? --the venus of the medici? --she of the diminutive head and the gilded hair? part of the left arm (here his voice dropped so as to be heard with difficulty,) and all the right are restorations, and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, i think, the quintessence of all affectation. give me the canova! the apollo, too! --is a copy --there can be no doubt of it --blind fool that i am, who cannot behold the boasted inspiration of the apollo! i cannot help --pity me! --i cannot help preferring the antinous. was it not socrates who said that the statuary found his statue in the block of marble? then michael angelo was by no means original in his couplet - 'non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto che tin marmo solo in se non circonscriva.'" it has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the true gentleman, we are always aware of a difference from the bearing of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in what such difference consists. allowing the remark to have applied in its full force to the outward demeanor of my acquaintance, i felt it, on that eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his moral temperament and character. nor can i better define that peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place him so essentially apart from all other human beings, than by calling it a habit of intense and continual thought, pervading even his most trivial actions --intruding upon his moments of dalliance --and interweaving itself with his very flashes of merriment --like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples of persepolis. i could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted upon matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidation --a degree of nervous unction in action and in speech --an unquiet excitability of manner which appeared to me at all times unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm. frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence whose commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be listening in the deepest attention, as if either in momentary expectation of a visitor, or to sounds, which must have had existence in his imagination alone. it was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent abstraction, that, in turning over a page of the poet and scholar politian's beautiful tragedy "the orfeo," (the first native italian tragedy,) which lay near me upon an ottoman, i discovered a passage underlined in pencil. it was a passage towards the end of the third act --a passage of the most heart-stirring excitement --a passage which, although tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a thrill of novel emotion --no woman without a sigh. the whole page was blotted with fresh tears, and, upon the opposite interleaf, were the following english lines, written in a hand so very different from the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that i had some difficulty in recognising it as his own. thou wast that all to me, love, for which my soul did pine - a green isle in the sea, love, a fountain and a shrine, all wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers; and all the flowers were mine. ah, dream too bright to last; ah, starry hope that didst arise but to be overcast! a voice from out the future cries "onward!" --but o'er the past (dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies, mute, motionless, aghast! for alas! alas! me the light of life is o'er. "no more-no more-no more," (such language holds the solemn sea to the sands upon the shore,) shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, or the stricken eagle soar! now all my hours are trances; and all my nightly dreams are where the dark eye glances, and where thy footstep gleams, in what ethereal dances, by what italian streams. alas! for that accursed time they bore thee o'er the billow, for love to titled age and crime, and an unholy pillow - from me, and from our misty clime, where weeps the silver willow! that these lines were written in english --a language with which i had not believed their author acquainted --afforded me little matter for surprise. i was too well aware of the extent of his acquirements, and of the singular pleasure he took in concealing them from observation, to be astonished at any similar discovery; but the place of date, i must confess, occasioned me no little amazement. it had been originally written london, and afterwards carefully overscored --not, however, so effectually as to conceal the word from a scrutinizing eye. i say this occasioned me no little amazement; for i well remember that, in a former conversation with a friend, i particularly inquired if he had at any time met in london the marchesa di mentoni, (who for some years previous to her marriage had resided in that city,) when his answer, if i mistake not, gave me to understand that he had never visited the metropolis of great britain. i might as well here mention, that i have more than once heard, (without of course giving credit to a report involving so many improbabilities,) that the person of whom i speak was not only by birth, but in education, an englishman. "there is one painting," said he, without being aware of my notice of the tragedy --"there is still one painting which you have not seen." and throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a full length portrait of the marchesa aphrodite. human art could have done no more in the delineation of her superhuman beauty. the same ethereal figure which stood before me the preceding night upon the steps of the ducal palace, stood before me once again. but in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomaly!) that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. her right arm lay folded over her bosom. with her left she pointed downward to a curiously fashioned vase. one small, fairy foot, alone visible, barely touched the earth --and, scarcely discernible in the brilliant atmosphere which seemed to encircle and enshrine her loveliness, floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings. my glance fell from the painting to the figure of my friend, and the vigorous words of chapman's bussy d'ambois quivered instinctively upon my lips: "he is up there like a roman statue! he will stand till death hath made him marble!" "come!" he said at length, turning towards a table of richly enamelled and massive silver, upon which were a few goblets fantastically stained, together with two large etruscan vases, fashioned in the same extraordinary model as that in the foreground of the portrait, and filled with what i supposed to be johannisberger. "come!" he said abruptly, "let us drink! it is early --but let us drink. it is indeed early," he continued, musingly, as a cherub with a heavy golden hammer, made the apartment ring with the first hour after sunrise --"it is indeed early, but what matters it? let us drink! let us pour out an offering to yon solemn sun which these gaudy lamps and censers are so eager to subdue!" and, having made me pledge him in a bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets of the wine. "to dream", he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of the magnificent vases --"to dream has been the business of my life. i have therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. in the heart of venice could i have erected a better? you behold around you, it is true, a medley of architectural embellishments. the chastity of ionia is offended by antediluvian devices, and the sphynxes of egypt are outstretched upon carpets of gold. yet the effect is incongruous to the timid alone. proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent. once i was myself a decorist: but that sublimation of folly has palled upon my soul. all this is now the fitter for my purpose. like these arabesque censers, my spirit is writhing in fire, and the delirium of this scene is fashioning me for the wilder visions of that land of real dreams whither i am now rapidly departing." he here paused abruptly, bent his head to his bosom, and seemed to listen to a sound which i could not hear. at length, erecting his frame, he looked upwards and ejaculated the lines of the bishop of chichester: - stay for me there! i will not fail to meet thee in that hollow vale. in the next instant, confessing the power of the wine, he threw himself at full length upon an ottoman. a quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at the door rapidly succeeded. i was hastening to anticipate a second disturbance, when a page of mentoni's household burst into the room, and faltered out, in a voice choking with emotion, the incoherent words, "my mistress! --my mistress! --poisoned! --poisoned! oh beautiful --oh beautiful aphrodite!" bewildered, i flew to the ottoman, and endeavored to arouse the sleeper to a sense of the startling intelligence. but his limbs were rigid --his lips were livid --his lately beaming eyes were riveted in death. i staggered back toward the table --my hand fell upon a cracked and blackened goblet --and a consciousness of the entire and terrible truth flashed suddenly over my soul. -the end. 1831 the city in the sea by edgar allan poe lo! death has reared himself a throne in a strange city lying alone far down within the dim west, where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest. there shrines and palaces and towers (time-eaten towers that tremble not!) resemble nothing that is ours. around, by lifting winds forgot, resignedly beneath the sky the melancholy waters he. no rays from the holy heaven come down on the long night-time of that town; but light from out the lurid sea streams up the turrets silently gleams up the pinnacles far and free up domesup spiresup kingly halls up fanesup babylon-like walls up shadowy long-forgotten bowers of sculptured ivy and stone flowers up many and many a marvellous shrine whose wreathed friezes intertwine the viol, the violet, and the vine. resignedly beneath the sky the melancholy waters lie. so blend the turrets and shadows there that all seem pendulous in air, while from a proud tower in the town death looks gigantically down. there open fanes and gaping graves yawn level with the luminous waves; but not the riches there that lie in each idol's diamond eye not the gaily-jewelled dead tempt the waters from their bed; for no ripples curl, alas! along that wilderness of glass no swellings tell that winds may be upon some far-off happier sea no heavings hint that winds have been on seas less hideously serene. but lo, a stir is in the air! the wavethere is a movement there! as if the towers had thrust aside, in slightly sinking, the dull tide as if their tops had feebly given a void within the filmy heaven. the waves have now a redder glow the hours are breathing faint and low and when, amid no earthly moans, down, down that town shall settle hence, hell, rising from a thousand thrones, shall do it reverence. -the end. 1850 morella by edgar allan poe morella itself, by itself, solely, one everlasting, and single. plato: sympos. with a feeling of deep yet most singular affection i regarded my friend morella. thrown by accident into her society many years ago, my soul from our first meeting, burned with fires it had never before known; but the fires were not of eros, and bitter and tormenting to my spirit was the gradual conviction that i could in no manner define their unusual meaning or regulate their vague intensity. yet we met; and fate bound us together at the altar, and i never spoke of passion nor thought of love. she, however, shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone rendered me happy. it is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream. morella's erudition was profound. as i hope to live, her talents were of no common orderher powers of mind were gigantic. i felt this, and, in many matters, became her pupil. i soon, however, found that, perhaps on account of her presburg education, she placed before me a number of those mystical writings which are usually considered the mere dross of the early german literature. these, for what reason i could not imagine, were her favourite and constant studyand that in process of time they became my own, should be attributed to the simple but effectual influence of habit and example. in all this, if i err not, my reason had little to do. my convictions, or i forget myself, were in no manner acted upon by the ideal, nor was any tincture of the mysticism which i read to be discovered, unless i am greatly mistaken, either in my deeds or in my thoughts. persuaded of this, i abandoned myself implicitly to the guidance of my wife, and entered with an unflinching heart into the intricacies of her studies. and thenthen, when poring over forbidden pages, i felt a forbidden spirit enkindling within mewould morella place her cold hand upon my own, and rake up from the ashes of a dead philosophy some low, singular words, whose strange meaning burned themselves in upon my memory. and then, hour after hour, would i linger by her side, and dwell upon the music of her voice, until at length its melody was tainted with terror, and there fell a shadow upon my soul, and i grew pale, and shuddered inwardly at those too unearthly tones. and thus, joy suddenly faded into horror, and the most beautiful became the most hideous, as hinnon became ge-henna. it is unnecessary to state the exact character of those disquisitions which, growing out of the volumes i have mentioned, formed, for so long a time, almost the sole conversation of morella and myself. by the learned in what might be termed theological morality they will be readily conceived, and by the unlearned they would, at all events, be little understood. the wild pantheism of fichte; the modified paliggenedia of the pythagoreans; and, above all, the doctrines of identity as urged by schelling, were generally the points of discussion presenting the most of beauty to the imaginative morella. that identity which is termed personal, mr. locke, i think, truly defines to consist in the saneness of rational being. and since by person we understand an intelligent essence having reason, and since there is a consciousness which always accompanies thinking, it is this which makes us all to be that which we call ourselves, thereby distinguishing us from other beings that think, and giving us our personal identity. but the principium indivduationis, the notion of that identity which at death is or is not lost for ever, was to me, at all times, a consideration of intense interest; not more from the perplexing and exciting nature of its consequences, than from the marked and agitated manner in which morella mentioned them. but, indeed, the time had now arrived when the mystery of my wife's manner oppressed me as a spell. i could no longer bear the touch of her wan fingers, nor the low tone of her musical language, nor the lustre of her melancholy eyes. and she knew all this, but did not upbraid; she seemed conscious of my weakness or my folly, and, smiling, called it fate. she seemed also conscious of a cause, to me unknown, for the gradual alienation of my regard; but she gave me no hint or token of its nature. yet was she woman, and pined away daily. in time the crimson spot settled steadily upon the cheek, and the blue veins upon the pale forehead became prominent; and one instant my nature melted into pity, but in, next i met the glance of her meaning eyes, and then my soul sickened and became giddy with the giddiness of one who gazes downward into some dreary and unfathomable abyss. shall i then say that i longed with an earnest and consuming desire for the moment of morella's decease? i did; but the fragile spirit clung to its tenement of clay for many days, for many weeks and irksome months, until my tortured nerves obtained the mastery over my mind, and i grew furious through delay, and, with the heart of a fiend, cursed the days and the hours and the bitter moments, which seemed to lengthen and lengthen as her gentle life declined, like shadows in the dying of the day. but one autumnal evening, when the winds lay still in heaven, morella called me to her bedside. there was a dim mist over all the earth, and a warm glow upon the waters, and amid the rich october leaves of the forest, a rainbow from the firmament had surely fallen. "it is a day of days," she said, as i approached; "a day of all days either to live or die. it is a fair day for the sons of earth and lifeah, more fair for the daughters of heaven and death!" i kissed her forehead, and she continued: "i am dying, yet shall i live." "morella!" "the days have never been when thou couldst love mebut her whom in life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt adore." "morella!" "i repeat i am dying. but within me is a pledge of that affectionah, how little!which thou didst feel for me, morella. and when my spirit departs shall the child livethy child and mine, morella's. but thy days shall be days of sorrowthat sorrow which is the most lasting of impressions, as the cypress is the most enduring of trees. for the hours of thy happiness are over and joy is not gathered twice in a life, as the roses of paestum twice in a year. thou shalt no longer, then, play the teian with time, but, being ignorant of the myrtle and the vine, thou shalt bear about with thee thy shroud on the earth, as do the moslemin at mecca." "morella!" i cried, "morella! how knowest thou this?" but she turned away her face upon the pillow and a slight tremor coming over her limbs, she thus died, and i heard her voice no more. yet, as she had foretold, her child, to which in dying she had given birth, which breathed not until the mother breathed no more, her child, a daughter, lived. and she grew strangely in stature and intellect, and was the perfect resemblance of her who had departed, and i loved her with a love more fervent than i had believed it possible to feel for any denizen of earth. but, ere long the heaven of this pure affection became darkened, and gloom, and horror, and grief swept over it in clouds. i said the child grew strangely in stature and intelligence. strange, indeed, was her rapid increase in bodily size, but terrible, oh! terrible were the tumultuous thoughts which crowded upon me while watching the development of her mental being. could it be otherwise, when i daily discovered in the conceptions of the child the adult powers and faculties of the woman? when the lessons of experience fell from the lips of infancy? and when the wisdom or the passions of maturity i found hourly gleaming from its full and speculative eye? when, i say, all this beeame evident to my appalled senses, when i could no longer hide it from my soul, nor throw it off from those perceptions which trembled to receive it, is it to be wondered at that suspicions, of a nature fearful and exciting, crept in upon my spirit, or that my thoughts fell back aghast upon the wild tales and thrilling theories of the entombed morella? i snatched from the scrutiny of the world a being whom destiny compelled me to adore, and in the rigorous seclusion of my home, watched with an agonizing anxiety over all which concerned the beloved. and as years rolled away, and i gazed day after day upon her holy, and mild, and eloquent face, and poured over her maturing form, day after day did i discover new points of resemblance in the child to her mother, the melancholy and the dead. and hourly grew darker these shadows of similitude, and more full, and more definite, and more perplexing, and more hideously terrible in their aspect. for that her smile was like her mother's i could bear; but then i shuddered at its too perfect identity, that her eyes were like morella's i could endure; but then they, too, often looked down into the depths of my soul with morella's own intense and bewildering meaning. and in the contour of the high forehead, and in the ringlets of the silken hair, and in the wan fingers which buried themselves therein, and in the sad musical tones of her speech, and above alloh, above all, in the phrases and expressions of the dead on the lips of the loved and the living, i found food for consuming thought and horror, for a worm that would not die. thus passed away two lustra of her life, and as yet my daughter remained nameless upon the earth. "my child," and "my love," were the designations usually prompted by a father's affection, and the rigid seclusion of her days precluded all other intercourse. morella's name died with her at her death. of the mother i had never spoken to the daughter, it was impossible to speak. indeed, during the brief period of her existence, the latter had received no impressions from the outward world, save such as might have been afforded by the narrow limits of her privacy. but at length the ceremony of baptism presented to my mind, in its unnerved and agitated condition, a present deliverance from the terrors of my destiny. and at the baptismal font i hesitated for a name. and many titles of the wise and beautiful, of old and modern times, of my own and foreign lands, came thronging to my lips, with many, many fair titles of the gentle, and the happy, and the good. what prompted me then to disturb the memory of the buried dead? what demon urged me to breathe that sound, which in its very recollection was wont to make ebb the purple blood in torrents from the temples to the heart? what fiend spoke from the recesses of my soul, when amid those dim aisles, and in the silence of the night, i whispered within the ears of the holy man the syllablesmorella? what more than fiend convulsed the features of my child, and overspread them with hues of death, as starting at that scarcely audible sound, she turned her glassy eyes from the earth to heaven, and falling prostrate on the black slabs of our ancestral vault, responded"i am here!" distinct, coldly, calmly distinct, fell those few simple sounds within my ear, and thence like molten lead rolled hissingly into my brain. yearsyears may pass away, but the memory of that epoch never. nor was i indeed ignorant of the flowers and the vinebut the hemlock and the cypress overshadowed me night and day. and i kept no reckoning of time or place, and the stars of my fate faded from heaven, and therefore the earth grew dark, and its figures passed by me like flitting shadows, and among them all i beheld onlymorella. the winds of the firmament breathed but one sound within my ears, and the ripples upon the sea murmured evermoremorella. but she died; and with my own hands i bore her to the tomb; and i laughed with a long and bitter laugh as i found no traces of the first in the channel where i laid the second.morella. the end . ***the project gutenberg etext of memoir of fleeming jenkin*** #33 in our series by robert louis stevenson copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. memoir of fleeming jenkin by robert louis stevenson october, 1996 [etext #698] ***the project gutenberg etext of memoir of fleeming jenkin*** *****this file should be named fleem10.txt or fleem10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, fleem11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, fleem10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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by way of introduction, the following pages were drawn up; and the whole, forming two considerable volumes, has been issued in england. in the states, it has not been thought advisable to reproduce the whole; and the memoir appearing alone, shorn of that other matter which was at once its occasion and its justification, so large an account of a man so little known may seem to a stranger out of all proportion. but jenkin was a man much more remarkable than the mere bulk or merit of his work approves him. it was in the world, in the commerce of friendship, by his brave attitude towards life, by his high moral value and unwearied intellectual effort, that he struck the minds of his contemporaries. his was an individual figure, such as authors delight to draw, and all men to read of, in the pages of a novel. his was a face worth painting for its own sake. if the sitter shall not seem to have justified the portrait, if jenkin, after his death, shall not continue to make new friends, the fault will be altogether mine. r. l s. saranac, oct., 1887. chapter i. the jenkins of stowting fleeming's grandfather mrs. buckner's fortune fleeming's father; goes to sea; at st. helena; meets king tom; service in the west indies; end of his career the campbelljacksons fleeming's mother fleeming's uncle john. in the reign of henry viii., a family of the name of jenkin, claiming to come from york, and bearing the arms of jenkin ap philip of st. melans, are found reputably settled in the county of kent. persons of strong genealogical pinion pass from william jenkin, mayor of folkestone in 1555, to his contemporary 'john jenkin, of the citie of york, receiver general of the county,' and thence, by way of jenkin ap philip, to the proper summit of any cambrian pedigree a prince; 'guaith voeth, lord of cardigan,' the name and style of him. it may suffice, however, for the present, that these kentish jenkins must have undoubtedly derived from wales, and being a stock of some efficiency, they struck root and grew to wealth and consequence in their new home. of their consequence we have proof enough in the fact that not only was william jenkin (as already mentioned) mayor of folkestone in 1555, but no less than twenty-three times in the succeeding century and a half, a jenkin (william, thomas, henry, or robert) sat in the same place of humble honour. of their wealth we know that in the reign of charles i., thomas jenkin of eythorne was more than once in the market buying land, and notably, in 1633, acquired the manor of stowting court. this was an estate of some 320 acres, six miles from hythe, in the bailiwick and hundred of stowting, and the lathe of shipway, held of the crown in capite by the service of six men and a constable to defend the passage of the sea at sandgate. it had a chequered history before it fell into the hands of thomas of eythorne, having been sold and given from one to another to the archbishop, to heringods, to the burghershes, to pavelys, trivets, cliffords, wenlocks, beauchamps, nevilles, kempes, and clarkes: a piece of kentish ground condemned to see new faces and to be no man's home. but from 1633 onward it became the anchor of the jenkin family in kent; and though passed on from brother to brother, held in shares between uncle and nephew, burthened by debts and jointures, and at least once sold and bought in again, it remains to this day in the hands of the direct line. it is not my design, nor have i the necessary knowledge, to give a history of this obscure family. but this is an age when genealogy has taken a new lease of life, and become for the first time a human science; so that we no longer study it in quest of the guaith voeths, but to trace out some of the secrets of descent and destiny; and as we study, we think less of sir bernard burke and more of mr. galton. not only do our character and talents lie upon the anvil and receive their temper during generations; but the very plot of our life's story unfolds itself on a scale of centuries, and the biography of the man is only an episode in the epic of the family. from this point of view i ask the reader's leave to begin this notice of a remarkable man who was my friend, with the accession of his great-grandfather, john jenkin. this john jenkin, a grandson of damaris kingsley, of the family of 'westward ho!' was born in 1727, and married elizabeth, daughter of thomas frewen, of church house, northiam. the jenkins had now been long enough intermarrying with their kentish neighbours to be kentish folk themselves in all but name; and with the frewens in particular their connection is singularly involved. john and his wife were each descended in the third degree from another thomas frewen, vicar of northiam, and brother to accepted frewen, archbishop of york. john's mother had married a frewen for a second husband. and the last complication was to be added by the bishop of chichester's brother, charles buckner, vice-admiral of the white, who was twice married, first to a paternal cousin of squire john, and second to anne, only sister of the squire's wife, and already the widow of another frewen. the reader must bear mrs. buckner in mind; it was by means of that lady that fleeming jenkin began life as a poor man. meanwhile, the relationship of any frewen to any jenkin at the end of these evolutions presents a problem almost insoluble; and we need not wonder if mrs. john, thus exercised in her immediate circle, was in her old age 'a great genealogist of all sussex families, and much consulted.' the names frewen and jenkin may almost seem to have been interchangeable at will; and yet fate proceeds with such particularity that it was perhaps on the point of name that the family was ruined. the john jenkins had a family of one daughter and five extravagant and unpractical sons. the eldest, stephen, entered the church and held the living of salehurst, where he offered, we may hope, an extreme example of the clergy of the age. he was a handsome figure of a man; jovial and jocular; fond of his garden, which produced under his care the finest fruits of the neighbourhood; and like all the family, very choice in horses. he drove tandem; like jehu, furiously. his saddle horse, captain (for the names of horses are piously preserved in the family chronicle which i follow), was trained to break into a gallop as soon as the vicar's foot was thrown across its back; nor would the rein be drawn in the nine miles between northiam and the vicarage door. debt was the man's proper element; he used to skulk from arrest in the chancel of his church; and the speed of captain may have come sometimes handy. at an early age this unconventional parson married his cook, and by her he had two daughters and one son. one of the daughters died unmarried; the other imitated her father, and married 'imprudently.' the son, still more gallantly continuing the tradition, entered the army, loaded himself with debt, was forced to sell out, took refuge in the marines, and was lost on the dogger bank in the war-ship minotaur. if he did not marry below him, like his father, his sister, and a certain great-uncle william, it was perhaps because he never married at all. the second brother, thomas, who was employed in the general postoffice, followed in all material points the example of stephen, married 'not very creditably,' and spent all the money he could lay his hands on. he died without issue; as did the fourth brother, john, who was of weak intellect and feeble health, and the fifth brother, william, whose brief career as one of mrs. buckner's satellites will fall to be considered later on. so soon, then, as the minotaur had struck upon the dogger bank, stowting and the line of the jenkin family fell on the shoulders of the third brother, charles. facility and self-indulgence are the family marks; facility (to judge by these imprudent marriages) being at once their quality and their defect; but in the case of charles, a man of exceptional beauty and sweetness both of face and disposition, the family fault had quite grown to be a virtue, and we find him in consequence the drudge and milk-cow of his relatives. born in 1766, charles served at sea in his youth, and smelt both salt water and powder. the jenkins had inclined hitherto, as far as i can make out, to the land service. stephen's son had been a soldier; william (fourth of stowting) had been an officer of the unhappy braddock's in america, where, by the way, he owned and afterwards sold an estate on the james river, called, after the parental seat; of which i should like well to hear if it still bears the name. it was probably by the influence of captain buckner, already connected with the family by his first marriage, that charles jenkin turned his mind in the direction of the navy; and it was in buckner's own ship, the prothee, 64, that the lad made his only campaign. it was in the days of rodney's war, when the prothee, we read, captured two large privateers to windward of barbadoes, and was 'materially and distinguishedly engaged' in both the actions with de grasse. while at sea charles kept a journal, and made strange archaic pilot-book sketches, part plan, part elevation, some of which survive for the amusement of posterity. he did a good deal of surveying, so that here we may perhaps lay our finger on the beginning of fleeming's education as an engineer. what is still more strange, among the relics of the handsome midshipman and his stay in the gun-room of the prothee, i find a code of signals graphically represented, for all the world as it would have been done by his grandson. on the declaration of peace, charles, because he had suffered from scurvy, received his mother's orders to retire; and he was not the man to refuse a request, far less to disobey a command. thereupon he turned farmer, a trade he was to practice on a large scale; and we find him married to a miss schirr, a woman of some fortune, the daughter of a london merchant. stephen, the not very reverend, was still alive, galloping about the country or skulking in his chancel. it does not appear whether he let or sold the paternal manor to charles; one or other, it must have been; and the sailorfarmer settled at stowting, with his wife, his mother, his unmarried sister, and his sick brother john. out of the six people of whom his nearest family consisted, three were in his own house, and two others (the horse-leeches, stephen and thomas) he appears to have continued to assist with more amiability than wisdom. he hunted, belonged to the yeomanry, owned famous horses, maggie and lucy, the latter coveted by royalty itself. 'lord rokeby, his neighbour, called him kinsman,' writes my artless chronicler, 'and altogether life was very cheery.' at stowting his three sons, john, charles, and thomas frewen, and his younger daughter, anna, were all born to him; and the reader should here be told that it is through the report of this second charles (born 1801) that he has been looking on at these confused passages of family history. in the year 1805 the ruin of the jenkins was begun. it was the work of a fallacious lady already mentioned, aunt anne frewen, a sister of mrs. john. twice married, first to her cousin charles frewen, clerk to the court of chancery, brunswick herald, and usher of the black rod, and secondly to admiral buckner, she was denied issue in both beds, and being very rich she died worth about 60,000l., mostly in land she was in perpetual quest of an heir. the mirage of this fortune hung before successive members of the jenkin family until her death in 1825, when it dissolved and left the latest alnaschar face to face with bankruptcy. the grandniece, stephen's daughter, the one who had not 'married imprudently,' appears to have been the first; for she was taken abroad by the golden aunt, and died in her care at ghent in 1792. next she adopted william, the youngest of the five nephews; took him abroad with her it seems as if that were in the formula; was shut up with him in paris by the revolution; brought him back to windsor, and got him a place in the king's body-guard, where he attracted the notice of george iii. by his proficiency in german. in 1797, being on guard at st. james's palace, william took a cold which carried him off; and aunt anne was once more left heirless. lastly, in 1805, perhaps moved by the admiral, who had a kindness for his old midshipman, perhaps pleased by the good looks and the good nature of the man himself, mrs. buckner turned her eyes upon charles jenkin. he was not only to be the heir, however, he was to be the chief hand in a somewhat wild scheme of family farming. mrs. jenkin, the mother, contributed 164 acres of land; mrs. buckner, 570, some at northiam, some farther off; charles let onehalf of stowting to a tenant, and threw the other and various scattered parcels into the common enterprise; so that the whole farm amounted to near upon a thousand acres, and was scattered over thirty miles of country. the ex-seaman of thirty-nine, on whose wisdom and ubiquity the scheme depended, was to live in the meanwhile without care or fear. he was to check himself in nothing; his two extravagances, valuable horses and worthless brothers, were to be indulged in comfort; and whether the year quite paid itself or not, whether successive years left accumulated savings or only a growing deficit, the fortune of the golden aunt should in the end repair all. on this understanding charles jenkin transported his family to church house, northiam: charles the second, then a child of three, among the number. through the eyes of the boy we have glimpses of the life that followed: of admiral and mrs. buckner driving up from windsor in a coach and six, two post-horses and their own four; of the house full of visitors, the great roasts at the fire, the tables in the servants' hall laid for thirty or forty for a month together; of the daily press of neighbours, many of whom, frewens, lords, bishops, batchellors, and dynes, were also kinsfolk; and the parties 'under the great spreading chestnuts of the old fore court,' where the young people danced and made merry to the music of the village band. or perhaps, in the depth of winter, the father would bid young charles saddle his pony; they would ride the thirty miles from northiam to stowting, with the snow to the pony's saddle girths, and be received by the tenants like princes. this life of delights, with the continual visible comings and goings of the golden aunt, was well qualified to relax the fibre of the lads. john, the heir, a yeoman and a fox-hunter, 'loud and notorious with his whip and spurs,' settled down into a kind of tony lumpkin, waiting for the shoes of his father and his aunt. thomas frewen, the youngest, is briefly dismissed as 'a handsome beau'; but he had the merit or the good fortune to become a doctor of medicine, so that when the crash came he was not empty-handed for the war of life. charles, at the day-school of northiam, grew so well acquainted with the rod, that his floggings became matter of pleasantry and reached the ears of admiral buckner. hereupon that tall, rough-voiced, formidable uncle entered with the lad into a covenant: every time that charles was thrashed he was to pay the admiral a penny; everyday that he escaped, the process was to be reversed. 'i recollect,' writes charles, 'going crying to my mother to be taken to the admiral to pay my debt.' it would seem by these terms the speculation was a losing one; yet it is probable it paid indirectly by bringing the boy under remark. the admiral was no enemy to dunces; he loved courage, and charles, while yet little more than a baby, would ride the great horse into the pond. presently it was decided that here was the stuff of a fine sailor; and at an early period the name of charles jenkin was entered on a ship's books. from northiam he was sent to another school at boonshill, near rye, where the master took 'infinite delight' in strapping him. 'it keeps me warm and makes you grow,' he used to say. and the stripes were not altogether wasted, for the dunce, though still very 'raw,' made progress with his studies. it was known, moreover, that he was going to sea, always a ground of pre-eminence with schoolboys; and in his case the glory was not altogether future, it wore a present form when he came driving to rye behind four horses in the same carriage with an admiral. 'i was not a little proud, you may believe,' says he. in 1814, when he was thirteen years of age, he was carried by his father to chichester to the bishop's palace. the bishop had heard from his brother the admiral that charles was likely to do well, and had an order from lord melville for the lad's admission to the royal naval college at portsmouth. both the bishop and the admiral patted him on the head and said, 'charles will restore the old family'; by which i gather with some surprise that, even in these days of open house at northiam and golden hope of my aunt's fortune, the family was supposed to stand in need of restoration. but the past is apt to look brighter than nature, above all to those enamoured of their genealogy; and the ravages of stephen and thomas must have always given matter of alarm. what with the flattery of bishops and admirals, the fine company in which he found himself at portsmouth, his visits home, with their gaiety and greatness of life, his visits to mrs. buckner (soon a widow) at windsor, where he had a pony kept for him, and visited at lord melville's and lord harcourt's and the leveson-gowers, he began to have 'bumptious notions,' and his head was 'somewhat turned with fine people'; as to some extent it remained throughout his innocent and honourable life. in this frame of mind the boy was appointed to the conqueror, captain davie, humorously known as gentle johnnie. the captain had earned this name by his style of discipline, which would have figured well in the pages of marryat: 'put the prisoner's head in a bag and give him another dozen!' survives as a specimen of his commands; and the men were often punished twice or thrice in a week. on board the ship of this disciplinarian, charles and his father were carried in a billy-boat from sheerness in december, 1816: charles with an outfit suitable to his pretensions, a twenty-guinea sextant and 120 dollars in silver, which were ordered into the care of the gunner. 'the old clerks and mates,' he writes, 'used to laugh and jeer me for joining the ship in a billyboat, and when they found i was from kent, vowed i was an old kentish smuggler. this to my pride, you will believe, was not a little offensive.' the conqueror carried the flag of vice-admiral plampin, commanding at the cape and st. helena; and at that all-important islet, in july, 1817, she relieved the flagship of sir pulteney malcolm. thus it befel that charles jenkin, coming too late for the epic of the french wars, played a small part in the dreary and disgraceful afterpiece of st. helena. life on the guard-ship was onerous and irksome. the anchor was never lifted, sail never made, the great guns were silent; none was allowed on shore except on duty; all day the movements of the imperial captive were signalled to and fro; all night the boats rowed guard around the accessible portions of the coast. this prolonged stagnation and petty watchfulness in what napoleon himself called that 'unchristian' climate, told cruelly on the health of the ship's company. in eighteen months, according to o'meara, the conqueror had lost one hundred and ten men and invalided home one hundred and seven, being more than a third of her complement. it does not seem that our young midshipman so much as once set eyes on bonaparte; and yet in other ways jenkin was more fortunate than some of his comrades. he drew in water-colour; not so badly as his father, yet ill enough; and this art was so rare aboard the conqueror that even his humble proficiency marked him out and procured him some alleviations. admiral plampin had succeeded napoleon at the briars; and here he had young jenkin staying with him to make sketches of the historic house. one of these is before me as i write, and gives a strange notion of the arts in our old english navy. yet it was again as an artist that the lad was taken for a run to rio, and apparently for a second outing in a ten-gun brig. these, and a cruise of six weeks to windward of the island undertaken by the conqueror herself in quest of health, were the only breaks in three years of murderous inaction; and at the end of that period jenkin was invalided home, having 'lost his health entirely.' as he left the deck of the guard-ship the historic part of his career came to an end. for forty-two years he continued to serve his country obscurely on the seas, sometimes thanked for inconspicuous and honourable services, but denied any opportunity of serious distinction. he was first two years in the larne, captain tait, hunting pirates and keeping a watch on the turkish and greek squadrons in the archipelago. captain tait was a favourite with sir thomas maitland, high commissioner of the ionian islands king tom as he was called who frequently took passage in the larne. king tom knew every inch of the mediterranean, and was a terror to the officers of the watch. he would come on deck at night; and with his broad scotch accent, 'well, sir,' he would say, 'what depth of water have ye? well now, sound; and ye'll just find so or so many fathoms,' as the case might be; and the obnoxious passenger was generally right. on one occasion, as the ship was going into corfu, sir thomas came up the hatchway and cast his eyes towards the gallows. 'bangham' charles jenkin heard him say to his aide-de-camp, lord bangham 'where the devil is that other chap? i left four fellows hanging there; now i can only see three. mind there is another there to-morrow.' and sure enough there was another greek dangling the next day. 'captain hamilton, of the cambrian, kept the greeks in order afloat,' writes my author, 'and king tom ashore.' from 1823 onward, the chief scene of charles jenkin's activities was in the west indies, where he was engaged off and on till 1844, now as a subaltern, now in a vessel of his own, hunting out pirates, 'then very notorious' in the leeward islands, cruising after slavers, or carrying dollars and provisions for the government. while yet a midshipman, he accompanied mr. cockburn to caraccas and had a sight of bolivar. in the brigantine griffon, which he commanded in his last years in the west indies, he carried aid to guadeloupe after the earthquake, and twice earned the thanks of government: once for an expedition to nicaragua to extort, under threat of a blockade, proper apologies and a sum of money due to certain british merchants; and once during an insurrection in san domingo, for the rescue of certain others from a perilous imprisonment and the recovery of a 'chest of money' of which they had been robbed. once, on the other hand, he earned his share of public censure. this was in 1837, when he commanded the romney lying in the inner harbour of havannah. the romney was in no proper sense a man-of-war; she was a slave-hulk, the bonded warehouse of the mixed slave commission; where negroes, captured out of slavers under spanish colours, were detained provisionally, till the commission should decide upon their case and either set them free or bind them to apprenticeship. to this ship, already an eye-sore to the authorities, a cuban slave made his escape. the position was invidious; on one side were the tradition of the british flag and the state of public sentiment at home; on the other, the certainty that if the slave were kept, the romney would be ordered at once out of the harbour, and the object of the mixed commission compromised. without consultation with any other officer, captain jenkin (then lieutenant) returned the man to shore and took the captain-general's receipt. lord palmerston approved his course; but the zealots of the anti-slave trade movement (never to be named without respect) were much dissatisfied; and thirtynine years later, the matter was again canvassed in parliament, and lord palmerston and captain jenkin defended by admiral erskine in a letter to the times (march 13, 1876). in 1845, while still lieutenant, charles jenkin acted as admiral pigot's flag captain in the cove of cork, where there were some thirty pennants; and about the same time, closed his career by an act of personal bravery. he had proceeded with his boats to the help of a merchant vessel, whose cargo of combustibles had taken fire and was smouldering under hatches; his sailors were in the hold, where the fumes were already heavy, and jenkin was on deck directing operations, when he found his orders were no longer answered from below: he jumped down without hesitation and slung up several insensible men with his own hand. for this act, he received a letter from the lords of the admiralty expressing a sense of his gallantry; and pretty soon after was promoted commander, superseded, and could never again obtain employment. in 1828 or 1829, charles jenkin was in the same watch with another midshipman, robert colin campbell jackson, who introduced him to his family in jamaica. the father, the honourable robert jackson, custos rotulorum of kingston, came of a yorkshire family, said to be originally scotch; and on the mother's side, counted kinship with some of the forbeses. the mother was susan campbell, one of the campbells of auchenbreck. her father colin, a merchant in greenock, is said to have been the heir to both the estate and the baronetcy; he claimed neither, which casts a doubt upon the fact, but he had pride enough himself, and taught enough pride to his family, for any station or descent in christendom. he had four daughters. one married an edinburgh writer, as i have it on a first account a minister, according to another a man at least of reasonable station, but not good enough for the campbells of auchenbreck; and the erring one was instantly discarded. another married an actor of the name of adcock, whom (as i receive the tale) she had seen acting in a barn; but the phrase should perhaps be regarded rather as a measure of the family annoyance, than a mirror of the facts. the marriage was not in itself unhappy; adcock was a gentleman by birth and made a good husband; the family reasonably prospered, and one of the daughters married no less a man than clarkson stanfield. but by the father, and the two remaining miss campbells, people of fierce passions and a truly highland pride, the derogation was bitterly resented. for long the sisters lived estranged then, mrs. jackson and mrs. adcock were reconciled for a moment, only to quarrel the more fiercely; the name of mrs. adcock was proscribed, nor did it again pass her sister's lips, until the morning when she announced: 'mary adcock is dead; i saw her in her shroud last night.' second sight was hereditary in the house; and sure enough, as i have it reported, on that very night mrs. adcock had passed away. thus, of the four daughters, two had, according to the idiotic notions of their friends, disgraced themselves in marriage; the others supported the honour of the family with a better grace, and married west indian magnates of whom, i believe, the world has never heard and would not care to hear: so strange a thing is this hereditary pride. of mr. jackson, beyond the fact that he was fleeming's grandfather, i know naught. his wife, as i have said, was a woman of fierce passions; she would tie her house slaves to the bed and lash them with her own hand; and her conduct to her wild and down-going sons, was a mixture of almost insane self-sacrifice and wholly insane violence of temper. she had three sons and one daughter. two of the sons went utterly to ruin, and reduced their mother to poverty. the third went to india, a slim, delicate lad, and passed so wholly from the knowledge of his relatives that he was thought to be long dead. years later, when his sister was living in genoa, a redbearded man of great strength and stature, tanned by years in india, and his hands covered with barbaric gems, entered the room unannounced, as she was playing the piano, lifted her from her seat, and kissed her. it was her brother, suddenly returned out of a past that was never very clearly understood, with the rank of general, many strange gems, many cloudy stories of adventure, and next his heart, the daguerreotype of an indian prince with whom he had mixed blood. the last of this wild family, the daughter, henrietta camilla, became the wife of the midshipman charles, and the mother of the subject of this notice, fleeming jenkin. she was a woman of parts and courage. not beautiful, she had a far higher gift, the art of seeming so; played the part of a belle in society, while far lovelier women were left unattended; and up to old age had much of both the exigency and the charm that mark that character. she drew naturally, for she had no training, with unusual skill; and it was from her, and not from the two naval artists, that fleeming inherited his eye and hand. she played on the harp and sang with something beyond the talent of an amateur. at the age of seventeen, she heard pasta in paris; flew up in a fire of youthful enthusiasm; and the next morning, all alone and without introduction, found her way into the presence of the prima donna and begged for lessons. pasta made her sing, kissed her when she had done, and though she refused to be her mistress, placed her in the hands of a friend. nor was this all, for when pasta returned to paris, she sent for the girl (once at least) to test her progress. but mrs. jenkin's talents were not so remarkable as her fortitude and strength of will; and it was in an art for which she had no natural taste (the art of literature) that she appeared before the public. her novels, though they attained and merited a certain popularity both in france and england, are a measure only of her courage. they were a task, not a beloved task; they were written for money in days of poverty, and they served their end. in the least thing as well as in the greatest, in every province of life as well as in her novels, she displayed the same capacity of taking infinite pains, which descended to her son. when she was about forty (as near as her age was known) she lost her voice; set herself at once to learn the piano, working eight hours a day; and attained to such proficiency that her collaboration in chamber music was courted by professionals. and more than twenty years later, the old lady might have been seen dauntlessly beginning the study of hebrew. this is the more ethereal part of courage; nor was she wanting in the more material. once when a neighbouring groom, a married man, had seduced her maid, mrs. jenkin mounted her horse, rode over to the stable entrance and horsewhipped the man with her own hand. how a match came about between this talented and spirited girl and the young midshipman, is not very i easy to conceive. charles jenkin was one of the finest creatures breathing; loyalty, devotion, simple natural piety, boyish cheerfulness, tender and manly sentiment in the old sailor fashion, were in him inherent and inextinguishable either by age, suffering, or injustice. he looked, as he was, every inch a gentleman; he must have been everywhere notable, even among handsome men, both for his face and his gallant bearing; not so much that of a sailor, you would have said, as like one of those gentle and graceful soldiers that, to this day, are the most pleasant of englishmen to see. but though he was in these ways noble, the dunce scholar of northiam was to the end no genius. upon all points that a man must understand to be a gentleman, to be upright, gallant, affectionate and dead to self, captain jenkin was more knowing than one among a thousand; outside of that, his mind was very largely blank. he had indeed a simplicity that came near to vacancy; and in the first forty years of his married life, this want grew more accentuated. in both families imprudent marriages had been the rule; but neither jenkin nor campbell had ever entered into a more unequal union. it was the captain's good looks, we may suppose, that gained for him this elevation; and in some ways and for many years of his life, he had to pay the penalty. his wife, impatient of his incapacity and surrounded by brilliant friends, used him with a certain contempt. she was the managing partner; the life was hers, not his; after his retirement they lived much abroad, where the poor captain, who could never learn any language but his own, sat in the corner mumchance; and even his son, carried away by his bright mother, did not recognise for long the treasures of simple chivalry that lay buried in the heart of his father. yet it would be an error to regard this marriage as unfortunate. it not only lasted long enough to justify itself in a beautiful and touching epilogue, but it gave to the world the scientific work and what (while time was) were of far greater value, the delightful qualities of fleeming jenkin. the kentish-welsh family, facile, extravagant, generous to a fault and far from brilliant, had given the father, an extreme example of its humble virtues. on the other side, the wild, cruel, proud, and somewhat blackguard stock of the scotch campbelljacksons, had put forth, in the person of the mother all its force and courage. the marriage fell in evil days. in 1823, the bubble of the golden aunt's inheritance had burst. she died holding the hand of the nephew she had so wantonly deceived; at the last she drew him down and seemed to bless him, surely with some remorseful feeling; for when the will was opened, there was not found so much as the mention of his name. he was deeply in debt; in debt even to the estate of his deceiver, so that he had to sell a piece of land to clear himself. 'my dear boy,' he said to charles, 'there will be nothing left for you. i am a ruined man.' and here follows for me the strangest part of this story. from the death of the treacherous aunt, charles jenkin, senior, had still some nine years to live; it was perhaps too late for him to turn to saving, and perhaps his affairs were past restoration. but his family at least had all this while to prepare; they were still young men, and knew what they had to look for at their father's death; and yet when that happened in september, 1831, the heir was still apathetically waiting. poor john, the days of his whips and spurs, and yeomanry dinners, were quite over; and with that incredible softness of the jenkin nature, he settled down for the rest of a long life, into something not far removed above a peasant. the mill farm at stowting had been saved out of the wreck; and here he built himself a house on the mexican model, and made the two ends meet with rustic thrift, gathering dung with his own hands upon the road and not at all abashed at his employment. in dress, voice, and manner, he fell into mere country plainness; lived without the least care for appearances, the least regret for the past or discontentment with the present; and when he came to die, died with stoic cheerfulness, announcing that he had had a comfortable time and was yet well pleased to go. one would think there was little active virtue to be inherited from such a race; and yet in this same voluntary peasant, the special gift of fleeming jenkin was already half developed. the old man to the end was perpetually inventing; his strange, ill-spelled, unpunctuated correspondence is full (when he does not drop into cookery receipts) of pumps, road engines, steam-diggers, steam-ploughs, and steam-threshing machines; and i have it on fleeming's word that what he did was full of ingenuity only, as if by some cross destiny, useless. these disappointments he not only took with imperturbable good humour, but rejoiced with a particular relish over his nephew's success in the same field. 'i glory in the professor,' he wrote to his brother; and to fleeming himself, with a touch of simple drollery, 'i was much pleased with your lecture, but why did you hit me so hard with conisure's' (connoisseur's, quasi amateur's) 'engineering? oh, what presumption! either of you or myself!' a quaint, pathetic figure, this of uncle john, with his dung cart and his inventions; and the romantic fancy of his mexican house; and his craze about the lost tribes which seemed to the worthy man the key of all perplexities; and his quiet conscience, looking back on a life not altogether vain, for he was a good son to his father while his father lived, and when evil days approached, he had proved himself a cheerful stoic. it followed from john's inertia, that the duty of winding up the estate fell into the hands of charles. he managed it with no more skill than might be expected of a sailor ashore, saved a bare livelihood for john and nothing for the rest. eight months later, he married miss jackson; and with her money, bought in some twothirds of stowting. in the beginning of the little family history which i have been following to so great an extent, the captain mentions, with a delightful pride: 'a court baron and court leet are regularly held by the lady of the manor, mrs. henrietta camilla jenkin'; and indeed the pleasure of so describing his wife, was the most solid benefit of the investment; for the purchase was heavily encumbered and paid them nothing till some years before their death. in the meanwhile, the jackson family also, what with wild sons, an indulgent mother and the impending emancipation of the slaves, was moving nearer and nearer to beggary; and thus of two doomed and declining houses, the subject of this memoir was born, heir to an estate and to no money, yet with inherited qualities that were to make him known and loved. chapter ii. 1833-1851. birth and childhood edinburgh frankfort-on-the-main paris the revolution of 1848 the insurrection flight to italy sympathy with italy the insurrection in genoa a student in genoa the lad and his mother. henry charles fleeming jenkin (fleeming, pronounced flemming, to his friends and family) was born in a government building on the coast of kent, near dungeness, where his father was serving at the time in the coastguard, on march 25, 1833, and named after admiral fleeming, one of his father's protectors in the navy. his childhood was vagrant like his life. once he was left in the care of his grandmother jackson, while mrs. jenkin sailed in her husband's ship and stayed a year at the havannah. the tragic woman was besides from time to time a member of the family she was in distress of mind and reduced in fortune by the misconduct of her sons; her destitution and solitude made it a recurring duty to receive her, her violence continually enforced fresh separations. in her passion of a disappointed mother, she was a fit object of pity; but her grandson, who heard her load his own mother with cruel insults and reproaches, conceived for her an indignant and impatient hatred, for which he blamed himself in later life. it is strange from this point of view to see his childish letters to mrs. jackson; and to think that a man, distinguished above all by stubborn truthfulness, should have been brought up to such dissimulation. but this is of course unavoidable in life; it did no harm to jenkin; and whether he got harm or benefit from a so early acquaintance with violent and hateful scenes, is more than i can guess. the experience, at least, was formative; and in judging his character it should not be forgotten. but mrs. jackson was not the only stranger in their gates; the captain's sister, aunt anna jenkin, lived with them until her death; she had all the jenkin beauty of countenance, though she was unhappily deformed in body and of frail health; and she even excelled her gentle and ineffectual family in all amiable qualities. so that each of the two races from which fleeming sprang, had an outpost by his very cradle; the one he instinctively loved, the other hated; and the life-long war in his members had begun thus early by a victory for what was best. we can trace the family from one country place to another in the south of scotland; where the child learned his taste for sport by riding home the pony from the moors. before he was nine he could write such a passage as this about a hallowe'en observance: 'i pulled a middling-sized cabbage-runt with a pretty sum of gold about it. no witches would run after me when i was sowing my hempseed this year; my nuts blazed away together very comfortably to the end of their lives, and when mamma put hers in which were meant for herself and papa they blazed away in the like manner.' before he was ten he could write, with a really irritating precocity, that he had been 'making some pictures from a book called "les francais peints par euxmemes." . . . it is full of pictures of all classes, with a description of each in french. the pictures are a little caricatured, but not much.' doubtless this was only an echo from his mother, but it shows the atmosphere in which he breathed. it must have been a good change for this art critic to be the playmate of mary macdonald, their gardener's daughter at barjarg, and to sup with her family on potatoes and milk; and fleeming himself attached some value to this early and friendly experience of another class. his education, in the formal sense, began at jedburgh. thence he went to the edinburgh academy, where he was the classmate of tait and clerk maxwell, bore away many prizes, and was once unjustly flogged by rector williams. he used to insist that all his bad schoolfellows had died early, a belief amusingly characteristic of the man's consistent optimism. in 1846 the mother and son proceeded to frankfort-on-the-main, where they were soon joined by the father, now reduced to inaction and to play something like third fiddle in his narrow household. the emancipation of the slaves had deprived them of their last resource beyond the half-pay of a captain; and life abroad was not only desirable for the sake of fleeming's education, it was almost enforced by reasons of economy. but it was, no doubt, somewhat hard upon the captain. certainly that perennial boy found a companion in his son; they were both active and eager, both willing to be amused, both young, if not in years, then in character. they went out together on excursions and sketched old castles, sitting side by side; they had an angry rivalry in walking, doubtless equally sincere upon both sides; and indeed we may say that fleeming was exceptionally favoured, and that no boy had ever a companion more innocent, engaging, gay, and airy. but although in this case it would be easy to exaggerate its import, yet, in the jenkin family also, the tragedy of the generations was proceeding, and the child was growing out of his father's knowledge. his artistic aptitude was of a different order. already he had his quick sight of many sides of life; he already overflowed with distinctions and generalisations, contrasting the dramatic art and national character of england, germany, italy, and france. if he were dull, he would write stories and poems. 'i have written,' he says at thirteen, 'a very long story in heroic measure, 300 lines, and another scotch story and innumerable bits of poetry'; and at the same age he had not only a keen feeling for scenery, but could do something with his pen to call it up. i feel i do always less than justice to the delightful memory of captain jenkin; but with a lad of this character, cutting the teeth of his intelligence, he was sure to fall into the background. the family removed in 1847 to paris, where fleeming was put to school under one deluc. there he learned french, and (if the captain is right) first began to show a taste for mathematics. but a far more important teacher than deluc was at hand; the year 1848, so momentous for europe, was momentous also for fleeming's character. the family politics were liberal; mrs. jenkin, generous before all things, was sure to be upon the side of exiles; and in the house of a paris friend of hers, mrs. turner already known to fame as shelley's cornelia de boinville fleeming saw and heard such men as manin, gioberti, and the ruffinis. he was thus prepared to sympathise with revolution; and when the hour came, and he found himself in the midst of stirring and influential events, the lad's whole character was moved. he corresponded at that time with a young edinburgh friend, one frank scott; and i am here going to draw somewhat largely on this boyish correspondence. it gives us at once a picture of the revolution and a portrait of jenkin at fifteen; not so different (his friends will think) from the jenkin of the end boyish, simple, opinionated, delighting in action, delighting before all things in any generous sentiment. 'february 23, 1848. 'when at 7 o'clock to-day i went out, i met a large band going round the streets, calling on the inhabitants to illuminate their houses, and bearing torches. this was all very good fun, and everybody was delighted; but as they stopped rather long and were rather turbulent in the place de la madeleine, near where we live' [in the rue caumartin] 'a squadron of dragoons came up, formed, and charged at a hand-gallop. this was a very pretty sight; the crowd was not too thick, so they easily got away; and the dragoons only gave blows with the back of the sword, which hurt but did not wound. i was as close to them as i am now to the other side of the table; it was rather impressive, however. at the second charge they rode on the pavement and knocked the torches out of the fellows' hands; rather a shame, too wouldn't be stood in england. . . . [at] 'ten minutes to ten . . . i went a long way along the boulevards, passing by the office of foreign affairs, where guizot lives, and where to-night there were about a thousand troops protecting him from the fury of the populace. after this was passed, the number of the people thickened, till about half a mile further on, i met a troop of vagabonds, the wildest vagabonds in the world paris vagabonds, well armed, having probably broken into gunsmiths' shops and taken the guns and swords. they were about a hundred. these were followed by about a thousand (i am rather diminishing than exaggerating numbers all through), indifferently armed with rusty sabres, sticks, etc. an uncountable troop of gentlemen, workmen, shopkeepers' wives (paris women dare anything), ladies' maids, common women in fact, a crowd of all classes, though by far the greater number were of the better dressed class followed. indeed, it was a splendid sight: the mob in front chanting the "marseillaise," the national war hymn, grave and powerful, sweetened by the night air though night in these splendid streets was turned into day, every window was filled with lamps, dim torches were tossing in the crowd . . . for guizot has late this night given in his resignation, and this was an improvised illumination. 'i and my father had turned with the crowd, and were close behind the second troop of vagabonds. joy was on every face. i remarked to papa that "i would not have missed the scene for anything, i might never see such a splendid one," when plong went one shot every face went pale r-r-r-r-r went the whole detachment, [and] the whole crowd of gentlemen and ladies turned and cut. such a scene! ladies, gentlemen, and vagabonds went sprawling in the mud, not shot but tripped up; and those that went down could not rise, they were trampled over. . . . i ran a short time straight on and did not fall, then turned down a side street, ran fifty yards and felt tolerably safe; looked for papa, did not see him; so walked on quickly, giving the news as i went.' [it appears, from another letter, the boy was the first to carry word of the firing to the rue st. honore; and that his news wherever he brought it was received with hurrahs. it was an odd entrance upon life for a little english lad, thus to play the part of rumour in such a crisis of the history of france.] 'but now a new fear came over me. i had little doubt but my papa was safe, but my fear was that he should arrive at home before me and tell the story; in that case i knew my mamma would go half mad with fright, so on i went as quick as possible. i heard no more discharges. when i got half way home, i found my way blocked up by troops. that way or the boulevards i must pass. in the boulevards they were fighting, and i was afraid all other passages might be blocked up . . . and i should have to sleep in a hotel in that case, and then my mamma however, after a long detour, i found a passage and ran home, and in our street joined papa. '. . . i'll tell you to-morrow the other facts gathered from newspapers and papa. . . . tonight i have given you what i have seen with my own eyes an hour ago, and began trembling with excitement and fear. if i have been too long on this one subject, it is because it is yet before my eyes. 'monday, 24. 'it was that fire raised the people. there was fighting all through the night in the rue notre dame de lorette, on the boulevards where they had been shot at, and at the porte st. denis. at ten o'clock, they resigned the house of the minister of foreign affairs (where the disastrous volley was fired) to the people, who immediately took possession of it. i went to school, but [was] hardly there when the row in that quarter commenced. barricades began to be fixed. everyone was very grave now; the externes went away, but no one came to fetch me, so i had to stay. no lessons could go on. a troop of armed men took possession of the barricades, so it was supposed i should have to sleep there. the revolters came and asked for arms, but deluc (head-master) is a national guard, and he said he had only his own and he wanted them; but he said he would not fire on them. then they asked for wine, which he gave them. they took good care not to get drunk, knowing they would not be able to fight. they were very polite and behaved extremely well. 'about 12 o'clock a servant came for a boy who lived near me, [and] deluc thought it best to send me with him. we heard a good deal of firing near, but did not come across any of the parties. as we approached the railway, the barricades were no longer formed of palings, planks, or stones; but they had got all the omnibuses as they passed, sent the horses and passengers about their business, and turned them over. a double row of overturned coaches made a capital barricade, with a few paving stones. 'when i got home i found to my astonishment that in our fighting quarter it was much quieter. mamma had just been out seeing the troops in the place de la concorde, when suddenly the municipal guard, now fairly exasperated, prevented the national guard from proceeding, and fired at them; the national guard had come with their muskets not loaded, but at length returned the fire. mamma saw the national guard fire. the municipal guard were round the corner. she was delighted for she saw no person killed, though many of the municipals were. . . . . 'i immediately went out with my papa (mamma had just come back with him) and went to the place de la concorde. there was an enormous quantity of troops in the place. suddenly the gates of the gardens of the tuileries opened: we rushed forward, out gallopped an enormous number of cuirassiers, in the middle of which were a couple of low carriages, said first to contain the count de paris and the duchess of orleans, but afterwards they said it was the king and queen; and then i heard he had abdicated. i returned and gave the news. 'went out again up the boulevards. the house of the minister of foreign affairs was filled with people and "hotel du peuple" written on it; the boulevards were barricaded with fine old trees that were cut down and stretched all across the road. we went through a great many little streets, all strongly barricaded, and sentinels of the people at the principal of them. the streets were very unquiet, filled with armed men and women, for the troops had followed the ex-king to neuilly and left paris in the power of the people. we met the captain of the third legion of the national guard (who had principally protected the people), badly wounded by a municipal guard, stretched on a litter. he was in possession of his senses. he was surrounded by a troop of men crying "our brave captain we have him yet he's not dead! vive la reforme!" this cry was responded to by all, and every one saluted him as he passed. i do not know if he was mortally wounded. that third legion has behaved splendidly. 'i then returned, and shortly afterwards went out again to the garden of the tuileries. they were given up to the people and the palace was being sacked. the people were firing blank cartridges to testify their joy, and they had a cannon on the top of the palace. it was a sight to see a palace sacked and armed vagabonds firing out of the windows, and throwing shirts, papers, and dresses of all kinds out of the windows. they are not rogues, these french; they are not stealing, burning, or doing much harm. in the tuileries they have dressed up some of the statues, broken some, and stolen nothing but queer dresses. i say, frank, you must not hate the french; hate the germans if you like. the french laugh at us a little, and call out goddam in the streets; but to-day, in civil war, when they might have put a bullet through our heads, i never was insulted once. 'at present we have a provisional government, consisting of odion [sic] barrot, lamartine, marast, and some others; among them a common workman, but very intelligent. this is a triumph of liberty rather! 'now then, frank, what do you think of it? i in a revolution and out all day. just think, what fun! so it was at first, till i was fired at yesterday; but to-day i was not frightened, but it turned me sick at heart, i don't know why. there has been no great bloodshed, [though] i certainly have seen men's blood several times. but there's something shocking to see a whole armed populace, though not furious, for not one single shop has been broken open, except the gunsmiths' shops, and most of the arms will probably be taken back again. for the french have no cupidity in their nature; they don't like to steal it is not in their nature. i shall send this letter in a day or two, when i am sure the post will go again. i know i have been a long time writing, but i hope you will find the matter of this letter interesting, as coming from a person resident on the spot; though probably you don't take much interest in the french, but i can think, write, and speak on no other subject. 'feb. 25. 'there is no more fighting, the people have conquered; but the barricades are still kept up, and the people are in arms, more than ever fearing some new act of treachery on the part of the ex-king. the fight where i was was the principal cause of the revolution. i was in little danger from the shot, for there was an immense crowd in front of me, though quite within gunshot. [by another letter, a hundred yards from the troops.] i wished i had stopped there. 'the paris streets are filled with the most extraordinary crowds of men, women and children, ladies and gentlemen. every person joyful. the bands of armed men are perfectly polite. mamma and aunt to-day walked through armed crowds alone, that were firing blank cartridges in all directions. every person made way with the greatest politeness, and one common man with a blouse, coming by accident against her immediately stopped to beg her pardon in the politest manner. there are few drunken men. the tuileries is still being run over by the people; they only broke two things, a bust of louis philippe and one of marshal bugeaud, who fired on the people. . . . . 'i have been out all day again to-day, and precious tired i am. the republican party seem the strongest, and are going about with red ribbons in their button-holes. . . . . 'the title of "mister" is abandoned; they say nothing but "citizen," and the people are shaking hands amazingly. they have got to the top of the public monuments, and, mingling with bronze or stone statues, five or six make a sort of tableau vivant, the top man holding up the red flag of the republic; and right well they do it, and very picturesque they look. i think i shall put this letter in the post to-morrow as we got a letter to-night. (on envelope.) 'm. lamartine has now by his eloquence conquered the whole armed crowd of citizens threatening to kill him if he did not immediately proclaim the republic and red flag. he said he could not yield to the citizens of paris alone, that the whole country must be consulted; that he chose the tricolour, for it had followed and accompanied the triumphs of france all over the world, and that the red flag had only been dipped in the blood of the citizens. for sixty hours he has been quieting the people: he is at the head of everything. don't be prejudiced, frank, by what you see in the papers. the french have acted nobly, splendidly; there has been no brutality, plundering, or stealing. . . . i did not like the french before; but in this respect they are the finest people in the world. i am so glad to have been here.' and there one could wish to stop with this apotheosis of liberty and order read with the generous enthusiasm of a boy; but as the reader knows, it was but the first act of the piece. the letters, vivid as they are, written as they were by a hand trembling with fear and excitement, yet do injustice, in their boyishness of tone, to the profound effect produced. at the sound of these songs and shot of cannon, the boy's mind awoke. he dated his own appreciation of the art of acting from the day when he saw and heard rachel recite the 'marseillaise' at the francais, the tricolour in her arms. what is still more strange, he had been up to then invincibly indifferent to music, insomuch that he could not distinguish 'god save the queen' from 'bonnie dundee'; and now, to the chanting of the mob, he amazed his family by learning and singing 'mourir pour la patrie.' but the letters, though they prepare the mind for no such revolution in the boy's tastes and feelings, are yet full of entertaining traits. let the reader note fleeming's eagerness to influence his friend frank, an incipient tory (no less) as further history displayed; his unconscious indifference to his father and devotion to his mother, betrayed in so many significant expressions and omissions; the sense of dignity of this diminutive 'person resident on the spot,' who was so happy as to escape insult; and the strange picture of the household father, mother, son, and even poor aunt anna all day in the streets in the thick of this rough business, and the boy packed off alone to school in a distant quarter on the very morrow of the massacre. they had all the gift of enjoying life's texture as it comes; they were all born optimists. the name of liberty was honoured in that family, its spirit also, but within stringent limits; and some of the foreign friends of mrs. jenkin were, as i have said, men distinguished on the liberal side. like wordsworth, they beheld france standing on the top of golden hours and human nature seeming born again. at once, by temper and belief, they were formed to find their element in such a decent and whiggish convulsion, spectacular in its course, moderate in its purpose. for them, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven. and i cannot but smile when i think that (again like wordsworth) they should have so specially disliked the consequence. it came upon them by surprise. liberal friends of the precise right shade of colour had assured them, in mrs. turner's drawingroom, that all was for the best; and they rose on january 23 without fear. about the middle of the day they heard the sound of musketry, and the next morning they were wakened by the cannonade. the french who had behaved so 'splendidly,' pausing, at the voice of lamartine, just where judicious liberals could have desired the french, who had 'no cupidity in their nature,' were now about to play a variation on the theme rebellion. the jenkins took refuge in the house of mrs. turner, the house of the false prophets, 'anna going with mrs. turner, that she might be prevented speaking english, fleeming, miss h. and i (it is the mother who writes) walking together. as we reached the rue de clichy, the report of the cannon sounded close to our ears and made our hearts sick, i assure you. the fighting was at the barrier rochechouart, a few streets off. all saturday and sunday we were a prey to great alarm, there came so many reports that the insurgents were getting the upper hand. one could tell the state of affairs from the extreme quiet or the sudden hum in the street. when the news was bad, all the houses closed and the people disappeared; when better, the doors half opened and you heard the sound of men again. from the upper windows we could see each discharge from the bastille i mean the smoke rising and also the flames and smoke from the boulevard la chapelle. we were four ladies, and only fleeming by way of a man, and difficulty enough we had to keep him from joining the national guards his pride and spirit were both fired. you cannot picture to yourself the multitudes of soldiers, guards, and armed men of all sorts we watched not close to the window, however, for such havoc had been made among them by the firing from the windows, that as the battalions marched by, they cried, "fermez vos fenetres!" and it was very painful to watch their looks of anxiety and suspicion as they marched by.' 'the revolution,' writes fleeming to frank scott, 'was quite delightful: getting popped at and run at by horses, and giving sous for the wounded into little boxes guarded by the raggedest, picturesquest, delightfullest, sentinels; but the insurrection! ugh, i shudder to think at [sic] it.' he found it 'not a bit of fun sitting boxed up in the house four days almost. . . i was the only gentleman to four ladies, and didn't they keep me in order! i did not dare to show my face at a window, for fear of catching a stray ball or being forced to enter the national guard; [for] they would have it i was a man full-grown, french, and every way fit to fight. and my mamma was as bad as any of them; she that told me i was a coward last time if i stayed in the house a quarter of an hour! but i drew, examined the pistols, of which i found lots with caps, powder, and ball, while sometimes murderous intentions of killing a dozen insurgents and dying violently overpowered by numbers. . . . .' we may drop this sentence here: under the conduct of its boyish writer, it was to reach no legitimate end. four days of such a discipline had cured the family of paris; the same year fleeming was to write, in answer apparently to a question of frank scott's, 'i could find no national game in france but revolutions'; and the witticism was justified in their experience. on the first possible day, they applied for passports, and were advised to take the road to geneva. it appears it was scarce safe to leave paris for england. charles reade, with keen dramatic gusto, had just smuggled himself out of that city in the bottom of a cab. english gold had been found on the insurgents, the name of england was in evil odour; and it was thus for strategic reasons, so to speak that fleeming found himself on the way to that italy where he was to complete his education, and for which he cherished to the end a special kindness. it was in genoa they settled; partly for the sake of the captain, who might there find naval comrades; partly because of the ruffinis, who had been friends of mrs. jenkin in their time of exile and were now considerable men at home; partly, in fine, with hopes that fleeming might attend the university; in preparation for which he was put at once to school. it was the year of novara; mazzini was in rome; the dry bones of italy were moving; and for people of alert and liberal sympathies the time was inspiriting. what with exiles turned ministers of state, universities thrown open to protestants, fleeming himself the first protestant student in genoa, and thus, as his mother writes, 'a living instance of the progress of liberal ideas' it was little wonder if the enthusiastic young woman and the clever boy were heart and soul upon the side of italy. it should not be forgotten that they were both on their first visit to that country; the mother still child enough 'to be delighted when she saw real monks'; and both mother and son thrilling with the first sight of snowy alps, the blue mediterranean, and the crowded port and the palaces of genoa. nor was their zeal without knowledge. ruffini, deputy for genoa and soon to be head of the university, was at their side; and by means of him the family appear to have had access to much italian society. to the end, fleeming professed his admiration of the piedmontese and his unalterable confidence in the future of italy under their conduct; for victor emanuel, cavour, the first la marmora and garibaldi, he had varying degrees of sympathy and praise: perhaps highest for the king, whose good sense and temper filled him with respect perhaps least for garibaldi, whom he loved but yet mistrusted. but this is to look forward: these were the days not of victor emanuel but of charles albert; and it was on charles albert that mother and son had now fixed their eyes as on the sword-bearer of italy. on fleeming's sixteenth birthday, they were, the mother writes, 'in great anxiety for news from the army. you can have no idea what it is to live in a country where such a struggle is going on. the interest is one that absorbs all others. we eat, drink, and sleep to the noise of drums and musketry. you would enjoy and almost admire fleeming's enthusiasm and earnestness and, courage, i may say for we are among the small minority of english who side with the italians. the other day, at dinner at the consul's, boy as he is, and in spite of my admonitions, fleeming defended the italian cause, and so well that he "tripped up the heels of his adversary" simply from being well-informed on the subject and honest. he is as true as steel, and for no one will he bend right or left. . . . . do not fancy him a bobadil,' she adds, 'he is only a very true, candid boy. i am so glad he remains in all respects but information a great child.' if this letter is correctly dated, the cause was already lost and the king had already abdicated when these lines were written. no sooner did the news reach genoa, than there began 'tumultuous movements'; and the jenkins' received hints it would be wise to leave the city. but they had friends and interests; even the captain had english officers to keep him company, for lord hardwicke's ship, the vengeance, lay in port; and supposing the danger to be real, i cannot but suspect the whole family of a divided purpose, prudence being possibly weaker than curiosity. stay, at least, they did, and thus rounded their experience of the revolutionary year. on sunday, april 1, fleeming and the captain went for a ramble beyond the walls, leaving aunt anna and mrs. jenkin to walk on the bastions with some friends. on the way back, this party turned aside to rest in the church of the madonna delle grazie. 'we had remarked,' writes mrs. jenkin, 'the entire absence of sentinels on the ramparts, and how the cannons were left in solitary state; and i had just remarked "how quiet everything is!" when suddenly we heard the drums begin to beat and distant shouts. accustomed as we are to revolutions, we never thought of being frightened.' for all that, they resumed their return home. on the way they saw men running and vociferating, but nothing to indicate a general disturbance, until, near the duke's palace, they came upon and passed a shouting mob dragging along with it three cannon. it had scarcely passed before they heard 'a rushing sound'; one of the gentlemen thrust back the party of ladies under a shed, and the mob passed again. a fine-looking young man was in their hands; and mrs. jenkin saw him with his mouth open as if he sought to speak, saw him tossed from one to another like a ball, and then saw him no more. 'he was dead a few instants after, but the crowd hid that terror from us. my knees shook under me and my sight left me.' with this street tragedy, the curtain rose upon their second revolution. the attack on spirito santo, and the capitulation and departure of the troops speedily followed. genoa was in the hands of the republicans, and now came a time when the english residents were in a position to pay some return for hospitality received. nor were they backward. our consul (the same who had the benefit of correction from fleeming) carried the intendente on board the vengeance, escorting him through the streets, getting along with him on board a shore boat, and when the insurgents levelled their muskets, standing up and naming himself, 'console inglese.' a friend of the jenkins', captain glynne, had a more painful, if a less dramatic part. one colonel nosozzo had been killed (i read) while trying to prevent his own artillery from firing on the mob; but in that hell's cauldron of a distracted city, there were no distinctions made, and the colonel's widow was hunted for her life. in her grief and peril, the glynnes received and hid her; captain glynne sought and found her husband's body among the slain, saved it for two days, brought the widow a lock of the dead man's hair; but at last, the mob still strictly searching, seems to have abandoned the body, and conveyed his guest on board the vengeance. the jenkins also had their refugees, the family of an employe threatened by a decree. 'you should have seen me making a union jack to nail over our door,' writes mrs. jenkin. 'i never worked so fast in my life. monday and tuesday,' she continues, 'were tolerably quiet, our hearts beating fast in the hope of la marmora's approach, the streets barricaded, and none but foreigners and women allowed to leave the city.' on wednesday, la marmora came indeed, but in the ugly form of a bombardment; and that evening the jenkins sat without lights about their drawing-room window, 'watching the huge red flashes of the cannon' from the brigato and la specula forts, and hearkening, not without some awful pleasure, to the thunder of the cannonade. lord hardwicke intervened between the rebels and la marmora; and there followed a troubled armistice, filled with the voice of panic. now the vengeance was known to be cleared for action; now it was rumoured that the galley slaves were to be let loose upon the town, and now that the troops would enter it by storm. crowds, trusting in the union jack over the jenkins' door, came to beg them to receive their linen and other valuables; nor could their instances be refused; and in the midst of all this bustle and alarm, piles of goods must be examined and long inventories made. at last the captain decided things had gone too far. he himself apparently remained to watch over the linen; but at five o'clock on the sunday morning, aunt anna, fleeming, and his mother were rowed in a pour of rain on board an english merchantman, to suffer 'nine mortal hours of agonising suspense.' with the end of that time, peace was restored. on tuesday morning officers with white flags appeared on the bastions; then, regiment by regiment, the troops marched in, two hundred men sleeping on the ground floor of the jenkins' house, thirty thousand in all entering the city, but without disturbance, old la marmora being a commander of a roman sternness. with the return of quiet, and the reopening of the universities, we behold a new character, signor flaminio: the professors, it appears, made no attempt upon the jenkin; and thus readily italianised the fleeming. he came well recommended; for their friend ruffini was then, or soon after, raised to be the head of the university; and the professors were very kind and attentive, possibly to ruffini's protege, perhaps also to the first protestant student. it was no joke for signor flaminio at first; certificates had to be got from paris and from rector williams; the classics must be furbished up at home that he might follow latin lectures; examinations bristled in the path, the entrance examination with latin and english essay, and oral trials (much softened for the foreigner) in horace, tacitus, and cicero, and the first university examination only three months later, in italian eloquence, no less, and other wider subjects. on one point the first protestant student was moved to thank his stars: that there was no greek required for the degree. little did he think, as he set down his gratitude, how much, in later life and among cribs and dictionaries, he was to lament this circumstance; nor how much of that later life he was to spend acquiring, with infinite toil, a shadow of what he might then have got with ease and fully. but if his genoese education was in this particular imperfect, he was fortunate in the branches that more immediately touched on his career. the physical laboratory was the best mounted in italy. bancalari, the professor of natural philosophy, was famous in his day; by what seems even an odd coincidence, he went deeply into electromagnetism; and it was principally in that subject that signor flaminio, questioned in latin and answering in italian, passed his master of arts degree with first-class honours. that he had secured the notice of his teachers, one circumstance sufficiently proves. a philosophical society was started under the presidency of mamiani, 'one of the examiners and one of the leaders of the moderate party'; and out of five promising students brought forward by the professors to attend the sittings and present essays, signor flaminio was one. i cannot find that he ever read an essay; and indeed i think his hands were otherwise too full. he found his fellow-students 'not such a bad set of chaps,' and preferred the piedmontese before the genoese; but i suspect he mixed not very freely with either. not only were his days filled with university work, but his spare hours were fully dedicated to the arts under the eye of a beloved task-mistress. he worked hard and well in the art school, where he obtained a silver medal 'for a couple of legs the size of life drawn from one of raphael's cartoons.' his holidays were spent in sketching; his evenings, when they were free, at the theatre. here at the opera he discovered besides a taste for a new art, the art of music; and it was, he wrote, 'as if he had found out a heaven on earth.' 'i am so anxious that whatever he professes to know, he should really perfectly possess,' his mother wrote, 'that i spare no pains'; neither to him nor to myself, she might have added. and so when he begged to be allowed to learn the piano, she started him with characteristic barbarity on the scales; and heard in consequence 'heart-rending groans' and saw 'anguished claspings of hands' as he lost his way among their arid intricacies. in this picture of the lad at the piano, there is something, for the period, girlish. he was indeed his mother's boy; and it was fortunate his mother was not altogether feminine. she gave her son a womanly delicacy in morals, to a man's taste to his own taste in later life too finely spun, and perhaps more elegant than healthful. she encouraged him besides in drawing-room interests. but in other points her influence was manlike. filled with the spirit of thoroughness, she taught him to make of the least of these accomplishments a virile task; and the teaching lasted him through life. immersed as she was in the day's movements and buzzed about by leading liberals, she handed on to him her creed in politics: an enduring kindness for italy, and a loyalty, like that of many clever women, to the liberal party with but small regard to men or measures. this attitude of mind used often to disappoint me in a man so fond of logic; but i see now how it was learned from the bright eyes of his mother and to the sound of the cannonades of 1848. to some of her defects, besides, she made him heir. kind as was the bond that united her to her son, kind and even pretty, she was scarce a woman to adorn a home; loving as she did to shine; careless as she was of domestic, studious of public graces. she probably rejoiced to see the boy grow up in somewhat of the image of herself, generous, excessive, enthusiastic, external; catching at ideas, brandishing them when caught; fiery for the right, but always fiery; ready at fifteen to correct a consul, ready at fifty to explain to any artist his own art. the defects and advantages of such a training were obvious in fleeming throughout life. his thoroughness was not that of the patient scholar, but of an untrained woman with fits of passionate study; he had learned too much from dogma, given indeed by cherished lips; and precocious as he was in the use of the tools of the mind, he was truly backward in knowledge of life and of himself. such as it was at least, his home and school training was now complete; and you are to conceive the lad as being formed in a household of meagre revenue, among foreign surroundings, and under the influence of an imperious drawing-room queen; from whom he learned a great refinement of morals, a strong sense of duty, much forwardness of bearing, all manner of studious and artistic interests, and many ready-made opinions which he embraced with a son's and a disciple's loyalty. chapter iii. 1851-1858. return to england fleeming at fairbairn's experience in a strike dr. bell and greek architecture the gaskells fleeming at greenwich the austins fleeming and the austins his engagement fleeming and sir w. thomson. in 1851, the year of aunt anna's death, the family left genoa and came to manchester, where fleeming was entered in fairbairn's works as an apprentice. from the palaces and alps, the mole, the blue mediterranean, the humming lanes and the bright theatres of genoa, he fell and he was sharply conscious of the fall to the dim skies and the foul ways of manchester. england he found on his return 'a horrid place,' and there is no doubt the family found it a dear one. the story of the jenkin finances is not easy to follow. the family, i am told, did not practice frugality, only lamented that it should be needful; and mrs. jenkin, who was always complaining of 'those dreadful bills,' was 'always a good deal dressed.' but at this time of the return to england, things must have gone further. a holiday tour of a fortnight, fleeming feared would be beyond what he could afford, and he only projected it 'to have a castle in the air.' and there were actual pinches. fresh from a warmer sun, he was obliged to go without a greatcoat, and learned on railway journeys to supply the place of one with wrappings of old newspaper. from half-past eight till six, he must 'file and chip vigorously in a moleskin suit and infernally dirty.' the work was not new to him, for he had already passed some time in a genoese shop; and to fleeming no work was without interest. whatever a man can do or know, he longed to know and do also. 'i never learned anything,' he wrote, 'not even standing on my head, but i found a use for it.' in the spare hours of his first telegraph voyage, to give an instance of his greed of knowledge, he meant 'to learn the whole art of navigation, every rope in the ship and how to handle her on any occasion'; and once when he was shown a young lady's holiday collection of seaweeds, he must cry out, 'it showed me my eyes had been idle.' nor was his the case of the mere literary smatterer, content if he but learn the names of things. in him, to do and to do well, was even a dearer ambition than to know. anything done well, any craft, despatch, or finish, delighted and inspired him. i remember him with a twopenny japanese box of three drawers, so exactly fitted that, when one was driven home, the others started from their places; the whole spirit of japan, he told me, was pictured in that box; that plain piece of carpentry was as much inspired by the spirit of perfection as the happiest drawing or the finest bronze; and he who could not enjoy it in the one was not fully able to enjoy it in the others. thus, too, he found in leonardo's engineering and anatomical drawings a perpetual feast; and of the former he spoke even with emotion. nothing indeed annoyed fleeming more than the attempt to separate the fine arts from the arts of handicraft; any definition or theory that failed to bring these two together, according to him, had missed the point; and the essence of the pleasure received lay in seeing things well done. other qualities must be added; he was the last to deny that; but this, of perfect craft, was at the bottom of all. and on the other hand, a nail ill-driven, a joint ill-fitted, a tracing clumsily done, anything to which a man had set his hand and not set it aptly, moved him to shame and anger. with such a character, he would feel but little drudgery at fairbairn's. there would be something daily to be done, slovenliness to be avoided, and a higher mark of skill to be attained; he would chip and file, as he had practiced scales, impatient of his own imperfection, but resolute to learn. and there was another spring of delight. for he was now moving daily among those strange creations of man's brain, to some so abhorrent, to him of an interest so inexhaustible: in which iron, water, and fire are made to serve as slaves, now with a tread more powerful than an elephant's, and now with a touch more precise and dainty than a pianist's. the taste for machinery was one that i could never share with him, and he had a certain bitter pity for my weakness. once when i had proved, for the hundredth time, the depth of this defect, he looked at me askance. 'and the best of the joke,' said he, 'is that he thinks himself quite a poet.' for to him the struggle of the engineer against brute forces and with inert allies, was nobly poetic. habit never dulled in him the sense of the greatness of the aims and obstacles of his profession. habit only sharpened his inventor's gusto in contrivance, in triumphant artifice, in the odyssean subtleties, by which wires are taught to speak, and iron hands to weave, and the slender ship to brave and to outstrip the tempest. to the ignorant the great results alone are admirable; to the knowing, and to fleeming in particular, rather the infinite device and sleight of hand that made them possible. a notion was current at the time that, in such a shop as fairbairn's, a pupil would never be popular unless he drank with the workmen and imitated them in speech and manner. fleeming, who would do none of these things, they accepted as a friend and companion; and this was the subject of remark in manchester, where some memory of it lingers till to-day. he thought it one of the advantages of his profession to be brought into a close relation with the working classes; and for the skilled artisan he had a great esteem, liking his company, his virtues, and his taste in some of the arts. but he knew the classes too well to regard them, like a platform speaker, in a lump. he drew, on the other hand, broad distinctions; and it was his profound sense of the difference between one working man and another that led him to devote so much time, in later days, to the furtherance of technical education. in 1852 he had occasion to see both men and masters at their worst, in the excitement of a strike; and very foolishly (after their custom) both would seem to have behaved. beginning with a fair show of justice on either side, the masters stultified their cause by obstinate impolicy, and the men disgraced their order by acts of outrage. 'on wednesday last,' writes fleeming, 'about three thousand banded round fairbairn's door at 6 o'clock: men, women, and children, factory boys and girls, the lowest of the low in a very low place. orders came that no one was to leave the works; but the men inside (knobsticks, as they are called) were precious hungry and thought they would venture. two of my companions and myself went out with the very first, and had the full benefit of every possible groan and bad language.' but the police cleared a lane through the crowd, the pupils were suffered to escape unhurt, and only the knobsticks followed home and kicked with clogs; so that fleeming enjoyed, as we may say, for nothing, that fine thrill of expectant valour with which he had sallied forth into the mob. 'i never before felt myself so decidedly somebody, instead of nobody,' he wrote. outside as inside the works, he was 'pretty merry and well to do,' zealous in study, welcome to many friends, unwearied in lovingkindness to his mother. for some time he spent three nights a week with dr. bell, 'working away at certain geometrical methods of getting the greek architectural proportions': a business after fleeming's heart, for he was never so pleased as when he could marry his two devotions, art and science. this was besides, in all likelihood, the beginning of that love and intimate appreciation of things greek, from the least to the greatest, from the agamemmon (perhaps his favourite tragedy) down to the details of grecian tailoring, which he used to express in his familiar phrase: 'the greeks were the boys.' dr. bell the son of george joseph, the nephew of sir charles, and though he made less use of it than some, a sharer in the distinguished talents of his race had hit upon the singular fact that certain geometrical intersections gave the proportions of the doric order. fleeming, under dr. bell's direction, applied the same method to the other orders, and again found the proportions accurately given. numbers of diagrams were prepared; but the discovery was never given to the world, perhaps because of the dissensions that arose between the authors. for dr. bell believed that 'these intersections were in some way connected with, or symbolical of, the antagonistic forces at work'; but his pupil and helper, with characteristic trenchancy, brushed aside this mysticism, and interpreted the discovery as 'a geometrical method of dividing the spaces or (as might be said) of setting out the work, purely empirical and in no way connected with any laws of either force or beauty.' 'many a hard and pleasant fight we had over it,' wrote jenkin, in later years; 'and impertinent as it may seem, the pupil is still unconvinced by the arguments of the master.' i do not know about the antagonistic forces in the doric order; in fleeming they were plain enough; and the bobadil of these affairs with dr. bell was still, like the corrector of italian consuls, 'a great child in everything but information.' at the house of colonel cleather, he might be seen with a family of children; and with these, there was no word of the greek orders; with these fleeming was only an uproarious boy and an entertaining draughtsman; so that his coming was the signal for the young people to troop into the playroom, where sometimes the roof rang with romping, and sometimes they gathered quietly about him as he amused them with his pencil. in another manchester family, whose name will be familiar to my readers that of the gaskells, fleeming was a frequent visitor. to mrs. gaskell, he would often bring his new ideas, a process that many of his later friends will understand and, in their own cases, remember. with the girls, he had 'constant fierce wrangles,' forcing them to reason out their thoughts and to explain their prepossessions; and i hear from miss gaskell that they used to wonder how he could throw all the ardour of his character into the smallest matters, and to admire his unselfish devotion to his parents. of one of these wrangles, i have found a record most characteristic of the man. fleeming had been laying down his doctrine that the end justifies the means, and that it is quite right 'to boast of your six men-servants to a burglar or to steal a knife to prevent a murder'; and the miss gaskells, with girlish loyalty to what is current, had rejected the heresy with indignation. from such passages-at-arms, many retire mortified and ruffled; but fleeming had no sooner left the house than he fell into delighted admiration of the spirit of his adversaries. from that it was but a step to ask himself 'what truth was sticking in their heads'; for even the falsest form of words (in fleeming's life-long opinion) reposed upon some truth, just as he could 'not even allow that people admire ugly things, they admire what is pretty in the ugly thing.' and before he sat down to write his letter, he thought he had hit upon the explanation. 'i fancy the true idea,' he wrote, 'is that you must never do yourself or anyone else a moral injury make any man a thief or a liar for any end'; quite a different thing, as he would have loved to point out, from never stealing or lying. but this perfervid disputant was not always out of key with his audience. one whom he met in the same house announced that she would never again be happy. 'what does that signify?' cried fleeming. 'we are not here to be happy, but to be good.' and the words (as his hearer writes to me) became to her a sort of motto during life. from fairbairn's and manchester, fleeming passed to a railway survey in switzerland, and thence again to mr. penn's at greenwich, where he was engaged as draughtsman. there in 1856, we find him in 'a terribly busy state, finishing up engines for innumerable gunboats and steam frigates for the ensuing campaign.' from half-past eight in the morning till nine or ten at night, he worked in a crowded office among uncongenial comrades, 'saluted by chaff, generally low personal and not witty,' pelted with oranges and apples, regaled with dirty stories, and seeking to suit himself with his surroundings or (as he writes it) trying to be as little like himself as possible. his lodgings were hard by, 'across a dirty green and through some half-built streets of two-storied houses'; he had carlyle and the poets, engineering and mathematics, to study by himself in such spare time as remained to him; and there were several ladies, young and not so young, with whom he liked to correspond. but not all of these could compensate for the absence of that mother, who had made herself so large a figure in his life, for sorry surroundings, unsuitable society, and work that leaned to the mechanical. 'sunday,' says he, 'i generally visit some friends in town and seem to swim in clearer water, but the dirty green seems all the dirtier when i get back. luckily i am fond of my profession, or i could not stand this life.' it is a question in my mind, if he could have long continued to stand it without loss. 'we are not here to be happy, but to be good,' quoth the young philosopher; but no man had a keener appetite for happiness than fleeming jenkin. there is a time of life besides when apart from circumstances, few men are agreeable to their neighbours and still fewer to themselves; and it was at this stage that fleeming had arrived, later than common and even worse provided. the letter from which i have quoted is the last of his correspondence with frank scott, and his last confidential letter to one of his own sex. 'if you consider it rightly,' he wrote long after, 'you will find the want of correspondence no such strange want in men's friendships. there is, believe me, something noble in the metal which does not rust though not burnished by daily use.' it is well said; but the last letter to frank scott is scarcely of a noble metal. it is plain the writer has outgrown his old self, yet not made acquaintance with the new. this letter from a busy youth of three and twenty, breathes of seventeen: the sickening alternations of conceit and shame, the expense of hope in vacuo, the lack of friends, the longing after love; the whole world of egoism under which youth stands groaning, a voluntary atlas. with fleeming this disease was never seemingly severe. the very day before this (to me) distasteful letter, he had written to miss bell of manchester in a sweeter strain; i do not quote the one, i quote the other; fair things are the best. 'i keep my own little lodgings,' he writes, 'but come up every night to see mamma' (who was then on a visit to london) 'if not kept too late at the works; and have singing lessons once more, and sing "donne l'amore e scaltro pargo-letto"; and think and talk about you; and listen to mamma's projects de stowting. everything turns to gold at her touch, she's a fairy and no mistake. we go on talking till i have a picture in my head, and can hardly believe at the end that the original is stowting. even you don't know half how good mamma is; in other things too, which i must not mention. she teaches me how it is not necessary to be very rich to do much good. i begin to understand that mamma would find useful occupation and create beauty at the bottom of a volcano. she has little weaknesses, but is a real generous-hearted woman, which i suppose is the finest thing in the world.' though neither mother nor son could be called beautiful, they make a pretty picture; the ugly, generous, ardent woman weaving rainbow illusions; the ugly, clear-sighted, loving son sitting at her side in one of his rare hours of pleasure, halfbeguiled, half-amused, wholly admiring, as he listens. but as he goes home, and the fancy pictures fade, and stowting is once more burthened with debt, and the noisy companions and the long hours of drudgery once more approach, no wonder if the dirty green seems all the dirtier or if atlas must resume his load. but in healthy natures, this time of moral teething passes quickly of itself, and is easily alleviated by fresh interests; and already, in the letter to frank scott, there are two words of hope: his friends in london, his love for his profession. the last might have saved him; for he was ere long to pass into a new sphere, where all his faculties were to be tried and exercised, and his life to be filled with interest and effort. but it was not left to engineering: another and more influential aim was to be set before him. he must, in any case, have fallen in love; in any case, his love would have ruled his life; and the question of choice was, for the descendant of two such families, a thing of paramount importance. innocent of the world, fiery, generous, devoted as he was, the son of the wild jacksons and the facile jenkins might have been led far astray. by one of those partialities that fill men at once with gratitude and wonder, his choosing was directed well. or are we to say that by a man's choice in marriage, as by a crucial merit, he deserves his fortune? one thing at least reason may discern: that a man but partly chooses, he also partly forms, his help-mate; and he must in part deserve her, or the treasure is but won for a moment to be lost. fleeming chanced if you will (and indeed all these opportunities are as 'random as blind man's buff') upon a wife who was worthy of him; but he had the wit to know it, the courage to wait and labour for his prize, and the tenderness and chivalry that are required to keep such prizes precious. upon this point he has himself written well, as usual with fervent optimism, but as usual (in his own phrase) with a truth sticking in his head. 'love,' he wrote, 'is not an intuition of the person most suitable to us, most required by us; of the person with whom life flowers and bears fruit. if this were so, the chances of our meeting that person would be small indeed; our intuition would often fail; the blindness of love would then be fatal as it is proverbial. no, love works differently, and in its blindness lies its strength. man and woman, each strongly desires to be loved, each opens to the other that heart of ideal aspirations which they have often hid till then; each, thus knowing the ideal of the other, tries to fulfil that ideal, each partially succeeds. the greater the love, the greater the success; the nobler the idea of each, the more durable, the more beautiful the effect. meanwhile the blindness of each to the other's defects enables the transformation to proceed [unobserved,] so that when the veil is withdrawn (if it ever is, and this i do not know) neither knows that any change has occurred in the person whom they loved. do not fear, therefore. i do not tell you that your friend will not change, but as i am sure that her choice cannot be that of a man with a base ideal, so i am sure the change will be a safe and a good one. do not fear that anything you love will vanish, he must love it too.' among other introductions in london, fleeming had presented a letter from mrs. gaskell to the alfred austins. this was a family certain to interest a thoughtful young man. alfred, the youngest and least known of the austins, had been a beautiful golden-haired child, petted and kept out of the way of both sport and study by a partial mother. bred an attorney, he had (like both his brothers) changed his way of life, and was called to the bar when past thirty. a commission of enquiry into the state of the poor in dorsetshire gave him an opportunity of proving his true talents; and he was appointed a poor law inspector, first at worcester, next at manchester, where he had to deal with the potato famine and the irish immigration of the 'forties, and finally in london, where he again distinguished himself during an epidemic of cholera. he was then advanced to the permanent secretaryship of her majesty's office of works and public buildings; a position which he filled with perfect competence, but with an extreme of modesty; and on his retirement, in 1868, he was made a companion of the bath. while apprentice to a norwich attorney, alfred austin was a frequent visitor in the house of mr. barron, a rallying place in those days of intellectual society. edward barron, the son of a rich saddler or leather merchant in the borough, was a man typical of the time. when he was a child, he had once been patted on the head in his father's shop by no less a man than samuel johnson, as the doctor went round the borough canvassing for mr. thrale; and the child was true to this early consecration. 'a life of lettered ease spent in provincial retirement,' it is thus that the biographer of that remarkable man, william taylor, announces his subject; and the phrase is equally descriptive of the life of edward barron. the pair were close friends, 'w. t. and a pipe render everything agreeable,' writes barron in his diary in 1823; and in 1833, after barron had moved to london and taylor had tasted the first public failure of his powers, the latter wrote: 'to my ever dearest mr. barron say, if you please, that i miss him more than i regret him that i acquiesce in his retirement from norwich, because i could ill brook his observation of my increasing debility of mind.' this chosen companion of william taylor must himself have been no ordinary man; and he was the friend besides of borrow, whom i find him helping in his latin. but he had no desire for popular distinction, lived privately, married a daughter of dr. enfield of enfield's speaker, and devoted his time to the education of his family, in a deliberate and scholarly fashion, and with certain traits of stoicism, that would surprise a modern. from these children we must single out his youngest daughter, eliza, who learned under his care to be a sound latin, an elegant grecian, and to suppress emotion without outward sign after the manner of the godwin school. this was the more notable, as the girl really derived from the enfields; whose high-flown romantic temper, i wish i could find space to illustrate. she was but seven years old, when alfred austin remarked and fell in love with her; and the union thus early prepared was singularly full. where the husband and wife differed, and they did so on momentous subjects, they differed with perfect temper and content; and in the conduct of life, and in depth and durability of love, they were at one. each full of high spirits, each practised something of the same repression: no sharp word was uttered in their house. the same point of honour ruled them, a guest was sacred and stood within the pale from criticism. it was a house, besides, of unusual intellectual tension. mrs. austin remembered, in the early days of the marriage, the three brothers, john, charles, and alfred, marching to and fro, each with his hands behind his back, and 'reasoning high' till morning; and how, like dr. johnson, they would cheer their speculations with as many as fifteen cups of tea. and though, before the date of fleeming's visit, the brothers were separated, charles long ago retired from the world at brandeston, and john already near his end in the 'rambling old house' at weybridge, alfred austin and his wife were still a centre of much intellectual society, and still, as indeed they remained until the last, youthfully alert in mind. there was but one child of the marriage, anne, and she was herself something new for the eyes of the young visitor; brought up, as she had been, like her mother before her, to the standard of a man's acquirements. only one art had she been denied, she must not learn the violin the thought was too monstrous even for the austins; and indeed it would seem as if that tide of reform which we may date from the days of mary wollstonecraft had in some degree even receded; for though miss austin was suffered to learn greek, the accomplishment was kept secret like a piece of guilt. but whether this stealth was caused by a backward movement in public thought since the time of edward barron, or by the change from enlightened norwich to barbarian london, i have no means of judging. when fleeming presented his letter, he fell in love at first sight with mrs. austin and the life, and atmosphere of the house. there was in the society of the austins, outward, stoical conformers to the world, something gravely suggestive of essential eccentricity, something unpretentiously breathing of intellectual effort, that could not fail to hit the fancy of this hot-brained boy. the unbroken enamel of courtesy, the self-restraint, the dignified kindness of these married folk, had besides a particular attraction for their visitor. he could not but compare what he saw, with what he knew of his mother and himself. whatever virtues fleeming possessed, he could never count on being civil; whatever brave, true-hearted qualities he was able to admire in mrs. jenkin, mildness of demeanour was not one of them. and here he found per sons who were the equals of his mother and himself in intellect and width of interest, and the equals of his father in mild urbanity of disposition. show fleeming an active virtue, and he always loved it. he went away from that house struck through with admiration, and vowing to himself that his own married life should be upon that pattern, his wife (whoever she might be) like eliza barron, himself such another husband as alfred austin. what is more strange, he not only brought away, but left behind him, golden opinions. he must have been he was, i am told a trying lad; but there shone out of him such a light of innocent candour, enthusiasm, intelligence, and appreciation, that to persons already some way forward in years, and thus able to enjoy indulgently the perennial comedy of youth, the sight of him was delightful. by a pleasant coincidence, there was one person in the house whom he did not appreciate and who did not appreciate him: anne austin, his future wife. his boyish vanity ruffled her; his appearance, never impressive, was then, by reason of obtrusive boyishness, still less so; she found occasion to put him in the wrong by correcting a false quantity; and when mr. austin, after doing his visitor the almost unheard-of honour of accompanying him to the door, announced 'that was what young men were like in my time' she could only reply, looking on her handsome father, 'i thought they had been better looking.' this first visit to the austins took place in 1855; and it seems it was some time before fleeming began to know his mind; and yet longer ere he ventured to show it. the corrected quantity, to those who knew him well, will seem to have played its part; he was the man always to reflect over a correction and to admire the castigator. and fall in love he did; not hurriedly but step by step, not blindly but with critical discrimination; not in the fashion of romeo, but before he was done, with all romeo's ardour and more than romeo's faith. the high favour to which he presently rose in the esteem of alfred austin and his wife, might well give him ambitious notions; but the poverty of the present and the obscurity of the future were there to give him pause; and when his aspirations began to settle round miss austin, he tasted, perhaps for the only time in his life, the pangs of diffidence. there was indeed opening before him a wide door of hope. he had changed into the service of messrs. liddell & gordon; these gentlemen had begun to dabble in the new field of marine telegraphy; and fleeming was already face to face with his life's work. that impotent sense of his own value, as of a ship aground, which makes one of the agonies of youth, began to fall from him. new problems which he was endowed to solve, vistas of new enquiry which he was fitted to explore, opened before him continually. his gifts had found their avenue and goal. and with this pleasure of effective exercise, there must have sprung up at once the hope of what is called by the world success. but from these low beginnings, it was a far look upward to miss austin: the favour of the loved one seems always more than problematical to any lover; the consent of parents must be always more than doubtful to a young man with a small salary and no capital except capacity and hope. but fleeming was not the lad to lose any good thing for the lack of trial; and at length, in the autumn of 1857, this boyish-sized, boyish-mannered, and superlatively ill-dressed young engineer, entered the house of the austins, with such sinkings as we may fancy, and asked leave to pay his addresses to the daughter. mrs. austin already loved him like a son, she was but too glad to give him her consent; mr. austin reserved the right to inquire into his character; from neither was there a word about his prospects, by neither was his income mentioned. 'are these people,' he wrote, struck with wonder at this dignified disinterestedness, 'are these people the same as other people?' it was not till he was armed with this permission, that miss austin even suspected the nature of his hopes: so strong, in this unmannerly boy, was the principle of true courtesy; so powerful, in this impetuous nature, the springs of selfrepression. and yet a boy he was; a boy in heart and mind; and it was with a boy's chivalry and frankness that he won his wife. his conduct was a model of honour, hardly of tact; to conceal love from the loved one, to court her parents, to be silent and discreet till these are won, and then without preparation to approach the lady these are not arts that i would recommend for imitation. they lead to final refusal. nothing saved fleeming from that fate, but one circumstance that cannot be counted upon the hearty favour of the mother, and one gift that is inimitable and that never failed him throughout life, the gift of a nature essentially noble and outspoken. a happy and high-minded anger flashed through his despair: it won for him his wife. nearly two years passed before it was possible to marry: two years of activity, now in london; now at birkenhead, fitting out ships, inventing new machinery for new purposes, and dipping into electrical experiment; now in the elba on his first telegraph cruise between sardinia and algiers: a busy and delightful period of bounding ardour, incessant toil, growing hope and fresh interests, with behind and through all, the image of his beloved. a few extracts from his correspondence with his betrothed will give the note of these truly joyous years. 'my profession gives me all the excitement and interest i ever hope for, but the sorry jade is obviously jealous of you.' '"poor fleeming," in spite of wet, cold and wind, clambering over moist, tarry slips, wandering among pools of slush in waste places inhabited by wandering locomotives, grows visibly stronger, has dismissed his office cough and cured his toothache.' 'the whole of the paying out and lifting machinery must be designed and ordered in two or three days, and i am half crazy with work. i like it though: it's like a good ball, the excitement carries you through.' 'i was running to and from the ships and warehouse through fierce gusts of rain and wind till near eleven, and you cannot think what a pleasure it was to be blown about and think of you in your pretty dress.' 'i am at the works till ten and sometimes till eleven. but i have a nice office to sit in, with a fire to myself, and bright brass scientific instruments all round me, and books to read, and experiments to make, and enjoy myself amazingly. i find the study of electricity so entertaining that i am apt to neglect my other work.' and for a last taste, 'yesterday i had some charming electrical experiments. what shall i compare them to a new song? a greek play?' it was at this time besides that he made the acquaintance of professor, now sir william, thomson. to describe the part played by these two in each other's lives would lie out of my way. they worked together on the committee on electrical standards; they served together at the laying down or the repair of many deep-sea cables; and sir william was regarded by fleeming, not only with the 'worship' (the word is his own) due to great scientific gifts, but with an ardour of personal friendship not frequently excelled. to their association, fleeming brought the valuable element of a practical understanding; but he never thought or spoke of himself where sir william was in question; and i recall quite in his last days, a singular instance of this modest loyalty to one whom he admired and loved. he drew up a paper, in a quite personal interest, of his own services; yet even here he must step out of his way, he must add, where it had no claim to be added, his opinion that, in their joint work, the contributions of sir william had been always greatly the most valuable. again, i shall not readily forget with what emotion he once told me an incident of their associated travels. on one of the mountain ledges of madeira, fleeming's pony bolted between sir william. and the precipice above; by strange good fortune and thanks to the steadiness of sir william's horse, no harm was done; but for the moment, fleeming saw his friend hurled into the sea, and almost by his own act: it was a memory that haunted him. chapter iv. 1859-1868. fleeming's marriage his married life professional difficulties life at claygate illness of mrs. f. jenkin; and of fleeming appointment to the chair at edinburgh. on saturday, feb. 26, 1859, profiting by a holiday of four days, fleeming was married to miss austin at northiam: a place connected not only with his own family but with that of his bride as well. by tuesday morning, he was at work again, fitting out cableships at birkenhead. of the walk from his lodgings to the works, i find a graphic sketch in one of his letters: 'out over the railway bridge, along a wide road raised to the level of a ground floor above the land, which, not being built upon, harbours puddles, ponds, pigs, and irish hovels; so to the dock warehouses, four huge piles of building with no windows, surrounded by a wall about twelve feet high in through the large gates, round which hang twenty or thirty rusty irish, playing pitch and toss and waiting for employment; on along the railway, which came in at the same gates and which branches down between each vast block past a pilot-engine butting refractory trucks into their places on to the last block, [and] down the branch, sniffing the guano-scented air and detecting the old bones. the hartshorn flavour of the guano becomes very strong, as i near the docks where, across the elba's decks, a huge vessel is discharging her cargo of the brown dust, and where huge vessels have been discharging that same cargo for the last five months.' this was the walk he took his young wife on the morrow of his return. she had been used to the society of lawyers and civil servants, moving in that circle which seems to itself the pivot of the nation and is in truth only a clique like another; and fleeming was to her the nameless assistant of a nameless firm of engineers, doing his inglorious business, as she now saw for herself, among unsavoury surroundings. but when their walk brought them within view of the river, she beheld a sight to her of the most novel beauty: four great, sea-going ships dressed out with flags. 'how lovely!' she cried. 'what is it for?' 'for you,' said fleeming. her surprise was only equalled by her pleasure. but perhaps, for what we may call private fame, there is no life like that of the engineer; who is a great man in out-ofthe-way places, by the dockside or on the desert island or in populous ships, and remains quite unheard of in the coteries of london. and fleeming had already made his mark among the few who had an opportunity of knowing him. his marriage was the one decisive incident of his career; from that moment until the day of his death, he had one thought to which all the rest were tributary, the thought of his wife. no one could know him even slightly, and not remark the absorbing greatness of that sentiment; nor can any picture of the man be drawn that does not in proportion dwell upon it. this is a delicate task; but if we are to leave behind us (as we wish) some presentment of the friend we have lost, it is a task that must be undertaken. for all his play of mind and fancy, for all his indulgence and, as time went on, he grew indulgent fleeming had views of duty that were even stern. he was too shrewd a student of his fellowmen to remain long content with rigid formulae of conduct. ironbound, impersonal ethics, the procrustean bed of rules, he soon saw at their true value as the deification of averages. 'as to miss (i declare i forget her name) being bad,' i find him writing, 'people only mean that she has broken the decalogue which is not at all the same thing. people who have kept in the high-road of life really have less opportunity for taking a comprehensive view of it than those who have leaped over the hedges and strayed up the hills; not but what the hedges are very necessary, and our stray travellers often have a weary time of it. so, you may say, have those in the dusty roads.' yet he was himself a very stern respecter of the hedgerows; sought safety and found dignity in the obvious path of conduct; and would palter with no simple and recognised duty of his epoch. of marriage in particular, of the bond so formed, of the obligations incurred, of the debt men owe to their children, he conceived in a truly antique spirit: not to blame others, but to constrain himself. it was not to blame, i repeat, that he held these views; for others, he could make a large allowance; and yet he tacitly expected of his friends and his wife a high standard of behaviour. nor was it always easy to wear the armour of that ideal. acting upon these beliefs; conceiving that he had indeed 'given himself' (in the full meaning of these words) for better, for worse; painfully alive to his defects of temper and deficiency in charm; resolute to make up for these; thinking last of himself: fleeming was in some ways the very man to have made a noble, uphill fight of an unfortunate marriage. in other ways, it is true he was one of the most unfit for such a trial. and it was his beautiful destiny to remain to the last hour the same absolute and romantic lover, who had shown to his new bride the flag-draped vessels in the mersey. no fate is altogether easy; but trials are our touchstone, trials overcome our reward; and it was given to fleeming to conquer. it was given to him to live for another, not as a task, but till the end as an enchanting pleasure. 'people may write novels,' he wrote in 1869, 'and other people may write poems, but not a man or woman among them can write to say how happy a man may be, who is desperately in love with his wife after ten years of marriage.' and again in 1885, after more than twenty-six years of marriage, and within but five weeks of his death: 'your first letter from bournemouth,' he wrote, 'gives me heavenly pleasure for which i thank heaven and you too who are my heaven on earth.' the mind hesitates whether to say that such a man has been more good or more fortunate. any woman (it is the defect of her sex) comes sooner to the stable mind of maturity than any man; and jenkin was to the end of a most deliberate growth. in the next chapter, when i come to deal with his telegraphic voyages and give some taste of his correspondence, the reader will still find him at twenty-five an arrant school-boy. his wife besides was more thoroughly educated than he. in many ways she was able to teach him, and he proud to be taught; in many ways she outshone him, and he delighted to be outshone. all these superiorities, and others that, after the manner of lovers, he no doubt forged for himself, added as time went on to the humility of his original love. only once, in all i know of his career, did he show a touch of smallness. he could not learn to sing correctly; his wife told him so and desisted from her lessons; and the mortification was so sharply felt that for years he could not be induced to go to a concert, instanced himself as a typical man without an ear, and never sang again. i tell it; for the fact that this stood singular in his behaviour, and really amazed all who knew him, is the happiest way i can imagine to commend the tenor of his simplicity; and because it illustrates his feeling for his wife. others were always welcome to laugh at him; if it amused them, or if it amused him, he would proceed undisturbed with his occupation, his vanity invulnerable. with his wife it was different: his wife had laughed at his singing; and for twenty years the fibre ached. nothing, again, was more notable than the formal chivalry of this unmannered man to the person on earth with whom he was the most familiar. he was conscious of his own innate and often rasping vivacity and roughness and he was never forgetful of his first visit to the austins and the vow he had registered on his return. there was thus an artificial element in his punctilio that at times might almost raise a smile. but it stood on noble grounds; for this was how he sought to shelter from his own petulance the woman who was to him the symbol of the household and to the end the beloved of his youth. i wish in this chapter to chronicle small beer; taking a hasty glance at some ten years of married life and of professional struggle; and reserving till the next all the more interesting matter of his cruises. of his achievements and their worth, it is not for me to speak: his friend and partner, sir william thomson, has contributed a note on the subject, which will be found in the appendix, and to which i must refer the reader. he is to conceive in the meanwhile for himself fleeming's manifold engagements: his service on the committee on electrical standards, his lectures on electricity at chatham, his chair at the london university, his partnership with sir william thomson and mr. varley in many ingenious patents, his growing credit with engineers and men of science; and he is to bear in mind that of all this activity and acquist of reputation, the immediate profit was scanty. soon after his marriage, fleeming had left the service of messrs. liddell & gordon, and entered into a general engineering partnership with mr. forde, a gentleman in a good way of business. it was a fortunate partnership in this, that the parties retained their mutual respect unlessened and separated with regret; but men's affairs, like men, have their times of sickness, and by one of these unaccountable variations, for hard upon ten years the business was disappointing and the profits meagre. 'inditing drafts of german railways which will never get made': it is thus i find fleeming, not without a touch of bitterness, describe his occupation. even the patents hung fire at first. there was no salary to rely on; children were coming and growing up; the prospect was often anxious. in the days of his courtship, fleeming had written to miss austin a dissuasive picture of the trials of poverty, assuring her these were no figments but truly bitter to support; he told her this, he wrote, beforehand, so that when the pinch came and she suffered, she should not be disappointed in herself nor tempted to doubt her own magnanimity: a letter of admirable wisdom and solicitude. but now that the trouble came, he bore it very lightly. it was his principle, as he once prettily expressed it, 'to enjoy each day's happiness, as it arises, like birds or children.' his optimism, if driven out at the door, would come in again by the window; if it found nothing but blackness in the present, would hit upon some ground of consolation in the future or the past. and his courage and energy were indefatigable. in the year 1863, soon after the birth of their first son, they moved into a cottage at claygate near esher; and about this time, under manifold troubles both of money and health, i find him writing from abroad: 'the country will give us, please god, health and strength. i will love and cherish you more than ever, you shall go where you wish, you shall receive whom you wish and as for money you shall have that too. i cannot be mistaken. i have now measured myself with many men. i do not feel weak, i do not feel that i shall fail. in many things i have succeeded, and i will in this. and meanwhile the time of waiting, which, please heaven, shall not be long, shall also not be so bitter. well, well, i promise much, and do not know at this moment how you and the dear child are. if he is but better, courage, my girl, for i see light.' this cottage at claygate stood just without the village, well surrounded with trees and commanding a pleasant view. a piece of the garden was turfed over to form a croquet green, and fleeming became (i need scarce say) a very ardent player. he grew ardent, too, in gardening. this he took up at first to please his wife, having no natural inclination; but he had no sooner set his hand to it, than, like everything else he touched, it became with him a passion. he budded roses, he potted cuttings in the coach-house; if there came a change of weather at night, he would rise out of bed to protect his favourites; when he was thrown with a dull companion, it was enough for him to discover in the man a fellow gardener; on his travels, he would go out of his way to visit nurseries and gather hints; and to the end of his life, after other occupations prevented him putting his own hand to the spade, he drew up a yearly programme for his gardener, in which all details were regulated. he had begun by this time to write. his paper on darwin, which had the merit of convincing on one point the philosopher himself, had indeed been written before this in london lodgings; but his pen was not idle at claygate; and it was here he wrote (among other things) that review of 'fecundity, fertility, sterility, and allied topics,' which dr. matthews duncan prefixed by way of introduction to the second edition of the work. the mere act of writing seems to cheer the vanity of the most incompetent; but a correction accepted by darwin, and a whole review borrowed and reprinted by matthews duncan are compliments of a rare strain, and to a man still unsuccessful must have been precious indeed. there was yet a third of the same kind in store for him; and when munro himself owned that he had found instruction in the paper on lucretius, we may say that fleeming had been crowned in the capitol of reviewing. croquet, charades, christmas magic lanterns for the village children, an amateur concert or a review article in the evening; plenty of hard work by day; regular visits to meetings of the british association, from one of which i find him characteristically writing: 'i cannot say that i have had any amusement yet, but i am enjoying the dulness and dry bustle of the whole thing'; occasional visits abroad on business, when he would find the time to glean (as i have said) gardening hints for himself, and old folk-songs or new fashions of dress for his wife; and the continual study and care of his children: these were the chief elements of his life. nor were friends wanting. captain and mrs. jenkin, mr. and mrs. austin, clerk maxwell, miss bell of manchester, and others came to them on visits. mr. hertslet of the foreign office, his wife and his daughter, were neighbours and proved kind friends; in 1867 the howitts came to claygate and sought the society of 'the two bright, clever young people'; and in a house close by, mr. frederick ricketts came to live with his family. mr. ricketts was a valued friend during his short life; and when he was lost with every circumstance of heroism in the la plata, fleeming mourned him sincerely. i think i shall give the best idea of fleeming in this time of his early married life, by a few sustained extracts from his letters to his wife, while she was absent on a visit in 1864. 'nov. 11. sunday was too wet to walk to isleworth, for which i was sorry, so i staid and went to church and thought of you at ardwick all through the commandments, and heard dr. expound in a remarkable way a prophecy of st. paul's about roman catholics, which mutatis mutandis would do very well for protestants in some parts. then i made a little nursery of borecole and enfield market cabbage, grubbing in wet earth with leggings and gray coat on. then i tidied up the coach-house to my own and christine's admiration. then encouraged by bouts-rimes i wrote you a copy of verses; high time i think; i shall just save my tenth year of knowing my lady-love without inditing poetry or rhymes to her. 'then i rummaged over the box with my father's letters and found interesting notes from myself. one i should say my first letter, which little austin i should say would rejoice to see and shall see with a drawing of a cottage and a spirited "cob." what was more to the purpose, i found with it a paste-cutter which mary begged humbly for christine and i generously gave this morning. 'then i read some of congreve. there are admirable scenes in the manner of sheridan; all wit and no character, or rather one character in a great variety of situations and scenes. i could show you some scenes, but others are too coarse even for my stomach hardened by a course of french novels. 'all things look so happy for the rain. 'nov. 16. verbenas looking well. . . . i am but a poor creature without you; i have naturally no spirit or fun or enterprise in me. only a kind of mechanical capacity for ascertaining whether two really is half four, etc.; but when you are near me i can fancy that i too shine, and vainly suppose it to be my proper light; whereas by my extreme darkness when you are not by, it clearly can only be by a reflected brilliance that i seem aught but dull. then for the moral part of me: if it were not for you and little odden, i should feel by no means sure that i had any affection power in me. . . . even the muscular me suffers a sad deterioration in your absence. i don't get up when i ought to, i have snoozed in my chair after dinner; i do not go in at the garden with my wonted vigour, and feel ten times as tired as usual with a walk in your absence; so you see, when you are not by, i am a person without ability, affections or vigour, but droop dull, selfish, and spiritless; can you wonder that i love you? 'nov. 17. . . . i am very glad we married young. i would not have missed these five years, no, not for any hopes; they are my own. 'nov. 30. i got through my chatham lecture very fairly though almost all my apparatus went astray. i dined at the mess, and got home to isleworth the same evening; your father very kindly sitting up for me. 'dec. 1. back at dear claygate. many cuttings flourish, especially those which do honour to your hand. your californian annuals are up and about. badger is fat, the grass green. . . . 'dec. 3. odden will not talk of you, while you are away, having inherited, as i suspect, his father's way of declining to consider a subject which is painful, as your absence is. . . . i certainly should like to learn greek and i think it would be a capital pastime for the long winter evenings. . . . how things are misrated! i declare croquet is a noble occupation compared to the pursuits of business men. as for so-called idleness that is, one form of it i vow it is the noblest aim of man. when idle, one can love, one can be good, feel kindly to all, devote oneself to others, be thankful for existence, educate one's mind, one's heart, one's body. when busy, as i am busy now or have been busy to-day, one feels just as you sometimes felt when you were too busy, owing to want of servants. 'dec. 5. on sunday i was at isleworth, chiefly engaged in playing with odden. we had the most enchanting walk together through the brickfields. it was very muddy, and, as he remarked, not fit for nanna, but fit for us men. the dreary waste of bared earth, thatched sheds and standing water, was a paradise to him; and when we walked up planks to deserted mixing and crushing mills, and actually saw where the clay was stirred with long iron prongs, and chalk or lime ground with "a tind of a mill," his expression of contentment and triumphant heroism knew no limit to its beauty. of course on returning i found mrs. austin looking out at the door in an anxious manner, and thinking we had been out quite long enough. . . . i am reading don quixote chiefly and am his fervent admirer, but i am so sorry he did not place his affections on a dulcinea of somewhat worthier stamp. in fact i think there must be a mistake about it. don quixote might and would serve his lady in most preposterous fashion, but i am sure he would have chosen a lady of merit. he imagined her to be such no doubt, and drew a charming picture of her occupations by the banks of the river; but in his other imaginations, there was some kind of peg on which to hang the false costumes he created; windmills are big, and wave their arms like giants; sheep in the distance are somewhat like an army; a little boat on the river-side must look much the same whether enchanted or belonging to millers; but except that dulcinea is a woman, she bears no resemblance at all to the damsel of his imagination.' at the time of these letters, the oldest son only was born to them. in september of the next year, with the birth of the second, charles frewen, there befell fleeming a terrible alarm and what proved to be a lifelong misfortune. mrs. jenkin was taken suddenly and alarmingly ill; fleeming ran a matter of two miles to fetch the doctor, and, drenched with sweat as he was, returned with him at once in an open gig. on their arrival at the house, mrs. jenkin half unconsciously took and kept hold of her husband's hand. by the doctor's orders, windows and doors were set open to create a thorough draught, and the patient was on no account to be disturbed. thus, then, did fleeming pass the whole of that night, crouching on the floor in the draught, and not daring to move lest he should wake the sleeper. he had never been strong; energy had stood him instead of vigour; and the result of that night's exposure was flying rheumatism varied by settled sciatica. sometimes it quite disabled him, sometimes it was less acute; but he was rarely free from it until his death. i knew him for many years; for more than ten we were closely intimate; i have lived with him for weeks; and during all this time, he only once referred to his infirmity and then perforce as an excuse for some trouble he put me to, and so slightly worded that i paid no heed. this is a good measure of his courage under sufferings of which none but the untried will think lightly. and i think it worth noting how this optimist was acquainted with pain. it will seem strange only to the superficial. the disease of pessimism springs never from real troubles, which it braces men to bear, which it delights men to bear well. nor does it readily spring at all, in minds that have conceived of life as a field of ordered duties, not as a chase in which to hunt for gratifications. 'we are not here to be happy, but to be good'; i wish he had mended the phrase: 'we are not here to be happy, but to try to be good,' comes nearer the modesty of truth. with such old-fashioned morality, it is possible to get through life, and see the worst of it, and feel some of the worst of it, and still acquiesce piously and even gladly in man's fate. feel some of the worst of it, i say; for some of the rest of the worst is, by this simple faith, excluded. it was in the year 1868, that the clouds finally rose. the business in partnership with mr. forde began suddenly to pay well; about the same time the patents showed themselves a valuable property; and but a little after, fleeming was appointed to the new chair of engineering in the university of edinburgh. thus, almost at once, pecuniary embarrassments passed for ever out of his life. here is his own epilogue to the time at claygate, and his anticipations of the future in edinburgh. ' . . . . the dear old house at claygate is not let and the pretty garden a mass of weeds. i feel rather as if we had behaved unkindly to them. we were very happy there, but now that it is over i am conscious of the weight of anxiety as to money which i bore all the time. with you in the garden, with austin in the coach-house, with pretty songs in the little, low white room, with the moonlight in the dear room up-stairs, ah, it was perfect; but the long walk, wondering, pondering, fearing, scheming, and the dusty jolting railway, and the horrid fusty office with its endless disappointments, they are well gone. it is well enough to fight and scheme and bustle about in the eager crowd here [in london] for a while now and then, but not for a lifetime. what i have now is just perfect. study for winter, action for summer, lovely country for recreation, a pleasant town for talk . . .' chapter v. notes of telegraph voyages, 1858 to 1873. but it is now time to see jenkin at his life's work. i have before me certain imperfect series of letters written, as he says, 'at hazard, for one does not know at the time what is important and what is not': the earlier addressed to miss austin, after the betrothal; the later to mrs. jenkin the young wife. i should premise that i have allowed myself certain editorial freedoms, leaving out and splicing together much as he himself did with the bona cable: thus edited the letters speak for themselves, and will fail to interest none who love adventure or activity. addressed as they were to her whom he called his 'dear engineering pupil,' they give a picture of his work so clear that a child may understand, and so attractive that i am half afraid their publication may prove harmful, and still further crowd the ranks of a profession already overcrowded. but their most engaging quality is the picture of the writer; with his indomitable self-confidence and courage, his readiness in every pinch of circumstance or change of plan, and his ever fresh enjoyment of the whole web of human experience, nature, adventure, science, toil and rest, society and solitude. it should be borne in mind that the writer of these buoyant pages was, even while he wrote, harassed by responsibility, stinted in sleep and often struggling with the prostration of sea-sickness. to this last enemy, which he never overcame, i have omitted, in my search after condensation, a good many references; if they were all left, such was the man's temper, they would not represent one hundredth part of what he suffered, for he was never given to complaint. but indeed he had met this ugly trifle, as he met every thwart circumstance of life, with a certain pleasure of pugnacity; and suffered it not to check him, whether in the exercise of his profession or the pursuit of amusement. i. 'birkenhead: april 18, 1858. 'well, you should know, mr. having a contract to lay down a submarine telegraph from sardinia to africa failed three times in the attempt. the distance from land to land is about 140 miles. on the first occasion, after proceeding some 70 miles, he had to cut the cable the cause i forget; he tried again, same result; then picked up about 20 miles of the lost cable, spliced on a new piece, and very nearly got across that time, but ran short of cable, and when but a few miles off galita in very deep water, had to telegraph to london for more cable to be manufactured and sent out whilst he tried to stick to the end: for five days, i think, he lay there sending and receiving messages, but heavy weather coming on the cable parted and mr. went home in despair at least i should think so. 'he then applied to those eminent engineers, r. s. newall & co., who made and laid down a cable for him last autumn fleeming jenkin (at the time in considerable mental agitation) having the honour of fitting out the elba for that purpose.' [on this occasion, the elba has no cable to lay; but] 'is going out in the beginning of may to endeavour to fish up the cables mr. lost. there are two ends at or near the shore: the third will probably not be found within 20 miles from land. one of these ends will be passed over a very big pulley or sheave at the bows, passed six times round a big barrel or drum; which will be turned round by a steam engine on deck, and thus wind up the cable, while the elba slowly steams ahead. the cable is not wound round and round the drum as your silk is wound on its reel, but on the contrary never goes round more than six times, going off at one side as it comes on at the other, and going down into the hold of the elba to be coiled along in a big coil or skein. 'i went down to gateshead to discuss with mr. newall the form which this tolerably simple idea should take, and have been busy since i came here drawing, ordering, and putting up the machinery uninterfered with, thank goodness, by any one. i own i like responsibility; it flatters one and then, your father might say, i have more to gain than to lose. moreover i do like this bloodless, painless combat with wood and iron, forcing the stubborn rascals to do my will, licking the clumsy cubs into an active shape, seeing the child of to-day's thought working to-morrow in full vigour at his appointed task. 'may 12. 'by dint of bribing, bullying, cajoling, and going day by day to see the state of things ordered, all my work is very nearly ready now; but those who have neglected these precautions are of course disappointed. five hundred fathoms of chain [were] ordered by some three weeks since, to be ready by the 10th without fail; he sends for it to-day 150 fathoms all they can let us have by the 15th and how the rest is to be got, who knows? he ordered a boat a month since and yesterday we could see nothing of her but the keel and about two planks. i could multiply instances without end. at first one goes nearly mad with vexation at these things; but one finds so soon that they are the rule, that then it becomes necessary to feign a rage one does not feel. i look upon it as the natural order of things, that if i order a thing, it will not be done if by accident it gets done, it will certainly be done wrong: the only remedy being to watch the performance at every stage. 'to-day was a grand field-day. i had steam up and tried the engine against pressure or resistance. one part of the machinery is driven by a belt or strap of leather. i always had my doubts this might slip; and so it did, wildly. i had made provision for doubling it, putting on two belts instead of one. no use off they went, slipping round and off the pulleys instead of driving the machinery. tighten them no use. more strength there down with the lever smash something, tear the belts, but get them tight now then, stand clear, on with the steam; and the belts slip away as if nothing held them. men begin to look queer; the circle of quidnuncs make sage remarks. once more no use. i begin to know i ought to feel sheepish and beat, but somehow i feel cocky instead. i laugh and say, "well, i am bound to break something down" and suddenly see. "oho, there's the place; get weight on there, and the belt won't slip." with much labour, on go the belts again. "now then, a spar thro' there and six men's weight on; mind you're not carried away." "ay, ay, sir." but evidently no one believes in the plan. "hurrah, round she goes stick to your spar. all right, shut off steam." and the difficulty is vanquished. 'this or such as this (not always quite so bad) occurs hour after hour, while five hundred tons of coal are rattling down into the holds and bunkers, riveters are making their infernal row all round, and riggers bend the sails and fit the rigging:a sort of pandemonium, it appeared to young mrs. newall, who was here on monday and half-choked with guano; but it suits the likes o' me. 's. s. elba, river mersey: may 17. 'we are delayed in the river by some of the ship's papers not being ready. such a scene at the dock gates. not a sailor will join till the last moment; and then, just as the ship forges ahead through the narrow pass, beds and baggage fly on board, the men half tipsy clutch at the rigging, the captain swears, the women scream and sob, the crowd cheer and laugh, while one or two pretty little girls stand still and cry outright, regardless of all eyes. 'these two days of comparative peace have quite set me on my legs again. i was getting worn and weary with anxiety and work. as usual i have been delighted with my shipwrights. i gave them some beer on saturday, making a short oration. to-day when they went ashore and i came on board, they gave three cheers, whether for me or the ship i hardly know, but i had just bid them good-bye, and the ship was out of hail; but i was startled and hardly liked to claim the compliment by acknowledging it. 's. s. elba: may 25. 'my first intentions of a long journal have been fairly frustrated by sea-sickness. on tuesday last about noon we started from the mersey in very dirty weather, and were hardly out of the river when we met a gale from the south-west and a heavy sea, both right in our teeth; and the poor elba had a sad shaking. had i not been very sea-sick, the sight would have been exciting enough, as i sat wrapped in my oilskins on the bridge; [but] in spite of all my efforts to talk, to eat, and to grin, i soon collapsed into imbecility; and i was heartily thankful towards evening to find myself in bed. 'next morning, i fancied it grew quieter and, as i listened, heard, "let go the anchor," whereon i concluded we had run into holyhead harbour, as was indeed the case. all that day we lay in holyhead, but i could neither read nor write nor draw. the captain of another steamer which had put in came on board, and we all went for a walk on the hill; and in the evening there was an exchange of presents. we gave some tobacco i think, and received a cat, two pounds of fresh butter, a cumberland ham, westward ho! and thackeray's english humourists. i was astonished at receiving two such fair books from the captain of a little coasting screw. our captain said he [the captain of the screw] had plenty of money, five or six hundred a year at least. "what in the world makes him go rolling about in such a craft, then?" "why, i fancy he's reckless; he's desperate in love with that girl i mentioned, and she won't look at him." our honest, fat, old captain says this very grimly in his thick, broad voice. 'my head won't stand much writing yet, so i will run up and take a look at the blue night sky off the coast of portugal. 'may 26. 'a nice lad of some two and twenty, aby name, goes out in a nondescript capacity as part purser, part telegraph clerk, part generally useful person. awas a great comfort during the miseries [of the gale]; for when with a dead head wind and a heavy sea, plates, books, papers, stomachs were being rolled about in sad confusion, we generally managed to lie on our backs, and grin, and try discordant staves of the flowers of the forest and the lowbacked car. we could sing and laugh, when we could do nothing else; though awas ready to swear after each fit was past, that that was the first time he had felt anything, and at this moment would declare in broad scotch that he'd never been sick at all, qualifying the oath with "except for a minute now and then." he brought a cornet-a-piston to practice on, having had three weeks' instructions on that melodious instrument; and if you could hear the horrid sounds that come! especially at heavy rolls. when i hint he is not improving, there comes a confession: "i don't feel quite right yet, you see!" but he blows away manfully, and in self-defence i try to roar the tune louder. '11:30 p.m. 'long past cape st. vincent now. we went within about 400 yards of the cliffs and light-house in a calm moonlight, with porpoises springing from the sea, the men crooning long ballads as they lay idle on the forecastle and the sails flapping uncertain on the yards. as we passed, there came a sudden breeze from land, hot and heavy scented; and now as i write its warm rich flavour contrasts strongly with the salt air we have been breathing. 'i paced the deck with h-, the second mate, and in the quiet night drew a confession that he was engaged to be married, and gave him a world of good advice. he is a very nice, active, little fellow, with a broad scotch tongue and "dirty, little rascal" appearance. he had a sad disappointment at starting. having been second mate on the last voyage, when the first mate was discharged, he took charge of the elba all the time she was in port, and of course looked forward to being chief mate this trip. liddell promised him the post. he had not authority to do this; and when newall heard of it, he appointed another man. fancy poor h-having told all the men and most of all, his sweetheart. but more remains behind; for when it came to signing articles, it turned out that o-, the new first mate, had not a certificate which allowed him to have a second mate. then came rather an affecting scene. for hproposed to sign as chief (he having the necessary higher certificate) but to act as second for the lower wages. at first owould not give in, but offered to go as second. but our brave little hsaid, no: "the owners wished mr. oto be chief mate, and chief mate he should be." so he carried the day, signed as chief and acts as second. shakespeare and byron are his favourite books. i walked into byron a little, but can well understand his stirring up a rough, young sailor's romance. i lent him westward ho from the cabin; but to my astonishment he did not care much for it; he said it smelt of the shilling railway library; perhaps i had praised it too highly. scott is his standard for novels. i am very happy to find good taste by no means confined to gentlemen, hhaving no pretensions to that title. he is a man after my own heart. 'then i came down to the cabin and heard young a-'s schemes for the future. his highest picture is a commission in the prince of vizianagram's irregular horse. his eldest brother is tutor to his highness's children, and grand vizier, and magistrate, and on his highness's household staff, and seems to be one of those scotch adventurers one meets with and hears of in queer berths raising cavalry, building palaces, and using some petty eastern king's long purse with their long scotch heads. 'off bona; june 4. 'i read your letter carefully, leaning back in a maltese boat to present the smallest surface of my body to a grilling sun, and sailing from the elba to cape hamrah about three miles distant. how we fried and sighed! at last, we reached land under fort genova, and i was carried ashore pick-a-back, and plucked the first flower i saw for annie. it was a strange scene, far more novel than i had imagined: the high, steep banks covered with rich, spicy vegetation of which i hardly knew one plant. the dwarf palm with fan-like leaves, growing about two feet high, formed the staple of the verdure. as we brushed through them, the gummy leaves of a cistus stuck to the clothes; and with its small white flower and yellow heart, stood for our english dog-rose. in place of heather, we had myrtle and lentisque with leaves somewhat similar. that large bulb with long flat leaves? do not touch it if your hands are cut; the arabs use it as blisters for their horses. is that the same sort? no, take that one up; it is the bulb of a dwarf palm, each layer of the onion peels off, brown and netted, like the outside of a cocoa-nut. it is a clever plant that; from the leaves we get a vegetable horsehair; and eat the bottom of the centre spike. all the leaves you pull have the same aromatic scent. but here a little patch of cleared ground shows old friends, who seem to cling by abused civilisation:-fine, hardy thistles, one of them bright yellow, though; honest, scotchlooking, large daisies or gowans; potatoes here and there, looking but sickly; and dark sturdy fig-trees looking cool and at their ease in the burning sun. 'here we are at fort genova, crowning the little point, a small old building, due to my old genoese acquaintance who fought and traded bravely once upon a time. a broken cannon of theirs forms the threshold; and through a dark, low arch, we enter upon broad terraces sloping to the centre, from which rain water may collect and run into that well. large-breeched french troopers lounge about and are most civil; and the whole party sit down to breakfast in a little white-washed room, from the door of which the long, mountain coastline and the sparkling sea show of an impossible blue through the openings of a white-washed rampart. i try a sea-egg, one of those prickly fellows sea-urchins, they are called sometimes; the shell is of a lovely purple, and when opened, there are rays of yellow adhering to the inside; these i eat, but they are very fishy. 'we are silent and shy of one another, and soon go out to watch while turbaned, blue-breeched, barelegged arabs dig holes for the land telegraph posts on the following principle: one man takes a pick and bangs lazily at the hard earth; when a little is loosened, his mate with a small spade lifts it on one side; and da capo. they have regular features and look quite in place among the palms. our english workmen screw the earthenware insulators on the posts, strain the wire, and order arabs about by the generic term of johnny. i find whas nothing for me to do; and that in fact no one has anything to do. some instruments for testing have stuck at lyons, some at cagliari; and nothing can be done or at any rate, is done. i wander about, thinking of you and staring at big, green grasshoppers locusts, some people call them and smelling the rich brushwood. there was nothing for a pencil to sketch, and i soon got tired of this work, though i have paid willingly much money for far less strange and lovely sights. 'off cape spartivento: june 8. 'at two this morning, we left cagliari; at five cast anchor here. i got up and began preparing for the final trial; and shortly afterwards everyone else of note on board went ashore to make experiments on the state of the cable, leaving me with the prospect of beginning to lift at 12 o'clock. i was not ready by that time; but the experiments were not concluded and moreover the cable was found to be imbedded some four or five feet in sand, so that the boat could not bring off the end. at three, messrs. liddell, &c., came on board in good spirits, having found two wires good or in such a state as permitted messages to be transmitted freely. the boat now went to grapple for the cable some way from shore while the elba towed a small lateen craft which was to take back the consul to cagliari some distance on its way. on our return we found the boat had been unsuccessful; she was allowed to drop astern, while we grappled for the cable in the elba [without more success]. the coast is a low mountain range covered with brushwood or heather pools of water and a sandy beach at their feet. i have not yet been ashore, my hands having been very full all day. 'june 9. 'grappling for the cable outside the bank had been voted too uncertain; [and the day was spent in] efforts to pull the cable off through the sand which has accumulated over it. by getting the cable tight on to the boat, and letting the swell pitch her about till it got slack, and then tightening again with blocks and pulleys, we managed to get out from the beach towards the ship at the rate of about twenty yards an hour. when they had got about 100 yards from shore, we ran round in the elba to try and help them, letting go the anchor in the shallowest possible water, this was about sunset. suddenly someone calls out he sees the cable at the bottom: there it was sure enough, apparently wriggling about as the waves rippled. great excitement; still greater when we find our own anchor is foul of it and has been the means of bringing it to light. we let go a grapnel, get the cable clear of the anchor on to the grapnel the captain in an agony lest we should drift ashore meanwhile hand the grappling line into the big boat, steam out far enough, and anchor again. a little more work and one end of the cable is up over the bows round my drum. i go to my engine and we start hauling in. all goes pretty well, but it is quite dark. lamps are got at last, and men arranged. we go on for a quarter of a mile or so from shore and then stop at about half-past nine with orders to be up at three. grand work at last! a number of the saturday review here; it reads so hot and feverish, so tomblike and unhealthy, in the midst of dear nature's hills and sea, with good wholesome work to do. pray that all go well tomorrow. 'june 10. 'thank heaven for a most fortunate day. at three o'clock this morning in a damp, chill mist all hands were roused to work. with a small delay, for one or two improvements i had seen to be necessary last night, the engine started and since that time i do not think there has been half an hour's stoppage. a rope to splice, a block to change, a wheel to oil, an old rusted anchor to disengage from the cable which brought it up, these have been our only obstructions. sixty, seventy, eighty, a hundred, a hundred and twenty revolutions at last, my little engine tears away. the even black rope comes straight out of the blue heaving water: passes slowly round an open-hearted, good-tempered looking pulley, five feet diameter; aft past a vicious nipper, to bring all up should anything go wrong; through a gentle guide; on to a huge bluff drum, who wraps him round his body and says "come you must," as plain as drum can speak: the chattering pauls say "i've got him, i've got him, he can't get back:" whilst black cable, much slacker and easier in mind and body, is taken by a slim v-pulley and passed down into the huge hold, where half a dozen men put him comfortably to bed after his exertion in rising from his long bath. in good sooth, it is one of the strangest sights i know to see that black fellow rising up so steadily in the midst of the blue sea. we are more than half way to the place where we expect the fault; and already the one wire, supposed previously to be quite bad near the african coast, can be spoken through. i am very glad i am here, for my machines are my own children and i look on their little failings with a parent's eye and lead them into the path of duty with gentleness and firmness. i am naturally in good spirits, but keep very quiet, for misfortunes may arise at any instant; moreover to-morrow my paying-out apparatus will be wanted should all go well, and that will be another nervous operation. fifteen miles are safely in; but no one knows better than i do that nothing is done till all is done. 'june 11. '9 a.m. we have reached the splice supposed to be faulty, and no fault has been found. the two men learned in electricity, land w-, squabble where the fault is. 'evening. a weary day in a hot broiling sun; no air. after the experiments, lsaid the fault might be ten miles ahead: by that time, we should be according to a chart in about a thousand fathoms of water rather more than a mile. it was most difficult to decide whether to go on or not. i made preparations for a heavy pull, set small things to rights and went to sleep. about four in the afternoon, mr. liddell decided to proceed, and we are now (at seven) grinding it in at the rate of a mile and three-quarters per hour, which appears a grand speed to us. if the paying-out only works well! i have just thought of a great improvement in it; i can't apply it this time, however. the sea is of an oily calm, and a perfect fleet of brigs and ships surrounds us, their sails hardly filling in the lazy breeze. the sun sets behind the dim coast of the isola san pietro, the coast of sardinia high and rugged becomes softer and softer in the distance, while to the westward still the isolated rock of toro springs from the horizon. it would amuse you to see how cool (in head) and jolly everybody is. a testy word now and then shows the wires are strained a little, but everyone laughs and makes his little jokes as if it were all in fun: yet we are all as much in earnest as the most earnest of the earnest bastard german school or demonstrative of frenchmen. i enjoy it very much. 'june 12. '5.30 a.m. out of sight of land: about thirty nautical miles in the hold; the wind rising a little; experiments being made for a fault, while the engine slowly revolves to keep us hanging at the same spot: depth supposed about a mile. the machinery has behaved admirably. oh! that the paying-out were over! the new machinery there is but rough, meant for an experiment in shallow water, and here we are in a mile of water. '6.30. i have made my calculations and find the new paying-out gear cannot possibly answer at this depth, some portion would give way. luckily, i have brought the old things with me and am getting them rigged up as fast as may be. bad news from the cable. number four has given in some portion of the last ten miles: the fault in number three is still at the bottom of the sea: number two is now the only good wire and the hold is getting in such a mess, through keeping bad bits out and cutting for splicing and testing, that there will be great risk in paying out. the cable is somewhat strained in its ascent from one mile below us; what it will be when we get to two miles is a problem we may have to determine. '9 p.m. a most provoking unsatisfactory day. we have done nothing. the wind and sea have both risen. too little notice has been given to the telegraphists who accompany this expedition; they had to leave all their instruments at lyons in order to arrive at bona in time; our tests are therefore of the roughest, and no one really knows where the faults are. mr. lin the morning lost much time; then he told us, after we had been inactive for about eight hours, that the fault in number three was within six miles; and at six o'clock in the evening, when all was ready for a start to pick up these six miles, he comes and says there must be a fault about thirty miles from bona! by this time it was too late to begin paying out today, and we must lie here moored in a thousand fathoms till light to-morrow morning. the ship pitches a good deal, but the wind is going down. 'june 13, sunday. 'the wind has not gone down, however. it now (at 10.30) blows a pretty stiff gale, the sea has also risen; and the elba's bows rise and fall about 9 feet. we make twelve pitches to the minute, and the poor cable must feel very sea-sick by this time. we are quite unable to do anything, and continue riding at anchor in one thousand fathoms, the engines going constantly so as to keep the ship's bows up to the cable, which by this means hangs nearly vertical and sustains no strain but that caused by its own weight and the pitching of the vessel. we were all up at four, but the weather entirely forbade work for to-day, so some went to bed and most lay down, making up our leeway as we nautically term our loss of sleep. i must say liddell is a fine fellow and keeps his patience and temper wonderfully; and yet how he does fret and fume about trifles at home! this wind has blown now for 36 hours, and yet we have telegrams from bona to say the sea there is as calm as a mirror. it makes one laugh to remember one is still tied to the shore. click, click, click, the pecker is at work: i wonder what herr psays to herr l-, tests, tests, tests, nothing more. this will be a very anxious day. 'june 14. 'another day of fatal inaction. 'june 15. '9.30. the wind has gone down a deal; but even now there are doubts whether we shall start to-day. when shall i get back to you? '9 p.m. four miles from land. our run has been successful and eventless. now the work is nearly over i feel a little out of spirits why, i should be puzzled to say mere wantonness, or reaction perhaps after suspense. 'june 16. 'up this morning at three, coupled my self-acting gear to the brake and had the satisfaction of seeing it pay out the last four miles in very good style. with one or two little improvements, i hope to make it a capital thing. the end has just gone ashore in two boats, three out of four wires good. thus ends our first expedition. by some odd chance a times of june the 7th has found its way on board through the agency of a wretched old peasant who watches the end of the line here. a long account of breakages in the atlantic trial trip. to-night we grapple for the heavy cable, eight tons to the mile. i long to have a tug at him; he may puzzle me, and though misfortunes or rather difficulties are a bore at the time, life when working with cables is tame without them. '2 p.m. hurrah, he is hooked, the big fellow, almost at the first cast. he hangs under our bows looking so huge and imposing that i could find it in my heart to be afraid of him. 'june 17. 'we went to a little bay called chia, where a fresh-water stream falls into the sea, and took in water. this is rather a long operation, so i went a walk up the valley with mr. liddell. the coast here consists of rocky mountains 800 to 1,000 feet high covered with shrubs of a brilliant green. on landing our first amusement was watching the hundreds of large fish who lazily swam in shoals about the river; the big canes on the further side hold numberless tortoises, we are told, but see none, for just now they prefer taking a siesta. a little further on, and what is this with large pink flowers in such abundance? the oleander in full flower. at first i fear to pluck them, thinking they must be cultivated and valuable; but soon the banks show a long line of thick tall shrubs, one mass of glorious pink and green. set these in a little valley, framed by mountains whose rocks gleam out blue and purple colours such as pre-raphaelites only dare attempt, shining out hard and weird-like amongst the clumps of castor-oil plants, oistus, arbor vitae and many other evergreens, whose names, alas! i know not; the cistus is brown now, the rest all deep or brilliant green. large herds of cattle browse on the baked deposit at the foot of these large crags. one or two half-savage herdsmen in sheepskin kilts, &c., ask for cigars; partridges whirr up on either side of us; pigeons coo and nightingales sing amongst the blooming oleander. we get six sheep and many fowls, too, from the priest of the small village; and then run back to spartivento and make preparations for the morning. 'june 18. 'the big cable is stubborn and will not behave like his smaller brother. the gear employed to take him off the drum is not strong enough; he gets slack on the drum and plays the mischief. luckily for my own conscience, the gear i had wanted was negatived by mr. newall. mr. liddell does not exactly blame me, but he says we might have had a silver pulley cheaper than the cost of this delay. he has telegraphed for more men to cagliari, to try to pull the cable off the drum into the hold, by hand. i look as comfortable as i can, but feel as if people were blaming me. i am trying my best to get something rigged which may help us; i wanted a little difficulty, and feel much better. the short length we have picked up was covered at places with beautiful sprays of coral, twisted and twined with shells of those small, fairy animals we saw in the aquarium at home; poor little things, they died at once, with their little bells and delicate bright tints. '12 o'clock. hurrah, victory! for the present anyhow. whilst in our first dejection, i thought i saw a place where a flat roller would remedy the whole misfortune; but a flat roller at cape spartivento, hard, easily unshipped, running freely! there was a grooved pulley used for the paying-out machinery with a spindle wheel, which might suit me. i filled him up with tarry spunyarn, nailed sheet copper round him, bent some parts in the fire; and we are paying-in without more trouble now. you would think some one would praise me; no, no more praise than blame before; perhaps now they think better of me, though. '10 p.m. we have gone on very comfortably for nearly six miles. an hour and a half was spent washing down; for along with many coloured polypi, from corals, shells and insects, the big cable brings up much mud and rust, and makes a fishy smell by no means pleasant: the bottom seems to teem with life. but now we are startled by a most unpleasant, grinding noise; which appeared at first to come from the large low pulley, but when the engines stopped, the noise continued; and we now imagine it is something slipping down the cable, and the pulley but acts as sounding-board to the big fiddle. whether it is only an anchor or one of the two other cables, we know not. we hope it is not the cable just laid down. 'june 19. '10 a.m. all our alarm groundless, it would appear: the odd noise ceased after a time, and there was no mark sufficiently strong on the large cable to warrant the suspicion that we had cut another line through. i stopped up on the look-out till three in the morning, which made 23 hours between sleep and sleep. one goes dozing about, though, most of the day, for it is only when something goes wrong that one has to look alive. hour after hour, i stand on the forecastle-head, picking off little specimens of polypi and coral, or lie on the saloon deck reading back numbers of the times till something hitches, and then all is hurly-burly once more. there are awnings all along the ship, and a most ancient, fish-like smell beneath. '1 o'clock. suddenly a great strain in only 95 fathoms of water belts surging and general dismay; grapnels being thrown out in the hope of finding what holds the cable. should it prove the young cable! we are apparently crossing its path not the working one, but the lost child; mr. liddell would start the big one first though it was laid first: he wanted to see the job done, and meant to leave us to the small one unaided by his presence. '3.30. grapnel caught something, lost it again; it left its marks on the prongs. started lifting gear again; and after hauling in some 50 fathoms grunt, grunt, grunt we hear the other cable slipping down our big one, playing the selfsame tune we heard last night louder, however. '10 p.m. the pull on the deck engines became harder and harder. i got steam up in a boiler on deck, and another little engine starts hauling at the grapnel. i wonder if there ever was such a scene of confusion: mr. liddell and wand the captain all giving orders contradictory, &c., on the forecastle; d-, the foreman of our men, the mates, &c., following the example of our superiors; the ship's engine and boilers below, a 50-horse engine on deck, a boiler 14 feet long on deck beside it, a little steam winch tearing round; a dozen italians (20 have come to relieve our hands, the men we telegraphed for to cagliari) hauling at the rope; wiremen, sailors, in the crevices left by ropes and machinery; everything that could swear swearing i found myself swearing like a trooper at last. we got the unknown difficulty within ten fathoms of the surface; but then the forecastle got frightened that, if it was the small cable which we had got hold of, we should certainly break it by continuing the tremendous and increasing strain. so at last mr. liddell decided to stop; cut the big cable, buoying its end; go back to our pleasant watering-place at chia, take more water and start lifting the small cable. the end of the large one has even now regained its sandy bed; and three buoys one to grapnel foul of the supposed small cable, two to the big cable are dipping about on the surface. one more a flag-buoy will soon follow, and then straight for shore. 'june 20. 'it is an ill-wind, &c. i have an unexpected opportunity of forwarding this engineering letter; for the craft which brought out our italian sailors must return to cagliari to-night, as the little cable will take us nearly to galita, and the italian skipper could hardly find his way from thence. to-day sunday not much rest. mr. liddell is at spartivento telegraphing. we are at chia, and shall shortly go to help our boat's crew in getting the small cable on board. we dropped them some time since in order that they might dig it out of the sand as far as possible. 'june 21. 'yesterday sunday as it was all hands were kept at work all day, coaling, watering, and making a futile attempt to pull the cable from the shore on board through the sand. this attempt was rather silly after the experience we had gained at cape spartivento. this morning we grappled, hooked the cable at once, and have made an excellent start. though i have called this the small cable, it is much larger than the bona one. here comes a break down and a bad one. 'june 22. 'we got over it, however; but it is a warning to me that my future difficulties will arise from parts wearing out. yesterday the cable was often a lovely sight, coming out of the water one large incrustation of delicate, net-like corals and long, white curling shells. no portion of the dirty black wires was visible; instead we had a garland of soft pink with little scarlet sprays and white enamel intermixed. all was fragile, however, and could hardly be secured in safety; and inexorable iron crushed the tender leaves to atoms. this morning at the end of my watch, about 4 o'clock, we came to the buoys, proving our anticipations right concerning the crossing of the cables. i went to bed for four hours, and on getting up, found a sad mess. a tangle of the six-wire cable hung to the grapnel which had been left buoyed, and the small cable had parted and is lost for the present. our hauling of the other day must have done the mischief. 'june 23. 'we contrived to get the two ends of the large cable and to pick the short end up. the long end, leading us seaward, was next put round the drum and a mile of it picked up; but then, fearing another tangle, the end was cut and buoyed, and we returned to grapple for the three-wire cable. all this is very tiresome for me. the buoying and dredging are managed entirely by w-, who has had much experience in this sort of thing; so i have not enough to do and get very homesick. at noon the wind freshened and the sea rose so high that we had to run for land and are once more this evening anchored at chia. 'june 24. 'the whole day spent in dredging without success. this operation consists in allowing the ship to drift slowly across the line where you expect the cable to be, while at the end of a long rope, fast either to the bow or stern, a grapnel drags along the ground. this grapnel is a small anchor, made like four pot-hooks tied back to back. when the rope gets taut, the ship is stopped and the grapnel hauled up to the surface in the hopes of finding the cable on its prongs. i am much discontented with myself for idly lounging about and reading westward ho! for the second time, instead of taking to electricity or picking up nautical information. i am uncommonly idle. the sea is not quite so rough, but the weather is squally and the rain comes in frequent gusts. 'june 25. 'to-day about 1 o'clock we hooked the three-wire cable, buoyed the long sea end, and picked up the short [or shore] end. now it is dark and we must wait for morning before lifting the buoy we lowered to-day and proceeding seawards. the depth of water here is about 600 feet, the height of a respectable english hill; our fishing line was about a quarter of a mile long. it blows pretty fresh, and there is a great deal of sea. '26th. 'this morning it came on to blow so heavily that it was impossible to take up our buoy. the elba recommenced rolling in true baltic style and towards noon we ran for land. '27th, sunday. 'this morning was a beautiful calm. we reached the buoys at about 4.30 and commenced picking up at 6.30. shortly a new cause of anxiety arose. kinks came up in great quantities, about thirty in the hour. to have a true conception of a kink, you must see one: it is a loop drawn tight, all the wires get twisted and the guttapercha inside pushed out. these much diminish the value of the cable, as they must all be cut out, the gutta-percha made good, and the cable spliced. they arise from the cable having been badly laid down so that it forms folds and tails at the bottom of the sea. these kinks have another disadvantage: they weaken the cable very much. at about six o'clock [p.m.] we had some twelve miles lifted, when i went to the bows; the kinks were exceedingly tight and were giving way in a most alarming manner. i got a cage rigged up to prevent the end (if it broke) from hurting anyone, and sat down on the bowsprit, thinking i should describe kinks to annie: suddenly i saw a great many coils and kinks altogether at the surface. i jumped to the gutta-percha pipe, by blowing through which the signal is given to stop the engine. i blow, but the engine does not stop; again no answer: the coils and kinks jam in the bows and i rush aft shouting stop. too late: the cable had parted and must lie in peace at the bottom. someone had pulled the gutta-percha tube across a bare part of the steam pipe and melted it. it had been used hundreds of times in the last few days and gave no symptoms of failing. i believe the cable must have gone at any rate; however, since it went in my watch and since i might have secured the tubing more strongly, i feel rather sad. . . . 'june 28. 'since i could not go to annie i took down shakespeare, and by the time i had finished antony and cleopatra, read the second half of troilus and got some way in coriolanus, i felt it was childish to regret the accident had happened in my watch, and moreover i felt myself not much to blame in the tubing matter it had been torn down, it had not fallen down; so i went to bed, and slept without fretting, and woke this morning in the same good mood for which thank you and our friend shakespeare. i am happy to say mr. liddell said the loss of the cable did not much matter; though this would have been no consolation had i felt myself to blame. this morning we have grappled for and found another length of small cable which mr. dropped in 100 fathoms of water. if this also gets full of kinks, we shall probably have to cut it after 10 miles or so, or more probably still it will part of its own free will or weight. '10 p.m. this second length of three-wire cable soon got into the same condition as its fellow i.e. came up twenty kinks an hour and after seven miles were in, parted on the pulley over the bows at one of the said kinks; during my watch again, but this time no earthly power could have saved it. i had taken all manner of precautions to prevent the end doing any damage when the smash came, for come i knew it must. we now return to the six-wire cable. as i sat watching the cable to-night, large phosphorescent globes kept rolling from it and fading in the black water. '29th. 'to-day we returned to the buoy we had left at the end of the sixwire cable, and after much trouble from a series of tangles, got a fair start at noon. you will easily believe a tangle of iron rope inch and a half diameter is not easy to unravel, especially with a ton or so hanging to the ends. it is now eight o'clock and we have about six and a half miles safe: it becomes very exciting, however, for the kinks are coming fast and furious. 'july 2. 'twenty-eight miles safe in the hold. the ship is now so deep, that the men are to be turned out of their aft hold, and the remainder coiled there; so the good elba's nose need not burrow too far into the waves. there can only be about 10 or 12 miles more, but these weigh 80 or 100 tons. 'july 5. 'our first mate was much hurt in securing a buoy on the evening of the 2nd. as interpreter [with the italians] i am useful in all these cases; but for no fortune would i be a doctor to witness these scenes continually. pain is a terrible thing. our work is done: the whole of the six-wire cable has been recovered; only a small part of the three-wire, but that wire was bad and, owing to its twisted state, the value small. we may therefore be said to have been very successful.' ii. i have given this cruise nearly in full. from the notes, unhappily imperfect, of two others, i will take only specimens; for in all there are features of similarity and it is possible to have too much even of submarine telegraphy and the romance of engineering. and first from the cruise of 1859 in the greek islands and to alexandria, take a few traits, incidents and pictures. 'may 10, 1859. 'we had a fair wind and we did very well, seeing a little bit of cerig or cythera, and lots of turtle-doves wandering about over the sea and perching, tired and timid, in the rigging of our little craft. then falconera, antimilo, and milo, topped with huge white clouds, barren, deserted, rising bold and mysterious from the blue, chafing sea; argentiera, siphano, scapho, paros, antiparos, and late at night syra itself. adam bede in one hand, a sketch-book in the other, lying on rugs under an awning, i enjoyed a very pleasant day. 'may 14. 'syra is semi-eastern. the pavement, huge shapeless blocks sloping to a central gutter; from this bare two-storied houses, sometimes plaster many coloured, sometimes rough-hewn marble, rise, dirty and ill-finished to straight, plain, flat roofs; shops guiltless of windows, with signs in greek letters; dogs, greeks in blue, baggy, zouave breeches and a fez, a few narghilehs and a sprinkling of the ordinary continental shopboys. in the evening i tried one more walk in syra with a-, but in vain endeavoured to amuse myself or to spend money; the first effort resulting in singing doodah to a passing greek or two, the second in spending, no, in making a spend, threepence on coffee for three. 'may 16. 'on coming on deck, i found we were at anchor in canea bay, and saw one of the most lovely sights man could witness. far on either hand stretch bold mountain capes, spada and maleka, tender in colour, bold in outline; rich sunny levels lie beneath them, framed by the azure sea. right in front, a dark brown fortress girdles white mosques and minarets. rich and green, our mountain capes here join to form a setting for the town, in whose dark walls still darker open a dozen high-arched caves in which the huge venetian galleys used to lie in wait. high above all, higher and higher yet, up into the firmament, range after range of blue and snow-capped mountains. i was bewildered and amazed, having heard nothing of this great beauty. the town when entered is quite eastern. the streets are formed of open stalls under the first story, in which squat tailors, cooks, sherbet vendors and the like, busy at their work or smoking narghilehs. cloths stretched from house to house keep out the sun. mules rattle through the crowd; curs yelp between your legs; negroes are as hideous and bright clothed as usual; grave turks with long chibouques continue to march solemnly without breaking them; a little arab in one dirty rag pokes fun at two splendid little turks with brilliant fezzes; wiry mountaineers in dirty, full, white kilts, shouldering long guns and one hand on their pistols, stalk untamed past a dozen turkish soldiers, who look sheepish and brutal in worn cloth jacket and cotton trousers. a headless, wingless lion of st. mark still stands upon a gate, and has left the mark of his strong clutch. of ancient times when crete was crete, not a trace remains; save perhaps in the full, well-cut nostril and firm tread of that mountaineer, and i suspect that even his sires were albanians, mere outer barbarians. 'may 17. i spent the day at the little station where the cable was landed, which has apparently been first a venetian monastery and then a turkish mosque. at any rate the big dome is very cool, and the little ones hold [our electric] batteries capitally. a handsome young bashibazouk guards it, and a still handsomer mountaineer is the servant; so i draw them and the monastery and the hill, till i'm black in the face with heat and come on board to hear the canea cable is still bad. 'may 23. 'we arrived in the morning at the east end of candia, and had a glorious scramble over the mountains which seem built of adamant. time has worn away the softer portions of the rock, only leaving sharp jagged edges of steel. sea eagles soaring above our heads; old tanks, ruins, and desolation at our feet. the ancient arsinoe stood here; a few blocks of marble with the cross attest the presence of venetian christians; but now the desolation of desolations. mr. liddell and i separated from the rest, and when we had found a sure bay for the cable, had a tremendous lively scramble back to the boat. these are the bits of our life which i enjoy, which have some poetry, some grandeur in them. 'may 29 (?). 'yesterday we ran round to the new harbour [of alexandria], landed the shore end of the cable close to cleopatra's bath, and made a very satisfactory start about one in the afternoon. we had scarcely gone 200 yards when i noticed that the cable ceased to run out, and i wondered why the ship had stopped. people ran aft to tell me not to put such a strain on the cable; i answered indignantly that there was no strain; and suddenly it broke on every one in the ship at once that we were aground. here was a nice mess. a violent scirocco blew from the land; making one's skin feel as if it belonged to some one else and didn't fit, making the horizon dim and yellow with fine sand, oppressing every sense and raising the thermometer 20 degrees in an hour, but making calm water round us which enabled the ship to lie for the time in safety. the wind might change at any moment, since the scirocco was only accidental; and at the first wave from seaward bump would go the poor ship, and there would [might] be an end of our voyage. the captain, without waiting to sound, began to make an effort to put the ship over what was supposed to be a sandbank; but by the time soundings were made, this was found to be impossible, and he had only been jamming the poor elba faster on a rock. now every effort was made to get her astern, an anchor taken out, a rope brought to a winch i had for the cable, and the engines backed; but all in vain. a small turkish government steamer, which is to be our consort, came to our assistance, but of course very slowly, and much time was occupied before we could get a hawser to her. i could do no good after having made a chart of the soundings round the ship, and went at last on to the bridge to sketch the scene. but at that moment the strain from the winch and a jerk from the turkish steamer got off the boat, after we had been some hours aground. the carpenter reported that she had made only two inches of water in one compartment; the cable was still uninjured astern, and our spirits rose; when, will you believe it? after going a short distance astern, the pilot ran us once more fast aground on what seemed to me nearly the same spot. the very same scene was gone through as on the first occasion, and dark came on whilst the wind shifted, and we were still aground. dinner was served up, but poor mr. liddell could eat very little; and bump, bump, grind, grind, went the ship fifteen or sixteen times as we sat at dinner. the slight sea, however, did enable us to bump off. this morning we appear not to have suffered in any way; but a sea is rolling in, which a few hours ago would have settled the poor old elba. 'june -. 'the alexandria cable has again failed; after paying out two-thirds of the distance successfully, an unlucky touch in deep water snapped the line. luckily the accident occurred in mr. liddell's watch. though personally it may not really concern me, the accident weighs like a personal misfortune. still i am glad i was present: a failure is probably more instructive than a success; and this experience may enable us to avoid misfortune in still greater undertakings. 'june -. 'we left syra the morning after our arrival on saturday the 4th. this we did (first) because we were in a hurry to do something and (second) because, coming from alexandria, we had four days' quarantine to perform. we were all mustered along the side while the doctor counted us; the letters were popped into a little tin box and taken away to be smoked; the guardians put on board to see that we held no communication with the shore without them we should still have had four more days' quarantine; and with twelve greek sailors besides, we started merrily enough picking up the canea cable. . . . to our utter dismay, the yarn covering began to come up quite decayed, and the cable, which when laid should have borne half a ton, was now in danger of snapping with a tenth part of that strain. we went as slow as possible in fear of a break at every instant. my watch was from eight to twelve in the morning, and during that time we had barely secured three miles of cable. once it broke inside the ship, but i seized hold of it in time the weight being hardly anything and the line for the nonce was saved. regular nooses were then planted inboard with men to draw them taut, should the cable break inboard. a-, who should have relieved me, was unwell, so i had to continue my look-out; and about one o'clock the line again parted, but was again caught in the last noose, with about four inches to spare. five minutes afterwards it again parted and was yet once more caught. mr. liddell (whom i had called) could stand this no longer; so we buoyed the line and ran into a bay in siphano, waiting for calm weather, though i was by no means of opinion that the slight sea and wind had been the cause of our failures. all next day (monday) we lay off siphano, amusing ourselves on shore with fowling pieces and navy revolvers. i need not say we killed nothing; and luckily we did not wound any of ourselves. a guardiano accompanied us, his functions being limited to preventing actual contact with the natives, for they might come as near and talk as much as they pleased. these isles of greece are sad, interesting places. they are not really barren all over, but they are quite destitute of verdure; and tufts of thyme, wild mastic or mint, though they sound well, are not nearly so pretty as grass. many little churches, glittering white, dot the islands; most of them, i believe, abandoned during the whole year with the exception of one day sacred to their patron saint. the villages are mean, but the inhabitants do not look wretched and the men are good sailors. there is something in this greek race yet; they will become a powerful levantine nation in the course of time. what a lovely moonlight evening that was! the barren island cutting the clear sky with fantastic outline, marble cliffs on either hand fairly gleaming over the calm sea. next day, the wind still continuing, i proposed a boating excursion and decoyed a-, l-, and sinto accompanying me. we took the little gig, and sailed away merrily enough round a point to a beautiful white bay, flanked with two glistening little churches, fronted by beautiful distant islands; when suddenly, to my horror, i discovered the elba steaming full speed out from the island. of course we steered after her; but the wind that instant ceased, and we were left in a dead calm. there was nothing for it but to unship the mast, get out the oars and pull. the ship was nearly certain to stop at the buoy; and i wanted to learn how to take an oar, so here was a chance with a vengeance! lsteered, and we three pulled a broiling pull it was about half way across to palikandro still we did come in, pulling an uncommon good stroke, and i had learned to hang on my oar. lhad pressed me to let him take my place; but though i was very tired at the end of the first quarter of an hour, and then every successive half hour, i would not give in. i nearly paid dear for my obstinacy, however; for in the evening i had alternate fits of shivering and burning.' iii. the next extracts, and i am sorry to say the last, are from fleeming's letters of 1860, when he was back at bona and spartivento and for the first time at the head of an expedition. unhappily these letters are not only the last, but the series is quite imperfect; and this is the more to be lamented as he had now begun to use a pen more skilfully, and in the following notes there is at times a touch of real distinction in the manner. 'cagliari: october 5, 1860. 'all tuesday i spent examining what was on board the elba, and trying to start the repairs of the spartivento land line, which has been entirely neglected, and no wonder, for no one has been paid for three months, no, not even the poor guards who have to keep themselves, their horses and their families, on their pay. wednesday morning, i started for spartivento and got there in time to try a good many experiments. spartivento looks more wild and savage than ever, but is not without a strange deadly beauty: the hills covered with bushes of a metallic green with coppery patches of soil in between; the valleys filled with dry salt mud and a little stagnant water; where that very morning the deer had drunk, where herons, curlews, and other fowl abound, and where, alas! malaria is breeding with this rain. (no fear for those who do not sleep on shore.) a little iron hut had been placed there since 1858; but the windows had been carried off, the door broken down, the roof pierced all over. in it, we sat to make experiments; and how it recalled birkenhead! there was thomson, there was my testing board, the strings of gutta-percha; harry peven, battering with the batteries; but where was my darling annie? whilst i sat feet in sand, with harry alone inside the hut -mats, coats, and wood to darken the window the others visited the murderous old friar, who is of the order of scaloppi, and for whom i brought a letter from his superior, ordering him to pay us attention; but he was away from home, gone to cagliari in a boat with the produce of the farm belonging to his convent. then they visited the tower of chia, but could not get in because the door is thirty feet off the ground; so they came back and pitched a magnificent tent which i brought from the bahiana a long time ago and where they will live (if i mistake not) in preference to the friar's, or the owland bat-haunted tower. mm. tand swill be left there: t-, an intelligent, hard-working frenchman, with whom i am well pleased; he can speak english and italian well, and has been two years at genoa. sis a french german with a face like an ancient gaul, who has been sergeant-major in the french line and who is, i see, a great, big, muscular faineant. we left the tent pitched and some stores in charge of a guide, and ran back to cagliari. 'certainly, being at the head of things is pleasanter than being subordinate. we all agree very well; and i have made the testing office into a kind of private room where i can come and write to you undisturbed, surrounded by my dear, bright brass things which all of them remind me of our nights at birkenhead. then i can work here, too, and try lots of experiments; you know how i like that! and now and then i read shakespeare principally. thank you so much for making me bring him: i think i must get a pocket edition of hamlet and henry the fifth, so as never to be without them. 'cagliari: october 7. '[the town was full?] . . . of red-shirted english garibaldini. a very fine looking set of fellows they are, too: the officers rather raffish, but with medals crimean and indian; the men a very sturdy set, with many lads of good birth i should say. they still wait their consort the emperor and will, i fear, be too late to do anything. i meant to have called on them, but they are all gone into barracks some way from the town, and i have been much too busy to go far. 'the view from the ramparts was very strange and beautiful. cagliari rises on a very steep rock, at the mouth of a wide plain circled by large hills and three-quarters filled with lagoons; it looks, therefore, like an old island citadel. large heaps of salt mark the border between the sea and the lagoons; thousands of flamingoes whiten the centre of the huge shallow marsh; hawks hover and scream among the trees under the high mouldering battlements. a little lower down, the band played. men and ladies bowed and pranced, the costumes posed, church bells tinkled, processions processed, the sun set behind thick clouds capping the hills; i pondered on you and enjoyed it all. 'decidedly i prefer being master to being man: boats at all hours, stewards flying for marmalade, captain enquiring when ship is to sail, clerks to copy my writing, the boat to steer when we go out i have run her nose on several times; decidedly, i begin to feel quite a little king. confound the cable, though! i shall never be able to repair it. 'bona: october 14. 'we left cagliari at 4.30 on the 9th and soon got to spartivento. i repeated some of my experiments, but found thomson, who was to have been my grand stand-by, would not work on that day in the wretched little hut. even if the windows and door had been put in, the wind which was very high made the lamp flicker about and blew it out; so i sent on board and got old sails, and fairly wrapped the hut up in them; and then we were as snug as could be, and i left the hut in glorious condition with a nice little stove in it. the tent which should have been forthcoming from the cure's for the guards, had gone to cagliari; but i found another, [a] green, turkish tent, in the elba and soon had him up. the square tent left on the last occasion was standing all right and tight in spite of wind and rain. we landed provisions, two beds, plates, knives, forks, candles, cooking utensils, and were ready for a start at 6 p.m.; but the wind meanwhile had come on to blow at such a rate that i thought better of it, and we stopped. tand sslept ashore, however, to see how they liked it, at least they tried to sleep, for sthe ancient sergeant-major had a toothache, and t thought the tent was coming down every minute. next morning they could only complain of sand and a leaky coffee-pot, so i leave them with a good conscience. the little encampment looked quite picturesque: the green round tent, the square white tent and the hut all wrapped up in sails, on a sand hill, looking on the sea and masking those confounded marshes at the back. one would have thought the cagliaritans were in a conspiracy to frighten the two poor fellows, who (i believe) will be safe enough if they do not go into the marshes after nightfall. sbrought a little dog to amuse them, such a jolly, ugly little cur without a tail, but full of fun; he will be better than quinine. 'the wind drove a barque, which had anchored near us for shelter, out to sea. we started, however, at 2 p.m., and had a quick passage but a very rough one, getting to bona by daylight [on the 11th]. such a place as this is for getting anything done! the health boat went away from us at 7.30 with won board; and we heard nothing of them till 9.30, when wcame back with two fat frenchmen who are to look on on the part of the government. they are exactly alike: only one has four bands and the other three round his cap, and so i know them. then i sent a boat round to fort genois [fort genova of 1858], where the cable is landed, with all sorts of things and directions, whilst i went ashore to see about coals and a room at the fort. we hunted people in the little square in their shops and offices, but only found them in cafes. one amiable gentleman wasn't up at 9.30, was out at 10, and as soon as he came back the servant said he would go to bed and not get up till 3: he came, however, to find us at a cafe, and said that, on the contrary, two days in the week he did not do so! then my two fat friends must have their breakfast after their "something" at a cafe; and all the shops shut from 10 to 2; and the post does not open till 12; and there was a road to fort genois, only a bridge had been carried away, &c. at last i got off, and we rowed round to fort genois, where my men had put up a capital gipsy tent with sails, and there was my big board and thomson's number 5 in great glory. i soon came to the conclusion there was a break. two of my faithful cagliaritans slept all night in the little tent, to guard it and my precious instruments; and the sea, which was rather rough, silenced my frenchmen. 'next day i went on with my experiments, whilst a boat grappled for the cable a little way from shore and buoyed it where the elba could get hold. i brought all back to the elba, tried my machinery and was all ready for a start next morning. but the wretched coal had not come yet; government permission from algiers to be got; lighters, men, baskets, and i know not what forms to be got or got through and everybody asleep! coals or no coals, i was determined to start next morning; and start we did at four in the morning, picked up the buoy with our deck engine, popped the cable across a boat, tested the wires to make sure the fault was not behind us, and started picking up at 11. everything worked admirably, and about 2 p.m., in came the fault. there is no doubt the cable was broken by coral fishers; twice they have had it up to their own knowledge. 'many men have been ashore to-day and have come back tipsy, and the whole ship is in a state of quarrel from top to bottom, and they will gossip just within my hearing. and we have had, moreover, three french gentlemen and a french lady to dinner, and i had to act host and try to manage the mixtures to their taste. the goodnatured little frenchwoman was most amusing; when i asked her if she would have some apple tart "mon dieu," with heroic resignation, "je veux bien"; or a little plombodding "mais ce que vous voudrez, monsieur!" 's. s. elba, somewhere not far from bona: oct. 19. 'yesterday [after three previous days of useless grappling] was destined to be very eventful. we began dredging at daybreak and hooked at once every time in rocks; but by capital luck, just as we were deciding it was no use to continue in that place, we hooked the cable: up it came, was tested, and lo! another complete break, a quarter of a mile off. i was amazed at my own tranquillity under these disappointments, but i was not really half so fussy as about getting a cab. well, there was nothing for it but grappling again, and, as you may imagine, we were getting about six miles from shore. but the water did not deepen rapidly; we seemed to be on the crest of a kind of submarine mountain in prolongation of cape de gonde, and pretty havoc we must have made with the crags. what rocks we did hook! no sooner was the grapnel down than the ship was anchored; and then came such a business: ship's engines going, deck engine thundering, belt slipping, fear of breaking ropes: actually breaking grapnels. it was always an hour or more before we could get the grapnel down again. at last we had to give up the place, though we knew we were close to the cable, and go further to sea in much deeper water; to my great fear, as i knew the cable was much eaten away and would stand but little strain. well, we hooked the cable first dredge this time, and pulled it slowly and gently to the top, with much trepidation. was it the cable? was there any weight on? it was evidently too small. imagine my dismay when the cable did come up, but hanging loosely, thus [picture] instead of taut, thus [picture] showing certain signs of a break close by. for a moment i felt provoked, as i thought, "here we are in deep water, and the cable will not stand lifting!" i tested at once, and by the very first wire found it had broken towards shore and was good towards sea. this was of course very pleasant; but from that time to this, though the wires test very well, not a signal has come from spartivento. i got the cable into a boat, and a gutta-percha line from the ship to the boat, and we signalled away at a great rate but no signs of life. the tests, however, make me pretty sure one wire at least is good; so i determined to lay down cable from where we were to the shore, and go to spartivento to see what had happened there. i fear my men are ill. the night was lovely, perfectly calm; so we lay close to the boat and signals were continually sent, but with no result. this morning i laid the cable down to fort genois in style; and now we are picking up odds and ends of cable between the different breaks, and getting our buoys on board, &c. to-morrow i expect to leave for spartivento.' iv. and now i am quite at an end of journal keeping; diaries and diary letters being things of youth which fleeming had at length outgrown. but one or two more fragments from his correspondence may be taken, and first this brief sketch of the laying of the norderney cable; mainly interesting as showing under what defects of strength and in what extremities of pain, this cheerful man must at times continue to go about his work. 'i slept on board 29th september having arranged everything to start by daybreak from where we lay in the roads: but at daybreak a heavy mist hung over us so that nothing of land or water could be seen. at midday it lifted suddenly and away we went with perfect weather, but could not find the buoys forde left, that evening. i saw the captain was not strong in navigation, and took matters next day much more into my own hands and before nine o'clock found the buoys; (the weather had been so fine we had anchored in the open sea near texel). it took us till the evening to reach the buoys, get the cable on board, test the first half, speak to lowestoft, make the splice, and start. hhad not finished his work at norderney, so i was alone on board for reuter. moreover the buoys to guide us in our course were not placed, and the captain had very vague ideas about keeping his course; so i had to do a good deal, and only lay down as i was for two hours in the night. i managed to run the course perfectly. everything went well, and we found norderney just where we wanted it next afternoon, and if the shore end had been laid, could have finished there and then, october 1st. but when we got to norderney, we found the caroline with shore end lying apparently aground, and could not understand her signals; so we had to anchor suddenly and i went off in a small boat with the captain to the caroline. it was cold by this time, and my arm was rather stiff and i was tired; i hauled myself up on board the caroline by a rope and found hand two men on board. all the rest were trying to get the shore end on shore, but had failed and apparently had stuck on shore, and the waves were getting up. we had anchored in the right place and next morning we hoped the shore end would be laid, so we had only to go back. it was of course still colder and quite night. i went to bed and hoped to sleep, but, alas, the rheumatism got into the joints and caused me terrible pain so that i could not sleep. i bore it as long as i could in order to disturb no one, for all were tired; but at last i could bear it no longer and managed to wake the steward and got a mustard poultice which took the pain from the shoulder; but then the elbow got very bad, and i had to call the second steward and get a second poultice, and then it was daylight, and i felt very ill and feverish. the sea was now rather rough too rough rather for small boats, but luckily a sort of thing called a scoot came out, and we got on board her with some trouble, and got on shore after a good tossing about which made us all sea-sick. the cable sent from the caroline was just 60 yards too short and did not reach the shore, so although the caroline did make the splice late that night, we could neither test nor speak. reuter was at norderney, and i had to do the best i could, which was not much, and went to bed early; i thought i should never sleep again, but in sheer desperation got up in the middle of the night and gulped a lot of raw whiskey and slept at last. but not long. a mr. f washed my face and hands and dressed me: and we hauled the cable out of the sea, and got it joined to the telegraph station, and on october 3rd telegraphed to lowestoft first and then to london. miss clara volkman, a niece of mr. reuter's, sent the first message to mrs. reuter, who was waiting (varley used miss clara's hand as a kind of key), and i sent one of the first messages to odden. i thought a message addressed to him would not frighten you, and that he would enjoy a message through papa's cable. i hope he did. they were all very merry, but i had been so lowered by pain that i could not enjoy myself in spite of the success.' v. of the 1869 cruise in the great eastern, i give what i am able; only sorry it is no more, for the sake of the ship itself, already almost a legend even to the generation that saw it launched. 'june 17, 1869. here are the names of our staff in whom i expect you to be interested, as future great eastern stories may be full of them: theophilus smith, a man of latimer clark's; leslie c. hill, my prizeman at university college; lord sackville cecil; king, one of the thomsonian kings; laws, goes for willoughby smith, who will also be on board; varley, clark, and sir james anderson make up the sum of all you know anything of. a captain halpin commands the big ship. there are four smaller vessels. the wm. cory, which laid the norderney cable, has already gone to st. pierre to lay the shore ends. the hawk and chiltern have gone to brest to lay shore ends. the hawk and scanderia go with us across the atlantic and we shall at st. pierre be transhipped into one or the other. 'june 18. somewhere in london. the shore end is laid, as you may have seen, and we are all under pressing orders to march, so we start from london to-night at 5.10. 'june 20. off ushant. i am getting quite fond of the big ship. yesterday morning in the quiet sunlight, she turned so slowly and lazily in the great harbour at portland, and bye and bye slipped out past the long pier with so little stir, that i could hardly believe we were really off. no men drunk, no women crying, no singing or swearing, no confusion or bustle on deck nobody apparently aware that they had anything to do. the look of the thing was that the ship had been spoken to civilly and had kindly undertaken to do everything that was necessary without any further interference. i have a nice cabin with plenty of room for my legs in my berth and have slept two nights like a top. then we have the ladies' cabin set apart as an engineer's office, and i think this decidedly the nicest place in the ship: 35 ft. x 20 ft. broad four tables, three great mirrors, plenty of air and no heat from the funnels which spoil the great dining-room. i saw a whole library of books on the walls when here last, and this made me less anxious to provide light literature; but alas, to-day i find that they are every one bibles or prayer-books. now one cannot read many hundred bibles. . . . as for the motion of the ship it is not very much, but 'twill suffice. thomson shook hands and wished me well. i do like thomson. . . . tell austin that the great eastern has six masts and four funnels. when i get back i will make a little model of her for all the chicks and pay out cotton reels. . . . here we are at 4.20 at brest. we leave probably to-morrow morning. 'july 12. great eastern. here as i write we run our last course for the buoy at the st. pierre shore end. it blows and lightens, and our good ship rolls, and buoys are hard to find; but we must soon now finish our work, and then this letter will start for home. . . . yesterday we were mournfully groping our way through the wet grey fog, not at all sure where we were, with one consort lost and the other faintly answering the roar of our great whistle through the mist. as to the ship which was to meet us, and pioneer us up the deep channel, we did not know if we should come within twenty miles of her; when suddenly up went the fog, out came the sun, and there, straight ahead, was the wm. cory, our pioneer, and a little dancing boat, the gulnare, sending signals of welcome with manycoloured flags. since then we have been steaming in a grand procession; but now at 2 a.m. the fog has fallen, and the great roaring whistle calls up the distant answering notes all around us. shall we, or shall we not find the buoy? 'july 13. all yesterday we lay in the damp dripping fog, with whistles all round and guns firing so that we might not bump up against one another. this little delay has let us get our reports into tolerable order. we are now at 7 o'clock getting the cable end again, with the main cable buoy close to us.' a telegram of july 20: 'i have received your four welcome letters. the americans are charming people.' vi. and here to make an end are a few random bits about the cruise to pernambuco:'plymouth, june 21, 1873. i have been down to the sea-shore and smelt the salt sea and like it; and i have seen the hooper pointing her great bow sea-ward, while light smoke rises from her funnels telling that the fires are being lighted; and sorry as i am to be without you, something inside me answers to the call to be off and doing. 'lalla rookh. plymouth, june 22. we have been a little cruise in the yacht over to the eddystone lighthouse, and my sea-legs seem very well on. strange how alike all these starts are first on shore, steaming hot days with a smell of bone-dust and tar and salt water; then the little puffing, panting steam-launch that bustles out across a port with green woody sides, little yachts sliding about, men-of-war training-ships, and then a great big black hulk of a thing with a mass of smaller vessels sticking to it like parasites; and that is one's home being coaled. then comes the champagne lunch where everyone says all that is polite to everyone else, and then the uncertainty when to start. so far as we know now, we are to start to-morrow morning at daybreak; letters that come later are to be sent to pernambuco by first mail. . . . my father has sent me the heartiest sort of jack tar's cheer. 's. s. hooper. off funchal, june 29. here we are off madeira at seven o'clock in the morning. thomson has been sounding with his special toy ever since half-past three (1087 fathoms of water). i have been watching the day break, and long jagged islands start into being out of the dull night. we are still some miles from land; but the sea is calmer than loch eil often was, and the big hooper rests very contentedly after a pleasant voyage and favourable breezes. i have not been able to do any real work except the testing [of the cable], for though not sea-sick, i get a little giddy when i try to think on board. . . . the ducks have just had their daily souse and are quacking and gabbling in a mighty way outside the door of the captain's deck cabin where i write. the cocks are crowing, and new-laid eggs are said to be found in the coops. four mild oxen have been untethered and allowed to walk along the broad iron decks a whole drove of sheep seem quite content while licking big lumps of bay salt. two exceedingly impertinent goats lead the cook a perfect life of misery. they steal round the galley and will nibble the carrots or turnips if his back is turned for one minute; and then he throws something at them and misses them; and they scuttle off laughing impudently, and flick one ear at him from a safe distance. this is the most impudent gesture i ever saw. winking is nothing to it. the ear normally hangs down behind; the goat turns sideways to her enemy by a little knowing cock of the head flicks one ear over one eye, and squints from behind it for half a minute tosses her head back, skips a pace or two further off, and repeats the manoeuvre. the cook is very fat and cannot run after that goat much. 'pernambuco, aug. 1. we landed here yesterday, all well and cable sound, after a good passage. . . . i am on familiar terms with cocoa-nuts, mangoes, and bread-fruit trees, but i think i like the negresses best of anything i have seen. in turbans and loose seagreen robes, with beautiful black-brown complexions and a stately carriage, they really are a satisfaction to my eye. the weather has been windy and rainy; the hooper has to lie about a mile from the town, in an open roadstead, with the whole swell of the atlantic driving straight on shore. the little steam launch gives all who go in her a good ducking, as she bobs about on the big rollers; and my old gymnastic practice stands me in good stead on boarding and leaving her. we clamber down a rope ladder hanging from the high stern, and then taking a rope in one hand, swing into the launch at the moment when she can contrive to steam up under us bobbing about like an apple thrown into a tub all the while. the president of the province and his suite tried to come off to a state luncheon on board on sunday; but the launch being rather heavily laden, behaved worse than usual, and some green seas stove in the president's hat and made him wetter than he had probably ever been in his life; so after one or two rollers, he turned back; and indeed he was wise to do so, for i don't see how he could have got on board. . . . being fully convinced that the world will not continue to go round unless i pay it personal attention, i must run away to my work.' chapter vi. 1869-1885. edinburgh colleagues farrago vitae i. the family circle fleeming and his sons highland life the cruise of the steam launch summer in styria rustic manners ii. the drama private theatricals iii. sanitary associations the phonograph iv. fleeming's acquaintance with a student his late maturity of mind religion and morality his love of heroism taste in literature v. his talk his late popularity letter from m. trelat. the remaining external incidents of fleeming's life, pleasures, honours, fresh interests, new friends, are not such as will bear to be told at any length or in the temporal order. and it is now time to lay narration by, and to look at the man he was and the life he lived, more largely. edinburgh, which was thenceforth to be his home, is a metropolitan small town; where college professors and the lawyers of the parliament house give the tone, and persons of leisure, attracted by educational advantages, make up much of the bulk of society. not, therefore, an unlettered place, yet not pedantic, edinburgh will compare favourably with much larger cities. a hard and disputatious element has been commented on by strangers: it would not touch fleeming, who was himself regarded, even in this metropolis of disputation, as a thorny table-mate. to golf unhappily he did not take, and golf is a cardinal virtue in the city of the winds. nor did he become an archer of the queen's body-guard, which is the chiltern hundreds of the distasted golfer. he did not even frequent the evening club, where his colleague tait (in my day) was so punctual and so genial. so that in some ways he stood outside of the lighter and kindlier life of his new home. i should not like to say that he was generally popular; but there as elsewhere, those who knew him well enough to love him, loved him well. and he, upon his side, liked a place where a dinner party was not of necessity unintellectual, and where men stood up to him in argument. the presence of his old classmate, tait, was one of his early attractions to the chair; and now that fleeming is gone again, tait still remains, ruling and really teaching his great classes. sir robert christison was an old friend of his mother's; sir alexander grant, kelland, and sellar, were new acquaintances and highly valued; and these too, all but the last, have been taken from their friends and labours. death has been busy in the senatus. i will speak elsewhere of fleeming's demeanour to his students; and it will be enough to add here that his relations with his colleagues in general were pleasant to himself. edinburgh, then, with its society, its university work, its delightful scenery, and its skating in the winter, was thenceforth his base of operations. but he shot meanwhile erratic in many directions: twice to america, as we have seen, on telegraph voyages; continually to london on business; often to paris; year after year to the highlands to shoot, to fish, to learn reels and gaelic, to make the acquaintance and fall in love with the character of highlanders; and once to styria, to hunt chamois and dance with peasant maidens. all the while, he was pursuing the course of his electrical studies, making fresh inventions, taking up the phonograph, filled with theories of graphic representation; reading, writing, publishing, founding sanitary associations, interested in technical education, investigating the laws of metre, drawing, acting, directing private theatricals, going a long way to see an actor a long way to see a picture; in the very bubble of the tideway of contemporary interests. and all the while he was busied about his father and mother, his wife, and in particular his sons; anxiously watching, anxiously guiding these, and plunging with his whole fund of youthfulness into their sports and interests. and all the while he was himself maturing not in character or body, for these remained young but in the stocked mind, in the tolerant knowledge of life and man, in pious acceptance of the universe. here is a farrago for a chapter: here is a world of interests and activities, human, artistic, social, scientific, at each of which he sprang with impetuous pleasure, on each of which he squandered energy, the arrow drawn to the head, the whole intensity of his spirit bent, for the moment, on the momentary purpose. it was this that lent such unusual interest to his society, so that no friend of his can forget that figure of fleeming coming charged with some new discovery: it is this that makes his character so difficult to represent. our fathers, upon some difficult theme, would invoke the muse; i can but appeal to the imagination of the reader. when i dwell upon some one thing, he must bear in mind it was only one of a score; that the unweariable brain was teeming at the very time with other thoughts; that the good heart had left no kind duty forgotten. i. in edinburgh, for a considerable time, fleeming's family, to three generations, was united: mr. and mrs. austin at hailes, captain and mrs. jenkin in the suburb of merchiston, fleeming himself in the city. it is not every family that could risk with safety such close interdomestic dealings; but in this also fleeming was particularly favoured. even the two extremes, mr. austin and the captain, drew together. it is pleasant to find that each of the old gentlemen set a high value on the good looks of the other, doubtless also on his own; and a fine picture they made as they walked the green terrace at hailes, conversing by the hour. what they talked of is still a mystery to those who knew them; but mr. austin always declared that on these occasions he learned much. to both of these families of elders, due service was paid of attention; to both, fleeming's easy circumstances had brought joy; and the eyes of all were on the grandchildren. in fleeming's scheme of duties, those of the family stood first; a man was first of all a child, nor did he cease to be so, but only took on added obligations, when he became in turn a father. the care of his parents was always a first thought with him, and their gratification his delight. and the care of his sons, as it was always a grave subject of study with him, and an affair never neglected, so it brought him a thousand satisfactions. 'hard work they are,' as he once wrote, 'but what fit work!' and again: 'o, it's a cold house where a dog is the only representative of a child!' not that dogs were despised; we shall drop across the name of jack, the harum-scarum irish terrier ere we have done; his own dog plato went up with him daily to his lectures, and still (like other friends) feels the loss and looks visibly for the reappearance of his master; and martin, the cat, fleeming has himself immortalised, to the delight of mr. swinburne, in the columns of the spectator. indeed there was nothing in which men take interest, in which he took not some; and yet always most in the strong human bonds, ancient as the race and woven of delights and duties. he was even an anxious father; perhaps that is the part where optimism is hardest tested. he was eager for his sons; eager for their health, whether of mind or body; eager for their education; in that, i should have thought, too eager. but he kept a pleasant face upon all things, believed in play, loved it himself, shared boyishly in theirs, and knew how to put a face of entertainment upon business and a spirit of education into entertainment. if he was to test the progress of the three boys, this advertisement would appear in their little manuscript paper:'notice: the professor of engineering in the university of edinburgh intends at the close of the scholastic year to hold examinations in the following subjects: (1) for boys in the fourth class of the academy geometry and algebra; (2) for boys at mr. henderson's school dictation and recitation; (3) for boys taught exclusively by their mothers arithmetic and reading.' prizes were given; but what prize would be so conciliatory as this boyish little joke? it may read thin here; it would smack racily in the playroom. whenever his sons 'started a new fad' (as one of them writes to me) they 'had only to tell him about it, and he was at once interested and keen to help.' he would discourage them in nothing unless it was hopelessly too hard for them; only, if there was any principle of science involved, they must understand the principle; and whatever was attempted, that was to be done thoroughly. if it was but play, if it was but a puppetshow they were to build, he set them the example of being no sluggard in play. when frewen, the second son, embarked on the ambitious design to make an engine for a toy steamboat, fleeming made him begin with a proper drawing doubtless to the disgust of the young engineer; but once that foundation laid, helped in the work with unflagging gusto, 'tinkering away,' for hours, and assisted at the final trial 'in the big bath' with no less excitement than the boy. 'he would take any amount of trouble to help us,' writes my correspondent. 'we never felt an affair was complete till we had called him to see, and he would come at any time, in the middle of any work.' there was indeed one recognised playhour, immediately after the despatch of the day's letters; and the boys were to be seen waiting on the stairs until the mail should be ready and the fun could begin. but at no other time did this busy man suffer his work to interfere with that first duty to his children; and there is a pleasant tale of the inventive master frewen, engaged at the time upon a toy crane, bringing to the study where his father sat at work a halfwound reel that formed some part of his design, and observing, 'papa, you might finiss windin' this for me; i am so very busy today.' i put together here a few brief extracts from fleeming's letters, none very important in itself, but all together building up a pleasant picture of the father with his sons. 'jan. 15th, 1875. frewen contemplates suspending soap bubbles by silk threads for experimental purposes. i don't think he will manage that. bernard' [the youngest] 'volunteered to blow the bubbles with enthusiasm.' 'jan. 17th. i am learning a great deal of electrostatics in consequence of the perpetual cross-examination to which i am subjected. i long for you on many grounds, but one is that i may not be obliged to deliver a running lecture on abstract points of science, subject to crossexamination by two acute students. bernie does not cross-examine much; but if anyone gets discomfited, he laughs a sort of little silver-whistle giggle, which is trying to the unhappy blunderer.' 'may 9th. frewen is deep in parachutes. i beg him not to drop from the top landing in one of his own making.' 'june 6th, 1876. frewen's crank axle is a failure just at present but he bears up.' 'june 14th. the boys enjoy their riding. it gets them whole funds of adventures. one of their caps falling off is matter for delightful reminiscences; and when a horse breaks his step, the occurrence becomes a rear, a shy, or a plunge as they talk it over. austin, with quiet confidence, speaks of the greater pleasure in riding a spirited horse, even if he does give a little trouble. it is the stolid brute that he dislikes. (n.b. you can still see six inches between him and the saddle when his pony trots.) i listen and sympathise and throw out no hint that their achievements are not really great.' 'june 18th. bernard is much impressed by the fact that i can be useful to frewen about the steamboat' [which the latter irrepressible inventor was making]. 'he says quite with awe, "he would not have got on nearly so well if you had not helped him."' 'june 27th. i do not see what i could do without austin. he talks so pleasantly and is so truly good all through.' 'june 27th. my chief difficulty with austin is to get him measured for a pair of trousers. hitherto i have failed, but i keep a stout heart and mean to succeed. frewen the observer, in describing the paces of two horses, says, "polly takes twenty-seven steps to get round the school. i couldn't count sophy, but she takes more than a hundred."' 'feb. 18th, 1877. we all feel very lonely without you. frewen had to come up and sit in my room for company last night and i actually kissed him, a thing that has not occurred for years. jack, poor fellow, bears it as well as he can, and has taken the opportunity of having a fester on his foot, so he is lame and has it bathed, and this occupies his thoughts a good deal.' 'feb. 19th. as to mill, austin has not got the list yet. i think it will prejudice him very much against mill but that is not my affair. education of that kind! . . . i would as soon cram my boys with food and boast of the pounds they had eaten, as cram them with literature.' but if fleeming was an anxious father, he did not suffer his anxiety to prevent the boys from any manly or even dangerous pursuit. whatever it might occur to them to try, he would carefully show them how to do it, explain the risks, and then either share the danger himself or, if that were not possible, stand aside and wait the event with that unhappy courage of the looker-on. he was a good swimmer, and taught them to swim. he thoroughly loved all manly exercises; and during their holidays, and principally in the highlands, helped and encouraged them to excel in as many as possible: to shoot, to fish, to walk, to pull an oar, to hand, reef and steer, and to run a steam launch. in all of these, and in all parts of highland life, he shared delightedly. he was well onto forty when he took once more to shooting, he was forty-three when he killed his first salmon, but no boy could have more single-mindedly rejoiced in these pursuits. his growing love for the highland character, perhaps also a sense of the difficulty of the task, led him to take up at forty-one the study of gaelic; in which he made some shadow of progress, but not much: the fastnesses of that elusive speech retaining to the last their independence. at the house of his friend mrs. blackburn, who plays the part of a highland lady as to the manner born, he learned the delightful custom of kitchen dances, which became the rule at his own house and brought him into yet nearer contact with his neighbours. and thus at forty-two, he began to learn the reel; a study, to which he brought his usual smiling earnestness; and the steps, diagrammatically represented by his own hand, are before me as i write. it was in 1879 that a new feature was added to the highland life: a steam launch, called the purgle, the styrian corruption of walpurga, after a friend to be hereafter mentioned. 'the steam launch goes,' fleeming wrote. 'i wish you had been present to describe two scenes of which she has been the occasion already: one during which the population of ullapool, to a baby, was harnessed to her hurrahing and the other in which the same population sat with its legs over a little pier, watching frewen and bernie getting up steam for the first time.' the purgle was got with educational intent; and it served its purpose so well, and the boys knew their business so practically, that when the summer was at an end, fleeming, mrs. jenkin, frewen the engineer, bernard the stoker, and kenneth robertson a highland seaman, set forth in her to make the passage south. the first morning they got from loch broom into gruinard bay, where they lunched upon an island; but the wind blowing up in the afternoon, with sheets of rain, it was found impossible to beat to sea; and very much in the situation of castaways upon an unknown coast, the party landed at the mouth of gruinard river. a shooting lodge was spied among the trees; there fleeming went; and though the master, mr. murray, was from home, though the two jenkin boys were of course as black as colliers, and all the castaways so wetted through that, as they stood in the passage, pools formed about their feet and ran before them into the house, yet mrs. murray kindly entertained them for the night. on the morrow, however, visitors were to arrive; there would be no room and, in so out-of-the-way a spot, most probably no food for the crew of the purgle; and on the morrow about noon, with the bay white with spindrift and the wind so strong that one could scarcely stand against it, they got up steam and skulked under the land as far as sanda bay. here they crept into a seaside cave, and cooked some food; but the weather now freshening to a gale, it was plain they must moor the launch where she was, and find their way overland to some place of shelter. even to get their baggage from on board was no light business; for the dingy was blown so far to leeward every trip, that they must carry her back by hand along the beach. but this once managed, and a cart procured in the neighbourhood, they were able to spend the night in a pot-house on ault bea. next day, the sea was unapproachable; but the next they had a pleasant passage to poolewe, hugging the cliffs, the falling swell bursting close by them in the gullies, and the black scarts that sat like ornaments on the top of every stack and pinnacle, looking down into the purgle as she passed. the climate of scotland had not done with them yet: for three days they lay storm-stayed in poolewe, and when they put to sea on the morning of the fourth, the sailors prayed them for god's sake not to attempt the passage. their setting out was indeed merely tentative; but presently they had gone too far to return, and found themselves committed to double rhu reay with a foul wind and a cross sea. from half-past eleven in the morning until half-past five at night, they were in immediate and unceasing danger. upon the least mishap, the purgle must either have been swamped by the seas or bulged upon the cliffs of that rude headland. fleeming and robertson took turns baling and steering; mrs. jenkin, so violent was the commotion of the boat, held on with both hands; frewen, by robertson's direction, ran the engine, slacking and pressing her to meet the seas; and bernard, only twelve years old, deadly sea-sick, and continually thrown against the boiler, so that he was found next day to be covered with burns, yet kept an even fire. it was a very thankful party that sat down that evening to meat in the hotel at gairloch. and perhaps, although the thing was new in the family, no one was much surprised when fleeming said grace over that meal. thenceforward he continued to observe the form, so that there was kept alive in his house a grateful memory of peril and deliverance. but there was nothing of the muff in fleeming; he thought it a good thing to escape death, but a becoming and a healthful thing to run the risk of it; and what is rarer, that which he thought for himself, he thought for his family also. in spite of the terrors of rhu reay, the cruise was persevered in and brought to an end under happier conditions. one year, instead of the highlands, alt aussee, in the steiermark, was chosen for the holidays; and the place, the people, and the life delighted fleeming. he worked hard at german, which he had much forgotten since he was a boy; and what is highly characteristic, equally hard at the patois, in which he learned to excel. he won a prize at a schutzen-fest; and though he hunted chamois without much success, brought down more interesting game in the shape of the styrian peasants, and in particular of his gillie, joseph. this joseph was much of a character; and his appreciations of fleeming have a fine note of their own. the bringing up of the boys he deigned to approve of: 'fast so gut wie ein bauer,' was his trenchant criticism. the attention and courtly respect with which fleeming surrounded his wife, was something of a puzzle to the philosophic gillie; he announced in the village that mrs. jenkin die silberne frau, as the folk had prettily named her from some silver ornaments was a 'geborene grafin' who had married beneath her; and when fleeming explained what he called the english theory (though indeed it was quite his own) of married relations, joseph, admiring but unconvinced, avowed it was 'gar schon.' joseph's cousin, walpurga moser, to an orchestra of clarionet and zither, taught the family the country dances, the steierisch and the landler, and gained their hearts during the lessons. her sister loys, too, who was up at the alp with the cattle, came down to church on sundays, made acquaintance with the jenkins, and must have them up to see the sunrise from her house upon the loser, where they had supper and all slept in the loft among the hay. the mosers were not lost sight of; walpurga still corresponds with mrs. jenkin, and it was a late pleasure of fleeming's to choose and despatch a wedding present for his little mountain friend. this visit was brought to an end by a ball in the big inn parlour; the refreshments chosen, the list of guests drawn up, by joseph; the best music of the place in attendance; and hosts and guests in their best clothes. the ball was opened by mrs. jenkin dancing steierisch with a lordly bauer, in gray and silver and with a plumed hat; and fleeming followed with walpurga moser. there ran a principle through all these holiday pleasures. in styria as in the highlands, the same course was followed: fleeming threw himself as fully as he could into the life and occupations of the native people, studying everywhere their dances and their language, and conforming, always with pleasure, to their rustic etiquette. just as the ball at alt aussee was designed for the taste of joseph, the parting feast at attadale was ordered in every particular to the taste of murdoch the keeper. fleeming was not one of the common, so-called gentlemen, who take the tricks of their own coterie to be eternal principles of taste. he was aware, on the other hand, that rustic people dwelling in their own places, follow ancient rules with fastidious precision, and are easily shocked and embarrassed by what (if they used the word) they would have to call the vulgarity of visitors from town. and he, who was so cavalier with men of his own class, was sedulous to shield the more tender feelings of the peasant; he, who could be so trying in a drawing-room, was even punctilious in the cottage. it was in all respects a happy virtue. it renewed his life, during these holidays, in all particulars. it often entertained him with the discovery of strange survivals; as when, by the orders of murdoch, mrs. jenkin must publicly taste of every dish before it was set before her guests. and thus to throw himself into a fresh life and a new school of manners was a grateful exercise of fleeming's mimetic instinct; and to the pleasures of the open air, of hardships supported, of dexterities improved and displayed, and of plain and elegant society, added a spice of drama. ii. fleeming was all his life a lover of the play and all that belonged to it. dramatic literature he knew fully. he was one of the not very numerous people who can read a play: a knack, the fruit of much knowledge and some imagination, comparable to that of reading score. few men better understood the artificial principles on which a play is good or bad; few more unaffectedly enjoyed a piece of any merit of construction. his own play was conceived with a double design; for he had long been filled with his theory of the true story of griselda; used to gird at father chaucer for his misconception; and was, perhaps first of all, moved by the desire to do justice to the marquis of saluces, and perhaps only in the second place, by the wish to treat a story (as he phrased it) like a sum in arithmetic. i do not think he quite succeeded; but i must own myself no fit judge. fleeming and i were teacher and taught as to the principles, disputatious rivals in the practice, of dramatic writing. acting had always, ever since rachel and the marseillaise, a particular power on him. 'if i do not cry at the play,' he used to say, 'i want to have my money back.' even from a poor play with poor actors, he could draw pleasure. 'giacometti's elisabetta,' i find him writing, 'fetched the house vastly. poor queen elizabeth! and yet it was a little good.' and again, after a night of salvini: 'i do not suppose any one with feelings could sit out othello, if iago and desdemona were acted.' salvini was, in his view, the greatest actor he had seen. we were all indeed moved and bettered by the visit of that wonderful man. 'i declare i feel as if i could pray!' cried one of us, on the return from hamlet. 'that is prayer,' said fleeming. w. b. hole and i, in a fine enthusiasm of gratitude, determined to draw up an address to salvini, did so, and carried it to fleeming; and i shall never forget with what coldness he heard and deleted the eloquence of our draft, nor with what spirit (our vanities once properly mortified) he threw himself into the business of collecting signatures. it was his part, on the ground of his italian, to see and arrange with the actor; it was mine to write in the academy a notice of the first performance of macbeth. fleeming opened the paper, read so far, and flung it on the floor. 'no,' he cried, 'that won't do. you were thinking of yourself, not of salvini!' the criticism was shrewd as usual, but it was unfair through ignorance; it was not of myself that i was thinking, but of the difficulties of my trade which i had not well mastered. another unalloyed dramatic pleasure which fleeming and i shared the year of the paris exposition, was the marquis de villemer, that blameless play, performed by madeleine brohan, delaunay, worms, and broisat an actress, in such parts at least, to whom i have never seen full justice rendered. he had his fill of weeping on that occasion; and when the piece was at an end, in front of a cafe, in the mild, midnight air, we had our fill of talk about the art of acting. but what gave the stage so strong a hold on fleeming was an inheritance from norwich, from edward barron, and from enfield of the speaker. the theatre was one of edward barron's elegant hobbies; he read plays, as became enfield's son-in-law, with a good discretion; he wrote plays for his family, in which eliza barron used to shine in the chief parts; and later in life, after the norwich home was broken up, his little granddaughter would sit behind him in a great armchair, and be introduced, with his stately elocution, to the world of dramatic literature. from this, in a direct line, we can deduce the charades at claygate; and after money came, in the edinburgh days, that private theatre which took up so much of fleeming's energy and thought. the company mr. and mrs. r. o. carter of colwall, w. b. hole, captain charles douglas, mr. kunz, mr. burnett, professor lewis campbell, mr. charles baxter, and many more made a charming society for themselves and gave pleasure to their audience. mr. carter in sir toby belch it would be hard to beat. mr. hole in broad farce, or as the herald in the trachiniae, showed true stage talent. as for mrs. jenkin, it was for her the rest of us existed and were forgiven; her powers were an endless spring of pride and pleasure to her husband; he spent hours hearing and schooling her in private; and when it came to the performance, though there was perhaps no one in the audience more critical, none was more moved than fleeming. the rest of us did not aspire so high. there were always five performances and weeks of busy rehearsal; and whether we came to sit and stifle as the prompter, to be the dumb (or rather the inarticulate) recipients of carter's dog whip in the taming of the shrew, or having earned our spurs, to lose one more illusion in a leading part, we were always sure at least of a long and an exciting holiday in mirthful company. in this laborious annual diversion, fleeming's part was large. i never thought him an actor, but he was something of a mimic, which stood him in stead. thus he had seen got in poirier; and his own poirier, when he came to play it, breathed meritoriously of the model. the last part i saw him play was triplet, and at first i thought it promised well. but alas! the boys went for a holiday, missed a train, and were not heard of at home till late at night. poor fleeming, the man who never hesitated to give his sons a chisel or a gun, or to send them abroad in a canoe or on a horse, toiled all day at his rehearsal, growing hourly paler, triplet growing hourly less meritorious. and though the return of the children, none the worse for their little adventure, brought the colour back into his face, it could not restore him to his part. i remember finding him seated on the stairs in some rare moment of quiet during the subsequent performances. 'hullo, jenkin,' said i, 'you look down in the mouth.' 'my dear boy,' said he, 'haven't you heard me? i have not one decent intonation from beginning to end.' but indeed he never supposed himself an actor; took a part, when he took any, merely for convenience, as one takes a hand at whist; and found his true service and pleasure in the more congenial business of the manager. augier, racine, shakespeare, aristophanes in hookham frere's translation, sophocles and aeschylus in lewis campbell's, such were some of the authors whom he introduced to his public. in putting these upon the stage, he found a thousand exercises for his ingenuity and taste, a thousand problems arising which he delighted to study, a thousand opportunities to make these infinitesimal improvements which are so much in art and for the artist. our first greek play had been costumed by the professional costumer, with unforgetable results of comicality and indecorum: the second, the trachiniae, of sophocles, he took in hand himself, and a delightful task he made of it. his study was then in antiquarian books, where he found confusion, and on statues and bas-reliefs, where he at last found clearness; after an hour or so at the british museum, he was able to master 'the chiton, sleeves and all'; and before the time was ripe, he had a theory of greek tailoring at his fingers' ends, and had all the costumes made under his eye as a greek tailor would have made them. 'the greeks made the best plays and the best statues, and were the best architects: of course, they were the best tailors, too,' said he; and was never weary, when he could find a tolerant listener, of dwelling on the simplicity, the economy, the elegance both of means and effect, which made their system so delightful. but there is another side to the stage-manager's employment. the discipline of acting is detestable; the failures and triumphs of that business appeal too directly to the vanity; and even in the course of a careful amateur performance such as ours, much of the smaller side of man will be displayed. fleeming, among conflicting vanities and levities, played his part to my admiration. he had his own view; he might be wrong; but the performances (he would remind us) were after all his, and he must decide. he was, in this as in all other things, an iron taskmaster, sparing not himself nor others. if you were going to do it at all, he would see that it was done as well as you were able. i have known him to keep two culprits (and one of these his wife) repeating the same action and the same two or three words for a whole weary afternoon. and yet he gained and retained warm feelings from far the most of those who fell under his domination, and particularly (it is pleasant to remember) from the girls. after the slipshod training and the incomplete accomplishments of a girls' school, there was something at first annoying, at last exciting and bracing, in this high standard of accomplishment and perseverance. iii. it did not matter why he entered upon any study or employment, whether for amusement like the greek tailoring or the highland reels, whether from a desire to serve the public as with his sanitary work, or in the view of benefiting poorer men as with his labours for technical education, he 'pitched into it' (as he would have said himself) with the same headlong zest. i give in the appendix a letter from colonel fergusson, which tells fully the nature of the sanitary work and of fleeming's part and success in it. it will be enough to say here that it was a scheme of protection against the blundering of builders and the dishonesty of plumbers. started with an eye rather to the houses of the rich, fleeming hoped his sanitary associations would soon extend their sphere of usefulness and improve the dwellings of the poor. in this hope he was disappointed; but in all other ways the scheme exceedingly prospered, associations sprang up and continue to spring up in many quarters, and wherever tried they have been found of use. here, then, was a serious employment; it has proved highly useful to mankind; and it was begun besides, in a mood of bitterness, under the shock of what fleeming would so sensitively feel the death of a whole family of children. yet it was gone upon like a holiday jaunt. i read in colonel fergusson's letter that his schoolmates bantered him when he began to broach his scheme; so did i at first, and he took the banter as he always did with enjoyment, until he suddenly posed me with the question: 'and now do you see any other jokes to make? well, then,' said he, 'that's all right. i wanted you to have your fun out first; now we can be serious.' and then with a glowing heat of pleasure, he laid his plans before me, revelling in the details, revelling in hope. it was as he wrote about the joy of electrical experiment. 'what shall i compare them to? a new song? a greek play?' delight attended the exercise of all his powers; delight painted the future. of these ideal visions, some (as i have said) failed of their fruition. and the illusion was characteristic. fleeming believed we had only to make a virtue cheap and easy, and then all would practise it; that for an end unquestionably good, men would not grudge a little trouble and a little money, though they might stumble at laborious pains and generous sacrifices. he could not believe in any resolute badness. 'i cannot quite say,' he wrote in his young manhood, 'that i think there is no sin or misery. this i can say: i do not remember one single malicious act done to myself. in fact it is rather awkward when i have to say the lord's prayer. i have nobody's trespasses to forgive.' and to the point, i remember one of our discussions. i said it was a dangerous error not to admit there were bad people; he, that it was only a confession of blindness on our part, and that we probably called others bad only so far as we were wrapped in ourselves and lacking in the transmigratory forces of imagination. i undertook to describe to him three persons irredeemably bad and whom he should admit to be so. in the first case, he denied my evidence: 'you cannot judge a man upon such testimony,' said he. for the second, he owned it made him sick to hear the tale; but then there was no spark of malice, it was mere weakness i had described, and he had never denied nor thought to set a limit to man's weakness. at my third gentleman, he struck his colours. 'yes,' said he, 'i'm afraid that is a bad man.' and then looking at me shrewdly: 'i wonder if it isn't a very unfortunate thing for you to have met him.' i showed him radiantly how it was the world we must know, the world as it was, not a world expurgated and prettified with optimistic rainbows. 'yes, yes,' said he; 'but this badness is such an easy, lazy explanation. won't you be tempted to use it, instead of trying to understand people?' in the year 1878, he took a passionate fancy for the phonograph: it was a toy after his heart, a toy that touched the skirts of life, art, and science, a toy prolific of problems and theories. something fell to be done for a university cricket ground bazaar. 'and the thought struck him,' mr. ewing writes to me, 'to exhibit edison's phonograph, then the very newest scientific marvel. the instrument itself was not to be purchased i think no specimen had then crossed the atlantic but a copy of the times with an account of it was at hand, and by the help of this we made a phonograph which to our great joy talked, and talked, too, with the purest american accent. it was so good that a second instrument was got ready forthwith. both were shown at the bazaar: one by mrs. jenkin to people willing to pay half a crown for a private view and the privilege of hearing their own voices, while jenkin, perfervid as usual, gave half-hourly lectures on the other in an adjoining room i, as his lieutenant, taking turns. the thing was in its way a little triumph. a few of the visitors were deaf, and hugged the belief that they were the victims of a new kind of fancy-fair swindle. of the others, many who came to scoff remained to take raffle tickets; and one of the phonographs was finally disposed of in this way, falling, by a happy freak of the ballot-box, into the hands of sir william thomson.' the other remained in fleeming's hands, and was a source of infinite occupation. once it was sent to london, 'to bring back on the tinfoil the tones of a lady distinguished for clear vocalisations; at another time sir robert christison was brought in to contribute his powerful bass'; and there scarcely came a visitor about the house, but he was made the subject of experiment. the visitors, i am afraid, took their parts lightly: mr. hole and i, with unscientific laughter, commemorating various shades of scotch accent, or proposing to 'teach the poor dumb animal to swear.' but fleeming and mr. ewing, when we butterflies were gone, were laboriously ardent. many thoughts that occupied the later years of my friend were caught from the small utterance of that toy. thence came his inquiries into the roots of articulate language and the foundations of literary art; his papers on vowel sounds, his papers in the saturday review upon the laws of verse, and many a strange approximation, many a just note, thrown out in talk and now forgotten. i pass over dozens of his interests, and dwell on this trifling matter of the phonograph, because it seems to me that it depicts the man. so, for fleeming, one thing joined into another, the greater with the less. he cared not where it was he scratched the surface of the ultimate mystery in the child's toy, in the great tragedy, in the laws of the tempest, or in the properties of energy or mass certain that whatever he touched, it was a part of life and however he touched it, there would flow for his happy constitution interest and delight. 'all fables have their morals,' says thoreau, 'but the innocent enjoy the story.' there is a truth represented for the imagination in these lines of a noble poem, where we are told, that in our highest hours of visionary clearness, we can but 'see the children sport upon the shore and hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.' to this clearness fleeming had attained; and although he heard the voice of the eternal seas and weighed its message, he was yet able, until the end of his life, to sport upon these shores of death and mystery with the gaiety and innocence of children. iv. it was as a student that i first knew fleeming, as one of that modest number of young men who sat under his ministrations in a soul-chilling class-room at the top of the university buildings. his presence was against him as a professor: no one, least of all students, would have been moved to respect him at first sight: rather short in stature, markedly plain, boyishly young in manner, cocking his head like a terrier with every mark of the most engaging vivacity and readiness to be pleased, full of words, full of paradox, a stranger could scarcely fail to look at him twice, a man thrown with him in a train could scarcely fail to be engaged by him in talk, but a student would never regard him as academical. yet he had that fibre in him that order always existed in his class-room. i do not remember that he ever addressed me in language; at the least sign of unrest, his eye would fall on me and i was quelled. such a feat is comparatively easy in a small class; but i have misbehaved in smaller classes and under eyes more olympian than fleeming jenkin's. he was simply a man from whose reproof one shrank; in manner the least buckrammed of mankind, he had, in serious moments, an extreme dignity of goodness. so it was that he obtained a power over the most insubordinate of students, but a power of which i was myself unconscious. i was inclined to regard any professor as a joke, and fleeming as a particularly good joke, perhaps the broadest in the vast pleasantry of my curriculum. i was not able to follow his lectures; i somehow dared not misconduct myself, as was my customary solace; and i refrained from attending. this brought me at the end of the session into a relation with my contemned professor that completely opened my eyes. during the year, bad student as i was, he had shown a certain leaning to my society; i had been to his house, he had asked me to take a humble part in his theatricals; i was a master in the art of extracting a certificate even at the cannon's mouth; and i was under no apprehension. but when i approached fleeming, i found myself in another world; he would have naught of me. 'it is quite useless for you to come to me, mr. stevenson. there may be doubtful cases, there is no doubt about yours. you have simply not attended my class.' the document was necessary to me for family considerations; and presently i stooped to such pleadings and rose to such adjurations, as made my ears burn to remember. he was quite unmoved; he had no pity for me. 'you are no fool,' said he, 'and you chose your course.' i showed him that he had misconceived his duty, that certificates were things of form, attendance a matter of taste. two things, he replied, had been required for graduation, a certain competency proved in the final trials and a certain period of genuine training proved by certificate; if he did as i desired, not less than if he gave me hints for an examination, he was aiding me to steal a degree. 'you see, mr. stevenson, these are the laws and i am here to apply them,' said he. i could not say but that this view was tenable, though it was new to me; i changed my attack: it was only for my father's eye that i required his signature, it need never go to the senatus, i had already certificates enough to justify my year's attendance. 'bring them to me; i cannot take your word for that,' said he. 'then i will consider.' the next day i came charged with my certificates, a humble assortment. and when he had satisfied himself, 'remember,' said he, 'that i can promise nothing, but i will try to find a form of words.' he did find one, and i am still ashamed when i think of his shame in giving me that paper. he made no reproach in speech, but his manner was the more eloquent; it told me plainly what a dirty business we were on; and i went from his presence, with my certificate indeed in my possession, but with no answerable sense of triumph. that was the bitter beginning of my love for fleeming; i never thought lightly of him afterwards. once, and once only, after our friendship was truly founded, did we come to a considerable difference. it was, by the rules of poor humanity, my fault and his. i had been led to dabble in society journalism; and this coming to his ears, he felt it like a disgrace upon himself. so far he was exactly in the right; but he was scarce happily inspired when he broached the subject at his own table and before guests who were strangers to me. it was the sort of error he was always ready to repent, but always certain to repeat; and on this occasion he spoke so freely that i soon made an excuse and left the house with the firm purpose of returning no more. about a month later, i met him at dinner at a common friend's. 'now,' said he, on the stairs, 'i engage you like a lady to dance for the end of the evening. you have no right to quarrel with me and not give me a chance.' i have often said and thought that fleeming had no tact; he belied the opinion then. i remember perfectly how, so soon as we could get together, he began his attack: 'you may have grounds of quarrel with me; you have none against mrs. jenkin; and before i say another word, i want you to promise you will come to her house as usual.' an interview thus begun could have but one ending: if the quarrel were the fault of both, the merit of the reconciliation was entirely fleeming's. when our intimacy first began, coldly enough, accidentally enough on his part, he had still something of the puritan, something of the inhuman narrowness of the good youth. it fell from him slowly, year by year, as he continued to ripen, and grow milder, and understand more generously the mingled characters of men. in the early days he once read me a bitter lecture; and i remember leaving his house in a fine spring afternoon, with the physical darkness of despair upon my eyesight. long after he made me a formal retractation of the sermon and a formal apology for the pain he had inflicted; adding drolly, but truly, 'you see, at that time i was so much younger than you!' and yet even in those days there was much to learn from him; and above all his fine spirit of piety, bravely and trustfully accepting life, and his singular delight in the heroic. his piety was, indeed, a thing of chief importance. his views (as they are called) upon religious matters varied much; and he could never be induced to think them more or less than views. 'all dogma is to me mere form,' he wrote; 'dogmas are mere blind struggles to express the inexpressible. i cannot conceive that any single proposition whatever in religion is true in the scientific sense; and yet all the while i think the religious view of the world is the most true view. try to separate from the mass of their statements that which is common to socrates, isaiah, david, st. bernard, the jansenists, luther, mahomet, bunyan yes, and george eliot: of course you do not believe that this something could be written down in a set of propositions like euclid, neither will you deny that there is something common and this something very valuable. . . . i shall be sorry if the boys ever give a moment's thought to the question of what community they belong to i hope they will belong to the great community.' i should observe that as time went on his conformity to the church in which he was born grew more complete, and his views drew nearer the conventional. 'the longer i live, my dear louis,' he wrote but a few months before his death, 'the more convinced i become of a direct care by god which is reasonably impossible but there it is.' and in his last year he took the communion. but at the time when i fell under his influence, he stood more aloof; and this made him the more impressive to a youthful atheist. he had a keen sense of language and its imperial influence on men; language contained all the great and sound metaphysics, he was wont to say; and a word once made and generally understood, he thought a real victory of man and reason. but he never dreamed it could be accurate, knowing that words stand symbol for the indefinable. i came to him once with a problem which had puzzled me out of measure: what is a cause? why out of so many innumerable millions of conditions, all necessary, should one be singled out and ticketed 'the cause'? 'you do not understand,' said he. 'a cause is the answer to a question: it designates that condition which i happen to know and you happen not to know.' it was thus, with partial exception of the mathematical, that he thought of all means of reasoning: they were in his eyes but means of communication, so to be understood, so to be judged, and only so far to be credited. the mathematical he made, i say, exception of: number and measure he believed in to the extent of their significance, but that significance, he was never weary of reminding you, was slender to the verge of nonentity. science was true, because it told us almost nothing. with a few abstractions it could deal, and deal correctly; conveying honestly faint truths. apply its means to any concrete fact of life, and this high dialect of the wise became a childish jargon. thus the atheistic youth was met at every turn by a scepticism more complete than his own, so that the very weapons of the fight were changed in his grasp to swords of paper. certainly the church is not right, he would argue, but certainly not the anti-church either. men are not such fools as to be wholly in the wrong, nor yet are they so placed as to be ever wholly in the right. somewhere, in mid air between the disputants, like hovering victory in some design of a greek battle, the truth hangs undiscerned. and in the meanwhile what matter these uncertainties? right is very obvious; a great consent of the best of mankind, a loud voice within us (whether of god, or whether by inheritance, and in that case still from god), guide and command us in the path of duty. he saw life very simple; he did not love refinements; he was a friend to much conformity in unessentials. for (he would argue) it is in this life as it stands about us, that we are given our problem; the manners of the day are the colours of our palette; they condition, they constrain us; and a man must be very sure he is in the right, must (in a favourite phrase of his) be 'either very wise or very vain,' to break with any general consent in ethics. i remember taking his advice upon some point of conduct. 'now,' he said, 'how do you suppose christ would have advised you?' and when i had answered that he would not have counselled me anything unkind or cowardly, 'no,' he said, with one of his shrewd strokes at the weakness of his hearer, 'nor anything amusing.' later in life, he made less certain in the field of ethics. 'the old story of the knowledge of good and evil is a very true one,' i find him writing; only (he goes on) 'the effect of the original dose is much worn out, leaving adam's descendants with the knowledge that there is such a thing but uncertain where.' his growing sense of this ambiguity made him less swift to condemn, but no less stimulating in counsel. 'you grant yourself certain freedoms. very well,' he would say, 'i want to see you pay for them some other way. you positively cannot do this: then there positively must be something else that you can do, and i want to see you find that out and do it.' fleeming would never suffer you to think that you were living, if there were not, somewhere in your life, some touch of heroism, to do or to endure. this was his rarest quality. far on in middle age, when men begin to lie down with the bestial goddesses, comfort and respectability, the strings of his nature still sounded as high a note as a young man's. he loved the harsh voice of duty like a call to battle. he loved courage, enterprise, brave natures, a brave word, an ugly virtue; everything that lifts us above the table where we eat or the bed we sleep upon. this with no touch of the motive-monger or the ascetic. he loved his virtues to be practical, his heroes to be great eaters of beef; he loved the jovial heracles, loved the astute odysseus; not the robespierres and wesleys. a fine buoyant sense of life and of man's unequal character ran through all his thoughts. he could not tolerate the spirit of the pick-thank; being what we are, he wished us to see others with a generous eye of admiration, not with the smallness of the seeker after faults. if there shone anywhere a virtue, no matter how incongruously set, it was upon the virtue we must fix our eyes. i remember having found much entertainment in voltaire's saul, and telling him what seemed to me the drollest touches. he heard me out, as usual when displeased, and then opened fire on me with red-hot shot. to belittle a noble story was easy; it was not literature, it was not art, it was not morality; there was no sustenance in such a form of jesting, there was (in his favourite phrase) 'no nitrogenous food' in such literature. and then he proceeded to show what a fine fellow david was; and what a hard knot he was in about bathsheba, so that (the initial wrong committed) honour might well hesitate in the choice of conduct; and what owls those people were who marvelled because an eastern tyrant had killed uriah, instead of marvelling that he had not killed the prophet also. 'now if voltaire had helped me to feel that,' said he, 'i could have seen some fun in it.' he loved the comedy which shows a hero human, and yet leaves him a hero, and the laughter which does not lessen love. it was this taste for what is fine in human-kind, that ruled his choice in books. these should all strike a high note, whether brave or tender, and smack of the open air. the noble and simple presentation of things noble and simple, that was the 'nitrogenous food' of which he spoke so much, which he sought so eagerly, enjoyed so royally. he wrote to an author, the first part of whose story he had seen with sympathy, hoping that it might continue in the same vein. 'that this may be so,' he wrote, 'i long with the longing of david for the water of bethlehem. but no man need die for the water a poet can give, and all can drink it to the end of time, and their thirst be quenched and the pool never dry and the thirst and the water are both blessed.' it was in the greeks particularly that he found this blessed water; he loved 'a fresh air' which he found 'about the greek things even in translations'; he loved their freedom from the mawkish and the rancid. the tale of david in the bible, the odyssey, sophocles, aeschylus, shakespeare, scott; old dumas in his chivalrous note; dickens rather than thackeray, and the tale of two cities out of dickens: such were some of his preferences. to ariosto and boccaccio he was always faithful; burnt njal was a late favourite; and he found at least a passing entertainment in the arcadia and the grand cyrus. george eliot he outgrew, finding her latterly only sawdust in the mouth; but her influence, while it lasted, was great, and must have gone some way to form his mind. he was easily set on edge, however, by didactic writing; and held that books should teach no other lesson but what 'real life would teach, were it as vividly presented.' again, it was the thing made that took him, the drama in the book; to the book itself, to any merit of the making, he was long strangely blind. he would prefer the agamemnon in the prose of mr. buckley, ay, to keats. but he was his mother's son, learning to the last. he told me one day that literature was not a trade; that it was no craft; that the professed author was merely an amateur with a door-plate. 'very well,' said i, 'the first time you get a proof, i will demonstrate that it is as much a trade as bricklaying, and that you do not know it.' by the very next post, a proof came. i opened it with fear; for he was indeed, as the reader will see by these volumes, a formidable amateur; always wrote brightly, because he always thought trenchantly; and sometimes wrote brilliantly, as the worst of whistlers may sometimes stumble on a perfect intonation. but it was all for the best in the interests of his education; and i was able, over that proof, to give him a quarter of an hour such as fleeming loved both to give and to receive. his subsequent training passed out of my hands into those of our common friend, w. e. henley. 'henley and i,' he wrote, 'have fairly good times wigging one another for not doing better. i wig him because he won't try to write a real play, and he wigs me because i can't try to write english.' when i next saw him, he was full of his new acquisitions. 'and yet i have lost something too,' he said regretfully. 'up to now scott seemed to me quite perfect, he was all i wanted. since i have been learning this confounded thing, i took up one of the novels, and a great deal of it is both careless and clumsy.' v. he spoke four languages with freedom, not even english with any marked propriety. what he uttered was not so much well said, as excellently acted: so we may hear every day the inexpressive language of a poorly-written drama assume character and colour in the hands of a good player. no man had more of the vis comica in private life; he played no character on the stage, as he could play himself among his friends. it was one of his special charms; now when the voice is silent and the face still, it makes it impossible to do justice to his power in conversation. he was a delightful companion to such as can bear bracing weather; not to the very vain; not to the owlishly wise, who cannot have their dogmas canvassed; not to the painfully refined, whose sentiments become articles of faith. the spirit in which he could write that he was 'much revived by having an opportunity of abusing whistler to a knot of his special admirers,' is a spirit apt to be misconstrued. he was not a dogmatist, even about whistler. 'the house is full of pretty things,' he wrote, when on a visit; 'but mrs. -'s taste in pretty things has one very bad fault: it is not my taste.' and that was the true attitude of his mind; but these eternal differences it was his joy to thresh out and wrangle over by the hour. it was no wonder if he loved the greeks; he was in many ways a greek himself; he should have been a sophist and met socrates; he would have loved socrates, and done battle with him staunchly and manfully owned his defeat; and the dialogue, arranged by plato, would have shown even in plato's gallery. he seemed in talk aggressive, petulant, full of a singular energy; as vain you would have said as a peacock, until you trod on his toes, and then you saw that he was at least clear of all the sicklier elements of vanity. soundly rang his laugh at any jest against himself. he wished to be taken, as he took others, for what was good in him without dissimulation of the evil, for what was wise in him without concealment of the childish. he hated a draped virtue, and despised a wit on its own defence. and he drew (if i may so express myself) a human and humorous portrait of himself with all his defects and qualities, as he thus enjoyed in talk the robust sports of the intelligence; giving and taking manfully, always without pretence, always with paradox, always with exuberant pleasure; speaking wisely of what he knew, foolishly of what he knew not; a teacher, a learner, but still combative; picking holes in what was said even to the length of captiousness, yet aware of all that was said rightly; jubilant in victory, delighted by defeat: a greek sophist, a british schoolboy. among the legends of what was once a very pleasant spot, the old savile club, not then divorced from savile row, there are many memories of fleeming. he was not popular at first, being known simply as 'the man who dines here and goes up to scotland'; but he grew at last, i think, the most generally liked of all the members. to those who truly knew and loved him, who had tasted the real sweetness of his nature, fleeming's porcupine ways had always been a matter of keen regret. they introduced him to their own friends with fear; sometimes recalled the step with mortification. it was not possible to look on with patience while a man so lovable thwarted love at every step. but the course of time and the ripening of his nature brought a cure. it was at the savile that he first remarked a change; it soon spread beyond the walls of the club. presently i find him writing: 'will you kindly explain what has happened to me? all my life i have talked a good deal, with the almost unfailing result of making people sick of the sound of my tongue. it appeared to me that i had various things to say, and i had no malevolent feelings, but nevertheless the result was that expressed above. well, lately some change has happened. if i talk to a person one day, they must have me the next. faces light up when they see me. "ah, i say, come here," "come and dine with me." it's the most preposterous thing i ever experienced. it is curiously pleasant. you have enjoyed it all your life, and therefore cannot conceive how bewildering a burst of it is for the first time at forty-nine.' and this late sunshine of popularity still further softened him. he was a bit of a porcupine to the last, still shedding darts; or rather he was to the end a bit of a schoolboy, and must still throw stones, but the essential toleration that underlay his disputatiousness, and the kindness that made of him a tender sicknurse and a generous helper, shone more conspicuously through. a new pleasure had come to him; and as with all sound natures, he was bettered by the pleasure. i can best show fleeming in this later stage by quoting from a vivid and interesting letter of m. emile trelat's. here, admirably expressed, is how he appeared to a friend of another nation, whom he encountered only late in life. m. trelat will pardon me if i correct, even before i quote him; but what the frenchman supposed to flow from some particular bitterness against france, was only fleeming's usual address. had m. trelat been italian, italy would have fared as ill; and yet italy was fleeming's favourite country. vous savez comment j'ai connu fleeming jenkin! c'etait en mai 1878. nous etions tous deux membres du jury de l'exposition universelle. on n'avait rien fait qui vaille a la premiere seance de notre classe, qui avait eu lieu le matin. tout le monde avait parle et reparle pour ne rien dire. cela durait depuis huit heures; il etait midi. je demandai la parole pour une motion d'ordre, et je proposai que la seance fut levee a la condition que chaque membre francais, emportat a dejeuner un jure etranger. jenkin applaudit. 'je vous emimene dejeuner,' lui criai-je. 'je veux bien.' . . . nous partimes; en chemin nous vous rencontrions; il vous presente et nous allons dejeuner tous trois aupres du trocadero. et, depuis ce temps, nous avons ete de vieux amis. non seulement nous passions nos journees au jury, ou nous etions toujours ensemble, cote-a-cote. mais nos habitudes s'etaient faites telles que, non contents de dejeuner en face l'un de l'autre, je le ramenais diner presque tous les jours chez moi. cela dura une quinzaine: puis il fut rappele en angleterre. mais il revint, et nous fimes encore une bonne etape de vie intellectuelle, morale et philosophique. je crois qu'il me rendait deja tout ce que j'eprouvais de sympathie et d'estime, et que je ne fus pas pour rien dans son retour a paris. chose singuliere! nous nous etions attaches l'un a l'autre par les sous-entendus bien plus que par la matiere de nos conversations. a vrai dire, nous etions presque toujours en discussion; et il nous arrivait de nous rire au nez l'un et l'autre pendant des heures, tant nous nous etonnions reciproquement de la diversite de nos points de vue. je le trouvais si anglais, et il me trouvais si francais! il etait si franchement revolte de certaines choses qu'il voyait chez nous, et je comprenais si mal certaines choses qui se passaient chez vous! rien de plus interessant que ces contacts qui etaient des contrastes, et que ces rencontres d'idees qui etaient des choses; rien de si attachant que les echappees de coeur ou d'esprit auxquelles ces petits conflits donnaient a tout moment cours. c'est dans ces conditions que, pendant son sejour a paris en 1878, je conduisis un peu partout mon nouvel ami. nous all�mes chez madame edmond adam, ou il vit passer beaucoup d'hommes politiques avec lesquels il causa. mais c'est chez les ministres qu'il fut interesse. le moment etait, d'ailleurs, curieux en france. je me rappelle que, lorsque je le presentai au ministre du commerce, il fit cette spirituelle repartie: 'c'est la seconde fois que je viens en france sous la republique. la premiere fois, c'etait en 1848, elle s'etait coiffee de travers: je suis bien heureux de saluer aujourd'hui votre excellence, quand elle a mis son chapeau droit.' une fois je le menai voir couronner la rosiere de nanterre. il y suivit les ceremonies civiles et religieuses; il y assista au banquet donne par le maire; il y vit notre de lesseps, auquel il porta un toast. le soir, nous revinmes tard a paris; il faisait chaud; nous etions un peu fatigues; nous entr�mes dans un des rares cafes encore ouverts. il devint silencieux. 'n'etesvous pas content de votre journee?' lui dis-je. 'o, si! mais je reflechis, et je me dis que vous etes un peuple gai tous ces braves gens etaient gais aujourd'hui. c'est une vertu, la gaiete, et vous l'avez en france, cette vertu!' il me disait cela melancoliquement; et c'etait la premiere fois que je lui entendais faire une louange adressee a la france. . . . mais il ne faut pas que vous voyiez la une plainte de ma part. je serais un ingrat si je me plaignais; car il me disait souvent: 'quel bon francais vous faites!' et il m'aimait a cause de cela, quoiqu'il sembl�t n'ainier pas la france. c'etait la un trait de son originalite. il est vrai qu'il s'en tirait en disant que je ne ressemblai pas a mes compatriotes, ce a quoi il ne connaissait rien! tout cela etait fort curieux; car, moi-meme, je l'aimais quoiqu'il en e�t a mon pays! en 1879 il amena son fils austin a paris. j'attirai celui-ci. il dejeunait avec moi deux fois par semaine. je lui montrai ce qu'etait l'intimite francaise en le tutoyant paternellement. cela reserra beaucoup nos liens d'intimite avec jenkin. . . . je fis inviter mon ami au congres de l'association francaise pour l'avancement des sciences, qui se tenait a rheims en 1880. il y vint. j'eus le plaisir de lui donner la parole dans la section du genie civil et militaire, que je presidais. ii y fit une tres interessante communication, qui me montrait une fois de plus l'originalite de ses vaes et la s�rete de sa science. c'est a l'issue de ce congres que je passai lui faire visite a rochefort, ou je le trouvai installe en famille et ou je presentai pour la premiere fois mes hommages a son eminente compagne. je le vis la sous un jour nouveau et touchant pour moi. madame jenkin, qu'il entourait si galamment, et ses deux jeunes fils donnaient encore plus de relief a sa personne. j'emportai des quelques heures que je passai a cote de lui dans ce charmant paysage un souvenir emu. j'etais alle en angleterre en 1882 sans pouvoir gagner edimbourg. j'y retournai en 1883 avec la commission d'assainissement de la ville de paris, dont je faisais partie. jenkin me rejoignit. je le fis entendre par mes collegues; car il etait fondateur d'une societe de salubrite. il eut un grand succes parmi nous. mais ce voyaye me restera toujours en memoire parce que c'est la que se fixa defenitivement notre forte amitie. il m'invita un jour a diner a son club et au moment de me faire asseoir a cote de lui, il me retint et me dit: 'je voudrais vous demander de m'accorder quelque chose. c'est mon sentiment que nos relations ne peuvent pas se bien continuer si vous ne me donnez pas la permission de vous tutoyer. voulez-vous que nous nous tutoyions?' je lui pris les mains et je lui dis qu'une pareille proposition venant d'un anglais, et d'un anglais de sa haute distinction, c'etait une victoire, dont je serais fier toute ma vie. et nous commencions a user de cette nouvelle forme dans nos rapports. vous savez avec quelle finesse il parlait le francais: comme il en connaissait tous les tours, comme il jouait avec ses difficultes, et meme avec ses petites gamineries. je crois qu'il a ete heureux de pratiquer avec moi ce tutoiement, qui ne s'adapte pas a l'anglais, et qui est si francais. je ne puis vous peindre l'etendue et la variete de nos conversations de la soiree. mais ce que je puis vous dire, c'est que, sous la caresse du tu, nos idees se sont elevees. nous avions toujours beaucoup ri ensemble; mais nous n'avions jamais laisse des banalites s'introduire dans nos echanges de pensees. ce soir-la, notre horizon intellectual s'est elargie, et nous y avons pousse des reconnaissances profondes et lointaines. apres avoir vivement cause a table, nous avons longuement cause au salon; et nous nous separions le soir a trafalgar square, apres avoir longe les trotters, stationne aux coins des rues et deux fois rebrousse chemie en nous reconduisant l'un l'autre. il etait pres d'une heure du matin! mais quelle belle passe d'argumentation, quels beaux echanges de sentiments, quelles fortes confidences patriotiques nous avions fournies! j'ai compris ce soir la que jenkin ne detestait pas la france, et je lui serrai fort les mains en l'embrassant. nous nous quittions aussi amis qu'on puisse l'etre; et notre affection s'etait par lui etendue et comprise dans un tu francais. chapter vii. 1875-1885. mr jenkin's illness captain jenkin the golden wedding death of uncle john death of mr. and mrs. austin illness and death of the captain death of mrs. jenkin effect on fleeming telpherage the end. and now i must resume my narrative for that melancholy business that concludes all human histories. in january of the year 1875, while fleeming's sky was still unclouded, he was reading smiles. 'i read my engineers' lives steadily,' he writes, 'but find biographies depressing. i suspect one reason to be that misfortunes and trials can be graphically described, but happiness and the causes of happiness either cannot be or are not. a grand new branch of literature opens to my view: a drama in which people begin in a poor way and end, after getting gradually happier, in an ecstasy of enjoyment. the common novel is not the thing at all. it gives struggle followed by relief. i want each act to close on a new and triumphant happiness, which has been steadily growing all the while. this is the real antithesis of tragedy, where things get blacker and blacker and end in hopeless woe. smiles has not grasped my grand idea, and only shows a bitter struggle followed by a little respite before death. some feeble critic might say my new idea was not true to nature. i'm sick of this old-fashioned notion of art. hold a mirror up, indeed! let's paint a picture of how things ought to be and hold that up to nature, and perhaps the poor old woman may repent and mend her ways.' the 'grand idea' might be possible in art; not even the ingenuity of nature could so round in the actual life of any man. and yet it might almost seem to fancy that she had read the letter and taken the hint; for to fleeming the cruelties of fate were strangely blended with tenderness, and when death came, it came harshly to others, to him not unkindly. in the autumn of that same year 1875, fleeming's father and mother were walking in the garden of their house at merchiston, when the latter fell to the ground. it was thought at the time to be a stumble; it was in all likelihood a premonitory stroke of palsy. from that day, there fell upon her an abiding panic fear; that glib, superficial part of us that speaks and reasons could allege no cause, science itself could find no mark of danger, a son's solicitude was laid at rest; but the eyes of the body saw the approach of a blow, and the consciousness of the body trembled at its coming. it came in a moment; the brilliant, spirited old lady leapt from her bed, raving. for about six months, this stage of her disease continued with many painful and many pathetic circumstances; her husband who tended her, her son who was unwearied in his visits, looked for no change in her condition but the change that comes to all. 'poor mother,' i find fleeming writing, 'i cannot get the tones of her voice out of my head. . . i may have to bear this pain for a long time; and so i am bearing it and sparing myself whatever pain seems useless. mercifully i do sleep, i am so weary that i must sleep.' and again later: 'i could do very well, if my mind did not revert to my poor mother's state whenever i stop attending to matters immediately before me.' and the next day: 'i can never feel a moment's pleasure without having my mother's suffering recalled by the very feeling of happiness. a pretty, young face recalls hers by contrast a careworn face recalls it by association. i tell you, for i can speak to no one else; but do not suppose that i wilfully let my mind dwell on sorrow.' in the summer of the next year, the frenzy left her; it left her stone deaf and almost entirely aphasic, but with some remains of her old sense and courage. stoutly she set to work with dictionaries, to recover her lost tongues; and had already made notable progress, when a third stroke scattered her acquisitions. thenceforth, for nearly ten years, stroke followed upon stroke, each still further jumbling the threads of her intelligence, but by degrees so gradual and with such partiality of loss and of survival, that her precise state was always and to the end a matter of dispute. she still remembered her friends; she still loved to learn news of them upon the slate; she still read and marked the list of the subscription library; she still took an interest in the choice of a play for the theatricals, and could remember and find parallel passages; but alongside of these surviving powers, were lapses as remarkable, she misbehaved like a child, and a servant had to sit with her at table. to see her so sitting, speaking with the tones of a deaf mute not always to the purpose, and to remember what she had been, was a moving appeal to all who knew her. such was the pathos of these two old people in their affliction, that even the reserve of cities was melted and the neighbours vied in sympathy and kindness. where so many were more than usually helpful, it is hard to draw distinctions; but i am directed and i delight to mention in particular the good dr. joseph bell, mr. thomas, and mr. archibald constable with both their wives, the rev. mr. belcombe (of whose good heart and taste i do not hear for the first time the news had come to me by way of the infirmary), and their next-door neighbour, unwearied in service, miss hannah mayne. nor should i omit to mention that john ruffini continued to write to mrs. jenkin till his own death, and the clever lady known to the world as vernon lee until the end: a touching, a becoming attention to what was only the wreck and survival of their brilliant friend. but he to whom this affliction brought the greatest change was the captain himself. what was bitter in his lot, he bore with unshaken courage; only once, in these ten years of trial, has mrs. fleeming jenkin seen him weep; for the rest of the time his wife his commanding officer, now become his trying child was served not with patience alone, but with a lovely happiness of temper. he had belonged all his life to the ancient, formal, speechmaking, compliment-presenting school of courtesy; the dictates of this code partook in his eyes of the nature of a duty; and he must now be courteous for two. partly from a happy illusion, partly in a tender fraud, he kept his wife before the world as a still active partner. when he paid a call, he would have her write 'with love' upon a card; or if that (at the moment) was too much, he would go armed with a bouquet and present it in her name. he even wrote letters for her to copy and sign: an innocent substitution, which may have caused surprise to ruffini or to vernon lee, if they ever received, in the hand of mrs. jenkin the very obvious reflections of her husband. he had always adored this wife whom he now tended and sought to represent in correspondence: it was now, if not before, her turn to repay the compliment; mind enough was left her to perceive his unwearied kindness; and as her moral qualities seemed to survive quite unimpaired, a childish love and gratitude were his reward. she would interrupt a conversation to cross the room and kiss him. if she grew excited (as she did too often) it was his habit to come behind her chair and pat her shoulder; and then she would turn round, and clasp his hand in hers, and look from him to her visitor with a face of pride and love; and it was at such moments only that the light of humanity revived in her eyes. it was hard for any stranger, it was impossible for any that loved them, to behold these mute scenes, to recall the past, and not to weep. but to the captain, i think it was all happiness. after these so long years, he had found his wife again; perhaps kinder than ever before; perhaps now on a more equal footing; certainly, to his eyes, still beautiful. and the call made on his intelligence had not been made in vain. the merchants of aux cayes, who had seen him tried in some 'counter-revolution' in 1845, wrote to the consul of his 'able and decided measures,' 'his cool, steady judgment and discernment' with admiration; and of himself, as 'a credit and an ornament to h. m. naval service.' it is plain he must have sunk in all his powers, during the years when he was only a figure, and often a dumb figure, in his wife's drawing-room; but with this new term of service, he brightened visibly. he showed tact and even invention in managing his wife, guiding or restraining her by the touch, holding family worship so arranged that she could follow and take part in it. he took (to the world's surprise) to reading voyages, biographies, blair's sermons, even (for her letter's sake) a work of vernon lee's, which proved, however, more than he was quite prepared for. he shone more, in his remarkable way, in society; and twice he had a little holiday to glenmorven, where, as may be fancied, he was the delight of the highlanders. one of his last pleasures was to arrange his diningroom. many and many a room (in their wandering and thriftless existence) had he seen his wife furnish with exquisite taste, and perhaps with 'considerable luxury': now it was his turn to be the decorator. on the wall he had an engraving of lord rodney's action, showing the prothee, his father's ship, if the reader recollects; on either side of this on brackets, his father's sword, and his father's telescope, a gift from admiral buckner, who had used it himself during the engagement; higher yet, the head of his grandson's first stag, portraits of his son and his son's wife, and a couple of old windsor jugs from mrs. buckner's. but his simple trophy was not yet complete; a device had to be worked and framed and hung below the engraving; and for this he applied to his daughter-in-law: 'i want you to work me something, annie. an anchor at each side an anchor stands for an old sailor, you know stands for hope, you know an anchor at each side, and in the middle thankful.' it is not easy, on any system of punctuation, to represent the captain's speech. yet i hope there may shine out of these facts, even as there shone through his own troubled utterance, some of the charm of that delightful spirit. in 1881, the time of the golden wedding came round for that sad and pretty household. it fell on a good friday, and its celebration can scarcely be recalled without both smiles and tears. the drawing-room was filled with presents and beautiful bouquets; these, to fleeming and his family, the golden bride and bridegroom displayed with unspeakable pride, she so painfully excited that the guests feared every moment to see her stricken afresh, he guiding and moderating her with his customary tact and understanding, and doing the honours of the day with more than his usual delight. thence they were brought to the dining-room, where the captain's idea of a feast awaited them: tea and champagne, fruit and toast and childish little luxuries, set forth pell-mell and pressed at random on the guests. and here he must make a speech for himself and his wife, praising their destiny, their marriage, their son, their daughter-in-law, their grandchildren, their manifold causes of gratitude: surely the most innocent speech, the old, sharp contemner of his innocence now watching him with eyes of admiration. then it was time for the guests to depart; and they went away, bathed, even to the youngest child, in tears of inseparable sorrow and gladness, and leaving the golden bride and bridegroom to their own society and that of the hired nurse. it was a great thing for fleeming to make, even thus late, the acquaintance of his father; but the harrowing pathos of such scenes consumed him. in a life of tense intellectual effort, a certain smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the candle at both ends. dr. bell perceived the evil that was being done; he pressed mrs. jenkin to restrain her husband from too frequent visits; but here was one of those clear-cut, indubitable duties for which fleeming lived, and he could not pardon even the suggestion of neglect. and now, after death had so long visibly but still innocuously hovered above the family, it began at last to strike and its blows fell thick and heavy. the first to go was uncle john jenkin, taken at last from his mexican dwelling and the lost tribes of israel; and nothing in this remarkable old gentleman's life, became him like the leaving of it. his sterling, jovial acquiescence in man's destiny was a delight to fleeming. 'my visit to stowting has been a very strange but not at all a painful one,' he wrote. 'in case you ever wish to make a person die as he ought to die in a novel,' he said to me, 'i must tell you all about my old uncle.' he was to see a nearer instance before long; for this family of jenkin, if they were not very aptly fitted to live, had the art of manly dying. uncle john was but an outsider after all; he had dropped out of hail of his nephew's way of life and station in society, and was more like some shrewd, old, humble friend who should have kept a lodge; yet he led the procession of becoming deaths, and began in the mind of fleeming that train of tender and grateful thought, which was like a preparation for his own. already i find him writing in the plural of 'these impending deaths'; already i find him in quest of consolation. 'there is little pain in store for these wayfarers,' he wrote, 'and we have hope more than hope, trust.' on may 19, 1884, mr. austin was taken. he was seventy-eight years of age, suffered sharply with all his old firmness, and died happy in the knowledge that he had left his wife well cared for. this had always been a bosom concern; for the barrons were long-lived and he believed that she would long survive him. but their union had been so full and quiet that mrs. austin languished under the separation. in their last years, they would sit all evening in their own drawing-room hand in hand: two old people who, for all their fundamental differences, had yet grown together and become all the world in each other's eyes and hearts; and it was felt to be a kind release, when eight months after, on january 14, 1885, eliza barron followed alfred austin. 'i wish i could save you from all pain,' wrote fleeming six days later to his sorrowing wife, 'i would if i could but my way is not god's way; and of this be assured, god's way is best.' in the end of the same month, captain jenkin caught cold and was confined to bed. he was so unchanged in spirit that at first there seemed no ground of fear; but his great age began to tell, and presently it was plain he had a summons. the charm of his sailor's cheerfulness and ancient courtesy, as he lay dying, is not to be described. there he lay, singing his old sea songs; watching the poultry from the window with a child's delight; scribbling on the slate little messages to his wife, who lay bed-ridden in another room; glad to have psalms read aloud to him, if they were of a pious strain checking, with an 'i don't think we need read that, my dear,' any that were gloomy or bloody. fleeming's wife coming to the house and asking one of the nurses for news of mrs. jenkin, 'madam, i do not know,' said the nurse; 'for i am really so carried away by the captain that i can think of nothing else.' one of the last messages scribbled to his wife and sent her with a glass of the champagne that had been ordered for himself, ran, in his most finished vein of childish madrigal: 'the captain bows to you, my love, across the table.' when the end was near and it was thought best that fleeming should no longer go home but sleep at merchiston, he broke his news to the captain with some trepidation, knowing that it carried sentence of death. 'charming, charming charming arrangement,' was the captain's only commentary. it was the proper thing for a dying man, of captain jenkin's school of manners, to make some expression of his spiritual state; nor did he neglect the observance. with his usual abruptness, 'fleeming,' said he, 'i suppose you and i feel about all this as two christian gentlemen should.' a last pleasure was secured for him. he had been waiting with painful interest for news of gordon and khartoum; and by great good fortune, a false report reached him that the city was relieved, and the men of sussex (his old neighbours) had been the first to enter. he sat up in bed and gave three cheers for the sussex regiment. the subsequent correction, if it came in time, was prudently withheld from the dying man. an hour before midnight on the fifth of february, he passed away: aged eighty-four. word of his death was kept from mrs. jenkin; and she survived him no more than nine and forty hours. on the day before her death, she received a letter from her old friend miss bell of manchester, knew the hand, kissed the envelope, and laid it on her heart; so that she too died upon a pleasure. half an hour after midnight, on the eighth of february, she fell asleep: it is supposed in her seventy-eighth year. thus, in the space of less than ten months, the four seniors of this family were taken away; but taken with such features of opportunity in time or pleasant courage in the sufferer, that grief was tempered with a kind of admiration. the effect on fleeming was profound. his pious optimism increased and became touched with something mystic and filial. 'the grave is not good, the approaches to it are terrible,' he had written in the beginning of his mother's illness: he thought so no more, when he had laid father and mother side by side at stowting. he had always loved life; in the brief time that now remained to him, he seemed to be half in love with death. 'grief is no duty,' he wrote to miss bell; 'it was all too beautiful for grief,' he said to me; but the emotion, call it by what name we please, shook him to his depths; his wife thought he would have broken his heart when he must demolish the captain's trophy in the dining-room, and he seemed thenceforth scarcely the same man. these last years were indeed years of an excessive demand upon his vitality; he was not only worn out with sorrow, he was worn out by hope. the singular invention to which he gave the name of telpherage, had of late consumed his time, overtaxed his strength and overheated his imagination. the words in which he first mentioned his discovery to me 'i am simply alnaschar' were not only descriptive of his state of mind, they were in a sense prophetic; since whatever fortune may await his idea in the future, it was not his to see it bring forth fruit. alnaschar he was indeed; beholding about him a world all changed, a world filled with telpherage wires; and seeing not only himself and family but all his friends enriched. it was his pleasure, when the company was floated, to endow those whom he liked with stock; one, at least, never knew that he was a possible rich man until the grave had closed over his stealthy benefactor. and however fleeming chafed among material and business difficulties, this rainbow vision never faded; and he, like his father and his mother, may be said to have died upon a pleasure. but the strain told, and he knew that it was telling. 'i am becoming a fossil,' he had written five years before, as a kind of plea for a holiday visit to his beloved italy. 'take care! if i am mr. fossil, you will be mrs. fossil, and jack will be jack fossil, and all the boys will be little fossils, and then we shall be a collection.' there was no fear more chimerical for fleeming; years brought him no repose; he was as packed with energy, as fiery in hope, as at the first; weariness, to which he began to be no stranger, distressed, it did not quiet him. he feared for himself, not without ground, the fate which had overtaken his mother; others shared the fear. in the changed life now made for his family, the elders dead, the sons going from home upon their education, even their tried domestic (mrs. alice dunns) leaving the house after twenty-two years of service, it was not unnatural that he should return to dreams of italy. he and his wife were to go (as he told me) on 'a real honeymoon tour.' he had not been alone with his wife 'to speak of,' he added, since the birth of his children. but now he was to enjoy the society of her to whom he wrote, in these last days, that she was his 'heaven on earth.' now he was to revisit italy, and see all the pictures and the buildings and the scenes that he admired so warmly, and lay aside for a time the irritations of his strenuous activity. nor was this all. a trifling operation was to restore his former lightness of foot; and it was a renovated youth that was to set forth upon this re�nacted honeymoon. the operation was performed; it was of a trifling character, it seemed to go well, no fear was entertained; and his wife was reading aloud to him as he lay in bed, when she perceived him to wander in his mind. it is doubtful if he ever recovered a sure grasp upon the things of life; and he was still unconscious when he passed away, june the twelfth, 1885, in the fifty-third year of his age. he passed; but something in his gallant vitality had impressed itself upon his friends, and still impresses. not from one or two only, but from many, i hear the same tale of how the imagination refuses to accept our loss and instinctively looks for his reappearing, and how memory retains his voice and image like things of yesterday. others, the well-beloved too, die and are progressively forgotten; two years have passed since fleeming was laid to rest beside his father, his mother, and his uncle john; and the thought and the look of our friend still haunt us. appendix. note on the contributions of fleeming jenkin to electrical and engineering science. by sir william thomson, f.r.s., ll d., etc., etc. in the beginning of the year 1859 my former colleague (the first british university professor of engineering), lewis gordon, at that time deeply engaged in the then new work of cable making and cable laying, came to glasgow to see apparatus for testing submarine cables and signalling through them, which i had been preparing for practical use on the first atlantic cable, and which had actually done service upon it, during the six weeks of its successful working between valencia and newfoundland. as soon as he had seen something of what i had in hand, he said to me, 'i would like to show this to a young man of remarkable ability, at present engaged in our works at birkenhead.' fleeming jenkin was accordingly telegraphed for, and appeared next morning in glasgow. he remained for a week, spending the whole day in my class-room and laboratory, and thus pleasantly began our lifelong acquaintance. i was much struck, not only with his brightness and ability, but with his resolution to understand everything spoken of, to see if possible thoroughly through every difficult question, and (no if about this!) to slur over nothing. i soon found that thoroughness of honesty was as strongly engrained in the scientific as in the moral side of his character. in the first week of our acquaintance, the electric telegraph and, particularly, submarine cables, and the methods, machines, and instruments for laying, testing, and using them, formed naturally the chief subject of our conversations and discussions; as it was in fact the practical object of jenkin's visit to me in glasgow; but not much of the week had passed before i found him remarkably interested in science generally, and full of intelligent eagerness on many particular questions of dynamics and physics. when he returned from glasgow to birkenhead a correspondence commenced between us, which was continued without intermission up to the last days of his life. it commenced with a well-sustained fire of letters on each side about the physical qualities of submarine cables, and the practical results attainable in the way of rapid signalling through them. jenkin used excellently the valuable opportunities for experiment allowed him by newall, and his partner lewis gordon, at their birkenhead factory. thus he began definite scientific investigation of the copper resistance of the conductor, and the insulating resistance and specific inductive capacity of its gutta-percha coating, in the factory, in various stages of manufacture; and he was the very first to introduce systematically into practice the grand system of absolute measurement founded in germany by gauss and weber. the immense value of this step, if only in respect to the electric telegraph, is amply appreciated by all who remember or who have read something of the history of submarine telegraphy; but it can scarcely be known generally how much it is due to jenkin. looking to the article 'telegraph (electric)' in the last volume of the old edition of the 'encyclopaedia britannica,' which was published about the year 1861, we find on record that jenkin's measurements in absolute units of the specific resistance of pure gutta-percha, and of the gutta-percha with chatterton's compound constituting the insulation of the red sea cable of 1859, are given as the only results in the way of absolute measurements of the electric resistance of an insulating material which had then been made. these remarks are prefaced in the 'encyclopaedia' article by the following statement: 'no telegraphic testing ought in future to be accepted in any department of telegraphic business which has not this definite character; although it is only within the last year that convenient instruments for working, in absolute measure, have been introduced at all, and the whole system of absolute measure is still almost unknown to practical electricians.' a particular result of great importance in respect to testing is referred to as follows in the 'encyclopaedia' article: 'the importance of having results thus stated in absolute measure is illustrated by the circumstance, that the writer has been able at once to compare them, in the manner stated in a preceding paragraph, with his own previous deductions from the testings of the atlantic cable during its manufacture in 1857, and with weber's measurements of the specific resistance of copper.' it has now become universally adapted first of all in england; twenty-two years later by germany, the country of its birth; and by france and italy, and all the other countries of europe and america practically the whole scientific world at the electrical congress in paris in the years 1882 and 1884. an important paper of thirty quarto pages published in the 'transactions of the royal society' for june 19, 1862, under the title 'experimental researches on the transmission of electric signals through submarine cables, part i. laws of transmission through various lengths of one cable, by fleeming jenkin, esq., communicated by c. wheatstone, esq., f.r.s.,' contains an account of a large part of jenkin's experimental work in the birkenhead factory during the years 1859 and 1860. this paper is called part i. part ii. alas never appeared, but something that it would have included we can see from the following ominous statement which i find near the end of part i.: 'from this value, the electrostatical capacity per unit of length and the specific inductive capacity of the dielectric, could be determined. these points will, however, be more fully treated of in the second part of this paper.' jenkin had in fact made a determination at birkenhead of the specific inductive capacity of gutta-percha, or of the gutta-percha and chatterton's compound constituting the insulation of the cable, on which he experimented. this was the very first true measurement of the specific inductive capacity of a dielectric which had been made after the discovery by faraday of the existence of the property, and his primitive measurement of it for the three substances, glass, shellac, and sulphur; and at the time when jenkin made his measurements the existence of specific inductive capacity was either unknown, or ignored, or denied, by almost all the scientific authorities of the day. the original determination of the microfarad, brought out under the auspices of the british association committee on electrical standards, is due to experimental work by jenkin, described in a paper, 'experiments on capacity,' constituting no. iv. of the appendix to the report presented by the committee to the dundee meeting of 1867. no other determination, so far as i know, of this important element of electric measurement has hitherto been made; and it is no small thing to be proud of in respect to jenkin's fame as a scientific and practical electrician that the microfarad which we now all use is his. the british association unit of electrical resistance, on which was founded the first practical approximation to absolute measurement on the system of gauss and weber, was largely due to jenkin's zeal as one of the originators, and persevering energy as a working member, of the first electrical standards committee. the experimental work of first making practical standards, founded on the absolute system, which led to the unit now known as the british association ohm, was chiefly performed by clerk maxwell and jenkin. the realisation of the great practical benefit which has resulted from the experimental and scientific work of the committee is certainly in a large measure due to jenkin's zeal and perseverance as secretary, and as editor of the volume of collected reports of the work of the committee, which extended over eight years, from 1861 till 1869. the volume of reports included jenkin's cantor lectures of january, 1866, 'on submarine telegraphy,' through which the practical applications of the scientific principles for which he had worked so devotedly for eight years became part of general knowledge in the engineering profession. jenkin's scientific activity continued without abatement to the end. for the last two years of his life he was much occupied with a new mode of electric locomotion, a very remarkable invention of his own, to which he gave the name of 'telpherage.' he persevered with endless ingenuity in carrying out the numerous and difficult mechanical arrangements essential to the project, up to the very last days of his work in life. he had completed almost every detail of the realisation of the system which was recently opened for practical working at glynde, in sussex, four months after his death. his book on 'magnetism and electricity,' published as one of longman's elementary series in 1873, marked a new departure in the exposition of electricity, as the first text-book containing a systematic application of the quantitative methods inaugurated by the british association committee on electrical standards. in 1883 the seventh edition was published, after there had already appeared two foreign editions, one in italian and the other in german. his papers on purely engineering subjects, though not numerous, are interesting and valuable. amongst these may be mentioned the article 'bridges,' written by him for the ninth edition of the 'encyclopaedia britannica,' and afterwards republished as a separate treatise in 1876; and a paper 'on the practical application of reciprocal figures to the calculation of strains in framework,' read before the royal society of edinburgh, and published in the 'transactions' of that society in 1869. but perhaps the most important of all is his paper 'on the application of graphic methods to the determination of the efficiency of machinery,' read before the royal society of edinburgh, and published in the 'transactions,' vol. xxviii. (1876-78), for which he was awarded the keith gold medal. this paper was a continuation of the subject treated in 'reulaux's mechanism,' and, recognising the value of that work, supplied the elements required to constitute from reulaux's kinematic system a full machine receiving energy and doing work. ii. note on the work of fleeming jenkin in connection with sanitary reform. by lt. col. alexander fergusson. [this appendix is not included in the project gutenberg etext because the uk volunteer could not locate a date of death for lt. col. alexander fergusson this is necessary for uk copyright reasons. if anyone could help with this information please contact ccx074@coventry.ac.uk] end of the project gutenberg etext of memoir of fleeming jenkin 1850 tale of jerusalem by edgar allan poe intensos rigidam in frontem ascendere canos passus erat lucan --a bristly bore. translation "let us hurry to the walls," said abel-phittim to buzi-ben-levi and simeon the pharisee, on the tenth day of the month thammuz, in the year of the world three thousand nine hundred and forty-one"let us hasten to the ramparts adjoining the gate of benjamin, which is in the city of david, and overlooking the camp of the uncircumcised; for it is the last hour of the fourth watch, being sunrise; and the idolaters, in fulfilment of the promise of pompey, should be awaiting us with the lambs for the sacrifices." simeon, abel-phittim, and buzi-ben-levi, were the gizbarim, or sub-collectors of the offering, in the holy city of jerusalem. "verily," replied the pharisee, "let us hasten: for this generosity in the heathen is unwonted; and fickle-mindedness has ever been an attribute of the worshippers of baal." "that they are fickle-minded and treacherous is as true as the pentateuch," said buzi-ben-levi, "but that is only towards the people of adonai. when was it ever known that the ammonites proved wanting to their own interests? methinks it is no great stretch of generosity to allow us lambs for the altar of the lord, receiving in lieu thereof thirty silver shekels per head!" "thou forgettest, however, ben-levi," replied abel-phittim, "that the roman pompey, who is now impiously besieging the city of the most high, has no assurity that we apply not the lambs thus purchased for the altar, to the sustenance of the body, rather than of the spirit." "now, by the five corners of my beard!" shouted the pharisee, who belonged to the sect called the dashers (that little knot of saints whose manner of dashing and lacerating the feet against the pavement was long a thorn and a reproach to less zealous devoteesa stumbling-block to less gifted perambulators)"by the five corners of that beard which, as a priest, i am forbidden to shave!have we lived to see the day when a blaspheming and idolatrous upstart of rome shall accuse us of appropriating to the appetites of the flesh the most holy and consecrated elements? have we lived to see the day when-" "let us not question the motives of the philistine," interrupted abel-phittim, "for to-day we profit for the first time by his avarice or by his generosity, but rather let us hurry to the ramparts, lest offerings should be wanting for that altar whose fire the rains of heaven cannot extinguish, and whose pillars of smoke no tempest can turn aside." that part of the city to which our worthy gizbarin now hastened, and which bore the name of its architect, king david, was esteemed the most strongly fortified district of jerusalem; being situated upon the steep and lofty hill of zion. here, a broad, deep, circumvallatory trench, hewn from the solid rock, was defended by a wall of great strength erected upon its inner edge. this wall was adorned, at regular interspaces, by square towers of white marble; the lowest sixty, and the highest one hundred and twenty cubits in height. but, in the vicinity of the gate of benjamin, the wall arose by no means from the margin of the fosse. on the contrary, between the level of the ditch and the basement of the rampart, sprang up a perpendicular cliff of two hundred and fifty cubits, forming part of the precipitous mount moriah. so that when simeon and his associates arrived on the summit of the tower called adoni-bezekthe loftiest of all the turrets around about jerusalem, and the usual place of conference with the besieging armythey looked down upon the camp of the enemy from an eminence excelling by many feet that of the pyramid of cheops, and, by several, that of the temple of belus. "verily," sighed the pharisee, as he peered dizzly over the precipice, "the uncircumcised are as the sands by the seashoreas the locusts in the wilderness! the valley of the king hath become the valley of adommin." "and yet," added ben-levi, "thou canst not point me out a philistineno, not onefrom aleph to taufrom the wilderness to the battlementswho seemeth any bigger than the letter jod!" "lower away the basket with the shekels of silver!" here shouted a roman soldier in a hoarse, rough voice, which appeared to issue from the regions of pluto"lower away the basket with the accursed coin which it has broken the jaw of a noble roman to pronounce! is it thus you evince your gratitude to our master pompeius, who, in his condescension, has thought fit to listen to your idolatrous importunities? the god phoebus, who is a true god, has been charioted for an hourand were you not to be on the ramparts by sunrise? aedepol! do you think that we, the conquerors of the world, have nothing better to do than stand waiting by the walls of every kennel, to traffic with the dogs of the earth? lower away! i sayand see that your trumpery be bright in color and just in weight!" "el elohim!" ejaculated the pharisee, as the discordant tones of the centurion rattled up the crags of the precipice, and fainted away against the temple"el elohim!who is the god phoebus?whom doth the blasphemer invoke? thou, buzi-ben-levi! who art read in the laws of the gentiles, and hast sojourned among them who dabble with the teraphim!is it nergal of whom the idolater speaketh?or ashimah?ornibhaz?or tartak?or adramalech?or anamalech?or succoth-benith?or dragon?or belial?or baal-perith?or baal-peor?or baal-zebub?" "verily it is neitherbut beware how thou lettest the rope slip too rapidly through thy fingers; for should the wicker-work chance to hang on the projection of yonder crag, there will be a woful outpouring of the holy things of the sanctuary." by the assistance of some rudely constructed machinery, the heavily laden basket was now carefully lowered down among the multitude; and, from the giddy pinnacle, the romans were seen gathering confusedly round it; but owing to the vast height and the prevalence of a fog, no distinct view of their operations could be obtained. half an hour had already elapsed. "we shall be too late!" sighed the pharisee, as at the expiration of this period, he looked over into the abyss"we shall be too late! we shall be turned out of office by the katholim." "no more," responded abel-phittim,"no more shall we feast upon the fat of the landno longer shall our beards be odorous with frankincenseour loins girded up with fine linen from the temple." "raca!" swore ben-levi, "raca! do they mean to defraud us of the purchase money? or, holy moses! are they weighing the shekels of the tabernacle? "they have given the signal at last!" cried the pharisee"they have given the signal at last!pull away, abel-phittim!and thou, buzi-ben-levi, pull away!for verily the philistines have either still hold upon the basket, or the lord hath softened their hearts to place therein a beast of good weight!" and the gizbarim pulled away, while their burthen swung heavily upwards through the still increasing mist. "booshoh he!"as, at the conclusion of an hour, some object at the extremity of the rope became indistinctly visible"booshoh he!" was the exclamation which burst from the lips of ben-levi. "booshoh he!for shame!it is a ram from the thickets of engedi, and as rugged as the valley of jehosaphat!" "it is a firstling of the flock," said abel-phittim, "i know him by the bleating of his lips, and the innocent folding of his limbs. his eyes are more beautiful than the jewels of the pectoral, and his flesh is like the honey of hebron." "it is a fatted calf from the pastures of bashan," said the pharisee, "the heathen have dealt wonderfully with us!let us raise up our voices in a psalm!let us give thanks on the shawm and on the psalteryon the harp and on the huggabon the cythern and on the sackbutt" it was not until the basket had arrived within a few feet of the gizbarium, that a low grunt betrayed to their perception a hog of no common size. "now el emanu!" slowly, and with upturned eyes ejaculated the trio, as, letting go their hold, the emancipated porker tumbled headlong among the philistines, "el emanu!god be with usit is the unutterable flesh!" -the end. 1831 israfel by edgar allan poe israfel in heaven a spirit doth dwell "whose heart-strings are a lute"; none sing so wildly well as the angel israfel, and the giddy stars (so legends tell), ceasing their hymns, attend the spell of his voice, all mute. tottering above in her highest noon, the enamored moon blushes with love, while, to listen, the red levin (with the rapid pleiads, even, which were seven,) pauses in heaven. and they say (the starry choir and the other listening things) that israfeli's fire is owing to that lyre by which he sits and sings the trembling living wire of those unusual strings. but the skies that angel trod, where deep thoughts are a duty where love's a grown-up god where the houri glances are imbued with all the beauty which we worship in a star. therefore thou art not wrong, israfeli, who despisest an unimpassioned song; to thee the laurels belong, best bard, because the wisest! merrily live, and long! the ecstasies above with thy burning measures suit thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, with the fervor of thy lute well may the stars be mute! yes, heaven is thine; but this is a world of sweets and sours; our flowers are merelyflowers, and the shadow of thy perfect bliss is the sunshine of ours. if i could dwell where israfel hath dwelt, and he where i, he might not sing so wildly well a mortal melody, while a bolder note than this might swell from my lyre within the sky. -the end. 1849 annabel lee by edgar allan poe it was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea, that a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of annabel lee; and this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me. i was a child and she was a child, in this kingdom by the sea; but we loved with a love that was more than love i and my annabel lee; with a love that the winged seraphs of heaven coveted her and me. and this was the reason that, long ago, in this kingdom by the sea, a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling my beautiful annabel lee; so that her highborn kinsman came and bore her away from me, to shut her up in a sepulchre in this kingdom by the sea. the angels, not half so happy in heaven, went envying her and me yes!that was the reason (as all men know, in this kingdom by the sea) that the wind came out of the cloud by night, chilling and killing my annabel lee. but our love it was stronger by far than the love of those who were older than we of many far wiser than we and neither the angels in heaven above, nor the demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful annabel lee. for the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful annabel lee; and the stars never rise but i feel the bright eyes of the beautiful annabel lee; and so, all the night-tide, i lie down by the side of my darlingmy darlingmy life and my bride, in the sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the sounding sea. -the end. 1850 diddling considered as one of the exact sciences by edgar allen poe diddling hey, diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle since the world began there have been two jeremys. the one wrote a jeremiad about usury, and was called jeremy bentham. he has been much admired by mr. john neal, and was a great man in a small way. the other gave name to the most important of the exact sciences, and was a great man in a great wayi may say, indeed, in the very greatest of ways. diddlingor the abstract idea conveyed by the verb to diddleis sufficiently well understood. yet the fact, the deed, the thing diddling, is somewhat difficult to define. we may get, however, at a tolerably distinct conception of the matter in hand, by definingnot the thing, diddling, in itselfbut man, as an animal that diddles. had plato but hit upon this, he would have been spared the affront of the picked chicken. very pertinently it was demanded of plato, why a picked chicken, which was clearly "a biped without feathers," was not, according to his own definition, a man? but i am not to be bothered by any similar query. man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man. it will take an entire hen-coop of picked chickens to get over that. what constitutes the essence, the nare, the principle of diddling is, in fact, peculiar to the class of creatures that wear coats and pantaloons. a crow thieves; a fox cheats; a weasel outwits; a man diddles. to diddle is his destiny. "man was made to mourn," says the poet. but not so:he was made to diddle. this is his aimhis objecthis end. and for this reason when a man's diddled we say he's "done." diddling, rightly considered, is a compound, of which the ingredients are minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity, nonchalance, originality, impertinence, and grin. minuteness:your diddler is minute. his operations are upon a small scale. his business is retail, for cash, or approved paper at sight. should he ever be tempted into magnificent speculation, he then, at once, loses his distinctive features, and becomes what we term "financier." this latter word conveys the diddling idea in every respect except that of magnitude. a diddler may thus be regarded as a banker in pettoa "financial operation," as a diddle at brobdignag. the one is to the other, as homer to "flaccus"as a mastodon to a mouseas the tail of a comet to that of a pig. interest:your diddler is guided by self-interest. he scorns to diddle for the mere sake of the diddle. he has an object in viewhis pocketand yours. he regards always the main chance. he looks to number one. you are number two, and must look to yourself. perseverance:your diddler perseveres. he is not readily discouraged. should even the banks break, he cares nothing about it. he steadily pursues his end, and ut canis a corio nunquam absterrebitur uncto. so he never lets go of his game. ingenuity:your diddler is ingenious. he has constructiveness large. he understands plot. he invents and circumvents. were he not alexander he would be diogenes. were he not a diddler, he would be a maker of patent rat-traps or an angler for trout. audacity:your diddler is audacious.he is a bold man. he carries the war into africa. he conquers all by assault. he would not fear the daggers of frey herren. with a little more prudence dick turpin would have made a good diddler; with a trifle less blarney, daniel o'connell; with a pound or two more brains charles the twelfth. nonchalance:your diddler is nonchalant. he is not at all nervous. he never had any nerves. he is never seduced into a flurry. he is never put outunless put out of doors. he is coolcool as a cucumber. he is calm"calm as a smile from lady bury." he is easyeasy as an old glove, or the damsels of ancient baiae. originality:your diddler is originalconscientiously so. his thoughts are his own. he would scorn to employ those of another. a stale trick is his aversion. he would return a purse, i am sure, upon discovering that he had obtained it by an unoriginal diddle. impertinence.your diddler is impertinent. he swaggers. he sets his arms a-kimbo. he thrusts. his hands in his trowsers' pockets. he sneers in your face. he treads on your corns. he eats your dinner, he drinks your wine, he borrows your money, he pulls your nose, he kicks your poodle, and he kisses your wife. grin:your true diddler winds up all with a grin. but this nobody sees but himself. he grins when his daily work is donewhen his allotted labors are accomplishedat night in his own closet, and altogether for his own private entertainment. he goes home. he locks his door. he divests himself of his clothes. he puts out his candle. he gets into bed. he places his head upon the pillow. all this done, and your diddler grins. this is no hypothesis. it is a matter of course. i reason a priori, and a diddle would be no diddle without a grin. the origin of the diddle is referrable to the infancy of the human race. perhaps the first diddler was adam. at all events, we can trace the science back to a very remote period of antiquity. the moderns, however, have brought it to a perfection never dreamed of by our thick-headed progenitors. without pausing to speak of the "old saws," therefore, i shall content myself with a compendious account of some of the more "modern instances." a very good diddle is this. a housekeeper in want of a sofa, for instance, is seen to go in and out of several cabinet warehouses. at length she arrives at one offering an excellent variety. she is accosted, and invited to enter, by a polite and voluble individual at the door. she finds a sofa well adapted to her views, and upon inquiring the price, is surprised and delighted to hear a sum named at least twenty per cent. lower than her expectations. she hastens to make the purchase, gets a bill and receipt, leaves her address, with a request that the article be sent home as speedily as possible, and retires amid a profusion of bows from the shopkeeper. the night arrives and no sofa. a servant is sent to make inquiry about the delay. the whole transaction is denied. no sofa has been soldno money receivedexcept by the diddler, who played shop-keeper for the nonce. our cabinet warehouses are left entirely unattended, and thus afford every facility for a trick of this kind. visiters enter, look at furniture, and depart unheeded and unseen. should any one wish to purchase, or to inquire the price of an article, a bell is at hand, and this is considered amply sufficient. again, quite a respectable diddle is this. a well-dressed individual enters a shop, makes a purchase to the value of a dollar; finds, much to his vexation, that he has left his pocket-book in another coat pocket; and so says to the shopkeeper "my dear sir, never mind; just oblige me, will you, by sending the bundle home? but stay! i really believe that i have nothing less than a five dollar bill, even there. however, you can send four dollars in change with the bundle, you know." "very good, sir," replies the shop-keeper, who entertains, at once, a lofty opinion of the high-mindedness of his customer. "i know fellows," he says to himself, "who would just have put the goods under their arm, and walked off with a promise to call and pay the dollar as they came by in the afternoon." a boy is sent with the parcel and change. on the route, quite accidentally, he is met by the purchaser, who exclaims: "ah! this is my bundle, i seei thought you had been home with it, long ago. well, go on! my wife, mrs. trotter, will give you the five dollarsi left instructions with her to that effect. the change you might as well give to mei shall want some silver for the post office. very good! one, two, is this a good quarter?three, fourquite right! say to mrs. trotter that you met me, and be sure now and do not loiter on the way." the boy doesn't loiter at allbut he is a very long time in getting back from his errandfor no lady of the precise name of mrs. trotter is to be discovered. he consoles himself, however, that he has not been such a fool as to leave the goods without the money, and re-entering his shop with a self-satisfied air, feels sensibly hurt and indignant when his master asks him what has become of the change. a very simple diddle, indeed, is this. the captain of a ship, which is about to sail, is presented by an official looking person with an unusually moderate bill of city charges. glad to get off so easily, and confused by a hundred duties pressing upon him all at once, he discharges the claim forthwith. in about fifteen minutes, another and less reasonable bill is handed him by one who soon makes it evident that the first collector was a diddler, and the original collection a diddle. and here, too, is a somewhat similar thing. a steamboat is casting loose from the wharf. a traveller, portmanteau in hand, is discovered running toward the wharf, at full speed. suddenly, he makes a dead halt, stoops, and picks up something from the ground in a very agitated manner. it is a pocket-book, and"has any gentleman lost a pocketbook?" he cries. no one can say that he has exactly lost a pocket-book; but a great excitement ensues, when the treasure trove is found to be of value. the boat, however, must not be detained. "time and tide wait for no man," says the captain. "for god's sake, stay only a few minutes," says the finder of the book"the true claimant will presently appear." "can't wait!" replies the man in authority; "cast off there, d'ye hear?" "what am i to do?" asks the finder, in great tribulation. "i am about to leave the country for some years, and i cannot conscientiously retain this large amount in my possession. i beg your pardon, sir," [here he addresses a gentleman on shore,] "but you have the air of an honest man. will you confer upon me the favor of taking charge of this pocket-booki know i can trust youand of advertising it? the notes, you see, amount to a very considerable sum. the owner will, no doubt, insist upon rewarding you for your trouble "me!no, you!it was you who found the book." "well, if you must have it soi will take a small rewardjust to satisfy your scruples. let me seewhy these notes are all hundredsbless my soul! a hundred is too much to takefifty would be quite enough, i am sure "cast off there!" says the captain. "but then i have no change for a hundred, and upon the whole, you had better "cast off there!" says the captain. "never mind!" cries the gentleman on shore, who has been examining his own pocket-book for the last minute or so"never mind! i can fix ithere is a fifty on the bank of north americathrow the book." and the over-conscientious finder takes the fifty with marked reluctance, and throws the gentleman the book, as desired, while the steamboat fumes and fizzes on her way. in about half an hour after her departure, the "large amount" is seen to be a "counterfeit presentment," and the whole thing a capital diddle. a bold diddle is this. a camp-meeting, or something similar, is to be held at a certain spot which is accessible only by means of a free bridge. a diddler stations himself upon this bridge, respectfully informs all passers by of the new county law, which establishes a toll of one cent for foot passengers, two for horses and donkeys, and so forth, and so forth. some grumble but all submit, and the diddler goes home a wealthier man by some fifty or sixty dollars well earned. this taking a toll from a great crowd of people is an excessively troublesome thing. a neat diddle is this. a friend holds one of the diddler's promises to pay, filled up and signed in due form, upon the ordinary blanks printed in red ink. the diddler purchases one or two dozen of these blanks, and every day dips one of them in his soup, makes his dog jump for it, and finally gives it to him as a bonne bouche. the note arriving at maturity, the diddler, with the diddler's dog, calls upon the friend, and the promise to pay is made the topic of discussion. the friend produces it from his escritoire, and is in the act of reaching it to the diddler, when up jumps the diddler's dog and devours it forthwith. the diddler is not only surprised but vexed and incensed at the absurd behavior of his dog, and expresses his entire readiness to cancel the obligation at any moment when the evidence of the obligation shall be forthcoming. a very mean diddle is this. a lady is insulted in the street by a diddler's accomplice. the diddler himself flies to her assistance, and, giving his friend a comfortable thrashing, insists upon attending the lady to her own door. he bows, with his hand upon his heart, and most respectfully bids her adieu. she entreats him, as her deliverer, to walk in and be introduced to her big brother and her papa. with a sigh, he declines to do so. "is there no way, then, sir," she murmurs, "in which i may be permitted to testify my gratitude?" "why, yes, madam, there is. will you be kind enough to lend me a couple of shillings?" in the first excitement of the moment the lady decides upon fainting outright. upon second thought, however, she opens her purse-strings and delivers the specie. now this, i say, is a diddle minutefor one entire moiety of the sum borrowed has to be paid to the gentleman who had the trouble of performing the insult, and who had then to stand still and be thrashed for performing it. rather a small but still a scientific diddle is this. the diddler approaches the bar of a tavern, and demands a couple of twists of tobacco. these are handed to him, when, having slightly examined them, he says: "i don't much like this tobacco. here, take it back, and give me a glass of brandy and water in its place." the brandy and water is furnished and imbibed, and the diddler makes his way to the door. but the voice of the tavern-keeper arrests him. "i believe, sir, you have forgotten to pay for your brandy and water." "pay for my brandy and water!didn't i give you the tobacco for the brandy and water? what more would you have?" "but, sir, if you please, i don't remember that you paid me for the tobacco." "what do you mean by that, you scoundrel?didn't i give you back your tobacco? isn't that your tobacco lying there? do you expect me to pay for what i did not take?" "but, sir," says the publican, now rather at a loss what to say, "but sir-" "but me no buts, sir," interrupts the diddler, apparently in very high dudgeon, and slamming the door after him, as he makes his escape."but me no buts, sir, and none of your tricks upon travellers." here again is a very clever diddle, of which the simplicity is not its least recommendation. a purse, or pocket-book, being really lost, the loser inserts in one of the daily papers of a large city a fully descriptive advertisement. whereupon our diddler copies the facts of this advertisement, with a change of heading, of general phraseology and address. the original, for instance, is long, and verbose, is headed "a pocket-book lost!" and requires the treasure, when found, to be left at no. 1 tom street. the copy is brief, and being headed with "lost" only, indicates no. 2 dick, or no. 3 harry street, as the locality at which the owner may be seen. moreover, it is inserted in at least five or six of the daily papers of the day, while in point of time, it makes its appearance only a few hours after the original. should it be read by the loser of the purse, he would hardly suspect it to have any reference to his own misfortune. but, of course, the chances are five or six to one, that the finder will repair to the address given by the diddler, rather than to that pointed out by the rightful proprietor. the former pays the reward, pockets the treasure and decamps. quite an analogous diddle is this. a lady of ton has dropped, some where in the street, a diamond ring of very unusual value. for its recovery, she offers some forty or fifty dollars rewardgiving, in her advertisement, a very minute description of the gem, and of its settings, and declaring that, on its restoration at no. so and so, in such and such avenue, the reward would be paid instanter, without a single question being asked. during the lady's absence from home, a day or two afterwards, a ring is heard at the door of no. so and so, in such and such avenue; a servant appears; the lady of the house is asked for and is declared to be out, at which astounding information, the visitor expresses the most poignant regret. his business is of importance and concerns the lady herself. in fact, he had the good fortune to find her diamond ring. but perhaps it would be as well that he should call again. "by no means!" says the servant; and "by no means!" says the lady's sister and the lady's sister-in-law, who are summoned forthwith. the ring is clamorously identified, the reward is paid, and the finder nearly thrust out of doors. the lady returns and expresses some little dissatisfaction with her sister and sister-in-law, because they happen to have paid forty or fifty dollars for a fac-simile of her diamond ringa fac-simile made out of real pinch-beck and unquestionable paste. but as there is really no end to diddling, so there would be none to this essay, were i even to hint at half the variations, or inflections, of which this science is susceptible. i must bring this paper, perforce, to a conclusion, and this i cannot do better than by a summary notice of a very decent, but rather elaborate diddle, of which our own city was made the theatre, not very long ago, and which was subsequently repeated with success, in other still more verdant localities of the union. a middle-aged gentleman arrives in town from parts unknown. he is remarkably precise, cautious, staid, and deliberate in his demeanor. his dress is scrupulously neat, but plain, unostentatious. he wears a white cravat, an ample waistcoat, made with an eye to comfort alone; thick-soled cosy-looking shoes, and pantaloons without straps. he has the whole air, in fact, of your well-to-do, sober-sided, exact, and respectable "man of business," par excellenceone of the stern and outwardly hard, internally soft, sort of people that we see in the crack high comediesfellows whose words are so many bonds, and who are noted for giving away guineas, in charity, with the one hand, while, in the way of mere bargain, they exact the uttermost fraction of a farthing with the other. he makes much ado before he can get suited with a boarding house. he dislikes children. he has been accustomed to quiet. his habits are methodicaland then he would prefer getting into a private and respectable small family, piously inclined. terms, however, are no objectonly he must insist upon settling his bill on the first of every month, (it is now the second) and begs his landlady, when he finally obtains one to his mind, not on any account to forget his instructions upon this pointbut to send in a bill, and receipt, precisely at ten o'clock, on the first day of every month, and under no circumstances to put it off to the second. these arrangements made, our man of business rents an office in a reputable rather than a fashionable quarter of the town. there is nothing he more despises than pretense. "where there is much show," he says, "there is seldom any thing very solid behind"an observation which so profoundly impresses his landlady's fancy, that she makes a pencil memorandum of it forthwith, in her great family bible, on the broad margin of the proverbs of solomon. the next step is to advertise, after some such fashion as this, in the principal business six-pennies of the citythe pennies are eschewed as not "respectable"and as demanding payment for all advertisements in advance. our man of business holds it as a point of his faith that work should never be paid for until done. "wantedthe advertisers, being about to commence extensive business operations in this city, will require the services of three or four intelligent and competent clerks, to whom a liberal salary will be paid. the very best recommendations, not so much for capacity, as for integrity, will be expected. indeed, as the duties to be performed involve high responsibilities, and large amounts of money must necessarily pass through the hands of those engaged, it is deemed advisable to demand a deposit of fifty dollars from each clerk employed. no person need apply, therefore, who is not prepared to leave this sum in the possession of the advertisers, and who cannot furnish the most satisfactory testimonials of morality. young gentlemen piously inclined will be preferred. application should be made between the hours of ten and eleven a. m., and four and five p. m., of messrs. "bogs, hogs logs, frogs & co., "no. 110 dog street" by the thirty-first day of the month, this advertisement has brought to the office of messrs. bogs, hogs, logs, frogs, and company, some fifteen or twenty young gentlemen piously inclined. but our man of business is in no hurry to conclude a contract with anyno man of business is ever precipitateand it is not until the most rigid catechism in respect to the piety of each young gentleman's inclination, that his services are engaged and his fifty dollars receipted for, just by way of proper precaution, on the part of the respectable firm of bogs, hogs, logs, frogs, and company. on the morning of the first day of the next month, the landlady does not present her bill, according to promisea piece of neglect for which the comfortable head of the house ending in ogs would no doubt have chided her severely, could he have been prevailed upon to remain in town a day or two for that purpose. as it is, the constables have had a sad time of it, running hither and thither, and all they can do is to declare the man of business most emphatically, a "hen knee high"by which some persons imagine them to imply that, in fact, he is n. e. i.by which again the very classical phrase non est inventus, is supposed to be understood. in the meantime the young gentlemen, one and all, are somewhat less piously inclined than before, while the landlady purchases a shilling's worth of the indian rubber, and very carefully obliterates the pencil memorandum that some fool has made in her great family bible, on the broad margin of the proverbs of solomon. the end . 1850 never bet the devil your head a tale with a moral by edgar allan poe con tal que las costumbres de un autor," says don thomas de las torres, in the preface to his "amatory poems" "sean puras y castas, importo muy poco que no sean igualmente severas sus obras"meaning, in plain english, that, provided the morals of an author are pure personally, it signifies nothing what are the morals of his books. we presume that don thomas is now in purgatory for the assertion. it would be a clever thing, too, in the way of poetical justice, to keep him there until his "amatory poems" get out of print, or are laid definitely upon the shelf through lack of readers. every fiction should have a moral; and, what is more to the purpose, the critics have discovered that every fiction has. philip melanchthon, some time ago, wrote a commentary upon the "batrachomyomachia," and proved that the poet's object was to excite a distaste for sedition. pierre la seine, going a step farther, shows that the intention was to recommend to young men temperance in eating and drinking. just so, too, jacobus hugo has satisfied himself that, by euenis, homer meant to insinuate john calvin; by antinous, martin luther; by the lotophagi, protestants in general; and, by the harpies, the dutch. our more modern scholiasts are equally acute. these fellows demonstrate a hidden meaning in "the antediluvians," a parable in powhatan," new views in "cock robin," and transcendentalism in "hop o' my thumb." in short, it has been shown that no man can sit down to write without a very profound design. thus to authors in general much trouble is spared. a novelist, for example, need have no care of his moral. it is therethat is to say, it is somewhereand the moral and the critics can take care of themselves. when the proper time arrives, all that the gentleman intended, and all that he did not intend, will be brought to light, in the "dial," or the "down-easter," together with all that he ought to have intended, and the rest that he clearly meant to intend:so that it will all come very straight in the end. there is no just ground, therefore, for the charge brought against me by certain ignoramusesthat i have never written a moral tale, or, in more precise words, a tale with a moral. they are not the critics predestined to bring me out, and develop my morals:that is the secret. by and by the "north american quarterly humdrum" will make them ashamed of their stupidity. in the meantime, by way of staying executionby way of mitigating the accusations against mei offer the sad history appended,a history about whose obvious moral there can be no question whatever, since he who runs may read it in the large capitals which form the title of the tale. i should have credit for this arrangementa far wiser one than that of la fontaine and others, who reserve the impression to be conveyed until the last moment, and thus sneak it in at the fag end of their fables. defuncti injuria ne afficiantur was a law of the twelve tables, and de mortuis nil nisi bonum is an excellent injunctioneven if the dead in question be nothing but dead small beer. it is not my design, therefore, to vituperate my deceased friend, toby dammit. he was a sad dog, it is true, and a dog's death it was that he died; but he himself was not to blame for his vices. they grew out of a personal defect in his mother. she did her best in the way of flogging him while an infantfor duties to her wellregulated mind were always pleasures, and babies, like tough steaks, or the modern greek olive trees, are invariably the better for beatingbut, poor woman! she had the misfortune to be left-handed, and a child flogged left-handedly had better be left unflogged. the world revolves from right to left. it will not do to whip a baby from left to right. if each blow in the proper direction drives an evil propensity out, it follows that every thump in an opposite one knocks its quota of wickedness in. i was often present at toby's chastisements, and, even by the way in which he kicked, i could perceive that he was getting worse and worse every day. at last i saw, through the tears in my eyes, that there was no hope of the villain at all, and one day when he had been cuffed until he grew so black in the face that one might have mistaken him for a little african, and no effect had been produced beyond that of making him wriggle himself into a fit, i could stand it no longer, but went down upon my knees forthwith, and, uplifting my voice, made prophecy of his ruin. the fact is that his precocity in vice was awful. at five months of age he used to get into such passions that he was unable to articulate. at six months, i caught him gnawing a pack of cards. at seven months he was in the constant habit of catching and kissing the female babies. at eight months he peremptorily refused to put his signature to the temperance pledge. thus he went on increasing in iniquity, month after month, until, at the close of the first year, he not only insisted upon wearing moustaches, but had contracted a propensity for cursing and swearing, and for backing his assertions by bets. through this latter most ungentlemanly practice, the ruin which i had predicted to toby dammit overtook him at last. the fashion had "grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength," so that, when he came to be a man, he could scarcely utter a sentence without interlarding it with a proposition to gamble. not that he actually laid wagersno. i will do my friend the justice to say that he would as soon have laid eggs. with him the thing was a mere formulanothing more. his expressions on this head had no meaning attached to them whatever. they were simple if not altogether innocent expletivesimaginative phrases wherewith to round off a sentence. when he said "i'll bet you so and so," nobody ever thought of taking him up; but still i could not help thinking it my duty to put him down. the habit was an immoral one, and so i told him. it was a vulgar onethis i begged him to believe. it was discountenanced by societyhere i said nothing but the truth. it was forbidden by act of congresshere i had not the slightest intention of telling a lie. i remonstratedbut to no purpose. i demonstratedin vain. i entreatedhe smiled. i imploredhe laughed. i preachedhe sneered. i threatenedhe swore. i kicked himhe called for the police. i pulled his nosehe blew it, and offered to bet the devil his head that i would not venture to try that experiment again. poverty was another vice which the peculiar physical deficiency of dammit's mother had entailed upon her son. he was detestably poor, and this was the reason, no doubt, that his expletive expressions about betting, seldom took a pecuniary turn. i will not be bound to say that i ever heard him make use of such a figure of speech as "i'll bet you a dollar." it was usually "i'll bet you what you please," or "i'll bet you what you dare," or "i'll bet you a trifle," or else, more significantly still, "i'll bet the devil my head." this latter form seemed to please him best;perhaps because it involved the least risk; for dammit had become excessively parsimonious. had any one taken him up, his head was small, and thus his loss would have been small too. but these are my own reflections and i am by no means sure that i am right in attributing them to him. at all events the phrase in question grew daily in favor, notwithstanding the gross impropriety of a man betting his brains like bank-notes:but this was a point which my friend's perversity of disposition would not permit him to comprehend. in the end, he abandoned all other forms of wager, and gave himself up to "i'll bet the devil my head," with a pertinacity and exclusiveness of devotion that displeased not less than it surprised me. i am always displeased by circumstances for which i cannot account. mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health. the truth is, there was something in the air with which mr. dammit was wont to give utterance to his offensive expressionsomething in his manner of enunciationwhich at first interested, and afterwards made me very uneasysomething which, for want of a more definite term at present, i must be permitted to call queer; but which mr. coleridge would have called mystical, mr. kant pantheistical, mr. carlyle twistical, and mr. emerson hyperquizzitistical. i began not to like it at all. mr. dammits soul was in a perilous state. i resolved to bring all my eloquence into play to save it. i vowed to serve him as st. patrick, in the irish chronicle, is said to have served the toad,that is to say, "awaken him to a sense of his situation." i addressed myself to the task forthwith. once more i betook myself to remonstrance. again i collected my energies for a final attempt at expostulation. when i had made an end of my lecture, mr. dammit indulged himself in some very equivocal behavior. for some moments he remained silent, merely looking me inquisitively in the face. but presently he threw his head to one side, and elevated his eyebrows to a great extent. then he spread out the palms of his hands and shrugged up his shoulders. then he winked with the right eye. then he repeated the operation with the left. then he shut them both up very tight. then he opened them both so very wide that i became seriously alarmed for the consequences. then, applying his thumb to his nose, he thought proper to make an indescribable movement with the rest of his fingers. finally, setting his arms a-kimbo, he condescended to reply. i can call to mind only the beads of his discourse. he would be obliged to me if i would hold my tongue. he wished none of my advice. he despised all my insinuations. he was old enough to take care of himself. did i still think him baby dammit? did i mean to say any thing against his character? did i intend to insult him? was i a fool? was my maternal parent aware, in a word, of my absence from the domiciliary residence? he would put this latter question to me as to a man of veracity, and he would bind himself to abide by my reply. once more he would demand explicitly if my mother knew that i was out. my confusion, he said, betrayed me, and he would be willing to bet the devil his head that she did not. mr. dammit did not pause for my rejoinder. turning upon his heel, he left my presence with undignified precipitation. it was well for him that he did so. my feelings had been wounded. even my anger had been aroused. for once i would have taken him up upon his insulting wager. i would have won for the arch-enemy mr. dammit's little headfor the fact is, my mamma was very well aware of my merely temporary absence from home. but khoda shefa midehedheaven gives reliefas the mussulmans say when you tread upon their toes. it was in pursuance of my duty that i had been insulted, and i bore the insult like a man. it now seemed to me, however, that i had done all that could be required of me, in the case of this miserable individual, and i resolved to trouble him no longer with my counsel, but to leave him to his conscience and himself. but although i forebore to intrude with my advice, i could not bring myself to give up his society altogether. i even went so far as to humor some of his less reprehensible propensities; and there were times when i found myself lauding his wicked jokes, as epicures do mustard, with tears in my eyes:so profoundly did it grieve me to hear his evil talk. one fine day, having strolled out together, arm in arm, our route led us in the direction of a river. there was a bridge, and we resolved to cross it. it was roofed over, by way of protection from the weather, and the archway, having but few windows, was thus very uncomfortably dark. as we entered the passage, the contrast between the external glare and the interior gloom struck heavily upon my spirits. not so upon those of the unhappy dammit, who offered to bet the devil his head that i was hipped. he seemed to be in an unusual good humor. he was excessively livelyso much so that i entertained i know not what of uneasy suspicion. it is not impossible that he was affected with the transcendentals. i am not well enough versed, however, in the diagnosis of this disease to speak with decision upon the point; and unhappily there were none of my friends of the "dial" present. i suggest the idea, nevertheless, because of a certain species of austere merry-andrewism which seemed to beset my poor friend, and caused him to make quite a tom-fool of himself. nothing would serve him but wriggling and skipping about under and over every thing that came in his way; now shouting out, and now lisping out, all manner of odd little and big words, yet preserving the gravest face in the world all the time. i really could not make up my mind whether to kick or to pity him. at length, having passed nearly across the bridge, we approached the termination of the footway, when our progress was impeded by a turnstile of some height. through this i made my way quietly, pushing it around as usual. but this turn would not serve the turn of mr. dammit. he insisted upon leaping the stile, and said he could cut a pigeon-wing over it in the air. now this, conscientiously speaking, i did not think he could do. the best pigeon-winger over all kinds of style was my friend mr. carlyle, and as i knew he could not do it, i would not believe that it could be done by toby dammit. i therefore told him, in so many words, that he was a braggadocio, and could not do what he said. for this i had reason to be sorry afterward;for he straightway offered to bet the devil his head that he could. i was about to reply, notwithstanding my previous resolutions, with some remonstrance against his impiety, when i heard, close at my elbow, a slight cough, which sounded very much like the ejaculation "ahem!" i started, and looked about me in surprise. my glance at length fell into a nook of the framework of the bridge, and upon the figure of a little lame old gentleman of venerable aspect. nothing could be more reverend than his whole appearance; for he not only had on a full suit of black, but his shirt was perfectly clean and the collar turned very neatly down over a white cravat, while his hair was parted in front like a girl's. his hands were clasped pensively together over his stomach, and his two eyes were carefully rolled up into the top of his head. upon observing him more closely, i perceived that he wore a black silk apron over his small-clothes; and this was a thing which i thought very odd. before i had time to make any remark, however, upon so singular a circumstance, he interrupted me with a second "ahem!" to this observation i was not immediately prepared to reply. the fact is, remarks of this laconic nature are nearly unanswerable. i have known a quarterly review non-plussed by the word "fudge!" i am not ashamed to say, therefore, that i turned to mr. dammit for assistance. "dammit," said i, "what are you about? don't you hear?the gentleman says 'ahem!'" i looked sternly at my friend while i thus addressed him; for, to say the truth, i felt particularly puzzled, and when a man is particularly puzzled he must knit his brows and look savage, or else he is pretty sure to look like a fool. "dammit," observed ialthough this sounded very much like an oath, than which nothing was further from my thoughts"dammit," i suggested"the gentleman says 'ahem!'" i do not attempt to defend my remark on the score of profundity; i did not think it profound myself; but i have noticed that the effect of our speeches is not always proportionate with their importance in our own eyes; and if i had shot mr. d. through and through with a paixhan bomb, or knocked him in the head with the "poets and poetry of america," he could hardly have been more discomfited than when i addressed him with those simple words: "dammit, what are you about?don't you hear?the gentleman says 'ahem!'" "you don't say so?" gasped he at length, after turning more colors than a pirate runs up, one after the other, when chased by a man-of-war. "are you quite sure he said that? well, at all events i am in for it now, and may as well put a bold face upon the matter. here goes, thenahem!" at this the little old gentleman seemed pleasedgod only knows why. he left his station at the nook of the bridge, limped forward with a gracious air, took dammit by the hand and shook it cordially, looking all the while straight up in his face with an air of the most unadulterated benignity which it is possible for the mind of man to imagine. "i am quite sure you will win it, dammit," said he, with the frankest of all smiles, "but we are obliged to have a trial, you know, for the sake of mere form." "ahem!" replied my friend, taking off his coat, with a deep sigh, tying a pocket-handkerchief around his waist, and producing an unaccountable alteration in his countenance by twisting up his eyes and bringing down the corners of his mouth"ahem!" and "ahem!" said he again, after a pause; and not another word more than "ahem!" did i ever know him to say after that. "aha!" thought i, without expressing myself aloud"this is quite a remarkable silence on the part of toby dammit, and is no doubt a consequence of his verbosity upon a previous occasion. one extreme induces another. i wonder if he has forgotten the many unanswerable questions which he propounded to me so fluently on the day when i gave him my last lecture? at all events, he is cured of the transcendentals." "ahem!" here replied toby, just as if he had been reading my thoughts, and looking like a very old sheep in a revery. the old gentleman now took him by the arm, and led him more into the shade of the bridgea few paces back from the turnstile. "my good fellow," said he, "i make it a point of conscience to allow you this much run. wait here, till i take my place by the stile, so that i may see whether you go over it handsomely, and transcendentally, and don't omit any flourishes of the pigeon-wing. a mere form, you know. i will say 'one, two, three, and away.' mind you, start at the word 'away'" here he took his position by the stile, paused a moment as if in profound reflection, then looked up and, i thought, smiled very slightly, then tightened the strings of his apron, then took a long look at dammit, and finally gave the word as agreed upon onetwothreeandaway! punctually at the word "away," my poor friend set off in a strong gallop. the stile was not very high, like mr. lord'snor yet very low, like that of mr. lord's reviewers, but upon the whole i made sure that he would clear it. and then what if he did not?ah, that was the questionwhat if he did not? "what right," said i, "had the old gentleman to make any other gentleman jump? the little old dot-and-carry-one! who is he? if he asks me to jump, i won't do it, that's flat, and i don't care who the devil he is." the bridge, as i say, was arched and covered in, in a very ridiculous manner, and there was a most uncomfortable echo about it at all timesan echo which i never before so particularly observed as when i uttered the four last words of my remark. but what i said, or what i thought, or what i heard, occupied only an instant. in less than five seconds from his starting, my poor toby had taken the leap. i saw him run nimbly, and spring grandly from the floor of the bridge, cutting the most awful flourishes with his legs as he went up. i saw him high in the air, pigeon-winging it to admiration just over the top of the stile; and of course i thought it an unusually singular thing that he did not continue to go over. but the whole leap was the affair of a moment, and, before i had a chance to make any profound reflections, down came mr. dammit on the flat of his back, on the same side of the stile from which he had started. at the same instant i saw the old gentleman limping off at the top of his speed, having caught and wrapt up in his apron something that fell heavily into it from the darkness of the arch just over the turnstile. at all this i was much astonished; but i had no leisure to think, for dammit lay particularly still, and i concluded that his feelings had been hurt, and that he stood in need of my assistance. i hurried up to him and found that he had received what might be termed a serious injury. the truth is, he had been deprived of his head, which after a close search i could not find anywhere; so i determined to take him home and send for the homoeopathists. in the meantime a thought struck me, and i threw open an adjacent window of the bridge, when the sad truth flashed upon me at once. about five feet just above the top of the turnstile, and crossing the arch of the foot-path so as to constitute a brace, there extended a flat iron bar, lying with its breadth horizontally, and forming one of a series that served to strengthen the structure throughout its extent. with the edge of this brace it appeared evident that the neck of my unfortunate friend had come precisely in contact. he did not long survive his terrible loss. the homoeopathists did not give him little enough physic, and what little they did give him he hesitated to take. so in the end he grew worse, and at length died, a lesson to all riotous livers. i bedewed his grave with my tears, worked a bar sinister on his family escutcheon, and, for the general expenses of his funeral, sent in my very moderate bill to the transcendentalists. the scoundrels refused to pay it, so i had mr. dammit dug up at once, and sold him for dog's meat. the end . 1835 berenice by edgar allan poe berenice dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas. --ebn zaiat. misery is manifold. the wretchedness of earth is multiform. overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, --as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! how is it that from beauty i have derived a type of unloveliness? --from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? but as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been. my baptismal name is egaeus; that of my family i will not mention. yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray, hereditary halls. our line has been called a race of visionaries; and in many striking particulars --in the character of the family mansion --in the frescos of the chief saloon --in the tapestries of the dormitories --in the chiselling of some buttresses in the armory --but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings --in the fashion of the library chamber --and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents, there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief. the recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes --of which latter i will say no more. here died my mother. herein was i born. but it is mere idleness to say that i had not lived before --that the soul has no previous existence. you deny it? --let us not argue the matter. convinced myself, i seek not to convince. there is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms --of spiritual and meaning eyes --of sounds, musical yet sad --a remembrance which will not be excluded; a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist. in that chamber was i born. thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairy-land --into a palace of imagination --into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition --it is not singular that i gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye --that i loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers --it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life --wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought. the realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn, --not the material of my every-day existence-but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself. berenice and i were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. yet differently we grew --i ill of health, and buried in gloom --she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers the ramble on the hill-side --mine the studies of the cloister --i living within my own heart, and addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation --she roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. berenice! --i call upon her name --berenice! --and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! ah! vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! oh! gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! oh! sylph amid the shrubberies of arnheim! --oh! naiad among its fountains! --and then --then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. disease --a fatal disease --fell like the simoom upon her frame, and, even while i gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept, over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person! alas! the destroyer came and went, and the victim --where was she, i knew her not --or knew her no longer as berenice. among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself --trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was in most instances, startlingly abrupt. in the mean time my own disease --for i have been told that i should call it by no other appelation --my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form --hourly and momently gaining vigor --and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. this monomania, if i must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. it is more than probable that i am not understood; but i fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe. to muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin, or in the topography of a book; to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the door; to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower; to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in; --such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation. yet let me not be misapprehended. --the undue, earnest, and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. it was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. in the one instance, the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day dream often replete with luxury, he finds the incitamentum or first cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. in my case the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. few deductions, if any, were made; and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as a centre. the meditations were never pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. in a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as i have said before, the attentive, and are, with the day-dreamer, the speculative. my books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in their imaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. i well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble italian coelius secundus curio "de amplitudine beati regni dei"; st. austin's great work, the "city of god"; and tertullian "de carne christi," in which the paradoxical sentence "mortuus est dei filius; credible est quia ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est" occupied my undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation. thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by ptolemy hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called asphodel. and although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in the moral condition of berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature i have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. in the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, i did not fall to ponder frequently and bitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. but these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred, under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. true to its own character, my disorder revelled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of berenice --in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity. during the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely i had never loved her. in the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind. through the gray of the early morning --among the trellissed shadows of the forest at noonday --and in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and i had seen her --not as the living and breathing berenice, but as the berenice of a dream --not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such a being-not as a thing to admire, but to analyze --not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation. and now --now i shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, i called to mind that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, i spoke to her of marriage. and at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year, --one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful halcyon*, --i sat, (and sat, as i thought, alone,) in the inner apartment of the library. but uplifting my eyes i saw that berenice stood before me. *for as jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this clement and temperate time the nurse of the beautiful halcyon --simonides. was it my own excited imagination --or the misty influence of the atmosphere --or the uncertain twilight of the chamber --or the gray draperies which fell around her figure --that caused in it so vacillating and indistinct an outline? i could not tell. she spoke no word, i --not for worlds could i have uttered a syllable. an icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and sinking back upon the chair, i remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. alas! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being, lurked in any single line of the contour. my burning glances at length fell upon the face. the forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets now of a vivid yellow, and jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. the eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and seemingly pupil-less, and i shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. they parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. would to god that i had never beheld them, or that, having done so, i had died! the shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, i found that my cousin had departed from the chamber. but from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. not a speck on their surface --not a shade on their enamel --not an indenture in their edges --but what that period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. i saw them now even more unequivocally than i beheld them then. the teeth! --the teeth! --they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. then came the full fury of my monomania, and i struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. in the multiplied objects of the external world i had no thoughts but for the teeth. for these i longed with a phrenzied desire. all other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. they --they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. i held them in every light. i turned them in every attitude. i surveyed their characteristics. i dwelt upon their peculiarities. i pondered upon their conformation. i mused upon the alteration in their nature. i shuddered as i assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. of mad'selle salle it has been well said, "que tous ses pas etaient des sentiments," and of berenice i more seriously believed que toutes ses dents etaient des idees. des idees! --ah here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me! des idees! --ah therefore it was that i coveted them so madly! i felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving me back to reason. and the evening closed in upon me thus-and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went --and the day again dawned --and the mists of a second night were now gathering around --and still i sat motionless in that solitary room; and still i sat buried in meditation, and still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy as, with the most vivid hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. at length there broke in upon my dreams a cry as of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow, or of pain. i arose from my seat and, throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out in the antechamber a servant maiden, all in tears, who told me that berenice was --no more. she had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed. i found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. it seemed that i had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. i knew that it was now midnight, and i was well aware that since the setting of the sun berenice had been interred. but of that dreary period which intervened i had no positive --at least no definite comprehension. yet its memory was replete with horror --horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. it was a fearful page in the record my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. i strived to decypher them, but in vain; while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. i had done a deed --what was it? i asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me, "what was it?" on the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box. it was of no remarkable character, and i had seen it frequently before, for it was the property of the family physician; but how came it there, upon my table, and why did i shudder in regarding it? these things were in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. the words were the singular but simple ones of the poet ebn zaiat, "dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas." why then, as i perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body become congealed within my veins? there came a light tap at the library door, and pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. his looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. what said he? --some broken sentences i heard. he told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night --of the gathering together of the household-of a search in the direction of the sound; --and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave --of a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive! he pointed to garments;-they were muddy and clotted with gore. i spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand; --it was indented with the impress of human nails. he directed my attention to some object against the wall; --i looked at it for some minutes; --it was a spade. with a shriek i bounded to the table, and grasped the box that lay upon it. but i could not force it open; and in my tremor it slipped from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor. -the end. 1850 bon-bon by edgar allan poe quand un bon vin meuble mon estomac je suis plus savant que balzac plus sage que pibrac; mon brass seul faisant l'attaque de la nation coseaque, la mettroit au sac; de charon je passerois le lac en dormant dans son bac, j'irois au fier eac, sans que mon coeur fit tic ni tac, premmer du tabac. french vaudeville that pierre bon-bon was a restaurateur of uncommon qualifications, the cul-de-sac le febvre at rouen, will, i imagine, feel himself at liberty to dispute. that pierre bon-bon was, in an equal degree, skilled in the philosophy of that period is, i presume still more especially undeniable. his pates a la fois were beyond doubt immaculate; but what pen can do justice to his essays sur la naturehis thoughts sur l'amehis observations sur l'esprit? if his omelettesif his fricandeaux were inestimable, what litterateur of that day would not have given twice as much for an "idee de bon-bon" as for all the trash of "idees" of all the rest of the savants? bon-bon had ransacked libraries which no other man had ransackedhad more than any other would have entertained a notion of readinghad understood more than any other would have conceived the possibility of understanding; and although, while he flourished, there were not wanting some authors at rouen to assert "that his dicta evinced neither the purity of the academy, nor the depth of the lyceum"although, mark me, his doctrines were by no means very generally comprehended, still it did not follow that they were difficult of comprehension. it was, i think, on account of their self-evidency that many persons were led to consider them abstruse. it is to bon-bonbut let this go no fartherit is to bon-bon that kant himself is mainly indebted for his metaphysics. the former was indeed not a platonist, nor strictly speaking an aristoteliannor did he, like the modern leibnitz, waste those precious hours which might be employed in the invention of a fricasee or, facili gradu, the analysis of a sensation, in frivolous attempts at reconciling the obstinate oils and waters of ethical discussion. not at all. bon-bon was ionicbon-bon was equally italic. he reasoned a priorihe reasoned also a posteriori. his ideas were innateor otherwise. he believed in george of trebizondehe believed in bossarion. bon-bon was emphatically abon-bonist. i have spoken of the philosopher in his capacity of restaurateur. i would not, however, have any friend of mine imagine that, in fulfilling his hereditary duties in that line, our hero wanted a proper estimation of their dignity and importance. far from it. it was impossible to say in which branch of his profession he took the greater pride. in his opinion the powers of the intellect held intimate connection with the capabilities of the stomach. i am not sure, indeed, that he greatly disagreed with the chinese, who held that the soul lies in the abdomen. the greeks at all events were right, he thought, who employed the same words for the mind and the diaphragm. by this i do not mean to insinuate a charge of gluttony, or indeed any other serious charge to the prejudice of the metaphysician. if pierre bon-bon had his failingsand what great man has not a thousand?if pierre bon-bon, i say, had his failings, they were failings of very little importancefaults indeed which, in other tempers, have often been looked upon rather in the light of virtues. as regards one of these foibles, i should not even have mentioned it in this history but for the remarkable prominencythe extreme alto relievoin which it jutted out from the plane of his general disposition. he could never let slip an opportunity of making a bargain. not that he was avariciousno. it was by no means necessary to the satisfaction of the philosopher, that the bargain should be to his own proper advantage. provided a trade could be effecteda trade of any kind, upon any terms, or under any circumstancesa triumphant smile was seen for many days thereafter to enlighten his countenance, and a knowing wink of the eye to give evidence of his sagacity. at any epoch it would not be very wonderful if a humor so peculiar as the one i have just mentioned, should elicit attention and remark. at the epoch of our narrative, had this peculiarity not attracted observation, there would have been room for wonder indeed. it was soon reported that, upon all occasions of the kind, the smile of bon-bon was wont to differ widely from the downright grin with which he would laugh at his own jokes, or welcome an acquaintance. hints were thrown out of an exciting nature; stories were told of perilous bargains made in a hurry and repented of at leisure; and instances were adduced of unaccountable capacities, vague longings, and unnatural inclinations implanted by the author of all evil for wise purposes of his own. the philosopher had other weaknessesbut they are scarcely worthy our serious examination. for example, there are few men of extraordinary profundity who are found wanting in an inclination for the bottle. whether this inclination be an exciting cause, or rather a valid proof of such profundity, it is a nice thing to say. bon-bon, as far as i can learn, did not think the subject adapted to minute investigation;nor do i. yet in the indulgence of a propensity so truly classical, it is not to be supposed that the restaurateur would lose sight of that intuitive discrimination which was wont to characterize, at one and the same time, his essais and his omelettes. in his seclusions the vin de bourgogne had its allotted hour, and there were appropriate moments for the cotes du rhone. with him sauterne was to medoc what catullus was to homer. he would sport with a syllogism in sipping st. peray, but unravel an argument over clos de vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of chambertin. well had it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the peddling propensity to which i have formerly alludedbut this was by no means the case. indeed to say the truth, that trait of mind in the philosophic bon-bon did begin at length to assume a character of strange intensity and mysticism, and appeared deeply tinctured with the diablerie of his favorite german studies. to enter the little cafe in the cul-de-sac le febvre was, at the period of our tale, to enter the sanctum of a man of genius. bon-bon was a man of genius. there was not a sous-cusinier in rouen, who could not have told you that bon-bon was a man of genius. his very cat knew it, and forebore to whisk her tail in the presence of the man of genius. his large water-dog was acquainted with the fact, and upon the approach of his master, betrayed his sense of inferiority by a sanctity of deportment, a debasement of the ears, and a dropping of the lower jaw not altogether unworthy of a dog. it is, however, true that much of this habitual respect might have been attributed to the personal appearance of the metaphysician. a distinguished exterior will, i am constrained to say, have its way even with a beast; and i am willing to allow much in the outward man of the restaurateur calculated to impress the imagination of the quadruped. there is a peculiar majesty about the atmosphere of the little greatif i may be permitted so equivocal an expressionwhich mere physical bulk alone will be found at all times inefficient in creating. if, however, bon-bon was barely three feet in height, and if his head was diminutively small, still it was impossible to behold the rotundity of his stomach without a sense of magnificence nearly bordering upon the sublime. in its size both dogs and men must have seen a type of his acquirementsin its immensity a fitting habitation for his immortal soul. i might hereif it so pleased medilate upon the matter of habiliment, and other mere circumstances of the external metaphysician. i might hint that the hair of our hero was worn short, combed smoothly over his forehead, and surmounted by a conical-shaped white flannel cap and tasselsthat his pea-green jerkin was not after the fashion of those worn by the common class of restaurateurs at that daythat the sleeves were something fuller than the reigning costume permittedthat the cuffs were turned up, not as usual in that barbarous period, with cloth of the same quality and color as the garment, but faced in a more fanciful manner with the particolored velvet of genoathat his slippers were of a bright purple, curiously filigreed, and might have been manufactured in japan, but for the exquisite pointing of the toes, and the brilliant tints of the binding and embroiderythat his breeches were of the yellow satin-like material called aimablethat his sky-blue cloak, resembling in form a dressing-wrapper, and richly bestudded all over with crimson devices, floated cavalierly upon his shoulders like a mist of the morningand that his tout ensemble gave rise to the remarkable words of benevenuta, the improvisatrice of florence, "that it was difficult to say whether pierre bon-bon was indeed a bird of paradise, or rather a very paradise of perfection." i might, i say, expatiate upon all these points if i pleased,but i forbear, merely personal details may be left to historical novelists,they are beneath the moral dignity of matter-of-fact. i have said that "to enter the cafe in the cul-de-sac le febvre was to enter the sanctum of a man of genius"but then it was only the man of genius who could duly estimate the merits of the sanctum. a sign, consisting of a vast folio, swung before the entrance. on one side of the volume was painted a bottle; on the reverse a pate. on the back were visible in large letters oeuvres de bon-bon. thus was delicately shadowed forth the two-fold occupation of the proprietor. upon stepping over the threshold, the whole interior of the building presented itself to view. a long, low-pitched room, of antique construction, was indeed all the accommodation afforded by the cafe. in a corner of the apartment stood the bed of the metaphysician. an army of curtains, together with a canopy a la grecque, gave it an air at once classic and comfortable. in the corner diagonary opposite, appeared, in direct family communion, the properties of the kitchen and the bibliotheque. a dish of polemics stood peacefully upon the dresser. here lay an ovenful of the latest ethicsthere a kettle of dudecimo melanges. volumes of german morality were hand and glove with the gridirona toasting-fork might be discovered by the side of eusebiusplato reclined at his ease in the frying-panand contemporary manuscripts were filed away upon the spit. in other respects the cafe de bon-bon might be said to differ little from the usual restaurants of the period. a fireplace yawned opposite the door. on the right of the fireplace an open cupboard displayed a formidable array of labelled bottles. it was here, about twelve o'clock one night during the severe winter the comments of his neighbours upon his singular propensitythat pierre bon-bon, i say, having turned them all out of his house, locked the door upon them with an oath, and betook himself in no very pacific mood to the comforts of a leather-bottomed arm-chair, and a fire of blazing fagots. it was one of those terrific nights which are only met with once or twice during a century. it snowed fiercely, and the house tottered to its centre with the floods of wind that, rushing through the crannies in the wall, and pouring impetuously down the chimney, shook awfully the curtains of the philosopher's bed, and disorganized the economy of his pate-pans and papers. the huge folio sign that swung without, exposed to the fury of the tempest, creaked ominously, and gave out a moaning sound from its stanchions of solid oak. it was in no placid temper, i say, that the metaphysician drew up his chair to its customary station by the hearth. many circumstances of a perplexing nature had occurred during the day, to disturb the serenity of his meditations. in attempting des oeufs a la princesse, he had unfortunately perpetrated an omelette a la reine; the discovery of a principle in ethics had been frustrated by the overturning of a stew; and last, not least, he had been thwarted in one of those admirable bargains which he at all times took such especial delight in bringing to a successful termination. but in the chafing of his mind at these unaccountable vicissitudes, there did not fail to be mingled some degree of that nervous anxiety which the fury of a boisterous night is so well calculated to produce. whistling to his more immediate vicinity the large black water-dog we have spoken of before, and settling himself uneasily in his chair, he could not help casting a wary and unquiet eye toward those distant recesses of the apartment whose inexorable shadows not even the red firelight itself could more than partially succeed in overcoming. having completed a scrutiny whose exact purpose was perhaps unintelligible to himself, he drew close to his seat a small table covered with books and papers, and soon became absorbed in the task of retouching a voluminous manuscript, intended for publication on the morrow. he had been thus occupied for some minutes when "i am in no hurry, monsieur bon-bon," suddenly whispered a whining voice in the apartment. "the devil!" ejaculated our hero, starting to his feet, overturning the table at his side, and staring around him in astonishment. "very true," calmly replied the voice. "very true!what is very true?how came you here?" vociferated the metaphysician, as his eye fell upon something which lay stretched at full length upon the bed. "i was saying," said the intruder, without attending to the interrogatives,"i was saying that i am not at all pushed for timethat the business upon which i took the liberty of calling, is of no pressing importancein short, that i can very well wait until you have finished your exposition." "my exposition!there now!how do you know?how came you to understand that i was writing an exposition?good god!" "hush!" replied the figure, in a shrill undertone; and, arising quickly from the bed, he made a single step toward our hero, while an iron lamp that depended over-head swung convulsively back from his approach. the philosopher's amazement did not prevent a narrow scrutiny of the stranger's dress and appearance. the outlines of his figure, exceedingly lean, but much above the common height, were rendered minutely distinct, by means of a faded suit of black cloth which fitted tight to the skin, but was otherwise cut very much in the style of a century ago. these garments had evidently been intended for a much shorter person than their present owner. his ankles and wrists were left naked for several inches. in his shoes, however, a pair of very brilliant buckles gave the lie to the extreme poverty implied by the other portions of his dress. his head was bare, and entirely bald, with the exception of a hinder part, from which depended a queue of considerable length. a pair of green spectacles, with side glasses, protected his eyes from the influence of the light, and at the same time prevented our hero from ascertaining either their color or their conformation. about the entire person there was no evidence of a shirt, but a white cravat, of filthy appearance, was tied with extreme precision around the throat and the ends hanging down formally side by side gave (although i dare say unintentionally) the idea of an ecclesiastic. indeed, many other points both in his appearance and demeanor might have very well sustained a conception of that nature. over his left ear, he carried, after the fashion of a modern clerk, an instrument resembling the stylus of the ancients. in a breast-pocket of his coat appeared conspicuously a small black volume fastened with clasps of steel. this book, whether accidentally or not, was so turned outwardly from the person as to discover the words "rituel catholique" in white letters upon the back. his entire physiognomy was interestingly saturnineeven cadaverously pale. the forehead was lofty, and deeply furrowed with the ridges of contemplation. the corners of the mouth were drawn down into an expression of the most submissive humility. there was also a clasping of the hands, as he stepped toward our heroa deep sighand altogether a look of such utter sanctity as could not have failed to be unequivocally preposessing. every shadow of anger faded from the countenance of the metaphysician, as, having completed a satisfactory survey of his visiter's person, he shook him cordially by the hand, and conducted him to a seat. there would however be a radical error in attributing this instantaneous transition of feeling in the philosopher, to any one of those causes which might naturally be supposed to have had an influence. indeed, pierre bon-bon, from what i have been able to understand of his disposition, was of all men the least likely to be imposed upon by any speciousness of exterior deportment. it was impossible that so accurate an observer of men and things should have failed to discover, upon the moment, the real character of the personage who had thus intruded upon his hospitality. to say no more, the conformation of his visiter's feet was sufficiently remarkablehe maintained lightly upon his head an inordinately tall hatthere was a tremulous swelling about the hinder part of his breechesand the vibration of his coat tail was a palpable fact. judge, then, with what feelings of satisfaction our hero found himself thrown thus at once into the society of a person for whom he had at all times entertained the most unqualified respect. he was, however, too much of the diplomatist to let escape him any intimation of his suspicions in regard to the true state of affairs. it was not his cue to appear at all conscious of the high honor he thus unexpectedly enjoyed; but, by leading his guest into the conversation, to elicit some important ethical ideas, which might, in obtaining a place in his contemplated publication, enlighten the human race, and at the same time immortalize himselfideas which, i should have added, his visitor's great age, and well-known proficiency in the science of morals, might very well have enabled him to afford. actuated by these enlightened views, our hero bade the gentleman sit down, while he himself took occasion to throw some fagots upon the fire, and place upon the now re-established table some bottles of mousseux. having quickly completed these operations, he drew his chair vis-a-vis to his companion's, and waited until the latter should open the conversation. but plans even the most skilfully matured are often thwarted in the outset of their applicationand the restaurateur found himself nonplussed by the very first words of his visiter's speech. "i see you know me, bon-bon," said he; "ha! ha! ha!he! he! he!hi! hi! hi!ho! ho! ho!hu! hu! hu!"and the devil, dropping at once the sanctity of his demeanor, opened to its fullest extent a mouth from ear to ear, so as to display a set of jagged and fang-like teeth, and, throwing back his head, laughed long, loudly, wickedly, and uproariously, while the black dog, crouching down upon his haunches, joined lustily in the chorus, and the tabby cat, flying off at a tangent, stood up on end, and shrieked in the farthest corner of the apartment. not so the philosopher; he was too much a man of the world either to laugh like the dog, or by shrieks to betray the indecorous trepidation of the cat. it must be confessed, he felt a little astonishment to see the white letters which formed the words "rituel catholique" on the book in his guest's pocket, momently changing both their color and their import, and in a few seconds, in place of the original title the words regitre des condamnes blazed forth in characters of red. this startling circumstance, when bon-bon replied to his visiter's remark, imparted to his manner an air of embarrassment which probably might, not otherwise have been observed. "why sir," said the philosopher, "why sir, to speak sincerelyi i imaginei have some faintsome very faint ideaof the remarkable honor-" "oh!ah!yes!very well!" interrupted his majesty; "say no morei see how it is." and hereupon, taking off his green spectacles, he wiped the glasses carefully with the sleeve of his coat, and deposited them in his pocket. if bon-bon had been astonished at the incident of the book, his amazement was now much increased by the spectacle which here presented itself to view. in raising his eyes, with a strong feeling of curiosity to ascertain the color of his guest's, he found them by no means black, as he had anticipatednor gray, as might have been imaginednor yet hazel nor bluenor indeed yellow nor rednor purplenor whitenor greennor any other color in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. in short, pierre bon-bon not only saw plainly that his majesty had no eyes whatsoever, but could discover no indications of their having existed at any previous periodfor the space where eyes should naturally have been was, i am constrained to say, simply a dead level of flesh. it was not in the nature of the metaphysician to forbear making some inquiry into the sources of so strange a phenomenon, and the reply of his majesty was at once prompt, dignified, and satisfactory. "eyes! my dear bon-boneyes! did you say?oh!ah!i perceive! the ridiculous prints, eh, which are in, circulation, have given you a false idea of my personal appearance? eyes!true. eyes, pierre bon-bon, are very well in their proper placethat, you would say, is the head?rightthe head of a worm. to you, likewise, these optics are indispensableyet i will convince you that my vision is more penetrating than your own. there is a cat i see in the cornera pretty catlook at herobserve her well. now, bon-bon, do you behold the thoughtsthe thoughts, i say,the ideasthe reflectionswhich are being engendered in her pericranium? there it is, nowyou do not! she is thinking we admire the length of her tail and the profundity of her mind. she has just concluded that i am the most distinguished of ecclesiastics, and that you are the most superficial of metaphysicians. thus you see i am not altogether blind; but to one of my profession, the eyes you speak of would be merely an incumbrance, liable at any time to be put out by a toasting-iron, or a pitchfork. to you, i allow, these optical affairs are indispensable. endeavor, bon-bon, to use them well;my vision is the soul." hereupon the guest helped himself to the wine upon the table, and pouring out a bumper for bon-bon, requested him to drink it without scruple, and make himself perfectly at home. "a clever book that of yours, pierre," resumed his majesty, tapping our friend knowingly upon the shoulder, as the latter put down his glass after a thorough compliance with his visiter's injunction. "a clever book that of yours, upon my honor. it's a work after my own heart. your arrangement of the matter, i think, however, might be improved, and many of your notions remind me of aristotle. that philosopher was one of my most intimate acquaintances. i liked him as much for his terrible ill temper, as for his happy knack at making a blunder. there is only one solid truth in all that he has written, and for that i gave him the hint out of pure compassion for his absurdity. i suppose, pierre bon-bon, you very well know to what divine moral truth i am alluding?" "cannot say that i-" "indeed!why it was i who told aristotle that by sneezing, men expelled superfluous ideas through the proboscis." "which ishiccup!undoubtedly the case," said the metaphysician, while he poured out for himself another bumper of mousseux, and offered his snuff-box to the fingers of his visiter. "there was plato, too," continued his majesty, modestly declining the snuff-box and the compliment it implied"there was plato, too, for whom i, at one time, felt all the affection of a friend. you knew plato, bon-bon?ah, no, i beg a thousand pardons. he met me at athens, one day, in the parthenon, and told me he was distressed for an idea. i bade him write, down that o nous estin aulos. he said that he would do so, and went home, while i stepped over to the pyramids. but my conscience smote me for having uttered a truth, even to aid a friend, and hastening back to athens, i arrived behind the philosopher's chair as he was inditing the 'aulos.'" "giving the lambda a fillip with my finger, i turned it upside down. so the sentence now read 'o nous estin augos', and is, you perceive, the fundamental doctrines in his metaphysics." "were you ever at rome?" asked the restaurateur, as he finished his second bottle of mousseux, and drew from the closet a larger supply of chambertin. but once, monsieur bon-bon, but once. there was a time," said the devil, as if reciting some passage from a book"there was a time when occurred an anarchy of five years, during which the republic, bereft of all its officers, had no magistracy besides the tribunes of the people, and these were not legally vested with any degree of executive powerat that time, monsieur bon-bonat that time only i was in rome, and i have no earthly acquaintance, consequently, with any of its philosophy."* *ils ecrivaient sur la philosophie (cicero, lucretius, seneca) mais c'etait la philosophie grecque.condorcet. "what do you think ofwhat do you think ofhiccup!epicurus?" "what do i think of whom?" said the devil, in astonishment, "you cannot surely mean to find any fault with epicurus! what do i think of epicurus! do you mean me, sir?i am epicurus! i am the same philosopher who wrote each of the three hundred treatises commemorated by diogenes laertes." "that's a lie!" said the metaphysician, for the wine had gotten a little into his head. "very well!very well, sir!very well, indeed, sir!" said his majesty, apparently much flattered. "that's a lie!" repeated the restaurateur, dogmatically; "that's ahiccup!a lie!" "well, well, have it your own way!" said the devil, pacifically, and bon-bon, having beaten his majesty at argument, thought it his duty to conclude a second bottle of chambertin. "as i was saying," resumed the visiter"as i was observing a little while ago, there are some very outre notions in that book of yours monsieur bon-bon. what, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug about the soul? pray, sir, what is the soul?" "thehiccup!soul," replied the metaphysician, referring to his ms., "is undoubtedly-" "no, sir!" "indubitably-" "no, sir!" "indisputably-" "no, sir!" "evidently-" "no, sir!" "incontrovertibly-" "no, sir!" "hiccup!-" "no, sir!" "and beyond all question, a-" "no sir, the soul is no such thing!" (here the philosopher, looking daggers, took occasion to make an end, upon the spot, of his third bottle of chambertin.) "thenhic-cup!pray, sirwhatwhat is it?" "that is neither here nor there, monsieur bon-bon," replied his majesty, musingly. "i have tastedthat is to say, i have known some very bad souls, and some toopretty good ones." here he smacked his lips, and, having unconsciously let fall his hand upon the volume in his pocket, was seized with a violent fit of sneezing. he continued. "there was the soul of cratinuspassable: aristophanesracy: platoexquisitenot your plato, but plato the comic poet; your plato would have turned the stomach of cerberusfaugh! then let me see! there were naevius, and andronicus, and plautus, and terentius. then there were lucilius, and catullus, and naso, and quintus flaccus,dear quinty! as i called him when he sung a seculare for my amusement, while i toasted him, in pure good humor, on a fork. but they want flavor, these romans. one fat greek is worth a dozen of them, and besides will keep, which cannot be said of a quirite.let us taste your sauterne." bon-bon had by this time made up his mind to nil admirari and endeavored to hand down the bottles in question. he was, however, conscious of a strange sound in the room like the wagging of a tail. of this, although extremely indecent in his majesty, the philosopher took no notice:simply kicking the dog, and requesting him to be quiet. the visiter continued: "i found that horace tasted very much like aristotle;you know i am fond of variety. terentius i could not have told from menander. naso, to my astonishment, was nicander in disguise. virgilius had a strong twang of theocritus. martial put me much in mind of archilochusand titus livius was positively polybius and none other." "hic-cup!" here replied bon-bon, and his majesty proceeded: "but if i have a penchant, monsieur bon-bonif i have a penchant, it is for a philosopher. yet, let me tell you, sir, it is not every devi mean it is not every gentleman who knows how to choose a philosopher. long ones are not good; and the best, if not carefully shelled, are apt to be a little rancid on account of the gall!" "shelled!" "i mean taken out of the carcass." "what do you think of ahic-cup!physician?" "don't mention them!ugh! ugh! ugh!" (here his majesty retched violently.) "i never tasted but onethat rascal hippocrates!smelt of asafoetidaugh! ugh! ugh!caught a wretched cold washing him in the styxand after all he gave me the cholera morbus." "thehiccupwretch!" ejaculated bon-bon, "thehic-cup!absorption of a pill-box!"and the philosopher dropped a tear. "after all," continued the visiter, "after all, if a devif a gentleman wishes to live, he must have more talents than one or two; and with us a fat face is an evidence of diplomacy." "how so?" "why, we are sometimes exceedingly pushed for provisions. you must know that, in a climate so sultry as mine, it is frequently impossible to keep a spirit alive for more than two or three hours; and after death, unless pickled immediately (and a pickled spirit is not good), they willsmellyou understand, eh? putrefaction is always to be apprehended when the souls are consigned to us in the usual way." "hiccup!hiccup!good god! how do you manage?" here the iron lamp commenced swinging with redoubled violence, and the devil half started from his seat;however, with a slight sigh, he recovered his composure, merely saying to our hero in a low tone: "i tell you what, pierre bon-bon, we must have no more swearing." the host swallowed another bumper, by way of denoting thorough comprehension and acquiescence, and the visiter continued. "why, there are several ways of managing. the most of us starve: some put up with the pickle: for my part i purchase my spirits vivente corpore, in which case i find they keep very well." "but the body!hiccup!the body!" "the body, the bodywell, what of the body?oh! ah! i perceive. why, sir, the body is not at all affected by the transaction. i have made innumerable purchases of the kind in my day, and the parties never experienced any inconvenience. there were cain and nimrod, and nero, and caligula, and dionysius, and pisistratus, andand a thousand others, who never knew what it was to have a soul during the latter part of their lives; yet, sir, these men adorned society. why possession of his faculties, mental and corporeal? who writes a keener epigram? who reasons more wittily? whobut stay! i have his agreement in my pocket-book." thus saying, he produced a red leather wallet, and took from it a number of papers. upon some of these bon-bon caught a glimpse of the letters machimazarobespwith the words caligula, george, elizabeth. his majesty selected a narrow slip of parchment, and from it read aloud the following words: "in consideration of certain mental endowments which it is unnecessary to specify, and in further consideration of one thousand louis d'or, i being aged one year and one month, do hereby make over to the bearer of this agreement all my right, title, and appurtenance in the shadow called my soul. (signed) a...."* (here his majesty repeated a name which i did not feel justified in indicating more unequivocally.) *quere-arouet? "a clever fellow that," resumed he; "but like you, monsieur bon-bon, he was mistaken about the soul. the soul a shadow, truly! the soul a shadow; ha! ha! ha!he! he! he!hu! hu! hu! only think of a fricasseed shadow!" "only thinkhiccup!of a fricasseed shadow!" exclaimed our hero, whose faculties were becoming much illuminated by the profundity of his majesty's discourse. "only think of a hiccup!fricasseed shadow!! now, damme!hiccup!humph! if i would have been such ahiccup!nincompoop! my soul, mr.humph!" "your soul, monsieur bon-bon?" "yes, sirhiccup!my soul is-" "what, sir?" "no shadow, damme!" "did you mean to say-" "yes, sir, my soul ishiccup!humph!yes, sir." "did you not intend to assert-" "my soul ishiccup!peculiarly qualified forhiccup!a-" "what, sir?" "stew." "ha!" "soufflee." "eh!" "fricassee." "indeed!" "ragout and fricandeauand see here, my good fellow! i'll let you have ithiccup!a bargain." here the philosopher slapped his majesty upon the back. "couldn't think of such a thing," said the latter calmly, at the same time rising from his seat. the metaphysician stared. "am supplied at present," said his majesty. "hiccupe-h?" said the philosopher. "have no funds on hand." "what?" "besides, very unhandsome in me-" "sir!" "to take advantage of-" "hiccup!" "your present disgusting and ungentlemanly situation." here the visiter bowed and withdrewin what manner could not precisely be ascertainedbut in a well-concerted effort to discharge a bottle at "the villain," the slender chain was severed that depended from the ceiling, and the metaphysician prostrated by the downfall of the lamp. the end . 1850 how to write a blackwood article by edgar allan poe "in the name of the prophetsfigs!!" cry of turkish fig-peddler. i presume everybody has heard of me. my name is the signora psyche zenobia. this i know to be a fact. nobody but my enemies ever calls me suky snobbs. i have been assured that suky is but a vulgar corruption of psyche, which is good greek, and means "the soul" (that's me, i'm all soul) and sometimes "a butterfly," which latter meaning undoubtedly alludes to my appearance in my new crimson satin dress, with the sky-blue arabian mantelet, and the trimmings of green agraffas, and the seven flounces of orange-colored auriculas. as for snobbsany person who should look at me would be instantly aware that my name wasn't snobbs. miss tabitha turnip propagated that report through sheer envy. tabitha turnip indeed! oh the little wretch! but what can we expect from a turnip? wonder if she remembers the old adage about "blood out of a turnip," &c.? [mem. put her in mind of it the first opportunity.] [mem. againpull her nose.] where was i? ah! i have been assured that snobbs is a mere corruption of zenobia, and that zenobia was a queen(so am i. dr. moneypenny always calls me the queen of the hearts)and that zenobia, as well as psyche, is good greek, and that my father was "a greek," and that consequently i have a right to our patronymic, which is zenobia and not by any means snobbs. nobody but tabitha turnip calls me suky snobbs. i am the signora psyche zenobia. as i said before, everybody has heard of me. i am that very signora psyche zenobia, so justly celebrated as corresponding secretary to the "philadelphia, regular, exchange, tea, total, young, belles, lettres, universal, experimental, bibliographical, association, to, civilize, humanity." dr. moneypenny made the title for us, and says he chose it because it sounded big like an empty rum-puncheon. (a vulgar man that sometimesbut he's deep.) we all sign the initials of the society after our names, in the fashion of the r. s. a., royal society of artsthe s. d. u. k., society for the diffusion of useful knowledge, &c, &c. dr. moneypenny says that s. stands for stale, and that d. u. k. spells duck, (but it don't,) that s. d. u. k. stands for stale duck and not for lord brougham's societybut then dr. moneypenny is such a queer man that i am never sure when he is telling me the truth. at any rate we always add to our names the initials p. r. e. t. t. y. b. l. u. e. b. a. t. c. h.that is to say, philadelphia, regular, exchange, tea, total, young, belles, lettres, universal, experimental, bibliographical, association, to, civilize, humanityone letter for each word, which is a decided improvement upon lord brougham. dr. moneypenny will have it that our initials give our true characterbut for my life i can't see what he means. notwithstanding the good offices of the doctor, and the strenuous exertions of the association to get itself into notice, it met with no very great success until i joined it. the truth is, the members indulged in too flippant a tone of discussion. the papers read every saturday evening were characterized less by depth than buffoonery. they were all whipped syllabub. there was no investigation of first causes, first principles. there was no investigation of any thing at all. there was no attention paid to that great point, the "fitness of things." in short there was no fine writing like this. it was all lowvery! no profundity, no reading, no metaphysicsnothing which the learned call spirituality, and which the unlearned choose to stigmatize as cant. [dr. m. says i ought to spell "cant" with a capital kbut i know better.] when i joined the society it was my endeavor to introduce a better style of thinking and writing, and all the world knows how well i have succeeded. we get up as good papers now in the p. r. e. t. t. y. b. l. u. e. b. a. t. c. h. as any to be found even in blackwood. i say, blackwood, because i have been assured that the finest writing, upon every subject, is to be discovered in the pages of that justly celebrated magazine. we now take it for our model upon all themes, and are getting into rapid notice accordingly. and, after all, it's not so very difficult a matter to compose an article of the genuine blackwood stamp, if one only goes properly about it. of course i don't speak of the political articles. everybody knows how they are managed, since dr. moneypenny explained it. mr. blackwood has a pair of tailor's-shears, and three apprentices who stand by him for orders. one hands him the "times," another the "examiner" and a third a "culley's new compendium of slang-whang." mr. b. merely cuts out and intersperses. it is soon donenothing but "examiner," "slang-whang," and "times"then "times," "slang-whang," and "examiner"and then "times," "examiner," and "slang-whang." but the chief merit of the magazine lies in its miscellaneous articles; and the best of these come under the head of what dr. moneypenny calls the bizarreries (whatever that may mean) and what everybody else calls the intensities. this is a species of writing which i have long known how to appreciate, although it is only since my late visit to mr. blackwood (deputed by the society) that i have been made aware of the exact method of composition. this method is very simple, but not so much so as the politics. upon my calling at mr. b.'s, and making known to him the wishes of the society, he received me with great civility, took me into his study, and gave me a clear explanation of the whole process. "my dear madam," said he, evidently struck with my majestic appearance, for i had on the crimson satin, with the green agraffas, and orange-colored auriclas. "my dear madam," said he, "sit down. the matter stands thus: in the first place your writer of intensities must have very black ink, and a very big pen, with a very blunt nib. and, mark me, miss psyche zenobia!" he continued, after a pause, with the most expressive energy and solemnity of manner, "mark me!that penmustnever be mended! herein, madam, lies the secret, the soul, of intensity. i assume upon myself to say, that no individual, of however great genius ever wrote with a good penunderstand me,a good article. you may take, it for granted, that when manuscript can be read it is never worth reading. this is a leading principle in our faith, to which if you cannot readily assent, our conference is at an end." he paused. but, of course, as i had no wish to put an end to the conference, i assented to a proposition so very obvious, and one, too, of whose truth i had all along been sufficiently aware. he seemed pleased, and went on with his instructions. "it may appear invidious in me, miss psyche zenobia, to refer you to any article, or set of articles, in the way of model or study, yet perhaps i may as well call your attention to a few cases. let me see. there was 'the dead alive,' a capital thing!the record of a gentleman's sensations when entombed before the breath was out of his bodyfull of tastes, terror, sentiment, metaphysics, and erudition. you would have sworn that the writer had been born and brought up in a coffin. then we had the 'confessions of an opium-eater'fine, very fine!glorious imaginationdeep philosophy acute speculationplenty of fire and fury, and a good spicing of the decidedly unintelligible. that was a nice bit of flummery, and went down the throats of the people delightfully. they would have it that coleridge wrote the paperbut not so. it was composed by my pet baboon, juniper, over a rummer of hollands and water, 'hot, without sugar.'" [this i could scarcely have believed had it been anybody but mr. blackwood, who assured me of it.] "then there was 'the involuntary experimentalist,' all about a gentleman who got baked in an oven, and came out alive and well, although certainly done to a turn. and then there was 'the diary of a late physician,' where the merit lay in good rant, and indifferent greekboth of them taking things with the public. and then there was 'the man in the bell,' a paper by-the-by, miss zenobia, which i cannot sufficiently recommend to your attention. it is the history of a young person who goes to sleep under the clapper of a church bell, and is awakened by its tolling for a funeral. the sound drives him mad, and, accordingly, pulling out his tablets, he gives a record of his sensations. sensations are the great things after all. should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensationsthey will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet. if you wish to write forcibly, miss zenobia, pay minute attention to the sensations." "that i certainly will, mr. blackwood," said i. "good!" he replied. "i see you are a pupil after my own heart. but i must put you au fait to the details necessary in composing what may be denominated a genuine blackwood article of the sensation stampthe kind which you will understand me to say i consider the best for all purposes. "the first thing requisite is to get yourself into such a scrape as no one ever got into before. the oven, for instance,that was a good hit. but if you have no oven or big bell, at hand, and if you cannot conveniently tumble out of a balloon, or be swallowed up in an earthquake, or get stuck fast in a chimney, you will have to be contented with simply imagining some similar misadventure. i should prefer, however, that you have the actual fact to bear you out. nothing so well assists the fancy, as an experimental knowledge of the matter in hand. 'truth is strange,' you know, 'stranger than fiction'besides being more to the purpose." here i assured him i had an excellent pair of garters, and would go and hang myself forthwith. "good!" he replied, "do so;although hanging is somewhat hacknied. perhaps you might do better. take a dose of brandreth's pills, and then give us your sensations. however, my instructions will apply equally well to any variety of misadventure, and in your way home you may easily get knocked in the head, or run over by an omnibus, or bitten by a mad dog, or drowned in a gutter. but to proceed. "having determined upon your subject, you must next consider the tone, or manner, of your narration. there is the tone didactic, the tone enthusiastic, the tone naturalall commonplace enough. but then there is the tone laconic, or curt, which has lately come much into use. it consists in short sentences. somehow thus: can't be too brief. can't be too snappish. always a full stop. and never a paragraph. "then there is the tone elevated, diffusive, and interjectional. some of our best novelists patronize this tone. the words must be all in a whirl, like a humming-top, and make a noise very similar, which answers remarkably well instead of meaning. this is the best of all possible styles where the writer is in too great a hurry to think. "the tone metaphysical is also a good one. if you know any big words this is your chance for them. talk of the ionic and eleatic schoolsof archytas, gorgias, and alcmaeon. say something about objectivity and subjectivity. be sure and abuse a man named locke. turn up your nose at things in general, and when you let slip any thing a little too absurd, you need not be at the trouble of scratching it out, but just add a footnote and say that you are indebted for the above profound observation to the 'kritik der reinem vernunft,' or to the 'metaphysithe anfongsgrunde der noturwissenchaft.' this would look erudite andandand frank. "there are various other tones of equal celebrity, but i shall mention only two morethe tone transcendental and the tone heterogeneous. in the former the merit consists in seeing into the nature of affairs a very great deal farther than anybody else. this second sight is very efficient when properly managed. a little reading of the 'dial' will carry you a great way. eschew, in this case, big words; get them as small as possible, and write them upside down. look over channing's poems and quote what he says about a 'fat little man with a delusive show of can.' put in something about the supernal oneness. don't say a syllable about the infernal twoness. above all, study innuendo. hint everythingassert nothing. if you feel inclined to say 'bread and butter,' do not by any means say it outright. you may say any thing and every thing approaching to 'bread and butter.' you may hint at buck-wheat cake, or you may even go so far as to insinuate oat-meal porridge, but if bread and butter be your real meaning, be cautious, my dear miss psyche, not on any account to say 'bread and butter!' i assured him that i should never say it again as long as i lived. he kissed me and continued: "as for the tone heterogeneous, it is merely a judicious mixture, in equal proportions, of all the other tones in the world, and is consequently made up of every thing deep, great, odd, piquant, pertinent, and pretty. "let us suppose now you have determined upon your incidents and tone. the most important portionin fact, the soul of the whole business, is yet to be attended toi allude to the filling up. it is not to be supposed that a lady, or gentleman either, has been leading the life of a book worm. and yet above all things it is necessary that your article have an air of erudition, or at least afford evidence of extensive general reading. now i'll put you in the way of accomplishing this point. see here!" (pulling down some three or four ordinary-looking volumes, and opening them at random). "by casting your eye down almost any page of any book in the world, you will be able to perceive at once a host of little scraps of either learning or bel-espritism, which are the very thing for the spicing of a blackwood article. you might as well note down a few while i read them to you. i shall make two divisions: first, piquant facts for the manufacture of similes, and, second, piquant expressions to be introduced as occasion may require. write now!"and i wrote as he dictated. "piquant facts for similes. 'there were originally but three musesmelete, mneme, aoedemeditation, memory, and singing.' you may make a good deal of that little fact if properly worked. you see it is not generally known, and looks recherche. you must be careful and give the thing with a downright improviso air. "again. 'the river alpheus passed beneath the sea, and emerged without injury to the purity of its waters.' rather stale that, to be sure, but, if properly dressed and dished up, will look quite as fresh as ever. "here is something better. 'the persian iris appears to some persons to possess a sweet and very powerful perfume, while to others it is perfectly scentless.' fine that, and very delicate! turn it about a little, and it will do wonders. we'll have some thing else in the botanical line. there's nothing goes down so well, especially with the help of a little latin. write! "'the epidendrum flos aeris, of java, bears a very beautiful flower, and will live when pulled up by the roots. the natives suspend it by a cord from the ceiling, and enjoy its fragrance for years.' that's capital! that will do for the similes. now for the piquant expressions. "piquant expressions. 'the venerable chinese novel ju-kiao-li.' good! by introducing these few words with dexterity you will evince your intimate acquaintance with the language and literature of the chinese. with the aid of this you may either get along without either arabic, or sanscrit, or chickasaw. there is no passing muster, however, without spanish, italian, german, latin, and greek. i must look you out a little specimen of each. any scrap will answer, because you must depend upon your own ingenuity to make it fit into your article. now write! "'aussi tendre que zaire'as tender as zaire-french. alludes to the frequent repetition of the phrase, la tendre zaire, in the french tragedy of that name. properly introduced, will show not only your knowledge of the language, but your general reading and wit. you can say, for instance, that the chicken you were eating (write an article about being choked to death by a chicken-bone) was not altogether aussi tendre que zaire. write! 'van muerte tan escondida, que no te sienta venir, porque el plazer del morir, no mestorne a dar la vida.' "that's spanishfrom miguel de cervantes. 'come quickly, o death! but be sure and don't let me see you coming, lest the pleasure i shall feel at your appearance should unfortunately bring me back again to life.' this you may slip in quite a propos when you are struggling in the last agonies with the chicken-bone. write! 'il pover 'huomo che non se'n era accorto, andava combattendo, e era morto.' that's italian, you perceivefrom ariosto. it means that a great hero, in the heat of combat, not perceiving that he had been fairly killed, continued to fight valiantly, dead as he was. the application of this to your own case is obviousfor i trust, miss psyche, that you will not neglect to kick for at least an hour and a half after you have been choked to death by that chicken-bone. please to write! 'und sterb'ich doch, no sterb'ich denn durch siedurch sie!' that's germanfrom schiller. 'and if i die, at least i diefor theefor thee!' here it is clear that you are apostrophizing the cause of your disaster, the chicken. indeed what gentleman (or lady either) of sense, wouldn't die, i should like to know, for a well fattened capon of the right molucca breed, stuffed with capers and mushrooms, and served up in a salad-bowl, with orange-jellies en mosaiques. write! (you can get them that way at tortoni's)write, if you please! "here is a nice little latin phrase, and rare too, (one can't be too recherche or brief in one's latin, it's getting so commonignoratio elenchi. he has committed an ignoratio elenchithat is to say, he has understood the words of your proposition, but not the idea. the man was a fool, you see. some poor fellow whom you address while choking with that chicken-bone, and who therefore didn't precisely understand what you were talking about. throw the ignoratio elenchi in his teeth, and, at once, you have him annihilated. if he dares to reply, you can tell him from lucan (here it is) that speeches are mere anemonae verborum, anemone words. the anemone, with great brilliancy, has no smell. or, if he begins to bluster, you may be down upon him with insomnia jovis, reveries of jupitera phrase which silius italicus (see here!) applies to thoughts pompous and inflated. this will be sure and cut him to the heart. he can do nothing but roll over and die. will you be kind enough to write? "in greek we must have some thing prettyfrom demosthenes, for example. anerh o pheugoen kai palin makesetai there is a tolerably good translation of it in hudibras 'for he that flies may fight again, which he can never do that's slain.' in a blackwood article nothing makes so fine a show as your greek. the very letters have an air of profundity about them. only observe, madam, the astute look of that epsilon! that phi ought certainly to be a bishop! was ever there a smarter fellow than that omicron? just twig that tau! in short, there is nothing like greek for a genuine sensation-paper. in the present case your application is the most obvious thing in the world. rap out the sentence, with a huge oath, and by way of ultimatum at the good-for-nothing dunder-headed villain who couldn't understand your plain english in relation to the chicken-bone. he'll take the hint and be off, you may depend upon it." these were all the instructions mr. b. could afford me upon the topic in question, but i felt they would be entirely sufficient. i was, at length, able to write a genuine blackwood article, and determined to do it forthwith. in taking leave of me, mr. b. made a proposition for the purchase of the paper when written; but as he could offer me only fifty guineas a sheet, i thought it better to let our society have it, than sacrifice it for so paltry a sum. notwithstanding this niggardly spirit, however, the gentleman showed his consideration for me in all other respects, and indeed treated me with the greatest civility. his parting words made a deep impression upon my heart, and i hope i shall always remember them with gratitude. "my dear miss zenobia," he said, while the tears stood in his eyes, "is there anything else i can do to promote the success of your laudable undertaking? let me reflect! it is just possible that you may not be able, so soon as convenient, totoget yourself drowned, orchoked with a chicken-bone, oror hung,orbitten by abut stay! now i think me of it, there are a couple of very excellent bull-dogs in the yardfine fellows, i assure yousavage, and all thatindeed just the thing for your moneythey'll have you eaten up, auricula and all, in less than five minutes (here's my watch!)and then only think of the sensations! here! i saytom!peter!dick, you villain!let out those"but as i was really in a great hurry, and had not another moment to spare, i was reluctantly forced to expedite my departure, and accordingly took leave at oncesomewhat more abruptly, i admit, than strict courtesy would have otherwise allowed. it was my primary object upon quitting mr. blackwood, to get into some immediate difficulty, pursuant to his advice, and with this view i spent the greater part of the day in wandering about edinburgh, seeking for desperate adventuresadventures adequate to the intensity of my feelings, and adapted to the vast character of the article i intended to write. in this excursion i was attended by one negroservant, pompey, and my little lap-dog diana, whom i had brought with me from philadelphia. it was not, however, until late in the afternoon that i fully succeeded in my arduous undertaking. an important event then happened of which the following blackwood article, in the tone heterogeneous, is the substance and result. the end . 1850 four beasts in onethe homo-cameleopard by edgar allan poe chacun a ses vertus. crebillon's xerxes. antiochus epiphanes is very generally looked upon as the gog of the prophet ezekiel. this honor is, however, more properly attributable to cambyses, the son of cyrus. and, indeed, the character of the syrian monarch does by no means stand in need of any adventitious embellishment. his accession to the throne, or rather his usurpation of the sovereignty, a hundred and seventy-one years before the coming of christ; his attempt to plunder the temple of diana at ephesus; his implacable hostility to the jews; his pollution of the holy of holies; and his miserable death at taba, after a tumultuous reign of eleven years, are circumstances of a prominent kind, and therefore more generally noticed by the historians of his time than the impious, dastardly, cruel, silly, and whimsical achievements which make up the sum total of his private life and reputation. let us suppose, gentle reader, that it is now the year of the world three thousand eight hundred and thirty, and let us, for a few minutes, imagine ourselves at that most grotesque habitation of man, the remarkable city of antioch. to be sure there were, in syria and other countries, sixteen cities of that appellation, besides the one to which i more particularly allude. but ours is that which went by the name of antiochia epidaphne, from its vicinity to the little village of daphne, where stood a temple to that divinity. it was built (although about this matter there is some dispute) by seleucus nicanor, the first king of the country after alexander the great, in memory of his father antiochus, and became immediately the residence of the syrian monarchy. in the flourishing times of the roman empire, it was the ordinary station of the prefect of the eastern provinces; and many of the emperors of the queen city (among whom may be mentioned, especially, verus and valens) spent here the greater part of their time. but i perceive we have arrived at the city itself. let us ascend this battlement, and throw our eyes upon the town and neighboring country. "what broad and rapid river is that which forces its way, with innumerable falls, through the mountainous wilderness, and finally through the wilderness of buildings?" that is the orontes, and it is the only water in sight, with the exception of the mediterranean, which stretches, like a broad mirror, about twelve miles off to the southward. every one has seen the mediterranean; but let me tell you, there are few who have had a peep at antioch. by few, i mean, few who, like you and me, have had, at the same time, the advantages of a modern education. therefore cease to regard that sea, and give your whole attention to the mass of houses that lie beneath us. you will remember that it is now the year of the world three thousand eight hundred and thirty. were it laterfor example, were it the year of our lord eighteen hundred and forty-five, we should be deprived of this extraordinary spectacle. in the nineteenth century antioch isthat is to say, antioch will bein a lamentable state of decay. it will have been, by that time, totally destroyed, at three different periods, by three successive earthquakes. indeed, to say the truth, what little of its former self may then remain, will be found in so desolate and ruinous a state that the patriarch shall have removed his residence to damascus. this is well. i see you profit by my advice, and are making the most of your time in inspecting the premisesin -satisfying your eyes with the memorials and the things of fame that most renown this city. i beg pardon; i had forgotten that shakespeare will not flourish for seventeen hundred and fifty years to come. but does not the appearance of epidaphne justify me in calling it grotesque? "it is well fortified; and in this respect is as much indebted to nature as to art." very true. "there are a prodigious number of stately palaces." there are. "and the numerous temples, sumptuous and magnificent, may bear comparison with the most lauded of antiquity." all this i must acknowledge. still there is an infinity of mud huts, and abominable hovels. we cannot help perceiving abundance of filth in every kennel, and, were it not for the over-powering fumes of idolatrous incense, i have no doubt we should find a most intolerable stench. did you ever behold streets so insufferably narrow, or houses so miraculously tall? what gloom their shadows cast upon the ground! it is well the swinging lamps in those endless colonnades are kept burning throughout the day; we should otherwise have the darkness of egypt in the time of her desolation. "it is certainly a strange place! what is the meaning of yonder singular building? see! it towers above all others, and lies to the eastward of what i take to be the royal palace." that is the new temple of the sun, who is adored in syria under the title of elah gabalah. hereafter a very notorious roman emperor will institute this worship in rome, and thence derive a cognomen, heliogabalus. i dare say you would like to take a peep at the divinity of the temple. you need not look up at the heavens; his sunship is not thereat least not the sunship adored by the syrians. that deity will be found in the interior of yonder building. he is worshipped under the figure of a large stone pillar terminating at the summit in a cone or pyramid, whereby is denoted fire. "harkbehold!who can those ridiculous beings be, half naked, with their faces painted, shouting and gesticulating to the rabble?" some few are mountebanks. others more particularly belong to the race of philosophers. the greatest portion, howeverthose especially who belabor the populace with clubsare the principal courtiers of the palace, executing as in duty bound, some laudable comicality of the king's. "but what have we here? heavens! the town is swarming with wild beasts! how terrible a spectacle!how dangerous a peculiarity!" terrible, if you please; but not in the least degree dangerous. each animal if you will take the pains to observe, is following, very quietly, in the wake of its master. some few, to be sure, are led with a rope about the neck, but these are chiefly the lesser or timid species. the lion, the tiger, and the leopard are entirely without restraint. they have been trained without difficulty to their present profession, and attend upon their respective owners in the capacity of valets-de-chambre. it is true, there are occasions when nature asserts her violated dominions;but then the devouring of a man-at-arms, or the throttling of a consecrated bull, is a circumstance of too little moment to be more than hinted at in epidaphne. "but what extraordinary tumult do i hear? surely this is a loud noise even for antioch! it argues some commotion of unusual interest." yesundoubtedly. the king has ordered some novel spectaclesome gladiatorial exhibition at the hippodromeor perhaps the massacre of the scythian prisonersor the conflagration of his new palaceor the tearing down of a handsome templeor, indeed, a bonfire of a few jews. the uproar increases. shouts of laughter ascend the skies. the air becomes dissonant with wind instruments, and horrible with clamor of a million throats. let us descend, for the love of fun, and see what is going on! this waybe careful! here we are in the principal street, which is called the street of timarchus. the sea of people is coming this way, and we shall find a difficulty in stemming the tide. they are pouring through the alley of heraclides, which leads directly from the palace;therefore the king is most probably among the rioters. yes;i hear the shouts of the herald proclaiming his approach in the pompous phraseology of the east. we shall have a glimpse of his person as he passes by the temple of ashimah. let us ensconce ourselves in the vestibule of the sanctuary; he will be here anon. in the meantime let us survey this image. what is it? oh! it is the god ashimah in proper person. you perceive, however, that he is neither a lamb, nor a goat, nor a satyr, neither has he much resemblance to the pan of the arcadians. yet all these appearances have been giveni beg pardonwill be givenby the learned of future ages, to the ashimah of the syrians. put on your spectacles, and tell me what it is. what is it? "bless me! it is an ape!" truea baboon; but by no means the less a deity. his name is a derivation of the greek simiawhat great fools are antiquarians! but see!see!yonder scampers a ragged little urchin. where is he going? what is he bawling about? what does he say? oh! he says the king is coming in triumph; that he is dressed in state; that he has just finished putting to death, with his own hand, a thousand chained israelitish prisoners! for this exploit the ragamuffin is lauding him to the skies. hark! here comes a troop of a similar description. they have made a latin hymn upon the valor of the king, and are singing it as they go: mille, mille, mille, mille, mille, mille, decollavimus, unus homo! mille, mille, mille, mille, decollavimus! mille, mille, mille, vivat qui mille mille occidit! tantum vini habet nemo quantum sanguinis effudit!* which may be thus paraphrased: a thousand, a thousand, a thousand, a thousand, a thousand, a thousand, we, with one warrior, have slain! a thousand, a thousand, a thousand, a thousand. sing a thousand over again! soho!let us sing long life to our king, who knocked over a thousand so fine! soho!let us roar, he has given us more red gallons of gore than all syria can furnish of wine! * flavius vospicus says, that the hymn here introduced was sung by the rabble upon the occasion of aurelian, in the sarmatic war, having slain, with his own hand, nine hundred and fifty of the enemy. "do you hear that flourish of trumpets?" yes: the king is coming! see! the people are aghast with admiration, and lift up their eyes to the heavens in reverence. he comes;he is coming;there he is! "who?where?the king?do not behold himcannot say that i perceive him." then you must be blind. "very possible. still i see nothing but a tumultuous mob of idiots and madmen, who are busy in prostrating themselves before a gigantic cameleopard, and endeavoring to obtain a kiss of the animal's hoofs. see! the beast has very justly kicked one of the rabble overand anotherand anotherand another. indeed, i cannot help admiring the animal for the excellent use he is making of his feet." rabble, indeed!why these are the noble and free citizens of epidaphne! beasts, did you say?take care that you are not overheard. do you not perceive that the animal has the visage of a man? why, my dear sir, that cameleopard is no other than antiochus epiphanes, antiochus the illustrious, king of syria, and the most potent of all the autocrats of the east! it is true, that he is entitled, at times, antiochus epimanesantiochus the madmanbut that is because all people have not the capacity to appreciate his merits. it is also certain that he is at present ensconced in the hide of a beast, and is doing his best to play the part of a cameleopard; but this is done for the better sustaining his dignity as king. besides, the monarch is of gigantic stature, and the dress is therefore neither unbecoming nor over large. we may, however, presume he would not have adopted it but for some occasion of especial state. such, you will allow, is the massacre of a thousand jews. with how superior a dignity the monarch perambulates on all fours! his tail, you perceive, is held aloft by his two principal concubines, elline and argelais; and his whole appearance would be infinitely prepossessing, were it not for the protuberance of his eyes, which will certainly start out of his head, and the queer color of his face, which has become nondescript from the quantity of wine he has swallowed. let us follow him to the hippodrome, whither he is proceeding, and listen to the song of triumph which he is commencing: who is king but epiphanes? saydo you know? who is king but epiphanes? bravo!bravo! there is none but epiphanes, nothere is none: so tear down the temples, and put out the sun! well and strenuously sung! the populace are hailing him 'prince of poets,' as well as 'glory of the east,' 'delight of the universe,' and 'most remarkable of cameleopards.' they have encored his effusion, and do you hear?he is singing it over again. when he arrives at the hippodrome, he will be crowned with the poetic wreath, in anticipation of his victory at the approaching olympics. "but, good jupiter! what is the matter in the crowd behind us?" behind us, did you say?oh! ah!i perceive. my friend, it is well that you spoke in time. let us get into a place of safety as soon as possible. here!let us conceal ourselves in the arch of this aqueduct, and i will inform you presently of the origin of the commotion. it has turned out as i have been anticipating. the singular appearance of the cameleopard and the head of a man, has, it seems, given offence to the notions of propriety entertained, in general, by the wild animals domesticated in the city. a mutiny has been the result; and, as is usual upon such occasions, all human efforts will be of no avail in quelling the mob. several of the syrians have already been devoured; but the general voice of the four-footed patriots seems to be for eating up the cameleopard. 'the prince of poets,' therefore, is upon his hinder legs, running for his life. his courtiers have left him in the lurch, and his concubines have followed so excellent an example. 'delight of the universe,' thou art in a sad predicament! 'glory of the east,' thou art in danger of mastication! therefore never regard so piteously thy tail; it will undoubtedly be draggled in the mud, and for this there is no help. look not behind thee, then, at its unavoidable degradation; but take courage, ply thy legs with vigor, and scud for the hippodrome! remember that thou art antiochus epiphanes. antiochus the illustrious!also 'prince of poets,' 'glory of the east,' 'delight of the universe,' and 'most remarkable of cameleopards!' heavens! what a power of speed thou art displaying! what a capacity for leg-bail thou art developing! run, prince!bravo, epiphanes! well done, cameleopard!glorious antiochus!he runs!he leaps!he flies! like an arrow from a catapult he approaches the hippodrome! he leaps!he shrieks!he is there! this is well; for hadst thou, 'glory of the east,' been half a second longer in reaching the gates of the amphitheatre, there is not a bear's cub in epidaphne that would not have had a nibble at thy carcase. let us be offlet us take our departure!for we shall find our delicate modern ears unable to endure the vast uproar which is about to commence in celebration of the king's escape! listen! it has already commenced. see!the whole town is topsy-turvy. "surely this is the most populous city of the east! what a wilderness of people! what a jumble of all ranks and ages! what a multiplicity of sects and nations! what a variety of costumes! what a babel of languages! what a screaming of beasts! what a tinkling of instruments! what a parcel of philosophers!" come let us be off. "stay a moment! i see a vast hubbub in the hippodrome; what is the meaning of it, i beseech you?" that?oh, nothing! the noble and free citizens of epidaphne being, as they declare, well satisfied of the faith, valor, wisdom, and divinity of their king, and having, moreover, been eye-witnesses of his late superhuman agility, do think it no more than their duty to invest his brows (in addition to the poetic crown) with the wreath of victory in the footracea wreath which it is evident he must obtain at the celebration of the next olympiad, and which, therefore, they now give him in advance. the end . 1829 sonnetto science by edgar allan poe science! true daughter of old time thou art! who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, vulture, whose wings are dull realities? how should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, who wouldst not leave him in his wandering to seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? hast thou not dragged diana from her car? and driven the hamadryad from the wood to seek a shelter in some happier star? hast thou not torn the naiad from her flood, the elfin from the green grass, and from me the summer dream beneath the tamarind tree? -the end. 1827 spirits of the dead by edgar allan poe thy soul shall find itself alone 'mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone; not one, of all the crowd, to pry into thine hour of secrecy. be silent in that solitude, which is not lonelinessfor then the spirits of the dead, who stood in life before thee, are again in death around thee, and their will shall overshadow thee; be still. the night, though clear, shall frown, and the stars shall not look down from their high thrones in the heaven with light like hope to mortals given, but their red orbs, without beam, to thy weariness shall seem as a burning and a fever which would cling to thee for ever. now are thoughts thou shalt not banish, now are visions ne'er to vanish; from thy spirit shall they pass no more, like dew-drop from the grass. the breeze, the breath of god, is still, and the mist upon the hill shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken, is a symbol and a token. how it hangs upon the trees, a mystery of mysteries! -the end. little women by louisa may alcott this text was digitized (typed by hand) by ted & florence daniel new wave publishers 2103 n. liberty street portland or 97217-4971 bbs: (503) 286-5577 this text is in the public domain. forward louisa may alcott 1832-1888 louisa may alcott's novel brings to life vividly the life of new england during the nineteenth century. a life that was tranquil, secure, and productive. it is little wonder, for she drew on her own and on her family's experiences for her work. as one of four daughters growing up in boston. at the age of eight, she moved with her family to nearby concord. there she spent the happiest years of her younger life, even though she experienced the constant threat of poverty. she counted as friends the children of hawthorne and emerson. the alcott was only a modest cottage, but the girls made use of a neighboring barn to perform plays written by louisa may. she was educated at home, and became a school teacher in boston. she saw her first story printed in a boston newspaper at the age of twenty. her first full-length book appeared two years later. interrupting her career as a writer,she served as a nurse in a washington hospital during the civil war. the thing that pleased her most about her writing, as she became more and more well known, was the fact that sales of her books helped to make life more comfortable and less of a daily struggle for her parents in their later years. little women was published in 1869, and has gone on to become one of america's classics. this copy of little women has been transposed to disk and is supplied by new wave publishers, 2103 n. liberty street, portland, or 97217-4971 uploaded from elvira's pinnacle club 286-5577 7 am 10 pm little women c 1869 by louisa may alcott chapter one "christmas won't be christmas without any presents," grumbled jo, lying on the rug. "it's so dreadful to be poor!" sighed meg, looking down at her old dress. "i don't think it's fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all," added little amy, with an injured sniff. "we've got father and mother, and each other," said beth contentedly from her corner. the four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the cheerful words, but darkened again as jo said sadly, "we haven't got father, and shall not have him for a long time." she didn't say "perhaps never," but each silently added it, thinking of father far away, where the fighting was. nobody spoke for a minute; then meg said in an altered tone, "you know the reason mother proposed not having any presents this christmas was because it is going to be a hard winter for everyone; and she thinks we ought not to spend money for pleasure, when our men are suffering so in the army. we can't do much,but we can make our little sacrifices, and ought to do it gladly. but i am afraid i don't" and meg shook her head,as she thought regretfully of all the pretty things she wanted. "but i don't think the little we should spend would do any good. we've each got a dollar, and the army wouldn't be much helped by our giving that. i agree not to expect anything from mother or you, but i do want to buy undine and sintram for myself. i've wanted it so long," said jo, who was a bookworm. "i planned to spend mine in new music," said beth, with a little sigh, which no one heard but the hearth brush and kettle holder. "i shall get a nice box of faber's drawing pencils. i really need them," said amy decidedly. "mother didn't say anything about our money, and she won't wish us to give up everything. let's each buy what we want, and have a little fun. i'm sure we work hard enough to earn it," cried jo, examining the heels of her shoes in a gentlemanly manner. "i know i do--teaching those tiresome children nearly all day, when i'm longing to enjoy myself at home," began meg, in the complaining tone again. "you don't have half such a hard time as i do," said jo. "how would you like to be shut up for hours with a nervous, fussy old lady, who keeps you trotting, is never satisfied, and worries you till you you're ready to fly out the window or cry?" "it's naughty to fret, but i do think washing dishes and keeping things tidy is the worst work in the world. it makes me cross, and my hands get so stiff, i can't practice well at all." and beth looked at her rough hands with a sigh that any one could hear that time. "i don't believe any of you suffer as i do," cried amy, "for you don't have to go to school with impertinent girls, who plague you if you don't know your lessons, and laugh at your dresses, and label your father if he isn't rich, and insult you when your nose isn't nice." "if you mean libel, i'd say so, and not talk about labels, as if papa was a pickle bottle," advised jo, laughing. "i know what i mean, and you needn't be statirical about it. it's proper to use good words, and improve your vocabilary," returned amy, with dignity. "don't peck at one another, children. don't you wish we had the money papa lost when we were little, jo? dear me! how happy and good we'd be, if we had no worries!" said meg, who could remember better times. "you said the other day you thought we were a deal happier than the king children, for they were fighting and fretting all the time, in spite of their money." "so i did, beth. well, i think we are. for though we do have to work, we make fun of ourselves, and are a pretty jolly set, as jo would say." "jo does use such slang words!" observed amy, with a reproving look at the long figure stretched on the rug. jo immediately sat up, put her hands in her pockets, and began to whistle. "don't, jo. it's so boyish!" "that's why i do it." "i detest rude, unladylike girls!" "i hate affected, niminy-piminy chits!" "birds in their little nests agree," sang beth, the peacemaker, with such a funny face that both sharp voices softened to a laugh, and the "pecking" ended for that time. "really, girls, you are both to be blamed," said meg, beginning to lecture in her elder-sisterly fashion."you are old enough to leave off boyish tricks, and to behave better, josephine. it didn't matter so much when you were a little girl, but now you are so tall,and turn up your hair, you should remember that you are a young lady." "i'm not! and if turning up my hair makes me one, i'll wear it in two tails till i'm twenty," cried jo, pulling off her net, and shaking down a chestnut mane. "i hate to think i've got to grow up, and be miss march, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a china aster! it's bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when i like boy's games and work and manners! i can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy. and it's worse than ever now, for i'm dying to go and fight with papa. and i can only stay home and knit, like a poky old woman!" and jo shook the blue army sock till the needles rattled like castanets, and her ball bounded across the room. "poor jo! it's too bad, but it can't be helped. so you must try to be contented with making your name boyish, and playing brother to us girls," said beth, stroking the rough head with a hand that all the dish washing and dusting in the world could not make ungentle in its touch. "as for you, amy," continued meg, "you are altogether to particular and prim. your airs are funny now, but you'll grow up an affected little goose, if you don't take care. i i like your nice manners and refined ways of speaking, when you don't try to be elegant. but your absurd words are as bad as jo's slang." "if jo is a tomboy and amy a goose, what am i, please?" asked beth, ready to share the lecture. "you're a dear, and nothing else," answered meg warmly, and no one contradicted her, for the `mouse' was the pet of the family. as young readers like to know `how people look', we will take this moment to give them a little sketch of the four sisters, who sat knitting away in the twilight, while the december snow fell quietly without, and the fire crackled cheerfully within. it was a comfortable room,though the carpet was faded and the furniture very plain, for a good picture or two hung on the walls, books filled the recesses, chrysanthemums and christmas roses bloomed in the windows, and a pleasant atmosphere of home peace pervaded it. margaret, the eldest of the four, was sixteen, and very pretty, being plump and fair, with large eyes, plenty of soft brown hair, a sweet mouth, and white hands,of which she was rather vain. fifteenyear-old jo was very tall, thin, and brown, and reminded one of a colt, for she never seemed to know what to do with her long limbs, which were very much in her way. she had a decided mouth, a comical nose, and sharp, gray eyes, which appeared to see everything, and were by turns fierce,funny, or thoughtful. her long, thick hair was her one beauty, but it was usually bundled into a net, to be out of her way. round shoulders had jo, big hands and feet, a flyaway look to her clothes, and the uncomfortable appearance of a girl who was rapidly shooting up into a woman and didn't like it. elizabeth, or beth, as everyone called her, was a rosy, smoothhaired, bright-eyed girl of thirteen, with a shy manner, a timid voice, and a ;peaceful expression which was seldom disturbed. her father called her `little miss tranquility', and the name suited her excellently, for she seemed to live in a happy world of her own, only venturing out to meet the few whom she trusted and loved. amy, though the youngest, was a most important person, in her own opinion at least. a regular snow maiden, with blue eyes, and yellow hair curling on her shoulders, pale and slender, and always carrying herself like a young lady mindful of her manners. what the characters of the four sisters were we will leave to be found out. the clock struck six and, having swept up the hearth, beth put a pair of slippers down to warm. somehow the sight of the old shoes had a good effect upon the girls, for mother was coming, and everyone brightened to welcome her. meg stopped lecturing, and lighted the lamp, amy got out of the easy chair without being asked, and jo forgot how tired she was as she sat up to hold the slippers nearer to the blaze. "they are quite worn out. marmee must have a new pair." "i thought i'd get her some with my dollar," said beth. "no, i shall!" cried amy. "i'm the oldest," began meg, but jo cut in with a decided, "i'm the man of the family now papa is away, and i shall provide the slippers, for he told me to take special care of mother while he was gone." "i'll tell you what we'll do," said beth, "let's each get her something for christmas,land not get anything for ourselves." "that's like you, dear! what will we get?" exclaimed jo. everyone thought soberly for a minute, then meg announced, as if the idea was suggested by the sight of her own pretty hands, "i shall give her a nice pair of gloves." "army shoes, best to be had," cried jo. "some handkerchiefs, all hemmed," said beth. "i'll get a little bottle of cologne. she likes it, and it won't cost much, so i'll have some left to buy my pencils," added amy. "how will we give the things?" asked meg. "put them on the table, and bring her in and see her open the bundles. don't you remember how we used to do on our birthdays?" answered jo. "i used to be so frightened when it was my turn to sit in the chair with the crown on, and see you all come marching round to give the presents, with a kiss. i liked the things and the kisses, but it was dreadful to have you sit looking at me while i opened the bundles," said beth, who was toasting her face and the bread for tea at the same time. "let marmee think we are getting things for ourselves, and then surprise her. we must go shopping tomorrow afternoon, meg. there is so much to do about the play for christmas night," said jo, marching up and down, with her hands behind her back, and her nose in the air. "i don't mean to act any more after this time. i'm getting too old for such things," observed meg, who was as much a child as ever about `dressing-up' frolics. "you won't stop, i know, as long as you can trail round in a white gown with your hair down, and wear gold-paper jewelry. you are the best actress we've got, and there'll be an end of everything if you quit the boards," said jo. "we ought to rehearse tonight. come here,amy, and do the fainting scene, for you are as stiff as a poker in that." "i can't help it. i never saw anyone faint, and i don't choose to make myself all black and blue, tumbling flat as you do. if i can go down easily, i'll drop. if i can't, i shall fall into a chair and be graceful. i don't care if hugo does come at me with a pistol," returned amy, who was not gifted with dramatic power, but was chosen because she was small enough to be borne out shrieking by the villain of the piece. "do it this way. clasp your hands so, and stagger across the room, crying frantically, `roderigo` save me! save me! and away went jo, with a melodramatic scream which was truly thrilling. amy followed, but she poked her hands out stiffly before her, and jerked herself along as if she went by machinery, and her "ow!" was more suggestive of pins being run into her than of fear and anguish. jo gave a despairing groan, and meg laughed outright, while beth let her bread burn as she watched the fun with interest. "it's no use! do the best you can when the time comes, and if the audience laughs, don't blame me. come on, meg." "then things went smoothly, for don pedro defied the world in a speech of two pages without a single break. hagar, the witch, chanted an awful incantation over her kettleful of simmering toads, with weird effect. roderigo rent his chains asunder manfully, and hugo died in agonies of remorse and arsenic, with a wild,"ha! ha!" "it's the best we've had yet," said meg, as the dead villain sat up and rubbed his elbows. "i don't see how you can write and act such splendid things, jo. you're a regular shakespeare!" exclaimed beth, who firmly believed that her sisters were gifted with wonderful genius in all things. "not quite," replied jo modestly. "i do think the witches curse, an operatic tragedy is rather a nice thing, but i'd like to try mcbeth, if we only had a trapdoor for banquo. i always wanted to do the killing part. `is that a dagger that i see before me?" muttered jo, rolling her eyes and clutching at the air, as she had seen a famous tragedian do. "no, it's the toasting fork, with mother's shoe on it instead of the bread. beth's stage-struck!" cried meg, and the rehearsal ended in a general burst of laughter. "glad to find you so merry, my girls," said a cheery voice at the door, and actors and audience turned to welcome a tall, motherly lady with a `can i help you' look about her which was truly delightful. she was not elegantly dressed, but a noble-looking woman, and the girls thought the gray cloak and unfashionable bonnet covered the most splendid mother in the world. "well, dearies, how have you got on today? there was so much to do, getting the boxes ready to go tomorrow, that i didn't come home to dinner. has anyone called, beth? how is your cold, meg? jo, you look tired to death. come and kiss me, baby." while making these maternal inquiries mrs. march got her wet things off, her warm slippers on, and sitting down in the easy chair, drew amy to her lap, preparing to enjoy the happiest hour of her busy day. the girls flew about, trying to make things comfortable, each in her own way. meg arranged the tea table, jo brought wood and set chairs, dropping, over-turning,and clattering everything she touched. beth trotted to and fro between parlor kitchen, quiet and busy, while amy gave directions to everyone, as she sat with her hands folded. as they gathered about the table, mrs. march said, with a particularly happy face, "i've got a treat for you after supper." a quick, bright smile went round like a streak of sunshine. beth clapped her hands, regardless of the biscuit she held,and jo tossed up her napkin, crying, "a letter! a letter! three cheers for father!" "yes, a nice long letter. he is well, and thinks he shall get through the cold season better than we feared. he sends all sorts of loving wishes for christmas, and an especial message to you girls," said mrs. march, patting her pocket as if she had got a treasure there. "hurry and get done! don't stop to quirk your little finger and simper over your plate, amy," cried jo, choking on her tea and dropping her bread, butter side down, on the carpet in her haste to get at the treat. beth ate no more, but crept away to sit in her shadowy corner and brood over the delight to come, till the others were ready. "i think it was so splendid in father to go as chaplain when he was too old to be drafted, and not strong enough for a soldier," said meg warmly. "don't i wish i could go as a drummer, a vivan--what's its name? or a nurse, so i could be near him and help him," exclaimed jo, with a groan. "it must be very disagreeable to sleep in a tent, and eat all sorts of bad-tasting things, and drink out of a tin mug," sighed amy. "when will he come home, marmee? asked beth, with a little quiver in her voice. "not for many months, dear, unless he is sick. he will stay and do his work faithfully as long as he can, and we won't ask for him back a minute sooner than he can be spared. now come and hear the letter." they all drew to the fire, mother in the big chair with beth at her feet, meg and amy perched on either arm of the chair, and jo leaning on the back, where no one would see any sign of emotion if the letter should happen to be touching. very few letters were written in those hard times that were not touching, especially those which fathers sent home. in this one little was said of the hardships endured, the dangers faced, or the homesickness conquered. it was a cheerful, hopeful letter, full of lively descriptions of camp life, marches, and military news, and only at the end did the writer's heart over-flow with fatherly love and longing for the little girls at home. " give them all of my dear love and a kiss. tell them i think of them by day, pray for them by night, and find my best comfort in their affection at all times. a year seems very long to wait before i see them, but remind them that while we wait we may all work, so that these hard days need not be wasted. i know they will remember all i said to them, that they will be loving children to you, will do their duty faithfully, fight their bosom enemies bravely, and conquer themselves so beautifully that when i come back to them i may be fonder and prouder than ever of my little women." everybody sniffed when they came to that part. jo wasn't ashamed of the great tear that dropped off the end of her nose, and amy never minded the rumpling of her curls as she hid her face on her mother's shoulder and sobbed out, "i am a selfish girl! but i'll truly try to be better, so he mayn't be disappointed in me by-and-by." we all will," cried meg. "i think too much of my looks and hate to work, but won't any more, if i can help it." "i'll try and be what he loves to call me, `a little woman' and not be rough and wild, but do my duty here instead of wanting to be somewhere else," said jo, thinking that keeping her temper at home was a much harder task than facing a rebel or two down south. beth said nothing, but wiped away her tears with the blue army sock and began to knit with all her might, losing no time in doing the duty that lay nearest her, while she resolved in her quiet little soul to be all that father hoped to find her when the year brought round the happy coming home. mrs. march broke the silence that followed jo's words, by saying in her cheery voice, "do you remember how you used to play pilgrims progress when you were little things? nothing delighted you more than to have me tie my piece bags on your backs for burdens, give you hats and sticks and rolls of paper, and let you travel through the house from the cellar, which was the city of destruction, up, up, to the housetop, where you had all the lovely things you could collect to make a celestial city." "what fun it was, especially going by the lions, fighting apollyon, and passing through the valley where the hob-goblins were," said jo. "i liked the place where the bundles fell off and tumbled downstairs," said meg. "i don't remember much about it, except that i was afraid of the cellar and the dark entry, and always liked the cake and milk we had up at the top. if i wasn't too old for such things, i'd rather like to play it over again," said amy, who began to talk of renouncing childish things at the mature age of twelve. "we never are too old for this, my dear, because it is a play we are playing all the time in one way or another. out burdens are here, our road is before us, and the longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us through many troubles and mistakes to the peace which is a true celestial city. now, my little pilgrims, suppose you begin again, not in play, but in earnest, and see how far on you can get before father comes home." "really, mother? where are our bundles?" asked amy, who was a very literal young lady. "each of you told what your burden was just now, except beth. i rather think she hasn't got any," said her mother. "yes, i have. mine is dishes and dusters, and envying girls with nice pianos, and being afraid of people." beth's bundle was such a funny one that everybody wanted to laugh, but nobody did, for it would have hurt her feelings very much. "let us do it," said meg thoughtfully. "it is only another name for trying to be good, and the story may help us, for though we do want to be good, it's hard work and we forget, and don't do our best." "we were in the slough of despond tonight, and mother came and pulled us out as help did in the book. we ought to have our roll of directions, like christian. what shall we do about that?" asked jo, delighted with the fancy which lent a little romance to the very dull task of doing her duty. "look under your pillows christmas morning, and you will find your guidebook," replied mrs. march. they talked over the new plan while old hannah cleared the table, then out came the four little work baskets, and the needles flew as the girls made sheets for aunt march. it was uninteresting sewing, but tonight no one grumbled. they adopted jo's plan of dividing the long seams into four parts, and calling the quarters europe, asia, africa, and america, and in that way got on capitally, especially when they talked about the different countries as they stitched their way through them. at nine they stopped work, and sang, as usual, before they went to bed. no one but beth could get much music out of the old piano, but she had a way of softly touching the yellow keys and making a pleasant accompaniment to the simple songs they sang. meg had a voice like a flute, and she and herr mother led the little choir. amy chirped like a cricket, and jo wandered through the airs at her own sweet will, always coming out at the wrong place with a croak or a quaver that spoiled the most pensive tune. they had always done this from the time they could lisp . . . crinkle, crinkle, 'ittle 'tar, and it had become a household custom,, for the mother was a born singer. the first sound in the morning was her voice as she went about the house singing like a lark, and the last sound at night was the same cheery sound, for the girls never grew too old for that familiar lullaby. chapter two jo was the first to wake in the gray dawn of christmas morning. no stockings hung at the fireplace, and for a moment she felt as much disappointed as she did long ago, when her little sock fell down because it was crammed so full of goodies. then she remembered her mother's promise and, slipping her hand under her pillow, drew out a little crimson-covered book. she knew it very well, for it was that beautiful old story of the best life ever lived, and jo felt that it was a true guidebook for any pilgrim going on a long journey. she woke meg with a "merry christmas," and bade her see what was under her pillow. a greencovered book appeared, with the same picture inside, and a few words written by their mother, which made their one present very precious in their eyes. presently beth and amy woke to rummage and find their little books also, one dove-colored, the other blue, and all sat looking at and talking about them, while the east grew rosy with the coming day. in spite of her small vanities, margaret had a sweet and pious nature, which unconsciously influenced her sisters, especially jo, who loved her very tenderly, and obeyed her because her advice was so gently given. "girls," said meg seriously, looking from the tumbled head beside her to the two little night-capped ones in the room beyond, "mother wants us to read and love and mind these books, and we must begin at once. we used to be faithful about it, but since father went away and all this war trouble unsettled us, we have neglected many things. you can do as you please, but i shall keep my book on the table here and read a little every morning as soon as i wake, for i know it will do me good and help me through the day." then she opened her new book and began to read. jo put her arm round her and, leaning cheek to cheek, read also, with the quiet expression so seldom seen on her restless face. "how good meg is! come, amy, let's do as they do. i'll help you with the hard words, and they'' explain things if we don't understand," whispered beth, very much impressed by the pretty books and her sisters, example. "i'm glad mine is blue," said amy. and then the rooms were very still while the pages were softly turned, and the winter sunshine crept in to touch the bright heads and serious faces with a christmas greeting. "where is mother?" asked meg, as she and jo ran down to thank her for their gifts, half an hour later. "goodness only knows. some poor creeter came a-beggin', and your ma went straight off to see what was needed. there never was such a woman for givin' away vittles and drink, clothes and firin'," replied hannah, who had lived with the family since meg was born, and was considered by them all more as a friend than a servant. "she will be back soon, i think, so fry your cakes, and have everything ready," said meg, looking over the presents which were collected in a basket and kept under the sofa, ready to be produced at the proper time. "why, where is amy's bottle of cologne?" she added, as the little flask did not appear. "she took it out a minute ago, and went off with it to put a ribbon on it, or some such notion," replied jo, dancing about the room to take the first stiffness off the new army slippers. "how nice my handkerchiefs look, don't they? hannah washed and ironed them for me, and i marked them all myself," said beth, looking proudly at the somewhat uneven letters which had cost her such labor. "bless the child! she's gone and put `mother' on them instead of `m. march'. how funny!" cried jo, taking one up. "isn't that right? i thought it was better to do it so, because meg's initials are m.m., and i don't want anyone to use these but marmee," said beth;, looking troubled. "it's all right, dear, and a very pretty idea, quite sensible too, for no one can ever mistake now. it will please her very much, i know," said meg, with a frown for jo and a smile for beth. "there's mother. hide the basket, quick!" cried jo, as a door slammed and steps sounded in the hall. amy came in hastily, and looked rather abashed when she saw her sisters all waiting for her. "where have you been, and what are you hiding behind you?" asked meg, surprised to see, by her hood and cloak, that lazy amy had been out so early. "don't laugh at me, jo! i didn't mean anyone should know till the time came. i only meant to change the little bottle for a big one, and i gave all my money to get it, and i'm truly trying not to be selfish any more." as she spoke, amy showed the handsome flask which replaced the cheap one, and looked so earnest and humble in her little effort to forget herself that meg hugged her on the spot, and jo pronounced her `a trump', while beth ran to the window, and picked her finest rose to ornament the stately bottle. "you see i felt ashamed of my present, after reading and talking about being good this morning, so i ran round the corner and changed it the minute i was up, and i'm so glad, for mine is the handsomest now." another bang of the street door sent the basket under the sofa, and the girls to the table, eager for breakfast. "merry christmas, marmee! many of them! thank you for our books. we read some, and mean to every day," they all cried in chorus. "merry christmas, little daughters! i'm glad you began at once, and hope you will keep on. but i want to say one word before we sit down. not far away from here lies a poor woman with a little newborn baby. six children are huddled into one bed to keep from freezing, for they have no fire. there is nothing to eat over there, and the oldest boy came to tell me they were suffering hunger and cold. my girls, will you give them your breakfast as a christmas present?" they were all unusually hungry, having waited nearly an hour, and for a minute no one spoke, only a minute, for jo exclaimed impetuously, "i'm so glad you came before we began!" "may i go and help carry the things to the poor little children?" asked beth eagerly. "i shall take the cream and the muffings," added amy, heroically giving up the article she most liked. meg was already covering the buckwheats, and piling the bread into one big plate. "i thought you'd do it," said mrs. march, smiling as if satisfied. "you shall all go and help me, and when we come back we will have bread and milk for breakfast, and make it up at dinnertime." they were soon ready, and the procession set out. fortunately it was early, and they went through back streets, so few people saw them, and no one laughed at the queer party. a poor, bare, miserable room it was, with broken windows, no fire, ragged bedclothes, a sick mother, wailing baby, and a group of pale, hungry children cuddled under one old quilt, trying to keep warm. how the big eyes stared and the blue lips smiled as the girls went in. "ach, mein gott! it is good angels come to us!" said the poor woman, crying for joy. "funny angels in hoods and mittens," said jo, and set them to laughing. in a few minutes it really did seem as if kind spirits had been at work there. hannah, who had carried wood, made a fire, and stopped up the broken panes with old hats and her own cloak. mrs. march gave the mother tea and gruel, and comforted her with promises of help, while she dressed the little baby as tenderly as if it had been her own. the girls meantime spread the table, set the children round the fire, and fed them like so many hungry birds, laughing, talking, and trying to understand the funny broken english. "das ist gut!" "die engel-kinder!" cried the poor things as they ate and warmed their purple hands at the comfortable blaze. the girls had never been called angel children before, and thought it very agreeable, especially jo, who had been considered a `sancho' ever since she was born. that was a very happy breakfast, though they didn't get any of it. and when they went away, leaving comfort behind, i think there were not in all the city four merrier people than the hungry little girls who gave away their breakfasts and contented themselves with bread and milk on christmas morning. "that's loving our neighbor better than ourselves, and i like it," said meg, as they set out their presents while their mother was upstairs collecting clothes for the poor hummels. not a very splendid show, but there was a great deal of love done up in the few little bundles, and the tall vase of red roses, white chrysanthemums, and trailing vines, which stood in the middle, gave quite an elegant air to the table. "she's coming! strike up, beth! open the door, amy! three cheers for marmee!" cried jo, prancing about while meg went to conduct mother to the seat of honor. beth played her gayest march, amy threw open the door, and meg enacted escort with great dignity. mrs. march was both surprised and touched, and smiled with her eyes full as she examined her presents and read the little notes which accompanied them. the slippers went on at once, a new handkerchief was slipped into her pocket, well scented with amy's cologne, the rose was fastened in her bosom, and the nice gloves were pronounced a perfect fit. there was a good deal of laughing and kissing and explaining, in the simple, loving fashion which makes these home festivals so pleasant at the time, so sweet to remember long afterward, and then all fell to work. the morning charities and ceremonies took so much time that the rest of the day was devoted to preparations for the evening festivities. being still too young to go often to the theater, and not rich enough to afford any great outlay for private performances, the girls put their wits to work, and necessity being the mother of invention, made whatever they needed. very clever were some of their productions, pasteboard guitars, antique lamps made of old-fashioned butter boats covered with silver paper, gorgeous robes of old cotton, glittering with tin spangles from a pickle factory, and armor covered with the same useful diamond shaped bits left inn sheets when the lids of preserve pots were cut out. the big chamber was the scene of many innocent revels. no gentleman were admitted, so jo played male parts to her heart's content and took immense satisfaction in a pair of russet leather boots given her by a friend, who knew a lady who knew an actor. these boots, an old foil, and a slashed doublet once used by an artist for some picture, were jo's chief treasures and appeared on all occasions. the smallness of the company made it necessary for the two principal actors to take several parts apiece, and they certainly deserved some credit for the hard work they did in learning three or four different parts, whisking in and out of various costumes, and managing the stage besides. it was excellent drill for their memories, a harmless amusement, and employed many hours which otherwise would have been idle, lonely, or spent in less profitable society. on christmas night, a dozen girls piled onto the bed which was the dress circle, and sat before the blue and yellow chintz curtains in a most flattering state of expectancy. there was a good deal of rustling and whispering behind the curtain, a trifle of lamp smoke,and an occasional giggle from amy, who was apt to get hysterical in the excitement of the moment. presently a bell sounded, the curtains flew apart, and the operatic tragedy began. "a gloomy wood," according to the one playbill, was represented by a few shrubs in pots, green baize on the floor, and a cave in the distance. this cave was made with a clothes horse for a roof, bureaus for walls, and in it was a small furnace in full blast, with a black pot on it and an old witch bending over it. the stage was dark and the glow of the furnace had a fine effect, especially as real steam issued from the kettle when the witch took off the cover. a moment was allowed for the first thrill to subside, then hugo, the villain, stalked in with a clanking sword at his side, a slouching hat, black beard, mysterious cloak, and the boots. after pacing to and fro in much agitation, he struck his forehead, and burst out in a wild strain, singing of his hatred to roderigo, his love for zara, and his pleasing resolution to kill the one and win the other. the gruff tones of hugo's voice, with an occasional shout when his feelings overcame him, were very impressive, and the audience applauded the moment he paused for breath. bowing with the air of one accustomed to public praise, he stole to the cavern and ordered hagar to come forth with a commanding, "what ho, minion! i need thee!" out came meg, with gray horsehair hanging about her face, a red and black robe, a staff, and cabalistic signs upon her cloak. hugo demanded a potion to make zara adore him, and one destroy roderigo. hagar, in a fine dramatic melody, promised both, and proceeded to call up the spirit who would bring the love philter. hither, hither,from thy home, airy sprite, i bid thee come! born of roses, fed on dew, charms and potions canst thou brew? bring me here, with elfin speed, the fragrant philter which i need. make it sweet and swift and strong, spirit, answer now my song! a soft strain of music sounded, and then at the back of the cave appeared a little figure in cloudy white, with glittering wings, golden hair, and a garland of roses on its head. waving a wand, it sang . . . hither i come, from my airy home, afar in the silver moon. take the magic spell, and use it well, or its power will vanish soon! and dropping a small, gilded bottle at the witch's feet, the spirit vanished. another chant from hagar produced another apparition, not a lovely one, for with a bang an ugly black imp appeared and, having croaked a reply, tossed a dark bottle at hugo and disappeared with a mocking laugh. having warbled his thanks and put the potions in his boots, hugo departed, and hagar informed the audience that as he had killed a few of her friends in times past, she had cursed him, and intends to thwart his plans, and be revenged on him. then the curtain fell, and the audience reposed and ate candy while discussing the merits of the play. a good deal of hammering went on before the curtain rose again, but when it became evident what a masterpiece of stage carpentery had been got up, no one murmured at the delay. it was truly superb. a tower rose to the ceiling, halfway up appeared a window with a lamp burning in it, and behind the white curtain appeared zara in a lovely blue and silver dress, waiting for roderigo. he came in gorgeous array, with plumed cap, red cloak, chestnut lovelocks, a guitar, and the boots, of course. kneeling at the foot of the tower, he sang a serenade in melting tones. zara replied and, after a musical dialogue, consented to fly. then came the grand effect of the play. roderigo produced a rope ladder, with five steps to it, threw up one end, and invited zara to descend. timidly she crept from her lattice, put her hand on roderigo's shoulder, and was about to leap gracfully down when "alas! alas for zara!" she forgot her train. it caught in the window, the tower tottered, leaned forward, fell with a crash, and buried the unhappy lovers in the ruins. a universal shriek arose as the russet boots waved wildly from the wreck and a golden head emerged, exclaiming, "i told you so! i told you so!" with wonderful presence of mind, don pedro, the cruel sire, rushed in, dragged out his daughter, with a hasty aside . . . "don't laugh! act as if it was all right!" and, ordering roderigo up, banished him form the kingdom with wrath and scorn. though decidedly shaken by the fall from the tower upon him, roderigo defied the old gentleman and refused to stir. this dauntless example fired zara. she also defied her sire, and he ordered them both to the deepest dungeons of the castle. a stout little retainer came in with chains and led them away, looking very much frightened and evidently forgetting the speech he ought to have made. act third was the castle hall, and here hagar appeared, having come to free the lovers and finish hugo. she hears him coming and hides, sees him put the potions into two cups of wine and bid the the timid little servant, "bear them to the captives in their cells, and tell them i shall come anon." the servant takes hugo aside to tell him something, and hagar changes the cups for two others which are harmless. ferdinando, the `minion', carries them away, and hagar puts back the cup which holds the poison meant for roderigo. hugo, getting thirsty after a long warble, drinks it, loses his wits, and after a good deal of clutching and stamping, falls flat and dies, while hagar informs him what she has done in a song of exquisite power and melody. this was a truly thrilling scene, though some persons might have thought that the sudden tumbling down of a quantity of long red hair rather marred the effect of the villain's death. he was called before the curtain, and with great propriety appeared, leading hagar, whose singing was considered more wonderful than all the rest of the performance put together. act fourth displayed the despairing roderigo on the point of stabbing himself because he has been told that zara has deserted him. just as the dagger is at his heart, a lovely song is sung under his window, informing him that zara is true but in danger, and he can save her if he will. a key is thrown in, which unlocks the door, and in a spasm of rapture he tears off his chains and rushes away to find and rescue his lady love. act fifth opened with a stormy scene between zara and don pedro. he wishes her to go into a convent, but she won't hear of it, and after a touching appeal, is about to faint when roderigo dashes in and demands her hand. don pedro refuses, because he is not rich. they shout and gesticulate tremendously but cannot agree, and rodrigo is about to bear away the exhausted zara, when the timid servant enters with a letter and a bag from hagar, who has mysteriously disappeared. the latter informs the party that she bequeths untold wealth to the young pair and an awful doom to don pedro, if he doesn't make them happy. the bag is opened, and several quarts of tin money shower down upon the stage till it is quite glorified with the glitter. this entirely softens the stern sire. he consents without a murmur, all join in a joyful chorus, and the curtain falls upon the lovers kneeling to receive don pedro's blessing in attitudes of the most romantic grace. tumultuous applause followed but received an unexpected check, for the cot bed, on which the dress circle was built, suddenly shut up and extinguished the enthusiastic audience. roderigo and don pedro flew to the rescue, and all were taken out unhurt, though many were speechless with laughter. the excitement had hardly subsided when hannah appeared, with "mrs. march's compliments, and would the ladies walk down to supper." this was a surprise even to the actors, and when they saw the table, they looked at one another in rapturous amazement. it was like marmee to get up a little treat for them, but anything so fine as this was unheard of since the departed days of plenty. there was ice cream, actually two dishes of it, pink and white, and cake and fruit and distracting french bonbons and, in the middle of the table, four great bouquets of hot house flowers. it quite took their breath away, and they stared first at the table and then at their mother, who looked as if she enjoyed it immensely. "is it fairies?" asked amy. "santa claus," said beth. "mother did it." and meg smiled her sweetest, in spite of her gray beard and white eyebrows. "aunt march had a good fit and sent the supper," cried jo, with a sudden inspiration. "all wrong. old mr. laurence sent it," replied mrs. march. "the laurence boy's grandfather! what in the world put such a thing into his head? we don't know him!' exclaimed meg. "hannah told one of his servants about your breakfast party. he is an odd old gentleman, but that pleased him. he knew my father years ago, and he sent me a polite note this afternoon, saying he hoped i would allow him to express his friendly feeling toward my children by sending them a few trifles in honor of the day. i could not refuse, and so you have a little feast at night to make up for the bread-and-milk breakfast." "that boy; put it into his head, i know he did! he's a capital fellow, and i wish we could get acquainted. he looks as if he'd like to know us but he's bashful, and meg is so prim she won't let me speak to him when we pass," said jo, as the plates went round, and the ice began to melt out of sight, with ohs and ahs of satisfaction. "you mean the people who live in the big house next door, don't you?" asked one of the girls. "my mother knows old mr. laurence, but says he's very proud and doesn't like to mix with his neighbors. he keeps his grandson shut up, when he isn't riding or walking with his tutor, and makes him study very hard. we invited him to our party, but he didn't come. mother says he's very nice, though he never speaks to us girls." "our cat ran away once, and he brought her back, and we talked over the fence, and were getting on capitally, all about cricket, and so on, when he saw meg coming, and walked off. i mean to know him some day, for he needs fun, i'm sure he does," said jo decidedly. "i like his manners, and he looks like a little gentleman, so i've no objection to your knowing him, if a proper opportunity comes. he brought the flowers himself, and i should have asked him in, if i had been sure what was going on upstairs. he looked so wistful as he went away, hearing the frolic and evidently having none of his own." "it's a mercy you didn't , mother!" laughed jo, looking at her boots. "but we'll have another play sometime that he can see. perhaps he'll help act. wouldn't that be jolly?" "i never had such a fine bouquet before! how pretty it is!" and meg examined her flowers with great interest. "they are lovely. but beth's roses are sweeter to me," said mrs. march, smelling the half-dead posy in her belt. beth nestled up to her, and whispered softly, "i wish i could send my bunch to father. i'm afraid he isn't having such a merry christmas as we are." chapter three "jo! jo! where are you?" cried meg at the foot of the garret stairs. "here!" answered a husky voice from above, and, running up, meg found her sister eating apples and crying over the heir of redclyffe, wrapped up in a comforter on an old three-legged sofa by the sunny window. this was jo's favorite refuge, and here she loved to retire with half a dozen russets and a nice book, to enjoy the quiet and the society of a pet rat who lived near by and didn't mind her a particle. as meg appeared, scrabble whisked into his hole. jo shook the tears off her cheeks and waited to hear the news. "such fun! only see! a regular note of invitation from mrs. gardiner for tomorrow night!" cried meg, waving the precious paper and then proceeding to read it with girlish delight. "`mrs. gardiner would be happy to see miss march and miss josephine at a little dance on new year's eve.' marmee is willing we should go, now what shall we wear?" "what's the use of asking that, when you know we shall wear our poplins, because we haven't got anything else?" answered jo with her mouth full. "if i only had a silk!" sighed meg. "mother says i may when i'm eighteen perhaps, but two years is an everlasting time to wait." "i'm sure our pops look like silk, and they are nice enough for us. yours is as good as new, but i forgot the burn and the tear in mine. whatever shall i do? the burn shows badly, and i can't take any out." "you must sit still all you can and keep your back out of sight. the front is all right. i shall have a new ribbon for my hair, and marmee will lend me her little pearl pin, and my new slippers are lovely, and my gloves will do, though they aren't as nice as i'd like." "mine are spoiled with lemonade, and i can't get any new ones, so i shall have to go without," said jo, who never troubled herself much about dress. "you must have gloves, or i won't go," cried meg decidedly. "gloves are more important than anything else. you can't dance without them, and if you don't i should be so mortified." "then i'll stay still. i don't care much for company dancing. it's no fun to go sailing round. i like to fly about and cut capers." "you can't ask mother for new ones, they are so expensive, and you are so careless. she said when you spoiled the others that she shouldn't get you any more this winter. can't you make them do?" "i can hold them crumpled up in my hand, so no one will know how stained they are. that's all i can do. no! i'll tell you how we can manage, each wear one good one and carry a bad one. don't you see?" "your hands are bigger than mine, and you will stretch my glove dreadfully," began meg, whose gloves were a tender point with her. "then i'll go without. i don't care what people say!" cried jo, taking up her book. "you may have it, you may! only don't stain it, and do behave nicely. don't put your hands behind you, or stare, or say `christopher columbus!' will you?" "don't worry about me. i'll be as prim ad i can and not get into any scrapes, if i can help it. now go and answer your note, and let me finish this splendid story." so meg went away to `accept with thanks', look over her dress, and sing blithely as she did up her one real lace frill, while jo finished her story, her four apples, and had a game of romps with scrabble. on new year's eve the parlor was deserted, for the two younger girls played dressing maids and the two elder were absorbed in the all-important business of `getting ready for the party'. simple as the toilets were, there was a great deal of running up and down, laughing and talking, and at one time a strong smell of burned hair pervaded the house. meg wanted a few curls about her face, and jo undertook to pinch the papered locks with a pair of hot tongs. "ought they to smoke like that?" asked beth from her perch on the bed. "it's the dampness drying," replied jo. "what a queer smell! it's like burned feathers," observed amy, smoothing her own pretty curls with a superior air. "there, now i'll take off the papers and you'll see a cloud of little ringlets," said jo, putting down the tongs. she did take off the papers, but no cloud of ringlets appeared, for the hair came with the papers, and the horrified hairdresser laid a row of little scorched bundles on the bureau before her victim. "oh, oh, oh! what have you done? i'm spoiled! i can't go! my hair, oh, my hair!" wailed meg, looking with despair at the uneven frizzle on her forehead. "just my luck! you shouldn't have asked me to do it. i always spoil everything. i'm so sorry, but the tongs were too hot, and so i've made a mess," groaned poor jo, regarding the little black pancakes with tears of regret. "it isn't spoiled. just frizzle it, and tie your ribbon so the ends come on your forehead a bit, and it will look like the last fashion. i've seen many girls do it so," said amy consolingly. "serves me right for trying to be fine. i wish i'd let my hair alone," cried meg petulantly. "so do i, it was so smooth and pretty. but it will soon grow out again," said beth, coming to kiss and comfort the shorn sheep. after various lesser mishaps, meg was finished at last, and by the united exertions of the entire family jo's hair was got up and her dress on. they looked very well in their simple suits, meg's in silvery drab, with a blue velvet snood, lace frills, and the pearl pin. jo in maroon, with a stiff, gentlemanly linen collar, and a white chrysanthemum or two for her only ornament. each put on one nice light glove, and carried one soiled one, and all pronounced the effect "quite easy and fine". meg's high-heeled slippers were very tight and hurt her, though she would not own it, and jo's nineteen hairpins all seemed stuck straight into her head, which was not exactly comfortable, but, dear me, let us be elegant or die. "have a good time, dearies!" said mrs. march, as the sisters went daintily down the walk. "don't eat much supper, and come away at eleven when i send hannah for you." as the gate clashed behind them, a voice cried from a window . . . "girls, girls! have you you both got nice pocket handkerchiefs?" "yes, yes, spandy nice, and meg has cologne on hers," cried jo, adding with a laugh as they went on, "i do believe marmee would ask that if we were all running away from an earthquake. "it is one of her aristocratic tastes, and quite proper, for a real lady is always known by neat boots, gloves, and handkerchief," replied meg, who had a good many little `aristocratic tastes' of her own. "now don't forget to keep the bad breadth out of sight, jo. is my sash right? and does my hair look very bad?" said meg, as she turned from the glass in mrs. gardiner's dressing room after a prolonged prink. "i know i shall forget. if you see me doing anything wrong, just remind me by a wink, will you?" returned jo, giving her collar a twitch and her head a hasty brush. "no, winking isn't ladylike. i'll lift my eyebrows if any thing is wrong, and nod if you are all right. now hold your shoulder straight, and take short steps, and don't shake hands if you are introduced to anyone. it isn't the thing." "how do you learn all the proper ways? i never can. isn't that music gay?" down they went, feeling a trifle timid, for they seldom went to parties, and informal as this little gathering was, it was an event to them. mrs. gardiner, a stately old lady, greeted them kindly and handed them over to the eldest of her six daughters. meg knew sallie and was at her ease very soon, but jo, who didn't care much for girls or girlish gossip, stood about, with her back carefully against the wall, and felt as much out of place as a colt in a flower garden. half a dozen jovial lads were talking about skates in another part of the room, and she longed to go and join them, for skating was one of the joys of her life. she telegraphed her wish to meg, but the eyebrows went up so alarmingly that she dared not stir. no one came to talk to her, and one by one the group dwindled away till she was left alone. she could not roam about and amuse herself, for the burned breadth would show, so she stared at people rather forlornly till the dancing began. meg was asked at once, and the tight slippers tripped about so briskly that none would have guessed the pain their wearer suffered smilingly. jo saw a big red headed youth approaching her corner, and fearing he meant to engage her, she slipped into a curtained recess, intending to peep and enjoy herself in peace. unfortunately, another bashful person had chosen the same refuge, for, as the curtain fell behind her, she found herself face to face with the `laurence boy'. "dear me, i didn't know anyone was here!" stammered jo, preparing to back out as speedily as she had bounced in. but the boy laughed and said pleasantly, though he looked a little startled, "don't mind me, stay if you like." "shan't i disturb you?" "not a bit. i only came here because i don't know many people and felt rather strange at first, you know." "so did i. don't go away, please, unless you'd rather." the boy sat down again and looked at his pumps, till jo said, trying to be polite and easy, "i think i've had the pleasure of seeing you before. you live near us, don't you?" "next door." and he looked up and laughed outright, for jo's prim manner was rather funny when he remembered how they had chatted about cricket when he brought the cat home. that put jo at her ease and she laughed too, as she said, in her heartiest way, "we did have such a good time over your nice christmas present." "grandpa sent it." "but you put it into his head, didn't you, now?" "how is your cat, miss march?" asked the boy, trying to look sober while his black eyes shone with fun. "nicely, thank you, mr. laurence. but i am not miss march, i'm only jo," returned the young lady. "i'm not mr. laurence, i'm only laurie." "laurie laurence, what an odd name." "my first name is theodore, but i don't like it, for the fellows called me dora, so i made the say laurie instead." "i hate my name, too, so sentimental! i wish every one would say jo instead of josephine. how did you make the boys stop calling you dora?" "i thrashed `em." "i can't thrash aunt march, so i suppose i shall have to bear it." and jo resigned herself with a sigh. "don't you like to dance, miss jo?" asked laurie, looking as if he thought the name suited her. "i like it well enough if there is plenty of room, and everyone is lively. in a place like this i'm sure to upset something, tread on people's toes, or do something dreadful, so i keep out of mischief and let meg sail about. don't you dance?" "sometimes. you see i've been abroad a good many years, and haven't been into company enough yet to know how you do things here." "abroad!." cried jo. "oh, tell me about it! i love dearly to hear people describe their travels." laurie didn't seem to know where to begin, but jo's eager questions soon set him going, and he told her how he had been at school in vevay, where the boys never wore hats and had a fleet of boats on the lake, and for holiday fun went on walking trips about switzerland with their teachers. "don't i wish i'd been there!" cried jo. "did you go to paris?" "we spent last winter there." "can you talk french?" "we were not allowed to speak anything else at vevay." "do say some! i can read it, but can't pronounce." "quel nom a cetter jeune demoiselle en les pantoulles jolis?" "how nicely you do it! let me see . . . you said, `who is the young lady in the pretty slippers', didn't you?" "oui, mademoiselle." "it's my sister margaret, and you knew it was! do you think she is pretty?" "yes, she makes me think of the german girls, she looks so fresh and quiet, and dances like a lady." jo quite glowed with pleasure at this boyish praise of her sister, and stored it up to repeat to meg. both peeped and critisized and chatted till they felt like old acquaintances. laurie's bashfulness soon wore off, for jo's gentlemanly demeanor amused and set him at his ease, and jo was her merry self again, because her dress was forgotten and nobody lifted their eyebrows at her. she liked the `laurence boy' better than ever and took several good looks at him, so that she might describe him to the girls, for they had no brothers, very few male cousins, and boys were almost unknown creatures to them. "curly black hair, brown skin, big black eyes, handsome nose, fine teeth, small hands and feet, taller than i am, very polite, for a boy, and altogether jolly. wonder how old he is?" it was on the tip of jo's tongue to ask, but she checked herself in time and, with unusual tact, tried to find out in a round-about way. "i suppose you are going to college soon? i see you pegging away at your books, no, i mean studying hard." and jo blushed at the dreadful `pegging' which had escaped her. laurie smiled but didn't seem shocked, and answered with a shrug. "not for a year or two. i won't go before seventeen, anyway." "aren't you but fifteen?" asked jo, looking at the tall lad, whom she had imagined seventeen already. "sixteen, next month." "how i wish i was going to college! you don't look as if you liked it." "i hate it! nothing but grinding or skylarking. and i don't like the way fellows do either, in this country." "what do you like?" "to live in italy, and to enjoy myself in my own way." jo wanted very much to ask what his own way was, but his black brows looked rather threatening as he knit them, so she changed the subject by saying, as her foot kept time, "that's a splendid polka! why don't you go and try it?" "if you will come too," he answered, with a gallant little bow. "i can't, for i told meg i wouldn't, because . . ." there jo stopped, and looked undecided whether to tell or to laugh. "because, what?" "you won't tell?" "never!" "well, i have a bad trick of standing before the fire, and so i burn my frocks, and i scorched this one, and though it's nicely mended, it shows, and meg told me to keep still so no one would see it. you may laugh, if you want to. it is funny, i know." but laurie didn't laugh. he only looked dawn a minute, and the expression of his face puzzled jo when he said very gently, "never mind that. i'll tell you how we can manage. there's a long hall out there, and we can dance grandly, and no one will see us. please come." jo thanked him and gladly went, wishing she had two neat gloves when she saw the nice, pearl-colored ones her partner wore. the hall was empty, and they had a grand polka, for laurie danced well, and taught her the german step, which delighted jo,being full of swing and spring> when the music stopped, they sat down on the stairs to get their breath, and laurie was in the midst of an account of a students' festival at heidelberg when meg appeared in search of her sister. she beckoned, and jo reluctantly followed her into a side room, where she found her on a sofa, holding her foot, and looking pale. "i've sprained my ankle. that stupid high heel turned and gave me a sad wrench. it aches so, i can hardly stand, and i don't know how i'm ever going to get home," she said, rocking to and fro in pain. "i knew you'd hurt your feet with those silly shoes. i'm sorry. but i don't see what you can do, except get a carriage, or stay here all night," answered jo, softly rubbing the poor ankle as she spoke. "i can't have a carriage without its costing ever so much. i dare say i can't get one at all, for most people come in their own, and it's a long way to the stable, and no one to send." "i'll go." "no, indeed! it's past nine, and dark as egypt. i can't stop here, for the house is full. sallie has some girls staying with her. i'll rest till hannah comes, and then do the best i can." "i'll ask laurie. he will go," said jo," looking relieved as the idea occurred to her. "mercy, no! don't ask or tell anyone. get me my rubbers, and put these slippers with our things. i can't dance anymore, but as soon as supper is over, watch for hannah and tell me the minute she comes." "they are going out to supper now. i'll stay with you. i'd rather." "no, dear, run along, and bring me some coffee. i'm so tired i can't stir." so meg reclined, with rubbers well hidden, and jo went blundering away to the dining room, which she found after going into a china closet, and opening the door of a room where old mr. gardiner was taking a little private refreshment. making a dart at the table, she secured the coffee, which she immediately spilled, thereby making the front of her dress as bad as the back. "oh, dear, what a blunderbuss i am!" exclaimed jo, finishing meg's glove by scrubbing her gown with it. "can i help you?" said a friendly voice. and there was laurie, with a full cup in one hand and a plate of ice in the other. "i was trying to get something for meg, who is very tired, and someone shook me, and here i am in a nice state," answered jo, glancing dismally from the stained skirt to the coffee-colored glove. "too bad! i was looking for someone to give this to. may i take it to your sister?" "oh, thank you! i'll show you where she is. i don't offer to take it myself, for i should only get into another scrape if i did." jo led the way, and as if used to waiting on ladies, laurie drew up a little table, brought a second installment of coffee and ice for jo, and was so obliging that even particular meg pronounced him a `nice boy'. they had a merry time over the bonbons and mottoes, and were in the midst of a quiet game of buzz, with two or three other young people who had strayed in, when hannah appeared. meg forgot her foot and rose so quickly that she was forced to catch hold of jo, with an exclamation of pain. "hush! don't say anything," she whispered, adding aloud, "it's nothing. i turned my foot a little, that's all," and limped upstairs to put her things on. hannah scolded, meg cried, and jo was at her wits' end, till se decided to take things into her own hands. slipping out, she ran down and, finding a servant, asked if he could get her a carriage. it happened to be a hired waiter who knew nothing about the neighborhood and jo was looking round for help when laurie, who had heard what she said, came up and offered his grandfather's carriage, which had just come for him, he said. "it's so early! you can't mean to go yet?" began jo. looking relieved but hesitating to accept the offer. "i always go early, i do, truly! please let me take you home. it's all on my way, you know, and it rains, they say." that settled it, and telling him of meg's mishap, jo gratefully accepted and rushed up to bring down the rest of the party. hannah hated rain as much as a cat does so she made no trouble, and they rolled away in the luxurious close carriage, feeling very festive and elegant. laurie went on the box so meg could keep her foot up, and the girls talked over their party in freedom. "i had a capital time. did you?' asked jo, rumpling up her hair, and making herself comfortable. "yes, till i hurt myself. sallie's friend, annie moffat, took a fancy to me, and asked me to come and spend a week with her when sallie does. she is going in the spring when the opera comes, and it will be perfectly splendid, if mother only lets me go," answered meg, cheering up at the thought. "i saw you dancing with the red headed man i ran away from. was he nice?" "oh. very! his hair is auburn, not red, and he was very polite, and i had a delicious redowa with him." "he looked like a grasshopper in a fit when he did the new step. laurie and i couldn't help laughing. did you hear us?" "no, but it was very rude. what were you about all that time, hidden away there?" jo told her adventures, and by the time she had finished they were at home. with many thanks, they said good night and crept in, hoping to disturb no one, but the instant their door creaked, two little nightcaps bobbed up, and two sleepy but eager voices cried out . . . "tell about the party! tell about the party!" with what meg called `a great want of manners' jo had saved some bonbons for the little girls, and they soon subsided, after hearing the most thrilling events of the evening. "i declare, it really seems like being a fine young lady, to come home from the party in a carriage and sit in my dressing gown wit a maid to wait on me," said meg, as jo bound up her foot with arnica and brushed her hair. "i don't believe fine young ladies enjoy themselves a bit more than we do, in spite of our burned hair, old gowns, one glove apiece and tight slippers that sprain our ankles when we are silly enough to wear them," and i think jo was quite right. chapter 4 "oh, dear, how hard it does seem to take up our packs and go on," sighed meg the morning after the party, for now the holidays were over, the week of merrymaking did not fit her for going on easily with the task she never liked. "i wish it was christmas or new year's all the time. wouldn't it be fun?" answered jo, yawning dismally. "we shouldn't enjoy ourselves half so much as we do now. but it does seem so nice to have little suppers and bouquets, and go to parties, and drive home, and read and rest,and not work. it's like other people, you know, and i always envy girls who do such things, i'm so fond of luxury," said meg, trying to decide which of two shabby gowns was the least shabby. "well, we can't have it, so don't let us grumble but shoulder our bundles and trudge along as cheerfully as marmee does. i'm sure aunt march is a regular old man of the sea to me, but i suppose when i've learned to carry her without complaining, she will tumble off, or get so light that i shan't mind her." this idea tickled jo's fancy and put her in good spirits, but meg didn't brighten, for her burden, consisting of four spoiled children, seemed heavier than ever. she had not heart enough even to make herself pretty as usual by putting on a blue neck ribbon and dressing her hair in the most becoming way. "where's the use of looking nice, when no one sees me but those cross midgets, and no one cares whether i'm pretty or not?" she muttered, shutting her drawer with a jerk. "i shall have to toil and moil all my days, with only little bits of fun now and then, and get old and ugly and sour, because i'm poor and can't enjoy my life as other girls do. it's a shame!" so meg went down, wearing an injured look,and wasn't at all agreeable at breakfast time. everyone seemed rather out of sorts and inclined to croak. beth had a headache and lay on the sofa, trying to comfort herself with the cat and three kittens. amy was fretting because her lessons were not learned, and she couldn't find her rubbers. jo would whistle and make a great racket getting ready. mrs. march was very busy trying to finish a letter, which must go at once, and hannah had the grumps, for being up late didn't suit her. "there never was such a cross family!" cried jo, losing her temper when she had upset an inkstand, broken both boot lacings, and sat down upon her hat. "you're the crossest person in it!" returned amy, washing out the sum that was all wrong with the tears that had fallen on her slate. "beth, if you don't keep these horrid cats down cellar i'll have them drowned," exclaimed meg angrily as she tried to get rid of the kitten which had scrambled up her back and stuck like a burr just out of reach. jo laughed, meg scolded, beth implored, and amy wailed because she couldn't remember how much nine times twelve was. "girls, girls, do be quiet one minute! i must get this off by the early mail, and you drive me distracted with your worry," cried mrs. march, crossing out the third spoiled sentence in her letter. there was a momentary lull, broken by hannah, who stalked in, laid two hot turnovers on the table, and stalked out again. these turnovers were an institution, and the girls called them `muffs',for they had no others and found the hot pies very comforting to their hands on cold mornings. hannah never forgot to make them, no matter how busy or grumpy she might be, for the walk was long and bleak. the poor things got no other lunch and were seldom home before two. "cuddle your cats and get over your headache, bethy. goodbye, marmee. we are a set of rascals this morning, but we'll come home regular angels. now then, meg!" and jo tramped away, feeling that the pilgrims were not setting out as they ought to do. they always looked back before turning the corner, for their mother was always at the window to nod and smile, and wave her hand to them. somehow it seemed as if they couldn't have got through the day without that, for whatever their mood might be, the last glimpse of that motherly face was sure to affect them like sunshine. "if marmee shook her fist instead of kissing her hand to us, it would serve us right, for more ungrateful wretches than we are were never seen," cried jo, taking a remorseful satisfaction in the snowy walk and bitter wind. "don't use such dreadful expressions," replied meg from the depths of the veil in which she had shrouded herself like a nun sick of the world. "i like good strong words that mean something," replied jo, catching her hat as it took a leap off her head preparatory to flying away altogether. "call yourself any names you like, but i am neither a rascal nor a wretch and i don't choose to be called so." "you're a blighted being, and decidedly cross today because you can't sit in the lap of luxury all the time. poor dear, just wait till i make my fortune, and you shall revel in carriages and ice cream and high-heeled slippers, and posies, and red-headed boys to dance with." "how ridiculous you are, jo!" but meg laughed at the nonsense and felt better in spite of herself. "lucky for you i am, for if i put on crushed airs and tried to be dismal, as you do, we should be in a nice state. thank goodness, i can always find something funny to keep me up. don't croak any more, but come home jolly, there's a dear." jo gave her sister an encouraging pat on the shoulder as they parted for the day, each going a different way, each hugging her little warm turnover, and each trying to be cheerful in spite of wintry weather, hard work, and the unsatisfied desires of pleasure-loving youth. when mr. march lost his property in trying to help an unfortunate friend,the two oldest girls begged to be allowed to do something toward their own support, at least. believing that they could not begin too early to cultivate energy, industry, and independence, their parents consented, and both fell to work with the hearty good will which in spite of all obstacles is sure to succeed at last. margaret found a place as nursery governess and felt rich with her small salary. as she said, she was `fond of luxury', and her chief trouble was poverty. she found it harder to bear than the others because she could remember a time when home was beautiful,life full of ease and pleasure, and want of any kind unknown. she tried not to be envious or discontented, but it was very natural that the young girl should long for pretty things, gay friends, accomplishments, and a happy life. at the kings' she daily saw all she wanted, for the children's older sisters were just out, and meg caught frequent glimpses of dainty ball dresses and bouquets, heard lively gossip about theaters, concerts, sleighing parties, and merrymakings of all kinds, and saw money lavished on trifles which would have been so precious to her. poor meg seldom complained,but a sense of injustice made her feel bitter toward everyone sometimes,for she had not yet learned to know how rich she was in the blessings which alone can make life happy. jo happened to suit aunt march, who was lame and needed an active person to wait upon her. the childless old lady had offered to adopt one of the girls when the troubles came, and was much offended because her offer was declined. other friends told the marches that they had lost all chance of being remembered in the rich old lady's will, but the unworldly marches only said . . . "we can't give up our girls for a dozen fortunes. rich or poor, we will keep together and be happy in one another." the old lady wouldn't speak to them for a time, but happening to meet jo at at a friend's, something in her comical face and blunt manners struck the old lady's fancy, and she proposed to take her for a companion. this did not suit jo at all, but she accepted the place since nothing better appeared and, to every one's surprise, got on remarkably well with her irascible relative. there was an occasional tempest, and once jo marched home, declaring she couldn't bear it longer, but aunt march always cleared up quickly, and sent for her to come back again with such urgency that she could not refuse, for in her heart she rather liked the peppery old lady. i suspect that the real attraction was a large library of fine books, which was left to dust and spiders since uncle march died. jo remembered the kind old gentleman, who used to let her build railroads and bridges with his big dictionaries, tell her stories about queer pictures in his latin books, and buy her cards of gingerbread whenever he met her in the street. the dim, dusty room, with the busts staring down from the tall bookcases, the cozy chairs, the globes, and best of all, the wilderness of books in which she could wander where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her. the moment aunt march took her nap, or was busy with company, jo hurried to this quiet place,and curling herself up in the easy chair, devoured poetry, romance, history, travels, and pictures like a regular bookworm. but, like all happiness, it did not last long, for as sure as she had just reached the heart of the story, the sweetest verse of a song, or the most perilous adventure of her traveler, a shrill voice called, "josy-phine! josy-phine! and she had to leave her paradise to wind yarn, wash the poodle, or read belsham's essays by the hour together. jo's ambition was to do something very splendid. what it was, she had no idea as yet,but left it for time to tell her, and meanwhile, found her greatest affliction in the fact that she couldn't read, run, and ride as much as she liked. a quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless spirit were always getting her into scrapes, and her life was a series of ups and downs, which were both comic and pathetic. but the training she received at aunt march's was just what she needed, and the thought that she was doing something to support herself made her happy in spite of the perpetual "josy-phine!" beth was too bashful to go to school.it had been tried, but she suffered so much that it was given up, and she did her lessons at home with her father. even when he went away, and her mother was called to devote her skill and energy to soldiers' aid societies, beth went faithfully on by herself and did the best she could. she was a housewifely little creature, and helped hannah keep home neat and comfortable for the workers, never thinking of any reward but to be loved. long, quiet days she spent, not lonely nor idle, for her little world was peopled with imaginary friends,and she was by nature a busy bee. there were six dolls to be taken up and dressed every morning, for beth was a child still and and loved her pets as well as ever. not one whole or handsome one among them, all were outcasts till beth took them in, for when her sisters outgrew these idols, they passed to her because amy would have nothing old or ugly. beth cherished them all the more tenderly for that very reason, and set up a hospital for infirm dolls. no pins were ever stuck into their cotton vitals, no harsh words or blows were ever given them, no neglect ever saddened the heart or the most repulsive, but all were fed and clothed, nursed and caressed with an affection which never failed. one forlorn fragment of dollanity had belonged to jo and, having led a tempestuous life, was left a wreck in the rag bag, from which dreary poorhouse it was rescued by beth and taken to her refuge. having no top to its head, she tied on a neat little cap, and as both arms and legs were gone,she hid these deficiencies by folding it in a blanket and devoting her best bed to this chronic invalid. if anyhad known the care lavished on that dolly, i think it would have touched their hearts, even while they laughed. she brought it bits of bouquets, she read to it, took it out to breathe fresh air, hidden under her coat, she sang it lullabies and never went to be without kissing its dirty face and whispering tenderly, "i hope you'll have a good night, my poor dear." beth had her troubles as well as the others, and not being an angel but a very human little girl, she often `wept a little weep' as jo said, because she couldn't take music lessons and have a fine piano. she loved music so dearly, tried so hard to learn, and practiced away so patiently at the jingling old instrument, that it did seem as if someone (not to hint aunt march) ought to help her. nobody did, however, and nobody saw beth wipe the tears off the yellow keys, that wouldn't keep in tune, when she was all alone. she sang like a little lark about her work, never was too tired for marmee and the girls, and day after day said hopefully to herself, " i know i'll get my music some time, if i'm good." there are many beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind. if anybody had asked amy what the greatest trial of her life was, she would have answered at once, "my nose." when she was a baby,jo had accidently dropped her into the coal hod, and amy insisted that the fall had ruined her nose forever. it was not big nor red, like poor `petrea's', it was only rather flat, and all the pinching in the world could not give it an aristocratic point. no one minded it but herself, and it was doing its best to grow, but amy felt deeply the want of a grecian nose, and drew whole sheets of handsome ones to console herself. "little raphael," as her sisters called her, had a decided talent for drawing, and was never so happy as when copying flowers, designing fairies, or illustrating stories with queer specimens of art. her teachers complained that instead of doing her sums she covered her slate with animals, the blank pages of her atlas were used to copy maps on, and caricatures of the most ludicrous description came fluttering out of all her books at unlucky moments. she got through her lessons as well as she could, and managed to escape reprimands by being a model of deportment. she was a great favorite with her mates, being good-tempered and possessing the happy art of pleasing without effort. her little airs and graces were much admired, so were her accomplishments, for besides her drawing, she could play twelve tunes, crochet, and read french without mispronouncing more than two-thirds of the words. she had a plaintive way of saying, "when papa was rich we did so-and-so," which was very touching, and her long words were considered `perfectly elegant' by the girls. amy was in a fair way to be spoiled, for everyone petted her, and her small vanities and selfishnesses were growing nicely. one thing, however, rather quenched the vanities. she had to wear her cousin's clothes. now florence's mama hadn't a particle of taste, and amy suffered deeply at having to wear a red instead of a blue bonnet, unbecoming gowns, and fussy aprons that did not fit. everything was good, well made, and little worn, but amy's artistic eyes were much afflicted, especially this winter, when her school dress was a dull purple with yellow dots and no trimming. "my only comfort," she said to meg, with tears in her eyes, "is that mother doesn't take tucks in my dresses whenever i'm naughty, as maria parks's mother does. my dear, it's really dreadful, for sometimes she is so bad her frock is up to her knees, and she can't come to school. when i think of this deggerredation, i fell that i can bear even my flat nose and purple gown with yellow skyrockets on it." meg was amy's confidante and monitor, and by some strange attraction of opposites jo was gentle beth's. to jo alone did the shy child tell her thoughts, and over her big harum-scarum sister beth unconsciously exercised more influence than anyone in the family. the two older girls were a great deal to one another, but each took one of the younger sisters into her keeping and watched over her in her own way, `playing mother' they called it, and put their sisters in the places of discarded dolls with the maternal instinct of litte women. "has anybody got anything to tell? it's been such a dismal day i'm really dying for some amusement," said meg, as they sat sewing together that evening. "i had a queer time with aunt today, and, as i got the best of it,i'll tell you about it," began jo, who dearly loved to tell stories. "i was reading that everlasting belsham, and droning away as i always do, for aunt soon drops off, and then i take out some nice book, and read like fury till she wakes up. i actually made myself sleepy, and before she began to nod, i gave such a gape that she asked me what i meant by opening my mouth wide enough to take the whole book in at once. "i wish i could, and be done with it," said i, trying not to be saucy. "then she gave me a long lecture on my sins, and told me to sit and think them over while she just `lost' herself for a moment. she never finds herself very soon, so the minute her cap began to bob like a top-heavy dahlia, i whipped the vicar of wakefield out of my pocket, and read away, with one eye on him and one on aunt. i'd just got to where they all tumbled into the water when i forgot and laughed out loud. aunt woke up and, being more good-natured after her nap, told me to read a bit and show what frivolous work i preferred to the worthy and instructive belsham. i did my very best, and she liked it, though she only said . . . "i don't understand what it's all about. go back and begin it, child." "back i went, and made the primroses as interesting as ever i could. once i was wicked enough to stop in a thrilling place, and say meekly, "i'm afraid it tires you, ma'am. shan't i stop now?" "she caught up her knitting, which had dropped out of her hands, gave me a sharp look through her specs, and said, in her short way, `finish the chapter, and don't be impertinent, miss'." "did she own she liked it?" asked meg. "oh, bless you, no! but she let old belsham rest, and when i ran back after my gloves this afternoon, there she was, so hard at the vicar that she didn't hear me laugh as i danced a jig in the hall because of the good time coming. what a pleasant life she might have if only she chose! i don't envy her much, in spite of her money, for after all rich people have about as many worries as poor ones, i think," added jo. "that reminds me," said meg, "that i've got something to tell. it isn't funny, like jo's story, but i thought about it a good deal as i came home. at the kings' today i found everybody in a flurry, and one of the children said that her oldest brother had done something dreadful, and papa had sent him away. i heard mrs. king crying and mr. king talking very loud, and grace and ellen turned away their faces when they passed me, so i shouldn't see how red and swollen their eyes were. i didn't ask any questions, of course, but i felt so sorry for them and was rather glad i hadn't any wild brothers to do wicked things and disgrace the family." "i think being disgraced in school is a great deal tryinger than anything bad boys can do," said amy, shaking her head, as if her experience of life had been a deep one. "susie perkins came to school today with a lovely red carnelian ring. i wanted it dreadfully, and wished i was her with all my might. well, she drew a picture of mr. davis, with a monstrous nose and a hump, and the words, `young ladies, my eye is upon you!' coming out of his mouth in a balloon thing. we were laughing over it when all of a sudden his eye was on us, and he ordered susie to bring up her slate. she was parrylized with fright, but she went, and oh, what do you think he did? he took her by the ear--the ear! just fancy how horrid!--and led her to the recitation platform, and made her stand there half and hour, holding the slate so everyone could see." "didn't the girls laugh at the picture?" asked jo, who relished the scrape. "laugh? not one! they sat still as mice, and susie cried quarts, i know she did. i didn't envy her then, for i felt that millions of carnelian rings wouldn't have made me happy after that. i never, never should have got over such a agonizing mortification." and amy went on with her work, in the proud consciousness of virtue and the successful utterance of two long words in a breath. "i saw something i liked this morning, and i meant to tell it at dinner, but i forgot," said beth, putting jo's topsy-turvy basket in order as she talked. "when i went to get some oysters for hannah, mr. laurence was in the fish shop, but he didn't see me, for i kept behind the fish barrel, and he was busy with mr. cutter the fishman. a poor woman came in with a pail a mop, and asked mr. cutter if he would let her do some scrubbing for a bit of fish, because she hadn't any dinner for her children, and had been disappointed of a day's work. mr. cutter was in a hurry and said `no', rather crossly, so she was going away, looking hungry and sorry, when mr. laurence hooked up a big fish with the crooked end of his cane and held it out to her. she was so glad and surprised she took it right into her arms, and thanked him over and over. he told her to `go along and cook it', and she hurried off, so happy! wasn't it good of him? oh, she did look so funny, hugging the big, slippery fish, and hoping mr. laurence's bed in heaven would be `aisy'." when they had laughed at beth's story, they asked their mother for one, and after a moments thought, she said soberly, "as i sat cutting out blue flannel jackets today at the rooms, i felt very anxious about father, and thought how lonely and helpless we should be , if anything happened to him. it was not a wise thing to do, but i kept on worrying till an old man came in with an order for some clothes. he sat down near me, and i began to talk to him, for he looked poor and tired and anxious. "`have you sons in the army?' i asked,for the note he brought was not to me. "yes, ma'am. i had four, but two were killed, one is a prisoner, and i'm going to the other, who is very sick in a washington hospital.' he answered quietly. "`you have done a great deal for your country, sir,' i said, feeling respect now, instead of pity. "`not a mite more than i ought, ma'am. i'd go myself, if i was any use. as i ain't, i give my boys, and give 'em free.' "he spoke so cheerfully, looked so sincere, and seemed so glad to give his all, that i was ashamed of myself. i'd given one man and thought it too much, while he gave four without grudging them. i had all my girls to comfort me at home, and his last son was waiting, miles away, to say good-by to him, perhaps! i felt so rich, so happy thinking of my blessings, that i made him a nice bundle, gave him some money, and thanked him heartily for the lesson he had taught me." "tell another story, mother, one with a moral to it, like this. i like to think about them afterward, if they are real and not too preachy," said jo, after a minute's silence. mrs. march smiled and began at once, for she had told stories to this little audience for many years, and knew how to please them. "once upon a time, there were four girls, who had enough to eat and drink and wear, a good many comforts and pleasures, kind friends and parents who loved them dearly, and yet they were not contented." (here the listeners stole sly looks at one another, and began to sew diligently.) "these girls were anxious to be good and made many excellent resolutions, but they did not keep them very well, and were constantly saying, `if only we had this,' or `if we could only do that,' quite forgetting how much they already had, and how many things they actually could do. so they asked an old woman what spell they could use to make them happy, and she said, `when you feel discontented, think over your blessings, and be grateful.'" (here jo looked up quickly, as if about to speak, but changed her mind, seeing that the story was not done yet.) "being sensible girls, they decided to try her advice, and soon were surprised to see how well off they were. one discovered that money couldn't keep shame and sorrow out of rich people's houses, another that, though she was poor, she was a great deal happier, with her youth, health, and good spirits, than a certain fretful, feeble old lady who couldn't enjoy her comforts, a third that, disagreeable as it was to help get dinner, it was harder still to go begging for it and the fourth, that even carnelian rings were not so valuable as good behavior. so they agreed to stop complaining, to enjoy the blessings already possessed, and try to deserve them, lest they should be taken away entirely, instead of increased, and i believe they were never disappointed or sorry that they took the old woman's advice." "now, marmee, that is very cunning of you to turn our own stories against us, and give us a sermon instead of a romance!" cried meg. "i like that kind of sermon. it's the sort father used to tell us," said beth thoughtfully, putting the needles straight on jo's cushion. "i don't complain near as much as the others do, and i shall be more careful than ever now, for i've had warning from susies's downfall," said amy morally. "we needed that lesson, and we won't forget it. if we do so, you just say to us, as old chloe did in uncle tom, `tink ob yer marcies, chillen! `tink ob yer marcies!'" added jo, who could not, for the life of her, help getting a morsel of fun out of the little sermon, though she took it to heart as much as any of them. chapter five "what in the world are you going to do now, jo." asked meg one snowy afternoon,as her sister came tramping through the hall, in rubber boots, old sack, and hood, with a broom in one hand and a shovel in the other. "going out for exercise," answered jo with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. "i should think two long walks this morning would have been enough! it's cold and dull out, and i advise you to stay warm and dry by the fire, as i do," said meg with a shiver. "never take advice! can't keep still all day, and not being a pussycat, i don't like to doze by the fire. i like adventures, and i'm going to find some." meg went back to toast her feet and read ivanhoe, and jo began to dig paths with great energy. the snow was light, and with her broom she soon swept a path all round the garden, for beth to walk in when the sun came out and the invalid dolls needed air. now, the garden separated the marches' house from that of mr. laurence. both stood in a suburb of the city, which was still countrylike, with groves and lawns, large gardens, and quiet streets. a low hedge parted the two estates. on one side was an old, brown house, looking rather bare and shabby, robbed of the vines that in summer covered its walls and the flowers, which then surrounded it. on the other side was a stately stone mansion, plainly betokening every sort of comfort and luxury, from the big coach house and well-kept grounds to the conservatory and the glimpses of lovely things one caught between the rich curtains. yet it seemed a lonely, lifeless sort of house, for no children frolicked on the lawn, no motherly face ever smiled at the windows, and few people went in and out, except the old gentleman and his grandson. to jo's lively fancy, this fine house seemed a kind of enchanted palace, full of splendors and delights which no one enjoyed. she had long wanted to behold these hidden glories, and to know the laurence boy, who looked as if he would like to be known, if he only knew how to begin. since the party, she had been more eager than ever, and had planned many ways of making friends with him, but he had not been seen lately, and jo began to think he had gone away, when she one day spied a brown face at an upper window, looking wistfully down into their garden, where beth and amy were snow-balling one another. "that boy is suffering for society and fun," she said to herself. "his grandpa does not know what's good for him, and keeps him shut up all alone. he needs a party of jolly boys to play with, or somebody young and lively. i've a great mind to go over and tell the old gentleman so!" the idea amused jo. who liked to do daring things and was always scandalizing meg by her queer performances. the plan of `going over' was not forgotten. and when the snowy afternoon came, jo resolved to try what could be done. she saw mr. lawrence drive off, and then sallied out to dig her way down to the hedge, where she paused and took a survey. all quiet, curtains down at the lower windows, servants out of sight, and nothing human visible but a curly black head leaning on a thin hand at the upper window. "there he is," thought jo, "poor boy! all alone and sick this dismal day. it's a shame! i'll toss up a snowball and make him look out, and then say a kind word to him." up went a handful of soft snow, and the head turned at once, showing a face which lost its listless look in a minute, as the big eyes brightened and the mouth began to smile. jo nodded and laughed, and flourished her broom as she called out . . . "how do you do? are you sick?" laurie opened the window, and croaked out as hoarsely as a raven . . . "better, thank you. i've had a bad cold, and been shut up a week." "i'm sorry. what do you amuse yourself with?" "nothing. it's dull as tombs up here." "don't you read?" "not much. they won't let me." "can't somebody read to you?" "grandpa does sometimes, but my books don't interest him, and i hate to ask brooke all the time." "have someone come and see you then." "there isn't anyone i'd like to see. boys make such a row, and my head is weak." "isn't there some nice girl who'd read and amuse you? girls are quiet and like to play nurse." "don't know any." "you know us," began jo, then laughed and stopped. "so i do! will you come, please?" cried laurie. "i'm not quiet and nice, but i'll come, if mother will let me. i'll go ask her. shut the window, like a good boy, and wait till i come." with that, jo shouldered her broom and marched into the house, wondering what they would all say to her. laurie was in a flutter of excitement at the idea of having company, and flew about to get ready, for as mrs. march said, he was `a little gentleman'. and did honor to the coming guest by brushing his curly pate, putting on a fresh color, and trying tidy up the room, which in spite of half a dozen servants, was anything but neat. presently there came a loud ring, than a decided voice, asking for `mr. laurie', and a surprisedlooking servant came running up to announce a young lady. "all right, show her up, it's miss jo,"said laurie, going to the door of his little parlor to meet jo, who appeared, looking rosy and quite at her ease, with a covered dish in one hand and beth's three kittens in the other. "here i am, bag and baggage," she said briskly. "mother sent her love, and was glad if i could do anything for you. meg wanted me to bring some of her blancmange, she makes it very nicely, and beth thought her cats would be comforting. i knew you'd laugh at them, but i couldn't refuse, she was so anxious to do something." it so happened that beth's funny loan was just the thing, for in laughing over the kits, laurie forgot his bashfulness, and grew sociable at once. "that looks too pretty to eat," he said, smiling with pleasure, as jo uncovered the dish, and showed the blancmange, surrounded by a garland of green leaves, and the scarlet flowers of amy's pet geranium. "it isn't anything, only they all felt kindly and wanted to show it. tell the girl to put it away for your tea. it's so simple you can eat it, and being soft, it will slip down without hurting your sore throat. what a cozy room this is!" "it might be it it was kept nice, but the maids are lazy,and i don't know how to make them mind. it worries me though." "i'll right it up in two minutes, for it only needs to have the hearth brushed, so--and the things made straight on the mantelpiece, so--and the books put here, and the bottles there, and your sofa turned from the light, and the pillows plumped up a bit. now then, you're fixed." and so he was, for, as she laughed and talked, jo had whisked things into place and given quite a different air to the room. laurie watched her in respectful silence, and when she beckoned him to his sofa, he sat down with a sigh of satisfaction, saying gratefully . . . "how kind you are! yes, that's what it wanted. now please take the big chair and let me do something to amuse my company." "no, i came to amuse you. shall i read aloud?" and jo looked affectionately toward some inviting books near by. "thank you! i've read all those, and if you don't mind, i'd rather talk," answered laurie. "not a bit. i'll talk all day if you'll only set me going. beth says i never know when to stop." "is beth the rosy one, who stays at home good deal and sometimes goes out with a little basket?" asked laurie with interest. "yes, that's beth. she's my girl, and a regular good one she is, too." "the pretty one is meg, and the curly-haired one is amy, i believe?" laurie colored up, but answered frankly, "why, you see i often hear you calling to one another, and when i'm alone up here, i can't help looking over at your house, you always seem to be having such good times. i beg your pardon for being so rude, but sometimes you forget to put down the curtain at the window where the flowers are. and when the lamps are lighted, it's like looking at a picture to see the fire, and you all around the table with your mother. her face is right opposite, and it looks so sweet behind the flowers, i can't help watching it. i haven't got any mother, you know." and laurie poked the fire to hide a little twitching of the lips that he could not control. the solitary, hungry look in his eyes went straight to jo's warm heart. she had been so simply taught that there was no nonsense in her head, and at fifteen she was as innocent and frank as any child. laurie was sick and lonely, and feeling how rich she was in home and happiness, she gladly tried to share it with him. her face was very friendly and her sharp voice unusually gentle as she said . . . "we'll never draw that curtain any more, and i give you leave to look as much as you like. i just wish, though, instead of peeping, you'd come over and see us. mother is so splendid, she'd do you heaps of good, and beth would sing to you if i begged her to, and amy would dance. meg and i would make you laugh over our funny stage properties, and we'd have jolly times. wouldn't your grandpa let you?" "i think he would, if your mother asked him. he's very kind, though he does not look so, and he lets me do what i like, pretty much, only he's afraid i might be a bother to strangers," began laurie, brightening more and more. "we are not strangers, we are neighbors, and you needn't think you'd be a bother. we want to know you, and i've been trying to do it this ever so long. we haven't been here a great while, you know, but we have got acquainted with all our neighbors but you." "you see, grandpa lives among his books, and doesn't mind much what happens outside. mr. brooke, my tutor, doesn't stay here, you know, and i have no one to go about with me, so i just stop at home and get on as i can." "that's bad. you ought to make an effort and go visiting everywhere you are asked, then you'll have plenty of friends, and pleasant places to go to. never mind being bashful. it won't last long if you keep going." laurie turned red again, but wasn't offended at being accused of bashfulness, for there was so much good will in jo it was impossible not to take her blunt speeches as kindly as they were meant. "do you like your school?" asked the boy, changing the subject, after a little pause, during which he stared at the fire and jo looked about her, well pleased. "don't go to school, i'm a businessman--girl, i mean. i go to wait on my great-aunt, and a dear, cross old soul she is, too," answered jo. laurie opened his mouth to ask another question, but remembering just in time that it wasn't manners to make too many inquiries into people's affairs, he shut it again, and looked uncomfortable. jo liked his good breeding, and didn't mind having a laugh at aunt march, so she gave him a lively description of the fidgety old lady, her fat poodle, the parrot that talked spanish, and the library where she reveled. laurie enjoyed that immensely, and when she told about the prim old gentleman who came once to woo aunt march, and in the middle of a fine speech, how poll had tweaked his wig off to his great dismay, the boy lay back and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, and a maid popped her head in to see what was the matter. "oh! that does me no end of good. tell on, please," he said, taking his face out of the sofa cushion, red and shining with merriment. much elated with her success, jo did `tell on', all about their plays and plans, their hopes and fears for father, and the most interesting events of the little world in which the sisters lived. then they got to talking about books, and to jo's delight, she found that laurie loved them as well as she did, and had read even more than herself. "if you like them so much, come down and see ours. grand father is out, so you needn't be afraid," said laurie, getting up. "i'm not afraid of anything," returned jo, with a toss of the head. "i don't believe you are!" exclaimed the boy, looking at her with much admiration, though he privately thought she would have good reason to be a trifle afraid of the old gentleman, if she met hem in some of his moods. the atmosphere of the whole house being summerlike, laurie led the way from room to room, letting jo stop to examine whatever struck her fancy. and so, at last they came to the library, where she clapped her hands and pranced, as she always did when especially delighted. it was lined with books, and there were pictures and statues, and distracting little cabinets full of coins and curiosities, and sleepy hollow chairs, and queer tables, and bronzes, and best of all, a great open fireplace with quaint tiles all round it. "what richness!" sighed jo, sinking into the depth of a velour chair and gazing about her with an air of intense satisfaction. "theodore laurence, you ought to be the happiest boy in the world," she added impressively. "a fellow can't live on books," said laurie, shaking his head as he perched on a table opposite. before he could more, a bell rang, and jo flew up, exclaiming with alarm, "mercy me! it's your grandpa!" "well, what if it is? you are not afraid of anything, you know," returned the boy, looking wicked. "i think i am a little bit afraid of him, but i don't know why i should be. marmee said i might come, and i don't think you're any the worse for it," said jo, composing herself, though she kept her eyes on the door. "i'm a great deal better for it, and ever so much obliged. i'm only afraid you are very tired of talking to me. it was so pleasant, i couldn't bear to stop," said laurie gratefully. "the doctor to see you, sir," and the maid beckoned as she spoke. "would you mind if i left you for a minute? i suppose i must see him," said laurie. "don't mind me. i'm happy as a cricket here," answered jo. laurie went away, and his guest amused herself in her own way. she was standing before a fine portrait of the old gentleman when the door opened again, and without turning, she said decidedly, "i'm sure now that i shouldn't be afraid of him, for he's got kind eyes, though his mouth is grim, and he looks as if he had a tremendous will of his own. he isn't as handsome as my grandfather, but i like him." "thank you, ma'am," said a gruff voice behind her, and there, to her great dismay, stood old mr. laurence. poor jo blushed till she couldn't blush any redder, and her heart began to beat uncomfortably fast as she thought what she had said. for a minute a wild desire to run away possessed her, but that was cowardly, and the girls would laugh at her, so she resolved to stay and get out of the scrape as she could. a second look showed her that the living eyes, under the bushy eyebrows, were kinder even than the painted ones, and there was a sly twinkle in them, which lessened her fear a good deal. the gruff voice was gruffer than ever, as the old gentleman said abruptly, after the dreadful pause, "so you're not afraid of me, hey?" "not much, sir." "and you don't think me as handsome as your grandfather?" "not quite, sir." "and i've got a tremendous will, have i?" "i only said i thought so." "but you like me in spite of it?" "yes, i do, sir." that answer pleased the old gentleman. he gave a short laugh, shook hands with her, and, putting his finger under her chin, turned up her face, examined it gravely, and let it go, saying with a nod, "you've got your grandfather's spirit, if you haven't his face. he was a fine man, my dear, but what is better, he was a brave and an honest one, and i was proud to be his friend." "thank you, sir," and jo was quite comfortable after that, for it suited her exactly. "what have you been doing to this boy of mine, hey?" was the next question, sharply put. "only trying to be neighborly, sir." and jo to how her visit came about. "you think he needs cheering up a bit, do you?" "yes, sir, he seems a little lonely, and young folks would do him good perhaps. we are only girls, but we should be glad to help if we could, for we don't forget the splendid christmas present you sent us," said jo eagerly. "tut, tut, tut! that was the boy's affair. how is the poor woman?" "doing nicely, sir." and off went jo, talking very fast, as she told all about the hummels, in whom her mother had interested richer friends than they were. "just her father's way of doing good. i shall come and see your mother some fine day. tell her so. there's the tea bell, we have it early on the boy's account. come down and go on being neighborly." "if you'd like to have me, sir." "shouldn't ask you, if i didn't." and mr. laurence offered her his arm with old-fashioned courtesy. "what would meg say to this?" thought jo, as she was marched away, while her eyes danced with fun as she imagined herself telling the story at home. "hey! why, what the dickens has come to the fellow?" said the old gentleman, as laurie came running downstairs and brought up with a start of surprise at the astounding sight of jo arm in arm with his redoubtable grandfather. "i didn't know you'd come, sir," he began, as jo gave him a triumphant little glance. "that's evident, by the way you racket downstairs. come to your tea, sir, and behave like a gentleman." and having pulled the boy's hair by way of a caress, mr. laurence walked on, while laurie went through a series of comic evolutions behind their backs, which nearly produced an explosion of laughter from jo. the old gentleman did not say much as he drank his four cups of tea, but he watched the young people, who soon chatted away like old friends, and the change in his grandson did not escape him. there was color, light, and life in the boy's face now, vivacity in his manner, and genuine merriment in his laugh. "she's right, the lad is lonely. i'll see what these little girls can do for him," thought mr. laurence, as he looked and listened. he liked jo, for her odd, blunt ways suited him, and she seemed to understand the boy almost as well as if she had been one herself. if the laurences had been what jo called `prim and poky', she would not have got on at all, for such people always made her shy and awkward. but finding them free and easy, she was so herself, and made a good impression. when they rose she proposed to go, but laurie said he had something more to show her, and took her away to the conservatory, which had been lighted for her benefit. it seemed quite fairylike to jo, as she went up and down the walks, enjoying the blooming walls on either side, the soft light, the damp sweet air, and the wonderful vines and trees that hung about her, while her new friend cut the finest flowers till his hands were full. then he tied them up, saying, with the happy look jo liked to see, "please give these to your mother, and tell her i like the medicine she sent me very much." they found mr. laurence standing before the fire in the great drawing room, by jo's attention was entirely absorbed by a grand piano, which stood open. "do you play?" she asked, turning to laurie with a respectful expression. "sometimes," he answered modestly. "please do now. i want to hear it, so i can tell beth." "won't you first?" "don't know how. too stupid to learn, but i love music dearly." so laurie played and jo listened, with her nose luxuriously buried in heliotrope and tea roses. her respect and regard for the `laurence' boy increased very much, for he played remarkably well and didn't put on any airs. she wished beth could hear him, but she did not say so, only praised him till he was quite abashed, and his grandfather came to his rescue. "that will do, that will do, young lady. too many sugarplums are not good for him. his music isn't bad, but i hope he will do as well in more important things. going? well, i'm much obliged to you, and i hope you'll come again. my respects to your mother. good night, doctor jo." he shook hands kindly, but looked as if something did not please him. when they got into the hall, jo asked laurie if she had said something amiss. he shook his head. "no, it was me. he doesn't like to hear me play." "why not?" "i'll tell you some day. john is going home with you, as i can't." "no need of that. i am not a young lady, and it's only a step. take care of yourself, won't you?" "yes, but you will come again, i hope?" "if you promise to come and see us after you are well." "i will." "good night, laurie!" "good night, jo, good night!" when all the afternoon's adventures had been told, the family felt inclined to go visiting in a body, for each found something very attractive in the big house on the other side of the hedge. mrs. march wanted to talk of her father with the old man who had not forgotten him, meg longed to walk in the conservatory, beth sighed for the grand piano. and amy was eager to see the fine pictures and statues. "mother, why didn't mr. laurence like to have laurie play?" asked jo, who was of an inquiring disposition. "i am not sure, but i think it was because his son, laurie's father, married an italian lady, a musician, which displeased the old man, who is very proud. the lady was good and lovely and accomplished, but he did not like her, and never saw his son after he married. they both died when laurie was a little child, and then his grandfather took him home. i fancy the boy, who was born in italy, is not very strong, and the old man is afraid of losing him, which makes him so careful. laurie comes naturally by his love of music, for he is like his mother, and i dare say his grandfather fears that he may want to be a musician. at any rate, his skill reminds him of the woman he did not like, and so he `glowered' as jo said." "dear me, how romantic!" exclaimed meg. "how silly!" said jo. "let him be a musician if he wants to, and not plague his life out sending him to college, when he hates to go." "that's why he has such handsome black eyes and pretty manners, i suppose. italians are always nice, " said meg, who was a little sentimental. "what do you know about his eyes and his manners? you never spoke to him, hardly," cried jo, who was not sentimental. "i saw him at the party, and what you tell shows that he knows how to behave. that was a nice little speech about the medicine mother sent him." "he meant the blanc mange, i suppose." "how stupid you are, child! he meant you, of course." "did he?" and jo opened her eyes as if it had never occurred to her before. "i never saw such a girl! you don't know a compliment when you get it," said meg, with the air of a young lady who knew all about the matter. "i think they are great nonsense, and i'll thank you not to be silly and spoil my fun. laurie's a nice boy and i like him, and i won't have any sentimental stuff about compliments and such rubbish. we'll all be good to him because he hasn't got any mother, and he may come over and see us, mayn't he, marmee?" "yes, jo, your little friend is very welcome, and i hope meg will remember that children should be children as long as they can." "i don't call myself a child, and i'm not in my teens yet," observed amy. "what do you say, beth?" "i was thinking about our `pilgrim's progress'," answered beth, who had not heard a word. "how we got out of the slough and through the wicket gate by resolving to be good, and up the steep hill by trying, and that maybe the house over there, full of splendid things, is going to be our palace beautiful." "we have got to get by the lions first," said jo, as if she rather liked the prospect. chapter six the big house did prove a palace beautiful, though it took some time for all to get in, and beth found it very hard to pass the lions. old mr. laurence was the biggest one, but after he had called, said something funny or kind to each one of the girls, and talked over old times with their mother, nobody felt much afraid of him, except timid beth. the other lion was the fact that they were poor and laurie rich, for this made them shy of accepting favors which they could not return. but, after a while, they found that he considered them the benefactors, and could not do enough to show how grateful he was for mrs. march's motherly welcome, their cheerful society, and the comfort he took in that humble home of theirs. so they soon forgot their pride and interchanged kindnesses without stopping to think which was the greater. all sorts of pleasant things happened about that time, for the new friendship flourished like grass in spring. every one liked laurie, and he privately informed his tutor that "the marches were regularly splendid girls." with the delightful enthusiasm of youth, they took the solitary boy into their midst and made much of him, and he found something very charming in the innocent companionship of these simple-hearted girls. never having known mother or sisters, he was quick to feel the influences they brought about him, and their busy, lively ways made him ashamed of the indolent life he led. he was tired of books, and found people so interesting now that mr. brooke was obliged to make very unsatisfactory reports, for laurie was always playing truant and running over to the marches'. "never mind, let him take a holiday, and make it up afterward," said the old gentleman. "the good lady next door says he is studying too hard and needs young society, amusement, and exercise. i suspect she is right, and that i've been coddling the fellow as if i'd been his grandmother. let him do what he likes, as long as he is happy. he can't get into mischief in that little nunnery over there, and mrs. march is doing more for him than we can." what good times they had, to be sure. such plays and tableaux, such sleigh rides and skating frolics, such pleasant evenings in the old parlor, and now and then such gay little parties at the great house. meg could walk in the conservatory whenever she liked and revel in bouquets, jo browsed over the new library voraciously, and convulsed the old gentleman with her criticisms, amy copied pictures and enjoyed beauty to her heart's content, and laurie played `lord of the manor' in the most delightful style. but beth, though yearning for the grand piano, could not pluck up courage to go to the `mansion of bliss', as meg called it. she went once with jo, but the old gentleman, not being aware of her infirmity, stared at her so hard from under his heavy eyebrows, and said "hey!" so loud, that he frightened her so much her `feet chattered on the floor', she never told her mother, and she ran away, declaring she would never go there any more, not even for the dear piano. no persuasions or enticements could overcome her fear, till, the fact coming to mr. laurence's ear in some mysterious way, he set about mending matters. during one of the brief calls he made, he artfully led the conversation to music, and talked away about great singers whom he had seen, fine organs he had heard, and told such charming anecdotes that beth found it impossible to stay in her distant corner, but crept nearer and nearer, as if fascinated. at the back of his chair she stopped and stood listening, with her great eyes wide open and her cheeks red with excitement of this unusual performance. taking no more notice of her than if she had been a fly, mr. laurence talked on about laurie's lessons and teachers. and presently, as if the idea had just occurred to him, he said to mrs. march . . . "the boy neglects his music now, and i'm glad of it, for he was getting too fond of it. but the piano suffers for want of use. wouldn't some of your girls like to run over, and practice on it now and then, just to keep it in tune, you know, ma`am?" beth took a step forward, and pressed her hands tightly together to keep from clapping them, for this was an irresistible temptation, and the thought of practicing on that splendid instrument quite took her breath away. before mrs. march could reply, mr. laurence went on with an odd little nod and smile. . . "they needn't see or speak to anyone, but run in at any time. for i'm shut up in my study at the other end of the house, laurie is out a great deal, and the servants are never near the drawing room after nine o'clock." here he rose, as if going, and beth made up her mind to speak, for that last arrangement left nothing to be desired. "please, tell the young ladies what i say, and if they don't care to come, why, never mind." here a little hand slipped into his, and beth looked up at him with a face full of gratitude, as she said, in her earnest yet timid way . . . "oh sir, they do care, very very much!" "are you the musical girl?" he asked, without any startling "hey!" as he looked down at her very kindly. "i'm beth. i love it dearly, and i'll come, if you are quite sure nobody will hear me, and be disturbed," she added, fearing to be rude, and trembling at her own boldness as she spoke. "not a soul, my dear. the house is empty half the day, so come and drum away as much as you like, and i shall be obliged to you." "how kind you are, sir!" beth blushed like a rose under the friendly look he wore, but she was not frightened now, and gave the hand a grateful squeeze because she had no words to thank him for the precious gift he had given her. the old gentleman softly stroked the hair off her forehead, and, stooping down, he kissed herr, saying, in a tone few people ever heard . . . "i had a little girl once, with eyes like these. god bless you, my dear! good day. madam." and away he went, in a great hurry. beth had a rapture with her mother, and then rushed up to impart the glorious news to her family of invalids, as the girls were not home. how blithely she sang that evening, and how they all laughed at her because she woke amy in the night by playing the piano on her face in her sleep. next day, having seen both the old and young gentleman out of the house, beth, after two or three retreats, fairly got in at the side door, and made her way as noiselessly as any mouse to the drawing room where her idol stood. quite by accident, of course, some pretty, easy music lay on the piano, and with trembling fingers and frequent stops to listen and look about, beth at last touched the great instrument, and straightway forgot her fear, herself, and everything else but the unspeakable delight which the music gave her, for it was like the voice of a beloved friend. she stayed till hannah came to take her home to dinner, but she had no appetite,and could only sit and smile upon everyone in a general state of beatitude. after that, the little brown hood slipped through the hedge nearly every day, and the great drawing room was haunted by a tuneful spirit that came and went unseen. she never knew that mr. laurence opened his study door to hear the old-fashioned airs he liked. she never saw laurie mount guard in the hall to warn the servants away. she never suspected that the exercise books and new songs which she found in the rack were put there for her especial benefit, and when he talked to her about music at home, she only thought how kind he was to tell things that helped her so much. so she enjoyed herself heartily, and found, what isn't always the case, that her granted wish was all she had hoped. perhaps it was because she was so grateful for this blessing that a greater was given her. at any rate she deserved both. "mother, i'm going to work mr. laurence a pair of slippers. he is so kind to me, i must thank him, and i don't know any other way. can i do it?" asked beth, a few weeks after that eventful call of his. "yes, dear. it will please him very much, and be a nice way of thanking him. the girls will help you about them, and i will pay for the making up," replied mrs. march, who took peculiar pleasure in granting beth's requests because she so seldom asked anything for herself. after many serious discussions with meg and jo, the pattern was chosen, the materials bought, and the slippers begun. a cluster of grave yet cheerful pansies on a deeper purple ground was pronounced very appropriate and pretty, and beth worked away early and late, with occasional lifts over hard parts. she was a nimble little needlewoman, and they were finished before anyone got tired of them. then she wrote a short, simple note, and with laurie's help, got them smuggled onto the study table one morning before the old gentleman was up. when this excitement was over, beth waited to see what would happen. all day passed a a part of the next before any acknowledgement arrived, and she was beginning to fear she had offended her crochety friend. on the afternoon of the second day, she went out to do an errand, and give poor joanna, the invalid doll, her daily exercise. as she came up the street, on her return, she saw three, yes, four heads popping in and out of the parlor windows, and the moment they saw her, several hands were waved, and several joyful voices screamed . . . "here's a letter from the old gentleman! come quick, and read it!" "oh, beth, he's sent you . . ." began amy, gesticulating with unseemly energy, but she got no further, for jo quenched her by slamming down the window. beth hurried on in a flutter of suspense. at the door her sisters seized and bore her to the parlor in a triumphal procession, all pointing and all saying at once, "look there! look there!" beth did look, and turned pale with delight and surprise, for there stood a little cabinet piano, with a letter lying on the glossy lid, directed like a sign board to "miss elizabeth march." "for me?" gasped beth, holding onto jo and feeling as if she should tumble down, it was such an overwhelming thing altogether. "yes, all for you, my precious! isn't it splendid of him? don't you think he's the dearest old man in the world? here's the key in the letter. we didn't open it, but we are dying to know what he says," cried jo, hugging her sister and offering the note. "you read it! i can't, i feel so queer! oh, it is too lovely!" and beth hid her face in jo's apron, quite upset by her present. jo opened the paper and began to laugh, for the first worked she saw were . . . "miss march: "dear madam--" "how nice it sounds! i wish someone would write to me so!" said amy, who thought the old-fashioned address very elegant. "`i have had many pairs of slippers in my life, but i never had any that suited me so well as yours,'" continues jo. "`heartsease is my favorite flower, and these will always remind me of the gentle giver. i like to pay my debts, so i know you will allow `the old gentleman' to send you something which once belonged to the little grand daughter he lost. with hearty thanks and best wishes, i remain "`your grateful friend and humble servant, "`james laurence' "there, beth, that's an honor to be proud of, i'm sure! laurie told me how fond mr.laurence used to be of the child who died, and how he kept all her little things carefully. just think, he's given you her piano. that comes of having big blue eyes and loving music," said jo, trying to soothe beth, who trembled and looked more excited than she had ever been before. "see the cunning brackets to hold candles, and the nice green sild, puckered up, with a gold rose in the middle, and the pretty rack and stool, all complete," added meg, opening the instrument and displaying its beauties. "`your humble servant, james laurence'. only think of his writing that to you. i'll tell the girls. they'll think it's splendid," said amy, much impressed by the note. "try it, honey. let's hear the sound of the baby pianny," said hannah, who always took a share in the family joys and sorrows. so beth tried it, and everyone pronounced it the most remarkable piano ever heard. it had evidently been newly tuned and put in applepie order, but, perfect as it was, i think the real charm lay in the happiest of all happy faces which leaned over it, as beth lovingly touched the beautiful black and white keys and pressed the bright pedals. "you'll have to go and thank him," said jo, by way of a joke, for the idea of the child's really going never entered her head. "yes, i mean to. i guess i'll go no, before i get frightened thinking about it." and, to the utter amazement of the assembled family, beth walked deliberately down the garden, through the hedge, and in at the laurences' door. "well, i wish i may die if it ain't the queerest thing i ever see! the pianny has turned her head! she'd never have gone in her right mind," cried hannah, staring after her, while the girls were rendered quite speechless by the miracle. they would have been still more amazed if they had seen what beth did afterward. if you will believe me, she went and knocked at the study door before she gave herself time to think, and when a gruff voice called out, "come in!" she did go in, right up to mr. laurence, who looked quite taken aback, and held out her hand, saying, with only a small quaver in her voice, "i came to thank you, sir, for. . ." but she didn't finish, for he looked so friendly that she forgot her speech and, only remembering that he had lost the little girl he loved, she put both arms round his neck and kissed him. if the roof of the house had suddenly flown off, the old gentleman wouldn't have been more astonished. but he liked it. oh, dear, yes, he liked it amazingly! and was so touched and pleased by that confiding little kiss that all his crustiness vanished, and he just set her on his knee, and laid his wrinkled cheek against her rosy one, feeling as if he had got his own little grand daughter back again. beth ceased to fear him from that moment, and sat there talking to him as cozily as if she had known him all her life, for love casts out fear, and gratitude can conquer pride. when she went home, he walked with her to her own gate, shook hands cordially, and touched his hat as he marched back again, looking very stately and erect, like a handsome, soldierly old gentleman, as he was. when the girls saw that performance, jo began to dance a jig, by way of expressing her satisfaction, amy nearly fell out of the window in her surprise, and meg exclaimed, with up-lifted hands, "well, i do believe the world is coming to an end. chapter seven "that boy is a perfect cyclops, isn't he?" said amy one day, as laurie clattered by on horseback, with a flourish of his whip as he passed. "how dare you say so, when he's got both his eyes? and very handsome ones they are, too," cried jo, who resented any slighting remarks about her friend. "i didn't day anything about his eyes, and i don't see why you need fire up when i admire his riding." "oh, my goodness! that little goose means a centaur, and she called him a cyclops," exclaimed jo, with a burst of laughter. "you needn't be so rude, it's only a `lapse of lingy', as mr. davis says," retorted amy, finishing jo with her latin. "i just wish i had a little of the money laurie spends on that horse," she added, as if to herself, yet hoping her sisters would hear. "why?" asked meg kindly, for jo had gone off in another laugh at amy's second blunder. "i need it so much. i'm dreadfully in debt, and it won't be my turn to have the rag money for a month." "in debt, amy? what do you mean?" and meg looked sober. "why, i owe at least a dozen pickled limes, and i can't pay them, you know, till i have money, for marmee forbade my having anything charged at the shop." "tell me all about it. are limes the fashion now? it used to be pricking bits of rubber to make balls." and meg tried to keep her countenance, amy looked so grave and important. "why, you see, the girls are always buying them, and unless you want to be thought mean, you must do it too. it's nothing but limes now, for everyone is sucking them in their desks in schooltime, and trading them off for pencils, bead rings, paper dolls, or something else, at recess. if one girl likes another, she gives her a lime. if she's mad with her, she eats one before her face, and doesn't offer even a suck. they treat by turns, and i've had ever so many but haven't returned them, and i ought for they are debts of honor, you know." "how much will pay them off and restore your credit?" asked meg, taking out her purse." "a quarter would more than do it, and leave a few cents over for a treat for you. don't you like limes?" "not much. you may have my share. here's the money. make it last as long as you can, for it isn't very plenty, you know." "oh, thank you! it must be so nice to have pocket money! i'll have a grand feast, for i haven't tasted a lime this week. i felt delicate about taking any, as i couldn't return them, and i'm actually suffering for one." next day amy was rather late at school, but could not resist the temptation of displaying, with pardonable pride, a moist brown-paper parcel, before she consigned it to the inmost recesses of her desk. during the next few minutes the rumor that amy march had got twentyfour delicious limes (she ate one on the way) and was going to treat circulated through her `set', and the attentions of her friends became quite overwhelming. katy brown invited her to her next party on the spot. mary kinglsey insisted on lending her her watch till recess, and jenny snow, a satirical young lady, who had basely twitted amy upon her limeless state, promptly buried the hatchet and offered to furnish answers to certain appalling sums. but amy had not forgotten miss snow's cutting remarks about `some persons whose noses were not too flat to smell other people's limes, and stuck-up people who were not too proud to ask for them', and she instantly crushed `that snow girl's' hopes by the withering telegram, "you needn't be so polite all of a sudden, for you won't get any." a distinguished personage happened to visit the school that morning, and amy's beautifully drawn maps received praise, which honor to her foe rankled in the soul of miss snow, and caused miss march to assume the airs of a studious young peacock. but, alas, alas! pride goes before a fall, and the revengeful snow turned the tables with disastrous success. no sooner had the guest paid the usual stale compliments and bowed himself out, than jenny, under pretense of asking an important question, informed mr. davis, the teacher, that amy march had pickled limes in her desk. now mr. davis had declared limes a contraband article, and solemnly vowed to publicly ferrule the first person who was found breaking the law. this much-enduring man had succeeded in banishing chewing gum after a long and stormy war, had made a bonfire of the confiscated novels and newspapers, had suppressed a private post office, had forbidden distortions of the face, nicknames, and caricatures, and done all that one man could do to keep half a hundred rebellious girls in order. boys are trying enough to human patience, goodness knows, but girls are infinitely more so, especially to nervous gentlemen with tyrannical tempers and no more talent for teaching than dr. blimber. mr. davis knew any quantity of greek, latin, algebra, and ologies of all sorts so he was called a fine teacher, and manners, morals, feelings, and examples were not considered of any particular importance. it was a most unfortunate moment for denouncing amy, and jenny knew it. mr. davis had evidently taken his coffee too strong that morning, there was an east wind, which always affected his neuralgia, and his pupils had not done him the credit which he felt he deserved. therefore, to use the expressive, if not elegant, language of a schoolgirl, "he was as nervous as a witch and as cross as a bear". the word `limes' was like fire to powder, his yellow face flushed, and he rapped on his desk with an energy which made jenny skip to her seat with unusual rapidity. "young ladies, attention, if you please!" at the stern order the buzz ceased, and fifty pairs of blue, black, gray, and brown eyes were obediently fixed upon his awful countenance. "miss march, come to the desk." amy rose to comply with outward composure, but a secret fear oppressed her, for the limes weighed upon her conscience. "bring with you the limes you have in your desk," was the unexpected command which arrested her before she got out of her seat. "don't take all." whispered her neighbor, a young lady of great presence of mind. amy hastily shook out half a dozen and laid the rest down before mr. davis, feeling that any man possessing a human heart would relent when that delicious perfume met his nose. unfortunately, mr. davis particularly detested the odor of the fashionable pickle, and disgust added to his wrath. "is that all?" "not quite," stammered amy. "bring the rest immediately." with a despairing glance at her set, she obeyed. "you are sure there are no more?' "i never lie, sir." "so i see. now take these disgusting things two by two, and throw them out of the window." there was a simultaneous sigh, which created quite a little gust, as the last hope fled, and the treat was ravished from their longing lips. scarlet with shame and anger, amy went to and fro six dreadful times, and as each doomed couple, looking oh, so plump and juicy, fell from her reluctant hands, a shout from the street completed the anguish of the girls, for it told them that their feast was being exulted over by the little irish children, who were their sworn foes. this--this was too much. all flashed indignant or appealing glances at the inexorable davis, and one passionate lime lover burst into tears. as amy returned from her last trip, mr. davis gave a portentous "hem!" and said, in his most impressive manner . . . "young ladies, you remember what i said to you a week ago. i am sorry this has happened, but i never allow my rules to be infringed, and i never break my word. miss march, hold out your hand." amy started, and put both hands behind her, turning on him an imploring look which pleaded for her better than the words she could not utter. she was rather a favorite with `old davis', as, of course, he was called, and it's my private belief that he would have broken his word if the indignation of one irrepressible young lady had not found vent in a hiss. that hiss, faint as it was, irritated the irascible gentleman, and sealed the culprit's fate. "your hand, miss march!" was the only answer her mute appeal received, and too proud to cry or beseech, amy set her teeth, threw bach her head defiantly, and bore without flinching several tingling blows on her little palm. they were neither many nor heavy,but that made no difference to her. for the first time in her life she had been struck, and the disgrace, in her eyes, was as deep as if he had knocked her down. "you will now stand on the platform till recess," said mr. davis, resolved to do the thing thoroughly, since he had begun. that was dreadful. it would have been bad enough to go to her seat, and see the pitying faces of her friends, or the satisfied ones of her few enemies, but to face the whole school, with that shame fresh upon her, seemed impossible, and for a second she felt as if she could only drop down where she stood, and break her heart with crying. a bitter sense of wrong and the thought of jenny snow helped her to bear it, and, taking the ignominious place, she fixed her eyes on the stove funnel above what now seemed a sea of faces, and stood there, so motionless and white that the girls found it hard to study with that pathetic figure before them. during the fifteen minutes that followed, the proud and sensitive little girl suffered a shame and pain which she never forgot. to others it might seem a ludicrous or trivial affair, but to her it was a hard experience, for during the twelve years of her life she had been governed by love alone, and a blow of that sort had never touched her before. the smart of her hand and the ache of her heart were forgotten in the sting of the thought, "i shall have to tell at home, and they will be so disappointed in me!" the fifteen minutes seemed an hour, but they came to an end at last, and the word `recess!' had never seemed so welcome to her before. "you can go, miss march," said mr. davis, looking, as he felt, uncomfortable. he did not soon forget the reproachful glance amy gave him, as she went, without a word to anyone, straight into the anteroom, snatched her things, and left the place "forever," as she passionately declared to herself. she was in a sad state when she got home, and when the older girls arrived, some time later, an indignation meeting was held at once. mrs. march did not say much but looked disturbed, and comforted her afflicted little daughter in her tenderest manner. meg bathed the insulted hand with glycerine and tears, beth felt that even her beloved kittens would fail as a balm for griefs like this, jo wrathfully proposed that mr. davis be arrested without delay, and hannah shook her fist at the `villain' and pounded potatoes for dinner as if she had him under her pestle. no notice was taken of amy's flight, except by her mates, but the sharp-eyed demoiselles discovered that mr. davis was quite benignant in the afternoon, also unusually nervous. just before school closed, jo appeared, wearing a grim expression as she stalked up to the desk, and delivered a letter from her mother, then collected amy's property, and departed, carefully scraping the mud from her boots on the door mat, as if she shook that dust of the place off her feet. "yes, you can have a vacation from school, but i want you to study a little every day with beth," said mrs. march that evening. "i don't approve of corporal punishment, especially for girls. i dislike mr. davis's manner of teaching and don't think the girls you associate with are doing you any good, so i shall ask your father's advice before i send you anywhere else." "that's good! i wish all the girls would leave, and spoil his old school. it's perfectly maddening to think of those lovely limes," sighed amy, with the air of a martyr. "i am not sorry you lost them, for you broke the rules, and deserved some punishment for disobedience," was the severe reply, which rather disappointed the young lady, who expected nothing but sympathy. "do you mean you are glad i was disgraced before the whole school?" cried amy. "i should not have chosen that way of mending a fault," replied her mother, "but i'm not sure that it won't do you more good than a molder method. you are getting to be rather conceited, my dear, and it is quite time you set about correcting it. you have a good many little gifts and virtues,but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. there is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty." "so it is!" cried laurie, who was playing chess in a corner with jo. "i knew a girl once, who had a really remarkable talent for music, and she didn't know it, never guessed what sweet little things she composed when she was alone, and wouldn't have believed it if anyone had told her." "i wish i'd known that nice girl. maybe she would have helped me, i'm so stupid," said beth, who stood beside him, listening eagerly. "you do know her, and she helps you better than anyone else could," answered laurie, looking at her with such mischievous meaning in his merry black eyes that beth suddenly turned very red, and hid her face in the sofa cushion, quite overcome by such an unexpected discovery. jo let laurie win the game to pay for that praise of her beth, who could not be prevailed upon to play for them after her compliment. so laurie did his best, and sang delightfully, being in a particularly lively humor, for to the marches he seldom showed the moody side of his character. when he was gone, amy, who had been pensive all evening, said suddenly, as if busy over some new idea, "is laurie an accomplished boy?" "yes, he has had an excellent education, and has much talent. he will make a fine man, if not spoiled by petting," replied her mother. "and he isn't conceited, is he?" asked amy. "not in the least. that is why he is so charming and we all like him so much." "i see. it's nice to have accomplishments and be elegant, but not to show off or get perked up," said amy thoughtfully. "these things are always seen and felt in a person's manner and conversations, if modestly used, but it is not necessary to display them," said mrs. march. "any more than it's proper to wear all your bonnets and gowns and ribbons at once, that folks may know you've got them," added jo, and the lecture ended in a laugh. chapter eight "girls, where are you going?" asked amy, coming into their room one saturday afternoon, and finding them getting ready to go out with an air of secrecy which excited her curiosity. "never mind. little girls shouldn't ask questions," returned jo sharply. now if there is anything mortifying to out feelings when we are young, it is to be told that, and to be bidden to "run away, dear" is still more trying to us. amy bridled up at this insult, and determined to find out the secret, if she teased for an hour. turning to meg, who never refused her anything very long, she said coaxingly, "do tell me! i should think you might let me go, too, for beth is fussing over her piano, and i haven't got anything to do, and am so lonely." "i can't, dear, because you aren't invited," began meg, but jo broke in impatiently, "now, meg, be quiet or you will spoil it all. you can't go, amy, so don't be a baby and whine about it." "you are going somewhere with laurie, i know you are. you were whispering and laughing together on the sofa last night, and you stopped when i came in. aren't you going with him?" "yes, we are. now do be still, and stop bothering." amy held her tongue, but used her eyes, and saw meg slip a fan into her pocket. "i know! i know! you're going to the theater to see the seven castles!" she cried, adding resolutely, "and i shall go, for mother said i might see it, and i've got my rag money, and it was mean not to tell me in time." "just listen to me a minute, and be a good child," said meg soothingly. "mother doesn't wish you to go this week, because your eyes are not well enough yet to bear the light of this fairy piece. next week you can go with beth and hannah, and have a nice time." "i don't like that half as well as going with you and laurie. please let me. i've been sick with this cold so long, and shut up, i'm dying for some fun. do, meg! i'll be ever so good," pleaded amy, looking as pathetic as she could. "suppose we take her. i don't believe mother would mind, if we bundle her up well," began meg. "if she goes i shan't, and if i don't, laurie won't like it, and it will be very rude, after he invited only us, to go and drag in amy. i should think she'd hate to poke herself where she isn't wanted," said jo crossly, for she disliked the trouble of overseeing a fidgety child when she wanted to enjoy herself. her tone and manner angered amy, who began to put her boots on, saying, in her most aggravating way, "i shall go. meg says i may, and if i pay for myself, laurie hasn't anything to do with it." "you can't sit with us, for our seats are reserved, and you mustn't sit alone, so laurie will give you his place, and that will spoil our pleasure. or he'll get another seat for you, and that isn't proper when you weren't asked. you shan't stir a step, so you may just stay where you are," scolded jo, crosser than ever, having just pricked her finger in her hurry. sitting on the floor with one boot on, amy began to cry and meg to reason with her, when laurie called from below, and the two girls hurried down, leaving their sister wailing. for now and then she forgot her grown-up ways and acted like a spoiled child. just as the party was setting out, amy called over the banisters in a threatening tone, "you'll be sorry for this, jo march, see if you ain't." "fiddlesticks!" returned jo, slamming the door. they had a charming time, for the seven castles of the diamond lake was as brilliant and wonderful as heart could wish. but in spite of the comical red imps, sparkling elves, and the gorgeous princes and princesses, jo's pleasure had a drop of bitterness in it. the fairy queen's yellow curls reminded her of amy, and between the acts she amused herself with wondering what her sister would do to make her `sorry for it'. she and amy had had many lively skirmishes in the course of their lives, for both had quick tempers and were apt to be violent when fairly roused. amy teased jo, and jo irritated amy, and semioccasional explosions occurred, of which both were much ashamed afterward. although the oldest, jo had the least self-control, and had hard times trying to curb the fiery spirit which was continually getting her into trouble. her anger never lasted long, and having humbly confessed her fault, she sincerely repented and tried to do better. her sisters used to say that they rather liked to get jo into a fury because she was such an angel afterward. poor jo tried desperately to be good, but her bosom enemy was always ready to flame up and defeat her, and it took years of patient effort to subdue it. when they got home, they found amy reading in the parlor. she assumed an injured air as they came in, never lifted her eyes from her book, or asked a single question. perhaps curiosity might have conquered resentment, if beth had not been there to inquire and receive a glowing description of the play. on going up to put away her best hat, jo's first look was toward the bureau, for in their last quarrel amy had soothed her feelings by turning jo's top drawer upside down on the floor. everything was in its place, however, and after a hasty glance into her various closets, bags, and boxes, jo decided that amy had forgiven and forgotten her wrongs. there jo was mistaken, for next day she made a discovery which produced a tempest. meg, beth, and amy were sitting together, late in the afternoon, when jo burst into the room, looking excited and demanding breathlessly, "has anyone taken my book?" meg and beth said, "no." at once, and looked surprised. amy poked the fire and said nothing. jo saw her color rise and was down upon her in a minute. "amy, you've got it!" "no, i haven't." "you know where it is, then!" "no, i don't." "that's a fib!" cried jo, taking her by the shoulders, and looking fierce enough to frighten a much braver child than amy. "it isn't. i haven't got it, don't know where it is now, and don't care." "you know something about it, and you'd better tell at once, or i'll make you." and jo gave her a slight shake. "scold as much as you like, you'll never see your silly old book again," cried amy, getting excited in her turn. "why not?" "i burned it up." "what! my little book i was so fond of, and worked over, and meant to finish before father got home? have you really burned it?" said jo, turning very pale, while her eyes kindled and her hands clutched amy nervously. "yes, i did! i told you i'd make you pay for being so cross yesterday, and i have, so . . ." amy got no farther, for jo's hot temper mastered her, and she shook amy till her teeth chattered in her head, crying in a passion of grief and anger . . . "you wicked, wicked girl! i never can write it again, and i'll never forgive you as long as i live." meg flew to rescue amy, and beth to pacify jo, but jo was quite beside herself, and with a parting box on her sister's ear, she rushed out of the room up to the old sofa in the garret, and finished her fight alone. the storm cleared up below, for mrs. march came home, and, having heard the story, soon brought amy to a sense of the wrong she had done her sister. jo's book was the pride of her heart, and was regarded by her family as a literary sprout of great promise. it was only half a dozen little fairy tales, but jo had worked over them patiently, putting her whole heart into her work, hoping to make something good enough to print. she had just copied them with great care, and had destroyed the old manuscript, so that amy's bonfire had consumed the loving work of several years. it seemed a small loss to others, but to jo it was a dreadful calamity, and she felt that it never could be made up to her. beth mourned as for a departed kitten, and meg refused to defend her pet. mrs. march looked grave and grieved, and amy felt that no one would love her till she had asked pardon for the act which she now regretted more than any of them. when the tea bell rang, jo appeared, looking so grim and unapproachable that it took all amy's courage to say meekly . . . "please forgive me, jo. i'm very, very sorry." "i never shall forgive you," was jo's stern answer, and from that moment she ignored amy entirely. no one spoke of the great trouble, not even mrs. march, for all had learned by experience that when jo was in that mood words were wasted, and the wisest course was to wait till some little accident, or her own generous nature, softened jo's resentment and healed the breach. it was not a happy evening, for though they sewed as usual, while their mother read aloud from bremer, scott, or edgeworth, something was wanting, and the sweet home peace was disturbed. they felt this most when singing time came, for beth could only play, jo stood dumb as a stone, and amy broke down, so meg and mother sang alone. but in spite of their efforts to be as cheery as larks, the flutelike voices did not seem to chord as well as usual, and all felt out of tune. as jo received her good-night kiss, mrs. march whispered gently, "my dear, don't let the sun go down upon your anger. forgive each other, help each other, and begin again tomorrow." jo wanted to lay her head down on that motherly bosom, and cry her grief and anger all away, but tears were an unmanly weakness, and she felt so deeply injured that she really couldn't quite forgive yet. so she winked hard, shook her head, and said gruffly because amy was listening, "it was an abominable thing, and she doesn't deserve to be forgiven." with that she marched off to bed, and there was no merry or confidential gossip that night. amy was much offended that her overtures of peace had been repulsed, and began to wish she had not humbled herself, to feel more injured than ever, and to plume herself on her superior virtue in a way which was particularly exasperating. jo still looked like a thunder cloud, and nothing went well all day. it was bitter cold in the morning, she dropped her precious turnover in the gutter, aunt march had an attack of the fidgets, meg was sensitive, beth would look grieved and wistful when she got home, and amy kept making remarks about people who were always talking about being good and yet wouldn't even try when other people set them a virtuous example. "everybody is so hateful, i'll ask laurie to go skating. he is always kind and jolly, and will put me to rights, i know," said jo to herself, and off she went. amy heard the clash of skates, and looked out with an impatient exclamation. "there! she promised i should go next time, for this is the last ice we shall have. but it's no use to ask such a crosspatch to take me." "don't say that. you were very naughty, and it is hard to forgive the loss of her precious little book, but i think she might do it now, and i guess she will, if you try her at the right minute," said meg. "go after them. don't say anything till jo has got good-natured with laurie, than take a quiet minute and just kiss her, or do some kind thing, and i'm sure she'll be friends again with all her heart." "i'll try," said amy, for the advice suited her, and after a flurry to get ready, she ran after the friends, who were just disappearing over the hill. it was not far to the river, but both were ready before amy reached them. jo saw her coming, and turned her back. laurie did not see, for he was carefully skating along the shore, sounding the ice, for a warm spell had preceded the cold snap. "i'll go on to the first bend, and see if it's all right before we begin to race," amy heard him say, as he shot away, looking like a young russian in his fur-trimmed coat and cap. jo heard amy panting after her run, stamping her feet and blowing on her fingers as she tried to put her skates on, but jo never turned and went slowly zigzagging down the river, taking a bitter, unhappy sort of satisfaction in her sister's troubles. she had cherished her anger till it grew strong and took possession of her, as evil thoughts and feelings always do unless cast out at once. as laurie turned the bend, he shouted back . . . "keep near the shore. it isn't safe in the middle." jo heard, but amy was struggling to her feet and did not catch a word. jo glanced over her shoulder, and the little demon she was harboring said in her ear . . . "no matter whether she heard or not, let her take care of herself." laurie had vanished round the bend, jo was just at the turn, and amy, far behind, striking out toward the the smoother ice in the middle of the river. for a minute jo stood still with a strange feeling in her heart, then she resolved to go on,but something held and turned her round, just in time to see amy throw up her hands and go down, with a sudden crash of rotten ice, the splash of water, and a cry that made jo's heart stand still with fear. she tried to call laurie, but her voice was gone. she tried to rush forward, but her feet seemed to have no strength in them, and for a second, she could only stand motionless, staring with a terror-stricken face at the little blue hood above the black water. something rushed swiftly by her, and laurie's voice cried out . . . "bring a rail. quick, quick!" how she did it, she never knew, but for the next few minutes she worked as if possessed, blindly obeying laurie, who was quite self-possessed, and lying flat, held amy up by his arm and hockey stick till jo dragged a rail from the fence, and together they got the child out, more frightened than hurt. "now then, we must walk her home as fast as we can. pile our things on her, while i get off these confounded skates," cried laurie, wrapping his coat round amy, and tugging away at the straps which never seemed so intricate before. shivering, dripping, and crying, they got amy home, and after an exciting time of it, she fell asleep, rolled in blankets before a hot fire. during the bustle jo had scarcely spoken but flown about, looking pale and wild, with her things half off, her dress torn, and her hands cut and bruised by ice and rails and refractory buckles. when amy was comfortably asleep, the house quiet, and mrs. march sitting by the bed, she called jo to her and began to bind up the hurt hands. "are you sure she is safe?" whispered jo, looking remorsefully at the golden head, which might have been swept away from her sight forever under the treacherous ice. "quite safe, dear. she is not hurt, and won't even take cold, i think, you were so sensible in covering and getting her home quickly," replied her mother cheerfully. "laurie did it all. i only let her go. mother, if she should die, it would be my fault." and jo dropped down beside the bed in a passion of penitent tears, telling all that had happened, bitterly condemning her hardness of heart, and sobbing out her gratitude for being spared the heavy punishment which might have come upon her. "it's my dreadful temper! i try to cure it, i think i have, and then it breaks out worse than ever. oh, mother, what shall i do? what shall i do?" cried poor jo, in despair. "watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault," said mrs. march, drawing the blowzy head to her shoulder and kissing the wet cheek so tenderly that jo cried even harder. "you don't know, you can't guess how bad it is! it seems as if i could do anything when i'm in a passion. i get so savage, i could hurt anyone and enjoy it. i'm afraid i shall do something dreadful some day, and spoil my life, and make everybody hate me. oh, mother, help me, do help me!" "i will, my child, i will. don't cry so bitterly, but remember this day, and resolve with all your soul that you will never know another like it. jo, dear, we all have our temptations, some far greater than yours, and it often takes us all our lives to conquer them. you think your temper is the worst in the world,but mine used to be just like it." "yours, mother? why, you are never angry!" and for the moment jo forgot remorse in surprise. "i've been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. i am angry nearly every day of my life, jo, but i have learned not to show it, and i still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so." the patience and the humility of the face she loved so well was a better lesson to jo than the wisest lecture, the sharpest reproof. she felt comforted at once by the sympathy and confidence given her. the knowledge that her mother had a fault like hers, and tried to mend it, made her own easier to bear and strengthened her resolution to cure it, though forty years seemed rather a long time to watch and pray to a girl of fifteen. "mother, are you angry when you fold your lips tight together and go out of the room sometimes, when aunt march scolds or people worry you?" asked jo, feeling nearer and dearer to her mother than ever before. "yes, i've learned to check the hasty words that rise to my lips, and when i feel that they mean to break out against my will, i just go away for a minute, and give myself a little shake for being so weak and wicked," answered mrs. march with a sigh and a smile, as she smoothed and fastened up jo's disheveled hair. "how did you learn to keep still? that is what troubles me, for the sharp words fly out before i know what i'm about, and the more i say the worse i get, till it's a pleasure to hurt people's feelings and say dreadful things. tell me how you do it, marmee dear." "my good mother used to help me . . ." "as you do us . . ." interrupted jo, with a grateful kiss. "but i lost her when i was a little older than you are, and for years had to struggle on alone, for i was too proud to confess my weakness to anyone else. i had a hard time, jo, and shed a good many bitter tears over my failures, for in spite of my efforts i never seemed to get on. then your father came, and i was so happy that i found it easy to be good. but by-and-by, when i had four little daughters round me and we were poor, then the old trouble began again, for i am not patient by nature, and it tried me very much to see my children wanting anything." "poor mother! what helped you then?" "your father, jo. he never loses patience, never doubts or complains, but always hopes, and works and waits so cheerfully that one is ashamed to do otherwise before him. he helped and comforted me, and showed me that i must try to practice all the virtues i would have my little girls possess, for i was their example. it was easier to try for your sakes than for my own. a startled or surprised look from one of you when i spoke sharply rebuked me more than any words could have done, and the love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward i could receive for my efforts to be the woman i would have them copy." "oh, mother, if i'm ever half as good as you, i shall be satisfied," cried jo, much touched. "i hope you will be a great deal better, dear, but you must keep watch over your `bosom enemy', as father calls it, or it may sadden, if not spoil your life. you have had a warning. remember it, and try with heart and soul to master this quick temper, before it brings you greater sorrow and regret than you have known today." "i will try, mother, i truly will. but you must help me, remind me, and keep me from flying out. i used to see father sometimes put his finger on his lips, and look at you with a very kind but sober face, and you always folded your lips tight and went away. was he reminding you then?" asked jo softly. "yes. i asked him to help me so, and he never forgot it, but saved me from many a sharp word by that little gesture and kind look." jo saw that her mother's eyes filled and her lips trembled as she spoke, and fearing that she had said too much, she whispered anxiously, "was it wrong to watch you and to speak of it? i didn't mean to be rude, but it's so comfortable to say all i think to you, and feel so safe and happy here." "mu jo, you may say anything to your mother, for it is my greatest happiness and pride to feel that my girls confide in me and know how much i love them." "i thought i'd grieved you." "no, dear, but speaking of father reminded me how much i miss him, how much i owe him, and how faithfully i should watch and work to keep his little daughters safe and good for him." "yet you told him to go, mother, and didn't cry when he went, and never complain now, or seem as if you needed any help," said jo, wondering. "i gave my best to the country i love, and kept my tears till he was gone. why should i complain, when we both have merely done our duty and will surely be the happier for it in the end? if i don't seem to need help, it is because i have a better friend, even than father, to comfort and sustain me. my child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning and may be many, but you can overcome and outlive them all if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your heavenly father as you do that of your earthly one. the more you love and trust him, and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. his love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but my become the source of lifelong peace, happiness, and strength. believe this heartily, and go to god with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother." jo's only answer was to hold her mother close, and in the silence which followed the sincerest prayer she had ever prayed left her heart without words. for in that sad yet happy hour, she had learned not only the bitterness of remorse and despair, but the sweetness of self-denial and self-control, and led by her mother's hand, she had drawn nearer to the friend who always welcomes every child with a love stronger than that of any father, tenderer than that of any mother. amy stirred and sighed in her sleep, and as if eager to begin at once to mend her fault,l jo looked up with an expression on her face which it had never worn before. "i let the sun go down on my anger. i wouldn't forgive her, and today, if it hadn't been for laurie, it might have been too late! how could i be so wicked?" said jo, half aloud, as she leaned over her sister softly stroking the wet hair scattered on the pillow. as if she heard, amy opened her eyes, and held out her arms, with a smile that went straight to jo's heart. neither said a word, but they hugged one another close, in spite of the blankets, and everything was forgiven and forgotten in one hearty kiss. chapter nine "i do think it was the most fortunate thing in the world that those children should have the measles just now," said meg, one april day, as she stood packing the `go abroady' trunk in her room, surrounded by her sisters. "and so nice of annie moffat not to forget her promise. a whole fortnight of fun will be regularly splendid," replied jo, looking like a windmill as she folded skirts with her long arms. "and such lovely weather, i'm so glad of that," added beth, tidily sorting neck and hair ribbons in her best box, lent for the great occasion. "i wish i was going to have a fine time and wear all these nice things," said amy with her mouth full of pins, as she artistically replenished her sister's cushion. "i wish you were all going, but as you can't, i shall keep my adventures to tell you when i come back. i'm sure it's the least i can do when you have been so kind, lending me things and helping me get ready," said meg, glancing round the room at the very simple outfit, which seemed nearly perfect in their eyes. "what did mother give you out of the treasure box?" asked amy, who had not been present at the opening of a certain cedar chest in which mrs. march kept a few relics of past splendor, as gifts for her girls when the proper time came. "a pair of silk stockings, that pretty carved fan, and a lovely blue sash. i wanted the violet silk, but there isn't time to make it over, so i must be contented with my old tarlatan." "it will look nice over my new muslin skirt, and the sash will set it off beautifully. i wish i hadn't smashed my coral bracelet, for you might have had it," said jo, who loved to give and lend, but whose possessions were usually too dilapidated to be of much use. "there is a lovely old-fashioned pearl set in the treasure chest, but mother said real flowers were the prettiest ornament for a young girl, and laurie promised to send me all i want," replied meg. "now, let me see, there's my new gray walking suit, just curl up the feather in my hat, beth, then my poplin for sunday and the small party, it looks heavy for spring, doesn't it? the violet silk would be so nice. oh, dear!" "never mind, you've got the tarlatan for the big party, and you always look like an angel in white," said amy, brooding over the little store of finery in which her soul delighted. "it isn't low-necked, and it doesn't sweep enough, but it will have to do. my blue housedress looks so well, turned and freshly trimmed, that i feel as if i'd got a new one. my silk sacque isn't a bit the fashion, and my bonnet doesn't look like sallie's. i didn't like to say anything, but i was sadly disappointed in my umbrella. i told mother black with a white handle, but she forgot and bought a green one with a yellowish handle. it's strong and neat, so i ought not to complain, but i know i shall feel ashamed of it beside annie's silk one with a gold top," sighed meg, surveying the little umbrella with great disfavor. "change it," advised jo. "i won't be so silly, or hurt marmee's feelings, when she took so much pains to get my things. it's a nonsensical notion of mine, and i'm not going to give up to it. my silk stockings and two pairs of new gloves are my comfort. you are a dear to lend me yours, jo. i feel so rich and sort of elegant, with two new pairs, and the old ones cleaned up for common." and meg took a refreshing peep at her glove box. "annie moffat has blue and pink bows on her nightcaps. would you put some on mine?" she asked, as beth brought up a pile of snowy muslins, fresh from hannah's hands. "no, i wouldn't, for the smart caps won't match the plain gowns without any trimming on them. poor folks shouldn't rig," said jo decidedly. "i wonder if i shall ever be happy enough to have real lace on my clothes and bows on my caps?" said meg impatiently. "you said the other day that you'd be perfectly happy if you could only go to annie moffat's," observed beth in her quiet way. "so i did! well, i am happy, and i won't fret, but it does seem as if the more one gets the more one wants, doesn't it? there now, the trays are ready, and everything in but my ball dress, which i shall leave for mother to pack," said meg, cheering up, as she glanced from the half-filled trunk to the many times pressed and mended white tarlatan, which she called her `ball dress' with an important air. the next day was fine, and meg departed in style for a fortnight of novelty and pleasure. mrs. march had consented to the visit rather reluctantly, fearing that margaret would come back more discontented than she went. but she begged so hard, and sallie had promised to take good care of her, and a little pleasure seemed so delightful after a winter of irksome work that the mother yielded, and the daughter went to take her first taste of fashionable life. the moffats were very fashionable, and simple meg was rather daunted, at first, by the splendor of the house and the elegance of its occupants. but they were kindly people, in spite of the frivolous life they led, and soon put their guest at her ease. perhaps meg felt, without understanding why, that they were not particularly cultivated or intelligent people, and that all their gilding could not quite conceal the ordinary material of which they were made. it certainly was agreeable to fare sumptuously, drive in a fine carriage, wear her best frock every day, and do nothing but enjoy herself. it suited her exactly, and soon she began to imitate the manners and conversation of those about her, to put on little airs and graces, use french phrases, crimp her hair, take in her dresses, and talk about the fashions as well as she could. the more she saw of annie moffat's pretty things, the more she envied her and sighed to be rich. home now looked bare and dismal as she thought of it, work grew harder than ever, and she felt that she was a very destitute and much-injured girl, in spite of the new gloves and silk stockings. she had not much time for repining, however, for the three young girls were busily employed in `having a good time'. they shopped, walked, rode, and called all day, went to theaters and operas or frolicked at home in the evening, for annie had many friends and knew how to entertain them. her older sisters were very fine young ladies, and one was engaged, which was extremely interesting and romantic, meg thought. mr. moffat was a fat, jolly old gentleman, who knew her father, and mrs. moffat, a fat, jolly old lady, who took as great a fancy to meg as her daughter had done. everyone petted her, and `daisey', as they called her, was in a fair way to have her head turned. when the evening for the small party came, she found that the poplin wouldn't do at all, for the other girls were putting on thin dresses and making themselves very fine indeed. so out came the tarlatan, looking older, limper, and shabbier than ever beside sallie's crisp new one. meg saw the girls glance at it and then at one another, and her cheeks began to burn, for with all her gentleness she was very proud. no one said a word about it, but sallie offered to dress her hair, and annie to tie her sash, and belle, the engaged sister, praised her white arms. but in their kindness meg saw only pity for her poverty, and her heart felt very heavy as she stood by herself, while the others laughed, chattered, and flew about like gauzy butterflies. the hard, bitter feeling was getting pretty bad, when the maid brought in a box of flowers. before she could speak, annie had the cover off, and all were exclaiming at the lovely roses, heath, and fern within. "it's for belle, of course, george always sends her some, but these are altogether ravishing," cried annie, with a great sniff. "they are for miss march, the man said. and here's a note," put in the maid, holding it to meg. "what fun! who are they from? didn't know you had a lover," cried the girls, fluttering about meg in a high state of curiosity and surprise. "the note is from mother, and the flowers from laurie," said meg simply, yet much gratified that he had not forgotten her. "oh, indeed!" said annie with a funny look, as meg slipped the note into her pocket as a sort of talisman against envy, vanity, and false pride, for the few loving words had done her good, and the flowers cheered her up by their beauty. feeling almost happy again,she laid by a few ferns and roses for herself, and quickly made up the rest in dainty bouquets for the breasts, hair, or skirts of her friends, offering them so prettily that clara, the elder sister, told her she was `the sweetest little thing she ever saw', and they looked quite charmed with her small attention. somehow the kind act finished her despondency, and when all the rest went to show themselves to mrs. moffat, she saw a happy, bright-eyed face in the mirror, as she laid her ferns against her rippling hair and fastened the roses in the dress that didn't strike her as so very shabby now. she enjoyed herself very much that evening, for she danced to her heart's content. everyone was very kind, and she had three compliments. annie made her sing, and some one said she had a remarkably fine voice. major lincoln asked who `the fresh little girl with the beautiful eyes' was, and mr. moffat insisted on dancing with her because she `didn't dawdle, but had some spring in her', as he gracefully expressed it. so altogether she had a very nice time, till she overheard a bit of conversation, which disturbed her extremely. she was sitting just inside the conservatory, waiting for her partner to bring her an ice, when she heard a voice ask on the other side of the flowery wall . . . "how old is he?" "sixteen or seventeen, i should say," replied another voice. "it would be a grand thing for one of those girls, wouldn't it? sallie says they are very intimate now, and the old man quite dotes on them." "mrs. m. has made her plans, i dare say, and will play her cards well, early as it is. the girl evidently doesn't think of it yet," said mrs. moffat. "she told that fib about her momma, as if she did know, and colored up when the flowers came quite prettily. poor thing! she'd be so nice if she was only got up in style. do you think she'd be offended if we offered to lend her a dress for thursday?" asked another voice. "she's proud, but i don't believe she'd mind, for that dowdy tarlatan is all she has got. she may tear it tonight, and that will be a good excuse for offering a decent one." here meg's partner appeared, to find her looking much flushed and rather agitated. she was proud, and her pride was useful just then, for it helped her hide her mortification, anger, and disgust at what she had just heard. for, innocent and unsuspicious as she was, she could not help understanding the gossip of her friends. she tried to forget it, but could not, and kept repeating to herself, "mrs. m. has made her plans," "that fib about her mamma," and 'dowdy tarlatan," till she was ready to cry and rush home to tell her troubles and ask for advice. as that was impossible, she did her best to seem gay, and being rather excited, she succeeded so well that no one dreamed what an effort she was making. she was very glad when it was all over and she was quiet in her bed, where she could think and wonder and fume till her head ached and her hot cheeks were cooled by a few natural tears. those foolish, yet well meant words, had opened a new world to meg, and much disturbed the peace of the old one in which till now she had lived as happily as a child. her innocent friendship with laurie was spoiled by the silly speeches she had overheard. her faith in her mother was a little shaken by the worldly plans attributed to her by mrs. moffat, who judged others by herself, and the sensible resolution to be contented with the simple wardrobe which suited a poor man's daughter was weakened by the unnecessary pity of girls who thought a shabby dress one of the greatest calamities under heaven. poor meg had a restless night, and got up heavy-eyed, unhappy, half resentful toward her friends, and half ashamed of herself for not speaking out frankly and setting everything right. everybody dawdled that morning, and it was noon before the girls found energy enough even to take up their worsted work. something in the manner of her friends struck meg at once. they treated her with more respect, she thought, took quite a tender interest in what she said, and looked at her with eyes that plainly betrayed curiosity. all this surprised and flattered her, though she did not understand it till miss belle looked up from her writing, and said, with a sentimental air . . . "daisy, dear, i've sent an invitation to your friend, mr. laurence, for thursday. we should like to know him, and it's only a proper compliment to you." meg colored, but a mischievous fancy to tease the girls made her reply demurely, "you are very kind, but i'm afraid he won't come." "why not, cherie?" asked miss belle. "he's too old." "my child, what do you mean? what is his age, i beg to know!" cried miss clara. "nearly seventy, i believe," answered meg, counting stitches to hide the merriment in her eyes. "you sly creature! of course we meant the young man," exclaimed miss belle, laughing. "there isn't any, laurie is only a little boy." and meg laughed also at the queer look which the sisters exchanged as she thus described her supposed lover. "about you age," nan said. "nearer my sister jo's, i am seventeen in august," returned meg, tossing her head. "it's very nice of him to send you flowers, isn't it?" said annie, looking wise about nothing. "yes, he often does, to all of us, for their house is full, and we are so fond of them. my mother and old mr. laurence are friends, you know, so it is quite natural that we children should play together." and meg hoped they would say no more. "it's evident daisy isn't out yet," said miss clara to belle with a nod. "quite a pastoral state of innocence all round," returned miss belle with a shrug. "i'm going out to get some little matters for my girls. can i do anything for you, young ladies?" asked mrs. moffat, lumbering in like an elephant in silk and lace. "no, thank you, ma'am," replied sallie. "i've got my new pink silk for thursday and don't want a thing." "nor i . . ." began meg, but stopped because it occurred to her that she did want several things and could not have them. "what shall you wear?" asked sallie. "my old white one again, if i can mend it fit to be seen, it got sadly torn last night," said meg, trying to speak quite easily, but feeling very uncomfortable. "why don't you send home for another?" said sallie, who was not an observing young lady. "i haven't got any other." it cost meg an effort to say that, but sallie did not see it and exclaimed in amiable surprise, "only that?" how funny . . ." she did not finish her speech, for belle shook her head at her and broke in, saying kindly . . . "not at all. where is the use of having a lot of dresses when she isn't out yet? there's no need of sending home, daisy, even if you had a dozen, for i've got a sweet blue silk laid away, which i've outgrown, and you shall wear it to please me, won't you, dear?" "you are very kind, but i don't mind my old dress if you don't, it does well enough for a little girl like me," said meg. "now do let me please myself by dressing you up in style. i admire to do it, and you'd be a regular little beauty with a touch here and there. i shan't let anyone see you till you are done, and then we'll burst upon them like cinderella and her godmother going to the ball," said belle in her persuasive tone. meg couldn't refuse the offer so kindly made, for a desire to see if she would be `a little beauty' after touching up caused her to accept and forget all her former uncomfortable feelings toward the moffats. on the thursday evening, belle shut herself up with her maid, and between them they turned meg into a fine lady. they crimped and curled her hair, they polished her neck and arms with some fragrant powder, touched her lips with coralline salve to make them redder, and hortense would have added `a soupcon of rouge', if meg had not rebelled. they laced her into a sky-blue dress, which was so tight she could hardly breathe and so low in the neck that modest meg blushed at herself in the mirror. a set of silver filagree was added, bracelets, necklace, brooch, and even earrings, for hortense tied them on with a bit of pink silk which did not show. a cluster of tea-rose buds at the bosom and a ruche, reconciled meg to the display of her pretty, white shoulders, and a pair of high-heeled silk boots satisfied the last wish of her heart. a lace handkerchief, a plumy fan, and a bouquet in a shoulder holder finished her off, and miss belle surveyed her with the satisfaction of a little girl with a newly dressed doll. "mademoiselle is chatmante, tres jolie, is she not?" cried hortense, clasping her hands in an affected rapture. "come and show yourself," said miss belle, leading the way to the room where the others were waiting. as meg went rustling after, with her long skirts trailing, her earrings tinkling, her curls waving, and her heart beating, she felt as if her fun had really begun at last, for the mirror had plainly told her that she was `a little beauty'. her friends repeated the pleasing phrase enthusiastically, and for several minutes she stood, like a jackdaw in the fable, enjoying her borrowed plumes, while the rest chattered like a party of magpies. "while i dress, do you drill her, nan, in the management of her skirt and those french heels, or she will trip herself up. take your silver butterfly, and catch up that long curl on the left side of her head, clara, and don't any of you disturb the charming work of my hands," said belle, as she hurried away, looking well pleased with her success. "you don't look a bit like yourself, but you are very nice. i'm nowhere beside you, for belle has heaps of taste, and you're quite french, i assure you. let your flowers hang, don't be so careful of them, and be sure you don't trip," returned sallie, trying not to care that meg was prettier than herself. keeping that warning carefully in mind, margaret got safely downstairs and sailed into the drawing rooms where the moffats and a few early guests were assembled. she very soon discovered that there is a charm about fine clothes which attracts a certain class of people and secures their respect. several young ladies, who had taken no notice of her before, were very affectionate all of a sudden. several young gentlemen, who had only stared at her at the other party, now not only stared, but asked to be introduced, and said all manner of foolish but agreeable things to her, and several old ladies, who sat on the sofas, and criticized the rest of the party, inquired who she was with an air of interest. she heard mrs. moffat reply to one of them . . . "daisy march--father a colonel in the army--one of our first families, but reverses of fortune, you know; intimate friends of the laurences; sweet creature, i assure you; my ned is quite wild about her." "dear me!" said the old lady, putting up her glass for another observation of meg, who tried to look as if she had not heard and been rather shocked at mrs. moffat's fibs. the `queer feeling' did not pass away, but she imagined herself acting the new part of fine lady and so got on pretty well, though the tight dress gave her a side-ache, the train kept getting under her feet, and she was in constant fear lest her earrings should fly off and get lost or broken. she was flirting her fan and laughing at the feeble jokes of a young gentleman who tried to be witty, when she suddenly stopped laughing and looked confused, for just opposite, she saw laurie. he was staring at her with undisguised surprise, and disapproval also, she thought, for though he bowed and smiled, yet something in his honest eyes made her blush and wish she had her old dress on. to complete her confusion, she saw belle nudge annie, and both glance from her to laurie, who, she was happy to see, looked unusually boyish and shy. "silly creatures, to put such thoughts into my head. i won't care for it, or let it change me a bit," thought meg, and rustled across the room to shake hands with her friend. "i'm glad you came, i was afraid you wouldn't." she said, with her most grown-up air. "jo wanted me to come, and tell her how you looked, so i did," answered laurie, without turning his eyes upon her, though he half smiled at her maternal tone. "what shall you tell her?" asked meg, full of curiosity to know his opinion of her, yet feeling ill at ease with him for the first time. "i shall say i didn't know you, for you look so grown-up and unlike yourself, i'm quite afraid of you," he said, fumbling at his glove button. "how absurd of you! the girls dressed me up for fun, and i rather like it. wouldn't jo stare if she saw me?" said meg, bent on making him say whether he thought her improved or not. "yes, i think she would," returned laurie gravely. "don't you like me so?' asked meg. "no, i don't," was the blunt reply. "why not?" in an anxious tone. he glanced at her frizzled head, bare shoulders, and fantastically trimmed dress with an expression that abashed her more than his answer, which had not particle of his usual politeness in it. "i don't like fuss and feathers." that was altogether too much from a lad younger than herself, and meg walked away, saying petulantly, "you are the rudest boy i ever saw." feeling very much ruffled, she went and stood at a quiet window to cool her cheeks, for the tight dress gave her an uncomfortably brilliant color. as she stood there, major lincoln passed by, and a minute after she heard him saying to his mother . . . "they are making a fool of that little girl. i wanted you to see her, but they have spoiled her entirely. she's nothing but a doll tonight." "oh, dear!" sighed meg. "i wish i'd been sensible and worn my own things, then i should not have disgusted other people, or felt so uncomfortable and ashamed of myself." she leaned her forehead on the cool pane, and stood half hidden by the curtains, never minding that her favorite waltz had begun, till some one touched her, and turning, she saw laurie, looking penitent, as he said, with his very best bow and his hand out . . . "please forgive my rudeness, and come and dance with me." "i'm afraid it will be to disagreeable to you," said meg, trying to look offended and failing entirely. "not a bit of it, i'm dying to do it. come, i'll be good. i don't like your gown, but i do think you are just splendid." and he waved his hands, as if words failed to express his admiration. meg smiled and relented, and whispered as they stood waiting to catch the time, "take care my skirt doesn't trip you up. it's the plague of my life and i was a goose to wear it." "pin it round your neck, and then it will be useful," said laurie, looking down at the little blue boots, which he evidently approved of. away they went fleetly and gracefully, for having practiced at home, they were well matched, and the blithe young couple were a pleasant sight to see, as they twirled merrily round and round, feeling more friendly than ever after their small tiff. "laurie,i want you to do me a favor, will you?' said meg, as he stood fanning her when her breath gave out, which it did very soon though she would not own why. "won't i!" said laurie, with alacrity. "please don't tell them at home about my dress tonight. they won't understand the joke, and it will worry mother.' "then why did you do it?" said laurie's eyes, so plainly that meg hastily added . . . "i shall tell them myself all about it, and `fess' to mother how silly i've been. but i'd rather do it myself. so you'll not tell, will you?" "i give you my word i won't, only what shall i say when they ask me?" "just say i looked pretty well and was having a good time." "i'll say the first with all my heart, but how about the other? you don't look as if you were having a good time. are you?' and laurie looked at her with an expression which made her answer in a whisper . . . "no, not just now. don't think i'm horrid. i only wanted a little fun, but this sort doesn't pay, i find, and i'm getting tired of it." "here comes ned moffat. what does he want?" said laurie, knitting his black brows as if he did not regard his young host in the light of a pleasant addition to the party. "he put his name down for three dances, and i suppose he's coming for them. what a bore!" said meg, assuming a languid air which amused laurie immensely. he did not speak to her again till suppertime, when he saw her drinking champagne with ned and his friend fisher, who were behaving `like a pair of fools', as laurie said to himself, for he felt a brotherly sort of right to watch over the marches and fight their battles whenever a defender was needed. "you'll have a splitting headache tomorrow, if you drink much of that. i wouldn't, meg, your mother doesn't like it, you know," he whispered, leaning over her chair, as ned turned to refill her glass and fisher stooped to pick up her fan. "i'm not meg tonight, i'm `a doll' who does all sorts of crazy things. tomorrow i shall put away my `fuss and feathers' and be desperately good again," se answered with an affected little laugh. "wish tomorrow was here,then," muttered laurie, walking off, ill-pleased at the change he saw in her. meg danced and flirted, chattered and giggled, as the other girls did. after supper she undertook the german, and blundered through it, nearly upsetting her partner with her long skirt, and romping in a way that scandalized laurie, who looked on and meditated a lecture. but he got no chance to deliver it, for meg kept away from him till he came to say good night. "remember!" she said, trying to smile, for the splitting headache had already begun. "silence a` la mort," replied laurie, with a melodramatic flourish, as he went away. this little bit of byplay excited annie's curiosity, but meg was too tired for gossip and went to bed, feeling as if she had been to a masquerade and hadn't enjoyed herself as much as she expected. she was sick all the next day, and on saturday went home, quite used up with her fortnight's fun and feeling that she had `sat in the lap of luxury' long enough. "it does seem pleasant to be quiet, and not have company manners on all the time. home is a nice place, though it isn't splendid," said meg, looking about her with a restful expression, as she sat with her mother and jo on the sunday evening. "i'm glad to hear you say so, dear, for i was afraid home would seem dull and poor to you after your fine quarters," replied her mother, who had given her many anxious looks that day. for motherly eyes are quick to see any change in children's faces. meg had told her adventures gayly and said over and over what a charming time she had had, but something still seemed to weigh upon her spirits, and when the younger girls were gone to bed, she sat thoughtfully staring at the fire, saying little and looking worried. as the clock struck nine and jo proposed bed, meg suddenly left her chair and, taking beth's stool, leaned her elbows on her mother's knee, saying bravely . . . "marmee, i want to `fess'." "i thought so. what is it, dear?" "shall i go away?" asked jo discreetly. "of course not. don't i always tell you everything? i was ashamed to speak of it before the younger children, but i want you to know all the dreadful things i did at the moffats'." "we are prepared," said mrs. march, smiling but looking a little anxious. "i told you they dressed me up, but i didn't tell you that they powdered and squeezed and frizzled, and made me look like a fashion plate. laurie thought i wasn't proper. i know he did, though he didn't say so, and one man called me `a doll'. i knew it was silly, but they flattered me and said i was a beauty, and quantities of nonsense, so i let them make a fool of me." "is that all?" asked jo, as mrs. march looked silently at the downcast face of her pretty daughter, and could not find it in her heart to blame her little follies. "no, i drank champagne and romped and tried to flirt, and was altogether abominable," said meg self-reproachfully. "there is something more, i think." and mrs. march smoothed the soft cheek,which suddenly grew rosy as meg answered slowly . . . "yes. it's very silly, but i want to tell it, because i hate to have people say and think such things about us and laurie." then she told the various bits of gossip she had heard at the moffats', and as she spoke, jo saw her mother fold her lips tightly, as if ill pleased that such ideas should be put into meg's innocent mind. "well, if that isn't the greatest rubbish i ever heard," cried jo indignantly. "why didn't you pop out and tell them so on the spot?' "i couldn't, it was so embarrassing for me. i couldn't help hearing at first, and then i was so angry and ashamed, i didn't remember that i ought to go away." "just wait till i see annie moffat, and i'll show you how to settle such ridiculous stuff. the idea of having `plans' and being kind to laurie because he's rich and may marry us by-and-by! won't he shout when i tell him what those silly things say about us poor children?" and jo laughed, as if on second thoughts the thing struck her as a good joke. "if you tell laurie, i'll never forgive you! she mustn't, must she, mother?" said meg, looking distressed. "no, never repeat that foolish gossip, and forget it as soon as you can," said mrs. march gravely. "i was very unwise to let you go among people of whom i know so little, kind, i dare say, but worldly, ill-bred, and full of these vulgar ideas about young people. i am more sorry than i can express for the mischief this visit may have done you, meg." "don't be sorry, i won't let it hurt me. i'll forget all the bad and remember only the good, for i did enjoy a great deal, and thank you very much for letting me go. i'll not be sentimental or dissatisfied, mother. i know i'm a silly little girl, and i'll stay with you till i'm fit to take care of myself. but it is nice to be praised and admired, and i can't help saying i like it," said meg, looking half ashamed of the confession. "that is perfectly natural, and quite harmless, if the liking does not become a passion and lead one to do foolish or unmaidenly things. learn to know and value the praise which is worth having, and to excite the admiration of excellent people by being modest as well as pretty, meg." margaret sat thinking a moment, while jo stood with her hands behind her, looking both interested and a little perplexed, for it was a new thing to see meg blushing and talking about admiration, lovers, and things of that sort. and jo felt as if during that fortnight her sister had grown up amazingly, and was drifting away from her into a world where she could not follow. "mother, do you have `plans', as mrs. moffat said?" asked meg bashfully. "yes, my dear, i have a great many, all mothers do, but mine differ somewhat from mrs. moffat's, i suspect. i will tell you some of them, for the time has come when a word may set this romantic little head and heart of yours right, on a very serious subject. you are young, meg, but not too young to understand me, and mothers' lips are the fittest to speak of such things to girls like you. jo, your turn will come in time, perhaps, so listen to my `plans' and help me carry them out, if they are good." jo went and sat on one arm of the chair, looking as if she thought they were about to join in some very solemn affair. holding a hand of each, and watching the two young faces wistfully, mrs. march said, in her serious yet cheery way . . . "i want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good. to be admired, loved, and respected. to have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with as little care and sorrow to try them as god sees fit to send. to be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and sweetest thing which can happen to a woman, and i sincerely hope my girls may know this beautiful experience. it is natural to think of it, meg, right to hope and wait for it, and wise to prepare for it, so that when the happy time comes, you may feel ready for the duties and worthy of the joy. my dear girls, i am ambitious for you, but not to have you make a dash in the world, marry rich men merely because they are rich, or have splendid houses, which are not homes because love is wanting. money is a needful and precious thing, and when well used, a noble thing, but i never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for. i'd rather see you poor men's wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace." "poor girls don't stand any chance, belle says, unless they put themselves forward," sighed meg. "then we'll be old maids," said jo stoutly. "right, jo. better be happy old maids than unhappy wives, or unmaidenly girls, running about to find husbands," said mrs. march decidedly. "don't be troubled, meg, poverty seldom daunts a sincere lover. some of the best and most honored women i know were poor girls, but so love-worthy that they were not allowed to be old maids. leave these things to time. make this home happy, so that you may be fit for homes of your own, if they are offered you, and contented here if they are not. one thing remember, my girls. mother is always ready to be your confidante, father to be your friend, and both of hope and trust that our daughters, whether married or single, will be the pride and comfort of out lives." "we will, marmee, we will!" cried both, with all their hearts, as she bade them good night. chapter ten as spring came on, a new set of amusements became the fashion, and the lengthening days gave long afternoons for work and play of all sorts. the garden had to be put in order, and each sister had a quarter of the little plot to do what she liked with. hannah used to say, "i'd know which each of them gardings belonged to, ef i see 'em in chiny," and so she might, for the girls' tastes differed as much as their characters. meg's had roses and heliotrope, myrtle, and a little orange tree in it. jo's bed was never alike two seasons, for she was always trying experiments. this year it was to be a plantation of sun flowers, the seeds of which cheerful land aspiring plant were to feed aunt cockle-top and her family of chicks. beth had old-fashioned fragrant flowers in her garden, sweet peas and mignonette, larkspur, pinks, pansies, and southernwood, with chickweed for the birds and catnip for the pussies. amy had a bower in hers, rather small and earwiggy, but very pretty to look at, with honeysuckle and morning-glories hanging their colored horns and bells in graceful wreaths all over it, tall white lilies, delicate ferns, and as many brilliant, picturesque plants as would consent to blossom there. gardening, walks, rows on the river, and flower hunts employed the fine days, and for rainy ones, they had house diversions, some old, some new, all more or less original. one of these was the `p.c', for as secret societies were the fashion, it was thought proper to have one, and as all of the girls admired dickens, they called themselves the pickwick club. with a few interruptions, they had kept this up for a year, and met every saturday evening in the big garret, on which occasions the ceremonies were as follows: three chairs were arranged in a row before a table on which was a lamp, also four white badges, with a big `p.c.' in different colors on each, and the weekly newspaper called, the pickwick portfolio, to which all contributed something, while jo, who reveled in pens and ink, was the editor. at seven o'clock, the four members ascended to the clubroom, tied their badges round their heads, and took their seats with great solemnity. meg, as the eldest, was samuel pickwick, jo, being of a literary turn, augustus snodgrass, beth, because she was round and rosy, tracy tupman, and amy, who was always trying to do what she couldn't, was nathaniel winkle. pickwick, the president, read the paper, which was filled with original tales, poetry, local news, funny advertisements, and hints, in which they good-naturedly reminded each other of their faults and short comings. on one occasion, mr. pickwick put on a pair of spectacles without any glass, rapped upon the table, hemmed, and having stared hard at mr. snodgrass, who was tilting back in his chair, till he arranged himself properly, began to read: ____________________________________________________ "the pickwick portfolio" _____________________________________________________ may 20, 18-- _____________________________________________________ poet's corner _____________________________________________________ anniversary ode ___________ again we meet to celebrate with badge and solemn rite, our fifty-second anniversary, in pickwick hall, tonight. we all are here in perfect health, none gone from our small band: again we see each well-known face, and press each friendly hand. our pickwick, always at his post, with reverence we greet, as, spectacles on nose, he reads our well-filled weekly sheet. although he suffers from a cold, we joy to hear him speak, for words of wisdom from him fall, in spite of croak or squeak. old six-foot snodgrass looms on high, with elephantine grace, and beams upon the company, with brown and jovial face. poetic fire lights up his eye, he struggles 'gainst his lot. behold ambition on his brow, and on his nose, a blot. next our peaceful tupman comes, so rosy, plump, and sweet, who chokes with laughter at the puns, and tumbles off his seat. prim little winkle too is here, with every hair in place, a model of propriety, though he hates to wash his face. the year is gone, we still unite to joke and laugh and read, and tread the path of literature that doth to glory lead. long may our paper prosper well, our club unbroken be, and coming years their blessings pour on the useful, gay `p. c.'. a. snodgrass ________ the masked marriage (a tale of venice) gondola after gondola swept up to the marble steps, and left its lovely load to swell the brill iant throng that filled the stately halls of count adelon. knights and ladies, elves and pages, monks and flower girls, all mingled gaily in the dance. sweet voices and rich melody filled the air, and so with mirth and music the masquerade went on. "has your highness seen the lady viola tonight?" asked a gallant troubadour of the fairy queen who floated down the hall upon his arm. "yes, is she not lovely, though so sad! her dress is well chosen, too, for in a week she weds count antonio, whom she passionately hates." "by my faith, i envy him. yonder he comes, arrayed like a bridegroom, except the black mask. when that is off we shall see how he regards the fair maid whose heart he cannot win, though her stern father bestows her hand," returned the troub adour. "tis whispered that she loves the young english artist who haunts her steps, and is spurned by the old count," said the lady, as they joined the dance. the revel was at its height when a priest appeared, and withdrawing the young pair to an alcove, hung with purple velvet, he motioned them to kneel. instant silence fell on the gay throng, and not a sound, but he dash of fountains or the rustle of orange groves sleeping in the moonlight, broke the hush, as count de adelon spoke thus: "my lords and ladies, pardon the ruse by which i have gathered you here to witness the marriage of my daughter. father, we wait your services." all eyes turned toward the bridal party, and a murmur of amazement went through the throng, for neither bride nor groom removed their masks. curiosity and wonder possessed all hearts, but respect restrained all tongues till the holy rite was over. then the eager spectators gathered round the count, demanding an explanation. "gladly would i give it if i could, but i only know that it was the whim of my timid viola, and i yielded to it. now, my children, let the play end. unmask and receive my blessing." but neither bent the knee,for the young bride groom replied in a tone that startled all listeners as the mask fell, disclosing the noble face of ferd inand devereux, the artist lover, and leaning on the breast where now flashed the star of an english earl was the lovely viola, radiant with joy and beauty. "my lord, you scornfully bade me claim your daughter when i could boast as high a name and vast a fortune as the count antonio. i can do more, for even your ambitious soul cannot refuse the earl of devereux and de vere, when he gives his ancient name and bound less wealth in return for the beloved hand of this fair lady, now my wife. the count stood like one changed to stone, and turning to the bewildered crowd, ferdinand added, with a gay smile of triumph, "to you, my gallant friends, i can only wish that your wooing may prosper as mine has done, and that you may all win as fair a bride as i have by this masked marriage." s. pickwick ___________ why is the p. c. like the tower of babel? it is full of unruly members. ___________ the history of a squash _____ once upon a time a farmer planted a little seed. in his garden, and after a while it sprouted and be came a vine and bore many squashes. one day in octo ber, when they were ripe, he picked one and took it to market. a gorcerman bought and put it in his shop. that same morning, a little girl in a brown hat and blue dress, with a round face and snub nose, went and bought it for her mother. she lugged it home, cut it up, and boiled it in the big pot, mashed some of it salt and butter, for dinner. and to the rest she added a pint of milk, two eggs, four spoons of sugar, nutmeg, and some crackers, put it in a deep dish, and baked it till it was brown and nice, and next day it was eaten by a family named march. t. tupman _____________ mr. pickwick, sir: i address you upon the subject of sin the sinner i mean is a man named winkle who makes trouble in his club by laughing and sometimes won't write his piece in this fine paper i hope you will pardon his badness and let him send a french fable because he can't write out of his head as he has so many lessons to do and no brains in future i will try to take time by the fetlock and prepare some work which will be all commy la fo that means all right i am in haste as it is nearly school time yours respectably, n. winkle [the above is a manly and handsome aknowledgment of past misdemeanors. if our young friend studied punctuation, it would be well.] _________ a sad accident __________ on friday last, we were startled by a violent shock in our basement, followed by cries of distress. on rush ing in a body to the cellar, we discovered our beloved president prostrate upon the floor, having tripped and fallen while getting wood for domestic purposes. a per fect scene of ruin met our eyes, for in his fall mr. pickwick had plunged his head and shoulders into a tub of water, upset a keg of soft soap upon his manly form, and torn his garments badly. on being removed from this perilous situation, it was discovered that he had suffered no injury but several bruises, and we are happy to add, is now doing well. ed. ______________________________________ the public bereavement it is our painful duty to record the sudden and mysterious disappearance of our cherished friend, mrs. snowball pat paw. this lovely and beloved cat was the pet of a large circle of warm and admiring friends; for her beauty attracted all eyes, her graces and virtues endeared her to all hearts, and her loss is deeply felt by the whole community. when last seen, she was sitting at the gate, watch ing the butcher's cart, and it is feared that some villain, tempted by her charms, basely stole her. weeks have passed, but no trace of her has been discovered, and we relinquish all hope, tie a black ribbon to her basket, set aside her dish, and weep for her as one lost to us forever. _________ a sympathizing friend sends the following gem: ________ a lament (for s. b. pat paw) we mourn the loss of our little pet, and sigh o'er her hapless fate, for never more by the fire she'll sit, nor play by the old green gate. the little grave where her infant sleeps is 'neath the chestnut tree. but o'er her grave we may not weep, we know not where it may be. her empty bed, her idle ball, will never see her more; no gentle tap, no loving purr is heard at the parlor door. another cat comes after her mice, a cat with a dirty face, but she does not hunt as our darling did, nor play with her airy grace. her stealthy paws tread the very hall where snowball used to play, but she only spits at the dogs our pet so gallantly drove away. she is useful and mild, and does her best, but she is not fair to see, and we cannot give her your place dear, nor worship her as we worship thee. a.s. __________________________________________ advertisements __________________________________________ miss oranthy bluggage, the accomplished strong-minded lecturer, will deliver her famous lecture on "woman and her position" at pickwick hall, next saturday evening, after the usual performances. ___________________________________________ a weekly meeting will be held at kitchen place, to teach young ladies how to cook. hannah brown will preside, and all are invited to attend. ____________________________________________ the dustpan society will meet on wednesday next, and parade in the upper story of the club house. all members to appear in uniform and shoulder their brooms at nine precisely. ____________________________________________ mrs. beth bouncer will open her new assort ment of doll's millinery next week. the latest paris fashions have arrived, and orders are respectfully solicited. ____________________________________________ a new play will appear at the barnville theatre,in the course of a few weeks,which will surpass anything ever seen on the amer ican stage. the greek slave, or constan tine the avenger, is the name of this thrill ing drama.!!! _____________________________________________ hints if s.p. didn't use so much soap on his hands, he wouldn't always be late at breakfast. a.s. is requested not to whistle in the street. t.t please don't forget amy's napkin. n.w. must not fret because his dress has not nine tucks. _______________________________________________ weekly report meg--good. jo--bad. beth--very good. amy--middling. ___________________________________________________________________ as the president finished reading the paper (which i beg leave to assure my readers is a bona fide copy of one written by bona fide girls once upon a time), a round of applause followed, and then mr. snodgrass rose to make a proposition. "mr. president and gentlemen," he began, assuming a parliamentary attitude and tone, "i wish to propose the admission of a new member--one who highly deserves the honor, would be deeply grateful for it, and would add immensely to the spirit of the club, the literary value of the paper, and be no end jolly and nice. i propose mr. theodore laurence as an honorary member of the p. c. come now, do have him." jo's sudden change of tone made the girls laugh, but all looked rather anxious, and no one said a word as snodgrass took his seat. "we'll put it to a vote," said the president. "all in favor of this motion please to manifest it by saying, `aye'." "contrary-minded say, `no'." meg and amy were contrary-minded, and mr. winkle rose to say with great elegance, "we don't wish any boys, they only joke and bounce about. this is a ladies' club, and we wish to be private and proper." "i'm afraid he'll laugh at our paper, and make fun of us afterward," observed pickwick, pulling the little curl on her forehead, as she always did when doubtful. up rose snodgrass, very much in earnest. "sir, i give you my word as a gentleman, laurie won't do anything of the sort. he likes to write, and he'll give a tone to our contributions and keep us from being sentimental, don't you see? we can do so little for him, and he does so much for us, i think the least we can do is to offer him a place here, and make him welcome if he comes." this artful allusion to benefits conferred brought tupman to his feet, looking as if he had quite made up his mind. "yes, we ought to do it, even if we are afraid. i say he may come, and his grandpa, too, if he likes." this spirited burst from beth electrified the club, and jo left her seat to shake hands approvingly. "now then, vote again. everybody remember it's our laurie, and say, `aye!'" cried snodgrass excitedly. "aye! aye! aye!" replied three voices at once. "good! bless you! now, as there's nothing like `taking time by the fetlock', as winkle characteristically observes, allow me to present the new member." and, to the dismay of the rest of the club, jo threw open the door of the closet, and displayed laurie sitting on a rag bag, flushed and twinkling with suppressed laughter. "you rogue! you traitor! jo, how could you?" cried the three girls, as snodgrass led her friend triumphantly forth, and producing both a chair and a badge, installed him in a jiffy. "the coolness of you two rascals is amazing," began mr. pickwick, trying to get up an awful frown and only succeeding in producing an amiable smile. but the new member was equal to the occasion, and rising, with a grateful salutation to the chair, said in the most engaging manner, "mr. president and ladies--i beg pardon, gentlemen--allow me to introduce myself as sam weller, the very humble servant of the club." "good! good!" cried jo, pounding with the handle of the old warming pan on which she leaned. "my faithful friend and noble patron," continued laurie with a wave of the hand, "who has so flatteringly presented me, is not to be blamed for the base stratagem of tonight. i planned it, and she only gave in after lots of teasing." "come now, don't lay it all on yourself. you know i proposed the cupboard," broke in snodgrass, who was enjoying the joke amazingly. "never mind what she says. i'm the wretch that did it, sir," said the new member, with a welleresque nod to mr. pickwick. "but on my honor, i never will do so again, and henceforth devote myself to the interest of this immortal club." "hear! hear!" cried jo, clashing the lid of the warming pan like a cymbal. "go on, go on!" added winkle and tupman, while the president bowed benignly. "i merely wish to say, that as a slight token of my gratitude for the honor done me, and as a means of promoting friendly relations between adjoining nations, i have set up a post office in the hedge in the lower corner of the garden, a fine, spacious building with padlocks on the doors and every convenience for the mails, also the females, if i may be allowed the expression. it's the old martin house, but i've stopped up the door and made the roof open, so it will hold all sorts of things, and save our valuable time. letters, manuscripts, books, and bundles can be passed in there, and as each nation has a key, it will be uncommonly nice, i fancy. allow me to present the club key, and with many thanks for your favor, take my seat." great applause as mr. weller deposited a little key on the table and subsided, the warming pan clashed and waved wildly, and it was some time before order could be restored. a long discussion followed, and everyone came out surprising, for everyone did her best. so it was an unusually lively meeting, and did not adjourn till a late hour, when it broke up with three shrill cheers for the new member. no one ever regretted the admittance of sam weller, for a more devoted, well-behaved, and jovial member no club could have. he certainly did add `spirit' to the meetings, and `a tone' to the paper, for his orations convulsed his hearers and his contributions were excellent, being patriotic, classical, comical, or dramatic, but never sentimental. jo regarded them as worthy of bacon, milton, or shakespeare, and remodeled her own works with good effect, she thought. the p. o. was a capital little institution, and flourished wonderfully, for nearly as many queer things passed through it as through the real post office. tragedies and cravats, poetry and pickles, garden seeds and long letters, music and gingerbread, rubbers, invitations, scoldings, and puppies. the old gentleman liked the fun, and amused himself by sending odd bundles, mysterious messages, and funny telegrams, and his gardener, who was smitten with hannah's charms, actually sent a love letter to jo's care. how they laughed when the secret came out, never dreaming how many love letters that little post office would hold in the years to come. chapter eleven "the first of june! the kings are off to the seashore tomorrow, and i'm free. three months' vacation--how i shall enjoy it!" exclaimed meg, coming home one warm day to find jo laid upon the sofa in an unusual state of exhaustion, while beth took off her dusty boots, and amy made lemonade for the refreshment of the whole party. "aunt march went today, for which, oh, be joyful!" said jo. "i was mortally afraid she'd ask me to go with her. if she had,i should have felt as if i ought to do it, but plumfield is about as gay as a churchyard, you know, and i'd rather be excused. we had a flurry getting the old lady off, and i had a fright every time she spoke to me, for i was in such a hurry to be through that i was uncommonly helpful and sweet, and feared she'd find it impossible to part from me. i quaked till she was fairly in the carriage, and had a final fright, for as it drove of, she popped out her head, saying, `josyphine, won't you--?' i didn't hear any more, for i basely turned and fled. i did actually run, and whisked round the corner whee i felt safe." "poor old jo! she came in looking as if bears were after her," said beth, as she cuddled her sister's feet with a motherly air. "aunt march is a regular samphire, is she not?" observed amy, tasting her mixture critically. "she means vampire, not seaweed,but it doesn't matter. it's too warm to be particular about one's parts of speech," murmured jo. "what shall you do all your vacation?" asked amy, changing the subject with tact. "i shall lie abed late, and do nothing," replied meg, from the depths of the rocking chair. "i've been routed up early all winter and had to spend my days working for other people, so now i'm going to rest and revel to my heart's content." "no," said jo, "that dozy way wouldn't suit me. i've laid in a heap of books, and i'm going to improve my shining hours reading on my perch in the old apple tree, when i'm not having l. . ." "don't say `larks!'" implored amy, as a return snub for the samphire' correction. "i'll say `nightingales' then, with laurie. that's proper and appropriate, since he's a warbler." "don't let us do any lessons, beth, for a while, but play all the time and rest, as the girls mean to," proposed amy. "well, i will,if mother doesn't mind. i want to learn some new songs, and my children need fitting up for the summer. they are dreadfully out of order and really suffering for clothes." "may we, mother?" asked meg, turning to mrs. march, who sat sewing in what they called `marmee's corner'. "you may try your experiment for a week and see how you like it. i think by saturday night you will find that all play and no work is as bad as all work and no play." "oh, dear, no! it will be delicious, i'm sure," said meg complacently. "i now propose a toast, as my `friend and pardner, sairy gamp', says. fun forever, and no grubbing!" cried jo, rising, glass in hand, as the lemonade went round. they all drank it merrily, and began the experiment by lounging for the rest of the day. next morning, meg did not appear till ten o'clock. her solitary breakfast did not taste nice, and the room seemed lonely and untidy, for jo had not filled the vases, beth had not dusted, and amy's books lay scattered about. nothing was neat and pleasant but `marmee's corner', which looked as usual. and there meg sat, to `rest and read', which meant to yawn and imagine what pretty summer dresses she would get with her salary. jo spent the morning on the river with laurie and the afternoon reading and crying over the wide, wide world, up in the apple tree. beth began by rummaging everything out of the big closet where her family resided, but getting tired before half done, she left her establishment topsy-turvy and went to her music, rejoicing that she had no dishes to wash. amy arranged her bower, put on her best white frock, smoothed her curls, and sat down to draw under the honeysuckle, hoping someone would see and inquire who the young artist was. as no one appeared but an inquisitive daddy-longlegs, who examined her work with interest, she went to walk, got caught in a shower, and came home dripping. at teatime they compared notes, and all agreed that it had been a delightful, though unusually long day. meg, who went shopping in the afternoon and got a `sweet blue muslin, had discovered, after she had cut the breadths off, that it wouldn't wash, which mishap made her slightly cross. jo had burned the skin off her nose boating, and got a raging headache by reading too long. beth was worried by the confusion of her closet and the difficulty of learning three or four songs at once, and amy deeply regretted the damage done her frock, for katy brown's party was to be the next day and now like flora mcflimsey, she had `nothing to wear'. but these were mere trifles, and they assured their mother that the experiment was working finely. she smiled, said nothing, and with hannah's help did their neglected work, keeping home pleasant and the domestic machinery running smoothly. it was astonishing what a peculiar and uncomfortable state of things was produced by the `resting and reveling' process. the days kept getting longer and longer, the weather was unusually variable and so were tempers, and unsettled feeling possessed everyone, and satan found plenty of mischief for the idle hands to do. as the height of luxury, meg put out some of her sewing, and then found time hang so heavily that she fell to snipping and spoiling her clothes in her attempts to furbish them up a`la moffat. jo read till her eyes gave out and she was sick of books, got so fidgety that even good-natured laurie had a quarrel with her, and so reduced in spirits that she desperately wished she had gone with aunt march. beth got on pretty well, for she was constantly forgetting that it was to be all play and no work, and fell back into her old ways now and then. but something in the air affected her, and more than once her tranquility was much disturbed, so much so that on one occasion she actually shook poor dear joanna and told her she was a fright'. amy fared worst of all, for her resources were small, and when her sisters left her to amuse herself, she soon found that accomplished and important little self a great burden. she didn't like dolls, fairy tales were childish, and one couldn't draw all the time. tea parties didn't amount to much neither did picnics unless very well conducted. "if one could have a fine house, full of nice girls, or go traveling, the summer would be delightful, but to stay at home with three selfish sisters and a grown-up boy was enough to try the patience of a boaz," complained miss malaprop, after several days devoted to pleasure, fretting, and ennui. no one would own that they were tired of the experiment, but by friday night each acknowledged to herself that she was glad the week was nearly done. hoping to impress the lesson more deeply, mrs. march, who had a good deal of humor, resolved to finish off the trial in an appropriate manner, so she gave hannah a holiday and let the girls enjoy the full effect of the play system. when they got up on saturday morning, there was no fire in the kitchen, no breakfast in the dining room, and no mother anywhere to be seen. "mercy on us! what has happened?" cried jo, staring about her in dismay. meg ran upstairs and soon came back again, looking relieved but rather bewildered, and a little ashamed. "mother isn't sick, only very tired, and she says she is going to stay quietly in her room all day and let us do the best we can. it's a very queer thing for her to do, she doesn't act a bit like herself. but she says it has been a hard week for her, so we mustn't grumble but take care of ourselves." "that's easy enough, and i like the idea, i'm aching for something to do, that is, some new amusement, you know," added jo quickly. in fact it was an immense relief to them all to have a little work, and they took hold with a will, but soon realized the truth of hannah's saying, "housekeeping ain't no joke." there was plenty of food in the larder, and while beth and amy set the table, meg and jo got breakfast, wondering as they did why servants ever talked about hard work. "i shall take some up to mother, though she said we were not to think of her, for she'd take care of herself," said meg, who presided and felt quite matronly behind the teapot. so a tray was fitted out before anyone began, and taken up with the cook's compliments. the boiled tea was very bitter, the omelet scorched, and the biscuits speckled with saleratus, but mrs. march received her repast with thanks and laughed heartily over it after jo was gone. "poor little souls, they will have a hard time, i'm afraid, but they won't suffer, and it will do them good," she said, producing the more palatable viands with which she had provided herself, and disposing of the bad breakfast, so that their feelings might not be hurt, a motherly little deception for which they were grateful. many were the complaints below, and great the chagrin of the head cook at her failures. "never mind, i'll get the dinner and be servant, you be mistress, keep your hands nice, see company, and give orders," said jo, who knew still less than meg, about culinary affairs. this obliging offer was gladly accepted, and margaret retired to the parlor, which she hastily put in order by whisking the litter under the sofa and shutting the blinds to save the trouble of dusting. jo, with perfect faith in her own powers and a friendly desire to make up the quarrel, immediately put a note in the office, inviting laurie to dinner. "you'd better see what you have got before you think of having company," said meg, when informed of the hospitable but rash act. "oh, there's corned beef and plenty of poatoes, and i shall get some asparagus and a lobster, `for a relish', as hannah says. we'll have lettuce and make a salad. i don't know how, but the book tells. i'll have blancmange and strawberries for dessert, and coffee too, if you want to be elegant." "don't try too many messes, jo, for you can't make anything but gingerbread and molasses candy fit to eat. i wash my hands of the dinner party, and since you have asked laurie on your own responsibility, you may just take care of him." "i don't want you to do anything but be civil to him and help to the pudding. you'll give me your advice if i get in a muddle, won't you?" asked jo, rather hurt. "yes, but i don't know much, except about bread and a few trifles. you had better ask mother's leave before you order anything," returned meg prudently. "of course i shall. i'm not a fool." and jo went off in a huff at the doubts expressed of her powers. "get what you like, and don't disturb me. i'm going out to dinner and can't worry about things at home," said mrs. march, when jo spoke to her. "i never enjoyed housekeeping, and i'm going to take a vacation today, and read, write, go visiting, and amuse myself." the unusual spectacle of her busy mother rocking comfortably and reading early in the morning made jo feel as if some unnatural phenomenon had occurred, for an eclipse, an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption would hardly have seemed stranger. "everything is out of sorts, somehow," she said to herself, going downstairs. "there's beth crying, that's a sure sign that something is wrong in this family. if amy is bothering, i'll shake her." feeling very much out of sorts herself, jo hurried into the parlor to find beth sobbing over pip, the canary, who lay dead in the cage with his little claws pathetically extended, as if imploring the food for want of which he had died. "it's all my fault, i forgot him, there isn't a seed or a drop left. oh, pip! oh, pip! how could i be so cruel to you?" cried beth, taking the poor thing in her hands and trying to restore him. jo peeped into his half-open eye, felt his little heart, and finding him stiff and cold, shook her head, and offered her domino box for a coffin. "put him in the oven, and maybe his will get warm and revive," said amy hopefully. "he's been starved, and he shan't be baked now he's dead. i'll make him a shroud, and he shall be buried in the garden, and i'll never have another bird, never, my pip! for i am too bad to own one," murmured beth, sitting on the floor with her pet folded in her hands. "the funeral shall be this afternoon, and we will all go. now, don't cry, bethy. it's a pity, but nothing goes right this week, and pip has had the worst of the experiment. make the shroud, and lay him in my box, and after the dinner party, we'll have a nice little funeral," said jo, beginning to feel as if she had undertaken a good deal. leaving the others to console beth, she departed to the kitchen, which was in a most discouraging state of confusion. putting on a big apron, she fell to work and got the dishes piled up ready for washing, when she discovered that the fire was out. "here's a sweet prospect!" muttered jo, slamming the stove door open, and poking vigorously among the cinders. having rekindled the fire, she thought she would go to market while the water heated. the walk revived her spirits, and flattering herself that she had made good bargins, she trudged home again, after buying a very young lobster, some very old asparagus, and two boxes of acid strawberries. by the time she got cleared up, the dinner arrived and the stove was red-hot. hannah had left a pan of bread to rise, meg had worked it up early, set it on the hearth for a second rising, and forgotten it. meg was entertaining sallie gardiner in the parlor, when the door flew open and a floury,crocky, flushed, and disheveled figure appeared, demanding tartly . . . "i say, isn't bread `riz' enough when it runs over the pans?" sallie began to laugh, but meg nodded and lifted her eyebrows as high as they would go, which caused the apparition to vanish and put the sour bread into the oven without further delay. mrs. march went out, after peeping here and there to see how matters went, also saying a word of comfort to beth, who sat making a winding sheet, while the dear departed lay in state in the domino box. a strange sense of helplessness fell upon the girls as the gray bonnet vanished round the corner, and despair seized them when a few minutes later miss crocker appeared, and said she'd come to dinner. now this lady was a thin, yellow spinster, with a sharp nose and inquisitive eyes, who saw everything and gossiped about all she saw. they disliked her, but had been taught to be kind to her, simply because she was old and poor and had few friends. so meg gave her the easy chair and tried to entertain her, while she asked questions, critsized everything, and told stories of the people whom she knew. language cannot describe the anxieties, experiences, and exertions which jo underwent that morning, and the dinner she served up became a standing joke. fearing to ask any more advice, she did her best alone, and discovered that something more than energy and good will is necessary to make a cook. she boiled the asparagus for an hour and was grieved to find the heads cooked off and the stalks harder than ever. the bread burned black, for the salad dressing so aggravated her that she could not make it fit to ear. the lobster was a scarlet mystery to her, but she hammered and poked till it was unshelled and its meager proportions concealed in a grove of lettuce leaves. the potatoes had to be hurried, not to keep the asparagus waiting, and were not done at the last. the blancmange was lumpy, and the strawberries not as ripe as they looked, having been skilfully `deaconed'. "well, they can eat beef and bread and butter, if they are hungry, only it's mortifying to have to spend your whole morning for nothing," thought jo, as she rang the bell half an hour later than usual, and stood, hot, tired, and dispirited, surveying the feast spread before laurie, accustomed to all sorts of elegance, and miss crocker, whose tattling tongue would report them far and wide. poor jo would gladly have gone under the table, as one thing after another was tasted and left, while amy giggled, meg looked distressed, miss crocker pursed her lips, and laurie talked and laughed with all his might to give a cheerful tone to the festive scene. jo's one strong point was the fruit,for she had sugared it well, and had a pitcher of rich cream to eat with it. her hot cheeks cooled a trifle, and she drew a long breath as the pretty glass plates went round, and everyone looked graciously at the little rosy islands floating in a sea of cream. miss crocker tasted first, made a wry face, and drank some water hastily. jo, who refused, thinking there might not be enough, for they dwindled sadly after the picking over, glanced at laurie, but he was eating away manfully, though there was a slight pucker about his mouth and he kept his eye fixed on his plate. amy, who was fond of delicate fare, took a heaping spoonful, choked, hid her face in her napkin, and left the table precipitately. "oh, what is it?" exclaimed jo, trembling. "salt instead of sugar, and the cream is sour," replied meg with a tragic gesture. jo uttered a groan and fell back in her chair, remembering that she had given a last hasty powdering to the berries out of one of the two boxes on the kitchen table, and had neglected to put the milk in the refrigerator. she turned scarlet and was on the verge of crying, when she met laurie's eyes, which would look merry in spite of his heroic efforts. the comical side of the affair suddenly struck her, and she laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks. so did everyone else, even `croaker' as the girls called the old lady, and the unfortunate dinner ended gaily, with bread and butter, olives and fun. "i haven't strength of mind enough to clear up now, so we will sober ourselves with a funeral," said jo, as they rose, and miss crocker made ready to go, being eager to tell the new story at another friend's dinner table. they did sober themselves for beth's sake. laurie dug a grave under the ferns in the grove, little pip was laid in, with many tears by his tender-hearted mistress, and covered with moss, while a wreath of violets and chickweed was hung on the stone which bore his epitaph, composed by jo while she struggled with the dinner. here lies pip march, who died the 7th of june; loved and lamented sore, and not forgotten soon. at the conclusion of the ceremonies, beth retired to her room, overcome with emotion and lobster, but there was no place of repose, for the beds were not made, and she found her grief much assuaged by beating up the pillows and putting things in order. meg helped jo clear away the remains of the feast, which took half the afternoon and left them so tired that they agreed to be contented with tea and toast for supper. laurie took amy to drive, which was a deed of charity, for the sour cream seemed to have had a bad effect upon her temper. mrs. march came home to find the three older girls hard at work in the middle of the afternoon, and a glance at the closet gave her an idea of the success of one part of the experiment. before the housewives could rest, several people called, and there was a scramble to get ready to see them. then tea must be got, errands done, and one or two necessary bits of sewing neglected until the last minute. as twilight fell, dewy and still, one by one they gathered on the porch where the june roses were budding beautifully, and each groaned or sighed as she sat down, as if tired or troubled. "what a dreadful day this has been!" began jo, usually the first to speak. "it has seemed shorter than usual, but so uncomfortable," said meg. "not a bit like home," added amy. "it can't seem so without marmee and little pip," sighed beth, glancing with full eyes at the empty cage above her head. "here's mother, dear, and you shall have another bird tomorrow, if you want it." as she spoke, mrs. march came and took her place among them, looking as if her holiday had not been much pleasanter than theirs. "are you satisfied with your experiment, girls, or do you want another week of it?" she asked, as beth nestled up to her and the rest turned toward her with brightening faces, as flowers turn toward the sun. "i don't!" cried jo decidedly. "nor i," echoed the others. "you think then, that it is better to have a few duties and live a little for others, do you?" "lounging and larking doesn't pay," observed jo, shaking her head. "i'm tired of it and mean to go to work at something right off." "suppose you learn plain cooking. that's a useful accomplishment, which no woman should be without," said mrs. march, laughing inaudibly at the recollection of jo's dinner party,, for she had met miss crocker and heard her account of it. "mother, did you go away and let everything be, just to see how we'd get on?" cried meg, who had had suspicions all day. "yes, i wanted you to see how the comfort of all depends on each doing her share faithfully. while hannah and i did your work, you got on pretty well, though i don't think you were very happy or amiable. so i thought, as a little lesson, i would show you what happens when everyone thinks only of herself. don't you feel that it is pleasanter to help one another, to have daily duties which make leisure sweet when it comes, and to bear and forbear, that home may be comfortable and lovely to us all?" "we do, mother we do!" cried the girls. "then let me advise you to take up your little burdens again, for though they seem heavy sometimes, they are good for us, and lighten as we learn to carry them. work is wholesome, and there is plenty for everyone. it keeps us from ennui and mischief, is good for health and spirits, and gives us a sense of power and independence better than money or fashion." "we'll work like bees, and love it too, see if we don't," said jo. "i'll learn plain cooking for my holiday task, and the dinner party i have shall be a success." "i'll make the set of shirts for father, instead of letting you do it, marmee. i can and i will, though i'm not fond of sewing. that will be better than fussing over my own things, which are plenty nice enough as they are." said meg. "i'll do my lessons every day, and not spend so much time with my music and dolls. i am a stupid thing, and ought to be studying, not playing," was beth's resolution, while amy followed their example by heroically declaring, "i shall learn to make buttonholes, and attend to my parts of speech." "very good! then i am quite satisfied with the experiment, and fancy that we shall not have to repeat it, only don't go to the other extreme and delve like slaves. have regular hours for work and play, make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life become a beautiful success, in spite of poverty." "we'll remember, mother!" and they did. chapter twelve beth was postmistress, for, being most at home, she could attend to it regularly, and dearly liked the daily task of unlocking the little door and distributing the mail. one july day she came in with her hands full, and went about the house leaving letters and parcels like the penny post. "here's your posy, mother! laurie never forgets that," she said, putting the fresh nosegay in the vase that stood in `marmee's corner', and was kept supplied by the affectionate boy. "miss meg march, one letter and a glove," continued beth, delivering the articles to her sister, who sat near her mother, stitching wristbands. "why, i left a pair over there, and here is only one," said meg, looking at the gray cotton glove. "didn't you drop the other in the garden?" "no, i'm sure i didn't, for there was only one in the office." "i hate to have odd gloves! never mind, the other may be found. my letter is only a translation of the german song i wanted. i think mr. brooke did it, for this isn't laurie's writing." mrs. march glanced at meg, who was looking very pretty in her gingham morning gown, with the little curls blowing about her forehead, and very womanly, as she sat sewing at her little worktable, full of tidy white rolls, so unconscious of the thought in her mother's mind as she sewed and sang, while her fingers flew and her thoughts were busied with girlish fancies as innocent and fresh as the pansies in her belt, that mrs. march smiled and was satisfied. "two letters for doctor jo, a book, and a funny old hat, which covered the whole post office and stuck outside," said beth, laughing as she went into the study where jo sat writing. "what a sly fellow laurie is! i said i wished bigger hats were the fashion, because i burn my face every hot day. he said, `why mind the fashion? wear a big hat, and be comfortable!' i said i would if i had one, and he has sent me this to try me. i'll wear it for fun, and show him i don't care for the fashion." and hanging the antique broadbrim on a bust of plato, jo read her letters. one from her mother made her cheeks glow and her eyes fill, for it said to her . . . my dear: i write a little word to tell you with how much satisfaction i watch your efforts to control your temper. you say nothing about your trials, failures, or successes, and think, perhaps, that no one sees them but the friend whose help you daily ask, if i may trust the well-worn cover of your guidebook. i, too, have seen them all, and heartily believe in the sincerity of your resolution, since it begins to bear fruit. go on, dear, patiently and bravely, and always believe that no one sympathizes more tenderly with you than your loving . . . mother "that does me good! that's worth millions of money and pecks of praise. oh, marmee, i do try! i will keep on trying, and not get tired, since i have you to help me." laying her head on her arms, jo wet her little romance with a few happy tears. for she had thought that no one saw and appreciated her efforts to be good, and this assurance was doubly precious, doubly encouraging, because unexpected and from the person whose commendation she most valued. feeling stronger than ever to meet and subdue her apollyon, she pinned the note inside her frock, as a shield and a reminder, lest she be taken unaware, and proceeded to open her other letter, quite ready for either good or bad news. in a big, dashing hand, laurie wrote . . . dear jo, what ho! some english girls and boys are coming to see me tomorrow and i want to have a jolly time. if it's fine, i'm going to pitch my tent in longmeadow, and row up the whole crew to lunch and croquet--have a fire, make messes, gypsy fashion, and all sorts of larks. they are nice people, and like such things. brooke will go to keep us boys steady, and kate vaughn will play propriety for the girls. i want you all to come, can't let beth off at any price, and nobody shall worry her. don't bother about rations, i'll see to that and everything else, only do come, there's a good fellow! in a tearing hurry, yours ever, laurie. "here's richness!" cried jo, flying in to tell the news to meg. "of course we can go, mother? it will be such a help to laurie, for i can row, and meg see to the lunch, and the children be useful in some way." "i hope the vaughns are not fine grown-up people. do you know anything about them, jo?" asked meg. "only that there are four of them. kate is older than you, fred and frank (twins) about my age, and a little girl (grace), who is nine or ten. laurie knew them abroad, and liked the boys. i fancied, from the way he primmed up his mouth in speaking of her, that he didn't admire kate much." "i'm so glad my french print is clean, it's just the thing and so becoming!" observed meg complacently. "have you anything decent, jo?" "scarlet and gray boating suit, good enough for me. i shall row and tramp about, so i don't want any starch to think of. you'll come, betty?" "if you won't let any boys talk to me." "not a boy!" "i like to please laurie, and i'm not afraid of mr. brooke, he is so kind. but i don't want to play, or sing, or say anything. i'll work hard and not trouble anyone, and you'll take care of me, jo, so i'll go." "that's my good girl. you do try to fight off your shyness, and i love you for it. fighting faults isn't easy, as i know, and a cheery word kind of gives a lift. thank you, mother," and jo gave the thin cheek a grateful kiss, more precious to mrs. march than if it had given back the rosy roundness of her youth. "i had a box of chocolate drops, and the picture i wanted to copy," said amy, showing her mail. "and i got a note from mr. laurence, asking me to come over and play to him tonight, before the lamps are lighted, and i shall go," added beth, whose friendship with the old gentleman prospered finely. "now let's fly round, and do double duty today, so that we can play tomorrow with free minds," said jo, preparing to replace her pen with a broom. when the sun peeped into the girls' room early next morning to promise them a fine day, he saw a comical sight. each had made such preparation for the fete as seemed necessary and proper. meg had an extra row of little curlpapers across her forehead, jo had copiously anointed her afflicted face with cold cream, beth had taken joanna to bed with her to atone for the approaching separation, and amy had capped the climax by putting a colthespin on her nose to uplift the offending feature. it was one of the kind artists use to hold the paper on their drawing boards,therefore quite appropriate and effective for the purpose it was now being put. this funny spectacle appeared to amuse the sun, for he burst out with such radiance that jo woke up and roused her sisters by a hearty laugh at amy's ornament. sunshine and laughter were good omens for a pleasure party, and soon a lively bustle began in both houses. beth, who was ready first, kept reporting what went on next door, and enlivened her sisters' toilets by frequent telegrams from the window. "there goes the man with the tent! i see mrs. barker doing up the lunch in a hamper and a great basket. now mr. laurence is looking up at the sky and the weathercock. i wish he would go too. there's laurie, looking like a sailor, nice boy! oh, mercy me! here's a carriage full of people, a tall lady, a little girl, and two dreadful boys. one is lame, poor thing, he's got a crutch. laurie didn't tell us that. be quick, girls! it's getting late. why, there is ned moffat, i do declare. meg, isn't that the man who bowed to you one day when we were shopping?" "so it is. how queer that he should come. i thought he was at the mountains. there is sallie. i'm glad she got back in time. am i all right, jo?" cried meg in a flutter. "a regular daisy. hold up your dress and put your hat on straight, it looks sentimental tipped that way and will fly off at the first puff. now then, come on!" "oh, jo, you are not going to wear that awful hat? it's too absurd! you shall not make a guy of yourself," remonstrated meg, as jo tied down with a red ribbon the broad-brimmed, old-fashioned leghorn laurie had sent for a joke. "i just will, though, for it's capital, so shady, light, and big. it will make fun, and i don't mind being a guy if i'm comfortable." with that jo marched straight away and the rest followed, a bright little band of sisters, all looking their best in summer suits, with happy faces under the jaunty hatbrims. laurie ran to meet and present them to his friends in the most cordial manner. the lawn was the reception room, and for several minutes a lively scene was enacted there. meg was grateful to see that miss kate, though twenty, was dressed with a simplicity which american girls would do well to imitate, and who was much flattered by mr. ned's assurances that he came especially to see her. jo understood why laurie `primmed up his mouth' when speaking of kate, for that young lady had a standoff-don't-touch-me air, which contrasted strongly with the free and easy demeanor of the other girls. beth took an observation of the new boys and decided that the lame one was not `dreadful', but gentle and feeble, and she would be kind to him on that account. amy found grace a well-mannered, merry, little person, and after staring dumbly at one another for a few minutes, they suddenly became very good friends. tents, lunch, and croquet utensils having been sent on beforehand, the party was soon embarked, and the two boats pushed off together, leaving mr. laurence waving his hat on the shore. laurie and jo rowed one boat, mr. brooke and ned the other, while fred vaughn, the riotous twin, did his best to upset both by paddling about in a wherry like a disturbed water bug. jo's funny hat deserved a vote of thanks, for it was of general utility. it broke the ice in the beginning by producing a laugh, it created quite a refreshing breeze, flapping to and fro as she rowed, and would make an excellent umbrella for the whole party, if a shower came up, she said. miss kate decided that she was `odd', but rather clever, and smiled upon her from afar. meg, in the other boat, was delightfully situated, face to face with the rowers, who both admired the prospect and feathered their oars with uncommon `skill and dexterity'. mr. brooke was a grave, silent young man, with handsome brown eyes and a pleasant voice. meg liked his quiet manners and considered him a walking encyclopedia of useful knowledge. he never talked to her much, but he looked at her a good deal, and she felt sure that he did not regard her with aversion. ned, being in college, of course put on all the airs which freshmen think it their bounden duty to assume. he was not very wise, but very good-natured, and altogether an excellent person to carry on a picnic. sallie gardiner was absorbed in keeping her white pique dress clean and chattering with the ubiquitous fred, who kept beth in constant terror by his pranks. it was not far to longmeadow, but the tent was pitched and the wickets down by the time they arrived. a pleasant green field, with three wide-spreading oaks in the middle and a smooth strip of turf for croquet. "welcome to camp laurence!" said the young host, as they landed with exclamations of delight. "brooke is commander in chief, i am commissary general, the other fellows are staff officers, and you, ladies, are company. the tent is for your especial benefit and that oak is your drawing room, this is the messroom and the third is the camp kitchen. now, let's have a game before it gets hot, and then we'll see about dinner." frank, beth, amy, and grace sat down to watch the game played by the other eight. mr. brooke chose meg, kate, and fred. laurie took sallie, jo, and ned. the english played well, but the americans played better, and contested every inch of the ground as strongly as if the spirit of `76 inspired them. jo and fred had several skirmishes and once narrowly escaped high words. jo was through the last wicket and had missed the stroke, which failure ruffled her a good deal. fred was close behind her and his turn came before hers. he gave a stroke, his ball hit the wicket, and stopped an inch on the wrong side. no one was very near, and running up to examine, he gave it a sly nudge with his toe, which put it just an inch on the right side. "i'm through! now, miss jo, i'll settle you, and get in first," cried the young gentleman, swinging his mallet for another blow. "you pushed it. i saw you. it's my turn now," said jo sharply. "upon my word, i didn't move it. it rolled a bit, perhaps, but that is allowed. so, stand off please, and let me have a go at the stake." "we don't cheat in america, but you can, if you choose," said jo angrily. "yankees are a deal the most tricky, everybody knows. there you go!" returned fred, croqueting her ball far away. jo opened her lips to say something rude, but checked herself in time, colored up to her forehead and stood a minute, hammering down a wicket with all her might, while fred hit the stake and declared himself out with much exultation. she went off to get her ball, and was a long time finding it among the bushes, but she came back, looking cool and quiet, and waited her turn patiently. it took several strokes to regain the place she had lost, and when she got there, the other side had nearly won, for kate's ball was the last but one and lay near the stake. "by george, it's all up with us! goodbye, kate. miss jo owes me one, so you are finished," cried fred excitedly, as they all drew near to see the finish. "yankees have a trick of being generous to their enemies," said jo, with a look that made the lad redden, "especially when they beat them," she added, as, leaving kate's ball untouched, she won the game by a clever stroke. laurie threw up his hat, then remembered that it wouldn't do to exult over the defeat of his guests, and stopped in the middle of the cheer to whisper to his friend, "good for you, jo! he did cheat, i saw him. we can't tell him so,but he won't do it again, take my word for it." meg drew her aside, under pretense of pinning up a loose braid, and said approvingly, "it was dreadfully provoking, but you kept your temper, and i'm so glad, jo." "don't praise me, meg, for i could box his ears this minute. i should certainly have boiled over if i hadn't stayed among the nettles till i got my rage under control enough to hold my tongue.. it's simmering now, so i hope he'll keep out of my way," returned jo, biting her lips as she glowered at fred from under her big hat. "time for lunch," said mr. brooke, looking at his watch. "commissary general, will you make the fire and get water, while miss march, miss sallie, and i spread the table? who can make good coffee?" "jo can," said meg, glad to recommend her sister. so jo, feeling that her late lessons in cookery were to do her honor, went to preside over the coffeepot, while the children collected dry sticks, and the boys made a fire and got water from a spring near by. miss kate sketched and frank talked to beth, who was making little mats of braided rushes to serve as plates. the commander in chief and his aides soon spread the tablecloth with an inviting array of eatables and drinkables, prettily decorated with green leaves. jo announced that the coffee was ready, and everyone settled themselves to a hearty meal, for youth is seldom dyspeptic, and exercise develops wholesome appetites. a very merry lunch it was, for everything seemed fresh and funny, and frequent peals of laughter startled a venerable horse who fed near by. there was a pleasing inequality in the table, which produced many mishaps to cups and plates, acorns dropped in the milk, little black ants partook of the refreshments without being invited, and fuzzy caterpillars swung down from the tree to see what was going on. three white-headed children peeped over the fence, and an objectionable dog barked at them from the other side of the river with all his might and main. "there's salt here," said laurie, as he handed jo a saucer of berries. "thank you, i prefer spiders," she replied, fishing up two unwary little ones who had gone to a creamy death. "how dare you remind me of that horrid dinner party, when your's is so nice in every way?' added jo, as they both laughed and ate out of one plate, the china having run short. "i had an uncommonly good time that day, and haven't got over it yet. this is no credit to me, you know, i don't do anything. it's you and meg and brooke who make it all go, and i'm no end obliged to you. what shall we do when we can't eat anymore?" asked laurie, feeling that his trump card had been played when lunch was over. "have games till it's cooler. i brought authors, and i dare say miss kate knows something new and nice. go and ask her. she's company, and you ought to stay with her more." "aren't you company too? i thought she'd suit brooke, but he keeps talking to meg, and kate just stares at them through that ridiculous glass of hers'. i'm going, so you needn't try to preach propriety, for you can't do it, jo." miss kate did know several new games, and as the girls would not, and the boys could not, eat any more, they all adjourned to the drawing room to play rig-marole. "one person begins a story, any nonsense you like, and tells as long as he pleases, only taking care to stop short at some exciting point, when the next takes it up and does the same. it's very funny when well done, and makes a perfect jumble of tragical comical stuff to laugh over. please start it, mr. brooke," said kate, with a commanding air, which surprised meg, who treated the tutor with as much respect as any other gentleman. lying on the grass at the feet of the two young ladies, mr. brooke obediently began the story, with the handsome brown eyes steadily fixed upon the sunshiny river. "once on a time, a knight went out into the world to seek his fortune, for he had nothing but his sword and his shield. he traveled a long while, nearly eight-and-twenty years, and had a hard time of it, till he came to the palace of a good old king, who had offered a reward to anyone who could tame and train a fine but unbroken colt, of which he was very fond. the knight agreed to try, and got on slowly but surely, for the colt was a gallant fellow, and soon learned to love his new master, though he was freakish and wild. every day, when he gave his lessons to this pet of the king's, the knight rode him through the city, and as he rode, he looked everywhere for a certain beautiful face, which he had seen many times in his dreams, but never found. one day, as he went prancing down a quiet street, he saw at the window of a ruinous castle the lovely face. he was delighted, inquired who lived in this old castle, and was told that several captive princesses were kept there by a spell, and spun all day to lay up money to buy their liberty. the knight wished intensely that he could free them, but he was poor and could only go by each day, watching for the sweet face and longing to see it out in the sunshine. at last he resolved to get into the castle and ask how he could help them. he went and knocked. the great door flew open, and he beheld . .." "a ravishingly lovely lady, who exclaimed, with a cry of rapture, `at last! at last!'" continued kate, who had read french novels, and admired the style. "`tis she!' cried count gustave, and fell at her feet in an ecstasy of joy. `oh, rise!' she said, extending a hand of marble fairness. `never! till you tell me how i may rescue you,' swore the knight, still kneeling. `alas, my cruel fate condemns me to remain here till my tyrant is destroyed.' `where is the villain?' `in the mauve salon. go, brave heart, and save me from despair.' `i obey, and return victorious or dead!' with these thrilling words he rushed away, and flinging open the door of the mauve salon, was about to enter, when he received . . ." "a stunning blow from the big greek lexicon, which an old fellow in a black gown fired at him," said ned. "instantly, sir what's-his-name recovered himself, pitched the tyrant out of the window, and turned to join the lady, victorious, but with a bump on his brow, found the door locked, tore up the curtains, made a rope ladder, got halfway down when the ladder broke, and he went headfirst into the moat, sixty feet below. could swim like a duck, paddled round the castle till he came to a little door guarded by two stout fellows, knocked their heads together till they cracked like a couple of nuts, then, by a trifling exertion of his prodigious strength, he smashed in the door, went up a pair of stone steps covered with dust a foot thick, toads as big as your fist, and spiders that would frighten you into hysterics, miss march. at the top of these steps he came plump upon a sight that took his breath away and chilled his blood . . ." "a tall figure, all in white with a veil over its face and a lamp in its wasted hand," went on meg. "it beckoned, gliding noiselessly before him down a corridor as dark and cold as any tomb. shadowy effigies in armor stood on either side,a dead silence reigned, the lamp burned blue, and the ghostly figure ever and anon turned its face toward him, showing the glitter of awful eyes through its white veil. they reached a curtained door, behind which sounded lovely music. he sprang forward to enter, but the specter plucked him back, and waved threateningly before him a . . ." "snuffbox," said jo, in a sepulchral tone, which convulsed the audience. "`thankee,' said the knight politely, as he took a pinch and sneezed seven times so violently that his head fell off. `ha! ha!' laughed the ghost, and having peeped through the keyhole at the princesses spinning away for dear life, the evil spirit picked up her victim and put him in a large tin box, where there were eleven other knights packed together without their heads, like sardines, who all rose and began to . . ." "dance a hornpipe," cut in fred, as jo paused for breath, "and, as they danced, the rubbishy old castle turned to a man-of-war in full sail. `up with the jib, reef the tops'l halliards, helm hard alee, and man the guns!' roared the captain, as a portuguese pirate hove in sight, with a flag black as ink flying from her foremast. `go in and win, my hearties!' says the captain, and a tremendous fight began. of course the british beat, they always do." "no, they don't!" cried jo, aside. "having taken the pirate captain prisoner, sailed slap over the schooner, whose decks were piled high with dead and whose lee scuppers ran blood, for the order had been `cutlasses, and die hard!' `bosun's mate, take a bight of the flying-jib sheet, and start this villain if he doesn't confess his sins double quick,' said the british captain. the portuguese held his tongue like a brick, and walked the plank, while the jolly tars cheered like mad. but the sly dog dived, came up under the man-of-war, scuttled her, and down she went, with all sail set, `to the bottom of the sea, sea, sea' where . . ." "oh, gracious! what shall i say?" cried sallie, as fred ended his rigmarole, in which he had jumbled together pell-mell nautical phrases and facts out of one of his favorite books. "well, they went to the bottom, and a nice mermaid welcomed them, but was much grieved on finding the box of headless knights, and kindly pickled them in brine, hoping to discover the mystery about them, for being a woman, she was curious. by-and-by a diver came down, and the mermaid said, `i'll give you a box of pearls if you can take it up,' for she wanted to restore the poor things to life, and couldn't raise the heavy load herself. so the diver hoisted it up, and was much disappointed on opening it to find no pearls. he left it in a great lonely field, where it was found by a . . ." "little goose girl, who kept a hundred fat geese in the field," said amy, when sallie's invention gave out. "the little girl was sorry for them, and asked an old woman what she should do to help them. `your geese will tell you, they know everything.' said the old woman. so she asked what she should use for new heads, since the old ones were lost, and all the geese opened their hundred mouths and screamed . . ." "`cabbages!'" continued laurie promptly. "`just the thing,' said the girl, and ran to get twelve fine ones from her garden. she put them on, the knights revived at once, thanked her, and went on their way rejoicing, never knowing the difference, for there were so many other heads like them in the world that no one thought anything of it. the knight in whom i'm interest went back to find the pretty face, and learned that the princesses had spun themselves free and all gone and married, but one. he was in a great state of mind at that, and mounting the colt, who stood by him through thick and thin, rushed to the castle to see which was left. peeping over the hedge, he saw the queen of his affections picking flowers in her garden. `will you give me a rose?' said he. `you must come and get it. i can't come to you, it isn't proper,' said she, as sweet as honey. he tried to climb over the hedge, but it seemed to grow higher and higher. then he tried to push through, but it grew thicker and thicker, and he was in despair. so he patiently broke twig after twig till he had made a little hole through which he peeped, saying imploringly, `let me in! let me in!' but the pretty princess did not seem to understand, for she picked her roses quietly, and left him to fight his way in. whether he did or not, frank will tell you." "i can't. i'm not playing, i never do," said frank, dismayed at the sentimental predicament out of which he was to rescue the absurd couple. beth had disappeared behind jo, and grace was asleep. "so the poor knight is to be left sticking in the hedge, is he?" asked mr. brooke, still watching the river, and playing with the wild rose in his buttonhole. "i guess the princess gave him a posy, and opened the gate after a while," said laurie, smiling to himself, as he threw acorns at his tutor. "what a piece of nonsense we have made! with practice we might do something quite clever. do you know truth?" "i hope so," said meg soberly. "the game, i mean?" "what is it?" said fred. "why, you pile up your hands, choose a number, and draw out in turn, and the person who draws at the number has to answer truly any question put by the rest. it's great fun." "let's try it," said jo, who liked new experiments. miss kate and mr. booke, meg, and ned declined, but fred, sallie, jo, and laurie piled and drew, and the lot fell to laurie. "who are your heroes?" asked jo. "grandfather and napoleon." "which lady here do you think prettiest?" said sallie. "margaret." "which do you like best?" from fred. "jo, of course." "what silly questions you ask!" and jo gave a disdainful shrug as the rest laughed at laurie's matter-of-fact tone. "try again. truth isn't a bad game," said fred. "it's a very good one for you," retorted jo in a low voice. her turn came next. "what is your greatest fault?' asked fred, by way of testing in her the virtue he lacked himself. "a quick temper." "what do you most wish for?" said laurie. "a pair of boot lacings," returned jo, guessing and defeating his purpose. "not a true answer. you must say what you really do want most." "genius. don't you wish you could give it to me, laurie?" and she slyly smiled in his disappointed face. "what virtues do you most admire in a man?" asked sallie. "courage and honesty." "now my turn," said fred, as his hand came last. "let's give it to him," whispered laurie to jo, who nodded and asked at once . . . "didn't you cheat at croquet?' "well, yes, a little bit." "good! didn't you take your story out of the sea lion?" said laurie. "rather." "don't you think the english nation perfect in every respect?" asked sallie. "i should be ashamed of myself if i didn't." "he's a true john bull. now, miss sallie, you shall have a chance without waiting to draw. i'll harrrow up your feelings first by asking if you don't think you are something of a flirt," said laurie, as jo nodded to fred as a sign that peace was declared. "you impertinent boy! of course i'm not," exclaimed sallie, with an air that proved the contrary. "what do you hate most?" asked fred. "spiders and rice pudding." "what do you like best?" asked jo. "dancing and french gloves." "well, i think truth is a very silly play. let's have a sensible game of authors to refresh our minds," proposed jo. ned, frank, and the little girls joined in this, and while it went on, the three elders sat apart, talking. miss kate took out her sketch again, and margaret watched her, while mr. brooke lay on the grass with a book, which he did not read. "how beautifully you do it! i wish i could draw," said meg, with mingled admiration and regret in her voice. "why don't you learn? i should think you had taste and talent for it," replied miss kate graciously. "i haven't time." "your mamma prefers other accomplishments, i fancy. so did mine, but i proved to her that i had talent by taking a few lessons privately, and then she was quite willing i should go on. can't you do the same with your governess?" "i have none." "i forgot young ladies in america go to school more than with us. very fine schools they are, too, papa says. you go to a private one, i suppose?" "i don't go at all. i am a governess myself." "oh. indeed!" said miss kate, but she might as well have said, "dear me, how dreadful!" for her tone implied it, and something in her face made meg color, and wish she had not been so frank. mr. brooke looked up and said quickly, young ladies in america love independence as much as their ancestors did, and are admired and respected for supporting themselves." "oh, yes, of course it's very nice and proper in them to do so. we have many most respectable and worthy young women who do the same and are employed by the nobility, because, being the daughters of gentlemen, they are both well bred and accomplished, you know," said miss kate in a patronizing tone that hurt meg's pride, and made her work seem not only more distasteful, but degrading. "did the german song suit, miss march?" inquired mr. brooke, breaking an awkward pause. "oh, yes! it was very sweet, and i'm much obliged to whoever translated it for me." and meg's downcast face brightened as she spoke. "don't you read german?" asked miss kate with a look of surprise. "not very well. my father, who taught me, is away, and i don't get on very fast alone, for i've no one to correct my pronunciation." "try a little now. here is schiller's mary stuart and a tutor who loves to teach." and mr. brooke laid his book on her lap with an inviting smile. "it's so hard i'm afraid to try," said meg, grateful, but bashful in the presence of the accomplished young lady beside her. "i'll read a bit to encourage you." and miss kate read one of the most beautiful passages in a perfectly correct but perfectly expressionless manner. mr. brooke made no comment as she returned the book to meg, who said innocently, "i thought it was poetry." "some of it is. try this passage." there was a queer smile about mr. brooke's mouth as he opened at poor mary's lament. meg obediently following the long grass-blade which her new tutor used to point with, read slowly and timidly, unconsciously making poetry of the hard words by the soft intonation of her musical voice. down the page went the green guide, and presently, forgetting her listener in the beauty of the sad scene, meg read as if alone, giving a little touch of tragedy to the words of the unhappy queen. if she had seen the brown eyes then, she would have stopped short, but she never looked up, and the lesson was not spoiled for her. "very well indeed!" said mr. brooke, as she paused, quite ignoring her many mistakes, and looking as if he did indeed love to teach. miss kate put up her glass, and, having taken a survey of the little tableau before her, shut her sketch book, saying with condescension, "you've a nice accent and in time will be a clever reader. i advise you to learn, for german is a valuable accomplishment to teachers. i must look after grace, she is romping." and miss kate strolled away, adding to herself with a shrug, "i didn't come to chaperone a governess, though she is young and pretty. what odd people these yankees are. i'm afraid laurie will be quite spoiled among them." "i forgot that english people rather turn up their noses at governesses and don't treat them as we do," said meg, looking after the retreating figure with an annoyed expression. "tutors also have rather a hard time of it there, as i know to my sorrow. there's no place like america for us workers, miss margaret." and mr. brooke looked so contented and cheerful that meg was ashamed to lament her hard lot. "i'm glad i live in it then. i don't like my work, but i get a good deal of satisfaction out of it after all, so i won't complain. i only wished i liked teaching as you do." "i think you would if you had laurie for a pupil. i shall be very sorry to lose him next year," said mr. brooke, busily punching holes in the turf. "going to college, i suppose?" meg's lips asked the question, but her eyes added, "and what becomes of you?" "yes, it's high time he went, for he is ready, and as soon as he is off, i shall turn soldier. i am needed." "i am glad of that!" exclaimed meg. "i should think every young man would want to go, though it is hard for the mothers and sisters who stay at home," she added sorrowfully. "i have neither, and very few friends to care whether i live or die," said mr. brooke rather bitterly as he absently put the dead rose in the hole he had made and covered it up, like a little grave. "laurie and his grandfather would care a great deal, and we should all be very sorry to have any harm happen to you," said meg heartily. "thank you, that sounds pleasant," began mr. brooke, looking cheerful again, but before he could finish his speech, ned, mounted on the old horse, came lumbering up to display his equestrian skill before the young ladies, and there was no more quiet that day. "don't you love to ride?" asked grace of amy, as they stood resting after a race round the field with the others, led by ned. "i dote upon it. my sister, meg, used to ride when papa was rich, but we don't keep any horses now, except ellen tree," added amy, laughing. "tell me about ellen tree. is it a donkey?" asked grace curiously. "why, you see, jo is crazy about horses and so am i, but we've only got an old sidesaddle and no horse. out in our garden is an apple tree that has a nice low branch, so jo put the saddle on it, fixed some reins on the part that turns up, and we bounce away on ellen tree whenever we like." "how funny!" laughed grace. "i have a pony at home, and ride nearly every day in the park with fred and kate. it's very nice, for my friends go too, and the row is full of ladies and gentlemen." "dear, how charming! i hope i shall go abroad some day, but i'd rather go to rome than the row," said amy, who had not the remotest idea what the row was and wouldn't have asked for the world. frank, sitting just behind the little girls, heard what they were saying, and pushed his crutch away from him with an impatient gesture as he watched the active lads going through all sorts of comical gymnastics. beth, who was collecting the scattered author cards, looked up and said, in her shy yet friendly way, "i'm afraid you are tired. can i do anything for you?" "talk to me, please. it's dull, sitting by myself," answered frank, who had evidently been used to being made much of at home. if he asked her to deliver a latin oration, it would not have seemed a more impossible task to bashful beth, but there was no place to run to, no jo to hide behind now, and the poor boy looked so wistfully at her that she bravely resolved to try. "what do you like to talk about?" she asked, fumbling over the cards and dropping half as she tried to tie them up. "well, i like to hear about cricket and boating and hunting," said frank, who had not yet learned to suit his amusements to his strength. my heart! what shall i do? i don't know anything about them, thought beth, and forgetting the boy's misfortune in her flurry, she said, hoping to make him talk, "i never saw any hunting, but i suppose you know all about it." "i did once, but i can never hunt again, for i got hurt leaping a confounded five-barred gate, so there are no more horses and hounds for me," said frank with a sigh that made beth hate herself for her innocent blunder. "your deer are much prettier than our ugly buffaloes," she said, turning to the prairies for help and feeling glad that she had read one of the boys' books in which jo delighted. buffaloes proved soothing and satisfactory, and in her eagerness to amuse another, beth forgot herself, and was quite unconscious of her sisters' surprise and delight at the unusual spectacle of beth talking away to one of the dreadful boys, against whom she had begged protection. "bless her heart! she pities him, so she is good to him," said jo, beaming at her from the croquet ground. "i always said she was a little saint," added meg, as if there could be no further doubt of it. "i haven't heard frank laugh so much for ever so long," said grace to amy, as they sat discussing dolls and making tea sets out of the acorn cups. "my sister beth is a very fastidious girl, when she likes to be," said amy, well pleased at beth's success. she meant `facinating', but as grace didn't know the exact meaning of either word, fastidious sounded well and made a good impression. an impromptu circus, fox and geese, and an amicable game of croquet finished the afternoon. at sunset the tent was struck, hampers packed, wickets pulled up, boats loaded, and the whole party floated down the river, singing at the tops of their voices. ned, getting sentimental, warbled a serenade with the pensive refrain . . . alone, alone, ah! woe, alone, and at the lines . . . we each are young, we each have a heart, oh, why should we stand thus coldly apart? he looked at meg with such a lackadiasical expression that she laughed outright and spoiled his song. "how can you be so cruel to me?" he whispered, under cover of a lively chorus. "you've kept close to that starched-up englishwoman all day, and now you snub me." "i didn't mean to, but you looked so funny i really couldn't help it," replied meg, passing over the first part of his reproach, for it was quite true that she had shunned him, remembering the moffat party and the talk after it. ned was offended and turned to sallie for consolation, saying to her rather pettishly, "there isn't a bit of flirt in that girl, is there?" "not a particle, but she's a dear," returned sallie, defending her friend even while confessing her shortcomings. "she's not a stricken deer anyway," said ned, trying to be witty, and succeeding as well as very young gentlemen usually do. on the lawn where it had gathered, the little party separated with cordial good nights and good-bys, for the vaughns were going to canada. as the four sisters went home through the garden, miss kate looked after them, saying, without the patronizing tone in her voice, "in spite of their demonstrative manners, american girls are very nice when one knows them." "i quite agree with you," said mr. brooke. chapter thirteen laurie lay luxuriously swinging to and fro in his hammock one warm september afternoon, wondering what his neighbors were about, but too lazy to go and find out. he was in one of his moods, for the day had been both unprofitable and unsatisfactory, and he was wishing he could live it over again. the hot weather made him indolent, and he had shirked his studies, tried mr. brooke's patience to the utmost, displeased his grandfather by practicing half the afternoon, frightened the maidservants half out of their wits by mischievously hinting that one of his dogs was going mad, and, after high words with the stableman about some fancied neglect of his horse, he had flung himself into his hammock to fume over the stupidity of the world in general, till the peace of the lovely day quieted him in spite of himself. staring up into the green gloom of the horse-chestnut trees above him, he dreamed dreams of all sorts, and was just imagining himself tossing on the ocean in a voyage round the world, when the sound of voices brought him ashore in a flash. peeping through the meshes of the hammock, he saw the marches coming out, as if bound on some expedition. "what in the world are those girls about now?" thought laurie, opening his sleepy eyes to take a good look, for there was something rather peculiar in the appearance of his neighbors. each wore a large, flapping hat, a brown linen pouch slung over one shoulder, and carried a long staff. meg had a cushion, jo a book, beth a basket, and amy a portfolio. all walked quietly through the garden, out at the little back gate, and began to climb the hill that lay between the house and river. "well, that's cool," said laurie to himself, "to have a picnic and never ask me! they can't be going in the boat, for they haven't got the key. perhaps they forgot it. i'll take it to them, and see what's going on." though possessed of half a dozen hats, it took him some time to find one, then there was a hunt for the key, which was at last discovered in his pocket, so that the girls were quite out of sight when leaped the fence and ran after them. taking the shortest way to the boathouse, he waited for them to appear, but no one came, and he went up the hill to take an observation. a grove of pines covered one part of it, and from the heart of this green spot came a clearer sound than the soft sigh of the pines or the drowsy chirp of the crickets. "here's a landscape!" thought laurie, peeping through the bushes, and looking wide-awake and good-natured already. it was a rather pretty little picture, for the sisters sat together in the shady nook, with sun and shadow flickering over them, the aromatic wind lifting their hair and cooling their hot cheeks, and all the little wood people going on with their affairs as if these were no strangers but old friends. meg sat upon her cushion, sewing daintily with her white hands, and looking as fresh and sweet as a rose in her pink dress among the green. beth was sorting the cones that lay thick under the hemlock near by, for she made pretty things with them. amy was sketching a group of ferns, and jo was knitting as she read aloud. a shadow passed over the boy's face as he watched them, feeling that he ought to go away because uninvited, yet lingering because home seemed very lonely and this quiet party in the woods most attractive to his restless spirit. he stood so still that a squirrel, busy with it's harvesting, ran dawn a pine close beside him, saw him suddenly and skipped back, scolding so shrilly that beth looked up, espied the wistful face behind the birches,and beckoned with a reassuring smile. "may i come in, please? or shall i be a bother?" he asked, advancing slowly. meg lifted her eyebrows, but jo scowled at her defiantly and said at once, "of course you may. we should have asked you before, only we thought you wouldn't care for such a girl's game as this." "i always like your games, but if meg doesn't want me, i'll go away." "i've no objection, if you do something. it's against the rules to be idle here," replied meg gravely but graciously. "much obliged. i'll do anything if you'll let me stop a bit, for it's as dull as the desert of sahara down there. shall i sew, read, cone, draw, or do all at once? bring on your bears. i'm ready." and laurie sat down with a submissive expression delightful to behold. "finish this story while i set my heel," said jo, handing him the book. "yes'm." was the meek answer, as he began, doing his best to prove his gratitude for the favor of admission into the `busy bee society'. the story was not a long one, and when it was finished, he ventured to ask a few questions as a reward of merit. "please, ma'am, could i inquire if this highly instructive and charming institution is a new one?" "would you tell him?" asked meg of her sisters. "he'll laugh," said amy warningly. "who cares?" said jo. "i guess he'll like it," added beth. "of course i shall! i give you my word i won't laugh. tell away, jo, and don't be afraid." "the idea of being afraid of you! well, you see we used to play pilgrim's progress, and we have been going on with it in earnest, all winter and summer." "yes, i know," said laurie, nodding wisely. "who told you?" demanded jo. "spirits." "no, i did. i wanted to amuse him one night when you were all away, and he was rather dismal. he did like it, so don't scold, jo," said beth meekly. "you can't keep a secret. never mind, it saves trouble now." "go on, please," said laurie, as jo became absorbed in her work, looking a trifle displeased. "oh, didn't she tell you about this new plan of ours? well, we have tried not to waste our holiday, but each has had a task and worked at it with a will. the vacation is nearly over, the stints are all done, and we are ever so glad that we didn't dawdle." "yes, i should think so," and laurie thought regretfully of his own idle days. "mother likes to have us out-of-doors as much as possible, so we bring our work here and have nice times. for the fun of it we bring our things in these bags, wear the old hats, use poles to climb the hill, and play pilgrims, as we used to do years ago. we call this hill the delectable mountain, for we can look far away and see the country where we hope to live some time." jo pointed, and laurie sat up to examine, for through an opening in the wood one could look cross the wide, blue river, the meadows on the other side, far over the outskirts of the great city, to the green hills that rose to meet the sky. the sun was low, and the heavens glowed with the splendor of an autumn sunset. gold and purple clouds lay on the hilltops, and rising high into the ruddy light were silvery white peaks that shone like the airy spires of some celestial city. "how beautiful that is!" said laurie softly, for he was quick to see and feel beauty of any kind. "it's often so, and we like to watch it, for it is never the same, but always splendid," replied amy, wishing she could paint it. "jo talks about the country where we hope to live some time-the real country, she means, with pigs and chickens and haymaking. it would be nice, but i wish the beautiful country up there was real, and we could ever go to it," said beth musingly. "there is a lovelier country even than that, where we shall go, by-and-by, when we are good enough," answered meg with her sweetest voice. "it seems so long to wait, so hard to do. i want to fly away at once, as those swallows fly, and go in at that splendid gate." "you'll get there, beth, sooner or later, no fear of that," said jo. "i'm the one that will have to fight and work, and climb and wait, and maybe never get in after all." "you'll have me for company, if that's any comfort. i shall have to do a deal of traveling before i come in sight of your celestial city. if i arrive late, you'll say a good word for me, won't you, beth?" something in the boy's face troubled his little friend, but she said cheerfully, with her quiet eyes on the changing clouds, "if people really want to go, and really try all their lives, i think they will get in, for i don't believe there are any locks on that door or any guards at the gate. i always imagine it is as it is in the picture, where the shining ones stretch out their hands to welcome poor christian as he comes up from the river. "wouldn't it be fun if all the castles in the air which we make could come true, and we could live in them?" said jo, after a little pause. "i've made such quantities it would be hard to choose which i'd have," said laurie, lying flat and throwing cones at the squirrel who had betrayed him. "you'd have to take your favorite one. what is it?" asked meg. "if i tell mine, will you tell yours?" "yes, if the girls will too." "we will. now, laurie." "after i'd seen as much of the world as i want to, i'd like to settle in germany and have just as much music as i choose. i'm to be a famous musician myself, and all creation is to rush to hear me. and i'm never to be bothered about money or business, but just enjoy myself and live for what i like. that's my favorite castle. what's yours, meg?" margaret seemed to find it a little hard to tell hers, and waved a brake before her face, as if to disperse imaginary gnats, while she said slowly, "i should like a lovely house, full of all sorts of luxurious things--nice food, pretty clothes, handsome furniture, pleasant people, and heaps of money. i am to be mistress of it, and manage it as i like, with plenty of servants, so i never need work a bit. how i should enjoy it! for i wouldn't be idle, but do good, and make everyone love me dearly." "wouldn't you have a master for your castle in the air?" asked laurie slyly. "i said `pleasant people', you know," and meg carefully tied up her shoe as she spoke, so that no one saw her face. "why don't you say you'd have a splendid, wise, good husband and some angelic little children? you know your castle wouldn't be perfect without," said blunt jo, who had no tender fancies yet, and rather scorned romance, except in books. "you'd have nothing but horses, inkstands, and novels in yours," answered meg petulantly. "wouldn't i though? i'd have a stable full of arabian steeds, rooms piled high with books, and i'd write out of a magic inkstand, so that my works should be as famous as laurie's music. i want to do something splendid before i go into my castle, something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after i'm dead. i don't know what, but i'm on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all some day. i think i shall write books, and get rich and famous, that would suit me, so that is my favorite dream." "mine is to stay at home safe with father and mother, and help take care of the family," said beth contentedly. "don't you wish for anything else?" asked laurie. "since i had my little piano, i am perfectly satisfied. i only wish we may all keep well and be together, nothing else." "i have ever so many wishes, but the pet one is to be an artist, and go to rome, and do fine pictures, and be the best artist in the whole world," was amy's modest desire. "we're an ambitious set, aren't we? every one of us, but beth, wants to be rich and famous, and gorgeous in every respect. i do wonder if any of us will ever get our wishes," said laurie, chewing grass like a meditative calf. "i've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether i can unlock the door remains to be seen," observed jo mysteriously. "i've got the key to mine, but i'm not allowed to try it. hang college!" muttered laurie with an impatient sigh. "here's mine!" and amy waved her pencil. "i haven't got any," said meg forlornly. "yes, you have," said laurie at once. "where?" "in your face." "nonsense, that's of no use." "wait and see if it doesn't bring you something worth having," replied the boy, laughing at the thought of a charming little secret which he fancied he knew. meg colored behind the brake, but asked no questions and looked across the river with the same expectant expression which mr. brooke had worn when he told the story of the knight. "if we are all alive ten years hence, let's meet, and see how many of us have got our wishes, or how much nearer we are then than now," said jo, always ready with a plan. "bless me! how old i shall be, twenty-seven!" exclaimed meg, who felt grown up already, having just reached seventeen. "you and i will be twenty-six, teddy, beth twenty-four, and amy twenty-two. what a venerable party!" said jo. "i hope i shall have done something to be proud of by that time, but i'm such a lazy dog, i'm afraid i shall dawdle, jo." "you need a motive, mother says, and when you get it, she is sure you'll work splendidly." "is she? by jupiter, i will, if i only get the chance!" cried laurie, sitting up with sudden energy. "i ought to be satisfied to please grandfather, and i do try, but it's working against the grain, you see, and comes hard. he wants me to be an india merchant, as he was, and i'd rather be shot. i hate tea and sild and spices, and every sort of rubbish his old ships bring, and i don't care how soon they go to the bottom when i own them. going to college ought to satisfy him, for if i give him four years he ought to let me off from the business. but he's set, and i've got to do just as he did, unless i break away and please myself, as my father did. if there was anyone left to stay with the old gentleman, i'd do it tomorrow." laurie spoke excitedly, and looked ready to carry his threat into execution on the slightest provocation, for he was growing up very fast and, in spite of his indolent ways, had a young man's hatred of subjection, a young man's restless longing to try the world for himself. "i advise you to sail away in one of your ships, and never come home again till you have tried your own way," said jo, whose imagination was fired by the thought of such a daring exploit, and whose sympathy was excited by what she called `teddy's wrongs'. "that's not right, jo. you mustn't talk in that way, and laurie mustn't take your bad advice. you should do just what your grandfather wishes, my dear boy," said meg in her most maternal tone. "do your best at college, and when he sees that you try to please him, i'm sure he won't be hard on you or unjust to you. as you say, there is no one else to stay with and love him, and you'd never forgive yourself if you left him without his permission. don't be dismal or fret, but do your duty and you'll get your reward, as good mr. brooke has, by being respected and loved." "what do you know about him?" asked laurie, grateful for the good advice, but objecting to the lecture, and glad to turn the conversation from himself after his unusual outbreak. "only what your grandpa told us about him, how he took good care of his own mother till she died, and wouldn't go abroad as tutor to some nice person because he wouldn't leave her. and how he provides now for an old woman who nursed his mother, and never tells anyone, but is just as generous and patient and good as he can be." "so he is, dear old fellow!" said laurie heartily, as meg paused, looking flushed and earnest with her story. "it's like grandpa to find out all about him without letting him know, and to tell all his goodness to others, so that they might like him. brooke couldn't understand why your mother was so kind to him, asking him over with me and treating him in her beautiful friendly way. he thought she was just perfect, and talked about it for days and days, and went on about you all in flaming style. if ever i do get my wish, you see what i'll do for booke." "begin to do something now by not plaguing his life out," said meg sharply. "how do you know i do, miss?" "i can always tell by his face when he goes away. if you have been good, he looks satisfied and walks briskly. if you have plagued him, he's sober and walks slowly, as if he wanted to go back and do his work better." "well, i like that? so you keep an account of my good and bad marks in brooke's face, do you? i see him bow and smile as he passes your window, but i didn't know you'd got up a telegraph." "we haven't. don't be angry, and oh, don't tell him i said anything! it was only to show that i cared how you get on, and what is said here is said in confidence, you know," cried meg, much alarmed at the thought of what might follow from her careless speech. "i don't tell tales," replied laurie, with his `high and mighty' air, as jo called a certain expression which he occasionally wore. "only if brooke is going to be a thermometer, i must mind and have fair weather for him to report." "please don't be offended. i didn't meant to preach or tell tales or be silly. i only thought jo was encouraging you in a feeling which you'd be sorry for by-and-by. you are so kind to us, we feel as if you were our brother and say just what we think. forgive me, i meant it kindly." and meg offered her hand with a gesture both affectionate and timid. ashamed of his momentary pique, laurie squeezed the kind little hand, and said frankly, "i'm the one to be forgiven. i'm cross and have been out of sorts all day. i like to have you tell me my faults and be sisterly, so don't mind if i am grumpy sometimes. i thank you all the same." bent on showing that he was not offended, he made himself as agreeable as possible, wound cotton for meg, recited poetry to please jo, shook down cones for beth, and helped amy with her ferns, proving himself a fit person to belong to the `busy bee society'. in the midst of an animated discussion on the domestic habits of turtles (one of those amiable creatures having strolled up from the river), the faint sound of a bell warned them that hannah had put the tea `to draw', and they would just have time to get home to supper. "may i come again?" asked laurie. "yes, if your are good, and love your book, as the boys in the primer are told to do," said meg, smiling. "i'll try." "then you may come, and i'll teach you to knit as the scotchmen do. there's a demand for socks just now," added jo, waving hers like a big blue worsted banner as they parted at the gate. that night, when beth played to mr. laurence in the twilight, laurie, standing in the shadow of the curtain, listened to the little david, whose simple music always quieted his moody spirit, and watched the old man, who sat with his gray head on his hand, thinking tender thoughts of the dead child he had loved so much. remembering the conversation of the afternoon, the boy said to himself, with the resolve to make the sacrifice cheerfully, "i'll let my castle go, and stay with the dear old gentleman while he needs me, for i am all he has." chapter fourteen jo was very busy in the garret, for the october days began to grow chilly, and the afternoons were short. for two or three hours the sun lay warmly in the high window, showing jo seated on the old sofa, writing busily, with her papers spread out upon a trunk before her, while scrabble, the pet rat, promenaded the beams overhead, accompanied by his oldest son, a fine young fellow, who was evidently very proud of his whiskers. quite absorbed in her work, jo scribbled away till the last page was filled, when she signed her name with a flourish and threw down her pen, exclaiming . . . "there, i've done my best! if this won't suit i shall have to wait till i can do better." lying back on the sofa, she read the manuscript carefully through, making dashes here and there, and putting in many exclamation points, which looked like little balloons. then she tied it up with a smart red ribbon, and sat a minute looking at it with a sober, wistful expression, which plainly showed how ernest her work had been. jo's desk up here was an old tin kitchen which hung against the wall. it it she kept her papers, and a few books, safely shut away from scrabble, who, being likewise of a literary turn,was fond of making a circulating library of such books as were left in his way by eating the leaves. from this tin receptacle jo produced another manuscript, and putting both in her pocket, crept quietly downstairs, leaving her friends to nibble on her pens and taste her ink. she put on her hat and jacket as noiselessly as possible, and going to the back entry window, got out upon the roof of a low porch, swung herself down to the grassy bank, and took a roundabout way to the road. once there, she composed herself, hailed a passing omnibus, and rolled away to town, looking very merry and mysterious. if anyone had been watching her, he would have thought her movements decidedly peculiar, for on alighting, she went off at a great pace till she reached a certain number in a certain busy street. having found the place with some difficulty, she went into the doorway, looked up the dirty stairs, and after standing stock still a minute, suddenly dived into the street and walked away as rapidly as she came. this maneuver she repeated several times, to the great amusement of a black-eyed young gentleman lounging in the window of a building opposite. on returning for the third time, jo gave herself a shake, pulled her hat over her eyes, and walked up the stairs, looking as if she were going to have all her teeth out. there was a dentist's sign, among others, which adorned the entrance, and after staring a moment at the pair of artificial jaws which slowly opened and shut to draw attention to a fine set of teeth, the young gentleman put on his coat, took his hat, and went down to post himself in the opposite doorway, saying with a smile and a shiver, "it's like her to come alone, but if she has a bad time she'll need someone to help her home." in ten minutes jo came running downstairs with a very red face and the general appearance of a person who had just passed through a trying ordeal of some sort. when she saw the young gentleman she looked anything but pleased, and passed him with a nod. but he followed, asking with an air of sympathy, "did you have a bad time?" "not very." "you got through quickly." "yes, thank goodness!" "why did you go alone?" "didn't want anyone to know." "you're the oddest fellow i ever saw. how many did you have out?" jo looked at her friend as if she did not understand him, then began to laugh as if mightily amused at something. "there are two which i want to have come out, but i must wait a week." "what are you laughing at? you are up to some mischief, jo," said laurie, looking mystified. "so are you. what were you doing, sir, up in that billiard saloon?" "begging your pardon, ma'am, it wasn't a billiard saloon, but a gymnasium, and i was taking a lesson in fencing." "i'm glad of that." "why?" "you can teach me, and then when we play hamlet, you can be laertes, and we'll make a fine thing of the fencing scene." "laurie burst out with a hearty boy's laugh, which made several passers-by smile in spite of themselves. "i'll teach you whether we play hamlet or not. it's grand fun and will straighten you up capitally. but i don't believe that was your only reason for saying `i'm glad' in that decided way, was it now?" "no, i was glad that you were not in the saloon, because i hope you never go to such places. do you?" "not often." "i wish you wouldn't." "it's no harm, jo. i have billiards at home, but it's no fun unless you have good players, so, as i'm fond of it, i come sometimes and have a game with ned moffat or some of the other fellows." "oh, dear, i'm so sorry, for you'll get to liking it better and better, and will waste time and money, and grow like those dreadful boys. i did hope you'd stay respectable and be a satisfaction to your friends," said jo, shaking her head. "can't a fellow take a little innocent amusement now and then without losing his respectability?" asked laurie, looking nettled. "that depends upon how and where he takes it. i don't like ned and his set, and wish you'd keep out of it. mother won't let us have him at our house, though he wants to come. and if you grow like him she won't be willing to have us frolic together as we do now." "won't she?" asked laurie anxiously. "no, she can't bear fashionable young men, and she'd shut us all up in bandboxes rather than have us associate with them." "well, she needn't get out her bandboxes yet. i'm not a fashionable party and don't mean to be, but i do like harmless larks now and then, don't you?" "yes, nobody minds them, so lark away, but don't get wild, will you? or there will be an end of all our good times." "i'll be a double distilled saint." "i can't bear saints. just be a simple, honest, respectable boy, and we'll never desert you. i don't know what i should do if you acted like mr. king's son. he had plenty of money, but didn't know how to spend it, and got tipsy and gambled, and ran away, and forged his father's name, i believe, and was altogether horrid." "you think i'm likely to do the same? much obliged." "no, i don't--oh, dear, no!--but i hear people talking about money being such a temptation, and i sometimes wish you were poor. i shouldn't worry then." "do you worry about me, jo?" "a little, when you look moody and discontented, as you sometimes do, for you've got such a strong will, if you once get started wrong, i'm afraid it would be hard to stop you." laurie walked in silence a few minutes, and jo watched him, wishing she had held her tongue, for his eyes looked angry, though his lips smiled as if at her warnings. "are you going to deliver lectures all the way home?" he asked presently. "of course not. why?" "because if you are, i'll take a bus. if you're not, i'd like to walk with you and tell you something very interesting." "i won't preach any more, and i'd like to hear the news immensely." "very well, then, come on. it's a secret, and if i tell you, you must tell me yours." "i haven't got any," began jo, but stopped suddenly, remembering that she had. "you know you have--you can't hide anything, so up and fess, or i won't tell," cried laurie. "is your secret a nice one?" "oh, isn't it! all about people you know, and such fun! you ought to hear it, and i've been aching to tell it this long time. come, you begin." "you'll not say anything about it at home, will you?" "not a word." "and you won't tease me in private?" "i never tease." "yes, you do. you get everything you want out of people. i don't know how you do it, but you are a born wheedler." "thank you. fire away." "well, i've left two stories with a newspaperman, and he's to give his answer next week," whispered jo, in her confidant's ear. "hurrah for miss march, the celebrated american authoress!" cried laurie, throwing up his hat and catching it again, to the great delight of two ducks, four cats, five hens, and half a dozen irish children, for they were out of the city now. "hush! it won't come to anything, i dare say, but i couldn't rest till i had tried, and i said nothing about it because i didn't want anyone else to be disappointed." "it won't fail. why, jo, your stories are works of shakespeare compared to half the rubbish that is published every day. won't it be fun to see them in print, and shan't we feel proud of our authoress?" jo's eyes sparkled, for it is always pleasant to be believed in, and a friend's praise is always sweeter than a dozen newspaper puffs. "where's your secret? play fair, teddy, or i'll never believe you again," she said, trying to extinguish the brilliant hopes that blazed up at a word of encouragement. "i may get into a scrape for telling, but i didn't promise not to, so i will, for i never feel easy in my mind till i've told you any plummy bit of news i get. i know where meg's glove is." "is that all? said jo, looking disappointed, as laurie nodded and twinkled with a face full of mysterious intelligence. "it's quite enough for the present, as you'll agree when i tell you where it is." "tell, then." laurie bent, and whispered three words in jo's ear, which produced a comical change. she stood and stared at him for a minute, looking both surprised and displeased, then walked on, saying sharply, "how do you know?" "saw it." "where?' "pocket." "all this time?" "yes, isn't that romantic?" "no, it's horrid." "don't you like it?" "of course i don't. it's ridiculous, it won't be allowed. my patience! what would meg say?" "you are not to tell anyone. mind that." "i didn't promise." "that was understood, and i trusted you." "well, i won't for the present, anyway, but i'm disgusted, and wish you hadn't told me." "i thought you'd be pleased." "at the idea of anybody coming to take meg away? no, thank you." "you'll feel better about it when somebody comes to take you away." "i'd like to see anyone try it," cried jo fiercely. "so should i!" and laurie chuckled at the idea. "i don't think secrets agree with me, i feel rumpled up in my mind since you told me that," said jo rather ungratefully. "race down this hill with me, and you'll be all right," suggested laurie. no one was in sight, the smooth road sloped invitingly before her, and finding the temptation irresistible, jo darted away, soon leaving hat and comb behind her and scattering hairpins as she ran. laurie reached the goal first and was quite satisfied with the success of his treatment, for his atalanta came panting up with flying hair, bright eyes, ruddy cheeks, and no signs of dissatisfaction in her face. "i wish i was a horse, then i could run for miles in this splendid air, and not lose my breath. it was capital, but see what a guy it's made me. go, pick up my things, like a cherub, as you are," said jo, dropping down under a maple tree, which was carpeting the bank with crimson leaves. laurie leisurely departed to recover the lost property, and jo bundled up her braids, hoping no one would pass by till she was tidy again. but someone did pass, and who should it be but meg, looking particularly ladylike in her state and festival suit, for she had been making calls. "what in the world are you doing here?" she asked, regarding her disheveled sister with well-bred surprise. "getting leaves," meekly answered jo, sorting the rosy handful she had just swept up. "and hairpins," added laurie, throwing half a dozen into jo's lap. "they grow on this road, meg, so do combs and brown straw hats." "you have been running, jo. how could you? when will you stop such romping ways?" said meg reprovingly, as she settled her cuffs and smoothed her hair, with which the wind had taken liberties. "never till i'm stiff and old and have to use a crutch. don't try to make me grow up before my time, meg. it's hard enough to have you change all of a sudden. let me be a little girl as long as i can." as she spoke, jo bent over the leaves to hide the trembling of her lips, for lately she had felt that margaret was fast getting to be a woman, and laurie's secret made her dread the separation which must surely come some time and now seemed very near. he saw the trouble in her face and drew meg's attention from it by asking quickly, "where have you been calling, all so fine?" "at the gardiners', and sallie has been telling me all about belle moffat's wedding. it was very splendid, and they have gone to spend the winter in paris. just think how delightful that must be!" "do you envy her, meg?" said laurie. "i'm afraid i do." "i'm glad of it!" muttered jo, tying on her hat with a jerk. "why?" asked meg, looking surprised. "because if you care much about riches, you will never go and marry a poor man," said jo, frowning at laurie, who was mutely warning her to mind what she said. "i shall never `go and marry' anyone," observed meg, walking on with great dignity while the others followed, laughing, whispering, skipping stones, and `behaving like children', as meg said to herself, though she might have been tempted to join them if she had not had her best dress on. for a week or two, jo behaved so queerly that her sisters were quite bewildered. she rushed to the door when the postman rang, was rude to mr. brooke whenever they met, would sit looking at meg with a woe-begone face, occasionally jumping up to shake and then kiss her in a very mysterious manner. laurie and she were always making signs to one another, and talking about `spread eagles' till the girls declared they had both lost their wits. on the second saturday after jo got out of the window, meg, as she sat sewing at her window, was scandalized by the sight of laurie chasing jo all over the garden and finally capturing her in amy's bower. what went on there, meg could not see, but shrieks of laughter were heard, followed by the murmur of voices and a great flapping of newspapers. "what shall we do with that girl? she never will behave like a young lady," sighed meg, as she watched the race with a disapproving face. "i hope she won't. she is so funny and dear as she is," said beth, who had never betrayed that she was a little hurt at jo's having secrets with anyone but her. "it's very trying, but we never can make her commy la fo," added amy, who sat making some new frills for herself, with her curls tied up in a very becoming way., two agreeable things that made her feel unusually elegant and ladylike. in a few minutes jo bounced in, laid herself on the sofa, and affected to read. "have you anything interesting there?" asked meg, with condescension. "nothing but a story, won't amount to much, i guess," returned jo, carefully keeping the name of the paper out of sight. "you'd better read it aloud. that will amuse us and keep you out of mischief," said amy in her most grown-up tone. "what's the name?" asked beth, wondering why jo kept her face behind the sheet. "the rival painters." "that sounds well. read it," said meg. with a loud "hem!" and a long breath, jo began to read very fast. the girls listened with interest, for the tale was romantic, and somewhat pathetic, as most of the characters died in the end. "i like that about the splendid picture," was amy's approving remark, as jo paused. "i prefer the lovering part. viola and angelo are two of our favorite names, isn't that queer?" said meg, wiping her eyes, for the lovering part was tragical. "who wrote it?" asked beth, who had caught a glimpse of jo's face. the reader suddenly sat up, cast away the paper, displaying a flushed countenance, and with a funny mixture of solemnity and excitement replied in a loud voice, "your sister." "you?" cried meg, dropping her work. "it's very good," said amy critically. "i knew it! i knew it! oh, my jo, i am so proud!" and beth ran to hug her sister and exult over this splendid success. dear me, how delighted they all were, to be sure! how meg wouldn't believe it till she saw the words. "miss josephine march," actually printed in the paper. how graciously amy critisized the artistic parts of the story, and offered hints for a sequel, which unfortunately couldn't be carried out, as the hero and heroine were dead. how beth got excited, and skipped and sang with joy. how hannah came in to exclaim, "sakes alive, well i never!" in great astonishment at `that jo's doin's'. how proud mrs. march was when she knew it. how jo laughed, with tears in her eyes, as she declared she might as well be a peacock and done with it. and how th `spread eagle' might be said to flap his wings triumphantly over the house of march, as the paper passed from hand to hand. "tell us about it." "when did it come?" "how much did you get for it?" "what will father say?" "won't laurie laugh?" cried the family, all in one breath as they clustered about jo, for these foolish, affectionate people mad a jubilee of every little household joy. "stop jabbering, girls, and i'll tell you everything," said jo, wondering if miss burney felt any grander over her evilina than she did over her `rival painters'. having told how she disposed of her tales, jo added, "and when i went to get my answer, the man said he liked them both, but didn't pay beginners, only let them print in his paper, and noticed the stories. it was good practice, he said, and when the beginners improved, anyone would pay. so i let him have the two stories, and today this was sent to me, and laurie caught me with it and insisted on seeing it, so i let him. and he said it was good, and i shall write more, and he's going to get the next paid for, and i am so happy, for in time i may be able to support myself and help the girls." jo's breath gave out here, and wrapping her head in the paper, she bedewed her little story with a few natural tears, for to be independent and earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest wishes of her heart, and this seemed to be the first step toward that happy end. chapter fifteen "november is the most disagreeable month in the whole year," said margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden. "that's the reason i was born in it," observed jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose. "if something very pleasant should happen now, we should think it a delightful month," said beth, who took a hopeful view of everything, even november. "i dare say, but nothing pleasant ever does happen in this family," said meg, who was out of sorts. "we go grubbing along day after day, without a bit of change, and very little fun. we might as well be in a treadmill." "my patience, how blue we are!" cried jo. "i don't much wonder, poor dear, for you see other girls having splendid times, while you grind, grind, year in and year out. oh, don't i wish i could manage things for you as i do for my heroines! you're pretty enough and good enough already, so i'd have some rich relation leave you a fortune unexpectedly. then you'd dash out as an heiress, scorn everyone who has slighted you, go abroad, and come home my lady something in a blaze of splendor and elegance." "people don't have fortunes left them in that style nowadays, men have to work and women marry for money. it's a dreadfully unjust world," said meg bitterly. "jo and i are going to make fortunes for you all. just wait ten years, and see if we don't," said amy, who sat in a corner making mud pies, as hannah called her little clay models of birds, fruit, and faces. "can't wait, and i'm afraid i haven't much faith in ink and dirt, though i'm grateful for your good intentions. meg sighed, and turned to the frostbitten garden again. jo groaned and leaned both elbows on the table in a despondent attitude, but amy spatted away energetically, and beth, who sat at the other window, said, smiling, "two pleasant things are going to happen right away. marmee is coming down the street, and laurie is tramping through the garden as if he had something nice to tell." in they both came, mrs. march with her usual question, "any letter from father, girls?" and laurie to say in his persuasive way, "won't some of you come for a drive? i've been working away at mathematics till my head is in a muddle, and i'm going to freshen my wits by a brisk turn. it's a dull day, but the air isn't bad, and i'm going to take brooke home, so it will be gay inside, if it isn't out. come, jo, you and beth will go, won't you?" "of course we will." "much obliged, but i'm busy." and meg whisked out her workbasket, for she had agreed with her mother that it was best, for her at least, not to drive too often with the young gentleman. "we three will be ready in a minute," cried amy, running away to wash her hands. "can i do anything for you, madam mother?" asked laurie, leaning over mrs. march's chair with the affectionate look and tone he always gave her. "no, thank you, except call at the office, if you'll be so kind, dear. it's our day for a letter, and the postman hasn't been. father is as regular as the sun, but there's some delay on the way, perhaps." a sharp ring interrupted her, and a minute after hannah came in with a letter. "it's one of them horrid telegraph things, mum," she said, handling it as if she was afraid it would explode and do some damage. at the word `telegraph', mrs. march snatched it, read the two lines it contained, and dropped back into her chair as white as if the little paper had sent a bullet to her heart. laurie dashed downstairs for water, while meg and hannah supported her, and jo read aloud, in a frightened voice . . . mrs. march: your husband is very ill. come at once. s. hale blank hospital, washington. how still the room was as they listened breathlessly, how strangely the day darkened outside, and how suddenly the whole world seemed to change, as the girls gathered about their mother, feeling as if all the happiness and support of their lives was about to be taken from them. mrs. march was herself again directly, read the message over, and stretched out her arms to her daughters, saying, in a tone they never forgot, "i shall go at once, but it may be too late. oh, children, children, help me to bear it!" for several minutes there was nothing but the sound of sobbing in the room, mingled with broken words of comfort, tender assurances of help, and hopeful whispers that died away in tears. poor hannah was the first to recover, and with unconscious wisdom she set all the rest a good example, for with her, work was panacea for most afflictions. "the lord keep the dear man! i won't waste no time a-cryin', but git your things ready right away, mum," she said heartily, as she wiped her face on her apron, gave her mistress a warm shake of the hand with her own hard one, and went away to work like three women in one. "she's right, there's no time for tears now. be calm, girls, and let me think." they tried to be calm, poor things, as their mother sat up, looking pale but steady, and put away her grief to think and plan for them. "where's laurie?' she asked presently, when she had collected her thoughts and decided on the first duties to be done. "here, ma'am. oh, let me do something!" cried the boy, hurrying from the next room whither he had withdrawn, feeling that their first sorrow was too sacred for even his friendly eyes to see. "send a telegram saying i will come at once. the next train goes early in the morning. i'll take that." "what else? the horses are ready. i can go anywhere, do anything," he said, looking ready to fly to the ends of the earth. "leave a note at aunt march's. jo, give me that pen and paper." tearing off the blank side of one of her newly copied pages, jo drew the table before her mother, well knowing that money for the long, sad journey must be borrowed, and feeling as if she could do anything to add to a little to the sum for her father. "now go, dear, but don't kill yourself driving at a desperate pace. there is no need of that." mrs. march's warning was evidently thrown away, for five minutes later laurie tore by the window on his own fleet horse, riding as if for his life. "jo, run to the rooms, and tell mrs. king that i can't come. on the way get these things. i'll put them down, they'll be needed and i must go prepared for nursing. hospital stores are not always good. beth, go and ask mr. laurence for a couple of bottles of old wine. i'm not too proud to beg for father. he shall have the best of everything. amy, tell hannah to get down the black trunk, and meg, come and help me find my things, for i'm half bewildered." writing, thinking, and directing all at once might well bewilder the poor lady, and meg begged her to sit quietly in her room for a little while, and let them work. everyone scattered like leaves before a gust of wind, and the quiet, happy household was broken up as suddenly as if the paper had been an evil spell. mr. laurence came hurrying back with beth, bringing every comfort the kind old gentleman could think of for the invalid, and friendliest promises of protection for the girls during the mother's absence, which comforted her very much. there was nothing he didn't offer, from his own dressing gown to himself as escort. but the last was impossible. mrs. march would not hear of the old gentleman's undertaking the long journey, yet an expression of relief was visible when he spoke of it, for anxiety ill fits one for traveling. he saw the look, knit his heavy eyebrows, rubbed his hands, and marched abruptly away, saying he'd be back directly. no one had time to think of him again till, as meg ran through the entry, with a pair of rubbers in one hand and a cup of tea in the other, she came suddenly upon mr. brooke. "i'm very sorry to hear of this, miss march," he said, in the kind, quiet tone which sounded very pleasantly to her perturbed spirit. "i came to offer myself as escort to your mother. mr. laurence has commissions for me in washington, and it will give me real satisfaction to be of service to her there." down dropped the rubbers, and the tea was very near following, as meg put out her hand, with a face so full of gratitude that mr. brooke would have felt repaid for a much greater sacrifice than the trifling one of time and comfort which he was about to take. "how kind you all are! mother will accept, i'm sure, and it will be such a relief to know that she has someone to take care of her. thank you very, very much!" meg spoke earnestly, and forgot herself entirely till something in the brown eyes looking down at her made her remember the cooling tea, and lead the way into the parlor, saying she would call her mother. everything was arranged by the time laurie returned with a note from aunt march, enclosing the desired sum, and a few lines repeating what she had often said before, that she had always told them it was absurd for march to go into the army, always predicted that no good would come of it, and she hoped they would take her advice the next time. mrs. march put the note in the fire, the money in her purse, and went on with her preparations, with her lips folded tightly in a way which jo would have understood if she had been there. the short afternoon wore away. all other errands were done, and meg and her mother busy at some necessary needlework, while beth and amy goth tea, and hannah finished her ironing with what she called a `slap and a bang', but still jo did not come. they began to get anxious, and laurie went off to find her, for no one knew what freak jo might take into her head. he missed her, however, and she came walking in with a very queer expression of countenance, for there was a mixture of fun and fear, satisfaction and regret in it, which puzzled the family as much as did the roll of bills she laid before her mother, saying with a little choke in her voice, "that's my contribution toward making father comfortable and bringing him home!" "my dear, where did you get it? twenty-five dollars! jo, i hope you haven't done anything rash?" "no, it's mine honestly. i didn't beg, borrow, or steal it. i earned it, and i don't think you'll blame me, for i only sold what was my own." as she spoke, jo took off her bonnet, and a general outcry arose, for all her abundant hair was cut short. "your hair! your beautiful hair!" "oh, jo, how could you? your one beauty." "my dear girl, there was no need of this." "she doesn't look like my jo any more, but i love her dearly for it!" as everyone exclaimed, and beth hugged the cropped head tenderly, jo assumed an indifferent air, which did not deceive anyone a particle, and said, rumpling up the brown bush and trying to look as if she liked it, "it doesn't affect the fate of the nation, so don't wail, beth. it will be good for my vanity, i getting too proud of my wig. it will do my brains good to have that mop taken off. my head feels deliciously light and cool, and the barber said i could soon have a curly crop, which will be boyish, becoming, and easy to keep in order. i'm satisfied, so please take the money and let's have supper." "tell me all about it, jo. i am not quite satisfied, but i can't blame you, for i know how willingly you sacrificed your vanity, as you call it, to your love. but, my dear, it was not necessary, and i'm afraid you will regret it one of these days," said mrs. march. "no, i won't!" returned jo stoutly, feeling much relieved that her prank was not entirely condemned. "what made you do it?" asked amy, who would as soon have thought of cutting off her head as her pretty hair. "well, i was wild to to something for father," replied jo, as they gathered about the table, for healthy young people can eat even in the midst of trouble. "i hate to borrow as much as mother does, and i knew aunt march would croak, she always does, if you ask for a ninepence. meg gave all her quarterly salary toward the rent, and i only got some clothes with mine, so i felt wicked, and was bound to have some money, if i sold the nose off my face to get it." "you needn't feel wicked, my child! you had no winter things and got the simplest with your own hard earnings," said mrs. march with a look that warmed jo's heart. "i hadn't the least idea of selling my hair at first, but as i went along i kept thinking what i could do, and feeling as if i'd like to dive into some of the rich stores and help myself. in a barber's window i saw tails of hair with the prices marked, and one black tail, not so thick as mine, was forty dollars. it came to me all of a sudden that i had one thing to make money out of, and without stopping to think, i walked in, asked if they bought hair, and what they would give for mine." "i don't see how you dared to do it," said beth in a tone of awe. "oh, he was a little man who looked as if he merely lived to oil his hair. he rather stared at first, as if he wasn't used to having girls bounce into his shop and ask him to buy their hair. he said he didn't care about mine, it wasn't the fashionable color, and he never paid much for it in the first place. the work he put it into it made it dear, and so on. it was getting late, and i was afraid if it wasn't done right away that i shouldn't have it done at all, and you know when i start to do a thing, i hate to give it up. so i begged him to take it, and told him why i was in such a hurry. it was silly, i dare say, but it changed his mind, for i got rather excited, and told the story in my topsy-turvy way, and his wife heard, and said so kindly, `take it, thomas, and oblige the young lady. i'd do as much for our jimmy any day if i had a spire of hair worth selling." "who was jimmy?" asked amy, who liked to have things explained as they went along. "her son, she said, who was in the army. how friendly such things make strangers feel, don't they? she talked away all the time the man clipped, and diverted my mind nicely." "didn't you feel dreadfully when the first cut came?" asked meg, with a shiver. "i took a last look at my hair while the man got his things, and that was the end of it. i never snivel over trifles like that. i will confess, though, i felt queer when i saw the dear old hair laid out on the table, and felt only the short rough ends of my head. it almost seemed as if i'd an arm or leg off. the woman saw me look at it, and picked out a long lock for me to keep. i'll give it to you, marmee, just to remember past glories by, for a crop is so comfortable i don't think i shall ever have a mane again." mrs. march folded the wavy chestnut lock, and laid it away with a short gray one in her desk. she only said, "thank you, deary," but something in her face made the girls change the subject, and talk as cheerfully as they could about mr. brooke's kindness, the prospect of a fine day tomorrow, and the happy times they would have when father came home to be nursed. no one wanted to go to bed when at ten o'clock mrs. march put by the last finished job, and said, "come girls." beth went to the piano and played the father's favorite hymn. all began bravely, but broke down one by one till beth was left alone, singing with all her heart, for to her music was always a sweet consoler. "go to bed and don't talk, for we must be up early and shall need all the sleep we can get. good night, my darlings," said mrs. march, as the hymn ended, for no one cared to try another. they kissed her quietly, and went to bed as silently as if the dear invalid lay in the next room. beth and amy soon fell asleep in spite of the great trouble, but meg lay awake, thinking the most serious thoughts she had ever known in her short life. jo lay motionless, and her sister fancied that she was asleep, till a stifled sob made her exclaim, as she touched a wet cheek . . . "jo, dear, what is it? are you crying about father?" "no, not now." "what then?" "my . . . my hair!" burst out poor jo, trying vainly to smother her emotion in the pillow. it did not seem at all comical to meg, who kissed and caressed the afflicted heroine in the tenderest manner. "i'm not sorry," protested jo, with a choke. "i'd do it again tomorrow, if i could. it's only the vain part of me that goes and cries in this silly way. don't tell anyone, it's all over now. i thought you were asleep, so i just made a little private moan for my one beauty. how came you to be awake?" "i can't sleep, i'm so anxious," said meg. "think about something pleasant, and you'll soon drop off." "i tried it, but felt wider awake than ever." "what did you think of?" "handsome faces--eyes particularly," answered meg, smiling to herself in the dark. "what color do you like best?" "brown, that is, sometimes. blue are lovely." jo, laughed, and meg sharply ordered her not to talk, then amiably promised to make her hair curl, and fell asleep to dream of living in her castle in the air. the clocks were striking midnight and the rooms were very still as a figure glided quietly from bed to bed, smoothing a coverlet here, settling a pillow there, and pausing to look long and tenderly at each unconscious face, to kiss each with lips that mutely blessed, and to pray the fervent prayers which only mothers utter. as she lifted the curtain to look out into the dreary night, the moon broke suddenly from behind the clouds and shone upon her like a bright, benignant face, which seemed to whisper in the silence," be comforted, dear soul! there is always light behind the clouds." chapter sixteen in the cold gray dawn the sisters lit their lamp and read their chapter with an earnestness never felt before. for now the shadow of a real trouble had come, the little books were full of help and comfort, and as they dressed, they agreed to say goodbye cheerfully and hopefully, and send their mother on her anxious journey unsaddened by tears or complaints from them. everything seemed very strange when they went down, so dim and still outside, so full of light and bustle within. breakfast at that early hour seemed odd, and even hannah's familiar face looked unnatural as she flew about her kitchen with her nightcap on. the big trunk stood ready in the hall, mother's cloak and bonnet lay on the sofa, and mother herself sat trying to eat, but looking so pale and worn with sleeplessness and anxiety that the girls found it very hard to keep their resolution. meg's eyes kept filling in spite of herself, jo was obliged to hide her face in the kitchen roller more than once, ant the little girls wore a grave, troubled expression, as if sorrow was a new experience to them. nobody talked much, but as the time drew very near and they sat waiting for the carriage, mrs. march said to the girls, who were all busied about her, one folding her shawl, another smoothing out the strings of her bonnet, a third putting on her overshoes, and a forth fastening up her travelling bag . . . "children, i leave you to hannah's care and mr. laurence's protection. hannah is faithfulness itself, and our good neighbor will guard you as if you were his own. i have no fears for you, yet i am anxious that you should take this trouble rightly. don't grieve and fret when i am gone, or think that you can be idle and comfort yourselves by being idle and trying to forget. go on with your work as usual, for work is a blessed solace. hope and keep busy, and whatever happens, remember that you never can be fatherless." "yes, mother." "meg, dear, be prudent, watch over your sisters, consult hannah, and in any perplexity, go to mr. laurence. be patient, jo, don't get despondent or do rash things, write to me often, and be my brave girl, ready to help and cheer all. beth, comfort yourself with your music, and be faithful to the little home duties, and you amy, help all you can, be obedient, and keep happy safe at home." "we will, mother! we will!" the rattle of an approaching carriage made them all start and listen. that was the hard minute, but the girls stood it well. no one cried, no one ran away or uttered a lamentation, though their hearts were very heavy as they sent loving messages to father, remembering, as they spoke that it might be too late to deliver them. they kissed their mother quietly, clung about her tenderly, and tried to wave their hands cheerfully when she drove away. laurie and his grandfather came over to see her off, and mr. brooke looked so strong and sensible and kind that the girls christened him `mr. greatheart' on the spot. "goodby, my darlings! god bless and keep us all!" whispered mrs. march, as she kissed one dear little face after the other, and hurried into the carriage. as she rolled away, the sun came out, and looking back, she saw it shining on the group at the gate like a good omen. they saw it also, and smiled and waved their hands, and the last thing she beheld as she turned the corner was the four bright faces, and behind them like a bodyguard, old mr. laurence, faithful hannah, and devoted laurie. "how kind everyone is to us!" she said, turning to find fresh proof of it in the respectful sympathy of the young man's face. "i don't see how they can help it," returned mr. brooke, laughing so infectiously that mrs. march could not help smiling. and so the journey began with the good omens of sunshine, smiles, and cheerful words. "i feel as if there had been an earthquake," said jo, as their neighbors went home to breakfast, leaving them to rest and refresh themselves. "it seems as if half the house was gone," added meg forlornly. beth opened her lips to say something, but could only point to the pile of nicely mended hose which lay on mother's table, showing that even in her last hurried moments she had thought and worked for them. it was a little thing, but it went straight to their hearts, and in spite of their brave resolutions, they all broke down and cried bitterly. hannah wisely allowed them to relieve their feelings, and when the shower showed signs of clearing up, she came to the rescue, armed with a coffeepot. "now, ny dear young ladies, remember what your ma said, and don't fret. come and have a cup of coffee all round, and then let's fall to work and be a credit to the family." coffee was a treat, and hannah showed great tact in making it that morning. no one could resist her persuasive nods, or the fragrant invitation issuing from the nose of the coffee pot. they drew up to the table, exchanged their handkerchiefs for napkins, and in ten minutes were all right again. "`hope and keep busy', that's the motto for us, so let's see who will remember it best. i shall go to aunt march, as usual. oh, won't she lecture though!" said jo, as she sipped with returning spirit. "i shall go to my kings, though i'd much rather stay at home and attend to things here," said meg, wishing she hadn't made her eyes so red. "no need of that. beth and i can keep house perfectly well," put in amy, with an important air. "hannah will tell us what to do, and we'll have everything nice when you come home," added beth, getting out her mop and dish tub without delay. "i think anxiety is very interesting," observed amy, eating sugar pensively. the girls couldn't help laughing, and felt better for it, though meg shook her head at the young lady who could find consolation in a sugar bowl. the sight of the turnovers made jo sober again, and when the two went out to their daily tasks, they looked sorrowfully back at the window where they were accustomed to see their mother's face. it was gone, but beth had remembered the little household ceremony, and there she was, nodding away at them like a rosyfaced mandarin. "that's so like my beth!" said jo, waving her hat, with a grateful face. "goodbye, meggy, i hope the kings won't strain today. don't fret about father, dear," she added, as they parted. "and i hope aunt march won't croak. your hair is becoming, and it looks very boyish and nice," returned meg, trying not to smile at the curly head, which looked comically small on her tall sister's shoulders. "that's my only comfort." and, touching her hat a` la laurie, away went jo, feeling like a shorn sheep on a wintry day. news from their father comforted the girls very much, for though dangerously ill, the presence of the best and tenderest of nurses had already done him good. mr. brooke sent a bulletin every day, and as the head of the family, meg insisted on reading the dispatches, which grew more cheerful as the week passed. at first, everyone was eager to write, and plump envelopes were carefully poked into the letter box by one or other of the sisters, who felt rather important with their washington correspondence. as one of these packets contained characteristic notes from the party, we will rob an imaginary mail, and read them. my dearest mother: it is impossible to tell you how happy your last letter made us, for the news was so good we couldn't help laughing and crying over it. how very kind mr. brooke is, and how fortunate that mr. laurence's business detains him near you so long, since he is so useful to you and father. the girls are all as good as gold. jo helps me with the sewing, and insists on doing all sorts of hard jobs. i should be afraid she might overdo, if i didn't know her `moral fit' wouldn't last long. beth is as regular about her tasks as a clock, and never forgets what you told her. she grieves about father, and looks sober except when she is at her little piano. amy minds me nicely, and i take great care of her. she does her own hair, and i am teaching her to make buttonholes and mend her stockings. she tries very hard, and i know you will be pleased with her improvement when you come. mr. laurence watches over us like a motherly old hen, as jo says, and laurie is very kind and neighborly. he and jo keep us merry, for we get pretty blue sometimes, and feel like orphans, with you so far away. hannah is a perfect saint. she does not scold at all, and always calls me miss margaret, which is quite proper, you know, and treats me with respect. we are all well and busy, but we long, day and night, to have you back. give my dearest love to father, and believe me, ever your own . . . meg this note, prettily written on scented paper, was a great contrast to the next, which was scribbled on a big sheet of thin foreign paper, ornamented with blots and all manner of flourishes and curly-tailed letters. my precious marmee: three cheers for dear father! brooke was a trump to telegraph right off, and let us know the minute he was better. i rushed up garret when the letter came, and tried to thank god for being so good to us, but i could only cry, and say, "i'm glad! i'm glad!" didn't that do as well as a regular prayer? for i felt a great many in my heart. we have such funny times, and now i can enjoy them, for everyone is so desperately good, it's like living in a nest of turtledoves. you'd laugh to see meg head the table and try to be motherish. she gets prettier every day, and i'm in love with her sometimes. the children are regular archangels, and i-well, i'm jo, and never shall be anything else. oh, i must tell you that i came near having a quarrel with laurie. i freed my mind about a silly little thing, and he was offended. i was right, but didn't speak as i ought, and he marched home, saying he wouldn't come again till i begged pardon. i declared i wouldn't and got mad. it lasted all day. i felt bad and wanted you very much. laurie and i are both so proud, it's hard to beg pardon. but i thought he'd come to it, for i was in the right. he didn't come, and just at night i remembered what you said when amy fell into the river. i read my little book, felt better, resolved not to let the sun set on my anger, and ran over to tell laurie i was sorry. i met him at the gate, coming for the same thing. we both laughed, begged each other's pardon, and felt all good and comfortable again. i made a `pome' yesterday, when i was helping hannah wash, and as father likes my silly little things, i put it in to amuse him. give him my lovingest hug that ever was, and kiss yourself a dozen times for your . . . topsy-turvy jo a song from the suds queen of my tub, i merrily sing, while the white foam rises high, and sturdily wash and rinse and wring, and fasten the clothes to dry. then out in the free fresh air they swing, under the sunny sky. i wish we could wash from out hearts and souls the stains of the week away, and let water and air by their magic make ourselves as pure as they. then on the earth there would be indeed, a glorious washing day! along the path of a useful life, will heartsease ever bloom. the busy mind has no time to think of sorrow or care or gloom. and anxious thoughts may be swept away, as we bravely wield a broom. i am glad a task to me is given, to labor at day by day, for it brings me health and strength and hope, and i cheerfully learn to say, "head, you may think, heart, you may feel, but, hand, you shall work alway!" dear mother, there is only room for me to send my love, and some pressed pansies from the root i have been keeping safe in the house for father to see. i read every morning, try to be good all day, and sing myself to sleep with father's tune. i can't sing `land of the leal' now, it makes me cry. everyone is very kind, and we are as happy as we can be without you. amy wants the rest of the page, so i must stop. i didn't forget to cover the holders, and i wind the clock and air the rooms every day. kiss dear father on the cheek he calls mine. oh, do come soon to your loving . .. little beth ma chere mamma, we are all well i do my lessons always and never corroberate the girls--meg says i mean contradick so i put in both words and you can take the properest. meg is a great comfort to me and lets me have jelly every night at tea its so good for me jo says because it keeps me sweet tempered. laurie is not as respeckful as he ought to be now i am almost in my teens, he calls me chick and hurts my feelings by talking french to me very fast when i say merci or bon jour as hattie king does. the sleeves of my blue dress were all worn out, and meg put in new ones, but the full front came wrong and they are more blue than the dress. i felt bad but did not fret i bear my troubles well but i do wish hannah would put more starch in my aprons and have buckwheats every day. can't she? didn't i make that interrigation point nice? meg says my punchtuation and spelling are disgraceful and i am mortyfied but dear me i have so many things to do, i can't stop. adieu, i send heaps of love to papa. your affectionate daughter . .. amy curtis march dear mis march, i jes drop a line to say we git on fust rate. the girls is clever and fly round right smart. miss meg is going to make a proper good housekeeper. she hes the liking for it, and gits the hang of things surprisin quick. jo doos beat all for goin ahead, but she don't stop to cal'k'late fust, and you never know where she's like to bring up. she done out a tub of clothes on monday, but she starched 'em afore they was wrenched, and blued a pink calico dress till i thought i should a died a laughin. beth is the best of little creeters, and a sight of help to me, bein so forehanded and dependable. she tries to learn everything, and really goes to market beyond her years, likewise keeps accounts, with my help, quite wonderful. we have got on very economical so fur. i don't let the girls hev coffee only once a week, accordin to your wish, and keep em on plain wholesome vittles. amy does well without frettin, wearin her best clothes and eatin sweet stuff. mr. laurie is as full of didoes as usual, and turns the house upside down frequent, but he heartens the girls, so i let em hev full swing. the old gentleman send heaps of things, and is rather wearin, but means wal, and it aint my place to say nothin. my bread is riz, so no more at this time. i send my duty to mr. march, and hope he's seen the last of his pewmonia. yours respectful, hannah mullet head nurse of ward no. 2, all serene on the rappahannock, troops in fine condition, commisary department well conducted, the home guard under colonel teddy always on duty, commander in chief general laurence reviews the army daily, quartermaster mullet keeps order in camp, and major lion does picket duty at night. a salute of twenty-four guns was fired on reciept of good news from washington, and a dress parade took place at headquarters. commander in chief sends best wishes, in which he is heartily joined by . . . colonel teddy dear madam: the little girls are all well. beth and my boy report daily. hannah is a model servant, and guards pretty meg like a dragon. glad the fine weather holds. pray make brooke useful, and draw on me for funds if expenses exceed your estimate. don't let your husband want anything. thank god he is mending. your sincere friend and servant, james laurence chapter seventeen for a week the amount of virtue in the old house would have supplied the neighborhood. it was really amazing, for everyone seemed in a heavenly frame of mind, and self-denial was all the fashion. relieved of their first anxiety about their father, girls insensibly relaxed their praiseworthy efforts a little, and began to fall back into old ways. they did not forget their motto, but hoping and keeping busy seemed to grow easier, and after such tremendous exertions, they felt that endeavor deserved a holiday, and gave it a good many. jo caught a bad cold through neglect to cover the shorn head enough, and was ordered to stay at home till she was better, for aunt march didn't like to hear people read with colds in their heads. jo liked this, and after an energetic rummage from garret to cellar, subsided on the sofa to nurse her cold with arsenicum and books. amy found that housework and art did not go well together, and returned to her mud pies. meg went daily to her pupils, and sewed, or thought she did, at home, but much time was spent in writing long letters to her mother, or reading the washington dispatches over and over. beth kept on, with only slight relapses into idleness or grieving. all the little duties were faithfully done each day, and many of her sisters' also, for they were forgetful, and the house seemed like a clock whose pendulum was gone a-visiting. when her heart got heavy with longings for mother or fears for father, she went away into a certain closet, hid her face in the folds of a dear old gown, and made her little moan and prayed her little prayer quietly by herself. nobody knew what cheered her up after a sober fit, but everyone felt how sweet and helpful beth was, and fell into a way of going to her for comfort or advice in their small affairs. all were unconscious that this experience was a test of character, and when the first excitement was over, felt that they had done well and deserved praise. so they did, but their mistake was in ceasing to do well, and they learned this lesson through much anxiety and regret. "meg, i wish you'd go and see the hummels. you know mother told us not to forget them." said beth, ten days after mrs. march's departure. "i'm too tired to go this afternoon," re;lied meg, rocking comfortably as she sewed. "can't you, jo?' asked beth. "too stormy for me with my cold." "i thought it was almost well." "it's well enough for me to go out with laurie, but not well enough to go to the hummels'," said jo, laughing, but looking a little ashamed of her inconsistency. "why don't you go yourself?" asked meg. "i have been every day, but the baby is sick, and i don't know what to do for it. mrs. hummel goes away to work, and lottchen takes care of it. but it gets sicker and sicker, and i think you or hannah ought to go." beth spoke earnestly, and meg promised she would go tomorrow. "ask hannah for some nice little mess, and take it round, beth, the air will do you good," said jo, adding apologetically, "i'd go but i want to finish my writing." "my head aches and i'm tired, so i thought maybe some of you would go," said beth. "amy will be in presently, and she will run down for us, suggested meg. so beth lay down on the sofa, the others returned to their work, and the hummels were forgotten. an hour passed. amy did not come, meg went to her room to try on a new dress, jo was absorbed in her story, and hannah was sound asleep before the kitchen fire,when beth quietly put on her hood, filled her basket with odds and ends for the poor children, and went out into the chilly air with a heavy head and a grieved look in her patient eyes. it was late when she came back, and no one saw her creep upstairs and shut herself into her mother's room. half an hour after, jo went to `mother's closet' for something, and there found little beth sitting on the medicine chest, looking very grave, with red eyes and a camphor bottle in her hand. "christopher columbus! what's the matter?" cried jo, as beth put out her hand as if to warn her off, and asked quickly, "you've had the scarlet fever, havent't you?" "years ago, when meg did. why?' "then i'll tell you. oh, jo, the baby's dead!" "what baby?" "mrs. hummel's. it died in my lap before she got home," cried beth with a sob. "my poor dear, how dreadful for you! i ought to have gone," said jo, taking her sister in her arms as she sat down in her mother's bit chair, with a remorseful face. "it wasn't dreadful, jo, only so sad! i saw in a minute it was sicker, but lottchen said her mother had gone for a doctor, so i took baby and let lotty rest. it seemed asleep, but all of a sudden if gave a little cry and trembled, and then lay very still. i tried to warm its feet, and lotty gave it some milk, but it didn't stir, and i knew it was dead." "don't cry, dear! what did you do?" "i just sat and held it softly till mrs. hummel came with the doctor. he said it was dead, and looked at heinrich and minna, who have sore throats. `scarlet fever, ma'am. ought to have called me before,' he said crossly. mrs. hummel told him she was poor, and had tried to cure baby herself, but now it was too late, and she could only ask him to help the others and trust to charity for his pay. he smiled then, and was kinder, but it was very sad, and i cried with them till he turned round all of a sudden, and told me to go home and take belladonna right away, or i'd have the fever." "no, you won't!" cried jo, hugging her close, with a frightened look. "oh, beth, if you should be sick i never could forgive myself! what shall we do?" "don't be frightened, i guess i shan't have it badly. i looked in mother's book, and saw that it begins with headache, sore throat, and queer feelings like mine, so i did take some belladonna, and i feel better," said beth, laying her cold hands on her hot forehead and trying to look well. "if mother was only at home!" exclaimed jo, seizing the book, and feeling that washington was an immense way off. she read a page, looked at beth, felt her head, peeped into her throat, and then said gravely, "you've been over the baby every day for more than a week, and among the others who are going to have it, so i'm afraid you are going to have it, beth. i'll call hannah, she knows all about sickness." "don't let amy come. she never had it, and i should hate to give it to her. can't you and meg have it over again?" asked beth, anxiously. "i guess not. don't care if i do. serve me right, selfish pig, to let you go, and stay writing rubbish myself!" muttered jo, as she went to consult hannah. the good soul was wide awake in a minute, and took the lead at once, assuring that there was no need to worry; every one had scarlet fever, and if rightly treated, nobody died, all of which jo believed, and felt much relieved as they went up to call meg. "now i'll tell you what we'll do," said hannah, when she had examined and questioned beth, "we will have dr. bangs, just to take a look at you, dear, and see that we start right. then we'll send amy off to aunt march's for a spell, to keep her out of harm's way, and one of you girls can stay at home and amuse beth for a day or two." "i shall stay, of course, i'm oldest," began meg, looking anxious and self-reproachful. "i shall, because it's my fault she is sick. i told mother i'd do the errands, and i haven't," said jo decidedly. "which will you have, beth? there ain't no need of but one," said hannah. "jo, please." and beth leaned her head against her sister with a contented look, which effectually settled that point. "i'll go and tell amy," said meg, feeling a little hurt, yet rather relieved on the whole, for she did not like nursing, and jo did. amy rebelled outright, and passionately declared that she had rather have the fever than go to aunt march. meg reasoned, pleaded, and commanded, all in vain. amy protested that she would not go, and meg left her in despair to ask hannah what should be done. before she came back, laurie walked into the parlor to find amy sobbing, with her head in the sofa cushions. she told her story, expecting to be consoled, but laurie only put his hands in his pockets and walked about the room, whistling softly, as he knit his brows in deep thought. presently he sat down beside her, and said, in his most wheedlesome tone, "now be a sensible little woman, and do as they say. no, don't cry, but hear what a jolly plan i've got. you go to aunt march's, and i'll come and take you out every day, driving or walking, and we'll have capital times. won't that be better than moping here?" "i don't wish to be sent off as if i was in the way," began amy, in an injured voice. "bless your heart, child, it's to keep you well. you don't want to be sick, do you?" "no, i'm sure i don't, but i dare say i shall be, for i've been with beth all the time." "that's the very reason you ought to go away at once, so that you may escape it. change of air and care will keep you well, i dare say, or if it does not entirely, you will have the fever more lightly. i advise you to be off as soon as you can, for scarlet fever is no joke, miss." "but it's dull at aunt march's, and she is so cross," said amy, looking rather frightened. "it won't be dull with me popping; in every day to tell you how beth is, and take you out gallivanting. the old lady likes me, and i'll be as sweet as possible to her, so she won't peck at us, whatever we do." "will you take me out in the trotting wagon with puck?" "on my honor as a gentleman." "and come every single day?" "see if i don't/" "and bring me back the minute beth is well?" "the identical minute." "and go to the theater, truly?" "a dozen theaters, if we may." "well--i guess i will," said amy slowly. "good girl! call meg, and tell her you'll give in," said laurie, with an approving pat, which annoyed amy more than the `giving in'. meg and jo came running down to behold the miracle which had been wrought, and amy, feeling very precious and self-sacrificing, promised to go, if the doctor said beth was going to be ill. "how is the little dear?" asked laurie, for beth was his especial pet, and he felt more anxious about her than he liked to show. "she is lying down on mother's bed, and feels better. the baby's death troubled her, but i dare say she has only got cold. hannah says she thinks so, but she looks worried, and that makes me fidgety," answered meg. "what a trying world it is!" said jo, rumpling up her hair in a fretful way. "no sooner do we get out of one trouble than down comes another. there doesn't seem to be anything to hold on to when mother's gone, so i'm all at sea." "well, don't make a porcupine of yourself, it isn't becoming. settle your wig, jo, and tell me if i shall telegraph to your mother, or do anything?" asked laurie, who never had been reconciled to the loss of his friend's one beauty. "that is what troubles me," said meg. "i think we ought to tell her if beth is really ill, but hannah says we mustn't, for mother can't leave father, and it will only make them anxious. beth won't be sick long, and hannah knows just what to do, and mother said we were to mind her, so i suppose we must, but it doesn't seem quite right to me." "hum, well, i can't say. suppose you ask grandfather after the doctor has been." "we will. jo, go and get dr. bangs at once," commanded meg. "we can't decide anything till he has been." "stay where you are, jo. i'm errand boy to this establishment," said laurie, taking up his cap. "i'm afraid you are busy," began meg. "no, i've done my lessons for the day." "do you study in vacation time?" asked jo. "i follow the good example my neighbors set me," was laurie's answer, as he swung himself out of the room. "i have great hopes for my boy," observed jo, watching him fly over the fence with an approving smile. "he does very well, for a boy," was meg's somewhat ungracious answer, for the subject did not interest her. dr. bangs came, said beth had symptoms of the fever, but he thought she would have it lightly, though he looked sober over the hummel story. amy was ordered off at once, and provided with something to ward off danger, she departed in great state, with jo and laurie as escort. aunt march received them with her usual hospitality. "what do you want now?" she asked, looking sharply over her spectacles, while the parrot, sitting on the back of her chair, called out . . . "go away. no boys allowed her." laurie retired to the window, and jo told her story. "no more than i expected, if you are allowed to go poking about among poor folks. amy can stay and make herself useful if she isn't sick, which i've no doubt she will be, looks like it now. don't cry, child, it worries me to hear people sniff." amy was on the point of crying, but laurie slyly pulled the parrot's tail, which caused polly to utter an astonished croak and call out, "bless my boots!" in such a funny way, that she laughed instead. "what do you hear from your mother?" asked the old lady gruffly. "father is much better," replied jo, trying to keep sober. "oh, is her? well, that won't last long, i fancy. march never had any stamina," was the cheerful reply. "ha, ha! never say die, take a pinch of snuff, goodbye, goodbye!" squalled polly, dancing on her perch, and clawing at the old lady's cap as laurie tweaked him in the rear. "hold your tongue, you disrespectful old bird! and, jo, you'd better go at once. it isn't proper to be gadding about so late with a rattlepated boy like . . ." "hold your tongue, you disrespectful old bird!" cried polly, tumbling off the chair with a bounce, and running to peck the `rattlepated' boy, who was shaking with laughter at the last speech. "i don't think i can bear it, but i'll try," thought amy, as she was left alone with aunt march. "get along, you fright!" screamed polly, and at that rude speech amy could not restrain a sniff. chapter eighteen beth did have the fever, and was much sicker than anyone but hannah and the doctor suspected. the girls knew nothing about illness, and mr. laurence was not allowed to see her, so hannah had everything her own way, and busy dr. bangs did his best, but left a good deal to the excellent nurse. meg stayed at home, lest she should infect the kings, and kept house, feeling very anxious and a little guilty when she wrote letters in which no mention was made of beth's illness. she could not think it right to deceive her mother, but she had been bidden to mind hannah, and hannah wouldn't hear of `mrs. march bein' told, and worried just for sech a trifle.' jo devoted herself to beth day and night, not a hard task, for beth was very patient, and bore her pain uncomplainingly as long as she could control herself. but there came a time when during the fever fits she began to talk in a hoarse, broken voice, to play on the coverlet as if on her beloved little piano, and try to sing with a throat so swollen that there was no music left, a time when she did not know the familiar faces around her, but addressed them by wrong names, and called imploringly for her mother. then jo grew frightened, meg begged to be allowed to write the truth, and even hannah said she `would think of it, though there was no danger yet'. a letter from washington added to their trouble, for mr. march had had a relapse, and could not think of coming home for a long while. how dark the days seemed now, how sad and lonely the house, and how heavy were the hearts of the sisters as they worked and waited, while the shadow of death hovered over the once happy home. then it was that margaret, sitting alone with tears dropping often on her work, felt how rich she had been in things more precious than any luxuries money could buy--in love, protection,, peace, and health, the real blessings of life. then it was that jo, living in the darkened room, with that suffering little sister always before her eyes and that pathetic voice sounding in her ears, learned to see the beauty and to sweetness of beth's nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of beth's unselfish ambition to live for others, and make home happy by that exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess, and which all should love and value more than talent, wealth, or beauty. and amy, in her exile, longed eagerly to be at home, that she might work for beth, feeling now that no service would be hard or irksome, and remembering, with regretful grief, how many neglected tasks those willing hands had done for her. laurie haunted the house like a restless ghost, and mr. laurence locke the grand piano, because he could not bear to be reminded of the young neighbor who used to make the twilight pleasant for him. everyone missed beth. the milkman, baker, grocer, and butcher inquired how she did, poor mrs. hummel came to beg pardon for her thoughtlessness and to get a shroud for minna, the neighbors sent all sorts of comforts and good wishes, and even those who knew her best were surprised to find how many friends shy little beth had made. meanwhile she lay on her bed with old joanna at her side, for even in her wanderings she did not forget her forlorn protege. she longed for her cats, but would not have them brought, lest they should get sick, and in her quiet hours she was full of anxiety about jo. she sent loving messages to amy, bade them tell her mother that she would write soon, and often begged for pencil and paper to try to say a word, that father might not think she had neglected him. but soon even these intervals of consciousness ended, and she lay hour after hour, tossing to and fro, with incoherent words on her lips, or sank into a heavy sleep which brought her no refreshment. dr. bangs came twice a day, hannah sat up at night, meg kept a telegram in her desk all ready to send off at any minute, and jo never stirred from beth's side. the first of december was a wintry day indeed to them, for a bitter wind blew, snow fell fast, and the year seemed getting ready for its death. when dr. bangs came that morning, he looked long at beth, held the hot hand in both his own for a minute, and laid it gently down, saying, in a low voice to hannah, "if mrs. march can leave her husband she'd better be sent for." hannah nodded without speaking, for her lips twitched nervously, meg dropped down into a chair as the strength seemed to go out of her limbs at the sound of those words, and jo, standing with a pale face for a minute, ran to the parlor, snatched up the telegram, and throwing on her things, rushed out into the storm. she was soon back, and while noiselessly taking off her cloak, laurie came in with a letter, saying that mr. march was mending again. jo read it thankfully, but the heavy weight did not seem lifted off her heart, and her face was so full of misery that laurie asked quickly, "what is it? is beth worse?" "i've sent for mother," said jo, tugging at her rubber boots with a tragic expression. "good for you, jo! did you do it on your own responsibility?" asked laurie, as he seated her in the hall chair and took off the rebellious boots, seeing how her hands shook. "no. the doctor told us to." "oh, jo, it's not so bad as that?" cried laurie, with a startled face. "yes, it is. she doesn't know us, she doesn't even talk about the flocks of green doves, as she calls the vine leaves on the wall. she doesn't look like my beth, and there's nobody to help us bear it. mother and father both gone, and god seems so far away i can't find him." as the tears streamed fast down poor jo's cheeks, she stretched out her hand in a helpless sort of way, as if groping in the dark, and laurie took it in his, whispering as well as he could with a lump in his throat, "i'm here. hold on tome, jo, dear!" she could not speak, but she did `hold on', and the warm grasp of the friendly human hand comforted her sore heart, and seemed to lead her nearer to the divine arm which alone could uphold her in her trouble. laurie longed to say something tender and comfortable, but no fitting words came to him, so he stood silent, gently stroking her bent head as her mother used to do. it was the best thing he could have done, far more soothing than the most eloquent words, for jo felt the unspoken sympathy, and in the silence learned the sweet solace which affection administers to sorrow. soon she dried the tears which had relieved her, and looked up with a grateful face. "thank you, teddy, i'm better now. i don't feel so forlorn, and will try to bear it if it comes." "keep hoping for the best, that will help you, jo. soon your mother will be here, and then everything will be all right." "i'm so glad father is better. now she won't feel so bad about leaving him. oh, me! it does seem as if all the troubles came in a heap, and i got the heaviest part on my shoulders," sighed jo, spreading her wet handkerchief over her knees to dry. "doesn't meg pull fair?" asked laurie, looking indignant. "oh, yes, she tries to, but she can't love bethy as i do, and she won't miss her as i shall. beth is my conscience, and i can't give her up. i can't! i can't!" down went jo's face into the wet handkerchief, and she cried despairingly, for she had kept up bravely till now and never shed a tear. laurie drew his hand across his eyes, but could not speak till he had subdued the choky feeling in his throat and steadied his lips. it might be unmanly, but he couldn't help it, and i am glad of it. presently, as jo's sobs quieted, he said hopefully, "i don't think she will die. she's so good, and we all love her so much, i don't believe god will take her away yet." "the good and dear people always do die," groaned jo, but she stopped crying, for her friend's words cheered her up in spite of her own doubts and fears. "poor girl, you're worn out. it isn't like you to be forlorn. stop a bit. i'll hearten you up in a jiffy." laurie went off two stairs at a time, and jo laid her wearied head down on beth's little brown hood, which no one had thought of moving from the table where she left it. it must have possessed some magic, for the submissive spirit of its gentle owner seemed to enter into jo, and when laurie came running down with a glass of wine, she took it with a smile, and said bravely, "i drink-health to my beth! you are a good doctor, teddy, and such a comfortable friend. how can i ever pay you?" she added, as the wine refreshed her body, as the kind words had done her troubled mind. "i'll send my bill, by-and-by, and tonight i'll give you something that will warm the cockles of your heart better than quarts of wine," said laurie, beaming at her with a face of suppressed satisfaction at something. "what is it?" cried jo, forgetting her woes for a minute in her wonder. "i telegraphed to your mother yesterday, and brooke answered she'd come at once, and she'll be here tonight, and everything will be all right. aren't you glad i did it?" laurie spoke very fast, and turned red and excited all in a minute, for he had kept his plot a secret, for fear of disappointing the girls or harming beth. jo grew quite white, flew out of her chair, and the moment he stopped speaking she electrified him by throwing her arms round his neck, and crying out, with a joyful cry, "oh, laurie! oh, mother! i am so glad!" she did not weep again, but laughed hysterically, and trembled and clung to her friend as if she was a little bewildered by the sudden news. laurie, though decidedly amazed, behaved with great presence of mind. he patted her back soothingly, and finding that she was recovering, followed it up by a bashful kiss or two, which brought jo round at once. holding on to the banisters, she put him gently away, saying breathlessly, "oh, don't! i didn't mean to, it was dreadful of me, but you were such a dear to go and do it in spite of hannah that i couldn't help flying at you. tell me all about it, and don't give me wine again, it makes me act so." "i don't mind," laughed laurie, as he settled his tie. "why, you see i got fidgety, and so did grandpa. we thought hannah was overdoing the authority business, and your mother ought to know. she'd never forgive us if beth . . . well, if anything happened, you know. so i got grandpa to say it was high time we did something, and off i pelted to the office yesterday, for the doctor looked sober, and hannah most took my head off when i proposed a telegram. i never can bear to be `lorded over', so that settled my mind, and i did it. your mother will come, i know, and the late train is in at two a.m. i shall go for her, and you've only got to bottle up your rapture, and keep beth quiet till that blessed lady gets here." "laurie, you're an angel! how shall i ever thank you?" "fly at me again. i rather liked it," said laurie, looking mischievous, a thing he had not done for a fortnight. "no, thank you. i'll do it by proxy, when your grandpa comes. don't tease, but go home and rest, for you'll be up half the night. bless you, teddy, bless you!" jo had backed into a corner, and as she finished her speech, she vanished precipitately into the kitchen, where she sat down upon a dresser and told the assembled cats that she was "happy, oh, so happy!" while laurie departed, feeling that he had made a rather neat thing of it. "that's the interferingest chap i ever see, but i forgive him and do hope mrs. march is coming right away," said hannah, with an air of relief, when jo told the good news. meg had a quiet rapture, and then brooded over the letter, while jo set the sickroom in order, and hannah `knocked up a couple of pies in case of company unexpected". a breath of fresh air seemed to blow through the house, and something better than sunshine brightened the quiet rooms. everything appeared to feel the hopeful change. beth's bird began to chirp again, and a half-blown rose was discovered on amy's bush in the window. the fires seemed to burn with unusual cheeriness, and every time the girls met, their pale faces broke into smiles as they hugged one another, whispering encouragingly, "mother's coming, dear! mother's coming!" every one rejoiced but beth. she lay in that heavy stupor, alike unconscious of hope and joy, doubt and danger. it was a piteous sight, the once rosy face so changed and vacant, the once busy hands so weak and wasted, the once smiling lips quite dumb, and the once pretty, well-kept hair scattered rough and tangled on the pillow. all day she say so, only rousing now and then to mutter, "water!" with lips so parched they could hardly shape the word. all day jo and meg hovered over her, watching, waiting, hoping, and trusting in god and mother, and all day the snow fell, the bitter wind raged, and the hours dragged slowly by. but night came at last, and every time the clock struck, the sisters, still sitting on either side of the bed, looked at each other with brightening eyes, for each hour brought help nearer. the doctor had been in to say that some change, for better or worse, would probably take place about midnight, at which time he would return. hannah, quite worn out, lay down on the sofa at the bed's foot and fell fast asleep, mr. laurence marched to and fro in the parlor, feeling that he would rather face a rebel battery than mrs. march's countenance as she entered. laurie lay on the rug, pretending to rest, but staring into the fire with the thoughtful look which made his black eyes beautifully soft and clear. the girls never forgot that night, for no sleep came to them as they kept their watch, with that dreadful sense of powerlessness which comes to us in hours like those. "if god spares beth, i never will complain again," whispered meg earnestly. "if god spares beth, i'll try to love and serve him all my life," answered jo, with equal fervor. "i wish i had no heart, it aches so," sighed meg, after a pause. "if life is often as hard as this, i don't see how we ever shall get through it," added her sister despondently. here the clock struck twelve, and both forgot themselves in watching beth, for they fancied a change passed over her wan face. the house was still as death, and nothing but the wailing of the wind broke the deep hush. weary hannah slept on, and no one but the sisters saw the pale shadow which seemed to fall upon the little bed. an hour went by, and nothing happened except laurie's quiet departure for the station. another hour, still no one came, and anxious fears of delay in the storm, or accidents by the way, or, worst of all, a great grief at washington, haunted the girls. it was past two, when jo, who stood at the window thinking how dreary the world looked in its winding sheet of snow, heard a movement by the bed, and turning quickly, saw meg kneeling before their mother's easy chair with her face hidden. a dreadful fear passed coldly over jo, as she thought, "beth is dead, and meg is afraid to tell me." she was back at her post in an instant, and to her excited eyes a great change seemed to have taken place. the fever flush and the look of pain were gone, and the beloved little face looked so pale and peaceful in its utter repose that jo felt no desire to weep or to lament. leaning low over this dearest of her sisters, she kissed the damp forehead with her heart on her lips, and softly whispered, "goodby, my beth. goodby!" as if awaked by the stir, hannah started out of her sleep, hurried to the bed, looked at beth, felt her hands, listened at her lips, and then, throwing her apron over her head, sat down to rock to and fro, exclaiming, under her breath, "the fever's turned, she's sleepin' nat'ral, her skin's damp, and she breathes easy. praise be given! oh, my goodness me!" before the girls could believe the happy truth, the doctor came to confirm it. he was a homely man, but they thought his face quite heavenly when he smiled and said, with a fatherly look at them, "yes, my dears, i think the little girl will pull through this time. keep the house quiet, let her sleep, and when she wakes, give her . . ." what they were to give, neither heard, for both crept into the dark hall, and, sitting on the stairs, held each other close, rejoicing with hearts too full for words. when they went back to be kissed and cuddled by faithful hannah, they found beth lying,, as she used to do, with her cheek pillowed on her hand, the dreadful pallor gone, and breathing quietly, as if just fallen asleep. "if mother would only come now!" said jo, as the winter night began to wane. "see," said meg, coming up with a white, half-opened rose, "i thought this would hardly be ready to lay in beth's hand tomorrow if she--went away from us. but it has blossomed in the night, and now i mean to put it in my vase here, so that when the darling wakes, the first thing she sees will be the little rose, and mother's face." never had the sun risen so beautifully, and never had the world seemed so lovely as it did to the heavy eyes of meg and jo, as they looked out in the early morning, when their long, sad vigil was done. "it looks like a fairy world," said meg, smiling to herself, as she stood behind the curtain, watching the dazzling sight. "hark!" cried jo, starting to her feet. yes, there was a sound of bells at the door below, a cry from hannah, and then laurie's voice saying in a joyful whisper, "girls, she's come! she's come!" chapter nineteen while these things were happening at home, amy was having hard times at aunt march's. she felt her exile deeply, and for the first time in her life, realized how much she was beloved and petted at home. aunt march never petted any one. she did not approve of it, but she meant to be kind, for the wellbehaved little girl pleased her very much, and aunt march had a soft place in her old heart for her nephew's children, though she didn't think it proper to confess it. she really did her best to make amy happy, but, dear me, what mistakes she made. some old people keep young at heart in spite of wrinkles and gray hairs, can sympathize with children's little cares and joys, make them feel at home, and can hide wise lessons under pleasant plays, giving and receiving friendship in the sweetest way. but aunt march had not this gift, and she worried amy very much with her rules and orders, her prim ways, and long, prosy talks. finding the child more docile and amiable than her sister, the old lady felt it her duty to try and counteract, as far as possible, the bad effects of home freedom and indulgence. so she took amy by the hand, and taught her as she herself had been taught sixty years ago, a process which carried dismay to amy's soul, and made her feel like a fly in the web of a very strict spider. she had to wash the cups every morning, and polish up the old-fashioned spoons, the fat silver teapot, and the glasses till they shone. then she must dust the room, and what a trying job that was. not a speck escaped aunt march's eye, and all the furniture had claw legs and much carving, which was never dusted to suit. then polly had to be fed, the lap dog combed, and a dozen trips upstairs and down to get things or deliver orders, for the old lady was very lame and seldom left her big chair. after these tiresome labors, she must do her lessons, which was a daily trial of every virtue she possessed. then she was allowed one hour for exercise or play, and didn't she enjoy it? laurie came every day, and wheedled aunt march till amy was allowed to go out with him, when they walked and rode and had capital times. after dinner, she had to read aloud, and sit still while the old lady slept, which she usually did for an hour, as she dropped off over the first page. then patchwork or towels appeared, and amy sewed with outward meekness and inward rebellion till dusk, when she was allowed to amuse herself as she liked till teatime. the evenings were the worst of all, for aunt march fell to telling long stories about her youth, which were so unutterably dull that amy was always ready to go to be, intending to cry over her hard fate, but usually going to sleep before she had squeezed out more than a tear or two. if it had not been for laurie, and old esther, the maid, she felt that she never could have got through that dreadful time. the parrot alone was enough to drive her distracted, for he soon felt that she did not admire him, and revenged himself by being as mischievous as possible. he pulled her hair whenever she came near him, upset his bread and milk to plague her when she had newly cleaned his cage, made mop bark by pecking at him while madam dozed, called her names before company, and behaved in all respects like an reprehensible old bird. then she could not endure the dog, a fat, cross beast who snarled and yelped at her when she made his toilet, and who lay on his back with all his legs in the air and a most idiotic expression of countenance when he wanted something to eat, which was about a dozen times a day. the cook was bad-tempered, the old coachman was deaf, and esther the only one who ever took any notice of the young lady. esther was a frenchwoman, who had lived with`madame', as she called her mistress, for many years, and who rather tyrannized over the old lady, who could not get along without her. her real name was estelle, but aunt march ordered her to change it, and she obeyed, on condition that she was never asked to change her religion. she took a fancy to mademoiselle, and amused her very much with odd stories of her life in france, when amy sat with her while she got up madam's laces. she also allowed her to roam about the great house, and examine the curious and pretty things stored away in the big wardrobes and the ancient chests, for aunt march hoarded like a magpie. amy's chief delight was an indian cabinet, full of queer drawers, little pigeonholes, and secret places, in which were kept all sorts of ornaments, some precious, some merely curious, all more or less antique. to examine and arrange these things gave amy great satisfaction, especially the jewel cases, in which on velvet cushions reposed the ornaments which had adorned a belle forty years ago. there was the garnet set which aunt march wore when she came out, the pearls her father gave her on her wedding day, her lover's diamonds, the jet mourning rings and pins, the queer lockets, with portraits of dead friends and weeping willows made of hair inside,the baby bracelets her one little daughter had worn, uncle march's big watch, with the red seal so many childish hands had played with, and in a box all by itself lay aunt march's wedding ring, too small now for her fat finger, but put carefully away like the most precious jewel of them all. "which would mademoiselle choose if she had her will?" asked esther, wo always sat near to watch over and lock up the valuables. "i like the diamonds best, but there is no necklace among them, and i'm fond of necklaces, they are so becoming. i should choose this if i might," replied amy, looking with great admiration at a string of gold and ebony beads from which hung a heavy cross of the same. "i, too, covet that, but not as a necklace. ah, no! to me it is a rosary, and as such i should use it like a good catholic," said esther, eyeing the handsome thing wistfully. "is it meant to use as you use the string of good-smelling wooden beads hanging over your glass?" asked amy. "truly, yes, to pray with. it would be pleasing to the saints if one used so fine a rosary as this, instead of wearing it as a vain bijou." "you seem to take a great deal of comfort in your prayers, esther, and always come down looking quiet and satisfied. i wish i could." "if mademoiselle was a catholic, she would find true comfort, but as that is not to be, it would be well if you went apart each day to meditate and pray, as did the good mistress whom i served before madame. she had a little chapel, and in it found solacement for much trouble." "would it be right for me to do so too?" asked amy, who in her loneliness felt the need of help of some sort, and found that she was apt to forget her little book, now that beth was not there to remind her of it. "it would be excellent and charming, and i shall gladly arrange the little dressing room for you if you like it. say nothing to madame, but when she sleeps go you and sit alone a while to think good thoughts, and pray the dear god preserve your sister." esther was truly pious, and quite sincere in her advice, for she had an affectionate heart, and felt much for the sisters in their anxiety. amy liked the idea, and gave her leave to arrange the light closet next her room, hoping it would do her good. "i wish i knew where all these pretty things would go when aunt march dies," she said, as she slowly replaced the shining rosary and shut the jewel cases one by one. "to you and your sisters. i know it, madame confides in me. i witnessed her will, and it is to be so," whispered esther smiling. "how nice! but i wish she'd let us have them now. procrastination is not agreeable," observed amy, taking a last look at the diamonds. "it is too soon yet for the young ladies to wear these things. the first one who is affianced will have the pearls, madame has said it, and i have a fancy that the little turquoise ring will be given to you when you go, for madame approves your good behavior and charming manners." "do you think so? oh, i'll be a lamb, if i can only have that lovely ring! it's ever so much prettier than kitty bryant's. i do like aunt march after all." and amy tried on the blue ring with a delighted face and a firm resolve to earn it. from that day she was a model of obedience, and the old lady complacently admired the success of her training. esther fitted up the closet with a little table, placed a footstool before it, and over it a picture taken from one of the shut-up rooms. she thought it was of no great value, but, being appropriate, she borrowed it, well knowing that madame would never know it, nor care if she did. it was, however, a very valuable copy of one of the famous pictures of the world, and amy's beauty-loving eyes were never tired of looking up at the sweet face of the divine mother, while her tender thoughts of her own were busy at her heart. on the table she laid her little testament and hymnbook, kept a vase always full of the best flowers laurie brought her, and came every day to `sit alone' thinking good thoughts, and praying the dear god to preserve her sister. esther had given her a rosary of black beads with a silver cross, but amy hung it up and did not use it, feeling doubtful as to its fitness for protestant prayers. the little girl was very sincere in all this, for being left alone outside the safe home nest, she felt the need of some kind hand to hold by so sorely that she instinctively turned to the strong and tender friend, whose fatherly love most closely surrounds his little children. she missed her mother's help to understand and rule herself, but having been taught where to look, she did her best to find the way and walk in it confidingly. but amy was a young pilgrim, and just now her burden seemed very heavy. she tried to forget herself, to keep cheerful, and be satisfied with doing right, though no one saw or praised her for it. in her first effort at being very, very good, she decided to make her will, as aunt march had done, so that if she did fall ill and die, her possessions might be justly and generously divided. it cost her a pang even to think of giving up the little treasures which in her eyes were as precious as the old lady's jewels. during one of her play hours she wrote out the important document as well as she could, with some help from esther as to certain legal terms, and when the good-natured frenchwoman had signed her name, amy felt relieved and laid it by to show laurie, whom she wanted as a second witness. as it was a rainy day, she went upstairs to amuse herself in one of the large chambers, and took polly with her for company. in this room there was a wardrobe full of old-fashioned costumes with which esther allowed her to play, and it was her favorite amusement to array herself in the faded brocades, and parade up and down before the long mirror, making stately curtsies, and sweeping her train about with a rustle which delighted her ears. so busy was she on this day that she did not hear laurie's ring nor see his face peeping in at her as she gravely promenaded to and fro, flirting her fan and tossing her head, on which she wore a great pink turban, contrasting oddly with her blue brocade dress and yellow quilted petticoat. she was obliged to walk carefully, for she had on highheeled shoes, and, as laurie told jo afterward, it was a comical sight to see her mince along in her gay suit, with polly sidilng and bridling just behind her, imitating her as well as he could, and occasionally stopping to laugh or exclaim, "ain't we fine? get along, you fright! hold your tongue! kiss me, dear! ha! ha!" having with difficulty restrained an explosion of merriment, lest it should offend her majesty, laurie tapped and was graciously received. "sit down and rest while i put these things away, then i want to consult you about a very serious matter," said amy, when she had shown her splendor and driven polly into a corner. "that bird is the trial of my life," she continued, removing the pink mountain from her head, while laurie seated himself astride a chair. "yesterday, when aunt was asleep and i was trying to be as still as a mouse, polly began to squall and flap about in his cage, so i went to let him out, and found a big spider there. i poked it out, and it ran under the bookcase. polly marched straight after it, stooped down and peeped under the bookcase, saying, in his funny way, with a cock of his eye, `come out and take a walk, my dear.' i couldn't help laughing, which made poll swear, and aunt woke up and scolded us both." "did the spider accept the old fellow's invitation?" asked laurie, yawning. "yes, out it came, and away ran polly, frightened to death, and scrambled up on aunt's chair, calling out, `catch her! catch her! catch her!' as i chased the spider." "that's a lie! oh, lor!" cried the parrot, pecking at laurie's toes. "i'd wring your neck if you were mine, you old torment," cried laurie, shaking his fist at the bird, who put his head on one side and gravely croaked, "allyluyer! bless your buttons, dear!" "now i'm ready," said amy, shutting the wardrobe and taking a piece of paper out of her pocket. "i want you to read that, please, and tell me if it is legal and right. i felt i ought to do it, for life is uncertain and i don't want any ill feeling over my tomb." laurie bit his lips, and turning a little from the pensive speaker, read the following document, with praiseworthy gravity, considering the spelling: my last will and testiment i, amy curtis march, being in my sane mind, go give and bequeethe all my earthly property--viz.to wit:--namely to my father, my best pictures, sketches, maps, and works of art, including frames. also my $100, to do what he likes with. to my mother, all my clothes, except the blue apron with pockets--also my likeness, and my medal, with much love. to my dear sister margaret, i give my turkquoise ring (if i get it), also my green box with the doves on it, also my; piece of real lace for her neck, and my sketch of her as a memorial of her 'little girl'. to jo i leave my breastpin, the one mended with sealing wax, also my bronze inkstand--she lost the cover--and my most precious plaster rabbit, because i am sorry i burned up her story. to beth (if she lives after me) i give my dolls and the little bureau, my fan, my linen collars and my new slippers if she can wear them being thin when she gets well. and i herewith also leave her my regret that i ever made fun of old joanna. to my friend and neighbor theodore laurence i bequeethe my paper mashay portfolio, my clay model of a horse though he did say it hadn't any neck. also in return for his great kindness in the hour of affliction any one of my artistic works he likes, noter dame is the best. to our venerable benefactor mr. laurence i leave my purple box with a looking glass in the cover which will be nice for his pens and remind him of the departed girl who thanks him for his favors to her family, especially beth. i wish my favorite playmate kitty bryant to have the blue silk apron and my gold-bead ring with a kiss. to hannah i give the bandbox she wanted and all the patchwork i leave hoping she `will remember me, when it you see'. and now having disposed of my most valuable property i hope all will be satisfied and not blame the dead. i forgive everyone, and trust we may all meet when the trump shall sound. amen. to this will and testiment i set my hand and seal on this 20th day of nov. anni domino 1861. amy curtis march witnesses: estelle valnor, theodore laurence. the last name was written in pencil, and amy explained that he was to rewrite it in ink and seal it up for her properly. "what put it into your head? did anyone tell you about beth's giving away her things?" asked laurie soberly, as amy laid a bit of red tape, with sealing wax, a taper, and a standish before him. she explained and then asked anxiously, "what about beth?" "i'm sorry i spoke, but as i did, i'll tell you. she felt so ill one day that she told jo she wanted to give her piano to meg, her cats to you, and the poor old doll to jo, who would love it for her sake. she was sorry she had so little to give, and left locks of hair to the rest of us, and her best love to grandpa. she never thought of a will." laurie was signing and sealing as he spoke, and did not look up till a great tear dropped on the paper. amy's face was full of trouble, but she only said, "don't people put sort of postscripts to their wills, sometimes?" "yes, `codicils', they call them." "put one in mine then, that i wish all my curls cut off, and given round to my friends. i forgot it, but i want it done though it will spoil my looks." laurie added it, smiling at amy's last and greatest sacrifice. then he amused her for an hour, and was much interested in all her trials. but when he came to go, amy held him back to whisper with trembling lips, "is there really any danger about beth?" "i'm afraid there is, but we must hope for the best, so don't cry, dear." and laurie put his arm about her with a brotherly gesture which was very comforting. when he had gone, she went to her little chapel, and sitting in the twilight, prayed for beth, with streaming tears and an aching heart, feeling that a million turquoise rings would not console her for the loss of her gentle little sister. chapter twenty i don't think i have any words in which to tell the meeting of the mother and daughters. such hours are beautiful to live, but very hard to describe, so i will leave it to the imagination of my readers, merely saying that the house was full of genuine happiness, and that meg's tender hope was realized, for when beth woke from that long, healing sleep, the first objects on which her eyes fell were the little rose and mother's face. too weak to wonder at anything, she only smiled and nestled close in the loving arms about her, feeling that the hungry longing was satisfied at last. then she slept again, and the girls waited upon their mother, for she would not unclasp the thin hand which clung to hers even in sleep. hannah had `dished up' and astonishing breakfast for the traveler, finding it impossible to vent her excitement in any other way, and meg and jo fed their mother like dutiful young storks, while they listened to her whispered account of father's state, mr. brooke's promise to stay and nurse him, the delays which the storm occasioned on the homeward journey, and the unspeakable comfort laurie's hopeful face had given her when she arrived, worn out with fatigue, anxiety, and cold. what a strange yet pleasant day that was. so brilliant and gay without, for all the world seemed abroad to welcome the first snow. so quiet and reposeful within, for everyone slept, spent with watching, and a sabbath stillness reigned through the house, while nodding hannah mounted guard at the door. with a blissful sense of burdens lifted off, meg and jo closed their weary eyes, and lay at rest, like storm-beaten boats safe at anchor in a quiet harbor. mrs. march would not leave beth's side, but rested in the big chair, waking often to look at, touch, and brood over her child, like a miser over some recovered treasure. laurie meanwhile posted off to comfort amy, and told his story so well that aunt march actually `sniffed' herself, and never once said "i told you so". amy came out so strong on this occasion that i think the good thoughts in the little chapel really began to bear fruit. she dried her tears quickly, restrained her impatience to see her mother, and never even thought of the turquoise ring, when the old lady heartily agreed in laurie's opinion, that she behaved `like a capital little woman'. even polly seemed impressed, for he called her a good girl, blessed her buttons, and begged her to "come and take a walk, dear", in his most affable tone. she would very gladly have gone out to enjoy the bright wintry weather, but discovering that laurie was dropping with sleep in spite of manful efforts to conceal the fact, she persuaded him to rest on the sofa, while she wrote a note to her mother. she was a long time about it, and when she returned, he was stretched out with both arms under his head, sound asleep, while aunt march had pulled down the curtains and sat doing nothing in an unusual fit of benignity. after a while, they began to think he was not going to wake up till night, and i'm not sure that he would, had he not been effectually roused by amy's cry of joy at sight of her mother. there probably were a good many happy little girls in and about the city that day, but it is my private opinion that amy was the happiest of all, when she sat in her mother's lap and told her trials, receiving consolation and compensation in the shape of approving smiles and fond caresses. they were alone together in the chapel, to which her mother did not object when its purpose was explained to her. "on the contrary, i like it very much, dear," looking from the dusty rosary to the well-worn little book, and the lovely picture with its garland of evergreen. "it is an excellent plan to have some place where we can go to be quiet, when things vex or grieve us. there are a good many hard times in this life of ours, but we can always bear them if we ask help in the right way. i think my little girl is learning this." "yes, mother, and when i go home i mean to have a corner in the big closet to put my books and the copy of that picture which i've tried to make. the woman's face is not good, it's too beautiful for me to draw, but the baby is done better, and i love it very much. i like to think he was a little child once, for then i don't seem so far away, and that helps me." as amy pointed to the smiling christ child on his mother's knee, mrs. march saw something on the lifted hand that made her smile. she said nothing, but amy understood the look, and after a minute's pause, she added gravely, "i wanted to speak to you about this, but i forgot it. aunt gave me the ring today. she called me to her and kissed me, and put it on my finger, and said i was a credit to her, and she'd like to keep me always. she gave that funny guard to keep the turquoise on, as it's too big. i'd like to wear them mother, can i?" "they are very pretty, but i think you're rather too young for such ornaments, amy," said mrs. march, looking at the plump little hand, with the band of sky-blue stones on the forefinger, and the quaint guard formed of two tiny golden hands clasped together. "i'll try not to be vain," said amy. "i don't think i like it only because it's so pretty, but i want to wear it as the girl in the story wore her bracelet, to remind me of something." "do you mean aunt march?" asked her mother, laughing. "no, to remind me not to be selfish." amy looked so earnest and sincere about it that her mother stopped laughing, and listened respectfully to the little plan. "i've thought a great deal lately about my `bundle of naughties', and being selfish is the largest one in it, so i'm going to try hard to cure it, if i can. beth isn't selfish, and that's the reason everyone loves her and feels so bad at the thoughts of losing her. people wouldn't feel so bat about me if i was sick, and i don't deserve to have them, but i'd like to be loved and missed by a great many friends, so i'm going to try and be like beth all i can. i'm apt to forget my resolutions, but if i had something always about me to remind me, i guess i should do better. may we try this way?" "yes, but i have more faith in the corner of the big closet. wear your ring, dear, and do your best. i think you will prosper, for the sincere wish to be good is half the battle. now i must go back to beth. keep up your heart, little daughter, and we will soon have you home again." that evening while meg was writing to her father to report the traveler's safe arrival, jo slipped upstairs into beth's room, and finding her mother in her usual place, stood a minute twisting her fingers in her hair, with a worried gesture and an undecided look. "what is it, deary?' asked mrs. march, holding out her hand, with a face which invited confidence. "i want to tell you something, mother." "about meg?" "how quickly you guessed! yes, it's about her, and though it's a little thing, it fidgets me." "beth is asleep. speak low, and tell me all about it. that moffat hasn't been here, i hope?" asked mrs. march rather sharply. "no. i should have shut the door in his face if he had," said jo, settling herself on the floor at her mother's feet. "last summer meg left a pair of gloves over at the laurences' and only one was returned. we forgot about it, till teddy told me that mr. brooke owned that he liked meg but didn't dare say so, she was so young and he so poor. now, isn't it a dreadful state of things?" "do you think meg cares for him?" asked mrs. march, with an anxious look. "mercy me! i don't know anything about love and such nonsense!" cried jo, with a funny mixture of interest and contempt. "in novels, the girls show it by starting and blushing, fainting away, growing thin, and acting like fools. now meg does not do anything of the sort. she eats and drinks and sleeps like a sensible creature, she looks straight in my face when i talk about that man, and only blushes a little bit when teddy jokes about lovers. i forbid him to do it, but he doesn't mind me as he ought." "then you fancy that meg is not interested in john?' "who?" cried jo, staring. "mr. brooke. i call him `john' now. we fell into the way of doing so at the hospital, and he likes it." "oh, dear! i know you'll take his part. he's been good to father, and you won't send him away, but let meg marry him, if she wants to. mean thing! to go petting papa and helping you, just to wheedle you into liking him." and jo pulled her hair again with a wrathful tweak. "my dear, don't get angry about it, and i will tell you how it happened. john went with me at mr. laurence's request, and was so devoted to poor father that we couldn't help getting fond of him. he was perfectly open and honorable about meg, for he told us he loved her, but would earn a comfortable home before he asked her to marry him. he only wanted our leave to love her and work for her, and the right to make her love him if he could. he is a truly excellent young man, and we could not refuse to listen to him, but i will not consent to meg's engaging herself so young." "of course not. it would be idiotic! i knew there was mischief brewing. i felt it, and now it's worse than i imagined. i just wish i could marry meg myself, and keep her safe in the family." this odd arrangement made mrs. march smile, but she said gravely, "jo, i confide in you and don't wish you to say anything to meg yet. when john comes back, and i see them together, i can judge better of her feelings toward him." "she'll see those handsome eyes that she talks about, and then it will be all up with her. she's got such a soft heart, it will melt like butter in the sun if anyone looks sentimentlly at her. she read the short reports he sent more than she did your letters, and pinched me when i spoke of it, and likes brown eyes, and doesn't think john an ugly name, and she'll go and fall in love, and there's an end of peace and fun, and cozy times together. i see it all! they'll go lovering around the house, and we shall have to dodge. meg will be absorbed and no good to me any more. brooke will scratch up a fortune somehow, carry her off, and make a hole in the family, and i shall break my heart, and everything will be abominably uncomfortable. oh, dear me! why weren't we all boys, then there wouldn't be any bother." jo leaned her chin on her knees in a disconsolate attitude and shook her fist at the reprehensible john. mrs. march sighed, and jo looked up with an air of relief. "you don't like it, mother? i'm glad of it. let's send him about his business, and not tell meg a word of it, but all be happy together as we always have been." "i did wrong to sigh, jo. it is natural and right you should all go to homes of your own in time, but i do want to keep my girls as long as i can, and i am sorry that this happened so soon, for meg is only seventeen and it will be some years before john can make a home for her. your father and i have agreed that she shall not bind herself in any way, nor be married, before twenty. if she and john love one another, they can wait, and test the love by doing so. she is conscientious, and i have no fear of her treating him unkindly. my pretty, tender hearted girl! i hope things will go happily with her." "hadn't you rather have her marry a rich man?" asked jo, as her mother's voice faltered a little over the last words. "money is a good and useful thing, jo, and i hope my girls will never feel the need of it too bitterly not be tempted by too much. i should like to know that john was firmly established in some good business, which gave him an income large enough to keep free from debt and make meg comfortable. i'm not ambitious for a splendid fortune, a fashionable position, or a great name for my girls. if rank and money come with love and virtue, also, i should accept them gratefully, and enjoy your good fortune, but i know, by experience, how much genuine happiness can be had in a plain little house, where the daily bread is earned, and some privations give sweetness to the few pleasures. i am content to see meg begin humbly, for if i am not mistaken, she will be rich in the possession of a good man's heart, and that is better than a fortune." "i understand, mother, and quite agree, but i'm disappointed about meg, for i'd planned to have her marry teddy by-and-by and sit in the lap of luxury all her days. wouldn't it be nice?" asked jo, looking up with a brighter face. "he is younger than she, you know," began mrs. march, but jo broke in . . . "only a little, he's old for his age, and tall, and can be quite grown-up in his manners if he likes. then he's rich and generous and good, and loves us all, and i say it's a pity my plan is spoiled." "i'm afraid laurie is hardly grown-up enough for meg, and altogether too much of a weathercock just now for anyone to depend on. don't make plans, jo, but let time and their own hearts mate your friends. we can't meddle safely in such matters, and had better not get `romantic rubbish' as you call it, into our heads, lest it spoil our friendship." "well, i won't, but i hate to see things going all crisscross and getting snarled up, when a pull her and a snip there would straighten it out. i wish wearing flatirons on our heads would keep us from growing up. but buds will be roses, and kittens cats, more's the pity!" "what's that about flatirons and cats?" asked meg, as she crept into the room with the finished letter in her hand. "only one of my stupid speeches. i'm going to bed. come, peggy," said jo, unfolding herself like an animated puzzle. "quite right, and beautifully written. please add that i send my love to john," said mrs. march, as she glanced over the letter and gave it back. "do you call him `john'?" asked meg, smiling, with her innocent eyes looking down into her mother's. "yes, he has been like a son to us, and we are very fond of him," replied mrs. march, returning the look with a keen one. "i'm glad of that, he is so lonely. good night, mother, dear. it is so inexpressibly comfortable to have you here," was meg's answer. the kiss her mother gave her was a very tender one, and as she went away, mrs. march said, with a mixture of satisfaction and regret, "she does not love john yet, but will soon learn to. chapter twenty-one jo's face was a study next day, for the secret rather weighed upon her, and she found it hard not to look mysterious and important. meg observed it, but did not trouble herself to make inquiries, for she had learned that the best way to manage jo was by the law of contraries, so she felt sure of being told everything if she did not ask. she was rather surprised, therefore, when the silence remained unbroken, and jo assumed a patronizing air, which decidedly aggravated meg, who in turn assumed an air of dignified reserve and devoted herself to her mother. this left jo to her own devices, for mrs. march had taken her place as nurse, and bade her rest, exercise, and amuse herself after her long confinement. amy being gone, laurie was her only refuge, and much as she enjoyed his society, she rather dreaded him just then, for he was an incorrigible tease, and she feared he would coax the secret from her. she was quite right, for the mischief-loving lad no sooner suspected a mystery than he set himself to find it out, and led jo a trying life of it. he wheedled, bribed, ridiculed, threatened, and scolded; affected indifference, that he might surprise the truth from her; declared her knew, then that he didn't care; and at last, by dint of perseverance, he satisfied himself that it concerned meg and mr. brooke. feeling indignant that he was not taken into his tutor's confidence, he set his wits to work to devise some proper retaliation for the slight. meg meanwhile had apparently forgotten the matter and was absorbed in preparations for her father's return, but all of a sudden a change seemed to come over her, and, for a day or two, she was quite unlike herself. she started when spoken to, blushed when looked at, was very quiet, and sat over her sewing, with a timid, troubled look on her face. to her mother's inquiries she answered that she was quite well, and jo's she silenced by begging to be let alone. "she feels it in the air--love, i mean--and she's going very fast. she's got most of the symptoms--is twittery and cross, doesn't eat, lies awake, and mopes in corners. i caught her singing that song he gave her, and once she said `john', as you do, and then turned as red as a poppy. whatever shall we do?" said jo, looking ready for any measures, however violent. "nothing but wait. let her alone, be kind and patient, and father's coming will settle everything," replied her mother. "here's a note to you, meg, all sealed up. how odd! teddy never seals mine," said jo next day, as she distributed the contents of the little post office. mrs. march and jo were deep in their own affairs, when a sound from meg made them look up to see her staring at her note with a frightened face. "my child, what is it?" cried her mother, running to her, while jo tried to take the paper which had done the mischief. "it's all a mistake, he didn't send it. oh, jo, how could you do it?" and meg hid her face in her hands, crying as if her heart were quite broken. "me! i've done nothing! what's she talking about?" cried jo, bewildered. meg's mild eyes kindled with anger as she pulled a crumpled note from her pocket and threw it at jo, saying reproachfully, "you wrote it, and that bad boy helped you. how could you be so rude, so mean, and cruel to us both?" jo hardly heard her, for she and her mother were reading the note, which was written in a peculiar hand. "my dearest margaret "i can no longer restrain my passion, and must know my fate before i return. i dare not tell your parents yet, but i think they would consent if they knew that we adored one another. mr. laurence will help me to some good place, and then, my sweet girl, you will make me happy. i implore you to say nothing to your family yet, but to send one word of hope through laurie to, "your devoted john." "oh, the little villain! that's the way he meant to pay me for keeping my word to mother. i'll give him a hearty scolding and bring him over to beg pardon," cried jo, burning to execute immediate justice. but her mother held her back, saying, with a look she seldom wore . . . "stop, jo, you must clear yourself first. you have played so many pranks that i am afraid you have had a hand in this." "on my word, mother, i haven't! i never saw that note before, and don't know anything about it, as true as i live!" said jo, so earnestly that they believed her. "if i had taken part in it i'd have done it better than this, and have written a sensible note. i should think you'd have known mr. brooke wouldn't write such stuff as that," she added, scornfully tossing down the paper. "it's like his writing," faltered meg, comparing it with the note in her hand. "oh, meg, you didn't answer it?" cried mrs. march quickly. "yes, i did!" and meg hid her face again, overcome with shame. "here's a scrape! do let me bring that wicked boy over to explain and be lectured. i can't rest till i get hold of him." and jo made for the door again. "hush! let me handle this, for it is worse than i thought. margaret, tell me the whole story," commanded mrs. march, sitting down by meg, yet keeping hold of jo, lest she should fly off. "i received the first letter from laurie, who didn't look as if he knew anything about it," began meg, without looking up. "i was worried at first and meant to tell you, then i remembered how you liked mr. brooke, so i thought you wouldn't mind if i kept my little secret for a few days. i'm so silly that i liked to think no one knew, and while i was deciding what to say, i felt like the girls in books, who have such things to do. forgive me, mother, i'm paid for my silliness now. i never can look him in the face again." "what did you say to him?' asked mrs. march. "i only said i was too young to do anything about it yet, that i didn't wish to have secrets from you, and he must speak to father. i was very grateful for his kindness, and would be his friend, but nothing more, for a long while." mrs. march smiled, as if well pleased, and jo clapped her hands, exclaiming, with a laugh, "you are almost equal to caroline percy, who was a pattern of prudence! tell on, meg. what did he say to that?" "he writes in a different way entirely, telling me that he never sent any love letter at all, and is very sorry that my roguish sister, jo, should take liberties with our names. it's very kind and respectful, but think how dreadful for me!" meg leaned against her mother, looking the image of despair, and jo tramped about the room, calling laurie names. all of a sudden she stopped, caught up the two notes, and after looking at them closely, said decidedly, "i don't believe brooke ever saw either of these letters. teddy wrote both, and keeps yours to crow over me with because i wouldn't tell him my secret." "don't have any secrets, jo. tell it to mother and keep out of trouble, as i should have done," said meg warningly. "bless you, child! mother told me." "that will do, jo. i'll comfort meg while you go and get laurie. i shall sift the matter to the bottom, and put a stop to such pranks at once." away ran jo, and mrs. march gently told meg mr. brooke's real feelings. "now, dear, what are your own? do you love him enough to wait till her can make a home for you, or will you keep yourself quite free for the present?" "i've been so scared and worried, i don't want to have anything to do with lovers for a long while, perhaps never," answered meg petulantly. "if john doesn't know anything about this nonsense, don't tell him, and make jo and laurie hold their tongues. i won't be deceived and plagued and made a fool of. it's a shame!" seeing meg's usually gentle temper was roused and her pride hurt by this mischievous joke, mrs. march soothed her by promises of entire silence and great discretion for the future. the instant laurie's step was heard in the hall, meg fled into the study, and mrs. march received the culprit alone. jo had not told him why he was wanted, fearing he wouldn't come, but he knew the minute he saw mrs. march's face, and stood twirling his hat with a guilty air which convicted him at once. jo was dismissed, but chose to march up and down the hall like a sentinel, having some fear that the prisoner might bolt. the sound of voices in the parlor rose and fell for half an hour, but what happened during that interview the girls never knew. when they were called in, laurie was standing by their mother with such a penitent face that jo forgave him on the spot, but did not think it wise to betray the fact. meg received his humble apology, and was much comforted by the assurance that brooke knew nothing of the joke. "i'll never tell him to my dying day, wild horses shan't drag it out of me, so you'll forgive me, meg, and i'll do anything to show how out-and-out sorry i am," he added, looking very much ashamed of himself. "i'll try,but it was a very ungentlemanly thing to do, i didn't think you could be so sly and malicious, laurie," replied meg, trying to hid her maidenly confusion under a gravely reproachful air. "it was altogether abominable, and i don't deserve to be spoken to for a month, but you will, though, won't you?" and laurie folded his hands together with such and imploring gesture, as he spoke in his irresistibly persuasive tone, that it was impossible to frown upon him in spite of his scandalous behavior. meg pardoned him, and mrs. march's grave face relaxed, in spite of her efforts to keep sober, when she heard him declare that he would atone for his sins by all sorts of penances, and abase himself like a worm before the injured damsel. jo stood aloof, meanwhile, trying to harden her heart against him, and succeeding only in primming up her face into an expression of entire disapprobation. laurie looked at her once or twice, but as she showed no sign of relenting, he felt injured, and turned his back on her till the others were done with him, when he made her a low bow and walked off without a word. as soon as he had gone, she wished she had been more forgiving, and when meg and her mother went upstairs, she felt lonely and longed for teddy. after resisting for some time, she yielded to the impulse, and armed with a book to return, went over to the big house. "is mr. laurence in?" asked jo, of a housemaid, who was coming downstairs. "yes, miss, but i don't believe he's seeable just yet." "why not? is he ill?" "la, no miss, but he's had a scene with mr. laurie, who is in one of his tantrums about something, which vexes the old gentleman, so i dursn't go nigh him." "where is laurie?' "shut up in his room, and he won't answer, though i've been a-tapping. i don't know what's to become of the dinner, for it's ready, and there's no one to eat it." "i'll go and see what the matter is. i'm not afraid of either of them." up went jo, and knocked smartly on the door of laurie's little study. "stop that, or i'll open the door and make you!" called out the young gentleman in a threatening tone. jo immediately knocked again. the door flew open, and in she bounced before laurie could recover from his surprise. seeing that he really was out of temper, jo, who knew how to manage him, assumed a contrite expression, and going artistically down upon her knees, said meekly, "please forgive me for being so cross. i came to make it up, and can't go away till i have." "it's all right. get up, and don't be a goose, jo," was the cavalier reply to her petition. "thank you, i will. could i ask what's the matter? you don't look exactly easy in your mind." "i've been shaken, and i won't bear it!" growled laurie indignantly. "who did it?" demanded jo. "grandfather. if it had been anyone else i'd have . . ." and the injured youth finished his sentence by an energetic gesture of the right arm. "that's nothing. i often shake you, and you don't mind," said jo soothingly. "pooh! you're a girl, and it's fun, but i'll allow no man to shake me!" "i don't think anyone would care to try it, if you looked as much like a thundercloud as you do now. why were you treated so?" "just because i wouldn't say what your mother wanted me for. i'd promised not to tell, and of course i wasn't going to break my word." "couldn't you satisfy your grandpa in any other way?" "no, he would have the truth, the whole truth,and nothing but the truth. i'd have told my part of the scrape, if i could without bringing meg in. as i couldn't, i held my tongue, and bore the scolding till the old gentleman collared me. then i bolted, for fear i should forget myself." "it wasn't nice, but he's sorry, i know, so go down and make up. i'll help you." "hanged if i do! i'm not going to be lectured and pummelled by everyone, just for a bit of a frolic. i was sorry about meg, and begged pardon like a man, but i won't do it again, when i wasn't in the wrong." "he didn't know that." "he ought to trust me, and not act as if i was a baby. it's no use, jo, he's got to learn that i'm able to take care of myself, and don't need anyone's apron string to hold on by." "what pepper pots you are! " sighed jo. "how do you mean to settle this affair?" "well, he ought to beg pardon, and believe me when i say i can't tell him what the fuss's about." "bless you! he won't do that." "i won't go down till he does." "now, teddy, be sensible. let it pass, and i'll explain what i can. you can't stay here, so what's the use of being melodramatic?" "i don't intend to stay here long, anyway. i'll slip off and take a journey somewhere, and when grandpa misses me he'll come round fast enough." "i dare say, but you ought not to go and worry him." "don't preach. i'll go to washington and see brooke. it's gay there, and i'll enjoy myself after the troubles." "what fun you'd have! i wish i could run off too," said jo, forgetting her part of mentor in lively visions of martial life at the capital. "come on, then! why not? you go and surprise your father, and i'll stir up old brooke. it would be a glorious joke. let's do it, jo. we'll leave a letter saying we are all right, and trot off at once. i've got money enough. it will do you good, and no harm, as you go to your father." for a moment jo looked as if she would agree, for wild as the plan was, it just suited her. she was tired of care and confinement, longed for change, and thoughts of her father blended temptingly with the novel charms of camps and hospitals, liberty and fun. her eyes kindled as they turned wistfully toward the window, but they fell on the old house opposite, and she shook her head with sorrowful decision. "if i was a boy, we'd run away together, and have a capital time, but as i'm a miserable girl, i must be proper and stop at home. don't tempt me, teddy, it's a crazy plan." "that's the fun of it," began laurie, who had got a willful fit on him and was possessed to break out of bounds in some way. "hold your tongue!" cried jo, covering her ears. "`prunes and prisms' are my doom, and i may as well make up my mind to it. i came here to moralize, not to hear things that make me skip to think of." "i know meg would wet-blanket such a proposal, but i thought you had more spirit," began laurie insinuatingly. "bad boy, be quiet! sit down and think of your own sins, don't go making me add to mine. if i get your grandpa to apologize for the shaking, will you give up running away?" asked jo seriously. "yes, but you won't do it," answered laurie, who wished to make up, but felt that his outraged dignity must be appeased first. "if i can manage the young one, i can the old one," muttered jo, as she walked away, leaving laurie bent over a railroad map with his head propped up on both hands. "come in!" and mr. laurence's gruff voice sounded gruffer than ever, as jo tapped at his door. "it's only me, sir, come to return a book," she said blandly, as she entered. "want any more?" asked the old gentleman, looking grim and vexed, but trying not to show it. "yes, please. i like old sam so well, i think i'll try the second volume," returned jo, hoping to propitiate him by accepting a second dose of boswell's johnson, as he had recommended that lively work. the shaggy eyebrows unbent a little as he rolled the steps toward the shelf where the johnsonian literature was placed. jo skipped up, and sitting on the top step, affected to be searching for her book, but was really wondering how best to introduce the dangerous object of her visit. mr. laurence seemed to suspect that something was brewing in her mind, for after taking several brisk turns about the room, he faced round on her, speaking so abruptly that rasselas tumbled face downward on the floor. "what has that boy been about? don't try to shield him. i know he has been in mischief by the way he acted when he came home. i can't get a word from him, and when i threatened to shake the truth out of him he bolted upstairs and locked himself into his room." "he did wrong, but we forgave him, and all promised not to say a word to anyone," began jo reluctantly. "that won't do. he shall not shelter himself behind a promise from you softhearted girls. if he's done anything amiss, he shall confess, beg pardon, and be punished. out with it, jo. i won't be kept in the dark." mr. laurence looked so alarming and spoke so sharply that jo would have gladly run away, if she could, but she was perched aloft on the steps, and he stood at the foot, a lion in the path, so she had to stay and brave it out. "indeed, sir, i cannot tell. mother forbade it. laurie has confessed, asked pardon, and been punished quite enough. we don't keep silence to shield him, but someone else, and it will make more trouble if you interfere. please don't. it was partly my fault, but it's all right now. so let's forget it, and talk about the rambler or something pleasant." "hang the rambler! come down and give me your word that this harum-scarum boy of mine hasn't done anything ungrateful or impertinent. if he has, after all your kindness to him, i'll thrash him with my own hands." the threat sounded awful, but did not alarm jo, for she knew the irascible old gentleman would never lift a finger against his grandson, whatever he might say to the contrary. she obediently descended, and made as light of the prank as she could without betraying meg or forgetting the truth. "hum . . . ha . . . well, if the boy held his tongue because he promised, and not from obstinacy, i'll forgive him. he's a stubborn fellow and hard to manage," said mr. laurence, rubbing up his hair till it looked as if he had been out in a gale, and smoothing the frown from his brow with an air of relief. "so am i, but a kind word will govern me when all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't," said jo, trying to say a kind word for her friend, who seemed to get out of one scrape only to fall into another. "you think i'm not kind to him, hey?" was the sharp answer. "oh, dear no, sir. you are rather too kind sometimes, and then just a trifle hasty when he tries your patience. don't you think you are?" jo was determined to have it out now, and tried to look quite placid, though she quaked a little after her bold speech. to her great relief and surprise, the old gentleman only threw his spectacles onto the table with a rattle and exclaimed frankly . .. "you're right, girl, i am! i love the boy, but he tries my patience past bearing, and i know how it will end, if we go on so." "i'll tell you, he'll run away." jo was sorry for that speech the minute it was made. she meant to warn him that laurie would not bear much restraint, and hoped he would be more forebearing with the lad. mr. laurence's ruddy face changed suddenly, and he sat down, with a troubled glance at the picture of a handsome man, which hung over his table. it was laurie's father, who had run away in his youth, and married against the imperious old man's will. jo fancied her remembered and regretted the past, and she wished she had held her tongue. "he won't do it unless he is very much worried, and only threatens it sometimes, when he gets tired of studying. i often think i should like to, especially since my hair was cut, so if you ever miss us, you may advertise for two boys and look among the ships bound for india." she laughed as she spoke, and mr. laurence looked relieved, evidently taking the whole as a joke. "you hussy, how dare you talk in that way? where's your respect for me, and your proper bringing up? bless the boys and girls! what torments they are, yet we can't do without them," he said, pinching her cheeks good-humoredly. "go and bring that boy down to his dinner, tell him it's all right, and advise him not to put on tragedy airs with his grandfather. i won't bear it." "he won't come, sir. he feels badly because you didn't believe him when he said he couldn't tell. i think the shaking hurt his feelings very much." jo tried to look pathetic but must have failed, for mr. laurence began to laugh, and she knew the day was won. "i'm sorry for that, and ought to thank him for not shaking me, i suppose. what the dickens does the fellow expect?" and the old gentleman looked a trifle ashamed of his own testiness. "if i were you, i'd write him an apology, sir. he says he won't come down till he has one, and talks about washington, and goes on in an absurd way. a formal apology will make him see how foolish he is, and bring him down quite amiable. try it. he likes fun, and this was is better than talking. i'll carry it up, and teach him his duty." mr. laurence gave her a sharp look, and put on his specta cles, saying slowly, "you're a sly puss, but i don't mind being managed by you and beth. here, give me a bit of paper, and let us have done with this nonsense." the note was written in the terms which one gentleman would use to another after offering some deep insult. jo dropped a kiss on the top of mr. laurence's bald head, and ran up to slip the apology under laurie's door, advising him through the keyhole to be submissive, decorous, and a few other agreeable impossibilities. finding the door locked again, she left the note to do its work, and was going quietly away, when the young gentleman slid down the banisters, and waited for her at the bottom, saying, with his most virtuous expression of countenance, "what a good fellow you are, jo! did you get blown up?" he added, laughing. "no, he was pretty mild, on the whole." "ah! i got it all round. even you cast me off over there, and i felt just ready to go to the deuce," he began apologetically. "don't talk that way, turn over a new leaf and begin again, teddy, my son." "i keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as i used to spoil my copybooks, and i make so many beginnings there never will be an end," he said dolefully. "go and eat your dinner, you'll feel better after it. men always croak when they are hungry," and jo whisked out at the front door after that. "that's a `label' on my `sect'," answered laurie, quoting amy, as he went to partake of humble pie dutifully with his grandfather, who was quite saintly in temper and overwhelmingly respectful in manner all the rest of the day. everyone thought the matter ended and the little cloud blown over, but the mischief was done, for though others forgot it, meg remembered. she never alluded to a certain person, but she thought of him a good deal, dreamed dreams more than ever, and once jo, rummaging her sister's desk for stamps, found a bit of paper scribbled over with the words, `mrs. john brooke', whereat she groaned tragically and cast it into the fire, feeling that laurie's prank had hastened the evil day for her. chapter twenty-two like sunshine after a storm were the peaceful weeks which followed. the invalids improved rapidly, and mr. march began to talk or returning early in the new year. beth was soon able to lie on the study sofa all day, amusing herself with the wellbeloved cats at first, and in time with doll's sewing, which had fallen sadly behindhand. her once active limbs were so stiff and feeble that jo took her for a daily airing about the house in her strong arms. meg cheerfully blackened and burned her white hands cooking delicate messes for `the dear', while amy, a loyal slave of the ring, celebrated her return by giving away as many of her treasures as she could prevail on her sisters to accept. as christmas approached, the usual mysteries began to haunt the house, and jo frequently convulsed the family by proposing utterly impossible or magnificently absurd ceremonies, in honor of this unusually merry christmas. laurie was equally impracticable, and would have had bonfires, skyrockets, and triumphal arches, if he had had his own way. after many skirmishes and snubbings, the ambitious pair were considered effectually quenched and went about with forlorn faces, which were rather belied by explosions of laughter when the two got together. several days of unusually mild weather fitly ushered in a splendid christmas day. hannah `felt in her bones' that it was going to be an unusually fine day, and she proved herself a true prophetess, for everybody and everything seemed bound to produce a grand success. to begin with, mr. march wrote that he should soon be with them, then beth felt uncommonly well that morning, and, being dressed in her mother's gift, a soft crimson merino wrapper, was borne in high triumph to the window to behold the offering of jo and laurie. the unquenchables had done their best to be worthy of the name, for like elves they had worked by night and conjured up a comical surprise. out in the garden stood a stately snow maiden, crowned with holly, bearing a basket of fruit and flowers in one hand, a great roll of music in the other, a perfect rainbow of an afghan round her chilly shoulders, and a christmas carol issuing from her lips on a pink paper streamer. the jungfrau to beth god bless you, dear queen bess! may nothing you dismay, but health and peace and happiness be yours, this christmas day. here's fruit to feed our busy bee, and flowers for her nose. here's music for her pianee, an afghan for her toes, a portrait of joanna, see, by raphael no. 2, who laboured with great industry to make it fair and true. accept a ribbon red, i beg, for madam purrer's tail, and ice cream made by lovely peg, a mont blanc in a pail. their dearest love my makers laid within my breast of snow. accept it, and the alpine maid, from laurie and from jo. how beth laughed when she saw it, how laurie ran up and down to bring in the gifts, and what ridiculous speeches jo made as she presented them. "i'm so full of happiness, that if father was only here, i couldn't hold one drop more," said beth, quite sighing with contentment as jo carried her off to the study to rest after the excitement, and to refresh herself with some of the delicious grapes the `jungfrau' had sent her. "so am i," added jo, slapping the pocket wherein reposed the long-desired undine and sintram. "i'm sure i am," echoed amy, poring over the engraved copy of the madonna and child, which her mother had given her in a pretty frame. "of course i am!" cried meg, smoothing the silvery folds of her first sild dress, for mr. laurence had insisted on giving it. "how can i be otherwise?" said mrs. march gratefully, as her eyes went from her husband's letter to beth's smiling face, and her hand carressed the brooch made of gray and golden, chestnut and dark brown hair, which the girls had just fastened on her breast. now and then, in this workaday world, things do happen in the delightful storybook fashion, and what a comfort it is. half an hour after everyone had said they were so happy they could only hold one drop more, the drop came. laurie opened the parlor door and popped his head in very quietly. he might just as well have turned a somersault and uttered an indian war whoop, for his face was so full of suppressed excitement and his voice so treacherously joyful that everyone jumped up, though he only said, in a queer, breathless voice, "here's another christmas present for the march family." before the words were well out of his mouth, he was whisked away somehow, and in his place appeared a tall man, muffled up to the eyes, leaning on the arm of another tall man, who tried to say something and couldn't. of course there was a general stampede, and for several minutes everybody seemed to lose their wits, for the strangest things were done, and no one said a word. mr. march became invisible in the embrace of four pairs of loving arms. jo disgraced herself by nearly fainting away, and had to be doctored by laurie in the china closet. mr. brooke kissed meg entirely by mistake, as he somewhat incoherently explained. and amy, the dignified, tumbled over a stool, and never stopping to get up, hugged and cried over her father's boots in the most touching manner. mrs. march was the first to recover herself, and held up her hand with a warning, "hush! remember beth." but it was too late. the study door flew open, the little red wrapper appeared on the threshold, joy put strength into the feeble limbs, and beth ran straight into her father's arms. never mind what happened just after that, for the full hearts overflowed, washing away the bitterness of the past and leaving only the sweetness of the present. it was not at all romantic, but a hearty laugh set everybody straight again, for hannah was discovered behind the door, sobbing over the fat turkey, which she had forgotten to put down when she rushed up from the kitchen. as the laugh subsided, mrs. march began to thank mr. brooke for his faithful care of her husband, at which mr. brooke suddenly remembered that mr. march needed rest, and seizing laurie, he precipitately retired. then the two invalids were ordered to repose, which they did, by both sitting in one big chair and talking hard. mr. march told how he had longed to surprise them, and how, when the fine weather came, he had been allowed by his doctor, to take advantage of it, how devoted brooke had been, and how he was altogether a most estimable and upright young man. why mr. march paused a minute just there, and after a glance at meg, who was violently poking the fire, looked at his wife with an inquiring lift of the eyebrows, i leave you to imagine. also why mrs. march gently nodded her head and asked, rather abruptly, if he wouldn't like to have something to eat. jo saw and understood the look, and she stalked grimly away to get wine and beef tea, muttering to herself as she slammed the door, "i hate estimable young men with brown eyes!" there never was such a christmas dinner as they had that day. the fat turkey was a sight to behold, when hannah sent him up, stuffed, browned, and decorated. so was the plum pudding, which melted in one's mouth, likewise the jellies, in which amy reveled like a fly in a honeypot. everything turned out well, which was a mercy, hannah said, "for my mind was that flustered, mum, that it's a merrycle i didn't roast the pudding, and stuff the turkey with raisins, let alone bilin' of it in a cloth." mr. laurence and his grandson dined with them, also mr. brooke, at whom jo glowered darkly, to laurie's infinite amusement. two easy chairs stood side by side at the head of the table, in which sat beth and her father, feasting modestly on chicken and a little fruit. they drank healths, told stories, sang songs, `reminisced', as the old folks say, and had a thoroughly good time. a sleigh ride had been planned, but the girls would not leave their father, so the guests departed early, and as twilight gathered, the happy family sat together round the fire. "just a year ago we were groaning over the dismal christmas we expected to have. do you remember?" asked jo, breaking a short pause which had followed a long conversation about many things. "rather a pleasant year on the whole!" said meg, smiling at the fire, and congratulating herself on having treated mr. brooke with dignity. "i think it's been a pretty hard one," observed amy, watching the light shine on her ring with thoughtful eyes. "i'm glad it's over, because we've got you back," whispered beth, who sat on her father's knee. "rather a rough road for you to travel, my little pilgrims, especially the latter part of it. but you have got on bravely, and i think the burdens are in a fair way to tumble off very soon," said mr. march, looking with fatherly satisfaction at the four young faces gathered round him. "how do you know? did mother tell you?' asked jo. "not much. straws show which way the wind blows, and i've made several discoveries today." "oh, tell us what they are!" cried meg, who sat beside him. "here is one." and taking up the hand which lay on the arm of his chair, he pointed to the roughened forefinger, a burn on the back, and two or three little hard spots on the palm. "i remember a time when this hand was white and smooth, and your first care was to keep it so. it was very pretty then, but to me it is much prettier now, for in this seeming blemishes i read a little history. a burnt offering has been made to vanity, this hardened palm has earned something better than blisters, and i'm sure the sewing done by these pricked fingers will last a long time, so much good will went into the stitches. meg, my dear, i value the womanly skill which keeps home happy more than white hands or fashionable accomplishments. i'm proud to shake this good, industrious little hand, and hope i shall not soon be asked to give it away." if meg had wanted a reward for hours of patient labor, she received it in the hearty pressure of her father's hand and the approving smile he gave her. "what about jo? please say something nice, for she has tried so hard and been so very, very good to me," said beth in her father's ear. he laughed and looked across at the tall girl who sat opposite, with and unusually mild expression in her face. "in spite of the curly crop, i don't see the `son jo' whom i left a year ago," said mr. march. "i see a young lady who pins her collar straight, laces her boots neatly, and neither whistles, talks slang, nor lies on the rug as she used to do. her face is rather thin and pale just now, with watching and anxiety, but i like to look at it, for it has grown gentler, and her voice is lower. she doesn't bounce, but moves quietly, and takes care of a certain little person in a motherly way which delights me. i rather miss my wild girl, but if i get a strong, helpful, tenderhearted woman in her place, i shall feel quite satisfied. i don't know whether the shearing sobered our black sheep, but i do know that in all washington i couldn't find anything beautiful enough to be bought with the five-and-twenty dollars my good girl sent me." jo's keen eyes were rather dim for a minute, and her thin face grew rosy in the firelight as she received her father's praise, feeling that she did deserve a portion of it. "now, beth," said amy, longing for her turn, but ready to wait. "there's so little of her, i'm afraid to say much, for fear she will slip away altogether, though she is not so shy as she used to be," began their father cheerfully. but recollecting how nearly he had lost her, he held her close, saying tenderly, with her cheek against his own, "i've got you safe, my beth, and i'll keep you so, please god." after a minute's silence, he looked down at amy, who sat on the cricket at his feet, and said, with a caress of the shining hair . . . "i observed that amy took drumsticks at dinner, ran errands for her mother all the afternoon, gave meg her place tonight, and has waited on every on with patience and good humor. i also observe that she does not fret much nor look in the glass, and has not even mentioned a very pretty ring which she wears, so i conclude that she has learned to think of other people more and of herself less, and has decided to try and mold her character as carefully as she molds her little clay figures. i am glad of this, for though i should be very proud of a graceful statue made by her, i shall be infinitely prouder of a lovable daughter with a talent for making life beautiful to herself and others." "what are you thinking of, beth?" asked jo, when amy had thanked her father and told about her ring. "i read in pilgrim's progress today how, after many troubles, christian and hopeful came to a pleasant green meadow where lilies bloomed all year round, and there they rested happily, as we do now, before they went on to their journey's end," answered beth, adding, as she slipped out of her father's arms and went to the instrument, "it's singing time now, and i want to be in my old place. i'll try to sing the song of the shepherd boy which the pilgrims heard. i made the music for father, because he likes the verses." so, sitting at the dear little piano, beth softly touched the keys, and in the sweet voice they had never thought to hear again, sang to her own accompaniment the quaint hymn, which was a singularly fitting song for her. he that is down need fear no fall, he that is low no pride. he that is humble ever shall have god to be his guide. i am content with what i have, little be it, or much. and, lord! contentment still i crave, because thou savest such. fulness to them a burden is, that go on pilgrimage. here little, and hereafter bliss, is best from age to age! chapter twenty-three like bees swarming after their queen, mother and daughters hovered about mr. march the next day, neglecting everything to look at, wait upon, and listen to the new invalid, who was in a fair way to be killed by kindness. as he sat propped up in a big chair by beth's sofa, with the other three close by, and hannah popping in her head now and then `to peek at the dear man', nothing seemed needed to complete their happiness. but something was needed, and the elder ones felt it, though none confessed the fact. mr. and mrs. march looked at one another with an anxious expression, as their eyes followed meg. jo had sudden fits of sobriety, and was seen to shake her fist at mr. brooke's umbrella, which had been left in the hall. meg was absent-minded, shy, and silent, started when the bell rang, and colored when john's name was mentioned. amy said, "everyone seemed waiting for something, and couldn't settle down, which was queer, since father was safe at home," and beth innocently wondered why their neighbors didn't run over as usual. laurie went by in the afternoon, and seeing meg at the window, seemed suddenly possessed with a melodramatic fit, for he fell down on one knee in the snow, beat his breast, tore his hair, and clasped his hands imploringly, as if begging some boon. and when meg told him to behave himself and go away, he wrung imaginary tears out of his handkerchief, and staggered round the corner as if in utter despair. "what does the goose mean?" said meg, laughing and trying to look unconscious. "he's showing you how your john will go on by-and-by. touchin, isn't it?" answered jo scornfully. "don't say my john, it isn't proper or true," but meg's voice lingered over the words as if they sounded pleasant to her. "please don't plague me, jo, i've told you i don't care much about him, and there isn't to be anything said, but we are all to be friendly, and go on as before." "we can't, for something has been said, and laurie's mischief has spoiled you for me. i see it, and so does mother. you are not like your old self a bit, and seem ever so far away from me. i don't mean to plague you and will bear it like a man, but i do wish it was all settled. i hate to wait, so if you mean ever to do it, make haste and have it over quickly," said jo pettishly. "i can't say anything till he speaks, and he won't, because father said i was too young," began meg, bending over her work with a queer little smile, which suggested that she did not quite agree with her father on that point. "if he did speak, you wouldn't know what to say, but would cry or blush, or let him have his own way, instead of giving a good, decided no." "i'm not so silly and weak as you think. i know just what i should say, for i've planned it all, so i needn't be taken unawares. there's no knowing what may happen, and i wished to be prepared." jo couldn't help smiling at the important air which meg had unconsciously assumed and which was as becoming as the pretty color varying in her cheeks. "would you mind telling me what you'd say?" asked jo more respectfully. "not at all. you are sixteen now, quite old enough to be my confidente, and my experience will be useful to you by-and-by, perhaps, in your own affairs of this sort." "don't mean to have any. it's fun to watch other people philander, but i should feel like a fool doing it myself," said jo, looking alarmed at the thought. "i think not, if you liked anyone very much, and he liked you." meg spoke as if to herself, and glanced out at the lane where she had often seen lovers walking together in the summer twilight. "i thought you were going to tell your speech to that man," said jo, rudely shortening her sister's little reverie. "oh, i should merely say, quite calmly and decidedly, `thank you, mr. brooke, you are very kind, but i agree with father that i am too young to enter into any engagement at present, so please say no more, but let us be friends as we were." "hum, that's stiff and cool enough! i don't believe you'll ever say it, and i know he won't be satisfied if you do. if he goes on like the rejected lovers in books, you'll give in, rather than hurt his feelings." "no, i won't. i shall tell him i've made up my mind, and shall walk out of the room with dignity." meg rose as she spoke, and was just going to rehearse the dignified exit, when a step in the hall made her fly into her seat and begin to sew as fast as if her life depended on finishing that particular seam in a given time. jo smothered a laugh at the sudden change, and when someone gave a modest tap, opened the door with a grim aspect which was anything but hospitable. "good afternoon. i came to get my umbrella, that is, to see how your father finds himself today," said mr. brooke, getting a trifle confused as his eyes went from one telltale face to the other. "it's very well, he's in the rack. i'll get him, and tell it you are here." and having jumbled her father and the umbrella well together in her reply, jo slipped out of the room to give meg a chance to make her speech and air her dignity. but the instant she vanished, meg began to sidle toward the door, murmuring . . . "mother will like to see you. pray sit down, i'll call her." "don't go. are you afraid of me, margaret?" and mr. brooke looked so hurt that meg thought she must have done something very rude. she blushed up to the little curls on her forehead, for he had never called her margaret before, and she was surprised to find how natural and sweet it seemed to hear him say it. anxious to appear friendly and at her ease, she put out her hand with a confiding gesture, and said gratefully . . . "how can i be afraid when you have been so kind to father? i only wish i could thank you for it." "shall i tell you how?" asked mr. brooke, holding the small hand fast in both his own, and looking down at meg with so much love in the brown eyes that her heart began to flutter, and she both longed to run away and to stop and listen. "oh no, please don't, i'd rather not," she said, trying to withdraw her hand, and looking frightened in spite of her denial. "i won't trouble you. i only want to know if you care for me a little, meg. i love you so much, dear," added mr. brooke tenderly. this was the moment for the calm, proper speech, but meg didn't make it. she forgot every word of it, hung her head, and answered, "i don't know," so softly that john had to stoop down to catch the foolish little reply. he seemed to think it was worth the trouble, for he smiled to himself as if quite satisfied, pressed the plump hand gratefully, and said in his most persuasive tone, "will you try and find out? i want to know so much, for i can't go to work with any heart until i learn whether i am to have my reward in the end or not." "i'm too young," faltered meg, wondering was she was so fluttered, yet rather enjoying it. "i'll wait, and in the meantime, you could be learning to like me. would it be a very hard lesson, dear?" "not if i chose to learn it, but . . ." "please choose to learn, meg. i love you to teach, and this is easier than german," broke in john, getting possession of the other hand, so that she had no way of hiding her face as he bent to look into it. his tone was properly beseeching, but stealing a shy look at him, meg saw that his eyes were merry as well as tender, and that he wore the satisfied smile of one who had no doubt of his success. this nettled her. annie moffat's foolish lessons in coquetry came into her mind, and the love of power, which sleeps in the bosoms of the best of little women, woke up all of a sudden and took possession of her. she felt excited and strange, and not knowing what else to do, followed a capricious impulse, and, withdrawing her hands, said petulantly, "i don't choose. please go away and let me be!" poor mr. brooke looked as if his lovely castle in the air was tumbling about his ears, for he had never seen meg in such a mood before, and it rather bewildered him. "do you really mean that?" he asked anxiously, following her as she walked away. "yes, i do. i don't want to be worried about such things. father says i needn't, it's too soon and i'd rather not." "mayn't i hope you'll change your mind by-and-by? i'll wait and say nothing till you have had more time. don't play with me, meg. i didn't think that of you." "don't think of me at all. i'd rather you wouldn't," said meg, taking a naughty satisfaction in trying her lover's patience and her own power. he was grave and pale now, and looked decidedly more like the novel heroes whom she admired, but he neither slapped his forehead nor tramped about the room as they did. he just stood looking at her so wistfully, so tenderly, that she found her heart relenting in spite of herself. what would have happened next i cannot say, if aunt march had not come hobbling in at this interesting minute. the old lady couldn't resist her longing to see her nephew, for she had met laurie as she took her airing, and hearing of mr. march's arrival, drove straight out to see him. the family were all busy in the back part of the house, and she had made her way quietly in, hoping to surprise them. she did surprise two of them so much that meg started as if she had seen a ghost, and mr. brooke vanished into the study. "bless me, what's all this?" cried the old lady with a rap of her cane as she glanced from the pale young gentleman to the scarlet young lady. "it's father's friend. i'm so surprised to see you!" stammered meg, feeling that she was in for a lecture now. "that's evident," returned aunt march, sitting down. "but what is father's friend saying to make you look like a peony? there's mischief going on, and i insist upon knowing what it is," with another rap. "we were only talking. mr. brooke came for his umbrella," began meg, wishing that mr. brooke and the umbrella were safely out of the house. "brooke? that boy's tutor? ah! i understand now. i know all about it. jo blundered into a wrong message in one of your father's letters, and i made her tell me. you haven't gone and accepted him, child?" cried aunt march, looking scandalized. "hush! he'll hear. shan't i call mother?" said meg, much troubled. "not yet. i've something to say to you, and i must free my mind at once. tell me, do you mean to marry this cook? if you do, not one penny of my money ever goes to you. remember that, and be a sensible girl," said the old lady impressively. now aunt march possessed in perfection the art of rousing the spirit of opposition in the gentlest people, and enjoyed doing it. the best of us have a spice of perversity in us, especially when we are young and in love. if aunt march had begged meg to accept john brooke, she would probably have declared she couldn't think of it, but as she was preemptorily ordered not to like him, she immediately made up her mind that she would. inclination as well as perversity made the decision easy, and being already much excited, meg opposed the old lady with unusual spirit. "i shall marry whom i please, aunt march, and you can leave your money to anyone you like," she said, nodding her head with a resolute air. "highty-tighty! is that the way you take my advice, miss? you'll be sorry for it by-and-by, when you've tried love in a cottage and found it a failure." "it can't be a worse one than some people find in big houses," retorted meg. aunt march put on her glasses and took a look at the girl, for she did not know her in this new mood. meg hardly knew herself, she felt so brave and independent, so glad to defend john and assert her right to love him, if she liked. aunt march saw that she had begun wrong, and after a little pause, made a fresh start, saying as mildly as she could, "now, meg, my dear, be reasonable and take my advice. i mean it kindly, and don't want you to spoil your whole life by making a mistake at the beginning. you ought to marry well and help your family. it's your duty to make a rich match and it ought to be impressed upon you." "father and mother don't think so. they like john though he is poor." "your parents, my dear, have no more worldly wisdom than a pair of babies." "i'm glad of it," cried meg stoutly. aunt march took no notice, but went on with her lecture. "this rook is poor and hasn't got any rich relations, has he?" "no, but he has many warm friends." "you can't live on friends, try it and see how cool they'll grow. he hasn't any business, has he?" "not yet. mr. laurence is going to help him." "that won't last long. james laurence is a crotchety old fellow and not to be depended on. so you intend to marry a man without money, position, or business, and go on working harder than you do now, when you might be comfortable all your days by minding me and doing better? i thought you had more sense, meg." "i couldn't do better if i waited half my life! john is good and wise, he's got heaps of talent, he's willing to work and sure to get on, he's so energetic and brave. everyone likes and respects him, and i'm proud to think he cares for me, though i'm so poor and young and silly," said meg, looking prettier than ever in her earnestness. "he knows you have got rich relations, child. that's the secret of his liking, i suspect." "aunt march, how dare you say such a thing? john is above such meanness, and i won't listen to you a minute if you talk so," cried meg indignantly, forgetting everything but the injustice of the old lady's suspicions. "my john wouldn't marry for money, any more than i would. we are willing to work and we mean to wait. i'm not afraid of being poor, for i've been happy so far, and i know i shall be with him because he loves me, and i . . ." meg stopped there, remembering all of a sudden that she hadn't made up her mind, that she had told `her john' to go away, and that he might be overhearing her inconsistent remarks. aunt march was very angry, for she had set her heart on having her pretty niece make a fine match, and something in the girl's happy young face made the lonely old woman feel both sad and sour. "well, i wash my hands of the whole affair! you are a willful child, and you've lost more than you know by this piece of folly. no, i won't stop. i'm disappointed in you, and haven't spirits to see your father now. don't expect anything from me when you are married. your mr. book's friends must take care of you. i'm done with you forever." and slamming the door in meg's face, aunt march drove off in high dudgeon. she seemed to take all the girl's courage with her, for when left alone, meg stood for a moment, undecided whether to laugh or cry. before she could make up her mind, she was taken possession of by mr. brooke, who said all in one breath, "i couldn't help hearing, meg. thank you for defending me, and aunt march for proving that you do care for me a little bit." "i didn't know how much till she abused you," began meg. "and i needn't go away, but my stay and be happy, may i, dear?" here was another fine chance to make the crushing speech and the stately exit, but meg never thought of doing either, and disgraced herself forever in jo's eyes by meekly whispering, "yes, john," and hiding her face on mr. brooke's waistcoat. fifteen minutes after aunt march's departure, jo came softly downstairs, paused an instant at the parlor door, and hearing no sound within, nodded and smiled with a satisfied expression, saying to herself, "she has seen him away as we planned, and that affair is settled. i'll go and hear the fun, and have a good laugh over it." but poor jo never got her laugh, for she was transfixed upon the threshold by a spectacle which held her there, staring with her mouth nearly as wide open as her eyes. going in to exult over a fallen enemy and to praise a strong-minded sister for the banishment of an objectionable lover, it certainly was a shock to behold the aforesaid enemy serenely sitting on the sofa, with the strongminded sister enthroned upon his knee and wearing an expression of the most abject submission. jo gave a sort of gasp, as if a cold shower bath had suddenly fallen upon her, for such an unexpected turning of the tables actually took her breath away. at the odd sound the lovers turned and saw her. meg jumped up, looking both proud and shy, but `that man', as jo called him, actually laughed and said coolly, as he kissed the astonished newcomer, "sister jo, congratulate us!" that was adding insult to injury, it was altogether too much, and making some wild demonstration with her hands, jo vanished without a word. rushing upstairs, she startled the invalids by exclaiming tragically as she burst into the room, "oh, do somebody go down quick! john brooke is acting dreadfully, and meg likes it!" mr. and mrs. march left the room with speed, and casting herself upon the be, jo cried and scolded tempestuously as she told the awful news to beth and amy. the little girls, however, considered it a most agreeable and interesting event, and jo got little comfort from them, so she went up to her refuge in the garret, and confided her troubles to the rats. nobody ever knew what went on in the parlor that afternoon, but a great deal of talking was done, and quiet mr. brooke astonished his friends by the eloquence and spirit with which he pleaded his suit, told his plans, and persuaded them to arrange everything just as he wanted it. the tea bell rang before he had finished describing the paradise which he meant to earn for meg, and he proudly took her in to supper, both looking so happy that jo hadn't the heart to be jealous or dismal. amy was very much impressed by john's devotion and meg's dignity, beth beamed at them from a distance, while mr. and mrs. march surveyed the young couple with such tender satisfaction that it was perfectly evident aunt march was right in calling them as `unworldly as a pair of babies'. no one ate much, but everyone looked very happy, and the old room seemed to brighten up amazingly when the first romance of the family began there. "you can't say nothing pleasant ever happens now, can you, meg?" said amy, trying to decide how she would group the lovers in a sketch she was planning to make. "no, i'm sure i can't. how much has happened since i said that! it seems a year ago," answered meg, who was in a blissful dream lifted far above such common things as bread and butter. "the joys come close upon the sorrows this time, and i rather think the changes have begun," said mrs. march. "in most families there comes, now and then, a year full of events. this has been such a one, but it ends well, after all." "hope the next will end better," muttered jo, who found it very hard to see meg absorbed in a stranger before her face, for jo loved a few persons very dearly and dreaded to have their affection lost or lessened in any way. "i hope the third year from this will end better. i mean it shall, if i live to work out my plans," said mr. brooke, smiling at meg, as if everything had become possible to him now. "doesn't it seem very long to wait?" asked amy, who was in a hurry for the wedding. "i've got so much to learn before i shall be ready, it seems a short time to me," answered meg, with a sweet gravity in her face never seen there before. "you have only to wait, i am to do the work," said john beginning his labors by picking up meg's napkin, with an expression which caused jo to shake her head, and then say to herself with an air of relief as the front door banged, "here comes laurie. now we shall have some sensible conversation." but jo was mistaken, for laurie came prancing in, overflowing with good spirits, bearing a great bridal-looking bouquet for `mrs. john brooke', and evidently laboring under the delusion that the whole affair had been brought about by his excellent management. "i knew brooke would have it all his own way, he always does, for when he makes up his mind to accomplish anything, it's done though the sky falls," said laurie, when he had presented his offering and his congratulations. "much obliged for that recommendation. i take it as a good omen for the future and invite you to my wedding on the spot," answered mr. brooke, who felt at peace with all mankind, even his mischievous pupil. "i'll come if i'm at the ens of the earth, for the sight of jo's face alone on that occasion would be worth a long journey. you don't look festive, ma'am, what's the matter?" asked laurie, following her into a corner of the parlor, whither all had adjourned to greet mr. laurence. "i don't approve of the match, but i've made up my mind to bear it, and shall not say a word against it," said jo solemnly. "you can't know how hard it is for me to give up meg," she continued with a little quiver in her voice. "you don't give her up. you only go halves," said laurie consolingly. "it can never be the same again. i've lost my dearest friend," sighed jo. "you've got me, anyhow. i'm not good for much, i know, but i'll stand by you, jo, all the days of my life. upon my word i will!" and laurie meant what he said. "i know you will, and i'm ever so much obliged. you are always a great comfort to me, teddy," returned jo, gratefully shaking hands. "well, now, don't be dismal, there's a good fellow. it's all right you see. meg is happy, brooke will fly round and get settled immediately, grandpa will attend to him, and it will be very jolly to see meg in her own little house. we'll have capital times after she is gone, for i shall be through college before long, and then we'll go abroad on some nice trip or other. wouldn't that console you?" "i rather think it would, but there's no knowing what may happen in three years," said jo thoughtfully. "that's true. don't you wish you could take a look forward and wee where we shall all be then? i do," returned laurie. "i think not, for i might see something sad, and everyone looks so happy now, i don't believe they could be much improved." and jo's eyes went slowly round the room, brightening as they looked, for the prospect was a pleasant one. father and mother sat together, quietly reliving the first chapter of the romance which for them began some twenty years ago. amy was drawing the lovers,who sat apart in a beautiful world of their own, the light of which touched their faces with a grace the little artist could not copy. beth lay on her sofa, talking cheerily with her old friend, who held her little hand as if he felt that it possessed the power to lead him along the peaceful way she walked. jo lounged in her favorite low seat, with the grave quiet look which best became her, and laurie, leaning on the back of her chair, his chin on a level with her curly head, smiled with his friendliest aspect, and nodded at her in the long glass which reflected them both. so the curtain falls upon meg, jo, beth, and amy. whether it ever rises again, depends upon the reception give the first act of the domestic drama called little women. little women part 2 chapter twenty-four in order that we may start afresh and go to meg's wedding with free minds, it will be well to begin with a little gossip about the marches. and here let me premise that if any of the elders think there is too much `lovering' in the story, as i fear they may (i'm not afraid the young folks will make that objection), i can only say with mrs. march, "what can you expect when i have four gay girls in the house, and a dashing young neighbor over the way?" the three years that have passed have brought but few changes to the quiet family. the war is over, and mr. march safely at home,busy with his books and the small parish which found in him a minister by nature as by grace, a quiet, studious man, rich in the wisdom that is better than learning, the charity which calls all mankind `brother', the piety that blossoms into character, making it august and lovely. these attributes, in spite of poverty and the strict integrity which shut him out from the more worldly successes, attracted to him many admirable persons, as naturally as sweet herbs draw bees, and as naturally he gave them the honey into which fifty years of hard experience had distilled no bitter drop. earnest young men found the gray-headed scholar as young at heart as they, thoughtful or troubled women instinctively brought their doubts to him, sure of finding the gentlest sympathy, the wisest counsel. sinners told their sins to the pure-hearted old man and were both rebuked and saved. gifted men found a companion in him. ambitious men caught glimpses of nobler ambitions than their own, and even worldlings confessed that his beliefs were beautiful and true, although `they wouldn't pay'. to outsiders the five energetic women seemed to rule the house, and so they did in many things, but the quiet scholar, sitting among his books, was still the head of the family, the household conscience, anchor, and comforter, for to him the busy, anxious women always turned in troublous times, finding him, in the truest sense of those sacred words, husband and father. the girls gave their hearts into their mother's keeping, their souls into their father's, and to both parents, who lived and labored so faithfully for them, they gave a love that grew with their growth and bound them tenderly together by the sweetest tie which blesses life and outlives death. mrs. march is as brisk and cheery, though rather grayer, than when we saw her last, and just now so absorbed in meg's affairs that the hospitals and homes still full of wounded `boys' and soldiers' widows, decidedly miss the motherly missionary's visits. john brooke did his duty manfully for a year, got wounded, was sent home, and not allowed to return. he received no stars or bars, but he deserved them, for he cheerfully risked all he had, and life and love are very precious when both are in full bloom. perfectly resigned to his discharge, he devoted himself to getting well, preparing for business, and earning a home for meg. with the good sense and sturdy independence that characterized him, he refused mr. laurence's more generous offers, and accepted the place of bookkeeper, feeling better satisfied to begin with an honestly earned salary than by running any risks with borrowed money. meg had spent the time in working as well as waiting, growing womanly in character, wise in housewifely arts, and prettier than ever, for love is a great beautifier. she had her girlish ambitions and hopes, and felt some disappointment at the humble way in which the new life must begin. ned moffat had just married sallie gardiner, and meg couldn't help contrasting their fine house and carriage, many gifts, and splendid outfit with her own, and secretly wishing she could have the same. but somehow envy and discontent soon vanished when she thought of all the patient love and labor john had put into the little home awaiting her, and when they sat together in the twilight, talking over their small plans, the future always grew so beautiful and bright that she forgot sallie's splendor and felt herself the richest, happiest girl in christendom. jo never went back to aunt march, for the old lady took such a fancy to amy that she bribed her with the offer of drawing lessons from one of the best teachers going, and for the sake of this advantage, amy would have served a far harder mistress. so she gave her mornings to duty, her afternoons to pleasure, and prospered finely. jo meantime devoted herself to literature and beth, who remained delicate long after the fever was a thing of the past. not an invalid exactly, but never again the rosy, healthy creature she had been, yet always hopeful, happy, and serene, and busy with the quiet duties she loved, everyone's friend, and an angel in the house, long before those who loved her most had learned to know it. as long as the spread eagle paid her a dollar a column for her `rubbish', as she called it, jo felt herself a woman of means, and spun her little romances diligently. but great plans fermented in her busy brain and ambitious mind, and the old tin kitchen in the garret held a slowly increasing pile of blotted manuscript, which was one day to place the name of march upon the roll of fame. laurie, having dutifully gone to college to please his grandfather, was now getting through it in the easiest possible manner to please himself. a universal favorite, thanks to money, manners, much talent, and the kindest heart that ever got its owner into scrapes by trying to get other people out of them, he stood in great danger of being spoiled, and probably would have been, like many another promising boy, if he had not possessed a talisman against evil in the memory of the kind old man who was bound up in his success, the motherly friend who watched over him as if he were her son, and last, but not least by any means, the knowledge that four innocent girls loved, admired, and believed in him with all their hearts. being only `a glorious human boy', of course he frolicked and flirted, grew dandified, aquatic, sentimental, or gymnastic, as college fashions ordained, hazed and was hazed, talked slang, and more than once came perilously near suspension and expulsion. but as high spirits and the love of fun were the causes of these pranks, he always managed to save himself by frank confession, honorable atonement, or the irresistible power of persuasion which he possessed in perfection. in fact, he rather prided himself on his narrow escapes, and liked to thrill the girls with graphic accounts of his triumphs over wrathful tutors, dignified professors, and vanquished enemies. the `men of my class', were heroes in the eyes of the girls, who never wearied of the exploits of `our fellows', and were frequently allowed to bask in the smiles of these great creatures, when laurie brought them home with him. amy especially enjoyed this high honor, and became quite a belle among them, for her ladyship early felt and learned to use the gift of fascination with which she was endowed. meg was too much absorbed in her private and particular john to care for any other lords of creation, and beth too shy to do more than peep at them and wonder how amy dared to order them about so, but jo felt quite in her own element, and found it very difficult to refrain from imitating the gentlemanly attitudes, phrases, and feats, which seemed more natural to her than the decorums prescribed for young ladies. they all liked jo immensely, but never fell in love with her, though very few escaped without paying the tribute of a sentimental sigh or two at amy's shrine. and speaking of sentiment brings us very naturally to the `dovecote'. that was the name of the little brown house mr. brooke had prepared for meg's first home. laurie had christened it, saying it was highly appropriate to the gentle lovers who `went on together like a pair of turtledoves, with first a bill and then a coo'. it was a tiny house, with a little garden behind and a lawn about as big as a pocket handkerchief in the front. here meg meant to have a fountain, shrubbery, and a profusion of lovely flowers, though just at present the fountain was represented by a weather-beaten urn, very like a dilapidated slopbowl, the shrubbery consisted of several young larches, undecided whether to live or die, and the profusion of flowers was merely hinted by regiments of sticks to show where seeds were planted. but inside, it was altogether charming, and the happy bride saw no fault from garret to cellar. to be sure, the hall was so narrow it was fortunate that they had no piano, for one never could have been got in whole, the dining room was so small that six people were a tight fit, and the kitchen stairs seemed built for the express purpose of precipitating both servants and china pell-mell into the coalbin. but once get used to these slight blemishes and nothing could be more complete, for good sense and good taste had presided over the furnishing, and the result was highly satisfactory. there were no marble-topped tables, long mirrors, or lace curtains in the little parlor, but simple furniture, plenty of books, a fine picture or two, a stand of flowers in the bay window, and, scattered all about, the pretty gifts which came from friendly hands and were the fairer for the loving messages they brought. i don't think the parian psyche laurie gave lost any of its beauty because john put up the bracket it stood upon, that any upholsterer could have draped the plain muslin curtains more gracefully than amy's artistic hand, or that any store-room was ever better provided with good wishes, merry words, and happy hopes than that in which jo and her mother put away meg's few boxes, barrels, and bundles, and i am morally certain that the spandy new kitchen never could have looked so cozy and neat if hannah had not arranged every pot and pan a dozen times over, and laid the fire all ready for lighting the minute `mis. brooke came home'. i also doubt if any young matron ever began life with so rich a supply of dusters, holders, and piece bags,for beth made enough to last till the silver wedding came round, and invented three different kinds of dishcloths for the express service of the bridal china. people who hire all these things done for them never know what they lose, for the homeliest tasks get beautified if loving hands do them, and meg found so many proofs of this that everything in her small nest, from the kitchen roller to the silver vase on her parlor table, was eloquent of home love and tender forethought. what happy times they had planning together, what solemn shopping excursions, what funny mistakes they made, and what shouts of laughter arose over laurie's ridiculous bargains. in his love of jokes, this young gentleman, though nearly through college, was a much of a boy as ever. his last whim had been to bring with him on his weekly visits some new, useful, and ingenious article for the young housekeeper. now a bag of remarkable clothespins, next, a wonderful nutmeg grater which fell to pieces at the first trial, a knife cleaner that spoiled all the knives, or a sweeper that picked the nap neatly off the carpet and left the dirt, labor-saving soap that took the skin off one's hands, infallible cements which stuck firmly to nothing but the fingers of the deluded buyer, and every kind of tinware, from a toy savings bank for odd pennies, to a wonderful boiler which would wash articles in its own steam with every prospect of exploding in the process. in vain meg begged him to stop. john laughed at him, and jo called him `mr. toodles'. he was possessed with a mania for patronizing yankee ingenuity, and seeing his friends fitly furnished forth. so each week beheld some fresh absurdity. everything was done at last, even to amy's arranging different colored soaps to match the different colored rooms, and beth's setting the table for the first meal. "are you satisfied? does it seem like home, and do you feel as if you should be happy here?" asked mrs. march, as she and her daughter went through the new kingdom arm in arm, for just then they seemed to cling together more tenderly than ever. "yes, mother, perfectly satisfied, thanks to you all, and so happy that i can't talk about it," with a look that was far better than words. "if she only had a servant or two it would be all right," said amy, coming out of the parlor, where she had been trying to decide whether the bronze mercury looked best on the whatnot or the mantlepiece. "mother and i have talked that over, and i have made up my mind to try her way first. there will be so little to do that with lotty to run my errands and help me here and there, i shall only have enough work to keep me from getting lazy or homesick," answered meg tranquilly. "sallie moffat has four," began amy. "if meg had four, the house wouldn't hold them, and master and missis would have to camp in the garden," broke in jo, who, enveloped in a big blue pinafore, was giving the last polish to the door handles. "sallie isn't a poor man's wife, and many maids are in keeping with her fine establishment. meg and john begin humbly, but i have a feeling that there will be quite as much happiness in the little house as in the big one. it's a great mistake for young girls like meg to leave themselves nothing to do but dress, give orders, and gossip. when i was first married, i used to long for my new clothes to wear out or get torn, so that i might have the pleasure of mending them, for i got heartily sick of doing fancywork and tending my pocket handkerchief." "why didn't you go into the kitchen and make messes, as sallie says she does to amuse herself, though they never turn out well and the servants laugh at her," said meg. "i did after a while, not to `mess' but to learn of hannah how things should be done, that my servants need not laugh at me. it was play then, but there came a time when i was truly grateful that i not only possessed the will but the power to cook wholesome food for my little girls, and help myself when i could no longer afford to hire help. you begin at the other end, meg, dear, but the lessons you learn now will be of use to you by-and-by when john is a richer man, for the mistress of a house, however splendid, should know how work ought to be done, if she wishes to be well and honestly served." "yes, mother, i'm sure of that," said meg, listening respectfully to the little lecture, for the best of women will hold forth upon the all absorbing subject of house keeping. "do you know i like this room most of all in my baby house," added meg, a minute after, as they went upstairs and she looked into her well-stored linen closet. beth was there, laying the snowy piles smoothly on the shelves and exulting over the goodly array. all three laughed as meg spoke, for that linen closet was a joke. you see, having said that if meg married `that brooke' she shouldn't have a cent of her money, aunt march was rather in a quandary when time had appeased her wrath and made her repent her vow. she never broke her word, and was much exercised in her mind how to get round it, and at last devised a plan whereby she could satisfy herself. mrs. carrol, florence's mamma, was ordered to buy, have made, and marked a generous supply of house and table linen, and send it as her present, all of which was faithfully done, but the secret leaked out, and was greatly enjoyed by the family, for aunt march tried to look utterly unconscious, and insisted that she could give nothing but the oldfashioned pearls long promised to the first bride. "that's a housewifely taste which i am glad to see. i had a young friend who set up housekeeping with six sheets, but she had finger bowls for company and that satisfied her," said mrs. march, patting the damask tablecloths, with a truly feminine appreciation of their fineness. "i haven't a single finger bowl, but this is a setout that will last me all my days, hannah says." and meg looked quite contented, as well she might. a tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a cropped head, a felt basin of a hat, and a flyaway coat, came tramping down the road at a great pace, walked over the low fence without stopping to open the gate, straight up to mrs. march, with both hands out and a hearty . .. "here i am, mother! yes, it's all right." the last words were in answer to the look the elder lady gave him, a kindly questioning look which the handsome eyes met so frankly that the little ceremony closed, as usual, with a motherly kiss. "for mrs. john brooke, with the maker's congratulations and compliments. bless you, beth! what a refreshing spectacle you are, jo. amy, you are getting altogether too handsome for a single lady." as laurie spoke, he delivered a brown paper parcel to meg, pilled beth's hair ribbon, stared at jo's bib pinafore, and fell into an attitude of mock rapture before amy, then shook hands all round, and everyone began to talk. "where is john?" asked meg anxiously. "stopped to get the license for tomorrow, ma'am." "which side won the last match, teddy?" inquired jo, who persisted in feeling an interest in manly sports despite her nineteen years. "ours, of course. wish you'd been there to see." "how is the lovely miss randal?" asked amy with a significant smile. "more cruel than ever. don't you see how i'm pining away?" and laurie gave his broad chest a sounding slap and heaved a melodramatic sigh. "what's the last joke? undo the bundle and see, meg," said beth, eying the knobby parcel with curiosity. "it's a useful thing to have in the house in case of fire or thieves," observed laurie, as a watchman's rattle appeared, amid the laughter of the girls. "any time when john is away and you get frightened, mrs. meg, just swing that out of the front window, and it will rouse the neighborhood in a jiffy. nice thing, isn't it?" and laurie gave them a sample of its powers that made them cover up their ears. "there's gratitude for you! and speaking of gratitude reminds me to mention that you may thank hannah for saving your wedding cake from destruction. i saw it going into your house as i came by, and if she hadn't defended it manfully i'd have had a pick at it, for it looked like a remarkably plummy one." "i wonder if you will ever grow up, laurie," said meg in a matronly tone. "i'm doing my best, ma'am, but can't get much higher, i'm afraid, as six feet is about all men can do in these degenerate days," responded the young gentleman, whose head was about level with the little chandelier. "i suppose it would be profanation to eat anything in this spickand-span bower, so as i'm tremendously hungry, i propose an adjournment," he added presently. "mother and i are going to wait for john. there are some last things to settle," said meg, bustling away. "beth and i are going over to kitty bryant's to get more flowers for tomorrow," added amy, tying a picturesque hat over her picturesque curls, and enjoying the effect as much as anybody. "come, jo, don't desert a fellow. i'm in such a state of exhaustion i can't get home without help. don't take off your apron, whatever you do, it's peculiarly becoming," said laurie, as jo bestowed his especial aversion in her capacious pocket and offered her arm to support his feeble steps. "now, teddy, i want to talk seriously to you about tomorrow," began jo, as they strolled away together. "you must promise to behave well, and not cut up any pranks, and spoil our plans." "not a prank." "and don't say funny things when we ought to be sober." "i never do. you are the one for that." "and i implore you not to look at me during the ceremony. i shall certainly laugh if you do." "you won't see me, you'll be crying so hard that the thick fog round you will obscure the prospect." "i never cry unless for some great affliction." "such as fellows going to college, hey?" cut in laurie, with suggestive laugh. "don't be a peacock. i only moaned a trifle to keep the girls company." "exactly. i say, jo, how is grandpa this week? pretty amiable?" "very. why, have you got into a scrape and want to know how he'll take it?" asked jo rather sharply. "now, jo, do you think i'd look your mother in the face and say `all right', if it wasn't?" and laurie stopped short, with an injured air. "no, i don't." "then don't go and be suspicious. i only want some money," said laurie, walking on again, appeased by her hearty tone. "you spend a great deal, teddy." "bless you, i don't spend it, it spends itself somehow, and is gone before i know it." "you are so generous and kind-hearted that you let people borrow, and can't say `no' to anyone. we heard about henshaw and all you did for him. if you always spent money in that way, no one would blame you," said jo warmly. "oh, he made a mountain out of a molehill. you wouldn't have me let that fine fellow work himself to death just for want of a little help, when he is worth a dozen of us lazy chaps, would you?" "of course not, but i don't see the use of your having seventeen waistcoats, endless neckties, and a new hat every time you come home. i thought you'd got over the dandy period, but every now and then it breaks out in a new spot. just now it's the fashion to be hideous, to make your head look like a scrubbing brush, wear a strait jacket, orange gloves, and clumping square-toed boots. if it was cheap ugliness, i'd say nothing, but it costs as much as the other, and i don't get any satisfaction out of it." laurie threw back his head, and laughed so heartily at this attack, that the felt hat fell off, and jo walked on it, which insult only afforded him an opportunity for expatiating on the advantages of a rough-and-ready costume, as he folded up the maltreated hat, and stuffed it into his pocket. "don't lecture any more, there's a good soul! i have enough all through the week, and like to enjoy myself when i come home. i'll get myself up regardless of expense tomorrow and be a satisfaction to my friends." "i'll leave you in peace if you'll only let your hair grow. i'm not aristocratic, but i do object to being seen with a person who looks like a young prize fighter," observed jo severely. "this unassuming style promotes study, that's why we adopt it," returned laurie, who certainly could not be accused of vanity, having voluntarily sacrificed a handsome curly crop to the demand for quarterinch-long stubble. "by the way, jo, i think that little parker is really getting desperate about amy. he talks of her constantly, writes poetry, and moons about in a most suspicious manner. he'd better nip his little passion in the bud, hadn't he?" added laurie, in a confidential, elder brotherly tone, after a minute's silence. "of course he had. we don't want any more marrying in this family for years to come. mercy on us, what are the children thinking of?" and jo looked as much scandalized as if amy and little parker were not yet in their teens. "it's a fast age, and i don't know what we are coming to, ma'am. you are a mere infant, but you'll go next, jo, and we'll be left lamenting," said laurie, shaking his head over the degeneracy of the times. "don't be alarmed. i'm not one of the agreeable sort. nobody will want me, and it's a mercy, for there should always be one old maid in a family." "you won't give anyone a chance," said laurie, with a sidelong glance and a little more color than before in his sunburned face. "you won't show the soft side of your character, and if a fellow gets a peep at it by accident and can't help showing that he likes it, you treat him as mrs. gummidge did her sweetheart, throw cold water over him, and get so thorny no one dares touch or look at you." "i don't like that sort of thing. i'm too busy to be worried with nonsense, and i think it's dreadful to break up families so. now don't say any more about it. meg's wedding has turned all our heads, and we talk of nothing but lovers and such absurdities. i don't wish to get cross, so let's change the subject." and jo looked quite ready to fling cold water on the slightest provocation. whatever his feelings might have been, laurie found a vent for them in a long low whistle and the fearful prediction as they parted at the gate, "mark my words, jo, you'll go next." chapter twenty-five the june roses over the porch were awake bright and early on that morning, rejoicing with all their hearts in the cloudless sunshine, like friendly little neighbors, as they were. quite flushed with excitement were their ruddy faces, as they swung in the wind, whispering to one another what they had seen, for some peeped in at the dining room windows where the feast was spread, some climbed up to nod and smile at the sisters as they dressed the bride, others waved a welcome to those who came and went on various errands in garden, porch, and hall, and all, from the rosiest full-blown flower to the palest baby bud, offered their tribute of beauty and fragrance to the gentle mistress who had loved and tended them so long. meg looked very like a rose herself, for all that was best and sweetest in heart and soul seemed to bloom into her face that day, making it fair and tender, with a charm more beautiful than beauty. neither silk, lace, nor orange flowers would she have. "i don't want a fashionable wedding, but only those about me whom i love, and to them i wish to look and be my familiar self." so she made her wedding gown herself, sewing into it the tender hopes and innocent romances of a girlish heart. her sisters braided up her pretty hair, and the only ornaments she wore were the lilies of the valley, which `her john' liked best of all the flowers that grew. "you do look just like our own dear meg, only so very sweet and lovely that i should hug you if it wouldn't crumple your dress," cried amy, surveying her with delight when all was done. "then i am satisfied. but please hug and kiss me, everyone, and don't mind my dress. i want a great many crumples of this sort put into it today." and meg opened her arms to her sisters, who clung about her with april faces for a minute, feeling that the new love had not changed the old. "now i'm going to tie john's cravat for him, and then to stay a few minutes with father quietly in the study." and meg ran down to perform these little ceremonies, and then to follow her mother wherever she went, conscious that in spite of the smiles on the motherly face, there was a secret sorrow hid in the motherly heart at the flight of the first bird from the nest. as the younger girls stand together, giving the last touches to their simple toilet, it may be a good time to tell of a few changes which three years have wrought in their appearance, for all are looking their best just now. jo's angles are much softened, she has learned to carry herself with ease, if not grace. the curly crop has lengthened into a thick coil, more becoming to the small head atop of the tall figure. there is a fresh color in her brown cheeks, a soft shine in her eyes, and only gentle words fall from her sharp tongue today. beth has grown slender, pale, and more quiet than ever. the beautiful, kind eyes are larger, and in them lies an expression that saddens one, although it is not sad itself. it is the shadow of pain which touches the young face with such pathetic patience, but beth seldom complains and always speaks hopefully of `being better soon'. amy is with truth considered `the flower of the family', for at sixteen she has the air and bearing of a full-grown woman, not beautiful, but possessed of that indescribable charm called grace. one saw it in the lines of her figure, the make and motion of her hands, the flow of her dress, the droop of her hair, unconscious yet harmonious, and as attractive to many as beauty itself. amy's nose still afflicted her, for it never would grow grecian, so did her mouth, being too wide,and having a decided chin. these offending features gave character to her whole face, but she never could see it, and consoled herself with her wonderfully fair complexion, keen blue eyes, and curls more golden and abundant than ever. all three wore suits of thin silver gray (their best gowns for the summer), with blush roses in hair and bosom, and all three looked just what they were, fresh-faced, happy-hearted girls, pausing a moment in their busy lives to read with wistful eyes the sweetest chapter in the romance of womanhood. there were to be no ceremonious performances, everything was to be as natural and homelike as possible, so when aunt march arrived, she was scandalized to see the bride come running to welcome and lead her in, to find the bridegroom fastening up a garland that had fallen down, and to catch a glimpse of the paternal minister marching upstairs with a grave countenance and a wine bottle under each arm. "upon my word, here's a state of things!" cried the old lady, taking the seat of honor prepared for her, and settling the folds of her lavender moire with a great rustle. "you oughtn't to be seen till the last minute, child." "i'm not a show, aunty, and no one is coming to stare at me, to criticize my dress, or count the cost of my luncheon. i'm too happy to care what anyone says or thinks, and i'm going to have my little wedding just as i like it. john, dear, here's your hammer." and away went meg to help `that man' in his highly improper employment. mr. brooke didn't even say, "thank you," but as he stooped for the unromantic tool, he kissed his little bride behind the folding door, with a look that made aunt march whisk out her pocket handkerchief with a sudden dew in her sharp old eyes. a crash, a cry, and a laugh from laurie, accompanied by the indecorous exclamation, "jupiter ammon! jo's upset the cake again!" caused a momentary flurry, which was hardly over when a flock of cousins arrived, and `the party came in', as beth used to say when a child. "don't let that young giant come near me, he worries me worse than mosquitoes," whispered the old lady to amy, as the rooms filled and laurie's black head towered above the rest. "he has promised to be very good today, and he can be perfectly elegant if he likes," returned amy, and gliding away to warn hercules to beware of the dragon, which warning caused him to haunt the old lady with a devotion that nearly distracted her. there was no bridal procession, but a sudden silence fell upon the room as mr. march and the young couple took their places under the green arch. mother and sisters gathered close, as if loath to give meg up. the fatherly voice broke more than once, which only seemed to make the service more beautiful and solemn. the bridegroom's hand trembled visibly, and no one heard his replies. but meg looked straight up in her husband's eyes, and said, "i will!" with such tender trust in her own face and voice that her mother's heart rejoiced and aunt march sniffed audibly. jo did not cry, though she was very near it once, and was only saved from a demonstration by the consciousness that laurie was staring fixedly at her, with a comical mixture of merriment and emotion in his wicked black eyes. beth kept her face hidden on her mother's shoulder, but amy stood like a graceful statue, with a most becoming ray of sunshine touching her white forehead and the flower in her hair. it wasn't at all the thing, i'm afraid,but the minute she was fairly married, meg cried, "the first kiss for marmee!" and turning, gave it with her heart on her lips. during the next fifteen minutes she looked more like a rose than ever, for everyone availed themselves of their privileges to the fullest extent, from mr. laurence to old hannah, who, adorned with a headdress fearfully and wonderfully made, fell upon her in the hall, crying with a sob and a chuckle, "bless you, deary, a hundred times! the cake ain't hurt a mite, and everything looks lovely." everybody cleared up after that, and said something brilliant, or tried to, which did just as well, for laughter is ready when hearts are light. there was no display of gifts, for they were already in the little house, nor was there an elaborate breakfast, but a plentiful lunch of cake and fruit, dressed with flowers. mr. laurence and aunt march shrugged and smiled at one another when water, lemonade, and coffee were found to be to only sorts of nectar which the three hebes carried around. no one said anything, till laurie, who insisted on serving the bride, appeared before her, with a loaded salver in his hand and a puzzled expression on his face. "has jo smashed all the bottles by accident?" he whispered, "or am i merely laboring under a delusion that i saw some lying about loose this morning?" "no, your grandfather kindly offered us his best, and aunt march actually sent some, but father put away a little for beth, and dispatched the rest to the soldier's home. you know he thinks that wine should be used only in illness, and mother says that neither she nor her daughters will ever offer it to any young man under her roof." meg spoke seriously and expected to see laurie frown or laugh, but he did neither, for after a quick look at her, he said, in his impetuous way, "i like that! for i've seen enough harm done to wish other women would think as you do." "you are not made wise by experience, i hope?" and there was an anxious accent in meg's voice. "no. i give you my word for it. don't think too well of me, either, this is not one of my temptations. being brought up where wine is as common as water and almost as harmless, i don't care for it, but when a pretty girl offers it, one doesn't like to refuse, you see." "but you will, for the sake of others, if not for your own. come, laurie, promise, and give me one more reason to call this the happiest day of my life." a demand so sudden and so serious made the young man hesitate a moment, for ridicule is often harder to bear than self-denial. meg knew that if he gave the promise he would keep it at all costs, and feeling her power, used it as a woman may for her friend's good. she did not speak, but she looked up at him with a face made very eloquent by happiness, and a smile which said, "no one can refuse me anything today." laurie certainly could not, and with an answering smile, he gave her his hand, saying heartily, "i promise, mrs. brooke!" "i thank you, very, very much." "and i drink `long life to your resolution', teddy," cried jo, baptizing him with a splash of lemonade, as she waved her glass and beamed approvingly upon him. so the toast was drunk, the pledge made and loyally kept in spite of many temptations, for with instinctive wisdom, the girls seized a happy moment to do their friend a service, for which he thanked them all his life. after lunch, people strolled about, by twos and threes, through the house and garden, enjoying the sunshine without and within. meg and john happened to be standing together in the middle of the grass plot, when laurie was seized with an inspiration which put the finishing touch to this unfashionable wedding. "all the married people take hands and dance round the new-made husband and wife, as the germans do, while we bachelors and spinsters prance in couples outside!" cried laurie, promenading down the path with amy, with such infectious spirit and skill that everyone else followed their example without a murmur. mr. and mrs. march, aunt and uncle carrol began it, others rapidly joined in, even sallie moffat, after a moment's hesitation, threw her train over her arm and whisked ned into the ring. but the crowning joke was mr. laurence and aunt march, for when the stately old gentleman chass'ed solemnly up to the old lady, she just tucked her cane under arm, and hopped briskly away to join hands with the rest and dance about the bridal pair, while the young folks pervaded the garden like butterflies on a midsummer day. want of breath brought the impromptu ball to a close, and then people began to go. "i wish you well, my dear, i heartily wish you well, but i think you'll be sorry for it," said aunt march to meg, adding to the bridegroom, as he led her to the carriage, "you've got a treasure, young man, see that you deserve it." "that is the prettiest wedding i've been to for an age, ned, and i don't see why, for there wasn't a bit of style about it," observed mrs. moffat to her husband, as they drove away. "laurie, my lad, if you ever want to indulge in this sort of thing, get one of those little girls to help you, and i shall be perfectly satisfied," said mr. laurence, settling himself in his easy chair to rest after the excitement of the morning. "i'll do my best to gratify you, sir," was laurie's unusually dutiful reply, as he carefully unpinned the posy jo had put in his buttonhole. the little house was not far away, and the only bridal journey meg had was the quiet walk with john from the old home to the new. when she came down, looking like a pretty quakeress in her dovecolored suit and straw bonnet tied with white, they all gathered about her to say goodby, as tenderly as if she had been going to make the grand tour. "don't feel that i am separated from you, marmee dear, or that i love you any the less for loving john so much," she said, clinging to her mother, with full eyes for a moment. "i shall come every day, father, and expect to keep my old place in all your hearts, though i am married. beth is going to be with me a great deal, and the other girls will drop in now and then to laugh at my housekeeping struggles. thank you all for my happy wedding day. goodby, goodby!" they stood watching her, with faces full of love and hope and tender pride as she walked away, leaning on her husband's arm, with her hands full of flowers and the june sunshine brightening her happy face--and so meg's married life began. chapter twenty-six it takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women. amy was learning this distinction through much tribulation, for mistaking enthusiasm for inspiration, she attempted every branch of art with youthful audacity. for a long time there was a lull in the `mud-pie' business, and she devoted herself to the finest pen-and-ink drawing, in which she showed such taste and skill that her graceful handiwork proved both pleasant and profitable. but over-strained eyes caused pen and ink to be laid aside for a bold attempt at poker sketching. while this attack lasted, the family lived in constant fear of a conflagration, for the odor of burning wood pervaded the house at all hours, smoke issued from attic and shed with alarming frequency, red-hot pokers lay about promiscuously, and hannah never went to bed without a pail of water and the dinner bell at her door in case of fire. raphael's face was found boldly executed on the underside of the moulding board,and bacchus on the head of a beer barrel. a chanting cherub adorned the cover of the sugar bucket, and attempts to portray romeo and juliet supplied kindling for some time. from fire to oil was a natural transition for burned fingers, and amy fell to painting with undiminished ardor. an artist friend fitted her out with his castoff palettes, brushes, and colors, and she daubed away, producing pastoral and marine views such as were never seen on land or sea. her monstrosities in the way of cattle would have taken prizes at an agricultural fair, and the perilous pitching of her vessels would have produced seasickness in the most nautical observer, if the utter disregard to all known rules of shipbuilding and rigging had not convulsed him with laughter at the first glance. swarthy boys and dark-eyed madonnas, staring at you from one corner of the studio, suggested murillo. oily brown shadows of faces with a lurid streak in the wrong place, meant rembrandt. buxom ladies and dropiscal infants, rubens, and turner appeared in tempests of blue thunder, orange lightning, brown rain, and purple clouds, with a tomato-colored splash in the middle, which might be the sun or a bouy,a sailor's shirt or a king's robe, as the spectator pleased. charcoal portraits came next, and the entire family hung in a row, looking as wild and crocky as if just evoked from a coalbin. softened into crayon sketches, they did better, for the likenesses were good, and amy's hair, jo's nose, meg's mouth, and laurie's eyes were pronounced `wonderfully fine'. a return to clay and plaster followed, and ghostly casts of her acquaintances haunted corners of the house, or tumbled off closet shelves onto people's heads. children were enticed in as models, till their incoherent accounts of her mysterious doings caused miss amy to be regarded in the light of a young ogress. her efforts in this line, however, were brought to an abrupt close by an untoward accident, which quenched her ardor. other models failing her for a time, she undertook to cast her own pretty foot, and the family were one day alarmed by an unearthly bumping and screaming and running to the rescue, found the young enthusiast hopping wildly about the shed with her foot held fast in a pan full of plaster, which had hardened with unexpected rapidity. with much difficulty and some danger she was dug out, for jo was so overcome with laughter while she excavated that her knife went too far, cut the poor foot, and left a lasting memorial of one artistic attempt, at least. after this amy subsided, till a mania for sketching from nature set her to haunting river, field, and wood, for picturesque studies, and sighing for ruins to copy. she caught endless colds sitting on damp grass to book `delicious bit', composed of a stone, a stump, one mushroom, and a broken mullein stalk, or `a heavenly mass of clouds', that looked like a choice display of featherbeds when done. she sacrificed her complexion floating on the river in the midsummer sun to study light and shade, and got a wrinkle over her nose trying after `points of sight', or whatever the squint-and-string performance is called. if `genius is eternal patience', as michelangelo affirms, amy had some claim to the divine attribute, for she persevered in spite of all obstacles, failures, and discouragements, firmly believing that in time she should do something worthy to be called `high art'. she was learning, doing, and enjoying other things, meanwhile, for she had resolved to be an attractive and accomplished woman, even if she never became a great artist. here she succeeded better, for she was one of those happily created beings who please without effort, make friends everywhere, and take life so gracefully and easily that less fortunate souls are tempted to believe that such are born under a lucky star. everybody liked her, for among her good gifts was tact. she had an instinctive sense of what was pleasing and proper, always said the right thing to the right person, did just what suited the time and place, and was so self-possessed that her sisters used to say, "if amy went to court without any rehearsal beforehand, she'd know exactly what to do." one of her weaknesses was a desire to move in `our best society', without being quite sure what the best really was. money, position, fashionable accomplishments, and elegant manners were most desirable things in her eyes, and she liked to associate with those who possessed them, often mistaking the false for the true, and admiring what was not admirable. never forgetting that by birth she was a gentlewoman, she cultivated her aristocratic tastes and feelings, so that when the opportunity came she might be ready to take the place from which poverty now excluded her. "my lady," as her friends called her, sincerely desired to be a genuine lady, and was so at heart, but had yet to learn that money cannot buy refinement of nature, that rank does not always confer nobility, and that true breeding makes itself felt in spite of external drawbacks. "i want to ask a favor of you, mamma," amy said, coming in with an important air one day. "well, little girl, what is it?" replied her mother, in whose eyes the stately young lady still remained `the baby'. "our drawing class breaks up next week, and before the girls separate for the summer, i want to ask them out here for a day. they are wild to see the river, sketch the broken bridge, and copy some of the things they admire in my book. they have been very kind to me in many ways, and i am grateful, for they are all rich and i know i am poor, yet they never made any difference." "why should they?" and mrs. march put the question with what the girls called her `maria theresa air'. "you know as well as i that it does make a difference with nearly everyone, so don't ruffle up like a dear, motherly hen, when your chickens get pecked by smarter birds. the ugly duckling turned out a swan, you know." and amy smiled without bitterness, for she possessed a happy temper and hopeful spirit. mrs. march laughed, and smoothed down her maternal pride as she asked, "well, my swan, what is your plan?" "i should like to ask the girls out to lunch next week, to take them for a drive to the places they want to see, a row on the river, perhaps, and make a little artistic fete for them." "that looks feasible. what do you want for lunch? cake, sandwiches, fruit, and coffee will be all that is necessary, i suppose?" "oh, dear, no! we must have cold tongue and chicken, french chocolate and ice cream, besides. the girls are used to such things, and i want my lunch to be proper and elegant, though i do work for my living." "how many young ladies are there?" asked her mother, beginning to look sober. "twelve or fourteen in the class, but i dare say they won't all come." "bless me, child, you will have to charter an omnibus to carry them about." "why, mother, how can you think of such a thing? not more than six or eight will probably come, so i shall hire a beach wagon and borrow mr. laurence's cherry-bounce." (hannah's pronunciation of charabanc.) "all of this will be expensive, amy." "not very. i've calculated the cost, and i'll pay for it myself." "don't you think, dear, that as these girls are used to such things, and the best we can do will be nothing new, that some simpler plan would be pleasanter to them, as a change if nothing more, and much better for us than buying or borrowing what we don't need, and attempting a style not in keeping with our circumstances?" "if i can't have it as i like, i don't care to have it at all. i know that i can carry it out perfectly well, if you and the girls will help a little, and i don't see why i can't if i'm willing to pay for it," said amy, with the decision which opposition was apt to change into obstinacy. mrs. march knew that experience was an excellent teacher, and when it was possible she left her children to learn alone the lessons which she would gladly have made easier, if they had not objected to taking advice as much as they did salts and senna. "very well, amy, if your heart is set upon it, and you see your way through without too great an outlay of money, time, and temper, i'll say no more. talk it over with the girls, and whichever way you decide, i'll do my best to help you." "thanks, mother, you are always so kind." and away went amy to lay her plan before her sisters. meg agreed at once, and promised to her aid, gladly offering anything she possessed, from her little house itself to her very best saltspoons. but jo frowned upon the whole project and would have nothing to do with it at first. "why in the world should you spend your money, worry your family, and turn the house upside down for a parcel of girls who don't care a sixpence for you? i thought you had too much pride and sense to truckle to any mortal woman just because she wears french boots and rides in a coupe," said jo, who, being called from the tragic climax of her novel, was not in the best mood for social enterprises. "i don't truckle, and i hate being patronized as much as you do!" returned amy indignantly, for the two still jangled when such questions arose. "the girls do care for me, and i for them, and there's a great deal of kindness and sense and talent among them, in spite of what you call fashionable nonsense. you don't care to make people like you, to go into good society, and cultivate your manners and tastes. i do, and i mean to make the most of every chance that comes. you can go through the world with your elbows out and your nose in the air, and call it independence, if you like. that's not my way." when amy had whetted her tongue and freed her mind she usually got the best of it, for she seldom failed to have common sense on her side, while jo carried her love of liberty and hate of conventionalities to such an unlimited extent that she naturally found herself worsted in an argument. amy's definition of jo's idea of independence was such a good hit that both burst out laughing, and the discussion took a more amiable turn. much against her will, jo at length consented to sacrifice a day to mrs. grundy, and help her sister through what she regarded as `a nonsensical business'. the invitations were sent, nearly all accepted, and the following monday was set apart for the grand event. hannah was out of humor because her week's work was deranged, and prophesied that "ef the washin' and ironin' warn't done reg'lar, nothin' would go well anywheres". this hitch in the mainspring of the domestic machinery had a bad effect upon the whole concern, but amy's motto was `nil desperandum', and having made up her mind what to do, she proceeded to do it in spite of all obstacles. to begin with, hannah's cooking didn't turn out well. the chicken was tough, the tongue too salt, and the chocolate wouldn't froth properly. then the cake and ice cost more than amy expected, so did the wagon, and various other expenses, which seemed trifling at the outset, counted up rather alarmingly afterward. beth got a cold and took to her bed. meg had an unusual number of callers to keep her at home, and jo was in such a divided state of mind that her breakages, accidents, and mistakes were uncommonly numerous, serious, and trying. it it was not fair on monday, the young ladies were to come on tuesday, and arrangement which aggravated jo and hannah to the last degree. on monday morning the weather was in that undecided state which is more exasperating than a steady pour. it drizzled a little, shone a little, blew a little, and didn't make up its mind till it was too late for anyone else to make up theirs. amy was up at dawn, hustling people out of their beds and through their breakfasts, that the house might be got in order. the parlor struck her as looking uncommonly shabby, but without stopping to sigh for what she had not, she skillfully made the best of what she had, arranging chairs over the worn places in the carpet, covering stains on the walls with homemade statuary, which gave an artistic air to the room, as did the lovely vases of flowers jo scattered about. the lunch looked charming, and as she surveyed it, she sincerely hoped it would taste well, and that the borrowed glass, china, and silver would get safely home again. the carriages were promised, meg and mother were all ready to do the honors, beth was able to help hannah behind the scenes, jo had engaged to be as lively and amiable as an absent mind, and aching head, and a very decided disapproval of everybody and everything would allow, and as she wearily dressed, amy cheered herself with anticipations of the happy moment when, lunch safely over, she should drive away with her friends for an afternoon of artistic delights, for the `cherry bounce' and the broken bridge were her strong points. then came the hours of suspense, during which she vibrated from parlor to porch, while public opinion varied like the weathercock. a smart shower at eleven had evidently quenched the enthusiasm of the young ladies who were to arrive at twelve, for nobody came, and at two the exhausted family sat down in a blaze of sunshine to consume the perishable portions of the feast, that nothing might be lost. "no doubt about the weather today, they will certainly come, so we must fly round and be ready for them," said amy, as the sun woke her next morning. she spoke briskly, but in her secret soul she wished she had said nothing about tuesday, for her interest like her cake was getting a little stale. "i can't get any lobsters, so you will have to do without salad today," said mr. march, coming in half an hour later, with an expression of placid despair. "use the chicken then, the toughness won't matter in a salad," advised his wife. "hannah left it on the kitchen table a minute, and the kittens got at it. i'm very sorry, amy," added beth, who was still a patroness of cats. "then i must have a lobster, for tongue alone won't do," said amy decidedly. "shall i rush into town and demand one?" asked jo, with the magnanimity of a martyr. "you'd come bringing it home under your arm without any paper, just to try me. i'll go myself," answered amy, whose temper was beginning to fail. shrouded in a thick veil and armed with a genteel traveling basket, she departed, feeling that a cool drive would soothe her ruffled spirit and fit her for the labors of the day. after some delay, the object of her desire was procured, likewise a bottle of dressing to prevent further loss of time at home, and off she drove again, well pleased with her own forethought. as the omnibus contained only one other passenger, a sleepy old lady, amy pocketed her veil and beguiled the tedium of the way by trying to find out where all her money had gone to. so busy was she with her card full of refractory figures that she did not observe a newcomer, who entered without stopping the vehicle, till a masculine voice said, "good morning, miss march," and, looking up, she beheld one of laurie's most elegant college friends. fervently hoping that he would get out before she did, amy utterly ignored the basket at her feet, and congratulating herself that she had on her new traveling dress, returned the young man's greeting with her usual suavity and spirit. they got on excellently, for amy's chief care was soon set at rest by learning that the gentleman would leave first, and she was chatting away in a peculiarly lofty strain, when the old lady got out. in stumbling to the door, she upset the basket, and--oh horror!--the lobster, in all its vulgar size and brilliancy, was revealed to the highborn eyes of a tudor. "by jove, she's forgotten her dinner!" cried the unconscious youth, poking the scarlet monster into its place with his cane, and preparing to hand out the basket after the old lady. "please don't--it's--it's mine," murmured amy, with a face nearly as red as her fish. "oh, really, i beg pardon. it's an uncommonly fine one, isn't it?" said tudor, with great presence of mind, and an air of sober interest that did credit to his breeding. amy recovered herself in a breath, set her basket boldly on the seat, and said, laughing, "don't you wish you were to have some of the salad he's going to make, and to see the charming young ladies who are to eat it?" now that was tact, for two of the ruling foibles of the masculine mind were touched. the lobster was instantly surrounded by a halo of pleasing reminiscences, and curiosity about `the charming young ladies' diverted his mind from the comical mishap. "i suppose he'll laugh and joke over it with laurie, but i shan't see them, that's a comfort," thought amy, as tudor bowed and departed. she did not mention this meeting at home (though she discovered that, thanks to the upset, her new dress was much damaged by the rivulets of dressing that meandered down the skirt), but went through with the preparations which now seemed more irksome than before, and at twelve o'clock all was ready again. feeling that the neighbors were interested in her movements, she wished to efface the memory of yesterday's failure by a grand success today, so she ordered the `cherry bounce', and drove away in state to meet and escort her guests to the banquet. "there's the rumble, they're coming! i'll go onto the porch and meet them. it looks hospitable, and i want the poor child to have a good time after all her trouble," said mrs. march, suiting the action to the word. but after one glance, she retired, with an indescribable expression, for looking quite lost in the big carriage, sat amy and one young lady. "run, beth, and help hannah clear half the things off the table. it will be too absurd to put a luncheon for twelve before a single girl," cried jo, hurrying away to the lower regions, too excited to stop even for a laugh. in came amy, quite calm and delightfully cordial to the one guest who had kept her promise. the rest of the family, being of a dramatic turn, played their parts equally well, and miss eliott found them a most hilarious set, for it was impossible to control entirely the merriment which possessed them. the remodeled lunch being gaily partaken of, the studio and garden visited, and art discussed with enthusiasm, amy ordered a buggy (alas for the elegant cherry-bounce), and drove her friend quietly about the neighborhood till sunset, when `the party went out'. as she came walking in, looking very tired but as composed as ever, she observed that every vestige of the unfortunate fete had disappeared, except a suspicious pucker about the corners of jo's mouth. "you've had a loverly afternoon for your drive, dear," said her mother, as respectfully as if the whole twelve had come. "miss eliott is a very sweet girl, and seemed to enjoy herself, i thought," observed beth, with unusual warmth. "could you spare me some of your cake? i really need some, i have so much company, and i can't make such delicious stuff as yours," asked meg soberly. "take it all. i'm the only one here who likes sweet things, and it will mold before i can dispose of it," answered amy, thinking with a sigh of the generous store she had laid in for such an end as this. "it's a pity laurie isn't here to help us," began jo, as they sat down to ice cream and salad for the second time in two days. a warning look from her mother checked any further remarks, and the whole family ate in heroic silence, till mr. march mildly observed, "salad was one of the favorite dishes of the ancients, and evelyn . . ." here a general explosion of laughter cut short the `history of salads', to the great surprise of the learned gentleman. "bundle everything into a basket and send it to the hummels. germans like messes. i'm sick of the sight of this, and there's no reason you should all die of a surfeit because i've been a fool," cried amy, wiping her eyes. "i thought i should have died when i saw you two girls rattling about in the what-you-call-it, like two little kernels in a very big nutshell, and mother waiting in state to receive the throng," sighed jo, quite spent with laughter. "i'm very sorry you were disappointed, dear, but we all did our best to satisfy you," said mrs. march, in a tone full of motherly regret. "i am satisfied. i've done what i undertook, and it's not my fault that it failed. i comfort myself with that," said amy with a little quiver in her voice. "i thank you all very much for helping me, and i'll thank you still more if you won't allude to it for a month, at least." no one did for several months, but the word `fete' always produced a general smile, and laurie's birthday gift to amy was a tiny coral lobster in the shape of a charm for her watch guard. chapter twenty-seven fortune suddenly smiled upon jo, and dropped a good luck penny in her path. not a golden penny, exactly, but i doubt if half a million would have given more real happiness then did the little sum that came to her in this wise. every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and `fall into a vortex', as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. her `scribbling suit' consisted of a black woolen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. this cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally to ask, with interest, "does genius burn, jo?" they did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. if this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on, in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew, and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor, and cast upon the floor. at such times the intruder silently withdrew, and not until the red bow was seen gaily erect upon the gifted brow, did anyone dare address jo. she did not think herself a genius by any means, but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh. sleep forsook her eyes, meals stood untasted, day and night were all too short to enjoy the happiness which blessed her only at such times, and made these hours worth living, even if they bore no other fruit. the devine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her `vortex', hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent. she was just recovering from one of these attacks when she was prevailed upon to escort miss crocker to a lecture, and in return for her virtue was rewarded with a new idea. it was a people's course, the lecture on the pyramids, and jo rather wondered at the choice of such a subject for such an audience, but took it for granted that some great social evil would be remedied or some great want supplied by unfolding the glories of the pharaohs to an audience whose thoughts were busy with the price of coal and flour, and whose lives were spent in trying to solve harder riddles than that of the sphinx. they were early, and while miss crocker set the heel of her stocking, jo amused herself by examining the faces of the people who occupied the seat with them. on her left were two matrons, with massive foreheads and bonnets to match, discussing women's rights and making tatting. beyond sat a pair of humble lovers, artlessly holding each other by the hand, a somber spinster eating peppermints out of a paper bag, and an old gentleman taking his preparatory nap behind a yellow bandanna. on her right, her only neighbor was a studious looking lad absorbed in a newspaper. it was a pictorial sheet, and jo examined the work of art nearest her, idly wondering what fortuitous concatenation of circumstances needed the melodramatic illustration of an indian in full war costume, tumbling over a precipice with a wolf at his throat, while two infuriated young gentlemen, with unnaturally small feet and big eyes, were stabbing each other close by, and a disheveled female was flying away in the background with her mouth wide open. pausing to turn a page, the lad saw her looking and, with boyish good nature offered half his paper, saying bluntly, "want to read it? that's a first-rate story." jo accepted it with a smile, for she had never outgrown her liking for lads, and soon found herself involved in the usual labyrinth of love, mystery, and murder, for the story belonged to that class of light literature in which the passions have a holiday, and when the author's invention fails, a grand catastrophe clears the stage of one half the dramatis personae, leaving the other half to exult over their downfall. "prime, isn't it?" asked the boy, as her eye went down the last paragraph of her portion. "i think you and i could do as well as that if we tried," returned jo, amused at his admiration of the trash. "i should think i was a pretty lucky chap if i could. she makes a good living out of such stories, they say." and he pointed to the name of mrs. s.l.a.n.g. northbury, under the title of the tale. "do you know her?" asked jo, with sudden interest. "no, but i read all her pieces, and i know a fellow who works in the office where this paper is printed." "do you say she makes a good living out of stories like this?" and jo looked more respectfully at the agitated group and thickly sprinkled exclamation points that adorned the page. "guess she does! she knows just what folks like, and gets paid well for writing it." here the lecture began, but jo heard very little of it, for while professor sands was prosing away about belzoni, cheops, scarabei, and hieroglyphics, she was covertly taking down the address of the paper, and boldly resolving to try for the hundred-dollar prize offered in its columns for a sensational story. by the time the lecture ended and the audience awoke, she had built up a splendid fortune for herself (not the first founded on paper), and was already deep in the concoction of her story, being unable to decide whether the duel should come before the elopement or after the murder. she said nothing of her plan at home, but fell to work next day, much to the disquiet of her mother, who always looked a little anxious when `genius took to burning'. jo had never tried this style before, contenting herself with very mild romances for the spread eagle. her experience and miscellaneous reading were of service now, for they gave her some idea of dramatic effect, and supplied plot, language, and costumes. her story was as full of desperation and despair as her limited acquaintance with those uncomfortable emotions enabled her to make it, and having located it in lisbon, she wound up with an earthquake, as a striking and appropriate denouement. the manuscript was privately dispatched, accompanied by a note, modestly saying that if the tale didn't get the prize, which the writer hardly dared expect, she would be very glad to receive any sum it might be considered worth. six weeks is a long time to wait, and a still longer time for a girl to keep a secret, but jo did both, and was just beginning to give up all hope of ever seeing her manuscript again, when a letter arrived which almost took her breath away, for on opening it, a check for a hundred dollars fell into her lap. for a minute she stared at it as if it had been a snake, then she read her letter and began to cry. if the amiable gentleman who wrote that kindly note could have known what intense happiness he was giving a fellow creature, i think he would devote his leisure hours, if he has any, to that amusement, for jo valued the letter more than the money, because it was encouraging, and after years of effort it was so pleasant to find that she had learned to do something, though it was only to write a sensation story. a prouder young woman was seldom seen than she, when, having composed herself, she electrified the family by appearing before them with the letter in one hand, the check in the other, announcing that she had won the prize. of course there was a great jubilee, and when the story came everyone read and praised it, though after her father had told her that the language was good, the romance fresh and hearty, and the tragedy quite thrilling, he shook his head, and said in his unworldly way . . . "you can do better than this, jo. aim at the highest, and never mind the money." "i think the money is the best part of it. what will you do with such a fortune?" asked amy, regarding the magic slip of paper with a reverential eye. "send beth and mother to the seaside for a month or two," answered jo promptly. to the seaside they went, after much discussion, and though beth didn't come home as plump and rosy as could be desired, she was much better, while mrs. march declared she felt ten years younger. so jo was satisfied with the investment of her prize money, and fell to work with a cheery spirit, bent on earning more of those delightful checks. she did earn several that year, and began to feel herself a power in the house, for by the magic of a pen, her `rubbish' turned into comforts for them all. the duke's daughter paid the butcher's bill, a phantom hand put down a new carpet, and the curse of the coventrys proved the blessing of the marches in the way of groceries and gowns. wealth is certainly a most desirable thing, but poverty has its sunny side, and one of the sweet uses of adversity is the genuine satisfaction which comes from hearty work of head or hand, and to the inspiration of necessity, we owe half the wise, beautiful, and useful blessings of the world. jo enjoyed a taste of this satisfaction, and ceased to envy richer girls, taking great comfort in the knowledge that she could supply her own wants, and need ask no one for a penny. little notice was taken of her stories, but they found a market, and encouraged by this fact, she resolved to make a bold stroke for fame and fortune. having copied her novel for the fourth time, read it to all her confidential friends, and submitted it with fear and trembling to three publishers, she at last disposed of it, on condition that she would cut it down one third, and omit all the parts which she particularly admired. "now i must either bundle it back in to my tin kitchen to mold, pay for printing it myself, or chop it up to suit purchasers and get what i can for it. fame is a very good thing to have in the house, but cash is more convenient, so i wish to take the sense of the meeting on this important subject," said jo, calling a family council. "don't spoil your book, my girl, for there is more in it than you know, and the idea is well worked out. let it wait and ripen," was her father's advice, and he practiced what he preached, having waited patiently thirty years for fruit of his own to ripen, and being in no haste to gather it even now when it was sweet and mellow. "it seems to me that jo will profit more by taking the trial than by waiting," said mrs. march. "criticism is the best test of such work, for it will show her both unsuspected merits and faults, and help her to do better next time. we are too partial, but the praise and blame of outsiders will prove useful, even if she gets but little money." "yes," said jo, knitting her brows, "that's just it. i've been fussing over the thing so long, i really don't know whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. it will be a great help to have cool, impartial persons take a look at it, and tell me what they think of it." "i wouldn't leave a word out of it. you'll spoil it if you do, for the interest of the story is more in the minds than in the actions of the people, and it will be all a muddle if you don't explain as you go on," said meg, who firmly believed that this book was the most remarkable novel ever written. "but mr. allen says, `leave out the explanations, make it brief and dramatic, and let the characters tell the story'," interrupted jo, turning to the publisher's note. "do as he tells you. he knows what will sale, and we don't. make a good, popular book, and get as much money as you can. by-andby, when you've got a name, you can afford to digress, and have philosophical and metaphysical people in your novels," said amy, who took a strictly practical view of the subject. "well," said jo, laughing, "if my people are `philosophical and metaphysical', it isn't my fault, for i know nothing about such things, except what i hear father say;, sometimes. if i've got some of his wise ideas jumbled up with my romance, so much the better for me. now, beth, what do you say?" "i should so like to see it printed soon," was all beth said, and smiled in saying it. but there was an unconscious emphasis on the last word, and a wistful look in the eyes that never lost their childlike candor, which chilled jo's heart for a minute with a forboding fear, and decided her to make her little venture `soon'. so, with spartan firmness, the young authoress laid her firstborn on her table, and chopped it up as ruthlessly as any ogre. in the hope of pleasing everyone, she took everyone's advice, and like the old man and his donkey in the fable suited nobody. her father liked the metaphysical streak which had unconsciously got into it, so that was allowed to remain though she had her doubts about it. her mother thought that there was a trifle too much description. out, therefore it came, and with it many necessary links in the story. meg admired the tragedy, so jo piled up the agony to suit her, while amy objected to the fun, and, with the best intentions in life, jo quenched the spritly scenes which relieved the somber character of the story. then, to complicate the ruin, she cut it down one third, and confidingly sent the poor little romance, like a picked robin, out into the big, busy world to try its fate. well, it was printed, and she got three hundred dollars for it, likewise plenty of praise and blame, both so much greater than she expected that she was thrown into a state of bewilderment from which it took her some time to recover. "you said, mother, that criticism would help me. but how can it,when it's so contradictory that i don't know whether i've written a promising book or broken all the ten commandments?" cried poor jo, turning over a heap of notices, the perusal of which filled her with pride and joy one minute, wrath and dismay the next. "this man says, `an exquisite book, full of truth, beauty, and earnestness. all is sweet, pure, and healthy.'" continued the perplexed authoress. "the next, `the theory of the book is bad, full of morbid fancies, spiritualistic ideas, and unnatural characters.' now, as i had no theory of any kind, don't believe in spiritualism, and copied my characters from life, i don't see how this critic can be right. another says, `it's one of the best american novels which has appeared for years.' (i know better than that), and the next asserts that `though it is original, and written with great force and feeling, it is a dangerous book.' 'tisn't! some make fun of it, some overpraise, and nearly all insist that i had a deep theory to expound, when i only wrote it for the pleasure and the money. i wish i'd printed the whole or not at all, for i do hate to be so misjudged." her family and friends administered comfort and commendation liberally. yet it was a hard time for sensitive, high-spirited jo, who meant so well and had apparently done so ill. but it did her good, for those whose opinion had real value gave her the critism which is an author's best education, and when the first soreness was over,she could laugh at her poor little book, yet believe in it still, and feel herself the wiser and stronger for the buffeting she had received. "not being a genius, like keats, it won't kill me," she said stoutly, "and i've got the joke on my side, after all, for the parts that were taken straight out of real life are denounced as impossible and absurd, and the scenes that i made up out of my own silly head are pronounced `charmingly natural, tender, and true'. so i'll comfort myself with that, and when i'm ready, i'll up again and take another." chapter twenty-eight like most other young matrons, meg began her married life with the determination to be a model housekeeper. john should find home a paradise, he should always see a smiling face, should fare sumptuously every day, and never know the loss of a button. she brought so much love, energy, and cheerfulness to the work that she could not but succeed, in spite of some obstacles. her paradise was not a tranquil one, for the little woman fussed, was over-anxious to please, and bustled about like a true martha, cumbered with many cares. she was too tired, sometimes, even to smile, john grew dyspeptic after a course of dainty dishes and ungratefully demanded plain fare. as for buttons, she soon learned to wonder where they went, to shake her head over the carelessness of men, and to threaten to make him sew them on himself, and see if his work would stand impatient and clumsy fingers any better than hers. they were very happy, even after they discovered that they couldn't live on love alone. john did not find meg's beauty diminished, though she beamed at him from behind the familiar coffee pot. nor did meg miss any of the romance from the daily parting, when her husband followed up his kiss with the tender inquiry, "shall i send some veal or mutton for dinner, darling?" the little house ceased to be a glorified bower, but it became a home, and the young couple soon felt that it was a change for the better. at first they played keep-house, and frolicked over it like children. then john took steadily to business, feeling the cares of the head of a family upon his shoulders, and meg laid by her cambric wrappers, put on a big apron, and fell to work, as before said, with more energy than discretion. while the cooking mania lasted she went through mrs. cornelius's receipt book as if it were a mathematical exercise, working out the problems with patience and care. sometimes her family were invited in to help eat up a too bounteous feast of successes, or lotty would be privately dispatched with a batch of failures, which were to be concealed from all eyes in the convenient stomachs of the little hummels. an evening with john over the account books usually produced a temporary lull in the culinary enthusiasm, and a frugal fit would ensue, during which the poor man was put through a course of bread pudding, hash, and warmed-over coffee, which tried his soul, although he bore it with praiseworthy fortitude. before the golden mean was found, however, meg added to her domestic possessions what young couples seldom get on long without, a family jar. fired a with housewifely wish to see her storeroom stocked with homemade preserves, she undertook to put up her own currant jelly. john was requested to order home a dozen or so of little pots and an extra quantity of sugar, for their own currants were ripe and were to be attended to at once. as john firmly believed that `my wife' was equal to anything, and took a natural pride in her skill, he resolved that she should be gratified, and their only crop of fruit laid by in a most pleasing form for winter use. home came four dozen delightful little pots, half a barrel of sugar, and a small boy to pick the currants for her. with her pretty hair tucked into a little cap, arms bared to the elbow, and a checked apron which had a coquettish look in spite of the bib, the young housewife fell to work, feeling no doubts about her success, for hadn't she seen hannah do it hundreds of times? the array of pots rather amazed her at first, but john was so fond of jelly, and the nice little jars would look so well on the top shelf, that meg resolved to fill them all, and spend a long day picking, boiling, straining, and fussing over her jelly. she did her best, she asked advice of mrs. cornelius, she racked her brain to remember what hannah did that she left undone, she reboiled, resugared, and restrained, but that dreadful stuff wouldn't `jell'. she longed to run home, bib and all, and ask mother to lend her a hand, but john and she had agreed that they would never annoy anyone with their private worries, experiments, or quarrels. they had laughed over that last word as if the idea it suggested was a most preposterous one, but they had held to their resolve, and whenever they could get on without help they did so, and no one interfered, for mrs. march had advised the plan. so meg wrestled alone with the refractory sweetmeats all that hot summer day, and at five o'clock sat down in her topsy-turvey kitchen, wrung her bedaubed hands, lifted up her voice and wept. now, in the first flush of the new life, she had often said, "my husband shall always feel free to bring a friend home whenever he likes. i shall always be prepared. there shall be no flurry, no scolding, no discomfort, but a neat house, a cheerful wife, and a good dinner. john, dear, never stop to ask my leave, invite whom you please, and be sure of a welcome from me." how charming that was, to be sure! john quite glowed with pride to hear her say it, and felt what a blessed thing it was to have a superior wife. but, although they had had company from time to time, it never happened to be unexpected, and meg had never had an opportunity to distinguish herself till now. it always happens so in this vale of tears, there is an inevitability about such things which we can only wonder at, deplore, and bear as we best can. if john had not forgotten all about the jelly, it really would have been unpardonable in him to choose that day, of all the days in the year, to bring a friend home to dinner unexpectedly. congratulating himself that a handsome repast had been ordered that morning, feeling sure that it would be ready to the minute, and indulging in pleasant anticipations of the charming effect it would produce, when his pretty wife came running out to meet him, he escorted his friend to his mansion, with the irrepressible satisfaction of a young host and husband. it is a world of disappointments, as john discovered when he reached the dovecote. the front door usually stood hospitably open. now it was not only shut, but locked, and yesterday's mud still adorned the steps. the parlor windows were closed and curtained, no picture of the pretty wife sewing on the piazza, in white, with a distracting little bow in her hair, or a bright-eyed hostess, smiling a shy welcome as she greeted her guest. nothing of the sort, for not a soul appeared but a sanginary-looking boy asleep under the current bushes. "i'm afraid something has happened. step into the garden, scott, while i look up mrs. brooke," said john, alarmed at the silence and solitude. round the house he hurried, led by a pungent smell of burned sugar, and mr. scott strolled after him, with a queer look on his face. he paused discreetly at a distance when brooke disappeared, but he could both see and hear, and being a bachelor, enjoyed the prospect mightily. in the kitchen reigned confusion and despair. one edition of jelly was trickled from pot to pot, another lay upon the floor, and a third was burning gaily on the stove. lotty, with teutonic phlegm, was calmly eating bread and currant wine, for the jelly was still in a hopelessly liquid state, while mrs. brooke, with her apron over her head, sat sobbing dismally. "my dearest girl, what is the matter?" cried john, rushing in, with awful visions of scalded hands, sudden news of affliction, and secret consternation at the thought of the guest in the garden. "oh, john, i am so tired and hot and cross and worried! i've been at it till i'm all worn out. do come and help me or i shall die!" and the exhausted housewife cast herself upon his breast, giving him a sweet welcome in every sense of the word, for her pinafore had been baptized at the same time as the floor. "what worries you dear? has anything dreadful happened?" asked the anxious john, tenderly kissing the crown of the little cap, which was all askew. "yes," sobbed meg despairingly. "tell me quick, then. don't cry. i can bear anything better than that. out with it, love." "the . . .the jelly won't jell and i don't know what to do!" john brooke laughed then as he never dared to laugh afterward, and the derisive scott smiled involuntarily as he heard the hearty peal, which put the finishing stroke to poor meg's woe. "is that all? fling it out of the window, and don't bother any more about it. i'll buy you quarts if you want it, but for heaven's sake don't have hysterics, for i've brought jack scott home to dinner, and . . ." john got no further, for meg cast him off, and clasped her hands with a tragic gesture as she fell into a chair, exclaiming in a tone of mingled indignation, reproach, and dismay . . . "a man to dinner, and everything in a mess! john brooke, how could you do such a thing?" "hush, he's in the garden! i forgot the confounded jelly, but it can't be helped now," said john, surveying the prospect with an anxious eye. "you ought to have sent word, or told me this morning, and you ought to have remembered how busy i was," continued meg petulantly, for even turtledoves will peck when ruffled. "i didn't know it this morning, and there was no time to send word, for i met him on the way out. i never thought of asking leave, when you have always told me to do as i liked. i never tried it before, and hang me if i ever do again!" added john, with an aggrieved air. "i should hope not! take him away at once. i can't see him, and there isn't any dinner." "well, i like that! where's the beef and vegetables i sent home, and the pudding you promised?" cried john, rushing to the larder. "i hadn't time to cook anything. i meant to dine at mother's. i'm sorry, but i was so busy," and meg's tears began again. john was a mild man, but he was human, and after a long day's work to come home tired, hungry, and hopeful, to find a chaotic house, an empty table, and a cross wife was not exactly conductive to repose of mind or manner. he restrained himself however, and the little squall would have blown over, but for one unlucky word. "it's a scrape, i acknowledge, but if you will lend a hand, we'll pull through and have a good time yet. don't cry, dear, but just exert yourself a bit, and fix us up something to eat. we're both as hungry as hunters, so we shan't mind what it is. give us the cold meat, and bread and cheese. we won't ask for jelly." he meant it to be a good-natured joke, but that one word sealed his fate. meg thought it was too cruel to hint about her sad failure, and the last atom of patience vanished as he spoke. "you must get yourself out of the scrape as you can. i'm too used up to `exert' myself for anyone. it's like a man to propose a bone and vulgar bread and cheese for company. i won't have anything of the sort in my house. take that scott up to mother's, and tell him i'm away, sick, dead, anything. i won't see him, and you two can laugh at me and my jelly as much as you like. you won't have anything else here." and having delivered her defiance all on one breath, meg cast away her pinafore and precipitately left the field to bemoan herself in her own room. what those two creatures did in her absence, she never knew, but mr. scott was not taken `up to mother's', and when meg descended, after they had strolled away together, she found traces of a promiscuous lunch which filled her with horror. lotty reported that they had eaten "a much, and greatly laughed, and the master bid her throw away all the sweet stuff, and hide the pots." meg longed to go and tell mother, but a sense of shame at her own short comings, of loyalty to john, "who might be cruel, but nobody should know it," restrained her, and after a summary cleaning up, she dressed herself prettily, and sat down to wait for john to come and be forgiven. unfortunately, john didn't come, not seeing the matter in that light. he had carried it off as a good joke with scott, excused his little wife as well as he could, and played the host so hospitably that his friend enjoyed the impromptu dinner, and promised to come again, but john was angry, though he did not show it, he felt that meg had deserted him in his hour of need. "it wasn't fair to tell a man to bring folks home any time, with perfect freedom, and when he took you at your word, to flame up and blame him, and leave him in the lurch, to be laughed at or pitied. no, by george, it wasn't! and meg must know it." he had fumed inwardly during the feast, but when the flurry was over and he strolled home after seeing scott off, a milder mood came over him. "poor little thing! it was hard upon her when she tried so heartily to please me. she was wrong, of course, but then she was young. i must be patient and teach her." he hoped she had not gone home--he hated gossip and interference. for a minute he was ruffled again at the mere thought of it, and then the fear that meg would cry herself sick softened his heart, and sent him on at a quicker pace, resolving to be calm and kind, but firm, quite firm, and show her where she had failed in her duty to her spouse. meg likewise resolved to be `calm and kind, but firm', and show him his duty. she longed to run to meet him, and beg pardon, and be kissed and comforted, as she was sure of being, but, of course, she did nothing of the sort, and when she saw john coming, began to hum quite naturally, as she rocked and sewed, like a lady of leisure in her best parlor. john was a little disappointed not to find a tender niobe, but feeling that his dignity demanded the first apology, he made none, only came leisurely in and laid himself upon the sofa with the singularly relevant remark, "we are going to have a new moon, my dear." "i've no objection," was meg's equally soothing remark. a few other topics of general interest were introduced by mr. brooke and wet-blanketed by mrs. brooke, and conversation languished. john went to one window, unfolded his paper, and wrapped himself in it, figuratively speaking. meg went to the other window, and sewed as if new rosettes for slippers were among the necessaries of life. neither spoke. both looked quite `calm and firm', and both felt desperately uncomfortable. "oh, dear," thought meg, "married life is very trying, and does need infinite patience as well as love, as mother says." the word `mother' suggested other maternal counsels given long ago, and received with unbelieving protests. "john is a good man, but he has his faults, and you must learn to see and bear with them, remembering your own. he is very decided, but never will be obstinate, if you reason kindly, not oppose impatiently. he is very accurate, and particular about the truth--a good trait, though you call him `fussy'. never deceive him by look or word, meg, and he will give you the confidence you deserve, the support you need. he has a temper, not like ours--one flash and then all over--but the white, still anger that is seldom stirred, but once kindled is hard to quench. be careful, be very careful, not to wake his anger against yourself, for peace and happiness depend on keeping his respect. watch yourself, be the first to ask pardon if you both err, and guard against the little piques, misunderstandings, and hasty words that often pave the way for bitter sorrow and regret." these words came back to meg, as she sat sewing in the sunset, especially the last. this was the first serious disagreement, her own hasty speeches sounded both silly and unkind, as she recalled them, her own anger looked childish now, and thoughts of poor john coming home to such a scene quite melted her heart. she glanced at him with tears in her eyes, but he did not see them. she put down her work and got up, thinking, "i will be the first to say, `forgive me', but he did not seem to hear her. she went very slowly across the room, for pride was hard to swallow, and stood by him, but he did not turn his head. for a minute she felt as if she really couldn't do it, then came the thought, this is the beginning. i'll do my part, and have nothing to reproach myself with," and stooping sown, she softly kissed her husband on the forehead. of course that settled it. the penitent kiss was better than a world of words, and john had her on his knee in a minute, saying tenderly . . . "it was too bad to laugh at the poor little jelly pots. forgive me, dear. i never will again!" but he did, oh bless you, yes, hundreds of times, and so did meg, both declaring that it was the sweetest jelly they ever made, for family peace was preserved in that little family jar. after this, meg had mr. scott to dinner by special invitation, and served him up a pleasant feast without a cooked wife for the first course, on which occasion she was so gay and gracious, and made everything go off so charmingly, that mr. scott told john he was a lucky fellow, and shook his head over the hardships of bachelorhood all the way home. in the autumn, new trials and experiences came to meg. sallie moffat renewed her friendship, was always running out for a dish of gossip at the little house, or inviting `that poor dear' to come in and spend the day at the big house. it was pleasant, for in dull weather meg often felt lonely. all were busy at home, john absent till night, and nothing to do but sew, or read, or potter about. so it naturally fell out that meg got into the way of gadding and gossiping with her friend. seeing sallie's pretty things made her long for such, and pity herself because she had not got them. sallie was very kind, and often offered her the coveted trifles, but meg declined them, knowing that john wouldn't like it, and then this foolish little woman went and did what john disliked even worse. she knew her husband's income, and she loved to feel that he trusted her, not only with his happiness, but what some men seem to value more--his money. she knew where it was, was free to take what she liked, and all he asked was that she should keep account of every penny, pay bills once a month, and remember that she was a poor man's wife. till now she had done well, been prudent and exact, kept her little account books neatly, and showed them to him monthly without fear. but that autumn the serpent got into meg's paradise, and tempted her like many a modern eve, not with apples, but with dress. meg didn't like to be pitied and made to feel poor. it irritated her, but she was ashamed to confess it, and now and then she tried to console herself by buying something pretty, so that sallie needn't think she had to economize. she always felt wicked after it, for the pretty things were seldom necessaries, but then they cost so little, it wasn't worth worrying about, so the trifles increased unconsciously, and in the shopping excursions she was no longer a passive looker-on. but the trifles cost more than one would imagine, and when she cast up her accounts at the end of the month the sum total rather scared her. john was busy that month and left the bills to her, the next month he was absent, but the third he had a grand quarterly settling up, and meg never forgot it. a few days before she had done a dreadful thing, and it weighed upon her conscience. sallie had been buying silks, and meg longed for a new one, just a handsome light one for parties, her black silk was so common, and thin things for evening wear were only proper for girls. aunt march usually gave the sisters a present of twenty-five dollars apiece at new year's. that was only a month to wait, and here was a lovely violet silk going at a bargain, and she had the money, if she only dared to take it. john always said what was his was hers, but would he think it right to spend not only the prospective five-and-twenty, but another five-andtwenty out of the household fund? that was the question. sallie had urged her to do it, had offered to lend the money, and with the best intentions in life had tempted meg beyond her strength. in an evil moment the shopman held up the lovely, shimmering folds, and said, "a bargain, i assure, you, ma'am." she answered, "i'll take it," and it was cut off and paid for, and sallie had exulted, and she had laughed as if it were a thing of no consequence, and driven away, feeling as if she had stolen something, and the police were after her. when she got home, she tried to assuage the pangs of remorse by spreading forth the lovely silk, but it looked less silvery now, didn't become her, after all, and the words `fifty dollars' seemed stamped like a pattern down each breadth. she put it away, but it haunted her, not delightfully as a new dress should, but dreadfully like the ghost of a folly that was not easily laid. when john got out his books that night, meg's heart sank, and for the first time in her married life, she was afraid of her husband. the kind, brown eyes looked as if they could be stern, and though he was unusually merry, she fancied he had found her out, but didn't mean to let her know it. the house bills were all paid, the books all in order. john had praised her, and was undoing the old pocketbook which they called the `bank', when meg, knowing that it was quite empty, stopped his hand, saying nervously . . . "you haven't seen my private expense book yet." john never asked to see it, but she always insisted on his doing so, and used to enjoy his masculine amazement at the queer things women wanted, and made him guess what piping was, demand fiercely the meaning of a hug-me-tight, or wonder how a little thing composed of three rosebuds, a bit of velvet, and a pair of strings, could possibly be a bonnet, and cost six dollars. that night he looked as if he would like the fun of quizzing her figures and pretending to be horrified at her extravagance, as he often did, being particularly proud of his prudent wife. the little book was brought slowly out and laid down before him. meg got behind his chair under pretense of smoothing the wrinkles out of his tired forehead, and standing there, she said, with her panic increasing with every word . .. "john, dear, i'm ashamed to show you my book, for i've really been dreadfully extravagant lately. i go about so much i must have things, you know, and sallie advised my getting it, so i did, and my new year's money will partly pay for it, but i was sorry after i had done it, for i knew you'd think it wrong in me." john laughed, and drew her round beside him, saying goodhumoredly, "don't go and hide. i won't beat you if you have got a pair of killing boots. i'm rather proud of my wife's feet, and don't mind if she does pay eight or nine dollars for her boots, if they are good ones." that had been one of her last `trifles', and john's eye had fallen on it as he spoke. "oh, what will he say when he comes to that awful fifty dollars!" thought meg, with a shiver. "it's worse than boots, it's a silk dress," she said, with the calmness of desperation, for she wanted the worst over. "well, dear, what is the `dem'd total', as mr. mantalini says?" that didn't sound like john, and she knew he was looking up at her with the straightforward look that she had always been ready to meet and answer with one as frank till now. she turned the page and her head at the same time, pointing to the sum which would have been bad enough without the fifty, but which was appalling to her with that added. for a minute the room was very still, then john said slowly--but she could feel it cost him an effort to express no displeasure-. . . "well, i don't know that fifty is much for a dress, with all the furbelows and notions you have to have to finish it off these days." "it isn't made or trimmed," sighed meg, faintly, for a sudden recollection of the cost still to be incurred quite overwhelmed her. "twenty-five yards of silk seems a good deal to cover one small woman, but i've no doubt my wife will look as fine as ned moffat's when she gets it on," said john dryly. "i know you are angry, john, but i can't help it. i don't mean to waste your money, and i didn't think those little things would count up so. i can't resist them when i see sallie buying all she wants, and pitying me because i don't. i try to be contented, but it is hard, and i'm tired of being poor." the last words were spoken so low she thought he did not hear them, but he did, and they wounded him deeply, for he had denied himself many pleasures for meg's sake. she could have bitten her tongue out the minute she had said it, for john pushed the books away and got up, saying with a little quiver in his voice, "i was afraid of this. i do my best, meg." if he had scolded her, or even shaken her, it would not have broken her heart like those few words. she ran to him and held him close, crying, with repentant tears, "oh, john, my dear, kind, hard-working boy. i didn't mean it! it was so wicked, so untrue and ungrateful, how could i say it! oh, how could i say it!" he was very kind, forgave her readily, and did not utter one reproach, but meg knew that she had done and said a thing which would not be forgotten soon, although he might never allude to it again. she had promised to love him for better or worse, and then she, his wife, had reproached him with his poverty, after spending his earnings recklessly. it was dreadful, and the worst of it was john went on so quietly afterward, just as if nothing had happened, except that he stayed in town later, and worked at night when she had gone to cry herself to sleep. a week or remorse nearly made meg sick, and the discovery that john had countermanded the order for his new greatcoat reduced her to a state of despair which was pathetic to behold. he had simply said, in answer to her surprised inquiries as to the change, "i can't afford it, my dear." meg said no more, but a few minutes after he found her in the hall with her face buried in the old greatcoat, crying as if her heart would break. they had a long talk that night, and meg learned to love her husband better for his poverty, because it seemed to have made a man of him, given him the strength and courage to fight his own way, and taught him a tender patience with which to bear and comfort the natural longings and failures of those he loved. next day she put her pride in her pocket, went to sallie, told the truth, and asked her to buy the silk as a favor. the goodnatured mrs. moffat willingly did so, and had the delicacy not to make her a present of it immediately afterward. then meg ordered home the greatcoat, and when john arrived, she put it on, and asked him how he liked her new silk gown. one can imagine what answer he made, how he received his present, and what a blissful state of things ensued. john came home early, meg gadded no more, and that greatcoat was put on in the morning by a very happy husband, and taken off at night by a most devoted little wife. so the year rolled round, and at midsummer there came to meg a new experience, the deepest and tenderest of a woman's life. laurie came sneaking into the kitchen of the dovecote one saturday, with an excited face, and was received with the clash of cymbals, for hannah clapped her hands with a saucepan in one and the cover in the other. "how's the little mamma? where is everybody? why didn't you tell me before i came home?" began laurie in a loud whisper. "happy as a queen, the dear! every soul of `em is upstairs a worshipin'. we didn't want no hurrycanes round. now you go into the parlor, and i'll send `em down to you," with which somewhat involved reply hannah vanished, chuckling ecstatically. presently jo appeared, proudly bearing a flannel bundle laid forth upon a large pillow. jo's face was very sober, but her eyes twinkled, and there was an odd sound in her voice of repressed emotion of some sort. "shut your eyes and hold out your arms," she said invitingly. laurie backed precipitately into a corner, and put his hands behind him with an imploring gesture. "no, thank you. i'd rather not. i shall drop it or smash it, as sure as fate." "then you shan't see your nevvy," said jo decidedly, turning as if to go. "i will, i will! only you must be responsible for damages." and obeying orders, laurie heroically shut his eyes while something was put into his arms. a peal of laughter from jo, amy, mrs. march, hannah, and john caused him to open them the next minute, to find himself invested with two babies instead of one. no wonder they laughed, for the expression of his face was droll enough to convulse a quaker, as he stood and stared wildly from the unconscious innocents to the hilarious spectators with such dismay that jo sat down on the floor and screamed. "twins, by jupiter!" was all he said for a minute, then turning to the women with an appealing look that was comically piteous, he added, "take `em quick, somebody! i'm going to laugh, and i shall drop `em." jo rescued his babies, and marched up and down, with one on each are, as if already initiated into the mysteries of babytending, while laurie laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. "it's the best joke of the season, isn't it? i wouldn't have told you, for i set my heart on surprising you, and i flatter myself i've done it," said jo, when she got her breath. "i never was more staggered in my life. isn't it fun? are they boys? what are you going to name them? let's have another look. hold me up, jo, for upon my life it's one too many for me," returned laurie, regarding the infants with the air of a big, benevolent newfoundland looking at a pair of infantile kittens. "boy and girl. aren't they beauties?" said the proud papa, beaming upon the little red squirmers as if they were unfledged angels. "most remarkable children i ever saw. which is which?" and laurie bent like a well-sweep to examine the prodigies. "amy put a blue ribbon on the boy and a pink on the girl, french fashion, so you can always tell. besides, one has blue eyes and one brown. kiss them, uncle teddy," said wicked jo. "i'm afraid they mightn't like it," began laurie, with un usual timidity in such matters. "of course they will, they are used to it now. do it this minute, sir!" commanded jo, fearing he might propose a proxy. laurie screwed up his face and obeyed with a gingerly peck at each little cheek that produced another laugh, and made the babies squeal. "there, i knew they didn't like it! that's the boy, see him kick, he hits out with his fists like a good one. now then, young brooke, pitch into a man of your own size, will you?" cried laurie, delighted with a poke in the face from a tiny fist, flapping aimlessly about. "he's to be named john laurence, and the girl margaret, after mother and grandmother. we shall call her daisey, so as not to have two megs, and i suppose the mannie will be jack, unless we find a better name," said amy, with aunt-like interest. "name him demijohn, and call him demi for short," said laurie "daisy and demi, just the thing! i knew teddy would do it," cried jo clapping her hands. teddy certainly had done it that time, for the babies were `daisy' and `demi' to the end of the chapter. chapter twenty-nine "come, jo, it's time." "for what?" "you don't mean to say you have forgotten that you promised to make half a dozen calls with me today?" "i've done a good many rash and foolish things in my life, but i don't think i ever was mad enough to say i'd make six calls in one day, when a single one upsets me for a week." "yes, you did, it was a bargain between us. i was to finish the crayon of beth for you, and you were to go properly with me, and return our neighbors' visits." "if it was fair, that was in the bond, and i stand to the letter of my bond, shylock. there is a pile of clouds in the east, it's not fair, and i don't go." "now, that's shirking. it's a lovely day, no prospect of rain, and you pride yourself on keeping; promises, so be honorable, come and do your duty, and then be at peace for another six months." at that minute jo was particularly absorbed in dressmaking, for she was mantua-maker general to the family, and took especial credit to herself because she could use a needle as well as a pen. it was very provoking to be arrested in the act of a first tryingon, and ordered out to make calls in her best array on a warm july day. she hated calls of the formal sort, and never made any till amy compelled her with a bargain, bribe, or promise. in the present instance there was no escape, and having clashed her scissors rebelliously, while protesting that she smelled thunder, she gave in, put away her work, and taking up her hat and gloves with an air of resignation, told amy the victim was ready. "jo march, you are perverse enough to provoke a saint! you don't intend to make calls in that state, i hope,: cried amy, surveying her with amazement. "why not? i'm neat and cool and comfortable, quite proper for a dusty walk on a warm day. if people care more for my clothes than they do for me, i don't wish to see them. you can dress for both, and be as elegant as you please. it pays for you to be fine. it doesn't for me, and furbelows only worry me." "oh, dear!" sighed amy, "now she's in a contrary fit, and will drive me distracted before i can get her properly ready. i'm sure it's no pleasure to me to go today, but it's a debt we owe society, and there's no one to pay it but you and me. i'll do anything for you, jo, if you'll only dress yourself nicely, and come and help me do the civil. you can talk so well, look so aristocratic in your best things, and behave so beautifully, if you try, that i'm proud of you. i'm afraid to go alone, do come and take care of me." "you're an artful little puss to flatter and wheedle your cross old sister in that way. the idea of my being aristocratic and well-bred, and your being afraid to go anywhere alone! i don't know which is the most absurd. well, i'll go if i must, and do my best. you shall be commander of the expedition, and i'll obey blindly, will that satisfy you?" said jo, with a sudden change from perversity to lamblike submission. "you're a perfect cherub! now put on all your best things, and i'll tell you how to behave at each place, so that you will make a good impression. i want people to like you, and they would if you'd only try to be a little more agreeable. do your hair the pretty way, and put the pink rose in your bonnet. it's becoming, and you look too sober in your plain suit. take your light gloves and the embroidered handkerchief. we'll stop at meg's, and borrow her white sunshade, and then you can have my dove-colored one." while amy dressed, she issued her orders, and jo obeyed them, not without entering her protest, however, for she sighed as she rustled into her new organdie, frowned darkly at herself as she tied her bonnet strings in an irreproachable bow, wrestled viciously with pins as she put on her collar, wrinkled up her features generally as she shook out the handkerchief, whose embroidery was as irritating to her nose as the present mission was to her feelings, and when she had squeezed her hands into tight gloves with three buttons and a tassel, as the last touch of elegance, she turned to amy with an imbecile expression of countenance, saying meekly . . . "i'm perfectly miserable, but if you consider me presentable, i die happy." "you're highly satisfactory. turn slowly round, and let me get a careful view." jo revolved, and amy gave a touch here and there, then fell back, with her head on one side, observing graciously, "yes, you'll do. your head is all i could ask, for that white bonnet with the rose is quite ravishing. hold back your shoulders, and carry your hands easily, no matter if your gloves do pinch. there's one thing you can do well, jo, that is, wear a shawl. i can't, but it's very nice to see you, and i'm so glad aunt march gave you that lovely one. it's simple, but handsome, and those folds over the arm are really artistic. is the point of my mantle in the middle, and have i looped my dress evenly? i like to show my boots, for my feet are pretty, though my nose isn't." "you are a thing of beauty and a joy forever," said jo, looking through her hand with the air of a connoisseur at the blue feather against the golden hair. "am i to drag my best dress through the dust, or loop it up, please, ma'am?" "hold it yup when you walk, but drop it in the house. the sweeping style suits you best, and you must learn to trail your skirts gracefully. you haven't half buttoned one cuff, do it at once. you'll never look finished if you are not careful about the little details, for they make yup the pleasing whole." jo sighed, and proceeded to burst the buttons off her glove, in doing up her cuff, but at last both were ready, and sailed away, looking as `pretty as picters', hannah said, as she hung out of the upper window to watch them. "now, jo dear, the chesters consider themselves very elegant people, so i want you to put on your best deportment. don't make any of your abrupt remarks, or do anything odd, will you? just be calm, cool, and quiet, that's safe and ladylike, and you can easily do it for fifteen minutes," said amy, as they approached the first place, having borrowed the white parasol and been inspected by meg, with a baby on each arm. "let me see. `calm, cool, and quiet', yes, i think i can promise that. i've played the part of a prim young lady on the stage, and i'll try it off. my powers are great, as you shall see, so be easy in your mind, my child." amy looked relieved, but naughty jo took her at her word, for during the first call she sat with every limb gracefully composed, every fold correctly draped, calm as a summer sea, cool as a snowbank, and as silent as the sphinx. in vain mrs. chester alluded to her `charming novel', and the misses chester introduced parties, picnics, the opera, and the fashions. each and all were answered by a smile, a bow, and a demure "yes" or "no" with the chill on. in vain amy telegraphed the word `talk', tried to draw her out, and administered covert pokes with her foot. jo sat as if blandly unconcious of it all, with deportment like maud's face, `icily regular, splendidly null'. "what a haughty, uninteresting creature that oldest miss march is!" was the unfortunately audible remark of one of the ladies, as the door closed upon their guests. jo laughed noiselessly all through the hall, but amy looked disgusted at the failure of her instructions, and very naturally laid the blame upon jo. "how could you mistake me so? i merely meant you to be properly dignified and composed, and you made yourself a perfect stock and stone. try to be sociable at the lamb's'. gossip as other girls do, and be interested in dress and flirtations and whatever nonsense comes up. they move in the best society, are valuable persons for us to know, and i wouldn't fail to make a good impression there for anything." "i'll be agreeable. i'll gossip and giggle, and have horrors and raptures over any trifle you like. i rather enjoy this, and now i'll imitate what is called `a charming girl'. i can do it, for i have may chester as a model, and i'll improve upon her. see if the lambs don't say, `what a lively, nice creature that jo march is!" amy felt anxious, as well she might, for when jo turned freakish there was no knowing where she would stop. amy's face was a study when she saw her sister skim into the next drawing room, kiss all the young ladies with effusion, beam graciously upon the young gentlemen, and join in the chat with a spirit which amazed the beholder. amy was taken possession of by mrs. lamb, with whom she was a favorite, and forced to hear a long account of lucretia's last attack, while three delightful young gentlemen hovered near, waiting for a pause when they might rush in and rescue her. so situated, she was powerless to check jo, who seemed possessed by a spirit of mischief, and talked away as volubly as the lady. a knot of heads gathered about her, and amy strained her ears to hear what was going on, for broken sentences filled her with curiosity, and frequent peals of laughter made her wild to share the fun. one may imagine her suffering on overhearing fragments of this sort of conversation. "she rides splendidly. who taught her?" "no one. she used to practice mounting, holding the reins, and sitting straight on an old saddle in a tree. now she rides anything, for she doesn't know what fear is, and the stableman lets her have horses cheap because she trains them to carry ladies so well. she has such a passion for it, i often tell her if everything else fails, she can be a horsebreaker, and get her living so." at this awful speech amy contained herself with difficulty, for the impression was being given that she was rather a fast young lady, which was her especial aversion. but what could she do? for the old lady was in the middle of her story, and long before it was done, jo was off again, make more droll revelations and committing still more fearful blunders. "yes, amy was in despair that day, for all the good beasts were gone, and of three left, one was lame, one blind, and the other so balky that you had to put dirt in his mouth before he would start. nice animal for a pleasure party, wasn't it?" "which did she choose?" asked one of the laughing gentlemen, who enjoyed the subject. "none of them. she heard of a young horse at the farm house over the river, and though a lady had never ridden him, she resolved to try, because he was handsome and spirited. her struggles were really pathetic. there was no one to bring the horse to the saddle, so she took the saddle to the horse. my dear creature, she actually rowed it over the river, put it on her head, and marched up to the barn to the utter amazement of the old man!" "did she ride the horse?' "of course she did, and had a capital time. i expected to see her brought home in fragments, but she managed him perfectly, and was the life of the party." "well, i call that plucky!" and young mr. lamb turned an approving glance upon amy, wondering what his mother could be saying to make the girl look so red and uncomfortable. she was still redder and more uncomfortable a moment after, when a sudden turn in the conversation introduced the subject of dress. one of the young ladies asked jo where she got the pretty drab hat she wore to the picnic and stupid jo, instead of mentioning the place where it was bought two years ago, must needs answer with unnecessary frankness, "oh, amy painted it. you can't buy those soft shades, so we paint ours any color we like. it's a great comfort to have an artistic sister." "isn't that an original idea?" cried miss lamb, who found jo great fun. "that's nothing compared to some of her brilliant performances. there's nothing the child can't do. why, she wanted a pair of blue boots for sallie's party, so she just painted her soiled white ones the loveliest shade of sky blue you ever saw, and they looked exactly like satin," added jo, with an air of pride in her sister's accomplishments that exasperated amy till she felt that it would be a relief to throw her cardcase at her. "we read a story of yours the other day, and enjoyed it very much," observed the elder miss lamb, wishing to compliment the literary lady, who did not look the character just then, it must be confessed. any mention of her `works' always had a bad effect upon jo, who either grew rigid and looked offended, or changed the subject with a brusque remark, as now. "sorry you could find nothing better to read. i write that rubbish because it sells, and ordinary people like it. are you going to new york this winter?' as miss lamb had `enjoyed' the story, this speech was not exactly grateful or complimentary. the minute it was made jo saw her mistake, but fearing to make the matter worse, suddenly remembered that it was for her to make the first move toward departure, and did so with an abruptness that left three people with halffinished sentences in their mouths. "amy, we must go. good-by, dear, do come and see us. we are pining for a visit. i don't dare to ask you, mr. lamb, but if you should come, i don't think i shall have the heart to send you away." jo said this with such a droll imitation of may chester's gushing style that amy got out of the room as rapidly as possible, feeling a strong desire to laugh and cry at the same time. "didn't i do well?" asked jo, with a satisfied air as they walked away. "nothing could have been worse," was amy's crushing reply. "what possessed you to tell those stories about my saddle, and the hats and boots, and all the rest of it?" "why, it's funny, and amuses people. they know we are poor, so it's no use pretending that we have grooms, buy three or four hats a season, and have things as easy and fine as they do." "you needn't go and tell them all our little shifts, and expose our; poverty in that perfectly unnecessary way. you haven't a bit of proper pride, and never will learn when to hold your tongue and when to speak," said amy despairingly. poor jo looked abashed, and silently chafed the end of her nose with the stiff handkerchief, as if performing a penance for her misdemeanors. "how shall i behave here?" she asked, as they approached the third mansion. "just as you please. i wash my hands of you," was amy's short answer. "then i'll enjoy myself. the boys are at home, and we'll have a comfortable time. goodness knows i need a little change, for elegance has a bad effect upon my constitution," returned jo gruffly, being disturbed by her failure to suit. an enthusiastic welcome from three big boys and several pretty children speedily soothed her ruffled feelings, and leaving amy to entertain the hostess and mr. tudor, who happened to be calling likewise, jo devoted herself to the young folks and found the change refreshing. she listened to college stories with deep interest, caressed pointers and poodles without a murmur, agreed heartily that "tom brown was a brick," regardless of the improper form of praise, and when one lad proposed a visit to his turtle tank, she went with an alacrity which caused mamma to smile upon her, as that motherly lady settled the cap which was left in a ruinous condition by filial hugs, bearlike but affectionate, and dearer to her than the most faultless coiffure from the hands of an inspired frenchwoman. leaving her sister to her own devices, amy proceeded to enjoy herself to her heart's content. mr. tudor's uncle had married an english lady who was third cousin to a living lord, and amy regarded the whole family with great respect, for in spite of her american birth and breeding, she possessed that reverence for titles which haunts the best of us--that unacknowledged loyalty to the early faith in kings which set the most democratic nation under the sun in ferment at the coming of a royal yellow-haired laddie, some years ago, and which still has something to do with the love the young country bears the old, like that of a big son for an imperious little mother, who held him while she could, and let him go with a farewell scolding when he rebelled. but even the satisfaction of talking with a distant connection of the british nobility did not render amy forgetful of time, and when the proper number of minutes had passed, she reluctantly tore herself from this aristocratic society, and looked about for jo, fervently hoping that her incorrigible sister would not be found in any position which should bring disgrace upon the name of march. it might have been worse, but amy considered it bad. for jo sat on the grass, with an encampment of boys about her, and a dirtyfooted dog reposing on the skirt of her state and festival dress, as she related one of laurie's pranks to her admiring audience. one small child was poking turtles with amy's cherished parasol, a second was eating gingerbread over jo's best bonnet, and a third playing ball with her gloves. but all were enjoying themselves, and when jo collected her damaged property to go, her escort accompanied her, begging her to come again, "it was such fun to hear about laurie's larks." "capital boys, aren't they? i feel quite young and brisk again after that." said jo, strolling along with her hands behind her, partly from habit, partly to conceal the bespattered parasol. "why do you always avoid mr. tudor?" asked amy, wisely refraining from any comment upon jo's dilapidated appearance. "don't like him, he puts on airs, snubs his sisters, worries his father, a nd doesn't speak respectfully of his mother. laurie says he is fast, and i don't consider him a desirable acquaintance, so i let him alone." "you might treat him civilly, at least. you gave him a cool nod, and just now you bowed and smiled in the politest way to tommy chamberlain, whose father keeps a grocery store. if you had just reversed the nod and the bow, it would have been right," said amy reprovingly. "no, it wouldn't," returned jo, "i neither like, respect, nor admire tudor, though his grandfather's uncle's nephew's niece was a third cousin to a lord. tommy is poor and bashful and good and very clever. i think well of him, and like to show that i do, for he is a gentleman in spite of the brown paper parcels." "it's no use trying to argue with you," began amy. "not the least, my dear," interrupted jo, "so let us look amiable, and drop a card here, as the kings are evidently out, for which i'm deeply grateful." the family cardcase having done its duty the girls walked on, and jo uttered another thanksgiving on reaching the fifth house, and being told that the young ladies were engaged. "now let us go home, and never mind aunt march today. we can run down there any time, and it's really a pity to trail through the dust in our best bibs and tuckers, when we are tired and cross." "speak for yourself, if you please. aunt march likes to have us pay her the compliment of coming in style, and making a formal call. it's a little thing to do, but it gives her pleasure, and i don't believe it will hurt your things half so much as letting dirty dogs and clumping boys spoil them. stoop down, and let me take the crumbs off of your bonnet." "what a good girl you are, amy!" said jo, with a repentant glance from her own damaged costume to that of her sister, which was fresh and spotless still. "i wish it was as easy for me to do little things to please people as it is for you. i think of them, but it takes too much time to do them, so i wait for a chance to confer a great favor, and let the small ones slip, but they tell best in the end, i fancy." amy smiled and was mollified at once, saying with a maternal air, "women should learn to be agreeable, particularly poor ones, for they have no other way of repaying the kindnesses they receive. if you'd remember that, and practice it, you'd be better liked than i am, because there is more of you." "i'm a crotchety old thing, and always shall be, but i'm willing to own that you are right, only it's easier for me to risk my life for a person than to be pleasant to him when i don't feel like it. it's a great misfortune to have such strong likes and dislikes, isn't it?" "it's a greater not to be able to hide them. i don't mind saying that i don't approve of tudor any more than you do, but i'm not called upon to tell him so. neither are you, and there is no use in making yourself disagreeable because he is." "but i think girls ought to show when they disapprove of young men, and how can they do it except by their manners? preaching does not do any good, as i know to my sorrow, since i've had teddie to manage. but there are many little ways in which i can influence him without a word, and i say we ought to do it to others if we can." "teddy is a remarkable boy, and can't be taken as a sample of other boys," said amy, in a tone of solemn conviction, which would have convulsed the `remarkable boy' if he had heard it. "if we were belles, or women of wealth and position, we might do something, perhaps, but for us to frown at one set of young gentlemen because we don't approve of them, and smile upon another set because we do, wouldn't have a particle of effect, and we should only be considered odd and puritanical." "so we are to countenance things and people which we detest, merely because we are not belles and millionaires, are we? that's a nice sort of morality." "i can't argue about it, i only know that it's the way of the world, and people who set themselves against it only get laughed at for their pains. i don't like reformers, and i hope you never try to be one." "i do like them, and i shall be one if i can, for in spite of the laughing the world would never get on without them. we can't agree about that. for you belong to the old set, and i to the new. you will get on the best, but i shall have the liveliest time of it. i should rather enjoy the brickbats and hooting, i think." "well, compose yourself now, and don't worry aunt with your new ideas." "i'll try not to, but i'm always possessed to burst out with some particularly blunt speech or revolutionary sentiment before her. it's my doom, and i can't help it." they found aunt carrol with the old lady, both absorbed in some very interesting subject, but they dropped it as the girls came in, with a conscious look which betrayed that they had been talking about their nieces. jo was not in a good humor, and the perverse fit returned, but amy, who had virtuously done her duty, kept her temper and pleased everybody, was in a most angelic frame of mind. this amiable spirit was felt at once, and both aunts `my deared' her affectionately, looking what they afterward said emphatically, "that child improves every day." "are you going to help about the fair, dear?" asked mrs. carrol, as amy sat down beside her with the confiding air elderly people like so well in the young. "yes, aunt. mrs. chester asked me if i would, and i offered to tend a table, as i have nothing but my time to give." "i'm not," put in jo decidedly. "i hate to be patronized, and the chesters think it's a great favor to allow us to help with their highly connected fair. i wonder you consented, amy, they only want you to work." "i am willing to work. it's for the freedmen as well as the chesters, and i think it very kind of them to let me share the labor and the fun. patronage does not trouble me when it is well meant." "quite right and proper. i like your grateful spirit, my dear. it's a pleasure to help people who appreciate our efforts. some do not, and that is trying," observed aunt march, looking over her spectacles at jo, who sat apart, rocking herself, with a somewhat morose expression. if jo had only known what a great happiness was wavering in the balance for one of them, she would have turned dove-like in a minute, but unfortunately, we don't have windows in our breasts, and cannot see what goes on in the minds of our friends. better for us that we cannot as a general thing, but now and then it would be such a comfort, such a saving of time and temper. by her next speech, jo deprived herself of several years of pleasure, and received a timely lesson in the art of holding her tongue. "i don't like favors, they oppress and make me feel like a slave. i'd rather do everything for myself, and be perfectly independent." "ahem!" coughed aunt carrol softly, with a look at aunt march. "i told you so," said aunt march, with a decided nod to aunt carrol. mercifully unconscious of what she had done, jo sat with her nose in the air, and a revolutionary aspect which was anything but inviting. "do you speak french, dear?" asked mrs. carrol, laying a hand on amy's. "pretty well, thanks to aunt march, who lets esther talk to me as often as i like," replied amy, with a grateful look, which caused the old lady to smile affably. "how are you about languages?" asked mrs. carrol of jo. "don't know a word. i'm very stupid about studying anything, can't bear french, it's such a slippery, silly sort of language," was the brusque reply. another look passed between the ladies, and aunt march said to amy, 'you are quite strong and well no, dear, i believe? eyes don't trouble you any more, do they?" "not at all, thank you, ma'am. i'm very well, and mean to do great things next winter, so that i may be ready for rome, whenever that joyful time arrives." "good girl! you deserve to go, and i'm sure you will some day," said aunt march, with an approving; pat on the head, as amy picked up her ball for her. crosspatch, draw the latch, sit by the fire and spin, squalled polly, bending down from his perch on the back of her chair to peep into jo's face, with such a comical air of impertinent inquiry that it was impossible to help laughing. "most observing bird," said the old lady. "come and take a walk, my dear?" cried polly, hopping toward the china closet, with a look suggestive of a lump of sugar. "thank you, i will. come amy." and jo brought the visit to an end, feeling more strongly than ever that calls did have a bad effect upon her constitution. she shook hands in a gentlemanly manner, but amy kissed both the aunts, and the girls departed, leaving behind them the impression of shadow and sunshine, which impression caused aunt march to say, as they vanished . . . "you'd better do it, mary. i'll supply the money. and aunt carrol to reply decidedly, "i certainly will, if her father and mother consent." chapter thirty mrs. chester's fair was so very elegant and select that it was considered a great honor by the young ladies of the neighborhood to be invited to take a table, and everyone was much interest in the matter. amy was asked, but jo was not, which was fortunate for all parties, as her elbows were decidedly akimbo at this period of her life, and it took a good many hard knocks to teach her how to get on easily. the `haughty, uninteresting creature' was let severely alone, but amy's talent and taste were duly complimented by the offer of the art table, and she exerted herself to prepare and secure appropriate and valuable contributions to it. everything went on smoothly till the day before the fair opened, then there occurred one of the little skirmishes which it is almost impossible to avoid, when some five-and-twenty women, old and young, with all their private piques and prejudices, try to work together. may chester was rather jealous of amy because the latter was a greater favorite than herself, and just at this time several trifling circumstances occurred to increase the feeling. amy's dainty pen-and-ink work entirely eclipsed may's painted vases--that was one thorn. then the all conquering tudor had danced four times with amy at a late party and only once with may--that was thorn number two. but the chief grievance that rankled in her soul, and gave an excuse for her unfriendly conduct, was a rumor which some obliging gossip had whispered to her, that the march girls had made fun of her at the lambs'. all the blame of this should have fallen upon jo, for her naughty imitation had been too lifelike to escape detection, and the frolicsome lambs had permitted the joke to escape. no hint of this had reached the culprits, however, and amy's dismay can be imagined,when, the very evening before the fair, as she was putting the last touches to her pretty table, mrs. chester, who, of course, resented the supposed ridicule of her daughter, said, in a bland tone, but with a cold look . . . "i find, dear, that there is some feeling among the young ladies about my giving this table to anyone but my girls. as this is the most prominent, and some say the most attractive table of all, and they are the chief getters-up of the fair, it is thought best for them to take this place. i'm sorry, but i know you are too sincerely interested in the cause to mind a little personal disappointment, and you shall have another table if you like." mrs. chester fancied beforehand that it would be easy to deliver this little speech, but when the time came, she found it rather difficult to utter it naturally, with amy's unsuspicious eyes looking straight at her full of surprise and trouble. "amy felt that there was something behind this, but would not guess what, and said quietly, feeling hurt, and showing that she did, "perhaps you had rather i took no table at all?" "now, my dear, don't have any ill feeling, i beg. it's merely a matter of expediency, you see, my girls will naturally take the lead, and this table is considered their proper place. i think it very appropriate to you, and feel very grateful for your efforts to make it so pretty, but we must give up our private wishes, of course, and i will see that you have a good place elsewhere. wouldn't you like the flower table? the little girls undertook it, but they are discouraged. you could make a charming thing of it, and the flower table is always attractive you know." "especially to gentlemen," added may, with a look which enlightened amy as to one cause of her sudden fall from favor. she colored angrily, but took no other notice of that girlish sarcasm, and answered with unexpected amiability . . . "it shall be as you please, mrs. chester. i'll give up my place here at once, and attend to the flowers, if you like." "you can put your own things on your own table, if you prefer," began may, feeling a little conscience-stricken, as she looked at the pretty racks, the painted shells, and quaint illuminations amy had so carefully made and so gracefully arranged. she meant it kindly, but amy mistook her meaning, and said quickly . .. "oh, certainly, if they are in your way," and sweeping her contributions into her apron, pell-mell, she walked off, feeling that herself and her works of art had been insulted past forgiveness. "now she's mad. oh, dear, i wish i hadn't asked you to speak, mama," said may, looking disconsolately at the empty spaces on her table. "girls' quarrels are soon over," returned her mother, feeling a trifle ashamed of her own part in this one, as well she might. the little girls hailed amy and her treasures with delight, which cordial reception somewhat soothed her perturbed spirit, and she fell to work, determined to succeed florally, if she could not artistically. but everything seemed against her. it was late, and she was tired. everyone was too busy with their own affairs to help her, and the little girls were only hindrances, for the dears fussed and chattered like so many magpies, making a great deal of confusion in their artless efforts to preserve the most perfect order. the evergreen arch wouldn't stay firm after she got it up, but wiggled and threatened to tumble down on her head when the hanging baskets were filled. her best tile got a splash of water, which left a sephia tear on the cupid's cheek. she bruised her hands with hammering, and got cold working in a draft, which last affliction filled her with apprehensions for the morrow. any girl reader who has suffered like afflictions will sympathize with poor amy and wish her well through her task. there was great indignation at home when she told her story that evening. her mother said it was a shame, but told her she had done right. beth declared she wouldn't go to the fair at all, and jo demanded why she didn't take all her pretty things and leave those mean people to get on without her. "because they are mean is no reason why i should be. i hate such things, and though i think i've a right to be hurt, i don't intend to show it. they will feel that more than angry speeches or huffy actions, won't they, marmee?" "that's the right spirit, my dear. a kiss for a blow is always best, though it's not very easy to give it sometimes," said her mother, with the air of one who had learned the difference between preaching and practicing. in spite of various very natural temptations to resent and retaliate, amy adhered to her resolution all the next day, bent on conquering her enemy by kindness. she began well, thanks to a silent reminder that came to her unexpectedly, but most opportunely. as she arranged her table that morning, while the little girls were in the anteroom filling the baskets, she took up her pet production, a little book, the antique cover of which her father had found among his treasures, and in which on leaves of vellum she had beautifully illuminated different texts. as she turned the pages rich in dainty devices with very pardonable pride, her eye fell upon one verse that made her stop and think. framed in a brilliant scrollwork of scarlet, blue and gold, with little spirits of good will helping one another up and down among the thorns and flowers, were the words, "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "i ought, but i don't," thought amy, as her eye went from the bright page to may's discontented face behind the big vases, that could not hide the vacancies her pretty work had once filled. amy stood a minute, turning the leaves in her hand, reading on each some sweet rebuke for all heartburnings and uncharitableness of spirit. many wise and true sermons are preached us every day by unconscious ministers in street, school, office, or home. even a fair table may become a pulpit, if it can offer the good and helpful words which are never out of season. amy's conscience preached her a little sermon from that text, then and there, and she did what many of us do not always do, took the sermon to heart, and straightway put it in practice. a group of girls were standing about may's table, admiring the pretty things, and talking over the change of saleswomen. they dropped their voices, but amy knew they were speaking of her, hearing one side of the story and judging accordingly. it was not pleasant, but a better spirit had come over her, and presently a chance offered for proving it. she heard may say sorrowfully . . . "it's too bad, for there is no time to make other things, and i don't want to fill up with odds and ends. the table was just complete then. now it's spoiled." "i dare say she'd put them back if you asked her," suggested someone. "how could i after all the fuss?" began may, but she did not finish, for amy's voice came across the hall, saying pleasantly . . . "you may have them, and welcome, without asking, if you want them. i was just thinking i'd offer to put them back, for they belong to your table rather than mine. here they are, please take them, and forgive me if i was hasty in carrying them away last night." as she spoke, amy returned her contribution, with a nod and a smile, and hurried away again, feeling that it was easier to do a friendly thing than it was to stay and be thanked for it. "now, i call that lovely of her, don't you?" cried one girl. may's answer was inaudible, but another young lady, whose temper was evidently a little soured by making lemonade, added, with a disagreeable laugh, "very lovely, for she knew she wouldn't sell them at her own table." now, that was hard. when we make little sacrifices we like to have them appreciated, at least, and for a minute amy was sorry she had done it, feeling that virtue was not always its won reward. but it is, as she presently discovered, for her spirits began to rise, and her table to blossom under her skillful hands, the girls were very kind, and that one little act seemed to have cleared the atmosphere amazingly. it was a very long day and a hard one for amy, as she sat behind her table, often quite alone, for the little girls deserted very soon. few cared to buy flowers in summer, and her bouquets began to droop long before night. the art table was the most attractive in the room. there was a crowd about it all day long, and the tenders were constantly flying to and fro with important faces and rattling money boxes. amy often looked wistfully across, longing to be there, where she felt at home and happy, instead of in a corner with nothing to do. it might seem no hardship to some of us, but to a pretty, blithe young girl, it was not only tedious, but very trying, and the thought of laurie and his friends made it a real martyrdom. she did not go home till night, and then she looked so pale and quiet that they knew the day had been a hard one, though she made no complaint, and did not even tell what she had done. her mother gave her an extra cordial cup of tea. beth helped her dress, and made a charming little wreath for her hair, while jo astonished her family by getting herself up with unusual care, and hinting darkly that the tables were about to be turned. "don't do anything rude, pray jo. i won't have any fuss made, so let it all pass and behave yourself," begged amy, as she departed early, hoping to find a reinforcement of flowers to refresh her poor little table. "i merely intend to make myself entrancingly agreeable to ever one i know, and to keep them in your corner as long as possible. teddy and his boys will lend a hand, and we'll have a good time yet." returned jo, leaning over the gate to watch for laurie. presently the familiar tramp was heard in the dusk, and she ran out to meet him. "is that my boy?" "as sure as this is my girl!" and laurie tucked her hand under his arm with the air of a man whose every wish was gratified. "oh, teddy, such doings!" and jo told amy's wrongs with sisterly zeal. "a flock of our fellows are going to drive over by-and-by, and i'll be hanged if i don't make them buy every flower she's got, and camp down before her table afterward," said laurie, espousing her cause with warmth. "the flowers are not at all nice, amy says, and the fresh ones may not arrive in time. i don't wish to be unjust or suspicious, but i shouldn't wonder if they never came at all. when people do one mean thing they are very likely to do another," observed jo in a disgusted tone. "didn't hayes give you the best out of our gardens? i told him to." "i didn't know that, he forgot, i suppose, and, as your grandpa was poorly, i didn't like to worry him by asking, though i did want some." "now, jo, how could you think there was any need of asking? they are just as much yours as mine. don't we always go halves in everything?" began laurie, in the tone that always made jo turn thorny. "gracious, i hope not! half of some of your things wouldn't suit me at all. but we mustn't stand philandering here. i've got to help amy, so you go and make yourself splendid, and if you'll be so very kind as to let hayes take a few nice flowers up to the hall, i'll bless you forever." "couldn't you do it now?" asked laurie, so suggestively that jo shut the gate in his face with inhospitable haste, and called through the bars, "go away, teddy, i'm busy." thanks to the conspirators, the tables were turned that night, for hayes sent up a wilderness of flowers, with a loverly basket arranged in his best manner for a centerpiece. then the march family turned out en masse, and jo exerted herself to some purpose, for people not only came, but stayed, laughing at her nonsense, admiring amy's taste, and apparently enjoying themselves very much. laurie and his friends gallantly threw themselves into the breach,bought up the bouquets, encamped before the table, and made that corner the liveliest spot in the room. amy was in her element now, and out of gratitude, if nothing more, was as spritely and gracious as poss ible, coming to the conclusion, about that time, that virtue was it's own reward, after all. jo behaved herself with exemplary propriety, and when amy was happily surrounded by her guard of honor, jo circulated about the hall, picking up various bits of gossip, which enlightened her upon the subject of the chester change of base. she reproached herself for her share of the ill feeling and resolved to exonerate amy as soon as possible. she also discovered what amy had done about the things in the morning,and considered her a model of magnanimity. as she passed the art table, she glanced over it for her sister's things, but saw no sign of them. "tucked away out of sight, i dare say," thought jo, who could forgiver her own wrongs, but hotly resented any insult offered her family. "good evening, miss jo. how does amy get on?" asked may with a conciliatory air, for she wanted to show that she also could be generous. "she has sold everything she had that was worth selling, and now she is enjoying herself. the flower table is always attractive, you know, `especially to gentlemen'." jo couldn't resist giving that little slap, but may took it so meekly she regretted it a minute after, and fell to praising the great vases, which still remained unsold. "is amy's illumination anywhere about" i took a fancy to buy that for father," said jo, very anxious to learn the fate of her sister's work. "everything of amy's sold long ago. i took care that the right people saw them, and they made a nice little sum of money for us," returned may, who had overcome sundry small temptations, as well as amy had, that day. much gratified, jo rushed back to tell the good news, and amy looked both touched and surprised by the report of may's word and manner. "now, gentlemen, i want you to go and do your duty by the other tables as generously as you have by mine, especially the art table," she said, ordering out `teddy's own', as the girls called the college friends. "`charge, chester, charge!' is the motto for that table, but do your duty like men, and you'll get your money's worth of art in every sense of the word," said the irrepressible jo, as the devoted phalanx prepared to take the field. "to hear is to obey, but march is fairer far than may," said little parker, making a frantic effort to be both witty and tender, and getting promptly quenched by laurie, who said . . . "very well, my son, for a small boy!" and walked him off, with a paternal pat on the head. "buy the vases," whispered amy to laurie, as a final heaping of coals of fire on her enemy's head. to may's great delight, mr. laurence not only bought the vases, but pervaded the hall with one under each arm. the other gentlemen speculated with equal rashness in all sorts of frail trifles, and wandered helplessly about afterward, burdened with wax flowers, painted fans, filigree portfolios, and other useful and appropriate purchases. aunt carrol was there, heard the story, looked pleased, and said something to mrs. march in a corner, which made the latter lady beam with satisfaction, and watch amy with a face full of mingled pride and anxiety, though she did not betray the cause of her pleasure till several days later. the fair was pronounced a success, and when may bade amy goodnight, she did not gush as usual, but gave her an affectionate kiss, and a look which said `forgive and forget'. that satisfied amy, and when she got home she found the vases paraded on the parlor chimney piece with a great bouquet in each. "the reward of merit for a magnanimous march," as laurie announced with a flourish. "you've a deal more principle and generosity and nobleness of character than i ever gave you credit for, amy. you've behaved sweetly, and i respect you with all my heart," said jo warmly, as they brushed their hair together late that night. "yes, we all do, and love her for being so ready to forgive. it must have been dreadfully hard, after working so long and setting your heart on selling your own pretty things. i don't believe i could have done it as kindly as you did," added beth from her pillow. "why, girls, you needn't praise me so. i only did as i'd be done by. you laugh at me when i say i want to be a lady, but i mean a true gentlewoman in mind and manners, and i try to do it as far as i know how. i can't explain exactly, but i want to be above the little meannesses and follies and faults that spoil so many women. i'm far from it now, but i do my best, and hope in time to be what mother is." amy spoke earnestly, and jo said, with a cordial hug, "i understand now what you mean, and i'll never laugh at you again. you are getting on faster than you think, and i'll take lessons of you in true politeness, for you've learned the secret, i believe. try away, deary, you'll get your reward some day, and no one will be more delighted than i shall." a week later amy did get her reward, and poor jo found it hard to be delighted. a letter came from aunt carrol, and mrs. march's face was illuminated to such a degree when she read it that jo and beth, who were with her, demanded what the glad tiding were. "aunt carrol is going abroad next month, and wants . . ." "me to go with her!" burst in jo, flying out of her chair in an uncontrollable rapture. "no, dear, not you. it's amy." "oh, mother! she's too young, it's my turn first. i've wanted it so long. it would do me so much good, and be so altogether splendid. i must go!" "i'm afraid it's impossible, jo. aunt says amy, decidedly, and it is not for us to dictate when she offers such a favor." "it's always so. amy has all the fun and i have all the work. it isn't fair, oh, it isn't fair!" cried jo passionately. "i'm afraid it's partly your own fault, dear. when aunt spoke to me the other day, she regretted your blunt manners and too independent spirit, and here she writes, as if quoting something you had said--`i planned at first to ask jo, but as `favors burden her', and she `hates french', i think i won't venture to invite her. amy is more docile, will make a good companion for flo, and receive gratefully any help the trip may give her." "oh, my tongue, my abominable tongue! why can't i learn to keep it quiet?' groaned jo, remembering words which had been her undoing. when she had heard the explanation of the quoted phrases, mrs. march said sorrowfully . . . "i wish you could have gone, but there is no hope of it this time, so try to bear it cheerfully, and don't sadden amy's pleasure by reproaches or regrets." "i'll try," said jo, winking hard as she knelt down to pick up the basket she had joyfully upset. "i'll take a leaf out of her book, and try not only to seem glad, but to be so, and not grudge her one minute of happiness. but it won't be easy, for it is a dreadful disappointment." and poor jo bedewed the little fat pincushion she held with several very bitter tears. "jo, dear, i'm very selfish, but i couldn't spare you, and i'm glad you are not going quite yet," whispered beth, embracing her, basket and all, with such a clinging touch and loving face that jo felt comforted in spite of the sharp regret that made her want to box her own ears, and humbly beg aunt carrol to burden her with this favor, and see how gratefully she would bear it. by the time amy came in, jo was able to take her part in the family jubilation, not quite as heartily as usual, perhaps, but without repinings at amy's good fortune. the young lady herself received the news as tidings of great joy, went about in a solemn sort of rapture, and began to sort her colors and pack her pencils that evening, leaving such trifles as clothes, money, and passports to those less absorbed in visions of art than herself. "it isn't a mere pleasure trip to me, girls," she said impressively, as she scraped her best palette. "it will decide my career, for if i have any genius, i shall find it out in rome, and will do something to prove it." "suppose you haven't?" said jo, sewing away, with red eyes, at the new collars which were to be handed over to amy. "then i shall come home and teach drawing for my living," replied the aspirant for fame, with philosophic composure. but she made a wry face at the prospect, and scratched away at her palette as if bent on vigorous measures before she gave up her hopes. "no, you won't. you hate hard work, and you'll marry some rich man, and come home to sit in the lap of luxury all your days," said jo. "your predictions sometimes come to pass, but i don't believe that one will. i'm sure i wish it would, for if i can't be an artist myself, i should like to be able to help those who are," said amy, smiling, as if the part of lady bountiful would suit her better than that of a poor drawing teacher. "hum!" said jo, with a sigh. "if you wish it you'll have it, for your wishes are always granted--mine never." "would you like to go?" asked amy, thoughtfully patting her nose with her knife. "rather!" "well, in a year or two i'll send for you, and we'll dig in the forum for relics, and carry out all the plans we've made so many times." "thank you. i'll remind you of your promise when that joyful day comes, if it ever does," returned jo, accepting the vague but magnificent offer as gratefully as she could. "there was not much time for preparation, and the house was in a ferment till amy was off. jo bore up very well till the last flutter of blue ribbon vanished, when she retired to her refuge, the garret, and cried till she couldn't cry any more. amy likewise bore up stoutly till the steamer sailed. then just as the gangway was about to be withdrawn, it suddenly came over her that a whole ocean was soon to roll between her and those who loved her best, and she clung to laurie, the last lingerer, saying with a sob . . . "oh, take care of them for me, and if anything should happen. . . " "i will, dear, i will, and if anything happens, i'll come and comfort you," whispered laurie, little dreaming that he would be called upon to keep his word. so amy sailed away to find the old world, which is always new and beautiful to young eyes, while her father and friend watched her from the shore, fervently hoping that none but gentle fortunes would befall the happy-hearted girl, who waved her hand to them till they could see nothing but the summer sunshine dazzling on the sea. chapter thirty-one london dearest people, here i really sit at a front window of the bath hotel, piccadilly. it's not a fashionable place, but uncle stopped here years ago, and won't go anywhere else. however, we don't mean to stay long, so it's no great matter. oh, i can't begin to tell you how i enjoy it all! i never can, so i'll only give you bits out of my notebook, for i've done nothing but sketch and scribble since i started. i sent a line from halifax, when i felt pretty miserable, but after that i got on delightfully, seldom ill, on deck all day, with plenty of pleasant people to amuse me. everyone was very kind to me, especially the officers. don't laugh, jo, gentlemen really are very necessary aboard ship, to hold on to, or to wait upon one, and as they have nothing to do, it's a mercy to make them useful, otherwise they would smoke themselves to death, i'm afraid. aunt and flo were poorly all the way, and liked to be let alone, so when i had done what i could for them, i went and enjoyed myself. such walks on deck, such sunsets, such splendid air and waves! it was almost as exciting as riding a fast horse, when we went rushing on so grandly. i wish beth could have come, it would have done her so much good. as for jo, she would have gone up and sat on the maintop jib, or whatever the high thing is called, made friends with the engineers, and tooted on the captain's speaking trumpet, she'd have been in such a state of rapture. it was all heavenly, but i was glad to see the irish coast, and found it very lovely, so green and sunny, with brown cabins here and there, ruins on some of the hills, and gentlemen's countryseats in the valleys, with deer feeding in the parks. it was early in the morning, but i didn't regret getting up to see it, for the bay was full of little boats, the shore so picturesque, and a rosy sky overhead. i never shall forget it. at queenstown on of my new acquaintances left us, mr. lennox, and when i said something about the lakes of killarney, he sighed and and, with a look at me . . . "oh, have you e'er heard of kate kearney? she lives on the banks of killarney; from the glance of her eye, shun danger and fly, for fatal's the glance of kate kearney." wasn't that nonsensical? we only stopped at liverpool a few hours. it's a dirty, noisy place, and i was glad to leave it. uncle rushed out and bought a pair of dogskin gloves, some ugly, thick shoes, and an umbrella, and got shaved `a la mutton chop, the first thing. then he flattered himself that he looked like a true briton, but the first time he had the mud cleaned off his shoes, the little bootblack knew that an american stood in them, and said, with a grin, "there yer har, sir. i've given `em the latest yankee shine." it amused uncle immensely. oh, i must tell you what that absurd lennox did! he got his friend ward, who came on with us, to order a bouquet for me, and the first thing i saw in my room was a lovely one, with "robert lennox's compliments," on the card. wasn't that fun, girls? i like traveling. i never shall get to london if i don't hurry. the trip was like riding through a long picture gallery, full of lovely landscapes. the farmhouses were my delight, with thatched roofs, ivy up to the eaves, latticed windows, and stout women with rosy children at the doors. the very cattle looked more tranquil than ours, as they stood knee-deep in clover, and the hens had a contented cluck, as if they never got nervous like yankee biddies. such perfect color i never saw, the grass so green, sky so blue, grain so yellow, woods so dark, i was in a rapture all the way. so was flo, and we kept bouncing from one side to the other, trying to see everything while we were whisking along at the rate of sixty miles an hour. aunt was tired and went to sleep, but uncle read his guidebook, and wouldn't be astonished at anything. this is the way we went on. amy, flying up--"oh, that must be kenilworth, that gray place among the trees!" flo, darting to my window--"how sweet! we must go there sometime, won't we papa?" uncle, calmly admiring his boots--"no, my dear, not unless you want beer, that's a brewery." a pause--then flo cried out, "bless me, there's a gallows and a man going up." "where, where?" shrieks amy, staring out at two tall posts with a crossbeam and some dangling chains. "a colliery," remarks uncle, with a twinkle of the eye. "here's a lovely flock of lambs all lying down," says amy. "see, papa, aren't they pretty?" added flo sentimentally. "geese, young ladies," returns uncle, in a tone that keeps us quiet till flo settles down to enjoy the flirtations of captain cavendish, and i have the scenery all to myself. of course it rained when we got to london, and there was nothing to be seen but fog and umbrellas. we rested, unpacked, and shopped a little between the showers. aunt mary got me some new things, for i came off in such a hurry i wasn't half ready. a white hat and blue feather, a muslin dress to match, and the loveliest mantle you ever saw. shopping in regent street is perfectly splendid. things seem so cheap, nice ribbons only sixpence a yard. i laid in a stock, but shall get my gloves in paris. doesn't that sound sort of elegant and rich? flo and i, for the fun of it, ordered a hansom cab, while aunt and uncle were out, and went for a drive, though we learned afterward that it wasn't the thing for young ladies to ride in them alone. it was so droll! for when we were shut in by the wooden apron, the man drove so fast that flo was frightened, and told me to stop him. but he was up outside behind somewhere, and i couldn't get at him. he didn't hear me call, nor see me flap my parasol in front, and there we were, quite helpless, rattling away, and whirling around corners at a breakneck pace. at last, in my despair, i saw a little door in the roof, and on poking it open, a red eye appeared, and a beery voice said . . . "now, then, mum?" i gave my order as soberly as i could, and slamming down the door, with an "aye, aye, mum," the man made his horse walk, as if going to a funeral. i poked again and said, "a little faster," then off he went, helter-skelter as before, and we resigned ourselves to our fate. today was fair, and we went to hyde park, close by, for we are more aristocratic than we look. the duke of devonshire lives near. i often see his footmen lounging at the back gate, and the duke of wellington's house is not far off. such sights as i saw, my dear! it was as good as punch, for there were fat dowagers rolling about in their red and yellow coaches, with gorgeous jeameses in silk stockings and velvet coats, up behind, and powdered coachmen in front. smart maids, with the rosiest children i ever saw, handsome girls, looking half asleep, dandies in queer english hats and lavender kids lounging about, and tall soldiers, in short red jackets and muffin caps stuck on one side, looking so funny i longed to sketch them. rotten row means `route de roi', or the king's way, but now it's more like a riding school than anything else. the horses are splendid, and the men, especially the grooms, ride well, but the women are stiff, and bounce, which isn't according to our rules. i longed to show them a tearing american gallop, for they trotted solemnly up and down, in their scant habits and high hats, looking like the women in a toy noah's ark. everyone rides--old men, stout ladies, little children-and the young folks do a deal of flirting here, i say a pair exchange rose buds, for it's the thing to wear one in the button-hole, and i thought it rather a nice little idea. in the p.m. to westminster abbey, but don't expect me to describe it, that's impossible, so i'll only say it was sublime! this evening we are going to see fechter, which will be an appropriate end to the happiest day of my life. it's very late, but i can't let my letter go in the morning without telling you what happened last evening. who do you think came in, as we were at tea? laurie's english friends, fred and frank vaughn! i was so surprised, for i shouldn't have known them but for the cards. both are tall fellows with whiskers, fred handsome in the english style, and frank much better, for he only limps slightly, and uses no crutches. they had heard from laurie where we were to be, and came to ask us to their house, but uncle won't go, so we shall return the call, and see them as we can. they went to the theater with us, and we did have such a good time, for frank devoted himself to flo, and fred and i talked over past, present, and future fun as if we had know each other all our days. tell beth frank asked for her, and was sorry to hear of her ill health. fred laughed when i spoke of jo, and sent his `respectful compliments to the big hat'. neither of them had forgotten camp laurence, or the fun we had there. what ages ago it seems, doesn't it? aunt is tapping on the wall for the third time, so i must stop. i really feel like a dissipated london fine lady, writing here so late, with my room full of pretty things, and my head a jumble of parks, theaters, new gowns, and gallant creatures who say "ah!" and twirl their blond mustaches with the true english lordliness. i long to see you all, and in spite of my nonsense am, as ever, your loving . . . amy paris dear girls, in my last i told you about our london visit, how kind the vaughns were, and what pleasant parties they made for us. i enjoyed the trips to hampton court and the kensington museum more than anything else, for at hampton i saw raphael's cartoons, and at the museum, rooms full of pictures by turner, lawrence, reynolds, hogarth, and the other great creatures. the day in richmond park was charming, for we had a regular english picnic, and i had more splendid oaks and groups of deer than i could copy, also heard a nightingale, and saw larks go up. we `did' london to our heart's content, thanks to fred and frank, and were sorry to go away, for though english people are slow to take you in, when they once make up their minds to do it they cannot be outdone in hospitality, i think. the vaughns hope to meet us in rome next winter, and i shall be dreadfully disappointed if they don't, for grace and i are great friends, and the boys very nice fellows, especially fred. well, we were hardly settled here, when he turned up again, saying he had come for a holiday, and was going to switzerland. aunt looked sober at first, but he was so cool about it she couldn't say a word. and now we get on nicely, and are very glad he came, for he speaks french like a native, and i don't know what we should do without him. uncle doesn't know ten words, and insists on talking english very loud, as if it would make people understand him. aunt's pronunciation is old-fashioned, and flo and i, though we flattered ourselves that we knew a good deal, find we don't, and are very grateful to have fred do the `parley vooing', as uncle calls it. such delightful times as we are having! sight-seeing from morning till night, stopping for nice lunches in the gay cafes, and meeting with all sorts of droll adventures. rainy days i spend in the louvre, revelling in pictures. jo would turn up her naughty nose at some of the finest, because she has no soul for art, but i have, and i'm cultivation eye and taste as fast as i can. she would like the relics of great people better, for i've seen her napoleon's cocked hat and gray coat, his baby's cradle and his old toothbrush, also marie antoinette's little shoe, the ring of saint denis, charlemagne's sword, and many other interesting things. i'll talk for hours about them when i come, but haven't time to write. the palais royale is a heavenly place, so full of bijouterie and lovely things that i'm nearly distracted because i can't buy them. fred wanted to get me some, but of course i didn't allow it. then the bois and champs elysees are tres magnifique. i've seen the imperial family several times, the emperor an ugly, hard-looking man, the empress pale and pretty, but dressed in bad taste, i thought--purple dress, green hat, and yellow gloves. little nap is a handsome boy, who sits chatting to his tutor, and kissed his hand to the people as he passes in his four-horse barouche, with postilions in red satin jackets and a mounted guard before and behind. we often walk in the tuileries gardens, for they are lovely, though the antique luxembourg gardens suit me better. pere la chaise is very curious, for many of the tombs are like small rooms, and looking in, one sees a table, with images or pictures of the dead, and chairs for the mourners to sit in when they come to lament. that is so frenchy. our rooms are on the rue de rivoli, and sitting on the balcony, we look up and down the long, brilliant street. it is so pleasant that we spend our evenings talking there when too tired with our day's work to go out. fred is very entertaining, and is altogether the most agreeable young man i ever knew--except laurie, whose manners are more charming. i wish fred was dark, for i don't fancy light men, however, the vaughns are very rich and come of an excellent family, so i won't find fault with their yellow hair, as my own is yellower. next week we are off to germany and switzerland, and as we shall travel fast, i shall only be able to give you hasty letters. i keep my diary, and try to `remember correctly and describe clearly all that i see and admire', as father advised. it is good practice for me, and with my sketchbook will give you a better idea of my tour than these scribbles. adieu, i embrace you tenderly. votre amie heidelberg my dear mamma, having a quiet hour before we leave for berne, i'll try to tell you what has happened, for some of it is very important, as you will see. the sail up the rhine was perfect, and i just sat and enjoyed it with all my might. get father's old guidebooks and read about it. i haven't words beautiful enough to describe it. at coblenz we had a lovely time, for some students from bonn, with whom fred got acquainted on the boat, gave us a serenade. it was a moonlight night, and about one o'clock flo and i were waked by the most delicious music under our windows. we flew up, and hid behind the curtains, but sly peeps showed us fred and the students singing away down below. it was the most romantic thing i ever saw--the river, the bridge of boats, the great fortress opposite, moonlight everywhere, and music fit to melt a heart of stone. when they were done we threw down some flowers, and saw them scramble for them, kiss their hands to the invisible ladies, and go laughing away, to smoke and drink beer, i suppose. next morning fred showed me one of the crumpled flowers in his vest pocket, and looked very sentimental. i laughed at him, and said i didn't throw it, but flo, which seemed to disgust him, for he tossed it out of the window, and turned sensible again. i'm afraid i'm going to have trouble with that boy, it begins to look like it. the baths at nassau were very gay, so was baden-baden, where fred lost some money, and i scolded him. he needs someone to look after him when frank is not with him. kate said once she hoped he'd marry soon, and i quite agree with her that it would be well for him. frankfurt was delightful. i saw goeth's house, schiller's statue, and dannecker's famous ariadne. it was very lovely, but i should have enjoyed it more if i had known the story better. i didn't like to ask, as everyone knew it or pretended they did. i wish jo would tell me all about it. i ought to have read more, for i find i don't know anything, and it mortifies me. now comes the serious part, for it happened here, and fred has just gone. he has been so kind and jolly that we all got quite fond of him. i never thought of anything but a traveling friendship till the serenade night. since then i've begun to feel that the moonlight walks, balcony talks, and daily adventures were something more to him than fun. i haven't flirted, mother, truly, but remembered what you said to me, and have done my very best. i can't help it if people like me. i don't try to make them, and it worries me if i don't care for them, though jo says i haven't got any heart. now i know mother will shake her head, and the girls say, "oh, the mercenary little wretch!", but i've made up my mind, and if fred asks me, i shall accept him, though i'm not madly in love. i like him, and we get on comfortably together. he is handsome, young, clever enough, and very rich--ever so much richer than the laurences. i don't think his family would object, and i should be very happy, for they are all kind, well-bred, generous people, and they like me. fred, as the eldest twin, will have the estate, i suppose, and such a splendid one it is! a city house in a fashionable street, not so showy as our big houses, but twice as comfortable and full of solid luxury, such as english people believe in. i like it, for it's genuine. i've seen the plate, the family jewels, the old servants, and pictures of the country place, with its park, great house, lovely grounds, and fine horses. oh, it would be all i should ask! and i'd rather have it than any title such as girls snap up so readily, and find nothing behind. i may be mercenary, but i hate poverty, and don't mean to bear it a minute longer than i can help. one of us must marry well. meg didn't, jo won't, beth can't yet, so i shall, and make everything okay all round. i wouldn't marry a man i hated or despised. you may be sure of that, and though fred is not my model hero, he does very well, and in time i should get fond enough of him if he was very fond of me, and let me do just as i liked. so i've been turning the matter over in my mind the last week, for it was impossible to help seeing that fred liked me. he said nothing, but little things showed it. he never goes with flo, always gets on my side of the carriage, table, or promenade, looks sentimental when we are alone, and frowns at anyone else who ventures to speak tome. yesterday at dinner, when an austrian officer stared at us and then said something to his friend, a rakish-looking baron, about `ein wonderschones blondchen', fred looked as fierce as a lion, and cut his meat so savagely it nearly flew off his plate. he isn't one of the cool, stiff englishmen, but is rather peppery, for he has scotch blood in him, as one might guess from his bonnie blue eyes. well, last evening we went up to the castle about sunset, at least all of us but fred, who was to meet us there after going to the post restante for letters. we had a charming time poking about the ruins, the vaults where the monster tun is, and the beautiful gardens made by the elector long ago for his english wife. i liked the great terrace best, for the view was divine, so while the rest went to see the rooms inside, i sat there trying to sketch the gray stone lion's head on the wall, with scarlet woodbine sprays hanging round it. i felt as if i'd got into a romance, sitting there, watching the meckar rolling through the valley, listening to the music of the austrian band below, and waiting for my lover, like a real storybook girl. i had a feeling that something was going to happen and i was ready for it. i didn't feel blushy or quakey, but quite cool and only a little excited. by-and-by i heard fred's voice, and then he came hurrying through the great arch to find me. he looked so troubled that i forgot all about myself, and asked what the matter was. he said he'd just got a letter begging him to come home, for frank was very ill. so he was going at once on the night train and only had time to say good-by. i was very sorry for him, and disappointed for myself, but only for a minute because he said, as he shook hands, and said it in a way that i could not mistake, "i shall soon come back, you won't forget me, amy?" i didn't promise, but i looked at him, and he seemed satisfied, and there was no time for anything but messages and goodbyes, for he was off in an hour, and we all miss him very much. i know he wanted to speak, but i think, from something he once hinted, that he had promised his father not to do anything of the sort yet a while, for is is a rash boy, and the old gentleman dreads a foreign daughter-in-law. we shall soon meet in rome, and then, if i don't change my mind, i'll say "yes, thank you," when he says "will you, please?" of course this is all very private, but i wished you to know what was going on. don't be anxious about me, remember i am your `prudent amy', and be sure i will do nothing rashly. send me as much advice as you like. i'll use it if i can. i wish i could see you for a good talk, marmee. love and trust me. ever your amy chapter thirty-two "jo, i'm anxious about beth." "why, mother, she has seemed unusually well since the babies came." "it's not her health that troubles me now, it's her spirits. i'm sure there is something on her mind, and i want you to discover what it is." "what makes you think so, mother?" "she sits alone a good deal, and doesn't talk to her father as much as she used. i found her crying over the babies the other day. when she sings, the songs are always sad ones, and now and then i see a look in her face that i don't understand. this isn't like beth, and it worries me." "have you asked her about it?' "i have tried once or twice, but she either evaded my questions or looked so distressed that i stopped. i never force my children's confidence, and i seldom have to wait for long." mrs. march glanced at jo as she spoke, but the face opposite seemed quite unconscious of any secret disquietude but beth's, and after sewing thoughtfully for a minute, jo said, "i think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why or being able to explain them. why, mother, beth's eighteen, but we don't realize it, and treat her like a child, forgetting she's a woman." "so she is. dear heart, how fast you do grow up," returned her mother with a sigh and a smile. "can't be helped, marmee, so you must resign yourself to all sorts of worries, and let your birds hop out of the nest, one by one. i promise never to hop very far, if that is any comfort to you." "it's a great comfort, jo. i always feel strong when you are at home, now meg is gone. beth is too feeble and amy too young to depend upon, but when the tug comes, you are always ready." "why, you know i don't mind hard jobs much, and there must always be one scrub in a family. amy is splendid in fine works and i'm not, but i feel in my element when all the carpets are to be taken up, or half the family fall sick at once. amy is distinguishing herself abroad, but if anything is amiss at home, i'm your man." "i leave beth to your hands, then, for she will open her tender little heart to her jo sooner than to anyone else. be very kind, and don't let her think anyone watches or talks about; her. if she only would get quite strong and cheerful again, i shouldn't have a wish in the world." "happy woman! i've got heaps." "my dear, what are they?" "i'll settle bethy's troubles, and then i'll tell you mine. they are not very wearing, so they'll keep." and jo stitched away, with a wise nod which set her mother's heart at rest about her for the present at least. while apparently absorbed in her own affairs, jo watched beth, and after many conflicting conjectures, finally settled upon one which seemed to explain the change in her. a slight incident gave jo the clue to the mystery, she thought, and lively fancy, loving heart did the rest. she was affecting to write busily one saturday afternoon, when she and beth were alone together. yet as she scribbled, she kept her eye on her sister, who seemed unusually quiet. sitting at the window, beth's work often dropped into her lap, and she leaned her head upon her hand, in a dejected attitude, while her eyes rested on the dull, autumnal landscape. suddenly some one passed below, whistling like an operatic blackbird, and a voice called out, "all serene! coming in tonight." beth started, leaned forward, smiled and nodded, watched the passer-by till his quick tramp died away, then said softly as if to herself, "how strong and well and happy that dear boy looks." "hum!" said jo, still intent upon her sister's face, for the bright color faded as quickly as it came, the smile vanished, and presently a tear lay shining on the window ledge. beth whisked it off, and in her half-averted face read a tender sorrow that made her own eyes fill. fearing to betray herself, she slipped away, murmuring something about needing more paper. "mercy on me, beth loves laurie!" she said, sitting down in her own room, pale with the shock of the discovery which she believed she had just made. "i never dreamed of such a thing. what will mother say? i wonder if her . . ." there jo stopped and turned scarlet with a sudden thought. "if he shouldn't love back again, how dreadful it would be. he must. i'll make him!" and she shook her head threateningly at the picture of the mischievous-looking boy laughing at her from the wall. "oh dear, we are growing up with a vengeance. here's meg married and a mamma, amy flourishing away at paris, and beth in love. i'm the only one that has sense enough to keep out of mischief." jo thought intently for a minute with her eyes fixed on the picture, then she smoothed out her wrinkled forehead and said, with a decided nod at the face opposite, "no thank you, sir, you're very charming, but you've no more stability than a weathercock. so you needn't write touching notes and smile in that insinuating way, for it won't do a bit of good, and i won't have it." then she sighed, and fell into a reverie from which she did not wake till the early twilight sent her down to take new observations, which only confirmed her suspicion. though laurie flirted with amy and joked with jo, his manner to beth had always been peculiarly kind and gentle, but so was everybody's. therefore, no one thought of imagining that he cared more for her than for the others. indeed, a general impression had prevailed in the family of late that `our boy' was getting fonder than ever of jo, who, however, wouldn't hear a word upon the subject and scolded violently if anyone dared to suggest it. if they had known the various tender passages which had been nipped in the bud, they would have had the immense satisfaction of saying, "i told you so." but jo hated `philandering', and wouldn't allow it, always having a joke or a smile ready at the least sign of impending danger. when laurie first went to college, he fell in love about once a month, but these small flames were as brief as ardent, did no damage, and much amused jo, who took great interest in the alternations of hop, despair, and resignation, which were confided to her in their weekly conferences. but there came a time when laurie ceased to worship at many shrines, hinted darkly at one all-absorbing passion, and indulged occasionally in byronic fits of gloom. then he avoided the tender subject altogether, wrote philosophical notes to jo, turned studious, and gave out that he was going to `dig', intending to graduate in a blaze of glory. this suited the young lady better than twilight confidences, tender pressures of the hand,, and eloquent glances of the eye, for with jo, brain developed earlier than heart, and she preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable. things were in this state when the grand discovery was made, and jo watched laurie that night as she had never done before. if she had not got the new idea into her head, she would have seen nothing unusual in the fact that beth was very quiet, and laurie very kind to her. but having given the rein to her lively fancy, it galloped away with her at a great pace, and common sense, being rather weakened by a long course or romance writing, did not come to the rescue. as usual beth lay on the sofa and laurie sat in a low chair close by, amusing her with all sorts of gossip, for she depended on her weekly `spin', and he never disappointed her. but that evening jo fancied that beth's eyes rested on the lively, dark face beside her with peculiar pleasure, and that she listened with intense interest to an account of some exciting cricket match, though the phrases, `caught off a tice', `stumped off his ground'', and `the leg hit for three', were as intelligible to her as sanskrit. she also fancied, having set her heart upon seeing it, that she saw a certain increase of gentleness in laurie's manner, that he dropped his voice now and then, laughed less than usual, was a little absent--minded, and settled the afghan over beth's feet with an assiduity that was really almost tender. "who knows? stranger things have happened," thought jo, as she fussed about the room. "she will make quite an angel of him, and he will make life delightfully easy and pleasant for the dear, if they only love each other. i don't see how he can help it,and i do believe he would if the rest of us were out of the way." as everyone was out of the way but herself, jo began to feel that she ought to dispose of herself with all speed. but where should she go? and burning to lay herself upon the shrine of sisterly devotion, she sat down to settle that point. now, the old sofa was a regular patriarch of a sofa--long, broad, well-cushioned, and low, a trifle shabby, as well it might be, for the girls had slept and sprawled on it as babies, fished over the back, rode on the arms, and had menageries under it as children, and rested tired heads, dreamed dreams, and listened to tender talk on it as young women. they all loved it, for it was a family refuge, and one corner had always been jo's favorite lounging place. among the many pillows that adorned the venerable couch was one, hard, round, covered with prickly horsehair, and furnished with a knobby button at each end. this repulsive pillow was her especial property, being used as a weapon of defense, a barricade, or a stern preventive of too much slumber. laurie knew this pillow well, and had cause to regard it with deep aversion, having been unmercifully pummeled with it in former days when romping was allowed, and now frequently debarred by it from the seat he most coveted next ot jo in the sofa corner. if `the sausage' as the called it, stood on end, it was a sign that he might approach and repose, but if it lay flat across the sofa, woe to man, woman, or child who dared disturb it! that evening jo forgot to barricade her corner, and had not been in her seat five minutes, before a massive form appeared beside her, and with both arms spread over the sofa back, both long legs stretched out before him, laurie exclaimed, with a sigh of satisfaction . . . "now, this is filling at the price." "no slang," snapped jo, slamming down the pillow. but it was too late, there was no room for it, and coasting onto the floor, it disappeared in a most mysterious manner. "come, jo, don't be thorny. after studying himself to a skeleton all the week, a fellow deserves petting and ought to get it." "beth will pet you. i'm busy." "no, she's not to be bothered with me, but you like that sort of thing, unless you've suddenly lost your taste for it. have you? do you hate your boy, and want to fire pillows at him?" anything more wheedlesome than that touching appeal was seldom heard, but jo quenched `her boy' by turning on him with a stern query, "how many bouquets have you sent miss randal this week?" "not one, upon my word. she's engaged. now then." "i'm glad of it, that's one of your foolish extravagances, sending flowers and things to girls for whom you don't care two pins," continued jo reprovingly. "sensible girls for whom i do care whole papers of pins won't let me send them `flowers and things', so what can i do? my feelings need a` vent'." "mother doesn't approve of flirting even in fun, and you do flirt desperately, teddy." "i'd give anything if i could answer, `so do you'. as i can't, i'll merely say that i don't see any harm in that pleasant little game, if all parties understand that it's only play." "well, it does look pleasant, but i can't learn how it's done. i've tried, because one feels awkward in company not to do as everybody else id doing, but i don't seem to get on", said jo, forgetting to play mentor. "take lessons of amy, she has a regular talent for it." "yes, she does it very prettily, and never seems to go too far. i suppose it's natural to some people to please without trying, and others to always say and do the wrong thing in the wrong place." "i'm glad you can't flirt. it's really refreshing to see a sensible, straightforward girl, who can be jolly and kind without making a fool of herself. between ourselves, jo, some of the girls i know really do go on at such a rate i'm ashamed of them. they don't mean any harm, i'm sure, but if they knew how we fellows talked about them afterward, they'd mend their ways, i fancy." "they do the same, and as their tongues are the sharpest, you fellows get the worst of it, for you are as silly as they, every bit. if you behaved properly, they would, but knowing you like their nonsense, they keep it up, and then you blame them." "much you know about it, ma'am," said laurie in a superior tone. "we don't like romps and flirts, though we may act as if we did sometimes. the pretty, modest girls are never talked about, except respectfully, among gentleman. bless your innocent soul! if you could be in my place for a month you'd see things that would astonish you a trifle. upon my word, when i see one of those harum-scarum girls, i always want to say with our friend cock robin . . . "out upon you, fie upon you, bold-faced jig!" it was impossible to help laughing at the funny conflict between laurie's chivalrous reluctance to speak ill of womankind, and his very natural dislike of the unfeminine folly of which fashionable society showed him many samples. jo knew that `young laurence' was regarded as a most eligible parti by worldly mamas, was much smiled upon by their daughters, and flattered enough by ladies of all ages to make a coxcomb of him, so she watched him rather jealously, fearing he would be spoiled, and rejoiced more than she confessed to find that he still believed in modest girls. returning suddenly to her admonitory tone, she said, dropping her voice, "if you must have a `went', teddy, go and devote yourself to one of the `pretty, modest girls' whom you do respect, and not waste your time with the silly ones." "you really advise it?" and laurie looked at her with an odd mixture of anxiety and merriment in his face. "yes, i do, but you'd better wait till you are through college, on the whole, and be fitting yourself for the place meantime. you're not half good enough for--well, whoever the modest girl may be." and jo looked a little queer likewise, for a name had almost escaped her. "that i'm not!" acquiesced laurie, with an expression of humility quite new to him, as he dropped his eyes and absently wound jo's apron tassel round his finger. "mercy on us, this will never do," thought jo, adding aloud, "go and sing to me. i'm dying for some music, and always like yours." "i'd rather stay here, thank you." "well, you can't, there isn't room. go and make yourself useful, since you are too big to be ornamental. i thought you hated to be tied to a woman's apron string?" retorted jo, quoting certain rebellious words of his own. "ah, that depends on who wears the apron!" and laurie gave an audacious tweak at the tassel. "are you going?" demanded jo, diving for the pillow. he fled at once, and the minute it was well, "up with the bonnets of bonnie dundee," she slipped away to return no more till the young gentleman departed in high dudgeon. jo lay long awake that night, and was just dropping off when the sound of a stifled sob made her fly to beth's bedside, with the anxious inquiry, "what is it, dear?" "i thought you were asleep," sobbed beth. "is it the old pain, my precious?' "no, it's a new one, but i can bear it." and beth tried to check her tears. "tell me all about it, and let me cure it as i often did the other." "you can't, there is no cure." there beth's voice gave way, and clinging to her sister, she cried so despairingly that jo was frightened. "where is it? shall i call mother?" "no, no, don't call her, don't tell her. i shall be better soon. lie down here and `poor' my head. i'll be quiet and go to sleep, indeed i will." jo obeyed, but as her hand went softly to and fro across beth's hot forehead and wet eyelids, her heart was very full and she longed to speak. but young as she was, jo had learned that hearts, like flowers, cannot be rudely handled, but must open naturally, so though she believed she knew the cause of beth's new pain, she only said, in her tenderest tone, "does anything trouble you, deary?" "yes, jo," after a long pause. "wouldn't it comfort you to tell me what it is?" "not now, not yet." "then i won't ask, but remember, bethy,that mother and jo are always glad to hear and help you, if they can." "i know it. i'll tell you by-and-by." "is the pain better now?" "oh, yes, much better, you are so comfortable, jo." "go to sleep, dear. i'll stay with you." so cheek to cheek they fell asleep, and on the morrow beth seemed quite herself again, for at eighteen neither heads nor hearts ache long, and a loving word can medicine most ills. but jo had made up her mind, and after pondering over a project for some days, she confided it to her mother. "you asked me the other day what my wishes were. i'll tell you one of them, marmee," she began, as they sat along together. "i want to go away somewhere this winter for a change." "why, jo?" and her mother looked up quickly, as if the words suggested a double meaning. with her eyes on her work jo answered soberly, "i want something new. i feel restless and anxious to be seeing, doing, and learning more than i am. i brood too much over my own small affairs, and need stirring up, so as i can be spared this winter, i'd like to hop a little way and try my wings." "where will you hop?" "to new york. i had a bright idea yesterday, and this is it. you know mrs. kirke wrote to you for some respectable young person to teach her children and sew. it's rather hard to find just the thing, but i think i should suit if i tried." "my dear, go out to service in that great boarding house!" and mrs. march looked surprised, but not displeased. "it's not exactly going out to service, for mrs. kirke is your friend--the kindest soul that ever lived--and would make things pleasant for me, i know. her family is separate from the rest, and no one knows me there. don't care if they do. it's honest work, and i'm not ashamed of it." "nor i. but your writing?" "all the better for the change. i shall see and hear new things, get new ideas, and even if i haven't much time there, i shall bring home quantities of material for my rubbish." "i have no doubt of it, but are these your only reasons for this sudden fancy?' "no, mother." "may i know the others?" jo looked up and jo looked down, then said slowly, with sudden color in her cheeks. "it may be vain and wrong to say it, but--i'm afraid--laurie is getting too fond of me." "then you don't care for him in the way it is evident he begins to care for you?' and mrs. march looked anxious as she put the question. "mercy, no! i love the dear boy, as i always have, and am immensely proud of him, but as for anything more, it's out of the question." "i'm glad of that, jo." "why, please?' "because, dear, i don't think you suited to one another. as friends you are very happy, and your frequent quarrels soon blow over, but i fear you would both rebel if you were mated for life. you are too much alike and too fond of freedom, not to mention hot tempers and strong wills, to get on happily together, in a relation which needs infinite patience and forbearance, as well as love." "that's just the feeling i had, though i couldn't express it. i'm glad you think he is only beginning to care for me. it would trouble me sadly to make him unhappy, for i couldn't fall in love with the dear old fellow merely out of gratitude, could i?" "you are sure of his feeling for you?" the color deepened in jo's cheeks as she answered, with the look of mingled pleasure, pride, and pain which young girls wear when speaking of first lovers, "i'm afraid it is so, mother. he hasn't said anything, but he looks a great deal. i think i had better go away before it comes to anything." "i agree with you, and if it can be managed you shall go." jo looked relieved, and after a pause, said, smiling, "how mrs. moffat would wonder at your want of management, if she knew, and how she will rejoice that annie may still hope." "ah, jo, mothers may differ in their management, but the hope is the same in all--the desire to see their children happy. meg is so, and i am content with her success. you i leave to enjoy your liberty till you tire of it, for only then will you find that there is something sweeter. amy is my chief care now, but her good sense will help ;her. for beth, i indulge no hopes except that she may be well. by the way, she seems brighter this last day or two. have you spoken to her?' "yes, she owned she had a trouble, and promised to tell me by-and-by. i said no more, for i think i know it," and jo told her little story. mrs. march shook her head, and did not take so romantic a view of the case, but looked grave, and repeated her opinion that for laurie's sake jo should go away for a time. "let us say nothing about it to him till the plan is settled, then i'll run away before he can collect his wits and be tragic. beth must think i'm going to please myself, as i am, for i can't talk about laurie to her. but she can pet and comfort him after i'm gone, and so cure him of this romantic notion. he's been through so many little trials of the sort, he's used to it, and will soon get over his lovelornity." jo spoke hopefully, but could not rid herself of the foreboding fear that this `little trial' would be harder than the others, and that laurie would not get over his `lovelornity' as easily as heretofore. the plan was talked over in a family council and agreed upon, for mrs. kirke gladly accepted jo, and promised to make a pleasant home for her. the teaching would render her independent, and such leisure as she got might be made profitable by writing, while the new scenes and society would be both useful and agreeable. jo liked the prospect and was eager to be gone, for the home nest was growing too narrow for her restless nature and adventurous spirit. when all was settled, with fear and trembling she told laurie, but to her surprise he took it very quietly. he had been graver than usual of late, but very pleasant, and when jokingly accused of turning over a new leaf, he answered soberly, "so i am, and i mean this one shall stay turned." jo was very much relieved that one of his virtuous fits should come on just then, and made her preparations with a lightened heart, for beth seemed more cheerful, and hoped she was doing the best for all. "one thing i leave in your especial care," she said, the night before she left. "you mean your papers?" asked beth. "no, my boy. be very good to him, won't you?" "of course i will, but i can't fill your place, and he'll miss you sadly." "it won't hurt him, so remember, i leave him in your charge, to plague, pet, and keep in order." "i'll do my best, for your sake," promised beth, wondering why jo looked at her so queerly. when laurie said good-by, he whispered significantly, "it won't do a bit of good, jo. my eye is on you, so mind what you do, or i'll come and bring you home." chapter thirty-three new york, november dear marmee and beth, i'm going to write you a regular volume, for i've got heaps to tell, though i'm not a fine young lady traveling on the continent. when i lost sight of father's dear old face, i felt a trifle blue, and might have shed a briny drop or two, if an irish lady with four small children, all crying more or less, hadn't diverted my mind, for i amused myself by dropping gingerbread nuts over the seat every time they opened their mouths to roar. soon the sun came out, and taking it as a good omen, i cleared up likewise and enjoyed my journey with all my heart. mrs. kirke welcomed me so kindly i felt at home at once, even in that big house full of strangers. she gave me a funny little sky parlor--all she had, but there is a stove in it, and a nice table in a sunny window, so i can sit here and write whenever i like. a fine view and a church tower opposite atone for the many stairs, and i took a fancy to my den on the spot. the nursery, where i am to teach and sew, is a pleasant room next mrs. kirke's private parlor, and the two little girls are pretty children, rather spoiled, i fancy, but they took to me after telling them the seven bad pigs, and i've no doubt i shall make a model governess. i am to have my meals with the children, if i prefer it to the great table, and for the present i do, for i am bashful, though no one will believe it. "now, my dear, make yourself at home," said mrs. k. in her motherly way, "i'm on the drive from morning to night, as you may suppose with such a family, but a great anxiety will be off my mind if i know the children are safe with you. my rooms are always open to you, and your own shall be as comfortable as i can make it. there are some pleasant people in the house if you feel sociable, and your evenings are always free. come to me if anything goes wrong, and be as happy as you can. there's the tea bell, i must run and change my cap." and off she bustled, leaving me to settle myself in my new nest. as i went downstairs soon after, i saw something i liked. the flights are very long in this tall house, and as i stood waiting at the head of the third one for a little servant girl to lumber up, i saw a gentleman come along behind her, take the heavy hod of coal out of her hand, carry it all the way up, put it down at a door near by, and walk away, saying, with a kind nod and a foreign accent, "it goes better so. the little back is too young to haf such heaviness." wasn't it good of him? i like such things, for as father says, trifles show character. when i mentioned it to mrs. k., that evening, she laughed, and said, "that must have been professor bhaer, he's always doing things of that sort." mrs. k. told me he was from berlin, very learned and good, but poor as a church mouse, and gives lessons to support himself and two little orphan nephews whom he is educating here, according to the wishes of his sister, who married an american. not a very romantic story, but it interested me, and i was glad to hear that mrs. k. lends him her parlor for some of his scholars. there is a glass door between it and the nursery, and i mean to peep at him, and then i'll tell you how he looks. he's almost forty, so it's no harm, marmee. after tea and a go-to-bed romp with the little girls, i attacked the big workbasket, and had a quiet evening chatting with my new friend. i shall keep a journal-letter, and send it once a week, so goodnight, and more tomorrow. tuesday eve had a lively time in my seminary this morning, for the children acted like sancho, and at one time i really thought i should shake them all round. some good angel inspired me to try gymnastics,and i kept it up till they were glad to sit down and keep still. after luncheon, the girl took them out for a walk, and i went to my needlework like little mabel `with a willing mind'. i was thanking my stars that i'd learned to make nice buttonholes, when the parlor door opened and shut, and someone began to hum, kennst du das land, like a big bumblebee. it was dreadfully improper, i know, but i couldn't resist the temptation, and lifting one end of the curtain before the glass door, i peeped in. professor bhaer was there, and while he arranged his books, i took a good look at him. a regular german--rather stout, with brown hair tumbled all over his head, a bushy beard, good nose, the kindest eyes i ever saw, and a splendid big voice that does one's ears good, after our sharp or slipshod american gabble. his clothes were rusty, his hands were large, and he hadn't a really handsome feature in his face, except his beautiful teeth, yet i liked him, for he had a fine head, his linen was very nice, and he looked like a gentleman, though two buttons were off his coat and there was a patch on one shoe. he looked sober in spite of his humming, till he went to the window to turn the hyacinth bulbs toward the sun, and stroke the cat, who received him like an old friend. then he smiled, and when a tap came at the door, called out in a loud, brisk tone, "herein!" i was just going to run, when i caught sight of a morsel of a child carrying a big book, and stopped, to see what was going on. "me wants me bhaer," said the mite, slamming down her book and running to meet him. "thou shalt haf thy bhaer. come, then, and take a goot hug from him, my tina," said the professor, catching her up with a laugh, and holding her so high over his head that she had to stoop her little face to kiss him. "now me mus tuddy my lessin," went on the funny little thing. so he put her up at the table, opened the great dictionary she had brought, and gave her a paper and pencil, and she scribbled away, turning a leaf now and then, and passing her little fat finger down the page, as if finding a word, so soberly that i nearly betrayed myself by a laugh, while mr. bhaer stood stroking her pretty hair with a fatherly look that made me think she must be his own, though she looked more french than german. another knock and the appearance of two young ladies sent me back to my work, and there i virtuously remained through all the noise and gabbling that went on next door. one of the girls kept laughing affectedly, and saying, "now professor," in a coquettish tone, and the other pronounced her german with an accent that must have made it hard for him to keep sober. both seemed to try his patience sorely, for more than once i heard him say emphatically, "no, no, it is not so, you haf not attend to what i say,"" and once there was a loud rap, as if he struck the table with his book, followed by the despairing exclamation, ""prut! it all goes bad this day." poor man, i pitied him, and when the girls were gone, took just one more peep to see if he survived it. he seemed to have thrown himself back in his chair, tired out, and sat there with his eyes shut till the clock struck two, when he jumped up, put his books in his pocket, as if ready for another lesson, and taking little tina who had fallen asleep on the sofa in his arms, he carried her quietly away. i fancy he has a hard life of it. mrs. kirke asked me if i wouldn't go down to the five o'clock dinner, and feeling a little bit homesick, i thought i would, just to see what sort of people are under the same roof with me. so i made myself respectable and tried to slip in behind mrs. kirke, but as she is short and i'm tall, my efforts at concealment were rather a failure. she gave me a seat by her, and after my face cooled off, i plucked up courage and looked about me. the long table was full, and every-one intent on getting their dinner, the gentlemen especially, who seemed to be eating on time, for they bolted in every sense of the word, vanishing as soon as they were done. there was the usual assortment of young men absorbed in themselves, young couples absorbed in each other, married ladies in their babies, and old gentlemen in politics. i don't think i shall care to have much to do with any of them, except one sweetfaced maiden lady, who looks as if she had something in her. cast away at the very bottom of the table was the professor, shouting answers to the questions of a very inquisitive, deaf old gentleman on one side, and talking philosophy with a frenchman on the other. if amy had been here, she'd have turned her back on him forever because, sad to relate, he had a great appetite, and shoveled in his dinner in a manner which would have horrified `her ladyship'. i didn't mind, for i like `to see folks eat with a relish', as hannah says, and the poor man must have needed a deal of food after teaching idiots all day. as i went upstairs after dinner, two of the young men were settling their hats before the hall mirror, and i heard one say low to the other, ""who's the new party?"" "governess, or something of that sort." "what the deuce is she at our table for?" "friend of the old lady's." "handsome head, but no style." "not a bit of it. give us a light and come on." i felt angry at first, and then i didn't care, for a governess is as good as a clerk, and i've got sense, if i haven't style, which is more than some people have, judging from the remarks of the elegant beings who clattered away, smoking like bad chimneys. i hate ordinary people! thursday yesterday was a quiet day spent in teaching, sewing, and writing in my little room, which is very cozy, with a light and fire. i picked up a few bits of news and was introduced to the professor. it seems that tina is the child of the frenchwoman who does the fine ironing in the laundry here. the little thing has lost her heart to mr. bhaer, and follows him about the house like a dog whenever he is at home, which delights him, as he is very fond of children, though a `bacheldore'. kitty and minnie kirk likewise regard him with affection, and tell all sorts of stories about the plays he invents, the presents he brings, and the splendid tales he tells. the younger men quiz him, it seems, call him old fritz, lager beer, ursa major, and make all manner of jokes on his name. but he enjoys it like a boy, mrs. kirke says, and takes it so good-naturedly that they all like him in spite of his foreign ways. the maiden lady is a miss norton, rich, cultivated, and kind. she spoke to me at dinner today (for i went to table again, it's such fun to watch people), and asked me to come and see her at her room. she has fine books and pictures, knows interesting persons, and seems friendly, so i shall make myself agreeable, for i do want to get into good society, only it isn't the same sort that amy likes. i was in our parlor last evening when mr. bhaer came in with some newspapers for mrs. kirke. she wasn't there, but minnie, who is a little old woman, introduced me very prettily. "this is mamma's friend, miss march." "yes, and she's jolly and we like her lots," added kitty, who is and `enfant terrible'. we both bowed, and then we laughed, for the prim introduction and the blunt addition were rather a comical contrast. ""ah, yes, i hear these naughty ones go to vex you, mees marsch. if so again, call at me and i come," he said, with a threatening frown that delighted the little wretches. i promised i would, and he departed, but it seems as if i was doomed to see a good deal of him, for today as i passed his door on my way out, by accident i knocked against it with my umbrella. it flew open, and there he stood in his dressing gown, with a big blue sock on one hand and a darning needle in the other. he didn't seem at all ashamed of it, for when i explained and hurried on, he waved his hand, sock and all, saying in his loud, cheerful way . . . ""you haf a fine day to make your walk. bon voyage, mademoiselle."" i laughed all the way downstairs, but it was a little pathetic, also to think of the poor man having to mend his own clothes. the german gentlemen embroider, i know, but darning hose is another thing and not so pretty. nothing has happened to write about, except a call on miss norton, who has a room full of pretty things, and who was very charming, for she showed me all her treasures, and asked me if i would sometimes go with her to lectures and concerts, as her escort, if i enjoyed them. she put it as a favor, but i'm sure mrs. kirke has told her about us, and she does it out of kindness to me. i'm as proud as lucifer, but such favors from such people don't burden me, and i accepted gratefully. when i got back to the nursery there was such an uproar in the parlor that i looked in, and there was mr. bhaer down on his hands and knees, with tina on his back, kitty leading him with a jump rope, and minnie feeding two small boys with seedcakes, as they roared and ramped in cages built of chairs. "we are playing nargerie,"" explained kitty. "dis is mine effalunt!" added tina, holding on by the professor's hair. "mamma always allows us to do what we like saturday afternoon, when franz and emil come, doesn't she, mr. bhaer?" said minnie. the `effalunt' sat up, looking as much in earnest as any of them, and said soberly to me, "i gif you my wort it is so, if we make too large a noise you shall say hush! to us, and we go more softly." i promised to do so, but left the door open and enjoyed the fun as much as they did, for a more glorious frolic i never witnessed. they played tag and soldiers, danced and sang, and when it began to grow dark they all piled onto the sofa about the professor, while he told charming fairy stories of the storks on the chimney tops, and the little `koblods', who ride the snowflakes as they fall. i wish americans were as simple and natural as germans, don't you? i'm so fond of writing, i should go spinning on forever if motives of economy didn't stop me, for though i've used thin paper and written fine, i tremble to think of the stamps this long letter will need. pray forward amy's as soon as you can spare them. my small news will sound very flat after her splendors, but you will like them, i know. is teddy studying so hard that he can't find time to write to his friends? take good care of him for me, beth, and tell me all about the babies, and give heaps of love to everyone. from your faithful jo. p.s. on reading over my letter, it strikes me as rather bhaery, but i am always interested in odd people, and i really had nothing else to write about. bless you! december my precious betsey, as this is to be a scribble-scrabble letter, i direct it to you, for it may amuse you, and give you some idea of my goings on, for though quiet, they are rather amusing, for which, oh, be joyful! after what amy would call herculaneum efforts, in the way of mental and moral agriculture, my young ideas begin to shoot and my little twigs to bend as i could wish. they are not so interesting tome as tina and the boys, but i do my duty by them, and they are fond of me. franz and emil are jolly little lads, quite after my own heart, for the mixture of german and american spirit in the produces a constant state of effervescence. saturday afternoons are riotous times, whether spent in the house or out, for on pleasant days they all go to walk, like a seminary, with the professor and myself to keep order, and then such fun! we are very good friends now, and i've begun to take lessons. i really couldn't help it, and it all came about in such a droll way that i must tell you. to begin at the beginning, mrs. kirke called to me one day as i passed mr. bhaer's room where she was rummaging. "did you ever see such a den, my dear? just come and help me put these books to rights, for i've turned everything upside down, trying to discover what he has done with the six new handkerchiefs i gave him not long ago." i went in, and while we worked i looked about me, for it was `a den' to be sure. books and papers everywhere, a broken meerschaum, and an old flute over the mantlepiece as if done with, a ragged bird without any tail chirped on one window seat, and a box of white mice adorned the other. half-finished boats and bits of string lay among the manuscripts. dirty little boots stood drying before the fire, and traces of the dearly beloved boys, for whom he makes a slave of himself, were to be seen all over the room. after a grand rummage three of the missing articles were found, one over the bird cage, one covered with ink, and a third burned brown, having been used as a holder. "such a man!" laughed good-natured mrs. k., as she put the relics in the rag bay. "i suppose the others are torn up to rig ships, bandage cut fingers, or make kite tails. it's dreadful, but i can't scold him. he's so absent-minded and goodnatured, he lets those boys ride over him roughshod. i agreed to do his washing and mending, but he forgets to give out his things and i forget to look them over, so he comes to a sad pass sometimes." "let me mend them," said i. "i don't mind it, and he needn't know. i'd like to, he's so kind to me about bringing my letters and lending books." so i have got his things in order, and knit heels into two pairs of the socks, for they were boggled out of shape with his queer darns. nothing was said, and i hoped he wouldn't find it out, but one day last week he caught me at it. hearing the lessons he gives to others has interested and amused me so much that i took a fancy to lear, for tina runs in and out, leaving the door open, and i can hear. i had been sitting near this door, finishing off the last sock, and trying to understand what he said to a new scholar, who is as stupid as i am. the girl had gone, and i thought he had also, it was so still, and i was busily gabbling over a verb, and rocking to and fro in a most absurd way, when a little crow made me look up, and there was mr. bhaer looking and laughing quietly, while he made signs to tina not to betray him. "so!" he said, as i stopped and stared like a goose, "you peep at me, i peep at you, and this is not bad, but see, i am not pleasanting when i say, haf you a wish for german?" "yes, but you are too busy. i am too stupid to learn," i blundered out, as red as a peony. "prut! we will make the time, and we fail not to find the sense. at efening i shall gif a little lesson with much gladness, for look you, mees marsch, i haf this debt to pay." and he pointed to my work `yes,' they say to one another, these so kind ladies, `he is a stupid old fellow, he will see not what we do, he will never observe that his sock heels go not in holes any more, he will think his buttons grow out new when they fall, and believe that strings make theirselves.' "ah! but i haf an eye, and i see much. i haf a heart, and i feel thanks for this. come, a little lesson then and now, or no more good fairy works for me and mine." of course i couldn't say anything after that, and as it really is a splendid opportunity, i made the bargain, and we began. i took four lessons, and then i stuck fast in a grammatical bog. the professor was very patient with me, but it must have been torment to him, and now and then he'd look at me with such an expression of mild despair that it was a toss-up with me whether to laugh or cry. i tried both ways, and when it came to a sniff or utter mortification and woe, he just threw the grammar on to the floor and marched out of the room. i felt myself disgraced and deserted forever, but didn't blame him a particle, and was scrambling my papers together, meaning to rush upstairs and shake myself hard, when in he came, as brisk and beaming as if i'd covered myself in glory. "now we shall try a new way. you and i will read these pleasant little marchen together, and dig no more in that dry book, that goes in the corner for making us trouble." he spoke so kindly, and opened hans andersons's fairy tales so invitingly before me, that i was more ashamed than ever, and went at my lesson in a neck-or-nothing style that seemed to amuse him immensely. i forgot my bashfulness, and pegged away (no other word will express it) with all my might, tumbling over long words, pronouncing according to inspiration of the minute, and doing my very best. when i finished reading my first page, and stopped for breath, he clapped his hands and cried out in his hearty way, "das ist gut!' now we go well! my turn. i do him in german, gif me your ear." and away he went, rumbling out the words with his strong voice and a relish which was good to see as well as hear. fortunately the story was the constant tin soldier, which is droll, you know, so i could laugh, and i did, though i didn't understand half he read, for i couldn't help it, he was so earnest, i so excited, and the whole thing so comical. after that we got on better, and now i read my lessons pretty well, for this way of studying suits me, and i can see that the grammar gets tucked into the tales and poetry as one gives pills in jelly. i like it very much, and he doesn't seem tired of it yet, which is very good of him, isn't it? i mean to give him something on christmas, for i dare not offer money. tell me something nice, marmee. i'm glad laurie seems so happy and busy, that he has given up smoking and lets his hair grow. you see beth manages him better than i did. i'm not jealous, dear, do your best, only don't make a saint of him. i'm afraid i couldn't like him without a spice of human naughtiness. read him bits of my letters. i haven't time to write much, and that will do just as well. thank heaven beth continues so comfortable. january a happy new year to you all, my dearest family, which of course includes mr. l. and a young man by the name of teddy. i can't tell you how much i enjoyed your christmas bundle, for i didn't get it till night and had given up hoping. your letter came in the morning, but you said nothing about a parcel, meaning it for a surprise, so i was disappointed, for i'd had a `kind of feeling' that you wouldn't forget me. i felt a little low in my mind as i sat up in my room after tea, and when the big, muddy, battered-looking bundle was brought to me, i just hugged it and pranced. it was so homey and refreshing that i sat down on the floor and read and looked and ate and laughed and cried, in my usual absurd way. the things were just what i wanted, and all the better for being made instead of bought. beth's new `ink bib' was capital, and hannah's box of hard gingerbread will be a treasure. i'll be sure and wear the nice flannels you sent, marmee, and read carefully the books father has marked. thank you all, heaps and heaps! speaking of books reminds me that i'm getting rich in that line, for on new year's day mr. bhaer gave me a fine shakespeare. it is one he values much, and i've often admired it, set up in the place of honor with his german bible, plato, homer, and milton, so you may imagine how i felt when he brought it down, without its cover, and showed me my own name in it, "from my friend friedrich bhaer". "you say often you wish a library. here i gif you one, for between these lids (he meant covers) is many books in one. read him well, and he will help you much, for the study of character in this book will help you to read it in the world and paint it with your pen." i thanked him as well as i could, and talk now about `my library', as if i had a hundred books. i never knew how much there was in shakespeare before, but then i never had a bhaer to explain it to me. now don't laugh at his horrid name. it isn't pronounced either bear or beer, as people will say it, but something between the two, as only germans can give it. i'm glad you both like what i tell you about him, and hope you will know him some day. mother would admire his warm heart, father his wise head. i admire both, and feel rich in my new `friend friedrich bhaer'. not having much money, or knowing what he'd like, i got several little things, and put them about the room, where he would find them unexpectedly. they were useful, pretty, or funny, a new standish on his table, a little vase for his flower, he always has one, or a bit of green in a glass, to keep him fresh, he says, and a holder for his blower, so that he needn't burn up what amy calls `mouchoirs'. i made it like those beth invented, a big butterfly with a fat body, and black and yellow wings, worsted feelers, and bead eyes. it took his fancy immensely, and he put it on his mantlepiece as an article of virtue, so it was rather a failure after all. poor as he is, he didn't forget a servant or a child in the house, and not a soul here, from the french laundrywoman to miss norton forgot him. i was so glad of that. they got up a masquerade, and had a gay time new year's eve. i didn't mean to go down, having no dress. but at the last minute, mrs. kirke remembered some old brocades, and miss norton lent me lace and feathers. so i dressed up as mrs. malaprop, and sailed in with a mask on. no one knew me, for i disguised my voice, and no one dreamed of the silent, haughty miss march (for they think i am very stiff and cool, most of them, and so i am to whippersnappers) could dance and dress, and burst out into a `nice derangement of epitaphs, like an allegory on the banks of the nile'. i enjoyed it very much, and when we unmasked it was fun to see them stare at me. i heard one of the young men tell another that he knew i'd been an actress, in fact, he thought he remembered seeing me at one of the minor theaters. meg will relish that joke. mr. bhaer was nick bottom, and tina was titania, a perfect little fairy in his arms. to see them dance was `quite a landscape', to use a teddyism. i had a very happy new year, after all, and when i thought it over in my room, i felt as if i was getting on a little in spite of my many failures, for i'm cheerful all the time now, work with a will, and take more interest in other people than i used to, which is satisfactory. bless you all! ever your loving . . . jo chapter thirty-four though very happy in the social atmosphere about her, and very busy with the daily work that earned her bread and made it sweeter for the effort, jo still found time for literary labors. the purpose which now took possession of her was a natural one to a poor and ambitious girl, but the means she took to gain her end were not the best. she saw that money conferred power, therefore, she resolved to have, not to be used for herself alone, but for those whom she loved more than life. the dream of filling home with comforts, giving beth everything she wanted,from strawberries in winter to an organ in her bedroom, going abroad herself, and always having more than enough, so that she might indulge in the luxury of charity, had been for years jo's most cherished castle in the air. the prize-story experience had seemed to open a way which might, after long traveling and much uphill work, lead to this delightful chateau en espagne. but the novel disaster quenched her courage for a time, for public opinion is a giant which has frightened stouter-hearted jacks on bigger beanstalks than hers. like that immortal hero, she reposed awhile after the first attempt, which resulted in a tumble and the least lovely of the giant's treasures, if i remember rightly. but the `up again and take another' spirit was as strong in jo as in jack, so she scrambled up on the shady side this time and got more booty, but nearly left behind her what was far more precious than the moneybags. she took to writing sensation stories, for in those dark ages, even all-perfect america read rubbish. she told no one, but concocted a `thrilling tale', and boldly carried it herself to mr. dashwood, editor of the weekly volcano. she had never read sartor resartus, but she had a womanly instinct that clothes possess an influence more powerful over many than the worth of character or the magic of manners. so she dressed herself in her best, and trying to persuade herself that she was neither excited nor nervous, bravely climbed two pairs of dark and dirty stairs to find herself in a disorderly room, a cloud of cigar smoke, and the presence of three gentlemen, sitting with their heels rather higher than their hats, which articles of dress none of them took the trouble to remove on her appearance. somewhat daunted by this reception, jo hesitated on the threshold, murmuring in much embarrassment . . . "excuse me, i was looking for the weekly volcano office. i wished to see mr. dashwood." down went the highest pair of heels, up rose the smokiest gentleman, and carefully cherishing his cigar between his fingers, he advanced with a nod and a countenance expressive of nothing but sleep. feeling that she must get through the matter somehow, jo produced her manuscript and, blushing redder and redder with each sentence, blundered out fragments of the little speech carefully prepared for the occasion. "a friend of mine desired me to offer--a story--just as an experiment--would like your opinion--be glad to write more if this suits." while she blushed and blundered, mr. dashwood had taken the manuscript, and was turning over the leaves with a pair of rather dirty fingers, and casting critical glances up and down the neat pages. "not a first attempt, i take it?" observing that the pages were numbered, covered only on one side, and not tied up with a ribbon--sure sign of a novice. "no, sir. she has had some experience, and got a prize for a tale in the blarneystone banner." "oh, did she?" and mr. dashwood gave jo a quick look, which seemed to take note of everything she had on, from the bow in her bonnet to the buttons on her boots. "well, you can leave it, if you like. we've more of this sort of thing on hand than we know what to do with at present, but i'll run my eye over it, and give you an answer next week." now, jo did not like to leave it, for mr. dashwood didn't suit her at all, but, under the circumstances, there was nothing for her to do but bow and walk away, looking particularly tall and dignified, as she was apt to do when nettled or abashed. just then she was both, for it was perfectly evident from the knowing glances exchanged among the gentlemen that her little fiction of `my friend' was considered a good joke, and a laugh, produced by some inaudible remark of the editor, as he closed the door, completed her discomfiture. half resolving never to return, she went home, and worked off her irritation by stitching pinafores vigorously, and in an hour or two was cool enough to laugh over the scene and long for next week. when she went again, mr. dashwood was alone, whereat she rejoiced. mr. dashwood was much wider awake than before, which was agreeable and mr. dashwood was not too deeply absorbed in a cigar to remember his manners, so the second interview was much more comfortable than the first. "we'll take this (editors never say i), if you don't object to a few alterations. it's too long, but omitting the passages i've marked will make it just the right length," he said, in a businesslike tone. jo hardly knew her own ms again, so crumpled and underscored were its pages and paragraphs, but feeling as a tender patent might on being asked to cut off her baby's legs in order that it might fit into a new cradle, she looked at the marked passages and was surprised to find that all the moral reflections--which she had carefully put in as ballast for much romance--had been stricken out. "but, sir, i thought every story should have some sort of a moral, so i took care to have a few of my sinners repent." mr. dashwoods's editorial gravity relaxed into a smile, for jo had forgotten her `friend', and spoken as only an author could. "people want to be amused, not preached at, you know. morals don't sell nowadays." which was not quite a correct statement, by the way. "you think it would do with these alterations, then?" "yes, it's a new plot, and pretty well worked up--language good, and so on," was mr. dashwood's affable reply. "what do you--that is, what compensation--" began jo, not exactly knowing how to express herself. "oh, yes, well, we give from twenty-five to thirty for things of this sort. pay when it comes out," returned mr. dashwood, as if that point had escaped him. such trifles do escape the editorial mind, it is said. "very well, you can have it," said jo, handing back the story with a satisfied air, for after the dollar-a-column work, even twenty-five seemed good pay. "shall i tell my friend you will take another if she has one better than this?" asked jo, unconscious of her little slip of the tongue, and emboldened by her success. "well, we'll look at it. can't promise to take it. tell her to make it short and spicy, and never mind the moral. what name would your friend like to put on it?" in a careless tone. "none at all, if you please, she doesn't wish her name to appear and has no nom de plume," said jo, blushing in spite of herself. "just as she likes, of course. the tale will be out next week. will you call for the money, or shall i send it?" asked mr. dashwood, who felt a natural desire to know who his new contributor might be. "i'll call. good morning, sir." as she departed, mr. dashwood put up his feet, with the graceful remark, "poor and proud, as usual, but she'll do." following mr. dashwood's directions, and making mrs. northbury her model, jo rashly took a plunge into the frothy sea of sensational literature, but thanks to the life preserver thrown her by a friend, she came up again not much the worse for her ducking. like most young scribblers, she went abroad for her characters and scenery, and banditti, counts, gypsies, nuns, and duchesses appeared upon her stage, and played their parts with as much accuracy and spirit as could be expected. her readers were not particular about such trifles as grammar, punctuation, and probability, and mr. dashwood graciously permitted her to fill his columns at the lowest prices, not thinking it necessary to tell her that the real cause of his hospitality was the fact that one of his hacks, on being offered higher wages, had basely left him in the lurch. she soon became interested in her work, for her emaciated purse grew stout, and the little hoard she was making to take beth to the mountains next summer grew slowly but surely as the weeks passed. one thing disturbed her satisfaction, and that was that she did not tell them at home. she had a feeling that father and mother would not approve, and preferred to have her own way first, and beg pardon afterward. it was easy to keep her secret, for no name appeared with her stories. mr. dashwood had of course found it out very soon, but promised to be dumb, and for a wonder kept his word. she thought it would do her no harm, for she sincerely meant to write nothing of which she would be ashamed, and quieted all pricks of conscience by anticipations of the happy minute when she should show her earnings and laugh over her well-kept secret. but mr. dashwood rejected any but thrilling tales, and as thrills could not be produced except by harrowing up the souls of the readers, history and romance, land and sea, science and art, police records and lunatic asylums, had to be ransacked for the purpose. jo soon found that her innocent experience had given her but few glimpses of the tragic world which underlies society, so regarding it in a business light, she set about supplying her deficiencies with characteristic energy. eager to find material for stories, and bent on making them original in plot, if not masterly in execution, she searched newspapers for accidents, incidents, and crimes. she excited the suspicions of public librarians by asking for works on poisons. she studied faces in the street, and characters, good, bad, and indifferent, all about her. she delved in the dust of ancient times for facts or fictions so old that they were as good as new, and introduced herself to folly, sin, and misery, as well as her limited opportunities allowed. she thought she was prospering finely, but unconsciously she was beginning to desecrate some of the womanliest attributes of a woman's character. she was living in bad society, and imaginary though it was, its influence affected her, for she was feeding heart and fancy on dangerous and unsubstantial food, and was fast brushing the innocent bloom from her nature by a premature acquaintance with the darker side of life, which comes soon enough to all of us. she was beginning to feel rather than see this, for much describing of other people's passions and feelings set her to studying and speculating about her own. a morbid amusement in which healthy young minds do not voluntarily indulge. wrongdoing always brings its own punishment, and when jo most needed hers, she got it. i don't know whether the study of shakespeare helped her to read character, or the natural instinct of a woman for what was honest, brave, and strong, but while endowing her imaginary heroes with every perfection under the sun, jo was discovering a live hero, who interested her in spite of many human imperfections. mr. bhaer, in one of their conversations, had advised her to study simple, true, and lovely characters, wherever she found them, as good training for a writer. jo took him at his word, for she coolly turned round and studied him--a proceeding which would have much surprised him, had he know it, for the worthy professor was very humble in his own conceit. why everybody liked him was what puzzled jo, at first. he was neither rich nor great, young nor handsome, in no respect what is called fascinating, imposing, or brilliant, and yet he was as attractive as a genial fire, and people seemed to gather about him as naturally as about a warm hearth. he was poor, yet always appeared to be giving something away; a stranger, yet everyone was his friend; no longer young, but as happy-hearted as a boy; plain and peculiar, yet his face looked beautiful to many, and his oddities were freely forgiven for his sake. jo often watched him, trying to discover the charm, and at last decided that it was benevolence which worked the miracle. if he had any sorrow, `it sat with its head under its wing', and he turned only his sunny side to the world. there were lines upon his forehead, but time seemed to have touched him gently, remembering how kind he was to others. the pleasant curves about his mouth were the memorials of many friendly words and cheery laughs, his eyes were never cold or hard, and his big hand had a warm, strong grasp that was more expressive than words. his very clothes seemed to partake of the hospitable nature of the wearer. they looked as if they were at ease, and liked to make him comfortable. his capacious waistcoat was suggestive of a large heart underneath. his rusty coat had a social air, and the baggy pockets plainly proved that little hands often went in empty and came out full. his very boots were benevolent, and his collars never stiff and raspy like other people's. "that's it!" said jo to herself, when she at length discovered that genuine good will toward one's fellow men could beautify and dignify even a stout german teacher, who shoveled in his dinner, darned his own socks, and was burdened with the name of bhaer. jo valued goodness highly, but she also possessed a most feminine respect for intellect, and a little discovery which she made about the professor added much to her regard for him. he never spoke of himself, and no one ever knew that in his native city he had been a man much honored and esteemed for learning and integrity, till a countryman came to see him. he never spoke of himself, and in a conversation with miss norton divulged the pleasing fact. from her jo learned it, and liked it all the better because mr. bhaer had never told it. she felt proud to know that he was an honored professor in berlin, though only a poor language-master in america, and his homely, hard-working life was much beautified by the spice of romance which this discovery gave it. another and a better gift than intellect was shown her in a most unexpected manner. miss norton had the entree into most society, which jo would have had no chance of seeing but for her. the solitary woman felt an interest in the ambitious girl, and kindly conferred many favors of this sort both on jo and the professor. she took them with her one night to a select symposium, held in honor of several celebrities. jo went prepared to bow down and adore the mighty ones whom she had worshiped with youthful enthusiasm afar off. but her reverence for genius received a severe shock that night, and it took her some time to recover from the discovery that the great creatures were only men and women after all. imagine her dismay, on stealing a glance of timid admiration at the poet whose lines suggested an ethereal being fed on `spirit, fire, and dew', to behold him devouring his supper with an ardor which flushed his intellectual countenance. turning as from a fallen idol, she made other discoveries which rapidly dispelled her romantic illusions. the great novelist vibrated between two decanters with the regularity of a pendulum; the famous divine flirted openly with one of the madame de staels of the age, who looked daggers at another corinne, who was amiably satirizing her, after outmaneuvering her in efforts to absorb the profound philosopher, who imbibed tea johnsonianly and appeared to slumber, the loquacity of the lady rendering speech impossible. the scientific celebrities, forgetting their mollusks and glacial periods, gossiped about art, while devoting themselves to oysters and ices with characteristic energy; the young musician, who was charming the city like a second orpheus, talked horses; and the specimen of the british nobility present happened to be the most ordinary man of the party. before the evening was half over, jo felt so completely disillusioned, that she sat down in a corner to recover herself. mr. bhaer soon joined her, looking rather out of his element, and presently several of the philosophers, each mounted on his hobby, came ambling up to hold an intellectual tournament in the recess. the conversations were miles beyond jo's comprehension, but she enjoyed it, though kant and hegel were unknown gods, the subjective and objective unintelligible terms, and the only thing `evolved from her inner consciousness' was a bad headache after it was all over. it dawned upon her gradually that the world was being picked to pieces, and put together on new and, according to the talkers, on infinitely better principles than before, that religion was in a fair way to be reasoned into nothingness, and intellect was to be the only god. jo knew nothing about philosophy or metaphysics of any sort, but a curious excitement, half pleasurable, half painful, came over her as she listened with a sense of being turned adrift into time and space, like a young balloon out on a holiday. she looked round to see how the professor liked it, and found him looking at her with the grimest expression she had ever seen him wear. he shook his head and beckoned her to come away, but she was fascinated just then by the freedom of speculative philosophy, and kept her seat, trying to find out what the wise gentlemen intended to rely upon after they had annihilated all the old beliefs. now, mr. bhaer was a diffident man and slow to offer his own opinions, not because they were unsettled, but too sincere and earnest to be lightly spoken. as he glanced from jo to several other young people, attracted by the brilliancy of the philosophic pyrotechnics,he knit his brows and longed to speak, fearing that some inflammable young soul would be led astray by the rockets, to find when the display was over that they had only an empty stick or a scorched hand. he bore it as long as he could, but when he was appealed to for an opinion, he blazed up with honest indignation and defended religion with all the eloquence of truth--an eloquence which made his broken english musical and his plain face beautiful. he had a hard fight, for the wise men argued well, but he didn't know when he was beaten and stood to his colors like a man. somehow, as he talked, the world got right again to jo. the old beliefs, that had lasted so long, seemed better than the new. god was not a blind force, and immortality was not a pretty fable, but a blessed fact. she felt as if she had solid ground under her feet again, and when mr. bhaer paused, outtalked but not one whit convinced, jo wanted to clap her hands and thank him. she did neither, but she remembered the scene, and gave the professor her heartiest respect, for she knew it cost him an effort to speak out then and there, because his conscience would not let him be silent. she began to see that character is a better possession than money, rank, intellect, or beauty, and to feel that if greatness is what a wise man has defined it to be, `truth, reverence, and good will', then her friend friedrich bhaer was not only good, but great. this belief strengthened daily. she valued his esteem, she coveted his respect, she wanted to be worthy of his friendship, and just when the wish was sincerest, she came near to losing everything. it all grew out of a cocked hat, for one evening the professor came in to give jo her lesson with a paper soldier cap on his head, which tina had put there and he had forgotten to take off. "it's evident he doesn't look in his glass before coming down," thought jo, with a smile, as he said "goot efening," and sat soberly down, quite unconscious of the ludicrous contrast between his subject and his headgear, for he was going to read her the death of wallenstein. she said nothing at first, for she liked to hear him laugh out his big, hearty laugh when anything funny happened, so she left him to discover it for himself, and presently forgot all about it, for to hear a german read schiller is rather an absorbing occupation. after the reading came the lesson, which was a lively one, for jo was in a gay mood that night, and the cocked hat kept her eyes dancing with merriment. the professor didn't know what to make of her, and stopped at last to ask with an air of mild surprise that was irresistible . . . "mees marsch, for what do you laugh in your master's face? haf you no respect for me, that you go on so bad?" "how can i be respectful, sir, when you forget to take your hat off?" said jo. lifting his hand to his head, the absent-minded professor gravely felt and removed the little cocked hat, looked at it a minute, and then threw back his head and laughed like a merry bass viol. "ah! i see him now, it is that imp tina who makes me a fool with my cap. well,it is nothing, but see you, if this lesson goes not well, you too shall wear him." but the lesson did not go at all for a few minutes because mr. bhaer caught sight of a picture on the hat, and unfolding it, said with great disgust, "i wish these papers did not come in the house. they are not for children to see, nor young people to read. it is not well, and i haf no patience with those who make this harm." jo glanced at the sheet and saw a pleasing illustration composed of a lunatic, a corpse, a villian, and a viper. she did not like it, but the impulse that made her turn it over was not one of displeasure but fear, because for a minute she fancied the paper was the volcano. it was not, however, and her panic subsided as she remembered that even if it had been and one of her own tales in it, there would have been no name to betray her. she had betrayed herself, however, by a look and a blush, for though an absent man, the professor saw a good deal more than people fancied. he knew that jo wrote, and had met her down among the newspaper offices more than once, but as she never spoke of it, he asked no questions in spite of a strong desire to see her work. now it occurred to him that she was doing what she was ashamed to own, and it troubled him. he did not say to himself, "it is none of my business. i've no right to say anything," as many people would have done. he only remembered that she was young and poor, a girl far away from mother's love and father's care, and he was moved to help her with an impulse as quick and natural as that which would prompt him to put out his hand to save a baby from a puddle. all this flashed through his mind in a minute, but not a trace of it appeared in his face, and by the time the paper was turned, and jo's needle threaded, he was ready to say quite naturally, but very gravely . . . "yes, you are right to put it from you. i do not think that good young girls should see such things. they are made pleasant to some, but i would more rather give my boys gunpowder to play with than this bad trash." "all may not be bad, only silly, you know, and if there is a demand for it, i don't see any harm in supplying it. many very respectable people make an honest living out of what are called sensation stories," said jo, scratching gathers so energetically that a row of little slits followed her pin. "there is a demand for whisky, but i think you and i do not care to sell it. if the respectable people knew what harm they did, they would not feel that the living was honest. they haf no right to put poison in the sugarplum, and let the small ones eat it. no, they should think a little, and sweep mud in the street before they do this thing." mr. bhaer spoke warmly, and walked to the fire, crumpling the paper in his hands. jo sat still, looking as if the fire had come to her, for her cheeks burned long after the cocked hat had turned to smoke and gone harmlessly up the chimney. "i should like much to send all the rest after him," muttered the professor, coming back with a relieved air. jo thought what a blaze her pile of papers upstairs would make, and her hard-earned money lay rather heavily on her conscience at that minute. then she thought consolingly to herself, "mine are not like that, they are only silly, never bad, so i won't be worried," and taking up her book, she said, with a studious face, "shall we go on, sir? i'll be very good and proper now." "i shall hope so," was all he said, but he meant more than she imagined, and the grave, kind look he gave her made her feel as if the words weekly volcano were printed in large type on her forehead. as soon as she went to her room, she got out her papers, and carefully reread every one of her stories. being a little shortsighted, mr. bhaer sometimes used eye glasses, and jo had tried them once, smiling to see how they magnified the fine print of her book. now she seemed to have on the professor's mental or moral spectacles also, for the faults of these poor stories glared at her dreadfully and filled her with dismay. "they are trash, and will soon be worse trash if i go on, for each is more sensational than the last. i've gone blindly on, hurting myself and other people, for the sake of money. i know it's so, for i can't read this stuff in sober earnest without being horribly ashamed of it, and what should i do if they were seen at home or mr. bhaer got hold of them?" jo turned hot at the bare idea, and stuffed the whole bundle into her stove, nearly setting the chimney afire with the blaze. "yes, that's the best place for such inflammable nonsense. i'd better burn the house down, i suppose, than let other people blow themselves up with my gunpowder," she thought as she watched the demon of the jura whisk away, a little black cinder with fiery eyes. but when nothing remained of all her three month's work except a heap of ashes and the money in her lap, jo looked sober, as she sat on the floor, wondering what she ought to do about her wages. "i think i haven't done much harm yet, and may keep this to pay for my time," she said, after a long meditation, adding impatiently, "i almost wish i hadn't any conscience, it's so inconvenient. if i didn't care about doing right, and didn't feel uncomfortable when doing wrong, i should get on capitally. i can't help wishing sometimes, that mother and father hadn't been so particular about such things." ah, jo, instead of wishing that, thank god that `father and mother were particular'. and pity from your heart those who have no such guardians to hedge them round with principles which may seem like prison walls to impatient youth, but which will prove sure foundations to build character upon in womanhood. jo wrote no more sensational stories, deciding that the money did not pay for her share of the sensation, but going to the other extreme, as is the way with people of her stamp, she took a course of mrs. sherwood, miss edgeworth, and hannah more, and then produced a tale which might have been more properly called an essay or a sermon, so intensely moral was it. she had her doubts about it from the beginning, for her lively fancy and girlish romance felt as ill at ease in the new style as she would have done masquerading in the stiff and cumbrous costume of the last century. she sent this didactic gem to several markets, but it found no purchaser, and she was inclined to agree with mr. dashwood that morals didn't sell. then she tried a child's story, which she could easily have disposed of if she had not been mercenary enough to demand filthy lucre for it. the only person who offered enough to make it worth her while to try juvenile literature was a worthy gentleman who felt it his mission to convert all the world to his particular belief. but much as she liked to write for children, jo could not consent to depict all her naughty boys as being eaten by bears or tossed by mad bulls because they did not go to a particular sabbath school, nor all the good infants who did go as rewarded by every kind of bliss, from gilded gingerbread to escorts of angels when they departed this life with psalms or sermons on their lisping tongues. so nothing came of these trials, land jo corked up her inkstand, and said in a fit of very wholesome humility . . . "i don't know anything. i'll wait until i do before i try again, and meantime, `sweep mud in the street' if i can't do better, that's honest, at least." which decision proved that her second tumble down the beanstalk had done her some good. while these internal revolutions were going on, her external life had been as busy and uneventful as usual, and if she sometimes looked serious or a little sad no one observed it but professor bhaer. he did it so quietly that jo never knew he was watching to see if she would accept and profit by his reproof, but she stood the test, and he was satisfied, for though no words passed between them, he knew that she had given up writing. not only did he guess it by the fact that the second finger of her right hand was no longer inky, but she spent her evenings downstairs now, was met no more among newspaper offices, and studied with a dogged patience, which assured him that she was bent on occupying her mind with something useful, if not pleasant. he helped her in many ways, proving himself a true friend, and jo was happy, for while her pen lay idle, she was learning other lessons besides german, and laying a foundation for the sensation story of her own life. it was a pleasant winter and a long one, for she did not leave mrs. kirke till june. everyone seemed sorry when the time came. the children were inconsolable, and mr. bhaer's hair stuck straight up all over his head, for he always rumpled it wildly when disturbed in mind. "going home? ah, you are happy that you haf a home to go in," he said, when she told him, and sat silently pulling his beard in the corner, while she held a little levee on that last evening. she was going early, so she bade them all goodbye overnight, and when his turn came, she said warmly, "now, sir, you won't forget to come and see us, if you ever travel our way, will you? i'll never forgive you if you do, for i want them all to know my friend." "do you? shall i come?" he asked, looking down at her with an eager expression which she did not see. "yes, come next month. laurie graduates then, and you'd enjoy commencement as something new." "that is your best friend, of whom you speak?" he said in an altered tone. "yes, my boy teddy. i'm very proud of him and should like you to see him." jo looked up then, quite unconscious of anything but her own pleasure in the prospect of showing them to one another. something in mr. bhaer's face suddenly recalled the fact that she might find laurie more than a `best friend', and simply because she particularly wished not to look as if anything was the matter, she involuntarily began to blush, and the more she tried not to, the redder she grew. if it had not been for tina on her knee. she didn't know what would have become of her. fortunately the child was moved to hug her, so she managed to hide her face an instant, hoping the professor did not see it. but he did, and his own changed again from that momentary anxiety to its usual expression, as he said cordially . . . "i fear i shall not make the time for that, but i wish the friend much success, and you all happiness. gott bless you!" and with that, he shook hands warmly, shouldered tina, and went away. but after the boys were abed, he sat long before his fire with the tired look on his face and the `heimweh', or homesickness, lying heavy at his heart. once, when he remembered jo as she sat with the little child in her lap and that new softness in her face, he leaned his head on his hands a minute, and then roamed about the room, as if in search of something that he could not find. "it is not for me, i must not hope it now," he said to himself, with a sigh that was almost a groan. then, as if reproaching himself for the longing that he could not repress, he went and kissed the two tousled heads upon the pillow, took down his seldom-used meerschaum, and opened his plato. he did his best and did it manfully, but i don't think he found that a pair of rampant boys, a pipe, or even the divine plato, were very satisfactory substitutes for wife and child at home. early as it was, he was at the station next morning to see jo off, and thanks to him, she began her solitary journey with the pleasant memory of a familiar face smiling its farewell, a bunch of violets to keep her company, and best of all, the happy thought, "well, the winter's gone, and i've written no books, earned no fortune, but i've made a friend worth having and i'll try to keep him all my life." chapter thirty-five whatever his motive might have been, laurie studied to some purpose that year, for he graduated with honor, and gave the latin oration with the grace of a phillips and the eloquence of a demosthenes, so his friends said. they were all there, his grandfather--oh, so proud--mr. and mrs. march, john and meg, jo and beth, and all exulted over him with the sincere admiration which boys make light of at the time, but fail to win from the world by any after-triumphs. "i've got to stay for this confounded supper, but i shall be home early tomorrow. you'll come and meet me as usual, girls?" laurie said, as he put the sisters into the carriage after the joys of the day were over. he said `girls', but he meant jo, for she was the only one who kept up the old custom. she had not the heart to refuse her splendid, successful boy anything, and answered warmly . . . "i'll come, teddy, rain or shine, and march before you, playing `hail the conquering hero comes' on a jew's-harp." laurie thanked her with a look that made her think in a sudden panic, "oh, deary me! i know he'll say something, and then what shall i do?" evening meditation and morning work somewhat allayed her fears, and having decided that she wouldn't be vain enough to think people were going to propose when she had given them every reason to know what her answer would be, she set forth at the appointed time, hoping teddy wouldn't do anything to make her hurt his poor feelings. a call at meg's, and a refreshing sniff and sip at the daisy and demijohn, still further fortified her for the tete-a-tete, but when she saw a stalwart figure looming in the distance, she had a strong desire to turn about and run away. "where's the jew's-harp, jo?" cried laurie, as soon as he was within speaking distance. "i forgot it." and jo took heart again, for that salutation could not be called loverlike. she always used to take his arm on these occasions, now she did not, and he made no complaint, which was a bad sign, but talked on rapidly about all sorts of faraway subjects, till they turned from the road into the little path that led homeward through the grove. then he walked more slowly, suddenly lost his fine flow of language, and now and then a dreadful pause occurred. to rescue the conversation from one of the wells of silence into which it kept falling, jo said hastily, "now you must have a good long holiday!" "i intend to." something in his resolute tone made jo look up quickly to find him looking down at her with an expression that assured her the dreaded moment had come, and made her put out her hand with an imploring, "no, teddy. please don't!" "i will, and you must hear me. it's no use, jo, we've got to have it out, and the sooner the better for both of us," he answered, getting flushed and excited all at once. "say what you like then. i'll listen," said jo, with a desperate sort of patience. laurie was a young lover, but he was in earnest, and meant to `have it out', if he died in the attempt, so he plunged into the subject with characteristic impetuousity, saying in a voice that would get choky now and then, in spite of manful efforts to keep it steady . .. "i've loved you ever since i've known you, jo, couldn't help it, you've been so good to me. i've tried to show it, but you wouldn't let me. now i'm going to make you hear, and give me an answer, for i can't go on so any longer." "i wanted to save you this. i thought you'd understand . . . began jo, finding it a great deal harder than she expected. "i know you did, but the girls are so queer you never know what they mean. they say no when they mean yes, and drive a man out of his wits just for the fun of it," returned laurie, entrenching himself behind an undeniable fact. "i don't. i never wanted to make you care for me so, and i went away to keep you from it if i could." "i thought so. it was like you, but it was no use. i only loved you all the more, and i worked hard to please you, and i gave up billiards and everything you didn't like, and waited and never complained, for i hoped you'd love me, though i'm not half good enough . . ." here there was a choke that couldn't be controlled, so he decapitated buttercups while he cleared his `confounded throat'. "you, you are, you're a great deal too good for me, and i'm so grateful to you, and so proud and fond of you, i don't know why i can't love you as you want me to. i've tried, but i can't change the feeling, and it would be a lie to say i do when i don't." "really, truly, jo?" he stopped short, and caught both her hands as he put his question with a look that she did not soon forget. "really, truly, dear."" they were in the grove now, close by the stile, and when the last words fell reluctantly from jo's lips, laurie dropped her hands and turned as if to go on, but for once in his life the fence was too much for him. so he just laid his head down on the mossy post, and stood so still that jo was frightened. "oh, teddy, i'm sorry, so desperately sorry, i could kill myself if it would do any good! i wish you wouldn't take it so hard, i can't help it. you know it's impossible for people to make themselves love other people if they don't," cried jo inelegantly but remorsefully, as she softly patted his shoulder, remembering the time when he had comforted her so long ago. "they do sometimes," said a muffled voice from the post. "i don't believe it's the right sort of love, and i'd rather not try it," was the decided answer. there was a long pause, while a blackbird sung blithely on the willow by the river, and the tall grass rustled in the wind. presently jo said very soberly, as she sat down on the step of the stile, "laurie, i want to tell you something." he started as if he had been shot, threw up his head, and cried out in a fierce tone, "don't tell me that, jo, i can't bear it now!" "tell what?" she asked, wondering at his violence. "that you love that old man." "what old man?" demanded jo, thinking he must mean his grandfather. "that devilish professor you were always writing about. if you say you love him, i know i shall do something desperate." and he looked as if he would keep his word, as he clenched his hands with a wrathful spark in his eyes. jo wanted to laugh, but restrained herself and said warmly, for she too, was getting excited with all this, "don't swear, teddy! he isn't old, nor anything bad, but good and kind, and the best friend i've got, next to you. pray, don't fly into a passion. i want to be kind, but i know i shall get angry if you abuse my professor. i haven't the least idea of loving him or anybody else." "but you will after a while, and then what will become of me?" "you'll love someone else too, like a sensible boy, and forget all this trouble." "i can't love anyone else, and i'll never forget you, jo, never! never!" with a stamp to emphasize his passionate words. "what shall i do with him?" sighed jo, finding that emotions were more unmanagable than she expected. "you haven't heard what i wanted to tell you. sit down and listen, for indeed i want to do right and make you happy," she said, hoping to soothe him with a little reason, which proved that she knew nothing about love. seeing a ray of hope in that last speech, laurie threw himself down on the grass at her feet, leaned his arm on the lower step of the stile, and looked up at her with an expectant face. now that arrangement was not conducive to calm speech or clear thought on jo's part, for how could she say hard things to her boy while he watched her with eyes full of love and longing, and lashes still wet with the bitter drop or two her hardness of heart had wrung from him? she gently turned his head away, saying, as she stroked the wavy hair which had been allowed to grow for her sake--how touching that was, to be sure! "i agree with mother that you and i are not suited to each other, because our quick tempers and strong wills would probably make us very miserable, if we were so foolish as to . . ." jo paused a little over the last word, but laurie uttered it with a rapturous expression. "marry--no we shouldn't! if you loved me, jo, i should be a perfect saint, for you could make me anything you like." "no, i can't. i've tried and failed, and i won't risk our happiness by such a serious experiment. we don't agree and we never shall, so we'll be good friends all our lives, but we won't go and do anything rash." "yes, we will if we get the chance," muttered laurie rebelliously. "now do be reasonable, and take a sensible view of the case," implored jo, almost at her wit's end. "i won't be reasonable. i don't want to take what you call `a sensible view'. it won't help me, and it only makes it harder. i don't believe you've got any heart." "i wish i hadn't." there was a little quiver in jo's voice, and thinking it a good omen, laurie turned round, bringing all his persuasive powers to bear as he said, in the wheedlesome tone that had never been so dangerously wheedlesome before, "don't disappoint us, dear! everyone expects it. grandpa has set his heart upon it, your people like it, and i can't get on without you. say you will, and let's be happy. do, do!" not until months afterward did jo understand how she had the strength of mind to hold fast to the resolution she had made when she decided that she did not love her boy, and never could. it was very hard to do, but she did it, knowing that delay was both useless and cruel. "i can't say `yes' truly, so i won't say it at all. you'll see that i'm right, by-and-by, and thank me for it . . ." she began solemnly. "i'll be hanged if i do!" and laurie bounced up off the grass, burning with indignation at the very idea. "yes, you will!" persisted jo. "you'll get over this after a while, and find some lovely accomplished girl, who will adore you, and make a fine mistress for your fine house. i shouldn't. i'm homely and awkward and odd and old, and you'd be ashamed of me, and we should quarrel--we can't help it even now, you see-and i shouldn't like elegant society and you would, and you'd hate my scribbling, and i couldn't get on without it, and we should be unhappy, and wish we hadn't done it, and everything would be horrid!" "anything more?" asked asked laurie, finding it hard to listen patiently to this prophetic burst. "nothing more, except that i don't believe i shall ever marry. i'm happy as i am, and love my liberty too well to be in a hurry to give it up for any mortal man." "i know better!" broke in laurie. "you think so now, but there'll come a time when you will care for somebody, and you'll love him tremendously, and live and die for him. i know you will, it's your way, and i shall have to stand by and see it." and the despairing lover cast his hat upon the ground with a gesture that would have seemed comical, if his face had not been so tragic. "yes, i will live and die for him, if her ever comes and makes me love him in spite of myself, and you must do the best you can!" cried jo, losing patience with poor teddy. "i've done my best, but you won't be reasonable, and it's selfish of you to keep teasing for what i can't give. i shall always be fond of you, very fond indeed, as a friend, but i'll never marry you, and the sooner you believe it the better for both of us--so now!" that speech was like gunpowder. laurie looked at her a minute as if he did not quite know what to do with himself, then turned sharply away, saying in a desperate sort of tone, "you'll be sorry some day, jo." "oh, where are you going?" she cried, for his face frightened her. "to the devil!" was the consoling answer. for a minute jo's heart stood still, as he swung himself down the bank toward the river, but it takes much folly, sin or misery to send a young man to a violent death, and laurie was not one of the weak sort who are conquered by a single failure. he had no thought of a melodramatic plunge, but some blind instinct led him to fling hat and coat into his boat, and row away with all his might, making better time up the river than he had done in any race. jo drew a long breath and unclasped her hands as she watched the poor fellow trying to outstrip the trouble which he carried in his heart. "that will do him good, and he'll come home in such a tender, penitent state of mind, that i shan't dare to see him." she said, adding, as she went slowly home, feeling as if she had murdered some innocent thing, and buried it under the leaves. "now i must go and prepare mr. laurence to be very kind to my poor boy. i wish he'd love beth, perhaps he may in time, but i begin to think i was mistaken about her. oh dear! how can girls like to have lovers and refuse them? i think it's dreadful." being sure that no one could do it so well as herself, she went straight to mr. laurence, told the hard story bravely through, and then broke down, crying so dismally over her own insensibility that the kind old gentleman, though sorely disappointed, did not utter a reproach. he found it difficult to understand how any girl could help loving laurie, and hoped she would change her mind, but he knew even better than jo that love cannot be forced, so he shook his head sadly and resolved to carry his boy out of harm's way, for young impetuosity's parting words to jo disturbed him more than he would confess. when laurie came home, dead tired but quite composed, his grandfather met him as if he knew nothing, and kept up the delusion very successfully for an hour or two. but when they sat together in the twilight, the time they used to enjoy so much, it was hard work for the old man to ramble on as usual, and harder still for the young one to listen to praises of the last year's success, which to him now seemed like love's labor lost. he bore it as long as he could, then went to his piano and began to play. the window's were open, and jo, walking in the garden with beth, for once understood music better than her sister, for he played the `sonata pathetique', and played it as he never did before. "that's very fine, i dare say, but it's sad enough to make one cry. give us something gayer, lad," said mr. laurence, whose kind old heart was full of sympathy, which he longed to show but knew not how. laurie dashed into a livelier strain, played stormily for several minutes, and would have got through bravely, if in a momentary lull mrs. march's voice had not been heard calling, "jo, dear, come in. i want you." just what laurie longed to say, with a different meaning! as he listened, he lost his place, the music ended with a broken chord, and the musician sat silent in the dark. "i can't stand this," muttered the old gentleman. up he got, groped his way to the piano, laid a kind hand on either of the broad shoulders, and said, as gently as a woman, "i know, my boy, i know." no answer for an instant, then laurie asked sharply, "who told you?" "jo herself." "then there's an end of it!" and he shook off his grandfather's hands with an impatient motion, for though grateful for the sympathy, his man's pride could not bear a man's pity. "not quite. i want to say one thing, and then there shall be an end of it," returned mr. laurence with unusual mildness. "you won't care to stay at home now, perhaps?" "i don't intend to run away from a girl. jo can't prevent my seeing her, and i shall stay and do it as long as i like," interrupted laurie in a defiant tone. "not if you are the gentleman i think you. i'm disappointed, but the girl can't help it, and the only thing left for you to do is to go away for a time. where will you go?" "anywhere. i don't care what becomes of me." and laurie got up with a reckless laugh that grated on his grandfather's ear. "take it like a man, and don't do anything rash, for god's sake. why not go abroad, as you planned, and forget it?" "i can't." "but you've been wild to go, and i promised you should when you got through college." "ah, but i didn't mean to go alone!" and laurie walked fast through the room with an expression which it was well his grandfather did not see. "i don't ask you to go alone. there's someone ready and glad to go with you, anywhere in the world." "who, sir?' stopping to listen. "myself." laurie came back as quickly as he went, and put out his hand, saying huskily, "i'm a selfish brute, but--you know-grandfather--" "lord help me, yes, i do know, for i've been through it all before, once in my own young days, and then with your father. now, my dear boy, just sit quietly down and hear my plan. it's all settled, and can be carried out at once," said mr. laurence, keeping hold of the young man, as if fearful that he would break away as his father had done before him. "well, sir, what is it?" and laurie sat down, without a sign of interest in face or voice. "there is business in london that needs looking after. i meant you should attend to it, but i can do it better myself, and things here will get on very well with brooke to manage them. my partners do almost everything, i'm merely holding on until you take my place, and can be off at any time." "but you hate traveling, sir. i can't ask it of you at your age," began laurie, who was grateful for the sacrifice, but much preferred to go alone, if he went at all. the old gentleman knew that perfectly well, and particularly desired to prevent it, for the mood in which he found his grandson assured him that it would not be wise to leave him to his own devices. so, stifling a natural regret at the thought of the home comforts he would leave behind him, he said stoutly, bless your soul, i'm not superannuated yet. i quite enjoy the idea. it will do me good, and my old bones won't suffer, for traveling nowadays is almost as easy as sitting in a chair." a restless movement from laurie suggested that his chair was not easy, or that he did not like the plan, and made the old man add hastily, "i don't mean to be a marplot or a burden. i go because i think you'd feel happier than if i was left behind. i don't intend to gad about with you, but leave you free to go where you like, while i amuse myself in my own way. i've friends in london and paris, and should like to visit them. meantime you can go to italy, germany, switzerland, where you will, and enjoy pictures, music, scenery, and adventures to your heart's content." now, laurie felt just then that his heart was entirely broken and the world a howling wilderness, but at the sound of certain words which the old gentleman artfully introduced into his closing sentence, the broken heart gave an unexpected leap, and a green oasis or two suddenly appeared in the howling wilderness. he sighed, and then said, in a spiritless tone, "just as you like, sir. it doesn't matter where i go or what i do." "it does to me, remember that, my lad. i give you entire liberty, but i trust you to make an honest use of it. promise me that, laurie." "anything you like, sir." "good," thought the old gentleman. "you don't care now, but there'll come a time when that promise will keep you out of mischief, or i'm much mistaken." being an energetic individual, mr. laurence struck while the iron was hot, and before the blighted being recovered spirit enough to rebel, they were off. during the time necessary for preparation, laurie bore himself as young gentleman usually do in such cases. he was moody, irritable, and pensive by turns, lost his appetite, neglected his dress and devoted much time to playing tempestuously on his piano, avoided jo, but consoled himself by staring at her from his window, with a tragic face that haunted her dreams by night and oppressed her with a heavy sense of guilt by day. unlike some sufferers, he never spoke of his unrequited passion, and would allow no one, not even mrs. march, to attempt consolation or offer sympathy. on some accounts, this was a relief to his friends, but the weeks before his departure were very uncomfortable, and everyone rejoiced that the `poor, dear fellow was going away to forget his trouble, and come home happy'. of course, he smiled darkly at their delusion, but passed it by with the sad superiority of one who knew that his fidelity like his love was unalterable. when the parting came he affected high spirits, to conceal certain inconvenient emotions which seemed inclined to assert themselves. this gaiety did not impose upon anybody, but they tried to look as if it did for his sake, and he got on very well till mrs. march kissed him, whit a whisper full of motherly solicitude. then feeling that he was going very fast, he hastily embraced them all round, not forgetting the afflicted hannah, and ran downstairs as if for his life. jo followed a minute after to wave her hand to him if he looked round. he did look round, came back, put his arms about her as she stood on the step above him, and looked up at her with a face that made his short appeal eloquent and pathetic. "oh, jo, can't you?" "teddy, dear, i wish i could!" that was all, except a little pause. then laurie straightened himself up, said, "it's all right, never mind," and went away without another word. ah, but it wasn't all right, and jo did mind, for while the curly head lay on her arm a minute after her hard answer, she felt as if she had stabbed her dearest friend, and when he left her without a look behind him, she knew that the boy laurie never would come again. chapter thirty-six when jo came home that spring, she had been struck with the change in beth. no one spoke of it or seemed aware of it, for it had come too gradually to startle those who saw her daily, but to eyes sharpened by absence, it was very plain and a heavy weight fell on jo's heart as she saw her sister's face. it was no paler and but littler thinner than in the autumn, yet there was a strange, transparent look about it, as if the mortal was being slowly refined away, and the immortal shining through the frail flesh with an indescribably pathetic beauty. jo saw and felt it, but said nothing at the time, and soon the first impression lost much of its power, for beth seemed happy, no one appeared to doubt that she was better, and presently in other cares jo fora time forgot her fear. but when laurie was gone, and peace prevailed again, the vague anxiety returned and haunted her. she had confessed her sins and been forgiven, but when she showed her savings and proposed a mountain trip, beth had thanked her heartily, but begged not to go so far away from home. another little visit to the seashore would suit her better, and as grandma could not be prevailed upon to leave the babies, jo took beth down to the quiet place, where she could live much in the open air, and let the fresh sea breezes blow a little color into her pale cheeks. it was not a fashionable place, but even among the pleasant people there, the girls made few friends, preferring to live for one another. beth was too shy to enjoy society, and jo too wrapped up in her to care for anyone else. so they were all in all to each other, and came and went, quite unconscious of the interest they exited in those about them, who watched with sympathetic eyes the strong sister and the feeble one, always together, as if they felt instinctively that a long separation was not far away. they did feel it, yet neither spoke of it, for often between ourselves and those nearest and dearest to us there exists a reserve which it is very hard to overcome. jo felt as if a veil had fallen between her heart and beth's, but when she put out her hand to lift it up, there seemed something sacred in the silence, and she waited for beth to speak. she wondered, and was thankful also, that her parents did not seem to see what she saw, and during the quiet weeks when the shadows grew so plain to her, she said nothing of it to those at home, believing that it would tell itself when beth came back no better. she wondered still more if her sister really guessed the hard truth, and what thoughts were passing through her mind during the long hours when she lay on the warm rocks with her head in jo's lap, while the winds blew healthfully over her and the sea made music at her feet. one day beth told her. jo thought she was asleep, she lay so still, and putting down her book, sat looking at her with wistful eyes, trying to see signs of hope in the faint color on beth's cheeks. but she could not find enough to satisfy her, for the cheeks were very thin, and the hands seemed too feeble to hold even the rosy little shells they had been collecting. it came to her then more bitterly than ever that beth was slowly drifting away form her, and her arms instinctively tightened their hold upon the dearest treasure she possessed. for a minute her eyes were too dim for seeing, and when they cleared, beth was looking up at her so tenderly that there was hardly any need for her to say, "jo, dear, i'm glad you know it. i've tried to tell you, but i couldn't." there was no answer except her sister's cheek against her own, not even tears, for when most deeply moved, jo did not cry. she was the weaker then,land beth tried to comfort and sustain her, with her arms about her and the soothing words she whispered in her ear. "i've known it for a good while, dear, and now i'm used to it, it isn't hard to think of or to bear. try to see it so and don't be troubled about me, because it's best, indeed it is." "is this what made you so unhappy in the autumn, beth? you did not feel it then, land keep it to yourself so long, did you?" asked jo, refusing to see or say that it was best, but glad to know that laurie had no part in beth's trouble. "yes, i gave up hoping then, but i didn't like to own it. i tried to think it was a sick fancy, and would not let it trouble anyone. but when i saw you all so well and strong and full of happy plans, it was hard to feel that i could never be like you, and then i was miserable, jo." "oh, beth, and you didn't tell me, didn't let me comfort and help you? how could you shut me out, bear it all alone?" jo's voice was full of tender reproach, and her heart ached to think of the solitary struggle that must have gone on while beth learned to say goodbye to health, love, and live, and take up her cross so cheerfully. "perhaps it was wrong, but i tried to do right. i wasn't sure, no one said anything, and i hoped i was mistaken. it would have been selfish to frighten you all when marmee was so anxious about meg, and amy away, and you so happy with laurie--at least i thought so then." "and i thought you loved him, beth, and i went away because i couldn't," cried jo, glad to say all the truth. beth looked so amazed at the idea that jo smiled in spite of her pain, and added softly, "then you didn't, dearie? i was afraid it was so, and imagined your poor little heart full of lovelornity all that while." "why, jo, how could i, when he was so fond of you?" asked beth, as innocently as a child. "i do love him dearly. he is so good to me, how can i help it? but he could never be anything to me but my brother. i hope he truly will be, sometime." "not through me," said jo decidedly. "amy is left for him, and they would suit excellently, but i have no heart for such things, now. i don't care what becomes of anybody but you, beth. you must get well." "i want to, oh, so much! i try, but every day i lose a little, and feel more sure that i shall never gain it back. it's like the tide, jo, when it turns, it goes slowly, but it can't be stopped.." "it shall be stopped, your tide must not turn so soon, nineteen is too young, beth. i can't let you go. i'll work and pray and fight against it. i'll keep you in spite of everything. there must be ways, it can't be too late. god won't be so cruel as to take you from me," cried poor jo rebelliously, for her spirit was far less piously submissive than beth's. simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety. it shows itself in acts rather than in words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations. beth could not reason upon or explain the faith that gave her courage and patience to give up life, and cheerfully wait for death. like a confiding child, she asked no questions, but left everything to god and nature, father and mother of us all, feeling sure that they, and they only, could teach and strengthen heart and spirit for this life and the life to come. she did not rebuke jo with saintly speeches, only loved her better for her passionate affection, and clung more closely to the dear human love, from which our father never means us to be weaned, but through which he draws us closer to himself. she could not say, "i'm glad to go," for life was very sweet for her. she could only sob out, "i try to be willing," while she held fast to jo, as the first bitter wave of this great sorrow broke over them together. by and by beth said, with recovered serenity, "you'll tell them this when we go home?" "i think they will see it without words," sighed jo, for now it seemed to her that beth changed every day. "perhaps not. i've heard that the people who love best are often blindest to such things. if they don't see it, you will tell them for me. i don't want any secrets, and it's kinder to prepare them. meg has john and the babies to comfort her, but you must stand by father and mother, won't you jo?" "if i can. but, beth, i don't give up yet. i'm going to believe that it is a sick fancy, and not let you think it's true." said jo, trying to speak cheerfully. beth lay a minute thinking, and then said in her quiet way, "i don't know how to express myself, and shouldn't try to anyone but you, because i can't speak out except to my jo. i only mean to say that i have a feeling that it never was intended i should live long. i'm not like the rest of you. i never made any plans about what i'd do when i grew up. i never thought of being married, as you all did. i couldn't seem to imagine myself anything but stupid little beth, trotting about at home, of no use anywhere but there. i never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is the leaving you all. i'm not afraid, but it seems as if i should be homesick for you even in heaven." jo could not speak, and for several minutes there was no sound but the sigh of the wind and the lapping of the tide. a white-winged gull flew by, with the flash of sunshine on its silvery breast. beth watched it till it vanished, and her eyes were full of sadness. a little gray-coated sand bird came tripping over the beach `peeping' softly to itself, as if enjoying the sun and sea. it came quite close to beth, and looked at her with a friendly eye and sat upon a warm stone, dressing its wet feathers, quite at home. beth smiled and felt comforted, for the tiny thing seemed to offer its small friendship and remind her that a pleasant world was still to be enjoyed. "dear little bird! see, jo, how tame it is. i like peeps better than the gulls. they are not so wild and handsome, but they seem happy, confiding little things. i used to call them my birds last summer, and mother said they reminded her of me --busy, quaker-colored creatures, always near the shore, and always chirping that contented little song of theirs. you are the gull, jo, strong and wild, fond of the storm and the wind, flying far out to sea, and happy all alone. meg is the turtledove, and amy is like the lark she write about, trying to get up among the clouds, but always dropping down into its nest again. dear little girl! she's so ambitious, but her heart is good and tender, and no matter how high she flies, she never will forget home. i hope i shall see her again, but she seems so far away." "she is coming in the spring, and i mean that you shall be all ready to see and enjoy her. i'm going to have you well and rosy by that time." began jo, feeling that of all the changes in beth, the talking change was the greatest, for it seemed to cost no effort now, and she thought aloud in a way quite unlike bashful beth. "jo, dear, don't hope any more. it won't do any good. i'm sure of that. we won't be miserable, but enjoy being together while we wait. we'll have happy times, for i don't suffer much, and i think the tide will go out easily, if you help me." jo leaned down to kiss the tranquil face, and with that silent kiss, she dedicated herself soul and body to beth. she was right. there was no need of any words when they got home, for father and mother saw plainly now what they had prayed to be saved from seeing. tired with her short journey, beth went at once to bed, saying how glad she was to be home, and when jo went down, she found that she would be spared the hard task of telling beth's secret. her father stood leaning his head on the mantelpiece and did not turn as she came in, but her mother stretched out her arms as if for help, and jo went to comfort her without a word. chapter thirty-seven at three o'clock in the afternoon, all the fashionable world at nice may be seen on the promenade des anglais--a charming place, for the wide walk, bordered with palms, flowers, and tropical shrubs, is bounded on one side by the sea, on the other by the grand drive, lined with hotels and villas, while beyond lie orange orchards and the hills. many nations are represented, many languages spoken, many costumes worn, and on a sunny day the spectacle is as gay and brilliant as a carnival. haughty english, lively french, sober germans, handsome spaniards, ugly russians, meek jews, free-and-easy americans, all drive,sit, or saunter here, chatting over the news, and criticzing the latest celebrity who has arrived--ristori or dickens, victor emmanuel or the queen of the sandwich islands. the equipages are as varied as the company and attract as much attention, especially the low basket barouches in which ladies drive themselves, with a pair of dashing ponies, gay nets to keep their voluminous flounces from overflowing the diminutive vehicles, and little grooms on the perch behind. along this walk, on christmas day, a tall young man walked slowly, with his hands behind him, and a somewhat absent expression of countenance. he looked like an italian, was dressed like an englishman, and had the independent air of an american--a combination which caused sundry pairs of feminine eyes to look approvingly after him, and sundry dandies in black velvet suits, with rose-colored neckties, buff gloves, and orange flowers in their buttonholes, to shrug their shoulders, and then envy him his inches. there were plenty of pretty faces to admire, but the young man took little notice of them, except to glance now and then at some blonde girl in blue. presently he strolled out of the promenade and stood a moment at the crossing, as if undecided whether to go and listen to the band in the jardin publique, or to wander along the beach toward castle hill. the quick trot of ponies feet made him look up, as one of the little carriages, containing a single young lady, came rapidly down the street. the lady was young, blonde, and dressed in blue. he stared a minute, then his whole face woke up, and, waving his hat like a boy, he hurried forward to meet her. "oh, laurie, is it really you? i thought you'd never come!" cried amy, dropping the reins and holding out both hands, to the great scandalization of a french mamma, who hastened her daughter's steps, lest she should be demoralized by beholding the free manners of these `mad english'. "i was detained by the way, but i promised to spend christmas with you, and here i am." "how is your grandfather? when did you come? where are you staying?" "very well--last night--at the chauvain. i called at your hotel, but you were out." "i have so much to say, i don't know where to begin! get in and we can talk at our ease. i was going for a drive and longing for company. flo's saving up for tonight." "what happens then, a ball?" "a christmas party at out hotel. there are many americans there, and they give it in honor of the day. you'll go with us, of course? aunt will be charmed." "thank you. where now?" asked laurie, leaning back and folding his arms, a proceeding which suited amy, who preferred to drive, for her parasol whip and blue reins over the white ponies backs afforded her infinite satisfaction. "i'm going to the bankers first for letters, and then to castle hill. the view is so lovely, and i like to feed the peacocks. have you ever been there?" "often, years ago, but i don't mind having a look at it." "now tell me all about yourself. the last i heard of you, your grandfather wrote that he expected you from berlin." "yes, i spent a month there and then joined him in paris, where he has settled for the winter. he has friends there and finds plenty to amuse him, so i go and come, and we got on capitally." "that's a sociable arrangement," said amy, missing something in laurie's manner, though she couldn't tell what. "why, you see, he hates to travel, and i hate to keep still, so we each suit ourselves, and there is no trouble. i am often with him, and he enjoys my adventures, while i like to feel that someone is glad to see me when i get back from my wanderings. dirty old hole, isn't it?" he added, with a look of disgust as they drove along the boulevard to the place napoleon in the old city. "the dirt is picturesque, so i don't mind. the river and the hills are delicious, and these glimpses of the narrow cross streets are my delight. now we shall have to wait for that procession to pass. it's going to the church of st. john." while laurie listlessly watched the procession of priests under their canopies, white-veiled nuns bearing lighted tapers, and some brotherhood in blue chanting as they walked, amy watched him, and felt a new sort of shyness steal over her, for he was changed,and she could not find the merry-faced boy she left in the moody-looking man beside her. he was handsomer than ever and greatly improved, she thought, but now that the flush of pleasure at meeting her was over, he looked tired and spiritless--not sick, nor exactly unhappy, but older and graver than a year or two of prosperous life should have made him. she couldn't understand it and did not venture to ask questions, so she shook her head and touched up her ponies, as the procession wound away across the arches of the paglioni bridge and vanished in the church. "que pensez-vous?" she said, airing her french, which had improved in quantity, if not in quality, since she came abroad. "that mademoiselle has made good use of her time, and the result is charming," replied laurie, bowing with his hand on his heart and an admiring look. she blushed with pleasure, but somehow the compliment did not satisfy her like the blunt praises he used to give her at home, when he promenaded round her on festival occasions, and tole her she was `altogether jolly', with a hearty smile and an approving pat on the head. she didn't like the new tone, for though not blase, it sounded indifferent in spite of the look. "if that's the way he's going to grow up, i wish he's stay a boy," she thought, with a curious sense of disappointment and discomfort, trying meantime to seem quite easy and gay. at avigdor's she found the precious home letters and, giving the reins to laurie,read them luxuriously as they wound up the shady road between green hedges, where tea roses bloomed as freshly as in june. "beth is very poorly, mother says. i often think i ought to go home, but they all say `stay'. so i do, for i shall never have another chance like this," said amy, looking sober over one page. "i think you are right, there. you could do nothing at home, and it is a great comfort to them to know that you are well and happy, and enjoying so much, my dear." he drew a little nearer, and looked more like his old self as he said that, and the fear that sometimes weighed on amy's heart was lightened, for the look, the act, the brotherly `my dear', seemed to assure her that if any trouble did come, she would not be alone in a strange land. presently she laughed and showed him a small sketch of jo in her scribbling suit, with the bow rampantly erect upon her cap, and issuing from her mouth the words, `genius burns!'. laurie smiled, took it, put it in his vest pocket `to keep it from blowing away', and listened with interest to the lively letter amy read him. "this will be a regularly merry christmas to me, with presents in the morning, you and letters in the afternoon, and a party at night," said amy, as they alighted among the ruins of the old fort, and a flock of splendid peacocks came trooping about them, tamely waiting to be fed. while amy stood laughing on the bank above him as she scattered crumbs to the brilliant birds, laurie looked at her as she had looked at him, with a natural curiosity to see what changes time and absence had wrought. he found nothing to perplex or disappoint, much to admire and approve, for overlooking a few little affectations of speech and manner, she was as sprightly and graceful as ever, with the addition of that indescribable something in dress and bearing which we call elegance. always mature for her age, she had gained a certain aplomb in both carriage and conversation, which made her seem more of a woman of the world than she was, but her old petulance now and then showed itself, her strong will still held its own, and her native frankness was unspoiled by foreign polish. laurie did not read all this while he watched her feed the peacocks, but he saw enough to satisfy and interest him, and carried away a pretty little picture of a bright-faced girl standing in the sunshine, which brought out the soft hue of her dress, the fresh color of her cheeks, the golden gloss of her hair, and made her a prominent figure in the pleasant scene. as they came up onto the stone plateau that crowns the hill, amy waved her hand as if welcoming him to her favorite haunt, and said, pointing here and there, "do you remember the cathedral and the corso, the fishermen dragging their nets in the bay, and the lovely road to villa franca, schubert's tower, just below, and best of all, that speck far out to sea which they say ils corsica?" "i remember. it's not much changed," he answered without enthusiasm. "what jo would give for a sight of that famous speck!" said amy, feeling in good spirits and anxious to see him so also. "yes," was all he said,but he turned and strained his eyes to see the island which a greater usurper than even napoleon now made interesting in his sight. "take a good look at it for her sake, and then come and tell me what you have been doing with yourself all this while," said amy, seating herself, ready for a good talk. but she did not get it, for though he joined her and answered all her questions freely, she could only learn that he had roved about the continent and been to greece. so after idling away an hour, they drove home again, and having paid his respects to mrs. carrol, laurie left them, promising to return in the evening. it must be recorded of amy that she deliberately prinked that night. time and absence had done its work on both the young people. she had seen her old friend in a new light, not as `our boy', but as a handsome and agreeable man, and she was conscious of a very natural desire to find favor in his sight. amy knew her good points, and made the most of them with the taste and skill which is a fortune to a poor and pretty woman. tarlatan and tulle were cheap at nice, so she enveloped herself in them on such occasions, and following the sensible english fashion of simple dress for young girls, got up charming little toilettes with fresh flowers, a few trinkets, and all manner of dainty devices, which were both inexpensive and effective. it must be confessed that the artist sometimes got possession of the woman, and indulged in antique coiffures, statuesque attitudes, and classic draperies. but, dear heart, we all have out little weaknesses, and find it easy to pardon such in the young, who satisfy our eyes with their comeliness, and keep our hearts merry with their artless vanities. "i do want him to think i look well, and tell them so at home," said amy to herself, as she put on flo's old white silk ball dress, and covered it with a cloud of fresh illusion, out of which her white shoulders and golden head emerged with a most artistic effect. her hair she had the sense to let alone, after gathering up the thick waves and curls into a hebe-like knot at the back of her head. "it's not the fashion, but it's becoming, and i can't afford to make a fright of myself," she used to say, when advised to frizzle, puff, or braid, as the latest style commanded. having no ornaments fine enough for this important occasion, amy looped her fleecy skirts with rosy clusters of azalea, and framed the white shoulders in delicate green vines. remembering the painted boots, she surveyed her white satin slippers with girlish satisfaction, and chassed down the room, admiring her aristocratic feet all by herself. "my new fan just matches my flowers, my gloves fit to a charm, and the real lace on aunt's mouchoir gives an air to my whole dress. if i only had a classical nose and mouth i should be perfectly happy," she said, surveying herself with a critical eye and a candle in each hand. in spite of this affliction, she looked unusually gay and graceful as she glided away. she seldom ran--it did not suit her style, she thought, for being tall, the stately and junoesque was more appropriate than the sportive or piquante. she walked up and down the long saloon while waiting for laurie, and once arranged herself under the chandelier, which had a good effect upon her hair, then she thought better of it, and went away to the other end of the room, as if ashamed of the girlish desire to have the first view a propitious one. it so happened that she could not have done a better thing, for laurie came in so quietly she did not hear him, and as she stood at the distant window, with her head half turned and one hand gathering up her dress, the slender, white figure against the red curtains was as effective as a well-placed statue. "good evening, diana!" said laurie, with the look of satisfaction she liked to see in his eyes when they rested on her. "good evening, apollo!" she answered, smiling back at him, for he too looked unusually debonair, and the thought of entering the ballroom on the arm of such a personable man caused amy to pity the four plain misses davis from the bottom of her heart. "here are your flowers. i arranged them myself, remembering that you didn't like what hannah calls a `sot-bookay', said laurie, handing her a delicate nosegay, in a holder that she had long coveted as she daily passed it in cardiglia's window. "how kind you are!" she exclaimed gratefully. "if i'd known you were coming i'd have had something ready for you today, though not as pretty as this, i'm afraid." "thank you. it isn't what it should be, but you have improved it," he added, as she snapped the silver bracelet on her wrist. "please don't." "i thought you liked that sort of thing." "not from you, it doesn't sound natural, and i like your old bluntness better." "i'm glad of it," he answered, with a look of relief, then buttoned her gloves for her, and asked if his tie was straight, just as he used to do when they went to parties together at home. the company assembled in the long salle a manger that evening was such as one sees nowhere but on the continent. the hospitable americans had invited every acquaintance they had in nice, and having no prejudice against titles, secured a few to add luster to their christmas ball. a russian prince condescended to sit in a corner for an hour and talk with a massive lady, dressed like hamlet's mother in black velvet with a pearl bridle under her chin. a polish count, aged eighteen, devoted himself to the ladies, who pronounced him, `a fascinating dear', and a german serene something, having come to supper alone, roamed vaguely about, seeking what he might devour. baron rothschild's private secretary, a largenosed jew in tight boots, affably beamed upon the world, as if his master's name crowned him with a golden halo. a stout frenchman, who knew the emperor, came to indulge his mania for dancing, and lady de jones, a british matron, adorned the scene with her little family of eight. of course, there were many light-footed, shrill-voiced american girls, handsome, lifelesslooking english ditto, and a few plain but piquante french demoiselles, likewise the usual set of traveling young gentlemen who disported themselves gaily, while mammas of all nations lined the walls and smiled upon them benignly when they danced with their daughters. any young girl can imagine amy's state of mind when she `took the stage' that night, leaning on laurie's arm. she knew she looked well, she loved to dance, she felt that her foot was on her native heath in a ballroom, and enjoyed the delightful sense of power which comes when young girls first discover the new and lovely kingdom they are born to rule by virtue of beauty, youth, and womanhood. she did pity the davis girls, who were awkward, plain, and destitute of escort, except a grim papa and three grimmer maiden aunts, and she bowed to them in her friendliest manner as she passed, which was good of her, as it permitted them to see her dress, and burn with curiosity to know who her distinguished-looking friend might be. with the first burst of the band, amy's color rose, her eyes began to sparkle, and her feet to tap the floor impatiently, for she danced well and wanted laurie to know it. therefore the shock she received can better be imagined than described, when he said in a perfectly tranquil tone, "do you care to dance?" "one usually does at a ball." her amazed look and quick answer caused laurie to repair his error as fast as possible. "i meant the first dance. may i have the honor?" "i can give you one if i put off the count. he dances devinely, but he will excuse me, as you are an old friend," said amy, hoping that the name would have a good effect, and show laurie that she was not to be trifled with. "nice little boy, but rather a short pole to support . .. a daughter of the gods, devinely tall, and most devinely fair," was all the satisfaction she got, however. the set in which they found themselves was composed of english, and amy was compelled to walk decorously through a cotillion, feeling all the while as if she could dance the tarantella with relish. laurie resigned her to the `nice little boy', and went to do his duty to flo, without securing amy for the joys to come, which reprehensible want of forethought was properly punished, for she immediately engaged herself till supper, meaning to relent if he then gave any signs penitence. she showed him her ball book with demure satisfaction when he strolled instead of rushed up to claim her for the next, a glorious polka redowa. but his polite regrets didn't impose upon her, and when she galloped away with the count, she saw laurie sit down by her aunt with an actual expression of relief. that was unpardonable, and amy took no more notice of him for a long while, except a word now and then when she came to her chaperon between the dances for a necessary pin or a moment's rest. her anger had a good effect, however, for she hid it under a smiling face, and seemed unusually blithe and brilliant. laurie's eyes followed her with pleasure, for she neither romped nor sauntered, but danced with spirit and grace, making the delightsome pastime what it should be. he very naturally fell to studying her from this new point of view, and before the evening was half over, had decided that `little amy was going to make a very charming woman'. it was a lively scene, for soon the spirit of the social season took possession of everyone, and christmas merriment made all faces shine, hearts happy, and heels light. the musicians fiddled, tooted, and banged as if they enjoyed it, everybody danced who could, and those who couldn't admired their neighbors with uncommon warmth. the air was dark with davises, and many jones gamboled like a flock of young giraffes. the golden secretary darted through the room like a meteor with a dashing frenchwoman who carped the floor with her pink satin train. the serene teuton found the supper table and was happy, eating steadily through the bill of fare, and dismayed the garcons by the ravages he committed. but the emperor's friend covered himself with glory, for he danced everything, whether he knew it or not, and introduced impromptu pirouettes when the figures bewildered him. the boyish abandon of that stout man was charming to behold, for though he `carried weight', he danced like an india-rubber ball. he ran, he flew, he pranced, his face glowed, his bald head shown, his coattails waved wildly, his pumps actually twinkled in the air, and when the music stopped, he wiped the drops from his brow, and beamed upon his fellow men like a french pickwick without glasses. amy and her pole distinguished themselves by equal enthusiasm but more graceful agility, and laurie found himself involuntarily keeping time to the rhythmic rise and fall of the white slippers as they flew by as indefatigably as if winged. when little vladimir finally relinquished her, with assurances that he was `desolated to leave so early', she was ready to rest, and see how her recreant knight had borne his punishment. it had been successful, for at three-and-twenty, blighted affections find a balm in friendly society, and young nerves will thrill, young blood dance, and healthy young spirits rise, when subjected to the enchantment of beauty, light, music, and motion. laurie had a waked-up look as he rose to give her his seat, and when he hurried away to bring her some supper, she said to herself, with a satisfied smile, "ah, i thought that would do him good!" "you look like balzac's `femme peinte par elle-nene'," he said, as he fanned her with one hand and held her coffee cup in the other. "my rouge won't come off." and amy rubbed her brilliant cheek, and showed him her white glove with a sober simplicity that made him laugh outright. "what do you call this stuff?" he asked, touching a fold of her dress that had blown over his knee. "illusion." "good name for it. it's very pretty--new thing, isn't it?" "it's as old as the hills. you have seen it on dozens of girls, and you never found out that it was pretty till now? stupide!" "i never saw it on you before, which accounts for the mistake, you see." "none of that, it is forbidden. i'd rather take coffee than compliments just now. no, don't lounge, it makes me nervous." laurie sat bold upright, and meekly took her empty plate feeling an odd sort of pleasure in having `little amy' order him about, for she had lost her shyness now, and felt an irrestible desire to trample on him, as girls have a delightful way of doing when lords of creation show any signs of subjection. "where did you learn all this sort of thing?" he asked with a quizzical look. "as `this sort of thing' is rather a vague expression, would you kindly explain?" returned amy, knowing perfectly well what he meant, but wickedly leaving him to describe what is indescribable. "well--the general air, the style, the self-possession, the-the--illusion--you know", laughed laurie, breaking down and helping himself out of his quandary with the new word. amy was gratified, but of course didn't show it, and demurely answered, "foreign life polishes one in spite of one's self. i study as well as play, and as for this"--with a little gesture toward her dress--"why, tulle is cheap, posies to be had for nothing, and i am used to making the most of my poor little things." amy rather regretted that last sentence, fearing it wasn't in good taste, but laurie liked her better for it, and found himself both admiring and respecting the brave patience that made the most of opportunity, and the cheerful spirit that covered poverty with flowers. amy did not know why he looked at her so kindly, now why he filled up her book with his own name, and devoted himself to her for the rest of the evening in the most delightful manner, but the impulse that wrought this agreeable change was the result of one of the new impressions which both of them were unconsciously giving and receiving. chapter thirty-eight in france the young girls have a dull time of it till they are married, when `vive la liberte!' becomes their motto. in america, as everyone knows,girls early sign the declaration of independence, and enjoy their freedom with republican zest, but the young matrons usually abdicate with the first heir to the throne and go into a seclusion almost as close as a french nunnery, though by no means as quiet. whether they like it or not, they are virtually put upon the shelf as soon as the wedding excitement is over, and most of them might exclaim, as did a very pretty woman the other day, "i'm as handsome as ever, but no one takes any notice of me because i'm married." not being a belle or even a fashionable lady, meg did not experience this affliction till her babies were a year old, for in her little world primitive customs prevailed, and she found herself more admired and beloved than ever. as she was a womanly little woman, the maternal instinct was very strong, and she was entirely absorbed in her children, to the utter exclusion of everything and everybody else. day and night she brooded over them with tireless devotion and anxiety, leaving john to the tender mercies of the help, for an irish lady now presided over the kitchen department. being a domestic man, john decidedly missed the wifely attentions he had been accustomed to receive, but as he adored his babies, he cheerfully relinquished his comfort for a time, supposing with masculine ignorance that peace would soon be restored. but three months passed, and there was no return of repose. meg looked worn and nervous, the babies absorbed every minute of her time, the house was neglected, and kitty, the cook, who took life `aisy', kept him on short commons. when he went out in the morning he was bewildered by small commissions for the captive mamma, if he came gaily in at night, eager to embrace his family, he was quenched by a "hush! they are just asleep after worrying all day." if he proposed a little amusement at home, "no, it would disturb the babies." if he hinted at a lecture or a concert, he was answered with a reproachful look, and a decided "leave my children for pleasure, never!" his sleep was broken by infant wails and visions of a phantom figure pacing noiselessly to and fro in the watches of the night. his meals were interrupted by the frequent flight of the presiding genius, who deserted him, half-helped, if a muffled chirp sounded from the nest above. and when he read his paper of an evening, demi's colic got into the shipping list and daisy's fall affected the price of stocks, for mrs. brooke was only interested in domestic news. the poor man was very uncomfortable, for the children had bereft him of his wife, home was merely a nursery and the perpetual `hushing' made him feel like a brutal intruder whenever he entered the sacred precincts of babyland. he bore it very patiently for six months, and when no signs of amendment appeared, he did what other paternal exiles do--tried to get a little comfort elsewhere. scott had married and gone to housekeeping not far off, and john fell into the way of running over for an hour or two of an evening, when his own parlor was empty, and his own wife singing lullabies that seemed to have no end. mrs. scott was a lively, pretty girl, with nothing to do but be agreeable, and she performed her mission most successfully. the parlor was always bright and attractive, the chessboard ready, the piano in tune, plenty of gay gossip, and a nice little supper set forth in tempting style. john would have preferred his own fireside if it had not been so lonely, but as it was he gratefully took the next best thing and enjoyed his neighbor's society. meg rather approved of the new arrangement at first, and found it a relief to know that john was having a good time instead of dozing in the parlor, or tramping about the house and waking the children. but by-and-by, when the teething worry was over and the idols went to sleep at proper hours, leaving mamma time to rest, she began to miss john, and find her workbasket dull company, when he was not sitting opposite in his old dressing gown, comfortably scorching his slippers on the fender. she would not ask him to stay at home, but felt injured because he did not know that she wanted him without being told, entirely forgetting the many evenings he had waited for her in vain. she was nervous and worn out with watching and worry, and in that unreasonable frame of mind which the best of mothers occasionally experience when domestic cares oppress them. want of exercise robs them of cheerfulness, and too much devotion to that idol of american women, the teapot, makes them feel as if they were all nerve and no muscle. "yes," she would say, looking in the glass, "i'm getting old and ugly. john doesn't find me interesting any longer, so he leaves his faded wife and goes to see his pretty neighbor, who has no incumbrances. well, the babies love me, they don't care if i am thin and pale and haven't time to crimp my hair, they are my comfort, and some day john will see what i've gladly sacrificed for them, won't he, my precious?" to which pathetic appeal daisy would answer with a coo, or demi with a crow, and meg would put by her lamentations for a maternal revel, which soothed her solitude for the time being. but the pain increased as politics absorbed john, who was always running over to discuss interesting points with scott, quite unconscious that meg missed him. not a word did she say, however, till her mother found her in tears one day, and insisted on knowing what the matter was,for meg's drooping spirits had not escaped her observation. "i wouldn't tell anyone except you, mother, but i really do need advice, for if john goes on much longer i might as well be widowed," replied mrs. brooke, drying her tears on daisy's bib with an injured air. "goes on how, my dear?" asked her mother anxiously. "he's away all day, and at night when i want to see him, he is continually going over to the scotts'. it isn't fair that i should have the hardest work, and never any amusement. men are very selfish, even the best of them." "so are women. don't blame john till you see where you are wrong yourself." "but it can't be right for him to neglect me." "don't you neglect him?" "why, mother, i thought you'd take my part!" "so i do, as far as sympathizing goes, but i think the fault is yours, meg." "i don't see how." "let me show you. did john ever neglect you, as you call it, while you made it a point to give him your society of an evening, his only leisure time?" "no, but i can't do it now, with two babies to tend." "i think you could, dear, and i think you ought. may i speak quite freely, and will you remember that it's mother who blames as well as mother who sympathizes?" "indeed i will! speak to me as if i were little meg again. i often feel as if i needed teaching more than ever since these babies look to me for everything." meg drew her low chair beside her mother's, and with a little interruption in either lap, the two women rocked and talked lovingly together, feeling that the tie of motherhood made them more one than ever. "you have only made the mistake that most young wives make-forgotten your duty to your husband in your love for your children. a very natural and forgivable mistake, meg, but one that had better be remedied before you take to different ways, for children should draw you nearer than ever, not separate you, as if they were all yours, and john had nothing to do but support them. i've seen it for some weeks, but have not spoken, feeling sure it would come right in time." "i'm afraid it won't. if i ask him to stay, he'll think i'm jealous, and i wouldn't insult him by such an idea. he doesn't see that i want him, and i don't know how to tell him without words." "make it so pleasant he won't want to go away. my dear, he's longing for his little home, but it isn't home without you, and you are always in the nursery." "oughtn't i to be there?" "not all the time, too much confinement makes you nervous, and then you are unfitted for everything. besides, you owe something to john as well as to the babies. don't neglect husband for children, don't shut him out of the nursery, but teach him how to help in it. his place is there as well as yours, and the children need him. let him feel that he has a part to do, and he will do it gladly and faithfully, and it will be better for you all." "you really think so, mother?" "i know it, meg, for i've tried it, and i seldom give advice unless i've proved its practicability. when you and jo were little, i went on just as you are, feeling as if i didn't do my duty unless i devoted myself wholly to you. poor father took to his books, after i had refused all offers of help, and left me to try my experiment alone. i struggled along as well as i could, but jo was too much for me. i nearly spoiled her by indulgence. you were poorly, and i worried about you till i fell sick myself. then father came to the rescue, quietly managed everything, and made himself so helpful that i saw my mistake, and never have been able to got on without him since. that is the secret of our home happiness. he does not let business wean him from the little cares and duties that affect us all, and i try not to let domestic worries destroy my interest in his pursuits. each do our part alone in many things, but at home we work together, always." "it is so, mother, and my great wish is to be to my husband and children what you have been to yours. show me how, i'll do anything you say." "you were always my docile daughter. well, dear, if i were you, i'd let john have more to do with the management of demi, for the boy needs training, and it's none too soon to begin. then i'd do what i have often proposed,, let hannah come and help you. she is a capital nurse, and you may trust the precious babies to her while you do more housework. you need the exercise, hannah would enjoy the rest, and john would find his wife again. go out more, keep cheerful as well as busy, for you are the sunshine-maker of the family, and if you get dismal there is no fair weather. then i'd try to take an interest in whatever john likes--talk with him, let him read to you, exchange ideas, and help each other in that way. don't shut yourself up in a bandbox because you are a woman, but understand what is going on, and educate yourself to take your part in the world's work, for it all affects you and yours." "john is so sensible, i'm afraid he will think i'm stupid if i ask questions about politics and things." "i don't believe he would. love covers a multitude of sins, and of whom could you ask more freely than of him? try it, and see if he doesn't find your society far more agreeable than mrs. scott's suppers." "i will. poor john! i'm afraid i have neglected him sadly, but i thought i was right, and he never said anything." "he tried not to be selfish, but he has felt rather forlorn, i fancy. this is just the time, meg, when young married people are apt to grow apart, and the very time when they ought to be most together, for the first tenderness soon wears off, unless care is taken to preserve it. and no time is so beautiful and precious to parents as the first years of the little lives given to them to train. don't let john be a stranger to the babies, for they will do more to keep him safe and happy in this world of trial and temptation than anything else, and through them you will learn to know and love one another as you should. now, dear, good-by. think over mother's preachment, act upon it if it seems good, and god bless you all." meg did think it over, found it good, and acted upon it, though the first attempt was not made exactly as she planned to have it. of course the children tyrannized over her, and ruled the house as soon as they found out that kicking and squalling brought them whatever they wanted. mamma was an abject slave to their caprices, but papa was not so easily subjugated, and occasionally afflicted his tender spouse by an attempt at paternal discipline with his obstreperous son. for demi inherited a trifle of his sire's firmness of character, we won't call it obstinacy, and when he made up his little to have or to do anything, all the king's horses and all the king's men could not change that pertinacious little mind. mamma thought the dear too young to be taught to conquer his prejudices, but papa believed that it never was too soon to learn obedience. so master demi early discovered that when he undertook to `wrastle' with `parpar', he always got the worst of it, yet like the englishman, baby respected the man who conquered him, and loved the father whose grave "no, no," was more impressive than all mamma's love pats. a few days after the talk with her mother, meg resolved to try a social evening with john, so she ordered a nice supper, set the parlor in order, dressed herself prettily, and put the children to bed early, that nothing should interfere with her experiment. but unfortunately demi's most unconquerable prejudice was against going to bed, and that night he decided to go on a rampage. so poor meg sang and rocked, told stories and tried every sleep-prevoking wile she could devise, but all in vain, the big eyes wouldn't shut, and long after daisy had gone to byelow, like the chubby little bunch of good nature she was, naughty demi lay staring at the light, with the most discouragingly wide-awake expression of countenance. "will demi lie still like a good boy, while mamma runs down and gives poor papa his tea?" asked meg, as the hall door softly closed, and the well-known step went tip-toeing into the dining room. "me has tea!" said demi, preparing to join in the revel. "no, but i'll save you some little cakies for breakfast, if you'll go bye-by like daisy. will you, lovey?" "iss!" and demi shut his eyes tight, as if to catch sleep and hurry the desired day. taking advantage of the propitious moment, meg slipped away and ran down to greet her husband with a smiling face and the little blue bow in her hair which was his especial admiration. he saw it at once and said with pleased surprise, "why, little mother, how gay we are tonight. do you expect company?" "only you, dear." "no, i'm tired of being dowdy, so i dressed up as a change. you always make yourself nice for table, no matter how tired you are, so why shouldn't i when i have the time?' "i do it out of respect for you, my dear," said oldfashioned john. "ditto, ditto, mr. brooke," laughed meg, looking young and pretty again, as she nodded to him over the teapot. "well, it's altogether delightful, and like old times. this tastes right. i drink your health, dear." and john sipped his tea with an air of reposeful rapture, which was of very short duration however, for as he put down his cup, the door handle rattled mysteriously, and a little voice was heard, saying impatiently . . . "opy doy. me's tummin!" "it's that naughty boy. i told him to go to sleep alone, and here he is, downstairs, getting his death a-cold pattering over that canvas," said meg, answering the call. "mornin' now," announced demi in joyful tone as he entered, with his long nightgown gracefully festooned over his arm and every curl bobbing gayly as he pranced about the table, eyeing the `cakies' with loving glances. "no, it isn't morning yet. you must go to bed, and not trouble poor mamma. then you can have the little cake with sugar on it." "me loves parpar," said the artful one, preparing to climb the paternal knee and revel in forbidden joys. but john shook his head, and said to meg. . . "if you told him to stay up there, and go to sleep alone, make him do it, or he will never learn to mind you." "yes, of course. come, demi." and meg led her son away, feeling a strong desire to spank the little marplot who hopped beside her, laboring under the delusion that the bribe was to be administered as soon as they reached the nursery. nor was he disappointed, for that shortsighted woman actually gave him a lump of sugar, tucked him into his bed, and forbade any more promenades till morning. "iss!" said demi the perjured, blissfully sucking his sugar, and regarding his first attempt as eminently successful. meg returned to her place, and supper was progressing pleasantly, when the little ghost walked again and exposed the maternal delinquencies by boldly demanding, "more sudar, marmar." "now this won't do," said john, hardening his heart against the engaging little sinner. "we shall never know any peace till that child learns togo to bed properly. you have made a slave of yourself long enough. give him one lesson, and then there will be an end of it. put him in his bed and leave him, meg." "he won't stay there, he never does unless i sit by him." "i'll manage him. demi, go upstairs, and get into your bed, as mamma bids you." "s'ant!" replied the young rebel, helping himself to the coveted `cakie', and beginning to eat the same with calm audacity. "you must never say that to papa. i shall carry you if you don't go yourself." "go 'way, me don't love parpar." and demi retired to his mother's skirts for protection. but even that refuge proved unavailing, for he was delivered over to the enemy, with a "be gentle with him, john," which struck the culprit with dismay, for when mamma deserted him, then the judgment day was at hand. bereft of his cake, defrauded of his frolic, and borne away by a strong hand to that detested bed, poor demi could not restrain his wrath, but openly defied papa, and kicked and screamed lustily all the way upstairs. the minute he was put into bed on one side, he rolled out on the other, and made for the door, only to be ignominiously caught up by the tail of his little toga and put back again, which lively performance was kept up till the young man's strength gave out, when he devoted himself to roaring at the top of his voice. this vocal exercise usually conquered meg, but john sat as unmoved as the post which is popularly believed to be deaf. no coaxing, no sugar, no lullaby, no story, even the light was put out and only the red glow of the fire enlivened the `big dark' which demi regarded with curiosity rather than fear. this new order of things disgusted him, and he howled dismally for `marmar', as his angry passions subsided, and recollections of his tender bondwoman returned to the captive autocrat. the plaintive wail which succeeded the passionate roar went to meg's heart, and she ran up to say beseechingly . . . "let me stay with him, he'll be good now, john." "no, my dear. i've told him he must go to sleep, as you bid him, and he must, if i stay here all night." "but he'll cry himself sick," pleaded meg, reproaching herself for deserting her boy. "no, he won't, he's so tired he will soon drop off and then the matter is settled, for he will understand that he has got to mind. don't interfere, i'll manage him." "he's my child, and i can't have his spirit broken by harshness." "he's my child, and i won't have his temper spoiled by indulgence. go down, my dear, and leave the boy to me." when john spoke in that masterful tone, meg always obeyed, and never regretted her docility. "please let me kiss him once, john?" "certainly. demi, say good night to mamma, and let her go and rest, for she is very tired with taking care of you all day." meg always insisted upon it that the kiss won the victory, for after it was given, demi sobbed more quietly, and lay quite still at the bottom of the bed, whither he had wriggled in his anguish of mind. "poor little man, he's worn out with sleep and crying. i'll cover him up, and then go and set meg's heart at rest." thought john, creeping to the bedside, hoping to find his rebellious heir asleep. but he wasn't, for the moment his father peeped at him, demi's eyes opened, his little chin began to quiver, and he put up his arms, saying with a penitent hiccough, "me's dood, now." sitting on the stairs outside meg wondered at the long silence which followed the uproar, and after imagining all sorts of impossible accidents, she slipped into the room to set her fears at rest. demi lay fast asleep, not in his usual spreadeagle attitude, but in a subdued bunch, cuddled close in the circle of his father's arm and holding his father's finger, as if he felt that justice was tempered with mercy, and had gone to sleep a sadder and wiser baby. so held, john had waited with a womanly patience till the little hand relaxed its hold, and while waiting had fallen asleep, more tired by that tussle with his son than with his whole day's work. as meg stood watching the two faces on the pillow, she smiled to herself, and then slipped away again, saying in a satisfied tone, "i never need fear that john will be too harsh with my babies. he does know how to manage them, and will be a great help, for demi is getting too much for me." when john came down at last, expecting to find a pensive or reproachful wife, he was agreeably surprised to find meg placidly trimming a bonnet, and to be greeted with the request to read something about the election, if he was not too tired. john saw in a minute that a revolution of some kind was going on, but wisely asked no questions, knowing that meg was such a transparent little person, she couldn't keep a secret to save her life, and therefore the clue would soon appear. he read a long debate with the most amiable readiness and then explained it in his most lucid manner, while meg tried to look deeply interested, to ask intelligent questions, and keep her thoughts from wandering from the state of the nation to the state of her bonnet. in her secret soul, however, she decided that politics were as bad as mathematics, and the the mission of politicians seemed to be calling each other names, but she kept these feminine ideas to herself, and when john paused, shook her head and said with what she thought diplomatic ambiguity, "well, i really don't see what we are coming to." john laughed, and watched her for a minute, as she poised a pretty little preparation of lace and flowers on her hand, and regarded it with the genuine interest which his harangue had failed to waken. "she is trying to like politics for my sake, so i'll try and like millinery for hers, that's only fair," thought john the just, adding aloud, "that's very pretty. is it what you call a breakfast cap?" "my dear man, it's a bonnet! my very best go-to-concertand-theater bonnet." "i beg your pardon, it was so small, i naturally mistook it for one of the flyaway things you sometimes wear. how do you keep it on?" "these bits of lace are fastened under the chin with a rosebud, so." and meg illustrated by putting on the bonnet and regarding him with an air of calm satisfaction that was irresistible. "it's a love of a bonnet, but i prefer the face inside, for it looks young and happy again." and john kissed the smiling face, to the great detriment of the rosebud under the chin. "i'm glad you like it, for i want you to take me to one of the new concerts some night. i really need some music to put me in tune. will you, please?" "of course i will, with all my heart, or anywhere else you like. you have been shut up so long, it will do you no end of good, and i shall enjoy it, of all things. what put it into your head, little mother?" "well, i had a talk with marmee the other day, and told her how nervous and cross and out of sorts i felt, and she said i needed change and less care, so hannah is to help me with the children, and i'm to see to things about the house more, and now and then have a little fun, just to keep me from getting to be a fidgety, broken-down old woman before my time. it's only an experiment, john, and i want to try it for your sake as much as for mine, because i've neglected you shamefully lately, and i'm going to make home what it used to be, if i can. you don't object, i hope?" never mind what john said, or what a very narrow escape the little bonnet had from utter ruin. all that we have any business to know is that john did not appear to object, judging from the changes which gradually took place in the house and its inmates. it was not all paradise by any means, but everyone was better for the division of labor system. the children throve under the paternal rule, for accurate, stedfast john brought order and obedience into babydom, while meg recovered her spirits and composed her nerves by plenty of wholesome exercise, a little pleasure, and much confidential conversation with her sensible husband. home grew homelike again, and john had no wish to leave it, unless he took meg with him. the scotts came to the brookes' now, and everyone found the little house a cheerful place, full of happiness, content, and family love. even sallie moffatt liked to go there. "it is always so quiet and pleasant here, it does me good, meg," she used to say, looking about her with wistful eyes, as if trying to discover the charm, that she might use it in her great house, full of splendid lonliness, for there were no riotous, sunny-faced babies there, and ned lived in a world of lis own, where there was no place for her. this household happiness did not come all at once, but john and meg had found the key to it, and each year of married life taught them how to use it, unlocking the treasuries of real home love and mutual helpfulness, which the poorest may possess, and the richest cannot buy. this is the sort of shelf on which young wives and mothers may consent to be laid, safe from the restless fret and fever of the world, finding loyal lovers in the little sons and daughters who cling to them, undaunted by sorrow, poverty, or age, walking side by side, through fair and stormy weather, with a faithful friend, who is, in the true sense of the good old saxon word, the `house-band', and learning, as meg learned, that a woman's happiest kingdom is home, her highest honor the art of ruling it not as a queen, but as a wise wife and mother. chapter thirty-nine laurie went to nice intending to stay a week, and remained a month. he was tired of wandering about alone, and amy's familiar presence seemed to give a homelike charm to the foreign scenes in which she bore a part. he rather missed the `petting' he used to receive, and enjoyed a taste of it again, for no attentions, however flattering, from strangers, were half so pleasant as the sisterly adoration of the girls at home. amy never would pet him like the others, but she was very glad to see him now, and quite clung to him, feeling that he was the representative of the dear family for whom she longed more than she would confess. they naturally took comfort in each other's society and were much together, riding, walking, dancing, or dawdling, for at nice no one can be very industrious during the gay season. but, while apparently amusing themselves in the most careless fashion, they were half-consciously making discoveries and forming opinions about each other. amy rose daily in the estimation of her friend, but he sank in hers, and each felt the truth before a word was spoken. amy tried to please, and succeeded, for she was grateful for the many pleasures he gave her, and repaid him with the little services to which womanly women know how to lend an indescribable charm. laurie made no effort of any kind, but just let himself drift along as comfortably as possible, trying to forget, and feeling that all women owed him a kind word because one had been cold to him. it cost him no effort to be generous, and he would have given amy all the trinkets in nice if she would have taken them, but at the same time he felt that he could not change the opinion she was forming of him, and he rather dreaded the keen blue eyes that seemed to watch him with such half-sorrowful, half-scornful surprise. "all the rest have gone to monaco for the day. i preferred to stay at home and write letters. they are done now, and i am going to valrosa to sketch, will you come?' said amy, as she joined laurie one lovely day when he lounged in as usual about noon. "well, yes, but isn't it rather warm for such a long walk?" he answered slowly, for the shaded salon looked inviting after the glare without. "i'm going to have the little carriage, and baptiste can drive, so you'll have nothing to do but hold your umbrella, and keep your gloves nice," returned amy, with a sarcastic glance at the immaculate kids, which were a weak point with laurie. "then i'll go with pleasure." and he put out his hand for her sketchbook. but she tucked it under her arm with a sharp . . . "don't trouble yourself. it's no exertion to me, but you don't look equal to it." laurie lifted his eyebrows and followed at a leisurely pace as she ran downstairs, but when they got into the carriage he took the reins himself, and left little baptiste nothing to do but fold his arms and fall asleep on his perch. the two never quarreled. amy was too well-bred, and just now laurie was too lazy, so in a minute he peeped under her hatbrim with an inquiring air. she answered him with a smile, and they went on together in the most amicable manner. it was a lovely drive, along winding roads rich in the picturesque scenes that delight beauty-loving eyes. here an ancient monastery, whence the solemn chanting of the monks came down to them. there a bare-legged shepherd, in wooden shoes, pointed hat, and rough jacket over one shoulder, sat piping on a stone while his goats skipped among the rocks or lay at his feet. meek, mouse-colored donkeys, laden with panniers of freshly cut grass passed by, with a pretty girl in a capaline sitting between the green piles, or an old woman spinning with a distaff as she went. brown, soft-eyed children ran out from the quaint stone hovels to offer nosegays, or bunches of oranges still on the bough. gnarled olive trees covered the hills with their dusky foliage, fruit hung golden in the orchard, and great scarlet anemones fringed the roadside, while beyond green slopes and craggy heights, the maritime alps rose sharp and white against the blue italian sky. valrosa well deserved its name, for in that climate of perpetual summer roses blossomed everywhere. they overhung the archway, thrust themselves between the bars of the great gate with a sweet welcome to passers-by, and lined the avenue, winding through lemon trees and feathery palms up to the villa on the hill. every shadowy nook, where seats invited one to stop and rest, was a mass of bloom, every cool grotto had its marble nymph smiling from a veil of flowers and every fountain reflected crimson, white, or pale pink roses, leaning down to smile at their own beauty. roses covered the walls of the house, draped the cornices, climbed the pillars, and ran riot over the balustrade of the wide terrace, whence one looked down on the sunny mediterranean, and the whitewalled city on its shore. "this is a regular honeymoon paradise, isn't it? did you ever see such roses?" asked amy, pausing on the terrace to enjoy the view, and a luxurious whiff of perfume that came wandering by. "no, nor felt such thorns," returned laurie, with his thumb in his mouth, after a vain attempt to capture a solitary scarlet flower that grew just beyond his reach. "try lower down, and pick those that have no thorns," said amy, gathering three of the tiny cream-colored ones that starred the wall behind her. she put them in his buttonhole as a peace offering, and he stood a minute looking down at them with a curious expression, for in the italian part of his nature there was a touch of superstition, and he was just then in that state of half-sweet, half-bitter melancholy, when imaginative young men find significance in trifles and food for romance everywhere. he had thought of jo in reaching after the thorny red rose, for vivid flowers became her, and she had often worn ones like that from the greenhouse at home. the pale roses amy gave him were the sort that the italians lay in dead hands, never in bridal wreaths, and for a moment he wondered if the omen was for jo or for himself, but the next instant his american common sense got the better of sentimentality, and he laughed a heartier laugh than amy had heard since he came. "it's good advice, you'd better take it and save your fingers," she said, thinking her speech amused him. "thank you, i will," he answered in jest, and a few months later he did it in earnest. "laurie, when are you going to your grandfather?" she asked presently, as she settled herself on a rustic seat. "very soon." "you have said that a dozen times within the last three weeks." "i dare say, short answers save trouble." "he expects you, and you really ought to go." "hospitable creature! i know it." "then why don't you do it?" "natural depravity, i suppose." "natural indolence, you mean. it's really dreadful!" and amy looked severe. "not so bad as it seems, for i should only plague him if i went, so i might as well stay and plague you a little longer, you can bear it better, in fact i think it agrees with you excellently." and laurie composed himself for a lounge on the broad ledge of the balustrade. amy shook her head and opened her sketchbook with an air of resignation, but she had made up her mind to lecture `that boy' and in a minute she began again. "what are you doing just now?" "watching lizards." "no, no. i mean what do you intend and wish to do?" "smoke a cigarette, if you'll allow me." "how provoking you are! i don't approve of cigars and i will only allow it on condition that you let me put you into my sketch. i need a figure." "with all the pleasure in life. how will you have me, fulllength or three-quarters, on my head or my heels? i should respectfully suggest a recumbent posture, then put yourself in also and call it `dolce far niente'." "stay as you are, and go to sleep if you like. i intend to work hard," said amy in her most energetic tone. "what delightful enthusiasm!" and he leaned against a tall urn with an ir of entire satisfaction. "what would jo say if she saw you now?" asked amy impatiently, hoping to stir him up by the mention of her still more energetic sister's name. "as usual, `go away, teddy. i'm busy!'" he laughed as he spoke, but the laugh was not natural, and a shade passed over his face, for the utterance of the familiar name touched the wound that was not healed yet. both tone and shadow struck amy, for she had seen and heard them before, and now she looked up in time to catch a new expression on laurie's face--a hard bitter look, full of pain, dissatisfaction, and regret. it was gone before she could study it and the listless expression back again. she watched him for a moment with artistic pleasure, thinking how like an italian he looked, as he lay basking in the sun with uncovered head and eyes full of southern dreaminess, for he seemed to have forgotten her and fallen into a reverie. "you look like the effigy of a young knight asleep on his tomb," she said, carefully tracing the well-cut profile defined against the dark stone. "wish i was!" "that's a foolish wish, unless you have spoiled your life. you are so changed, i sometimes think--" there amy stopped, with a half-timid, half-wistful look, more significant than her unfinished speech. laurie saw and understood the affectionate anxiety which she hesitated to express, and looking straight into her eyes, said, just as he used to say it to her mother, "it's all right, ma'am." that satisfied her and set at rest the doubts that had begun to worry her lately. it also touched her, and she showed that it did, by the cordial tone in which she said . . . "i'm glad of that! i didn't think you'd been a very bad boy, but i fancied you might have wasted money at that wicked baden-baden, lost your heart to some charming frenchwoman with a husband, or got into some of the scrapes that young men seem to consider a necessary part of a foreign tour. don't stay out there in the sun, come and lie on the grass here and `let us be friendly', as jo used to say when we got in the sofa corner and told secrets." laurie obediently threw himself down on the turf, and began to amuse himself by sticking daisies into the ribbons of amy's hat, that lay there. "i'm all ready for the secrets." and he glanced up with a decided expression of interest in his eyes. "i've none to tell. you may begin." "haven't one to bless myself with. i thought perhaps you'd had some news from home.." "you have heard all that has come lately. don't you hear often? i fancied jo would send you volumes." "she's very busy. i'm roving about so, it's impossible to be regular, you know. when do you begin your great work of art, raphaella?' he asked. changing the subject abruptly after another pause, in which he had been wondering if amy knew his secret and wanted to talk about it. "never," she answered, with a despondent but decided air. "rome took all the vanity out of me, for after seeing the wonders there, i felt too insignificant to live and gave up all my foolish hopes in despair." "why should you, with so much energy and talent?" "that's just why, because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. i want to be great,or nothing. i won't be a common-place dauber, so i don't intend to try any more." "and what are you going to do with yourself now, if i may ask?" "polish up my other talents, and be an ornament to society, if i get the chance." it was a characteristic speech, and sounded daring, but audacity becomes young people, and amy's ambition had a good foundation. laurie smiled, but he liked the spirit with which she took up a new purpose when a long-cherished one died, and spent no time lamenting. "good! and here is where fred vaughn comes in, i fancy." amy preserved a discreet silence, but there was a conscious look in her downcast face that made laurie sit up and say gravely, "now i'm going to play brother, and ask questions. may i?" "i don't promise to answer." "your face will, if your tongue won't. you aren't woman of the world enough yet to hide your feelings, my dear. i heard rumors about fred and you last year, and it's my private opinion that if he had not been called home so suddenly and detained so long, something would have come of it, hey?" "that's not for me to say," was amy's grim reply, but her lips would smile, and there was a traitorous sparkle of the eye which betrayed that she knew her power and enjoyed the knowledge. "you are not engaged, i hope?" and laurie looked very elder-brotherly and grave all of a sudden. "no." "but you will be, if he comes back and goes properly down on his knees, won't you?" "very likely." "then you are fond of old fred?" "i could be, if i tried." "but you don't intend to try till the proper moment? bless my soul, what unearthly prudence! he's a good fellow, amy, but not the man i fancied you'd like." "he is rich, a gentleman, and has delightful manners," began amy, trying to be quite cool and dignified, but feeling a little ashamed of herself, in spite of the sincerity of her intentions. "i understand. queens of society can't get on without money, so you mean to make a good match, and start in that way? quite right and proper, as the world goes, but it sounds odd from the lips of one of your mother's girls." "true, nevertheless." a short speech, but the quiet decision with which it was uttered contrasted curiously with the young speaker. laurie felt this instinctively and laid himself down again, with a sense of disappointment which he could not explain. his look and silence, as well as a certain inward self-disapproval, ruffled amy, and made her resolve to deliver her lecture without delay. "i wish you'd do me the favor to rouse yourself a little," she said sharply. "do it for me, there's a dear girl." "i could, if i tried." and she looked as if she would like doing it in the most summary style. "try, then. i give you leave," returned laurie, who enjoyed having someone to tease, after his long abstinence from his favorite pastime. "you'd be angry in five minutes." "i'm never angry with you. it takes two flints to make a fire. you are as cool and soft as snow." "you don't know what i can do. snow produces a glow and a tingle, if applied rightly. your indifference is half affectation, and a good stirring up would prove it." "stir away, it won't hurt me and it may amuse you, as the big man said when his little wife beat him. regard me in the light of a husband or a carpet, and beat till you are tired, if that sort of exercise agrees with you." being decidedly nettled herself, and longing to see him shake off the apathy that so altered him, amy sharpened both tongue and pencil, and began. "flo and i have got a new name for you. it's lazy laurence. how do you like it?" she thought it would annoy him, but he only folded his arms under his head, with an imperturbable, "that's not bad. thank you, ladies." "do you want to know what i honestly think of you?" "pining to be told." "well, i despise you." if she had even said `i hate you' in a petulant or coquettish tone, he would have laughed and rather liked it, but the grave, almost sad, accent in her voice made him open his eyes, and ask quickly . . . "why, if you please?" "because, with every chance for being good, useful, and happy, you are faulty, lazy, and miserable." "strong language, mademoiselle." "if you like it, i'll go on." "pray do, it's quite interesting." "i thought you'd find it so. selfish people always like to talk about themselves." "am i selfish?" the question slipped out involuntarily and in a tone of surprise, for the one virtue on which he prided himself was generosity. "yes, very selfish," continued amy, in a calm, cool voice, twice as effective just then as an angry one. "i'll show you how, for i've studied you while we were frolicking, and i'm not at all satisfied with you. here you have been abroad nearly six months, and done nothing but waste time and money and disappoint your friends." "isn't a fellow to have any pleasure after a four-year grind?" "you don't look as if you'd had much. at any rate, you are none the better for it, as far as i can see. i said when we first met that you had improved. now i take it all back, for i don't think you half so nice as when i left you at home. you have grown abominably lazy, you like gossip, and waste time on frivolous things, you are contented to be petted and admired by silly people, instead of being loved and respected by wise ones. with money, talent, position, health, and beauty, ah you like that old vanity! but it's the truth, so i can't help saying it, with all these splendid things to use and enjoy, you can find nothing to do but dawdle, and instead of being the man you ought to be, you are only . . ." there she stopped, with a look that had both pain and pity in it. "saint laurence on a gridiron," added laurie, blandly finishing the sentence. but the lecture began to take effect, for there was a wide-awake sparkle in his eyes now and a half-angry, half-injured expression replaced the former indifference. "i supposed you'd take it so. you men tell us we are angels, and say we can make you what we will, but the instant we honestly try to do you good, you laugh at us and won't listen, which proves how much your flattery is worth." amy spoke bitterly, and turned her back on the exasperating martyr at her feet. in a minute a hand came down over the page, so that she could not draw, and laurie's voice said, with a droll imitation of a penitent child, "i will be good, oh, i will be good!" but amy did not laugh, for she was in earnest, and tapping on the outspread hand with her pencil, said soberly, "aren't you ashamed of a hand like that? it's as soft and white as a woman's, and looks as if it never did anything but wear jouvin's best gloves and pick flowers for ladies. you are not a dandy, thank heaven, so i'm glad to see there are no diamonds or big seal rings on it, only the little old one jo gave you so long ago. dear soul, i wish she was here to help me!" "so do i!" the hand vanished as suddenly as it came, and there was energy enough in the echo of her wish to suit even amy. she glanced down at him with a new thought in her mind, but he was lying with his hat half over his face, as if for shade, and his mustache hid his mouth. she only saw his chest rise and fall, with a long breath that might have been a sigh, and the hand that wore the ring nestled down into the grass, as if to hide something too precious or too tender to be spoken of. all in a minute various hints and trifles assumed shape and significance in amy's mind, and told her what her sister never had confided to her. she remembered that laurie never spoke voluntarily of jo, she recalled the shadow on his face just now, the change in his character, and the wearing of the little old ring which was no ornament to a handsome hand. girls are quick to read such signs and feel their eloquence. amy had fancied that perhaps a love trouble was at the bottom of the alteration, and now she was sure of it. her keen eyes filled, and when she spoke again, it was in a voice that could be beautifully soft and kind when she chose to make it so. "i know i have no right to talk so to you, laurie, and if you weren't the sweetest-tempered fellow in the world, you'd be very angry with me. but we are all so fond and proud of you, i couldn't bear to think they should be disappointed in you at home as i have been, though, perhaps they would understand the change better than i do." "i think they would," came from under the hat, in a grim tone, quite as touching as a broken one. "they ought to have told me, and not let me go blundering and scolding, when i should have been more kind and patient than ever. i never did like that miss randal and now i hate her!" said artful amy, wishing to be sure of her facts this time. "hang miss randal!" and laurie knocked the hat off his face with a look that left no doubt of his sentiments toward that young lady. "i beg pardon, i thought . . ." and there she paused diplomatically. "no, you didn't, you knew perfectly well i never cared for anyone but jo," laurie said that in his old, impetuous tone, and turned his face away as he spoke. "i did think so, but as they never said anything about it, and you came away, i supposed i was mistaken. and jo wouldn't be kind to you? why, i was sure she loved you dearly." "she was kind, but not in the right way, and it's lucky for her she didn't love me, if i'm the good-for-nothing fellow you think me. it's her fault though, and you may tell her so." the hard, bitter look came back again as he said that, and it troubled amy, for she did not know what balm to apply. "i was wrong, i didn't know. i'm very sorry i was so cross, but i can't help wishing you'd bear it better, teddy, dear." "don't, that's her name for me!" and laurie put up his hand with a quick gesture to stop the words spoken in jo's half-kind, half-reproachful tone. "wait till you've tried it yourself," he added in a low voice, as he pulled up the grass by the handful. "i'd take it manfully, and be respected if i couldn't be loved," said amy, with the decision of one who knew nothing about it. now, laurie flattered himself that he had borne it remarkably well, making no moan, asking no sympathy, and taking his trouble away to live it down alone. amy's lecture put the matter in a new light, and for the first time it did look weak and selfish to lose heart at the first failure, and shut himself up in moody indifference. he felt as if suddenly shaken out of a pensive dream and found it impossible to go to sleep again. presently he sat up and asked slowly, "do you think jo would despise me as you do?" "yes, if she saw you now. she hates lazy people. why don't you do something splendid, and make her love you?" "i did my best, but it was no use." "graduating well, you mean? that was no more than you ought to have done, for your grandfather's sake. it would have been shameful to fail after spending so much time and money, when everyone knew that you could do well." "i did fail, say what you will, for jo wouldn't love me," began laurie, leaning his head on his hand in a despondent attitude. "no, you didn't, and you'll say so in the end, for it did you good, and proved that you could do something if you tried. if you'd only set about another task of some sort, you'd soon be your hearty, happy self again, and forget your trouble." "that's impossible." "try it and see. you needn't shrug your shoulders, and think, `much she knows about such things'. i don't pretend to be wise, but i am observing, and i see a great deal more than you'd imagine. i'm interested in other people's experiences and inconsistencies, and though i can't explain, i remember and use them for my own benefit. love jo all your days, if you choose, but don't let it spoil you, for it's wicked to throw away so many good gifts because you can't have the one you want. there, i won't lecture any more, for i know you'll wake up and be a man in spite of that hardhearted girl." neither spoke for several minutes. laurie sat turning the little ring on his finger, and amy put the last touches to the hasty sketch she had been working at while she talked. presently she put it on his knee, merely saying, "how do you like that?" he looked and then he smiled, as he could not well help doing, for it was capitally done, the long, lazy figure on the grass, with listless face, half-shut eyes, and one hand holding a cigar, from which came the little wreath of smoke that encircled the dreamer's head. "how well you draw!" he said, with a genuine surprise and pleasure at her skill, adding, with a half-laugh, "yes, that's me." "as you are. this is as you were." and amy laid another sketch beside the one he held. it was not nearly so well done, but there was a life and spirit in it which atoned for many faults, and it recalled the past so vividly that a sudden change swept over the young man's face as he looked. only a rough sketch of laurie taming a horse. hat and coat were off, and every line of the active figure, resolute face, and commanding attitude was full of energy and meaning. the handsome brute, just subdued, stood arching his neck under the tightly drawn rein, with one foot impatiently pawing the ground, and ears pricked up as if listening for the voice that had mastered him. in the ruffled mane. the rider's breezy hair and erect attitude, there was a suggestion of suddenly arrested motion, of strength, courage, and youthful buoyancy that contrasted sharply with the supine grace of the `dolce far niente' sketch. laurie said nothing but as his eye went from one to the other, amy say him flush up and fold his lips together as if he read and accepted the little lesson she had given him. that satisfied her, and without waiting for him to speak, she said, in her sprightly way . . . "don't you remember the day you played rarey with puck, and we all looked on? meg and beth were frightened, but jo clapped and pranced, and i sat on the fence and drew you. i found that sketch in my portfolio the other day, touched it up, and kept it to show you." "much obliged. you've improved immensely since then, and i congratulate you. may i venture to suggest in ` a honeymoon paradise' that five o'clock is the dinner hour at your hotel?" laurie rose as he spoke, returned the pictures with a smile and a bow and looked at his watch, as if to remind her that even moral lectures should have an end. he tried to resume his former easy, indifferent air, but it was an affectation now, for the rousing had been more effacious than he would confess. amy felt the shade of coldness in his manner, and said to herself . .. "now, i've offended him. well, if it does him good, i'm glad, if it makes him hate me, i'm sorry, but it's true, and i can't take back a word of it." they laughed and chatted all the way home, and little baptist, up behind, thought that monsieur and madamoiselle were in charming spirits. but both felt ill at ease. the friendly frankness was disturbed, the sunshine had a shadow over it, and despite their apparent gaiety, there was a secret discontent in the heart of each. "shall we see you this evening, mon frere?" asked amy, as they parted at her aunt's door. "unfortunately i have an engagement. au revoir, madamoiselle." and laurie bent as if to kiss her hand, in the foreign fashion, which became him better than many men. something in his face made amy say quickly and warmly . . . "no, be yourself with me, laurie, and part in the good old way. i'd rather have a hearty english handshake than all the sentimental salutations in france." "goodbye, dear." and with these words, uttered in the tone she liked, laurie left her, after a handshake almost painful in its heartiness. next morning, instead of the usual call, amy received a note which made her smile at the beginning and sigh at the end. my dear mentor, please make my adieux to your aunt, and exult within yourself, for `lazy laurence' has gone to his grandpa, like the best of boys. a pleasant winter to you, and may the gods grant you a blissful honeymoon at valrosa! i think fred would be benefited by a rouser. tell him so, with my congratulations. yours gratefully, telemachus "good boy! i'm glad he's gone," said amy, with an approving smile. the next minute her face fell as she glanced about the empty room, adding, with an involuntary sigh, "yes, i am glad, but how i shall miss him." chapter forty when the first bitterness was over, the family accepted the inevitable, and tried to bear it cheerfully, helping one another by the increased affection which comes to bind households tenderly together in times of trouble. they put away their grief, and each did his or her part toward making that last year a happy one. the pleasantest room in the house was set apart for beth, and in it was gathered everything that she most loved, flowers, pictures, her piano, the little worktable, and the beloved pussies. father's best books found their way there, mother's easy chair, jo's desk, amy's finest sketches, and every day meg brought her babies on a loving pilgrimage, to make sunshine for aunty beth. john quietly set apart a little sum, that he might enjoy the pleasure of keeping the invalid supplied with the fruit she loved and longed for. old hannah never wearied of concocting dainty dishes to tempt a capricious appetite, dropping tears as she worked, and from across the sea came little gifts and cheerful letters, seeming to bring breaths of warmth and fragrance from lands that know no winter. here, cherished like a household saint in its shrine, sat beth, tranquil and busy as ever, for nothing could change the sweet, unselfish nature, and even while preparing to leave life, she tried to make it happier for those who should remain behind. the feeble fingers were never idle, and one of her pleasures was to make little things for the school children daily passing to and fro, to drop a pair of mittens from her window for a pair of purple hands, a needlebook for some small mother of many dolls, penwipers for young penmen toiling through forests of pothooks, scrapbooks for picture-loving eyes, and all manner of pleasant devices, till the reluctant climbers of the ladder of learning found their way strewn with flowers, as it were, and came to regard the gentle giver as a sort of fairy godmother, who sat above there, and showered down gifts miraculously suited to their tastes and needs. if beth had wanted any reward, she found it in the bright little faces always turned up to her window, with nods and smiles, and the droll little letters which came to her, full of blots and gratitude. the first few months were very happy ones, and beth often used to look round, and say "how beautiful this is!" as they all sat together in her sunny room, the babies kicking and crowing on the floor, mother and sisters working near, and father reading, in his pleasant voice,from the wise old books which seemed rich in good and comfortable words, as applicable now as when written centuries ago, a little chapel, where a paternal priest taught his flock the hard lessons all must learn, trying to show them that hope can comfort love, and faith make resignation possible. simple sermons, that went straight to the souls of those who listened, for the father's heart was in the minister's religion, and the frequent falter in the voice gave a double eloquence to the words he spoke or read. it was well for all that this peaceful time was given them as preparation for the sad hours to come, for by-and-by, beth said the needle was `so heavy', and put it down forever. talking wearied her, faces troubled her, pain claimed her for its own, and her tranquil spirit was sorrowfully perturbed by the ills that vexed her feeble flesh. ah me! such heavy days, such long, long nights, such aching hearts and imploring prayers, when those who loved her best were forced to see the thin hands stretched out to them beseechingly, to hear the bitter cry, "help me, help me!" and to feel that there was no help. a sad eclipse of the serene soul, a sharp struggle of the young life with death, but both were mercifully brief, and then the natural rebellion over, the old peace returned more beautiful than ever. with the wreck of her frail body, beth's soul grew strong, and though she said little, those about her felt that she was ready, saw that the first pilgrim called was likewise the fittest, and waited with her on the shore, trying to see the shining ones coming to receive her when she crossed the river. jo never left her for an hour since beth had said "i feel stronger when you are here." she slept on a couch in the room, waking often to renew the fire, to feed, lift, or wait upon the patient creature who seldom asked for anything, and `tried not to be a trouble'. all day she haunted the room, jealous of any other nurse, and prouder of being chosen then than of any honor her life ever brought her. precious and helpful hours to jo, for now her heart received the teaching that it needed. lessons in patience were so sweetly taught her that she could not fail to learn them, charity for all, the lovely spirit that can forgive and truly forget unkindness, the loyalty to duty that makes the hardest easy, and the sincere faith that fears nothing, but trusts undoubtingly. often when she woke jo found beth reading in her well-worn little book, heard her singing softly, to beguile the sleepless night, or saw her lean her face upon her hands, while slow tears dropped through the transparent fingers, and jo would lie watching her with thoughts too deep for tears, feeling that beth, in her simple, unselfish way, was trying to wean herself from the dear old life, and fit herself for the life to come, by sacred words of comfort, quiet prayers, and the music she loved so well. seeing this did more for jo than the wisest sermons, the saintliest hymns, the most fervent prayers that any voice could utter. for with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister's life--uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which `smell sweet, and blossom in the dust', the self-forgetfulness that makes the humblest on earth remembered soonest in heaven, the true success which is possible to all. one night when beth looked among the books upon her table, to find something to make her forget the mortal weariness that was almost as hard to bear as pain, as she turned the leaves of her old favorite, pilgrims's progress, she found a little paper, scribbled over in jo's hand. the name caught her eye and the blurred look of the lines made her sure that tears had fallen on it. "poor jo! she's fast asleep, so i won't wake her to ask leave. she shows me all her things, and i don't think she'll mind if i look at this", thought beth, with a glance at her sister, who lay on the rug, with the tongs beside her, ready to wake up the minute the log fell apart. my beth sitting patient in the shadow till the blessed light shall come, a serene and saintly presence sanctifies our troubled home. earthly joys and hopes and sorrows break like ripples on the strand of the deep and solemn river where her willing feet now stand. o my sister, passing from me, out of human care and strife, leave me, as a gift, those virtues which have beautified your life. dear, bequeath me that great patience which has power to sustain a cheerful, uncomplaining spirit in its prison-house of pain. give me, for i need it sorely, of that courage, wise and sweet, which has made the path of duty green beneath your willing feet. give me that unselfish nature, that with charity devine can pardon wrong for love's dear sake- meek heart, forgive me mine! thus our parting daily loseth something of its bitter pain, and while learning this hard lesson, my great loss becomes my gain. for the touch of grief will render my wild nature more serene, give to life new aspirations, a new trust in the unseen. henceforth, safe across the river, i shall see forever more a beloved, household spirit waiting for me on the shore. hope and faith, born of my sorrow, guardian angels shall become, and the sister gone before me by their hands shall lead me home. blurred and blotted, faulty and feeble as the lines were, they brought a look of inexpressible comfort to beth's face, for her one regret had been that she had done so little, and this seemed to assure her that her life had not been useless, that her death would not bring the despair she feared. as she sat with the paper folded between her hands, the charred log fell asunder. jo started up, revived the blaze, and crept to the bedside, hoping beth slept. "not asleep, but so happy, dear. see, i found this and read it. i knew you wouldn't care. have i been all that to you, jo?" she asked, with wistful, humble earnestness. "oh, beth, so much, so much!" and jo's head went down upon the pillow beside her sister's. "then i don't feel as if i'd wasted my life. i'm not so good as you make me, but i have tried to do right. and now, when it's too late to begin even to do better, it's such a comfort to know that someone loves me so much, and feels as if i'd helped them." "more than any one in the world, beth. i used to think i couldn't let you go, but i'm learning to feel that i don't lose you, that you'll be more to me than ever, and death can't part us, though it seems to." "i know it cannot, and i don't fear it any longer, for i'm sure i shall be your beth still, to love and help you more than ever. you must take my place, jo, and be everything to father and mother when i'm gone. they will turn to you, don't fail them, and if it's hard to work alone, remember that i don't forget you, and that you'll be happier in doing that than writing splendid books or seeing all the world, for love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the go easy." "i'll try, beth." and then and there jo renounced her old ambition, pledged herself to a new and better one, acknowledging the poverty of other desires, and feeling the blessed solace of a belief in the immortality of love. so the spring days came and went , the sky grew clearer, the earth greener, the flowers were up fairly early, and the birds came back in time to say goodbye to beth, who, like a tired but trustful child, clung to the hands that had led her all her life, as father and mother guided her tenderly through the valley of the shadow, and gave her up to god. seldom except in books do the dying utter memorable words, see visions, or depart with beatified countenances, and those who have sped many parting souls know that to most the end comes as naturally and simply as sleep. as beth had hoped, the `tide went out easily', and in the dark hour before dawn, on the bosom where she had drawn her first breath, she quietly drew her last, with no farewell but one loving look, one little sigh. with tears and prayers and tender hands, mother and sisters made her ready for the long sleep that pain would never mar again, seeing with grateful eyes the beautiful serenity that soon replaced the pathetic patience that had wrung their hearts so long, and feeling with reverent joy that to their darling death was a benignant angel, not a phantom full of dread. when morning came, for the first time in many months the fire was out, jo's place was empty, and the room was very still. but a bird sang blithely on a budding bough, close by, the snowdrops blossomed freshly at the window, and the spring sunshine streamed in like a benediction over the placid face upon the pillow, a face so full of painless peace that those who loved it best smiled through their tears, and thanked god that beth was well at last. chapter forty-one amy's lecture did laurie good, though, of course, he did not own it till long afterward. men seldom do, for when women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. if it fails, they generously give her the whole. laurie went back to his grandfather, and was so dutifully devoted for several weeks that the old gentleman declared the climate of nice had improved him wonderfully, and he had better try it again. there was nothing the young gentleman would have liked better, but elephants could not have dragged him back after the scolding he had received. pride forbid, and whenever the longing grew very strong, he fortified his resolution by repeating the words that had made the deepest impression, "i despise you." "go and do something splendid that will make her love you." laurie turned the matter over in his mind so often that he soon brought himself to confess that he had been selfish and lazy, but then when a man has a great sorrow, he should be indulged in all sorts of vagaries till he has lived it down. he felt that his blighted affections were quite dead now, and though he should never cease to be a faithful mourner, there was no occasion to wear his weeds ostentatiously. jo wouldn't love him, but he might make her respect and admire him by doing something which should prove that a girl's no had not spoiled his life. he had always meant to do something, and amy's advice was quite unnecessary. he had only been waiting till the aforesaid blighted affections were decently interred. that being done, he felt that he was ready to `hide his stricken heart, and still toil on'. as goethe, when he had a joy or a grief, put it into a song, so laurie resolved to embalm his love sorrow in music, and to compose a requiem which should harrow up jo's soul and melt the heart of every hearer. therefore the next time the old gentleman found him getting restless and moody and ordered him off, he went to vienna, where he had musical friends, and fell to work with the firm determination to distinguish himself. but whether the sorrow was too vast to be embodied in music, or music too ethereal to uplift a mortal woe, he soon discovered that the requiem was beyond him just at present. it was evident that his mind was not in working order yet, and his ideas needed clarifying, for often in the middle of a plaintive strain, he would find himself humming a dancing tune that vividly recalled the christmas ball at nice, especially the stout frenchman, and put an effectual stop to tragic composition for the time being. then he tried an opera, for nothing seemed impossible in the beginning, but here again unforeseen difficulties beset him. he wanted jo for his heroine, and called upon his memory to supply him with tender recollections and romantic visions of his love. but memory turned traitor, and as if possessed by the perverse spirit of the girl, would only recall jo's oddities, faults, and freaks, would only show her in the most unsentimental aspects--beating mats with her head tied up in a bandana, barricading herself with the sofa pillow, or throwing cold water over his passion a la gummidge--and an irresistable laugh spoiled the pensive picture he was endeavoring to paint. jo wouldn't be put into the opera at any price, and he had to give her up with a "bless that girl, what a torment she is!" and a clutch at his hair, as became a distracted composer. when he looked about him for another and a less intractable damsel to immortalize in melody, memory produced one with the most obliging readiness. this phantom wore many faces, but it always had golden hair, was enveloped in a diaphanous cloud, and floated airily before his mind's eye in a pleasing chaos of roses, peacocks, white ponies, and blue ribbons. he did not give the complacent wraith any name, but he took her for his heroine and grew quite fond of her, as well he might, for he gifted her with every gift and grace under the sun, and escorted her, unscathed, through trials which would have annihilated any mortal woman. thanks to this inspiration, he got on swimmingly for a time, but gradually the work lost its charm, and he forgot to compose, while he sat musing, pen in hand, or roamed about the gay city to get some new ideas and refresh his mind, which seemed to be in a somewhat unsettled state that winter. he did not do much, but he thought a great deal and was conscious of a change of some sort going on in spite of himself. "it's genius simmering, perhaps. i'll let it simmer, and see what comes of it," he said, with a secret suspicion all the while that it wasn't genius, but something far more common. whatever it was, it simmered to some purpose, for he grew more and more discontented with his desultory life, began to long for some real and earnest work to go at, soul and body, and finally came to the wise conclusion that everyone who loved music was not a composer. returning from one of mozart's grand operas, splendidly performed at the royal theatre, he looked over his own, played a few of the best parts, sat staring at the busts of mendelssohn, beethoven, and bach, who stared benignly back again. then suddenly he tore up his music sheets, one by one, and as the last fluttered out of his hand, he said soberly to himself . . . "she is right! talent isn't genius, and you can't make it so. that music has taken the vanity out of my as rome took it out of her, and i won't be a humbug any longer. now what shall i do?" that seemed a hard question to answer, and laurie began to wish he had to work for his daily bread. now if ever, occurred an eligible opportunity for `going to the devil', as he once forcibly expressed it, for he had plenty of money and nothing to do, and satan is proverbially fond of providing employment for full and idle hands. the poor fellow had temptations enough from without and from within, but he withstood them pretty well, for much as he valued liberty, he valued good faith and confidence more, so his promise to his grandfather, and his desire to be able to look honestly into the eyes of the women who loved him, and say "all's well," kept him safe and steady. very likely some mrs. grundy will observe, "i don't believe it, boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats, and women must not expect miracles." i dare say you don't, mrs. grundy, but it's true nevertheless. women work a good many miracles, and i have a persuasion that they may perform even that of raising the standard of manhood by refusing to echo such sayings. let the boys be boys, the longer the better, and let the young men sow their wild oats if they must. but mothers, sisters, and friends may help to make the crop a small one, and keep many tares from spoiling the harvest, by believing, and showing that they believe, in the possibility of loyalty to the virtues which make men manliest in good women's eyes. if it is a feminine delusion, leave us to enjoy it while we may, for without it half the beauty and the romance of life is lost, and sorrowful forebodings would embitter all our hopes of the brave, tenderhearted little lads, who still love their mothers better than themselves and are not ashamed to own it. laurie thought that the task of forgetting his love for jo would absorb all his powers for years, but to his great surprise he discovered it grew easier every day. he refused to believe it at first, got angry with himself, and couldn't understand it, but these hearts of ours are curious and contrary things, and time and nature work their will in spite of us. laurie's heart wouldn't ache. the wound persisted in healing with a rapidity that astonished him, and instead of trying to forget, he found himself trying to remember. he had not foreseen this turn of affairs, and was not prepared for it. he was disgusted with himself, surprised at his own fickleness, and full of a queer mixture of disappointment and relief that he could recover from such a tremendous blow so soon. he carefully stirred up the embers of his lost love, but they refused to burst into a blaze. there was only a comfortable glow that warmed and did him good without putting him into a fever, and he was reluctantly obliged to confess that the boyish passion was slowly subbsiding into a more tranquil sentiment, very tender, a little sad and resentful still, but that was sure to pass away in time, leaving a brotherly affection which would last unbroken to the end. as the word `brotherly' passed through his mind in one of his reveries, he smiled, and glanced up at the picture of mozart that was before him . . . "well, he was a great man, and when he couldn't have one sister he took the other, and was happy." laurie did not utter the words, but he thought them, and the next instant kissed the little old ring, saying to himself, "no, i won't! i haven't forgotten, i never can. i'll try again, and if that fails, why then . . . leaving his sentence unfinished, he seized pen and paper and wrote to jo, telling her that he could not settle to anything while there was the least hope of her changing her mind. couldn't she, wouldn't she, and let him come home and be happy? while waiting for an answer he did nothing, but he did it energetically, for he was in a fever of impatience. it came at last, and settled his mind effectually on one point, for jo decidedly couldn't and wouldn't. she was wrapped up in beth, and never wished to hear the word love again. then she begged him to be happy with somebody else, but always keep a little corner of his ghart for his loving sister jo. in a postscript she desired him not to tell amy that beth was worse, she was coming home in the spring and there was no need of saddening the remainder of her stay. that would be time enough, please god, but laurie must write to her often, and not let her feel lonely, homesick or anxious. "so i will, at once. poor little girl, it will be a sad going home for her, i'm afraid." and laurie opened his desk, as if writing to amy had been the proper conclusion of the sentence left unfinished some weeks before. but he did not write the letter that day, for as he rummaged out his best paper, he came across something which changed his purpose. tumbling about in one part of the desk among bills, passports, and business documents of various kinds were several of jo's letters, and in another compartment were three notes from amy, carefully tied up with one of her blue ribbons and sweetly suggestive of the little dead roses put away inside. with a half-repentant, half-amused expression, laurie gathered up all jo's letters, smoothed, folded,and put them neatly into a small drawer of the desk, stood a minute turning the ring thoughtfully on his finger, then slowly drew it off, laid it with the letters, locked the drawer, and went out to hear high mass at saint stefan's, feeling as if there had been a funeral, and though not overwhelmed with affliction, this seemed a more proper way to spend the rest of the day than in writing letters to charming young ladies. the letter went very soon, however, and was promptly answered, for amy was homesick, and confessed it in the most delightfully confiding manner. the correspondence flourished famously, and letters flew to and fro with unfailing regularity all through the early spring. laurie sold his busts, made allumettes of his opera, and went back to paris, hoping somebody would arrive before long. he wanted desperately to go to nice, but would not till he was asked, and amy would not ask him, for just then she was having little experiences of her own, which made her rather wish to avoid the quizzical eyes of `out boy'. fred vaughn had returned, and put the question to which she had once decided to answer, "yes, thank you," but now she said, "no, thank you," kindly but steadily, for when the time came, her courage failed her, and she found that something more than money and position was needed to satisfy the new longing that filled her heart so full of tender hopes and fears. the words, "fred is a good fellow, but not at all the man i fancied you would ever like," and laurie's face when he uttered them, kept returning to her as pertinaciously as her own did when she said in look, if not in words, "i shall marry for money." it troubled her to remember that now, she wished she could take it back, it sounded so unwomanly. she didn't want laurie to think her a heartless, worldly creature. she didn't care to be a queen of society now half so much as she did to be a lovable woman. she was so glad he didn't hate her for the dreadful things she said, but took them so beautifully and was kinder than ever. his letters were such a comfort, for the home letters were very irregular and not half so satisfactory as his when they did come. it was not only a pleasure, but a duty to answer them, for the poor fellow was forlorn, and needed petting, since jo persisted in being stonyhearted. she ought to have made an effort and tried to love him. it couldn't be very hard, many people would be proud and glad to have such a dear boy care for them. but jo never would act like other girls, so there was nothing to do but be very kind and treat him like a brother. if all brothers were treated as well as laurie was at this period, they would be a much happier race of beings than they are. amy never lectured now. she asked his opinion on all subjects, she was interested in everything he did, made charming little presents for him, and sent him two letters a week, full of lively gossip, sisterly confidences, and captivating sketches of the lovely scenes about her. as few brothers are complimented by having their letters carried about in their sister's pockets, read and reread diligently, cried over when short, kissed when long, and treasured carefully, we will not hint that amy did any of these fond and foolish things. but she certainly did grow a little pale and pensive that spring, lost much of her relish for society, and went out sketching alone a good deal. she never had much to show when she came home, but was studying nature, i dare say, while she sat for hours, with her hands folded, on the terrace at valrosa, or absently sketched any fancy that occurred to her, a stalwart knight carved on a tomb, a young man asleep in the grass, with his hat over his eyes, or a curlyhaired girl in gorgeous array, promenading down a ballroom on the arm of a tall gentleman, both faces being left a blur according to the last fashion in art, which was safe but not altogether satisfactory. her aunt thought that she regretted her answer to fred, and finding denials useless and explanations impossible, amy left her to think what she liked, taking care that laurie should know that fred had gone to egypt. that was all, but he understood it, and looked relieved, as he said to himself, with a venerable air . .. "i was sure she would think better of it. poor old fellow! i've been through it all, and i can sympathize." with that he heaved a great sigh, and then, as if he had discharged his duty to the past, put his feet up on the sofa and enjoyed amy's letter luxuriously. while these changes were going on abroad, trouble had come at home. but the letter telling that beth was failing never reached amy, and when the next found her at vevay, for the heat had driven them from nice in may, and they had travelled slowly to switzerland, by way of genoa and the italian lakes. she bore it very well, and quietly submitted to the family decree that she should not shorten her visit, for since it was too late to say goodbye to beth, she had better stay, and let absence soften her sorrow. but her heart was very heavy, she longed to be at home, and every day looked wistfully across the lake, waiting for laurie to come and comfort her. he did come very soon, for the same mail brought letters to them both, but he was in germany, and it took some days to reach him. the moment he read it, he packed his knapsack, bade adieu to his fellow pedestrians, and was off to keep his promise, with a heart full of joy and sorrow, hope and suspense. he knew vevay well, and as soon as the boat touched the little quay, he hurried along the shore to la tour, where the carrols were living en pension. the garcon was in despair that the whole family had gone to take a promenade on the lake, but no, the blonde mademoiselle might be in the chateau garden. if monsier would give himself the pain of sitting down, a flash of time should present her. but monsieur could not wait even a `flash of time', and in the middle of the speech departed to find mademoiselle himself. a pleasant old garden on the borders of the lovely lake, with chestnuts rustling overhead, ivy climbing everywhere, and the black shadow of the tower falling far across the sunny water. at one corner of the wide, low wall was a seat,and here amy often came to read or work, or console herself with the beauty all about her. she was sitting here that day, leaning her head on her hand, with a homesick heart and heavy eyes, thinking of beth and wondering why laurie did not come. she did not hear him cross the courtyard beyond, nor see him pause in the archway that led from the subterranean path into the garden. he stood a minute looking at her with new eyes, seeing what no one had ever seen before, the tender side of amy's character. everything about her mutely suggested love and sorrow, the blotted letters in her lap, the black ribbon that tied up her hair, the womanly pain and patience in her face, even the little ebony cross at her throat seemed pathetic to laurie, for he had given it to her, and she wore it as her only ornament. if he had any doubts about the reception she would give him, they were set at rest the minute she looked up and saw him, for dropping everything, she ran to him, exclaiming in a tone of unmistakable love and longing . . . "oh, laurie, laurie, i knew you'd come to me!" i think everything was said and settled then, for as they stood together quite silent for a moment, with the dark head bent down protectingly over the light one, amy felt that no one could comfort and sustain her so well as laurie, and laurie decided that amy was the only woman in the world who could fill jo's place and make him happy. he did not tell her so, but she was not disappointed, for both felt the truth, were satisfied, and gladly left the rest to silence. in a minute amy went back to her place, and while she dried her tears, laurie gathered up the scattered papers, finding in the sight of sundry well-worn letters and suggestive sketches good omens for the future. as he sat down beside her, amy felt shy again, and turned rosy red at the recollection of her impulsive greeting. "i couldn't help it, i felt so lonely and sad, and was so very glad to see you. it was such a surprise to look up and find you, just as i was beginning to fear you wouldn't come," she said, trying in vain to speak quite naturally. "i came the minute i heard. i wish i could say something to comfort you for the loss of dear little beth, but i can only feel, and . . ." he could not get any further, for her too turned bashful all of a sudden, and did not quite know what to say. he longed to lay amy's head down on his shoulder, and tell her to have a good cry, but he did not dare, so took her hand instead, and gave it a sympathetic squeeze that was better than words. "you needn't say anything, this comforts me," she said softly. "beth is well and happy, and i mustn't wish her back, but i dread the going home, much as i long to see them all. we won't talk about it now, for it makes me cry, and i want to enjoy you while you stay. you needn't go right back, need you?" "not if you want me, dear." "i do, so much. aunt and flo are very kind, but you seem like one of the family, and it would be so comfortable to have you for a little while." amy spoke and looked so like a homesick child whose heart was full that laurie forgot his bashfulness all at once, and gave her just what she wanted--the petting she was used to and the cheerful conversation she needed. "poor little soul, you look as if you'd grieved yourself half sick! i'm going to take care of you, so don't cry any more, but come and walk about with me, the wind is too chilly for you to sit still," he said, in the half-caressing, halfcommanding way that amy liked, as he tied on her hat, drew her arm through his, and began to pace up and down the sunny walk under the new-leaved chestnuts. he felt more at ease upon his legs, and amy found it pleasant to have a strong arm to lean upon, a familiar face to smile at her, and a kind voice to talk delightfully for her alone. the quaint old garden had sheltered many pairs of lovers, and seemed expressly made for them, so sunny and secluded was it, with nothing but the tower to overlook them, and the wide lake to carry away the echo of their words, as it rippled by below. for an hour this new pair walked and talked, or rested on the wall, enjoying the sweet influences which gave such a charm to time and place, and when an unromantic dinner bell warned them away, amy felt as if she left her burden of lonliness and sorrow behind her in the chateau garden. the moment mrs. carrol saw the girl's altered face, she was illuminated with a new idea, and exclaimed to herself, "now i understand it all--the child has been pining for young laurence. bless my heart, i never thought of such a thing!" with praiseworthy discretion, the good lady said nothing, and betrayed no sign of enlightenment, but cordially urged laurie to stay and begged amy to enjoy his society, for it would do her more good than so much solitude. amy was a model of docility, and as her aunt was a good deal occupied with flo, she was left to entertain her friend, and did it with more than her usual success. at nice, laurie had lounged and amy had scolded. at vevay, laurie was never idle, but always walking, riding, boating, or studying in the most energetic manner, while amy admired everything he did and followed his example as far and as fast as she could. he said the change was owing to the climate, and she did not contradict him, being glad of a like excuse for her own recovered health and spirits. the invigorating air did them both good, and much exercise worked wholesome changes in minds as well as bodies. they seemed to get clearer views of life and duty up there among the everlasting hills. the fresh winds blew away desponding doubts, delusive fancies, and moody mists. the warm spring sunshine brought out all sorts of aspiring ideas, tender hopes, and happy thoughts. the lake seemed to wash away the troubles of the past, and the grand old mountains to look benignly down upon them saying, "little children, love one another." in spite of the new sorrow, it was a very happy time, so happy that laurie could not bear to disturb it by a word. it took him a little while to recover from his surprise at the cure of his first, and as he had firmly believed, his last and only love. he consoled himself for the seeming disloyalty by the thought that jo's sister was almost the same as jo's self, and the conviction that it would have been impossible to love any other woman but amy so soon and so well. his first wooing had been of the tempestuous order, and he looked back upon ;it as if through a long vista of years with a feeling of compassion blended with regret. he was not ashamed of it, but put it away as one of the bitter-sweet experiences of his life, for which he could be grateful when the pain was over. his second wooing, he resolved, should be as calm and simple as possible. there was no need of having a scene, hardly any need of telling amy that he loved her, she knew it without words and had given him his answer long ago. it all came about so naturally that no one could complain, and he knew that everybody would be pleased, even jo. but when our first little passion has been crushed, we are apt to be wary and slow in making a second trial, so laurie let the days pass, enjoying every hour, and leaving to chance the utterance of the word that would put an end to the first and sweetest part of his new romance. he had rather imagined that the denoument would take place in the chateau garden by moonlight, and in the most graceful and decorus manner, but it turned out exactly the reverse, for the matter was settled on the lake at noonday in a few blunt words. they had been floating about all the morning, from gloomy st. gingolf to sunny montreux, with the alps of savoy on one side, mont st. bernard and the dent du midi on the other, pretty vevay in the valley, and lausanne upon the hill beyond, a cloudless blue sky overhead, and the bluer lake below, dotted with the picturesque boats that look like white-winged gulls. they had been talking of bonnivard, as they glided past chillon, and of rousseau, as they looked up at clarens, where he wrote his heloise. neither had read it, but they knew it was a love story, and each privately wondered if it was half as interesting as their own. amy had been dabbling her hand in the water during the little pause that fell between them, and when she looked up, laurie was leaning on his oars with an expression in his eyes that made her say hastily, merely for the sake of saying something . . "you must be tired. rest a little, and let me row. it will do me good, for since you came i have been altogether lazy and luxurious." "i'm not tired, but you may take an oar, if you like. there's room enough, though i have to sit nearly in the middle, else the boat won't trim," returned laurie, as if he rather liked the arrangment. feeling that she had not mended matters much, amy took the offered third of a seat, shook her hair over her face, and accepted an oar. she rowed as well as she did many other things, and though she used both hands, and laurie but one, the oars kept time, and the boat went smoothly through the water. "how well we pull together, don't we?" said amy, who objected to silence just then. "so well that i wish we might always pull in the same boat. will you,amy?" very tenderly. "yes, laurie," very low. then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the dissolving views reflected in the lake. chapter forty-two it was easy to promise self-abnegation when self was wrapped up in another, and heart and soul were purified by a sweet example. but when the helpful voice was silent, the daily lesson over, the beloved presence gone, and nothing remained but lonliness and grief, then jo found her promise very hard to keep. how could she `comfort father and mother' when her own heart ached with a ceaseless longing for her sister, how could she `make the house cheerful' when all its light and warmth and beauty seemed to have deserted it when beth left the old home for the new, and where in all the world could she `find some useful, happy work to do', that would take the place of the loving service which had been its own reward? she tried in a blind, hopeless way to do her duty, secretly rebelling against it all the while, for it seemed unjust that her few joys should be lessened, her burdens made heavier, and life get harder and harder as she toiled along. some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow. it was not fair, for she tried more than amy to be good, but never got any reward, only disappointment, trouble and hard work. poor jo, these were dark days to her, for something like despair came over her when she thought of spending all her life in that quiet house, devoted to humdrum cares, a few small pleasures, and the duty that never seemed to grow any easier. "i can't do it. i wasn't meant for a life like this, and i know i shall break away and do something desperate if somebody doesn't come and help me," she said to herself, when her first efforts failed and she fell into the moody, miserable state of mind which often comes when strong wills have to yield to the inevitable. but someone did come and help her, though jo did not recognize her good angels at once because they wore familiar shapes and used the simple spells best fitted to poor humanity. often she started up at night, thinking beth called her, and when the sight of the little empty bed made her cry with the bitter cry of unsubmissive sorrow, "oh, beth, come back! come back!" she did not stretch out her yearning arms in vain. for, as quick to hear her sobbing as she had been to hear her sister's faintest whisper, her mother came to comfort her, not with words only, but the patient tenderness that soothes by a touch, tears that were mute reminders of a greater grief than jo's, and broken whispers, more eloquent than prayers, because hopeful resignation went hand-in-hand with natural sorrow. sacred moments, when heart talked to heart in the silence of the night, turning affliction to a blessing, which chastened grief and strengthned love. feeling this, jo's burden seemed easier to bear, duty grew sweeter, and life looked more endurable, seen from the safe shelter of her mother's arms. when aching heart was a little comforted, troubled mind likewise found help, for one day she went to the study, and leaning over the good gray head lifted to welcome her with a tranquil smile, she said very humbly, "father, talk to me as you did to beth. i need it more than she did, for i'm all wrong." "my dear, nothing can comfort me like this," he answered, with a falter in his voice, and both arms round her, as if he too, needed help, and did not fear to ask for it. then, sitting in beth's little chair close beside him, jo told her troubles, the resentful sorrow for her loss, the fruitless efforts that discouraged her, the want of faith that made life look so dark, and all the sad bewilderment which we call despair. she gave him entire confidence, he gave her the help she needed, and both found consolation in the act. for the time had come when they could talk together not only as father and daughter, but as man and woman, able and glad to serve each other with mutual sympathy as well as mutual love. happy, thoughtful times there in the old study which jo called `the church of one member', and from which she came with fresh courage, recovered cheerfulness, and a more submissive spirit. for the parents who had taught one child to meet death without fear, were trying now to teach another to accept life without despondency or distrust, and to use its beautiful opportunities with gratitude and power. other helps had jo--humble, wholesome duties and delights that would not be denied their part in serving her, and which she slowly learned to see and value. brooms and dishcloths never could be as distasteful as they once had been, for beth had presided over both, and something of her housewifely spirit seemed to linger around the little mop and the old brush, never thrown away. as she used them, jo found herself humming the songs beth used to hum, imitating beth's orderly ways, and giving the little touches here and there that kept everything fresh and cozy, which was the first step toward making home happy, though she didn't know it till hannah said with an approving squeeze of the hand . . . "you thoughtful creeter, you're determined we shan't miss that dear lamb ef you can help it. we don't say much, but we see it, and the lord will bless you for't, see ef he don't." as they sat sewing together, jo discovered how much improved her sister meg was, how well she could talk, how much she knew about good, womanly impulses, thoughts, and feelings, how happy she was in husband and children, and how much they were all doing for each other. "marriage is an excellent thing, after all. i wonder if i should blossom out half as well as you have, if i tried it?" said jo, as she constructed a kite for demi in the topsy-turvy nursery. "it's just what you need to bring out the tender womanly half of your nature, jo. you are like a chestnut burr, prickly outside, but silky-soft within, and a sweet kernal, if one can only get at it. love will make you show your heart one day, and then the rough burr will fall off." "frost opens chestnut burrs, ma`am, and it takes a good shake to bring them down. boys go nutting, and i don't care to be bagged by them," returned jo, pasting away at the kite which no wind that blows would ever carry up, for daisy had tied herself on as a bob. meg laughed, for she was glad to see a glimmer of jo's old spirit, but she felt it her duty to enforce her opinion by every argument in her power, and the sisterly chats were not wasted, especially as two of meg's most effective arguments were the babies, whom jo loved tenderly. grief is the best opener of some hearts, and jo's was nearly ready for the bag. a little more sunshine to ripen the nut, then, not a boy's impatient shake, but a man's hand reached up to pick it gently from the burr, and find the kernal sound and sweet. if she suspected this, she would have shut up tight, and been more prickly than ever, fortunately she wasn't thinking about herself, so when the time came, down she dropped. now, if she had been the heroine of a moral storybook, she ought at this period of her life to have become quite saintly, renounced the world, and gone about doing good in a mortified bonnet, with tracts in her pocket. but, you see, jo wasn't a heroine, she was only a struggling human girl like hundreds of others, and she just acted out her nature, being sad, cross, listless, or energetic, as the mood suggested. it's highly virtuous to say we'll be good, but we can't do it all at once, and it takes a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together before some of us even get our feet set in the right way. jo had got so far, she was learning to do her duty, and to feel unhappy if she did not, but to do it cheerfully, ah, that was another thing! she had often said she wanted to do something splendid, no matter how hard, and now she had her wish, for what could be more beautiful than to devote her life to father and mother, trying to make home as happy to them as they had to her? and if difficulties were necessary to increase the splendor of the effort, what could be harder for a restless, ambitious girl than to give up her own hopes, plans, and desires, and cheerfully live for others? providence had taken her at her word. here was the task, not what she had expected, but better because self had no part in it. now, could she do it? she decided that she would try, and in her first attempt she found the helps i have suggested. still another was given her, and she took it, not as a reward, but as a comfort, as christian took the refreshment afforded by the little arbor where he rested, as he climbed the hill called difficulty. "why don't you write? that always used to make you happy," said her mother once, when the desponding fit over-shadowed jo. "i've no heart to write, and if i had, nobody cares for my things." "we do. write something for us, and never mind the rest of the world. try it, dear. i'm sure it would do you good, and please us very much." "don't believe i can." but jo got out her desk and began to overhaul her half-finished manuscripts. an hour afterward her mother peeped in and there she was, scratching away, with her black pinafore on, and an absorbed expression, which caused mrs. march to smile and slip away, well pleased with the success of her suggestion. jo never knew how it happened, but something got into that story that went straight to the hearts of those who read it, for when her family had laughed and cried over it, her father sent it, much against her will, to one of the popular magazines, and to her utter surprise, it was not only paid for, but others requested. letters from several persons, whose praise was honor, followed the appearance of the little story, newspapers copied it, and strangers as well as friends, admired it. for a small thing it was a great success, and jo was more astonished than when her novel was commended and condemned all at once. "i don't understand it. what can there be in a simple little story like that to make people praise it so?" she said, quite bewildered. "there is truth in it, jo, that's the secret. humor and pathos make it alive, and you have found your style at last. you wrote with not thoughts of fame and money, and put your heart into it, my daughter. you have had the bitter, now comes the sweet. do your best, and grow as happy as we are in your success." "if there is anything good or true in what i write, it isn't mine. i owe it all to you and mother and beth," said jo, more touched by her father's words than by any amount of praise from the world. so taught by love and sorrow, jo wrote her little stories, and sent them away to make friends for themselves and her, finding it a very charitable world to such humble wanderers, for they were kindly welcomed, and sent home comfortable tokens to their mother, like dutiful children whom good fortune overtakes. when amy and laurie wrote of their engagement, mrs. march feared that jo would find it difficult to rejoice over it, but her fears were soon set at rest, for thought jo looked grave at first, she took it very quietly, and was full of hopes and plans for `the children' before she read the letter twice. it was a sort of written duet, wherein each glorified the other in loverlike fashion, very pleasant to read and satisfactory to think of, for no one had any objection to make. "you like it, mother?" said jo, as they laid down the closely written sheets and looked at one another. "yes, i hoped it would be so, ever since amy wrote that she had refused fred. i felt sure then that something better than what you call the `mercenary spirit' had come over her, and a hint here and there in her letters made me suspect that love and laurie would win the day." "how sharp you are, marmee, and how silent! you never said a worked to me." "mothers have need of sharp eyes and discreet tongues when they have girls to manage. i was half afraid to put the idea into your head, lest you should write and congratulate them before the thing was settled." "i'm not the scatterbrain i was. you may trust me. i'm sober and sensible enough for anyone's confidante now." "so you are, my dear, and i should have made you mine, only i fancied it might pain you to learn that your teddy loved someone else." "now, mother, did you really think i could be so silly and selfish, after i'd refused his love, when it was freshest, if not best?" "i knew you were sincere then, jo, but lately i have thought that if he came back, and asked again, you might perhaps, feel like giving another answer. forgive me, dear, i can't help seeing that you are very lonely, and sometimes there is a hungry look in your eyes that goes to my heart. so i fancied that your boy might fill the empty place if he tried now." "no, mother, it is better as it ia, and i'm glad amy has learned to love him. but you are right in one thing. i am lonely, and perhaps if teddy had tried again, i might have said `yes', not because i love him any more, but because i care more to be loved than when he went away." "i'm glad of that, jo, for it shows that you are getting on. there are plenty to love you, so try to be satisfied with father and mother, sisters and brothers, friends and babies, till the best lover of all comes to give you your reward." "mothers are the best lovers in the world, but i don't mind whispering to marmee that i'd like to try all kinds. it's very curious, but the more i try to satisfy myself with all sorts of natural affections, the more i seem to want. i'd no idea hearts could take in so many. mine is so elastic, it never seems full now, and i used to be quite contented with my family. i don't understand it." "i do." and mrs. march smiled her wise smile, as jo turned back the leaves to read what amy said of laurie. "it is so beautiful to be loved as laurie loves me. he isn't sentimental, doesn't say much about it, but i see and feel it in all he says and does, and it makes me so happy and so humble that i don't seem to be the same girl i was. i never knew how good and generous and tender he was till now, for he lets me read his heart, and i find it full of noble impulses and hopes and purposes, and am so proud to know it's mine. he says he feels as if he `could make a prosperous voyage now with me aboard as mate, and lots of love for ballast'. i pray he may, and try to be all he believes me, for i love my gallant captain with all my heart and soul and might, and never will desert him, while god lets us be together. oh, mother, i never knew how much like heaven this world could be, when two people love and live for one another!" "and that's our cool, reserved, and worldly amy! truly, love does work miracles. how very, very happy they must be!" and jo laid the rustling sheets together with a careful hand, as one might shut the covers of a lovely romance, which holds the reader fast till the end comes, and he finds himself alone in the workaday world again. by-and-by jo roamed away upstairs, for it was rainy, and she could not walk. a restless spirit possessed her, and the old feeling came again, not bitter as it once was, but a sorrowfully patient wonder why one sister should have all she asked, the other nothing. it was not true, she knew that and tried to put it away, but the natural craving for affection was strong, and amy's happiness woke the hungry longing for someone to `love with heart and soul, and cling to while god let them be together'. up in the garret, where jo's unquiet wanderings ended stood four little wooden chests in a row, each marked with its owners name, and each filled with relics of the childhood and girlhood ended now for all. jo glanced into them, and when she came to her own, leaned her chin on the edge, and stared absently at the chaotic collection, till a bundle of old exercise books caught her eye. she drew them out, turned them over, and relived that pleasant winter at kind mrs. kirke's. she had smiled at first, then she looked thoughtful, next sad, and when she came to a little message written in the professor's hand, her lips began to tremble, the books slid out of her lap, and she sat looking at the friendly words, as they took a new meaning, and touched a tender spot in her heart. "wait for me, my friend. i may be a little late, but i shall surely come." "oh, if he only would! so kine, so good, so patient with me always, my dear old fritz. i didn't value him half enough when i had him, but now how i should love to see him, for everyone seems going away from me, and i'm all alone." and holding the little paper fast, as if it were a promise yet to be fulfilled, jo laid her head down on a comfortable rag bag, and cried, as if in opposition to the rain pattering on the roof. was it all self-pity, loneliness, or low spirits? or was it the waking up of a sentiment which had bided its time as patiently as its inspirer? who shall say? chapter forty-three jo was alone in the twilight, lying on the old sofa, looking at the fire, and thinking. it was her favorite way of spending the hour of dusk. no one disturbed her, and she used to lie there on beth's little red pillow, planning stories, dreaming dreams, or thinking tender thoughts of the sister who never seemed far away. her face looked tired, grave, and rather sad, for tomorrow was her birthday, and she was thinking how fast the years went by, how old she was getting, and how little she seemed to have accomplished. almost twenty-five, and nothing to show for it. jo was mistaken in that. there was a good deal to show, and by-and-by she saw, and was grateful for it. "an old maid, that's what i'm to be. a literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence a morsel of fame, perhaps, when, like poor johnson, i'm old and can't enjoy it, solitary, and can't share it, independent, and don't need it. well, i needn't be a sour saint nor a selfish sinner, and, i dare say, old maids are very comfortable when they get used to it, but . . ." and there jo sighed, as if the prospect was not inviting. it seldom is, at first, and thirty seems the end of all things to five-and-twenty. but it's not as bad as it looks, and one can get on quite happily if one has something in one's self to fall back upon. at twenty-five, girls begin to talk about being old maids, but secretly resolve that they never will be. at thirty they say nothing about it, but quietly accept the fact, and if sensible, console themselves by remembering that they have twenty more useful, happy years, in which they may be learning to grow old gracefully. don't laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in god's sight. even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life, if for no other reason. and looking at them with compassion, not contempt, girls in their bloom should remember that they too may miss the blossom time. that rosy cheeks don't last forever, that silver threads will come in the bonnie brown hair, and that, by-and-by, kindness and respect will be as sweet as love and admiration now. gentlemen, which means boys, be courteous to the old maids, no matter how poor and plain and prim, for the only chivalry worth having is that which is the readiest to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve womankind, regardless of rank, age, or color. just recollect the good aunts who have not only lectured and fussed, but nursed and petted, too often without thanks, the scrapes they have helped you out of, the tips they have given you from their small store, the stitches the patient old fingers have set for you, the steps the willing old feet have taken, and gratefully pay the dear old ladies the little attentions that women love to receive as long as they live. the bright-eyed girls are quick to see such traits, and will like you all the better for them, and if death, almost the only power that can part mother and son, should rob you of yours, you will be sure to find a tender welcome and maternal cherishing from some aunt priscilla, who has kept the warmest corner of her lonely old heart for `the best nevvy in the world'. jo must have fallen asleep (as i dare say my reader has during this little homily), for suddenly laurie's ghost seemed to stand before her, a substantial, lifelike ghost, leaning over her with the very look he used to wear when he felt a good deal and didn't like to show it. but, like jenny in the ballad . . . she could not think it he, and lay staring up at him in startled silence, till he stooped and kissed her. then she knew him, and flew up, crying joyfully . .. "oh my teddy! oh my teddy!" "dear jo, you are glad to see me, then?" "glad! my blessed boy, words can't express my gladness. where's amy?" "your mother has got her down at meg's. we stopped there by the way, and there was no getting my wife out of their clutches." "your what?" cried jo, for laurie uttered those two words with an unconscious pride and satisfaction which betrayed him. "oh, the dickens! now i've done it." and he looked so guilty that jo was down on him like a flash. "you've gone and got married!" "yes, please, but i never will again." and he went down upon his knees, with a penitent clasping of hands, and a face full of mischief, mirth, and triumph. "actually married?" "very much so, thank you." "mercy on us. what dreadful thing will you do next?" and jo fell into her seat with a gasp. "a characteristic, but not exactly complimentary, congratulation," returned laurie, still in an abject attitude, but beaming with satisfaction. "what can you expect, when you take one's breath away, creeping in like a burglar, and letting cats out of bags like that? get up, you ridiculous boy, and tell me all about it." "not a word, unless you let me come in my old place, and promise not to barricade." jo laughed at that as she had not done for many a long day, and patted the sofa invitingly, as she said in a cordial tone, "the old pillow is up garret, and we don't need it now. so, come and fess, teddy." "how good it sounds to hear you say `teddy'! no one ever calls me that but you." and laurie sat down with an air of great content. "what does amy call you?" "my lord." "that's like her. well, you look it." and jo's eye plainly betrayed that she found her boy comelier than ever. the pillow was gone, but there was a barricade, nevertheless, a natural one, raised by time absence, and change of heart. both felt it, and for a minute looked at one another as if that invisible barrier cast a little shadow over them. it was gone directly however, for laurie said, with a vain attempt at dignity . . . "don't i look like a married man and the head of a family?" "not a bit, and you never will. you've grown bigger and bonnier, but you are the same scapegrace as ever." "now really, jo, you ought to treat me with more respect," began laurie, who enjoyed it all immensely. "how can i, when the mere idea of you, married and settled, is so irresistibly funny that i can't keep sober!" answered jo, smiling all over her face, so infectiously that they had another laugh, and then settled down for a good talk, quite in the pleasant old fashion. "it's no use your going out in the cold to get amy, for they are all coming up presently. i couldn't wait. i wanted to be the one to tell you the grand surprise, and have `first skim' as we used to say when we squabbled about the cream." "of course you did, and spoiled your story by beginning at the wrong end. now, start right, and tell me how it all happened. i'm pining to know." "well, i did it to please amy," began laurie,with a twinkle that made jo exclaim . . . "fib number one. amy did it to please you. go on, and tell the truth, if you can, sir." "now she's beginning to marm it. isn't it jolly to hear her?" said laurie to the fire, and the fire glowed and sparkled as if it quite agreed. "it's all the same, you know, she and i being one. we planned to come home with the carrols, a month or more ago, but they suddenly changed their minds, and decided to pass another winter in paris. but grandpa wanted to come home. he went to please me, and i couldn't let him go along, neither could i leave amy, and mrs. carrol had got english notions about chaperons and such nonsense, and wouldn't let amy come with us. so i just settled the difficulty by saying, `let's be married, and then we can do as we like'." "of course you did. you always have things to suit you." "not always." and something in laurie's voice made jo say hastily . . . "how did you ever get aunt to agree?" "it was hard work, but between us, we talked her over, for we had heaps of good reasons on our side. there wasn't time to write and ask leave, but you all liked it, had consented to it by-and-by, and it was only `taking time by the fetlock', as my wife says." "aren't we proud of those two word, and don't we like to say them?" interrupted jo, addressing the fire in her turn, and watching with delight the happy light it seemed to kindle in the eyes that had been so tragically gloomy when she saw them last. "a trifle, perhaps, she's such a captivating little woman i can't help being proud of her. well, then uncle and aunt were there to play propriety. we were so absorbed in one another we were of no mortal use apart, and that charming arrangement would make everything easy all round, so we did it." "when, where, how?" asked jo, in a fever of feminine interest and curiosity, for she could not realize it a particle. "six weeks ago, at the american consul's, in paris, a very quiet wedding of course, for even in our happiness we didn't forget dear little beth." jo put her hand in his as he said that, and laurie gently smoothed the little red pillow, which he remembered well. "why didn't you let us know afterward?" asked jo, in a quieter tone, when they had sat quite still a minute. "we wanted to surprise you. we thought we were coming directly home, at first, but the dear old gentleman, as soon as we were married, found he couldn't be ready under a month, at least, and sent us off to spend our honeymoon wherever we liked. amy had once called valrosa a regular honeymoon home, so we went there, and were as happy as people are but once in their lives. my faith! wasn't it love among the roses!" laurie seemed to forget jo for a minute, and jo was glad of it, for the fact that he told her these things so freely and so naturally assured her that he had quite forgiven and forgotten. she tried to draw away her hand, but as if he guessed the thought that prompted the half-involuntary impulse, laurie held it fast, and said, with a manly gravity she had never seen in him before . . . "jo, dear, i want to say one thing, and then we'll put it by forever. as i told you in my letter when i wrote that amy had been so kind to me, i never shall stop loving you, but the love is altered, and i have learned to see that it is better as it is. amy and you changed places in my heart, that's all. i think it was meant to be so, and would have come about naturally, if i had waited, as you tried to make me, but i never could be patient, and so i got a heartache. i was a boy then, headstrong and violent, and it took a hard lesson to show me my mistake. for it was one, jo, as you said, and i found it out, after making a fool of myself. upon my word, i was so tumbled up in my mind, at one time, that i didn't know which i loved best, you or amy, and tried to love you both alike. but i couldn't, and when i saw her in switzerland, everything seemed to clear up all at once. you both got into your right places, and i felt sure that it was well off with the old love before it was on with the new, that i could honestly share my heart between sister jo and wife amy, and love them dearly. will you believe it, and go back to the happy old times when we first knew one another?" "i'll believe it, with all my heart, but, teddy, we never can be boy and girl again. the happy old times can't come back, and we mustn't expect it. we are man and woman now, with sober work to do, for playtime is over, and we must give up frolicking. i'm sure you feel this. i see the change in you, and you'll find it in me. i shall miss my boy, but i shall love the man as much, and admire him more, because he means to be what i hoped he would. we can't be little playmates any longer, but we will be brother and sister, to love and help one another all our lives, won't we, laurie?" he did not say a word, but took the hand she offered him, and laid his face down on it for a minute, feeling that out of the grave of a boyish passion, there had risen a beautiful, strong friendship to bless them both. presently jo said cheerfully, for she didn't the coming home to be a sad one, "i can't make it true that you children are really married and going to set up housekeeping. why, it seems only yesterday that i was buttoning amy's pinafore, and pulling your hair when you teased. mercy me, how time does fly!" "as one of the children is older than yourself, you needn't talk so like a grandma. i flatter myself i'm a `gentleman growed' as peggotty said of david, and when you see amy, you'll find her rather a precocious infant," said laurie, looking amused at her maternal air. "you may be a little older in years, but i'm ever so much older in feeling, teddy. women always are, and this last year has been such a hard one that i feel forty." "poor jo! we left you to bear it alone, while we went pleasuring. you are older. here's a line, and there's another. unless you smile, your eyes look sad, and when i touched the cushion, just now, i found a tear on it. you've had a great deal to bear, and had to bear it all alone. what a selfish beast i've been!" and laurie pulled his own hair, with a remorseful look. but jo only turned over the traitorous pillow, and answered, in a tone which she tried to make more cheerful, "no, i had father and mother to help me, and the dear babies to comfort me, and the thought that you and amy were safe and happy, to make the troubles here easier to bear. i am lonely, sometimes, but i dare say it's good for me, and . . ." "you never shall be again," broke in laurie, putting his arm about her, as if to fence out every human ill. "amy and i can't get on without you, so you must come and teach `the children' to keep house, and go halves in everything, just as we used to do, and let us pet you, and all be blissfully happy and friendly together." "if i shouldn't be in the way, it would be very pleasant. i begin to feel quite young already, for somehow all my troubles seemed to fly away when you came. you always were a comfort, teddy." and jo leaned her head on his shoulder, just as she did years ago, when beth lay ill and laurie told her to hold on to him. he looked down at her, wondering if she remembered the time, but jo was smiling to herself, as if in truth her troubles had all vanished at his coming. "you are the same jo still, dropping tears about one minute, and laughing the next. you look a little wicked now. what is it, grandma?" "i was wondering how you and amy get on together." "like angels!" "yes, of course, but which rules?" "i don't mind telling you that she does now, at least i let her think so, it pleases her, you know. by-and-by we shall take turns, for marriage, they say, halves one's rights and doubles one's duties." "you'll go on as you begin, and amy will rule you all the days of your life." "well, she does it so imperceptibly that i don't think i shall mind much. she is the sort of woman who knows how to rule well. in fact, i rather like it, for she winds one round her finger as softly and prettily as a skein of silk, and makes you feel as if she was doing you a favor all the while." "that ever i should live to see you a henpecked husband and enjoying it!" cried jo, with uplifted hands. it was good to see laurie square his shoulders, and smile with masculine scorn at that insinuation, as he replied, with his "high and mighty" air, "amy is too well-bred for that, and i am not the sort of man to submit to it. my wife and i respect ourselves and one another too much ever to tyrannize or quarrel." jo like that, and thought the new dignity very becoming, but the boy seemed changing very fast into the man, and regret mingled with her pleasure. "i am sure of that. amy and you never did quarrel as we used to. she is the sun and i the wind, in the fable, and the sun managed the man best, you remember." "she can blow him up as well as shine on him," laughed laurie. "such a lecture as i got at nice! i give you my word it was a deal worse than any or your scoldings, a regular rouser. i'll tell you all about it sometime, she never will, because after telling me that she despised and was ashamed of me, she lost her heart to the despicable party and married the good-for-nothing." "what baseness! well, if she abuses you, come to me, and i'll defend you." "i look as if i needed it, don't i?" said laurie, getting up and striking an attitude which suddenly changed from the imposing to the rapturous, as amy's voice was heard calling, "where is she? where's my dear old jo?" in trooped the whole family, and everyone was hugged and kissed all over again, and after several vain attempts, the three wanderers were set down to be looked at and exulted over. mr. laurence, hale and hearty as ever, was quite as much improved as the others by his foreign tour, for the crustiness seemed to be nearly gone, and the old-fashioned courtliness had received a polish which made it kindlier than ever. it was good to see him beam at `my children', as he called the young pair. it was better still to see amy pay him the daughterly duty and affection which completely won his old heart, and best of all, to watch laurie revolve about the two, as if never tired of enjoying the pretty picture they made. the minute she put her eyes upon amy, meg became conscious that her own dress hadn't a parisian air, that young mrs. mofffat would be entirely eclipsed by young mrs. laurence, and that `her ladyship' was altogether a most elegant and graceful woman. jo thought, as she watched the pair, "how well they look together! i was right, and laurie has found the beautiful, accomplished girl who will become his home better than clumsy old jo, and be a pride, not a torment to him." mrs. march and her husband smiled and nodded at each other with happy faces, for they saw that their youngest had done well, not only in worldly things,but the better wealth of love, confidence, and happiness. for amy's face was full of the soft brightness which betokens a peaceful heart, her voice had a new tenderness in it, and the cool, prim carriage was changed to a gentle dignity, both womanly and winning. no little affectations marred it, and the cordial sweetness of her manner was more charming than the new beauty or the old grace, for it stamped her at once with the unmistakable sign of the true gentlewoman she had hoped to become. "love has done much for our little girl," said her mother softly. "she has had a good example before her all her life, my dear," mr. march whispered back, with a loving look at the worn face and gray head beside him. daisy found it impossible to keep her eyes off her `pitty aunty', but attached herself like a lap dog to the wonderful chatelaine full of delightful charms. demi paused to consider the new relationship before he compromised himself by the rash acceptance of a bribe, which took the tempting form of a family of wooden bears from berne. a flank movement produced an unconditional surrender, however, for laurie knew where to have him. "young man, when i first had the honor of making your acquaintance you hit me in the face. now i demand the satisfaction of a gentleman," and with that the tall uncle proceeded to toss and tousle the small nephew in a way that damaged his philosophical dignity as much as it delighted his boyish soul. "blest if she ain't in silk from head to foot? ain't it a relishin' sight to see her settin' there as fine as a fiddle, anch a happy procession as filed away into the little dining room! mr. march proudly escorted mrs. laurence. mrs. march as proudly leaned on the arm of `my son'. the old gentleman took jo, with a whispered, "you must be my girl now," and a glance at the empty corner by the fire, that made jo whisper back, "i'll try to fill her place, sir. the twins pranced behind, feeling that the millennium was at hand, for everyone was so busy with the newcomers that they were left to revel at their own sweet will, and you may be sure they made the most of the opportunity. didn't they steal sips of tea, stuff gingerbread ad libitum, get a hot biscuit apiece, and as a crowning trespass, didn't they each whisk a captivating little tart into their tiny pockets, there to stick and crumble treacherously, teaching them that both human nature and a pastry are frail? burdened with the guilty consciousness of the sequestered tarts, and fearing that dodo's sharp eyes would pierce the thin disguise of cambric and merino which hid their booty, the little sinners attached themselves to `dranpa', who hadn't his spectacles on. amy, who was handed about like refreshments, returned to the parlor on father laurence's arm. the others paired off as before, and this arrangement left jo companionless. she did not mind it at the minute, for she lingered to answer hannah's eager inquiry. "will miss amy ride in her coop (coupe), and use all them lovely silver dishes that's stored away over yander?" "shouldn't wonder if she drove six white horses, ate off gold plate, and wore diamonds and point lace every day. teddy thinks nothing too good for her," returned jo with infinite satisfaction. "no more there is! will you have hash or fishballs for breakfast?" asked hannah, who wisely mingled poetry and prose. "i don't care." and jo shut the door, feeling that food was an uncongenial topic just then. she stood a minute looking at the party vanishing above, and as demi's short plaid legs toiled up the last stair, a sudden sense of lonliness came over her so strongly that she looked about her with dim eyes, as if to find something to lean upon, for even teddy had deserted her. if she had known what birthday gift was coming every minute nearer and nearer, she would not have said to herself, "i'll weep a little weep when i go to bed. it won't do to be dismal now." then she drew her hand over her eyes, for one of her boyish habits was never to know where her handkerchief was, and had just managed to call up a smile when there came a knock at the porch door. she opened with hospitable haste, and started as if another ghost had come to surprise her, for there stood a tall bearded gentleman, beaming on her from the darkness like a midnight sun. "oh, mr. bhaer, i am so glad to see you!" cried jo, with a clutch, as if she feared the night would swallow him up before she could get him in. "and i to see miss marsch, but no, you haf a party," and the professor paused as the sound of voices and the tap of dancing feet came down to them. "no, we haven't, only the family. my sister and friends have just come home, and we are all very happy. come in, and make one of us." though a very social man, i think mr. bhaer would have gone decorously away, and come again another day, but how could he, when jo shut the door behind him, and bereft him of his hat? perhaps her face had something to do with it, for she forgot to hide her joy at seeing him, and showed it with a frankness that proved irresistible to the solitary man, whose welcome far exceeded his boldest hopes. "if i shall not be monsieur de trop, i will so gladly see them all. you haf been ill, my friend?" he put the question abruptly, for, as jo hung up his coat, the light fell on her face, and he saw a change in it. "not ill, but tired and sorrowful. we have had trouble since i saw you last." "ah, yes, i know. my heart was sore for you when i heard that," and he shook hands again, with such a sympathetic face that jo felt as if no comfort could equal the look of the kind eyes, the grasp of the big, warm hand. "father, mother, this is my friend, professor bhaer," she said, with a face and tone of such irrepressible pride and pleasure that she might as well have blown a trumpet and opened the door with a flourish. if the stranger had any doubts about his reception, they were set at rest in a minute by the cordial welcome he received. everyone greeted him kindly, for jo's sake at first, but very soon they liked him for his own. they could not help it, for he carried the talisman that opens all hearts, and these simple people warmed to him at once, feeling even the more friendly because he was poor. for poverty enriches those who live above it, and is a sure passport to truly hospitable spirits. mr. bhaer sat looking about him with the air of a traveler who knocks at a strange door, and when it opens, finds himself at home. the children went to him like bees to a honeypot, and establishing themselves on each knee, proceeded to captivate him by rifling his pockets, pulling his beard, and investigating his watch, with juvenile audacity. the women telegraphed their approval to one another, and mr. march, feeling that he had got a kindred spirit, opened his choicest stores for his guest's benefit, while silent john listened and enjoyed the talk, but said not a word, and mr. laurence found it impossible to go to sleep. if jo had not been otherwise engaged, laurie's behavior would have amused her, for a faint twinge, not of jealousy, but something like suspicion, caused that gentleman to stand aloof at first, and observe the newcomer with brotherly circumspection. but it did not last long. he got interested in spite of himself, and before he knew it, was drawn into the circle. for mr. bhaer talked well in this genial atmosphere, and did himself justice. he seldom spoke to laurie, but he looked at him often, and a shadow would pass across his face, as if regretting his own lost youth, as he watched the young man in his prime. then his eyes would turn to jo so wistfully that she would have surely answered the mute inquiry if she had seen it. but jo had her own eyes to take care of, and feeling that they could not be trusted, she prudently kept them on the little sock she was knitting, like a model maiden aunt. a stealthy glance now and then refreshed her like sips of fresh water after a dusty walk, for the sidelong peeps showed her several propitious omens. mr. bhaer's face had lost the absent-minded expression, and looked all alive with interest in the present moment, actually young and handsome, she thought, forgetting to compare him with laurie, as she usually did strange men, to their great detriment. then he seemed quite inspired, though the burial customs of the ancients, to which the conversation had strayed, might not be considered an exhilarating topic. jo quite glowed with triumph when teddy got quenched in an argument, and thought to herself, as she watched her father's absorbed face, "how he would enjoy having such a man as my professor to talk with every day!" lastly, mr. bhaer was dressed in a new suit of black, which made him look more like a gentleman than ever. his bushy hair had been cut and smoothly brushed, but didn't stay in order long, for in exciting moments, he rumpled it up in the droll way he used to do, and jo liked it rampantly erect better than flat, because she thought it gave his fine forehead a jove-like aspect. poor jo, how she did glorify that plain man, as she sat knitting away so quietly, yet letting nothing escape her, not even the fact that mr. bhaer actually had gold sleeve-buttons in his immaculate wristbands. "dear old fellow! he couldn't have got himself up with more care if he'd been going a-wooing," said jo to herself, and then a sudden thought born of the words made her blush so dreadfully that she had to drop her ball, and go down after it to hide her face. the maneuver did not succeed as well as she expected, however, for though just in the act of setting fire to a funeral pyre, the professor dropped his torch, metaphorically speaking, and made a dive after the little blue ball. of course they bumped their heads smartly together, saw stars, and both came up flushed and laughing, without the ball, to resume their seats, wishing they had not left them. nobody knew where the evening went to, for hannah skillfully abstracted the babies at an early hour, nodding like two rosy poppies, and mr. laurence went home to rest. the others sat round the fire, talking away, utterly regardless of the lapse of time, till meg, whose maternal was impressed with a firm conviction that daisy had tumbled out of be, and demi set his nightgown afire studying the structure of matches, made a move to go. "we must have our sing, in the good old way, for we are all together again once more," said jo, feeling that a good shout would be a safe and pleasant vent for the jubilant emotions of her soul. they were not all there. but no one found the words thougtless or untrue, for beth still seemed among them, a peaceful presence, invisible, but dearer than ever, since death could not break the household league that love made disoluble. the little chair stood in its old place. the tidy basket, with the bit of work she left unfinished when the needle grew `so heavy', was still on its accustomed shelf. the beloved instrument, seldom touched now had not been moved, and above it beth's face, serene and smiling, as in the early days, looked down upon them, seeming to say, "be happy. i am here." "play something, amy. let them hear how much you have improved," said laurie, with pardonable pride in his promising pupil. but amy whispered, with full eyes, as she twirled the faded stool, "not tonight, dear. i can't show off tonight." but she did show something better than brilliancy or skill, for she sang beth's songs with a tender music in her voice which the best master could not have taught, and touched the listener's hearts with a sweeter power than any other inspiration could have given her. the room was very still, when the clear voice failed suddenly at the last line of beth's favorite hymn. it was hard to say . . . earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal; and amy leaned against her husband, who stood behind her, feeling that her welcome home was not quite perfect without beth's kiss. "now, we must finish with mignon's song, for mr. bhaer sings that," said jo, before the pause grew painful. and mr. bhaer cleared his throat with a gratified "hem!" as he stepped into the corner where jo stood, saying . . . "you will sing with me? we go excellently well together." a pleasing fiction, by the way, for jo had no more idea of music than a grasshopper. but she would have consented if he had proposed to sing a whole opera, and warbled away, blissfully regardless of time and tune. it didn't much matter, for mr. bhaer sang like a true german, heartily and well, and jo soon subsided into a subdued hum, that she might listen to the mellow voice that seemed to sing for her alone. know'st thou the land where the citron blooms, used to be the professor's favorite line, for `das land' meant germany to him, but now he seemed to dwell, with peculiar warmth and melody, upon the words . . . there, oh there, might i with thee, o, my beloved, go and one listener was so thrilled by the tender invitation that she longed to say she did know the land, and would joyfully depart thither whenever he liked the song was considered a great success, and the singer retired covered with laurels. but a few minutes afterward, he forgot his manners entirely, and stared at amy putting on her bonnet, for she had been introduced simply as `my sister', and on one had called her by her new name since her came. he forgot himself still further when laurie said, in his most gracious manner, at parting . . . "my wife and i are very glad to meet you, sir. please remember that there is always a welcome waiting for you over the way." then the professor thanked him so heartily, and looked so suddenly illuminated with satisfaction, that laurie thought him the most delightfully demonstrative old fellow he ever met. "i too shall go, but i shall gladly come again, if you will gif me leave, dear madame, for a little business in the city will keep me here some days." he spoke to mrs. march, but he looked at jo, and the mother's voice gave as cordial an assent as did the daughter's eyes, for mrs. march was not so blind to her children's interest as mrs. moffat supposed. "i suspect that is a wise man," remarked mr. march, with placid satisfaction, from the hearthrug, after the last guest had gone. "i know he is a good one," added mrs. march, with decided approval, as she wound up the clock. "i thought you'd like him," was all jo said, as she slipped away to her bed. she wondered what the business was that brought mr. bhaer to the city, and finally decided that he had been appointed to some great honor, somewhere, but had been too modest to mention the fact. if she had seen his face when, safe in his own room, he looked at the picture of a severe and rigid young lady, with a good deal of hair, who appeared to be gazing darkly into futurity, it might have thrown some light upon the subject, especially when he turned off the gas, and kissed the picture in the dark. chapter forty-four "please, madam mother, could you lend me my wife for half an hour? the luggage has come, and i've been making hay of amy's paris finery, trying to find some things i want," said laurie, coming in the next day to find mrs. laurence sitting in her mother's lap, as if being made `the baby' again. "certainly. go, dear, i forgot that you have any home but this." and mrs. march pressed the white hand that wore the wedding ring, as if asking pardon for her maternal covetousness. "i shouldn't have come over if i could have helped it, but i can't get on without my little woman any more than a . . ." "weathercock can without the wind," suggested jo, as he paused for a simile. jo had grown quite her own saucy self again since teddy came home. "exactly, for amy keeps me pointing due west most of the time, with only an occasional whiffle round to the south, and i haven't had an easterly spell since i was married. don't know anything about the north, but am altogether salubrious and balmy, hey, my lady?" "lovely weather so far. i don't know how long it will last, but i'm not afraid of storms, for i'm learning how to sail my ship. come home, dear, and i'll find your bootjack. i suppose that's what you are rummaging after among my things. men are so helpless, mother," said amy, with a matronly air, which delighted her husband. "what are you going to do with yourselves after you get settled?" asked jo, buttoning amy's cloak as she used to button her pinafores. "we have our plans. we don't mean to say much about them yet, because we are such very new brooms, but we don't intend to be idle. i'm going into business with a devotion that shall delight grandfather, and prove to him that i'm not spoiled. i need something of the sort to keep me steady. i'm tired of dawdling, and mean to work like a man." "and amy, what is she going to do?" asked mrs. march, well pleased at laurie's decision and the energy with which he spoke. "after doing the civil all round, and airing our best bonnet, we shall astonish you by the elegant hospitalities of our mansion, the brilliant society we shall draw about us, and the beneficial influence we shall exert over the world at large. that's about it, isn't it, madame recamier?" asked laurie with a quizzical look at amy. "time will show. come away, impertinence, and don't shock my family by calling me names before their faces," answered amy, resolving that there should be a home with a good wife in it before she set up a salon as a queen of society. "how happy those children seem together!" observed mr. march, finding it difficult to become absorbed in his aristotle after the young couple had gone. "yes, and i think it will last," added mrs. march, with the restful expression of a pilot who has brought a ship safely into port. "i know it will. happy amy!" and jo sighed, then smiled brightly as professor bhaer opened the gate with an impatient push. later in the evening, when his mind had been set at rest about the bootjack, laurie said suddenly to his wife, "mrs. laurence." "my lord!" "that man intends to marry our jo!" "i hope so, don't you, dear?" "well, my love, i consider him a trump, in the fullest sense of that expressive word, but i do wish he was a little younger and a good deal richer." "now, laurie, don't be too fastidious and worldly-minded. if they love one another it doesn't matter a particle how old they are nor how poor. women never should marry for money . . ." amy caught herself up short as the words escaped her, and looked at her husband, who replied, with malicious gravity . . . "certainly not, though you do hear charming girls say that they intend to do it sometimes. if my memory serves me, you once thought it your duty to make a rich match. that accounts, perhaps, for your marrying a good-for-nothing like me." "oh, my dearest boy, don't, don't say that! i forgot you were rich when i said `yes'. i'd have married you if you hadn't a penny, and i sometimes wish you were poor that i might show how much i love you." and amy, who was very dignified in public and very fond in private, gave convincing proofs of the truth of her words. "you don't really think i am such a mercenary creature as i tried to be once, do you? it would break my heart if you didn't believe that i'd gladly pull in the same boat with you, even if you had to get your living by rowing on the lake."2 "am i an idiot and a brute? how could i think so, when you refused a richer man for me, and won't let me give you half i want to now, when i have the right? girls do it every day, poor things, and are taught to think it is their only salvation, but you had better lessons, and though i trembled for you at one time, i was not disappointed, for the daughter was true to the mother's teaching. i told mamma so yesterday, and she looked as glad and grateful as if i'd given her a check for a million, to be spent in charity. you are not listening to my moral remarks, mrs. laurence." and laurie paused, for amy's eyes had an absent look, though fixed upon his face. "yes, i am, and admiring the mple in your chin at the same time. i don't wish to make you vain, but i must confess that i'm prouder of my handsome husband than of all his money. don't laugh, but your nose is such a comfort to me." and amy softly caressed the well-cut feature with artistic satisfaction. laurie had received many compliments in his life, but never one that suited him better, as he plainly showed though he did laugh at his wife's peculiar taste, while she said slowly, "may i ask you a question, dear?" "of course, you may." "shall you care if jo does marry mr. bhaer?" "oh, that's the trouble is it? i thought there was something in the dimple that didn't quite suit you. not being a dog in the manger, but the happiest fellow alive, i assure you i can dance at jo's wedding with a heart as light as my heels. do you doubt it, my darling?" amy looked up at him, and was satisfied. her little jealous fear vanished forever, and she thanked him, with a face full of love and confidence. "i wish we could do something for that capital old professor. couldn't we invent a rich relation, who shall obligingly die out there in germany, and leave him a tidy little fortune?" said laurie, when they began to pace up and down the long drawing room, arm in arm, as they were fond of doing, in memory of the chateau garden. "jo would find us out, and spoil it all. she is very proud of him, just as he is, and said yesterday that she thought poverty was a beautiful thing." "bless her dear heart! she won't think so when she has a literary husband, and a dozen little professors and professorins to support. we won't interfere now, but watch our chance, and do them a good turn in spite of themselves. i owe jo for a part of my education, and she believes in people's paying their honest debts, so i'll get round her in that way." "how delightful it is to be able to help others, isn't it? that was always one of my dreams, to have the power of giving freely, and thanks to you, the dream has come true." "ah, we'll do quantities of good, won't we? there's one sort of poverty that i particularly like to help. out-and-out beggars get taken care of, but poor gentle folks fare badly, because they won't ask, and people don't dare to offer charity. yet there are a thousand ways of helping them, if one only knows how to do it so delicately that it does not offend. i must say, i like to serve a decayed gentleman better than a blarnerying beggar. i suppose it's wrong, but i do, though it is harder." "because it takes a gentleman to do it," added the other member of the domestic admiration society. "thank you, i'm afraid i don't deserve that pretty compliment. but i was going to say that while i was dawdling about abroad, i saw a good many talented young fellows making all sorts of sacrifices, and enduring real hardships, that they might realize their dreams. splendid fellows, some of them, working like heros, poor and friendless, but so full of courage, patience, and ambition that i was ashamed of myself, and longed to give them a right good lift. those are people whom it's a satisfaction to help, for if they've got genius, it's an honor to be allowed to serve them, and not let it be lost or delayed for want of fuel to keep the pot boiling. if they haven't, it's a pleasure to comfort the poor souls, and keep them from despair when they find it out." "yes, indeed, and there's another class who can't ask, and who suffer in silence. i know something of it, for i belonged to it before you made a princess of me, as the king does the beggarmaid in the old story. ambitious girls have a hard time, laurie, and often have to see youth, health, and precious opportunities go by, just for want of a little help at the right minute. people have been very kind to me, and whenever i see girls struggling along, as we used to do, i want to put out my hand and help them, as i was helped." "and so you shall, like an angel as you are!" cried laurie, resolving, with a glow of philanthropic zeal, to found and endow an institution for the express benefit of young women with artistic tendencies. "rich people have no right to sit down and enjoy themselves, or let their money accumulate for others to waste. it's not half so sensible to leave legacies when one dies as it is to use the money wisely while alive, and enjoy making one's fellow creatures happy with it. we'll have a good time ourselves, and add an extra relish to our own pleasure by giving other people a generous taste. will you be a little dorcal, going about emptying a big basket of comforts, and filling it up with good deeds?" "with all my heart, if you will be a brave st. martin, stopping as you ride gallantly through the world to share your cloak with the beggar." "it's a bargain, and we shall get the best of it!" so the young pair shook hands upon it, and then paced happily on again, feeling that their pleasant home was more homelike because they hoped to brighten other homes, believing that their own feet would walk more uprightly along the flowery path before them, if they smoothed rough ways for other feet, and feeling that their hearts were more closely knit together by a love which could tenderly remember those less blest than they. chapter forty-five i cannot feel that i have done my duty as humble historian of the march family, without devoting at least one chapter to the two most precious and important members of it. daisy and demi had now arrived at years of discretion, for in this fast age babies of three or four assert their rights, and get them, too, which is more than many of their elders do. if there ever were a pair of twins in danger of being utterly spoiled by adoration, it was these prattling brookes. of course they were the most remarkable children ever born, as will be shown when i mention that they walked at eight months, talked fluently at twelve months, and at two years they took their places at table, and behaved with a propriety which charmed all beholders. at three, daisy demanded a `needler', and actually made a bag with four stitches in it. she likewise set up housekeeping in the sideboard, and managed a microscopic cooking stove with a skill that brought tears of pride to hannah's eyes, while demi learned his letters with his grandfather, who invented a new mode of teaching the alphabet by forming letters with his arms and legs, thus uniting gymnastics for head and heels. the boy early developed a mechanical genius which delighted his father and distracted his mother, for he tried to imitate every machine he saw, and kept the nursery in a chaotic condition, with his `sewinsheen', a mysterious structure of string, chairs, clothespins, and spools, for wheels to go `wound and wound'. also a basket hung over the back of a chair, in which he vainly tried to hoist his too confiding sister, who, with feminine devotion, allowed her little head to be bumped till rescued, when the young inventor indignantly remarked, "why, marmar, dat's my lellywaiter, and me's trying to pull her up." though utterly unlike in character, the twins got on remarkably well together, and seldom quarreled more than thrice a day. of course, demi tyrannized over daisy, and gallantly defended her from every other aggressor, while daisy made a galley slave of herself, and adored her brother as the one perfect being in the world. a rosy, chubby, sunshiny little soul was daisy, who found her way to everybody's heart, and nestled there. one of the captivating children, who seem made to be kissed and cuddled, adorned and adored like little goddesses, and produced for general approval on all festive occasions. her small virtues were so sweet that she would have been quite angelic if a few small naughtinesses had not kept her delightfully human. it was all fair weather in her world, and every morning she scrambled up to the window in her little nightgown to look our, and say, no matter whether it rained or shone, "oh, pitty day, oh, pitty day!" everyone was a friend, and she offered kisses to a stranger so confidingly that the most inveterate bachelor relented, and baby-lovers became faithful worshipers. "me loves evvybody," she once said, opening her arms, with her spoon in one hand, and her mug in the other, as if eager to embrace and nourish the whole world. as she grew, her mother began to feel that the dovecote would be blessed by the presence of an inmate as serene and loving as that which had helped to make the old house home, and to pray that she might be spared a loss like that which had lately taught them how long they had entertained an angel unawares. her grandfather often called her `beth', and her grandmother watched over her with untiring devotion, as if trying to atone for some past mistake, which no eye but her own could see. demi, like a true yankee, was of an inquiring turn, wanting to know everything, and often getting much disturbed because he could not get satisfactory answers to his perpetual "what for?" he also possessed a philosophic bent, to the great delight of his grandfather, who used to hold socratic conversations with him, in which the precocious pupil occasionally posed his teacher, to the undisguised satisfaction of the womenfolk. "what makes my legs go, dranpa?" asked the young philosopher, surveying those active portions of his frame with a meditative air, while resting after a go-to-bed frolic one night. "it's your little mind, demi," replied the sage, stroking the yellow head respectfully. "what is a little mine?" "it is something which makes your body move, as the spring made the wheels go in my watch when i showed it to you." "open me. i want to see it go wound." "i can't do that any more than you could open the watch. god winds you up, and you go till he stops you." "does i?" and demi's brown eyes grew big and bright as he took in the new thought. "is i wounded up like the watch?" "yes, but i can't show you how, for it is done when we don't see." demi felt his back, as if expecting to find it like that of the watch, and then gravely remarked, "i dess dod does it when i's asleep." a careful explanation followed, to which he listened so attentively that his anxious grandmother said, "my dear, do you think it wise to talk about such things to that baby? he's getting great bumps over his eyes, and learning to ask the most unanswerable questions." "if he is old enough to ask the question he is old enough to receive true answers. i am not putting the thoughts into his head, but helping him unfold those already there. these children are wiser than we are, and i have no doubt the boy understands every word i have said to him. now, demi, tell me where you keep your mind." if the boy had replied like alcibiades, "by the gods, socrates, i cannot tell," his grandfather would not have been surprised, but when, after standing a moment on one leg, like a meditative young stork, he answered, in a tone of calm conviction, "in my little belly," the old gentleman could only join in grandma's laugh, and dismiss the class in metaphysics. there might have been cause for maternal anxiety, if demi had not given convincing proofs that he was a true boy, as well as a budding philosopher, for often, after a discussion which caused hannah to prophesy, with ominous nods, "that child ain't long for this world," he would turn about and set her fears at rest by some of the pranks with which dear, dirty, naughty little rascals distract and delight their parent's souls. meg made many moral rules, and tried to keep them, but what mother was ever proof against the winning wiles, the ingenious evasions, or the tranquil audacity of the miniature men and women who so early show themselves accomplished artful dodgers? "no more raisins, demi. they'll make you sick," says mamma to the young person who offers his services in the kitchen with unfailing regularity on plum-pudding day. "me likes to be sick." "i don't want to have you, so run away and help daisy make patty cakes." he reluctantly departs, but his wrongs weigh upon his spirit, and by-and-by when an opportunity comes to redress them, he outwits mamma by a shrewd bargain. "now you have been good children, and i'll play anything you like," says meg, as she leads her assistant cooks upstairs, when the pudding is safely bouncing in the pot. "truly, marmar?" asks demi, with a brilliant idea in his wellpowdered head. "yes, truly. anything you say," replies the shortsighted parent, preparing herself to sing, "the three little kittens" half a dozen times over, or to take her family to "buy a penny bun," regardless of wind or limb. but demi corners her by the cool reply... "then we'll go and eat up all the raisins." aunt dodo was chief playmate and confidante of both children, and the trio turned the little house topsy-turvy. aunt amy was as yet only a name to them, aunt beth soon faded into a pleasantly vague memory, but aunt dodo was a living reality, and they made the most of her, for which compliment she was deeply grateful. but when mr. bhaer came, jo neglected her playfellows, and dismay and desolation fell upon their little souls. daisy, who was fond of going about peddling kisses, lost her best customer and became bankrupt. demi, with infantile penetration, soon discovered that dodo like to play with `the bear-man' better than she did him, but though hurt, he concealed his anguish, for he hadn't the heart to insult a rival who kept a mine of chocolate drops in his waistcoat pocket, and a watch that could be taken out of its case and freely shaken by ardent admirers. some persons might have considered these pleasing liberties as bribes, but demi didn't see it in that light, and continued to patronize the `the bear-man' with pensive affability, while daisy bestowed her small affections upon him at the third call, and considered his shoulder her throne, his arm her refuge, his gifts treasures surpassing worth. gentlemen are sometimes seized with sudden fits of admiration for the young relatives of ladies whom they honor with their regard, but this counterfeit philoprogenitiveness sits uneasily upon them, and does not deceive anybody a particle. mr. bhaer's devotion was sincere, however likewise effective--for honesty is the best policy in love as in law. he was one of the men who are at home with children, and looked particularly well when little faces made a pleasant contrast with his manly one. his business, whatever it was, detained him from day to day, but evening seldom failed to bring him out to see--well, he always asked for mr. march, so i suppose he was the attraction. the excellent papa labored under the delusion that he was, and reveled in long discussions with the kindred spirit, till a chance remark of his more observing grandson suddenly enlightened him. mr. bhaer came in one evening to pause on the threshold of the study, astonished by the spectacle that met his eye. prone upon the floor lay mr. march, with his respectable legs in the air, and beside him, likewise prone, was demi, trying to imitate the attitude with his own short, scarlet-stockinged legs, both grovelers so seriously absorbed that they were unconscious of spectators, till mr. bhaer laughed his sonorous laugh, and jo cried out, with a scandalized face . . . "father, father, here's the professor!" down went the black legs and up came the gray head, as the preceptor said, with undisturbed dignity, "good evening, mr. bhaer. excuse me for a moment. we are just finishing our lesson. now, demi, make the letter and tell its name." "i knows him!" and, after a few convulsive efforts, the red legs tok the shape of a pair of compasses, and the intelligent pupil triumphantly shouted, "it's a we, dranpa, it's a we!" "he's a born weller," laughed jo, as her parent gathered himself up, and her nephew tried to stand on his head, as the only mode of expressing his satisfaction that school was over. "what have you been at today, bubchen?" asked mr. bhaer, picking up the gymnast. "me went to see little mary." "and what did you there?" "i kissed her," began demi, with artless frankness. "prut! thou beginnest early. what did the little mary say to that?" asked mr. bhaer, continuing to confess the young sinner, who stood upon the knee, exploring the waistcoat pocket. "oh, she liked it, and she kissed me, and i liked it. don't little boys like little girls?" asked demi, with his mouth full, and an air of bland satisfaction. "you precious chick! who put that into your head?" said jo, enjoying the innocent revelation as much as the professor. "`tisn't in mine head, it's in mine mouf," answered literal demi, putting out his tongue, with a chocolate drop on it, thinking she alluded to confectionery, not ideas. "thou shouldst save some for the little friend. sweets to the sweet, mannling." and mr. bhaer offered jo some, with a look that made her wonder if chocolate was not the nectar drunk by the gods. demi also saw the smile, was impressed by it, and artlessy inquired. .. "do great boys like great girls, to, 'fessor?" like young washington, mr. bhaer `couldn't tell a lie', so he gave the somewhat vague reply that he believed they did sometimes,in a tone that made mr. march put down his clothesbrush, glance at jo's retiring face, and then sink into his chair, looking as if the `precocious chick' had put an idea into his head that was both sweet and sour. why dodo, when she caught him in the china closet half an hour afterward, nearly squeezed the breath out of his little body with a tender embrace, instead of shaking him for being there, and why she followed up this novel performance by the unexpected gift of a big slice of bread and jelly, remained one of the problems over which demi puzzled his small wits, and was forced to leave unsolved forever. chapter forty-six while laurie and amy were taking conjugal strolls over velvet carpets, as they set their house in order, and planned a blissful future, mr. bhaer and jo were enjoying promenades of a different sort, along muddy roads and sodden fields. "i always do take a walk toward evening, and i don't know why i should give it up, just because i happen to meet the professor on his way out," said jo to herself, after two or three encounters, for though there were two paths to meg's whichever one she took she was sure to meet him., either going or returning. he was always walking rapidly, and never seemed to see her until quite close, when he would look as if his short-sighted eyes had failed to recognize the approaching lady till that moment. then, if she was going to meg's he always had something for the babies. if her face was turned homeward, he had merely strolled down to see the river, and was just returning, unless they were tired of his frequent calls. under the circumstances, what could jo do but greet him civilly, and invite him in? if she was tired of his visits, she concealed her weariness with perfect skill,and took care that there should be coffee for supper, "as friedrich--i mean mr. bhaer--doesn't like tea." by the second week, everyone knew perfectly well what was going on, yet everyone tried to look as if they were stone-blind to the changes in jo's face. they never asked why she sang about her work, did up her hair three times a day, and got so blooming with her evening exercise. and no one seemed to have the slightest suspicion that professor bhaer, while talking philosophy with the father, was giving the daughter lessons in love. jo couldn't even lose her heart in a decorous manner, but sternly tried to quench her feelings, and failing to do so, led a somewhat agitated life. she was mortally afraid of being laughed at for surrendering, after her many and vehement declarations of independence. laurie was her especial dread, but thanks to the new manager, he behaved with praiseworthy propriety, never called mr. bhaer `a capital old fellow' in public, never alluded, in the remotest manner, to jo's improved appearance, or expressed the least surprise at seeing the professor's hat on the marches' table nearly every evening. but he exulted in private and longed for the time to come when he could give jo a piece of plate, with a bear and a ragged staff on it as an appropriate coat of arms. for a fortnight, the professor came and went with lover-like regularity. then he stayed away for three whole days, and made no sign, a proceeding which caused everybody to look sober, and jo to become pensive, at first, and then--alas for romance--very cross. "disgusted, i dare say, and gone home as suddenly as he came. it's nothing tome, of course, but i should think he would have come and bid us goodbye like a gentleman," she said to herself, with a despairing look at the gate, as she put on her things for the customary walk one dull afternoon. "you'd better take the little umbrella, dear. it looks like rain," said her mother, observing that she had on her new bonnet, but not alluding to the fact. "yes, marmee, do you want anything in town? i've got to run in and get some paper," returned jo, pulling out the bow under her chin before the glass as an excuse for not looking at her mother. "yes, i want some twilled silesia, a paper of number nine needles, and two yards of narrow lavender ribbon. have you got your thick boots on, and something warm under your cloak?" "i believe so," answered jo absently. "if you happen to meet mr. bhaer, bring him home to tea. i quite long to see the dear man," added mrs. march. jo heard that, but made no answer, except to kiss her mother, and walk rapidly away, thinking with a glow of gratitude, in spite of her heartache, "how good she is to me! what do girls do who haven't any mothers to help them through their troubles?" the dry-goods stores were not down among the counting-houses, banks, and wholesale warerooms, where gentlemen most do congregate, but jo found herself in that part of the city before she did a single errand, loitering along as if waiting for someone, examining engineering instruments in one window and samples of wool in another, with most unfeminine interest, tumbling over barrels, being half-smothered by descending bales, and hustled unceremoniously by busy men who looked as if they wondered `how the deuce she got there'. a drop of rain on her cheek recalled her thoughts from baffled hopes to ruined ribbons. for the drops continued to fall, and being a woman as well as a lover, she felt that, though it was too late to save her heart, she might her bonnet. now she remembered the little umbrella, which she had forgotten to take in her hurry to be off, but regret was unavailing, and nothing could be done but borrow one or submit to to a drenching. she looked up at the lowering sky, down at the crimson bow already flecked with black, forward along the muddy street, then one long, lingering look behind, at a certain grimy warehouse, with `hoffmann, swartz, & co.' over the door, and said to herself, with a sternly reproachful air... "it serves me right! what business had i to put on all my best things and come philandering down here, hoping to see the professor? jo, i'm ashamed of you! no, you shall not go there to borrow an umbrella, or find out where he is, from his friends. you shall trudge away, and do your errands in the rain, and if you catch your death and ruin your bonnet, it's no more than you deserve. now then!" with that she rushed across the street so impetuously that she narrowly escaped annihilation from a passing truck,and precipitated herself into the arms of a stately old gentleman, who said, "i beg pardon, ma'am," and looked mortally offended. somewhat daunted, jo righted herself, spread her handkerchief over the devoted ribbons, and putting temptation behind her, hurried on, with increasing dampness about the ankles, and much clashing of umbrellas overhead. the fact that a somewhat dilapidated blue one remained stationary above the unprotected bonnet attracted her attention, and looking up, she saw mr. bhaer looking down. "i feel to know the strong-minded lady who goes so bravely under many horse noses, and so fast through much mus. what do you down here, my friend?" "i'm shopping." mr. bhaer smiled, as he glanced from the pickle factory on one side to the wholesale hide and leather concern on the other, but her only said politely, "you haf no umbrella. may i go also, and take for you the bundles?" "yes, thank you." jo's cheeks were as red as her ribbon, and she wondered what he thought of her, but she didn't care, for in a minute she found herself walking away arm in arm with her professor, feeling as if the sun had suddenly burst out with uncommon brilliancy, that the world was all right again, and that one thoroughly happy woman was paddling through the wet that day. "we thought you had gone," said jo hastily, for she knew he was looking at her. her bonnet wasn't big enough to hide her face, and she feared he might think the joy it betrayed unmaidenly. "did you believe that i should go with no farewell to those who haf been so heavenly kind tome?" he asked so reproachfully that she felt as if she had insulted him by the suggestion, and answered heartily . . . "no, i didn't. i knew you were busy about your own affairs, but we rather missed you, father and mother especially." "and you?" "i'm always glad to see you, sir." in her anxiety to keep her voice quite calm, jo made it rather cool, and the frosty little monosyllable at the end seemed to chill the professor, for his smile vanished, as he said gravely . . . "i thank you, and come one more time before i go." "you are going, then?" "i haf no longer any business here, it is done." "successfully, i hope?" said jo, for the bitterness of disappointment was in that short reply of his. "i ought to think so, for i haf a way opened to me by which i can make my bread and gif my junglings much help." "tell me, please! i like to know all about the--the boys," said jo eagerly. "that is so kind, i gladly tell you. my friends find for me a place in a college, where i teach as at home, and earn enough to make the way smooth for franz and emil. for this i should be grateful, should i not?" "indeed you should. how splendid it will be to have you doing what you like, and be able to see you often, and the boys!" cried jo, clinging to the lads as an excuse for the satisfaction she could not help betraying. "ah! but we shall not meet often, i fear, this place is at the west." "so far away!" and jo left her skirts to their fate, as if it didn't matter now what became of her clothes or herself. mr. bhaer could read several languages, but he had not learned to read women yet. he flattered himself that he knew jo pretty well, and was, therefore, much amazed by the contradictions of voice, face, and manner, which she showed him in rapid succession that day, for she was in half a dozen different moods in the course of half an hour. when she met him she looked surprised, though it was impossible to help suspecting that she had come for that express purpose. when he offered her his arm, she took it with a look that filled him with delight, but when he asked if she missed him, she gave such a chilly, formal reply that despair fell upon him. on learning his good fortune she almost clapped her hands. was the joy all for the boys? then on hearing his destination, she said, "so far away!" in a tone of despair that lifted him on to a pinnacle of hope, but the next minute she tumbled him down again by observing, like one entirely absorbed in the matter... "here's the place for my errands. will you come in? it won't take long." jo rather prided herself upon her shopping capabilities, and particularly wished to impress her escort with the neatness and dispatch with which she would accomplish the business. but owing to the flutter she was in, everything went amiss. she upset the tray of needles, forgot the silesia was to be `twilled' till it was cut off, gave the wrong change, and covered herself with confusion by asking for lavender ribbon at the calico counter. mr. bhaer stood by, watching her blush and blunder, and as he watched, his own bewilderment seemed to subside, for he was beginning to see that on some occasions, women,like dreams, go by contraries. when they came out, he put the parcel under his arm with a more cheerful aspect, and splashed through the puddles as if he rather enjoyed it on the whole. "should we no do a little what you call shopping for the babies, and haf a farewell feast tonight if i go for my last call at your so pleasant home?" he asked, stopping before a window full of fruit and flowers. "what will we buy?" asked jo, ignoring the latter part of his speech, and sniffing the mingled odors with an affectation of delight as they went in. "may they haf oranges and figs?" asked mr. bhaer, with a paternal air. "they eat them when they can get them." "do you care for nuts?" "like a squirrel." "hamburg grapes. yes, we shall drink to the fatherland in those?" jo frowned upon that piece of extravagance, and asked why he didn't buy a frail of dated, a cask of raisins, and a bag of almonds, and be done with it? whereat mr. bhaer confiscated her purse, produced his own, and finished the marketing by buying several pounds of grapes, a pot of rosy daisies, and a pretty jar of honey, to be regarded in the light of a demijohn. then distorting his pockets with knobby bundles,and giving her the flowers to hold, he put up the old umbrella, and they traveled on again. "miss marsch, i haf a great favor to ask of you," began the professor, after a moist promenade of half a block. "yes, sir." and jo's heart began to beat so hard she was afraid he would hear it. "i am bold to say it in spite of the rain, because so short a time remains to me." "yes, sir." and jo nearly crushed the small flowerpot with the sudden squeeze she gave it. "i wish to get a little dress for my tina, and i am too stupid to go alone. will you kindly gif me a word of taste and help?" "yes, sir." and jo felt as calm and cool all of a sudden as if she had stepped into a refrigerator. "perhaps also a shawl for tina's mother, she is so poor and sick, and the husband is such a care. yes, yes, a thick, warm shawl would be a friendly thing to take the little mother." "i'll do it with pleasure, mr. bhaer. i'm going very fast, and he's getting dearer every minute," added jo to herself, then with a mental shake she entered into the business with an energy that was pleasant to behold. mr. bhaer left it all to her, so she chose a pretty gown for tina, and then ordered out the shawls. the clerk, being a married man, condescended to take an interest in the couple, who appeared to be shopping for their family. "your lady may prefer this. it's a superior article, a most desirable color, quite chaste and genteel," he said, shaking out a comfortable gray shawl, and throwing it over jo's shoulders. "does this suit you, mr. bhaer?" she asked, turning her back to him, and feeling deeply grateful for the chance of hiding her face. "excellently well, we will haf it," answered the professor, smiling to himself as he paid for it, while jo continued to rummage the counters like a confirmed bargain-hunter. "now shall we go home?" he asked, as if the words were very pleasant to him. "yes, it's late, and i'm so tired." jo's voice was more pathetic than she knew. for now the sun seemed to have gone in as suddenly as it came out, and the world grew muddy and miserable again, and for the first time she discovered that her feet were cold, her head ached, and that her heart was colder than the former, fuller of pain than the latter. mr. bhaer was going away, he only cared for her as a friend, it was all a mistake, and the sooner it was over the better. with this idea in her head, she hailed an approaching omnibus with such a hasty gesture that the daisies flew out of the pot and were badly damaged. "this is not our omniboos," said the professor, waving the loaded vehicle away, and stopping to pick up the poor little flowers. "i beg your pardon. i didn't see the name distinctly. never mind, i can walk. i'm used to plodding in the mud," returned jo, winking hard, because she would have died rather than openly wipe her eyes. mr. bhaer saw the drops on her cheeks, though she turned her head away. the sight seemed to touch him very much, for suddenly stooping down, he asked in a tone that meant a great deal, "heart's dearest, why do you cry?" now, if jo had not been new to this sort of thing she would have said she wasn't crying, had a cold in her head, or told any other feminine fib proper to the occasion. instead of which, that undignified creature answered, with an irrepressible sob, "because you are going away." "ach, mein gott, that is so good!" cried mr. bhaer, managing to clasp his hands in spite of the umbrella and the bundles, "jo, i haf nothing but much love to gif you. i came to see if you could care for it, and i waited to be sure that i was something more than a friend. am i? can you make a little place in your heart for old fritz?" he added, all in one breath. "oh, yes!" said jo, and he was quite satisfied, for she folded both hands over his are, and looked up at him with an expression that plainly showed how happy she would be to walk through life beside him, even though she had no better shelter than the old umbrella, if he carried it. it was certainly proposing under difficulties, for even if he had desired to do so, mr. bhaer could not go down upon his knees, on account of the mud. neither could he offer jo his hand, except figuratively, for both were full. much less could he indulge in tender remonstrations in the open street, though he was near it. so the only way in which he could express his rapture was to look at her, with an expression which glorified his face to such a degree that there actually seemed to be little rainbows in the drops that sparkled on his beard. if he had not loved jo very much, i don't think he could have done it then, for she looked far from lovely, with her skirts in a deplorable state, her rubber boots splashed to the ankle, and her bonnet a ruin. fortunately, mr. bhaer considered her the most beautiful woman living, and she found him more `jove-like" than ever, though his hatbrim was quite limp with the little rills trickling thence upon his shoulders (for he held the umbrella all over jo), and every finger of his gloves needed mending. passers-by probably thought them a pair of harmless lunatics, for they entirely forgot to hail a bus, and strolled leisurely along, oblivious of deepening dusk and fog. little they cared what anybody thought, for they were enjoying the happy hour that seldom comes but once in any life, the magical moment which bestows youth on the old, beauty on the plain, wealth on the poor, and gives human hearts a foretaste of heaven. the professor looked as if he had conquered a kingdom, and the world had nothing more to offer him in the way of bliss. while jo trudged beside him, feeling as if her place had always been there, and wondering how she ever could have chosen any other lot. of course, she was the first to speak--intelligibly, i mean, for the emotional remarks which followed her impetuous "oh, yes!" were not of a coherent or reportable character. "friedrich, why didn't you . . ." "ah, heaven, she gifs me the name that no one speaks since minna died!" cried the professor, pausing in a puddle to regard her with grateful delight. "i always call you so to myself--i forgot, but i won't unless you like it." "like it? it is more sweet to me than i can tell. say `thou', also, and i shall say your language is almost as beautiful as mine." "isn't `thou' a little sentimental?" asked jo, privately thinking it a lovely monosyllable. "sentimental? yes. thank gott, we germans believe in sentiment, and keep ourselves young mit it. your english `you' is so cold, say `thou', heart's dearest, it means so much to me," pleaded mr. bhaer, more like a romantic student than a grave professor. "well, then, why didn't thou tell me all this sooner?" asked jo bashfully. "now i shall haf to show thee all my heart, and i so gladly will, because thou must take care of it hereafter. see, then, my jo--ah, the dear, funny little name--i had a wish to tell something the day i said goodbye in new york, but i thought the handsome friend was betrothed to thee, and so i spoke not. wouldst thou have said `yes', then, if i had spoken?" "i don't know. i'm afraid not, for i didn't have any heart just then." "prut! that i do not believe. it was asleep till the fairy prince came through the wood, and waked it up. ah, well, `die erste liebe ist die beste', but that i should not expect." "yes, the first love is the best, but be so contented, for i never had another. teddy was only a boy, and soon got over his little fancy," said jo, anxious to correct the professor's mistake. "good! then i shall rest happy, and be sure that thou givest me all. i haf waited so long, i am grown selfish, as thou wilt find , professorin." "i like that," cried jo, delighted with her new name. "now tell me what brought you, at last, just when i wanted you?" "this." and mr. bhaer took a little worn paper out of his waistcoat pocket. jo unfolded it, and looked much abashed, for it was one of her own contributions to a paper that paid for poetry, which accounted for her sending it an occasional attempt. "how could that bring you?" she asked, wondering what he meant. "i found it by chance. i knew it by the names and the initials, and in it there was one little verse that seemed to call me. read and find him. i will see that you go not in the wet." in the garret four little chests all in a row, dim with dust, and worn by time, all fashioned and filled, long ago, by children now in their prime. four little keys hung side by side, with faded ribbons, brave and gay when fastened there, with childish pride, long ago, on a rainy day. four little names, one on each lid, carved out by a boyish hand, and underneath there lieth hid histories of the happpy band once playing here, and pausing oft to hear the sweet refrain, that came and went on the roof aloft, in the falling summer rain. "meg" on the first lid, smooth and fair. i look in with loving eyes, for folded here, with well-known care, a goodly gathering lies, the record of a peaceful life- gifts to gentle child and girl, a bridal gown, lines to a wife, a tiny shoe, a baby curl. no toys in this first chest remain, for all are carried away, in their old age, to join again in another small meg's play. ah, happy mother! well i know you hear, like a sweet refrain, lullabies ever soft and low in the falling summer rain. "jo" on the next lid, scratched and worn, and within a motley store of headless, dolls, of schoolbooks torn, birds and beasts that speak no more, spoils brought home from the fairy ground only trod by youthful feet, dreams of a future never found, memories of a past still sweet, half-writ poems, stories wild, april letters, warm and cold, diaries of a wilful child, hints of a woman early old, a woman in a lonely home, hearing, like a sad refrain- "be worthy, love, and love will come," in the falling summer rain. my beth! the dust is always swept from the lid that bears your name, as if by loving eyes that wept, by careful hands that often came. death cannonized for us one saint, ever less human than divine, and still we lay, with tender plaint, relics in this household shrine- the silver bell, so seldom rung, the little cap which last she wore, the fair, dead catherine that hung by angels borne above her door. the songs she sang, without lament, in her prison-house of pain, forever are they sweetly blent with the falling summer rain. upon the last lid's polished field- legend now both fair and true a gallant knight bears on his shield, "amy" in letters gold and blue. within lie snoods that bound her hair, slippers that have danced their last, faded flowers laid by with care, fans whose airy toils are past, gay valentines, all ardent flames, trifles that have borne their part in girlish hopes and fears and shames, the record of a maiden heart now learning fairer, truer spells, hearing, like a blithe refrain, the silver sound of bridal bells in the falling summer rain. four little chests all in a row, dim with dust, and worn by time, four women, taught by weal and woe to love and labor in their prime. four sisters, parted for an hour, none lost, one only gone before, made by love's immortal power, nearest and dearest evermore. oh, when these hidden stores of ours lie open to the father's sight, may they be rich in golden hours, deeds that show fairer for the light, lives whose brave music long shall ring, like a spirit-stirring strain, souls that shall gladly soar and sing in the long sunshine after rain. "it's very bad poetry, but i felt it when i wrote it, one day when i was very lonely, and had a good cry on a rag bag. i never thought it would go where it could tell tales," said jo, tearing up the verses the professor had treasured so long. "let it go, it has done it's duty, and i will haf a fresh one when i read all the brown book in which she keeps her little secrets," said mr. bhaer with a smile as he watched the fragments fly away on the wind. "yes," he added earnestly, "i read that, and i think to myself, she has a sorrow, she is lonely, she would find comfort in true love. i haf a heart full, full for her. shall i not go and say, "if this is not too poor a thing to gif for what i shall hope to receive, take it in gott's name?" "and so you came to find that it was not too poor,but the one precious thing i needed," whispered jo. "i had no courage to think that at first, heavenly kind as was your welcome to me. but soon i began to hope, and then i said, `i will haf her if i die for it'. and so i will!" cried mr. bhaer, with a defiant nod, as if the walls of mist closing round them were barriers which he was to surmount or valiantly knock down. jo thought that was splendid, and resolved to be worthy of her knight, though he did not come prancing on a charger in gorgeous array. "what made you stay away so long?" she asked presently, finding it so pleasant to ask confidential questions and get delightful answers that she could not keep silent. "it was not easy, but i could not find the heart to take you from that so happy home until i could haf a prospect of one to gif you, after much time, perhaps, and hard work. how could i ask you to gif up so much for a poor old fellow, who has no fortune but a little learning?" "i'm glad you are poor. i couldn't bear a rich husband," said jo decidedly, adding in a softer tone, "don't fear poverty. i've known it long enough to lose my dread and be happy working for those i love, and don't call yourself old--forty is the prime of life. i couldn't help loving you if you were seventy!" the professor found that so touching that he would have been glad of his handkerchief, if he could have got at it. as her couldn't, jo wiped his eyes for him, and said, laughing, as she took away a bundle or two... "i may be strong-minded, but no one can say i'm out of my sphere now, for woman's special mission is supposed to be drying tears and bearing burdens. i'm to carry my share, friedrich, and help to earn the home. make up your mind to that, or i'll never go," she added resolutely, as he tried to reclaim his load. "we shall see. haf you patience to wait a long time, jo? i must go away and do my work alone. i must help my boys first, because, even for you, i may not break my word to minna. can you forgif that, and be happy while we hope and wait?" "yes, i know i can, for we love one another, and that makes all the rest easy to bear. i have my duty, also, and my work. i couldn't enjoy myself if i neglected them even for you, so there's no need of hurry or impatience. you can do your part out west, i can do mine here, and both be happy hoping for the best, and leaving the future to be as god wills." "ah! thou gifest me such hope and courage, and i haf nothing to gif back but a full heart and these empty hands," cried the professor, quite overcome. jo never, never would learn to be proper, for when he said that as they stood upon the steps, she just put both hands into his, whispering tenderly, "not empty now," and stooping down, kissed her friedrich under the umbrella. it was dreadful, but she would have done it if the flock of draggle-tailed sparrows on the hedge had been human beings, for she was very far gone indeed, and quite regardless of everything but her own happiness. though it came in such a very simple guise, that was the crowning moment of both their lives, when, turning from the night and storm and loneliness to the household light and warmth and peace waiting to receive them, with a glad "welcome home!" jo led her lover in, and shut the door. chapter forty-seven for a year jo and her professor worked and waited, hoped and loved, met occasionally, and wrote such voluminous letters that the rise in the price of paper was accounted for, laurie said. the second year began rather soberly, for their prospects did not brighten, and aunt march died suddenly. but when their first sorrow was over--for they loved the old lady in spite of her sharp tongue--they found they had cause for rejoicing, for she had left plumfield to jo, which made all sorts of joyful things possible. "it's a fine old place, and will bring a handsome sum, for of course you intend to sell it," said laurie, as they were all talking the matter over some weeks later. "no, i don't," was jo's decided answer, as she petted the fat poodle, whom she had adopted, out of respect to his former mistress. "you don't mean to live there?" "yes, i do." "but, my dear girl, it's an immense house, and will take a power of money to keep it in order. the garden and orchard alone need two or three men, and farming isn't in bhaer's line, i take it." "he'll try his hand at it there, if i propose it." "and you expect to live on the produce of the place? well, that sounds paradisiacal, but you'll find it desperate hard work." "the crop we are going to raise is a profitable one," and jo laughed. "of what is this fine crop to consist, ma'am?" "boys. i want to open a school for little lads--a good, happy, homelike school, with me to take care of them and fritz to teach them." "that's a truly joian plan for you! isn't that just like her?" cried laurie, appealing to the family, who looked as much surprised as he. "i like it," said mrs. march decidedly. "so do i," added her husband, who welcomed the thought of a chance for trying the socratic method of education on modern youth. "it will be an immense care for jo," said meg, stroking the head or her one all-absorbing son. "jo can do it, and be happy in it. it's a splendid idea. tell us all about it," cried mr. laurence, who had been longing to lend the lovers a hand, but knew that they would refuse his help. "i knew you'd stand by me, sir. amy does too--i see it in her eyes, though she prudently waits to turn it over in her mind before she speaks. now, my dear people," continued jo earnestly, "just understand that this isn't a new idea of mine, but a longcherished plan. before my fritz came, i used to think how, when i'd made my fortune, and no one needed me at home, i'd hire a big house, and pick up some poor, forlorn little lads who hadn't any mothers, and take care of them, and make life jolly for them before it was too late. i see so many going to ruin for want of help at the right minute, i love so to do anything for them, i seem to feel their wants, and sympathize with their troubles, and oh, i should so like to be a mother to them!" mrs. march held out her hand to jo, who took it, smiling, with tears in her eyes, and went on in the old enthusiastic way, which they had not seen for a long while. "i told my plan to fritz once, and he said it was just what he would like, and agreed to try it when we got rich. bless his dear heart, he's been doing it all his life--helping poor boys, i mean, not getting rich, that he'll never be. money doesn't stay in his pocket long enough to lay up any. but now, thanks to my good old aunt, who loved me better than i ever deserved, i'm rich, at least i feel so, and we can live at plumfield perfectly well, if we have a flourishing school. it's just the place for boys, the house is big, and the furniture strong and plain. there's plenty of room for dozens inside, and splendid grounds outside. they could help in the garden and orchard. such work is healthy, isn't it, sir? then fritz could train and teach in his own way, and father will help him. i can feed and nurse and pet and scold them, and mother will be my stand-by. i've always longed for lots of boys, and never had enough, now i can fill the house full and revel in the little dears to my heart's content. think what luxury--plumfield my own, and a wilderness of boys to enjoy it with me." as jo waved her hands and gave a sigh of rapture, the family went off into a gale of merriment, and mr. laurence laughed till they thought he'd have an apoplectic fit. "i don't see anything funny," she said gravely, when she could be heard. "nothing could be more natural and proper than for my professor to open a school, and for me to prefer to reside in my own estate." "she is putting on airs already," said laurie, who regarded the idea in the light of a capital joke. "but may i inquire how you intend to support the establishment? if all the pupils are little ragamuffins, i'm afraid your crop won't be profitable in a worldly sense, mr. bhaer." "now don't be a wet-blanket, teddy. of course i shall have rich pupils, also--perhaps begin with such altogether. then, when i've got a start, i can take in a ragamuffin or two, just for a relish. rich people's children often need care and comfort, as well as poor. i've seen unfortunate little creatures left to servants, or backward ones pushed forward, when it's real cruelty. some are naughty through mismanagment or neglect, and some lose their mothers. besides, the best have to get through the hobbledehoy age, and that's the very time they need most patience and kindness. people laugh at them, and hustle them about, try to keep them out of sight, and expect them to turn all at once from pretty children into fine young men. they don't complain much-plucky little souls--but they feel it. i've been through something of it, and i know all about it. i've a special interest in such young bears, and like to show them that i see the warm, honest, well-meaning boys' hearts, in spite of the clumsy arms and legs and the topsy-turvy heads. i've had experience, too, for haven't i brought up one boy to be a pride and honor to his family?" "i'll testify that you tried to do it," said laurie with a grateful look. "and i've succeeded beyond my hopes, for here you are, a steady, sensible businessman, doing heaps of good with your money, and laying up the blessings of the poor, instead of dollars. but you are not merely a businessman, you love good and beautiful things, enjoy them yourself, and let others go halves, as you always did in the old times. i am proud of you, teddy, for you get better every year, and everyone feels it, though you won't let them say so. yes, and when i have my flock, i'll just point to you, and say `there's your model, my lads'." poor laurie didn't know where to look, for, man though he was, something of the old bashfulness came over him as this burst of praise made all faces turn approvingly upon him. "i say, jo, that's rather too much," he began, just in his old boyish way. "you have all done more for me than i can ever thank you for, except by doing my best not to disapoint you. you have rather cast me off lately, jo, but i've had the best of help, nevertheless. so, if i've got on at all, you may thank these two for it." and he laid one hand gently on his grandfather's head, and the other on amy's golden one, for the three were never far apart. "i do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world!" burst out jo, who was in an unusually up-lifted frame of mind just then. "when i have one of my own, i hope it will be as happy as the three i know and love the best. if john and my fritz were only here, it would be quite a little heaven on earth," she added more quietly. and that night when she went to her room after a blissful evening of family counsels, hopes, and plans, her heart was so full of happiness that she could only calm it by kneeling beside the empty bed always near her own, and thinking tender thoughts of beth. it was a very astonishing year altogether, for things seemed to happen in an unusually rapid and delightful manner. almost before she knew where she was, jo found herself married and settled at plumfield. then a family of six or seven boys sprung up like mushrooms, and flourished surprisingly, poor boys as well as rich, for mr. laurence was continually finding some touching case of destitution, and begging the bhaers to take pity on the child, and he would gladly pay a trifle for its support. in this way, the sly old gentleman got round proud jo, and furnished her with the style of boy in which she most delighted. of course it was uphill work at first, and jo made queer mistakes, but the wise professor steered her safely into calmer waters, and the most rampant ragamuffin was conquered in the end. how jo did enjoy her `wilderness of boys', and how poor, dear aunt march would have lamented had she been there to see the sacred precincts of prim, well-ordered plumfield overrun with toms, dicks, and harrys! there was a sort of poetic justice about it, after all, for the old lady had been the terror of the boys for miles around, and now the exiles feasted freely on forbidden plums, kicked up the gravel with profane boots unreproved, and played cricket in the big field where the irritable `cow with a crumpled horn' used to invite rash youths to come and be tossed. it became a sort of boys' paradise, and laurie suggested that it should be called the `bhaer-garten', as a compliment to its master and appropriate to its inhabitants. it never was a fashionable school, and the professor did not lay up a fortune, but it was just what jo intended it to be--`a happy, homelike place for boys, who needed teaching, care, and kindness'. every room in the big house was soon full. every little plot in the garden soon had its owner. a regular menagerie appeared in barn and shed, for pet animals were allowed. and three times a day, jo smiled at her fritz from the head of a long table lined on either side with rows of happy young faces, which all turned to her with affectionate eyes, confiding words, and grateful hearts, full of love for `mother bhaer'. she had boys enough now, and did not tire of them, though they were not angels, by any means, and some of them caused both professor and professorin much trouble and anxiety. but her faith in the good spot which exists in the heart of the naughtiest, sauciest, most tantalizing little ragamuffin gave her patience, skill, and in time success, for no mortal boy could hold out long with father bhaer shining on him as benevolently as the sun, and mother bhaer forgiving him seventy times seven. very precious to jo was the friendship of the lads, their penitent sniffs and whispers after wrongdoing, their droll or touching little confidences, their pleasant enthusiasms, hopes, and plans, even their misfortunes, for they only endeared them to her all the more. there were slow boys and bashful boys, feeble boys and riotous boys, boys that lisped and boys that stuttered, one or two lame ones, and a merry little quadroon, who could not be taken in elsewhere, but who was welcome to the `bhaer-garten', though some people predicted that his admission would ruin the school. yes, jo was a very happy woman there, in spite of hard work, much anxiety, and a perpetual racket. she enjoyed it heartily and found the applause of her boys more satisfying than any praise of the world, for now she told no stories except to her flock of enthusiastic believers and admirers. as the years went on, two little lads of her own came to increase her happiness--rob, named for grandpa, and teddy, a happy-go-lucky baby, who seemed to have inherited his papa's sunshiny temper as well as his mother's lively spirit. how they ever grew up alive in that whirlpool of boys was a mystery to their grandma and aunts, but they flourished like dandelions in spring, and their rough nurses loved and served them well. there were a great many holidays at plumfield, and one of the most delightful was the yearly apple-picking. for then the marches, laurences, brookes. and bhaers turned out in full force and made a day of it. five years after jo's wedding, one of these fruitful festivals occurred, a mellow october day, when the air was full of an exhilarating freshness which made the spirits rise and the blood dance healthily in the veins. the old orchard wore its holiday attire. goldenrod and asters fringed the mossy walls. grasshoppers skipped briskly in the sere grass, and crickets chirped like fairy pipers at a feast. squirrels were busy with their small harvesting. birds twittered their adieux from the alders in the lane, and every tree stood ready to send down its shower of red or yellow apples at the first shake. everybody was there. everybody laughed and sang, climbed up and tumbled down. everybody declared that there never had been such a perfect day or such a jolly set to enjoy it, and everyone gave themselves up to the simple pleasures of the hour as freely as if there were no such things as care or sorrow in the world. mr. march strolled placidly about, quoting tusser, cowley, and columella to mr. laurence, while enjoying . . . the gentle apple's winey juice. the professor charged up and down the green aisles like a stout teutonic knight, with a pole for a lance, leading on the boys, who made a hook and ladder company of themselves, and performed wonders in the way of ground and lofty tumbling. laurie devoted himself to the little ones, rode his small daughter in a bushelbasket, took daisy up among the bird's nests, and kept adventurous rob from breaking his neck. mrs. march and meg sat among the apple piles like a pair of pomonas, sorting the contributions that kept pouring in, while amy with a beautiful motherly expression in her face sketched the various groups, and watched over one pale lad, who sat adoring her with his little crutch beside him. jo was in her element that day, and rushed about, with her gown pinned up, and her hat anywhere but on her head, and her baby tucked under her arm, ready for any lively adventure which might turn up. little teddy bore a charmed life, for nothing ever happened to him, and jo never felt any anxiety when he was whisked up into a tree by one lad, galloped off on the back of another, or supplied with sour russets by his indulgent papa, who labored under the germanic delusion that babies could digest anything, from pickled cabbage to buttons, nails, and their own small shoes. she knew that little ted would turn up again in time, safe and rosy, dirty and serene, and she always received him back with a hearty welcome, for jo loved her babies tenderly. at four o'clock a lull took place, and baskets remained empty, while the apple pickers rested and compared rents and bruises. then jo and meg, with a detachment of the bigger boys, set forth the supper on the grass, for an out-of-door tea was always the crowning joy of the day. the land literally flowed with milk and honey on such occasions, for the lads were not required to sit at table, but allowed to partake of refreshment as they liked--freedom being the sauce best beloved by the boyish soul. they availed themselves of the rare privilege to the fullest extent, for some tried the pleasing experiment of drinking mild while standing on their heads, others lent a charm to leapfrog by eating pie in the pauses of the game, cookies were sown broadcast over the field, and apple turnovers roosted in the trees like a new style of bird. the little girls had a private tea party, and ted roved among the edibles at his own sweet will. when no one could eat any more, the professor proposed the first regular toast, which was always drunk at such times--"aunt march, god bless her!" a toast heartily given by the good man, who never forgot how much he owed her, and quietly drunk by the boys, who had been taught to keep her memory green. "now, grandma's sixtieth birthday! long life to her, with three times three!" that was given with a will, as you may well believe, and the cheering once begun, it was hard to stop it. everybody's health was proposed, form mr. laurence, who was considered their special patron, to the astonished guinea pig, who had strayed from its proper sphere in search of its young master. demi, as the oldest grandchild, then presented the queen of the day with various gifts, so numerous that they were transported to the festive scene in a wheelbarrow. funny presents, some of them, but what would have been defects to other eyes were ornaments to grandma's--for the children's gifts were all their own. every stitch daisy's patient little fingers had put into the handkerchiefs she hemmed was better than embroidery to mrs. march. demi's miracle of mechanical skill, though the cover wouldn't shut, rob's footstool had a wiggle in its uneven legs that she declared was soothing, and no page of the costly book amy's child gave her was so fair as that on which appeared in tipsy capitals, the words-"to dear grandma, from her little beth." during the ceremony the boys had mysteriously disappeared, and when mrs. march had tried to thank her children, and broken down, while teddy wiped her eyes on his pinafore, the professor suddenly began to sing. then, from above him, voice after voice took up the words, and from tree to tree echoed the music of the unseen choir, as the boys sang with all their hearts the little song that jo had written, laurie set to music, and the professor trained his lads to give with the best effect. this was something altogether new, and it proved a grand success, for mrs. march couldn't get over her surprise, and insisted on shaking hands with every one of the featherless birds, from tall franz and emil to the little quadroon, who had the sweetest voice of all. after this, the boys dispersed for a final lark, leaving mrs. march and her daughters under the festival tree. "i don't think i ever ought to call myself `unlucky jo' again, when my greatest wish has been so beautifully gratified," said mrs. bhaer, taking teddy's little fist out of the milk pitcher, in which he was rapturously churning. "and yet your life is very different from the one you pictured so long ago. do you remember our castles in the air?" asked amy, smiling as she watched laurie and john playing cricket with the boys. "dear fellows! it does my heart good to see them forget business and frolic for a day," answered jo, who now spoke in a maternal way of all mankind. "yes, i remember, but the life i wanted then seems selfish, lonely, and cold to me now. i haven't given up the hope that i may write a good book yet, but i can wait, and i'm sure it will be all the better for such experiences and illustrations as these." and jo pointed from the lively lads in the distance to her father, leaning on the professor's arm, as they walked to and fro in the sunshine, deep in one of the conversations which both enjoyed so much, and then to her mother, sitting enthroned among her daughters, with their children in her lap and at her feet, as if all found help and happiness in the face which never could grow old to them. "my castle was the most nearly realized of all. i asked for splendid things, to be sure, but in my heart i knew i should be satisfied, if i had a little home, and john, and some dear children like these. i've got them all, thank god, and am the happiest woman in the world." and meg laid her hand on her tall boy's head, with a face full of tender and devout content. "my castle is very different from what i planned, but i would not alter it, though, like jo, i don't relinquish all my artistic hopes, or confine myself to helping others fulfill their dreams of beauty. i've begun to model a figure of baby, and laurie says it is the best thing i've ever done. i think so, myself, and mean to do it in marble, so that, whatever happens, i may at least keep the image of my little angel." as amy spoke, a great tear dropped on the golden hair of the sleeping child in her arms, for her one well-beloved daughter was a frail little creature and the dread of losing her was the shadow over amy's sunshine. this cross was doing much for both father and mother, for one love and sorrow bound them closely together. amy's nature was growing sweeter, deeper, and more tender. laurie was growing more serious, strong, and firm, and both were learning that beauty, youth, good fortune, even love itself, cannot keep care and pain, loss and sorrow, from the most blessed for ... into each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and sad and dreary. "she is growing better, i am sure of it, my dear. don't despond, but hope and keep happy," said mrs. march, as tenderhearted daisy stooped from her knee to lay her rosy cheek against her little cousin's pale one. "i never ought to, while i have you to cheer me up, marmee, and laurie to take more than half of every burden," replied amy warmly. "he never lets me see his anxiety, but is so sweet and patient with me, so devoted to beth, and such a stay and comfort to me always that i can't love him enough. so, in spite of my one cross, i can say with meg, `thank god, i'm a happy woman.'" "there's no need for me to say it, for everyone can see that i'm far happier than i deserve," added jo, glancing from her good husband to her chubby children, tumbling on the grass beside her. "fritz is getting gray and stout. i'm growing as thin as a shadow, and am thirty. we never shall be rich, and plumfield may burn up any night, for that incorrigible tommy bangs will smoke sweet-fern cigars under the bed-clothes, though he's set himself afire three times already. but in spite of these unromantic facts, i have nothing to complain of, and never was so jolly in my life. excuse the remark, but living among boys, i can't help using their expressions now and then." "yes, jo, i think your harvest will be a good one," began mrs. march, frightening away a big black cricket that was staring teddy out of countenance. "not half so good as yours, mother. here it is, and we never can thank you enough for the patient sowing and reaping you have done," cried jo, with the loving impetuosity which she never would outgrow. "i hope there will be more wheat and fewer tares every year," said amy softly. "a large sheaf, but i know there's room in your heart for it, marmee dear," added meg's tender voice. touched to the heart, mrs. march could only stretch out her arms, as if to gather children and grandchildren to herself, and say, with face and voice full of motherly love, gratitude, and humility... "oh, my girls, however long you may live, i never can wish you a greater happiness than this!" end of little women . 1827 stanzas by edgar allan poe stanzas stanzas how often we forget all time, when lone admiring nature's universal throne; her woodsher wildsher mountainsthe intense reply of hers to our intelligence! [byron, the island.] i in youth have i known one with whom the earth in secret communing heldas he with it, in daylight, and in beauty from his birth: whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit from the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth a passionate lightsuch for his spirit was fit and yet that spirit knew not, in the hour of its own fervor what had o'er it power. ii perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought to a fever by the moonbeam that hangs o'er, but i will half believe that wild light fraught with more of sovereignty than ancient lore hath ever toldor is it of a thought the unembodied essence, and no more, that with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass as dew of the night-time o'er the summer grass? iii doth o'er us pass, when, as th' expanding eye to the loved objectso the tear to the lid will start, which lately slept in apathy? and yet it need not be(that object) hid from us in lifebut commonwhich doth lie each hour before usbut then only, bid with a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken, to awake us'tis a symbol and a token iv of what in other worlds shall beand given in beauty by our god, to those alone who otherwise would fall from life and heaven drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone, that high tone of the spirit which hath striven, tho' not with faithwith godlinesswhose throne with desperate energy 't hath beaten down; wearing its own deep feeling as a crown. -the end. 1833 ms. found in a bottle by edgar allan poe qui n'a plus qu'un moment a vivre n'a plus rien a dissimuler. --quinault --atys. of my country and of my family i have little to say. ill usage and length of years have driven me from the one, and estranged me from the other. hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no common order, and a contemplative turn of mind enabled me to methodize the stores which early study very diligently garnered up. --beyond all things, the study of the german moralists gave me great delight; not from any ill-advised admiration of their eloquent madness, but from the ease with which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their falsities. i have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. indeed, a strong relish for physical philosophy has, i fear, tinctured my mind with a very common error of this age --i mean the habit of referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science. upon the whole, no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. i have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale i have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than the positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity. after many years spent in foreign travel, i sailed in the year 18--, from the port of batavia, in the rich and populous island of java, on a voyage to the archipelago of the sunda islands. i went as passenger --having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend. our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at bombay of malabar teak. she was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the lachadive islands. we had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. the stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank. we got under way with a mere breath of wind, and for many days stood along the eastern coast of java, without any other incident to beguile the monotony of our course than the occasional meeting with some of the small grabs of the archipelago to which we were bound. one evening, leaning over the taffrail, i observed a very singular, isolated cloud, to the n.w. it was remarkable, as well for its color, as from its being the first we had seen since our departure from batavia. i watched it attentively until sunset, when it spread all at once to the eastward and westward, girting in the horizon with a narrow strip of vapor, and looking like a long line of low beach. my notice was soon afterwards attracted by the dusky-red appearance of the moon, and the peculiar character of the sea. the latter was undergoing a rapid change, and the water seemed more than usually transparent. although i could distinctly see the bottom, yet, heaving the lead, i found the ship in fifteen fathoms. the air now became intolerably hot, and was loaded with spiral exhalations similar to those arising from heat iron. as night came on, every breath of wind died away, an more entire calm it is impossible to conceive. the flame of a candle burned upon the poop without the least perceptible motion, and a long hair, held between the finger and thumb, hung without the possibility of detecting a vibration. however, as the captain said he could perceive no indication of danger, and as we were drifting in bodily to shore, he ordered the sails to be furled, and the anchor let go. no watch was set, and the crew, consisting principally of malays, stretched themselves deliberately upon deck. i went below --not without a full presentiment of evil. indeed, every appearance warranted me in apprehending a simoom. i told the captain my fears; but he paid no attention to what i said, and left me without deigning to give a reply. my uneasiness, however, prevented me from sleeping, and about midnight i went upon deck. --as i placed my foot upon the upper step of the companion-ladder, i was startled by a loud, humming noise, like that occasioned by the rapid revolution of a mill-wheel, and before i could ascertain its meaning, i found the ship quivering to its centre. in the next instant, a wilderness of foam hurled us upon our beam-ends, and, rushing over us fore and aft, swept the entire decks from stem to stern. the extreme fury of the blast proved, in a great measure, the salvation of the ship. although completely water-logged, yet, as her masts had gone by the board, she rose, after a minute, heavily from the sea, and, staggering awhile beneath the immense pressure of the tempest, finally righted. by what miracle i escaped destruction, it is impossible to say. stunned by the shock of the water, i found myself, upon recovery, jammed in between the stern-post and rudder. with great difficulty i gained my feet, and looking dizzily around, was, at first, struck with the idea of our being among breakers; so terrific, beyond the wildest imagination, was the whirlpool of mountainous and foaming ocean within which we were engulfed. after a while, i heard the voice of an old swede, who had shipped with us at the moment of our leaving port. i hallooed to him with all my strength, and presently he came reeling aft. we soon discovered that we were the sole survivors of the accident. all on deck, with the exception of ourselves, had been swept overboard; --the captain and mates must have perished as they slept, for the cabins were deluged with water. without assistance, we could expect to do little for the security of the ship, and our exertions were at first paralyzed by the momentary expectation of going down. our cable had, of course, parted like pack-thread, at the first breath of the hurricane, or we should have been instantaneously overwhelmed. we scudded with frightful velocity before the sea, and the water made clear breaches over us. the frame-work of our stern was shattered excessively, and, in almost every respect, we had received considerable injury; but to our extreme joy we found the pumps unchoked, and that we had made no great shifting of our ballast. the main fury of the blast had already blown over, and we apprehended little danger from the violence of the wind; but we looked forward to its total cessation with dismay; well believing, that, in our shattered condition, we should inevitably perish in the tremendous swell which would ensue. but this very just apprehension seemed by no means likely to be soon verified. for five entire days and nights --during which our only subsistence was a small quantity of jaggeree, procured with great difficulty from the forecastle --the hulk flew at a rate defying computation, before rapidly succeeding flaws of wind, which, without equalling the first violence of the simoom, were still more terrific than any tempest i had before encountered. our course for the first four days was, with trifling variations, s.e. and by s.; and we must have run down the coast of new holland. --on the fifth day the cold became extreme, although the wind had hauled round a point more to the northward. --the sun arose with a sickly yellow lustre, and clambered a very few degrees above the horizon --emitting no decisive light. --there were no clouds apparent, yet the wind was upon the increase, and blew with a fitful and unsteady fury. about noon, as nearly as we could guess, our attention was again arrested by the appearance of the sun. it gave out no light, properly so called, but a dull and sullen glow without reflection, as if all its rays were polarized. just before sinking within the turgid sea, its central fires suddenly went out, as if hurriedly extinguished by some unaccountable power. it was a dim, sliver-like rim, alone, as it rushed down the unfathomable ocean. we waited in vain for the arrival of the sixth day --that day to me has not arrived --to the swede, never did arrive. thenceforward we were enshrouded in patchy darkness, so that we could not have seen an object at twenty paces from the ship. eternal night continued to envelop us, all unrelieved by the phosphoric sea-brilliancy to which we had been accustomed in the tropics. we observed too, that, although the tempest continued to rage with unabated violence, there was no longer to be discovered the usual appearance of surf, or foam, which had hitherto attended us. all around were horror, and thick gloom, and a black sweltering desert of ebony. --superstitious terror crept by degrees into the spirit of the old swede, and my own soul was wrapped up in silent wonder. we neglected all care of the ship, as worse than useless, and securing ourselves, as well as possible, to the stump of the mizen-mast, looked out bitterly into the world of ocean. we had no means of calculating time, nor could we form any guess of our situation. we were, however, well aware of having made farther to the southward than any previous navigators, and felt great amazement at not meeting with the usual impediments of ice. in the meantime every moment threatened to be our last --every mountainous billow hurried to overwhelm us. the swell surpassed anything i had imagined possible, and that we were not instantly buried is a miracle. my companion spoke of the lightness of our cargo, and reminded me of the excellent qualities of our ship; but i could not help feeling the utter hopelessness of hope itself, and prepared myself gloomily for that death which i thought nothing could defer beyond an hour, as, with every knot of way the ship made, the swelling of the black stupendous seas became more dismally appalling. at times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross --at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken. we were at the bottom of one of these abysses, when a quick scream from my companion broke fearfully upon the night. "see! see!" cried he, shrieking in my ears, "almighty god! see! see!" as he spoke, i became aware of a dull, sullen glare of red light which streamed down the sides of the vast chasm where we lay, and threw a fitful brilliancy upon our deck. casting my eyes upwards, i beheld a spectacle which froze the current of my blood. at a terrific height directly above us, and upon the very verge of the precipitous descent, hovered a gigantic ship of, perhaps, four thousand tons. although upreared upon the summit of a wave more than a hundred times her own altitude, her apparent size exceeded that of any ship of the line or east indiaman in existence. her huge hull was of a deep dingy black, unrelieved by any of the customary carvings of a ship. a single row of brass cannon protruded from her open ports, and dashed from their polished surfaces the fires of innumerable battle-lanterns, which swung to and fro about her rigging. but what mainly inspired us with horror and astonishment, was that she bore up under a press of sail in the very teeth of that supernatural sea, and of that ungovernable hurricane. when we first discovered her, her bows were alone to be seen, as she rose slowly from the dim and horrible gulf beyond her. for a moment of intense terror she paused upon the giddy pinnacle, as if in contemplation of her own sublimity, then trembled and tottered, and --came down. at this instant, i know not what sudden self-possession came over my spirit. staggering as far aft as i could, i awaited fearlessly the ruin that was to overwhelm. our own vessel was at length ceasing from her struggles, and sinking with her head to the sea. the shock of the descending mass struck her, consequently, in that portion of her frame which was already under water, and the inevitable result was to hurl me, with irresistible violence, upon the rigging of the stranger. as i fell, the ship hove in stays, and went about; and to the confusion ensuing i attributed my escape from the notice of the crew. with little difficulty i made my way unperceived to the main hatchway, which was partially open, and soon found an opportunity of secreting myself in the hold. why i did so i can hardly tell. an indefinite sense of awe, which at first sight of the navigators of the ship had taken hold of my mind, was perhaps the principle of my concealment. i was unwilling to trust myself with a race of people who had offered, to the cursory glance i had taken, so many points of vague novelty, doubt, and apprehension. i therefore thought proper to contrive a hiding-place in the hold. this i did by removing a small portion of the shifting-boards, in such a manner as to afford me a convenient retreat between the huge timbers of the ship. i had scarcely completed my work, when a footstep in the hold forced me to make use of it. a man passed by my place of concealment with a feeble and unsteady gait. i could not see his face, but had an opportunity of observing his general appearance. there was about it an evidence of great age and infirmity. his knees tottered beneath a load of years, and his entire frame quivered under the burthen. he muttered to himself, in a low broken tone, some words of a language which i could not understand, and groped in a corner among a pile of singular-looking instruments, and decayed charts of navigation. his manner was a wild mixture of the peevishness of second childhood, and the solemn dignity of a god. he at length went on deck, and i saw him no more. a feeling, for which i have no name, has taken possession of my soul --a sensation which will admit of no analysis, to which the lessons of bygone times are inadequate, and for which i fear futurity itself will offer me no key. to a mind constituted like my own, the latter consideration is an evil. i shall never --i know that i shall never --be satisfied with regard to the nature of my conceptions. yet it is not wonderful that these conceptions are indefinite, since they have their origin in sources so utterly novel. a new sense --a new entity is added to my soul. it is long since i first trod the deck of this terrible ship, and the rays of my destiny are, i think, gathering to a focus. incomprehensible men! wrapped up in meditations of a kind which i cannot divine, they pass me by unnoticed. concealment is utter folly on my part, for the people will not see. it was but just now that i passed directly before the eyes of the mate --it was no long while ago that i ventured into the captain's own private cabin, and took thence the materials with which i write, and have written. i shall from time to time continue this journal. it is true that i may not find an opportunity of transmitting it to the world, but i will not fall to make the endeavour. at the last moment i will enclose the ms. in a bottle, and cast it within the sea. an incident has occurred which has given me new room for meditation. are such things the operation of ungoverned chance? i had ventured upon deck and thrown myself down, without attracting any notice, among a pile of ratlin-stuff and old sails in the bottom of the yawl. while musing upon the singularity of my fate, i unwittingly daubed with a tar-brush the edges of a neatly-folded studding-sail which lay near me on a barrel. the studding-sail is now bent upon the ship, and the thoughtless touches of the brush are spread out into the word discovery. i have made many observations lately upon the structure of the vessel. although well armed, she is not, i think, a ship of war. her rigging, build, and general equipment, all negative a supposition of this kind. what she is not, i can easily perceive --what she is i fear it is impossible to say. i know not how it is, but in scrutinizing her strange model and singular cast of spars, her huge size and overgrown suits of canvas, her severely simple bow and antiquated stern, there will occasionally flash across my mind a sensation of familiar things, and there is always mixed up with such indistinct shadows of recollection, an unaccountable memory of old foreign chronicles and ages long ago. i have been looking at the timbers of the ship. she is built of a material to which i am a stranger. there is a peculiar character about the wood which strikes me as rendering it unfit for the purpose to which it has been applied. i mean its extreme porousness, considered independently by the worm-eaten condition which is a consequence of navigation in these seas, and apart from the rottenness attendant upon age. it will appear perhaps an observation somewhat over-curious, but this wood would have every, characteristic of spanish oak, if spanish oak were distended by any unnatural means. in reading the above sentence a curious apothegm of an old weather-beaten dutch navigator comes full upon my recollection. "it is as sure," he was wont to say, when any doubt was entertained of his veracity, "as sure as there is a sea where the ship itself will grow in bulk like the living body of the seaman." about an hour ago, i made bold to thrust myself among a group of the crew. they paid me no manner of attention, and, although i stood in the very midst of them all, seemed utterly unconscious of my presence. like the one i had at first seen in the hold, they all bore about them the marks of a hoary old age. their knees trembled with infirmity; their shoulders were bent double with decrepitude; their shrivelled skins rattled in the wind; their voices were low, tremulous and broken; their eyes glistened with the rheum of years; and their gray hairs streamed terribly in the tempest. around them, on every part of the deck, lay scattered mathematical instruments of the most quaint and obsolete construction. i mentioned some time ago the bending of a studding-sail. from that period the ship, being thrown dead off the wind, has continued her terrific course due south, with every rag of canvas packed upon her, from her trucks to her lower studding-sail booms, and rolling every moment her top-gallant yard-arms into the most appalling hell of water which it can enter into the mind of a man to imagine. i have just left the deck, where i find it impossible to maintain a footing, although the crew seem to experience little inconvenience. it appears to me a miracle of miracles that our enormous bulk is not swallowed up at once and forever. we are surely doomed to hover continually upon the brink of eternity, without taking a final plunge into the abyss. from billows a thousand times more stupendous than any i have ever seen, we glide away with the facility of the arrowy sea-gull; and the colossal waters rear their heads above us like demons of the deep, but like demons confined to simple threats and forbidden to destroy. i am led to attribute these frequent escapes to the only natural cause which can account for such effect. --i must suppose the ship to be within the influence of some strong current, or impetuous under-tow. i have seen the captain face to face, and in his own cabin --but, as i expected, he paid me no attention. although in his appearance there is, to a casual observer, nothing which might bespeak him more or less than man-still a feeling of irrepressible reverence and awe mingled with the sensation of wonder with which i regarded him. in stature he is nearly my own height; that is, about five feet eight inches. he is of a well-knit and compact frame of body, neither robust nor remarkably otherwise. but it is the singularity of the expression which reigns upon the face --it is the intense, the wonderful, the thrilling evidence of old age, so utter, so extreme, which excites within my spirit a sense --a sentiment ineffable. his forehead, although little wrinkled, seems to bear upon it the stamp of a myriad of years. --his gray hairs are records of the past, and his grayer eyes are sybils of the future. the cabin floor was thickly strewn with strange, iron-clasped folios, and mouldering instruments of science, and obsolete long-forgotten charts. his head was bowed down upon his hands, and he pored, with a fiery unquiet eye, over a paper which i took to be a commission, and which, at all events, bore the signature of a monarch. he muttered to himself, as did the first seaman whom i saw in the hold, some low peevish syllables of a foreign tongue, and although the speaker was close at my elbow, his voice seemed to reach my ears from the distance of a mile. the ship and all in it are imbued with the spirit of eld. the crew glide to and fro like the ghosts of buried centuries; their eyes have an eager and uneasy meaning; and when their fingers fall athwart my path in the wild glare of the battle-lanterns, i feel as i have never felt before, although i have been all my life a dealer in antiquities, and have imbibed the shadows of fallen columns at balbec, and tadmor, and persepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin. when i look around me i feel ashamed of my former apprehensions. if i trembled at the blast which has hitherto attended us, shall i not stand aghast at a warring of wind and ocean, to convey any idea of which the words tornado and simoom are trivial and ineffective? all in the immediate vicinity of the ship is the blackness of eternal night, and a chaos of foamless water; but, about a league on either side of us, may be seen, indistinctly and at intervals, stupendous ramparts of ice, towering away into the desolate sky, and looking like the walls of the universe. as i imagined, the ship proves to be in a current; if that appellation can properly be given to a tide which, howling and shrieking by the white ice, thunders on to the southward with a velocity like the headlong dashing of a cataract. to conceive the horror of my sensations is, i presume, utterly impossible; yet a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions, predominates even over my despair, and will reconcile me to the most hideous aspect of death. it is evident that we are hurrying onwards to some exciting knowledge --some never-to-be-imparted secret, whose attainment is destruction. perhaps this current leads us to the southern pole itself. it must be confessed that a supposition apparently so wild has every probability in its favor. the crew pace the deck with unquiet and tremulous step; but there is upon their countenances an expression more of the eagerness of hope than of the apathy of despair. in the meantime the wind is still in our poop, and, as we carry a crowd of canvas, the ship is at times lifted bodily from out the sea --oh, horror upon horror! the ice opens suddenly to the right, and to the left, and we are whirling dizzily, in immense concentric circles, round and round the borders of a gigantic amphitheatre, the summit of whose walls is lost in the darkness and the distance. but little time will be left me to ponder upon my destiny --the circles rapidly grow small --we are plunging madly within the grasp of the whirlpool --and amid a roaring, and bellowing, and thundering of ocean and of tempest, the ship is quivering, oh god! and --going down. note.--the "ms. found in a bottle," was originally published in 1831 [1833], and it was not until many years afterwards that i became acquainted with the maps of mercator, in which the ocean is represented as rushing, by four mouths, into the (northern) polar gulf, to be absorbed into the bowels of the earth; the pole itself being represented by a black rock, towering to a prodigious height. -the end. 1850 mesmeric revelation by edgar allan poe whatever doubt may still envelop the rationale of mesmerism, its startling facts are now almost universally admitted. of these latter, those who doubt, are your mere doubters by professionan unprofitable and disreputable tribe. there can be no more absolute waste of time than the attempt to prove, at the present day, that man, by mere exercise of will can so impress his fellow as to cast him into an abnormal condition, of which the phenomena resemble very closely those of death, or at least resemble them more nearly than they do the phenomena of any other normal condition within our cognizance; that, while in this state, the person so impressed employs only with effort, and then feebly, the external organs of sense, yet perceives, with keenly refined perception, and through channels supposed unknown, matters beyond the scope of the physical organs; that, moreover, his intellectual faculties are wonderfully exalted and invigorated; that his sympathies with the person so impressing him are profound, and, finally, that his susceptibility to the impression increases with its frequency, while in the same proportion, the peculiar phenomena elicited are more extended and more pronounced. i say that thesewhich are the laws of mesmerism in its general featuresit would be supererogation to demonstrate; nor shall i inflict upon my readers so needless a demonstration to-day. my purpose at present is a very different one indeed. i am impelled, even in the teeth of a world of prejudice, to detail without comment, the very remarkable substance of a colloquy occurring between a sleep-waker and myself. i had long been in the habit of mesmerizing the person in question (mr. vankirk), and the usual acute susceptibility and exaltation of the mesmeric perception had supervened. for many months he had been laboring under confirmed phthisis, the more distressing effects of which had been relieved by my manipulations; and on the night of wednesday, the fifteenth instant, i was summoned to his bedside. the invalid was suffering with acute pain in the region of the heart, and breathed with great difficulty, having all the ordinary symptoms of asthma. in spasms such as these he had usually found relief from the application of mustard to the nervous centres, but to-night this had been attempted in vain. as i entered his room he greeted me with a cheerful smile, and although evidently in much bodily pain, appeared to be, mentally, quite at ease. "i sent for you to-night," he said, "not so much to administer to my bodily ailment, as to satisfy me concerning certain physical impressions which, of late, have occasioned me much anxiety and surprise. i need not tell you how skeptical i have hitherto been on the topic of the soul's immortality. i cannot deny that there has always existed, as if in that very soul which i have been denying, a vague half-sentiment of its own existence. but this half-sentiment at no time amounted to conviction. with it my reason had nothing to do. all attempts at logical inquiry resulted, indeed, in leaving me more sceptical than before. i had been advised to study cousin. i studied him in his own works as well as in those of his european and american echoes. the 'charles elwood' of mr. brownson for example, was placed in my hands. i read it with profound attention. throughout i found it logical but the portions which were not merely logical were unhappily the initial arguments of the disbelieving hero of the book. in his summing up it seemed evident to me that the reasoner had not even succeeded in convincing himself. his end had plainly forgotten his beginning, like the government of trinculo. in short, i was not long in perceiving that if man is to be intellectually convinced of his own immortality, he will never be so convinced by the mere abstractions which have been so long the fashion of the moralists of england, of france, and of germany. abstractions may amuse and exercise, but take no hold on the mind. here upon earth, at least, philosophy, i am persuaded, will always in vain call upon us to look upon qualities as things. the will may assentthe soulthe intellect, never. "i repeat, then, that i only half felt, and never intellectually believed. but latterly there has been a certain deepening of the feeling, until it has come so nearly to resemble the acquiesence of reason, that i find it difficult to distinguish the two. i am enabled, too, plainly to trace this effect to the mesmeric influence. i cannot better explain my meaning than by the hypothesis that the mesmeric exaltation enables me to perceive a train of ratiocination which, in my abnormal existence, convinces, but which, in full accordance with the mesmeric phenomena, does not extend, except through its effect, into my normal condition. in sleep-waking, the reasoning and its conclusionthe cause and its effectare present together. in my natural state, the cause vanishes, the effect only, and perhaps only partially, remains. "these considerations have led me to think that some good results might ensue from a series of well-directed questions propounded to me while mesmerized. you have often observed the profound self-cognizance evinced by the sleep-wakerthe extensive knowledge he displays upon all points relating to the mesmeric condition itself, and from this self-cognizance may be deduced hints for the proper conduct of a catechism." i consented of course to make this experiment. a few passes threw mr. vankirk into the mesmeric sleep. his breathing became immediately more easy, and he seemed to suffer no physical uneasiness. the following conversation then ensued:-v. in the dialogue representing the patient, and p. myself. p. are you asleep? v. yesno; i would rather sleep more soundly. p. [after a few more passes.] do you sleep now? v. yes. p. how do you think your present illness will result? v. [after a long hesitation and speaking as if with effort.] i must die. p. does the idea of death afflict you? v. [very quickly.] nono! p. are you pleased with the prospect? v. if i were awake i should like to die, but now it is no matter. the mesmeric condition is so near death as to content me. p. i wish you would explain yourself, mr. vankirk. v. i am willing to do so, but it requires more effort than i feel able to make. you do not question me properly. p. what then shall i ask? v. you must begin at the beginning. p. the beginning! but where is the beginning? v. you know that the beginning is god. [this was said in a low, fluctuating tone, and with every sign of the most profound veneration.] p. what, then, is god? v. [hesitating for many minutes.] i cannot tell. p. is not god spirit? v. while i was awake i knew what you meant by "spirit," but now it seems only a wordsuch, for instance, as truth, beautya quality, i mean. p. is not god immaterial? v. there is no immaterialityit is a mere word. that which is not matter, is not at allunless qualities are things. p. is god, then, material? v. no. [this reply startled me very much.] p. what, then, is he? v. [after a long pause, and mutteringly.] i seebut it is a thing difficult to tell. [another long pause.] he is not spirit, for he exists. nor is he matter, as you understand it. but there are gradations of matter of which man knows nothing; the grosser impelling the finer, the finer pervading the grosser. the atmosphere, for example, impels the electric principle, while the electric principle permeates the atmosphere. these gradations of matter increase in rarity or fineness until we arrive at a matter unparticledwithout particlesindivisible-one, and here the law of impulsion and permeation is modified. the ultimate or unparticled matter not only permeates all things, but impels all things; and thus is all things within itself. this matter is god. what men attempt to embody in the word "thought," is this matter in motion. p. the metaphysicians maintain that all action is reducible to motion and thinking, and that the latter is the origin of the former. v. yes; and i now see the confusion of idea. motion is the action of mind, not of thinking. the unparticled matter, or god, in quiescence is (as nearly as we can conceive it) what men call mind. and the power of self-movement (equivalent in effect to human volition) is, in the unparticled matter, the result of its unity and omniprevalence; how, i know not, and now clearly see that i shall never know. but the unparticled matter, set in motion by a law or quality existing within itself, is thinking. p. can you give me no more precise idea of what you term the unparticled matter? v. the matters of which man is cognizant escape the senses in gradation. we have, for example, a metal, a piece of wood, a drop of water, the atmosphere, a gas, caloric, electricity, the luminiferous ether. now, we call all these things matter, and embrace all matter in one general definition; but in spite of this, there can be no two ideas more essentially distinct than that which we attach to a metal, and that which we attach to the luminiferous ether. when we reach the latter, we feel an almost irresistible inclination to class it with spirit, or with nihilty. the only consideration which restrains us is our conception of its atomic constitution; and here, even, we have to seek aid from our notion of an atom, as something possessing in infinite minuteness, solidity, palpability, weight. destroy the idea of the atomic constitution and we should no longer be able to regard the ether as an entity, or, at least, as matter. for want of a better word we might term it spirit. take, now, a step beyond the luminiferous etherconceive a matter as much more rare than the ether, as this ether is more rare than the metal, and we arrive at once (in spite of all the school dogmas) at a unique massan unparticled matter. for although we may admit infinite littleness in the atoms themselves, the infinitude of littleness in the spaces between them is an absurdity. there will be a pointthere will be a degree of rarity at which, if the atoms are sufficiently numerous, the interspaces must vanish, and the mass absolutely coalesce. but the consideration of the atomic constitution being now taken away, the nature of the mass inevitably glides into what we conceive of spirit. it is clear, however, that it is as fully matter as before. the truth is, it is impossible to conceive spirit since it is impossible to imagine what is not. when we flatter ourselves that we have formed its conception, we have merely deceived our understanding by the consideration of infinitely rarefied matter. p. there seems to me an insurmountable objection to the idea of absolute coalescence;and that is the very slight resistance experienced by the heavenly bodies in their revolutions through spacea resistance now ascertained, it is true, to exist in some degree, but which is, nevertheless, so slight as to have been quite overlooked by the sagacity even of newton. we know that the resistance of bodies is, chiefly, in proportion to their density. absolute coalescence is absolute density. where there are no interspaces, there can be no yielding. an ether, absolutely dense, would put an infinitely more effectual stop to the progress of a star than would an ether of adamant or of iron. v. your objection is answered with an ease which is nearly in the ratio of its apparent unanswerability.as regards the progress of the star, it can make no difference whether the star passes through the ether or the ether through it. there is no astronomical error more unaccountable than that which reconciles the known retardation of the comets with the idea of their passage through an ether, for, however rare this ether be supposed, it would put a stop to all sidereal revolution in a very far briefer period than has been admitted by those astronomers who have endeavored to slur over a point which they found it impossible to comprehend. the retardation actually experienced is, on the other hand, about that which might be expected from the friction of the ether in the instantaneous passage through the orb. in the one case, the retarding force is momentary and complete within itselfin the other it is endlessly accumulative. p. but in all thisin this identification of mere matter with godis there nothing of irreverence? [i was forced to repeat this question before the sleep-waker fully comprehended my meaning.] v. can you say why matter should be less reverenced than mind? but you forget that the matter of which "mind" or "spirit" of the schools, so far as regards its high capacities, and is, moreover, the "matter" of these schools at the same time. god, with all the powers attributed to spirit, is but the perfection of matter. p. you assert, then, that the unparticled matter, in motion, is thought. v. in general, this motion is the universal thought of the universal mind. this thought creates. all created things are but the thoughts of god. p. you say, "in general." v. yes. the universal mind is god. for new individualities, matter is necessary. p. but you now speak of "mind" and "matter" as do the metaphysicians. v. yesto avoid confusion. when i say "mind," i mean the unparticled or ultimate matter, by "matter," i intend all else. p. you were saying that "for new individualities matter is necessary." v. yes; for mind, existing unincorporate, is merely god. to create individual, thinking beings, it was necessary to incarnate portions of the divine mind. thus man is individualized. divested of corporate investiture, he were god. now the particular motion of the incarnated portions of the unparticled matter is the thought of man; as the motion of the whole is that of god. p. you say that divested of the body man will be god? v. [after much hesitation.] i could not have said this; it is an absurdity. p. [referring to my notes.] you did say that "divested of corporate investiture man were god." v. and this is true. man thus divested would be godwould be unindividualized. but he can never be thus divestedat least never will beelse we must imagine an action of god returning upon itselfa purposeless and futile action. man is a creature. creatures are thoughts of god. it is the nature of thought to be irrevocable. p. i do not comprehend. you say that man will never put off the body? v. i say that he will never be bodiless. p. explain. v. there are two bodiesthe rudimental and the complete, corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. what we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. the ultimate life is the full design. p. but of the worm's metamorphosis we are palpably cognizant. v. we, certainlybut not the worm. the matter of which our rudimental body is composed, is within the ken of the organs of that body; or, more distinctly, our rudimental organs are adapted to the matter of which is formed the rudimental body, but not to that of which the ultimate is composed. the ultimate body thus escapes our rudimental senses, and we perceive only the shell which falls, in decaying, from the inner form, not that inner form itself; but this inner form as well as the shell, is appreciable by those who have already acquired the ultimate life. p. you have often said that the mesmeric state very nearly resembles death. how is this? v. when i say that it resembles death, i mean that it resembles the ultimate life; for when i am entranced the senses of my rudimental life are in abeyance and i perceive external things directly, without organs, through a medium which i shall employ in the ultimate, unorganized life. p. unorganized? v. yes; organs are contrivances by which the individual is brought into sensible relation with particular classes and forms of matter, to the exclusion of other classes and forms. the organs of man are adapted to his rudimental condition, and to that only; his ultimate condition, being unorganized, is of unlimited comprehension in all points but onethe nature of the volition of godthat is to say, the motion of the unparticled matter. you may have a distinct idea of the ultimate body by conceiving it to be entire brain. this it is not, but a conception of this nature will bring you near a comprehension of what it is. a luminous body imparts vibration to the luminiferous ether. the vibrations generate similar ones within the retina; these again communicate similar ones to the optic nerve. the nerve conveys similar ones to the brain; the brain, also, similar ones to the unparticled matter which permeates it. the motion of this latter is thought, of which perception is the first undulation. this is the mode by which the mind of the rudimental life communicates with the external world; and this external world is, to the rudimental life, limited, through the idiosyncrasy of its organs. but in the ultimate, unorganized life, the external world reaches the whole body, (which is of a substance having affinity to brain, as i have said,) with no other intervention than that of an infinitely rarer ether than even the luminiferous; and to this etherin unison with itthe whole body vibrates, setting in motion the unparticled matter which permeates it. it is to the absence of idiosyncratic organs, therefore, that we must attribute the nearly unlimited perception of the ultimate life. to rudimental beings, organs are the cages necessary to confine them until fledged. p. you speak of rudimental "beings." are there other rudimental thinking beings than man? v. the multitudinous conglomeration of rare matter into nebulae, planets, suns, and other bodies which are neither nebulae, suns, nor planets, is for the sole purpose of supplying pabulum for the idiosyncrasy of the organs of an infinity of rudimental beings. but for the necessity of the rudimental, prior to the ultimate life, there would have been no bodies such as these. each of these is tenanted by a distinct variety of organic rudimental thinking creatures. in all, the organs vary with the features of the place tenanted. at death, or metamorphosis, these creatures, enjoying the ultimate lifeimmortalityand cognizant of all secrets but the one, act all things and pass every where by mere volition:indwelling, not the stars, which to us seem the sole palpabilities, and for the accommodation of which we blindly deem space createdbut that space itselfthat infinity of which the truly substantive vastness swallows up the star-shadowsblotting them out as non-entities from the perception of the angels. p. you say that "but for the necessity of the rudimental life, there would have been no stars." but why this necessity? v. in the inorganic life, as well as in the inorganic matter generally, there is nothing to impede the action of one simple unique lawthe divine volition. with the view of producing impediment, the organic life and matter (complex, substantial and lawencumbered) were contrived. p. but againwhy need this impediment have been produced? v. the result of law inviolate is perfectionrightnegative happiness. the result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, positive pain. through the impediments afforded by the number, complexity, and substantiality of the laws of organic life and matter, the violation of law is rendered, to a certain extent, practicable. thus pain, which is the inorganic life is impossible, is possible in the organic. p. but to what good end is pain thus rendered possible? v. all things are either good or bad by comparison. a sufficient analysis will show that pleasure in all cases, is but the contrast of pain. positive pleasure is a mere idea. to be happy at any one point we must have suffered at the same. never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed. but it has been shown that, in the inorganic life, pain cannot be; thus the necessity for the organic. the pain of the primitive life of earth, is the sole basis of the bliss of the ultimate life in heaven. p. still there is one of your expressions which i find it impossible to comprehend"the truly substantive vastness of infinity." v. this, probably, is because you have no sufficiently generic conception of the term "substance" itself. we must not regard it as a quality, but as a sentiment:it is the perception, in thinking beings, of the adaptation of matter to their organization. there are many things on the earth, which would be nihility to the inhabitants of venusmany things visible and tangible in venus, which we could not be brought to appreciate as existing at all. but to the inorganic beingsto the angelsthe whole of the unparticled matter is substance; that is to say, the whole of what we term "space," is to them the truest substantiality;the stars, meantime, through what we consider their materiality, escaping the angelic sense, just in proportion as the unparticled matter, through what we consider its immateriality, eludes the organic. as the sleep-waker pronounced these latter words, in a feeble tone, i observed on his countenance a singular expression, which somewhat alarmed me, and induced me to awake him at once. no sooner had i done this than, with a bright smile irradiating all his features, he fell back upon his pillow and expired. i noticed that in less than a minute afterward his corpse had all the stern rigidity of stone. his brow was of the coldness of ice. thus, ordinarily, should it have appeared, only after long pressure from azrael's hand. had the sleep-waker, indeed, during the latter portion of his discourse, been addressing me from out the regions of the shadows? the end . 1850 mystification by edgar allan poe mystification slid, if these be your "passados" and "montantes," i'll have none o' them. ned knowles. the baron ritzner von jung was a noble hungarian family, every member of which (at least as far back into antiquity as any certain records extend) was more or less remarkable for talent of some descriptionthe majority for that species of grotesquerie in conception of which tieck, a scion of the house, has given a vivid, although by no means the most vivid exemplifications. my acquaintance with ritzner commenced at the magnificent chateau jung, into which a train of droll adventures, not to be made public, threw a place in his regard, and here, with somewhat more difficulty, a partial insight into his mental conformation. in later days this insight grew more clear, as the intimacy which had at first permitted it became more close; and when, after three years of the character of the baron ritzner von jung. i remember the buzz of curiosity which his advent excited within the college precincts on the night of the twenty-fifth of june. i remember still more distinctly, that while he was pronounced by all parties at first sight "the most remarkable man in the world," no person made any attempt at accounting for his opinion. that he was unique appeared so undeniable, that it was deemed impertinent to inquire wherein the uniquity consisted. but, letting this matter pass for the present, i will merely observe that, from the first moment of his setting foot within the limits of the university, he began to exercise over the habits, manners, persons, purses, and propensities of the whole community which surrounded him, an influence the most extensive and despotic, yet at the same time the most indefinite and altogether unaccountable. thus the brief period of his residence at the university forms an era in its annals, and is characterized by all classes of people appertaining to it or its dependencies as "that very extraordinary epoch forming the domination of the baron ritzner von jung." then of no particular age, by which i mean that it was impossible to form a guess respecting his age by any data personally afforded. he might have been fifteen or fifty, and was twenty-one years and seven months. he was by no means a handsome manperhaps the reverse. the contour of his face was somewhat angular and harsh. his forehead was lofty and very fair; his nose a snub; his eyes large, heavy, glassy, and meaningless. about the mouth there was more to be observed. the lips were gently protruded, and rested the one upon the other, after such a fashion that it is impossible to conceive any, even the most complex, combination of human features, conveying so entirely, and so singly, the idea of unmitigated gravity, solemnity and repose. it will be perceived, no doubt, from what i have already said, that the baron was one of those human anomalies now and then to be found, who make the science of mystification the study and the business of their lives. for this science a peculiar turn of mind gave him instinctively the cue, while his physical appearance afforded him unusual facilities for carrying his prospects into effect. i quaintly termed the domination of the baron ritzner von jung, ever rightly entered into the mystery which overshadowed his character. i truly think that no person at the university, with the exception of myself, ever suspected him to be capable of a joke, verbal or practical:the old bull-dog at the garden-gate would sooner have been accused,the ghost of heraclitus,or the wig of the emeritus professor of theology. this, too, when it was evident that the most egregious and unpardonable of all conceivable tricks, whimsicalities and buffooneries were brought about, if not directly by him, at least plainly through his intermediate agency or connivance. the beauty, if i may so call it, of his art mystifique, lay in that consummate ability (resulting from an almost intuitive knowledge of human nature, and a most wonderful self-possession,) by means of which he never failed to make it appear that the drolleries he was occupied in bringing to a point, arose partly in spite, and partly in consequence of the laudable efforts he was making for their prevention, and for the preservation of the good order and dignity of alma mater. the deep, the poignant, the overwhelming mortification, which upon each such failure of his praise worthy endeavors, would suffuse every lineament of his countenance, left not the slightest room for doubt of his sincerity in the bosoms of even his most skeptical companions. the adroitness, too, was no less worthy of observation by which he contrived to shift the sense of the grotesque from the creator to the createdfrom his own person to the absurdities to which he had given rise. in no instance before that of which i speak, have i known the habitual mystific escape the natural consequence of his manoevresan attachment of the ludicrous to his own character and person. continually enveloped in an atmosphere of whim, my friend appeared to live only for the severities of society; and not even his own household have for a moment associated other ideas than those of the rigid and august with the memory of the baron ritzner von jung. the demon of the dolce far niente lay like an incubus upon the university. nothing, at least, was done beyond eating and drinking and making merry. the apartments of the students were converted into so many pot-houses, and there was no pot-house of them all more famous or more frequented than that of the baron. our carousals here were many, and boisterous, and long, and never unfruitful of events. upon one occasion we had protracted our sitting until nearly daybreak, and an unusual quantity of wine had been drunk. the company consisted of seven or eight individuals besides the baron and myself. most of these were young men of wealth, of high connection, of great family pride, and all alive with an exaggerated sense of honor. they abounded in the most ultra german opinions respecting the duello. to these quixotic notions some recent parisian publications, backed by three or four desperate and fatal conversation, during the greater part of the night, had run wild upon the allengrossing topic of the times. the baron, who had been unusually silent and abstracted in the earlier portion of the evening, at length seemed to be aroused from his apathy, took a leading part in the discourse, and dwelt upon the benefits, and more especially upon the beauties, of the received code of etiquette in passages of arms with an ardor, an eloquence, an impressiveness, and an affectionateness of manner, which elicited the warmest enthusiasm from his hearers in general, and absolutely staggered even myself, who well knew him to be at heart a ridiculer of those very points for which he contended, and especially to hold the entire fanfaronade of duelling etiquette in the sovereign contempt which it deserves. looking around me during a pause in the baron's discourse (of which my readers may gather some faint idea when i say that it bore resemblance to the fervid, chanting, monotonous, yet musical sermonic manner of coleridge), i perceived symptoms of even more than the general interest in the countenance of one of the party. this gentleman, whom i shall call hermann, was an original in every respectexcept, perhaps, in the single particular that he was a very great fool. he contrived to bear, however, among a particular set at the university, a reputation for deep metaphysical thinking, and, i believe, for some logical talent. as a duellist he had acquired who had fallen at his hands; but they were many. he was a man of courage undoubtedly. but it was upon his minute acquaintance with the etiquette of the duello, and the nicety of his sense of honor, that he most especially prided himself. these things were a hobby which he rode to the death. to ritzner, ever upon the lookout for the grotesque, his peculiarities had for a long time past afforded food for mystification. of this, however, i was not aware; although, in the present instance, i saw clearly that something of a whimsical nature was upon the tapis with my friend, and that hermann was its especial object. as the former proceeded in his discourse, or rather monologue i perceived the excitement of the latter momently increasing. at length he spoke; offering some objection to a point insisted upon by r., and giving his reasons in detail. to these the baron replied at length (still maintaining his exaggerated tone of sentiment) and concluding, in what i thought very bad taste, with a sarcasm and a sneer. the hobby of hermann now took the bit in his teeth. this i could discern by the studied hair-splitting farrago of his rejoinder. his last words i distinctly remember. "your opinions, allow me to say, baron von jung, although in the main correct, are, in many nice points, discreditable to yourself and to the university of which you are a member. in a few respects they are even unworthy of serious refutation. i would say more than this, sir, were it not for the fear of giving you offence (here the speaker smiled blandly), i would say, sir, that your opinions are not the opinions to be expected from a gentleman." as hermann completed this equivocal sentence, all eyes were turned upon the baron. he became pale, then excessively red; then, dropping his pocket-handkerchief, stooped to recover it, when i caught a glimpse of his countenance, while it could be seen by no one else at the table. it was radiant with the quizzical expression which was its natural character, but which i had never seen it assume except when we were alone together, and when he unbent himself freely. in an instant afterward he stood erect, confronting hermann; and so total an alteration of countenance in so short a period i certainly never saw before. for a moment i even fancied that i had misconceived him, and that he was in sober earnest. he appeared to be stifling with passion, and his face was cadaverously white. for a short time he remained silent, apparently striving to master his emotion. having at length seemingly succeeded, he reached a decanter which stood near him, saying as he held it firmly clenched "the language you have thought proper to employ, mynheer hermann, in addressing yourself to me, is objectionable in so many particulars, that i have neither temper nor time for specification. that my opinions, however, are not the opinions to be expected from a gentleman, is an observation so directly offensive as to allow me but one line of conduct. some courtesy, nevertheless, is due to the presence of this company, and to yourself, at this moment, as my guest. you will pardon me, therefore, if, upon this consideration, i deviate slightly from the general usage among gentlemen in similar cases of personal affront. you will forgive me for the moderate tax i shall make upon your imagination, and endeavor to consider, for an instant, the reflection of your person in yonder mirror as the living mynheer hermann himself. this being done, there will be no difficulty whatever. i shall discharge this decanter of wine at your image in yonder mirror, and thus fulfil all the spirit, if not the exact letter, of resentment for your insult, while the necessity of physical violence to your real person will be obviated." with these words he hurled the decanter, full of wine, against the mirror which hung directly opposite hermann; striking the reflection of his person with great precision, and of course shattering the glass into fragments. the whole company at once started to their feet, and, with the exception of myself and ritzner, took their departure. as hermann went out, the baron whispered me that i should follow him and make an offer of my services. to this i agreed; not knowing precisely what to make of so ridiculous a piece of business. the duellist accepted my aid with his stiff and ultra recherche air, and, taking my arm, led me to his apartment. i could hardly forbear laughing in his face while he proceeded to discuss, with the profoundest gravity, what he termed "the refinedly peculiar character" of the insult he had received. after a tiresome harangue in his ordinary style, he took down from his book shelves a number of musty volumes on the subject of the duello, and entertained me for a long time with their contents; reading aloud, and commenting earnestly as he read. i can just remember the titles of some of the works. there were the "ordonnance of philip le bel on single combat"; the "theatre of honor," by favyn, and a treatise "on the permission of duels," by andiguier. he displayed, also, with much pomposity, brantome's "memoirs of duels,"published at cologne, 1666, in the types of elzevira precious and unique vellum-paper volume, with a fine margin, and bound by derome. but he requested my attention particularly, and with an air of mysterious sagacity, to a thick octavo, written in barbarous latin by one hedelin, a frenchman, and having the quaint title, "duelli lex scripta, et non; aliterque." from this he read me one of the drollest chapters in the world concerning "injuriae per applicationem, per constructionem, et per se," about half of which, he averred, was strictly applicable to his own "refinedly peculiar" case, although not one syllable of the whole matter could i understand for the life of me. having finished the chapter, he closed the book, and demanded what i thought necessary to be done. i replied that i had entire confidence in his superior delicacy of feeling, and would abide by what he proposed. with this answer he seemed flattered, and sat down to write a note to the baron. it ran thus: sir,my friend, m. p.-, will hand you this note. i find it incumbent upon me to request, at your earliest convenience, an explanation of this evening's occurrences at your chambers. in the event of your declining this request, mr. p. will be happy to arrange, with any friend whom you may appoint, the steps preliminary to a meeting. with sentiments of perfect respect, your most humble servant, johann herman. to the baron ritzner von jung, not knowing what better to do, i called upon ritzner with this epistle. he bowed as i presented it; then, with a grave countenance, motioned me to a seat. having perused the cartel, he wrote the following reply, which i carried to hermann. sir,through our common friend, mr. p., i have received your note of this evening. upon due reflection i frankly admit the propriety of the explanation you suggest. this being admitted, i still find great difficulty, (owing to the refinedly peculiar nature of our disagreement, and of the personal affront offered on my part,) in so wording what i have to say by way of apology, as to meet all the minute exigencies, and all the variable shadows, of the case. i have great reliance, however, on that extreme delicacy of discrimination, in matters appertaining to the rules of etiquette, for which you have been so long and so pre-eminently distinguished. with perfect certainty, therefore, of being comprehended, i beg leave, in lieu of offering any sentiments of my own, to refer you to the opinions of sieur hedelin, as set forth in the ninth paragraph of the chapter of "injuriae per applicationem, per constructionem, et per se," in his "duelli lex scripta, et non; aliterque." the nicety of your discernment in all the matters here treated, will be sufficient, i am assured, to convince you that the mere circumstance of me referring you to this admirable passage, ought to satisfy your request, as a man of honor, for explanation. with sentiments of profound respect, your most obedient servant, von jung. the herr johann hermann hermann commenced the perusal of this epistle with a scowl, which, however, was converted into a smile of the most ludicrous self-complacency as he came to the rigmarole about injuriae per applicationem, per constructionem, et per se. having finished reading, he begged me, with the blandest of all possible smiles, to be seated, while he made reference to the treatise in question. turning to the passage specified, he read it with great care to himself, then closed the book, and desired me, in my character of confidential acquaintance, to express to the baron von jung his exalted sense of his chivalrous behavior, and, in that of second, to assure him that the explanation offered was of the fullest, the most honorable, and the most unequivocally satisfactory nature. somewhat amazed at all this, i made my retreat to the baron. he seemed to receive hermann's amicable letter as a matter of course, and after a few words of general conversation, went to an inner room and brought out the everlasting treatise "duelli lex scripta, et non; aliterque." he handed me the volume and asked me to look over some portion of it. i did so, but to little purpose, not being able to gather the least particle of meaning. he then took the book himself, and read me a chapter aloud. to my surprise, what he read proved to be a most horribly absurd account of a duel between two baboons. he now explained the mystery; showing that the volume, as it appeared prima facie, was written upon the plan of the nonsense verses of du bartas; that is to say, the language was ingeniously framed so as to present to the ear all the outward signs of intelligibility, and even of profundity, while in fact not a shadow of meaning existed. the key to the whole was found in leaving out every second and third word alternately, when there appeared a series of ludicrous quizzes upon a single combat as practised in modern times. the baron afterwards informed me that he had purposely thrown the treatise in hermann's way two or three weeks before the adventure, and that he was satisfied, from the general tenor of his conversation, that he had studied it with the deepest attention, and firmly believed it to be a work of unusual merit. upon this hint he proceeded. hermann would have died a thousand deaths rather than acknowledge his inability to understand anything and everything in the universe that had ever been written about the duello. littleton barry. the end . 1849 for annie by edgar allan poe thank heaven! the crisis the danger is past, and the lingering illness is over at last and the fever called "living" is conquered at last. sadly, i know i am shorn of my strength, and no muscle i move as i lie at full length but no matter!-i feel i am better at length. and i rest so composedly, now, in my bed that any beholder might fancy me dead might start at beholding me, thinking me dead. the moaning and groaning, the sighing and sobbing, are quieted now, with that horrible throbbing at heart:ah, that horrible, horrible throbbing! the sicknessthe nausea the pitiless pain have ceased, with the fever that maddened my brain with the fever called "living" that burned in my brain. and oh! of all tortures that torture the worst has abatedthe terrible torture of thirst for the naphthaline river of passion accurst: i have drunk of a water that quenches all thirst: of a water that flows, with a lullaby sound, from a spring but a very few feet under ground from a cavern not very far down under ground. and ah! let it never be foolishly said that my room it is gloomy and narrow my bed; for man never slept in a different bed and, to sleep, you must slumber in just such a bed. my tantalized spirit here blandly reposes, forgetting, or never regretting its roses its old agitations of myrtles and roses: for now, while so quietly lying, it fancies a holier odor about it, of pansies a rosemary odor, commingled with pansies with rue and the beautiful puritan pansies. and so it lies happily, bathing in many a dream of the truth and the beauty of annie drowned in a bath of the tresses of annie. she tenderly kissed me, she fondly caressed, and then i fell gently to sleep on her breast deeply to sleep from the heaven of her breast. when the light was extinguished, she covered me warm, and she prayed to the angels to keep me from harm to the queen of the angels to shield me from harm. and i lie so composedly, now, in my bed, (knowing her love) that you fancy me dead and i rest so contentedly, now, in my bed, (with her love at my breast) that you fancy me dead that you shudder to look at me, thinking me dead. but my heart it is brighter than all of the many stars in the sky, for it sparkles with annie it glows with the light of the love of my annie with the thought of the light of the eyes of my annie. -the end. 1830 alone by edgar allan poe alone from childhood's hour i have not been as others were; i have not seen as others saw; i could not bring my passions from a common spring. from the same source i have not taken my sorrow; i could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone; and all i loved, i loved alone. thenin my childhood, in the dawn of a most stormy lifewas drawn from every depth of good and ill the mystery which binds me still: from the torrent, or the fountain, from the red cliff of the mountain, from the sun that round me rolled in its autumn tint of gold, from the lightning in the sky as it passed me flying by, from the thunder and the storm, and the cloud that took the form (when the rest of heaven was blue) of a demon in my view. -the end. 1837 sonnetto zante by edgar allan poe fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers, thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take! how many memories of what radiant hours at sight of thee and thine at once awake! how many scenes of what departed bliss! how many thoughts of what entombed hopes! how many visions of a maiden that is no moreno more upon thy verdant slopes! no more! alas, that magical sad sound transforming all! thy charms shall please no more thy memory no more! accursed ground henceforth i hold thy flower-enameled shore, o hyacinthine isle! o purple zante! "isola d'oro! fior di levante!" -the end. 1827 evening star by edgar allan poe 'twas noontide of summer, and mid-time of night; and stars, in their orbits, shone pale, thro' the light of the brighter, cold moon, 'mid planets her slaves, herself in the heavens, her beam on the waves. i gazed awhile on her cold smile; too coldtoo cold for me there pass'd, as a shroud, a fleecy cloud, and i turned away to thee, proud evening star, in thy glory afar, and dearer thy beam shall be; for joy to my heart is the proud part thou bearest in heaven at night, and more i admire thy distant fire, than that colder, lowly light. -the end. 1848 an enigma by edgar allan poe "seldom we find," says solomon don dunce, "half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. through all the flimsy things we see at once as easily as through a naples bonnet trash of all trash!how can a lady don it? yet heavier far than your petrarchan stuff owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it." and, veritably, sol is right enough. the general tuckermanities are arrant bubblesephemeral and so transparent but this is, nowyou may depend upon it stable, opaque, immortalall by dint of the dear names that he concealed within 't. -the end. 1840 sonnetsilence by edgar allan poe there are some qualitiessome incorporate things, that have a double life, which thus is made a type of that twin entity which springs from matter and light, evinced in solid and shade. there is a two-fold silencesea and shore body and soul. one dwells in lonely places, newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn graces, some human memories and tearful lore, render him terrorless: his name's "no more." he is the corporate silence: dread him not! no power hath he of evil in himself; but should some urgent fate (untimely lot!) bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf, that haunteth the lone regions where hath trod no foot of man,) commend thyself to god! -the end. 1850 metzengerstein by edgar allan poe metzengerstein pestis eram vivus moriens tua mors ero. martin luther horror and fatality have been stalking abroad in all ages. why then give a date to this story i have to tell? let it suffice to say, that at the period of which i speak, there existed, in the interior of hungary, a settled although hidden belief in the doctrines of the metempsychosis. of the doctrines themselvesthat is, of their falsity, or of their probabilityi say nothing. i assert, however, that much of our incredulityas la bruyere says of all our unhappiness"vient de ne pouvoir etre seuls." but there are some points in the hungarian superstition which were fast verging to absurdity. theythe hungariansdiffered very essentially from their eastern authorities. for example, "the soul," said the formeri give the words of an acute and intelligent parisian"ne demeure qu'un seul fois dans un corps sensible: au resteun cheval, un chien, un homme meme, n'est que la ressemblance peu tangible de ces animaux." the families of berlifitzing and metzengerstein had been at variance for centuries. never before were two houses so illustrious, mutually embittered by hostility so deadly. indeed at the era of this history, it was observed by an old crone of haggard and sinister appearance, that "fire and water might sooner mingle than a berlifitzing clasp the hand of a metzengerstein." the origin of this enmity seems to be found in the words of an ancient prophecy"a lofty name shall have a fearful fall when, as the rider over his horse, the mortality of metzengerstein shall triumph over the immortality of berlifitzing." to be sure the words themselves had little or no meaning. but more trivial causes have given riseand that no long while agoto consequences equally eventful. besides, the estates, which were contiguous, had long exercised a rival influence in the affairs of a busy government. moreover, near neighbors are seldom friends; and the inhabitants of the castle berlifitzing might look, from their lofty buttresses, into the very windows of the palace metzengerstein. least of all had the more than feudal magnificence, thus discovered, a tendency to allay the irritable feelings of the less ancient and less wealthy berlifitzings. what wonder then, that the words, however silly, of that prediction, should have succeeded in setting and keeping at variance two families already predisposed to quarrel by every instigation of hereditary jealousy? the prophecy seemed to implyif it implied anythinga final triumph on the part of the already more powerful house; and was of course remembered with the more bitter animosity by the weaker and less influential. wilhelm, count berlifitzing, although loftily descended, was, at the epoch of this narrative, an infirm and doting old man, remarkable for nothing but an inordinate and inveterate personal antipathy to the family of his rival, and so passionate a love of horses, and of hunting, that neither bodily infirmity, great age, nor mental incapacity, prevented his daily participation in the dangers of the chase. frederick, baron metzengerstein, was, on the other hand, not yet mary, followed him quickly after. frederick was, at that time, in his fifteenth year. in a city, fifteen years are no long perioda child may be still a child in his third lustrum: but in a wildernessin so magnificent a wilderness as that old principality, fifteen years have a far deeper meaning. the beautiful lady mary! how could she die?and of consumption! but it is a path i have prayed to follow. i would wish all i love to perish of that gentle disease. how gloriousto depart in the heyday of the young bloodthe heart of all passionthe imagination all fireamid the remembrances of happier daysin the fall of the yearand so be buried up forever in the gorgeous autumnal leaves! thus died the lady mary. the young baron frederick stood without a living relative by the coffin of his dead mother. he placed his hand upon her placid forehead. no shudder came over his delicate frameno sigh from his flinty bosom. heartless, self-willed and impetuous from his childhood, he had reached the age of which i speak through a career of unfeeling, wanton, and reckless dissipation; and a barrier had long since arisen in the channel of all holy thoughts and gentle recollections. from some peculiar circumstances attending the administration of his father, the young baron, at the decease of the former, entered immediately upon his vast possessions. such estates were seldom held before by a nobleman of hungary. his castles were without number. the chief in point of splendor and extent was the "chateau metzengerstein." the boundary line of his dominions was never clearly defined; but his principal park embraced a circuit of fifty miles. upon the succession of a proprietor so young, with a character so well known, to a fortune so unparalleled, little speculation was afloat in regard to his probable course of conduct. and, indeed, for the space of three days, the behavior of the heir out-heroded herod, and fairly surpassed the expectations of his most enthusiastic admirers. shameful debaucheriesflagrant treacheriesunheard-of atrocitiesgave his trembling vassals quickly to understand that no servile submission on their partno punctilios of conscience on his ownwere thenceforward to prove any security against the remorseless fangs of a petty caligula. on the night of the fourth day, the stables of the castle berlifitzing were discovered to be on fire; and the unanimous opinion of the neighborhood added the crime of the incendiary to the already hideous list of the baron's misdemeanors and enormities. but during the tumult occasioned by this occurrence, the young nobleman himself sat apparently buried in meditation, in a vast and desolate upper apartment of the family palace of metzengerstein. the rich although faded tapestry hangings which swung gloomily upon the walls, represented the shadowy and majestic forms of a thousand illustrious ancestors. here, rich-ermined priests, and pontifical dignitaries, familiarly seated with the autocrat and the sovereign, put a veto on the wishes of a temporal king, or restrained with the fiat of papal supremacy the rebellious sceptre of the arch-enemy. there, the dark, tall statures of the princes metzengersteintheir muscular war-coursers plunging over the carcasses of fallen foesstartled the steadiest nerves with their vigorous expression; and here, again, the voluptuous and swan-like figures of the dames of days gone by, floated away in the mazes of an unreal dance to the strains of imaginary melody. but as the baron listened, or affected to listen, to the gradually increasing uproar in the stables of berlifitzingor perhaps pondered upon some more novel, some more decided act of audacityhis eyes became unwittingly rivetted to the figure of an enormous, and unnaturally colored horse, represented in the tapestry as belonging to a saracen ancestor of the family of his rival. the horse itself, in the foreground of the design, stood motionless and statue-likewhile farther back, its discomfited rider perished by the dagger of a metzengerstein. on frederick's lip arose a fiendish expression, as he became aware of the direction which his glance had, without his consciousness, assumed. yet he did not remove it. on the contrary, he could by no means account for the overwhelming anxiety which appeared falling like a pall upon his senses. it was with difficulty that he reconciled his dreamy and incoherent feelings with the certainty of being awake. the longer he gazed the more absorbing became the spellthe more impossible did it appear that he could ever withdraw his glance from the fascination of that tapestry. but the tumult without becoming suddenly more violent, with a compulsory exertion he diverted his attention to the glare of ruddy light thrown full by the flaming stables upon the windows of the apartment. the action, however, was but momentary, his gaze returned mechanically to the wall. to his extreme horror and astonishment, the head of the gigantic steed had, in the meantime, altered its position. the neck of the animal, before arched, as if in compassion, over the prostrate body of its lord, was now extended, at full length, in the direction of the baron. the eyes, before invisible, now wore an energetic and human expression, while they gleamed with a fiery and unusual red; and the distended lips of the apparently enraged horse left in full view his gigantic and disgusting teeth. stupefied with terror, the young nobleman tottered to the door. as he threw it open, a flash of red light, streaming far into the chamber, flung his shadow with a clear outline against the quivering tapestry, and he shuddered to perceive that shadowas he staggered awhile upon the thresholdassuming the exact position, and precisely filling up the contour, of the relentless and triumphant murderer of the saracen berlifitzing. to lighten the depression of his spirits, the baron hurried into the open air. at the principal gate of the palace he encountered three equerries. with much difficulty, and at the imminent peril of their lives, they were restraining the convulsive plunges of a gigantic and fiery-colored horse. "whose horse? where did you get him?" demanded the youth, in a querulous and husky tone of voice, as he became instantly aware that the mysterious steed in the tapestried chamber was the very counterpart of the furious animal before his eyes. "he is your own property, sire," replied one of the equerries, "at least he is claimed by no other owner. we caught him flying, all smoking and foaming with rage, from the burning stables of the castle berlifitzing. supposing him to have belonged to the old count's stud of foreign horses, we led him back as an estray. but the grooms there disclaim any title to the creature; which is strange, since he bears evident marks of having made a narrow escape from the flames. "the letters w. v. b. are also branded very distinctly on his forehead," interrupted a second equerry, "i supposed them, of course, to be the initials of wilhelm von berlifitzingbut all at the castle are positive in denying any knowledge of the horse." "extremely singular!" said the young baron, with a musing air, and apparently unconscious of the meaning of his words. "he is, as you say, a remarkable horsea prodigious horse! although, as you very justly observe, of a suspicious and untractable character, let him be mine, however," he added, after a pause, "perhaps a rider like frederick of metzengerstein, may tame even the devil from the stables of berlifitzing." "you are mistaken, my lord; the horse, as i think we mentioned, is not from the stables of the count. if such had been the case, we know our duty better than to bring him into the presence of a noble of your family." "true!" observed the baron, dryly, and at that instant a page of the bedchamber came from the palace with a heightened color, and a precipitate step. he whispered into his master's ear an account of the sudden disappearance of a small portion of the tapestry, in an apartment which he designated; entering, at the same time, into particulars of a minute and circumstantial character; but from the low tone of voice in which these latter were communicated, nothing escaped to gratify the excited curiosity of the equerries. the young frederick, during the conference, seemed agitated by a variety of emotions. he soon, however, recovered his composure, and an expression of determined malignancy settled upon his countenance, as he gave peremptory orders that a certain chamber should be immediately locked up, and the key placed in his own possession. "have you heard of the unhappy death of the old hunter berlifitzing?" said one of his vassals to the baron, as, after the departure of the page, the huge steed which that nobleman had adopted as his own, plunged and curvetted, with redoubled fury, down the long avenue which extended from the chateau to the stables of metzengerstein. "no!" said the baron, turning abruptly toward the speaker, "dead! say you?" "it is indeed true, my lord; and, to a noble of your name, will be, i imagine, no unwelcome intelligence." a rapid smile shot over the countenance of the listener. "how died he?" "in his rash exertions to rescue a favorite portion of his hunting stud, he has himself perished miserably in the flames." "i-n-d-e-e-d-!" ejaculated the baron, as if slowly and deliberately impressed with the truth of some exciting idea. "indeed;" repeated the vassal. "shocking!" said the youth, calmly, and turned quietly into the chateau. from this date a marked alteration took place in the outward demeanor of the dissolute young baron frederick von metzengerstein. indeed, his behavior disappointed every expectation, and proved little in accordance with the views of many a manoeuvering mamma; while his habits and manner, still less than formerly, offered any thing congenial with those of the neighboring aristocracy. he was never to be seen beyond the limits of his own domain, and, in this wide and social world, was utterly companionlessunless, indeed, that unnatural, impetuous, and fiery-colored horse, which he henceforward continually bestrode, had any mysterious right to the title of his friend. numerous invitations on the part of the neighborhood for a long time, however, periodically came in. "will the baron honor our festivals with his presence?" "will the baron join us in a hunting of the boar?""metzengerstein does not hunt;" "metzengerstein will not attend," were the haughty and laconic answers. these repeated insults were not to be endured by an imperious nobility. such invitations became less cordialless frequentin time they ceased altogether. the widow of the unfortunate count berlifitzing was even heard to express a hope "that the baron might be at home when he did not wish to be at home, since he disdained the company of his equals; and ride when he did not wish to ride, since he preferred the society of a horse." this to be sure was a very silly explosion of hereditary pique; and merely proved how singularly unmeaning our sayings are apt to become, when we desire to be unusually energetic. the charitable, nevertheless, attributed the alteration in the conduct of the young nobleman to the natural sorrow of a son for the untimely loss of his parentsforgetting, however, his atrocious and reckless behavior during the short period immediately succeeding that bereavement. some there were, indeed, who suggested a too haughty idea of self-consequence and dignity. others again (among them may be mentioned the family physician) did not hesitate in speaking of morbid melancholy, and hereditary ill-health; while dark hints, of a more equivocal nature, were current among the multitude. indeed, the baron's perverse attachment to his lately-acquired chargeran attachment which seemed to attain new strength from every fresh example of the animal's ferocious and demon-like propensitiesat length became, in the eyes of all reasonable men, a hideous and unnatural fervor. in the glare of noonat the dead hour of nightin sickness or in healthin calm or in tempestthe young metzengerstein seemed rivetted to the saddle of that colossal horse, whose intractable audacities so well accorded with his own spirit. there were circumstances, moreover, which coupled with late events, gave an unearthly and portentous character to the mania of the rider, and to the capabilities of the steed. the space passed over in a single leap had been accurately measured, and was found to exceed, by an astounding difference, the wildest expectations of the most imaginative. the baron, besides, had no particular name for the animal, although all the rest in his collection were distinguished by characteristic appellations. his stable, too, was appointed at a distance from the rest; and with regard to grooming and other necessary offices, none but the owner in person had ventured to officiate, or even to enter the enclosure of that particular stall. it was also to be observed, that although the three grooms, who had caught the steed as he fled from the conflagration at berlifitzing, had succeeded in arresting his course, by means of a chain-bridle and nooseyet no one of the three could with any certainty affirm that he had, during that dangerous struggle, or at any period thereafter, actually placed his hand upon the body of the beast. instances of peculiar intelligence in the demeanor of a noble and high-spirited horse are not to be supposed capable of exciting unreasonable attentionespecially among men who, daily trained to the labors of the chase, might appear well acquainted with the sagacity of a horsebut there were certain circumstances which intruded themselves per force upon the most skeptical and phlegmatic; and it is said there were times when the animal caused the gaping crowd who stood around to recoil in horror from the deep and impressive meaning of his terrible stamptimes when the young metzengerstein turned pale and shrunk away from the rapid and searching expression of his earnest and human-looking eye. among all the retinue of the baron, however, none were found to doubt the ardor of that extraordinary affection which existed on the part of the young nobleman for the fiery qualities of his horse; at least, none but an insignificant and misshapen little page, whose deformities were in everybody's way, and whose opinions were of the least possible importance. heif his ideas are worth mentioning at allhad the effrontery to assert that his master never vaulted into the saddle without an unaccountable and almost imperceptible shudder, and that, upon his return from every long-continued and habitual ride, an expression of triumphant malignity distorted every muscle in his countenance. one tempestuous night, metzengerstein, awaking from a heavy slumber, descended like a maniac from his chamber, and, mounting in hot haste, bounded away into the mazes of the forest. an occurrence so common attracted no particular attention, but his return was looked for with intense anxiety on the part of his domestics, when, after some hours' absence, the stupendous and magnificent battlements of the chateau metzengerstein, were discovered crackling and rocking to their very foundation, under the influence of a dense and livid mass of ungovernable fire. as the flames, when first seen, had already made so terrible a progress that all efforts to save any portion of the building were evidently futile, the astonished neighborhood stood idly around in silent and pathetic wonder. but a new and fearful object soon rivetted the attention of the multitude, and proved how much more intense is the excitement wrought in the feelings of a crowd by the contemplation of human agony, than that brought about by the most appalling spectacles of inanimate matter. up the long avenue of aged oaks which led from the forest to the main entrance of the chateau metzengerstein, a steed, bearing an unbonneted and disordered rider, was seen leaping with an impetuosity which outstripped the very demon of the tempest, and extorted from every stupefied beholder the ejaculation"horrible." the career of the horseman was indisputably, on his own part, uncontrollable. the agony of his countenance, the convulsive struggle of his frame, gave evidence of superhuman exertion: but no sound, save a solitary shriek, escaped from his lacerated lips, which were bitten through and through in the intensity of terror. one instant, and the clattering of hoofs resounded sharply and shrilly above the roaring of the flames and the shrieking of the windsanother, and, clearing at a single plunge the gate-way and the moat, the steed bounded far up the tottering staircases of the palace, and, with its rider, disappeared amid the whirlwind of chaotic fire. the fury of the tempest immediately died away, and a dead calm sullenly succeeded. a white flame still enveloped the building like a shroud, and, streaming far away into the quiet atmosphere, shot forth a glare of preternatural light; while a cloud of smoke settled heavily over the battlements in the distinct colossal figure ofa horse. -the end. othello dramatis personae duke of venice: brabantio a senator. other senators. (senator:) (first senator:) (second senator:) gratiano brother to brabantio. lodovico kinsman to brabantio. othello a noble moor in the service of the venetian state. cassio his lieutenant. iago his ancient. roderigo a venetian gentleman. montano othello's predecessor in the government of cyprus. clown, servant to othello. (clown:) desdemona daughter to brabantio and wife to othello. emilia wife to iago. bianca mistress to cassio. sailor, messenger, herald, officers, gentlemen, musicians, and attendants. (sailor:) (first officer:) (messenger:) (gentleman:) (first gentleman:) (second gentleman:) (third gentleman:) (first musician:) scene venice: a sea-port in cyprus. othello act i scene i venice. a street. [enter roderigo and iago] roderigo tush! never tell me; i take it much unkindly that thou, iago, who hast had my purse as if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this. iago 'sblood, but you will not hear me: if ever i did dream of such a matter, abhor me. roderigo thou told'st me thou didst hold him in thy hate. iago despise me, if i do not. three great ones of the city, in personal suit to make me his lieutenant, off-capp'd to him: and, by the faith of man, i know my price, i am worth no worse a place: but he; as loving his own pride and purposes, evades them, with a bombast circumstance horribly stuff'd with epithets of war; and, in conclusion, nonsuits my mediators; for, 'certes,' says he, 'i have already chose my officer.' and what was he? forsooth, a great arithmetician, one michael cassio, a florentine, a fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife; that never set a squadron in the field, nor the division of a battle knows more than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric, wherein the toged consuls can propose as masterly as he: mere prattle, without practise, is all his soldiership. but he, sir, had the election: and i, of whom his eyes had seen the proof at rhodes, at cyprus and on other grounds christian and heathen, must be be-lee'd and calm'd by debitor and creditor: this counter-caster, he, in good time, must his lieutenant be, and i--god bless the mark!--his moorship's ancient. roderigo by heaven, i rather would have been his hangman. iago why, there's no remedy; 'tis the curse of service, preferment goes by letter and affection, and not by old gradation, where each second stood heir to the first. now, sir, be judge yourself, whether i in any just term am affined to love the moor. roderigo i would not follow him then. iago o, sir, content you; i follow him to serve my turn upon him: we cannot all be masters, nor all masters cannot be truly follow'd. you shall mark many a duteous and knee-crooking knave, that, doting on his own obsequious bondage, wears out his time, much like his master's ass, for nought but provender, and when he's old, cashier'd: whip me such honest knaves. others there are who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty, keep yet their hearts attending on themselves, and, throwing but shows of service on their lords, do well thrive by them and when they have lined their coats do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul; and such a one do i profess myself. for, sir, it is as sure as you are roderigo, were i the moor, i would not be iago: in following him, i follow but myself; heaven is my judge, not i for love and duty, but seeming so, for my peculiar end: for when my outward action doth demonstrate the native act and figure of my heart in compliment extern, 'tis not long after but i will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at: i am not what i am. roderigo what a full fortune does the thicklips owe if he can carry't thus! iago call up her father, rouse him: make after him, poison his delight, proclaim him in the streets; incense her kinsmen, and, though he in a fertile climate dwell, plague him with flies: though that his joy be joy, yet throw such changes of vexation on't, as it may lose some colour. roderigo here is her father's house; i'll call aloud. iago do, with like timorous accent and dire yell as when, by night and negligence, the fire is spied in populous cities. roderigo what, ho, brabantio! signior brabantio, ho! iago awake! what, ho, brabantio! thieves! thieves! thieves! look to your house, your daughter and your bags! thieves! thieves! [brabantio appears above, at a window] brabantio what is the reason of this terrible summons? what is the matter there? roderigo signior, is all your family within? iago are your doors lock'd? brabantio why, wherefore ask you this? iago 'zounds, sir, you're robb'd; for shame, put on your gown; your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul; even now, now, very now, an old black ram is topping your white ewe. arise, arise; awake the snorting citizens with the bell, or else the devil will make a grandsire of you: arise, i say. brabantio what, have you lost your wits? roderigo most reverend signior, do you know my voice? brabantio not i what are you? roderigo my name is roderigo. brabantio the worser welcome: i have charged thee not to haunt about my doors: in honest plainness thou hast heard me say my daughter is not for thee; and now, in madness, being full of supper and distempering draughts, upon malicious bravery, dost thou come to start my quiet. roderigo sir, sir, sir,- brabantio but thou must needs be sure my spirit and my place have in them power to make this bitter to thee. roderigo patience, good sir. brabantio what tell'st thou me of robbing? this is venice; my house is not a grange. roderigo most grave brabantio, in simple and pure soul i come to you. iago 'zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not serve god, if the devil bid you. because we come to do you service and you think we are ruffians, you'll have your daughter covered with a barbary horse; you'll have your nephews neigh to you; you'll have coursers for cousins and gennets for germans. brabantio what profane wretch art thou? iago i am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the moor are now making the beast with two backs. brabantio thou art a villain. iago you are--a senator. brabantio this thou shalt answer; i know thee, roderigo. roderigo sir, i will answer any thing. but, i beseech you, if't be your pleasure and most wise consent, as partly i find it is, that your fair daughter, at this odd-even and dull watch o' the night, transported, with no worse nor better guard but with a knave of common hire, a gondolier, to the gross clasps of a lascivious moor- if this be known to you and your allowance, we then have done you bold and saucy wrongs; but if you know not this, my manners tell me we have your wrong rebuke. do not believe that, from the sense of all civility, i thus would play and trifle with your reverence: your daughter, if you have not given her leave, i say again, hath made a gross revolt; tying her duty, beauty, wit and fortunes in an extravagant and wheeling stranger of here and every where. straight satisfy yourself: if she be in her chamber or your house, let loose on me the justice of the state for thus deluding you. brabantio strike on the tinder, ho! give me a taper! call up all my people! this accident is not unlike my dream: belief of it oppresses me already. light, i say! light! [exit above] iago farewell; for i must leave you: it seems not meet, nor wholesome to my place, to be produced--as, if i stay, i shall- against the moor: for, i do know, the state, however this may gall him with some cheque, cannot with safety cast him, for he's embark'd with such loud reason to the cyprus wars, which even now stand in act, that, for their souls, another of his fathom they have none, to lead their business: in which regard, though i do hate him as i do hell-pains. yet, for necessity of present life, i must show out a flag and sign of love, which is indeed but sign. that you shall surely find him, lead to the sagittary the raised search; and there will i be with him. so, farewell. [exit] [enter, below, brabantio, and servants with torches] brabantio it is too true an evil: gone she is; and what's to come of my despised time is nought but bitterness. now, roderigo, where didst thou see her? o unhappy girl! with the moor, say'st thou? who would be a father! how didst thou know 'twas she? o she deceives me past thought! what said she to you? get more tapers: raise all my kindred. are they married, think you? roderigo truly, i think they are. brabantio o heaven! how got she out? o treason of the blood! fathers, from hence trust not your daughters' minds by what you see them act. is there not charms by which the property of youth and maidhood may be abused? have you not read, roderigo, of some such thing? roderigo yes, sir, i have indeed. brabantio call up my brother. o, would you had had her! some one way, some another. do you know where we may apprehend her and the moor? roderigo i think i can discover him, if you please, to get good guard and go along with me. brabantio pray you, lead on. at every house i'll call; i may command at most. get weapons, ho! and raise some special officers of night. on, good roderigo: i'll deserve your pains. [exeunt] othello act i scene ii another street. [enter othello, iago, and attendants with torches] iago though in the trade of war i have slain men, yet do i hold it very stuff o' the conscience to do no contrived murder: i lack iniquity sometimes to do me service: nine or ten times i had thought to have yerk'd him here under the ribs. othello 'tis better as it is. iago nay, but he prated, and spoke such scurvy and provoking terms against your honour that, with the little godliness i have, i did full hard forbear him. but, i pray you, sir, are you fast married? be assured of this, that the magnifico is much beloved, and hath in his effect a voice potential as double as the duke's: he will divorce you; or put upon you what restraint and grievance the law, with all his might to enforce it on, will give him cable. othello let him do his spite: my services which i have done the signiory shall out-tongue his complaints. 'tis yet to know,- which, when i know that boasting is an honour, i shall promulgate--i fetch my life and being from men of royal siege, and my demerits may speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune as this that i have reach'd: for know, iago, but that i love the gentle desdemona, i would not my unhoused free condition put into circumscription and confine for the sea's worth. but, look! what lights come yond? iago those are the raised father and his friends: you were best go in. othello not i i must be found: my parts, my title and my perfect soul shall manifest me rightly. is it they? iago by janus, i think no. [enter cassio, and certain officers with torches] othello the servants of the duke, and my lieutenant. the goodness of the night upon you, friends! what is the news? cassio the duke does greet you, general, and he requires your haste-post-haste appearance, even on the instant. othello what is the matter, think you? cassio something from cyprus as i may divine: it is a business of some heat: the galleys have sent a dozen sequent messengers this very night at one another's heels, and many of the consuls, raised and met, are at the duke's already: you have been hotly call'd for; when, being not at your lodging to be found, the senate hath sent about three several guests to search you out. othello 'tis well i am found by you. i will but spend a word here in the house, and go with you. [exit] cassio ancient, what makes he here? iago 'faith, he to-night hath boarded a land carack: if it prove lawful prize, he's made for ever. cassio i do not understand. iago he's married. cassio to who? [re-enter othello] iago marry, to--come, captain, will you go? othello have with you. cassio here comes another troop to seek for you. iago it is brabantio. general, be advised; he comes to bad intent. [enter brabantio, roderigo, and officers with torches and weapons] othello holla! stand there! roderigo signior, it is the moor. brabantio down with him, thief! [they draw on both sides] iago you, roderigo! come, sir, i am for you. othello keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them. good signior, you shall more command with years than with your weapons. brabantio o thou foul thief, where hast thou stow'd my daughter? damn'd as thou art, thou hast enchanted her; for i'll refer me to all things of sense, if she in chains of magic were not bound, whether a maid so tender, fair and happy, so opposite to marriage that she shunned the wealthy curled darlings of our nation, would ever have, to incur a general mock, run from her guardage to the sooty bosom of such a thing as thou, to fear, not to delight. judge me the world, if 'tis not gross in sense that thou hast practised on her with foul charms, abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals that weaken motion: i'll have't disputed on; 'tis probable and palpable to thinking. i therefore apprehend and do attach thee for an abuser of the world, a practiser of arts inhibited and out of warrant. lay hold upon him: if he do resist, subdue him at his peril. othello hold your hands, both you of my inclining, and the rest: were it my cue to fight, i should have known it without a prompter. where will you that i go to answer this your charge? brabantio to prison, till fit time of law and course of direct session call thee to answer. othello what if i do obey? how may the duke be therewith satisfied, whose messengers are here about my side, upon some present business of the state to bring me to him? first officer 'tis true, most worthy signior; the duke's in council and your noble self, i am sure, is sent for. brabantio how! the duke in council! in this time of the night! bring him away: mine's not an idle cause: the duke himself, or any of my brothers of the state, cannot but feel this wrong as 'twere their own; for if such actions may have passage free, bond-slaves and pagans shall our statesmen be. [exeunt] othello act i scene iii a council-chamber. [the duke and senators sitting at a table; officers attending] duke of venice there is no composition in these news that gives them credit. first senator indeed, they are disproportion'd; my letters say a hundred and seven galleys. duke of venice and mine, a hundred and forty. second senator and mine, two hundred: but though they jump not on a just account,- as in these cases, where the aim reports, 'tis oft with difference--yet do they all confirm a turkish fleet, and bearing up to cyprus. duke of venice nay, it is possible enough to judgment: i do not so secure me in the error, but the main article i do approve in fearful sense. sailor [within] what, ho! what, ho! what, ho! first officer a messenger from the galleys. [enter a sailor] duke of venice now, what's the business? sailor the turkish preparation makes for rhodes; so was i bid report here to the state by signior angelo. duke of venice how say you by this change? first senator this cannot be, by no assay of reason: 'tis a pageant, to keep us in false gaze. when we consider the importancy of cyprus to the turk, and let ourselves again but understand, that as it more concerns the turk than rhodes, so may he with more facile question bear it, for that it stands not in such warlike brace, but altogether lacks the abilities that rhodes is dress'd in: if we make thought of this, we must not think the turk is so unskilful to leave that latest which concerns him first, neglecting an attempt of ease and gain, to wake and wage a danger profitless. duke of venice nay, in all confidence, he's not for rhodes. first officer here is more news. [enter a messenger] messenger the ottomites, reverend and gracious, steering with due course towards the isle of rhodes, have there injointed them with an after fleet. first senator ay, so i thought. how many, as you guess? messenger of thirty sail: and now they do restem their backward course, bearing with frank appearance their purposes toward cyprus. signior montano, your trusty and most valiant servitor, with his free duty recommends you thus, and prays you to believe him. duke of venice 'tis certain, then, for cyprus. marcus luccicos, is not he in town? first senator he's now in florence. duke of venice write from us to him; post-post-haste dispatch. first senator here comes brabantio and the valiant moor. [enter brabantio, othello, iago, roderigo, and officers] duke of venice valiant othello, we must straight employ you against the general enemy ottoman. [to brabantio] i did not see you; welcome, gentle signior; we lack'd your counsel and your help tonight. brabantio so did i yours. good your grace, pardon me; neither my place nor aught i heard of business hath raised me from my bed, nor doth the general care take hold on me, for my particular grief is of so flood-gate and o'erbearing nature that it engluts and swallows other sorrows and it is still itself. duke of venice why, what's the matter? brabantio my daughter! o, my daughter! duke of venice | dead? senator | brabantio ay, to me; she is abused, stol'n from me, and corrupted by spells and medicines bought of mountebanks; for nature so preposterously to err, being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense, sans witchcraft could not. duke of venice whoe'er he be that in this foul proceeding hath thus beguiled your daughter of herself and you of her, the bloody book of law you shall yourself read in the bitter letter after your own sense, yea, though our proper son stood in your action. brabantio humbly i thank your grace. here is the man, this moor, whom now, it seems, your special mandate for the state-affairs hath hither brought. duke of venice | | we are very sorry for't. senator | duke of venice [to othello] what, in your own part, can you say to this? brabantio nothing, but this is so. othello most potent, grave, and reverend signiors, my very noble and approved good masters, that i have ta'en away this old man's daughter, it is most true; true, i have married her: the very head and front of my offending hath this extent, no more. rude am i in my speech, and little bless'd with the soft phrase of peace: for since these arms of mine had seven years' pith, till now some nine moons wasted, they have used their dearest action in the tented field, and little of this great world can i speak, more than pertains to feats of broil and battle, and therefore little shall i grace my cause in speaking for myself. yet, by your gracious patience, i will a round unvarnish'd tale deliver of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms, what conjuration and what mighty magic, for such proceeding i am charged withal, i won his daughter. brabantio a maiden never bold; of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion blush'd at herself; and she, in spite of nature, of years, of country, credit, every thing, to fall in love with what she fear'd to look on! it is a judgment maim'd and most imperfect that will confess perfection so could err against all rules of nature, and must be driven to find out practises of cunning hell, why this should be. i therefore vouch again that with some mixtures powerful o'er the blood, or with some dram conjured to this effect, he wrought upon her. duke of venice to vouch this, is no proof, without more wider and more overt test than these thin habits and poor likelihoods of modern seeming do prefer against him. first senator but, othello, speak: did you by indirect and forced courses subdue and poison this young maid's affections? or came it by request and such fair question as soul to soul affordeth? othello i do beseech you, send for the lady to the sagittary, and let her speak of me before her father: if you do find me foul in her report, the trust, the office i do hold of you, not only take away, but let your sentence even fall upon my life. duke of venice fetch desdemona hither. othello ancient, conduct them: you best know the place. [exeunt iago and attendants] and, till she come, as truly as to heaven i do confess the vices of my blood, so justly to your grave ears i'll present how i did thrive in this fair lady's love, and she in mine. duke of venice say it, othello. othello her father loved me; oft invited me; still question'd me the story of my life, from year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes, that i have passed. i ran it through, even from my boyish days, to the very moment that he bade me tell it; wherein i spake of most disastrous chances, of moving accidents by flood and field of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach, of being taken by the insolent foe and sold to slavery, of my redemption thence and portance in my travels' history: wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven it was my hint to speak,--such was the process; and of the cannibals that each other eat, the anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. this to hear would desdemona seriously incline: but still the house-affairs would draw her thence: which ever as she could with haste dispatch, she'ld come again, and with a greedy ear devour up my discourse: which i observing, took once a pliant hour, and found good means to draw from her a prayer of earnest heart that i would all my pilgrimage dilate, whereof by parcels she had something heard, but not intentively: i did consent, and often did beguile her of her tears, when i did speak of some distressful stroke that my youth suffer'd. my story being done, she gave me for my pains a world of sighs: she swore, in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange, 'twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful: she wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd that heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me, and bade me, if i had a friend that loved her, i should but teach him how to tell my story. and that would woo her. upon this hint i spake: she loved me for the dangers i had pass'd, and i loved her that she did pity them. this only is the witchcraft i have used: here comes the lady; let her witness it. [enter desdemona, iago, and attendants] duke of venice i think this tale would win my daughter too. good brabantio, take up this mangled matter at the best: men do their broken weapons rather use than their bare hands. brabantio i pray you, hear her speak: if she confess that she was half the wooer, destruction on my head, if my bad blame light on the man! come hither, gentle mistress: do you perceive in all this noble company where most you owe obedience? desdemona my noble father, i do perceive here a divided duty: to you i am bound for life and education; my life and education both do learn me how to respect you; you are the lord of duty; i am hitherto your daughter: but here's my husband, and so much duty as my mother show'd to you, preferring you before her father, so much i challenge that i may profess due to the moor my lord. brabantio god be wi' you! i have done. please it your grace, on to the state-affairs: i had rather to adopt a child than get it. come hither, moor: i here do give thee that with all my heart which, but thou hast already, with all my heart i would keep from thee. for your sake, jewel, i am glad at soul i have no other child: for thy escape would teach me tyranny, to hang clogs on them. i have done, my lord. duke of venice let me speak like yourself, and lay a sentence, which, as a grise or step, may help these lovers into your favour. when remedies are past, the griefs are ended by seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended. to mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief on. what cannot be preserved when fortune takes patience her injury a mockery makes. the robb'd that smiles steals something from the thief; he robs himself that spends a bootless grief. brabantio so let the turk of cyprus us beguile; we lose it not, so long as we can smile. he bears the sentence well that nothing bears but the free comfort which from thence he hears, but he bears both the sentence and the sorrow that, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow. these sentences, to sugar, or to gall, being strong on both sides, are equivocal: but words are words; i never yet did hear that the bruised heart was pierced through the ear. i humbly beseech you, proceed to the affairs of state. duke of venice the turk with a most mighty preparation makes for cyprus. othello, the fortitude of the place is best known to you; and though we have there a substitute of most allowed sufficiency, yet opinion, a sovereign mistress of effects, throws a more safer voice on you: you must therefore be content to slubber the gloss of your new fortunes with this more stubborn and boisterous expedition. othello the tyrant custom, most grave senators, hath made the flinty and steel couch of war my thrice-driven bed of down: i do agnise a natural and prompt alacrity i find in hardness, and do undertake these present wars against the ottomites. most humbly therefore bending to your state, i crave fit disposition for my wife. due reference of place and exhibition, with such accommodation and besort as levels with her breeding. duke of venice if you please, be't at her father's. brabantio i'll not have it so. othello nor i. desdemona nor i; i would not there reside, to put my father in impatient thoughts by being in his eye. most gracious duke, to my unfolding lend your prosperous ear; and let me find a charter in your voice, to assist my simpleness. duke of venice what would you, desdemona? desdemona that i did love the moor to live with him, my downright violence and storm of fortunes may trumpet to the world: my heart's subdued even to the very quality of my lord: i saw othello's visage in his mind, and to his honour and his valiant parts did i my soul and fortunes consecrate. so that, dear lords, if i be left behind, a moth of peace, and he go to the war, the rites for which i love him are bereft me, and i a heavy interim shall support by his dear absence. let me go with him. othello let her have your voices. vouch with me, heaven, i therefore beg it not, to please the palate of my appetite, nor to comply with heat--the young affects in me defunct--and proper satisfaction. but to be free and bounteous to her mind: and heaven defend your good souls, that you think i will your serious and great business scant for she is with me: no, when light-wing'd toys of feather'd cupid seal with wanton dullness my speculative and officed instruments, that my disports corrupt and taint my business, let housewives make a skillet of my helm, and all indign and base adversities make head against my estimation! duke of venice be it as you shall privately determine, either for her stay or going: the affair cries haste, and speed must answer it. first senator you must away to-night. othello with all my heart. duke of venice at nine i' the morning here we'll meet again. othello, leave some officer behind, and he shall our commission bring to you; with such things else of quality and respect as doth import you. othello so please your grace, my ancient; a man he is of honest and trust: to his conveyance i assign my wife, with what else needful your good grace shall think to be sent after me. duke of venice let it be so. good night to every one. [to brabantio] and, noble signior, if virtue no delighted beauty lack, your son-in-law is far more fair than black. first senator adieu, brave moor, use desdemona well. brabantio look to her, moor, if thou hast eyes to see: she has deceived her father, and may thee. [exeunt duke of venice, senators, officers, &c] othello my life upon her faith! honest iago, my desdemona must i leave to thee: i prithee, let thy wife attend on her: and bring them after in the best advantage. come, desdemona: i have but an hour of love, of worldly matters and direction, to spend with thee: we must obey the time. [exeunt othello and desdemona] roderigo iago,- iago what say'st thou, noble heart? roderigo what will i do, thinkest thou? iago why, go to bed, and sleep. roderigo i will incontinently drown myself. iago if thou dost, i shall never love thee after. why, thou silly gentleman! roderigo it is silliness to live when to live is torment; and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician. iago o villainous! i have looked upon the world for four times seven years; and since i could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, i never found man that knew how to love himself. ere i would say, i would drown myself for the love of a guinea-hen, i would change my humanity with a baboon. roderigo what should i do? i confess it is my shame to be so fond; but it is not in my virtue to amend it. iago virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. if the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions: but we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof i take this that you call love to be a sect or scion. roderigo it cannot be. iago it is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. come, be a man. drown thyself! drown cats and blind puppies. i have professed me thy friend and i confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; i could never better stead thee than now. put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; i say, put money in thy purse. it cannot be that desdemona should long continue her love to the moor,-put money in thy purse,--nor he his to her: it was a violent commencement, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration:--put but money in thy purse. these moors are changeable in their wills: fill thy purse with money:--the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida. she must change for youth: when she is sated with his body, she will find the error of her choice: she must have change, she must: therefore put money in thy purse. if thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning. make all the money thou canst: if sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a supersubtle venetian not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her; therefore make money. a pox of drowning thyself! it is clean out of the way: seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy joy than to be drowned and go without her. roderigo wilt thou be fast to my hopes, if i depend on the issue? iago thou art sure of me:--go, make money:--i have told thee often, and i re-tell thee again and again, i hate the moor: my cause is hearted; thine hath no less reason. let us be conjunctive in our revenge against him: if thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport. there are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered. traverse! go, provide thy money. we will have more of this to-morrow. adieu. roderigo where shall we meet i' the morning? iago at my lodging. roderigo i'll be with thee betimes. iago go to; farewell. do you hear, roderigo? roderigo what say you? iago no more of drowning, do you hear? roderigo i am changed: i'll go sell all my land. [exit] iago thus do i ever make my fool my purse: for i mine own gain'd knowledge should profane, if i would time expend with such a snipe. but for my sport and profit. i hate the moor: and it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets he has done my office: i know not if't be true; but i, for mere suspicion in that kind, will do as if for surety. he holds me well; the better shall my purpose work on him. cassio's a proper man: let me see now: to get his place and to plume up my will in double knavery--how, how? let's see:- after some time, to abuse othello's ear that he is too familiar with his wife. he hath a person and a smooth dispose to be suspected, framed to make women false. the moor is of a free and open nature, that thinks men honest that but seem to be so, and will as tenderly be led by the nose as asses are. i have't. it is engender'd. hell and night must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light. [exit] othello act ii scene i a sea-port in cyprus. an open place near the quay. [enter montano and two gentlemen] montano what from the cape can you discern at sea? first gentleman nothing at all: it is a highwrought flood; i cannot, 'twixt the heaven and the main, descry a sail. montano methinks the wind hath spoke aloud at land; a fuller blast ne'er shook our battlements: if it hath ruffian'd so upon the sea, what ribs of oak, when mountains melt on them, can hold the mortise? what shall we hear of this? second gentleman a segregation of the turkish fleet: for do but stand upon the foaming shore, the chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds; the wind-shaked surge, with high and monstrous mane, seems to cast water on the burning bear, and quench the guards of the ever-fixed pole: i never did like molestation view on the enchafed flood. montano if that the turkish fleet be not enshelter'd and embay'd, they are drown'd: it is impossible they bear it out. [enter a third gentleman] third gentleman news, lads! our wars are done. the desperate tempest hath so bang'd the turks, that their designment halts: a noble ship of venice hath seen a grievous wreck and sufferance on most part of their fleet. montano how! is this true? third gentleman the ship is here put in, a veronesa; michael cassio, lieutenant to the warlike moor othello, is come on shore: the moor himself at sea, and is in full commission here for cyprus. montano i am glad on't; 'tis a worthy governor. third gentleman but this same cassio, though he speak of comfort touching the turkish loss, yet he looks sadly, and prays the moor be safe; for they were parted with foul and violent tempest. montano pray heavens he be; for i have served him, and the man commands like a full soldier. let's to the seaside, ho! as well to see the vessel that's come in as to throw out our eyes for brave othello, even till we make the main and the aerial blue an indistinct regard. third gentleman come, let's do so: for every minute is expectancy of more arrivance. [enter cassio] cassio thanks, you the valiant of this warlike isle, that so approve the moor! o, let the heavens give him defence against the elements, for i have lost us him on a dangerous sea. montano is he well shipp'd? cassio his bark is stoutly timber'd, his pilot of very expert and approved allowance; therefore my hopes, not surfeited to death, stand in bold cure. [a cry within 'a sail, a sail, a sail!'] [enter a fourth gentleman] cassio what noise? fourth gentleman the town is empty; on the brow o' the sea stand ranks of people, and they cry 'a sail!' cassio my hopes do shape him for the governor. [guns heard] second gentlemen they do discharge their shot of courtesy: our friends at least. cassio i pray you, sir, go forth, and give us truth who 'tis that is arrived. second gentleman i shall. [exit] montano but, good lieutenant, is your general wived? cassio most fortunately: he hath achieved a maid that paragons description and wild fame; one that excels the quirks of blazoning pens, and in the essential vesture of creation does tire the ingener. [re-enter second gentleman] how now! who has put in? second gentleman 'tis one iago, ancient to the general. cassio has had most favourable and happy speed: tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds, the gutter'd rocks and congregated sands- traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel,- as having sense of beauty, do omit their mortal natures, letting go safely by the divine desdemona. montano what is she? cassio she that i spake of, our great captain's captain, left in the conduct of the bold iago, whose footing here anticipates our thoughts a se'nnight's speed. great jove, othello guard, and swell his sail with thine own powerful breath, that he may bless this bay with his tall ship, make love's quick pants in desdemona's arms, give renew'd fire to our extincted spirits and bring all cyprus comfort! [enter desdemona, emilia, iago, roderigo, and attendants] o, behold, the riches of the ship is come on shore! ye men of cyprus, let her have your knees. hail to thee, lady! and the grace of heaven, before, behind thee, and on every hand, enwheel thee round! desdemona i thank you, valiant cassio. what tidings can you tell me of my lord? cassio he is not yet arrived: nor know i aught but that he's well and will be shortly here. desdemona o, but i fear--how lost you company? cassio the great contention of the sea and skies parted our fellowship--but, hark! a sail. [within 'a sail, a sail!' guns heard] second gentleman they give their greeting to the citadel; this likewise is a friend. cassio see for the news. [exit gentleman] good ancient, you are welcome. [to emilia] welcome, mistress. let it not gall your patience, good iago, that i extend my manners; 'tis my breeding that gives me this bold show of courtesy. [kissing her] iago sir, would she give you so much of her lips as of her tongue she oft bestows on me, you'll have enough. desdemona alas, she has no speech. iago in faith, too much; i find it still, when i have list to sleep: marry, before your ladyship, i grant, she puts her tongue a little in her heart, and chides with thinking. emilia you have little cause to say so. iago come on, come on; you are pictures out of doors, bells in your parlors, wild-cats in your kitchens, saints m your injuries, devils being offended, players in your housewifery, and housewives' in your beds. desdemona o, fie upon thee, slanderer! iago nay, it is true, or else i am a turk: you rise to play and go to bed to work. emilia you shall not write my praise. iago no, let me not. desdemona what wouldst thou write of me, if thou shouldst praise me? iago o gentle lady, do not put me to't; for i am nothing, if not critical. desdemona come on assay. there's one gone to the harbour? iago ay, madam. desdemona i am not merry; but i do beguile the thing i am, by seeming otherwise. come, how wouldst thou praise me? iago i am about it; but indeed my invention comes from my pate as birdlime does from frize; it plucks out brains and all: but my muse labours, and thus she is deliver'd. if she be fair and wise, fairness and wit, the one's for use, the other useth it. desdemona well praised! how if she be black and witty? iago if she be black, and thereto have a wit, she'll find a white that shall her blackness fit. desdemona worse and worse. emilia how if fair and foolish? iago she never yet was foolish that was fair; for even her folly help'd her to an heir. desdemona these are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i' the alehouse. what miserable praise hast thou for her that's foul and foolish? iago there's none so foul and foolish thereunto, but does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do. desdemona o heavy ignorance! thou praisest the worst best. but what praise couldst thou bestow on a deserving woman indeed, one that, in the authority of her merit, did justly put on the vouch of very malice itself? iago she that was ever fair and never proud, had tongue at will and yet was never loud, never lack'd gold and yet went never gay, fled from her wish and yet said 'now i may,' she that being anger'd, her revenge being nigh, bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly, she that in wisdom never was so frail to change the cod's head for the salmon's tail; she that could think and ne'er disclose her mind, see suitors following and not look behind, she was a wight, if ever such wight were,- desdemona to do what? iago to suckle fools and chronicle small beer. desdemona o most lame and impotent conclusion! do not learn of him, emilia, though he be thy husband. how say you, cassio? is he not a most profane and liberal counsellor? cassio he speaks home, madam: you may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar. iago [aside] he takes her by the palm: ay, well said, whisper: with as little a web as this will i ensnare as great a fly as cassio. ay, smile upon her, do; i will gyve thee in thine own courtship. you say true; 'tis so, indeed: if such tricks as these strip you out of your lieutenantry, it had been better you had not kissed your three fingers so oft, which now again you are most apt to play the sir in. very good; well kissed! an excellent courtesy! 'tis so, indeed. yet again your fingers to your lips? would they were clyster-pipes for your sake! [trumpet within] the moor! i know his trumpet. cassio 'tis truly so. desdemona let's meet him and receive him. cassio lo, where he comes! [enter othello and attendants] othello o my fair warrior! desdemona my dear othello! othello it gives me wonder great as my content to see you here before me. o my soul's joy! if after every tempest come such calms, may the winds blow till they have waken'd death! and let the labouring bark climb hills of seas olympus-high and duck again as low as hell's from heaven! if it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy; for, i fear, my soul hath her content so absolute that not another comfort like to this succeeds in unknown fate. desdemona the heavens forbid but that our loves and comforts should increase, even as our days do grow! othello amen to that, sweet powers! i cannot speak enough of this content; it stops me here; it is too much of joy: and this, and this, the greatest discords be [kissing her] that e'er our hearts shall make! iago [aside] o, you are well tuned now! but i'll set down the pegs that make this music, as honest as i am. othello come, let us to the castle. news, friends; our wars are done, the turks are drown'd. how does my old acquaintance of this isle? honey, you shall be well desired in cyprus; i have found great love amongst them. o my sweet, i prattle out of fashion, and i dote in mine own comforts. i prithee, good iago, go to the bay and disembark my coffers: bring thou the master to the citadel; he is a good one, and his worthiness does challenge much respect. come, desdemona, once more, well met at cyprus. [exeunt othello, desdemona, and attendants] iago do thou meet me presently at the harbour. come hither. if thou be'st valiant,-as, they say, base men being in love have then a nobility in their natures more than is native to them--list me. the lieutenant tonight watches on the court of guard:--first, i must tell thee this--desdemona is directly in love with him. roderigo with him! why, 'tis not possible. iago lay thy finger thus, and let thy soul be instructed. mark me with what violence she first loved the moor, but for bragging and telling her fantastical lies: and will she love him still for prating? let not thy discreet heart think it. her eye must be fed; and what delight shall she have to look on the devil? when the blood is made dull with the act of sport, there should be, again to inflame it and to give satiety a fresh appetite, loveliness in favour, sympathy in years, manners and beauties; all which the moor is defective in: now, for want of these required conveniences, her delicate tenderness will find itself abused, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and abhor the moor; very nature will instruct her in it and compel her to some second choice. now, sir, this granted,--as it is a most pregnant and unforced position--who stands so eminent in the degree of this fortune as cassio does? a knave very voluble; no further conscionable than in putting on the mere form of civil and humane seeming, for the better compassing of his salt and most hidden loose affection? why, none; why, none: a slipper and subtle knave, a finder of occasions, that has an eye can stamp and counterfeit advantages, though true advantage never present itself; a devilish knave. besides, the knave is handsome, young, and hath all those requisites in him that folly and green minds look after: a pestilent complete knave; and the woman hath found him already. roderigo i cannot believe that in her; she's full of most blessed condition. iago blessed fig's-end! the wine she drinks is made of grapes: if she had been blessed, she would never have loved the moor. blessed pudding! didst thou not see her paddle with the palm of his hand? didst not mark that? roderigo yes, that i did; but that was but courtesy. iago lechery, by this hand; an index and obscure prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts. they met so near with their lips that their breaths embraced together. villanous thoughts, roderigo! when these mutualities so marshal the way, hard at hand comes the master and main exercise, the incorporate conclusion, pish! but, sir, be you ruled by me: i have brought you from venice. watch you to-night; for the command, i'll lay't upon you. cassio knows you not. i'll not be far from you: do you find some occasion to anger cassio, either by speaking too loud, or tainting his discipline; or from what other course you please, which the time shall more favourably minister. roderigo well. iago sir, he is rash and very sudden in choler, and haply may strike at you: provoke him, that he may; for even out of that will i cause these of cyprus to mutiny; whose qualification shall come into no true taste again but by the displanting of cassio. so shall you have a shorter journey to your desires by the means i shall then have to prefer them; and the impediment most profitably removed, without the which there were no expectation of our prosperity. roderigo i will do this, if i can bring it to any opportunity. iago i warrant thee. meet me by and by at the citadel: i must fetch his necessaries ashore. farewell. roderigo adieu. [exit] iago that cassio loves her, i do well believe it; that she loves him, 'tis apt and of great credit: the moor, howbeit that i endure him not, is of a constant, loving, noble nature, and i dare think he'll prove to desdemona a most dear husband. now, i do love her too; not out of absolute lust, though peradventure i stand accountant for as great a sin, but partly led to diet my revenge, for that i do suspect the lusty moor hath leap'd into my seat; the thought whereof doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my inwards; and nothing can or shall content my soul till i am even'd with him, wife for wife, or failing so, yet that i put the moor at least into a jealousy so strong that judgment cannot cure. which thing to do, if this poor trash of venice, whom i trash for his quick hunting, stand the putting on, i'll have our michael cassio on the hip, abuse him to the moor in the rank garb- for i fear cassio with my night-cap too- make the moor thank me, love me and reward me. for making him egregiously an ass and practising upon his peace and quiet even to madness. 'tis here, but yet confused: knavery's plain face is never seen tin used. [exit] othello act ii scene ii a street. [enter a herald with a proclamation; people following] herald it is othello's pleasure, our noble and valiant general, that, upon certain tidings now arrived, importing the mere perdition of the turkish fleet, every man put himself into triumph; some to dance, some to make bonfires, each man to what sport and revels his addiction leads him: for, besides these beneficial news, it is the celebration of his nuptial. so much was his pleasure should be proclaimed. all offices are open, and there is full liberty of feasting from this present hour of five till the bell have told eleven. heaven bless the isle of cyprus and our noble general othello! [exeunt] othello act ii scene iii a hall in the castle. [enter othello, desdemona, cassio, and attendants] othello good michael, look you to the guard to-night: let's teach ourselves that honourable stop, not to outsport discretion. cassio iago hath direction what to do; but, notwithstanding, with my personal eye will i look to't. othello iago is most honest. michael, good night: to-morrow with your earliest let me have speech with you. [to desdemona] come, my dear love, the purchase made, the fruits are to ensue; that profit's yet to come 'tween me and you. good night. [exeunt othello, desdemona, and attendants] [enter iago] cassio welcome, iago; we must to the watch. iago not this hour, lieutenant; 'tis not yet ten o' the clock. our general cast us thus early for the love of his desdemona; who let us not therefore blame: he hath not yet made wanton the night with her; and she is sport for jove. cassio she's a most exquisite lady. iago and, i'll warrant her, fun of game. cassio indeed, she's a most fresh and delicate creature. iago what an eye she has! methinks it sounds a parley of provocation. cassio an inviting eye; and yet methinks right modest. iago and when she speaks, is it not an alarum to love? cassio she is indeed perfection. iago well, happiness to their sheets! come, lieutenant, i have a stoup of wine; and here without are a brace of cyprus gallants that would fain have a measure to the health of black othello. cassio not to-night, good iago: i have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking: i could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment. iago o, they are our friends; but one cup: i'll drink for you. cassio i have drunk but one cup to-night, and that was craftily qualified too, and, behold, what innovation it makes here: i am unfortunate in the infirmity, and dare not task my weakness with any more. iago what, man! 'tis a night of revels: the gallants desire it. cassio where are they? iago here at the door; i pray you, call them in. cassio i'll do't; but it dislikes me. [exit] iago if i can fasten but one cup upon him, with that which he hath drunk to-night already, he'll be as full of quarrel and offence as my young mistress' dog. now, my sick fool roderigo, whom love hath turn'd almost the wrong side out, to desdemona hath to-night caroused potations pottle-deep; and he's to watch: three lads of cyprus, noble swelling spirits, that hold their honours in a wary distance, the very elements of this warlike isle, have i to-night fluster'd with flowing cups, and they watch too. now, 'mongst this flock of drunkards, am i to put our cassio in some action that may offend the isle.--but here they come: if consequence do but approve my dream, my boat sails freely, both with wind and stream. [re-enter cassio; with him montano and gentlemen; servants following with wine] cassio 'fore god, they have given me a rouse already. montano good faith, a little one; not past a pint, as i am a soldier. iago some wine, ho! [sings] and let me the canakin clink, clink; and let me the canakin clink a soldier's a man; a life's but a span; why, then, let a soldier drink. some wine, boys! cassio 'fore god, an excellent song. iago i learned it in england, where, indeed, they are most potent in potting: your dane, your german, and your swag-bellied hollander--drink, ho!--are nothing to your english. cassio is your englishman so expert in his drinking? iago why, he drinks you, with facility, your dane dead drunk; he sweats not to overthrow your almain; he gives your hollander a vomit, ere the next pottle can be filled. cassio to the health of our general! montano i am for it, lieutenant; and i'll do you justice. iago o sweet england! king stephen was a worthy peer, his breeches cost him but a crown; he held them sixpence all too dear, with that he call'd the tailor lown. he was a wight of high renown, and thou art but of low degree: 'tis pride that pulls the country down; then take thine auld cloak about thee. some wine, ho! cassio why, this is a more exquisite song than the other. iago will you hear't again? cassio no; for i hold him to be unworthy of his place that does those things. well, god's above all; and there be souls must be saved, and there be souls must not be saved. iago it's true, good lieutenant. cassio for mine own part,--no offence to the general, nor any man of quality,--i hope to be saved. iago and so do i too, lieutenant. cassio ay, but, by your leave, not before me; the lieutenant is to be saved before the ancient. let's have no more of this; let's to our affairs.--forgive us our sins!--gentlemen, let's look to our business. do not think, gentlemen. i am drunk: this is my ancient; this is my right hand, and this is my left: i am not drunk now; i can stand well enough, and speak well enough. all excellent well. cassio why, very well then; you must not think then that i am drunk. [exit] montano to the platform, masters; come, let's set the watch. iago you see this fellow that is gone before; he is a soldier fit to stand by caesar and give direction: and do but see his vice; 'tis to his virtue a just equinox, the one as long as the other: 'tis pity of him. i fear the trust othello puts him in. on some odd time of his infirmity, will shake this island. montano but is he often thus? iago 'tis evermore the prologue to his sleep: he'll watch the horologe a double set, if drink rock not his cradle. montano it were well the general were put in mind of it. perhaps he sees it not; or his good nature prizes the virtue that appears in cassio, and looks not on his evils: is not this true? [enter roderigo] iago [aside to him] how now, roderigo! i pray you, after the lieutenant; go. [exit roderigo] montano and 'tis great pity that the noble moor should hazard such a place as his own second with one of an ingraft infirmity: it were an honest action to say so to the moor. iago not i, for this fair island: i do love cassio well; and would do much to cure him of this evil--but, hark! what noise? [cry within: 'help! help!'] [re-enter cassio, driving in roderigo] cassio you rogue! you rascal! montano what's the matter, lieutenant? cassio a knave teach me my duty! i'll beat the knave into a twiggen bottle. roderigo beat me! cassio dost thou prate, rogue? [striking roderigo] montano nay, good lieutenant; [staying him] i pray you, sir, hold your hand. cassio let me go, sir, or i'll knock you o'er the mazzard. montano come, come, you're drunk. cassio drunk! [they fight] iago [aside to roderigo] away, i say; go out, and cry a mutiny. [exit roderigo] nay, good lieutenant,--alas, gentlemen;- help, ho!--lieutenant,--sir,--montano,--sir; help, masters!--here's a goodly watch indeed! [bell rings] who's that which rings the bell?--diablo, ho! the town will rise: god's will, lieutenant, hold! you will be shamed for ever. [re-enter othello and attendants] othello what is the matter here? montano 'zounds, i bleed still; i am hurt to the death. [faints] othello hold, for your lives! iago hold, ho! lieutenant,--sir--montano,--gentlemen,- have you forgot all sense of place and duty? hold! the general speaks to you; hold, hold, for shame! othello why, how now, ho! from whence ariseth this? are we turn'd turks, and to ourselves do that which heaven hath forbid the ottomites? for christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl: he that stirs next to carve for his own rage holds his soul light; he dies upon his motion. silence that dreadful bell: it frights the isle from her propriety. what is the matter, masters? honest iago, that look'st dead with grieving, speak, who began this? on thy love, i charge thee. iago i do not know: friends all but now, even now, in quarter, and in terms like bride and groom devesting them for bed; and then, but now- as if some planet had unwitted men- swords out, and tilting one at other's breast, in opposition bloody. i cannot speak any beginning to this peevish odds; and would in action glorious i had lost those legs that brought me to a part of it! othello how comes it, michael, you are thus forgot? cassio i pray you, pardon me; i cannot speak. othello worthy montano, you were wont be civil; the gravity and stillness of your youth the world hath noted, and your name is great in mouths of wisest censure: what's the matter, that you unlace your reputation thus and spend your rich opinion for the name of a night-brawler? give me answer to it. montano worthy othello, i am hurt to danger: your officer, iago, can inform you,- while i spare speech, which something now offends me,- of all that i do know: nor know i aught by me that's said or done amiss this night; unless self-charity be sometimes a vice, and to defend ourselves it be a sin when violence assails us. othello now, by heaven, my blood begins my safer guides to rule; and passion, having my best judgment collied, assays to lead the way: if i once stir, or do but lift this arm, the best of you shall sink in my rebuke. give me to know how this foul rout began, who set it on; and he that is approved in this offence, though he had twinn'd with me, both at a birth, shall lose me. what! in a town of war, yet wild, the people's hearts brimful of fear, to manage private and domestic quarrel, in night, and on the court and guard of safety! 'tis monstrous. iago, who began't? montano if partially affined, or leagued in office, thou dost deliver more or less than truth, thou art no soldier. iago touch me not so near: i had rather have this tongue cut from my mouth than it should do offence to michael cassio; yet, i persuade myself, to speak the truth shall nothing wrong him. thus it is, general. montano and myself being in speech, there comes a fellow crying out for help: and cassio following him with determined sword, to execute upon him. sir, this gentleman steps in to cassio, and entreats his pause: myself the crying fellow did pursue, lest by his clamour--as it so fell out- the town might fall in fright: he, swift of foot, outran my purpose; and i return'd the rather for that i heard the clink and fall of swords, and cassio high in oath; which till to-night i ne'er might say before. when i came back- for this was brief--i found them close together, at blow and thrust; even as again they were when you yourself did part them. more of this matter cannot i report: but men are men; the best sometimes forget: though cassio did some little wrong to him, as men in rage strike those that wish them best, yet surely cassio, i believe, received from him that fled some strange indignity, which patience could not pass. othello i know, iago, thy honesty and love doth mince this matter, making it light to cassio. cassio, i love thee but never more be officer of mine. [re-enter desdemona, attended] look, if my gentle love be not raised up! i'll make thee an example. desdemona what's the matter? othello all's well now, sweeting; come away to bed. sir, for your hurts, myself will be your surgeon: lead him off. [to montano, who is led off] iago, look with care about the town, and silence those whom this vile brawl distracted. come, desdemona: 'tis the soldiers' life to have their balmy slumbers waked with strife. [exeunt all but iago and cassio] iago what, are you hurt, lieutenant? cassio ay, past all surgery. iago marry, heaven forbid! cassio reputation, reputation, reputation! o, i have lost my reputation! i have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. my reputation, iago, my reputation! iago as i am an honest man, i thought you had received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation. reputation is an idle and most false imposition: oft got without merit, and lost without deserving: you have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser. what, man! there are ways to recover the general again: you are but now cast in his mood, a punishment more in policy than in malice, even so as one would beat his offenceless dog to affright an imperious lion: sue to him again, and he's yours. cassio i will rather sue to be despised than to deceive so good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet an officer. drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with one's own shadow? o thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil! iago what was he that you followed with your sword? what had he done to you? cassio i know not. iago is't possible? cassio i remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. o god, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance revel and applause, transform ourselves into beasts! iago why, but you are now well enough: how came you thus recovered? cassio it hath pleased the devil drunkenness to give place to the devil wrath; one unperfectness shows me another, to make me frankly despise myself. iago come, you are too severe a moraler: as the time, the place, and the condition of this country stands, i could heartily wish this had not befallen; but, since it is as it is, mend it for your own good. cassio i will ask him for my place again; he shall tell me i am a drunkard! had i as many mouths as hydra, such an answer would stop them all. to be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast! o strange! every inordinate cup is unblessed and the ingredient is a devil. iago come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used: exclaim no more against it. and, good lieutenant, i think you think i love you. cassio i have well approved it, sir. i drunk! iago you or any man living may be drunk! at a time, man. i'll tell you what you shall do. our general's wife is now the general: may say so in this respect, for that he hath devoted and given up himself to the contemplation, mark, and denotement of her parts and graces: confess yourself freely to her; importune her help to put you in your place again: she is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested: this broken joint between you and her husband entreat her to splinter; and, my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack of your love shall grow stronger than it was before. cassio you advise me well. iago i protest, in the sincerity of love and honest kindness. cassio i think it freely; and betimes in the morning i will beseech the virtuous desdemona to undertake for me: i am desperate of my fortunes if they cheque me here. iago you are in the right. good night, lieutenant; i must to the watch. cassio: good night, honest iago. [exit] iago and what's he then that says i play the villain? when this advice is free i give and honest, probal to thinking and indeed the course to win the moor again? for 'tis most easy the inclining desdemona to subdue in any honest suit: she's framed as fruitful as the free elements. and then for her to win the moor--were't to renounce his baptism, all seals and symbols of redeemed sin, his soul is so enfetter'd to her love, that she may make, unmake, do what she list, even as her appetite shall play the god with his weak function. how am i then a villain to counsel cassio to this parallel course, directly to his good? divinity of hell! when devils will the blackest sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows, as i do now: for whiles this honest fool plies desdemona to repair his fortunes and she for him pleads strongly to the moor, i'll pour this pestilence into his ear, that she repeals him for her body's lust; and by how much she strives to do him good, she shall undo her credit with the moor. so will i turn her virtue into pitch, and out of her own goodness make the net that shall enmesh them all. [re-enter roderigo] how now, roderigo! roderigo i do follow here in the chase, not like a hound that hunts, but one that fills up the cry. my money is almost spent; i have been to-night exceedingly well cudgelled; and i think the issue will be, i shall have so much experience for my pains, and so, with no money at all and a little more wit, return again to venice. iago how poor are they that have not patience! what wound did ever heal but by degrees? thou know'st we work by wit, and not by witchcraft; and wit depends on dilatory time. does't not go well? cassio hath beaten thee. and thou, by that small hurt, hast cashier'd cassio: though other things grow fair against the sun, yet fruits that blossom first will first be ripe: content thyself awhile. by the mass, 'tis morning; pleasure and action make the hours seem short. retire thee; go where thou art billeted: away, i say; thou shalt know more hereafter: nay, get thee gone. [exit roderigo] two things are to be done: my wife must move for cassio to her mistress; i'll set her on; myself the while to draw the moor apart, and bring him jump when he may cassio find soliciting his wife: ay, that's the way dull not device by coldness and delay. [exit] othello act iii scene i before the castle. [enter cassio and some musicians] cassio masters, play here; i will content your pains; something that's brief; and bid 'good morrow, general.' [music] [enter clown] clown why masters, have your instruments been in naples, that they speak i' the nose thus? first musician how, sir, how! clown are these, i pray you, wind-instruments? first musician ay, marry, are they, sir. clown o, thereby hangs a tail. first musician whereby hangs a tale, sir? clown marry. sir, by many a wind-instrument that i know. but, masters, here's money for you: and the general so likes your music, that he desires you, for love's sake, to make no more noise with it. first musician well, sir, we will not. clown if you have any music that may not be heard, to't again: but, as they say to hear music the general does not greatly care. first musician we have none such, sir. clown then put up your pipes in your bag, for i'll away: go; vanish into air; away! [exeunt musicians] cassio dost thou hear, my honest friend? clown no, i hear not your honest friend; i hear you. cassio prithee, keep up thy quillets. there's a poor piece of gold for thee: if the gentlewoman that attends the general's wife be stirring, tell her there's one cassio entreats her a little favour of speech: wilt thou do this? clown she is stirring, sir: if she will stir hither, i shall seem to notify unto her. cassio do, good my friend. [exit clown] [enter iago] in happy time, iago. iago you have not been a-bed, then? cassio why, no; the day had broke before we parted. i have made bold, iago, to send in to your wife: my suit to her is, that she will to virtuous desdemona procure me some access. iago i'll send her to you presently; and i'll devise a mean to draw the moor out of the way, that your converse and business may be more free. cassio i humbly thank you for't. [exit iago] i never knew a florentine more kind and honest. [enter emilia] emilia good morrow, good lieutenant: i am sorry for your displeasure; but all will sure be well. the general and his wife are talking of it; and she speaks for you stoutly: the moor replies, that he you hurt is of great fame in cyprus, and great affinity, and that in wholesome wisdom he might not but refuse you; but he protests he loves you and needs no other suitor but his likings to take the safest occasion by the front to bring you in again. cassio yet, i beseech you, if you think fit, or that it may be done, give me advantage of some brief discourse with desdemona alone. emilia pray you, come in; i will bestow you where you shall have time to speak your bosom freely. cassio i am much bound to you. [exeunt] othello act iii scene ii a room in the castle. [enter othello, iago, and gentlemen] othello these letters give, iago, to the pilot; and by him do my duties to the senate: that done, i will be walking on the works; repair there to me. iago well, my good lord, i'll do't. othello this fortification, gentlemen, shall we see't? gentleman we'll wait upon your lordship. [exeunt] othello act iii scene iii the garden of the castle. [enter desdemona, cassio, and emilia] desdemona be thou assured, good cassio, i will do all my abilities in thy behalf. emilia good madam, do: i warrant it grieves my husband, as if the case were his. desdemona o, that's an honest fellow. do not doubt, cassio, but i will have my lord and you again as friendly as you were. cassio bounteous madam, whatever shall become of michael cassio, he's never any thing but your true servant. desdemona i know't; i thank you. you do love my lord: you have known him long; and be you well assured he shall in strangeness stand no further off than in a polite distance. cassio ay, but, lady, that policy may either last so long, or feed upon such nice and waterish diet, or breed itself so out of circumstance, that, i being absent and my place supplied, my general will forget my love and service. desdemona do not doubt that; before emilia here i give thee warrant of thy place: assure thee, if i do vow a friendship, i'll perform it to the last article: my lord shall never rest; i'll watch him tame and talk him out of patience; his bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift; i'll intermingle every thing he does with cassio's suit: therefore be merry, cassio; for thy solicitor shall rather die than give thy cause away. emilia madam, here comes my lord. cassio madam, i'll take my leave. desdemona why, stay, and hear me speak. cassio madam, not now: i am very ill at ease, unfit for mine own purposes. desdemona well, do your discretion. [exit cassio] [enter othello and iago] iago ha! i like not that. othello what dost thou say? iago nothing, my lord: or if--i know not what. othello was not that cassio parted from my wife? iago cassio, my lord! no, sure, i cannot think it, that he would steal away so guilty-like, seeing you coming. othello i do believe 'twas he. desdemona how now, my lord! i have been talking with a suitor here, a man that languishes in your displeasure. othello who is't you mean? desdemona why, your lieutenant, cassio. good my lord, if i have any grace or power to move you, his present reconciliation take; for if he be not one that truly loves you, that errs in ignorance and not in cunning, i have no judgment in an honest face: i prithee, call him back. othello went he hence now? desdemona ay, sooth; so humbled that he hath left part of his grief with me, to suffer with him. good love, call him back. othello not now, sweet desdemona; some other time. desdemona but shall't be shortly? othello the sooner, sweet, for you. desdemona shall't be to-night at supper? othello no, not to-night. desdemona to-morrow dinner, then? othello i shall not dine at home; i meet the captains at the citadel. desdemona why, then, to-morrow night; or tuesday morn; on tuesday noon, or night; on wednesday morn: i prithee, name the time, but let it not exceed three days: in faith, he's penitent; and yet his trespass, in our common reason- save that, they say, the wars must make examples out of their best--is not almost a fault to incur a private cheque. when shall he come? tell me, othello: i wonder in my soul, what you would ask me, that i should deny, or stand so mammering on. what! michael cassio, that came a-wooing with you, and so many a time, when i have spoke of you dispraisingly, hath ta'en your part; to have so much to do to bring him in! trust me, i could do much,- othello prithee, no more: let him come when he will; i will deny thee nothing. desdemona why, this is not a boon; 'tis as i should entreat you wear your gloves, or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm, or sue to you to do a peculiar profit to your own person: nay, when i have a suit wherein i mean to touch your love indeed, it shall be full of poise and difficult weight and fearful to be granted. othello i will deny thee nothing: whereon, i do beseech thee, grant me this, to leave me but a little to myself. desdemona shall i deny you? no: farewell, my lord. othello farewell, my desdemona: i'll come to thee straight. desdemona emilia, come. be as your fancies teach you; whate'er you be, i am obedient. [exeunt desdemona and emilia] othello excellent wretch! perdition catch my soul, but i do love thee! and when i love thee not, chaos is come again. iago my noble lord- othello what dost thou say, iago? iago did michael cassio, when you woo'd my lady, know of your love? othello he did, from first to last: why dost thou ask? iago but for a satisfaction of my thought; no further harm. othello why of thy thought, iago? iago i did not think he had been acquainted with her. othello o, yes; and went between us very oft. iago indeed! othello indeed! ay, indeed: discern'st thou aught in that? is he not honest? iago honest, my lord! othello honest! ay, honest. iago my lord, for aught i know. othello what dost thou think? iago think, my lord! othello think, my lord! by heaven, he echoes me, as if there were some monster in his thought too hideous to be shown. thou dost mean something: i heard thee say even now, thou likedst not that, when cassio left my wife: what didst not like? and when i told thee he was of my counsel in my whole course of wooing, thou criedst 'indeed!' and didst contract and purse thy brow together, as if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain some horrible conceit: if thou dost love me, show me thy thought. iago my lord, you know i love you. othello i think thou dost; and, for i know thou'rt full of love and honesty, and weigh'st thy words before thou givest them breath, therefore these stops of thine fright me the more: for such things in a false disloyal knave are tricks of custom, but in a man that's just they are close delations, working from the heart that passion cannot rule. iago for michael cassio, i dare be sworn i think that he is honest. othello i think so too. iago men should be what they seem; or those that be not, would they might seem none! othello certain, men should be what they seem. iago why, then, i think cassio's an honest man. othello nay, yet there's more in this: i prithee, speak to me as to thy thinkings, as thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts the worst of words. iago good my lord, pardon me: though i am bound to every act of duty, i am not bound to that all slaves are free to. utter my thoughts? why, say they are vile and false; as where's that palace whereinto foul things sometimes intrude not? who has a breast so pure, but some uncleanly apprehensions keep leets and law-days and in session sit with meditations lawful? othello thou dost conspire against thy friend, iago, if thou but think'st him wrong'd and makest his ear a stranger to thy thoughts. iago i do beseech you- though i perchance am vicious in my guess, as, i confess, it is my nature's plague to spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy shapes faults that are not--that your wisdom yet, from one that so imperfectly conceits, would take no notice, nor build yourself a trouble out of his scattering and unsure observance. it were not for your quiet nor your good, nor for my manhood, honesty, or wisdom, to let you know my thoughts. othello what dost thou mean? iago good name in man and woman, dear my lord, is the immediate jewel of their souls: who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands: but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed. othello by heaven, i'll know thy thoughts. iago you cannot, if my heart were in your hand; nor shall not, whilst 'tis in my custody. othello ha! iago o, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger; but, o, what damned minutes tells he o'er who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves! othello o misery! iago poor and content is rich and rich enough, but riches fineless is as poor as winter to him that ever fears he shall be poor. good heaven, the souls of all my tribe defend from jealousy! othello why, why is this? think'st thou i'ld make a lie of jealousy, to follow still the changes of the moon with fresh suspicions? no; to be once in doubt is once to be resolved: exchange me for a goat, when i shall turn the business of my soul to such exsufflicate and blown surmises, matching thy inference. 'tis not to make me jealous to say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, is free of speech, sings, plays and dances well; where virtue is, these are more virtuous: nor from mine own weak merits will i draw the smallest fear or doubt of her revolt; for she had eyes, and chose me. no, iago; i'll see before i doubt; when i doubt, prove; and on the proof, there is no more but this,- away at once with love or jealousy! iago i am glad of it; for now i shall have reason to show the love and duty that i bear you with franker spirit: therefore, as i am bound, receive it from me. i speak not yet of proof. look to your wife; observe her well with cassio; wear your eye thus, not jealous nor secure: i would not have your free and noble nature, out of self-bounty, be abused; look to't: i know our country disposition well; in venice they do let heaven see the pranks they dare not show their husbands; their best conscience is not to leave't undone, but keep't unknown. othello dost thou say so? iago she did deceive her father, marrying you; and when she seem'd to shake and fear your looks, she loved them most. othello and so she did. iago why, go to then; she that, so young, could give out such a seeming, to seal her father's eyes up close as oak he thought 'twas witchcraft--but i am much to blame; i humbly do beseech you of your pardon for too much loving you. othello i am bound to thee for ever. iago i see this hath a little dash'd your spirits. othello not a jot, not a jot. iago i' faith, i fear it has. i hope you will consider what is spoke comes from my love. but i do see you're moved: i am to pray you not to strain my speech to grosser issues nor to larger reach than to suspicion. othello i will not. iago should you do so, my lord, my speech should fall into such vile success as my thoughts aim not at. cassio's my worthy friend- my lord, i see you're moved. othello no, not much moved: i do not think but desdemona's honest. iago long live she so! and long live you to think so! othello and yet, how nature erring from itself,- iago ay, there's the point: as--to be bold with you- not to affect many proposed matches of her own clime, complexion, and degree, whereto we see in all things nature tends- foh! one may smell in such a will most rank, foul disproportion thoughts unnatural. but pardon me; i do not in position distinctly speak of her; though i may fear her will, recoiling to her better judgment, may fall to match you with her country forms and happily repent. othello farewell, farewell: if more thou dost perceive, let me know more; set on thy wife to observe: leave me, iago: iago [going] my lord, i take my leave. othello why did i marry? this honest creature doubtless sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds. iago [returning] my lord, i would i might entreat your honour to scan this thing no further; leave it to time: though it be fit that cassio have his place, for sure, he fills it up with great ability, yet, if you please to hold him off awhile, you shall by that perceive him and his means: note, if your lady strain his entertainment with any strong or vehement importunity; much will be seen in that. in the mean time, let me be thought too busy in my fears- as worthy cause i have to fear i am- and hold her free, i do beseech your honour. othello fear not my government. iago i once more take my leave. [exit] othello this fellow's of exceeding honesty, and knows all qualities, with a learned spirit, of human dealings. if i do prove her haggard, though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings, i'ld whistle her off and let her down the wind, to pray at fortune. haply, for i am black and have not those soft parts of conversation that chamberers have, or for i am declined into the vale of years,--yet that's not much- she's gone. i am abused; and my relief must be to loathe her. o curse of marriage, that we can call these delicate creatures ours, and not their appetites! i had rather be a toad, and live upon the vapour of a dungeon, than keep a corner in the thing i love for others' uses. yet, 'tis the plague of great ones; prerogatived are they less than the base; 'tis destiny unshunnable, like death: even then this forked plague is fated to us when we do quicken. desdemona comes: [re-enter desdemona and emilia] if she be false, o, then heaven mocks itself! i'll not believe't. desdemona how now, my dear othello! your dinner, and the generous islanders by you invited, do attend your presence. othello i am to blame. desdemona why do you speak so faintly? are you not well? othello i have a pain upon my forehead here. desdemona 'faith, that's with watching; 'twill away again: let me but bind it hard, within this hour it will be well. othello your napkin is too little: [he puts the handkerchief from him; and it drops] let it alone. come, i'll go in with you. desdemona i am very sorry that you are not well. [exeunt othello and desdemona] emilia i am glad i have found this napkin: this was her first remembrance from the moor: my wayward husband hath a hundred times woo'd me to steal it; but she so loves the token, for he conjured her she should ever keep it, that she reserves it evermore about her to kiss and talk to. i'll have the work ta'en out, and give't iago: what he will do with it heaven knows, not i; i nothing but to please his fantasy. [re-enter iago] iago how now! what do you here alone? emilia do not you chide; i have a thing for you. iago a thing for me? it is a common thing- emilia ha! iago to have a foolish wife. emilia o, is that all? what will you give me now for the same handkerchief? iago what handkerchief? emilia what handkerchief? why, that the moor first gave to desdemona; that which so often you did bid me steal. iago hast stol'n it from her? emilia no, 'faith; she let it drop by negligence. and, to the advantage, i, being here, took't up. look, here it is. iago a good wench; give it me. emilia what will you do with 't, that you have been so earnest to have me filch it? iago [snatching it] why, what's that to you? emilia if it be not for some purpose of import, give't me again: poor lady, she'll run mad when she shall lack it. iago be not acknown on 't; i have use for it. go, leave me. [exit emilia] i will in cassio's lodging lose this napkin, and let him find it. trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ: this may do something. the moor already changes with my poison: dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons. which at the first are scarce found to distaste, but with a little act upon the blood. burn like the mines of sulphur. i did say so: look, where he comes! [re-enter othello] not poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep which thou owedst yesterday. othello ha! ha! false to me? iago why, how now, general! no more of that. othello avaunt! be gone! thou hast set me on the rack: i swear 'tis better to be much abused than but to know't a little. iago how now, my lord! othello what sense had i of her stol'n hours of lust? i saw't not, thought it not, it harm'd not me: i slept the next night well, was free and merry; i found not cassio's kisses on her lips: he that is robb'd, not wanting what is stol'n, let him not know't, and he's not robb'd at all. iago i am sorry to hear this. othello i had been happy, if the general camp, pioners and all, had tasted her sweet body, so i had nothing known. o, now, for ever farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content! farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars, that make ambition virtue! o, farewell! farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, the spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, the royal banner, and all quality, pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war! and, o you mortal engines, whose rude throats the immortal jove's dead clamours counterfeit, farewell! othello's occupation's gone! iago is't possible, my lord? othello villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore, be sure of it; give me the ocular proof: or by the worth of man's eternal soul, thou hadst been better have been born a dog than answer my waked wrath! iago is't come to this? othello make me to see't; or, at the least, so prove it, that the probation bear no hinge nor loop to hang a doubt on; or woe upon thy life! iago my noble lord,- othello if thou dost slander her and torture me, never pray more; abandon all remorse; on horror's head horrors accumulate; do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed; for nothing canst thou to damnation add greater than that. iago o grace! o heaven forgive me! are you a man? have you a soul or sense? god be wi' you; take mine office. o wretched fool. that livest to make thine honesty a vice! o monstrous world! take note, take note, o world, to be direct and honest is not safe. i thank you for this profit; and from hence i'll love no friend, sith love breeds such offence. othello nay, stay: thou shouldst be honest. iago i should be wise, for honesty's a fool and loses that it works for. othello by the world, i think my wife be honest and think she is not; i think that thou art just and think thou art not. i'll have some proof. her name, that was as fresh as dian's visage, is now begrimed and black as mine own face. if there be cords, or knives, poison, or fire, or suffocating streams, i'll not endure it. would i were satisfied! iago i see, sir, you are eaten up with passion: i do repent me that i put it to you. you would be satisfied? othello would! nay, i will. iago and may: but, how? how satisfied, my lord? would you, the supervisor, grossly gape on- behold her topp'd? othello death and damnation! o! iago it were a tedious difficulty, i think, to bring them to that prospect: damn them then, if ever mortal eyes do see them bolster more than their own! what then? how then? what shall i say? where's satisfaction? it is impossible you should see this, were they as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys, as salt as wolves in pride, and fools as gross as ignorance made drunk. but yet, i say, if imputation and strong circumstances, which lead directly to the door of truth, will give you satisfaction, you may have't. othello give me a living reason she's disloyal. iago i do not like the office: but, sith i am enter'd in this cause so far, prick'd to't by foolish honesty and love, i will go on. i lay with cassio lately; and, being troubled with a raging tooth, i could not sleep. there are a kind of men so loose of soul, that in their sleeps will mutter their affairs: one of this kind is cassio: in sleep i heard him say 'sweet desdemona, let us be wary, let us hide our loves;' and then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand, cry 'o sweet creature!' and then kiss me hard, as if he pluck'd up kisses by the roots that grew upon my lips: then laid his leg over my thigh, and sigh'd, and kiss'd; and then cried 'cursed fate that gave thee to the moor!' othello o monstrous! monstrous! iago nay, this was but his dream. othello but this denoted a foregone conclusion: 'tis a shrewd doubt, though it be but a dream. iago and this may help to thicken other proofs that do demonstrate thinly. othello i'll tear her all to pieces. iago nay, but be wise: yet we see nothing done; she may be honest yet. tell me but this, have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief spotted with strawberries in your wife's hand? othello i gave her such a one; 'twas my first gift. iago i know not that; but such a handkerchief- i am sure it was your wife's--did i to-day see cassio wipe his beard with. othello if it be that- iago if it be that, or any that was hers, it speaks against her with the other proofs. othello o, that the slave had forty thousand lives! one is too poor, too weak for my revenge. now do i see 'tis true. look here, iago; all my fond love thus do i blow to heaven. 'tis gone. arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow cell! yield up, o love, thy crown and hearted throne to tyrannous hate! swell, bosom, with thy fraught, for 'tis of aspics' tongues! iago yet be content. othello o, blood, blood, blood! iago patience, i say; your mind perhaps may change. othello never, iago: like to the pontic sea, whose icy current and compulsive course ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on to the propontic and the hellespont, even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love, till that a capable and wide revenge swallow them up. now, by yond marble heaven, [kneels] in the due reverence of a sacred vow i here engage my words. iago do not rise yet. [kneels] witness, you ever-burning lights above, you elements that clip us round about, witness that here iago doth give up the execution of his wit, hands, heart, to wrong'd othello's service! let him command, and to obey shall be in me remorse, what bloody business ever. [they rise] othello i greet thy love, not with vain thanks, but with acceptance bounteous, and will upon the instant put thee to't: within these three days let me hear thee say that cassio's not alive. iago my friend is dead; 'tis done at your request: but let her live. othello damn her, lewd minx! o, damn her! come, go with me apart; i will withdraw, to furnish me with some swift means of death for the fair devil. now art thou my lieutenant. iago i am your own for ever. [exeunt] othello act iii scene iv before the castle. [enter desdemona, emilia, and clown] desdemona do you know, sirrah, where lieutenant cassio lies? clown i dare not say he lies any where. desdemona why, man? clown he's a soldier, and for one to say a soldier lies, is stabbing. desdemona go to: where lodges he? clown to tell you where he lodges, is to tell you where i lie. desdemona can any thing be made of this? clown i know not where he lodges, and for me to devise a lodging and say he lies here or he lies there, were to lie in mine own throat. desdemona can you inquire him out, and be edified by report? clown i will catechise the world for him; that is, make questions, and by them answer. desdemona seek him, bid him come hither: tell him i have moved my lord on his behalf, and hope all will be well. clown to do this is within the compass of man's wit: and therefore i will attempt the doing it. [exit] desdemona where should i lose that handkerchief, emilia? emilia i know not, madam. desdemona believe me, i had rather have lost my purse full of crusadoes: and, but my noble moor is true of mind and made of no such baseness as jealous creatures are, it were enough to put him to ill thinking. emilia is he not jealous? desdemona who, he? i think the sun where he was born drew all such humours from him. emilia look, where he comes. desdemona i will not leave him now till cassio be call'd to him. [enter othello] how is't with you, my lord othello well, my good lady. [aside] o, hardness to dissemble!- how do you, desdemona? desdemona well, my good lord. othello give me your hand: this hand is moist, my lady. desdemona it yet hath felt no age nor known no sorrow. othello this argues fruitfulness and liberal heart: hot, hot, and moist: this hand of yours requires a sequester from liberty, fasting and prayer, much castigation, exercise devout; for here's a young and sweating devil here, that commonly rebels. 'tis a good hand, a frank one. desdemona you may, indeed, say so; for 'twas that hand that gave away my heart. othello a liberal hand: the hearts of old gave hands; but our new heraldry is hands, not hearts. desdemona i cannot speak of this. come now, your promise. othello what promise, chuck? desdemona i have sent to bid cassio come speak with you. othello i have a salt and sorry rheum offends me; lend me thy handkerchief. desdemona here, my lord. othello that which i gave you. desdemona i have it not about me. othello not? desdemona no, indeed, my lord. othello that is a fault. that handkerchief did an egyptian to my mother give; she was a charmer, and could almost read the thoughts of people: she told her, while she kept it, 'twould make her amiable and subdue my father entirely to her love, but if she lost it or made gift of it, my father's eye should hold her loathed and his spirits should hunt after new fancies: she, dying, gave it me; and bid me, when my fate would have me wive, to give it her. i did so: and take heed on't; make it a darling like your precious eye; to lose't or give't away were such perdition as nothing else could match. desdemona is't possible? othello 'tis true: there's magic in the web of it: a sibyl, that had number'd in the world the sun to course two hundred compasses, in her prophetic fury sew'd the work; the worms were hallow'd that did breed the silk; and it was dyed in mummy which the skilful conserved of maidens' hearts. desdemona indeed! is't true? othello most veritable; therefore look to't well. desdemona then would to god that i had never seen't! othello ha! wherefore? desdemona why do you speak so startingly and rash? othello is't lost? is't gone? speak, is it out o' the way? desdemona heaven bless us! othello say you? desdemona it is not lost; but what an if it were? othello how! desdemona i say, it is not lost. othello fetch't, let me see't. desdemona why, so i can, sir, but i will not now. this is a trick to put me from my suit: pray you, let cassio be received again. othello fetch me the handkerchief: my mind misgives. desdemona come, come; you'll never meet a more sufficient man. othello the handkerchief! desdemona i pray, talk me of cassio. othello the handkerchief! desdemona a man that all his time hath founded his good fortunes on your love, shared dangers with you,- othello the handkerchief! desdemona in sooth, you are to blame. othello away! [exit] emilia is not this man jealous? desdemona i ne'er saw this before. sure, there's some wonder in this handkerchief: i am most unhappy in the loss of it. emilia 'tis not a year or two shows us a man: they are all but stomachs, and we all but food; to eat us hungerly, and when they are full, they belch us. look you, cassio and my husband! [enter cassio and iago] iago there is no other way; 'tis she must do't: and, lo, the happiness! go, and importune her. desdemona how now, good cassio! what's the news with you? cassio madam, my former suit: i do beseech you that by your virtuous means i may again exist, and be a member of his love whom i with all the office of my heart entirely honour: i would not be delay'd. if my offence be of such mortal kind that nor my service past, nor present sorrows, nor purposed merit in futurity, can ransom me into his love again, but to know so must be my benefit; so shall i clothe me in a forced content, and shut myself up in some other course, to fortune's alms. desdemona alas, thrice-gentle cassio! my advocation is not now in tune; my lord is not my lord; nor should i know him, were he in favour as in humour alter'd. so help me every spirit sanctified, as i have spoken for you all my best and stood within the blank of his displeasure for my free speech! you must awhile be patient: what i can do i will; and more i will than for myself i dare: let that suffice you. iago is my lord angry? emilia he went hence but now, and certainly in strange unquietness. iago can he be angry? i have seen the cannon, when it hath blown his ranks into the air, and, like the devil, from his very arm puff'd his own brother:--and can he be angry? something of moment then: i will go meet him: there's matter in't indeed, if he be angry. desdemona i prithee, do so. [exit iago] something, sure, of state, either from venice, or some unhatch'd practise made demonstrable here in cyprus to him, hath puddled his clear spirit: and in such cases men's natures wrangle with inferior things, though great ones are their object. 'tis even so; for let our finger ache, and it indues our other healthful members even to that sense of pain: nay, we must think men are not gods, nor of them look for such observances as fit the bridal. beshrew me much, emilia, i was, unhandsome warrior as i am, arraigning his unkindness with my soul; but now i find i had suborn'd the witness, and he's indicted falsely. emilia pray heaven it be state-matters, as you think, and no conception nor no jealous toy concerning you. desdemona alas the day! i never gave him cause. emilia but jealous souls will not be answer'd so; they are not ever jealous for the cause, but jealous for they are jealous: 'tis a monster begot upon itself, born on itself. desdemona heaven keep that monster from othello's mind! emilia lady, amen. desdemona i will go seek him. cassio, walk hereabout: if i do find him fit, i'll move your suit and seek to effect it to my uttermost. cassio i humbly thank your ladyship. [exeunt desdemona and emilia] [enter bianca] bianca save you, friend cassio! cassio what make you from home? how is it with you, my most fair bianca? i' faith, sweet love, i was coming to your house. bianca and i was going to your lodging, cassio. what, keep a week away? seven days and nights? eight score eight hours? and lovers' absent hours, more tedious than the dial eight score times? o weary reckoning! cassio pardon me, bianca: i have this while with leaden thoughts been press'd: but i shall, in a more continuate time, strike off this score of absence. sweet bianca, [giving her desdemona's handkerchief] take me this work out. bianca o cassio, whence came this? this is some token from a newer friend: to the felt absence now i feel a cause: is't come to this? well, well. cassio go to, woman! throw your vile guesses in the devil's teeth, from whence you have them. you are jealous now that this is from some mistress, some remembrance: no, in good troth, bianca. bianca why, whose is it? cassio i know not, sweet: i found it in my chamber. i like the work well: ere it be demanded- as like enough it will--i'ld have it copied: take it, and do't; and leave me for this time. bianca leave you! wherefore? cassio i do attend here on the general; and think it no addition, nor my wish, to have him see me woman'd. bianca why, i pray you? cassio not that i love you not. bianca but that you do not love me. i pray you, bring me on the way a little, and say if i shall see you soon at night. cassio 'tis but a little way that i can bring you; for i attend here: but i'll see you soon. bianca 'tis very good; i must be circumstanced. [exeunt] othello act iv scene i cyprus. before the castle. [enter othello and iago] iago will you think so? othello think so, iago! iago what, to kiss in private? othello an unauthorized kiss. iago or to be naked with her friend in bed an hour or more, not meaning any harm? othello naked in bed, iago, and not mean harm! it is hypocrisy against the devil: they that mean virtuously, and yet do so, the devil their virtue tempts, and they tempt heaven. iago so they do nothing, 'tis a venial slip: but if i give my wife a handkerchief,- othello what then? iago why, then, 'tis hers, my lord; and, being hers, she may, i think, bestow't on any man. othello she is protectress of her honour too: may she give that? iago her honour is an essence that's not seen; they have it very oft that have it not: but, for the handkerchief,- othello by heaven, i would most gladly have forgot it. thou said'st, it comes o'er my memory, as doth the raven o'er the infected house, boding to all--he had my handkerchief. iago ay, what of that? othello that's not so good now. iago what, if i had said i had seen him do you wrong? or heard him say,--as knaves be such abroad, who having, by their own importunate suit, or voluntary dotage of some mistress, convinced or supplied them, cannot choose but they must blab- othello hath he said any thing? iago he hath, my lord; but be you well assured, no more than he'll unswear. othello what hath he said? iago 'faith, that he did--i know not what he did. othello what? what? iago lie- othello with her? iago with her, on her; what you will. othello lie with her! lie on her! we say lie on her, when they belie her. lie with her! that's fulsome. --handkerchief--confessions--handkerchief!--to confess, and be hanged for his labour;--first, to be hanged, and then to confess.--i tremble at it. nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion without some instruction. it is not words that shake me thus. pish! noses, ears, and lips. --is't possible?--confess--handkerchief!--o devil!- [falls in a trance] iago work on, my medicine, work! thus credulous fools are caught; and many worthy and chaste dames even thus, all guiltless, meet reproach. what, ho! my lord! my lord, i say! othello! [enter cassio] how now, cassio! cassio what's the matter? iago my lord is fall'n into an epilepsy: this is his second fit; he had one yesterday. cassio rub him about the temples. iago no, forbear; the lethargy must have his quiet course: if not, he foams at mouth and by and by breaks out to savage madness. look he stirs: do you withdraw yourself a little while, he will recover straight: when he is gone, i would on great occasion speak with you. [exit cassio] how is it, general? have you not hurt your head? othello dost thou mock me? iago i mock you! no, by heaven. would you would bear your fortune like a man! othello a horned man's a monster and a beast. iago there's many a beast then in a populous city, and many a civil monster. othello did he confess it? iago good sir, be a man; think every bearded fellow that's but yoked may draw with you: there's millions now alive that nightly lie in those unproper beds which they dare swear peculiar: your case is better. o, 'tis the spite of hell, the fiend's arch-mock, to lip a wanton in a secure couch, and to suppose her chaste! no, let me know; and knowing what i am, i know what she shall be. othello o, thou art wise; 'tis certain. iago stand you awhile apart; confine yourself but in a patient list. whilst you were here o'erwhelmed with your grief- a passion most unsuiting such a man- cassio came hither: i shifted him away, and laid good 'scuse upon your ecstasy, bade him anon return and here speak with me; the which he promised. do but encave yourself, and mark the fleers, the gibes, and notable scorns, that dwell in every region of his face; for i will make him tell the tale anew, where, how, how oft, how long ago, and when he hath, and is again to cope your wife: i say, but mark his gesture. marry, patience; or i shall say you are all in all in spleen, and nothing of a man. othello dost thou hear, iago? i will be found most cunning in my patience; but--dost thou hear?--most bloody. iago that's not amiss; but yet keep time in all. will you withdraw? [othello retires] now will i question cassio of bianca, a housewife that by selling her desires buys herself bread and clothes: it is a creature that dotes on cassio; as 'tis the strumpet's plague to beguile many and be beguiled by one: he, when he hears of her, cannot refrain from the excess of laughter. here he comes: [re-enter cassio] as he shall smile, othello shall go mad; and his unbookish jealousy must construe poor cassio's smiles, gestures and light behavior, quite in the wrong. how do you now, lieutenant? cassio the worser that you give me the addition whose want even kills me. iago ply desdemona well, and you are sure on't. [speaking lower] now, if this suit lay in bianco's power, how quickly should you speed! cassio alas, poor caitiff! othello look, how he laughs already! iago i never knew woman love man so. cassio alas, poor rogue! i think, i' faith, she loves me. othello now he denies it faintly, and laughs it out. iago do you hear, cassio? othello now he importunes him to tell it o'er: go to; well said, well said. iago she gives it out that you shall marry hey: do you intend it? cassio ha, ha, ha! othello do you triumph, roman? do you triumph? cassio i marry her! what? a customer! prithee, bear some charity to my wit: do not think it so unwholesome. ha, ha, ha! othello so, so, so, so: they laugh that win. iago 'faith, the cry goes that you shall marry her. cassio prithee, say true. iago i am a very villain else. othello have you scored me? well. cassio this is the monkey's own giving out: she is persuaded i will marry her, out of her own love and flattery, not out of my promise. othello iago beckons me; now he begins the story. cassio she was here even now; she haunts me in every place. i was the other day talking on the sea-bank with certain venetians; and thither comes the bauble, and, by this hand, she falls me thus about my neck- othello crying 'o dear cassio!' as it were: his gesture imports it. cassio so hangs, and lolls, and weeps upon me; so hales, and pulls me: ha, ha, ha! othello now he tells how she plucked him to my chamber. o, i see that nose of yours, but not that dog i shall throw it to. cassio well, i must leave her company. iago before me! look, where she comes. cassio 'tis such another fitchew! marry a perfumed one. [enter bianca] what do you mean by this haunting of me? bianca let the devil and his dam haunt you! what did you mean by that same handkerchief you gave me even now? i was a fine fool to take it. i must take out the work?--a likely piece of work, that you should find it in your chamber, and not know who left it there! this is some minx's token, and i must take out the work? there; give it your hobby-horse: wheresoever you had it, i'll take out no work on't. cassio how now, my sweet bianca! how now! how now! othello by heaven, that should be my handkerchief! bianca an you'll come to supper to-night, you may; an you will not, come when you are next prepared for. [exit] iago after her, after her. cassio 'faith, i must; she'll rail in the street else. iago will you sup there? cassio 'faith, i intend so. iago well, i may chance to see you; for i would very fain speak with you. cassio prithee, come; will you? iago go to; say no more. [exit cassio] othello [advancing] how shall i murder him, iago? iago did you perceive how he laughed at his vice? othello o iago! iago and did you see the handkerchief? othello was that mine? iago yours by this hand: and to see how he prizes the foolish woman your wife! she gave it him, and he hath given it his whore. othello i would have him nine years a-killing. a fine woman! a fair woman! a sweet woman! iago nay, you must forget that. othello ay, let her rot, and perish, and be damned to-night; for she shall not live: no, my heart is turned to stone; i strike it, and it hurts my hand. o, the world hath not a sweeter creature: she might lie by an emperor's side and command him tasks. iago nay, that's not your way. othello hang her! i do but say what she is: so delicate with her needle: an admirable musician: o! she will sing the savageness out of a bear: of so high and plenteous wit and invention:- iago she's the worse for all this. othello o, a thousand thousand times: and then, of so gentle a condition! iago ay, too gentle. othello nay, that's certain: but yet the pity of it, iago! o iago, the pity of it, iago! iago if you are so fond over her iniquity, give her patent to offend; for, if it touch not you, it comes near nobody. othello i will chop her into messes: cuckold me! iago o, 'tis foul in her. othello with mine officer! iago that's fouler. othello get me some poison, iago; this night: i'll not expostulate with her, lest her body and beauty unprovide my mind again: this night, iago. iago do it not with poison, strangle her in her bed, even the bed she hath contaminated. othello good, good: the justice of it pleases: very good. iago and for cassio, let me be his undertaker: you shall hear more by midnight. othello excellent good. [a trumpet within] what trumpet is that same? iago something from venice, sure. 'tis lodovico come from the duke: and, see, your wife is with him. [enter lodovico, desdemona, and attendants] lodovico save you, worthy general! othello with all my heart, sir. lodovico the duke and senators of venice greet you. [gives him a letter] othello i kiss the instrument of their pleasures. [opens the letter, and reads] desdemona and what's the news, good cousin lodovico? iago i am very glad to see you, signior welcome to cyprus. lodovico i thank you. how does lieutenant cassio? iago lives, sir. desdemona cousin, there's fall'n between him and my lord an unkind breach: but you shall make all well. othello are you sure of that? desdemona my lord? othello [reads] 'this fail you not to do, as you will--' lodovico he did not call; he's busy in the paper. is there division 'twixt my lord and cassio? desdemona a most unhappy one: i would do much to atone them, for the love i bear to cassio. othello fire and brimstone! desdemona my lord? othello are you wise? desdemona what, is he angry? lodovico may be the letter moved him; for, as i think, they do command him home, deputing cassio in his government. desdemona trust me, i am glad on't. othello indeed! desdemona my lord? othello i am glad to see you mad. desdemona why, sweet othello,- othello [striking her] devil! desdemona i have not deserved this. lodovico my lord, this would not be believed in venice, though i should swear i saw't: 'tis very much: make her amends; she weeps. othello o devil, devil! if that the earth could teem with woman's tears, each drop she falls would prove a crocodile. out of my sight! desdemona i will not stay to offend you. [going] lodovico truly, an obedient lady: i do beseech your lordship, call her back. othello mistress! desdemona my lord? othello what would you with her, sir? lodovico who, i, my lord? othello ay; you did wish that i would make her turn: sir, she can turn, and turn, and yet go on, and turn again; and she can weep, sir, weep; and she's obedient, as you say, obedient, very obedient. proceed you in your tears. concerning this, sir,--o well-painted passion!- i am commanded home. get you away; i'll send for you anon. sir, i obey the mandate, and will return to venice. hence, avaunt! [exit desdemona] cassio shall have my place. and, sir, tonight, i do entreat that we may sup together: you are welcome, sir, to cyprus.--goats and monkeys! [exit] lodovico is this the noble moor whom our full senate call all in all sufficient? is this the nature whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue the shot of accident, nor dart of chance, could neither graze nor pierce? iago he is much changed. lodovico are his wits safe? is he not light of brain? iago he's that he is: i may not breathe my censure what he might be: if what he might he is not, i would to heaven he were! lodovico what, strike his wife! iago 'faith, that was not so well; yet would i knew that stroke would prove the worst! lodovico is it his use? or did the letters work upon his blood, and new-create this fault? iago alas, alas! it is not honesty in me to speak what i have seen and known. you shall observe him, and his own courses will denote him so that i may save my speech: do but go after, and mark how he continues. lodovico i am sorry that i am deceived in him. [exeunt] othello act iv scene ii a room in the castle. [enter othello and emilia] othello you have seen nothing then? emilia nor ever heard, nor ever did suspect. othello yes, you have seen cassio and she together. emilia but then i saw no harm, and then i heard each syllable that breath made up between them. othello what, did they never whisper? emilia never, my lord. othello nor send you out o' the way? emilia never. othello to fetch her fan, her gloves, her mask, nor nothing? emilia never, my lord. othello that's strange. emilia i durst, my lord, to wager she is honest, lay down my soul at stake: if you think other, remove your thought; it doth abuse your bosom. if any wretch have put this in your head, let heaven requite it with the serpent's curse! for, if she be not honest, chaste, and true, there's no man happy; the purest of their wives is foul as slander. othello bid her come hither: go. [exit emilia] she says enough; yet she's a simple bawd that cannot say as much. this is a subtle whore, a closet lock and key of villanous secrets and yet she'll kneel and pray; i have seen her do't. [enter desdemona with emilia] desdemona my lord, what is your will? othello pray, chuck, come hither. desdemona what is your pleasure? othello let me see your eyes; look in my face. desdemona what horrible fancy's this? othello [to emilia] some of your function, mistress; leave procreants alone and shut the door; cough, or cry 'hem,' if any body come: your mystery, your mystery: nay, dispatch. [exit emilia] desdemona upon my knees, what doth your speech import? i understand a fury in your words. but not the words. othello why, what art thou? desdemona your wife, my lord; your true and loyal wife. othello come, swear it, damn thyself lest, being like one of heaven, the devils themselves should fear to seize thee: therefore be double damn'd: swear thou art honest. desdemona heaven doth truly know it. othello heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell. desdemona to whom, my lord? with whom? how am i false? othello o desdemona! away! away! away! desdemona alas the heavy day! why do you weep? am i the motive of these tears, my lord? if haply you my father do suspect an instrument of this your calling back, lay not your blame on me: if you have lost him, why, i have lost him too. othello had it pleased heaven to try me with affliction; had they rain'd all kinds of sores and shames on my bare head. steep'd me in poverty to the very lips, given to captivity me and my utmost hopes, i should have found in some place of my soul a drop of patience: but, alas, to make me a fixed figure for the time of scorn to point his slow unmoving finger at! yet could i bear that too; well, very well: but there, where i have garner'd up my heart, where either i must live, or bear no life; the fountain from the which my current runs, or else dries up; to be discarded thence! or keep it as a cistern for foul toads to knot and gender in! turn thy complexion there, patience, thou young and rose-lipp'd cherubin,- ay, there, look grim as hell! desdemona i hope my noble lord esteems me honest. othello o, ay; as summer flies are in the shambles, that quicken even with blowing. o thou weed, who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet that the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born! desdemona alas, what ignorant sin have i committed? othello was this fair paper, this most goodly book, made to write 'whore' upon? what committed! committed! o thou public commoner! i should make very forges of my cheeks, that would to cinders burn up modesty, did i but speak thy deeds. what committed! heaven stops the nose at it and the moon winks, the bawdy wind that kisses all it meets is hush'd within the hollow mine of earth, and will not hear it. what committed! impudent strumpet! desdemona by heaven, you do me wrong. othello are you not a strumpet? desdemona no, as i am a christian: if to preserve this vessel for my lord from any other foul unlawful touch be not to be a strumpet, i am none. othello what, not a whore? desdemona no, as i shall be saved. othello is't possible? desdemona o, heaven forgive us! othello i cry you mercy, then: i took you for that cunning whore of venice that married with othello. [raising his voice] you, mistress, that have the office opposite to saint peter, and keep the gate of hell! [re-enter emilia] you, you, ay, you! we have done our course; there's money for your pains: i pray you, turn the key and keep our counsel. [exit] emilia alas, what does this gentleman conceive? how do you, madam? how do you, my good lady? desdemona 'faith, half asleep. emilia good madam, what's the matter with my lord? desdemona with who? emilia why, with my lord, madam. desdemona who is thy lord? emilia he that is yours, sweet lady. desdemona i have none: do not talk to me, emilia; i cannot weep; nor answer have i none, but what should go by water. prithee, tonight lay on my bed my wedding sheets: remember; and call thy husband hither. emilia here's a change indeed! [exit] desdemona 'tis meet i should be used so, very meet. how have i been behaved, that he might stick the small'st opinion on my least misuse? [re-enter emilia with iago] iago what is your pleasure, madam? how is't with you? desdemona i cannot tell. those that do teach young babes do it with gentle means and easy tasks: he might have chid me so; for, in good faith, i am a child to chiding. iago what's the matter, lady? emilia alas, iago, my lord hath so bewhored her. thrown such despite and heavy terms upon her, as true hearts cannot bear. desdemona am i that name, iago? iago what name, fair lady? desdemona such as she says my lord did say i was. emilia he call'd her whore: a beggar in his drink could not have laid such terms upon his callat. iago why did he so? desdemona i do not know; i am sure i am none such. iago do not weep, do not weep. alas the day! emilia hath she forsook so many noble matches, her father and her country and her friends, to be call'd whore? would it not make one weep? desdemona it is my wretched fortune. iago beshrew him for't! how comes this trick upon him? desdemona nay, heaven doth know. emilia i will be hang'd, if some eternal villain, some busy and insinuating rogue, some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office, have not devised this slander; i'll be hang'd else. iago fie, there is no such man; it is impossible. desdemona if any such there be, heaven pardon him! emilia a halter pardon him! and hell gnaw his bones! why should he call her whore? who keeps her company? what place? what time? what form? what likelihood? the moor's abused by some most villanous knave, some base notorious knave, some scurvy fellow. o heaven, that such companions thou'ldst unfold, and put in every honest hand a whip to lash the rascals naked through the world even from the east to the west! iago speak within door. emilia o, fie upon them! some such squire he was that turn'd your wit the seamy side without, and made you to suspect me with the moor. iago you are a fool; go to. desdemona o good iago, what shall i do to win my lord again? good friend, go to him; for, by this light of heaven, i know not how i lost him. here i kneel: if e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love, either in discourse of thought or actual deed, or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense, delighted them in any other form; or that i do not yet, and ever did. and ever will--though he do shake me off to beggarly divorcement--love him dearly, comfort forswear me! unkindness may do much; and his unkindness may defeat my life, but never taint my love. i cannot say 'whore:' it does abhor me now i speak the word; to do the act that might the addition earn not the world's mass of vanity could make me. iago i pray you, be content; 'tis but his humour: the business of the state does him offence, and he does chide with you. desdemona if 'twere no other- iago 'tis but so, i warrant. [trumpets within] hark, how these instruments summon to supper! the messengers of venice stay the meat; go in, and weep not; all things shall be well. [exeunt desdemona and emilia] [enter roderigo] how now, roderigo! roderigo i do not find that thou dealest justly with me. iago what in the contrary? roderigo every day thou daffest me with some device, iago; and rather, as it seems to me now, keepest from me all conveniency than suppliest me with the least advantage of hope. i will indeed no longer endure it, nor am i yet persuaded to put up in peace what already i have foolishly suffered. iago will you hear me, roderigo? roderigo 'faith, i have heard too much, for your words and performances are no kin together. iago you charge me most unjustly. roderigo with nought but truth. i have wasted myself out of my means. the jewels you have had from me to deliver to desdemona would half have corrupted a votarist: you have told me she hath received them and returned me expectations and comforts of sudden respect and acquaintance, but i find none. iago well; go to; very well. roderigo very well! go to! i cannot go to, man; nor 'tis not very well: nay, i think it is scurvy, and begin to find myself fobbed in it. iago very well. roderigo i tell you 'tis not very well. i will make myself known to desdemona: if she will return me my jewels, i will give over my suit and repent my unlawful solicitation; if not, assure yourself i will seek satisfaction of you. iago you have said now. roderigo ay, and said nothing but what i protest intendment of doing. iago why, now i see there's mettle in thee, and even from this instant to build on thee a better opinion than ever before. give me thy hand, roderigo: thou hast taken against me a most just exception; but yet, i protest, i have dealt most directly in thy affair. roderigo it hath not appeared. iago i grant indeed it hath not appeared, and your suspicion is not without wit and judgment. but, roderigo, if thou hast that in thee indeed, which i have greater reason to believe now than ever, i mean purpose, courage and valour, this night show it: if thou the next night following enjoy not desdemona, take me from this world with treachery and devise engines for my life. roderigo well, what is it? is it within reason and compass? iago sir, there is especial commission come from venice to depute cassio in othello's place. roderigo is that true? why, then othello and desdemona return again to venice. iago o, no; he goes into mauritania and takes away with him the fair desdemona, unless his abode be lingered here by some accident: wherein none can be so determinate as the removing of cassio. roderigo how do you mean, removing of him? iago why, by making him uncapable of othello's place; knocking out his brains. roderigo and that you would have me to do? iago ay, if you dare do yourself a profit and a right. he sups to-night with a harlotry, and thither will i go to him: he knows not yet of his horrorable fortune. if you will watch his going thence, which i will fashion to fall out between twelve and one, you may take him at your pleasure: i will be near to second your attempt, and he shall fall between us. come, stand not amazed at it, but go along with me; i will show you such a necessity in his death that you shall think yourself bound to put it on him. it is now high suppertime, and the night grows to waste: about it. roderigo i will hear further reason for this. iago and you shall be satisfied. [exeunt] othello act iv scene iii another room in the castle. [enter othello, lodovico, desdemona, emilia and attendants] lodovico i do beseech you, sir, trouble yourself no further. othello o, pardon me: 'twill do me good to walk. lodovico madam, good night; i humbly thank your ladyship. desdemona your honour is most welcome. othello will you walk, sir? o,--desdemona,- desdemona my lord? othello get you to bed on the instant; i will be returned forthwith: dismiss your attendant there: look it be done. desdemona i will, my lord. [exeunt othello, lodovico, and attendants] emilia how goes it now? he looks gentler than he did. desdemona he says he will return incontinent: he hath commanded me to go to bed, and bade me to dismiss you. emilia dismiss me! desdemona it was his bidding: therefore, good emilia,. give me my nightly wearing, and adieu: we must not now displease him. emilia i would you had never seen him! desdemona so would not i my love doth so approve him, that even his stubbornness, his cheques, his frowns- prithee, unpin me,--have grace and favour in them. emilia i have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed. desdemona all's one. good faith, how foolish are our minds! if i do die before thee prithee, shroud me in one of those same sheets. emilia come, come you talk. desdemona my mother had a maid call'd barbara: she was in love, and he she loved proved mad and did forsake her: she had a song of 'willow;' an old thing 'twas, but it express'd her fortune, and she died singing it: that song to-night will not go from my mind; i have much to do, but to go hang my head all at one side, and sing it like poor barbara. prithee, dispatch. emilia shall i go fetch your night-gown? desdemona no, unpin me here. this lodovico is a proper man. emilia a very handsome man. desdemona he speaks well. emilia i know a lady in venice would have walked barefoot to palestine for a touch of his nether lip. desdemona [singing] the poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, sing all a green willow: her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, sing willow, willow, willow: the fresh streams ran by her, and murmur'd her moans; sing willow, willow, willow; her salt tears fell from her, and soften'd the stones; lay by these:- [singing] sing willow, willow, willow; prithee, hie thee; he'll come anon:- [singing] sing all a green willow must be my garland. let nobody blame him; his scorn i approve, nay, that's not next.--hark! who is't that knocks? emilia it's the wind. desdemona [singing] i call'd my love false love; but what said he then? sing willow, willow, willow: if i court moe women, you'll couch with moe men! so, get thee gone; good night ate eyes do itch; doth that bode weeping? emilia 'tis neither here nor there. desdemona i have heard it said so. o, these men, these men! dost thou in conscience think,--tell me, emilia,- that there be women do abuse their husbands in such gross kind? emilia there be some such, no question. desdemona wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world? emilia why, would not you? desdemona no, by this heavenly light! emilia nor i neither by this heavenly light; i might do't as well i' the dark. desdemona wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world? emilia the world's a huge thing: it is a great price. for a small vice. desdemona in troth, i think thou wouldst not. emilia in troth, i think i should; and undo't when i had done. marry, i would not do such a thing for a joint-ring, nor for measures of lawn, nor for gowns, petticoats, nor caps, nor any petty exhibition; but for the whole world,--why, who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch? i should venture purgatory for't. desdemona beshrew me, if i would do such a wrong for the whole world. emilia why the wrong is but a wrong i' the world: and having the world for your labour, tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it right. desdemona i do not think there is any such woman. emilia yes, a dozen; and as many to the vantage as would store the world they played for. but i do think it is their husbands' faults if wives do fall: say that they slack their duties, and pour our treasures into foreign laps, or else break out in peevish jealousies, throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us, or scant our former having in despite; why, we have galls, and though we have some grace, yet have we some revenge. let husbands know their wives have sense like them: they see and smell and have their palates both for sweet and sour, as husbands have. what is it that they do when they change us for others? is it sport? i think it is: and doth affection breed it? i think it doth: is't frailty that thus errs? it is so too: and have not we affections, desires for sport, and frailty, as men have? then let them use us well: else let them know, the ills we do, their ills instruct us so. desdemona good night, good night: heaven me such uses send, not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend! [exeunt] othello act v scene i cyprus. a street. [enter iago and roderigo] iago here, stand behind this bulk; straight will he come: wear thy good rapier bare, and put it home: quick, quick; fear nothing; i'll be at thy elbow: it makes us, or it mars us; think on that, and fix most firm thy resolution. roderigo be near at hand; i may miscarry in't. iago here, at thy hand: be bold, and take thy stand. [retires] roderigo i have no great devotion to the deed; and yet he hath given me satisfying reasons: 'tis but a man gone. forth, my sword: he dies. iago i have rubb'd this young quat almost to the sense, and he grows angry. now, whether he kill cassio, or cassio him, or each do kill the other, every way makes my gain: live roderigo, he calls me to a restitution large of gold and jewels that i bobb'd from him, as gifts to desdemona; it must not be: if cassio do remain, he hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly; and, besides, the moor may unfold me to him; there stand i in much peril: no, he must die. but so: i hear him coming. [enter cassio] roderigo i know his gait, 'tis he.--villain, thou diest! [makes a pass at cassio] cassio that thrust had been mine enemy indeed, but that my coat is better than thou know'st i will make proof of thine. [draws, and wounds roderigo] roderigo o, i am slain! [iago from behind wounds cassio in the leg, and exit] cassio i am maim'd for ever. help, ho! murder! murder! [falls] [enter othello] othello the voice of cassio: iago keeps his word. roderigo o, villain that i am! othello it is even so. cassio o, help, ho! light! a surgeon! othello 'tis he:--o brave iago, honest and just, that hast such noble sense of thy friend's wrong! thou teachest me. minion, your dear lies dead, and your unblest fate hies: strumpet, i come. forth of my heart those charms, thine eyes, are blotted; thy bed, lust-stain'd, shall with lust's blood be spotted. [exit] [enter lodovico and gratiano] cassio what, ho! no watch? no passage? murder! murder! gratiano 'tis some mischance; the cry is very direful. cassio o, help! lodovico hark! roderigo o wretched villain! lodovico two or three groan: it is a heavy night: these may be counterfeits: let's think't unsafe to come in to the cry without more help. roderigo nobody come? then shall i bleed to death. lodovico hark! [re-enter iago, with a light] gratiano here's one comes in his shirt, with light and weapons. iago who's there? whose noise is this that ones on murder? lodovico we do not know. iago did not you hear a cry? cassio here, here! for heaven's sake, help me! iago what's the matter? gratiano this is othello's ancient, as i take it. lodovico the same indeed; a very valiant fellow. iago what are you here that cry so grievously? cassio iago? o, i am spoil'd, undone by villains! give me some help. iago o me, lieutenant! what villains have done this? cassio i think that one of them is hereabout, and cannot make away. iago o treacherous villains! what are you there? come in, and give some help. [to lodovico and gratiano] roderigo o, help me here! cassio that's one of them. iago o murderous slave! o villain! [stabs roderigo] roderigo o damn'd iago! o inhuman dog! iago kill men i' the dark!--where be these bloody thieves?- how silent is this town!--ho! murder! murder!- what may you be? are you of good or evil? lodovico as you shall prove us, praise us. iago signior lodovico? lodovico he, sir. iago i cry you mercy. here's cassio hurt by villains. gratiano cassio! iago how is't, brother! cassio my leg is cut in two. iago marry, heaven forbid! light, gentlemen; i'll bind it with my shirt. [enter bianca] bianca what is the matter, ho? who is't that cried? iago who is't that cried! bianca o my dear cassio! my sweet cassio! o cassio, cassio, cassio! iago o notable strumpet! cassio, may you suspect who they should be that have thus many led you? cassio no. gratiano i am to find you thus: i have been to seek you. iago lend me a garter. so. o, for a chair, to bear him easily hence! bianca alas, he faints! o cassio, cassio, cassio! iago gentlemen all, i do suspect this trash to be a party in this injury. patience awhile, good cassio. come, come; lend me a light. know we this face or no? alas my friend and my dear countryman roderigo! no:--yes, sure: o heaven! roderigo. gratiano what, of venice? iago even he, sir; did you know him? gratiano know him! ay. iago signior gratiano? i cry you gentle pardon; these bloody accidents must excuse my manners, that so neglected you. gratiano i am glad to see you. iago how do you, cassio? o, a chair, a chair! gratiano roderigo! iago he, he 'tis he. [a chair brought in] o, that's well said; the chair! gratiano some good man bear him carefully from hence; i'll fetch the general's surgeon. [to bianca] for you, mistress, save you your labour. he that lies slain here, cassio, was my dear friend: what malice was between you? cassio none in the world; nor do i know the man. iago [to bianca] what, look you pale? o, bear him out o' the air. [cassio and roderigo are borne off] stay you, good gentlemen. look you pale, mistress? do you perceive the gastness of her eye? nay, if you stare, we shall hear more anon. behold her well; i pray you, look upon her: do you see, gentlemen? nay, guiltiness will speak, though tongues were out of use. [enter emilia] emilia 'las, what's the matter? what's the matter, husband? iago cassio hath here been set on in the dark by roderigo and fellows that are scaped: he's almost slain, and roderigo dead. emilia alas, good gentleman! alas, good cassio! iago this is the fruit of whoring. prithee, emilia, go know of cassio where he supp'd to-night. [to bianca] what, do you shake at that? bianca he supp'd at my house; but i therefore shake not. iago o, did he so? i charge you, go with me. emilia fie, fie upon thee, strumpet! bianca i am no strumpet; but of life as honest as you that thus abuse me. emilia as i! foh! fie upon thee! iago kind gentlemen, let's go see poor cassio dress'd. come, mistress, you must tell's another tale. emilia run you to the citadel, and tell my lord and lady what hath happ'd. will you go on? i pray. [aside] this is the night that either makes me or fordoes me quite. [exeunt] othello act v scene ii a bedchamber in the castle: desdemona in bed asleep; a light burning. [enter othello] othello it is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,- let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!- it is the cause. yet i'll not shed her blood; nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, and smooth as monumental alabaster. yet she must die, else she'll betray more men. put out the light, and then put out the light: if i quench thee, thou flaming minister, i can again thy former light restore, should i repent me: but once put out thy light, thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, i know not where is that promethean heat that can thy light relume. when i have pluck'd the rose, i cannot give it vital growth again. it must needs wither: i'll smell it on the tree. [kissing her] ah balmy breath, that dost almost persuade justice to break her sword! one more, one more. be thus when thou art dead, and i will kill thee, and love thee after. one more, and this the last: so sweet was ne'er so fatal. i must weep, but they are cruel tears: this sorrow's heavenly; it strikes where it doth love. she wakes. desdemona who's there? othello? othello ay. desdemona. desdemona will you come to bed, my lord? othello have you pray'd to-night, desdemona? desdemona ay, my lord. othello if you bethink yourself of any crime unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace, solicit for it straight. desdemona alas, my lord, what do you mean by that? othello well, do it, and be brief; i will walk by: i would not kill thy unprepared spirit; no; heaven forfend! i would not kill thy soul. desdemona talk you of killing? othello ay, i do. desdemona then heaven have mercy on me! othello amen, with all my heart! desdemona if you say so, i hope you will not kill me. othello hum! desdemona and yet i fear you; for you are fatal then when your eyes roll so: why i should fear i know not, since guiltiness i know not; but yet i feel i fear. othello think on thy sins. desdemona they are loves i bear to you. othello ay, and for that thou diest. desdemona that death's unnatural that kills for loving. alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip? some bloody passion shakes your very frame: these are portents; but yet i hope, i hope, they do not point on me. othello peace, and be still! desdemona i will so. what's the matter? othello that handkerchief which i so loved and gave thee thou gavest to cassio. desdemona no, by my life and soul! send for the man, and ask him. othello sweet soul, take heed, take heed of perjury; thou art on thy deathbed. desdemona ay, but not yet to die. othello yes, presently: therefore confess thee freely of thy sin; for to deny each article with oath cannot remove nor choke the strong conception that i do groan withal. thou art to die. desdemona then lord have mercy on me! othello i say, amen. desdemona and have you mercy too! i never did offend you in my life; never loved cassio but with such general warranty of heaven as i might love: i never gave him token. othello by heaven, i saw my handkerchief in's hand. o perjured woman! thou dost stone my heart, and makest me call what i intend to do a murder, which i thought a sacrifice: i saw the handkerchief. desdemona he found it then; i never gave it him: send for him hither; let him confess a truth. othello he hath confess'd. desdemona what, my lord? othello that he hath used thee. desdemona how? unlawfully? othello ay. desdemona he will not say so. othello no, his mouth is stopp'd; honest iago hath ta'en order for't. desdemona o! my fear interprets: what, is he dead? othello had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge had stomach for them all. desdemona alas! he is betray'd and i undone. othello out, strumpet! weep'st thou for him to my face? desdemona o, banish me, my lord, but kill me not! othello down, strumpet! desdemona kill me to-morrow: let me live to-night! othello nay, if you strive- desdemona but half an hour! othello being done, there is no pause. desdemona but while i say one prayer! othello it is too late. [he stifles her] emilia [within] my lord, my lord! what, ho! my lord, my lord! othello what noise is this? not dead? not yet quite dead? i that am cruel am yet merciful; i would not have thee linger in thy pain: so, so. emilia [within] what, ho! my lord, my lord! othello who's there? emilia [within] o, good my lord, i would speak a word with you! othello yes: 'tis emilia. by and by. she's dead. 'tis like she comes to speak of cassio's death.- the noise was here. ha! no more moving? still as the grave. shall she come in? were't good?- i think she stirs again:--no. what's best to do? if she come in, she'll sure speak to my wife: my wife! my wife! what wife? i have no wife. o insupportable! o heavy hour! methinks it should be now a huge eclipse of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe should yawn at alteration. emilia [within] i do beseech you that i may speak with you, o, good my lord! othello i had forgot thee: o, come in, emilia; soft; by and by. let me the curtains draw. where art thou? [unlocks the door] [enter emilia] what's the matter with thee now? emilia o, my good lord, yonder's foul murders done! othello what, now? emilia but now, my lord. othello it is the very error of the moon; she comes more nearer earth than she was wont, and makes men mad. emilia cassio, my lord, hath kill'd a young venetian call'd roderigo. othello roderigo kill'd! and cassio kill'd! emilia no, cassio is not kill'd. othello not cassio kill'd! then murder's out of tune, and sweet revenge grows harsh. desdemona o, falsely, falsely murder'd! emilia alas, what cry is that? othello that! what? emilia out, and alas! that was my lady's voice. help! help, ho! help! o lady, speak again! sweet desdemona! o sweet mistress, speak! desdemona a guiltless death i die. emilia o, who hath done this deed? desdemona nobody; i myself. farewell commend me to my kind lord: o, farewell! [dies] othello why, how should she be murder'd? emilia alas, who knows? othello you heard her say herself, it was not i. emilia she said so: i must needs report the truth. othello she's, like a liar, gone to burning hell: 'twas i that kill'd her. emilia o, the more angel she, and you the blacker devil! othello she turn'd to folly, and she was a whore. emilia thou dost belie her, and thou art a devil. othello she was false as water. emilia thou art rash as fire, to say that she was false: o, she was heavenly true! othello cassio did top her; ask thy husband else. o, i were damn'd beneath all depth in hell, but that i did proceed upon just grounds to this extremity. thy husband knew it all. emilia my husband! othello thy husband. emilia that she was false to wedlock? othello ay, with cassio. nay, had she been true, if heaven would make me such another world of one entire and perfect chrysolite, i'ld not have sold her for it. emilia my husband! othello ay, 'twas he that told me first: an honest man he is, and hates the slime that sticks on filthy deeds. emilia my husband! othello what needs this iteration, woman? i say thy husband. emilia o mistress, villany hath made mocks with love, my husband say that she was false! othello he, woman; i say thy husband: dost understand the word? my friend, thy husband, honest, honest iago. emilia if he say so, may his pernicious soul rot half a grain a day! he lies to the heart: she was too fond of her most filthy bargain. othello ha! emilia do thy worst: this deed of thine is no more worthy heaven than thou wast worthy her. othello peace, you were best. emilia thou hast not half that power to do me harm as i have to be hurt. o gull! o dolt! as ignorant as dirt! thou hast done a deed- i care not for thy sword; i'll make thee known, though i lost twenty lives.--help! help, ho! help! the moor hath kill'd my mistress! murder! murder! [enter montano, gratiano, iago, and others] montano what is the matter? how now, general! emilia o, are you come, iago? you have done well, that men must lay their murders on your neck. gratiano what is the matter? emilia disprove this villain, if thou be'st a man: he says thou told'st him that his wife was false: i know thou didst not, thou'rt not such a villain: speak, for my heart is full. iago i told him what i thought, and told no more than what he found himself was apt and true. emilia but did you ever tell him she was false? iago i did. emilia you told a lie, an odious, damned lie; upon my soul, a lie, a wicked lie. she false with cassio!--did you say with cassio? iago with cassio, mistress. go to, charm your tongue. emilia i will not charm my tongue; i am bound to speak: my mistress here lies murder'd in her bed,- all o heavens forfend! emilia and your reports have set the murder on. othello nay, stare not, masters: it is true, indeed. gratiano 'tis a strange truth. montano o monstrous act! emilia villany, villany, villany! i think upon't, i think: i smell't: o villany!- i thought so then:--i'll kill myself for grief:- o villany, villany! iago what, are you mad? i charge you, get you home. emilia good gentlemen, let me have leave to speak: 'tis proper i obey him, but not now. perchance, iago, i will ne'er go home. othello o! o! o! [he falls on the bed] emilia nay, lay thee down and roar; for thou hast kill'd the sweetest innocent that e'er did lift up eye. othello [rising] o, she was foul! i scarce did know you, uncle: there lies your niece, whose breath, indeed, these hands have newly stopp'd: i know this act shows horrible and grim. gratiano poor desdemona! i am glad thy father's dead: thy match was mortal to him, and pure grief shore his old thread in twain: did he live now, this sight would make him do a desperate turn, yea, curse his better angel from his side, and fall to reprobation. othello 'tis pitiful; but yet iago knows that she with cassio hath the act of shame a thousand times committed; cassio confess'd it: and she did gratify his amorous works with that recognizance and pledge of love which i first gave her; i saw it in his hand: it was a handkerchief, an antique token my father gave my mother. emilia o heaven! o heavenly powers! iago come, hold your peace. emilia 'twill out, 'twill out: i peace! no, i will speak as liberal as the north: let heaven and men and devils, let them all, all, all, cry shame against me, yet i'll speak. iago be wise, and get you home. emilia i will not. [iago offers to stab emilia] gratiano fie! your sword upon a woman? emilia o thou dull moor! that handkerchief thou speak'st of i found by fortune and did give my husband; for often, with a solemn earnestness, more than indeed belong'd to such a trifle, he begg'd of me to steal it. iago villanous whore! emilia she give it cassio! no, alas! i found it, and i did give't my husband. iago filth, thou liest! emilia by heaven, i do not, i do not, gentlemen. o murderous coxcomb! what should such a fool do with so good a woman? othello are there no stones in heaven but what serve for the thunder?--precious villain! [he runs at iago iago, from behind, stabs emilia, and exit] gratiano the woman falls; sure, he hath kill'd his wife. emilia ay, ay: o, lay me by my mistress' side. gratiano he's gone, but his wife's kill'd. montano 'tis a notorious villain. take you this weapon, which i have here recover'd from the moor: come, guard the door without; let him not pass, but kill him rather. i'll after that same villain, for 'tis a damned slave. [exeunt montano and gratiano] othello i am not valiant neither, but ever puny whipster gets my sword: but why should honour outlive honesty? let it go all. emilia what did thy song bode, lady? hark, canst thou hear me? i will play the swan. and die in music. [singing] willow, willow, willow,- moor, she was chaste; she loved thee, cruel moor; so come my soul to bliss, as i speak true; so speaking as i think, i die, i die. [dies] othello i have another weapon in this chamber; it is a sword of spain, the ice-brook's temper:- o, here it is. uncle, i must come forth. gratiano [within] if thou attempt it, it will cost thee dear: thou hast no weapon, and perforce must suffer. othello look in upon me then and speak with me, or, naked as i am, i will assault thee. [re-enter gratiano] gratiano what is the matter? othello behold, i have a weapon; a better never did itself sustain upon a soldier's thigh: i have seen the day, that, with this little arm and this good sword, i have made my way through more impediments than twenty times your stop: but, o vain boast! who can control his fate? 'tis not so now. be not afraid, though you do see me weapon'd; here is my journey's end, here is my butt, and very sea-mark of my utmost sail. do you go back dismay'd? 'tis a lost fear; man but a rush against othello's breast, and he retires. where should othello go? now, how dost thou look now? o ill-starr'd wench! pale as thy smock! when we shall meet at compt, this look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven, and fiends will snatch at it. cold, cold, my girl! even like thy chastity. o cursed slave! whip me, ye devils, from the possession of this heavenly sight! blow me about in winds! roast me in sulphur! wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire! o desdemona! desdemona! dead! oh! oh! oh! [enter lodovico. montano, cassio carried in a chair, and officers with iago, prisoner] lodovico where is this rash and most unfortunate man? othello that's he that was othello: here i am. lodovico where is that viper? bring the villain forth. othello i look down towards his feet; but that's a fable. if that thou best a devil, i cannot kill thee. [wounds iago] lodovico wrench his sword from him. iago i bleed, sir; but not kill'd. othello i am not sorry neither: i'ld have thee live; for, in my sense, 'tis happiness to die. lodovico o thou othello, thou wert once so good, fall'n in the practise of a damned slave, what shall be said to thee? othello why, any thing: an honourable murderer, if you will; for nought i did in hate, but all in honour. lodovico this wretch hath part confess'd his villany: did you and he consent in cassio's death? othello ay. cassio dear general, i never gave you cause. othello i do believe it, and i ask your pardon. will you, i pray, demand that demi-devil why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body? iago demand me nothing: what you know, you know: from this time forth i never will speak word. lodovico what, not to pray? gratiano torments will ope your lips. othello well, thou dost best. lodovico sir, you shall understand what hath befall'n, which, as i think, you know not. here is a letter found in the pocket of the slain roderigo; and here another: the one of them imports the death of cassio to be undertook by roderigo. othello o villain! cassio most heathenish and most gross! lodovico now here's another discontented paper, found in his pocket too; and this, it seems, roderigo meant to have sent this damned villain; but that belike iago in the interim came in and satisfied him. othello o the pernicious caitiff! how came you, cassio, by that handkerchief that was my wife's? cassio i found it in my chamber: and he himself confess'd but even now that there he dropp'd it for a special purpose which wrought to his desire. othello o fool! fool! fool! cassio there is besides in roderigo's letter, how he upbraids iago, that he made him brave me upon the watch; whereon it came that i was cast: and even but now he spake, after long seeming dead, iago hurt him, iago set him on. lodovico you must forsake this room, and go with us: your power and your command is taken off, and cassio rules in cyprus. for this slave, if there be any cunning cruelty that can torment him much and hold him long, it shall be his. you shall close prisoner rest, till that the nature of your fault be known to the venetian state. come, bring him away. othello soft you; a word or two before you go. i have done the state some service, and they know't. no more of that. i pray you, in your letters, when you shall these unlucky deeds relate, speak of me as i am; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak of one that loved not wisely but too well; of one not easily jealous, but being wrought perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand, like the base indian, threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, albeit unused to the melting mood, drop tears as fast as the arabian trees their medicinal gum. set you down this; and say besides, that in aleppo once, where a malignant and a turban'd turk beat a venetian and traduced the state, i took by the throat the circumcised dog, and smote him, thus. [stabs himself] lodovico o bloody period! gratiano all that's spoke is marr'd. othello i kiss'd thee ere i kill'd thee: no way but this; killing myself, to die upon a kiss. [falls on the bed, and dies] cassio this did i fear, but thought he had no weapon; for he was great of heart. lodovico [to iago] o spartan dog, more fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea! look on the tragic loading of this bed; this is thy work: the object poisons sight; let it be hid. gratiano, keep the house, and seize upon the fortunes of the moor, for they succeed on you. to you, lord governor, remains the censure of this hellish villain; the time, the place, the torture: o, enforce it! myself will straight aboard: and to the state this heavy act with heavy heart relate. [exeunt] 1837 silence a fable by edgar allan poe 'eudosin d'orheon korhuphai te kai pharhagges' 'prhones te kai charhadrhai.' alcman. (60 (10),646.) the mountain pinnacles slumber; valleys, crags and caves are silent. "listen to me," said the demon as he placed his hand upon my head. "the region of which i speak is a dreary region in libya, by the borders of the river zaire. and there is no quiet there, nor silence. "the waters of the river have a saffron and sickly hue; and they flow not onwards to the sea, but palpitate forever and forever beneath the red eye of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. for many miles on either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. they sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads. and there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from among them like the rushing of subterrene water. and they sigh one unto the other. "but there is a boundary to their realm--the boundary of the dark, horrible, lofty forest. there, like the waves about the hebrides, the low underwood is agitated continually. but there is no wind throughout the heaven. and the tall primeval trees rock eternally hither and thither with a crashing and mighty sound. and from their high summits, one by one, drop everlasting dews. and at the roots strange poisonous flowers lie writhing in perturbed slumber. and overhead, with a rustling and loud noise, the gray clouds rush westwardly forever, until they roll, a cataract, over the fiery wall of the horizon. but there is no wind throughout the heaven. and by the shores of the river zaire there is neither quiet nor silence. "it was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood. and i stood in the morass among the tall and the rain fell upon my head --and the lilies sighed one unto the other in the solemnity of their desolation. "and, all at once, the moon arose through the thin ghastly mist, and was crimson in color. and mine eyes fell upon a huge gray rock which stood by the shore of the river, and was lighted by the light of the moon. and the rock was gray, and ghastly, and tall, --and the rock was gray. upon its front were characters engraven in the stone; and i walked through the morass of water-lilies, until i came close unto the shore, that i might read the characters upon the stone. but i could not decypher them. and i was going back into the morass, when the moon shone with a fuller red, and i turned and looked again upon the rock, and upon the characters;--and the characters were desolation. "and i looked upwards, and there stood a man upon the summit of the rock; and i hid myself among the water-lilies that i might discover the actions of the man. and the man was tall and stately in form, and was wrapped up from his shoulders to his feet in the toga of old rome. and the outlines of his figure were indistinct--but his features were the features of a deity; for the mantle of the night, and of the mist, and of the moon, and of the dew, had left uncovered the features of his face. and his brow was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care; and, in the few furrows upon his cheek i read the fables of sorrow, and weariness, and disgust with mankind, and a longing after solitude. "and the man sat upon the rock, and leaned his head upon his hand, and looked out upon the desolation. he looked down into the low unquiet shrubbery, and up into the tall primeval trees, and up higher at the rustling heaven, and into the crimson moon. and i lay close within shelter of the lilies, and observed the actions of the man. and the man trembled in the solitude; --but the night waned, and he sat upon the rock. "and the man turned his attention from the heaven, and looked out upon the dreary river zaire, and upon the yellow ghastly waters, and upon the pale legions of the water-lilies. and the man listened to the sighs of the water-lilies, and to the murmur that came up from among them. and i lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. and the man trembled in the solitude; --but the night waned and he sat upon the rock. "then i went down into the recesses of the morass, and waded afar in among the wilderness of the lilies, and called unto the hippopotami which dwelt among the fens in the recesses of the morass. and the hippopotami heard my call, and came, with the behemoth, unto the foot of the rock, and roared loudly and fearfully beneath the moon. and i lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. and the man trembled in the solitude; --but the night waned and he sat upon the rock. "then i cursed the elements with the curse of tumult; and a frightful tempest gathered in the heaven where, before, there had been no wind. and the heaven became livid with the violence of the tempest --and the rain beat upon the head of the man --and the floods of the river came down --and the river was tormented into foam --and the water-lilies shrieked within their beds --and the forest crumbled before the wind --and the thunder rolled --and the lightning fell --and the rock rocked to its foundation. and i lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. and the man trembled in the solitude; --but the night waned and he sat upon the rock. "then i grew angry and cursed, with the curse of silence, the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs of the water-lilies. and they became accursed, and were still. and the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven --and the thunder died away --and the lightning did not flash --and the clouds hung motionless --and the waters sunk to their level and remained --and the trees ceased to rock --and the water-lilies sighed no more --and the murmur was heard no longer from among them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast illimitable desert. and i looked upon the characters of the rock, and they were changed; --and the characters were silence. "and mine eyes fell upon the countenance of the man, and his countenance was wan with terror. and, hurriedly, he raised his head from his hand, and stood forth upon the rock and listened. but there was no voice throughout the vast illimitable desert, and the characters upon the rock were silence. and the man shuddered, and turned his face away, and fled afar off, in haste, so that i beheld him no more." now there are fine tales in the volumes of the magi --in the iron-bound, melancholy volumes of the magi. therein, i say, are glorious histories of the heaven, and of the earth, and of the mighty sea --and of the genii that over-ruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. there was much lore too in the sayings which were said by the sybils; and holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves that trembled around dodona --but, as allah liveth, that fable which the demon told me as he sat by my side in the shadow of the tomb, i hold to be the most wonderful of all! and as the demon made an end of his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb and laughed. and i could not laugh with the demon, and he cursed me because i could not laugh. and the lynx which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom, and lay down at the feet of the demon, and looked at him steadily in the face. -the end. 1829 fairy-land by edgar allan poe dim valesand shadowy floods and cloudy-looking woods, whose forms we can't discover for the tears that drip all over! huge moons there wax and wane againagainagain every moment of the night forever changing places and they put out the star-light with the breath from their pale faces. about twelve by the moon-dial, one more filmy than the rest (a kind which, upon trial, they have found to be the best) comes downstill downand down, with its centre on the crown of a mountain's eminence, while its wide circumference in easy drapery falls over hamlets, over halls, wherever they may be o'er the strange woodso'er the sea over spirits on the wing over every drowsy thing and buries them up quite in a labyrinth of light and then, how deep!o, deep! is the passion of their sleep. in the morning they arise, and their moony covering is soaring in the skies, with the tempests as they toss, likealmost anything or a yellow albatross. they use that moon no more for the same end as before videlicet, a tent which i think extravagant: its atomies, however, into a shower dissever, of which those butterflies of earth, who seek the skies, and so come down again, (never-contented things!) have brought a specimen upon their quivering wings. -the end. 1850 lionizing by edgar allan poe lionizing -all people went upon their ten toes in wild wondernment. bishop hall's satires. i am, that is to say i was, a great man, but i am neither the author of junius nor the man in the mask, for my name, i believe, is robert jones, and i was born somewhere in the city of fum-fudge. the first action of my life was the taking hold of my nose with both hands. my mother saw this and called me a genius:my father wept for joy and presented me with a treatise on nosology. this i mastered before i was breeched. i now began to feel my way in the science, and soon came to understand that, provided a man had a nose sufficiently conspicuous, he might by merely following it, arrive at a lionship. but my attention was not confined to theories alone. every morning i gave my proboscis a couple of pulls and swallowed a half-dozen of drams. when i came of age my father asked me, one day, if i would step with him into his study. "my son," he said, when we were seated, "what is the chief end of your existence?" "my father," i answered, "it is the study of nosology." "and what, robert," he inquired, "is nosology?" "sir," i said, "it is the science of noses." "and can you tell me," he demanded, "what is the meaning of a nose?" "a nose, my father," i replied, greatly softened, "has been variously defined by about a thousand different authors." [here i pulled out my watch.] "it is now noon, or thereaboutswe shall have time enough to get through with them all before midnight. to commence then: the nose, according to bartholinus, is that protuberancethat bumpthat excresencethat-" "will do, robert," interupted the old gentleman. "i am thunderstruck at the extent of your informationi am positivelyupon my soul." [here he closed his eyes and placed his hand upon his heart.] "come here!" [here he took me by the arm.] "your education may now be considered as finishedit is high time you should scuffle for yourselfand you cannot do a better thing than merely follow your nosesososo-" [here he kicked me down stairs and out of the door.]-"so get out of my house, and god bless you!" as i felt within me the divine afflatus, i considered this accident rather fortunate than otherwise. i resolved to be guided by the paternal advice. i determined to follow my nose. i gave it a pull or two upon the spot, and wrote a pamphlet on nosology forthwith. all fum-fudge was in an uproar. "wonderful genius!" said the quarterly. "superb physiologist!" said the westminster. "clever fellow!" said the foreign. "fine writer!", said the edinburgh. "profound thinker!" said the dublin. "great man!" said bentley. "divine soul!" said fraser. "one of us!" said blackwood. "who can he be?" said mrs. bas-bleu. "what can he be?" said big miss bas-bleu. "where can he be?" said little miss bas-bleu.but i paid these people no attention whateveri just stepped into the shop of an artist. the duchess of bless-my-soul was sitting for her portrait; the marquis of so-and-so was holding the duchess' poodle; the earl of this-and-that was flirting with her salts; and his royal highness of touch-me-not was leaning upon the back of her chair. i approached the artist and turned up my nose. "oh, beautiful!" sighed her grace. "oh, my!" lisped the marquis. "oh, shocking!" groaned the earl. "oh, abominable!" growled his royal highness. "what will you take for it?" asked the artist. "for his nose!" shouted her grace. "a thousand pounds," said i, sitting down. "a thousand pounds?" inquired the artist, musingly. "a thousand pounds," said i. "beautiful!" said he, entranced. "a thousand pounds," said i. "do you warrant it?" he asked, turning the nose to the light. "i do," said i, blowing it well. "is it quite original?" he inquired, touching it with reverence. "humph!" said i, twisting it to one side. "has no copy been taken?" he demanded, surveying it through a microscope. "none," said i, turning it up. "admirable!" he ejaculated, thrown quite off his guard by the beauty of the manoeuvre. "a thousand pounds," said i. "a thousand pounds?" said he. "precisely," said i. "a thousand pounds?" said he. "just so," said i. "you shall have them," said he. "what a piece of virtu!" so he drew me a check upon the spot, and took a sketch of my nose. i engaged rooms in jermyn street, and sent her majesty the ninety-ninth edition of the "nosology," with a portrait of the proboscis. that sad little rake, the prince of wales, invited me to dinner. we are all lions and recherches. there was a modern platonist. he quoted porphyry, iamblicus, plotinus, proclus, hierocles, maximus tyrius, and syrianus. there was a human-perfectibility man. he quoted turgot, price, priestly, condorcet, de stael, and the "ambitious student in ill-health." there was sir positive paradox. he observed that all fools were philosophers, and that all philosophers were fools. there was aestheticus ethix. he spoke of fire, unity, and atoms; bi-part and pre-existent soul; affinity and discord; primitive intelligence and homoomeria. there was theologos theology. he talked of eusebius and arianus; heresy and the council of nice; puseyism and consubstantialism; homousios and homouioisios. there was fricassee from the rocher de cancale. he mentioned muriton of red tongue; cauliflowers with veloute sauce; veal a la st. menehoult; marinade a la st. florentin; and orange jellies en mosaiques. there was bibulus o'bumper. he touched upon latour and markbrunnen; upon mosseux and chambertin; upon richbourg and st. george; upon haubrion, leonville, and medoc; upon barac and preignac; upon grave, upon sauterne, upon lafitte, and upon st. peray. he shook his head at clos de vougeot, and told with his eyes shut, the difference between sherry and amontillado. there was signor tintontintino from florence. he discoursed of cimabue, arpino, carpaccio, and argostinoof the gloom of caravaggio, of the amenity of albano, of the colors of titian, of the frows of rubens, and of the waggeries of jan steen. there was the president of the fum-fudge university. he was of the opinion that the moon was called bendis in thrace, bubastis in egypt, dian in rome, and artemis in greece. there was a grand turk from stamboul. he could not help thinking that the angels were horses, cocks, and bulls; that somebody in the sixth heaven had seventy thousand heads; and that the earth was supported by a sky-blue cow with an incalculable number of green horns. there was delphinus polyglott. he told us what had become of the eighty-three lost tragedies of aeschylus; of the fifty-four orations of isaeus; of the three hundred and ninety-one speeches of lysias; of the hundred and eighty treatises of theophrastus; of the eighth book of the conic sections of apollonius; of pindar's hymns and dithyrambics, and of the five and forty tragedies of homer junior. there was ferdinand fitz-fossillus feltspar. he informed us all about internal fires and tertiary formations; about aeriforms, fluidiforms, and solidforms; about quartz and marl; about schist and schorl; about gypsum and trap; about talc and calc; about blende and horn-blende; about micaslate and pudding-stone; about cyanite and lepidolite; about haematite and tremolite; about antimony and calcedony; about manganese and whatever you please. there was myself. i spoke of myself;of myself, of myself, of myself;of nosology, of my pamphlet, and of myself. i turned up my nose, and i spoke of myself. "marvellous clever man!" said the prince. "superb!" said his guests;and next morning her grace of bless-my-soul paid me a visit. "will you go to almack's, pretty creature?" she said, tapping me under the chin. "upon honor," said i. "nose and all?" she asked. "as i live," i replied. "here then is a card, my life. shall i say you will be there?" "dear, duchess, with all my heart." "pshaw, no!but with all your nose?" "every bit of it, my love," said i:so i gave it a twist or two, and found myself at almack's. the rooms were crowded to suffocation. "he is coming!" said somebody on the staircase. "he is coming!" said somebody farther up. "he is coming!" said somebody farther still. "he is come!" exclaimed the duchess, "he is come, the little love!"and, seizing me firmly by both hands, she kissed me thrice upon the nose. a marked sensation immediately ensued. "diavolo!" cried count capricornutti. "dios guarda!" muttered don stiletto. "mille tonnerres!" ejaculated the prince de grenouille. "tousand teufel!" growled the elector of bluddennuff. it was not to be borne. i grew angry. i turned short upon bluddennuff. "sir!" said i to him, "you are a baboon." "sir," he replied, after a pause. "donner und blitzen!" this was all that could be desired. we exchanged cards. at chalk-farm, the next morning, i shot off his noseand then called upon my friends. "bete!" said the first. "fool!" said the second. "dolt!" said the third. "ass!" said the fourth. "ninny!" said the fifth. "noodle!" said the sixth. "be off!" said the seventh. at all this i felt mortified, and so called upon my father. "father," i asked, "what is the chief end of my existence?" "my son," he replied, "it is still the study of nosology; but in hitting the elector upon the nose you have overshot your mark. you have a fine nose, it is true; but then bluddennuff has none. you are damned, and he has become the hero of the day. i grant you that in fum-fudge the greatness of a lion is in proportion to the size of his proboscisbut, good heavens! there is no competing with a lion who has no proboscis at all." the end . project gutenberg etext of travels with a donkey in the cevenne #24 in our series by copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. travels with a donkey in the cevenne by robert louis stevenson may, 1996 [etext #535] project gutenberg etext of travels with a donkey in the cevenne *****this file should be named ceven10.txt or ceven10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, ceven11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, ceven10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / illinois benedictine college". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* travels with a donkey in the cevennes by robert louis stevenson. scanned and proofed by david price, ccx074@coventry.ac.uk travels with a donkey in the cevennes my dear sidney colvin, the journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable and fortunate for me. after an uncouth beginning, i had the best of luck to the end. but we are all travellers in what john bunyan calls the wilderness of this world all, too, travellers with a donkey: and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. he is a fortunate voyager who finds many. we travel, indeed, to find them. they are the end and the reward of life. they keep us worthy of ourselves; and when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent. every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it. they alone take his meaning; they find private messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude, dropped for them in every corner. the public is but a generous patron who defrays the postage. yet through the letter is directed to all, we have an old and kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends? and so, my dear sidney colvin, it is with pride that i sign myself affectionately yours, r. l. s. velay many are the mighty things, and nought is more mighty than man. . . . . he masters by his devices the tenant of the fields. sophocles. who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass? job. the donkey, the pack, and the pack-saddle in a little place called le monastier, in a pleasant highland valley fifteen miles from le puy, i spent about a month of fine days. monastier is notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political dissension. there are adherents of each of the four french parties legitimists, orleanists, imperialists, and republicans in this little mountain-town; and they all hate, loathe, decry, and calumniate each other. except for business purposes, or to give each other the lie in a tavern brawl, they have laid aside even the civility of speech. 'tis a mere mountain poland. in the midst of this babylon i found myself a rallyingpoint; every one was anxious to be kind and helpful to the stranger. this was not merely from the natural hospitality of mountain people, nor even from the surprise with which i was regarded as a man living of his own free will in le monastier, when he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this big world; it arose a good deal from my projected excursion southward through the cevennes. a traveller of my sort was a thing hitherto unheard of in that district. i was looked upon with contempt, like a man who should project a journey to the moon, but yet with a respectful interest, like one setting forth for the inclement pole. all were ready to help in my preparations; a crowd of sympathisers supported me at the critical moment of a bargain; not a step was taken but was heralded by glasses round and celebrated by a dinner or a breakfast. it was already hard upon october before i was ready to set forth, and at the high altitudes over which my road lay there was no indian summer to be looked for. i was determined, if not to camp out, at least to have the means of camping out in my possession; for there is nothing more harassing to an easy mind than the necessity of reaching shelter by dusk, and the hospitality of a village inn is not always to be reckoned sure by those who trudge on foot. a tent, above all for a solitary traveller, is troublesome to pitch, and troublesome to strike again; and even on the march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. a sleeping-sack, on the other hand, is always ready you have only to get into it; it serves a double purpose a bed by night, a portmanteau by day; and it does not advertise your intention of camping out to every curious passer-by. this is a huge point. if a camp is not secret, it is but a troubled resting-place; you become a public character; the convivial rustic visits your bedside after an early supper; and you must sleep with one eye open, and be up before the day. i decided on a sleeping-sack; and after repeated visits to le puy, and a deal of high living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping-sack was designed, constructed, and triumphantly brought home. this child of my invention was nearly six feet square, exclusive of two triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night and as the top and bottom of the sack by day. i call it 'the sack,' but it was never a sack by more than courtesy: only a sort of long roll or sausage, green waterproof cart-cloth without and blue sheep's fur within. it was commodious as a valise, warm and dry for a bed. there was luxurious turning room for one; and at a pinch the thing might serve for two. i could bury myself in it up to the neck; for my head i trusted to a fur cap, with a hood to fold down over my ears and a band to pass under my nose like a respirator; and in case of heavy rain i proposed to make myself a little tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three stones, and a bent branch. it will readily be conceived that i could not carry this huge package on my own, merely human, shoulders. it remained to choose a beast of burden. now, a horse is a fine lady among animals, flighty, timid, delicate in eating, of tender health; he is too valuable and too restive to be left alone, so that you are chained to your brute as to a fellow galley-slave; a dangerous road puts him out of his wits; in short, he's an uncertain and exacting ally, and adds thirty-fold to the troubles of the voyager. what i required was something cheap and small and hardy, and of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed to a donkey. there dwelt an old man in monastier, of rather unsound intellect according to some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame as father adam. father adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive she-ass, not much bigger than a dog, the colour of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined under-jaw. there was something neat and high-bred, a quakerish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on the spot. our first interview was in monastier market-place. to prove her good temper, one child after another was set upon her back to ride, and one after another went head over heels into the air; until a want of confidence began to reign in youthful bosoms, and the experiment was discontinued from a dearth of subjects. i was already backed by a deputation of my friends; but as if this were not enough, all the buyers and sellers came round and helped me in the bargain; and the ass and i and father adam were the centre of a hubbub for near half an hour. at length she passed into my service for the consideration of sixtyfive francs and a glass of brandy. the sack had already cost eighty francs and two glasses of beer; so that modestine, as i instantly baptized her, was upon all accounts the cheaper article. indeed, that was as it should be; for she was only an appurtenance of my mattress, or self-acting bedstead on four castors. i had a last interview with father adam in a billiard-room at the witching hour of dawn, when i administered the brandy. he professed himself greatly touched by the separation, and declared he had often bought white bread for the donkey when he had been content with black bread for himself; but this, according to the best authorities, must have been a flight of fancy. he had a name in the village for brutally misusing the ass; yet it is certain that he shed a tear, and the tear made a clean mark down one cheek. by the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a leather pad was made for me with rings to fasten on my bundle; and i thoughtfully completed my kit and arranged my toilette. by way of armoury and utensils, i took a revolver, a little spirit-lamp and pan, a lantern and some halfpenny candles, a jack-knife and a large leather flask. the main cargo consisted of two entire changes of warm clothing besides my travelling wear of country velveteen, pilot-coat, and knitted spencer some books, and my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a double castle for cold nights. the permanent larder was represented by cakes of chocolate and tins of bologna sausage. all this, except what i carried about my person, was easily stowed into the sheepskin bag; and by good fortune i threw in my empty knapsack, rather for convenience of carriage than from any thought that i should want it on my journey. for more immediate needs i took a leg of cold mutton, a bottle of beaujolais, an empty bottle to carry milk, an egg-beater, and a considerable quantity of black bread and white, like father adam, for myself and donkey, only in my scheme of things the destinations were reversed. monastrians, of all shades of thought in politics, had agreed in threatening me with many ludicrous misadventures, and with sudden death in many surprising forms. cold, wolves, robbers, above all the nocturnal practical joker, were daily and eloquently forced on my attention. yet in these vaticinations, the true, patent danger was left out. like christian, it was from my pack i suffered by the way. before telling my own mishaps, let me in two words relate the lesson of my experience. if the pack is well strapped at the ends, and hung at full length not doubled, for your life across the pack-saddle, the traveller is safe. the saddle will certainly not fit, such is the imperfection of our transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend to overset; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting any tendency to overbalance with a well-adjusted stone. on the day of my departure i was up a little after five; by six, we began to load the donkey; and ten minutes after, my hopes were in the dust. the pad would not stay on modestine's back for half a moment. i returned it to its maker, with whom i had so contumelious a passage that the street outside was crowded from wall to wall with gossips looking on and listening. the pad changed hands with much vivacity; perhaps it would be more descriptive to say that we threw it at each other's heads; and, at any rate, we were very warm and unfriendly, and spoke with a deal of freedom. i had a common donkey pack-saddle a barde, as they call it fitted upon modestine; and once more loaded her with my effects. the doubled sack, my pilot-coat (for it was warm, and i was to walk in my waistcoat), a great bar of black bread, and an open basket containing the white bread, the mutton, and the bottles, were all corded together in a very elaborate system of knots, and i looked on the result with fatuous content. in such a monstrous deckcargo, all poised above the donkey's shoulders, with nothing below to balance, on a brand-new pack-saddle that had not yet been worn to fit the animal, and fastened with brand-new girths that might be expected to stretch and slacken by the way, even a very careless traveller should have seen disaster brewing. that elaborate system of knots, again, was the work of too many sympathisers to be very artfully designed. it is true they tightened the cords with a will; as many as three at a time would have a foot against modestine's quarters, and be hauling with clenched teeth; but i learned afterwards that one thoughtful person, without any exercise of force, can make a more solid job than half-a-dozen heated and enthusiastic grooms. i was then but a novice; even after the misadventure of the pad nothing could disturb my security, and i went forth from the stable door as an ox goeth to the slaughter. the green donkey-driver the bell of monastier was just striking nine as i got quit of these preliminary troubles and descended the hill through the common. as long as i was within sight of the windows, a secret shame and the fear of some laughable defeat withheld me from tampering with modestine. she tripped along upon her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait; from time to time she shook her ears or her tail; and she looked so small under the bundle that my mind misgave me. we got across the ford without difficulty there was no doubt about the matter, she was docility itself and once on the other bank, where the road begins to mount through pine-woods, i took in my right hand the unhallowed staff, and with a quaking spirit applied it to the donkey. modestine brisked up her pace for perhaps three steps, and then relapsed into her former minuet. another application had the same effect, and so with the third. i am worthy the name of an englishman, and it goes against my conscience to lay my hand rudely on a female. i desisted, and looked her all over from head to foot; the poor brute's knees were trembling and her breathing was distressed; it was plain that she could go no faster on a hill. god forbid, thought i, that i should brutalise this innocent creature; let her go at her own pace, and let me patiently follow. what that pace was, there is no word mean enough to describe; it was something as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run; it kept me hanging on each foot for an incredible length of time; in five minutes it exhausted the spirit and set up a fever in all the muscles of the leg. and yet i had to keep close at hand and measure my advance exactly upon hers; for if i dropped a few yards into the rear, or went on a few yards ahead, modestine came instantly to a halt and began to browse. the thought that this was to last from here to alais nearly broke my heart. of all conceivable journeys, this promised to be the most tedious. i tried to tell myself it was a lovely day; i tried to charm my foreboding spirit with tobacco; but i had a vision ever present to me of the long, long roads, up hill and down dale, and a pair of figures ever infinitesimally moving, foot by foot, a yard to the minute, and, like things enchanted in a nightmare, approaching no nearer to the goal. in the meantime there came up behind us a tall peasant, perhaps forty years of age, of an ironical snuffy countenance, and arrayed in the green tail-coat of the country. he overtook us hand over hand, and stopped to consider our pitiful advance. 'your donkey,' says he, 'is very old?' i told him, i believed not. then, he supposed, we had come far. i told him, we had but newly left monastier. 'et vous marchez comme ca!' cried he; and, throwing back his head, he laughed long and heartily. i watched him, half prepared to feel offended, until he had satisfied his mirth; and then, 'you must have no pity on these animals,' said he; and, plucking a switch out of a thicket, he began to lace modestine about the stern-works, uttering a cry. the rogue pricked up her ears and broke into a good round pace, which she kept up without flagging, and without exhibiting the least symptom of distress, as long as the peasant kept beside us. her former panting and shaking had been, i regret to say, a piece of comedy. my deus ex machina, before he left me, supplied some excellent, if inhumane, advice; presented me with the switch, which he declared she would feel more tenderly than my cane; and finally taught me the true cry or masonic word of donkey-drivers, 'proot!' all the time, he regarded me with a comical, incredulous air, which was embarrassing to confront; and smiled over my donkey-driving, as i might have smiled over his orthography, or his green tail-coat. but it was not my turn for the moment. i was proud of my new lore, and thought i had learned the art to perfection. and certainly modestine did wonders for the rest of the fore-noon, and i had a breathing space to look about me. it was sabbath; the mountain-fields were all vacant in the sunshine; and as we came down through st. martin de frugeres, the church was crowded to the door, there were people kneeling without upon the steps, and the sound of the priest's chanting came forth out of the dim interior. it gave me a home feeling on the spot; for i am a countryman of the sabbath, so to speak, and all sabbath observances, like a scottish accent, strike in me mixed feelings, grateful and the reverse. it is only a traveller, hurrying by like a person from another planet, who can rightly enjoy the peace and beauty of the great ascetic feast. the sight of the resting country does his spirit good. there is something better than music in the wide unusual silence; and it disposes him to amiable thoughts, like the sound of a little river or the warmth of sunlight. in this pleasant humour i came down the hill to where goudet stands in a green end of a valley, with chateau beaufort opposite upon a rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal, lying in a deep pool between them. above and below, you may hear it wimpling over the stones, an amiable stripling of a river, which it seems absurd to call the loire. on all sides, goudet is shut in by mountains; rocky footpaths, practicable at best for donkeys, join it to the outer world of france; and the men and women drink and swear, in their green corner, or look up at the snow-clad peaks in winter from the threshold of their homes, in an isolation, you would think, like that of homer's cyclops. but it is not so; the postman reaches goudet with the letter-bag; the aspiring youth of goudet are within a day's walk of the railway at le puy; and here in the inn you may find an engraved portrait of the host's nephew, regis senac, 'professor of fencing and champion of the two americas,' a distinction gained by him, along with the sum of five hundred dollars, at tammany hall, new york, on the 10th april 1876. i hurried over my midday meal, and was early forth again. but, alas, as we climbed the interminable hill upon the other side, 'proot!' seemed to have lost its virtue. i prooted like a lion, i prooted mellifluously like a sucking-dove; but modestine would be neither softened nor intimidated. she held doggedly to her pace; nothing but a blow would move her, and that only for a second. i must follow at her heels, incessantly be-labouring. a moment's pause in this ignoble toil, and she relapsed into her own private gait. i think i never heard of any one in as mean a situation. i must reach the lake of bouchet, where i meant to camp, before sundown, and, to have even a hope of this, i must instantly maltreat this uncomplaining animal. the sound of my own blows sickened me. once, when i looked at her, she had a faint resemblance to a lady of my acquaintance who formerly loaded me with kindness; and this increased my horror of my cruelty. to make matters worse, we encountered another donkey, ranging at will upon the roadside; and this other donkey chanced to be a gentleman. he and modestine met nickering for joy, and i had to separate the pair and beat down their young romance with a renewed and feverish bastinado. if the other donkey had had the heart of a male under his hide, he would have fallen upon me tooth and hoof; and this was a kind of consolation he was plainly unworthy of modestine's affection. but the incident saddened me, as did everything that spoke of my donkey's sex. it was blazing hot up the valley, windless, with vehement sun upon my shoulders; and i had to labour so consistently with my stick that the sweat ran into my eyes. every five minutes, too, the pack, the basket, and the pilot-coat would take an ugly slew to one side or the other; and i had to stop modestine, just when i had got her to a tolerable pace of about two miles an hour, to tug, push, shoulder, and readjust the load. and at last, in the village of ussel, saddle and all, the whole hypothec turned round and grovelled in the dust below the donkey's belly. she, none better pleased, incontinently drew up and seemed to smile; and a party of one man, two women, and two children came up, and, standing round me in a half-circle, encouraged her by their example. i had the devil's own trouble to get the thing righted; and the instant i had done so, without hesitation, it toppled and fell down upon the other side. judge if i was hot! and yet not a hand was offered to assist me. the man, indeed, told me i ought to have a package of a different shape. i suggested, if he knew nothing better to the point in my predicament, he might hold his tongue. and the good-natured dog agreed with me smilingly. it was the most despicable fix. i must plainly content myself with the pack for modestine, and take the following items for my own share of the portage: a cane, a quart-flask, a pilot-jacket heavily weighted in the pockets, two pounds of black bread, and an open basket full of meats and bottles. i believe i may say i am not devoid of greatness of soul; for i did not recoil from this infamous burden. i disposed it, heaven knows how, so as to be mildly portable, and then proceeded to steer modestine through the village. she tried, as was indeed her invariable habit, to enter every house and every courtyard in the whole length; and, encumbered as i was, without a hand to help myself, no words can render an idea of my difficulties. a priest, with six or seven others, was examining a church in process of repair, and he and his acolytes laughed loudly as they saw my plight. i remembered having laughed myself when i had seen good men struggling with adversity in the person of a jackass, and the recollection filled me with penitence. that was in my old light days, before this trouble came upon me. god knows at least that i shall never laugh again, thought i. but oh, what a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged in it! a little out of the village, modestine, filled with the demon, set her heart upon a by-road, and positively refused to leave it. i dropped all my bundles, and, i am ashamed to say, struck the poor sinner twice across the face. it was pitiful to see her lift her head with shut eyes, as if waiting for another blow. i came very near crying; but i did a wiser thing than that, and sat squarely down by the roadside to consider my situation under the cheerful influence of tobacco and a nip of brandy. modestine, in the meanwhile, munched some black bread with a contrite hypocritical air. it was plain that i must make a sacrifice to the gods of shipwreck. i threw away the empty bottle destined to carry milk; i threw away my own white bread, and, disdaining to act by general average, kept the black bread for modestine; lastly, i threw away the cold leg of mutton and the egg-whisk, although this last was dear to my heart. thus i found room for everything in the basket, and even stowed the boating-coat on the top. by means of an end of cord i slung it under one arm; and although the cord cut my shoulder, and the jacket hung almost to the ground, it was with a heart greatly lightened that i set forth again. i had now an arm free to thrash modestine, and cruelly i chastised her. if i were to reach the lakeside before dark, she must bestir her little shanks to some tune. already the sun had gone down into a windy-looking mist; and although there were still a few streaks of gold far off to the east on the hills and the black fir-woods, all was cold and grey about our onward path. an infinity of little country by-roads led hither and thither among the fields. it was the most pointless labyrinth. i could see my destination overhead, or rather the peak that dominates it; but choose as i pleased, the roads always ended by turning away from it, and sneaking back towards the valley, or northward along the margin of the hills. the failing light, the waning colour, the naked, unhomely, stony country through which i was travelling, threw me into some despondency. i promise you, the stick was not idle; i think every decent step that modestine took must have cost me at least two emphatic blows. there was not another sound in the neighbourhood but that of my unwearying bastinado. suddenly, in the midst of my toils, the load once more bit the dust, and, as by enchantment, all the cords were simultaneously loosened, and the road scattered with my dear possessions. the packing was to begin again from the beginning; and as i had to invent a new and better system, i do not doubt but i lost half an hour. it began to be dusk in earnest as i reached a wilderness of turf and stones. it had the air of being a road which should lead everywhere at the same time; and i was falling into something not unlike despair when i saw two figures stalking towards me over the stones. they walked one behind the other like tramps, but their pace was remarkable. the son led the way, a tall, ill-made, sombre, scottish-looking man; the mother followed, all in her sunday's best, with an elegantly embroidered ribbon to her cap, and a new felt hat atop, and proffering, as she strode along with kilted petticoats, a string of obscene and blasphemous oaths. i hailed the son, and asked him my direction. he pointed loosely west and north-west, muttered an inaudible comment, and, without slackening his pace for an instant, stalked on, as he was going, right athwart my path. the mother followed without so much as raising her head. i shouted and shouted after them, but they continued to scale the hillside, and turned a deaf ear to my outcries. at last, leaving modestine by herself, i was constrained to run after them, hailing the while. they stopped as i drew near, the mother still cursing; and i could see she was a handsome, motherly, respectable-looking woman. the son once more answered me roughly and inaudibly, and was for setting out again. but this time i simply collared the mother, who was nearest me, and, apologising for my violence, declared that i could not let them go until they had put me on my road. they were neither of them offended rather mollified than otherwise; told me i had only to follow them; and then the mother asked me what i wanted by the lake at such an hour. i replied, in the scottish manner, by inquiring if she had far to go herself. she told me, with another oath, that she had an hour and a half's road before her. and then, without salutation, the pair strode forward again up the hillside in the gathering dusk. i returned for modestine, pushed her briskly forward, and, after a sharp ascent of twenty minutes, reached the edge of a plateau. the view, looking back on my day's journey, was both wild and sad. mount mezenc and the peaks beyond st. julien stood out in trenchant gloom against a cold glitter in the east; and the intervening field of hills had fallen together into one broad wash of shadow, except here and there the outline of a wooded sugar-loaf in black, here and there a white irregular patch to represent a cultivated farm, and here and there a blot where the loire, the gazeille, or the laussonne wandered in a gorge. soon we were on a high-road, and surprise seized on my mind as i beheld a village of some magnitude close at hand; for i had been told that the neighbourhood of the lake was uninhabited except by trout. the road smoked in the twilight with children driving home cattle from the fields; and a pair of mounted stride-legged women, hat and cap and all, dashed past me at a hammering trot from the canton where they had been to church and market. i asked one of the children where i was. at bouchet st. nicolas, he told me. thither, about a mile south of my destination, and on the other side of a respectable summit, had these confused roads and treacherous peasantry conducted me. my shoulder was cut, so that it hurt sharply; my arm ached like toothache from perpetual beating; i gave up the lake and my design to camp, and asked for the auberge. i have a goad the auberge of bouchet st. nicolas was among the least pretentious i have ever visited; but i saw many more of the like upon my journey. indeed, it was typical of these french highlands. imagine a cottage of two stories, with a bench before the door; the stable and kitchen in a suite, so that modestine and i could hear each other dining; furniture of the plainest, earthern floors, a single bedchamber for travellers, and that without any convenience but beds. in the kitchen cooking and eating go forward side by side, and the family sleep at night. any one who has a fancy to wash must do so in public at the common table. the food is sometimes spare; hard fish and omelette have been my portion more than once; the wine is of the smallest, the brandy abominable to man; and the visit of a fat sow, grouting under the table and rubbing against your legs, is no impossible accompaniment to dinner. but the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, show themselves friendly and considerate. as soon as you cross the doors you cease to be a stranger; and although these peasantry are rude and forbidding on the highway, they show a tincture of kind breeding when you share their hearth. at bouchet, for instance, i uncorked my bottle of beaujolais, and asked the host to join me. he would take but little. 'i am an amateur of such wine, do you see?' he said, 'and i am capable of leaving you not enough.' in these hedge-inns the traveller is expected to eat with his own knife; unless he ask, no other will be supplied: with a glass, a whang of bread, and an iron fork, the table is completely laid. my knife was cordially admired by the landlord of bouchet, and the spring filled him with wonder. 'i should never have guessed that,' he said. 'i would bet,' he added, weighing it in his hand, 'that this cost you not less than five francs.' when i told him it had cost me twenty, his jaw dropped. he was a mild, handsome, sensible, friendly old man, astonishingly ignorant. his wife, who was not so pleasant in her manners, knew how to read, although i do not suppose she ever did so. she had a share of brains and spoke with a cutting emphasis, like one who ruled the roast. 'my man knows nothing,' she said, with an angry nod; 'he is like the beasts.' and the old gentleman signified acquiescence with his head. there was no contempt on her part, and no shame on his; the facts were accepted loyally, and no more about the matter. i was tightly cross-examined about my journey; and the lady understood in a moment, and sketched out what i should put into my book when i got home. 'whether people harvest or not in such or such a place; if there were forests; studies of manners; what, for example, i and the master of the house say to you; the beauties of nature, and all that.' and she interrogated me with a look. 'it is just that,' said i. 'you see,' she added to her husband, 'i understood that.' they were both much interested by the story of my misadventures. 'in the morning,' said the husband, 'i will make you something better than your cane. such a beast as that feels nothing; it is in the proverb dur comme un ane; you might beat her insensible with a cudgel, and yet you would arrive nowhere.' something better! i little knew what he was offering. the sleeping-room was furnished with two beds. i had one; and i will own i was a little abashed to find a young man and his wife and child in the act of mounting into the other. this was my first experience of the sort; and if i am always to feel equally silly and extraneous, i pray god it be my last as well. i kept my eyes to myself, and know nothing of the woman except that she had beautiful arms, and seemed no whit embarrassed by my appearance. as a matter of fact, the situation was more trying to me than to the pair. a pair keep each other in countenance; it is the single gentleman who has to blush. but i could not help attributing my sentiments to the husband, and sought to conciliate his tolerance with a cup of brandy from my flask. he told me that he was a cooper of alais travelling to st. etienne in search of work, and that in his spare moments he followed the fatal calling of a maker of matches. me he readily enough divined to be a brandy merchant. i was up first in the morning (monday, september 23rd), and hastened my toilette guiltily, so as to leave a clear field for madam, the cooper's wife. i drank a bowl of milk, and set off to explore the neighbourhood of bouchet. it was perishing cold, a grey, windy, wintry morning; misty clouds flew fast and low; the wind piped over the naked platform; and the only speck of colour was away behind mount mezenc and the eastern hills, where the sky still wore the orange of the dawn. it was five in the morning, and four thousand feet above the sea; and i had to bury my hands in my pockets and trot. people were trooping out to the labours of the field by twos and threes, and all turned round to stare upon the stranger. i had seen them coming back last night, i saw them going afield again; and there was the life of bouchet in a nutshell. when i came back to the inn for a bit of breakfast, the landlady was in the kitchen combing out her daughter's hair; and i made her my compliments upon its beauty. 'oh no,' said the mother; 'it is not so beautiful as it ought to be. look, it is too fine.' thus does a wise peasantry console itself under adverse physical circumstances, and, by a startling democratic process, the defects of the majority decide the type of beauty. 'and where,' said i, 'is monsieur?' 'the master of the house is upstairs,' she answered, 'making you a goad.' blessed be the man who invented goads! blessed the innkeeper of bouchet st. nicolas, who introduced me to their use! this plain wand, with an eighth of an inch of pin, was indeed a sceptre when he put it in my hands. thenceforward modestine was my slave. a prick, and she passed the most inviting stable door. a prick, and she broke forth into a gallant little trotlet that devoured the miles. it was not a remarkable speed, when all was said; and we took four hours to cover ten miles at the best of it. but what a heavenly change since yesterday! no more wielding of the ugly cudgel; no more flailing with an aching arm; no more broadsword exercise, but a discreet and gentlemanly fence. and what although now and then a drop of blood should appear on modestine's mousecoloured wedge-like rump? i should have preferred it otherwise, indeed; but yesterday's exploits had purged my heart of all humanity. the perverse little devil, since she would not be taken with kindness, must even go with pricking. it was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a cavalcade of stridelegged ladies and a pair of post-runners, the road was dead solitary all the way to pradelles. i scarce remember an incident but one. a handsome foal with a bell about his neck came charging up to us upon a stretch of common, sniffed the air martially as one about to do great deeds, and suddenly thinking otherwise in his green young heart, put about and galloped off as he had come, the bell tinkling in the wind. for a long while afterwards i saw his noble attitude as he drew up, and heard the note of his bell; and when i struck the high-road, the song of the telegraph-wires seemed to continue the same music. pradelles stands on a hillside, high above the allier, surrounded by rich meadows. they were cutting aftermath on all sides, which gave the neighbourhood, this gusty autumn morning, an untimely smell of hay. on the opposite bank of the allier the land kept mounting for miles to the horizon: a tanned and sallow autumn landscape, with black blots of fir-wood and white roads wandering through the hills. over all this the clouds shed a uniform and purplish shadow, sad and somewhat menacing, exaggerating height and distance, and throwing into still higher relief the twisted ribbons of the highway. it was a cheerless prospect, but one stimulating to a traveller. for i was now upon the limit of velay, and all that i beheld lay in another county wild gevaudan, mountainous, uncultivated, and but recently disforested from terror of the wolves. wolves, alas, like bandits, seem to flee the traveller's advance; and you may trudge through all our comfortable europe, and not meet with an adventure worth the name. but here, if anywhere, a man was on the frontiers of hope. for this was the land of the evermemorable beast, the napoleon bonaparte of wolves. what a career was his! he lived ten months at free quarters in gevaudan and vivarais; he ate women and children and 'shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty'; he pursued armed horsemen; he has been seen at broad noonday chasing a post-chaise and outrider along the king's high-road, and chaise and outrider fleeing before him at the gallop. he was placarded like a political offender, and ten thousand francs were offered for his head. and yet, when he was shot and sent to versailles, behold! a common wolf, and even small for that. 'though i could reach from pole to pole,' sang alexander pope; the little corporal shook europe; and if all wolves had been as this wolf, they would have changed the history of man. m. elie berthet has made him the hero of a novel, which i have read, and do not wish to read again. i hurried over my lunch, and was proof against the landlady's desire that i should visit our lady of pradelles, 'who performed many miracles, although she was of wood'; and before three-quarters of an hour i was goading modestine down the steep descent that leads to langogne on the allier. on both sides of the road, in big dusty fields, farmers were preparing for next spring. every fifty yards a yoke of great-necked stolid oxen were patiently haling at the plough. i saw one of these mild formidable servants of the glebe, who took a sudden interest in modestine and me. the furrow down which he was journeying lay at an angle to the road, and his head was solidly fixed to the yoke like those of caryatides below a ponderous cornice; but he screwed round his big honest eyes and followed us with a ruminating look, until his master bade him turn the plough and proceed to reascend the field. from all these furrowing ploughshares, from the feet of oxen, from a labourer here and there who was breaking the dry clods with a hoe, the wind carried away a thin dust like so much smoke. it was a fine, busy, breathing, rustic landscape; and as i continued to descend, the highlands of gevaudan kept mounting in front of me against the sky. i had crossed the loire the day before; now i was to cross the allier; so near are these two confluents in their youth. just at the bridge of langogne, as the long-promised rain was beginning to fall, a lassie of some seven or eight addressed me in the sacramental phrase, 'd'ou'st-ce-que vous venez?' she did it with so high an air that she set me laughing; and this cut her to the quick. she was evidently one who reckoned on respect, and stood looking after me in silent dudgeon, as i crossed the bridge and entered the county of gevaudan. upper gevaudan the way also here was very wearisome through dirt and slabbiness; nor was there on all this ground so much as one inn or victuallinghouse wherein to refresh the feebler sort. pilgrim's progress. a camp in the dark the next day (tuesday, september 24th), it was two o'clock in the afternoon before i got my journal written up and my knapsack repaired, for i was determined to carry my knapsack in the future and have no more ado with baskets; and half an hour afterwards i set out for le cheylard l'eveque, a place on the borders of the forest of mercoire. a man, i was told, should walk there in an hour and a half; and i thought it scarce too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with a donkey might cover the same distance in four hours. all the way up the long hill from langogne it rained and hailed alternately; the wind kept freshening steadily, although slowly; plentiful hurrying clouds some dragging veils of straight rainshower, others massed and luminous as though promising snow careered out of the north and followed me along my way. i was soon out of the cultivated basin of the allier, and away from the ploughing oxen, and such-like sights of the country. moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines, woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few naked cottages and bleak fields, these were the characters of the country. hill and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, split into three or four, died away in marshy hollows, and began again sporadically on hillsides or at the borders of a wood. there was no direct road to cheylard, and it was no easy affair to make a passage in this uneven country and through this intermittent labyrinth of tracks. it must have been about four when i struck sagnerousse, and went on my way rejoicing in a sure point of departure. two hours afterwards, the dusk rapidly falling, in a lull of the wind, i issued from a fir-wood where i had long been wandering, and found, not the looked-for village, but another marish bottom among rough-and-tumble hills. for some time past i had heard the ringing of cattle-bells ahead; and now, as i came out of the skirts of the wood, i saw near upon a dozen cows and perhaps as many more black figures, which i conjectured to be children, although the mist had almost unrecognisably exaggerated their forms. these were all silently following each other round and round in a circle, now taking hands, now breaking up with chains and reverences. a dance of children appeals to very innocent and lively thoughts; but, at nightfall on the marshes, the thing was eerie and fantastic to behold. even i, who am well enough read in herbert spencer, felt a sort of silence fall for an instant on my mind. the next, i was pricking modestine forward, and guiding her like an unruly ship through the open. in a path, she went doggedly ahead of her own accord, as before a fair wind; but once on the turf or among heather, and the brute became demented. the tendency of lost travellers to go round in a circle was developed in her to the degree of passion, and it took all the steering i had in me to keep even a decently straight course through a single field. while i was thus desperately tacking through the bog, children and cattle began to disperse, until only a pair of girls remained behind. from these i sought direction on my path. the peasantry in general were but little disposed to counsel a wayfarer. one old devil simply retired into his house, and barricaded the door on my approach; and i might beat and shout myself hoarse, he turned a deaf ear. another, having given me a direction which, as i found afterwards, i had misunderstood, complacently watched me going wrong without adding a sign. he did not care a stalk of parsley if i wandered all night upon the hills! as for these two girls, they were a pair of impudent sly sluts, with not a thought but mischief. one put out her tongue at me, the other bade me follow the cows; and they both giggled and jogged each other's elbows. the beast of gevaudan ate about a hundred children of this district; i began to think of him with sympathy. leaving the girls, i pushed on through the bog, and got into another wood and upon a well-marked road. it grew darker and darker. modestine, suddenly beginning to smell mischief, bettered the pace of her own accord, and from that time forward gave me no trouble. it was the first sign of intelligence i had occasion to remark in her. at the same time, the wind freshened into half a gale, and another heavy discharge of rain came flying up out of the north. at the other side of the wood i sighted some red windows in the dusk. this was the hamlet of fouzilhic; three houses on a hillside, near a wood of birches. here i found a delightful old man, who came a little way with me in the rain to put me safely on the road for cheylard. he would hear of no reward; but shook his hands above his head almost as if in menace, and refused volubly and shrilly, in unmitigated patois. all seemed right at last. my thoughts began to turn upon dinner and a fireside, and my heart was agreeably softened in my bosom. alas, and i was on the brink of new and greater miseries! suddenly, at a single swoop, the night fell. i have been abroad in many a black night, but never in a blacker. a glimmer of rocks, a glimmer of the track where it was well beaten, a certain fleecy density, or night within night, for a tree, this was all that i could discriminate. the sky was simply darkness overhead; even the flying clouds pursued their way invisibly to human eyesight. i could not distinguish my hand at arm's-length from the track, nor my goad, at the same distance, from the meadows or the sky. soon the road that i was following split, after the fashion of the country, into three or four in a piece of rocky meadow. since modestine had shown such a fancy for beaten roads, i tried her instinct in this predicament. but the instinct of an ass is what might be expected from the name; in half a minute she was clambering round and round among some boulders, as lost a donkey as you would wish to see. i should have camped long before had i been properly provided; but as this was to be so short a stage, i had brought no wine, no bread for myself, and little over a pound for my lady friend. add to this, that i and modestine were both handsomely wetted by the showers. but now, if i could have found some water, i should have camped at once in spite of all. water, however, being entirely absent, except in the form of rain, i determined to return to fouzilhic, and ask a guide a little farther on my way 'a little farther lend thy guiding hand.' the thing was easy to decide, hard to accomplish. in this sensible roaring blackness i was sure of nothing but the direction of the wind. to this i set my face; the road had disappeared, and i went across country, now in marshy opens, now baffled by walls unscalable to modestine, until i came once more in sight of some red windows. this time they were differently disposed. it was not fouzilhic, but fouzilhac, a hamlet little distant from the other in space, but worlds away in the spirit of its inhabitants. i tied modestine to a gate, and groped forward, stumbling among rocks, plunging mid-leg in bog, until i gained the entrance of the village. in the first lighted house there was a woman who would not open to me. she could do nothing, she cried to me through the door, being alone and lame; but if i would apply at the next house, there was a man who could help me if he had a mind. they came to the next door in force, a man, two women, and a girl, and brought a pair of lanterns to examine the wayfarer. the man was not ill-looking, but had a shifty smile. he leaned against the doorpost, and heard me state my case. all i asked was a guide as far as cheylard. 'c'est que, voyez-vous, il fait noir,' said he. i told him that was just my reason for requiring help. 'i understand that,' said he, looking uncomfortable; 'mais c'est de la peine.' i was willing to pay, i said. he shook his head. i rose as high as ten francs; but he continued to shake his head. 'name your own price, then,' said i. 'ce n'est pas ca,' he said at length, and with evident difficulty; 'but i am not going to cross the door mais je ne sortirai pas de la porte.' i grew a little warm, and asked him what he proposed that i should do. 'where are you going beyond cheylard?' he asked by way of answer. 'that is no affair of yours,' i returned, for i was not going to indulge his bestial curiosity; 'it changes nothing in my present predicament.' 'c'est vrai, ca,' he acknowledged, with a laugh; 'oui, c'est vrai. et d'ou venez-vous?' a better man than i might have felt nettled. 'oh,' said i, 'i am not going to answer any of your questions, so you may spare yourself the trouble of putting them. i am late enough already; i want help. if you will not guide me yourself, at least help me to find some one else who will.' 'hold on,' he cried suddenly. 'was it not you who passed in the meadow while it was still day?' 'yes, yes,' said the girl, whom i had not hitherto recognised; 'it was monsieur; i told him to follow the cow.' 'as for you, mademoiselle,' said i, 'you are a farceuse.' 'and,' added the man, 'what the devil have you done to be still here?' what the devil, indeed! but there i was. 'the great thing,' said i, 'is to make an end of it'; and once more proposed that he should help me to find a guide. 'c'est que,' he said again, 'c'est que il fait noir.' 'very well,' said i; 'take one of your lanterns.' 'no,' he cried, drawing a thought backward, and again intrenching himself behind one of his former phrases; 'i will not cross the door.' i looked at him. i saw unaffected terror struggling on his face with unaffected shame; he was smiling pitifully and wetting his lip with his tongue, like a detected schoolboy. i drew a brief picture of my state, and asked him what i was to do. 'i don't know,' he said; 'i will not cross the door.' here was the beast of gevaudan, and no mistake. 'sir,' said i, with my most commanding manners, 'you are a coward.' and with that i turned my back upon the family party, who hastened to retire within their fortifications; and the famous door was closed again, but not till i had overheard the sound of laughter. filia barbara pater barbarior. let me say it in the plural: the beasts of gevaudan. the lanterns had somewhat dazzled me, and i ploughed distressfully among stones and rubbish-heaps. all the other houses in the village were both dark and silent; and though i knocked at here and there a door, my knocking was unanswered. it was a bad business; i gave up fouzilhac with my curses. the rain had stopped, and the wind, which still kept rising, began to dry my coat and trousers. 'very well,' thought i, 'water or no water, i must camp.' but the first thing was to return to modestine. i am pretty sure i was twenty minutes groping for my lady in the dark; and if it had not been for the unkindly services of the bog, into which i once more stumbled, i might have still been groping for her at the dawn. my next business was to gain the shelter of a wood, for the wind was cold as well as boisterous. how, in this well-wooded district, i should have been so long in finding one, is another of the insoluble mysteries of this day's adventures; but i will take my oath that i put near an hour to the discovery. at last black trees began to show upon my left, and, suddenly crossing the road, made a cave of unmitigated blackness right in front. i call it a cave without exaggeration; to pass below that arch of leaves was like entering a dungeon. i felt about until my hand encountered a stout branch, and to this i tied modestine, a haggard, drenched, desponding donkey. then i lowered my pack, laid it along the wall on the margin of the road, and unbuckled the straps. i knew well enough where the lantern was; but where were the candles? i groped and groped among the tumbled articles, and, while i was thus groping, suddenly i touched the spirit-lamp. salvation! this would serve my turn as well. the wind roared unwearyingly among the trees; i could hear the boughs tossing and the leaves churning through half a mile of forest; yet the scene of my encampment was not only as black as the pit, but admirably sheltered. at the second match the wick caught flame. the light was both livid and shifting; but it cut me off from the universe, and doubled the darkness of the surrounding night. i tied modestine more conveniently for herself, and broke up half the black bread for her supper, reserving the other half against the morning. then i gathered what i should want within reach, took off my wet boots and gaiters, which i wrapped in my waterproof, arranged my knapsack for a pillow under the flap of my sleepingbag, insinuated my limbs into the interior, and buckled myself in like a bambino. i opened a tin of bologna sausage and broke a cake of chocolate, and that was all i had to eat. it may sound offensive, but i ate them together, bite by bite, by way of bread and meat. all i had to wash down this revolting mixture was neat brandy: a revolting beverage in itself. but i was rare and hungry; ate well, and smoked one of the best cigarettes in my experience. then i put a stone in my straw hat, pulled the flap of my fur cap over my neck and eyes, put my revolver ready to my hand, and snuggled well down among the sheepskins. i questioned at first if i were sleepy, for i felt my heart beating faster than usual, as if with an agreeable excitement to which my mind remained a stranger. but as soon as my eyelids touched, that subtle glue leaped between them, and they would no more come separate. the wind among the trees was my lullaby. sometimes it sounded for minutes together with a steady, even rush, not rising nor abating; and again it would swell and burst like a great crashing breaker, and the trees would patter me all over with big drops from the rain of the afternoon. night after night, in my own bedroom in the country, i have given ear to this perturbing concert of the wind among the woods; but whether it was a difference in the trees, or the lie of the ground, or because i was myself outside and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the wind sang to a different tune among these woods of gevaudan. i hearkened and hearkened; and meanwhile sleep took gradual possession of my body and subdued my thoughts and senses; but still my last waking effort was to listen and distinguish, and my last conscious state was one of wonder at the foreign clamour in my ears. twice in the course of the dark hours once when a stone galled me underneath the sack, and again when the poor patient modestine, growing angry, pawed and stamped upon the road i was recalled for a brief while to consciousness, and saw a star or two overhead, and the lace-like edge of the foliage against the sky. when i awoke for the third time (wednesday, september 25th), the world was flooded with a blue light, the mother of the dawn. i saw the leaves labouring in the wind and the ribbon of the road; and, on turning my head, there was modestine tied to a beech, and standing half across the path in an attitude of inimitable patience. i closed my eyes again, and set to thinking over the experience of the night. i was surprised to find how easy and pleasant it had been, even in this tempestuous weather. the stone which annoyed me would not have been there, had i not been forced to camp blindfold in the opaque night; and i had felt no other inconvenience, except when my feet encountered the lantern or the second volume of peyrat's pastors of the desert among the mixed contents of my sleeping-bag; nay, more, i had felt not a touch of cold, and awakened with unusually lightsome and clear sensations. with that, i shook myself, got once more into my boots and gaiters, and, breaking up the rest of the bread for modestine, strolled about to see in what part of the world i had awakened. ulysses, left on ithaca, and with a mind unsettled by the goddess, was not more pleasantly astray. i have been after an adventure all my life, a pure dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and heroic voyagers; and thus to be found by morning in a random woodside nook in gevaudan not knowing north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the earth, an inland castaway was to find a fraction of my day-dreams realised. i was on the skirts of a little wood of birch, sprinkled with a few beeches; behind, it adjoined another wood of fir; and in front, it broke up and went down in open order into a shallow and meadowy dale. all around there were bare hilltops, some near, some far away, as the perspective closed or opened, but none apparently much higher than the rest. the wind huddled the trees. the golden specks of autumn in the birches tossed shiveringly. overhead the sky was full of strings and shreds of vapour, flying, vanishing, reappearing, and turning about an axis like tumblers, as the wind hounded them through heaven. it was wild weather and famishing cold. i ate some chocolate, swallowed a mouthful of brandy, and smoked a cigarette before the cold should have time to disable my fingers. and by the time i had got all this done, and had made my pack and bound it on the pack-saddle, the day was tiptoe on the threshold of the east. we had not gone many steps along the lane, before the sun, still invisible to me, sent a glow of gold over some cloud mountains that lay ranged along the eastern sky. the wind had us on the stern, and hurried us bitingly forward. i buttoned myself into my coat, and walked on in a pleasant frame of mind with all men, when suddenly, at a corner, there was fouzilhic once more in front of me. nor only that, but there was the old gentleman who had escorted me so far the night before, running out of his house at sight of me, with hands upraised in horror. 'my poor boy!' he cried, 'what does this mean?' i told him what had happened. he beat his old hands like clappers in a mill, to think how lightly he had let me go; but when he heard of the man of fouzilhac, anger and depression seized upon his mind. 'this time, at least,' said he, 'there shall be no mistake.' and he limped along, for he was very rheumatic, for about half a mile, and until i was almost within sight of cheylard, the destination i had hunted for so long. cheylard and luc candidly, it seemed little worthy of all this searching. a few broken ends of village, with no particular street, but a succession of open places heaped with logs and fagots; a couple of tilted crosses, a shrine to our lady of all graces on the summit of a little hill; and all this, upon a rattling highland river, in the corner of a naked valley. what went ye out for to see? thought i to myself. but the place had a life of its own. i found a board, commemorating the liberalities of cheylard for the past year, hung up, like a banner, in the diminutive and tottering church. in 1877, it appeared, the inhabitants subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes for the 'work of the propagation of the faith.' some of this, i could not help hoping, would be applied to my native land. cheylard scrapes together halfpence for the darkened souls in edinburgh; while balquhidder and dunrossness bemoan the ignorance of rome. thus, to the high entertainment of the angels, do we pelt each other with evangelists, like schoolboys bickering in the snow. the inn was again singularly unpretentious. the whole furniture of a not ill-to-do family was in the kitchen: the beds, the cradle, the clothes, the plate-rack, the meal-chest, and the photograph of the parish priest. there were five children, one of whom was set to its morning prayers at the stair-foot soon after my arrival, and a sixth would ere long be forthcoming. i was kindly received by these good folk. they were much interested in my misadventure. the wood in which i had slept belonged to them; the man of fouzilhac they thought a monster of iniquity, and counselled me warmly to summon him at law 'because i might have died.' the good wife was horror-stricken to see me drink over a pint of uncreamed milk. 'you will do yourself an evil,' she said. 'permit me to boil it for you.' after i had begun the morning on this delightful liquor, she having an infinity of things to arrange, i was permitted, nay requested, to make a bowl of chocolate for myself. my boots and gaiters were hung up to dry, and, seeing me trying to write my journal on my knee, the eldest daughter let down a hinged table in the chimneycorner for my convenience. here i wrote, drank my chocolate, and finally ate an omelette before i left. the table was thick with dust; for, as they explained, it was not used except in winter weather. i had a clear look up the vent, through brown agglomerations of soot and blue vapour, to the sky; and whenever a handful of twigs was thrown on to the fire, my legs were scorched by the blaze. the husband had begun life as a muleteer, and when i came to charge modestine showed himself full of the prudence of his art. 'you will have to change this package,' said he; 'it ought to be in two parts, and then you might have double the weight.' i explained that i wanted no more weight; and for no donkey hitherto created would i cut my sleeping-bag in two. 'it fatigues her, however,' said the innkeeper; 'it fatigues her greatly on the march. look.' alas, there were her two forelegs no better than raw beef on the inside, and blood was running from under her tail. they told me when i started, and i was ready to believe it, that before a few days i should come to love modestine like a dog. three days had passed, we had shared some misadventures, and my heart was still as cold as a potato towards my beast of burden. she was pretty enough to look at; but then she had given proof of dead stupidity, redeemed indeed by patience, but aggravated by flashes of sorry and ill-judged light-heartedness. and i own this new discovery seemed another point against her. what the devil was the good of a sheass if she could not carry a sleeping-bag and a few necessaries? i saw the end of the fable rapidly approaching, when i should have to carry modestine. aesop was the man to know the world! i assure you i set out with heavy thoughts upon my short day's march. it was not only heavy thoughts about modestine that weighted me upon the way; it was a leaden business altogether. for first, the wind blew so rudely that i had to hold on the pack with one hand from cheylard to luc; and second, my road lay through one of the most beggarly countries in the world. it was like the worst of the scottish highlands, only worse; cold, naked, and ignoble, scant of wood, scant of heather, scant of life. a road and some fences broke the unvarying waste, and the line of the road was marked by upright pillars, to serve in time of snow. why any one should desire to visit either luc or cheylard is more than my much-inventing spirit can suppose. for my part, i travel not to go anywhere, but to go. i travel for travel's sake. the great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. to hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and compose the mind. and when the present is so exacting, who can annoy himself about the future? i came out at length above the allier. a more unsightly prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to fancy. shelving hills rose round it on all sides, here dabbled with wood and fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and hairy with pines. the colour throughout was black or ashen, and came to a point in the ruins of the castle of luc, which pricked up impudently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white statue of our lady, which, i heard with interest, weighed fifty quintals, and was to be dedicated on the 6th of october. through this sorry landscape trickled the allier and a tributary of nearly equal size, which came down to join it through a broad nude valley in vivarais. the weather had somewhat lightened, and the clouds massed in squadron; but the fierce wind still hunted them through heaven, and cast great ungainly splashes of shadow and sunlight over the scene. luc itself was a straggling double file of houses wedged between hill and river. it had no beauty, nor was there any notable feature, save the old castle overhead with its fifty quintals of brand-new madonna. but the inn was clean and large. the kitchen, with its two box-beds hung with clean check curtains, with its wide stone chimney, its chimney-shelf four yards long and garnished with lanterns and religious statuettes, its array of chests and pair of ticking clocks, was the very model of what a kitchen ought to be; a melodrama kitchen, suitable for bandits or noblemen in disguise. nor was the scene disgraced by the landlady, a handsome, silent, dark old woman, clothed and hooded in black like a nun. even the public bedroom had a character of its own, with the long deal tables and benches, where fifty might have dined, set out as for a harvest-home, and the three box-beds along the wall. in one of these, lying on straw and covered with a pair of table-napkins, did i do penance all night long in goose-flesh and chattering teeth, and sigh, from time to time as i awakened, for my sheepskin sack and the lee of some great wood. our lady of the snows 'i behold the house, the brotherhood austere and what am i, that i am here?' matthew arnold. father apollinaris next morning (thursday, 20th september) i took the road in a new order. the sack was no longer doubled, but hung at full length across the saddle, a green sausage six feet long with a tuft of blue wool hanging out of either end. it was more picturesque, it spared the donkey, and, as i began to see, it would ensure stability, blow high, blow low. but it was not without a pang that i had so decided. for although i had purchased a new cord, and made all as fast as i was able, i was yet jealously uneasy lest the flaps should tumble out and scatter my effects along the line of march. my way lay up the bald valley of the river, along the march of vivarais and gevaudan. the hills of gevaudan on the right were a little more naked, if anything, than those of vivarais upon the left, and the former had a monopoly of a low dotty underwood that grew thickly in the gorges and died out in solitary burrs upon the shoulders and the summits. black bricks of fir-wood were plastered here and there upon both sides, and here and there were cultivated fields. a railway ran beside the river; the only bit of railway in gevaudan, although there are many proposals afoot and surveys being made, and even, as they tell me, a station standing ready built in mende. a year or two hence and this may be another world. the desert is beleaguered. now may some languedocian wordsworth turn the sonnet into patois: 'mountains and vales and floods, heard ye that whistle?' at a place called la bastide i was directed to leave the river, and follow a road that mounted on the left among the hills of vivarais, the modern ardeche; for i was now come within a little way of my strange destination, the trappist monastery of our lady of the snows. the sun came out as i left the shelter of a pine-wood, and i beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. high rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the sun glittering on veins of rock, the underwood clambering in the hollows, as rude as god made them at the first. there was not a sign of man's hand in all the prospect; and indeed not a trace of his passage, save where generation after generation had walked in twisted footpaths, in and out among the beeches, and up and down upon the channelled slopes. the mists, which had hitherto beset me, were now broken into clouds, and fled swiftly and shone brightly in the sun. i drew a long breath. it was grateful to come, after so long, upon a scene of some attraction for the human heart. i own i like definite form in what my eyes are to rest upon; and if landscapes were sold, like the sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny plain and twopence coloured, i should go the length of twopence every day of my life. but if things had grown better to the south, it was still desolate and inclement near at hand. a spidery cross on every hill-top marked the neighbourhood of a religious house; and a quarter of a mile beyond, the outlook southward opening out and growing bolder with every step, a white statue of the virgin at the corner of a young plantation directed the traveller to our lady of the snows. here, then, i struck leftward, and pursued my way, driving my secular donkey before me, and creaking in my secular boots and gaiters, towards the asylum of silence. i had not gone very far ere the wind brought to me the clanging of a bell, and somehow, i can scarce tell why, my heart sank within me at the sound. i have rarely approached anything with more unaffected terror than the monastery of our lady of the snows. this it is to have had a protestant education. and suddenly, on turning a corner, fear took hold on me from head to foot slavish, superstitious fear; and though i did not stop in my advance, yet i went on slowly, like a man who should have passed a bourne unnoticed, and strayed into the country of the dead. for there, upon the narrow new-made road, between the stripling pines, was a mediaeval friar, fighting with a barrowful of turfs. every sunday of my childhood i used to study the hermits of marco sadeler enchanting prints, full of wood and field and mediaeval landscapes, as large as a county, for the imagination to go a-travelling in; and here, sure enough, was one of marco sadeler's heroes. he was robed in white like any spectre, and the hood falling back, in the instancy of his contention with the barrow, disclosed a pate as bald and yellow as a skull. he might have been buried any time these thousand years, and all the lively parts of him resolved into earth and broken up with the farmer's harrow. i was troubled besides in my mind as to etiquette. durst i address a person who was under a vow of silence? clearly not. but drawing near, i doffed my cap to him with a far-away superstitious reverence. he nodded back, and cheerfully addressed me. was i going to the monastery? who was i? an englishman? ah, an irishman, then? 'no,' i said, 'a scotsman.' a scotsman? ah, he had never seen a scotsman before. and he looked me all over, his good, honest, brawny countenance shining with interest, as a boy might look upon a lion or an alligator. from him i learned with disgust that i could not be received at our lady of the snows; i might get a meal, perhaps, but that was all. and then, as our talk ran on, and it turned out that i was not a pedlar, but a literary man, who drew landscapes and was going to write a book, he changed his manner of thinking as to my reception (for i fear they respect persons even in a trappist monastery), and told me i must be sure to ask for the father prior, and state my case to him in full. on second thoughts he determined to go down with me himself; he thought he could manage for me better. might he say that i was a geographer? no; i thought, in the interests of truth, he positively might not. 'very well, then' (with disappointment), 'an author.' it appeared he had been in a seminary with six young irishmen, all priests long since, who had received newspapers and kept him informed of the state of ecclesiastical affairs in england. and he asked me eagerly after dr. pusey, for whose conversion the good man had continued ever since to pray night and morning. 'i thought he was very near the truth,' he said; 'and he will reach it yet; there is so much virtue in prayer.' he must be a stiff, ungodly protestant who can take anything but pleasure in this kind and hopeful story. while he was thus near the subject, the good father asked me if i were a christian; and when he found i was not, or not after his way, he glossed it over with great good-will. the road which we were following, and which this stalwart father had made with his own two hands within the space of a year, came to a corner, and showed us some white buildings a little farther on beyond the wood. at the same time, the bell once more sounded abroad. we were hard upon the monastery. father apollinaris (for that was my companion's name) stopped me. 'i must not speak to you down there,' he said. 'ask for the brother porter, and all will be well. but try to see me as you go out again through the wood, where i may speak to you. i am charmed to have made your acquaintance.' and then suddenly raising his arms, flapping his fingers, and crying out twice, 'i must not speak, i must not speak!' he ran away in front of me, and disappeared into the monastery door. i own this somewhat ghastly eccentricity went a good way to revive my terrors. but where one was so good and simple, why should not all be alike? i took heart of grace, and went forward to the gate as fast as modestine, who seemed to have a disaffection for monasteries, would permit. it was the first door, in my acquaintance of her, which she had not shown an indecent haste to enter. i summoned the place in form, though with a quaking heart. father michael, the father hospitaller, and a pair of brown-robed brothers came to the gate and spoke with me a while. i think my sack was the great attraction; it had already beguiled the heart of poor apollinaris, who had charged me on my life to show it to the father prior, but whether it was my address, or the sack, or the idea speedily published among that part of the brotherhood who attend on strangers that i was not a pedlar after all, i found no difficulty as to my reception. modestine was led away by a layman to the stables, and i and my pack were received into our lady of the snows. the monks father michael, a pleasant, fresh-faced, smiling man, perhaps of thirty-five, took me to the pantry, and gave me a glass of liqueur to stay me until dinner. we had some talk, or rather i should say he listened to my prattle indulgently enough, but with an abstracted air, like a spirit with a thing of clay. and truly, when i remember that i descanted principally on my appetite, and that it must have been by that time more than eighteen hours since father michael had so much as broken bread, i can well understand that he would find an earthly savour in my conversation. but his manner, though superior, was exquisitely gracious; and i find i have a lurking curiosity as to father michael's past. the whet administered, i was left alone for a little in the monastery garden. this is no more than the main court, laid out in sandy paths and beds of parti-coloured dahlias, and with a fountain and a black statue of the virgin in the centre. the buildings stand around it four-square, bleak, as yet unseasoned by the years and weather, and with no other features than a belfry and a pair of slated gables. brothers in white, brothers in brown, passed silently along the sanded alleys; and when i first came out, three hooded monks were kneeling on the terrace at their prayers. a naked hill commands the monastery upon one side, and the wood commands it on the other. it lies exposed to wind; the snow falls off and on from october to may, and sometimes lies six weeks on end; but if they stood in eden, with a climate like heaven's, the buildings themselves would offer the same wintry and cheerless aspect; and for my part, on this wild september day, before i was called to dinner, i felt chilly in and out. when i had eaten well and heartily, brother ambrose, a hearty conversible frenchman (for all those who wait on strangers have the liberty to speak), led me to a little room in that part of the building which is set apart for mm. les retraitants. it was clean and whitewashed, and furnished with strict necessaries, a crucifix, a bust of the late pope, the imitation in french, a book of religious meditations, and the life of elizabeth seton, evangelist, it would appear, of north america and of new england in particular. as far as my experience goes, there is a fair field for some more evangelisation in these quarters; but think of cotton mather! i should like to give him a reading of this little work in heaven, where i hope he dwells; but perhaps he knows all that already, and much more; and perhaps he and mrs. seton are the dearest friends, and gladly unite their voices in the everlasting psalm. over the table, to conclude the inventory of the room, hung a set of regulations for mm. les retraitants: what services they should attend, when they were to tell their beads or meditate, and when they were to rise and go to rest. at the foot was a notable n.b.: 'le temps libre est employe a l'examen de conscience, a la confession, a faire de bonnes resolutions, etc.' to make good resolutions, indeed! you might talk as fruitfully of making the hair grow on your head. i had scarce explored my niche when brother ambrose returned. an english boarder, it appeared, would like to speak with me. i professed my willingness, and the friar ushered in a fresh, young, little irishman of fifty, a deacon of the church, arrayed in strict canonicals, and wearing on his head what, in default of knowledge, i can only call the ecclesiastical shako. he had lived seven years in retreat at a convent of nuns in belgium, and now five at our lady of the snows; he never saw an english newspaper; he spoke french imperfectly, and had he spoken it like a native, there was not much chance of conversation where he dwelt. with this, he was a man eminently sociable, greedy of news, and simple-minded like a child. if i was pleased to have a guide about the monastery, he was no less delighted to see an english face and hear an english tongue. he showed me his own room, where he passed his time among breviaries, hebrew bibles, and the waverley novels. thence he led me to the cloisters, into the chapter-house, through the vestry, where the brothers' gowns and broad straw hats were hanging up, each with his religious name upon a board names full of legendary suavity and interest, such as basil, hilarion, raphael, or pacifique; into the library, where were all the works of veuillot and chateaubriand, and the odes et ballades, if you please, and even moliere, to say nothing of innumerable fathers and a great variety of local and general historians. thence my good irishman took me round the workshops, where brothers bake bread, and make cartwheels, and take photographs; where one superintends a collection of curiosities, and another a gallery of rabbits. for in a trappist monastery each monk has an occupation of his own choice, apart from his religious duties and the general labours of the house. each must sing in the choir, if he has a voice and ear, and join in the haymaking if he has a hand to stir; but in his private hours, although he must be occupied, he may be occupied on what he likes. thus i was told that one brother was engaged with literature; while father apollinaris busies himself in making roads, and the abbot employs himself in binding books. it is not so long since this abbot was consecrated, by the way; and on that occasion, by a special grace, his mother was permitted to enter the chapel and witness the ceremony of consecration. a proud day for her to have a son a mitred abbot; it makes you glad to think they let her in. in all these journeyings to and fro, many silent fathers and brethren fell in our way. usually they paid no more regard to our passage than if we had been a cloud; but sometimes the good deacon had a permission to ask of them, and it was granted by a peculiar movement of the hands, almost like that of a dog's paws in swimming, or refused by the usual negative signs, and in either case with lowered eyelids and a certain air of contrition, as of a man who was steering very close to evil. the monks, by special grace of their abbot, were still taking two meals a day; but it was already time for their grand fast, which begins somewhere in september and lasts till easter, and during which they eat but once in the twenty-four hours, and that at two in the afternoon, twelve hours after they have begun the toil and vigil of the day. their meals are scanty, but even of these they eat sparingly; and though each is allowed a small carafe of wine, many refrain from this indulgence. without doubt, the most of mankind grossly overeat themselves; our meals serve not only for support, but as a hearty and natural diversion from the labour of life. yet, though excess may be hurtful, i should have thought this trappist regimen defective. and i am astonished, as i look back, at the freshness of face and cheerfulness of manner of all whom i beheld. a happier nor a healthier company i should scarce suppose that i have ever seen. as a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and with the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of an uncertain tenure, and death no infrequent visitor, at our lady of the snows. this, at least, was what was told me. but if they die easily, they must live healthily in the meantime, for they seemed all firm of flesh and high in colour; and the only morbid sign that i could observe, an unusual brilliancy of eye, was one that served rather to increase the general impression of vivacity and strength. those with whom i spoke were singularly sweet-tempered, with what i can only call a holy cheerfulness in air and conversation. there is a note, in the direction to visitors, telling them not to be offended at the curt speech of those who wait upon them, since it is proper to monks to speak little. the note might have been spared; to a man the hospitallers were all brimming with innocent talk, and, in my experience of the monastery, it was easier to begin than to break off a conversation. with the exception of father michael, who was a man of the world, they showed themselves full of kind and healthy interest in all sorts of subjects in politics, in voyages, in my sleeping-sack and not without a certain pleasure in the sound of their own voices. as for those who are restricted to silence, i can only wonder how they bear their solemn and cheerless isolation. and yet, apart from any view of mortification, i can see a certain policy, not only in the exclusion of women, but in this vow of silence. i have had some experience of lay phalansteries, of an artistic, not to say a bacchanalian character; and seen more than one association easily formed and yet more easily dispersed. with a cistercian rule, perhaps they might have lasted longer. in the neighbourhood of women it is but a touch-and-go association that can be formed among defenceless men; the stronger electricity is sure to triumph; the dreams of boyhood, the schemes of youth, are abandoned after an interview of ten minutes, and the arts and sciences, and professional male jollity, deserted at once for two sweet eyes and a caressing accent. and next after this, the tongue is the great divider. i am almost ashamed to pursue this worldly criticism of a religious rule; but there is yet another point in which the trappist order appeals to me as a model of wisdom. by two in the morning the clapper goes upon the bell, and so on, hour by hour, and sometimes quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour of rest; so infinitesimally is the day divided among different occupations. the man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries from his hutches to the chapel, the chapter-room, or the refectory, all day long: every hour he has an office to sing, a duty to perform; from two, when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns to receive the comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet and occupied with manifold and changing business. i know many persons, worth several thousands in the year, who are not so fortunate in the disposal of their lives. into how many houses would not the note of the monastery bell, dividing the day into manageable portions, bring peace of mind and healthful activity of body! we speak of hardships, but the true hardship is to be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our own dull and foolish manner. from this point of view, we may perhaps better understand the monk's existence. a long novitiate and every proof of constancy of mind and strength of body is required before admission to the order; but i could not find that many were discouraged. in the photographer's studio, which figures so strangely among the outbuildings, my eye was attracted by the portrait of a young fellow in the uniform of a private of foot. this was one of the novices, who came of the age for service, and marched and drilled and mounted guard for the proper time among the garrison of algiers. here was a man who had surely seen both sides of life before deciding; yet as soon as he was set free from service he returned to finish his novitiate. this austere rule entitles a man to heaven as by right. when the trappist sickens, he quits not his habit; he lies in the bed of death as he has prayed and laboured in his frugal and silent existence; and when the liberator comes, at the very moment, even before they have carried him in his robe to lie his little last in the chapel among continual chantings, joy-bells break forth, as if for a marriage, from the slated belfry, and proclaim throughout the neighbourhood that another soul has gone to god. at night, under the conduct of my kind irishman, i took my place in the gallery to hear compline and salve regina, with which the cistercians bring every day to a conclusion. there were none of those circumstances which strike the protestant as childish or as tawdry in the public offices of rome. a stern simplicity, heightened by the romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. i recall the whitewashed chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded and revealed, the strong manly singing, the silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and then the clear trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in to show that the last office was over and the hour of sleep had come; and when i remember, i am not surprised that i made my escape into the court with somewhat whirling fancies, and stood like a man bewildered in the windy starry night. but i was weary; and when i had quieted my spirits with elizabeth seton's memoirs a dull work the cold and the raving of the wind among the pines (for my room was on that side of the monastery which adjoins the woods) disposed me readily to slumber. i was wakened at black midnight, as it seemed, though it was really two in the morning, by the first stroke upon the bell. all the brothers were then hurrying to the chapel; the dead in life, at this untimely hour, were already beginning the uncomforted labours of their day. the dead in life there was a chill reflection. and the words of a french song came back into my memory, telling of the best of our mixed existence: 'que t'as de belles filles, girofle! girofla! que t'as de belles filles, l'amour let comptera!' and i blessed god that i was free to wander, free to hope, and free to love. the boarders but there was another side to my residence at our lady of the snows. at this late season there were not many boarders; and yet i was not alone in the public part of the monastery. this itself is hard by the gate, with a small dining-room on the ground-floor and a whole corridor of cells similar to mine upstairs. i have stupidly forgotten the board for a regular retraitant; but it was somewhere between three and five francs a day, and i think most probably the first. chance visitors like myself might give what they chose as a free-will offering, but nothing was demanded. i may mention that when i was going away, father michael refused twenty francs as excessive. i explained the reasoning which led me to offer him so much; but even then, from a curious point of honour, he would not accept it with his own hand. 'i have no right to refuse for the monastery,' he explained, 'but i should prefer if you would give it to one of the brothers.' i had dined alone, because i arrived late; but at supper i found two other guests. one was a country parish priest, who had walked over that morning from the seat of his cure near mende to enjoy four days of solitude and prayer. he was a grenadier in person, with the hale colour and circular wrinkles of a peasant; and as he complained much of how he had been impeded by his skirts upon the march, i have a vivid fancy portrait of him, striding along, upright, big-boned, with kilted cassock, through the bleak hills of gevaudan. the other was a short, grizzling, thick-set man, from forty-five to fifty, dressed in tweed with a knitted spencer, and the red ribbon of a decoration in his button-hole. this last was a hard person to classify. he was an old soldier, who had seen service and risen to the rank of commandant; and he retained some of the brisk decisive manners of the camp. on the other hand, as soon as his resignation was accepted, he had come to our lady of the snows as a boarder, and, after a brief experience of its ways, had decided to remain as a novice. already the new life was beginning to modify his appearance; already he had acquired somewhat of the quiet and smiling air of the brethren; and he was as yet neither an officer nor a trappist, but partook of the character of each. and certainly here was a man in an interesting nick of life. out of the noise of cannon and trumpets, he was in the act of passing into this still country bordering on the grave, where men sleep nightly in their grave-clothes, and, like phantoms, communicate by signs. at supper we talked politics. i make it my business, when i am in france, to preach political good-will and moderation, and to dwell on the example of poland, much as some alarmists in england dwell on the example of carthage. the priest and the commandant assured me of their sympathy with all i said, and made a heavy sighing over the bitterness of contemporary feeling. 'why, you cannot say anything to a man with which he does not absolutely agree,' said i, 'but he flies up at you in a temper.' they both declared that such a state of things was antichristian. while we were thus agreeing, what should my tongue stumble upon but a word in praise of gambetta's moderation. the old soldier's countenance was instantly suffused with blood; with the palms of his hands he beat the table like a naughty child. 'comment, monsieur?' he shouted. 'comment? gambetta moderate? will you dare to justify these words?' but the priest had not forgotten the tenor of our talk. and suddenly, in the height of his fury, the old soldier found a warning look directed on his face; the absurdity of his behaviour was brought home to him in a flash; and the storm came to an abrupt end, without another word. it was only in the morning, over our coffee (friday, september 27th), that this couple found out i was a heretic. i suppose i had misled them by some admiring expressions as to the monastic life around us; and it was only by a point-blank question that the truth came out. i had been tolerantly used both by simple father apollinaris and astute father michael; and the good irish deacon, when he heard of my religious weakness, had only patted me upon the shoulder and said, 'you must be a catholic and come to heaven.' but i was now among a different sect of orthodox. these two men were bitter and upright and narrow, like the worst of scotsmen, and indeed, upon my heart, i fancy they were worse. the priest snorted aloud like a battle-horse. 'et vous pretendez mourir dans cette espece de croyance?' he demanded; and there is no type used by mortal printers large enough to qualify his accent. i humbly indicated that i had no design of changing. but he could not away with such a monstrous attitude. 'no, no,' he cried; 'you must change. you have come here, god has led you here, and you must embrace the opportunity.' i made a slip in policy; i appealed to the family affections, though i was speaking to a priest and a soldier, two classes of men circumstantially divorced from the kind and homely ties of life. 'your father and mother?' cried the priest. 'very well; you will convert them in their turn when you go home.' i think i see my father's face! i would rather tackle the gaetulian lion in his den than embark on such an enterprise against the family theologian. but now the hunt was up; priest and soldier were in full cry for my conversion; and the work of the propagation of the faith, for which the people of cheylard subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes during 1877, was being gallantly pursued against myself. it was an odd but most effective proselytising. they never sought to convince me in argument, where i might have attempted some defence; but took it for granted that i was both ashamed and terrified at my position, and urged me solely on the point of time. now, they said, when god had led me to our lady of the snows, now was the appointed hour. 'do not be withheld by false shame,' observed the priest, for my encouragement. for one who feels very similarly to all sects of religion, and who has never been able, even for a moment, to weigh seriously the merit of this or that creed on the eternal side of things, however much he may see to praise or blame upon the secular and temporal side, the situation thus created was both unfair and painful. i committed my second fault in tact, and tried to plead that it was all the same thing in the end, and we were all drawing near by different sides to the same kind and undiscriminating friend and father. that, as it seems to lay spirits, would be the only gospel worthy of the name. but different men think differently; and this revolutionary aspiration brought down the priest with all the terrors of the law. he launched into harrowing details of hell. the damned, he said on the authority of a little book which he had read not a week before, and which, to add conviction to conviction, he had fully intended to bring along with him in his pocket were to occupy the same attitude through all eternity in the midst of dismal tortures. and as he thus expatiated, he grew in nobility of aspect with his enthusiasm. as a result the pair concluded that i should seek out the prior, since the abbot was from home, and lay my case immediately before him. 'c'est mon conseil comme ancien militaire,' observed the commandant; 'et celui de monsieur comme pretre.' 'oui,' added the cure, sententiously nodding; 'comme ancien militaire et comme pretre.' at this moment, whilst i was somewhat embarrassed how to answer, in came one of the monks, a little brown fellow, as lively as a grig, and with an italian accent, who threw himself at once into the contention, but in a milder and more persuasive vein, as befitted one of these pleasant brethren. look at him, he said. the rule was very hard; he would have dearly liked to stay in his own country, italy it was well known how beautiful it was, the beautiful italy; but then there were no trappists in italy; and he had a soul to save; and here he was. i am afraid i must be at bottom, what a cheerful indian critic has dubbed me, 'a faddling hedonist,' for this description of the brother's motives gave me somewhat of a shock. i should have preferred to think he had chosen the life for its own sake, and not for ulterior purposes; and this shows how profoundly i was out of sympathy with these good trappists, even when i was doing my best to sympathise. but to the cure the argument seemed decisive. 'hear that!' he cried. 'and i have seen a marquis here, a marquis, a marquis' he repeated the holy word three times over 'and other persons high in society; and generals. and here, at your side, is this gentleman, who has been so many years in armies decorated, an old warrior. and here he is, ready to dedicate himself to god.' i was by this time so thoroughly embarrassed that i pled cold feet, and made my escape from the apartment. it was a furious windy morning, with a sky much cleared, and long and potent intervals of sunshine; and i wandered until dinner in the wild country towards the east, sorely staggered and beaten upon by the gale, but rewarded with some striking views. at dinner the work of the propagation of the faith was recommenced, and on this occasion still more distastefully to me. the priest asked me many questions as to the contemptible faith of my fathers, and received my replies with a kind of ecclesiastical titter. 'your sect,' he said once; 'for i think you will admit it would be doing it too much honour to call it a religion.' 'as you please, monsieur,' said i. 'la parole est a vous.' at length i grew annoyed beyond endurance; and although he was on his own ground and, what is more to the purpose, an old man, and so holding a claim upon my toleration, i could not avoid a protest against this uncivil usage. he was sadly discountenanced. 'i assure you.' he said, 'i have no inclination to laugh in my heart. i have no other feeling but interest in your soul.' and there ended my conversion. honest man! he was no dangerous deceiver; but a country parson, full of zeal and faith. long may he tread gevaudan with his kilted skirts a man strong to walk and strong to comfort his parishioners in death! i daresay he would beat bravely through a snowstorm where his duty called him; and it is not always the most faithful believer who makes the cunningest apostle. upper gevaudan (continued) the bed was made, the room was fit, by punctual eve the stars were lit; the air was still, the water ran; no need there was for maid or man, when we put up, my ass and i, at god's green caravanserai. old play. across the goulet the wind fell during dinner, and the sky remained clear; so it was under better auspices that i loaded modestine before the monastery gate. my irish friend accompanied me so far on the way. as we came through the wood, there was pere apollinaire hauling his barrow; and he too quitted his labours to go with me for perhaps a hundred yards, holding my hand between both of his in front of him. i parted first from one and then from the other with unfeigned regret, but yet with the glee of the traveller who shakes off the dust of one stage before hurrying forth upon another. then modestine and i mounted the course of the allier, which here led us back into gevaudan towards its sources in the forest of mercoire. it was but an inconsiderable burn before we left its guidance. thence, over a hill, our way lay through a naked plateau, until we reached chasserades at sundown. the company in the inn kitchen that night were all men employed in survey for one of the projected railways. they were intelligent and conversible, and we decided the future of france over hot wine, until the state of the clock frightened us to rest. there were four beds in the little upstairs room; and we slept six. but i had a bed to myself, and persuaded them to leave the window open. 'he, bourgeois; il est cinq heures!' was the cry that wakened me in the morning (saturday, september 28th). the room was full of a transparent darkness, which dimly showed me the other three beds and the five different nightcaps on the pillows. but out of the window the dawn was growing ruddy in a long belt over the hilltops, and day was about to flood the plateau. the hour was inspiriting; and there seemed a promise of calm weather, which was perfectly fulfilled. i was soon under way with modestine. the road lay for a while over the plateau, and then descended through a precipitous village into the valley of the chassezac. this stream ran among green meadows, well hidden from the world by its steep banks; the broom was in flower, and here and there was a hamlet sending up its smoke. at last the path crossed the chassezac upon a bridge, and, forsaking this deep hollow, set itself to cross the mountain of la goulet. it wound up through lestampes by upland fields and woods of beech and birch, and with every corner brought me into an acquaintance with some new interest. even in the gully of the chassezac my ear had been struck by a noise like that of a great bass bell ringing at the distance of many miles; but this, as i continued to mount and draw nearer to it, seemed to change in character, and i found at length that it came from some one leading flocks afield to the note of a rural horn. the narrow street of lestampes stood full of sheep, from wall to wall black sheep and white, bleating with one accord like the birds in spring, and each one accompanying himself upon the sheep-bell round his neck. it made a pathetic concert, all in treble. a little higher, and i passed a pair of men in a tree with pruning-hooks, and one of them was singing the music of a bourree. still further, and when i was already threading the birches, the crowing of cocks came cheerfully up to my ears, and along with that the voice of a flute discoursing a deliberate and plaintive air from one of the upland villages. i pictured to myself some grizzled, apple-cheeked, country schoolmaster fluting in his bit of a garden in the clear autumn sunshine. all these beautiful and interesting sounds filled my heart with an unwonted expectation; and it appeared to me that, once past this range which i was mounting, i should descend into the garden of the world. nor was i deceived, for i was now done with rains and winds and a bleak country. the first part of my journey ended here; and this was like an induction of sweet sounds into the other and more beautiful. there are other degrees of feyness, as of punishment, besides the capital; and i was now led by my good spirits into an adventure which i relate in the interest of future donkey-drivers. the road zigzagged so widely on the hillside, that i chose a short cut by map and compass, and struck through the dwarf woods to catch the road again upon a higher level. it was my one serious conflict with modestine. she would none of my short cut; she turned in my face; she backed, she reared; she, whom i had hitherto imagined to be dumb, actually brayed with a loud hoarse flourish, like a cock crowing for the dawn. i plied the goad with one hand; with the other, so steep was the ascent, i had to hold on the pack-saddle. half-a-dozen times she was nearly over backwards on the top of me; half-a-dozen times, from sheer weariness of spirit, i was nearly giving it up, and leading her down again to follow the road. but i took the thing as a wager, and fought it through. i was surprised, as i went on my way again, by what appeared to be chill rain-drops falling on my hand, and more than once looked up in wonder at the cloudless sky. but it was only sweat which came dropping from my brow. over the summit of the goulet there was no marked road only upright stones posted from space to space to guide the drovers. the turf underfoot was springy and well scented. i had no company but a lark or two, and met but one bullock-cart between lestampes and bleymard. in front of me i saw a shallow valley, and beyond that the range of the lozere, sparsely wooded and well enough modelled in the flanks, but straight and dull in outline. there was scarce a sign of culture; only about bleymard, the white highroad from villefort to mende traversed a range of meadows, set with spiry poplars, and sounding from side to side with the bells of flocks and herds. a night among the pines from bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, i set out to scale a portion of the lozere. an ill-marked stony drove-road guided me forward; and i met nearly half-a-dozen bullock-carts descending from the woods, each laden with a whole pine-tree for the winter's firing. at the top of the woods, which do not climb very high upon this cold ridge, i struck leftward by a path among the pines, until i hit on a dell of green turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some stones to serve me for a water-tap. 'in a more sacred or sequestered bower . . . nor nymph nor faunus haunted.' the trees were not old, but they grew thickly round the glade: there was no outlook, except north-eastward upon distant hill-tops, or straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure and private like a room. by the time i had made my arrangements and fed modestine, the day was already beginning to decline. i buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty meal; and as soon as the sun went down, i pulled my cap over my eyes and fell asleep. night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of nature. what seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. all night long he can hear nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest, she turns and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet. it is then that the cock first crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course of night. cattle awake on the meadows; sheep break their fast on dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair among the ferns; and houseless men, who have lain down with the fowls, open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night. at what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of nature, are all these sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life? do the stars rain down an influence, or do we share some thrill of mother earth below our resting bodies? even shepherds and old countryfolk, who are the deepest read in these arcana, have not a guess as to the means or purpose of this nightly resurrection. towards two in the morning they declare the thing takes place; and neither know nor inquire further. and at least it is a pleasant incident. we are disturbed in our slumber only, like the luxurious montaigne, 'that we may the better and more sensibly relish it.' we have a moment to look upon the stars. and there is a special pleasure for some minds in the reflection that we share the impulse with all outdoor creatures in our neighbourhood, that we have escaped out of the bastille of civilisation, and are become, for the time being, a mere kindly animal and a sheep of nature's flock. when that hour came to me among the pines, i wakened thirsty. my tin was standing by me half full of water. i emptied it at a draught; and feeling broad awake after this internal cold aspersion, sat upright to make a cigarette. the stars were clear, coloured, and jewel-like, but not frosty. a faint silvery vapour stood for the milky way. all around me the black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. by the whiteness of the pack-saddle, i could see modestine walking round and round at the length of her tether; i could hear her steadily munching at the sward; but there was not another sound, save the indescribable quiet talk of the runnel over the stones. i lay lazily smoking and studying the colour of the sky, as we call the void of space, from where it showed a reddish grey behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. as if to be more like a pedlar, i wear a silver ring. this i could see faintly shining as i raised or lowered the cigarette; and at each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a second the highest light in the landscape. a faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air, passed down the glade from time to time; so that even in my great chamber the air was being renewed all night long. i thought with horror of the inn at chasserades and the congregated nightcaps; with horror of the nocturnal prowesses of clerks and students, of hot theatres and pass-keys and close rooms. i have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor felt more independent of material aids. the outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where god keeps an open house. i thought i had rediscovered one of those truths which are revealed to savages and hid from political economists: at the least, i had discovered a new pleasure for myself. and yet even while i was exulting in my solitude i became aware of a strange lack. i wished a companion to lie near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but ever within touch. for there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect. and to live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and free. as i thus lay, between content and longing, a faint noise stole towards me through the pines. i thought, at first, it was the crowing of cocks or the barking of dogs at some very distant farm; but steadily and gradually it took articulate shape in my ears, until i became aware that a passenger was going by upon the highroad in the valley, and singing loudly as he went. there was more of good-will than grace in his performance; but he trolled with ample lungs; and the sound of his voice took hold upon the hillside and set the air shaking in the leafy glens. i have heard people passing by night in sleeping cities; some of them sang; one, i remember, played loudly on the bagpipes. i have heard the rattle of a cart or carriage spring up suddenly after hours of stillness, and pass, for some minutes, within the range of my hearing as i lay abed. there is a romance about all who are abroad in the black hours, and with something of a thrill we try to guess their business. but here the romance was double: first, this glad passenger, lit internally with wine, who sent up his voice in music through the night; and then i, on the other hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the pine-woods between four and five thousand feet towards the stars. when i awoke again (sunday, 29th september), many of the stars had disappeared; only the stronger companions of the night still burned visibly overhead; and away towards the east i saw a faint haze of light upon the horizon, such as had been the milky way when i was last awake. day was at hand. i lit my lantern, and by its glowworm light put on my boots and gaiters; then i broke up some bread for modestine, filled my can at the water-tap, and lit my spiritlamp to boil myself some chocolate. the blue darkness lay long in the glade where i had so sweetly slumbered; but soon there was a broad streak of orange melting into gold along the mountain-tops of vivarais. a solemn glee possessed my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day. i heard the runnel with delight; i looked round me for something beautiful and unexpected; but the still black pine-trees, the hollow glade, the munching ass, remained unchanged in figure. nothing had altered but the light, and that, indeed, shed over all a spirit of life and of breathing peace, and moved me to a strange exhilaration. i drank my water-chocolate, which was hot if it was not rich, and strolled here and there, and up and down about the glade. while i was thus delaying, a gush of steady wind, as long as a heavy sigh, poured direct out of the quarter of the morning. it was cold, and set me sneezing. the trees near at hand tossed their black plumes in its passage; and i could see the thin distant spires of pine along the edge of the hill rock slightly to and fro against the golden east. ten minutes after, the sunlight spread at a gallop along the hillside, scattering shadows and sparkles, and the day had come completely. i hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle the steep ascent that lay before me; but i had something on my mind. it was only a fancy; yet a fancy will sometimes be importunate. i had been most hospitably received and punctually served in my green caravanserai. the room was airy, the water excellent, and the dawn had called me to a moment. i say nothing of the tapestries or the inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which i commanded from the windows; but i felt i was in some one's debt for all this liberal entertainment. and so it pleased me, in a half-laughing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as i went along, until i had left enough for my night's lodging. i trust they did not fall to some rich and churlish drover. the country of the camisards we travelled in the print of olden wars; yet all the land was green; and love we found, and peace, where fire and war had been. they pass and smile, the children of the sword no more the sword they wield; and o, how deep the corn along the battlefield! w. p. bannatyne. the country of the camisards across the lozere the track that i had followed in the evening soon died out, and i continued to follow over a bald turf ascent a row of stone pillars, such as had conducted me across the goulet. it was already warm. i tied my jacket on the pack, and walked in my knitted waistcoat. modestine herself was in high spirits, and broke of her own accord, for the first time in my experience, into a jolting trot that set the oats swashing in the pocket of my coat. the view, back upon the northern gevaudan, extended with every step; scarce a tree, scarce a house, appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning. a multitude of little birds kept sweeping and twittering about my path; they perched on the stone pillars, they pecked and strutted on the turf, and i saw them circle in volleys in the blue air, and show, from time to time, translucent flickering wings between the sun and me. almost from the first moment of my march, a faint large noise, like a distant surf, had filled my ears. sometimes i was tempted to think it the voice of a neighbouring waterfall, and sometimes a subjective result of the utter stillness of the hill. but as i continued to advance, the noise increased, and became like the hissing of an enormous tea-urn, and at the same time breaths of cool air began to reach me from the direction of the summit. at length i understood. it was blowing stiffly from the south upon the other slope of the lozere, and every step that i took i was drawing nearer to the wind. although it had been long desired, it was quite unexpectedly at last that my eyes rose above the summit. a step that seemed no way more decisive than many other steps that had preceded it and, 'like stout cortez when, with eagle eyes, he stared on the pacific,' i took possession, in my own name, of a new quarter of the world. for behold, instead of the gross turf rampart i had been mounting for so long, a view into the hazy air of heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills below my feet. the lozere lies nearly east and west, cutting gevaudan into two unequal parts; its highest point, this pic de finiels, on which i was then standing, rises upwards of five thousand six hundred feet above the sea, and in clear weather commands a view over all lower languedoc to the mediterranean sea. i have spoken with people who either pretended or believed that they had seen, from the pie de finiels, white ships sailing by montpellier and cette. behind was the upland northern country through which my way had lain, peopled by a dull race, without wood, without much grandeur of hill-form, and famous in the past for little beside wolves. but in front of me, half veiled in sunny haze, lay a new gevaudan, rich, picturesque, illustrious for stirring events. speaking largely, i was in the cevennes at monastier, and during all my journey; but there is a strict and local sense in which only this confused and shaggy country at my feet has any title to the name, and in this sense the peasantry employ the word. these are the cevennes with an emphasis: the cevennes of the cevennes. in that undecipherable labyrinth of hills, a war of bandits, a war of wild beasts, raged for two years between the grand monarch with all his troops and marshals on the one hand, and a few thousand protestant mountaineers upon the other. a hundred and eighty years ago, the camisards held a station even on the lozere, where i stood; they had an organisation, arsenals, a military and religious hierarchy; their affairs were 'the discourse of every coffee-house' in london; england sent fleets in their support; their leaders prophesied and murdered; with colours and drums, and the singing of old french psalms, their bands sometimes affronted daylight, marched before walled cities, and dispersed the generals of the king; and sometimes at night, or in masquerade, possessed themselves of strong castles, and avenged treachery upon their allies and cruelty upon their foes. there, a hundred and eighty years ago, was the chivalrous roland, 'count and lord roland, generalissimo of the protestants in france,' grave, silent, imperious, pock-marked exdragoon, whom a lady followed in his wanderings out of love. there was cavalier, a baker's apprentice with a genius for war, elected brigadier of camisards at seventeen, to die at fifty-five the english governor of jersey. there again was castanet, a partisan leader in a voluminous peruke and with a taste for controversial divinity. strange generals, who moved apart to take counsel with the god of hosts, and fled or offered battle, set sentinels or slept in an unguarded camp, as the spirit whispered to their hearts! and there, to follow these and other leaders, was the rank and file of prophets and disciples, bold, patient, indefatigable, hardy to run upon the mountains, cheering their rough life with psalms, eager to fight, eager to pray, listening devoutly to the oracles of brain-sick children, and mystically putting a grain of wheat among the pewter balls with which they charged their muskets. i had travelled hitherto through a dull district, and in the track of nothing more notable than the child-eating beast of gevaudan, the napoleon bonaparte of wolves. but now i was to go down into the scene of a romantic chapter or, better, a romantic footnote in the history of the world. what was left of all this bygone dust and heroism? i was told that protestantism still survived in this head seat of protestant resistance; so much the priest himself had told me in the monastery parlour. but i had yet to learn if it were a bare survival, or a lively and generous tradition. again, if in the northern cevennes the people are narrow in religious judgments, and more filled with zeal than charity, what was i to look for in this land of persecution and reprisal in a land where the tyranny of the church produced the camisard rebellion, and the terror of the camisards threw the catholic peasantry into legalised revolt upon the other side, so that camisard and florentin skulked for each other's lives among the mountains? just on the brow of the hill, where i paused to look before me, the series of stone pillars came abruptly to an end; and only a little below, a sort of track appeared and began to go down a break-neck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. it led into a valley between falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped field of corn, and floored farther down with green meadows. i followed the track with precipitation; the steepness of the slope, the continual agile turning of the line of the descent, and the old unwearied hope of finding something new in a new country, all conspired to lend me wings. yet a little lower and a stream began, collecting itself together out of many fountains, and soon making a glad noise among the hills. sometimes it would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with a pool, in which modestine refreshed her feet. the whole descent is like a dream to me, so rapidly was it accomplished. i had scarcely left the summit ere the valley had closed round my path, and the sun beat upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere. the track became a road, and went up and down in easy undulations. i passed cabin after cabin, but all seemed deserted; and i saw not a human creature, nor heard any sound except that of the stream. i was, however, in a different country from the day before. the stony skeleton of the world was here vigorously displayed to sun and air. the slopes were steep and changeful. oak-trees clung along the hills, well grown, wealthy in leaf, and touched by the autumn with strong and luminous colours. here and there another stream would fall in from the right or the left, down a gorge of snow-white and tumultuary boulders. the river in the bottom (for it was rapidly growing a river, collecting on all hands as it trotted on its way) here foamed a while in desperate rapids, and there lay in pools of the most enchanting sea-green shot with watery browns. as far as i have gone, i have never seen a river of so changeful and delicate a hue; crystal was not more clear, the meadows were not by half so green; and at every pool i saw i felt a thrill of longing to be out of these hot, dusty, and material garments, and bathe my naked body in the mountain air and water. all the time as i went on i never forgot it was the sabbath; the stillness was a perpetual reminder; and i heard in spirit the church-bells clamouring all over europe, and the psalms of a thousand churches. at length a human sound struck upon my ear a cry strangely modulated between pathos and derision; and looking across the valley, i saw a little urchin sitting in a meadow, with his hands about his knees, and dwarfed to almost comical smallness by the distance. but the rogue had picked me out as i went down the road, from oak wood on to oak wood, driving modestine; and he made me the compliments of the new country in this tremulous high-pitched salutation. and as all noises are lovely and natural at a sufficient distance, this also, coming through so much clean hill air and crossing all the green valley, sounded pleasant to my ear, and seemed a thing rustic, like the oaks or the river. a little after, the stream that i was following fell into the tarn at pont de montvert of bloody memory. pont de montvert one of the first things i encountered in pont de montvert was, if i remember rightly, the protestant temple; but this was but the type of other novelties. a subtle atmosphere distinguishes a town in england from a town in france, or even in scotland. at carlisle you can see you are in the one country; at dumfries, thirty miles away, you are as sure that you are in the other. i should find it difficult to tell in what particulars pont de montvert differed from monastier or langogne, or even bleymard; but the difference existed, and spoke eloquently to the eyes. the place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river-bed, wore an indescribable air of the south. all was sunday bustle in the streets and in the public-house, as all had been sabbath peace among the mountains. there must have been near a score of us at dinner by eleven before noon; and after i had eaten and drunken, and sat writing up my journal, i suppose as many more came dropping in one after another, or by twos and threes. in crossing the lozere i had not only come among new natural features, but moved into the territory of a different race. these people, as they hurriedly despatched their viands in an intricate sword-play of knives, questioned and answered me with a degree of intelligence which excelled all that i had met, except among the railway folk at chasserades. they had open telling faces, and were lively both in speech and manner. they not only entered thoroughly into the spirit of my little trip, but more than one declared, if he were rich enough, he would like to set forth on such another. even physically there was a pleasant change. i had not seen a pretty woman since i left monastier, and there but one. now of the three who sat down with me to dinner, one was certainly not beautiful a poor timid thing of forty, quite troubled at this roaring table d'hote, whom i squired and helped to wine, and pledged and tried generally to encourage, with quite a contrary effect; but the other two, both married, were both more handsome than the average of women. and clarisse? what shall i say of clarisse? she waited the table with a heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; her great grey eyes were steeped in amorous languor; her features, although fleshy, were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her nostril spoke of dainty pride; her cheek fell into strange and interesting lines. it was a face capable of strong emotion, and, with training, it offered the promise of delicate sentiment. it seemed pitiful to see so good a model left to country admirers and a country way of thought. beauty should at least have touched society; then, in a moment, it throws off a weight that lay upon it, it becomes conscious of itself, it puts on an elegance, learns a gait and a carriage of the head, and, in a moment, patet dea. before i left i assured clarisse of my hearty admiration. she took it like milk, without embarrassment or wonder, merely looking at me steadily with her great eyes; and i own the result upon myself was some confusion. if clarisse could read english, i should not dare to add that her figure was unworthy of her face. hers was a case for stays; but that may perhaps grow better as she gets up in years. pont de montvert, or greenhill bridge, as we might say at home, is a place memorable in the story of the camisards. it was here that the war broke out; here that those southern covenanters slew their archbishop sharp. the persecution on the one hand, the febrile enthusiasm on the other, are almost equally difficult to understand in these quiet modern days, and with our easy modern beliefs and disbeliefs. the protestants were one and all beside their right minds with zeal and sorrow. they were all prophets and prophetesses. children at the breast would exhort their parents to good works. 'a child of fifteen months at quissac spoke from its mother's arms, agitated and sobbing, distinctly and with a loud voice.' marshal villars has seen a town where all the women 'seemed possessed by the devil,' and had trembling fits, and uttered prophecies publicly upon the streets. a prophetess of vivarais was hanged at moutpellier because blood flowed from her eyes and nose, and she declared that she was weeping tears of blood for the misfortunes of the protestants. and it was not only women and children. stalwart dangerous fellows, used to swing the sickle or to wield the forest axe, were likewise shaken with strange paroxysms, and spoke oracles with sobs and streaming tears. a persecution unsurpassed in violence had lasted near a score of years, and this was the result upon the persecuted; hanging, burning, breaking on the wheel, had been in vain; the dragoons had left their hoof-marks over all the countryside; there were men rowing in the galleys, and women pining in the prisons of the church; and not a thought was changed in the heart of any upright protestant. now the head and forefront of the persecution after lamoignon de bavile francois de langlade du chayla (pronounce cheila), archpriest of the cevennes and inspector of missions in the same country, had a house in which he sometimes dwelt in the town of pont de montvert. he was a conscientious person, who seems to have been intended by nature for a pirate, and now fifty-five, an age by which a man has learned all the moderation of which he is capable. a missionary in his youth in china, he there suffered martyrdom, was left for dead, and only succoured and brought back to life by the charity of a pariah. we must suppose the pariah devoid of second-sight, and not purposely malicious in this act. such an experience, it might be thought, would have cured a man of the desire to persecute; but the human spirit is a thing strangely put together; and, having been a christian martyr, du chayla became a christian persecutor. the work of the propagation of the faith went roundly forward in his hands. his house in pont de montvert served him as a prison. there he closed the hands of his prisoners upon live coal, and plucked out the hairs of their beards, to convince them that they were deceived in their opinions. and yet had not he himself tried and proved the inefficacy of these carnal arguments among the buddhists in china? not only was life made intolerable in languedoc, but flight was rigidly forbidden. one massip, a muleteer, and well acquainted with the mountain-paths, had already guided several troops of fugitives in safety to geneva; and on him, with another convoy, consisting mostly of women dressed as men, du chayla, in an evil hour for himself, laid his hands. the sunday following, there was a conventicle of protestants in the woods of altefage upon mount bouges; where there stood up one seguier spirit seguier, as his companions called him a wool-carder, tall, black-faced, and toothless, but a man full of prophecy. he declared, in the name of god, that the time for submission had gone by, and they must betake themselves to arms for the deliverance of their brethren and the destruction of the priests. the next night, 24th july 1702, a sound disturbed the inspector of missions as he sat in his prison-house at pont de montvert: the voices of many men upraised in psalmody drew nearer and nearer through the town. it was ten at night; he had his court about him, priests, soldiers, and servants, to the number of twelve or fifteen; and now dreading the insolence of a conventicle below his very windows, he ordered forth his soldiers to report. but the psalm-singers were already at his door, fifty strong, led by the inspired seguier, and breathing death. to their summons, the archpriest made answer like a stout old persecutor, and bade his garrison fire upon the mob. one camisard (for, according to some, it was in this night's work that they came by the name) fell at this discharge: his comrades burst in the door with hatchets and a beam of wood, overran the lower story of the house, set free the prisoners, and finding one of them in the vine, a sort of scavenger's daughter of the place and period, redoubled in fury against du chayla, and sought by repeated assaults to carry the upper floors. but he, on his side, had given absolution to his men, and they bravely held the staircase. 'children of god,' cried the prophet, 'hold your hands. let us burn the house, with the priest and the satellites of baal.' the fire caught readily. out of an upper window du chayla and his men lowered themselves into the garden by means of knotted sheets; some escaped across the river under the bullets of the insurgents; but the archpriest himself fell, broke his thigh, and could only crawl into the hedge. what were his reflections as this second martyrdom drew near? a poor, brave, besotted, hateful man, who had done his duty resolutely according to his light both in the cevennes and china. he found at least one telling word to say in his defence; for when the roof fell in and the upbursting flames discovered his retreat, and they came and dragged him to the public place of the town, raging and calling him damned 'if i be damned,' said he, 'why should you also damn yourselves?' here was a good reason for the last; but in the course of his inspectorship he had given many stronger which all told in a contrary direction; and these he was now to hear. one by one, seguier first, the camisards drew near and stabbed him. 'this,' they said, 'is for my father broken on the wheel. this for my brother in the galleys. that for my mother or my sister imprisoned in your cursed convents.' each gave his blow and his reason; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around the body till the dawn. with the dawn, still singing, they defiled away towards frugeres, farther up the tarn, to pursue the work of vengeance, leaving du chayla's prison-house in ruins, and his body pierced with two-andfifty wounds upon the public place. 'tis a wild night's work, with its accompaniment of psalms; and it seems as if a psalm must always have a sound of threatening in that town upon the tarn. but the story does not end, even so far as concerns pont de montvert, with the departure of the camisards. the career of seguier was brief and bloody. two more priests and a whole family at ladeveze, from the father to the servants, fell by his hand or by his orders; and yet he was but a day or two at large, and restrained all the time by the presence of the soldiery. taken at length by a famous soldier of fortune, captain poul, he appeared unmoved before his judges. 'your name?' they asked. 'pierre seguier.' 'why are you called spirit?' 'because the spirit of the lord is with me.' 'your domicile?' 'lately in the desert, and soon in heaven.' 'have you no remorse for your crimes?' 'i have committed none. my soul is like a garden full of shelter and of fountains.' at pont de montvert, on the 12th of august, he had his right hand stricken from his body, and was burned alive. and his soul was like a garden? so perhaps was the soul of du chayla, the christian martyr. and perhaps if you could read in my soul, or i could read in yours, our own composure might seem little less surprising. du chayla's house still stands, with a new roof, beside one of the bridges of the town; and if you are curious you may see the terrace-garden into which he dropped. in the valley of the tarn a new road leads from pont de montvert to florac by the valley of the tarn; a smooth sandy ledge, it runs about half-way between the summit of the cliffs and the river in the bottom of the valley; and i went in and out, as i followed it, from bays of shadow into promontories of afternoon sun. this was a pass like that of killiecrankie; a deep turning gully in the hills, with the tarn making a wonderful hoarse uproar far below, and craggy summits standing in the sunshine high above. a thin fringe of ash-trees ran about the hill-tops, like ivy on a ruin; but on the lower slopes, and far up every glen, the spanish chestnut-trees stood each four-square to heaven under its tented foliage. some were planted, each on its own terrace no larger than a bed; some, trusting in their roots, found strength to grow and prosper and be straight and large upon the rapid slopes of the valley; others, where there was a margin to the river, stood marshalled in a line and mighty like cedars of lebanon. yet even where they grew most thickly they were not to be thought of as a wood, but as a herd of stalwart individuals; and the dome of each tree stood forth separate and large, and as it were a little hill, from among the domes of its companions. they gave forth a faint sweet perfume which pervaded the air of the afternoon; autumn had put tints of gold and tarnish in the green; and the sun so shone through and kindled the broad foliage, that each chestnut was relieved against another, not in shadow, but in light. a humble sketcher here laid down his pencil in despair. i wish i could convey a notion of the growth of these noble trees; of how they strike out boughs like the oak, and trail sprays of drooping foliage like the willow; of how they stand on upright fluted columns like the pillars of a church; or like the olive, from the most shattered bole can put out smooth and youthful shoots, and begin a new life upon the ruins of the old. thus they partake of the nature of many different trees; and even their prickly top-knots, seen near at hand against the sky, have a certain palm-like air that impresses the imagination. but their individuality, although compounded of so many elements, is but the richer and the more original. and to look down upon a level filled with these knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old unconquerable chestnuts cluster 'like herded elephants' upon the spur of a mountain, is to rise to higher thoughts of the powers that are in nature. between modestine's laggard humour and the beauty of the scene, we made little progress all that afternoon; and at last finding the sun, although still far from setting, was already beginning to desert the narrow valley of the tarn, i began to cast about for a place to camp in. this was not easy to find; the terraces were too narrow, and the ground, where it was unterraced, was usually too steep for a man to lie upon. i should have slipped all night, and awakened towards morning with my feet or my head in the river. after perhaps a mile, i saw, some sixty feet above the road, a little plateau large enough to hold my sack, and securely parapeted by the trunk of an aged and enormous chestnut. thither, with infinite trouble, i goaded and kicked the reluctant modestine, and there i hastened to unload her. there was only room for myself upon the plateau, and i had to go nearly as high again before i found so much as standing-room for the ass. it was on a heap of rolling stones, on an artificial terrace, certainly not five feet square in all. here i tied her to a chestnut, and having given her corn and bread and made a pile of chestnut-leaves, of which i found her greedy, i descended once more to my own encampment. the position was unpleasantly exposed. one or two carts went by upon the road; and as long as daylight lasted i concealed myself, for all the world like a hunted camisard, behind my fortification of vast chestnut trunk; for i was passionately afraid of discovery and the visit of jocular persons in the night. moreover, i saw that i must be early awake; for these chestnut gardens had been the scene of industry no further gone than on the day before. the slope was strewn with lopped branches, and here and there a great package of leaves was propped against a trunk; for even the leaves are serviceable, and the peasants use them in winter by way of fodder for their animals. i picked a meal in fear and trembling, half lying down to hide myself from the road; and i daresay i was as much concerned as if i had been a scout from joani's band above upon the lozere, or from salomon's across the tarn, in the old times of psalm-singing and blood. or, indeed, perhaps more; for the camisards had a remarkable confidence in god; and a tale comes back into my memory of how the count of gevaudan, riding with a party of dragoons and a notary at his saddlebow to enforce the oath of fidelity in all the country hamlets, entered a valley in the woods, and found cavalier and his men at dinner, gaily seated on the grass, and their hats crowned with box-tree garlands, while fifteen women washed their linen in the stream. such was a field festival in 1703; at that date antony watteau would be painting similar subjects. this was a very different camp from that of the night before in the cool and silent pine-woods. it was warm and even stifling in the valley. the shrill song of frogs, like the tremolo note of a whistle with a pea in it, rang up from the river-side before the sun was down. in the growing dusk, faint rustlings began to run to and fro among the fallen leaves; from time to time a faint chirping or cheeping noise would fall upon my ear; and from time to time i thought i could see the movement of something swift and indistinct between the chestnuts. a profusion of large ants swarmed upon the ground; bats whisked by, and mosquitoes droned overhead. the long boughs with their bunches of leaves hung against the sky like garlands; and those immediately above and around me had somewhat the air of a trellis which should have been wrecked and half overthrown in a gale of wind. sleep for a long time fled my eyelids; and just as i was beginning to feel quiet stealing over my limbs, and settling densely on my mind, a noise at my head startled me broad awake again, and, i will frankly confess it, brought my heart into my mouth. it was such a noise as a person would make scratching loudly with a finger-nail; it came from under the knapsack which served me for a pillow, and it was thrice repeated before i had time to sit up and turn about. nothing was to be seen, nothing more was to be heard, but a few of these mysterious rustlings far and near, and the ceaseless accompaniment of the river and the frogs. i learned next day that the chestnut gardens are infested by rats; rustling, chirping, and scraping were probably all due to these; but the puzzle, for the moment, was insoluble, and i had to compose myself for sleep, as best i could, in wondering uncertainty about my neighbours. i was wakened in the grey of the morning (monday, 30th september) by the sound of foot-steps not far off upon the stones, and opening my eyes, i beheld a peasant going by among the chestnuts by a footpath that i had not hitherto observed. he turned his head neither to the right nor to the left, and disappeared in a few strides among the foliage. here was an escape! but it was plainly more than time to be moving. the peasantry were abroad; scarce less terrible to me in my nondescript position than the soldiers of captain poul to an undaunted camisard. i fed modestine with what haste i could; but as i was returning to my sack, i saw a man and a boy come down the hillside in a direction crossing mine. they unintelligibly hailed me, and i replied with inarticulate but cheerful sounds, and hurried forward to get into my gaiters. the pair, who seemed to be father and son, came slowly up to the plateau, and stood close beside me for some time in silence. the bed was open, and i saw with regret my revolver lying patently disclosed on the blue wool. at last, after they had looked me all over, and the silence had grown laughably embarrassing, the man demanded in what seemed unfriendly tones: 'you have slept here?' 'yes,' said i. 'as you see.' 'why?' he asked. 'my faith,' i answered lightly, 'i was tired.' he next inquired where i was going and what i had had for dinner; and then, without the least transition, 'c'est bien,' he added, 'come along.' and he and his son, without another word, turned off to the next chestnut-tree but one, which they set to pruning. the thing had passed of more simply than i hoped. he was a grave, respectable man; and his unfriendly voice did not imply that he thought he was speaking to a criminal, but merely to an inferior. i was soon on the road, nibbling a cake of chocolate and seriously occupied with a case of conscience. was i to pay for my night's lodging? i had slept ill, the bed was full of fleas in the shape of ants, there was no water in the room, the very dawn had neglected to call me in the morning. i might have missed a train, had there been any in the neighbourhood to catch. clearly, i was dissatisfied with my entertainment; and i decided i should not pay unless i met a beggar. the valley looked even lovelier by morning; and soon the road descended to the level of the river. here, in a place where many straight and prosperous chestnuts stood together, making an aisle upon a swarded terrace, i made my morning toilette in the water of the tarn. it was marvellously clear, thrillingly cool; the soapsuds disappeared as if by magic in the swift current, and the white boulders gave one a model for cleanliness. to wash in one of god's rivers in the open air seems to me a sort of cheerful solemnity or semi-pagan act of worship. to dabble among dishes in a bedroom may perhaps make clean the body; but the imagination takes no share in such a cleansing. i went on with a light and peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the spiritual ear as i advanced. suddenly up came an old woman, who point-blank demanded alms. 'good,' thought i; 'here comes the waiter with the bill.' and i paid for my night's lodging on the spot. take it how you please, but this was the first and the last beggar that i met with during all my tour. a step or two farther i was overtaken by an old man in a brown nightcap, clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint excited smile. a little girl followed him, driving two sheep and a goat; but she kept in our wake, while the old man walked beside me and talked about the morning and the valley. it was not much past six; and for healthy people who have slept enough, that is an hour of expansion and of open and trustful talk. 'connaissez-vous le seigneur?' he said at length. i asked him what seigneur he meant; but he only repeated the question with more emphasis and a look in his eyes denoting hope and interest. 'ah,' said i, pointing upwards, 'i understand you now. yes, i know him; he is the best of acquaintances.' the old man said he was delighted. 'hold,' he added, striking his bosom; 'it makes me happy here.' there were a few who knew the lord in these valleys, he went on to tell me; not many, but a few. 'many are called.' he quoted, 'and few chosen.' 'my father,' said i, 'it is not easy to say who know the lord; and it is none of our business. protestants and catholics, and even those who worship stones, may know him and be known by him; for he has made all.' i did not know i was so good a preacher. the old man assured me he thought as i did, and repeated his expressions of pleasure at meeting me. 'we are so few,' he said. 'they call us moravians here; but down in the department of gard, where there are also a good number, they are called derbists, after an english pastor.' i began to understand that i was figuring, in questionable taste, as a member of some sect to me unknown; but i was more pleased with the pleasure of my companion than embarrassed by my own equivocal position. indeed, i can see no dishonesty in not avowing a difference; and especially in these high matters, where we have all a sufficient assurance that, whoever may be in the wrong, we ourselves are not completely in the right. the truth is much talked about; but this old man in a brown nightcap showed himself so simple, sweet, and friendly, that i am not unwilling to profess myself his convert. he was, as a matter of fact, a plymouth brother. of what that involves in the way of doctrine i have no idea nor the time to inform myself; but i know right well that we are all embarked upon a troublesome world, the children of one father, striving in many essential points to do and to become the same. and although it was somewhat in a mistake that he shook hands with me so often and showed himself so ready to receive my words, that was a mistake of the truth-finding sort. for charity begins blindfold; and only through a series of similar misapprehensions rises at length into a settled principle of love and patience, and a firm belief in all our fellow-men. if i deceived this good old man, in the like manner i would willingly go on to deceive others. and if ever at length, out of our separate and sad ways, we should all come together into one common house, i have a hope, to which i cling dearly, that my mountain plymouth brother will hasten to shake hands with me again. thus, talking like christian and faithful by the way, he and i came down upon a hamlet by the tarn. it was but a humble place, called la vernede, with less than a dozen houses, and a protestant chapel on a knoll. here he dwelt; and here, at the inn, i ordered my breakfast. the inn was kept by an agreeable young man, a stonebreaker on the road, and his sister, a pretty and engaging girl. the village schoolmaster dropped in to speak with the stranger. and these were all protestants a fact which pleased me more than i should have expected; and, what pleased me still more, they seemed all upright and simple people. the plymouth brother hung round me with a sort of yearning interest, and returned at least thrice to make sure i was enjoying my meal. his behaviour touched me deeply at the time, and even now moves me in recollection. he feared to intrude, but he would not willingly forego one moment of my society; and he seemed never weary of shaking me by the hand. when all the rest had drifted off to their day's work, i sat for near half an hour with the young mistress of the house, who talked pleasantly over her seam of the chestnut harvest, and the beauties of the tarn, and old family affections, broken up when young folk go from home, yet still subsisting. hers, i am sure, was a sweet nature, with a country plainness and much delicacy underneath; and he who takes her to his heart will doubtless be a fortunate young man. the valley below la vernede pleased me more and more as i went forward. now the hills approached from either hand, naked and crumbling, and walled in the river between cliffs; and now the valley widened and became green. the road led me past the old castle of miral on a steep; past a battlemented monastery, long since broken up and turned into a church and parsonage; and past a cluster of black roofs, the village of cocures, sitting among vineyards, and meadows, and orchards thick with red apples, and where, along the highway, they were knocking down walnuts from the roadside trees, and gathering them in sacks and baskets. the hills, however much the vale might open, were still tall and bare, with cliffy battlements and here and there a pointed summit; and the tarn still rattled through the stones with a mountain noise. i had been led, by bagmen of a picturesque turn of mind, to expect a horrific country after the heart of byron; but to my scottish eyes it seemed smiling and plentiful, as the weather still gave an impression of high summer to my scottish body; although the chestnuts were already picked out by the autumn, and the poplars, that here began to mingle with them, had turned into pale gold against the approach of winter. there was something in this landscape, smiling although wild, that explained to me the spirit of the southern covenanters. those who took to the hills for conscience' sake in scotland had all gloomy and bedevilled thoughts; for once that they received god's comfort they would be twice engaged with satan; but the camisards had only bright and supporting visions. they dealt much more in blood, both given and taken; yet i find no obsession of the evil one in their records. with a light conscience, they pursued their life in these rough times and circumstances. the soul of seguier, let us not forget, was like a garden. they knew they were on god's side, with a knowledge that has no parallel among the scots; for the scots, although they might be certain of the cause, could never rest confident of the person. 'we flew,' says one old camisard, 'when we heard the sound of psalm-singing, we flew as if with wings. we felt within us an animating ardour, a transporting desire. the feeling cannot be expressed in words. it is a thing that must have been experienced to be understood. however weary we might be, we thought no more of our weariness, and grew light so soon as the psalms fell upon our ears.' the valley of the tarn and the people whom i met at la vernede not only explain to me this passage, but the twenty years of suffering which those, who were so stiff and so bloody when once they betook themselves to war, endured with the meekness of children and the constancy of saints and peasants. florac on a branch of the tarn stands florac, the seat of a subprefecture, with an old castle, an alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a live fountain welling from the hill. it is notable, besides, for handsome women, and as one of the two capitals, alais being the other, of the country of the camisards. the landlord of the inn took me, after i had eaten, to an adjoining cafe, where i, or rather my journey, became the topic of the afternoon. every one had some suggestion for my guidance; and the sub-prefectorial map was fetched from the sub-prefecture itself, and much thumbed among coffee-cups and glasses of liqueur. most of these kind advisers were protestant, though i observed that protestant and catholic intermingled in a very easy manner; and it surprised me to see what a lively memory still subsisted of the religious war. among the hills of the south-west, by mauchline, cumnock, or carsphairn, in isolated farms or in the manse, serious presbyterian people still recall the days of the great persecution, and the graves of local martyrs are still piously regarded. but in towns and among the so-called better classes, i fear that these old doings have become an idle tale. if you met a mixed company in the king's arms at wigton, it is not likely that the talk would run on covenanters. nay, at muirkirk of glenluce, i found the beadle's wife had not so much as heard of prophet peden. but these cevenols were proud of their ancestors in quite another sense; the war was their chosen topic; its exploits were their own patent of nobility; and where a man or a race has had but one adventure, and that heroic, we must expect and pardon some prolixity of reference. they told me the country was still full of legends hitherto uncollected; i heard from them about cavalier's descendants not direct descendants, be it understood, but only cousins or nephews who were still prosperous people in the scene of the boy-general's exploits; and one farmer had seen the bones of old combatants dug up into the air of an afternoon in the nineteenth century, in a field where the ancestors had fought, and the great-grandchildren were peaceably ditching. later in the day one of the protestant pastors was so good as to visit me: a young man, intelligent and polite, with whom i passed an hour or two in talk. florac, he told me, is part protestant, part catholic; and the difference in religion is usually doubled by a difference in politics. you may judge of my surprise, coming as i did from such a babbling purgatorial poland of a place as monastier, when i learned that the population lived together on very quiet terms; and there was even an exchange of hospitalities between households thus doubly separated. black camisard and white camisard, militiaman and miquelet and dragoon, protestant prophet and catholic cadet of the white cross, they had all been sabring and shooting, burning, pillaging, and murdering, their hearts hot with indignant passion; and here, after a hundred and seventy years, protestant is still protestant, catholic still catholic, in mutual toleration and mild amity of life. but the race of man, like that indomitable nature whence it sprang, has medicating virtues of its own; the years and seasons bring various harvests; the sun returns after the rain; and mankind outlives secular animosities, as a single man awakens from the passions of a day. we judge our ancestors from a more divine position; and the dust being a little laid with several centuries, we can see both sides adorned with human virtues and fighting with a show of right. i have never thought it easy to be just, and find it daily even harder than i thought. i own i met these protestants with a delight and a sense of coming home. i was accustomed to speak their language, in another and deeper sense of the word than that which distinguishes between french and english; for the true babel is a divergence upon morals. and hence i could hold more free communication with the protestants, and judge them more justly, than the catholics. father apollinaris may pair off with my mountain plymouth brother as two guileless and devout old men; yet i ask myself if i had as ready a feeling for the virtues of the trappist; or, had i been a catholic, if i should have felt so warmly to the dissenter of la vernede. with the first i was on terms of mere forbearance; but with the other, although only on a misunderstanding and by keeping on selected points, it was still possible to hold converse and exchange some honest thoughts. in this world of imperfection we gladly welcome even partial intimacies. and if we find but one to whom we can speak out of our heart freely, with whom we can walk in love and simplicity without dissimulation, we have no ground of quarrel with the world or god. in the valley of the mimente on tuesday, 1st october, we left florac late in the afternoon, a tired donkey and tired donkey-driver. a little way up the tarnon, a covered bridge of wood introduced us into the valley of the mimente. steep rocky red mountains overhung the stream; great oaks and chestnuts grew upon the slopes or in stony terraces; here and there was a red field of millet or a few apple-trees studded with red apples; and the road passed hard by two black hamlets, one with an old castle atop to please the heart of the tourist. it was difficult here again to find a spot fit for my encampment. even under the oaks and chestnuts the ground had not only a very rapid slope, but was heaped with loose stones; and where there was no timber the hills descended to the stream in a red precipice tufted with heather. the sun had left the highest peak in front of me, and the valley was full of the lowing sound of herdsmen's horns as they recalled the flocks into the stable, when i spied a bight of meadow some way below the roadway in an angle of the river. thither i descended, and, tying modestine provisionally to a tree, proceeded to investigate the neighbourhood. a grey pearly evening shadow filled the glen; objects at a little distance grew indistinct and melted bafflingly into each other; and the darkness was rising steadily like an exhalation. i approached a great oak which grew in the meadow, hard by the river's brink; when to my disgust the voices of children fell upon my ear, and i beheld a house round the angle on the other bank. i had half a mind to pack and be gone again, but the growing darkness moved me to remain. i had only to make no noise until the night was fairly come, and trust to the dawn to call me early in the morning. but it was hard to be annoyed by neighbours in such a great hotel. a hollow underneath the oak was my bed. before i had fed modestine and arranged my sack, three stars were already brightly shining, and the others were beginning dimly to appear. i slipped down to the river, which looked very black among its rocks, to fill my can; and dined with a good appetite in the dark, for i scrupled to light a lantern while so near a house. the moon, which i had seen a pallid crescent all afternoon, faintly illuminated the summit of the hills, but not a ray fell into the bottom of the glen where i was lying. the oak rose before me like a pillar of darkness; and overhead the heartsome stars were set in the face of the night. no one knows the stars who has not slept, as the french happily put it, a la belle etoile. he may know all their names and distances and magnitudes, and yet be ignorant of what alone concerns mankind, their serene and gladsome influence on the mind. the greater part of poetry is about the stars; and very justly, for they are themselves the most classical of poets. these same far-away worlds, sprinkled like tapers or shaken together like a diamond dust upon the sky, had looked not otherwise to roland or cavalier, when, in the words of the latter, they had 'no other tent but the sky, and no other bed than my mother earth.' all night a strong wind blew up the valley, and the acorns fell pattering over me from the oak. yet, on this first night of october, the air was as mild as may, and i slept with the fur thrown back. i was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an animal that i fear more than any wolf. a dog is vastly braver, and is besides supported by the sense of duty. if you kill a wolf, you meet with encouragement and praise; but if you kill a dog, the sacred rights of property and the domestic affections come clamouring round you for redress. at the end of a fagging day, the sharp cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen annoyance; and to a tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary and respectable world in its most hostile form. there is something of the clergyman or the lawyer about this engaging animal; and if he were not amenable to stones, the boldest man would shrink from travelling afoot. i respect dogs much in the domestic circle; but on the highway, or sleeping afield, i both detest and fear them. i was wakened next morning (wednesday, october 2nd) by the same dog for i knew his bark making a charge down the bank, and then, seeing me sit up, retreating again with great alacrity. the stars were not yet quite extinguished. the heaven was of that enchanting mild grey-blue of the early morn. a still clear light began to fall, and the trees on the hillside were outlined sharply against the sky. the wind had veered more to the north, and no longer reached me in the glen; but as i was going on with my preparations, it drove a white cloud very swiftly over the hill-top; and looking up, i was surprised to see the cloud dyed with gold. in these high regions of the air, the sun was already shining as at noon. if only the clouds travelled high enough, we should see the same thing all night long. for it is always daylight in the fields of space. as i began to go up the valley, a draught of wind came down it out of the seat of the sunrise, although the clouds continued to run overhead in an almost contrary direction. a few steps farther, and i saw a whole hillside gilded with the sun; and still a little beyond, between two peaks, a centre of dazzling brilliancy appeared floating in the sky, and i was once more face to face with the big bonfire that occupies the kernel of our system. i met but one human being that forenoon, a dark military-looking wayfarer, who carried a game-bag on a baldric; but he made a remark that seems worthy of record. for when i asked him if he were protestant or catholic 'oh,' said he, 'i make no shame of my religion. i am a catholic.' he made no shame of it! the phrase is a piece of natural statistics; for it is the language of one in a minority. i thought with a smile of bavile and his dragoons, and how you may ride rough-shod over a religion for a century, and leave it only the more lively for the friction. ireland is still catholic; the cevennes still protestant. it is not a basketful of law-papers, nor the hoofs and pistol-butts of a regiment of horse, that can change one tittle of a ploughman's thoughts. outdoor rustic people have not many ideas, but such as they have are hardy plants, and thrive flourishingly in persecution. one who has grown a long while in the sweat of laborious noons, and under the stars at night, a frequenter of hills and forests, an old honest countryman, has, in the end, a sense of communion with the powers of the universe, and amicable relations towards his god. like my mountain plymouth brother, he knows the lord. his religion does not repose upon a choice of logic; it is the poetry of the man's experience, the philosophy of the history of his life. god, like a great power, like a great shining sun, has appeared to this simple fellow in the course of years, and become the ground and essence of his least reflections; and you may change creeds and dogmas by authority, or proclaim a new religion with the sound of trumpets, if you will; but here is a man who has his own thoughts, and will stubbornly adhere to them in good and evil. he is a catholic, a protestant, or a plymouth brother, in the same indefeasible sense that a man is not a woman, or a woman not a man. for he could not vary from his faith, unless he could eradicate all memory of the past, and, in a strict and not a conventional meaning, change his mind. the heart of the country i was now drawing near to cassagnas, a cluster of black roofs upon the hillside, in this wild valley, among chestnut gardens, and looked upon in the clear air by many rocky peaks. the road along the mimente is yet new, nor have the mountaineers recovered their surprise when the first cart arrived at cassagnas. but although it lay thus apart from the current of men's business, this hamlet had already made a figure in the history of france. hard by, in caverns of the mountain, was one of the five arsenals of the camisards; where they laid up clothes and corn and arms against necessity, forged bayonets and sabres, and made themselves gunpowder with willow charcoal and saltpetre boiled in kettles. to the same caves, amid this multifarious industry, the sick and wounded were brought up to heal; and there they were visited by the two surgeons, chabrier and tavan, and secretly nursed by women of the neighbourhood. of the five legions into which the camisards were divided, it was the oldest and the most obscure that had its magazines by cassagnas. this was the band of spirit seguier; men who had joined their voices with his in the 68th psalm as they marched down by night on the archpriest of the cevennes. seguier, promoted to heaven, was succeeded by salomon couderc, whom cavalier treats in his memoirs as chaplain-general to the whole army of the camisards. he was a prophet; a great reader of the heart, who admitted people to the sacrament or refused them, by 'intensively viewing every man' between the eyes; and had the most of the scriptures off by rote. and this was surely happy; since in a surprise in august 1703, he lost his mule, his portfolios, and his bible. it is only strange that they were not surprised more often and more effectually; for this legion of cassagnas was truly patriarchal in its theory of war, and camped without sentries, leaving that duty to the angels of the god for whom they fought. this is a token, not only of their faith, but of the trackless country where they harboured. m. de caladon, taking a stroll one fine day, walked without warning into their midst, as he might have walked into 'a flock of sheep in a plain,' and found some asleep and some awake and psalm-singing. a traitor had need of no recommendation to insinuate himself among their ranks, beyond 'his faculty of singing psalms'; and even the prophet salomon 'took him into a particular friendship.' thus, among their intricate hills, the rustic troop subsisted; and history can attribute few exploits to them but sacraments and ecstasies. people of this tough and simple stock will not, as i have just been saying, prove variable in religion; nor will they get nearer to apostasy than a mere external conformity like that of naaman in the house of rimmon. when louis xvi., in the words of the edict, 'convinced by the uselessness of a century of persecutions, and rather from necessity than sympathy,' granted at last a royal grace of toleration, cassagnas was still protestant; and to a man, it is so to this day. there is, indeed, one family that is not protestant, but neither is it catholic. it is that of a catholic cure in revolt, who has taken to his bosom a schoolmistress. and his conduct, it is worth noting, is disapproved by the protestant villagers. 'it is a bad idea for a man,' said one, 'to go back from his engagements.' the villagers whom i saw seemed intelligent after a countrified fashion, and were all plain and dignified in manner. as a protestant myself, i was well looked upon, and my acquaintance with history gained me further respect. for we had something not unlike a religious controversy at table, a gendarme and a merchant with whom i dined being both strangers to the place, and catholics. the young men of the house stood round and supported me; and the whole discussion was tolerantly conducted, and surprised a man brought up among the infinitesimal and contentious differences of scotland. the merchant, indeed, grew a little warm, and was far less pleased than some others with my historical acquirements. but the gendarme was mighty easy over it all. 'it's a bad idea for a man to change,' said he; and the remark was generally applauded. that was not the opinion of the priest and soldier at our lady of the snows. but this is a different race; and perhaps the same great-heartedness that upheld them to resist, now enables them to differ in a kind spirit. for courage respects courage; but where a faith has been trodden out, we may look for a mean and narrow population. the true work of bruce and wallace was the union of the nations; not that they should stand apart a while longer, skirmishing upon their borders; but that, when the time came, they might unite with self-respect. the merchant was much interested in my journey, and thought it dangerous to sleep afield. 'there are the wolves,' said he; 'and then it is known you are an englishman. the english have always long purses, and it might very well enter into some one's head to deal you an ill blow some night.' i told him i was not much afraid of such accidents; and at any rate judged it unwise to dwell upon alarms or consider small perils in the arrangement of life. life itself, i submitted, was a far too risky business as a whole to make each additional particular of danger worth regard. 'something,' said i, 'might burst in your inside any day of the week, and there would be an end of you, if you were locked into your room with three turns of the key.' 'cependant,' said he, 'coucher dehors!' 'god,' said i, 'is everywhere.' 'cependant, coucher dehors!' he repeated, and his voice was eloquent of terror. he was the only person, in all my voyage, who saw anything hardy in so simple a proceeding; although many considered it superfluous. only one, on the other hand, professed much delight in the idea; and that was my plymouth brother, who cried out, when i told him i sometimes preferred sleeping under the stars to a close and noisy ale-house, 'now i see that you know the lord!' the merchant asked me for one of my cards as i was leaving, for he said i should be something to talk of in the future, and desired me to make a note of his request and reason; a desire with which i have thus complied. a little after two i struck across the mimente, and took a rugged path southward up a hillside covered with loose stones and tufts of heather. at the top, as is the habit of the country, the path disappeared; and i left my she-ass munching heather, and went forward alone to seek a road. i was now on the separation of two vast water-sheds; behind me all the streams were bound for the garonne and the western ocean; before me was the basin of the rhone. hence, as from the lozere, you can see in clear weather the shining of the gulf of lyons; and perhaps from here the soldiers of salomon may have watched for the topsails of sir cloudesley shovel, and the long-promised aid from england. you may take this ridge as lying in the heart of the country of the camisards; four of the five legions camped all round it and almost within view salomon and joani to the north, castanet and roland to the south; and when julien had finished his famous work, the devastation of the high cevennes, which lasted all through october and november 1703, and during which four hundred and sixty villages and hamlets were, with fire and pickaxe, utterly subverted, a man standing on this eminence would have looked forth upon a silent, smokeless, and dispeopled land. time and man's activity have now repaired these ruins; cassagnas is once more roofed and sending up domestic smoke; and in the chestnut gardens, in low and leafy corners, many a prosperous farmer returns, when the day's work is done, to his children and bright hearth. and still it was perhaps the wildest view of all my journey. peak upon peak, chain upon chain of hills ran surging southward, channelled and sculptured by the winter streams, feathered from head to foot with chestnuts, and here and there breaking out into a coronal of cliffs. the sun, which was still far from setting, sent a drift of misty gold across the hill-tops, but the valleys were already plunged in a profound and quiet shadow. a very old shepherd, hobbling on a pair of sticks, and wearing a black cap of liberty, as if in honour of his nearness to the grave, directed me to the road for st. germain de calberte. there was something solemn in the isolation of this infirm and ancient creature. where he dwelt, how he got upon this high ridge, or how he proposed to get down again, were more than i could fancy. not far off upon my right was the famous plan de font morte, where poul with his armenian sabre slashed down the camisards of seguier. this, methought, might be some rip van winkle of the war, who had lost his comrades, fleeing before poul, and wandered ever since upon the mountains. it might be news to him that cavalier had surrendered, or roland had fallen fighting with his back against an olive. and while i was thus working on my fancy, i heard him hailing in broken tones, and saw him waving me to come back with one of his two sticks. i had already got some way past him; but, leaving modestine once more, retraced my steps. alas, it was a very commonplace affair. the old gentleman had forgot to ask the pedlar what he sold, and wished to remedy this neglect. i told him sternly, 'nothing.' 'nothing?' cried he. i repeated 'nothing,' and made off. it's odd to think of, but perhaps i thus became as inexplicable to the old man as he had been to me. the road lay under chestnuts, and though i saw a hamlet or two below me in the vale, and many lone houses of the chestnut farmers, it was a very solitary march all afternoon; and the evening began early underneath the trees. but i heard the voice of a woman singing some sad, old, endless ballad not far off. it seemed to be about love and a bel amoureux, her handsome sweetheart; and i wished i could have taken up the strain and answered her, as i went on upon my invisible woodland way, weaving, like pippa in the poem, my own thoughts with hers. what could i have told her? little enough; and yet all the heart requires. how the world gives and takes away, and brings sweethearts near only to separate them again into distant and strange lands; but to love is the great amulet which makes the world a garden; and 'hope, which comes to all,' outwears the accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and death. easy to say: yea, but also, by god's mercy, both easy and grateful to believe! we struck at last into a wide white high-road carpeted with noiseless dust. the night had come; the moon had been shining for a long while upon the opposite mountain; when on turning a corner my donkey and i issued ourselves into her light. i had emptied out my brandy at florac, for i could bear the stuff no longer, and replaced it with some generous and scented volnay; and now i drank to the moon's sacred majesty upon the road. it was but a couple of mouthfuls; yet i became thenceforth unconscious of my limbs, and my blood flowed with luxury. even modestine was inspired by this purified nocturnal sunshine, and bestirred her little hoofs as to a livelier measure. the road wound and descended swiftly among masses of chestnuts. hot dust rose from our feet and flowed away. our two shadows mine deformed with the knapsack, hers comically bestridden by the pack now lay before us clearly outlined on the road, and now, as we turned a corner, went off into the ghostly distance, and sailed along the mountain like clouds. from time to time a warm wind rustled down the valley, and set all the chestnuts dangling their bunches of foliage and fruit; the ear was filled with whispering music, and the shadows danced in tune. and next moment the breeze had gone by, and in all the valley nothing moved except our travelling feet. on the opposite slope, the monstrous ribs and gullies of the mountain were faintly designed in the moonshine; and high overhead, in some lone house, there burned one lighted window, one square spark of red in the huge field of sad nocturnal colouring. at a certain point, as i went downward, turning many acute angles, the moon disappeared behind the hill; and i pursued my way in great darkness, until another turning shot me without preparation into st. germain de calberte. the place was asleep and silent, and buried in opaque night. only from a single open door, some lamplight escaped upon the road to show me that i was come among men's habitations. the two last gossips of the evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed me to the inn. the landlady was getting her chicks to bed; the fire was already out, and had, not without grumbling, to be rekindled; half an hour later, and i must have gone supperless to roost. the last day when i awoke (thursday, 2nd october), and, hearing a great flourishing of cocks and chuckling of contented hens, betook me to the window of the clean and comfortable room where i had slept the night, i looked forth on a sunshiny morning in a deep vale of chestnut gardens. it was still early, and the cockcrows, and the slanting lights, and the long shadows encouraged me to be out and look round me. st. germain de calberte is a great parish nine leagues round about. at the period of the wars, and immediately before the devastation, it was inhabited by two hundred and seventy-five families, of which only nine were catholic; and it took the cure seventeen september days to go from house to house on horseback for a census. but the place itself, although capital of a canton, is scarce larger than a hamlet. it lies terraced across a steep slope in the midst of mighty chestnuts. the protestant chapel stands below upon a shoulder; in the midst of the town is the quaint old catholic church. it was here that poor du chayla, the christian martyr, kept his library and held a court of missionaries; here he had built his tomb, thinking to lie among a grateful population whom he had redeemed from error; and hither on the morrow of his death they brought the body, pierced with two-and-fifty wounds, to be interred. clad in his priestly robes, he was laid out in state in the church. the cure, taking his text from second samuel, twentieth chapter and twelfth verse, 'and amasa wallowed in his blood in the highway,' preached a rousing sermon, and exhorted his brethren to die each at his post, like their unhappy and illustrious superior. in the midst of this eloquence there came a breeze that spirit seguier was near at hand; and behold! all the assembly took to their horses' heels, some east, some west, and the cure himself as far as alais. strange was the position of this little catholic metropolis, a thimbleful of rome, in such a wild and contrary neighbourhood. on the one hand, the legion of salomon overlooked it from cassagnas; on the other, it was cut off from assistance by the legion of roland at mialet. the cure, louvrelenil, although he took a panic at the arch-priest's funeral, and so hurriedly decamped to alais, stood well by his isolated pulpit, and thence uttered fulminations against the crimes of the protestants. salomon besieged the village for an hour and a half, but was beaten back. the militiamen, on guard before the cure's door, could be heard, in the black hours, singing protestant psalms and holding friendly talk with the insurgents. and in the morning, although not a shot had been fired, there would not be a round of powder in their flasks. where was it gone? all handed over to the camisards for a consideration. untrusty guardians for an isolated priest! that these continual stirs were once busy in st. germain de calberte, the imagination with difficulty receives; all is now so quiet, the pulse of human life now beats so low and still in this hamlet of the mountains. boys followed me a great way off, like a timid sort of lion-hunters; and people turned round to have a second look, or came out of their houses, as i went by. my passage was the first event, you would have fancied, since the camisards. there was nothing rude or forward in this observation; it was but a pleased and wondering scrutiny, like that of oxen or the human infant; yet it wearied my spirits, and soon drove me from the street. i took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted with sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable attitudes of the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. ever and again a little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all around me, with a light and dull sound, upon the sward. the noise was as of a thin fall of great hailstones; but there went with it a cheerful human sentiment of an approaching harvest and farmers rejoicing in their gains. looking up, i could see the brown nut peering through the husk, which was already gaping; and between the stems the eye embraced an amphitheatre of hill, sunlit and green with leaves. i have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. i moved in an atmosphere of pleasure, and felt light and quiet and content. but perhaps it was not the place alone that so disposed my spirit. perhaps some one was thinking of me in another country; or perhaps some thought of my own had come and gone unnoticed, and yet done me good. for some thoughts, which sure would be the most beautiful, vanish before we can rightly scan their features; as though a god, travelling by our green highways, should but ope the door, give one smiling look into the house, and go again for ever. was it apollo, or mercury, or love with folded wings? who shall say? but we go the lighter about our business, and feel peace and pleasure in our hearts. i dined with a pair of catholics. they agreed in the condemnation of a young man, a catholic, who had married a protestant girl and gone over to the religion of his wife. a protestant born they could understand and respect; indeed, they seemed to be of the mind of an old catholic woman, who told me that same day there was no difference between the two sects, save that 'wrong was more wrong for the catholic,' who had more light and guidance; but this of a man's desertion filled them with contempt. 'it is a bad idea for a man to change,' said one. it may have been accidental, but you see how this phrase pursued me; and for myself, i believe it is the current philosophy in these parts. i have some difficulty in imagining a better. it's not only a great flight of confidence for a man to change his creed and go out of his family for heaven's sake; but the odds are nay, and the hope is that, with all this great transition in the eyes of man, he has not changed himself a hairbreadth to the eyes of god. honour to those who do so, for the wrench is sore. but it argues something narrow, whether of strength or weakness, whether of the prophet or the fool, in those who can take a sufficient interest in such infinitesimal and human operations, or who can quit a friendship for a doubtful process of the mind. and i think i should not leave my old creed for another, changing only words for other words; but by some brave reading, embrace it in spirit and truth, and find wrong as wrong for me as for the best of other communions the phylloxera was in the neighbourhood; and instead of wine we drank at dinner a more economical juice of the grape la parisienne, they call it. it is made by putting the fruit whole into a cask with water; one by one the berries ferment and burst; what is drunk during the day is supplied at night in water: so, with ever another pitcher from the well, and ever another grape exploding and giving out its strength, one cask of parisienne may last a family till spring. it is, as the reader will anticipate, a feeble beverage, but very pleasant to the taste. what with dinner and coffee, it was long past three before i left st. germain de calberte. i went down beside the gardon of mialet, a great glaring watercourse devoid of water, and through st. etienne de vallee francaise, or val francesque, as they used to call it; and towards evening began to ascend the hill of st. pierre. it was a long and steep ascent. behind me an empty carriage returning to st. jean du gard kept hard upon my tracks, and near the summit overtook me. the driver, like the rest of the world, was sure i was a pedlar; but, unlike others, he was sure of what i had to sell. he had noticed the blue wool which hung out of my pack at either end; and from this he had decided, beyond my power to alter his decision, that i dealt in blue-wool collars, such as decorate the neck of the french draught-horse. i had hurried to the topmost powers of modestine, for i dearly desired to see the view upon the other side before the day had faded. but it was night when i reached the summit; the moon was riding high and clear; and only a few grey streaks of twilight lingered in the west. a yawning valley, gulfed in blackness, lay like a hole in created nature at my feet; but the outline of the hills was sharp against the sky. there was mount aigoal, the stronghold of castanet. and castanet, not only as an active undertaking leader, deserves some mention among camisards; for there is a spray of rose among his laurel; and he showed how, even in a public tragedy, love will have its way. in the high tide of war he married, in his mountain citadel, a young and pretty lass called mariette. there were great rejoicings; and the bridegroom released five-and-twenty prisoners in honour of the glad event. seven months afterwards, mariette, the princess of the cevennes, as they called her in derision, fell into the hands of the authorities, where it was like to have gone hard with her. but castanet was a man of execution, and loved his wife. he fell on valleraugue, and got a lady there for a hostage; and for the first and last time in that war there was an exchange of prisoners. their daughter, pledge of some starry night upon mount aigoal, has left descendants to this day. modestine and i it was our last meal together had a snack upon the top of st. pierre, i on a heap of stones, she standing by me in the moonlight and decorously eating bread out of my hand. the poor brute would eat more heartily in this manner; for she had a sort of affection for me, which i was soon to betray. it was a long descent upon st. jean du gard, and we met no one but a carter, visible afar off by the glint of the moon on his extinguished lantern. before ten o'clock we had got in and were at supper; fifteen miles and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours! farewell, modestine! on examination, on the morning of october 3rd, modestine was pronounced unfit for travel. she would need at least two days' repose, according to the ostler; but i was now eager to reach alais for my letters; and, being in a civilised country of stage-coaches, i determined to sell my lady friend and be off by the diligence that afternoon. our yesterday's march, with the testimony of the driver who had pursued us up the long hill of st. pierre, spread a favourable notion of my donkey's capabilities. intending purchasers were aware of an unrivalled opportunity. before ten i had an offer of twenty-five francs; and before noon, after a desperate engagement, i sold her, saddle and all, for five-andthirty. the pecuniary gain is not obvious, but i had bought freedom into the bargain. st jean du gard is a large place, and largely protestant. the maire, a protestant, asked me to help him in a small matter which is itself characteristic of the country. the young women of the cevennes profit by the common religion and the difference of the language to go largely as governesses into england; and here was one, a native of mialet, struggling with english circulars from two different agencies in london. i gave what help i could; and volunteered some advice, which struck me as being excellent. one thing more i note. the phylloxera has ravaged the vineyards in this neighbourhood; and in the early morning, under some chestnuts by the river, i found a party of men working with a cider-press. i could not at first make out what they were after, and asked one fellow to explain. 'making cider,' he said. 'oui, c'est comme ca. comme dans le nord!' there was a ring of sarcasm in his voice: the country was going to the devil. it was not until i was fairly seated by the driver, and rattling through a rocky valley with dwarf olives, that i became aware of my bereavement. i had lost modestine. up to that moment i had thought i hated her; but now she was gone, 'and oh! the difference to me!' for twelve days we had been fast companions; we had travelled upwards of a hundred and twenty miles, crossed several respectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs by many a rocky and many a boggy by-road. after the first day, although sometimes i was hurt and distant in manner, i still kept my patience; and as for her, poor soul! she had come to regard me as a god. she loved to eat out of my hand. she was patient, elegant in form, the colour of an ideal mouse, and inimitably small. her faults were those of her race and sex; her virtues were her own. farewell, and if for ever father adam wept when he sold her to me; after i had sold her in my turn, i was tempted to follow his example; and being alone with a stage-driver and four or five agreeable young men, i did not hesitate to yield to my emotion. end of the project gutenberg etext travels with a donkey the project gutenberg etext of letters of robert louis stevenson volume 2 #31 in our series by robert louis stevenson copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. letters of robert louis stevenson volume 2 august, 1996 [etext #637] the project gutenberg etext of letters of robert louis stevenson volume 2 *****this file should be named rlsl210.txt or rlsl210.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, rlsl211.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, rlsl210a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / benedictine university" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / benedictine university". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* the letters of robert louis stevenson, volume ii scanned and proofed by david price ccx074@coventry.ac.uk the letters of robert louis stevenson, volume ii chapter viii life at bournemouth, continued, january 1886-july 1887 letter: to mrs. de mattos [skerryvore, bournemouth], january 1st, 1886. dearest katharine, here, on a very little book and accompanied with lame verses, i have put your name. our kindness is now getting well on in years; it must be nearly of age; and it gets more valuable to me with every time i see you. it is not possible to express any sentiment, and it is not necessary to try, at least between us. you know very well that i love you dearly, and that i always will. i only wish the verses were better, but at least you like the story; and it is sent to you by the one that loves you jekyll, and not hyde. r. l. s. ave! bells upon the city are ringing in the night; high above the gardens are the houses full of light; on the heathy pentlands is the curlew flying free; and the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie. we cannae break the bonds that god decreed to bind, still we'll be the children of the heather and the wind; far away from home, o, it's still for you and me that the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie! r. l. s. letter: to alison cunningham [skerryvore, bournemouth], 1st, 1886. my dear kinnicum, i am a very bad dog, but not for the first time. your book, which is very interesting, came duly; and i immediately got a very bad cold indeed, and have been fit for nothing whatever. i am a bit better now, and aye on the mend; so i write to tell you, i thought of you on new year's day; though, i own, it would have been more decent if i had thought in time for you to get my letter then. well, what can't be cured must be endured, mr. lawrie; and you must be content with what i give. if i wrote all the letters i ought to write, and at the proper time, i should be very good and very happy; but i doubt if i should do anything else. i suppose you will be in town for the new year; and i hope your health is pretty good. what you want is diet; but it is as much use to tell you that as it is to tell my father. and i quite admit a diet is a beastly thing. i doubt, however, if it be as bad as not being allowed to speak, which i have tried fully, and do not like. when, at the same time, i was not allowed to read, it passed a joke. but these are troubles of the past, and on this day, at least, it is proper to suppose they won't return. but we are not put here to enjoy ourselves: it was not god's purpose; and i am prepared to argue, it is not our sincere wish. as for our deserts, the less said of them the better, for somebody might hear, and nobody cares to be laughed at. a good man is a very noble thing to see, but not to himself; what he seems to god is, fortunately, not our business; that is the domain of faith; and whether on the first of january or the thirty-first of december, faith is a good word to end on. my dear cummy, many happy returns to you and my best love. the worst correspondent in the world, robert louis stevenson. letter: to mr. and mrs. thomas stevenson [skerryvore, bournemouth], january 1st, 1886. my dear people, many happy returns of the day to you all; i am fairly well and in good spirits; and much and hopefully occupied with dear jenkin's life. the inquiry in every detail, every letter that i read, makes me think of him more nobly. i cannot imagine how i got his friendship; i did not deserve it. i believe the notice will be interesting and useful. my father's last letter, owing to the use of a quill pen and the neglect of blotting-paper, was hopelessly illegible. every one tried, and every one failed to decipher an important word on which the interest of one whole clause (and the letter consisted of two) depended. i find i can make little more of this; but i'll spare the blots. dear people, ever your loving son, r. l. s. i will try again, being a giant refreshed by the house being empty. the presence of people is the great obstacle to letter-writing. i deny that letters should contain news (i mean mine; those of other people should). but mine should contain appropriate sentiments and humorous nonsense, or nonsense without the humour. when the house is empty, the mind is seized with a desire no, that is too strong a willingness to pour forth unmitigated rot, which constitutes (in me) the true spirit of correspondence. when i have no remarks to offer (and nobody to offer them to), my pen flies, and you see the remarkable consequence of a page literally covered with words and genuinely devoid of sense. i can always do that, if quite alone, and i like doing it; but i have yet to learn that it is beloved by correspondents. the deuce of it is, that there is no end possible but the end of the paper; and as there is very little left of that if i cannot stop writing suppose you give up reading. it would all come to the same thing; and i think we should all be happier... letter: to w. h. low [skerryvore, bournemouth], jan. 2nd, 1886. my dear low, lamia has come, and i do not know how to thank you, not only for the beautiful art of the designs, but for the handsome and apt words of the dedication. my favourite is 'bathes unseen,' which is a masterpiece; and the next, 'into the green recessed woods,' is perhaps more remarkable, though it does not take my fancy so imperiously. the night scene at corinth pleases me also. the second part offers fewer opportunities. i own i should like to see both isabella and the eve thus illustrated; and then there's hyperion o, yes, and endymion! i should like to see the lot: beautiful pictures dance before me by hundreds: i believe endymion would suit you best. it also is in faery-land; and i see a hundred opportunities, cloudy and flowery glories, things as delicate as the cobweb in the bush; actions, not in themselves of any mighty purport, but made for the pencil: the feast of pan, peona's isle, the 'slabbed margin of a well,' the chase of the butterfly, the nymph, glaucus, cybele, sleep on his couch, a farrago of unconnected beauties. but i divagate; and all this sits in the bosom of the publisher. what is more important, i accept the terms of the dedication with a frank heart, and the terms of your latin legend fairly. the sight of your pictures has once more awakened me to my right mind; something may come of it; yet one more bold push to get free of this prisonyard of the abominably ugly, where i take my daily exercise with my contemporaries. i do not know, i have a feeling in my bones, a sentiment which may take on the forms of imagination, or may not. if it does, i shall owe it to you; and the thing will thus descend from keats even if on the wrong side of the blanket. if it can be done in prose that is the puzzle i divagate again. thank you again: you can draw and yet you do not love the ugly: what are you doing in this age? flee, while it is yet time; they will have your four limbs pinned upon a stable door to scare witches. the ugly, my unhappy friend, is de rigueur: it is the only wear! what a chance you threw away with the serpent! why had apollonius no pimples? heavens, my dear low, you do not know your business.... i send you herewith a gothic gnome for your greek nymph; but the gnome is interesting, i think, and he came out of a deep mine, where he guards the fountain of tears. it is not always the time to rejoice. yours ever, r. l. s. the gnome's name is jekyll & hyde; i believe you will find he is likewise quite willing to answer to the name of low or stevenson. same day. i have copied out on the other sheet some bad verses, which somehow your picture suggested; as a kind of image of things that i pursue and cannot reach, and that you seem no, not to have reached but to have come a thought nearer to than i. this is the life we have chosen: well, the choice was mad, but i should make it again. what occurs to me is this: perhaps they might be printed in (say) the century for the sake of my name; and if that were possible, they might advertise your book. it might be headed as sent in acknowledgment of your lamia. or perhaps it might be introduced by the phrases i have marked above. i dare say they would stick it in: i want no payment, being well paid by lamia. if they are not, keep them to yourself. to will h. low damned bad lines in return for a beautiful book youth now flees on feathered foot. faint and fainter sounds the flute; rarer songs of gods. and still, somewhere on the sunny hill, or along the winding stream, through the willows, flits a dream; flits, but shows a smiling face, flees, but with so quaint a grace, none can choose to stay at home, all must follow all must roam. this is unborn beauty: she now in air floats high and free, takes the sun, and breaks the blue; late, with stooping pinion flew raking hedgerow trees, and wet her wing in silver streams, and set shining foot on temple roof. now again she flies aloof, coasting mountain clouds, and kissed by the evening's amethyst. in wet wood and miry lane still we pound and pant in vain; still with earthy foot we chase waning pinion, fainting face; still, with grey hair, we stumble on till behold! the vision gone! where has fleeting beauty led? to the doorway of the dead! qy. omit? [life is gone, but life was gay: we have come the primrose way!] r. l. s. letter: to edmund gosse skerryvore, bournemouth, jan. 2nd, 1886. my dear gosse, thank you for your letter, so interesting to my vanity. there is a review in the st. james's, which, as it seems to hold somewhat of your opinions, and is besides written with a pen and not a poker, we think may possibly be yours. the prince has done fairly well in spite of the reviews, which have been bad: he was, as you doubtless saw, well slated in the saturday; one paper received it as a child's story; another (picture my agony) described it as a 'gilbert comedy.' it was amusing to see the race between me and justin m'carthy: the milesian has won by a length. that is the hard part of literature. you aim high, and you take longer over your work, and it will not be so successful as if you had aimed low and rushed it. what the public likes is work (of any kind) a little loosely executed; so long as it is a little wordy, a little slack, a little dim and knotless, the dear public likes it; it should (if possible) be a little dull into the bargain. i know that good work sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my heart, i think it is by an accident. and i know also that good work must succeed at last; but that is not the doing of the public; they are only shamed into silence or affectation. i do not write for the public; i do write for money, a nobler deity; and most of all for myself, not perhaps any more noble, but both more intelligent and nearer home. let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the beast whom we feed. what he likes is the newspaper; and to me the press is the mouth of a sewer, where lying is professed as from an university chair, and everything prurient, and ignoble, and essentially dull, finds its abode and pulpit. i do not like mankind; but men, and not all of these and fewer women. as for respecting the race, and, above all, that fatuous rabble of burgesses called 'the public,' god save me from such irreligion! that way lies disgrace and dishonour. there must be something wrong in me, or i would not be popular. this is perhaps a trifle stronger than my sedate and permanent opinion. not much, i think. as for the art that we practise, i have never been able to see why its professors should be respected. they chose the primrose path; when they found it was not all primroses, but some of it brambly, and much of it uphill, they began to think and to speak of themselves as holy martyrs. but a man is never martyred in any honest sense in the pursuit of his pleasure; and delirium tremens has more of the honour of the cross. we were full of the pride of life, and chose, like prostitutes, to live by a pleasure. we should be paid if we give the pleasure we pretend to give; but why should we be honoured? i hope some day you and mrs. gosse will come for a sunday; but we must wait till i am able to see people. i am very full of jenkin's life; it is painful, yet very pleasant, to dig into the past of a dead friend, and find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter. i own, as i read, i wonder more and more why he should have taken me to be a friend. he had many and obvious faults upon the face of him; the heart was pure gold. i feel it little pain to have lost him, for it is a loss in which i cannot believe; i take it, against reason, for an absence; if not to-day, then to-morrow, i still fancy i shall see him in the door; and then, now when i know him better, how glad a meeting! yes, if i could believe in the immortality business, the world would indeed be too good to be true; but we were put here to do what service we can, for honour and not for hire: the sods cover us, and the worm that never dies, the conscience, sleeps well at last; these are the wages, besides what we receive so lavishly day by day; and they are enough for a man who knows his own frailty and sees all things in the proportion of reality. the soul of piety was killed long ago by that idea of reward. nor is happiness, whether eternal or temporal, the reward that mankind seeks. happinesses are but his wayside campings; his soul is in the journey; he was born for the struggle, and only tastes his life in effort and on the condition that he is opposed. how, then, is such a creature, so fiery, so pugnacious, so made up of discontent and aspiration, and such noble and uneasy passions how can he be rewarded but by rest? i would not say it aloud; for man's cherished belief is that he loves that happiness which he continually spurns and passes by; and this belief in some ulterior happiness exactly fits him. he does not require to stop and taste it; he can be about the rugged and bitter business where his heart lies; and yet he can tell himself this fairy tale of an eternal tea-party, and enjoy the notion that he is both himself and something else; and that his friends will yet meet him, all ironed out and emasculate, and still be lovable, as if love did not live in the faults of the beloved only, and draw its breath in an unbroken round of forgiveness! but the truth is, we must fight until we die; and when we die there can be no quiet for mankind but complete resumption into what? god, let us say when all these desperate tricks will lie spellbound at last. here came my dinner and cut this sermon short excusez. r. l. s. letter: to james payn skerryvore, bournemouth, jan. 2nd, 1886. dear james payn, your very kind letter came very welcome; and still more welcome the news that you see -'s tale. i will now tell you (and it was very good and very wise of me not to tell it before) that he is one of the most unlucky men i know, having put all his money into a pharmacy at hyeres, when the cholera (certainly not his fault) swept away his customers in a body. thus you can imagine the pleasure i have to announce to him a spark of hope, for he sits to-day in his pharmacy, doing nothing and taking nothing, and watching his debts inexorably mount up. to pass to other matters: your hand, you are perhaps aware, is not one of those that can be read running; and the name of your daughter remains for me undecipherable. i call her, then, your daughter and a very good name too and i beg to explain how it came about that i took her house. the hospital was a point in my tale; but there is a house on each side. now the true house is the one before the hospital: is that no. 11? if not, what do you complain of? if it is, how can i help what is true? everything in the dynamiter is not true; but the story of the brown box is, in almost every particular; i lay my hand on my heart and swear to it. it took place in that house in 1884; and if your daughter was in that house at the time, all i can say is she must have kept very bad society. but i see you coming. perhaps your daughter's house has not a balcony at the back? i cannot answer for that; i only know that side of queen square from the pavement and the back windows of brunswick row. thence i saw plenty of balconies (terraces rather); and if there is none to the particular house in question, it must have been so arranged to spite me. i now come to the conclusion of this matter. i address three questions to your daughter:1st has her house the proper terrace? 2nd. is it on the proper side of the hospital? 3rd. was she there in the summer of 1884? you see, i begin to fear that mrs. desborough may have deceived me on some trifling points, for she is not a lady of peddling exactitude. if this should prove to be so, i will give your daughter a proper certificate, and her house property will return to its original value. can man say more? yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. i saw the other day that the eternal had plagiarised from lost sir massingberd: good again, sir! i wish he would plagiarise the death of zero. letter: to w. h. low skerryvore, bournemouth, jan. somethingorother-th, 1886. my dear low, i send you two photographs: they are both done by sir percy shelley, the poet's son, which may interest. the sitting down one is, i think, the best; but if they choose that, see that the little reflected light on the nose does not give me a turn-up; that would be tragic. don't forget 'baronet' to sir percy's name. we all think a heap of your book; and i am well pleased with my dedication. yours ever, r. l. stevenson. p.s. apropos of the odd controversy about shelley's nose: i have before me four photographs of myself, done by shelley's son: my nose is hooked, not like the eagle, indeed, but like the accipitrine family in man: well, out of these four, only one marks the bend, one makes it straight, and one suggests a turn-up. this throws a flood of light on calumnious man and the scandalmongering sun. for personally i cling to my curve. to continue the shelley controversy: i have a look of him, all his sisters had noses like mine; sir percy has a marked hook; all the family had high cheek-bones like mine; what doubt, then, but that this turn-up (of which jeaffreson accuses the poet, along with much other fatras) is the result of some accident similar to what has happened in my photographs by his son? r. l. s. letter: to thomas stevenson [skerryvore, bournemouth, january 25, 1886.] my dear father, many thanks for a letter quite like yourself. i quite agree with you, and had already planned a scene of religion in balfour; the society for the propagation of christian knowledge furnishes me with a catechist whom i shall try to make the man. i have another catechist, the blind, pistol-carrying highway robber, whom i have transferred from the long island to mull. i find it a most picturesque period, and wonder scott let it escape. the covenant is lost on one of the tarrans, and david is cast on earraid, where (being from inland) he is nearly starved before he finds out the island is tidal; then he crosses mull to toronsay, meeting the blind catechist by the way; then crosses morven from kinlochaline to kingairloch, where he stays the night with the good catechist; that is where i am; next day he is to be put ashore in appin, and be present at colin campbell's death. to-day i rest, being a little run down. strange how liable we are to brain fag in this scooty family! but as far as i have got, all but the last chapter, i think david is on his feet, and (to my mind) a far better story and far sounder at heart than treasure island. i have no earthly news, living entirely in my story, and only coming out of it to play patience. the shelleys are gone; the taylors kinder than can be imagined. the other day, lady taylor drove over and called on me; she is a delightful old lady, and great fun. i mentioned a story about the duchess of wellington which i had heard sir henry tell; and though he was very tired, he looked it up and copied it out for me in his own hand. your most affectionate son, robert louis stevenson. letter: to c. w. stoddard skerryvore, bournemouth, feb. 13th, 1886. my dear stoddard, i am a dreadful character; but, you see, i have at last taken pen in hand; how long i may hold it, god knows. this is already my sixth letter to-day, and i have many more waiting; and my wrist gives me a jog on the subject of scrivener's cramp, which is not encouraging. i gather you were a little down in the jaw when you wrote your last. i am as usual pretty cheerful, but not very strong. i stay in the house all winter, which is base; but, as you continue to see, the pen goes from time to time, though neither fast enough nor constantly enough to please me. my wife is at bath with my father and mother, and the interval of widowery explains my writing. another person writing for you when you have done work is a great enemy to correspondence. to-day i feel out of health, and shan't work; and hence this so much overdue reply. i was re-reading some of your south sea idyls the other day: some of the chapters are very good indeed; some pages as good as they can be. how does your class get along? if you like to touch on otto, any day in a by-hour, you may tell them as the author's last dying confession that it is a strange example of the difficulty of being ideal in an age of realism; that the unpleasant giddymindedness, which spoils the book and often gives it a wanton air of unreality and juggling with air-bells, comes from unsteadiness of key; from the too great realism of some chapters and passages some of which i have now spotted, others i dare say i shall never spot which disprepares the imagination for the cast of the remainder. any story can be made true in its own key; any story can be made false by the choice of a wrong key of detail or style: otto is made to reel like a drunken i was going to say man, but let us substitute cipher by the variations of the key. have you observed that the famous problem of realism and idealism is one purely of detail? have you seen my 'note on realism' in cassell's magazine of art; and 'elements of style' in the contemporary; and 'romance' and 'humble apology' in longman's? they are all in your line of business; let me know what you have not seen and i'll send 'em. i am glad i brought the old house up to you. it was a pleasant old spot, and i remember you there, though still more dearly in your own strange den upon a hill in san francisco; and one of the most san francisco-y parts of san francisco. good-bye, my dear fellow, and believe me your friend, robert louis stevenson. letter: to j. a. symonds skerryvore, bournemouth [spring 1886]. my dear symonds, if we have lost touch, it is (i think) only in a material sense; a question of letters, not hearts. you will find a warm welcome at skerryvore from both the lightkeepers; and, indeed, we never tell ourselves one of our financial fairy tales, but a run to davos is a prime feature. i am not changeable in friendship; and i think i can promise you you have a pair of trusty wellwishers and friends in bournemouth: whether they write or not is but a small thing; the flag may not be waved, but it is there. jekyll is a dreadful thing, i own; but the only thing i feel dreadful about is that damned old business of the war in the members. this time it came out; i hope it will stay in, in future. raskolnikoff is easily the greatest book i have read in ten years; i am glad you took to it. many find it dull: henry james could not finish it: all i can say is, it nearly finished me. it was like having an illness. james did not care for it because the character of raskolnikoff was not objective; and at that i divined a great gulf between us, and, on further reflection, the existence of a certain impotence in many minds of to-day, which prevents them from living in a book or a character, and keeps them standing afar off, spectators of a puppet show. to such i suppose the book may seem empty in the centre; to the others it is a room, a house of life, into which they themselves enter, and are tortured and purified. the juge d'instruction i thought a wonderful, weird, touching, ingenious creation: the drunken father, and sonia, and the student friend, and the uncircumscribed, protaplasmic humanity of raskolnikoff, all upon a level that filled me with wonder: the execution also, superb in places. another has been translated humilies et offenses. it is even more incoherent than le crime et le chatiment, but breathes much of the same lovely goodness, and has passages of power. dostoieffsky is a devil of a swell, to be sure. have you heard that he became a stout, imperialist conservative? it is interesting to know. to something of that side, the balance leans with me also in view of the incoherency and incapacity of all. the old boyish idea of the march on paradise being now out of season, and all plans and ideas that i hear debated being built on a superb indifference to the first principles of human character, a helpless desire to acquiesce in anything of which i know the worst assails me. fundamental errors in human nature of two sorts stand on the skyline of all this modem world of aspirations. first, that it is happiness that men want; and second, that happiness consists of anything but an internal harmony. men do not want, and i do not think they would accept, happiness; what they live for is rivalry, effort, success the elements our friends wish to eliminate. and, on the other hand, happiness is a question of morality or of immorality, there is no difference and conviction. gordon was happy in khartoum, in his worst hours of danger and fatigue; marat was happy, i suppose, in his ugliest frenzy; marcus aurelius was happy in the detested camp; pepys was pretty happy, and i am pretty happy on the whole, because we both somewhat crowingly accepted a via media, both liked to attend to our affairs, and both had some success in managing the same. it is quite an open question whether pepys and i ought to be happy; on the other hand, there is no doubt that marat had better be unhappy. he was right (if he said it) that he was la misere humaine, cureless misery unless perhaps by the gallows. death is a great and gentle solvent; it has never had justice done it, no, not by whitman. as for those crockery chimney-piece ornaments, the bourgeois (quorum pars), and their cowardly dislike of dying and killing, it is merely one symptom of a thousand how utterly they have got out of touch of life. their dislike of capital punishment and their treatment of their domestic servants are for me the two flaunting emblems of their hollowness. god knows where i am driving to. but here comes my lunch. which interruption, happily for you, seems to have stayed the issue. i have now nothing to say, that had formerly such a pressure of twaddle. pray don't fail to come this summer. it will be a great disappointment, now it has been spoken of, if you do. yours ever, robert louis stevenson letter: to w. h. low [skerryvore, bournemouth, march 1886.] my dear low, this is the most enchanting picture. now understand my state: i am really an invalid, but of a mysterious order. i might be a malade imaginaire, but for one too tangible symptom, my tendency to bleed from the lungs. if we could go, (1st) we must have money enough to travel with leisure and comfort especially the first. (2nd) you must be prepared for a comrade who would go to bed some part of every day and often stay silent (3rd) you would have to play the part of a thoughtful courier, sparing me fatigue, looking out that my bed was warmed, etc. (4th) if you are very nervous, you must recollect a bad haemorrhage is always on the cards, with its concomitants of anxiety and horror for those who are beside me. do you blench? if so, let us say no more about it. if you are still unafraid, and the money were forthcoming, i believe the trip might do me good, and i feel sure that, working together, we might produce a fine book. the rhone is the river of angels. i adore it: have adored it since i was twelve, and first saw it from the train. lastly, it would depend on how i keep from now on. i have stood the winter hitherto with some credit, but the dreadful weather still continues, and i cannot holloa till i am through the wood. subject to these numerous and gloomy provisos, i embrace the prospect with glorious feelings. i write this from bed, snow pouring without, and no circumstance of pleasure except your letter. that, however, counts for much. i am glad you liked the doggerel: i have already had a liberal cheque, over which i licked my fingers with a sound conscience. i had not meant to make money by these stumbling feet, but if it comes, it is only too welcome in my handsome but impecunious house. let me know soon what is to be expected as far as it does not hang by that inconstant quantity, my want of health. remember me to madam with the best thanks and wishes; and believe me your friend, robert louis stevenson. letter: to mrs. fleeming jenkin [skerryvore, bournemouth, april 1886.] my dear mrs. jenkin, i try to tell myself it is good nature, but i know it is vanity that makes me write. i have drafted the first part of chapter vi., fleeming and his friends, his influence on me, his views on religion and literature, his part at the savile; it should boil down to about ten pages, and i really do think it admirably good. it has so much evoked fleeming for myself that i found my conscience stirred just as it used to be after a serious talk with him: surely that means it is good? i had to write and tell you, being alone. i have excellent news of fanny, who is much better for the change. my father is still very yellow, and very old, and very weak, but yesterday he seemed happier, and smiled, and followed what was said; even laughed, i think. when he came away, he said to me, 'take care of yourself, my dearie,' which had a strange sound of childish days, and will not leave my mind. you must get litolf's gavottes celebres: i have made another trover there: a musette of lully's. the second part of it i have not yet got the hang of; but the first only a few bars! the gavotte is beautiful and pretty hard, i think, and very much of the period; and at the end of it, this musette enters with the most really thrilling effect of simple beauty. o it's first-rate. i am quite mad over it. if you find other books containing lully, rameau, martini, please let me know; also you might tell me, you who know bach, where the easiest is to be found. i write all morning, come down, and never leave the piano till about five; write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave the piano till i go to bed. this is a fine life. yours most sincerely, r. l. s. if you get the musette (lully's), please tell me if i am right, and it was probably written for strings. anyway, it is as neat as as neat as bach on the piano; or seems so to my ignorance. i play much of the rigadoon but it is strange, it don't come off quite so well with me! [musical score which cannot be reproduced] there is the first part of the musette copied (from memory, so i hope there's nothing wrong). is it not angelic? but it ought, of course, to have the gavotte before. the gavotte is in g, and ends on the keynote thus (if i remember):[musical score which cannot be reproduced] staccato, i think. then you sail into the musette. n.b. where i have put an 'a,' is that a dominant eleventh, or what? or just a seventh on the d? and if the latter, is that allowed? it sounds very funny. never mind all my questions; if i begin about music (which is my leading ignorance and curiosity), i have always to babble questions: all my friends know me now, and take no notice whatever. the whole piece is marked allegro; but surely could easily be played too fast? the dignity must not be lost; the periwig feeling. letter: to thomas stevenson [skerryvore, bournemouth, march 1886.] my dear father, the david problem has to-day been decided. i am to leave the door open for a sequel if the public take to it, and this will save me from butchering a lot of good material to no purpose. your letter from carlisle was pretty like yourself, sir, as i was pleased to see; the hand of jekyll, not the hand of hyde. i am for action quite unfit, and even a letter is beyond me; so pray take these scraps at a vast deal more than their intrinsic worth. i am in great spirits about david, colvin agreeing with henley, fanny, and myself in thinking it far the most human of my labours hitherto. as to whether the long-eared british public may take to it, all think it more than doubtful; i wish they would, for i could do a second volume with ease and pleasure, and colvin thinks it sin and folly to throw away david and alan breck upon so small a field as this one. ever your affectionate son, r. l. s. letter: to mrs. fleeming jenkin [skerryvore, bournemouth], april 15 or 16 (the hour not being known), 1886. my dear mrs. jenkin, it is i know not what hour of the night; but i cannot sleep, have lit the gas, and here goes. first, all your packet arrived: i have dipped into the schumann already with great pleasure. surely, in what concerns us there is a sweet little chirrup; the good words arrived in the morning just when i needed it, and the famous notes that i had lost were recovered also in the nick of time. and now i am going to bother you with my affairs: premising, first, that this is private; second, that whatever i do the life shall be done first, and i am getting on with it well; and third, that i do not quite know why i consult you, but something tells me you will hear with fairness. here is my problem. the curtin women are still miserable prisoners; no one dare buy their farm of them, all the manhood of england and the world stands aghast before a threat of murder. (1) now, my work can be done anywhere; hence i can take up without loss a back-going irish farm, and live on, though not (as i had originally written) in it: first reason. (2) if i should be killed, there are a good many who would feel it: writers are so much in the public eye, that a writer being murdered would attract attention, throw a bull's-eye light upon this cowardly business: second reason. (3) i am not unknown in the states, from which the funds come that pay for these brutalities: to some faint extent, my death (if i should be killed) would tell there: third reason. (4) nobody else is taking up this obvious and crying duly: fourth reason. (5) i have a crazy health and may die at any moment, my life is of no purchase in an insurance office, it is the less account to husband it, and the business of husbanding a life is dreary and demoralising: fifth reason. i state these in no order, but as they occur to me. and i shall do the like with the objections. first objection: it will do no good; you have seen gordon die and nobody minded; nobody will mind if you die. this is plainly of the devil. second objection: you will not even be murdered, the climate will miserably kill you, you will strangle out in a rotten damp heat, in congestion, etc. well, what then? it changes nothing: the purpose is to brave crime; let me brave it, for such time and to such an extent as god allows. third objection: the curtin women are probably highly uninteresting females. i haven't a doubt of it. but the government cannot, men will not, protect them. if i am the only one to see this public duty, it is to the public and the right i should perform it not to mesdames curtin. fourth objection: i am married. 'i have married a wife!' i seem to have heard it before. it smells ancient! what was the context? fifth objection: my wife has had a mean life (1), loves me (2), could not bear to lose me (3). (1) i admit: i am sorry. (2) but what does she love me for? and (3) she must lose me soon or late. and after all, because we run this risk, it does not follow we should fail. sixth objection: my wife wouldn't like it. no, she wouldn't. who would? but the curtins don't like it. and all those who are to suffer if this goes on, won't like it. and if there is a great wrong, somebody must suffer. seventh objection: i won't like it. no, i will not; i have thought it through, and i will not. but what of that? and both she and i may like it more than we suppose. we shall lose friends, all comforts, all society: so has everybody who has ever done anything; but we shall have some excitement, and that's a fine thing; and we shall be trying to do the right, and that's not to be despised. eighth objection: i am an author with my work before me. see second reason. ninth objection: but am i not taken with the hope of excitement? i was at first. i am not much now. i see what a dreary, friendless, miserable, god-forgotten business it will be. and anyway, is not excitement the proper reward of doing anything both right and a little dangerous? tenth objection: but am i not taken with a notion of glory? i dare say i am. yet i see quite clearly how all points to nothing coming, to a quite inglorious death by disease and from the lack of attendance; or even if i should be knocked on the head, as these poor irish promise, how little any one will care. it will be a smile at a thousand breakfast-tables. i am nearly forty now; i have not many illusions. and if i had? i do not love this health-tending, housekeeping life of mine. i have a taste for danger, which is human, like the fear of it. here is a fair cause; a just cause; no knight ever set lance in rest for a juster. yet it needs not the strength i have not, only the passive courage that i hope i could muster, and the watchfulness that i am sure i could learn. here is a long midnight dissertation; with myself; with you. please let me hear. but i charge you this: if you see in this idea of mine the finger of duty, do not dissuade me. i am nearing forty, i begin to love my ease and my home and my habits, i never knew how much till this arose; do not falsely counsel me to put my head under the bed-clothes. and i will say this to you: my wife, who hates the idea, does not refuse. 'it is nonsense,' says she, 'but if you go, i will go.' poor girl, and her home and her garden that she was so proud of! i feel her garden most of all, because it is a pleasure (i suppose) that i do not feel myself to share. 1. here is a great wrong. 2. " growing wrong. 3. " wrong founded on crime. 4. " crime that the government cannot prevent. 5. " crime that it occurs to no man to defy. 6. but it has occurred to me. 7. being a known person, some will notice my defiance. 8. being a writer, i can make people notice it. 9. and, i think, make people imitate me. 10. which would destroy in time this whole scaffolding of oppression. 11. and if i fail, however ignominiously, that is not my concern. it is, with an odd mixture of reverence and humorous remembrances of dickens, be it said it is a-nother's. and here, at i cannot think what hour of the morning, i shall dry up, and remain, yours, really in want of a little help, r. l s. sleepless at midnight's dewy hour. " " witching " " " maudlin " " " etc. next morning. eleventh objection: i have a father and mother. and who has not? macduff's was a rare case; if we must wait for a macduff. besides, my father will not perhaps be long here. twelfth objection: the cause of england in ireland is not worth supporting. a qui le dites-vous? and i am not supporting that. home rule, if you like. cause of decency, the idea that populations should not be taught to gain public ends by private crime, the idea that for all men to bow before a threat of crime is to loosen and degrade beyond redemption the whole fabric of man's decency. letter: to mrs. fleeming jenkin [skerryvore, bournemouth, april 1886.] my dear mrs. jenkin, the book it is all drafted: i hope soon to send you for comments chapters iii., iv., and v. chapter vii. is roughly but satisfactorily drafted: a very little work should put that to rights. but chapter vi. is no joke; it is a mare magnum: i swim and drown and come up again; and it is all broken ends and mystification: moreover, i perceive i am in want of more matter. i must have, first of all, a little letter from mr. ewing about the phonograph work: if you think he would understand it is quite a matter of chance whether i use a word or a fact out of it. if you think he would not: i will go without. also, could i have a look at ewing's precis? and lastly, i perceive i must interview you again about a few points; they are very few, and might come to little; and i propose to go on getting things as well together as i can in the meanwhile, and rather have a final time when all is ready and only to be criticised. i do still think it will be good. i wonder if trelat would let me cut? but no, i think i wouldn't after all; 'tis so quaint and pretty and clever and simple and french, and gives such a good sight of fleeming: the plum of the book, i think. you misunderstood me in one point: i always hoped to found such a society; that was the outside of my dream, and would mean entire success. but i cannot play peter the hermit. in these days of the fleet street journalist, i cannot send out better men than myself, with wives or mothers just as good as mine, and sisters (i may at least say) better, to a danger and a long-drawn dreariness that i do not share. my wife says it's cowardice; what brave men are the leader-writers! call it cowardice; it is mine. mind you, i may end by trying to do it by the pen only: i shall not love myself if i do; and is it ever a good thing to do a thing for which you despise yourself? even in the doing? and if the thing you do is to call upon others to do the thing you neglect? i have never dared to say what i feel about men's lives, because my own was in the wrong: shall i dare to send them to death? the physician must heal himself; he must honestly try the path he recommends: if he does not even try, should he not be silent? i thank you very heartily for your letter, and for the seriousness you brought to it. you know, i think when a serious thing is your own, you keep a saner man by laughing at it and yourself as you go. so i do not write possibly with all the really somewhat sickened gravity i feel. and indeed, what with the book, and this business to which i referred, and ireland, i am scarcely in an enviable state. well, i ought to be glad, after ten years of the worst training on earth valetudinarianism that i can still be troubled by a duty. you shall hear more in time; so far, i am at least decided: i will go and see balfour when i get to london. we have all had a great pleasure: a mrs. rawlinson came and brought with her a nineteen-year-old daughter, simple, human, as beautiful as herself; i never admired a girl before, you know it was my weakness: we are all three dead in love with her. how nice to be able to do so much good to harassed people by yourself! ever yours, r. l. s. letter: to miss rawlinson [skerryvore, bournemouth, april 1886.] of the many flowers you brought me, only some were meant to stay, and the flower i thought the sweetest was the flower that went away. of the many flowers you brought me, all were fair and fresh and gay, but the flower i thought the sweetest was the blossom of the may. robert louis stevenson. letter: to miss monroe skerryvore, bournemouth, may 25th, 1886. dear miss monroe, (i hope i have this rightly) i must lose no time in thanking you for a letter singularly pleasant to receive. it may interest you to know that i read to the signature without suspecting my correspondent was a woman; though in one point (a reference to the countess) i might have found a hint of the truth. you are not pleased with otto; since i judge you do not like weakness; and no more do i. and yet i have more than tolerance for otto, whose faults are the faults of weakness, but never of ignoble weakness, and who seeks before all to be both kind and just. seeks, not succeeds. but what is man? so much of cynicism to recognise that nobody does right is the best equipment for those who do not wish to be cynics in good earnest. think better of otto, if my plea can influence you; and this i mean for your own sake not his, poor fellow, as he will never learn your opinion; but for yours, because, as men go in this world (and women too), you will not go far wrong if you light upon so fine a fellow; and to light upon one and not perceive his merits is a calamity. in the flesh, of course, i mean; in the book the fault, of course, is with my stumbling pen. seraphina made a mistake about her otto; it begins to swim before me dimly that you may have some traits of seraphina? with true ingratitude you see me pitch upon your exception; but it is easier to defend oneself gracefully than to acknowledge praise. i am truly glad that you should like my books; for i think i see from what you write that you are a reader worth convincing. your name, if i have properly deciphered it, suggests that you may be also something of my countrywoman; for it is hard to see where monroe came from, if not from scotland. i seem to have here a double claim on your good nature: being myself pure scotch and having appreciated your letter, make up two undeniable merits which, perhaps, if it should be quite without trouble, you might reward with your photograph. yours truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to miss monroe [skerryvore, bournemouth, june 1886.] my dear miss monroe, i am ill in bed and stupid, incoherently stupid; yet i have to answer your letter, and if the answer is incomprehensible you must forgive me. you say my letter caused you pleasure; i am sure, as it fell out, not near so much as yours has brought to me. the interest taken in an author is fragile: his next book, or your next year of culture, might see the interest frosted or outgrown; and himself, in spite of all, you might probably find the most distasteful person upon earth. my case is different. i have bad health, am often condemned to silence for days together was so once for six weeks, so that my voice was awful to hear when i first used it, like the whisper of a shadow have outlived all my chief pleasures, which were active and adventurous, and ran in the open air: and being a person who prefers life to art, and who knows it is a far finer thing to be in love, or to risk a danger, than to paint the finest picture or write the noblest book, i begin to regard what remains to me of my life as very shadowy. from a variety of reasons, i am ashamed to confess i was much in this humour when your letter came. i had a good many troubles; was regretting a high average of sins; had been recently reminded that i had outlived some friends, and wondering if i had not outlived some friendships; and had just, while boasting of better health, been struck down again by my haunting enemy, an enemy who was exciting at first, but has now, by the iteration of his strokes, become merely annoying and inexpressibly irksome. can you fancy that to a person drawing towards the elderly this sort of conjunction of circumstances brings a rather aching sense of the past and the future? well, it was just then that your letter and your photograph were brought to me in bed; and there came to me at once the most agreeable sense of triumph. my books were still young; my words had their good health and could go about the world and make themselves welcome; and even (in a shadowy and distant sense) make something in the nature of friends for the sheer hulk that stays at home and bites his pen over the manuscripts. it amused me very much to remember that i had been in chicago, not so many years ago, in my proper person; where i had failed to awaken much remark, except from the ticket collector; and to think how much more gallant and persuasive were the fellows that i now send instead of me, and how these are welcome in that quarter to the sitter of herr platz, while their author was not very welcome even in the villainous restaurant where he tried to eat a meal and rather failed. and this leads me directly to a confession. the photograph which shall accompany this is not chosen as the most like, but the bestlooking. put yourself in my place, and you will call this pardonable. even as it is, even putting forth a flattered presentment, i am a little pained; and very glad it is a photograph and not myself that has to go; for in this case, if it please you, you can tell yourself it is my image and if it displeased you, you can lay the blame on the photographer; but in that, there were no help, and the poor author might belie his labours. kidnapped should soon appear; i am afraid you may not like it, as it is very unlike prince otto in every way; but i am myself a great admirer of the two chief characters, alan and david. virginibus puerisque has never been issued in the states. i do not think it is a book that has much charm for publishers in any land; but i am to bring out a new edition in england shortly, a copy of which i must try to remember to send you. i say try to remember, because i have some superficial acquaintance with myself: and i have determined, after a galling discipline, to promise nothing more until the day of my death: at least, in this way, i shall no more break my word, and i must now try being churlish instead of being false. i do not believe you to be the least like seraphina. your photograph has no trace of her, which somewhat relieves me, as i am a good deal afraid of seraphinas they do not always go into the woods and see the sunrise, and some are so well-mailed that even that experience would leave them unaffected and unsoftened. the 'hair and eyes of several complexions' was a trait taken from myself; and i do not bind myself to the opinions of sir john. in this case, perhaps but no, if the peculiarity is shared by two such pleasant persons as you and i (as you and me the grammatical nut is hard), it must be a very good thing indeed, and sir john must be an ass. the book reader notice was a strange jumble of fact and fancy. i wish you could have seen my father's old assistant and present partner when he heard my father described as an 'inspector of lighthouses,' for we are all very proud of the family achievements, and the name of my house here in bournemouth is stolen from one of the sea-towers of the hebrides which are our pyramids and monuments. i was never at cambridge, again; but neglected a considerable succession of classes at edinburgh. but to correct that friendly blunderer were to write an autobiography. and so now, with many thanks, believe me yours sincerely, robert louis stevenson. letter: to r. a. m. stevenson skerryvore, bournemouth, july 1886. sir, your foolish letter was unduly received. there may be hidden fifths, and if there are, it shows how dam spontaneous the thing was. i could tinker and tic-tac-toe on a piece of paper, but scorned the act with a threnody, which was poured forth like blood and water on the groaning organ. if your heart (which was what i addressed) remained unmoved, let us refer to the affair no more: crystallised emotion, the statement and the reconciliation of the sorrows of the race and the individual, is obviously no more to you than supping sawdust. well, well. if ever i write another threnody! my next op. will probably be a passepied and fugue in g (or d). the mind is in my case shrunk to the size and sp. gr. of an aged spanish filbert. o, i am so jolly silly. i now pickle with some freedom (1) the refrain of martini's moutons; (2) sul margine d'un rio, arranged for the infant school by the aged statesman; (3) the first phrase of bach's musette (sweet englishwoman, no. 3), the rest of the musette being one prolonged cropper, which i take daily for the benefit of my health. all my other works (of which there are many) are either arranged (by r. l. stevenson) for the manly and melodious forefinger, or else prolonged and melancholy croppers. . . . i find one can get a notion of music very nicely. i have been pickling deeply in the magic flute; and have arranged la dove prende, almost to the end, for two melodious forefingers. i am next going to score the really nobler colomba o tortorella for the same instruments. this day is published the works of ludwig van beethoven arranged and wiederdurchgearbeiteted for two melodious forefingers by, sir, your obedient servant, pimperly stipple. that's a good idea? there's a person called lenz who actually does it beware his den; i lost eighteenpennies on him, and found the bleeding corpses of pieces of music divorced from their keys, despoiled of their graces, and even changed in time; i do not wish to regard music (nor to be regarded) through that bony lenz. you say you are 'a spumfed idiot'; but how about lenz? and how about me, sir, me? i yesterday sent lloyd by parcel post, at great expense, an empty matchbox and empty cigarette-paper book, a bell from a cat's collar, an iron kitchen spoon, and a piece of coal more than half the superficies of this sheet of paper. they are now (appropriately enough) speeding towards the silly isles; i hope he will find them useful. by that, and my telegram with prepaid answer to yourself, you may judge of my spiritual state. the finances have much brightened; and if kidnapped keeps on as it has begun, i may be solvent. yours, threnodiae avctor (the authour of ane threnodie). op. 2: scherzo (in g major) expressive of the sense of favours to come. letter: to r. a. m. stevenson skerryvore [bournemouth, july 1886]. dear bob, herewith another shy; more melancholy than before, but i think not so abjectly idiotic. the musical terms seem to be as good as in beethoven, and that, after all, is the great affair. bar the dam bareness of the base, it looks like a piece of real music from a distance. i am proud to say it was not made one hand at a time; the base was of synchronous birth with the treble; they are of the same age, sir, and may god have mercy on their souls! yours, the maestro. letter: to mr. and mrs. thomas stevenson skerryvore, bournemouth, july 7th, 1886. my dear people, it is probably my fault, and not yours, that i did not understand. i think it would be well worth trying the winter in bournemouth; but i would only take the house by the month this after mature discussion. my leakage still pursues its course; if i were only well, i have a notion to go north and get in (if i could) at the inn at kirkmichael, which has always smiled upon me much. if i did well there, we might then meet and do what should most smile at the time. meanwhile, of course, i must not move, and am in a rancid box here, feeling the heat a great deal, and pretty tired of things. alexander did a good thing of me at last; it looks like a mixture of an aztec idol, a lion, an indian rajah, and a woman; and certainly represents a mighty comic figure. f. and lloyd both think it is the best thing that has been done of me up to now. you should hear lloyd on the penny whistle, and me on the piano! dear powers, what a concerto! i now live entirely for the piano, he for the whistle; the neighbours, in a radius of a furlong and a half, are packing up in quest of brighter climes. ever yours, r. l. s. p.s. please say if you can afford to let us have money for this trip, and if so, how much. i can see the year through without help, i believe, and supposing my health to keep up; but can scarce make this change on my own metal. r. l. s. letter: to charles baxter [skerryvore, bournemouth, july 1886]. dear charles, doubtless, if all goes well, towards the 1st of august we shall be begging at your door. thanks for a sight of the papers, which i return (you see) at once, fearing further responsibility. glad you like dauvit; but eh, man, yon's terrible strange conduc' o' thon man rankeillor. ca' him a legal adviser! it would make a bonny law-shuit, the shaws case; and yon paper they signed, i'm thinking, wouldnae be muckle thought o' by puggy deas. yours ever, r. l. s. letter: to thomas stevenson [skerryvore, bournemouth], july 28, 1886. my dear father, we have decided not to come to scotland, but just to do as dobell wished, and take an outing. i believe this is wiser in all ways; but i own it is a disappointment. i am weary of england; like alan, 'i weary for the heather,' if not for the deer. lloyd has gone to scilly with katharine and c., where and with whom he should have a good time. david seems really to be going to succeed, which is a pleasant prospect on all sides. i am, i believe, floated financially; a book that sells will be a pleasant novelty. i enclose another review; mighty complimentary, and calculated to sell the book too. coolin's tombstone has been got out, honest man! and it is to be polished, for it has got scratched, and have a touch of gilding in the letters, and be sunk in the front of the house. worthy man, he, too, will maybe weary for the heather, and the bents of gullane, where (as i dare say you remember) he gaed clean gyte, and jumped on to his crown from a gig, in hot and hopeless chase of many thousand rabbits. i can still hear the little cries of the honest fellow as he disappeared; and my mother will correct me, but i believe it was two days before he turned up again at north berwick: to judge by his belly, he had caught not one out of these thousands, but he had had some exercise. i keep well. ever your affectionate son, r. l. s. letter: to mrs. thomas stevenson british museum [august 10th, 1886]. my dear mother, we are having a capital holiday, and i am much better, and enjoying myself to the nines. richmond is painting my portrait. to-day i lunch with him, and meet burne-jones; to-night browning dines with us. that sounds rather lofty work, does it not? his path was paved with celebrities. to-morrow we leave for paris, and next week, i suppose, or the week after, come home. address here, as we may not reach paris. i am really very well. ever your affectionate son, r. l. s. letter: to t. watts-dunton skerryvore, bournemouth [september 1886]. dear mr. watts, the sight of the last athenaeum reminds me of you, and of my debt, now too long due. i wish to thank you for your notice of kidnapped; and that not because it was kind, though for that also i valued it, but in the same sense as i have thanked you before now for a hundred articles on a hundred different writers. a critic like you is one who fights the good fight, contending with stupidity, and i would fain hope not all in vain; in my own case, for instance, surely not in vain. what you say of the two parts in kidnapped was felt by no one more painfully than by myself. i began it partly as a lark, partly as a pot-boiler; and suddenly it moved, david and alan stepped out from the canvas, and i found i was in another world. but there was the cursed beginning, and a cursed end must be appended; and our old friend byles the butcher was plainly audible tapping at the back door. so it had to go into the world, one part (as it does seem to me) alive, one part merely galvanised: no work, only an essay. for a man of tentative method, and weak health, and a scarcity of private means, and not too much of that frugality which is the artist's proper virtue, the days of sinecures and patrons look very golden: the days of professional literature very hard. yet i do not so far deceive myself as to think i should change my character by changing my epoch; the sum of virtue in our books is in a relation of equality to the sum of virtues in ourselves; and my kidnapped was doomed, while still in the womb and while i was yet in the cradle, to be the thing it is. and now to the more genial business of defence. you attack my fight on board the covenant: i think it literal. david and alan had every advantage on their side position, arms, training, a good conscience; a handful of merchant sailors, not well led in the first attack, not led at all in the second, could only by an accident have taken the round-house by attack; and since the defenders had firearms and food, it is even doubtful if they could have been starved out. the only doubtful point with me is whether the seamen would have ever ventured on the second onslaught; i half believe they would not; still the illusion of numbers and the authority of hoseason would perhaps stretch far enough to justify the extremity. i am, dear mr. watts, your very sincere admirer, robert louis stevenson. letter: to frederick locker-lampson skerryvore, september 4, 1886. not roses to the rose, i trow, the thistle sends, nor to the bee do wasps bring honey. wherefore now should locker ask a verse from me? martial, perchance, but he is dead, and herrick now must rhyme no more; still burning with the muse, they tread (and arm in arm) the shadowy shore. they, if they lived, with dainty hand, to music as of mountain brooks, might bring you worthy words to stand unshamed, dear locker, in your books. but tho' these fathers of your race be gone before, yourself a sire, to-day you see before your face your stalwart youngsters touch the lyre on these on lang, or dobson call, long leaders of the songful feast. they lend a verse your laughing fall a verse they owe you at the least. letter: to frederick locker-lampson [skerryvore], bournemouth, september 1886. dear locker, you take my verses too kindly, but you will admit, for such a bluebottle of a versifier to enter the house of gertrude, where her necklace hangs, was not a little brave. your kind invitation, i fear, must remain unaccented; and yet if i am very well perhaps next spring (for i mean to be very well) my wife might.... but all that is in the clouds with my better health. and now look here: you are a rich man and know many people, therefore perhaps some of the governors of christ's hospital. if you do, i know a most deserving case, in which i would (if i could) do anything. to approach you, in this way, is not decent; and you may therefore judge by my doing it, how near this matter lies to my heart. i enclose you a list of the governors, which i beg you to return, whether or not you shall be able to do anything to help me. the boy's name is -; he and his mother are very poor. it may interest you in her cause if i tell you this: that when i was dangerously ill at hyeres, this brave lady, who had then a sick husband of her own (since dead) and a house to keep and a family of four to cook for, all with her own hands, for they could afford no servant, yet took watch-about with my wife, and contributed not only to my comfort, but to my recovery in a degree that i am not able to limit. you can conceive how much i suffer from my impotence to help her, and indeed i have already shown myself a thankless friend. let not my cry go up before you in vain! yours in hope, robert louis stevenson. letter: to frederick locker-lampson skerryvore, bournemouth, september 1886. my dear locker, that i should call myself a man of letters, and land myself in such unfathomable ambiguities! no, my dear locker, i did not want a cheque; and in my ignorance of business, which is greater even than my ignorance of literature, i have taken the liberty of drawing a pen through the document and returning it; should this be against the laws of god or man, forgive me. all that i meant by my excessively disgusting reference to your material well-being was the vague notion that a man who is well off was sure to know a governor of christ's hospital; though how i quite arrived at this conclusion i do not see. a man with a cold in the head does not necessarily know a ratcatcher; and the connection is equally close as it now appears to my awakened and somewhat humbled spirit. for all that, let me thank you in the warmest manner for your friendly readiness to contribute. you say you have hopes of becoming a miser: i wish i had; but indeed i believe you deceive yourself, and are as far from it as ever. i wish i had any excuse to keep your cheque, for it is much more elegant to receive than to return; but i have my way of making it up to you, and i do sincerely beg you to write to the two governors. this extraordinary outpouring of correspondence would (if you knew my habits) convince you of my great eagerness in this matter. i would promise gratitude; but i have made a promise to myself to make no more promises to anybody else, having broken such a host already, and come near breaking my heart in consequence; and as for gratitude, i am by nature a thankless dog, and was spoiled from a child up. but if you can help this lady in the matter of the hospital, you will have helped the worthy. let me continue to hope that i shall make out my visit in the spring, and believe me, yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. it may amuse you to know that a very long while ago, i broke my heart to try to imitate your verses, and failed hopelessly. i saw some of the evidences the other day among my papers, and blushed to the heels. r. l. s. i give up finding out your name in the meantime, and keep to that by which you will be known frederick locker. letter: to frederick locker-lampson [skerryvore, bournemouth], 24th september 1886. my dear locker, you are simply an angel of light, and your two letters have gone to the post; i trust they will reach the hearts of the recipients at least, that could not be more handsomely expressed. about the cheque: well now, i am going to keep it; but i assure you mrs. has never asked me for money, and i would not dare to offer any till she did. for all that i shall stick to the cheque now, and act to that amount as your almoner. in this way i reward myself for the ambiguity of my epistolary style. i suppose, if you please, you may say your verses are thin (would you so describe an arrow, by the way, and one that struck the gold? it scarce strikes me as exhaustively descriptive), and, thin or not, they are (and i have found them) inimitably elegant. i thank you again very sincerely for the generous trouble you have taken in this matter which was so near my heart, and you may be very certain it will be the fault of my health and not my inclination, if i do not see you before very long; for all that has past has made me in more than the official sense sincerely yours, robert louis stevenson. letter: to sidney colvin skerryvore, dec. 14, 1886. my dear colvin, this is first-rate of you, the lord love you for it! i am truly much obliged. he my father is very changeable; at times, he seems only a slow quiet edition of himself; again, he will be very heavy and blank; but never so violent as last spring; and therefore, to my mind, better on the whole. fanny is pretty peepy; i am splendid. i have been writing much verse quite the bard, in fact; and also a dam tale to order, which will be what it will be: i don't love it, but some of it is passable in its mouldy way, the misadventures of john nicholson. all my bardly exercises are in scotch; i have struck my somewhat ponderous guitar in that tongue to no small extent: with what success, i know not, but i think it's better than my english verse; more marrow and fatness, and more ruggedness. how goes keats? pray remark, if he (keats) hung back from shelley, it was not to be wondered at, when so many of his friends were shelley's pensioners. i forget if you have made this point; it has been borne in upon me reading dowden and the shelley papers; and it will do no harm if you have made it. i finished a poem to-day, and writ 3000 words of a story, tant bien que mal; and have a right to be sleepy, and (what is far nobler and rarer) am so. my dear colvin, ever yours, the real mackay. letter: to frederick locker-lampson skerryvore, bournemouth, february 5th, 1887. my dear locker, here i am in my bed as usual, and it is indeed a long while since i went out to dinner. you do not know what a crazy fellow this is. my winter has not so far been luckily passed, and all hope of paying visits at easter has vanished for twelve calendar months. but because i am a beastly and indurated invalid, i am not dead to human feelings; and i neither have forgotten you nor will forget you. some day the wind may round to the right quarter and we may meet; till then i am still truly yours, robert louis stevenson. letter: to henry james [skerryvore, bournemouth, february 1887.] my dear james, my health has played me it in once more in the absurdest fashion, and the creature who now addresses you is but a stringy and white-faced bouilli out of the pot of fever, with the devil to pay in every corner of his economy. i suppose (to judge by your letter) i need not send you these sheets, which came during my collapse by the rush. i am on the start with three volumes, that one of tales, a second one of essays, and one of ahem verse. this is a great order, is it not? after that i shall have empty lockers. all new work stands still; i was getting on well with jenkin when this blessed malady unhorsed me, and sent me back to the dung-collecting trade of the republisher. i shall re-issue virg. puer. as vol. i. of essays, and the new vol. as vol. ii. of ditto; to be sold, however, separately. this is but a dry maundering; however, i am quite unfit 'i am for action quite unfit either of exercise or wit.' my father is in a variable state; many sorrows and perplexities environ the house of stevenson; my mother shoots north at this hour on business of a distinctly rancid character; my father (under my wife's tutorage) proceeds to-morrow to salisbury; i remain here in my bed and whistle; in no quarter of heaven is anything encouraging apparent, except that the good colvin comes to the hotel here on a visit. this dreary view of life is somewhat blackened by the fact that my head aches, which i always regard as a liberty on the part of the powers that be. this is also my first letter since my recovery. god speed your laudatory pen! my wife joins in all warm messages. yours, r. l. s. letter: to w. h. low (april 1887.) my dear low, the fares to london may be found in any continental bradshaw or sich; from london to bournemouth impoverished parties who can stoop to the third class get their ticket for the matter of 10s., or, as my wife loves to phrase it, 'a half a pound.' you will also be involved in a 3s. fare to get to skerryvore; but this, i dare say, friends could help you in on your arrival; so that you may reserve your energies for the two tickets costing the matter of a pound and the usual gratuities to porters. this does not seem to me much: considering the intellectual pleasures that await you here, i call it dirt cheap. i believe the third class from paris to london (via dover) is about forty francs, but i cannot swear. suppose it to be fifty. 50x2=100 the expense of spirit or spontaneous lapse of coin on the journey, at 5 frcs. a head, 5x2=10 victuals on ditto, at 5 frcs. a head, 5x2 = 10 gratuity to stewardess, in case of severe prostration, at 3 francs one night in london, on a modest footing, say 20 two tickets to bournemouth at 12.50, 12.50x2=25 porters and general devilment, say 5 cabs in london, say 2 shillings, and in bournemouth, 3 shillings=5 shillings, 6 frcs. 25 total frcs. 179.25 or, the same in pounds, 7 pounds, 3s. 6 and a half d. or, the same in dollars, $35.45, if there be any arithmetical virtue in me. i have left out dinner in london in case you want to blow out, which would come extry, and with the aid of vangs fangs might easily double the whole amount above all if you have a few friends to meet you. in making this valuable project, or budget, i discovered for the first time a reason (frequently overlooked) for the singular costliness of travelling with your wife. anybody would count the tickets double; but how few would have remembered or indeed has any one ever remembered? to count the spontaneous lapse of coin double also? yet there are two of you, each must do his daily leakage, and it must be done out of your travelling fund. you will tell me, perhaps, that you carry the coin yourself: my dear sir, do you think you can fool your maker? your wife has to lose her quota; and by god she will if you kept the coin in a belt. one thing i have omitted: you will lose a certain amount on the exchange, but this even i cannot foresee, as it is one of the few things that vary with the way a man has. i am, dear sir, yours financially, samuel budgett. letter: to alison cunningham skerryvore, april 16th, 1887. my dearest cummy, as usual, i have been a dreary bad fellow and not written for ages; but you must just try to forgive me, to believe (what is the truth) that the number of my letters is no measure of the number of times i think of you, and to remember how much writing i have to do. the weather is bright, but still cold; and my father, i'm afraid, feels it sharply. he has had still has, rather a most obstinate jaundice, which has reduced him cruelly in strength, and really upset him altogether. i hope, or think, he is perhaps a little better; but he suffers much, cannot sleep at night, and gives john and my mother a severe life of it to wait upon him. my wife is, i think, a little better, but no great shakes. i keep mightily respectable myself. coolin's tombstone is now built into the front wall of skerryvore, and poor bogie's (with a latin inscription also) is set just above it. poor, unhappy wee man, he died, as you must have heard, in fight, which was what he would have chosen; for military glory was more in his line than the domestic virtues. i believe this is about all my news, except that, as i write, there is a blackbird singing in our garden trees, as it were at swanston. i would like fine to go up the burnside a bit, and sit by the pool and be young again or no, be what i am still, only there instead of here, for just a little. did you see that i had written about john todd? in this month's longman it was; if you have not seen it, i will try and send it you. some day climb as high as halkerside for me (i am never likely to do it for myself), and sprinkle some of the well water on the turf. i am afraid it is a pagan rite, but quite harmless, and ye can sain it wi' a bit prayer. tell the peewies that i mind their forbears well. my heart is sometimes heavy, and sometimes glad to mind it all. but for what we have received, the lord make us truly thankful. don't forget to sprinkle the water, and do it in my name; i feel a childish eagerness in this. remember me most kindly to james, and with all sorts of love to yourself, believe me, your laddie, robert louis stevenson. p.s. i suppose mrs. todd ought to see the paper about her man; judge of that, and if you think she would not dislike it, buy her one from me, and let me know. the article is called 'pastoral,' in longman's magazine for april. i will send you the money; i would to-day, but it's the sabbie day, and i cannae. r. l. s. remembrances from all here. letter: to sidney colvin [edinburgh, june 1887.] my dear s. c., at last i can write a word to you. your little note in the p. m. g. was charming. i have written four pages in the contemporary, which bunting found room for: they are not very good, but i shall do more for his memory in time. about the death, i have long hesitated, i was long before i could tell my mind; and now i know it, and can but say that i am glad. if we could have had my father, that would have been a different thing. but to keep that changeling suffering changeling any longer, could better none and nothing. now he rests; it is more significant, it is more like himself. he will begin to return to us in the course of time, as he was and as we loved him. my favourite words in literature, my favourite scene 'o let him pass,' kent and lear was played for me here in the first moment of my return. i believe shakespeare saw it with his own father. i had no words; but it was shocking to see. he died on his feet, you know; was on his feet the last day, knowing nobody still he would be up. this was his constant wish; also that he might smoke a pipe on his last day. the funeral would have pleased him; it was the largest private funeral in man's memory here. we have no plans, and it is possible we may go home without going through town. i do not know; i have no views yet whatever; nor can have any at this stage of my cold and my business. ever yours, r. l. s. chapter ix the united states again: winter in the adirondacks, august 1887-october 1888 letter: to w. e. henley [skerryvore, bournemouth], august 1887. dear lad, i write to inform you that mr. stevenson's well-known work, virginibus puerisque, is about to be reprinted. at the same time a second volume called memories and portraits will issue from the roaring loom. its interest will be largely autobiographical, mr. s. having sketched there the lineaments of many departed friends, and dwelt fondly, and with a m'istened eye, upon byegone pleasures. the two will be issued under the common title of familiar essays; but the volumes will be vended separately to those who are mean enough not to hawk at both. the blood is at last stopped: only yesterday. i began to think i should not get away. however, i hope i hope remark the word no boasting i hope i may luff up a bit now. dobell, whom i saw, gave as usual a good account of my lungs, and expressed himself, like his neighbours, hopefully about the trip. he says, my uncle says, scott says, brown says they all say you ought not to be in such a state of health; you should recover. well, then, i mean to. my spirits are rising again after three months of black depression: i almost begin to feel as if i should care to live: i would, by god! and so i believe i shall. yours, bulletin m'gurder. how has the deacon gone? letter: to w. h. low [skerryvore, bournemouth], august 6th, 1887. my dear low, we my mother, my wife, my stepson, my maidservant, and myself, five souls leave, if all is well, aug. 20th, per wilson line ss. ludgate hill. shall probably evade n. y. at first, cutting straight to a watering-place: newport, i believe, its name. afterwards we shall steal incognito into la bonne villa, and see no one but you and the scribners, if it may be so managed. you must understand i have been very seedy indeed, quite a dead body; and unless the voyage does miracles, i shall have to draw it dam fine. alas, 'the canoe speaks' is now out of date; it will figure in my volume of verses now imminent. however, i may find some inspiration some day. till very soon, yours ever, r. l. s. letter: to miss adelaide boodle bournemouth, august 19th, 1887. my dear miss boodle, i promise you the paper-knife shall go to sea with me; and if it were in my disposal, i should promise it should return with me too. all that you say, i thank you for very much; i thank you for all the pleasantness that you have brought about our house; and i hope the day may come when i shall see you again in poor old skerryvore, now left to the natives of canada, or to worse barbarians, if such exist. i am afraid my attempt to jest is rather a contre-coeur. good-bye au revoir and do not forget your friend, robert louis stevenson. letter: to messrs. chatto and windus bournemouth [august 1887]. dear sirs, i here enclose the two titles. had you not better send me the bargains to sign? i shall be here till saturday; and shall have an address in london (which i shall send you) till monday, when i shall sail. even if the proofs do not reach you till monday morning, you could send a clerk from fenchurch street station at 10.23 a.m. for galleons station, and he would find me embarking on board the ludgate hill, island berth, royal albert dock. pray keep this in case it should be necessary to catch this last chance. i am most anxious to have the proofs with me on the voyage. yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to sidney colvin h.m.s. 'vulgarium,' off havre de grace, this 22nd day of august [1887]. sir, the weather has been hitherto inimitable. inimitable is the only word that i can apply to our fellow-voyagers, whom a categorist, possibly premature, has been already led to divide into two classes the better sort consisting of the baser kind of bagman, and the worser of undisguised beasts of the field. the berths are excellent, the pasture swallowable, the champagne of h. james (to recur to my favourite adjective) inimitable. as for the commodore, he slept awhile in the evening, tossed off a cup of henry james with his plain meal, walked the deck till eight, among sands and floating lights and buoys and wrecked brigantines, came down (to his regret) a minute too soon to see margate lit up, turned in about nine, slept, with some interruptions, but on the whole sweetly, until six, and has already walked a mile or so of deck, among a fleet of other steamers waiting for the tide, within view of havre, and pleasantly entertained by passing fishing-boats, hovering sea-gulls, and vulgarians pairing on deck with endearments of primitive simplicity. there, sir, can be viewed the sham quarrel, the sham desire for information, and every device of these two poor ancient sexes (who might, you might think, have learned in the course of the ages something new) down to the exchange of headgear. i am, sir, yours, bold bob boltsprit. b. b. b. (alias the commodore) will now turn to his proofs. havre de grace is a city of some show. it is for-ti-fied; and, so far as i can see, is a place of some trade. it is situ-ated in france, a country of europe. you always complain there are no facts in my letters. r. l. s. letter: to sidney colvin newport, r. i. u.s.a. [september 1887]. my dear colvin, so long it went excellent well, and i had a time i am glad to have had; really enjoying my life. there is nothing like being at sea, after all. and o, why have i allowed myself to rot so long on land? but on the banks i caught a cold, and i have not yet got over it. my reception here was idiotic to the last degree.... it is very silly, and not pleasant, except where humour enters; and i confess the poor interviewer lads pleased me. they are too good for their trade; avoided anything i asked them to avoid, and were no more vulgar in their reports than they could help. i liked the lads. o, it was lovely on our stable-ship, chock full of stallions. she rolled heartily, rolled some of the fittings out of our state-room, and i think a more dangerous cruise (except that it was summer) it would be hard to imagine. but we enjoyed it to the masthead, all but fanny; and even she perhaps a little. when we got in, we had run out of beer, stout, cocoa, soda-water, water, fresh meat, and (almost) of biscuit. but it was a thousandfold pleasanter than a great big birmingham liner like a new hotel; and we liked the officers, and made friends with the quartermasters, and i (at least) made a friend of a baboon (for we carried a cargo of apes), whose embraces have pretty near cost me a coat. the passengers improved, and were a very good specimen lot, with no drunkard, no gambling that i saw, and less grumbling and backbiting than one would have asked of poor human nature. apes, stallions, cows, matches, hay, and poor men-folk, all, or almost all, came successfully to land. yours ever, r. l. s. letter: to henry james [newport, u.s.a., september 1887.] my dear james, here we are at newport in the house of the good fairchilds; and a sad burthen we have laid upon their shoulders. i have been in bed practically ever since i came. i caught a cold on the banks after having had the finest time conceivable, and enjoyed myself more than i could have hoped on board our strange floating menagerie: stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent of these incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotised by the motion, looking through the ports at our dinner-table, and winked when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at each other in their cages, and were thrown overboard like little bluish babies; and the big monkey, jacko, scoured about the ship and rested willingly in my arms, to the ruin of my clothing; and the man of the stallions made a bower of the black tarpaulin, and sat therein at the feet of a raddled divinity, like a picture on a box of chocolates; and the other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed. take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound unexpected notes and the fittings shall break lose in our stateroom, and you have the voyage of the ludgate hill. she arrived in the port of new york, without beer, porter, soda-water, curacoa, fresh meat, or fresh water; and yet we lived, and we regret her. my wife is a good deal run down, and i am no great shakes. america is, as i remarked, a fine place to eat in, and a great place for kindness; but, lord, what a silly thing is popularity! i envy the cool obscurity of skerryvore. if it even paid, said meanness! and was abashed at himself. yours most sincerely, r. l s. letter: to sidney colvin [new york: end of september 1887.] my dear s. c., your delightful letter has just come, and finds me in a new york hotel, waiting the arrival of a sculptor (st. gaudens) who is making a medallion of yours truly and who is (to boot) one of the handsomest and nicest fellows i have seen. i caught a cold on the banks; fog is not for me; nearly died of interviewers and visitors, during twenty-four hours in new york; cut for newport with lloyd and valentine, a journey like fairy-land for the most engaging beauties, one little rocky and pine-shaded cove after another, each with a house and a boat at anchor, so that i left my heart in each and marvelled why american authors had been so unjust to their country; caught another cold on the train; arrived at newport to go to bed and to grow worse, and to stay in bed until i left again; the fairchilds proving during this time kindness itself; mr. fairchild simply one of the most engaging men in the world, and one of the children, blair, aet. ten, a great joy and amusement in his solemn adoring attitude to the author of treasure island. here i was interrupted by the arrival of my sculptor. i have begged him to make a medallion of himself and give me a copy. i will not take up the sentence in which i was wandering so long, but begin fresh. i was ten or twelve days at newport; then came back convalescent to new york. fanny and lloyd are off to the adirondacks to see if that will suit; and the rest of us leave monday (this is saturday) to follow them up. i hope we may manage to stay there all winter. i have a splendid appetite and have on the whole recovered well after a mighty sharp attack. i am now on a salary of 500 pounds a year for twelve articles in scribner's magazine on what i like; it is more than 500 pounds, but i cannot calculate more precisely. you have no idea how much is made of me here; i was offered 2000 pounds for a weekly article eh heh! how is that? but i refused that lucrative job. the success of underwoods is gratifying. you see, the verses are sane; that is their strong point, and it seems it is strong enough to carry them. a thousand thanks for your grand letter, ever yours, r. l. s. letter: to w. e. henley new york [september 1887] my dear lad, herewith verses for dr. hake, which please communicate. i did my best with the interviewers; i don't know if lloyd sent you the result; my heart was too sick: you can do nothing with them; and yet literally sweated with anxiety to please, and took me down in long hand! i have been quite ill, but go better. i am being not busted, but medallioned, by st. gaudens, who is a first-rate, plain, highminded artist and honest fellow; you would like him down to the ground. i believe sculptors are fine fellows when they are not demons. o, i am now a salaried person, 600 pounds a year, to write twelve articles in scribner's magazine; it remains to be seen if it really pays, huge as the sum is, but the slavery may overweigh me. i hope you will like my answer to hake, and specially that he will. love to all. yours affectionately, r. l. s. (le salarie). letter: to r. a. m. stevenson saranac lake, adirondacks, new york, u.s.a. [october 1887]. my dear bob, the cold [of colorado] was too rigorous for me; i could not risk the long railway voyage, and the season was too late to risk the eastern, cape hatteras side of the steamer one; so here we stuck and stick. we have a wooden house on a hill-top, overlooking a river, and a village about a quarter of a mile away, and very wooded hills; the whole scene is very highland, bar want of heather and the wooden houses. i have got one good thing of my sea voyage: it is proved the sea agrees heartily with me, and my mother likes it; so if i get any better, or no worse, my mother will likely hire a yacht for a month or so in summer. good lord! what fun! wealth is only useful for two things: a yacht and a string quartette. for these two i will sell my soul. except for these i hold that 700 pounds a year is as much as anybody can possibly want; and i have had more, so i know, for the extry coins were for no use, excepting for illness, which damns everything. i was so happy on board that ship, i could not have believed it possible. we had the beastliest weather, and many discomforts; but the mere fact of its being a tramp-ship gave us many comforts; we could cut about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, discuss all manner of things, and really be a little at sea. and truly there is nothing else. i had literally forgotten what happiness was, and the full mind full of external and physical things, not full of cares and labours and rot about a fellow's behaviour. my heart literally sang; i truly care for nothing so much as for that. we took so north a course, that we saw newfoundland; no one in the ship had ever seen it before. it was beyond belief to me how she rolled; in seemingly smooth water, the bell striking, the fittings bounding out of our stateroom. it is worth having lived these last years, partly because i have written some better books, which is always pleasant, but chiefly to have had the joy of this voyage. i have been made a lot of here, and it is sometimes pleasant, sometimes the reverse; but i could give it all up, and agree that was the author of my works, for a good seventy ton schooner and the coins to keep her on. and to think there are parties with yachts who would make the exchange! i know a little about fame now; it is no good compared to a yacht; and anyway there is more fame in a yacht, more genuine fame; to cross the atlantic and come to anchor in newport (say) with the union jack, and go ashore for your letters and hang about the pier, among the holiday yachtsmen that's fame, that's glory, and nobody can take it away; they can't say your book is bad; you have crossed the atlantic. i should do it south by the west indies, to avoid the damned banks; and probably come home by steamer, and leave the skipper to bring the yacht home. well, if all goes well, we shall maybe sail out of southampton water some of these days and take a run to havre, and try the baltic, or somewhere. love to you all. ever your afft., robert louis stevenson. letter: to edmund gosse saranac lake, oct. 8th, 1887. my dear gosse, i have just read your article twice, with cheers of approving laughter. i do not believe you ever wrote anything so funny: tyndall's 'shell,' the passage on the davos press and its invaluable issues, and that on v. hugo and swinburne, are exquisite; so, i say it more ruefully, is the touch about the doctors. for the rest, i am very glad you like my verses so well; and the qualities you ascribe to them seem to me well found and well named. i own to that kind of candour you attribute to me: when i am frankly interested, i suppose i fancy the public will be so too; and when i am moved, i am sure of it. it has been my luck hitherto to meet with no staggering disillusion. 'before' and 'after' may be two; and yet i believe the habit is now too thoroughly ingrained to be altered. about the doctors, you were right, that dedication has been the subject of some pleasantries that made me grind, and of your happily touched reproof which made me blush. and to miscarry in a dedication is an abominable form of book-wreck; i am a good captain, i would rather lose the tent and save my dedication. i am at saranac lake in the adirondacks, i suppose for the winter: it seems a first-rate place; we have a house in the eye of many winds, with a view of a piece of running water highland, all but the dear hue of peat and of many hills highland also, but for the lack of heather. soon the snow will close on us; we are here some twenty miles twenty-seven, they say, but this i profoundly disbelieve in the woods; communication by letter is slow and (let me be consistent) aleatory; by telegram is as near as may be impossible. i had some experience of american appreciation; i liked a little of it, but there is too much; a little of that would go a long way to spoil a man; and i like myself better in the woods. i am so damned candid and ingenuous (for a cynic), and so much of a 'cweatu' of impulse aw' (if you remember that admirable leech), that i begin to shirk any more taffy; i think i begin to like it too well. but let us trust the gods; they have a rod in pickle; reverently i doff my trousers, and with screwed eyes await the amari aliquid of the great god busby. i thank you for the article in all ways, and remain yours affectionately, r. l. s. letter: to w. h. low [saranac, october 1887.] sir, i have to trouble you with the following paroles bien senties. we are here at a first-rate place. 'baker's' is the name of our house, but we don't address there; we prefer the tender care of the post-office, as more aristocratic (it is no use to telegraph even to the care of the post-office who does not give a single damn). baker's has a prophet's chamber, which the hypercritical might describe as a garret with a hole in the floor: in that garret, sir, i have to trouble you and your wife to come and slumber. not now, however: with manly hospitality, i choke off any sudden impulse. because first, my wife and my mother are gone (a note for the latter, strongly suspected to be in the hand of your talented wife, now sits silent on the mantel shelf), one to niagara and t'other to indianapolis. because, second, we are not yet installed. and because third, i won't have you till i have a buffalo robe and leggings, lest you should want to paint me as a plain man, which i am not, but a rank saranacker and wild man of the woods. yours, robert louis stevenson. letter: to william archer. saranac lake, october 1887. dear archer, many thanks for the wondrous tale. it is scarcely a work of genius, as i believe you felt. thanks also for your pencillings; though i defend 'shrew,' or at least many of the shrews. we are here (i suppose) for the winter in the adirondacks, a hill and forest country on the canadian border of new york state, very unsettled and primitive and cold, and healthful, or we are the more bitterly deceived. i believe it will do well for me; but must not boast. my wife is away to indiana to see her family; my mother, lloyd, and i remain here in the cold, which has been exceeding sharp, and the hill air, which is inimitably fine. we all eat bravely, and sleep well, and make great fires, and get along like one o'clock, i am now a salaried party; i am a bourgeois now; i am to write a weekly paper for scribner's, at a scale of payment which makes my teeth ache for shame and diffidence. the editor is, i believe, to apply to you; for we were talking over likely men, and when i instanced you, he said he had had his eye upon you from the first. it is worth while, perhaps, to get in tow with the scribners; they are such thorough gentlefolk in all ways that it is always a pleasure to deal with them. i am like to be a millionaire if this goes on, and be publicly hanged at the social revolution: well, i would prefer that to dying in my bed; and it would be a godsend to my biographer, if ever i have one. what are you about? i hope you are all well and in good case and spirits, as i am now, after a most nefast experience of despondency before i left; but indeed i was quite run down. remember me to mrs. archer, and give my respects to tom. yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to henry james [saranac lake, october 1887.] i know not the day; but the month it is the drear october by the ghoul-haunted woodland of weir my dear henry james, this is to say first, the voyage was a huge success. we all enjoyed it (bar my wife) to the ground: sixteen days at sea with a cargo of hay, matches, stallions, and monkeys, and in a ship with no style on, and plenty of sailors to talk to, and the endless pleasures of the sea the romance of it, the sport of the scratch dinner and the smashing crockery, the pleasure an endless pleasure of balancing to the swell: well, it's over. second, i had a fine time, rather a troubled one, at newport and new york; saw much of and liked hugely the fairchilds, st. gaudens the sculptor, gilder of the century just saw the dear alexander saw a lot of my old and admirable friend will low, whom i wish you knew and appreciated was medallioned by st. gaudens, and at last escaped to third, saranac lake, where we now are, and which i believe we mean to like and pass the winter at. our house emphatically 'baker's' is on a hill, and has a sight of a stream turning a corner in the valley bless the face of running water! and sees some hills too, and the paganly prosaic roofs of saranac itself; the lake it does not see, nor do i regret that; i like water (fresh water i mean) either running swiftly among stones, or else largely qualified with whisky. as i write, the sun (which has been long a stranger) shines in at my shoulder; from the next room, the bell of lloyd's typewriter makes an agreeable music as it patters off (at a rate which astonishes this experienced novelist) the early chapters of a humorous romance; from still further off the walls of baker's are neither ancient nor massive rumours of valentine about the kitchen stove come to my ears; of my mother and fanny i hear nothing, for the excellent reason that they have gone sparking off, one to niagara, one to indianapolis. people complain that i never give news in my letters. i have wiped out that reproach. but now, fourth, i have seen the article; and it may be from natural partiality, i think it the best you have written. o i remember the gautier, which was an excellent performance; and the balzac, which was good; and the daudet, over which i licked my chops; but the r. l. s. is better yet. it is so humorous, and it hits my little frailties with so neat (and so friendly) a touch; and alan is the occasion for so much happy talk, and the quarrel is so generously praised. i read it twice, though it was only some hours in my possession; and low, who got it for me from the century, sat up to finish it ere he returned it; and, sir, we were all delighted. here is the paper out, nor will anything, not even friendship, not even gratitude for the article, induce me to begin a second sheet; so here with the kindest remembrances and the warmest good wishes, i remain, yours affectionately, r. l. s. letter: to charles baxter saranac, 18th november 1887. my dear charles, no likely i'm going to waste a sheet of paper. . . . i am offered 1600 pounds ($8000) for the american serial rights on my next story! as you say, times are changed since the lothian road. well, the lothian road was grand fun too; i could take an afternoon of it with great delight. but i'm awfu' grand noo, and long may it last! remember me to any of the faithful if there are any left. i wish i could have a crack with you. yours ever affectionately, r. l. s. i find i have forgotten more than i remembered of business. . . . please let us know (if you know) for how much skerryvore is let; you will here detect the female mind; i let it for what i could get; nor shall the possession of this knowledge (which i am happy to have forgot) increase the amount by so much as the shadow of a sixpenny piece; but my females are agog. yours ever, r. l. s. letter: to charles scribner [saranac, november 20 or 21, 1887.] my dear mr. scribner, heaven help me, i am under a curse just now. i have played fast and loose with what i said to you; and that, i beg you to believe, in the purest innocence of mind. i told you you should have the power over all my work in this country; and about a fortnight ago, when m'clure was here, i calmly signed a bargain for the serial publication of a story. you will scarce believe that i did this in mere oblivion; but i did; and all that i can say is that i will do so no more, and ask you to forgive me. please write to me soon as to this. will you oblige me by paying in for three articles, as already sent, to my account with john paton & co., 52 william street? this will be most convenient for us. the fourth article is nearly done; and i am the more deceived, or it is a buster. now as to the first thing in this letter, i do wish to hear from you soon; and i am prepared to hear any reproach, or (what is harder to hear) any forgiveness; for i have deserved the worst. yours sincerely, robert louis stevenson. letter: to e. l. burlingame saranac, november 1887. dear mr. burlingame, i enclose corrected proof of beggars, which seems good. i mean to make a second sermon, which, if it is about the same length as pulvis et umbra, might go in along with it as two sermons, in which case i should call the first 'the whole creation,' and the second 'any good.' we shall see; but you might say how you like the notion. one word: if you have heard from mr. scribner of my unhappy oversight in the matter of a story, you will make me ashamed to write to you, and yet i wish to beg you to help me into quieter waters. the oversight committed and i do think it was not so bad as mr. scribner seems to think it-and discovered, i was in a miserable position. i need not tell you that my first impulse was to offer to share or to surrender the price agreed upon when it should fall due; and it is almost to my credit that i arranged to refrain. it is one of these positions from which there is no escape; i cannot undo what i have done. and i wish to beg you should mr. scribner speak to you in the matter to try to get him to see this neglect of mine for no worse than it is: unpardonable enough, because a breach of an agreement; but still pardonable, because a piece of sheer carelessness and want of memory, done, god knows, without design and since most sincerely regretted. i have no memory. you have seen how i omitted to reserve the american rights in jekyll: last winter i wrote and demanded, as an increase, a less sum than had already been agreed upon for a story that i gave to cassell's. for once that my forgetfulness has, by a cursed fortune, seemed to gain, instead of lose, me money, it is painful indeed that i should produce so poor an impression on the mind of mr. scribner. but i beg you to believe, and if possible to make him believe, that i am in no degree or sense a faiseur, and that in matters of business my design, at least, is honest. nor (bating bad memory and self-deception) am i untruthful in such affairs. if mr. scribner shall have said nothing to you in the matter, please regard the above as unwritten, and believe me, yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to e. l. burlingame saranac, november 1887. dear mr. burlingame, the revise seemed all right, so i did not trouble you with it; indeed, my demand for one was theatrical, to impress that obdurate dog, your reader. herewith a third paper: it has been a cruel long time upon the road, but here it is, and not bad at last, i fondly hope. i was glad you liked the lantern bearers; i did, too. i thought it was a good paper, really contained some excellent sense, and was ingeniously put together. i have not often had more trouble than i have with these papers; thirty or forty pages of foul copy, twenty is the very least i have had. well, you pay high; it is fit that i should have to work hard, it somewhat quiets my conscience. yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to j. a. symonds saranac lake, adirondack mountains, new york, u.s.a., november 21, 1887. my dear symonds, i think we have both meant and wanted to write to you any time these months; but we have been much tossed about, among new faces and old, and new scenes and old, and scenes (like this of saranac) which are neither one nor other. to give you some clue to our affairs, i had best begin pretty well back. we sailed from the thames in a vast bucket of iron that took seventeen days from shore to shore. i cannot describe how i enjoyed the voyage, nor what good it did me; but on the banks i caught friend catarrh. in new york and then in newport i was pretty ill; but on my return to new york, lying in bed most of the time, with st. gaudens the sculptor sculping me, and my old friend low around, i began to pick up once more. now here we are in a kind of wilderness of hills and firwoods and boulders and snow and wooden houses. so far as we have gone the climate is grey and harsh, but hungry and somnolent; and although not charming like that of davos, essentially bracing and briskening. the country is a kind of insane mixture of scotland and a touch of switzerland and a dash of america, and a thought of the british channel in the skies. we have a decent house december 6th. a decent house, as i was saying, sir, on a hill-top, with a look down a scottish river in front, and on one hand a perthshire hill; on the other, the beginnings and skirts of the village play hide and seek among other hills. we have been below zero, i know not how far (10 at 8 a.m. once), and when it is cold it is delightful; but hitherto the cold has not held, and we have chopped in and out from frost to thaw, from snow to rain, from quiet air to the most disastrous north-westerly curdlers of the blood. after a week of practical thaw, the ice still bears in favoured places. so there is hope. i wonder if you saw my book of verses? it went into a second edition, because of my name, i suppose, and its prose merits. i do not set up to be a poet. only an all-round literary man: a man who talks, not one who sings. but i believe the very fact that it was only speech served the book with the public. horace is much a speaker, and see how popular! most of martial is only speech, and i cannot conceive a person who does not love his martial; most of burns, also, such as 'the louse,' 'the toothache,' 'the haggis,' and lots more of his best. excuse this little apology for my house; but i don't like to come before people who have a note of song, and let it be supposed i do not know the difference. to return to the more important news. my wife again suffers in high and cold places; i again profit. she is off to-day to new york for a change, as heretofore to berne, but i am glad to say in better case than then. still it is undeniable she suffers, and you must excuse her (at least) if we both prove bad correspondents. i am decidedly better, but i have been terribly cut up with business complications: one disagreeable, as threatening loss; one, of the most intolerable complexion, as involving me in dishonour. the burthen of consistent carelessness: i have lost much by it in the past; and for once (to my damnation) i have gained. i am sure you will sympathise. it is hard work to sleep; it is hard to be told you are a liar, and have to hold your peace, and think, 'yes, by god, and a thief too!' you remember my lectures on ajax, or the unintentional sin? well, i know all about that now. nothing seems so unjust to the sufferer: or is more just in essence. laissez passer la justice de dieu. lloyd has learned to use the typewriter, and has most gallantly completed upon that the draft of a tale, which seems to me not without merit and promise, it is so silly, so gay, so absurd, in spots (to my partial eyes) so genuinely humorous. it is true, he would not have written it but for the new arabian nights; but it is strange to find a young writer funny. heavens, but i was depressing when i took the pen in hand! and now i doubt if i am sadder than my neighbours. will this beginner move in the inverse direction? let me have your news, and believe me, my dear symonds, with genuine affection, yours, robert louis stevenson. letter: to w. e. henley saranac [december 1887]. my dear lad, i was indeed overjoyed to hear of the dumas. in the matter of the dedication, are not cross dedications a little awkward? lang and rider haggard did it, to be sure. perpend. and if you should conclude against a dedication, there is a passage in memories and portraits written at you, when i was most desperate (to stir you up a bit), which might be quoted: something about dumas still waiting his biographer. i have a decent time when the weather is fine; when it is grey, or windy, or wet (as it too often is), i am merely degraded to the dirt. i get some work done every day with a devil of a heave; not extra good ever; and i regret my engagement. whiles i have had the most deplorable business annoyances too; have been threatened with having to refund money; got over that; and found myself in the worse scrape of being a kind of unintentional swindler. these have worried me a great deal; also old age with his stealing steps seems to have clawed me in his clutch to some tune. do you play all fours? we are trying it; it is still all haze to me. can the elder hand beg more than once? the port admiral is at boston mingling with millionaires. i am but a weed on lethe wharf. the wife is only so-so. the lord lead us all: if i can only get off the stage with clean hands, i shall sing hosanna. 'put' is described quite differently from your version in a book i have; what are your rules? the port admiral is using a game of put in a tale of his, the first copy of which was gloriously finished about a fortnight ago, and the revise gallantly begun: the finsbury tontine it is named, and might fill two volumes, and is quite incredibly silly, and in parts (it seems to me) pretty humorous. love to all from an old, old man. i say, taine's origines de la france contemporaine is no end; it would turn the dead body of charles fox into a living tory. letter: to mrs. fleeming jenkin [saranac lake, december 1887.] my dear mrs. jenkin, the opal is very well; it is fed with glycerine when it seems hungry. i am very well, and get about much more than i could have hoped. my wife is not very well; there is no doubt the high level does not agree with her, and she is on the move for a holiday to new york. lloyd is at boston on a visit, and i hope has a good time. my mother is really first-rate; she and i, despairing of other games for two, now play all fours out of a gamebook, and have not yet discovered its niceties, if any. you will have heard, i dare say, that they made a great row over me here. they also offered me much money, a great deal more than my works are worth: i took some of it, and was greedy and hasty, and am now very sorry. i have done with big prices from now out. wealth and self-respect seem, in my case, to be strangers. we were talking the other day of how well fleeming managed to grow rich. ah, that is a rare art; something more intellectual than a virtue. the book has not yet made its appearance here; the life alone, with a little preface, is to appear in the states; and the scribners are to send you half the royalties. i should like it to do well, for fleeming's sake. will you please send me the greek water-carrier's song? i have a particular use for it. have i any more news, i wonder? and echo wonders along with me. i am strangely disquieted on all political matters; and i do not know if it is 'the signs of the times' or the sign of my own time of life. but to me the sky seems black both in france and england, and only partly clear in america. i have not seen it so dark in my time; of that i am sure. please let us have some news; and, excuse me, for the sake of my well-known idleness; and pardon fanny, who is really not very well, for this long silence. very sincerely your friend, robert louis stevenson. letter: to miss adelaide boodle [saranac lake, december 1887.] my dear miss boodle, i am so much afraid, our gamekeeper may weary of unacknowledged reports! hence, in the midst of a perfect horror of detestable weathers of a quite incongruous strain, and with less desire for correspondence than well, than well, with no desire for correspondence, behold me dash into the breach. do keep up your letters. they are most delightful to this exiled backwoods family; and in your next, we shall hope somehow or other to hear better news of you and yours that in the first place and to hear more news of our beasts and birds and kindly fruits of earth and those human tenants who are (truly) too much with us. i am very well; better than for years: that is for good. but then my wife is no great shakes; the place does not suit her it is my private opinion that no place does and she is now away down to new york for a change, which (as lloyd is in boston) leaves my mother and me and valentine alone in our wind-beleaguered hilltop hatbox of a house. you should hear the cows butt against the walls in the early morning while they feed; you should also see our back log when the thermometer goes (as it does go) away away below zero, till it can be seen no more by the eye of man not the thermometer, which is still perfectly visible, but the mercury, which curls up into the bulb like a hibernating bear; you should also see the lad who 'does chores' for us, with his red stockings and his thirteen year old face, and his highly manly tramp into the room; and his two alternative answers to all questions about the weather: either 'cold,' or with a really lyrical movement of the voice, 'lovely raining!' will you take this miserable scarp for what it is worth? will you also understand that i am the man to blame, and my wife is really almost too much out of health to write, or at least doesn't write? and believe me, with kind remembrance to mrs. boodle and your sisters, very sincerely yours, robert louis stevenson letter: to charles baxter saranac, 12th december '87. give us news of all your folk. a merry christmas from all of us. my dear charles, will you please send 20 pounds to for a christmas gift from -? moreover, i cannot remember what i told you to send to ; but as god has dealt so providentially with me this year, i now propose to make it 20 pounds. i beg of you also to consider my strange position. i jined a club which it was said was to defend the union; and had a letter from the secretary, which his name i believe was lord warmingpan (or words to that effect), to say i am elected, and had better pay up a certain sum of money, i forget what. now i cannae verra weel draw a blank cheque and send to lord warmingpan (or words to that effect), london, england. and, man, if it was possible, i would be dooms glad to be out o' this bit scrapie. mebbe the club was ca'd 'the union,' but i wouldnae like to sweir; and mebbe it wasnae, or mebbe only words to that effec' but i wouldnae care just exac'ly about sweirin'. do ye no think henley, or pollick, or some o' they london fellies, micht mebbe perhaps find out for me? and just what the soom was? and that you would aiblins pay for me? for i thocht i was sae dam patriotic jinin', and it would be a kind o' a come-doun to be turned out again. mebbe lang would ken; or mebbe rider haggyard: they're kind o' union folks. but it's my belief his name was warmingpan whatever. yours, thomson, alias robert louis stevenson. could it be warminster? letter: to miss monroe saranac lake, new york [december 19, 1887]. dear miss monroe, many thanks for your letter and your good wishes. it was much my desire to get to chicago: had i done or if i yet do so, i shall hope to see the original of my photograph, which is one of my show possessions; but the fates are rather contrary. my wife is far from well; i myself dread worse than almost any other imaginable peril, that miraculous and really insane invention the american railroad car. heaven help the man may i add the woman that sets foot in one! ah, if it were only an ocean to cross, it would be a matter of small thought to me and great pleasure. but the railroad car every man has his weak point; and i fear the railroad car as abjectly as i do an earwig, and, on the whole, on better grounds. you do not know how bitter it is to have to make such a confession; for you have not the pretension nor the weakness of a man. if i do get to chicago, you will hear of me: so much can be said. and do you never come east? i was pleased to recognise a word of my poor old deacon in your letter. it would interest me very much to hear how it went and what you thought of piece and actors; and my collaborator, who knows and respects the photograph, would be pleased too. still in the hope of seeing you, i am, yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to henry james saranac lake, winter 1887-8. my dear henry james, it may please you to know how our family has been employed. in the silence of the snow the afternoon lamp has lighted an eager fireside group: my mother reading, fanny, lloyd, and i devoted listeners; and the work was really one of the best works i ever heard; and its author is to be praised and honoured; and what do you suppose is the name of it? and have you ever read it yourself? and (i am bound i will get to the bottom of the page before i blow the gaff, if i have to fight it out on this line all summer; for if you have not to turn a leaf, there can be no suspense, the conspectory eye being swift to pick out proper names; and without suspense, there can be little pleasure in this world, to my mind at least) and, in short, the name of it is roderick hudson, if you please. my dear james, it is very spirited, and very sound, and very noble too. hudson, mrs. hudson, rowland, o, all first-rate: rowland a very fine fellow; hudson as good as he can stick (did you know hudson? i suspect you did), mrs. h. his real born mother, a thing rarely managed in fiction. we are all keeping pretty fit and pretty hearty; but this letter is not from me to you, it is from a reader of r. h. to the author of the same, and it says nothing, and has nothing to say, but thank you. we are going to re-read casamassima as a proper pendant. sir, i think these two are your best, and care not who knows it. may i beg you, the next time roderick is printed off, to go over the sheets of the last few chapters, and strike out 'immense' and 'tremendous'? you have simply dropped them there like your pockethandkerchief; all you have to do is to pick them up and pouch them, and your room what do i say? your cathedral! will be swept and garnished. i am, dear sir, your delighted reader, robert louis stevenson. p.s. perhaps it is a pang of causeless honesty, perhaps. i hope it will set a value on my praise of roderick, perhaps it's a burst of the diabolic, but i must break out with the news that i can't bear the portrait of a lady. i read it all, and i wept too; but i can't stand your having written it; and i beg you will write no more of the like. infra, sir; below you: i can't help it it may be your favourite work, but in my eyes it's below you to write and me to read. i thought roderick was going to be another such at the beginning; and i cannot describe my pleasure as i found it taking bones and blood, and looking out at me with a moved and human countenance, whose lineaments are written in my memory until my last of days. r. l. s. my wife begs your forgiveness; i believe for her silence. letter: to sidney colvin saranac lake [december 1887]. my dear colvin, this goes to say that we are all fit, and the place is very bleak and wintry, and up to now has shown no such charms of climate as davos, but is a place where men eat and where the cattarh, catarrh (cattarrh, or cattarrhh) appears to be unknown. i walk in my verandy in the snaw, sir, looking down over one of those dabbled wintry landscapes that are (to be frank) so chilly to the human bosom, and up at a grey, english nay, mehercle, scottish heaven; and i think it pretty bleak; and the wind swoops at me round the corner, like a lion, and fluffs the snow in my face; and i could aspire to be elsewhere; but yet i do not catch cold, and yet, when i come in, i eat. so that hitherto saranac, if not deliriously delectable, has not been a failure; nay, from the mere point of view of the wicked body, it has proved a success. but i wish i could still get to the woods; alas, nous n'irons plus au bois is my poor song; the paths are buried, the dingles drifted full, a little walk is grown a long one; till spring comes, i fear the burthen will hold good. i get along with my papers for scribner not fast, nor so far specially well; only this last, the fourth one (which makes a third part of my whole task), i do believe is pulled off after a fashion. it is a mere sermon: 'smith opens out'; but it is true, and i find it touching and beneficial, to me at least; and i think there is some fine writing in it, some very apt and pregnant phrases. pulvis et umbra, i call it; i might have called it a darwinian sermon, if i had wanted. its sentiments, although parsonic, will not offend even you, i believe. the other three papers, i fear, bear many traces of effort, and the ungenuine inspiration of an income at so much per essay, and the honest desire of the incomer to give good measure for his money. well, i did my damndest anyway. we have been reading h. james's roderick hudson, which i eagerly press you to get at once: it is a book of a high order the last volume in particular. i wish meredith would read it. it took my breath away. i am at the seventh book of the aeneid, and quite amazed at its merits (also very often floored by its difficulties). the circe passage at the beginning, and the sublime business of amata with the simile of the boy's top o lord, what a happy thought! have specially delighted me. i am, dear sir, your respected friend, john gregg gillson, j.p., m.r.i.a., etc letter: to sidney colvin [saranac, december 24, 1887.] my dear colvin, thank you for your explanations. i have done no more virgil since i finished the seventh book, for i have, first been eaten up with taine, and next have fallen head over heels into a new tale, the master of ballantrae. no thought have i now apart from it, and i have got along up to page ninety-two of the draft with great interest. it is to me a most seizing tale: there are some fantastic elements; the most is a dead genuine human problem human tragedy, i should say rather. it will be about as long, i imagine, as kidnapped. dramatis personae: (1) my old lord durrisdeer. (2) the master of ballantrae, and (3) henry durie, his sons. (4) clementina, engaged to the first, married to the second. (5) ephraim mackellar, land steward at durrisdeer and narrator of the most of the book. (6) francis burke, chevalier de st. louis, one of prince charlie's irishmen and narrator of the rest. besides these, many instant figures, most of them dumb or nearly so: jessie brown the whore, captain crail, captain maccombie, our old friend alan breck, our old friend riach (both only for an instant), teach the pirate (vulgarly blackbeard), john paul and macconochie, servants at durrisdeer. the date is from 1745 to '65 (about). the scene, near kirkcudbright, in the states, and for a little moment in the french east indies. i have done most of the big work, the quarrel, duel between the brothers, and announcement of the death to clementina and my lord clementina, henry, and mackellar (nicknamed squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the master is all i know of the devil. i have known hints of him, in the world, but always cowards; he is as bold as a lion, but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity i have watched with so much surprise in my two cowards. 'tis true, i saw a hint of the same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend to; the master has nothing else but his devilry. here come my visitors and have now gone, or the first relay of them; and i hope no more may come. for mark you, sir, this is our 'day' saturday, as ever was, and here we sit, my mother and i, before a large wood fire and await the enemy with the most steadfast courage; and without snow and greyness: and the woman fanny in new york for her health, which is far from good; and the lad lloyd at the inn in the village because he has a cold; and the handmaid valentine abroad in a sleigh upon her messages; and to-morrow christmas and no mistake. such is human life: la carriere humaine. i will enclose, if i remember, the required autograph. i will do better, put it on the back of this page. love to all, and mostly, my very dear colvin, to yourself. for whatever i say or do, or don't say or do, you may be very sure i am, yours always affectionately, r. l. s. letter: to miss adelaide boodle saranac lake, adirondacks, n.y., u.s.a., christmas 1887. my dear miss boodle, and a very good christmas to you all; and better fortune; and if worse, the more courage to support it which i think is the kinder wish in all human affairs. somewhile i fear a good while after this, you should receive our christmas gift; we have no tact and no taste, only a welcome and (often) tonic brutality; and i dare say the present, even after my friend baxter has acted on and reviewed my hints, may prove a white elephant. that is why i dread presents. and therefore pray understand if any element of that hamper prove unwelcome, it is to be exchanged. i will not sit down under the name of a giver of white elephants. i never had any elephant but one, and his initials were r. l. s.; and he trod on my foot at a very early age. but this is a fable, and not in the least to the point: which is that if, for once in my life, i have wished to make things nicer for anybody but the elephant (see fable), do not suffer me to have made them ineffably more embarrassing, and exchange ruthlessly exchange! for my part, i am the most cockered up of any mortal being; and one of the healthiest, or thereabout, at some modest distance from the bull's eye. i am condemned to write twelve articles in scribner's magazine for the love of gain; i think i had better send you them; what is far more to the purpose, i am on the jump with a new story which has bewitched me i doubt it may bewitch no one else. it is called the master of ballantrae pronounce ballan-tray. if it is not good, well, mine will be the fault; for i believe it is a good tale. the greetings of the season to you, and your mother, and your sisters. my wife heartily joins. and i am, yours very sincerely, robert louis stevenson. p.s. you will think me an illiterate dog: i am, for the first time, reading robertson's sermons. i do not know how to express how much i think of them. if by any chance you should be as illiterate as i, and not know them, it is worth while curing the defect. r. l. s. letter: to charles baxter saranac lake, january '88. dear charles, you are the flower of doers. . . . will my doer collaborate thus much in my new novel? in the year 1794 or 5, mr. ephraim mackellar, a.m., late. steward on the durrisdeer estates, completed a set of memoranda (as long as a novel) with regard to the death of the (then) late lord durrisdeer, and as to that of his attainted elder brother, called by the family courtesy title the master of ballantrae. these he placed in the hands of john macbrair. w.s., the family agent, on the understanding they were to be sealed until 1862, when a century would have elapsed since the affair in the wilderness (my lord's death). you succeeded mr. macbrair's firm; the durrisdeers are extinct; and last year, in an old green box, you found these papers with macbrair's indorsation. it is that indorsation of which i want a copy; you may remember, when you gave me the papers, i neglected to take that, and i am sure you are a man too careful of antiquities to have let it fall aside. i shall have a little introduction descriptive of my visit to edinburgh, arrival there, denner with yoursel', and first reading of the papers in your smoking-room: all of which, of course, you well remember. ever yours affectionately, r. l s. your name is my friend mr. johnstone thomson, w.s.!!! letter: to e. l. burlingame saranac, winter 1887-8. dear mr. burlingame, i am keeping the sermon to see if i can't add another. meanwhile, i will send you very soon a different paper which may take its place. possibly some of these days soon i may get together a talk on things current, which should go in (if possible) earlier than either. i am now less nervous about these papers; i believe i can do the trick without great strain, though the terror that breathed on my back in the beginning is not yet forgotten. the master of ballantrae i have had to leave aside, as i was quite worked out. but in about a week i hope to try back and send you the first four numbers: these are all drafted, it is only the revision that has broken me down, as it is often the hardest work. these four i propose you should set up for me at once, and we'll copyright 'em in a pamphlet. i will tell you the names of the bona fide purchasers in england. the numbers will run from twenty to thirty pages of my manuscript. you can give me that much, can you not? it is a howling good tale at least these first four numbers are; the end is a trifle more fantastic, but 'tis all picturesque. don't trouble about any more french books; i am on another scent, you see, just now. only the french in hindustan i await with impatience, as that is for ballantrae. the scene of that romance is scotland the states scotland india scotland and the states again; so it jumps like a flea. i have enough about the states now, and very much obliged i am; yet if drake's tragedies of the wilderness is (as i gather) a collection of originals, i should like to purchase it. if it is a picturesque vulgarisation, i do not wish to look it in the face. purchase, i say; for i think it would be well to have some such collection by me with a view to fresh works. yours very sincerely, robert louis stevenson. p.s. if you think of having the master illustrated, i suggest that hole would be very well up to the scottish, which is the larger part. if you have it done here, tell your artist to look at the hall of craigievar in billing's baronial and ecclesiastical antiquities, and he will get a broad hint for the hall at durrisdeer: it is, i think, the chimney of craigievar and the roof of pinkie, and perhaps a little more of pinkie altogether; but i should have to see the book myself to be sure. hole would be invaluable for this. i dare say if you had it illustrated, you could let me have one or two for the english edition. r. l. s. letter: to william archer [saranac, winter 1887-8.] my dear archer, what am i to say? i have read your friend's book with singular relish. if he has written any other, i beg you will let me see it; and if he has not, i beg him to lose no time in supplying the deficiency. it is full of promise; but i should like to know his age. there are things in it that are very clever, to which i attach small importance; it is the shape of the age. and there are passages, particularly the rally in presence of the zulu king, that show genuine and remarkable narrative talent a talent that few will have the wit to understand, a talent of strength, spirit, capacity, sufficient vision, and sufficient self-sacrifice, which last is the chief point in a narrator. as a whole, it is (of course) a fever dream of the most feverish. over bashville the footman i howled with derision and delight; i dote on bashville i could read of him for ever; de bashville je suis le fervent there is only one bashville, and i am his devoted slave; bashville est magnifique, mais il n'est guere possible. he is the note of the book. it is all mad, mad and deliriously delightful; the author has a taste in chivalry like walter scott's or dumas', and then he daubs in little bits of socialism; he soars away on the wings of the romantic griffon even the griffon, as he cleaves air, shouting with laughter at the nature of the quest and i believe in his heart he thinks he is labouring in a quarry of solid granite realism. it is this that makes me the most hardened adviser now extant stand back and hold my peace. if mr. shaw is below five-andtwenty, let him go his path; if he is thirty, he had best be told that he is a romantic, and pursue romance with his eyes open; or perhaps he knows it; god knows! my brain is softened. it is horrid fun. all i ask is more of it. thank you for the pleasure you gave us, and tell me more of the inimitable author. (i say, archer, my god, what women!) yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to william archer saranac, february 1888. my dear archer, pretty sick in bed; but necessary to protest and continue your education. why was jenkin an amateur in my eyes? you think because not amusing (i think he often was amusing). the reason is this: i never, or almost never, saw two pages of his work that i could not have put in one without the smallest loss of material. that is the only test i know of writing. if there is anywhere a thing said in two sentences that could have been as clearly and as engagingly and as forcibly said in one, then it's amateur work. then you will bring me up with old dumas. nay, the object of a story is to be long, to fill up hours; the story-teller's art of writing is to water out by continual invention, historical and technical, and yet not seem to water; seem on the other hand to practise that same wit of conspicuous and declaratory condensation which is the proper art of writing. that is one thing in which my stories fail: i am always cutting the flesh off their bones. i would rise from the dead to preach! hope all well. i think my wife better, but she's not allowed to write; and this (only wrung from me by desire to boss and parsonise and dominate, strong in sickness) is my first letter for days, and will likely be my last for many more. not blame my wife for her silence: doctor's orders. all much interested by your last, and fragment from brother, and anecdotes of tomarcher. the sick but still moral r. l. s. tell shaw to hurry up: i want another. letter: to william archer [saranac, spring 1888?] my dear archer, it happened thus. i came forth from that performance in a breathing heat of indignation. (mind, at this distance of time and with my increased knowledge, i admit there is a problem in the piece; but i saw none then, except a problem in brutality; and i still consider the problem in that case not established.) on my way down the francais stairs, i trod on an old gentleman's toes, whereupon with that suavity that so well becomes me, i turned about to apologise, and on the instant, repenting me of that intention, stopped the apology midway, and added something in french to this effect: no, you are one of the laches who have been applauding that piece. i retract my apology. said the old frenchman, laying his hand on my arm, and with a smile that was truly heavenly in temperance, irony, good-nature, and knowledge of the world, 'ah, monsieur, vous etes bien jeune!' yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to e. l. burlingame saranac [february 1888]. dear mr. burlingame, will you send me (from the library) some of the works of my dear old g. p. r. james. with the following especially i desire to make or to renew acquaintance: the songster, the gipsy, the convict, the stepmother, the gentleman of the old school, the robber. excusez du peu. this sudden return to an ancient favourite hangs upon an accident. the 'franklin county library' contains two works of his, the cavalier and morley ernstein. i read the first with indescribable amusement it was worse than i had feared, and yet somehow engaging; the second (to my surprise) was better than i had dared to hope: a good honest, dull, interesting tale, with a genuine old-fashioned talent in the invention when not strained; and a genuine old-fashioned feeling for the english language. this experience awoke appetite, and you see i have taken steps to stay it. r. l. s. letter: to e. l. burlingame [saranac, february 1888.] dear mr. burlingame, 1. of course then don't use it. dear man, i write these to please you, not myself, and you know a main sight better than i do what is good. in that case, however, i enclose another paper, and return the corrected proof of pulvis et umbra, so that we may be afloat. 2. i want to say a word as to the master. (the master of ballantrae shall be the name by all means.) if you like and want it, i leave it to you to make an offer. you may remember i thought the offer you made when i was still in england too small; by which i did not at all mean, i thought it less than it was worth, but too little to tempt me to undergo the disagreeables of serial publication. this tale (if you want it) you are to have; for it is the least i can do for you; and you are to observe that the sum you pay me for my articles going far to meet my wants, i am quite open to be satisfied with less than formerly. i tell you i do dislike this battle of the dollars. i feel sure you all pay too much here in america; and i beg you not to spoil me any more. for i am getting spoiled: i do not want wealth, and i feel these big sums demoralise me. my wife came here pretty ill; she had a dreadful bad night; to-day she is better. but now valentine is ill; and lloyd and i have got breakfast, and my hand somewhat shakes after washing dishes. yours very sincerely, robert louis stevenson. p.s. please order me the evening post for two months. my subscription is run out. the mutiny and edwardes to hand. letter: to sidney colvin [saranac, march 1888.] my dear colvin, fanny has been very unwell. she is not long home, has been ill again since her return, but is now better again to a degree. you must not blame her for not writing, as she is not allowed to write at all, not even a letter. to add to our misfortunes, valentine is quite ill and in bed. lloyd and i get breakfast; i have now, 10.15, just got the dishes washed and the kitchen all clear, and sit down to give you as much news as i have spirit for, after such an engagement. glass is a thing that really breaks my spirit: i do not like to fail, and with glass i cannot reach the work of my high calling the artist's. i am, as you may gather from this, wonderfully better: this harsh, grey, glum, doleful climate has done me good. you cannot fancy how sad a climate it is. when the thermometer stays all day below 10 degrees, it is really cold; and when the wind blows, o commend me to the result. pleasure in life is all delete; there is no red spot left, fires do not radiate, you burn your hands all the time on what seem to be cold stones. it is odd, zero is like summer heat to us now; and we like, when the thermometer outside is really low, a room at about 48 degrees: 60 degrees we find oppressive. yet the natives keep their holes at 90 degrees or even 100 degrees. this was interrupted days ago by household labours. since then i have had and (i tremble to write it, but it does seem as if i had) beaten off an influenza. the cold is exquisite. valentine still in bed. the proofs of the first part of the master of ballantrae begin to come in; soon you shall have it in the pamphlet form; and i hope you will like it. the second part will not be near so good; but there we can but do as it'll do with us. i have every reason to believe this winter has done me real good, so far as it has gone; and if i carry out my scheme for next winter, and succeeding years, i should end by being a tower of strength. i want you to save a good holiday for next winter; i hope we shall be able to help you to some larks. is there any greek isle you would like to explore? or any creek in asia minor? yours ever affectionately, r. l. s. letter: to the rev. dr. charteris [saranac lake, winter 1887-1888.] my dear dr. charteris, i have asked douglas and foulis to send you my last volume, so that you may possess my little paper on my father in a permanent shape; not for what that is worth, but as a tribute of respect to one whom my father regarded with such love, esteem, and affection. besides, as you will see, i have brought you under contribution, and i have still to thank you for your letter to my mother; so more than kind; in much, so just. it is my hope, when time and health permit, to do something more definite for my father's memory. you are one of the very few who can (if you will) help me. pray believe that i lay on you no obligation; i know too well, you may believe me, how difficult it is to put even two sincere lines upon paper, where all, too, is to order. but if the spirit should ever move you, and you should recall something memorable of your friend, his son will heartily thank you for a note of it. with much respect, believe me, yours sincerely, robert louis stevenson. letter: to henry james [saranac lake, march 1888.] my dear delightful james, to quote your heading to my wife, i think no man writes so elegant a letter, i am sure none so kind, unless it be colvin, and there is more of the stern parent about him. i was vexed at your account of my admired meredith: i wish i could go and see him; as it is i will try to write. i read with indescribable admiration your emerson. i begin to long for the day when these portraits of yours shall be collected: do put me in. but emerson is a higher flight. have you a tourgueneff? you have told me many interesting things of him, and i seem to see them written, and forming a graceful and bildend sketch. my novel is a tragedy; four parts out of six or seven are written, and gone to burlingame. five parts of it are sound, human tragedy; the last one or two, i regret to say, not so soundly designed; i almost hesitate to write them; they are very picturesque, but they are fantastic; they shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning. i wish i knew; that was how the tale came to me however. i got the situation; it was an old taste of mine: the older brother goes out in the '45, the younger stays; the younger, of course, gets title and estate and marries the bride designate of the elder a family match, but he (the younger) had always loved her, and she had really loved the elder. do you see the situation? then the devil and saranac suggested this denouement, and i joined the two ends in a day or two of constant feverish thought, and began to write. and now i wonder if i have not gone too far with the fantastic? the elder brother is an incubus: supposed to be killed at culloden, he turns up again and bleeds the family of money; on that stopping he comes and lives with them, whence flows the real tragedy, the nocturnal duel of the brothers (very naturally, and indeed, i think, inevitably arising), and second supposed death of the elder. husband and wife now really make up, and then the cloven hoof appears. for the third supposed death and the manner of the third reappearance is steep; steep, sir. it is even very steep, and i fear it shames the honest stuff so far; but then it is highly pictorial, and it leads up to the death of the elder brother at the hands of the younger in a perfectly cold-blooded murder, of which i wish (and mean) the reader to approve. you see how daring is the design. there are really but six characters, and one of these episodic, and yet it covers eighteen years, and will be, i imagine, the longest of my works. yours ever, r. l. s. read gosse's raleigh. first-rate. yours ever, r. l. s. letter: to the rev. dr. charteris saranac lake, adirondacks, new york, u.s.a., spring 1888. my dear dr. charteris, the funeral letter, your notes, and many other things, are reserved for a book, memorials of a scottish family, if ever i can find time and opportunity. i wish i could throw off all else and sit down to it to-day. yes, my father was a 'distinctly religious man,' but not a pious. the distinction painfully and pleasurably recalls old conflicts; it used to be my great gun and you, who suffered for the whole church, know how needful it was to have some reserve artillery! his sentiments were tragic; he was a tragic thinker. now, granted that life is tragic to the marrow, it seems the proper function of religion to make us accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in that other and comparable one of war. service is the word, active service, in the military sense; and the religious man i beg pardon, the pious man is he who has a military joy in duty not he who weeps over the wounded. we can do no more than try to do our best. really, i am the grandson of the manse i preach you a kind of sermon. box the brat's ears! my mother to pass to matters more within my competence finely enjoys herself. the new country, some new friends we have made, the interesting experiment of this climate-which (at least) is tragic all have done her good. i have myself passed a better winter than for years, and now that it is nearly over have some diffident hopes of doing well in the summer and 'eating a little more air' than usual. i thank you for the trouble you are taking, and my mother joins with me in kindest regards to yourself and mrs. charteris. yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to s. r. crockett [saranac lake, spring 1888.] dear minister of the free kirk at penicuik, for o, man, i cannae read your name! that i have been so long in answering your delightful letter sits on my conscience badly. the fact is i let my correspondence accumulate until i am going to leave a place; and then i pitch in, overhaul the pile, and my cries of penitence might be heard a mile about. yesterday i despatched thirty-five belated letters: conceive the state of my conscience, above all as the sins of omission (see boyhood's guide, the shorter catechism) are in my view the only serious ones; i call it my view, but it cannot have escaped you that it was also christ's. however, all that is not to the purpose, which is to thank you for the sincere pleasure afforded by your charming letter. i get a good few such; how few that please me at all, you would be surprised to learn or have a singularly just idea of the dulness of our race; how few that please me as yours did, i can tell you in one word none. i am no great kirkgoer, for many reasons and the sermon's one of them, and the first prayer another, but the chief and effectual reason is the stuffiness. i am no great kirkgoer, says i, but when i read yon letter of yours, i thought i would like to sit under ye. and then i saw ye were to send me a bit buik, and says i, i'll wait for the bit buik, and then i'll mebbe can read the man's name, and anyway i'll can kill twa birds wi' ae stane. and, man! the buik was ne'er heard tell o'! that fact is an adminicle of excuse for my delay. and now, dear minister of the illegible name, thanks to you, and greeting to your wife, and may you have good guidance in your difficult labours, and a blessing on your life. robert louis stevenson. (no just so young sae young's he was, though i'm awfae near forty, man.) address c/o charles scribner's sons, 743 broadway, new york. don't put 'n.b.' in your paper: put scotland, and be done with it. alas, that i should be thus stabbed in the home of my friends! the name of my native land is not north britain, whatever may be the name of yours. r. l. s. letter: to miss ferrier [saranac lake, april 1888.] my dearest coggie, i wish i could find the letter i began to you some time ago when i was ill; but i can't and i don't believe there was much in it anyway. we have all behaved like pigs and beasts and barn-door poultry to you; but i have been sunk in work, and the lad is lazy and blind and has been working too; and as for fanny, she has been (and still is) really unwell. i had a mean hope you might perhaps write again before i got up steam: i could not have been more ashamed of myself than i am, and i should have had another laugh. they always say i cannot give news in my letters: i shall shake off that reproach. on monday, if she is well enough, fanny leaves for california to see her friends; it is rather an anxiety to let her go alone; but the doctor simply forbids it in my case, and she is better anywhere than here a bleak, blackguard, beggarly climate, of which i can say no good except that it suits me and some others of the same or similar persuasions whom (by all rights) it ought to kill. it is a form of arctic st. andrews, i should imagine; and the miseries of forty degrees below zero, with a high wind, have to be felt to be appreciated. the greyness of the heavens here is a circumstance eminently revolting to the soul; i have near forgot the aspect of the sun i doubt if this be news; it is certainly no news to us. my mother suffers a little from the inclemency of the place, but less on the whole than would be imagined. among other wild schemes, we have been projecting yacht voyages; and i beg to inform you that cogia hassan was cast for the part of passenger. they may come off! again this is not news. the lad? well, the lad wrote a tale this winter, which appeared to me so funny that i have taken it in hand, and some of these days you will receive a copy of a work entitled 'a game of bluff, by lloyd osbourne and robert louis stevenson.' otherwise he (the lad) is much as usual. there remains, i believe, to be considered only r. l. s., the house-bond, prop, pillar, bread-winner, and bully of the establishment. well, i do think him much better; he is making piles of money; the hope of being able to hire a yacht ere long dances before his eyes; otherwise he is not in very high spirits at this particular moment, though compared with last year at bournemouth an angel of joy. and now is this news, cogia, or is it not? it all depends upon the point of view, and i call it news. the devil of it is that i can think of nothing else, except to send you all our loves, and to wish exceedingly you were here to cheer us all up. but we'll see about that on board the yacht. your affectionate friend, robert louis stevenson. letter: to sidney colvin [saranac lake], april 9th!! 1888 my dear colvin, i have been long without writing to you, but am not to blame, i had some little annoyances quite for a private eye, but they ran me so hard that i could not write without lugging them in, which (for several reasons) i did not choose to do. fanny is off to san francisco, and next week i myself flit to new york: address scribner's. where we shall go i know not, nor (i was going to say) care; so bald and bad is my frame of mind. do you know our ahem! fellow clubman, colonel majendie? i had such an interesting letter from him. did you see my sermon? it has evoked the worst feeling: i fear people don't care for the truth, or else i don't tell it. suffer me to wander without purpose. i have sent off twenty letters to-day, and begun and stuck at a twenty-first, and taken a copy of one which was on business, and corrected several galleys of proof, and sorted about a bushel of old letters; so if any one has a right to be romantically stupid it is i and i am. really deeply stupid, and at that stage when in old days i used to pour out words without any meaning whatever and with my mind taking no part in the performance. i suspect that is now the case. i am reading with extraordinary pleasure the life of lord lawrence: lloyd and i have a mutiny novel (next morning, after twelve other letters) mutiny novel on hand a tremendous work so we are all at indian books. the idea of the novel is lloyd's: i call it a novel. 'tis a tragic romance, of the most tragic sort: i believe the end will be almost too much for human endurance when the hero is thrown to the ground with one of his own (sepoy) soldier's knees upon his chest, and the cries begin in the beebeeghar. o truly, you know it is a howler! the whole last part is well the difficulty is that, short of resuscitating shakespeare, i don't know who is to write it. i still keep wonderful. i am a great performer before the lord on the penny whistle. dear sir, sincerely yours, andrew jackson. letter: to miss adelaide boodle [saranac lake, april 1888.] address c/o messrs. scribner's sons, 743 broadway, n.y. my dear gamekeeper, your p. c. (proving you a good student of micawber) has just arrived, and it paves the way to something i am anxious to say. i wrote a paper the other day pulvis et umbra; i wrote it with great feeling and conviction: to me it seemed bracing and healthful, it is in such a world (so seen by me), that i am very glad to fight out my battle, and see some fine sunsets, and hear some excellent jests between whiles round the camp fire. but i find that to some people this vision of mine is a nightmare, and extinguishes all ground of faith in god or pleasure in man. truth i think not so much of; for i do not know it. and i could wish in my heart that i had not published this paper, if it troubles folk too much: all have not the same digestion, nor the same sight of things. and it came over me with special pain that perhaps this article (which i was at the pains to send to her) might give dismalness to my gamekeeper at home. well, i cannot take back what i have said; but yet i may add this. if my view be everything but the nonsense that it may be to me it seems selfevident and blinding truth surely of all things it makes this world holier. there is nothing in it but the moral side but the great battle and the breathing times with their refreshments. i see no more and no less. and if you look again, it is not ugly, and it is filled with promise. pray excuse a desponding author for this apology. my wife is away off to the uttermost parts of the states, all by herself. i shall be off, i hope, in a week; but where? ah! that i know not. i keep wonderful, and my wife a little better, and the lad flourishing. we now perform duets on two d tin whistles; it is no joke to make the bass; i think i must really send you one, which i wish you would correct . . . i may be said to live for these instrumental labours now, but i have always some childishness on hand. i am, dear gamekeeper, your indulgent but intemperate squire, robert louis stevenson. letter: to charles baxter union house, manasquan, n.j., but address to scribner's, 11th may 1888. my dear charles, i have found a yacht, and we are going the full pitch for seven months. if i cannot get my health back (more or less), 'tis madness; but, of course, there is the hope, and i will play big. . . . if this business fails to set me up, well, 2000 pounds is gone, and i know i can't get better. we sail from san francisco, june 15th, for the south seas in the yacht casco. with a million thanks for all your dear friendliness, ever yours affectionately, robert louis stevenson. letter: to homer st. gaudens manasquan, new jersey, 27th may 1888. dear homer st. gaudens, your father has brought you this day to see me, and he tells me it is his hope you may remember the occasion. i am going to do what i can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years after, to see this little scrap of paper and to read what i write. i must begin by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this i thought an excellent and admirable point in your character. you were also (i use the past tense, with a view to the time when you shall read, rather than to that when i am writing) a very pretty boy, and (to my european views) startlingly self-possessed. my time of observation was so limited that you must pardon me if i can say no more: what else i marked, what restlessness of foot and hand, what graceful clumsiness, what experimental designs upon the furniture, was but the common inheritance of human youth. but you may perhaps like to know that the lean flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant: harassed with work which he thought he was not doing well, troubled with difficulties to which you will in time succeed, and yet looking forward to no less a matter than a voyage to the south seas and the visitation of savage and desert islands. -your father's friend, robert louis stevenson. letter: to henry james manasquan (ahem!), new jersey, may 28th, 1888. my dear james, with what a torrent it has come at last! up to now, what i like best is the first number of a london life. you have never done anything better, and i don't know if perhaps you have ever done anything so good as the girl's outburst: tip-top. i have been preaching your later works in your native land. i had to present the beltraffio volume to low, and it has brought him to his knees; he was amazed at the first part of georgina's reasons, although (like me) not so well satisfied with part ii. it is annoying to find the american public as stupid as the english, but they will waken up in time: i wonder what they will think of two nations? . . this, dear james, is a valedictory. on june 15th the schooner yacht casco will (weather and a jealous providence permitting) steam through the golden gates for honolulu, tahiti, the galapagos, guayaquil, and i hope not the bottom of the pacific. it will contain your obedient 'umble servant and party. it seems too good to be true, and is a very good way of getting through the greensickness of maturity which, with all its accompanying ills, is now declaring itself in my mind and life. they tell me it is not so severe as that of youth; if i (and the casco) are spared, i shall tell you more exactly, as i am one of the few people in the world who do not forget their own lives. good-bye, then, my dear fellow, and please write us a word; we expect to have three mails in the next two months: honolulu, tahiti, and guayaquil. but letters will be forwarded from scribner's, if you hear nothing more definite directly. in 3 (three) days i leave for san francisco. ever yours most cordially, r. l. s. chapter x pacific voyages, june 1888-november 1890 to sidney colvin yacht 'casco,' anaho bay, nukahiva, marquesas islands [july 1888]. my dear colvin, from this somewhat (ahem) out of the way place, i write to say how d'ye do. it is all a swindle: i chose these isles as having the most beastly population, and they are far better, and far more civilised than we. i know one old chief ko-oamua, a great cannibal in his day, who ate his enemies even as he walked home from killing 'em, and he is a perfect gentleman and exceedingly amiable and simple-minded: no fool, though. the climate is delightful; and the harbour where we lie one of the loveliest spots imaginable. yesterday evening we had near a score natives on board; lovely parties. we have a native god; very rare now. very rare and equally absurd to view. this sort of work is not favourable to correspondence: it takes me all the little strength i have to go about and see, and then come home and note, the strangeness around us. i shouldn't wonder if there came trouble here some day, all the same. i could name a nation that is not beloved in certain islands and it does not know it! strange: like ourselves, perhaps, in india! love to all and much to yourself. r. l. s. letter: to charles baxter yacht 'casco,' at sea, near the paumotus, 7 a.m., september 6th, 1888, with a dreadful pen. my dear charles, last night as i lay under my blanket in the cockpit, courting sleep, i had a comic seizure. there was nothing visible but the southern stars, and the steersman there out by the binnacle lamp; we were all looking forward to a most deplorable landfall on the morrow, praying god we should fetch a tuft of palms which are to indicate the dangerous archipelago; the night was as warm as milk, and all of a sudden i had a vision of drummond street. it came on me like a flash of lightning: i simply returned thither, and into the past. and when i remember all i hoped and feared as i pickled about rutherford's in the rain and the east wind; how i feared i should make a mere shipwreck, and yet timidly hoped not; how i feared i should never have a friend, far less a wife, and yet passionately hoped i might; how i hoped (if i did not take to drink) i should possibly write one little book, etc. etc. and then now what a change! i feel somehow as if i should like the incident set upon a brass plate at the corner of that dreary thoroughfare for all students to read, poor devils, when their hearts are down. and i felt i must write one word to you. excuse me if i write little: when i am at sea, it gives me a headache; when i am in port, i have my diary crying 'give, give.' i shall have a fine book of travels, i feel sure; and will tell you more of the south seas after very few months than any other writer has done except herman melville perhaps, who is a howling cheese. good luck to you, god bless you. your affectionate friend, r. l. s. letter: to sidney colvin fakarava, low archipelago, september 21st, 1888. my dear colvin, only a word. get out your big atlas, and imagine a straight line from san francisco to anaho, the n.e. corner of nukahiva, one of the marquesas islands; imagine three weeks there: imagine a day's sail on august 12th round the eastern end of the island to tai-o-hae, the capital; imagine us there till august 22nd: imagine us skirt the east side of ua-pu perhaps rona-poa on your atlas and through the bondelais straits to taaka-uku in hiva-oa, where we arrive on the 23rd; imagine us there until september 4th, when we sailed for fakarava, which we reached on the 9th, after a very difficult and dangerous passage among these isles. tuesday, we shall leave for taiti, where i shall knock off and do some necessary work ashore. it looks pretty bald in the atlas; not in fact; nor i trust in the 130 odd pages of diary which i have just been looking up for these dates: the interest, indeed, has been incredible: i did not dream there were such places or such races. my health has stood me splendidly; i am in for hours wading over the knees for shells; i have been five hours on horseback: i have been up pretty near all night waiting to see where the casco would go ashore, and with my diary all ready simply the most entertaining night of my life. withal i still have colds; i have one now, and feel pretty sick too; but not as at home: instead of being in bed, for instance, i am at this moment sitting snuffling and writing in an undershirt and trousers; and as for colour, hands, arms, feet, legs, and face, i am browner than the berry: only my trunk and the aristocratic spot on which i sit retain the vile whiteness of the north. please give my news and kind love to henley, henry james, and any whom you see of well-wishers. accept from me the very best of my affection: and believe me ever yours, the old man virulent. taiti, october 7th, 1888. never having found a chance to send this off, i may add more of my news. my cold took a very bad turn, and i am pretty much out of sorts at this particular, living in a little bare one-twentiethfurnished house, surrounded by mangoes, etc. all the rest are well, and i mean to be soon. but these taiti colds are very severe and, to children, often fatal; so they were not the thing for me. yesterday the brigantine came in from san francisco, so we can get our letters off soon. there are in papeete at this moment, in a little wooden house with grated verandahs, two people who love you very much, and one of them is robert louis stevenson. letter: to charles baxter taiti, as ever was, 6th october 1888. my dear charles, . . . you will receive a lot of mostly very bad proofs of photographs: the paper was so bad. please keep them very private, as they are for the book. we send them, having learned so dread a fear of the sea, that we wish to put our eggs in different baskets. we have been thrice within an ace of being ashore: we were lost (!) for about twelve hours in the low archipelago, but by god's blessing had quiet weather all the time; and once, in a squall, we cam' so near gaun heels ower hurdies, that i really dinnae ken why we didnae athegither. hence, as i say, a great desire to put our eggs in different baskets, particularly on the pacific (aw-haw-haw) pacific ocean. you can have no idea what a mean time we have had, owing to incidental beastlinesses, nor what a glorious, owing to the intrinsic interest of these isles. i hope the book will be a good one; nor do i really very much doubt that the stuff is so curious; what i wonder is, if the public will rise to it. a copy of my journal, or as much of it as is made, shall go to you also; it is, of course, quite imperfect, much being to be added and corrected; but o, for the eggs in the different baskets. all the rest are well enough, and all have enjoyed the cruise so far, in spite of its drawbacks. we have had an awfae time in some ways, mr. baxter; and if i wasnae sic a verra patient man (when i ken that i have to be) there wad hae been a braw row; and ance if i hadnae happened to be on deck about three in the marnin', i think there would have been murder done. the american mairchant marine is a kent service; ye'll have heard its praise, i'm thinkin'; an' if ye never did, ye can get twa years before the mast, by dana, whaur forbye a great deal o' pleisure, ye'll get a' the needcessary information. love to your father and all the family. ever your affectionate friend, robert louis stevenson. letter: to miss adelaide boodle taiti, october 10th, 1888. dear giver, i am at a loss to conceive your object in giving me to a person so locomotory as my proprietor. the number of thousand miles that i have travelled, the strange bed-fellows with which i have been made acquainted, i lack the requisite literary talent to make clear to your imagination. i speak of bed-fellows; pocketfellows would be a more exact expression, for the place of my abode is in my master's righthand trouser-pocket; and there, as he waded on the resounding beaches of nukahiva, or in the shallow tepid water on the reef of fakarava, i have been overwhelmed by and buried among all manner of abominable south sea shells, beautiful enough in their way, i make no doubt, but singular company for any self-respecting paper-cutter. he, my master or as i more justly call him, my bearer; for although i occasionally serve him, does not he serve me daily and all day long, carrying me like an african potentate on my subject's legs? he is delighted with these isles, and this climate, and these savages, and a variety of other things. he now blows a flageolet with singular effects: sometimes the poor thing appears stifled with shame, sometimes it screams with agony; he pursues his career with truculent insensibility. health appears to reign in the party. i was very nearly sunk in a squall. i am sorry i ever left england, for here there are no books to be had, and without books there is no stable situation for, dear giver, your affectionate wooden paper-cutter. a neighbouring pair of scissors snips a kiss in your direction. letter: to sidney colvin taiti, october 16th, 1888. my dear colvin, the cruiser for san francisco departs to-morrow morning bearing you some kind of a scratch. this much more important packet will travel by way of auckland. it contains a ballant; and i think a better ballant than i expected ever to do. i can imagine how you will wag your pow over it; and how ragged you will find it, etc., but has it not spirit all the same? and though the verse is not all your fancy painted it, has it not some life? and surely, as narrative, the thing has considerable merit! read it, get a typewritten copy taken, and send me that and your opinion to the sandwiches. i know i am only courting the most excruciating mortification; but the real cause of my sending the thing is that i could bear to go down myself, but not to have much ms. go down with me. to say truth, we are through the most dangerous; but it has left in all minds a strong sense of insecurity, and we are all for putting eggs in various baskets. we leave here soon, bound for uahiva, reiatea, bora-bora, and the sandwiches. o, how my spirit languishes to step ashore on the sanguishes; for there my letters wait, there shall i know my fate. o, how my spirit languidges to step ashore on the sanguidges. 18th. i think we shall leave here if all is well on monday. i am quite recovered, astonishingly recovered. it must be owned these climates and this voyage have given me more strength than i could have thought possible. and yet the sea is a terrible place, stupefying to the mind and poisonous to the temper, the sea, the motion, the lack of space, the cruel publicity, the villainous tinned foods, the sailors, the captain, the passengers but you are amply repaid when you sight an island, and drop anchor in a new world. much trouble has attended this trip, but i must confess more pleasure. nor should i ever complain, as in the last few weeks, with the curing of my illness indeed, as if that were the bursting of an abscess, the cloud has risen from my spirits and to some degree from my temper. do you know what they called the casco at fakarava? the silver ship. is that not pretty? pray tell mrs. jenkin, die silberne frau, as i only learned it since i wrote her. i think of calling the book by that name: the cruise of the silver ship so there will be one poetic page at least the title. at the sandwiches we shall say farewell to the s. s. with mingled feelings. she is a lovely creature: the most beautiful thing at this moment in taiti. well, i will take another sheet, though i know i have nothing to say. you would think i was bursting: but the voyage is all stored up for the book, which is to pay for it, we fondly hope; and the troubles of the time are not worth telling; and our news is little. here i conclude (oct. 24th, i think), for we are now stored, and the blue peter metaphorically flies. r. l. s. letter: to william and thomas archer taiti, october 17th, 1888. dear archer, though quite unable to write letters, i nobly send you a line signifying nothing. the voyage has agreed well with all; it has had its pains, and its extraordinary pleasures; nothing in the world can equal the excitement of the first time you cast anchor in some bay of a tropical island, and the boats begin to surround you, and the tattooed people swarm aboard. tell tomarcher, with my respex, that hide-and-seek is not equal to it; no, nor hidee-in-the-dark; which, for the matter of that, is a game for the unskilful: the artist prefers daylight, a good-sized garden, some shrubbery, an open paddock, and come on, macduff. tomarcher, i am now a distinguished litterytour, but that was not the real bent of my genius. i was the best player of hide-and-seek going; not a good runner, i was up to every shift and dodge, i could jink very well, i could crawl without any noise through leaves, i could hide under a carrot plant, it used to be my favourite boast that i always walked into the den. you may care to hear, tomarcher, about the children in these parts; their parents obey them, they do not obey their parents; and i am sorry to tell you (for i dare say you are already thinking the idea a good one) that it does not pay one halfpenny. there are three sorts of civilisation, tomarcher: the real old-fashioned one, in which children either had to find out how to please their dear papas, or their dear papas cut their heads off. this style did very well, but is now out of fashion. then the modern european style: in which children have to behave reasonably well, and go to school and say their prayers, or their dear papas will know the reason why. this does fairly well. then there is the south sea island plan, which does not do one bit. the children beat their parents here; it does not make their parents any better; so do not try it. dear tomarcher, i have forgotten the address of your new house, but will send this to one of your papa's publishers. remember us all to all of you, and believe me, yours respectably, robert louis stevenson. letter: to charles baxter tautira (the garden of the world), otherwise called hans-christianandersen-ville [november 1888]. my dear charles, whether i have a penny left in the wide world, i know not, nor shall know, till i get to honolulu, where i anticipate a devil of an awakening. it will be from a mighty pleasant dream at least: tautira being mere heaven. but suppose, for the sake of argument, any money to be left in the hands of my painful doer, what is to be done with it? save us from exile would be the wise man's choice, i suppose; for the exile threatens to be eternal. but yet i am of opinion in case there should be some dibs in the hand of the p.d., i.e. painful doer; because if there be none, i shall take to my flageolet on the high-road, and work home the best way i can, having previously made away with my family i am of opinion that if and his are in the customary state, and you are thinking of an offering, and there should be still some funds over, you would be a real good p.d. to put some in with yours and tak' the credit o't, like a wee man! i know it's a beastly thing to ask; but it, after all, does no earthly harm, only that much good. and besides, like enough there's nothing in the till, and there is an end. yet i live here in the full lustre of millions; it is thought i am the richest son of man that has yet been to tautira: i! and i am secretly eaten with the fear of lying in pawn, perhaps for the remainder of my days, in san francisco. as usual, my colds have much hashed my finances. do tell henley i write this just after having dismissed ori the sub-chief, in whose house i live, mrs. ori, and pairai, their adopted child, from the evening hour of music: during which i publickly (with a k) blow on the flageolet. these are words of truth. yesterday i told ori about w. e. h., counterfeited his playing on the piano and the pipe, and succeeded in sending the six feet four there is of that sub-chief somewhat sadly to his bed; feeling that his was not the genuine article after all. ori is exactly like a colonel in the guards. i am, dear charles, ever yours affectionately, r. l. s. letter: tautira, 10th november '88. my dear charles, our mainmast is dry-rotten, and we are all to the devil; i shall lie in a debtor's jail. never mind, tautira is first chop. i am so besotted that i shall put on the back of this my attempt at words to wandering willie; if you can conceive at all the difficulty, you will also conceive the vanity with which i regard any kind of result; and whatever mine is like, it has some sense, and burns's has none. home no more home to me, whither must i wander? hunger my driver, i go where i must. cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather; thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust. loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree. the true word of welcome was spoken in the door dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight, kind folks of old, you come again no more. home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces, home was home then, my dear, happy for the child. fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland; song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild. now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland, lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold. lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed, the kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old. r. l. s. letter: to j. a. symonds november 11th 1888. one november night, in the village of tautira, we sat at the high table in the hall of assembly, hearing the natives sing. it was dark in the hall, and very warm; though at times the land wind blew a little shrewdly through the chinks, and at times, through the larger openings, we could see the moonlight on the lawn. as the songs arose in the rattling tahitian chorus, the chief translated here and there a verse. farther on in the volume you shall read the songs themselves; and i am in hopes that not you only, but all who can find a savour in the ancient poetry of places, will read them with some pleasure. you are to conceive us, therefore, in strange circumstances and very pleasing; in a strange land and climate, the most beautiful on earth; surrounded by a foreign race that all travellers have agreed to be the most engaging; and taking a double interest in two foreign arts. we came forth again at last, in a cloudy moonlight, on the forest lawn which is the street of tautira. the pacific roared outside upon the reef. here and there one of the scattered palm-built lodges shone out under the shadow of the wood, the lamplight bursting through the crannies of the wall. we went homeward slowly, ori a ori carrying behind us the lantern and the chairs, properties with which we had just been enacting our part of the distinguished visitor. it was one of those moments in which minds not altogether churlish recall the names and deplore the absence of congenial friends; and it was your name that first rose upon our lips. 'how symonds would have enjoyed this evening!' said one, and then another. the word caught in my mind; i went to bed, and it was still there. the glittering, frosty solitudes in which your days are cast arose before me: i seemed to see you walking there in the late night, under the pine-trees and the stars; and i received the image with something like remorse. there is a modern attitude towards fortune; in this place i will not use a graver name. staunchly to withstand her buffets and to enjoy with equanimity her favours was the code of the virtuous of old. our fathers, it should seem, wondered and doubted how they had merited their misfortunes: we, rather how we have deserved our happiness. and we stand often abashed and sometimes revolted, at those partialities of fate by which we profit most. it was so with me on that november night: i felt that our positions should be changed. it was you, dear symonds, who should have gone upon that voyage and written this account. with your rich stores of knowledge, you could have remarked and understood a thousand things of interest and beauty that escaped my ignorance; and the brilliant colours of your style would have carried into a thousand sickrooms the sea air and the strong sun of tropic islands. it was otherwise decreed. but suffer me at least to connect you, if only in name and only in the fondness of imagination, with the voyage of the 'silver ship.' robert louis stevenson. dear symonds, i send you this (november 11th), the morning of its completion. if i ever write an account of this voyage, may i place this letter at the beginning? it represents i need not tell you, for you too are an artist a most genuine feeling, which kept me long awake last night; and though perhaps a little elaborate, i think it a good piece of writing. we are in heaven here. do not forget r. l. s. please keep this: i have no perfect copy. tautira, on the peninsula of tahiti. letter: to thomas archer tautira, island of tahiti [november 1888]. dear tomarcher, this is a pretty state of things! seven o'clock and no word of breakfast! and i was awake a good deal last night, for it was full moon, and they had made a great fire of cocoa-nut husks down by the sea, and as we have no blinds or shutters, this kept my room very bright. and then the rats had a wedding or a school-feast under my bed. and then i woke early, and i have nothing to read except virgil's aeneid, which is not good fun on an empty stomach, and a latin dictionary, which is good for naught, and by some humorous accident, your dear papa's article on skerryvore. and i read the whole of that, and very impudent it is, but you must not tell your dear papa i said so, or it might come to a battle in which you might lose either a dear papa or a valued correspondent, or both, which would be prodigal. and still no breakfast; so i said 'let's write to tomarcher.' this is a much better place for children than any i have hitherto seen in these seas. the girls (and sometimes the boys) play a very elaborate kind of hopscotch. the boys play horses exactly as we do in europe; and have very good fun on stilts, trying to knock each other down, in which they do not often succeed. the children of all ages go to church and are allowed to do what they please, running about the aisles, rolling balls, stealing mamma's bonnet and publicly sitting on it, and at last going to sleep in the middle of the floor. i forgot to say that the whips to play horses, and the balls to roll about the church at least i never saw them used elsewhere grow ready made on trees; which is rough on toy-shops. the whips are so good that i wanted to play horses myself; but no such luck! my hair is grey, and i am a great, big, ugly man. the balls are rather hard, but very light and quite round. when you grow up and become offensively rich, you can charter a ship in the port of london, and have it come back to you entirely loaded with these balls; when you could satisfy your mind as to their character, and give them away when done with to your uncles and aunts. but what i really wanted to tell you was this: besides the tree-top toys (hush-a-by, toy-shop, on the tree-top!), i have seen some real made toys, the first hitherto observed in the south seas. this was how. you are to imagine a four-wheeled gig; one horse; in the front seat two tahiti natives, in their sunday clothes, blue coat, white shirt, kilt (a little longer than the scotch) of a blue stuff with big white or yellow flowers, legs and feet bare; in the back seat me and my wife, who is a friend of yours; under our feet, plenty of lunch and things: among us a great deal of fun in broken tahitian, one of the natives, the sub-chief of the village, being a great ally of mine. indeed we have exchanged names; so that he is now called rui, the nearest they can come to louis, for they have no l and no s in their language. rui is six feet three in his stockings, and a magnificent man. we all have straw hats, for the sun is strong. we drive between the sea, which makes a great noise, and the mountains; the road is cut through a forest mostly of fruit trees, the very creepers, which take the place of our ivy, heavy with a great and delicious fruit, bigger than your head and far nicer, called barbedine. presently we came to a house in a pretty garden, quite by itself, very nicely kept, the doors and windows open, no one about, and no noise but that of the sea. it looked like a house in a fairy-tale, and just beyond we must ford a river, and there we saw the inhabitants. just in the mouth of the river, where it met the sea waves, they were ducking and bathing and screaming together like a covey of birds: seven or eight little naked brown boys and girls as happy as the day was long; and on the banks of the stream beside them, real toys toy ships, full rigged, and with their sails set, though they were lying in the dust on their beam ends. and then i knew for sure they were all children in a fairy-story, living alone together in that lonely house with the only toys in all the island; and that i had myself driven, in my four-wheeled gig, into a corner of the fairy-story, and the question was, should i get out again? but it was all right; i guess only one of the wheels of the gig had got into the fairy-story; and the next jolt the whole thing vanished, and we drove on in our sea-side forest as before, and i have the honour to be tomarcher's valued correspondent, teriitepa, which he was previously known as robert louis stevenson. letter: to sidney colvin yacht 'casco,' at sea, 14th january, 1889. my dear colvin, twenty days out from papeete. yes, sir, all that, and only (for a guess) in 4 degrees north or at the best 4 degrees 30 minutes, though already the wind seems to smell a little of the north pole. my handwriting you must take as you get, for we are speeding along through a nasty swell, and i can only keep my place at the table by means of a foot against the divan, the unoccupied hand meanwhile gripping the ink-bottle. as we begin (so very slowly) to draw near to seven months of correspondence, we are all in some fear; and i want to have letters written before i shall be plunged into that boiling pot of disagreeables which i constantly expect at honolulu. what is needful can be added there. we were kept two months at tautira in the house of my dear old friend, ori a ori, till both the masts of this invaluable yacht had been repaired. it was all for the best: tautira being the most beautiful spot, and its people the most amiable, i have ever found. besides which, the climate suited me to the ground; i actually went sea-bathing almost every day, and in our feasts (we are all huge eaters in taiarapu) have been known to apply four times for pig. and then again i got wonderful materials for my book, collected songs and legends on the spot; songs still sung in chorus by perhaps a hundred persons, not two of whom can agree on their translation; legends, on which i have seen half a dozen seniors sitting in conclave and debating what came next. once i went a day's journey to the other side of the island to tati, the high chief of the tevas my chief that is, for i am now a teva and teriitera, at your service to collect more and correct what i had already. in the meanwhile i got on with my work, almost finished the master of ballantrae, which contains more human work than anything of mine but kidnapped, and wrote the half of another ballad, the song of rahero, on a taiarapu legend of my own clan, sir not so much fire as the feast of famine, but promising to be more even and correct. but the best fortune of our stay at tautira was my knowledge of ori himself, one of the finest creatures extant. the day of our parting was a sad one. we deduced from it a rule for travellers: not to stay two months in one place which is to cultivate regrets. at last our contemptible ship was ready; to sea we went, bound for honolulu and the letter-bag, on christmas day; and from then to now have experienced every sort of minor misfortune, squalls, calms, contrary winds and seas, pertinacious rains, declining stores, till we came almost to regard ourselves as in the case of vanderdecken. three days ago our luck seemed to improve, we struck a leading breeze, got creditably through the doldrums, and just as we looked to have the n.e. trades and a straight run, the rains and squalls and calms began again about midnight, and this morning, though there is breeze enough to send us along, we are beaten back by an obnoxious swell out of the north. here is a page of complaint, when a verse of thanksgiving had perhaps been more in place. for all this time we must have been skirting past dangerous weather, in the tail and circumference of hurricanes, and getting only annoyance where we should have had peril, and ill-humour instead of fear. i wonder if i have managed to give you any news this time, or whether the usual damn hangs over my letter? 'the midwife whispered, be thou dull!' or at least inexplicit. anyway i have tried my best, am exhausted with the effort, and fall back into the land of generalities. i cannot tell you how often we have planned our arrival at the monument: two nights ago, the 12th january, we had it all planned out, arrived in the lights and whirl of waterloo, hailed a hansom, span up waterloo road, over the bridge, etc. etc., and hailed the monument gate in triumph and with indescribable delight. my dear custodian, i always think we are too sparing of assurances: cordelia is only to be excused by regan and goneril in the same nursery; i wish to tell you that the longer i live, the more dear do you become to me; nor does my heart own any stronger sentiment. if the bloody schooner didn't send me flying in every sort of direction at the same time, i would say better what i feel so much; but really, if you were here, you would not be writing letters, i believe; and even i, though of a more marine constitution, am much perturbed by this bobbery and wish o ye gods, how i wish! that it was done, and we had arrived, and i had pandora's box (my mail bag) in hand, and was in the lively hope of something eatable for dinner instead of salt horse, tinned mutton, duff without any plums, and pie fruit, which now make up our whole repertory. o pandora's box! i wonder what you will contain. as like as not you will contain but little money: if that be so, we shall have to retire to 'frisco in the casco, and thence by sea via panama to southampton, where we should arrive in april. i would like fine to see you on the tug: ten years older both of us than the last time you came to welcome fanny and me to england. if we have money, however, we shall do a little differently: send the casco away from honolulu empty of its highborn lessees, for that voyage to 'frisco is one long dead beat in foul and at last in cold weather; stay awhile behind, follow by steamer, cross the states by train, stay awhile in new york on business, and arrive probably by the german line in southampton. but all this is a question of money. we shall have to lie very dark awhile to recruit our finances: what comes from the book of the cruise, i do not want to touch until the capital is repaid. r. l. s. letter: to e. l. burlingame honolulu, january 1889. my dear burlingame, here at last i have arrived. we could not get away from tahiti till christmas day, and then had thirty days of calms and squalls, a deplorable passage. this has thrown me all out of gear in every way. i plunge into business. 1. the master: herewith go three more parts. you see he grows in balk; this making ten already, and i am not yet sure if i can finish it in an eleventh; which shall go to you quam primum i hope by next mail. 2. illustrations to m. i totally forgot to try to write to hole. it was just as well, for i find it impossible to forecast with sufficient precision. you had better throw off all this and let him have it at once. please do: all, and at once: see further; and i should hope he would still be in time for the later numbers. the three pictures i have received are so truly good that i should bitterly regret having the volume imperfectly equipped. they are the best illustrations i have seen since i don't know when. 3. money. to-morrow the mail comes in, and i hope it will bring me money either from you or home, but i will add a word on that point. 4. my address will be honolulu no longer yacht casco, which i am packing off till probably april. 5. as soon as i am through with the master, i shall finish the game of bluff now rechristened the wrong box. this i wish to sell, cash down. it is of course copyright in the states; and i offer it to you for five thousand dollars. please reply on this by return. also please tell the typewriter who was so good as to be amused by our follies that i am filled with admiration for his piece of work. 6. master again. please see that i haven't the name of the governor of new york wrong (1764 is the date) in part ten. i have no book of reference to put me right. observe you now have up to august inclusive in hand, so you should begin to feel happy. is this all? i wonder, and fear not. henry the trader has not yet turned up: i hope he may to-morrow, when we expect a mail. not one word of business have i received either from the states or england, nor anything in the shape of coin; which leaves me in a fine uncertainty and quite penniless on these islands. h.m. (who is a gentleman of a courtly order and much tinctured with letters) is very polite; i may possibly ask for the position of palace doorkeeper. my voyage has been a singular mixture of good and illfortune. as far as regards interest and material, the fortune has been admirable; as far as regards time, money, and impediments of all kinds, from squalls and calms to rotten masts and sprung spars, simply detestable. i hope you will be interested to hear of two volumes on the wing. the cruise itself, you are to know, will make a big volume with appendices; some of it will first appear as (what they call) letters in some of m'clure's papers. i believe the book when ready will have a fair measure of serious interest: i have had great fortune in finding old songs and ballads and stories, for instance, and have many singular instances of life in the last few years among these islands. the second volume is of ballads. you know ticonderoga. i have written another: the feast of famine, a marquesan story. a third is half done: the song of rahero, a genuine tahitian legend. a fourth dances before me. a hawaiian fellow this, the priest's drought, or some such name. if, as i half suspect, i get enough subjects out of the islands, ticonderoga shall be suppressed, and we'll call the volume south sea ballads. in health, spirits, renewed interest in life, and, i do believe, refreshed capacity for work, the cruise has proved a wise folly. still we're not home, and (although the friend of a crowned head) are penniless upon these (as one of my correspondents used to call them) 'lovely but fatil islands.' by the way, who wrote the lion of the nile? my dear sir, that is something like. overdone in bits, it has a true thought and a true ring of language. beg the anonymous from me, to delete (when he shall republish) the two last verses, and end on 'the lion of the nile.' one lampman has a good sonnet on a 'winter evening' in, i think, the same number: he seems ill named, but i am tempted to hope a man is not always answerable for his name. for instance, you would think you knew mine. no such matter. it is at your service and mr. scribner's and that of all of the faithful teriitera (pray pronounce tayree-tayra) or (gallice) teri-tera. r. l. s. more when the mail shall come. i am an idiot. i want to be clear on one point. some of hole's drawings must of course be too late; and yet they seem to me so excellent i would fain have the lot complete. it is one thing for you to pay for drawings which are to appear in that soul-swallowing machine, your magazine: quite another if they are only to illustrate a volume. i wish you to take a brisk (even a fiery) decision on the point; and let hole know. to resume my desultory song, i desire you would carry the same fire (hereinbefore suggested) into your decision on the wrong box; for in my present state of benighted ignorance as to my affairs for the last seven months i know not even whether my house or my mother's house have been let i desire to see something definite in front of me outside the lot of palace doorkeeper. i believe the said wrong box is a real lark; in which, of course, i may be grievously deceived; but the typewriter is with me. i may also be deceived as to the numbers of the master now going and already gone; but to me they seem first chop, sir, first chop. i hope i shall pull off that damned ending; but it still depresses me: this is your doing, mr. burlingame: you would have it there and then, and i fear it i fear that ending. r. l. s. letter: to charles baxter honolulu, february 8th, 1889. my dear charles, here we are at honolulu, and have dismissed the yacht, and lie here till april anyway, in a fine state of haze, which i am yet in hopes some letter of yours (still on the way) may dissipate. no money, and not one word as to money! however, i have got the yacht paid off in triumph, i think; and though we stay here impignorate, it should not be for long, even if you bring us no extra help from home. the cruise has been a great success, both as to matter, fun, and health; and yet, lord, man! we're pleased to be ashore! yon was a very fine voyage from tahiti up here, but the dry land's a fine place too, and we don't mind squalls any longer, and eh, man, that's a great thing. blow, blow, thou wintry wind, thou hast done me no appreciable harm beyond a few grey hairs! altogether, this foolhardy venture is achieved; and if i have but nine months of life and any kind of health, i shall have both eaten my cake and got it back again with usury. but, man, there have been days when i felt guilty, and thought i was in no position for the head of a house. your letter and accounts are doubtless at s. f., and will reach me in course. my wife is no great shakes; she is the one who has suffered most. my mother has had a huge old time; lloyd is first chop; i so well that i do not know myself sea-bathing, if you please, and what is far more dangerous, entertaining and being entertained by his majesty here, who is a very fine intelligent fellow, but o, charles! what a crop for the drink! he carries it, too, like a mountain with a sparrow on its shoulders. we calculated five bottles of champagne in three hours and a half (afternoon), and the sovereign quite presentable, although perceptibly more dignified at the end. . . . the extraordinary health i enjoy and variety of interests i find among these islands would tempt me to remain here; only for lloyd, who is not well placed in such countries for a permanency; and a little for colvin, to whom i feel i owe a sort of filial duty. and these two considerations will no doubt bring me back to go to bed again in england. yours ever affectionately, r. l. s. letter: to r. a. m. stevenson honolulu, hawaiian islands, february 1889. my dear bob, my extremely foolhardy venture is practically over. how foolhardy it was i don't think i realised. we had a very small schooner, and, like most yachts, over-rigged and over-sparred, and like many american yachts on a very dangerous sail plan. the waters we sailed in are, of course, entirely unlighted, and very badly charted; in the dangerous archipelago, through which we were fools enough to go, we were perfectly in ignorance of where we were for a whole night and half the next day, and this in the midst of invisible islands and rapid and variable currents; and we were lucky when we found our whereabouts at last. we have twice had all we wanted in the way of squalls: once, as i came on deck, i found the green sea over the cockpit coamings and running down the companion like a brook to meet me; at that same moment the foresail sheet jammed and the captain had no knife; this was the only occasion on the cruise that ever i set a hand to a rope, but i worked like a trojan, judging the possibility of haemorrhage better than the certainty of drowning. another time i saw a rather singular thing: our whole ship's company as pale as paper from the captain to the cook; we had a black squall astern on the port side and a white squall ahead to starboard; the complication passed off innocuous, the black squall only fetching us with its tail, and the white one slewing off somewhere else. twice we were a long while (days) in the close vicinity of hurricane weather, but again luck prevailed, and we saw none of it. these are dangers incident to these seas and small craft. what was an amazement, and at the same time a powerful stroke of luck, both our masts were rotten, and we found it out i was going to say in time, but it was stranger and luckier than that. the head of the mainmast hung over so that hands were afraid to go to the helm; and less than three weeks before i am not sure it was more than a fortnight we had been nearly twelve hours beating off the lee shore of eimeo (or moorea, next island to tahiti) in half a gale of wind with a violent head sea: she would neither tack nor wear once, and had to be boxed off with the mainsail you can imagine what an ungodly show of kites we carried and yet the mast stood. the very day after that, in the southern bight of tahiti, we had a near squeak, the wind suddenly coming calm; the reefs were close in with, my eye! what a surf! the pilot thought we were gone, and the captain had a boat cleared, when a lucky squall came to our rescue. my wife, hearing the order given about the boats, remarked to my mother, 'isn't that nice? we shall soon be ashore!' thus does the female mind unconsciously skirt along the verge of eternity. our voyage up here was most disastrous calms, squalls, head sea, waterspouts of rain, hurricane weather all about, and we in the midst of the hurricane season, when even the hopeful builder and owner of the yacht had pronounced these seas unfit for her. we ran out of food, and were quite given up for lost in honolulu: people had ceased to speak to belle about the casco, as a deadly subject. but the perils of the deep were part of the programme; and though i am very glad to be done with them for a while and comfortably ashore, where a squall does not matter a snuff to any one, i feel pretty sure i shall want to get to sea again ere long. the dreadful risk i took was financial, and double-headed. first, i had to sink a lot of money in the cruise, and if i didn't get health, how was i to get it back? i have got health to a wonderful extent; and as i have the most interesting matter for my book, bar accidents, i ought to get all i have laid out and a profit. but, second (what i own i never considered till too late), there was the danger of collisions, of damages and heavy repairs, of disablement, towing, and salvage; indeed, the cruise might have turned round and cost me double. nor will this danger be quite over till i hear the yacht is in san francisco; for though i have shaken the dust of her deck from my feet, i fear (as a point of law) she is still mine till she gets there. from my point of view, up to now the cruise has been a wonderful success. i never knew the world was so amusing. on the last voyage we had grown so used to sea-life that no one wearied, though it lasted a full month, except fanny, who is always ill. all the time our visits to the islands have been more like dreams than realities: the people, the life, the beachcombers, the old stories and songs i have picked up, so interesting; the climate, the scenery, and (in some places) the women, so beautiful. the women are handsomest in tahiti, the men in the marquesas; both as fine types as can be imagined. lloyd reminds me, i have not told you one characteristic incident of the cruise from a semi-naval point of view. one night we were going ashore in anaho bay; the most awful noise on deck; the breakers distinctly audible in the cabin; and there i had to sit below, entertaining in my best style a negroid native chieftain, much the worse for rum! you can imagine the evening's pleasure. this naval report on cruising in the south seas would be incomplete without one other trait. on our voyage up here i came one day into the dining-room, the hatch in the floor was open, the ship's boy was below with a baler, and two of the hands were carrying buckets as for a fire; this meant that the pumps had ceased working. one stirring day was that in which we sighted hawaii. it blew fair, but very strong; we carried jib, foresail, and mainsail, all single-reefed, and she carried her lee rail under water and flew. the swell, the heaviest i have ever been out in i tried in vain to estimate the height, at least fifteen feet came tearing after us about a point and a half off the wind. we had the best hand old louis at the wheel; and, really, he did nobly, and had noble luck, for it never caught us once. at times it seemed we must have it; louis would look over his shoulder with the queerest look and dive down his neck into his shoulders; and then it missed us somehow, and only sprays came over our quarter, turning the little outside lane of deck into a mill race as deep as to the cockpit coamings. i never remember anything more delightful and exciting. pretty soon after we were lying absolutely becalmed under the lee of hawaii, of which we had been warned; and the captain never confessed he had done it on purpose, but when accused, he smiled. really, i suppose he did quite right, for we stood committed to a dangerous race, and to bring her to the wind would have been rather a heart-sickening manoeuvre. r. l. s. letter: to marcel schwob honolulu, sandwich islands, february 8th, 1889. dear sir, i thank you from the midst of such a flurry as you can imagine, with seven months' accumulated correspondence on my table for your two friendly and clever letters. pray write me again. i shall be home in may or june, and not improbably shall come to paris in the summer. then we can talk; or in the interval i may be able to write, which is to-day out of the question. pray take a word from a man of crushing occupations, and count it as a volume. your little conte is delightful. ah yes, you are right, i love the eighteenth century; and so do you, and have not listened to its voice in vain. the hunted one, robert louis stevenson. letter: to charles baxter honolulu, 8th march 1889. my dear charles, at last i have the accounts: the doer has done excellently, and in the words of -, 'i reciprocate every step of your behaviour.' . . i send a letter for bob in your care, as i don't know his liverpool address, by which (for he is to show you part of it) you will see we have got out of this adventure or hope to have with wonderful fortune. i have the retrospective horrors on me when i think of the liabilities i incurred; but, thank god, i think i'm in port again, and i have found one climate in which i can enjoy life. even honolulu is too cold for me; but the south isles were a heaven upon earth to a puir, catarrhal party like johns'one. we think, as tahiti is too complete a banishment, to try madeira. it's only a week from england, good communications, and i suspect in climate and scenery not unlike our dear islands; in people, alas! there can be no comparison. but friends could go, and i could come in summer, so i should not be quite cut off. lloyd and i have finished a story, the wrong box. if it is not funny, i am sure i do not know what is. i have split over writing it. since i have been here, i have been toiling like a galley slave: three numbers of the master to rewrite, five chapters of the wrong box to write and rewrite, and about five hundred lines of a narrative poem to write, rewrite, and re-rewrite. now i have the master waiting me for its continuation, two numbers more; when that's done, i shall breathe. this spasm of activity has been chequered with champagne parties: happy and glorious, hawaii ponoi paua: kou moi (native hawaiians, dote upon your monarch!) hawaiian god save the king. (in addition to my other labours, i am learning the language with a native moonshee.) kalakaua is a terrible companion; a bottle of fizz is like a glass of sherry to him, he thinks nothing of five or six in an afternoon as a whet for dinner. you should see a photograph of our party after an afternoon with h. h. m.: my! what a crew! yours ever affectionately, robert louis stevenson. letter: to henry james honolulu [march 1889]. my dear james, yes i own up i am untrue to friendship and (what is less, but still considerable) to civilisation. i am not coming home for another year. there it is, cold and bald, and now you won't believe in me at all, and serve me right (says you) and the devil take me. but look here, and judge me tenderly. i have had more fun and pleasure of my life these past months than ever before, and more health than any time in ten long years. and even here in honolulu i have withered in the cold; and this precious deep is filled with islands, which we may still visit; and though the sea is a deathful place, i like to be there, and like squalls (when they are over); and to draw near to a new island, i cannot say how much i like. in short, i take another year of this sort of life, and mean to try to work down among the poisoned arrows, and mean (if it may be) to come back again when the thing is through, and converse with henry james as heretofore; and in the meanwhile issue directions to h. j. to write to me once more. let him address here at honolulu, for my views are vague; and if it is sent here it will follow and find me, if i am to be found; and if i am not to be found the man james will have done his duty, and we shall be at the bottom of the sea, where no post-office clerk can be expected to discover us, or languishing on a coral island, the philosophic drudges of some barbarian potentate: perchance, of an american missionary. my wife has just sent to mrs. sitwell a translation (tant bien que mal) of a letter i have had from my chief friend in this part of the world: go and see her, and get a hearing of it; it will do you good; it is a better method of correspondence 'than even henry james's. i jest, but seriously it is a strange thing for a tough, sick, middle-aged scrivener like r. l. s. to receive a letter so conceived from a man fifty years old, a leading politician, a crack orator, and the great wit of his village: boldly say, 'the highly popular m.p. of tautira.' my nineteenth century strikes here, and lies alongside of something beautiful and ancient. i think the receipt of such a letter might humble, shall i say even -? and for me, i would rather have received it than written redgauntlet or the sixth aeneid. all told, if my books have enabled or helped me to make this voyage, to know rui, and to have received such a letter, they have (in the old prefatorial expression) not been writ in vain. it would seem from this that i have been not so much humbled as puffed up; but, i assure you, i have in fact been both. a little of what that letter says is my own earning; not all, but yet a little; and the little makes me proud, and all the rest ashamed; and in the contrast, how much more beautiful altogether is the ancient man than him of today! well, well, henry james is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly. and to curry favour with him, i wish i could be more explicit; but, indeed, i am still of necessity extremely vague, and cannot tell what i am to do, nor where i am to go for some while yet. as soon as i am sure, you shall hear. all are fairly well the wife, your countrywoman, least of all; troubles are not entirely wanting; but on the whole we prosper, and we are all affectionately yours, robert louis stevenson. letter: to sidney colvin honolulu, april 2nd, 1889. my dear colvin, i am beginning to be ashamed of writing on to you without the least acknowledgment, like a tramp; but i do not care i am hardened; and whatever be the cause of your silence, i mean to write till all is blue. i am outright ashamed of my news, which is that we are not coming home for another year. i cannot but hope it may continue the vast improvement of my health: i think it good for fanny and lloyd; and we have all a taste for this wandering and dangerous life. my mother i send home, to my relief, as this part of our cruise will be (if we can carry it out) rather difficult in places. here is the idea: about the middle of june (unless the boston board objects) we sail from honolulu in the missionary ship (barquentine auxiliary steamer) morning star: she takes us through the gilberts and marshalls, and drops us (this is my great idea) on ponape, one of the volcanic islands of the carolines. here we stay marooned among a doubtful population, with a spanish vice-governor and five native kings, and a sprinkling of missionaries all at loggerheads, on the chance of fetching a passage to sydney in a trader, a labour ship, or (maybe, but this appears too bright) a ship of war. if we can't get the morning star (and the board has many reasons that i can see for refusing its permission) i mean to try to fetch fiji, hire a schooner there, do the fijis and friendlies, hit the course of the richmond at tonga tabu, make back by tahiti, and so to s. f., and home: perhaps in june 1890. for the latter part of the cruise will likely be the same in either case. you can see for yourself how much variety and adventure this promises, and that it is not devoid of danger at the best; but if we can pull it off in safety, gives me a fine book of travel, and lloyd a fine lecture and diorama, which should vastly better our finances. i feel as if i were untrue to friendship; believe me, colvin, when i look forward to this absence of another year, my conscience sinks at thought of the monument; but i think you will pardon me if you consider how much this tropical weather mends my health. remember me as i was at home, and think of me sea-bathing and walking about, as jolly as a sandboy: you will own the temptation is strong; and as the scheme, bar fatal accidents, is bound to pay into the bargain, sooner or later, it seems it would be madness to come home now, with an imperfect book, no illustrations to speak of, no diorama, and perhaps fall sick again by autumn. i do not think i delude myself when i say the tendency to catarrh has visibly diminished. it is a singular tiring that as i was packing up old papers ere i left skerryvore, i came on the prophecies of a drunken highland sibyl, when i was seventeen. she said i was to be very happy, to visit america, and to be much upon the sea. it seems as if it were coming true with a vengeance. also, do you remember my strong, old, rooted belief that i shall die by drowning? i don't want that to come true, though it is an easy death; but it occurs to me oddly, with these long chances in front. i cannot say why i like the sea; no man is more cynically and constantly alive to its perils; i regard it as the highest form of gambling; and yet i love the sea as much as i hate gambling. fine, clean emotions; a world all and always beautiful; air better than wine; interest unflagging; there is upon the whole no better life. yours ever, r. l. s. letter: to e. l. burlingame [honolulu, april 1889.] my dear burlingame, this is to announce the most prodigious change of programme. i have seen so much of the south seas that i desire to see more, and i get so much health here that i dread a return to our vile climates. i have applied accordingly to the missionary folk to let me go round in the morning star; and if the boston board should refuse, i shall get somehow to fiji, hire a trading schooner, and see the fijis and friendlies and samoa. he would be a south seayer, mr. burlingame. of course, if i go in the morning star, i see all the eastern (or western?) islands. before i sail, i shall make out to let you have the last of the master: though i tell you it sticks! and i hope to have had some proofs forbye, of the verses anyway. and now to business. i want (if you can find them) in the british sixpenny edition, if not, in some equally compact and portable shape seaside library, for instance the waverley novels entire, or as entire as you can get 'em, and the following of marryat: phantom ship, peter simple, percival keene, privateersman, children of the new forest, frank mildmay, newton forster, dog fiend (snarleyyow). also midshipman easy, kingsburn, carlyle's french revolution, motley's dutch republic, lang's letters on literature, a complete set of my works, jenkin, in duplicate; also familiar studies, ditto. i have to thank you for the accounts, which are satisfactory indeed, and for the cheque for $1000. another account will have come and gone before i see you. i hope it will be equally roseate in colour. i am quite worked out, and this cursed end of the master hangs over me like the arm of the gallows; but it is always darkest before dawn, and no doubt the clouds will soon rise; but it is a difficult thing to write, above all in mackellarese; and i cannot yet see my way clear. if i pull this off, the master will be a pretty good novel or i am the more deceived; and even if i don't pull it off, it'll still have some stuff in it. we shall remain here until the middle of june anyway; but my mother leaves for europe early in may. hence our mail should continue to come here; but not hers. i will let you know my next address, which will probably be sydney. if we get on the morning star, i propose at present to get marooned on ponape, and take my chance of getting a passage to australia. it will leave times and seasons mighty vague, and the cruise is risky; but i shall know something of the south seas when it is done, or else the south seas will contain all there is of me. it should give me a fine book of travels, anyway. low will probably come and ask some dollars of you. pray let him have them, they are for outfit. o, another complete set of my books should go to captain a. h. otis, care of dr. merritt, yacht casco, oakland, cal. in haste, r. l. s. letter: to miss adelaide boodle honolulu, april 6th, 1889. my dear miss boodle, nobody writes a better letter than my gamekeeper: so gay, so pleasant, so engagingly particular, answering (by some delicate instinct) all the questions she suggests. it is a shame you should get such a poor return as i can make, from a mind essentially and originally incapable of the art epistolary. i would let the paper-cutter take my place; but i am sorry to say the little wooden seaman did after the manner of seamen, and deserted in the societies. the place he seems to have stayed at seems, for his absence was not observed till we were near the equator was tautira, and, i assure you, he displayed good taste, tautira being as 'nigh hand heaven' as a paper-cutter or anybody has a right to expect. i think all our friends will be very angry with us, and i give the grounds of their probable displeasure bluntly we are not coming home for another year. my mother returns next month. fanny, lloyd, and i push on again among the islands on a trading schooner, the equator first for the gilbert group, which we shall have an opportunity to explore thoroughly; then, if occasion serve, to the marshalls and carolines; and if occasion (or money) fail, to samoa, and back to tahiti. i own we are deserters, but we have excuses. you cannot conceive how these climates agree with the wretched house-plant of skerryvore: he wonders to find himself sea-bathing, and cutting about the world loose, like a grown-up person. they agree with fanny too, who does not suffer from her rheumatism, and with lloyd also. and the interest of the islands is endless; and the sea, though i own it is a fearsome place, is very delightful. we had applied for places in the american missionary ship, the morning star, but this trading schooner is a far preferable idea, giving us more time and a thousandfold more liberty; so we determined to cut off the missionaries with a shilling. the sandwich islands do not interest us very much; we live here, oppressed with civilisation, and look for good things in the future. but it would surprise you if you came out to-night from honolulu (all shining with electric lights, and all in a bustle from the arrival of the mail, which is to carry you these lines) and crossed the long wooden causeway along the beach, and came out on the road through kapiolani park, and seeing a gate in the palings, with a tub of gold-fish by the wayside, entered casually in. the buildings stand in three groups by the edge of the beach, where an angry little spitfire sea continually spirts and thrashes with impotent irascibility, the big seas breaking further out upon the reef. the first is a small house, with a very large summer parlour, or lanai, as they call it here, roofed, but practically open. there you will find the lamps burning and the family sitting about the table, dinner just done: my mother, my wife, lloyd, belle, my wife's daughter, austin her child, and to-night (by way of rarity) a guest. all about the walls our south sea curiosities, war clubs, idols, pearl shells, stone axes, etc.; and the walls are only a small part of a lanai, the rest being glazed or latticed windows, or mere open space. you will see there no sign of the squire, however; and being a person of a humane disposition, you will only glance in over the balcony railing at the merry-makers in the summer parlour, and proceed further afield after the exile. you look round, there is beautiful green turf, many trees of an outlandish sort that drop thorns look out if your feet are bare; but i beg your pardon, you have not been long enough in the south seas and many oleanders in full flower. the next group of buildings is ramshackle, and quite dark; you make out a coach-house door, and look in only some cocoanuts; you try round to the left and come to the sea front, where venus and the moon are making luminous tracks on the water, and a great swell rolls and shines on the outer reef; and here is another door all these places open from the outside and you go in, and find photography, tubs of water, negatives steeping, a tap, and a chair and an inkbottle, where my wife is supposed to write; round a little further, a third door, entering which you find a picture upon the easel and a table sticky with paints; a fourth door admits you to a sort of court, where there is a hen sitting i believe on a fallacious egg. no sign of the squire in all this. but right opposite the studio door you have observed a third little house, from whose open door lamplight streams and makes hay of the strong moonlight shadows. you had supposed it made no part of the grounds, for a fence runs round it lined with oleander; but as the squire is nowhere else, is it not just possible he may be here? it is a grim little wooden shanty; cobwebs bedeck it; friendly mice inhabit its recesses; the mailed cockroach walks upon the wall; so also, i regret to say, the scorpion. herein are two pallet beds, two mosquito curtains, strung to the pitch-boards of the roof, two tables laden with books and manuscripts, three chairs, and, in one of the beds, the squire busy writing to yourself, as it chances, and just at this moment somewhat bitten by mosquitoes. he has just set fire to the insect powder, and will be all right in no time; but just now he contemplates large white blisters, and would like to scratch them, but knows better. the house is not bare; it has been inhabited by kanakas, and you know what children are! the bare wood walls are pasted over with pages from the graphic, harper's weekly, etc. the floor is matted, and i am bound to say the matting is filthy. there are two windows and two doors, one of which is condemned; on the panels of that last a sheet of paper is pinned up, and covered with writing. i cull a few plums:'a duck-hammock for each person. a patent organ like the commandant's at taiohae. cheap and bad cigars for presents. revolvers. permanganate of potass. liniment for the head and sulphur. fine tooth-comb.' what do you think this is? simply life in the south seas foreshortened. these are a few of our desiderata for the next trip, which we jot down as they occur. there, i have really done my best and tried to send something like a letter one letter in return for all your dozens. pray remember us all to yourself, mrs. boodle, and the rest of your house. i do hope your mother will be better when this comes. i shall write and give you a new address when i have made up my mind as to the most probable, and i do beg you will continue to write from time to time and give us airs from home. to-morrow think of it i must be off by a quarter to eight to drive in to the palace and breakfast with his hawaiian majesty at 8.30: i shall be dead indeed. please give my news to scott, i trust he is better; give him my warm regards. to you we all send all kinds of things, and i am the absentee squire, robert louis stevenson. letter: to charles baxter honolulu, april 1889. my dear charles, as usual, your letter is as good as a cordial, and i thank you for it, and all your care, kindness, and generous and thoughtful friendship, from my heart. i was truly glad to hear a word of colvin, whose long silence has terrified me; and glad to hear that you condoned the notion of my staying longer in the south seas, for i have decided in that sense. the first idea was to go in the morning star, missionary ship; but now i have found a trading schooner, the equator, which is to call for me here early in june and carry us through the gilberts. what will happen then, the lord knows. my mother does not accompany us: she leaves here for home early in may, and you will hear of us from her; but not, i imagine, anything more definite. we shall get dumped on butaritari, and whether we manage to go on to the marshalls and carolines, or whether we fall back on samoa, heaven must decide; but i mean to fetch back into the course of the richmond (to think you don't know what the richmond is! the steamer of the eastern south seas, joining new zealand, tongatabu, the samoas, taheite, and rarotonga, and carrying by last advices sheep in the saloon!) into the course of the richmond and make taheite again on the home track. would i like to see the scots observer? wouldn't i not? but whaur? i'm direckit at space. they have nae post offishes at the gilberts, and as for the car'lines! ye see, mr. baxter, we're no just in the punkshewal centre o' civ'lisation. but pile them up for me, and when i've decided on an address, i'll let you ken, and ye'll can send them stavin' after me. ever your affectionate, r. l. s. letter: to charles baxter honolulu, 10th may 1889. my dear charles, i am appalled to gather from your last just to hand that you have felt so much concern about the letter. pray dismiss it from your mind. but i think you scarce appreciate how disagreeable it is to have your private affairs and private unguarded expressions getting into print. it would soon sicken any one of writing letters. i have no doubt that letter was very wisely selected, but it just shows how things crop up. there was a raging jealousy between the two yachts; our captain was nearly in a fight over it. however, no more; and whatever you think, my dear fellow, do not suppose me angry with you or -; although i was annoyed at the circumstance a very different thing. but it is difficult to conduct life by letter, and i continually feel i may be drifting into some matter of offence, in which my heart takes no part. i must now turn to a point of business. this new cruise of ours is somewhat venturesome; and i think it needful to warn you not to be in a hurry to suppose us dead. in these ill-charted seas, it is quite on the cards we might be cast on some unvisited, or very rarely visited, island; that there we might lie for a long time, even years, unheard of; and yet turn up smiling at the hinder end. so do not let me be 'rowpit' till you get some certainty we have gone to davie jones in a squall, or graced the feast of some barbarian in the character of long pig. i have just been a week away alone on the lee coast of hawaii, the only white creature in many miles, riding five and a half hours one day, living with a native, seeing four lepers shipped off to molokai, hearing native causes, and giving my opinion as amicus curiae as to the interpretation of a statute in english; a lovely week among god's best at least god's sweetest works polynesians. it has bettered me greatly. if i could only stay there the time that remains, i could get my work done and be happy; but the care of my family keeps me in vile honolulu, where i am always out of sorts, amidst heat and cold and cesspools and beastly haoles. what is a haole? you are one; and so, i am sorry to say, am i. after so long a dose of whites, it was a blessing to get among polynesians again even for a week. well, charles, there are waur haoles than yoursel', i'll say that for ye; and trust before i sail i shall get another letter with more about yourself. ever your affectionate friend r. l. s. letter: to w. h. low honolulu, (about) 20th may '89. my dear low, the goods have come; many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. i have at length finished the master; it has been a sore cross to me; but now he is buried, his body's under hatches, his soul, if there is any hell to go to, gone to hell; and i forgive him: it is harder to forgive burlingame for having induced me to begin the publication, or myself for suffering the induction. yes, i think hole has done finely; it will be one of the most adequately illustrated books of our generation; he gets the note, he tells the story my story: i know only one failure the master standing on the beach. you must have a letter for me at sydney till further notice. remember me to mrs. will. h., the godlike sculptor, and any of the faithful. if you want to cease to be a republican, see my little kaiulani, as she goes through but she is gone already. you will die a red, i wear the colours of that little royal maiden, nous allons chanter a la ronde, si vous voulez! only she is not blonde by several chalks, though she is but a half-blood, and the wrong half edinburgh scots like mysel'. but, o low, i love the polynesian: this civilisation of ours is a dingy, ungentlemanly business; it drops out too much of man, and too much of that the very beauty of the poor beast: who has his beauties in spite of zola and co. as usual, here is a whole letter with no news: i am a bloodless, inhuman dog; and no doubt zola is a better correspondent. long live your fine old english admiral yours, i mean the u.s.a. one at samoa; i wept tears and loved myself and mankind when i read of him: he is not too much civilised. and there was gordon, too; and there are others, beyond question. but if you could live, the only white folk, in a polynesian village; and drink that warm, light vin du pays of human affection, and enjoy that simple dignity of all about you i will not gush, for i am now in my fortieth year, which seems highly unjust, but there it is, mr. low, and the lord enlighten your affectionate r. l. s. letter: to mrs. r. l. stevenson kalawao, molokai [may 1889]. dear fanny, i had a lovely sail up. captain cameron and mr. gilfillan, both born in the states, yet the first still with a strong highland, and the second still with a strong lowland accent, were good company; the night was warm, the victuals plain but good. mr. gilfillan gave me his berth, and i slept well, though i heard the sisters sick in the next stateroom, poor souls. heavy rolling woke me in the morning; i turned in all standing, so went right on the upper deck. the day was on the peep out of a low morning bank, and we were wallowing along under stupendous cliffs. as the lights brightened, we could see certain abutments and buttresses on their front where wood clustered and grass grew brightly. but the whole brow seemed quite impassable, and my heart sank at the sight. two thousand feet of rock making 19 degrees (the captain guesses) seemed quite beyond my powers. however, i had come so far; and, to tell you the truth, i was so cowed with fear and disgust that i dared not go back on the adventure in the interests of my own selfrespect. presently we came up with the leper promontory: lowland, quite bare and bleak and harsh, a little town of wooden houses, two churches, a landing-stair, all unsightly, sour, northerly, lying athwart the sunrise, with the great wall of the pali cutting the world out on the south. our lepers were sent on the first boat, about a dozen, one poor child very horrid, one white man, leaving a large grown family behind him in honolulu, and then into the second stepped the sisters and myself. i do not know how it would have been with me had the sisters not been there. my horror of the horrible is about my weakest point; but the moral loveliness at my elbow blotted all else out; and when i found that one of them was crying, poor soul, quietly under her veil, i cried a little myself; then i felt as right as a trivet, only a little crushed to be there so uselessly. i thought it was a sin and a shame she should feel unhappy; i turned round to her, and said something like this: 'ladies, god himself is here to give you welcome. i'm sure it is good for me to be beside you; i hope it will be blessed to me; i thank you for myself and the good you do me.' it seemed to cheer her up; but indeed i had scarce said it when we were at the landing-stairs, and there was a great crowd, hundreds of (god save us!) pantomime masks in poor human flesh, waiting to receive the sisters and the new patients. every hand was offered: i had gloves, but i had made up my mind on the boat's voyage not to give my hand; that seemed less offensive than the gloves. so the sisters and i went up among that crew, and presently i got aside (for i felt i had no business there) and set off on foot across the promontory, carrying my wrap and the camera. all horror was quite gone from me: to see these dread creatures smile and look happy was beautiful. on my way through kalaupapa i was exchanging cheerful alohas with the patients coming galloping over on their horses; i was stopping to gossip at house-doors; i was happy, only ashamed of myself that i was here for no good. one woman was pretty, and spoke good english, and was infinitely engaging and (in the old phrase) towardly; she thought i was the new white patient; and when she found i was only a visitor, a curious change came in her face and voice the only sad thing, morally sad, i mean that i met that morning. but for all that, they tell me none want to leave. beyond kalaupapa the houses became rare; dry stone dykes, grassy, stony land, one sick pandanus; a dreary country; from overhead in the little clinging wood shogs of the pali chirruping of birds fell; the low sun was right in my face; the trade blew pure and cool and delicious; i felt as right as ninepence, and stopped and chatted with the patients whom i still met on their horses, with not the least disgust. about half-way over, i met the superintendent (a leper) with a horse for me, and o, wasn't i glad! but the horse was one of those curious, dogged, cranky brutes that always dully want to go somewhere else, and my traffic with him completed my crushing fatigue. i got to the guest-house, an empty house with several rooms, kitchen, bath, etc. there was no one there, and i let the horse go loose in the garden, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep. dr. swift woke me and gave me breakfast, then i came back and slept again while he was at the dispensary, and he woke me for dinner; and i came back and slept again, and he woke me about six for supper; and then in about an hour i felt tired again, and came up to my solitary guest-house, played the flageolet, and am now writing to you. as yet, you see, i have seen nothing of the settlement, and my crushing fatigue (though i believe that was moral and a measure of my cowardice) and the doctor's opinion make me think the pali hopeless. 'you don't look a strong man,' said the doctor; 'but are you sound?' i told him the truth; then he said it was out of the question, and if i were to get up at all, i must be carried up. but, as it seems, men as well as horses continually fall on this ascent: the doctor goes up with a change of clothes it is plain that to be carried would in itself be very fatiguing to both mind and body; and i should then be at the beginning of thirteen miles of mountain road to be ridden against time. how should i come through? i hope you will think me right in my decision: i mean to stay, and shall not be back in honolulu till saturday, june first. you must all do the best you can to make ready. dr. swift has a wife and an infant son, beginning to toddle and run, and they live here as composed as brick and mortar at least the wife does, a kentucky german, a fine enough creature, i believe, who was quite amazed at the sisters shedding tears! how strange is mankind! gilfillan too, a good fellow i think, and far from a stupid, kept up his hard lowland scottish talk in the boat while the sister was covering her face; but i believe he knew, and did it (partly) in embarrassment, and part perhaps in mistaken kindness. and that was one reason, too, why i made my speech to them. partly, too, i did it, because i was ashamed to do so, and remembered one of my golden rules, 'when you are ashamed to speak, speak up at once.' but, mind you, that rule is only golden with strangers; with your own folks, there are other considerations. this is a strange place to be in. a bell has been sounded at intervals while i wrote, now all is still but a musical humming of the sea, not unlike the sound of telegraph wires; the night is quite cool and pitch dark, with a small fine rain; one light over in the leper settlement, one cricket whistling in the garden, my lamp here by my bedside, and my pen cheeping between my inky fingers. next day, lovely morning, slept all night, 80 degrees in the shade, strong, sweet anaho trade-wind. louis. letter: to sidney colvin honolulu, june 1889. my dear colvin, i am just home after twelve days journey to molokai, seven of them at the leper settlement, where i can only say that the sight of so much courage, cheerfulness, and devotion strung me too high to mind the infinite pity and horror of the sights. i used to ride over from kalawao to kalaupapa (about three miles across the promontory, the cliff-wall, ivied with forest and yet inaccessible from steepness, on my left), go to the sisters' home, which is a miracle of neatness, play a game of croquet with seven leper girls (90 degrees in the shade), got a little old-maid meal served me by the sisters, and ride home again, tired enough, but not too tired. the girls have all dolls, and love dressing them. you who know so many ladies delicately clad, and they who know so many dressmakers, please make it known it would be an acceptable gift to send scraps for doll dressmaking to the reverend sister maryanne, bishop home, kalaupapa, molokai, hawaiian islands. i have seen sights that cannot be told, and heard stories that cannot be repeated: yet i never admired my poor race so much, nor (strange as it may seem) loved life more than in the settlement. a horror of moral beauty broods over the place: that's like bad victor hugo, but it is the only way i can express the sense that lived with me all these days. and this even though it was in great part catholic, and my sympathies flew never with so much difficulty as towards catholic virtues. the pass-book kept with heaven stirs me to anger and laughter. one of the sisters calls the place 'the ticket office to heaven.' well, what is the odds? they do their darg and do it with kindness and efficiency incredible; and we must take folk's virtues as we find them, and love the better part. of old damien, whose weaknesses and worse perhaps i heard fully, i think only the more. it was a european peasant: dirty, bigoted, untruthful, unwise, tricky, but superb with generosity, residual candour and fundamental good-humour: convince him he had done wrong (it might take hours of insult) and he would undo what he had done and like his corrector better. a man, with all the grime and paltriness of mankind, but a saint and hero all the more for that. the place as regards scenery is grand, gloomy, and bleak. mighty mountain walls descending sheer along the whole face of the island into a sea unusually deep; the front of the mountain ivied and furred with clinging forest, one viridescent cliff: about half-way from east to west, the low, bare, stony promontory edged in between the cliff and the ocean; the two little towns (kalawao and kalaupapa) seated on either side of it, as bare almost as bathing machines upon a beach; and the population gorgons and chimaeras dire. all this tear of the nerves i bore admirably; and the day after i got away, rode twenty miles along the opposite coast and up into the mountains: they call it twenty, i am doubtful of the figures: i should guess it nearer twelve; but let me take credit for what residents allege; and i was riding again the day after, so i need say no more about health. honolulu does not agree with me at all: i am always out of sorts there, with slight headache, blood to the head, etc. i had a good deal of work to do and did it with miserable difficulty; and yet all the time i have been gaining strength, as you see, which is highly encouraging. by the time i am done with this cruise i shall have the material for a very singular book of travels: names of strange stories and characters, cannibals, pirates, ancient legends, old polynesian poetry, never was so generous a farrago. i am going down now to get the story of a shipwrecked family, who were fifteen months on an island with a murderer: there is a specimen. the pacific is a strange place; the nineteenth century only exists there in spots: all round, it is a no man's land of the ages, a stir-about of epochs and races, barbarisms and civilisations, virtues and crimes. it is good of you to let me stay longer, but if i had known how ill you were, i should be now on my way home. i had chartered my schooner and made all arrangements before (at last) we got definite news. i feel highly guilty; i should be back to insult and worry you a little. our address till further notice is to be c/o r. towns and co., sydney. that is final: i only got the arrangement made yesterday; but you may now publish it abroad. yours ever, r. l. s. letter: to james payn honolulu, h.i., june 13th, 1889. my dear james payn, i get sad news of you here at my offsetting for further voyages: i wish i could say what i feel. sure there was never any man less deserved this calamity; for i have heard you speak time and again, and i remember nothing that was unkind, nothing that was untrue, nothing that was not helpful, from your lips. it is the ill-talkers that should hear no more. god knows, i know no word of consolation; but i do feel your trouble. you are the more open to letters now; let me talk to you for two pages. i have nothing but happiness to tell; and you may bless god you are a man so sound-hearted that (even in the freshness of your calamity) i can come to you with my own good fortune unashamed and secure of sympathy. it is a good thing to be a good man, whether deaf or whether dumb; and of all our fellow-craftsmen (whom yet they count a jealous race), i never knew one but gave you the name of honesty and kindness: come to think of it gravely, this is better than the finest hearing. we are all on the march to deafness, blindness, and all conceivable and fatal disabilities; we shall not all get there with a report so good. my good news is a health astonishingly reinstated. this climate; these voyagings; these landfalls at dawn; new islands peaking from the morning bank; new forested harbours; new passing alarms of squalls and surf; new interests of gentle natives, the whole tale of my life is better to me than any poem. i am fresh just now from the leper settlement of molokai, playing croquet with seven leper girls, sitting and yarning with old, blind, leper beachcombers in the hospital, sickened with the spectacle of abhorrent suffering and deformation amongst the patients, touched to the heart by the sight of lovely and effective virtues in their helpers: no stranger time have i ever had, nor any so moving. i do not think it a little thing to be deaf, god knows, and god defend me from the same! but to be a leper, of one of the self-condemned, how much more awful! and yet there's a way there also. 'there are molokais everywhere,' said mr. dutton, father damien's dresser; you are but new landed in yours; and my dear and kind adviser, i wish you, with all my soul, that patience and courage which you will require. think of me meanwhile on a trading schooner, bound for the gilbert islands, thereafter for the marshalls, with a diet of fish and cocoanut before me; bound on a cruise of well, of investigation to what islands we can reach, and to get (some day or other) to sydney, where a letter addressed to the care of r. towns & co. will find me sooner or later; and if it contain any good news, whether of your welfare or the courage with which you bear the contrary, will do me good. yours affectionately (although so near a stranger), robert louis stevenson. letter: to sidney colvin schooner 'equator,' apaiang lagoon, august 22nd, 1889. my dear colvin, the missionary ship is outside the reef trying (vainly) to get in; so i may have a chance to get a line off. i am glad to say i shall be home by june next for the summer, or we shall know the reason why. for god's sake be well and jolly for the meeting. i shall be, i believe, a different character from what you have seen this long while. this cruise is up to now a huge success, being interesting, pleasant, and profitable. the beachcomber is perhaps the most interesting character here; the natives are very different, on the whole, from polynesians: they are moral, stand-offish (for good reasons), and protected by a dark tongue. it is delightful to meet the few hawaiians (mostly missionaries) that are dotted about, with their italian brio and their ready friendliness. the whites are a strange lot, many of them good, kind, pleasant fellows; others quite the lowest i have ever seen even in the slums of cities. i wish i had time to narrate to you the doings and character of three white murderers (more or less proven) i have met. one, the only undoubted assassin of the lot, quite gained my affection in his big home out of a wreck, with his new hebrides wife in her savage turban of hair and yet a perfect lady, and his three adorable little girls in rob roy macgregor dresses, dancing to the hand organ, performing circus on the floor with startling effects of nudity, and curling up together on a mat to sleep, three sizes, three attitudes, three rob roy dresses, and six little clenched fists: the murderer meanwhile brooding and gloating over his chicks, till your whole heart went out to him; and yet his crime on the face of it was dark: disembowelling, in his own house, an old man of seventy, and him drunk. it is lunch-time, i see, and i must close up with my warmest love to you. i wish you were here to sit upon me when required. ah! if you were but a good sailor! i will never leave the sea, i think; it is only there that a briton lives: my poor grandfather, it is from him i inherit the taste, i fancy, and he was round many islands in his day; but i, please god, shall beat him at that before the recall is sounded. would you be surprised to learn that i contemplate becoming a shipowner? i do, but it is a secret. life is far better fun than people dream who fall asleep among the chimney stacks and telegraph wires. love to henry james and others near. ever yours, my dear fellow, robert louis stevenson. equator town, apemama, october 1889. no morning star came, however; and so now i try to send this to you by the schooner j. l. tiernan. we have been about a month ashore, camping out in a kind of town the king set up for us: on the idea that i was really a 'big chief' in england. he dines with us sometimes, and sends up a cook for a share of our meals when he does not come himself. this sounds like high living! alas, undeceive yourself. salt junk is the mainstay; a low island, except for cocoanuts, is just the same as a ship at sea: brackish water, no supplies, and very little shelter. the king is a great character a thorough tyrant, very much of a gentleman, a poet, a musician, a historian, or perhaps rather more a genealogist it is strange to see him lying in his house among a lot of wives (nominal wives) writing the history of apemama in an account-book; his description of one of his own songs, which he sang to me himself, as 'about sweethearts, and trees, and the sea and no true, allthe-same lie,' seems about as compendious a definition of lyric poetry as a man could ask. tembinoka is here the great attraction: all the rest is heat and tedium and villainous dazzle, and yet more villainous mosquitoes. we are like to be here, however, many a long week before we get away, and then whither? a strange trade this voyaging: so vague, so bound-down, so helpless. fanny has been planting some vegetables, and we have actually onions and radishes coming up: ah, onion-despiser, were you but awhile in a low island, how your heart would leap at sight of a coster's barrow! i think i could shed tears over a dish of turnips. no doubt we shall all be glad to say farewell to low islands i had near said for ever. they are very tame; and i begin to read up the directory, and pine for an island with a profile, a running brook, or were it only a well among the rocks. the thought of a mango came to me early this morning and set my greed on edge; but you do not know what a mango is, so -. i have been thinking a great deal of you and the monument of late, and even tried to get my thoughts into a poem, hitherto without success. god knows how you are: i begin to weary dreadfully to see you well, in nine months, i hope; but that seems a long time. i wonder what has befallen me too, that flimsy part of me that lives (or dwindles) in the public mind; and what has befallen the master, and what kind of a box the merry box has been found. it is odd to know nothing of all this. we had an old woman to do devilwork for you about a month ago, in a chinaman's house on apaiang (august 23rd or 24th). you should have seen the crone with a noble masculine face, like that of an old crone [sic], a body like a man's (naked all but the feathery female girdle), knotting cocoanut leaves and muttering spells: fanny and i, and the good captain of the equator, and the chinaman and his native wife and sister-inlaw, all squatting on the floor about the sibyl; and a crowd of dark faces watching from behind her shoulder (she sat right in the doorway) and tittering aloud with strange, appalled, embarrassed laughter at each fresh adjuration. she informed us you were in england, not travelling and now no longer sick; she promised us a fair wind the next day, and we had it, so i cherish the hope she was as right about sidney colvin. the shipownering has rather petered out since i last wrote, and a good many other plans beside. health? fanny very so-so; i pretty right upon the whole, and getting through plenty work: i know not quite how, but it seems to me not bad and in places funny. south sea yarns: 1. the wrecker } } r. l. s. 2. the pearl fisher } by and } lloyd o. 3. the beachcombers } the pearl fisher, part done, lies in sydney. it is the wrecker we are now engaged upon: strange ways of life, i think, they set forth: things that i can scarce touch upon, or even not at all, in my travel book; and the yarns are good, i do believe. the pearl fisher is for the new york ledger: the yarn is a kind of monte cristo one. the wrecker is the least good as a story, i think; but the characters seem to me good. the beachcombers is more sentimental. these three scarce touch the outskirts of the life we have been viewing; a hot-bed of strange characters and incidents: lord, how different from europe or the pallid states! farewell. heaven knows when this will get to you. i burn to be in sydney and have news. r. l. s. letter: to sidney colvin schooner 'equator,' at sea. 190 miles off samoa. monday, december 2nd, 1889 my dear colvin, we are just nearing the end of our long cruise. rain, calms, squalls, bang there's the foretopmast gone; rain, calm, squalls, away with the staysail; more rain, more calm, more squalls; a prodigious heavy sea all the time, and the equator staggering and hovering like a swallow in a storm; and the cabin, a great square, crowded with wet human beings, and the rain avalanching on the deck, and the leaks dripping everywhere: fanny, in the midst of fifteen males, bearing up wonderfully. but such voyages are at the best a trial. we had one particularity: coming down on winslow reef, p. d. (position doubtful): two positions in the directory, a third (if you cared to count that) on the chart; heavy sea running, and the night due. the boats were cleared, bread put on board, and we made up our packets for a boat voyage of four or five hundred miles, and turned in, expectant of a crash. needless to say it did not come, and no doubt we were far to leeward. if we only had twopenceworth of wind, we might be at dinner in apia to-morrow evening; but no such luck: here we roll, dead before a light air and that is no point of sailing at all for a fore and aft schooner the sun blazing overhead, thermometer 88 degrees, four degrees above what i have learned to call south sea temperature; but for all that, land so near, and so much grief being happily astern, we are all pretty gay on board, and have been photographing and draught-playing and sky-larking like anything. i am minded to stay not very long in samoa and confine my studies there (as far as any one can forecast) to the history of the late war. my book is now practically modelled: if i can execute what is designed, there are few better books now extant on this globe, bar the epics, and the big tragedies, and histories, and the choice lyric poetics and a novel or so none. but it is not executed yet; and let not him that putteth on his armour, vaunt himself. at least, nobody has had such stuff; such wild stories, such beautiful scenes, such singular intimacies, such manners and traditions, so incredible a mixture of the beautiful and horrible, the savage and civilised. i will give you here some idea of the table of contents, which ought to make your mouth water. i propose to call the book the south seas: it is rather a large title, but not many people have seen more of them than i, perhaps no one certainly no one capable of using the material. part i. general. 'of schooners, islands, and maroons.' chapter i. marine. ii. contraband (smuggling, barratry, labour traffic). iii. the beachcomber. iv. beachcomber stories. i. the murder of the chinaman. ii. death of a beachcomber. iii. a character. iv. the apia blacksmith. part ii. the marquesas. v. anaho. i. arrival. ii. death. iii. the tapu. iv. morals. v. hoka. vi. tai-o-hae. i. arrival. ii. the french. iii. the royal family. iv. chiefless folk. v. the catholics. vi. hawaiian missionaries. vii. observations of a long pig. i. cannibalism. ii. hatiheu. iii. frere michel. iv. toahauka and atuona. v. the vale of atuona. vi. moipu. vii. captain hati. part iii. the dangerous archipelago. viii. the group. ix. a house to let in a low island. x. a paumotuan funeral. i. the funeral. ii. tales of the dead. part iv. tahiti. xi. tautira. xii. village government in tahiti. xiii. a journey in quest of legends. xiv. legends and songs. xv. life in eden. xvi. note on the french regimen. part v. the eight islands. xvii. a note on missions. xviii. the kona coast of hawaii. i. hookena. ii. a ride in the forest. iii. a law case. iv. the city of refuge. v. the lepers. xix. molokai. i. a week in the precinct. ii. history of the leper settlement. iii. the mokolii. iv. the free island. part vi. the gilberts. xx. the group. ii. position of woman. iii. the missions. iv. devilwork. v. republics. xxi. rule and misrule on makin. i. butaritari, its king and court. ii. history of three kings. iii. the drink question. xxii. a butaritarian festival. xxiii. the king of apemama. i. first impressions. ii. equator town and the palace. iii. the three corselets. part vii. samoa. which i have not yet reached. even as so sketched it makes sixty chapters, not less than 300 cornhill pages; and i suspect not much under 500. samoa has yet to be accounted for: i think it will be all history, and i shall work in observations on samoan manners, under the similar heads in other polynesian islands. it is still possible, though unlikely, that i may add a passing visit to fiji or tonga, or even both; but i am growing impatient to see yourself, and i do not want to be later than june of coming to england. anyway, you see it will be a large work, and as it will be copiously illustrated, the lord knows what it will cost. we shall return, god willing, by sydney, ceylon, suez and, i guess, marseilles the many-masted (copyright epithet). i shall likely pause a day or two in paris, but all that is too far ahead although now it begins to look near so near, and i can hear the rattle of the hansom up endell street, and see the gates swing back, and feel myself jump out upon the monument steps hosanna! home again. my dear fellow, now that my father is done with his troubles, and 17 heriot row no more than a mere shell, you and that gaunt old monument in bloomsbury are all that i have in view when i use the word home; some passing thoughts there may be of the rooms at skerryvore, and the black-birds in the chine on a may morning; but the essence is s. c. and the museum. suppose, by some damned accident, you were no more: well, i should return just the same, because of my mother and lloyd, whom i now think to send to cambridge; but all the spring would have gone out of me, and ninety per cent. of the attraction lost. i will copy for you here a copy of verses made in apemama. i heard the pulse of the besieging sea throb far away all night. i heard the wind fly crying, and convulse tumultuous palms. i rose and strolled. the isle was all bright sand, and flailing fans and shadows of the palm: the heaven all moon, and wind, and the blind vault the keenest planet slain, for venus slept. the king, my neighbour, with his host of wives, slept in the precinct of the palisade: where single, in the wind, under the moon, among the slumbering cabins, blazed a fire, sole street-lamp and the only sentinel. to other lands and nights my fancy turned, to london first, and chiefly to your house, the many-pillared and the well-beloved. there yearning fancy lighted; there again in the upper room i lay and heard far off the unsleeping city murmur like a shell; the muffled tramp of the museum guard once more went by me; i beheld again lamps vainly brighten the dispeopled street; again i longed for the returning morn, the awaking traffic, the bestirring birds, the consentaneous trill of tiny song that weaves round monumental cornices a passing charm of beauty: most of all, for your light foot i wearied, and your knock that was the glad reveille of my day. lo, now, when to your task in the great house at morning through the portico you pass, one moment glance where, by the pillared wall, far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke, sit now unworshipped, the rude monument of faiths forgot and races undivined; sit now disconsolate, remembering well the priest, the victim, and the songful crowd, the blaze of the blue noon, and that huge voice incessant, of the breakers on the shore. as far as these from their ancestral shrine, so far, so foreign, your divided friends wander, estranged in body, not in mind. r. l. s. letter: to e. l. burlingame schooner 'equator,' at sea, wednesday, 4th december 1889. my dear burlingame, we are now about to rise, like whales, from this long dive, and i make ready a communication which is to go to you by the first mail from samoa. how long we shall stay in that group i cannot forecast; but it will be best still to address at sydney, where i trust, when i shall arrive, perhaps in one month from now, more probably in two or three, to find all news. business. will you be likely to have a space in the magazine for a serial story, which should be, ready, i believe, by april, at latest by autumn? it is called the wrecker; and in book form will appear as number 1 of south sea yarns by r. l. s. and lloyd osbourne. here is the table as far as fully conceived, and indeed executed. ... the story is founded on fact, the mystery i really believe to be insoluble; the purchase of a wreck has never been handled before, no more has san francisco. these seem all elements of success. there is, besides, a character, jim pinkerton, of the advertising american, on whom we build a good deal; and some sketches of the american merchant marine, opium smuggling in honolulu, etc. it should run to (about) three hundred pages of my ms. i would like to know if this tale smiles upon you, if you will have a vacancy, and what you will be willing to pay. it will of course be copyright in both the states and england. i am a little anxious to have it tried serially, as it tests the interest of the mystery. pleasure. we have had a fine time in the gilbert group, though four months on low islands, which involves low diet, is a largish order; and my wife is rather down. i am myself, up to now, a pillar of health, though our long and vile voyage of calms, squalls, cataracts of rain, sails carried away, foretopmast lost, boats cleared and packets made on the approach of a p. d. reef, etc., has cured me of salt brine, and filled me with a longing for beef steak and mangoes not to be depicted. the interest has been immense. old king tembinoka of apemama, the napoleon of the group, poet, tyrant, altogether a man of mark, gave me the woven corselets of his grandfather, his father and his uncle, and, what pleased me more, told me their singular story, then all manner of strange tales, facts and experiences for my south sea book, which should be a tearer, mr. burlingame: no one at least has had such stuff. we are now engaged in the hell of a dead calm, the heat is cruel it is the only time when i suffer from heat: i have nothing on but a pair of serge trousers, and a singlet without sleeves of oxford gauze o, yes, and a red sash about my waist; and yet as i sit here in the cabin, sweat streams from me. the rest are on deck under a bit of awning; we are not much above a hundred miles from port, and we might as well be in kamschatka. however, i should be honest: this is the first calm i have endured without the added bane of a heavy swell, and the intoxicated blue-bottle wallowings and knockings of the helpless ship. i wonder how you liked the end of the master; that was the hardest job i ever had to do; did i do it? my wife begs to be remembered to yourself and mrs. burlingame. remember all of us to all friends, particularly low, in case i don't get a word through for him. i am, yours very sincerely, robert louis stevenson. letter: to charles baxter samoa, [december 1889]. my dear baxter, . . . i cannot return until i have seen either tonga or fiji or both: and i must not leave here till i have finished my collections on the war a very interesting bit of history, the truth often very hard to come at, and the search (for me) much complicated by the german tongue, from the use of which i have desisted (i suppose) these fifteen years. the last two days i have been mugging with a dictionary from five to six hours a day; besides this, i have to call upon, keep sweet, and judiciously interview all sorts of persons english, american, german, and samoan. it makes a hard life; above all, as after every interview i have to come and get my notes straight on the nail. i believe i should have got my facts before the end of january, when i shall make our tonga or fiji. i am down right in the hurricane season; but they had so bad a one last year, i don't imagine there will be much of an edition this. say that i get to sydney some time in april, and i shall have done well, and be in a position to write a very singular and interesting book, or rather two; for i shall begin, i think, with a separate opuscule on the samoan trouble, about as long as kidnapped, not very interesting, but valuable and a thing proper to be done. and then, hey! for the big south sea book: a devil of a big one, and full of the finest sport. this morning as i was going along to my breakfast a little before seven, reading a number of blackwood's magazine, i was startled by a soft talofa, alii (note for my mother: they are quite courteous here in the european style, quite unlike tahiti), right in my ear: it was mataafa coming from early mass in his white coat and white linen kilt, with three fellows behind him. mataafa is the nearest thing to a hero in my history, and really a fine fellow; plenty sense, and the most dignified, quiet, gentle manners. talking of blackwood a file of which i was lucky enough to find here in the lawyer's mrs. oliphant seems in a staggering state: from the wrong box to the master i scarce recognise either my critic or myself. i gather that the master should do well, and at least that notice is agreeable reading. i expect to be home in june: you will have gathered that i am pretty well. in addition to my labours, i suppose i walk five or six miles a day, and almost every day i ride up and see fanny and lloyd, who are in a house in the bush with ah fu. i live in apia for history's sake with moors, an american trader. day before yesterday i was arrested and fined for riding fast in the street, which made my blood bitter, as the wife of the manager of the german firm has twice almost ridden me down, and there seems none to say her nay. the germans have behaved pretty badly here, but not in all ways so ill as you may have gathered: they were doubtless much provoked; and if the insane knappe had not appeared upon the scene, might have got out of the muddle with dignity. i write along without rhyme or reason, as things occur to me. i hope from my outcries about printing you do not think i want you to keep my news or letters in a blue beard closet. i like all friends to hear of me; they all should if i had ninety hours in the day, and strength for all of them; but you must have gathered how hard worked i am, and you will understand i go to bed a pretty tired man. 29th december, [1889]. to-morrow (monday, i won't swear to my day of the month; this is the sunday between christmas and new year) i go up the coast with mr. clarke, one of the london society missionaries, in a boat to examine schools, see tamasese, etc. lloyd comes to photograph. pray heaven we have good weather; this is the rainy season; we shall be gone four or five days; and if the rain keep off, i shall be glad of the change; if it rain, it will be beastly. this explains still further how hard pressed i am, as the mail will be gone ere i return, and i have thus lost the days i meant to write in. i have a boy, henry, who interprets and copies for me, and is a great nuisance. he said he wished to come to me in order to learn 'long expressions.' henry goes up along with us; and as i am not fond of him, he may before the trip is over hear some 'strong expressions.' i am writing this on the back balcony at moors', palms and a hill like the hill of kinnoull looking in at me; myself lying on the floor, and (like the parties in handel's song) 'clad in robes of virgin white'; the ink is dreadful, the heat delicious, a fine going breeze in the palms, and from the other side of the house the sudden angry splash and roar of the pacific on the reef, where the warships are still piled from last year's hurricane, some under water, one high and dry upon her side, the strangest figure of a ship was ever witnessed; the narrow bay there is full of ships; the men-of-war covered with sail after the rains, and (especially the german ship, which is fearfully and awfully top heavy) rolling almost yards in, in what appears to be calm water. samoa, apia at least, is far less beautiful than the marquesas or tahiti: a more gentle scene, gentler acclivities, a tamer face of nature; and this much aided, for the wanderer, by the great german plantations with their countless regular avenues of palms. the island has beautiful rivers, of about the bigness of our waters in the lothians, with pleasant pools and waterfalls and overhanging verdure, and often a great volume of sound, so that once i thought i was passing near a mill, and it was only the voice of the river. i am not specially attracted by the people; but they are courteous; the women very attractive, and dress lovely; the men purposelike, well set up, tall, lean, and dignified. as i write the breeze is brisking up, doors are beginning to slam: and shutters; a strong draught sweeps round the balcony; it looks doubtful for to-morrow. here i shut up. ever your affectionate, r. l. stevenson. letter: to dr. scott apia, samoa, january 20th, 1890. my dear scott, shameful indeed that you should not have heard of me before! i have now been some twenty months in the south seas, and am (up to date) a person whom you would scarce know. i think nothing of long walks and rides: i was four hours and a half gone the other day, partly riding, partly climbing up a steep ravine. i have stood a six months' voyage on a copra schooner with about three months ashore on coral atolls, which means (except for cocoanuts to drink) no change whatever from ship's food. my wife suffered badly it was too rough a business altogether lloyd suffered and, in short, i was the only one of the party who 'kept my end up.' i am so pleased with this climate that i have decided to settle; have even purchased a piece of land from three to four hundred acres, i know not which till the survey is completed, and shall only return next summer to wind up my affairs in england; thenceforth i mean to be a subject of the high commissioner. now you would have gone longer yet without news of your truant patient, but that i have a medical discovery to communicate. i find i can (almost immediately) fight off a cold with liquid extract of coca; two or (if obstinate) three teaspoonfuls in the day for a variable period of from one to five days sees the cold generally to the door. i find it at once produces a glow, stops rigour, and though it makes one very uncomfortable, prevents the advance of the disease. hearing of this influenza, it occurred to me that this might prove remedial; and perhaps a stronger exhibition injections of cocaine, for instance still better. if on my return i find myself let in for this epidemic, which seems highly calculated to nip me in the bud, i shall feel very much inclined to make the experiment. see what a gulf you may save me from if you shall have previously made it on anima vili, on some less important sufferer, and shall have found it worse than useless. how is miss boodle and her family? greeting to your brother and all friends in bournemouth, yours very sincerely, robert louis stevenson. letter: to charles baxter februar den 3en 1890. dampfer lubeck zwischen apia und sydney. my dear charles, i have got one delightful letter from you, and heard from my mother of your kindness in going to see her. thank you for that: you can in no way more touch and serve me. . . . ay, ay, it is sad to sell 17; sad and fine were the old days: when i was away in apemama, i wrote two copies of verse about edinburgh and the past, so ink black, so golden bright. i will send them, if i can find them, for they will say something to you, and indeed one is more than half addressed to you. this is it to my old comrades do you remember can we e'er forget? how, in the coiled perplexities of youth, in our wild climate, in our scowling town, we gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed, and feared? the belching winter wind, the missile rain, the rare and welcome silence of the snows, the laggard morn, the haggard day, the night, the grimy spell of the nocturnal town, do you remember? ah, could one forget! as when the fevered sick that all night long listed the wind intone, and hear at last the ever-welcome voice of the chanticleer sing in the bitter hour before the dawn, with sudden ardour, these desire the day: (here a squall sends all flying.) so sang in the gloom of youth the bird of hope; so we, exulting, hearkened and desired. for lo! as in the palace porch of life we huddled with chimeras, from within how sweet to hear! the music swelled and fell, and through the breach of the revolving doors what dreams of splendour blinded us and fled! i have since then contended and rejoiced; amid the glories of the house of life profoundly entered, and the shrine beheld: yet when the lamp from my expiring eyes shall dwindle and recede, the voice of love fall insignificant on my closing ears, what sound shall come but the old cry of the wind in our inclement city? what return but the image of the emptiness of youth, filled with the sound of footsteps and that voice of discontent and rapture and despair? so, as in darkness, from the magic lamp, the momentary pictures gleam and fade and perish, and the night resurges these shall i remember, and then all forget. they're pretty second-rate, but felt. i can't be bothered to copy the other. i have bought 314 and a half acres of beautiful land in the bush behind apia; when we get the house built, the garden laid, and cattle in the place, it will be something to fall back on for shelter and food; and if the island could stumble into political quiet, it is conceivable it might even bring a little income. . . . we range from 600 to 1500 feet, have five streams, waterfalls, precipices, profound ravines, rich tablelands, fifty head of cattle on the ground (if any one could catch them), a great view of forest, sea, mountains, the warships in the haven: really a noble place. some day you are to take a long holiday and come and see us: it has been all planned. with all these irons in the fire, and cloudy prospects, you may be sure i was pleased to hear a good account of business. i believed the master was a sure card: i wonder why henley thinks it grimy; grim it is, god knows, but sure not grimy, else i am the more deceived. i am sorry he did not care for it; i place it on the line with kidnapped myself. we'll see as time goes on whether it goes above or falls below. r. l. s. letter: to e. l. burlingame ss. lubeck, [between apia and sydney, february] 1890. my dear burlingame, i desire nothing better than to continue my relation with the magazine, to which it pleases me to hear i have been useful. the only thing i have ready is the enclosed barbaric piece. as soon as i have arrived in sydney i shall send you some photographs, a portrait of tembinoka, perhaps a view of the palace or of the 'matted men' at their singing; also t.'s flag, which my wife designed for him: in a word, what i can do best for you. it will be thus a foretaste of my book of travels. i shall ask you to let me have, if i wish it, the use of the plates made, and to make up a little tract of the verses and illustrations, of which you might send six copies to h. m. tembinoka, king of apemama via butaritari, gilbert islands. it might be best to send it by crawford and co., s. f. there is no postal service; and schooners must take it, how they may and when. perhaps some such note as this might be prefixed: at my departure from the island of apemama, for which you will look in vain in most atlases, the king and i agreed, since we both set up to be in the poetical way, that we should celebrate our separation in verse. whether or not his majesty has been true to his bargain, the laggard posts of the pacific may perhaps inform me in six months, perhaps not before a year. the following lines represent my part of the contract, and it is hoped, by their pictures of strange manners, they may entertain a civilised audience. nothing throughout has been invented or exaggerated; the lady herein referred to as the author's muse, has confined herself to stringing into rhyme facts and legends that i saw or heard during two months' residence upon the island. r. l. s. you will have received from me a letter about the wrecker. no doubt it is a new experiment for me, being disguised so much as a study of manners, and the interest turning on a mystery of the detective sort, i think there need be no hesitation about beginning it in the fall of the year. lloyd has nearly finished his part, and i shall hope to send you very soon the ms. of about the first four-sevenths. at the same time, i have been employing myself in samoa, collecting facts about the recent war; and i propose to write almost at once and to publish shortly a small volume, called i know not what the war in samoa, the samoa trouble, an island war, the war of the three consuls, i know not perhaps you can suggest. it was meant to be a part of my travel book; but material has accumulated on my hands until i see myself forced into volume form, and i hope it may be of use, if it come soon. i have a few photographs of the war, which will do for illustrations. it is conceivable you might wish to handle this in the magazine, although i am inclined to think you won't, and to agree with you. but if you think otherwise, there it is. the travel letters (fifty of them) are already contracted for in papers; these i was quite bound to let m'clure handle, as the idea was of his suggestion, and i always felt a little sore as to one trick i played him in the matter of the end-papers. the war-volume will contain some very interesting and picturesque details: more i can't promise for it. of course the fifty newspaper letters will be simply patches chosen from the travel volume (or volumes) as it gets written. but you see i have in hand:say half done. 1. the wrecker. lloyd's copy half done, mine not touched. 2. the pearl fisher (a novel promised to the ledger, and which will form, when it comes in book form, no. 2 of our south sea yarns). not begun, but all material ready. 3. the war volume. ditto. 4. the big travel book, which includes the letters. you know how they stand. 5. the ballads. excusez du peu! and you see what madness it would be to make any fresh engagement. at the same time, you have the wrecker and the war volume, if you like either or both to keep my name in the magazine. it begins to look as if i should not be able to get any more ballads done this somewhile. i know the book would sell better if it were all ballads; and yet i am growing half tempted to fill up with some other verses. a good few are connected with my voyage, such as the 'home of tembinoka' sent herewith, and would have a sort of slight affinity to the south sea ballads. you might tell me how that strikes a stranger. in all this, my real interest is with the travel volume, which ought to be of a really extraordinary interest i am sending you 'tembinoka' as he stands; but there are parts of him that i hope to better, particularly in stanzas iii. and ii. i scarce feel intelligent enough to try just now; and i thought at any rate you had better see it, set it up if you think well, and let me have a proof; so, at least, we shall get the bulk of it straight. i have spared you tenkoruti, tenbaitake, tembinatake, and other barbarous names, because i thought the dentists in the states had work enough without my assistance; but my chiefs name is tembinoka, pronounced, according to the present quite modern habit in the gilberts, tembinok'. compare in the margin tengkorootch; a singular new trick, setting at defiance all south sea analogy, for nowhere else do they show even the ability, far less the will, to end a word upon a consonant. loia is lloyd's name, ship becomes shipe, teapot, tipote, etc. our admirable friend herman melville, of whom, since i could judge, i have thought more than ever, had no ear for languages whatever: his hapar tribe should be hapaa, etc. but this is of no interest to you: suffice it, you see how i am as usual up to the neck in projects, and really all likely bairns this time. when will this activity cease? too soon for me, i dare to say. r. l. s. letter: to james payn february 4th, 1890, ss. 'lubeck.' my dear james payn, in virtue of confessions in your last, you would at the present moment, if you were along of me, be sick; and i will ask you to receive that as an excuse for my hand of write. excuse a plain seaman if he regards with scorn the likes of you pore land-lubbers ashore now. (reference to nautical ditty.) which i may however be allowed to add that when eight months' mail was laid by my side one evening in apia, and my wife and i sat up the most of the night to peruse the same (precious indisposed we were next day in consequence) no letter, out of so many, more appealed to our hearts than one from the pore, stick-in-the-mud, land-lubbering, common (or garden) londoner, james payn. thank you for it; my wife says, 'can't i see him when we get back to london?' i have told her the thing appeared to me within the spear of practical politix. (why can't i spell and write like an honest, sober, god-fearing litry gent? i think it's the motion of the ship.) here i was interrupted to play chess with the chief engineer; as i grow old, i prefer the 'athletic sport of cribbage,' of which (i am sure i misquote) i have just been reading in your delightful literary recollections. how you skim along, you and andrew lang (different as you are), and yet the only two who can keep a fellow smiling every page, and ever and again laughing out loud. i joke wi' deeficulty, i believe; i am not funny; and when i am, mrs. oliphant says i'm vulgar, and somebody else says (in latin) that i'm a whore, which seems harsh and even uncalled for: i shall stick to weepers; a 5s. weeper, 2s. 6d. laugher, 1s. shocker. my dear sir, i grow more and more idiotic; i cannot even feign sanity. sometime in the month of june a stalwart weather-beaten man, evidently of seafaring antecedents, shall be observed wending his way between the athenaeum club and waterloo place. arrived off no. 17, he shall be observed to bring his head sharply to the wind, and tack into the outer haven. 'captain payn in the harbour?' 'ay, ay, sir. what ship?' 'barquentin r. l. s., nine hundred and odd days out from the port of bournemouth, homeward bound, with yarns and curiosities.' who was it said, 'for god's sake, don't speak of it!' about scott and his tears? he knew what he was saying. the fear of that hour is the skeleton in all our cupboards; that hour when the pastime and the livelihood go together; and i am getting hard of hearing myself; a pore young child of forty, but new come frae my mammy, o! excuse these follies, and accept the expression of all my regards. yours affectionately, r. l. stevenson. letter: to charles baxter union club, sydney, march 7th, 1890. my dear charles, i did not send off the enclosed before from laziness; having gone quite sick, and being a blooming prisoner here in the club, and indeed in my bedroom. i was in receipt of your letters and your ornamental photo, and was delighted to see how well you looked, and how reasonably well i stood. . . . i am sure i shall never come back home except to die; i may do it, but shall always think of the move as suicidal, unless a great change comes over me, of which as yet i see no symptom. this visit to sydney has smashed me handsomely; and yet i made myself a prisoner here in the club upon my first arrival. this is not encouraging for further ventures; sydney winter or, i might almost say, sydney spring, for i came when the worst was over is so small an affair, comparable to our june depression at home in scotland. . . . the pipe is right again; it was the springs that had rusted, and ought to have been oiled. its voice is now that of an angel; but, lord! here in the club i dare not wake it! conceive my impatience to be in my own backwoods and raise the sound of minstrelsy. what pleasures are to be compared with those of the unvirtuous virtuoso. yours ever affectionately, the unvirtuous virtuoso, robert louis stevenson. letter: to sidney colvin ss. 'janet nicoll,' off upolu [spring 1890]. my dearest colvin, i was sharply ill at sydney, cut off, right out of bed, in this steamer on a fresh island cruise, and have already reaped the benefit. we are excellently found this time, on a spacious vessel, with an excellent table; the captain, supercargo, our one fellow-passenger, etc., very nice; and the charterer, mr. henderson, the very man i could have chosen. the truth is, i fear, this life is the only one that suits me; so long as i cruise in the south seas, i shall be well and happy alas, no, i do not mean that, and absit omen! i mean that, so soon as i cease from cruising, the nerves are strained, the decline commences, and i steer slowly but surely back to bedward. we left sydney, had a cruel rough passage to auckland, for the janet is the worst roller i was ever aboard of. i was confined to my cabin, ports closed, self shied out of the berth, stomach (pampered till the day i left on a diet of perpetual egg-nogg) revolted at ship's food and ship eating, in a frowsy bunk, clinging with one hand to the plate, with the other to the glass, and using the knife and fork (except at intervals) with the eyelid. no matter: i picked up hand over hand. after a day in auckland, we set sail again; were blown up in the main cabin with calcium fires, as we left the bay. let no man say i am unscientific: when i ran, on the alert, out of my stateroom, and found the main cabin incarnadined with the glow of the last scene of a pantomime, i stopped dead: 'what is this?' said i. 'this ship is on fire, i see that; but why a pantomime?' and i stood and reasoned the point, until my head was so muddled with the fumes that i could not find the companion. a few seconds later, the captain had to enter crawling on his belly, and took days to recover (if he has recovered) from the fumes. by singular good fortune, we got the hose down in time and saved the ship, but lloyd lost most of his clothes and a great part of our photographs was destroyed. fanny saw the native sailors tossing overboard a blazing trunk; she stopped them in time, and behold, it contained my manuscripts. thereafter we had three (or two) days fine weather: then got into a gale of wind, with rain and a vexatious sea. as we drew into our anchorage in a bight of savage island, a man ashore told me afterwards the sight of the janet nicoll made him sick; and indeed it was rough play, though nothing to the night before. all through this gale i worked four to six hours per diem, spearing the ink-bottle like a flying fish, and holding my papers together as i might. for, of all things, what i was at was history the samoan business and i had to turn from one to another of these piles of manuscript notes, and from one page to another in each, until i should have found employment for the hands of briareus. all the same, this history is a godsend for a voyage; i can put in time, getting events co-ordinated and the narrative distributed, when my much-heaving numskull would be incapable of finish or fine style. at savage we met the missionary barque john williams. i tell you it was a great day for savage island: the path up the cliffs was crowded with gay islandresses (i like that feminine plural) who wrapped me in their embraces, and picked my pockets of all my tobacco, with a manner which a touch would have made revolting, but as it was, was simply charming, like the golden age. one pretty, little, stalwart minx, with a red flower behind her ear, had searched me with extraordinary zeal; and when, soon after, i missed my matches, i accused her (she still following us) of being the thief. after some delay, and with a subtle smile, she produced the box, gave me one match, and put the rest away again. too tired to add more. your most affectionate, r. l. s. letter: to e. l. burlingame s.s. 'janet nicoll,' off peru island, kingsmills group, july 13th, '90. my dear burlingame, i am moved to write to you in the matter of the end papers. i am somewhat tempted to begin them again. follow the reasons pro and con:1st. i must say i feel as if something in the nature of the end paper were a desirable finish to the number, and that the substitutes of occasional essays by occasional contributors somehow fail to fill the bill. should you differ with me on this point, no more is to be said. and what follows must be regarded as lost words. 2nd. i am rather taken with the idea of continuing the work. for instance, should you have no distaste for papers of the class called random memories, i should enjoy continuing them (of course at intervals), and when they were done i have an idea they might make a readable book. on the other hand, i believe a greater freedom of choice might be taken, the subjects more varied and more briefly treated, in somewhat approaching the manner of andrew lang in the sign of the ship; it being well understood that the broken sticks method is one not very suitable (as colonel burke would say) to my genius, and not very likely to be pushed far in my practice. upon this point i wish you to condense your massive brain. in the last lot i was promised, and i fondly expected to receive, a vast amount of assistance from intelligent and genial correspondents. i assure you, i never had a scratch of a pen from any one above the level of a village idiot, except once, when a lady sowed my head full of grey hairs by announcing that she was going to direct her life in future by my counsels. will the correspondents be more copious and less irrelevant in the future? suppose that to be the case, will they be of any use to me in my place of exile? is it possible for a man in samoa to be in touch with the great heart of the people? and is it not perhaps a mere folly to attempt, from so hopeless a distance, anything so delicate as a series of papers? upon these points, perpend, and give me the results of your perpensions. 3rd. the emolument would be agreeable to your humble servant. i have now stated all the pros, and the most of the cons are come in by the way. there follows, however, one immense con (with a capital 'c'), which i beg you to consider particularly. i fear that, to be of any use for your magazine, these papers should begin with the beginning of a volume. even supposing my hands were free, this would be now impossible for next year. you have to consider whether, supposing you have no other objection, it would be worth while to begin the series in the middle of a volume, or desirable to delay the whole matter until the beginning of another year. now supposing that the cons have it, and you refuse my offer, let me make another proposal, which you will be very inclined to refuse at the first off-go, but which i really believe might in time come to something. you know how the penny papers have their answers to correspondents. why not do something of the same kind for the 'culchawed'? why not get men like stimson, brownell, professor james, goldwin smith, and others who will occur to you more readily than to me, to put and to answer a series of questions of intellectual and general interest, until at last you should have established a certain standard of matter to be discussed in this part of the magazine? i want you to get me bound volumes of the magazine from its start. the lord knows i have had enough copies; where they are i know not. a wandering author gathers no magazines. the wrecker is in no forrader state than in last reports. i have indeed got to a period when i cannot well go on until i can refresh myself on the proofs of the beginning. my respected collaborator, who handles the machine which is now addressing you, has indeed carried his labours farther, but not, i am led to understand, with what we used to call a blessing; at least, i have been refused a sight of his latest labours. however, there is plenty of time ahead, and i feel no anxiety about the tale, except that it may meet with your approval. all this voyage i have been busy over my travels, which, given a very high temperature and the saloon of a steamer usually going before the wind, and with the cabins in front of the engines, has come very near to prostrating me altogether. you will therefore understand that there are no more poems. i wonder whether there are already enough, and whether you think that such a volume would be worth the publishing? i shall hope to find in sydney some expression of your opinion on this point. living as i do among not the most cultured of mankind ('splendidly educated and perfect gentlemen when sober') i attach a growing importance to friendly criticisms from yourself. i believe that this is the most of our business. as for my health, i got over my cold in a fine style, but have not been very well of late. to my unaffected annoyance, the blood-spitting has started again. i find the heat of a steamer decidedly wearing and trying in these latitudes, and i am inclined to think the superior expedition rather dearly paid for. still, the fact that one does not even remark the coming of a squall, nor feel relief on its departure, is a mercy not to be acknowledged without gratitude. the rest of the family seem to be doing fairly well; both seem less run down than they were on the equator, and mrs. stevenson very much less so. we have now been three months away, have visited about thirty-five islands, many of which were novel to us, and some extremely entertaining; some also were old acquaintances, and pleasant to revisit. in the meantime, we have really a capital time aboard ship, in the most pleasant and interesting society, and with (considering the length and nature of the voyage) an excellent table. please remember us all to mr. scribner, the young chieftain of the house, and the lady, whose health i trust is better. to mrs. burlingame we all desire to be remembered, and i hope you will give our news to low, st. gaudens, faxon, and others of the faithful in the city. i shall probably return to samoa direct, having given up all idea of returning to civilisation in the meanwhile. there, on my ancestral acres, which i purchased six months ago from a blind scots blacksmith, you will please address me until further notice. the name of the ancestral acres is going to be vailima; but as at the present moment nobody else knows the name, except myself and the co-patentees, it will be safer, if less ambitious, to address r. l. s., apia, samoa. the ancestral acres run to upwards of three hundred; they enjoy the ministrations of five streams, whence the name. they are all at the present moment under a trackless covering of magnificent forest, which would be worth a great deal if it grew beside a railway terminus. to me, as it stands, it represents a handsome deficit. obliging natives from the cannibal islands are now cutting it down at my expense. you would be able to run your magazine to much greater advantage if the terms of authors were on the same scale with those of my cannibals. we have also a house about the size of a manufacturer's lodge. 'tis but the egg of the future palace, over the details of which on paper mrs. stevenson and i have already shed real tears; what it will be when it comes to paying for it, i leave you to imagine. but if it can only be built as now intended, it will be with genuine satisfaction and a growunded pride that i shall welcome you at the steps of my old colonial home, when you land from the steamer on a long-merited holiday. i speak much at my ease; yet i do not know, i may be now an outlaw, a bankrupt, the abhorred of all good men. i do not know, you probably do. has hyde turned upon me? have i fallen, like danvers carew? it is suggested to me that you might like to know what will be my future society. three consuls, all at logger-heads with one another, or at the best in a clique of two against one; three different sects of missionaries, not upon the best of terms; and the catholics and protestants in a condition of unhealable illfeeling as to whether a wooden drum ought or ought not to be beaten to announce the time of school. the native population, very genteel, very songful, very agreeable, very good-looking, chronically spoiling for a fight (a circumstance not to be entirely neglected in the design of the palace). as for the white population of (technically, 'the beach'), i don't suppose it is possible for any person not thoroughly conversant with the south seas to form the smallest conception of such a society, with its grog-shops, its apparently unemployed hangers-on, its merchants of all degrees of respectability and the reverse. the paper, of which i must really send you a copy if yours were really a live magazine, you would have an exchange with the editor: i assure you, it has of late contained a great deal of matter about one of your contributors rejoices in the name of samoa times and south sea advertiser. the advertisements in the advertiser are permanent, being simply subsidies for its existence. a dashing warfare of newspaper correspondence goes on between the various residents, who are rather fond of recurring to one another's antecedents. but when all is said, there are a lot of very nice, pleasant people, and i don't know that apia is very much worse than half a hundred towns that i could name. robert louis stevenson. letter: to charles baxter hotel sebastopol, noumea, august 1890. my dear charles, i have stayed here a week while lloyd and my wife continue to voyage in the janet nicoll; this i did, partly to see the convict system, partly to shorten my stay in the extreme cold hear me with my extreme! moi qui suis originaire d'edinbourg of sydney at this season. i am feeling very seedy, utterly fatigued, and overborne with sleep. i have a fine old gentleman of a doctor, who attends and cheers and entertains, if he does not cure me; but even with his ministrations i am almost incapable of the exertion sufficient for this letter; and i am really, as i write, falling down with sleep. what is necessary to say, i must try to say shortly. lloyd goes to clear out our establishments: pray keep him in funds, if i have any; if i have not, pray try to raise them. here is the idea: to install ourselves, at the risk of bankruptcy, in samoa. it is not the least likely it will pay (although it may); but it is almost certain it will support life, with very few external expenses. if i die, it will be an endowment for the survivors, at least for my wife and lloyd; and my mother, who might prefer to go home, has her own. hence i believe i shall do well to hurry my installation. the letters are already in part done; in part done is a novel for scribner; in the course of the next twelve months i should receive a considerable amount of money. i am aware i had intended to pay back to my capital some of this. i am now of opinion i should act foolishly. better to build the house and have a roof and farm of my own; and thereafter, with a livelihood assured, save and repay . . . there is my livelihood, all but books and wine, ready in a nutshell; and it ought to be more easy to save and to repay afterwards. excellent, say you, but will you save and will you repay? i do not know, said the bell of old bow. . . . it seems clear to me. . . . the deuce of the affair is that i do not know when i shall see you and colvin. i guess you will have to come and see me: many a time already we have arranged the details of your visit in the yet unbuilt house on the mountain. i shall be able to get decent wine from noumea. we shall be able to give you a decent welcome, and talk of old days. apropos of old days, do you remember still the phrase we heard in waterloo place? i believe you made a piece for the piano on that phrase. pray, if you remember it, send it me in your next. if you find it impossible to write correctly, send it me a la recitative, and indicate the accents. do you feel (you must) how strangely heavy and stupid i am? i must at last give up and go sleep; i am simply a rag. the morrow: i feel better, but still dim and groggy. to-night i go to the governor's; such a lark no dress clothes twenty-four hours' notice able-bodied polish tailor suit made for a man with the figure of a puncheon same hastily altered for self with the figure of a bodkin sight inconceivable. never mind; dress clothes, 'which nobody can deny'; and the officials have been all so civil that i liked neither to refuse nor to appear in mufti. bad dress clothes only prove you are a grisly ass; no dress clothes, even when explained, indicate a want of respect. i wish you were here with me to help me dress in this wild raiment, and to accompany me to m. noel-pardon's. i cannot say what i would give if there came a knock now at the door and you came in. i guess noel-pardon would go begging, and we might burn the fr. 200 dress clothes in the back garden for a bonfire; or what would be yet more expensive and more humorous, get them once more expanded to fit you, and when that was done, a second time cut down for my gossamer dimensions. i hope you never forget to remember me to your father, who has always a place in my heart, as i hope i have a little in his. his kindness helped me infinitely when you and i were young; i recall it with gratitude and affection in this town of convicts at the world's end. there are very few things, my dear charles, worth mention: on a retrospect of life, the day's flash and colour, one day with another, flames, dazzles, and puts to sleep; and when the days are gone, like a fast-flying thaumatrope, they make but a single pattern. only a few things stand out; and among these most plainly to me rutland square, ever, my dear charles, your affectionate friend, robert louis stevenson. p.s. just returned from trying on the dress clo'. lord, you should see the coat! it stands out at the waist like a bustle, the flaps cross in front, the sleeves are like bags. letter: to e. l. burlingame union club, sydney [august 1890]. my dear burlingame ballads. the deuce is in this volume. it has cost me more botheration and dubiety than any other i ever took in hand. on one thing my mind is made up: the verses at the end have no business there, and throw them down. many of them are bad, many of the rest want nine years' keeping, and the remainder are not relevant throw them down; some i never want to hear of more, others will grow in time towards decent items in a second underwoods and in the meanwhile, down with them! at the same time, i have a sneaking idea the ballads are not altogether without merit i don't know if they're poetry, but they're good narrative, or i'm deceived. (you've never said one word about them, from which i astutely gather you are dead set against: 'he was a diplomatic man' extract from epitaph of e. l. b. 'and remained on good terms with minor poets.') you will have to judge: one of the gladstonian trinity of paths must be chosen. (1st) either publish the five ballads, such as they are, in a volume called ballads; in which case pray send sheets at once to chatto and windus. or (2nd) write and tell me you think the book too small, and i'll try and get into the mood to do some more. or (3rd) write and tell me the whole thing is a blooming illusion; in which case draw off some twenty copies for my private entertainment, and charge me with the expense of the whole dream. in the matter of rhyme no man can judge himself; i am at the world's end, have no one to consult, and my publisher holds his tongue. i call it unfair and almost unmanly. i do indeed begin to be filled with animosity; lord, wait till you see the continuation of the wrecker, when i introduce some new york publishers. . . it's a good scene; the quantities you drink and the really hideous language you are represented as employing may perhaps cause you one tithe of the pain you have inflicted by your silence on, sir, the poetaster, r. l. s. lloyd is off home; my wife and i dwell sundered: she in lodgings, preparing for the move; i here in the club, and at my old trade bedridden. naturally, the visit home is given up; we only wait our opportunity to get to samoa, where, please, address me. have i yet asked you to despatch the books and papers left in your care to me at apia, samoa? i wish you would, quam primum. r. l. s. letter: to henry james union club, sydney, august 1890. my dear henry james, kipling is too clever to live. the bete humaine i had already perused in noumea, listening the while to the strains of the convict band. he a beast; but not human, and, to be frank, not very interesting. 'nervous maladies: the homicidal ward,' would be the better name: o, this game gets very tedious. your two long and kind letters have helped to entertain the old familiar sickbed. so has a book called the bondman, by hall caine; i wish you would look at it. i am not half-way through yet. read the book, and communicate your views. hall caine, by the way, appears to take hugo's view of history and chronology. (later; the book doesn't keep up; it gets very wild.) i must tell you plainly i can't tell colvin i do not think i shall come to england more than once, and then it'll be to die. health i enjoy in the tropics; even here, which they call subor semi-tropical, i come only to catch cold. i have not been out since my arrival; live here in a nice bedroom by the fireside, and read books and letters from henry james, and send out to get his tragic muse, only to be told they can't be had as yet in sydney, and have altogether a placid time. but i can't go out! the thermometer was nearly down to 50 degrees the other day no temperature for me, mr. james: how should i do in england? i fear not at all. am i very sorry? i am sorry about seven or eight people in england, and one or two in the states. and outside of that, i simply prefer samoa. these are the words of honesty and soberness. (i am fasting from all but sin, coughing, the bondman, a couple of eggs and a cup of tea.) i was never fond of towns, houses, society, or (it seems) civilisation. nor yet it seems was i ever very fond of (what is technically called) god's green earth. the sea, islands, the islanders, the island life and climate, make and keep me truly happier. these last two years i have been much at sea, and i have never wearied; sometimes i have indeed grown impatient for some destination; more often i was sorry that the voyage drew so early to an end; and never once did i lose my fidelity to blue water and a ship. it is plain, then, that for me my exile to the place of schooners and islands can be in no sense regarded as a calamity. good-bye just now: i must take a turn at my proofs. n.b. even my wife has weakened about the sea. she wearied, the last time we were ashore, to get afloat again. yours ever, r. l. s. letter: to marcel schwob union club, sydney, august 19th, 1890. my dear mr. schwob, mais, alors, vous avez tous les bonheurs, vous! more about villon; it seems incredible: when it is put in order, pray send it me. you wish to translate the black arrow: dear sir, you are hereby authorised; but i warn you, i do not like the work. ah, if you, who know so well both tongues, and have taste and instruction if you would but take a fancy to translate a book of mine that i myself admired for we sometimes admire our own or i do with what satisfaction would the authority be granted! but these things are too much to expect. vous ne detestez pas alors mes bonnes femmes? moi, je les deteste. i have never pleased myself with any women of mine save two character parts, one of only a few lines the countess of rosen, and madame desprez in the treasure of franchard. i had indeed one moment of pride about my poor black arrow: dickon crookback i did, and i do, think is a spirited and possible figure. shakespeare's o, if we can call that cocoon shakespeare! shakespeare's is spirited one likes to see the untaught athlete butting against the adamantine ramparts of human nature, head down, breach up; it reminds us how trivial we are to-day, and what safety resides in our triviality. for spirited it may be, but o, sure not possible! i love dumas and i love shakespeare: you will not mistake me when i say that the richard of the one reminds me of the porthos of the other; and if by any sacrifice of my own literary baggage i could clear the vicomte de bragelonne of porthos, jekyll might go, and the master, and the black arrow, you may be sure, and i should think my life not lost for mankind if half a dozen more of my volumes must be thrown in. the tone of your pleasant letters makes me egotistical; you make me take myself too gravely. comprehend how i have lived much of my time in france, and loved your country, and many of its people, and all the time was learning that which your country has to teach breathing in rather that atmosphere of art which can only there be breathed; and all the time knew and raged to know that i might write with the pen of angels or of heroes, and no frenchman be the least the wiser! and now steps in m. marcel schwob, writes me the most kind encouragement, and reads and understands, and is kind enough to like my work. i am just now overloaded with work. i have two huge novels on hand the wrecker and the pearl fisher, in collaboration with my stepson: the latter, the pearl fisher, i think highly of, for a black, ugly, trampling, violent story, full of strange scenes and striking characters. and then i am about waist-deep in my big book on the south seas: the big book on the south seas it ought to be, and shall. and besides, i have some verses in the press, which, however, i hesitate to publish. for i am no judge of my own verse; self-deception is there so facile. all this and the cares of an impending settlement in samoa keep me very busy, and a cold (as usual) keeps me in bed. alas, i shall not have the pleasure to see you yet awhile, if ever. you must be content to take me as a wandering voice, and in the form of occasional letters from recondite islands; and address me, if you will be good enough to write, to apia, samoa. my stepson, mr. osbourne, goes home meanwhile to arrange some affairs; it is not unlikely he may go to paris to arrange about the illustrations to my south seas; in which case i shall ask him to call upon you, and give you some word of our outlandish destinies. you will find him intelligent, i think; and i am sure, if (par hasard) you should take any interest in the islands, he will have much to tell you. herewith i conclude, and am your obliged and interested correspondent, robert louis stevenson. p.s. the story you refer to has got lost in the post. letter: to andrew lang union club, sydney [august 1890]. my dear lang, i observed with a great deal of surprise and interest that a controversy in which you have been taking sides at home, in yellow london, hinges in part at least on the gilbert islanders and their customs in burial. nearly six months of my life has been passed in the group: i have revisited it but the other day; and i make haste to tell you what i know. the upright stones i enclose you a photograph of one on apemama are certainly connected with religion; i do not think they are adored. they stand usually on the windward shore of the islands, that is to say, apart from habitation (on enclosed islands, where the people live on the sea side, i do not know how it is, never having lived on one). i gathered from tembinoka, rex apemamae, that the pillars were supposed to fortify the island from invasion: spiritual martellos. i think he indicated they were connected with the cult of tenti pronounce almost as chintz in english, the t being explosive; but you must take this with a grain of salt, for i knew no word of gilbert island; and the king's english, although creditable, is rather vigorous than exact. now, here follows the point of interest to you: such pillars, or standing stones, have no connection with graves. the most elaborate grave that i have ever seen in the group to be certain is in the form of a raised border of gravel, usually strewn with broken glass. one, of which i cannot be sure that it was a grave, for i was told by one that it was, and by another that it was not consisted of a mound about breast high in an excavated taro swamp, on the top of which was a child's house, or rather maniapa that is to say, shed, or open house, such as is used in the group for social or political gatherings so small that only a child could creep under its eaves. i have heard of another great tomb on apemama, which i did not see; but here again, by all accounts, no sign of a standing stone. my report would be no connection between standing stones and sepulture. i shall, however, send on the terms of the problem to a highly intelligent resident trader, who knows more than perhaps any one living, white or native, of the gilbert group; and you shall have the result. in samoa, whither i return for good, i shall myself make inquiries; up to now, i have neither seen nor heard of any standing stones in that group. yours, r. l. stevenson. letter: to mrs. charles fairchild union club, sydney [september 1890]. my dear mrs. fairchild, i began a letter to you on board the janet nicoll on my last cruise, wrote, i believe, two sheets, and ruthlessly destroyed the flippant trash. your last has given me great pleasure and some pain, for it increased the consciousness of my neglect. now, this must go to you, whatever it is like. . . . you are quite right; our civilisation is a hollow fraud, all the fun of life is lost by it; all it gains is that a larger number of persons can continue to be contemporaneously unhappy on the surface of the globe. o, unhappy! there is a big word and a false continue to be not nearly by about twenty per cent. so happy as they might be: that would be nearer the mark. when observe that word, which i will write again and larger when you come to see us in samoa, you will see for yourself a healthy and happy people. you see, you are one of the very few of our friends rich enough to come and see us; and when my house is built, and the road is made, and we have enough fruit planted and poultry and pigs raised, it is undeniable that you must come must is the word; that is the way in which i speak to ladies. you and fairchild, anyway perhaps my friend blair we'll arrange details in good time. it will be the salvation of your souls, and make you willing to die. let me tell you this: in '74 or 5 there came to stay with my father and mother a certain mr. seed, a prime minister or something of new zealand. he spotted what my complaint was; told me that i had no business to stay in europe; that i should find all i cared for, and all that was good for me, in the navigator islands; sat up till four in the morning persuading me, demolishing my scruples. and i resisted: i refused to go so far from my father and mother. o, it was virtuous, and o, wasn't it silly! but my father, who was always my dearest, got to his grave without that pang; and now in 1890, i (or what is left of me) go at last to the navigator islands. god go with us! it is but a pisgah sight when all is said; i go there only to grow old and die; but when you come, you will see it is a fair place for the purpose. flaubert has not turned up; i hope he will soon; i knew of him only through maxime descamps. with kindest messages to yourself and all of yours, i remain, robert louis stevenson. chapter xi life in samoa, november 1890-december 1892 letter: to e. l burlingame vailima, apia, samoa, nov. 7, 1890. i wish you to add to the words at the end of the prologue; they run, i think, thus, 'and this is the yarn of loudon dodd'; add, 'not as he told, but as he wrote it afterwards for his diversion.' this becomes the more needful, because, when all is done, i shall probably revert to tai-o-hae, and give final details about the characters in the way of a conversation between dodd and havers. these little snippets of information and faits-divers have always a disjointed, broken-backed appearance; yet, readers like them. in this book we have introduced so many characters, that this kind of epilogue will be looked for; and i rather hope, looking far ahead, that i can lighten it in dialogue. we are well past the middle now. how does it strike you? and can you guess my mystery? it will make a fattish volume! i say, have you ever read the highland widow? i never had till yesterday: i am half inclined, bar a trip or two, to think it scott's masterpiece; and it has the name of a failure! strange things are readers. i expect proofs and revises in duplicate. we have now got into a small barrack at our place. we see the sea six hundred feet below filling the end of two vales of forest. on one hand the mountain runs above us some thousand feet higher; great trees stand round us in our clearing; there is an endless voice of birds; i have never lived in such a heaven; just now, i have fever, which mitigates but not destroys my gusto in my circumstances. you may envy robert louis stevenson. . . . o, i don't know if i mentioned that having seen your new tail to the magazine, i cried off interference, at least for this trip. did i ask you to send me my books and papers, and all the bound volumes of the mag.? quorum pars. i might add that were there a good book or so new i don't believe there is such would be welcome. i desire i positively begin to awake to be remembered to scribner, low, st. gaudens, russell sullivan. well, well, you fellows have the feast of reason and the flow of soul; i have a better-looking place and climate: you should hear the birds on the hill now! the day has just wound up with a shower; it is still light without, though i write within here at the cheek of a lamp; my wife and an invaluable german are wrestling about bread on the back verandah; and how the birds and the frogs are rattling, and piping, and hailing from the woods! here and there a throaty chuckle; here and there, cries like those of jolly children who have lost their way; here and there, the ringing sleigh-bell of the tree frog. out and away down below me on the sea it is still raining; it will be wet under foot on schooners, and the house will leak; how well i know that! here the showers only patter on the iron roof, and sometimes roar; and within, the lamp burns steady on the tafa-covered walls, with their dusky tartan patterns, and the book-shelves with their thin array of books; and no squall can rout my house or bring my heart into my mouth. the well-pleased south sea islander, r. l. s. letter: to e. l. burlingame [vailima, december 1890.] my dear burlingame, by some diabolical accident, i have mislaid your last. what was in it? i know not, and here i am caught unexpectedly by the american mail, a week earlier than by computation. the computation, not the mail, is supposed to be in error. the vols. of scribner's have arrived, and present a noble appearance in my house, which is not a noble structure at present. but by autumn we hope to be sprawling in our verandah, twelve feet, sir, by eighty-eight in front, and seventy-two on the flank; view of the sea and mountains, sunrise, moonrise, and the german fleet at anchor three miles away in apia harbour. i hope some day to offer you a bowl of kava there, or a slice of a pineapple, or some lemonade from my own hedge. 'i know a hedge where the lemons grow' shakespeare. my house at this moment smells of them strong; and the rain, which a while ago roared there, now rings in minute drops upon the iron roof. i have no wrecker for you this mail, other things having engaged me. i was on the whole rather relieved you did not vote for regular papers, as i feared the traces. it is my design from time to time to write a paper of a reminiscential (beastly word) description; some of them i could scarce publish from different considerations; but some of them for instance, my long experience of gambling places homburg, wiesbaden, badenbaden, old monaco, and new monte carlo would make good magazine padding, if i got the stuff handled the right way. i never could fathom why verse was put in magazines; it has something to do with the making-up, has it not? i am scribbling a lot just now; if you are taken badly that way, apply to the south seas. i could send you some, i believe, anyway, only none of it is thoroughly ripe. if kept back the volume of ballads, i'll soon make it a respectable size if this fit continue. by the next mail you may expect some more wrecker, or i shall be displeased. probably no more than a chapter, however, for it is a hard one, and i am denuded of my proofs, my collaborator having walked away with them to england; hence some trouble in catching the just note. i am a mere farmer: my talk, which would scarce interest you on broadway, is all of fuafua and tuitui, and black boys, and planting and weeding, and axes and cutlasses; my hands are covered with blisters and full of thorns; letters are, doubtless, a fine thing, so are beer and skittles, but give me farmering in the tropics for real interest. life goes in enchantment; i come home to find i am late for dinner; and when i go to bed at night, i could cry for the weariness of my loins and thighs. do not speak to me of vexation, the life brims with it, but with living interest fairly. christmas i go to auckland, to meet tamate, the new guinea missionary, a man i love. the rest of my life is a prospect of much rain, much weeding and making of paths, a little letters, and devilish little to eat. i am, my dear burlingame, with messages to all whom it may concern, very sincerely yours, robert louis stevenson. letter: to henry james vailima, apia, samoa, december 29th, 1890. my dear henry james, it is terrible how little everybody writes, and how much of that little disappears in the capacious maw of the post office. many letters, both from and to me, i now know to have been lost in transit: my eye is on the sydney post office, a large ungainly structure with a tower, as being not a hundred miles from the scene of disappearance; but then i have no proof. the tragic muse you announced to me as coming; i had already ordered it from a sydney bookseller: about two months ago he advised me that his copy was in the post; and i am still tragically museless. news, news, news. what do we know of yours? what do you care for ours? we are in the midst of the rainy season, and dwell among alarms of hurricanes, in a very unsafe little two-storied wooden box 650 feet above and about three miles from the sea-beach. behind us, till the other slope of the island, desert forest, peaks, and loud torrents; in front green slopes to the sea, some fifty miles of which we dominate. we see the ships as they go out and in to the dangerous roadstead of apia; and if they lie far out, we can even see their topmasts while they are at anchor. of sounds of men, beyond those of our own labourers, there reach us, at very long intervals, salutes from the warships in harbour, the bell of the cathedral church, and the low of the conch-shell calling the labour boys on the german plantations. yesterday, which was sunday the quantieme is most likely erroneous; you can now correct it we had a visitor baker of tonga. heard you ever of him? he is a great man here: he is accused of theft, rape, judicial murder, private poisoning, abortion, misappropriation of public moneys oddly enough, not forgery, nor arson: you would be amused if you knew how thick the accusations fly in this south sea world. i make no doubt my own character is something illustrious; or if not yet, there is a good time coming. but all our resources have not of late been pacific. we have had enlightened society: la farge the painter, and your friend henry adams: a great privilege would it might endure. i would go oftener to see them, but the place is awkward to reach on horseback. i had to swim my horse the last time i went to dinner; and as i have not yet returned the clothes i had to borrow, i dare not return in the same plight: it seems inevitable as soon as the wash comes in, i plump straight into the american consul's shirt or trousers! they, i believe, would come oftener to see me but for the horrid doubt that weighs upon our commissariat department; we have often almost nothing to eat; a guest would simply break the bank; my wife and i have dined on one avocado pear; i have several times dined on hard bread and onions. what would you do with a guest at such narrow seasons? eat him? or serve up a labour boy fricasseed? work? work is now arrested, but i have written, i should think, about thirty chapters of the south sea book; they will all want rehandling, i dare say. gracious, what a strain is a long book! the time it took me to design this volume, before i could dream of putting pen to paper, was excessive; and then think of writing a book of travels on the spot, when i am continually extending my information, revising my opinions, and seeing the most finely finished portions of my work come part by part in pieces. very soon i shall have no opinions left. and without an opinion, how to string artistically vast accumulations of fact? darwin said no one could observe without a theory; i suppose he was right; 'tis a fine point of metaphysic; but i will take my oath, no man can write without one at least the way he would like to, and my theories melt, melt, melt, and as they melt the thaw-waters wash down my writing, and leave unideal tracts wastes instead of cultivated farms. kipling is by far the most promising young man who has appeared since ahem i appeared. he amazes me by his precocity and various endowment. but he alarms me by his copiousness and haste. he should shield his fire with both hands 'and draw up all his strength and sweetness in one ball.' ('draw all his strength and all his sweetness up into one ball'? i cannot remember marvell's words.) so the critics have been saying to me; but i was never capable of and surely never guilty of such a debauch of production. at this rate his works will soon fill the habitable globe; and surely he was armed for better conflicts than these succinct sketches and flying leaves of verse? i look on, i admire, i rejoice for myself; but in a kind of ambition we all have for our tongue and literature i am wounded. if i had this man's fertility and courage, it seems to me i could heave a pyramid. well, we begin to be the old fogies now; and it was high time something rose to take our places. certainly kipling has the gifts; the fairy godmothers were all tipsy at his christening: what will he do with them? goodbye, my dear james; find an hour to write to us, and register your letter. yours affectionately, r. l. s. letter: to rudyard kipling [vailima, 1891.] sir, i cannot call to mind having written you, but i am so throng with occupation this may have fallen aside. i never heard tell i had any friends in ireland, and i am led to understand you are come of no considerable family. the gentleman i now serve with assures me, however, you are a very pretty fellow and your letter deserves to be remarked. it's true he is himself a man of a very low descent upon the one side; though upon the other he counts cousinship with a gentleman, my very good friend, the late mr. balfour of the shaws, in the lothian; which i should be wanting in good fellowship to forget. he tells me besides you are a man of your hands; i am not informed of your weapon; but if all be true it sticks in my mind i would be ready to make exception in your favour, and meet you like one gentleman with another. i suppose this'll be your purpose in your favour, which i could very ill make out; it's one i would be sweir to baulk you of. it seems, mr. mcilvaine, which i take to be your name, you are in the household of a gentleman of the name of coupling: for whom my friend is very much engaged. the distances being very uncommodious, i think it will be maybe better if we leave it to these two to settle all that's necessary to honour. i would have you to take heed it's a very unusual condescension on my part, that bear a king's name; and for the matter of that i think shame to be mingled with a person of the name of coupling, which is doubtless a very good house but one i never heard tell of, any more than stevenson. but your purpose being laudable, i would be sorry (as the word goes) to cut off my nose to spite my face. i am, sir, your humble servant, a. stewart, chevalier de st. louis. to mr. m'ilvaine, gentleman private in a foot regiment, under cover to mr. coupling. he has read me some of your barrack room ballants, which are not of so noble a strain as some of mine in the gaelic, but i could set some of them to the pipes if this rencounter goes as it's to be desired. let's first, as i understand you to move, do each other this rational courtesys; and if either will survive, we may grow better acquaint. for your tastes for what's martial and for poetry agree with mine. a. s. letter: to marcel schwob sydney, january 19th, 1891. my dear sir, sapristi, comme vous y allez! richard iii. and dumas, with all my heart; but not hamlet. hamlet is great literature; richard iii. a big, black, gross, sprawling melodrama, writ with infinite spirit but with no refinement or philosophy by a man who had the world, himself, mankind, and his trade still to learn. i prefer the vicomte de bragelonne to richard iii.; it is better done of its kind: i simply do not mention the vicomte in the same part of the building with hamlet, or lear, or othello, or any of those masterpieces that shakespeare survived to give us. also, comme vous y allez in my commendation! i fear my solide education classique had best be described, like shakespeare's, as 'little latin and no greek,' and i was educated, let me inform you, for an engineer. i shall tell my bookseller to send you a copy of memories and portraits, where you will see something of my descent and education, as it was, and hear me at length on my dear vicomte. i give you permission gladly to take your choice out of my works, and translate what you shall prefer, too much honoured that so clever a young man should think it worth the pains. my own choice would lie between kidnapped and the master of ballantrae. should you choose the latter, pray do not let mrs. henry thrust the sword up to the hilt in the frozen ground one of my inconceivable blunders, an exaggeration to stagger hugo. say 'she sought to thrust it in the ground.' in both these works you should be prepared for scotticisms used deliberately. i fear my stepson will not have found time to get to paris; he was overwhelmed with occupation, and is already on his voyage back. we live here in a beautiful land, amid a beautiful and interesting people. the life is still very hard: my wife and i live in a tworoomed cottage, about three miles and six hundred and fifty feet above the sea; we have had to make the road to it; our supplies are very imperfect; in the wild weather of this (the hurricane) season we have much discomfort: one night the wind blew in our house so outrageously that we must sit in the dark; and as the sound of the rain on the roof made speech inaudible, you may imagine we found the evening long. all these things, however, are pleasant to me. you say l'artiste inconscient set off to travel: you do not divide me right. 0.6 of me is artist; 0.4, adventurer. first, i suppose, come letters; then adventure; and since i have indulged the second part, i think the formula begins to change: 0.55 of an artist, 0.45 of the adventurer were nearer true. and if it had not been for my small strength, i might have been a different man in all things, whatever you do, do not neglect to send me what you publish on villon: i look forward to that with lively interest. i have no photograph at hand, but i will send one when i can. it would be kind if you would do the like, for i do not see much chance of our meeting in the flesh: and a name, and a handwriting, and an address, and even a style? i know about as much of tacitus, and more of horace; it is not enough between contemporaries, such as we still are. i have just remembered another of my books, which i reread the other day, and thought in places good prince otto. it is not as good as either of the others; but it has one recommendation it has female parts, so it might perhaps please better in france. i will ask chatto to send you, then prince otto, memories and portraits, underwoods, and ballads, none of which you seem to have seen. they will be too late for the new year: let them be an easter present. you must translate me soon; you will soon have better to do than to transverse the work of others. yours very truly, robert louis stevenson, with the worst pen in the south pacific. letter: to charles baxter ss. 'lubeck,' at sea [on the return voyage from sydney, march 1891]. my dear charles, perhaps in my old days i do grow irascible; 'the old man virulent' has long been my pet name for myself. well, the temper is at least all gone now; time is good at lowering these distemperatures; far better is a sharp sickness, and i am just (and scarce) afoot again after a smoking hot little malady at sydney. and the temper being gone, i still think the same. . . . we have not our parents for ever; we are never very good to them; when they go and we have lost our front-file man, we begin to feel all our neglects mighty sensibly. i propose a proposal. my mother is here on board with me; to-day for once i mean to make her as happy as i am able, and to do that which i know she likes. you, on the other hand, go and see your father, and do ditto, and give him a real good hour or two. we shall both be glad hereafter. yours ever, r. l. s. letter: to h. b. baildon vailima, upolu [undated, but written in 1891]. my dear baildon, this is a real disappointment. it was so long since we had met, i was anxious to see where time had carried and stranded us. last time we saw each other it must have been all ten years ago, as we were new to the thirties it was only for a moment, and now we're in the forties, and before very long we shall be in our graves. sick and well, i have had a splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little and then only some little corners of misconduct for which i deserve hanging, and must infallibly be damned and, take it all over, damnation and all, would hardly change with any man of my time, unless perhaps it were gordon or our friend chalmers: a man i admire for his virtues, love for his faults, and envy for the really a1 life he has, with everything heart my heart, i mean could wish. it is curious to think you will read this in the grey metropolis; go the first grey, east-windy day into the caledonian station, if it looks at all as it did of yore: i met satan there. and then go and stand by the cross, and remember the other one him that went down my brother, robert fergusson. it is a pity you had not made me out, and seen me as patriarch and planter. i shall look forward to some record of your time with chalmers: you can't weary me of that fellow, he is as big as a house and far bigger than any church, where no man warms his hands. do you know anything of thomson? of a-, b-, c-, d-, e-, f-, at all? as i write c.'s name mustard rises my nose; i have never forgiven that weak, amiable boy a little trick he played me when i could ill afford it: i mean that whenever i think of it, some of the old wrath kindles, not that i would hurt the poor soul, if i got the world with it. and old x-? is he still afloat? harmless bark! i gather you ain't married yet, since your sister, to whom i ask to be remembered, goes with you. did you see a silly tale, john nicholson's predicament, or some such name, in which i made free with your home at murrayfield? there is precious little sense in it, but it might amuse. cassell's published it in a thing called yule-tide years ago, and nobody that ever i heard of read or has ever seen yule-tide. it is addressed to a class we never met readers of cassell's series and that class of conscientious chaff, and my tale was dull, though i don't recall that it was conscientious. only, there's the house at murrayfield and a dead body in it. glad the ballads amused you. they failed to entertain a coy public, at which i wondered, not that i set much account by my verses, which are the verses of prosator; but i do know how to tell a yarn, and two of the yarns are great. rahero is for its length a perfect folk-tale: savage and yet fine, full of tailforemost morality, ancient as the granite rocks; if the historian, not to say the politician, could get that yarn into his head, he would have learned some of his a b c. but the average man at home cannot understand antiquity; he is sunk over the ears in roman civilisation; and a tale like that of rahero falls on his ears inarticulate. the spectator said there was no psychology in it; that interested me much: my grandmother (as i used to call that able paper, and an able paper it is, and a fair one) cannot so much as observe the existence of savage psychology when it is put before it. i am at bottom a psychologist and ashamed of it; the tale seized me one-third because of its picturesque features, two-thirds because of its astonishing psychology, and the spectator says there's none. i am going on with a lot of island work, exulting in the knowledge of a new world, 'a new created world' and new men; and i am sure my income will decline and fall off; for the effort of comprehension is death to the intelligent public, and sickness to the dull. i do not know why i pester you with all this trash, above all as you deserve nothing. i give you my warm talofa ('my love to you,' samoan salutation). write me again when the spirit moves you. and some day, if i still live, make out the trip again and let us hoba-nob with our grey pows on my verandah. yours sincerely, robert louis stevenson. letter: to w. craibe angus vailima, samoa, april 1891. dear mr. angus, surely i remember you! it was w. c. murray who made us acquainted, and we had a pleasant crack. i see your poet is not yet dead. i remember even our talk or you would not think of trusting that invaluable jolly beggars to the treacherous posts, and the perils of the sea, and the carelessness of authors. i love the idea, but i could not bear the risk. however 'hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle ' it was kindly thought upon. my interest in burns is, as you suppose, perennial. i would i could be present at the exhibition, with the purpose of which i heartily sympathise; but the nancy has not waited in vain for me, i have followed my chest, the anchor is weighed long ago, i have said my last farewell to the hills and the heather and the lynns: like leyden, i have gone into far lands to die, not stayed like burns to mingle in the end with scottish soil. i shall not even return like scott for the last scene. burns exhibitions are all over. 'tis a far cry to lochow from tropical vailima. 'but still our hearts are true, our hearts are highland, and we in dreams behold the hebrides.' when your hand is in, will you remember our poor edinburgh robin? burns alone has been just to his promise; follow burns, he knew best, he knew whence he drew fire from the poor, white-faced, drunken, vicious boy that raved himself to death in the edinburgh madhouse. surely there is more to be gleaned about fergusson, and surely it is high time the task was set about. i way tell you (because your poet is not dead) something of how i feel: we are three robins who have touched the scots lyre this last century. well, the one is the world's, he did it, he came off, he is for ever; but i and the other ah! what bonds we have born in the same city; both sickly, both pestered, one nearly to madness, one to the madhouse, with a damnatory creed; both seeing the stars and the dawn, and wearing shoe-leather on the same ancient stones, under the same pends, down the same closes, where our common ancestors clashed in their armour, rusty or bright. and the old robin, who was before burns and the flood, died in his acute, painful youth, and left the models of the great things that were to come; and the new, who came after, outlived his greensickness, and has faintly tried to parody the finished work. if you will collect the strays of robin fergusson, fish for material, collect any last re-echoing of gossip, command me to do what you prefer to write the preface to write the whole if you prefer: anything, so that another monument (after burns's) be set up to my unhappy predecessor on the causey of auld reekie. you will never know, nor will any man, how deep this feeling is: i believe fergusson lives in me. i do, but tell it not in gath; every man has these fanciful superstitions, coming, going, but yet enduring; only most men are so wise (or the poet in them so dead) that they keep their follies for themselves. i am, yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to edmund gosse vailima, april 1891. my dear gosse, i have to thank you and mrs. gosse for many mementoes, chiefly for your life of your father. there is a very delicate task, very delicately done. i noted one or two carelessnesses, which i meant to point out to you for another edition; but i find i lack the time, and you will remark them for yourself against a new edition. they were two, or perhaps three, flabbinesses of style which (in your work) amazed me. am i right in thinking you were a shade bored over the last chapters? or was it my own fault that made me think them susceptible of a more athletic compression? (the flabbinesses were not there, i think, but in the more admirable part, where they showed the bigger.) take it all together, the book struck me as if you had been hurried at the last, but particularly hurried over the proofs, and could still spend a very profitable fortnight in earnest revision and (towards the end) heroic compression. the book, in design, subject, and general execution, is well worth the extra trouble. and even if i were wrong in thinking it specially wanted, it will not be lost; for do we not know, in flaubert's dread confession, that 'prose is never done'? what a medium to work in, for a man tired, perplexed among different aims and subjects, and spurred by the immediate need of 'siller'! however, it's mine for what it's worth; and it's one of yours, the devil take it; and you know, as well as flaubert, and as well as me, that it is never done; in other words, it is a torment of the pit, usually neglected by the bards who (lucky beggars!) approached the styx in measure. i speak bitterly at the moment, having just detected in myself the last fatal symptom, three blank verses in succession and i believe, god help me, a hemistich at the tail of them; hence i have deposed the labourer, come out of hell by my private trap, and now write to you from my little place in purgatory. but i prefer hell: would i could always dig in those red coals or else be at sea in a schooner, bound for isles unvisited: to be on shore and not to work is emptiness suicidal vacancy. i was the more interested in your life of your father, because i meditate one of mine, or rather of my family. i have no such materials as you, and (our objections already made) your attack fills me with despair; it is direct and elegant, and your style is always admirable to me lenity, lucidity, usually a high strain of breeding, an elegance that has a pleasant air of the accidental. but beware of purple passages. i wonder if you think as well of your purple passages as i do of mine? i wonder if you think as ill of mine as i do of yours? i wonder; i can tell you at least what is wrong with yours they are treated in the spirit of verse. the spirit i don't mean the measure, i don't mean you fall into bastard cadences; what i mean is that they seem vacant and smoothed out, ironed, if you like. and in a style which (like yours) aims more and more successfully at the academic, one purple word is already much; three a whole phrase is inadmissible. wed yourself to a clean austerity: that is your force. wear a linen ephod, splendidly candid. arrange its folds, but do not fasten it with any brooch. i swear to you, in your talking robes, there should be no patch of adornment; and where the subject forces, let it force you no further than it must; and be ready with a twinkle of your pleasantry. yours is a fine tool, and i see so well how to hold it; i wonder if you see how to hold mine? but then i am to the neck in prose, and just now in the 'dark interstylar cave,' all methods and effects wooing me, myself in the midst impotent to follow any. i look for dawn presently, and a full flowing river of expression, running whither it wills. but these useless seasons, above all, when a man must continue to spoil paper, are infinitely weary. we are in our house after a fashion; without furniture, 'tis true, camping there, like the family after a sale. but the bailiff has not yet appeared; he will probably come after. the place is beautiful beyond dreams; some fifty miles of the pacific spread in front; deep woods all round; a mountain making in the sky a profile of huge trees upon our left; about us, the little island of our clearing, studded with brave old gentlemen (or ladies, or 'the twa o' them') whom we have spared. it is a good place to be in; night and morning, we have theodore rousseaus (always a new one) hung to amuse us on the walls of the world; and the moon this is our good season, we have a moon just now makes the night a piece of heaven. it amazes me how people can live on in the dirty north; yet if you saw our rainy season (which is really a caulker for wind, wet, and darkness howling showers, roaring winds, pitblackness at noon) you might marvel how we could endure that. and we can't. but there's a winter everywhere; only ours is in the summer. mark my words: there will be a winter in heaven and in hell. cela rentre dans les procedes du bon dieu; et vous verrez! there's another very good thing about vailima, i am away from the little bubble of the literary life. it is not all beer and skittles, is it? by the by, my ballads seem to have been dam bad; all the crickets sing so in their crickety papers; and i have no ghost of an idea on the point myself: verse is always to me the unknowable. you might tell me how it strikes a professional bard: not that it really matters, for, of course, good or bad, i don't think i shall get into that galley any more. but i should like to know if you join the shrill chorus of the crickets. the crickets are the devil in all to you: 'tis a strange thing, they seem to rejoice like a strong man in their injustice. i trust you got my letter about your browning book. in case it missed, i wish to say again that your publication of browning's kind letter, as an illustration of his character, was modest, proper, and in radiant good taste. in witness whereof, etc., etc., robert louis stevenson. letter: to miss rawlinson vailima, apia, samoa, april 1891. my dear may, i never think of you by any more ceremonial name, so i will not pretend. there is not much chance that i shall forget you until the time comes for me to forget all this little turmoil in a corner (though indeed i have been in several corners) of an inconsiderable planet. you remain in my mind for a good reason, having given me (in so short a time) the most delightful pleasure. i shall remember, and you must still be beautiful. the truth is, you must grow more so, or you will soon be less. it is not so easy to be a flower, even when you bear a flower's name. and if i admired you so much, and still remember you, it is not because of your face, but because you were then worthy of it, as you must still continue. will you give my heartiest congratulations to mr. s.? he has my admiration; he is a brave man; when i was young, i should have run away from the sight of you, pierced with the sense of my unfitness. he is more wise and manly. what a good husband he will have to be! and you what a good wife! carry your love tenderly. i will never forgive him or you it is in both your hands if the face that once gladdened my heart should be changed into one sour or sorrowful. what a person you are to give flowers! it was so i first heard of you; and now you are giving the may flower! yes, skerryvore has passed; it was, for us. but i wish you could see us in our new home on the mountain, in the middle of great woods, and looking far out over the pacific. when mr. s. is very rich, he must bring you round the world and let you see it, and see the old gentleman and the old lady. i mean to live quite a long while yet, and my wife must do the same, or else i couldn't manage it; so, you see, you will have plenty of time; and it's a pity not to see the most beautiful places, and the most beautiful people moving there, and the real stars and moon overhead, instead of the tin imitations that preside over london. i do not think my wife very well; but i am in hopes she will now have a little rest. it has been a hard business, above all for her; we lived four months in the hurricane season in a miserable house, overborne with work, ill-fed, continually worried, drowned in perpetual rain, beaten upon by wind, so that we must sit in the dark in the evenings; and then i ran away, and she had a month of it alone. things go better now; the back of the work is broken; and we are still foolish enough to look forward to a little peace. i am a very different person from the prisoner of skerryvore. the other day i was threeand-twenty hours in an open boat; it made me pretty ill; but fancy its not killing me half-way! it is like a fairy story that i should have recovered liberty and strength, and should go round again among my fellow-men, boating, riding, bathing, toiling hard with a wood-knife in the forest. i can wish you nothing more delightful than my fortune in life; i wish it you; and better, if the thing be possible. lloyd is tinkling below me on the typewriter; my wife has just left the room; she asks me to say she would have written had she been well enough, and hopes to do it still. accept the best wishes of your admirer, robert louis stevenson. letter: to miss adelaide boodle [vailima, may 1891.] my dear adelaide, i will own you just did manage to tread on my gouty toe; and i beg to assure you with most people i should simply have turned away and said no more. my cudgelling was therefore in the nature of a caress or testimonial. god forbid, i should seem to judge for you on such a point; it was what you seemed to set forth as your reasons that fluttered my old presbyterian spirit for, mind you, i am a child of the covenanters whom i do not love, but they are mine after all, my father's and my mother's and they had their merits too, and their ugly beauties, and grotesque heroisms, that i love them for, the while i laugh at them; but in their name and mine do what you think right, and let the world fall. that is the privilege and the duty of private persons; and i shall think the more of you at the greater distance, because you keep a promise to your fellow-man, your helper and creditor in life, by just so much as i was tempted to think the less of you (o not much, or i would never have been angry) when i thought you were the swallower of a (tinfoil) formula. i must say i was uneasy about my letter, not because it was too strong as an expression of my unregenerate sentiments, but because i knew full well it should be followed by something kinder. and the mischief has been in my health. i fell sharply sick in sydney, was put aboard the lubeck pretty bad, got to vailima, hung on a month there, and didn't pick up as well as my work needed; set off on a journey, gained a great deal, lost it again; and am back at vailima, still no good at my necessary work. i tell you this for my imperfect excuse that i should not have written you again sooner to remove the bad taste of my last. a road has been called adelaide road; it leads from the back of our house to the bridge, and thence to the garden, and by a bifurcation to the pig pen. it is thus much traversed, particularly by fanny. an oleander, the only one of your seeds that prospered in this climate, grows there; and the name is now some week or ten days applied and published. adelaide road leads also into the bush, to the banana patch, and by a second bifurcation over the left branch of the stream to the plateau and the right hand of the gorges. in short, it leads to all sorts of good, and is, besides, in itself a pretty winding path, bound downhill among big woods to the margin of the stream. what a strange idea, to think me a jew-hater! isaiah and david and heine are good enough for me; and i leave more unsaid. were i of jew blood, i do not think i could ever forgive the christians; the ghettos would get in my nostrils like mustard or lit gunpowder. just so you as being a child of the presbytery, i retain i need not dwell on that. the ascendant hand is what i feel most strongly; i am bound in and in with my forbears; were he one of mine, i should not be struck at all by mr. moss of bevis marks, i should still see behind him moses of the mount and the tables and the shining face. we are all nobly born; fortunate those who know it; blessed those who remember. i am, my dear adelaide, most genuinely yours, robert louis stevenson. write by return to say you are better, and i will try to do the same. letter: to charles baxter [vailima], tuesday, 19th may '91. my dear charles, i don't know what you think of me, not having written to you at all during your illness. i find two sheets begun with your name, but that is no excuse. . . . i am keeping bravely; getting about better, every day, and hope soon to be in my usual fettle. my books begin to come; and i fell once more on the old bailey session papers. i have 1778, 1784, and 1786. should you be able to lay hands on any other volumes, above all a little later, i should be very glad you should buy them for me. i particularly want one or two during the course of the peninsular war. come to think, i ought rather to have communicated this want to bain. would it bore you to communicate to that effect with the great man? the sooner i have them, the better for me. 'tis for henry shovel. but henry shovel has now turned into a work called 'the shovels of newton french: including memoirs of henry shovel, a private in the peninsular war,' which work is to begin in 1664 with the marriage of skipper, afterwards alderman shovel of bristol, henry's greatgreat-grandfather, and end about 1832 with his own second marriage to the daughter of his runaway aunt. will the public ever stand such an opus? gude kens, but it tickles me. two or three historical personages will just appear: judge jeffreys, wellington, colquhoun, grant, and i think townsend the runner. i know the public won't like it; let 'em lump it then; i mean to make it good; it will be more like a saga. adieu, yours ever affectionately, r. l. stevenson. letter: to e. l. burlingame vailima [summer 1891]. my dear burlingame, i find among my grandfather's papers his own reminiscences of his voyage round the north with sir walter, eighty years ago, labuntur anni! they are not remarkably good, but he was not a bad observer, and several touches seem to me speaking. it has occurred to me you might like them to appear in the magazine. if you would, kindly let me know, and tell me how you would like it handled. my grandad's ms. runs to between six and seven thousand words, which i could abbreviate of anecdotes that scarce touch sir w. would you like this done? would you like me to introduce the old gentleman? i had something of the sort in my mind, and could fill a few columns rather a propos. i give you the first offer of this, according to your request; for though it may forestall one of the interests of my biography, the thing seems to me particularly suited for prior appearance in a magazine. i see the first number of the wrecker; i thought it went lively enough; and by a singular accident, the picture is not unlike taio-hae! thus we see the age of miracles, etc. yours very sincerely, r. l. s. proofs for next mail. letter: to w. craibe angus [summer 1891.] dear mr. angus, you can use my letter as you will. the parcel has not come; pray heaven the next post bring it safe. is it possible for me to write a preface here? i will try if you like, if you think i must: though surely there are rivers in assyria. of course you will send me sheets of the catalogue; i suppose it (the preface) need not be long; perhaps it should be rather very short? be sure you give me your views upon these points. also tell me what names to mention among those of your helpers, and do remember to register everything, else it is not safe. the true place (in my view) for a monument to fergusson were the churchyard of haddington. but as that would perhaps not carry many votes, i should say one of the two following sites:first, either as near the site of the old bedlam as we could get, or, second, beside the cross, the heart of his city. upon this i would have a fluttering butterfly, and, i suggest, the citation, poor butterfly, thy case i mourn. for the case of fergusson is not one to pretend about. a more miserable tragedy the sun never shone upon, or (in consideration of our climate) i should rather say refused to brighten. yours truly, robert louis stevenson. where burns goes will not matter. he is no local poet, like your robin the first; he is general as the casing air. glasgow, as the chief city of scottish men, would do well; but for god's sake, don't let it be like the glasgow memorial to knox: i remember, when i first saw this, laughing for an hour by shrewsbury clock. r. l. s. letter: to h. c. ide [vailima, june 19, 1891.] dear mr. ide, herewith please find the document, which i trust will prove sufficient in law. it seems to me very attractive in its eclecticism; scots, english, and roman law phrases are all indifferently introduced, and a quotation from the works of haynes bayly can hardly fail to attract the indulgence of the bench. yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. i, robert louis stevenson, advocate of the scots bar, author of the master of ballantrae and moral emblems, stuck civil engineer, sole owner and patentee of the palace and plantation known as vailima in the island of upolu, samoa, a british subject, being in sound mind, and pretty well, i thank you, in body: in consideration that miss annie h. ide, daughter of h. c. ide, in the town of saint johnsbury, in the county of caledonia, in the state of vermont, united states of america, was born, out of all reason, upon christmas day, and is therefore out of all justice denied the consolation and profit of a proper birthday; and considering that i, the said robert louis stevenson, have attained an age when o, we never mention it, and that i have now no further use for a birthday of any description; and in consideration that i have met h. c. ide, the father of the said annie h. ide, and found him about as white a land commissioner as i require: have transferred, and do hereby transfer, to the said annie h. ide, all and whole my rights and priviledges in the thirteenth day of november, formerly my birthday, now, hereby, and henceforth, the birthday of the said annie h. ide, to have, hold, exercise, and enjoy the same in the customary manner, by the sporting of fine raiment, eating of rich meats, and receipt of gifts, compliments, and copies of verse, according to the manner of our ancestors; and i direct the said annie h. ide to add to the said name of annie h. ide the name louisa at least in private; and i charge her to use my said birthday with moderation and humanity, et tamquam bona filia familiae, the said birthday not being so young as it once was, and having carried me in a very satisfactory manner since i can remember; and in case the said annie h. ide shall neglect or contravene either of the above conditions, i hereby revoke the donation and transfer my rights in the said birthday to the president of the united states of america for the time being: in witness whereof i have hereto set my hand and seal this nineteenth day of june in the year of grace eighteen hundred and ninety-one. [seal.] robert louis stevenson. witness, lloyd osbourne, witness, harold watts. letter: to henry james [vailima, october 1891.] my dear henry james, from this perturbed and hunted being expect but a line, and that line shall be but a whoop for adela. o she's delicious, delicious; i could live and die with adela die, rather the better of the two; you never did a straighter thing, and never will. david balfour, second part of kidnapped, is on the stocks at last; and is not bad, i think. as for the wrecker, it's a machine, you know don't expect aught else a machine, and a police machine; but i believe the end is one of the most genuine butcheries in literature; and we point to our machine with a modest pride, as the only police machine without a villain. our criminals are a most pleasing crew, and leave the dock with scarce a stain upon their character. what a different line of country to be trying to draw adela, and trying to write the last four chapters of the wrecker! heavens, it's like two centuries; and ours is such rude, transpontine business, aiming only at a certain fervour of conviction and sense of energy and violence in the men; and yours is so neat and bright and of so exquisite a surface! seems dreadful to send such a book to such an author; but your name is on the list. and we do modestly ask you to consider the chapters on the norah creina with the study of captain nares, and the forementioned last four, with their brutality of substance and the curious (and perhaps unsound) technical manoeuvre of running the story together to a point as we go along, the narrative becoming more succinct and the details fining off with every page. sworn affidavit of r. l. s. no person now alive has beaten adela: i adore adela and her maker. sic subscrib. robert louis stevenson. a sublime poem to follow. adela, adela, adela chart, what have you done to my elderly heart? of all the ladies of paper and ink i count you the paragon, call you the pink. the word of your brother depicts you in part: 'you raving maniac!' adela chart; but in all the asylums that cumber the ground, so delightful a maniac was ne'er to be found. i pore on you, dote on you, clasp you to heart, i laud, love, and laugh at you, adela chart, and thank my dear maker the while i admire that i can be neither your husband nor sire. your husband's, your sire's were a difficult part; you're a byway to suicide, adela chart; but to read of, depicted by exquisite james, o, sure you're the flower and quintessence of dames. r. l. s. eructavit cor meum. my heart was inditing a goodly matter about adela chart. though oft i've been touched by the volatile dart, to none have i grovelled but adela chart, there are passable ladies, no question, in art but where is the marrow of adela chart? i dreamed that to tyburn i passed in the cart i dreamed i was married to adela chart: from the first i awoke with a palpable start, the second dumfoundered me, adela chart! another verse bursts from me, you see; no end to the violence of the muse. letter: to e. l. burlingame october 8th, 1891. my dear burlingame, all right, you shall have the tales of my grandfather soon, but i guess we'll try and finish off the wrecker first. a propos of whom, please send some advanced sheets to cassell's away ahead of you so that they may get a dummy out. do you wish to illustrate my grandfather? he mentions as excellent a portrait of scott by basil hall's brother. i don't think i ever saw this engraved; would it not, if you could get track of it, prove a taking embellishment? i suggest this for your consideration and inquiry. a new portrait of scott strikes me as good. there is a hard, tough, constipated old portrait of my grandfather hanging in my aunt's house, mrs. alan stevenson, 16 st. leonard's terrace, chelsea, which has never been engraved the better portrait, joseph's bust has been reproduced, i believe, twice and which, i am sure, my aunt would let you have a copy of. the plate could be of use for the book when we get so far, and thus to place it in the magazine might be an actual saving. i am swallowed up in politics for the first, i hope for the last, time in my sublunary career. it is a painful, thankless trade; but one thing that came up i could not pass in silence. much drafting, addressing, deputationising has eaten up all my time, and again (to my contrition) i leave you wreckerless. as soon as the mail leaves i tackle it straight. yours very sincerely, robert louis stevenson. letter: to e. l. burlingame vailima [autumn 1891]. my dear burlingame, the time draws nigh, the mail is near due, and i snatch a moment of collapse so that you may have at least some sort of a scratch of note along with the \ end \ of \ the \ wrecker. hurray! which i mean to go herewith. it has taken me a devil of a pull, but i think it's going to be ready. if i did not know you were on the stretch waiting for it and trembling for your illustrations, i would keep it for another finish; but things being as they are, i will let it go the best way i can get it. i am now within two pages of the end of chapter xxv., which is the last chapter, the end with its gathering up of loose threads, being the dedication to low, and addressed to him: this is my last and best expedient for the knotting up of these loose cards. 'tis possible i may not get that finished in time, in which case you'll receive only chapters xxii. to xxv. by this mail, which is all that can be required for illustration. i wish you would send me memoirs of baron marbot (french); introduction to the study of the history of language, strong, logeman & wheeler; principles of psychology, william james; morris & magnusson's saga library, any volumes that are out; george meredith's one of our conquerors; la bas, by huysmans (french); o'connor morris's great commanders of modern times; life's handicap, by kipling; of taine's origines de la france contemporaine, i have only as far as la revolution, vol. iii.; if another volume is out, please add that. there is for a book-box. i hope you will like the end; i think it is rather strong meat. i have got into such a deliberate, dilatory, expansive turn, that the effort to compress this last yarn was unwelcome; but the longest yarn has to come to an end sometime. please look it over for carelessnesses, and tell me if it had any effect upon your jaded editorial mind. i'll see if ever i have time to add more. i add to my book-box list adams' historical essays; the plays of a. w. pinero all that have appeared, and send me the rest in course as they do appear; noughts and crosses by q.; robertson's scotland under her early kings. sunday. the deed is done, didst thou not hear a noise? 'the end' has been written to this endless yarn, and i am once more a free man. what will he do with it? letter: to w. craibe angus vailima, samoa, november 1891. my dear mr. angus, herewith the invaluable sheets. they came months after your letter, and i trembled; but here they are, and i have scrawled my vile name on them, and 'thocht shame' as i did it. i am expecting the sheets of your catalogue, so that i may attack the preface. please give me all the time you can. the sooner the better; you might even send me early proofs as they are sent out, to give me more incubation. i used to write as slow as judgment; now i write rather fast; but i am still 'a slow study,' and sit a long while silent on my eggs. unconscious thought, there is the only method: macerate your subject, let it boil slow, then take the lid off and look in and there your stuff is, good or bad. but the journalist's method is the way to manufacture lies; it is will-worship if you know the luminous quaker phrase; and the will is only to be brought in the field for study, and again for revision. the essential part of work is not an act, it is a state. i do not know why i write you this trash. many thanks for your handsome dedication. i have not yet had time to do more than glance at mrs. begg; it looks interesting. yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to miss annie h. ide vailima, samoa [november 1891]. my dear louisa, your picture of the church, the photograph of yourself and your sister, and your very witty and pleasing letter, came all in a bundle, and made me feel i had my money's worth for that birthday. i am now, i must be, one of your nearest relatives; exactly what we are to each other, i do not know, i doubt if the case has ever happened before your papa ought to know, and i don't believe he does; but i think i ought to call you in the meanwhile, and until we get the advice of counsel learned in the law, my name-daughter. well, i was extremely pleased to see by the church that my name-daughter could draw; by the letter, that she was no fool; and by the photograph, that she was a pretty girl, which hurts nothing. see how virtues are rewarded! my first idea of adopting you was entirely charitable; and here i find that i am quite proud of it, and of you, and that i chose just the kind of name-daughter i wanted. for i can draw too, or rather i mean to say i could before i forgot how; and i am very far from being a fool myself, however much i may look it; and i am as beautiful as the day, or at least i once hoped that perhaps i might be going to be. and so i might. so that you see we are well met, and peers on these important points. i am very glad also that you are older than your sister. so should i have been, if i had had one. so that the number of points and virtues which you have inherited from your name-father is already quite surprising. i wish you would tell your father not that i like to encourage my rival that we have had a wonderful time here of late, and that they are having a cold day on mulinuu, and the consuls are writing reports, and i am writing to the times, and if we don't get rid of our friends this time i shall begin to despair of everything but my name-daughter. you are quite wrong as to the effect of the birthday on your age. from the moment the deed was registered (as it was in the public press with every solemnity), the 13th of november became your own and only birthday, and you ceased to have been born on christmas day. ask your father: i am sure he will tell you this is sound law. you are thus become a month and twelve days younger than you were, but will go on growing older for the future in the regular and human manner from one 13th november to the next. the effect on me is more doubtful; i may, as you suggest, live for ever; i might, on the other hand, come to pieces like the one-horse shay at a moment's notice; doubtless the step was risky, but i do not the least regret that which enables me to sign myself your revered and delighted name-father, robert louis stevenson. letter: to fred orr vailima, upolu, samoa, november 28th, 1891. dear sir, your obliging communication is to hand. i am glad to find that you have read some of my books, and to see that you spell my name right. this is a point (for some reason) of great difficulty; and i believe that a gentleman who can spell stevenson with a v at sixteen, should have a show for the presidency before fifty. by that time i, nearer to the wayside inn, predict that you will have outgrown your taste for autographs, but perhaps your son may have inherited the collection, and on the morning of the great day will recall my prophecy to your mind. and in the papers of 1921 (say) this letter may arouse a smile. whatever you do, read something else besides novels and newspapers; the first are good enough when they are good; the second, at their best, are worth nothing. read great books of literature and history; try to understand the roman empire and the middle ages; be sure you do not understand when you dislike them; condemnation is non-comprehension. and if you know something of these two periods, you will know a little more about to-day, and may be a good president. i send you my best wishes, and am yours, robert louis stevenson, author of a vast quantity of little books. letter: to e. l. burlingame [vailima, december 1891.] my dear burlingame, the end of the wrecker having but just come in, you will, i dare say, be appalled to receive three (possibly four) chapters of a new book of the least attractive sort: a history of nowhere in a corner, for no time to mention, running to a volume! well, it may very likely be an illusion; it is very likely no one could possibly wish to read it, but i wish to publish it. if you don't cotton to the idea, kindly set it up at my expense, and let me know your terms for publishing. the great affair to me is to have per return (if it might be) four or five better say half a dozen sets of the roughest proofs that can be drawn. there are a good many men here whom i want to read the blessed thing, and not one would have the energy to read ms. at the same time, if you care to glance at it, and have the time, i should be very glad of your opinion as to whether i have made any step at all towards possibly inducing folk at home to read matter so extraneous and outlandish. i become heavy and owlish; years sit upon me; it begins to seem to me to be a man's business to leave off his damnable faces and say his say. else i could have made it pungent and light and lively. in considering, kindly forget that i am r. l. s.; think of the four chapters as a book you are reading, by an inhabitant of our 'lovely but fatil' islands; and see if it could possibly amuse the hebetated public. i have to publish anyway, you understand; i have a purpose beyond; i am concerned for some of the parties to this quarrel. what i want to hear is from curiosity; what i want you to judge of is what we are to do with the book in a business sense. to me it is not business at all; i had meant originally to lay all the profits to the credit of samoa; when it comes to the pinch of writing, i judge this unfair i give too much and i mean to keep (if there be any profit at all) onehalf for the artisan; the rest i shall hold over to give to the samoans for that which i choose and against work done. i think i have never heard of greater insolence than to attempt such a subject; yet the tale is so strange and mixed, and the people so oddly charactered above all, the whites and the high note of the hurricane and the warships is so well prepared to take popular interest, and the latter part is so directly in the day's movement, that i am not without hope but some may read it; and if they don't, a murrain on them! here is, for the first time, a tale of greeks homeric greeks mingled with moderns, and all true; odysseus alongside of rajah brooke, proportion gardee; and all true. here is for the first time since the greeks (that i remember) the history of a handful of men, where all know each other in the eyes, and live close in a few acres, narrated at length, and with the seriousness of history. talk of the modern novel; here is a modern history. and if i had the misfortune to found a school, the legitimate historian might lie down and die, for he could never overtake his material. here is a little tale that has not 'caret'ed its 'vates'; 'sacer' is another point. r. l. s. letter: to henry james december 7th, 1891. my dear henry james, thanks for yours; your former letter was lost; so it appears was my long and masterly treatise on the tragic muse. i remember sending it very well, and there went by the same mail a long and masterly tractate to gosse about his daddy's life, for which i have been long expecting an acknowledgment, and which is plainly gone to the bottom with the other. if you see gosse, please mention it. these gems of criticism are now lost literature, like the tomes of alexandria. i could not do 'em again. and i must ask you to be content with a dull head, a weary hand, and short commons, for to-day, as i am physically tired with hard work of every kind, the labours of the planter and the author both piled upon me mountain deep. i am delighted beyond expression by bourget's book: he has phrases which affect me almost like montaigne; i had read ere this a masterly essay of his on pascal; this book does it; i write for all his essays by this mail, and shall try to meet him when i come to europe. the proposal is to pass a summer in france, i think in royat, where the faithful could come and visit me; they are now not many. i expect henry james to come and break a crust or two with us. i believe it will be only my wife and myself; and she will go over to england, but not i, or possibly incog. to southampton, and then to boscombe to see poor lady shelley. i am writing trying to write in a babel fit for the bottomless pit; my wife, her daughter, her grandson and my mother, all shrieking at each other round the house not in war, thank god! but the din is ultra martial, and the note of lloyd joins in occasionally, and the cause of this to-do is simply cacao, whereof chocolate comes. you may drink of our chocolate perhaps in five or six years from now, and not know it. it makes a fine bustle, and gives us some hard work, out of which i have slunk for to-day. i have a story coming out: god knows when or how; it answers to the name of the beach of falesa, and i think well of it. i was delighted with the tragic muse; i thought the muse herself one of your best works; i was delighted also to hear of the success of your piece, as you know i am a dam failure, and might have dined with the dinner club that daudet and these parties frequented. next day. i have just been breakfasting at baiae and brindisi, and the charm of bourget hag-rides me. i wonder if this exquisite fellow, all made of fiddle-strings and scent and intelligence, could bear any of my bald prose. if you think he could, ask colvin to send him a copy of these last essays of mine when they appear; and tell bourget they go to him from a south sea island as literal homage. i have read no new book for years that gave me the same literary thrill as his sensations d'italie. if (as i imagine) my cut-anddry literature would be death to him, and worse than death journalism be silent on the point. for i have a great curiosity to know him, and if he doesn't know my work, i shall have the better chance of making his acquaintance. i read the pupil the other day with great joy; your little boy is admirable; why is there no little boy like that unless he hails from the great republic? here i broke off, and wrote bourget a dedication; no use resisting; it's a love affair. o, he's exquisite, i bless you for the gift of him. i have really enjoyed this book as i almost as i used to enjoy books when i was going twenty twenty-three; and these are the years for reading! r. l. s. letter: to e. l. burlingame [vailima] jan 2nd, '92. my dear burlingame, overjoyed you were pleased with wrecker, and shall consider your protests. there is perhaps more art than you think for in the peccant chapter, where i have succeeded in packing into one a dedication, an explanation, and a termination. surely you had not recognised the phrase about boodle? it was a quotation from jim pinkerton, and seemed to me agreeably skittish. however, all shall be prayerfully considered. to come to a more painful subject. herewith go three more chapters of the wretched history; as you see, i approach the climax. i expect the book to be some 70,000 words, of which you have now 45. can i finish it for next mail? i am going to try! 'tis a long piece of journalism, and full of difficulties here and there, of this kind and that, and will make me a power of friends to be sure. there is one becker who will probably put up a window to me in the church where he was baptized; and i expect a testimonial from captain hand. sorry to let the mail go without the scott; this has been a bad month with me, and i have been below myself. i shall find a way to have it come by next, or know the reason why. the mail after, anyway. a bit of a sketch map appears to me necessary for my history; perhaps two. if i do not have any, 'tis impossible any one should follow; and i, even when not at all interested, demand that i shall be able to follow; even a tourist book without a map is a cross to me; and there must be others of my way of thinking. i inclose the very artless one that i think needful. vailima, in case you are curious, is about as far again behind tanugamanono as that is from the sea. m'clure is publishing a short story of mine, some 50,000 words, i think, the beach of falesa; when he's done with it, i want you and cassell to bring it out in a little volume; i shall send you a dedication for it; i believe it good; indeed, to be honest, very good. good gear that pleases the merchant. the other map that i half threaten is a chart for the hurricane. get me kimberley's report of the hurricane: not to be found here. it is of most importance; i must have it with my proofs of that part, if i cannot have it earlier, which now seems impossible. yours in hot haste, r. l. stevenson. letter: to j. m. barrie vailima, samoa, february 1892. dear mr. barrie, this is at least the third letter i have written you, but my correspondence has a bad habit of not getting so far as the post. that which i possess of manhood turns pale before the business of the address and envelope. but i hope to be more fortunate with this: for, besides the usual and often recurrent desire to thank you for your work-you are one of four that have come to the front since i was watching and had a corner of my own to watch, and there is no reason, unless it be in these mysterious tides that ebb and flow, and make and mar and murder the works of poor scribblers, why you should not do work of the best order. the tides have borne away my sentence, of which i was weary at any rate, and between authors i may allow myself so much freedom as to leave it pending. we are both scots besides, and i suspect both rather scotty scots; my own scotchness tends to intermittency, but is at times erisypelitous if that be rightly spelt. lastly, i have gathered we had both made our stages in the metropolis of the winds: our virgil's 'grey metropolis,' and i count that a lasting bond. no place so brands a man. finally, i feel it a sort of duty to you to report progress. this may be an error, but i believed i detected your hand in an article it may be an illusion, it may have been by one of those industrious insects who catch up and reproduce the handling of each emergent man but i'll still hope it was yours and hope it may please you to hear that the continuation of kidnapped is under way. i have not yet got to alan, so i do not know if he is still alive, but david seems to have a kick or two in his shanks. i was pleased to see how the anglo-saxon theory fell into the trap: i gave my lowlander a gaelic name, and even commented on the fact in the text; yet almost all critics recognised in alan and david a saxon and a celt. i know not about england; in scotland at least, where gaelic was spoken in fife little over the century ago, and in galloway not much earlier, i deny that there exists such a thing as a pure saxon, and i think it more than questionable if there be such a thing as a pure celt. but what have you to do with this? and what have i? let us continue to inscribe our little bits of tales, and let the heathen rage! yours, with sincere interest in your career, robert louis stevenson. letter: to william morris vailima, samoa, feb. 1892. master, a plea from a place so distant should have some weight, and from a heart so grateful should have some address. i have been long in your debt, master, and i did not think it could be so much increased as you have now increased it. i was long in your debt and deep in your debt for many poems that i shall never forget, and for sigurd before all, and now you have plunged me beyond payment by the saga library. and so now, true to human nature, being plunged beyond payment, i come and bark at your heels. for surely, master, that tongue that we write, and that you have illustrated so nobly, is yet alive. she has her rights and laws, and is our mother, our queen, and our instrument. now in that living tongue where has one sense, whereas another. in the heathslayings story, p. 241, line 13, it bears one of its ordinary senses. elsewhere and usually through the two volumes, which is all that has yet reached me of this entrancing publication, whereas is made to figure for where. for the love of god, my dear and honoured morris, use where, and let us know whereas we are, wherefore our gratitude shall grow, whereby you shall be the more honoured wherever men love clear language, whereas now, although we honour, we are troubled. whereunder, please find inscribed to this very impudent but yet very anxious document, the name of one of the most distant but not the youngest or the coldest of those who honour you. robert louis stevenson. letter: to mrs. charles fairchild [vailima, march 1892.] my dear mrs. fairchild, i am guilty in your sight, but my affairs besiege me. the chief-justiceship of a family of nineteen persons is in itself no sinecure, and sometimes occupies me for days: two weeks ago for four days almost entirely, and for two days entirely. besides which, i have in the last few months written all but one chapter of a history of samoa for the last eight or nine years; and while i was unavoidably delayed in the writing of this, awaiting material, put in one-half of david balfour, the sequel to kidnapped. add the ordinary impediments of life, and admire my busyness. i am now an old, but healthy skeleton, and degenerate much towards the machine. by six at work: stopped at half-past ten to give a history lesson to a stepgrandson; eleven, lunch; after lunch we have a musical performance till two; then to work again; bath, 4.40, dinner, five; cards in the evening till eight; and then to bed only i have no bed, only a chest with a mat and blankets and read myself to sleep. this is the routine, but often sadly interrupted. then you may see me sitting on the floor of my verandah haranguing and being harangued by squatting chiefs on a question of a road; or more privately holding an inquiry into some dispute among our familiars, myself on my bed, the boys on the floor for when it comes to the judicial i play dignity or else going down to apia on some more or less unsatisfactory errand. altogether it is a life that suits me, but it absorbs me like an ocean. that is what i have always envied and admired in scott; with all that immensity of work and study, his mind kept flexible, glancing to all points of natural interest. but the lean hot spirits, such as mine, become hypnotised with their bit occupations if i may use scotch to you it is so far more scornful than any english idiom. well, i can't help being a skeleton, and you are to take this devious passage for an apology. i thought aladdin capital fun; but why, in fortune, did he pretend it was moral at the end? the so-called nineteenth century, ou vat-il se nicher? 'tis a trifle, but pyle would do well to knock the passage out, and leave his boguey tale a boguey tale, and a good one at that. the arrival of your box was altogether a great success to the castaways. you have no idea where we live. do you know, in all these islands there are not five hundred whites, and no postal delivery, and only one village it is no more and would be a mean enough village in europe? we were asked the other day if vailima were the name of our post town, and we laughed. do you know, though we are but three miles from the village metropolis, we have no road to it, and our goods are brought on the pack-saddle? and do you know or i should rather say, can you believe or (in the famous old tichborne trial phrase) would you be surprised to learn, that all you have read of vailima or subpriorsford, as i call it is entirely false, and we have no ice-machine, and no electric light, and no water supply but the cistern of the heavens, and but one public room, and scarce a bedroom apiece? but, of course, it is well known that i have made enormous sums by my evanescent literature, and you will smile at my false humility. the point, however, is much on our minds just now. we are expecting an invasion of kiplings; very glad we shall be to see them; but two of the party are ladies, and i tell you we had to hold a council of war to stow them. you european ladies are so particular; with all of mine, sleeping has long become a public function, as with natives and those who go down much into the sea in ships. dear mrs. fairchild, i must go to my work. i have but two words to say in conclusion. first, civilisation is rot. second, console a savage with more of the milk of that over civilised being, your adorable schoolboy. as i wrote these remarkable words, i was called down to eight o'clock prayers, and have just worked through a chapter of joshua and five verses, with five treble choruses of a samoan hymn; but the music was good, our boys and precentress ('tis always a woman that leads) did better than i ever heard them, and to my great pleasure i understood it all except one verse. this gave me the more time to try and identify what the parts were doing, and further convict my dull ear. beyond the fact that the soprano rose to the tonic above, on one occasion i could recognise nothing. this is sickening, but i mean to teach my ear better before i am done with it or this vile carcase. i think it will amuse you (for a last word) to hear that our precentress she is the washerwoman is our shame. she is a good, healthy, comely, strapping young wench, full of energy and seriousness, a splendid workwoman, delighting to train our chorus, delighting in the poetry of the hymns, which she reads aloud (on the least provocation) with a great sentiment of rhythm. well, then, what is curious? ah, we did not know! but it was told us in a whisper from the cook-house she is not of good family. don't let it get out, please; everybody knows it, of course, here; there is no reason why europe and the states should have the advantage of me also. and the rest of my housefolk are all chief-people, i assure you. and my late overseer (far the best of his race) is a really serious chief with a good 'name.' tina is the name; it is not in the almanach de gotha, it must have got dropped at press. the odd thing is, we rather share the prejudice. i have almost always though not quite always found the higher the chief the better the man through all the islands; or, at least, that the best man came always from a highish rank. i hope helen will continue to prove a bright exception. with love to fairchild and the huge schoolboy, i am, my dear mrs. fairchild, yours very sincerely, robert louis stevenson. letter: to e. l. burlingame [vailima, march 1892.] my dear burlingame, herewith chapters ix. and x., and i am left face to face with the horrors and dilemmas of the present regimen: pray for those that go down to the sea in ships. i have promised henley shall have a chance to publish the hurricane chapter if he like, so please let the slips be sent quam primum to c. baxter, w.s., 11 s. charlotte street, edinburgh. i got on mighty quick with that chapter about five days of the toughest kind of work. god forbid i should ever have such another pirn to wind! when i invent a language, there shall be a direct and an indirect pronoun differently declined then writing would be some fun. direct indirect he tu him tum his tus ex.: he seized tum by tus throat; but tu at the same moment caught him by his hair. a fellow could write hurricanes with an inflection like that! yet there would he difficulties too. do what you please about the beach; and i give you carte blanche to write in the matter to baxter or telegraph if the time press to delay the english contingent. herewith the two last slips of the wrecker. i cannot go beyond. by the way, pray compliment the printers on the proofs of the samoa racket, but hint to them that it is most unbusiness-like and unscholarly to clip the edges of the galleys; these proofs should really have been sent me on large paper; and i and my friends here are all put to a great deal of trouble and confusion by the mistake. for, as you must conceive, in a matter so contested and complicated, the number of corrections and the length of explanations is considerable. please add to my former orders le chevalier des touches } by barbey d'aurevilly. les diaboliques . . . } correspondance de henri beyle (stendahl). yours sincerely, r. l. stevenson. letter: to t. w. dover vailima plantation, upolu, samoa, june 20th, 1892. sir, in reply to your very interesting letter, i cannot fairly say that i have ever been poor, or known what it was to want a meal. i have been reduced, however, to a very small sum of money, with no apparent prospect of increasing it; and at that time i reduced myself to practically one meal a day, with the most disgusting consequences to my health. at this time i lodged in the house of a working man, and associated much with others. at the same time, from my youth up, i have always been a good deal and rather intimately thrown among the working-classes, partly as a civil engineer in out-of-the-way places, partly from a strong and, i hope, not ill-favoured sentiment of curiosity. but the place where, perhaps, i was most struck with the fact upon which you comment was the house of a friend, who was exceedingly poor, in fact, i may say destitute, and who lived in the attic of a very tall house entirely inhabited by persons in varying stages of poverty. as he was also in ill-health, i made a habit of passing my afternoon with him, and when there it was my part to answer the door. the steady procession of people begging, and the expectant and confident manner in which they presented themselves, struck me more and more daily; and i could not but remember with surprise that though my father lived but a few streets away in a fine house, beggars scarce came to the door once a fortnight or a month. from that time forward i made it my business to inquire, and in the stories which i am very fond of hearing from all sorts and conditions of men, learned that in the time of their distress it was always from the poor they sought assistance, and almost always from the poor they got it. trusting i have now satisfactorily answered your question, which i thank you for asking, i remain, with sincere compliments, robert louis stevenson. letter: to e. l. burlingame vailima, summer 1892. my dear burlingame, first of all, you have all the corrections on 'the wrecker.' i found i had made what i meant and forgotten it, and was so careless as not to tell you. second, of course, and by all means, charge corrections on the samoa book to me; but there are not near so many as i feared. the lord hath dealt bountifully with me, and i believe all my advisers were amazed to see how nearly correct i had got the truck, at least i was. with this you will receive the whole revise and a typewritten copy of the last chapter. and the thing now is speed, to catch a possible revision of the treaty. i believe cassells are to bring it out, but baxter knows, and the thing has to be crammed through prestissimo, a la chasseur. you mention the belated barbeys; what about the equally belated pineros? and i hope you will keep your bookshop alive to supplying me continuously with the saga library. i cannot get enough of sagas; i wish there were nine thousand; talk about realism! all seems to flourish with you; i also prosper; none the less for being quit of that abhorred task, samoa. i could give a supper party here were there any one to sup. never was such a disagreeable task, but the thing had to be told. . . . there, i trust i am done with this cursed chapter of my career, bar the rotten eggs and broken bottles that may follow, of course. pray remember, speed is now all that can be asked, hoped, or wished. i give up all hope of proofs, revises, proof of the map, or sic like; and you on your side will try to get it out as reasonably seemly as may be. whole samoa book herewith. glory be to god. yours very sincerely, robert louis stevenson. letter: to charles baxter vailima plantation, upolu, samoan islands, 18th july 1892. my dear charles,. . . i have been now for some time contending with powers and principalities, and i have never once seen one of my own letters to the times. so when you see something in the papers that you think might interest the exiles of upolu, do not think twice, out with your saxpence, and send it flying to vailima. of what you say of the past, eh, man, it was a queer time, and awful miserable, but there's no sense in denying it was awful fun. do you mind the youth in highland garb and the tableful of coppers? do you mind the signal of waterloo place? hey, how the blood stands to the heart at such a memory! hae ye the notes o't? gie's them. gude's sake, man, gie's the notes o't; i mind ye made a tune o't an' played it on your pinanny; gie's the notes. dear lord, that past. glad to hear henley's prospects are fair: his new volume is the work of a real poet. he is one of those who can make a noise of his own with words, and in whom experience strikes an individual note. there is perhaps no more genuine poet living, bar the big guns. in case i cannot overtake an acknowledgment to himself by this mail, please let him hear of my pleasure and admiration. how poorly compares! he is all smart journalism and cleverness: it is all bright and shallow and limpid, like a business paper a good one, s'entend; but there is no blot of heart's blood and the old night: there are no harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his music; and in henley all of these; a touch, a sense within sense, a sound outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable, eloquent beyond all definition. the first london voluntary knocked me wholly. ever yours affectionately, my dear charles, robert louis stevenson. kind memories to your father and all friends. letter: to w. e. henley vailima plantation, upolu, samoa, august 1st, 1892. my dear henley, it is impossible to let your new volume pass in silence. i have not received the same thrill of poetry since g. m.'s joy of earth volume and love in a valley; and i do not know that even that was so intimate and deep. again and again, i take the book down, and read, and my blood is fired as it used to be in youth. andante con moto in the voluntaries, and the thing about the trees at night (no. xxiv. i think) are up to date my favourites. i did not guess you were so great a magician; these are new tunes, this is an undertone of the true apollo; these are not verse, they are poetry inventions, creations, in language. i thank you for the joy you have given me, and remain your old friend and present huge admirer, robert louis stevenson. the hand is really the hand of esau, but under a course of threatened scrivener's cramp. for the next edition of the book of verses, pray accept an emendation. last three lines of echoes no. xliv. read 'but life in act? how should the grave be victor over these, mother, a mother of men?' the two vocatives scatter the effect of this inimitable close. if you insist on the longer line, equip 'grave' with an epithet. r. l. s. letter: to e. l. burlingame vailima, upolu, august 1st, '92. my dear burlingame, herewith my grandfather. i have had rather a bad time suppressing the old gentleman, who was really in a very garrulous stage; as for getting him in order, i could do but little towards that; however, there are one or two points of interest which may justify us in printing. the swinging of his stick and not knowing the sailor of coruiskin, in particular, and the account of how he wrote the lives in the bell book particularly please me. i hope my own little introduction is not egoistic; or rather i do not care if it is. it was that old gentleman's blood that brought me to samoa. by the by, vols. vii., viii., and ix. of adams's history have never come to hand; no more have the dictionaries. please send me stonehenge on horse, stories and interludes by barry pain, and edinburgh sketches and memoirs by david masson. the wrecker has turned up. so far as i have seen, it is very satisfactory, but on pp. 548, 549, there has been a devil of a miscarriage. the two latin quotations instead of following each other being separated (doubtless for printing considerations) by a line of prose. my compliments to the printers; there is doubtless such a thing as good printing, but there is such a thing as good sense. the sequel to kidnapped, david balfour by name, is about threequarters done and gone to press for serial publication. by what i can find out it ought to be through hand with that and ready for volume form early next spring. yours very sincerely, r. l. s. letter: to andrew lang [vailima, august 1892.] my dear lang, i knew you would prove a trusty purveyor. the books you have sent are admirable. i got the name of my hero out of brown blair of balmyle francie blair. but whether to call the story blair of balmyle, or whether to call it the young chevalier, i have not yet decided. the admirable cameronian tract perhaps you will think this a cheat is to be boned into david balfour, where it will fit better, and really furnishes me with a desired foothold over a boggy place. later; no, it won't go in, and i fear i must give up 'the idolatrous occupant upon the throne,' a phrase that overjoyed me beyond expression. i am in a deuce of a flutter with politics, which i hate, and in which i certainly do not shine; but a fellow cannot stand aside and look on at such an exhibition as our government. 'taint decent; no gent can hold a candle to it. but it's a grind to be interrupted by midnight messengers and pass your days writing proclamations (which are never proclaimed) and petitions (which ain't petited) and letters to the times, which it makes my jaws yawn to re-read, and all your time have your heart with david balfour: he has just left glasgow this morning for edinburgh, james more has escaped from the castle; it is far more real to me than the behring sea or the baring brothers either he got the news of james more's escape from the lord advocate, and started off straight to comfort catriona. you don't know her; she's james more's daughter, and a respectable young wumman; the miss grants think so the lord advocate's daughters so there can't be anything really wrong. pretty soon we all go to holland, and be hanged; thence to dunkirk, and be damned; and the tale concludes in paris, and be poll-parrotted. this is the last authentic news. you are not a real hard-working novelist; not a practical novelist; so you don't know the temptation to let your characters maunder. dumas did it, and lived. but it is not war; it ain't sportsmanlike, and i have to be stopping their chatter all the time. brown's appendix is great reading. my only grief is that i can't use the idolatrous occupant. yours ever, r. l. s. blessing and praising you for a useful (though idolatrous) occupant of kensington. letter: to the countess of jersey august 14, 1745. to miss amelia balfour my dear cousin, we are going an expedition to leeward on tuesday morning. if a lady were perhaps to be encountered on horseback say, towards the gasi-gasi river about six a.m., i think we should have an episode somewhat after the style of the '45. what a misfortune, my dear cousin, that you should have arrived while your cousin graham was occupying my only guest-chamber for osterley park is not so large in samoa as it was at home but happily our friend haggard has found a corner for you! the king over the water the gasi-gasi water will be pleased to see the clan of balfour mustering so thick around his standard. i have (one serious word) been so lucky as to get a really secret interpreter, so all is for the best in our little adventure into the waverley novels. i am your affectionate cousin, robert louis stevenson. observe the stealth with which i have blotted my signature, but we must be political a outrance. letter: to the countess of jersey my dear cousin, i send for your information a copy of my last letter to the gentleman in question. 'tis thought more wise, in consideration of the difficulty and peril of the enterprise, that we should leave the town in the afternoon, and by several detachments. if you would start for a ride with the master of haggard and captain lockhart of lee, say at three o'clock of the afternoon, you would make some rencounters by the wayside which might be agreeable to your political opinions. all present will be staunch. the master of haggard might extend his ride a little, and return through the marsh and by the nuns' house (i trust that has the proper flavour), so as a little to diminish the effect of separation. i remain, your affectionate cousin to command, o tusitala. p.s. it is to be thought this present year of grace will be historical. letter: to mrs. charles fairchild [vailima, august 1892.] my dear mrs. fairchild, thank you a thousand times for your letter. you are the angel of (the sort of) information (that i care about); i appoint you successor to the newspaper press; and i beg of you, whenever you wish to gird at the age, or think the bugs out of proportion to the roses, or despair, or enjoy any cosmic or epochal emotion, to sit down again and write to the hermit of samoa. what do i think of it all? well, i love the romantic solemnity of youth; and even in this form, although not without laughter, i have to love it still. they are such ducks! but what are they made of? we were just as solemn as that about atheism and the stars and humanity; but we were all for belief anyway we held atheism and sociology (of which none of us, nor indeed anybody, knew anything) for a gospel and an iron rule of life; and it was lucky enough, or there would have been more windows broken. what is apt to puzzle one at first sight in the new youth is that, with such rickety and risky problems always at heart, they should not plunge down a niagara of dissolution. but let us remember the high practical timidity of youth. i was a particularly brave boy this i think of myself, looking back and plunged into adventures and experiments, and ran risks that it still surprises me to recall. but, dear me, what a fear i was in of that strange blind machinery in the midst of which i stood; and with what a compressed heart and what empty lungs i would touch a new crank and await developments! i do not mean to say i do not fear life still; i do; and that terror (for an adventurer like myself) is still one of the chief joys of living. but it was different indeed while i was yet girt with the priceless robes of inexperience; then the fear was exquisite and infinite. and so, when you see all these little ibsens, who seem at once so dry and so excitable, and faint in swathes over a play (i suppose for a wager) that would seem to me merely tedious, smile behind your hand, and remember the little dears are all in a blue funk. it must be very funny, and to a spectator like yourself i almost envy it. but never get desperate; human nature is human nature; and the roman empire, since the romans founded it and made our european human nature what it is, bids fair to go on and to be true to itself. these little bodies will all grow up and become men and women, and have heaps of fun; nay, and are having it now; and whatever happens to the fashion of the age, it makes no difference there are always high and brave and amusing lives to be lived; and a change of key, however exotic, does not exclude melody. even chinamen, hard as we find it to believe, enjoy being chinese. and the chinaman stands alone to be unthinkable; natural enough, as the representative of the only other great civilisation. take my people here at my doors; their life is a very good one; it is quite thinkable, quite acceptable to us. and the little dears will be soon skating on the other foot; sooner or later, in each generation, the one-half of them at least begin to remember all the material they had rejected when first they made and nailed up their little theory of life; and these become reactionaries or conservatives, and the ship of man begins to fill upon the other tack. here is a sermon, by your leave! it is your own fault, you have amused and interested me so much by your breath of the new youth, which comes to me from so far away, where i live up here in my mountain, and secret messengers bring me letters from rebels, and the government sometimes seizes them, and generally grumbles in its beard that stevenson should really be deported. o, my life is the more lively, never fear! it has recently been most amusingly varied by a visit from lady jersey. i took her over mysteriously (under the pseudonym of my cousin, miss amelia balfour) to visit mataafa, our rebel; and we had great fun, and wrote a ouida novel on our life here, in which every author had to describe himself in the ouida glamour, and of which for the jerseys intend printing it i must let you have a copy. my wife's chapter, and my description of myself, should, i think, amuse you. but there were finer touches still; as when belle and lady jersey came out to brush their teeth in front of the rebel king's palace, and the night guard squatted opposite on the grass and watched the process; or when i and my interpreter, and the king with his secretary, mysteriously disappeared to conspire. ever yours sincerely, r. l. stevenson. letter: to gordon browne vailima, samoa, autumn 1892. to the artist who did the illustrations to 'uma.' dear sir, i only know you under the initials g. b., but you have done some exceedingly spirited and satisfactory illustrations to my story the beach of falesa, and i wish to write and thank you expressly for the care and talent shown. such numbers of people can do good black and whites! so few can illustrate a story, or apparently read it. you have shown that you can do both, and your creation of wiltshire is a real illumination of the text. it was exactly so that wiltshire dressed and looked, and you have the line of his nose to a nicety. his nose is an inspiration. nor should i forget to thank you for case, particularly in his last appearance. it is a singular fact which seems to point still more directly to inspiration in your case that your missionary actually resembles the flesh-and-blood person from whom mr. tarleton was drawn. the general effect of the islands is all that could be wished; indeed i have but one criticism to make, that in the background of case taking the dollar from mr. tarleton's head head not hand, as the fools have printed it the natives have a little too much the look of africans. but the great affair is that you have been to the pains to illustrate my story instead of making conscientious black and whites of people sitting talking. i doubt if you have left unrepresented a single pictorial incident. i am writing by this mail to the editor in the hopes that i may buy from him the originals, and i am, dear sir, your very much obliged, robert louis stevenson. letter: to miss morse vailima, samoan islands, october 7th, 1892. dear madam, i have a great diffidence in answering your valued letter. it would be difficult for me to express the feelings with which i read it and am now trying to re-read it as i dictate this. you ask me to forgive what you say 'must seem a liberty,' and i find that i cannot thank you sufficiently or even find a word with which to qualify your letter. dear madam, such a communication even the vainest man would think a sufficient reward for a lifetime of labour. that i should have been able to give so much help and pleasure to your sister is the subject of my grateful wonder. that she, being dead, and speaking with your pen, should be able to repay the debt with such a liberal interest, is one of those things that reconcile us with the world and make us take hope again. i do not know what i have done to deserve so beautiful and touching a compliment; and i feel there is but one thing fit for me to say here, that i will try with renewed courage to go on in the same path, and to deserve, if not to receive, a similar return from others. you apologise for speaking so much about yourselves. dear madam, i thought you did so too little. i should have wished to have known more of those who were so sympathetic as to find a consolation in my work, and so graceful and so tactful as to acknowledge it in such a letter as was yours. will you offer to your mother the expression of a sympathy which (coming from a stranger) must seem very airy, but which yet is genuine; and accept for yourself my gratitude for the thought which inspired you to write to me and the words which you found to express it. robert louis stevenson. letter: to e. l. burlingame vailima plantation, samoan islands, oct. 10th, 1892. my dear burlingame, it is now, as you see, the 10th of october, and there has not reached the island of upolu one single copy, or rag of a copy, of the samoa book. i lie; there has come one, and that in the pocket of a missionary man who is at daggers drawn with me, who lends it to all my enemies, conceals it from all my friends, and is bringing a lawsuit against me on the strength of expressions in the same which i have forgotten, and now cannot see. this is pretty tragic, i think you will allow; and i was inclined to fancy it was the fault of the post office. but i hear from my sister-in-law mrs. sanchez that she is in the same case, and has received no 'footnote.' i have also to consider that i had no letter from you last mail, although you ought to have received by that time 'my grandfather and scott,' and 'me and my grandfather.' taking one consideration with another, therefore, i prefer to conceive that no. 743 broadway has fallen upon gentle and continuous slumber, and is become an enchanted palace among publishing houses. if it be not so, if the 'footnotes' were really sent, i hope you will fall upon the post office with all the vigour you possess. how does the wrecker go in the states? it seems to be doing exceptionally well in england. yours sincerely, robert louis stevenson. letter: to j. m. barrie vailima plantation, samoan islands, november 1st, 1892. dear mr. barrie, i can scarce thank you sufficiently for your extremely amusing letter. no, the auld licht idyls never reached me i wish it had, and i wonder extremely whether it would not be good for me to have a pennyworth of the auld licht pulpit. it is a singular thing that i should live here in the south seas under conditions so new and so striking, and yet my imagination so continually inhabit that cold old huddle of grey hills from which we come. i have just finished david balfour; i have another book on the stocks, the young chevalier, which is to be part in france and part in scotland, and to deal with prince charlie about the year 1749; and now what have i done but begun a third which is to be all moorland together, and is to have for a centrepiece a figure that i think you will appreciate that of the immortal braxfield braxfield himself is my grand premier, or, since you are so much involved in the british drama, let me say my heavy lead. . . . your descriptions of your dealings with lord rintoul are frightfully unconscientious. you should never write about anybody until you persuade yourself at least for the moment that you love him, above all anybody on whom your plot revolves. it will always make a hole in the book; and, if he has anything to do with the mechanism, prove a stick in your machinery. but you know all this better than i do, and it is one of your most promising traits that you do not take your powers too seriously. the little minister ought to have ended badly; we all know it did; and we are infinitely grateful to you for the grace and good feeling with which you lied about it. if you had told the truth, i for one could never have forgiven you. as you had conceived and written the earlier parts, the truth about the end, though indisputably true to fact, would have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord in art. if you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning. now your book began to end well. you let yourself fall in love with, and fondle, and smile at your puppets. once you had done that, your honour was committed at the cost of truth to life you were bound to save them. it is the blot on richard feverel, for instance, that it begins to end well; and then tricks you and ends ill. but in that case there is worse behind, for the ill-ending does not inherently issue from the plot the story had, in fact, ended well after the great last interview between richard and lucy and the blind, illogical bullet which smashes all has no more to do between the boards than a fly has to do with the room into whose open window it comes buzzing. it might have so happened; it needed not; and unless needs must, we have no right to pain our readers. i have had a heavy case of conscience of the same kind about my braxfield story. braxfield only his name is hermiston has a son who is condemned to death; plainly, there is a fine tempting fitness about this; and i meant he was to hang. but now on considering my minor characters, i saw there were five people who would in a sense who must break prison and attempt his rescue. they were capable, hardy folks, too, who might very well succeed. why should they not then? why should not young hermiston escape clear out of the country? and be happy, if he could, with his but soft! i will not betray my secret of my heroine. suffice it to breathe in your ear that she was what hardy calls (and others in their plain way don't) a pure woman. much virtue in a capital letter, such as yours was. write to me again in my infinite distance. tell me about your new book. no harm in telling me; i am too far off to be indiscreet; there are too few near me who would care to hear. i am rushes by the riverside, and the stream is in babylon: breathe your secrets to me fearlessly; and if the trade wind caught and carried them away, there are none to catch them nearer than australia, unless it were the tropic birds. in the unavoidable absence of my amanuensis, who is buying eels for dinner, i have thus concluded my despatch, like st. paul, with my own hand. and in the inimitable words of lord kames, faur ye weel, ye bitch. yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to e. l. burlingame vailima plantation, nov. 2nd, 1892. my dear burlingame, in the first place, i have to acknowledge receipt of your munificent cheque for three hundred and fifty dollars. glad you liked the scott voyage; rather more than i did upon the whole. as the proofs have not turned up at all, there can be no question of returning them, and i am therefore very much pleased to think you have arranged not to wait. the volumes of adams arrived along with yours of october 6th. one of the dictionaries has also blundered home, apparently from the colonies; the other is still to seek. i note and sympathise with your bewilderment as to falesa. my own direct correspondence with mr. baxter is now about three months in abeyance. altogether you see how well it would be if you could do anything to wake up the post office. not a single copy of the 'footnote' has yet reached samoa, but i hear of one having come to its address in hawaii. glad to hear good news of stoddard. yours sincerely, r. l. stevenson. p.s. since the above was written an aftermath of post matter came in, among which were the proofs of my grandfather. i shall correct and return them, but as i have lost all confidence in the post office, i shall mention here: first galley, 4th line from the bottom, for 'as' read 'or.' should i ever again have to use my work without waiting for proofs, bear in mind this golden principle. from a congenital defect, i must suppose, i am unable to write the word or wherever i write it the printer unerringly puts as and those who read for me had better, wherever it is possible, substitute or for as. this the more so since many writers have a habit of using as which is death to my temper and confusion to my face. r. l. s. letter: to lieutenant eeles vailima plantation, upolu, samoan islands, november 15th, 1892. dear eeles, in the first place, excuse me writing to you by another hand, as that is the way in which alone all my correspondence gets effected. before i took to this method, or rather before i found a victim, it simply didn't get effected. thank you again and again, first for your kind thought of writing to me, and second for your extremely amusing and interesting letter. you can have no guess how immediately interesting it was to our family. first of all, the poor soul at nukufetau is an old friend of ours, and we have actually treated him ourselves on a former visit to the island. i don't know if hoskin would approve of our treatment; it consisted, i believe, mostly in a present of stout and a recommendation to put nails in his water-tank. we also (as you seem to have done) recommended him to leave the island; and i remember very well how wise and kind we thought his answer. he had half-caste children (he said) who would suffer and perhaps be despised if he carried them elsewhere; if he left them there alone, they would almost certainly miscarry; and the best thing was that he should stay and die with them. but the cream of the fun was your meeting with burn. we not only know him, but (as the french say) we don't know anybody else; he is our intimate and adored original; and prepare your mind he was, is, and ever will be, tommy haddon! as i don't believe you to be inspired, i suspect you to have suspected this. at least it was a mighty happy suspicion. you are quite right: tommy is really 'a good chap,' though about as comic as they make them. i was extremely interested in your fiji legend, and perhaps even more so in your capital account of the curacoa's misadventure. alas! we have nothing so thrilling to relate. all hangs and fools on in this isle of misgovernment, without change, though not without novelty, but wholly without hope, unless perhaps you should consider it hopeful that i am still more immediately threatened with arrest. the confounded thing is, that if it comes off, i shall be sent away in the ringarooma instead of the curacoa. the former ship burst upon by the run she had been sent off by despatch and without orders and to make me a little more easy in my mind she brought newspapers clamouring for my incarceration. since then i have had a conversation with the german consul. he said he had read a review of my samoa book, and if the review were fair, must regard it as an insult, and one that would have to be resented. at the same time, i learn that letters addressed to the german squadron lie for them here in the post office. reports are current of other english ships being on the way i hope to goodness yours will be among the number. and i gather from one thing and another that there must be a holy row going on between the powers at home, and that the issue (like all else connected with samoa) is on the knees of the gods. one thing, however, is pretty sure if that issue prove to be a german protectorate, i shall have to tramp. can you give us any advice as to a fresh field of energy? we have been searching the atlas, and it seems difficult to fill the bill. how would rarotonga do? i forget if you have been there. the best of it is that my new house is going up like winking, and i am dictating this letter to the accompaniment of saws and hammers. a hundred black boys and about a score draught-oxen perished, or at least barely escaped with their lives, from the mud-holes on our road, bringing up the materials. it will be a fine legacy to h.i.g.m.'s protectorate, and doubtless the governor will take it for his country-house. the ringarooma people, by the way, seem very nice. i liked stansfield particularly. our middy has gone up to san francisco in pursuit of the phantom education. we have good word of him, and i hope he will not be in disgrace again, as he was when the hope of the british navy need i say that i refer to admiral burney? honoured us last. the next time you come, as the new house will be finished, we shall be able to offer you a bed. nares and meiklejohn may like to hear that our new room is to be big enough to dance in. it will be a very pleasant day for me to see the curacoa in port again and at least a proper contingent of her officers 'skipping in my 'all.' we have just had a feast on my birthday at which we had three of the ringaromas, and i wish they had been three curacoas say yourself, hoskin, and burney the ever great. (consider this an invitation.) our boys had got the thing up regardless. there were two huge sows oh, brutes of animals that would have broken down a hansom cab four smaller pigs, two barrels of beef, and a horror of vegetables and fowls. we sat down between forty and fifty in a big new native house behind the kitchen that you have never seen, and ate and public spoke till all was blue. then we had about half an hour's holiday with some beer and sherry and brandy and soda to restrengthen the european heart, and then out to the old native house to see a siva. finally, all the guests were packed off in a trackless black night and down a road that was rather fitted for the curacoa than any human pedestrian, though to be sure i do not know the draught of the curacoa. my ladies one and all desire to be particularly remembered to our friends on board, and all look forward, as i do myself, in the hope of your return. yours sincerely, robert louis stevenson. and let me hear from you again! letter: to charles baxter 1st dec. '92. . . . i have a novel on the stocks to be called the justice-clerk. it is pretty scotch, the grand premier is taken from braxfield (oh, by the by, send me cockburn's memorials) and some of the story is well queer. the heroine is seduced by one man, and finally disappears with the other man who shot him. . . . mind you, i expect the justice-clerk to be my masterpiece. my braxfield is already a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, and so far as he has gone far my best character. [later.] second thought. i wish pitcairn's criminal trials quam primum. also, an absolutely correct text of the scots judiciary oath. also, in case pitcairn does not come down late enough, i wish as full a report as possible of a scotch murder trial between 17901820. understand, the fullest possible. is there any book which would guide me as to the following facts? the justice-clerk tries some people capitally on circuit. certain evidence cropping up, the charge is transferred to the j.-c.'s own son. of course, in the next trial the j.-c. is excluded, and the case is called before the lord-justice general. where would this trial have to be? i fear in edinburgh, which would not suit my view. could it be again at the circuit town? robert louis stevenson. letter: to mrs. jenkin december 5th, 1892. my dear mrs. jenkin, . . . so much said, i come with guilty speed to what more immediately concerns myself. spare us a month or two for old sake's sake, and make my wife and me happy and proud. we are only fourteen days from san francisco, just about a month from liverpool; we have our new house almost finished. the thing can be done; i believe we can make you almost comfortable. it is the loveliest climate in the world, our political troubles seem near an end. it can be done, it must! do, please, make a virtuous effort, come and take a glimpse of a new world i am sure you do not dream of, and some old friends who do often dream of your arrival. alas, i was just beginning to get eloquent, and there goes the lunch bell, and after lunch i must make up the mail. do come. you must not come in february or march bad months. from april on it is delightful. your sincere friend, robert louis stevenson. letter: to henry james december 5th, 1892. my dear james, how comes it so great a silence has fallen? the still small voice of self-approval whispers me it is not from me. i have looked up my register, and find i have neither written to you nor heard from you since june 22nd, on which day of grace that invaluable work began. this is not as it should be. how to get back? i remember acknowledging with rapture the of the master, and i remember receiving marbot: was that our last relation? hey, well! anyway, as you may have probably gathered from the papers, i have been in devilish hot water, and (what may be new to you) devilish hard at work. in twelve calendar months i finished the wrecker, wrote all of falesa but the first chapter (well, much of), the history of samoa, did something here and there to my life of my grandfather, and began and finished david balfour. what do you think of it for a year? since then i may say i have done nothing beyond draft three chapters of another novel, the justiceclerk, which ought to be shorter and a blower at least if it don't make a spoon, it will spoil the horn of an aurochs (if that's how it should be spelt). on the hot water side it may entertain you to know that i have been actually sentenced to deportation by my friends on mulinuu, c. j. cedercrantz, and baron senfft von pilsach. the awful doom, however, declined to fall, owing to circumstances over which. i only heard of it (so to speak) last night. i mean officially, but i had walked among rumours. the whole tale will be some day put into my hand, and i shall share it with humorous friends. it is likely, however, by my judgment, that this epoch of gaiety in samoa will soon cease; and the fierce white light of history will beat no longer on yours sincerely and his fellows here on the beach. we ask ourselves whether the reason will more rejoice over the end of a disgraceful business, or the unregenerate man more sorrow over the stoppage of the fun. for, say what you please, it has been a deeply interesting time. you don't know what news is, nor what politics, nor what the life of man, till you see it on so small a scale and with your own liberty on the board for stake. i would not have missed it for much. and anxious friends beg me to stay at home and study human nature in brompton drawing-rooms! farceurs! and anyway you know that such is not my talent. i could never be induced to take the faintest interest in brompton qua brompton or a drawing-room qua a drawing-room. i am an epick writer with a k to it, but without the necessary genius. hurry up with another book of stories. i am now reduced to two of my contemporaries, you and barrie o, and kipling you and barrie and kipling are now my muses three. and with kipling, as you know, there are reservations to be made. and you and barrie don't write enough. i should say i also read anstey when he is serious, and can almost always get a happy day out of marion crawford ce n'est pas toujours la guerre, but it's got life to it and guts, and it moves. did you read the witch of prague? nobody could read it twice, of course; and the first time even it was necessary to skip. e pur si muove. but barrie is a beauty, the little minister and the window in thrums, eh? stuff in that young man; but he must see and not be too funny. genius in him, but there's a journalist at his elbow there's the risk. look, what a page is the glove business in the window! knocks a man flat; that's guts, if you please. why have i wasted the little time that is left with a sort of naked review article? i don't know, i'm sure. i suppose a mere ebullition of congested literary talk i am beginning to think a visit from friends would be due. wish you could come! let us have your news anyway, and forgive this silly stale effusion. yours ever, robert louis stevenson. letter: to j. m. barrie [vailima, december 1892.] dear j. m. barrie, you will be sick of me soon; i cannot help it. i have been off my work for some time, and re-read the edinburgh eleven, and had a great mind to write a parody and give you all your sauce back again, and see how you would like it yourself. and then i read (for the first time i know not how) the window in thrums; i don't say that it is better than the minister; it's less of a tale and there is a beauty, a material beauty, of the tale ipse, which clever critics nowadays long and love to forget; it has more real flaws; but somehow it is well, i read it last anyway, and it's by barrie. and he's the man for my money. the glove is a great page; it is startlingly original, and as true as death and judgment. tibbie birse in the burial is great, but i think it was a journalist that got in the word 'official.' the same character plainly had a word to say to thomas haggard. thomas affects me as a lie i beg your pardon; doubtless he was somebody you knew, that leads people so far astray. the actual is not the true. i am proud to think you are a scotchman though to be sure i know nothing of that country, being only an english tourist, quo' gavin ogilvy. i commend the hard case of mr. gavin ogilvy to j. m. barrie, whose work is to me a source of living pleasure and heartfelt national pride. there are two of us now that the shirra might have patted on the head. and please do not think when i thus seem to bracket myself with you, that i am wholly blinded with vanity. jess is beyond my frontier line; i could not touch her skirt; i have no such glamour of twilight on my pen. i am a capable artist; but it begins to look to me as if you were a man of genius. take care of yourself, for my sake. it's a devilish hard thing for a man who writes so many novels as i do, that i should get so few to read. and i can read yours, and i love them. a pity for you that my amanuensis is not on stock to-day, and my own hand perceptibly worse than usual. yours, robert louis stevenson. december 5th, 1892. p.s. they tell me your health is not strong. man, come out here and try the prophet's chamber. there's only one bad point to us we do rise early. the amanuensis states that you are a lover of silence and that ours is a noisy house and she is a chatterbox i am not answerable for these statements, though i do think there is a touch of garrulity about my premises. we have so little to talk about, you see. the house is three miles from town, in the midst of great silent forests. there is a burn close by, and when we are not talking you can hear the burn, and the birds, and the sea breaking on the coast three miles away and six hundred feet below us, and about three times a month a bell i don't know where the bell is, nor who rings it; it may be the bell in hans andersen's story for all i know. it is never hot here 86 in the shade is about our hottest and it is never cold except just in the early mornings. take it for all in all, i suppose this island climate to be by far the healthiest in the world even the influenza entirely lost its sting. only two patients died, and one was a man nearly eighty, and the other a child below four months. i won't tell you if it is beautiful, for i want you to come here and see for yourself. everybody on the premises except my wife has some scotch blood in their veins i beg your pardon except the natives and then my wife is a dutchwoman and the natives are the next thing conceivable to highlanders before the forty-five. we would have some grand cracks! r. l. s. come, it will broaden your mind, and be the making of me. chapter xii life in samoa, continued, january 1893-december 1894 letter: to charles baxter [april, 1893.] . . . about the justice-clerk, i long to go at it, but will first try to get a short story done. since january i have had two severe illnesses, my boy, and some heart-breaking anxiety over fanny; and am only now convalescing. i came down to dinner last night for the first time, and that only because the service had broken down, and to relieve an inexperienced servant. nearly four months now i have rested my brains; and if it be true that rest is good for brains, i ought to be able to pitch in like a giant refreshed. before the autumn, i hope to send you some justice-clerk, or weir of hermiston, as colvin seems to prefer; i own to indecision. received syntax, dance of death, and pitcairn, which last i have read from end to end since its arrival, with vast improvement. what a pity it stops so soon! i wonder is there nothing that seems to prolong the series? why doesn't some young man take it up? how about my old friend fountainhall's decisions? i remember as a boy that there was some good reading there. perhaps you could borrow me that, and send it on loan; and perhaps laing's memorials therewith; and a work i'm ashamed to say i have never read, balfour's letters. . . . i have come by accident, through a correspondent, on one very curious and interesting fact namely, that stevenson was one of the names adopted by the macgregors at the proscription. the details supplied by my correspondent are both convincing and amusing; but it would be highly interesting to find out more of this. r. l. s. letter: to a. conan doyle vailima, apia, samoa, april 5th, 1893. dear sir, you have taken many occasions to make yourself very agreeable to me, for which i might in decency have thanked you earlier. it is now my turn; and i hope you will allow me to offer you my compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of sherlock holmes. that is the class of literature that i like when i have the toothache. as a matter of fact, it was a pleurisy i was enjoying when i took the volume up; and it will interest you as a medical man to know that the cure was for the moment effectual. only the one thing troubles me: can this be my old friend joe bell? i am, yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. p.s. and lo, here is your address supplied me here in samoa! but do not take mine, o frolic fellow spookist, from the same source; mine is wrong. r. l. s. letter: to s. r. crockett vailima, samoa, may 17th, 1893. dear mr. crockett, i do not owe you two letters, nor yet nearly one, sir! the last time i heard of you, you wrote about an accident, and i sent you a letter to my lawyer, charles baxter, which does not seem to have been presented, as i see nothing of it in his accounts. query, was that lost? i should not like you to think i had been so unmannerly and so inhuman. if you have written since, your letter also has miscarried, as is much the rule in this part of the world, unless you register. your book is not yet to hand, but will probably follow next month. i detected you early in the bookman, which i usually see, and noted you in particular as displaying a monstrous ingratitude about the footnote. well, mankind is ungrateful; 'man's ingratitude to man makes countless thousands mourn,' quo' rab or words to that effect. by the way, an anecdote of a cautious sailor: 'bill, bill,' says i to him, 'or words to that effect.' i shall never take that walk by the fisher's tryst and glencorse. i shall never see auld reekie. i shall never set my foot again upon the heather. here i am until i die, and here will i be buried. the word is out and the doom written. or, if i do come, it will be a voyage to a further goal, and in fact a suicide; which, however, if i could get my family all fixed up in the money way, i might, perhaps, perform, or attempt. but there is a plaguey risk of breaking down by the way; and i believe i shall stay here until the end comes like a good boy, as i am. if i did it, i should put upon my trunks: 'passenger to hades.' how strangely wrong your information is! in the first place, i should never carry a novel to sydney; i should post it from here. in the second place, weir of hermiston is as yet scarce begun. it's going to be excellent, no doubt; but it consists of about twenty pages. i have a tale, a shortish tale in length, but it has proved long to do, the ebb tide, some part of which goes home this mail. it is by me and mr. osbourne, and is really a singular work. there are only four characters, and three of them are bandits well, two of them are, and the third is their comrade and accomplice. it sounds cheering, doesn't it? barratry, and drunkenness, and vitriol, and i cannot tell you all what, are the beams of the roof. and yet i don't know i sort of think there's something in it. you'll see (which is more than i ever can) whether davis and attwater come off or not. weir of hermiston is a much greater undertaking, and the plot is not good, i fear; but lord justice-clerk hermiston ought to be a plum. of other schemes, more or less executed, it skills not to speak. i am glad to hear so good an account of your activity and interests, and shall always hear from you with pleasure; though i am, and must continue, a mere sprite of the inkbottle, unseen in the flesh. please remember me to your wife and to the four-yearold sweetheart, if she be not too engrossed with higher matters. do you know where the road crosses the burn under glencorse church? go there, and say a prayer for me: moriturus salutat. see that it's a sunny day; i would like it to be a sunday, but that's not possible in the premises; and stand on the right-hand bank just where the road goes down into the water, and shut your eyes, and if i don't appear to you! well, it can't be helped, and will be extremely funny. i have no concern here but to work and to keep an eye on this distracted people. i live just now wholly alone in an upper room of my house, because the whole family are down with influenza, bar my wife and myself. i get my horse up sometimes in the afternoon and have a ride in the woods; and i sit here and smoke and write, and rewrite, and destroy, and rage at my own impotence, from six in the morning till eight at night, with trifling and not always agreeable intervals for meals. i am sure you chose wisely to keep your country charge. there a minister can be something, not in a town. in a town, the most of them are empty houses and public speakers. why should you suppose your book will be slated because you have no friends? a new writer, if he is any good, will be acclaimed generally with more noise than he deserves. but by this time you will know for certain. i am, yours sincerely, robert louis stevenson. p.s. be it known to this fluent generation that i r. l. s., in the forty-third of my age and the twentieth of my professional life, wrote twenty-four pages in twenty-one days, working from six to eleven, and again in the afternoon from two to four or so, without fail or interruption. such are the gifts the gods have endowed us withal: such was the facility of this prolific writer! r. l. s. letter: to augustus st. gaudens vailima, samoa, may 29th, 1893 my dear god-like sculptor, i wish in the most delicate manner in the world to insinuate a few commissions:no. 1. is for a couple of copies of my medallion, as gilt-edged and high-toned as it is possible to make them. one is for our house here, and should be addressed as above. the other is for my friend sidney colvin, and should be addressed sidney colvin, esq., keeper of the print room, british museum, london. no. 2. this is a rather large order, and demands some explanation. our house is lined with varnished wood of a dark ruddy colour, very beautiful to see; at the same time, it calls very much for gold; there is a limit to picture frames, and really you know there has to be a limit to the pictures you put inside of them. accordingly, we have had an idea of a certain kind of decoration, which, i think, you might help us to make practical. what we want is an alphabet of gilt letters (very much such as people play with), and all mounted on spikes like drawing-pins; say two spikes to each letter, one at top, and one at bottom. say that they were this height, i i i and that you chose a model of some really exquisitely fine, clear type from some roman monument, and that they were made either of metal or some composition gilt the point is, could not you, in your land of wooden houses, get a manufacturer to take the idea and manufacture them at a venture, so that i could get two or three hundred pieces or so at a moderate figure? you see, suppose you entertain an honoured guest, when he goes he leaves his name in gilt letters on your walls; an infinity of fun and decoration can be got out of hospitable and festive mottoes; and the doors of every room can be beautified by the legend of their names. i really think there is something in the idea, and you might be able to push it with the brutal and licentious manufacturer, using my name if necessary, though i should think the name of the god-like sculptor would be more germane. in case you should get it started, i should tell you that we should require commas in order to write the samoan language, which is full of words written thus: la'u, ti'e ti'e. as the samoan language uses but a very small proportion of the consonants, we should require a double or treble stock of all vowels and of f, g, l, u, n, p, s, t, and v. the other day in sydney, i think you might be interested to hear, i was sculpt a second time by a man called -, as well as i can remember and read. i mustn't criticise a present, and he had very little time to do it in. it is thought by my family to be an excellent likeness of mark twain. this poor fellow, by the by, met with the devil of an accident. a model of a statue which he had just finished with a desperate effort was smashed to smithereens on its way to exhibition. please be sure and let me know if anything is likely to come of this letter business, and the exact cost of each letter, so that i may count the cost before ordering. yours sincerely, robert louis stevenson. letter: to edmund gosse june 10th, 1893. my dear gosse, my mother tells me you never received the very long and careful letter that i sent you more than a year ago; or is it two years? i was indeed so much surprised at your silence that i wrote to henry james and begged him to inquire if you had received it; his reply was an (if possible) higher power of the same silence; whereupon i bowed my head and acquiesced. but there is no doubt the letter was written and sent; and i am sorry it was lost, for it contained, among other things, an irrecoverable criticism of your father's life, with a number of suggestions for another edition, which struck me at the time as excellent. well, suppose we call that cried off, and begin as before? it is fortunate indeed that we can do so, being both for a while longer in the day. but, alas! when i see 'works of the late j. a. s.,' i can see no help and no reconciliation possible. i wrote him a letter, i think, three years ago, heard in some roundabout way that he had received it, waited in vain for an answer (which had probably miscarried), and in a humour between frowns and smiles wrote to him no more. and now the strange, poignant, pathetic, brilliant creature is gone into the night, and the voice is silent that uttered so much excellent discourse; and i am sorry that i did not write to him again. yet i am glad for him; light lie the turf! the saturday is the only obituary i have seen, and i thought it very good upon the whole. i should be half tempted to write an in memoriam, but i am submerged with other work. are you going to do it? i very much admire your efforts that way; you are our only academician. so you have tried fiction? i will tell you the truth: when i saw it announced, i was so sure you would send it to me, that i did not order it! but the order goes this mail, and i will give you news of it. yes, honestly, fiction is very difficult; it is a terrible strain to carry your characters all that time. and the difficulty of according the narrative and the dialogue (in a work in the third person) is extreme. that is one reason out of half a dozen why i so often prefer the first. it is much in my mind just now, because of my last work, just off the stocks three days ago, the ebb tide: a dreadful, grimy business in the third person, where the strain between a vilely realistic dialogue and a narrative style pitched about (in phrase) 'four notes higher' than it should have been, has sown my head with grey hairs; or i believe so if my head escaped, my heart has them. the truth is, i have a little lost my way, and stand bemused at the cross-roads. a subject? ay, i have dozens; i have at least four novels begun, they are none good enough; and the mill waits, and i'll have to take second best. the ebb tide i make the world a present of; i expect, and, i suppose, deserve to be torn to pieces; but there was all that good work lying useless, and i had to finish it! all your news of your family is pleasant to hear. my wife has been very ill, but is now better; i may say i am ditto, the ebb tide having left me high and dry, which is a good example of the mixed metaphor. our home, and estate, and our boys, and the politics of the island, keep us perpetually amused and busy; and i grind away with an odd, dogged, down sensation and an idea in petto that the game is about played out. i have got too realistic, and i must break the trammels i mean i would if i could; but the yoke is heavy. i saw with amusement that zola says the same thing; and truly the debacle was a mighty big book, i have no need for a bigger, though the last part is a mere mistake in my opinion. but the emperor, and sedan, and the doctor at the ambulance, and the horses in the field of battle, lord, how gripped it is! what an epical performance! according to my usual opinion, i believe i could go over that book and leave a masterpiece by blotting and no ulterior art. but that is an old story, ever new with me. taine gone, and renan, and symonds, and tennyson, and browning; the suns go swiftly out, and i see no suns to follow, nothing but a universal twilight of the demi-divinities, with parties like you and me and lang beating on toy drums and playing on penny whistles about glow-worms. but zola is big anyway; he has plenty in his belly; too much, that is all; he wrote the debacle and he wrote la bete humaine, perhaps the most excruciatingly silly book that i ever read to an end. and why did i read it to an end, w. e. g.? because the animal in me was interested in the lewdness. not sincerely, of course, my mind refusing to partake in it; but the flesh was slightly pleased. and when it was done, i cast it from me with a peal of laughter, and forgot it, as i would forget a montepin. taine is to me perhaps the chief of these losses; i did luxuriate in his origines; it was something beyond literature, not quite so good, if you please, but so much more systematic, and the pages that had to be 'written' always so adequate. robespierre, napoleon, were both excellent good. june 18th, '93 well, i have left fiction wholly, and gone to my grandfather, and on the whole found peace. by next month my grandfather will begin to be quite grown up. i have already three chapters about as good as done; by which, of course, as you know, i mean till further notice or the next discovery. i like biography far better than fiction myself: fiction is too free. in biography you have your little handful of facts, little bits of a puzzle, and you sit and think, and fit 'em together this way and that, and get up and throw 'em down, and say damn, and go out for a walk. and it's real soothing; and when done, gives an idea of finish to the writer that is very peaceful. of course, it's not really so finished as quite a rotten novel; it always has and always must have the incurable illogicalities of life about it, the fathoms of slack and the miles of tedium. still, that's where the fun comes in; and when you have at last managed to shut up the castle spectre (dulness), the very outside of his door looks beautiful by contrast. there are pages in these books that may seem nothing to the reader; but you remember what they were, you know what they might have been, and they seem to you witty beyond comparison. in my grandfather i've had (for instance) to give up the temporal order almost entirely; doubtless the temporal order is the great foe of the biographer; it is so tempting, so easy, and lo! there you are in the bog! ever yours, r. l. stevenson. with all kind messages from self and wife to you and yours. my wife is very much better, having been the early part of this year alarmingly ill. she is now all right, only complaining of trifles, annoying to her, but happily not interesting to her friends. i am in a hideous state, having stopped drink and smoking; yes, both. no wine, no tobacco; and the dreadful part of it is that looking forward i have what shall i say? nauseating intimations that it ought to be for ever. letter: to henry james vailima plantation, samoan islands, june 17th, 1893. my dear henry james, i believe i have neglected a mail in answering yours. you will be very sorry to hear that my wife was exceedingly ill, and very glad to hear that she is better. i cannot say that i feel any more anxiety about her. we shall send you a photograph of her taken in sydney in her customary island habit as she walks and gardens and shrilly drills her brown assistants. she was very ill when she sat for it, which may a little explain the appearance of the photograph. it reminds me of a friend of my grandmother's who used to say when talking to younger women, 'aweel, when i was young, i wasnae just exactly what ye wad call bonny, but i was pale, penetratin', and interestin'.' i would not venture to hint that fanny is 'no bonny,' but there is no doubt but that in this presentment she is 'pale, penetratin', and interesting.' as you are aware, i have been wading deep waters and contending with the great ones of the earth, not wholly without success. it is, you may be interested to hear, a dreary and infuriating business. if you can get the fools to admit one thing, they will always save their face by denying another. if you can induce them to take a step to the right hand, they generally indemnify themselves by cutting a caper to the left. i always held (upon no evidence whatever, from a mere sentiment or intuition) that politics was the dirtiest, the most foolish, and the most random of human employments. i always held, but now i know it! fortunately, you have nothing to do with anything of the kind, and i may spare you the horror of further details. i received from you a book by a man by the name of anatole france. why should i disguise it? i have no use for anatole. he writes very prettily, and then afterwards? baron marbot was a different pair of shoes. so likewise is the baron de vitrolles, whom i am now perusing with delight. his escape in 1814 is one of the best pages i remember anywhere to have read. but marbot and vitrolles are dead, and what has become of the living? it seems as if literature were coming to a stand. i am sure it is with me; and i am sure everybody will say so when they have the privilege of reading the ebb tide. my dear man, the grimness of that story is not to be depicted in words. there are only four characters, to be sure, but they are such a troop of swine! and their behaviour is really so deeply beneath any possible standard, that on a retrospect i wonder i have been able to endure them myself until the yarn was finished. well, there is always one thing; it will serve as a touchstone. if the admirers of zola admire him for his pertinent ugliness and pessimism, i think they should admire this; but if, as i have long suspected, they neither admire nor understand the man's art, and only wallow in his rancidness like a hound in offal, then they will certainly be disappointed in the ebb tide. alas! poor little tale, it is not even rancid. by way of an antidote or febrifuge, i am going on at a great rate with my history of the stevensons, which i hope may prove rather amusing, in some parts at least. the excess of materials weighs upon me. my grandfather is a delightful comedy part; and i have to treat him besides as a serious and (in his way) a heroic figure, and at times i lose my way, and i fear in the end will blur the effect. however, a la grace de dieu! i'll make a spoon or spoil a horn. you see, i have to do the building of the bell rock by cutting down and packing my grandsire's book, which i rather hope i have done, but do not know. and it makes a huge chunk of a very different style and quality between chapters ii. and iv. and it can't be helped! it is just a delightful and exasperating necessity. you know, the stuff is really excellent narrative: only, perhaps there's too much of it! there is the rub. well, well, it will be plain to you that my mind is affected; it might be with less. the ebb tide and northern lights are a full meal for any plain man. i have written and ordered your last book, the real thing, so be sure and don't send it. what else are you doing or thinking of doing? news i have none, and don't want any. i have had to stop all strong drink and all tobacco, and am now in a transition state between the two, which seems to be near madness. you never smoked, i think, so you can never taste the joys of stopping it. but at least you have drunk, and you can enter perhaps into my annoyance when i suddenly find a glass of claret or a brandy-and-water give me a splitting headache the next morning. no mistake about it; drink anything, and there's your headache. tobacco just as bad for me. if i live through this breach of habit, i shall be a whitelivered puppy indeed. actually i am so made, or so twisted, that i do not like to think of a life without the red wine on the table and the tobacco with its lovely little coal of fire. it doesn't amuse me from a distance. i may find it the garden of eden when i go in, but i don't like the colour of the gate-posts. suppose somebody said to you, you are to leave your home, and your books, and your clubs, and go out and camp in mid-africa, and command an expedition, you would howl, and kick, and flee. i think the same of a life without wine and tobacco; and if this goes on, i've got to go and do it, sir, in the living flesh! i thought bourget was a friend of yours? and i thought the french were a polite race? he has taken my dedication with a stately silence that has surprised me into apoplexy. did i go and dedicate my book to the nasty alien, and the 'norrid frenchman, and the bloody furrineer? well, i wouldn't do it again; and unless his case is susceptible of explanation, you might perhaps tell him so over the walnuts and the wine, by way of speeding the gay hours. sincerely, i thought my dedication worth a letter. if anything be worth anything here below! do you know the story of the man who found a button in his hash, and called the waiter? 'what do you call that?' says he. 'well,' said the waiter, 'what d'you expect? expect to find a gold watch and chain?' heavenly apologue, is it not? i expected (rather) to find a gold watch and chain; i expected to be able to smoke to excess and drink to comfort all the days of my life; and i am still indignantly staring on this button! it's not even a button; it's a teetotal badge! ever yours, robert louis stevenson. letter: to henry james apia, july 1893. my dear henry james, yes. les trophees, on the whole, a book. it is excellent; but is it a life's work? i always suspect you of a volume of sonnets up your sleeve; when is it coming down? i am in one of my moods of wholesale impatience with all fiction and all verging on it, reading instead, with rapture, fountainhall's decisions. you never read it: well, it hasn't much form, and is inexpressibly dreary, i should suppose, to others and even to me for pages. it's like walking in a mine underground, and with a damned bad lantern, and picking out pieces of ore. this, and war, will be my excuse for not having read your (doubtless) charming work of fiction. the revolving year will bring me round to it; and i know, when fiction shall begin to feel a little solid to me again, that i shall love it, because it's james. do you know, when i am in this mood, i would rather try to read a bad book? it's not so disappointing, anyway. and fountainhall is prime, two big folio volumes, and all dreary, and all true, and all as terse as an obituary; and about one interesting fact on an average in twenty pages, and ten of them unintelligible for technicalities. there's literature, if you like! it feeds; it falls about you genuine like rain. rain: nobody has done justice to rain in literature yet: surely a subject for a scot. but then you can't do rain in that ledger-book style that i am trying for or between a ledger-book and an old ballad. how to get over, how to escape from, the besotting particularity of fiction. 'roland approached the house; it had green doors and window blinds; and there was a scraper on the upper step.' to hell with roland and the scraper! yours ever, r. l. s. letter: to a. conan doyle vailima, july 12, 1893. my dear dr. conan doyle, the white company has not yet turned up; but when it does which i suppose will be next mail you shall hear news of me. i have a great talent for compliment, accompanied by a hateful, even a diabolic frankness. delighted to hear i have a chance of seeing you and mrs. doyle; mrs. stevenson bids me say (what is too true) that our rations are often spare. are you great eaters? please reply. as to ways and means, here is what you will have to do. leave san francisco by the down mail, get off at samoa, and twelve days or a fortnight later, you can continue your journey to auckland per upolu, which will give you a look at tonga and possibly fiji by the way. make this a first part of your plans. a fortnight, even of vailima diet, could kill nobody. we are in the midst of war here; rather a nasty business, with the head-taking; and there seem signs of other trouble. but i believe you need make no change in your design to visit us. all should be well over; and if it were not, why! you need not leave the steamer. yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to charles baxter 19th july '93. . . . we are in the thick of war see illustrated london news we have only two outside boys left to us. nothing is doing, and per contra little paying. . . my life here is dear; but i can live within my income for a time at least so long as my prices keep up and it seems a clear duty to waste none of it on gadding about. . . . my life of my family fills up intervals, and should be an excellent book when it is done, but big, damnably big. my dear old man, i perceive by a thousand signs that we grow old, and are soon to pass away! i hope with dignity; if not, with courage at least. i am myself very ready; or would be will be when i have made a little money for my folks. the blows that have fallen upon you are truly terrifying; i wish you strength to bear them. it is strange, i must seem to you to blaze in a birmingham prosperity and happiness; and to myself i seem a failure. the truth is, i have never got over the last influenza yet, and am miserably out of heart and out of kilter. lungs pretty right, stomach nowhere, spirits a good deal overshadowed; but we'll come through it yet, and cock our bonnets. (i confess with sorrow that i am not yet quite sure about the intellects; but i hope it is only one of my usual periods of non-work. they are more unbearable now, because i cannot rest. no rest but the grave for sir walter! o the words ring in a man's head.) r. l. s. letter: to a. conan doyle vailima, august 23rd, 1893. my dear dr. conan doyle, i am reposing after a somewhat severe experience upon which i think it my duty to report to you. immediately after dinner this evening it occurred to me to renarrate to my native overseer simele your story of the engineer's thumb. and, sir, i have done it. it was necessary, i need hardly say, to go somewhat farther afield than you have done. to explain (for instance) what a railway is, what a steam hammer, what a coach and horse, what coining, what a criminal, and what the police. i pass over other and no less necessary explanations. but i did actually succeed; and if you could have seen the drawn, anxious features and the bright, feverish eyes of simele, you would have (for the moment at least) tasted glory. you might perhaps think that, were you to come to samoa, you might be introduced as the author of the engineer's thumb. disabuse yourself. they do not know what it is to make up a story. the engineer's thumb (god forgive me) was narrated as a piece of actual and factual history. nay, and more, i who write to you have had the indiscretion to perpetrate a trifling piece of fiction entitled the bottle imp. parties who come up to visit my unpretentious mansion, after having admired the ceilings by vanderputty and the tapestry by gobbling, manifest towards the end a certain uneasiness which proves them to be fellows of an infinite delicacy. they may be seen to shrug a brown shoulder, to roll up a speaking eye, and at last secret bursts from them: 'where is the bottle?' alas, my friends (i feel tempted to say), you will find it by the engineer's thumb! talofasoifuia. oa'u, o lau no moni, o tusitala. more commonly known as, r. l. stevenson. have read the refugees; conde and old p. murat very good; louis xiv. and louvois with the letter bag very rich. you have reached a trifle wide perhaps; too many celebrities? though i was delighted to re-encounter my old friend du chaylu. old murat is perhaps your high water mark; 'tis excellently human, cheerful and real. do it again. madame de maintenon struck me as quite good. have you any document for the decapitation? it sounds steepish. the devil of all that first part is that you see old dumas; yet your louis xiv. is distinctly good. i am much interested with this book, which fulfils a good deal, and promises more. question: how far a historical novel should be wholly episodic? i incline to that view, with trembling. i shake hands with you on old murat. r. l. s. letter: to george meredith sept. 5th, 1893, vailima plantation, upolu, samoa. my dear meredith, i have again and again taken up the pen to write to you, and many beginnings have gone into the waste paper basket (i have one now for the second time in my life and feel a big man on the strength of it). and no doubt it requires some decision to break so long a silence. my health is vastly restored, and i am now living patriarchally in this place six hundred feet above the sea on the shoulder of a mountain of 1500. behind me, the unbroken bush slopes up to the backbone of the island (3 to 4000) without a house, with no inhabitants save a few runaway black boys, wild pigs and cattle, and wild doves and flying foxes, and many parti-coloured birds, and many black, and many white: a very eerie, dim, strange place and hard to travel. i am the head of a household of five whites, and of twelve samoans, to all of whom i am the chief and father: my cook comes to me and asks leave to marry and his mother, a fine old chief woman, who has never lived here, does the same. you may be sure i granted the petition. it is a life of great interest, complicated by the tower of babel, that old enemy. and i have all the time on my hands for literary work. my house is a great place; we have a hall fifty feet long with a great red-wood stair ascending from it, where we dine in state myself usually dressed in a singlet and a pair of trousers and attended on by servants in a single garment, a kind of kilt also flowers and leaves and their hair often powdered with lime. the european who came upon it suddenly would think it was a dream. we have prayers on sunday night i am a perfect pariah in the island not to have them oftener, but the spirit is unwilling and the flesh proud, and i cannot go it more. it is strange to see the long line of the brown folk crouched along the wall with lanterns at intervals before them in the big shadowy hall, with an oak cabinet at one end of it and a group of rodin's (which native taste regards as prodigieusement leste) presiding over all from the top and to hear the long rambling samoan hymn rolling up (god bless me, what style! but i am off business to-day, and this is not meant to be literature.). i have asked colvin to send you a copy of catriona, which i am sometimes tempted to think is about my best work. i hear word occasionally of the amazing marriage. it will be a brave day for me when i get hold of it. gower woodseer is now an ancient, lean, grim, exiled scot, living and labouring as for a wager in the tropics; still active, still with lots of fire in him, but the youth ah, the youth where is it? for years after i came here, the critics (those genial gentlemen) used to deplore the relaxation of my fibre and the idleness to which i had succumbed. i hear less of this now; the next thing is they will tell me i am writing myself out! and that my unconscientious conduct is bringing their grey hairs with sorrow to the dust. i do not know i mean i do know one thing. for fourteen years i have not had a day's real health; i have wakened sick and gone to bed weary; and i have done my work unflinchingly. i have written in bed, and written out of it, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness; and for so long, it seems to me i have won my wager and recovered my glove. i am better now, have been rightly speaking since first i came to the pacific; and still, few are the days when i am not in some physical distress. and the battle goes on ill or well, is a trifle; so as it goes. i was made for a contest, and the powers have so willed that my battlefield should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and the physic bottle. at least i have not failed, but i would have preferred a place of trumpetings and the open air over my head. this is a devilish egotistical yarn. will you try to imitate me in that if the spirit ever moves you to reply? and meantime be sure that away in the midst of the pacific there is a house on a wooded island where the name of george meredith is very dear, and his memory (since it must be no more) is continually honoured. ever your friend, robert louis stevenson. remember me to mariette, if you please; and my wife sends her most kind remembrances to yourself. r. l. s. letter: to augustus st. gaudens vailima, september 1893. my dear st. gaudens, i had determined not to write to you till i had seen the medallion, but it looks as if that might mean the greek kalends or the day after to-morrow. reassure yourself, your part is done, it is ours that halts the consideration of conveyance over our sweet little road on boys' backs, for we cannot very well apply the horses to this work; there is only one; you cannot put it in a panier; to put it on the horse's back we have not the heart. beneath the beauty of r. l. s., to say nothing of his verses, which the publishers find heavy enough, and the genius of the god-like sculptor, the spine would snap and the well-knit limbs of the (ahem) cart-horse would be loosed by death. so you are to conceive me, sitting in my house, dubitative, and the medallion chuckling in the warehouse of the german firm, for some days longer; and hear me meanwhile on the golden letters. alas! they are all my fancy painted, but the price is prohibitive. i cannot do it. it is another day-dream burst. another gable of abbotsford has gone down, fortunately before it was builded, so there's nobody injured except me. i had a strong conviction that i was a great hand at writing inscriptions, and meant to exhibit and test my genius on the walls of my house; and now i see i can't. it is generally thus. the battle of the golden letters will never be delivered. on making preparation to open the campaign, the king found himself face to face with invincible difficulties, in which the rapacity of a mercenary soldiery and the complaints of an impoverished treasury played an equal part. ever yours, robert louis stevenson. i enclose a bill for the medallion; have been trying to find your letter, quite in vain, and therefore must request you to pay for the bronze letters yourself and let me know the damage. r. l. s. letter: to j. horne stevenson vailima, samoa, november 5th, 1893. my dear stevenson, a thousand thanks for your voluminous and delightful collections. baxter so soon as it is ready will let you see a proof of my introduction, which is only sent out as a sprat to catch whales. and you will find i have a good deal of what you have, only mine in a perfectly desultory manner, as is necessary to an exile. my uncle's pedigree is wrong; there was never a stevenson of caldwell, of course, but they were tenants of the muirs; the farm held by them is in my introduction; and i have already written to charles baxter to have a search made in the register house. i hope he will have had the inspiration to put it under your surveillance. your information as to your own family is intensely interesting, and i should not wonder but what you and we and old john stevenson, 'land labourer in the parish of dailly,' came all of the same stock. ayrshire and probably cunningham seems to be the home of the race our part of it. from the distribution of the name which your collections have so much extended without essentially changing my knowledge of we seem rather pointed to a british origin. what you say of the engineers is fresh to me, and must be well thrashed out. this introduction of it will take a long while to walk about! as perhaps i may be tempted to let it become long; after all, i am writing this for my own pleasure solely. greetings to you and other speculatives of our date, long bygone, alas! yours very sincerely, robert louis stevenson. p.s. i have a different version of my grandfather's arms or my father had if i could find it. r. l. s. letter: to john p-n vailima, samoa, december 3rd, 1893. dear johnnie, well, i must say you seem to be a tremendous fellow! before i was eight i used to write stories or dictate them at least and i had produced an excellent history of moses, for which i got 1 pound from an uncle; but i had never gone the length of a play, so you have beaten me fairly on my own ground. i hope you may continue to do so, and thanking you heartily for your nice letter, i shall beg you to believe me yours truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to russell p-n vailima, samoa, december 3rd, 1893. dear russell, i have to thank you very much for your capital letter, which came to hand here in samoa along with your mother's. when you 'grow up and write stories like me,' you will be able to understand that there is scarce anything more painful than for an author to hold a pen; he has to do it so much that his heart sickens and his fingers ache at the sight or touch of it; so that you will excuse me if i do not write much, but remain (with compliments and greetings from one scot to another though i was not born in ceylon you're ahead of me there). yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to alison cunningham vailima, december 5, 1893. my dearest cummy, this goes to you with a merry christmas and a happy new year. the happy new year anyway, for i think it should reach you about noor's day. i dare say it may be cold and frosty. do you remember when you used to take me out of bed in the early morning, carry me to the back windows, show me the hills of fife, and quote to me. 'a' the hills are covered wi' snaw, an' winter's noo come fairly'? there is not much chance of that here! i wonder how my mother is going to stand the winter. if she can, it will be a very good thing for her. we are in that part of the year which i like the best the rainy or hurricane season. 'when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is horrid,' and our fine days are certainly fine like heaven; such a blue of the sea, such green of the trees, and such crimson of the hibiscus flowers, you never saw; and the air as mild and gentle as a baby's breath, and yet not hot! the mail is on the move, and i must let up. with much love, i am, your laddie, r. l. s. letter: to charles baxter 6th december 1893. 'october 25, 1685. at privy council, george murray, lieutenant of the king's guard, and others, did, on the 21st of september last, obtain a clandestine order of privy council to apprehend the person of janet pringle, daughter to the late clifton, and she having retired out of the way upon information, he got an order against andrew pringle, her uncle, to produce her. . . . but she having married andrew pringle, her uncle's son (to disappoint all their designs of selling her), a boy of thirteen years old.' but my boy is to be fourteen, so i extract no further. fountainhall, i. 320. 'may 6, 1685. wappus pringle of clifton was still alive after all, and in prison for debt, and transacts with lieutenant murray, giving security for 7000 marks.' i. 372. no, it seems to have been her brother who had succeeded. my dear charles, the above is my story, and i wonder if any light can be thrown on it. i prefer the girl's father dead; and the question is, how in that case could lieutenant george murray get his order to 'apprehend' and his power to 'sell' her in marriage? or might lieutenant g. be her tutor, and she fugitive to the pringles, and on the discovery of her whereabouts hastily married? a good legal note on these points is very ardently desired by me; it will be the corner-stone of my novel. this is for i am quite wrong to tell you for you will tell others and nothing will teach you that all my schemes are in the air, and vanish and reappear again like shapes in the clouds it is for heathercat: whereof the first volume will be called the killing time, and i believe i have authorities ample for that. but the second volume is to be called (i believe) darien, and for that i want, i fear, a good deal of truck:darien papers, carstairs papers, marchmont papers, jerviswoode correspondence, i hope may do me. some sort of general history of the darien affair (if there is a decent one, which i misdoubt), it would also be well to have the one with most details, if possible. it is singular how obscure to me this decade of scots history remains, 1690-1700 a deuce of a want of light and grouping to it! however, i believe i shall be mostly out of scotland in my tale; first in carolina, next in darien. i want also i am the daughter of the horse-leech truly 'black's new large map of scotland,' sheets 3, 4, and 5, a 7s. 6d. touch. i believe, if you can get the caldwell papers, they had better come also; and if there be any reasonable work but no, i must call a halt. . . . i fear the song looks doubtful, but i'll consider of it, and i can promise you some reminiscences which it will amuse me to write, whether or not it will amuse the public to read of them. but it's an unco business to supply deid-heid coapy. letter: to j. m. barrie vailima, samoa, december 7th, 1893. my dear barrie, i have received duly the magnum opus, and it really is a magnum opus. it is a beautiful specimen of clark's printing, paper sufficient, and the illustrations all my fancy painted. but the particular flower of the flock to whom i have hopelessly lost my heart is tibby birse. i must have known tibby birse when she was a servant's mantua-maker in edinburgh and answered to the name of miss broddie. she used to come and sew with my nurse, sitting with her legs crossed in a masculine manner; and swinging her foot emphatically, she used to pour forth a perfectly unbroken stream of gossip. i didn't hear it, i was immersed in far more important business with a box of bricks, but the recollection of that thin, perpetual, shrill sound of a voice has echoed in my ears sinsyne. i am bound to say she was younger than tibbie, but there is no mistaking that and the indescribable and eminently scottish expression. i have been very much prevented of late, having carried out thoroughly to my own satisfaction two considerable illnesses, had a birthday, and visited honolulu, where politics are (if possible) a shade more exasperating than they are with us. i am told that it was just when i was on the point of leaving that i received your superlative epistle about the cricket eleven. in that case it is impossible i should have answered it, which is inconsistent with my own recollection of the fact. what i remember is, that i sat down under your immediate inspiration and wrote an answer in every way worthy. if i didn't, as it seems proved that i couldn't, it will never be done now. however, i did the next best thing, i equipped my cousin graham balfour with a letter of introduction, and from him, if you know how for he is rather of the scottish character you may elicit all the information you can possibly wish to have as to us and ours. do not be bluffed off by the somewhat stern and monumental first impression that he may make upon you. he is one of the best fellows in the world, and the same sort of fool that we are, only better-looking, with all the faults of vailimans and some of his own i say nothing about virtues. i have lately been returning to my wallowing in the mire. when i was a child, and indeed until i was nearly a man, i consistently read covenanting books. now that i am a grey-beard or would be, if i could raise the beard i have returned, and for weeks back have read little else but wodrow, walker, shields, etc. of course this is with an idea of a novel, but in the course of it i made a very curious discovery. i have been accustomed to hear refined and intelligent critics those who know so much better what we are than we do ourselves, trace down my literary descent from all sorts of people, including addison, of whom i could never read a word. well, laigh i' your lug, sir the clue was found. my style is from the covenanting writers. take a particular case the fondness for rhymes. i don't know of any english prose-writer who rhymes except by accident, and then a stone had better be tied around his neck and himself cast into the sea. but my covenanting buckies rhyme all the time a beautiful example of the unconscious rhyme above referred to. do you know, and have you really tasted, these delightful works? if not, it should be remedied; there is enough of the auld licht in you to be ravished. i suppose you know that success has so far attended my banners my political banners i mean, and not my literary. in conjunction with the three great powers i have succeeded in getting rid of my president and my chief-justice. they've gone home, the one to germany, the other to souwegia. i hear little echoes of footfalls of their departing footsteps through the medium of the newspapers. . . . whereupon i make you my salute with the firm remark that it is time to be done with trifling and give us a great book, and my ladies fall into line with me to pay you a most respectful courtesy, and we all join in the cry, 'come to vailima!' my dear sir, your soul's health is in it you will never do the great book, you will never cease to work in l., etc., till you come to vailima. robert louis stevenson. letter: to r. le gallienne vailima, samoa, december 28th, 1893. dear mr. le gallienne, i have received some time ago, through our friend miss taylor, a book of yours. but that was by no means my first introduction to your name. the same book had stood already on my shelves; i had read articles of yours in the academy; and by a piece of constructive criticism (which i trust was sound) had arrived at the conclusion that you were 'log-roller.' since then i have seen your beautiful verses to your wife. you are to conceive me, then, as only too ready to make the acquaintance of a man who loved good literature and could make it. i had to thank you, besides, for a triumphant exposure of a paradox of my own: the literary-prostitute disappeared from view at a phrase of yours 'the essence is not in the pleasure but the sale.' true: you are right, i was wrong; the author is not the whore, but the libertine; and yet i shall let the passage stand. it is an error, but it illustrated the truth for which i was contending, that literature painting all art, are no other than pleasures, which we turn into trades. and more than all this, i had, and i have to thank you for the intimate loyalty you have shown to myself; for the eager welcome you give to what is good for the courtly tenderness with which you touch on my defects. i begin to grow old; i have given my top note, i fancy; and i have written too many books. the world begins to be weary of the old booth; and if not weary, familiar with the familiarity that breeds contempt. i do not know that i am sensitive to criticism, if it be hostile; i am sensitive indeed, when it is friendly; and when i read such criticism as yours, i am emboldened to go on and praise god. you are still young, and you may live to do much. the little, artificial popularity of style in england tends, i think, to die out; the british pig returns to his true love, the love of the styleless, of the shapeless, of the slapdash and the disorderly. there is trouble coming, i think; and you may have to hold the fort for us in evil days. lastly, let me apologise for the crucifixion that i am inflicting on you (bien a contre-coeur) by my bad writing. i was once the best of writers; landladies, puzzled as to my 'trade,' used to have their honest bosoms set at rest by a sight of a page of manuscript. 'ah,' they would say, 'no wonder they pay you for that'; and when i sent it in to the printers, it was given to the boys! i was about thirty-nine, i think, when i had a turn of scrivener's palsy; my hand got worse; and for the first time, i received clean proofs. but it has gone beyond that now, i know i am like my old friend james payn, a terror to correspondents; and you would not believe the care with which this has been written. believe me to be, very sincerely yours, robert louis stevenson. letter: to mrs. a. baker december 1893. dear madam, there is no trouble, and i wish i could help instead. as it is, i fear i am only going to put you to trouble and vexation. this braille writing is a kind of consecration, and i would like if i could to have your copy perfect. the two volumes are to be published as vols. i. and ii. of the adventures of david balfour. 1st, kidnapped; 2nd, catriona. i am just sending home a corrected kidnapped for this purpose to messrs. cassell, and in order that i may if possible be in time, i send it to you first of all. please, as soon as you have noted the changes, forward the same to cassell and co., la belle sauvage yard, ludgate hill. i am writing to them by this mail to send you catriona. you say, dear madam, you are good enough to say, it is 'a keen pleasure' to you to bring my book within the reach of the blind. conceive then what it is to me! and believe me, sincerely yours, robert louis stevenson. i was a barren tree before, i blew a quenched coal, i could not, on their midnight shore, the lonely blind console. a moment, lend your hand, i bring my sheaf for you to bind, and you can teach my words to sing in the darkness of the blind. r. l. s. letter: to henry james apia, december 1893. my dear henry james, the mail has come upon me like an armed man three days earlier than was expected; and the lord help me! it is impossible i should answer anybody the way they should be. your jubilation over catriona did me good, and still more the subtlety and truth of your remark on the starving of the visual sense in that book. 'tis true, and unless i make the greater effort and am, as a step to that, convinced of its necessity it will be more true i fear in the future. i hear people talking, and i feel them acting, and that seems to me to be fiction. my two aims may be described as 1st. war to the adjective. 2nd. death to the optic nerve. admitted we live in an age of the optic nerve in literature. for how many centuries did literature get along without a sign of it? however, i'll consider your letter. how exquisite is your character of the critic in essays in london! i doubt if you have done any single thing so satisfying as a piece of style and of insight. yours ever, r. l. s. letter: to charles baxter 1st january '94. my dear charles, i am delighted with your idea, and first, i will here give an amended plan and afterwards give you a note of some of the difficulties. [plan of the edinburgh edition 14 vols.] . . . it may be a question whether my times letters might not be appended to the 'footnote' with a note of the dates of discharge of cedercrantz and pilsach. i am particularly pleased with this idea of yours, because i am come to a dead stop. i never can remember how bad i have been before, but at any rate i am bad enough just now, i mean as to literature; in health i am well and strong. i take it i shall be six months before i'm heard of again, and this time i could put in to some advantage in revising the text and (if it were thought desirable) writing prefaces. i do not know how many of them might be thought desirable. i have written a paper on treasure island, which is to appear shortly. master of ballantrae i have one drafted. the wrecker is quite sufficiently done already with the last chapter, but i suppose an historic introduction to david balfour is quite unavoidable. prince otto i don't think i could say anything about, and black arrow don't want to. but it is probable i could say something to the volume of travels. in the verse business i can do just what i like better than anything else, and extend underwoods with a lot of unpublished stuff. apropos, if i were to get printed off a very few poems which are somewhat too intimate for the public, could you get them run up in some luxuous manner, so that fools might be induced to buy them in just a sufficient quantity to pay expenses and the thing remain still in a manner private? we could supply photographs of the illustrations and the poems are of vailima and the family i should much like to get this done as a surprise for fanny. r. l. s. letter: to h. b. baildon vailima, january 15th, 1894. my dear baildon, last mail brought your book and its dedication. 'frederick street and the gardens, and the short-lived jack o' lantern,' are again with me and the note of the east wind, and froebel's voice, and the smell of soup in thomson's stair. truly, you had no need to put yourself under the protection of any other saint, were that saint our tamate himself! yourself were enough, and yourself coming with so rich a sheaf. for what is this that you say about the muses? they have certainly never better inspired you than in 'jael and sisera,' and 'herodias and john the baptist,' good stout poems, fiery and sound. ''tis but a mask and behind it chuckles the god of the garden,' i shall never forget. by the by, an error of the press, page 49, line 4, 'no infant's lesson are the ways of god.' the is dropped. and this reminds me you have a bad habit which is to be comminated in my theory of letters. same page, two lines lower: 'but the vulture's track' is surely as fine to the ear as 'but vulture's track,' and this latter version has a dreadful baldness. the reader goes on with a sense of impoverishment, of unnecessary sacrifice; he has been robbed by footpads, and goes scouting for his lost article! again, in the second epode, these fine verses would surely sound much finer if they began, 'as a hardy climber who has set his heart,' than with the jejune 'as hardy climber.' i do not know why you permit yourself this license with grammar; you show, in so many pages, that you are superior to the paltry sense of rhythm which usually dictates it as though some poetaster had been suffered to correct the poet's text. by the way, i confess to a heartfelt weakness for auriculas. believe me the very grateful and characteristic pick-thank, but still sincere and affectionate, robert louis stevenson. letter: to w. h. low. vailima, january 15th, 1894. my dear low, . . . pray you, stoop your proud head, and sell yourself to some jew magazine, and make the visit out. i assure you, this is the spot for a sculptor or painter. this, and no other i don't say to stay there, but to come once and get the living colour into them. i am used to it; i do not notice it; rather prefer my grey, freezing recollections of scotland; but there it is, and every morning is a thing to give thanks for, and every night another bar when it rains, of course. about the wrecker rather late days, and i still suspect i had somehow offended you; however, all's well that ends well, and i am glad i am forgiven did you not fail to appreciate the attitude of dodd? he was a fizzle and a stick, he knew it, he knew nothing else, and there is an undercurrent of bitterness in him. and then the problem that pinkerton laid down: why the artist can do nothing else? is one that continually exercises myself. he cannot: granted. but scott could. and montaigne. and julius caesar. and many more. and why can't r. l. s.? does it not amaze you? it does me. i think of the renaissance fellows, and their all-round human sufficiency, and compare it with the ineffable smallness of the field in which we labour and in which we do so little. i think david balfour a nice little book, and very artistic, and just the thing to occupy the leisure of a busy man; but for the top flower of a man's life it seems to me inadequate. small is the word; it is a small age, and i am of it. i could have wished to be otherwise busy in this world. i ought to have been able to build lighthouses and write david balfours too. hinc illae lacrymae. i take my own case as most handy, but it is as illustrative of my quarrel with the age. we take all these pains, and we don't do as well as michael angelo or leonardo, or even fielding, who was an active magistrate, or richardson, who was a busy bookseller. j'ai honte pour nous; my ears burn. i am amazed at the effect which this chicago exhibition has produced upon you and others. it set mrs. fairchild literally mad to judge by her letters. and i wish i had seen anything so influential. i suppose there was an aura, a halo, some sort of effulgency about the place; for here i find you louder than the rest. well, it may be there is a time coming; and i wonder, when it comes, whether it will be a time of little, exclusive, one-eyed rascals like you and me, or parties of the old stamp who can paint and fight, and write and keep books of double entry, and sculp, and scalp. it might be. you have a lot of stuff in the kettle, and a great deal of it celtic. i have changed my mind progressively about england, practically the whole of scotland is celtic, and the western half of england, and all ireland, and the celtic blood makes a rare blend for art. if it is stiffened up with latin blood, you get the french. we were less lucky: we had only scandinavians, themselves decidedly artistic, and the low-german lot. however, that is a good starting-point, and with all the other elements in your crucible, it may come to something great very easily. i wish you would hurry up and let me see it. here is a long while i have been waiting for something good in art; and what have i seen? zola's debacle and a few of kipling's tales. are you a reader of barbey d'aurevilly? he is a never-failing source of pleasure to me, for my sins, i suppose. what a work is the rideau cramoisi! and l'ensorcelee! and le chevalier des touches! this is degenerating into mere twaddle. so please remember us all most kindly to mrs. low, and believe me ever yours, robert louis stevenson. p.s. were all your privateers voiceless in the war of 1812? did no one of them write memoirs? i shall have to do my privateer from chic, if you can't help me. my application to scribner has been quite in vain. see if you can get hold of some historic sharp in the club, and tap him; they must some of them have written memoirs or notes of some sort; perhaps still unprinted; if that be so, get them copied for me. r. l. s. letter: to h. b. baildon vailima, january 30th, 1894. my dear baildon, 'call not blessed.' yes, if i could die just now, or say in half a year, i should have had a splendid time of it on the whole. but it gets a little stale, and my work will begin to senesce; and parties to shy bricks at me; and now it begins to look as if i should survive to see myself impotent and forgotten. it's a pity suicide is not thought the ticket in the best circles. but your letter goes on to congratulate me on having done the one thing i am a little sorry for; a little not much for my father himself lived to think that i had been wiser than he. but the cream of the jest is that i have lived to change my mind; and think that he was wiser than i. had i been an engineer, and literature my amusement, it would have been better perhaps. i pulled it off, of course, i won the wager, and it is pleasant while it lasts; but how long will it last? i don't know, say the bells of old bow. all of which goes to show that nobody is quite sane in judging himself. truly, had i given way and gone in for engineering, i should be dead by now. well, the gods know best. i hope you got my letter about the rescue. adieu, r. l. s. true for you about the benefit: except by kisses, jests, song, et hoc genus omne, man cannot convey benefit to another. the universal benefactor has been there before him. letter: to j. h. bates vailima, samoa, march 25th, 1894. my dear mr. joe h. bates, i shall have the greatest pleasure in acceding to your complimentary request. i shall think it an honour to be associated with your chapter, and i need not remind you (for you have said it yourself) how much depends upon your own exertions whether to make it to me a real honour or only a derision. this is to let you know that i accept the position that you have seriously offered to me in a quite serious spirit. i need scarce tell you that i shall always be pleased to receive reports of your proceedings; and if i do not always acknowledge them, you are to remember that i am a man very much occupied otherwise, and not at all to suppose that i have lost interest in my chapter. in this world, which (as you justly say) is so full of sorrow and suffering, it will always please me to remember that my name is connected with some efforts after alleviation, nor less so with purposes of innocent recreation which, after all, are the only certain means at our disposal for bettering human life. with kind regards, to yourself, to mr. l. c. congdon, to e. m. g. bates, and to mr. edward hugh higlee bates, and the heartiest wishes for the future success of the chapter, believe me, yours cordially, robert louis stevenson. letter: to william archer vailima, samoa, march 27th, 1894. my dear archer, many thanks for your theatrical world. do you know, it strikes me as being really very good? i have not yet read much of it, but so far as i have looked, there is not a dull and not an empty page in it. hazlitt, whom you must often have thought of, would have been pleased. come to think of it, i shall put this book upon the hazlitt shelf. you have acquired a manner that i can only call august; otherwise, i should have to call it such amazing impudence. the bauble shop and becket are examples of what i mean. but it 'sets you weel.' marjorie fleming i have known, as you surmise, for long. she was possibly no, i take back possibly she was one of the greatest works of god. your note about the resemblance of her verses to mine gave me great joy, though it only proved me a plagiarist. by the by, was it not over the child's garden of verses that we first scraped acquaintance? i am sorry indeed to hear that my esteemed correspondent tomarcher has such poor taste in literature. i fear he cannot have inherited this trait from his dear papa. indeed, i may say i know it, for i remember the energy of papa's disapproval when the work passed through his hands on its way to a second birth, which none regrets more than myself. it is an odd fact, or perhaps a very natural one; i find few greater pleasures than reading my own works, but i never, o i never read the black arrow. in that country tomarcher reigns supreme. well, and after all, if tomarcher likes it, it has not been written in vain. we have just now a curious breath from europe. a young fellow just beginning letters, and no fool, turned up here with a letter of introduction in the well-known blue ink and decorative hieroglyphs of george meredith. his name may be known to you. it is sidney lysaght. he is staying with us but a day or two, and it is strange to me and not unpleasant to hear all the names, old and new, come up again. but oddly the new are so much more in number. if i revisited the glimpses of the moon on your side of the ocean, i should know comparatively few of them. my amanuensis deserts me i should have said you, for yours is the loss, my script having lost all bond with humanity. one touch of nature makes the whole world kin: that nobody can read my hand. it is a humiliating circumstance that thus evens us with printers! you must sometimes think it strange or perhaps it is only i that should so think it to be following the old round, in the gas lamps and the crowded theatres, when i am away here in the tropical forest and the vast silences! my dear archer, my wife joins me in the best wishes to yourself and mrs. archer, not forgetting tom; and i am yours very cordially, robert louis stevenson. letter: to w. b. yeats vailima, samoa, april 14, 1894. dear sir, long since when i was a boy i remember the emotions with which i repeated swinburne's poems and ballads. some ten years ago, a similar spell was cast upon me by meredith's love in the valley; the stanzas beginning 'when her mother tends her' haunted me and made me drunk like wine; and i remember waking with them all the echoes of the hills about hyeres. it may interest you to hear that i have a third time fallen in slavery: this is to your poem called the lake isle of innisfrae. it is so quaint and airy, simple, artful, and eloquent to the heart but i seek words in vain. enough that 'always night and day i hear lake water lapping with low sounds on the shore,' and am, yours gratefully, robert louis stevenson. letter: to george meredith vailima, samoa, april 17th, 1894. my dear meredith, many good things have the gods sent to me of late. first of all there was a letter from you by the kind hand of mariette, if she is not too great a lady to be remembered in such a style; and then there came one lysaght with a charming note of introduction in the well-known hand itself. we had but a few days of him, and liked him well. there was a sort of geniality and inward fire about him at which i warmed my hands. it is long since i have seen a young man who has left in me such a favourable impression; and i find myself telling myself, 'o, i must tell this to lysaght,' or, 'this will interest him,' in a manner very unusual after so brief an acquaintance. the whole of my family shared in this favourable impression, and my halls have re-echoed ever since, i am sure he will be amused to know, with widdicombe fair. he will have told you doubtless more of my news than i could tell you myself; he has your european perspective, a thing long lost to me. i heard with a great deal of interest the news of box hill. and so i understand it is to be enclosed! allow me to remark, that seems a far more barbaric trait of manners than the most barbarous of ours. we content ourselves with cutting off an occasional head. i hear we may soon expect the amazing marriage. you know how long, and with how much curiosity, i have looked forward to the book. now, in so far as you have adhered to your intention, gower woodsere will be a family portrait, age twenty-five, of the highly respectable and slightly influential and fairly aged tusitala. you have not known that gentleman; console yourself, he is not worth knowing. at the same time, my dear meredith, he is very sincerely yours for what he is worth, for the memories of old times, and in the expectation of many pleasures still to come. i suppose we shall never see each other again; flitting youths of the lysaght species may occasionally cover these unconscionable leagues and bear greetings to and fro. but we ourselves must be content to converse on an occasional sheet of notepaper, and i shall never see whether you have grown older, and you shall never deplore that gower woodsere should have declined into the pantaloon tusitala. it is perhaps better so. let us continue to see each other as we were, and accept, my dear meredith, my love and respect. robert louis stevenson. p.s. my wife joins me in the kindest messages to yourself and mariette. letter: to charles baxter [vailima], april 17, '94. my dear charles, st. ives is now well on its way into the second volume. there remains no mortal doubt that it will reach the three volume standard. i am very anxious that you should send me 1st. tom and jerry, a cheap edition. 2nd. the book by ashton the dawn of the century, i think it was called which colvin sent me, and which has miscarried, and 3rd. if it is possible, a file of the edinburgh courant for the years 1811, 1812, 1813, or 1814. i should not care for a whole year. if it were possible to find me three months, winter months by preference, it would do my business not only for st. ives, but for the justice-clerk as well. suppose this to be impossible, perhaps i could get the loan of it from somebody; or perhaps it would be possible to have some one read a file for me and make notes. this would be extremely bad, as unhappily one man's food is another man's poison, and the reader would probably leave out everything i should choose. but if you are reduced to that, you might mention to the man who is to read for me that balloon ascensions are in the order of the day. 4th. it might be as well to get a book on balloon ascension, particularly in the early part of the century. . . . . . iii. at last this book has come from scribner, and, alas! i have the first six or seven chapters of st. ives to recast entirely. who could foresee that they clothed the french prisoners in yellow? but that one fatal fact and also that they shaved them twice a week damns the whole beginning. if it had been sent in time, it would have saved me a deal of trouble. . . . i have had a long letter from dr. scott dalgleish, 25 mayfield terrace, asking me to put my name down to the ballantyne memorial committee. i have sent him a pretty sharp answer in favour of cutting down the memorial and giving more to the widow and children. if there is to be any foolery in the way of statues or other trash, please send them a guinea; but if they are going to take my advice and put up a simple tablet with a few heartfelt words, and really devote the bulk of the subscriptions to the wife and family, i will go to the length of twenty pounds, if you will allow me (and if the case of the family be at all urgent), and at least i direct you to send ten pounds. i suppose you had better see scott dalgleish himself on the matter. i take the opportunity here to warn you that my head is simply spinning with a multitude of affairs, and i shall probably forget a half of my business at last. r. l. s. letter: to mrs. sitwell vailima, april 1894. my dear friend, i have at last got some photographs, and hasten to send you, as you asked, a portrait of tusitala. he is a strange person; not so lean, say experts, but infinitely battered; mighty active again on the whole; going up and down our break-neck road at all hours of the day and night on horseback; holding meetings with all manner of chiefs; quite a political personage god save the mark! in a small way, but at heart very conscious of the inevitable flat failure that awaits every one. i shall never do a better book than catriona, that is my high-water mark, and the trouble of production increases on me at a great rate and mighty anxious about how i am to leave my family: an elderly man, with elderly preoccupations, whom i should be ashamed to show you for your old friend; but not a hope of my dying soon and cleanly, and 'winning off the stage.' rather i am daily better in physical health. i shall have to see this business out, after all; and i think, in that case, they should have they might have spared me all my ill-health this decade past, if it were not to unbar the doors. i have no taste for old age, and my nose is to be rubbed in it in spite of my face. i was meant to die young, and the gods do not love me. this is very like an epitaph, bar the handwriting, which is anything but monumental, and i dare say i had better stop. fanny is down at her own cottage planting or deplanting or replanting, i know not which, and she will not be home till dinner, by which time the mail will be all closed, else she would join me in all good messages and remembrances of love. i hope you will congratulate burne jones from me on his baronetcy. i cannot make out to be anything but raspingly, harrowingly sad; so i will close, and not affect levity which i cannot feel. do not altogether forget me; keep a corner of your memory for the exile louis. letter: to charles baxter [vailima, may 1894.] my dear charles, my dear fellow, i wish to assure you of the greatness of the pleasure that this edinburgh edition gives me. i suppose it was your idea to give it that name. no other would have affected me in the same manner. do you remember, how many years ago i would be afraid to hazard a guess one night when i communicated to you certain intimations of early death and aspirations after fame? i was particularly maudlin; and my remorse the next morning on a review of my folly has written the matter very deeply in my mind; from yours it may easily have fled. if any one at that moment could have shown me the edinburgh edition, i suppose i should have died. it is with gratitude and wonder that i consider 'the way in which i have been led.' could a more preposterous idea have occurred to us in those days when we used to search our pockets for coppers, too often in vain, and combine forces to produce the threepence necessary for two glasses of beer, or wander down the lothian road without any, than that i should be strong and well at the age of forty-three in the island of upolu, and that you should be at home bringing out the edinburgh edition? if it had been possible, i should almost have preferred the lothian road edition, say, with a picture of the old dutch smuggler on the covers. i have now something heavy on my mind. i had always a great sense of kinship with poor robert fergusson so clever a boy, so wild, of such a mixed strain, so unfortunate, born in the same town with me, and, as i always felt, rather by express intimation than from evidence, so like myself. now the injustice with which the one robert is rewarded and the other left out in the cold sits heavy on me, and i wish you could think of some way in which i could do honour to my unfortunate namesake. do you think it would look like affectation to dedicate the whole edition to his memory? i think it would. the sentiment which would dictate it to me is too abstruse; and besides, i think my wife is the proper person to receive the dedication of my life's work. at the same time, it is very odd it really looks like the transmigration of souls i feel that i must do something for fergusson; burns has been before me with the gravestone. it occurs to me you might take a walk down the canongate and see in what condition the stone is. if it be at all uncared for, we might repair it, and perhaps add a few words of inscription. i must tell you, what i just remembered in a flash as i was walking about dictating this letter there was in the original plan of the master of ballantrae a sort of introduction describing my arrival in edinburgh on a visit to yourself and your placing in my hands the papers of the story. i actually wrote it, and then condemned the idea as being a little too like scott, i suppose. now i must really find the ms. and try to finish it for the e. e. it will give you, what i should so much like you to have, another corner of your own in that lofty monument. suppose we do what i have proposed about fergusson's monument, i wonder if an inscription like this would look arrogant this stone originally erected by robert burns has been repaired at the charges of robert louis stevenson, and is by him re-dedicated to the memory of robert fergusson, as the gift of one edinburgh lad to another. in spacing this inscription i would detach the names of fergusson and burns, but leave mine in the text. or would that look like sham modesty, and is it better to bring out the three roberts? letter: to r. a. m. stevenson vailima, june 1894. my dear bob, i must make out a letter this mail or perish in the attempt. all the same, i am deeply stupid, in bed with a cold, deprived of my amanuensis, and conscious of the wish but not the furnished will. you may be interested to hear how the family inquiries go. it is now quite certain that we are a second-rate lot, and came out of cunningham or clydesdale, therefore british folk; so that you are cymry on both sides, and i cymry and pict. we may have fought with king arthur and known merlin. the first of the family, stevenson of stevenson, was quite a great party, and dates back to the wars of edward first. the last male heir of stevenson of stevenson died 1670, 220 pounds, 10s. to the bad, from drink. about the same time the stevensons, who were mostly in cunningham before, crop up suddenly in the parish of neilston, over the border in renfrewshire. of course, they may have been there before, but there is no word of them in that parish till 1675 in any extracts i have. our first traceable ancestor was a tenant farmer of muir of cauldwells james in nether-carsewell. presently two families of maltmen are found in glasgow, both, by re-duplicated proofs, related to james (the son of james) in nether carsewell. we descend by his second marriage from robert; one of these died 1733. it is not very romantic up to now, but has interested me surprisingly to fish out, always hoping for more and occasionally getting at least a little clearness and confirmation. but the earliest date, 1655, apparently the marriage of james in nether carsewell, cannot as yet be pushed back. from which of any number of dozen little families in cunningham we should derive, god knows! of course, it doesn't matter a hundred years hence, an argument fatal to all human enterprise, industry, or pleasure. and to me it will be a deadly disappointment if i cannot roll this stone away! one generation further might be nothing, but it is my present object of desire, and we are so near it! there is a man in the same parish called constantine; if i could only trace to him, i could take you far afield by that one talisman of the strange christian name of constantine. but no such luck! and i kind of fear we shall stick at james. so much, though all inchoate, i trouble you with, knowing that you, at least, must take an interest in it. so much is certain of that strange celtic descent, that the past has an interest for it apparently gratuitous, but fiercely strong. i wish to trace my ancestors a thousand years, if i trace them by gallowses. it is not love, not pride, not admiration; it is an expansion of the identity, intimately pleasing, and wholly uncritical; i can expend myself in the person of an inglorious ancestor with perfect comfort; or a disgraced, if i could find one. i suppose, perhaps, it is more to me who am childless, and refrain with a certain shock from looking forwards. but, i am sure, in the solid grounds of race, that you have it also in some degree. i. james, a tenant of the muirs, in nether-carsewell, neilston, married (1665?) jean keir. || | || | || | +-----------------------------------------+ ii. robert (maltman in glasgow), died 1733, | married 1st; married second, | elizabeth cumming. | || | || william (maltman in || glasgow). +--------------+ | | | | +-------------+--------------+ iii. robert (maltman robert, marion, elizabeth. in glasgow), married margaret fulton (had note. between 1730-1766 flourished a large family). in glasgow alan the coppersmith, who || acts as a kind of a pin to the whole || stevenson system there. he was caution iv. alan, west india to robert the second's will, and to merchant, married william's will, and to the will of a jean lillie. john, another maltman. || || v. robert, married jean smith. | vi. alan. margaret jones | vii. r. a. m. s. enough genealogy. i do not know if you will be able to read my hand. unhappily, belle, who is my amanuensis, is out of the way on other affairs, and i have to make the unwelcome effort. (o this is beautiful, i am quite pleased with myself.) graham has just arrived last night (my mother is coming by the other steamer in three days), and has told me of your meeting, and he said you looked a little older than i did; so that i suppose we keep step fairly on the downward side of the hill. he thought you looked harassed, and i could imagine that too. i sometimes feel harassed. i have a great family here about me, a great anxiety. the loss (to use my grandfather's expression), the 'loss' of our family is that we are disbelievers in the morrow perhaps i should say, rather, in next year. the future is always black to us; it was to robert stevenson; to thomas; i suspect to alan; to r. a. m. s. it was so almost to his ruin in youth; to r. l. s., who had a hard hopeful strain in him from his mother, it was not so much so once, but becomes daily more so. daily so much more so, that i have a painful difficulty in believing i can ever finish another book, or that the public will ever read it. i have so huge a desire to know exactly what you are doing, that i suppose i should tell you what i am doing by way of an example. i have a room now, a part of the twelve-foot verandah sparred in, at the most inaccessible end of the house. daily i see the sunrise out of my bed, which i still value as a tonic, a perpetual tuning fork, a look of god's face once in the day. at six my breakfast comes up to me here, and i work till eleven. if i am quite well, i sometimes go out and bathe in the river before lunch, twelve. in the afternoon i generally work again, now alone drafting, now with belle dictating. dinner is at six, and i am often in bed by eight. this is supposing me to stay at home. but i must often be away, sometimes all day long, sometimes till twelve, one, or two at night, when you might see me coming home to the sleeping house, sometimes in a trackless darkness, sometimes with a glorious tropic moon, everything drenched with dew unsaddling and creeping to bed; and you would no longer be surprised that i live out in this country, and not in bournemouth in bed. my great recent interruptions have (as you know) come from politics; not much in my line, you will say. but it is impossible to live here and not feel very sorely the consequences of the horrid white mismanagement. i tried standing by and looking on, and it became too much for me. they are such illogical fools; a logical fool in an office, with a lot of red tape, is conceivable. furthermore, he is as much as we have any reason to expect of officials a thoroughly common-place, unintellectual lot. but these people are wholly on wires; laying their ears down, skimming away, pausing as though shot, and presto! full spread on the other tack. i observe in the official class mostly an insane jealousy of the smallest kind, as compared to which the artist's is of a grave, modest character the actor's, even; a desire to extend his little authority, and to relish it like a glass of wine, that is impayable. sometimes, when i see one of these little kings strutting over one of his victories wholly illegal, perhaps, and certain to be reversed to his shame if his superiors ever heard of it i could weep. the strange thing is that they have nothing else. i auscultate them in vain; no real sense of duty, no real comprehension, no real attempt to comprehend, no wish for information you cannot offend one of them more bitterly than by offering information, though it is certain that you have more, and obvious that you have other, information than they have; and talking of policy, they could not play a better stroke than by listening to you, and it need by no means influence their action. tenez, you know what a french post office or railway official is? that is the diplomatic card to the life. dickens is not in it; caricature fails. all this keeps me from my work, and gives me the unpleasant side of the world. when your letters are disbelieved it makes you angry, and that is rot; and i wish i could keep out of it with all my soul. but i have just got into it again, and farewell peace! my work goes along but slowly. i have got to a crossing place, i suppose; the present book, saint ives, is nothing; it is in no style in particular, a tissue of adventures, the central character not very well done, no philosophic pith under the yarn; and, in short, if people will read it, that's all i ask; and if they won't, damn them! i like doing it though; and if you ask me why! after that i am on weir of hermiston and heathercat, two scotch stories, which will either be something different, or i shall have failed. the first is generally designed, and is a private story of two or three characters in a very grim vein. the second alas! the thought is an attempt at a real historical novel, to present a whole field of time; the race our own race the west land and clydesdale blue bonnets, under the influence of their last trial, when they got to a pitch of organisation in madness that no other peasantry has ever made an offer at. i was going to call it the killing time, but this man crockett has forestalled me in that. well, it'll be a big smash if i fail in it; but a gallant attempt. all my weary reading as a boy, which you remember well enough, will come to bear on it; and if my mind will keep up to the point it was in a while back, perhaps i can pull it through. for two months past, fanny, belle, austin (her child), and i have been alone; but yesterday, as i mentioned, graham balfour arrived, and on wednesday my mother and lloyd will make up the party to its full strength. i wish you could drop in for a month or a week, or two hours. that is my chief want. on the whole, it is an unexpectedly pleasant corner i have dropped into for an end of it, which i could scarcely have foreseen from wilson's shop, or the princes street gardens, or the portobello road. still, i would like to hear what my alter ego thought of it; and i would sometimes like to have my old maitre es arts express an opinion on what i do. i put this very tamely, being on the whole a quiet elderly man; but it is a strong passion with me, though intermittent. now, try to follow my example and tell me something about yourself, louisa, the bab, and your work; and kindly send me some specimens of what you're about. i have only seen one thing by you, about notre dame in the westminster or st. james's, since i left england, now i suppose six years ago. i have looked this trash over, and it is not at all the letter i wanted to write not truck about officials, ancestors, and the like rancidness but you have to let your pen go in its own broken-down gait, like an old butcher's pony, stop when it pleases, and go on again as it will. ever, my dear bob, your affectionate cousin, r. l. stevenson. letter: to henry james vailima, july 7th, 1894. dear henry james, i am going to try and dictate to you a letter or a note, and begin the same without any spark of hope, my mind being entirely in abeyance. this malady is very bitter on the literary man. i have had it now coming on for a month, and it seems to get worse instead of better. if it should prove to be softening of the brain, a melancholy interest will attach to the present document. i heard a great deal about you from my mother and graham balfour; the latter declares that you could take a first in any samoan subject. if that be so, i should like to hear you on the theory of the constitution. also to consult you on the force of the particles o lo 'o and ua, which are the subject of a dispute among local pundits. you might, if you ever answer this, give me your opinion on the origin of the samoan race, just to complete the favour. they both say that you are looking well, and i suppose i may conclude from that that you are feeling passably. i wish i was. do not suppose from this that i am ill in body; it is the numskull that i complain of. and when that is wrong, as you must be very keenly aware, you begin every day with a smarting disappointment, which is not good for the temper. i am in one of the humours when a man wonders how any one can be such an ass as to embrace the profession of letters, and not get apprenticed to a barber or keep a baked-potato stall. but i have no doubt in the course of a week, or perhaps to-morrow, things will look better. we have at present in port the model warship of great britain. she is called the curacoa, and has the nicest set of officers and men conceivable. they, the officers, are all very intimate with us, and the front verandah is known as the curacoa club, and the road up to vailima is known as the curacoa track. it was rather a surprise to me; many naval officers have i known, and somehow had not learned to think entirely well of them, and perhaps sometimes ask myself a little uneasily how that kind of men could do great actions? and behold! the answer comes to me, and i see a ship that i would guarantee to go anywhere it was possible for men to go, and accomplish anything it was permitted man to attempt. i had a cruise on board of her not long ago to manu'a, and was delighted. the goodwill of all on board; the grim playfulness of quarters, with the wounded falling down at the word; the ambulances hastening up and carrying them away; the captain suddenly crying, 'fire in the ward-room!' and the squad hastening forward with the hose; and, last and most curious spectacle of all, all the men in their dustcoloured fatigue clothes, at a note of the bugle, falling simultaneously flat on deck, and the ship proceeding with its prostrate crew quasi to ram an enemy; our dinner at night in a wild open anchorage, the ship rolling almost to her gunwales, and showing us alternately her bulwarks up in the sky, and then the wild broken cliffy palm-crested shores of the island with the surf thundering and leaping close aboard. we had the ward-room mess on deck, lit by pink wax tapers, everybody, of course, in uniform but myself, and the first lieutenant (who is a rheumaticky body) wrapped in a boat cloak. gradually the sunset faded out, the island disappeared from the eye, though it remained menacingly present to the ear with the voice of the surf; and then the captain turned on the searchlight and gave us the coast, the beach, the trees, the native houses, and the cliffs by glimpses of daylight, a kind of deliberate lightning. about which time, i suppose, we must have come as far as the dessert, and were probably drinking our first glass of port to her majesty. we stayed two days at the island, and had, in addition, a very picturesque snapshot at the native life. the three islands of manu'a are independent, and are ruled over by a little slip of a half-caste girl about twenty, who sits all day in a pink gown, in a little white european house with about a quarter of an acre of roses in front of it, looking at the palm-trees on the village street, and listening to the surf. this, so far as i could discover, was all she had to do. 'this is a very dull place,' she said. it appears she could go to no other village for fear of raising the jealousy of her own people in the capital. and as for going about 'tafatafaoing,' as we say here, its cost was too enormous. a strong able-bodied native must walk in front of her and blow the conch shell continuously from the moment she leaves one house until the moment she enters another. did you ever blow the conch shell? i presume not; but the sweat literally hailed off that man, and i expected every moment to see him burst a blood-vessel. we were entertained to kava in the guest-house with some very original features. the young men who run for the kava have a right to misconduct themselves ad libitum on the way back; and though they were told to restrain themselves on the occasion of our visit, there was a strange hurly-burly at their return, when they came beating the trees and the posts of the houses, leaping, shouting, and yelling like bacchants. i tasted on that occasion what it is to be great. my name was called next after the captain's, and several chiefs (a thing quite new to me, and not at all samoan practice) drank to me by name. and now, if you are not sick of the curacoa and manu'a, i am, at least on paper. and i decline any longer to give you examples of how not to write. by the by, you sent me long ago a work by anatole france, which i confess i did not taste. since then i have made the acquaintance of the abbe coignard, and have become a faithful adorer. i don't think a better book was ever written. and i have no idea what i have said, and i have no idea what i ought to have said, and i am a total ass, but my heart is in the right place, and i am, my dear henry james, yours, r. l. s. letter: to mr. marcel schwob vailima, upolu, samoa, july 7, 1894. dear mr. marcel schwob, thank you for having remembered me in my exile. i have read mimes twice as a whole; and now, as i write, i am reading it again as it were by accident, and a piece at a time, my eye catching a word and travelling obediently on through the whole number. it is a graceful book, essentially graceful, with its haunting agreeable melancholy, its pleasing savour of antiquity. at the same time, by its merits, it shows itself rather as the promise of something else to come than a thing final in itself. you have yet to give us and i am expecting it with impatience something of a larger gait; something daylit, not twilit; something with the colours of life, not the flat tints of a temple illumination; something that shall be said with all the clearnesses and the trivialities of speech, not sung like a semiarticulate lullaby. it will not please yourself as well, when you come to give it us, but it will please others better. it will be more of a whole, more worldly, more nourished, more commonplace and not so pretty, perhaps not even so beautiful. no man knows better than i that, as we go on in life, we must part from prettiness and the graces. we but attain qualities to lose them; life is a series of farewells, even in art; even our proficiencies are deciduous and evanescent. so here with these exquisite pieces the xviith, xviiith, and ivth of the present collection. you will perhaps never excel them; i should think the 'hermes,' never. well, you will do something else, and of that i am in expectation. yours cordially, robert louis stevenson. letter: to a. st. gaudens vailima, samoa, july 8, 1894. my dear st. gaudens, this is to tell you that the medallion has been at last triumphantly transported up the hill and placed over my smoking-room mantelpiece. it is considered by everybody a first-rate but flattering portrait. we have it in a very good light, which brings out the artistic merits of the god-like sculptor to great advantage. as for my own opinion, i believe it to be a speaking likeness, and not flattered at all; possibly a little the reverse. the verses (curse the rhyme) look remarkably well. please do not longer delay, but send me an account for the expense of the gilt letters. i was sorry indeed that they proved beyond the means of a small farmer. yours very sincerely, robert louis stevenson. letter: to miss adelaide boodle vailima, july 14, 1894. my dear adelaide, . . . so, at last, you are going into mission work? where i think your heart always was. you will like it in a way, but remember it is dreary long. do you know the story of the american tramp who was offered meals and a day's wage to chop with the back of an axe on a fallen trunk. 'damned if i can go on chopping when i can't see the chips fly!' you will never see the chips fly in mission work, never; and be sure you know it beforehand. the work is one long dull disappointment, varied by acute revulsions; and those who are by nature courageous and cheerful and have grown old in experience, learn to rub their hands over infinitesimal successes. however, as i really believe there is some good done in the long run gutta cavat lapidem non vi in this business it is a useful and honourable career in which no one should be ashamed to embark. always remember the fable of the sun, the storm, and the traveller's cloak. forget wholly and for ever all small pruderies, and remember that you cannot change ancestral feelings of right and wrong without what is practically soul-murder. barbarous as the customs may seem, always hear them with patience, always judge them with gentleness, always find in them some seed of good; see that you always develop them; remember that all you can do is to civilise the man in the line of his own civilisation, such as it is. and never expect, never believe in, thaumaturgic conversions. they may do very well for st. paul; in the case of an andaman islander they mean less than nothing. in fact, what you have to do is to teach the parents in the interests of their great-grandchildren. now, my dear adelaide, dismiss from your mind the least idea of fault upon your side; nothing is further from the fact. i cannot forgive you, for i do not know your fault. my own is plain enough, and the name of it is cold-hearted neglect; and you may busy yourself more usefully in trying to forgive me. but ugly as my fault is, you must not suppose it to mean more than it does; it does not mean that we have at all forgotten you, that we have become at all indifferent to the thought of you. see, in my life of jenkin, a remark of his, very well expressed, on the friendships of men who do not write to each other. i can honestly say that i have not changed to you in any way; though i have behaved thus ill, thus cruelly. evil is done by want of well, principally by want of industry. you can imagine what i would say (in a novel) of any one who had behaved as i have done, deteriora sequor. and you must somehow manage to forgive your old friend; and if you will be so very good, continue to give us news of you, and let us share the knowledge of your adventures, sure that it will be always followed with interest even if it is answered with the silence of ingratitude. for i am not a fool; i know my faults, i know they are ineluctable, i know they are growing on me. i know i may offend again, and i warn you of it. but the next time i offend, tell me so plainly and frankly like a lady, and don't lacerate my heart and bludgeon my vanity with imaginary faults of your own and purely gratuitous penitence. i might suspect you of irony! we are all fairly well, though i have been off work and off as you know very well letter-writing. yet i have sometimes more than twenty letters, and sometimes more than thirty, going out each mail. and fanny has had a most distressing bronchitis for some time, which she is only now beginning to get over. i have just been to see her; she is lying though she had breakfast an hour ago, about seven in her big cool, mosquito-proof room, ingloriously asleep. as for me, you see that a doom has come upon me: i cannot make marks with a pen witness 'ingloriously' above; and my amanuensis not appearing so early in the day, for she is then immersed in household affairs, and i can hear her 'steering the boys' up and down the verandahs you must decipher this unhappy letter for yourself and, i fully admit, with everything against you. a letter should be always well written; how much more a letter of apology! legibility is the politeness of men of letters, as punctuality of kings and beggars. by the punctuality of my replies, and the beauty of my hand-writing, judge what a fine conscience i must have! now, my dear gamekeeper, i must really draw to a close. for i have much else to write before the mail goes out three days hence. fanny being asleep, it would not be conscientious to invent a message from her, so you must just imagine her sentiments. i find i have not the heart to speak of your recent loss. you remember perhaps, when my father died, you told me those ugly images of sickness, decline, and impaired reason, which then haunted me day and night, would pass away and be succeeded by things more happily characteristic. i have found it so. he now haunts me, strangely enough, in two guises; as a man of fifty, lying on a hillside and carving mottoes on a stick, strong and well; and as a younger man, running down the sands into the sea near north berwick, myself aetat. ii somewhat horrified at finding him so beautiful when stripped! i hand on your own advice to you in case you have forgotten it, as i know one is apt to do in seasons of bereavement. ever yours, with much love and sympathy, robert louis stevenson. letter: to mrs. baker vailima, samoa, july 16, 1894. dear mrs. baker, i am very much obliged to you for your letter and the enclosure from mr. skinner. mr. skinner says he 'thinks mr. stevenson must be a very kind man'; he little knows me. but i am very sure of one thing, that you are a very kind woman. i envy you my amanuensis being called away, i continue in my own hand, or what is left of it unusually legible, i am thankful to see i envy you your beautiful choice of an employment. there must be no regrets at least for a day so spent; and when the night falls you need ask no blessing on your work. 'inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these.' yours truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to j. m. barrie vailima, july 13, 1894. my dear barrie, this is the last effort of an ulcerated conscience. i have been so long owing you a letter, i have heard so much of you, fresh from the press, from my mother and graham balfour, that i have to write a letter no later than to-day, or perish in my shame. but the deuce of it is, my dear fellow, that you write such a very good letter that i am ashamed to exhibit myself before my junior (which you are, after all) in the light of the dreary idiot i feel. understand that there will be nothing funny in the following pages. if i can manage to be rationally coherent, i shall be more than satisfied. in the first place, i have had the extreme satisfaction to be shown that photograph of your mother. it bears evident traces of the hand of an amateur. how is it that amateurs invariably take better photographs than professionals? i must qualify invariably. my own negatives have always represented a province of chaos and old night in which you might dimly perceive fleecy spots of twilight, representing nothing; so that, if i am right in supposing the portrait of your mother to be yours, i must salute you as my superior. is that your mother's breakfast? or is it only afternoon tea? if the first, do let me recommend to mrs. barrie to add an egg to her ordinary. which, if you please, i will ask her to eat to the honour of her son, and i am sure she will live much longer for it, to enjoy his fresh successes. i never in my life saw anything more deliciously characteristic. i declare i can hear her speak. i wonder my mother could resist the temptation of your proposed visit to kirriemuir, which it was like your kindness to propose. by the way, i was twice in kirriemuir, i believe in the year '71, when i was going on a visit to glenogil. it was kirriemuir, was it not? i have a distinct recollection of an inn at the end i think the upper end of an irregular open place or square, in which i always see your characters evolve. but, indeed, i did not pay much attention; being all bent upon my visit to a shooting-box, where i should fish a real trout-stream, and i believe preserved. i did, too, and it was a charming stream, clear as crystal, without a trace of peat a strange thing in scotland and alive with trout; the name of it i cannot remember, it was something like the queen's river, and in some hazy way connected with memories of mary queen of scots. it formed an epoch in my life, being the end of all my trout-fishing. i had always been accustomed to pause and very laboriously to kill every fish as i took it. but in the queen's river i took so good a basket that i forgot these niceties; and when i sat down, in a hard rain shower, under a bank, to take my sandwiches and sherry, lo! and behold, there was the basketful of trouts still kicking in their agony. i had a very unpleasant conversation with my conscience. all that afternoon i persevered in fishing, brought home my basket in triumph, and sometime that night, 'in the wee sma' hours ayont the twal,' i finally forswore the gentle craft of fishing. i dare say your local knowledge may identify this historic river; i wish it could go farther and identify also that particular free kirk in which i sat and groaned on sunday. while my hand is in i must tell you a story. at that antique epoch you must not fall into the vulgar error that i was myself ancient. i was, on the contrary, very young, very green, and (what you will appreciate, mr. barrie) very shy. there came one day to lunch at the house two very formidable old ladies or one very formidable, and the other what you please answering to the honoured and historic name of the miss ca-'s of balnamoon. at table i was exceedingly funny, and entertained the company with tales of geese and bubbly-jocks. i was great in the expression of my terror for these bipeds, and suddenly this horrid, severe, and eminently matronly old lady put up a pair of gold eye-glasses, looked at me awhile in silence, and pronounced in a clangorous voice her verdict. 'you give me very much the effect of a coward, mr. stevenson!' i had very nearly left two vices behind me at glenogil fishing and jesting at table. and of one thing you may be very sure, my lips were no more opened at that meal. july 29th no, barrie, 'tis in vain they try to alarm me with their bulletins. no doubt, you're ill, and unco ill, i believe; but i have been so often in the same case that i know pleurisy and pneumonia are in vain against scotsmen who can write, (i once could.) you cannot imagine probably how near me this common calamity brings you. ce que j'ai tousse dans ma vie! how often and how long have i been on the rack at night and learned to appreciate that noble passage in the psalms when somebody or other is said to be more set on something than they 'who dig for hid treasures yea, than those who long for the morning' for all the world, as you have been racked and you have longed. keep your heart up, and you'll do. tell that to your mother, if you are still in any danger or suffering. and by the way, if you are at all like me and i tell myself you are very like me be sure there is only one thing good for you, and that is the sea in hot climates. mount, sir, into 'a little frigot' of 5000 tons or so, and steer peremptorily for the tropics; and what if the ancient mariner, who guides your frigot, should startle the silence of the ocean with the cry of land ho! say, when the day is dawning and you should see the turquoise mountain tops of upolu coming hand over fist above the horizon? mr. barrie, sir, 'tis then there would be larks! and though i cannot be certain that our climate would suit you (for it does not suit some), i am sure as death the voyage would do you good would do you best and if samoa didn't do, you needn't stay beyond the month, and i should have had another pleasure in my life, which is a serious consideration for me. i take this as the hand of the lord preparing your way to vailima in the desert, certainly in the desert of cough and by the ghoul-haunted woodland of fever but whither that way points there can be no question and there will be a meeting of the twa hoasting scots makers in spite of fate, fortune, and the devil. absit omen! my dear barrie, i am a little in the dark about this new work of yours: what is to become of me afterwards? you say carefully methought anxiously that i was no longer me when i grew up? i cannot bear this suspense: what is it? it's no forgery? and am i hangit? these are the elements of a very pretty lawsuit which you had better come to samoa to compromise. i am enjoying a great pleasure that i had long looked forward to, reading orme's history of indostan; i had been looking out for it everywhere; but at last, in four volumes, large quarto, beautiful type and page, and with a delectable set of maps and plans, and all the names of the places wrongly spelled it came to samoa, little barrie. i tell you frankly, you had better come soon. i am sair failed a'ready; and what i may be if you continue to dally, i dread to conceive. i may be speechless; already, or at least for a month or so, i'm little better than a teetoller i beg pardon, a teetotaller. it is not exactly physical, for i am in good health, working four or five hours a day in my plantation, and intending to ride a paper-chase next sunday ay, man, that's a fact, and i havena had the hert to breathe it to my mother yet the obligation's poleetical, for i am trying every means to live well with my german neighbours and, o barrie, but it's no easy! to be sure, there are many exceptions. and the whole of the above must be regarded as private strictly private. breathe it not in kirriemuir: tell it not to the daughters of dundee! what a nice extract this would make for the daily papers! and how it would facilitate my position here! . . . august 5th. this is sunday, the lord's day. 'the hour of attack approaches.' and it is a singular consideration what i risk; i may yet be the subject of a tract, and a good tract too such as one which i remember reading with recreant awe and rising hair in my youth, of a boy who was a very good boy, and went to sunday schule, and one day kipped from it, and went and actually bathed, and was dashed over a waterfall, and he was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. a dangerous trade, that, and one that i have to practise. i'll put in a word when i get home again, to tell you whether i'm killed or not. 'accident in the (paper) hunting field: death of a notorious author. we deeply regret to announce the death of the most unpopular man in samoa, who broke his neck at the descent of magagi, from the misconduct of his little raving lunatic of an old beast of a pony. it is proposed to commemorate the incident by the erection of a suitable pile. the design (by our local architect, mr. walker) is highly artificial, with a rich and voluminous crockett at each corner, a small but impervious barrieer at the entrance, an arch at the top, an archer of a pleasing but solid character at the bottom; the colour will be genuine williamblack; and lang, lang may the ladies sit wi' their fans in their hands.' well, well, they may sit as they sat for me, and little they'll reck, the ungrateful jauds! muckle they cared about tusitala when they had him! but now ye can see the difference; now, leddies, ye can repent, when ower late, o' your former cauldness and what ye'll perhaps allow me to ca' your tepeedity! he was beautiful as the day, but his day is done! and perhaps, as he was maybe gettin' a wee thing fly-blawn, it's nane too shune. monday, august 6th. well, sir, i have escaped the dangerous conjunction of the widow's only son and the sabbath day. we had a most enjoyable time, and lloyd and i were 3 and 4 to arrive; i will not tell here what interval had elapsed between our arrival and the arrival of 1 and 2; the question, sir, is otiose and malign; it deserves, it shall have no answer. and now without further delay to the main purpose of this hasty note. we received and we have already in fact distributed the gorgeous fahbrics of kirriemuir. whether from the splendour of the robes themselves, or from the direct nature of the compliments with which you had directed us to accompany the presentations, one young lady blushed as she received the proofs of your munificence. . . . bad ink, and the dregs of it at that, but the heart in the right place. still very cordially interested in my barrie and wishing him well through his sickness, which is of the body, and long defended from mine, which is of the head, and by the impolite might be described as idiocy. the whole head is useless, and the whole sitting part painful: reason, the recent paper chase. there was racing and chasing in vailile plantation, and vastly we enjoyed it, but, alas! for the state of my foundation, for it wholly has destroyed it. come, my mind is looking up. the above is wholly impromptu. on oath, tusitala. august 12, 1894 and here, mr. barrie, is news with a vengeance. mother hubbard's dog is well again what did i tell you? pleurisy, pneumonia, and all that kind of truck is quite unavailing against a scotchman who can write and not only that, but it appears the perfidious dog is married. this incident, so far as i remember, is omitted from the original epic she went to the graveyard to see him get him buried, and when she came back the deil had got merried. it now remains to inform you that i have taken what we call here 'german offence' at not receiving cards, and that the only reparation i will accept is that mrs. barrie shall incontinently upon the receipt of this take and bring you to vailima in order to apologise and be pardoned for this offence. the commentary of tamaitai upon the event was brief but pregnant: 'well, it's a comfort our guest-room is furnished for two.' this letter, about nothing, has already endured too long. i shall just present the family to mrs. barrie tamaitai, tamaitai matua, teuila, palema, loia, and with an extra low bow, yours, tusitala. letter: to dr. bakewell vailima, august 7, 1894. dear dr. bakewell, i am not more than human. i am more human than is wholly convenient, and your anecdote was welcome. what you say about unwilling work, my dear sir, is a consideration always present with me, and yet not easy to give its due weight to. you grow gradually into a certain income; without spending a penny more, with the same sense of restriction as before when you painfully scraped two hundred a year together, you find you have spent, and you cannot well stop spending, a far larger sum; and this expense can only be supported by a certain production. however, i am off work this month, and occupy myself instead in weeding my cacao, paper chases, and the like. i may tell you, my average of work in favourable circumstances is far greater than you suppose: from six o'clock till eleven at latest, and often till twelve, and again in the afternoon from two to four. my hand is quite destroyed, as you may perceive, to-day to a really unusual extent. i can sometimes write a decent fist still; but i have just returned with my arms all stung from three hours' work in the cacao. yours, etc., r. l. s. letter: to james payn vailima, upolu, samoa [august 11, 1894]. my dear james payn, i hear from lang that you are unwell, and it reminds me of two circumstances: first, that it is a very long time since you had the exquisite pleasure of hearing from me; and second, that i have been very often unwell myself, and sometimes had to thank you for a grateful anodyne. they are not good, the circumstances, to write an anodyne letter. the hills and my house at less than (boom) a minute's interval quake with thunder; and though i cannot hear that part of it, shells are falling thick into the fort of luatuanu'u (boom). it is my friends of the curacoa, the falke, and the bussard bombarding (after all these boom months) the rebels of atua. (boom-boom.) it is most distracting in itself; and the thought of the poor devils in their fort (boom) with their bits of rifles far from pleasant. (boom-boom.) you can see how quick it goes, and i'll say no more about mr. bow-wow, only you must understand the perpetual accompaniment of this discomfortable sound, and make allowances for the value of my copy. it is odd, though, i can well remember, when the franco-prussian war began, and i was in eilean earraid, far enough from the sound of the loudest cannonade, i could hear the shots fired, and i felt the pang in my breast of a man struck. it was sometimes so distressing, so instant, that i lay in the heather on the top of the island, with my face hid, kicking my heels for agony. and now, when i can hear the actual concussion of the air and hills, when i know personally the people who stand exposed to it, i am able to go on tant bien que mal with a letter to james payn! the blessings of age, though mighty small, are tangible. i have heard a great deal of them since i came into the world, and now that i begin to taste of them well! but this is one, that people do get cured of the excess of sensibility; and i had as lief these people were shot at as myself or almost, for then i should have some of the fun, such as it is. you are to conceive me, then, sitting in my little gallery room, shaken by these continual spasms of cannon, and with my eye more or less singly fixed on the imaginary figure of my dear james payn. i try to see him in bed; no go. i see him instead jumping up in his room in waterloo place (where ex hypothesi he is not), sitting on the table, drawing out a very black briar-root pipe, and beginning to talk to a slim and ill-dressed visitor in a voice that is good to hear and with a smile that is pleasant to see. (after a little more than half an hour, the voice that was ill to hear has ceased, the cannonade is over.) and i am thinking how i can get an answering smile wafted over so many leagues of land and water, and can find no way. i have always been a great visitor of the sick; and one of the sick i visited was w. e. henley, which did not make very tedious visits, so i'll not get off much purgatory for them. that was in the edinburgh infirmary, the old one, the true one, with georgius secundus standing and pointing his toe in a niche of the facade; and a mighty fine building it was! and i remember one winter's afternoon, in that place of misery, that henley and i chanced to fall in talk about james payn himself. i am wishing you could have heard that talk! i think that would make you smile. we had mixed you up with john payne, for one thing, and stood amazed at your extraordinary, even painful, versatility; and for another, we found ourselves each students so well prepared for examinations on the novels of the real mackay. perhaps, after all, this is worth something in life to have given so much pleasure to a pair so different in every way as were henley and i, and to be talked of with so much interest by two such (beg pardon) clever lads! the cheerful lang has neglected to tell me what is the matter with you; so, i'm sorry to say, i am cut off from all the customary consolations. i can't say, 'think how much worse it would be if you had a broken leg!' when you may have the crushing repartee up your sleeve, 'but it is my leg that is broken.' this is a pity. but there are consolations. you are an englishman (i believe); you are a man of letters; you have never been made c.b.; your hair was not red; you have played cribbage and whist; you did not play either the fiddle or the banjo; you were never an aesthete; you never contributed to -'s journal; your name is not jabez balfour; you are totally unconnected with the army and navy departments; i understand you to have lived within your income why, cheer up! here are many legitimate causes of congratulation. i seem to be writing an obituary notice. absit omen! but i feel very sure that these considerations will have done you more good than medicine. by the by, did you ever play piquet? i have fallen a victim to this debilitating game. it is supposed to be scientific; god save the mark, what self-deceivers men are! it is distinctly less so than cribbage. but how fascinating! there is such material opulence about it, such vast ambitions may be realised and are not; it may be called the monte cristo of games. and the thrill with which you take five cards partakes of the nature of lust and you draw four sevens and a nine, and the seven and nine of a suit that you discarded, and o! but the world is a desert! you may see traces of discouragement in my letter: all due to piquet! there has been a disastrous turn of the luck against me; a month or two ago i was two thousand ahead; now, and for a week back, i have been anything from four thousand eight hundred to five thousand two hundred astern. if i have a sixieme, my beast of a partner has a septieme; and if i have three aces, three kings, three queens, and three knaves (excuse the slight exaggeration), the devil holds quatorze of tens! i remain, my dear james payn, your sincere and obliged friend old friend let me say, robert louis stevenson. letter: to miss middleton vailima, samoa, september 9, 1894. dear miss middleton, your letter has been like the drawing up of a curtain. of course i remember you very well, and the skye terrier to which you refer a heavy, dull, fatted, graceless creature he grew up to be was my own particular pet. it may amuse you, perhaps, as much as 'the inn' amused me, if i tell you what made this dog particularly mine. my father was the natural god of all the dogs in our house, and poor jura took to him of course. jura was stolen, and kept in prison somewhere for more than a week, as i remember. when he came back smeoroch had come and taken my father's heart from him. he took his stand like a man, and positively never spoke to my father again from that day until the day of his death. it was the only sign of character he ever showed. i took him up to my room and to be my dog in consequence, partly because i was sorry for him, and partly because i admired his dignity in misfortune. with best regards and thanks for having reminded me of so many pleasant days, old acquaintances, dead friends, and what is perhaps as pathetic as any of them dead dogs, i remain, yours truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to a. conan doyle vailima, samoa, september 9, 1894. my dear conan doyle, if you found anything to entertain you in my treasure island article, it may amuse you to know that you owe it entirely to yourself. your 'first book' was by some accident read aloud one night in my baronial 'all. i was consumedly amused by it, so was the whole family, and we proceeded to hunt up back idlers and read the whole series. it is a rattling good series, even people whom you would not expect came in quite the proper tone miss braddon, for instance, who was really one of the best where all are good or all but one! ... in short, i fell in love with 'the first book' series, and determined that it should be all our first books, and that i could not hold back where the white plume of conan doyle waved gallantly in the front. i hope they will republish them, though it's a grievous thought to me that that effigy in the german cap likewise the other effigy of the noisome old man with the long hair, telling indelicate stories to a couple of deformed negresses in a rancid shanty full of wreckage should be perpetuated. i may seem to speak in pleasantry it is only a seeming that german cap, sir, would be found, when i come to die, imprinted on my heart. enough my heart is too full. adieu. yours very truly, robert louis stevenson (in a german cap, damn 'em!) letter: to charles baxter [vailima, september 1894.] my dear charles, . . . well, there is no more edmund baxter now; and i think i may say i know how you feel. he was one of the best, the kindest, and the most genial men i ever knew. i shall always remember his brisk, cordial ways and the essential goodness which he showed me whenever we met with gratitude. and the always is such a little while now! he is another of the landmarks gone; when it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, i shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue; and whatever be my destiny afterward, i shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honour. it is human at least, if not divine. and these deaths make me think of it with an ever greater readiness. strange that you should be beginning a new life, when i, who am a little your junior, am thinking of the end of mine. but i have had hard lines; i have been so long waiting for death, i have unwrapped my thoughts from about life so long, that i have not a filament left to hold by; i have done my fiddling so long under vesuvius, that i have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption, and think it long of coming. literally, no man has more wholly outlived life than i. and still it's good fun. r. l. s. letter: to r. a. m. stevenson [vailima, september 1894.] dear bob, you are in error about the picts. they were a gaelic race, spoke a celtic tongue, and we have no evidence that i know of that they were blacker than other celts. the balfours, i take it, were plainly celts; their name shows it the 'cold croft,' it means; so does their country. where the black scotch come from nobody knows; but i recognise with you the fact that the whole of britain is rapidly and progressively becoming more pigmented; already in one man's life i can decidedly trace a difference in the children about a school door. but colour is not an essential part of a man or a race. take my polynesians, an asiatic people probably from the neighbourhood of the persian gulf. they range through any amount of shades, from the burnt hue of the low archipelago islander, which seems half negro, to the 'bleached' pretty women of the marquesas (close by on the map), who come out for a festival no darker than an italian; their colour seems to vary directly with the degree of exposure to the sun. and, as with negroes, the babes are born white; only it should seem a little sack of pigment at the lower part of the spine, which presently spreads over the whole field. very puzzling. but to return. the picts furnish to-day perhaps a third of the population of scotland, say another third for scots and britons, and the third for norse and angles is a bad third. edinburgh was a pictish place. but the fact is, we don't know their frontiers. tell some of your journalist friends with a good style to popularise old skene; or say your prayers, and read him for yourself; he was a great historian, and i was his blessed clerk, and did not know it; and you will not be in a state of grace about the picts till you have studied him. j. horne stevenson (do you know him?) is working this up with me, and the fact is it's not interesting to the public but it's interesting, and very interesting, in itself, and just now very embarrassing this rural parish supplied glasgow with such a quantity of stevensons in the beginning of last century! there is just a link wanting; and we might be able to go back to the eleventh century, always undistinguished, but clearly traceable. when i say just a link, i guess i may be taken to mean a dozen. what a singular thing is this undistinguished perpetuation of a family throughout the centuries, and the sudden bursting forth of character and capacity that began with our grandfather! but as i go on in life, day by day, i become more of a bewildered child; i cannot get used to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight, to hearing; the commonest things are a burthen. the prim obliterated polite face of life, and the broad, bawdy, and orgiastic or maenadic foundations, form a spectacle to which no habit reconciles me; and 'i could wish my days to be bound each to each' by the same open-mouthed wonder. they are anyway, and whether i wish it or not. i remember very well your attitude to life, this conventional surface of it. you had none of that curiosity for the social stage directions, the trivial ficelles of the business; it is simian, but that is how the wild youth of man is captured; you wouldn't imitate, hence you kept free a wild dog, outside the kennel and came dam' near starving for your pains. the key to the business is of course the belly; difficult as it is to keep that in view in the zone of three miraculous meals a day in which we were brought up. civilisation has become reflex with us; you might think that hunger was the name of the best sauce; but hunger to the cold solitary under a bush of a rainy night is the name of something quite different. i defend civilisation for the thing it is, for the thing it has come to be, the standpoint of a real old tory. my ideal would be the female clan. but how can you turn these crowding dumb multitudes back? they don't do anything because; they do things, write able articles, stitch shoes, dig, from the purely simian impulse. go and reason with monkeys! no, i am right about jean lillie. jean lillie, our double greatgrandmother, the daughter of david lillie, sometime deacon of the wrights, married, first, alan stevenson, who died may 26, 1774, 'at santt kittes of a fiver,' by whom she had robert stevenson, born 8th june 1772; and, second, in may or june 1787, thomas smith, a widower, and already the father of our grandmother. this improbable double connection always tends to confuse a student of the family, thomas smith being doubly our great-grandfather. i looked on the perpetuation of our honoured name with veneration. my mother collared one of the photos, of course; the other is stuck up on my wall as the chief of our sept. do you know any of the gaelic-celtic sharps? you might ask what the name means. it puzzles me. i find a m'stein and a macstephane; and our own greatgrandfather always called himself steenson, though he wrote it stevenson. there are at least three places called stevenson stevenson in cunningham, stevenson in peebles, and stevenson in haddington. and it was not the celtic trick, i understand, to call places after people. i am going to write to sir herbert maxwell about the name, but you might find some one. get the anglo-saxon heresy out of your head; they superimposed their language, they scarce modified the race; only in berwickshire and roxburgh have they very largely affected the place names. the scandinavians did much more to scotland than the angles. the saxons didn't come. enough of this sham antiquarianism. yes, it is in the matter of the book, of course, that collaboration shows; as for the manner, it is superficially all mine, in the sense that the last copy is all in my hand. lloyd did not even put pen to paper in the paris scenes or the barbizon scene; it was no good; he wrote and often rewrote all the rest; i had the best service from him on the character of nares. you see, we had been just meeting the man, and his memory was full of the man's words and ways. and lloyd is an impressionist, pure and simple. the great difficulty of collaboration is that you can't explain what you mean. i know what kind of effect i mean a character to give what kind of tache he is to make; but how am i to tell my collaborator in words? hence it was necessary to say, 'make him so-and-so'; and this was all right for nares and pinkerton and loudon dodd, whom we both knew, but for bellairs, for instance a man with whom i passed ten minutes fifteen years ago what was i to say? and what could lloyd do? i, as a personal artist, can begin a character with only a haze in my head, but how if i have to translate the haze into words before i begin? in our manner of collaboration (which i think the only possible i mean that of one person being responsible, and giving the coup de pouce to every part of the work) i was spared the obviously hopeless business of trying to explain to my collaborator what style i wished a passage to be treated in. these are the times that illustrate to a man the inadequacy of spoken language. now to be just to written language i can (or could) find a language for my every mood, but how could i tell any one beforehand what this effect was to be, which it would take every art that i possessed, and hours and hours of deliberate labour and selection and rejection, to produce? these are the impossibilities of collaboration. its immediate advantage is to focus two minds together on the stuff, and to produce in consequence an extraordinarily greater richness of purview, consideration, and invention. the hardest chapter of all was 'cross questions and crooked answers.' you would not believe what that cost us before it assumed the least unity and colour. lloyd wrote it at least thrice, and i at least five times this is from memory. and was that last chapter worth the trouble it cost? alas, that i should ask the question! two classes of men the artist and the educationalist are sworn, on soul and conscience, not to ask it. you get an ordinary, grinning, red-headed boy, and you have to educate him. faith supports you; you give your valuable hours, the boy does not seem to profit, but that way your duty lies, for which you are paid, and you must persevere. education has always seemed to me one of the few possible and dignified ways of life. a sailor, a shepherd, a schoolmaster to a less degree, a soldier and (i don't know why, upon my soul, except as a sort of schoolmaster's unofficial assistant, and a kind of acrobat in tights) an artist, almost exhaust the category. if i had to begin again i know not si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait . . . i know not at all i believe i should try to honour sex more religiously. the worst of our education is that christianity does not recognise and hallow sex. it looks askance at it, over its shoulder, oppressed as it is by reminiscences of hermits and asiatic self-tortures. it is a terrible hiatus in our modern religions that they cannot see and make venerable that which they ought to see first and hallow most. well, it is so; i cannot be wiser than my generation. but no doubt there is something great in the half-success that has attended the effort of turning into an emotional religion, bald conduct, without any appeal, or almost none, to the figurative, mysterious, and constitutive facts of life. not that conduct is not constitutive, but dear! it's dreary! on the whole, conduct is better dealt with on the cast-iron 'gentleman' and duty formula, with as little fervour and poetry as possible; stoical and short. . . . there is a new something or other in the wind, which exercises me hugely: anarchy, i mean, anarchism. people who (for pity's sake) commit dastardly murders very basely, die like saints, and leave beautiful letters behind 'em (did you see vaillant to his daughter? it was the new testament over again); people whose conduct is inexplicable to me, and yet their spiritual life higher than that of most. this is just what the early christians must have seemed to the romans. is this, then, a new drive among the monkeys? mind you, bob, if they go on being martyred a few years more, the gross, dull, not unkindly bourgeois may get tired or ashamed or afraid of going on martyring; and the anarchists come out at the top just like the early christians. that is, of course, they will step into power as a personnel, but god knows what they may believe when they come to do so; it can't be stranger or more improbable than what christianity had come to be by the same time. your letter was easily read, the pagination presented no difficulty, and i read it with much edification and gusto. to look back, and to stereotype one bygone humour what a hopeless thing! the mind runs ever in a thousand eddies like a river between cliffs. you (the ego) are always spinning round in it, east, west, north, and south. you are twenty years old, and forty, and five, and the next moment you are freezing at an imaginary eighty; you are never the plain forty-four that you should be by dates. (the most philosophical language is the gaelic, which has no present tense and the most useless.) how, then, to choose some former age, and stick there? r. l. s. letter: to sir herbert maxwell vailima, samoa, september 10, 1894. dear sir herbert maxwell, i am emboldened by reading your very interesting rhind lectures to put to you a question: what is my name, stevenson? i find it in the forms stevinetoun, stevensoune, stevensonne, stenesone, stewinsoune, m'stein, and macstephane. my family, and (as far as i can gather) the majority of the inglorious clan, hailed from the borders of cunningham and renfrew, and the upper waters of the clyde. in the barony of bothwell was the seat of the laird stevenson of stevenson; but, as of course you know, there is a parish in cunningham and places in peebles and haddington bearing the same name. if you can at all help me, you will render me a real service which i wish i could think of some manner to repay. believe me, yours truly, robert louis stevenson. p.s. i should have added that i have perfect evidence before me that (for some obscure reason) stevenson was a favourite alias with the m'gregors. letter: to alison cunningham [vailima], october 8th 1894. my dear cummy, so i hear you are ailing? think shame to yourself! so you think there is nothing better to be done with time than that? and be sure we can all do much ourselves to decide whether we are to be ill or well! like a man on the gymnastic bars. we are all pretty well. as for me, there is nothing the matter with me in the world, beyond the disgusting circumstance that i am not so young as once i was. lloyd has a gymnastic machine, and practises upon it every morning for an hour: he is beginning to be a kind of young samson. austin grows fat and brown, and gets on not so ill with his lessons, and my mother is in great price. we are having knock-me-down weather for heat; i never remember it so hot before, and i fancy it means we are to have a hurricane again this year, i think; since we came here, we have not had a single gale of wind! the pacific is but a child to the north sea; but when she does get excited, and gets up and girds herself, she can do something good. we have had a very interesting business here. i helped the chiefs who were in prison; and when they were set free, what should they do but offer to make a part of my road for me out of gratitude? well, i was ashamed to refuse, and the trumps dug my road for me, and put up this inscription on a board:'considering the great love of his excellency tusitala in his loving care of us in our tribulation in the prison we have made this great gift; it shall never be muddy, it shall go on for ever, this road that we have dug!' we had a great feast when it was done, and i read them a kind of lecture, which i dare say auntie will have, and can let you see. weel, guid bye to ye, and joy be wi' ye! i hae nae time to say mair. they say i'm gettin' fat a fact! your laddie, with all love, robert louis stevenson. letter: to james payn vailima, samoa, nov. 4, 1894. my dear james payn, i am asked to relate to you a little incident of domestic life at vailima. i had read your gleams of memory, no. 1; it then went to my wife, to osbourne, to the cousin that is within my gates, and to my respected amanuensis, mrs. strong. sunday approached. in the course of the afternoon i was attracted to the great 'all the winders is by vanderputty, which upon entering i beheld a memorable scene. the floor was bestrewn with the forms of midshipmen from the curacoa 'boldly say a wilderness of gunroom' and in the midst of this sat mrs. strong throned on the sofa and reading aloud gleams of memory. they had just come the length of your immortal definition of boyhood in the concrete, and i had the pleasure to see the whole party dissolve under its influence with inextinguishable laughter. i thought this was not half bad for arthritic gout! depend upon it, sir, when i go into the arthritic gout business, i shall be done with literature, or at least with the funny business. it is quite true i have my battlefields behind me. i have done perhaps as much work as anybody else under the most deplorable conditions. but two things fall to be noticed: in the first place, i never was in actual pain; and in the second, i was never funny. i'll tell you the worst day that i remember. i had a haemorrhage, and was not allowed to speak; then, induced by the devil, or an errant doctor, i was led to partake of that bowl which neither cheers nor inebriates the castor-oil bowl. now, when castor-oil goes right, it is one thing; but when it goes wrong, it is another. and it went wrong with me that day. the waves of faintness and nausea succeeded each other for twelve hours, and i do feel a legitimate pride in thinking that i stuck to my work all through and wrote a good deal of admiral guinea (which i might just as well not have written for all the reward it ever brought me) in spite of the barbarous bad conditions. i think that is my great boast; and it seems a little thing alongside of your gleams of memory illustrated by spasms of arthritic gout. we really should have an order of merit in the trade of letters. for valour, scott would have had it; pope too; myself on the strength of that castor-oil; and james payn would be a knight commander. the worst of it is, though lang tells me you exhibit the courage of huish, that not even an order can alleviate the wretched annoyance of the business. i have always said that there is nothing like pain; toothache, dumb-ague, arthritic gout, it does not matter what you call it, if the screw is put upon the nerves sufficiently strong, there is nothing left in heaven or in earth that can interest the sufferer. still, even to this there is the consolation that it cannot last for ever. either you will be relieved and have a good hour again before the sun goes down, or else you will be liberated. it is something after all (although not much) to think that you are leaving a brave example; that other literary men love to remember, as i am sure they will love to remember, everything about you your sweetness, your brightness, your helpfulness to all of us, and in particular those one or two really adequate and noble papers which you have been privileged to write during these last years. with the heartiest and kindest good-will, i remain, yours ever, r. l. s. letter: to lieutenant eeles vailima, samoa, november 24, 1894. my dear eeles, the hand, as you will perceive (and also the spelling!), is teuila's, but the scrannel voice is what remains of tusitala's. first of all, for business. when you go to london you are to charter a hansom cab and proceed to the museum. it is particular fun to do this on sundays when the monument is shut up. your cabman expostulates with you, you persist. the cabman drives up in front of the closed gates and says, 'i told you so, sir.' you breathe in the porter's ears the mystic name of colvin, and he immediately unfolds the iron barrier. you drive in, and doesn't your cabman think you're a swell. a lord mayor is nothing to it. colvin's door is the only one in the eastern gable of the building. send in your card to him with 'from r. l. s.' in the corner, and the machinery will do the rest. henry james's address is 34 de vere mansions west. i cannot remember where the place is; i cannot even remember on which side of the park. but it's one of those big cromwell road-looking deserted thoroughfares out west in kensington or bayswater, or between the two; and anyway, colvin will be able to put you on the direct track for henry james. i do not send formal introductions, as i have taken the liberty to prepare both of them for seeing you already. hoskyn is staying with us. it is raining dismally. the curacoa track is hardly passable, but it must be trod to-morrow by the degenerate feet of their successor the wallaroos. i think it a very good account of these last that we don't think them either deformed or habitual criminals they seem to be a kindly lot. the doctor will give you all the gossip. i have preferred in this letter to stick to the strictly solid and necessary. with kind messages from all in the house to all in the wardroom, all in the gunroom, and (may we dare to breathe it) to him who walks abaft, believe me, my dear eeles, yours ever, r. l. stevenson. letter: to sir herbert maxwell vailima, samoa, december 1, 1894. dear sir herbert, thank you very much for your long and kind letter. i shall certainly take your advice and call my cousin, the lyon king, into council. it is certainly a very interesting subject, though i don't suppose it can possibly lead to anything, this connection between the stevensons and m'gregors. alas! your invitation is to me a mere derision. my chances of visiting heaven are about as valid as my chances of visiting monreith. though i should like well to see you, shrunken into a cottage, a literary lord of ravenscraig. i suppose it is the inevitable doom of all those who dabble in scotch soil; but really your fate is the more blessed. i cannot conceive anything more grateful to me, or more amusing or more picturesque, than to live in a cottage outside your own park-walls. with renewed thanks, believe me, dear sir herbert, yours very truly, robert louis stevenson. letter: to andrew lang vailima, samoa, december 1, 1894. my dear lang, for the portrait of braxfield, much thanks! it is engraved from the same raeburn portrait that i saw in '76 or '77 with so extreme a gusto that i have ever since been braxfield's humble servant, and am now trying, as you know, to stick him into a novel. alas! one might as well try to stick in napoleon. the picture shall be framed and hung up in my study. not only as a memento of you, but as a perpetual encouragement to do better with his lordship. i have not yet received the transcripts. they must be very interesting. do you know, i picked up the other day an old longman's, where i found an article of yours that i had missed, about christie's? i read it with great delight. the year ends with us pretty much as it began, among wars and rumours of wars, and a vast and splendid exhibition of official incompetence. yours ever, r. l. stevenson. letter: to edmund gosse vailima, samoa, december 1, 1894. i am afraid, my dear weg, that this must be the result of bribery and corruption! the volume to which the dedication stands as preface seems to me to stand alone in your work; it is so natural, so personal, so sincere, so articulate in substance, and what you always were sure of so rich in adornment. let me speak first of the dedication. i thank you for it from the heart. it is beautifully said, beautifully and kindly felt; and i should be a churl indeed if i were not grateful, and an ass if i were not proud. i remember when symonds dedicated a book to me; i wrote and told him of 'the pang of gratified vanity' with which i had read it. the pang was present again, but how much more sober and autumnal like your volume. let me tell you a story, or remind you of a story. in the year of grace something or other, anything between '76 and '78 i mentioned to you in my usual autobiographical and inconsiderate manner that i was hard up. you said promptly that you had a balance at your banker's, and could make it convenient to let me have a cheque, and i accepted and got the money how much was it? twenty or perhaps thirty pounds? i know not but it was a great convenience. the same evening, or the next day, i fell in conversation (in my usual autobiographical and . . . see above) with a denizen of the savile club, name now gone from me, only his figure and a dim three-quarter view of his face remaining. to him i mentioned that you had given me a loan, remarking easily that of course it didn't matter to you. whereupon he read me a lecture, and told me how it really stood with you financially. he was pretty serious; fearing, as i could not help perceiving, that i should take too light a view of the responsibility and the service (i was always thought too light the irresponsible jester you remember. o, quantum mutatus ab illo!) if i remember rightly, the money was repaid before the end of the week or, to be more exact and a trifle pedantic, the sennight but the service has never been forgotten; and i send you back this piece of ancient history, consule planco, as a salute for your dedication, and propose that we should drink the health of the nameless one, who opened my eyes as to the true nature of what you did for me on that occasion. but here comes my amanuensis, so we'll get on more swimmingly now. you will understand perhaps that what so particularly pleased me in the new volume, what seems to me to have so personal and original a note, are the middle-aged pieces in the beginning. the whole of them, i may say, though i must own an especial liking to 'i yearn not for the fighting fate, that holds and hath achieved; i live to watch and meditate and dream and be deceived.' you take the change gallantly. not i, i must confess. it is all very well to talk of renunciation, and of course it has to be done. but, for my part, give me a roaring toothache! i do like to be deceived and to dream, but i have very little use for either watching or meditation. i was not born for age. and, curiously enough, i seem to see a contrary drift in my work from that which is so remarkable in yours. you are going on sedately travelling through your ages, decently changing with the years to the proper tune. and here am i, quite out of my true course, and with nothing in my foolish elderly head but love-stories. this must repose upon some curious distinction of temperaments. i gather from a phrase, boldly autobiographical, that you are well, not precisely growing thin. can that be the difference? it is rather funny that this matter should come up just now, as i am at present engaged in treating a severe case of middle age in one of my stories 'the justice-clerk.' the case is that of a woman, and i think that i am doing her justice. you will be interested, i believe, to see the difference in our treatments. secreta vitae, comes nearer to the case of my poor kirstie. come to think of it, gosse, i believe the main distinction is that you have a family growing up around you, and i am a childless, rather bitter, very clear-eyed, blighted youth. i have, in fact, lost the path that makes it easy and natural for you to descend the hill. i am going at it straight. and where i have to go down it is a precipice. i must not forget to give you a word of thanks for an english village. it reminds me strongly of keats, which is enough to say; and i was particularly pleased with the petulant sincerity of the concluding sentiment. well, my dear gosse, here's wishing you all health and prosperity, as well as to the mistress and the bairns. may you live long, since it seems as if you would continue to enjoy life. may you write many more books as good as this one only there's one thing impossible, you can never write another dedication that can give the same pleasure to the vanished tusitala. end of the project gutenberg etext the letters of robert louis stevenson, volume 2 1850 the mystery of marie roget a sequel to "the murder in the rue morgue" by edgar allan poe introduction there are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones. they rarely coincide. men and circumstances generally modify the ideal train of events, so that it seems imperfect, and its consequences are equally imperfect. thus with the reformation; instead of protestantism came lutheranism. novalis. moral ansichten. upon the original publication of "marie roget," the footnotes now appended were considered unnecessary; but the lapse of several years since the tragedy upon which the tale is based, renders it expedient to give them, and also to say a few words in explanation of the general design. a young girl, mary cecilia rogers, was murdered in the vicinity of new york; and although her death occasioned an intense and long-enduring excitement, the mystery attending it had remained unsolved at the period when the present paper was written and published (november, 1842). herein, under pretence of relating the fate of a parisian grisette, the author has followed, in minute detail, the essential, while merely paralleling the inessential, facts of the real murder of mary rogers. thus all argument founded upon the fiction is applicable to the truth: and the investigation of the truth was the object. the "mystery of marie roget" was composed at a distance from the scene of the atrocity, and with no other means of investigation than the newspapers afforded. thus much escaped the writer of which he could have availed himself had he been upon the spot and visited the localities. it may not be improper to record, nevertheless, that the confessions of two persons (one of them the madame deluc of the narrative), made, at different periods, long subsequent to the publication, confirmed, in full, not only the general conclusion, but absolutely all the chief hypothetical details by which that conclusion was attained. there are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them. such sentimentsfor the half-credences of which i speak have never the full force of thoughtsuch sentiments are seldom thoroughly stifled unless by reference to the doctrine of chance, or, as it is technically termed, the calculus of probabilities. now this calculus is, in its essence, purely mathematical; and thus we have the anomaly of the most rigidly exact in science applied to the shadow and spirituality of the most intangible in speculation. the extraordinary details which i am now called upon to make public, will be found to form, as regards sequence of time, the primary branch of a series of scarcely intelligible coincidences, whose secondary or concluding branch will be recognized by all readers in the late murder of mary cecilia rogers, at new york. when, in an article entitled "the murders in the rue morgue," i endeavored, about a year ago, to depict some very remarkable features in the mental character of my friend, the chevalier c. auguste dupin, it did not occur to me that i should ever resume the subject. this depicting of character constituted my design; and this design was thoroughly fulfilled in the wild train of circumstances brought to instance dupin's idiosyncrasy. i might have adduced other examples, but i should have proven no more. late events, however, in their surprising development, have startled me into some farther details, which will carry with them the air of extorted confession. hearing what i have lately heard, it would be indeed strange should i remain silent in regard to what i both heard and saw so long ago. upon the winding up of the tragedy involved in the deaths of madame l'espanaye and her daughter, the chevalier dismissed the affair at once from his attention, and relapsed into his old habits of moody revery. prone, at all times, to abstraction, i readily fell in with his humor; and continuing to occupy our chambers in the faubourg saint germain, we gave the future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams. but these dreams were not altogether uninterrupted. it may readily be supposed that the part played by my friend, in the drama at the rue morgue had not failed of its impression upon the fancies of the parisian police. with its emissaries, the name of dupin had grown into a household word. the simple character of those inductions by which he had disentangled the mystery never having been explained even to the prefect, or to any other individual than myself, of course it is not surprising that the affair was regarded as little less than miraculous, or that the chevalier's analytical abilities acquired for him the credit of intuition. his frankness would have led him to disabuse every inquirer of such prejudice; but his indolent humor forbade all further agitation of a topic whose interest to himself had long ceased. it thus happened that he found himself the cynosure of the political eyes; and the cases were not few in which attempt was made to engage his services at the prefecture. one of the most remarkable instances was that of the murder of a young girl named marie roget. this event occurred about two years after the atrocity in the rue morgue. marie, whose christian and family name will at once arrest attention from their resemblance to those of the unfortunate "cigar-girl" was the only daughter of the widow estelle roget. the father had died during the child's infancy, and from the period of his death, until within eighteen months before the assassination which forms the subject of our narrative, the mother and daughter had dwelt together in the rue pavee saint andree;* madame there keeping a pension, assisted by marie. affairs went on thus until the latter had attained her twenty-second year, when her great beauty attracted the notice of a perfumer, who occupied one of the shops in the basement of the palais royal, and whose custom lay, chiefly among the desperate adventurers infesting that neighborhood. monsieur le blanc*(2) was not unaware of the advantages to be derived from the attendance of the fair marie in his perfumery; and his liberal proposals were accepted eagerly by the girl, although with somewhat more of hesitation by madame. * nassau street *(2) anderson the anticipations of the shopkeeper were realized, and his rooms soon became notorious through the charms of the sprightly grisette. she had been in his employ about a year, when her admirers were thrown into confusion by her sudden disappearance from the shop. monsieur le blanc was unable to account for her absence, and madame roget was distracted with anxiety and terror. the public papers immediately took up the theme, and the police were upon the point of making serious investigations, when, one fine morning, after the lapse of a week, marie, in good health, but with a somewhat saddened air, made her re-appearance at her usual counter in the perfumery. all inquiry, except that of a private character, was of course, immediately hushed. monsieur le blanc professed total ignorance, as before. marie, with madame, replied to all questions, that the last week had been spent at the house of a relation in the country. thus the affair died away, and was generally forgotten; for the girl, ostensibly to relieve herself from the impertinence of curiosity soon bade a final adieu to the perfumer, and sought the shelter of her mother's residence in the rue pavee saint andree. it was about five months after this return home, that her friends were alarmed by her sudden disappearance for the second time. three days elapsed, and nothing was heard of her. on the fourth her corpse was found floating in the seine* near the shore which is opposite the quartier of the rue saint andre, and at a point not very far distant from the secluded neighborhood of the barriere du roule.*(2) * the hudson *(2) weehawken the atrocity of this murder (for it was at once evident that murder had been committed), the youth and beauty of the victim, and, above all her previous notoriety, conspired to produce intense excitement in the minds of the sensitive parisians. i can call to mind no similar occurrence producing so general and so intense an effect. for several weeks, in the discussion of this one absorbing theme, even the momentous political topics of the day were forgotten. the prefect made unusual exertions; and the powers of the whole parisian police were, of course, tasked to the utmost extent. upon the first discovery of the corpse, it was not supposed that the murderer would be able to elude, for more than a very brief period, the inquisition which was immediately set on foot. it was not until the expiration of a week that it was deemed necessary to offer a reward; and even then this reward was limited to a thousand francs. in the meantime the investigation proceeded with vigor, if not always with judgment, and numerous individuals were examined to no purpose; while, owing to the continual absence of all clew to the mystery, the popular excitement greatly increased. at the end of the tenth day it was thought advisable to double the sum originally proposed; and, at length, the second week having elapsed without leading to any discoveries, and the prejudice which always exists in paris against the police having given vent to itself in several serious emeutes, the prefect took it upon himself to offer the sum of twenty thousand francs "for the conviction of the assassin," or, if more than one should prove to have been implicated, "for the conviction of any one of the assassins." in the proclamation setting forth this reward, a full pardon was promised to any accomplice who should come forward in evidence against his fellow; and to the whole was appended, wherever it appeared, the private placard of a committee of citizens, offering ten thousand francs, in addition to the amount proposed by the prefecture. the entire reward thus stood at no less than thirty thousand francs, which will be regarded as an extraordinary sum when we consider the humble condition of the girl, and the great frequency, in large cities, of such atrocities as the one described. no one doubted now that the mystery of this murder would be immediately brought to light. but although, in one or two instances, arrests were made which promised elucidation, yet nothing was elicited which could implicate the parties suspected; and they were discharged forthwith. strange as it may appear, the third week from the discovery of the body had passed, and passed without any light being thrown upon the subject, before even a rumor of the events which had so agitated the public mind reached the ears of dupin and myself. engaged in researches which had absorbed our whole attention, it had been nearly a month since either of us had gone abroad, or received a visitor, or more than glanced at the leading political articles in one of the daily papers. the first intelligence of the murder was brought us by g--, in person. he called upon us early in the afternoon of the thirteenth of july, 18-, and remained with us until late in the night. he had been piqued by the failure of all his endeavors to ferret out the assassins. his reputationso he said with a peculiarly parisian airwas at stake. even his honor was concerned. the eyes of the public were upon him; and there was really no sacrifice which he would not be willing to make for the development of the mystery. he concluded a somewhat droll speech with a compliment upon what he was pleased to term the tact of dupin, and made him a direct and certainly a liberal proposition, the precise nature of which i do not feel myself at liberty to disclose, but which has no bearing upon the proper subject of my narrative. the compliment my friend rebutted as best he could, but the proposition he accepted at once, although its advantages were altogether provisional. this point being settled, the prefect broke forth at once into explanations of his own views, interspersing them with long comments upon the evidence; of which latter we were not yet in possession. he discoursed much and, beyond doubt, learnedly; while i hazarded an occasional suggestion as the night wore drowsily away. dupin, sitting steadily in his accustomed armchair, was the embodiment of respectful attention. he wore spectacles, during the whole interview; and an occasional glance beneath their green glasses sufficed to convince me that he slept not the less soundly, because silently, throughout the seven or eight leaden-footed hours which immediately preceded the departure of the prefect. in the morning, i procured, at the prefecture, a full report of all the evidence elicited, and, at the various newspaper offices, a copy of every paper in which, from first to last, had been published any decisive information in regard to this sad affair. freed from all that was positively disproved, this mass of information stood thus: marie roget left the residence of her mother, in the rue pavee st. andree, about nine o'clock in the morning of sunday, june the twenty second, 18-. in going out, she gave notice to a monsieur jacques st. eustache,* and to him only, of her intention to spend the day with an aunt, who resided in the rue des dromes. the rue des dromes is a short and narrow but populous thoroughfare, not far from the banks of the river, and at a distance of some two miles, in the most direct course possible, from the pension of madame roget. st. eustache was the accepted suitor of marie, and lodged, as well as took his meals, at the pension. he was to have gone for his betrothed at dusk, and to have escorted her home. in the afternoon, however, it came on to rain heavily; and, supposing that she would remain all night at her aunt's (as she had done under similar circumstances before), he did not think it necessary to keep his promise. as night drew on, madame roget (who was an infirm old lady, seventy years of age) was heard to express a fear "that she should never see marie again;" but this observation attracted little attention at the time. * payne on monday it was ascertained that the girl had not been to the rue des dromes; and when the day elapsed without tidings of her, a tardy search was instituted at several points in the city and its environs. it was not, however, until the fourth day from the period of her disappearance that any thing satisfactory was ascertained respecting her. on this day (wednesday, the twenty-fifth of june) a monsieur beauvais,* who, with a friend, had been making inquiries for marie near the barriere du roule, on the shore of the seine which is opposite the rue pavee st. andree, was informed that a corpse had just been towed ashore by some fishermen, who had found it floating in the river. upon seeing the body, beauvais, after some hesitation, identified it as that of the perfumery-girl. his friend recognized it more promptly. * crommelin the face was suffused with dark blood, some of which issued from the mouth. no foam was seen, as in the case of the merely drowned. there was no discoloration in the cellular tissue. about the throat were bruises and impressions of fingers. the arms were bent over on the chest, and were rigid. the right hand was clenched; the left partially open. on the left wrist were two circular excoriations, apparently the effect of ropes, or of a rope in more than one volution. a part of the right wrist, also, was much chafed, as well as the back throughout its extent, but more especially at the shoulder-blades. in bringing the body to the shore the fishermen had attached to it a rope, but none of the excorations had been effected by this. the flesh of the neck was much swollen. there were no cuts apparent, or bruises which appeared the effect of blows. a piece of lace was found tied so tightly around the neck as to be hidden from sight; it was completely buried in the flesh, and was fastened by a knot which lay just under the left ear. this alone would have sufficed to produce death. the medical testimony spoke confidently of the virtuous character of the deceased. she had been subjected, it said, to brutal violence. the corpse was in such condition when found, that there could have been no difficulty in its recognition by friends. the dress was much torn and otherwise disordered. in the outer garment, a slip, about a foot wide, had been torn upward from the bottom hem to the waist, but not torn off. it was wound three times around the waist, and secured by a sort of hitch in the back. the dress immediately beneath the frock was of fine muslin; and from this a slip eighteen inches wide had been torn entirely out-torn very evenly and with great care. it was found around her neck, fitting loosely, and secured with a hard knot. over this muslin slip and the slip of lace the strings of a bonnet were attached, the bonnet being appended. the knot by which the strings of the bonnet were fastened was not a lady's, but a slip or sailors knot. after the recognition of the corpse, it was not, as usual, taken to the morgue (this formality being superfluous), but hastily interred not far from the spot at which it was brought ashore. through the exertions of beauvais, the matter was industriously hushed up, as far as possible; and several days had elapsed before any public emotion resulted. a weekly paper,* however, at length took up the theme; the corpse was disinterred, and a re-examination instituted; but nothing was elicited beyond what has been already noted. the clothes, however, were now submitted to the mother and friends of the deceased, and fully identified as those worn by the girl upon leaving home. * the new york mercury. meantime, the excitement increased hourly. several individuals were arrested and discharged. st. eustache fell especially under suspicion; and he failed, at first, to give an intelligible account of his whereabouts during the sunday on which marie left home. subsequently, however, he submitted to monsieur g--, affidavits, accounting satisfactorily for every hour of the day in question. as time passed and no discovery ensued, a thousand contradictory rumors were circulated and journalists busied themselves in suggestions. among these, the one which attracted the most notice, was the idea that marie roget still livedthat the corpse found in the seine was that of some other unfortunate. it will be proper that i submit to the reader some passages which embody the suggestion alluded to. these passages are literal translations from l'etoile,* a paper conducted, in general, with much ability. * the new york brother jonathon, edited by h. hastings weld, esq. "mademoiselle roget left her mother's house on sunday morning, june the twenty-second, 18-, with the ostensible purpose of going to see her aunt, or some other connection, in the rue des dromes. from that hour, nobody is proved to have seen her. there is no trace or tidings of her at all.... there has no person, whatever, come forward, so far, who saw her at all in that day, after she left her mother's door.... now, though we have no evidence that marie roget was in the land of the living after nine o'clock on sunday, june the twenty-second, we have proof that, up to that hour, she was alive. on wednesday noon, at twelve, a female body was discovered afloat on the shore of the barriere du roule. this was, even if we presume that marie roget was thrown into the river within three hours after she left her mother's house, only three days from the time she left her homethree days to an hour. but it is folly to suppose that the murder, if murder was committed on her body, could have been consummated soon enough to have enabled her murderers to throw the body into the river before midnight. those who are guilty of such horrid crimes choose darkness rather than light... thus we see that if the body found in the river was that of marie roget it could only have been in the water two and a half days, or three at the outside. all experience has shown that drowned bodies, or bodies thrown into the water immediately after death by violence, require from six to ten days for sufficient decomposition to take place to bring them to the top of the water. even where a cannon is fired over a corpse, and it rises before at least five or six days' immersion, it sinks again, if left alone. now, we ask, what was there in this case to cause a departure from the ordinary course of nature?... if the body had been kept in its mangled state on shore until tuesday night some trace would be found in shore of the murderers. it is a doubtful point, also, whether the body would be so soon afloat, even were it thrown in after having been dead two days. and, furthermore, it is exceedingly improbable that any villains who had committed such a murder as is here supposed, would have thrown the body in without weight to sink it, when such a precaution could have so easily been taken." the editor here proceeds to argue that the body must have been in the water "not three days merely, but, at least, five times three days," because it was so far decomposed that beauvais had great difficulty in recognizing it. this latter point, however, was fully disproved. i continue the translation: "what, then, are the facts on which m. beauvais says that he had no doubt the body was that of marie roget? he ripped up the gown sleeve, and says he found marks which satisfied him of the identity. the public generally supposed those marks to have consisted of some description of scars. he rubbed the arm and found hair upon itsomething as indefinite, we think, as can readily be imaginedas little conclusive as finding an arm in the sleeve. m. beauvais did not return that night, but sent word to madame roget, at seven o'clock, on wednesday evening, that an investigation was still in progress respecting her daughter. if we allow that madame roget, from her age and grief, could not go over (which is allowing a great deal), there certainly must have been some one who would have thought it worth while to go over and attend the investigation, if they thought the body was that of marie. nobody went over. there was nothing said or heard about the matter in the rue pavee st. andree, that reached even the occupants of the same building. m. st. eustache, the lover and intended husband of marie, who boarded in her mother's house, deposes that he did not hear of the discovery of the body of his intended until the next morning, when m. beauvais came into his chamber and told him of it. for an item of news like this, it strikes us it was very coolly received." in this way the journal endeavored to create the impression of an apathy on the part of the relatives of marie, inconsistent with the supposition that these relatives believed the corpse to be hers. its insinuations amount to this:that marie, with the connivance of her friends, had absented herself from the city for reasons involving a charge against her chastity; and that these friends upon the discovery of a corpse in the seine, somewhat resembling that of the girl, had availed themselves of the opportunity to impress the public with the belief of her death. but l'etoile was again overhasty. it was distinctly proved that no apathy, such as was imagined, existed; that the old lady was exceedingly feeble, and so agitated as to be unable to attend to any duty; that st. eustache, so far from receiving the news coolly, was distracted with grief, and bore himself so frantically, that m. beauvais prevailed upon a friend and relative to take charge of him, and prevent his attending the examination at the disinterment. moreover, although it was stated by l'etoile, that the corpse was re-interred at the public expense,that an advantageous offer of private sepulture was absolutely declined by the family,and that no member of the family attended the ceremonial:although, i say, all this was asserted by l'etoile in furtherance of the impression it designed to conveyyet all this was satisfactorily disproved. in a subsequent number of the paper, an attempt was made to throw suspicion upon beauvais himself. the editor says: "now, then, a change comes over the matter. we are told that, on one occasion, while a madame bwas at madame roget's house, m. beauvais, who was going out, told her that a gendarme was expected there, and that she, madame b., must not say any thing to the gendarme until he returned, but let the matter be for him.... in the present posture of affairs, m. beauvais appears to have the whole matter locked up in his head. a single step cannot be taken without m. beauvais, for, go which way you will you run against him.... for some reason he determined that nobody shall have anything to do with the proceedings but himself, and he has elbowed the male relatives out of the way, according to their representations, in a very singular manner. he seems to have been very much averse to permitting the relatives to see the body." by the following fact, some color was given to the suspicion thus thrown upon beauvais. a visitor at his office, a few days prior to the girl's disappearance, and during the absence of its occupant, had observed a rose in the key-hole of the door, and the name "marie" inscribed upon a slate which hung near at hand. the general impression, so far as we were enabled to glean it from the newspapers, seemed to be, that marie had been the victim of a gang of desperadoesthat by these she had been borne across the river, maltreated, and murdered. le commerciel,* however, a print of extensive influence, was earnest in combatting this popular idea. i quote a passage or two from its columns: * new york journal of commerce "we are persuaded that pursuit has hitherto been on a false scent, so far as it has been directed to the barriere du roule. it is impossible that a person so well known to thousands as this young woman was, should have passed three blocks without some one having seen her; and any one who saw her would have remembered it, for she interested all who knew her. it was when the streets were full of people, when she went out.... it is impossible that she could have gone to the barriere du roule, or to the rue des dromes, without being recognized by a dozen persons; yet no one has come forward who saw her outside of her mother's door, and there is no evidence, except the testimony concerning her expressed intentions, that she did go out at all. her gown was torn, bound round her, and tied; and by that the body was carried as a bundle. if the murder had been committed at the barriere du roule, there would have been no necessity for any such arrangement. the fact that the body was found floating near the barriere, is no proof as to where it was thrown into the water.... a piece of one of the unfortunate girl's petticoats, two feet long and one foot wide, was torn out and tied under her chin around the back of her head, probably to prevent screams. this was done by fellows who had no pocket-handkerchief." a day or two before the prefect called upon us, however, some important information reached the police, which seemed to overthrow, at least, the chief portion of le commerciel's argument. two small boys, sons of a madame deluc, while roaming among the woods near the barriere du roule, chanced to penetrate a close thicket, within which were three or four large stones, forming a kind of seat with a back and footstool. on the upper stone lay a white petticoat; on the second, a silk scarf. a parasol, gloves, and a pocket-handkerchief were also here found. the handkerchief bore the name "marie roget." fragments of dress were discovered on the brambles around. the earth was trampled, the bushes were broken, and there was every evidence of a struggle. between the thicket and the river, the fences were found taken down, and the ground bore evidence of some heavy burthen having been dragged along it. a weekly paper, le soleil,* had the following comments upon this discoverycomments which merely echoed the sentiment of the whole parisian press: * philadelphia saturday evening post, edited by c. i. peterson, esq. "the things had all evidently been there at least three or four weeks; they were all mildewed down hard with the action of the rain, and stuck together from mildew. the grass had grown around and over some of them. the silk on the parasol was strong, but the threads of it were run together within. the upper part, where it had been doubled and folded, was all mildewed and rotten, and tore on its being opened.... the pieces of her frock torn out by the bushes were about three inches wide and six inches long. one part was the hem of the frock, and it had been mended; the other piece was part of the skirt, not the hem. they looked like strips torn off, and were on the thorn bush, about a foot from the ground.... there can be no doubt, therefore, that the spot of this appalling outrage has been discovered." consequent upon this discovery, new evidence appeared. madame deluc testified that she keeps a roadside inn not far from the bank of the river, opposite the barriere du roule. the neighborhood is secludedparticularly so. it is the usual sunday resort of blackguards from the city, who cross the river in boats. about three o'clock, in the afternoon of the sunday in question, a young girl arrived at the inn, accompanied by a young man of dark complexion. the two remained here for some time. on their departure, they took the road to some thick woods in the vicinity. madame deluc's attention was called to the dress worn by the girl, on account of its resemblance to one worn by a deceased relative. a scarf was particularly noticed. soon after the departure of the couple, a gang of miscreants made their appearance, behaved boisterously, ate and drank without making payment, followed in the route of the young man and girl, returned to the inn about dusk, and re-crossed the river as if in great haste. it was soon after dark, upon this same evening, that madame deluc, as well as her eldest son, heard the screams of a female in the vicinity of the inn. the screams were violent but brief. madame d. recognized not only the scarf which was found in the thicket, but the dress which was discovered upon the corpse. an omnibus-driver, valence,* now also testified that he saw marie roget cross a ferry on the seine, on the sunday in question, in company with a young man of dark complexion. he, valence, knew marie, and could not be mistaken in her identity. the articles found in the thicket were fully identified by the relatives of marie. * adam the items of evidence and information thus collected by myself, from the newspapers, at the suggestion of dupin, embraced only one more pointbut this was a point of seemingly vast consequence. it appears that, immediately after the discovery of the clothes as above described, the lifeless or nearly lifeless body of st. eustache, marie's betrothed, was found in the vicinity of what all now supposed the scene of the outrage. a phial labelled "laudanum," and emptied, was found near him. his breath gave evidence of the poison. he died without speaking. upon his person was found a letter, briefly stating his love for marie, with his design of self-destruction. "i need scarcely tell you," said dupin, as he finished the perusal of my notes, "that this is a far more intricate case than that of the rue morgue; from which it differs in one important respect. this is an ordinary, although an atrocious, instance of crime. there is nothing peculiarly outre about it. you will observe that, for this reason, the mystery has been considered easy, when, for this reason, it should have been considered difficult, of solution. thus, at first, it was thought unnecessary to offer a reward. the myrmidons of gwere able at once to comprehend how and why such an atrocity might have been committed. they could picture to their imaginations a modemany modesand a motivemany motives; and because it was not impossible that either of these numerous modes or motives could have been the actual one, they have taken it for granted that one of them must. but the ease with which these variable fancies were entertained, and the very plausibility which each assumed, should have been understood as indicative rather of the difficulties than of the facilities which must attend elucidation. i have before observed that it is by prominences above the plane of the ordinary, that reason feels her way, if at all, in her search for the true, and that the proper question in cases such as this, is not so much 'what has occurred?' as 'what has occurred that has never occurred before?' in the investigations at the house of madame l'espanaye,* the agents of gwere discouraged and confounded by that very unusualness which, to a properly regulated intellect, would have afforded the surest omen of success; while this same intellect might have been plunged in despair at the ordinary character of all that met the eye in the case of the perfumery girl, and yet told of nothing but easy triumph to the functionaries of the prefecture. * see "murder's in the rue morgue." "in the case of madame l'espanaye and her daughter, there was, even at the begining of our investigation, no doubt that murder had been committed. the idea of suicide was excluded at once. here, too, we are freed, at the commencement, from all supposition of self-murder. the body found at the barriere du roule was found under such circumstances as to leave us no room for embarrassment upon this important point. but it has been suggested that the corpse discovered is not that of the marie roget for the conviction of whose assassin, or assassins, the reward is offered, and respecting whom, solely, our agreement has been arranged with the prefect. we both know this gentleman well. it will not do to trust him too far. if, dating our inquiries from the body found, and then tracing a murderer, we yet discover this body to be that of some other individual than marie; or if, starting from the living marie, we find her, yet find her unassassinatedin either case we lose our labor; since it is monsieur gwith whom we have to deal. for our own purpose, therefore, if not for the purpose of justice, it is indispensable that our first step should be the determination of the identity of the corpse with the marie roget who is missing. "with the public the arguments of l'etoile have had weight; and that the journal itself is convinced of their importance would appear from the manner in which it commences one of its essays upon the subject'several of the morning papers of the day,' it says, 'speak of the conclusive article in monday's etoile.' to me, this article appears conclusive of little beyond the zeal of its inditer. we should bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensationto make a pointthan to further the cause of truth. the latter end is only pursued when it seems coincident with the former. the print which merely falls in with ordinary opinion (however well founded this opinion may be) earns for itself no credit with the mob. the mass of the people regard as profound only him who suggests pungent contradictions of the general idea. in ratiocination, not less than in literature, it is the epigram which is the most immediately and the most universally appreciated. in both, it is of the lowest order of merit. "what i mean to say is, that it is the mingled epigram and melodrame of the idea, that marie roget still lives, rather than any true plausibility in this idea, which have suggested it to l'etoile, and secured it a favorable reception with the public. let us examine the heads of this journal's argument, endeavoring to avoid the incoherence with which it is originally set forth. "the first aim of the writer is to show, from the brevity of the interval between marie's disappearance and the finding of the floating corpse, that this corpse cannot be that of marie. the reduction of this interval to its smallest possible dimension, becomes thus, at once, an object with the reasoner. in the rash pursuit of this object, he rushes into mere assumption at the outset. 'it is folly to suppose,' he says, 'that the murder, if murder was committed on her body, could have been consummated soon enough to have enabled her murderers to throw the body into the river before midnight.' we demand at once, and very naturally, why? why is it folly to suppose that the murder was committed within five minutes after the girl's quitting her mother's house? why is it folly to suppose that the murder was committed at any given period of the day? there have been assassinations at all hours. but, had the murder taken place at any moment between nine o'clock in the morning of sunday and a quarter before midnight, there would still have been time enough 'to throw the body into the river before midnight.' this assumption, then, amounts precisely to thisthat the murder was not committed on sunday at alland, if we allow l'etoile to assume this, we may permit it any liberties whatever. the paragraph beginning 'it is folly to suppose that the murder, etc.,' however it appears as printed in l'etoile, may be imagined to have existed actually thus in the brain of its inditer: 'it is folly to suppose that the murder, if murder was committed on the body, could have been committed soon enough to have enabled her murderers to throw the body into the river before midnight; it is folly, we say, to suppose all this, and to suppose at the same time, (as we are resolved to suppose), that the body was not thrown in until after midnight'a sentence sufficiently inconsequential in itself, but not so utterly preposterous as the one printed. "were it my purpose," continued dupin, "merely to make out a case against this passage of l'etoile's argument, i might safely leave it where it is. it is not, however, with l'etoile that we have to do, but with truth. the sentence in question has but one meaning, as it stands; and this meaning i have fairly stated, but it is material that we go behind the mere words, for an idea which these words have obviously intended, and failed to convey. it was the design of the journalists to say that at whatever period of the day or night of sunday this murder was committed, it was improbable that the assassins would have ventured to bear the corpse to the river before midnight. and herein lies, really, the assumption of which i complain. it is assumed that the murder was committed at such a position, and under such circumstances, that the bearing it to the river became necessary. now, the assassination might have taken place upon the river's brink, or on the river itself; and, thus, the throwing the corpse in the water might have been resorted to at any period of the day or night, as the most obvious and most immediate mode of disposal. you will understand that i suggest nothing here as probable, or as coincident with my own opinion. my design, so far, has no reference to the facts of the case. i wish merely to caution you against the whole tone of l'etoile's suggestion, by calling your attention to its ex-parte character at the outset. "having prescribed thus a limit to suit its own preconceived notions; having assumed that, if this were the body of marie, it could have been in the water but a very brief time, the journal goes on to say: all experience has shown that drowned bodies, or bodies thrown into the water immediately after death by violence, require from six to ten days for sufficient decomposition to take place to bring them to the top of the water. even when a cannon is fired over a corpse, and it rises before at least five or six days' immersion, it sinks again if let alone. "these assertions have been tacitly received by every paper in paris, with the exception of le moniteur.* this latter print endeavors to combat that portion of the paragraph which has reference to 'drowned bodies' only, by citing some five or six instances in which the bodies of individuals known to be drowned were found floating after the lapse of less time than is insisted upon by l'etoile. but there is something excessively unphilosophical in the attempt, on the part of le moniteur, to rebut the general assertion of l'etoile, by a citation of particular instances militating against that assertion. had it been possible to adduce fifty instead of five examples of bodies found floating at the end of two or three days, these fifty examples could still have been properly regarded only as exceptions to l'etoile's rule, until such time as the rule itself should be confuted. admitting the rule, (and this le moniteur does not deny, insisting merely upon its exceptions,) the argument of l'etoile is suffered to remain in full force; for this argument does not pretend to involve more than a question of the probability of the body having risen to the surface in less than three days; and this probability will be in favor of l'etoile's position until the instances so childishly adduced shall be sufficient in number to establish an antagonistical rule. * the new york commercial advertiser, edited by col. stone. "you will see at once that all argument upon this head should be urged, if at all, against the rule itself; and for this end we must examine the rationale of the rule. now the human body, in general is neither much lighter nor much heavier than the water of the seine; that is to say, the specific gravity of the human body, in its natural condition, is about equal to the bulk of fresh water which it displaces. the bodies of fat and fleshy persons, with small bones, and of women generally, are lighter than those of the lean and large-boned, and of men; and the specific gravity of the water of a river is somewhat influenced by the presence of the tide from the sea. but, leaving this tide out of the question, it may be said that very few human bodies will sink at all, even in fresh water, of their own accord. almost any one, falling into a river, will be enabled to float, if he suffer the specific gravity of the water fairly to be adduced in comparison with his ownthat is to say, if he suffer his whole person to be immersed, with as little exception as possible. the proper position for one who cannot swim, is the upright position of the walker on land, with the head thrown fully back, and immersed; the mouth and nostrils alone remaining above the surface. thus circumstanced; we shall find that we float without difficulty and without exertion. it is evident, however, that the gravities of the body, and of the bulk of water displaced, are very nicely balanced, and that a trifle will cause either to preponderate. an arm, for instance, uplifted from the water, and thus deprived of its support, is an additional weight sufficient to immerse the whole head, while the accidental aid of the smallest piece of timber will enable us to elevate the head so as to look about. now, in the struggles of one unused to swimming, the arms are invariably thrown upward, while an attempt is made to keep the head in its usual perpendicular position. the result is the immersion of the mouth and nostrils, and the inception, during efforts to breathe while beneath the surface, of water into the lungs. much is also received into the stomach, and the whole body becomes heavier by the difference between the weight of the air originally distending these cavities, and that of the fluid which now fills them. this difference is sufficient to cause the body to sink, as a general rule; but is insufficient in the case of individuals with small bones and an abnormal quantity of flaccid or fatty matter. such individuals float even after drowning. "the corpse, being supposed at the bottom of the river, will there remain until, by some means, its specific gravity again becomes less than that of the bulk of water which it displaces. this effect is brought about by decomposition, or otherwise. the result of decomposition is the generation of gas, distending the cellular tissues and all the cavities, and giving the puffed appearance which is so horrible. when this distension has so far progressed that the bulk of the corpse is materially increased without a corresponding increase of mass or weight, its specific gravity becomes less than that of the water displaced, and it forthwith makes its appearance at the surface. but decomposition is modified by innumerable circumstancesis hastened or retarded by innumerable agencies; for example, by the heat or cold of the season, by the mineral impregnation or purity of the water, by its depth or shallowness, by its currency or stagnation, by the temperament of the body, by its infection or freedom from disease before death. thus it is evident that we can assign no period, with anything like accuracy, at which the corpse shall rise through decomposition. under certain conditions this result would be brought about within an hour, under others it might not take place at all. there are chemical infusions by which the animal frame can be preserved forever from corruption; the bi-chloride of mercury is one. but, apart from decomposition, there may be, and very usually is, a generation of gas within the stomach, from the acetous fermentation of vegetable matter (or within other cavities from other causes), sufficient to induce a distension which will bring the body to the surface. the effect produced by the firing of a cannon is that of simple vibration. this may either loosen the corpse from the soft mud or ooze in which it is imbedded, thus permitting it to rise when other agencies have already prepared it for so doing, or it may overcome the tenacity of some putrescent portions of the cellular tissue, allowing the cavities to distend under the influence of the gas. "having thus before us the whole philosophy of this subject, we can easily test by it the assertions of l'etoile. 'all experience shows,' says this paper, 'that drowned bodies, or bodies thrown into the water immediately after death by violence, require from six to ten days for sufficient decomposition to take place to bring them to the top of the water. even when a cannon is fired over a corpse, and it rises before at least five or six days' immersion, it sinks again if let alone.' "the whole of this paragraph must now appear a tissue of inconsequence and incoherence. all experience does not show that 'drowned bodies' require from six to ten days for sufficient decomposition to take place to bring them to the surface. both science and experience show that the period of their rising is, and necessarily must be, indeterminate. if, moreover, a body has risen to the surface through firing of cannon, it will not 'sink again if let alone,' until decomposition has so far progressed as to permit the escape of the generated gas. but i wish to call your attention to the distinction which is made between 'drowned bodies,' and 'bodies thrown into the water immediately after death by violence: although the writer admits the distinction, he yet includes them all in the same category. i have shown how it is that the body of a drowning man becomes specifically heavier than its bulk of water, and that he would not sink at all, except for the struggle by which he elevates his arms above the surface, and his gasps for breath while beneath the surfacegasps which supply by water the place of the original air in the lungs. but these struggles and these gasps would not occur in the body 'thrown into the water immediately after death by violence.' thus, in the latter instance, the body, as a general rule, would not sink at alla fact of which l'etoile is evidently ignorant. when decomposition had proceeded to a very great extentwhen the flesh had in a great measure left the bonesthen, indeed, but not till then, should we lose sight of the corpse. "and now what are we to make of the argument, that the body found could not be that of marie roget, because, three days only having elapsed, this body was found floating? if drowned, being a woman, she might never have sunk; or, having sunk, might have reappeared in twentyfour hours or less. but no one supposes her to have been drowned; and, dying before being thrown into the river, she might have been found floating at any period afterwards whatever. "'but,' says l'etoile, 'if the body had been kept in its mangled state on shore until tuesday night, some trace would be found on shore of the murderers.' here it is at first difficult to perceive the intention of the reasoner. he means to anticipate what he imagines would be an objection to his theoryviz.: that the body was kept on shore two days, suffering rapid decompositionmore rapid than if immersed in water. he supposes that, had this been the case, it might have appeared at the surface on the wednesday, and thinks that only under such circumstances it could so have appeared. he is accordingly in haste to show that it was not kept on shore; for, if so, 'some trace would be found on shore of the murderers.' i presume you smile at the sequitur. you cannot be made to see how the mere duration of the corpse on the shore could operate to multiply traces of the assassins. nor can i. "'and furthermore it is exceedingly improbable,' continues our journal, 'that any villains who had committed such a murder as is here supposed, would have thrown the body in without weight to sink it, when such a precaution could have so easily been taken.' observe, here, the laughable confusion of thought! no onenot even l'etoiledisputes the murder committed on the body found. the marks of violence are too obvious. it is our reasoner's object merely to show that this body is not marie's. he wishes to prove that marie is not assassinatednot that the corpse was not. yet his observation proves only the latter point. here is a corpse without weight attached. murderers, casting it in, would not have failed to attach a weight. therefore it was not thrown in by murderers. this is all which is proved, if any thing is. the question of identity is not even approached, and l'etoile has been at great pains merely to gainsay now what it has admitted only a moment before. 'we are perfectly convinced,' it says, 'that the body found was that of a murdered female.' "nor is this the sole instance, even in this division of the subject, where our reasoner unwittingly reasons against himself. his evident object i have already said, is to reduce, as much as possible, the interval between marie's disappearance and the finding of the corpse. yet we find him urging the point that no person saw the girl from the moment of her leaving her mother's house. 'we have no evidence,' he says, 'that marie roget was in the land of the living after nine o'clock on sunday, june the twenty-second.' as his argument is obviously an ex-parte one, he should, at least, have left this matter out of sight; for had any one been known to see marie, say on monday, or on tuesday, the interval in question would have been much reduced, and, by his own ratiocination, the probability much diminished of the corpse being that of the grisette. it is, nevertheless, amusing to observe that l'etoile insists upon its point in the full belief of its furthering its general argument. "reperuse now that portion of this argument which has reference to the identification of the corpse by beauvais. in regard to the hair upon the arm, l'etoile has been obviously disingenuous. m. beauvais, not being an idiot, could never have urged in identification of the corpse, simply hair upon its arm. no arm is without hair. the generality of the expression of l'etoile is a mere perversion of the witness' phraseology. he must have spoken of some peculiarity in this hair. it must have been a peculiarity of color, of quantity, of length, or of situation. "'her foot,' says the journal, 'was smallso are thousands of feet. her garter is no proof whatevernor is her shoefor shoes and garters are sold in packages. the same may be said of the flowers in her hat. one thing upon which m. beauvais strongly insists is, that the clasp on the garter found had been set back to take it in. this amounts to nothing; for most women find it proper to take a pair of garters home and, fit them to the size of the limbs they are to encircle, rather than to try them in the store where they purchase.' here it is difficult to suppose the reasoner in earnest. had m. beauvais, in his search for the body of marie, discovered a corpse corresponding in general size and appearance to the missing girl, he would have been warranted (without reference to the question of habiliment at all) in forming an opinion that his search had been successful. if, in addition to the point of general size and contour, he had found upon the arm a peculiar hairy appearance which he had observed upon the living marie, his opinion might have been justly strengthened; and the increase of positiveness might well have been in the ratio of the peculiarity, or unusualness, of the hairy mark. if, the feet of marie being small, those of the corpse were also small, the increase of probability that the body was that of marie would not be an increase in a ratio merely arithmetical, but in one highly geometrical, or accumulative. add to all this shoes such as she had been known to wear upon the day of her disappearance, and, although these shoes may be 'sold in packages,' you so far augment the probability as to verge upon the certain. what, of itself, would be no evidence of identity, becomes through its corroborative position, proof most sure. give us, then, flowers in the hat corresponding to those worn by the missing girl, and we seek for nothing farther. if only one flower, we seek for nothing fartherwhat then if two or three, or more? each successive one is multiple evidenceproof not added to proof, but multiplied by hundreds or thousands. let us now discover, upon the deceased, garters such as the living used, and it is almost folly to proceed. but these garters are found to be tightened, by the setting back of a clasp, in just such a manner as her own had been tightened by marie shortly previous to her leaving home. it is now madness or hypocrisy to doubt. what l'etoile says in respect to this abbreviation of the garter's being an unusual occurrence, shows nothing beyond its own pertinacity in error. the elastic nature of the clasp-garter is self-demonstration of the unusualness of the abbreviation. what is made to adjust itself, must of necessity require foreign adjustment but rarely. it must have been by an accident, in its strictest sense, that these garters of marie needed the tightening described. they alone would have amply established her identity. but it is not that the corpse was found to have the garters of the missing girl, or found to have her shoes, or her bonnet, or the flowers of her bonnet, or her feet, or a peculiar mark upon the arm, or her general size and appearanceit is that the corpse had each and all collectively. could it be proved that the editor of l'etoile really entertained a doubt, under the circumstances, there would be no need, in his case, of a commission de lunatico inquirendo. he has thought it sagacious to echo the small talk of the lawyers, who, for the most part, content themselves with echoing the rectangular precepts of the courts. i would here observe that very much of what is rejected as evidence by a court, is the best of evidence to the intellect. for the court, guiding itself by the general principles of evidencethe recognized and booked principlesis averse from swerving at particular instances. and this steadfast adherence to principle, with rigorous disregard of the conflicting exception, is a sure mode of attaining the maximum of attainable truth, in any long sequence of time. the practice, in mass, is therefore philosophical; but it is not the less certain that it engenders vast individual error.* * "a theory based on the qualities of an object, will prevent its being unfolded according to its objects; and he who arranges topics in reference to their causes, will cease to value them according to their results. thus the jurisprudence of every nation will show that, when law becomes a science and a system, it ceases to be justice. the errors into which a blind devotion to principles of classification has led the common law, will be seen by observing how often the legislature has been obliged to come forward to restore the equity its scheme had lost."landor. "in respect to the insinuations levelled at beauvais, you will be willing to dismiss them in a breath. you have already fathomed the true character of this good gentleman. he is a busy-body, with much of romance and little of wit. any one so constituted will readily so conduct himself, upon occasion of real excitement, as to render himself liable to suspicion on the part of the over-acute, or the ill-disposed. m. beauvais (as it appears from your notes) had some personal interviews with the editor of l'etoile, and offended him by venturing an opinion that the corpse, notwithstanding the theory of the editor, was, in sober fact, that of marie. 'he persists,' says the paper, 'in asserting the corpse to be that of marie, but cannot give a circumstance, in addition to those which we have commented upon, to make others believe.' now, without readverting to the fact that stronger evidence 'to make others believe,' could never have been adduced, it may be remarked that a man may very well be understood to believe, in a case of this kind, without the ability to advance a single reason for the belief of a second party. nothing is more vague than impressions of individual identity. each man recognizes his neighbor, yet there are few instances in which any one is prepared to give a reason for his recognition. the editor of l'etoile had no right to be offended at m. beauvais' unreasoning belief. "the suspicious circumstances which invest him, will be found to tally much better with my hypothesis of romantic busy-bodyism, than with the reasoner's suggestion of guilt. once adopting the more charitable interpretation, we shall find no difficulty in comprehending the rose in the key-hole; the 'marie' upon the slate; the 'elbowing the male relatives out of the way'; the 'aversion to permitting them to see the body'; the caution given to madame b-, that she must hold no conversation with the gendarme until his return (beauvais); and, lastly, his apparent determination 'that nobody should have any thing to do with the proceedings except himself.' it seems to be unquestionable that beauvais was a suitor of marie's; that she coquetted with him; and that he was ambitious of being thought to enjoy her fullest intimacy and confidence. i shall say nothing more upon this point; and, as the evidence fully rebuts the assertion of l'etoile, touching the matter of apathy on the part of the mother and other relativesan apathy inconsistent with the supposition of their believing the corpse to be that of the perfumerygirlwe shall now proceed as if the question of identity were settled to our perfect satisfaction." "and what," i here demanded, "do you think of the opinions of le commerciel?" "that in spirit, they are far more worthy of attention than any which have been promulgated upon the subject. the deductions from the premises are philosophical and acute; but the premises, in two instances, at least, are founded in imperfect observation. le commerciel wishes to intimate that marie was seized by some gang of low ruffians not far from her mother's door. 'it is impossible,' it urges, 'that a person so well known to thousands as this young woman was, should have passed three blocks without some one having seen her." this is the idea of a man long resident in parisa public manand one whose walks to and fro in the city have been mostly limited to the vicinity of the public offices. he is aware that he seldom passes so far as a dozen blocks from his own bureau, without being recognized and accosted. and, knowing the extent of his personal acquaintance with others, and of others with him, he compares his notoriety with that of the perfumery-girl, finds no great difference between them, and reaches at once the conclusion that she, in her walks, would be equally liable to recognition with himself in his. this could only be the case were her walks of the same unvarying, methodical character, and within the same species of limited region as are his own. he passes to and fro, at regular intervals, within a confined periphery, abounding in individuals who are led to observation of his person through interest in the kindred nature of his occupation with their own. but the walks of marie may, in general, be supposed discursive. in this particular instance, it will be understood as most probable, that she proceeded upon a route of more than average diversity from her accustomed ones. the parallel which we imagine to have existed in the mind of le commerciel would only be sustained in the event of the two individuals traversing the whole city. in this case, granting the personal acquaintances to be equal, the chances would be also equal that an equal number of personal encounters would be made. for my own part, i should hold it not only as possible, but as very far more probable, that marie might have proceeded, at any given period, by any one of the many routes between her own residence and that of her aunt, without meeting a single individual whom she knew, or by whom she was known. in viewing this question in its full and proper light, we must hold steadily in mind the great disproportion between the personal acquaintances of even the most noted individual in paris, and the entire population of paris itself. "but whatever force there may still appear to be in the suggestion of le commerciel, will be much diminished when we take into consideration the hour at which the girl went abroad. 'it was when the streets were full of people,' says le commerciel, 'that she went out.' but not so. it was at nine o'clock in the morning. now at nine o'clock of every morning in the week, with the exception of sunday, the streets of the city are, it is true, thronged with people. at nine on sunday, the populace are chiefly within doors preparing for church. no observing person can have failed to notice the peculiarly deserted air of the town, from about eight until ten on the morning of every sabbath. between ten and eleven the streets are thronged, but not at so early a period as that designated. "there is another point at which there seems a deficiency of observation on the part of le commerciel. 'a piece,' it says, 'of one of the unfortunate girl's petticoats, two feet long, and one foot wide, was torn out and tied under her chin, and around the back of her head, probably to prevent screams. this was done by fellows who had no pocket-handkerchiefs.' whether this idea is or is not well founded, we will endeavor to see hereafter, but by 'fellows who have no pocket-handkerchiefs,' the editor intends the lowest class of ruffians. these, however, are the very description of people who will always be found to have handkerchiefs even when destitute of shirts. you must have had occasion to observe how absolutely indispensable, of late years, to the thorough blackguard, has become the pocket-handkerchief." "and what are we to think," i asked, "of the article in le soleil?" "that it is a vast pity its inditer was not born a parrotin which case he would have been the most illustrious parrot of his race. he has merely repeated the individual items of the already published opinion; collecting them, with a laudable industry, from this paper and from that. 'the things had all evidently been there,' he says, 'at least three or four weeks, and there can be no doubt that the spot of this appalling outrage has been discovered.' the facts here re-stated by le soleil, are very far indeed from removing my own doubts upon this subject, and we will examine them more particularly hereafter in connection with another division of the theme. "at present we must occupy ourselves with other investigations. you cannot fail to have remarked the extreme laxity of the examination of the corpse. to be sure, the question of identity was readily determined, or should have been; but there were other points to be ascertained. had the body been in any respect despoiled? had the deceased any articles of jewelry about her person upon leaving home? if so, had she any when found? these are important questions utterly untouched by the evidence; and there are others of equal moment, which have met with no attention. we must endeavor to satisfy ourselves by personal inquiry. the case of st. eustache must be re-examined. i have no suspicion of this person; but let us proceed methodically. we will ascertain beyond a doubt the validity of the affidavits in regard to his whereabouts on the sunday. affidavits of this character are readily made matter of mystification. should there be nothing wrong here, however, we will dismiss st. eustache from our investigations. his suicide, however, corroborative of suspicion, were there found to be deceit in the affidavits, is, without such deceit, in no respect an unaccountable circumstance, or one which need cause us to deflect from the line of ordinary analysis. "in that which i now propose, we will discard the interior points of this tragedy, and concentrate our attention upon its outskirts. not the least usual error in investigations such as this is the limiting of inquiry to the immediate, with total disregard of the collateral or circumstantial events. it is the malpractice of the courts to confine evidence and discussion to the bounds of apparent relevancy. yet experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant. it is through the spirit of this principle, if not precisely through its letter, that modern science has resolved to calculate upon the unforeseen. but perhaps you do not comprehend me. the history of human knowledge has so uninterruptedly shown that to collateral, or incidental, or accidental events we are indebted for the most numerous and most valuable discoveries, that it has at length become necessary, in any prospective view of improvement, to make not only large, but the largest, allowances for inventions that shall arise by chance, and quite out of the range of ordinary expectation. it is no longer philosophical to base upon what has been a vision of what is to be. accident is admitted as a portion of the substructure. we make chance a matter of absolute calculation. we subject the unlooked for and unimagined to the mathematical formulae of the schools. "i repeat that it is no more than fact that the larger portion of all truth has sprung from the collateral; and it is but in accordance with the spirit of the principle involved in this fact that i would divert inquiry, in the present case, from the trodden and hitherto unfruitful ground of the event itself to the contemporary circumstances which surround it. while you ascertain the validity of the affidavits, i will examine the newspapers more generally than you have as yet done. so far, we have only reconnoitred the field of investigation; but it will be strange, indeed, if a comprehensive survey, such as i propose, of the public prints will not afford us some minute points which shall establish a direction for inquiry." in pursuance of dupin's suggestion, i made scrupulous examination of the affair of the affidavits. the result was a firm conviction of their validity, and of the consequent innocence of st. eustache. in the meantime my friend occupied himself, with what seemed to me a minuteness altogether objectless, in a scrutiny of the various newspaper files. at the end of a week he placed before me the following extracts: "about three years and a half ago, a disturbance very similar to the present was caused by the disappearance of this same marie roget from the parfumerie of monsieur le blanc, in the palais royal. at the end of a week, however, she re-appeared at her customary comptoir, as well as ever, with the exception of a slight paleness not altogether usual. it was given out by monsieur le blanc and her mother that she had merely been on a visit to some friend in the country; and the affair was speedily hushed up. we presume that the present absence is a freak of the same nature, and that, at the expiration of a week or, perhaps, of a month, we shall have her among us again."evening paper, monday, june 23.* * new york express "an evening journal of yesterday refers to a former mysterious disappearance of mademoiselle roget. it is well known that, during the week of her absence from le blanc's parfumerie, she was in the company of a young naval officer much noted for his debaucheries. a quarrel, it is supposed, providentially, led to her return home. we have the name of the lothario in question, who is at present stationed in paris, but for obvious reasons forbear to make it public."le mercure, tuesday morning, june 24.* * new york herald "an outrage of the most atrocious character was perpetrated near this city the day before yesterday. a gentleman, with his wife and daughter, engaged, about dusk, the services of six young men, who were idly rowing a boat to and fro near the banks of the seine, to convey him across the river. upon reaching the opposite shore the three passengers stepped out, and had proceeded so far as to be beyond the view of the boat, when the daughter discovered that she had left in it her parasol. she returned for it, was seized by the gang, carried out into the stream, gagged, brutally treated, and finally taken to the shore at a point not far from that at which she had originally entered the boat with her parents. the villains have escaped for the time, but the police are upon their trail, and some of them will soon be taken."morning paper, june 25-* * new york courier and inquirer "we have received one or two communications, the object of which is to fasten the crime of the late atrocity upon mennais*; but as this gentleman has been fully exonerated by a legal inquiry, and as the arguments of our several correspondents appear to be more zealous than profound, we do not think it advisable to make them public."morning paper, june 28.*(2) * mennais was one of the parties originally arrested, but discharged through total lack of evidence. *(2) new york courier and inquirer "we have received several forcibly written communications, apparently from various sources, and which go far to render it a matter of certainty that the unfortunate marie roget has become a victim of one of the numerous bands of blackguards which infest the vicinity of the city upon sunday. our own opinion is decidedly in favor of this supposition. we shall endeavor to make room for some of these arguments hereafter."evening paper, tuesday, june 31.* * new york evening post "on monday, one of the bargemen connected with the revenue service saw an empty boat floating down the seine. sails were lying in the bottom of the boat. the bargeman towed it under the barge office. the next morning it was taken from thence without the knowledge of any of the officers. the rudder is now at the barge office."le diligence, thursday, june 26.* * new york standard upon reading these various extracts, they not only seemed to me irrelevant, but i could perceive no mode in which any one of them could be brought to bear upon the matter in hand. i waited for some explanation from dupin. "it is not my present design," he said, "to dwell upon the first and second of these extracts. i have copied them chiefly to show you the extreme remissness of the police, who, as far as i can understand from the prefect, have not troubled themselves, in any respect, with an examination of the naval officer alluded to. yet it is mere folly to say that between the first and second disappearance of marie there is no supposable connection. let us admit the first elopement to have resulted in a quarrel between the lovers, and the return home of the betrayed. we are now prepared to view a second elopement (if we know that an elopement has again taken place) as indicating a renewal of the betrayer's advances, rather than as the result of new proposals by a second individualwe are prepared to regard it as a 'making up' of the old amour, rather than as the commencement of a new one. the chances are ten to one, that he who had once eloped with marie would again propose an elopement, rather than that she to whom proposals of an elopement had been made by one individual, should have them made to her by another. and here let me call your attention to the fact, that the time elapsing between the first ascertained and the second supposed elopement is a few months more than the general period of the cruises of our men-of-war. had the lover been interrupted in his first villainy by the necessity of departure to sea, and had he seized the first moment of his return to renew the base designs not yet altogether accomplishedor not yet altogether accomplished by him? of all these things we know nothing. "you will say, however, that, in the second instance, there was no elopement as imagined. certainly notbut are we prepared to say that there was not the frustrated design? beyond st. eustache, and perhaps beauvais, we find no recognized, no open, no honorable suitors of marie. of none other is there any thing said. who, then, is the secret lover, of whom the relatives (at least most of them) know nothing, but whom marie meets upon the morning of sunday, and who is so deeply in her confidence, that she hesitates not to remain with him until the shades of the evening descend, amid the solitary groves of the barriere du roule? who is that secret lover, i ask, of whom, at least, most of the relatives know nothing? and what means the singular prophecy of madam roget on the morning of marie's departure? 'i fear that i shall never see marie again.' "but if we cannot imagine madame roget privy to the design of elopement, may we not at least suppose this design entertained by the girl? upon quitting home, she gave it to be understood that she was about to visit her aunt in the rue des dromes, and st. eustache was requested to call for her at dark. now, at first glance, this fact strongly militates against my suggestion;but let us reflect. that she did meet some companion, and proceed with him across the river, reaching the barriere du roule at so late an hour as three o'clock in the afternoon, is known. but in consenting so to accompany this individual, (for whatever purposeto her mother known or unknown,) she must have thought of her expressed intention when leaving home, and of the surprise and suspicion aroused in the bosom of her affianced suitor, st. eustache, when, calling for her, at the hour appointed, in the rue des dromes, he should find that she had not been there, and when, moreover, upon returning to the pension with this alarming intelligence, he should become aware of her continued absence from home. she must have thought of these things, i say. she must have foreseen the chagrin of st. eustache, the suspicion of all. she could not have thought of returning to brave this suspicion; but the suspicion becomes a point of trivial importance to her, if we suppose her not intending to return. "we may imagine her thinking thus'i am to meet a certain person for the purpose of elopement, or for certain other purposes known only to myself. it is necessary that there be no chance of interruptionthere must be sufficient time given us to elude pursuiti will give it to be understood that i shall visit and spend the day with my aunt at the rue des dromesi will tell st. eustache not to call for me until darkin this way, my absence from home for the longest possible period, without causing suspicion or anxiety, will be accounted for, and i shall gain more time than in any other manner. if i bid st. eustache call for me at dark, he will be sure not to call before; but if i wholly neglect to bid him call, my time for escape will be diminished, since it will be expected that i return the earlier, and my absence will the sooner excite anxiety. now, if it were my design to return at allif i had in contemplation merely a stroll with the individual in questionit would not be my policy to bid st. eustache call; for, calling, he will be sure to ascertain that i have played him falsea fact of which i might keep him forever in ignorance, by leaving home without notifying him of my intention, by returning before dark, and by then stating that i had been to visit my aunt in the rue des dromes. but, as it is my design never to returnor not for some weeksor not until certain concealments are effectedthe gaining of time is the only point about which i need give myself any concern.' "you have observed, in your notes, that the most general opinion in relation to this sad affair is, and was from the first, that the girl had been the victim of a gang of blackguards. now, the popular opinion, under certain conditions, is not to be disregarded. when arising of itselfwhen manifesting itself in a strictly spontaneous mannerwe should look upon it as analogous with that intuition which is the idiosyncrasy of the individual man of genius. in ninety-nine cases from the hundred i would abide by its decision. but it is important that we find no palpable traces of suggestion. the opinion must be rigorously the public's own, and the distinction is often exceedingly difficult to perceive and to maintain. in the present instance, it appears to me that this 'public opinion,' in respect to a gang, has been superinduced by the collateral event which is detailed in the third of my extracts. all paris is excited by the discovered corpse of marie, a girl young, beautiful, and notorious. this corpse is found, bearing marks of violence, and floating in the river. but it is now made known that, at the very period, or about the very period, in which it is supposed that the girl was assassinated, an outrage similar in nature to that endured by the deceased, although less in extent, was perpetrated by a gang of young ruffians, upon the person of a second young female. is it wonderful that the one known atrocity should influence the popular judgment in regard to the other unknown? this judgment awaited direction, and the known outrage seemed so opportunely to afford it! marie, too, was found in the river; and upon this very river was this known outrage committed. the connection of the two events had about it so much of the palpable, that the true wonder would have been a failure of the populace to appreciate and to seize it. but, in fact, the one atrocity, known to be so committed, is, if any thing, evidence that the other, committed at a time nearly coincident, was not so committed. it would have been a miracle indeed, if, while a gang of ruffians were perpetrating, at a given locality, a most unheardof wrong, there should have been another similar gang, in a similar locality, in the same city, under the same circumstances, with the same means and appliances, engaged in a wrong of precisely the same aspect, at precisely the same period of time! yet in what, if not in this marvellous train of coincidence, does the accidentally suggested opinion of the populace call upon us to believe? "before proceeding farther, let us consider the supposed scene of the assassination, in the thicket at the barriere du roule. this thicket, although dense, was in the close vicinity of a public road. within were three or four large stones, forming a kind of seat with a back and a footstool. on the upper stone was discovered a white petticoat; on the second, a silk scarf. a parasol, gloves, and a pocket-handkerchief were also here found. the handkerchief bore the name 'marie roget'. fragments of dress were seen on the branches around. the earth was trampled, the bushes were broken, and there was every evidence of a violent struggle. "notwithstanding the acclamation with which the discovery of this thicket was received by the press, and the unanimity with which it was supposed to indicate the precise scene of the outrage, it must be admitted that there was some very good reason for doubt. that it was the scene, i may or i may not believebut there was excellent reason for doubt. had the true scene been, as le commerciel suggested, in the neighborhood of the rue pavee st. andree, the perpetrators of the crime, supposing them still resident in paris, would naturally have been stricken with terror at the public attention thus acutely directed into the proper channel; and, in certain classes of minds, there would have arisen, at once, a sense of the necessity of some exertion to re-divert this attention. and thus, the thicket of the barriere du roule having been already suspected, the idea of placing the articles where they were found, might have been naturally entertained. there is no real evidence, although le soleil so supposes, that the articles discovered had been more than a very few days in the thicket; while there is much circumstantial proof that they could not have remained there, without attracting attention, during the twenty days elapsing between the fatal sunday and the afternoon upon which they were found by the boys. 'they were all mildewed down hard,' says le soleil, adopting the opinions of its predecessors, 'with the action of the rain and stuck together from mildew. the grass had grown around and over some of them. the silk of the parasol was strong, but the threads of it were run together within. the upper part, where it had been doubled and folded, was all mildewed and rotten, and tore on being opened.' in respect to the grass having 'grown around and over some of them,' it is obvious that the fact could only have been ascertained from the words, and thus from the recollections, of two small boys; for these boys removed the articles and took them home before they had been seen by a third party. but the grass will grow, especially in warm and damp weather (such as was that of the period of the murder), as much as two or three inches in a single day. a parasol lying upon a newly turfed ground, might, in a single week, be entirely concealed from sight by the upspringing grass. and touching that mildew upon which the editor of le soleil so pertinaciously insists, that he employs the word no less than three times in the brief paragraph just quoted, is he really unaware of the nature of this mildew? is he to be told that it is one of the many classes of fungus, of which the most ordinary feature is its upspringing and decadence within twenty-four hours? "thus we see, at a glance, that what has been most triumphantly adduced in support of the idea that the articles had been 'for at least three or four weeks' in the thicket, is most absurdly null as regards any evidence of that fact. on the other hand, it is exceedingly difficult to believe that these articles could have remained in the thicket specified for a longer period than a single weekfor a longer period than from one sunday to the next. those who know any thing of the vicinity of paris, know the extreme difficulty of finding seclusion, unless at a great distance from its suburbs. such a thing as an unexplored or even an unfrequently visited recess, amid its woods or groves, is not for a moment to be imagined. let any one who, being at heart a lover of nature, is yet chained by duty to the dust and heat of this great metropolislet any such one attempt, even during the week-days, to slake his thirst for solitude amid the scenes of natural loveliness which immediately surround us. at every second step, he will find the growing charm dispelled by the voice and personal intrusion of some ruffian or party of carousing blackguards. he will seek privacy amid the densest foliage, all in vain. here are the very nooks where the unwashed most aboundhere are the temples most desecrate. with sickness of the heart the wanderer will flee back to the polluted paris as to a less odious because less incongruous sink of pollution. but if the vicinity of the city is so beset during the working days of the week, how much more so on the sabbath! it is now especially that, released from the claims of labor, or deprived of the customary opportunities of crime, the town blackguard seeks the precincts of the town, not through love of the rural, which in his heart he despises, but by way of escape from the restraints and conventionalities of society. he desires less the fresh air and the green trees, than the utter license of the country. here, at the road-side inn, or beneath the foliage of the woods, he indulges unchecked by any eye except those of his boon companions, in all the mad excess of a counterfeit hilaritythe joint offspring of liberty and of rum. i say nothing more than what must be obvious to every dispassionate observer, when i repeat that the circumstance of the articles in question having remained undiscovered, for a longer period than from one sunday to another, in any thicket in the immediate neighborhood of paris, is to be looked upon as little less than miraculous. "but there are not wanting other grounds for the suspicion that the articles were placed in the thicket with the view of diverting attention from the real scene of the outrage. and first, let me direct your notice to the date of the discovery of the articles. collate this with the date of the fifth extract made by myself from the newspapers. you will find that the discovery followed, almost immediately, the urgent communications sent to the evening paper. these communications, although various, and apparently from various sources, tended all to the same point-viz., the directing of attention to a gang as the perpetrators of the outrage, and to the neighborhood of the barriere du roule as its scene. now, here, of course, the suspicion is not that, in consequence of these communications, or of the public attention by them directed, the articles were found by the boys; but the suspicion might and may well have been, that the articles were not before found by the boys, for the reason that the articles had not before been in the thicket; having been deposited there only at so late a period as at the date, or shortly prior to the date of the communications, by the guilty authors of these communications themselves. "this thicket was a singularan exceedingly singular one. it was unusually dense. within its naturally walled enclosure were three extraordinary stones, forming a seat with a back and a footstool. and this thicket, so full of art, was in the immediate vicinity, within a few rods, of the dwelling of madame deluc, whose boys were in the habit of closely examining the shrubberies about them in search of the bark of the sassafras. would it be a rash wagera wager of one thousand to onethat a day never passed over the heads of these boys without finding at least one of them ensconced in the umbrageous hall, and enthroned upon its natural throne? those who would hesitate at such a wager, have either never been boys themselves, or have forgotten the boyish nature. i repeatit is exceedingly hard to comprehend how the articles could have remained in this thicket undiscovered, for a longer period than one or two days; and that thus there is good ground for suspicion, in spite of the dogmatic ignorance of le soleil, that they were, at a comparatively late date, deposited where found. "but there are still other and stronger reasons for believing them so deposited, than any which i have as yet urged. and, now, let me beg your notice to the highly artificial arrangement of the articles. on the upper stone lay a white petticoat; on the second, a silk scarf; scattered around, were a parasol, gloves, and a pocket-handkerchief bearing the name 'marie roget.' here is just such an arrangement as would naturally be made by a not over-acute person wishing to dispose the articles naturally. but it is by no means a really natural arrangement. i should rather have looked to see the things all lying on the ground and trampled under foot. in the narrow limits of that bower, it would have been scarcely possible that the petticoat and scarf should have retained a position upon the stones, when subjected to the brushing to and fro of many struggling persons. 'there was evidence,' it is said, 'of a struggle; and the earth was trampled, the bushes were broken,'but the petticoat and the scarf are found deposited as if upon shelves. 'the pieces of the frock torn out by the bushes were about three inches wide and six inches long. one part was the hem of the frock and it had been mended. they looked like strips torn off.' here, inadvertently, le soleil has employed an exceedingly suspicious phrase. the pieces, as described, do indeed look like strips torn off; but purposely and by hand. it is one of the rarest of accidents that a piece is 'torn off,' from any garment such as is now in question, by the agency of a thorn. from the very nature of such fabrics, a thorn or nail becoming tangled in them, tears them rectangularlydivides them into two longitudinal rents, at right angles with each other, and meeting at an apex where the thorn entersbut it is scarcely possible to conceive the piece 'torn off.' i never so knew it, nor did you. to tear a piece off from such fabric, two distinct forces, in different directions, will be, in almost every case, required. if there be two edges to the fabricif, for example, it be a pocket-handkerchief, and it is desired to tear from it a slip, then, and then only, will the one force serve the purpose. but in the present case the question is of a dress, presenting but one edge. to tear a piece from the interior, where no edge is presented, could only be effected by a miracle through the agency of thorns, and no one thorn could accomplish it. but, even where an edge is presented, two thorns will be necessary, operating, the one in two distinct directions, and the other in one. and this in the supposition that the edge is unhemmed. if hemmed, the matter is nearly out of the question. we thus see the numerous and great obstacles in the way of pieces being 'torn off' through the simple agency of 'thorns'; yet we are required to believe not only that one piece but that many have been so torn. 'and one part,' too, 'was the hem of the frock'! another piece was 'part of the skirt, not the hem,'that is to say, was torn completely out, through the agency of thorns, from the unedged interior of the dress! these, i say, are things which one may well be pardoned for disbelieving; yet, taken collectedly, they form, perhaps, less of reasonable ground for suspicion, than the one startling circumstance of the articles having been left in this thicket at all, by any murderers who had enough precaution to think of removing the corpse. you will not have apprehended me rightly, however, if you suppose it my design to deny this thicket as the scene of the outrage. there might have been a wrong here, or more possibly, an accident at madame deluc's. but, in fact, this is a point of minor importance. we are not engaged in an attempt to discover the scene, but to produce the perpetrators of the murder. what i have adduced, notwithstanding the minuteness with which i have adduced it, has been with the view, first, to show the folly of the positive and headlong assertions of le soleil, but secondly and chiefly, to bring you, by the most natural route, to a further contemplation of the doubt whether this assassination has, or has not, been the work of a gang. "we will resume this question by mere allusion to the revolting details of the surgeon examined at the inquest. it is only necessary to say that his published inferences, in regard to the number of the ruffians, have been properly ridiculed as unjust and totally baseless, by all the reputable anatomists of paris. not that the matter might not have been as inferred, but that there was no ground for the inference:was there not much for another? "let us reflect now upon 'the traces of a struggle'; let meask what these traces have been supposed to demonstrate. a gang. but do they not rather demonstrate the absence of a gang? what struggle could have taken placewhat struggle so violent and so enduring as to have left its 'traces' in all directionsbetween a weak and defenceless girl and a gang of ruffians imagined? the silent grasp of a few rough arms and all would have been over. the victim must have been absolutely passive at their will. you will here bear in mind that the arguments urged against the thicket as the scene, are applicable, in chief part, only against it as the scene of an outrage committed by more than a single individual. if we imagine but one violator, we can conceive, and thus only conceive, the struggle of so violent and so obstinate a nature as to have left the 'traces' apparent. "and again. i have already mentioned the suspicion to be excited by the fact that the articles in question were suffered to remain at all in the thicket where discovered. it seems almost impossible that these evidences of guilt should have been accidentally left where found. there was sufficient presence of mind (it is supposed) to remove the corpse, and yet a more positive evidence than the corpse itself (whose features might have been quickly obliterated by decay), is allowed to lie conspicuously in the scene of the outragei allude to the handkerchief with the name of the deceased. if this was accident, it was not the accident of a gang. we can imagine it only the accident of an individual. let us see. an individual has committed the murder. he is alone with the ghost of the departed. he is appalled by what lies motionless before him. the fury of his passion is over, and there is abundant room in his heart for the natural awe of the deed. his is none of that confidence which the presence of numbers inevitably inspires. he is alone with the dead. he trembles and is bewildered. yet there is a necessity for disposing of the corpse. he bears it to the river, and leaves behind him the other evidences of his guilt; for it is difficult, if not impossible to carry all the burthen at once, and it will be easy to return for what is left. but in his toilsome journey to the water his fears redouble within him. the sounds of life encompass his path. a dozen times he hears or fancies he hears the step of an observer. even the very lights from the city bewilder him. yet, in time, and by long and frequent pauses of deep agony, he reaches the river's brink, and disposes of his ghastly chargeperhaps through the medium of a boat. but now what treasure does the world holdwhat threat of vengeance could it hold outwhich would have power to urge the return of that lonely murderer over that toilsome and perilous path, to the thicket and its blood-chilling recollections? he returns not, let the consequences be what they may. he could not return if he would. his sole thought is immediate escape. he turns his back forever upon those dreadful shrubberies, and flees as from the wrath to come. "but how with a gang? their number would have inspired them with confidence; if, indeed, confidence is ever wanting in the breast of the arrant blackguard; and of arrant blackguards alone are the supposed gangs ever constituted. their number, i say, would have prevented the bewildering and unreasoning terror which i have imagined to paralyze the single man. could we suppose an oversight in one, or two, or three, this oversight would have been remedied by a fourth. they would have left nothing behind them; for their number would have enabled them to carry all at once. there would have been no need of return. "consider now the circumstance that, in the outer garment of the corpse when found, 'a slip, about a foot wide, had been torn upward from the bottom hem to the waist, wound three times around the waist, and secured by a sort of hitch in the back.' this was done with the obvious design of affording a handle by which to carry the body. but would any number of men have dreamed of resorting to such an expedient? to three or four, the limbs of the corpse would have afforded not only a sufficient, but the best possible, hold. the device is that of a single individual; and this brings us to the fact that 'between the thicket and the river, the rails of the fences were found taken down, and the ground bore evident traces of some heavy burden having been dragged along it!' but would a number of men have put themselves to the superfluous trouble of taking down a fence, for the purpose of dragging through it a corpse which they might have lifted over any fence in an instant? would a number of men have so dragged a corpse at all as to have left evident traces of the dragging? "and here we must refer to an observation of le commerciel; an observation upon which i have already, in some measure, commented. 'a piece,' says this journal, 'of one of the unfortunate girl's petticoats was torn out and tied under her chin, and around the back of her head, probably to prevent screams. this was done by fellows who had no pocket-handkerchiefs.' "i have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief. but it is not to this fact that i now especially advert. that it was not through want of a handkerchief for the purpose imagined by le commerciel that this bandage was employed, is rendered apparent by the handkerchief left in the thicket; and that the object was not 'to prevent screams' appears, also, from the bandage having been employed in preference to what would so much better have answered the purpose. but the language of the evidence speaks of the strip in question as 'found around the neck, fitting loosely, and secured with a hard knot.' these words are sufficiently vague, but differ materially from those of le commerciel. the slip was eighteen inches wide, and therefore, although of muslin, would form a strong band when folded or rumpled longitudinally. and thus rumpled it was discovered. my inference is this. the solitary murderer, having borne the corpse for some distance (whether from the thicket or elsewhere) by means of the bandage hitched around its middle, found the weight, in this mode of procedure, too much for his strength. he resolved to drag the burthenthe evidence goes to show that it was dragged. with this object in view, it became necessary to attach something like a rope to one of the extremities. it could be best attached about the neck, where the head would prevent it slipping off. and now the murderer bethought him, unquestionably, of the bandage about the loins. he would have used this, but for its volution about the corpse, the hitch which embarrassed it, and the reflection that it had not been 'torn off from the garment. it was easier to tear a new slip from the petticoat. he tore it, made it fast about the neck, and so dragged his victim to the brink of the river. that this 'bandage,' only attainable with trouble and delay, and but imperfectly answering its purposethat this bandage was employed at all, demonstrates that the necessity for its employment sprang from circumstances arising at a period when the handkerchief was no longer attainablethat is to say, arising, as we have imagined, after quitting the thicket (if the thicket it was), and on the road between the thicket and the river. "but the evidence, you will say, of madame deluc(!) points especially to the presence of a gang in the vicinity of the thicket, at or about the epoch of the murder. this i grant. i doubt if there were not a dozen gangs, such as described by madame deluc, in and about the vicinity of the barriere du roule at or about the period of this tragedy. but the gang which has drawn upon itself the pointed animadversion, although the somewhat tardy and very suspicious evidence, of madame deluc, is the only gang which is represented by that honest and scrupulous old lady as having eaten her cakes and swallowed her brandy, without putting themselves to the trouble of making her payment. et hinc illae irae? "but what is the precise evidence of madame deluc? 'a gang of miscreants made their appearance, behaved boisterously, ate and drank without making payment, followed in the route of the young man and the girl, returned to the inn about dusk, and re-crossed the river as if in great haste.' "now this 'great haste very possibly seemed greater haste in the eyes of madame deluc, since she dwelt lingeringly and lamentingly upon her violated cakes and ale,cakes and ale for which she might still have entertained a faint hope of compensation. why, otherwise, since it was about dusk, should she make a point of the haste? it is no cause for wonder, surely, that even a gang of blackguards should make haste to get home when a wide river is to be crossed in small boats, when storm impends, and when night approaches. "i say approaches, for the night had not yet arrived. it was only about dusk that the indecent haste of these 'miscreants' offended the sober eyes of madame deluc. but we are told that it was upon this very evening that madame deluc, as well as her eldest son, 'heard the screams of a female in the vicinity of the inn.' and in what words does madame deluc designate the period of the evening at which these screams were heard? 'it was soon after dark' she says. but 'soon after dark' is, at least, dark; and 'about dusk' is as certainly daylight. thus it is abundantly clear that the gang quitted the barriere da roule prior to the screams overheard(?) by madame deluc. and although, in all the many reports of the evidence, the relative expressions in question are distinctly and invariably employed just as i have employed them in this conversation with yourself, no notice whatever of the gross discrepancy has, as yet, been taken by any of the public journals, or by any of the myrmidons of police. "i shall add but one to the arguments against a gang, but this one has, to my own understanding at least, a weight altogether irresistible. under the circumstances of large reward offered, and full pardon to any king's evidence, it is not to be imagined, for a moment, that some member of a gang of low ruffians, or of any body of men would not long ago have betrayed his accomplices. each one of a gang, so placed, is not so much greedy of reward, or anxious for escape, as fearful of betrayal. he betrays eagerly and early that he may not himself be betrayed. that the secret has not been divulged is the very best of proof that it is, in fact, a secret. the horrors of this dark deed are known only to one, or two, living human beings, and to god. "let us sum up now the meagre yet certain fruits of our long analysis. we have attained the idea either of a fatal accident under the roof of madame deluc, or of a murder perpetrated, in the thicket at the barriere du roule, by a lover, or at least by an intimate and secret associate of the deceased. this associate is of swarthy complexion. this complexion, the 'hitch' in the bandage, and the 'sailor's knot' with which the bonnet-ribbon is tied, point to a seaman. his companionship with the deceased, a gay but not an abject young girl, designates him as above the grade of the common sailor. here the well-written and urgent communications to the journals are much in the way of corroboration. the circumstance of the first elopement as mentioned by le mercurie, tends to blend the idea of this seaman with that of that 'naval officer' who is first known to have led the unfortunate into crime. "and here, most fitly, comes the consideration of the continued absence of him of the dark complexion. let me pause to observe that the complexion of this man is dark and swarthy; it was no common swarthiness which constituted the sole point of remembrance, both as regards valence and madame deluc. but why is this man absent? was he murdered by the gang? if so, why are there only traces of the assassinated girl? the scene of the two outrages will naturally be supposed identical. and where is his corpse? the assassins would most probably have disposed of both in the same way. but it may be said that this man lives, and is deterred from making himself known, through dread of being charged with the murder. this consideration might be supposed to operate upon him nowat late periodsince it has been given in evidence that he was seen with mariebut it would have had no force at the period of the deed. the first impulse of an innocent man would have been to announce the outrage, and to aid in identifying the ruffians. this, policy would have suggested. he had been seen with the girl. he had crossed the river with her in an open ferry-boat. the denouncing of the assassins would have appeared, even to an idiot, the surest and sole means of relieving himself from suspicion. we cannot suppose him, on the night of the fatal sunday, both innocent himself and incognizant of an outrage committed. yet only under such circumstances is it possible to imagine that he would have failed, if alive, in the denouncement of the assassins. "and what means are ours of attaining the truth? we shall find these means multiplying and gathering distinctness as we proceed. let us sift to the bottom this affair of the first elopement. let us know the full history of 'the officer,' with his present circumstances, and his whereabouts at the precise period of the murder. let us carefully compare with each other the various communications sent to the evening paper, in which the object was to inculpate a gang. this done, let us compare these communications, both as regards style and ms., with those sent to the morning paper, at a previous period, and insisting so vehemently upon the guilt of mennais. and, all this done, let us again compare these various communications with the known mss. of the officer. let us endeavor to ascertain, by repeated questionings of madame deluc and her boys, as well as of the omnibus-driver, valence, something more of the personal appearance and bearing of the 'man of dark complexion.' queries, skillfully directed will not fail to elicit, from some of these parties, information on this particular point (or upon others)information which the parties themselves may not even be aware of possessing. and let us now trace the boat picked up by the bargeman on the morning of monday the twenty-third of june, and which was removed from the barge-office, without the cognizance of the officer in attendance, and without the rudder, at some period prior to the discovery of the corpse. with a proper caution and perseverance we shall infallibly trace this boat; for not only can the bargeman who picked it up identify it, but the rudder is at hand. the rudder of a sail boat would not have been abandoned, without inquiry, by one altogether at ease in heart. and here let me pause to insinuate a question. there was no advertisement of the picking up of this boat. it was silently taken to the barge-office and as silently removed. but its owner or employerhow happened he, at so early a period as tuesday morning, to be informed, without the agency of advertisement, of the locality of the boat taken up on monday, unless we imagine some connection with the navysome personal permanent connexion leading to cognizance of its minute interestsits petty local news? "in speaking of the lonely assassin dragging his burden to the shore, i have already suggested the probability of his availing himself of a boat. now we are to understand that marie roget was precipitated from a boat. this would naturally have been the case. the corpse could not have been trusted to the shallow waters of the shore. the peculiar marks on the back and shoulders of the victim tell of the bottom ribs of a boat. that the body was found without weight is also corroborative of the idea. if thrown from the shore a weight would have been attached. we can only account for its absence by supposing the murderer to have neglected the precaution of supplying himself with it before pushing off. in the act of consigning the corpse to the water, he would unquestionably have noticed his oversight; but then no remedy would have been at hand. any risk would have been preferred to a return to that accursed shore. having rid himself of his ghastly charge, the murderer would have hastened to the city. there, at some obscure wharf, he would have leaped on land. but the boatwould he have secured it? he would have been in too great haste for such things as securing a boat. moreover, in fastening it to the wharf, he would have felt as if securing evidence against himself. his natural thought would have been to cast from him, as far as possible, all that had held connection with his crime. he would not only have fled from the wharf, but he would not have permitted the boat to remain. assuredly he would have cast it adrift. let us pursue our fancies. in the morning, the wretch is stricken with unutterable horror at finding that the boat has been picked up and detained at a locality which he is in the daily habit of frequentingat a locality, perhaps, which his duty compels him to frequent. the next night, without daring to ask for the rudder, he removes it. now where is that rudderless boat? let it be one of our first purposes to discover. with the first glimpse we obtain of it, the dawn of our success shall begin. this boat shall guide us, with a rapidity which will surprise even ourselves, to him who employed it in the midnight of the fatal sabbath. corroboration will rise upon corroboration, and the murderer will be traced." [for reasons which we shall not specify, but which to many readers will appear obvious, we have taken the liberty of here omitting, from the mss. placed in our hands, such portion as details the following up of the apparently slight clew obtained by dupin. we feel it advisable only to state, in brief, that the result desired was brought to pass; and that the prefect fulfilled punctually, although with reluctance, the terms of his compact with the chevalier. mr. poe's article concludes with the following words.eds.*] * of the magazine in which the article was originally published. it will be understood that i speak of coincidences and no more. what i have said above upon this topic must suffice. in my own heart there dwells no faith in praeter-nature. that nature and its god are two, no man who thinks will deny. that the latter, creating the former, can, at will, control or modify it, is also unquestionable. i say "at will"; for the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed, of power. it is not that the deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification. in their origin these laws were fashioned to embrace all contingencies which could lie in the future. with god all is now. i repeat, then, that i speak of these things only as of coincidences. and further: in what i relate it will be seen that between the fate of the unhappy mary cecilia rogers, so far as that fate is known, and the fate of one marie roget up to a certain epoch in her history, there has existed a parallel in the contemplation of whose wonderful exactitude the reason becomes embarrassed. i say all this will be seen. but let it not for a moment be supposed that, in proceeding with the sad narrative of marie from the epoch just mentioned, and in tracing to its denouement the mystery which enshrouded her, it is my covert design to hint at an extension of the parallel, or even to suggest that the measures adopted in paris for the discovery of the assassin of a grisette, or measures founded in any similar ratiocination would produce any similar result. for, in respect to the latter branch of the supposition, it should be considered that the most trifling variation in the facts of the two cases might give rise to the most important miscalculations, by diverting thoroughly the two courses of events; very much as, in arithmetic, an error which, in its own individuality, may be inappreciable, produces, at length, by dint of multiplication at all points of the process, a result enormously at variance with truth. and, in regard to the former branch, we must not fail to hold in view that the very calculus of probabilities to which i have referred, forbids all idea of the extension of the parallel,forbids it with a positiveness strong and decided just in proportion as this parallel has already been long-drawn and exact. this is one of those anomalous propositions which, seemingly appealing to thought altogether apart from the mathematical, is yet one which only the mathematician can fully entertain. nothing, for example, is more difficult than to convince the merely general reader that the fact of sixes having been thrown twice in succession by a player at dice, is sufficient cause for betting the largest odds that sixes will not be thrown in the third attempt. a suggestion to this effect is usually rejected by the intellect at once. it does not appear that the two throws which have been completed, and which lie now absolutely in the past, can have influence upon the throw which exists only in the future. the chance for throwing sixes seems to be precisely as it was at any ordinary timethat is to say, subject only to the influence of the various other throws which may be made by the dice. and this is a reflection which appears so exceedingly obvious that attempts to controvert it are received more frequently with a derisive smile than with any thing like respectful attention. the error here involveda gross error redolent of mischiefi cannot pretend to expose within the limits assigned me at present; and with the philosophical it needs no exposure. it may be sufficient here to say that it forms one of an infinite series of mistakes which arise in the path of reason through her propensity for seeking truth in detail. the end . 1850 elizabeth by edgar allan poe elizabeth elizabeth, it surely is most fit [logic and common usage so commanding] in thy own book that first thy name be writ, zeno and other sages notwithstanding; and i have other reasons for so doing besides my innate love of contradiction; each poet if a poet in pursuing the muses thro' their bowers of truth or fiction, has studied very little of his part, read nothing, written less in short's a fool endued with neither soul, nor sense, nor art, being ignorant of one important rule, employed in even the theses of the school called i forget the heathenish greek name [called anything, its meaning is the same] "always write first things uppermost in the heart." the end . 1850 some words with a mummy by edgar allan poe the symposium of the preceding evening had been a little too much for my nerves. i had a wretched headache, and was desperately drowsy. instead of going out therefore to spend the evening as i had proposed, it occurred to me that i could not do a wiser thing than just eat a mouthful of supper and go immediately to bed. a light supper of course. i am exceedingly fond of welsh rabbit. more than a pound at once, however, may not at all times be advisable. still, there can be no material objection to two. and really between two and three, there is merely a single unit of difference. i ventured, perhaps, upon four. my wife will have it five;but, clearly, she has confounded two very distinct affairs. the abstract number, five, i am willing to admit; but, concretely, it has reference to bottles of brown stout, without which, in the way of condiment, welsh rabbit is to be eschewed. having thus concluded a frugal meal, and donned my night-cap, with the serene hope of enjoying it till noon the next day, i placed my head upon the pillow, and, through the aid of a capital conscience, fell into a profound slumber forthwith. but when were the hopes of humanity fulfilled? i could not have completed my third snore when there came a furious ringing at the street-door bell, and then an impatient thumping at the knocker, which awakened me at once. in a minute afterward, and while i was still rubbing my eyes, my wife thrust in my face a note, from my old friend, doctor ponnonner. it ran thus: come to me, by all means, my dear good friend, as soon as you receive this. come and help us to rejoice. at last, by long persevering diplomacy, i have gained the assent of the directors of the city museum, to my examination of the mummyyou know the one i mean. i have permission to unswathe it and open it, if desirable. a few friends only will be presentyou, of course. the mummy is now at my house, and we shall begin to unroll it at eleven to-night. yours, ever, ponnonner. by the time i had reached the "ponnonner," it struck me that i was as wide awake as a man need be. i leaped out of bed in an ecstacy, overthrowing all in my way; dressed myself with a rapidity truly marvellous; and set off, at the top of my speed, for the doctor's. there i found a very eager company assembled. they had been awaiting me with much impatience; the mummy was extended upon the dining-table; and the moment i entered its examination was commenced. it was one of a pair brought, several years previously, by captain arthur sabretash, a cousin of ponnonner's from a tomb near eleithias, in the lybian mountains, a considerable distance above thebes on the nile. the grottoes at this point, although less magnificent than the theban sepulchres, are of higher interest, on account of affording more numerous illustrations of the private life of the egyptians. the chamber from which our specimen was taken, was said to be very rich in such illustrations; the walls being completely covered with fresco paintings and bas-reliefs, while statues, vases, and mosaic work of rich patterns, indicated the vast wealth of the deceased. the treasure had been deposited in the museum precisely in the same condition in which captain sabretash had found it;that is to say, the coffin had not been disturbed. for eight years it had thus stood, subject only externally to public inspection. we had now, therefore, the complete mummy at our disposal; and to those who are aware how very rarely the unransacked antique reaches our shores, it will be evident, at once that we had great reason to congratulate ourselves upon our good fortune. approaching the table, i saw on it a large box, or case, nearly seven feet long, and perhaps three feet wide, by two feet and a half deep. it was oblongnot coffin-shaped. the material was at first supposed to be the wood of the sycamore (platanus), but, upon cutting into it, we found it to be pasteboard, or, more properly, papier mache, composed of papyrus. it was thickly ornamented with paintings, representing funeral scenes, and other mournful subjectsinterspersed among which, in every variety of position, were certain series of hieroglyphical characters, intended, no doubt, for the name of the departed. by good luck, mr. gliddon formed one of our party; and he had no difficulty in translating the letters, which were simply phonetic, and represented the word allamistakeo. we had some difficulty in getting this case open without injury; but having at length accomplished the task, we came to a second, coffin-shaped, and very considerably less in size than the exterior one, but resembling it precisely in every other respect. the interval between the two was filled with resin, which had, in some degree, defaced the colors of the interior box. upon opening this latter (which we did quite easily), we arrived at a third case, also coffin-shaped, and varying from the second one in no particular, except in that of its material, which was cedar, and still emitted the peculiar and highly aromatic odor of that wood. between the second and the third case there was no intervalthe one fitting accurately within the other. removing the third case, we discovered and took out the body itself. we had expected to find it, as usual, enveloped in frequent rolls, or bandages, of linen; but, in place of these, we found a sort of sheath, made of papyrus, and coated with a layer of plaster, thickly gilt and painted. the paintings represented subjects connected with the various supposed duties of the soul, and its presentation to different divinities, with numerous identical human figures, intended, very probably, as portraits of the persons embalmed. extending from head to foot was a columnar, or perpendicular, inscription, in phonetic hieroglyphics, giving again his name and titles, and the names and titles of his relations. around the neck thus ensheathed, was a collar of cylindrical glass beads, diverse in color, and so arranged as to form images of deities, of the scarabaeus, etc, with the winged globe. around the small of the waist was a similar collar or belt. stripping off the papyrus, we found the flesh in excellent preservation, with no perceptible odor. the color was reddish. the skin was hard, smooth, and glossy. the teeth and hair were in good condition. the eyes (it seemed) had been removed, and glass ones substituted, which were very beautiful and wonderfully life-like, with the exception of somewhat too determined a stare. the fingers and the nails were brilliantly gilded. mr. gliddon was of opinion, from the redness of the epidermis, that the embalmment had been effected altogether by asphaltum; but, on scraping the surface with a steel instrument, and throwing into the fire some of the powder thus obtained, the flavor of camphor and other sweet-scented gums became apparent. we searched the corpse very carefully for the usual openings through which the entrails are extracted, but, to our surprise, we could discover none. no member of the party was at that period aware that entire or unopened mummies are not infrequently met. the brain it was customary to withdraw through the nose; the intestines through an incision in the side; the body was then shaved, washed, and salted; then laid aside for several weeks, when the operation of embalming, properly so called, began. as no trace of an opening could be found, doctor ponnonner was preparing his instruments for dissection, when i observed that it was then past two o'clock. hereupon it was agreed to postpone the internal examination until the next evening; and we were about to separate for the present, when some one suggested an experiment or two with the voltaic pile. the application of electricity to a mummy three or four thousand years old at the least, was an idea, if not very sage, still sufficiently original, and we all caught it at once. about one-tenth in earnest and nine-tenths in jest, we arranged a battery in the doctor's study, and conveyed thither the egyptian. it was only after much trouble that we succeeded in laying bare some portions of the temporal muscle which appeared of less stony rigidity than other parts of the frame, but which, as we had anticipated, of course, gave no indication of galvanic susceptibility when brought in contact with the wire. this, the first trial, indeed, seemed decisive, and, with a hearty laugh at our own absurdity, we were bidding each other good night, when my eyes, happening to fall upon those of the mummy, were there immediately riveted in amazement. my brief glance, in fact, had sufficed to assure me that the orbs which we had all supposed to be glass, and which were originally noticeable for a certain wild stare, were now so far covered by the lids, that only a small portion of the tunica albuginea remained visible. with a shout i called attention to the fact, and it became immediately obvious to all. i cannot say that i was alarmed at the phenomenon, because "alarmed" is, in my case, not exactly the word. it is possible, however, that, but for the brown stout, i might have been a little nervous. as for the rest of the company, they really made no attempt at concealing the downright fright which possessed them. doctor ponnonner was a man to be pitied. mr. gliddon, by some peculiar process, rendered himself invisible. mr. silk buckingham, i fancy, will scarcely be so bold as to deny that he made his way, upon all fours, under the table. after the first shock of astonishment, however, we resolved, as a matter of course, upon further experiment forthwith. our operations were now directed against the great toe of the right foot. we made an incision over the outside of the exterior os sesamoideum pollicis pedis, and thus got at the root of the abductor muscle. readjusting the battery, we now applied the fluid to the bisected nerveswhen, with a movement of exceeding life-likeness, the mummy first drew up its right knee so as to bring it nearly in contact with the abdomen, and then, straightening the limb with inconceivable force, bestowed a kick upon doctor ponnonner, which had the effect of discharging that gentleman, like an arrow from a catapult, through a window into the street below. we rushed out en masse to bring in the mangled remains of the victim, but had the happiness to meet him upon the staircase, coming up in an unaccountable hurry, brimful of the most ardent philosophy, and more than ever impressed with the necessity of prosecuting our experiment with vigor and with zeal. it was by his advice, accordingly, that we made, upon the spot, a profound incision into the tip of the subject's nose, while the doctor himself, laying violent hands upon it, pulled it into vehement contact with the wire. morally and physicallyfiguratively and literallywas the effect electric. in the first place, the corpse opened its eyes and winked very rapidly for several minutes, as does mr. barnes in the pantomime, in the second place, it sneezed; in the third, it sat upon end; in the fourth, it shook its fist in doctor ponnonner's face; in the fifth, turning to messieurs gliddon and buckingham, it addressed them, in very capital egyptian, thus: "i must say, gentlemen, that i am as much surprised as i am mortified at your behaviour. of doctor ponnonner nothing better was to be expected. he is a poor little fat fool who knows no better. i pity and forgive him. but you, mr. gliddonand you, silkwho have travelled and resided in egypt until one might imagine you to the manner bornyou, i say who have been so much among us that you speak egyptian fully as well, i think, as you write your mother tongueyou, whom i have always been led to regard as the firm friend of the mummiesi really did anticipate more gentlemanly conduct from you. what am i to think of your standing quietly by and seeing me thus unhandsomely used? what am i to suppose by your permitting tom, dick, and harry to strip me of my coffins, and my clothes, in this wretchedly cold climate? in what light (to come to the point) am i to regard your aiding and abetting that miserable little villain, doctor ponnonner, in pulling me by the nose?" it will be taken for granted, no doubt, that upon hearing this speech under the circumstances, we all either made for the door, or fell into violent hysterics, or went off in a general swoon. one of these three things was, i say, to be expected. indeed each and all of these lines of conduct might have been very plausibly pursued. and, upon my word, i am at a loss to know how or why it was that we pursued neither the one nor the other. but, perhaps, the true reason is to be sought in the spirit of the age, which proceeds by the rule of contraries altogether, and is now usually admitted as the solution of every thing in the way of paradox and impossibility. or, perhaps, after all, it was only the mummy's exceedingly natural and matter-of-course air that divested his words of the terrible. however this may be, the facts are clear, and no member of our party betrayed any very particular trepidation, or seemed to consider that any thing had gone very especially wrong. for my part i was convinced it was all right, and merely stepped aside, out of the range of the egyptian's fist. doctor ponnonner thrust his hands into his breeches' pockets, looked hard at the mummy, and grew excessively red in the face. mr. glidden stroked his whiskers and drew up the collar of his shirt. mr. buckingham hung down his head, and put his right thumb into the left corner of his mouth. the egyptian regarded him with a severe countenance for some minutes and at length, with a sneer, said: "why don't you speak, mr. buckingham? did you hear what i asked you, or not? do take your thumb out of your mouth!" mr. buckingham, hereupon, gave a slight start, took his right thumb out of the left corner of his mouth, and, by way of indemnification inserted his left thumb in the right corner of the aperture above-mentioned. not being able to get an answer from mr. b., the figure turned peevishly to mr. gliddon, and, in a peremptory tone, demanded in general terms what we all meant. mr. gliddon replied at great length, in phonetics; and but for the deficiency of american printing-offices in hieroglyphical type, it would afford me much pleasure to record here, in the original, the whole of his very excellent speech. i may as well take this occasion to remark, that all the subsequent conversation in which the mummy took a part, was carried on in primitive egyptian, through the medium (so far as concerned myself and other untravelled members of the company)through the medium, i say, of messieurs gliddon and buckingham, as interpreters. these gentlemen spoke the mother tongue of the mummy with inimitable fluency and grace; but i could not help observing that (owing, no doubt, to the introduction of images entirely modern, and, of course, entirely novel to the stranger) the two travellers were reduced, occasionally, to the employment of sensible forms for the purpose of conveying a particular meaning. mr. gliddon, at one period, for example, could not make the egyptian comprehend the term "politics," until he sketched upon the wall, with a bit of charcoal a little carbuncle-nosed gentleman, out at elbows, standing upon a stump, with his left leg drawn back, right arm thrown forward, with his fist shut, the eyes rolled up toward heaven, and the mouth open at an angle of ninety degrees. just in the same way mr. buckingham failed to convey the absolutely modern idea "wig," until (at doctor ponnonner's suggestion) he grew very pale in the face, and consented to take off his own. it will be readily understood that mr. gliddon's discourse turned chiefly upon the vast benefits accruing to science from the unrolling and disembowelling of mummies; apologizing, upon this score, for any disturbance that might have been occasioned him, in particular, the individual mummy called allamistakeo; and concluding with a mere hint (for it could scarcely be considered more) that, as these little matters were now explained, it might be as well to proceed with the investigation intended. here doctor ponnonner made ready his instruments. in regard to the latter suggestions of the orator, it appears that allamistakeo had certain scruples of conscience, the nature of which i did not distinctly learn; but he expressed himself satisfied with the apologies tendered, and, getting down from the table, shook hands with the company all round. when this ceremony was at an end, we immediately busied ourselves in repairing the damages which our subject had sustained from the scalpel. we sewed up the wound in his temple, bandaged his foot, and applied a square inch of black plaster to the tip of his nose. it was now observed that the count (this was the title, it seems, of allamistakeo) had a slight fit of shiveringno doubt from the cold. the doctor immediately repaired to his wardrobe, and soon returned with a black dress coat, made in jennings' best manner, a pair of sky-blue plaid pantaloons with straps, a pink gingham chemise, a flapped vest of brocade, a white sack overcoat, a walking cane with a hook, a hat with no brim, patent-leather boots, straw-colored kid gloves, an eye-glass, a pair of whiskers, and a waterfall cravat. owing to the disparity of size between the count and the doctor (the proportion being as two to one), there was some little difficulty in adjusting these habiliments upon the person of the egyptian; but when all was arranged, he might have been said to be dressed. mr. gliddon, therefore, gave him his arm, and led him to a comfortable chair by the fire, while the doctor rang the bell upon the spot and ordered a supply of cigars and wine. the conversation soon grew animated. much curiosity was, of course, expressed in regard to the somewhat remarkable fact of allamistakeo's still remaining alive. "i should have thought," observed mr. buckingham, "that it is high time you were dead." "why," replied the count, very much astonished, "i am little more than seven hundred years old! my father lived a thousand, and was by no means in his dotage when he died." here ensued a brisk series of questions and computations, by means of which it became evident that the antiquity of the mummy had been grossly misjudged. it had been five thousand and fifty years and some months since he had been consigned to the catacombs at eleithias. "but my remark," resumed mr. buckingham, "had no reference to your age at the period of interment (i am willing to grant, in fact, that you are still a young man), and my illusion was to the immensity of time during which, by your own showing, you must have been done up in asphaltum." "in what?" said the count. "in asphaltum," persisted mr. b. "ah, yes; i have some faint notion of what you mean; it might be made to answer, no doubtbut in my time we employed scarcely any thing else than the bichloride of mercury." "but what we are especially at a loss to understand," said doctor ponnonner, "is how it happens that, having been dead and buried in egypt five thousand years ago, you are here to-day all alive and looking so delightfully well." "had i been, as you say, dead," replied the count, "it is more than probable that dead, i should still be; for i perceive you are yet in the infancy of calvanism, and cannot accomplish with it what was a common thing among us in the old days. but the fact is, i fell into catalepsy, and it was considered by my best friends that i was either dead or should be; they accordingly embalmed me at oncei presume you are aware of the chief principle of the embalming process?" "why not altogether." "why, i perceivea deplorable condition of ignorance! well i cannot enter into details just now: but it is necessary to explain that to embalm (properly speaking), in egypt, was to arrest indefinitely all the animal functions subjected to the process. i use the word 'animal' in its widest sense, as including the physical not more than the moral and vital being. i repeat that the leading principle of embalmment consisted, with us, in the immediately arresting, and holding in perpetual abeyance, all the animal functions subjected to the process. to be brief, in whatever condition the individual was, at the period of embalmment, in that condition he remained. now, as it is my good fortune to be of the blood of the scarabaeus, i was embalmed alive, as you see me at present." "the blood of the scarabaeus!" exclaimed doctor ponnonner. "yes. the scarabaeus was the insignium or the 'arms,' of a very distinguished and very rare patrician family. to be 'of the blood of the scarabaeus,' is merely to be one of that family of which the scarabaeus is the insignium. i speak figuratively." "but what has this to do with you being alive?" "why, it is the general custom in egypt to deprive a corpse, before embalmment, of its bowels and brains; the race of the scarabaei alone did not coincide with the custom. had i not been a scarabeus, therefore, i should have been without bowels and brains; and without either it is inconvenient to live." "i perceive that," said mr. buckingham, "and i presume that all the entire mummies that come to hand are of the race of scarabaei." "beyond doubt." "i thought," said mr. gliddon, very meekly, "that the scarabaeus was one of the egyptian gods." "one of the egyptian what?" exclaimed the mummy, starting to its feet. "gods!" repeated the traveller. "mr. gliddon, i really am astonished to hear you talk in this style," said the count, resuming his chair. "no nation upon the face of the earth has ever acknowledged more than one god. the scarabaeus, the ibis, etc., were with us (as similar creatures have been with others) the symbols, or media, through which we offered worship to the creator too august to be more directly approached." there was here a pause. at length the colloquy was renewed by doctor ponnonner. "it is not improbable, then, from what you have explained," said he, "that among the catacombs near the nile there may exist other mummies of the scarabaeus tribe, in a condition of vitality?" "there can be no question of it," replied the count; "all the scarabaei embalmed accidentally while alive, are alive now. even some of those purposely so embalmed, may have been overlooked by their executors, and still remain in the tomb." "will you be kind enough to explain," i said, "what you mean by 'purposely so embalmed'?" "with great pleasure!" answered the mummy, after surveying me leisurely through his eye-glassfor it was the first time i had ventured to address him a direct question. "with great pleasure," he said. "the usual duration of man's life, in my time, was about eight hundred years. few men died, unless by most extraordinary accident, before the age of six hundred; few lived longer than a decade of centuries; but eight were considered the natural term. after the discovery of the embalming principle, as i have already described it to you, it occurred to our philosophers that a laudable curiosity might be gratified, and, at the same time, the interests of science much advanced, by living this natural term in installments. in the case of history, indeed, experience demonstrated that something of this kind was indispensable. an historian, for example, having attained the age of five hundred, would write a book with great labor and then get himself carefully embalmed; leaving instructions to his executors pro tem., that they should cause him to be revivified after the lapse of a certain periodsay five or six hundred years. resuming existence at the expiration of this time, he would invariably find his great work converted into a species of hap-hazard note-bookthat is to say, into a kind of literary arena for the conflicting guesses, riddles, and personal squabbles of whole herds of exasperated commentators. these guesses, etc., which passed under the name of annotations, or emendations, were found so completely to have enveloped, distorted, and overwhelmed the text, that the author had to go about with a lantern to discover his own book. when discovered, it was never worth the trouble of the search. after re-writing it throughout, it was regarded as the bounden duty of the historian to set himself to work immediately in correcting, from his own private knowledge and experience, the traditions of the day concerning the epoch at which he had originally lived. now this process of re-scription and personal rectification, pursued by various individual sages from time to time, had the effect of preventing our history from degenerating into absolute fable." "i beg your pardon," said doctor ponnonner at this point, laying his hand gently upon the arm of the egyptian"i beg your pardon, sir, but may i presume to interrupt you for one moment?" "by all means, sir," replied the count, drawing up. "i merely wished to ask you a question," said the doctor. "you mentioned the historian's personal correction of traditions respecting his own epoch. pray, sir, upon an average what proportion of these kabbala were usually found to be right?" "the kabbala, as you properly term them, sir, were generally discovered to be precisely on a par with the facts recorded in the un-re-written histories themselves;that is to say, not one individual iota of either was ever known, under any circumstances, to be not totally and radically wrong." "but since it is quite clear," resumed the doctor, "that at least five thousand years have elapsed since your entombment, i take it for granted that your histories at that period, if not your traditions were sufficiently explicit on that one topic of universal interest, the creation, which took place, as i presume you are aware, only about ten centuries before." "sir!" said the count allamistakeo. the doctor repeated his remarks, but it was only after much additional explanation that the foreigner could be made to comprehend them. the latter at length said, hesitatingly: "the ideas you have suggested are to me, i confess, utterly novel. during my time i never knew any one to entertain so singular a fancy as that the universe (or this world if you will have it so) ever had a beginning at all. i remember once, and once only, hearing something remotely hinted, by a man of many speculations, concerning the origin of the human race; and by this individual, the very word adam (or red earth), which you make use of, was employed. he employed it, however, in a generical sense, with reference to the spontaneous germination from rank soil (just as a thousand of the lower genera of creatures are germinated)the spontaneous germination, i say, of five vast hordes of men, simultaneously upspringing in five distinct and nearly equal divisions of the globe." here, in general, the company shrugged their shoulders, and one or two of us touched our foreheads with a very significant air. mr. silk buckingham, first glancing slightly at the occiput and then at the sinciput of allamistakeo, spoke as follows: "the long duration of human life in your time, together with the occasional practice of passing it, as you have explained, in installments, must have had, indeed, a strong tendency to the general development and conglomeration of knowledge. i presume, therefore, that we are to attribute the marked inferiority of the old egyptians in all particulars of science, when compared with the moderns, and more especially with the yankees, altogether to the superior solidity of the egyptian skull." "i confess again," replied the count, with much suavity, "that i am somewhat at a loss to comprehend you; pray, to what particulars of science do you allude?" here our whole party, joining voices, detailed, at great length, the assumptions of phrenology and the marvels of animal magnetism. having heard us to an end, the count proceeded to relate a few anecdotes, which rendered it evident that prototypes of gall and spurzheim had flourished and faded in egypt so long ago as to have been nearly forgotten, and that the manoeuvres of mesmer were really very contemptible tricks when put in collation with the positive miracles of the theban savans, who created lice and a great many other similar things. i here asked the count if his people were able to calculate eclipses. he smiled rather contemptuously, and said they were. this put me a little out, but i began to make other inquiries in regard to his astronomical knowledge, when a member of the company, who had never as yet opened his mouth, whispered in my ear, that for information on this head, i had better consult ptolemy (whoever ptolemy is), as well as one plutarch de facie lunae. i then questioned the mummy about burning-glasses and lenses, and, in general, about the manufacture of glass; but i had not made an end of my queries before the silent member again touched me quietly on the elbow, and begged me for god's sake to take a peep at diodorus siculus. as for the count, he merely asked me, in the way of reply, if we moderns possessed any such microscopes as would enable us to cut cameos in the style of the egyptians. while i was thinking how i should answer this question, little doctor ponnonner committed himself in a very extraordinary way. "look at our architecture!" he exclaimed, greatly to the indignation of both the travellers, who pinched him black and blue to no purpose. "look," he cried with enthusiasm, "at the bowling-green fountain in new york! or if this be too vast a contemplation, regard for a moment the capitol at washington, d. c.!"and the good little medical man went on to detail very minutely, the proportions of the fabric to which he referred. he explained that the portico alone was adorned with no less than four and twenty columns, five feet in diameter, and ten feet apart. the count said that he regretted not being able to remember, just at that moment, the precise dimensions of any one of the principal buildings of the city of aznac, whose foundations were laid in the night of time, but the ruins of which were still standing, at the epoch of his entombment, in a vast plain of sand to the westward of thebes. he recollected, however, (talking of the porticoes,) that one affixed to an inferior palace in a kind of suburb called carnac, consisted of a hundred and forty-four columns, thirty-seven feet in circumference, and twenty-five feet apart. the approach to this portico, from the nile, was through an avenue two miles long, composed of sphynxes, statues, and obelisks, twenty, sixty, and a hundred feet in height. the palace itself (as well as he could remember) was, in one direction, two miles long, and might have been altogether about seven in circuit. its walls were richly painted all over, within and without, with hieroglyphics. he would not pretend to assert that even fifty or sixty of the doctor's capitols might have been built within these walls, but he was by no means sure that two or three hundred of them might not have been squeezed in with some trouble. that palace at carnac was an insignificant little building after all. he (the count), however, could not conscientiously refuse to admit the ingenuity, magnificence, and superiority of the fountain at the bowling green, as described by the doctor. nothing like it, he was forced to allow, had ever been seen in egypt or elsewhere. i here asked the count what he had to say to our railroads. "nothing," he replied, "in particular." they were rather slight, rather ill-conceived, and clumsily put together. they could not be compared, of course, with the vast, level, direct, iron-grooved causeways upon which the egyptians conveyed entire temples and solid obelisks of a hundred and fifty feet in altitude. i spoke of our gigantic mechanical forces. he agreed that we knew something in that way, but inquired how i should have gone to work in getting up the imposts on the lintels of even the little palace at carnac. this question i concluded not to hear, and demanded if he had any idea of artesian wells; but he simply raised his eyebrows; while mr. gliddon winked at me very hard and said, in a low tone, that one had been recently discovered by the engineers employed to bore for water in the great oasis. i then mentioned our steel; but the foreigner elevated his nose, and asked me if our steel could have executed the sharp carved work seen on the obelisks, and which was wrought altogether by edge-tools of copper. this disconcerted us so greatly that we thought it advisable to vary the attack to metaphysics. we sent for a copy of a book called the "dial," and read out of it a chapter or two about something that is not very clear, but which the bostonians call the great movement of progress. the count merely said that great movements were awfully common things in his day, and as for progress, it was at one time quite a nuisance, but it never progressed. we then spoke of the great beauty and importance of democracy, and were at much trouble in impressing the count with a due sense of the advantages we enjoyed in living where there was suffrage ad libitum, and no king. he listened with marked interest, and in fact seemed not a little amused. when we had done, he said that, a great while ago, there had occurred something of a very similar sort. thirteen egyptian provinces determined all at once to be free, and to set a magnificent example to the rest of mankind. they assembled their wise men, and concocted the most ingenious constitution it is possible to conceive. for a while they managed remarkably well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. the thing ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some fifteen or twenty others, in the most odious and insupportable despotism that was ever heard of upon the face of the earth. i asked what was the name of the usurping tyrant. as well as the count could recollect, it was mob. not knowing what to say to this, i raised my voice, and deplored the egyptian ignorance of steam. the count looked at me with much astonishment, but made no answer. the silent gentleman, however, gave me a violent nudge in the ribs with his elbowstold me i had sufficiently exposed myself for onceand demanded if i was really such a fool as not to know that the modern steam-engine is derived from the invention of hero, through solomon de caus. we were now in imminent danger of being discomfited; but, as good luck would have it, doctor ponnonner, having rallied, returned to our rescue, and inquired if the people of egypt would seriously pretend to rival the moderns in the allimportant particular of dress. the count, at this, glanced downward to the straps of his pantaloons, and then taking hold of the end of one of his coat-tails, held it up close to his eyes for some minutes. letting it fall, at last, his mouth extended itself very gradually from ear to ear; but i do not remember that he said any thing in the way of reply. hereupon we recovered our spirits, and the doctor, approaching the mummy with great dignity, desired it to say candidly, upon its honor as a gentleman, if the egyptians had comprehended, at any period, the manufacture of either ponnonner's lozenges or brandreth's pills. we looked, with profound anxiety, for an answerbut in vain. it was not forthcoming. the egyptian blushed and hung down his head. never was triumph more consummate; never was defeat borne with so ill a grace. indeed, i could not endure the spectacle of the poor mummy's mortification. i reached my hat, bowed to him stiffly, and took leave. upon getting home i found it past four o'clock, and went immediately to bed. it is now ten a.m. i have been up since seven, penning these memoranda for the benefit of my family and of mankind. the former i shall behold no more. my wife is a shrew. the truth is, i am heartily sick of this life and of the nineteenth century in general. i am convinced that every thing is going wrong. besides, i am anxious to know who will be president in 2045. as soon, therefore, as i shave and swallow a cup of coffee, i shall just step over to ponnonner's and get embalmed for a couple of hundred years. the end . 1846 a valentine by edgar allan poe for her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes, brightly expressive as the twins of leda, shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies upon the page, enwrapped from every reader. search narrowly the lines!they hold a treasure divinea talismanan amulet that must be worn at heart. search well the measure the wordsthe syllables! do not forget the trivialest point, or you may lose your labor and yet there is in this no gordian knot which one might not undo without a sabre, if one could merely comprehend the plot. enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing of poets, by poetsas the name is a poet's, too, its letters, although naturally lying like the knight pintomendez ferdinando still form a synonym for truthcease trying! you will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do. -the end. 1850 literary life of thingum bob, esq. by edgar allan poe late editor of the "goosetherumfoodle" by himself i am now growing in years, andsince i understand that shakespeare and mr. emmons are deceasedit is not impossible that i may even die. it has occurred to me, therefore, that i may as well retire from the field of letters and repose upon my laurels. but i am ambitious of signalizing my abdication of the literary sceptre by some important bequest to posterity; and, perhaps, i cannot do a better thing than just pen for it an account of my earlier career. my name, indeed, has been so long and so constantly before the public eye, that i am not only willing to admit the naturalness of the interest which it has everywhere excited, but ready to satisfy the extreme curiosity which it has inspired. in fact, it is no more than the duty of him who achieves greatness to leave behind him, in his ascent, such landmarks as may guide others to be great. i propose, therefore, in the present paper (which i had some idea of calling "memoranda to serve for the literary history of america") to give a detail of those important, yet feeble and tottering, first steps, by which, at length, i attained the high road to the pinnacle of human renown. of one's very remote ancestors it is superfluous to say much. my father, thomas bob, esq., stood for many years at the summit of his profession, which was that of a merchant-barber, in the city of smug. his warehouse was the resort of all the principal people of the place, and especially of the editorial corpsa body which inspires all about it with profound veneration and awe. for my own part, i regarded them as gods, and drank in with avidity the rich wit and wisdom which continuously flowed from their august mouths during the process of what is styled "lather." my first moment of positive inspiration must be dated from that ever-memorable epoch, when the brilliant conductor of the "gad-fly," in the intervals of the important process just mentioned, recited aloud, before a conclave of our apprentices, an inimitable poem in honor of the "only genuine oil-of-bob" (so called from its talented inventor, my father), and for which effusion the editor of the "fly" was remunerated with a regal liberality by the firm of thomas bob & company, merchant-barbers. the genius of the stanzas to the "oil-of-bob" first breathed into me, i say, the divine afflatus. i resolved at once to become a great man, and to commence by becoming a great poet. that very evening i fell upon my knees at the feet of my father. "father," i said, "pardon me!but i have a soul above lather. it is my firm intention to cut the shop. i would be an editori would be a poeti would pen stanzas to the 'oil-of-bob.' pardon me and aid me to be great!" "my dear thingum," replied father, (i had been christened thingum after a wealthy relative so surnamed,) "my dear thingum," he said, raising me from my knees by the ears"thingum, my boy, you're a trump, and take after your father in having a soul. you have an immense head, too, and it must hold a great many brains. this i have long seen, and therefore had thoughts of making you a lawyer. the business, however, has grown ungenteel and that of a politician don't pay. upon the whole you judge wisely;the trade of editor is best:and if you can be a poet at the same time,as most of the editors are, by the by, why, you will kill two birds with the one stone. to encourage you in the beginning of things, i will allow you a garret, pen, ink, and paper, a rhyming dictionary; and a copy of the 'gad-fly.' i suppose you would scarcely demand any more." "i would be an ungrateful villain if i did" i replied with enthusiasm. "your generosity is boundless. i will repay it by making you the father of a genius." thus ended my conference with the best of men, and immediately upon its termination, i betook myself with zeal to my poetical labors; as upon these, chiefly, i founded my hopes of ultimate elevation to the editorial chair. in my first attempts at composition i found the stanzas to "the oil-of-bob" rather a drawback than otherwise. their splendor more dazzled than enlightened me. the contemplation of their excellence tended, naturally, to discourage me by comparison with my own abortions; so that for a long time i labored in vain. at length there came into my head one of those exquisitely original ideas which now and then will permeate the brain of a man of genius. it was this:or, rather, thus was it carried into execution. from the rubbish of an old book-stall, in a very remote corner of the town, i got together several antique and altogether unknown or forgotten volumes. the bookseller sold them to me for a song. from one of these, which purported to be a translation of one dantes "inferno," i copied with remarkable neatness a long passage about a man named ugolino, who had a parcel of brats. from another, which contained a good many old plays by some person whose name i forget, i enacted in the same manner, and with the same care, a great number of lines about "angels" and "ministers saying grace," and "goblins damned," and more besides of that sort. from a third, which was the composition of some blind man or other, either a greek or a choctawi cannot be at the pains of remembering every trifle exactly,i took about fifty verses beginning with "achilles' wrath," and "grease," and something else. from a fourth, which i recollect was also the work of a blind man, i selected a page or two all about "hail" and "holy light"; and, although a blind man has no business to write about light, still the verses were sufficiently good in their way. having made fair copies of these poems, i signed every one of them "oppodeldoc" (a fine sonorous name), and, doing each up nicely in a separate envelope, i dispatched one to each of the four principal magazines, with a request for speedy insertion and prompt pay. the result of this well-conceived plan, however, (the success of which would have saved me much trouble in after-life,) served to convince me that some editors are not to be bamboozled, and gave the coup-de-grace (as they say in france) to my nascent hopes (as they say in the city of the transcendentals). the fact is, that each and every one of the magazines in question gave mr. "oppodeldoc" a complete using-up, in the "monthly notices to correspondents." the "hum-drum" gave him a dressing after this fashion: "'oppodeldoc' (whoever he is) has sent us a long tirade concerning a bedlamite whom he styles 'ugolino,' had a great many children that should have been all whipped and sent to bed without their suppers. the whole affair is exceedingly tamenot to say flat. 'oppodeldoc' (whoever he is) is entirely devoid of imaginationand imagination, in our humble opinion, is not only the soul of poesy, but also its very heart. 'oppodeldoc' (whoever he is) has the audacity to demand of us, for his twattle, a 'speedy insertion and prompt pay.' we neither insert nor purchase any stuff of the sort. there can be no doubt, however, that he would meet with a ready sale for all the balderdash he can scribble, at the office of either the 'rowdy-dow,' the 'lollipop,' or the 'goosetherumfoodle.' all this, it must be acknowledged, was very severe upon "oppodeldoc,"but the unkindest cut was putting the word poesy in small caps. in those five pre-eminent letters what a world of bitterness is there not involved! but "oppodeldoc" was punished with equal severity in the "rowdy dow," which spoke thus: "we have received a most singular and insolent communication from a person (whoever he is) signing himself 'oppodeldoc,'thus desecrating the greatness of the illustrious roman emperor so named. accompanying the letter of 'oppodeldoc' (whoever he is) we find sundry lines of most disgusting and unmeaning rant about 'angels and ministers of grace,'rant such as no madman short of a nat lee, or an 'oppodeldoc,' could possibly perpetrate. and for this trash of trash, we are modestly requested to 'pay promptly.' no, sirno! we pay for nothing of that sort. apply to the 'hum-drum,' the 'lollipop,' or the 'goosetherumfoodle.' these periodicals will undoubtedly accept any literary offal you may send themand as undoubtedly promise to pay for it." this was bitter indeed upon poor "oppodeldoc"; but, in this instance, the weight of the satire falls upon the "hum-drum," the "lollipop," and the "goosetherumfoodle," who are pungently styled "periodicals"in italics, tooa thing that must have cut them to the heart. scarcely less savage was the "lollipop," which thus discoursed: "some individual, who rejoices in the appellation 'oppodeldoc,' (to what low uses are the names of the illustrious dead too often applied!) has enclosed us some fifty or sixty verses commencing after this fashion: 'achilles' wrath, to greece the direful spring of woes unnumbered, &c., &c., &c, &c.' "'oppodeldoc?' (whoever he is) is respectfully informed that there is not a printer's devil in our office who is not in the daily habit of composing better lines. those of 'oppodeldoc' will not scan. 'oppodeldoc' should learn to count. but why he should have conceived the idea that we (of all others, we!) would disgrace our pages with his ineffable nonsense is utterly beyond comprehension. why, the absurd twattle is scarcely good enough for the 'hum-drum,' the 'rowdy-dow,' the 'goosetherumfoodle,'things that are in the practice of publishing 'mother gooses melodies' as original lyrics. and 'oppodeldoc' (whoever he is) has even the assurance to demand pay for this drivel. does 'oppodeldoc' (whoever he is) knowis he aware that we could not be paid to insert it?" as i perused this i felt myself growing gradually smaller and smaller, and when i came to the point at which the editor sneered at the poem as "verses," there was little more than an ounce of me left. as for "oppodeldoc," i began to experience compassion for the poor fellow. but the "goosetherumfoodle" showed, if possible, less mercy than the "lollipop." it was the "goosetherumfoodle" that said "a wretched poetaster, who signs himself 'oppodeldoc,' is silly enough to fancy that we will print and pay for a medley of incoherent and ungrammatical bombast which he has transmitted to us, and which commences with the following most intelligible line: 'hail holy light! offspring of heaven, first born.' "we say, 'most intelligible.' 'oppodeldoc' (whoever he is) will be kind enough to tell us, perhaps, how 'hail' can be 'holy light.' we always regarded it as frozen rain. will he inform us, also, how frozen rain can be, at one and the same time, both 'holy light' (whatever that is) and an 'off-spring'?which latter term (if we understand anything about english) is only employed, with propriety, in reference to small babies of about six weeks old. but it is preposterous to descant upon such absurdityalthough 'oppodeldoc' (whoever he is) has the unparalled effrontery to suppose that we will not only 'insert' his ignorant ravings, but (absolutely) pay for them? "now this is fineit is rich!and we have half a mind to punish this young scribbler for his egotism by really publishing his effusion verbatim et literatim, as he has written it. we could inflict no punishment so severe, and we would inflict it, but for the boredom which we should cause our readers in so doing. "let 'oppodeldoc' (whoever he is) send any future composition of like character to the 'hum-drum,' the 'lollipop,' or the 'rowdy-dow: they will 'insert' it. they 'insert' every month just such stuff. send it to them. we are not to be insulted with impunity." this made an end of me, and as for the "hum-drum," the "rowdy-dow," and the "lollipop," i never could comprehend how they survived it. the putting them in the smallest possible minion (that was the rubthereby insinuating their lownesstheir baseness,) while we stood looking upon them in gigantic capitals!oh it was too bitter!it was wormwoodit was gall. had i been either of these periodicals i would have spared no pains to have the "goosetherumfoodle" prosecuted. it might have been done under the act for the "prevention of cruelty to animals." for oppodeldoc (whoever he was), i had by this time lost all patience with the fellow, and sympathized with him no longer. he was a fool, beyond doubt, (whoever he was,) and got not a kick more than he deserved. the result of my experiment with the old books convinced me, in the first place, that "honesty is the best policy," and, in the second, that if i could not write better than mr. dante, and the two blind men, and the rest of the old set, it would, at least, be a difficult matter to write worse. i took heart, therefore, and determined to prosecute the "entirely original" (as they say on the covers of the magazines), at whatever cost of study and pains. i again placed before my eyes, as a model, the brilliant stanzas on "the oil-of-bob" by the editor of the "gad-fly" and resolved to construct an ode on the same sublime theme, in rivalry of what had already been done. with my first line i had no material difficulty. it ran thus: "to pen an ode upon the 'oil-of-bob.'" having carefully looked out, however, all the legitimate rhymes to "bob," i found it impossible to proceed. in this dilemma i had recourse to paternal aid; and, after some hours of mature thought, my father and myself thus constructed the poem: "to pen an ode upon the 'oil-of-bob' is all sorts of a job. (signed) snob." to be sure, this composition was of no very great length,but i "have yet to learn," as they say in the "edinburgh review," that the mere extent of a literary work has anything to do with its merit. as for the quarterly cant about "sustained effort," it is impossible to see the sense of it. upon the whole, therefore, i was satisfied with the success of my maiden attempt, and now the only question regarded the disposal i should make of it. my father suggested that i should send it to the "gad-fly,"but there were two reasons which operated to prevent me from so doing. i dreaded the jealousy of the editorand i had ascertained that he did not pay for original contributions. i therefore, after due deliberation, consigned the article to the more dignified pages of the "lollipop" and awaited the event in anxiety, but with resignation. in the very next published number i had the proud satisfaction of seeing my poem printed at length, as the leading article, with the following significant words, prefixed in italics and between brackets: [we call the attention of our readers to the subjoined admirable on "the oil-of-bob." we need say nothing of their sublimity, or of their pathos.it is impossible to peruse them without tears. those who have been nauseated with a sad dose on the same august topic from the goose-quill of the editor of the "gad-fly," will do well to compare the two compositions. p. s.we are consumed with anxiety to probe the mystery which envelops the evident pseudonym "snob" may we hope for a personal interview?] all this was scarcely more than justice, but it was, i confess, rather more than i had expected:i acknowledge this, be it observed, to the everlasting disgrace of my country and of mankind. i lost no time, however, in calling upon the editor of the "lollipop" and had the good fortune to find this gentleman at home. he saluted me with an air of profound respect, slightly blended with a fatherly and patronizing admiration, wrought in him, no doubt, by my appearance of extreme youth and inexperience. begging me to be seated, he entered at once upon the subject of my poem;but modesty will ever forbid me to repeat the thousand compliments which he lavished upon me. the eulogies of mr. crab (such was the editor's name) were, however, by no means fulsomely indiscriminate. he analyzed my composition with much freedom and great abilitynot hesitating to point out a few trivial defectsa circumstance which elevated him highly in my esteem. the "gad-fly" was, of course, brought upon the tapis, and i hope never to be subjected to a criticism so searching, or to rebukes so withering, as were bestowed by mr. crab upon that unhappy effusion. i had been accustomed to regard the editor of the "gad-fly" as something superhuman; but mr. crab soon disabused me of that idea. he set the literary as well as the personal character of the fly (so mr. c. satirically designated the rival editor), in its true light. he, the fly, was very little better than he should be. he had written infamous things. he was a penny-a-liner, and a buffoon. he was a villain. he had composed a tragedy which set the whole country in a guffaw, and a farce which deluged the universe in tears. besides all this, he had the impudence to pen what he meant for a lampoon upon himself (mr. crab), and the temerity to style him "an ass." should i at any time wish to express my opinion of mr. fly, the pages of the "lollipop," mr. crab assured me, were at my unlimited disposal. in the meantime, as it was very certain that i would be attacked in the "fly" for my attempt at composing a rival poem on the "oil-of-bob," he (mr. crab) would take it upon himself to attend, pointedly, to my private and personal interests. if i were not made a man of at once, it should not be the fault of himself (mr. crab). mr. crab having now paused in his discourse (the latter portion of which i found it impossible to comprehend), i ventured to suggest something about the remuneration which i had been taught to expect for my poem, by an announcement on the cover of the "lollipop," declaring that it (the "lollipop") "insisted upon being permitted to pay exorbitant prices for all accepted contributions,frequently expending more money for a single brief poem than the whole annual cost of the 'hum-drum,' the 'rowdy-dow,' and the 'goosetherumfoodle' combined." as i mentioned the word "remuneration," mr. crab first opened his eyes, and then his mouth, to quite a remarkable extent, causing his personal appearance to resemble that of a highly agitated elderly duck in the act of quacking; and in this condition he remained (ever and anon pressing his hinds tightly to his forehead, as if in a state of desperate bewilderment) until i had nearly made an end of what i had to say. upon my conclusion, he sank back into his seat, as if much overcome, letting his arms fall lifelessly by his side, but keeping his mouth still rigorously open, after the fashion of the duck. while i remained in speechless astonishment at behavior so alarming he suddenly leaped to his feet and made a rush at the bell-rope; but just as he reached this, he appeared to have altered his intention, whatever it was, for he dived under a table and immediately re-appeared with a cudgel. this he was in the act of uplifting (for what purpose i am at a loss to imagine), when all at once, there came a benign smile over his features, and he sank placidly back in his chair. "mr. bob," he said, (for i had sent up my card before ascending myself,) "mr. bob, you are a young man, i presumevery?" i assented; adding that i had not yet concluded my third lustrum. "ah!" he replied, "very good! i see how it issay no more! touching this matter of compensation, what you observe is very just,in fact it is excessively so. but ahahthe first contributionthe first, i sayit is never the magazine custom to pay for,you comprehend, eh? the truth is, we are usually the recipients in such case." [mr. crab smiled blandly as he emphasized the word "recipients."] "for the most part, we are paid for the insertion of a maiden attemptespecially in verse. in the second place, mr. bob, the magazine rule is never to disburse what we term in france the argent comptant:i have no doubt you understand. in a quarter or two after publication of the articleor in a year or twowe make no objection to giving our note at nine months; provided, always, that we can so arrange our affairs as to be quite certain of a 'burst up' in six. i really do hope, mr. bob, that you will look upon this explanation as satisfactory." here mr. crab concluded, and the tears stood in his eyes. grieved to the soul at having been, however innocently, the cause of pain to so eminent and so sensitive a man, i hastened to apologize, and to reassure him, by expressing my perfect coincidence with his views, as well as my entire appreciation of the delicacy of his position. having done all this in a neat speech, i took leave. one fine morning, very shortly afterwards, "i awoke and found myself famous." the extent of my renown will be best estimated by reference to the editorial opinions of the day. these opinions, it will be seen, were embodied in critical notices of the number of the "lollipop" containing my poem, and are perfectly satisfactory, conclusive, and clear with the exception, perhaps, of the hieroglyphical marks, "sep. 151 t," appended to each of the critiques. the "owl" a journal of profound sagacity, and well known for the deliberate gravity of its literary decisionsthe "owl," i say, spoke as follows: "the lollipop! the october number of this delicious magazine surpasses its predecessors, and sets competition at defiance. in the beauty of its typography and paperin the number and excellence of its steel platesas well as in the literary merit of its contributionsthe 'lollipop' compares with its slow-paced rivals as hyperion with satyr. the 'hum-drum,' the 'rowdy-dow,' and the 'goosetherumfoodle,' excel, it is true, in braggadocio, but in all other points, give us the 'lollipop'! how this celebrated journal can sustain its evidently tremendous expenses, is more than we can understand. to be sure, it has a circulation of 100,000 and its subscription list has increased one fourth during the last month; but, on the other hand, the sums it disburses constantly for contributions are inconceivable. it is reported that mr. slyass received no less than thirty-seven and a half cents for his inimitable paper on 'pigs.' with mr. crab, as editor, and with such names upon the list of contributors as snob and slyass, there can be no such word as 'fail' for the 'lollipop.' go and subscribe. sep. 151 t." i must say that i was gratified with this high-toned notice from a paper so respectable as the "owl." the placing my namethat is to say, my nom de guerrein priority of station to that of the great slyass, was a compliment as happy as i felt it to be deserved. my attention was next arrested by these paragraphs in the "toad"print highly distinguished for its uprightness and independencefor its entire freedom from sycophancy and subservience to the givers of dinners: "the 'lollipop' for october is out in advance of all its contemporaries, and infinitely surpasses them, of course, in the splendor of its embellishments, as well as in the richness of its contents. the 'hum-drum,' the 'rowdy-dow,' and the 'goosetherumfoodle' excel, we admit, in braggadocio, but, in all other points, give us the 'lollipop.' how this celebrated magazine can sustain its evidently tremendous expenses is more than we can understand. to be sure, it has a circulation of 200,000 and its subscription list has increased one third during the last fortnight, but, on the other hand, the sums it disburses, monthly, for contributions, are fearfully great. we learn that mr. mumblethumb received no less than fifty cents for his late 'monody in a mud-puddle.' "among the original contributors to the present number we notice (besides the eminent editor, mr. crab), such men as snob, slyass, and mumblethumb. apart from the editorial matter, the most valuable paper, nevertheless, is, we think, a poetical gem by snob, on the 'oil-of-bob.'-but our readers must not suppose, from the title of this incomparable bijou, that it bears any similitude to some balderdash on the same subject by a certain contemptible individual whose name is unmentionable to ears polite. the present poem 'on the oil-of-bob,' has excited universal anxiety and curiosity in respect to the owner of the evident pseudonym, 'snob,'a curiosity which, happily, we have it in our power to satisfy. 'snob' is the nom de plume of mr. thingum bob, of this city, a relative of the great mr. thingum, (after whom he is named), and otherwise connected with the most illustrious families of the state. his father, thomas bob, esq., is an opulent merchant in smug. sep. 151 t." this generous approbation touched me to the heartthe more especially as it emanated from a source so avowedlyso proverbially pure as the "toad." the word "balderdash," as applied to the "oil-of-bob" of the fly, i considered singularly pungent and appropriate. the words "gem" and "bijou," however, used in reference to my composition, struck me as being, in some degree, feeble. they seemed to me to be deficient in force. they were not sufficiently prononces (as we have it in france). i had hardly finished reading the "toad," when a friend placed in my hands a copy of the "mole," a daily, enjoying high reputation for the keenness of its perception about matters in general, and for the open, honest, above-ground style of its editorials. the "mole" spoke of the "lollypop" as follows: "we have just received the 'lollipop' for october, and must say that never before have we perused any single number of any periodical which afforded us a felicity so supreme. we speak advisedly. the 'hum-drum.' the 'rowdy-dow,' and the 'goosetherumfoodle' must look well to their laurels. these prints, no doubt, surpass everything in loudness of pretension, but, in all other points, give us the 'lollipop'! how this celebrated magazine can sustain its evidently tremendous expenses, is more than we can comprehend. to be sure, it has a circulation of 300,000; and its subscription list has increased one half within the last week, but then the sum it disburses, monthly, for contributions, is astoundingly enormous. we have it upon good authority that mr. fatquack received no less than sixty-two cents and a half for his late domestic nouvellette, the 'dish-clout.' "the contributors to the number before us are mr. crab (the eminent editor), snob, mumblethumb, fatquack, and others; but, after the inimitable compositions of the editor himself, we prefer a diamondlike effusion from the pen of a rising poet who writes over the signature 'snob'a nom de guerre which we predict will one day extinguish the radiance of 'boz.' 'snob,' we learn, is a mr. thingum bob, esq., sole heir of a wealthy merchant of this city, thomas bob, esq., and a near relative of the distinguished mr. thingum. the title of mr. b.'s admirable poem is the 'oil-of-bob'a somewhat unfortunate name, by-the-bye, as some contemptible vagabond connected with the penny press has already disgusted the town with a great deal of drivel upon the same topic. there will be no danger, however, of confounding the compositions. sep. 151 t. the generous approbation of so clear-sighted a journal as the "mole" penetrated my soul with delight. the only objection which occurred to me was, that the terms "contemptible vagabond" might have been better written "odious and contemptible wretch, villain, and vagabond." this would have sounded more graceful, i think. "diamond-like," also, was scarcely, it will be admitted, of sufficient intensity to express what the "mole" evidently thought of the brilliancy of the "oil-of-bob." on the same afternoon in which i saw these notices in the "owl," the "toad" and the "mole," i happened to meet with a copy of the "daddy-long-legs," a periodical proverbial for the extreme extent of its understanding. and it was the "daddy-long-legs" which spoke thus: "the 'lollipop'! this gorgeous magazine is already before the public for october. the question of pre-eminence is forever put to rest, and hereafter it will be preposterous in the 'hum-drum,' the 'rowdy-dow,' or the 'goosetherumfoodle' to make any further spasmodic attempts at competition. these journals may excel the 'lollipop' in outcry, but, in all other points, give us the 'lollipop'! how this celebrated magazine can sustain its evidently tremendous expenses, is past comprehension. to be sure it has a circulation of precisely half a million, and its subscription list has increased seventy-five per cent. within the last couple of days, but then the sums it disburses, monthly, for contributions, are scarcely credible; we are cognizant of the fact, that mademoiselle cribalittle received no less than eighty-seven cents and a half for her late valuable revolutionary tale, entitled 'the york-town katy-did, and the bunker-hill katy-didn't.' "the most able papers in the present number are, of course, those furnished by the editor (the eminent mr. crab), but there are numerous magnificent contributions from such names as snob, mademoiselle cribalittle, slyass, mrs. fibalittle, mumblethumb, mrs. squibalittle, and last, though not least, fatquack. the world may well be challenged to produce so rich a galaxy of genius. "the poem over the signature, "snob" is, we find, attracting universal commendation, and, we are constrained to say, deserves, if possible, even more applause than it has received. the 'oil-of-bob' is the title of this masterpiece of eloquence and art. one or two of our readers may have a very faint, although sufficiently disgusting recollection of a poem (?) similarly entitled, the perpetration of a miserable penny-a-liner, mendicant, and cut-throat, connected in the capacity of scullion, we believe, with one of the indecent prints about the purlieus of the city, we beg them, for god's sake, not to confound the compositions. the author of the 'oil-of-bob' is, we hear, thingum bob, esq, a gentleman of high genius, and a scholar. 'snob' is merely a nom de guerre. sep. 151 t." i could scarcely restrain my indignation while i perused the concluding portions of this diatribe. it was clear to me that the yea-nay mannernot to say the gentleness,the positive forbearancewith which the "daddy-long-legs" spoke of that pig, the editor of the "gad-fly,"it was evident to me, i say, that this gentleness of speech could proceed from nothing else than a partiality for the "fly"whom it was clearly the intention of the "daddy-long-legs" to elevate into reputation at my expense. any one, indeed, might perceive, with half an eye, that, had the real design of the "daddy" been what it wished to appear, it (the "daddy") might have expressed itself in terms more direct, more pungent, and altogether more to the purpose. the words "penny-a-liner," "mendicant," "scullion," and "cut-throat," were epithets so intentionally inexpressive and equivocal, as to be worse than nothing when applied to the author of the very worst stanzas ever penned by one of the human race. we all know what is meant by "damning with faint praise," and, on the other hand, who could fail seeing through the covert purpose of the "daddy,"that of glorifying with feeble abuse? what the "daddy" chose to say to the "fly," however, was no business of mine. what it said of myself was. after the noble manner in which the "owl," the "toad," the "mole," had expressed themselves in respect to my ability, it was rather too much to be coolly spoken of by a thing like the "daddy-long-legs," as merely "a gentleman of high genius and scholar." gentleman indeed! i made up my mind at once either to get written apology from the "daddy-long-legs," or to call it out. full of this purpose, i looked about me to find a friend whom i could entrust with a message to his "daddy"ship, and as the editor of the "lollipop" had given me marked tokens of regard, i at length concluded to seek assistance upon the present occasion. i have never yet been able to account, in a manner satisfactory to my own understanding, for the very peculiar countenance and demeanor with which mr. crab listened to me, as i unfolded to him my design. he again went through the scene of the bell-rope and cudgel, and did not omit the duck. at one period i thought he really intended to quack. his fit, nevertheless, finally subsided as before, and he began to act and speak in a rational way. he declined bearing the cartel, however, and in fact, dissuaded me from sending it at all; but was candid enough to admit that the "daddy-long-legs" had been disgracefully in the wrongmore especially in what related to the epithets "gentleman and scholar." toward the end of this interview with mr. crab, who really appeared to take a paternal interest in my welfare, he suggested to me that i might turn an honest penny, and at the same time, advance my reputation, by occasionally playing thomas hawk for the "lollypop." i begged mr. crab to inform me who was mr. thomas hawk, and how it was expected that i should play him. here mr. crab again "made great eyes" (as we say in germany), but at length, recovering himself from a profound attack of astonishment, he assured me that he employed the words "thomas hawk" to avoid the colloquialism, tommy, which was lowbut that the true idea was tommy hawkor tomahawkand that by "playing tomahawk" he referred to scalping, brow-beating, and otherwise usingup the herd of poor-devil authors. i assured my patron that, if this was all, i was perfectly resigned to the task of playing thomas hawk. hereupon mr. crab desired me to use up the editor of the "gad-fly" forthwith, in the fiercest style within the scope of my ability, and as a specimen of my powers. this i did, upon the spot, in a review of the original "oil-of-bob," occupying thirty-six pages of the "lollipop." i found playing thomas hawk, indeed, a far less onerous occupation than poetizing; for i went upon system altogether, and thus it was easy to do the thing thoroughly well. my practice was this. i bought auction copies (cheap) of "lord brougham's speeches," "cobbett's complete works," the "new slang-syllabus," the "whole art of snubbing," "prentice's billingsgate" (folio edition), and "lewis g. clarke on tongue." these works i cut up thoroughly with a curry-comb, and then, throwing the shreds into a sieve, sifted out carefully all that might be thought decent (a mere trifle); reserving the hard phrases, which i threw into a large tin pepper-castor with longitudinal holes, so that an entire sentence could get through without material injury. the mixture was then ready for use. when called upon to play thomas hawk, i anointed a sheet of foolscap with the white of a gander's egg; then, shredding the thing to be reviewed as i had previously shredded the booksonly with more care, so as to get every word separatei threw the latter shreds in with the former, screwed on the lid of the castor, gave it a shake, and so dusted out the mixture upon the egged foolscap; where it stuck. the effect was beautiful to behold. it was captivating. indeed, the reviews i brought to pass by this simple expedient have never been approached, and were the wonder of the world. at first, through bashfulnessthe result of inexperiencei was a little put out by a certain inconsistencya certain air of the bizarre (as we say in france), worn by the composition as a whole. all the phrases did not fit (as we say in the anglo-saxon). many were quite awry. some, even, were upside-down; and there were none of them which were not in some measure, injured in regard to effect, by this latter species of accident, when it occurredwith the exception of mr. lewis clarkes paragraphs, which were so vigorous and altogether stout, that they seemed not particularly disconcerted by any extreme of position, but looked equally happy and satisfactory, whether on their heads, or on their heels. what became of the editor of the "gad-fly" after the publication of my criticism on his "oil-of-bob," it is somewhat difficult to determine. the most reasonable conclusion is, that he wept himself to death. at all events he disappeared instantaneously from the face of the earth, and no man has seen even the ghost of him since. this matter having been properly accomplished, and the furies appeased, i grew at once into high favor with mr. crab. he took me into his confidence, gave me a permanent situation as thomas hawk of the "lollipop," and, as for the present, he could afford me no salary, allowed me to profit, at discretion, by his advice. "my dear thingum," said he to me one day after dinner, "i respect your abilities and love you as a son. you shall be my heir. when i die i will bequeath you the "lollipop." in the meantime i will make a man of youi willprovided always that you follow my counsel. the first thing to do is to get rid of the old bore." "boar?" said i inquiringly"pig, eh?aper? (as we say in latin)who?where?" "your father," said he. "precisely," i replied"pig." "you have your fortune to make, thingum," resumed mr. crab, "and that governor of yours is a millstone about your neck. we must cut him at once." [here i took out my knife.] "we must cut him," continued mr. crab, "decidedly and forever. he won't dohe won't. upon second thoughts, you had better kick him, or cane him, or something of that kind." "what do you say," i suggested modestly, "to my kicking him in the first instance, caning him afterward, and winding up by tweaking his nose?" mr. crab looked at me musingly for some moments, and then answered: "i think, mr. bob, that what you propose would answer sufficiently wellindeed remarkably wellthat is to say, as far as it wentbut barbers are exceedingly hard to cut, and i think, upon the whole, that, having performed upon thomas bob the operations you suggest, it would be advisable to blacken, with your fists, both his eyes, very carefully and thoroughly, to prevent his ever seeing you again in fashionable promenades. after doing this, i really do not perceive that you can do any more. howeverit might be just as well to roll him once or twice in the gutter, and then put him in charge of the police. any time the next morning you can call at the watch-house and swear an assault." i was much affected by the kindness of feeling toward me personally, which was evinced in this excellent advice of mr. crab, and i did not fail to profit by it forthwith. the result was, that i got rid of the old bore, and began to feel a little independent and gentleman-like. the want of money, however, was, for a few weeks, a source of some discomfort; but at length, by carefully putting to use my two eyes, and observing how matters went just in front of my nose, i perceived how the thing was to be brought about. i say "thing"be it observedfor they tell me in the latin for it is rem. by the way, talking of latin, can any one tell me the meaning of quocunqueor what is the meaning of modo? my plan was exceedingly simple. i bought, for a song, a sixteenth of the "snapping-turtle":that was all. the thing was done, and i put money in my purse. there were some trivial arrangements afterward, to be sure, but these formed no portion of the plan. they were a consequencea result. for example, i bought pen, ink, and paper, and put them into furious activity. having thus completed a magazine article, i gave it, for appellation, "fol lol, by the author of 'the oil-of-bob,'" and enveloped it to the "goosetherumfoodle." that journal, however, having pronounced it "twattle" in the "monthly notices to correspondents," i reheaded the paper "hey-diddle-diddle," by thigum bob, esq., author of the ode on 'the oil-of-bob,' and editor of the 'snapping turtle.'" with this amendment, i re-enclosed it to the "goosetherumfoodle," and, while i awaited a reply, published daily, in the "turtle," six columns of what may be termed philosophical and analytical investigation of the literary merits of the "goosetherumfoodle," as well as of the personal character of the editor of the "goosetherumfoodle." at the end of a week the "goosetherumfoodle," discovered that it had, by some odd mistake, "confounded a stupid article, headed 'hey-diddle-diddle,' and composed by some unknown ignoramus, with a gem of resplendent lustre similarly entitled, the work of thingum bob, esq, the celebrated author of 'the oil-of-bob.'" the "goosetherumfoodle" deeply "regretted this very natural accident," and promised, moreover, an insertion of the genuine "hey-diddle-diddle" in the very next number of the magazine. the fact is, i thoughti really thoughti thought at the timei thought thenand have no reason for thinking otherwise nowthat the "goosetherumfoodle" did make a mistake. with the best intentions in the world, i never knew any thing that made as many singular mistakes as the "goosetherumfoodle." from that day i took a liking to the "goosetherumfoodle" and the result was i soon saw into the very depths of its literary merits, and did not fail to expatiate upon them, in the "turtle," whenever a fitting opportunity occurred. and it is to be regarded as a very peculiar coincidenceas one of those positively remarkable coincidences which set a man to serious thinkingthat just such a total revolution of opinionjust such entire bouleversement (as we say in french)just such thorough topsiturviness (if i may be permitted to employ a rather forcible term of the choctaws), as happened, pro and con, between myself on the one part, and the "goosetherumfoodle" on the other, did actually again happen, in a brief period afterwards, and with precisely similar circumstances, in the case of myself and the "rowdy-dow," and in the case of myself and the "hum-drum." thus it was that, by a master-stroke of genius, i at length consummated my triumphs by "putting money in my purse," and thus may be said really and fairly to have commenced that brilliant and eventful career which rendered me illustrious, and which now enables me to say with chateaubriand: "i have made history"j'ai fait l'histoire." i have indeed "made history." from the bright epoch which i now record, my actionsmy worksare the property of mankind. they are familiar to the world. it is, then, needless for me to detail how, soaring rapidly, i fell heir to the "lollipop"how i merged this journal in the "hum-drum"how again i made purchase of the "rowdy-dow," thus combining the three periodicalshow lastly, i effected a bargain for the sole remaining rival, and united all the literature of the country in one magnificent magazine known everywhere as the rowdy-dow, lollipop, hum-drum, and goosetherumfoodle. yes, i have made history. my fame is universal. it extends to the uttermost ends of the earth. you cannot take up a common newspaper in which you shall not see some allusion to the immortal thigum bob. it is mr. thingum bob said so, and mr. thingum bob wrote this, and mr. thingum bob did that. but i am meek and expire with an humble heart. after all, what is it?this indescribable something which men will persist in terming "genius"? i agree with buffonwith hogarthit is but diligence after all. look at me!how i laboredhow i toiledhow i wrote! ye gods, did i not write? i knew not the word "ease." by day i adhered to my desk, and at night, a pale student, i consumed the midnight oil. you should have seen meyou should. i leaned to the right. i leaned to the left. i sat forward. i sat backward. i sat tete baissee (as they have it in the kickapoo), bowing my head close to the alabaster page. and, through all, iwrote. through joy and through sorrow, i-wrote. through hunger and through thirst, i-wrote. through good report and through ill reporti wrote. through sunshine and through moonshine, i-wrote. what i wrote it is unnecessary to say. the style!that was the thing. i caught it from fatquackwhizz!fizz!and i am giving you a specimen of it now. the end . 1850 mellonta tauta by edgar allan poe to the editors of the lady's book: i have the honor of sending you, for your magazine, an article which i hope you will be able to comprehend rather more distinctly than i do myself. it is a translation, by my friend, martin van buren mavis, (sometimes called the "toughkeepsie seer") of an odd-looking ms. which i found, about a year ago, tightly corked up in a jug floating in the mare tenebraruma sea well described by the nubian geographer, but seldom visited now-a-days, except for the transcendentalists and divers for crotchets. truly yours, edgar a. poe on board balloon "skylark" april, 1, 2848 now, my dear friendnow, for your sins, you are to suffer the infliction of a long gossiping letter. i tell you distinctly that i am going to punish you for all your impertinences by being as tedious, as discursive, as incoherent and as unsatisfactory as possible. besides, here i am, cooped up in a dirty balloon, with some one or two hundred of the canaille, all bound on a pleasure excursion, (what a funny idea some people have of pleasure!) and i have no prospect of touching terra firma for a month at least. nobody to talk to. nothing to do. when one has nothing to do, then is the time to correspond with ones friends. you perceive, then, why it is that i write you this letterit is on account of my ennui and your sins. get ready your spectacles and make up your mind to be annoyed. i mean to write at you every day during this odious voyage. heigho! when will any invention visit the human pericranium? are we forever to be doomed to the thousand inconveniences of the balloon? will nobody contrive a more expeditious mode of progress? the jog-trot movement, to my thinking, is little less than positive torture. upon my word we have not made more than a hundred miles the hour since leaving home! the very birds beat usat least some of them. i assure you that i do not exaggerate at all. our motion, no doubt, seems slower than it actually isthis on account of our having no objects about us by which to estimate our velocity, and on account of our going with the wind. to be sure, whenever we meet a balloon we have a chance of perceiving our rate, and then, i admit, things do not appear so very bad. accustomed as i am to this mode of travelling, i cannot get over a kind of giddiness whenever a balloon passes us in a current directly overhead. it always seems to me like an immense bird of prey about to pounce upon us and carry us off in its claws. one went over us this morning about sunrise, and so nearly overhead that its drag-rope actually brushed the network suspending our car, and caused us very serious apprehension. our captain said that if the material of the bag had been the trumpery varnished "silk" of five hundred or a thousand years ago, we should inevitably have been damaged. this silk, as he explained it to me, was a fabric composed of the entrails of a species of earth-worm. the worm was carefully fed on mulberrieskind of fruit resembling a water-melonand, when sufficiently fat, was crushed in a mill. the paste thus arising was called papyrus in its primary state, and went through a variety of processes until it finally became "silk." singular to relate, it was once much admired as an article of female dress! balloons were also very generally constructed from it. a better kind of material, it appears, was subsequently found in the down surrounding the seed-vessels of a plant vulgarly called euphorbium, and at that time botanically termed milk-weed. this latter kind of silk was designated as silk-buckingham, on account of its superior durability, and was usually prepared for use by being varnished with a solution of gum caoutchouca substance which in some respects must have resembled the gutta percha now in common use. this caoutchouc was occasionally called indian rubber or rubber of twist, and was no doubt one of the numerous fungi. never tell me again that i am not at heart an antiquarian. talking of drag-ropesour own, it seems, has this moment knocked a man overboard from one of the small magnetic propellers that swarm in ocean below usa boat of about six thousand tons, and, from all accounts, shamefully crowded. these diminutive barques should be prohibited from carrying more than a definite number of passengers. the man, of course, was not permitted to get on board again, and was soon out of sight, he and his life-preserver. i rejoice, my dear friend, that we live in an age so enlightened that no such a thing as an individual is supposed to exist. it is the mass for which the true humanity cares. by-the-by, talking of humanity, do you know that our immortal wiggins is not so original in his views of the social condition and so forth, as his contemporaries are inclined to suppose? pundit assures me that the same ideas were put nearly in the same way, about a thousand years ago, by an irish philosopher called furrier, on account of his keeping a retail shop for cat peltries and other furs. pundit knows, you know; there can be no mistake about it. how very wonderfully do we see verified every day, the profound observation of the hindoo aries tottle (as quoted by pundit)"thus must we say that, not once or twice, or a few times, but with almost infinite repetitions, the same opinions come round in a circle among men." april 2.spoke to-day the magnetic cutter in charge of the middle section of floating telegraph wires. i learn that when this species of telegraph was first put into operation by horse, it was considered quite impossible to convey the wires over sea, but now we are at a loss to comprehend where the difficulty lay! so wags the world. tempora mutanturexcuse me for quoting the etruscan. what would we do without the atalantic telegraph? (pundit says atlantic was the ancient adjective.) we lay to a few minutes to ask the cutter some questions, and learned, among other glorious news, that civil war is raging in africa, while the plague is doing its good work beautifully both in yurope and ayesher. is it not truly remarkable that, before the magnificent light shed upon philosophy by humanity, the world was accustomed to regard war and pestilence as calamities? do you know that prayers were actually offered up in the ancient temples to the end that these evils (!) might not be visited upon mankind? is it not really difficult to comprehend upon what principle of interest our forefathers acted? were they so blind as not to perceive that the destruction of a myriad of individuals is only so much positive advantage to the mass! april 3.it is really a very fine amusement to ascend the rope-ladder leading to the summit of the balloon-bag, and thence survey the surrounding world. from the car below you know the prospect is not so comprehensiveyou can see little vertically. but seated here (where i write this) in the luxuriously-cushioned open piazza of the summit, one can see everything that is going on in all directions. just now there is quite a crowd of balloons in sight, and they present a very animated appearance, while the air is resonant with the hum of so many millions of human voices. i have heard it asserted that when yellow or (pundit will have it) violet, who is supposed to have been the first aeronaut, maintained the practicability of traversing the atmosphere in all directions, by merely ascending or descending until a favorable current was attained, he was scarcely hearkened to at all by his contemporaries, who looked upon him as merely an ingenious sort of madman, because the philosophers (?) of the day declared the thing impossible. really now it does seem to me quite unaccountable how any thing so obviously feasible could have escaped the sagacity of the ancient savans. but in all ages the great obstacles to advancement in art have been opposed by the so-called men of science. to be sure, our men of science are not quite so bigoted as those of old:oh, i have something so queer to tell you on this topic. do you know that it is not more than a thousand years ago since the metaphysicians consented to relieve the people of the singular fancy that there existed but two possible roads for the attainment of truth! believe it if you can! it appears that long, long ago, in the night of time, there lived a turkish philosopher (or hindoo possibly) called aries tottle. this person introduced, or at all events propagated what was termed the deductive or a priori mode of investigation. he started with what he maintained to be axioms or "self-evident truths," and thence proceeded "logically" to results. his greatest disciples were one neuclid, and one cant. well, aries tottle flourished supreme until advent of one hog, surnamed the "ettrick shepherd," who preached an entirely different system, which he called the a posteriori or inductive. his plan referred altogether to sensation. he proceeded by observing, analyzing, and classifying facts-instantiae naturae, as they were affectedly calledinto general laws. aries tottle's mode, in a word, was based on noumena; hog's on phenomena. well, so great was the admiration excited by this latter system that, at its first introduction, aries tottle fell into disrepute; but finally he recovered ground and was permitted to divide the realm of truth with his more modern rival. the savans now maintained the aristotelian and baconian roads were the sole possible avenues to knowledge. "baconian," you must know, was an adjective invented as equivalent to hog-ian and more euphonious and dignified. now, my dear friend, i do assure you, most positively, that i represent this matter fairly, on the soundest authority and you can easily understand how a notion so absurd on its very face must have operated to retard the progress of all true knowledgewhich makes its advances almost invariably by intuitive bounds. the ancient idea confined investigations to crawling; and for hundreds of years so great was the infatuation about hog especially, that a virtual end was put to all thinking, properly so called. no man dared utter a truth to which he felt himself indebted to his soul alone. it mattered not whether the truth was even demonstrably a truth, for the bullet-headed savans of the time regarded only the road by which he had attained it. they would not even look at the end. "let us see the means," they cried, "the means!" if, upon investigation of the means, it was found to come under neither the category aries (that is to say ram) nor under the category hog, why then the savans went no farther, but pronounced the "theorist" a fool, and would have nothing to do with him or his truth. now, it cannot be maintained, even, that by the crawling system the greatest amount of truth would be attained in any long series of ages, for the repression of imagination was an evil not to be compensated for by any superior certainty in the ancient modes of investigation. the error of these jurmains, these vrinch, these inglitch, and these amriccans (the latter, by the way, were our own immediate progenitors), was an error quite analogous with that of the wiseacre who fancies that he must necessarily see an object the better the more closely he holds it to his eyes. these people blinded themselves by details. when they proceeded hoggishly, their "facts" were by no means always factsa matter of little consequence had it not been for assuming that they were facts and must be facts because they appeared to be such. when they proceeded on the path of the ram, their course was scarcely as straight as a ram's horn, for they never had an axiom which was an axiom at all. they must have been very blind not to see this, even in their own day; for even in their own day many of the long "established" axioms had been rejected. for example"ex nihilo nihil fit"; "a body cannot act where it is not"; "there cannot exist antipodes"; "darkness cannot come out of light"all these, and a dozen other similar propositions, formerly admitted without hesitation as axioms, were, even at the period of which i speak, seen to be untenable. how absurd in these people, then, to persist in putting faith in "axioms" as immutable bases of truth! but even out of the mouths of their soundest reasoners it is easy to demonstrate the futility, the impalpability of their axioms in general. who was the soundest of their logicians? let me see! i will go and ask pundit and be back in a minute.... ah, here we have it! here is a book written nearly a thousand years ago and lately translated from the inglitchwhich, by the way, appears to have been the rudiment of the amriccan. pundit says it is decidedly the cleverest ancient work on its topic, logic. the author (who was much thought of in his day) was one miller, or mill; and we find it recorded of him, as a point of some importance, that he had a mill-horse called bentham. but let us glance at the treatise! ah!"ability or inability to conceive," says mr. mill, very properly, "is in no case to be received as a criterion of axiomatic truth." what modern in his senses would ever think of disputing this truism? the only wonder with us must be, how it happened that mr. mill conceived it necessary even to hint at any thing so obvious. so far goodbut let us turn over another paper. what have we here?"contradictories cannot both be truethat is, cannot co-exist in nature." here mr. mill means, for example, that a tree must be either a tree or not a treethat it cannot be at the same time a tree and not a tree. very well; but i ask him why. his reply is thisand never pretends to be any thing else than this"because it is impossible to conceive that contradictories can both be true." but this is no answer at all, by his own showing, for has he not just admitted as a truism that "ability or inability to conceive is in no case to be received as a criterion of axiomatic truth." now i do not complain of these ancients so much because their logic is, by their own showing, utterly baseless, worthless and fantastic altogether, as because of their pompous and imbecile proscription of all other roads of truth, of all other means for its attainment than the two preposterous pathsthe one of creeping and the one of crawlingto which they have dared to confine the soul that loves nothing so well as to soar. by the by, my dear friend, do you not think it would have puzzled these ancient dogmaticians to have determined by which of their two roads it was that the most important and most sublime of all their truths was, in effect, attained? i mean the truth of gravitation. newton owed it to kepler. kepler admitted that his three laws were guessed atthese three laws of all laws which led the great inglitch mathematician to his principle, the basis of all physical principleto go behind which we must enter the kingdom of metaphysics. kepler guessedthat is to say imagined. he was essentially a "theorist"that word now of so much sanctity, formerly an epithet of contempt. would it not have puzzled these old moles too, to have explained by which of the two "roads" a cryptographist unriddles a cryptograph of more than usual secrecy, or by which of the two roads champollion directed mankind to those enduring and almost innumerable truths which resulted from his deciphering the hieroglyphics. one word more on this topic and i will be done boring you. is it not passing strange that, with their eternal prattling about roads to truth, these bigoted people missed what we now so clearly perceive to be the great highwaythat of consistency? does it not seem singular how they should have failed to deduce from the works of god the vital fact that a perfect consistency must be an absolute truth! how plain has been our progress since the late announcement of this proposition! investigation has been taken out of the hands of the ground-moles and given, as a task, to the true and only true thinkers, the men of ardent imagination. these latter theorize. can you not fancy the shout of scorn with which my words would be received by our progenitors were it possible for them to be now looking over my shoulder? these men, i say, theorize; and their theories are simply corrected, reduced, systematizedcleared, little by little, of their dross of inconsistencyuntil, finally, a perfect consistency stands apparent which even the most stolid admit, because it is a consistency, to be an absolute and an unquestionable truth. april 4.the new gas is doing wonders, in conjunction with the new improvement with gutta percha. how very safe, commodious, manageable, and in every respect convenient are our modern balloons! here is an immense one approaching us at the rate of at least a hundred and fifty miles an hour. it seems to be crowded with peopleperhaps there are three or four hundred passengersand yet it soars to an elevation of nearly a mile, looking down upon poor us with sovereign contempt. still a hundred or even two hundred miles an hour is slow travelling after all. do you remember our flight on the railroad across the kanadaw continent?fully three hundred miles the hourthat was travelling. nothing to be seen thoughnothing to be done but flirt, feast and dance in the magnificent saloons. do you remember what an odd sensation was experienced when, by chance, we caught a glimpse of external objects while the cars were in full flight? every thing seemed uniquein one mass. for my part, i cannot say but that i preferred the travelling by the slow train of a hundred miles the hour. here we were permitted to have glass windowseven to have them openand something like a distinct view of the country was attainable.... pundit says that the route for the great kanadaw railroad must have been in some measure marked out about nine hundred years ago! in fact, he goes so far as to assert that actual traces of a road are still discernibletraces referable to a period quite as remote as that mentioned. the track, it appears was double only; ours, you know, has twelve paths; and three or four new ones are in preparation. the ancient rails were very slight, and placed so close together as to be, according to modern notions, quite frivolous, if not dangerous in the extreme. the present width of trackfifty feetis considered, indeed, scarcely secure enough. for my part, i make no doubt that a track of some sort must have existed in very remote times, as pundit asserts; for nothing can be clearer, to my mind, than that, at some periodnot less than seven centuries ago, certainlythe northern and southern kanadaw continents were united; the kanawdians, then, would have been driven, by necessity, to a great railroad across the continent. april 5.i am almost devoured by ennui. pundit is the only conversible person on board; and he, poor soul! can speak of nothing but antiquities. he has been occupied all the day in the attempt to convince me that the ancient amriccans governed themselves!did ever anybody hear of such an absurdity?that they existed in a sort of every-man-for-himself confederacy, after the fashion of the "prairie dogs" that we read of in fable. he says that they started with the queerest idea conceivable, viz: that all men are born free and equalthis in the very teeth of the laws of gradation so visibly impressed upon all things both in the moral and physical universe. every man "voted," as they called itthat is to say meddled with public affairsuntil at length, it was discovered that what is everybody's business is nobody's, and that the "republic" (so the absurd thing was called) was without a government at all. it is related, however, that the first circumstance which disturbed, very particularly, the self-complacency of the philosophers who constructed this "republic," was the startling discovery that universal suffrage gave opportunity for fraudulent schemes, by means of which any desired number of votes might at any time be polled, without the possibility of prevention or even detection, by any party which should be merely villainous enough not to be ashamed of the fraud. a little reflection upon this discovery sufficed to render evident the consequences, which were that rascality must predominatein a word, that a republican government could never be any thing but a rascally one. while the philosophers, however, were busied in blushing at their stupidity in not having foreseen these inevitable evils, and intent upon the invention of new theories, the matter was put to an abrupt issue by a fellow of the name of mob, who took every thing into his own hands and set up a despotism, in comparison with which those of the fabulous zeros and hellofagabaluses were respectable and delectable. this mob (a foreigner, by-the-by), is said to have been the most odious of all men that ever encumbered the earth. he was a giant in statureinsolent, rapacious, filthy, had the gall of a bullock with the heart of a hyena and the brains of a peacock. he died, at length, by dint of his own energies, which exhausted him. nevertheless, he had his uses, as every thing has, however vile, and taught mankind a lesson which to this day it is in no danger of forgettingnever to run directly contrary to the natural analogies. as for republicanism, no analogy could be found for it upon the face of the earthunless we except the case of the "prairie dogs," an exception which seems to demonstrate, if anything, that democracy is a very admirable form of governmentfor dogs. april 6.last night had a fine view of alpha lyrae, whose disk, through our captain's spy-glass, subtends an angle of half a degree, looking very much as our sun does to the naked eye on a misty day. alpha lyrae, although so very much larger than our sun, by the by, resembles him closely as regards its spots, its atmosphere, and in many other particulars. it is only within the last century, pundit tells me, that the binary relation existing between these two orbs began even to be suspected. the evident motion of our system in the heavens was (strange to say!) referred to an orbit about a prodigious star in the centre of the galaxy. about this star, or at all events about a centre of gravity common to all the globes of the milky way and supposed to be near alcyone in the pleiades, every one of these globes was declared to be revolving, our own performing the circuit in a period of 117,000,000 of years! we, with our present lights, our vast telescopic improvements, and so forth, of course find it difficult to comprehend the ground of an idea such as this. its first propagator was one mudler. he was led, we must presume, to this wild hypothesis by mere analogy in the first instance; but, this being the case, he should have at least adhered to analogy in its development. a great central orb was, in fact, suggested; so far mudler was consistent. this central orb, however, dynamically, should have been greater than all its surrounding orbs taken together. the question might then have been asked"why do we not see it?"we, especially, who occupy the mid region of the clusterthe very locality near which, at least, must be situated this inconceivable central sun. the astronomer, perhaps, at this point, took refuge in the suggestion of non-luminosity; and here analogy was suddenly let fall. but even admitting the central orb non-luminous, how did he manage to explain its failure to be rendered visible by the incalculable host of glorious suns glaring in all directions about it? no doubt what he finally maintained was merely a centre of gravity common to all the revolving orbsbut here again analogy must have been let fall. our system revolves, it is true, about a common centre of gravity, but it does this in connection with and in consequence of a material sun whose mass more than counterbalances the rest of the system. the mathematical circle is a curve composed of an infinity of straight lines; but this idea of the circlethis idea of it which, in regard to all earthly geometry, we consider as merely the mathematical, in contradistinction from the practical, ideais, in sober fact, the practical conception which alone we have any right to entertain in respect to those titanic circles with which we have to deal, at least in fancy, when we suppose our system, with its fellows, revolving about a point in the centre of the galaxy. let the most vigorous of human imaginations but attempt to take a single step toward the comprehension of a circuit so unutterable! i would scarcely be paradoxical to say that a flash of lightning itself, travelling forever upon the circumference of this inconceivable circle, would still forever be travelling in a straight line. that the path of our sun along such a circumferencethat the direction of our system in such an orbitwould, to any human perception, deviate in the slightest degree from a straight line even in a million of years, is a proposition not to be entertained; and yet these ancient astronomers were absolutely cajoled, it appears, into believing that a decisive curvature had become apparent during the brief period of their astronomical historyduring the mere pointduring the utter nothingness of two or three thousand years! how incomprehensible, that considerations such as this did not at once indicate to them the true state of affairsthat of the binary revolution of our sun and alpha lyrae around a common centre of gravity! april 7.continued last night our astronomical amusements. had a fine view of the five neptunian asteroids, and watched with much interest the putting up of a huge impost on a couple of lintels in the new temple at daphnis in the moon. it was amusing to think that creatures so diminutive as the lunarians, and bearing so little resemblance to humanity, yet evinced a mechanical ingenuity so much superior to our own. one finds it difficult, too, to conceive the vast masses which these people handle so easily, to be as light as our own reason tells us they actually are. april 8.eureka! pundit is in his glory. a balloon from kanadaw spoke us to-day and threw on board several late papers; they contain some exceedingly curious information relative to kanawdian or rather amriccan antiquities. you know, i presume, that laborers have for some months been employed in preparing the ground for a new fountain at paradise, the emperor's principal pleasure garden. paradise, it appears, has been, literally speaking, an island time out of mindthat is to say, its northern boundary was always (as far back as any record extends) a rivulet, or rather a very narrow arm of the sea. this arm was gradually widened until it attained its present breadtha mile. the whole length of the island is nine miles; the breadth varies materially. the entire area (so pundit says) was, about eight hundred years ago, densely packed with houses, some of them twenty stories high; land (for some most unaccountable reason) being considered as especially precious just in this vicinity. the disastrous earthquake, however, of the year 2050, so totally uprooted and overwhelmed the town (for it was almost too large to be called a village) that the most indefatigable of our antiquarians have never yet been able to obtain from the site any sufficient data (in the shape of coins, medals or inscriptions) wherewith to build up even the ghost of a theory concerning the manners, customs, &c., &c., &c., of the aboriginal inhabitants. nearly all that we have hitherto known of them is, that they were a portion of the knickerbocker tribe of savages infesting the continent at its first discovery by recorder riker, a knight of the golden fleece. they were by no means uncivilized, however, but cultivated various arts and even sciences after a fashion of their own. it is related of them that they were acute in many respects, but were oddly afflicted with monomania for building what, in the ancient amriccan, was denominated "churches"a kind of pagoda instituted for the worship of two idols that went by the names of wealth and fashion. in the end, it is said, the island became, nine tenths of it, church. the women, too, it appears, were oddly deformed by a natural protuberance of the region just below the small of the backalthough, most unaccountably, this deformity was looked upon altogether in the light of a beauty. one or two pictures of these singular women have in fact, been miraculously preserved. they look very odd, verylike something between a turkey-cock and a dromedary. well, these few details are nearly all that have descended to us respecting the ancient knickerbockers. it seems, however, that while digging in the centre of the emperors garden, (which, you know, covers the whole island), some of the workmen unearthed a cubical and evidently chiseled block of granite, weighing several hundred pounds. it was in good preservation, having received, apparently, little injury from the convulsion which entombed it. on one of its surfaces was a marble slab with (only think of it!) an inscriptiona legible inscription. pundit is in ecstacies. upon detaching the slab, a cavity appeared, containing a leaden box filled with various coins, a long scroll of names, several documents which appear to resemble newspapers, with other matters of intense interest to the antiquarian! there can be no doubt that all these are genuine amriccan relics belonging to the tribe called knickerbocker. the papers thrown on board our balloon are filled with fac-similes of the coins, mss., typography, &c., &c. i copy for your amusement the knickerbocker inscription on the marble slab: this corner stone of a monument to the memory of george washington was laid with appropriate ceremonies on the 19th day of october, 1847 the anniversary of the surrender of lord cornwallis to general washington at yorktown a. d. 1781 under the auspices of the washington monument association of the city of new york this, as i give it, is a verbatim translation done by pundit himself, so there can be no mistake about it. from the few words thus preserved, we glean several important items of knowledge, not the least interesting of which is the fact that a thousand years ago actual monuments had fallen into disuseas was all very properthe people contenting themselves, as we do now, with a mere indication of the design to erect a monument at some future time; a corner-stone being cautiously laid by itself "solitary and alone" (excuse me for quoting the great american poet benton!), as a guarantee of the magnanimous intention. we ascertain, too, very distinctly, from this admirable inscription, the how as well as the where and the what, of the great surrender in question. as to the where, it was yorktown (wherever that was), and as to the what, it was general cornwallis (no doubt some wealthy dealer in corn). he was surrendered. the inscription commemorates the surrender ofwhat? why, "of lord cornwallis." the only question is what could the savages wish him surrendered for. but when we remember that these savages were undoubtedly cannibals, we are led to the conclusion that they intended him for sausage. as to the how of the surrender, no language can be more explicit. lord cornwallis was surrendered (for sausage) "under the auspices of the washington monument association"no doubt a charitable institution for the depositing of corner-stones.but, heaven bless me! what is the matter? ah, i seethe balloon has collapsed, and we shall have a tumble into the sea. i have, therefore, only time enough to add that, from a hasty inspection of the fac-similes of newspapers, &c., &c., i find that the great men in those days among the amriccans, were one john, a smith, and one zacchary, a tailor. good-bye, until i see you again. whether you ever get this letter or not is point of little importance, as i write altogether for my own amusement. i shall cork the ms. up in a bottle, however, and throw it into the sea. yours everlastingly, pundita. the end . the chronicles of clovis by saki (h. h. munro) [obi/h.h.munro/chronicles.of.clovis] this text is in the public domain. text prepared in may 1993 by anders thulin ath@linkoping.trab.se esm<e'> the match-maker tobermory mrs. packletide's tiger the stampeding of lady bastable the background hermann the irascible the unrest-cure the jesting of arlington stringham sredni vashtar adrian the chaplet the quest wratislav the easter egg filboid studge the music on the hill the story of st. vespaluus the way to the dairy the peace offering the peace of mowsle barton the talking-out of tarrington the hounds of fate the recessional a matter of sentiment the secret sin of septimus brope ``ministers of grace'' the remoulding of groby lington esm<e'> ``all hunting stories are the same,'' said clovis; ``just as all turf stories are the same, and all---'' ``my hunting story isn't a bit like any you've ever heard,'' said the baroness. ``it happened quite a while ago, when i was about twenty-three. i wasn't living apart from my husband then; you see, neither of us could afford to make the other a separate allowance. in spite of everything that proverbs may say, poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up. but we always hunted with different packs. all this has nothing to do with the story.'' ``we haven't arrived at the meet yet. i suppose there was a meet,'' said clovis. ``of course there was a meet,'' said the baroness; ``all the usual crowd were there, especially constance broddle. constance is one of those strapping florid girls that go so well with autumn scenery or christmas decorations in church. `i feel a presentiment that something dreadful is going to happen,' she said to me; `am i looking pale?' ``she was looking about as pale as a beetroot that has suddenly heard bad news. `` `you're looking nicer than usual,' i said, `but that's so easy for you.' before she had got the right bearings of this remark we had settled down to business; hounds had found a fox lying out in some gorse-bushes.'' ``i knew it,'' said clovis; ``in every fox-hunting story that i've ever heard there's been a fox and some gorse-bushes.'' ``constance and i were well mounted,'' continued the baroness serenely, ``and we had no difficulty in keeping ourselves in the first flight, though it was a fairly stiff run. towards the finish, however, we must have held rather too independent a line, for we lost the hounds, and found ourselves plodding aimlessly along miles away from anywhere. it was fairly exasperating, and my temper was beginning to let itself go by inches, when on pushing our way through an accommodating hedge we were gladdened by the sight of hounds in full cry in a hollow just beneath us. `` `there they go,' cried constance, and then added in a gasp, 'in heaven's name, what are they hunting?' ``it was certainly no mortal fox. it stood more than twice as high, had a short, ugly head, and an enormous thick neck. `` `it's a hy<ae>na,' i cried; `it must have escaped from lord pabham's park.' ``at that moment the hunted beast turned and faced its pursuers, and the hounds (there were only about six couple of them) stood round in a half-circle and looked foolish. evidently they had broken away from the rest of the pack on the trail of this alien scent, and were not quite sure how to treat their quarry now they had got him. ``the hy<ae>na hailed our approach with unmistakable relief and demonstrations of friendliness. it had probably been accustomed to uniform kindness from humans, while its first experience of a pack of hounds had left a bad impression. the hounds looked more than ever embarrassed as their quarry paraded its sudden intimacy with us, and the faint toot of a horn in the distance was seized on as a welcome signal for unobtrusive departure. constance and i and the hy<ae>na were left alone in the gathering twilight. `` `what are we to do?' asked constance. `` `what a person you are for questions,' i said. `` `well, we can't stay here all night with a hy<ae>na,' she retorted. `` `i don't know what your ideas of comfort are,' i said; `but i shouldn't think of staying here all night even without a hy<ae>na. my home may be an unhappy one, but at least it has hot and cold water laid on, and domestic service, and other conveniences which we shouldn't find here. we had better make for that ridge of trees to the right; i imagine the crowley road is just beyond.' ``we trotted off slowly along a faintly marked cart-track, with the beast following cheerfully at our heels. `` `what on earth are we to do with the hy<ae>na?' came the inevitable question. `` `what does one generally do with hy<ae>nas?' i asked crossly. `` `i've never had anything to do with one before,' said constance. `` `well, neither have i. if we even knew its sex we might give it a name. perhaps we might call it esm<e'>. that would do in either case. ``there was still sufficient daylight for us to distinguish wayside objects, and our listless spirits gave an upward perk as we came upon a small half-naked gipsy brat picking blackberries from a low-growing bush. the sudden apparition of two horsewomen and a hy<ae>na set it off crying, and in any case we should scarcely have gleaned any useful geographical information from that source; but there was a probability that we might strike a gipsy encampment somewhere along our route. we rode on hopefully but uneventfully for another mile or so. `` `i wonder what the child was doing there,' said constance presently. `` `picking blackberries. obviously.' `` `i don't like the way it cried,' pursued constance; `somehow its wail keeps ringing in my ears.' ``i did not chide constance for her morbid fancies; as a matter of fact the same sensation, of being pursued by a persistent fretful wail, had been forcing itself on my rather over-tired nerves. for company's sake i hulloed to esm<e'>, who had lagged somewhat behind. with a few springy bounds he drew up level, and then shot past us. ``the wailing accompaniment was explained. the gipsy child was firmly, and i expect painfully, held in his jaws. `` `merciful heaven!' screamed constance, `what on earth shall we do? what are we to do?' ``i am perfectly certain that at the last judgment constance will ask more questions than any of the examining seraphs. `` `can't we do something?' she persisted tearfully, as esm<e'> cantered easily along in front of our tired horses. ``personally i was doing everything that occurred to me at the moment. i stormed and scolded and coaxed in english and french and gamekeeper language; i made absurd, ineffectual cuts in the air with my thongless hunting-crop; i hurled my sandwich case at the brute; in fact, i really don't know what more i could have done. and still we lumbered on through the deepening dusk, with that dark uncouth shape lumbering ahead of us, and a drone of lugubrious music floating in our ears. suddenly esm<e'> bounded aside into some thick bushes, where we could not follow; the wail rose to a shriek and then stopped altogether. this part of the story i always hurry over, because it is really rather horrible. when the beast joined us again, after an absence of a few minutes, there was an air of patient understanding about him, as though he knew that he had done something of which we disapproved, but which he felt to be thoroughly justifiable. `` `how can you let that ravening beast trot by your side?' asked constance. she was looking more than ever like an albino beetroot. `` `in the first place, i can't prevent it,' i said; `and in the second place, whatever else he may be, i doubt if he's ravening at the present moment.' ``constance shuddered. `do you think the poor little thing suffered much?' came another of her futile questions. `` `the indications were all that way,' i said; `on the other hand, of course, it may have been crying from sheer temper. children sometimes do.' ``it was nearly pitch-dark when we emerged suddenly into the high road. a flash of lights and the whir of a motor went past us at the same moment at uncomfortably close quarters. a thud and a sharp screeching yell followed a second later. the car drew up, and when i had ridden back to the spot i found a young man bending over a dark motionless mass lying by the roadside. `` `you have killed my esm<e'>,' i exclaimed bitterly. `` `i'm so awfully sorry,' said the young man; `i keep dogs myself, so i know what you must feel about it. i'll do anything i can in reparation.' `` `please bury him at once,' i said; `that much i think i may ask of you. `` `bring the spade, william,' he called to the chauffeur. evidently hasty roadside interments were contingencies that had been provided against. ``the digging of a sufficiently large grave took some little time. `i say, what a magnificent fellow,' said the motorist as the corpse was rolled over into the trench. `i'm afraid he must have been rather a valuable animal.' `` `he took second in the puppy class at birmingham last year,' i said resolutely. constance snorted loudly. `` `don't cry, dear,' i said brokenly; `it was all over in a moment. he couldn't have suffered much.' `` `look here,' said the young fellow desperately, `you simply must let me do something by way of reparation.' ``i refused sweetly, but as he persisted i let him have my address. ``of course, we kept our own counsel as to the earlier episodes of the evening. lord pabham never advertised the loss of his hy<ae>na; when a strictly fruit-eating animal strayed from his park a year or two previously he was called upon to give compensation in eleven cases of sheep-worrying and practically to re-stock his neighbours' poultry-yards, and an escaped hy<ae>na would have mounted up to something on the scale of a government grant. the gipsies were equally unobtrusive over their missing offspring; i don't suppose in large encampments they really know to a child or two how many they've got.'' the baroness paused reflectively, and then continued: ``there was a sequel to the adventure, though. i got through the post a charming little diamond broach, with the name esm<e'> set in a sprig of rosemary. incidentally, too, i lost the friendship of constance broddle. you see, when i sold the brooch i quite properly refused to give her any share of the proceeds. i pointed out that the esm<e'> part of the affair was my own invention, and the hy<ae>na part of it belonged to lord pabham, if it really was his hy<ae>na, of which, of course, i've no proof.'' the match-maker the grill-room clock struck eleven with the respectful unobtrusiveness of one whose mission in life is to be ignored. when the flight of time should really have rendered abstinence and migration imperative the lighting apparatus would signal the fact in the usual way. six minutes later clovis approached the supper-table, in the blessed expectancy of one who has dined sketchily and long ago. ``i'm starving,'' he announced, making an effort to sit down gracefully and read the menu at the same time. ``so i gathered,'' said his host, ``from the fact that you were nearly punctual. i ought to have told you that i'm a food reformer. i've ordered two bowls of bread-and-milk and some health biscuits. i hope you don't mind.'' clovis pretended afterwards that he didn't go white above the collar-line for the fraction of a second. ``all the same,'' he said, ``you ought not to joke about such things. there really are such people. i've known people who've met them. to think of all the adorable things there are to eat in the world, and then to go through life munching sawdust and being proud of it.'' ``they're like the flagellants of the middle ages, who went about mortifying themselves.'' ``they had some excuse,'' said clovis. ``they did it to save their immortal souls, didn't they? you needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. he's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.'' clovis relapsed for a few golden moments into tender intimacies with a succession of rapidly disappearing oysters. ``i think oysters are more beautiful than any religion,'' he resumed presently. ``they not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. there's nothing in christianity or buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. do you like my new waistcoat? i'm wearing it for the first time tonight.'' ``it looks like a great many others you've had lately, only worse. new dinner waistcoats are becoming a habit with you.'' ``they say one always pays for the excesses of one's youth; mercifully that isn't true about one's clothes. my mother is thinking of getting married.'' ``again!'' ``it's the first time.'' ``of course, you ought to know. i was under the impression that she'd been married once or twice at least.'' ``three times, to be mathematically exact. i meant that it was the first time she'd thought about getting married; the other times she did it without thinking. as a matter of fact, it's really i who am doing the thinking for her in this case. you see, it's quite two years since her last husband died.'' ``you evidently think that brevity is the soul of widowhood.'' ``well, it struck me that she was getting moped, and beginning to settle down, which wouldn't suit her a bit. the first symptom that i noticed was when she began to complain that we were living beyond our income. all decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren't respectable live beyond other people's. a few gifted individuals manage to do both.'' ``it's hardly so much a gift as an industry.'' ``the crisis came,'' returned clovis, ``when she suddenly started the theory that late hours were bad for one, and wanted me to be in by one o'clock every night. imagine that sort of thing for me, who was eighteen on my last birthday.'' ``on your last two birthdays, to be mathematically exact.'' ``oh, well, that's not my fault. i'm not going to arrive at nineteen as long as my mother remains at thirty-seven. one must have some regard for appearances.'' ``perhaps your mother would age a little in the process of settling down.'' ``that's the last thing she'd think of. feminine reformations always start in on the failings of other people. that's why i was so keen on the husband idea.'' ``did you go as far as to select the gentleman, or did you merely throw out a general idea, and trust to the force of suggestion?'' ``if one wants a thing done in a hurry one must see to it oneself. i found a military johnny hanging round on a loose end at the club, and took him home to lunch once or twice. he'd spent most of his life on the indian frontier, building roads, and relieving famines and minimizing earthquakes, and all that sort of thing that one does do on frontiers. he could talk sense to a peevish cobra in fifteen native languages, and probably knew what to do if you found a rogue elephant on your croquet-lawn; but he was shy and diffident with women. i told my mother privately that he was an absolute woman-hater; so, of course, she laid herself out to flirt all she knew, which isn't a little.'' ``and was the gentleman responsive?'' ``i hear he told some one at the club that he was looking out for a colonial job, with plenty of hard work, for a young friend of his, so i gather that he has some idea of marrying into the family.'' ``you seem destined to be the victim of the reformation, after all.'' clovis wiped the trace of turkish coffee and the beginnings of a smile from his lips, and slowly lowered his dexter eyelid. which, being interpreted, probably meant, ``i don't think!'' tobermory it was a chill, rain-washed afternoon of a late august day, that indefinite season when partridges are still in security or cold storage, and there is nothing to hunt---unless one is bounded on the north by the bristol channel, in which case one may lawfully gallop after fat red stags. lady blemley's house-party was not bounded on the north by the bristol channel, hence there was a full gathering of her guests round the tea-table on this particular afternoon. and, in spite of the blankness of the season and the triteness of the occasion, there was no trace in the company of that fatigued restlessness which means a dread of the pianola and a subdued hankering for auction bridge. the undisguised open-mouthed attention of the entire party was fixed on the homely negative personality of mr. cornelius appin. of all her guests, he was the one who had come to lady blemley with the vaguest reputation. some one had said he was ``clever,'' and he had got his invitation in the moderate expectation, on the part of his hostess, that some portion at least of his cleverness would be contributed to the general entertainment. until tea-time that day she had been unable to discover in what direction, if any, his cleverness lay. he was neither a wit nor a croquet champion, a hypnotic force nor a begetter of amateur theatricals. neither did his exterior suggest the sort of man in whom women are willing to pardon a generous measure of mental deficiency. he had subsided into mere mr. appin, and the cornelius seemed a piece of transparent baptismal bluff. and now he was claiming to have launched on the world a discovery beside which the invention of gunpowder, of the printing-press, and of steam locomotion were inconsiderable trifles. science had made bewildering strides in many directions during recent decades, but this thing seemed to belong to the domain of miracle rather than to scientific achievement. ``and do you really ask us to believe,'' sir wilfrid was saying, ``that you have discovered a means for instructing animals in the art of human speech, and that dear old tobermory has proved your first successful pupil?'' ``it is a problem at which i have worked for the last seventeen years,'' said mr. appin, ``but only during the last eight or nine months have i been rewarded with glimmerings of success. of course i have experimented with thousands of animals, but latterly only with cats, those wonderful creatures which have assimilated themselves so marvellously with our civilization while retaining all their highly developed feral instincts. here and there among cats one comes across an outstanding superior intellect, just as one does among the ruck of human beings, and when i made the acquaintance of tobermory a week ago i saw at once that i was in contact with a `beyond-cat' of extraordinary intelligence. i had gone far along the road to success in recent experiments; with tobermory, as you call him, i have reached the goal.'' mr. appin concluded his remarkable statement in a voice which he strove to divest of a triumphant inflection. no one said ``rats,'' though clovis's lips moved in a monosyllabic contortion which probably invoked those rodents of disbelief. ``and do you mean to say,'' asked miss resker, after a slight pause, ``that you have taught tobermory to say and understand easy sentences of one syllable?'' ``my dear miss resker,'' said the wonder-worker patiently, ``one teaches little children and savages and backward adults in that piecemeal fashion; when one has once solved the problem of making a beginning with an animal of highly developed intelligence one has no need for those halting methods. tobermory can speak our language with perfect correctness.'' this time clovis very distinctly said, ``beyond-rats!'' sir wilfrid was more polite, but equally sceptical. ``hadn't we better have the cat in and judge for ourselves?'' suggested lady blemley. sir wilfrid went in search of the animal, and the company settled themselves down to the languid expectation of witnessing some more or less adroit drawing-room ventriloquism. in a minute sir wilfrid was back in the room, his face white beneath its tan and his eyes dilated with excitement. ``by gad, it's true!'' his agitation was unmistakably genuine, and his hearers started forward in a thrill of awakened interest. collapsing into an armchair he continued breathlessly: ``i found him dozing in the smoking-room and called out to him to come for his tea. he blinked at me in his usual way, and i said, `come on, toby; don't keep us waiting'; and, by gad! he drawled out in a most horribly natural voice that he'd come when he dashed well pleased! i nearly jumped out of my skin!'' appin had preached to absolutely incredulous hearers; sir wilfred's statement carried instant conviction. a babel-like chorus of startled exclamation arose, amid which the scientist sat mutely enjoying the first fruit of his stupendous discovery. in the midst of the clamour tobermory entered the room and made his way with velvet tread and studied unconcern across to the group seated round the tea-table. a sudden hush of awkwardness and constraint fell on the company. somehow there seemed an element of embarrassment in addressing on equal terms a domestic cat of acknowledged mental ability. ``will you have some milk, tobermory?'' asked lady blemley in a rather strained voice. ``i don't mind if i do,'' was the response, couched in a tone of even indifference. a shiver of suppressed excitement went through the listeners, and lady blemley might be excused for pouring out the saucerful of milk rather unsteadily. ``i'm afraid i've spilt a good deal of it,'' she said apologetically. ``after all, it's not my axminster,'' was tobermory's rejoinder. another silence fell on the group, and then miss resker, in her best district-visitor manner, asked if the human language had been difficult to learn. tobermory looked squarely at her for a moment and then fixed his gaze serenely on the middle distance. it was obvious that boring questions lay outside his scheme of life. ``what do you think of human intelligence?'' asked mavis pellington lamely. ``of whose intelligence in particular?'' asked tobermory coldly. ``oh, well, mine for instance,'' said mavis, with a feeble laugh. ``you put me in an embarrassing position,'' said tobermory, whose tone and attitude certainly did not suggest a shred of embarrassment. ``when your inclusion in this house-party was suggested sir wilfrid protested that you were the most brainless woman of his acquaintance, and that there was a wide distinction between hospitality and the care of the feeble-minded. lady blemley replied that your lack of brain-power was the precise quality which had earned you your invitation, as you were the only person she could think of who might be idiotic enough to buy their old car. you know, the one they call `the envy of sisyphus,' because it goes quite nicely up-hill if you push it.'' lady blemley's protestations would have had greater effect if she had not casually suggested to mavis only that morning that the car in question would be just the thing for her down at her devonshire home. major barfield plunged in heavily to effect a diversion. ``how about your carryings-on with the tortoise-shell puss up at the stables, eh?'' the moment he had said it every one realized the blunder. ``one does not usually discuss these matters in public,'' said tobermory frigidly. ``from a slight observation of your ways since you've been in this house i should imagine you'd find it inconvenient if i were to shift the conversation on to your own little affairs.'' the panic which ensued was not confined to the major. ``would you like to go and see if cook has got your dinner ready?'' suggested lady blemley hurriedly, affecting to ignore the fact that it wanted at least two hours to tobermory's dinner-time. ``thanks,'' said tobermory, ``not quite so soon after my tea. i don't want to die of indigestion.'' ``cats have nine lives, you know,'' said sir wilfrid heartily. ``possibly'', answered tobermory; ``but only one liver.'' ``adelaide!'' said mrs. cornett, ``do you mean to encourage that cat to go out and gossip about us in the servants' hall?'' the panic had indeed become general. a narrow ornamental balustrade ran in front of most of the bedroom windows at the towers, and it was recalled with dismay that this had formed a favourite promenade for tobermory at all hours, whence he could watch the pigeons---and heaven knew what else besides. if he intended to become reminiscent in his present outspoken strain the effect would be something more than disconcerting. mrs. cornett, who spent much time at her toilet table, and whose complexion was reputed to be of a nomadic though punctual disposition, looked as ill at ease as the major. miss scrawen, who wrote fiercely sensuous poetry and led a blameless life, merely displayed irritation; if you are methodical and virtuous in private you don't necessarily want every one to know it. bertie van tahn, who was so depraved at seventeen that he had long ago given up trying to be any worse, turned a dull shade of gardenia white, but he did not commit the error of dashing out of the room like odo finsberry, a young gentleman who was understood to be reading for the church and who was possibly disturbed at the thought of scandals he might hear concerning other people. clovis had the presence of mind to maintain a composed exterior; privately he was calculating how long it would take to procure a box of fancy mice through the agency of the exchange and mart as a species of hush-money. even in a delicate situation like the present, agnes resker could not endure to remain too long in the background. ``why did i ever come down here?'' she asked dramatically. tobermory immediately accepted the opening. ``judging by what you said to mrs. cornett on the croquet-lawn yesterday, you were out for food. you described the blemleys as the dullest people to stay with that you knew, but said they were clever enough to employ a first-rate cook; otherwise they'd find it difficult to get any one to come down a second time.'' ``there's not a word of truth in it! i appeal to mrs. cornett---'' exclaimed the discomfited agnes. ``mrs. cornett repeated your remark afterwards to bertie van tahn,'' continued tobermory, ``and said, `that woman is a regular hunger marcher; she'd go anywhere for four square meals a day,' and bertie van tahn said---'' at this point the chronicle mercifully ceased. tobermory had caught a glimpse of the big yellow tom from the rectory working his way through the shrubbery towards the stable wing. in a flash he had vanished through the open french window. with the disappearance of his too brilliant pupil cornelius appin found himself beset by a hurricane of bitter upbraiding, anxious inquiry, and frightened entreaty. the responsibility for the situation lay with him, and he must prevent matters from becoming worse. could tobermory impart his dangerous gift to other cats? was the first question he had to answer. it was possible, he replied, that he might have initiated his intimate friend the stable puss into his new accomplishment, but it was unlikely that his teaching could have taken a wider range as yet. ``then,'' said mrs. cornett, ``tobermory may be a valuable cat and a great pet; but i'm sure you'll agree, adelaide, that both he and the stable cat must be done away with without delay.'' ``you don't suppose i've enjoyed the last quarter of an hour, do you?'' said lady blemley bitterly. ``my husband and i are very fond of tobermory---at least, we were before this horrible accomplishment was infused into him; but now, of course, the only thing is to have him destroyed as soon as possible.'' ``we can put some strychnine in the scraps he always gets at dinner-time,'' said sir wilfrid, ``and i will go and drown the stable cat myself. the coachman will be very sore at losing his pet, but i'll say a very catching form of mange has broken out in both cats and we're afraid of its spreading to the kennels.'' ``but my great discovery!'' expostulated mr. appin; ``after all my years of research and experiment---'' ``you can go and experiment on the short-horns at the farm, who are under proper control,'' said mrs. cornett, ``or the elephants at the zoological gardens. they're said to be highly intelligent, and they have this recommendation, that they don't come creeping about our bedrooms and under chairs, and so forth.'' an archangel ecstatically proclaiming the millennium, and then finding that it clashed unpardonably with henley and would have to be indefinitely postponed, could hardly have felt more crestfallen than cornelius appin at the reception of his wonderful achievement. public opinion, however, was against him---in fact, had the general voice been consulted on the subject it is probable that a strong minority vote would have been in favour of including him in the strychnine diet. defective train arrangements and a nervous desire to see matters brought to a finish prevented an immediate dispersal of the party, but dinner that evening was not a social success. sir wilfrid had had rather a trying time with the stable cat and subsequently with the coachman. agnes resker ostentatiously limited her repast to a morsel of dry toast, which she bit as though it were a personal enemy; while mavis pellington maintained a vindictive silence throughout the meal. lady blemley kept up a flow of what she hoped was conversation, but her attention was fixed on the doorway. a plateful of carefully dosed fish scraps was in readiness on the sideboard, but sweets and savoury and dessert went their way, and no tobermory appeared either in the dining-room or kitchen. the sepulchral dinner was cheerful compared with the subsequent vigil in the smoking-room. eating and drinking had at least supplied a distraction and cloak to the prevailing embarrassment. bridge was out of the question in the general tension of nerves and tempers, and after odo finsberry had given a lugubrious rendering of ``m<e'>lisande in the wood'' to a frigid audience, music was tacitly avoided. at eleven the servants went to bed, announcing that the small window in the pantry had been left open as usual for tobermory's private use. the guests read steadily through the current batch of magazines, and fell back gradually on the ``badminton library'' and bound volumes of punch. lady blemley made periodic visits to the pantry, returning each time with an expression of listless depression which forestalled questioning. at two o'clock clovis broke the dominating silence. ``he won't turn up tonight. he's probably in the local newspaper office at the present moment, dictating the first instalment of his reminiscences. lady what's-her-name's book won't be in it. it will be the event of the day.'' having made this contribution to the general cheerfulness, clovis went to bed. at long intervals the various members of the house-party followed his example. the servants taking round the early tea made a uniform announcement in reply to a uniform question. tobermory had not returned. breakfast was, if anything, a more unpleasant function than dinner had been, but before its conclusion the situation was relieved. tobermory's corpse was brought in from the shrubbery, where a gardener had just discovered it. from the bites on his throat and the yellow fur which coated his claws it was evident that he had fallen in unequal combat with the big tom from the rectory. by midday most of the guests had quitted the towers, and after lunch lady blemley had sufficiently recovered her spirits to write an extremely nasty letter to the rectory about the loss of her valuable pet. tobermory had been appin's one successful pupil, and he was destined to have no successor. a few weeks later an elephant in the dresden zoological garden, which had shown no previous signs of irritability, broke loose and killed an englishman who had apparently been teasing it. the victim's name was variously reported in the papers as oppin and eppelin, but his front name was faithfully rendered cornelius. ``if he was trying german irregular verbs on the poor beast,'' said clovis, ``he deserved all he got.'' mrs. packletide's tiger it was mrs. packletide's pleasure and intention that she should shoot a tiger. not that the lust to kill had suddenly descended on her, or that she felt that she would leave india safer and more wholesome than she had found it, with one fraction less of wild beast per million of inhabitants. the compelling motive for her sudden deviation towards the footsteps of nimrod was the fact that loona bimberton had recently been carried eleven miles in an aeroplane by an algerian aviator, and talked of nothing else; only a personally procured tiger-skin and a heavy harvest of press photographs could successfully counter that sort of thing. mrs. packletide had already arranged in her mind the lunch she would give at her house in curzon street, ostensibly in loona bimberton's honour, with a tiger-skin rug occupying most of the foreground and all of the conversation. she had also already designed in her mind the tiger-claw broach that she was going to give loona bimberton on her next birthday. in a world that is supposed to be chiefly swayed by hunger and by love mrs. packletide was an exception; her movements and motives were largely governed by dislike of loona bimberton. circumstances proved propitious. mrs. packletide had offered a thousand rupees for the opportunity of shooting a tiger without over-much risk or exertion, and it so happened that a neighbouring village could boast of being the favoured rendezvous of an animal of respectable antecedents, which had been driven by the increasing infirmities of age to abandon game-killing and confine its appetite to the smaller domestic animals. the prospect of earning the thousand rupees had stimulated the sporting and commercial instinct of the villagers; children were posted night and day on the outskirts of the local jungle to head the tiger back in the unlikely event of his attempting to roam away to fresh hunting-grounds, and the cheaper kinds of goats were left about with elaborate carelessness to keep him satisfied with his present quarters. the one great anxiety was lest he should die of old age before the date appointed for the memsahib's shoot. mothers carrying their babies home through the jungle after the day's work in the fields hushed their singing lest they might curtail the restful sleep of the venerable herd-robber. the great night duly arrived, moonlit and cloudless. a platform had been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placed tree, and thereon crouched mrs. packletide and her paid companion, miss mebbin. a goat, gifted with a particularly persistent bleat, such as even a partially deaf tiger might be reasonably expected to hear on a still night, was tethered at the correct distance. with an accurately sighted rifle and a thumb-nail pack of patience cards the sportswoman awaited the coming of the quarry. ``i suppose we are in some danger?'' said miss mebbin. she was not actually nervous about the wild beast, but she had a morbid dread of performing an atom more service than she had been paid for. ``nonsense,'' said mrs. packletide; ``it's a very old tiger. it couldn't spring up here even if it wanted to.'' ``if it's an old tiger i think you ought to get it cheaper. a thousand rupees is a lot of money.'' louisa mebbin adopted a protective elder-sister attitude towards money in general, irrespective of nationality or denomination. her energetic intervention had saved many a rouble from dissipating itself in tips in some moscow hotel, and francs and centimes clung to her instinctively under circumstances which would have driven them headlong from less sympathetic hands. her speculations as to the market depreciation of tiger remnants were cut short by the appearance on the scene of the animal itself. as soon as it caught sight of the tethered goat it lay flat on the earth, seemingly less from a desire to take advantage of all available cover than for the purpose of snatching a short rest before commencing the grand attack. ``i believe it's ill,'' said louisa mebbin, loudly in hindustani, for the benefit of the village headman, who was in ambush in a neighbouring tree. ``hush!'' said mrs. packletide, and at that moment the tiger commenced ambling towards his victim. ``now, now!'' urged miss mebbin with some excitement; ``if he doesn't touch the goat we needn't pay for it.'' (the bait was an extra.) the rifle flashed out with a loud report, and the great tawny beast sprang to one side and then rolled over in the stillness of death. in a moment a crowd of excited natives had swarmed on to the scene, and their shouting speedily carried the glad news to the village, where a thumping of tom-toms took up the chorus of triumph. and their triumph and rejoicing found a ready echo in the heart of mrs. packletide; already that luncheon-party in curzon street seemed immeasurably nearer. it was louisa mebbin who drew attention to the fact that the goat was in death-throes from a mortal bullet-wound, while no trace of the rifle's deadly work could be found on the tiger. evidently the wrong animal had been hit, and the beast of prey had succumbed to heart-failure, caused by the sudden report of the rifle, accelerated by senile decay. mrs. packletide was pardonably annoyed at the discovery; but, at any rate, she was the possessor of a dead tiger, and the villagers, anxious for their thousand rupees, gladly connived at the fiction that she had shot the beast. and miss mebbin was a paid companion. therefore did mrs. packletide face the cameras with a light heart, and her pictured fame reached from the pages of the _texas weekly snapshot_ to the illustrated monday supplement of the _novoe vremya_. as for loona bimberton, she refused to look at an illustrated paper for weeks, and her letter of thanks for the gift of a tiger-claw brooch was a model of repressed emotions. the luncheon-party she declined; there are limits beyond which repressed emotions become dangerous. from curzon street the tiger-skin rug travelled down to the manor house, and was duly inspected and admired by the county, and it seemed a fitting and appropriate thing when mrs. packletide went to the county costume ball in the character of diana. she refused to fall in, however, with clovis's tempting suggestion of a primeval dance party, at which every one should wear the skins of beasts they had recently slain. ``i should be in rather a baby bunting condition,'' confessed clovis, ``with a miserable rabbit-skin or two to wrap up in, but then,'' he added, with a rather malicious glance at diana's proportions, ``my figure is quite as good as that russian dancing boy's.'' ``how amused every one would be if they knew what really happened,'' said louisa mebbin a few days after the ball. ``what do you mean?'' asked mrs. packletide quickly. ``how you shot the goat and frightened the tiger to death,'' said miss mebbin, with her disagreeably pleasant laugh. ``no one would believe it,'' said mrs. packletide, her face changing colour as rapidly as though it were going through a book of patterns before post-time. ``loona bimberton would,'' said miss mebbin. mrs. packletide's face settled on an unbecoming shade of greenish white. ``you surely wouldn't give me away?'' she asked. ``i've seen a week-end cottage near darking that i should rather like to buy,'' said miss mebbin with seeming irrelevance. ``six hundred and eighty, freehold. quite a bargain, only i don't happen to have the money.'' * louisa mebbin's pretty week-end cottage, christened by her ``les fauves,'' and gay in summer-time with its garden borders of tiger-lilies, is the wonder and admiration of her friends. ``it is a marvel how louisa manages to do it,'' is the general verdict. mrs. packletide indulges in no more big-game shooting. ``the incidental expenses are so heavy,'' she confides to inquiring friends. the stampeding of lady bastable ``it would be rather nice if you would put clovis up for another six days while i go up north to the macgregors','' said mrs. sangrail sleepily across the breakfast-table. it was her invariable plan to speak in a sleepy, comfortable voice whenever she was unusually keen about anything; it put people off their guard, and they frequently fell in with her wishes before they had realized that she was really asking for anything. lady bastable, however, was not so easily taken unawares; possibly she knew that voice and what it betokened--at any rate, she knew clovis. she frowned at a piece of toast and ate it very slowly, as though she wished to convey the impression that the process hurt her more than it hurt the toast; but no extension of hospitality on clovis's behalf rose to her lips. ``it would be a great convenience to me,'' pursued mrs. sangrail, abandoning the careless tone. ``i particularly don't want to take him to the macgregors', and it will only be for six days.'' ``it will seem longer,'' said lady bastable dismally. ``the last time he stayed here for a week---'' ``i know,'' interrupted the other hastily, ``but that was nearly two years ago. he was younger then.'' ``but he hasn't improved,'' said her hostess; ``it's no use growing older if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself.'' mrs. sangrail was unable to argue the point; since clovis had reached the age of seventeen she had never ceased to bewail his irrepressible waywardness to all her circle of acquaintances, and a polite scepticism would have greeted the slightest hint at a prospective reformation. she discarded the fruitless effort at cajolery and resorted to undisguised bribery. ``if you'll have him here for these six days i'll cancel that outstanding bridge account.'' it was only for forty-nine shillings, but lady bastable loved shillings with a great, strong love. to lose money at bridge and not to have to pay it was one of those rare experiences which gave the card-table a glamour in her eyes which it could never otherwise have possessed. mrs. sangrail was almost equally devoted to her card winnings, but the prospect of conveniently warehousing her offspring for six days, and incidentally saving his railway fare to the north, reconciled her to the sacrifice; when clovis made a belated appearance at the breakfast-table the bargain had been struck. ``just think,'' said mrs. sangrail sleepily; ``lady bastable has very kindly asked you to stay on here while i go to the macgregors'.'' clovis said suitable things in a highly unsuitable manner, and proceeded to make punitive expeditions among the breakfast dishes with a scowl on his face that would have driven the purr out of a peace conference. the arrangement that had been concluded behind his back was doubly distasteful to him. in the first place, he particularly wanted to teach the macgregor boys, who could well afford the knowledge, how to play poker-patience; secondly, the bastable catering was of the kind that is classified as a rude plenty, which clovis translated as a plenty that gives rise to rude remarks. watching him from behind ostentatiously sleepy lids, his mother realized, in the light of long experience, that any rejoicing over the success of her man<oe>uvre would be distinctly premature. it was one thing to fit clovis into a convenient niche of the domestic jig-saw puzzle; it was quite another matter to get him to stay there. lady bastable was wont to retire in state to the morning-room immediately after breakfast and spend a quiet hour in skimming through the papers; they were there, so she might as well get their money's worth out of them. politics did not greatly interest her, but she was obsessed with a favourite foreboding that one of these days there would be a great social upheaval, in which everybody would be killed by everybody else. ``it will come sooner than we think,'' she would observe darkly; a mathematical expert of exceptionally high powers would have been puzzled to work out the approximate date from the slender and confusing groundwork which this assertion afforded. on this particular morning the sight of lady bastable enthroned among her papers gave clovis the hint towards which his mind had been groping all breakfast time. his mother had gone upstairs to supervise packing operations, and he was alone on the ground-floor with his hostess---and the servants. the latter were the key to the situation. bursting wildly into the kitchen quarters, clovis screamed a frantic though strictly non-committal summons: ``poor lady bastable! in the morning-room! oh, quick!'' the next moment the butler, cook, page-boy, two or three maids, and a gardener who had happened to be in one of the outer kitchens were following in a hot scurry after clovis as he headed back for the morning-room. lady bastable was roused from the world of newspaper lore by hearing a japanese screen in the hall go down with a crash. then the door leading from the ball flew open and her young guest tore madly through the room, shrieked at her in passing, ``the jacquerie! they're on us!'' and dashed like an escaping hawk out through the french window. the scared mob of servants burst in on his heels, the gardener still clutching the sickle with which he had been trimming hedges, and the impetus of their headlong haste carried them, slipping and sliding, over the smooth parquet flooring towards the chair where their mistress sat in panic-stricken amazement. if she had had a moment granted her for reflection she would have behaved, as she afterwards explained, with considerable dignity. it was probably the sickle which decided her, but anyway she followed the lead that clovis had given her through the french window, and ran well and far across the lawn before the eyes of her astonished retainers. * lost dignity is not a possession which can be restored at a moment's notice, and both lady bastable and the butler found the process of returning to normal conditions almost as painful as a slow recovery from drowning. a jacquerie, even if carried out with the most respectful of intentions, cannot fail to leave some traces of embarrassment behind it. by lunch-time, however, decorum had reasserted itself with enhanced rigour as a natural rebound from its recent overthrow, and the meal was served in a frigid stateliness that might have been framed on a byzantine model. half-way through its duration mrs. sangrail was solemnly presented with an envelope lying on a silver salver. it contained a cheque for forty-nine shillings. the macgregor boys learned how to play poker-patience; after all, they could afford to. the background ``that woman's art-jargon tires me,'' said clovis to his journalist friend. ``she's so fond of talking of certain pictures as `growing on one,' as though they were a sort of fungus.'' ``that reminds me,'' said the journalist, ``of the story of henri deplis. have i ever told it you?'' clovis shook his head. ``henri deplis was by birth a native of the grand duchy of luxemburg. on maturer reflection he became a commercial traveller. his business activities frequently took him beyond the limits of the grand duchy, and he was stopping in a small town of northern italy when news reached him from home that a legacy from a distant and deceased relative had fallen to his share. ``it was not a large legacy, even from the modest standpoint of henri deplis, but it impelled him towards some seemingly harmless extravagances. in particular it led him to patronize local art as represented by the tattoo-needles of signor andreas pincini. signor pincini was, perhaps, the most brilliant master of tattoo craft that italy had ever known, but his circumstances were decidedly impoverished, and for the sum of six hundred francs he gladly undertook to cover his client's back, from the collar-bone down to the waist-line, with a glowing representation of the fall of icarus. the design, when finally developed, was a slight disappointment to monsieur deplis, who had suspected icarus of being a fortress taken by wallenstein in the thirty years' war, but he was more than satisfied with the execution of the work, which was acclaimed by all who had the privilege of seeing it as pincini's masterpiece. ``it was his greatest effort, and his last. without even waiting to be paid, the illustrious craftsman departed this life, and was buried under an ornate tombstone, whose winged cherubs would have afforded singularly little scope for the exercise of his favourite art. there remained, however, the widow pincini, to whom the six hundred francs were due. and thereupon arose the great crisis in the life of henri deplis, traveller of commerce. the legacy, under the stress of numerous little calls on its substance, had dwindled to very insignificant proportions, and when a pressing wine bill and sundry other current accounts had been paid, there remained little more than 430 francs to offer to the widow. the lady was properly indignant, not wholly, as she volubly explained, on account of the suggested writing-off of 170 francs, but also at the attempt to depreciate the value of her late husband's acknowledged masterpiece. in a week's time deplis was obliged to reduce his offer to 405 francs, which circumstance fanned the widow's indignation into a fury. she cancelled the sale of the work of art, and a few days later deplis learned with a sense of consternation that she bad presented it to the municipality of bergamo, which had gratefully accepted it. he left the neighbourhood as unobtrusively as possible, and was genuinely relieved when his business commands took him to rome, where he hoped his identity and that of the famous picture might be lost sight of. ``but he bore on his back the burden of the dead man's genius. on presenting himself one day in the steaming corridor of a vapour bath, he was at once hustled back into his clothes by the proprietor, who was a north italian, and who emphatically refused to allow the celebrated fall of icarus to be publicly on view without the permission of the municipality of bergamo. public interest and official vigilance increased as the matter became more widely known, and deplis was unable to take a simple dip in the sea or river on the hottest afternoon unless clothed up to the collar-bone in a substantial bathing garment. later on the authorities of bergamo conceived the idea that salt water might be injurious to the masterpiece, and a perpetual injunction was obtained which debarred the muchly harassed commercial traveller from sea bathing under any circumstances. altogether, he was fervently thankful when his firm of employers found him a new range of activities in the neighbourhood of bordeaux. his thankfulness, however, ceased abruptly at the franco-italian frontier. an imposing array of official force barred his departure, and he was sternly reminded of the stringent law which forbids the exportation of italian works of art. a diplomatic parley ensued between the luxemburgian and italian governments, and at one time the european situation became overcast with the possibilities of trouble. but the italian government stood firm; it declined to concern itself in the least with the fortunes or even the existence of henri deplis, commercial traveller, but was immovable in its decision that the fall of icarus (by the late pincini, andreas) at present the property of the municipality of bergamo, should not leave the country. ``the excitement died down in time, but the unfortunate deplis, who was of a constitutionally retiring disposition, found himself a few months later once more the storm-centre of a furious controversy. a certain german art expert, who had obtained from the municipality of bergamo permission to inspect the famous masterpiece, declared it to be a spurious pincini, probably the work of some pupil whom he had employed in his declining years. the evidence of deplis on the subject was obviously worthless, as he had been under the influence of the customary narcotics during the long process of pricking in the design. the editor of an italian art journal refuted the contentions of the german expert and undertook to prove that his private life did not conform to any modern standard of decency. the whole of italy and germany were drawn into the dispute, and the rest of europe was soon involved in the quarrel. there were stormy scenes in the spanish parliament, and the university of copenhagen bestowed a gold medal on the german expert (afterwards sending a commission to examine his proofs on the spot), while two polish schoolboys in paris committed suicide to show what _they_ thought of the matter. ``meanwhile, the unhappy human background fared no better than before, and it was not surprising that he drifted into the ranks of italian anarchists. four times at least he was escorted to the frontier as a dangerous and undesirable foreigner, but he was always brought back as the fall of icarus (attributed to pincini, andreas, early twentieth century). and then one day, at an anarchist congress at genoa, a fellow-worker, in the heat of debate, broke a phial full of corrosive liquid over his back. the red shirt that he was wearing mitigated the effects, but the icarus was ruined beyond recognition. his assailant was severely reprimanded for assaulting a fellow-anarchist and received seven years' imprisonment for defacing a national art treasure. as soon as he was able to leave the hospital henri deplis was put across the frontier as an undesirable alien. ``in the quieter streets of paris, especially in the neighbourhood of the ministry of fine arts, you may sometimes meet a depressed, anxious-looking man, who, if you pass him the time of day, will answer you with a slight luxemburgian accent. he nurses the illusion that he is one of the lost arms of the venus de milo, and hopes that the french government may be persuaded to buy him. on all other subjects i believe he is tolerably sane.'' hermann the irascible---a story of the great weep it was in the second decade of the twentieth century, after the great plague had devastated england, that hermann the irascible, nicknamed also the wise, sat on the british throne. the mortal sickness had swept away the entire royal family, unto the third and fourth generations, and thus it came to pass that hermann the fourteenth of saxe-drachsen-wachtelstein, who had stood thirtieth in the order of succession, found himself one day ruler of the british dominions within and beyond the seas. he was one of the unexpected things that happen in polities, and he happened with great thoroughness. in many ways he was the most progressive monarch who had sat on an important throne; before people knew where they were, they were somewhere else. even his ministers, progressive though they were by tradition, found it difficult to keep pace with his legislative suggestions. ``as a matter of fact,'' admitted the prime minister, ``we are hampered by these votes-for-women creatures; they disturb our meetings throughout the country, and they try to turn downing street into a sort of political picnic-ground.'' ``they must be dealt with'' said hermann. ``dealt with,'' said the prime minister; ``exactly, just so; but how?'' ``i will draft you a bill,'' said the king, sitting down at his type-writing machine, ``enacting that women shall vote at all future elections. _shall_ vote, you observe; or, to put it plainer, must. voting will remain optional, as before, for male electors; but every woman between the ages of twenty-one and seventy will be obliged to vote, not only at elections for parliament, county councils, district boards, parish-councils, and municipalities, but for coroners, school inspectors, churchwardens, curators of museums, sanitary authorities, police-court interpreters, swimming-bath instructors, contractors, choir-masters, market superintendents, art-school teachers, cathedral vergers, and other local functionaries whose names i will add as they occur to me. all these offices will become elective, and failure to vote at any election falling within her area of residence will involve the female elector in a penalty of <l>10. absence, unsupported by an adequate medical certificate, will not be accepted as an excuse. pass this bill through the two houses of parliament and bring it to me for signature the day after tomorrow.'' from the very outset the compulsory female franchise produced little or no elation even in circles which had been loudest in demanding the vote. the bulk of the women of the country had been indifferent or hostile to the franchise agitation, and the most fanatical suffragettes began to wonder what they had found so attractive in the prospect of putting ballot-papers into a box. in the country districts the task of carrying out the provisions of the new act was irksome enough; in the towns and cities it became an incubus. there seemed no end to the elections. laundresses and seamstresses had to hurry away from their work to vote, often for a candidate whose name they hadn't heard before, and whom they selected at haphazard; female clerks and waitresses got up extra early to get their voting done before starting off to their places of business. society women found their arrangements impeded and upset by the continual necessity for attending the polling stations, and week-end parties and summer holidays became gradually a masculine luxury. as for cairo and the riviera, they were possible only for genuine invalids or people of enormous wealth, for the accumulation of <l>10 fines during a prolonged absence was a contingency that even ordinarily wealthy folk could hardly afford to risk. it was not wonderful that the female disfranchisement agitation became a formidable movement. the no-votes-for-women league numbered its feminine adherents by the million; its colours, citron and old dutch-madder, were flaunted everywhere, and its battle hymn, ``we don't want to vote,'' became a popular refrain. as the government showed no signs of being impressed by peaceful persuasion, more violent methods came into vogue. meetings were disturbed, ministers were mobbed, policemen were bitten, and ordinary prison fare rejected, and on the eve of the anniversary of trafalgar women bound themselves in tiers up the entire length of the nelson column so that its customary floral decoration had to be abandoned. still the government obstinately adhered to its conviction that women ought to have the vote. then, as a last resort, some woman wit hit upon an expedient which it was strange that no one had thought of before. the great weep was organized. relays of women, ten thousand at a time, wept continuously in the public places of the metropolis. they wept in railway stations, in tubes and omnibuses, in the national gallery, at the army and navy stores, in st. james's park, at ballad concerts, at prince's and in the burlington arcade. the hitherto unbroken success of the brilliant farcical comedy ``henry's rabbit'' was imperilled by the presence of drearily weeping women in stalls and circle and gallery, and one of the brightest divorce cases that had been tried for many years was robbed of much of its sparkle by the lachrymose behaviour of a section of the audience. ``what are we to do?'' asked the prime minister, whose cook had wept into all the breakfast dishes and whose nursemaid had gone out, crying quietly and miserably, to take the children for a walk in the park. ``there is a time for everything,'' said the king; ``there is a time to yield. pass a measure through the two houses depriving women of the right to vote, and bring it to me for the royal assent the day after tomorrow.'' as the minister withdrew, hermann the irascible, who was also nicknamed the wise, gave a profound chuckle. ``there are more ways of killing a cat than by choking it with cream,'' he quoted, ``but i'm not sure,'' he added ``that it's not the best way.'' the unrest-cure on the rack in the railway carriage immediately opposite clovis was a solidly wrought travelling bag, with a carefully written label, on which was inscribed, ``j. p. huddle, the warren, tilfield, near slowborough.'' immediately below the rack sat the human embodiment of the label, a solid, sedate individual, sedately dressed, sedately conversational. even without his conversation (which was addressed to a friend seated by his side, and touched chiefly on such topics as the backwardness of roman hyacinths and the prevalence of measles at the rectory), one could have gauged fairly accurately the temperament and mental outlook of the travelling bag's owner. but he seemed unwilling to leave anything to the imagination of a casual observer, and his talk grew presently personal and introspective. ``i don't know how it is,'' he told his friend, ``i'm not much over forty, but i seem to have settled down into a deep groove of elderly middle-age. my sister shows the same tendency. we like everything to be exactly in its accustomed place; we like things to happen exactly at their appointed times; we like everything to be usual, orderly, punctual, methodical, to a hair's breadth, to a minute. it distresses and upsets us if it is not so. for instance, to take a very trifling matter, a thrush has built its nest year after year in the catkin-tree on the lawn; this year, for no obvious reason, it is building in the ivy on the garden wall. we have said very little about it, but i think we both feel that the change is unnecessary, and just a little irritating.'' ``perhaps,'' said the friend, ``it is a different thrush.'' ``we have suspected that,'' said j. p. huddle, ``and i think it gives us even more cause for annoyance. we don't feel that we want a change of thrush at our time of life; and yet, as i have said, we have scarcely reached an age when these things should make themselves seriously felt.'' ``what you want,'' said the friend, ``is an unrest-cure.'' ``an unrest-cure? i've never heard of such a thing.'' ``you've heard of rest-cures for people who've broken down under stress of too much worry and strenuous living; well, you're suffering from overmuch repose and placidity, and you need the opposite kind of treatment.'' ``but where would one go for such a thing?'' ``well, you might stand as an orange candidate for kilkenny, or do a course of district visiting in one of the apache quarters of paris, or give lectures in berlin to prove that most of wagner's music was written by gambetta; and there's always the interior of morocco to travel in. but, to be really effective, the unrest-cure ought to be tried in the home. how you would do it i haven't the faintest idea.'' it was at this point in the conversation that clovis became galvanized into alert attention. after all, his two days' visit to an elderly relative at slowborough did not promise much excitement. before the train had stopped he had decorated his sinister shirt-cuff with the inscription, ``j. p. huddle, the warren, tilfield, near slowborough.'' * two mornings later mr. huddle broke in on his sister's privacy as she sat reading country life in the morning room. it was her day and hour and place for reading country life, and the intrusion was absolutely irregular; but he bore in his hand a telegram, and in that household telegrams were recognized as happening by the hand of god. this particular telegram partook of the nature of a thunderbolt. ``bishop examining confirmation class in neighbourhood unable stay rectory on account measles invokes your hospitality sending secretary arrange.'' ``i scarcely know the bishop; i've only spoken to him once,'' exclaimed j. p. huddle, with the exculpating air of one who realizes too late the indiscretion of speaking to strange bishops. miss huddle was the first to rally; she disliked thunderbolts as fervently as her brother did, but the womanly instinct in her told her that thunderbolts must be fed. ``we can curry the cold duck,'' she said. it was not the appointed day for curry, but the little orange envelope involved a certain departure from rule and custom. her brother said nothing, but his eyes thanked her for being brave. ``a young gentleman to see you,'' announced the parlour-maid. ``the secretary!'' murmured the huddles in unison; they instantly stiffened into a demeanour which proclaimed that, though they held all strangers to be guilty, they were willing to hear anything they might have to say in their defence. the young gentleman, who came into the room with a certain elegant haughtiness, was not at all huddle's idea of a bishop's secretary; he had not supposed that the episcopal establishment could have afforded such an expensively upholstered article when there were so many other claims on its resources. the face was fleetingly familiar; if he had bestowed more attention on the fellow-traveller sitting opposite him in the railway carriage two days before he might have recognized clovis in his present visitor. ``you are the bishop's secretary?'' asked huddle, becoming consciously deferential. ``his confidential secretary,'' answered clovis. ``you may call me stanislaus; my other name doesn't matter. the bishop and colonel alberti may be here to lunch. i shall be here in any case.'' it sounded rather like the programme of a royal visit. ``the bishop is examining a confirmation class in the neighbourhood, isn't he?'' asked miss huddle. ``ostensibly,'' was the dark reply, followed by a request for a large-scale map of the locality. clovis was still immersed in a seemingly profound study of the map when another telegram arrived. it was addressed to ``prince stanislaus, care of huddle, the warren, etc.'' clovis glanced at the contents and announced: ``the bishop and alberti won't be here till late in the afternoon.'' then he returned to his scrutiny of the map. the luncheon was not a very festive function. the princely secretary ate and drank with fair appetite, but severely discouraged conversation. at the finish of the meal he broke suddenly into a radiant smile, thanked his hostess for a charming repast, and kissed her hand with deferential rapture. miss huddle was unable to decide in her mind whether the action savoured of louis quatorzian courtliness or the reprehensible roman attitude towards the sabine women. it was not her day for having a headache, but she felt that the circumstances excused her, and retired to her room to have as much headache as was possible before the bishop's arrival. clovis, having asked the way to the nearest telegraph office, disappeared presently down the carriage drive. mr. huddle met him in the hall some two hours later, and asked when the bishop would arrive. ``he is in the library with alberti,'' was the reply. ``but why wasn't i told? i never knew he had come!'' exclaimed huddle. ``no one knows he is here,'' said clovis; ``the quieter we can keep matters the better. and on no account disturb him in the library. those are his orders.'' ``but what is all this mystery about? and who is alberti? and isn't the bishop going to have tea?'' ``the bishop is out for blood, not tea.'' ``blood!'' gasped huddle, who did not find that the thunderbolt improved on acquaintance. ``tonight is going to be a great night in the history of christendom,'' said clovis. ``we are going to massacre every jew in the neighbourhood.'' ``to massacre the jews!'' said huddle indignantly. ``do you mean to tell me there's a general rising against them?'' ``no, it's the bishop's own idea. he's in there arranging all the details now.'' ``but---the bishop is such a tolerant, humane man.'' ``that is precisely what will heighten the effect of his action. the sensation will be enormous.'' that at least huddle could believe. ``he will be hanged!'' he exclaimed with conviction. ``a motor is waiting to carry him to the coast, where a steam yacht is in readiness.'' ``but there aren't thirty jews in the whole neighbourhood,'' protested huddle, whose brain, under the repeated shocks of the day, was operating with the uncertainty of a telegraph wire during earthquake disturbances. ``we have twenty-six on our list,'' said clovis, referring to a bundle of notes. ``we shall be able to deal with them all the more thoroughly.'' ``do you mean to tell me that you are meditating violence against a man like sir leon birberry,'' stammered huddle; ``he's one of the most respected men in the country.'' ``he's down on our list,'' said clovis carelessly; ``after all, we've got men we can trust to do our job, so we shan't have to rely on local assistance. and we've got some boy-scouts helping us as auxiliaries.'' ``boy-scouts!'' ``yes; when they understood there was real killing to be done they were even keener than the men.'' ``this thing will be a blot on the twentieth century!'' ``and your house will be the blotting-pad. have you realized that half the papers of europe and the united states will publish pictures of it? by the way, i've sent some photographs of you and your sister, that i found in the library, to the _matin_ and _die woche_; i hope you don't mind. also a sketch of the staircase; most of the killing will probably be done on the staircase.'' the emotions that were surging in j. p. huddle's brain were almost too intense to be disclosed in speech, but he managed to gasp out: ``there aren't any jews in this house.'' ``not at present,'' said clovis. ``i shall go to the police,'' shouted huddle with sudden energy. ``in the shrubbery,'' said clovis, ``are posted ten men, who have orders to fire on any one who leaves the house without my signal of permission. another armed picquet is in ambush near the front gate. the boy-scouts watch the back premises.'' at this moment the cheerful hoot of a motor-horn was heard from the drive. huddle rushed to the hall door with the feeling of a man half-awakened from a nightmare, and beheld sir leon birberry, who had driven himself over in his car. ``i got your telegram,'' he said; ``what's up?'' telegram? it seemed to be a day of telegrams. ``come here at once. urgent. james huddle,'' was the purport of the message displayed before huddle's bewildered eyes. ``i see it all!'' he exclaimed suddenly in a voice shaken with agitation, and with a look of agony in the direction of the shrubbery he hauled the astonished birberry into the house. tea had just been laid in the hall, but the now thoroughly panic-stricken huddle dragged his protesting guest upstairs, and in a few minutes' time the entire household had been summoned to that region of momentary safety. clovis alone graced the tea-table with his presence; the fanatics in the library were evidently too immersed in their monstrous machinations to dally with the solace of teacup and hot toast. once the youth rose, in answer to the summons of the front-door bell, and admitted mr. paul isaacs, shoemaker and parish councillor, who had also received a pressing invitation to the warren. with an atrocious assumption of courtesy, which a borgia could hardly have outdone, the secretary escorted this new captive of his net to the head of the stairway, where his involuntary host awaited him. and then ensued a long ghastly vigil of watching and waiting. once or twice clovis left the house to stroll across to the shrubbery, returning always to the library, for the purpose evidently of making a brief report. once he took in the letters from the evening postman, and brought them to the top of the stairs with punctilious politeness. after his next absence he came half-way up the stairs to make an announcement. ``the boy-scouts mistook my signal, and have killed the postman. i've had very little practice in this sort of thing, you see. another time i shall do better.'' the housemaid, who was engaged to be married to the evening postman, gave way to clamorous grief. ``remember that your mistress has a headache,'' said j. p. huddle. (miss huddle's headache was worse.) clovis hastened downstairs, and after a short visit to the library returned with another message: ``the bishop is sorry to hear that miss huddle has a headache. he is issuing orders that as far as possible no firearms shall be used near the house; any killing that is necessary on the premises will be done with cold steel. the bishop does not see why a man should not be a gentleman as well as a christian.'' that was the last they saw of clovis; it was nearly seven o'clock, and his elderly relative liked him to dress for dinner. but, though he had left them for ever, the lurking suggestion of his presence haunted the lower regions of the house during the long hours of the wakeful night, and every creak of the stairway, every rustle of wind through the shrubbery, was fraught with horrible meaning. at about seven next morning the gardener's boy and the early postman finally convinced the watchers that the twentieth century was still unblotted. ``i don't suppose,'' mused clovis, as an early train bore him townwards, ``that they will be in the least grateful for the unrest-cure.'' the jesting of arlington stringham arlington stringham made a joke in the house of commons. it was a thin house, and a very thin joke; something about the anglo-saxon race having a great many angles. it is possible that it was unintentional, but a fellow-member, who did not wish it to be supposed that he was asleep because his eyes were shut, laughed. one or two of the papers noted ``a laugh'' in brackets, and another, which was notorious for the carelessness of its political news, mentioned ``laughter.'' things often begin in that way. ``arlington made a joke in the house last night,'' said eleanor stringham to her mother; ``in all the years we've been married neither of us has made jokes, and i don't like it now. i'm afraid it's the beginning of the rift in the lute.'' ``what lute?'' said her mother. ``it's a quotation,'' said eleanor. to say that anything was a quotation was an excellent method, in eleanor's eyes, for withdrawing it from discussion, just as you could always defend indifferent lamb late in the season by saying ``it's mutton.'' and, of course, arlington stringham continued to tread the thorny path of conscious humour into which fate had beckoned him. ``the country's looking very green, but, after all, that's what it's there for,'' he remarked to his wife two days later. ``that's very modern, and i daresay very clever, but i'm afraid it's wasted on me,'' she observed coldly. if she had known how much effort it had cost him to make the remark she might have greeted it in a kinder spirit. it is the tragedy of human endeavour that it works so often unseen and unguessed. arlington said nothing, not from injured pride, but because he was thinking hard for something to say. eleanor mistook his silence for an assumption of tolerant superiority, and her anger prompted her to a further gibe. ``you had better tell it to lady isobel. i've no doubt she would appreciate it.'' lady isobel was seen everywhere with a fawn-coloured collie at a time when every one else kept nothing but pekinese, and she had once eaten four green apples at an afternoon tea in the botanical gardens, so she was widely credited with a rather unpleasant wit. the censorious said she slept in a hammock and understood yeats's poems, but her family denied both stories. ``the rift is widening to an abyss,'' said eleanor to her mother that afternoon. ``i should not tell that to any one,'' remarked her mother, after long reflection. ``naturally, i should not talk about it very much,'' said eleanor, ``but why shouldn't i mention it to any one?'' ``because you can't have an abyss in a lute. there isn't room.'' eleanor's outlook on life did not improve as the afternoon wore on. the page-boy had brought from the library _by mere and wold_ instead of _by mere chance_, the book which every one denied having read. the unwelcome substitute appeared to be a collection of nature notes contributed by the author to the pages of some northern weekly, and when one had been prepared to plunge with disapproving mind into a regrettable chronicle of ill-spent lives it was intensely irritating to read ``the dainty yellow-hammers are now with us, and flaunt their jaundiced livery from every bush and hillock.'' besides, the thing was so obviously untrue; either there must be hardly any bushes or hillocks in those parts or the country must be fearfully overstocked with yellow-hammers. the thing scarcely seemed worth telling such a lie about. and the page-boy stood there, with his sleekly brushed and parted hair, and his air of chaste and callous indifference to the desires and passions of the world. eleanor hated boys, and she would have liked to have whipped this one long and often. it was perhaps the yearning of a woman who had no children of her own. she turned at random to another paragraph. ``lie quietly concealed in the fern and bramble in the gap by the old rowan tree, and you may see, almost every evening during early summer, a pair of lesser whitethroats creeping up and down the nettles and hedge-growth that mask their nesting-place.'' the insufferable monotony of the proposed recreation! eleanor would not have watched the most brilliant performance at his majesty's theatre for a single evening under such uncomfortable circumstances, and to be asked to watch lesser whitethroats creeping up and down a nettle ``almost every evening'' during the height of the season struck her as an imputation on her intelligence that was positively offensive. impatiently she transferred her attention to the dinner menu, which the boy had thoughtfully brought in as an alternative to the more solid literary fare. ``rabbit curry,'' met her eye, and the lines of disapproval deepened on her already puckered brow. the cook was a great believer in the influence of environment, and nourished an obstinate conviction that if you brought rabbit and curry-powder together in one dish a rabbit curry would be the result. and clovis and the odious bertie van tahn were coming to dinner. surely, thought eleanor, if arlington knew how much she had had that day to try her, he would refrain from joke-making. at dinner that night it was eleanor herself who mentioned the name of a certain statesman, who may be decently covered under the disguise of x. ``x.,'' said arlington stringham, ``has the soul of a meringue.'' it was a useful remark to have on hand, because it applied equally well to four prominent statesmen of the day, which quadrupled the opportunities for using it. ``meringues haven't got souls,'' said eleanor's mother. ``it's a mercy that they haven't,'' said clovis; ``they would be always losing them, and people like my aunt would get up missions to meringues, and say it was wonderful how much one could teach them and how much more one could learn from them.'' ``what could you learn from a meringue?'' asked eleanor's mother. ``my aunt has been known to learn humility from an ex-viceroy,'' said clovis. ``i wish cook would learn to make curry, or have the sense to leave it alone,'' said arlington, suddenly and savagely. eleanor's face softened. it was like one of his old remarks in the days when there was no abyss between them. it was during the debate on the foreign office vote that stringham made his great remark that ``the people of crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.'' it was not brilliant, but it came in the middle of a dull speech, and the house was quite pleased with it. old gentlemen with bad memories said it reminded them of disraeli. it was eleanor's friend, gertrude ilpton, who drew her attention to arlington's newest outbreak. eleanor in these days avoided the morning papers. ``it's very modern, and i suppose very clever,'' she observed. ``of course it's clever,'' said gertrude; ``all lady isobel's sayings are clever, and luckily they bear repeating.'' ``are you sure it's one of her sayings?'' asked eleanor. ``my dear, i've heard her say it dozens of times.'' ``so that is where he gets his humour,'' said eleanor slowly, and the hard lines deepened round her mouth. the death of eleanor stringham from an overdose of chloral, occurring at the end of a rather uneventful season, excited a certain amount of unobtrusive speculation. clovis, who perhaps exaggerated the importance of curry in the home, hinted at domestic sorrow. and of course arlington never knew. it was the tragedy of his life that he should miss the fullest effect of his jesting. sredni vashtar conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years. the doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by mrs. de ropp, who counted for nearly everything. mrs. de ropp was conradin's cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his imagination. one of these days conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things---such as illnesses and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dulness. without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago. mrs. de ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to herself that she disliked conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him ``for his good'' was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome. conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. such few pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked out---an unclean thing, which should find no entrance. in the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were ready to open with a message not to do this or that, or a reminder that medicines were due, he found little attraction. the few fruit-trees that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking, as though they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an arid waste; it would probably have been difficult to find a market-gardener who would have offered ten shillings for their entire yearly produce. in a forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its walls conradin found a haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a playroom and a cathedral. he had peopled it with a legion of familiar phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from his own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. in one corner lived a ragged-plumaged houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet. further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. this was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small silver. conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession. its very presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. and one day, out of heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion. the woman indulged in religion once a week at a church near by, and took conradin with her, but to him the church service was an alien rite in the house of rimmon. every thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt sredni vashtar, the great ferret. red flowers in their season and scarlet berries in the winter-time were offered at his shrine, for he was a god who laid some special stress on the fierce impatient side of things, as opposed to the woman's religion, which, as far as conradin could observe, went to great lengths in the contrary direction. and on great festivals powdered nutmeg was strewn in front of his hutch, an important feature of the offering being that the nutmeg had to be stolen. these festivals were of irregular occurrence, and were chiefly appointed to celebrate some passing event. on one occasion, when mrs. de ropp suffered from acute toothache for three days, conradin kept up the festival during the entire three days, and almost succeeded in persuading himself that sredni vashtar was personally responsible for the toothache. if the malady had lasted for another day the supply of nutmeg would have given out. the houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of sredni vashtar. conradin had long ago settled that she was an anabaptist. he did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an anabaptist was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable. mrs. de ropp was the ground plan on which he based and detested all respectability. after a while conradin's absorption in the tool-shed began to attract the notice of his guardian. ``it is not good for him to be pottering down there in all weathers,'' she promptly decided, and at breakfast one morning she announced that the houdan hen had been sold and taken away overnight. with her short-sighted eyes she peered at conradin, waiting for an outbreak of rage and sorrow, which she was ready to rebuke with a flow of excellent precepts and reasoning. but conradin said nothing: there was nothing to be said. something perhaps in his white set face gave her a momentary qualm, for at tea that afternoon there was toast on the table, a delicacy which she usually banned on the ground that it was bad for him; also because the making of it ``gave trouble,'' a deadly offence in the middle-class feminine eye. ``i thought you liked toast,'' she exclaimed, with an injured air, observing that he did not touch it. ``sometimes,'' said conradin. in the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the hutch-god. conradin had been wont to chant his praises, tonight be asked a boon. ``do one thing for me, sredni vashtar.'' the thing was not specified. as sredni vashtar was a god he must be supposed to know. and choking back a sob as he looked at that other empty comer, conradin went back to the world he so hated. and every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom, and every evening in the dusk of the tool-shed, conradin's bitter litany went up: ``do one thing for me, sredni vashtar.'' mrs. de ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not cease, and one day she made a further journey of inspection. ``what are you keeping in that locked hutch?'' she asked. ``i believe it's guinea-pigs. i'll have them all cleared away.'' conradin shut his lips tight, but the woman ransacked his bedroom till she found the carefully hidden key, and forthwith marched down to the shed to complete her discovery. it was a cold afternoon, and conradin had been bidden to keep to the house. from the furthest window of the dining-room the door of the shed could just be seen beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there conradin stationed himself. he saw the woman enter, and then be imagined her opening the door of the sacred hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw bed where his god lay hidden. perhaps she would prod at the straw in her clumsy impatience. and conradin fervently breathed his prayer for the last time. but he knew as he prayed that he did not believe. he knew that the woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, but a simple brown ferret in a hutch. and he knew that the woman would triumph always as she triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her pestering and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be proved right. and in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol: sredni vashtar went forth, his thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white. his enemies called for peace, but he brought them death. sredni vashtar the beautiful. and then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the window-pane. the door of the shed still stood ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping by. they were long minutes, but they slipped by nevertheless. he watched the starlings running and flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door. a sour-faced maid came in to lay the table for tea, and still conradin stood and waited and watched. hope had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful patience of defeat. under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he began once again the p<ae>an of victory and devastation. and presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat. conradin dropped on his knees. the great polecat-ferret made its way down to a small brook at the foot of the garden, drank for a moment, then crossed a little plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes. such was the passing of sredni vashtar. ``tea is ready,'' said the sour-faced maid; ``where is the mistress?'' ``she went down to the shed some time ago,'' said conradin. and while the maid went to summon her mistress to tea, conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and proceeded to toast himself a piece of bread. and during the toasting of it and the buttering of it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it, conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick spasms beyond the dining-room door. the loud foolish screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of wondering ejaculations from the kitchen region, the scuttering footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and then, after a lull, the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of those who bore a heavy burden into the house. ``whoever will break it to the poor child? i couldn't for the life of me!'' exclaimed a shrill voice. and while they debated the matter among themselves, conradin made himself another piece of toast. adrian a chapter in acclimatization his baptismal register spoke of him pessimistically as john henry, but he had left that behind with the other maladies of infancy, and his friends knew him under the front-name of adrian. his mother lived in bethnal green, which was not altogether his fault; one can discourage too much history in one's family, but one cannot always prevent geography. and, after all, the bethnal green habit has this virtue---that it is seldom transmitted to the next generation. adrian lived in a roomlet which came under the auspicious constellation of w. how he lived was to a great extent a mystery even to himself; his struggle for existence probably coincided in many material details with the rather dramatic accounts he gave of it to sympathetic acquaintances. all that is definitely known is that he now and then emerged from the struggle to dine at the ritz or carlton, correctly garbed and with a correctly critical appetite. on these occasions he was usually the guest of lucas croyden, an amiable worldling, who had three thousand a year and a taste for introducing impossible people to irreproachable cookery. like most men who combine three thousand a year with an uncertain digestion, lucas was a socialist, and he argued that you cannot hope to elevate the masses until you have brought plovers' eggs into their lives and taught them to appreciate the difference between coupe jacques and mac<e'>doine de fruits. his friends pointed out that it was a doubtful kindness to initiate a boy from behind a drapery counter into the blessedness of the higher catering, to which lucas invariably replied that all kindnesses were doubtful. which was perhaps true. it was after one of his adrian evenings that lucas met his aunt, mrs. mebberley, at a fashionable teashop, where the lamp of family life is still kept burning and you meet relatives who might otherwise have slipped your memory. ``who was that good-looking boy who was dining with you last night?'' she asked. ``he looked much too nice to be thrown away upon you.'' susan mebberley was a charming woman, but she was also an aunt. ``who are his people?'' she continued, when the prot<e'>g<e'>'s name (revised version) had been given her. ``his mother lives at beth---'' lucas checked himself on the threshold of what was perhaps a social indiscretion. ``beth? where is it? it sounds like asia minor. is she mixed up with consular people?'' ``oh, no. her work lies among the poor.'' this was a side-slip into truth. the mother of adrian was employed in a laundry. ``i see,'' said mrs. mebberley, ``mission work of some sort. and meanwhile the boy has no one to look after him. it's obviously my duty to see that he doesn't come to harm. bring him to call on me.'' ``my dear aunt susan,'' expostulated lucas, ``i really know very little about him. he may not be at all nice, you know, on further acquaintance.'' ``he has delightful hair and a weak mouth. i shall take him with me to homburg or cairo.'' ``it's the maddest thing i ever heard of,'' said lucas angrily. ``well, there is a strong strain of madness in our family. if you haven't noticed it yourself all your friends must have.'' ``one is so dreadfully under everybody's eyes at homburg. at least you might give him a preliminary trial at etretat.'' ``and be surrounded by americans trying to talk french? no, thank you. i love americans, but not when they try to talk french. what a blessing it is that they never try to talk english. tomorrow at five you can bring your young friend to call on me.'' and lucas, realizing that susan mebberley was a woman as well as an aunt, saw that she would have to be allowed to have her own way. adrian was duly carried abroad under the mebberley wing; but as a reluctant concession to sanity homburg and other inconveniently fashionable resorts were given a wide berth, and the mebberley establishment planted itself down in the best hotel at dohledorf, an alpine townlet somewhere at the back of the engadine. it was the usual kind of resort, with the usual type of visitors, that one finds over the greater part of switzerland during the summer season, but to adrian it was all unusual. the mountain air, the certainty of regular and abundant meals, and in particular the social atmosphere, affected him much as the indiscriminating fervour of a forcing-house might affect a weed that had strayed within its limits. he had been brought up in a world where breakages were regarded as crimes and expiated as such; it was something new and altogether exhilarating to find that you were considered rather amusing if you smashed things in the right manner and at the recognized hours. susan mebberley had expressed the intention of showing adrian a bit of the world; the particular bit of the world represented by dohledorf began to be shown a good deal of adrian. lucas got occasional glimpses of the alpine sojourn, not from his aunt or adrian, but from the industrious pen of clovis, who was also moving as a satellite in the mebberley constellation. ``the entertainment which susan got up last night ended in disaster. i thought it would. the grobmayer child, a particularly loathsome five-year-old, had appeared as `bubbles' during the early part of the evening, and been put to bed during the interval. adrian watched his opportunity and kidnapped it when the nurse was downstairs, and introduced it during the second half of the entertainment, thinly disguised as a performing pig. it certainly looked very like a pig, and grunted and slobbered just like the real article; no one knew exactly what it was, but every one said it was awfully clever, especially the grobmayers. at the third curtain adrian pinched it too hard, and it yelled `marmar'! i am supposed to be good at descriptions, but don't ask me to describe the sayings and doings of the grobmayers at that moment; it was like one of the angrier psalms set to strauss's music. we have moved to an hotel higher up the valley.'' clovis's next letter arrived five days later, and was written from the hotel steinbock. ``we left the hotel victoria this morning. it was fairly comfortable and quiet---at least there was an air of repose about it when we arrived. before we had been in residence twenty-four hours most of the repose had vanished `like a dutiful bream,' as adrian expressed it. however, nothing unduly outrageous happened till last night, when adrian had a fit of insomnia and amused himself by unscrewing and transposing all the bedroom numbers on his floor. he transferred the bathroom label to the adjoining bedroom door, which happened to be that of frau hofrath schilling, and this morning from seven o'clock onwards the old lady had a stream of involuntary visitors; she was too horrified and scandalized it seems to get up and lock her door. the would-be bathers flew back in confusion to their rooms, and, of course, the change of numbers led them astray again, and the corridor gradually filled with panic-stricken, scantily robed humans, dashing wildly about like rabbits in a ferret-infested warren. it took nearly an hour before the guests were all sorted into their respective rooms, and the frau hofrath's condition was still causing some anxiety when we left. susan is beginning to look a little worried. she can't very well turn the boy adrift, as he hasn't got any money, and she can't send him to his people as she doesn't know where they are. adrian says his mother moves about a good deal and he's lost her address. probably, if the truth were known, he's had a row at home. so many boys nowadays seem to think that quarrelling with one's family is a recognized occupation.'' lucas's next communication from the travellers took the form of a telegram from mrs. mebberley herself. it was sent ``reply prepaid,'' and consisted of a single sentence: ``in heaven's name, where is beth?'' the chaplet a strange stillness hung over the restaurant; it was one of those rare moments when the orchestra was not discoursing the strains of the ice-cream sailor waltz. ``did i ever tell you,'' asked clovis of his friend, ``the tragedy of music at mealtimes? ``it was a gala evening at the grand sybaris hotel, and a special dinner was being served in the amethyst dining-hall. the amethyst dining-hall had almost a european reputation, especially with that section of europe which is historically identified with the jordan valley. its cooking was beyond reproach, and its orchestra was sufficiently highly salaried to be above criticism. thither came in shoals the intensely musical and the almost intensely musical, who are very many, and in still greater numbers the merely musical, who know how tschaikowsky's name is pronounced and can recognize several of chopin's nocturnes if you give them due warning; these eat in the nervous, detached manner of roebuck feeding in the open, and keep anxious ears cocked towards the orchestra for the first hint of a recognizable melody. `` `ah, yes, pagliacci,' they murmur, as the opening strains follow hot upon the soup, and if no contradiction is forthcoming from any better-informed quarter they break forth into subdued humming by way of supplementing the efforts of the musicians. sometimes the melody starts on level terms with the soup, in which case the banqueters contrive somehow to hum between the spoonfuls; the facial expression of enthusiasts who are punctuating potage st. germain with pagliacci is not beautiful, but it should be seen by those who are bent on observing all sides of life. one cannot discount the unpleasant things of this world merely by looking the other way. ``in addition to the aforementioned types the restaurant was patronized by a fair sprinkling of the absolutely non-musical; their presence in the dining-hall could only be explained on the supposition that they had come there to dine. ``the earlier stages of the dinner had worn off. the wine lists had been consulted, by some with the blank embarrassment of a school-boy suddenly called on to locate a minor prophet in the tangled hinterland of the old testament, by others with the severe scrutiny which suggests that they have visited most of the higher-priced wines in their own homes and probed their family weaknesses. the diners who chose their wine in the latter fashion always gave their orders in a penetrating voice, with a plentiful garnishing of stage directions. by insisting on having your bottle pointing to the north when the cork is being drawn, and calling the waiter max, you may induce an impression on your guests which hours of laboured boasting might be powerless to achieve. for this purpose, however, the guests must be chosen as carefully as the wine. ``standing aside from the revellers in the shadow of a massive pillar was an interested spectator who was assuredly of the feast, and yet not in it. monsieur aristide saucourt was the chef of the grand sybaris hotel, and if he had an equal in his profession he had never acknowledged the fact. in his own domain he was a potentate, hedged around with the cold brutality that genius expects rather than excuses in her children; he never forgave, and those who served him were careful that there should be little to forgive. in the outer world, the world which devoured his creations, he was an influence; how profound or how shallow an influence he never attempted to guess. it is the penalty and the safeguard of genius that it computes itself by troy weight in a world that measures by vulgar hundredweights. once in a way the great man would be seized with a desire to watch the effect of his master-efforts, just as the guiding brain of krupp's might wish at a supreme moment to intrude into the firing line of an artillery duel. and such an occasion was the present. for the first time in the history of the grand sybaris hotel, he was presenting to its guests the dish which he had brought to that pitch of perfection which almost amounts to scandal. canetons <a`> la mode d'ambl<`e>ve. in thin gilt lettering on the creamy white of the menu how little those words conveyed to the bulk of the imperfectly educated diners. and yet how much specialized effort had been lavished, how much carefully treasured lore had been ungarnered, before those six words could be written. in the department of deux-s<e`>vres ducklings had lived peculiar and beautiful lives and died in the odour of satiety to furnish the main theme of the dish; champignons, which even a purist for saxon english would have hesitated to address as mushrooms, had contributed their languorous atrophied bodies to the garnishing, and a sauce devised in the twilight reign of the fifteenth louis had been summoned back from the imperishable past to take its part in the wonderful confection. thus far had human effort laboured to achieve the desired result; the rest had been left to human genius---the genius of aristide saucourt. ``and now the moment had arrived for the serving of the great dish, the dish which world-weary grand dukes and market-obsessed money magnates counted among their happiest memories. and at the same moment something else happened. the leader of the highly salaried orchestra placed his violin caressingly against his chin, lowered his eyelids, and floated into a sea of melody. `` `hark!' said most of the diners, `he is playing ``the chaplet.'' ' ``they knew it was `the chaplet' because they had heard it played at luncheon and afternoon tea, and at supper the night before, and had not had time to forget. `` `yes, he is playing ``the chaplet,'' ' they reassured one another. the general voice was unanimous on the subject. the orchestra had already played it eleven times that day, four times by desire and seven times from force of habit, but the familiar strains were greeted with the rapture due to a revelation. a murmur of much humming rose from half the tables in the room, and some of the more overwrought listeners laid down knife and fork in order to be able to burst in with loud clappings at the earliest permissible moment. ``and the canetons <`a> la mode d'ambl<e`>ve? in stupefied, sickened wonder aristide watched them grow cold in total neglect, or suffer the almost worse indignity of perfunctory pecking and listless munching while the banqueters lavished their approval and applause on the music-makers. calves' liver and bacon, with parsley sauce, could hardly have figured more ignominiously in the evening's entertainment. and while the master of culinary art leaned back against the sheltering pillar, choking with a horrible brain-searing rage that could find no outlet for its agony, the orchestra leader was bowing his acknowledgments of the hand-clappings that rose in a storm around him. turning to his colleagues he nodded the signal for an encore. but before the violin had been lifted anew into position there came from the shadow of the pillar an explosive negative. `` `noh! noh! you do not play thot again!' ``the musician turned in furious astonishment. had he taken warning from the look in the other man's eyes he might have acted differently. but the admiring plaudits were ringing in his ears, and he snarled out sharply, `that is for me to decide.' `` `noh! you play thot never again,' shouted the chef, and the next moment he had flung himself violently upon the loathed being who had supplanted him in the world's esteem. a large metal tureen, filled to the brim with steaming soup, had just been placed on a side table in readiness for a late party of diners; before the waiting staff or the guests had time to realize what was happening, aristide had dragged his struggling victim up to the table and plunged his head deep down into the almost boiling contents of the tureen. at the further end of the room the diners were still spasmodically applauding in view of an encore. ``whether the leader of the orchestra died from drowning by soup, or from the shock to his professional vanity, or was scalded to death, the doctors were never wholly able to agree. monsieur aristide saucourt, who now lives in complete retirement, always inclined to the drowning theory.'' the quest an unwonted peace hung over the villa elsinore, broken, however, at frequent intervals, by clamorous lamentations suggestive of bewildered bereavement. the momebys had lost their infant child; hence the peace which its absence entailed; they were looking for it in wild, undisciplined fashion, giving tongue the whole time, which accounted for the outcry which swept through house and garden whenever they returned to try the home coverts anew. clovis, who was temporarily and unwillingly a paying guest at the villa, had been dozing in a hammock at the far end of the garden when mrs. momeby had broken the news to him. ``we've lost baby,'' she screamed. ``do you mean that it's dead, or stampeded, or that you staked it at cards and lost it that way?'' asked clovis lazily. ``he was toddling about quite happily on the lawn,'' said mrs. momeby tearfully, ``and arnold had just come in, and i was asking him what sort of sauce he would like with the asparagus---'' ``i hope he said hollandaise,'' interrupted clovis, with a show of quickened interest, ``because if there's anything i hate---'' ``and all of a sudden i missed baby,'' continued mrs. momeby in a shriller tone. ``we've hunted high and low, in house and garden and outside the gates, and he's nowhere to be seen.'' ``is he anywhere to be heard?'' asked clovis; ``if not, he must be at least two miles away.'' ``but where? and how?'' asked the distracted mother. ``perhaps an eagle or a wild beast has carried him off,'' suggested clovis. ``there aren't eagles and wild beasts in surrey,'' said mrs. momeby, but a note of horror had crept into her voice. ``they escape now and then from travelling shows. sometimes i think they let them get loose for the sake of the advertisement. think what a sensational headline it would make in the local papers: `infant son of prominent nonconformist devoured by spotted hy<ae>na.' your husband isn't a prominent nonconformist, but his mother came of wesleyan stock, and you must allow the newspapers some latitude.'' ``but we should have found his remains,'' sobbed mrs. momeby. ``if the hy<ae>na was really hungry and not merely toying with his food there wouldn't be much in the way of remains. it would be like the small-boy-and-apple story---there ain't going to be no core.'' mrs. momeby turned away hastily to seek comfort and counsel in some other direction. with the selfish absorption of young motherhood she entirely disregarded clovis's obvious anxiety about the asparagus sauce. before she had gone a yard, however, the click of the side gate caused her to pull up sharp. miss gilpet, from the villa peterhof, had come over to hear details of the bereavement. clovis was already rather bored with the story, but mrs. momeby was equipped with that merciless faculty which finds as much joy in the ninetieth time of telling as in the first. ``arnold had just come in; he was complaining of rheumatism---'' ``there are so many things to complain of in this household that it would never have occurred to me to complain of rheumatism,'' murmured clovis. ``he was complaining of rheumatism,'' continued mrs. momeby, trying to throw a chilling inflection into a voice that was already doing a good deal of sobbing and talking at high pressure as well. she was again interrupted. ``there is no such thing as rheumatism,'' said miss gilpet. she said it with the conscious air of defiance that a waiter adopts in announcing that the cheapest-priced claret in the wine-list is no more. she did not proceed, however, to offer the alternative of some more expensive malady, but denied the existence of them all. mrs. momebys temper began to shine out through her grief. ``i suppose you'll say next that baby hasn't really disappeared.'' ``he has disappeared,'' conceded miss gilpet, ``but only because you haven't sufficient faith to find him. it's only lack of faith on your part that prevents him from being restored to you safe and well.'' ``but if he's been eaten in the meantime by a hy<ae>na and partly digested,'' said clovis, who clung affectionately to his wild beast theory, ``surely some ill-effects would be noticeable?'' miss gilpet was rather staggered by this complication of the question. ``i feel sure that a hy<ae>na has not eaten him,'' she said lamely. ``the hy<ae>na may be equally certain that it has. you see, it may have just as much faith as you have, and more special knowledge as to the present whereabouts of the baby.'' mrs. momeby was in tears again. ``if you have faith,'' she sobbed, struck by a happy inspiration, ``won't you find our little erik for us? i am sure you have powers that are denied to us.'' rose-marie gilpet was thoroughly sincere in her adherence to christian science principles; whether she understood or correctly expounded them the learned in such manners may best decide. in the present case she was undoubtedly confronted with a great opportunity, and as she started forth on her vague search she strenuously summoned to her aid every scrap of faith that she possessed. she passed out into the bare and open high road, followed by mrs. momeby's warning, ``it's no use going there, we've searched there a dozen times.'' but rose-marie's ears were already deaf to all things save self-congratulation; for sitting in the middle of the highway, playing contentedly with the dust and some faded buttercups, was a white-pinafored baby with a mop of tow-coloured hair tied over one temple with a pale-blue ribbon. taking first the usual feminine precaution of looking to see that no motor-car was on the distant horizon, rose-marie dashed at the child and bore it, despite its vigorous opposition, in through the portals of elsinore. the child's furious screams had already announced the fact of its discovery, and the almost hysterical parents raced down the lawn to meet their restored offspring. the <ae>sthetic value of the scene was marred in some degree by rose-marie's difficulty in holding the struggling infant, which was borne wrong-end foremost towards the agitated bosom of its family. ``our own little erik come back to us,'' cried the momebys in unison; as the child had rammed its fists tightly into its eye-sockets and nothing could be seen of its face but a widely gaping mouth, the recognition was in itself almost an act of faith. ``is he glad to get back to daddy and mummy again?'' crooned mrs. momeby; the preference which the child was showing for, its dust and buttercup distractions was so marked that the question struck clovis as being unnecessarily tactless. ``give him a ride on the roly-poly,'' suggested the father brilliantly, as the howls continued with no sign of early abatement. in a moment the child had been placed astride the big garden roller and a preliminary tug was given to set it in motion. from the hollow depths of the cylinder came an earsplitting roar, drowning even the vocal efforts of the squalling baby, and immediately afterwards there crept forth a white-pinafored infant with a mop of tow-coloured hair tied over one temple with a pale blue ribbon. there was no mistaking either the features or the lung-power of the new arrival. ``our own little erik,'' screamed mrs. momeby, pouncing on him and nearly smothering him with kisses; ``did he hide in the roly-poly to give us all a big fright?'' this was the obvious explanation of the child's sudden disappearance and equally abrupt discovery. there remained, however, the problem of the interloping baby, which now sat whimpering on the lawn in a disfavour as chilling as its previous popularity had been unwelcome. the momebys glared at it as though it had wormed its way into their short-lived affections by heartless and unworthy pretences. miss gilpet's face took on an ashen tinge as she stared helplessly at the bunched-up figure that had been such a gladsome sight to her eyes a few moments ago. ``when love is over, how little of love even the lover understands,'' quoted clovis to himself. rose-marie was the first to break the silence. ``if that is erik you have in your arms, who is---that?'' ``that, i think, is for you to explain,'' said mrs. momeby stiffly. ``obviously,'' said clovis, ``it's a duplicate erik that your powers of faith called into being. the question is: what are you going to do with him?'' the ashen pallor deepened in rose-marie's cheeks. mrs. momeby clutched the genuine erik closer to her side, as though she feared that her uncanny neighbour might out of sheer pique turn him into a bowl of gold-fish. ``i found him sitting in the middle of the road,'' said rose-marie weakly. ``you can't take him back and leave him there,'' said clovis; ``the highway is meant for traffic, not to be used as a lumber-room for disused miracles.'' rose-marie wept. the proverb ``weep and you weep alone,'' broke down as badly on application as most of its kind. both babies were wailing lugubriously, and the parent momebys had scarcely recovered from their earlier lachrymose condition. clovis alone maintained an unruffled cheerfulness. ``must i keep him always?'' asked rose-marie dolefully. ``not always,'' said clovis consolingly; ``he can go into the navy when he's thirteen.'' rose-marie wept afresh. ``of course,'' added clovis, ``there may be no end of a bother about his birth certificate. you'll have to explain matters to the admiralty, and they're dreadfully hidebound.'' it was rather a relief when a breathless nursemaid from the villa charlottenburg over the way came running across the lawn to claim little percy, who had slipped out of the front gate and disappeared like a twinkling from the high road. and even then clovis found it necessary to go in person to the kitchen to make sure about the asparagus sauce. wratislav the gr<a:>fin's two elder sons had made deplorable marriages. it was, observed clovis, a family habit. the youngest boy, wratislav, who was the black sheep of a rather greyish family, had as yet made no marriage at all. ``there is certainly this much to be said for viciousness,'' said the gr<a:>fin, ``it keeps boys out of mischief.'' ``does it?'' asked the baroness sophie, not by way of questioning the statement, but with a painstaking effort to talk intelligently. it was the one matter in which she attempted to override the decrees of providence, which had obviously never intended that she should talk otherwise than inanely. ``i don't know why i shouldn't talk cleverly,'' she would complain; ``my mother was considered a brilliant conversationalist.'' ``these things have a way of skipping one generation,'' said the gr<a:>fin. ``that seems so unjust,'' said sophie; ``one doesn't object to one's mother having outshone one as a clever talker, but i must admit that i should be rather annoyed if my daughters talked brilliantly.'' ``well, none of them do,'' said the gr<a:>fin consolingly. ``i don't know about that,'' said the baroness, promptly veering round in defence of her offspring. ``elsa said something quite clever on thursday about the triple alliance. something about it being like a paper umbrella, that was all right as long as you didn't take it out in the rain. it's not every one who could say that.'' ``every one has said it; at least every one that i know. but then i know very few people.'' ``i don't think you're particularly agreeable today.'' ``i never am. haven't you noticed that women with a really perfect profile like mine are seldom even moderately agreeable?'' ``i don't think your profile is so perfect as all that,'' said the baroness. ``it would be surprising if it wasn't. my mother was one of the most noted classical beauties of her day.'' ``these things sometimes skip a generation, you know,'' put in the baroness, with the breathless haste of one to whom repartee comes as rarely as the finding of a gold-handled umbrella. ``my dear sophie,'' said the gr<a:>fin sweetly, ``that isn't in the least bit clever; but you do try so hard that i suppose i oughtn't to discourage you. tell me something: has it ever occurred to you that elsa would do very well for wratislav? it's time he married somebody, and why not elsa?'' ``elsa marry that dreadful boy!'' gasped the baroness. ``beggars can't be choosers,'' observed the gr<a:>fin. ``elsa isn't a beggar!'' ``not financially, or i shouldn't have suggested the match. but she's getting on, you know, and has no pretensions to brains or looks or anything of that sort.'' ``you seem to forget that she's my daughter.'' ``that shows my generosity. but, seriously, i don't see what there is against wratislav. he has no debts---at least, nothing worth speaking about.'' ``but think of his reputation! if half the things they say about him are true---'' ``probably three-quarters of them are. but what of it? you don't want an archangel for a son-in-law.'' ``i don't want wratislav. my poor elsa would be miserable with him.'' ``a little misery wouldn't matter very much with her; it would go so well with the way she does her hair, and if she couldn't get on with wratislav she could always go and do good among the poor.'' the baroness picked up a framed photograph from the table. ``he certainly is very handsome,'' she said doubtfully; adding even more doubtfully, ``i dare say dear elsa might reform him.'' the gr<a:>fin had the presence of mind to laugh in the right key. * three weeks later the gr<a:>fin bore down upon the baroness sophie in a foreign bookseller's shop in the graben, where she was, possibly, buying books of devotion, though it was the wrong counter for them. ``i've just left the dear children at the rodenstahls','' was the gr<a:>fin's greeting. ``were they looking very happy?'' asked the baroness. ``wratislav was wearing some new english clothes, so, of course, he was quite happy. i overheard him telling toni a rather amusing story about a nun and a mousetrap, which won't bear repetition. elsa was telling every one else a witticism about the triple alliance being like a paper umbrella---which seems to bear repetition with christian fortitude.'' ``did they seem much wrapped up in each other?'' ``to be candid, elsa looked as if she were wrapped up in a horse-rug. and why let her wear saffron colour?'' ``i always think it goes with her complexion.'' ``unfortunately it doesn't. it stays with it. ugh. don't forget, you're lunching with me on thursday.'' the baroness was late for her luncheon engagement the following thursday. ``imagine what has happened!'' she screamed as she burst into the room. ``something remarkable, to make you late for a meal,'' said the gr<a:>fin. ``elsa has run away with the rodenstahls' chauffeur!'' ``kolossal!'' ``such a thing as that no one in our family has ever done,'' gasped the baroness. ``perhaps he didn't appeal to them in the same way'' suggested the gr<a:>fin judicially. the baroness began to feel that she was not getting the astonishment and sympathy to which her catastrophe entitled her. ``at any rate,'' she snapped, ``now she can't marry wratislav.'' ``she couldn't in any case,'' said the griffin; ``he left suddenly for abroad last night.'' ``for abroad! where?'' ``for mexico, i believe.'' ``mexico! but what for? why mexico?'' ``the english have a proverb, `conscience makes cowboys of us all.' '' ``i didn't know wratislav had a conscience.'' ``my dear sophie, he hasn't. it's other people's consciences that send one abroad in a hurry. let's go and eat.'' the easter egg it was distinctly hard lines for lady barbara, who came of good fighting stock, and was one of the bravest women of her generation, that her son should be so undisguisedly a coward. whatever good qualities lester slaggby may have possessed, and he was in some respects charming, courage could certainly never be imputed to him. as a child he had suffered from childish timidity, as a boy from unboyish funk, and as a youth he had exchanged unreasoning fears for others which were more formidable from the fact of having a carefully-thought-out basis. he was frankly afraid of animals, nervous with firearms, and never crossed the channel without mentally comparing the numerical proportion of life belts to passengers. on horseback he seemed to require as many hands as a hindu god, at least four for clutching the reins, and two more for patting the horse soothingly on the neck. lady barbara no longer pretended not to see her son's prevailing weakness; with her usual courage she faced the knowledge of it squarely, and, mother-like, loved him none the less. continental travel, anywhere away from the great tourist tracks, was a favoured hobby with lady barbara, and lester joined her as often as possible. eastertide usually found her at knobaltheim, an upland township in one of those small princedoms that make inconspicuous freckles on the map of central europe. a long-standing acquaintanceship with the reigning family made her a personage of due importance in the eyes of her old friend the burgomaster, and she was anxiously consulted by that worthy on the momentous occasion when the prince made known his intention of coming in person to open a sanatorium outside the town. all the usual items in a programme of welcome, some of them fatuous and commonplace, others quaint and charming, had been arranged for, but the burgomaster hoped that the resourceful english lady might have something new and tasteful to suggest in the way of loyal greeting. the prince was known to the outside world, if at all, as an old-fashioned reactionary, combating modern progress, as it were, with a wooden sword; to his own people he was known as a kindly old gentleman with a certain endearing stateliness which had nothing of standoffishness about it. knobaltheim was anxious to do its best. lady barbara discussed the matter with lester and one or two acquaintances in her little hotel, but ideas were difficult to come by. ``might i suggest something to the gn<a:>dige frau?'' asked a sallow high-cheekboned lady to whom the englishwoman had spoken once or twice, and whom she had set down in her mind as probably a southern slav. ``might i suggest something for the reception fest?'' she went on, with a certain shy eagerness. ``our little child here, our baby, we will dress him in little white coat, with small wings, as an easter angel, and he will carry a large white easter egg, and inside shall be a basket of plover eggs, of which the prince is so fond, and he shall give it to his highness as easter offering. it is so pretty an idea; we have seen it done once in styria.'' lady barbara looked dubiously at the proposed easter angel, a fair, wooden-faced child of about four years old. she had noticed it the day before in the hotel, and wondered rather how such a tow-headed child could belong to such a dark-visaged couple as the woman and her husband; probably, she thought, an adopted baby, especially as the couple were not young. ``of course gn<a:>dige frau will escort the little child up to the prince,'' pursued the woman; ``but he will be quite good, and do as he is told.'' ``we haf some pluffers' eggs shall come fresh from wien,'' said the husband. the small child and lady barbara seemed equally unenthusiastic about the pretty idea; lester was openly discouraging, but when the burgomaster heard of it he was enchanted. the combination of sentiment and plovers' eggs appealed strongly to his teutonic mind. on the eventful day the easter angel, really quite prettily and quaintly dressed, was a centre of kindly interest to the gala crowd marshalled to receive his highness. the mother was unobtrusive and less fussy than most parents would have been under the circumstances, merely stipulating that she should place the easter egg herself in the arms that had been carefully schooled how to hold the precious burden. then lady barbara moved forward, the child marching stolidly and with grim determination at her side. it had been promised cakes and sweeties galore if it gave the egg well and truly to the kind old gentleman who was waiting to receive it. lester had tried to convey to it privately that horrible smackings would attend any failure in its share of the proceedings, but it is doubtful if his german caused more than an immediate distress. lady barbara had thoughtfully provided herself with an emergency supply of chocolate sweetmeats; children may sometimes be timeservers, but they do not encourage long accounts. as they approached nearer to the princely dais lady barbara stood discreetly aside, and the stolid-faced infant walked forward alone, with staggering but steadfast gait. encouraged by a murmur of elderly approval. lester, standing in the front row of the onlookers, turned to scan the crowd for the beaming faces of the happy parents. in a side-road which led to the railway station he saw a cab; entering the cab with every appearance of furtive haste were the dark-visaged couple who had been so plausibly eager for the ``pretty idea.'' the sharpened instinct of cowardice lit up the situation to him in one swift flash. the blood roared and surged to his head as though thousands of floodgates had been opened in his veins and arteries, and his brain was the common sluice in which all the torrents met. he saw nothing but a blur around him. then the blood ebbed away in quick waves, till his very heart seemed drained and empty, and he stood nervelessly, helplessly, dumbly watching the child, bearing its accursed burden with slow, relentless steps nearer and nearer to the group that waited sheep-like to receive him. a fascinated curiosity compelled lester to turn his head towards the fugitives; the cab had started at hot pace in the direction of the station. the next moment lester was running, running faster than any of those present had ever seen a man run, and---he was not running away. for that stray fraction of his life some unwonted impulse beset him, some hint of the stock he came from, and he ran unflinchingly towards danger. he stooped and clutched at the easter egg as one tries to scoop up the ball in rugby football. what he meant to do with it he had not considered, the thing was to get it. but the child had been promised cakes and sweetmeats if it safely gave the egg into the hands of the kindly old gentleman; it uttered no scream but it held to its charge with limpet grip. lester sank to his knees, tugging savagely at the tightly clasped burden, and angry cries rose from the scandalized onlookers. a questioning, threatening ring formed round him, then shrank back in recoil as he shrieked out one hideous word. lady barbara heard the word and saw the crowd race away like scattered sheep, saw the prince forcibly hustled away by his attendants; also she saw her son lying prone in an agony of overmastering terror, his spasm of daring shattered by the child's unexpected resistance, still clutching frantically, as though for safety, at that white-satin gew-gaw, unable to crawl even from its deadly neighbourhood, able only to scream and scream and scream. in her brain she was dimly conscious of balancing, or striving to balance, the abject shame which had him now in thrall against the one compelling act of courage which had flung him grandly and madly on to the point of danger. it was only for the fraction of a minute that she stood watching the two entangled figures, the infant with its woodenly obstinate face and body tense with dogged resistance, and the boy limp and already nearly dead with a terror that almost stifled his screams; and over them the long gala streamers flapping gaily in the sunshine. she never forgot the scene; but then, it was the last she ever saw. lady barbara carries her scarred face with its sightless eyes as bravely as ever in the world, but at eastertide her friends are careful to keep from her ears any mention of the children's easter symbol. filboid studge, the story of a mouse that helped ``i want to marry your daughter,'' said mark spayley with faltering eagerness. ``i am only an artist with an income of two hundred a year, and she is the daughter of an enormously wealthy man, so i suppose you will think my offer a piece of presumption.'' duncan dullamy, the great company inflator, showed no outward sign of displeasure. as a matter of fact, he was secretly relieved at the prospect of finding even a two-hundred-a-year husband for his daughter leonore. a crisis was rapidly rushing upon him, from which he knew he would emerge with neither money nor credit; all his recent ventures had fallen flat, and flattest of all had gone the wonderful new breakfast food, pipenta, on the advertisement of which he had sunk such huge sums. it could scarcely be called a drug in the market; people bought drugs, but no one bought pipenta. ``would you marry leonore if she were a poor man's daughter?'' asked the man of phantom wealth. ``yes,'' said mark, wisely avoiding the error of over-protestation. and to his astonishment leonore's father not only gave his consent, but suggested a fairly early date for the wedding. ``i wish i could show my gratitude in some way,'' said mark with genuine emotion. ``i'm afraid it's rather like the mouse proposing to help the lion.'' ``get people to buy that beastly muck,'' said dullamy, nodding savagely at a poster of the despised pipenta, ``and you'll have done more than any of my agents have been able to accomplish.'' ``it wants a better name,'' said mark reflectively, ``and something distinctive in the poster line. anyway, i'll have a shot at it.'' three weeks later the world was advised of the coming of a new breakfast food, heralded under the resounding name of ``filboid studge.'' spayley put forth no pictures of massive babies springing up with fungus-like rapidity under its forcing influence, or of representatives of the leading nations of the world scrambling with fatuous eagerness for its possession. one huge sombre poster depicted the damned in hell suffering a new torment from their inability to get at the filboid studge which elegant young fiends held in transparent bowls just beyond their reach. the scene was rendered even more gruesome by a subtle suggestion of the features of leading men and women of the day in the portrayal of the lost souls; prominent individuals of both political parties, society hostesses, well-known dramatic authors and novelists, and distinguished aeroplanists were dimly recognizable in that doomed throng; noted lights of the musical-comedy stage flickered wanly in the shades of the inferno, smiling still from force of habit, but with the fearsome smiling rage of baffled effort. the poster bore no fulsome allusions to the merits of the new breakfast food, but a single grim statement ran in bold letters along its base: ``they cannot buy it now.'' spayley had grasped the fact that people will do things from a sense of duty which they would never attempt as a pleasure. there are thousands of respectable middle-class men who, if you found them unexpectedly in a turkish bath, would explain in all sincerity that a doctor had ordered them to take turkish baths; if you told them in return that you went there because you liked it, they would stare in pained wonder at the frivolity of your motive. in the same way, whenever a massacre of armenians is reported from asia minor, every one assumes that it has been carried out ``under orders'' from somewhere or another; no one seems to think that there are people who might like to kill their neighbours now and then. and so it was with the new breakfast food. no one would have eaten filboid studge as a pleasure, but the grim austerity of its advertisement drove housewives in shoals to the grocers' shops to clamour for an immediate supply. in small kitchens solemn pig-tailed daughters helped depressed mothers to perform the primitive ritual of its preparation. on the breakfast-tables of cheerless parlours it was partaken of in silence. once the womenfolk discovered that it was thoroughly unpalatable, their zeal in forcing it on their households knew no bounds. ``you haven't eaten your filboid studge!'' would be screamed at the appetiteless clerk as he turned weariedly from the breakfast-table, and his evening meal would be prefaced by a warmed-up mess which would be explained as ``your filboid studge that you didn't eat this morning.'' those strange fanatics who ostentatiously mortify themselves, inwardly and outwardly, with health biscuits and health garments, battened aggressively on the new food. earnest spectacled young men devoured it on the steps of the national liberal club. a bishop who did not believe in a future state preached against the poster, and a peer's daughter died from eating too much of the compound. a further advertisement was obtained when an infantry regiment mutinied and shot its officers rather than eat the nauseous mess; fortunately, lord birrell of blatherstone, who was war minister at the moment, saved the situation by his happy epigram, that ``discipline to be effective must be optional.'' filboid studge had become a household word, but dullamy wisely realized that it was not necessarily the last word in breakfast dietary; its supremacy would be challenged as soon as some yet more unpalatable food should be put on the market. there might even be a reaction in favour of something tasty and appetizing, and the puritan austerity of the moment might be banished from domestic cookery. at an opportune moment, therefore, he sold out his interests in the article which had brought him in colossal wealth at a critical juncture, and placed his financial reputation beyond the reach of cavil. as for leonore, who was now an heiress on a far greater scale than ever before, he naturally found her something a vast deal higher in the husband market than a two-hundred-a-year poster designer. mark spayley, the brainmouse who had helped the financial lion with such untoward effect, was left to curse the day he produced the wonder-working poster. ``after all,'' said clovis, meeting him shortly afterwards at his club, ``you have this doubtful consolation, that 'tis not in mortals to countermand success.'' the music on the hill sylvia seltoun ate her breakfast in the morning-room at yessney with a pleasant sense of ultimate victory, such as a fervent ironside might have permitted himself on the morrow of worcester fight. she was scarcely pugnacious by temperament, but belonged to that more successful class of fighters who are pugnacious by circumstance. fate had willed that her life should be occupied with a series of small struggles, usually with the odds slightly against her, and usually she had just managed to come through winning. and now she felt that she had brought her hardest and certainly her most important struggle to a successful issue. to have married mortimer seltoun, ``dead mortimer'' as his more intimate enemies called him, in the teeth of the cold hostility of his family, and in spite of his unaffected indifference to women, was indeed an achievement that had needed some determination and adroitness to carry through; yesterday she had brought her victory to its concluding stage by wrenching her husband away from town and its group of satellite watering-places and ``settling him down,'' in the vocabulary of her kind, in this remote wood-girt manor farm which was his country house. ``you will never get mortimer to go,'' his mother had said carpingly, ``but if he once goes he'll stay; yessney throws almost as much a spell over him as town does. one can understand what holds him to town, but yessney---'' and the dowager had shrugged her shoulders. there was a sombre almost savage wildness about yessney that was certainly not likely to appeal to town-bred tastes, and sylvia, notwithstanding her name, was accustomed to nothing much more sylvan than ``leafy kensington.'' she looked on the country as something excellent and wholesome in its way, which was apt to become troublesome if you encouraged it overmuch. distrust of townlife had been a new thing with her, born of her marriage with mortimer, and she had watched with satisfaction the gradual fading of what she called ``the jermyn-street-look'' in his eyes as the woods and heather of yessney had closed in on them yesternight. her will-power and strategy had prevailed; mortimer would stay. outside the morning-room windows was a triangular slope of turf, which the indulgent might call a lawn, and beyond its low hedge of neglected fuschia bushes a steeper slope of heather and bracken dropped down into cavernous combes overgrown with oak and yew. in its wild open savagery there seemed a stealthy linking of the joy of life with the terror of unseen things. sylvia smiled complacently as she gazed with a school-of-art appreciation at the landscape, and then of a sudden she almost shuddered. ``it is very wild,'' she said to mortimer, who had joined her; ``one could almost think that in such a place the worship of pan had never quite died out.'' ``the worship of pan never has died out,'' said mortimer. ``other newer gods have drawn aside his votaries from time to time, but he is the nature-god to whom all must come back at last. he has been called the father of all the gods, but most of his children have been stillborn.'' sylvia was religious in an honest, vaguely devotional kind of way, and did not like to hear her beliefs spoken of as mere aftergrowths, but it was at least something new and hopeful to hear dead mortimer speak with such energy and conviction on any subject. ``you don't really believe in pan?'' she asked incredulously. ``i've been a fool in most things,'' said mortimer quietly, ``but i'm not such a fool as not to believe in pan when i'm down here. and if you're wise you won't disbelieve in him too boastfully while you're in his country.'' it was not till a week later, when sylvia had exhausted the attractions of the woodland walks round yessney, that she ventured on a tour of inspection of the farm buildings. a farmyard suggested in her mind a scene of cheerful bustle, with churns and flails and smiling dairymaids, and teams of horses drinking knee-deep in duck-crowded ponds. as she wandered among the gaunt grey buildings of yessney manor farm her first impression was one of crushing stillness and desolation, as though she had happened on some lone deserted homestead long given over to owls and cobwebs; then came a sense of furtive watchful hostility, the same shadow of unseen things that seemed to lurk in the wooded combes and coppices. from behind heavy doors and shuttered windows came the restless stamp of hoof or rasp of chain halter, and at times a muffled bellow from some stalled beast. from a distant comer a shaggy dog watched her with intent unfriendly eyes; as she drew near it slipped quietly into its kennel, and slipped out again as noiselessly when she had passed by. a few hens, questing for food under a rick, stole away under a gate at her approach. sylvia felt that if she had come across any human beings in this wilderness of barn and byre they would have fled wraith-like from her gaze. at last, turning a corner quickly, she came upon a living thing that did not fly from her. astretch in a pool of mud was an enormous sow, gigantic beyond the town-woman's wildest computation of swine-flesh, and speedily alert to resent and if necessary repel the unwonted intrusion. it was sylvia's turn to make an unobtrusive retreat. as she threaded her way past rickyards and cowsheds and long blank walls, she started suddenly at a strange sound---the echo of a boy's laughter, golden and equivocal. jan, the only boy employed on the farm, a tow-headed, wizen-faced yokel, was visibly at work on a potato clearing half-way up the nearest hill-side, and mortimer, when questioned, knew of no other probable or possible begetter of the hidden mockery that had ambushed sylvia's retreat. the memory of that untraceable echo was added to her other impressions of a furtive sinister ``something'' that hung around yessney. of mortimer she saw very little; farm and woods and troutstreams seemed to swallow him up from dawn till dusk. once, following the direction she had seen him take in the morning, she came to an open space in a nut copse, further shut in by huge yew trees, in the centre of which stood a stone pedestal surmounted by a small bronze figure of a youthful pan. it was a beautiful piece of workmanship, but her attention was chiefly held by the fact that a newly cut bunch of grapes had been placed as an offering at its feet. grapes were none too plentiful at the manor house, and sylvia snatched the bunch angrily from the pedestal. contemptuous annoyance dominated her thoughts as she strolled slowly homeward, and then gave way to a sharp feeling of something that was very near fright; across a thick tangle of undergrowth a boy's face was scowling at her, brown and beautiful, with unutterably evil eyes. it was a lonely pathway, all pathways round yessney were lonely for the matter of that, and she sped forward without waiting to give a closer scrutiny to this sudden apparition. it was not till she had reached the house that she discovered that she had dropped the bunch of grapes in her flight. ``i saw a youth in the wood today,'' she told mortimer that evening, ``brown-faced and rather handsome, but a scoundrel to look at. a gipsy lad, i suppose.'' ``a reasonable theory,'' said mortimer, ``only there aren't any gipsies in these parts at present.'' ``then who was he?'' asked sylvia, and as mortimer appeared to have no theory of his own she passed on to recount her finding of the votive offering. ``i suppose it was your doing,'' she observed; ``it's a harmless piece of lunacy, but people would think you dreadfully silly if they knew of it.'' ``did you meddle with it in any way?'' asked mortimer. ``i---i threw the grapes away. it seemed so silly,'' said sylvia, watching mortimer's impassive face for a sign of annoyance. ``i don't think you were wise to do that,'' he said reflectively. ``i've heard it said that the wood gods are rather horrible to those who molest them.'' ``horrible perhaps to those that believe in them, but you see i don't,'' retorted sylvia. ``all the same,'' said mortimer in his even, dispassionate tone, ``i should avoid the woods and orchards if i were you, and give a wide berth to the horned beasts on the farm.'' it was all nonsense, of course, but in that lonely wood-girt spot nonsense seemed able to rear a bastard brood of uneasiness. ``mortimer,'' said sylvia suddenly, ``i think we will go back to town some time soon.'' her victory had not been so complete as she had supposed; it had carried her on to ground that she was already anxious to quit. ``i don't think you will ever go back to town,'' said mortimer. he seemed to be paraphrasing his mother's prediction as to himself. sylvia noted with dissatisfaction and some self-contempt that the course of her next afternoon's ramble took her instinctively clear of the network of woods. as to the horned cattle, mortimer's warning was scarcely needed, for she had always regarded them as of doubtful neutrality at the best: her imagination unsexed the most matronly dairy cows and turned them into bulls liable to ``see red'' at any moment. the ram who fed in the narrow paddock below the orchards she had adjudged, after ample and cautious probation, to be of docile temper; today, however, she decided to leave his docility untested, for the usually tranquil beast was roaming with every sign of restlessness from corner to corner of his meadow. a low, fitful piping, as of some reedy flute, was coming from the depth of a neighbouring copse, and there seemed to be some subtle connection between the animal's restless pacing and the wild music from the wood. sylvia turned her steps in an upward direction and climbed the heather-clad slopes that stretched in rolling shoulders high above yessney. she had left the piping notes behind her, but across the wooded combes at her feet the wind brought her another kind of music, the straining bay of hounds in full chase. yessney was just on the outskirts of the devon-and-somerset country, and the hunted deer sometimes came that way. sylvia could presently see a dark body, breasting hill after hill, and sinking again and again out of sight as he crossed the combes, while behind him steadily swelled that relentless chorus, and she grew tense with the excited sympathy that one feels for any hunted thing in whose capture one is not directly interested. and at last he broke through the outermost line of oak scrub and fern and stood panting in the open, a fat september stag carrying a well-furnished head. his obvious course was to drop down to the brown pools of undercombe, and thence make his way towards the red deer's favoured sanctuary, the sea. to sylvia's surprise, however, he turned his head to the upland slope and came lumbering resolutely onward over the heather. ``it will be dreadful,'' she thought, ``the hounds will pull him down under my very eyes.'' but the music of the pack seemed to have died away for a moment, and in its place she heard again that wild piping, which rose now on this side, now on that, as though urging the failing stag to a final effort. sylvia stood well aside from his path, half hidden in a thick growth of whortle bushes, and watched him swing stiffly upward, his flanks dark with sweat, the coarse hair on his neck showing light by contrast. the pipe music shrilled suddenly around her, seeming to come from the bushes at her very feet, and at the same moment the great beast slewed round and bore directly down upon her. in an instant her pity for the hunted animal was changed to wild terror at her own danger; the thick heather roots mocked her scrambling efforts at flight, and she looked frantically downward for a glimpse of oncoming hounds. the huge antler spikes were within a few yards of her, and in a flash of numbing fear she remembered mortimer's warning, to beware of horned beasts on the farm. and then with a quick throb of joy she saw that she was not alone; a human figure stood a few paces aside, knee-deep in the whortle bushes. ``drive it off!'' she shrieked. but the figure made no answering movement. the antlers drove straight at her breast, the acrid smell of the hunted animal was in her nostrils, but her eyes were filled with the horror of something she saw other than her oncoming death. and in her ears rang the echo of a boy's laughter, golden and equivocal. the story of st. vespaluus ``tell me a story,'' said the baroness, staring out despairingly at the rain; it was that light, apologetic sort of rain that looks as if it was going to leave off every minute and goes on for the greater part of the afternoon. ``what sort of story?'' asked clovis, giving his croquet mallet a valedictory shove into retirement. ``one just true enough to be interesting and not true enough to be tiresome,'' said the baroness. clovis rearranged several cushions to his personal solace and satisfaction; he knew that the baroness liked her guests to be comfortable, and he thought it right to respect her wishes in that particular. ``have i ever told you the story of st. vespaluus?'' he asked. ``you've told me stories about grand-dukes and lion-tamers and financiers' widows and a postmaster in herzegovina,'' said the baroness, ``and about an italian jockey and an amateur governess who went to warsaw, and several about your mother, but certainly never anything about a saint.'' ``this story happened a long while ago,'' he said, ``in those uncomfortable piebald times when a third of the people were pagan, and a third christian, and the biggest third of all just followed whichever religion the court happened to profess. there was a certain king called hkrikros, who had a fearful temper and no immediate successor in his own family; his married sister, however, had provided him with a large stock of nephews from which to select his heir. and the most eligible and royally-approved of all these nephews was the sixteen-year-old vespaluus. he was the best looking, and the best horseman and javelin-thrower, and had that priceless princely gift of being able to walk past a supplicant with an air of not having seen him, but would certainly have given something if he had. my mother has that gift to a certain extent; she can go smilingly and financially unscathed through a charity bazaar, and meet the organizers next day with a solicitous `had i but known you were in need of funds' air that is really rather a triumph in audacity. now hkrikros was a pagan of the first water, and kept the worship of the sacred serpents, who lived in a hallowed grove on a hill near the royal palace, up to a high pitch of enthusiasm. the common people were allowed to please themselves, within certain discreet limits, in the matter of private religion, but any official in the service of the court who went over to the new cult was looked down on, literally as well as metaphorically, the looking down being done from the gallery that ran round the royal bear-pit. consequently there was considerable scandal and consternation when the youthful vespaluus appeared one day at a court function with a rosary tucked into his belt, and announced in reply to angry questionings that he had decided to adopt christianity, or at any rate to give it a trial. if it had been any of the other nephews the king would possibly have ordered something drastic in the way of scourging and banishment, but in the case of the favoured vespaluus he determined to look on the whole thing much as a modern father might regard the announced intention of his son to adopt the stage as a profession. he sent accordingly for the royal librarian. the royal library in those days was not a very extensive affair, and the keeper of the king's books had a great deal of leisure on his hands. consequently he was in frequent demand for the settlement of other people's affairs when these strayed beyond normal limits and got temporarily unmanageable. `` `you must reason with prince vespaluus,' said the king, `and impress on him the error of his ways. we cannot have the heir to the throne setting such a dangerous example.' `` `but where shall i find the necessary arguments?' asked the librarian. `` `i give you free leave to pick and choose your arguments in the royal woods and coppices,' said the king; `if you cannot get together some cutting observations and stinging retorts suitable to the occasion you are a person of very poor resource.' ``so the librarian went into the woods and gathered a goodly selection of highly argumentative rods and switches, and then proceeded to reason with vespaluus on the folly and iniquity and above all the unseemliness of his conduct. his reasoning left a deep impression on the young prince, an impression which lasted for many weeks, during which time nothing more was heard about the unfortunate lapse into christianity. then a further scandal of the same nature agitated the court. at a time when he should have been engaged in audibly invoking the gracious protection and patronage of the holy serpents, vespaluus was heard singing a chant in honour of st. odilo of cluny. the king was furious at this new outbreak, and began to take a gloomy view of the situation; vespaluus was evidently going to show a dangerous obstinacy in persisting in his heresy. and yet there was nothing in his appearance to justify such perverseness; he had not the pale eye of the fanatic or the mystic look of the dreamer. on the contrary, he was quite the best-looking boy at court; he had an elegant, well-knit figure, a healthy complexion, eyes the colour of very ripe mulberries, and dark hair, smooth and very well cared for.'' ``it sounds like a description of what you imagine yourself to have been like at the age of sixteen,'' said the baroness. ``my mother has probably been showing you some of my early photographs,'' said clovis. having turned the sarcasm into a compliment, he resumed his story. ``the king had vespaluus shut up in a dark tower for three days, with nothing but bread and water to live on, the squealing and fluttering of bats to listen to, and drifting clouds to watch through one little window slit. the anti-pagan section of the community began to talk portentously of the boy-martyr. the martyrdom was mitigated, as far as the food was concerned, by the carelessness of the tower warden, who once or twice left a portion of his own supper of broiled meat and fruit and wine by mistake in the prince's cell. after the punishment was over, vespaluus was closely watched for any further symptom of religious perversity, for the king was determined to stand no more opposition on so important a matter, even from a favourite nephew. if there was any more of this nonsense, he said, the succession to the throne would have to be altered. ``for a time all went well; the festival of summer sports was approaching, and the young vespaluus was too engrossed in wrestling and foot-running and javelin-throwing competitions to bother himself with the strife of conflicting religious systems. then, however, came the great culminating feature of the summer festival, the ceremonial dance round the grove of the sacred serpents, and vespaluus, as we should say, `sat it out.' the affront to the state religion was too public and ostentatious to be overlooked, even if the king had been so minded, and he was not in the least so minded. for a day and a half he sat apart and brooded, and every one thought he was debating within himself the question of the young prince's death or pardon; as a matter of fact he was merely thinking out the manner of the boys death. as the thing had to be done, and was bound to attract an enormous amount of public attention in any case, it was as well to make it as spectacular and impressive as possible. `` `apart from his unfortunate taste in religions,' said the king, `and his obstinacy in adhering to it, he is a sweet and pleasant youth, therefore it is meet and fitting that he should be done to death by the winged envoys of sweetness.' `` `your majesty means---?' said the royal librarian. `` `i mean,' said the king, `that he shall be stung to death by bees. by the royal bees, of course.' `` `a most elegant death,' said the librarian. `` `elegant and spectacular, and decidedly painful,' said the king; `it fulfills all the conditions that could be wished for.' ``the king himself thought out all the details of the execution ceremony. vespaluus was to be stripped of his clothes, his hands were to be bound behind him, and he was then to be slung in a recumbent position immediately above three of the largest of the royal beehives, so that the least movement of his body would bring him in jarring contact with them. the rest could be safely left to the bees. the death throes, the king computed, might last anything from fifteen to forty minutes, though there was division of opinion and considerable wagering among the other nephews as to whether death might not be almost instantaneous, or, on the other hand, whether it might not be deferred for a couple of hours. anyway, they all agreed, it was vastly preferable to being thrown down into an evil smelling bear-pit and being clawed and mauled to death by imperfectly carnivorous animals. ``it so happened, however, that the keeper of the royal hives had leanings towards christianity himself, and moreover, like most of the court officials, he was very much attached to vespaluus. on the eve of the execution, therefore, he busied himself with removing the stings from all the royal bees; it was a long and delicate operation, but he was an expert beemaster, and by working hard nearly all night he succeeded in disarming all, or almost all, of the hive inmates.'' ``i didn't know you could take the sting from a live bee,'' said the baroness incredulously. ``every profession has its secrets,'' replied clovis; ``if it hadn't it wouldn't be a profession. well, the moment for the execution arrived; the king and court took their places, and accommodation was found for as many of the populace as wished to witness the unusual spectacle. fortunately the royal bee-yard was of considerable dimensions, and was commanded, moreover, by the terraces that ran round the royal gardens; with a little squeezing and the erection of a few platforms room was found for everybody. vespaluus was carried into the open space in front of the hives, blushing and slightly embarrassed, but not at all displeased at the attention which was being centred on him.'' ``he seems to have resembled you in more things than in appearance,'' said the baroness. ``don't interrupt at a critical point in the story,'' said clovis. ``as soon as he had been carefully adjusted in the prescribed position over the hives, and almost before the gaolers had time to retire to a safe distance, vespaluus gave a lusty and well-aimed kick, which sent all three hives toppling one over another. the next moment he was wrapped from head to foot in bees; each individual insect nursed the dreadful and humiliating knowledge that in this supreme hour of catastrophe it could not sting, but each felt that it ought to pretend to. vespaluus squealed and wriggled with laughter, for he was being tickled nearly to death, and now and again he gave a furious kick and used a bad word as one of the few bees that had escaped disarmament got its protest home. but the spectators saw with amazement that he showed no signs of approaching death agony, and as the bees dropped wearily away in clusters from his body his flesh was seen to be as white and smooth as before the ordeal, with a shiny glaze from the honey-smear of innumerable bee-feet, and here and there a small red spot where one of the rare stings had left its mark. it was obvious that a miracle had been performed in his favour, and one loud murmur, of astonishment or exultation, rose from the onlooking crowd. the king gave orders for vespaluus to be taken down to await further orders, and stalked silently back to his midday meal, at which he was careful to eat heartily and drink copiously as though nothing unusual had happened. after dinner he sent for the royal librarian. `` `what is the meaning of this fiasco?' he demanded. `` `your majesty,' said that official, `either there is something radically wrong with the bees---' `` `there is nothing wrong with my bees,' said the king haughtily, `they are the best bees.' `` `or else,' said the librarian, `there is something irremediably right about prince vespaluus.' `` `if vespaluus is right i must be wrong,' said the king. ``the librarian was silent for a moment. hasty speech has been the downfall of many; ill-considered silence was the undoing of the luckless court functionary. ``forgetting the restraint due to his dignity, and the golden rule which imposes repose of mind and body after a heavy meal, the king rushed upon the keeper of the royal books and hit him repeatedly and promiscuously over the head with an ivory chess-board, a pewter wine-flagon, and a brass candlestick; he knocked him violently and often against an iron torch sconce, and kicked him thrice round the banqueting chamber with rapid, energetic kicks. finally, he dragged him down a long passage by the hair of his head and flung him out of a window into the courtyard below.'' ``was he much hurt?'' asked the baroness. ``more hurt than surprised,'' said clovis. ``you see, the king was notorious for his violent temper. however, this was the first time he had let himself go so unrestrainedly on the top of a heavy meal. the librarian lingered for many days---in fact, for all i know, he may have ultimately recovered, but hkrikros died that same evening. vespaluus had hardly finished getting the honey stains off his body before a hurried deputation came to put the coronation oil on his head. and what with the publicly-witnessed miracle and the accession of a christian sovereign, it was not surprising that there was a general scramble of converts to the new religion. a hastily consecrated bishop was overworked with a rush of baptisms in the hastily improvised cathedral of st. odilo. and the boy-martyr-that-might-have-been was transposed in the popular imagination into a royal boy-saint, whose fame attracted throngs of curious and devout sightseers to the capital. vespaluus, who was busily engaged in organizing the games and athletic contests that were to mark the commencement of his reign, had no time to give heed to the religious fervour which was effervescing round his personality; the first indication he had of the existing state of affairs was when the court chamberlain (a recent and very ardent addition to the christian community) brought for his approval the outlines of a projected ceremonial cutting-down of the idolatrous serpent-grove. `` `your majesty will be graciously pleased to cut down the first tree with a specially consecrated axe,' said the obsequious official. `` `i'll cut off your head first, with any axe that comes handy,' said vespaluus indignantly; `do you suppose that i'm going to begin my reign by mortally affronting the sacred serpents? it would be most unlucky.' `` `but your majesty's christian principles?' exclaimed the bewildered chamberlain. `` `i never had any,' said vespaluus; `i used to pretend to be a christian convert just to annoy hkrikros. he used to fly into such delicious tempers. and it was rather fun being whipped and scolded and shut up in a tower all for nothing. but as to turning christian in real earnest, like you people seem to do, i couldn't think of such a thing. and the holy and esteemed serpents have always helped me when i've prayed to them for success in my running and wrestling and hunting, and it was through their distinguished intercession that the bees were not able to hurt me with their stings. it would be black ingratitude to turn against their worship at the very outset of my reign. i hate you for suggesting it.' ``the chamberlain wrung his hands despairingly. `` `but, your majesty,' he wailed, `the people are reverencing you as a saint, and the nobles are being christianized in batches, and neighbouring potentates of that faith are sending special envoys to welcome you as a brother. there is some talk of making you the patron saint of beehives, and a certain shade of honey-yellow has been christened vespalussian gold at the emperor's court. you can't surely go back on all this.' `` `i don't mind being reverenced and greeted and honoured,' said vespaluus; `i don't even mind being sainted in moderation, as long as i'm not expected to be saintly as well. but i wish you clearly and finally to understand that i will not give up the worship of the august and auspicious serpents.' ``there was a world of unspoken bear-pit in the way he uttered those last words, and the mulberry-dark eyes flashed dangerously. `` `a new reign,' said the chamberlain to himself, `but the same old temper.' ``finally, as a state necessity, the matter of the religions was compromised. at stated intervals the king appeared before his subjects in the national cathedral in the character of st. vespaluus, and the idolatrous grove was gradually pruned and lopped away till nothing remained of it. but the sacred and esteemed serpents were removed to a private shrubbery in the royal gardens, where vespaluus the pagan and certain members of his household devoutly and decently worshipped them. that possibly is the reason why the boy-king's success in sports and hunting never deserted him to the end of his days, and that is also the reason why, in spite of the popular veneration for his sanctity, he never received official canonization.'' ``it has stopped raining,'' said the baroness. the way to the dairy the baroness and clovis sat in a much-frequented corner of the park exchanging biographical confidences about the long succession of passers-by. ``who are those depressed-looking young women who have just gone by?'' asked the baroness; ``they have the air of people who have bowed to destiny and are not quite sure whether the salute will be returned.'' ``those,'' said clovis, ``are the brimley bomefields. i dare say you would look depressed if you had been through their experiences.'' ``i'm always having depressing experiences,'' said the baroness, ``but i never give them outward expression. it's as bad as looking one's age. tell me about the brimley bomefields.'' ``well,'' said clovis, ``the beginning of their tragedy was that they found an aunt. the aunt had been there all the time, but they had very nearly forgotten her existence until a distant relative refreshed their memory, by remembering her very distinctly in his will; it is wonderful what the force of example will accomplish. the aunt, who had been unobtrusively poor, became quite pleasantly rich, and the brimley bomefields grew suddenly concerned at the loneliness of her life and took her under their collective wings. she had as many wings around her at this time as one of those beast-things in revelation.'' ``so far i don't see any tragedy from the brimley bomefields' point of view,'' said the baroness. ``we haven't got to it yet,'' said clovis. ``the aunt had been used to living very simply, and had seen next to nothing of what we should consider life, and her nieces didn't encourage her to do much in the way of making a splash with her money. quite a good deal of it would come to them at her death, and she was a fairly old woman, but there was one circumstance which cast a shadow of gloom over the satisfaction they felt in the discovery and acquisition of this desirable aunt: she openly acknowledged that a comfortable slice of her little fortune would go to a nephew on the other side of her family. he was rather a deplorable thing in rotters, and quite hopelessly top-hole in the way of getting through money, but he had been more or less decent to the old lady in her unremembered days, and she wouldn't hear anything against him. at least, she wouldn't pay any attention to what she did hear, but her nieces took care that she should have to listen to a good deal in that line. it seemed such a pity, they said among themselves, that good money should fall into such wortless hands. they habitually spoke of their aunt's money as `good money,' as though other people's aunts dabbled for the most part in spurious currency. ``regularly after the derby, st. leger, and other notable racing events they indulged in audible speculations as to how much money roger had squandered in unfortunate betting transactions. `` `his travelling expenses must come to a big sum,' said the eldest brimley bomefield one day; `they say he attends every race-meeting in england, besides others abroad. i shouldn't wonder if he went all the way to india to see the race for the calcutta sweepstake that one hears so much about.' `` `travel enlarges the mind, my dear christine,' said her aunt. `` `yes, dear aunt, travel undertaken in the right spirit,' agreed christine; `but travel pursued merely as a means towards gambling and extravagant living is more likely to contract the purse than to enlarge the mind. however, as long as roger enjoys himself, i suppose he doesn't care how fast or unprofitably the money goes, or where he is to find more. it seems a pity, that's all.' ``the aunt by that time had begun to talk of something else, and it was doubtful if christine's moralizing had been even accorded a hearing. it was her remark, however---the aunt's remark, i mean---about travel enlarging the mind, that gave the youngest brimley bomefield her great idea for the showing-up of roger. `` `if aunt could only be taken somewhere to see him gambling and throwing away money,' she said, `it would open her eyes to his character more effectually than anything we can say.' `` `my dear veronique,' said her sisters, `we can't go following him to race-meetings.' `` `certainly not to race-meetings,' said veronique, `but we might go to some place where one can look on at gambling without talking part in it.' `` `do you mean monte carlo?' they asked her, beginning to jump rather at the idea. `` `monte carlo is a long way off, and has a dreadful reputation,' said veronique; `i shouldn't like to tell our friends that we were going to monte carlo. but i believe roger usually goes to dieppe about this time of year, and some quite respectable english people go there, and the journey wouldn't be expensive. if aunt could stand the channel crossing the change of scene might do her a lot of good.' ``and that was how the fateful idea came to the brimley bomefields. ``from the very first set-off disaster hung over the expedition, as they afterwards remembered. to begin with, all the brimley bomefields were extremely unwell during the crossing, while the aunt enjoyed the sea air and made friends with all manner of strange travelling companions. then, although it was many years since she had been on the continent, she had served a very practical apprenticeship there as a paid companion, and her knowledge of colloquial french beat theirs to a standstill. it became increasingly difficult to keep under their collective wings a person who knew what she wanted and was able to ask for it and to see that she got it. also, as far as roger was concerned, they drew dieppe blank; it turned out that he was staying at pourville, a little watering-place a mile or two further west. the brimley bomefields discovered that dieppe was too crowded and frivolous, and persuaded the old lady to migrate to the comparative seclusion of pourville. `` `you won't find it dull, you know,' they assured her; `there is a little casino attached to the hotel, and you can watch the people dancing and throwing away their money at _petits chevaux_.' ``it was just before _petits chevaux_ had been supplanted by _boule_. ``roger was not staying in the same hotel, but they knew that the casino would be certain of his patronage on most afternoons and evenings. ``on the first evening of their visit they wandered into the casino after a fairly early dinner, and hovered near the tables. bertie van tahn was staying there at the time, and he described the whole incident to me. the brimley bomefields kept a furtive watch on the doors as though they were expecting some one to turn up, and the aunt got more and more amused and interested watching the little horses whirl round and round the board. `` `do you know, poor little number eight hasn't won for the last thirty-two times,' she said to christine; `i've been keeping count. i shall really have to put five francs on him to encourage him.' `` `come and watch the dancing, dear,' said christine nervously. it was scarcely a part of their strategy that roger should come in and find the old lady backing her fancy at the _petits chevaux_ table. `` `just wait while i put five francs on number eight,' said the aunt, and in another moment her money was lying on the table. the horses commenced to move round; it was a slow race this time, and number eight crept up at the finish like some crafty demon and placed his nose just a fraction in front of number three, who had seemed to be winning easily. recourse had to be had to measurement, and the number eight was proclaimed the winner. the aunt picked up thirty-five francs. after that the brimley bomefields would have had to have used concerted force to get her away from the tables. when roger appeared on the scene she was fifty-two francs to the good; her nieces were hovering forlornly in the background, like chickens that have been hatched out by a duck and are despairingly watching their parent disporting herself in a dangerous and uncongenial element. the supper-party which roger insisted on standing that night in honour of his aunt and the three miss brimley bomefields was remarkable for the unrestrained gaiety of two of the participants and the funereal mirthlessness of the remaining guests. `` `i do not think,' christine confided afterwards to a friend, who re-confided it to bertie van tahn, `that i shall ever be able to touch _p<a^>t<e'> de foie gras_ again. it would bring back memories of that awful evening.' ``for the next two or three days the nieces made plans for returning to england or moving on to some other resort where there was no casino. the aunt was busy making a system for winning at _petits chevaux_. number eight, her first love, had been running rather unkindly for her, and a series of plunges on number five had turned out even worse. `` `do you know, i dropped over seven hundred francs at the tables this afternoon,' she announced cheerfully at dinner on the fourth evening of their visit. `` `aunt! twenty-eight pounds! and you were losing last night too.' `` `oh, i shall get it all back,' she said optimistically; `but not here. these silly little horses are no good. i shall go somewhere where one can play comfortably at roulette. you needn't look so shocked. i've always felt that, given the opportunity, i should be an inveterate gambler, and now you darlings have put the opportunity in my way. i must drink your very good healths. waiter, a bottle of _pontet canet_. ah, it's number seven on the wine list; i shall plunge on number seven tonight. it won four times running this afternoon when i was backing that silly number five.' ``number seven was not in a winning mood that evening. the brimley bomefields, tired of watching disaster from a distance, drew near to the table where their aunt was now an honoured habitu<e'>e, and gazed mournfully at the successive victories of one and five and eight and four, which swept `good money' out of the purse of seven's obstinate backer. the day's losses totalled something very near two thousand francs. `` `you incorrigible gamblers,' said roger chaffingly to them, when he found them at the tables. `` `we are not gambling,' said christine freezingly; 'we are looking on.' `` `i _don't_ think,' said roger knowingly; `of course you're a syndicate and aunt is putting the stakes on for all of you. any one can tell by your looks when the wrong horse wins that you've got a stake on.' ``aunt and nephew had supper alone that night, or at least they would have if bertie hadn't joined them; all the brimley bomefields had headaches. ``the aunt carried them all off to dieppe the next day and set cheerily about the task of winning back some of her losses. her luck was variable; in fact, she had some fair streaks of good fortune, just enough to keep her thoroughly amused with her new distraction; but on the whole she was a loser. the brimley bomefields had a collective attack of nervous prostration on the day when she sold out a quantity of shares in argentine rails. `nothing will ever bring that money back,' they remarked lugubriously to one another. ``veronique at last could bear it no longer, and went home; you see, it had been her idea to bring the aunt on this disastrous expedition, and though the others did not cast the fact verbally in her face, there was a certain lurking reproach in their eyes which was harder to meet than actual upbraidings. the other two remained behind, forlornly mounting guard over their aunt until such time as the waning of the dieppe season should at last turn her in the direction of home and safety. they made anxious calculations as to how little `good money' might, with reasonable luck, be squandered in the meantime. here, however, their reckoning went far astray; the close of the dieppe season merely turned their aunt's thoughts in search of some other convenient gambling resort. `show a cat the way to the dairy---' i forget how the proverb goes on, but it summed up the situation as far as the brimley bomefields' aunt was concerned. she had been introduced to unexplored pleasures, and found them greatly to her liking, and she was in no hurry to forgo the fruits of her newly acquired knowledge. you see, for the first time in her life the old thing was thoroughly enjoying herself; she was losing money, but she had plenty of fun and excitement over the process, and she had enough left to do very comfortably on. indeed, she was only just learning to understand the art of doing oneself well. she was a popular hostess, and in return her fellow-gamblers were always ready to entertain her to dinners and suppers when their luck was in. her nieces, who still remained in attendance on her, with the pathetic unwillingness of a crew to leave a foundering treasure ship which might yet be steered into port, found little pleasure in these bohemian festivities; to see `good money' lavished on good living for the entertainment of a nondescript circle of acquaintances who were not likely to be in any way socially useful to them, did not attune them to a spirit of revelry. they contrived, whenever possible, to excuse themselves from participation in their aunt's deplored gaieties; the brimley bomefield headaches became famous. ``and one day the nieces came to the conclusion that, as they would have expressed it, `no useful purpose would be served' by their continued attendance on a relative who had so thoroughly emancipated herself from the sheltering protection of their wings. the aunt bore the announcement of their departure with a cheerfulness that was almost disconcerting. `` `it's time you went home and had those headaches seen to by a specialist,' was her comment on the situation. ``the homeward journey of the brimley bomefields was a veritable retreat from moscow, and what made it the more bitter was the fact that the moscow, in this case, was not overwhelmed with fire and ashes, but merely extravagantly over-illuminated. ``from mutual friends and acquaintances they sometimes get glimpses of their prodigal relative, who has settled down into a confirmed gambling maniac, living on such salvage of income as obliging moneylenders have left at her disposal. ``so you need not be surprised,'' concluded clovis, ``if they do wear a depressed look in public.'' ``which is veronique?'' asked the baroness. ``the most depressed-looking of the three,'' said clovis. the peace offering ``i want you to help me in getting up a dramatic entertainment of some sort,'' said the baroness to clovis. ``you see, there's been an election petition down here, and a member unseated and no end of bitterness and ill-feeling, and the county is socially divided against itself. i thought a play of some kind would be an excellent opportunity for bringing people together again, and giving them something to think of besides tiresome political squabbles.'' the baroness was evidently ambitious of reproducing beneath her own roof the pacifying effects traditionally ascribed to the celebrated reel of tullochgorum. ``we might do something on the lines of greek tragedy,'' said clovis, after due reflection; ``the return of agamemnon, for instance.'' the baroness frowned. ``it sounds rather reminiscent of an election result, doesn't it?'' ``it wasn't that sort of return,'' explained clovis; ``it was a homecoming.'' ``i thought you said it was a tragedy.'' ``well, it was. he was killed in his bathroom, you know.'' ``oh, now i know the story, of course. do you want me to take the part of charlotte corday?'' ``that's a different story and a different century,'' said clovis; ``the dramatic unities forbid one to lay a scene in more than one century at a time. the killing in this case has to be done by clytemnestra.'' ``rather a pretty name. i'll do that part. i suppose you want to be aga-whatever his name is?'' ``dear no. agamemnon was the father of grown-up children, and probably wore a beard and looked prematurely aged. i shall be his charioteer or bath-attendant, or something decorative of that kind. we must do everything in the sumurun manner, you know.'' ``i don't know,'' said the baroness; ``at least, i should know better if you would explain exactly what you mean by the sumurun manner.'' clovis obliged: ``weird music, and exotic skippings and flying leaps, and lots of drapery and undrapery. particularly undrapery.'' ``i think i told you the county are coming. the county won't stand anything very greek.'' ``you can get over any objection by calling it hygiene, or limb-culture, or something of that sort. after all, every one exposes their insides to the public gaze and sympathy nowadays, so why not one's outside?'' ``my dear boy, i can ask the county to a greek play, or to a costume play, but to a greek-costume play, never. it doesn't do to let the dramatic instinct carry one too far; one must consider one's environment. when one lives among greyhounds one should avoid giving life-like imitations of a rabbit, unless one wants one's head snapped off. remember, i've got this place on a seven years' lease. and then,'' continued the baroness, ``as to skippings and flying leaps; i must ask emily dushford to take a part. she's a dear good thing, and will do anything she's told, or try to; but can you imagine her doing a flying leap under any circumstances?'' ``she can be cassandra, and she need only take flying leaps into the future, in a metaphorical sense.'' ``cassandra; rather a pretty name. what kind of character is she?'' ``she was a sort of advance-agent for calamities. to know her was to know the worst. fortunately for the gaiety of the age she lived in, no one took her very seriously. still, it must have been fairly galling to have her turning up after every catastrophe with a conscious air of `perhaps another time you'll believe what i say.' '' ``i should have wanted to kill her.'' ``as clytemnestra i believe you gratify that very natural wish.'' ``then it has a happy ending, in spite of it being a tragedy?'' ``well, hardly,'' said clovis; ``you see, the satisfaction of putting a violent end to cassandra must have been considerably damped by the fact that she had foretold what was going to happen to her. she probably dies with an intensely irritating `what-did-i-tell-you' smile on her lips. by the way, of course all the killing will be done in the sumurun manner.'' ``please explain again,'' said the baroness, taking out a notebook and pencil. ``little and often, you know, instead of one sweeping blow. you see, you are at your own home, so there's no need to hurry over the murdering as though it were some disagreeable but necessary duty.'' ``and what sort of end do i have? i mean, what curtain do i get?'' ``i suppose you rush into your lover's arms. that is where one of the flying leaps will come in.'' the getting-up and rehearsing of the play seemed likely to cause, in a restricted area, nearly as much heart-burning and ill-feeling as the election petition. clovis, as adapter and stage-manager, insisted, as far as he was able, on the charioteer being quite the most prominent character in the play, and his panther-skin tunic caused almost as much trouble and discussion as clytemnestra's spasmodic succession of lovers, who broke down on probation with alarming uniformity. when the cast was at length fixed beyond hope of reprieve matters went scarcely more smoothly. clovis and the baroness rather overdid the sumurun manner, while the rest of the company could hardly be said to attempt it at all. as for cassandra, who was expected to improvise her own prophecies, she appeared to be as incapable of taking flying leaps into futurity as of executing more than a severely plantigrade walk across the stage. ``woe! trojans, woe to troy!'' was the most inspired remark she could produce after several hours of conscientious study of all the available authorities. ``it's no earthly use foretelling the fall of troy,'' expostulated clovis, ``because troy has fallen before the action of the play begins. and you mustn't say too much about your own impending doom either, because that will give things away too much to the audience.'' after several minutes of painful brain-searching, cassandra smiled reassuringly. ``i know. i'll predict a long and happy reign for george the fifth.'' ``my dear girl,'' protested clovis, ``have you reflected that cassandra specialized in foretelling calamities?'' there was another prolonged pause and another triumphant issue. ``i know. i'll foretell a most disastrous season for the foxhounds.'' ``on no account,'' entreated clovis; ``do remember that all cassandra's predictions came true. the m.f.h. and the hunt secretary are both awfully superstitious, and they are both going to be present.'' cassandra retreated hastily to her bedroom to bathe her eyes before appearing at tea. the baroness and clovis were by this time scarcely on speaking terms. each sincerely wished their respective r<o^>le to be the pivot round which the entire production should revolve, and each lost no opportunity for furthering the cause they had at heart. as fast as clovis introduced some effective bit of business for the charioteer (and he introduced a great many), the baroness would remorselessly cut it out, or more often dovetail it into her own part, while clovis retaliated in a similar fashion whenever possible. the climax came when clytemnestra annexed some highly complimentary lines, which were to have been addressed to the charioteer by a bevy of admiring greek damsels, and put them into the mouth of her lover. clovis stood by in apparent unconcern while the words: ``oh, lovely stripling, radiant as the dawn,'' were transposed into: ``oh, clytemnestra, radiant as the dawn,'' but there was a dangerous glitter in his eye that might have given the baroness warning. he had composed the verse himself, inspired and thoroughly carried away by his subject; he suffered, therefore, a double pang in beholding his tribute deflected from its destined object, and his words mutilated and twisted into what became an extravagant panegyric on the baroness's personal charms. it was from this moment that he became gentle and assiduous in his private coaching of cassandra. the county, forgetting its dissensions, mustered in full strength to witness the much-talked-of production. the protective providence that looks after little children and amateur theatricals made good its traditional promise that everything should be right on the night. the baroness and clovis seemed to have sunk their mutual differences, and between them dominated the scene to the partial eclipse of all the other characters, who, for the most part, seemed well content to remain in the shadow. even agamemnon, with ten years of strenuous life around troy standing to his credit, appeared to be an unobtrusive personality compared with his flamboyant charioteer. but the moment came for cassandra (who had been excused from any very definite outpourings during rehearsals) to support her role by delivering herself of a few well-chosen anticipations of pending misfortune. the musicians obliged with appropriately lugubrious wailings and thumpings, and the baroness seized the opportunity to make a dash to the dressing-room to effect certain repairs in her make-up. cassandra nervous but resolute, came down to the footlights and, like one repeating a carefully learned lesson, flung her remarks straight at the audience: ``i see woe for this fair country if the brood of corrupt, self-seeking, unscrupulous, unprincipled politicians'' (here she named one of the two rival parties in the state) ``continue to infest and poison our local councils and undermine our parliamentary representation; if they continue to snatch votes by nefarious and discreditable means---'' a humming as of a great hive of bewildered and affronted bees drowned her further remarks and wore down the droning of the musicians. the baroness, who should have been greeted on her return to the stage with the pleasing invocation, ``oh, clytemnestra, radiant as the dawn,'' heard instead the imperious voice of lady thistledale ordering her carriage, and something like a storm of open discord going on at the back of the room. * the social divisions in the county healed themselves after their own fashion; both parties found common ground in condemning the baroness's outrageously bad taste and tactlessness. she has been fortunate in sub-letting for the greater part of her seven years' lease. the peace of mowsle barton crefton lockyer sat at his ease, an ease alike of body and soul, in the little patch of ground, half-orchard and half-garden, that abutted on the farmyard at mowsle barton. after the stress and noise of long years of city life, the repose and peace of the hill-begirt homestead struck on his senses with an almost dramatic intensity. time and space seemed to lose their meaning and their abruptness; the minutes slid away into hours, and the meadows and fallows sloped away into middle distance, softly and imperceptibly. wild weeds of the hedgerow straggled into the flower-garden, and wallflowers and garden bushes made counter-raids into farmyard and lane. sleepy-looking hens and solemn preoccupied ducks were equally at home in yard, orchard, or roadway; nothing seemed to belong definitely to anywhere; even the gates were not necessarily to be found on their hinges. and over the whole scene brooded the sense of a peace that had almost a quality of magic in it. in the afternoon you felt that it had always been afternoon, and must always remain afternoon; in the twilight you knew that it could never have been anything else but twilight. crefton cockyer sat at his ease in the rustic seat beneath an old medlar tree, and decided that here was the life-anchorage that his mind had so fondly pictured and that latterly his tired and jarred senses had so often pined for. he would make a permanent lodging-place among these simple friendly people, gradually increasing the modest comforts with which he would like to surround himself, but falling in as much as possible with their manner of living. as he slowly matured this resolution in his mind an elderly woman came hobbling with uncertain gait through the orchard. he recognized her as a member of the farm household, the mother or possibly the mother-in-law of mrs. spurfield, his present landlady, and hastily formulated some pleasant remark to make to her. she forestalled him. ``there's a bit of writing chalked up on the door over yonder. what is it?'' she spoke in a dull impersonal manner, as though the question had been on her lips for years and has best be got rid of. her eyes, however, looked impatiently over crefton's head at the door of a small barn which formed the outpost of a straggling line of farm buildings. ``martha pillamon is an old witch'' was the announcement that met crefton's inquiring scrutiny, and he hesitated a moment before giving the statement wider publicity. for all he knew to the contrary, it might be martha herself to whom he was speaking. it was possible that mrs. spurfield's maiden name had been pillamon. and the gaunt, withered old dame at his side might certainly fulfil local conditions as to the outward aspect of a witch. ``it's something about some one called martha pillamon,'' he explained cautiously. ``what does it say?'' ``it's very disrespectful,'' said crefton; ``it says she's a witch. such things ought not to be written up.'' ``it's true, every word of it,'' said his listener with considerable satisfaction, adding as a special descriptive note of her own, ``the old toad.'' and as she hobbled away through the farmyard she shrilled out in her cracked voice, ``martha pillamon is an old witch!'' ``did you hear what she said?'' mumbled a weak, angry voice somewhere behind crefton's shoulder. turning hastily, he beheld another old crone, thin and yellow and wrinkled, and evidently in a high state of displeasure. obviously this was martha pillamon in person. the orchard seemed to be a favourite promenade for the aged women of the neighbourhood. ``'tis lies, 'tis sinful lies,'' the weak voice went on. ``'tis betsy croot is the old witch. she an' her daughter, the dirty rat. i'll put a spell on 'em, the old nuisances.'' as she limped slowly away her eye caught the chalk inscription on the barn door. ``what's written up there?'' she demanded, wheeling round on crefton. ``vote for soarker,'' he responded, with the craven boldness of the practised peacemaker. the old woman grunted, and her mutterings and her faded red shawl lost themselves gradually among the tree-trunks. crefton rose presently and made his way towards the farmhouse. somehow a good deal of the peace seemed to have slipped out of the atmosphere. the cheery bustle of tea-time in the old farm kitchen, which crefton had found so agreeable on previous afternoons, seemed to have soured today into a certain uneasy melancholy. there was a dull, dragging silence around the board, and the tea itself, when crefton came to taste it, was a flat, lukewarm concoction that would have driven the spirit of revelry out of a carnival. ``it's no use complaining of the tea,'' said mrs. spurfield hastily, as her guest stared with an air of polite inquiry at his cup. ``the kettle won't boil, that's the truth of it.'' crefton turned to the hearth, where an unusually fierce fire was banked up under a big black kettle, which sent a thin wreath of steam from its spout, but seemed otherwise to ignore the action of the roaring blaze beneath it. ``it's been there more than an hour, an' boil it won't,'' said mrs. spurfield, adding, by way of complete explanation, ``we're bewitched.'' ``it's martha pillamon as has done it,'' chimed in the old mother; ``i'll be even with the old toad, i'll put a spell on her.'' ``it must boil in time,'' protested crefton, ignoring the suggestions of foul influences. ``perhaps the coal is damp.'' ``it won't boil in time for supper, nor for breakfast tomorrow morning, not if you was to keep the fire agoing all night for it,'' said mrs. spurfield. and it didn't. the household subsisted on fried and baked dishes, and a neighbour obligingly brewed tea and sent it across in a moderately warm condition. ``i suppose you'll be leaving us now that things has turned up uncomfortable,'' mrs. spurfield observed at breakfast; ``there are folks as deserts one as soon as trouble comes.'' crefton hurriedly disclaimed any immediate change of plans; he observed, however, to himself that the earlier heartiness of manner had in a large measure deserted the household. suspicious looks, sulky silences, or sharp speeches had become the order of the day. as for the old mother, she sat about the kitchen or the garden all day, murmuring threats and spells against martha pillamon. there was something alike terrifying and piteous in the spectacle of these frail old morsels of humanity consecrating their last flickering energies to the task of making each other wretched. hatred seemed to be the one faculty which had survived in undiminished vigour and intensity where all else was dropping into ordered and symmetrical decay. and the uncanny part of it was that some horrid unwholesome power seemed to be distilled from their spite and their cursings. no amount of sceptical explanation could remove the undoubted fact that neither kettle nor saucepan would come to boiling-point over the hottest fire. crefton clung as long as possible to the theory of some defect in the coals, but a wood fire gave the same result, and when a small spirit-lamp kettle, which he ordered out by carrier, showed the same obstinate refusal to allow its contents to boil he felt that he had come suddenly into contact with some unguessed-at and very evil aspect of hidden forces. miles away, down through an opening in the hills, he could catch glimpses of a road where motor-cars sometimes passed, and yet here, so little removed from the arteries of the latest civilization, was a bat-haunted old homestead, where something unmistakably like witchcraft seemed to hold a very practical sway. passing out through the farm garden on his way to the lanes beyond, where he hoped to recapture the comfortable sense of peacefulness that was so lacking around house and hearth---especially hearth---crefton came across the old mother, sitting mumbling to herself in the seat beneath the medlar tree. ``let un sink as swims, let un sink as swims,'' she was repeating over and over again, as a child repeats a half-learned lesson. and now and then she would break off into a shrill laugh, with a note of malice in it that was not pleasant to hear. crefton was glad when he found himself out of earshot, in the quiet and seclusion of the deep overgrown lanes that seemed to lead away to nowhere; one, narrower and deeper than the rest, attracted his footsteps, and he was almost annoyed when he found that it really did act as a miniature roadway to a human dwelling. a forlorn-looking cottage with a scrap of ill-tended cabbage garden and a few aged apple trees stood at an angle where a swift-flowing stream widened out for a space into a decent-sized pond before hurrying away again trough the willows that had checked its course. crefton leaned against a tree-trunk and looked across the swirling eddies of the pond at the humble little homestead opposite him; the only sign of life came from a small procession of dingy-looking ducks that marched in single file down to the water's edge. there is always something rather taking in the way a duck changes itself in an instant from a slow, clumsy waddler of the earth to a graceful, buoyant swimmer of the waters, and crefton waited with a certain arrested attention to watch the leader of the file launch itself on to the surface of the pond. he was aware at the same time of a curious warning instinct that something strange and unpleasant was about to happen. the duck flung itself confidently forward into the water, and rolled immediately under the surface. its head appeared for a moment and went under again, leaving a train of bubbles in its wake, while wings and legs churned the water in a helpless swirl of flapping and kicking. the bird was obviously drowning. crefton thought at first that it had caught itself in some weeds, or was being attacked from below by a pike or water-rat. but no blood floated to the surface, and the wildly bobbing body made the circuit of the pond current without hindrance from any entanglement. a second duck had by this time launched itself into the pond, and a second struggling body rolled and twisted under the surface. there was something peculiarly piteous in the sight of the gasping beaks that showed now and again above the water, as though in terrified protest at this treachery of a trusted and familiar element. crefton gazed with something like horror as a third duck poised itself on the bank and splashed in, to share the fate of the other two. he felt almost relieved when the remainder of the flock, taking tardy alarm from the commotion of the slowly drowning bodies, drew themselves up with tense outstretched necks, and sidled away from the scene of danger, quacking a deep note of disquietude as they went. at the same moment crefton became aware that he was not the only human witness of the scene; a bent and withered old woman, whom he recognized at once as martha pillamon, of sinister reputation, had limped down the cottage path to the water's edge, and was gazing fixedly at the gruesome whirligig of dying birds that went in horrible procession round the pool. presently her voice rang out in a shrill note of quavering rage: ``'tis betsy croot adone it, the old rat. i'll put a spell on her, see if i don't.'' crefton slipped quietly away, uncertain whether or no the old woman had noticed his presence. even before she had proclaimed the guiltiness of betsy croot, the latter's muttered incantation ``let un sink as swims'' had flashed uncomfortably across his mind. but it was the final threat of a retaliatory spell which crowded his mind with misgiving to the exclusion of all other thoughts or fancies. his reasoning powers could no longer afford to dismiss these old-wives' threats as empty bickerings. the household at mowsle barton lay under the displeasure of a vindictive old woman who seemed able to materialize her personal spites in a very practical fashion, and there was no saying what form her revenge for three drowned ducks might not take. as a member of the household crefton might find himself involved in some general and highly disagreeable visitation of martha pillamon's wrath. of course he knew that he was giving way to absurd fancies, but the behaviour of the spirit-lamp kettle and the subsequent scene at the pond had considerably unnerved him. and the vagueness of his alarm added to its terrors; when once you have taken the impossible into your calculations its possibilities become practically limitless. crefton rose at his usual early hour the next morning, after one of the least restful nights he had spent at the farm. his sharpened senses quickly detected that subtle atmosphere of things-being-not-altogether well that hangs over a stricken household. the cows had been milked, but they stood huddled about in the yard, waiting impatiently to be driven out afield, and the poultry kept up an importunate querulous reminder of deferred feeding-time; the yard pump, which usually made discordant music at frequent intervals during the early morning, was today ominously silent. in the house itself there was a coming and going of scuttering footsteps, a rushing and dying away of hurried voices, and long, uneasy stillnesses. crefton finished his dressing and made his way to the head of a narrow staircase. he could hear a dull, complaining voice, a voice into which an awed hush had crept, and recognized the speaker as mrs. spurfield. ``he'll go away, for sure,'' the voice was saying; ``there are those as runs away from one as soon as real misfortune shows itself.'' crefton felt that he probably was one of ``those,'' and that there were moments when it was advisable to be true to type. he crept back to his room, collected and, packed his few belongings, placed the money due for his lodgings on a table, and made his way out by a back door into the yard. a mob of poultry surged expectantly towards him; shaking off their interested attentions he hurried along under cover of cowstall, piggery, and hayricks till he reached the lane at the back of the farm. a few minutes' walk, which only the burden of his portmanteaux restrained from developing into an undisguised run, brought him to a main road, where the early carrier soon overtook him and sped him onward to the neighbouring town. at a bend of the road he caught a last glimpse of the farm; the old gabled roofs and thatched barns, the straggling orchard, and the medlar tree, with its wooden seat, stood out with an almost spectral clearness in the early morning light, and over it all brooded that air of magic possession which crefton had once mistaken for peace. the bustle and roar of paddington station smote on his ears with a welcome protective greeting. ``very bad for our nerves, all this rush and hurry,'' said a fellow-traveller; ``give me the peace and quiet of the country.'' crefton mentally surrendered his share of the desired commodity. a crowded, brilliantly over-lighted music-hall, where an exuberant rendering of ``1812'' was being given by a strenuous orchestra, came nearest to his ideal of a nerve sedative. the talking-out of tarrington ``heavens!'' exclaimed the aunt of clovis, ``here's some one i know bearing down on us. i can't remember his name, but he lunched with us once in town. tarrington---yes, that's it. he's heard of the picnic i'm giving for the princess, and he'll cling to me like a lifebelt till i give him an invitation; then he'll ask if he may bring all his wives and mothers and sisters with him. that's the worst of these small watering-places; one can't escape from anybody.'' ``i'll fight a rearguard action for you if you like to do a bolt now,'' volunteered clovis; ``you've a clear ten yards start if you don't lose time.'' the aunt of clovis responded gamely to the suggestion, and churned away like a nile steamer, with a long brown ripple of pekingese spaniel trailing in her wake. ``pretend you don't know him,'' was her parting advice, tinged with the reckless courage of the non-combatant. the next moment the overtures of an affably disposed gentleman were being received by clovis with a ``silent-upon-a-peak-in-darien'' stare which denoted an absence of all previous acquaintance with the object scrutinized. ``i expect you don't know me with my moustache,'' said the new-comer; ``i've only grown it during the last two months.'' ``on the contrary,'' said clovis, ``the moustache is the only thing about you that seemed familiar to me. i felt certain that i had met it somewhere before.'' ``my name is tarrington,'' resumed the candidate for recognition. ``a very useful kind of name,'' said clovis; ``with a name of that sort no one would blame you if you did nothing in particular heroic or remarkable, would they? and yet if you were to raise a troop of light horse in a moment of national emergency, `tarrington's light horse' would sound quite appropriate and pulse-quickening; whereas if you were called spoopin, for instance, the thing would be out of the question. no one, even in a moment of national emergency, could possibly belong to spoopin's horse.'' the new-comer smiled weakly, as one who is not to be put off by mere flippancy, and began again with patient persistence: ``i think you ought to remember my name---'' ``i shall,'' said clovis, with an air of immense sincerity. ``my aunt was asking me only this morning to suggest names for four young owls she's just had sent her as pets. i shall call them all tarrington; then if one or two of them die or fly away, or leave us in any of the ways that pet owls are prone to, there will be always one or two left to carry on your name. and my aunt won't _let_ me forget it; she will always be asking `have the tarringtons had their mice?' and questions of that sort. she says if you keep wild creatures in captivity you ought to see after their wants, and of course she's quite right there.'' ``i met you at luncheon at your aunt's house once---'' broke in mr. tarrington, pale but still resolute. ``my aunt never lunches,'' said clovis; ``she belongs to the national anti-luncheon league, which is doing quite a lot of good work in a quiet, unobtrusive way. a subscription of half a crown per quarter entitles you to go without ninety-two luncheons.'' ``this must be something new,'' exclaimed tarrington. ``it's the same aunt that i've always had,'' said clovis coldly. ``i perfectly well remember meeting you at a luncheon-party given by your aunt,'' persisted tarrington, who was beginning to flush an unhealthy shade of mottled pink. ``what was there for lunch?'' asked clovis. ``oh, well, i don't remember that---'' ``how nice of you to remember my aunt when you can no longer recall the names of the things you ate. now my memory works quite differently. i can remember a menu long after i've forgotten the hostess that accompanied it. when i was seven years old i recollect being given a peach at a garden-party by some duchess or other; i can't remember a thing about her, except that i imagine our acquaintance must have been of the slightest, as she called me a `nice little boy,' but i have unfading memories of that peach. it was one of those exuberant peaches that meet you halfway, so to speak, and are all over you in a moment. it was a beautiful unspoiled product of a hothouse, and yet it managed quite successfully to give itself the airs of a compote. you had to bite it and imbibe it at the same time. to me there has always been something charming and mystic in the thought of that delicate velvet globe of fruit, slowly ripening and warming to perfection through the long summer days and perfumed nights, and then coming suddenly athwart my life in the supreme moment of its existence. i can never forget it, even if i wished to. and when i had devoured all that was edible of it, there still remained the stone, which a heedless, thoughtless child would doubtless have thrown away; i put it down the neck of a young friend who was wearing a very _d<e'>collet<e'>_ sailor suit. i told him it was a scorpion, and from the way he wriggled and screamed he evidently believed it, though where the silly kid imagined i could procure a live scorpion at a garden-party i don't know. altogether, that peach is for me an unfading and happy memory---'' the defeated tarrington had by this time retreated out of earshot, comforting himself as best he might with the reflection that a picnic which included the presence of clovis might prove a doubtfully agreeable experience. ``i shall certainly go in for a parliamentary career,'' said clovis to himself as he turned complacently to rejoin his aunt. ``as a talker-out of inconvenient bills i should be invaluable.'' the hounds of fate in the fading light of a close dull autumn afternoon martin stoner plodded his way along muddy lanes and rut-seamed cart tracks that led he knew not exactly whither. somewhere in front of him, he fancied, lay the sea, and towards the sea his footsteps seemed persistently turning; why he was struggling wearily forward to that goal he could scarcely have explained, unless he was possessed by the same instinct that turns a hard-pressed stag cliffward in its last extremity. in his case the hounds of fate were certainly pressing him with unrelenting insistence; hunger, fatigue, and despairing hopelessness had numbed his brain, and he could scarcely summon sufficient energy to wonder what underlying impulse was driving him onward. stoner was one of those unfortunate individuals who seem to have tried everything; a natural slothfulness and improvidence had always intervened to blight any chance of even moderate success, and now he was at the end of his tether, and there was nothing more to try. desperation had not awakened in him any dormant reserve of energy; on the contrary, a mental torpor grew up round the crisis of his fortunes. with the clothes he stood up in, a halfpenny in his pocket, and no single friend or acquaintance to turn to, with no prospect either of a bed for the night or a meal for the morrow, martin stoner trudged stolidly forward, between moist hedgerows and beneath dripping trees, his mind almost a blank, except that he was subconsciously aware that somewhere in front of him lay the sea. another consciousness obtruded itself now and then---the knowledge that he was miserably hungry. presently he came to a halt by an open gateway that led into a spacious and rather neglected farm-garden; there was little sign of life about, and the farm-house at the further end of the garden looked chill and inhospitable. a drizzling rain, however, was setting in, and stoner thought that here perhaps he might obtain a few minutes' shelter and buy a glass of milk with his last remaining coin. he turned slowly and wearily into the garden and followed a narrow, flagged path up to a side door. before he had time to knock the door opened and a bent, withered-looking old man stood aside in the doorway as though to let him pass in. ``could i come in out of the rain?'' stoner began, but the old man interrupted him. ``come in, master tom. i knew you would come back one of these days.'' stoner lurched across the threshold and stood staring uncomprehendingly at the other. ``sit down while i put you out a bit of supper,'' said the old man with quavering eagerness. stoner's legs gave way from very weariness, and he sank inertly into the arm-chair that had been pushed up to him. in another minute he was devouring the cold meat, cheese, and bread, that had been placed on the table at his side. ``you'm little changed these four years,'' went on the old man, in a voice that sounded to stoner as something in a dream, far away and inconsequent; ``but you'll find us a deal changed, you will. there's no one about the place same as when you left; nought but me and your old aunt. i'll go and tell her that you'm come; she won't be seeing you, but she'll let you stay right enough. she always did say if you was to come back you should stay, but she'd never set eyes on you or speak to you again.'' the old man placed a mug of beer on the table in front of stoner and then hobbled away down a long passage. the drizzle of rain had changed to a furious lashing downpour, which beat violently against door and windows. the wanderer thought with a shudder of what the sea-shore must look like under this drenching rainfall, with night beating down on all sides. he finished the food and beer and sat numbly waiting for the return of his strange host. as the minutes ticked by on the grandfather clock in the corner a new hope began to flicker and grow in the young man's mind; it was merely the expansion of his former craving for food and a few minutes' rest into a longing to find a night's shelter under this seemingly hospitable roof. a clattering of footsteps down the passage heralded the old farm servant's return. ``the old missus won't see you, master tom, but she says you are to stay. 'tis right enough, seeing the farm will be yours when she be put under earth. i've had a fire lit in your room, master tom, and the maids has put fresh sheets on to the bed. you'll find nought changed up there. maybe you'm tired and would like to go there now.'' without a word martin stoner rose heavily to his feet and followed his ministering angel along a passage, up a short creaking stair, along another passage, and into a large room lit with a cheerfully blazing fire. there was but little furniture, plain, old-fashioned, and good of its kind; a stuffed squirrel in a case and a wall-calendar of four years ago were about the only symptoms of decoration. but stoner had eyes for little else than the bed, and could scarce wait to tear his clothes off him before rolling in a luxury of weariness into its comfortable depths. the hounds of fate seemed to have checked for a brief moment. in the cold light of morning stoner laughed mirthlessly as he slowly realized the position in which he found himself. perhaps he might snatch a bit of breakfast on the strength of his likeness to this other missing neer-do-well, and get safely away before any one discovered the fraud that had been thrust on him. in the room downstairs he found the bent old man ready with a dish of bacon and fried eggs for ``master tom's'' breakfast, while a hard-faced elderly maid brought in a teapot and poured him out a cup of tea. as he sat at the table a small spaniel came up and made friendly advances. ``'tis old bowker's pup,'' explained the old man, whom the hard-faced maid had addressed as george. ``she was main fond of you; never seemed the same after you went away to australee. she died 'bout a year agone. 'tis her pup.'' stoner found it difficult to regret her decease; as a witness for identification she would have left something to be desired. ``you'll go for a ride, master tom?'' was the next startling proposition that came from the old man. ``we've a nice little roan cob that goes well in saddle. old biddy is getting a bit up in years, though 'er goes well still, but i'll have the little roan saddled and brought round to door.'' ``i've got no riding things,'' stammered the castaway, almost laughing as he looked down at his one suit of well-worn clothes. ``master tom,'' said the old man earnestly, almost with an offended air, ``all your things is just as you left them. a bit of airing before the fire an' they'll be all right. 'twill be a bit of a distraction like, a little riding and wild-fowling now and agen. you'll find the folk around here has hard and bitter minds towards you. they hasn't forgotten nor forgiven. no one'll come nigh you, so you'd best get what distraction you can with horse and dog. they'm good company, too.'' old george hobbled away to give his orders, and stoner, feeling more than ever like one in a dream, went upstairs to inspect ``master tom's'' wardrobe. a ride was one of the pleasures dearest to his heart, and there was some protection against immediate discovery of his imposture in the thought that none of tom's aforetime companions were likely to favour him with a close inspection. as the interloper thrust himself into some tolerably well-fitting riding cords he wondered vaguely what manner of misdeed the genuine tom had committed to set the whole countryside against him. the thud of quick, eager hoofs on damp earth cut short his speculations. the roan cob had been brought up to the side door. ``talk of beggars on horseback,'' thought stoner to himself, as he trotted rapidly along the muddy lanes where he had tramped yesterday as a down-at-heel outcast; and then he flung reflection indolently aside and gave himself up to the pleasure of a smart canter along the turf-grown side of a level stretch of road. at an open gateway he checked his pace to allow two carts to turn into a field. the lads driving the carts found time to give him a prolonged stare, and as he passed on he heard an excited voice call out, ``'tis tom prike! i knowed him at once; showing himself here agen, is he?'' evidently the likeness which had imposed at close quarters on a doddering old man was good enough to mislead younger eyes at a short distance. in the course of his ride he met with ample evidence to confirm the statement that local folk had neither forgotten nor forgiven the bygone crime which had come to him as a legacy from the absent tom. scowling looks, mutterings, and nudgings greeted him whenever he chanced upon human beings; ``bowker's pup,'' trotting placidly by his side, seemed the one element of friendliness in a hostile world. as he dismounted at the side door he caught a fleeting glimpse of a gaunt, elderly woman peering at him from behind the curtain of an upper window. evidently this was his aunt by adoption. over the ample midday meal that stood in readiness for him stoner was able to review the possibilities of his extraordinary situation. the real tom, after four years of absence, might suddenly turn up at the farm, or a letter might come from him at any moment. again, in the character of heir to the farm, the false tom might be called on to sign documents, which would be an embarrassing predicament. or a relative might arrive who would not imitate the aunt's attitude of aloofness. all these things would mean ignominious exposure. on the other hand, the alternatives was the open sky and the muddy lanes that led down to the sea. the farm offered him, at any rate, a temporary refuge from destitution; farming was one of the many things he had ``tried,'' and he would be able to do a certain amount of work in return for the hospitality to which he was so little entitled. ``will you have cold pork for your supper,'' asked the hard-faced maid, as she cleared the table, ``or will you have it hotted up?'' ``hot, with onions,'' said stoner. it was the only time in his life that he had made a rapid decision. and as he gave the order he knew that he meant to stay. stoner kept rigidly to those portions of the house which seemed to have been allotted to him by a tacit treaty of delimitation. when he took part in the farm-work it was as one who worked under orders and never initiated them. old george, the roan cob, and bowker's pup were his sole companions in a world that was otherwise frostily silent and hostile. of the mistress of the farm he saw nothing. once, when he knew she had gone forth to church, he made a furtive visit to the farm parlour in an endeavour to glean some fragmentary knowledge of the young man whose place he had usurped, and whose ill-repute he had fastened on himself. there were many photographs hung on the walls, or stuck in prim frames, but the likeness he sought for was not among them. at last, in an album thrust out of sight, he came across what he wanted. there was a whole series, labelled ``tom,'' a podgy child of three, in a fantastic frock, an awkward boy of about twelve, holding a cricket bat as though be loathed it, a rather good-looking youth of eighteen with very smooth, evenly parted hair, and, finally, a young man with a somewhat surly dare-devil expression. at this last portrait stoner looked with particular interest; the likeness to himself was unmistakable. from the lips of old george, who was garrulous enough on most subjects, he tried again and again to learn something of the nature of the offence which shut him off as a creature to be shunned and hated by hiss fellow-men. ``what do the folk around here say about me?'' he asked one day as they were walking home from an outlying field. the old man shook his head. ``they be bitter agen you, mortal bitter. ay, 'tis a sad business, a sad business.'' and never could he be got to say anything more enlightening. on a clear frosty evening, a few days before the festival of christmas, stoner stood in a corner of the orchard which commanded a wide view of the countryside. here and there he could see the twinkling dots of lamp or candle glow which told of human homes where the goodwill and jollity of the season held their sway. behind him lay the grim, silent farm-house, where no one ever laughed, where even a quarrel would have seemed cheerful. as he turned to look at the long grey front of the gloom-shadowed building, a door opened and old george came hurriedly forth. stoner heard his adopted name called in a tone of strained anxiety. instantly be knew that something untoward had happened, and with a quick revulsion of outlook his sanctuary became in his eyes a place of peace and contentment, from which he dreaded to be driven. ``master tom,'' said the old man in a hoarse whisper, ``you must slip away quiet from here for a few days. michael ley is back in the village, an' he swears to shoot you if he can come across you. he'll do it, too, there's murder in the look of him. get away under cover of night, 'tis only for a week or so, he won't be here longer.'' ``but where am i to go?'' stammered stoner, who had caught the infection of the old man's obvious terror. ``go right away along the coast to punchford and keep hid there. when michael's safe gone i'll ride the roan over to the green dragon at punchford; when you see the cob stabled at the green dragon 'tis a sign you may come back agen.'' ``but---'' began stoner hesitatingly. ``'tis all right for money,'' said the other; ``the old missus agrees you'd best do as i say, and she's given me this.'' the old man produced three sovereigns and some odd silver. stoner felt more of a cheat than ever as he stole away that night from the back gate of the farm with the old woman's money in his pocket. old george and bowker's pup stood watching him a silent farewell from the yard. he could scarcely fancy that he would ever come back, and he felt a throb of compunction for those two humble friends who would wait wistfully for his return. some day perhaps the real tom would come back, and there would be wild wonderment among those simple farm folks as to the identity of the shadowy guest they had harboured under their roof. for his own fate he felt no immediate anxiety; three pounds goes but little way in the world when there is nothing behind it, but to a man who has counted his exchequer in pennies it seems a good starting-point. fortune had done him a whimsically kind turn when last he trod these lanes as a hopeless adventurer, and there might yet be a chance of his finding some work and making a fresh start; as he got further from the farm his spirits rose higher. there was a sense of relief in regaining once more his lost identity and ceasing to be the uneasy ghost of another. he scarcely bothered to speculate about the implacable enemy who had dropped from nowhere into his life; since that life was now behind him one unreal item the more made little difference. for the first time for many months he began to hum a careless light-hearted refrain. then there stepped out from the shadow of an overhanging oak tree a man with a gun. there was no need to wonder who he might be; the moonlight falling on his white set face revealed a glare of human hate such as stoner in the ups and downs of his wanderings had never seen before. he sprang aside in a wild effort to break through the hedge that bordered the lane, but the tough branches held him fast. the hounds of fate had waited for him in those narrow lanes, and this time they were not to be denied. the recessional clovis sat in the hottest zone but two of a turkish bath, alternately inert in statuesque contemplation and rapidly man<oe>uvring a fountain-pen over the pages of a note-book. ``don't interrupt me with your childish prattle,'' he observed to bertie van tahn, who had slung himself languidly into a neighbouring chair and looked conversationally inclined; ``i'm writing death-less verse.'' bertie looked interested. ``i say, what a boon you would be to portrait painters if you really got to be notorious as a poetry writer. if they couldn't get your likeness hung in the academy as `clovis sangrail, esq., at work on his latest poem,' they could slip you in as a study of the nude or orpheus descending into jermyn street. they always complain that modern dress handicaps them, whereas a towel and a fountain-pen---'' ``it was mrs. packletide's suggestion that i should write this thing,'' said clovis, ignoring the bypaths to fame that bertie van tahn was pointing out to him. ``you see, loona bimberton had a coronation ode accepted by the _new infancy_, a paper that has been started with the idea of making the _new age_ seem elder and hidebound. `so clever of you, dear loona,' the packletide remarked when she had read it; `of course, any one could write a coronation ode, but no one else would have thought of doing it.' loona protested that these things were extremely difficult to do, and gave us to understand that they were more or less the province of a gifted few. now the packletide has been rather decent to me in many ways, a sort of financial ambulance, you know, that carries you off the field when you're hard hit, which is a frequent occurrence with me, and i've no use whatever for loona bimberton, so i chipped in and said i could turn out that sort of stuff by the square yard if i gave my mind to it. loona said i couldn't, and we got bets on, and between you and me i think the money's fairly safe. of course, one of the conditions of the wager is that the thing has to be published in something or other, local newspapers barred; but mrs. packletide has endeared herself by many little acts of thoughtfulness to the editor of the _smoky chimney_, so if i can hammer out anything at all approaching the level of the usual ode output we ought to be all right. so far i'm getting along so comfortably that i begin to be afraid that i must be one of the gifted few.'' ``it's rather late in the day for a coronation ode, isn't it?'' said bertie. ``of course,'' said clovis; ``this is going to be a durbar recessional, the sort of thing that you can keep by you for all time if you want to.'' ``now i understand your choice of a place to write it in,'' said bertie van tahn, with the air of one who has suddenly unravelled a hitherto obscure problem; ``you want to get the local temperature.'' ``i came here to get freedom from the inane interruptions of the mentally deficient,'' said clovis, ``but it seems i asked too much of fate.'' bertie van tahn prepared to use his towel as a weapon of precision, but reflecting that he had a good deal of unprotected coast-line himself, and that clovis was equipped with a fountain-pen as well as a towel, he relapsed pacifically into the depths of his chair. ``may one hear extracts from the immortal work?'' he asked. ``i promise that nothing that i hear now shall prejudice me against borrowing a copy of the _smoky chimney_ at the right moment.'' ``it's rather like casting pearls into a trough,'' remarked clovis pleasantly, ``but i don't mind reading you bits of it. it begins with a general dispersal of the durbar participants: `` `back to their homes in himalayan heights the stale pale elephants of cutch behar roll like great galleons on a tideless sea---' '' ``i don't believe cutch behar is anywhere near the himalayan region,'' interrupted bertie. ``you ought to have an atlas on hand when you do this sort of thing; and why stale and pale?'' ``after the late hours and the excitement, of course,'' said clovis; ``and i said their _homes_ were in the himalayas. you can have himalayan elephants in cutch behar, i suppose, just as you have irish-bred horses running at ascot.'' ``you said they were going back to the himalayas,'' objected bertie. ``well, they would naturally be sent home to recuperate. it's the usual thing out there to turn elephants loose in the hills, just as we put horses out to grass in this country.'' clovis could at least flatter himself that he had infused some of the reckless splendour of the east into his mendacity. ``is it all going to be in blank verse?'' asked the critic. ``of course not; `durbar' comes at the end of the fourth line.'' ``that seems so cowardly; however, it explains why you pitched on cutch behar.'' ``there is more connection between geographical place-names and poetical inspiration than is generally recognized; one of the chief reasons why there are so few really great poems about russia in our language is that you can't possibly get a rhyme to names like smolensk and tobolsk and minsk.'' clovis spoke with the authority of one who has tried. ``of course, you could rhyme omsk with tomsk,'' he continued; ``in fact, they seem to be there for that purpose, but the public wouldn't stand that sort of thing indefinitely.'' ``the public will stand a good deal,'' said bertie malevolently, ``and so small a proportion of it knows russian that you could always have an explanatory footnote asserting that the last three letters in smolensk are not pronounced. it's quite as believable as your statement about putting elephants out to grass in the himalayan range.'' ``i've got rather a nice bit,'' resumed clovis with unruffled serenity, ``giving an evening scene on the outskirts of a jungle village: `` `where the coiled cobra in the gloaming gloats, and prowling panthers stalk the wary goats.' '' ``there is practically no gloaming in tropical countries,'' said bertie indulgently; ``but i like the masterly reticence with which you treat the cobra's motive for gloating. the unknown is proverbially the uncanny. i can picture nervous readers of the _smoky chimney_ keeping the light turned on in their bedrooms all night out of sheer sickening uncertainty as to _what_ the cobra might have been gloating about.'' ``cobras gloat naturally,'' said clovis, ``just as wolves are always ravening from mere force of habit, even after they've hopelessly overeaten themselves. i've got a fine bit of colour painting later on,'' he added, ``where i describe the dawn coming up over the brahmaputra river: `` `the amber dawn-drenched east with sun-shafts kissed, stained sanguine apricot and amethyst, o'er the washed emerald of the mango groves hangs in a mist of opalescent mauves, while painted parrot-flights impinge the haze with scarlet, chalcedon and chrysoprase.'' ' ``i've never seen the dawn come up over the brahmaputra river,'' said bertie, ``so i can't say if it's a good description of the event, but it sounds more like an account of an extensive jewel robbery. anyhow, the parrots give a good useful touch of local colour. i suppose you've introduced some tigers into the scenery? an indian landscape would have rather a bare, unfinished look without a tiger or two in the middle distance.'' ``i've got a hen-tiger somewhere in the poem,'' said clovis, hunting through his notes. ``here she is: `` `the tawny tigress 'mid the tangled teak drags to her purring cubs' enraptured ears the harsh death-rattle in the pea-fowl's beak, a jungle lullaby of blood and tears.' '' bertie van tahn rose hurriedly from his recumbent position and made for the glass door leading into the next compartment. ``i think your idea of home life in the jungle is perfectly horrid,'' he said. ``the cobra was sinister enough, but the improvised rattle in the tiger-nursery is the limit. if you're going to make me turn hot and cold all over i may as well go into the steam room at once.'' ``just listen to this line,'' said clovis; ``it would make the reputation of any ordinary poet: `` `and overhead the pendulum-patient punkah, parent of stillborn breeze.' '' ``most of your readers will think `punkah' is a kind of iced drink or half-time at polo,'' said bertie, and disappeared into the steam. * the _smoky chimney_ duly published the ``recessional,'' but it proved to be its swan song, for the paper never attained to another issue. loona bimberton gave up her intention of attending the durbar and went into a nursing-home on the sussex downs. nervous breakdown after a particularly strenuous season was the usually accepted explanation, but there are three or four people who know that she never really recovered from the dawn breaking over the brahmaputra river. a matter of sentiment it was the eve of the great race, and scarcely a member of lady susan's house-party had as yet a single bet on. it was one of those unsatisfactory years when one horse held a commanding market position, not by reason of any general belief in its crushing superiority, but because it was extremely difficult to pitch on any other candidate to whom to pin ones faith. peradventure ii was the favourite, not in the sense of being a popular fancy, but by virtue of a lack of confidence in any one of his rather undistinguished rivals. the brains of club-land were much exercised in seeking out possible merit where none was very obvious to the naked intelligence, and the house-party at lady susan's was possessed by the same uncertainty and irresolution that infected wider circles. ``it is just the time for bringing off a good coup,'' said bertie van tahn. ``undoubtedly. but with what?'' demanded clovis for the twentieth time. the women of the party were just as keenly interested in the matter, and just as helplessly perplexed; even the mother of clovis, who usually got good racing information from her dressmaker, confessed herself fancy free on this occasion. colonel drake, who was professor of military history at a minor cramming establishment, was the only person who had a definite selection for the event, but as his choice varied every three hours he was worse than useless as an inspired guide. the crowning difficulty of the problem was that it could only be fitfully and furtively discussed. lady susan disapproved of racing. she disapproved of many things; some people went as far as to say that she disapproved of most things. disapproval was to her what neuralgia and fancy needlework are to many other women. she disapproved of early morning tea and auction bridge, of ski-ing and the two-step, of the russian ballet and the chelsea arts club ball, of the french policy in morocco and the british policy everywhere. it was not that she was particularly strict or narrow in her views of life, but she had been the eldest sister of a large family of self-indulgent children, and her particular form of indulgence had consisted in openly disapproving of the foibles of the others. unfortunately the hobby had grown up with her. as she was rich, influential, and very, very kind, most people were content to count their early tea as well lost on her behalf. still, the necessity for hurriedly dropping the discussion of an enthralling topic, and suppressing all mention of it during her presence on the scene, was an affliction at a moment like the present, when time was slipping away and indecision was the prevailing note. after a lunch-time of rather strangled and uneasy conversation, clovis managed to get most of the party together at the further end of the kitchen gardens, on the pretext of admiring the himalayan pheasants. he had made an important discovery. motkin, the butler, who (as clovis expressed it) had grown prematurely grey in lady susan's service, added to his other excellent qualities an intelligent interest in matters connected with the turf. on the subject of the forthcoming race he was not illuminating, except in so far that he shared the prevailing unwillingness to see a winner in peradventure ii. but where he outshone all the members of the house-party was in the fact that he had a second cousin who was head stable-lad at a neighbouring racing establishment, and usually gifted with much inside information as to private form and possibilities. only the fact of her ladyship having taken it into her head to invite a house-party for the last week of may had prevented mr. motkin from paying a visit of consultation to his relative with respect to the big race; there was still time to cycle over if he could get leave of absence for the afternoon on some specious excuse. ``let's jolly well hope he does,'' said bertie van tahn; ``under the circumstances a second cousin is almost as useful as second sight.'' ``that stable ought to know something, if knowledge is to be found anywhere,'' said mrs. packletide hopefully. ``i expect you'll find he'll echo my fancy for motorboat,'' said colonel drake. at this moment the subject had to be hastily dropped. lady susan bore down upon them, leaning on the arm of clovis's mother, to whom she was confiding the fact that she disapproved of the craze for pekingese spaniels. it was the third thing she had found time to disapprove of since lunch, without counting her silent and permanent disapproval of the way clovis's mother did her hair. ``we have been admiring the himalayan pheasants,'' said mrs. packletide suavely. ``they went off to a bird-show at nottingham early this morning,'' said lady susan, with the air of one who disapproves of hasty and ill-considered lying. ``their house, i mean; such perfect roosting arrangements, and all so clean,'' resumed mrs. packletide, with an increased glow of enthusiasm. the odious bertie van tahn was murmuring audible prayers for mrs. packletide's ultimate estrangement from the paths of falsehood. ``i hope you don't mind dinner being a quarter of an hour late tonight,'' said lady susan; ``motkin has had an urgent summons to go and see a sick relative this afternoon. he wanted to bicycle there, but i am sending him in the motor.'' ``how very kind of you! of course we don't mind dinner being put off.'' the assurances came with unanimous and hearty sincerity. at the dinner-table that night an undercurrent of furtive curiosity directed itself towards motkin's impassive countenance. one or two of the guests almost expected to find a slip of paper concealed in their napkins, bearing the name of the second cousin's selection. they had not long to wait. as the butler went round with the murmured question, ``sherry?'' he added in an even lower tone the cryptic words, ``better not.'' mrs. packletide gave a start of alarm, and refused the sherry; there seemed some sinister suggestion in the butler's warning, as though her hostess had suddenly become addicted to the borgia habit. a moment later the explanation flashed on her that ``better not'' was the name of one of the runners in the big race. clovis was already pencilling it on his cuff, and colonel drake, in his turn, was signalling to every one in hoarse whispers and dumb-show the fact that he had all along fancied ``b.n.'' early next morning a sheaf of telegrams went townward, representing the market commands of the house-party and servants' hall. it was a wet afternoon, and most of lady susan's guests hung about the hall, waiting apparently for the appearance of tea, though it was scarcely yet due. the advent of a telegram quickened every one into a flutter of expectancy; the page who brought the telegram to clovis waited with unusual alertness to know if there might be an answer. clovis read the message and gave an exclamation of annoyance. ``no bad news, i hope,'' said lady susan. every one else knew that the news was not good. ``it's only the result of the derby,'' he blurted out; ``sadowa won; an utter outsider.'' ``sadowa!'' exclaimed lady susan; ``you don't say so! how remarkable! it's the first time i've ever backed a horse; in fact i disapprove of horse-racing, but just for once in a way i put money on this horse, and it's gone and won.'' ``may i ask,'' said mrs. packletide, amid the general silence, ``why you put your money on this particular horse? none of the sporting prophets mentioned it as having an outside chance.'' ``well,'' said lady susan, ``you may laugh at me, but it was the name that attracted me. you see, i was always mixed up with the franco-german war; i was married on the day that the war was declared, and my eldest child was born the day that peace was signed, so anything connected with the war has always interested me. and when i saw there was a horse running in the derby called after one of the battles in the franco-german war, i said i _must_ put some money on it, for once in a way, though i disapprove of racing. and it's actually won.'' there was a general groan. no one groaned more deeply than the professor of military history. the secret sin of septimus brope ``who and what is mr. brope?'' demanded the aunt of clovis suddenly. mrs. riversedge, who had been snipping off the heads of defunct roses, and thinking of nothing in particular, sprang hurriedly to mental attention. she was one of those old-fashioned hostesses who consider that one ought to know something about one's guests, and that the something ought to be to their credit. ``i believe he comes from leighton buzzard,'' she observed by way of preliminary explanation. ``in these days of rapid and convenient travel,'' said clovis, who was dispersing a colony of green-fly with visitations of cigarette smoke, ``to come from leighton buzzard does not necessarily denote any great strength of character. it might only mean mere restlessness. now if he had left it under a cloud, or as a protest against the incurable and heartless frivolity of its inhabitants, that would tell us something about the man and his mission in life.'' ``what does he do?'' pursued mrs. troyle magisterially. ``he edits the _cathedral monthly_,'' said her hostess, ``and he's enormously learned about memorial brasses and transepts and the influence of byzantine worship on modern liturgy, and all those sort of things. perhaps he is just a little bit heavy and immersed in one range of subjects, but it takes all sorts to make a good house-party, you know. you don't find him _too_ dull, do you?'' ``dulness i could overlook,'' said the aunt of clovis: ``what i cannot forgive is his making love to my maid.'' ``my dear mrs. troyle,'' gasped the hostess, ``what an extraordinary idea! i assure you mr. brope would not dream of doing such a thing.'' ``his dreams are a matter of indifference to me; for all i care his slumbers may be one long indiscretion of unsuitable erotic advances, in which the entire servants' hall may be involved. but in his waking hours he shall not make love to my maid. it's no use arguing about it, i'm firm on the point.'' ``but you must be mistaken,'' persisted mrs. riversedge; ``mr. brope would be the last person to do such a thing.'' ``he is the first person to do such a thing, as far as my information goes, and if i have any voice in the matter he certainly shall be the last. of course, i am not referring to respectably-intentioned lovers.'' ``i simply cannot think that a man who writes so charmingly and informingly about transepts and byzantine influences would behave in such an unprincipled manner,'' said mrs. riversedge; ``what evidence have you that he's doing anything of the sort? i don't want to doubt your word, of course, but we mustn't be too ready to condemn him unheard, must we?'' ``whether we condemn him or not, he has certainly not been unheard. he has the room next to my dressing-room, and on two occasions, when i dare say he thought i was absent, i have plainly heard him announcing through the wall, `i love you, florrie.' those partition walls upstairs are very thin; one can almost hear a watch ticking in the next room.'' ``is your maid called florence?'' ``her name is florinda.'' ``what an extraordinary name to give a maid!'' ``i did not give it to her; she arrived in my service already christened.'' ``what i mean is,'' said mrs. riversedge, ``that when i get maids with unsuitable names i call them jane; they soon get used to it.'' ``an excellent plan,'' said the aunt of clovis coldly; ``unfortunately i have got used to being called jane myself. it happens to be my name.'' she cut short mrs. riversedge's flood of apologies by abruptly remarking: ``the question is not whether i'm to call my maid florinda, but whether mr. brope is to be permitted to call her florrie. i am strongly of opinion that he shall not.'' ``he may have been repeating the words of some song,'' said mrs. riversedge hopefully; ``there are lots of those sorts of silly refrains with girls' names,'' she continued, turning to clovis as a possible authority on the subject. `` `you mustn't call me mary---' '' ``i shouldn't think of doing so,'' clovis assured her; ``in the first place, i've always understood that your name was henrietta; and then i hardly know you well enough to take such a liberty.'' ``i mean there's a _song_ with that refrain,'' hurriedly explained mrs. riversedge, ``and there's `rhoda, rhoda kept a pagoda,' and `maisie is a daisy,' and heaps of others. certainly it doesn't sound like mr. brope to be singing such songs, but i think we ought to give him the benefit of the doubt.'' ``i had already done so,'' said mrs. troyle, ``until further evidence came my way. she shut her lips with the resolute finality of one who enjoys the blessed certainty of being implored to open them again. ``further evidence!'' exclaimed her hostess; ``do tell me!'' ``as i was coming upstairs after breakfast mr. brope was just passing my room. in the most natural way in the world a piece of paper dropped out of a packet that he held in his hand and fluttered to the ground just at my door. i was going to call out to him `you've dropped something,' and then for some reason i held back and didn't show myself till he was safely in his room. you see it occurred to me that i was very seldom in my room just at that hour, and that florinda was almost always there tidying up things about that time. so i picked up that innocent-looking piece of paper.'' mrs. troyle paused again, with the self-applauding air of one who has detected an asp lurking in an apple-charlotte. mrs. riversedge snipped vigorously at the nearest rose bush, incidentally decapitating a viscountess folkestone that was just coming into bloom. ``what was on the paper?'' she asked. ``just the words in pencil, `i love you, florrie,' and then underneath, crossed out with a faint line, but perfectly plain to read, `meet me in the garden by the yew.' '' ``there _is_ a yew tree at the bottom of the garden,'' admitted mrs. riversedge. ``at any rate he appears to be truthful,'' commented clovis. ``to think that a scandal of this sort should be going on under my roof!'' said mrs. riversedge indignantly. ``i wonder why it is that scandal seems so much worse under a roof,'' observed clovis; ``i've always regarded it as a proof of the superior delicacy of the cat tribe that it conducts most of its scandals above the slates.'' ``now i come to think of it,'' resumed mrs. riversedge, ``there are things about mr. brope that i've never been able to account for. his income, for instance: he only gets two hundred a year as editor of the _cathedral monthly_, and i know that his people are quite poor, and he hasn't any private means. yet he manages to afford a flat somewhere in westminster, and he goes abroad to bruges and those sorts of places every year, and always dresses well, and gives quite nice luncheon-parties in the season. you can't do all that on two hundred a year, can you?'' ``does he write for any other papers?'' queried mrs. troyle. ``no, you see he specializes so entirely on liturgy and ecclesiastical architecture that his field is rather restricted. he once tried the _sporting and dramatic_ with an article on church edifices in famous fox-hunting centres, but it wasn't considered of sufficient general interest to be accepted. no, i don't see how he can support himself in his present style merely by what be writes.'' ``perhaps he sells spurious transepts to american enthusiasts,'' suggested clovis. ``how could you sell a transept?'' said mrs. riversedge; ``such a thing would be impossible.'' ``whatever he may do to eke out his income,'' interrupted mrs. troyle, ``he is certainly not going to fill in his leisure moments by making love to my maid.'' ``of course not,'' agreed her hostess; ``that must be put a stop to at once. but i don't quite know what we ought to do.'' ``you might put a barbed wire entanglement round the yew tree as a precautionary measure,'' said clovis. ``i don't think that the disagreeable situation that has arisen is improved by flippancy,'' said mrs. riversedge; ``a good maid is a treasure---'' ``i am sure i don't know what i should do without florinda,'' admitted mrs. troyle; ``she understands my hair. i've long ago given up trying to do anything with it myself. i regard one's hair as i regard husbands: as long as one is seen together in public one's private divergences don't matter. surely that was the luncheon gong.'' septimus brope and clovis had the smoking-room to themselves after lunch. the former seemed restless and preoccupied, the latter quietly observant. ``what is a lorry?'' asked septimus suddenly; ``i don't mean the thing on wheels, of course i know what that is, but isn't there a bird with a name like that, the larger form of a lorikeet?'' ``i fancy it's a lory, with one `r,' '' said clovis lazily, ``in which case it's no good to you.'' septimus brope stared in some astonishment. ``how do you mean, no good to me?'' he asked, with more than a trace of uneasiness in his voice. ``won't rhyme with florrie,'' explained clovis briefly. septimus sat upright in his chair, with unmistakable alarm on his face. ``how did you find out? i mean how did you know i was trying to get a rhyme to florrie?'' he asked sharply. ``i didn't know,'' said clovis, ``i only guessed. when you wanted to turn the prosaic lorry of commerce into a feathered poem flitting through the verdure of a tropical forest, i knew you must be working up a sonnet, and florrie was the only female name that suggested itself as rhyming with lorry.'' septimus still looked uneasy. ``i believe you know more,'' be said. clovis laughed quietly, but said nothing. ``how much do you know?'' septimus asked desperately. ``the yew tree in the garden,'' said clovis. ``there! i felt certain i'd dropped it somewhere. but you must have guessed something before. look here, you have surprised my secret. you won't give me away, will you? it is nothing to be ashamed of, but it wouldn't do for the editor of the _cathedral monthly_ to go in openly for that sort of thing, would it?'' ``well, i suppose not,'' admitted clovis. ``you see,'' continued septimus, ``i get quite a decent lot of money out of it. i could never live in the style i do on what i get as editor of the _cathedral monthly_.'' clovis was even more startled than septimus had been earlier in the conversation, but he was better skilled in repressing surprise. ``do you mean to say you get money out of---florrie?'' he asked. ``not out of florrie, as yet,'' said septimus; ``in fact, i don't mind saying that i'm having a good deal of trouble over florrie. but there are a lot of others.'' clovis's cigarette went out. ``this is very interesting,'' he said slowly. and then, with septimus brope's next words, illumination dawned on him. ``there are heaps of others; for instance: `` `cora with the lips of coral, you and i will never quarrel.' that was one of my earliest successes, and it still brings me in royalties. and then there is---`esmeralda, when i first beheld her,' and `fair teresa, how i love to please her,' both of those have been fairly popular. and there is one rather dreadful one,'' continued septimus, flushing deep carmine, ``which has brought me in more money than any of the others: `` `lively little lucie with her naughty nez retrousee'. of course, i loathe the whole lot of them; in fact, i'm rapidly becoming something of a woman-hater under their influence, but i can't afford to disregard the financial aspect of the matter. and at the same time you can understand that my position as an authority on ecclesiastical architecture and liturgical subjects would be weakened, if not altogether ruined, if it once got about that i was the author of `cora with the lips of coral' and all the rest of them.'' clovis had recovered sufficiently to ask in a sympathetic, if rather unsteady, voice what was the special trouble with ``florrie.'' ``i can't get her into lyric shape, try as i will,'' said septimus mournfully. ``you see, one has to work in a lot of sentimental, sugary compliment with a catchy rhyme, and a certain amount of personal biography or prophecy. they've all of them got to have a long string of past successes recorded about them, or else you've got to foretell blissful things about them and yourself in the future. for instance, there is: `` `dainty little girlie mavis, she is such a rara avis. all the money i can save is all to be for mavis mine.' it goes to a sickening namby-pamby waltz tune, and for months nothing else was sung and hummed in blackpool and other popular centres.'' this time clovis's self-control broke down badly. ``please excuse me,'' he gurgled, ``but i can't help it when i remember the awful solemnity of that article of yours that you so kindly read us last night, on the coptic church in its relation to early christian worship.'' septimus groaned. ``you see how it would be,'' he said; ``as soon as people knew me to be the author of that miserable sentimental twaddle, all respect for the serious labours of my life would be gone. i dare say i know more about memorial brasses than any one living, in fact i hope one day to publish a monograph on the subject, but i should be pointed out everywhere as the man whose ditties were in the mouths of nigger minstrels along the entire coast-line of our island home. can you wonder that i positively hate florrie all the time that i'm trying to grind out sugar-coated rhapsodies about her?'' ``why not give free play to your emotions, and be brutally abusive? an uncomplimentary refrain would have an instant success as a novelty if you were sufficiently outspoken.'' ``i've never thought of that,'' said septimus, ``and i'm afraid i couldn't break away from the habit of fulsome adulation and suddenly change my style.'' ``you needn't change your style in the least,'' said clovis; ``merely reverse the sentiment and keep to the inane phraseology of the thing. if you'll do the body of the song i'll knock off the refrain, which is the thing that principally matters, i believe. i shall charge half-shares in the royalties, and throw in my silence as to your guilty secret. in the eyes of the world you shall still be the man who has devoted his life to the study of transepts and byzantine ritual; only sometimes, in the long winter evenings, when the wind howls drearily down the chimney and the rain beats against the windows, i shall think of you as the author of `cora with the lips of coral.' of course, if in sheer gratitude at my silence you like to take me for a much-needed holiday to the adriatic or somewhere equally interesting, paying all expenses, i shouldn't dream of refusing.'' later in the afternoon clovis found his aunt and mrs. riversedge indulging in gentle exercise in the jacobean garden. ``i've spoken to mr. brope about f.,'' he announced. ``how splendid of you! what did he say?'' came in a quick chorus from the two ladies. ``he was quite frank and straightforward with me when he saw that i knew his secret,'' said clovis, ``and it seems that his intentions were quite serious, if slightly unsuitable. i tried to show him the impracticability of the course that he was following. he said he wanted to be understood, and he seemed to think that florinda would excel in that requirement, but i pointed out that there were probably dozens of delicately nurtured, pure-hearted young english girls who would be capable of understanding him, while florinda was the only person in the world who understood my aunt's hair. that rather weighed with him, for he's not really a selfish animal, if you take him in the right way, and when i appealed to the memory of his happy childish days, spent amid the daisied fields of leighton buzzard (i suppose daisies do grow there), he was obviously affected. anyhow, he gave me his word that he would put florinda absolutely out of his mind, and he has agreed to go for a short trip abroad as the best distraction for his thoughts. i am going with him as far as ragusa. if my aunt should wish to give me a really nice scarf-pin (to be chosen by myself), as a small recognition of the very considerable service i had done her, i shouldn't dream of refusing. i'm not one of those who think that because one is abroad one can go about dressed anyhow.'' a few weeks later in blackpool and places where they sing, the following refrain held undisputed sway: ``how you bore me, florrie, with those eyes of vacant blue; you'll be very sorry, florrie, if i marry you. though i'm easy-goin', florrie, this i swear is true, i'll throw you down a quarry, florrie, if i marry you.'' ``ministers of grace'' although he was scarcely yet out of his teens, the duke of scaw was already marked out as a personality widely differing from others of his caste and period. not in externals; therein he conformed correctly to type. his hair was faintly reminiscent of houbigant, and at the other end of him his shoes exhaled the right soup<c,>on of harness-room; his socks compelled one's attention without losing one's respect; and his attitude in repose had just that suggestion of whistler's mother, so becoming in the really young. it was within that the trouble lay, if trouble it could be accounted, which marked him apart from his fellows. the duke was religious. not in any of the ordinary senses of the word; he took small heed of high church or evangelical standpoints, he stood outside of all the movements and missions and cults and crusades of the day, uncaring and uninterested. yet in a mystical-practical way of his own, which had served him unscathed and unshaken through the fickle years of boyhood, he was intensely and intensively religious. his family were naturally, though unobtrusively, distressed about it. ``i am so afraid it may affect his bridge,'' said his mother. the duke sat in a pennyworth of chair in st. james's park, listening to the pessimisms of belturbet, who reviewed the existing political situation from the gloomiest of standpoints. ``where i think you political spade-workers are so silly,'' said the duke, ``is in the misdirection of your efforts. you spend thousands of pounds of money, and heaven knows how much dynamic force of brain power and personal energy, in trying to elect or displace this or that man, whereas you could gain your ends so much more simply by making use of the men as you find them. if they don't suit your purpose as they are, transform them into something more satisfactory.'' ``do you refer to hypnotic suggestion?'' asked belturbet, with the air of one who is being trifled with. ``nothing of the sort. do you understand what i mean by the verb to koepenick? that is to say, to replace an authority by a spurious imitation that would carry just as much weight for the moment as the displaced original; the advantage, of course, being that the koepenick replica would do what you wanted, whereas the original does what seems best in its own eyes.'' ``i suppose every public man has a double, if not two or three,'' said belturbet; ``but it would be a pretty hard task to koepenick a whole bunch of them and keep the originals out of the way.'' ``there have been instances in european history of highly successful koepenickery,'' said the duke dreamily. ``oh, of course, there have been false dimitris and perkin warbecks, who imposed on the world for a time,'' assented belturbet, ``but they personated people who were dead or safely out of the way. that was a comparatively simple matter. it would be far easier to pass oneself off as dead hannibal than as living haldane, for instance.'' ``i was thinking,'' said the duke, ``of the most famous case of all, the angel who koepenicked king robert of sicily with such brilliant results. just imagine what an advantage it would be to have angels deputizing, to use a horrible but convenient word, for quinston and lord hugo sizzle, for example. how much smoother the parliamentary machine would work than at present!'' ``now you're talking nonsense,'' said belturbet; ``angels don't exist nowadays, at least, not in that way, so what is the use of dragging them into a serious discussion? it's merely silly.'' ``if you talk to me like that i shall just do it,'' said the duke. ``do what?'' asked belturbet. there were times when his young friend's uncanny remarks rather frightened him. ``i shall summon angelic forces to take over some of the more troublesome personalities of our public life, and i shall send the ousted originals into temporary retirement in suitable animal organisms. it's not every one who would have the knowledge or the power necessary to bring such a thing off---'' ``oh, stop that inane rubbish,'' said belturbet angrily; ``it's getting wearisome. here's quinston coming,'' he added, as there approached along the almost deserted path the well-known figure of a young cabinet minister, whose personality evoked a curious mixture of public interest and unpopularity. ``hurry along, my dear man,'' said the young duke to the minister, who had given him a condescending nod; ``your time is running short,'' he continued in a provocative strain; ``the whole inept crowd of you will shortly be swept away into the world's wastepaper basket.'' ``you poor little strawberry-leafed nonentity,'' said the minister, checking himself for a moment in his stride and rolling out his words spasmodically; ``who is going to sweep us away, i should like to know? the voting masses are on our side, and all the ability and administrative talent is on our side too. no power of earth or heaven is going to move us from our place till we choose to quit it. no power of earth or---'' belturbet saw, with bulging eyes, a sudden void where a moment earlier had been a cabinet minister; a void emphasized rather than relieved by the presence of a puffed-out bewildered-looking sparrow, which hopped about for a moment in a dazed fashion and then fell to a violent cheeping and scolding. ``if we could understand sparrow-language,'' said the duke serenely, ``i fancy we should hear something infinitely worse than `strawberry-leafed nonentity.' '' ``but good heavens, eug<e`>ne,'' said belturbet hoarsely, ``what has become of--why, there he is! how on earth did he get there?'' and he pointed with a shaking finger towards a semblance of the vanished minister, which approached once more along the unfrequented path. the duke laughed. ``it is quinston to all outward appearance,'' he said composedly, ``but i fancy you will find, on closer investigation, that it is an angel under-study of the real article.'' the angel-quinston greeted them with a friendly smile. ``how beastly happy you two look sitting there!'' he said wistfully. ``i don't suppose you'd care to change places with poor little us,'' replied the duke chaffingly. ``how about poor little me?'' said the angel modestly. ``i've got to run about behind the wheels of popularity, like a spotted dog behind a carriage, getting all the dust and trying to look as if i was an important part of the machine. i must seem a perfect fool to you onlookers sometimes.'' ``i think you are a perfect angel.'' said the duke. the angel-that-had-been-quinston smiled and passed on his way, pursued across the breadth of the horse guards parade by a tiresome little sparrow that cheeped incessantly and furiously at him. ``that's only the beginning,'' said the duke complacently; ``i've made it operative with all of them, irrespective of parties.'' belturbet made no coherent reply; he was engaged in feeling his pulse. the duke fixed his attention with some interest on a black swan that was swimming with haughty, stiff-necked aloofness amid the crowd of lesser water-fowl that dotted the ornamental water. for all its pride of bearing, something was evidently ruffling and enraging it; in its way it seemed as angry and amazed as the sparrow had been. at the same moment a human figure came along the pathway. belturbet looked up apprehensively. ``kedzon,'' he whispered briefly. ``an angel-kedzon, if i am not mistaken,'' said the duke. ``look, he is talking affably to a human being. that settles it.'' a shabbily dressed lounger had accosted the man who had been viceroy in the splendid east, and who still reflected in his mien some of the cold dignity of the himalayan snow-peaks. ``could you tell me, sir, if them white birds is storks or halbatrosses? i had an argyment---'' the cold dignity thawed at once into genial friendliness. ``those are pelicans, my dear sir. are you interested in birds? if you would join me in a bun and a glass of milk at the stall yonder, i could tell you some interesting things about indian birds. right oh! now the hill-mynah, for instance---'' the two men disappeared in the direction of the bun stall, chatting volubly as they went, and shadowed from the other side of the railed enclosure by a black swan, whose temper seemed to have reached the limit of inarticulate rage. belturbet gazed in an open-mouthed wonder after the retreating couple, then transferred his attention to the infuriated swan, and finally turned with a look of scared comprehension at his young friend lolling unconcernedly in his chair. there was no longer any room to doubt what was happening. the ``silly talk'' had been translated into terrifying action. ``i think a prairie oyster on the top of a stiffish brandy-and-soda might save my reason,'' said belturbet weakly, as he limped towards his club. it was late in the day before he could steady his nerves sufficiently to glance at the evening papers. the parliamentary report proved significant reading, and confirmed the fears that he had been trying to shake off. mr. ap dave, the chancellor, whose lively controversial style endeared him to his supporters and embittered him, politically speaking, to his opponents, had risen in his place to make an unprovoked apology for having alluded in a recent speech to certain protesting taxpayers as ``skulkers.'' he had realized on reflection that they were in all probability perfectly honest in their inability to understand certain legal technicalities of the new finance laws. the house had scarcely recovered from this sensation when lord hugo sizzle caused a further flutter of astonishment by going out of his way to indulge in an outspoken appreciation of the fairness, loyalty, and straightforwardness not only of the chancellor, but of all the members of the cabinet. a wit had gravely suggested moving the adjournment of the house in view of the unexpected circumstances that had arisen. belturbet anxiously skimmed over a further item of news printed immediately below the parliamentary report: ``wild cat found in an exhausted condition in palace yard.'' ``now i wonder which of them---'' he mused, and then an appalling idea came to him. ``supposing he's put them both into the same beast!'' he hurriedly ordered another prairie oyster. belturbet was known in his club as a strictly moderate drinker; his consumption of alcoholic stimulants that day gave rise to considerable comment. the events of the next few days were piquantly bewildering to the world at large; to belturbet, who knew dimly what was happening, the situation was fraught with recurring alarms. the old saying that in politics it's the unexpected that always happens received a justification that it had hitherto somewhat lacked, and the epidemic of startling personal changes of front was not wholly confined to the realm of actual politics. the eminent chocolate magnate, sadbury, whose antipathy to the turf and everything connected with it was a matter of general knowledge, had evidently been replaced by an angel-sadbury, who proceeded to electrify the public by blossoming forth as an owner of race-horses, giving as a reason his matured conviction that the sport was, after all, one which gave healthy open-air recreation to large numbers of people drawn from all classes of the community, and incidentally stimulated the important industry of horse-breeding. his colours, chocolate and cream hoops spangled with pink stars, promised to become as popular as any on the turf. at the same time, in order to give effect to his condemnation of the evils resulting from the spread of the gambling habit among wage-earning classes, who lived for the most part from hand to mouth, he suppressed all betting news and tipsters' forecasts in the popular evening paper that was under his control. his action received instant recognition and support from the angel-proprietor of the _evening views_, the principal rival evening halfpenny paper, who forthwith issued an ukase decreeing a similar ban on betting news, and in a short while the regular evening press was purged of all mention of starting prices and probable winners. a considerable drop in the circulation of all these papers was the immediate result, accompanied, of course, by a falling-off in advertisement value, while a crop of special betting broadsheets sprang up to supply the newly created want. under their influence the betting habit became if anything rather more widely diffused than before. the duke had possibly overlooked the futility of koepenicking the leaders of the nation with excellently intentioned angel under-studies, while leaving the mass of the people in its original condition. further sensation and dislocation was caused in the press world by the sudden and dramatic _rapprochement_ which took place between the angel-editor of the _scrutator_ and the angel-editor of the _anglian review_, who not only ceased to criticize and disparage the tone and tendencies of each other's publication, but agreed to exchange editorships for alternating periods. here again public support was not on the side of the angels; constant readers of the _scrutator_ complained bitterly of the strong meat which was thrust upon them at fitful intervals in place of the almost vegetarian diet to which they had become confidently accustomed; even those who were not mentally averse to strong meat as a separate course were pardonably annoyed at being supplied with it in the pages of the _scrutator_. to be suddenly confronted with a pungent herring salad when one had attuned oneself to tea and toast, or to discover a richly truffled segment of _p<a^>r<e`> de foie_ dissembled in a bowl of bread and milk, would be an experience that might upset the equanimity of the most placidly disposed mortal. an equally vehement outcry arose from the regular subscribers of the _anglian review_, who protested against being served from time to time with literary fare which no young person of sixteen could possibly want to devour in secret. to take infinite precautions, they complained, against the juvenile perusal of such eminently innocuous literature was like reading the riot act on an uninhabited island. both reviews suffered a serious falling-off in circulation and influence. peace hath its devastations as well as war. the wives of noted public men formed another element of discomfiture which the young duke had almost entirely left out of his calculations. it is sufficiently embarrassing to keep abreast of the possible wobblings and veerings-round of a human husband, who, from the strength or weakness of his personal character, may leap over or slip through the barriers which divide the parties; for this reason a merciful politician usually marries late in life, when he has definitely made up his mind on which side he wishes his wife to be socially valuable. but these trials were as nothing compared to the bewilderment caused by the angel-husbands who seemed in some cases to have revolutionized their outlook on life in the interval between breakfast and dinner, without premonition or preparation of any kind, and apparently without realizing the least need for subsequent explanation. the temporary peace which brooded over the parliamentary situation was by no means reproduced in the home circles of the leading statesmen and politicians. it had been frequently and extensively remarked of mrs. exe that she would try the patience of an angel; now the tables were reversed, and she unwittingly had an opportunity for discovering that the capacity for exasperating behaviour was not all on one side. and then, with the introduction of the navy estimates, parliamentary peace suddenly dissolved. it was the old quarrel between ministers and the opposition as to the adequacy or the reverse of the government's naval programme. the angel-quinston and the angel-hugo-sizzle contrived to keep the debates free from personalities and pinpricks, but an enormous sensation was created when the elegant lackadaisical halfan halfour threatened to bring up fifty thousand stalwarts to wreck the house if the estimates were not forthwith revised on a two-power basis. it was a memorable scene when he rose in his place, in response to the scandalized shouts of his opponents, and thundered forth, ``gentlemen, i glory in the name of apache.'' belturbet, who had made several fruitless attempts to ring up his young friend since the fateful morning in st. james's park, ran him to earth one afternoon at his club, smooth and spruce and unruffled as ever. ``tell me, what on earth have you turned cocksley coxon into?'' belturbet asked anxiously, mentioning the name of one of the pillars of unorthodoxy in the anglican church. ``i don't fancy he _believes_ in angels, and if he finds an angel preaching orthodox sermons from his pulpit while he's been turned into a fox-terrier, he'll develop rabies in less than no time.'' ``i rather think it was a fox-terrier,'' said the duke lazily. belturbet groaned heavily, and sank into a chair. ``look here, eug<e'>ne,'' he whispered hoarsely, having first looked well round to see that no one was within hearing range, ``you've got to stop it. consols are jumping up and down like bronchos, and that speech of halfour's in the house last night has simply startled everybody out of their wits. and then on the top if it, thistlebery---'' ``what has he been saying?'' asked the duke quickly. ``nothing. that's just what's so disturbing. every one thought it was simply inevitable that he should come out with a great epoch-making speech at this juncture, and i've just seen on the tape that he has refused to address any meetings at present, giving as a reason his opinion that something more than mere speech-making was wanted.'' the young duke said nothing, but his eyes shone with quiet exultation. ``it's so unlike thistlebery,'' continued belturbet; ``at least,'' he said suspiciously, ``it's unlike the _real_ thistlebery---'' ``the real thistlebery is flying about somewhere as a vocally industrious lapwing,'' said the duke calmly; ``i expect great things of the angel-thistlebery,'' he added. at this moment there was a magnetic stampede of members towards the lobby, where the tape-machines were ticking out some news of more than ordinary import. ``_coup d'<e'>tat_ in the north. thistlebery seizes edinburgh castle. threatens civil war unless government expands naval programme.'' in the babel which ensued belturbet lost sight of his young friend. for the best part of the afternoon he searched one likely haunt after another, spurred on by the sensational posters which the evening papers were displaying broadcast over the west end. general baden-baden mobilizes boy-scouts. another _coup d'<e'>tat_ feared. is windsor castle safe?'' this was one of the earlier posters, and was followed by one of even more sinister purport: ``will the test-match have to be postponed?'' it was this disquietening question which brought home the real seriousness of the situation to the london public, and made people wonder whether one might not pay too high a price for the advantages of party government. belturbet, questing round in the hope of finding the originator of the trouble, with a vague idea of being able to induce him to restore matters to their normal human footing, came across an elderly club acquaintance who dabbled extensively in some of the more sensitive market securities. he was pale with indignation, and his pallor deepened as a breathless newsboy dashed past with a poster inscribed: ``premier's constituency harried by moss-troopers. halfour sends encouraging telegram to rioters. letchworth garden city threatens reprisals. foreigners taking refuge in embassies and national liberal club.'' ``this is devils' work!'' he said angrily. belturbet knew otherwise. at the bottom of st. james's street a newspaper motor-cart, which had just come rapidly along pall mall, was surrounded by a knot of eagerly talking people, and for the first time that afternoon belturbet heard expressions of relief and congratulation. it displayed a placard with the welcome announcement: ``crisis ended. government gives way. important expansion of naval programme.'' there seemed to be no immediate necessity for pursuing the quest of the errant duke, and belturbet turned to make his way homeward through st. james's park. his mind, attuned to the alarums and excursions of the afternoon, became dimly aware that some excitement of a detached nature was going on around him. in spite of the political ferment which reigned in the streets, quite a large crowd had gathered to watch the unfolding of a tragedy that had taken place on the shore of the ornamental water. a large black swan, which had recently shown signs of a savage and dangerous disposition, had suddenly attacked a young gentleman who was walking by the water's edge, dragged him down under the surface, and drowned him before any one could come to his assistance. at the moment when belturbet arrived on the spot several park-keepers were engaged in lifting the corpse into a punt. belturbet stooped to pick up a hat that lay near the scene of the struggle. it was a smart soft felt hat, faintly reminiscent of houbigant. more than a month elapsed before belturbet had sufficiently recovered from his attack of nervous prostration to take an interest once more in what was going on in the world of politics. the parliamentary session was still in full swing, and a general election was looming in the near future. he called for a batch of morning papers and skimmed rapidly through the speeches of the chancellor, quinston, and other ministerial leaders, as well as those of the principal opposition champions, and then sank back in his chair with a sigh of relief. evidently the spell had ceased to act after the tragedy which had overtaken its invoker. there was no trace of angel anywhere. the remoulding of groby lington ``a man is known by the company he keeps.`` in the morning-room of his sister-in-law's house groby lington fidgeted away the passing minutes with the demure restlessness of advanced middle age. about a quarter of an hour would have to elapse before it would be time to say his good-byes and make his way across the village green to the station, with a selected escort of nephews and nieces. he was a good-natured, kindly dispositioned man, and in theory he was delighted to pay periodical visits to the wife and children of his dead brother william; in practice, he infinitely preferred the comfort and seclusion of his own house and garden, and the companionship of his books and his parrot to these rather meaningless and tiresome incursions into a family circle with which he had little in common. it was not so much the spur of his own conscience that drove him to make the occasional short journey by rail to visit his relatives, as an obedient concession to the more insistent but vicarious conscience of his brother, colonel john, who was apt to accuse him of neglecting poor old william's family. groby usually forgot or ignored the existence of his neighbour kinsfolk until such time as he was threatened with a visit from the colonel, when he would put matters straight by a burned pilgrimage across the few miles of intervening country to renew his acquaintance with the young people and assume a kindly if rather forced interest in the well-being of his sister-in-law. on this occasion he had cut matters so fine between the timing of his exculpatory visit and the coming of colonel john, that he would scarcely be home before the latter was due to arrive. anyhow, groby had got it over, and six or seven months might decently elapse before he need again sacrifice his comforts and inclinations on the altar of family sociability. he was inclined to be distinctly cheerful as he hopped about the room, picking up first one object, then another, and subjecting each to a brief bird-like scrutiny. presently his cheerful listlessness changed sharply to an attitude of vexed attention. in a scrap-book of drawings and caricatures belonging to one of his nephews he had come across an unkindly clever sketch of himself and his parrot, solemnly confronting each other in postures of ridiculous gravity and repose, and bearing a likeness to one another that the artist had done his utmost to accentuate. after the first flush of annoyance had passed away, groby laughed good-naturedly and admitted to himself the cleverness of the drawing. then the feeling of resentment repossessed him, resentment not against the caricaturist who had embodied the idea in pen and ink, but against the possible truth that the idea represented. was it really the case that people grew in time to resemble the animals they kept as pets, and had he unconsciously become more and more like the comically solemn bird that was his constant companion? groby was unusually silent as he walked to the train with his escort of chattering nephews and nieces, and during the short railway journey his mind was more and more possessed with an introspective conviction that he had gradually settled down into a sort of parrot-like existence. what, after all, did his daily routine amount to but a sedate meandering and pecking and perching, in his garden, among his fruit trees, in his wicker chair on the lawn, or by the fireside in his library? and what was the sum total of his conversation with chance-encountered neighbours? ``quite a spring day, isn't it?'' ``it looks as though we should have some rain.`` ``glad to see you about again; you must take care of yourself.'' ``how the young folk shoot up, don't they?'' strings of stupid, inevitable perfunctory remarks came to his mind, remarks that were certainly not the mental exchange of human intelligences, but mere empty parrot-talk. one might really just as well salute one's acquaintances with ``pretty polly. puss, puss, miaow!'' groby began to fume against the picture of himself as a foolish feathered fowl which his nephews sketch had first suggested, and which his own accusing imagination was filling in with such unflattering detail. ``i'll give the beastly bird away,'' he said resentfully; though he knew at the same time that he would do no such thing. it would look so absurd after all the years that he had kept the parrot and made much of it suddenly to try and find it a new home. ``has my brother arrived?'' he asked of the stable-boy, who had come with the pony-carriage to meet him. ``yessir, came down by the two-fifteen. your parrot's dead.'' the boy made the latter announcement with the relish which his class finds in proclaiming a catastrophe. ``my parrot dead?'' said groby. ``what caused its death?'' ``the ipe,'' said the boy briefly. ``the ipe?'' queried groby. ``whatever's that?'' ``the ipe what the colonel brought down with him,'' came the rather alarming answer. ``do you mean to say my brother is ill?'' asked groby. ``is it something infectious?'' ``th' coloners so well as ever he was,'' said the boy; and as no further explanation was forthcoming groby had to possess himself in mystified patience till he reached home. his brother was waiting for him at the hall door. ``have you heard about the parrot?'' he asked at once. ``'pon my soul i'm awfully sorry. the moment he saw the monkey i'd brought down as a surprise for you he squawked out, `rats to you, sir!' and the blessed monkey made one spring at him, got him by the neck and whirled him round like a rattle. he was as dead as mutton by the time i'd got him out of the little beggar's paws. always been such a friendly little beast, the monkey has, should never have thought he`d got it in him to see red like that. can't tell you how sorry i feel about it, and now of course you'll hate the sight of the monkey.'' ``not at all,' said groby sincerely. a few hours earlier the tragic end which had befallen his parrot would have presented itself to him as a calamity; now it arrived almost as a polite attention on the part of the fates. ``the bird was getting old, you know,'' he went on, in explanation of his obvious lack of decent regret at the loss of his pet. ``i was really beginning to wonder if it was an unmixed kindness to let him go on living till he succumbed to old age. what a charming little monkey!'' he added, when he was introduced to the culprit. the new-comer was a small, long-tailed monkey from the western hemisphere, with a gentle, half-shy, half-trusting manner that instantly captured groby's confidence; a student of simian character might have seen in the fitful red light in its eyes some indication of the underlying temper which the parrot had so rashly put to the test with such dramatic consequences for itself. the servants, who had come to regard the defunct bird as a regular member of the household, and one who gave really very little trouble, were scandalized to find his bloodthirsty aggressor installed in his place as an honoured domestic pet. ``a nasty heathen ipe what don't never say nothing sensible and cheerful, same as pore polly did,'' was the unfavourable verdict of the kitchen quarters. ;one sunday morning, some twelve or fourteen months after the visit of colonel john and the parrot-tragedy, miss wepley sat decorously in her pew in the parish church, immediately in front of that occupied by groby lington. she was, comparatively speaking, a new-comer in the neighbourhood, and was not personally acquainted with her fellow-worshipper in the seat behind, but for the past two years the sunday morning service had brought them regularly within each other's sphere of consciousness. without having paid particular attention to the subject, she could probably have given a correct rendering of the way in which he pronounced certain words occurring in the responses, while he was well aware of the trivial fact that, in addition to her prayer book and handkerchief, a small paper packet of throat lozenges always reposed on the seat beside her. miss wepley rarely had recourse to her lozenges, but in case she should be taken with a fit of coughing she wished to have the emergency duly provided for. on this particular sunday the lozenges occasioned an unusual diversion in the even tenor of her devotions, far more disturbing to her personally than a prolonged attack of coughing would have been. as she rose to take part in the singing of the first hymn, she fancied that she saw the hand of her neighbour, who was alone in the pew behind her, make a furtive downward grab at the packet lying on the seat; on turning sharply round she found that the packet had certainly disappeared, but mr. lington was to all outward seeming serenely intent on his hymn-book. no amount of interrogatory glaring on the part of the despoiled lady could bring the least shade of conscious guilt to his face. ``worse was to follow,'' as she remarked afterwards to a scandalized audience of friends and acquaintances. ''i had scarcely knelt in prayer when a lozenge, one of _my_ lozenges, came whizzing into the pew, just under my nose. i turned round and stared, but mr. lington had his eyes closed and his lips moving as though engaged in prayer. the moment i resumed my devotions another lozenge came rattling in, and then another. i took no notice for a while, and then turned round suddenly just as the dreadful man was about to flip another one at me. he hastily pretended to be turning over the leaves of his book but i was not to be taken in that time. he saw that he had been discovered and no more lozenges came. of course i have changed my pew.'' ``no gentleman would have acted in such a disgraceful manner,'' said one of her listeners; ``and yet mr. lington used to be so respected by everybody. he seems to have behaved like a little ill-bred schoolboy.'' ``he behaved like a monkey,'' said miss wepley. her unfavourable verdict was echoed in other quarters about the same time. groby lington had never been a hero in the eyes of his personal retainers, but he had shared the approval accorded to his defunct parrot as a cheerful well-dispositioned body, who gave no particular trouble. of late months, however, this character would hardly have been endorsed by the members of his domestic establishment. the stolid stable-boy, who had first announced to him the tragic end of his feathered pet, was one of the first to give voice to the murmurs of disapproval which became rampant and general in the servants' quarters, and he had fairly substantial grounds for his disaffection. in a burst of hot summer weather he had obtained permission to bathe in a modest-sized pond in the orchard, and thither one afternoon groby had bent his steps, attracted by loud imprecations of anger mingled with the shriller chattering of monkey-language. he beheld his plump diminutive servitor, clad only in a waistcoat and a pair of socks, storming ineffectually at the monkey which was seated on a low branch of an apple tree, abstractedly fingering the remainder of the boy's outfit, which he had removed just out of his reach. ``the ipe's been an' took my clothes,'' whined the boy, with the passion of his kind for explaining the obvious. his incomplete toilet effect rather embarrassed him, but he hailed the arrival of groby with relief, as promising moral and material support in his efforts to get back his raided garments. the monkey had ceased its defiant jabbering, and doubtless with a little coaxing from its master it would hand back the plunder. ``if i lift you up,'' suggested groby, ``you will just be able to reach the clothes.'' the boy agreed, and groby clutched him firmly by the waistcoat, which was about all there was to catch hold of, and lifted him clear of the ground. then, with a deft swing he sent him crashing into a clump of tag nettles, which closed receptively round him. the victim had not been brought up in a school which teaches one to repress one's emotions---if a fox had attempted to gnaw at his vitals he would have flown to complain to the nearest hunt committee rather than have affected an attitude of stoical indifference. on this occasion the volume of sound which he produced under the stimulus of pain and rage and astonishment was generous and sustained, but above his bellowings he could distinctly hear the triumphant chattering of his enemy in the tree, and a peal of shrill laughter from groby. when the boy had finished an improvised st. vitus caracole, which would have brought him fame on the boards of the coliseum, and which indeed met with ready appreciation and applause from the retreating figure of groby lington, he found that the monkey had also discreetly retired, while his clothes were scattered on the grass at the foot of the tree. ``they'm two ipes, that's what they be,'' he muttered angrily, and if his judgment was severe, at least he spoke under the sting of considerable provocation. it was a week or two later that the parlour-maid gave notice, having been terrified almost to tears by an outbreak of sudden temper on the part of the master anent some under done cutlets. ``'e gnashed 'is teeth at me, 'e did reely,'' she informed a sympathetic kitchen audience. ``i'd like to see 'im talk like that to me, i would,'' said the cook defiantly, but her cooking from that moment showed a marked improvement. it was seldom that groby lington so far detached himself from his accustomed habits as to go and form one of a house-party, and he was not a little piqued that mrs. glenduff should have stowed him away in the musty old georgian wing of the house, in the next room, moreover, to leonard spabbink, the eminent pianist. ``he plays liszt like an angel,'' had been the hostess's enthusiastic testimonial. ``he may play him like a trout for all i care,'' had been groby's mental comment, ``but i wouldn't mind betting that be snores. he's just the sort and shape that would. and if i hear him snoring through those ridiculous thin-panelled walls, there'll be trouble.'' he did, and there was. groby stood it for about two and a quarter minutes, and then made his way through the corridor into spabbink's room. under groby's vigorous measures the musicians flabby, redundant figure sat up in bewildered semi-consciousness like an ice-cream that has been taught to beg. groby prodded him into complete wakefulness, and then the pettish self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper and slapped his domineering visitant on the hand. in another moment spabbink was being nearly stifled and very effectually gagged by a pillow-case tightly bound round his head, while his plump pyjama'd limbs were hauled out of bed and smacked, pinched, kicked, and bumped in a catch-as-catch-can progress across the floor, towards the flat shallow bath in whose utterly inadequate depths groby perseveringly strove to drown him. for a few moments the room was almost in darkness: groby's candle had overturned in an early stage of the scuffle, and its flicker scarcely reached to the spot where splashings, smacks, muffled cries, and splutterings, and a chatter of ape-like rage told of the struggle that was being waged round the shores of the bath. a few instants later the one-sided combat was brightly lit up by the flare of blazing curtains and rapidly kindling panelling. when the hastily aroused members of the house-party stampeded out on to the lawn, the georgian wing was well alight and belching forth masses of smoke, but some moments elapsed before groby appeared with the half-drowned pianist in his arms, having just bethought him of the superior drowning facilities offered by the pond at the bottom of the lawn. the cool night air sobered his rage, and when he found that he was innocently acclaimed as the heroic rescuer of poor leonard spabbink, and loudly commended for his presence of mind in tying a wet cloth round his head to protect him from smoke suffocation, he accepted the situation, and subsequently gave a graphic account of his finding the musician asleep with an overturned candle by his side and the conflagration well started. spabbink gave his version some days later, when he had partially recovered from the shock of his midnight castigation and immersion, but the gentle pitying smiles and evasive comments with which his story was greeted warned him that the public ear was not at his disposal. he refused, however, to attend the ceremonial presentation of the royal humane society's life-saving medal. it was about this time that groby's pet monkey fell a victim to the disease which attacks so many of its kind when brought under the influence of a northern climate. its master appeared to be profoundly affected by its loss, and never quite recovered the level of spirits that he had recently attained. in company with the tortoise, which colonel john presented to him on his last visit, he potters about his lawn and kitchen garden, with none of his erstwhile sprightliness; and his nephews and nieces are fairly well justified in alluding to him as ``old uncle groby.'' [end of the chronicles of clovis] . **the project gutenberg etext of essays of travel by stevenson** #30 in our series by robert louis stevenson copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. essays of travel by robert louis stevenson august, 1996 [etext #627] **the project gutenberg etext of essays of travel by stevenson** *****this file should be named dasym1str.txt or esstr10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, esstr11.txt. versions based on separate sources get new letter, esstr10a.txt. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month: or 400 more etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion etexts. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association / benedictine university" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / benedictine university". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* essays of travel by robert louis stevenson scanned and proofed by david price ccx074@coventry.ac.uk essays of travel contents i. the amateur emigrant: from the clyde to sandy hook the second cabin early impression steerage impressions steerage types the sick man the stowaways personal expierence and review new york ii. cockermouth and keswick cockermouth an evangelist another last of smethurst iii. an autumn effect iv. a winter's walk in carrick and galloway v. forest notes on the plains in the season idle hours a pleasure-party the woods in spring morality vi. a mountain town in france vii. random memories: rosa quo locorum viii. the ideal house ix. davos in winter x. health and mountains xi. alpine diversion xii. the stumulation of the alps xiii. roads xiv. on the enjoyment of unpleasant places chapter i the amateur emigrant the second cabin i first encountered my fellow-passengers on the broomielaw in glasgow. thence we descended the clyde in no familiar spirit, but looking askance on each other as on possible enemies. a few scandinavians, who had already grown acquainted on the north sea, were friendly and voluble over their long pipes; but among english speakers distance and suspicion reigned supreme. the sun was soon overclouded, the wind freshened and grew sharp as we continued to descend the widening estuary; and with the falling temperature the gloom among the passengers increased. two of the women wept. any one who had come aboard might have supposed we were all absconding from the law. there was scarce a word interchanged, and no common sentiment but that of cold united us, until at length, having touched at greenock, a pointing arm and a rush to the starboard now announced that our ocean steamer was in sight. there she lay in mid-river, at the tail of the bank, her sea-signal flying: a wall of bulwark, a street of white deck-houses, an aspiring forest of spars, larger than a church, and soon to be as populous as many an incorporated town in the land to which she was to bear us. i was not, in truth, a steerage passenger. although anxious to see the worst of emigrant life, i had some work to finish on the voyage, and was advised to go by the second cabin, where at least i should have a table at command. the advice was excellent; but to understand the choice, and what i gained, some outline of the internal disposition of the ship will first be necessary. in her very nose is steerage no. 1, down two pair of stairs. a little abaft, another companion, labelled steerage no. 2 and 3, gives admission to three galleries, two running forward towards steerage no. 1, and the third aft towards the engines. the starboard forward gallery is the second cabin. away abaft the engines and below the officers' cabins, to complete our survey of the vessel, there is yet a third nest of steerages, labelled 4 and 5. the second cabin, to return, is thus a modified oasis in the very heart of the steerages. through the thin partition you can hear the steerage passengers being sick, the rattle of tin dishes as they sit at meals, the varied accents in which they converse, the crying of their children terrified by this new experience, or the clean flat smack of the parental hand in chastisement. there are, however, many advantages for the inhabitant of this strip. he does not require to bring his own bedding or dishes, but finds berths and a table completely if somewhat roughly furnished. he enjoys a distinct superiority in diet; but this, strange to say, differs not only on different ships, but on the same ship according as her head is to the east or west. in my own experience, the principal difference between our table and that of the true steerage passenger was the table itself, and the crockery plates from which we ate. but lest i should show myself ungrateful, let me recapitulate every advantage. at breakfast we had a choice between tea and coffee for beverage; a choice not easy to make, the two were so surprisingly alike. i found that i could sleep after the coffee and lay awake after the tea, which is proof conclusive of some chemical disparity; and even by the palate i could distinguish a smack of snuff in the former from a flavour of boiling and dish-cloths in the second. as a matter of fact, i have seen passengers, after many sips, still doubting which had been supplied them. in the way of eatables at the same meal we were gloriously favoured; for in addition to porridge, which was common to all, we had irish stew, sometimes a bit of fish, and sometimes rissoles. the dinner of soup, roast fresh beef, boiled salt junk, and potatoes, was, i believe, exactly common to the steerage and the second cabin; only i have heard it rumoured that our potatoes were of a superior brand; and twice a week, on pudding-days, instead of duff, we had a saddle-bag filled with currants under the name of a plum-pudding. at tea we were served with some broken meat from the saloon; sometimes in the comparatively elegant form of spare patties or rissoles; but as a general thing mere chicken-bones and flakes of fish, neither hot nor cold. if these were not the scrapings of plates their looks belied them sorely; yet we were all too hungry to be proud, and fell to these leavings greedily. these, the bread, which was excellent, and the soup and porridge which were both good, formed my whole diet throughout the voyage; so that except for the broken meat and the convenience of a table i might as well have been in the steerage outright. had they given me porridge again in the evening, i should have been perfectly contented with the fare. as it was, with a few biscuits and some whisky and water before turning in, i kept my body going and my spirits up to the mark. the last particular in which the second cabin passenger remarkably stands ahead of his brother of the steerage is one altogether of sentiment. in the steerage there are males and females; in the second cabin ladies and gentlemen. for some time after i came aboard i thought i was only a male; but in the course of a voyage of discovery between decks, i came on a brass plate, and learned that i was still a gentleman. nobody knew it, of course. i was lost in the crowd of males and females, and rigorously confined to the same quarter of the deck. who could tell whether i housed on the port or starboard side of steerage no. 2 and 3? and it was only there that my superiority became practical; everywhere else i was incognito, moving among my inferiors with simplicity, not so much as a swagger to indicate that i was a gentleman after all, and had broken meat to tea. still, i was like one with a patent of nobility in a drawer at home; and when i felt out of spirits i could go down and refresh myself with a look of that brass plate. for all these advantages i paid but two guineas. six guineas is the steerage fare; eight that by the second cabin; and when you remember that the steerage passenger must supply bedding and dishes, and, in five cases out of ten, either brings some dainties with him, or privately pays the steward for extra rations, the difference in price becomes almost nominal. air comparatively fit to breathe, food comparatively varied, and the satisfaction of being still privately a gentleman, may thus be had almost for the asking. two of my fellowpassengers in the second cabin had already made the passage by the cheaper fare, and declared it was an experiment not to be repeated. as i go on to tell about my steerage friends, the reader will perceive that they were not alone in their opinion. out of ten with whom i was more or less intimate, i am sure not fewer than five vowed, if they returned, to travel second cabin; and all who had left their wives behind them assured me they would go without the comfort of their presence until they could afford to bring them by saloon. our party in the second cabin was not perhaps the most interesting on board. perhaps even in the saloon there was as much good-will and character. yet it had some elements of curiosity. there was a mixed group of swedes, danes, and norsemen, one of whom, generally known by the name of 'johnny,' in spite of his own protests, greatly diverted us by his clever, cross-country efforts to speak english, and became on the strength of that an universal favourite it takes so little in this world of shipboard to create a popularity. there was, besides, a scots mason, known from his favourite dish as 'irish stew,' three or four nondescript scots, a fine young irishman, o'reilly, and a pair of young men who deserve a special word of condemnation. one of them was scots; the other claimed to be american; admitted, after some fencing, that he was born in england; and ultimately proved to be an irishman born and nurtured, but ashamed to own his country. he had a sister on board, whom he faithfully neglected throughout the voyage, though she was not only sick, but much his senior, and had nursed and cared for him in childhood. in appearance he was like an imbecile henry the third of france. the scotsman, though perhaps as big an ass, was not so dead of heart; and i have only bracketed them together because they were fast friends, and disgraced themselves equally by their conduct at the table. next, to turn to topics more agreeable, we had a newly-married couple, devoted to each other, with a pleasant story of how they had first seen each other years ago at a preparatory school, and that very afternoon he had carried her books home for her. i do not know if this story will be plain to southern readers; but to me it recalls many a school idyll, with wrathful swains of eight and nine confronting each other stride-legs, flushed with jealousy; for to carry home a young lady's books was both a delicate attention and a privilege. then there was an old lady, or indeed i am not sure that she was as much old as antiquated and strangely out of place, who had left her husband, and was travelling all the way to kansas by herself. we had to take her own word that she was married; for it was sorely contradicted by the testimony of her appearance. nature seemed to have sanctified her for the single state; even the colour of her hair was incompatible with matrimony, and her husband, i thought, should be a man of saintly spirit and phantasmal bodily presence. she was ill, poor thing; her soul turned from the viands; the dirty tablecloth shocked her like an impropriety; and the whole strength of her endeavour was bent upon keeping her watch true to glasgow time till she should reach new york. they had heard reports, her husband and she, of some unwarrantable disparity of hours between these two cities; and with a spirit commendably scientific, had seized on this occasion to put them to the proof. it was a good thing for the old lady; for she passed much leisure time in studying the watch. once, when prostrated by sickness, she let it run down. it was inscribed on her harmless mind in letters of adamant that the hands of a watch must never be turned backwards; and so it behoved her to lie in wait for the exact moment ere she started it again. when she imagined this was about due, she sought out one of the young second-cabin scotsmen, who was embarked on the same experiment as herself and had hitherto been less neglectful. she was in quest of two o'clock; and when she learned it was already seven on the shores of clyde, she lifted up her voice and cried 'gravy!' i had not heard this innocent expletive since i was a young child; and i suppose it must have been the same with the other scotsmen present, for we all laughed our fill. last but not least, i come to my excellent friend mr. jones. it would be difficult to say whether i was his right-hand man, or he mine, during the voyage. thus at table i carved, while he only scooped gravy; but at our concerts, of which more anon, he was the president who called up performers to sing, and i but his messenger who ran his errands and pleaded privately with the over-modest. i knew i liked mr. jones from the moment i saw him. i thought him by his face to be scottish; nor could his accent undeceive me. for as there is a lingua franca of many tongues on the moles and in the feluccas of the mediterranean, so there is a free or common accent among english-speaking men who follow the sea. they catch a twang in a new england port; from a cockney skipper, even a scotsman sometimes learns to drop an h; a word of a dialect is picked up from another band in the forecastle; until often the result is undecipherable, and you have to ask for the man's place of birth. so it was with mr. jones. i thought him a scotsman who had been long to sea; and yet he was from wales, and had been most of his life a blacksmith at an inland forge; a few years in america and half a score of ocean voyages having sufficed to modify his speech into the common pattern. by his own account he was both strong and skilful in his trade. a few years back, he had been married and after a fashion a rich man; now the wife was dead and the money gone. but his was the nature that looks forward, and goes on from one year to another and through all the extremities of fortune undismayed; and if the sky were to fall to-morrow, i should look to see jones, the day following, perched on a step-ladder and getting things to rights. he was always hovering round inventions like a bee over a flower, and lived in a dream of patents. he had with him a patent medicine, for instance, the composition of which he had bought years ago for five dollars from an american pedlar, and sold the other day for a hundred pounds (i think it was) to an english apothecary. it was called golden oil, cured all maladies without exception; and i am bound to say that i partook of it myself with good results. it is a character of the man that he was not only perpetually dosing himself with golden oil, but wherever there was a head aching or a finger cut, there would be jones with his bottle. if he had one taste more strongly than another, it was to study character. many an hour have we two walked upon the deck dissecting our neighbours in a spirit that was too purely scientific to be called unkind; whenever a quaint or human trait slipped out in conversation, you might have seen jones and me exchanging glances; and we could hardly go to bed in comfort till we had exchanged notes and discussed the day's experience. we were then like a couple of anglers comparing a day's kill. but the fish we angled for were of a metaphysical species, and we angled as often as not in one another's baskets. once, in the midst of a serious talk, each found there was a scrutinising eye upon himself; i own i paused in embarrassment at this double detection; but jones, with a better civility, broke into a peal of unaffected laughter, and declared, what was the truth, that there was a pair of us indeed. early impressions we steamed out of the clyde on thursday night, and early on the friday forenoon we took in our last batch of emigrants at lough foyle, in ireland, and said farewell to europe. the company was now complete, and began to draw together, by inscrutable magnetisms, upon the decks. there were scots and irish in plenty, a few english, a few americans, a good handful of scandinavians, a german or two, and one russian; all now belonging for ten days to one small iron country on the deep. as i walked the deck and looked round upon my fellow-passengers, thus curiously assorted from all northern europe, i began for the first time to understand the nature of emigration. day by day throughout the passage, and thenceforward across all the states, and on to the shores of the pacific, this knowledge grew more clear and melancholy. emigration, from a word of the most cheerful import, came to sound most dismally in my ear. there is nothing more agreeable to picture and nothing more pathetic to behold. the abstract idea, as conceived at home, is hopeful and adventurous. a young man, you fancy, scorning restraints and helpers, issues forth into life, that great battle, to fight for his own hand. the most pleasant stories of ambition, of difficulties overcome, and of ultimate success, are but as episodes to this great epic of self-help. the epic is composed of individual heroisms; it stands to them as the victorious war which subdued an empire stands to the personal act of bravery which spiked a single cannon and was adequately rewarded with a medal. for in emigration the young men enter direct and by the shipload on their heritage of work; empty continents swarm, as at the bo's'un's whistle, with industrious hands, and whole new empires are domesticated to the service of man. this is the closet picture, and is found, on trial, to consist mostly of embellishments. the more i saw of my fellow-passengers, the less i was tempted to the lyric note. comparatively few of the men were below thirty; many were married, and encumbered with families; not a few were already up in years; and this itself was out of tune with my imaginations, for the ideal emigrant should certainly be young. again, i thought he should offer to the eye some bold type of humanity, with bluff or hawk-like features, and the stamp of an eager and pushing disposition. now those around me were for the most part quiet, orderly, obedient citizens, family men broken by adversity, elderly youths who had failed to place themselves in life, and people who had seen better days. mildness was the prevailing character; mild mirth and mild endurance. in a word, i was not taking part in an impetuous and conquering sally, such as swept over mexico or siberia, but found myself, like marmion, 'in the lost battle, borne down by the flying.' labouring mankind had in the last years, and throughout great britain, sustained a prolonged and crushing series of defeats. i had heard vaguely of these reverses; of whole streets of houses standing deserted by the tyne, the cellar-doors broken and removed for firewood; of homeless men loitering at the street-corners of glasgow with their chests beside them; of closed factories, useless strikes, and starving girls. but i had never taken them home to me or represented these distresses livingly to my imagination. a turn of the market may be a calamity as disastrous as the french retreat from moscow; but it hardly lends itself to lively treatment, and makes a trifling figure in the morning papers. we may struggle as we please, we are not born economists. the individual is more affecting than the mass. it is by the scenic accidents, and the appeal to the carnal eye, that for the most part we grasp the significance of tragedies. thus it was only now, when i found myself involved in the rout, that i began to appreciate how sharp had been the battle. we were a company of the rejected; the drunken, the incompetent, the weak, the prodigal, all who had been unable to prevail against circumstances in the one land, were now fleeing pitifully to another; and though one or two might still succeed, all had already failed. we were a shipful of failures, the broken men of england. yet it must not be supposed that these people exhibited depression. the scene, on the contrary, was cheerful. not a tear was shed on board the vessel. all were full of hope for the future, and showed an inclination to innocent gaiety. some were heard to sing, and all began to scrape acquaintance with small jests and ready laughter. the children found each other out like dogs, and ran about the decks scraping acquaintance after their fashion also. 'what do you call your mither?' i heard one ask. 'mawmaw,' was the reply, indicating, i fancy, a shade of difference in the social scale. when people pass each other on the high seas of life at so early an age, the contact is but slight, and the relation more like what we may imagine to be the friendship of flies than that of men; it is so quickly joined, so easily dissolved, so open in its communications and so devoid of deeper human qualities. the children, i observed, were all in a band, and as thick as thieves at a fair, while their elders were still ceremoniously manoeuvring on the outskirts of acquaintance. the sea, the ship, and the seamen were soon as familiar as home to these half-conscious little ones. it was odd to hear them, throughout the voyage, employ shore words to designate portions of the vessel. 'go 'way doon to yon dyke,' i heard one say, probably meaning the bulwark. i often had my heart in my mouth, watching them climb into the shrouds or on the rails, while the ship went swinging through the waves; and i admired and envied the courage of their mothers, who sat by in the sun and looked on with composure at these perilous feats. 'he'll maybe be a sailor,' i heard one remark; 'now's the time to learn.' i had been on the point of running forward to interfere, but stood back at that, reproved. very few in the more delicate classes have the nerve to look upon the peril of one dear to them; but the life of poorer folk, where necessity is so much more immediate and imperious, braces even a mother to this extreme of endurance. and perhaps, after all, it is better that the lad should break his neck than that you should break his spirit. and since i am here on the chapter of the children, i must mention one little fellow, whose family belonged to steerage no. 4 and 5, and who, wherever he went, was like a strain of music round the ship. he was an ugly, merry, unbreeched child of three, his lint-white hair in a tangle, his face smeared with suet and treacle; but he ran to and fro with so natural a step, and fell and picked himself up again with such grace and good-humour, that he might fairly be called beautiful when he was in motion. to meet him, crowing with laughter and beating an accompaniment to his own mirth with a tin spoon upon a tin cup, was to meet a little triumph of the human species. even when his mother and the rest of his family lay sick and prostrate around him, he sat upright in their midst and sang aloud in the pleasant heartlessness of infancy. throughout the friday, intimacy among us men made but a few advances. we discussed the probable duration of the voyage, we exchanged pieces of information, naming our trades, what we hoped to find in the new world, or what we were fleeing from in the old; and, above all, we condoled together over the food and the vileness of the steerage. one or two had been so near famine that you may say they had run into the ship with the devil at their heels; and to these all seemed for the best in the best of possible steamers. but the majority were hugely contented. coming as they did from a country in so low a state as great britain, many of them from glasgow, which commercially speaking was as good as dead, and many having long been out of work, i was surprised to find them so dainty in their notions. i myself lived almost exclusively on bread, porridge, and soup, precisely as it was supplied to them, and found it, if not luxurious, at least sufficient. but these working men were loud in their outcries. it was not 'food for human beings,' it was 'only fit for pigs,' it was 'a disgrace.' many of them lived almost entirely upon biscuit, others on their own private supplies, and some paid extra for better rations from the ship. this marvellously changed my notion of the degree of luxury habitual to the artisan. i was prepared to hear him grumble, for grumbling is the traveller's pastime; but i was not prepared to find him turn away from a diet which was palatable to myself. words i should have disregarded, or taken with a liberal allowance; but when a man prefers dry biscuit there can be no question of the sincerity of his disgust. with one of their complaints i could most heartily sympathise. a single night of the steerage had filled them with horror. i had myself suffered, even in my decent-second-cabin berth, from the lack of air; and as the night promised to be fine and quiet, i determined to sleep on deck, and advised all who complained of their quarters to follow my example. i dare say a dozen of others agreed to do so, and i thought we should have been quite a party. yet, when i brought up my rug about seven bells, there was no one to be seen but the watch. that chimerical terror of good night-air, which makes men close their windows, list their doors, and seal themselves up with their own poisonous exhalations, had sent all these healthy workmen down below. one would think we had been brought up in a fever country; yet in england the most malarious districts are in the bedchambers. i felt saddened at this defection, and yet half-pleased to have the night so quietly to myself. the wind had hauled a little ahead on the starboard bow, and was dry but chilly. i found a shelter near the fire-hole, and made myself snug for the night. the ship moved over the uneven sea with a gentle and cradling movement. the ponderous, organic labours of the engine in her bowels occupied the mind, and prepared it for slumber. from time to time a heavier lurch would disturb me as i lay, and recall me to the obscure borders of consciousness; or i heard, as it were through a veil, the clear note of the clapper on the brass and the beautiful sea-cry, 'all's well!' i know nothing, whether for poetry or music, that can surpass the effect of these two syllables in the darkness of a night at sea. the day dawned fairly enough, and during the early part we had some pleasant hours to improve acquaintance in the open air; but towards nightfall the wind freshened, the rain began to fall, and the sea rose so high that it was difficult to keep ones footing on the deck. i have spoken of our concerts. we were indeed a musical ship's company, and cheered our way into exile with the fiddle, the accordion, and the songs of all nations. good, bad, or indifferent scottish, english, irish, russian, german or norse, the songs were received with generous applause. once or twice, a recitation, very spiritedly rendered in a powerful scottish accent, varied the proceedings; and once we sought in vain to dance a quadrille, eight men of us together, to the music of the violin. the performers were all humorous, frisky fellows, who loved to cut capers in private life; but as soon as they were arranged for the dance, they conducted themselves like so many mutes at a funeral. i have never seen decorum pushed so far; and as this was not expected, the quadrille was soon whistled down, and the dancers departed under a cloud. eight frenchmen, even eight englishmen from another rank of society, would have dared to make some fun for themselves and the spectators; but the working man, when sober, takes an extreme and even melancholy view of personal deportment. a fifth-form schoolboy is not more careful of dignity. he dares not be comical; his fun must escape from him unprepared, and above all, it must be unaccompanied by any physical demonstration. i like his society under most circumstances, but let me never again join with him in public gambols. but the impulse to sing was strong, and triumphed over modesty and even the inclemencies of sea and sky. on this rough saturday night, we got together by the main deck-house, in a place sheltered from the wind and rain. some clinging to a ladder which led to the hurricane deck, and the rest knitting arms or taking hands, we made a ring to support the women in the violent lurching of the ship; and when we were thus disposed, sang to our hearts' content. some of the songs were appropriate to the scene; others strikingly the reverse. bastard doggrel of the music-hall, such as, 'around her splendid form, i weaved the magic circle,' sounded bald, bleak, and pitifully silly. 'we don't want to fight, but, by jingo, if we do,' was in some measure saved by the vigour and unanimity with which the chorus was thrown forth into the night. i observed a platt-deutsch mason, entirely innocent of english, adding heartily to the general effect. and perhaps the german mason is but a fair example of the sincerity with which the song was rendered; for nearly all with whom i conversed upon the subject were bitterly opposed to war, and attributed their own misfortunes, and frequently their own taste for whisky, to the campaigns in zululand and afghanistan. every now and again, however, some song that touched the pathos of our situation was given forth; and you could hear by the voices that took up the burden how the sentiment came home to each, 'the anchor's weighed' was true for us. we were indeed 'rocked on the bosom of the stormy deep.' how many of us could say with the singer, 'i'm lonely to-night, love, without you,' or, 'go, some one, and tell them from me, to write me a letter from home'! and when was there a more appropriate moment for 'auld lang syne' than now, when the land, the friends, and the affections of that mingled but beloved time were fading and fleeing behind us in the vessel's wake? it pointed forward to the hour when these labours should be overpast, to the return voyage, and to many a meeting in the sanded inn, when those who had parted in the spring of youth should again drink a cup of kindness in their age. had not burns contemplated emigration, i scarce believe he would have found that note. all sunday the weather remained wild and cloudy; many were prostrated by sickness; only five sat down to tea in the second cabin, and two of these departed abruptly ere the meal was at an end. the sabbath was observed strictly by the majority of the emigrants. i heard an old woman express her surprise that 'the ship didna gae doon,' as she saw some one pass her with a chess-board on the holy day. some sang scottish psalms. many went to service, and in true scottish fashion came back ill pleased with their divine. 'i didna think he was an experienced preacher,' said one girl to me. is was a bleak, uncomfortable day; but at night, by six bells, although the wind had not yet moderated, the clouds were all wrecked and blown away behind the rim of the horizon, and the stars came out thickly overhead. i saw venus burning as steadily and sweetly across this hurly-burly of the winds and waters as ever at home upon the summer woods. the engine pounded, the screw tossed out of the water with a roar, and shook the ship from end to end; the bows battled with loud reports against the billows: and as i stood in the leescuppers and looked up to where the funnel leaned out, over my head, vomiting smoke, and the black and monstrous top-sails blotted, at each lurch, a different crop of stars, it seemed as if all this trouble were a thing of small account, and that just above the mast reigned peace unbroken and eternal. steerage scenes our companion (steerage no. 2 and 3) was a favourite resort. down one flight of stairs there was a comparatively large open space, the centre occupied by a hatchway, which made a convenient seat for about twenty persons, while barrels, coils of rope, and the carpenter's bench afforded perches for perhaps as many more. the canteen, or steerage bar, was on one side of the stair; on the other, a no less attractive spot, the cabin of the indefatigable interpreter. i have seen people packed into this space like herrings in a barrel, and many merry evenings prolonged there until five bells, when the lights were ruthlessly extinguished and all must go to roost. it had been rumoured since friday that there was a fiddler aboard, who lay sick and unmelodious in steerage no. 1; and on the monday forenoon, as i came down the companion, i was saluted by something in strathspey time. a white-faced orpheus was cheerily playing to an audience of white-faced women. it was as much as he could do to play, and some of his hearers were scarce able to sit; yet they had crawled from their bunks at the first experimental flourish, and found better than medicine in the music. some of the heaviest heads began to nod in time, and a degree of animation looked from some of the palest eyes. humanly speaking, it is a more important matter to play the fiddle, even badly, than to write huge works upon recondite subjects. what could mr. darwin have done for these sick women? but this fellow scraped away; and the world was positively a better place for all who heard him. we have yet to understand the economical value of these mere accomplishments. i told the fiddler he was a happy man, carrying happiness about with him in his fiddle-case, and he seemed alive to the fact. 'it is a privilege,' i said. he thought a while upon the word, turning it over in his scots head, and then answered with conviction, 'yes, a privilege.' that night i was summoned by 'merrily danced the quake's wife' into the companion of steerage no. 4 and 5. this was, properly speaking, but a strip across a deck-house, lit by a sickly lantern which swung to and fro with the motion of the ship. through the open slide-door we had a glimpse of a grey night sea, with patches of phosphorescent foam flying, swift as birds, into the wake, and the horizon rising and falling as the vessel rolled to the wind. in the centre the companion ladder plunged down sheerly like an open pit. below, on the first landing, and lighted by another lamp, lads and lasses danced, not more than three at a time for lack of space, in jigs and reels and hornpipes. above, on either side, there was a recess railed with iron, perhaps two feet wide and four long, which stood for orchestra and seats of honour. in the one balcony, five slatternly irish lasses sat woven in a comely group. in the other was posted orpheus, his body, which was convulsively in motion, forming an odd contrast to his somnolent, imperturbable scots face. his brother, a dark man with a vehement, interested countenance, who made a god of the fiddler, sat by with open mouth, drinking in the general admiration and throwing out remarks to kindle it. 'that's a bonny hornpipe now,' he would say, 'it's a great favourite with performers; they dance the sand dance to it.' and he expounded the sand dance. then suddenly, it would be a long, 'hush!' with uplifted finger and glowing, supplicating eyes, 'he's going to play "auld robin gray " on one string!' and throughout this excruciating movement, 'on one string, that's on one string!' he kept crying. i would have given something myself that it had been on none; but the hearers were much awed. i called for a tune or two, and thus introduced myself to the notice of the brother, who directed his talk to me for some little while, keeping, i need hardly mention, true to his topic, like the seamen to the star. 'he's grand of it,' he said confidentially. 'his master was a music-hall man.' indeed the music-hall man had left his mark, for our fiddler was ignorant of many of our best old airs; 'logie o' buchan,' for instance, he only knew as a quick, jigging figure in a set of quadrilles, and had never heard it called by name. perhaps, after all, the brother was the more interesting performer of the two. i have spoken with him afterwards repeatedly, and found him always the same quick, fiery bit of a man, not without brains; but he never showed to such advantage as when he was thus squiring the fiddler into public note. there is nothing more becoming than a genuine admiration; and it shares this with love, that it does not become contemptible although misplaced. the dancing was but feebly carried on. the space was almost impracticably small; and the irish wenches combined the extreme of bashfulness about this innocent display with a surprising impudence and roughness of address. most often, either the fiddle lifted up its voice unheeded, or only a couple of lads would be footing it and snapping fingers on the landing. and such was the eagerness of the brother to display all the acquirements of his idol, and such the sleepy indifference of the performer, that the tune would as often as not be changed, and the hornpipe expire into a ballad before the dancers had cut half a dozen shuffles. in the meantime, however, the audience had been growing more and more numerous every moment; there was hardly standing-room round the top of the companion; and the strange instinct of the race moved some of the newcomers to close both the doors, so that the atmosphere grew insupportable. it was a good place, as the saying is, to leave. the wind hauled ahead with a head sea. by ten at night heavy sprays were flying and drumming over the forecastle; the companion of steerage no. 1 had to be closed, and the door of communication through the second cabin thrown open. either from the convenience of the opportunity, or because we had already a number of acquaintances in that part of the ship, mr. jones and i paid it a late visit. steerage no. 1 is shaped like an isosceles triangle, the sides opposite the equal angles bulging outward with the contour of the ship. it is lined with eight pens of sixteen bunks apiece, four bunks below and four above on either side. at night the place is lit with two lanterns, one to each table. as the steamer beat on her way among the rough billows, the light passed through violent phases of change, and was thrown to and fro and up and down with startling swiftness. you were tempted to wonder, as you looked, how so thin a glimmer could control and disperse such solid blackness. when jones and i entered we found a little company of our acquaintances seated together at the triangular foremost table. a more forlorn party, in more dismal circumstances, it would be hard to imagine. the motion here in the ship's nose was very violent; the uproar of the sea often overpoweringly loud. the yellow flicker of the lantern spun round and round and tossed the shadows in masses. the air was hot, but it struck a chill from its foetor. from all round in the dark bunks, the scarcely human noises of the sick joined into a kind of farmyard chorus. in the midst, these five friends of mine were keeping up what heart they could in company. singing was their refuge from discomfortable thoughts and sensations. one piped, in feeble tones, 'oh why left i my hame?' which seemed a pertinent question in the circumstances. another, from the invisible horrors of a pen where he lay dog-sick upon the upper-shelf, found courage, in a blink of his sufferings, to give us several verses of the 'death of nelson'; and it was odd and eerie to hear the chorus breathe feebly from all sorts of dark corners, and 'this day has done his dooty' rise and fall and be taken up again in this dim inferno, to an accompaniment of plunging, hollow-sounding bows and the rattling spray-showers overhead. all seemed unfit for conversation; a certain dizziness had interrupted the activity of their minds; and except to sing they were tongue-tied. there was present, however, one tall, powerful fellow of doubtful nationality, being neither quite scotsman nor altogether irish, but of surprising clearness of conviction on the highest problems. he had gone nearly beside himself on the sunday, because of a general backwardness to indorse his definition of mind as 'a living, thinking substance which cannot be felt, heard, or seen' nor, i presume, although he failed to mention it, smelt. now he came forward in a pause with another contribution to our culture. 'just by way of change,' said he, 'i'll ask you a scripture riddle. there's profit in them too,' he added ungrammatically. this was the riddlec and p did agree to cut down c; but c and p could not agree without the leave of g; all the people cried to see the crueltie of c and p. harsh are the words of mercury after the songs of apollo! we were a long while over the problem, shaking our heads and gloomily wondering how a man could be such a fool; but at length he put us out of suspense and divulged the fact that c and p stood for caiaphas and pontius pilate. i think it must have been the riddle that settled us; but the motion and the close air likewise hurried our departure. we had not been gone long, we heard next morning, ere two or even three out of the five fell sick. we thought it little wonder on the whole, for the sea kept contrary all night. i now made my bed upon the second cabin floor, where, although i ran the risk of being stepped upon, i had a free current of air, more or less vitiated indeed, and running only from steerage to steerage, but at least not stagnant; and from this couch, as well as the usual sounds of a rough night at sea, the hateful coughing and retching of the sick and the sobs of children, i heard a man run wild with terror beseeching his friend for encouragement. 'the ship 's going down!' he cried with a thrill of agony. 'the ship's going down!' he repeated, now in a blank whisper, now with his voice rising towards a sob; and his friend might reassure him, reason with him, joke at him all was in vain, and the old cry came back, 'the ship's going down!' there was something panicky and catching in the emotion of his tones; and i saw in a clear flash what an involved and hideous tragedy was a disaster to an emigrant ship. if this whole parishful of people came no more to land, into how many houses would the newspaper carry woe, and what a great part of the web of our corporate human life would be rent across for ever! the next morning when i came on deck i found a new world indeed. the wind was fair; the sun mounted into a cloudless heaven; through great dark blue seas the ship cut a swath of curded foam. the horizon was dotted all day with companionable sails, and the sun shone pleasantly on the long, heaving deck. we had many fine-weather diversions to beguile the time. there was a single chess-board and a single pack of cards. sometimes as many as twenty of us would be playing dominoes for love. feats of dexterity, puzzles for the intelligence, some arithmetical, some of the same order as the old problem of the fox and goose and cabbage, were always welcome; and the latter, i observed, more popular as well as more conspicuously well done than the former. we had a regular daily competition to guess the vessel's progress; and twelve o'clock, when the result was published in the wheel-house, came to be a moment of considerable interest. but the interest was unmixed. not a bet was laid upon our guesses. from the clyde to sandy hook i never heard a wager offered or taken. we had, besides, romps in plenty. puss in the corner, which we had rebaptized, in more manly style, devil and four corners, was my own favourite game; but there were many who preferred another, the humour of which was to box a person's ears until he found out who had cuffed him. this tuesday morning we were all delighted with the change of weather, and in the highest possible spirits. we got in a cluster like bees, sitting between each other's feet under lee of the deckhouses. stories and laughter went around. the children climbed about the shrouds. white faces appeared for the first time, and began to take on colour from the wind. i was kept hard at work making cigarettes for one amateur after another, and my less than moderate skill was heartily admired. lastly, down sat the fiddler in our midst and began to discourse his reels, and jigs, and ballads, with now and then a voice or two to take up the air and throw in the interest of human speech. through this merry and good-hearted scene there came three cabin passengers, a gentleman and two young ladies, picking their way with little gracious titters of indulgence, and a lady-bountiful air about nothing, which galled me to the quick. i have little of the radical in social questions, and have always nourished an idea that one person was as good as another. but i began to be troubled by this episode. it was astonishing what insults these people managed to convey by their presence. they seemed to throw their clothes in our faces. their eyes searched us all over for tatters and incongruities. a laugh was ready at their lips; but they were too well-mannered to indulge it in our hearing. wait a bit, till they were all back in the saloon, and then hear how wittily they would depict the manners of the steerage. we were in truth very innocently, cheerfully, and sensibly engaged, and there was no shadow of excuse for the swaying elegant superiority with which these damsels passed among us, or for the stiff and waggish glances of their squire. not a word was said; only when they were gone mackay sullenly damned their impudence under his breath; but we were all conscious of an icy influence and a dead break in the course of our enjoyment. steerage types we had a fellow on board, an irish-american, for all the world like a beggar in a print by callot; one-eyed, with great, splay crow's-feet round the sockets; a knotty squab nose coming down over his moustache; a miraculous hat; a shirt that had been white, ay, ages long ago; an alpaca coat in its last sleeves; and, without hyperbole, no buttons to his trousers. even in these rags and tatters, the man twinkled all over with impudence like a piece of sham jewellery; and i have heard him offer a situation to one of his fellow-passengers with the air of a lord. nothing could overlie such a fellow; a kind of base success was written on his brow. he was then in his ill days; but i can imagine him in congress with his mouth full of bombast and sawder. as we moved in the same circle, i was brought necessarily into his society. i do not think i ever heard him say anything that was true, kind, or interesting; but there was entertainment in the man's demeanour. you might call him a halfeducated irish tigg. our russian made a remarkable contrast to this impossible fellow. rumours and legends were current in the steerages about his antecedents. some said he was a nihilist escaping; others set him down for a harmless spendthrift, who had squandered fifty thousand roubles, and whose father had now despatched him to america by way of penance. either tale might flourish in security; there was no contradiction to be feared, for the hero spoke not one word of english. i got on with him lumberingly enough in broken german, and learned from his own lips that he had been an apothecary. he carried the photograph of his betrothed in a pocket-book, and remarked that it did not do her justice. the cut of his head stood out from among the passengers with an air of startling strangeness. the first natural instinct was to take him for a desperado; but although the features, to our western eyes, had a barbaric and unhomely cast, the eye both reassured and touched. it was large and very dark and soft, with an expression of dumb endurance, as if it had often looked on desperate circumstances and never looked on them without resolution. he cried out when i used the word. 'no, no,' he said, 'not resolution.' 'the resolution to endure,' i explained. and then he shrugged his shoulders, and said, 'ach, ja,' with gusto, like a man who has been flattered in his favourite pretensions. indeed, he was always hinting at some secret sorrow; and his life, he said, had been one of unusual trouble and anxiety; so the legends of the steerage may have represented at least some shadow of the truth. once, and once only, he sang a song at our concerts; standing forth without embarrassment, his great stature somewhat humped, his long arms frequently extended, his kalmuck head thrown backward. it was a suitable piece of music, as deep as a cow's bellow and wild like the white sea. he was struck and charmed by the freedom and sociality of our manners. at home, he said, no one on a journey would speak to him, but those with whom he would not care to speak; thus unconsciously involving himself in the condemnation of his countrymen. but russia was soon to be changed; the ice of the neva was softening under the sun of civilisation; the new ideas, 'wie eine feine violine,' were audible among the big empty drum notes of imperial diplomacy; and he looked to see a great revival, though with a somewhat indistinct and childish hope. we had a father and son who made a pair of jacks-of-all-trades. it was the son who sang the 'death of nelson' under such contrarious circumstances. he was by trade a shearer of ship plates; but he could touch the organ, and led two choirs, and played the flute and piccolo in a professional string band. his repertory of songs was, besides, inexhaustible, and ranged impartially from the very best to the very worst within his reach. nor did he seem to make the least distinction between these extremes, but would cheerily follow up 'tom bowling' with 'around her splendid form.' the father, an old, cheery, small piece of man-hood, could do everything connected with tinwork from one end of the process to the other, use almost every carpenter's tool, and make picture frames to boot. 'i sat down with silver plate every sunday,' said he, 'and pictures on the wall. i have made enough money to be rolling in my carriage. but, sir,' looking at me unsteadily with his bright rheumy eyes, 'i was troubled with a drunken wife.' he took a hostile view of matrimony in consequence. 'it's an old saying,' he remarked: 'god made 'em, and the devil he mixed 'em.' i think he was justified by his experience. it was a dreary story. he would bring home three pounds on saturday, and on monday all the clothes would be in pawn. sick of the useless struggle, he gave up a paying contract, and contented himself with small and ill-paid jobs. 'a bad job was as good as a good job for me,' he said; 'it all went the same way.' once the wife showed signs of amendment; she kept steady for weeks on end; it was again worth while to labour and to do one's best. the husband found a good situation some distance from home, and, to make a little upon every hand, started the wife in a cook-shop; the children were here and there, busy as mice; savings began to grow together in the bank, and the golden age of hope had returned again to that unhappy family. but one week my old acquaintance, getting earlier through with his work, came home on the friday instead of the saturday, and there was his wife to receive him reeling drunk. he 'took and gave her a pair o' black eyes,' for which i pardon him, nailed up the cook-shop door, gave up his situation, and resigned himself to a life of poverty, with the workhouse at the end. as the children came to their full age they fled the house, and established themselves in other countries; some did well, some not so well; but the father remained at home alone with his drunken wife, all his sound-hearted pluck and varied accomplishments depressed and negatived. was she dead now? or, after all these years, had he broken the chain, and run from home like a schoolboy? i could not discover which; but here at least he was out on the adventure, and still one of the bravest and most youthful men on board. 'now, i suppose, i must put my old bones to work again,' said he; 'but i can do a turn yet.' and the son to whom he was going, i asked, was he not able to support him? 'oh yes,' he replied. 'but i'm never happy without a job on hand. and i'm stout; i can eat a'most anything. you see no craze about me.' this tale of a drunken wife was paralleled on board by another of a drunken father. he was a capable man, with a good chance in life; but he had drunk up two thriving businesses like a bottle of sherry, and involved his sons along with him in ruin. now they were on board with us, fleeing his disastrous neighbourhood. total abstinence, like all ascetical conclusions, is unfriendly to the most generous, cheerful, and human parts of man; but it could have adduced many instances and arguments from among our ship's company. i was, one day conversing with a kind and happy scotsman, running to fat and perspiration in the physical, but with a taste for poetry and a genial sense of fun. i had asked him his hopes in emigrating. they were like those of so many others, vague and unfounded; times were bad at home; they were said to have a turn for the better in the states; a man could get on anywhere, he thought. that was precisely the weak point of his position; for if he could get on in america, why could he not do the same in scotland? but i never had the courage to use that argument, though it was often on the tip of my tongue, and instead i agreed with him heartily adding, with reckless originality, 'if the man stuck to his work, and kept away from drink.' 'ah!' said he slowly, 'the drink! you see, that's just my trouble.' he spoke with a simplicity that was touching, looking at me at the same time with something strange and timid in his eye, half-ashamed, half-sorry, like a good child who knows he should be beaten. you would have said he recognised a destiny to which he was born, and accepted the consequences mildly. like the merchant abudah, he was at the same time fleeing from his destiny and carrying it along with him, the whole at an expense of six guineas. as far as i saw, drink, idleness, and incompetency were the three great causes of emigration, and for all of them, and drink first and foremost, this trick of getting transported overseas appears to me the silliest means of cure. you cannot run away from a weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand? coelum non animam. change glenlivet for bourbon, and it is still whisky, only not so good. a sea-voyage will not give a man the nerve to put aside cheap pleasure; emigration has to be done before we climb the vessel; an aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself. speaking generally, there is no vice of this kind more contemptible than another; for each is but a result and outward sign of a soul tragically ship-wrecked. in the majority of cases, cheap pleasure is resorted to by way of anodyne. the pleasure-seeker sets forth upon life with high and difficult ambitions; he meant to be nobly good and nobly happy, though at as little pains as possible to himself; and it is because all has failed in his celestial enterprise that you now behold him rolling in the garbage. hence the comparative success of the teetotal pledge; because to a man who had nothing it sets at least a negative aim in life. somewhat as prisoners beguile their days by taming a spider, the reformed drunkard makes an interest out of abstaining from intoxicating drinks, and may live for that negation. there is something, at least, not to be done each day; and a cold triumph awaits him every evening. we had one on board with us, whom i have already referred to under the name mackay, who seemed to me not only a good instance of this failure in life of which we have been speaking, but a good type of the intelligence which here surrounded me. physically he was a small scotsman, standing a little back as though he were already carrying the elements of a corporation, and his looks somewhat marred by the smallness of his eyes. mentally, he was endowed above the average. there were but few subjects on which he could not converse with understanding and a dash of wit; delivering himself slowly and with gusto like a man who enjoyed his own sententiousness. he was a dry, quick, pertinent debater, speaking with a small voice, and swinging on his heels to launch and emphasise an argument. when he began a discussion, he could not bear to leave it off, but would pick the subject to the bone, without once relinquishing a point. an engineer by trade, mackay believed in the unlimited perfectibility of all machines except the human machine. the latter he gave up with ridicule for a compound of carrion and perverse gases. he had an appetite for disconnected facts which i can only compare to the savage taste for beads. what is called information was indeed a passion with the man, and he not only delighted to receive it, but could pay you back in kind. with all these capabilities, here was mackay, already no longer young, on his way to a new country, with no prospects, no money, and but little hope. he was almost tedious in the cynical disclosures of his despair. 'the ship may go down for me,' he would say, 'now or to-morrow. i have nothing to lose and nothing to hope.' and again: 'i am sick of the whole damned performance.' he was, like the kind little man, already quoted, another so-called victim of the bottle. but mackay was miles from publishing his weakness to the world; laid the blame of his failure on corrupt masters and a corrupt state policy; and after he had been one night overtaken and had played the buffoon in his cups, sternly, though not without tact, suppressed all reference to his escapade. it was a treat to see him manage this: the various jesters withered under his gaze, and you were forced to recognise in him a certain steely force, and a gift of command which might have ruled a senate. in truth it was not whisky that had ruined him; he was ruined long before for all good human purposes but conversation. his eyes were sealed by a cheap, school-book materialism. he could see nothing in the world but money and steam-engines. he did not know what you meant by the word happiness. he had forgotten the simple emotions of childhood, and perhaps never encountered the delights of youth. he believed in production, that useful figment of economy, as if it had been real like laughter; and production, without prejudice to liquor, was his god and guide. one day he took me to task novel cry to me upon the over-payment of literature. literary men, he said, were more highly paid than artisans; yet the artisan made threshingmachines and butter-churns, and the man of letters, except in the way of a few useful handbooks, made nothing worth the while. he produced a mere fancy article. mackay's notion of a book was hoppus's measurer. now in my time i have possessed and even studied that work; but if i were to be left to-morrow on juan fernandez, hoppus's is not the book that i should choose for my companion volume. i tried to fight the point with mackay. i made him own that he had taken pleasure in reading books otherwise, to his view, insignificant; but he was too wary to advance a step beyond the admission. it was in vain for me to argue that here was pleasure ready-made and running from the spring, whereas his ploughs and butter-churns were but means and mechanisms to give men the necessary food and leisure before they start upon the search for pleasure; he jibbed and ran away from such conclusions. the thing was different, he declared, and nothing was serviceable but what had to do with food. 'eat, eat, eat!' he cried; 'that's the bottom and the top.' by an odd irony of circumstance, he grew so much interested in this discussion that he let the hour slip by unnoticed and had to go without his tea. he had enough sense and humour, indeed he had no lack of either, to have chuckled over this himself in private; and even to me he referred to it with the shadow of a smile. mackay was a hot bigot. he would not hear of religion. i have seen him waste hours of time in argument with all sorts of poor human creatures who understood neither him nor themselves, and he had had the boyishness to dissect and criticise even so small a matter as the riddler's definition of mind. he snorted aloud with zealotry and the lust for intellectual battle. anything, whatever it was, that seemed to him likely to discourage the continued passionate production of corn and steam-engines he resented like a conspiracy against the people. thus, when i put in the plea for literature, that it was only in good books, or in the society of the good, that a man could get help in his conduct, he declared i was in a different world from him. 'damn my conduct!' said he. 'i have given it up for a bad job. my question is, "can i drive a nail?"' and he plainly looked upon me as one who was insidiously seeking to reduce the people's annual bellyful of corn and steam-engines. it may be argued that these opinions spring from the defect of culture; that a narrow and pinching way of life not only exaggerates to a man the importance of material conditions, but indirectly, by denying him the necessary books and leisure, keeps his mind ignorant of larger thoughts; and that hence springs this overwhelming concern about diet, and hence the bald view of existence professed by mackay. had this been an english peasant the conclusion would be tenable. but mackay had most of the elements of a liberal education. he had skirted metaphysical and mathematical studies. he had a thoughtful hold of what he knew, which would be exceptional among bankers. he had been brought up in the midst of hot-house piety, and told, with incongruous pride, the story of his own brother's deathbed ecstasies. yet he had somehow failed to fulfil himself, and was adrift like a dead thing among external circumstances, without hope or lively preference or shaping aim. and further, there seemed a tendency among many of his fellows to fall into the same blank and unlovely opinions. one thing, indeed, is not to be learned in scotland, and that is the way to be happy. yet that is the whole of culture, and perhaps two-thirds of morality. can it be that the puritan school, by divorcing a man from nature, by thinning out his instincts, and setting a stamp of its disapproval on whole fields of human activity and interest, leads at last directly to material greed? nature is a good guide through life, and the love of simple pleasures next, if not superior, to virtue; and we had on board an irishman who based his claim to the widest and most affectionate popularity precisely upon these two qualities, that he was natural and happy. he boasted a fresh colour, a tight little figure, unquenchable gaiety, and indefatigable goodwill. his clothes puzzled the diagnostic mind, until you heard he had been once a private coachman, when they became eloquent and seemed a part of his biography. his face contained the rest, and, i fear, a prophecy of the future; the hawk's nose above accorded so ill with the pink baby's mouth below. his spirit and his pride belonged, you might say, to the nose; while it was the general shiftlessness expressed by the other that had thrown him from situation to situation, and at length on board the emigrant ship. barney ate, so to speak, nothing from the galley; his own tea, butter, and eggs supported him throughout the voyage; and about mealtime you might often find him up to the elbows in amateur cookery. his was the first voice heard singing among all the passengers; he was the first who fell to dancing. from loch foyle to sandy hook, there was not a piece of fun undertaken but there was barney in the midst. you ought to have seen him when he stood up to sing at our concerts his tight little figure stepping to and fro, and his feet shuffling to the air, his eyes seeking and bestowing encouragement and to have enjoyed the bow, so nicely calculated between jest and earnest, between grace and clumsiness, with which he brought each song to a conclusion. he was not only a great favourite among ourselves, but his songs attracted the lords of the saloon, who often leaned to hear him over the rails of the hurricane-deck. he was somewhat pleased, but not at all abashed, by this attention; and one night, in the midst of his famous performance of 'billy keogh,' i saw him spin half round in a pirouette and throw an audacious wink to an old gentleman above. this was the more characteristic, as, for all his daffing, he was a modest and very polite little fellow among ourselves. he would not have hurt the feelings of a fly, nor throughout the passage did he give a shadow of offence; yet he was always, by his innocent freedoms and love of fun, brought upon that narrow margin where politeness must be natural to walk without a fall. he was once seriously angry, and that in a grave, quiet manner, because they supplied no fish on friday; for barney was a conscientious catholic. he had likewise strict notions of refinement; and when, late one evening, after the women had retired, a young scotsman struck up an indecent song, barney's drab clothes were immediately missing from the group. his taste was for the society of gentlemen, of whom, with the reader's permission, there was no lack in our five steerages and second cabin; and he avoided the rough and positive with a girlish shrinking. mackay, partly from his superior powers of mind, which rendered him incomprehensible, partly from his extreme opinions, was especially distasteful to the irishman. i have seen him slink off with backward looks of terror and offended delicacy, while the other, in his witty, ugly way, had been professing hostility to god, and an extreme theatrical readiness to be shipwrecked on the spot. these utterances hurt the little coachman's modesty like a bad word. the sick man one night jones, the young o'reilly, and myself were walking arm-inarm and briskly up and down the deck. six bells had rung; a headwind blew chill and fitful, the fog was closing in with a sprinkle of rain, and the fog-whistle had been turned on, and now divided time with its unwelcome outcries, loud like a bull, thrilling and intense like a mosquito. even the watch lay somewhere snugly out of sight. for some time we observed something lying black and huddled in the scuppers, which at last heaved a little and moaned aloud. we ran to the rails. an elderly man, but whether passenger or seaman it was impossible in the darkness to determine, lay grovelling on his belly in the wet scuppers, and kicking feebly with his outspread toes. we asked him what was amiss, and he replied incoherently, with a strange accent and in a voice unmanned by terror, that he had cramp in the stomach, that he had been ailing all day, had seen the doctor twice, and had walked the deck against fatigue till he was overmastered and had fallen where we found him. jones remained by his side, while o'reilly and i hurried off to seek the doctor. we knocked in vain at the doctor's cabin; there came no reply; nor could we find any one to guide us. it was no time for delicacy; so we ran once more forward; and i, whipping up a ladder and touching my hat to the officer of the watch, addressed him as politely as i could 'i beg your pardon, sir; but there is a man lying bad with cramp in the lee scuppers; and i can't find the doctor.' he looked at me peeringly in the darkness; and then, somewhat harshly, 'well, i can't leave the bridge, my man,' said he. 'no, sir; but you can tell me what to do,' i returned. 'is it one of the crew?' he asked. 'i believe him to be a fireman,' i replied. i dare say officers are much annoyed by complaints and alarmist information from their freight of human creatures; but certainly, whether it was the idea that the sick man was one of the crew, or from something conciliatory in my address, the officer in question was immediately relieved and mollified; and speaking in a voice much freer from constraint, advised me to find a steward and despatch him in quest of the doctor, who would now be in the smoking-room over his pipe. one of the stewards was often enough to be found about this hour down our companion, steerage no. 2 and 3; that was his smoking-room of a night. let me call him blackwood. o'reilly and i rattled down the companion, breathing hurry; and in his shirt-sleeves and perched across the carpenters bench upon one thigh, found blackwood; a neat, bright, dapper, glasgow-looking man, with a bead of an eye and a rank twang in his speech. i forget who was with him, but the pair were enjoying a deliberate talk over their pipes. i dare say he was tired with his day's work, and eminently comfortable at that moment; and the truth is, i did not stop to consider his feelings, but told my story in a breath. 'steward,' said i, 'there's a man lying bad with cramp, and i can't find the doctor.' he turned upon me as pert as a sparrow, but with a black look that is the prerogative of man; and taking his pipe out of his mouth 'that's none of my business,' said he. 'i don't care.' i could have strangled the little ruffian where he sat. the thought of his cabin civility and cabin tips filled me with indignation. i glanced at o'reilly; he was pale and quivering, and looked like assault and battery, every inch of him. but we had a better card than violence. 'you will have to make it your business,' said i, 'for i am sent to you by the officer on the bridge.' blackwood was fairly tripped. he made no answer, but put out his pipe, gave me one murderous look, and set off upon his errand strolling. from that day forward, i should say, he improved to me in courtesy, as though he had repented his evil speech and were anxious to leave a better impression. when we got on deck again, jones was still beside the sick man; and two or three late stragglers had gathered round, and were offering suggestions. one proposed to give the patient water, which was promptly negatived. another bade us hold him up; he himself prayed to be let lie; but as it was at least as well to keep him off the streaming decks, o'reilly and i supported him between us. it was only by main force that we did so, and neither an easy nor an agreeable duty; for he fought in his paroxysms like a frightened child, and moaned miserably when he resigned himself to our control. 'o let me lie!' he pleaded. 'i'll no' get better anyway.' and then, with a moan that went to my heart, 'o why did i come upon this miserable journey?' i was reminded of the song which i had heard a little while before in the close, tossing steerage: 'o why left i my hame?' meantime jones, relieved of his immediate charge, had gone off to the galley, where we could see a light. there he found a belated cook scouring pans by the radiance of two lanterns, and one of these he sought to borrow. the scullion was backward. 'was it one of the crew?' he asked. and when jones, smitten with my theory, had assured him that it was a fireman, he reluctantly left his scouring and came towards us at an easy pace, with one of the lanterns swinging from his finger. the light, as it reached the spot, showed us an elderly man, thick-set, and grizzled with years; but the shifting and coarse shadows concealed from us the expression and even the design of his face. so soon as the cook set eyes on him he gave a sort of whistle. 'it's only a passenger!' said he; and turning about, made, lantern and all, for the galley. 'he's a man anyway,' cried jones in indignation. 'nobody said he was a woman,' said a gruff voice, which i recognised for that of the bo's'un. all this while there was no word of blackwood or the doctor; and now the officer came to our side of the ship and asked, over the hurricane-deck rails, if the doctor were not yet come. we told him not. 'no?' he repeated with a breathing of anger; and we saw him hurry aft in person. ten minutes after the doctor made his appearance deliberately enough and examined our patient with the lantern. he made little of the case, had the man brought aft to the dispensary, dosed him, and sent him forward to his bunk. two of his neighbours in the steerage had now come to our assistance, expressing loud sorrow that such 'a fine cheery body' should be sick; and these, claiming a sort of possession, took him entirely under their own care. the drug had probably relieved him, for he struggled no more, and was led along plaintive and patient, but protesting. his heart recoiled at the thought of the steerage. 'o let me lie down upon the bieldy side,' he cried; 'o dinna take me down!' and again: 'o why did ever i come upon this miserable voyage?' and yet once more, with a gasp and a wailing prolongation of the fourth word: 'i had no call to come.' but there he was; and by the doctor's orders and the kind force of his two shipmates disappeared down the companion of steerage no.1 into the den allotted him. at the foot of our own companion, just where i found blackwood, jones and the bo's'un were now engaged in talk. this last was a gruff, cruel-looking seaman, who must have passed near half a century upon the seas; square-headed, goat-bearded, with heavy blond eyebrows, and an eye without radiance, but inflexibly steady and hard. i had not forgotten his rough speech; but i remembered also that he had helped us about the lantern; and now seeing him in conversation with jones, and being choked with indignation, i proceeded to blow off my steam. 'well,' said i, 'i make you my compliments upon your steward,' and furiously narrated what had happened. 'i've nothing to do with him,' replied the bo's'un. 'they're all alike. they wouldn't mind if they saw you all lying dead one upon the top of another.' this was enough. a very little humanity went a long way with me after the experience of the evening. a sympathy grew up at once between the bo's'un and myself; and that night, and during the next few days, i learned to appreciate him better. he was a remarkable type, and not at all the kind of man you find in books. he had been at sebastopol under english colours; and again in a states ship, 'after the alabama, and praying god we shouldn't find her.' he was a high tory and a high englishman. no manufacturer could have held opinions more hostile to the working man and his strikes. 'the workmen,' he said, 'think nothing of their country. they think of nothing but themselves. they're damned greedy, selfish fellows.' he would not hear of the decadence of england. 'they say they send us beef from america,' he argued; 'but who pays for it? all the money in the world's in england.' the royal navy was the best of possible services, according to him. 'anyway the officers are gentlemen,' said he; 'and you can't get hazed to death by a damned noncommissioned as you can in the army.' among nations, england was the first; then came france. he respected the french navy and liked the french people; and if he were forced to make a new choice in life, 'by god, he would try frenchmen!' for all his looks and rough, cold manners, i observed that children were never frightened by him; they divined him at once to be a friend; and one night when he had chalked his hand and clothes, it was incongruous to hear this formidable old salt chuckling over his boyish monkey trick. in the morning, my first thought was of the sick man. i was afraid i should not recognise him, baffling had been the light of the lantern; and found myself unable to decide if he were scots, english, or irish. he had certainly employed north-country words and elisions; but the accent and the pronunciation seemed unfamiliar and incongruous in my ear. to descend on an empty stomach into steerage no. 1, was an adventure that required some nerve. the stench was atrocious; each respiration tasted in the throat like some horrible kind of cheese; and the squalid aspect of the place was aggravated by so many people worming themselves into their clothes in twilight of the bunks. you may guess if i was pleased, not only for him, but for myself also, when i heard that the sick man was better and had gone on deck. the morning was raw and foggy, though the sun suffused the fog with pink and amber; the fog-horn still blew, stertorous and intermittent; and to add to the discomfort, the seamen were just beginning to wash down the decks. but for a sick man this was heaven compared to the steerage. i found him standing on the hot-water pipe, just forward of the saloon deck house. he was smaller than i had fancied, and plain-looking; but his face was distinguished by strange and fascinating eyes, limpid grey from a distance, but, when looked into, full of changing colours and grains of gold. his manners were mild and uncompromisingly plain; and i soon saw that, when once started, he delighted to talk. his accent and language had been formed in the most natural way, since he was born in ireland, had lived a quarter of a century on the banks of tyne, and was married to a scots wife. a fisherman in the season, he had fished the east coast from fisherrow to whitby. when the season was over, and the great boats, which required extra hands, were once drawn up on shore till the next spring, he worked as a labourer about chemical furnaces, or along the wharves unloading vessels. in this comparatively humble way of life he had gathered a competence, and could speak of his comfortable house, his hayfield, and his garden. on this ship, where so many accomplished artisans were fleeing from starvation, he was present on a pleasure trip to visit a brother in new york. ere he started, he informed me, he had been warned against the steerage and the steerage fare, and recommended to bring with him a ham and tea and a spice loaf. but he laughed to scorn such counsels. 'i'm not afraid,' he had told his adviser; 'i'll get on for ten days. i've not been a fisherman for nothing.' for it is no light matter, as he reminded me, to be in an open boat, perhaps waist-deep with herrings, day breaking with a scowl, and for miles on every hand leeshores, unbroken, iron-bound, surf-beat, with only here and there an anchorage where you dare not lie, or a harbour impossible to enter with the wind that blows. the life of a north sea fisher is one long chapter of exposure and hard work and insufficient fare; and even if he makes land at some bleak fisher port, perhaps the season is bad or his boat has been unlucky and after fifty hours' unsleeping vigilance and toil, not a shop will give him credit for a loaf of bread. yet the steerage of the emigrant ship had been too vile for the endurance of a man thus rudely trained. he had scarce eaten since he came on board, until the day before, when his appetite was tempted by some excellent pea-soup. we were all much of the same mind on board, and beginning with myself, had dined upon pea-soup not wisely but too well; only with him the excess had been punished, perhaps because he was weakened by former abstinence, and his first meal had resulted in a cramp. he had determined to live henceforth on biscuit; and when, two months later, he should return to england, to make the passage by saloon. the second cabin, after due inquiry, he scouted as another edition of the steerage. he spoke apologetically of his emotion when ill. 'ye see, i had no call to be here,' said he; 'and i thought it was by with me last night. i've a good house at home, and plenty to nurse me, and i had no real call to leave them.' speaking of the attentions he had received from his shipmates generally, 'they were all so kind,' he said, 'that there's none to mention.' and except in so far as i might share in this, he troubled me with no reference to my services. but what affected me in the most lively manner was the wealth of this day-labourer, paying a two months' pleasure visit to the states, and preparing to return in the saloon, and the new testimony rendered by his story, not so much to the horrors of the steerage as to the habitual comfort of the working classes. one foggy, frosty december evening, i encountered on liberton hill, near edinburgh, an irish labourer trudging homeward from the fields. our roads lay together, and it was natural that we should fall into talk. he was covered with mud; an inoffensive, ignorant creature, who thought the atlantic cable was a secret contrivance of the masters the better to oppress labouring mankind; and i confess i was astonished to learn that he had nearly three hundred pounds in the bank. but this man had travelled over most of the world, and enjoyed wonderful opportunities on some american railroad, with two dollars a shift and double pay on sunday and at night; whereas my fellow-passenger had never quitted tyneside, and had made all that he possessed in that same accursed, down-falling england, whence skilled mechanics, engineers, millwrights, and carpenters were fleeing as from the native country of starvation. fitly enough, we slid off on the subject of strikes and wages and hard times. being from the tyne, and a man who had gained and lost in his own pocket by these fluctuations, he had much to say, and held strong opinions on the subject. he spoke sharply of the masters, and, when i led him on, of the men also. the masters had been selfish and obstructive, the men selfish, silly, and light-headed. he rehearsed to me the course of a meeting at which he had been present, and the somewhat long discourse which he had there pronounced, calling into question the wisdom and even the good faith of the union delegates; and although he had escaped himself through flush times and starvation times with a handsomely provided purse, he had so little faith in either man or master, and so profound a terror for the unerring nemesis of mercantile affairs, that he could think of no hope for our country outside of a sudden and complete political subversion. down must go lords and church and army; and capital, by some happy direction, must change hands from worse to better, or england stood condemned. such principles, he said, were growing 'like a seed.' from this mild, soft, domestic man, these words sounded unusually ominous and grave. i had heard enough revolutionary talk among my workmen fellow-passengers; but most of it was hot and turgid, and fell discredited from the lips of unsuccessful men. this man was calm; he had attained prosperity and ease; he disapproved the policy which had been pursued by labour in the past; and yet this was his panacea, to rend the old country from end to end, and from top to bottom, and in clamour and civil discord remodel it with the hand of violence. the stowaways on the sunday, among a party of men who were talking in our companion, steerage no. 2 and 3, we remarked a new figure. he wore tweed clothes, well enough made if not very fresh, and a plain smoking-cap. his face was pale, with pale eyes, and spiritedly enough designed; but though not yet thirty, a sort of blackguardly degeneration had already overtaken his features. the fine nose had grown fleshy towards the point, the pale eyes were sunk in fat. his hands were strong and elegant; his experience of life evidently varied; his speech full of pith and verve; his manners forward, but perfectly presentable. the lad who helped in the second cabin told me, in answer to a question, that he did not know who he was, but thought, 'by his way of speaking, and because he was so polite, that he was some one from the saloon.' i was not so sure, for to me there was something equivocal in his air and bearing. he might have been, i thought, the son of some good family who had fallen early into dissipation and run from home. but, making every allowance, how admirable was his talk! i wish you could have heard hin, tell his own stories. they were so swingingly set forth, in such dramatic language, and illustrated here and there by such luminous bits of acting, that they could only lose in any reproduction. there were tales of the p. and o. company, where he had been an officer; of the east indies, where in former years he had lived lavishly; of the royal engineers, where he had served for a period; and of a dozen other sides of life, each introducing some vigorous thumb-nail portrait. he had the talk to himself that night, we were all so glad to listen. the best talkers usually address themselves to some particular society; there they are kings, elsewhere camp-followers, as a man may know russian and yet be ignorant of spanish; but this fellow had a frank, headlong power of style, and a broad, human choice of subject, that would have turned any circle in the world into a circle of hearers. he was a homeric talker, plain, strong, and cheerful; and the things and the people of which he spoke became readily and clearly present to the minds of those who heard him. this, with a certain added colouring of rhetoric and rodomontade, must have been the style of burns, who equally charmed the ears of duchesses and hostlers. yet freely and personally as he spoke, many points remained obscure in his narration. the engineers, for instance, was a service which he praised highly; it is true there would be trouble with the sergeants; but then the officers were gentlemen, and his own, in particular, one among ten thousand. it sounded so far exactly like an episode in the rakish, topsy-turvy life of such an one as i had imagined. but then there came incidents more doubtful, which showed an almost impudent greed after gratuities, and a truly impudent disregard for truth. and then there was the tale of his departure. he had wearied, it seems, of woolwich, and one fine day, with a companion, slipped up to london for a spree. i have a suspicion that spree was meant to be a long one; but god disposes all things; and one morning, near westminster bridge, whom should he come across but the very sergeant who had recruited him at first! what followed? he himself indicated cavalierly that he had then resigned. let us put it so. but these resignations are sometimes very trying. at length, after having delighted us for hours, he took himself away from the companion; and i could ask mackay who and what he was. 'that?' said mackay. 'why, that's one of the stowaways.' 'no man,' said the same authority, 'who has had anything to do with the sea, would ever think of paying for a passage.' i give the statement as mackay's, without endorsement; yet i am tempted to believe that it contains a grain of truth; and if you add that the man shall be impudent and thievish, or else dead-broke, it may even pass for a fair representation of the facts. we gentlemen of england who live at home at ease have, i suspect, very insufficient ideas on the subject. all the world over, people are stowing away in coalholes and dark corners, and when ships are once out to sea, appearing again, begrimed and bashful, upon deck. the career of these seatramps partakes largely of the adventurous. they may be poisoned by coal-gas, or die by starvation in their place of concealment; or when found they may be clapped at once and ignominiously into irons, thus to be carried to their promised land, the port of destination, and alas! brought back in the same way to that from which they started, and there delivered over to the magistrates and the seclusion of a county jail. since i crossed the atlantic, one miserable stowaway was found in a dying state among the fuel, uttered but a word or two, and departed for a farther country than america. when the stowaway appears on deck, he has but one thing to pray for: that he be set to work, which is the price and sign of his forgiveness. after half an hour with a swab or a bucket, he feels himself as secure as if he had paid for his passage. it is not altogether a bad thing for the company, who get more or less efficient hands for nothing but a few plates of junk and duff; and every now and again find themselves better paid than by a whole family of cabin passengers. not long ago, for instance, a packet was saved from nearly certain loss by the skill and courage of a stowaway engineer. as was no more than just, a handsome subscription rewarded him for his success: but even without such exceptional good fortune, as things stand in england and america, the stowaway will often make a good profit out of his adventure. four engineers stowed away last summer on the same ship, the circassia; and before two days after their arrival each of the four had found a comfortable berth. this was the most hopeful tale of emigration that i heard from first to last; and as you see, the luck was for stowaways. my curiosity was much inflamed by what i heard; and the next morning, as i was making the round of the ship, i was delighted to find the ex-royal engineer engaged in washing down the white paint of a deck house. there was another fellow at work beside him, a lad not more than twenty, in the most miraculous tatters, his handsome face sown with grains of beauty and lighted up by expressive eyes. four stowaways had been found aboard our ship before she left the clyde, but these two had alone escaped the ignominy of being put ashore. alick, my acquaintance of last night, was scots by birth, and by trade a practical engineer; the other was from devonshire, and had been to sea before the mast. two people more unlike by training, character, and habits it would be hard to imagine; yet here they were together, scrubbing paint. alick had held all sorts of good situations, and wasted many opportunities in life. i have heard him end a story with these words: 'that was in my golden days, when i used finger-glasses.' situation after situation failed him; then followed the depression of trade, and for months he had hung round with other idlers, playing marbles all day in the west park, and going home at night to tell his landlady how he had been seeking for a job. i believe this kind of existence was not unpleasant to alick himself, and he might have long continued to enjoy idleness and a life on tick; but he had a comrade, let us call him brown, who grew restive. this fellow was continually threatening to slip his cable for the states, and at last, one wednesday, glasgow was left widowed of her brown. some months afterwards, alick met another old chum in sauchiehall street. 'by the bye, alick,' said he, 'i met a gentleman in new york who was asking for you.' 'who was that?' asked alick. 'the new second engineer on board the so-and-so,' was the reply. 'well, and who is he?' 'brown, to be sure.' for brown had been one of the fortunate quartette aboard the circassia. if that was the way of it in the states, alick thought it was high time to follow brown's example. he spent his last day, as he put it, 'reviewing the yeomanry,' and the next morning says he to his landlady, 'mrs. x., i'll not take porridge to-day, please; i'll take some eggs.' 'why, have you found a job?' she asked, delighted. 'well, yes,' returned the perfidious alick; 'i think i'll start today.' and so, well lined with eggs, start he did, but for america. i am afraid that landlady has seen the last of him. it was easy enough to get on board in the confusion that attends a vessel's departure; and in one of the dark corners of steerage no. 1, flat in a bunk and with an empty stomach, alick made the voyage from the broomielaw to greenock. that night, the ship's yeoman pulled him out by the heels and had him before the mate. two other stowaways had already been found and sent ashore; but by this time darkness had fallen, they were out in the middle of the estuary, and the last steamer had left them till the morning. 'take him to the forecastle and give him a meal,' said the mate, 'and see and pack him off the first thing to-morrow.' in the forecastle he had supper, a good night's rest, and breakfast; and was sitting placidly with a pipe, fancying all was over and the game up for good with that ship, when one of the sailors grumbled out an oath at him, with a 'what are you doing there?' and 'do you call that hiding, anyway?' there was need of no more; alick was in another bunk before the day was older. shortly before the passengers arrived, the ship was cursorily inspected. he heard the round come down the companion and look into one pen after another, until they came within two of the one in which he lay concealed. into these last two they did not enter, but merely glanced from without; and alick had no doubt that he was personally favoured in this escape. it was the character of the man to attribute nothing to luck and but little to kindness; whatever happened to him he had earned in his own right amply; favours came to him from his singular attraction and adroitness, and misfortunes he had always accepted with his eyes open. half an hour after the searchers had departed, the steerage began to fill with legitimate passengers, and the worst of alick's troubles was at an end. he was soon making himself popular, smoking other people's tobacco, and politely sharing their private stock delicacies, and when night came he retired to his bunk beside the others with composure. next day by afternoon, lough foyle being already far behind, and only the rough north-western hills of ireland within view, alick appeared on deck to court inquiry and decide his fate. as a matter of fact, he was known to several on board, and even intimate with one of the engineers; but it was plainly not the etiquette of such occasions for the authorities to avow their information. every one professed surprise and anger on his appearance, and he was led prison before the captain. 'what have you got to say for yourself?' inquired the captain. 'not much,' said alick; 'but when a man has been a long time out of a job, he will do things he would not under other circumstances.' 'are you willing to work?' alick swore he was burning to be useful. 'and what can you do?' asked the captain. he replied composedly that he was a brass-fitter by trade. 'i think you will be better at engineering?' suggested the officer, with a shrewd look. 'no, sir,' says alick simply. 'there's few can beat me at a lie,' was his engaging commentary to me as he recounted the affair. 'have you been to sea?' again asked the captain. 'i've had a trip on a clyde steamboat, sir, but no more,' replied the unabashed alick. 'well, we must try and find some work for you,' concluded the officer. and hence we behold alick, clear of the hot engine-room, lazily scraping paint and now and then taking a pull upon a sheet. 'you leave me alone,' was his deduction. 'when i get talking to a man, i can get round him.' the other stowaway, whom i will call the devonian it was noticeable that neither of them told his name had both been brought up and seen the world in a much smaller way. his father, a confectioner, died and was closely followed by his mother. his sisters had taken, i think, to dressmaking. he himself had returned from sea about a year ago and gone to live with his brother, who kept the 'george hotel' 'it was not quite a real hotel,' added the candid fellow 'and had a hired man to mind the horses.' at first the devonian was very welcome; but as time went on his brother not unnaturally grew cool towards him, and he began to find himself one too many at the 'george hotel.' 'i don't think brothers care much for you,' he said, as a general reflection upon life. hurt at this change, nearly penniless, and too proud to ask for more, he set off on foot and walked eighty miles to weymouth, living on the journey as he could. he would have enlisted, but he was too small for the army and too old for the navy; and thought himself fortunate at last to find a berth on board a trading dandy. somewhere in the bristol channel the dandy sprung a leak and went down; and though the crew were picked up and brought ashore by fishermen, they found themselves with nothing but the clothes upon their back. his next engagement was scarcely better starred; for the ship proved so leaky, and frightened them all so heartily during a short passage through the irish sea, that the entire crew deserted and remained behind upon the quays of belfast. evil days were now coming thick on the devonian. he could find no berth in belfast, and had to work a passage to glasgow on a steamer. she reached the broomielaw on a wednesday: the devonian had a bellyful that morning, laying in breakfast manfully to provide against the future, and set off along the quays to seek employment. but he was now not only penniless, his clothes had begun to fall in tatters; he had begun to have the look of a street arab; and captains will have nothing to say to a ragamuffin; for in that trade, as in all others, it is the coat that depicts the man. you may hand, reef, and steer like an angel, but if you have a hole in your trousers, it is like a millstone round your neck. the devonian lost heart at so many refusals. he had not the impudence to beg; although, as he said, 'when i had money of my own, i always gave it.' it was only on saturday morning, after three whole days of starvation, that he asked a scone from a milkwoman, who added of her own accord a glass of milk. he had now made up his mind to stow away, not from any desire to see america, but merely to obtain the comfort of a place in the forecastle and a supply of familiar sea-fare. he lived by begging, always from milkwomen, and always scones and milk, and was not once refused. it was vile wet weather, and he could never have been dry. by night he walked the streets, and by day slept upon glasgow green, and heard, in the intervals of his dozing, the famous theologians of the spot clear up intricate points of doctrine and appraise the merits of the clergy. he had not much instruction; he could 'read bills on the street,' but was 'main bad at writing'; yet these theologians seem to have impressed him with a genuine sense of amusement. why he did not go to the sailors' house i know not; i presume there is in glasgow one of these institutions, which are by far the happiest and the wisest effort of contemporaneous charity; but i must stand to my author, as they say in old books, and relate the story as i heard it. in the meantime, he had tried four times to stow away in different vessels, and four times had been discovered and handed back to starvation. the fifth time was lucky; and you may judge if he were pleased to be aboard ship again, at his old work, and with duff twice a week. he was, said alick, 'a devil for the duff.' or if devil was not the word, it was one if anything stronger. the difference in the conduct of the two was remarkable. the devonian was as willing as any paid hand, swarmed aloft among the first, pulled his natural weight and firmly upon a rope, and found work for himself when there was none to show him. alick, on the other hand, was not only a skulker in the brain, but took a humorous and fine gentlemanly view of the transaction. he would speak to me by the hour in ostentatious idleness; and only if the bo's'un or a mate came by, fell-to languidly for just the necessary time till they were out of sight. 'i'm not breaking my heart with it,' he remarked. once there was a hatch to be opened near where he was stationed; he watched the preparations for a second or so suspiciously, and then, 'hullo,' said he, 'here's some real work coming i'm off,' and he was gone that moment. again, calculating the six guinea passagemoney, and the probable duration of the passage, he remarked pleasantly that he was getting six shillings a day for this job, 'and it's pretty dear to the company at that.' 'they are making nothing by me,' was another of his observations; 'they're making something by that fellow.' and he pointed to the devonian, who was just then busy to the eyes. the more you saw of alick, the more, it must be owned, you learned to despise him. his natural talents were of no use either to himself or others; for his character had degenerated like his face, and become pulpy and pretentious. even his power of persuasion, which was certainly very surprising, stood in some danger of being lost or neutralised by over-confidence. he lied in an aggressive, brazen manner, like a pert criminal in the dock; and he was so vain of his own cleverness that he could not refrain from boasting, ten minutes after, of the very trick by which he had deceived you. 'why, now i have more money than when i came on board,' he said one night, exhibiting a sixpence, 'and yet i stood myself a bottle of beer before i went to bed yesterday. and as for tobacco, i have fifteen sticks of it.' that was fairly successful indeed; yet a man of his superiority, and with a less obtrusive policy, might, who knows? have got the length of half a crown. a man who prides himself upon persuasion should learn the persuasive faculty of silence, above all as to his own misdeeds. it is only in the farce and for dramatic purposes that scapin enlarges on his peculiar talents to the world at large. scapin is perhaps a good name for this clever, unfortunate alick; for at the bottom of all his misconduct there was a guiding sense of humour that moved you to forgive him. it was more than half a jest that he conducted his existence. 'oh, man,' he said to me once with unusual emotion, like a man thinking of his mistress, 'i would give up anything for a lark.' it was in relation to his fellow-stowaway that alick showed the best, or perhaps i should say the only good, points of his nature. 'mind you,' he said suddenly, changing his tone, 'mind you that's a good boy. he wouldn't tell you a lie. a lot of them think he is a scamp because his clothes are ragged, but he isn't; he's as good as gold.' to hear him, you become aware that alick himself had a taste for virtue. he thought his own idleness and the other's industry equally becoming. he was no more anxious to insure his own reputation as a liar than to uphold the truthfulness of his companion; and he seemed unaware of what was incongruous in his attitude, and was plainly sincere in both characters. it was not surprising that he should take an interest in the devonian, for the lad worshipped and served him in love and wonder. busy as he was, he would find time to warn alick of an approaching officer, or even to tell him that the coast was clear, and he might slip off and smoke a pipe in safety. 'tom,' he once said to him, for that was the name which alick ordered him to use, 'if you don't like going to the galley, i'll go for you. you ain't used to this kind of thing, you ain't. but i'm a sailor; and i can understand the feelings of any fellow, i can.' again, he was hard up, and casting about for some tobacco, for he was not so liberally used in this respect as others perhaps less worthy, when alick offered him the half of one of his fifteen sticks. i think, for my part, he might have increased the offer to a whole one, or perhaps a pair of them, and not lived to regret his liberality. but the devonian refused. 'no,' he said, 'you're a stowaway like me; i won't take it from you, i'll take it from some one who's not down on his luck.' it was notable in this generous lad that he was strongly under the influence of sex. if a woman passed near where he was working, his eyes lit up, his hand paused, and his mind wandered instantly to other thoughts. it was natural that he should exercise a fascination proportionally strong upon women. he begged, you will remember, from women only, and was never refused. without wishing to explain away the charity of those who helped him, i cannot but fancy he may have owed a little to his handsome face, and to that quick, responsive nature, formed for love, which speaks eloquently through all disguises, and can stamp an impression in ten minutes' talk or an exchange of glances. he was the more dangerous in that he was far from bold, but seemed to woo in spite of himself, and with a soft and pleading eye. ragged as he was, and many a scarecrow is in that respect more comfortably furnished, even on board he was not without some curious admirers. there was a girl among the passengers, a tall, blonde, handsome, strapping irishwoman, with a wild, accommodating eye, whom alick had dubbed tommy, with that transcendental appropriateness that defies analysis. one day the devonian was lying for warmth in the upper stoke-hole, which stands open on the deck, when irish tommy came past, very neatly attired, as was her custom. 'poor fellow,' she said, stopping, 'you haven't a vest.' 'no,' he said; 'i wish i 'ad.' then she stood and gazed on him in silence, until, in his embarrassment, for he knew not how to look under this scrutiny, he pulled out his pipe and began to fill it with tobacco. 'do you want a match?' she asked. and before he had time to reply, she ran off and presently returned with more than one. that was the beginning and the end, as far as our passage is concerned, of what i will make bold to call this love-affair. there are many relations which go on to marriage and last during a lifetime, in which less human feeling is engaged than in this scene of five minutes at the stoke-hole. rigidly speaking, this would end the chapter of the stowaways; but in a larger sense of the word i have yet more to add. jones had discovered and pointed out to me a young woman who was remarkable among her fellows for a pleasing and interesting air. she was poorly clad, to the verge, if not over the line, of disrespectability, with a ragged old jacket and a bit of a sealskin cap no bigger than your fist; but her eyes, her whole expression, and her manner, even in ordinary moments, told of a true womanly nature, capable of love, anger, and devotion. she had a look, too, of refinement, like one who might have been a better lady than most, had she been allowed the opportunity. when alone she seemed preoccupied and sad; but she was not often alone; there was usually by her side a heavy, dull, gross man in rough clothes, chary of speech and gesture not from caution, but poverty of disposition; a man like a ditcher, unlovely and uninteresting; whom she petted and tended and waited on with her eyes as if he had been amadis of gaul. it was strange to see this hulking fellow dog-sick, and this delicate, sad woman caring for him. he seemed, from first to last, insensible of her caresses and attentions, and she seemed unconscious of his insensibility. the irish husband, who sang his wife to sleep, and this scottish girl serving her orson, were the two bits of human nature that most appealed to me throughout the voyage. on the thursday before we arrived, the tickets were collected; and soon a rumour began to go round the vessel; and this girl, with her bit of sealskin cap, became the centre of whispering and pointed fingers. she also, it was said, was a stowaway of a sort; for she was on board with neither ticket nor money; and the man with whom she travelled was the father of a family, who had left wife and children to be hers. the ship's officers discouraged the story, which may therefore have been a story and no more; but it was believed in the steerage, and the poor girl had to encounter many curious eyes from that day forth. personal experience and review travel is of two kinds; and this voyage of mine across the ocean combined both. 'out of my country and myself i go,' sings the old poet: and i was not only travelling out of my country in latitude and longitude, but out of myself in diet, associates, and consideration. part of the interest and a great deal of the amusement flowed, at least to me, from this novel situation in the world. i found that i had what they call fallen in life with absolute success and verisimilitude. i was taken for a steerage passenger; no one seemed surprised that i should be so; and there was nothing but the brass plate between decks to remind me that i had once been a gentleman. in a former book, describing a former journey, i expressed some wonder that i could be readily and naturally taken for a pedlar, and explained the accident by the difference of language and manners between england and france. i must now take a humbler view; for here i was among my own countrymen, somewhat roughly clad to be sure, but with every advantage of speech and manner; and i am bound to confess that i passed for nearly anything you please except an educated gentleman. the sailors called me 'mate,' the officers addressed me as 'my man,' my comrades accepted me without hesitation for a person of their own character and experience, but with some curious information. one, a mason himself, believed i was a mason; several, and among these at least one of the seaman, judged me to be a petty officer in the american navy; and i was so often set down for a practical engineer that at last i had not the heart to deny it. from all these guesses i drew one conclusion, which told against the insight of my companions. they might be close observers in their own way, and read the manners in the face; but it was plain that they did not extend their observation to the hands. to the saloon passengers also i sustained my part without a hitch. it is true i came little in their way; but when we did encounter, there was no recognition in their eye, although i confess i sometimes courted it in silence. all these, my inferiors and equals, took me, like the transformed monarch in the story, for a mere common, human man. they gave me a hard, dead look, with the flesh about the eye kept unrelaxed. with the women this surprised me less, as i had already experimented on the sex by going abroad through a suburban part of london simply attired in a sleeve-waistcoat. the result was curious. i then learned for the first time, and by the exhaustive process, how much attention ladies are accustomed to bestow on all male creatures of their own station; for, in my humble rig, each one who went by me caused me a certain shock of surprise and a sense of something wanting. in my normal circumstances, it appeared every young lady must have paid me some tribute of a glance; and though i had often not detected it when it was given, i was well aware of its absence when it was withheld. my height seemed to decrease with every woman who passed me, for she passed me like a dog. this is one of my grounds for supposing that what are called the upper classes may sometimes produce a disagreeable impression in what are called the lower; and i wish some one would continue my experiment, and find out exactly at what stage of toilette a man becomes invisible to the well-regulated female eye. here on shipboard the matter was put to a more complete test; for, even with the addition of speech and manner, i passed among the ladies for precisely the average man of the steerage. it was one afternoon that i saw this demonstrated. a very plainly dressed woman was taken ill on deck. i think i had the luck to be present at every sudden seizure during all the passage; and on this occasion found myself in the place of importance, supporting the sufferer. there was not only a large crowd immediately around us, but a considerable knot of saloon passengers leaning over our heads from the hurricanedeck. one of these, an elderly managing woman, hailed me with counsels. of course i had to reply; and as the talk went on, i began to discover that the whole group took me for the husband. i looked upon my new wife, poor creature, with mingled feelings; and i must own she had not even the appearance of the poorest class of city servant-maids, but looked more like a country wench who should have been employed at a roadside inn. now was the time for me to go and study the brass plate. to such of the officers as knew about me the doctor, the purser, and the stewards i appeared in the light of a broad joke. the fact that i spent the better part of my day in writing had gone abroad over the ship and tickled them all prodigiously. whenever they met me they referred to my absurd occupation with familiarity and breadth of humorous intention. their manner was well calculated to remind me of my fallen fortunes. you may be sincerely amused by the amateur literary efforts of a gentleman, but you scarce publish the feeling to his face. 'well!' they would say: 'still writing?' and the smile would widen into a laugh. the purser came one day into the cabin, and, touched to the heart by my misguided industry, offered me some other kind of writing, 'for which,' he added pointedly, 'you will be paid.' this was nothing else than to copy out the list of passengers. another trick of mine which told against my reputation was my choice of roosting-place in an active draught upon the cabin floor. i was openly jeered and flouted for this eccentricity; and a considerable knot would sometimes gather at the door to see my last dispositions for the night. this was embarrassing, but i learned to support the trial with equanimity. indeed i may say that, upon the whole, my new position sat lightly and naturally upon my spirits. i accepted the consequences with readiness, and found them far from difficult to bear. the steerage conquered me; i conformed more and more to the type of the place, not only in manner but at heart, growing hostile to the officers and cabin passengers who looked down upon me, and day by day greedier for small delicacies. such was the result, as i fancy, of a diet of bread and butter, soup and porridge. we think we have no sweet tooth as long as we are full to the brim of molasses; but a man must have sojourned in the workhouse before he boasts himself indifferent to dainties. every evening, for instance, i was more and more preoccupied about our doubtful fare at tea. if it was delicate my heart was much lightened; if it was but broken fish i was proportionally downcast. the offer of a little jelly from a fellowpassenger more provident than myself caused a marked elevation in my spirits. and i would have gone to the ship's end and back again for an oyster or a chipped fruit. in other ways i was content with my position. it seemed no disgrace to he confounded with my company; for i may as well declare at once i found their manners as gentle and becoming as those of any other class. i do not mean that my friends could have sat down without embarrassment and laughable disaster at the table of a duke. that does not imply an inferiority of breeding, but a difference of usage. thus i flatter myself that i conducted myself well among my fellowpassengers; yet my most ambitious hope is not to have avoided faults, but to have committed as few as possible. i know too well that my tact is not the same as their tact, and that my habit of a different society constituted, not only no qualification, but a positive disability to move easily and becomingly in this. when jones complimented me because i 'managed to behave very pleasantly' to my fellow-passengers, was how he put it i could follow the thought in his mind, and knew his compliment to be such as we pay foreigners on their proficiency in english. i dare say this praise was given me immediately on the back of some unpardonable solecism, which had led him to review my conduct as a whole. we are all ready to laugh at the ploughman among lords; we should consider also the case of a lord among the ploughmen. i have seen a lawyer in the house of a hebridean fisherman; and i know, but nothing will induce me to disclose, which of these two was the better gentleman. some of our finest behaviour, though it looks well enough from the boxes, may seem even brutal to the gallery. we boast too often manners that are parochial rather than universal; that, like a country wine, will not bear transportation for a hundred miles, nor from the parlour to the kitchen. to be a gentleman is to be one all the world over, and in every relation and grade of society. it is a high calling, to which a man must first be born, and then devote himself for life. and, unhappily, the manners of a certain so-called upper grade have a kind of currency, and meet with a certain external acceptation throughout all the others, and this tends to keep us well satisfied with slight acquirements and the amateurish accomplishments of a clique. but manners, like art, should be human and central. some of my fellow-passengers, as i now moved among them in a relation of equality, seemed to me excellent gentlemen. they were not rough, nor hasty, nor disputatious; debated pleasantly, differed kindly; were helpful, gentle, patient, and placid. the type of manners was plain, and even heavy; there was little to please the eye, but nothing to shock; and i thought gentleness lay more nearly at the spring of behaviour than in many more ornate and delicate societies. i say delicate, where i cannot say refined; a thing may be fine, like ironwork, without being delicate, like lace. there was here less delicacy; the skin supported more callously the natural surface of events, the mind received more bravely the crude facts of human existence; but i do not think that there was less effective refinement, less consideration for others, less polite suppression of self. i speak of the best among my fellow-passengers; for in the steerage, as well as in the saloon, there is a mixture. those, then, with whom i found myself in sympathy, and of whom i may therefore hope to write with a greater measure of truth, were not only as good in their manners, but endowed with very much the same natural capacities, and about as wise in deduction, as the bankers and barristers of what is called society. one and all were too much interested in disconnected facts, and loved information for its own sake with too rash a devotion; but people in all classes display the same appetite as they gorge themselves daily with the miscellaneous gossip of the newspaper. newspaper-reading, as far as i can make out, is often rather a sort of brown study than an act of culture. i have myself palmed off yesterday's issue on a friend, and seen him re-peruse it for a continuance of minutes with an air at once refreshed and solemn. workmen, perhaps, pay more attention; but though they may be eager listeners, they have rarely seemed to me either willing or careful thinkers. culture is not measured by the greatness of the field which is covered by our knowledge, but by the nicety with which we can perceive relations in that field, whether great or small. workmen, certainly those who were on board with me, i found wanting in this quality or habit of the mind. they did not perceive relations, but leaped to a so-called cause, and thought the problem settled. thus the cause of everything in england was the form of government, and the cure for all evils was, by consequence, a revolution. it is surprising how many of them said this, and that none should have had a definite thought in his head as he said it. some hated the church because they disagreed with it; some hated lord beaconsfield because of war and taxes; all hated the masters, possibly with reason. but these failings were not at the root of the matter; the true reasoning of their souls ran thus i have not got on; i ought to have got on; if there was a revolution i should get on. how? they had no idea. why? because because well, look at america! to be politically blind is no distinction; we are all so, if you come to that. at bottom, as it seems to me, there is but one question in modern home politics, though it appears in many shapes, and that is the question of money; and but one political remedy, that the people should grow wiser and better. my workmen fellow-passengers were as impatient and dull of hearing on the second of these points as any member of parliament; but they had some glimmerings of the first. they would not hear of improvement on their part, but wished the world made over again in a crack, so that they might remain improvident and idle and debauched, and yet enjoy the comfort and respect that should accompany the opposite virtues; and it was in this expectation, as far as i could see, that many of them were now on their way to america. but on the point of money they saw clearly enough that inland politics, so far as they were concerned, were reducible to the question of annual income; a question which should long ago have been settled by a revolution, they did not know how, and which they were now about to settle for themselves, once more they knew not how, by crossing the atlantic in a steamship of considerable tonnage. and yet it has been amply shown them that the second or income question is in itself nothing, and may as well be left undecided, if there be no wisdom and virtue to profit by the change. it is not by a man's purse, but by his character that he is rich or poor. barney will be poor, alick will be poor, mackay will be poor; let them go where they will, and wreck all the governments under heaven, they will be poor until they die. nothing is perhaps more notable in the average workman than his surprising idleness, and the candour with which he confesses to the failing. it has to me been always something of a relief to find the poor, as a general rule, so little oppressed with work. i can in consequence enjoy my own more fortunate beginning with a better grace. the other day i was living with a farmer in america, an old frontiersman, who had worked and fought, hunted and farmed, from his childhood up. he excused himself for his defective education on the ground that he had been overworked from first to last. even now, he said, anxious as he was, he had never the time to take up a book. in consequence of this, i observed him closely; he was occupied for four or, at the extreme outside, for five hours out of the twenty-four, and then principally in walking; and the remainder of the day he passed in born idleness, either eating fruit or standing with his back against a door. i have known men do hard literary work all morning, and then undergo quite as much physical fatigue by way of relief as satisfied this powerful frontiersman for the day. he, at least, like all the educated class, did so much homage to industry as to persuade himself he was industrious. but the average mechanic recognises his idleness with effrontery; he has even, as i am told, organised it. i give the story as it was told me, and it was told me for a fact. a man fell from a housetop in the city of aberdeen, and was brought into hospital with broken bones. he was asked what was his trade, and replied that he was a tapper. no one had ever heard of such a thing before; the officials were filled with curiosity; they besought an explanation. it appeared that when a party of slaters were engaged upon a roof, they would now and then be taken with a fancy for the public-house. now a seamstress, for example, might slip away from her work and no one be the wiser; but if these fellows adjourned, the tapping of the mallets would cease, and thus the neighbourhood be advertised of their defection. hence the career of the tapper. he has to do the tapping and keep up an industrious bustle on the housetop during the absence of the slaters. when he taps for only one or two the thing is child's-play, but when he has to represent a whole troop, it is then that he earns his money in the sweat of his brow. then must he bound from spot to spot, reduplicate, triplicate, sexduplicate his single personality, and swell and hasten his blows., until he produce a perfect illusion for the ear, and you would swear that a crowd of emulous masons were continuing merrily to roof the house. it must be a strange sight from an upper window. i heard nothing on board of the tapper; but i was astonished at the stories told by my companions. skulking, shirking, malingering, were all established tactics, it appeared. they could see no dishonesty where a man who is paid for an bones work gives half an hour's consistent idling in its place. thus the tapper would refuse to watch for the police during a burglary, and call himself a honest man. it is not sufficiently recognised that our race detests to work. if i thought that i should have to work every day of my life as hard as i am working now, i should be tempted to give up the struggle. and the workman early begins on his career of toil. he has never had his fill of holidays in the past, and his prospect of holidays in the future is both distant and uncertain. in the circumstances, it would require a high degree of virtue not to snatch alleviations for the moment. there were many good talkers on the ship; and i believe good talking of a certain sort is a common accomplishment among working men. where books are comparatively scarce, a greater amount of information will be given and received by word of mouth; and this tends to produce good talkers, and, what is no less needful for conversation, good listeners. they could all tell a story with effect. i am sometimes tempted to think that the less literary class show always better in narration; they have so much more patience with detail, are so much less hurried to reach the points, and preserve so much juster a proportion among the facts. at the same time their talk is dry; they pursue a topic ploddingly, have not an agile fancy, do not throw sudden lights from unexpected quarters, and when the talk is over they often leave the matter where it was. they mark time instead of marching. they think only to argue, not to reach new conclusions, and use their reason rather as a weapon of offense than as a tool for self-improvement. hence the talk of some of the cleverest was unprofitable in result, because there was no give and take; they would grant you as little as possible for premise, and begin to dispute under an oath to conquer or to die. but the talk of a workman is apt to be more interesting than that of a wealthy merchant, because the thoughts, hopes, and fears of which the workman's life is built lie nearer to necessity and nature. they are more immediate to human life. an income calculated by the week is a far more human thing than one calculated by the year, and a small income, simply from its smallness, than a large one. i never wearied listening to the details of a workman's economy, because every item stood for some real pleasure. if he could afford pudding twice a week, you know that twice a week the man ate with genuine gusto and was physically happy; while if you learn that a rich man has seven courses a day, ten to one the half of them remain untasted, and the whole is but misspent money and a weariness to the flesh. the difference between england and america to a working man was thus most humanly put to me by a fellow-passenger: 'in america,' said he, 'you get pies and puddings.' i do not hear enough, in economy books, of pies and pudding. a man lives in and for the delicacies, adornments, and accidental attributes of life, such as pudding to eat and pleasant books and theatres to occupy his leisure. the bare terms of existence would be rejected with contempt by all. if a man feeds on bread and butter, soup and porridge, his appetite grows wolfish after dainties. and the workman dwells in a borderland, and is always within sight of those cheerless regions where life is more difficult to sustain than worth sustaining. every detail of our existence, where it is worth while to cross the ocean after pie and pudding, is made alive and enthralling by the presence of genuine desire; but it is all one to me whether croesus has a hundred or a thousand thousands in the bank. there is more adventure in the life of the working man who descends as a common solder into the battle of life, than in that of the millionaire who sits apart in an office, like von moltke, and only directs the manoeuvres by telegraph. give me to hear about the career of him who is in the thick of business; to whom one change of market means empty belly, and another a copious and savoury meal. this is not the philosophical, but the human side of economics; it interests like a story; and the life all who are thus situated partakes in a small way the charm of robinson crusoe; for every step is critical and human life is presented to you naked and verging to its lowest terms. new york as we drew near to new york i was at first amused, and then somewhat staggered, by the cautious and the grisly tales that went the round. you would have thought we were to land upon a cannibal island. you must speak to no one in the streets, as they would not leave you till you were rooked and beaten. you must enter a hotel with military precautions; for the least you had to apprehend was to awake next morning without money or baggage, or necessary raiment, a lone forked radish in a bed; and if the worst befell, you would instantly and mysteriously disappear from the ranks of mankind. i have usually found such stories correspond to the least modicum of fact. thus i was warned, i remember, against the roadside inns of the cevennes, and that by a learned professor; and when i reached pradelles the warning was explained it was but the far-away rumour and reduplication of a single terrifying story already half a century old, and half forgotten in the theatre of the events. so i was tempted to make light of these reports against america. but we had on board with us a man whose evidence it would not do to put aside. he had come near these perils in the body; he had visited a robber inn. the public has an old and well-grounded favour for this class of incident, and shall be gratified to the best of my power. my fellow-passenger, whom we shall call m'naughten, had come from new york to boston with a comrade, seeking work. they were a pair of rattling blades; and, leaving their baggage at the station, passed the day in beer saloons, and with congenial spirits, until midnight struck. then they applied themselves to find a lodging, and walked the streets till two, knocking at houses of entertainment and being refused admittance, or themselves declining the terms. by two the inspiration of their liquor had begun to wear off; they were weary and humble, and after a great circuit found themselves in the same street where they had begun their search, and in front of a french hotel where they had already sought accommodation. seeing the house still open, they returned to the charge. a man in a white cap sat in an office by the door. he seemed to welcome them more warmly than when they had first presented themselves, and the charge for the night had somewhat unaccountably fallen from a dollar to a quarter. they thought him ill-looking, but paid their quarter apiece, and were shown upstairs to the top of the house. there, in a small room, the man in the white cap wished them pleasant slumbers. it was furnished with a bed, a chair, and some conveniences. the door did not lock on the inside; and the only sign of adornment was a couple of framed pictures, one close above the head of the bed, and the other opposite the foot, and both curtained, as we may sometimes see valuable water-colours, or the portraits of the dead, or works of art more than usually skittish in the subject. it was perhaps in the hope of finding something of this last description that m'naughten's comrade pulled aside the curtain of the first. he was startlingly disappointed. there was no picture. the frame surrounded, and the curtain was designed to hide, an oblong aperture in the partition, through which they looked forth into the dark corridor. a person standing without could easily take a purse from under the pillow, or even strangle a sleeper as he lay abed. m'naughten and his comrade stared at each other like vasco's seamen, 'with a wild surmise'; and then the latter, catching up the lamp, ran to the other frame and roughly raised the curtain. there he stood, petrified; and m'naughten, who had followed, grasped him by the wrist in terror. they could see into another room, larger in size than that which they occupied, where three men sat crouching and silent in the dark. for a second or so these five persons looked each other in the eyes, then the curtain was dropped, and m'naughten and his friend made but one bolt of it out of the room and downstairs. the man in the white cap said nothing as they passed him; and they were so pleased to be once more in the open night that they gave up all notion of a bed, and walked the streets of boston till the morning. no one seemed much cast down by these stories, but all inquired after the address of a respectable hotel; and i, for my part, put myself under the conduct of mr. jones. before noon of the second sunday we sighted the low shores outside of new york harbour; the steerage passengers must remain on board to pass through castle garden on the following morning; but we of the second cabin made our escape along with the lords of the saloon; and by six o'clock jones and i issued into west street, sitting on some straw in the bottom of an open baggage-wagon. it rained miraculously; and from that moment till on the following night i left new york, there was scarce a lull, and no cessation of the downpour. the roadways were flooded; a loud strident noise of falling water filled the air; the restaurants smelt heavily of wet people and wet clothing. it took us but a few minutes, though it cost us a good deal of money, to be rattled along west street to our destination: 'reunion house, no. 10 west street, one minutes walk from castle garden; convenient to castle garden, the steamboat landings, california steamers and liverpool ships; board and lodging per day 1 dollar, single meals 25 cents, lodging per night 25 cents; private rooms for families; no charge for storage or baggage; satisfaction guaranteed to all persons; michael mitchell, proprietor.' reunion house was, i may go the length of saying, a humble hostelry. you entered through a long bar-room, thence passed into a little dining-room, and thence into a still smaller kitchen. the furniture was of the plainest; but the bar was hung in the american taste, with encouraging and hospitable mottoes. jones was well known; we were received warmly; and two minutes afterwards i had refused a drink from the proprietor, and was going on, in my plain european fashion, to refuse a cigar, when mr. mitchell sternly interposed, and explained the situation. he was offering to treat me, it appeared, whenever an american bar-keeper proposes anything, it must be borne in mind that he is offering to treat; and if i did not want a drink, i must at least take the cigar. i took it bashfully, feeling i had begun my american career on the wrong foot. i did not enjoy that cigar; but this may have been from a variety of reasons, even the best cigar often failing to please if you smoke three-quarters of it in a drenching rain. for many years america was to me a sort of promised land; 'westward the march of empire holds its way'; the race is for the moment to the young; what has been and what is we imperfectly and obscurely know; what is to be yet lies beyond the flight of our imaginations. greece, rome, and judaea are gone by forever, leaving to generations the legacy of their accomplished work; china still endures, an oldinhabited house in the brand-new city of nations; england has already declined, since she has lost the states; and to these states, therefore, yet undeveloped, full of dark possibilities, and grown, like another eve, from one rib out of the side of their own old land, the minds of young men in england turn naturally at a certain hopeful period of their age. it will be hard for an american to understand the spirit. but let him imagine a young man, who shall have grown up in an old and rigid circle, following bygone fashions and taught to distrust his own fresh instincts, and who now suddenly hears of a family of cousins, all about his own age, who keep house together by themselves and live far from restraint and tradition; let him imagine this, and he will have some imperfect notion of the sentiment with which spirited english youths turn to the thought of the american republic. it seems to them as if, out west, the war of life was still conducted in the open air, and on free barbaric terms; as if it had not yet been narrowed into parlours, nor begun to be conducted, like some unjust and dreary arbitration, by compromise, costume forms of procedure, and sad, senseless self-denial. which of these two he prefers, a man with any youth still left in him will decide rightly for himself. he would rather be houseless than denied a pass-key; rather go without food than partake of stalled ox in stiff, respectable society; rather be shot out of hand than direct his life according to the dictates of the world. he knows or thinks nothing of the maine laws, the puritan sourness, the fierce, sordid appetite for dollars, or the dreary existence of country towns. a few wild story-books which delighted his childhood form the imaginative basis of his picture of america. in course of time, there is added to this a great crowd of stimulating details vast cities that grow up as by enchantment; the birds, that have gone south in autumn, returning with the spring to find thousands camped upon their marshes, and the lamps burning far and near along populous streets; forests that disappear like snow; countries larger than britain that are cleared and settled, one man running forth with his household gods before another, while the bear and the indian are yet scarce aware of their approach; oil that gushes from the earth; gold that is washed or quarried in the brooks or glens of the sierras; and all that bustle, courage, action, and constant kaleidoscopic change that walt whitman has seized and set forth in his vigorous, cheerful, and loquacious verses. here i was at last in america, and was soon out upon new york streets, spying for things foreign. the place had to me an air of liverpool; but such was the rain that not paradise itself would have looked inviting. we were a party of four, under two umbrellas; jones and i and two scots lads, recent immigrants, and not indisposed to welcome a compatriot. they had been six weeks in new york, and neither of them had yet found a single job or earned a single halfpenny. up to the present they were exactly out of pocket by the amount of the fare. the lads soon left us. now i had sworn by all my gods to have such a dinner as would rouse the dead; there was scarce any expense at which i should have hesitated; the devil was in it, but jones and i should dine like heathen emperors. i set to work, asking after a restaurant; and i chose the wealthiest and most gastronomical-looking passers-by to ask from. yet, although i had told them i was willing to pay anything in reason, one and all sent me off to cheap, fixedprice houses, where i would not have eaten that night for the cost of twenty dinners. i do not know if this were characteristic of new york, or whether it was only jones and i who looked un-dinerly and discouraged enterprising suggestions. but at length, by our own sagacity, we found a french restaurant, where there was a french waiter, some fair french cooking, some so-called french wine, and french coffee to conclude the whole. i never entered into the feelings of jack on land so completely as when i tasted that coffee. i suppose we had one of the 'private rooms for families' at reunion house. it was very small, furnished with a bed, a chair, and some clothes-pegs; and it derived all that was necessary for the life of the human animal through two borrowed lights; one looking into the passage, and the second opening, without sash, into another apartment, where three men fitfully snored, or in intervals of wakefulness, drearily mumbled to each other all night long. it will be observed that this was almost exactly the disposition of the room in m'naughten's story. jones had the bed; i pitched my camp upon the floor; he did not sleep until near morning, and i, for my part, never closed an eye. at sunrise i heard a cannon fired; and shortly afterwards the men in the next room gave over snoring for good, and began to rustle over their toilettes. the sound of their voices as they talked was low and like that of people watching by the sick. jones, who had at last begun to doze, tumbled and murmured, and every now and then opened unconscious eyes upon me where i lay. i found myself growing eerier and eerier, for i dare say i was a little fevered by my restless night, and hurried to dress and get downstairs. you had to pass through the rain, which still fell thick and resonant, to reach a lavatory on the other side of the court. there were three basin-stands, and a few crumpled towels and pieces of wet soap, white and slippery like fish; nor should i forget a lookingglass and a pair of questionable combs. another scots lad was here, scrubbing his face with a good will. he had been three months in new york and had not yet found a single job nor earned a single halfpenny. up to the present, he also was exactly out of pocket by the amount of the fare. i began to grow sick at heart for my fellowemigrants. of my nightmare wanderings in new york i spare to tell. i had a thousand and one things to do; only the day to do them in, and a journey across the continent before me in the evening. it rained with patient fury; every now and then i had to get under cover for a while in order, so to speak, to give my mackintosh a rest; for under this continued drenching it began to grow damp on the inside. i went to banks, post-offices, railway-offices, restaurants, publishers, booksellers, money-changers, and wherever i went a pool would gather about my feet, and those who were careful of their floors would look on with an unfriendly eye. wherever i went, too, the same traits struck me: the people were all surprisingly rude and surprisingly kind. the money-changer cross-questioned me like a french commissary, asking my age, my business, my average income, and my destination, beating down my attempts at evasion, and receiving my answers in silence; and yet when all was over, he shook hands with me up to the elbows, and sent his lad nearly a quarter of a mile in the rain to get me books at a reduction. again, in a very large publishing and bookselling establishment, a man, who seemed to he the manager, received me as i had certainly never before been received in any human shop, indicated squarely that he put no faith in my honesty, and refused to look up the names of books or give me the slightest help or information, on the ground, like the steward, that it was none of his business. i lost my temper at last, said i was a stranger in america and not learned in their etiquette; but i would assure him, if he went to any bookseller in england, of more handsome usage. the boast was perhaps exaggerated; but like many a long shot, it struck the gold. the manager passed at once from one extreme to the other; i may say that from that moment he loaded me with kindness; he gave me all sorts of good advice, wrote me down addresses, and came bareheaded into the rain to point me out a restaurant, where i might lunch, nor even then did he seem to think that he had done enough. these are (it is as well to be bold in statement) the manners of america. it is this same opposition that has most struck me in people of almost all classes and from east to west. by the time a man had about strung me up to be the death of him by his insulting behaviour, he himself would be just upon the point of melting into confidence and serviceable attentions. yet i suspect, although i have met with the like in so many parts, that this must be the character of some particular state or group of states, for in america, and this again in all classes, you will find some of the softest-mannered gentlemen in the world. i was so wet when i got back to mitchell's toward the evening, that i had simply to divest myself of my shoes, socks, and trousers, and leave them behind for the benefit of new york city. no fire could have dried them ere i had to start; and to pack them in their present condition was to spread ruin among my other possessions. with a heavy heart i said farewell to them as they lay a pulp in the middle of a pool upon the floor of mitchell's kitchen. i wonder if they are dry by now. mitchell hired a man to carry my baggage to the station, which was hard by, accompanied me thither himself, and recommended me to the particular attention of the officials. no one could have been kinder. those who are out of pocket may go safely to reunion house, where they will get decent meals and find an honest and obliging landlord. i owed him this word of thanks, before i enter fairly on the second and far less agreeable chapter of my emigrant experience. chapter ii cockermouth and keswick a fragment 1871 very much as a painter half closes his eyes so that some salient unity may disengage itself from among the crowd of details, and what he sees may thus form itself into a whole; very much on the same principle, i may say, i allow a considerable lapse of time to intervene between any of my little journeyings and the attempt to chronicle them. i cannot describe a thing that is before me at the moment, or that has been before me only a very little while before; i must allow my recollections to get thoroughly strained free from all chaff till nothing be except the pure gold; allow my memory to choose out what is truly memorable by a process of natural selection; and i piously believe that in this way i ensure the survival of the fittest. if i make notes for future use, or if i am obliged to write letters during the course of my little excursion, i so interfere with the process that i can never again find out what is worthy of being preserved, or what should be given in full length, what in torso, or what merely in profile. this process of incubation may be unreasonably prolonged; and i am somewhat afraid that i have made this mistake with the present journey. like a bad daguerreotype, great part of it has been entirely lost; i can tell you nothing about the beginning and nothing about the end; but the doings of some fifty or sixty hours about the middle remain quite distinct and definite, like a little patch of sunshine on a long, shadowy plain, or the one spot on an old picture that has been restored by the dexterous hand of the cleaner. i remember a tale of an old scots minister called upon suddenly to preach, who had hastily snatched an old sermon out of his study and found himself in the pulpit before he noticed that the rats had been making free with his manuscript and eaten the first two or three pages away; he gravely explained to the congregation how he found himself situated: 'and now,' said he, 'let us just begin where the rats have left off.' i must follow the divine's example, and take up the thread of my discourse where it first distinctly issues from the limbo of forgetfulness. cockermouth i was lighting my pipe as i stepped out of the inn at cockermouth, and did not raise my head until i was fairly in the street. when i did so, it flashed upon me that i was in england; the evening sunlight lit up english houses, english faces, an english conformation of street, as it were, an english atmosphere blew against my face. there is nothing perhaps more puzzling (if one thing in sociology can ever really be more unaccountable than another) than the great gulf that is set between england and scotland a gulf so easy in appearance, in reality so difficult to traverse. here are two people almost identical in blood; pent up together on one small island, so that their intercourse (one would have thought) must be as close as that of prisoners who shared one cell of the bastille; the same in language and religion; and yet a few years of quarrelsome isolation a mere forenoon's tiff, as one may call it, in comparison with the great historical cycles has so separated their thoughts and ways that not unions, not mutual dangers, nor steamers, nor railways, nor all the king's horses and all the king's men, seem able to obliterate the broad distinction. in the trituration of another century or so the corners may disappear; but in the meantime, in the year of grace 1871, i was as much in a new country as if i had been walking out of the hotel st. antoine at antwerp. i felt a little thrill of pleasure at my heart as i realised the change, and strolled away up the street with my hands behind my back, noting in a dull, sensual way how foreign, and yet how friendly, were the slopes of the gables and the colour of the tiles, and even the demeanour and voices of the gossips round about me. wandering in this aimless humour, i turned up a lane and found myself following the course of the bright little river. i passed first one and then another, then a third, several couples out love-making in the spring evening; and a consequent feeling of loneliness was beginning to grow upon me, when i came to a dam across the river, and a mill a great, gaunt promontory of building, half on dry ground and half arched over the stream. the road here drew in its shoulders and crept through between the landward extremity of the mill and a little garden enclosure, with a small house and a large signboard within its privet hedge. i was pleased to fancy this an inn, and drew little etchings in fancy of a sanded parlour, and three-cornered spittoons, and a society of parochial gossips seated within over their churchwardens; but as i drew near, the board displayed its superscription, and i could read the name of smethurst, and the designation of 'canadian felt hat manufacturers.' there was no more hope of evening fellowship, and i could only stroll on by the riverside, under the trees. the water was dappled with slanting sunshine, and dusted all over with a little mist of flying insects. there were some amorous ducks, also, whose lovemaking reminded me of what i had seen a little farther down. but the road grew sad, and i grew weary; and as i was perpetually haunted with the terror of a return of the tie that had been playing such ruin in my head a week ago, i turned and went back to the inn, and supper, and my bed. the next morning, at breakfast, i communicated to the smart waitress my intention of continuing down the coast and through whitehaven to furness, and, as i might have expected, i was instantly confronted by that last and most worrying form of interference, that chooses to introduce tradition and authority into the choice of a man's own pleasures. i can excuse a person combating my religious or philosophical heresies, because them i have deliberately accepted, and am ready to justify by present argument. but i do not seek to justify my pleasures. if i prefer tame scenery to grand, a little hot sunshine over lowland parks and woodlands to the war of the elements round the summit of mont blanc; or if i prefer a pipe of mild tobacco, and the company of one or two chosen companions, to a ball where i feel myself very hot, awkward, and weary, i merely state these preferences as facts, and do not seek to establish them as principles. this is not the general rule, however, and accordingly the waitress was shocked, as one might be at a heresy, to hear the route that i had sketched out for myself. everybody who came to cockermouth for pleasure, it appeared, went on to keswick. it was in vain that i put up a little plea for the liberty of the subject; it was in vain that i said i should prefer to go to whitehaven. i was told that there was 'nothing to see there' that weary, hackneyed, old falsehood; and at last, as the handmaiden began to look really concerned, i gave way, as men always do in such circumstances, and agreed that i was to leave for keswick by a train in the early evening. an evangelist cockermouth itself, on the same authority, was a place with 'nothing to see'; nevertheless i saw a good deal, and retain a pleasant, vague picture of the town and all its surroundings. i might have dodged happily enough all day about the main street and up to the castle and in and out of byways, but the curious attraction that leads a person in a strange place to follow, day after day, the same round, and to make set habits for himself in a week or ten days, led me half unconsciously up the same, road that i had gone the evening before. when i came up to the hat manufactory, smethurst himself was standing in the garden gate. he was brushing one canadian felt hat, and several others had been put to await their turn one above the other on his own head, so that he looked something like the typical jew old-clothes man. as i drew near, he came sidling out of the doorway to accost me, with so curious an expression on his face that i instinctively prepared myself to apologise for some unwitting trespass. his first question rather confirmed me in this belief, for it was whether or not he had seen me going up this way last night; and after having answered in the affirmative, i waited in some alarm for the rest of my indictment. but the good man's heart was full of peace; and he stood there brushing his hats and prattling on about fishing, and walking, and the pleasures of convalescence, in a bright shallow stream that kept me pleased and interested, i could scarcely say how. as he went on, he warmed to his subject, and laid his hats aside to go along the water-side and show me where the large trout commonly lay, underneath an overhanging bank; and he was much disappointed, for my sake, that there were none visible just then. then he wandered off on to another tack, and stood a great while out in the middle of a meadow in the hot sunshine, trying to make out that he had known me before, or, if not me, some friend of mine, merely, i believe, out of a desire that we should feel more friendly and at our ease with one another. at last he made a little speech to me, of which i wish i could recollect the very words, for they were so simple and unaffected that they put all the best writing and speaking to the blush; as it is, i can recall only the sense, and that perhaps imperfectly. he began by saying that he had little things in his past life that it gave him especial pleasure to recall; and that the faculty of receiving such sharp impressions had now died out in himself, but must at my age be still quite lively and active. then he told me that he had a little raft afloat on the river above the dam which he was going to lend me, in order that i might be able to look back, in after years, upon having done so, and get great pleasure from the recollection. now, i have a friend of my own who will forgo present enjoyments and suffer much present inconvenience for the sake of manufacturing 'a reminiscence' for himself; but there was something singularly refined in this pleasure that the hatmaker found in making reminiscences for others; surely no more simple or unselfish luxury can be imagined. after he had unmoored his little embarkation, and seen me safely shoved off into midstream, he ran away back to his hats with the air of a man who had only just recollected that he had anything to do. i did not stay very long on the raft. it ought to have been very nice punting about there in the cool shade of the trees, or sitting moored to an over-hanging root; but perhaps the very notion that i was bound in gratitude specially to enjoy my little cruise, and cherish its recollection, turned the whole thing from a pleasure into a duty. be that as it may, there is no doubt that i soon wearied and came ashore again, and that it gives me more pleasure to recall the man himself and his simple, happy conversation, so full of gusto and sympathy, than anything possibly connected with his crank, insecure embarkation. in order to avoid seeing him, for i was not a little ashamed of myself for having failed to enjoy his treat sufficiently, i determined to continue up the river, and, at all prices, to find some other way back into the town in time for dinner. as i went, i was thinking of smethurst with admiration; a look into that man's mind was like a retrospect over the smiling champaign of his past life, and very different from the sinai-gorges up which one looks for a terrified moment into the dark souls of many good, many wise, and many prudent men. i cannot be very grateful to such men for their excellence, and wisdom, and prudence. i find myself facing as stoutly as i can a hard, combative existence, full of doubt, difficulties, defeats, disappointments, and dangers, quite a hard enough life without their dark countenances at my elbow, so that what i want is a happy-minded smethurst placed here and there at ugly corners of my life's wayside, preaching his gospel of quiet and contentment. another i was shortly to meet with an evangelist of another stamp. after i had forced my way through a gentleman's grounds, i came out on the high road, and sat down to rest myself on a heap of stones at the top of a long hill, with cockermouth lying snugly at the bottom. an irish beggar-woman, with a beautiful little girl by her side, came up to ask for alms, and gradually fell to telling me the little tragedy of her life. her own sister, she told me, had seduced her husband from her after many years of married life, and the pair had fled, leaving her destitute, with the little girl upon her hands. she seemed quite hopeful and cheery, and, though she was unaffectedly sorry for the loss of her husband's earnings, she made no pretence of despair at the loss of his affection; some day she would meet the fugitives, and the law would see her duly righted, and in the meantime the smallest contribution was gratefully received. while she was telling all this in the most matter-of-fact way, i had been noticing the approach of a tall man, with a high white hat and darkish clothes. he came up the hill at a rapid pace, and joined our little group with a sort of half-salutation. turning at once to the woman, he asked her in a business-like way whether she had anything to do, whether she were a catholic or a protestant, whether she could read, and so forth; and then, after a few kind words and some sweeties to the child, he despatched the mother with some tracts about biddy and the priest, and the orangeman's bible. i was a little amused at his abrupt manner, for he was still a young man, and had somewhat the air of a navy officer; but he tackled me with great solemnity. i could make fun of what he said, for i do not think it was very wise; but the subject does not appear to me just now in a jesting light, so i shall only say that he related to me his own conversion, which had been effected (as is very often the case) through the agency of a gig accident, and that, after having examined me and diagnosed my case, he selected some suitable tracts from his repertory, gave them to me, and, bidding me god-speed, went on his way. last of smethurst that evening i got into a third-class carriage on my way for keswick, and was followed almost immediately by a burly man in brown clothes. this fellow-passenger was seemingly ill at ease, and kept continually putting his head out of the window, and asking the bystanders if they saw him coming. at last, when the train was already in motion, there was a commotion on the platform, and a way was left clear to our carriage door. he had arrived. in the hurry i could just see smethurst, red and panting, thrust a couple of clay pipes into my companion's outstretched band, and hear him crying his farewells after us as we slipped out of the station at an ever accelerating pace. i said something about it being a close run, and the broad man, already engaged in filling one of the pipes, assented, and went on to tell me of his own stupidity in forgetting a necessary, and of how his friend had good-naturedly gone down town at the last moment to supply the omission. i mentioned that i had seen mr. smethurst already, and that he had been very polite to me; and we fell into a discussion of the hatter's merits that lasted some time and left us quite good friends at its conclusion. the topic was productive of goodwill. we exchanged tobacco and talked about the season, and agreed at last that we should go to the same hotel at keswick and sup in company. as he had some business in the town which would occupy him some hour or so, on our arrival i was to improve the time and go down to the lake, that i might see a glimpse of the promised wonders. the night had fallen already when i reached the water-side, at a place where many pleasure-boats are moored and ready for hire; and as i went along a stony path, between wood and water, a strong wind blew in gusts from the far end of the lake. the sky was covered with flying scud; and, as this was ragged, there was quite a wild chase of shadow and moon-glimpse over the surface of the shuddering water. i had to hold my hat on, and was growing rather tired, and inclined to go back in disgust, when a little incident occurred to break the tedium. a sudden and violent squall of wind sundered the low underwood, and at the same time there came one of those brief discharges of moonlight, which leaped into the opening thus made, and showed me three girls in the prettiest flutter and disorder. it was as though they had sprung out of the ground. i accosted them very politely in my capacity of stranger, and requested to be told the names of all manner of hills and woods and places that i did not wish to know, and we stood together for a while and had an amusing little talk. the wind, too, made himself of the party, brought the colour into their faces, and gave them enough to do to repress their drapery; and one of them, amid much giggling, had to pirouette round and round upon her toes (as girls do) when some specially strong gust had got the advantage over her. they were just high enough up in the social order not to be afraid to speak to a gentleman; and just low enough to feel a little tremor, a nervous consciousness of wrongdoing of stolen waters, that gave a considerable zest to our most innocent interview. they were as much discomposed and fluttered, indeed, as if i had been a wicked baron proposing to elope with the whole trio; but they showed no inclination to go away, and i had managed to get them off hills and waterfalls and on to more promising subjects, when a young man was descried coming along the path from the direction of keswick. now whether he was the young man of one of my friends, or the brother of one of them, or indeed the brother of all, i do not know; but they incontinently said that they must be going, and went away up the path with friendly salutations. i need not say that i found the lake and the moonlight rather dull after their departure, and speedily found my way back to potted herrings and whisky-and-water in the commercial room with my late fellowtraveller. in the smoking-room there was a tall dark man with a moustache, in an ulster coat, who had got the best place and was monopolising most of the talk; and, as i came in, a whisper came round to me from both sides, that this was the manager of a london theatre. the presence of such a man was a great event for keswick, and i must own that the manager showed himself equal to his position. he had a large fat pocket-book, from which he produced poem after poem, written on the backs of letters or hotel-bills; and nothing could be more humorous than his recitation of these elegant extracts, except perhaps the anecdotes with which he varied the entertainment. seeing, i suppose, something less countrified in my appearance than in most of the company, he singled me out to corroborate some statements as to the depravity and vice of the aristocracy, and when he went on to describe some gilded saloon experiences, i am proud to say that he honoured my sagacity with one little covert wink before a second time appealing to me for confirmation. the wink was not thrown away; i went in up to the elbows with the manager, until i think that some of the glory of that great man settled by reflection upon me, and that i was as noticeably the second person in the smoking-room as he was the first. for a young man, this was a position of some distinction, i think you will admit. . . . chapter iii an autumn effect 1875 'nous ne decrivons jamais mieux la nature que lorsque nous nous efforcons d'exprimer sobrement et simplement l'impression que nous en avons recue.' m. andre theuriet, 'l'automne dans les bois,' revue des deux mondes, 1st oct. 1874, p.562. a country rapidly passed through under favourable auspices may leave upon us a unity of impression that would only be disturbed and dissipated if we stayed longer. clear vision goes with the quick foot. things fall for us into a sort of natural perspective when we see them for a moment in going by; we generalise boldly and simply, and are gone before the sun is overcast, before the rain falls, before the season can steal like a dial-hand from his figure, before the lights and shadows, shifting round towards nightfall, can show us the other side of things, and belie what they showed us in the morning. we expose our mind to the landscape (as we would expose the prepared plate in the camera) for the moment only during which the effect endures; and we are away before the effect can change. hence we shall have in our memories a long scroll of continuous wayside pictures, all imbued already with the prevailing sentiment of the season, the weather and the landscape, and certain to be unified more and more, as time goes on, by the unconscious processes of thought. so that we who have only looked at a country over our shoulder, so to speak, as we went by, will have a conception of it far more memorable and articulate than a man who has lived there all his life from a child upwards, and had his impression of to-day modified by that of to-morrow, and belied by that of the day after, till at length the stable characteristics of the country are all blotted out from him behind the confusion of variable effect. i begin my little pilgrimage in the most enviable of all humours: that in which a person, with a sufficiency of money and a knapsack, turns his back on a town and walks forward into a country of which he knows only by the vague report of others. such an one has not surrendered his will and contracted for the next hundred miles, like a man on a railway. he may change his mind at every finger-post, and, where ways meet, follow vague preferences freely and go the low road or the high, choose the shadow or the sun-shine, suffer himself to be tempted by the lane that turns immediately into the woods, or the broad road that lies open before him into the distance, and shows him the far-off spires of some city, or a range of mountain-tops, or a rim of sea, perhaps, along a low horizon. in short, he may gratify his every whim and fancy, without a pang of reproving conscience, or the least jostle to his self-respect. it is true, however, that most men do not possess the faculty of free action, the priceless gift of being able to live for the moment only; and as they begin to go forward on their journey, they will find that they have made for themselves new fetters. slight projects they may have entertained for a moment, half in jest, become iron laws to them, they know not why. they will be led by the nose by these vague reports of which i spoke above; and the mere fact that their informant mentioned one village and not another will compel their footsteps with inexplicable power. and yet a little while, yet a few days of this fictitious liberty, and they will begin to hear imperious voices calling on them to return; and some passion, some duty, some worthy or unworthy expectation, will set its hand upon their shoulder and lead them back into the old paths. once and again we have all made the experiment. we know the end of it right well. and yet if we make it for the hundredth time to-morrow: it will have the same charm as ever; our heart will beat and our eyes will be bright, as we leave the town behind us, and we shall feel once again (as we have felt so often before) that we are cutting ourselves loose for ever from our whole past life, with all its sins and follies and circumscriptions, and go forward as a new creature into a new world. it was well, perhaps, that i had this first enthusiasm to encourage me up the long hill above high wycombe; for the day was a bad day for walking at best, and now began to draw towards afternoon, dull, heavy, and lifeless. a pall of grey cloud covered the sky, and its colour reacted on the colour of the landscape. near at hand, indeed, the hedgerow trees were still fairly green, shot through with bright autumnal yellows, bright as sunshine. but a little way off, the solid bricks of woodland that lay squarely on slope and hill-top were not green, but russet and grey, and ever less russet and more grey as they drew off into the distance. as they drew off into the distance, also, the woods seemed to mass themselves together, and lie thin and straight, like clouds, upon the limit of one's view. not that this massing was complete, or gave the idea of any extent of forest, for every here and there the trees would break up and go down into a valley in open order, or stand in long indian file along the horizon, tree after tree relieved, foolishly enough, against the sky. i say foolishly enough, although i have seen the effect employed cleverly in art, and such long line of single trees thrown out against the customary sunset of a japanese picture with a certain fantastic effect that was not to be despised; but this was over water and level land, where it did not jar, as here, with the soft contour of hills and valleys. the whole scene had an indefinable look of being painted, the colour was so abstract and correct, and there was something so sketchy and merely impressional about these distant single trees on the horizon that one was forced to think of it all as of a clever french landscape. for it is rather in nature that we see resemblance to art, than in art to nature; and we say a hundred times, 'how like a picture!' for once that we say, 'how like the truth!' the forms in which we learn to think of landscape are forms that we have got from painted canvas. any man can see and understand a picture; it is reserved for the few to separate anything out of the confusion of nature, and see that distinctly and with intelligence. the sun came out before i had been long on my way; and as i had got by that time to the top of the ascent, and was now treading a labyrinth of confined by-roads, my whole view brightened considerably in colour, for it was the distance only that was grey and cold, and the distance i could see no longer. overhead there was a wonderful carolling of larks which seemed to follow me as i went. indeed, during all the time i was in that country the larks did not desert me. the air was alive with them from high wycombe to tring; and as, day after day, their 'shrill delight' fell upon me out of the vacant sky, they began to take such a prominence over other conditions, and form so integral a part of my conception of the country, that i could have baptized it 'the country of larks.' this, of course, might just as well have been in early spring; but everything else was deeply imbued with the sentiment of the later year. there was no stir of insects in the grass. the sunshine was more golden, and gave less heat than summer sunshine; and the shadows under the hedge were somewhat blue and misty. it was only in autumn that you could have seen the mingled green and yellow of the elm foliage, and the fallen leaves that lay about the road, and covered the surface of wayside pools so thickly that the sun was reflected only here and there from little joints and pinholes in that brown coat of proof; or that your ear would have been troubled, as you went forward, by the occasional report of fowling-pieces from all directions and all degrees of distance. for a long time this dropping fire was the one sign of human activity that came to disturb me as i walked. the lanes were profoundly still. they would have been sad but for the sunshine and the singing of the larks. and as it was, there came over me at times a feeling of isolation that was not disagreeable, and yet was enough to make me quicken my steps eagerly when i saw some one before me on the road. this fellow-voyager proved to be no less a person than the parish constable. it had occurred to me that in a district which was so little populous and so well wooded, a criminal of any intelligence might play hide-and-seek with the authorities for months; and this idea was strengthened by the aspect of the portly constable as he walked by my side with deliberate dignity and turned-out toes. but a few minutes' converse set my heart at rest. these rural criminals are very tame birds, it appeared. if my informant did not immediately lay his hand on an offender, he was content to wait; some evening after nightfall there would come a tap at his door, and the outlaw, weary of outlawry, would give himself quietly up to undergo sentence, and resume his position in the life of the country-side. married men caused him no disquietude whatever; he had them fast by the foot. sooner or later they would come back to see their wives, a peeping neighbour would pass the word, and my portly constable would walk quietly over and take the bird sitting. and if there were a few who had no particular ties in the neighbourhood, and preferred to shift into another county when they fell into trouble, their departure moved the placid constable in no degree. he was of dogberry's opinion; and if a man would not stand in the prince's name, he took no note of him, but let him go, and thanked god he was rid of a knave. and surely the crime and the law were in admirable keeping; rustic constable was well met with rustic offender. the officer sitting at home over a bit of fire until the criminal came to visit him, and the criminal coming it was a fair match. one felt as if this must have been the order in that delightful seaboard bohemia where florizel and perdita courted in such sweet accents, and the puritan sang psalms to hornpipes, and the four-and-twenty shearers danced with nosegays in their bosoms, and chanted their three songs apiece at the old shepherd's festival; and one could not help picturing to oneself what havoc among good peoples purses, and tribulation for benignant constables, might be worked here by the arrival, over stile and footpath, of a new autolycus. bidding good-morning to my fellow-traveller, i left the road and struck across country. it was rather a revelation to pass from between the hedgerows and find quite a bustle on the other side, a great coming and going of school-children upon by-paths, and, in every second field, lusty horses and stout country-folk a-ploughing. the way i followed took me through many fields thus occupied, and through many strips of plantation, and then over a little space of smooth turf, very pleasant to the feet, set with tall fir-trees and clamorous with rooks making ready for the winter, and so back again into the quiet road. i was now not far from the end of my day's journey. a few hundred yards farther, and, passing through a gap in the hedge, i began to go down hill through a pretty extensive tract of young beeches. i was soon in shadow myself, but the afternoon sun still coloured the upmost boughs of the wood, and made a fire over my head in the autumnal foliage. a little faint vapour lay among the slim tree-stems in the bottom of the hollow; and from farther up i heard from time to time an outburst of gross laughter, as though clowns were making merry in the bush. there was something about the atmosphere that brought all sights and sounds home to one with a singular purity, so that i felt as if my senses had been washed with water. after i had crossed the little zone of mist, the path began to remount the hill; and just as i, mounting along with it, had got back again, from the head downwards, into the thin golden sunshine, i saw in front of me a donkey tied to a tree. now, i have a certain liking for donkeys, principally, i believe, because of the delightful things that sterne has written of them. but this was not after the pattern of the ass at lyons. he was of a white colour, that seemed to fit him rather for rare festal occasions than for constant drudgery. besides, he was very small, and of the daintiest portions you can imagine in a donkey. and so, sure enough, you had only to look at him to see he had never worked. there was something too roguish and wanton in his face, a look too like that of a schoolboy or a street arab, to have survived much cudgelling. it was plain that these feet had kicked off sportive children oftener than they had plodded with a freight through miry lanes. he was altogether a fine-weather, holiday sort of donkey; and though he was just then somewhat solemnised and rueful, he still gave proof of the levity of his disposition by impudently wagging his ears at me as i drew near. i say he was somewhat solemnised just then; for, with the admirable instinct of all men and animals under restraint, he had so wound and wound the halter about the tree that he could go neither back nor forwards, nor so much as put down his head to browse. there he stood, poor rogue, part puzzled, part angry, part, i believe, amused. he had not given up hope, and dully revolved the problem in his head, giving ever and again another jerk at the few inches of free rope that still remained unwound. a humorous sort of sympathy for the creature took hold upon me. i went up, and, not without some trouble on my part, and much distrust and resistance on the part of neddy, got him forced backwards until the whole length of the halter was set loose, and he was once more as free a donkey as i dared to make him. i was pleased (as people are) with this friendly action to a fellowcreature in tribulation, and glanced back over my shoulder to see how he was profiting by his freedom. the brute was looking after me; and no sooner did he catch my eye than he put up his long white face into the air, pulled an impudent mouth at me, and began to bray derisively. if ever any one person made a grimace at another, that donkey made a grimace at me. the hardened ingratitude of his behaviour, and the impertinence that inspired his whole face as he curled up his lip, and showed his teeth, and began to bray, so tickled me, and was so much in keeping with what i had imagined to myself about his character, that i could not find it in my heart to be angry, and burst into a peal of hearty laughter. this seemed to strike the ass as a repartee, so he brayed at me again by way of rejoinder; and we went on for a while, braying and laughing, until i began to grow aweary of it, and, shouting a derisive farewell, turned to pursue my way. in so doing it was like going suddenly into cold water i found myself face to face with a prim little old maid. she was all in a flutter, the poor old dear! she had concluded beyond question that this must be a lunatic who stood laughing aloud at a white donkey in the placid beech-woods. i was sure, by her face, that she had already recommended her spirit most religiously to heaven, and prepared herself for the worst. and so, to reassure her, i uncovered and besought her, after a very staid fashion, to put me on my way to great missenden. her voice trembled a little, to be sure, but i think her mind was set at rest; and she told me, very explicitly, to follow the path until i came to the end of the wood, and then i should see the village below me in the bottom of the valley. and, with mutual courtesies, the little old maid and i went on our respective ways. nor had she misled me. great missenden was close at hand, as she had said, in the trough of a gentle valley, with many great elms about it. the smoke from its chimneys went up pleasantly in the afternoon sunshine. the sleepy hum of a threshing-machine filled the neighbouring fields and hung about the quaint street corners. a little above, the church sits well back on its haunches against the hillside an attitude for a church, you know, that makes it look as if it could be ever so much higher if it liked; and the trees grew about it thickly, so as to make a density of shade in the churchyard. a very quiet place it looks; and yet i saw many boards and posters about threatening dire punishment against those who broke the church windows or defaced the precinct, and offering rewards for the apprehension of those who had done the like already. it was fair day in great missenden. there were three stalls set up, sub jove, for the sale of pastry and cheap toys; and a great number of holiday children thronged about the stalls and noisily invaded every corner of the straggling village. they came round me by coveys, blowing simultaneously upon penny trumpets as though they imagined i should fall to pieces like the battlements of jericho. i noticed one among them who could make a wheel of himself like a london boy, and seemingly enjoyed a grave pre-eminence upon the strength of the accomplishment. by and by, however, the trumpets began to weary me, and i went indoors, leaving the fair, i fancy, at its height. night had fallen before i ventured forth again. it was pitch-dark in the village street, and the darkness seemed only the greater for a light here and there in an uncurtained window or from an open door. into one such window i was rude enough to peep, and saw within a charming genre picture. in a room, all white wainscot and crimson wall-paper, a perfect gem of colour after the black, empty darkness in which i had been groping, a pretty girl was telling a story, as well as i could make out, to an attentive child upon her knee, while an old woman sat placidly dozing over the fire. you may be sure i was not behindhand with a story for myself a good old story after the manner of g. p. r. james and the village melodramas, with a wicked squire, and poachers, and an attorney, and a virtuous young man with a genius for mechanics, who should love, and protect, and ultimately marry the girl in the crimson room. baudelaire has a few dainty sentences on the fancies that we are inspired with when we look through a window into other people's lives; and i think dickens has somewhere enlarged on the same text. the subject, at least, is one that i am seldom weary of entertaining. i remember, night after night, at brussels, watching a good family sup together, make merry, and retire to rest; and night after night i waited to see the candles lit, and the salad made, and the last salutations dutifully exchanged, without any abatement of interest. night after night i found the scene rivet my attention and keep me awake in bed with all manner of quaint imaginations. much of the pleasure of the arabian nights hinges upon this asmodean interest; and we are not weary of lifting other people's roofs, and going about behind the scenes of life with the caliph and the serviceable giaffar. it is a salutary exercise, besides; it is salutary to get out of ourselves and see people living together in perfect unconsciousness of our existence, as they will live when we are gone. if to-morrow the blow falls, and the worst of our ill fears is realised, the girl will none the less tell stories to the child on her lap in the cottage at great missenden, nor the good belgians light their candle, and mix their salad, and go orderly to bed. the next morning was sunny overhead and damp underfoot, with a thrill in the air like a reminiscence of frost. i went up into the sloping garden behind the inn and smoked a pipe pleasantly enough, to the tune of my landlady's lamentations over sundry cabbages and cauliflowers that had been spoiled by caterpillars. she had been so much pleased in the summer-time, she said, to see the garden all hovered over by white butterflies. and now, look at the end of it! she could nowise reconcile this with her moral sense. and, indeed, unless these butterflies are created with a side-look to the composition of improving apologues, it is not altogether easy, even for people who have read hegel and dr. m'cosh, to decide intelligibly upon the issue raised. then i fell into a long and abstruse calculation with my landlord; having for object to compare the distance driven by him during eight years' service on the box of the wendover coach with the girth of the round world itself. we tackled the question most conscientiously, made all necessary allowance for sundays and leap-years, and were just coming to a triumphant conclusion of our labours when we were stayed by a small lacuna in my information. i did not know the circumference of the earth. the landlord knew it, to be sure plainly he had made the same calculation twice and once before, but he wanted confidence in his own figures, and from the moment i showed myself so poor a second seemed to lose all interest in the result. wendover (which was my next stage) lies in the same valley with great missenden, but at the foot of it, where the hills trend off on either hand like a coast-line, and a great hemisphere of plain lies, like a sea, before one, i went up a chalky road, until i had a good outlook over the place. the vale, as it opened out into the plain, was shallow, and a little bare, perhaps, but full of graceful convolutions. from the level to which i have now attained the fields were exposed before me like a map, and i could see all that bustle of autumn field-work which had been hid from me yesterday behind the hedgerows, or shown to me only for a moment as i followed the footpath. wendover lay well down in the midst, with mountains of foliage about it. the great plain stretched away to the northward, variegated near at hand with the quaint pattern of the fields, but growing ever more and more indistinct, until it became a mere hurlyburly of trees and bright crescents of river, and snatches of slanting road, and finally melted into the ambiguous cloud-land over the horizon. the sky was an opal-grey, touched here and there with blue, and with certain faint russets that looked as if they were reflections of the colour of the autumnal woods below. i could hear the ploughmen shouting to their horses, the uninterrupted carol of larks innumerable overhead, and, from a field where the shepherd was marshalling his flock, a sweet tumultuous tinkle of sheep-bells. all these noises came to me very thin and distinct in the clear air. there was a wonderful sentiment of distance and atmosphere about the day and the place. i mounted the hill yet farther by a rough staircase of chalky footholds cut in the turf. the hills about wendover and, as far as i could see, all the hills in buckinghamshire, wear a sort of hood of beech plantation; but in this particular case the hood had been suffered to extend itself into something more like a cloak, and hung down about the shoulders of the hill in wide folds, instead of lying flatly along the summit. the trees grew so close, and their boughs were so matted together, that the whole wood looked as dense as a bush of heather. the prevailing colour was a dull, smouldering red, touched here and there with vivid yellow. but the autumn had scarce advanced beyond the outworks; it was still almost summer in the heart of the wood; and as soon as i had scrambled through the hedge, i found myself in a dim green forest atmosphere under eaves of virgin foliage. in places where the wood had itself for a background and the trees were massed together thickly, the colour became intensified and almost gem-like: a perfect fire green, that seemed none the less green for a few specks of autumn gold. none of the trees were of any considerable age or stature; but they grew well together, i have said; and as the road turned and wound among them, they fell into pleasant groupings and broke the light up pleasantly. sometimes there would be a colonnade of slim, straight tree-stems with the light running down them as down the shafts of pillars, that looked as if it ought to lead to something, and led only to a corner of sombre and intricate jungle. sometimes a spray of delicate foliage would be thrown out flat, the light lying flatly along the top of it, so that against a dark background it seemed almost luminous. there was a great bush over the thicket (for, indeed, it was more of a thicket than a wood); and the vague rumours that went among the tree-tops, and the occasional rustling of big birds or hares among the undergrowth, had in them a note of almost treacherous stealthiness, that put the imagination on its guard and made me walk warily on the russet carpeting of last year's leaves. the spirit of the place seemed to be all attention; the wood listened as i went, and held its breath to number my footfalls. one could not help feeling that there ought to be some reason for this stillness; whether, as the bright old legend goes, pan lay somewhere near in siesta, or whether, perhaps, the heaven was meditating rain, and the first drops would soon come pattering through the leaves. it was not unpleasant, in such an humour, to catch sight, ever and anon, of large spaces of the open plain. this happened only where the path lay much upon the slope, and there was a flaw in the solid leafy thatch of the wood at some distance below the level at which i chanced myself to be walking; then, indeed, little scraps of foreshortened distance, miniature fields, and lilliputian houses and hedgerow trees would appear for a moment in the aperture, and grow larger and smaller, and change and melt one into another, as i continued to go forward, and so shift my point of view. for ten minutes, perhaps, i had heard from somewhere before me in the wood a strange, continuous noise, as of clucking, cooing, and gobbling, now and again interrupted by a harsh scream. as i advanced towards this noise, it began to grow lighter about me, and i caught sight, through the trees, of sundry gables and enclosure walls, and something like the tops of a rickyard. and sure enough, a rickyard it proved to be, and a neat little farm-steading, with the beechwoods growing almost to the door of it. just before me, however, as i came upon the path, the trees drew back and let in a wide flood of daylight on to a circular lawn. it was here that the noises had their origin. more than a score of peacocks (there are altogether thirty at the farm), a proper contingent of peahens, and a great multitude that i could not number of more ordinary barn-door fowls, were all feeding together on this little open lawn among the beeches. they fed in a dense crowd, which swayed to and fro, and came hither and thither as by a sort of tide, and of which the surface was agitated like the surface of a sea as each bird guzzled his head along the ground after the scattered corn. the clucking, cooing noise that had led me thither was formed by the blending together of countless expressions of individual contentment into one collective expression of contentment, or general grace during meat. every now and again a big peacock would separate himself from the mob and take a stately turn or two about the lawn, or perhaps mount for a moment upon the rail, and there shrilly publish to the world his satisfaction with himself and what he had to eat. it happened, for my sins, that none of these admirable birds had anything beyond the merest rudiment of a tail. tails, it seemed, were out of season just then. but they had their necks for all that; and by their necks alone they do as much surpass all the other birds of our grey climate as they fall in quality of song below the blackbird or the lark. surely the peacock, with its incomparable parade of glorious colour and the scannel voice of it issuing forth, as in mockery, from its painted throat, must, like my landlady's butterflies at great missenden, have been invented by some skilful fabulist for the consolation and support of homely virtue: or rather, perhaps, by a fabulist not quite so skilful, who made points for the moment without having a studious enough eye to the complete effect; for i thought these melting greens and blues so beautiful that afternoon, that i would have given them my vote just then before the sweetest pipe in all the spring woods. for indeed there is no piece of colour of the same extent in nature, that will so flatter and satisfy the lust of a man's eyes; and to come upon so many of them, after these acres of stone-coloured heavens and russet woods, and grey-brown ploughlands and white roads, was like going three whole days' journey to the southward, or a month back into the summer. i was sorry to leave peacock farm for so the place is called, after the name of its splendid pensioners and go forwards again in the quiet woods. it began to grow both damp and dusk under the beeches; and as the day declined the colour faded out of the foliage; and shadow, without form and void, took the place of all the fine tracery of leaves and delicate gradations of living green that had before accompanied my walk. i had been sorry to leave peacock farm, but i was not sorry to find myself once more in the open road, under a pale and somewhat troubled-looking evening sky, and put my best foot foremost for the inn at wendover. wendover, in itself, is a straggling, purposeless sort of place. everybody seems to have had his own opinion as to how the street should go; or rather, every now and then a man seems to have arisen with a new idea on the subject, and led away a little sect of neighbours to join in his heresy. it would have somewhat the look of an abortive watering-place, such as we may now see them here and there along the coast, but for the age of the houses, the comely quiet design of some of them, and the look of long habitation, of a life that is settled and rooted, and makes it worth while to train flowers about the windows, and otherwise shape the dwelling to the humour of the inhabitant. the church, which might perhaps have served as rallying-point for these loose houses, and pulled the township into something like intelligible unity, stands some distance off among great trees; but the inn (to take the public buildings in order of importance) is in what i understand to be the principal street: a pleasant old house, with bay-windows, and three peaked gables, and many swallows' nests plastered about the eaves. the interior of the inn was answerable to the outside: indeed, i never saw any room much more to be admired than the low wainscoted parlour in which i spent the remainder of the evening. it was a short oblong in shape, save that the fireplace was built across one of the angles so as to cut it partially off, and the opposite angle was similarly truncated by a corner cupboard. the wainscot was white, and there was a turkey carpet on the floor, so old that it might have been imported by walter shandy before he retired, worn almost through in some places, but in others making a good show of blues and oranges, none the less harmonious for being somewhat faded. the corner cupboard was agreeable in design; and there were just the right things upon the shelves decanters and tumblers, and blue plates, and one red rose in a glass of water. the furniture was oldfashioned and stiff. everything was in keeping, down to the ponderous leaden inkstand on the round table. and you may fancy how pleasant it looked, all flushed and flickered over by the light of a brisk companionable fire, and seen, in a strange, tilted sort of perspective, in the three compartments of the old mirror above the chimney. as i sat reading in the great armchair, i kept looking round with the tail of my eye at the quaint, bright picture that was about me, and could not help some pleasure and a certain childish pride in forming part of it. the book i read was about italy in the early renaissance, the pageantries and the light loves of princes, the passion of men for learning, and poetry, and art; but it was written, by good luck, after a solid, prosaic fashion, that suited the room infinitely more nearly than the matter; and the result was that i thought less, perhaps, of lippo lippi, or lorenzo, or politian, than of the good englishman who had written in that volume what he knew of them, and taken so much pleasure in his solemn polysyllables. i was not left without society. my landlord had a very pretty little daughter, whom we shall call lizzie. if i had made any notes at the time, i might be able to tell you something definite of her appearance. but faces have a trick of growing more and more spiritualised and abstract in the memory, until nothing remains of them but a look, a haunting expression; just that secret quality in a face that is apt to slip out somehow under the cunningest painter's touch, and leave the portrait dead for the lack of it. and if it is hard to catch with the finest of camel's-hair pencils, you may think how hopeless it must be to pursue after it with clumsy words. if i say, for instance, that this look, which i remember as lizzie, was something wistful that seemed partly to come of slyness and in part of simplicity, and that i am inclined to imagine it had something to do with the daintiest suspicion of a cast in one of her large eyes, i shall have said all that i can, and the reader will not be much advanced towards comprehension. i had struck up an acquaintance with this little damsel in the morning, and professed much interest in her dolls, and an impatient desire to see the large one which was kept locked away for great occasions. and so i had not been very long in the parlour before the door opened, and in came miss lizzie with two dolls tucked clumsily under her arm. she was followed by her brother john, a year or so younger than herself, not simply to play propriety at our interview, but to show his own two whips in emulation of his sister's dolls. i did my best to make myself agreeable to my visitors, showing much admiration for the dolls and dolls' dresses, and, with a very serious demeanour, asking many questions about their age and character. i do not think that lizzie distrusted my sincerity, but it was evident that she was both bewildered and a little contemptuous. although she was ready herself to treat her dolls as if they were alive, she seemed to think rather poorly of any grown person who could fall heartily into the spirit of the fiction. sometimes she would look at me with gravity and a sort of disquietude, as though she really feared i must be out of my wits. sometimes, as when i inquired too particularly into the question of their names, she laughed at me so long and heartily that i began to feel almost embarrassed. but when, in an evil moment, i asked to be allowed to kiss one of them, she could keep herself no longer to herself. clambering down from the chair on which she sat perched to show me, cornelia-like, her jewels, she ran straight out of the room and into the bar it was just across the passage, and i could hear her telling her mother in loud tones, but apparently more in sorrow than in merriment, that the gentleman in the parlour wanted to kiss dolly. i fancy she was determined to save me from this humiliating action, even in spite of myself, for she never gave me the desired permission. she reminded me of an old dog i once knew, who would never suffer the master of the house to dance, out of an exaggerated sense of the dignity of that master's place and carriage. after the young people were gone there was but one more incident ere i went to bed. i heard a party of children go up and down the dark street for a while, singing together sweetly. and the mystery of this little incident was so pleasant to me that i purposely refrained from asking who they were, and wherefore they went singing at so late an hour. one can rarely be in a pleasant place without meeting with some pleasant accident. i have a conviction that these children would not have gone singing before the inn unless the inn-parlour had been the delightful place it was. at least, if i had been in the customary public room of the modern hotel, with all its disproportions and discomforts, my ears would have been dull, and there would have been some ugly temper or other uppermost in my spirit, and so they would have wasted their songs upon an unworthy hearer. next morning i went along to visit the church. it is a long-backed red-and-white building, very much restored, and stands in a pleasant graveyard among those great trees of which i have spoken already. the sky was drowned in a mist. now and again pulses of cold wind went about the enclosure, and set the branches busy overhead, and the dead leaves scurrying into the angles of the church buttresses. now and again, also, i could hear the dull sudden fall of a chestnut among the grass the dog would bark before the rectory door or there would come a clinking of pails from the stable-yard behind. but in spite of these occasional interruptions in spite, also, of the continuous autumn twittering that filled the trees the chief impression somehow was one as of utter silence, insomuch that the little greenish bell that peeped out of a window in the tower disquieted me with a sense of some possible and more inharmonious disturbance. the grass was wet, as if with a hoar frost that had just been melted. i do not know that ever i saw a morning more autumnal. as i went to and fro among the graves, i saw some flowers set reverently before a recently erected tomb, and drawing near, was almost startled to find they lay on the grave a man seventy-two years old when he died. we are accustomed to strew flowers only over the young, where love has been cut short untimely, and great possibilities have been restrained by death. we strew them there in token, that these possibilities, in some deeper sense, shall yet be realised, and the touch of our dead loves remain with us and guide us to the end. and yet there was more significance, perhaps, and perhaps a greater consolation, in this little nosegay on the grave of one who had died old. we are apt to make so much of the tragedy of death, and think so little of the enduring tragedy of some men's lives, that we see more to lament for in a life cut off in the midst of usefulness and love, than in one that miserably survives all love and usefulness, and goes about the world the phantom of itself, without hope, or joy, or any consolation. these flowers seemed not so much the token of love that survived death, as of something yet more beautiful of love that had lived a man's life out to an end with him, and been faithful and companionable, and not weary of loving, throughout all these years. the morning cleared a little, and the sky was once more the old stone-coloured vault over the sallow meadows and the russet woods, as i set forth on a dog-cart from wendover to tring. the road lay for a good distance along the side of the hills, with the great plain below on one hand, and the beech-woods above on the other. the fields were busy with people ploughing and sowing; every here and there a jug of ale stood in the angle of the hedge, and i could see many a team wait smoking in the furrow as ploughman or sower stepped aside for a moment to take a draught. over all the brown ploughlands, and under all the leafless hedgerows, there was a stout piece of labour abroad, and, as it were, a spirit of picnic. the horses smoked and the men laboured and shouted and drank in the sharp autumn morning; so that one had a strong effect of large, open-air existence. the fellow who drove me was something of a humourist; and his conversation was all in praise of an agricultural labourer's way of life. it was he who called my attention to these jugs of ale by the hedgerow; he could not sufficiently express the liberality of these men's wages; he told me how sharp an appetite was given by breaking up the earth in the morning air, whether with plough or spade, and cordially admired this provision of nature. he sang o fortunatos agricolas! indeed, in every possible key, and with many cunning inflections, till i began to wonder what was the use of such people as mr. arch, and to sing the same air myself in a more diffident manner. tring was reached, and then tring railway-station; for the two are not very near, the good people of tring having held the railway, of old days, in extreme apprehension, lest some day it should break loose in the town and work mischief. i had a last walk, among russet beeches as usual, and the air filled, as usual, with the carolling of larks; i heard shots fired in the distance, and saw, as a new sign of the fulfilled autumn, two horsemen exercising a pack of fox-hounds. and then the train came and carried me back to london. chapter iv a winter's walk in carrick and galloway a fragment 1876 at the famous bridge of doon, kyle, the central district of the shire of ayr, marches with carrick, the most southerly. on the carrick side of the river rises a hill of somewhat gentle conformation, cleft with shallow dells, and sown here and there with farms and tufts of wood. inland, it loses itself, joining, i suppose, the great herd of similar hills that occupies the centre of the lowlands. towards the sea it swells out the coast-line into a protuberance, like a baywindow in a plan, and is fortified against the surf behind bold crags. this hill is known as the brown hill of carrick, or, more shortly, brown carrick. it had snowed overnight. the fields were all sheeted up; they were tucked in among the snow, and their shape was modelled through the pliant counterpane, like children tucked in by a fond mother. the wind had made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what the sea, in quiet weather, leaves upon the sand. there was a frosty stifle in the air. an effusion of coppery light on the summit of brown carrick showed where the sun was trying to look through; but along the horizon clouds of cold fog had settled down, so that there was no distinction of sky and sea. over the white shoulders of the headlands, or in the opening of bays, there was nothing but a great vacancy and blackness; and the road as it drew near the edge of the cliff seemed to skirt the shores of creation and void space. the snow crunched under foot, and at farms all the dogs broke out barking as they smelt a passer-by upon the road. i met a fine old fellow, who might have sat as the father in 'the cottar's saturday night,' and who swore most heathenishly at a cow he was driving. and a little after i scraped acquaintance with a poor body tramping out to gather cockles. his face was wrinkled by exposure; it was broken up into flakes and channels, like mud beginning to dry, and weathered in two colours, an incongruous pink and grey. he had a faint air of being surprised which, god knows, he might well be that life had gone so ill with him. the shape of his trousers was in itself a jest, so strangely were they bagged and ravelled about his knees; and his coat was all bedaubed with clay as tough he had lain in a raindub during the new year's festivity. i will own i was not sorry to think he had had a merry new year, and been young again for an evening; but i was sorry to see the mark still there. one could not expect such an old gentleman to be much of a dandy or a great student of respectability in dress; but there might have been a wife at home, who had brushed out similar stains after fifty new years, now become old, or a round-armed daughter, who would wish to have him neat, were it only out of self-respect and for the ploughman sweetheart when he looks round at night. plainly, there was nothing of this in his life, and years and loneliness hung heavily on his old arms. he was seventy-six, he told me; and nobody would give a day's work to a man that age: they would think he couldn't do it. 'and, 'deed,' he went on, with a sad little chuckle, ''deed, i doubt if i could.' he said goodbye to me at a footpath, and crippled wearily off to his work. it will make your heart ache if you think of his old fingers groping in the snow. he told me i was to turn down beside the school-house for dunure. and so, when i found a lone house among the snow, and heard a babble of childish voices from within, i struck off into a steep road leading downwards to the sea. dunure lies close under the steep hill: a haven among the rocks, a breakwater in consummate disrepair, much apparatus for drying nets, and a score or so of fishers' houses. hard by, a few shards of ruined castle overhang the sea, a few vaults, and one tall gable honeycombed with windows. the snow lay on the beach to the tidemark. it was daubed on to the sills of the ruin: it roosted in the crannies of the rock like white sea-birds; even on outlying reefs there would be a little cock of snow, like a toy lighthouse. everything was grey and white in a cold and dolorous sort of shepherd's plaid. in the profound silence, broken only by the noise of oars at sea, a horn was sounded twice; and i saw the postman, girt with two bags, pause a moment at the end of the clachan for letters. it is, perhaps, characteristic of dunure that none were brought him. the people at the public-house did not seem well pleased to see me, and though i would fain have stayed by the kitchen fire, sent me 'ben the hoose' into the guest-room. this guest-room at dunure was painted in quite aesthetic fashion. there are rooms in the same taste not a hundred miles from london, where persons of an extreme sensibility meet together without embarrassment. it was all in a fine dull bottle-green and black; a grave harmonious piece of colouring, with nothing, so far as coarser folk can judge, to hurt the better feelings of the most exquisite purist. a cherry-red half window-blind kept up an imaginary warmth in the cold room, and threw quite a glow on the floor. twelve cockle-shells and a half-penny china figure were ranged solemnly along the mantel-shelf. even the spittoon was an original note, and instead of sawdust contained seashells. and as for the hearthrug, it would merit an article to itself, and a coloured diagram to help the text. it was patchwork, but the patchwork of the poor; no glowing shreds of old brocade and chinese silk, shaken together in the kaleidoscope of some tasteful housewife's fancy; but a work of art in its own way, and plainly a labour of love. the patches came exclusively from people's raiment. there was no colour more brilliant than a heather mixture; 'my johnny's grey breeks,' well polished over the oar on the boat's thwart, entered largely into its composition. and the spoils of an old black cloth coat, that had been many a sunday to church, added something (save the mark!) of preciousness to the material. while i was at luncheon four carters came in long-limbed, muscular ayrshire scots, with lean, intelligent faces. four quarts of stout were ordered; they kept filling the tumbler with the other hand as they drank; and in less time than it takes me to write these words the four quarts were finished another round was proposed, discussed, and negatived and they were creaking out of the village with their carts. the ruins drew you towards them. you never saw any place more desolate from a distance, nor one that less belied its promise near at hand. some crows and gulls flew away croaking as i scrambled in. the snow had drifted into the vaults. the clachan dabbled with snow, the white hills, the black sky, the sea marked in the coves with faint circular wrinkles, the whole world, as it looked from a loophole in dunure, was cold, wretched, and out-at-elbows. if you had been a wicked baron and compelled to stay there all the afternoon, you would have had a rare fit of remorse. how you would have heaped up the fire and gnawed your fingers! i think it would have come to homicide before the evening if it were only for the pleasure of seeing something red! and the masters of dunure, it is to be noticed, were remarkable of old for inhumanity. one of these vaults where the snow had drifted was that 'black route' where 'mr. alane stewart, commendatour of crossraguel,' endured his fiery trials. on the 1st and 7th of september 1570 (ill dates for mr. alan!), gilbert, earl of cassilis, his chaplain, his baker, his cook, his pantryman, and another servant, bound the poor commendator 'betwix an iron chimlay and a fire,' and there cruelly roasted him until he signed away his abbacy. it is one of the ugliest stories of an ugly period, but not, somehow, without such a flavour of the ridiculous as makes it hard to sympathise quite seriously with the victim. and it is consoling to remember that he got away at last, and kept his abbacy, and, over and above, had a pension from the earl until he died. some way beyond dunure a wide bay, of somewhat less unkindly aspect, opened out. colzean plantations lay all along the steep shore, and there was a wooded hill towards the centre, where the trees made a sort of shadowy etching over the snow. the road went down and up, and past a blacksmith's cottage that made fine music in the valley. three compatriots of burns drove up to me in a cart. they were all drunk, and asked me jeeringly if this was the way to dunure. i told them it was; and my answer was received with unfeigned merriment. one gentleman was so much tickled he nearly fell out of the cart; indeed, he was only saved by a companion, who either had not so fine a sense of humour or had drunken less. 'the toune of mayboll,' says the inimitable abercrummie, 'stands upon an ascending ground from east to west, and lyes open to the south. it hath one principals street, with houses upon both sides, built of freestone; and it is beautifyed with the situation of two castles, one at each end of this street. that on the east belongs to the erle of cassilis. on the west end is a castle, which belonged sometime to the laird of blairquan, which is now the tolbuith, and is adorned with a pyremide [conical roof], and a row of ballesters round it raised from the top of the staircase, into which they have mounted a fyne clock. there be four lanes which pass from the principall street; one is called the black vennel, which is steep, declining to the south-west, and leads to a lower street, which is far larger than the high chiefe street, and it runs from the kirkland to the well trees, in which there have been many pretty buildings, belonging to the severall gentry of the countrey, who were wont to resort thither in winter, and divert themselves in converse together at their owne houses. it was once the principall street of the town; but many of these houses of the gentry having been decayed and ruined, it has lost much of its ancient beautie. just opposite to this vennel, there is another that leads north-west, from the chiefe street to the green, which is a pleasant plott of ground, enclosed round with an earthen wall, wherein they were wont to play football, but now at the gowff and byasse-bowls. the houses of this towne, on both sides of the street, have their several gardens belonging to them; and in the lower street there be some pretty orchards, that yield store of good fruit.' as patterson says, this description is near enough even today, and is mighty nicely written to boot. i am bound to add, of my own experience, that maybole is tumbledown and dreary. prosperous enough in reality, it has an air of decay; and though the population has increased, a roofless house every here and there seems to protest the contrary. the women are more than well-favoured, and the men fine tall fellows; but they look slipshod and dissipated. as they slouched at street corners, or stood about gossiping in the snow, it seemed they would have been more at home in the slums of a large city than here in a country place betwixt a village and a town. i heard a great deal about drinking, and a great deal about religious revivals: two things in which the scottish character is emphatic and most unlovely. in particular, i heard of clergymen who were employing their time in explaining to a delighted audience the physics of the second coming. it is not very likely any of us will be asked to help. if we were, it is likely we should receive instructions for the occasion, and that on more reliable authority. and so i can only figure to myself a congregation truly curious in such flights of theological fancy, as one of veteran and accomplished saints, who have fought the good fight to an end and outlived all worldly passion, and are to be regarded rather as a part of the church triumphant than the poor, imperfect company on earth. and yet i saw some young fellows about the smoking-room who seemed, in the eyes of one who cannot count himself strait-laced, in need of some more practical sort of teaching. they seemed only eager to get drunk, and to do so speedily. it was not much more than a week after the new year; and to hear them return on their past bouts with a gusto unspeakable was not altogether pleasing. here is one snatch of talk, for the accuracy of which i can vouch'ye had a spree here last tuesday?' 'we had that!' 'i wasna able to be oot o' my bed. man, i was awful bad on wednesday.' 'ay, ye were gey bad.' and you should have seen the bright eyes, and heard the sensual accents! they recalled their doings with devout gusto and a sort of rational pride. schoolboys, after their first drunkenness, are not more boastful; a cock does not plume himself with a more unmingled satisfaction as he paces forth among his harem; and yet these were grown men, and by no means short of wit. it was hard to suppose they were very eager about the second coming: it seemed as if some elementary notions of temperance for the men and seemliness for the women would have gone nearer the mark. and yet, as it seemed to me typical of much that is evil in scotland, maybole is also typical of much that is best. some of the factories, which have taken the place of weaving in the town's economy, were originally founded and are still possessed by self-made men of the sterling, stout old breed fellows who made some little bit of an invention, borrowed some little pocketful of capital, and then, step by step, in courage, thrift and industry, fought their way upwards to an assured position. abercrummie has told you enough of the tolbooth; but, as a bit of spelling, this inscription on the tolbooth bell seems too delicious to withhold: 'this bell is founded at maiboll bi danel geli, a frenchman, the 6th november, 1696, bi appointment of the heritors of the parish of maiyboll.' the castle deserves more notice. it is a large and shapely tower, plain from the ground upwards, but with a zone of ornamentation running about the top. in a general way this adornment is perched on the very summit of the chimney-stacks; but there is one corner more elaborate than the rest. a very heavy string-course runs round the upper story, and just above this, facing up the street, the tower carries a small oriel window, fluted and corbelled and carved about with stone heads. it is so ornate it has somewhat the air of a shrine. and it was, indeed, the casket of a very precious jewel, for in the room to which it gives light lay, for long years, the heroine of the sweet old ballad of 'johnnie faa' she who, at the call of the gipsies' songs, 'came tripping down the stair, and all her maids before her.' some people say the ballad has no basis in fact, and have written, i believe, unanswerable papers to the proof. but in the face of all that, the very look of that high oriel window convinces the imagination, and we enter into all the sorrows of the imprisoned dame. we conceive the burthen of the long, lack-lustre days, when she leaned her sick head against the mullions, and saw the burghers loafing in maybole high street, and the children at play, and ruffling gallants riding by from hunt or foray. we conceive the passion of odd moments, when the wind threw up to her some snatch of song, and her heart grew hot within her, and her eyes overflowed at the memory of the past. and even if the tale be not true of this or that lady, or this or that old tower, it is true in the essence of all men and women: for all of us, some time or other, hear the gipsies singing; over all of us is the glamour cast. some resist and sit resolutely by the fire. most go and are brought back again, like lady cassilis. a few, of the tribe of waring, go and are seen no more; only now and again, at springtime, when the gipsies' song is afloat in the amethyst evening, we can catch their voices in the glee. by night it was clearer, and maybole more visible than during the day. clouds coursed over the sky in great masses; the full moon battled the other way, and lit up the snow with gleams of flying silver; the town came down the hill in a cascade of brown gables, bestridden by smooth white roofs, and sprangled here and there with lighted windows. at either end the snow stood high up in the darkness, on the peak of the tolbooth and among the chimneys of the castle. as the moon flashed a bull's-eye glitter across the town between the racing clouds, the white roofs leaped into relief over the gables and the chimney-stacks, and their shadows over the white roofs. in the town itself the lit face of the clock peered down the street; an hour was hammered out on mr. geli's bell, and from behind the red curtains of a public-house some one trolled out a compatriot of burns, again! 'the saut tear blin's my e'e.' next morning there was sun and a flapping wind. from the street corners of maybole i could catch breezy glimpses of green fields. the road underfoot was wet and heavy part ice, part snow, part water, and any one i met greeted me, by way of salutation, with 'a fine thowe' (thaw). my way lay among rather bleak bills, and past bleak ponds and dilapidated castles and monasteries, to the highlandlooking village of kirkoswald. it has little claim to notice, save that burns came there to study surveying in the summer of 1777, and there also, in the kirkyard, the original of tam o' shanter sleeps his last sleep. it is worth noticing, however, that this was the first place i thought 'highland-looking.' over the bill from kirkoswald a farm-road leads to the coast. as i came down above turnberry, the sea view was indeed strangely different from the day before. the cold fogs were all blown away; and there was ailsa craig, like a refraction, magnified and deformed, of the bass rock; and there were the chiselled mountain-tops of arran, veined and tipped with snow; and behind, and fainter, the low, blue land of cantyre. cottony clouds stood in a great castle over the top of arran, and blew out in long streamers to the south. the sea was bitten all over with white; little ships, tacking up and down the firth, lay over at different angles in the wind. on shanter they were ploughing lea; a cart foal, all in a field by himself, capered and whinnied as if the spring were in him. the road from turnberry to girvan lies along the shore, among sandhills and by wildernesses of tumbled bent. every here and there a few cottages stood together beside a bridge. they had one odd feature, not easy to describe in words: a triangular porch projected from above the door, supported at the apex by a single upright post; a secondary door was hinged to the post, and could be hasped on either cheek of the real entrance; so, whether the wind was north or south, the cotter could make himself a triangular bight of shelter where to set his chair and finish a pipe with comfort. there is one objection to this device; for, as the post stands in the middle of the fairway, any one precipitately issuing from the cottage must run his chance of a broken head. so far as i am aware, it is peculiar to the little corner of country about girvan. and that corner is noticeable for more reasons: it is certainly one of the most characteristic districts in scotland, it has this movable porch by way of architecture; it has, as we shall see, a sort of remnant of provincial costume, and it has the handsomest population in the lowlands. . . . chapter v forest notes 1875-6 on the plain perhaps the reader knows already the aspect of the great levels of the gatinais, where they border with the wooded hills of fontainebleau. here and there a few grey rocks creep out of the forest as if to sun themselves. here and there a few apple-trees stand together on a knoll. the quaint, undignified tartan of a myriad small fields dies out into the distance; the strips blend and disappear; and the dead flat lies forth open and empty, with no accident save perhaps a thin line of trees or faint church spire against the sky. solemn and vast at all times, in spite of pettiness in the near details, the impression becomes more solemn and vast towards evening. the sun goes down, a swollen orange, as it were into the sea. a blue-clad peasant rides home, with a harrow smoking behind him among the dry clods. another still works with his wife in their little strip. an immense shadow fills the plain; these people stand in it up to their shoulders; and their heads, as they stoop over their work and rise again, are relieved from time to time against the golden sky. these peasant farmers are well off nowadays, and not by any means overworked; but somehow you always see in them the historical representative of the serf of yore, and think not so much of present times, which may be prosperous enough, as of the old days when the peasant was taxed beyond possibility of payment, and lived, in michelet's image, like a hare between two furrows. these very people now weeding their patch under the broad sunset, that very man and his wife, it seems to us, have suffered all the wrongs of france. it is they who have been their country's scapegoat for long ages; they who, generation after generation, have sowed and not reaped, reaped and another has garnered; and who have now entered into their reward, and enjoy their good things in their turn. for the days are gone by when the seigneur ruled and profited. 'le seigneur,' says the old formula, 'enferme ses manants comme sous porte et gonds, du ciel a la terre. tout est a lui, foret chenue, oiseau dans l'air, poisson dans l'eau, bete an buisson, l'onde qui coule, la cloche dont le son au loin roule.' such was his old state of sovereignty, a local god rather than a mere king. and now you may ask yourself where he is, and look round for vestiges of my late lord, and in all the countryside there is no trace of him but his forlorn and fallen mansion. at the end of a long avenue, now sown with grain, in the midst of a close full of cypresses and lilacs, ducks and crowing chanticleers and droning bees, the old chateau lifts its red chimneys and peaked roofs and turning vanes into the wind and sun. there is a glad spring bustle in the air, perhaps, and the lilacs are all in flower, and the creepers green about the broken balustrade: but no spring shall revive the honour of the place. old women of the people, little, children of the people, saunter and gambol in the walled court or feed the ducks in the neglected moat. plough-horses, mighty of limb, browse in the long stables. the dial-hand on the clock waits for some better hour. out on the plain, where hot sweat trickles into men's eyes, and the spade goes in deep and comes up slowly, perhaps the peasant may feel a movement of joy at his heart when he thinks that these spacious chimneys are now cold, which have so often blazed and flickered upon gay folk at supper, while he and his hollow-eyed children watched through the night with empty bellies and cold feet. and perhaps, as he raises his head and sees the forest lying like a coast-line of low hills along the sea-level of the plain, perhaps forest and chateau hold no unsimilar place in his affections. if the chateau was my lord's, the forest was my lord the king's; neither of them for this poor jacques. if he thought to eke out his meagre way of life by some petty theft of wood for the fire, or for a new roof-tree, he found himself face to face with a whole department, from the grand master of the woods and waters, who was a high-born lord, down to the common sergeant, who was a peasant like himself, and wore stripes or a bandoleer by way of uniform. for the first offence, by the salic law, there was a fine of fifteen sols; and should a man be taken more than once in fault, or circumstances aggravate the colour of his guilt, he might be whipped, branded, or hanged. there was a hangman over at melun, and, i doubt not, a fine tall gibbet hard by the town gate, where jacques might see his fellows dangle against the sky as he went to market. and then, if he lived near to a cover, there would be the more hares and rabbits to eat out his harvest, and the more hunters to trample it down. my lord has a new horn from england. he has laid out seven francs in decorating it with silver and gold, and fitting it with a silken leash to hang about his shoulder. the hounds have been on a pilgrimage to the shrine of saint mesmer, or saint hubert in the ardennes, or some other holy intercessor who has made a speciality of the health of hunting-dogs. in the grey dawn the game was turned and the branch broken by our best piqueur. a rare day's hunting lies before us. wind a jolly flourish, sound the bien-aller with all your lungs. jacques must stand by, hat in hand, while the quarry and hound and huntsman sweep across his field, and a year's sparing and labouring is as though it had not been. if he can see the ruin with a good enough grace, who knows but he may fall in favour with my lord; who knows but his son may become the last and least among the servants at his lordship's kennel one of the two poor varlets who get no wages and sleep at night among the hounds? for all that, the forest has been of use to jacques, not only warming him with fallen wood, but giving him shelter in days of sore trouble, when my lord of the chateau, with all his troopers and trumpets, had been beaten from field after field into some ultimate fastness, or lay over-seas in an english prison. in these dark days, when the watch on the church steeple saw the smoke of burning villages on the sky-line, or a clump of spears and fluttering pensions drawing nigh across the plain, these good folk gat them up, with all their household gods, into the wood, whence, from some high spur, their timid scouts might overlook the coming and going of the marauders, and see the harvest ridden down, and church and cottage go up to heaven all night in flame. it was but an unhomely refuge that the woods afforded, where they must abide all change of weather and keep house with wolves and vipers. often there was none left alive, when they returned, to show the old divisions of field from field. and yet, as times went, when the wolves entered at night into depopulated paris, and perhaps de retz was passing by with a company of demons like himself, even in these caves and thickets there were glad hearts and grateful prayers. once or twice, as i say, in the course of the ages, the forest may have served the peasant well, but at heart it is a royal forest, and noble by old associations. these woods have rung to the horns of all the kings of france, from philip augustus downwards. they have seen saint louis exercise the dogs he brought with him from egypt; francis i. go a-hunting with ten thousand horses in his train; and peter of russia following his first stag. and so they are still haunted for the imagination by royal hunts and progresses, and peopled with the faces of memorable men of yore. and this distinction is not only in virtue of the pastime of dead monarchs. great events, great revolutions, great cycles in the affairs of men, have here left their note, here taken shape in some significant and dramatic situation. it was hence that gruise and his leaguers led charles the ninth a prisoner to paris. here, booted and spurred, and with all his dogs about him, napoleon met the pope beside a woodland cross. here, on his way to elba not so long after, he kissed the eagle of the old guard, and spoke words of passionate farewell to his soldiers. and here, after waterloo, rather than yield its ensign to the new power, one of his faithful regiments burned that memorial of so much toil and glory on the grand master's table, and drank its dust in brandy, as a devout priest consumes the remnants of the host. in the season close into the edge of the forest, so close that the trees of the bornage stand pleasantly about the last houses, sits a certain small and very quiet village. there is but one street, and that, not long ago, was a green lane, where the cattle browsed between the doorsteps. as you go up this street, drawing ever nearer the beginning of the wood, you will arrive at last before an inn where artists lodge. to the door (for i imagine it to be six o'clock on some fine summer's even), half a dozen, or maybe half a score, of people have brought out chairs, and now sit sunning themselves, and waiting the omnibus from melun. if you go on into the court you will find as many more, some in billiard-room over absinthe and a match of corks some without over a last cigar and a vermouth. the doves coo and flutter from the dovecot; hortense is drawing water from the well; and as all the rooms open into the court, you can see the white-capped cook over the furnace in the kitchen, and some idle painter, who has stored his canvases and washed his brushes, jangling a waltz on the crazy, tongue-tied piano in the salle-a-manger. 'edmond, encore un vermouth,' cries a man in velveteen, adding in a tone of apologetic afterthought, 'un double, s'il vous plait.' 'where are you working?' asks one in pure white linen from top to toe. 'at the carrefour de l'epine,' returns the other in corduroy (they are all gaitered, by the way). 'i couldn't do a thing to it. i ran out of white. where were you?' 'i wasn't working. i was looking for motives.' here is an outbreak of jubilation, and a lot of men clustering together about some new-comer with outstretched hands; perhaps the 'correspondence' has come in and brought so-and-so from paris, or perhaps it is only so-and-so who has walked over from chailly to dinner. 'a table, messieurs!' cries m. siron, bearing through the court the first tureen of soup. and immediately the company begins to settle down about the long tables in the dining-room, framed all round with sketches of all degrees of merit and demerit. there's the big picture of the huntsman winding a horn with a dead boar between his legs, and his legs well, his legs in stockings. and here is the little picture of a raw mutton-chop, in which such-a-one knocked a hole last summer with no worse a missile than a plum from the dessert. and under all these works of art so much eating goes forward, so much drinking, so much jabbering in french and english, that it would do your heart good merely to peep and listen at the door. one man is telling how they all went last year to the fete at fleury, and another how well so-and-so would sing of an evening: and here are a third and fourth making plans for the whole future of their lives; and there is a fifth imitating a conjurer and making faces on his clenched fist, surely of all arts the most difficult and admirable! a sixth has eaten his fill, lights a cigarette, and resigns himself to digestion. a seventh has just dropped in, and calls for soup. number eight, meanwhile, has left the table, and is once more trampling the poor piano under powerful and uncertain fingers. dinner over, people drop outside to smoke and chat. perhaps we go along to visit our friends at the other end of the village, where there is always a good welcome and a good talk, and perhaps some pickled oysters and white wine to close the evening. or a dance is organised in the dining-room, and the piano exhibits all its paces under manful jockeying, to the light of three or four candles and a lamp or two, while the waltzers move to and fro upon the wooden floor, and sober men, who are not given to such light pleasures, get up on the table or the sideboard, and sit there looking on approvingly over a pipe and a tumbler of wine. or sometimes suppose my lady moon looks forth, and the court from out the half-lit dining-room seems nearly as bright as by day, and the light picks out the window-panes, and makes a clear shadow under every vine-leaf on the wall sometimes a picnic is proposed, and a basket made ready, and a good procession formed in front of the hotel. the two trumpeters in honour go before; and as we file down the long alley, and up through devious footpaths among rocks and pine-trees, with every here and there a dark passage of shadow, and every here and there a spacious outlook over moonlit woods, these two precede us and sound many a jolly flourish as they walk. we gather ferns and dry boughs into the cavern, and soon a good blaze flutters the shadows of the old bandits' haunt, and shows shapely beards and comely faces and toilettes ranged about the wall. the bowl is lit, and the punch is burnt and sent round in scalding thimblefuls. so a good hour or two may pass with song and jest. and then we go home in the moonlit morning, straggling a good deal among the birch tufts and the boulders, but ever called together again, as one of our leaders winds his horn. perhaps some one of the party will not heed the summons, but chooses out some by-way of his own. as he follows the winding sandy road, he hears the flourishes grow fainter and fainter in the distance, and die finally out, and still walks on in the strange coolness and silence and between the crisp lights and shadows of the moonlit woods, until suddenly the bell rings out the hour from faraway chailly, and he starts to find himself alone. no surf-bell on forlorn and perilous shores, no passing knell over the busy marketplace, can speak with a more heavy and disconsolate tongue to human ears. each stroke calls up a host of ghostly reverberations in his mind. and as he stands rooted, it has grown once more so utterly silent that it seems to him he might hear the church bells ring the hour out all the world over, not at chailly only, but in paris, and away in outlandish cities, and in the village on the river, where his childhood passed between the sun and flowers. idle hours the woods by night, in all their uncanny effect, are not rightly to be understood until you can compare them with the woods by day. the stillness of the medium, the floor of glittering sand, these trees that go streaming up like monstrous sea-weeds and waver in the moving winds like the weeds in submarine currents, all these set the mind working on the thought of what you may have seen off a foreland or over the side of a boat, and make you feel like a diver, down in the quiet water, fathoms below the tumbling, transitory surface of the sea. and yet in itself, as i say, the strangeness of these nocturnal solitudes is not to be felt fully without the sense of contrast. you must have risen in the morning and seen the woods as they are by day, kindled and coloured in the sun's light; you must have felt the odour of innumerable trees at even, the unsparing heat along the forest roads, and the coolness of the groves. and on the first morning you will doubtless rise betimes. if you have not been wakened before by the visit of some adventurous pigeon, you will be wakened as soon as the sun can reach your window for there are no blind or shutters to keep him out and the room, with its bare wood floor and bare whitewashed walls, shines all round you in a sort of glory of reflected lights. you may doze a while longer by snatches, or lie awake to study the charcoal men and dogs and horses with which former occupants have defiled the partitions: thiers, with wily profile; local celebrities, pipe in hand; or, maybe, a romantic landscape splashed in oil. meanwhile artist after artist drops into the salle-a-manger for coffee, and then shoulders easel, sunshade, stool, and paint-box, bound into a fagot, and sets of for what he calls his 'motive.' and artist after artist, as he goes out of the village, carries with him a little following of dogs. for the dogs, who belong only nominally to any special master, hang about the gate of the forest all day long, and whenever any one goes by who hits their fancy, profit by his escort, and go forth with him to play an hour or two at hunting. they would like to be under the trees all day. but they cannot go alone. they require a pretext. and so they take the passing artist as an excuse to go into the woods, as they might take a walking-stick as an excuse to bathe. with quick ears, long spines, and bandy legs, or perhaps as tall as a greyhound and with a bulldog's head, this company of mongrels will trot by your side all day and come home with you at night, still showing white teeth and wagging stunted tail. their good humour is not to be exhausted. you may pelt them with stones if you please, and all they will do is to give you a wider berth. if once they come out with you, to you they will remain faithful, and with you return; although if you meet them next morning in the street, it is as like as not they will cut you with a countenance of brass. the forest a strange thing for an englishman is very destitute of birds. this is no country where every patch of wood among the meadows gibes up an increase of song, and every valley wandered through by a streamlet rings and reverberates from side to with a profusion of clear notes. and this rarity of birds is not to be regretted on its own account only. for the insects prosper in their absence, and become as one of the plagues of egypt. ants swarm in the hot sand; mosquitos drone their nasal drone; wherever the sun finds a hole in the roof of the forest, you see a myriad transparent creatures coming and going in the shaft of light; and even betweenwhiles, even where there is no incursion of sun-rays into the dark arcade of the wood, you are conscious of a continual drift of insects, an ebb and flow of infinitesimal living things between the trees. nor are insects the only evil creatures that haunt the forest. for you may plump into a cave among the rocks, and find yourself face to face with a wild boar, or see a crooked viper slither across the road. perhaps you may set yourself down in the bay between two spreading beech-roots with a book on your lap, and be awakened all of a sudden by a friend: 'i say, just keep where you are, will you? you make the jolliest motive.' and you reply: 'well, i don't mind, if i may smoke.' and thereafter the hours go idly by. your friend at the easel labours doggedly a little way off, in the wide shadow of the tree; and yet farther, across a strait of glaring sunshine, you see another painter, encamped in the shadow of another tree, and up to his waist in the fern. you cannot watch your own effigy growing out of the white trunk, and the trunk beginning to stand forth from the rest of the wood, and the whole picture getting dappled over with the flecks of sun that slip through the leaves overhead, and, as a wind goes by and sets the trees a-talking, flicker hither and thither like butterflies of light. but you know it is going forward; and, out of emulation with the painter, get ready your own palette, and lay out the colour for a woodland scene in words. your tree stands in a hollow paved with fern and heather, set in a basin of low hills, and scattered over with rocks and junipers. all the open is steeped in pitiless sunlight. everything stands out as though it were cut in cardboard, every colour is strained into its highest key. the boulders are some of them upright and dead like monolithic castles, some of them prone like sleeping cattle. the junipers looking, in their soiled and ragged mourning, like some funeral procession that has gone seeking the place of sepulchre three hundred years and more in wind and rain are daubed in forcibly against the glowing ferns and heather. every tassel of their rusty foliage is defined with pre-raphaelite minuteness. and a sorry figure they make out there in the sun, like misbegotten yew-trees! the scene is all pitched in a key of colour so peculiar, and lit up with such a discharge of violent sunlight, as a man might live fifty years in england and not see. meanwhile at your elbow some one tunes up a song, words of ronsard to a pathetic tremulous air, of how the poet loved his mistress long ago, and pressed on her the flight of time, and told her how white and quiet the dead lay under the stones, and how the boat dipped and pitched as the shades embarked for the passionless land. yet a little while, sang the poet, and there shall be no more love; only to sit and remember loves that might have been. there is a falling flourish in the air that remains in the memory and comes back in incongruous places, on the seat of hansoms or in the warm bed at night, with something of a forest savour. 'you can get up now,' says the painter; 'i'm at the background.' and so up you get, stretching yourself, and go your way into the wood, the daylight becoming richer and more golden, and the shadows stretching farther into the open. a cool air comes along the highways, and the scents awaken. the fir-trees breathe abroad their ozone. out of unknown thickets comes forth the soft, secret, aromatic odour of the woods, not like a smell of the free heaven, but as though court ladies, who had known these paths in ages long gone by, still walked in the summer evenings, and shed from their brocades a breath of musk or bergamot upon the woodland winds. one side of the long avenues is still kindled with the sun, the other is plunged in transparent shadow. over the trees the west begins to burn like a furnace; and the painters gather up their chattels, and go down, by avenue or footpath, to the plain. a pleasure-party as this excursion is a matter of some length, and, moreover, we go in force, we have set aside our usual vehicle, the pony-cart, and ordered a large wagonette from lejosne's. it has been waiting for near an hour, while one went to pack a knapsack, and t'other hurried over his toilette and coffee; but now it is filled from end to end with merry folk in summer attire, the coachman cracks his whip, and amid much applause from round the inn door off we rattle at a spanking trot. the way lies through the forest, up hill and down dale, and by beech and pine wood, in the cheerful morning sunshine. the english get down at all the ascents and walk on ahead for exercise; the french are mightily entertained at this, and keep coyly underneath the tilt. as we go we carry with us a pleasant noise of laughter and light speech, and some one will be always breaking out into a bar or two of opera bouffe. before we get to the route ronde here comes desprez, the colourman from fontainebleau, trudging across on his weekly peddle with a case of merchandise; and it is 'desprez, leave me some malachite green'; 'desprez, leave me so much canvas'; 'desprez, leave me this, or leave me that'; m. desprez standing the while in the sunlight with grave face and many salutations. the next interruption is more important. for some time back we have had the sound of cannon in our ears; and now, a little past franchard, we find a mounted trooper holding a led horse, who brings the wagonette to a stand. the artillery is practising in the quadrilateral, it appears; passage along the route ronde formally interdicted for the moment. there is nothing for it but to draw up at the glaring crossroads and get down to make fun with the notorious cocardon, the most ungainly and ill-bred dog of all the ungainly and ill-bred dogs of barbizon, or clamber about the sandy banks. and meanwhile the doctor, with sun umbrella, wide panama, and patriarchal beard, is busy wheedling and (for aught the rest of us know) bribing the too facile sentry. his speech is smooth and dulcet, his manner dignified and insinuating. it is not for nothing that the doctor has voyaged all the world over, and speaks all languages from french to patagonian. he has not come borne from perilous journeys to be thwarted by a corporal of horse. and so we soon see the soldier's mouth relax, and his shoulders imitate a relenting heart. 'en voiture, messieurs, mesdames,' sings the doctor; and on we go again at a good round pace, for black care follows hard after us, and discretion prevails not a little over valour in some timorous spirits of the party. at any moment we may meet the sergeant, who will send us back. at any moment we may encounter a flying shell, which will send us somewhere farther off than grez. grez for that is our destination has been highly recommended for its beauty. 'il y a de l'eau,' people have said, with an emphasis, as if that settled the question, which, for a french mind, i am rather led to think it does. and grez, when we get there, is indeed a place worthy of some praise. it lies out of the forest, a cluster of houses, with an old bridge, an old castle in ruin, and a quaint old church. the inn garden descends in terraces to the river; stable-yard, kailyard, orchard, and a space of lawn, fringed with rushes and embellished with a green arbour. on the opposite bank there is a reach of english-looking plain, set thickly with willows and poplars. and between the two lies the river, clear and deep, and full of reeds and floating lilies. water-plants cluster about the starlings of the long low bridge, and stand half-way up upon the piers in green luxuriance. they catch the dipped oar with long antennae, and chequer the slimy bottom with the shadow of their leaves. and the river wanders and thither hither among the islets, and is smothered and broken up by the reeds, like an old building in the lithe, hardy arms of the climbing ivy. you may watch the box where the good man of the inn keeps fish alive for his kitchen, one oily ripple following another over the top of the yellow deal. and you can hear a splashing and a prattle of voices from the shed under the old kirk, where the village women wash and wash all day among the fish and water-lilies. it seems as if linen washed there should be specially cool and sweet. we have come here for the river. and no sooner have we all bathed than we board the two shallops and push off gaily, and go gliding under the trees and gathering a great treasure of water-lilies. some one sings; some trail their hands in the cool water; some lean over the gunwale to see the image of the tall poplars far below, and the shadow of the boat, with the balanced oars and their own head protruded, glide smoothly over the yellow floor of the stream. at last, the day declining all silent and happy, and up to the knees in the wet lilies we punt slowly back again to the landing-place beside the bridge. there is a wish for solitude on all. one hides himself in the arbour with a cigarette; another goes a walk in the country with cocardon; a third inspects the church. and it is not till dinner is on the table, and the inn's best wine goes round from glass to glass, that we begin to throw off the restraint and fuse once more into a jolly fellowship. half the party are to return to-night with the wagonette; and some of the others, loath to break up company, will go with them a bit of the way and drink a stirrup-cup at marlotte. it is dark in the wagonette, and not so merry as it might have been. the coachman loses the road. so-and-so tries to light fireworks with the most indifferent success. some sing, but the rest are too weary to applaud; and it seems as if the festival were fairly at an end 'nous avons fait la noce, rentrons a nos foyers!' and such is the burthen, even after we have come to marlotte and taken our places in the court at mother antonine's. there is punch on the long table out in the open air, where the guests dine in summer weather. the candles flare in the night wind, and the faces round the punch are lit up, with shifting emphasis, against a background of complete and solid darkness. it is all picturesque enough; but the fact is, we are aweary. we yawn; we are out of the vein; we have made the wedding, as the song says, and now, for pleasure's sake, let's make an end on't. when here comes striding into the court, booted to mid-thigh, spurred and splashed, in a jacket of green cord, the great, famous, and redoubtable blank; and in a moment the fire kindles again, and the night is witness of our laughter as he imitates spaniards, germans, englishmen, picturedealers, all eccentric ways of speaking and thinking, with a possession, a fury, a strain of mind and voice, that would rather suggest a nervous crisis than a desire to please. we are as merry as ever when the trap sets forth again, and say farewell noisily to all the good folk going farther. then, as we are far enough from thoughts of sleep, we visit blank in his quaint house, and sit an hour or so in a great tapestried chamber, laid with furs, littered with sleeping hounds, and lit up, in fantastic shadow and shine, by a wood fire in a mediaeval chimney. and then we plod back through the darkness to the inn beside the river. how quick bright things come to confusion! when we arise next morning, the grey showers fall steadily, the trees hang limp, and the face of the stream is spoiled with dimpling raindrops. yesterday's lilies encumber the garden walk, or begin, dismally enough, their voyage towards the seine and the salt sea. a sickly shimmer lies upon the dripping house-roofs, and all the colour is washed out of the green and golden landscape of last night, as though an envious man had taken a water-colour sketch and blotted it together with a sponge. we go out a-walking in the wet roads. but the roads about grez have a trick of their own. they go on for a while among clumps of willows and patches of vine, and then, suddenly and without any warning, cease and determine in some miry hollow or upon some bald knowe; and you have a short period of hope, then right-about face, and back the way you came! so we draw about the kitchen fire and play a round game of cards for ha'pence, or go to the billiard-room, for a match at corks and by one consent a messenger is sent over for the wagonette grez shall be left to-morrow. to-morrow dawns so fair that two of the party agree to walk back for exercise, and let their kidnap-sacks follow by the trap. i need hardly say they are neither of them french; for, of all english phrases, the phrase 'for exercise' is the least comprehensible across the straits of dover. all goes well for a while with the pedestrians. the wet woods are full of scents in the noontide. at a certain cross, where there is a guardhouse, they make a halt, for the forester's wife is the daughter of their good host at barbizon. and so there they are hospitably received by the comely woman, with one child in her arms and another prattling and tottering at her gown, and drink some syrup of quince in the back parlour, with a map of the forest on the wall, and some prints of love-affairs and the great napoleon hunting. as they draw near the quadrilateral, and hear once more the report of the big guns, they take a by-road to avoid the sentries, and go on a while somewhat vaguely, with the sound of the cannon in their ears and the rain beginning to fall. the ways grow wider and sandier; here and there there are real sand-hills, as though by the sea-shore; the fir-wood is open and grows in clumps upon the hillocks, and the race of sign-posts is no more. one begins to look at the other doubtfully. 'i am sure we should keep more to the right,' says one; and the other is just as certain they should hold to the left. and now, suddenly, the heavens open, and the rain falls 'sheer and strong and loud,' as out of a shower-bath. in a moment they are as wet as shipwrecked sailors. they cannot see out of their eyes for the drift, and the water churns and gurgles in their boots. they leave the track and try across country with a gambler's desperatin, for it seems as if it were impossible to make the situation worse; and, for the next hour, go scrambling from boulder to boulder, or plod along paths that are now no more than rivulets, and across waste clearings where the scattered shells and broken fir-trees tell all too plainly of the cannon in the distance. and meantime the cannon grumble out responses to the grumbling thunder. there is such a mixture of melodrama and sheer discomfort about all this, it is at once so grey and so lurid, that it is far more agreeable to read and write about by the chimney-corner than to suffer in the person. at last they chance on the right path, and make franchard in the early evening, the sorriest pair of wanderers that ever welcomed english ale. thence, by the bois d'hyver, the ventes-alexandre, and the pins brules, to the clean hostelry, dry clothes, and dinner. the woods in spring i think you will like the forest best in the sharp early springtime, when it is just beginning to reawaken, and innumerable violets peep from among the fallen leaves; when two or three people at most sit down to dinner, and, at table, you will do well to keep a rug about your knees, for the nights are chill, and the salle-a-manger opens on the court. there is less to distract the attention, for one thing, and the forest is more itself. it is not bedotted with artists' sunshades as with unknown mushrooms, nor bestrewn with the remains of english picnics. the hunting still goes on, and at any moment your heart may be brought into your mouth as you hear far-away horns; or you may be told by an agitated peasant that the vicomte has gone up the avenue, not ten minutes since, 'a fond de train, monsieur, et avec douze pipuers.' if you go up to some coign of vantage in the system of low hills that permeates the forest, you will see many different tracts of country, each of its own cold and melancholy neutral tint, and all mixed together and mingled the one into the other at the seams. you will see tracts of leafless beeches of a faint yellowish grey, and leafless oaks a little ruddier in the hue. then zones of pine of a solemn green; and, dotted among the pines, or standing by themselves in rocky clearings, the delicate, snow-white trunks of birches, spreading out into snow-white branches yet more delicate, and crowned and canopied with a purple haze of twigs. and then a long, bare ridge of tumbled boulders, with bright sand-breaks between them, and wavering sandy roads among the bracken and brown heather. it is all rather cold and unhomely. it has not the perfect beauty, nor the gem-like colouring, of the wood in the later year, when it is no more than one vast colonnade of verdant shadow, tremulous with insects, intersected here and there by lanes of sunlight set in purple heather. the loveliness of the woods in march is not, assuredly, of this blowzy rustic type. it is made sharp with a grain of salt, with a touch of ugliness. it has a sting like the sting of bitter ale; you acquire the love of it as men acquire a taste for olives. and the wonderful clear, pure air wells into your lungs the while by voluptuous inhalations, and makes the eyes bright, and sets the heart tinkling to a new tune or, rather, to an old tune; for you remember in your boyhood something akin to this spirit of adventure, this thirst for exploration, that now takes you masterfully by the hand, plunges you into many a deep grove, and drags you over many a stony crest. it is as if the whole wood were full of friendly voice, calling you farther in, and you turn from one side to another, like buridan's donkey, in a maze of pleasure. comely beeches send up their white, straight, clustered branches, barred with green moss, like so many fingers from a half-clenched hand. mighty oaks stand to the ankles in a fine tracery of underwood; thence the tall shaft climbs upwards, and the great forest of stalwart boughs spreads out into the golden evening sky, where the rooks are flying and calling. on the sward of the bois d'hyver the firs stand well asunder with outspread arms, like fencers saluting; and the air smells of resin all around, and the sound of the axe is rarely still. but strangest of all, and in appearance oldest of all, are the dim and wizard upland districts of young wood. the ground is carpeted with fir-tassel, and strewn with fir-apples and flakes of fallen bark. rocks lie crouching in the thicket, guttered with rain, tufted with lichen, white with years and the rigours of the changeful seasons. brown and yellow butterflies are sown and carried away again by the light air like thistledown. the loneliness of these coverts is so excessive, that there are moments when pleasure draws to the verge of fear. you listen and listen for some noise to break the silence, till you grow half mesmerised by the intensity of the strain; your sense of your own identity is troubled; your brain reels, like that of some gymnosophist poring on his own nose in asiatic jungles; and should you see your own outspread feet, you see them, not as anything of yours, but as a feature of the scene around you. still the forest is always, but the stillness is not always unbroken. you can hear the wind pass in the distance over the tree-tops; sometimes briefly, like the noise of a train; sometimes with a long steady rush, like the breaking of waves. and sometimes, close at band, the branches move, a moan goes through the thicket, and the wood thrills to its heart. perhaps you may hear a carriage on the road to fontainebleau, a bird gives a dry continual chirp, the dead leaves rustle underfoot, or you may time your steps to the steady recurrent strokes of the woodman's axe. from time to time, over the low grounds, a flight of rooks goes by; and from time to time the cooing of wild doves falls upon the ear, not sweet and rich and near at hand as in england, but a sort of voice of the woods, thin and far away, as fits these solemn places. or you hear suddenly the hollow, eager, violent barking of dogs; scared deer flit past you through the fringes of the wood; then a man or two running, in green blouse, with gun and game-bag on a bandoleer; and then, out of the thick of the trees, comes the jar of rifle-shots. or perhaps the hounds are out, and horns are blown, and scarlet-coated huntsmen flash through the clearings, and the solid noise of horses galloping passes below you, where you sit perched among the rocks and heather. the boar is afoot, and all over the forest, and in all neighbouring villages, there is a vague excitement and a vague hope; for who knows whither the chase may lead? and even to have seen a single piqueur, or spoken to a single sportsman, is to be a man of consequence for the night. besides men who shoot and men who ride with the hounds, there are few people in the forest, in the early spring, save woodcutters plying their axes steadily, and old women and children gathering wood for the fire. you may meet such a party coming home in the twilight: the old woman laden with a fagot of chips, and the little ones hauling a long branch behind them in her wake. that is the worst of what there is to encounter; and if i tell you of what once happened to a friend of mine, it is by no means to tantalise you with false hopes; for the adventure was unique. it was on a very cold, still, sunless morning, with a flat grey sky and a frosty tingle in the air, that this friend (who shall here be nameless) heard the notes of a key-bugle played with much hesitation, and saw the smoke of a fire spread out along the green pine-tops, in a remote uncanny glen, hard by a hill of naked boulders. he drew near warily, and beheld a picnic party seated under a tree in an open. the old father knitted a sock, the mother sat staring at the fire. the eldest son, in the uniform of a private of dragoons, was choosing out notes on a keybugle. two or three daughters lay in the neighbourhood picking violets. and the whole party as grave and silent as the woods around them! my friend watched for a long time, he says; but all held their peace; not one spoke or smiled; only the dragoon kept choosing out single notes upon the bugle, and the father knitted away at his work and made strange movements the while with his flexible eyebrows. they took no notice whatever of my friend's presence, which was disquieting in itself, and increased the resemblance of the whole party to mechanical waxworks. certainly, he affirms, a wax figure might have played the bugle with more spirit than that strange dragoon. and as this hypothesis of his became more certain, the awful insolubility of why they should be left out there in the woods with nobody to wind them up again when they ran down, and a growing disquietude as to what might happen next, became too much for his courage, and he turned tail, and fairly took to his heels. it might have been a singing in his ears, but he fancies he was followed as he ran by a peal of titanic laughter. nothing has ever transpired to clear up the mystery; it may be they were automata; or it may be (and this is the theory to which i lean myself) that this is all another chapter of heine's 'gods in exile'; that the upright old man with the eyebrows was no other than father jove, and the young dragoon with the taste for music either apollo or mars. morality strange indeed is the attraction of the forest for the minds of men. not one or two only, but a great chorus of grateful voices have arisen to spread abroad its fame. half the famous writers of modern france have had their word to say about fontainebleau. chateaubriand, michelet, beranger, george sand, de senancour, flaubert, murger, the brothers goncourt, theodore de banville, each of these has done something to the eternal praise and memory of these woods. even at the very worst of times, even when the picturesque was anathema in the eyes of all persons of taste, the forest still preserved a certain reputation for beauty. it was in 1730 that the abbe guilbert published his historical description of the palace, town, and forest of fontainebleau. and very droll it is to see him, as he tries to set forth his admiration in terms of what was then permissible. the monstrous rocks, etc., says the abbe 'sont admirees avec surprise des voyageurs qui s'ecrient aussitot avec horace: ut mihi devio rupee et vacuum nemus mirari libet.' the good man is not exactly lyrical in his praise; and you see how he sets his back against horace as against a trusty oak. horace, at any rate, was classical. for the rest, however, the abbe likes places where many alleys meet; or which, like the belle-etoile, are kept up 'by a special gardener,' and admires at the table du roi the labours of the grand master of woods and waters, the sieur de la falure, 'qui a fait faire ce magnifique endroit.' but indeed, it is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of the air, that emanation from the old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. disappointed men, sick francis firsts and vanquished grand monarchs, time out of mind have come here for consolation. hither perplexed folk have retired out of the press of life, as into a deep bay-window on some night of masquerade, and here found quiet and silence, and rest, the mother of wisdom. it is the great moral spa; this forest without a fountain is itself the great fountain of juventius. it is the best place in the world to bring an old sorrow that has been a long while your friend and enemy; and if, like beranger's your gaiety has run away from home and left open the door for sorrow to come in, of all covers in europe, it is here you may expect to find the truant hid. with every hour you change. the air penetrates through your clothes, and nestles to your living body. you love exercise and slumber, long fasting and full meals. you forget all your scruples and live a while in peace and freedom, and for the moment only. for here, all is absent that can stimulate to moral feeling. such people as you see may be old, or toil-worn, or sorry; but you see them framed in the forest, like figures on a painted canvas; and for you, they are not people in any living and kindly sense. you forget the grim contrariety of interests. you forget the narrow lane where all men jostle together in unchivalrous contention, and the kennel, deep and unclean, that gapes on either hand for the defeated. life is simple enough, it seems, and the very idea of sacrifice becomes like a mad fancy out of a last night's dream. your ideal is not perhaps high, but it is plain and possible. you become enamoured of a life of change and movement and the open air, where the muscles shall be more exercised than the affections. when you have had your will of the forest, you may visit the whole round world. you may buckle on your knapsack and take the road on foot. you may bestride a good nag, and ride forth, with a pair of saddlebags, into the enchanted east. you may cross the black forest, and see germany wide-spread before you, like a map, dotted with old cities, walled and spired, that dream all day on their own reflections in the rhine or danube. you may pass the spinal cord of europe and go down from alpine glaciers to where italy extends her marble moles and glasses her marble palaces in the midland sea. you may sleep in flying trains or wayside taverns. you may be awakened at dawn by the scream of the express or the small pipe of the robin in the hedge. for you the rain should allay the dust of the beaten road; the wind dry your clothes upon you as you walked. autumn should hang out russet pears and purple grapes along the lane; inn after inn proffer you their cups of raw wine; river by river receive your body in the sultry noon. wherever you went warm valleys and high trees and pleasant villages should compass you about; and light fellowships should take you by the arm, and walk with you an hour upon your way. you may see from afar off what it will come to in the end the weather-beaten red-nosed vagabond, consumed by a fever of the feet, cut off from all near touch of human sympathy, a waif, an ishmael, and an outcast. and yet it will seem well and yet, in the air of the forest, this will seem the best to break all the network bound about your feet by birth and old companionship and loyal love, and bear your shovelful of phosphates to and fro, in town country, until the hour of the great dissolvent. or, perhaps, you will keep to the cover. for the forest is by itself, and forest life owns small kinship with life in the dismal land of labour. men are so far sophisticated that they cannot take the world as it is given to them by the sight of their eyes. not only what they see and hear, but what they know to be behind, enter into their notion of a place. if the sea, for instance, lie just across the hills, sea-thoughts will come to them at intervals, and the tenor of their dreams from time to time will suffer a sea-change. and so here, in this forest, a knowledge of its greatness is for much in the effect produced. you reckon up the miles that lie between you and intrusion. you may walk before you all day long, and not fear to touch the barrier of your eden, or stumble out of fairyland into the land of gin and steam-hammers. and there is an old tale enhances for the imagination the grandeur of the woods of france, and secures you in the thought of your seclusion. when charles vi. hunted in the time of his wild boyhood near senlis, there was captured an old stag, having a collar of bronze about his neck, and these words engraved on the collar: 'caesar mihi hoc donavit.' it is no wonder if the minds of men were moved at this occurrence and they stood aghast to find themselves thus touching hands with forgotten ages, and following an antiquity with hound and horn. and even for you, it is scarcely in an idle curiosity that you ponder how many centuries this stag had carried its free antlers through the wood, and how many summers and winters had shone and snowed on the imperial badge. if the extent of solemn wood could thus safeguard a tall stag from the hunter's hounds and houses, might not you also play hide-and-seek, in these groves, with all the pangs and trepidations of man's life, and elude death, the mighty hunter, for more than the span of human years? here, also, crash his arrows; here, in the farthest glade, sounds the gallop of the pale horse. but he does not hunt this cover with all his hounds, for the game is thin and small: and if you were but alert and wary, if you lodged ever in the deepest thickets, you too might live on into later generations and astonish men by your stalwart age and the trophies of an immemorial success. for the forest takes away from you all excuse to die. there is nothing here to cabin or thwart your free desires. here all the impudencies of the brawling world reach you no more. you may count your hours, like endymion, by the strokes of the lone woodcutter, or by the progression of the lights and shadows and the sun wheeling his wide circuit through the naked heavens. here shall you see no enemies but winter and rough weather. and if a pang comes to you at all, it will be a pang of healthful hunger. all the puling sorrows, all the carking repentance, all this talk of duty that is no duty, in the great peace, in the pure daylight of these woods, fall away from you like a garment. and if perchance you come forth upon an eminence, where the wind blows upon you large and fresh, and the pines knock their long stems together, like an ungainly sort of puppets, and see far away over the plain a factory chimney defined against the pale horizon it is for you, as for the staid and simple peasant when, with his plough, he upturns old arms and harness from the furrow of the glebe. ay, sure enough, there was a battle there in the old times; and, sure enough, there is a world out yonder where men strive together with a noise of oaths and weeping and clamorous dispute. so much you apprehend by an athletic act of the imagination. a faint far-off rumour as of merovingian wars; a legend as of some dead religion. chapter vi a mountain town in france a fragment 1879 originally intended to serve as the opening chapter of 'travels with a donkey in the cevennes.' le monastier is the chief place of a hilly canton in haute loire, the ancient velay. as the name betokens, the town is of monastic origin; and it still contains a towered bulk of monastery and a church of some architectural pretensions, the seat of an arch-priest and several vicars. it stands on the side of hill above the river gazeille, about fifteen miles from le puy, up a steep road where the wolves sometime pursue the diligence in winter. the road, which is bound for vivarais, passes through the town from end to end in a single narrow street; there you may see the fountain where women fill their pitchers; there also some old houses with carved doors and pediment and ornamental work in iron. for monastier, like maybole in ayrshire, was a sort of country capital, where the local aristocracy had their town mansions for the winter; and there is a certain baron still alive and, i am told, extremely penitent, who found means to ruin himself by high living in this village on the hills. he certainly has claims to be considered the most remarkable spendthrift on record. how he set about it, in a place where there are no luxuries for sale, and where the board at the best inn comes to little more than a shilling a day, is a problem for the wise. his son, ruined as the family was, went as far as paris to sow his wild oats; and so the cases of father and son mark an epoch in the history of centralisation in france. not until the latter had got into the train was the work of richelieu complete. it is a people of lace-makers. the women sit in the streets by groups of five or six; and the noise of the bobbins is audible from one group to another. now and then you will hear one woman clattering off prayers for the edification of the others at their work. they wear gaudy shawls, white caps with a gay ribbon about the head, and sometimes a black felt brigand hat above the cap; and so they give the street colour and brightness and a foreign air. a while ago, when england largely supplied herself from this district with the lace called torchon, it was not unusual to earn five francs a day; and five francs in monastier is worth a pound in london. now, from a change in the market, it takes a clever and industrious workwoman to earn from three to four in the week, or less than an eighth of what she made easily a few years ago. the tide of prosperity came and went, as with our northern pitmen, and left nobody the richer. the women bravely squandered their gains, kept the men in idleness, and gave themselves up, as i was told, to sweethearting and a merry life. from week's end to week's end it was one continuous gala in monastier; people spent the day in the wine-shops, and the drum or the bagpipes led on the bourrees up to ten at night. now these dancing days are over. 'il n'y a plus de jeunesse,' said victor the garcon. i hear of no great advance in what are thought the essentials of morality; but the bourree, with its rambling, sweet, interminable music, and alert and rustic figures, has fallen into disuse, and is mostly remembered as a custom of the past. only on the occasion of the fair shall you hear a drum discreetly in a wineshop or perhaps one of the company singing the measure while the others dance. i am sorry at the change, and marvel once more at the complicated scheme of things upon this earth, and how a turn of fashion in england can silence so much mountain merriment in france. the lace-makers themselves have not entirely forgiven our countrywomen; and i think they take a special pleasure in the legend of the northern quarter of the town, called l'anglade, because there the english free-lances were arrested and driven back by the potency of a little virgin mary on the wall. from time to time a market is held, and the town has a season of revival; cattle and pigs are stabled in the streets; and pickpockets have been known to come all the way from lyons for the occasion. every sunday the country folk throng in with daylight to buy apples, to attend mass, and to visit one of the wine-shops, of which there are no fewer than fifty in this little town. sunday wear for the men is a green tailcoat of some coarse sort of drugget, and usually a complete suit to match. i have never set eyes on such degrading raiment. here it clings, there bulges; and the human body, with its agreeable and lively lines, is turned into a mockery and laughingstock. another piece of sunday business with the peasants is to take their ailments to the chemist for advice. it is as much a matter for sunday as church-going. i have seen a woman who had been unable to speak since the monday before, wheezing, catching her breath, endlessly and painfully coughing; and yet she had waited upwards of a hundred hours before coming to seek help, and had the week been twice as long, she would have waited still. there was a canonical day for consultation; such was the ancestral habit, to which a respectable lady must study to conform. two conveyances go daily to le puy, but they rival each other in polite concessions rather than in speed. each will wait an hour or two hours cheerfully while an old lady does her marketing or a gentleman finishes the papers in a cafe. the courrier (such is the name of one) should leave le puy by two in the afternoon and arrive at monastier in good on the return voyage, and arrive at monastier in good time for a six-o'clock dinner. but the driver dares not disoblige his customers. he will postpone his departure again and again, hour after hour; and i have known the sun to go down on his delay. these purely personal favours, this consideration of men's fancies, rather than the hands of a mechanical clock, as marking the advance of the abstraction, time, makes a more humorous business of stage-coaching than we are used to see it. as far as the eye can reach, one swelling line of hill top rises and falls behind another; and if you climb an eminence, it is only to see new and father ranges behind these. many little rivers run from all sides in cliffy valleys; and one of them, a few miles from monastier, bears the great name of loire. the mean level of the country is a little more than three thousand feet above the sea, which makes the atmosphere proportionally brisk and wholesome. there is little timber except pines, and the greater part of the country lies in moorland pasture. the country is wild and tumbled rather than commanding; an upland rather than a mountain district; and the most striking as well as the most agreeable scenery lies low beside the rivers. there, indeed, you will find many corners that take the fancy; such as made the english noble choose his grave by a swiss streamlet, where nature is at her freshest, and looks as young as on the seventh morning. such a place is the course of the gazeille, where it waters the common of monastier and thence downwards till it joins the loire; a place to hear birds singing; a place for lovers to frequent. the name of the river was perhaps suggested by the sound of its passage over the stones; for it is a great warbler, and at night, after i was in bed at monastier, i could hear it go singing down the valley till i fell asleep. on the whole, this is a scottish landscape, although not so noble as the best in scotland; and by an odd coincidence, the population is, in its way, as scottish as the country. they have abrupt, uncouth, fifeshire manners, and accost you, as if you were trespassing, an 'ou'st-ce que vous allez?' only translatable into the lowland 'whaur ye gaun?' they keep the scottish sabbath. there is no labour done on that day but to drive in and out the various pigs and sheep and cattle that make so pleasant a tinkling in the meadows. the lacemakers have disappeared from the street. not to attend mass would involve social degradation; and you may find people reading sunday books, in particular a sort of catholic monthly visitor on the doings of our lady of lourdes. i remember one sunday, when i was walking in the country, that i fell on a hamlet and found all the inhabitants, from the patriarch to the baby, gathered in the shadow of a gable at prayer. one strapping lass stood with her back to the wall and did the solo part, the rest chiming in devoutly. not far off, a lad lay flat on his face asleep among some straw, to represent the worldly element. again, this people is eager to proselytise; and the postmaster's daughter used to argue with me by the half-hour about my heresy, until she grew quite flushed. i have heard the reverse process going on between a scotswoman and a french girl; and the arguments in the two cases were identical. each apostle based her claim on the superior virtue and attainments of her clergy, and clenched the business with a threat of hell-fire. 'pas bong pretres ici,' said the presbyterian, 'bong pretres en ecosse.' and the postmaster's daughter, taking up the same weapon, plied me, so to speak, with the butt of it instead of the bayonet. we are a hopeful race, it seems, and easily persuaded for our good. one cheerful circumstance i note in these guerilla missions, that each side relies on hell, and protestant and catholic alike address themselves to a supposed misgiving in their adversary's heart. and i call it cheerful, for faith is a more supporting quality than imagination. here, as in scotland, many peasant families boast a son in holy orders. and here also, the young men have a tendency to emigrate. it is certainly not poverty that drives them to the great cities or across the seas, for many peasant families, i was told, have a fortune of at least 40,000 francs. the lads go forth pricked with the spirit of adventure and the desire to rise in life, and leave their homespun elders grumbling and wondering over the event. once, at a village called laussonne, i met one of these disappointed parents: a drake who had fathered a wild swan and seen it take wing and disappear. the wild swan in question was now an apothecary in brazil. he had flown by way of bordeaux, and first landed in america, bareheaded and barefoot, and with a single halfpenny in his pocket. and now he was an apothecary! such a wonderful thing is an adventurous life! i thought he might as well have stayed at home; but you never can tell wherein a man's life consists, nor in what he sets his pleasure: one to drink, another to marry, a third to write scurrilous articles and be repeatedly caned in public, and now this fourth, perhaps, to be an apothecary in brazil. as for his old father, he could conceive no reason for the lad's behaviour. 'i had always bread for him,' he said; 'he ran away to annoy me. he loved to annoy me. he had no gratitude.' but at heart he was swelling with pride over his travelled offspring, and he produced a letter out of his pocket, where, as he said, it was rotting, a mere lump of paper rags, and waved it gloriously in the air. 'this comes from america,' he cried, 'six thousand leagues away!' and the wine-shop audience looked upon it with a certain thrill. i soon became a popular figure, and was known for miles in the country. ou'st que vous allez? was changed for me into quoi, vous rentrez au monastier and in the town itself every urchin seemed to know my name, although no living creature could pronounce it. there was one particular group of lace-makers who brought out a chair for me whenever i went by, and detained me from my walk to gossip. they were filled with curiosity about england, its language, its religion, the dress of the women, and were never weary of seeing the queen's head on english postage-stamps, or seeking for french words in english journals. the language, in particular, filled them with surprise. 'do they speak patois in england?' i was once asked; and when i told them not, 'ah, then, french?' said they. 'no, no,' i said, 'not french.' 'then,' they concluded, 'they speak patois.' you must obviously either speak french or patios. talk of the force of logic here it was in all its weakness. i gave up the point, but proceeding to give illustrations of my native jargon, i was met with a new mortification. of all patios they declared that mine was the most preposterous and the most jocose in sound. at each new word there was a new explosion of laughter, and some of the younger ones were glad to rise from their chairs and stamp about the street in ecstasy; and i looked on upon their mirth in a faint and slightly disagreeable bewilderment. 'bread,' which sounds a commonplace, plain-sailing monosyllable in england, was the word that most delighted these good ladies of monastier; it seemed to them frolicsome and racy, like a page of pickwick; and they all got it carefully by heart, as a stand-by, i presume, for winter evenings. i have tried it since then with every sort of accent and inflection, but i seem to lack the sense of humour. they were of all ages: children at their first web of lace, a stripling girl with a bashful but encouraging play of eyes, solid married women, and grandmothers, some on the top of their age and some falling towards decrepitude. one and all were pleasant and natural, ready to laugh and ready with a certain quiet solemnity when that was called for by the subject of our talk. life, since the fall in wages, had begun to appear to them with a more serious air. the stripling girl would sometimes laugh at me in a provocative and not unadmiring manner, if i judge aright; and one of the grandmothers, who was my great friend of the party, gave me many a sharp word of judgment on my sketches, my heresy, or even my arguments, and gave them with a wry mouth and a humorous twinkle in her eye that were eminently scottish. but the rest used me with a certain reverence, as something come from afar and not entirely human. nothing would put them at their ease but the irresistible gaiety of my native tongue. between the old lady and myself i think there was a real attachment. she was never weary of sitting to me for her portrait, in her best cap and brigand hat, and with all her wrinkles tidily composed, and though she never failed to repudiate the result, she would always insist upon another trial. it was as good as a play to see her sitting in judgment over the last. 'no, no,' she would say, 'that is not it. i am old, to be sure, but i am better-looking than that. we must try again.' when i was about to leave she bade me good-bye for this life in a somewhat touching manner. we should not meet again, she said; it was a long farewell, and she was sorry. but life is so full of crooks, old lady, that who knows? i have said good-bye to people for greater distances and times, and, please god, i mean to see them yet again. one thing was notable about these women, from the youngest to the oldest, and with hardly an exception. in spite of their piety, they could twang off an oath with sir toby belch in person. there was nothing so high or so low, in heaven or earth or in the human body, but a woman of this neighbourhood would whip out the name of it, fair and square, by way of conversational adornment. my landlady, who was pretty and young, dressed like a lady and avoided patois like a weakness, commonly addressed her child in the language of a drunken bully. and of all the swearers that i ever heard, commend me to an old lady in gondet, a village of the loire. i was making a sketch, and her curse was not yet ended when i had finished it and took my departure. it is true she had a right to be angry; for here was her son, a hulking fellow, visibly the worse for drink before the day was well begun. but it was strange to hear her unwearying flow of oaths and obscenities, endless like a river, and now and then rising to a passionate shrillness, in the clear and silent air of the morning. in city slums, the thing might have passed unnoticed; but in a country valley, and from a plain and honest countrywoman, this beastliness of speech surprised the ear. the conductor, as he is called, of roads and bridges was my principal companion. he was generally intelligent, and could have spoken more or less falsetto on any of the trite topics; but it was his specially to have a generous taste in eating. this was what was most indigenous in the man; it was here he was an artist; and i found in his company what i had long suspected, that enthusiasm and special knowledge are the great social qualities, and what they are about, whether white sauce or shakespeare's plays, an altogether secondary question. i used to accompany the conductor on his professional rounds, and grew to believe myself an expert in the business. i thought i could make an entry in a stone-breaker's time-book, or order manure off the wayside with any living engineer in france. gondet was one of the places we visited together; and laussonne, where i met the apothecary's father, was another. there, at laussonne, george sand spent a day while she was gathering materials for the marquis de villemer; and i have spoken with an old man, who was then a child running about the inn kitchen, and who still remembers her with a sort of reverence. it appears that he spoke french imperfectly; for this reason george sand chose him for companion, and whenever he let slip a broad and picturesque phrase in patois, she would make him repeat it again and again till it was graven in her memory. the word for a frog particularly pleased her fancy; and it would be curious to know if she afterwards employed it in her works. the peasants, who knew nothing of betters and had never so much as heard of local colour, could not explain her chattering with this backward child; and to them she seemed a very homely lady and far from beautiful: the most famous man-killer of the age appealed so little to velaisian swine-herds! on my first engineering excursion, which lay up by crouzials towards mount mezenc and the borders of ardeche, i began an improving acquaintance with the foreman road-mender. he was in great glee at having me with him, passed me off among his subalterns as the supervising engineer, and insisted on what he called 'the gallantry' of paying for my breakfast in a roadside wine-shop. on the whole, he was a man of great weather-wisdom, some spirits, and a social temper. but i am afraid he was superstitious. when he was nine years old, he had seen one night a company of bourgeois et dames qui faisaient la manege avec des chaises, and concluded that he was in the presence of a witches' sabbath. i suppose, but venture with timidity on the suggestion, that this may have been a romantic and nocturnal picnic party. again, coming from pradelles with his brother, they saw a great empty cart drawn by six enormous horses before them on the road. the driver cried aloud and filled the mountains with the cracking of his whip. he never seemed to go faster than a walk, yet it was impossible to overtake him; and at length, at the comer of a hill, the whole equipage disappeared bodily into the night. at the time, people said it was the devil qui s'amusait a faire ca. i suggested there was nothing more likely, as he must have some amusement. the foreman said it was odd, but there was less of that sort of thing than formerly. 'c'est difficile,' he added, 'a expliquer.' when we were well up on the moors and the conductor was trying some road-metal with the gauge 'hark!' said the foreman, 'do you hear nothing?' we listened, and the wind, which was blowing chilly out of the east, brought a faint, tangled jangling to our ears. 'it is the flocks of vivarais,' said he. for every summer, the flocks out of all ardeche are brought up to pasture on these grassy plateaux. here and there a little private flock was being tended by a girl, one spinning with a distaff, another seated on a wall and intently making lace. this last, when we addressed her, leaped up in a panic and put out her arms, like a person swimming, to keep us at a distance, and it was some seconds before we could persuade her of the honesty of our intentions. the conductor told me of another herdswoman from whom he had once asked his road while he was yet new to the country, and who fled from him, driving her beasts before her, until he had given up the information in despair. a tale of old lawlessness may yet be read in these uncouth timidities. the winter in these uplands is a dangerous and melancholy time. houses are snowed up, and way-farers lost in a flurry within hail of their own fireside. no man ventures abroad without meat and a bottle of wine, which he replenishes at every wine-shop; and even thus equipped he takes the road with terror. all day the family sits about the fire in a foul and airless hovel, and equally without work or diversion. the father may carve a rude piece of furniture, but that is all that will be done until the spring sets in again, and along with it the labours of the field. it is not for nothing that you find a clock in the meanest of these mountain habitations. a clock and an almanac, you would fancy, were indispensable in such a life. . . chapter vii random memories: rosa quo locorum through what little channels, by what hints and premonitions, the consciousness of the man's art dawns first upon the child, it should be not only interesting but instructive to inquire. a matter of curiosity to-day, it will become the ground of science to-morrow. from the mind of childhood there is more history and more philosophy to be fished up than from all the printed volumes in a library. the child is conscious of an interest, not in literature but in life. a taste for the precise, the adroit, or the comely in the use of words, comes late; but long before that he has enjoyed in books a delightful dress rehearsal of experience. he is first conscious of this material i had almost said this practical pre-occupation; it does not follow that it really came the first. i have some old fogged negatives in my collection that would seem to imply a prior stage 'the lord is gone up with a shout, and god with the sound of a trumpet' memorial version, i know not where to find the text rings still in my ear from my first childhood, and perhaps with something of my nurses accent. there was possibly some sort of image written in my mind by these loud words, but i believe the words themselves were what i cherished. i had about the same time, and under the same influence that of my dear nurse a favourite author: it is possible the reader has not heard of him the rev. robert murray m'cheyne. my nurse and i admired his name exceedingly, so that i must have been taught the love of beautiful sounds before i was breeched; and i remember two specimens of his muse until this day:'behind the hills of naphtali the sun went slowly down, leaving on mountain, tower, and tree, a tinge of golden brown.' there is imagery here, and i set it on one side. the other it is but a verse not only contains no image, but is quite unintelligible even to my comparatively instructed mind, and i know not even how to spell the outlandish vocable that charmed me in my childhood: 'jehovah tschidkenu is nothing to her'; i may say, without flippancy, that he was nothing to me either, since i had no ray of a guess of what he was about; yet the verse, from then to now, a longer interval than the life of a generation, has continued to haunt me. i have said that i should set a passage distinguished by obvious and pleasing imagery, however faint; for the child thinks much in images, words are very live to him, phrases that imply a picture eloquent beyond their value. rummaging in the dusty pigeon-holes of memory, i came once upon a graphic version of the famous psalm, 'the lord is my shepherd': and from the places employed in its illustration, which are all in the immediate neighbourhood of a house then occupied by my father, i am able, to date it before the seventh year of my age, although it was probably earlier in fact. the 'pastures green' were represented by a certain suburban stubble-field, where i had once walked with my nurse, under an autumnal sunset, on the banks of the water of leith: the place is long ago built up; no pastures now, no stubble-fields; only a maze of little streets and smoking chimneys and shrill children. here, in the fleecy person of a sheep, i seemed to myself to follow something unseen, unrealised, and yet benignant; and close by the sheep in which i was incarnated as if for greater security rustled the skirt, of my nurse. 'death's dark vale' was a certain archway in the warriston cemetery: a formidable yet beloved spot, for children love to be afraid, in measure as they love all experience of vitality. here i beheld myself some paces ahead (seeing myself, i mean, from behind) utterly alone in that uncanny passage; on the one side of me a rude, knobby, shepherd's staff, such as cheers the heart of the cockney tourist, on the other a rod like a billiard cue, appeared to accompany my progress; the stiff sturdily upright, the billiard cue inclined confidentially, like one whispering, towards my ear. i was aware i will never tell you how that the presence of these articles afforded me encouragement. the third and last of my pictures illustrated words: 'my table thou hast furnished in presence of my foes: my head thou dost with oil anoint, and my cup overflows': and this was perhaps the most interesting of the series. i saw myself seated in a kind of open stone summer-house at table; over my shoulder a hairy, bearded, and robed presence anointed me from an authentic shoe-horn; the summer-house was part of the green court of a ruin, and from the far side of the court black and white imps discharged against me ineffectual arrows. the picture appears arbitrary, but i can trace every detail to its source, as mr. brock analysed the dream of alan armadale. the summer-house and court were muddled together out of billings' antiquities of scotland; the imps conveyed from bagster's pilgrim's progress; the bearded and robed figure from any one of the thousand bible pictures; and the shoe-horn was plagiarised from an old illustrated bible, where it figured in the hand of samuel anointing saul, and had been pointed out to me as a jest by my father. it was shown me for a jest, remark; but the serious spirit of infancy adopted it in earnest. children are all classics; a bottle would have seemed an intermediary too trivial that divine refreshment of whose meaning i had no guess; and i seized on the idea of that mystic shoe-horn with delight, even as, a little later, i should have written flagon, chalice, hanaper, beaker, or any word that might have appealed to me at the moment as least contaminate with mean associations. in this string of pictures i believe the gist of the psalm to have consisted; i believe it had no more to say to me; and the result was consolatory. i would go to sleep dwelling with restfulness upon these images; they passed before me, besides, to an appropriate music; for i had already singled out from that rude psalm the one lovely verse which dwells in the minds of all, not growing old, not disgraced by its association with long sunday tasks, a scarce conscious joy in childhood, in age a companion thought:'in pastures green thou leadest me, the quiet waters by.' the remainder of my childish recollections are all of the matter of what was read to me, and not of any manner in the words. if these pleased me it was unconsciously; i listened for news of the great vacant world upon whose edge i stood; i listened for delightful plots that i might re-enact in play, and romantic scenes and circumstances that i might call up before me, with closed eyes, when i was tired of scotland, and home, and that weary prison of the sick-chamber in which i lay so long in durance. robinson crusoe; some of the books of that cheerful, ingenious, romantic soul, mayne reid; and a work rather gruesome and bloody for a child, but very picturesque, called paul blake; these are the three strongest impressions i remember: the swiss family robinson came next, longo intervallo. at these i played, conjured up their scenes, and delighted to hear them rehearsed unto seventy times seven. i am not sure but what paul blake came after i could read. it seems connected with a visit to the country, and an experience unforgettable. the day had been warm; hand i had played together charmingly all day in a sandy wilderness across the road; then came the evening with a great flash of colour and a heavenly sweetness in the air. somehow my play-mate had vanished, or is out of the story, as the sages say, but i was sent into the village on an errand; and, taking a book of fairy tales, went down alone through a fir-wood, reading as i walked. how often since then has it befallen me to be happy even so; but that was the first time: the shock of that pleasure i have never since forgot, and if my mind serves me to the last, i never shall, for it was then that i knew i loved reading. ii to pass from hearing literature to reading it is to take a great and dangerous step. with not a few, i think a large proportion of their pleasure then comes to an end; 'the malady of not marking' overtakes them; they read thenceforward by the eye alone and hear never again the chime of fair words or the march of the stately period. non ragioniam of these. but to all the step is dangerous; it involves coming of age; it is even a kind of second weaning. in the past all was at the choice of others; they chose, they digested, they read aloud for us and sang to their own tune the books of childhood. in the future we are to approach the silent, inexpressive type alone, like pioneers; and the choice of what we are to read is in our own hands thenceforward. for instance, in the passages already adduced, i detect and applaud the ear of my old nurse; they were of her choice, and she imposed them on my infancy, reading the works of others as a poet would scarce dare to read his own; gloating on the rhythm, dwelling with delight on assonances and alliterations. i know very well my mother must have been all the while trying to educate my taste upon more secular authors; but the vigour and the continual opportunities of my nurse triumphed, and after a long search, i can find in these earliest volumes of my autobiography no mention of anything but nursery rhymes, the bible, and mr. m'cheyne. i suppose all children agree in looking back with delight on their school readers. we might not now find so much pathos in 'bingen on the rhine,' 'a soldier of the legion lay dying in algiers,' or in 'the soldier's funeral,' in the declamation of which i was held to have surpassed myself. 'robert's voice,' said the master on this memorable occasion, 'is not strong, but impressive': an opinion which i was fool enough to carry home to my father; who roasted me for years in consequence. i am sure one should not be so deliciously tickled by the humorous pieces:'what, crusty? cries will in a taking, who would not be crusty with half a year's baking?' i think this quip would leave us cold. the 'isles of greece' seem rather tawdry too; but on the 'address to the ocean,' or on 'the dying gladiator,' 'time has writ no wrinkle.' 'tis the morn, but dim and dark, whither flies the silent lark?' does the reader recall the moment when his eye first fell upon these lines in the fourth reader; and 'surprised with joy, impatient as the wind,' he plunged into the sequel? and there was another piece, this time in prose, which none can have forgotten; many like me must have searched dickens with zeal to find it again, and in its proper context, and have perhaps been conscious of some inconsiderable measure of disappointment, that it was only tom pinch who drove, in such a pomp of poetry, to london. but in the reader we are still under guides. what a boy turns out for himself, as he rummages the bookshelves, is the real test and pleasure. my father's library was a spot of some austerity; the proceedings of learned societies, some latin divinity, cyclopaedias, physical science, and, above all, optics, held the chief place upon the shelves, and it was only in holes and corners that anything really legible existed as by accident. the parent's assistant, rob roy, waverley, and guy mannering, the voyages of captain woods rogers, fuller's and bunyan's holy wars, the reflections of robinson crusoe, the female bluebeard, g. sand's mare au diable (how came it in that grave assembly!), ainsworth's tower of london, and four old volumes of punch these were the chief exceptions. in these latter, which made for years the chief of my diet, i very early fell in love (almost as soon as i could spell) with the snob papers. i knew them almost by heart, particularly the visit to the pontos; and i remember my surprise when i found, long afterwards, that they were famous, and signed with a famous name; to me, as i read and admired them, they were the works of mr. punch. time and again i tried to read rob roy, with whom of course i was acquainted from the tales of a grandfather; time and again the early part, with rashleigh and (think of it!) the adorable diana, choked me off; and i shall never forget the pleasure and surprise with which, lying on the floor one summer evening, i struck of a sudden into the first scene with andrew fairservice. 'the worthy dr. lightfoot' 'mistrysted with a bogle' 'a wheen green trash' 'jenny, lass, i think i ha'e her': from that day to this the phrases have been unforgotten. i read on, i need scarce say; i came to glasgow, i bided tryst on glasgow bridge, i met rob roy and the bailie in the tolbooth, all with transporting pleasure; and then the clouds gathered once more about my path; and i dozed and skipped until i stumbled half-asleep into the clachan of aberfoyle, and the voices of iverach and galbraith recalled me to myself. with that scene and the defeat of captain thornton the book concluded; helen and her sons shocked even the little schoolboy of nine or ten with their unreality; i read no more, or i did not grasp what i was reading; and years elapsed before i consciously met diana and her father among the hills, or saw rashleigh dying in the chair. when i think of that novel and that evening, i am impatient with all others; they seem but shadows and impostors; they cannot satisfy the appetite which this awakened; and i dare be known to think it the best of sir walter's by nearly as much as sir walter is the best of novelists. perhaps mr. lang is right, and our first friends in the land of fiction are always the most real. and yet i had read before this guy mannering, and some of waverley, with no such delighted sense of truth and humour, and i read immediately after the greater part of the waverley novels, and was never moved again in the same way or to the same degree. one circumstance is suspicious: my critical estimate of the waverley novels has scarce changed at all since i was ten. rob roy, guy mannering, and redgauntlet first; then, a little lower; the fortunes of nigel; then, after a huge gulf, ivanhoe and anne of geierstein: the rest nowhere; such was the verdict of the boy. since then the antiquary, st. ronan's well, kenilworth, and the heart of midlothian have gone up in the scale; perhaps ivanhoe and anne of geierstein have gone a trifle down; diana vernon has been added to my admirations in that enchanted world of rob roy; i think more of the letters in redgauntlet, and peter peebles, that dreadful piece of realism, i can now read about with equanimity, interest, and i had almost said pleasure, while to the childish critic he often caused unmixed distress. but the rest is the same; i could not finish the pirate when i was a child, i have never finished it yet; peveril of the peak dropped half way through from my schoolboy hands, and though i have since waded to an end in a kind of wager with myself, the exercise was quite without enjoyment. there is something disquieting in these considerations. i still think the visit to ponto's the best part of the book of snobs: does that mean that i was right when i was a child, or does it mean that i have never grown since then, that the child is not the man's father, but the man? and that i came into the world with all my faculties complete, and have only learned sinsyne to be more tolerant of boredom? . . . chapter viii the ideal house two things are necessary in any neighbourhood where we propose to spend a life: a desert and some living water. there are many parts of the earth's face which offer the necessary combination of a certain wildness with a kindly variety. a great prospect is desirable, but the want may be otherwise supplied; even greatness can be found on the small scale; for the mind and the eye measure differently. bold rocks near hand are more inspiriting than distant alps, and the thick fern upon a surrey heath makes a fine forest for the imagination, and the dotted yew trees noble mountains. a scottish moor with birches and firs grouped here and there upon a knoll, or one of those rocky seaside deserts of provence overgrown with rosemary and thyme and smoking with aroma, are places where the mind is never weary. forests, being more enclosed, are not at first sight so attractive, but they exercise a spell; they must, however, be diversified with either heath or rock, and are hardly to be considered perfect without conifers. even sand-hills, with their intricate plan, and their gulls and rabbits, will stand well for the necessary desert. the house must be within hail of either a little river or the sea. a great river is more fit for poetry than to adorn a neighbourhood; its sweep of waters increases the scale of the scenery and the distance of one notable object from another; and a lively burn gives us, in the space of a few yards, a greater variety of promontory and islet, of cascade, shallow goil, and boiling pool, with answerable changes both of song and colour, than a navigable stream in many hundred miles. the fish, too, make a more considerable feature of the brookside, and the trout plumping in the shadow takes the ear. a stream should, besides, be narrow enough to cross, or the burn hard by a bridge, or we are at once shut out of eden. the quantity of water need be of no concern, for the mind sets the scale, and can enjoy a niagara fall of thirty inches. let us approve the singer of 'shallow rivers, by whose falls melodious birds sing madrigals.' if the sea is to be our ornamental water, choose an open seaboard with a heavy beat of surf; one much broken in outline, with small havens and dwarf headlands; if possible a few islets; and as a first necessity, rocks reaching out into deep water. such a rock on a calm day is a better station than the top of teneriffe or chimborazo. in short, both for the desert and the water, the conjunction of many near and bold details is bold scenery for the imagination and keeps the mind alive. given these two prime luxuries, the nature of the country where we are to live is, i had almost said, indifferent; after that inside the garden, we can construct a country of our own. several old trees, a considerable variety of level, several well-grown hedges to divide our garden into provinces, a good extent of old well-set turf, and thickets of shrubs and ever-greens to be cut into and cleared at the new owner's pleasure, are the qualities to be sought for in your chosen land. nothing is more delightful than a succession of small lawns, opening one out of the other through tall hedges; these have all the charm of the old bowling-green repeated, do not require the labour of many trimmers, and afford a series of changes. you must have much lawn against the early summer, so as to have a great field of daisies, the year's morning frost; as you must have a wood of lilacs, to enjoy to the full the period of their blossoming. hawthorn is another of the spring's ingredients; but it is even best to have a rough public lane at one side of your enclosure which, at the right season, shall become an avenue of bloom and odour. the old flowers are the best and should grow carelessly in corners. indeed, the ideal fortune is to find an old garden, once very richly cared for, since sunk into neglect, and to tend, not repair, that neglect; it will thus have a smack of nature and wildness which skilful dispositions cannot overtake. the gardener should be an idler, and have a gross partiality to the kitchen plots: an eager or toilful gardener misbecomes the garden landscape; a tasteful gardener will be ever meddling, will keep the borders raw, and take the bloom off nature. close adjoining, if you are in the south, an olive-yard, if in the north, a swarded apple-orchard reaching to the stream, completes your miniature domain; but this is perhaps best entered through a door in the high fruit-wall; so that you close the door behind you on your sunny plots, your hedges and evergreen jungle, when you go down to watch the apples falling in the pool. it is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves. nor must the ear be forgotten: without birds a garden is a prison-yard. there is a garden near marseilles on a steep hill-side, walking by which, upon a sunny morning, your ear will suddenly be ravished with a burst of small and very cheerful singing: some score of cages being set out there to sun their occupants. this is a heavenly surprise to any passer-by; but the price paid, to keep so many ardent and winged creatures from their liberty, will make the luxury too dear for any thoughtful pleasurelover. there is only one sort of bird that i can tolerate caged, though even then i think it hard, and that is what is called in france the bec-d'argent. i once had two of these pigmies in captivity; and in the quiet, hire house upon a silent street where i was then living, their song, which was not much louder than a bee's, but airily musical, kept me in a perpetual good humour. i put the cage upon my table when i worked, carried it with me when i went for meals, and kept it by my head at night: the first thing in the morning, these maestrini would pipe up. but these, even if you can pardon their imprisonment, are for the house. in the garden the wild birds must plant a colony, a chorus of the lesser warblers that should be almost deafening, a blackbird in the lilacs, a nightingale down the lane, so that you must stroll to hear it, and yet a little farther, tree-tops populous with rooks. your house should not command much outlook; it should be set deep and green, though upon rising ground, or, if possible, crowning a knoll, for the sake of drainage. yet it must be open to the east, or you will miss the sunrise; sunset occurring so much later, you can go up a few steps and look the other way. a house of more than two stories is a mere barrack; indeed the ideal is of one story, raised upon cellars. if the rooms are large, the house may be small: a single room, lofty, spacious, and lightsome, is more palatial than a castleful of cabinets and cupboards. yet size in a house, and some extent and intricacy of corridor, is certainly delightful to the flesh. the reception room should be, if possible, a place of many recesses, which are 'petty retiring places for conference'; but it must have one long wall with a divan: for a day spent upon a divan, among a world of cushions, is as full of diversion as to travel. the eating-room, in the french mode, should be ad hoc: unfurnished, but with a buffet, the table, necessary chairs, one or two of canaletto's etchings, and a tile fire-place for the winter. in neither of these public places should there be anything beyond a shelf or two of books; but the passages may be one library from end to end, and the stair, if there be one, lined with volumes in old leather, very brightly carpeted, and leading half-way up, and by way of landing, to a windowed recess with a fire-place; this window, almost alone in the house, should command a handsome prospect. husband and wife must each possess a studio; on the woman's sanctuary i hesitate to dwell, and turn to the man's. the walls are shelved waist-high for books, and the top thus forms a continuous table running round the wall. above are prints, a large map of the neighbourhood, a corot and a claude or two. the room is very spacious, and the five tables and two chairs are but as islands. one table is for actual work, one close by for references in use; one, very large, for mss. or proofs that wait their turn; one kept clear for an occasion; and the fifth is the map table, groaning under a collection of large-scale maps and charts. of all books these are the least wearisome to read and the richest in matter; the course of roads and rivers, the contour lines and the forests in the maps the reefs, soundings, anchors, sailing marks and little pilot-pictures in the charts and, in both, the bead-roll of names, make them of all printed matter the most fit to stimulate and satisfy the fancy. the chair in which you write is very low and easy, and backed into a corner; at one elbow the fire twinkles; close at the other, if you are a little inhumane, your cage of silver-bills are twittering into song. joined along by a passage, you may reach the great, sunny, glassroofed, and tiled gymnasium, at the far end of which, lined with bright marble, is your plunge and swimming bath, fitted with a capacious boiler. the whole loft of the house from end to end makes one undivided chamber; here are set forth tables on which to model imaginary or actual countries in putty or plaster, with tools and hardy pigments; a carpenter's bench; and a spared corner for photography, while at the far end a space is kept clear for playing soldiers. two boxes contain the two armies of some five hundred horse and foot; two others the ammunition of each side, and a fifth the foot-rules and the three colours of chalk, with which you lay down, or, after a day's play, refresh the outlines of the country; red or white for the two kinds of road (according as they are suitable or not for the passage of ordnance), and blue for the course of the obstructing rivers. here i foresee that you may pass much happy time; against a good adversary a game may well continue for a month; for with armies so considerable three moves will occupy an hour. it will be found to set an excellent edge on this diversion if one of the players shall, every day or so, write a report of the operations in the character of army correspondent. i have left to the last the little room for winter evenings. this should be furnished in warm positive colours, and sofas and floor thick with rich furs. the hearth, where you burn wood of aromatic quality on silver dogs, tiled round about with bible pictures; the seats deep and easy; a single titian in a gold frame; a white bust or so upon a bracket; a rack for the journals of the week; a table for the books of the year; and close in a corner the three shelves full of eternal books that never weary: shakespeare, moliere, montaigne, lamb, sterne, de musset's comedies (the one volume open at carmosine and the other at fantasio); the arabian nights, and kindred stories, in weber's solemn volumes; borrow's bible in spain, the pilgrim's progress, guy mannering and rob roy, monte cristo and the vicomte de bragelonne, immortal boswell sole among biographers, chaucer, herrick, and the state trials. the bedrooms are large, airy, with almost no furniture, floors of varnished wood, and at the bed-head, in case of insomnia, one shelf of books of a particular and dippable order, such as pepys, the paston letters, burt's letters from the highlands, or the newgate calendar. . . . chapter ix davos in winter a mountain valley has, at the best, a certain prison-like effect on the imagination, but a mountain valley, an alpine winter, and an invalid's weakness make up among them a prison of the most effective kind. the roads indeed are cleared, and at least one footpath dodging up the hill; but to these the health-seeker is rigidly confined. there are for him no cross-cuts over the field, no following of streams, no unguided rambles in the wood. his walks are cut and dry. in five or six different directions he can push as far, and no farther, than his strength permits; never deviating from the line laid down for him and beholding at each repetition the same field of wood and snow from the same corner of the road. this, of itself, would be a little trying to the patience in the course of months; but to this is added, by the heaped mantle of the snow, an almost utter absence of detail and an almost unbroken identity of colour. snow, it is true, is not merely white. the sun touches it with roseate and golden lights. its own crushed infinity of crystals, its own richness of tiny sculpture, fills it, when regarded near at hand, with wonderful depths of coloured shadow, and, though wintrily transformed, it is still water, and has watery tones of blue. but, when all is said, these fields of white and blots of crude black forest are but a trite and staring substitute for the infinite variety and pleasantness of the earth's face. even a boulder, whose front is too precipitous to have retained the snow, seems, if you come upon it in your walk, a perfect gem of colour, reminds you almost painfully of other places, and brings into your head the delights of more arcadian days the path across the meadow, the hazel dell, the lilies on the stream, and the scents, the colours, and the whisper of the woods. and scents here are as rare as colours. unless you get a gust of kitchen in passing some hotel, you shall smell nothing all day long but the faint and choking odour of frost. sounds, too, are absent: not a bird pipes, not a bough waves, in the dead, windless atmosphere. if a sleigh goes by, the sleigh-bells ring, and that is all; you work all winter through to no other accompaniment but the crunching of your steps upon the frozen snow. it is the curse of the alpine valleys to be each one village from one end to the other. go where you please, houses will still be in sight, before and behind you, and to the right and left. climb as high as an invalid is able, and it is only to spy new habitations nested in the wood. nor is that all; for about the health resort the walks are besieged by single people walking rapidly with plaids about their shoulders, by sudden troops of german boys trying to learn to jodel, and by german couples silently and, as you venture to fancy, not quite happily, pursuing love's young dream. you may perhaps be an invalid who likes to make bad verses as he walks about. alas! no muse will suffer this imminence of interruption and at the second stampede of jodellers you find your modest inspiration fled. or you may only have a taste for solitude; it may try your nerves to have some one always in front whom you are visibly overtaking, and some one always behind who is audibly overtaking you, to say nothing of a score or so who brush past you in an opposite direction. it may annoy you to take your walks and seats in public view. alas! there is no help for it among the alps. there are no recesses, as in gorbio valley by the oil-mill; no sacred solitude of olive gardens on the roccabruna-road; no nook upon saint martin's cape, haunted by the voice of breakers, and fragrant with the threefold sweetness of the rosemary and the sea-pines and the sea. for this publicity there is no cure, and no alleviation; but the storms of which you will complain so bitterly while they endure, chequer and by their contrast brighten the sameness of the fairweather scenes. when sun and storm contend together when the thick clouds are broken up and pierced by arrows of golden daylight there will be startling rearrangements and transfigurations of the mountain summits. a sun-dazzling spire of alp hangs suspended in mid-sky among awful glooms and blackness; or perhaps the edge of some great mountain shoulder will be designed in living gold, and appear for the duration of a glance bright like a constellation, and alone 'in the unapparent.' you may think you know the figure of these hills; but when they are thus revealed, they belong no longer to the things of earth meteors we should rather call them, appearances of sun and air that endure but for a moment and return no more. other variations are more lasting, as when, for instance, heavy and wet snow has fallen through some windless hours, and the thin, spiry, mountain pine trees stand each stock-still and loaded with a shining burthen. you may drive through a forest so disguised, the tonguetied torrent struggling silently in the cleft of the ravine, and all still except the jingle of the sleigh bells, and you shall fancy yourself in some untrodden northern territory lapland, labrador, or alaska. or, possibly, you arise very early in the morning; totter down stairs in a state of somnambulism; take the simulacrum of a meal by the glimmer of one lamp in the deserted coffee-room; and find yourself by seven o'clock outside in a belated moonlight and a freezing chill. the mail sleigh takes you up and carries you on, and you reach the top of the ascent in the first hour of the day. to trace the fires of the sunrise as they pass from peak to peak, to see the unlit treetops stand out soberly against the lighted sky, to be for twenty minutes in a wonderland of clear, fading shadows, disappearing vapours, solemn blooms of dawn, hills half glorified already with the day and still half confounded with the greyness of the western heaven these will seem to repay you for the discomforts of that early start; but as the hour proceeds, and these enchantments vanish, you will find yourself upon the farther side in yet another alpine valley, snow white and coal black, with such another long-drawn congeries of hamlets and such another senseless watercourse bickering along the foot. you have had your moment; but you have not changed the scene. the mountains are about you like a trap; you cannot foot it up a hillside and behold the sea as a great plain, but live in holes and corners, and can change only one for another. chapter x health and mountains there has come a change in medical opinion, and a change has followed in the lives of sick folk. a year or two ago and the wounded soldiery of mankind were all shut up together in some basking angle of the riviera, walking a dusty promenade or sitting in dusty oliveyards within earshot of the interminable and unchanging surf idle among spiritless idlers; not perhaps dying, yet hardly living either, and aspiring, sometimes fiercely, after livelier weather and some vivifying change. these were certainly beautiful places to live in, and the climate was wooing in its softness. yet there was a later shiver in the sunshine; you were not certain whether you were being wooed; and these mild shores would sometimes seem to you to be the shores of death. there was a lack of a manly element; the air was not reactive; you might write bits of poetry and practise resignation, but you did not feel that here was a good spot to repair your tissue or regain your nerve. and it appears, after all, that there was something just in these appreciations. the invalid is now asked to lodge on wintry alps; a ruder air shall medicine him; the demon of cold is no longer to be fled from, but bearded in his den. for even winter has his 'dear domestic cave,' and in those places where he may be said to dwell for ever tempers his austerities. any one who has travelled westward by the great transcontinental railroad of america must remember the joy with which he perceived, after the tedious prairies of nebraska and across the vast and dismal moorlands of wyoming, a few snowy mountain summits alone, the southern sky. it is among these mountains in the new state of colorado that the sick man may find, not merely an alleviation of his ailments, but the possibility of an active life and an honest livelihood. there, no longer as a lounger in a plaid, but as a working farmer, sweating at his work, he may prolong and begin anew his life. instead of the bath-chair, the spade; instead of the regulated walk, rough journeys in the forest, and the pure, rare air of the open mountains for the miasma of the sick-room these are the changes offered him, with what promise of pleasure and of selfrespect, with what a revolution in all his hopes and terrors, none but an invalid can know. resignation, the cowardice that apes a kind of courage and that lives in the very air of health resorts, is cast aside at a breath of such a prospect. the man can open the door; he can be up and doing; he can be a kind of a man after all and not merely an invalid. but it is a far cry to the rocky mountains. we cannot all of us go farming in colorado; and there is yet a middle term, which combines the medical benefits of the new system with the moral drawbacks of the old. again the invalid has to lie aside from life and its wholesome duties; again he has to be an idler among idlers; but this time at a great altitude, far among the mountains, with the snow piled before his door and the frost flowers every morning on his window. the mere fact is tonic to his nerves. his choice of a place of wintering has somehow to his own eyes the air of an act of bold contract; and, since he has wilfully sought low temperatures, he is not so apt to shudder at a touch of chill. he came for that, he looked for it, and he throws it from him with the thought. a long straight reach of valley, wall-like mountains upon either hand that rise higher and higher and shoot up new summits the higher you climb; a few noble peaks seen even from the valley; a village of hotels; a world of black and white black pine-woods, clinging to the sides of the valley, and white snow flouring it, and papering it between the pine-woods, and covering all the mountains with a dazzling curd; add a few score invalids marching to and fro upon the snowy road, or skating on the ice-rinks, possibly to music, or sitting under sunshades by the door of the hotel and you have the larger features of a mountain sanatorium. a certain furious river runs curving down the valley; its pace never varies, it has not a pool for as far as you can follow it; and its unchanging, senseless hurry is strangely tedious to witness. it is a river that a man could grow to hate. day after day breaks with the rarest gold upon the mountain spires, and creeps, growing and glowing, down into the valley. from end to end the snow reverberates the sunshine; from end to end the air tingles with the light, clear and dry like crystal. only along the course of the river, but high above it, there hangs far into the noon, one waving scarf of vapour. it were hard to fancy a more engaging feature in a landscape; perhaps it is harder to believe that delicate, long-lasting phantom of the atmosphere, a creature of the incontinent stream whose course it follows. by noon the sky is arrayed in an unrivalled pomp of colour mild and pale and melting in the north, but towards the zenith, dark with an intensity of purple blue. what with this darkness of heaven and the intolerable lustre of the snow, space is reduced again to chaos. an english painter, coming to france late in life, declared with natural anger that 'the values were all wrong.' had he got among the alps on a bright day he might have lost his reason. and even to any one who has looked at landscape with any care, and in any way through the spectacles of representative art, the scene has a character of insanity. the distant shining mountain peak is here beside your eye; the neighbouring dull-coloured house in comparison is miles away; the summit, which is all of splendid snow, is close at hand; the nigh slopes, which are black with pine trees, bear it no relation, and might be in another sphere. here there are none of those delicate gradations, those intimate, misty joinings-on and spreadings-out into the distance, nothing of that art of air and light by which the face of nature explains and veils itself in climes which we may be allowed to think more lovely. a glaring piece of crudity, where everything that is not white is a solecism and defies the judgment of the eyesight; a scene of blinding definition; a parade of daylight, almost scenically vulgar, more than scenically trying, and yet hearty and healthy, making the nerves to tighten and the mouth to smile: such is the winter daytime in the alps. with the approach of evening all is changed. a mountain will suddenly intercept the sun; a shadow fall upon the valley; in ten minutes the thermometer will drop as many degrees; the peaks that are no longer shone upon dwindle into ghosts; and meanwhile, overhead, if the weather be rightly characteristic of the place, the sky fades towards night through a surprising key of colours. the latest gold leaps from the last mountain. soon, perhaps, the moon shall rise, and in her gentler light the valley shall be mellowed and misted, and here and there a wisp of silver cloud upon a hilltop, and here and there a warmly glowing window in a house, between fire and starlight, kind and homely in the fields of snow. but the valley is not seated so high among the clouds to be eternally exempt from changes. the clouds gather, black as ink; the wind bursts rudely in; day after day the mists drive overhead, the snowflakes flutter down in blinding disarray; daily the mail comes in later from the top of the pass; people peer through their windows and foresee no end but an entire seclusion from europe, and death by gradual dry-rot, each in his indifferent inn; and when at last the storm goes, and the sun comes again, behold a world of unpolluted snow, glossy like fur, bright like daylight, a joy to wallowing dogs and cheerful to the souls of men. or perhaps from across storied and malarious italy, a wind cunningly winds about the mountains and breaks, warm and unclean, upon our mountain valley. every nerve is set ajar; the conscience recognises, at a gust, a load of sins and negligences hitherto unknown; and the whole invalid world huddles into its private chambers, and silently recognises the empire of the fohn. chapter xi alpine diversions there will be no lack of diversion in an alpine sanitarium. the place is half english, to be sure, the local sheet appearing in double column, text and translation; but it still remains half german; and hence we have a band which is able to play, and a company of actors able, as you will be told, to act. this last you will take on trust, for the players, unlike the local sheet, confine themselves to german and though at the beginning of winter they come with their wig-boxes to each hotel in turn, long before christmas they will have given up the english for a bad job. there will follow, perhaps, a skirmish between the two races; the german element seeking, in the interest of their actors, to raise a mysterious item, the kur-taxe, which figures heavily enough already in the weekly bills, the english element stoutly resisting. meantime in the english hotels homeplayed farces, tableaux-vivants, and even balls enliven the evenings; a charity bazaar sheds genial consternation; christmas and new year are solemnised with pantagruelian dinners, and from time to time the young folks carol and revolve untunefully enough through the figures of a singing quadrille. a magazine club supplies you with everything, from the quarterly to the sunday at home. grand tournaments are organised at chess, draughts, billiards and whist. once and again wandering artists drop into our mountain valley, coming you know not whence, going you cannot imagine whither, and belonging to every degree in the hierarchy of musical art, from the recognised performer who announces a concert for the evening, to the comic german family or solitary long-haired german baritone, who surprises the guests at dinner-time with songs and a collection. they are all of them good to see; they, at least, are moving; they bring with them the sentiment of the open road; yesterday, perhaps, they were in tyrol, and next week they will be far in lombardy, while all we sick folk still simmer in our mountain prison. some of them, too, are welcome as the flowers in may for their own sake; some of them may have a human voice; some may have that magic which transforms a wooden box into a song-bird, and what we jeeringly call a fiddle into what we mention with respect as a violin. from that grinding lilt, with which the blind man, seeking pence, accompanies the beat of paddle wheels across the ferry, there is surely a difference rather of kind than of degree to that unearthly voice of singing that bewails and praises the destiny of man at the touch of the true virtuoso. even that you may perhaps enjoy; and if you do so you will own it impossible to enjoy it more keenly than here, im schnee der alpen. a hyacinth in a pot, a handful of primroses packed in moss, or a piece of music by some one who knows the way to the heart of a violin, are things that, in this invariable sameness of the snows and frosty air, surprise you like an adventure. it is droll, moreover, to compare the respect with which the invalids attend a concert, and the ready contempt with which they greet the dinner-time performers. singing which they would hear with real enthusiasm possibly with tears from a corner of a drawingroom, is listened to with laughter when it is offered by an unknown professional and no money has been taken at the door. of skating little need be said; in so snowy a climate the rinks must be intelligently managed; their mismanagement will lead to many days of vexation and some petty quarrelling, but when all goes well, it is certainly curious, and perhaps rather unsafe, for the invalid to skate under a burning sun, and walk back to his hotel in a sweat, through long tracts of glare and passages of freezing shadow. but the peculiar outdoor sport of this district is tobogganing. a scotchman may remember the low flat board, with the front wheels on a pivot, which was called a hurlie; he may remember this contrivance, laden with boys, as, laboriously started, it ran rattling down the brae, and was, now successfully, now unsuccessfully, steered round the corner at the foot; he may remember scented summer evenings passed in this diversion, and many a grazed skin, bloody cockscomb, and neglected lesson. the toboggan is to the hurlie what the sled is to the carriage; it is a hurlie upon runners; and if for a grating road you substitute a long declivity of beaten snow, you can imagine the giddy career of the tobogganist. the correct position is to sit; but the fantastic will sometimes sit hind-foremost, or dare the descent upon their belly or their back. a few steer with a pair of pointed sticks, but it is more classical to use the feet. if the weight be heavy and the track smooth, the toboggan takes the bit between its teeth; and to steer a couple of full-sized friends in safety requires not only judgment but desperate exertion. on a very steep track, with a keen evening frost, you may have moments almost too appalling to be called enjoyment; the head goes, the world vanishes; your blind steed bounds below your weight; you reach the foot, with all the breath knocked out of your body, jarred and bewildered as though you had just been subjected to a railway accident. another element of joyful horror is added by the formation of a train; one toboggan being tied to another, perhaps to the number of half a dozen, only the first rider being allowed to steer, and all the rest pledged to put up their feet and follow their leader, with heart in mouth, down the mad descent. this, particularly if the track begins with a headlong plunge, is one of the most exhilarating follies in the world, and the tobogganing invalid is early reconciled to somersaults. there is all manner of variety in the nature of the tracks, some miles in length, others but a few yards, and yet like some short rivers, furious in their brevity. all degrees of skill and courage and taste may be suited in your neighbourhood. but perhaps the true way to toboggan is alone and at night. first comes the tedious climb, dragging your instrument behind you. next a long breathingspace, alone with snow and pinewoods, cold, silent and solemn to the heart. then you push of; the toboggan fetches way; she begins to feel the hill, to glide, to, swim, to gallop. in a breath you are out from under the pine trees, and a whole heavenful of stars reels and flashes overhead. then comes a vicious effort; for by this time your wooden steed is speeding like the wind, and you are spinning round a corner, and the whole glittering valley and all the lights in all the great hotels lie for a moment at your feet; and the next you are racing once more in the shadow of the night with close-shut teeth and beating heart. yet a little while and you will be landed on the highroad by the door of your own hotel. this, in an atmosphere tingling with forty degrees of frost, in a night made luminous with stars and snow, and girt with strange white mountains, teaches the pulse an unaccustomed tune and adds a new excitement to the life of man upon his planet. chapter xii the stimulation of the alps to any one who should come from a southern sanitarium to the alps, the row of sun-burned faces round the table would present the first surprise. he would begin by looking for the invalids, and he would lose his pains, for not one out of five of even the bad cases bears the mark of sickness on his face. the plump sunshine from above and its strong reverberation from below colour the skin like an indian climate; the treatment, which consists mainly of the open air, exposes even the sickliest to tan, and a tableful of invalids comes, in a month or two, to resemble a tableful of hunters. but although he may be thus surprised at the first glance, his astonishment will grow greater, as he experiences the effects of the climate on himself. in many ways it is a trying business to reside upon the alps: the stomach is exercised, the appetite often languishes; the liver may at times rebel; and because you have come so far from metropolitan advantages, it does not follow that you shall recover. but one thing is undeniable that in the rare air, clear, cold, and blinding light of alpine winters, a man takes a certain troubled delight in his existence which can nowhere else be paralleled. he is perhaps no happier, but he is stingingly alive. it does not, perhaps, come out of him in work or exercise, yet he feels an enthusiasm of the blood unknown in more temperate climates. it may not be health, but it is fun. there is nothing more difficult to communicate on paper than this baseless ardour, this stimulation of the brain, this sterile joyousness of spirits. you wake every morning, see the gold upon the snow-peaks, become filled with courage, and bless god for your prolonged existence. the valleys are but a stride to you; you cast your shoe over the hilltops; your ears and your heart sing; in the words of an unverified quotation from the scotch psalms, you feel yourself fit 'on the wings of all the winds' to 'come flying all abroad.' europe and your mind are too narrow for that flood of energy. yet it is notable that you are hard to root out of your bed; that you start forth, singing, indeed, on your walk, yet are unusually ready to turn home again; that the best of you is volatile; and that although the restlessness remains till night, the strength is early at an end. with all these heady jollities, you are half conscious of an underlying languor in the body; you prove not to be so well as you had fancied; you weary before you have well begun; and though you mount at morning with the lark, that is not precisely a song-bird's heart that you bring back with you when you return with aching limbs and peevish temper to your inn. it is hard to say wherein it lies, but this joy of alpine winters is its own reward. baseless, in a sense, it is more than worth more permanent improvements. the dream of health is perfect while it lasts; and if, in trying to realise it, you speedily wear out the dear hallucination, still every day, and many times a day, you are conscious of a strength you scarce possess, and a delight in living as merry as it proves to be transient. the brightness heaven and earth conspiring to be bright the levity and quiet of the air; the odd stirring silence more stirring than a tumult; the snow, the frost, the enchanted landscape: all have their part in the effect and on the memory, 'tous vous tapent sur la tete'; and yet when you have enumerated all, you have gone no nearer to explain or even to qualify the delicate exhilaration that you feel delicate, you may say, and yet excessive, greater than can be said in prose, almost greater than an invalid can bear. there is a certain wine of france known in england in some gaseous disguise, but when drunk in the land of its nativity still as a pool, clean as river water, and as heady as verse. it is more than probable that in its noble natural condition this was the very wine of anjou so beloved by athos in the 'musketeers.' now, if the reader has ever washed down a liberal second breakfast with the wine in question, and gone forth, on the back of these dilutions, into a sultry, sparkling noontide, he will have felt an influence almost as genial, although strangely grosser, than this fairy titillation of the nerves among the snow and sunshine of the alps. that also is a mode, we need not say of intoxication, but of insobriety. thus also a man walks in a strong sunshine of the mind, and follows smiling, insubstantial meditations. and whether he be really so clever or so strong as he supposes, in either case he will enjoy his chimera while it lasts. the influence of this giddy air displays itself in many secondary ways. a certain sort of laboured pleasantry has already been recognised, and may perhaps have been remarked in these papers, as a sort peculiar to that climate. people utter their judgments with a cannonade of syllables; a big word is as good as a meal to them; and the turn of a phrase goes further than humour or wisdom. by the professional writer many sad vicissitudes have to be undergone. at first he cannot write at all. the heart, it appears, is unequal to the pressure of business, and the brain, left without nourishment, goes into a mild decline. next, some power of work returns to him, accompanied by jumping headaches. last, the spring is opened, and there pours at once from his pen a world of blatant, hustling polysyllables, and talk so high as, in the old joke, to be positively offensive in hot weather. he writes it in good faith and with a sense of inspiration; it is only when he comes to read what he has written that surprise and disquiet seize upon his mind. what is he to do, poor man? all his little fishes talk like whales. this yeasty inflation, this stiff and strutting architecture of the sentence has come upon him while he slept; and it is not he, it is the alps, who are to blame. he is not, perhaps, alone, which somewhat comforts him. nor is the ill without a remedy. some day, when the spring returns, he shall go down a little lower in this world, and remember quieter inflections and more modest language. but here, in the meantime, there seems to swim up some outline of a new cerebral hygiene and a good time coming, when experienced advisers shall send a man to the proper measured level for the ode, the biography, or the religious tract; and a nook may be found between the sea and chimborazo, where mr. swinburne shall be able to write more continently, and mr. browning somewhat slower. is it a return of youth, or is it a congestion of the brain? it is a sort of congestion, perhaps, that leads the invalid, when all goes well, to face the new day with such a bubbling cheerfulness. it is certainly congestion that makes night hideous with visions, all the chambers of a many-storeyed caravanserai, haunted with vociferous nightmares, and many wakeful people come down late for breakfast in the morning. upon that theory the cynic may explain the whole affair exhilaration, nightmares, pomp of tongue and all. but, on the other hand, the peculiar blessedness of boyhood may itself be but a symptom of the same complaint, for the two effects are strangely similar; and the frame of mind of the invalid upon the alps is a sort of intermittent youth, with periods of lassitude. the fountain of juventus does not play steadily in these parts; but there it plays, and possibly nowhere else. chapter xiii roads 1873 no amateur will deny that he can find more pleasure in a single drawing, over which he can sit a whole quiet forenoon, and so gradually study himself into humour with the artist, than he can ever extract from the dazzle and accumulation of incongruous impressions that send him, weary and stupefied, out of some famous picturegallery. but what is thus admitted with regard to art is not extended to the (so-called) natural beauties no amount of excess in sublime mountain outline or the graces of cultivated lowland can do anything, it is supposed, to weaken or degrade the palate. we are not at all sure, however, that moderation, and a regimen tolerably austere, even in scenery, are not healthful and strengthening to the taste; and that the best school for a lover of nature is not to the found in one of those countries where there is no stage effect nothing salient or sudden, but a quiet spirit of orderly and harmonious beauty pervades all the details, so that we can patiently attend to each of the little touches that strike in us, all of them together, the subdued note of the landscape. it is in scenery such as this that we find ourselves in the right temper to seek out small sequestered loveliness. the constant recurrence of similar combinations of colour and outline gradually forces upon us a sense of how the harmony has been built up, and we become familiar with something of nature's mannerism. this is the true pleasure of your 'rural voluptuary,' not to remain awe-stricken before a mount chimborazo; not to sit deafened over the big drum in the orchestra, but day by day to teach himself some new beauty to experience some new vague and tranquil sensation that has before evaded him. it is not the people who 'have pined and hungered after nature many a year, in the great city pent,' as coleridge said in the poem that made charles lamb so much ashamed of himself; it is not those who make the greatest progress in this intimacy with her, or who are most quick to see and have the greatest gusto to enjoy. in this, as in everything else, it is minute knowledge and long-continued loving industry that make the true dilettante. a man must have thought much over scenery before he begins fully to enjoy it. it is no youngling enthusiasm on hilltops that can possess itself of the last essence of beauty. probably most people's heads are growing bare before they can see all in a landscape that they have the capability of seeing; and, even then, it will be only for one little moment of consummation before the faculties are again on the decline, and they that look out of the windows begin to be darkened and restrained in sight. thus the study of nature should be carried forward thoroughly and with system. every gratification should be rolled long under the tongue, and we should be always eager to analyse and compare, in order that we may be able to give some plausible reason for our admirations. true, it is difficult to put even approximately into words the kind of feelings thus called into play. there is a dangerous vice inherent in any such intellectual refining upon vague sensation. the analysis of such satisfactions lends itself very readily to literary affectations; and we can all think of instances where it has shown itself apt to exercise a morbid influence, even upon an author's choice of language and the turn of his sentences. and yet there is much that makes the attempt attractive; for any expression, however imperfect, once given to a cherished feeling, seems a sort of legitimation of the pleasure we take in it. a common sentiment is one of those great goods that make life palatable and ever new. the knowledge that another has felt as we have felt, and seen things, even if they are little things, not much otherwise than we have seen them, will continue to the end to be one of life's choicest pleasures. let the reader, then, betake himself in the spirit we have recommended to some of the quieter kinds of english landscape. in those homely and placid agricultural districts, familiarity will bring into relief many things worthy of notice, and urge them pleasantly home to him by a sort of loving repetition; such as the wonderful life-giving speed of windmill sails above the stationary country; the occurrence and recurrence of the same church tower at the end of one long vista after another: and, conspicuous among these sources of quiet pleasure, the character and variety of the road itself, along which he takes his way. not only near at hand, in the lithe contortions with which it adapts itself to the interchanges of level and slope, but far away also, when he sees a few hundred feet of it upheaved against a hill and shining in the afternoon sun, he will find it an object so changeful and enlivening that he can always pleasurably busy his mind about it. he may leave the riverside, or fall out of the way of villages, but the road he has always with him; and, in the true humour of observation, will find in that sufficient company. from its subtle windings and changes of level there arises a keen and continuous interest, that keeps the attention ever alert and cheerful. every sensitive adjustment to the contour of the ground, every little dip and swerve, seems instinct with life and an exquisite sense of balance and beauty. the road rolls upon the easy slopes of the country, like a long ship in the hollows of the sea. the very margins of waste ground, as they trench a little farther on the beaten way, or recede again to the shelter of the hedge, have something of the same free delicacy of line of the same swing and wilfulness. you might think for a whole summer's day (and not have thought it any nearer an end by evening) what concourse and succession of circumstances has produced the least of these deflections; and it is, perhaps, just in this that we should look for the secret of their interest. a foot-path across a meadow in all its human waywardness and unaccountability, in all the grata protervitas of its varying direction will always be more to us than a railroad well engineered through a difficult country. no reasoned sequence is thrust upon our attention: we seem to have slipped for one lawless little moment out of the iron rule of cause and effect; and so we revert at once to some of the pleasant old heresies of personification, always poetically orthodox, and attribute a sort of free-will, an active and spontaneous life, to the white riband of road that lengthens out, and bends, and cunningly adapts itself to the inequalities of the land before our eyes. we remember, as we write, some miles of fine wide highway laid out with conscious aesthetic artifice through a broken and richly cultivated tract of country. it is said that the engineer had hogarth's line of beauty in his mind as he laid them down. and the result is striking. one splendid satisfying sweep passes with easy transition into another, and there is nothing to trouble or dislocate the strong continuousness of the main line of the road. and yet there is something wanting. there is here no saving imperfection, none of those secondary curves and little trepidations of direction that carry, in natural roads, our curiosity actively along with them. one feels at once that this road has not has been laboriously grown like a natural road, but made to pattern; and that, while a model may be academically correct in outline, it will always be inanimate and cold. the traveller is also aware of a sympathy of mood between himself and the road he travels. we have all seen ways that have wandered into heavy sand near the sea-coast, and trail wearily over the dunes like a trodden serpent. here we too must plod forward at a dull, laborious pace; and so a sympathy is preserved between our frame of mind and the expression of the relaxed, heavy curves of the roadway. such a phenomenon, indeed, our reason might perhaps resolve with a little trouble. we might reflect that the present road had been developed out of a tract spontaneously followed by generations of primitive wayfarers; and might see in its expression a testimony that those generations had been affected at the same ground, one after another, in the same manner as we are affected to-day. or we might carry the reflection further, and remind ourselves that where the air is invigorating and the ground firm under the traveller's foot, his eye is quick to take advantage of small undulations, and he will turn carelessly aside from the direct way wherever there is anything beautiful to examine or some promise of a wider view; so that even a bush of wild roses may permanently bias and deform the straight path over the meadow; whereas, where the soil is heavy, one is preoccupied with the labour of mere progression, and goes with a bowed head heavily and unobservantly forward. reason, however, will not carry us the whole way; for the sentiment often recurs in situations where it is very hard to imagine any possible explanation; and indeed, if we drive briskly along a good, well-made road in an open vehicle, we shall experience this sympathy almost at its fullest. we feel the sharp settle of the springs at some curiously twisted corner; after a steep ascent, the fresh air dances in our faces as we rattle precipitately down the other side, and we find it difficult to avoid attributing something headlong, a sort of abandon, to the road itself. the mere winding of the path is enough to enliven a long day's walk in even a commonplace or dreary country-side. something that we have seen from miles back, upon an eminence, is so long hid from us, as we wander through folded valleys or among woods, that our expectation of seeing it again is sharpened into a violent appetite, and as we draw nearer we impatiently quicken our steps and turn every corner with a beating heart. it is through these prolongations of expectancy, this succession of one hope to another, that we live out long seasons of pleasure in a few hours' walk. it is in following these capricious sinuosities that we learn, only bit by bit and through one coquettish reticence after another, much as we learn the heart of a friend, the whole loveliness of the country. this disposition always preserves something new to be seen, and takes us, like a careful cicerone, to many different points of distant view before it allows us finally to approach the hoped-for destination. in its connection with the traffic, and whole friendly intercourse with the country, there is something very pleasant in that succession of saunterers and brisk and business-like passers-by, that peoples our ways and helps to build up what walt whitman calls 'the cheerful voice of the public road, the gay, fresh sentiment of the road.' but out of the great network of ways that binds all life together from the hill-farm to the city, there is something individual to most, and, on the whole, nearly as much choice on the score of company as on the score of beauty or easy travel. on some we are never long without the sound of wheels, and folk pass us by so thickly that we lose the sense of their number. but on others, about littlefrequented districts, a meeting is an affair of moment; we have the sight far off of some one coming towards us, the growing definiteness of the person, and then the brief passage and salutation, and the road left empty in front of us for perhaps a great while to come. such encounters have a wistful interest that can hardly be understood by the dweller in places more populous. we remember standing beside a countryman once, in the mouth of a quiet by-street in a city that was more than ordinarily crowded and bustling; he seemed stunned and bewildered by the continual passage of different faces; and after a long pause, during which he appeared to search for some suitable expression, he said timidly that there seemed to be a great deal of meeting thereabouts. the phrase is significant. it is the expression of town-life in the language of the long, solitary country highways. a meeting of one with one was what this man had been used to in the pastoral uplands from which he came; and the concourse of the streets was in his eyes only an extraordinary multiplication of such 'meetings.' and now we come to that last and most subtle quality of all, to that sense of prospect, of outlook, that is brought so powerfully to our minds by a road. in real nature, as well as in old landscapes, beneath that impartial daylight in which a whole variegated plain is plunged and saturated, the line of the road leads the eye forth with the vague sense of desire up to the green limit of the horizon. travel is brought home to us, and we visit in spirit every grove and hamlet that tempts us in the distance. sehnsucht the passion for what is ever beyond is livingly expressed in that white riband of possible travel that severs the uneven country; not a ploughman following his plough up the shining furrow, not the blue smoke of any cottage in a hollow, but is brought to us with a sense of nearness and attainability by this wavering line of junction. there is a passionate paragraph in werther that strikes the very key. 'when i came hither,' he writes, 'how the beautiful valley invited me on every side, as i gazed down into it from the hill-top! there the wood ah, that i might mingle in its shadows! there the mountain summits ah, that i might look down from them over the broad country! the interlinked hills! the secret valleys! oh to lose myself among their mysteries! i hurried into the midst, and came back without finding aught i hoped for. alas! the distance is like the future. a vast whole lies in the twilight before our spirit; sight and feeling alike plunge and lose themselves in the prospect, and we yearn to surrender our whole being, and let it be filled full with all the rapture of one single glorious sensation; and alas! when we hasten to the fruition, when there is changed to here, all is afterwards as it was before, and we stand in our indigent and cramped estate, and our soul thirsts after a still ebbing elixir.' it is to this wandering and uneasy spirit of anticipation that roads minister. every little vista, every little glimpse that we have of what lies before us, gives the impatient imagination rein, so that it can outstrip the body and already plunge into the shadow of the woods, and overlook from the hill-top the plain beyond it, and wander in the windings of the valleys that are still far in front. the road is already there we shall not be long behind. it is as if we were marching with the rear of a great army, and, from far before, heard the acclamation of the people as the vanguard entered some friendly and jubilant city. would not every man, through all the long miles of march, feel as if he also were within the gates? chapter xiv on the enjoyment of unpleasant places 1874 it is a difficult matter to make the most of any given place, and we have much in our own power. things looked at patiently from one side after another generally end by showing a side that is beautiful. a few months ago some words were said in the portfolio as to an 'austere regimen in scenery'; and such a discipline was then recommended as 'healthful and strengthening to the taste.' that is the text, so to speak, of the present essay. this discipline in scenery, it must be understood, is something more than a mere walk before breakfast to whet the appetite. for when we are put down in some unsightly neighbourhood, and especially if we have come to be more or less dependent on what we see, we must set ourselves to hunt out beautiful things with all the ardour and patience of a botanist after a rye plant. day by day we perfect ourselves in the art of seeing nature more favourably. we learn to live with her, as people learn to live with fretful or violent spouses: to dwell lovingly on what is good, and shut our eyes against all that is bleak or inharmonious. we learn, also, to come to each place in the right spirit. the traveller, as brantome quaintly tells us, 'fait des discours en soi pour soutenir en chemin'; and into these discourses he weaves something out of all that he sees and suffers by the way; they take their tone greatly from the varying character of the scene; a sharp ascent brings different thoughts from a level road; and the man's fancies grow lighter as he comes out of the wood into a clearing. nor does the scenery any more affect the thoughts than the thoughts affect the scenery. we see places through our humours as through differently coloured glasses. we are ourselves a term in the equation, a note of the chord, and make discord or harmony almost at will. there is no fear for the result, if we can but surrender ourselves sufficiently to the country that surrounds and follows us, so that we are ever thinking suitable thoughts or telling ourselves some suitable sort of story as we go. we become thus, in some sense, a centre of beauty; we are provocative of beauty, much as a gentle and sincere character is provocative of sincerity and gentleness in others. and even where there is no harmony to be elicited by the quickest and most obedient of spirits, we may still embellish a place with some attraction of romance. we may learn to go far afield for associations, and handle them lightly when we have found them. sometimes an old print comes to our aid; i have seen many a spot lit up at once with picturesque imaginations, by a reminiscence of callot, or sadeler, or paul brill. dick turpin has been my lay figure for many an english lane. and i suppose the trossachs would hardly be the trossachs for most tourists if a man of admirable romantic instinct had not peopled it for them with harmonious figures, and brought them thither with minds rightly prepared for the impression. there is half the battle in this preparation. for instance: i have rarely been able to visit, in the proper spirit, the wild and inhospitable places of our own highlands. i am happier where it is tame and fertile, and not readily pleased without trees. i understand that there are some phases of mental trouble that harmonise well with such surroundings, and that some persons, by the dispensing power of the imagination, can go back several centuries in spirit, and put themselves into sympathy with the hunted, houseless, unsociable way of life that was in its place upon these savage hills. now, when i am sad, i like nature to charm me out of my sadness, like david before saul; and the thought of these past ages strikes nothing in me but an unpleasant pity; so that i can never hit on the right humour for this sort of landscape, and lose much pleasure in consequence. still, even here, if i were only let alone, and time enough were given, i should have all manner of pleasures, and take many clear and beautiful images away with me when i left. when we cannot think ourselves into sympathy with the great features of a country, we learn to ignore them, and put our head among the grass for flowers, or pore, for long times together, over the changeful current of a stream. we come down to the sermon in stones, when we are shut out from any poem in the spread landscape. we begin to peep and botanise, we take an interest in birds and insects, we find many things beautiful in miniature. the reader will recollect the little summer scene in wuthering heights the one warm scene, perhaps, in all that powerful, miserable novel and the great feature that is made therein by grasses and flowers and a little sunshine: this is in the spirit of which i now speak. and, lastly, we can go indoors; interiors are sometimes as beautiful, often more picturesque, than the shows of the open air, and they have that quality of shelter of which i shall presently have more to say. with all this in mind, i have often been tempted to put forth the paradox that any place is good enough to live a life in, while it is only in a few, and those highly favoured, that we can pass a few hours agreeably. for, if we only stay long enough we become at home in the neighbourhood. reminiscences spring up, like flowers, about uninteresting corners. we forget to some degree the superior loveliness of other places, and fall into a tolerant and sympathetic spirit which is its own reward and justification. looking back the other day on some recollections of my own, i was astonished to find how much i owed to such a residence; six weeks in one unpleasant country-side had done more, it seemed, to quicken and educate my sensibilities than many years in places that jumped more nearly with my inclination. the country to which i refer was a level and tree-less plateau, over which the winds cut like a whip. for miles and miles it was the same. a river, indeed, fell into the sea near the town where i resided; but the valley of the river was shallow and bald, for as far up as ever i had the heart to follow it. there were roads, certainly, but roads that had no beauty or interest; for, as there was no timber, and but little irregularity of surface, you saw your whole walk exposed to you from the beginning: there was nothing left to fancy, nothing to expect, nothing to see by the wayside, save here and there an unhomely-looking homestead, and here and there a solitary, spectacled stone-breaker; and you were only accompanied, as you went doggedly forward, by the gaunt telegraph-posts and the hum of the resonant wires in the keen sea-wind. to one who had learned to know their song in warm pleasant places by the mediterranean, it seemed to taunt the country, and make it still bleaker by suggested contrast. even the waste places by the side of the road were not, as hawthorne liked to put it, 'taken back to nature' by any decent covering of vegetation. wherever the land had the chance, it seemed to lie fallow. there is a certain tawny nudity of the south, bare sunburnt plains, coloured like a lion, and hills clothed only in the blue transparent air; but this was of another description this was the nakedness of the north; the earth seemed to know that it was naked, and was ashamed and cold. it seemed to be always blowing on that coast. indeed, this had passed into the speech of the inhabitants, and they saluted each other when they met with 'breezy, breezy,' instead of the customary 'fine day' of farther south. these continual winds were not like the harvest breeze, that just keeps an equable pressure against your face as you walk, and serves to set all the trees talking over your head, or bring round you the smell of the wet surface of the country after a shower. they were of the bitter, hard, persistent sort, that interferes with sight and respiration, and makes the eyes sore. even such winds as these have their own merit in proper time and place. it is pleasant to see them brandish great masses of shadow. and what a power they have over the colour of the world! how they ruffle the solid woodlands in their passage, and make them shudder and whiten like a single willow! there is nothing more vertiginous than a wind like this among the woods, with all its sights and noises; and the effect gets between some painters and their sober eyesight, so that, even when the rest of their picture is calm, the foliage is coloured like foliage in a gale. there was nothing, however, of this sort to be noticed in a country where there were no trees and hardly any shadows, save the passive shadows of clouds or those of rigid houses and walls. but the wind was nevertheless an occasion of pleasure; for nowhere could you taste more fully the pleasure of a sudden lull, or a place of opportune shelter. the reader knows what i mean; he must remember how, when he has sat himself down behind a dyke on a hillside, he delighted to hear the wind hiss vainly through the crannies at his back; how his body tingled all over with warmth, and it began to dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the far-away hills all marbled with sun and shadow. wordsworth, in a beautiful passage of the 'prelude,' has used this as a figure for the feeling struck in us by the quiet by-streets of london after the uproar of the great thoroughfares; and the comparison may be turned the other way with as good effect:'meanwhile the roar continues, till at length, escaped as from an enemy, we turn abruptly into some sequester'd nook, still as a shelter'd place when winds blow loud!' i remember meeting a man once, in a train, who told me of what must have been quite the most perfect instance of this pleasure of escape. he had gone up, one sunny, windy morning, to the top of a great cathedral somewhere abroad; i think it was cologne cathedral, the great unfinished marvel by the rhine; and after a long while in dark stairways, he issued at last into the sunshine, on a platform high above the town. at that elevation it was quite still and warm; the gale was only in the lower strata of the air, and he had forgotten it in the quiet interior of the church and during his long ascent; and so you may judge of his surprise when, resting his arms on the sunlit balustrade and looking over into the place far below him, he saw the good people holding on their hats and leaning hard against the wind as they walked. there is something, to my fancy, quite perfect in this little experience of my fellow-traveller's. the ways of men seem always very trivial to us when we find ourselves alone on a church-top, with the blue sky and a few tall pinnacles, and see far below us the steep roofs and foreshortened buttresses, and the silent activity of the city streets; but how much more must they not have seemed so to him as he stood, not only above other men's business, but above other men's climate, in a golden zone like apollo's! this was the sort of pleasure i found in the country of which i write. the pleasure was to be out of the wind, and to keep it in memory all the time, and hug oneself upon the shelter. and it was only by the sea that any such sheltered places were to be found. between the black worm-eaten head-lands there are little bights and havens, well screened from the wind and the commotion of the external sea, where the sand and weeds look up into the gazer's face from a depth of tranquil water, and the sea-birds, screaming and flickering from the ruined crags, alone disturb the silence and the sunshine. one such place has impressed itself on my memory beyond all others. on a rock by the water's edge, old fighting men of the norse breed had planted a double castle; the two stood wall to wall like semidetached villas; and yet feud had run so high between their owners, that one, from out of a window, shot the other as he stood in his own doorway. there is something in the juxtaposition of these two enemies full of tragic irony. it is grim to think of bearded men and bitter women taking hateful counsel together about the two hall-fires at night, when the sea boomed against the foundations and the wild winter wind was loose over the battlements. and in the study we may reconstruct for ourselves some pale figure of what life then was. not so when we are there; when we are there such thoughts come to us only to intensify a contrary impression, and association is turned against itself. i remember walking thither three afternoons in succession, my eyes weary with being set against the wind, and how, dropping suddenly over the edge of the down, i found myself in a new world of warmth and shelter. the wind, from which i had escaped, 'as from an enemy,' was seemingly quite local. it carried no clouds with it, and came from such a quarter that it did not trouble the sea within view. the two castles, black and ruinous as the rocks about them, were still distinguishable from these by something more insecure and fantastic in the outline, something that the last storm had left imminent and the next would demolish entirely. it would be difficult to render in words the sense of peace that took possession of me on these three afternoons. it was helped out, as i have said, by the contrast. the shore was battered and bemauled by previous tempests; i had the memory at heart of the insane strife of the pigmies who had erected these two castles and lived in them in mutual distrust and enmity, and knew i had only to put my head out of this little cup of shelter to find the hard wind blowing in my eyes; and yet there were the two great tracts of motionless blue air and peaceful sea looking on, unconcerned and apart, at the turmoil of the present moment and the memorials of the precarious past. there is ever something transitory and fretful in the impression of a high wind under a cloudless sky; it seems to have no root in the constitution of things; it must speedily begin to faint and wither away like a cut flower. and on those days the thought of the wind and the thought of human life came very near together in my mind. our noisy years did indeed seem moments in the being of the eternal silence; and the wind, in the face of that great field of stationary blue, was as the wind of a butterfly's wing. the placidity of the sea was a thing likewise to be remembered. shelley speaks of the sea as 'hungering for calm,' and in this place one learned to understand the phrase. looking down into these green waters from the broken edge of the rock, or swimming leisurely in the sunshine, it seemed to me that they were enjoying their own tranquillity; and when now and again it was disturbed by a wind ripple on the surface, or the quick black passage of a fish far below, they settled back again (one could fancy) with relief. on shore too, in the little nook of shelter, everything was so subdued and still that the least particular struck in me a pleasurable surprise. the desultory crackling of the whin-pods in the afternoon sun usurped the ear. the hot, sweet breath of the bank, that had been saturated all day long with sunshine, and now exhaled it into my face, was like the breath of a fellow-creature. i remember that i was haunted by two lines of french verse; in some dumb way they seemed to fit my surroundings and give expression to the contentment that was in me, and i kept repeating to myself 'mon coeur est un luth suspendu, sitot qu'on le touche, il resonne.' i can give no reason why these lines came to me at this time; and for that very cause i repeat them here. for all i know, they may serve to complete the impression in the mind of the reader, as they were certainly a part of it for me. and this happened to me in the place of all others where i liked least to stay. when i think of it i grow ashamed of my own ingratitude. 'out of the strong came forth sweetness.' there, in the bleak and gusty north, i received, perhaps, my strongest impression of peace. i saw the sea to be great and calm; and the earth, in that little corner, was all alive and friendly to me. so, wherever a man is, he will find something to please and pacify him: in the town he will meet pleasant faces of men and women, and see beautiful flowers at a window, or hear a cage-bird singing at the corner of the gloomiest street; and for the country, there is no country without some amenity let him only look for it in the right spirit, and he will surely find. end of the project gutenberg etext of essays of travel by stevenson 1850 loss of breath a tale neither in nor out of "blackwood" by edgar allan poe o breathe not, etc. moore's melodies the most notorious ill-fortune must in the end yield to the untiring courage of philosophyas the most stubborn city to the ceaseless vigilance of an enemy. shalmanezer, as we have it in holy writings, lay three years before samaria; yet it fell. sardanapalussee diodorusmaintained himself seven in nineveh; but to no purpose. troy expired at the close of the second lustrum; and azoth, as aristaeus declares upon his honour as a gentleman, opened at last her gates to psammetichus, after having barred them for the fifth part of a century.... "thou wretch!thou vixen!thou shrew!" said i to my wife on the morning after our wedding; "thou witch!thou hag!thou whippersnapperthou sink of iniquity!thou fiery-faced quintessence of all that is abominable!thouthou-" here standing upon tiptoe, seizing her by the throat, and placing my mouth close to her ear, i was preparing to launch forth a new and more decided epithet of opprobrium, which should not fail, if ejaculated, to convince her of her insignificance, when to my extreme horror and astonishment i discovered that i had lost my breath. the phrases "i am out of breath," "i have lost my breath," etc., are often enough repeated in common conversation; but it had never occurred to me that the terrible accident of which i speak could bona fide and actually happen! imaginethat is if you have a fanciful turnimagine, i say, my wondermy consternationmy despair! there is a good genius, however, which has never entirely deserted me. in my most ungovernable moods i still retain a sense of propriety, et le chemin des passions me conduitas lord edouard in the "julie" says it did hima la philosophie veritable. although i could not at first precisely ascertain to what degree the occurence had affected me, i determined at all events to conceal the matter from my wife, until further experience should discover to me the extent of this my unheard of calamity. altering my countenance, therefore, in a moment, from its bepuffed and distorted appearance, to an expression of arch and coquettish benignity, i gave my lady a pat on the one cheek, and a kiss on the other, and without saying one syllable (furies! i could not), left her astonished at my drollery, as i pirouetted out of the room in a pas de zephyr. behold me then safely ensconced in my private boudoir, a fearful instance of the ill consequences attending upon irascibilityalive, with the qualifications of the deaddead, with the propensities of the livingan anomaly on the face of the earthbeing very calm, yet breathless. yes! breathless. i am serious in asserting that my breath was entirely gone. i could not have stirred with it a feather if my life had been at issue, or sullied even the delicacy of a mirror. hard fate!yet there was some alleviation to the first overwhelming paroxysm of my sorrow. i found, upon trial, that the powers of utterance which, upon my inability to proceed in the conversation with my wife, i then concluded to be totally destroyed, were in fact only partially impeded, and i discovered that had i, at that interesting crisis, dropped my voice to a singularly deep guttural, i might still have continued to her the communication of my sentiments; this pitch of voice (the guttural) depending, i find, not upon the current of the breath, but upon a certain spasmodic action of the muscles of the throat. throwing myself upon a chair, i remained for some time absorbed in meditation. my reflections, be sure, were of no consolatory kind. a thousand vague and lachrymatory fancies took possesion of my souland even the idea of suicide flitted across my brain; but it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant and equivocal. thus i shuddered at self-murder as the most decided of atrocities while the tabby cat purred strenuously upon the rug, and the very water dog wheezed assiduously under the table, each taking to itself much merit for the strength of its lungs, and all obviously done in derision of my own pulmonary incapacity. oppressed with a tumult of vague hopes and fears, i at length heard the footsteps of my wife descending the staircase. being now assured of her absence, i returned with a palpitating heart to the scene of my disaster. carefully locking the door on the inside, i commenced a vigorous search. it was possible, i thought, that, concealed in some obscure corner, or lurking in some closet or drawer, might be found the lost object of my inquiry. it might have a vaporyit might even have a tangible form. most philosophers, upon many points of philosophy, are still very unphilosophical. william godwin, however, says in his "mandeville," that "invisible things are the only realities," and this, all will allow, is a case in point. i would have the judicious reader pause before accusing such asseverations of an undue quantum of absurdity. anaxagoras, it will be remembered, maintained that snow is black, and this i have since found to be the case. long and earnestly did i continue the investigation: but the contemptible reward of my industry and perseverance proved to be only a set of false teeth, two pair of hips, an eye, and a bundle of billets-doux from mr. windenough to my wife. i might as well here observe that this confirmation of my lady's partiality for mr. w. occasioned me little uneasiness. that mrs. lackobreath should admire anything so dissimilar to myself was a natural and necessary evil. i am, it is well known, of a robust and corpulent appearance, and at the same time somewhat diminutive in stature. what wonder, then, that the lath-like tenuity of my acquaintance, and his altitude, which has grown into a proverb, should have met with all due estimation in the eyes of mrs. lackobreath. but to return. my exertions, as i have before said, proved fruitless. closet after closetdrawer after drawercorner after cornerwere scrutinized to no purpose. at one time, however, i thought myself sure of my prize, having, in rummaging a dressing-case, accidentally demolished a bottle of grandjean's oil of archangelswhich, as an agreeable perfume, i here take the liberty of recommending. with a heavy heart i returned to my boudoirthere to ponder upon some method of eluding my wife's penetration, until i could make arrangements prior to my leaving the country, for to this i had already made up my mind. in a foreign climate, being unknown, i might, with some probability of success, endeavor to conceal my unhappy calamitya calamity calculated, even more than beggary, to estrange the affections of the multitude, and to draw down upon the wretch the well-merited indignation of the virtuous and the happy. i was not long in hesitation. being naturally quick, i committed to memory the entire tragedy of "metamora." i had the good fortune to recollect that in the accentuation of this drama, or at least of such portion of it as is allotted to the hero, the tones of voice in which i found myself deficient were altogether unnecessary, and the deep guttural was expected to reign monotonously throughout. i practised for some time by the borders of a well frequented marsh;herein, however, having no reference to a similar proceeding of demosthenes, but from a design peculiarly and conscientiously my own. thus armed at all points, i determined to make my wife believe that i was suddenly smitten with a passion for the stage. in this, i succeeded to a miracle; and to every question or suggestion found myself at liberty to reply in my most frog-like and sepulchral tones with some passage from the tragedyany portion of which, as i soon took great pleasure in observing, would apply equally well to any particular subject. it is not to be supposed, however, that in the delivery of such passages i was found at all deficient in the looking asquintthe showing my teeththe working my kneesthe shuffling my feetor in any of those unmentionable graces which are now justly considered the characteristics of a popular performer. to be sure they spoke of confining me in a strait-jacketbut, good god! they never suspected me of having lost my breath. having at length put my affairs in order, i took my seat very early one morning in the mail stage for --, giving it to be understood, among my acquaintances, that business of the last importance required my immediate personal attendance in that city. the coach was crammed to repletion; but in the uncertain twilight the features of my companions could not be distinguished. without making any effectual resistance, i suffered myself to be placed between two gentlemen of colossal dimensions; while a third, of a size larger, requesting pardon for the liberty he was about to take, threw himself upon my body at full length, and falling asleep in an instant, drowned all my guttural ejaculations for relief, in a snore which would have put to blush the roarings of the bull of phalaris. happily the state of my respiratory faculties rendered suffocation an accident entirely out of the question. as, however, the day broke more distinctly in our approach to the outskirts of the city, my tormentor, arising and adjusting his shirt-collar, thanked me in a very friendly manner for my civility. seeing that i remained motionless (all my limbs were dislocated and my head twisted on one side), his apprehensions began to be excited; and arousing the rest of the passengers, he communicated, in a very decided manner, his opinion that a dead man had been palmed upon them during the night for a living and responsible fellow-traveller; here giving me a thump on the right eye, by way of demonstrating the truth of his suggestion. hereupon all, one after another (there were nine in company), believed it their duty to pull me by the ear. a young practising physician, too, having applied a pocket-mirror to my mouth, and found me without breath, the assertion of my persecutor was pronounced a true bill; and the whole party expressed a determination to endure tamely no such impositions for the future, and to proceed no farther with any such carcasses for the present. i was here, accordingly, thrown out at the sign of the "crow" (by which tavern the coach happened to be passing), without meeting with any farther accident than the breaking of both my arms, under the left hind wheel of the vehicle. i must besides do the driver the justice to state that he did not forget to throw after me the largest of my trunks, which, unfortunately falling on my head, fractured my skull in a manner at once interesting and extraordinary. the landlord of the "crow," who is a hospitable man, finding that my trunk contained sufficient to indemnify him for any little trouble he might take in my behalf, sent forthwith for a surgeon of his acquaintance, and delivered me to his care with a bill and receipt for ten dollars. the purchaser took me to his apartments and commenced operations immediately. having cut off my ears, however, he discovered signs of animation. he now rang the bell, and sent for a neighboring apothecary with whom to consult in the emergency. in case of his suspicions with regard to my existence proving ultimately correct, he, in the meantime, made an incision in my stomach, and removed several of my viscera for private dissection. the apothecary had an idea that i was actually dead. this idea i endeavored to confute, kicking and plunging with all my might, and making the most furious contortionsfor the operations of the surgeon had, in a measure, restored me to the possession of my faculties. all, however, was attributed to the effects of a new galvanic battery, wherewith the apothecary, who is really a man of information, performed several curious experiments, in which, from my personal share in their fulfillment, i could not help feeling deeply interested. it was a course of mortification to me, nevertheless, that although i made several attempts at conversation, my powers of speech were so entirely in abeyance, that i could not even open my mouth; much less, then, make reply to some ingenious but fanciful theories of which, under other circumstances, my minute acquaintance with the hippocratian pathology would have afforded me a ready confutation. not being able to arrive at a conclusion, the practitioners remanded me for farther examination. i was taken up into a garret; and the surgeon's lady having accommodated me with drawers and stockings, the surgeon himself fastened my hands, and tied up my jaws with a pocket-handkerchiefthen bolted the door on the outside as he hurried to his dinner, leaving me alone to silence and to meditation. i now discovered to my extreme delight that i could have spoken had not my mouth been tied up with the pocket-handkerchief. consoling myself with this reflection, i was mentally repeating some passages of the "omnipresence of the deity," as is my custom before resigning myself to sleep, when two cats, of a greedy and vituperative turn, entering at a hole in the wall, leaped up with a flourish a la catalani, and alighting opposite one another on my visage, betook themselves to indecorous contention for the paltry consideration of my nose. but, as the loss of his ears proved the means of elevating to the throne of cyrus, the magian or mige-gush of persia, and as the cutting off his nose gave zopyrus possession of babylon, so the loss of a few ounces of my countenance proved the salvation of my body. aroused by the pain, and burning with indignation, i burst, at a single effort, the fastenings and the bandage. stalking across the room i cast a glance of contempt at the belligerents, and throwing open the sash to their extreme horror and disappointment, precipitated myself, very dexterously, from the window. this moment passing from the city jail to the scaffold erected for his execution in the suburbs. his extreme infirmity and long continued ill health had obtained him the privilege of remaining unmanacled; and habited in his gallows costumeone very similar to my own,he lay at full length in the bottom of the hangman's cart (which happened to be under the windows of the surgeon at the moment of my precipitation) without any other guard than the driver, who was asleep, and two recruits of the sixth infantry, who were drunk. as ill-luck would have it, i alit upon my feet within the vehicle. immediately, he bolted out behind, and turning down an alley, was out of sight in the twinkling of an eye. the recruits, aroused by the bustle, could not exactly comprehend the merits of the transaction. seeing, however, a man, the precise counterpart of the felon, standing upright in the cart before their eyes, they were of (so they expressed themselves,) and, having communicated this opinion to one another, they took each a dram, and then knocked me down with the butt-ends of their muskets. it was not long ere we arrived at the place of destination. of course nothing could be said in my defence. hanging was my inevitable fate. i resigned myself thereto with a feeling half stupid, half acrimonious. being little of a cynic, i had all the sentiments of a dog. the hangman, however, adjusted the noose about my neck. the drop fell. i forbear to depict my sensations upon the gallows; although here, undoubtedly, i could speak to the point, and it is a topic upon which nothing has been well said. in fact, to write upon such a theme it is necessary to have been hanged. every author should confine himself to matters of experience. thus mark antony composed a treatise upon getting drunk. i may just mention, however, that die i did not. my body was, but i had no breath to be, suspended; and but for the knot under my left ear (which had the feel of a military stock) i dare say that i should have experienced very little inconvenience. as for the jerk given to my neck upon the falling of the drop, it merely proved a corrective to the twist afforded me by the fat gentleman in the coach. for good reasons, however, i did my best to give the crowd the worth of their trouble. my convulsions were said to be extraordinary. my spasms it would have been difficult to beat. the populace encored. several gentlemen swooned; and a multitude of ladies were carried home in hysterics. pinxit availed himself of the opportunity to retouch, from a sketch taken upon the spot, his admirable painting of the "marsyas flayed alive." when i had afforded sufficient amusement, it was thought proper to remove my body from the gallows;this the more especially as the real culprit had in the meantime been retaken and recognized, a fact which i was so unlucky as not to know. much sympathy was, of course, exercised in my behalf, and as no one made claim to my corpse, it was ordered that i should be interred in a public vault. here, after due interval, i was deposited. the sexton departed, and i was left alone. a line of marston's "malcontent" death's a good fellow and keeps open housestruck me at that moment as a palpable lie. i knocked off, however, the lid of my coffin, and stepped out. the place was dreadfully dreary and damp, and i became troubled with ennui. by way of amusement, i felt my way among the numerous coffins ranged in order around. i lifted them down, one by one, and breaking open their lids, busied myself in speculations about the mortality within. "this," i soliloquized, tumbling over a carcass, puffy, bloated, and rotund"this has been, no doubt, in every sense of the word, an unhappyan unfortunate man. it has been his terrible lot not to walk but to waddleto pass through life not like a human being, but like an elephantnot like a man, but like a rhinoceros. "his attempts at getting on have been mere abortions, and his circumgyratory proceedings a palpable failure. taking a step forward, it has been his misfortune to take two toward the right, and three toward the left. his studies have been confined to the poetry of crabbe. he can have no idea of the wonder of a pirouette. to him a pas de papillon has been an abstract conception. he has never ascended the summit of a hill. he has never viewed from any steeple the glories of a metropolis. heat has been his mortal enemy. in the dog-days his days have been the days of a dog. therein, he has dreamed of flames and suffocationof mountains upon mountainsof pelion upon ossa. he was short of breathto say all in a word, he was short of breath. he thought it extravagant to play upon wind instruments. he was the inventor of self-moving fans, wind-sails, and ventilators. he patronized du pont the bellows-maker, and he died miserably in attempting to smoke a cigar. his was a case in which i feel a deep interesta lot in which i sincerely sympathize. "but here,"said i"here"and i dragged spitefully from its receptacle a gaunt, tall and peculiar-looking form, whose remarkable appearance struck me with a sense of unwelcome familiarity"here is a wretch entitled to no earthly commiseration." thus saying, in order to obtain a more distinct view of my subject, i applied my thumb and forefinger to its nose, and causing it to assume a sitting position upon the ground, held it thus, at the length of my arm, while i continued my soliloquy. -"entitled," i repeated, "to no earthly commiseration. who indeed would think of compassioning a shadow? besides, has he not had his full share of the blessings of mortality? he was the originator of tall monumentsshot-towerslightning-rodslombardy poplars. his treatise upon "shades and shadows" has immortalized him. he edited with distinguished ability the last edition of "south on the bones." he went early to college and studied pneumatics. he then came home, talked eternally, and played upon the french-horn. he patronized the bagpipes. captain barclay, who walked against time, would not walk against him. windham and allbreath were his favorite writers,his favorite artist, phiz. he died gloriously while inhaling gaslevique flatu corrupitur, like the fama pudicitae in hieronymus.* he was indubitably a" *tenera res in feminis fama pudicitiae, et quasi flos pulcherrimus, cito ad levem marcessit auram, levique flatu corrumpitur, maxime, &c.hieronymus ad salvinam. "how can you?howcanyou?"interrupted the object of my animadversions, gasping for breath, and tearing off, with a desperate exertion, the bandage around its jaws"how can you, mr. lackobreath, be so infernally cruel as to pinch me in that manner by the nose? did you not see how they had fastened up my mouthand you must knowif you know any thinghow vast a superfluity of breath i have to dispose of! if you do not know, however, sit down and you shall see. in my situation it is really a great relief to be able to open ones mouthto be able to expatiateto be able to communicate with a person like yourself, who do not think yourself called upon at every period to interrupt the thread of a gentleman's discourse. interruptions are annoying and should undoubtedly be abolisheddon't you think so?no reply, i beg you,one person is enough to be speaking at a time.i shall be done by and by, and then you may begin.how the devil sir, did you get into this place?not a word i beseech youbeen here some time myselfterrible accident!heard of it, i suppose?awful calamity!walking under your windowssome short while agoabout the time you were stage-struckhorrible occurrence!heard of "catching one's breath," eh?hold your tongue i tell you!i caught somebody elses!had always too much of my ownmet blab at the corner of the streetwouldn't give me a chance for a wordcouldn't get in a syllable edgewaysattacked, consequently, with epilepsisblab made his escapedamn all fools!they took me up for dead, and put me in this placepretty doings all of them!heard all you said about meevery word a liehorrible!wonderfuloutrageous!hideous!incomprehensible!et ceteraet ceteraet ceteraet cetera-" it is impossible to conceive my astonishment at so unexpected a discourse, or the joy with which i became gradually convinced that the breath so fortunately caught by the gentleman (whom i soon recognized as my neighbor windenough) was, in fact, the identical expiration mislaid by myself in the conversation with my wife. time, place, and circumstances rendered it a matter beyond question. i did not at least during the long period in which the inventor of lombardy poplars continued to favor me with his explanations. in this respect i was actuated by that habitual prudence which has ever been my predominating trait. i reflected that many difficulties might still lie in the path of my preservation which only extreme exertion on my part would be able to surmount. many persons, i considered, are prone to estimate commodities in their possessionhowever valueless to the then proprietorhowever troublesome, or distressingin direct ratio with the advantages to be derived by others from their attainment, or by themselves from their abandonment. might not this be the case with mr. windenough? in displaying anxiety for the breath of which he was at present so willing to get rid, might i not lay myself open to the exactions of his avarice? there are scoundrels in this world, i remembered with a sigh, who will not scruple to take unfair opportunities with even a next door neighbor, and (this remark is from epictetus) it is precisely at that time when men are most anxious to throw off the burden of their own calamities that they feel the least desirous of relieving them in others. upon considerations similar to these, and still retaining my grasp upon the nose of mr. w., i accordingly thought proper to model my reply. "monster!" i began in a tone of the deepest indignation"monster and double-winded idiot!dost thou, whom for thine iniquities it has pleased heaven to accurse with a two-fold respimtiondost thou, i say, presume to address me in the familiar language of an old acquaintance?'i lie,' forsooth! and 'hold my tongue,' to be sure!pretty conversation indeed, to a gentleman with a single breath!all this, too, when i have it in my power to relieve the calamity under which thou dost so justly sufferto curtail the superfluities of thine unhappy respiration." like brutus, i paused for a replywith which, like a tornado, mr. windenough immediately overwhelmed me. protestation followed upon protestation, and apology upon apology. there were no terms with which he was unwilling to comply, and there were none of which i failed to take the fullest advantage. preliminaries being at length arranged, my acquaintance delivered me the respiration; for which (having carefully examined it) i gave him afterward a receipt. i am aware that by many i shall be held to blame for speaking in a manner so cursory, of a transaction so impalpable. it will be thought that i should have entered more minutely, into the details of an occurrence by whichand this is very truemuch new light might be thrown upon a highly interesting branch of physical philosophy. to all this i am sorry that i cannot reply. a hint is the only answer which i am permitted to make. there were circumstancesbut i think it much safer upon consideration to say as little as possible about an affair so delicateso delicate, i repeat, and at the time involving the interests of a third party whose sulphurous resentment i have not the least desire, at this moment, of incurring. we were not long after this necessary arrangement in effecting an escape from the dungeons of the sepulchre. the united strength of our resuscitated voices was soon sufficiently apparent. scissors, the whig editor, republished a treatise upon "the nature and origin of subterranean noises." a replyrejoinderconfutationand justificationfollowed in the columns of a democratic gazette. it was not until the opening of the vault to decide the controversy, that the appearance of mr. windenough and myself proved both parties to have been decidedly in the wrong. i cannot conclude these details of some very singular passages in a life at all times sufficiently eventful, without again recalling to the attention of the reader the merits of that indiscriminate philosophy which is a sure and ready shield against those shafts of calamity which can neither be seen, felt nor fully understood. it was in the spirit of this wisdom that, among the ancient hebrews, it was believed the gates of heaven would be inevitably opened to that sinner, or saint, who, with good lungs and implicit confidence, should vociferate the word "amen!" it was in the spirit of this wisdom that, when a great plague raged at athens, and every means had been in vain attempted for its removal, epimenides, as laertius relates, in his second book, of that philosopher, advised the erection of a shrine and temple "to the proper god." lyttleton barry. -the end. 1831 lenore by edgar allan poe lenore ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! let the bell toll!a saintly soul floats on the stygian river; and, guy de vere, hast thou no tear?weep now or nevermore! see! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, lenore! come! let the burial rite be readthe funeral song be sung! an anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young a dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young. "wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride, and when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed herthat she died! how shall the ritual, then, be read?the requiem how be sung by youby yours, the evil eye,by yours, the slanderous tongue that did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?" peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a sabbath song go up to god so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong. the sweet lenore hath "gone before," with hope, that flew beside, leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride. for her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies, the life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes the life still there, upon her hairthe death upon her eyes. "avaunt! avaunt! from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven from hell unto a high estate far up within the heaven from grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the king of heaven! let no bell toll, then,lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth, should catch the note as it doth float up from the damned earth! and i!to-night my heart is light!no dirge will i upraise, but waft the angel on her flight with a paean of old days!" -the end. 1850 hop-frog or the eight chained ourang-outangs by edgar allan poe i never knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. he seemed to live only for joking. to tell a good story of the joke kind, and to tell it well, was the surest road to his favor. thus it happened that his seven ministers were all noted for their accomplishments as jokers. they all took after the king, too, in being large, corpulent, oily men, as well as inimitable jokers. whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, i have never been quite able to determine; but certain it is that a lean joker is a rara avis in terris. about the refinements, or, as he called them, the 'ghost' of wit, the king troubled himself very little. he had an especial admiration for breadth in a jest, and would often put up with length, for the sake of it. over-niceties wearied him. he would have preferred rabelais' 'gargantua' to the 'zadig' of voltaire: and, upon the whole, practical jokes suited his taste far better than verbal ones. at the date of my narrative, professing jesters had not altogether gone out of fashion at court. several of the great continental 'powers' still retain their 'fools,' who wore motley, with caps and bells, and who were expected to be always ready with sharp witticisms, at a moment's notice, in consideration of the crumbs that fell from the royal table. our king, as a matter of course, retained his 'fool.' the fact is, he required something in the way of follyif only to counterbalance the heavy wisdom of the seven wise men who were his ministersnot to mention himself. his fool, or professional jester, was not only a fool, however. his value was trebled in the eyes of the king, by the fact of his being also a dwarf and a cripple. dwarfs were as common at court, in those days, as fools; and many monarchs would have found it difficult to get through their days (days are rather longer at court than elsewhere) without both a jester to laugh with, and a dwarf to laugh at. but, as i have already observed, your jesters, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are fat, round, and unwieldyso that it was no small source of self-gratulation with our king that, in hop-frog (this was the fool's name), he possessed a triplicate treasure in one person. i believe the name 'hop-frog' was not that given to the dwarf by his sponsors at baptism, but it was conferred upon him, by general consent of the several ministers, on account of his inability to walk as other men do. in fact, hop-frog could only get along by a sort of interjectional gaitsomething between a leap and a wrigglea movement that afforded illimitable amusement, and of course consolation, to the king, for (notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and a constitutional swelling of the head) the king, by his whole court, was accounted a capital figure. but although hop-frog, through the distortion of his legs, could move only with great pain and difficulty along a road or floor, the prodigious muscular power which nature seemed to have bestowed upon his arms, by way of compensation for deficiency in the lower limbs, enabled him to perform many feats of wonderful dexterity, where trees or ropes were in question, or any thing else to climb. at such exercises he certainly much more resembled a squirrel, or a small monkey, than a frog. i am not able to say, with precision, from what country hop-frog originally came. it was from some barbarous region, however, that no person ever heard ofa vast distance from the court of our king. hop-frog, and a young girl very little less dwarfish than himself (although of exquisite proportions, and a marvellous dancer), had been forcibly carried off from their respective homes in adjoining provinces, and sent as presents to the king, by one of his ever-victorious generals. under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that a close intimacy arose between the two little captives. indeed, they soon became sworn friends. hop-frog, who, although he made a great deal of sport, was by no means popular, had it not in his power to render trippetta many services; but she, on account of her grace and exquisite beauty (although a dwarf), was universally admired and petted; so she possessed much influence; and never failed to use it, whenever she could, for the benefit of hop-frog. on some grand state occasioni forgot whatthe king determined to have a masquerade, and whenever a masquerade or any thing of that kind, occurred at our court, then the talents, both of hop-frog and trippetta were sure to be called into play. hop-frog, in especial, was so inventive in the way of getting up pageants, suggesting novel characters, and arranging costumes, for masked balls, that nothing could be done, it seems, without his assistance. the night appointed for the fete had arrived. a gorgeous hall had been fitted up, under trippetta's eye, with every kind of device which could possibly give eclat to a masquerade. the whole court was in a fever of expectation. as for costumes and characters, it might well be supposed that everybody had come to a decision on such points. many had made up their minds (as to what roles they should assume) a week, or even a month, in advance; and, in fact, there was not a particle of indecision anywhereexcept in the case of the king and his seven minsters. why they hesitated i never could tell, unless they did it by way of a joke. more probably, they found it difficult, on account of being so fat, to make up their minds. at all events, time flew; and, as a last resort they sent for trippetta and hop-frog. when the two little friends obeyed the summons of the king they found him sitting at his wine with the seven members of his cabinet council; but the monarch appeared to be in a very ill humor. he knew that hop-frog was not fond of wine, for it excited the poor cripple almost to madness; and madness is no comfortable feeling. but the king loved his practical jokes, and took pleasure in forcing hop-frog to drink and (as the king called it) 'to be merry.' "come here, hop-frog," said he, as the jester and his friend entered the room; "swallow this bumper to the health of your absent friends, [here hop-frog sighed,] and then let us have the benefit of your invention. we want characterscharacters, mansomething novelout of the way. we are wearied with this everlasting sameness. come, drink! the wine will brighten your wits." hop-frog endeavored, as usual, to get up a jest in reply to these advances from the king; but the effort was too much. it happened to be the poor dwarf's birthday, and the command to drink to his 'absent friends' forced the tears to his eyes. many large, bitter drops fell into the goblet as he took it, humbly, from the hand of the tyrant. "ah! ha! ha!" roared the latter, as the dwarf reluctantly drained the beaker."see what a glass of good wine can do! why, your eyes are shining already!" poor fellow! his large eyes gleamed, rather than shone; for the effect of wine on his excitable brain was not more powerful than instantaneous. he placed the goblet nervously on the table, and looked round upon the company with a halfinsane stare. they all seemed highly amused at the success of the king's 'joke.' "and now to business," said the prime minister, a very fat man. "yes," said the king; "come lend us your assistance. characters, my fine fellow; we stand in need of charactersall of usha! ha! ha!" and as this was seriously meant for a joke, his laugh was chorused by the seven. hop-frog also laughed although feebly and somewhat vacantly. "come, come," said the king, impatiently, "have you nothing to suggest?" "i am endeavoring to think of something novel," replied the dwarf, abstractedly, for he was quite bewildered by the wine. "endeavoring!" cried the tyrant, fiercely; "what do you mean by that? ah, i perceive. you are sulky, and want more wine. here, drink this!" and he poured out another goblet full and offered it to the cripple, who merely gazed at it, gasping for breath. "drink, i say!" shouted the monster, "or by the fiends-" the dwarf hesitated. the king grew purple with rage. the courtiers smirked. trippetta, pale as a corpse, advanced to the monarch's seat, and, falling on her knees before him, implored him to spare her friend. the tyrant regarded her, for some moments, in evident wonder at her audacity. he seemed quite at a loss what to do or sayhow most becomingly to express his indignation. at last, without uttering a syllable, he pushed her violently from him, and threw the contents of the brimming goblet in her face. the poor girl got up the best she could, and, not daring even to sigh, resumed her position at the foot of the table. there was a dead silence for about half a minute, during which the falling of a leaf, or of a feather, might have been heard. it was interrupted by a low, but harsh and protracted grating sound which seemed to come at once from every corner of the room. "whatwhatwhat are you making that noise for?" demanded the king, turning furiously to the dwarf. the latter seemed to have recovered, in great measure, from his intoxication, and looking fixedly but quietly into the tyrant's face, merely ejaculated: "ii? how could it have been me?" "the sound appeared to come from without," observed one of the courtiers. "i fancy it was the parrot at the window, whetting his bill upon his cage-wires." "true," replied the monarch, as if much relieved by the suggestion; "but, on the honor of a knight, i could have sworn that it was the gritting of this vagabond's teeth." hereupon the dwarf laughed (the king was too confirmed a joker to object to any one's laughing), and displayed a set of large, powerful, and very repulsive teeth. moreover, he avowed his perfect willingness to swallow as much wine as desired. the monarch was pacified; and having drained another bumper with no very perceptible ill effect, hop-frog entered at once, and with spirit, into the plans for the masquerade. "i cannot tell what was the association of idea," observed he, very tranquilly, and as if he had never tasted wine in his life, "but just after your majesty, had struck the girl and thrown the wine in her facejust after your majesty had done this, and while the parrot was making that odd noise outside the window, there came into my mind a capital diversionone of my own country frolicsoften enacted among us, at our masquerades: but here it will be new altogether. unfortunately, however, it requires a company of eight persons and-" "here we are!" cried the king, laughing at his acute discovery of the coincidence; "eight to a fractioni and my seven ministers. come! what is the diversion?" "we call it," replied the cripple, "the eight chained ourang-outangs, and it really is excellent sport if well enacted." "we will enact it," remarked the king, drawing himself up, and lowering his eyelids. "the beauty of the game," continued hop-frog, "lies in the fright it occasions among the women." "capital!" roared in chorus the monarch and his ministry. "i will equip you as ourang-outangs," proceeded the dwarf; "leave all that to me. the resemblance shall be so striking, that the company of masqueraders will take you for real beastsand of course, they will be as much terrified as astonished." "oh, this is exquisite!" exclaimed the king. "hop-frog! i will make a man of you." "the chains are for the purpose of increasing the confusion by their jangling. you are supposed to have escaped, en masse, from your keepers. your majesty cannot conceive the effect produced, at a masquerade, by eight chained ourang-outangs, imagined to be real ones by most of the company; and rushing in with savage cries, among the crowd of delicately and gorgeously habited men and women. the contrast is inimitable!" "it must be," said the king: and the council arose hurriedly (as it was growing late), to put in execution the scheme of hop-frog. his mode of equipping the party as ourang-outangs was very simple, but effective enough for his purposes. the animals in question had, at the epoch of my story, very rarely been seen in any part of the civilized world; and as the imitations made by the dwarf were sufficiently beast-like and more than sufficiently hideous, their truthfulness to nature was thus thought to be secured. the king and his ministers were first encased in tight-fitting stockinet shirts and drawers. they were then saturated with tar. at this stage of the process, some one of the party suggested feathers; but the suggestion was at once overruled by the dwarf, who soon convinced the eight, by ocular demonstration, that the hair of such a brute as the ourang-outang was much more efficiently represented by flu. a thick coating of the latter was accordingly plastered upon the coating of tar. a long chain was now procured. first, it was passed about the waist of the king, and tied, then about another of the party, and also tied; then about all successively, in the same manner. when this chaining arrangement was complete, and the party stood as far apart from each other as possible, they formed a circle; and to make all things appear natural, hop-frog passed the residue of the chain in two diameters, at right angles, across the circle, after the fashion adopted, at the present day, by those who capture chimpanzees, or other large apes, in borneo. the grand saloon in which the masquerade was to take place, was a circular room, very lofty, and receiving the light of the sun only through a single window at top. at night (the season for which the apartment was especially designed) it was illuminated principally by a large chandelier, depending by a chain from the centre of the sky-light, and lowered, or elevated, by means of a counter-balance as usual; but (in order not to look unsightly) this latter passed outside the cupola and over the roof. the arrangements of the room had been left to trippetta's superintendence; but, in some particulars, it seems, she had been guided by the calmer judgment of her friend the dwarf. at his suggestion it was that, on this occasion, the chandelier was removed. its waxen drippings (which, in weather so warm, it was quite impossible to prevent) would have been seriously detrimental to the rich dresses of the guests, who, on account of the crowded state of the saloon, could not all be expected to keep from out its centre; that is to say, from under the chandelier. additional sconces were set in various parts of the hall, out of the war, and a flambeau, emitting sweet odor, was placed in the right hand of each of the caryatides that stood against the wallsome fifty or sixty altogether. the eight ourang-outangs, taking hop-frog's advice, waited patiently until midnight (when the room was thoroughly filled with masqueraders) before making their appearance. no sooner had the clock ceased striking, however, than they rushed, or rather rolled in, all togetherfor the impediments of their chains caused most of the party to fall, and all to stumble as they entered. the excitement among the masqueraders was prodigious, and filled the heart of the king with glee. as had been anticipated, there were not a few of the guests who supposed the ferocious-looking creatures to be beasts of some kind in reality, if not precisely ourang-outangs. many of the women swooned with affright; and had not the king taken the precaution to exclude all weapons from the saloon, his party might soon have expiated their frolic in their blood. as it was, a general rush was made for the doors; but the king had ordered them to be locked immediately upon his entrance; and, at the dwarf's suggestion, the keys had been deposited with him. while the tumult was at its height, and each masquerader attentive only to his own safety (for, in fact, there was much real danger from the pressure of the excited crowd), the chain by which the chandelier ordinarily hung, and which had been drawn up on its removal, might have been seen very gradually to descend, until its hooked extremity came within three feet of the floor. soon after this, the king and his seven friends having reeled about the hall in all directions, found themselves, at length, in its centre, and, of course, in immediate contact with the chain. while they were thus situated, the dwarf, who had followed noiselessly at their heels, inciting them to keep up the commotion, took hold of their own chain at the intersection of the two portions which crossed the circle diametrically and at right angles. here, with the rapidity of thought, he inserted the hook from which the chandelier had been wont to depend; and, in an instant, by some unseen agency, the chandelier-chain was drawn so far upward as to take the hook out of reach, and, as an inevitable consequence, to drag the ourang-outangs together in close connection, and face to face. the masqueraders, by this time, had recovered, in some measure, from their alarm; and, beginning to regard the whole matter as a well-contrived pleasantry, set up a loud shout of laughter at the predicament of the apes. "leave them to me!" now screamed hop-frog, his shrill voice making itself easily heard through all the din. "leave them to me. i fancy i know them. if i can only get a good look at them, i can soon tell who they are." here, scrambling over the heads of the crowd, he managed to get to the wall; when, seizing a flambeau from one of the caryatides, he returned, as he went, to the centre of the room-leaping, with the agility of a monkey, upon the kings head, and thence clambered a few feet up the chain; holding down the torch to examine the group of ourang-outangs, and still screaming: "i shall soon find out who they are!" and now, while the whole assembly (the apes included) were convulsed with laughter, the jester suddenly uttered a shrill whistle; when the chain flew violently up for about thirty feetdragging with it the dismayed and struggling ourang-outangs, and leaving them suspended in mid-air between the sky-light and the floor. hop-frog, clinging to the chain as it rose, still maintained his relative position in respect to the eight maskers, and still (as if nothing were the matter) continued to thrust his torch down toward them, as though endeavoring to discover who they were. so thoroughly astonished was the whole company at this ascent, that a dead silence, of about a minute's duration, ensued. it was broken by just such a low, harsh, grating sound, as had before attracted the attention of the king and his councillors when the former threw the wine in the face of trippetta. but, on the present occasion, there could be no question as to whence the sound issued. it came from the fanglike teeth of the dwarf, who ground them and gnashed them as he foamed at the mouth, and glared, with an expression of maniacal rage, into the upturned countenances of the king and his seven companions. "ah, ha!" said at length the infuriated jester. "ah, ha! i begin to see who these people are now!" here, pretending to scrutinize the king more closely, he held the flambeau to the flaxen coat which enveloped him, and which instantly burst into a sheet of vivid flame. in less than half a minute the whole eight ourang-outangs were blazing fiercely, amid the shrieks of the multitude who gazed at them from below, horror-stricken, and without the power to render them the slightest assistance. at length the flames, suddenly increasing in virulence, forced the jester to climb higher up the chain, to be out of their reach; and, as he made this movement, the crowd again sank, for a brief instant, into silence. the dwarf seized his opportunity, and once more spoke: "i now see distinctly." he said, "what manner of people these maskers are. they are a great king and his seven privy-councillors,a king who does not scruple to strike a defenceless girl and his seven councillors who abet him in the outrage. as for myself, i am simply hop-frog, the jesterand this is my last jest." owing to the high combustibility of both the flax and the tar to which it adhered, the dwarf had scarcely made an end of his brief speech before the work of vengeance was complete. the eight corpses swung in their chains, a fetid, blackened, hideous, and indistinguishable mass. the cripple hurled his torch at them, clambered leisurely to the ceiling, and disappeared through the sky-light. it is supposed that trippetta, stationed on the roof of the saloon, had been the accomplice of her friend in his fiery revenge, and that, together, they effected their escape to their own country: for neither was seen again. the end . 1844 dreamland by edgar allan poe dreamland by a route obscure and lonely, haunted by ill angels only, where an eidolon, named night, on a black throne reigns upright, i have reached these lands but newly from an ultimate dim thule from a wild clime that lieth, sublime, out of spaceout of time. bottomless vales and boundless floods, and chasms, and caves, and titan woods, with forms that no man can discover for the tears that drip all over; mountains toppling evermore into seas without a shore; seas that restlessly aspire, surging, unto skies of fire; lakes that endlessly outspread their lone waterslone and dead, their still watersstill and chilly with the snows of the lolling lily. by the lakes that thus outspread their lone waters, lone and dead, their sad waters, sad and chilly with the snows of the lolling lily, by the mountainsnear the river murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, by the grey woods,by the swamp where the toad and the newt encamp by the dismal tarns and pools where dwell the ghouls, by each spot the most unholy in each nook most melancholy there the traveller meets aghast sheeted memories of the past shrouded forms that start and sigh as they pass the wanderer by white-robed forms of friends long given, in agony, to the earthand heaven. for the heart whose woes are legion 'tis a peaceful, soothing region for the spirit that walks in shadow 'tisoh, 'tis an eldorado! but the traveller, travelling through it, may notdare not openly view it! never its mysteries are exposed to the weak human eye unclosed; so wills its king, who hath forbid the uplifting of the fringed lid; and thus the sad soul that here passes beholds it but through darkened glasses. by a route obscure and lonely, haunted by ill angels only, where an eidolon, named night, on a black throne reigns upright, i have wandered home but newly from this ultimate dim thule. -the end. 1850 eleonora by edgar allan poe eleonora sub conservatione formae specificae salva anima. raymond lully. i am come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligencewhether much that is gloriouswhether all that is profounddoes not spring from disease of thoughtfrom moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. they who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. in their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. in snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. they penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable," and again, like the adventures of the nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi." we will say, then, that i am mad. i grant, at least, that there are two distinct conditions of my mental existencethe condition of a lucid reason, not to be disputed, and belonging to the memory of events forming the first epoch of my lifeand a condition of shadow and doubt, appertaining to the present, and to the recollection of what constitutes the second great era of my being. therefore, what i shall tell of the earlier period, believe; and to what i may relate of the later time, give only such credit as may seem due, or doubt it altogether, or, if doubt it ye cannot, then play unto its riddle the oedipus. she whom i loved in youth, and of whom i now pen calmly and distinctly these remembrances, was the sole daughter of the only sister of my mother long departed. eleonora was the name of my cousin. we had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the valley of the many-colored grass. no unguided footstep ever came upon that vale; for it lay away up among a range of giant hills that hung beetling around about it, shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. no path was trodden in its vicinity; and, to reach our happy home, there was need of putting back, with force, the foliage of many thousands of forest trees, and of crushing to death the glories of many millions of fragrant flowers. thus it was that we lived all alone, knowing nothing of the world without the valleyi, and my cousin, and her mother. from the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. we called it the "river of silence"; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. no murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever. the margin of the river, and of the many dazzling rivulets that glided through devious ways into its channel, as well as the spaces that extended from the margins away down into the depths of the streams until they reached the bed of pebbles at the bottom,these spots, not less than the whole surface of the valley, from the river to the mountains that girdled it in, were carpeted all by a soft green grass, thick, short, perfectly even, and vanilla-perfumed, but so besprinkled throughout with the yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purple violet, and the ruby-red asphodel, that its exceeding beauty spoke to our hearts in loud tones, of the love and of the glory of god. and, here and there, in groves about this grass, like wildernesses of dreams, sprang up fantastic trees, whose tall slender stems stood not upright, but slanted gracefully toward the light that peered at noon-day into the centre of the valley. their mark was speckled with the vivid alternate splendor of ebony and silver, and was smoother than all save the cheeks of eleonora; so that, but for the brilliant green of the huge leaves that spread from their summits in long, tremulous lines, dallying with the zephyrs, one might have fancied them giant serpents of syria doing homage to their sovereign the sun. hand in hand about this valley, for fifteen years, roamed i with eleonora before love entered within our hearts. it was one evening at the close of the third lustrum of her life, and of the fourth of my own, that we sat, locked in each other's embrace, beneath the serpent-like trees, and looked down within the water of the river of silence at our images therein. we spoke no words during the rest of that sweet day, and our words even upon the morrow were tremulous and few. we had drawn the god eros from that wave, and now we felt that he had enkindled within us the fiery souls of our forefathers. the passions which had for centuries distinguished our race, came thronging with the fancies for which they had been equally noted, and together breathed a delirious bliss over the valley of the many-colored grass. a change fell upon all things. strange, brilliant flowers, star-shaped, burn out upon the trees where no flowers had been known before. the tints of the green carpet deepened; and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. and life arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo, hitherto unseen, with all gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. the golden and silver fish haunted the river, out of the bosom of which issued, little by little, a murmur that swelled, at length, into a lulling melody more divine than that of the harp of aeolus-sweeter than all save the voice of eleonora. and now, too, a voluminous cloud, which we had long watched in the regions of hesper, floated out thence, all gorgeous in crimson and gold, and settling in peace above us, sank, day by day, lower and lower, until its edges rested upon the tops of the mountains, turning all their dimness into magnificence, and shutting us up, as if forever, within a magic prison-house of grandeur and of glory. the loveliness of eleonora was that of the seraphim; but she was a maiden artless and innocent as the brief life she had led among the flowers. no guile disguised the fervor of love which animated her heart, and she examined with me its inmost recesses as we walked together in the valley of the many-colored grass, and discoursed of the mighty changes which had lately taken place therein. at length, having spoken one day, in tears, of the last sad change which must befall humanity, she thenceforward dwelt only upon this one sorrowful theme, interweaving it into all our converse, as, in the songs of the bard of schiraz, the same images are found occurring, again and again, in every impressive variation of phrase. she had seen that the finger of death was upon her bosomthat, like the ephemeron, she had been made perfect in loveliness only to die; but the terrors of the grave to her lay solely in a consideration which she revealed to me, one evening at twilight, by the banks of the river of silence. she grieved to think that, having entombed her in the valley of the many-colored grass, i would quit forever its happy recesses, transferring the love which now was so passionately her own to some maiden of the outer and everyday world. and, then and there, i threw myself hurriedly at the feet of eleonora, and offered up a vow, to herself and to heaven, that i would never bind myself in marriage to any daughter of earththat i would in no manner prove recreant to her dear memory, or to the memory of the devout affection with which she had blessed me. and i called the mighty ruler of the universe to witness the pious solemnity of my vow. and the curse which i invoked of him and of her, a saint in helusion should i prove traitorous to that promise, involved a penalty the exceeding great horror of which will not permit me to make record of it here. and the bright eyes of eleonora grew brighter at my words; and she sighed as if a deadly burthen had been taken from her breast; and she trembled and very bitterly wept; but she made acceptance of the vow, (for what was she but a child?) and it made easy to her the bed of her death. and she said to me, not many days afterward, tranquilly dying, that, because of what i had done for the comfort of her spirit she would watch over me in that spirit when departed, and, if so it were permitted her return to me visibly in the watches of the night; but, if this thing were, indeed, beyond the power of the souls in paradise, that she would, at least, give me frequent indications of her presence, sighing upon me in the evening winds, or filling the air which i breathed with perfume from the censers of the angels. and, with these words upon her lips, she yielded up her innocent life, putting an end to the first epoch of my own. thus far i have faithfully said. but as i pass the barrier in times path, formed by the death of my beloved, and proceed with the second era of my existence, i feel that a shadow gathers over my brain, and i mistrust the perfect sanity of the record. but let me on.years dragged themselves along heavily, and still i dwelled within the valley of the many-colored grass; but a second change had come upon all things. the star-shaped flowers shrank into the stems of the trees, and appeared no more. the tints of the green carpet faded; and, one by one, the ruby-red asphodels withered away; and there sprang up, in place of them, ten by ten, dark, eye-like violets, that writhed uneasily and were ever encumbered with dew. and life departed from our paths; for the tall flamingo flaunted no longer his scarlet plumage before us, but flew sadly from the vale into the hills, with all the gay glowing birds that had arrived in his company. and the golden and silver fish swam down through the gorge at the lower end of our domain and bedecked the sweet river never again. and the lulling melody that had been softer than the wind-harp of aeolus, and more divine than all save the voice of eleonora, it died little by little away, in murmurs growing lower and lower, until the stream returned, at length, utterly, into the solemnity of its original silence. and then, lastly, the voluminous cloud uprose, and, abandoning the tops of the mountains to the dimness of old, fell back into the regions of hesper, and took away all its manifold golden and gorgeous glories from the valley of the many-colored grass. yet the promises of eleonora were not forgotten; for i heard the sounds of the swinging of the censers of the angels; and streams of a holy perfume floated ever and ever about the valley; and at lone hours, when my heart beat heavily, the winds that bathed my brow came unto me laden with soft sighs; and indistinct murmurs filled often the night air, and onceoh, but once only! i was awakened from a slumber, like the slumber of death, by the pressing of spiritual lips upon my own. but the void within my heart refused, even thus, to be filled. i longed for the love which had before filled it to overflowing. at length the valley pained me through its memories of eleonora, and i left it for ever for the vanities and the turbulent triumphs of the world. i found myself within a strange city, where all things might have served to blot from recollection the sweet dreams i had dreamed so long in the valley of the many-colored grass. the pomps and pageantries of a stately court, and the mad clangor of arms, and the radiant loveliness of women, bewildered and intoxicated my brain. but as yet my soul had proved true to its vows, and the indications of the presence of eleonora were still given me in the silent hours of the night. suddenly these manifestations they ceased, and the world grew dark before mine eyes, and i stood aghast at the burning thoughts which possessed, at the terrible temptations which beset me; for there came from some far, far distant and unknown land, into the gay court of the king i served, a maiden to whose beauty my whole recreant heart yielded at onceat whose footstool i bowed down without a struggle, in the most ardent, in the most abject worship of love. what, indeed, was my passion for the young girl of the valley in comparison with the fervor, and the delirium, and the spirit-lifting ecstasy of adoration with which i poured out my whole soul in tears at the feet of the ethereal ermengarde?oh, bright was the seraph ermengarde! and in that knowledge i had room for none other.oh, divine was the angel ermengarde! and as i looked down into the depths of her memorial eyes, i thought only of themand of her. i wedded;nor dreaded the curse i had invoked; and its bitterness was not visited upon me. and oncebut once again in the silence of the night; there came through my lattice the soft sighs which had forsaken me; and they modelled themselves into familiar and sweet voice, saying: "sleep in peace!for the spirit of love reigneth and ruleth, and, in taking to thy passionate heart her who is ermengarde, thou art absolved, for reasons which shall be made known to thee in heaven, of thy vows unto eleonora." the end . 1827 song by edgar allan poe song i saw thee on thy bridal day when a burning blush came o'er thee, though happiness around thee lay, the world all love before thee: and in thine eye a kindling light (whatever it might be) was all on earth my aching sight of loveliness could see. that blush, perhaps, was maiden shame as such it well may pass though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame in the breast of him, alas! who saw thee on that bridal day, when that deep blush would come o'er thee, though happiness around thee lay; the world all love before thee. -the end. 1849 eldorado by edgar allan poe eldorado gaily bedight, a gallant knight, in sunshine and in shadow, had journeyed long, singing a song, in search of eldorado. but he grew old this knight so bold and o'er his heart a shadow fell as he found no spot of ground that looked like eldorado. and, as his strength failed him at length, he met a pilgrim shadow "shadow," said he, "where can it be this land of eldorado?" "over the mountains of the moon, down the valley of the shadow, ride, boldly ride," the shade replied "if you seek for eldorado!" -the end. 1845 eulalie by edgar allan poe eulalie i dwelt alone in a world of moan, and my soul was a stagnant tide, till the fair and gentle eulalie became my blushing bride till the yellow-haired young eulalie became my smiling bride. ah, lessless bright the stars of the night than the eyes of the radiant girl! that the vapor can make with the moon-tints of purple and pearl, can vie with the modest eulalie's most unregarded curl can compare with the bright-eyed eulalie's most humble and careless curl. now doubtnow pain come never again, for her soul gives me sigh for sigh, and all day long shines, bright and strong, astarte within the sky, while ever to her dear eulalie upturns her matron eye while ever to her young eulalie upturns her violet eye. -the end. "ayala's angel": electronic edition this text is based on the public domain tei edition prepared at the oxford text archive. it was converted to ascii by internet wiretap on 18 may 1993. iw is solely responsible for changes. a-1377-c: ayala's angel. ed. david skilton. london, 1989: folio society. depositor: joe whitlock blundell, the folio society. [on rlin] distributor of tei edition: oxford text archive, oxford university computing services, 13 banbury road, oxford ox2 6nn; archive@ox.ac.uk freely available for non-commercial use provided that this header is included in its entirety with any copy distributed. 11 may 1993 first edition published in 1881 ayala's angel by anthony trollope chapter 1 the two sisters when egbert dormer died he left his two daughters utterly penniless upon the world, and it must be said of egbert dormer that nothing else could have been expected of him. the two girls were both pretty, but lucy, who was twenty-one, was supposed to be simple and comparatively unattractive, whereas ayala was credited -as her somewhat romantic name might show -with poetic charm and a taste for romance. ayala when her father died was nineteen. we must begin yet a little earlier and say that there had been -and had died many years before the death of egbert dormer -a clerk in the admiralty, by name reginald dosett, who, and whose wife, had been conspicuous for personal beauty. their charms were gone, but the records of them had been left in various grandchildren. there had been a son born to mr dosett, who was also a reginald and a clerk in the admiralty, and who also, in his turn, had been a handsome man. with him, in his decadence, the reader will become acquainted. there were also two daughters, whose reputation for perfect feminine beauty had never been contested. the elder had married a city man of wealth -of wealth when he married her, but who had become enormously wealthy by the time of our story. he had when he married been simply mister, but was now sir thomas tringle, baronet, and was senior partner in the great firm of travers and treason. of traverses and treasons there were none left in these days, and mr tringle was supposed to manipulate all the millions with which the great firm in lombard street was concerned. he had married old mr dosett's eldest daughter, emmeline, who was now lady tringle, with a house at the top of queen's gate, rented at l#1,500 a year, with a palatial moor in scotland, with a seat in sussex, and as many carriages and horses as would suit an archduchess. lady tringle had everything in the world; a son, two daughters, and an open-handed stout husband, who was said to have told her that money was a matter of no consideration. the second miss dosett, adelaide dosett, who had been considerably younger than her sister, had insisted upon giving herself to egbert dormer the artist, whose death we commemorated in our first line. but she had died before her husband. they who remembered the two miss dosetts as girls were wont to declare that, though lady tringle might, perhaps, have had the advantage in perfection of feature and in unequalled symmetry, adelaide had been the more attractive from expression and brilliancy. to her lord sizes had offered his hand and coronet, promising to abandon for her sake all the haunts of his matured life. to her mr tringle had knelt before he had taken the elder sister. for her mr progrum, the popular preacher of the day, for a time so totally lost himself that he was nearly minded to go over to rome. she was said to have had offers from a widowed lord chancellor and from a russian prince. her triumphs would have quite obliterated that of her sister had she not insisted on marrying egbert dormer. then there had been, and still was, reginald dosett, the son of old dosett, and the eldest of the family. he too had married, and was now living with his wife; but to them had no children been born, luckily, as he was a poor man. alas, to a beautiful son it is not often that beauty can be a fortune as to a daughter. young reginald dosett -he is anything now but young -had done but little for himself with his beauty, having simply married the estimable daughter of a brother clerk. now, at the age of fifty, he had his l#900 a year from his office, and might have lived in fair comfort had he not allowed a small millstone of debt to hang round his neck from his earlier years. but still he lived creditably in a small but very genteel house at notting hill, and would have undergone any want rather than have declared himself to be a poor man to his rich relations the tringles. such were now the remaining two children of old mr dosett -lady tringle, namely, and reginald dosett, the clerk in the admiralty. adelaide, the beauty in chief of the family, was gone; and now also her husband, the improvident artist, had followed his wife. dormer had been by no means a failing artist. he had achieved great honour -had at an early age been accepted into the royal academy -had sold pictures to illustrious princes and more illustrious dealers, had been engraved and had lived to see his own works resold at five times their original prices. egbert dormer might also have been a rich man. but he had a taste for other beautiful things besides a wife. the sweetest little phaeton that was to cost nothing, the most perfect bijou of a little house at south kensington -he had boasted that it might have been packed without trouble in his brother-in-law tringle's dining-room -the simplest little gem for his wife, just a blue set of china for his dinner table, just a painted cornice for his studio, just satin hangings for his drawing-room -and a few simple ornaments for his little girls; these with a few rings for himself, and velvet suits of clothing in which to do his painting; these, with a few little dinner parties to show off his blue china, were the first and last of his extravagances. but when he went, and when his pretty things were sold, there was not enough to cover his debts. there was, however, a sweet savour about his name. when he died it was said of him that his wife's death had killed him. he had dropped his palette, refused to finish the ordered portrait of a princess, and had simply turned himself round and died. then there were the two daughters, lucy and ayala. it should be explained that though a proper family intercourse had always been maintained between the three families, the tringles, the dormers, and the dosetts, there had never been cordiality between the first and the two latter. the wealth of the tringles had seemed to convey with it a fetid odour. egbert dormer, with every luxury around him which money could purchase, had affected to despise the heavy magnificence of the tringles. it may be that he affected a fashion higher than that which the tringles really attained. reginald dosett, who was neither brilliant nor fashionable, was in truth independent, and, perhaps, a little thin-skinned. he would submit to no touch of arrogance from sir thomas; and sir thomas seemed to carry arrogance in his brow and in his paunch. it was there rather, perhaps, than in his heart; but there are men to whom a knack of fumbling their money in their pockets and of looking out from under penthouse brows over an expanse of waistcoat, gives an air of overweening pride which their true idiosyncracies may not justify. to dosett had, perhaps, been spoken a word or two which on some occasion he had inwardly resented, and from thenceforward he had ever been ready to league with dormer against the "bullionaire", as they agreed to call sir thomas. lady tringle had even said a word to her sister, mrs dormer, as to expenses, and that had never been forgiven by the artist. so things were when mrs dormer died first; and so they remained when her husband followed her. then there arose a sudden necessity for action, which, for a while, brought reginald dosett into connexion with sir thomas and lady tringle. something must be done for the poor girls. that the something should come out of the pocket of sir thomas would have seemed to be natural. money with him was no object -not at all. another girl or two would be nothing to him -as regarded simple expenditure. but the care of a human being is an important matter, and so sir thomas knew. dosett had not a child at all, and would be the better for such a windfall. dosett he supposed to be -in his, dosett's way -fairly well off. so he made this proposition. he would take one girl and let dosett take the other. to this lady tringle added her proviso, that she should have the choice. to her nerves affairs of taste were of such paramount importance! to this dosett yielded. the matter was decided in lady tringle's back drawing-room. mrs dosett was not even consulted in that matter of choice, having already acknowledged the duty of mothering a motherless child. dosett had thought that the bullionaire should have said a word as to some future provision for the penniless girl, for whom he would be able to do so little. but sir thomas had said no such word, and dosett, himself, lacked both the courage and the coarseness to allude to the matter. then lady tringle declared that she must have ayala, and so the matter was settled. ayala the romantic; ayala the poetic! it was a matter of course that ayala should be chosen. ayala had already been made intimate with the magnificent saloons of the tringles, and had been felt by lady tringle to be an attraction. her long dark black locks, which had never hitherto been tucked up, which were never curled, which were never so long as to be awkward, were already known as being the loveliest locks in london. she sang as though nature had intended her to be a singing-bird -requiring no education, no labour. she had been once for three months in paris, and french had come naturally to her. her father had taught her something of his art, and flatterers had already begun to say that she was born to be the one great female artist of the world. her hands, her feet, her figure were perfect. though she was as yet but nineteen, london had already begun to talk about ayala dormer. of course lady tringle chose ayala, not remembering at the moment that her own daughters might probably be superseded by their cousin. and, therefore, as lady tringle said herself to lucy with her sweetest smile -mrs dosett had chosen lucy. the two girls were old enough to know something of the meaning of such a choice. ayala, the younger, was to be adopted into immense wealth, and lucy was to be given up to comparative poverty. she knew nothing of her uncle dosett's circumstances, but the genteel house at notting hill -no. 3, kingsbury crescent -was known to her, and was but a poor affair as compared even with the bijou in which she had hitherto lived. her aunt dosett never rose to any vehicle beyond a four-wheeler, and was careful even in thinking of that accommodation. ayala would be whirled about the park by a wire-wig and a pair of brown horses which they had heard it said were not to be matched in london. ayala would be carried with her aunt and her cousin to the show-room of madame tonsonville, the great french milliner of bond street, whereas she, lucy, might too probably be called on to make her own gowns. all the fashion of queen's gate, something, perhaps, of the fashion of eaton square, would be open to ayala. lucy understood enough to know that ayala's own charms might probably cause still more august gates to be opened to her, whereas aunt dosett entered no gates. it was quite natural that ayala should be chosen. lucy acknowledged as much to herself. but they were sisters, and had been so near! by what a chasm would they be dissevered, now so far asunder! lucy herself was a lovely girl, and knew her own loveliness. she was fairer than ayala, somewhat taller, and much more quiet in her demeanour. she was also clever, but her cleverness did not show itself so quickly. she was a musician, whereas her sister could only sing. she could really draw, whereas her sister would rush away into effects in which the drawing was not always very excellent. lucy was doing the best she could for herself, knowing something of french and german, though as yet not very fluent with her tongue. the two girls were, in truth, both greatly gifted; but ayala had the gift of showing her talent without thought of showing it. lucy saw it all, and knew that she was outshone; but how great had been the price of the outshining! the artist's house had been badly ordered, and the two girls were of better disposition and better conduct than might have been expected from such fitful training. ayala had been the father's pet and lucy the mother's. parents do ill in making pets, and here they had done ill. ayala had been taught to think herself the favourite, because the artist, himself, had been more prominent before the world than his wife. but the evil had not been lasting enough to have made bad feeling between the sisters. lucy knew that her sister had been preferred to her, but she had been self-denying enough to be aware that some such preference was due to ayala. she, too, admired ayala, and loved her with her whole heart. and ayala was always good to her -had tried to divide everything -had assumed no preference as a right. the two were true sisters. but when it was decided that lucy was to go to kingsbury crescent the difference was very great. the two girls, on their father's death, had been taken to the great red brick house in queen's gate, and from hence, three or four days after the funeral, lucy was to be transferred to her aunt dosett. hitherto there had been little between them but weeping for their father. now had come the hour of parting. the tidings had been communicated to lucy, and to lucy alone, by aunt tringle -"as you are the eldest, dear, we think that you will be best able to be a comfort to your aunt," said lady tringle. "i will do the best i can, aunt emmeline," said lucy, declaring to herself that, in giving such a reason, her aunt was lying basely. "i am sure you will. poor dear ayala is younger than her cousins, and will be more subject to them." so in truth was lucy younger than her cousins, but of that she said nothing. "i am sure you will agree with me that it is best that we should have the youngest." "perhaps it is, aunt emmeline." "sir thomas would not have had it any other way," said lady tringle, with a little severity, feeling that lucy's accord had hardly been as generous as it should be. but she recovered herself quickly, remembering how much it was that ayala was to get, how much that lucy was to lose. "but, my dear, we shall see you very often, you know. it is not so far across the park; and when we do have a few parties again -" "oh, aunt, i am not thinking of that." "of course not. we can none of us think of it just now. but when the time does come of course we shall always have you, just as if you were one of us." then her aunt gave her a roll of bank-notes, a little present of twenty-five pounds, to begin the world with, and told her that the carriage should take her to kingsbury crescent on the following morning. on the whole lucy behaved well and left a pleasant impression on her aunt's mind. the difference between queen's gate and kingsbury crescent -between queen's gate and kingsbury crescent for life -was indeed great! "i wish it were you, with all my heart," said ayala, clinging to her sister. "it could not have been me." "why not!" "because you are so pretty and you are so clever." "no!" "yes! if we were to be separated of course it would be so. do not suppose, dear, that i am disappointed." "i am." "if i can only like aunt margaret," -aunt margaret was mrs dosett, with whom neither of the girls had hitherto become intimate, and who was known to be quiet, domestic, and economical, but who had also been spoken of as having a will of her own -"i shall do better with her than you would, ayala." "i don't see why." "because i can remain quiet longer than you. it will be very quiet. i wonder how we shall see each other! i cannot walk across the park alone." "uncle reg will bring you." "not often, i fear. uncle reg has enough to do with his office. "you can come in a cab." "cabs cost money, ayey dear." "but uncle thomas -" "we had better understand one or two things, ayala. uncle thomas will pay everything for you, and as he is very rich things will come as they are wanted. there will be cabs, and if not cabs, carriages. uncle reg must pay for me, and he is very very kind to do so. but as he is not rich, there will be no carriages, and not a great many cabs. it is best to understand it all." "but they will send for you." "that's as they please. i don't think they will very often. i would not for the world put you against uncle thomas, but i have a feeling that i shall never get on with him. but you will never separate yourself from me, ayala!" "separate myself!" "you will not -not be my sister because you will be one of these rich ones?" "oh, i wish -i wish that i were to be the poor one. i'm sure i should like it best. i never cared about being rich. oh, lucy, can't we make them change?" "no, ayey, my own, we can't make them change. and if we could, we wouldn't. it is altogether best that you should be a rich tringle and that i should be a poor dosett." "i will always be a dormer," said ayala, proudly. "and i will always be so too, my pet. but you should be a bright dormer among the tringles, and i will be a dull dormer among the dosetts. i shall begrudge nothing, if only we can see each other." so the two girls were parted, the elder being taken away to kingsbury crescent and the latter remaining with her rich relations at queen's gate. ayala had not probably realized the great difference of their future positions. to her the attractions of wealth and the privations of comparative poverty had not made themselves as yet palpably plain. they do not become so manifest to those to whom the wealth falls -at any rate, not in early life -as to the opposite party. if the other lot had fallen to ayala she might have felt it more keenly. lucy felt it keenly enough. without any longing after the magnificence of the tringle mansion she knew how great was the fall from her father's well-assorted luxuries and prettinesses down to the plain walls, tables, and chairs of her uncle dosett's house. her aunt did not subscribe to mudie's. the old piano had not been tuned for the last ten years. the parlour-maid was a cross old woman. her aunt always sat in the dining-room through the greater part of the day, and of all rooms the dining-room in kingsbury crescent was the dingiest. lucy understood very well to what she was going. her father and mother were gone. her sister was divided from her. her life offered for the future nothing to her. but with it all she carried a good courage. there was present to her an idea of great misfortune; but present to her at the same time an idea also that she would do her duty. chapter 2 lucy with her aunt dosett for some days lucy found herself to be absolutely crushed -in the first place, by a strong resolution to do some disagreeable duty, and then by a feeling that there was no duty the doing of which was within her reach. it seemed to her that her whole life was a blank. her father's house had been a small affair and considered to be poor when compared with the tringle mansion, but she now became aware that everything there had in truth abounded. in one little room there had been two or three hundred beautifully bound books. that mudie's unnumbered volumes should come into the house as they were wanted had almost been as much a provision of nature as water, gas, and hot rolls for breakfast. a piano of the best kind, and always in order, had been a first necessary of life, and, like other necessaries, of course, forthcoming. there had been the little room in which the girls painted, joining their father's studio and sharing its light, surrounded by every pretty female appliance. then there had always been visitors. the artists from kensington had been wont to gather there, and the artists' daughters, and perhaps the artists' sons. every day had had its round of delights -its round of occupations, as the girls would call them. there had been some reading, some painting, some music -perhaps a little needlework and a great deal of talking. how little do we know how other people live in the houses close to us! we see the houses looking like our own, and we see the people come out of them looking like ourselves. but a chinaman is not more different from the english john bull than is no. 10 from no. 11. here there are books, paintings, music, wine, a little dilettanti getting-up of subjects of the day, a little dilettanti thinking on great affairs, perhaps a little dilettanti religion; few domestic laws, and those easily broken; few domestic duties, and those easily evaded; breakfast when you will, with dinner almost as little binding, with much company and acknowledged aptitude for idle luxury. that is life at no. 10. at no. 11 everything is cased in iron. there shall be equal plenty, but at no. 11 even plenty is a bondage. duty rules everything, and it has come to be acknowledged that duty is to be hard. so many hours of needlework, so many hours of books, so many hours of prayer! that all the household shall shiver before daylight, is a law, the breach of which by any member either augurs sickness or requires condign punishment. to be comfortable is a sin; to laugh is almost equal to bad language. such and so various is life at no. 10 and at no. 11. from one extremity, as far removed, to another poor lucy had been conveyed; though all the laws were not exactly carried out in kingsbury crescent as they have been described at no. 11. the enforced prayers were not there, nor the early hours. it was simply necessary that lucy should be down to breakfast at nine, and had she not appeared nothing violent would have been said. but it was required of her that she should endure a life which was altogether without adornment. uncle dosett himself, as a clerk in the admiralty, had a certain position in the world which was sufficiently maintained by decent apparel, a well-kept, slight, grey whisker, and an umbrella which seemed never to have been violated by use. dosett was popular at his office, and was regarded by his brother clerks as a friend. but no one was acquainted with his house and home. they did not dine with him, nor he with them. there are such men in all public offices -not the less respected because of the quiescence of their lives. it was known of him that he had burdens, though it was not known what his burdens were. his friends, therefore, were intimate with him as far as the entrance into somerset house -where his duties lay -and not beyond it. lucy was destined to know the other side of his affairs, the domestic side, which was as quiet as the official side. the link between them, which consisted of a journey by the underground railway to the temple station, and a walk home along the embankment and across the parks and kensington gardens, was the pleasantest part of dosett's life. mr dosett's salary has been said to be l#900 per annum. what a fund of comfort there is in the word! when the youth of nineteen enters an office how far beyond want would he think himself should he ever reach the pecuniary paradise of l#900 a year! how he would see all his friends, and in return be seen of them! but when the income has been achieved its capabilities are found to be by no means endless. and dosett in the earlier spheres of his married life had unfortunately anticipated something of such comforts. for a year or two he had spent a little money imprudently. something which he had expected had not come to him; and, as a result, he had been forced to borrow, and to insure his life for the amount borrowed. then, too, when that misfortune as to the money came -came from the non-realization of certain claims which his wife had been supposed to possess -provision had also to be made for her. in this way an assurance office eat up a large fraction of his income, and left him with means which in truth were very straitened. dosett at once gave up all glories of social life, settled himself in kingsbury crescent, and resolved to satisfy himself with his walk across the park and his frugal dinner afterwards. he never complained to anyone, nor did his wife. he was a man small enough to be contented with a thin existence, but far too great to ask anyone to help him to widen it. sir thomas tringle never heard of that l#175 paid annually to the assurance office, nor had lady tringle, dosett's sister, even heard of it. when it was suggested to him that he should take one of the dormer girls, he consented to take her and said nothing of the assurance office. mrs dosett had had her great blow in life, and had suffered more perhaps than her husband. this money had been expected. there had been no doubt of the money -at any rate on her part. it did not depend on an old gentleman with or without good intentions, but simply on his death. there was to be ever so much of it, four or five hundred a year, which would last for ever. when the old gentleman died, which took place some ten years after dosett's marriage, it was found that the money, tied tight as it had been by half a dozen lawyers, had in some fashion vanished. whither it had gone is little to our purpose, but it had gone. then there came a great crash upon the dosetts, which she for a while had been hardly able to endure. but when she had collected herself together after the crash, and had made up her mind, as had dosett also, to the nature of the life which they must in future lead, she became more stringent in it even than he. he could bear and say nothing; but she, in bearing, found herself compelled to say much. it had been her fault -the fault of people on her side -and she would fain have fed her husband with the full flowery potato while she ate only the rind. she told him, unnecessarily, over and over again, that she had ruined him by her marriage. no such idea was ever in his head. the thing had come, and so it must be. there was food to eat, potatoes enough for both, and a genteel house in which to live. he could still be happy if she would not groan. a certain amount of groaning she did postpone while in his presence. the sewing of seams, and the darning of household linen, which in his eyes amounted to groaning, was done in his absence. after their genteel dinner he would sleep a little, and she would knit. he would have his glass of wine, but would make his bottle of port last almost for a week. this was the house to which lucy dormer was brought when mr dosett had consented to share with sir thomas the burden left by the death of the improvident artist. when a month passed by lucy began to think that time itself would almost drive her mad. her father had died early in september. the tringles had then, of course, been out of town, but sir thomas and his wife had found themselves compelled to come up on such an occasion. something they knew must be done about the girls, and they had not chosen that that something should be done in their absence. mr dosett was also enjoying his official leave of absence for the year, but was enjoying it within the economical precincts of kingsbury crescent. there was but seldom now an excursion for him or his wife to the joys of the country. once, some years ago, they had paid a visit to the palatial luxuries of glenbogie, but the delights of the place had not paid for the expense of the long journey. they, therefore, had been at hand to undertake their duties. dosett and tringle, with a score of artists, had followed poor dormer to his grave in kensal green, and then dosett and tringle had parted again, probably not to see each other for another term of years. "my dear, what do you like to do with your time?" mrs dosett said to her niece, after the first week. at this time lucy's wardrobe was not yet of a nature to need much work over its ravages. the dormer girls had hardly known where their frocks had come from when they wanted frocks -hardly with more precision than the tringle girls. frocks had come -dark, gloomy frocks, lately, alas! and these, too, had now come a second time. let creditors be ever so unsatisfied, new raiment will always be found for mourning families. everything about lucy was nearly new. the need of repairing would come upon her by degrees, but it had not come as yet. therefore there had seemed, to the anxious aunt, to be a necessity for some such question as the above. "i'll do anything you like, aunt," said lucy. "it is not for me, my dear. i get through a deal of work, and am obliged to do so." she was, at this time, sitting with a sheet in her lap, which she was turning. lucy had, indeed, once offered to assist, but her assistance had been rejected. this had been two days since, and she had not renewed the proposal as she should have done. this had been mainly from bashfulness. though the work would certainly be distasteful to her, she would do it. but she had not liked to seem to interfere, not having as yet fallen into the ways of intimacy with her aunt. "i don't want to burden you with my task-work," continued mrs dosett, "but i am afraid you seem to be listless." "i was reading till just before you spoke," said lucy, again turning her eyes to the little volume of poetry, which was one of the few treasures which she had brought away with her from her old home. "reading is very well, but i do not like it as an excuse, lucy." lucy's anger boiled within her when she was told of an excuse, and she declared to herself that she could never like her aunt. "i am quite sure that for young girls, as well as for old women, there must be a great deal of waste time unless there be needle and thread always about. and i know, too, unless ladies are well off, they cannot afford to waste time any more than gentlemen." in the whole course of her life nothing so much like scolding as this had ever been addressed to her. so at least thought lucy at that moment. mrs dosett had intended the remarks all in good part, thinking them to be simply fitting from an aunt to a niece. it was her duty to give advice, and for the giving of such advice some day must be taken as the beginning. she had purposely allowed a week to run by, and now she had spoken her word -as she thought in good season. to lucy it was a new and most bitter experience. though she was reading the idylls of the king, or pretending to read them, she was, in truth, thinking of all that had gone from her. her mind had, at that moment, been intent upon her mother, who, in all respects, had been so different from this careful, sheet-darning housewife of a woman. and in thinking of her mother there had no doubt been regrets for many things of which she would not have ventured to speak as sharing her thoughts with the memory of her mother, but which were nevertheless there to add darkness to the retrospective. everything behind had been so bright, and everything behind had gone away from her! everything before was so gloomy, and everything before must last for so long! after her aunt's lecture about wasted time lucy sat silent for a few minutes, and then burst into uncontrolled tears. "i did not mean to vex you," said her aunt. "i was thinking of my -darling, darling mamma," sobbed lucy. "of course, lucy, you will think of her. how should you not? and of your father. those are sorrows which must be borne. but sorrows such as those are much lighter to the busy than to the idle. i sometimes think that the labourers grieve less for those they love than we do just because they have not time to grieve." "i wish i were a labourer then," said lucy, through her tears. "you may be if you will. the sooner you begin to be a labourer the better for yourself and for those about you." that aunt dosett's voice was harsh was not her fault -nor that in the obduracy of her daily life she had lost much of her original softness. she had simply meant to be useful, and to do her duty; but in telling lucy that it would be better that the labouring should be commenced at once for the sake of "those about you' -who could only be aunt dosett herself -she had seemed to the girl to be harsh, selfish, and almost unnatural. the volume of poetry fell from her hand, and she jumped up from the chair quickly. "give it me at once," she said, taking hold of the sheet -which was not itself a pleasant object; lucy had never seen such a thing at the bijou. "give it me at once," she said, and clawed the long folds of linen nearly out of her aunt's lap. "i did not mean anything of the kind," said aunt dosett. "you should not take me up in that way. i am speaking only for your good, because i know that you should not dawdle away your existence. leave the sheet." lucy did leave the sheet, and then, sobbing violently, ran out of the room up to her own chamber. mrs dosett determined that she would not follow her. she partly forgave the girl because of her sorrows, partly reminded herself that she was not soft and facile as had been her sister-in-law, lucy's mother; and then, as she continued her work, she assured herself that it would be best to let her niece have her cry out upstairs. lucy's violence had astonished her for a moment, but she had taught herself to think it best to allow such little ebullitions to pass off by themselves. lucy, when she was alone, flung herself upon her bed in absolute agony. she thought that she had misbehaved, and yet how cruel -how harsh had been her aunt's words! if she, the quiet one, had misbehaved, what would ayala have done? and how was she to find strength with which to look forward to the future? she struggled hard with herself for a resolution. should she determine that she would henceforward darn sheets morning, noon, and night till she worked her fingers to the bone? perhaps there had been something of truth in that assertion of her aunt's that the labourers have no time to grieve. as everything else was shut out from her, it might be well for her to darn sheets. should she rush down penitent and beg her aunt to allow her to commence at once? she would have done it as far as the sheets were concerned, but she could not do it as regarded her aunt. she could put herself into unison with the crumpled soiled linen, but not with the hard woman. oh, how terrible was the change! her father and her mother who had been so gentle to her! all the sweet prettinesses of her life! all her occupations, all her friends, all her delights! even ayala was gone from her! how was she to bear it? she begrudged ayala nothing -no, nothing. but yet it was hard! ayala was to have everything. aunt emmeline -though they had not hitherto been very fond of aunt emmeline -was sweetness itself as compared with this woman. "the sooner you begin to labour the better for yourself and those about you." would it not have been fitter that she should have been sent at once to some actual poorhouse in which there would have been no mistake as to her position? that it should all have been decided for her for her and ayala, not by any will of their own, not by any concert between themselves, but simply by the fantasy of another! why should she thus be made a slave to the fantasy of anyone! let ayala have her uncle's wealth and her aunt's palaces at her command, and she would walk out simply a pauper into the world -into some workhouse, so that at least she need not be obedient to the harsh voice and the odious common sense of her aunt dosett! but how should she take herself to some workhouse? in what way could she prove her right to be admitted even then? it seemed to her that the same decree which had admitted ayala into the golden halls of the fairies had doomed her not only to poverty, but to slavery. there was no escape for her from her aunt and her aunt's sermons. "oh, ayala, my darling -my own one; oh, ayala, if you did but know!" she said to herself. what would ayala think, how would ayala bear it, could she but guess by what a gulf was her heaven divided from her sister's hell! "i will never tell her," she said to herself. "i will die, and she shall never know." as she lay there sobbing all the gilded things of the world were beautiful in her eyes. alas, yes, it was true. the magnificence of the mansion at queen's gate, the glories of glenbogie, the closely studied comforts of merle park, as the place in sussex was called, all the carriages and horses, madame tonsonville and all the draperies, the seats at the albert hall into which she had been accustomed to go with as much ease as into her bedroom, the box at the opera, the pretty furniture, the frequent gems, even the raiment which would make her pleasing to the eyes of men whom she would like to please -all these things grew in her eyes and became beautiful. no. 3, kingsbury crescent, was surely, of all places on the earth's surface, the most ugly. and yet -yet she had endeavoured to do her duty. "if it had been the workhouse i could have borne it," she said to herself; "but not to be the slave of my aunt dosett!" again she appealed to her sister, "oh, ayala, if you did but know it!" then she remembered herself, declaring that it might have been worse to ayala than even to her. "if one had to bear it, it was better for me," she said, as she struggled to prepare herself for her uncle's dinner. chapter 3 lucy's troubles the evening after the affair with the sheet went off quietly, as did many days and many evenings. mrs dosett was wise enough to forget the little violence and to forget also the feeling which had been displayed. when lucy first asked for some household needlework, which she did with a faltering voice and shame-faced remembrance of her fault, her aunt took it all in good part and gave her a task somewhat lighter as a beginning than the handling of a sheet. lucy sat at it and suffered. she went on sitting and suffering. she told herself that she was a martyr at every stitch she made. as she occupied the seat opposite to her aunt's accustomed chair she would hardly speak at all, but would keep her mind always intent on ayala and the joys of ayala's life. that they who had been born together, sisters, with equal fortunes, who had so closely lived together, should be sundered so utterly one from the other; that the one should be so exalted and the other so debased! and why? what justice had there been? could it be from heaven or even from earth that the law had gone forth for such a division of the things of the world between them? "you have got very little to say to a person," said aunt dosett, one morning. this, too, was a reproach. this, too, was scolding. and yet aunt dosett had intended to be as pleasant as she knew how. "i have very little to say," replied lucy, with repressed anger. "but why?" "because i am stupid," said lucy. "stupid people can't talk. you should have had ayala." "i hope you do not envy ayala her fortune, lucy?" a woman with any tact would not have asked such a question at such a time. she should have felt that a touch of such irony might he natural, and that unless it were expressed loudly, or shown actively, it might be left to be suppressed by affection and time. but she, as she had grown old, had taught herself to bear disappointment, and thought it wise to teach lucy to do the same. "envy!" said lucy, not passionately, but after a little pause for thought. "i sometimes think it is very hard to know what envy is." "envy, hatred, and malice," said mrs dosett, hardly knowing what she meant by the use of the well-worn words. "i do know what hatred and malice are," said lucy. "do you think i hate ayala?" "i am sure you do not." "or that i bear her malice?" "certainly not." "if i had the power to take anything from her, would i do it? i love ayala with my whole heart. whatever be my misery i would rather bear it than let ayala have even a share of it. whatever good things she may have i would not rob her even of a part of them. if there be joy and sorrow to be divided between us i would wish to have the sorrow so that she might have the joy. that is not hatred and malice." mrs dosett looked at her over her spectacles. this was the girl who had declared that she could not speak because she was too stupid! "but, when you ask me whether i envy her, i hardly know," continued lucy. "i think one does covet one's neighbour's house, in spite of the tenth commandment, even though one does not want to steal it." mrs dosett repented herself that she had given rise to any conversation at all. silence, absolute silence, the old silence which she had known for a dozen years before lucy had come to her, would have been better than this. she was very angry, more angry than she had ever yet been with lucy; and yet she was afraid to show her anger. was this the girl's gratitude for all that her uncle was doing for her -for shelter, food, comfort, for all that she had in the world? mrs dosett knew, though lucy did not, of the little increased pinchings which had been made necessary by the advent of another inmate in the house; so many pounds of the meat in the week, and so much bread, and so much tea and sugar! it had all been calculated. in genteel houses such calculation must often be made. and when by degrees -degrees very quick -the garments should become worn which lucy had brought with her, there must be something taken from the tight-fitting income for that need. arrangements had already been made of which lucy knew nothing, and already the two glasses of port wine a day had been knocked off from poor mr dosett's comforts. his wife had sobbed in despair when he had said that it should be so. he had declared gin and water to be as supporting as port wine, and the thing had been done. lucy inwardly had been disgusted by the gin and water, knowing nothing of its history. her father, who had not always been punctual in paying his wine-merchant's bills, would not have touched gin and water, would not have allowed it to contaminate his table. everything in mr dosett's house was paid for weekly. and now lucy, who had been made welcome to all that the genteel house could afford, who had been taken in as a child, had spoken of her lot as one which was all sorrowful. bad as it is -this living in kingsbury crescent -i would rather bear it myself than subject ayala to such misery! it was thus that she had, in fact, spoken of her new home when she had found it necessary to defend her feelings towards her sister. it was impossible that her aunt should be altogether silent under such treatment. "we have done the best for you that is in our power, lucy," she said, with a whole load of reproach in her tone. "have i complained, aunt?" "i thought you did." "oh, no! you asked me whether i envied ayala. what was i to say? perhaps i should have said nothing, but the idea of envying ayala was painful to me. of course she -" "well?" "i had better say nothing more, aunt. if i were to pretend to be cheerful i should be false. it is as yet only a few weeks since papa died." then the work went on in silence between them for the next hour. and the work went on in solemn silence between them through the winter. it came to pass that the sole excitement of lucy's life came from ayala's letters -the sole excitement except a meeting which took place between the sisters one day. when lucy was taken to kingsbury crescent ayala was at once carried down to glenbogie, and from thence there came letters twice a week for six weeks. ayala's letters, too, were full of sorrow. she, too, had lost her mother, her father, and her sister. moreover, in her foolish petulance she said things of her aunt emmeline, and of the girls, and of sir thomas, which ought not to have been written of those who were kind to her. her cousin tom, too, she ridiculed -tom tringle, the son and heir -saying that he was a lout who endeavoured to make eyes at her. oh, how distasteful, how vulgar they were after all that she had known. perhaps the eldest girl, augusta, was the worst. she did not think that she could put up with the assumed authority of augusta. gertrude was better, but a simpleton. ayala declared herself to be sad at heart. but then the sweet scenery of glenbogie, and the colour of the moors, and the glorious heights of ben alchan, made some amends. even in her sorrow she would rave about the beauties of glenbogie. lucy, as she read the letters, told herself that ayala's grief was a grief to be borne, a grief almost to be enjoyed. to sit and be sad with a stream purling by you, how different from the sadness of that dining-room in the crescent. to look out upon the glories of a mountain, while a tear would now and again force itself into the eye, how much less bitter than the falling of salt drops over a tattered towel. lucy, in her answers, endeavoured to repress the groans of her spirit. in the first place she did acknowledge that it did not become her to speak ill of those who were, in truth, her benefactors; and then she was anxious not to declare to ayala her feeling of the injustice by which their two lots had been defined to them. though she had failed to control herself once or twice in speaking to her aunt she did control herself in writing her letters. she would never, never, write a word which should make ayala unnecessarily unhappy. on that she was determined. she would say nothing to explain to ayala the unutterable tedium of that downstairs parlour in which they passed their lives, lest ayala should feel herself to be wounded by the luxurious comforts around her. it was thus she wrote. then there came a time in which they were to meet -just at the beginning of november. the tringles were going to rome. they generally did go somewhere. glenbogie, merle park, and the house in queen's gate, were not enough for the year. sir thomas was to take them to rome, and then return to london for the manipulation of the millions in lombard street. he generally did remain nine months out of the twelve in town, because of the millions, making his visits at merle park very short; but lady tringle found that change of air was good for the girls. it was her intention now to remain at rome for two or three months. the party from scotland reached queen's gate late one saturday evening, and intended to start early on the monday. to ayala, who had made it quite a matter of course that she should see her sister, lady tringle had said that in that case a carriage must be sent across. it was awkward, because there were no carriages in london. she had thought that they had all intended to pass through london just as though they were not stopping. sunday, she had thought, was not to be regarded as being a day at all. then ayala flashed up. she had flashed up some times before. was it supposed that she was not going to see lucy? carriage! she would walk across kensington gardens, and find the house out all by herself. she would spend the whole day with lucy, and come back alone in a cab. she was strong enough, at any rate, to have her way so far, that a carriage, wherever it came from, was sent for lucy about three in the afternoon, and did take her back to kingsbury crescent after dinner. then at last the sisters were together in ayala's bedroom. "and now tell me about everything," said ayala. but lucy was resolved that she would not tell anything. "i am so wretched!" that would have been all; but she would not tell her wretchedness. "we are so quiet in kingsbury crescent," she said,; "you have so much more to talk of." "oh, lucy, i do not like it." "not your aunt?" "she is not the worst, though she sometimes is hard to bear. i can't tell you what it is, but they all seem to think so much of themselves. in the first place they never will say a word about papa." "perhaps that is from feeling, ayey." "no, it is not. one would know that. but they look down upon papa, who had more in his little finger than they have with all their money." "then i should hold my tongue." "so i do -about him; but it is very hard. and then augusta has a way with me, as though she had a right to order me. i certainly will not be ordered by augusta. you never ordered me." "dear ayey!" "augusta is older than you -of course, ever so much. they make her out twenty-three at her last birthday, but she is twenty-four. but that is not difference enough for ordering -certainly between cousins. i do hate augusta." "i would not hate her." "how is one to help oneself? she has a way of whispering to gertrude, and to her mother, when i am there, which almost kills me. 'if you'll only give me notice i'll go out of the room at once,' i said the other day, and they were all so angry." "i would not make them angry if i were you, ayey." "why not?" "not sir thomas, or aunt emmeline." "i don't care a bit for sir thomas. i am not sure but he is the most good-natured, though he is so podgy. of course, when aunt emmeline tells me anything i do it." "it is so important that you should be on good terms with them." "i don't see it at all," said ayala, flashing round. "aunt emmeline can do so much for you. we have nothing of our own -you and i." "am i to sell myself because they have got money! no, indeed! no one despises money so much as i do. i will never be other to them than if i had the money, and they were the poor relations." "that will not do, ayey." "i will make it do. they may turn me out if they like. of course, i know that i should obey my aunt, and so i will. if sir thomas told me anything i should do it. but not augusta." then, while lucy was thinking how she might best put into soft words advice which was so clearly needed, ayala declared another trouble. "but there is worse still." "what is that?" "tom!" "what does tom do?" "you know tom, lucy?" "i have seen him." "of all the horrors he is the horridest." "does he order you about?" "no; but he -" "what is it, ayey?" "oh! lucy, he is so dreadful. he -" "you don't mean that he makes love to you?" "he does. what am i to do, lucy?" "do they know it?" "augusta does, i'm sure; and pretends to think that it is my fault. i am sure that there will be a terrible quarrel some day. i told him the day before we left glenbogie that i should tell his mother. i did indeed. then he grinned. he is such a fool. and when i laughed he took it all as kindness. i couldn't have helped laughing if i had died for it." "but he has been left behind." "yes, for the present. but he is to come over to us some time after christmas, when uncle tringle has gone back." "a girl need not be bothered by a lover unless she chooses, ayey. "but it will be such a bother to have to talk about it. he looks at me, and is such an idiot. then augusta frowns. when i see augusta frowning i am so angry that i feel like boxing her ears. do you know, lucy, that i often think that it will not do, and that i shall have to be sent away. i wish it had been you that they had chosen." such was the conversation between the girls. of what was said everything appertained to ayala. of the very nature of lucy's life not a word was spoken. as ayala was talking lucy was constantly thinking of all that might be lost by her sister's imprudence. even though augusta might be disagreeable, even though tom might be a bore, it should all be borne -borne at any rate for a while -seeing how terrible would be the alternative. the alternative to lucy seemed to be kingsbury crescent and aunt dosett. it did not occur to her to think whether in any possible case ayala would indeed be added to the crescent family, or what in that case would become of herself, and whether they two might live with aunt dosett, and whether in that case life would not be infinitely improved. ayala had all that money could do for her, and would have such a look-out into the world from a wealthy house as might be sure at last to bring her some such husband as would be desirable. ayala, in fact, had everything before her, and lucy had nothing. wherefore it became lucy's duty to warn ayala, so that she should bear with much, and throw away nothing. if ayala could only know what life might be, what life was at kingsbury crescent, then she would be patient, then she would softly make a confidence with her aunt as to tom's folly, then she would propitiate augusta. not care for money! ayala had not yet lived in an ugly room and darned sheets all the morning. ayala had never sat for two hours between the slumbers of uncle dosett and the knitting of aunt dosett. ayala had not been brought into contact with gin and water. "oh, ayala!" she said, as they were going down to dinner together, "do struggle; do bear it. tell aunt emmeline. she will like you to tell her. if augusta wants you to go anywhere, do go. what does it signify? papa and mamma are gone, and we are alone." all this she said without a word of allusion to her own sufferings. ayala made a half promise. she did not think she would go anywhere for augusta's telling; but she would do her best to satisfy aunt emmeline. then they went to dinner, and after dinner lucy was taken home without further words between them. ayala wrote long letters on her journey, full of what she saw, and full of her companions. from paris she wrote, and then from turin, and then again on their immediate arrival at rome. her letters were most imprudent as written from the close vicinity of her aunt and cousin. it was such a comfort that that oaf tom had been left behind. uncle tringle was angry because he did not get what he liked to eat. aunt emmeline gave that courier such a terrible life, sending for him every quarter of an hour. augusta would talk first french and then italian, of which no one could understand a word. gertrude was so sick with travelling that she was as pale as a sheet. nobody seemed to care for anything. she could not get her aunt to look at the campanile at florence, or her cousins to know one picture from another. "as for pictures, i am quite sure that mangle's angels would do as well as raffael's." mangle was a brother academician whom their father had taught them to despise. there was contempt, most foolish contempt, for all the tringles; but, luckily, there had be no quarrelling. then it seemed that both in paris and in florence ayala had bought pretty things, from which it was to be argued that her uncle had provided her liberally with money. one pretty thing had been sent from paris to lucy, which could not have been bought for less than many francs. it would not be fair that ayala should take so much without giving something in return. lucy knew that she too should give something in return. though kingsbury crescent was not attractive, though aunt dosett was not to her a pleasant companion, she had begun to realise the fact that it behoved her to be grateful, if only for the food she ate, and for the bed on which she slept. as she thought of all that ayala owed she remembered also her own debts. as the winter went on she struggled to pay them. but aunt dosett was a lady not much given to vacillation. she had become aware at first that lucy had been rough to her, and she did not easily open herself to lucy's endearments. lucy's life at kingsbury crescent had begun badly, and lucy, though she understood much about it, found it hard to turn a bad beginning to a good result. chapter 4 isadore hamel it was suggested to lucy before she had been long in kingsbury crescent that she should take some exercise. for the first week she had hardly been out of the house; but this was attributed to her sorrow. then she had accompanied her aunt for a few days during the half-hour's marketing which took place every morning, but in this there had been no sympathy. lucy would not interest herself in the shoulder of mutton which must be of just such a weight as to last conveniently for two days -twelve pounds -of which, it was explained to her, more than one-half was intended for the two servants, because there was always a more lavish consumption in the kitchen than in the parlour. lucy would not appreciate the fact that eggs at a penny a piece, whatever they might be, must be used for puddings, as eggs with even a reputation of freshness cost two-pence. aunt dosett, beyond this, never left the house on week-days except for a few calls which were made perhaps once a month, on which occasion the sunday gloves and the sunday silk dress were used. on sunday they all went to church. but this was not enough for exercise, and as lucy was becoming pale she was recommended to take to walking in kensington gardens. it is generally understood that there are raging lions about the metropolis, who would certainly eat up young ladies whole if young ladies were to walk about the streets or even about the parks by themselves. there is, however, beginning to be some vacillation as to the received belief on this subject as regards london. in large continental towns, such as paris and vienna, young ladies would be devoured certainly. such, at least, is the creed. in new york and washington there are supposed to be no lions, so that young ladies go about free as air. in london there is a rising doubt, under which before long, probably, the lions will succumb altogether. mrs dosett did believe somewhat in lions, but she believed also in exercise. and she was aware that the lions eat up chiefly rich people. young ladies who must go about without mothers, brothers, uncles, carriages, or attendants of any sort, are not often eaten or even roared at. it is the dainty darlings for whom the roarings have to be feared. mrs dosett, aware that daintiness was no longer within the reach of her and hers, did assent to these walkings in kensington gardens. at some hour in the afternoon lucy would walk from the house by herself, and within a quarter of an hour would find herself on the broad gravel path which leads down to the round pond. from thence she would go by the back of the albert memorial, and then across by the serpentine and return to the same gate, never leaving kensington gardens. aunt dosett had expressed some old-fashioned idea that lions were more likely to roar in hyde park than within the comparatively retired purlieus of kensington. now the reader must be taken back for a few moments to the bijou, as the bijou was before either the artist or his wife had died. in those days there had been a frequent concourse of people in the artist's house. society there had not consisted chiefly of eating and drinking. men and women would come in and out as though really for a purpose of talking. there would be three or four constantly with dormer in his studio, helping him but little perhaps in the real furtherance of his work, though discussing art subjects in a manner calculated to keep alive art-feeling among them. a novelist or two of a morning might perhaps aid me in my general pursuit, but would, i think, interfere with the actual tally of pages. egbert dormer did not turn out from his hand so much work as some men that i know, but he was overflowing with art up to his ears -and with tobacco, so that, upon the whole, the bijou was a pleasant rendezvous. there had come there of late, quite of late, a young sculptor, named isadore hamel. hamel was an englishman, who, however, had been carried very early to rome and had been bred there. of his mother question never was made, but his father had been well known as an english sculptor resident at rome. the elder hamel had been a man of mark, who had a fine suite of rooms in the city and a villa on one of the lakes, but who never came to england. english connections were, he said, to him abominable, by which he perhaps meant that the restrictions of decent life were not to his taste. but his busts came, and his groups in marble, and now and again some great work for some public decoration: so that money was plentiful with him, and he was a man of note. it must be acknowledged of him that he spared nothing in bringing up his son, giving him such education as might best suit his future career as an artist, and that money was always forthcoming for the lad's wants and fantasies. then young hamel also became a sculptor of much promise; but early in life differed from his father on certain subjects of importance. the father was wedded to rome and to italy. isadore gradually expressed an opinion that the nearer a man was to his market the better for him, that all that art could do for a man in rome was as nothing to the position which a great artist might make for himself in london -that, in fact, an englishman had better be an englishman. at twenty-six he succeeded in his attempt, and became known as a young sculptor with a workshop at brompton. he became known to many both by his work and his acquirements; but it may not be surprising that after a year he was still unable to live, as he had been taught to live, without drawing upon his father. then his father threw his failure in his teeth, not refusing him money indeed, but making the receipt of it unpleasant to him. at no house had isadore hamel been made so welcome as at dormer's. there was a sympathy between them both on that great question of art, whether to an artist his art should be a matter to him of more importance than all the world besides. so said dormer -who simply died because his wife died, who could not have touched his brush if one of his girls had been suffering, who, with all his genius, was but a faineant workman. his art more than all the world to him! no, not to him. perhaps here and again to some enthusiast, and him hardly removed from madness! where is the painter who shall paint a picture after his soul's longing though he shall get not a penny for it -though he shall starve as he put his last touch to it, when he knows that by drawing some duchess of the day he shall in a fortnight earn a ducal price? shall a wife and child be less dear to him than to a lawyer -or to a shoemaker, or the very craving of his hunger less obdurate? a man's self, and what he has within him and his belongings, with his outlook for this and other worlds -let that be the first, and the work, noble or otherwise, be the second. to be honest is greater than to have painted the san sisto, or to have chiselled the apollo, to have assisted in making others honest -infinitely greater. all of which were discussed at great length at the bijou, and the bijouites always sided with the master of the house. to an artist, said dormer, let his art be everything -above wife and children, above money, above health, above even character. then he would put out his hand with his jewelled finger, and stretch forth his velvet-clad arm, and soon after lead his friend away to the little dinner at which no luxury had been spared. but young hamel agreed with the sermons, and not the less because lucy dormer had sat by and listened to them with rapt attention. not a word of love had been spoken to her by the sculptor when her mother died, but there had been glances and little feelings of which each was half conscious. it is so hard for a young man to speak of love, if there be real love -so impossible that a girl should do so! not a word had been spoken, but each had thought that the other must have known. to lucy a word had been spoken by her mother -"do not think too much of him till you know," the mother had said -not quite prudently. "oh, no! i will think of him not at all," lucy had replied. and she had thought of him day and night. "i wonder why mr hamel is so different with you?" ayala had said to her sister. "i am sure he is not different with me", lucy had replied. then ayala had shaken her full locks and smiled. things came quickly after that. mrs dormer had sickened and died. there was no time then for thinking of that handsome brow, of that short jet black hair, of those eyes so full of fire and thoughtfulness, of that perfect mouth, and the deep but yet soft voice. still even in her sorrow this new god of her idolatry was not altogether forgotten. it was told to her that he had been summoned off to rome by his father, and she wondered whether he was to find his home at rome for ever. then her father was ill, and in his illness hamel came to say one word of farewell before he started. "you find me crushed to the ground," the painter said. something the young man whispered as to the consolation which time would bring. "not to me," said dormer. "it is as though one had lost his eyes. one cannot see without his eyes." it was true of him. his light had been put out. then, on the landing at the top of the stairs, there had been one word between lucy and the sculptor. "i ought not to have intruded on you perhaps," he said; "but after so much kindness i could hardly go without a word." "i am sure he will be glad that you have come." "and you?" "i am glad too -so that i may say goodbye." then she put out her hand, and he held it for a moment as he looked into her eyes. there was not a word more, but it seemed to lucy as though there had been so many words. things went on quickly. egbert dormer died, and lucy was taken away to kingsbury crescent. when once ayala had spoken about mr hamel, lucy had silenced her. any allusion to the idea of love wounded her, as though it was too impossible for dreams, too holy for words. how should there be words about a lover when father and mother were both dead? he had gone to his old and natural home. he had gone, and of course he would not return. to ayala, when she came up to london early in november, to ayala, who was going to rome, where isadore hamel now was, isadore hamel's name was not mentioned. but through the long mornings of her life, through the long evenings, through the long nights, she still thought of him -she could not keep herself from thinking. to a girl whose life is full of delights her lover need not be so very much -need not, at least, be everything. though he be a lover to be loved at all points, her friends will be something, her dancing, her horse, her theatre-going, her brothers and sisters, even her father and mother. but lucy had nothing. the vision of isadore hamel had passed across her life, and had left with her the only possession that she had. it need hardly be said that she never alluded to that possession at kingsbury crescent. it was not a possession from which any enjoyment could come except that of thinking of it. he had passed away from her, and there was no point of life at which he could come across her again. there was no longer that half-joint studio. if it had been her lot to be as was ayala, she then would have been taken to rome. then again he would have looked into her eyes. and taken her hand in his. then perhaps -. but now, even though he were to come back to london, he would know nothing of her haunts. even in that case nothing would bring them together. as the idea was crossing her mind -as it did cross it so frequently -she saw him turning from the path on which she was walking, making his way towards the steps of the memorial. though she saw no more than his back she was sure that it was isadore hamel. for a moment there was an impulse on her to run after him and to call his name. it was then early in january, and she was taking her daily walk through kensington gardens. she had walked there daily now for the last two months and had never spoken a word or been addressed -had never seen a face that she had recognised. it had seemed to her that she had not an acquaintance in the world except uncle reg and aunt dosett. and now, almost within reach of her hand, was the one being in all the world whom she most longed to see. she did stand and the word was formed within her lips; but she could not speak it. then came the thought that she would run after him, but the thought was expelled quickly. though she might lose him again and for ever she could not do that. she stood almost gasping till he was out of sight, and then she passed on upon her usual round. she never omitted her walks after that, and always paused a moment as the path turned away to the memorial. it was not that she thought that she might meet him there -there rather than elsewhere -but there is present to us often an idea that when some object has passed from us that we have desired then it may be seen again. day after day, and week after week, she did not see him. during this time there came letters from ayala, saying that their return to england was postponed till the first week in february -that she would certainly see lucy in february -that she was not going to be hurried through london in half an hour because her aunt wished it; and that she would do as she pleased as to visiting her sister. then there was a word or two about tom -"oh, tom -that idiot tom!" and another word or two about augusta. "augusta is worse than ever. we have not spoken to each other for the last day or two." this came but a day or two before the intended return of the tringles. no actual day had been fixed. but on the day before that on which lucy thought it probable that the tringles might return to town she was again walking in the gardens. having put two and two together, as people do, she felt sure that the travellers could not be away more than a day or two longer. her mind was much intent upon ayala, feeling that the imprudent girl was subjecting herself to great danger, knowing that it was wrong that she and augusta should be together in the house without speaking -thinking of her sister's perils -when, of a sudden, hamel was close before her! there was no question of calling to him now -no question of an attempt to see him face to face. she had been wandering along the path with eyes fixed upon the ground, when her name was sharply called, and they two were close to each other. hamel had a friend with him, and it seemed to lucy at once, that she could only bow to him, only mutter something, and then pass on. how can a girl stand and speak to a gentleman in public, especially when that gentleman has a friend with him? she tried to look pleasant, bowed, smiled, muttered something, and was passing on. but he was not minded to lose her thus immediately. "miss dormer," he said, "i have seen your sister at rome. may i not say a word about her?" why should he not say a word about ayala? in a minute he had left his friend, and was walking back along the path with lucy. there was not much that he had to say about ayala. he had seen ayala and the tringles, and did manage to let it escape him that lady tringle had not been very gracious to himself when once, in public, he had claimed acquaintance with ayala. but at that he simply smiled. then he had asked of lucy where she lived. "with my uncle, mr dosett," said lucy, "at kingsbury crescent." then, when he asked whether he might call, lucy, with many blushes, had said that her aunt did not receive many visitors -that her uncle's house was different from what her father's had been. "shall i not see you at all, then?" he asked. she did not like to ask him after his own purposes of life, whether he was now a resident in london, or whether he intended to return to rome. she was covered with bashfulness, and dreaded to seem even to be interested in his affairs. "oh, yes," she said,; "perhaps we may meet some day." "here?" he asked. "oh, no; not here! it was only an accident." as she said this she determined that she must walk no more in kensington gardens. it would be dreadful, indeed, were he to imagine that she would consent to make an appointment with him. it immediately occurred to her that the lions were about, and that she must shut herself up. "i have thought of you every day since i have been back," he said, "and i did not know where to hear of you. now that we have met am i to lose you again?" lose her! what did he mean by losing her? she, too, had found a friend -she who had been so friendless! would it not be dreadful to her, also, to lose him? "is there no place where i may ask of you?" "when ayala is back, and they are in town, perhaps i shall sometimes be at lady tringle's," said lucy, resolved that she would not tell him of her immediate abode. this was, at any rate, a certain address from where he might commence further inquiries, should he wish to make inquiry; and as such he accepted it. "i think i had better go now," said lucy, trembling at the apparent impropriety of her present conversation. he knew that it was intended that he should leave her, and he went. "i hope i have not offended you in coming so far." "oh, no." then again she gave him her hand and again there was the same look as he took his leave. when she got home, which was before the dusk, having resolved that she must, at any rate, tell her aunt that she had met a friend, she found that her uncle had returned from his office. this was a most unusual occurrence. her uncle, she knew, left somerset house exactly at half past four, and always took an hour and a quarter for his walk. she had never seen him in kingsbury crescent till a quarter before six. "i have got letters from rome," he said, in a solemn voice. "from ayala?" "one from ayala, for you. it is here. and i have had one from my sister, also; and one, in the course of the day, from your uncle in lombard street. you had better read them!" there was something terribly tragic in uncle dosett's voice as he spoke. and so must the reader read the letters; but they must be delayed for a few chapters. chapter 5 at glenbogie we must go back to ayala's life during the autumn and winter. she was rapidly whirled away to glenbogie amidst the affectionate welcomings of her aunt and cousins. all manner of good things were done for her, as to presents and comforts. young as she was, she had money given to her, which was not without attraction; and though she was, of course, in the depth of her mourning, she was made to understand that even mourning might be made becoming if no expense were spared. no expense among the tringles ever was spared, and at first ayala liked the bounty of profusion. but before the end of the first fortnight there grew upon her a feeling that even bank-notes become tawdry if you are taught to use them as curl-papers. it may be said that nothing in the world is charming unless it be achieved at some trouble. if it rained "'64 leoville' -which i regard as the most divine of nectars -i feel sure that i should never raise it to my lips. ayala did not argue the matter out in her mind, but in very early days she began to entertain a dislike to tringle magnificence. there had been a good deal of luxury at the bijou, but always with a feeling that it ought not to be there -that more money was being spent than prudence authorised -which had certainly added a savour to the luxuries. a lovely bonnet, is it not more lovely because the destined wearer knows that there is some wickedness in achieving it? all the bonnets, all the claret, all the horses, seemed to come at queen's gate and at glenbogie without any wickedness. there was no more question about them than as to one's ordinary bread and butter at breakfast. sir thomas had a way -a merit shall we call it or a fault? -of pouring out his wealth upon the family as though it were water running in perpetuity from a mountain tarn. ayala the romantic, ayala the poetic, found very soon that she did not like it. perhaps the only pleasure left to the very rich is that of thinking of the deprivations of the poor. the bonnets, and the claret, and the horses, have lost their charm; but the gladstone, and the old hats, and the four-wheeled cabs of their neighbours, still have a little flavour for them. from this source it seemed to ayala that the tringles drew much of the recreation of their lives. sir thomas had his way of enjoying this amusement, but it was a way that did not specially come beneath ayala's notice. when she heard that break-at-last, the huddersfield manufacturer, had to sell his pictures, and that all shoddy and stuffgoods' grand doings for the last two years had only been a flash in the pan, she did not understand enough about it to feel wounded; but when she heard her aunt say that people like the poodles had better not have a place in scotland than have to let it, and when augusta hinted that lady sophia smallware had pawned her diamonds, then she felt that her nearest and dearest relatives smelt abominably of money. of all the family sir thomas was most persistently the kindest to her, though he was a man who did not look to be kind. she was pretty, and though he was ugly himself he liked to look at things pretty. he was, too, perhaps, a little tired of his own wife and daughters -who were indeed what he had made them, but still were not quite to his taste. in a general way he gave instructions that ayala should be treated exactly as a daughter, and he informed his wife that he intended to add a codicil to his will on her behalf. "is that necessary?" asked lady tringle, who began to feel something like natural jealousy. "i suppose i ought to do something for a girl if i take her by the hand," said sir thomas, roughly. "if she gets a husband i will give her something, and that will do as well." nothing more was said about it, but when sir thomas went up to town the codicil was added to his will. ayala was foolish rather than ungrateful, not understanding the nature of the family to which she was relegated. before she had been taken away she had promised lucy that she would be "obedient" to her aunt. there had hardly been such a word as obedience known at the bijou. if any were obedient, it was the mother and the father to the daughters. lucy, and ayala as well, had understood something of this; and therefore ayala had promised to be obedient to her aunt. "and to uncle thomas," lucy had demanded, with an imploring embrace. "oh, yes," said ayala, dreading her uncle at that time. she soon learned that no obedience whatsoever was exacted from sir thomas. she had to kiss him morning and evening, and then to take whatever presents he made her. an easy uncle he was to deal with, and she almost learned to love him. nor was aunt emmeline very exigeant, though she was fantastic and sometimes disagreeable. but augusta was the great difficulty. lucy had not told her to obey augusta, and augusta she would not obey. now augusta demanded obedience. "you never ordered me," ayala had said to lucy when they met in london as the tringles were passing through. at the bijou there had been a republic, in which all the inhabitants and all the visitors had been free and equal. such republicanism had been the very mainspring of life at the bijou. ayala loved equality, and she specially felt that it should exist among sisters. do anything for lucy? oh, yes, indeed, anything; abandon anything; but for lucy as a sister among sisters, not for an elder as from a younger! and if she were not bound to serve lucy then certainly not augusta. but augusta liked to be served. on one occasion she sent ayala upstairs, and on another she sent ayala downstairs. ayala went, but determined to be equal with her cousin. on the morning following, in the presence of aunt emmeline and of gertrude, in the presence also of two other ladies who were visiting at the house, she asked augusta if she would mind running upstairs and fetching her scrap-book! she had been thinking about it all the night and all the morning, plucking up her courage. but she had been determined. she found a great difficulty in saying the words, but she said them. the thing was so preposterous that all the ladies in the room looked aghast at the proposition. "i really think that augusta has got something else to do," said. aunt emmeline. "oh, very well," said ayala, and then they were all silent. augusta, who was employed on a silk purse, sat still and did not say a word. had a great secret, or rather a great piece of news which pervaded the family, been previously communicated to ayala, she would not probably have made so insane a suggestion. augusta was engaged to be married to the honourable septimus traffick, the member for port glasgow. a young lady who is already half a bride is not supposed to run up and down stairs as readily as a mere girl. for running up and down stairs at the bijou ayala had been proverbial. they were a family who ran up and down with the greatest alacrity. "oh, papa, my basket is out on the seat' -for there had been a seat in the two-foot garden behind the house. papa would go down in two jumps and come up with three skips, and there was the basket, only because his girl liked him to do something for her. but for him ayala would run about as though she were a tricksy ariel. had the important matrimonial news been conveyed to ariel, with a true girl's spirit she would have felt that during the present period augusta was entitled to special exemption from all ordering. had she herself been engaged she would have run more and quicker than ever -would have been excited thereto by the peculiar vitality of her new prospects; but to even augusta she would be subservient, because of her appreciation of bridal importance. she, however, had not been told till that afternoon. "you should not have asked augusta to go upstairs," said aunt emmeline, in a tone of mitigated reproach. "oh! i didn't know," said ayala. "you had meant to say that because she had sent you you were to send her. there is a difference, you know." "i didn't know," said ayala, beginning to think that she would fight her battle if told of such differences as she believed to exist. "i had meant to tell you before, but i may as well tell you now, augusta is engaged to be married to the honourable mr septimus traffick. he is second son of lord boardotrade, and is in the house." "dear me!" said ayala, acknowledging at once within her heart that the difference alleged was one against which she need not rouse herself to the fight. aunt emmeline had, in truth, intended to insist on that difference -and another; but her courage had failed her. "yes, indeed. he is a man very much thought of just now in public life, and augusta's mind is naturally much occupied. he writes all those letters in the times about supply and demand." "does he, aunt?" ayala did feel that if augusta's mind was entirely occupied with supply and demand she ought not to be made to go upstairs to fetch a scrap-book. but she had her doubts about augusta's mind. nevertheless, if the forthcoming husband were true, that might be a reason. "if anybody had told me before i wouldn't have asked her," she said. then lady tringle explained that it had been thought better not to say anything heretofore as to the coming matrimonial hilarities because of the sadness which had fallen upon the dormer family. ayala accepted this as an excuse, and nothing further was said as to the iniquity of her request to her cousin. but there was a general feeling among the women that ayala, in lieu of gratitude, had exhibited an intention of rebelling. on the next day mr traffick arrived, whose coming had probably made it necessary that the news should be told. ayala was never so surprised in her life as when she saw him. she had never yet had a lover of her own, had never dreamed of a lover, but she had her own idea as to what a lover ought to be. she had thought that isadore hamel would be a very nice lover -for her sister. hamel was young, handsome, with a great deal to say on such a general subject as art, but too bashful to talk easily to the girl he admired. ayala had thought that all that was just as it should be. she was altogether resolved that hamel and her sister should be lovers, and was determined to be devoted to her future brother-in-law. but the honourable septimus traffick! it was a question to her whether her uncle tringle would not have been better as a lover. and yet there was nothing amiss about mr traffick. he was very much like an ordinary hard-working member of the house of commons, over perhaps rather than under forty years of age. he was somewhat bald, somewhat grey, somewhat fat, and had lost that look of rosy plumpness which is seldom, i fear, compatible with hard work and late hours. he was not particularly ugly, nor was he absurd in appearance. but he looked to be a disciple of business, not of pleasure, nor of art. "to sit out on the bank of a stream and have him beside one would not be particularly nice," thought ayala to herself. mr traffick no doubt would have enjoyed it very well if he could have spared the time; but to ayala it seemed that such a man as that could have cared nothing for love. as soon as she saw him, and realised in her mind the fact that augusta was to become his wife, she felt at once the absurdity of sending augusta on a message. augusta that evening was somewhat more than ordinarily kind to her cousin. now that the great secret was told, her cousin no doubt would recognise her importance. "i suppose you had not heard of him before?" she said to ayala. "i never did." "that's because you have not attended to the debates." "i never have. what are debates?" "mr traffick is very much thought of in the house of commons on all subjects affecting commerce." "oh!" "it is the most glorious study which the world affords." "the house of commons. i don't think it can be equal to art." then augusta turned up her nose with a double turn -first as against painters, mr dormer having been no more, and then at ayala's ignorance in supposing that the house of commons could have been spoken of as a study. "mr traffick will probably be in the government some day," she said. "has not he been yet?" asked ayala. "not yet." "then won't he be very old before he gets there?" this was a terrible question. young ladies of five-and-twenty, when they marry gentlemen of four-and-fifty, make up their minds for well-understood and well-recognised old age. they see that they had best declare their purpose, and they do declare it. "of course, mr walker is old enough to be my father, but i have made up my mind that i like that better than anything else." then the wall has been jumped, and the thing can go smoothly. but at forty-five there is supposed to be so much of youth left that the difference of age may possibly be tided over and not made to appear abnormal. augusta tringle had determined to tide it over in this way. the forty-five had been gradually reduced to "less than forty' -though all the peerages were there to give the lie to the assertion. she talked of her lover as septimus, and was quite prepared to sit with him beside a stream if only half an hour for the amusement could be found. when, therefore, ayala suggested that if her lover wanted to get into office he had better do so quickly, lest he should be too old, augusta was not well pleased. "lord boardotrade was much older when he began," said augusta. "his friends, indeed, tell septimus that he should not push himself forward too quickly. but i don't think that i ever came across anyone who was so ignorant of such things as you are, ayala." "perhaps he is not so old as he looks," said ayala. after this it may be imagined that there was not close friendship between the cousins. augusta's mind was filled with a strong conception as to ayala's ingratitude. the houseless, penniless orphan had been taken in, and had done nothing but make herself disagreeable. young! no doubt she was young. but had she been as old as methuselah she could not have been more insolent. it did not, however, matter to her, augusta. she was going away; but it would be terrible to her mamma and to gertrude! thus it was that augusta spoke of her cousin to her mother. and then there came another trouble, which was more troublesome to ayala even than the other. tom tringle, who was in the house in lombard street, who was the only son, and heir to the title and no doubt to much of the wealth, had chosen to take ayala's part and to enlist himself as her special friend. ayala had, at first, accepted him as a cousin, and had consented to fraternise with him. then, on some unfortunate day, there had been some word or look which she had failed not to understand, and immediately she had become afraid of tom. tom was not like isadore hamel -was very far, indeed, from that idea of a perfect lover which ayala's mind had conceived; but he was by no means a lout, or an oaf, or an idiot, as ayala in her letters to her sister had described him. he had been first at eton and then at oxford, and having spent a great deal of money recklessly, and done but little towards his education, had been withdrawn and put into the office. his father declared of him now that he would do fairly well in the world. he had a taste for dress, and kept four or five hunters which he got but little credit by riding. he made a fuss about his shooting, but did not shoot much. he was stout and awkward looking -very like his father, but without that settled air which age gives to heavy men. in appearance he was not the sort of lover to satisfy the preconceptions of such a girl as ayala. but he was good-natured and true. at last he became to her terribly true. his love, such as it seemed at first, was absurd to her. "if you make yourself such a fool, tom, i'll never speak to you again," she had said, once. even after that she had not understood that it was more than a stupid joke. but the joke, while it was considered as such, was very distasteful to her; and afterwards, when a certain earnestness in it was driven in upon her, it became worse than distasteful. she repudiated his love with such power as she had, but she could not silence him. she could not at all understand that a young man, who seemed to her to be an oaf, should really be in love -honestly in love with her. but such was the case. then she became afraid lest others should see it -afraid, though she often told herself that she would appeal to her aunt for protection. "i tell you i don't care a bit about you, and you oughtn't to go on," she said. but he did go on, and though her aunt did not see it augusta did. then augusta spoke a word to her in scorn. "ayala," she said, "you should not encourage tom." encourage him! what a word from one girl to another! what a world of wrong there was in the idea which had created the word! what an absence of the sort of feeling which, according to ayala's theory of life, there should be on such a matter between two sisters, two cousins, or two friends! encourage him! when augusta ought to have been the first to assist her in her trouble! "oh, augusta," she said, turning sharply round, "what a spiteful creature you are." "i suppose you think so, because i do not choose to approve." "approve of what! tom is thoroughly disagreeable. sometimes he makes my life such a burden to me that i think i shall have to go to my aunt. but you are worse. oh!" exclaimed ayala, shuddering as she thought of the unwomanly treachery of which her cousin was guilty towards her. nothing more came of it at glenbogie. tom was required in lombard street, and the matter was not suspected by aunt emmeline -as far, at least, as ayala was aware. when he was gone it was to her as though there would be a world of time before she would see him again. they were to go to rome, and he would not be at rome till january. before that he might have forgotten his folly. but ayala was quite determined that she would never forget the ill offices of augusta. she did hate augusta, as she had told her sister. then, in this frame of mind, the family was taken to rome. chapter 6 at rome during her journeying and during her sojourn at rome ayala did enjoy much; but even these joys did not come to her without causing some trouble of spirit. at glenbogie everybody had known that she was a dependent niece, and that as such she was in truth nobody. on that morning when she had ordered augusta to go upstairs the two visitors had stared with amazement -who would not have stared at all had they heard ayala ordered in the same way. but it came about that in rome ayala was almost of more importance than the tringles. it was absolutely true that lady tringle and augusta and gertrude were asked here and there because of ayala; and the worst of it was that the fact was at last suspected by the tringles themselves. sometimes they would not always be asked. one of the tringle girls would only be named. but ayala was never forgotten. once or twice an effort was made by some grand lady, whose taste was perhaps more conspicuous than her good nature, to get ayala without burdening herself with any of the tringles. when this became clear to the mind of augusta -of augusta, engaged as she was to the honourable septimus traffick, member of parliament -augusta's feelings were -such as may better be understood than described! "don't let her go, mamma," she said to lady tringle one morning. "but the marchesa has made such a point of it." "bother the marchesa! who is the marchesa? i believe it is all ayala's doing because she expects to meet that mr hamel. it is dreadful to see the way she goes on." "mr hamel was a very intimate friend of her father's." "i don't believe a bit of it." "he certainly used to be at his house. i remember seeing him." "i daresay; but that doesn't justify ayala in running after him as she does. i believe that all this about the marchesa is because of mr hamel." this was better than believing that ayala was to be asked to sing, and that ayala was to be feted and admired and danced with, simply because ayala was ayala, and that they, the tringles, in spite of glenbogie, merle park, and queen's gate, were not wanted at all. but when aunt emmeline signified to ayala that on that particular morning she had better not go to the marchesa's picnic, ayala simply said that she had promised -and ayala went. at this time no gentleman of the family was with them. sir thomas had gone, and tom tringle had not come. then, just at christmas, the honourable septimus traffick came for a short visit -a very short visit, no more than four or five days, because supply and demand were requiring all his services in preparation for the coming session of parliament. but for five halcyon days he was prepared to devote himself to the glories of rome under the guidance of augusta. he did not of course sleep at the palazzo ruperti, where it delighted lady tringle to inform her friends in rome that she had a suite of apartments au premiere, but he ate there and drank there and almost lived there; so that it became absolutely necessary to inform the world of rome that it was augusta's destiny to become in course of time the honourable mrs traffick, otherwise the close intimacy would hardly have been discreet -unless it had been thought, as the ill-natured marchesa had hinted, that mr traffick was lady tringle's elder brother. augusta, however, was by no means ashamed of her lover. perhaps she felt that when it was known that she was about to be the bride of so great a man then doors would be open for her at any rate as wide as for her cousin. at this moment she was very important to herself. she was about to convey no less a sum than l#120,000 to mr traffick, who in truth, as younger son of lord boardotrade, was himself not well endowed. considering her own position and her future husband's rank and standing, she did not know how a young woman could well be more important. she was very important at any rate to mr traffick. she was sure of that. when, therefore, she learned that ayala had been asked to a grand ball at the marchesa's, that mr traffick was also to be among the guests, and that none of the tringles had been invited -then her anger became hot. she must have been very stupid when she took it into her head to be jealous of mr traffick's attention to her cousin; stupid, at any rate, when she thought that her cousin was laying out feminine lures for mr traffick. poor ayala! we shall see much of her in these pages, and it may be well to declare of her at once that her ideas at this moment about men -or rather about a possible man -were confined altogether to the abstract. she had floating in her young mind some fancies as to the beauty of love. that there should be a hero must of course be necessary. but in her day-dreams this hero was almost celestial -or, at least, athereal. it was a concentration of poetic perfection to which there was not as yet any appanage of apparel, of features, or of wealth. it was a something out of heaven which should think it well to spend his whole time in adoring her and making her more blessed than had ever yet been a woman upon the earth. then her first approach to a mundane feeling had been her acknowledgment to herself that isadore hamel would do as a lover for lucy. isadore hamel was certainly very handsome -was possessed of infinite good gifts; but even he would by no means have come up to her requirements for her own hero. that hero must have wings tinged with azure, whereas hamel had a not much more aetherealised than ordinary coat and waistcoat. she knew that heroes with azure wings were not existent save in the imagination, and, as she desired a real lover for lucy, hamel would do. but for herself her imagination was too valuable then to allow her to put her foot upon earth. such as she was, must not augusta have been very stupid to have thought that ayala should become fond of her mr traffick! her cousin tom had come to her, and had been to her as a newfoundland dog is when he jumps all over you just when he has come out of a horse-pond. she would have liked tom had he kept his dog-like gambols at a proper distance. but when he would cover her with muddy water he was abominable. but this augusta had not understood. with mr traffick there would be no dog-like gambols; and, as he was not harsh to her, ayala liked him. she had liked her uncle. such men were, to her thinking, more like dogs than lovers. she sang when mr traffick asked her, and made a picture for him, and went with him to the coliseum, and laughed at him about supply and demand. she was very pretty, and perhaps mr traffick did like to look at her. "i really think you were too free with mr traffick last night," augusta said to her one morning. "free! how free?" "you were -laughing at him." "oh, he likes that," said ayala. "all that time we were up at the top of st peter's i was quizzing him about his speeches. he lets me say just what i please." this was wormwood. in the first place there had been a word or two between the lovers about that going up of st peter's, and augusta had refused to join them. she had wished septimus to remain down with her -which would have been tantamount to preventing any of the party from going up; but septimus had persisted on ascending. then augusta had been left for a long hour alone with her mother. gertrude had no doubt gone up, but gertrude had lagged during the ascent. ayala had skipped up the interminable stairs and mr traffick had trotted after her with admiring breathless industry. this itself, with the thoughts of the good time which septimus might be having at the top, was very bad. but now to be told that she, ayala, should laugh at him; and that he, septimus, should like it! "i suppose he takes you to be a child," said augusta; "but if you are a child you ought to conduct yourself." "i suppose he does perceive the difference," said ayala. she had not in the least known what the words might convey -had probably meant nothing. but to augusta it was apparent that ayala had declared that her lover, her septimus, had preferred her extreme youth to the more mature charms of his own true love -or had, perhaps, preferred ayala's raillery to augusta's serious demeanour. "you are the most impertinent person i ever knew in my life," said augusta, rising from her chair and walking slowly out of the room. ayala stared after her, not above half comprehending the cause of the anger. then came the very serious affair of the ball. the marchesa had asked that her dear little friend ayala dormer might be allowed to come over to a little dance which her own girls were going to have. her own girls were so fond of ayala! there would be no trouble. there was a carriage which would be going somewhere else, and she would be fetched and taken home. ayala at once declared that she intended to go, and her aunt emmeline did not refuse her sanction. augusta was shocked, declaring that the little dance was to be one of the great balls of the season, and pronouncing the whole to be a falsehood; but the affair was arranged before she could stop it. but mr traffick's affair in the matter came more within her range. "septimus," she said, "i would rather you would not go to that woman's party." septimus had been asked only on the day before the party -as soon, indeed, as his arrival had become known to the marchesa. "why, my own one?" "she has not treated mamma well -nor yet me." "ayala is going." he had no right to call her ayala. so augusta thought. "my cousin is behaving badly in the matter, and mamma ought not to allow her to go. who knows anything about the marchesa baldoni?" "both he and she are of the very best families in rome," said mr traffick, who knew everything about it. "at any rate they are behaving very badly to us, and i will take it as a favour that you do not go. asking ayala, and then asking you, as good as from the same house, is too marked. you ought not to go." perhaps mr traffick had on some former occasion felt some little interference with his freedom of action. perhaps he liked the acquaintance of the marchesa. perhaps he liked ayala dormer. be that as it might, he would not yield. "dear augusta, it is right that i should go there, if it be only for half an hour." this he said in a tone of voice with which augusta was already acquainted, which she did not love, and which, when she heard it, would make her think of her l#120,000. when he had spoken he left her, and she began to think of her l#120,000. they both went, ayala and mr traffick -and mr traffick, instead of staying half an hour, brought ayala back at three o'clock in the morning. though mr traffick was nearly as old as uncle tringle, yet he could dance. ayala had been astonished to find how well he could dance, and thought that she might please her cousin augusta by praising the juvenility of her lover at luncheon the next day. she had not appeared at breakfast, but had been full of the ball at lunch. "oh, dear, yes, i dare say there were two hundred people there." "that is what she calls a little dance," said augusta, with scorn. "i suppose that is the italian way of talking about it," said ayala. "italian way! i hate italian ways." "mr traffick liked it very much. i'm sure he'll tell you so. i had no idea he would care to dance." augusta only shook herself and turned up her nose. lady tringle thought it necessary to say something in defence of her daughter's choice. "why should not mr traffick dance like any other gentleman?" "oh, i don't know. i thought that a man who makes so many speeches in parliament would think of something else. i was very glad he did, for he danced three times with me. he can waltz as lightly as -" as though he were young, she was going to say, but then she stopped herself. "he is the best dancer i ever danced with," said augusta. "but you almost never do dance," said ayala. "i suppose i may know about it as well as another," said augusta, angrily. the next day was the last of mr traffick's sojourn in rome, and on that day he and augusta so quarrelled that, for a certain number of hours, it was almost supposed in the family that the match would be broken off. on the afternoon of the day after the dance, mr traffick was walking with ayala on the pincian, while augusta was absolutely remaining behind with her mother. for a quarter of an hour -the whole day, as it seemed to augusta -there was a full two hundred yards between them. it was not that the engaged girl could not bear the severance, but that she could not endure the attention paid to ayala. on the next morning "she had it out", as some people say, with her lover. "if i am to be treated in this way you had better tell me so at once," she said. "i know no better way of treating you," said mr traffick. "dancing with that chit all night, turning her head, and then walking with her all the next day! i will not put up with such conduct." mr traffick valued l#120,000 very highly, as do most men, and would have done much to keep it; but he believed that the best way of making sure of it would be by showing himself to be the master. "my own one," he said, "you are really making an ass of yourself." "very well! then i will write to papa, and let him know that it must be all over." for three hours there was terrible trouble in the apartments in the palazzo ruperti, during which mr traffick was enjoying himself by walking up and down the forum, and calculating how many romans could have congregated themselves in the space which is supposed to have seen so much of the world's doings. during this time augusta was very frequently in hysterics; but, whether in hysterics or out of them, she would not allow ayala to come near her. she gave it to be understood that ayala had interfered fatally, foully, damnably, with all her happiness. she demanded, from fit to fit, that telegrams should be sent over to bring her father to italy for her protection. she would rave about septimus, and then swear that, under no consideration whatever, would she ever see him again. at the end of three hours she was told that septimus was in the drawing-room. lady tringle had sent half a dozen messengers after him, and at last he was found looking up at the arch of titus. "bid him go," said augusta. "i never want to behold him again." but within two minutes she was in his arms, and before dinner she was able to take a stroll with him on the pincian. he left, like a thriving lover, high in the good graces of his beloved; but the anger which had fallen on ayala had not been removed. then came a rumour that the marchesa, who was half english, had called ayala cinderella, and the name had added fuel to the fire of augusta's wrath. there was much said about it between lady tringle and her daughter, the aunt really feeling that more blame was being attributed to ayala than she deserved. "perhaps she gives herself airs," said lady tringle, "but really it is no more." "she is a viper," said augusta. gertrude rather took ayala's part, telling her mother, in private, that the accusation about mr traffick was absurd. "the truth is", said gertrude, "that ayala thinks herself very clever and very beautiful, and augusta will not stand it." gertrude acknowledged that ayala was upsetting and ungrateful. poor lady tringle, in her husband's absence, did not know what to do about her niece. altogether, they were uncomfortable after mr traffick went and before tom tringle had come. on no consideration whatsoever would augusta speak to her cousin. she declared that ayala was a viper, and would give no other reason. in all such quarrelings the matter most distressing is that the evil cannot be hidden. everybody at rome who knew the tringles, or who knew ayala, was aware that augusta tringle would not speak to her cousin. when ayala was asked she would shake her locks, and open her eyes, and declare that she knew nothing about it. in truth she knew very little about it. she remembered that passage-at-arms about the going upstairs at glenbogie, but she could hardly understand that for so small an affront, and one so distant, augusta would now refuse to speak to her. that augusta had always been angry with her, and since mr traffick's arrival more angry than ever, she had felt; but that augusta was jealous in respect to her lover had never yet at all come home to ayala. that she should have wanted to captivate mr traffick -she with her high ideas of some transcendental, more than human, hero! but she had to put up with it, and to think of it. she had sense enough to know that she was no more than a stranger in her aunt's family, and that she must go if she made herself unpleasant to them. she was aware that hitherto she had not succeeded with her residence among them. perhaps she might have to go. some things she would bear, and in them she would endeavour to amend her conduct. in other matters she would hold her own, and go, if necessary. though her young imagination was still full of her unsubstantial hero -though she still had her castles in the air altogether incapable of terrestrial foundation -still there was a common sense about her which told her that she must give and take. she would endeavour to submit herself to her aunt. she would be kind -as she had always been kind -to gertrude. she would in all matters obey her uncle. her misfortune with the newfoundland dog had almost dwindled out of her mind. to augusta she could not submit herself. but then augusta, as soon as the next session of parliament should be over, would be married out of the way. and, on her own part, she did think that her aunt was inclined to take her part in the quarrel with augusta. thus matters were going on in rome when there came up another and a worse cause for trouble. chapter 7 tom tringle in earnest tom tringle, though he had first appeared to his cousin ayala as a newfoundland dog which might perhaps be pleasantly playful, and then, as the same dog, very unpleasant because dripping with muddy water, was nevertheless a young man with so much manly truth about him as to be very much in love. he did not look like it; but then perhaps the young men who do fall most absolutely into love do not look like it. to ayala her cousin tom was as unloveable as mr septimus traffick. she could like them both well enough while they would be kind to her. but as to regarding cousin tom as a lover -the idea was so preposterous to her that she could not imagine that anyone else should look upon it as real. but with tom the idea had been real, and was, moreover, permanent. the black locks which would be shaken here and there, the bright glancing eyes which could be so joyous and could be so indignant, the colour of her face which had nothing in it of pink, which was brown rather, but over which the tell-tale blood would rush with a quickness which was marvellous to him, the lithe quick figure which had in it nothing of the weight of earth, the little foot which in itself was a perfect joy, the step with all the elasticity of a fawn -these charms together had mastered him. tom was not romantic or poetic, but the romance and poetry of ayala had been divine to him. it is not always like to like in love. titania loved the weaver bottom with the ass's head. bluebeard, though a bad husband, is supposed to have been fond of his last wife. the beauty has always been beloved by the beast. to ayala the thing was monstrous: but it was natural. tom tringle was determined to have his way, and when he started for rome was more intent upon his love-making than all the glories of the capitol and the vatican. when he first made his appearance before ayala's eyes he was bedecked in a manner that was awful to her. down at glenbogie he had affected a rough attire, as is the custom with young men of ample means when fishing, shooting, or the like, is supposed to be the employment then in hand. the roughness had been a little overdone, but it had added nothing to his own uncouthness. in london he was apt to run a little towards ornamental gilding, but in london his tastes had been tempered by the ill-natured criticism of the world at large. he had hardly dared at queen's gate to wear his biggest pins; but he had taken upon himself to think that at rome an englishman might expose himself with all his jewelry. "oh, tom, i never saw anything so stunning," his sister gertrude said to him. he had simply frowned upon her, and had turned himself to ayala, as though ayala, being an artist, would be able to appreciate something beautiful in art. ayala had looked at him and had marvelled, and had ventured to hope that, with his glenbogie dress, his glenbogie manners and glenbogie propensities would be changed. at this time the family at rome was very uncomfortable. augusta would not speak to her cousin, and had declared to her mother and sister her determination never to speak to ayala again. for a time aunt emmeline had almost taken her niece's part, feeling that she might, best bring things back to a condition of peace in this manner. ayala, she had thought, might thus be decoyed into a state of submission. ayala, so instigated, had made her attempt. "what is the matter, augusta," she had said, "that you are determined to quarrel with me?" then had followed a little offer that bygones should be bygones. "i have quarrelled with you", said augusta, "because you do not know how to behave yourself." then ayala had flashed forth, and the little attempt led to a worse condition than ever, and words were spoken which even aunt emmeline had felt to be irrevocable, irremediable. "only that you are going away i would not consent to live here." said ayala. then aunt emmeline had asked her where she would go to live should it please her to remove herself. ayala had thought of this for a moment, and then had burst into tears. "if i could not live i could die. anything would be better than to be treated as she treats me." so the matters were when tom came to rome with all his jewelry. lady tringle had already told herself that, in choosing ayala, she had chosen wrong. lucy, though not so attractive as ayala, was pretty, quiet, and ladylike. so she thought now. and as to ayala's attractions, they were not at all of a nature to be serviceable to such a family as hers. to have her own girls outshone, to be made to feel that the poor orphan was the one person most worthy of note among them, to be subjected to the caprices of a pretty, proud, ill-conditioned minx -thus it was that aunt emmeline was taught to regard her own charity and good-nature towards her niece. there was, she said, no gratitude in ayala. had she said that there was no humility she would have been more nearly right. she was entitled, she thought, to expect both gratitude and humility, and she was sorry that she had opened the paradise of her opulent home to one so little grateful and so little humble as ayala. she saw now her want of judgment in that she had not taken lucy. tom, who was not a fool, in spite of his trinkets, saw the state of the case, and took ayala's part at once. "i think you are quite right,"he said to her, on the first occasion on which he had contrived to find himself alone with her after his arrival. "right about what?" "in not giving up to augusta. she was always like that when she was a child, and now her head is turned about traffick." "i shouldn't grudge her her lover if she would only let me alone." "i don't suppose she hurts you much?" "she sets my aunt against me, and that makes me unhappy. of course i am wretched." "oh, ayala, don't be wretched." "how is one to help it? i never said an ill-natured word to her, and now i am so lonely among them!" in saying this -in seeking to get one word of sympathy from her cousin, she forgot for a moment his disagreeable pretensions. but, no sooner had she spoken of her loneliness, than she saw that ogle in his eye of which she had spoken with so much ludicrous awe in her letters from glenbogie to her sister. "i shall always take your part," said he. "i don't want any taking of parts." "but i shall. i am not going to see you put upon. you are more to me, ayala, than any of them." then he looked at her, whereupon she got up and ran away. but she could not always run away, nor could she always refuse when he asked her to go with him about the show-places of the city. to avoid starting alone with him was within her power; but she found herself compelled to join herself to gertrude and her brother in some of those little excursions which were taken for her benefit. at this time there had come to be a direct quarrel between lady tringle and the marchesa, which, however, had arisen altogether on the part of augusta. augusta had forced her mother to declare that she was insulted, and then there was no more visiting between them. this had been sad enough for ayala, who had struck up an intimacy with the marchesa's daughters. but the marchesa had explained to her that there was no help for it. "it won't do for you to separate yourself from your aunt," she had said. "of course we shall be friends, and at some future time you shall come and see us." so there had been a division, and ayala would have been quite alone had she declined the proffered companionship of gertrude. within the walls and arches and upraised terraces of the coliseum they were joined one day by young hamel, the sculptor, who had not, as yet, gone back to london -and had not, as yet, met lucy in the gardens at kensington; and with him there had been one frank houston, who had made acquaintance with lady tringle, and with the tringles generally, since they had been at rome. frank houston was a young man of family, with a taste for art, very good-looking, but not specially well off in regard to income. he had heard of the good fortune of septimus traffick in having prepared for himself a connection with so wealthy a family as the tringles, and had thought it possible that a settlement in life might be comfortable for himself. what few softwords he had hitherto been able to say to gertrude had been taken in good part, and when, therefore, they met among the walls of the coliseum, she had naturally straggled away to see some special wonder which he had a special aptitude for showing. hamel remained with ayala and tom, talking of the old days at the bijou, till he found himself obliged to leave them. then tom had his opportunity. "ayala," he said, "all this must be altered." "what must be altered?" "if you only knew, ayala, how much you are to me." "i wish you wouldn't, tom. i don't want to be anything to anybody in particular." "what i mean is, that i won't have them sit upon you. they treat you as -as -well, as though you had only half a right to be one of them." "no more i have. i have no right at all." "but that's not the way i want it to be. if you were my wife -" "tom, pray don't." "why not? i'm in earnest. why ain't i to speak as i think? oh, ayala, if you knew how much i think of you." "but you shouldn't. you haven't got a right." "i have got a right." "but i don't want it, tom, and i won't have it." he had carried her away now to the end of the terrace, or ruined tier of seats, on which they were walking, and had got her so hemmed into a corner that she could not get away from him. she was afraid of him, lest he should put out his hand to take hold of her -lest something even more might be attempted. and yet his manner was manly and sincere, and had it not been for his pins and his chains she could not but have acknowledged his goodness to her, much as she might have disliked his person. "i want to get out," she said. "i won't stay here any more. mr traffick, on the top of st peter's, had been a much pleasanter companion. "don't you believe me when i tell you that i love you better than anybody?" pleaded tom. "no." "not believe me? oh, ayala!" "i don't want to believe anything. i want to get out. if you go on, i'll tell my aunt." tell her aunt! there was a want of personal consideration to himself in this way of receiving his addresses which almost angered him. tom tringle was not in the least afraid of his mother -was not even afraid of his father as long as he was fairly regular at the office in lombard street. he was quite determined to please himself in marriage, and was disposed to think that his father and mother would like him to be settled. money was no object. there was, to his thinking, no good reason why he should not marry his cousin. for her the match was so excellent that he hardly expected she would reject him when she could be made to understand that he was really in earnest. "you may tell all the world," lie said proudly. "all i want is that you should love me." "but i don't. there are gertrude and mr houston, and i want to go to them." "say one nice word to me, ayala." "i don't know how to say a nice word. can't you be made to understand that i don't like it?" "ayala." "why don't you let me go away?" "ayala -give me -one -kiss." then ayala did go away, escaping by some kid-like manoeuvre among the ruins, and running quickly, while he followed her, joined herself to the other pair of lovers, who probably were less in want of her society than she of theirs. "ayala, i am quite in earnest," said tom, as they were walking home, "and i mean to go on with it." ayala thought that there was nothing for it but to tell her aunt. that there would be some absurdity in such a proceeding she did feel -that she would be acting as though her cousin were a naughty boy who was merely teasing her. but she felt also the peculiar danger of her own position. her aunt must be made to understand that she, ayala, was innocent in the matter. it would be terrible to her to be suspected even for a moment of a desire to inveigle the heir. that augusta would bring such an accusation against her she thought probable. augusta had said as much even at glenbogie. she must therefore be on the alert, and let it be understood at once that she was not leagued with her cousin tom. there would be an absurdity -but that would be better than suspicion. she thought about it all that afternoon, and in the evening she came to a resolution. she would write a letter to her cousin and persuade him if possible to desist. if he should again annoy her after that she would appeal to her aunt. then she wrote and sent her letter, which was as follows - dear tom? you don't know how unhappy you made me at the coliseum today. i don't think you ought to turn against me when you know what i have to bear. it is turning against me to talk as you did. of course it means nothing; but you shouldn't do it. it never never could mean anything. i hope you will be good-natured and kind to me, and then i shall be so much obliged to you. if you won't say anything more like that i will forget it altogether. your affectionate cousin, ayala the letter ought to have convinced him. those two underscored nevers should have eradicated from his mind the feeling which had been previously produced by the assertion that he had "meant nothing". but he was so assured in his own meanings that he paid no attention whatever to the nevers. the letter was a delight to him because it gave him the opportunity of a rejoinder -and he wrote his rejoinder on a scented sheet of notepaper and copied it twice - dearest ayala, why do you say that it means nothing? it means everything. no man was ever more in earnest in speaking to a lady than i am with you. why should i not be in earnest when i am so deeply in love? from the first moment in which i saw you down at glenbogie i knew how it was going to be with me. as for my mother i don't think she would say a word. why should she? but i am not the sort of man to be talked out of my intentions in such a matter as this. i have set my heart upon having you and nothing will ever turn me off. dearest ayala, let me have one look to say that you will love me, and i shall be the happiest man in england. i think you so beautiful! i do, indeed. the governor has always said that if i would settle down and marry there should be lots of money. what could i do better with it than make my darling look as grand as the best of them? yours, always meaning it, most affectionately, t. tringle it almost touched her -not in the way of love but of gratitude. he was still to her like bottom with the ass's head, or the newfoundland dog gambolling out of the water. there was the heavy face, and there were the big chains and the odious rings, and the great hands and the clumsy feet -making together a creature whom it was impossible even to think of with love. she shuddered as she remembered the proposition which had been made to her in the coliseum. and now by writing to him she had brought down upon herself this absolute love-letter. she had thought that by appealing to him as "dear tom," and by signing herself his affectionate cousin, she might have prevailed. if he could only be made to understand that it could never mean anything! but now, on the other hand, she had begun to understand that it did mean a great deal. he had sent to her a regular offer of marriage! the magnitude of the thing struck her at last. the heir of all the wealth of her mighty uncle wanted to make her his wife! but it was to her exactly as though the heir had come to her wearing an ass's head on his shoulders. love him! marry him! or even touch him? oh, no. they might ill-use her; they might scold her,; they might turn her out of the house; but no consideration would induce her to think of tom tringle as a lover. and yet he was in earnest, and honest, and good. and some answer -some further communication must be made to him. she did recognise some nobility in him, though personally he was so distasteful to her. now his appeal to her had taken the guise of an absolute offer of marriage he was entitled to a discreet and civil answer. romantic, dreamy, poetic, childish as she was, she knew as much as that. "go away, tom, you fool, you," would no longer do for the occasion. as she thought of it all that night it was borne in upon her more strongly than ever that her only protection would be in telling her aunt, and in getting her aunt to make tom understand that there must be no more of it. early on the following morning she found herself in her aunt's bedroom. chapter 8 the lout "aunt emmeline, i want you to read this letter." so it was that ayala commenced the interview. at this moment ayala was not on much better terms with her aunt than she was with her cousin augusta. ayala was a trouble to her -lady tringle -who was altogether perplexed with the feeling that she had burdened herself with an inmate in her house who was distasteful to her and of whom she could not rid herself. ayala had turned out on her hands something altogether different from the girl she had intended to cherish and patronise. ayala was independent; superior rather than inferior to her own girls; more thought of by others; apparently without any touch of that subservience which should have been produced in her by her position. ayala seemed to demand as much as though she were a daughter of the house, and at the same time to carry herself as though she were more gifted than the daughters of the house. she was less obedient even than a daughter. all this aunt emmeline could not endure with a placid bosom. she was herself kind of heart. she acknowledged her duty to her dead sister. she wished to protect and foster the orphan. she did not even yet wish to punish ayala by utter desertion. she would protect her in opposition to augusta's more declared malignity; but she did wish to be rid of ayala, if she only knew how. she took her son's letter and read it, and as a matter of course misunderstood the position. at glenbogie something had been whispered to her about tom and ayala, but she had not believed much in it. ayala was a child, and tom was to her not much more than a boy. but now here was a genuine love-letter -a letter in which her son had made a distinct proposition to marry the orphan. she did not stop to consider why ayala had brought the letter to her, but entertained at once an idea that the two young people were going to vex her very soul by a lamentable love affair. how imprudent she had been to let the two young people be together in rome, seeing that the matter had been whispered to her at glenbogie! "how long has this been going on?" she asked, severely. "he used to tease me at glenbogie, and now he is doing it again," said ayala. "there must certainly be put an end to it. you must go away." ayala knew at once that her aunt was angry with her, and was indignant at the injustice. "of course there must be put an end to it, aunt emmeline. he has no right to annoy me when i tell him not." "i suppose you have encouraged him." this was too cruel to be borne! encouraged him! ayala's anger was caused not so much by a feeling that her aunt had misappreciated the cause of her coming as that it should have been thought possible that she should have "encouraged" such a lover. it was the outrage to her taste rather than to her conduct which afflicted her. "he is a lout," she said; "a stupid lout!" thus casting her scorn upon the mother as well as on the son, and, indeed, upon the whole family. "i have not encouraged him. it is untrue." "ayala, you are very impertinent." "and you are very unjust. because i want to put a stop to it i come to you, and you tell me that i encourage him. you are worse than augusta." this was too much for the good nature even of aunt emmeline. whatever may have been the truth as to the love affair, however innocent ayala may have been in that matter, or however guilty tom, such words from a niece to her aunt -from a dependent to her superior -were unpardonable. the extreme youthfulness of the girl, a peculiar look of childhood which she still had with her, made the feeling so much the stronger. "you are worse than augusta!" and this was said to her who was specially conscious of her endeavours to mitigate augusta's just anger. she bridled up, and tried to look big and knit her brows. at that moment she could not think what must be the end of it, but she felt that ayala must be crushed. "how dare you speak to me like that, miss?" she said. "so you are. it is very cruel. tom will go on saying all this nonsense to me, and when i come to you you say i encourage him! i never encouraged him. i despise him too much. i did not think my own aunt could have told me that i encouraged any man. no, i didn't. you drive me to it, so that i have got to be impertinent." "you had better go to your room," said the aunt. then ayala, lifting her head as high as she knew how, walked towards the door. "you had better leave that letter with me." ayala considered the matter for a moment, and then handed the letter a second time to her aunt. it could be nothing to her who saw the letter. she did not want it. having thus given it up she stalked off in silent disdain and went to her chamber. aunt emmeline, when she was left alone, felt herself to be enveloped in a cloud of doubt. the desirableness of tom as a husband first forced itself upon her attention, and the undesirableness of ayala as a wife for tom. she was perplexed at her own folly in not having seen that danger of this kind would arise when she first proposed to take ayala into the house. aunts and uncles do not like the marriage of cousins, and the parents of rich children do not, as a rule, approve of marriages with those which are poor. although ayala had been so violent, lady tringle could not rid herself of the idea that her darling boy was going to throw himself away. then her cheeks became red with anger as she remembered that her tom had been called a lout -a stupid lout. there was an ingratitude in the use of such language which was not alleviated even by the remembrance that it tended against that matrimonial danger of which she was so much afraid. ayala was behaving very badly. she ought not to have coaxed tom to be her lover, and she certainly ought not to have called tom a lout. and then ayala had told her aunt that she was unjust and worse than augusta! it was out of the question that such a state of things should be endured. ayala must be made to go away. before the day was over lady tringle spoke to her son, and was astonished to find that the "lout" was quite in earnest -so much in earnest that he declared his purpose of marrying his cousin in opposition to his father and mother, in opposition even to ayala herself. he was so much in earnest that he would not be roused to wrath even when he was told that ayala had called him a lout. and then grew upon the mother a feeling that the young man had never been so little loutish before. for there had been, even in her maternal bosom, a feeling that tom was open to the criticism expressed on him. tom had been a hobble de hoy, one of those overgrown lads who come late to their manhood, and who are regarded by young ladies as louts. though he had spent his money only too freely when away, his sisters had sometimes said that he could not say "bo to a goose" at home. but now -now tom was quite an altered young man. when his own letter was shown to him he simply said that he meant to stick to it. when it was represented to him that his cousin would be quite an unfit wife for him he assured his mother that his own opinion on that matter was very different. when his father's anger was threatened he declared that his father would have no right to be angry with him if he married a lady. at the word "lout" he simply smiled. "she'll come to think different from that before she's done with me," he said, with a smile. even the mother could not but perceive that the young man had been much improved by his love. but what was she to do? two or three days went on, during which there was no reconciliation between her and ayala. between augusta and ayala no word was spoken. messages were taken to her by gertrude, the object of which was to induce her to ask her aunt's pardon. but ayala was of opinion that her aunt ought to ask her pardon, and could not be beaten from it. "why did she say that i encouraged him?" she demanded indignantly of gertrude. "i don't think she did encourage him," said gertrude to her mother. this might possibly be true, but not the less had she misbehaved. and though she might not yet have encouraged her lover it was only too probable that she might do so when she found that her lover was quite in earnest. lady tringle was much harassed. and then there came an additional trouble. gertrude informed her mother that she had engaged herself to mr francis houston, and that mr houston was going to write to her father with the object of proposing himself as a son-in-law. mr houston came also to herself and told her, in the most natural tone in the world, that he intended to marry her daughter. she had not known what to say. it was sir thomas who managed all matters of money. she had an idea that mr houston was very poor. but then so also had been mr traffick, who had been received into the family with open arms. but then mr traffick had a career, whereas mr houston was lamentably idle. she could only refer mr houston to sir thomas, and beg him not to come among them any more till sir thomas had decided. upon this gertrude also got angry, and shut herself up in her room. the apartments ruperti were, therefore, upon the whole, an uncomfortable home to them. letters upon letters were written to sir thomas, and letters upon letters came. the first letter had been about ayala. he had been much more tender towards ayala than her aunt had been. he talked of calf-love, and said that tom was a fool; but he had not at once thought it necessary to give imperative orders for tom's return. as to ayala's impudence, he evidently regarded it as nothing. it was not till aunt emmeline had spoken out in her third letter that he seemed to recognise the possibility of getting rid of ayala altogether. and this he did in answer to a suggestion which had been made to him. "if she likes to change with her sister lucy, and you like it, i shall not object," said sir thomas. then there came an order to tom that he should return to lombard street at once; but this order had been rendered abortive by the sudden return of the whole family. sir thomas, in his first letter as to gertrude, had declared that the houston marriage would not do at all. then, when he was told that gertrude and mr houston had certainly met each other more than once since an order had been given for their separation, he desired the whole family to come back at once to merle park. the proposition as to lucy had arisen in this wise. tom being in the same house with ayala, of course had her very much at advantage, and would carry on his suit in spite of any abuse which she might lavish upon him. it was quite in vain that she called him lout. "you'll think very different from that some of these days, ayala," he said, more seriously. "no, i shan't; i shall think always the same." "when you know how much i love you, you'll change." "i don't want you to love me," she said; "and if you were anything that is good you wouldn't go on after i have told you so often. it is not manly of you. you have brought me to all manner of trouble. it is your fault, but they make me suffer." after that ayala again went to her aunt, and on this occasion the family misfortune was discussed in more seemly language. ayala was still indignant, but she said nothing insolent. aunt emmeline was still averse to her niece, but she abstained from crimination. they knew each as enemies, but recognised the wisdom of keeping the peace. "as for that, aunt emmeline," ayala said, "you may be quite sure that i shall never encourage him. i shall never like him well enough." "very well. then we need say no more about that, my dear. of course, it must be unpleasant to us all, being in the same house together." "it is very unpleasant to me, when he will go on bothering me like that. it makes me wish that i were anywhere else." then aunt emmeline began to think about it very seriously. it was very unpleasant. ayala had made herself disagreeable to all the ladies of the family, and only too agreeable to the young gentleman. nor did the manifest favour of sir thomas do much towards raising ayala in lady tringle's estimation. sir thomas had only laughed when augusta had been requested to go upstairs for the scrap-book. sir thomas had been profuse with his presents even when ayala had been most persistent in her misbehaviour. and then all that affair of the marchesa, and even mr traffick's infatuation! if ayala wished that she were somewhere else would it not be well to indulge her wish! aunt emmeline certainly wished it. "if you think so, perhaps some arrangement can be made," said aunt emmeline, very slowly. "what arrangement?" "you must not suppose that i wish to turn you out." "but what arrangement?" "you see, ayala, that unfortunately we have not all of us hit it on nicely; have we?" "not at all, aunt emmeline. augusta is always angry with me. and you -you think that i have encouraged tom." "i am saying nothing about that, ayala." "but what arrangement is it, aunt emmeline?" the matter was one of fearful import to ayala. she was prudent enough to understand that well. the arrangement must be one by which she would be banished from all the wealth of the tringles. her coming among them had not been a success. she had already made them tired of her by her petulance and independence. young as she was she could see that, and comprehend the material injury she had done herself by her folly. she had been very wrong in telling augusta to go upstairs. she had been wrong in the triumph of her exclusive visits to the marchesa. she had been wrong in walking away with mr traffick on the pincian. she could see that. she had not been wrong in regard to tom -except in calling him a lout; but whether wrong or right she had been most unfortunate. but the thing had been done, and she must go. at this moment the wealth of the tringles seemed to be more to her than it had ever been before -and her own poverty and destitution seemed to be more absolute. when the word "arrangement" was whispered to her there came upon her a clear idea of all that which she was to lose. she was to be banished from merle park, from queen's gate, and from glenbogie. for her there were to be no more carriages, and horses, and pretty trinkets -none of that abandon of the luxury of money among which the tringles lived. but she had done it for herself, and she would not say a word in opposition to the fate which was before her. "what arrangement, aunt?" she said again, in a voice which was intended to welcome any arrangement that might be made. then her aunt spoke very softly. "of course, dear ayala, we do not wish to do less than we at first intended. but as you are not happy here -" then she paused, almost ashamed of herself. "i am not happy here," said ayala, boldly. "how would it be if you were to change -with lucy?" the idea which had been present to lady tringle for some weeks past had never struck ayala. the moment she heard it she felt that she was more than ever bound to assent. if the home from which she was to be banished was good, then would that good fall upon lucy. lucy would have the carriages and the horses and the trinkets, lucy, who certainly was not happy at kingsbury crescent. "i should be very glad, indeed," said ayala. her voice was so brave and decided that, in itself, it gave fresh offence to her aunt. was there to be no regret after so much generosity? but she misunderstood the girl altogether. as the words were coming from her lips -"i should be very glad, indeed," -ayala's heart was sinking with tenderness as she remembered how much after all had been done for her. but as they wished her to go there should be not a word, not a sign of unwillingness on her part. "then perhaps it can be arranged," said lady tringle. "i don't know what uncle dosett may say. perhaps they are very fond of lucy now." "they wouldn't wish to stand in her way, i should think." "at any rate, i won't. if you, and my uncles, and aunt margaret, will consent, i will go whenever you choose. of course i must do just as i'm told." aunt emmeline made a faint demur to this; but still the matter was held to be arranged. letters were written to sir thomas, and letters came, and at last even sir thomas had assented. he suggested, in the first place, that all the facts which would follow the exchange should be explained to ayala; but he was obliged after a while to acknowledge that this would be inexpedient. the girl was willing; and knew no doubt that she was to give up the great wealth of her present home. but she had proved herself to be an unfit participator, and it was better that she should go. then the departure of them all from rome was hurried on by the indiscretion of gertrude. gertrude declared that she had a right to her lover. as to his having no income, what matter for that. everyone knew that septimus traffick had no income. papa had income enough for them all. mr houston was a gentleman. till this moment no one had known of how strong a will of her own gertrude was possessed. when gertrude declared that she would not consent to be separated from mr houston then they were all hurried home. chapter 9 the exchange such was the state of things when mr dosett brought the three letters home with him to kingsbury crescent, having been so much disturbed by the contents of the two which were addressed to himself as to have found himself compelled to leave his office two hours before the proper time. the three letters were handed together by her uncle to lucy, and she, seeing the importance of the occasion, read the two open ones before she broke the envelope of her own. that from sir thomas came first, and was as follows - lombard street, january, 187 - my dear dosett, i have had a correspondence with the ladies at rome which has been painful in its nature, but which i had better perhaps communicate to you at once. ayala has not got on as well with lady tringle and the girls as might have been wished, and they all think it will be better that she and lucy should change places. i chiefly write to give my assent. your sister will no doubt write to you. i may as well mention to you, should you consent to take charge of ayala, that i have made some provision for her in my will, and that i shall not change it. i have to add on my own account that i have no complaint of my own to make against ayala. yours sincerely, t. tringle lucy, when she had read this, proceeded at once to the letter from her aunt. the matter to her was one of terrible importance, but the importance was quite as great to ayala. she had been allowed to go up alone into her own room. the letters were of such a nature that she could hardly have read them calmly in the presence of her aunt dosett. it was thus that her aunt emmeline had written - palazzo ruperti, rome, thursday my dear reginald, i am sure you will be sorry to hear that we are in great trouble here. this has become so bad that we are obliged to apply to you to help us. now you must understand that i do not mean to say a word against dear ayala -only she does not suit. it will occur sometimes that people who are most attached to each other do not suit. so it has been with dear ayala. she is not happy with us. she has not perhaps accommodated herself to her cousins quite as carefully as she might have done. she is fully as sensible of this as i am, and is, herself, persuaded that there had better be a change. now, my dear reginald, i am quite aware that when poor egbert died it was i who chose ayala, and that you took lucy partly in compliance with my wishes. now i write to suggest that there should be a change. i am sure you will give me credit for a desire to do the best i can for both the poor dear girls. i did think that this might be best done by letting ayala come to us. i now think that lucy would do better with her cousins, and that ayala would be more attractive without the young people around her. when i see you i will tell you everything. there has been no great fault. she has spoken a word or two to me which had been better unsaid, but i am well convinced that it has come from hot temper and not from a bad heart. perhaps i had better tell you the truth. tom has admired her. she has behaved very well; but she could not bear to be spoken to, and so there have been unpleasantnesses. and the girls certainly have not got on well together. sir thomas quite agrees with me that if you will consent there had better be a change. i will not write to dear lucy herself because you and margaret can explain it all so much better -if you will consent to our plan. ayala also will write to her sister. but pray tell her from me that i will love her very dearly if she will come to me. and indeed i have loved ayala almost as though she were my own, only we have not been quite able to hit it off together. of course neither has sir thomas nor have i any idea of escaping from a responsibility. i should be quite unhappy if i did not have one of poor dear egbert's girls with me. only i do think that lucy would be the best for us; and ayala thinks so too. i should be quite unhappy if i were doing this in opposition to ayala. we shall be in england almost as soon as this letter, and i should be so glad if this could be decided at once. if a thing like this is to be done it is so much better for all parties that it should be done quickly. pray give my best love to margaret, and tell her that ayala shall bring everything with her that she wants. your most affectionate sister, emmeline tringle the letter, though it was much longer than her uncle's, going into details, such as that of tom's unfortunate passion for his cousin, had less effect upon lucy, as it did not speak with so much authority as that from sir thomas. what sir thomas said would surely be done; whereas aunt emmeline was only a woman, and her letter, unsupported, might not have carried conviction. but, if sir thomas wished it, surely it must be done. then, at last, came ayala's letter - rome, thursday dearest, dearest lucy, oh, i have such things to write to you! aunt emmeline has told it all to uncle reginald. you are to come and be the princess, and i am to go and be the milkmaid at home. i am quite content that it should be so because i know that it will be the best. you ought to be a princess and i ought to be a milkmaid. it has been coming almost ever since the first day that i came among them -since i told augusta to go upstairs for the scrap-book. i felt from the very moment in which the words were uttered that i had gone and done for myself. but i am not a bit sorry, as you will come in my place. augusta will very soon be gone now, and aunt emmeline is not bad at all if you will only not contradict her. i always contradicted her, and i know that i have been a fool. but i am not a bit sorry, as you are to come instead of me. but it is not only about augusta and aunt emmeline. there has been that oaf tom. poor tom! i do believe that he is the most good-natured fellow alive. and if he had not so many chains i should not dislike him so very much. but he will go on saying horrible things to me. and then he wrote me a letter! oh dear! i took the letter to aunt emmeline, and that made the quarrel. she said that i had -encouraged him! oh, lucy, if you will think of that! i was so angry that i said ever so much to her -till she sent me out of the room. she had no business to say that i encouraged him. it was shameful! but she has never forgiven me, because i scolded her. so they have decided among them that i am to be sent away, and that you are to come in my place. my own darling lucy, it will be ever so much better. i know that you are not happy in kingsbury crescent, and that i shall bear it very much better. i can sit still and mend sheets. [poor ayala, how little she knew herself!] and you will make a beautiful grand lady, quiescent and dignified as a grand lady ought to be. at any rate it would be impossible that i should remain here. tom is bad enough, but to be told that i encourage him is more than i can bear. i shall see you very soon, but i cannot help writing and telling it to you all. give my love to aunt dosett. if she will consent to receive me i will endeavour to be good to her. in the meantime goodbye. your most affectionate sister, ayala when lucy had completed the reading of the letters she sat for a considerable time wrapped in thought. there was, in truth, very much that required thinking. it was proposed that the whole tenor of her life should be changed, and changed in a direction which would certainly suit her taste. she had acknowledged to herself that she had hated the comparative poverty of her uncle dosett's life, hating herself in that she was compelled to make such acknowledgment. but there had been more than the poverty which had been distasteful to her -a something which she had been able to tell herself that she might be justified in hating without shame. there had been to her an absence of intellectual charm in the habits and manners of kingsbury crescent which she had regarded as unfortunate and depressing. there had been no thought of art delights. no one read poetry. no one heard music. no one looked at pictures. a sheet to be darned was the one thing of greatest importance. the due development of a leg of mutton, the stretching of a pound of butter, the best way of repressing the washerwoman's bills -these had been the matters of interest. and they had not been made the less irritating to her by her aunt's extreme goodness in the matter. the leg of mutton was to be developed in the absence of her uncle -if possible without his knowledge. he was to have his run of clean linen. lucy did not grudge him anything, but was sickened by that partnership in economy which was established between her and her aunt. undoubtedly from time to time she had thought of the luxuries which had been thrown in ayala's way. there had been a regret -not that ayala should have them but that she should have missed them. money she declared that she despised -but the easy luxury of the bijou was sweet to her memory. now it was suggested to her suddenly that she was to exchange the poverty for the luxury, and to return to a mode of life in which her mind might be devoted to things of beauty. the very scenery of glenbogie -what a charm it would have for her! judging from her uncle's manner, as well as she could during that moment in which he handed to her the letter, she imagined that he intended to make no great objection. her aunt disliked her. she was sure that her aunt disliked her in spite of the partnership. only that there was one other view of the case -how happy might the transfer be. her uncle was always gentle to her, but there could hardly as yet have grown up any strong affection for her. to him she was grateful, but she could not tell herself that to part from him would be a pang. there was, however, another view of the case. ayala! how would it be with ayala! would ayala like the partnership and the economies? would ayala be cheerful as she sat opposite to her aunt for four hours at a time! ayala had said that she could sit still and mend sheets, but was it not manifest enough that ayala knew nothing of the life of which she was speaking? and would she, lucy, be able to enjoy the glories of glenbogie while she thought that ayala was eating out her heart in the sad companionship of kingsbury crescent? for above an hour she sat and thought; but of one aspect which the affair bore she did not think. she did not reflect that she and ayala were in the hands of fate, and that they must both do as their elders should require of them. at last there came a knock at the door, and her aunt entered. she would sooner that it should have been her uncle: but there was no choice but that the matter should be now discussed with the woman whom she did not love -this matter that was so dreadful to herself in all its bearings, and so dreadful to one for whom she would willingly sacrifice herself if it were possible! she did not know what she could say to create sympathy with aunt dosett. "lucy," said aunt dosett, "this is a very serious proposal." "very serious," said lucy, sternly. "i have not read the letters, but your uncle has told me about it." then lucy handed her the two letters, keeping that from ayala to herself, and she sat perfectly still while her aunt read them both slowly. "your aunt emmeline is certainly in earnest," said mrs dosett. "aunt emmeline is very good-natured, and perhaps she will change her mind if we tell her that we wish it." "but sir thomas has agreed to it." "i am sure my uncle will give way if aunt emmeline will ask him. he says he has no complaint to make against ayala. i think it is augusta, and augusta will be married, and will go away very soon." then there came a change, a visible change, over the countenance of aunt dosett, and a softening of the voice -so that she looked and spoke as lucy had not seen or heard her before. there are people apparently so hard, so ungenial, so unsympathetic, that they who only half know them expect no trait of tenderness, think that features so little alluring cannot be compatible with softness. lucy had acknowledged her aunt dosett to be good, but believed her to be incapable of being touched. but a word or two had now conquered her. the girl did not want to leave her -did not seize the first opportunity of running from her poverty to the splendour of the tringles! "but, lucy," she said, and came and placed herself nearer to lucy on the bed. "ayala -," said lucy, sobbing. "i will be kind to her -perhaps kinder than i have been to you." "you have been kind, and i have been ungrateful. i know it. but i will do better now, aunt dosett. i will stay, if you will have me." "they are rich and powerful, and you will have to do as they direct." "no! who are they that i should be made to come and go at their bidding? they cannot make me leave you." "but they can rid themselves of ayala. you see what your uncle says about money for ayala." "i hate money." "money is a thing which none of us can afford to hate. do you think it will not be much to your uncle reginald to know that you are both provided for? already he is wretched because there will be nothing to come to you. if you go to your aunt emmeline, sir thomas will do for you as he has done for ayala. dear lucy, it is not that i want to send you away." then for the first time lucy put her arm round her aunt's neck. "but it had better be as is proposed, if your aunt still wishes it, when she comes home. i and your uncle reginald would not do right were we to allow you to throw away the prospects that are offered you. it is natural that lady tringle should be anxious about her son." "she need not, in the least," said lucy, indignantly. "but you see what they say." "it is his fault, not hers. why should she be punished?" "because he is fortune's favourite, and she is not. it is no good kicking against the pricks, my dear. he is his father's son and heir, and everything must give way to him." "but ayala does not want him. ayala despises him. it is too hard that she is to lose everything because a young man like that will go on making himself disagreeable. they have no right to do it after having accustomed ayala to such a home. don't you feel that, aunt dosett?" "i do feel it." "however it might have been arranged at first, it ought to remain now. even though ayala and i are only girls, we ought not to be changed about as though we were horses. if she had done anything wrong -but uncle tom says she has done nothing wrong." "i suppose she has spoken to her aunt disrespectfully." "because her aunt told her that she had encouraged this man. what would you have a girl say when she is falsely accused like that? would you say it to me merely because some horrid man would come and speak to me?" then there came a slight pang of conscience as she remembered isadore hamel in kensington gardens. if the men were not thought to be horrid, then perhaps the speaking might be a sin worthy of most severe accusation. there was nothing more said about it that night, nor till the following afternoon, when mr dosett returned home at the usual hour from his office. then lucy was closeted with him for a quarter of an hour in the drawing-room. he had been into the city and seen sir thomas. sir thomas had been of opinion that it would be much better that lady tringle's wishes should be obeyed. it was quite true that he himself had no complaint to make against ayala, but he did think that ayala had been pert; and, though it might be true that ayala had not encouraged tom, there was no knowing what might grow out of such a propensity on tom's part. and then it could not be pleasant to lady tringle or to himself that their son should be banished out of their house. when something was hinted as to the injustice of this, sir thomas endeavoured to put all that right by declaring that, if lady tringle's wishes could be attended to in this matter, provision would be made for the two girls. he certainly would not strike ayala's name out of his will, and as certainly would not take lucy under his wing as his own child without making some provision for her. looking at the matter in this light he did not think that mr dosett would be justified in robbing lucy of the advantages which were offered to her. with this view mr dosett found himself compelled to agree, and with these arguments he declared to lucy that it was her duty to submit herself to the proposed exchange. early in february all the tringle family were in queen's gate, and lucy on her first visit to the house found that everyone, including ayala, looked upon the thing as settled. ayala, who under these circumstances was living on affectionate terms with all the tringles, except tom, was quite radiant. "i suppose i had better go tomorrow, aunt?" she said, as though it were a matter of most trivial consequence. "in a day or two, ayala, it will be better." "it shall be monday, then. you must come over here in a cab, lucy." "the carriage shall be sent, my dear." "but then it must go back with me, aunt emmeline." "it shall, my dear." "and the horses must be put up, because lucy and i must change all our things in the drawers." lucy at the time was sitting in the drawing-room, and augusta, with most affectionate confidence, was singing to her all the praises of mr traffick. in this way it was settled, and the change, so greatly affecting the fortunes of our two sisters, was arranged. chapter 10 ayala and her aunt margaret till the last moment for going ayala seemed to be childish, triumphant, and indifferent. but, till that last moment, she was never alone with lucy. it was the presence of her aunt and cousins which sustained her in her hardihood. tom was never there -or so rarely as not to affect her greatly. in london he had his own lodgings, and was not encouraged to appear frequently till ayala should have gone. but aunt emmeline and gertrude were perseveringly gracious, and even augusta had somewhat relaxed from her wrath. with them ayala was always good-humoured, but always brave. she affected to rejoice at the change which was to be made. she spoke of lucy's coming and of her own going as an unmixed blessing. this she did so effectually as to make aunt emmeline declare to sir thomas, with tears in her eyes, that the girl was heartless. but when, at the moment of parting, the two girls were together, then ayala broke down. they were in the room, together, which one had occupied and the other was to occupy, and their boxes were still upon the floor. though less than six months had passed since ayala had come among the rich things and lucy had been among the poor, ayala's belongings had become much more important than her sister's. though the tringles had been unpleasant they had been generous. lucy was sitting upon the bed, while ayala was now moving about the room restlessly, now clinging to her sister, and now sobbing almost in despair. "of course i know," she said. "what is the use of telling stories about it any longer?" "it is not too late yet, ayala. if we both go to uncle tom he will let us change it." "why should it be changed? if i could change it by lifting up my little finger i could not do it. why should it not be you as well as me? they have tried me, and -as aunt emmeline says -i have not suited." "aunt dosett is not ill-natured, my darling." "no, i dare say not. it is i that am bad. it is bad to like pretty things and money, and to hate poor things. or, rather, i do not believe it is bad at all, because it is so natural. i believe it is all a lie as to its being wicked to love riches. i love them, whether it is wicked or not." "oh, ayala!" "do not you? don't let us be hypocritical, lucy, now at the last moment. did you like the way in which they lived in kingsbury crescent?" lucy paused before she answered. "i like it better than i did," she said. "at any rate, i would willingly go back to kingsbury crescent." "yes -for my sake." "indeed i would, my pet." "and for your sake i would rather die than stay. but what is the good of talking about it, lucy? you and i have no voice in it, though it is all about ourselves. as you say, we are like two tame birds, who have to be moved from one cage into another just as the owner pleases. we belong either to uncle tom or uncle dosett, just as they like to settle it. oh, lucy, i do so wish that i were dead." "ayala, that is wicked." "how can i help it, if i am wicked? what am i to do when i get there? what am i to say to them? how am i to live? lucy, we shall never see each other." "i will come across to you constantly." "i meant to do so, but i didn't. they are two worlds, miles asunder. lucy, will they let isadore hamel come here?" lucy blushed and hesitated. "i am sure he will come." lucy remembered that she had given her friend her address at queen's gate, and felt that she would seem to have done it as though she had known that she was about to be transferred to the other uncle's house. "it will make no difference if he does," she said. "oh, i have such a dream -such a castle in the air! if i could think it might ever be so, then i should not want to die." "what do you dream?" but lucy, though she asked the question, knew the dream. "if you had a little house of your own, oh, ever so tiny; and if you and he -?" "there is no he." "there might be. and, if you and he would let me have any corner for myself, then i should be happy. then i would not want to die. you would, wouldn't you?" "how can i talk about it, ayala? there isn't such a thing. but yet -but yet; oh, ayala, do you not know that to have you with me would be better than anything?" "no -not better than anything -second best. he would be best. i do so hope that he may be 'he'. come in." there was a knock at the door, and aunt emmeline, herself, entered the room. "now, my dears, the horses are standing there, and the men are coming up for the luggage. ayala, i hope we shall see you very often. and remember that, as regards anything that is unpleasant, bygones shall be bygones." then there was a crowd of farewell kisses, and in a few minutes ayala was alone in the carriage on her road up to kingsbury crescent. the thing had been done so quickly that hitherto there had hardly been time for tears. to ayala herself the most remarkable matter in the whole affair had been tom's persistence. he had, at last, been allowed to bring them home from rome, there having been no other gentleman whose services were available for the occasion. he had been watched on the journey very closely, and had had no slant in his favour, as the young lady to whom he was devoted was quite as anxious to keep out of his way as had been the others of the party to separate them. but he had made occasion, more than once, sufficient to express his intention. "i don't mean to give you up, you know," he had said to her. "when i say a thing i mean it. i am not going to be put off by my mother. and as for the governor he would not say a word against it if he thought we were both in earnest." "but i ain't in earnest," said ayala; "or rather, i am very much in earnest." "so am i. that's all i've got to say just at present." from this there grew up within her mind a certain respect for the "lout", which, however, made him more disagreeable to her than he might have been had he been less persistent. it was late in the afternoon, not much before dinner, when ayala reached the house in kingsbury crescent. hitherto she had known almost nothing of her aunt dosett, and had never been intimate even with her uncle. they, of course, had heard much of her, and had been led to suppose that she was much less tractable than the simple lucy. this feeling had been so strong that mr dosett himself would hardly have been led to sanction the change had it not been for that promise from sir thomas that he would not withdraw the provision he had made for ayala, and would do as much for lucy if lucy should become an inmate of his family. mrs dosett had certainly been glad to welcome any change, when a change was proposed to her. there had grown up something of affection at the last moment, but up to that time she had certainly disliked her niece. lucy had appeared to her to be at first idle and then sullen. the girl had seemed to affect a higher nature than her own, and had been wilfully indifferent to the little things which had given to her life whatever interest it possessed. lucy's silence had been a reproach to her, though she herself had been able to do so little to abolish the silence. perhaps ayala might be better. but they were both afraid of ayala -as they had not been afraid of lucy before her arrival. they made more of preparation for her in their own minds, and, as to their own conduct, mr dosett was there himself to receive her, and was conscious in doing so that there had been something of failure in their intercourse with lucy. lucy had been allowed to come in without preparation, with an expectation that she would fall easily into her place, and there had been failure. there had been no regular consultation as to this new coming, but both mr and mrs dosett were conscious of an intended effort. lady tringle and mr dosett had always been aunt emmeline and uncle reginald, by reason of the nearness of their relationship. circumstances of closer intercourse had caused sir thomas to be uncle tom. but mrs dosett had never become more than aunt dosett to either of the girls. this in itself had been matter almost of soreness to her, and she had intended to ask lucy to adopt the more endearing form of her christian name; but there had been so little endearment between them that the moment for doing so had never come. she was thinking of all this up in her own room, preparatory to the reception of this other girl, while mr dosett was bidding her welcome to kingsbury crescent in the drawing-room below. ayala had been dissolved in tears during the drive round by kensington to bayswater, and was hardly able to repress her sobs as she entered the house. "my dear," said the uncle, "we will do all that we can to make you happy here." "i am sure you will; but -but -it is so sad coming away from lucy." "lucy i am sure will be happy with her cousins." if lucy's happiness were made to depend on her cousins, thought ayala, it would not be well assured. "and my sister emmeline is always good-natured." "aunt emmeline is very good, only -" "only what?" "i don't know. but it is such a sudden change, uncle reginald." "yes, it is a very great change, my dear. they are very rich and we are poor enough. i should hardly have consented to this, for your sake, but that there are reasons which will make it better for you both." "as to that," said ayala, stoutly, "i had to come away. i didn't suit." "you shall suit us, my dear." "i hope so. i will try. i know more now than i did then. i thought i was to be augusta's equal." "we shall all be equal here." "people ought to be equal, i think -except old people and young people. i will do whatever you and my aunt tell me. there are no young people here, so there won't be any trouble of that kind." "there will be no other young person, certainly. you shall go upstairs now and see your aunt." then there was the interview upstairs, which consisted chiefly in promises and kisses, and ayala was left alone to unpack her boxes and prepare for dinner. before she began her operations she sat still for a few moments, and with an effort collected her energies and made her resolution. she had said to lucy in her passion that she would that she were dead. that that should have been wicked was not matter of much concern to her. but she acknowledged to herself that it had been weak and foolish. there was her life before her, and she would still endeavour to be happy though there had been so much to distress her. she had flung away wealth. she was determined to fling it away still when it should present itself to her in the shape of her cousin tom. but she had her dreams -her day-dreams -those castles in the air which it had been the delight of her life to construct, and in the building of which her hours had never run heavy with her. isadore hamel would, of course, come again, and would, of course, marry lucy, and then there would be a home for her after her own heart. with isadore as her brother, and her own lucy close to her, she would not feel the want of riches and of luxury. if there were only some intellectual charm in her life, some touch of art, some devotion to things beautiful, then she could do without gold and silver and costly raiment. of course, isadore would come; and then -then -in the far distance, something else would come, something of which in her castle-building she had not yet developed the form, of which she did not yet know the bearing, or the manner of its beauty, or the music of its voice; but as to which she was very sure that its form would be beautiful and its voice full of music. it can hardly be said that this something was the centre of her dreams, or the foundation of her castles. it was the extreme point of perfection at which she would arrive at last, when her thoughts had become sublimated by the intensity of her thinking. it was the tower of the castle from which she could look down upon the inferior world below -the last point of the dream in arranging which she would all but escape from earth to heaven -when in the moment of her escape the cruel waking back into the world would come upon her. but this she knew -that this something, whatever might be its form or whatever its voice, would be exactly the opposite of tom tringle. she had fallen away from her resolution to her dreams for a time, when suddenly she jumped up and began her work with immense energy. open went one box after another, and in five minutes the room was strewed with her possessions. the modest set of drawers which was to supply all her wants was filled with immediate haste. things were deposited in whatever nooks might be found, and every corner was utilised. her character for tidiness had never stood high. at the bijou lucy, or her mother, or the favourite maid, had always been at hand to make good her deficiencies with a reproach which had never gone beyond a smile or a kiss. at glenbogie and even on the journey there had been attendant lady's maids. but here she was all alone. everything was still in confusion when she was called to dinner. as she went down she recalled to herself her second resolution. she would be good -whereby she intimated to herself that she would endeavour to do what might be pleasing to her aunt dosett. she had little doubt as to her uncle. but she was aware that there had been differences between her aunt and lucy. if lucy had found it difficult to be good how great would be the struggle required from her! she sat herself down at table a little nearer to her aunt than her uncle, because it was specially her aunt whom she wished to win, and after a few minutes she put out her little soft hand and touched that of mrs dosett. "my dear," said that lady. "i hope you will be happy." "i am determined to be happy," said ayala, "if you will let me love you." mrs dosett was not beautiful, nor was she romantic. in appearance she was the very reverse of ayala. the cares of the world, the looking after shillings and their results, had given her that look of commonplace insignificance which is so frequent and so unattractive among middle-aged women upon whom the world leans heavily. but there was a tender corner in her heart which was still green, and from which a little rill of sweet water could be made to flow when it was touched aright. on this occasion a tear came to her eye as she pressed her niece's hand; but she said nothing. she was sure, however, that she would love ayala much better than she had been able to love lucy. "what would you like me to do?" asked ayala, when her aunt accompanied her that night to her bedroom. "to do, my dear? what do you generally do?" "nothing. i read a little and draw a little, but i do nothing useful. i mean it to be different now." "you shall do as you please, ayala." "oh, but i mean it. and you must tell me. of course things have to be different." "we are not rich like your uncle and aunt tringle." "perhaps it is better not to be rich, so that one may have something to do. but i want you to tell me as though you really cared for me." "i will care for you," said aunt dosett, sobbing. "then first begin by telling me what to do. i will try and do it. of course i have thought about it, coming away from all manner of rich things; and i have determined that it shall not make me unhappy. i will rise above it. i will begin tomorrow and do anything if you will tell me." then aunt dosett took her in her arms and kissed her, and declared that on the morrow they would begin their work together in perfect confidence and love with each other. "i think she will do better than lucy," said mrs dosett to her husband that night. "lucy was a dear girl too," said uncle reginald. "oh, yes -quite so. i don't mean to say a word against lucy; but i think that i can do better with ayala. she will be more diligent." uncle reginald said nothing to this, but he could not but think that of the two lucy would be the one most likely to devote herself to hard work. on the next morning ayala went out with her aunt on the round to the shopkeepers, and listened with profound attention to the domestic instructions which were given to her on the occasion. when she came home she knew much of which she had known nothing before. what was the price of mutton and how much mutton she was expected as one of the family to eat per week; what were the necessities of the house in bread and butter, how far a pint of milk might be stretched -with a proper understanding that her uncle reginald as head of the family was to be subjected to no limits. and before their return from that walk -on the first morning of ayala's sojourn -ayala had undertaken always to call mrs dosett aunt margaret for the future. chapter 11 tom tringle comes to the crescent during the next three months, up to the end of the winter and through the early spring, things went on without any change either in queen's gate or kingsbury crescent. the sisters saw each other occasionally, but not as frequently as either of them had intended. lucy was not encouraged in the use of cabs, nor was the carriage lent to her often for the purpose of going to the crescent. the reader may remember that she had been in the habit of walking alone in kensington gardens, and a walk across kensington gardens would carry her the greater part of the distance to kingsbury crescent. but lucy, in her new circumstances, was not advised -perhaps, i may say, was not allowed -to walk alone. lady tringle, being a lady of rank and wealth, was afraid, or pretended to be afraid, of the lions. poor ayala was really afraid of the lions. thus it came to pass that the intercourse was not frequent. in her daily life lucy was quiet and obedient. she did not run counter to augusta, whose approaching nuptials gave her that predominance in the house which is always accorded to young ladies in her recognised position. gertrude was at this time a subject of trouble at queen's gate. sir thomas had not been got to approve of mr frank houston, and gertrude had positively refused to give him up. sir thomas was, indeed, considerably troubled by his children. there had been a period of disagreeable obstinacy even with augusta before mr traffick had been taken into the bosom of the family. now gertrude had her own ideas, and so also had tom. tom had become quite a trouble. sir thomas and lady tringle, together, had determined that tom must be weaned; by which they meant that he must be cured of his love. but tom had altogether refused to be weaned. mr dosett had been requested to deny him admittance to the house in kingsbury crescent, and as this request had been fully endorsed by ayala herself orders had been given to the effect to the parlour-maid. tom had called more than once, and had been unable to obtain access to his beloved. but yet he resolutely refused to be weaned. he told his father to his face that he intended to marry ayala, and abused his mother roundly when she attempted to interfere. the whole family was astounded by his perseverance, so that there had already sprung up an idea in the minds of some among the tringles that he would be successful at last. augusta was very firm, declaring that ayala was a viper. but sir thomas, himself, began to inquire, within his own bosom, whether tom should not be allowed to settle down in the manner desired by himself. in no consultation held at queen's gate on the subject was there the slightest expression of an opinion that tom might be denied the opportunity of settling down as he wished through any unwillingness on the part of ayala. when things were in this position, tom sought an interview one morning with his father in lombard street. they rarely saw each other at the office, each having his own peculiar branch of business. sir thomas manipulated his millions in a little back room of his own, while tom, dealing probably with limited thousands, made himself useful in an outer room. they never went to, or left, the office together, but sir thomas always took care to know that his son was or was not on the premises. "i want to say a word or two, sir, about -about the little affair of mine," said tom. "what affair?" said sir thomas, looking up from his millions. "i think i should like to -marry." "the best thing you can do, my boy; only it depends upon who the young lady may be." "my mind is made up about that, sir; i mean to marry my cousin. i don't see why a young man isn't to choose for himself." then sir thomas preached his sermon, but preached it in the manner which men are wont to use when they know that they are preaching in vain. there is a tone of refusal, which, though the words used may be manifestly enough words of denial, is in itself indicative of assent. sir thomas ended the conference by taking a week to think over the matter, and when the week was over gave way. he was still inclined to think that marriages with cousins had better be avoided; but he gave way, and at last promised that if tom and ayala were of one mind an income should be forthcoming. for the carrying out of this purpose it was necessary that the door of uncle dosett's house should be unlocked, and with the object of turning the key sir thomas himself called at the admiralty. "i find my boy is quite in earnest about this," he said to the admiralty clerk. "oh; indeed." "i can't say i quite like it myself." mr dosett could only shake his head. "cousins had better be cousins, and nothing more." "and then you would probably expect him to get money?" "not at all," said sir thomas, proudly. "i have got money enough for them both. it isn't an affair of money. to make a long story short, i have given my consent; and, therefore, if you do not mind, i shall be glad if you will allow tom to call at the crescent. of course, you may have your own views; but i don't suppose you can hope to do better for the girl. cousins do marry, you know, very often." mr dosett could only say that he could not expect to do anything for the girl nearly so good, and that, as far as he was concerned, his nephew tom should be made quite welcome at kingsbury crescent. it was not, he added, in his power to answer for ayala. as to this, sir thomas did not seem to have any doubts. the good things of the world, which it was in his power to offer, were so good, that it was hardly probable that a young lady in ayala's position should refuse them. "my dear," said aunt margaret, the next morning, speaking in her most suasive tone, "your cousin tom is to be allowed to call here." "tom tringle?" "yes, my dear. sir thomas has consented." "then he had better not," said ayala, bristling up in hot anger. "uncle tom has got nothing to do with it, either in refusing or consenting. i won't see him." "i think you must see him if he calls." "but i don't want. oh, aunt margaret, pray make him not come. i don't like him a bit. we are doing so very well. are we not, aunt margaret?" "certainly, my dear, we are doing very well -at least, i hope so. but you are old enough now to understand that this is a very serious matter." "of course it is serious," said ayala, who certainly was not guilty of the fault of making light of her future life. those dreams of hers, in which were contained all her hopes and all her aspirations, were very serious to her. this was so much the case that she had by no means thought of her cousin tom in a light spirit, as though he were a matter of no moment to her. he was to her just what the beast must have been to the beauty, when the beast first began to be in love. but her safety had consisted in the fact that no one had approved of the beast being in love with her. now she could understand that all the horrors of oppression might fall upon her. of course it was serious; but not the less was she resolved that nothing should induce her to marry the beast. "i think you ought to see him when he comes, and to remember how different it will be when he comes with the approval of his father. it is, of course, saying that they are ready to welcome you as their daughter." "i don't want to be anybody's daughter." "but, ayala, there are so many things to be thought of. here is a young man who is able to give you not only every comfort but great opulence." "i don't want to be opulent." "and be will be a baronet." "i don't care about baronets, aunt margaret." "and you will have a house of your own in which you may be of service to your sister." "i had rather she should have a house." "but tom is not in love with lucy." "he is such a lout! aunt margaret, i won't have anything to say to him. i would a great deal sooner die. uncle tom has no right to send him here. they have got rid of me, and i am very glad of it; but it isn't fair that he should come after me now that i'm gone away. couldn't uncle reginald tell him to stay away?" a great deal more was said, but nothing that was said had the slightest effect on ayala. when she was told of her dependent position, and of the splendour of the prospects offered, she declared that she would rather go into the poorhouse than marry her cousin. when she was told that tom was good-natured, honest, and true, she declared that good-nature, honesty, and truth had nothing to do with it. when she was asked what it was that she looked forward to in the world she could merely sob and say that there was nothing. she could not tell even her sister lucy of those dreams and castles. how, then, could she explain them to her aunt margaret? how could she make her aunt understand that there could be no place in her heart for tom tringle seeing that it was to be kept in reserve for some angel of light who would surely make his appearance in due season -but who must still be there, present to her as her angel of light, even should he never show himself in the flesh. how vain it was to talk of tom tringle to her, when she had so visible before her eyes that angel of light with whom she was compelled to compare him! but, though she could not be brought to say that she would listen patiently to his story, she was nevertheless made to understand that she must see him when he came to her. aunt margaret was very full on that subject. a young man who was approved of by the young lady's friends, and who had means at command, was, in mrs dosett's opinion, entitled to a hearing. how otherwise were properly authorised marriages to be made up and arranged? when this was going on there was in some slight degree a diminished sympathy between ayala and her aunt. ayala still continued her household duties -over which, in the privacy of her own room, she groaned sadly; but she continued them in silence. her aunt, upon whom she had counted, was, she thought, turning against her. mrs dosett, on the other hand, declared to herself that the girl was romantic and silly. husbands with every immediate comfort, and a prospect of almost unlimited wealth, are not to be found under every hedge. what right could a girl so dependent as ayala have to refuse an eligible match? she therefore in this way became an advocate on behalf of tom -as did also uncle reginald, more mildly. uncle reginald merely remarked that tom was attending to his business, which was a great thing in a young man. it was not much, but it showed ayala that in this matter her uncle was her enemy. in this, her terrible crisis, she had not a friend, unless it might be lucy. then a day was fixed on which tom was to come, which made the matter more terrible by anticipation. "what can be the good?" ayala said to her aunt when the hour named for the interview was told her, "as i can tell him everything just as well without his coming at all." but all that had been settled. aunt margaret had repeated over and over again that such an excellent young man as tom, with such admirable intentions, was entitled to a hearing from any young lady. in reply to this ayala simply made a grimace, which was intended to signify the utter contempt in which she held her cousin tom with all his wealth. tom tringle, in spite of his rings and a certain dash of vulgarity, which was, perhaps, not altogether his own fault, was not a bad fellow. having taken it into his heart that he was very much in love he was very much in love. he pictured to himself a happiness of a wholesome cleanly kind. to have the girl as his own, to caress her and foster her, and expend himself in making her happy; to exalt her, so as to have it acknowledged that she was, at any rate, as important as augusta; to learn something from her, so that he, too, might become romantic, and in some degree poetical -all this had come home to him in a not ignoble manner. but it had not come home to him that ayala might probably refuse him. hitherto ayala had been very persistent in her refusals; but then hitherto there had existed the opposition of all the family. now he had overcome that, and he felt therefore that he was entitled to ask and to receive. on the day fixed, and at the hour fixed, he came in the plenitude of all his rings. poor tom! it was a pity that he should have had no one to advise him as to his apparel. ayala hated his jewelry. she was not quite distinct in her mind as to the raiment which would be worn by the angel of light when he should come, but she was sure that he would not be chiefly conspicuous for heavy gilding; and tom, moreover, had a waistcoat which would of itself have been suicidal. such as he was, however, he was shown up into the drawing-room, where he found ayala alone. it was certainly a misfortune to him that no preliminary conversation was possible. ayala had been instructed to be there with the express object of listening to an offer of marriage. the work had to be done -and should be done; but it would not admit of other ordinary courtesies. she was very angry with him, and she looked her anger. why should she be subjected to this terrible annoyance? he had sense enough to perceive that there was no place for preliminary courtesy, and therefore rushed away at once to the matter in hand. "ayala!" he exclaimed, coming and standing before her as she sat upon the sofa. "tom!" she said, looking boldly up into his face. "ayala, i love you better than anything else in the world." "but what's the good of it?" "of course it was different when i told you so before. i meant to stick to it, and i was determined that the governor should give way. but you couldn't know that. mother and the girls were all against us." "they weren't against me," said ayala. "they were against our being married, and so they squeezed you out as it were. that is why you have been sent to this place. but they understand me now, and know what i am about. they have all given their consent, and the governor has promised to be liberal. when he says a thing he'll do it. there will be lots of money." "i don't care a bit about money," said ayala, fiercely. "no more do i -except only that it is comfortable. it wouldn't do to marry without money -would it?" "it would do very well if anybody cared for anybody." the angel of light generally appeared in forma pauperis, though there was always about him a tinge of bright azure which was hardly compatible with the draggle-tailed hue of everyday poverty. "but an income is a good thing, and the governor will come down like a brick." "the governor has nothing to do with it. i told you before that it is all nonsense. if you will only go away and say nothing about it i shall always think you very good-natured." "but i won't go away," said tom speaking out boldly. "i mean to stick to it. ayala, i don't believe you understand that i am thoroughly in earnest." "why shouldn't i be in earnest, too?" "but i love you, ayala. i have set my heart upon it. you don't know how well i love you. i have quite made up my mind about it." "and i have made up my mind." "but, ayala -" now the tenor of his face changed, and something of the look of a despairing lover took the place of that offensive triumph which had at first sat upon his brow. "i don't suppose you care for any other fellow yet." there was the angel of light. but even though she might be most anxious to explain to him that his suit was altogether impracticable she could say nothing to him about the angel. though she was sure that the angel would come, she was not certain that she would ever give herself altogether even to the angel. the celestial castle which was ever being built in her imagination was as yet very much complicated. but had it been ever so clear it would have been quite impossible to explain anything of this to her cousin tom. "that has nothing to do with it," she said. "if you knew how i love you!" this came from him with a sob, and as he sobbed he went down before her on his knees. "don't be a fool, tom -pray don't. if you won't get up i shall go away. i must go away. i have heard all that there is to hear. i told them that there is no use in your coming." "ayala!" with this there were veritable sobs. "then why don't you give it up and let us be good friends?" "i can't give it up. i won't give it up. when a fellow means it as i do he never gives it up. nothing on earth shall make me give it up. ayala, you've got to do it, and so i tell you." "nobody can make me," said ayala, nodding her head, but somewhat tamed by the unexpected passion of the young man. "then you won't say one kind word to me?" "i can't say anything kinder." "very well. then i shall go away and come again constantly till you do. i mean to have you. when you come to know how very much i love you i do think you will give way at last." with that he picked himself up from the ground and hurried out of the house without saying another word. chapter 12 "would you?" the scene described in the last chapter took place in march. for three days afterwards there was quiescence in kingsbury crescent. then there came a letter from tom to ayala, very pressing, full of love and resolution, offering to wait any time -even a month -if she wished it, but still persisting in his declared intention of marrying her sooner or later -not by any means a bad letter had there not been about it a little touch of bombast which made it odious to ayala's sensitive appreciation. to this ayala wrote a reply in the following words: "when i tell you that i won't, you oughtn't to go on. it isn't manly. ayala "pray do not write again for i shall never answer another." of this she said nothing to mrs dosett, though the arrival of tom's letter must have been known to that lady. and she posted her own epistle without a word as to what she was doing. she wrote again and again to lucy imploring her sister to come to her, urging that as circumstances now were she could not show herself at the house in queen's gate. to these lucy always replied; but she did not reply by coming, and hardly made it intelligible why she did not come. aunt emmeline hoped, she said, that ayala would very soon be able to be at queen's gate. then there was a difficulty about the carriage. no one would walk across with her except tom; and walking by herself was forbidden. aunt emmeline did not like cabs. then there came a third or fourth letter, in which lucy was more explanatory, but yet not sufficiently so. during the easter recess, which would take place in the middle of april, augusta and mr traffick would be married. the happy couple were to be blessed with a divided honeymoon. the interval between easter and whitsuntide would require mr traffick's presence in the house, and the bride with her bridegroom were to return to queen's gate. then they would depart again for the second holidays, and when they were so gone aunt emmeline hoped that ayala would come to them for a visit. "they quite understand", said lucy, "that it will not do to have you and augusta together." this was not at all what ayala wanted. "it won't at all do to have me and him together," said ayala to herself, alluding of course to tom tringle. but why did not lucy come over to her? lucy, who knew so well that her sister did not want to see anyone of the tringles, who must have been sure that any visit to queen's gate must have been impossible, ought to have come to her. to whom else could she say a word in her trouble? it was thus that ayala argued with herself, declaring to herself that she must soon die in her misery -unless indeed that angel of light might come to her assistance very quickly. but lucy had troubles of her own in reference to the family at queen's gate, which did, in fact, make it almost impossible to visit her sister for some weeks. sir thomas had given an unwilling but a frank consent to his son's marriage -and then expected simply to be told that it would take place at such and such a time, when money would be required. lady tringle had given her consent -but not quite frankly. she still would fain have forbidden the banns had any power of forbidding remained in her hands. augusta was still hot against the marriage, and still resolute to prevent it. that proposed journey upstairs after the scrap-book at glenbogie, that real journey up to the top of st peter's, still rankled in her heart. that tom should make ayala a future baronet's wife; that tom should endow ayala with the greatest share of the tringle wealth; that ayala should become powerful in queen's gate, and dominant probably at merle park and glenbogie -was wormwood to her. she was conscious that ayala was pretty and witty, though she could affect to despise the wit and the prettiness. by instigating her mother, and by inducing mr traffick to interfere when mr traffick should be a member of the family, she thought that she might prevail. with her mother she did in part prevail. her future husband was at present too much engaged with supply and demand to be able to give his thoughts to tom's affairs. but there would soon be a time when he naturally would be compelled to divide his thoughts. then there was gertrude. gertrude's own affairs had not as yet been smiled upon, and the want of smiles she attributed very much to augusta. why should augusta have her way and not she, gertrude, nor her brother tom? she therefore leagued herself with tom, and declared herself quite prepared to receive ayala into the house. in this way the family was very much divided. when lucy first made her petition for the carriage, expressing her desire to see ayala, both her uncle and her aunt were in the room. objection was made -some frivolous objection -by lady tringle, who did not in truth care to maintain much connection between queen's gate and the crescent. then sir thomas, in his burly authoritative way, had said that ayala had better come to them. that same evening he had settled or intended to settle it with his wife. let ayala come as soon as the trafficks -as they then would be -should have gone. to this lady tringle had assented, knowing more than her husband as to ayala's feelings, and thinking that in this way a breach might be made between them. ayala had been a great trouble to her, and she was beginning to be almost sick of the dormer connection altogether. it was thus that lucy was hindered from seeing her sister for six weeks after that first formal declaration of his love made by tom to ayala. tom had still persevered and had forced his way more than once into ayala's presence, but ayala's answers had been always the same. "it's a great shame, and you have no right to treat me in this way." then came the traffick marriage with great eclat. there were no less than four traffick bridesmaids, all of them no doubt noble, but none of them very young, and gertrude and lucy were bridesmaids -and two of augusta's friends. ayala, of course, was not of the party. tom was gorgeous in his apparel, not in the least depressed by his numerous repulses, quite confident of ultimate success, and proud of his position as a lover with so beautiful a girl. he talked of his affairs to all his friends, and seemed to think that even on this wedding-day his part was as conspicuous as that of his sister, because of his affair with his beautiful cousin. "augusta doesn't hit it off with her," he said to one of his friends, who asked why ayala was not at the wedding -"augusta is the biggest fool out, you know. she's proud of her husband because he's the son of a lord. i wouldn't change ayala for the daughter of any duchess in europe;" -thus showing that he regarded ayala as being almost his own already. lord boardotrade was there, making a semi-jocose speech, quite in the approved way for a cognate paterfamilias. perhaps there was something of a thorn in this to sir thomas, as it had become apparent at last that mr traffick himself did not purpose to add anything from his own resources to the income on which he intended to live with his wife. lord boardotrade had been obliged to do so much for his eldest son that there appeared to be nothing left for the member for port glasgow. sir thomas was prepared with his l#120,000, and did not perhaps mind this very much. but a man, when he pays his money, likes to have some return for it, and he did not quite like the tone with which the old nobleman, not possessed of very old standing in the peerage, seemed to imply that he, like a noble old providence, had enveloped the whole tringle family in the mantle of his noble blood. he combined the jocose and the paternal in the manner appropriate to such occasions; but there did run through sir thomas's mind as he heard him an idea that l#120,000 was a sufficient sum to pay, and that it might be necessary to make mr traffick understand that out of the income thenceforth coming he must provide a house for himself and his wife. it had been already arranged that he was to return to queen's gate with his wife for the period between easter and whitsuntide. it had lately -quite lately -been hinted to sir thomas that the married pair would run up again after the second holidays. mr septimus traffick had once spoken of glenbogie as almost all his own, and augusta had, in her father's hearing, said a word intended to be very affectionate about "dear merle park". sir thomas was a father all over, with all a father's feelings; but even a father does not like to be done. mr traffick, no doubt, was a member of parliament and son of a peer -but there might be a question whether even mr traffick had not been purchased at quite his full value. nevertheless the marriage was pronounced to have been a success. immediately after it -early, indeed, on the following morning -sir thomas inquired when ayala was coming to queen's gate. "is it necessary that she should come quite at present?" asked lady tringle. "i thought it was all settled," said sir thomas, angrily. this had been said in the privacy of his own dressing-room, but downstairs at the breakfast-table in the presence of gertrude and lucy, he returned to the subject. tom, who did not live in the house, was not there. "i suppose we might as well have ayala now," he said, addressing himself chiefly to lucy. "do you go and manage it with her." there was not a word more said. sir thomas did not always have his own way in his family. what man was ever happy enough to do that? but he was seldom directly contradicted. lady tringle when the order was given pursed up her lips, and he, had he been observant, might have known that she did not intend to have ayala if she could help it. but he was not observant -except as to millions. when sir thomas was gone, lady tringle discussed the matter with lucy. "of course, my dear," she said, "if we could make dear ayala happy -" "i don't think she will come, aunt emmeline." "not come!" this was not said at all in a voice of anger, but simply as eliciting some further expression of opinion. "she's afraid of -tom." lucy had never hitherto expressed a positive opinion on that matter at queen's gate. when augusta had spoken of ayala as having run after tom, lucy had been indignant, and had declared that the running had been all on the other side. in a side way she had hinted that ayala, at any rate at present, was far from favourable to tom's suit. but she had never yet spoken out her mind at queen's gate as ayala had spoken it to her. "afraid of him?" said aunt emmeline. "i mean that she is not a bit in love with him, and when a girl is like that i suppose she is -is afraid of a man, if everybody else wants her to marry him." "why should everybody want her to marry tom?" asked lady tringle, indignantly. "i am sure i don't want her." "i suppose it is uncle tom, and aunt dosett and uncle reginald," said poor lucy, finding that she had made a mistake. "i don't see why anybody should want her to marry tom. tom is carried away by her baby face, and makes a fool of himself. as to everybody wanting her, i hope she does not flatter herself that there is anything of the kind." "i only meant that i think she would rather not be brought here, where she would have to see him daily." after this the loan of the carriage was at last made, and lucy was allowed to visit her sister at the crescent. "has he been there?" was almost the first question that ayala asked. "what he do you mean?" "isadore hamel." "no; i have not seen him since i met him in the park. but i do not want to talk about mr hamel, ayala. mr hamel is nothing." "oh, lucy." "he is nothing. had he been anything, he has gone, and there would be an end to it. but he is nothing." "if a man is true he may go, but he will come back." ayala had her ideas about the angel of light very clearly impressed upon her mind in regard to the conduct of the man, though they were terribly vague as to his personal appearance, his condition of life, his appropriateness for marriage, and many other details of his circumstances. it had also often occurred to her that this angel of light, when he should come, might not be in love with herself -and that she might have to die simply because she had seen him and loved him in vain. but he would be a man sure to come back if there were fitting reasons that he should do so. isadore hamel was not quite an angel of light, but he was nearly angelic -at any rate very good, and surely would come back. "never mind about mr hamel, ayala. it is not nice to talk about a man who has never spoken a word." "never spoken a word! oh, lucy!" "mr hamel has never spoken a word, and i will not talk about him. there! all my heart is open to you, ayala. you know that. but i will not talk about mr hamel. aunt emmeline wants you to come to queen's gate." "i will not." "or rather it is sir thomas who wants you to come. i do like uncle tom. i do, indeed." "so do i." "you ought to come when he asks you." "why ought i? that lout would be there -of course." "i don't know about his being a lout, ayala." "he comes here, and i have to be perfectly brutal to him. you can't guess the sort of things i say to him, and he doesn't mind it a bit. he thinks that he has to go on long enough, and that i must give way at last. if i were to go to queen's gate it would be just as much as to say that i had given way." "why not?" "lucy!" "why not? he is not bad. he is honest, and true, and kind-hearted. i know you can't be happy here." "no." "aunt dosett, with all her affairs, must be trouble to you. i could not bear them patiently. how can you?" "because they are better than tom tringle. i read somewhere about there being seven houses of the devil, each one being lower and worse than the other. tom would be the lowest -the lowest -the lowest." "ayala, my darling." "do not tell me that i ought to marry tom," said ayala, almost standing off in anger from the proferred kiss. "do you think that i could love him?" "i think you could if you tried, because he is loveable. it is so much to be good, and then he loves you truly. after all, it is something to have everything nice around you. you have not been made to be poor and uncomfortable. i fear that it must be bad with you here." "it is bad." "i wish i could have stayed, ayala. i am more tranquil than you, and could have borne it better." "it is bad. it is one of the houses -but not the lowest. i can eat my heart out here, peaceably, and die with a great needle in my hand and a towel in my lap. but if i were to marry him i should kill myself the first hour after i had gone away with him. things! what would things be with such a monster as that leaning over one? would you marry him?" in answer to this, lucy made no immediate reply. "why don't you say? you want me to marry him. would you?" "no." "then why should i?" "i could not try to love him." "try! how can a girl try to love any man? it should come because she can't help it, let her try ever so. trying to love tom tringle! why can't you try?" "he doesn't want me." "but if he did? i don't suppose it would make the least difference to him which it was. would you try if he asked?" "no." "then why should i? am i so much a poorer creature than you?" "you are a finer creature. you know that i think so." "i don't want to be finer. i want to be the same." "you are free to do as you please. i am not -quite." "that means isadore hamel." "i try to tell you all the truth, ayala; but pray do not talk about him even to me. as for you, you are free; and if you could -" "i can't. i don't know that i am free, as you call it." then lucy started, as though about to ask the question which would naturally follow. "you needn't look like that, lucy. there isn't anyone to be named." "a man not to be named?" "there isn't a man at all. there isn't anybody. but i may have my own ideas if i please. if i had an isadore hamel of my own i could compare tom or mr traffick, or any other lout to him, and could say how infinitely higher in the order of things was my isadore than any of them. though i haven't an isadore can't i have an image? and can't i make my image brighter, even higher, than isadore? you won't believe that, of course, and i don't want you to believe it yourself. but you should believe it for me. my image can make tom tringle just as horrible to me as isadore hamel can make him to you." thus it was that ayala endeavoured to explain to her sister something of the castle which she had built in the air, and of the angel of light who inhabited the castle. then it was decided between them that lucy should explain to aunt emmeline that ayala could not make a prolonged stay at queen's gate. "but how shall i say it?" asked lucy. "tell her the truth, openly. 'tom wants to marry ayala, and ayala won't have him. therefore, of course, she can't come, because it would look as though she were going to change her mind -which she isn't.' aunt emmeline will understand that, and will not be a bit sorry. she doesn't want to have me for a daughter-in-law. she had quite enough of me at rome." all this time the carriage was waiting, and lucy was obliged to return before half of all that was necessary had been said. what was to be ayala's life for the future? how were the sisters to see each other? what was to be done when, at the end of the coming summer, lucy should be taken first to glenbogie and then to merle park? there is a support in any excitement, though it be in the excitement of sorrow only. at the present moment ayala was kept alive by the necessity of her battle with tom tringle, but how would it be with her when tom should have given up the fight? lucy knew, by sad experience, how great might be the tedium of life in kingsbury crescent, and knew, also, how unfitted ayala was to endure it. there seemed to be no prospect of escape in future. "she knows nothing of what i am suffering", said ayala, "when she gives me the things to do, and tells me of more things, and more, and more! how can there be so many things to be done in such a house as this?" but as lucy was endeavouring to explain how different were the arrangements in kingsbury crescent from those which had prevailed at the bijou, the offended coachman sent up word to say that he didn't think sir thomas would like it if the horses were kept out in the rain any longer. then lucy hurried down, not having spoken of half the things which were down in her mind on the list for discussion. chapter 13 how the tringles fell into trouble after the easter holidays the trafficks came back to queen's gate, making a combination of honeymoon and business which did very well for a time. it was understood that it was to be so. during honeymoon times the fashionable married couple is always lodged and generally boarded for nothing. that opening wide of generous hands, which exhibits itself in the joyous enthusiasm of a coming marriage, taking the shape of a houseful of presents, of a gorgeous and ponderous trousseau, of a splendid marriage feast, and not unfrequently of subsidiary presents from the opulent papa -presents which are subsidiary to the grand substratum of settled dowry -generously extends itself to luxurious provision for a month or two. that mr and mrs traffick should come back to queen's gate for the six weeks intervening between easter and whitsuntide had been arranged, and arranged also that the use of merle park, for the whitsun holidays, should be allowed to them. this last boon augusta, with her sweetest kiss, had obtained from her father only two days before the wedding. but when it was suggested, just before the departure to merle park, that mr traffick's unnecessary boots might be left at queen's gate, because he would come back there, then sir thomas, who had thought over the matter, said a word. it was in this way. "mamma," said augusta, "i suppose i can leave a lot of things in the big wardrobe. jemima says i cannot take them to merle park without ever so many extra trunks." "certainly, my dear. when anybody occupies the room, they won't want all the wardrobe. i don't know that anyone will come this summer." this was only the thin end of the wedge, and, as augusta felt, was not introduced successfully. the words spoken seemed to have admitted that a return to queen's gate had not been intended. the conversation went no further at the moment, but was recommenced the same evening. "mamma, i suppose septimus can leave his things here?" "of course, my dear; he can leave anything -to be taken care of." "it will be so convenient if we can come back -just for a few days." now, there certainly had been a lack of confidence between the married daughter and her mother as to a new residence. a word had been spoken, and augusta had said that she supposed they would go to lord boardotrade when they left queen's gate, just to finish the season. now, it was known that his lordship, with his four unmarried daughters, lived in a small house in a small street in mayfair. the locality is no doubt fashionable, but the house was inconvenient. mr traffick, himself, had occupied lodgings near the house of commons, but these had been given up. "i think you must ask your papa," said lady tringle. "couldn't you ask him?" said the honourable mrs traffick. lady tringle was driven at last to consent, and then put the question to sir thomas -beginning with the suggestion as to the unnecessary boots. "i suppose septimus can leave his things here?" "where do they mean to live when they come back to town?" asked sir thomas, sharply. "i suppose it would be convenient if they could come here for a little time," said lady tringle. "and stay till the end of the season -and then go down to glenbogie, and then to merle park! where do they mean to live?" "i think there was a promise about glenbogie," said lady tringle. "i never made a promise. i heard traffick say that he would like to have some shooting -though, as far as i know, he can't hit a haystack. they may come to glenbogie for two or three weeks, if they like, but they shan't stay here during the entire summer." "you won't turn your own daughter out, tom." "i'll turn traffick out, and i suppose he'll take his wife with him," said sir thomas, thus closing the conversation in wrath. the trafficks went and came back, and were admitted into the bedroom with the big wardrobe, and to the dressing-room where the boots were kept. on the very first day of his arrival mr traffick was in the house at four, and remained there till four the next morning -certain irish members having been very eloquent. he was not down when sir thomas left the next morning at nine, and was again at the house when sir thomas came home to dinner. "how long is it to be?" said sir thomas, that night, to his wife. there was a certain tone in his voice which made lady tringle feel herself to be ill all over. it must be said, in justice to sir thomas, that he did not often use this voice in his domestic circle, though it was well known in lombard street. but he used it now, and his wife felt herself to be unwell. "i am not going to put up with it, and he needn't think it." "don't destroy poor augusta's happiness so soon." "that be d -d," said the father, energetically. "who's going to destroy her happiness? her happiness ought to consist in living in her husband's house. what have i given her all that money for?" then lady tringle did not dare to say another word. it was not till the third day that sir thomas and his son-in-law met each other. by that time sir thomas had got it into his head that his son-in-law was avoiding him. but on the saturday there was no house. it was then just the middle of june -saturday, june 15 -and sir thomas had considered, at the most, that there would be yet nearly two months before parliament would cease to sit and the time for glenbogie would come. he had fed his anger warm, and was determined that he would not be done. "well, traffick, how are you?" he said, encountering his son-in-law in the hall, and leading him into the dining-room. "i haven't seen you since you've been back." "i've been in the house morning, noon, and night, pretty near." "i dare say. i hope you found yourself comfortable at merle park." "a charming house -quite charming. i don't know whether i shouldn't build the stables a little further from -" "very likely. nothing is so easy as knocking other people's houses about. i hope you'll soon have one to knock about of your own." "all in good time," said mr traffick, smiling. sir thomas was one of those men who during the course of a successful life have contrived to repress their original roughnesses, and who make a not ineffectual attempt to live after the fashion of those with whom their wealth and successes have thrown them. but among such will occasionally be found one whose roughness does not altogether desert him, and who can on an occasion use it with a purpose. such a one will occasionally surprise his latter-day associates by the sudden ferocity of his brow, by the hardness of his voice, and by an apparently unaccustomed use of violent words. the man feels that he must fight, and, not having learned the practice of finer weapons, fights in this way. unskilled with foils or rapier he falls back upon the bludgeon with which his hand has not lost all its old familiarity. such a one was sir thomas tringle, and a time for such exercise had seemed to him to have come now. there are other men who by the possession of imperturbable serenity seem to be armed equally against rapier and bludgeon, whom there is no wounding with any weapon. such a one was mr traffick. when he was told of knocking about a house of his own, he quite took the meaning of sir thomas's words, and was immediately prepared for the sort of conversation which would follow. "i wish i might -a merle park of my own for instance. if i had gone into the city instead of to westminster it might have come in my way." "it seems to me that a good deal has come in your way without very much trouble on your part. "a seat in the house is a nice thing -but i work harder, i take it, than you do, sir thomas." "i never have had a shilling but what i earned. when you leave this where are you and augusta going to live?" this was a home question, which would have disconcerted most gentlemen in mr traffick's position, were it not that gentlemen easily disconcerted would hardly find themselves there. "where shall we go when we leave this? you wore so kind as to say something about glenbogie when parliament is up." "no, i didn't." "i thought i understood it." "you said something and i didn't refuse." "put it any way you like, sir thomas." "but what do you mean to do before parliament is up? the long and the short of it is, we didn't expect you to come back after the holidays. i like to be plain. this might go on for ever if i didn't speak out." "and a very comfortable way of going on it would be." sir thomas raised his eyebrows in unaffected surprise, and then again assumed his frown. "of course i'm thinking of augusta chiefly." "augusta made up her mind no doubt to leave her father's house when she married." "she shows her affection for her parents by wishing to remain in it. the fact, i suppose, is, you want the rooms." "but even if we didn't? you're not going to live here for ever, i suppose?" "that, sir, is too good to be thought of, i fear. the truth is we had an idea of staying at my father's. he spoke of going down to the country and lending us the house. my sisters have made him change his mind and so here we are. of course we can go into lodgings." "or to an hotel." "too dear! you see you've made me pay such a sum for insuring my life. i'll tell you what i'll do. if you'll let us make it out here till the 10th of july we'll go into an hotel then." sir thomas, surprised at his own compliance, did at last give way. "and then we can have a month at glenbogie from the 12th." "three weeks," said sir thomas, shouting at the top of his voice. "very well; three weeks. if you could have made it the month it would have been convenient; but i hate to be disagreeable." thus the matter was settled, and mr traffick was altogether well pleased with the arrangement. "what are we to do?" said augusta, with a very long face. "what are we to do when we are made to go away?" "i hope i shall be able to make some of the girls go down by that time, and then we must squeeze in at my father's." this and other matters made sir thomas in those days irritable and disagreeable to the family. "tom", he said to his wife, "is the biggest fool that ever lived." "what is the matter with him now?" asked lady tringle, who did not like to have her only son abused. "he's away half his time, and when he does come he'd better be away. if he wants to marry that girl why doesn't he marry her and have done with it?" now this was a matter upon which lady tringle had ideas of her own which were becoming every day stronger. "i'm sure i should be very sorry to see it," she said. "why should you be sorry? isn't it the best thing a young man can do? if he's set his heart that way all the world won't talk him off. i thought all that was settled." "you can't make the girl marry him." "is that it?" asked sir thomas, with a whistle. "you used to say she was setting her cap at him." "she is one of those girls you don't know what she would be at. she's full of romance and nonsense, and isn't half as fond of telling the truth as she ought to be. she made my life a burden to me while she was with us, and i don't think she would be any better for tom." "but he's still determined." "what's the use of that?" said lady tringle. "then he shall have her. i made him a promise and i'm not going to give it up. i told him that if he was in earnest he should have her." "you can't make a girl marry a young man." "you have her here, and then we'll take her to glenbogie. now when i say it i mean it. you go and fetch her, and if you don't i will. i'm not going to have her turned out into the cold in that way." "she won't come, tom." then he turned round and frowned at her. the immediate result of this was that lady tringle herself did drive across to kingsbury crescent accompanied by gertrude and lucy, and did make her request in form. "my dear, your uncle particularly wants you to come to us for the next month." mrs dosett was sitting by. "i hope ayala may be allowed to come to us for a month." "ayala must answer for herself," said mrs dosett, firmly. there had never been any warm friendship between mrs dosett and her husband's elder sister. "i can't," said ayala, shaking her head. "why not, my dear?" said lady tringle. "i can't," said ayala. lady tringle was not in the least offended or annoyed at the refusal. she did not at all desire that ayala should come to glenbogie. ayala at glenbogie would make her life miserable to her. it would, of course, lead to tom's marriage, and then there would be internecine fighting between ayala and augusta. but it was necessary that she should take back to her husband some reply -and this reply, if in the form of refusal, must come from ayala herself. "your uncle has sent me," said lady tringle, "and i must give him some reason. as for expense, you know," -then she turned to mrs dosett with a smile -"that of course would be our affair." "if you ask me," said mrs dosett, "i think that as ayala has come to us she had better remain with us. of course things are very different, and she would be only discontented." at this lady tringle smiled her sweetest smile -as though acknowledging that things certainly were different -and then turned to ayala for a further reply. "aunt emmeline, i can't," said ayala. "but why, my dear? can't isn't a courteous answer to a request that is meant to be kind." "speak out, ayala," said mrs dosett. "there is nobody here but your aunts." "because of tom." "tom wouldn't eat you," said lady tringle, again smiling. "it's worse than eating me," said ayala. "he will go on when i tell him not. if i were down there he'd be doing it always. and then you'd tell me that i -encouraged him!" lady tringle felt this to be unkind and undeserved. those passages in rome had been very disagreeable to every one concerned. the girl certainly, as she thought, had been arrogant and impertinent. she had been accepted from charity and had then domineered in the family. she had given herself airs and had gone out into company almost without authority, into company which had rejected her -lady tringle. it had become absolutely necessary to get rid of an inmate so troublesome, so unbearable. the girl had been sent away -almost ignominiously. now she, lady tringle, the offended aunt, the aunt who had so much cause for offence, had been good enough, gracious enough, to pardon all this, and was again offering the fruition of a portion of her good things to the sinner. no doubt she was not anxious that the offer should be accepted, but not the less was it made graciously -as she felt herself. in answer to this she had thrown back upon her the only hard word she had ever spoken to the girl! "you wouldn't be told anything of the kind, but you needn't come if you don't like it." "then i don't," said ayala, nodding her head. "but i did think that after all that has passed, and when i am trying to be kind to you, you would have made yourself more pleasant to me. i can only tell your uncle that you say you won't." "give my love to my uncle, and tell him that i am much obliged to him and that i know how good he is; but i can't -because of tom." "tom is too good for you," exclaimed aunt emmeline, who could not bear to have her son depreciated even by the girl whom she did not wish to marry him. "i didn't say he wasn't," said ayala, bursting into tears. "the archbishop of canterbury would be too good for me, but i don't want to marry him." then she got up and ran out of the room in order that she might weep over her troubles in the privacy of her own chamber. she was thoroughly convinced that she was being ill-used. no one had a right to tell her that any man was too good for her unless she herself should make pretensions to the man. it was an insult to her even to connect her name with that of any man unless she had done something to connect it. in her own estimation her cousin tom was infinitely beneath her -worlds beneath her -a denizen of an altogether inferior race, such as the beast was to the beauty! not that ayala had ever boasted to herself of her own face or form. it was not in that respect that she likened herself to the beauty when she thought of tom as the beast. her assumed superiority existed in certain intellectual or rather artistic and aesthetic gifts -certain celestial gifts. but as she had boasted of them to no one, as she had never said that she and her cousin were poles asunder in their tastes, poles asunder in their feelings, poles asunder in their intelligence, was it not very, very cruel that she should be told, first that she encouraged him, and then that she was not good enough for him? cinderella did not ask to have the prince for her husband. when she had her own image of which no one could rob her, and was content with that, why should they treat her in this cruel way? "i am afraid you are having a great deal of trouble with her," said lady tringle to mrs dosett. "no, indeed. of course she is romantic, which is very objectionable." "quite detestable!" said lady tringle. "but she has been brought up like that, so that it is not her fault. now she endeavours to do her best." "she is so upsetting." "she is angry because her cousin persecutes her." "persecutes her, indeed! tom is in a position to ask any girl to be his wife. he can give her a home of her own, and a good income. she ought to be proud of the offer instead of speaking like that. but nobody wants her to have him." "he wants it, i suppose." "just taken by her baby face -that's all. it won't last, and she needn't think so. however, i've done my best to be kind, mrs dosett, and there's an end of it. if you please i'll ring the bell for the carriage. goodbye." after that she swam out of the room and had herself carried back to queen's gate. chapter 14 frank houston three or four days afterwards sir thomas asked whether ayala was to come to glenbogie. "she positively refused," said his wife, "and was so rude and impertinent that i could not possibly have her now." then sir thomas frowned and turned himself away, and said not a word further on that occasion. there were many candidates for glenbogie on this occasion. among others there was mr frank houston, whose candidature was not pressed by himself -as could not well have been done -but was enforced by gertrude on his behalf. it was now july. gertrude and mr houston had seen something of each other in rome, as may be remembered, and since then had seen a good deal of each other in town. gertrude was perfectly well aware that mr houston was impecunious; but augusta had been allowed to have an impecunious lover, and tom to throw himself at the feet of an impecunious love. gertrude felt herself to be entitled to her l#120,000; did not for a moment doubt but that she would get it. why shouldn't she give it to any young man she liked as long as he belonged to decent people? mr houston wasn't a member of parliament -but then he was young and good-looking. mr houston wasn't son to a lord, but he was brother to a county squire, and came of a family much older than that of those stupid boardotrade and traffick people. and then frank houston was very presentable, was not at all bald, and was just the man for a girl to like as a husband. it was dinned into her ears that houston had no income at all -just a few hundreds a year on which he never could keep himself out of debt. but he was a generous man, who would be more than contented with the income coming from l#120,000. he would not spunge upon the house at queen's gate. he would not make use of merle park and glenbogie. he would have a house of his own for his old boots. four-percent. would give them nearly l#5,000 a year. gertrude knew all about it already. they could have a nice house near queen's gate -say somewhere about onslow gardens. there would be quite enough for a carriage, for three months upon a mountain in switzerland, and three more among the art treasures of italy. it was astonishing how completely gertrude had it all at her finger's ends when she discussed the matter with her mother. mr houston was a man of no expensive tastes. he didn't want to hunt. he did shoot, no doubt, and perhaps a little shooting at glenbogie might be nice before they went to switzerland. in that case two months on the top of the mountain would suffice. but if he was not asked he would never condescend to demand an entry at glenbogie as a part of his wife's dower. lady tringle was thus talked over, though she did think that at least one of her daughter's husbands ought to have an income of his own. there was another point which gertrude put forward very frankly, and which no doubt had weight with her mother. "mamma, i mean to have him," she said, when lady tringle expressed a doubt. "but papa?" "i mean to have him. papa can scold, of course, if he pleases." "but where would the income come from if papa did not give it?" "of course he'll give it. i've a right to it as much as augusta." there was something in gertrude's face as she said this which made her mother think that she would have her way. but sir thomas had hitherto declined. when frank houston, after the manner of would-be sons-in-law, had applied to sir thomas, sir thomas, who already knew all about it, asked after his income, his prospects, and his occupation. fifty years ago young men used to encounter the misery of such questions, and to live afterwards often in the enjoyment of the stern questioner's money and daughters. but there used in those days to be a bad quarter of an hour while the questions were being asked, and not unfrequently a bad six months afterwards, while the stern questioner was gradually undergoing a softening process under the hands of the females of the family. but the young man of today has no bad quarter of an hour. "you are a mercantile old brick with money and a daughter. i am a jeunesse doree -gilded by blood and fashion, though so utterly impecunious! let us know your terms. how much is it to be, and then i can say whether we can afford to live upon it." the old brick surrenders himself more readily and speedily to the latter than to the former manner -but he hardly surrenders himself quite at once. frank houston, when inquired into, declared at once, without blushing, that he had no income at all to speak of in reference to matrimonial life. as to family prospects he had none. his elder brother had four blooming boys, and was likely to have more. as for occupation, he was very fond of painting, very fond of art all round, could shoot a little, and was never in want of anything to do as long as he had a book. but for the earning of money he had no turn whatever. he was quite sure of himself that he could never earn a shilling. but then on the other hand he was not extravagant -which was almost as good as earning. it was almost incredible; but with his means, limited as they were to a few hundreds, he did not owe above a thousand pounds -a fact which he thought would weigh much with sir thomas in regard to his daughter's future happiness. sir thomas gave him a flat refusal. "i think that i may boast that your daughter's happiness is in my charge," said frank houston. "then she must be unhappy," said sir thomas. houston shrugged his shoulders. "a fool like that has no right to be happy." "there isn't another man in the world by whom i would allow her to be spoken of like that," said houston. "bother!" "i regard her as all that is perfect in woman, and you must forgive me if i say that i shall not abandon my suit. i may be allowed, at any rate, to call at the house?" "certainly not." "that is a kind of thing that is never done nowadays -never," said houston, shaking his head. "i suppose my own house is my own." "yours and lady tringle's, and your daughters', no doubt. at any rate, sir thomas, you will think of this again. i am sure you will think of it again. if you find that your daughter's happiness depends upon it -" "i shall find nothing of the kind. good morning." "good morning, sir thomas." then mr houston, bowing graciously, left the little back room in lombard street, and, jumping into a cab had himself taken straight away to queen's gate. "papa is always like that," said gertrude. on that day mrs traffick, with all the boots, had taken herself away to the small house in mayfair, and gertrude, with her mother, had the house to herself. at the present moment lady tringle was elsewhere, so that the young lady was alone with her lover. "but he comes round, i suppose." "if he doesn't have too much to eat -which disagrees with him -he does. he's always better down at glenbogie because he's out of doors a good deal, and then he can digest things." "then take him down to glenbogie and let him digest it at once." "of course we can't go till the 12th. perhaps we shall start on the 10th, because the 11th is sunday. what will you do, frank?" there had been a whisper of frank's going to the tyrol in august, there to join the mudbury docimers, who were his far-away cousins. imogene docimer was a young lady of marvellous beauty -not possessed indeed of l#120,000 -of whom gertrude had heard, and was already anxious that her frank should not go to the tyrol this year. she was already aware that her frank had -just an artist's eye for feminine beauty in its various shapes, and thought that in the present condition of things he would be better at glenbogie than in the tyrol. "i am thinking of wandering away somewhere -perhaps to the tyrol. the mudbury docimers are there. he's a pal of mine, besides being a cousin. mrs docimer is a very nice woman." "and her sister?" "a lovely creature. such a turn of the neck! i've promised to make a study of her back head." "come down to glenbogie," said gertrude, sternly. "how can i do that when your governor won't let me enter his house door even in london?" "but you're here." "well -yes -i am here. but he told me not. i don't see how i'm to drive in at the gate at glenbogie with all my traps, and ask to be shown my room. i have cheek enough for a good deal, my pet." "i believe you have, sir -cheek enough for anything. but mamma must manage it -mamma and me, between us. only keep yourself disengaged. you won't go to the tyrol -eh?" then frank houston promised that he would not go to the tyrol as long as there was a chance open that he might be invited to glenbogie. "i won't hear of it," said sir thomas to his wife. on that occasion his digestion had perhaps failed him a little. "he only wants to get my money." "but gertrude has set her heart on it, and nothing will turn her away." "why can't she set her heart on someone who has got a decent income? that man hasn't a shilling." "nor yet has mr traffick." "mr traffick has, at any rate, got an occupation. were it to do again, mr traffick would never see a shilling of my money. by -, those fellows, who haven't got a pound belonging to them, think that they're to live on the fat of the land out of the sweat of the brow of such men as me." "what is your money for, tom, but for the children?" "i know what it's for. i'd sooner build a hospital than give it to an idle fellow like that houston. when i asked him what he did, he said he was fond of 'picters'!" sir thomas would fall back from his usual modes of expression when he was a little excited. "of course he hasn't been brought up to work. but he is a gentleman, and i do think he would make our girl happy." "my money would make him happy -till he had spent it." "tie it up." "you don't know what you're talking about. how are you to prevent a man from spending his wife's income?" "at any rate, if you have him down at glenbogie you can see what sort of a man he is. you don't know him now." "as much as i wish to." "that isn't fair to the poor girl. you needn't give your consent to a marriage because he comes to glenbogie. you have only to say that you won't give the money and then it must be off. they can't take the money from you." his digestion could not have been very bad, for he allowed himself to be persuaded that houston should be asked to glenbogie for ten days. this was the letter of invitation - my dear mr. houston, we shall start for glenbogie on the 10th of next month. sir thomas wishes you to join us on the 20th if you can, and stay till the end of the month. we shall be a little crowded at first, and therefore cannot name an earlier day. i am particularly to warn you that this means nothing more than a simple invitation. i know what passed between you and sir thomas, and he hasn't at all changed his mind. i think it right to tell you this. if you like to speak to him again when you are at glenbogie of course you can. very sincerely yours, emmeline tringle at the same time, or within a post of it, he got another letter, which was as follows - dearest f, papa, you see, hasn't cut up so very rough, after all. you are to be allowed to come and help to slaughter grouse, which will be better than going to that stupid tyrol. if you want to draw somebody's back head you can do it there. isn't it a joke papa's giving way like that all in a moment? he gets so fierce sometimes that we think he's going to eat everybody. then he has to come down, and he gets eaten worse than anybody else. of course, as you're asked to glenbogie, you can come here as often as you like. i shall ride on thursday and friday. i shall expect you exactly at six, just under the memorial. you can't come home to dinner, you know, because he might flare up; but you can turn in at lunch every day you please except saturday and sunday. i intend to be so jolly down at glenbogie. you mustn't be shooting always. ever your own, g. frank houston as he read this threw himself back on the sofa and gave way to a soft sigh. he knew he was doing his duty -just as another man does who goes forth from his pleasant home to earn his bread and win his fortune in some dry, comfortless climate, far from the delights to which he has been always accustomed. he must do his duty. he could not live always adding a hundred or two of debt to the burden already round his neck. he must do his duty. as he thought of this he praised himself mightily. how beautiful was his far-away cousin, imogene docimer, as she would twist her head round so as to show the turn of her neck! how delightful it would be to talk love to imogene! as to marrying imogene, who hadn't quite so many hundreds as himself, that he knew to be impossible. as for marriage, he wasn't quite sure that he wanted to marry anyone. marriage, to his thinking, was "a sort of grind" at the best. a man would have to get up and go to bed with some regularity. his wife might want him to come down in a frock coat to breakfast. his wife would certainly object to his drawing the back heads of other young women. then he thought of the provocation he had received to draw gertrude's back head. gertrude hadn't got any turn of a neck to speak of. gertrude was a stout, healthy girl; and, having l#120,000, was entitled to such a husband as himself. if he waited longer he might be driven to worse before he found the money which was so essentially necessary. he was grateful to gertrude for not being worse, and was determined to treat her well. but as for love, romance, poetry, art -all that must for the future be out of the question. of course, there would now be no difficulty with sir thomas, and therefore he must at once make up his mind. he decided that morning, with many soft regrets, that he would go to glenbogie, and let those dreams of wanderings in the mountains of the tyrol pass away from him. "dear, dearest imogene!" he could have loved imogene dearly had fates been more propitious. then he got up and shook himself, made his resolution like a man, ate a large allowance of curried salmon for his breakfast -and then wrote the following letter. "duty first!" he said to himself as he sat down to the table like a hero. letter no. 1 dear lady tringle, so many thanks! nothing could suit my book so well as a few days at glenbogie just at the end of august. i will be there, like a book, on the 20th. of course i understand all that you say. fathers can't be expected to yield all at once, especially when suitors haven't got very much of their own. i shouldn't have dared to ask hadn't i known myself to be a most moderate man. of course i shall ask again. if you will help me, no doubt i shall succeed. i really do think that i am the man to make gertrude happy. yours, dear lady tringle, ever so much, f. houston letter no. 2 my own one, your governor is a brick. of course, glenbogie will be better than the tyrol, as you are to be there. not but what the tyrol is a very jolly place, and we'll go and see it together some day. ask tom to let me know whether one can wear heavy boots in the glenbogie mountains. they are much the best for the heather; but i have shot generally in yorkshire, and there they are too hot. what number does he shoot with generally? i fancy the birds are wilder with you than with us. as for riding, i don't dare to sit upon a horse this weather. nobody but a woman can stand it. indeed, now i think of it, i sold my horse last week to pay the fellow i buy paints from. i've got the saddle and bridle, and if i stick them up upon a rail, under the trees, it would be better than any horse while the thermometer is near 80. all the ladies could come round and talk to one so nicely. i hate lunch, because it makes me red in the face, and nobody will give me my breakfast before eleven at the earliest. but i'll come in about three as often as you like to have me. i think i perhaps shall run over to the tyrol after glenbogie. a man must go somewhere when he has been turned out in that fashion. there are so many babies at buncombe hall! -buncombe hall is the family seat of the houstons -and i don't like to see my own fate typified before the time. can i do anything for you except riding or eating lunch -which are simply feminine exercises? always your own, frank letter no. 3 dear cousin im, how pleasant it is that a little strain of thin blood should make the use of that pretty name allowable! what a stupid world it is when the people who like each other best cannot get together because of proprieties, and marriages, and such balderdash as we call love. i do not in the least want to be in love with you -but i do want to sit near you, and listen to you, and look at you, and to know that the whole air around is impregnated by the mysterious odour of your presence. when one is thoroughly satisfied with a woman there comes a scent as of sweet flowers, which does not reach the senses of those whose feelings are not so awakened. and now for my news! i suppose that g. t. will in a tremendously short period become mistress f. h. "a long day, my lord." but, if you are to be hung, better be hung at once. pere tringle has not consented -has done just the reverse -has turned me out of his house, morally. that is, out of his london house. he asked of my "house and my home", as they did of allan-a-dale. queen gate and glenbogie stand fair on the hill."my home", quoth bold houston, "shows gallanter still.'tis the gerret up three pair -" then he told me roughly to get me gone; but "had laughed on the lass with my bonny black eye." so the next day i got an invite to glenbogie, and at the appropriate time in august, she'll go to the mountains to hear a love tale,and the youth - it will be told by is to be your poor unfortunate coz, frank houston. who's going to whimper? haven't i known all along what was to come? it has not been my lot in life to see a flower and pick it because i love it. but a good head of cabbage when you're hungry is wholesome food. - your loving cousin, but not loving as he oughtn't to love, frank houston "i shall still make a dash for the tyrol when this episode at glenbogie is over." chapter 15 ayala with her friends some few days after lady tringle had been at kingsbury crescent, two visitors, who knew little or nothing of each other, came to see ayala. one was a lady and the other a gentleman, and the lady came first. the gentleman, however, arrived before the lady had gone. mrs dosett was present while the lady remained; but when the gentleman came she was invited to leave him alone with her niece -as shall be told. the lady was the marchesa baldoni. can the reader go so far back as to remember the marchesa baldoni? it was she who rather instigated ayala to be naughty to the tringles in rome, and would have ayala at her parties when she did not want the tringles. the marchesa was herself an englishwoman, though she had lived at rome all her life, and had married an italian nobleman. she was now in london for a few weeks, and still bore in mind her friendship for ayala, and a certain promise she had once made her. in rome lady tringle, actuated by augusta, who at the moment was very angry with everybody, including her own lover, had quarrelled with the marchesa. the marchesa had then told ayala that she, ayala, must stay with her aunt -must, in fact, cease for the time to come to the marchesa's apartments, because of the quarrel; but that a time would come in which they might again be friends. soon afterwards the marchesa had heard that the tringle family had discarded poor ayala -that her own quarrel had, in fact, extended itself to ayala, and that ayala had been shunted off to a poor relation, far away from all the wealth and luxuries which she had been allowed to enjoy for so short a time. therefore, soon after her arrival in london, the marchesa had made herself acquainted with the address of the dosetts, and now was in kingsbury crescent in fulfilment of her promise made at rome. "so now you have got our friend ayala," said the marchesa with a smile to mrs dosett. "yes; we have her now. there has been a change. her sister, lucy, has gone to my husband's sister, lady tringle." the marchesa made a pleasant little bow at each word. she seemed to mrs dosett to be very gorgeously dressed. she was thoroughly well dressed, and looked like a marchesa -or perhaps, even, like a marchioness. she was a tall, handsome woman, with a smile perhaps a little too continuously sweet, but with a look conscious of her own position behind it. she had seen in a moment of what nature was ayala, how charming, how attractive, how pretty, how clever -how completely the very opposite of the tringles! ayala learned italian so readily that she could talk it almost at once. she could sing, and play, and draw. the marchesa had been quite willing that her own daughter nina should find a friend in ayala. then had come the quarrel. now she was quite willing to renew the friendship, though ayala's position was so sadly altered. mrs dosett was almost frightened as the grand lady sat holding ayala's hand, and patting it. "we used to know her so well in rome -did we not, ayala?" "you were very kind to me." "nina couldn't come, because her father would make her go with him to the pictures. but now, my dear, you must come to us just for a little time. we have a furnished house in brook street, near the park, till the end of the season, and we have one small spare room which will just do for you. i hope you will let her come to us, for we really are old friends," said the marchesa, turning to mrs dosett. mrs dosett looked black. there are people who always look black when such applications are made to them -who look black at any allusions to pleasures. and then there came across her mind serious thoughts as to flowers and ribbons -and then more serious thoughts as to boots, dresses, and hats. ayala, no doubt, had come there less than six months since with good store of everything; but mrs dosett knew that such a house as would be that of this lady would require a girl to show herself with the newest sheen on everything. and ayala knew it too. the marchesa turned from the blackness of mrs dosett's face with her sweetest smile to ayala. "can't we manage it?" said the marchesa. "i don't think we can," said ayala, with a deep sigh. "and why not?" ayala looked furtively round to her aunt. "i suppose i may tell, aunt margaret?" she said. "you may tell everything, my dear," said mrs dosett. "because we are poor," said ayala. "what does that matter?" said the marchesa, brightening up. "we want you because you are rich in good gifts and pretty ways." "but i can't get new frocks now as i used to do in rome. aunt emmeline was cruel to me, and said things which i could not bear. but they let me have everything. uncle reginald gives me all that he has, and i am much happier here. but we cannot go out and buy things -can we, aunt margaret?" "no, my dear; we cannot." "it does not signify," said the marchesa. "we are quite quiet, and what you have got will do very well. frocks! the frocks you had in rome are good enough for london. i won't have a word of all that. nina has set her heart upon it, and so has my husband, and so have i. mrs dosett, when we are at home we are the most homely people in the world. we think nothing of dressing. not to come and see your old friends because of your frocks! we shall send for you the day after tomorrow. don't you know, mrs dosett, it will do her good to be with her young friend for a few days." mrs dosett had not succeeded in her remonstrances when sir thomas tringle was shown into the room, and then the marchesa took her leave. for sir thomas tringle was the other visitor who came on that morning to see ayala. "if you wouldn't mind, mrs dosett," said sir thomas before he sat down, "i should like to see ayala alone." mrs dosett had not a word to say against such a request, and at once took her leave. "my dear," he began, coming and sitting opposite to ayala, with his knees almost touching her, "i have got something very particular to say to you." ayala was at once much frightened. her uncle had never before spoken to her in this way -had never in truth said a word to her seriously. he had always been kind to her, making her presents, and allowing himself to be kissed graciously morning and evening. he had never scolded her, and, better than all, had never said a word to her, one way or the other, about tom. she had always liked her uncle, because he had never caused her trouble when all the others in his house had been troublesome to her. but now she was afraid of him. he did not frown, but he looked very seriously at her, as he might look, perhaps, when he was counting out all his millions in lombard street. "i hope you think that i have always wished to be kind to you, ayala." "i am sure you have, uncle tom." "when you had come to us i always wished you to stay. i don't like changes of this sort. i suppose you didn't hit it off with augusta. but she's gone now." "aunt emmeline said something." that accusation, as to "encouragement", so rankled in her heart, that when she looked back at her grievances among the tringles that always loomed the largest. "i don't want to hear anything about it," said sir thomas. "let bygones be bygones. your aunt, i am sure, never meant unkindly by you. now, i want you to listen to me." "i will, uncle tom." "listen to me to the end, like a good girl." "i will." "your cousin tom -." ayala gave a visible shudder, and uttered an audible groan, but as yet she did not say a word. sir thomas, having seen the shudder, and heard the groan, did frown as he began again. "your cousin tom is most truly attached to you." "why won't he leave me alone, then?" "ayala, you promised to listen to me without speaking." "i will, uncle tom. only -" "listen to me, and then i will hear anything you have to say." "i will," said ayala, screwing up her lips, so that no words should come out of them, let the provocation be what it might. sir thomas began again. "your cousin tom is most truly attached to you. for some time i and his mother disapproved of this. we thought you were both too young, and there were other reasons which i need not now mention. but when i came to see how thoroughly he was in earnest, how he put his heart into it, how the very fact that he loved you had made a man of him; then how the fact that you would not return his love unmanned him -when i saw all that, i gave my permission." here he paused, almost as though expecting a word; but ayala gave an additional turn to the screw on her lips, and remained quite silent. "yes; we gave our permission -i and your aunt. of course, our son's happiness is all in all to us; and i do believe that you are so good that you would make him a good wife." "but -" "listen till i have done, ayala." then there was another squeeze. "i suppose you are what they call romantic. romance, my dear, won't buy bread and butter. tom is a very good young man, and he loves you most dearly. if you will consent to be his i will make a rich man of him. he will then be a respectable man of business, and will become a partner in the house. you and he can choose a place to live in almost where you please. you can have your own establishment and your carriage, and will be able to do a deal of good. you will make him happy, and you will be my dear child. i have come here to tell you that i will make you welcome into the family, and to promise that i will do everything i can to make you happy. now you may say what you like; but, ayala, think a little before you speak." ayala thought a little -not as to what she should say, but as to the words in which she might say it. she was conscious that a great compliment was paid to her. and there was a certain pride in her heart as she thought that this invitation into the family had come to her after that ignominious accusation of encouragement had been made. augusta had snubbed her about tom, and her aunt; but now she was asked to come among them, and be one of them, with full observances. she was aware of all this, and aware, also, that such treatment required from her a gracious return. but not on that account could she give herself to the beast. not on that account could she be untrue to her image. not on that account could she rob her bosom of that idea of love which was seated there. not on that account could she look upon the marriage proposed to her with aught but a shuddering abhorrence. she sat silent for a minute or two, while her heavy eyes were fixed upon his. then, falling on her knees before him, she put up her little hands to pray to him. "uncle tom, i can't," she said. and then the tears came running down her cheeks. "why can't you, ayala? why cannot you be sensible, as other girls are?" said sir thomas, lifting her up, and putting her on his knee. "i can't," she said. "i don't know how to tell you." "do you love some other man?" "no; no; no!" to uncle tom, at any rate, she need say nothing of the image. "then why is it?" "because i can't. i don't know what i say, but i can't. i know how very, very, very good you are." "i would love you as my daughter." "but i can't, uncle tom. pray tell him, and make him get somebody else. he would be quite happy if he could get somebody else." "it is you that he loves." "but what's the use of it, when i can't? dear, dear uncle tom, do have it all settled for me. nothing on earth could ever make me do it. i should die if i were to try." "that's nonsense." "i do so want not to make you angry, uncle tom. and i do so wish he would be happy with someone else. nobody ought to be made to marry unless they like it -ought they?" "there is no talk of making," said sir thomas, frowning. "at any rate i can't," said ayala, releasing herself from her uncle's embrace. it was in vain that even after this he continued his request, begging her to come down to glenbogie, so that she might make herself used to tom and his ways. if she could only once more, he thought, be introduced to the luxuries of a rich house, then she would give way. but she would not go to glenbogie,; she would not go to merle park; she would not consent to see tom anywhere. her uncle told her that she was romantic and foolish, endeavouring to explain to her over and over again that the good things of the world were too good to be thrown away for a dream. at last there was a touch of dignity in the final repetition of her refusal. "i am sorry to make you angry, but i can't, uncle tom." then he frowned with all his power of frowning, and, taking his hat, left the room and the house almost without a word. at the time fixed the marchesa's carriage came, and ayala with her boxes was taken away to brook street. uncle reginald had offered to do something for her in the way of buying a frock, but this she refused, declaring that she would not allow herself to become an expense merely because her friends in rome had been kind to her. so she had packed up the best of what she had and started, with her heart in her mouth, fearing the grandeur of the marchesa's house. on her arrival she was received by nina, who at once threw herself into all her old intimacy. "oh, ayala," she said, "this is so nice to have you again. i have been looking forward to this ever since we left rome." "yes," said ayala, "it is nice." "but why did you tell mamma you would not come? what nonsense to talk to her about frocks! why not come and tell me? you used to have everything at rome, much more than i had." then ayala began to explain the great difference between uncle tom and uncle reginald -how uncle tom had so many thousands that nobody could count them, how uncle reginald was so shorn in his hundreds that there was hardly enough to supply the necessaries of life. "you see," she said, "when papa died lucy and i were divided. i got the rich uncle, and lucy got the poor one; but i made myself disagreeable, and didn't suit, and so we have been changed." "but why did you make yourself disagreeable?" said nina, opening her eyes. "i remember when we were at rome your cousin augusta was always quarrelling with you. i never quite knew what it was all about." "it wasn't only that," said ayala, whispering. "did you do anything very bad?" then it occurred to ayala that she might tell the whole story to her friend, and she told it. she explained the nature of that great persecution as to tom. "and that was the real reason why we were changed," said ayala, as she completed her story. "i remember seeing the young man," said nina. "he is such a lout!" "but was he very much in love?" asked nina. "well, i don't know. i suppose he was after his way. i don't think louts like that can be very much in love to signify. young men when they look like that would do with one girl as well as another." "i don't see that at all," said nina. "i am sure he would if he'd only try. at any rate what's the good of his going on? they can't make a girl marry unless she chooses." "won't he be rich?" "awfully rich," said ayala. "then i should think about it again," said the young lady from rome. "never," said ayala, with an impressive whisper. "i will never think about it again. if he were made of diamonds i would not think about it again." "and is that why you were changed?" said nina. "well, yes. no; it is very hard to explain. aunt emmeline told me that -that i encouraged him. i thought i should have rushed out of the house when she said that. then i had to be changed. i don't know whether they could forgive me, but i could not forgive her." "and how is it now?" "it is different now," said ayala, softly. "only that it can't make any real difference." "how different?" "they'd let me come if i would, i suppose; but i shall never, never go to them any more." "i suppose you won't tell me everything?" said nina, after a pause. "what everything?" "you won't be angry if i ask?" "no, i will not be angry." "i suppose there is someone else you really care for?" "there is no one," said ayala, escaping a little from her friend's embrace. "then why should you be so determined against that poor young man?" "because he is a lout and a beast," said ayala, jumping up. "i wonder you should ask me -as if that had anything to do with it. would you fall in love with a lout because you had no one else? i would rather live for ever all alone, even in kingsbury crescent, than have to think of becoming the wife of my cousin tom." at this nina shrugged her shoulders, showing that her education in italy had been less romantic than that accorded to ayala in london. chapter 16 jonathan stubbs but, though nina differed somewhat from ayala as to their ideas as to life in general, they were close friends, and everything was done both by the marchesa and by her daughter to make ayala happy. there was not very much of going into grand society, and that difficulty about the dresses solved itself, as do other difficulties. there came a few presents, with entreaties from ayala that presents of that kind might not be made. but the presents were, of course, accepted, and our girl was as prettily arrayed, if not as richly, as the best around her. at first there was an evening at the opera, and then a theatre -diversions which are easy. ayala, after her six dull months in kingsbury crescent, found herself well pleased to be taken to easy amusements. the carriage in the park was delightful to her, and delightful a visit which was made to her by lucy. for the tringle carriage could be spared for a visit in brook street, even though there was still a remembrance in the bosom of aunt emmeline of the evil things which had been done by the marchesa in rome. then there came a dance -which was not so easy. the marchesa and nina were going to a dance at lady putney's, and arrangements were made that ayala should be taken. ayala begged that there might be no arrangements, declared that she would be quite happy to see nina go forth in her finery. but the marchesa was a woman who always had her way, and ayala was taken to lady putney's dance without a suspicion on the part of any who saw her that her ball-room apparatus was not all that it ought to be. ayala when she entered the room was certainly a little bashful. when in rome, even in the old days at the bijou, when she did not consider herself to be quite out, she had not been at all bashful. she had been able to enjoy herself entirely, being very fond of dancing, conscious that she could dance well, and always having plenty to say for herself. but now there had settled upon her something of the tedium, something of the silence, of kingsbury crescent, and she almost felt that she would not know how to behave herself if she were asked to stand up and dance before all lady putney's world. in her first attempt she certainly was not successful. an elderly gentleman was brought up to her -a gentleman whom she afterwards declared to be a hundred, and who was, in truth, over forty, and with him she manoeuvred gently through a quadrille. he asked her two or three questions to which she was able to answer only in monosyllables. then he ceased his questions, and the manoeuvres were carried on in perfect silence. poor ayala did not attribute any blame to the man. it was all because she had been six months in kingsbury crescent. of course this aged gentleman, if he wanted to dance, would have a partner chosen for him out of kingsbury crescent. conversation was not to be expected from a gentleman who was made to stand up with kingsbury crescent. any powers of talking that had ever belonged to herself had of course evaporated amidst the gloom of kingsbury crescent. after this she was returned speedily to the wings of the marchesa, and during the next dance sat in undisturbed peace. then suddenly, when the marchesa had for a moment left her, and when nina had just been taken away to join a set, she saw the man of silence coming to her from a distance, with an evident intention of asking her to stand up again. it was in his eye, in his toe, as he came bowing forward. he had evidently learned to suppose that they two outcasts might lessen their miseries by joining them together. she was to dance with him because no one else would ask her! she had plucked up her spirit and resolved that, desolate as she might be, she would not descend so far as that, when, in a moment, another gentleman sprang in, as it were, between her and her enemy, and addressed her with free and easy speech as though he had known her all her life. "you are ayala dormer, i am sure," said he. she looked up into his face and nodded her head at him in her own peculiar way. she was quite sure that she had never set her eyes on him before. he was so ugly that she could not have forgotten him. so at least she told herself. he was very, very ugly, but his voice was very pleasant. "i knew you were, and i am jonathan stubbs. so now we are introduced, and you are to come and dance with me." she had heard the name of jonathan stubbs. she was sure of that, although she could not at the moment join any facts with the name. "but i don't know you," she said, hesitating. though he was so ugly he could not but be better than that ancient dancer whom she saw standing at a distance, looking like a dog that has been deprived of his bone. "yes, you do," said jonathan stubbs, "and if you'll come and dance i'll tell you about it. the marchesa told me to take you." "did she?" said ayala, getting up, and putting her little hand upon his arm. "i'll go and fetch her if you like; only she's a long way off, and we shall lose our place. she's my aunt." "oh," said, ayala, quite satisfied -remembering now that she had heard her friend nina boast of a colonel cousin, who was supposed to be the youngest colonel in the british army, who had done some wonderful thing -taken a new province in india, or marched across africa, or defended the turks -or perhaps conquered them. she knew that he was very brave -but why was he so very ugly? his hair was ruby red, and very short; and he had a thick red beard: not silky, but bristly, with each bristle almost a dagger -and his mouth was enormous. his eyes were very bright, and there was a smile about him, partly of fun, partly of good humour. but his mouth! and then that bristling beard! ayala was half inclined to like him, because he was so completely master of himself, so unlike the unhappy ancient gentleman who was still hovering at a distance. but why was he so ugly? and why was he called jonathan stubbs? "there now," he said, "we can't get in at any of the sets. that's your fault." "no, it isn't," said ayala. "yes, it is. you wouldn't stand up till you had heard all about me." "i don't know anything about you now." "then come and walk about and i'll tell you. then we shall be ready for a waltz. do you waltz well?" "do you?" "i'll back myself against any englishman, frenchman, german, or italian, for a large sum of money. i can't come quite up to the poles. the fact is, the honester the man is the worse he always dances. yes; i see what you mean. i must be a rogue. perhaps i am -perhaps i'm only an exception. i knew your father." "papa!" "yes, i did. he was down at stalham with the alburys once. that was five years ago, and he told me he had a daughter named ayala. i didn't quite believe him." "why not?" "it is such an out-of-the-way name." "it's as good as jonathan, at any rate." and ayala again nodded her head. "there's a prejudice about jonathan, as there is about jacob and jonah. i never could quite tell why. i was going to marry a girl once with a hundred thousand pounds, and she wouldn't have me at last because she couldn't bring her lips to say jonathan. do you think she was right?" "did she love you?" said ayala, looking up into his face. "awfully! but she couldn't bear the name; so within three months she gave herself and all her money to mr montgomery talbot de montpellier. he got drunk, and threw her out of the window before a month was over. that's what comes of going in for sweet names." "i don't believe a word of it," said ayala. "very well. didn't septimus traffick marry your cousin?" "of course he did, about a month ago." "he is another friend of mine. why didn't you go to your cousin's marriage?" "there were reasons," said ayala. "i know all about it," said the colonel. "you quarrelled with augusta down in scotland, and you don't like poor traffick because he has got a bald head." "i believe you're a conjuror," said ayala. "and then your cousin was jealous because you went to the top of st peter's, and because you would walk with mr traffick on the pincian. i was in rome, and saw all about it." "i won't have anything more to do with you," said ayala. "and then you quarrelled with one set of uncles and aunts, and now you live with another." "your aunt told you that." "and i know your cousin, tom tringle." "you know tom?" asked ayala. "yes; he was ever so good to me in rome about a horse; i like tom tringle in spite of his chains. don't you think, upon the whole, if that young lady had put up with jonathan she would have done better than marry montpellier? but now they're going to waltz, come along." thereupon ayala got up and danced with him for the next ten minutes. again and again before the evening was over she danced with him; and although, in the course of the night, many other partners had offered themselves, and many had been accepted, she felt that colonel jonathan stubbs had certainly been the partner of the evening. why should he be so hideously ugly? said ayala to herself, as she wished him goodnight before she left the room with the marchesa and nina. "what do you think of my nephew?" asked the marchesa, when they were in the carriage together. "do tell us what you think of jonathan," said nina. "i thought he was very good-natured." "and very handsome?" "nina, don't be foolish. jonathan is one of the most rising officers in the british service, and luckily he can be that without being beautiful to look at." "i declare," said nina, "sometimes, when he is talking, i think him perfectly lovely. the fire comes out of his eyes, and he rubs his old red hairs about till they sparkle. then he shines all over like a carbuncle, and every word he says makes me die of laughter." "i laughed too," said ayala. "but you didn't think him beautiful," said nina. "no, i did not," said ayala. "i liked him very much, but i thought him very ugly. was it true about the young lady who married mr montgomery de montpellier and was thrown out of a window a week afterwards?" "there is one other thing i must tell you about jonathan," said nina. "you must not believe a word that he says." "that i deny," said the marchesa; "but here we are. and now, girls, get out of the carriage and go up to bed at once." ayala, before she went to sleep, and again when she woke in the morning, thought a great deal about her new friend. as to shining like a carbuncle -perhaps he did, but that was not her idea of manly beauty. and hair ought not to sparkle. she was sure that colonel stubbs was very, very ugly. she was almost disposed to think that he was the ugliest man she had ever seen. he certainly was a great deal worse than her cousin tom, who, after all, was not particularly ugly. but, nevertheless, she would very much rather dance with colonel stubbs. she was sure of that, even without reference to tom's objectionable love-making. upon the whole she liked dancing with colonel stubbs, ugly as he was. indeed, she liked him very much. she had spent a very pleasant evening because he had been there. "it all depends upon whether anyone has anything to say." that was the determination to which she came when she endeavoured to explain to herself how it had come to pass that she had liked dancing with anybody so very hideous. the angel of light would of course have plenty to say for himself, and would be something altogether different in appearance. he would be handsome -or rather, intensely interesting, and his talk would be of other things. he would not say of himself that he danced as well as though he were a rogue, or declare that a lady had been thrown out of a window the week after she was married. nothing could be more unlike an angel of light than colonel stubbs -unless, perhaps, it were tom tringle. colonel stubbs, however, was completely unangelic -so much so that the marvel was that he should yet be so pleasant. she had no horror of colonel stubbs at all. she would go anywhere with colonel stubbs, and feel herself to be quite safe. she hoped she might meet him again very often. he was, as it were, the genius of comedy, without a touch of which life would be very dull. but the angel of light must have something tragic in his composition -must verge, at any rate, on tragedy. ayala did not know that beautiful description of a "sallow, sublime, sort of werther-faced man," but i fear that in creating her angel of light she drew a picture in her imagination of a man of that kind. days went on, till the last day of ayala's visit had come, and it was necessary that she should go back to kingsbury crescent. it was now august, and everybody was leaving town. the marchesa and nina were going to their relations, the alburys, at stalham, and could not, of course, take ayala with them. the dosetts would remain in town for another month, with a distant hope of being able to run down to pegwell bay for a fortnight in september. but even that had not yet been promised. colonel stubbs had been more than once at the house in brook street, and ayala had come to know him almost as she might some great tame dog. it was now the afternoon of the last day, and she was sorry because she would not be able to see him again. she was to be taken to the theatre that night -and then to kingsbury crescent and the realms of lethe early on the following morning. it was very hot, and they were sitting with the shutters nearly closed, having resolved not to go out, in order that they might be ready for the theatre -when the door was opened and tom tringle was announced. tom tringle had come to call on his cousin. "lady baldoni," he said, "i hope you won't think me intrusive, but i thought i'd come and see my cousin once whilst she is staying here." the marchesa bowed, and assured him that he was very welcome. "it's tremendously hot," said tom. "very hot indeed," said the marchesa. "i don't think it's ever so hot as this in rome," said nina, fanning herself. "i find it quite impossible to walk a yard," said tom, "and therefore i've hired a hansom cab all to myself. the man goes home and changes his horse regularly when i go to dinner; then he comes for me at ten, and sticks to me till i go to bed. i call that a very good plan." nina asked him why he didn't drive the cab himself. "that would be a grind," said he, "because it would be so hot all day, and there might be rain at night. have you read what my brother-in-law, traffick, said in the house last night, my lady?" "i'm afraid i passed it over," said the marchesa. "indeed, i am not very good at the debates." "they are dull," said tom, "but when it's one's brother-in-law, one does like to look at it. i thought he made that very clear about the malt tax." the marchesa smiled and bowed. "what is -malt tax?" asked nina. "well, it means beer," said tom. "the question is whether the poor man pays it who drinks the beer, or the farmer who grows the malt. it is very interesting when you come to think of it." "but i fear i never have come to think of it," said the marchesa. during all this time ayala never said a word, but sat looking at her cousin, and remembering how much better colonel jonathan stubbs would have talked if he had been there. then, after a pause, tom got up, and took his leave, having to content himself with simply squeezing his cousin's hand as he left the room. "he is a lout," said ayala, as soon as she knew that the door was closed behind him. "i don't see anything loutish at all," said the marchesa. "he's just like most other young men," said nina. "he's not at all like colonel stubbs," said ayala. then the marchesa preached a little sermon. "colonel stubbs, my dear," she said, "happens to have been thrown a good deal about the world, and has thus been able to pick up that easy mode of talking which young ladies like, perhaps because it means nothing. your cousin is a man of business, and will probably have amassed a large fortune when my poor nephew will be a do-nothing old general on half-pay. his chatter will not then have availed him quite so much as your cousin's habits of business." "mamma," said nina, "jonathan will have money of his own." "never mind, my dear. i do not like to hear a young man called a lout because he's more like a man of business than a man of pleasure." ayala felt herself to be snubbed, but was not a whit the less sure that tom was a lout, and the colonel an agreeable partner to dance with. but at the same time she remembered that neither the one nor the other was to be spoken of in the same breath, or thought of in the same spirit, as the angel of light. when they were dressed, and just going to dinner, the ugly man with the red head was announced, and declared his purpose of going with them to the theatre. "i've been to the office," said he, "and got a stall next to yours, and have managed it all. it now only remains that you should give me some dinner and a seat in the carriage." of course he was told that there was no dinner sufficient for a man to eat; but he put up with a feminine repast, and spent the whole of the evening sitting next to his aunt, on a back tier, while the two girls were placed in front. in this way, leaning forward, with his ugly head between them, he acted as a running chorus to the play during the whole performance. ayala thoroughly enjoyed herself, and thought that in all her experience no play she'd seen had ever been so delightful. on their return home the two girls were both told to go to bed in the marchesa's good-natured authoritative tone; but, nevertheless, ayala did manage to say a word before she finally adjusted herself on her pillow. "it is all very well, nina, for your mamma to say that a young man of business is the best; but i do know a lout when i see him; and i am quite sure that my cousin tom is a lot, and that colonel jonathan is not." "i believe you are falling in love with colonel jonathan," said nina. "i should as soon think of falling in love with a wild bear -but he's not a lout, and therefore i like him." chapter 17 lucy is very firm it was just before the tringles had returned from rome, during the winter, that lucy dormer had met mr hamel in kensington gardens for the second time, had walked there with him perhaps for half an hour, and had then retumed home with a conviction that she had done a wicked thing. but she had other convictions also, which were perhaps stronger. "now that we have met, am i to lose you again?" he had said. what could he mean by losing except that she was the one thing which he desired to find? but she had not seen him since, or heard a word of his whereabouts, although, as she so well remembered, she had given him an address at her aunt emmeline's -not knowing then that it would be her fate to become a resident in her aunt emmeline's house. she had told him that ayala would live there, and that perhaps she might sometimes be found visiting ayala. now, she was herself filling ayala's place, and might so easily have been found. but she knew nothing of the man who had once asked whether he was "to lose her again". her own feelings about isadore hamel were clear enough to herself now. ayala in her hot humour had asked her whether she could give her hand and her heart to such a one as their cousin tom, and she had found herself constrained to say that she could not do so, because she was not free -not quite free -to do as she pleased with her hand and her heart. she had striven hard not to acknowledge anything, even to ayala -even to herself. but the words had been forced from her, and now she was conscious, terribly conscious, that the words were true. there could be no one else now, whether tom or another -whether such as tom or such as any other. it was just that little word that had won her. "am i to lose you again?" a girl loves most often because she is loved -not from choice on her part. she is won by the flattery of the man's desire. "am i to lose you again?" he had seemed to throw all his soul into his voice and into his eyes as he had asked the question. a sudden thrill had filled her, and, for his sake -for his sake -she had hoped that she might not be lost to him. now she began to fear that he was lost to her. something has been told of the relations between isadore hamel and his father. they were both sculptors, the father having become a successful artist. the father was liberal, but he was essentially autocratic. if he supplied to his son the means of living -and he was willing to supply the means of a very comfortable life -he expected that his son should live to some extent in accordance with his fancies. the father wished his son to live in rome, and to live after the manner of romans. isadore would prefer to live in london, and after the manner of londoners. for a time he had been allowed to do so, and had achieved a moderate success. but a young artist may achieve a moderate success with a pecuniary result that shall be almost less than moderate. after a while the sculptor in rome had told his son that if he intended to remain in london he ought to do so on the independent proceeds of his own profession. isadore, if he would return to rome, would be made welcome to join his affairs to those of his father. in other words, he was to be turned adrift if he remained in london, and petted with every luxury if he would consent to follow his art in italy. but in rome the father lived after a fashion which was distasteful to the son. old mr hamel had repudiated all conventions. conventions are apt to go very quickly, one after another, when the first has been thrown aside. the man who ceases to dress for dinner soon finds it to be a trouble to wash his hands. a house is a bore. calling is a bore. church is a great bore. a family is a bore. a wife is an unendurable bore. all laws are bores, except those by which inferiors can be constrained to do their work. mr hamel had got rid of a great many bores, and had a strong opinion that bores prevailed more mightily in london than in rome. isadore was not a bore to him. he was always willing to have isadore near to him. but if isadore chose to enter the conventional mode of life he must do it at his own expense. it may be said at once that isadore's present view of life was very much influenced by lucy dormer, and by a feeling that she certainly was conventional. a small house, very prettily furnished, somewhat near the fulham road, or perhaps verging a little towards south kensington, with two maids, and perhaps an additional one as nurse in the process of some months, with a pleasant english breakfast and a pleasant english teapot in the evening, afforded certainly a very conventional aspect of life. but, at the present moment, it was his aspect, and therefore he could not go upon all fours with his father. in this state of things there had, during the last twelvemonth, been more than one journey made to rome and back. ayala had seen him at rome, and lady tringle, remembering that the man had been intimate with her brother, was afraid of him. they had made inquiry about him, and had fully resolved that he should not be allowed into the house if he came after ayala. he had no mother -to speak of; and he had little brothers and sisters, who also had no mother -to speak of. mr hamel, the father, entertained friends on sunday, with the express object of playing cards. that a papist should do so was to be borne -but mr hamel was not a papist, and, therefore, would certainly be -. all this and much more had been learned at rome, and therefore lucy, though she herself never mentioned mr hamel's name in queen's gate, heard evil things said of the man who was so dear to her. it was the custom of her life to be driven out every day with her aunt and gertrude. not to be taken two or three times round the park would be to lady tringle to rob her of the best appreciated of all those gifts of fortune which had come to her by reason of the banker's wealth. it was a stern law -and as stern a law that lucy should accompany her. gertrude, as being an absolute daughter of the house, and as having an almost acknowledged lover of her own, was allowed some choice. but for lucy there was no alternative. why should she not go and be driven? two days before they left town she was being driven, while her aunt was sitting almost in a slumber beside her, when suddenly a young man, leaning over the railings, took off his hat so close to lucy that she could almost have put out her hand to him. he was standing there all alone, and seemed simply to be watching the carriages as they passed. she felt that she blushed as she bowed to him, and saw also that the colour had risen to his face. then she turned gently round to her aunt, whom she hoped to find still sleeping; but aunt emmeline could slumber with one eye open. "who was that young man, my dear?" said aunt emmeline. "it was mr hamel." "mr isadore hamel!" said aunt emmeline, horrified. "is that the young man at rome who has got the horrible father?" "i do not know his father," said lucy; "but he does live at rome." "of course, it is the mr hamel i mean. he scraped some acquaintance with ayala, but i would not have it for a moment. he is not at all the sort of person any young girl ought to know. his father is a horrible man. i hope he is no friend of yours, lucy!" "he is a friend of mine." lucy said this in a tone of voice which was very seldom heard from her, but which, when heard, was evidence that beneath the softness of her general manner there lay a will of her own. "then, my dear, i hope that such friendship may be discontinued as long as you remain with us." "he was a friend of papa's," said lucy. "that's all very well. i suppose artists must know artists, even though they are disreputable." "mr hamel is not disreputable." aunt emmeline, as she heard this, could almost fancy that she was renewing one of her difficulties with ayala. "my dear," she said -and she intended to be very impressive as she spoke -"in a matter such as this i must beg you to be guided by me. you must acknowledge that i know the world better than you do. mr hamel is not a fit person to be acquainted with a young lady who occupies the place of my daughter. i am sure that will be sufficient." then she leant back in the carriage, and seemed again to slumber; but she still had one eye open, so that if mr hamel should appear again at any corner and venture to raise his hand she might be aware of the impropriety. but on that day mr hamel did not appear again. lucy did not speak another word during the drive, and on reaching the house went at once to her bedroom. while she had been out with her aunt close to her, and while it had been possible that the man she loved should appear again, she had been unable to collect her thoughts or to make up her mind what she would do or say. one thing simply was certain to her, that if mr hamel should present himself again to her she would not desert him. all that her aunt had said to her as to improprieties and the like had no effect at all upon her. the man had been welcomed at her father's house, had been allowed there to be intimate with her, and was now, as she was well aware, much dearer to her than any other human being. nor for all the aunt emmelines in the world would she regard him otherwise than as her dearest friend. when she was alone she discussed the matter with herself. it was repugnant to her that there should be any secret on the subject between herself and her aunt after what had been said -much more that there should be any deceit. "mr hamel is not fit to be acquainted with a lady who occupies the position of my daughter." it was thus that her aunt had spoken. to this the proper answer seemed to be -seemed at least to lucy -"in that case, my dear aunt, i cannot for a moment longer occupy the position of your daughter, as i certainly am acquainted and shall remain acquainted with mr hamel." but to such speech as this on her own part there were two impediments. in the first place it would imply that mr hamel was her lover -for implying which mr hamel had given her no authority; and then what should she immediately do when she had thus obstinately declared herself to be unfit for that daughter's position which she was supposed now to occupy? with all her firmness of determination she could not bring herself to tell her aunt that mr hamel was her lover. not because it was not as yet true. she would have been quite willing that her aunt should know the exact truth, if the exact truth could be explained. but how could she convey to such a one as aunt emmeline the meaning of those words -"am i to lose you again?" how could she make her aunt understand that she held herself to be absolutely bound, as by a marriage vow, by such words as those -words in which there was no promise, even had they come from some fitting suitor, but which would be regarded by aunt emmeline as being simply impertinent coming as they did from such a one as isadore hamel. it was quite out of the question to tell all that to aunt emmeline, but yet it was necessary that something should be told. she had been ordered to drop her acquaintance with isadore, and it was essential that she should declare that she would do nothing of the kind. she would not recognise such obedience as a duty on her part. the friendship had been created by her father, to whom her earlier obedience had been due. it might be that, refusing to render such obedience, her aunt and her uncle might tell her that there could be no longer shelter for her in that house. they could not cherish and foster a disobedient child. if it must be so, it must. though there should be no home left to her in all the wide world she would not accept an order which should separate her from the man she loved. she must simply tell her aunt that she could not drop mr hamel's acquaintance -because mr hamel was a friend. early on the next morning she did so. "are you aware", said aunt emmeline, with a severe face, "that he is -illegitimate?" lucy blushed, but made no answer. "is he -is he -engaged to you?" "no," said lucy, sharply. "has he asked you to marry him?" "no," said lucy. "then what is it?" asked lady tringle, in a tone which was intended to signify that as nothing of that kind had taken place such a friendship could be a matter of no consequence. "he was papa's friend." "my dear, what can that matter? your poor papa has gone, and you are in my charge and your uncle's. surely you cannot object to choose your friends as we should wish. mr hamel is a gentleman of whom we do not approve. you cannot have seen very much of him, and it would be very easy for you, should he bow to you again in the park, to let him see that you do not like it." "but i do like it," said lucy with energy. "lucy!" "i do like to see mr hamel, and i feel almost sure that he will come and call here now that he has seen me. last winter he asked me my address, and i gave him this house." "when you were living with your aunt dosett?" "yes, i did, aunt emmeline. i thought aunt margaret would not like him to come to kingsbury crescent, and, as ayala was to be here, i told him he might call at queen's gate." then lady tringle was really angry. it was not only that her house should have been selected for so improper a use but that lucy should have shown a fear and a respect for mrs dosett which had not been accorded to herself. it was shocking to her pride that that should have appeared to be easy of achievement at queen's gate which was too wicked to be attempted at kingsbury crescent. and then the thing which had been done seemed in itself to her to be so horrible! this girl, when living under the care of her aunt, had made an appointment with an improper young man at the house of another aunt! any appointment made by a young lady with a young man must, as she thought, be wrong. she began to be aghast at the very nature of the girl who could do such a thing, and on reflecting that that girl was at present under her charge as an adopted daughter. "lucy," she said, very impressively, "there must be an end of this." "there cannot be an end of it," said lucy. "do you mean to say that he is to come here to this house whether i and your uncle like it or not?" "he will come," said lucy; "i am sure he will come. now he has seen me he will come at once." "why should he do that if he is not your lover?" "because," said lucy -and then she paused; "because -. it is very hard to tell you, aunt emmeline." "why should he come so quickly?" demanded aunt emmeline again. "because -. though he has said nothing to me such as that you mean," stammered out lucy, determined to tell the whole truth, "i believe that he will." "and you?" "if he did i should accept him." "has he any means?" "i do not know." "have you any?" "certainly not." "and you would consent to be his wife after what i've told you?" "yes," said lucy, "i should." "then it must not be in this house. that is all. i will not have him here on any pretence whatsoever." "i thought not, aunt emmeline, and therefore i have told you." "do you mean that you will make an appointment with him elsewhere?" "certainly not. i have not in fact ever made an appointment with him. i do not know his address. till yesterday i thought that he was in rome. i never had a line from him in my life, and of course have never written to him." upon hearing all this lady tringle sat in silence, not quite knowing how to carry on the conversation. the condition of lucy's mind was so strange to her, that she felt herself to be incompetent to dictate. she could only resolve that under no circumstances should the objectionable man be allowed into her house. "now, aunt emmeline," said lucy, "i have told you everything. of course you have a right to order, but i also have some right. you told me i was to drop mr hamel, but i cannot drop him. if he comes in my way i certainly shall not drop him. if he comes here i shall see him if i can. if you and uncle tom choose to turn me out, of course you can do so." "i shall tell your uncle all about it," said aunt emmeline, angrily, "and then you will hear what he says." and so the conversation was ended. at that moment sir thomas was, of course, in the city managing his millions, and as lucy herself had suggested that mr hamel might not improbably call on that very day, and as she was quite determined that mr hamel should not enter the doors of the house in queen's gate, it was necessary that steps should be taken at once. some hours afterwards mr hamel did call and asked for miss dormer. the door was opened by a well-appointed footman, who, with lugubrious face -with a face which spoke much more eloquently than his words -declared that miss dormer was not at home. in answer to further inquiries he went on to express an opinion that miss dormer never would be at home -from all which it may be seen that aunt emmeline had taken strong measures to carry out her purpose. hamel, when he heard his fate thus plainly spoken from the man's mouth, turned away, not doubting its meaning. he had seen lucy's face in the park, and had seen also lady tringle's gesture after his greeting. that lady tringle should not be disposed to receive him at her house was not matter of surprise to him. when lucy went to bed that night she did not doubt that mr hamel had called, and that he had been turned away from the door. chapter 18 down in scotland when the time came, all the tringles, together with the honourable mrs traffick, started for glenbogie. aunt emmeline had told sir thomas all lucy's sins, but sir thomas had not made so much of them as his wife had expected. "it wouldn't be a bad thing to have a husband for lucy," said sir thomas. "but the man hasn't got a sixpence." "he has a profession." "i don't know that he makes anything. and then think of his father! he is -illegitimate!" sir thomas seemed rather to sneer at this. "and if you knew the way the old man lives in rome! he plays cards all sunday!" again sir thomas sneered. sir thomas was fairly submissive to the conventionalities himself, but did not think that they ought to stand in the way of a provision for a young lady who had no provision of her own. "you wouldn't wish to have him at queen's gate?" asked lady tringle. "certainly not, if he makes nothing by his profession. a good deal, i think, depends upon that." then nothing further was said, but lucy was not told her uncle's opinion on the matter, as had been promised. when she went down to glenbogie she only knew that mr hamel was considered to be by far too black a sheep to be admitted into her aunt's presence, and that she must regard herself as separated from the man as far as any separation could be effected by her present protectors. but if he would be true to her, as to a girl whom he had a short time since so keenly rejoiced in "finding again," she was quite sure that she could be true to him. on the day fixed, the 20th of august, mr houston arrived at glenbogie, with boots and stockings and ammunition, such as tom had recommended when interrogated on those matters by his sister, gertrude. "i travelled down with a man i think you know," he said to lucy -"at any rate your sister does, because i saw him with her at rome." the man turned out to be isadore hamel. "i didn't like to ask him whether he was coming here," said frank houston. "no; he is not coming here," said aunt emmeline. "certainly not," said gertrude, who was quite prepared to take up the cudgels on her mother's behalf against mr hamel. "he said something about another man he used to know at rome, before you came. he was a nephew of that marchesa baldoni." "she was a lady we didn't like a bit too well," said gertrude. "a very stuck-up sort of person, who did all she could to spoil ayala," said aunt emmeline. "ayala has just been staying with her," said lucy. "she has been very kind to ayala." "we have nothing to do with that now," said aunt emmeline. "ayala can stay with whom she and her aunt pleases. is this mr hamel, whom you saw, a friend of the marchesa's?" "he seemed to be a friend of the marchesa's nephew," continued houston -"one colonel stubbs. we used to see him at rome, and a most curious man he is. his name is jonathan, and i don't suppose that any man was ever seen so red before. he is shooting somewhere, and hamel seems to be going to join him. i thought he might have been coming here afterwards, as you all were in rome together." "certainly he is not coming here," said aunt emmeline. "and as for colonel stubbs, i never heard of him before." a week of the time allotted to frank houston had gone before he had repeated a word of his suit to sir thomas. but with gertrude every opportunity had been allowed him, and by the rest of the family they had been regarded as though they were engaged. mr traffick, who was now at glenbogie, in accordance with the compact made with him, did not at first approve of frank houston. he had insinuated to lady tringle, and had said very plainly to augusta, that he regarded a young man, without any employment and without any income, as being quite unfit to marry. "if he had a seat in the house it would be quite a different thing," he had said to augusta. but his wife had snubbed him; telling him, almost in so many words, that if gertrude was determined to have her way in opposition to her father she certainly would not be deterred by her brother-in-law. "it's nothing to me," mr traffick had then said; "the money won't come out of my pocket; but when a man has nothing else to do he is sure to spend all that he can lay his hands upon." after that, however, he withdrew his opposition, and allowed it to be supposed that he was ready to receive frank houston as his brother-in-law, should it be so decided. the time was running by both with houston, the expectant son-in-law, and with mr traffick, who had achieved his position, and both were aware that no grace would be allowed to them beyond that which had been promised. frank had fully considered the matter, and was quite resolved that it would be unmanly in him to run after his cousin imogene, in the tyrol, before he had performed his business. one day, therefore, after having returned from the daily allowance of slaughter, he contrived to find sir thomas in the solitude of his own room, and again began to act the part of allan-a-dale. "i thought, mr houston," said sir thomas, "that we had settled that matter before." "not quite," said houston. "i don't know why you should say so. i intended to be understood as expressing my mind." "but you have been good enough to ask me down here." "i may ask a man to my house, i suppose, without intending to give him my daughter's hand." then he again asked the important question, to which allana-dale's answer was so unreasonable and so successful. "have you an income on which to maintain my daughter?" "i cannot just say that i have, sir thomas," said houston, apologetically. "then you mean to ask me to furnish you with an income." "you can do as you please about that, sir thomas." "you can hardly marry her without it." "well; no; not altogether. no doubt it is true that i should not have proposed myself had i not thought that the young lady would have something of her own." "but she has nothing of her own," said sir thomas. and then that interview was over. "you won't throw us over, lady tringle?" houston said to gertrude's mother that evening. "sir thomas likes to have his own way," said lady tringle. "somebody got round him about septimus traffick." "that was different," said lady tringle. "mr traffick is in parliament, and that gives him an employment. he is a son of lord boardotrade, and some of these days he will be in office." "of course, you know that if gertrude sticks to it she will have her own way. when a girl sticks to it her father has to give way. what does it matter to him whether i have any business or not? the money would be the same in one case as the other, only it does seem such an unnecessary trouble to have it put off." all this lady tringle seemed to take in good part, and half acknowledged that if frank houston were constant in the matter he would succeed at last. gertrude, when the time for his departure had come, expressed herself as thoroughly disgusted by her father's sternness. "it's all bosh," she said to her lover. "who is lord boardotrade that that should make a difference? i have as much right to please myself as augusta." but there was the stern fact that the money had not been promised, and even frank had not proposed to marry the girl of his heart without the concomitant thousands. before he left glenbogie, on the evening of his departure, he wrote a second letter to miss docimer, as follows - dear cousin im, here i am at glenbogie, and here i have been for a week, without doing a stroke of work. the father still asks "of his house and his home" and does not seem to be at all affected by my reference to the romantic grandeur of my own peculiar residence. perhaps i may boast so far as to say that i have laughed on the lass as successfully as did allan-a-dale. but what's the good of laughing on a lass when one has got nothing to eat? allan-a-dale could pick a pocket or cut a purse, accomplishments in which i am altogether deficient. i suppose i shall succeed sooner or later, but when i put my neck into the collar i had no idea that there would be so much uphill work before me. it is all very well joking, but it is not nice to be asked "of your house and your home" by a gentleman who knows very well you've got none, and is conscious of inhabiting three or four palaces himself. such treatment must be described as being decidedly vulgar. and then he must know that it can be of no possible permanent use. the ladies are all on my side, but i am told by tringle mere that i am less acceptable than old traffick, who married the other girl, because i'm not the son of lord boardotrade! nothing astonishes me so much as the bad taste of some people. now, it must all be put off till christmas, and the cruel part is, that one doesn't see how i'm to go on living. "in the meantime i have a little time in which to amuse myself, and i shall turn up in about three weeks at merle park. i wish chiefly to beg that you will not dissuade me from what i see clearly to be a duty. i know exactly your line of argument. following a girl for her money is, you will say, mercenary. so, as far as i can see, is every transaction in the world by which men live. the judges, the bishops, the poets, the royal academicians, and the prime ministers, are all mercenary -as is also the man who breaks stones for 2s. 1d. a day. how shall a man live without being mercenary unless he be born to fortune? are not girls always mercenary? will she marry me knowing that i have nothing? will you not marry someone whom you will probably like much less simply because he will have something for you to eat and drink? of course i am mercenary, and i don't even pretend to old tringle that i am not so. i feel a little tired of this special effort -but if i were to abandon it i should simply have to begin again elsewhere. i have sighted my stag, and i must go on following him, trying to get on the right side of the wind till i bring him down. it is not nice, but it is to me manifestly my duty -and i shall do it. therefore, do not let there be any blowing up. i hate to be scolded. yours always affectionately, f. h. gertrude, when he was gone, did not take the matter quite so quietly as he did, feeling that, as she had made up her mind, and as all her world would know that she had made up her mind, it behoved her to carry her purpose to its desired end. a girl who is known to be engaged, but whose engagement is not allowed, is always in a disagreeable plight. "mamma," she said, "i think that papa is not treating me well." "my dear, your papa has always had his own way." "that is all very well -but why am i to be worse used than augusta? it turns out now that mr traffick has not got a shilling of his own." "your papa likes his being in parliament." "all the girls can't marry members of parliament." "and he likes his being the son of lord boardotrade." "lord boardotrade! i call that very mean: mr houston is a gentleman, and the buncombe property has been for ever so many hundreds of years in the family. i think more of frank as to birth and all that than i do of lord boardotrade and his mushroom peerage. can't you tell papa that i mean to marry mr houston at last, and that he is making very little of me to let me be talked about as i shall be?" "i don't think i can, gertrude." "then i shall. what would he say if i were to run away with frank?" "i don't think frank houston would do that." "he would if i told him -in a moment." there miss tringle was probably in error. "and unless papa consents i shall tell him. i am not going to be made miserable for ever." this was at glenbogie, in inverness-shire, on the south-eastern side of loch ness, where sir thomas tringle possessed a beautiful mansion, with a deerforest, and a waterfall of his own, and any amount of moors which the minds of sportsmen could conceive. nothing in scotland could be more excellent, unless there might be some truth in the remarks of those who said that the grouse were scarce, and that the deer were almost nonexistent. on the other side of the lake, four miles up from the gates, on the edge of a ravine, down which rushed a little stream called the caller, was an inconvenient rickety cottage, built piecemeal at two or three different times, called drumcaller. from one room you went into another, and from that into a third. to get from the sitting-room, which was called the parlour, into another which was called the den, you had to pass through the kitchen, or else to make communication by a covered passage out of doors which seemed to hang over the margin of the ravine. pine trees enveloped the place. looking at the house from the outside anyone would declare it to be wet through. it certainly could not with truth be described as a comfortable family residence. but you might, perhaps, travel through all scotland without finding a more beautifully romantic spot in which to reside. from that passage, which seemed to totter suspended over the rocks, whence the tumbling rushing waters could always be heard like music close at hand, the view down over the little twisting river was such as filled the mind with a conviction of realised poetry. behind the house across the little garden there was a high rock where a little path had been formed, from which could be seen the whole valley of the caller and the broad shining expanse of the lake beyond. those who knew the cottage of drumcaller were apt to say that no man in scotland had a more picturesque abode, or one more inconvenient. even bread had to be carried up from callerfoot, as was called the little village down on the lake side, and other provisions, such even as meat, had to be fetched twenty miles, from the town of inverness. a few days after the departure of houston from glenbogie two men were seated with pipes in their mouths on the landing outside the room called the den to which the passage from the parlour ran. here a square platform had been constructed capable of containing two armchairs, and here the owner of the cottage was accustomed to sit, when he was disposed, as he called it, to loaf away his time at drumcaller. this man was colonel jonathan stubbs, and his companion at the present moment was isadore hamel. "i never knew them in rome," said the colonel. "i never even saw ayala there, though she was so much at my aunt's house. i was in sicily part of the time, and did not get back till they had all quarrelled. i did know the nephew, who was a good-natured but a vulgar young man. they are vulgar people, i should say." "you could hardly have found ayala vulgar?" asked hamel. "indeed, no. but uncles and aunts and nephews and nieces are not at all bound to run together. ayala is the daintiest little darling i ever saw." "i knew their father and mother, and certainly no one would have called them vulgar." "sisters when they marry of course go off according to their husbands, and the children follow. in this case one sister became tringlish after sir tringle, and the other dormerish, after that most improvident of human beings, your late friend the artist. i don't suppose any amount of experience will teach ayala how many shillings there are in a pound. no doubt the honourable mrs traffick knows all about it." "i don't think a girl is much improved by knowing how many shillings there are in a pound," said hamel. "it is useful sometimes." "so it might be to kill a sheep and skin it, or to milk a cow and make cheese; but here, as in other things, one acquirement will drive out others. a woman, if she cannot be beautiful, should at any rate be graceful, and if she cannot soar to poetry, should at least be soft and unworldly." "that's all very well in its way, but i go in for roasting, baking, and boiling. i can bake and i can brew;i can make an irish stew;wash a shirt and iron it too. that's the sort of girl i mean to go in for if ever i marry; and when you've got six children and a small income it's apt to turn out better than grace and poetry." "a little of both perhaps," said hamel. "well, yes; i don't mind a little byron now and again, so there is no nonsense. as to glenbogie, it's right over there across the lake. you can get a boat at callerfoot, and a fellow to take you across and wait for you won't cost you more than three half-crowns. i suppose glenbogie is as far from the lake on that side as my cottage is on this. how you'll get up except by walking i cannot say, unless you will write a note to sir thomas and ask him to send a horse down for you." "sir thomas would not accommodate me." "you think he will frown if you come after his niece?" "i simply want to call on miss dormer", said hamel, blushing, "because her father was always kind to me." "i don't mean to ask any questions," said the colonel. "it is just so as i say. i do not like being in the neighbourhood without calling on miss dormer." "i daresay not." "but i doubt whether sir thomas or lady tringle would be at all inclined to make me welcome. as to the distance, i can walk that easily enough, and if the door is slammed in my face i can walk back again." thus it was resolved that early on the following morning after breakfast isadore hamel should go across the lake and make his way up to glenbogie. chapter 19 isadore hamel is asked to lunch on the following morning, the morning of monday, 2nd september, isadore hamel started on his journey. he had thought much about the journey before he made it. no doubt the door had been slammed in his face in london. he felt quite conscious of that, and conscious also that a man should not renew his attempt to enter a door when it has been once slammed in his face. but he understood the circumstances nearly as they had happened -except that he was not aware how far the door had been slammed by lady tringle without any concurrence on the part of sir thomas. but the door had, at any rate, not been slammed by lucy. the only person he had really wished to see within that house had been lucy dormer; and he had hitherto no reason for supposing that she would be unwilling to receive him. her face had been sweet and gracious when she saw him in the park. was he to deny himself all hope of any future intercourse with her because lady tringle had chosen to despise him? he must make some attempt. it was more than probable, no doubt, that this attempt would be futile. the servant at glenbogie would probably be as well instructed as the servant in queen's gate. but still a man has to go on and do something, if he means to do anything. there could be no good in sitting up at drumcaller, at one side of the lake, and thinking of lucy dormer far away, at the other side. he had not at all made up his mind that he would ask lucy to be his wife. his professional income was still poor, and she, as he was aware, had nothing. but he felt it to be incumbent upon him to get nearer to her if it were possible, and to say something to her if the privilege of speech should be accorded to him. he walked down to callerfoot, refusing the loan of the colonel's pony carriage, and thence had himself carried across the lake in a hired boat to a place called sandy's quay. that, he was assured, was the spot on the other side from whence the nearest road would be found to glenbogie. but nobody on the callerfoot side could tell him what would be the distance. at sandy's quay he was assured that it was twelve miles to glenbogie house; but he soon found that the man who told him had a pony for hire. "ye'll nae get there under twalve mile -or maybe saxteen, if ye attampt to walk up the glin." so said the owner of the pony. but milder information came to him speedily. a little boy would show him the way up the glen for sixpence, and engage to bring him to the house in an hour and a half. so he started with the little boy, and after a hot scramble for about two hours he found himself within the demesne. poking their way up through thick bushes from a ravine, they showed their two heads -first the boy and then the sculptor -close by the side of the private road -just as sir thomas was passing, mounted on his cob. "it's his ain sell," said the boy, dropping his head again amongst the bushes. hamel, when he had made good his footing, had first to turn round so that the lad might not lose his wages. a dirty little hand came up for the sixpence, but the head never appeared again. it was well known in the neighbourhood -especially at sandy's quay, where boats were used to land -that sir thomas was not partial to visitors who made their way into glenbogie by any but the authorised road. while hamel was paying his debt, he stood still on his steed waiting to see who might be the trespasser. "that's not a high road," said sir thomas, as the young man approached him. as the last quarter of an hour from the bottom of the ravine had been occupied in very stiff climbing among the rocks the information conveyed appeared to hamel to have been almost unnecessary. "your way up to the house, if you are going there, would have been through the lodge down there." "perhaps you are sir thomas tringle," said hamel. "that is my name." "then i have to ask your pardon for my mode of ingress. i am going up to the house; but having crossed the lake from callerfoot i did not know my way on this side, and so i have clambered up the ravine." sir thomas bowed, and then waited for further tidings. "i believe miss dormer is at the house?" "my niece is there." "my name is hamel -isadore hamel. i am a sculptor, and used to be acquainted with her father. i have had great kindness from the whole family, and so i was going to call upon her. if you do not object, i will go on to the house." sir thomas sat upon his horse speechless for a minute. he had to consider whether he did not object or not. he was well aware that his wife objected -aware also that he had declined to coincide with his wife's objection when it had been pressed upon him. why should not his niece have the advantage of a lover, if a proper sort of a lover came in her way? as to the father's morals or the son's birth, those matters to sir thomas were nothing. the young man, he was told, was good at making busts. would anyone buy the busts when they were made? that was the question. his wife would certainly be prejudiced -would think it necessary to reject for lucy any suitor she would reject for her own girls. and then, as sir thomas felt, she had not shown great judgment in selecting suitors for her own girls. "oh, mr hamel, are you?" he said at last. "isadore hamel." "you called at queen's gate once, not long ago?" "i did," said hamel; "but saw no one." "no, you didn't; i heard that. well, you can go on to the house if you like, but you had better ask for lady tringle. after coming over from callerfoot you'll want some lunch. stop a moment. i don't mind if i ride back with you." and so the two started towards the house, and hamel listened whilst sir thomas expatiated on the beauties of glenbogie. they had passed through one gate and were approaching another, when, away among the trees, there was a young lady seen walking alone. "there is miss dormer," said hamel; "i suppose i may join her?" sir thomas could not quite make up his mind whether the meeting was to be allowed or not, but he could not bring himself at the spur of the moment to refuse his sanction. so hamel made his way across to lucy, while sir thomas rode on alone to the house. lucy had seen her uncle on the cob, and, being accustomed to see him on the cob, knew of course who he was. she had also seen another man with him, but not in the least expecting that hamel was in those parts, had never dreamt that he was her uncle's companion. it was not till hamel was near to her that she understood that the man was coming to join herself; and then, when she did recognise the man, she was lost in amazement. "you hardly expected to see me here?" said he. "indeed; no." "nor did i expect that i should find you in this way." "my uncle knows it is you?" asked lucy. "oh, yes. i met him as i came up from the ravine, and he has asked me to go on to the house to lunch." then there was silence for a few moments as they walked on together. "i hope you do not think that i am persecuting you in making my way over here." "oh, no; not persecuting!" lucy when she heard the sound of what she herself had said, was angry with herself, feeling that she had almost declared him guilty of some wrong in having come thither. "of course i am glad to see you", she added, "for papa's sake, but i'm afraid -" "afraid of what, miss dormer?" she looked him full in the face as she answered him, collecting her courage to make the declaration which seemed to be necessary. "my aunt emmeline does not want you to come." "why should she not want me?" "that i cannot tell. perhaps if i did know i should not tell. but it is so. you called at queen's gate, and i know that you were not admitted, though i was at home. of course, aunt emmeline has a right to choose who shall come. it is not as though i had a house of my own." "but sir thomas asked me in." "then you had better go in. after what aunt emmeline said, i do not think that you ought to remain with me." "your uncle knows i am with you," said hamel. then they walked on towards the house together in silence for a while. "do you mean to say", he continued, "that because your aunt objects you are never to see me again?" "i hope i shall see you again. you were papa's friend, and i should be so very sorry not to see you again." "i suppose", he said, slowly, "i can never be more than your papa's friend." "you are mine also." "i would be more than that." then he paused as if waiting for a reply, but she of course had none to make. "i would be so much more than that, lucy." still she had no answer to give him. but there comes a time when no answer is as excellent eloquence as any words that can be spoken. hamel, who had probably not thought much of this, was nevertheless at once informed by his instincts that it was so. "oh, lucy," he said, "if you can love me say so." "mr hamel," she whispered. "lucy." "mr hamel, i told you about aunt emmeline. she will not allow it. i ought not to have let you speak to me like this, while i am staying here." "but your uncle knows i am with you." "my aunt does not know. we must go to the house. she expressly desired that i would not speak to you." "and you will obey her -always?" "no; not always. i did not say that i should obey her always. some day, perhaps, i shall do as i think fit myself." "and then you will speak to me?" "then i will speak to you," she said. "and love me?" "and love you," she answered, again looking him full in the face. "but now pray, pray let us go on." for he had stopped her awhile amidst the trees, and had put out his hand as though to take hers, and had opened his arms as though he would embrace her. but she passed on quickly, and hardly answered his further questions till they found themselves together in the hall of the house. then they met lady tringle, who was just passing into the room where the lunch was laid, and following her were augusta, gertrude, and the honourable septimus traffick. for, though frank houston had found himself compelled to go at the day named, the honourable septimus had contrived to squeeze out another week. augusta was indeed still not without hope that the paternal hospitality of glenbogie might be prolonged till dear merle park should once again open her portals. sir thomas had already passed into the dining-room, having in a gruff voice informed his wife that he had invited mr hamel to come in to lunch. "mr hamel!" she had exclaimed. "yes, mr hamel. i could not see the man starving when he had come all this way. i don't know anything against him." then he had turned away, and had gone into the dining-room, and was now standing with his back to the empty fireplace, determined to take mr hamel's part if any want of courtesy were shown to him. it certainly was hard upon lady tringle. she frowned and was going to walk on without any acknowledgment, when lucy timidly went through a form of introduction. "aunt emmeline, this is mr hamel. uncle tom met him somewhere in the grounds and has asked him to come to luncheon." then lady tringle curtseyed and made a bow. the curtsey and the bow together were sufficient to have crushed the heart of any young man who had not been comforted and exalted by such words as isadore had heard from lucy's lips not five minutes since. "and love you," she had said. after that lady tringle might curtsey and bow as she would, and he could still live uncrushed. after the curtsey and the bow lady tringle passed on. lucy fell into the rank behind gertrude; and then hamel afterwards took his place behind the honourable septimus. "if you will sit there, mr hamel," said lady tringle, pointing to a chair, across the table, obliquely, at the greatest possible distance from that occupied by lucy. there he was stationed between mr traffick and sir thomas. but now, in his present frame of mind, his position at the table made very little difference to him. the lunch was eaten in grim silence. sir thomas was not a man profuse with conversation at his meals, and at this moment was ill-inclined for any words except what he might use in scolding his wife for being uncivil to his guest. lady tringle sat with her head erect, hardly opening her mouth sufficiently to allow the food to enter it. it was her purpose to show her displeasure at mr hamel, and she showed it. augusta took her mother's part, thoroughly despising the two dormer girls and any lover that they might have. poor gertrude had on that morning been violently persecuted by a lecture as to frank houston's impecuniosity. lucy of course would not speak. the honourable septimus was anxious chiefly about his lunch -somewhat anxious also to offend neither the master nor the mistress of merle park. hamel made one or two little efforts to extract answers from sir thomas, but soon found that sir thomas would prefer to be left in silence. what did it signify to him? he had done all that he wanted, and much more than he had expected. the rising and getting away from luncheon is always a difficulty -so great a difficulty when there are guests that lunch should never be much a company festival. there is no provision for leaving the table as there is at dinner. but on this occasion lady tringle extemporised provision the first moment in which they had all ceased to eat. "mr hamel," she said very loudly, "would you like some cheese?" mr hamel, with a little start, declared that he wanted no cheese. "then, my dears, i think we will go into my room. lucy, will you come with me?" upon this the four ladies all went out in procession, but her ladyship was careful that lucy should go first so that there might be no possibility of escape. augusta and gertrude followed her. the minds of all the four were somewhat perturbed; but among the four lucy's heart was by far the lightest. "are you staying over with stubbs at that cottage?" asked the honourable septimus. "a very queer fellow is stubbs." "a very good fellow," said hamel. "i dare say. he hasn't got any shooting?" "i think not." "not a head. glentower wouldn't let an acre of shooting over there for any money." this was the earl of glentower, to whom belonged an enormous tract of country on the other side of the lake. "what on earth does he do with himself stuck up on the top of those rocks?" "he does shoot sometimes, i believe, when lord glentower is there." "that's a poor kind of fun, waiting to be asked for a day," said the honourable septimus, who rarely waited for anything till he was asked. "does he get any fishing?" "he catches a few trout sometimes in the tarns above. but i fancy that stubbs isn't much devoted to shooting and fishing." "then what the d - does he do with himself in such a country as this?" hamel shrugged his shoulders, not caring to say that what with walking, what with reading and writing, his friend could be as happy as the day was long in such a place as drumcaller. "is he a liberal?" "a what?" asked hamel. "oh, a liberal? upon my word i don't know what he is. he is chiefly given to poetry, tobacco, and military matters." then the honourable septimus turned up his nose in disgust, and ceased his cross-examination as to the character and pursuits of colonel jonathan stubbs. "sir thomas, i am very much obliged to you for your kindness," said hamel, getting up suddenly. "as it is a long way over to drumcaller i think i will make a start. i know my way down the glen and should be sure to miss it by any other route. perhaps you'll let me go back as i came." sir thomas offered him the loan of a horse, but this was refused, and hamel started on his return journey across the lake. when he had gone a few steps from the portal he turned to look at the house which contained one whom he now regarded as belonging exclusively to himself,; perhaps he thought that he might catch some final view of lucy; or, not quite thinking it, fancied that some such chance might at least be possible; but he saw nothing but the uninteresting facade of the grand mansion. lucy was employed quite otherwise. she was listening to a lecture in which her aunt was describing to her how very badly mr hamel had behaved in obtruding himself on the shades of glenbogie. the lecture was somewhat long, as aunt emmeline found it necessary to repeat all the arguments which she had before used as to the miscreant's birth, as to his want of adequate means, and as to the general iniquities of the miscreant's father. all this she repeated more than once with an energy that was quite unusual to her. the flood of her eloquence was so great that lucy found no moment for an interposing word till all these evils had been denunciated twice and thrice. but then she spoke. "aunt emmeline," she said, "i am engaged to mr hamel now." "what!" "he has asked me to be his wife and i have promised." "and that after all that i had said to you!" "aunt emmeline, i told you that i should not drop him. i did not bid him come here. uncle tom brought him. when i saw him i would have avoided him if i could. i told him he ought not to be here because you did not wish it; and then he answered that my uncle knew that he was with me. of course when he told me that he -loved me, i could not make him any other answer." then aunt emmeline expressed the magnitude of her indignation simply by silence, and lucy was left to think of her lover in solitude. "and how have you fared on your day's journey?" said the colonel, when hamel found him still seated on the platform with a book in his hand. "much better than i thought. sir thomas gave me luncheon." "and the young lady?" "the young lady was gracious also; but i am afraid that i cannot carry my praises of the family at glenbogie any further. the three tringle ladies looked at me as i was sitting at table as though i certainly had no business in their august society." chapter 20 stubbs upon matrimony before that evening was over -or in the course of the night, it might be better said, as the two men sat up late with their pipes -hamel told his friend the colonel exactly what had taken place that morning over at glenbogie. "you went for the purpose, of course?" asked the colonel. "for an off chance." "i know that well enough. i never heard of a man's walking twelve miles to call upon a young lady merely because he knew her father; and when there was to be a second call within a few weeks, the first having not been taken in very good part by the young lady's friends, my inquiring mind told me that there was something more than old family friendship." "your inquiring mind saw into the truth." "and now looks forward to further events. can she bake and can she brew?" "i do not doubt that she could if she tried." "and can she wash a shirt for a man? don't suppose, my dear fellow, that i intend to say that your wife will have to wash yours. washing a shirt, as read in the poem from which i am quoting, is presumed to be simply emblematic of household duties in general." "i take all you say in good part -as coming from a friend." "i regard matrimony", said the colonel, "as being altogether the happiest state of life for a man -unless to be engaged to some lovely creature, in whom one can have perfect confidence, may be a thought happier. one can enjoy all the ecstatic mental reflection, all the delights of conceit which come from being loved, that feeling of superiority to all the world around which illumines the bosom of the favoured lover, without having to put one's hand into one's pocket, or having one's pipe put out either morally or physically. the next to this is matrimony itself, which is the only remedy for that consciousness of disreputable debauchery, a savour of which always clings, more or less strongly, to unmarried men in our rank of life. the chimes must be heard at midnight, let a young man be ever so well given to the proprieties, and he must have just a touch of the swingebuckler about him, or he will seem to himself to be deficient in virility. there is no getting out of it until a man marry. but then -" "well; then?" "do you know the man whose long-preserved hat is always brushed carefully, whose coat is the pattern of neatness, but still a little threadbare when you look at it -in the colour of whose cheek there is still some touch of juvenility, but whose step is ever heavy and whose brow is always sad? the seriousness of life has pressed the smiles out of him. he has learned hardly to want anything for himself but outward decency and the common necessaries of life. such little personal indulgences as are common to you and to me are as strange to him as ortolans or diamonds." "i do not think i do know him." "i do -well. i have seen him in the regiment, i have met him on the steps of a public office, i have watched him as he entered his parsonage house. you shall find him coming out of a lawyer's office, where he has sat for the last nine hours, having supported nature with two penny biscuits. he has always those few thin hairs over his forehead, he has always that well-brushed hat, he has always that load of care on his brow. he is generally thinking whether he shall endeavour to extend his credit with the butcher, or resolve that the supply of meat may be again curtailed without injury to the health of his five daughters." "that is an ugly picture." "but is it true?" "in some cases, of course, it is." "and yet not ugly all round," said the meditative colonel, who had just replenished his pipe. "there are, on the other side, the five daughters, and the partner of this load of cares. he knows it is well to have the five daughters, rather than to live with plenty of beef and mutton -even with the ortolans if you will -and with no one to care whether his body may be racked in this world or his spirit in the next. i do not say whether the balance of good or evil be on one side or the other; but when a man is going to do a thing he should know what it is he is going to do." "the reading of all this," said hamel, "is, that if i succeed in marrying miss dormer i must have thin locks, and a bad hat, and a butcher's bill." "other men do." "some, instead, have balances at their bankers, and die worth thirty, forty, or fifty thousand pounds, to the great consolation of the five daughters." "or a hundred thousand pounds! there is, of course, no end to the amount of thousands which a successful professional man may accumulate. you may be the man; but the question is, whether you should not have reasonable ground to suppose yourself the man, before you encumber yourself with the five daughters." "it seems to me," said hamel, "that the need of such assurance is cowardly." "that is just the question which i am always debating with myself. i also want to rid myself of that swingebuckler flavour. i feel that for me, like adam, it is not good that i should be alone. i would fain ask the first girl, that i could love well enough to wish to make myself one with her, to be my wife, regardless of hats, butchers, and daughters. it is a plucky and a fine thing for a man to feel that he can make his back broad enough for all burdens. but yet what is the good of thinking that you can carry a sack of wheat when you are sure that you have not, in truth, strength to raise it from the ground?" "strength will come," said hamel. "yes, and the bad hat. and, worse than the bad hat, the soiled gown; and perhaps with the soiled gown the altered heart -and perhaps with the altered heart an absence of all that tenderness which it is a woman's special right to expect from a man." "i should have thought you would have been the last to be so self-diffident." "to be so thoughtful, you mean," said the colonel. "i am unattached now, and having had no special duty for the last three months i have given myself over to thinking in a nasty morbid manner. it comes, i daresay, partly from tobacco. but there is comfort in this -that no such reflections falling out of one man's mouth ever had the slightest effect in influencing another man's conduct." hamel had told his friend with great triumph of his engagement with lucy dormer, but the friend did not return the confidence by informing the sculptor that during the whole of this conversation, and for many days previous to it, his mind had been concerned with the image of lucy's sister. he was aware that ayala had been, as it were, turned out from her rich uncle's house, and given over to the comparative poverty of kingsbury crescent. he himself, at the present moment, was possessed of what might be considered a comfortable income for a bachelor. he had been accustomed to live almost more than comfortably; but, having so lived, was aware of himself that he had not adapted himself for straitened circumstances. in spite of that advice of his as to the brewing, baking, and washing capabilities of a female candidate for marriage, he knew himself well enough to be aware that a wife red with a face from a kitchen fire would be distasteful to him. he had often told himself that to look for a woman with money would be still more distasteful. therefore he had thought that for the present, at least, it would be well for him to remain as he was. but now he had come across ayala, and though in the pursuance of his philosophy he had assured himself that ayala should be nothing to him, still he found himself so often reverting to this resolution that ayala, instead of being nothing, was very much indeed to him. three days after this hamel was preparing himself for his departure immediately after breakfast. "what a beast you are to go", said the colonel, "when there can be no possible reason for your going." "the five daughters and the bad hat make it necessary that a fellow should do a little work sometimes." "why can't you make your images down here?" "with you for a model, and mud out of the caller for clay." "i shouldn't have the slightest objection. in your art you cannot perpetuate the atrocity of my colour, as the fellow did who painted my portrait last winter. if you will go, go, and make busts at unheard-of prices, so that the five daughters may live for ever on the fat of the land. can i do any good for you by going over to glenbogie?" "if you could snub that mr traffick, who is of all men the most atrocious." "the power doesn't exist," said the colonel, "which could snub the honourable septimus. that man is possessed of a strength which i thoroughly envy -which is perhaps more enviable than any other gift the gods can give. words cannot penetrate that skin of his. satire flows off him like water from a duck. ridicule does not touch him. the fellest abuse does not succeed in inflicting the slightest wound. he has learnt the great secret that a man cannot be cut who will not be cut. as it is worth no man's while to protract an enmity with such a one as he, he suffers from no prolonged enmities. he walks unassailable by any darts, and is, i should say, the happiest man in london." "then i fear you can do nothing for me at glenbogie. to mollify aunt emmeline would, i fear, be beyond your power. sir thomas, as far as i can see, does not require much mollifying." "sir thomas might give the young woman a thousand or two." "that is not the way in which i desire to keep a good hat on my head," said hamel, as he seated himself in the little carriage which was to take him down to callerfoot. the colonel remained at drumcaller till the end of september, when his presence was required at aldershot, during which time he shot a good deal, in obedience to the good-natured behests of lord glentower, and in spite of the up-turned nose of mr traffick. he read much, and smoked much, so that as to the passing of his time there was not need to pity him, and he consumed a portion of his spare hours in a correspondence with his aunt, the marchesa, and with his cousin nina. one of his letters from each shall be given, and also one of the letters written to each in reply. nina to her cousin the colonel my dear jonathan, lady albury says that you ought to be here, and so you ought. it is ever so nice. there is a mr ponsonby here, and he and i can beat any other couple at lawn tennis. there is an awning over the ground which is such a lounge. playing lawn tennis with a parasol as those melcombe girls did is stupid. they were here, but have gone. one i am quite sure was over head and ears in love with mr ponsonby. these sort of things are always all on one side, you know. he isn't very much of a man, but he does play lawn tennis divinely. take it altogether, i don't think there is anything out to beat lawn tennis. i don't know about hunting -and i don't suppose i ever shall. we tried to have ayala here, but i fear it will not come off. lady albury was good-natured, but at last she did not quite like writing to mrs dosett. so mamma wrote but the lady's answer was very stiff. she thought it better for ayala to remain among her own friends. poor ayala! it is clear that a knight will be wanted to go in armour, and get her out of prison. i will leave it to you to say who must be the knight. i hope you will come for a day or two before you go to aldershot. we stay till the 1st of october. you will be a beast if you don't. lady albury says she never means to ask you again. "oh, stubbs!" said sir harry; "stubbs is one of those fellows who never come if they're asked." of course we all sat upon him. then he declared that you were the dearest friend he had in the world, but that he never dared to dream that you would ever come to stalham again. perhaps if we can hit it off at last with ayala, then you would come. mamma means to try again. your affectionate cousin, nina the marchesa baldoni to her nephew, colonel stubbs my dear jonathan, i did my best for my protegee, but i am afraid it will not succeed. her aunt mrs dosett seems to think that, as ayala is fated to live with her, ayala had better take her fate as she finds it. the meaning of that is, that if a girl is doomed to have a dull life she had better not begin it with a little pleasure. there is a good deal to be said for the argument, but if i were the girl i should like to begin with the pleasure and take my chance for the reaction. i should perhaps be vain enough to think that during the preliminary course i might solve all the difficulty by my beaux yeux. i saw mrs dosett once, and now i have had a letter from her. upon the whole, i am inclined to pity poor ayala. we are very happy here. the marchese has gone to como to look after some property he has there. do not be ill-natured enough to say that the two things go together -but in truth he is never comfortable out of italy. he had a slice of red meat put before him the other day, and that decided him to start at once. on the first of october we go back to london, and shall remain till the end of november. they have asked nina to come again in november in order that she may see a hunt. i know that means that she will try to jump over something, and have her leg broken. you must be here and not allow it. if she does come here i shall perhaps go down to brighton for a fortnight. yes -i do think ayala dormer is a very pretty girl, and i do think, also, that she is clever. i quite agree that she is ladylike. but i do not therefore think that she is just such a girl as such a man as colonel jonathan stubbs ought to marry. she is one of those human beings who seem to have been removed out of this world and brought up in another. though she knows ever so much that nobody else knows, she is ignorant of ever so much that everybody ought to know. wandering through a grove, or seated by a brook, or shivering with you on the top of a mountain, she would be charming. i doubt whether she would be equally good at the top of your table, or looking after your children, or keeping the week's accounts. she would tease you with poetry, and not even pretend to be instructed when you told her how an army ought to be moved. i say nothing as to the fact that she hasn't got a penny, though you are just in that position which makes it necessary for a man to get some money with his wife. i therefore am altogether indisposed to any matrimonial outlook in that direction. your affectionate aunt, beatrice baldoni colonel stubbs to his cousin nina dear nina, lady albury is wrong; i ought not to be at stalham. what should i do at stalham at this time of year, who never shoot partridges, and what would be the use of attempting lawn tennis when i know i should be cut out by mr ponsonby? if that day in november is to come off then i'll come and coach you across the country. you tell sir harry that i say so, and that i will bring three horses for one week. i think it very hard about poor ayala dormer, but what can any knight do in such a case? when a young lady is handed over to the custody of an uncle or an aunt, she becomes that uncle's and aunt's individual property. mrs dosett may be the most noxious dragon that ever was created for the mortification and general misery of an imprisoned damsel, but still she is omnipotent. the only knight who can be of any service is one who will go with a ring in his hand, and absolutely carry the prisoner away by force of the marriage service. your unfortunate cousin is so exclusively devoted to the duty of fighting his country's battles that he has not even time to think of a step so momentous as that. poor ayala! do not be stupid enough to accuse me of pitying her because i cannot be the knight to release her; but i cannot but think how happy she would be at stalham, struggling to beat you, and mr ponsonby at lawn tennis, and then risking a cropper when the happy days of november should come round. your loving cousin, j. s. colonel stubbs to the marchesa baldoni my dear aunt, your letter is worthy of the queen of sheba, if, as was no doubt the case, she corresponded with king solomon. as for ayala's fate, if it be her fate to live with mrs dosett, she can only submit to it. you cannot carry her over to italy, nor would the marchese allow her to divide his italian good things with nina. poor little bird! she had her chance of living amidst diamonds and bank-notes, with the tringle millionaires, but threw it away after some fashion that i do not understand. no doubt she was a fool, but i cannot but like her the better for it. i hardly think that a fortnight at stalham, with all sir harry's luxuries around her, would do her much service. as for myself and the top of my table, and the future companion who is to be doomed to listen to my military lucubrations, i am altogether inclined to agree with you, seeing that you write in a pure spirit of worldly good sense. no doubt the queen of sheba gave advice of the same sort to king solomon. i never knew a woman to speak confidentially of matrimony otherwise than as a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. in counsels so given, no word of love has ever been known to creep in. why should it, seeing that love cannot put a leg of mutton into the pot? don't imagine that i say this in a spirit either of censure or satire. your ideas are my own, and should i ever marry i shall do so in strict accordance with your tenets, thinking altogether of the weekly accounts, and determined to eschew any sitting by the sides of brooks. i have told nina about my plans. i will be at stalham in november to see that she does not break her neck. yours always, j. s. chapter 21 ayalaxr's indignation perhaps mrs dosett had some just cause for refusing her sanction for the proposed visit to albury. if fate did require that ayala should live permanently in kingsbury crescent, the gaiety of a very gay house, and the wealth of a very wealthy house, would hardly be good preparation for such a life. up to the time of her going to the marchesa in brook street, ayala had certainly done her best to suit herself to her aunt's manners -though she had done it with pain and suffering. she had hemmed the towels and mended the sheets and had made the rounds to the shops. she had endeavoured to attend to the pounds of meat and to sympathise with her aunt in the interest taken in the relics of the joints as they escaped from the hungry treatment of the two maidens in the kitchen. ayala had been clever enough to understand that her aunt had been wounded by lucy's indifference, not so much because she had desired to avail herself of lucy's labours as from a feeling that that indifference had seemed to declare that her own pursuits were mean and vulgar. understanding this she had struggled to make those pursuits her own -and had in part succeeded. her aunt could talk to her about the butter and the washing, matters as to which her lips had been closed in any conversation with lucy. that ayala was struggling mrs dosett had been aware -but she had thought that such struggles were good and had not been hopeless. then came the visit to brook street, and ayala returned quite an altered young woman. it seemed as though she neither could nor would struggle any longer. "i hate mutton bones," she said to her aunt one morning soon after her return. "no doubt we would all like meat joints the best," said her aunt, frowning. "i hate joints too." "you have, i dare say, been cockered up at the marchesa's with made dishes." "i hate dishes," said ayala, petulantly. "you don't hate eating?" "yes, i do. it is ignoble. nature should have managed it differently. we ought to have sucked it in from the atmosphere through our fingers and hairs, as the trees do by their leaves. there should have been no butchers, and no grease, and no nasty smells from the kitchen -and no gin." this was worse than all -this allusion to the mild but unfashionable stimulant to which mr dosett had been reduced by his good nature. "you are flying in the face of the creator, miss," said aunt margaret, in her most angry voice -"in the face of the creator who made everything, and ordained what his creatures should eat and drink by his infinite wisdom." "nevertheless," said ayala, "i think we might have done without boiled mutton." then she turned to some articles of domestic needlework which were in her lap so as to show that in spite of the wickedness of her opinions she did not mean to be idle. but mrs dosett, in her wrath, snatched the work from her niece's hands and carried it out of the room, thus declaring that not even a pillowcase in her house should owe a stitch to the hands of a girl so ungrateful and so blasphemous. the wrath wore off soon. ayala, though not contrite was meek, and walked home with her aunt on the following morning, patiently carrying a pound of butter, six eggs, and a small lump of bacon in a basket. after that the pillowcase was recommitted to her. but there still was left evidence enough that the girl's mind had been upset by the luxuries of brook street -evidence to which aunt margaret paid very much attention, insisting upon it in her colloquies with her husband. "i think that a little amusement is good for young people," said uncle reginald, weakly. "and for old people too. no doubt about it, if they can get it so as not to do them any harm at the same time. nothing can be good for a young woman which unfits her for that state of life to which it has pleased god to call her. ayala has to live with us. no doubt there was a struggle when she first came from your sister, lady tringle, but she made it gallantly, and i gave her great credit. she was just falling into a quiet mode of life when there came this invitation from the marchesa baldoni. now she has come back quite an altered person, and the struggle has to be made all over again." uncle reginald again expressed his opinion that young people ought to have a little amusement, but he was not strong enough to insist very much upon his theory. it certainly, however, was true that ayala, though she still struggled, had been very much disturbed by the visit. then came the invitation to stalham. there was a very pretty note from lady albury to ayala herself, saying how much pleasure she would have in seeing miss dormer at her house, where ayala's old friends the marchesa and nina were then staying. this was accompanied by a long letter from nina herself, in which all the charms of stalham, including mr ponsonby and lawn tennis, were set forth at full length. ayala had already heard much about stalham and the alburys from her friend nina, who had hinted in a whisper that such an invitation as this might perhaps be forthcoming. she was ready enough for the visit, having looked through her wardrobe, and resolved that things which had been good enough for brook street would still be good enough for stalham. but the same post had brought a letter for mrs dosett, and ayala could see, that, as the letter was read, a frown came upon her aunt's brow, and that the look on her aunt's face was decidedly averse to stalham. this took place soon after breakfast, when uncle reginald had just started for his office, and neither of them for a while said a word to the other of the letter that had been received. it was not till after lunch that ayala spoke. "aunt," she said, "you have had a letter from lady albury?" "yes," said mrs dosett, grimly, "i have had a letter from lady albury." then there was another silence, till ayala, whose mind was full of promised delights, could not refrain herself longer. "aunt margaret," she said, "i hope you mean to let me go." for a minute or two there was no reply, and ayala again pressed her question. "lady albury wants me to go to stalham." "she has written to me to say that she would receive you." "and i may go?" "i am strongly of opinion that you had better not," said mrs dosett, confirming her decree by a nod which might have suited jupiter. "oh, aunt margaret, why not?" "i think it would be most prudent to decline." "but why -why -why, aunt margaret?" "there must be expense." "i have money enough for the journey left of my own from what uncle tom gave me," said ayala, pleading her cause with all her eloquence. "it is not only the money. there are other reasons -very strong reasons." "what reasons, aunt margaret?" "my dear, it is your lot to have to live with us, and not with such people as the marchesa baldoni and lady albury." "i am sure i do not complain." "but you would complain after having for a time been used to the luxuries of albury park. i do not say that as finding fault, ayala. it is human nature that it should be so." "but i won't complain. have i ever complained?" "yes, my dear. you told me the other day that you did not like bones of mutton, and you were disgusted because things were greasy. i do not say this by way of scolding you, ayala, but only that you may understand what must be the effect of your going from such a house as this to such a house as stalham, and then returning back from stalham to such a house as this. you had better be contented with your position." "i am contented with my position," sobbed ayala. "and allow me to write to lady albury refusing the invitation." but ayala could not be brought to look at the matter with her aunt's eyes. when her aunt pressed her for an answer which should convey her consent she would give none, and at last left the room bitterly sobbing. turning the matter over in her own bosom upstairs she determined to be mutinous. no doubt she owed a certain amount of obedience to her aunt; but had she not been obedient, had she not worked hard and lugged about that basket of provisions, and endeavoured to take an interest in all her aunt's concerns? was she so absolutely the property of her aunt that she was bound to do everything her aunt desired to the utter annihilation of all her hopes, to the extermination of her promised joys? she felt that she had succeeded in brook street. she had met no angel of light, but she was associated with people whom she had liked, and had been talked to by those to whom it had been a pleasure to listen. that colonel with the quaint name and the ugly face was still present to her memory as he had leaned over her shoulder at the theatre, making her now laugh by his drollery, and now filling her mind with interest by his description of the scenes which she was seeing. she was sure that all this, or something of the same nature, would be renewed for her delight at stalham. and was she to be robbed of this -the only pleasure which seemed to regain to her in this world -merely because her aunt chose to entertain severe notions as to duty and pleasure? other girls went out when they were asked. at rome, when that question of the dance at the marchesa's had been discussed, she had had her own way in opposition to her aunt emmeline and her cousin augusta. no doubt she had, in consequence partly of her conduct on that occasion, been turned out of her uncle tom's house; but of that she did not think at the present moment. she would be mutinous, and would appeal to her uncle reginald for assistance. but the letter which contained the real invitation had been addressed to her aunt, and her aunt could in truth answer it as she pleased. the answer might at this moment be in the act of being written, and should it be averse ayala knew very well that she could not go in opposition to it. and yet her aunt came to her in the afternoon consulting her again, quite unconquered as to her own opinion, but still evidently unwilling to write the fatal letter without ayala's permission. then ayala assured herself that she had rights of her own, which her aunt did not care to contravene. "i think i ought to be allowed to go," she said, when her aunt came to her during the afternoon. "when i think it will be bad for you?" "it won't be bad. they are very good people. i think that i ought to be allowed to go." "have you no reliance on those who are your natural guardians?" "uncle reginald is my natural guardian," said ayala, through her tears. "very well! if you refuse to be guided by me as though i were not your aunt, and as you will pay no attention to what i tell you is proper for you and best, the question must be left till your uncle comes home. i cannot but be very much hurt that you should think so little of me. i have always endeavoured to do the best i could for you, just as though i were your mother." "i think that i ought to be allowed to go," repeated ayala. as the first consequence of this, the replies to all the three letters were delayed for the next day's post. ayala had considered much with what pretty words she might best answer lady albury's kind note, and she had settled upon a form of words which she had felt to be very pretty. unless her uncle would support her, that would be of no avail, and another form must be chosen. to nina she would tell the whole truth, either how full of joy she was -or else how cruelly used and how thoroughly broken-hearted. but she could not think that her uncle would be unkind to her. her uncle had been uniformly gentle. her uncle, when he should know how much her heart was set upon it, would surely let her go. the poor girl, when she tacitly agreed that her uncle should be the arbiter in the matter, thus pledging herself to abide by her uncle's decision, let it be what it might, did not think what great advantage her aunt would have over her in that discussion which would be held upstairs while the master of the house was washing his hands before dinner. nor did she know of how much stronger will was her aunt margaret than her uncle reginald. while he was washing his hands and putting on his slippers, the matter was settled in a manner quite destructive of poor ayala's hopes. "i won't have it," said mrs dosett, in reply to the old argument that young people ought to have some amusement. "if i am to be responsible for the girl i must be allowed my own way with her. it is trouble enough, and very little thanks i get for it. of course she hates me. nevertheless, i can endeavour to do my duty, and i will. it is not thanks, nor love, nor even gratitude, that i look for. i am bound to do the best i can by her because she is your niece, and because she has no other real friends. i knew what would come of it when she went to that house in brook street. i was soft then and gave way. the girl has moped about like a miserable creature ever since. if i am not to have my own way now i will have done with her altogether." having heard this very powerful speech, uncle reginald was obliged to give way, and it was settled that after dinner he should convey to ayala the decision to which they had come. ayala, as she sat at the dinner-table, was all expectation, but she asked no question. she asked no question after dinner, while her uncle slowly, solemnly, and sadly sipped his one beaker of cold gin and water. he sipped it very slowly, no doubt because he was anxious to postpone the evil moment in which he must communicate her fate to his niece. but at last the melancholy glass was drained, and then, according to the custom of the family, mrs dosett led the way up into the drawing-room, followed by ayala and her husband. he, when he was on the stairs, and when the eyes of his wife were not upon him, tremulously put out his hand and laid it on ayala's shoulder, as though to embrace her. the poor girl knew well that mark of affection. there would have been no need for such embracing had the offered joys of stalham been in store for her. the tears were already in her eyes when she seated herself in the drawing-room, as far removed as possible from the armchair which was occupied by her aunt. then her uncle pronounced his judgment in a vacillating voice -with a vacillation which was ineffectual of any good to ayala. "ayala," he said, "your aunt and i have been talking over this invitation to stalham, and we are of opinion, my dear, that you had better not accept it." "why not, uncle reginald?" "there would be expense." "i can pay for my own ticket." "there would be many expenses, which i need not explain to you more fully. the truth is, my dear, that poor people cannot afford to live with rich people, and had better not attempt it." "i don't want to live with them." "visiting them is living with them for a time. i am sorry, ayala, that we are not able to put you in a position in which you might enjoy more of the pleasures incidental to your age; but you must take the things as they are. looking at the matter all round, i am sure that your aunt is right in advising that you should stay at home." "it isn't advice at all," said ayala. "ayala!" exclaimed her aunt, in a tone of indignation. "it isn't advice," repeated ayala. "of course, if you won't let me go, i can't." "you are a very wicked girl," said mrs dosett, "to speak to your uncle like that, after all that he has done for you." "not wicked," said the uncle. "i say, wicked. but it doesn't matter. i shall at once write to lady albury, as you desire, and of course there will be no further question as to her going." soon after that mrs dosett sat down to her desk, and wrote that letter to which the marchesa had alluded in hers to her nephew. no doubt it was stern and hard, and of a nature to make such a woman as the marchesa feel that mrs dosett would not be a pleasant companion for a girl like ayala. but it was written with a full conviction that duty required it; and the words, though hard and stiff, had been chosen with the purpose of showing that the doing of this disagreeable duty had been felt to be imperative. when the matter had been thus decided, ayala soon retreated to her own room. her very soul was burning with indignation at the tyranny to which she thought herself subjected. the use of that weak word, advice, had angered her more than anything. it had not been advice. it had not been given as advice. a command had been laid upon her, a most cruel and unjust command, which she was forced to obey, because she lacked the power of escaping from her condition of slavery. advice, indeed! advice is a thing with which the advised one may or may not comply, as that advised one may choose. a slave must obey an order! her own papa and her own mamma had always advised her, and the advice had always been followed, even when read only in the glance of an eye, in a smile, or a nod. then she had known what it was to be advised. now she was ordered -as slaves are ordered; and there was no escape from her slavery! she, too, must write her letter, but there was no need now of that pretty studied phrase, in which she had hoped to thank lady albury fitly for her great kindness. she found, after a vain attempt or two, that it was hopeless to endeavour to write to lady albury. the words would not come to her pen. but she did write to nina: dear, dearest nina, they won't let me go! oh, my darling, i am so miserable! why should they not let me go, when people are so kind, so very kind, as lady albury and your dear mamma? i feel as though i should like to run from the house, and never come back, even though i had to die in the streets. i was so happy when i got your letter and lady albury's, and now i am so wretched! i cannot write to lady albury. you must just tell her, with many thanks from me, that they will not let me go! your unhappy but affectionate friend, ayala chapter 22 ayala's gratitude there was much pity felt for ayala among the folk at stalham. the sympathies of them all should have been with mrs dosett. they ought to have felt that the poor aunt was simply performing an unpleasant duty, and that the girl was impracticable if not disobedient. but ayala was known to be very pretty, and mrs dosett was supposed to be plain. ayala was interesting, while mrs dosett, from the nature of her circumstances, was most uninteresting. it was agreed on all sides, at stalham, that so pretty a bird as ayala should not be imprisoned for ever in so ugly a cage. such a bird ought, at least, to be allowed its chance of captivating some fitting mate by its song and its plumage. that was lady albury's argument -a woman very good-natured, a little given to matchmaking, a great friend to pretty girls -and whose eldest son was as yet only nine, so that there could be no danger to herself or her own flock. there was much ridicule thrown on mrs dosett at stalham, and many pretty things said of the bird who was so unworthily imprisoned in kingsbury crescent. at last there was something like a conspiracy, the purport of which was to get the bird out of its cage in november. in this conspiracy it can hardly be said that the marchesa took an active part. much as she liked ayala, she was less prone than lady albury to think that the girl was ill-used. she was more keenly alive than her cousin -or rather her cousin's wife -to the hard necessities of the world. ayala must be said to have made her own bed. at any rate there was the bed and she must lie on it. it was not the dosetts' fault that they were poor. according to their means they were doing the best they could for their niece, and were entitled to praise rather than abuse. and then the marchesa was afraid for her nephew. colonel stubbs, in his letter to her, had declared that he quite agreed with her views as to matrimony; but she was quite alive to her nephew's sarcasm. her nephew, though he might in truth agree with her, nevertheless was sarcastic. though he was sarcastic, still he might be made to accede to her views, because he did, in truth, agree with her. she was eminently an intelligent woman, seeing far into character, and she knew pretty well the real condition of her nephew's mind, and could foresee his conduct. he would marry before long, and might not improbably marry a girl with some money if one could be made to come in his way, who would at the same time suit his somewhat fastidious taste. but ayala suited his taste, ayala who had not a shilling, and the marchesa thought it only too likely that if ayala were released from her cage, and brought to albury, ayala might become mrs jonathan stubbs. that ayala should refuse to become mrs jonathan stubbs did not present itself as a possibility to the marchesa. so the matters were when the marchesa and nina returned from stalham to london, a promise having been given that nina should go back to stalham in november, and be allowed to see the glories of a hunt. she was not to ride to hounds. that was a matter of course, but she was to be permitted to see what a pack of hounds was like, and of what like were the men in their scarlet coats, and how the huntsman's horn would sound when it should be heard among the woods and fields. it was already decided that the colonel should be there to meet her, and the conspiracy was formed with the object of getting ayala out of her cage at the same time. stalham was a handsome country seat, in the county of rufford, and sir harry albury had lately taken upon himself the duties of master of the rufford and ufford united pack. colonel stubbs was to be there with his horses in november, but had, in the meantime, been seen by lady albury, and had been instigated to do something for the release of ayala. but what could he do? it was at first suggested that he should call at kingsbury crescent, and endeavour to mollify the stony heart of aunt dosett. but, as he had said himself, he would be the worst person in the world to perform such an embassy. "i am not an adonis, i know," he said, "nor do i look like a lothario, but still i am in some sort a young man, and therefore certain to be regarded as pernicious, as dangerous and damnable, by such a dragon of virtue as aunt dosett. i don't see how i could expect to have a chance." this interview took place in london during the latter end of october, and it was at last decided that the mission should be made by lady albury herself, and made, not to mrs dosett, at kingsbury crescent, but to mr dosett at his office in somerset house. "i don't think i could stand mrs d.," said lady albury. lady albury was a handsome, fashionable woman, rather tall, always excellently dressed, and possessed of a personal assurance which nothing could daunt. she had the reputation of an affectionate wife and a good mother, but was nevertheless declared by some of her friends to be "a little fast". she certainly was fond of comedy -those who did not like her were apt to say that her comedy was only fun -and was much disposed to have her own way when she could get it. she was now bent upon liberating ayala from her cage, and for this purpose had herself driven into the huge court belonging to somerset house. mr dosett was dignified at his office with the use of a room to himself, a small room looking out upon the river, in which he spent six hours on six days of the week in arranging the indexes of a voluminous library of manuscript letter-books. it was rarely indeed that he was disturbed by the presence of any visitor. when, therefore, his door was opened by one of the messengers, and he was informed that lady albury desired to see him, he was for the moment a good deal disturbed. no option, however, was given to him as to refusing admission to lady albury. she was in the room before the messenger had completed his announcement, and had seated herself in one of the two spare chairs which the room afforded as soon as the door was closed. "mr dosett," she said, "i have taken the great liberty of calling to say a few words about your niece, miss ayala dormer." when the lady was first announced, mr dosett, in his confusion, had failed to connect the name which he had heard with that of the lady who had invited ayala to her house. but now he recognised it, and knew who it was that had come to him. "you were kind enough", he said, "to invite my little girl to your house some weeks ago." "and now i have come to invite her again." mr dosett was now more disturbed than ever. with what words was he to refuse the request which this kind but very grand lady was about to make? how could he explain to her all those details as to his own poverty, and as to ayala's fate in having to share that poverty with him? how could he explain the unfitness of ayala's temporary sojourn with people so wealthy and luxurious? and yet were he to yield in the least how could he face his wife on his return home to the crescent? "you are very kind, lady albury," he said. "we particularly wish to have her about the end of the first week in november," said the lady. "her friend nina baldoni will be there, and one or two others whom she knows. we shall try to be a little gay for a week or two." "i have no doubt it would be gay, and we at home are very dull." "do you not think a little gaiety good for young people?" said her ladyship, using the very argument which poor mr dosett had so often attempted to employ on ayala's behalf. "yes; a little gaiety," he said, as though deprecating the excessive amount of hilarity which he imagined to prevail at stalham. "of course you do," said lady albury. "poor little girl! i have heard so much about her, and of all your goodness to her. mrs dosett, i know, is another mother to her; but still a little country air could not but be beneficial. do say that she shall come to us, mr dosett." then mr dosett felt that, disagreeable as it was, he must preach the sermon which his wife had preached to him, and he did preach it. he spoke timidly of his own poverty, and the need which there was that ayala should share it. he spoke a word of the danger which might come from luxury, and of the discontent which would be felt when the girl returned to her own home. something he added of the propriety of like living with like, and ended by praying that ayala might be excused. the words came from him with none of that energy which his wife would have used -were uttered in a low melancholy drone; but still they were words hard to answer, and called upon lady albury for all her ingenuity in finding an argument against them. but lady albury was strong-minded, and did find an argument. "you mustn't be angry with me," she said, "if i don't quite agree with you. of course you wish to do the best you can for this dear child." "indeed i do, lady albury." "how is anything then to be done for her if she remains shut up in your house? you do not, if i understand, see much company yourselves." "none at all." "you won't be angry with me for my impertinence in alluding to it." "not in the least. it is the fact that we live altogether to ourselves." "and the happiest kind of life too for married people," said lady albury, who was accustomed to fill her house in the country with a constant succession of visitors, and to have engagements for every night of the week in town. "but for young people it is not quite so good. how is a young lady to get herself settled in life?" "settled?" asked mr dosett, vaguely. "married," suggested lady albury, more plainly. mr dosett shook his head. no idea on the subject had ever flashed across his mind. to provide bread and meat, a bed and clothes, for his sister's child he had felt to be a duty -but not a husband. husbands came, or did not -as the heavens might be propitious. that ayala should go to stalham for the sake of finding a husband was certainly beyond the extent of his providing care. "in fact how is a girl to have a chance at all unless she is allowed to see someone? of course i don't say this with reference to our house. there will be no young men there, or anything of that kind. but, taking a broad view, unless you let a girl like that have what chances come in her way how is she to get on? i think you have hardly a right to do it." "we have done it for the best." "i am sure of that, mr dosett. and i hope you will tell mrs dosett, with my compliments, how thoroughly i appreciate her goodness. i should have called upon her instead of coming here, only that i cannot very well get into that part of the town." "i will tell her what you are good enough to say." "poor ayala! i am afraid that her other aunt, aunt tringle, was not as good to her as your wife. i have heard about how all that occurred in rome. she was very much admired there. i am told that she is perfectly lovely." "pretty well." "a sort of beauty that we hardly ever see now -and very, very clever." "ayala is clever, i think." "she ought to have her chance. she ought indeed. i don't think you quite do your duty by such a girl as that unless you let her have a chance. she is sure to get to know people, and to be asked from one house to another. i speak plainly, for i really think you ought to let her come." all this sank deeply into the heart of uncle reginald. whether it was for good or evil it seemed to him at the moment to be unanswerable. if there was a chance of any good thing for ayala, surely it could not be his duty to bar her from that chance. a whole vista of new views in reference to the treatment of young ladies was opened to him by the words of his visitor. ayala certainly was pretty. certainly she was clever. a husband with an income would certainly be a good thing. embryo husbands with incomes do occasionally fall in love with pretty girls. but how can any pretty girl be fallen in love with unless someone be permitted to see her? at kingsbury crescent there was not a man to be seen from one end of the year to another. it occurred to him now, for the first time, that ayala by her present life was shut out from any chance of marriage. it was manifestly true that he had no right to seclude her in that fashion. at last he made a promise, rashly, as he felt at the very moment of making it, that he would ask his wife to allow ayala to go to stalham. lady albury of course accepted this as an undertaking that ayala should come, and went away triumphant. mr dosett walked home across the parks with a troubled mind, thinking much of all that had passed between him and the lady of fashion. it was with great difficulty that he could quite make up his mind which was right -the lady of fashion or his wife. if ayala was to live always as they lived at kingsbury crescent, if it should in process of time be her fate to marry some man in the same class as themselves, if continued care as to small pecuniary needs was to be her future lot, then certainly her comfort would only be disturbed by such a visit as that now proposed. and was it not probable that such would be the destiny in store for her? mr dosett knew the world well enough to be aware that all pretty girls such as ayala cannot find rich husbands merely by exhibiting their prettiness. kingsbury crescent, unalloyed by the dangers of stalham, would certainly be the most secure. but then he had been told that ayala now had special chances offered to her, and that he had no right to rob her of those chances. he felt this the more strongly, because she was not his daughter -only his niece. with a daughter he and his wife might have used their own judgment without check. but now he had been told that he had no right to rob ayala of her chances, and he felt that he had not the right. by the time that he reached kingsbury crescent he had, with many misgivings, decided in favour of stalham. it was now some weeks since the first invitation had been refused, and during those weeks life had not been pleasant at the crescent. ayala moped and pined as though some great misfortune had fallen upon her. when she had first come to the crescent she had borne herself bravely, as a man bears a trouble when he is conscious that he has brought it on himself by his own act, and is proud of the act which has done it. but when that excitement has gone, and the trouble still remains, the pride wears off, and the man is simply alive to his suffering. so it had been with ayala. then had come the visit to brook street. when, soon after that, she was invited to stalham, it seemed as though a new world was being opened to her. there came a moment when she could again rejoice that she had quarrelled with her aunt emmeline. this new world would be a much better world than the tringle world. then had come the great blow, and it had seemed to her as though there was nothing but kingsbury crescent before her for the rest of her wretched life. there was not a detail of all this hidden from the eyes of aunt margaret. stalham had decided that aunt margaret was ugly and uninteresting. stalham, according to its own views, was right. nevertheless the lady in kingsbury crescent had both eyes to see and a heart to feel. she was hot of temper, but she was forgiving. she liked her own way, but she was affectionate. she considered it right to teach her niece the unsavoury mysteries of economy, but she was aware that such mysteries must be distasteful to one brought up as ayala. even when she had been loudest in denouncing ayala's mutiny, her heart had melted in ruth because ayala had been so unhappy. she, too, had questioned herself again and again as to the justness of her decision. was she entitled to rob ayala of her chances? in her frequent discussions with her husband she still persisted in declaring that kingsbury crescent was safe, and that stalham would be dangerous. but, nevertheless, in her own bosom she had misgivings. as she saw the poor girl mope and weary through one day after another, she could not but have misgivings. "i have had that lady albury with me at the office today, and have almost promised that ayala shall go to her on the 8th of november." it was thus that mr dosett rushed at once into his difficulty as soon as he found himself upstairs with his wife. "you have?" "well, my dear, i almost did. she said a great deal, and i could not but agree with much of it. ayala ought to have her chances." "what chances?" demanded mrs dosett, who did not at all like the expression. "well; seeing people. she never sees anybody here." "nobody is better than some people," said mrs dosett, meaning to be severe on lady albury's probable guests. "but if a girl sees nobody," said mr dosett, "she can have no -no -no chances." "she has the chance of wholesome victuals," said mrs dosett, "and i don't know what other chances you or i can give her." "she might see -a young man." this mr dosett said very timidly. "a young fiddlestick! a young man! young men should be waited for till they come naturally, and never thought about if they don't come at all. i hate this looking after young men. if there wasn't a young man for the next dozen years we should do better -so as just to get out of the way of thinking about them for a time." this was mrs dosett's philosophy; but in spite of her philosophy she did yield, and on that night it was decided that ayala after all was to be allowed to go to stalham. to mr dosett was deputed the agreeable task of telling ayala on the next evening what was to befall her. if anything agreeable was to be done in that sombre house it was always deputed to the master. "what!" said ayala, jumping from her chair. "on the eighth of november," said mr dosett. "to stalham?" "lady albury was with me yesterday at the office, and your aunt has consented." "oh, uncle reginald!" said ayala, falling on her knees, and hiding her face on his lap. heaven had been once more opened to her. "i'll never forget it," said ayala, when she went to thank her aunt -"never." "i only hope it may not do you a mischief." "and i beg your pardon, aunt margaret, because i was -i was -because i was -" she could not find the word which would express her own delinquency, without admitting more than she intended to admit -"too self-asserting, considering that i am only a young girl." that would have been her meaning could she have found appropriate words. "we need not go back to that now," said aunt margaret. chapter 23 stalham park on the day fixed ayala went down to stalham. a few days before she started there came to her a letter, or rather an envelope, from her uncle sir thomas, enclosing a cheque for l#20. the tringle women had heard that ayala had been asked to stalham, and had mentioned the visit disparagingly before sir thomas. "i think it very wrong of my poor brother," said lady tringle. "she can't have a shilling even to get herself gloves." this had an effect which had not been intended, and sir thomas sent the cheque for l#20. then ayala felt not only that the heavens were opened to her but that the sweetest zephyrs were blowing her upon her course. thoughts as to gloves had disturbed her, and as to some shoes which were wanting, and especially as to a pretty hat for winter wear. now she could get hat, and shoes and gloves, and pay her fare, and go down to stalham with money in her pocket. before going she wrote a very pretty note to her uncle tom. on her arrival she was made much of by everyone. lady albury called her the caged bird, and congratulated her on her escape from the bars. sir harry asked her whether she could ride to hounds. nina gave her a thousand kisses. but perhaps her greatest delight was in finding that jonathan stubbs was at albury. she had become so intimate with the colonel that she regarded him quite like an old friend; and when a girl has a male friend, though he may be much less loved, or not loved at all, he is always more pleasant, or at any rate more piquant, than a female friend. as for love with colonel stubbs that was quite out of the question. she was sure that he would never fall in love with herself. his manner to her was altogether unlike that of a lover. a lover would be smooth, soft, poetic, and flattering. he was always a little rough to her -sometimes almost scolding her. but then he scolded her as she liked to be scolded -with a dash of fun and a greatly predominating admixture of good nature. he was like a bear -but a bear who would always behave himself pleasantly. she was delighted when colonel stubbs congratulated her on her escape from kingsbury crescent, and felt that he was justified by his intimacy when he called mrs dosett a mollified she-cerberus. "are you going to make one of my team?" said the colonel to her on the morning after her arrival. it was a non-hunting morning, and the gentlemen were vacant about the house till they went out for a little shooting later in the day. "what team?" said ayala, feeling that she had suddenly received a check to her happiness. she knew that the colonel was alluding to those hunting joys which were to be prepared for nina, and which were far beyond her own reach. that question of riding gear is terrible to young ladies who are not properly supplied. even had time admitted she would not have dared to use her uncle's money for such a purpose, in the hope that a horse might be lent to her. she had told herself that it was out of the question, and had declared to herself that she was too thankful for her visit to allow any regret on such a matter to cross her mind. but when the colonel spoke of his team there was something of a pang. how she would have liked to be one of such a team! "my pony team. i mean to drive two. you mustn't think that i am taking a liberty when i say that they are to be called nina and ayala." there was no liberty at all. had he called her simply ayala she would have felt it to be no more than pleasant friendship, coming from him. he was so big, and so red, and so ugly, and so friendly! why should he not call her ayala? but as to that team -it could not be. "if it's riding," she said demurely, "i can't be one of the ponies." "it is riding -of course. now the marchesa is not here, we mean to call it hunting in a mild way." "i can't," she said. "but you've got to do it, miss dormer." "i haven't got anything to do it with. of course, i don't mind telling you." "you are to ride the sweetest little horse that ever was foaled -just bigger than a pony. it belongs to sir harry's sister who is away, and we've settled it all. there never was a safer little beast, and he can climb through a fence without letting you know that it's there." "but i mean -clothes," said ayala. then she whispered, "i haven't got a habit, or anything else anybody ought to have." "ah," said the colonel; "i don't know anything about that. i should say that nina must have managed that. the horse department was left to me, and i have done my part. you will find that you will have to go out next tuesday and friday. the hounds will be here on tuesday, and they will be at rufford on friday. rufford is only nine miles from here, and it's all settled." before the day was over the difficulty had vanished. miss albury's horse was not only called into requisition but miss albury's habit also. ayala had a little black hat of her own, which lady albury assured her would do excellently well for the hunting field. there was some fitting and some trying on, and perhaps a few moments of preliminary despair; but on the tuesday morning she rode away from the hall door at eleven o'clock mounted on sprite, as the little horse was called, and felt herself from head to foot to be one of colonel stubbs's team. when at glenbogie she had ridden a little, and again in italy, and being fearless by nature, had no trepidation to impair the fulness of her delight. hunting from home coverts rarely exacts much jumping from ladies. the woods are big, and the gates are numerous. it is when the far-away homes of wild foxes are drawn -those secluded brakes and gorses where the noble animal is wont to live at a distance from carriage-roads and other weak refuges of civilisation -that the riding capacities of ladies must be equal to those of their husbands and brothers. this present moment was an occasion for great delight -at least, so it was found by both nina and ayala. but it was not an opportunity for great glory. till it was time for lunch one fox after another ran about the big woods of albury in a fashion that seemed perfect to the two girls, but which nearly broke the heart of old tony, who was still huntsman to the ufford and rufford united hunt. "darm their nasty ways," said tony to mr larry twentyman, who was one of the popular habitues of the hunt; "they runs one a top of another's brushes, till there ain't a 'ound living knows t'other from which. there's always a many on 'em at albury, but i never knew an albury fox worth his grub yet." but there was galloping along roads and through gates, and long strings of horsemen followed each other up and down the rides, and an easy coming back to the places from which they started, which made the girls think that the whole thing was divine. once or twice there was a little bank, and once or twice a little ditch -just sufficient to make ayala feel that no possible fence would be a difficulty to sprite. she soon learnt that mode of governing her body which leaping requires, and when she was brought into lunch at about two she was sure that she could do anything which the art of hunting required. but at lunch an edict went forth as to the two girls, against further hunting for that day. nina strove to rebel, and ayala attempted to be eloquent by a supplicating glance at the colonel. but they were told that as the horses would be wanted again on friday they had done enough. in truth, tony had already trotted off with the hounds to pringle's gorse, a distance of five miles, and the gentlemen who had lingered over their lunch had to follow him at their best pace. "pringle's gorse is not just the place for young ladies," sir harry said, and so the matter had been decided against nina and ayala. at about six sir harry, colonel stubbs, and the other gentlemen returned, declaring that nothing quicker than their run from pringle's gorse had ever been known in that country. "about six miles straight on end in forty minutes," said the colonel, "and then a kill in the open." "he was laid up under a bank," said young gosling. "he was so beat that he couldn't carry on a field farther," said captain batsby, who was staying in the house. "i call that the open," said stubbs. "i always think i kill a fox in the open", said sir harry, "when the hounds run into him, because he cannot run another yard with the country there before him." then there was a long discussion, as they stood drinking tea before the fire, as to what "the open" meant, from which they went to other hunting matters. to all this ayala listened with attentive ears, and was aware that she had spent a great day. oh, what a difference was there between stalham and kingsbury crescent! the next two days were almost equally full of delight. she was taken into the stables to see her horse, and as she patted his glossy coat she felt that she loved sprite with all her heart. oh, what a world of joy was this -how infinitely superior even to queen's gate and glenbogie! the gaudy magnificence of the tringles had been altogether unlike the luxurious comfort of stalham, where everybody was at his ease, where everybody was good-natured, where everybody seemed to acknowledge that pleasure was the one object of life! on the evening before the friday she was taken out to dinner by captain batsby. she was not sure that she liked captain batsby, who made little complimentary speeches to her. but her neighbour on the other side was colonel stubbs, and she was quite sure that she liked colonel stubbs. "i know you'll go like a bird tomorrow," said captain batsby. "i shouldn't like that, because there would be no jumping," said ayala. "but you'd be such a beautiful bird." the captain, as he drawled out his words, made an eye at her, and she was sure that she did not like the captain. "at what time are we to start tomorrow?" she said, turning to the colonel. "ten, sharp. mind you're ready. sir harry takes us on the drag, and wouldn't wait for venus, though she wanted five minutes more for her back hair." "i don't suppose she ever wants any time for her back hair. i wouldn't if i were a goddess." "then you'd be a very untidy goddess, that's all. i wonder whether you are untidy." "well -yes -sometimes." "i hate untidy girls." "thank you, colonel stubbs." "what i like is a nice prim little woman, who never had a pin in the wrong place in her life. her cuffs and collars are always as stiff as steel, and she never rubs the sleeves of her dresses by leaning about, like some young ladies." "that's what i do." "my young woman never sits down lest she should crease her dress. my young woman never lets her ribbons get tangled. my young woman can dress upon forty pounds a year, and always look as though she came out of a band-box." "i don't believe you've got a young woman, colonel stubbs." "well; no; i haven't -except in my imagination." if so, he too must have his angel of light! "do you ever dream about her?" "oh dear, yes. i dream that she does scold so awfully when i have her to myself. in my dreams, you know, i'm married to her, and she always wants me to eat hashed mutton. now, if there is one thing that makes me more sick than another it is hashed mutton. of course i shall marry her in some of my waking moments, and then i shall have to eat hashed mutton for ever." then captain batsby put in another word. "i should so like to be allowed to give you a lead tomorrow." "oh, thank you -but i'd rather not have it," said ayala, who was altogether in the dark, thinking that "a lead" might be some present which she would not wish to accept from captain batsby. "i mean that i should like to show you a line if we get a run." "what is a line?" asked ayala. "a line? why a line is just a lead -keep your eye on me and i'll take the fences where you can follow without coming to grief." "oh," said ayala, "that's a lead, is it? colonel stubbs is going to give my friend and me a lead, as long as we stay here." "no man ever ought to coach more than one lady at once," said the captain, showing his erudition. "you're sure to come on top of one another if there are two." "but colonel stubbs is especially told by the marchesa to look after both of us," said ayala almost angrily. then she turned her shoulder to him, and was soon intent upon further instructions from the colonel. the following morning was fine, and all the ladies in the house were packed on to the top of sir harry's drag. the colonel sat behind sir harry on the plea that he was wanted to take care of the two girls. captain batsby and three other gentlemen were put inside, where they consoled themselves with unlimited tobacco. in this way they were driven to a spot called rufford cross roads, where they found tony tappett sitting perfectly quiescent on his old mare, while the hounds were seated around him on the grassy sides of the roads. with him was talking a stout, almost middle-aged gentleman, in a scarlet coat, and natty pink top boots, who was the owner of all the country around. this was lord rufford, who a few years since was known as one of the hardest riders in those parts; but he had degenerated into matrimony, was now the happy father of half a dozen babies, and was hardly ever seen to jump over a fence. but he still came out when the meets were not too distant, and carefully performed that first duty of an english country gentleman -the preservation of foxes. though he did not ride much, no one liked a little hunting gossip better than lord rufford. it was, however, observed that even in regard to hunting he was apt to quote the authority of his wife. "oh, yes, my lord," said tony, "there'll sure to be a fox at dillsborough. but we'll find one afore we get to rufford, my lord." "lady rufford says there hasn't been a fox seen in the home woods this week." "her ladyship will be sure to know," said tony. "do you remember that fence where poor major caneback got his fall six years ago?" asked the lord. "seven years next christmas, my lord," said tony. "he never put a leg across a saddle again, poor fellow! i remember him well, my lord; a man who could 'andle a 'orse wonderful, though he didn't know 'ow to ride to 'ounds; not according to my idea. to get your animal to carry you through, never mind 'ow long the thing is; that's my idea of riding to 'ounds, my lord. the major was for always making a 'orse jump over everything. i never wants 'em to jump over nothing i can't help -i don't, my lord." "that's just what her ladyship is always saying to me," said lord rufford, "and i do pretty much what her ladyship tells me." on this occasion lady rufford had been quite right about the home covers. no doubt she generally was right in any assertion she made as to her husband's affairs. after drawing them tony trotted on towards dillsborough, running his hounds through a few little springs, which lay near his way. as they went colonel stubbs rode between the two girls. "whenever i see rufford," said the colonel, "he does me a world of good." "what good can a fat man like that do you?" said nina. "he is a continual sermon against marriage. if i could see rufford once a week i know that i should be safe." "he seems to me to be a very comfortable old gentleman," said ayala. "old! seven years ago he was acknowledged to be the one undisputed paragon of a young man in this county. no one else dreamed of looking at a young lady if he chose to turn his eyes in that direction. he was handsome as apollo -" "he an apollo!" said nina. "the best apollo there then was in these parts, and every one knew that he had forty thousand a year to spend. now he is supposed to be the best hand in the house at rocking the cradle." "do you mean to say that he nurses the babies?" asked ayala. "he looks as if he did at any rate. he never goes ten miles away from his door without having lady rufford with him, and is always tucked up at night just at half past ten by her ladyship's own maid. ten years ago he would generally have been found at midnight with cards in his hand and a cigar in his mouth. now he is allowed two cigarettes a day. well, mr twentyman, how are you getting on?" this he said to a good-looking better sort of farmer, who came up, riding a remarkably strong horse, and dressed in pink and white cords. "thank ye, colonel, pretty well, considering how hard the times are. a man who owns a few acres and tries to farm them must be on the road to ruin nowadays. that's what i'm always telling my wife, so that she may know what she has got to expect." mr twentyman had been married just twelve months. "she isn't much frightened, i daresay," said the colonel. "she's young, you see," continued the farmer, "and hasn't settled herself down yet to the sorrows of life." this was that mr lawrence twentyman who married kate masters, the youngest daughter of old masters, the attorney at dillsborough, and sister of mrs morton, wife of the squire of bragton. "by the holy," said twentyman suddenly, "the hounds have put a fox out of that little spinney." chapter 24 rufford cross-roads ayala, who had been listening attentively to the conversation of mr twentyman, and been feeling that she was being initiated every moment into a new phase of life -who had been endeavouring to make some connection in her mind between the new charms of the world around her and that world of her dreams that was ever present to her, and had as yet simply determined that neither could lord rufford or mr twentyman have ever been an angel of light -at once straightened herself in her saddle, and prepared herself for the doing of something memorable. it was evident to her that mr twentyman considered that the moment for action had come. he did not gallop off wildly, as did four or five others, but stood still for a moment looking intently at a few hounds who, with their tails feathering in the air and with their noses down, seemed at the same time to be irresolute and determined, knowing that the scent was there but not yet quite fixed as to its line. "half a moment, colonel," he said, standing up in his stirrups, with his left hand raised, while his right held his reins and his whip close down on his horse's neck. "half a moment!" he only whispered, and then shook his head angrily, as he heard the ill-timed shouting of one or two men who had already reached the other side of the little skirting of trees. "i wish fred botsey's tongue were tied to his teeth," he said, still whispering. "now, colonel, they have it. there's a little lane to the right, and a gate. after that the country's open, and there's nothing which the ladies' nags can't do. i know the country so well, you'd perhaps better come with me for a bit." "he knows all about it," said the colonel to ayala. "do as he tells you." ayala and nina both were quick enough to obey. twentyman dashed along the lane, while the girls followed him with the colonel after them. when they were at the hunting gate already spoken of, old tony tappett was with them, trotting, impatient to get to the hounds, courteously giving place to the ladies -whom, however, in his heart, he wished at home in bed -and then thrusting himself through the gate in front of the colonel. "d - their pigheaded folly," he said, as he came up to his friend twentyman -"they knows no more about it than if they'd just come from behind a counter -'olloaing, 'olloaing, 'olloaing -as if 'olloaing'd make a fox break! 'owsomever 'e's off now, and they've got cranbury brook between them and his line!" this he said in a squeaking little voice, intended to be jocose and satirical, shaking his head as he rode. this last idea seemed to give him great consolation. it was the consideration, deep and well-founded, as to the cranbury which had induced larry twentyman to pause on the road when he had paused, and then to make for the lane and the gate. the direction had hardly seemed to be that of the hounds, but larry knew the spinney, knew the brook -knew the fox, perhaps -and was aware of the spot at which the brute would cross the water if he did cross it. the brute did cross the water, and therefore there was cranbury brook between many of the forward riders and his line. sir harry was then with them, and two or three other farmers. but larry had a lead, and the two girls were with him. tony tappett, though he had got up to his hounds, did not endeavour to ride straight to them as did larry twentyman. he was old and unambitious, very anxious to know where his hounds were, so that he might be with them should they want the assistance of his voice and counsel, anxious to be near enough to take their fox from them should they run into him, but taking no glory in jumping over a fence if he could avoid it, creeping about here and there, knowing from experience nearly every turn in the animal's mind, aware of every impediment which would delay him, riding fast only when the impediments were far between, taking no amusement to himself out of the riding, but with his heart cruelly, bloodily, ruthlessly set upon killing the animal before him. to kill his fox he would imperil his neck, but for the glory of riding he would not soil his boots if he could help it. after the girls came the colonel, somewhat shorn of his honour in that he was no longer giving them a lead, but doing his best to maintain the pace, which twentyman was making very good. "now, young ladies," said twentyman, "give them their heads, and let them do it just as they please -alongside of each other, and not too near to me." it was a brook -a confluent of cranbury brook, and was wide enough to require a good deal of jumping. it may be supposed that the two young ladies did not understand much of the instructions given to them. to hold their breath and be brave was the only idea present to them. the rest must come from instinct and chance. the other side of the brook was heaven -this would be purgatory. larry, fearing perhaps that the order as to their not being too near might not be obeyed, added a little to his own pace so as to be clear of them. nevertheless they were only a few strides behind, and had larry's horse missed his footing there would have been a mess. as it was they took the brook side by side close to each other, and landed full of delight and glory on the opposite bank. "bravo! young ladies," shouted twentyman. "oh, nina, that is divine," said ayala. nina was a little too much out of breath for answering, but simply threw up her eyes to heaven and made a flourish with her whip, intended to be expressive of her perfect joy. away went larry and away went the girls with him quite unconscious that the colonel's horse had balked the brook and then jumped into it -quite unconscious that sir harry, seeing the colonel's catastrophe, had followed tony a quarter of a mile up the brook to a ford. even in the soft bosoms of young ladies "the devil take the hindmost" will be the motto most appropriate for hunting. larry twentyman, of whom they had never heard before, was now the god of their idolatry. where larry twentyman might go it was manifestly their duty to follow, even though they should never see the poor colonel again. they recked nothing of the fox or of the hounds or of the master or even of the huntsman. they had a man before them to show them the way, and as long as they could keep him in sight each was determined to be at any rate as good as the other. to give larry his due it must be acknowledged that he was thoroughly thoughtful of them. at every fence encountered he studied the spot at which they would be least likely to fall. he had to remember, also, that there were two of them together, and that he had made himself in a way responsible for the safety of both. all this he did, and did well, because he knew his business. with the exception of the waterjump, the country over which they passed was not difficult. for a time there was a run of gates, each of which their guide was able to open for them, and as they came near to dillsborough wood there were gaps in most of the fences; but it seemed to the girls that they had galloped over monstrous hedges and leapt over walls which it would almost take a strong man to climb. the brook, however -the river as it seemed to them -had been the crowning glory. ayala was sure that that brook would never be forgotten by her. even the angel of light was hardly more heavenly than the brook. that the fox was running for dillsborough wood was a fact well known both to tony tappett and mr larry twentyman. a fox crossing the brook from the rufford side would be sure to run to dillsborough wood. when larry, with the two girls, were just about to enter the ride, there was old tony standing up on his horse at the corner, looking into the covert. and now also a crowd of horsemen came rushing up, who had made their way along the road,and had passed up to the wood through mr twentyman's farmyard,; for, as it happened, here it was that mr twentyman lived and farmed his own land. then came sir harry, colonel stubbs, and some others who had followed the line throughout -the colonel with his boots full of water, as he had been forced to get off his horse in the bed of the brook. sir harry, himself, was not in the best of humours -as will sometimes be the case with masters when they fail to see the cream of a run. "i never saw such riding in my life," said sir harry, as though some great sin had been committed by those to whom he was addressing himself. larry turned round, and winked at the two girls, knowing that, if sin had been committed, they three were the sinners. the girls understood nothing about it, but still thought that larry twentyman was divine. while they were standing about on the rides, tony was still at his work. the riding was over, but the fox had to be killed, and dillsborough wood was a covert in which a fox will often require a large amount of killing. no happier home for the vulpine deity exists among the shires of england! there are earths there deep, capacious, full of nurseries; but these, on the present occasion, were debarred from the poor stranger by the wicked ingenuity of man. but there were deep dells, in which the brambles and bracken were so thick that no hound careful of his snout would penetrate them. the undergrowth of the wood was so interwoven that no huntsman could see through its depths. there were dark nooks so impervious that any fox ignorant of the theory of his own scent must have wondered why a hound should have been induced to creep into spaces so narrow. from one side to another of the wood the hunted brute would traverse, and always seem to have at last succeeded in putting his persecutors at fault. so it was on this occasion. the run, while it lasted, had occupied, perhaps, three-quarters of an hour, and during a time equally long poor old tony was to be seen scurrying from one side of the wood to another, and was to be heard loudly swearing at his attendant whips because the hounds did not follow his footsteps as quickly as his soul desired. "i never mean to put on a pair of top-boots again, as long as i live," said the colonel. at this time a little knot of horsemen was stationed in a knoll in the centre of the wood, waiting till they should hear the fatal whoop. among them were nina, ayala, the colonel, larry twentyman, and captain batsby. "give up top-boots?" said larry. "you don't mean to say you'll ride in black!" "top-boots, black boots, spurs, breeches, and red coat, i renounce them all from this moment. if ever i'm seen in a hunting field again it will be in a pair of trousers with overalls." "now, you're joking, colonel," said larry. "why won't you wear a red coat any more?" said ayala. "because i'm disgraced for ever. i came out to coach two young women, and give them a lead, and all i've done was to tumble into a brook, while a better man has taken my charge away from me." "oh, jonathan, i am so sorry," said nina, "particularly about your getting into the water." "oh, colonel stubbs, we ought to have stopped," said ayala. "it was my only comfort to see how very little i was wanted," said the colonel. "if i had broke my neck instead of wetting my feet it would have been just the same to some people." "oh, jonathan!" said nina, really shocked. "we ought to have stopped. i know we ought to have stopped," said ayala, almost crying. "nobody ever stops for anyone out hunting," said twentyman, laying down a great law. "i should think not," said captain batsby, who had hardly been off the road all the time. "i am sure the colonel will not be angry with me because i took the young ladies on," said larry. "the colonel is such a muff", said the colonel himself, "that he will never presume to be angry with anybody again. but if my cousin and miss dormer are not very much obliged to you for what you have done for them there will be nothing of gratitude left in the female british bosom. you have probably given to them the most triumphant moment of their existence." "it was their own riding, colonel; i had nothing to do with it." "i am so much obliged to you, sir," said nina. "and so am i," said ayala, "though it was such a pity that colonel stubbs got into the water." at that moment came the long expected call. tony tappett had killed his fox, after crossing and re-crossing through the wood half a score of times. "is it all over?" asked ayala, as they hurried down the knoll and scurried down the line to get to the spot outside the wood to which tony was dragging the carcass of his defeated enemy. "it's all over for him," said larry. "a good fox he was, but he'll never run again. he is one of them bred at littlecotes. the foxes bred at littlecotes always run." "and is he dead?" asked nina. "poor fellow! i wish it wasn't necessary to kill them." then they stood by till they saw the body of the victim thrown up into the air, and fall amongst the blood-smirched upturned noses of the expectant pack. "i call that a pretty little run, sir harry," said larry twentyman. "pretty well," said sir harry; "the pace wasn't very great, or that pony of mine which miss dormer is riding could not have lived with it." "horses, sir harry, don't want so much pace, if they are allowed to go straight. it's when a man doesn't get well away, or has made a mess with his fences, that he needs an extra allowance of pace to catch the hounds. if you're once with them and can go straight you may keep your place without such a deal of legs." to this sir harry replied only by a grunt, as on the present occasion he had "made a mess with his fences," as larry twentyman had called it. "and now, young ladies," said larry, "i hope you'll come in and see my missus and her baby, and have a little bit of lunch, such as it is." nina asked anxiously whether there would not be another fox. ayala also was anxious lest in accepting the proffered hospitality she should lose any of the delights of the day. but it was at length arranged that a quarter of an hour should be allowed before tony took his hounds over to the bragton coverts. immediately larry was off his horse, rushing into the house and ordering everyone about it to come forth with bread and cheese and sherry and beer. in spite of what he had said of his ruin it was known that larry twentyman was a warm man, and that no man in rufford gave what he had to give with a fuller heart. his house was in the middle of the rufford and ufford hunting country, and the consumption there during the hunting months of bread and cheese, sherry and beer, must have been immense. everyone seemed to be intimate with him, and all called for what they wanted as if they were on their own premises. on such occasions as these larry was a proud man; for no one in those parts carried a lighter heart or was more fond of popularity. the parlour inside was by no means big enough to hold the crowding guests, who therefore munched their bread and cheese and drank their beer round the front door, without dismounting from their horses; but nina and ayala with their friend the colonel were taken inside to see mrs twentyman and her baby. "now, larry, what sort of a run was it?" said the young mother. "where did you find him, and what line did he take?" "i'll tell you all about it when i come back; there are two young ladies for you now to look after." then he introduced his wife and the baby which was in her arms. "the little fellow is only six weeks old, and yet she wanted to come to the meet. she'd have been riding to hounds if i'd let her." "why not?" said mrs twentyman. "at any rate i might have gone in the pony carriage and had baby with me. "only six weeks old!" said nina, stooping down and kissing the child. "he is a darling!" said ayala. "i hope he'll go out hunting some day." "he'll want to go six times a week if he's anything like his father," said mrs twentyman. "and seven times if he's like his mother," said larry. then again they mounted their nags, and trotted off across the high roads to the bragton coverts. mrs twentyman with her baby in her arms walked down to the gate at the high road and watched them with longing eyes, till tony and the hounds were out of sight. nothing further in the way of hunting was done that day which requires to be recorded. they drew various coverts and found a fox or two, but the scent, which had been so strong in the morning, seemed to have gone, and the glory of the day was over. the two girls and the colonel remained companions during the afternoon, and succeeded in making themselves merry over the incident of the brook. the colonel was in truth well pleased that larry twentyman should have taken his place, though he probably would not have been gratified had he seen captain batsby assume his duties. it had been his delight to see the two girls ride, and he had been near enough to see them. he was one of those men who, though fond of hunting, take no special glory in it, and are devoid of the jealousy of riding. not to have a good place in a run was no worse to him than to lose a game of billiards or a rubber of whist. let the reader understand that this trait in his character is not mentioned with approbation. "always to excel and to go ahead of everybody" should, the present writer thinks, be in the heart of every man who rides to hounds. there was in our colonel a philosophical way of looking into the thing which perhaps became him as a man, but was deleterious to his character as a sportsman. "i do hope you've enjoyed yourself, ayala!" he said, as he lifted her from her horse. "indeed -indeed, i have!" said ayala, not noticing the use of her christian name. "i have been so happy, and i'm so much obliged to you!' chapter 25 "you are not he" ayala had been a week at stalham, and according to the understanding which had existed she should now have returned to kingsbury crescent. she had come for a week, and she had had her week. oh, what a week it had been, so thoroughly happy, without a cloud, filled full with ecstatic pleasures! jonathan stubbs had become to her the pleasantest of friends. lady albury had covered her with caresses and little presents. nina was the most perfect of friends. sir harry had never been cross, except for that one moment in the wood. and as for sprite -sprite had nearly realised her idea of an angel of light. oh, how happy she had been! she was to return on the monday, having thus comprised two sundays within her elongated week. she knew that her heaven was to be at an end; but she was grateful, and was determined in her gratitude to be happy and cheerful to the close. but early on this sunday morning colonel stubbs spoke a word to lady albury. "that little girl is so thoroughly happy here. cannot you prolong it for her just for another three days?" "is it to be for her -or for colonel stubbs, who is enamoured of the little girl?" asked lady albury. "for both," said the colonel, rather gravely. "are you in earnest?" "what do you call in earnest? i do love to see a pretty creature enjoy herself thoroughly as she does. if you will make her stay till thursday albury will let her ride the little horse again at star cross on wednesday. "of course she shall stay -all the season if you wish it. she is indeed a happy girl if you are in earnest." then it was settled, and lady albury in her happiest manner informed ayala that she was not to be allowed to take her departure till after she had ridden sprite once again. "sir harry says that you have given the little horse quite a name, and that you must finish off his character for him at star cross." as was the heart of the peri when the gate of paradise was opened for her so was the heart of ayala. there were to be four days, with the fourth as a hunting day, before she need think of going! there was an eternity of bliss before her. "but aunt margaret!" she said, not, however, doubting for a moment that she would stay. who cares for a frowning aunt at the distance of an eternity. i fear that in the ecstasy of her joy she had forgotten the promise made, that she would always remember her aunt's goodness to her. "i will write a note to mrs dosett, and make it all straight," said lady albury. the note was written, and, whether matters were straight or crooked at kingsbury crescent, ayala remained at albury. colonel stubbs had thought about the matter, and determined that he was quite in earnest. he had, he told himself, enough for modest living -for modest living without poverty. more would come to him when old general stubbs, his uncle, should die. the general was already past seventy. what was the use of independence if he could not allow himself to have the girl whom he really loved? had any human being so perfectly lovely as ayala ever flashed before his eyes before? was there ever a sweeter voice heard from a woman's mouth? and then all her little ways and motions -her very tricks -how full of charm they were! when she would open her eyes and nod her head, and pout with her lips, he would declare to himself that he could no longer live without her. and then every word that fell from her lips seemed to have something in it of pretty humour. in fact the colonel was in love, and had now resolved that he would give way to his love in spite of his aunt, the marchesa, and in spite of his own philosophy. he felt by no means sure of success, but yet he thought that he might succeed. from the moment in which, as the reader may remember, he had accosted her at the ball, and desired her to dance with him in obedience to his aunt's behests, it had been understood by everyone around him that ayala had liked him. they had become fast friends. ayala allowed him to do many little things which, by some feminine instinct of her own, would have been put altogether beyond the reach of captain batsby. the colonel knew all this, and knew at the same time that he should not trust to it only. but still he could not but trust to it in some degree. lady albury had told him that ayala would be a happy girl if he were in earnest, and he himself was well aware of ayala's dependent position, and of the discomforts of kingsbury crescent. ayala had spoken quite openly to him of kingsbury crescent as to a confidential friend. but on all that he did not lean much as being in his favour. he could understand that such a girl as ayala would not accept a husband merely with the object of avoiding domestic poverty. little qualms of doubt came upon him as he remembered the nature of the girl, so that he confessed to himself that lady albury knew nothing about it. but, nevertheless, he hoped. his red hair and his ugly face had never yet stood against him among the women with whom he had lived. he had been taught by popularity to think himself a popular man -and then ayala had shown so many signs of her friendship! there was shooting on saturday, and he went out with the shooters, saying nothing to anyone of an intended early return; but at three o'clock he was back at the house. then he found that ayala was out in the carriage, and he waited. he sat in the library pretending to read, till he heard the sounds of the carriage wheels, and then he met the ladies in the hall. "are they all home from shooting?" asked lady albury. the colonel explained that no one was home but himself. he had missed three cock-pheasants running, and had then come away in disgust. "i am the most ignominious creature in existence," he said laughing; "one day i tumble into a ditch three feet wide -" "it was ten yards at least," said nina, jealous as to the glory of her jump. "and today i cannot hit a bird. i shall take to writing a book and leave the severer pursuit of sport to more enterprising persons." then suddenly turning round he said to ayala, "are you good-natured enough to come and take a walk with me in the shrubbery?" ayala, taken somewhat by surprise at the request, looked up into lady albury's face. "go with him, my dear, if you are not tired," said lady albury. "he deserves consolation after all his good deeds to you." ayala still doubted. though she was on terms of pleasant friendship with the man, yet she felt almost awestruck at this sudden request that she should walk alone with him. but not to do so, especially after lady albury's injunction, would have been peculiar. she certainly was not tired and had such a walk come naturally it would have been an additional pleasure to her; but now, though she went she hesitated, and showed her hesitation. "are you afraid to come with me?" he said, as soon as they were out on the gravel together. "afraid! oh, dear no, i should not be afraid to go anywhere with you, i think; only it seems odd that you did not ask nina too." "shall i tell you why?" "why was it?" "because i have something to say to you which i do not wish nina to hear just at this moment. and then i thought that we were such friends that you would not mind coming with me." "of course we are," said ayala. "i don't know why it should be so, but i seem to have known you years instead of days." "perhaps that is because you knew papa." "more likely because i have learnt to know your papa's daughter." "do you mean lucy?" "i mean ayala." "that is saying the same thing twice over. you know me because you know me." "just that. how long do you suppose i have known that mrs gregory, who sat opposite to us yesterday?" "how can i tell?" "just fifteen years. i was going to harrow when she came as a young girl to stay with my mother. her people and my people had known each other for the last fifty years. since that i have seen her constantly, and of course we are very intimate." "i suppose so." "i know as much about her after all that as if we had lived in two different hemispheres and couldn't speak a word of each other's language. there isn't a thought or a feeling in common between us. i ask after her husband and her children, and then tell her it's going to rain. she says something about the old general's health, and then there is an end of everything between us. when next we meet we do it all over again." "how very uninteresting!" said ayala. "very uninteresting. it is because there are so many mrs gregorys about that i like to go down to drumcaller and live by myself. perhaps you're a mrs gregory to somebody." "why should i be a mrs gregory? i don't think i am at all like mrs gregory." "not to me, ayala." now she heard the "ayala", and felt something of what it meant. there had been moments at which she had almost disliked to hear him call her miss dormer; but now -now she wished that he had not called her ayala. she strove to assume a serious expression of face, but having done so she could not dare to turn it up towards him. the glance of her little anger, if there was any, fell only upon the ground. "it is because you are to me a creature so essentially different from mrs gregory that i seem to know you so well. i never want to go to drumcaller if you are near me -or, if i think of drumcaller, it is that i might be there with you." "i am sure the place is very pretty, but i don't suppose i shall ever see it." "do you know about your sister and mr hamel?" "yes," said ayala, surprised. "she has told me all about it. how do you know?" "he was staying at drumcaller -he and i together with no one else -when he went over to ask her. i never saw a man so happy as when he came back from glenbogie. he had got all that he wanted in the world." "i do so love him because he loves her." "and i love her -because she loves you." "it is not the same, you know," said ayala, trying to think it all out. "may i not love her? "he is to be my brother. that's why i love him. she can't be your sister." the poor girl, though she had tried to think it all out, had not thought very far. "can she not?" he said. "of course not. lucy is to marry mr hamel." "and whom am i to marry?" then she saw it all. "ayala -ayala -who is to be my wife?" "i do not know," she said -speaking with a gruff voice, but still in a whisper, with a manner altogether different -thinking how well it would be that she should be taken at once back into the house. "do you know whom i would fain have as my wife?" then he felt that it behoved him to speak out plainly. he was already sure that she would not at once tell him that it should be as he would have it -that she would not instantly throw herself into his arms. but he must speak plainly to her, and then fight his cause as best he might. "ayala, i have asked you to come out with me that i might ask you to be my wife. it is that that i did not wish nina to hear at once. if you will put out your hand and say that it shall be so, nina and all the world shall know it. i shall be as proud then as hamel, and as happy -happier, i think. it seems to me that no one can love as i do now, ayala; it has grown upon me from hour to hour as i have seen you. when i first took you away to that dance it was so already. do you remember that night at the theatre -when i had come away from everything and striven so hard that i might be near to you before you went back to your home? ayala, i loved you then so dearly -but not as i love you now. when i saw you riding away from me yesterday, when i could not get over the brook, i told myself that unless i might catch you at last, and have you all to myself, i could never again be happy. do you remember when you stooped down and kissed that man's baby at the farmhouse? oh, ayala, i thought then that if you would not be my wife -if you would not be my wife -i should never have wife, never should have baby, never should have home of my own." she walked on by his side, listening, but she had not a word to say to him. it had been easy enough to her to reject and to rebuke and to scorn tom tringle, when he had persisted in his suit; but she knew not with what words to reject this man who stood so high in her estimation, who was in many respects so perfect, whom she so thoroughly liked -but whom, nevertheless she must reject. he was not the angel of light. there was nothing there of the azure wings upon which should soar the all but celestial being to whom she could condescend to give herself and her love. he was pleasant, good, friendly, kind-hearted -all that a friend or a brother should be; but he was not the angel of light. she was sure of that. she told herself that she was quite sure of it, as she walked beside him in silence along the path. "you know what i mean, ayala, when i tell you that i love you," he continued. but still she made no answer. "i have seen at last the one human being with whom i feel that i can be happy to spend my life, and, having seen her, i ask her to be my wife. the hope has been dwelling with me and growing since i first met you. shall it be a vain hope? ayala, may i still hope?" "no," she said, abruptly. "is that all?" "it is all that i can say." "is that one 'no' to be the end of everything between us?" "i don't know what else i ought to say to you, colonel stubbs." "do you mean that you can never love me?" "never," she said. "that is a hard word -and hardly friendly. is there to be no more than one hard word between you and me? though i did not venture to think that you could tell me that you loved me, i looked for something kinder, something gentler than that." from such a sharp and waspish word as "no",to pluck the sting! ayala did not know the lines i have quoted, but the idea conveyed in them was present clearly to her mind. she would fain have told him, had she known how to do so, that her heart was very gentle towards him, was very kind, gentle and kind as a sister's -but that she could not love him, so as to become his wife. "you are not he -not he, not that angel of light, which must come to me, radiant with poetry, beautiful to the eye, full of all excellences of art, lifted above the earth by the qualities of his mind -such a one as must come to me if it be that i am ever to confess that i love. you are not he, and i cannot love you. but you shall be the next to him in my estimation, and you are already so dear to me that i would be tender to you, would be gentle -if only i knew how." it was all there, clear enough in her mind, but she had not the words. "i don't know what it is that i ought to say," she exclaimed through her sobs. "the truth, at any rate," he answered sternly, "but not the truth, half and half, after the fashion of some young ladies. do not think that you should palter with the truth either because it may not be palatable to me, or seem decorous to yourself. to my happiness this matter is all important, and you are something to my happiness, if only because i have risked it on your love. tell me -why cannot you love me?" the altered tone of his voice, which now had in it something of severity, seemed to give her more power. "it is because -" then she paused. "because why? out with it, whatever it is. if it be something that a man may remedy i will remedy it. do not fear to hurt me. is it because i am ugly? that i cannot remedy." she did not dare to tell him that it was so, but she looked up at him, not dissenting by any motion of her head. "then god help me, for ugly i must remain." "it is not that only." "is it because my name is stubbs -jonathan stubbs?" now she did assent, nodding her head at him. he had bade her tell him the truth, and she was so anxious to do as he bade her! "if it be so, ayala, i must tell you that you are wrong -wrong and foolish; that you are carried away by a feeling of romance, which is a false romance. far be it from me to say that i could make you happy, but i am sure that your happiness cannot be made and cannot be marred by such accidents as that. do you think that my means are not sufficient?" "no -no," she cried; "i know nothing of your means. if i could love you i would not condescend to ask -even to hear." "there is no other man, i think?" "there is no other man." "but your imagination has depicted to you something grander than i am," -then she assented quickly, turning round and nodding her head to him -"someone who shall better respond to that spirit of poetry which is within you?" again she nodded her head approvingly, as though to assure him that now he knew the whole truth. "then, ayala, i must strive to soar till i can approach your dreams. but, if you dare to desire things which are really grand, do not allow yourself to be mean at the same time. do not let the sound of a name move you, or i shall not believe in your aspirations. now, shall i take you back to the house?" back to the house they went, and there was not another word spoken between them. by those last words of his she had felt herself to be rebuked. if it were possible that he could ask her again whether that sound, jonathan stubbs, had anything to do with it, she would let him know now, by some signal, that she no longer found a barrier in the name. but there were other barriers -barriers which he himself had not pretended to call vain. as to his ugliness, that he had confessed he could not remedy; calling on god to pity him because he was so. and as for that something grander which he had described, and for which her soul sighed, he had simply said that he would seek for it. she was sure that he would not find it. it was not to such as he that the something grander -which was to be the peculiar attribute of the angel of light -could be accorded. but he had owned that the something grander might exist. chapter 26 "the finest hero that i ever knew" the colonel and ayala returned to the house without a word. when they were passing through the hall she turned to go at once up the stairs to her own room. as she did so he put out his hand to her, and she took it. but she passed on without speaking, and when she was alone she considered it over all in her own mind. there could be no doubt that she was right. of that she was quite sure. it was certainly a fixed law that a girl should not marry a man unless she loved him. she did not love this man, and therefore she ought not to marry him. but there were some qualms at her heart as to the possible reality of the image which she had created for her own idolatry. and she had been wounded when he told her that she should not allow herself to be mean amidst her soarings. she had been wounded, and yet she knew that he had been right. he had intended to teach her the same lesson when he told her the absurd story of the woman who had been flung out of the window. she could not love him; but that name of his should never again be a reason for not doing so. let the angel of light come to her with his necessary angelic qualities, and no want of euphony in a sound should be a barrier to him. nor in truth could any outside appearance be an attribute of angelic light. the angel of light might be there even with red hair. something as to the truth of this also came across her, though the colonel had not rebuked her on that head. but how should she carry herself now during the four days which remained to her at stalham park? all the loveliness seemed to depart from her prospect. she would hardly know how to open her mouth before her late friend. she suspected that lady albury knew with what purpose the colonel had taken her out in the shrubbery, and she would not dare to look lady albury in the face. how should she answer nina if nina were to ask her questions about the walk. the hunt for next wednesday was no longer a delight to which she could look forward. how would it be possible that colonel stubbs should direct her now as to her riding, and instruct her as to her conduct in the hunting field? it would be better for her that she should return at once to kingsbury crescent. as she thought of this there did come upon her a reflection that had she been able to accept colonel stubbs's offer there would have been an end for ever to the miseries of her aunt's house. she would have been lifted at once into the mode of life in which the man lived. instead of being a stranger admitted by special grace into such an elysium as that of stalham park, she would become one of those to whom such an elysium belonged almost of right. by her own gifts she would have won her way into that upper and brighter life which seemed to her to be all smiles and all joy. as to his income she thought nothing and cared nothing. he lived with men who had horses and carriages, and who spent their time in pleasurable pursuits. and she would live amidst ladies who were always arrayed in bright garments, who, too, had horses and carriages at their command, and were never troubled by these sordid cares which made life at kingsbury crescent so sad and tedious. one little word would have done it all for her, would have enabled her to take the step by which she would be placed among the bright ones of the earth. but the remembrance of all this only made her firmer in her resolution. if there was any law of right and wrong fixed absolutely in her bosom, it was this -that no question of happiness or unhappiness, of suffering or joy, would affect her duty to the angel of light. she owed herself to him should he come to seek her. she owed herself to him no less, even should he fail to come. and she owed herself equally whether he should be rich or poor. as she was fortifying herself with these assurances nina came to ask her whether she would not come down to tea. ayala pleaded headache, and said that she would rest till dinner. "has anything happened?" asked nina. ayala simply begged that she might be asked no questions then, because her head was aching. "if you do not tell me everything, i shall think you are no true friend," said nina, as she left the room. as evening drew on she dressed for dinner, and went down into the drawing-room. in doing so it was necessary to pass through the billiard-room, and there she found colonel stubbs, knocking about the balls. "are you dressed for dinner?" he exclaimed; "i haven't begun to think of it yet, and sir harry hates a man when he comes in late. that wretch batsby has beaten me four games." with that he rushed off, putting down the cue with a rattle, and seeming to ayala to have recovered altogether from the late prostration of his spirits. in the drawing-room ayala was for a few minutes alone, and then, as she was glad to see, three or four ladies all came in at once, so that no question could be asked her by lady albury. they went into dinner without the colonel, who was in truth late, and she was taken in by mr gosling, whose pretty little wife was just opposite to her. on the other side of her sat lord rufford, who had come to stalham with his wife for a day or two, and who immediately began to congratulate her on the performance of the day before. "i am told you jumped the cranbury brook," he said. "i should as soon think of jumping the serpentine." "i did it because somebody told me." "ah," said lord rufford, with a sigh, "there is nothing like ignorance, innocence, and youth combined. but why didn't colonel stubbs get over after you?" "because colonel stubbs couldn't," said that gentleman, as he took his seat in the vacant chair. "it may be possible", said sir harry, "that a gentleman should not be able to jump over cranbury brook; but any gentleman, if he will take a little trouble, may come down in time for dinner." "now that i have been duly snubbed right and left", said the colonel, "perhaps i may eat my soup." ayala, who had expected she hardly knew what further troubles, and who had almost feared that nobody would speak to her because she had misbehaved herself, endeavoured to take heart of grace when she found that all around her, including the colonel himself, were as pleasant as ever. she had fancied that lady albury had looked at her specially when colonel stubbs took his seat, and she had specially noticed the fact that his chair had not been next her own. these little matters she was aware lady albury managed herself, and was aware also that in accordance with the due rotation of things she and the colonel should have been placed together. she was glad that it was not so, but at the same time she was confident that lady albury knew something of what had passed between herself and her suitor. the evening, however, went off easily, and nothing occurred to disturb her except that the colonel had called her by her christian name, when as usual he brought to her a cup of tea in the drawing-room. oh, that he would continue to do so, and yet not demand from her more than their old friendship! the next morning was sunday, and they all went to church. it was a law at stalham that every one should go to church on sunday morning. sir harry himself, who was not supposed to be a peculiarly religious man, was always angry when any male guest did not show himself in the enormous family pew. "i call it d - indecent," he has been heard to say. but nobody was expected to go twice -and consequently nobody ever did go twice. lunch was protracted later than usual. the men would roam about the grounds with cigars in their mouths, and ladies would take to reading in their own rooms, in following which occupation they would spend a considerable part of the afternoon asleep. on this afternoon lady albury did not go to sleep, but contrived to get ayala alone upstairs into her little sittingroom. "ayala," she said, with something between a smile and a frown, "i am afraid i am going to be angry with you." "please don't be angry, lady albury." "if i am right in what i surmise, you had an offer made to you yesterday which ought to satisfy the heart of almost any girl in england." here she paused, but ayala had not a word to say for herself. "if it was so, the best man i know asked you to share his fortune with him." "has he told you?" "but he did?" "i shall not tell," said ayala, proudly. "i know he did. i knew that it was his intention before. are you aware what kind of man is my cousin, jonathan stubbs? has it occurred to you that in truth and gallantry, in honour, honesty, courage and real tenderness, he is so perfect as to be quite unlike to the crowd of men you see?" "i do know that he is good," said ayala. "good! where will you find anyone good like him? compare him to the other men around him, and then say whether he is good! can it be possible that you should refuse the love of such a man as that?" "i don't think i ought to be made to talk about it," said ayala, hesitating. "my dear, it is for your own sake and for his. when you go away from here it may be so difficult for him to see you again." "i don't suppose he will ever want," said ayala. "it is sufficient that he wants it now. what better can you expect for yourself?" "i expect nothing," said ayala, proudly. "i have got nothing, and i expect nothing." "he will give you everything, simply because he loves you. my dear, i should not take the trouble to tell you all this, did i not know that he is a man who ought to be accepted when he asks such a request as that. your happiness would be safe in his hands." she paused, but ayala had not a word to say. "and he is not a man likely to renew such a request. he is too proud for that. i can conceive no possible reason for such a refusal unless it be that you are engaged. if there be someone else, then of course there must be an end of it." "there is no one else." "then, my dear, with your prospects it is sheer folly. when the general dies he will have over two thousand a year." "as if that had anything to do with it!" said ayala, holding herself aloft in her wrath, and throwing angry glances at the lady. "it is what i call romance," said lady albury. "romance can never make you happy." "at any rate it is not riches. what you call romance may be what i like best. at any rate if i do not love colonel stubbs i am sure i ought not to marry him -and i won't." after this there was nothing further to be said. ayala thought that she would be turned out of the room -almost out of the house, in disgrace. but lady albury, who was simply playing her part, was not in the least angry. "well, my dear," she said, "pray -pray, think better of it. i am in earnest, of course, because of my cousin -because he seems to have put his heart upon it. he is just the man to be absolutely in love when he is in love. but i would not speak as i do unless i were sure that he would make you happy. my cousin jonathan is to me the finest hero that i know. when a man is a hero he shouldn't be broken-hearted for want of a woman's smiles -should he?" "she ought not to smile unless she loves him," said ayala, as she left the room. the monday and tuesday went very quietly. lady albury said nothing more on the great subject, and the colonel behaved himself exactly as though there had been no word of love at all. there was nothing special said about the wednesday's hunt through the two days, till ayala almost thought that there would be no hunt for her. nor, indeed, did she much wish for it. it had been the colonel who had instigated her to deeds of daring, and under his sanction that she had ventured to ride. she would hardly know how to go through the wednesday -whether still to trust him, or whether to hold herself aloof from him. when nothing was said on the subject till late on the evening of the tuesday, she had almost resolved that she would not put on her habit when the morning came. but just as she was about to leave the drawing-room with her bed-candle colonel stubbs came to her. "most of us ride to the meet tomorrow," he said; "but you and nina shall be taken in the waggonette so as to save you a little. it is all arranged." she bowed and thanked him, going to bed almost sorry that it should have been so settled. when the morning came nina could not ride. she had hurt her foot, and, coming early into ayala's room, declared with tears that she could not go. "then neither shall i," said ayala, who was at that moment preparing to put on her habit. "but you must. it is all settled, and sir harry would be offended if you did not go. what has jonathan done that you should refuse to ride with him because i am lame?" "nothing," said ayala. "oh, ayala, do tell me. i should tell you everything. of course you must hunt whatever it is. even though he should have offered and you refused him, of course you must go." "must i?" said ayala. "then you have refused him?" "i have. oh, nina, pray do not speak of it. do not think of it if you can help it. why should everything be disturbed because i have been a fool?" "then you think you have been a fool?" "other people think so; but if so i shall at any rate be constant to my folly. what i mean is, that it has been done, and should be passed over as done with. i am quite sure that i ought not to be scolded; but lady albury did scold me." then they went down together to breakfast, ayala having prepared herself properly for the hunting field. in the waggonette there were with her lady albury, mrs gosling, and nina, who was not prevented by her lameness from going to the meet. the gentlemen all rode, so that there was no immediate difficulty as to colonel stubbs. but when she had been put on her horse by his assistance and found herself compelled to ride away from the carriage, apparently under his especial guidance her heart misgave her, and she thoroughly wished that she was at home in the crescent. though she was specially under his guidance there were at first others close around her, and, while they were on the road going to the covert which they were to draw, conversation was kept up so that it was not necessary for her to speak -but what should she do when she should find herself alone with him as would certain!y be the case? it soon was the case. the hounds were at work in a large wood in which she was told they might possibly pass the best part of the day, and it was not long before the men had dispersed themselves, some on this side some on that, and she found herself with no one near her but the colonel. "ayala," he said, "of course you know it is my duty to look after you, and to do it better if i can than i did on friday." "i understand," she said. "do not let any remembrance of that walk on saturday interfere with your happiness today. who knows when you may be out hunting again?" "never!" she said; "i don't suppose i shall ever hunt again." "carpe diem," he said laughing. "do you know what 'carpe diem' means?" "it is latin perhaps." "yes; and therefore you are not supposed to understand it. this is what it means. as an hour for joy has come, do not let any trouble interfere with it. let it all be, for this day at least, as though there had been no walk in the stalham woods. there is larry twentyman. if i break down as i did on friday you may always trust to him. larry and you are old friends now." "carpe diem," she said to herself. "oh, yes; if it were only possible. how is one to carpe diem with one's heart full of troubles?" and it was the less possible because this man whom she had rejected was so anxious to do everything for her happiness. lady albury had told her that he was a hero -that he was perfect in honour, honesty, and gallantry,; and she felt inclined to own that lady albury was almost right. yet -yet how far was he from that image of manly perfection which her daily thoughts had created for her! could she have found an appropriate word with which to thank him she would have done so; but there was no such word; and larry twentyman was now with them, taking off his hat and overflowing with compliments. "oh, miss dormer, i am so delighted to see you out again." "how is the baby, mr twentyman?" "brisk as a bee, and hungry as a hunter." "and how is mrs twentyman?" "brisker and hungrier than the baby. what do you think of the day, colonel?" "a very good sort of day, twentyman, if we were anywhere out of these big woods." larry shook his head solemnly. the mudcombe woods in which they were now at work had been known to occupy tony tappett and his whole pack from eleven o'clock till the dusk of evening. "we've got to draw them, of course," continued the colonel. then mr twentyman discoursed at some length on the excellence of mudcombe woods. what would any county be without a nursery for young foxes? gorse-coverts, hedgerows, and little spinneys would be of no avail unless there were some grandly wild domain in which maternal and paternal foxes could roam in comparative security. all this was just as ayala would have it, because it enabled her to ask questions, and saved her from subjects which might be painful to her. the day, in truth, was not propitious to hunting even. foxes were found in plenty, and two of them were killed within the recesses of the wood; but on no occasion did they run a mile into the open. for ayala it was very well, because she was galloping hither and thither, and because before the day was over, she found herself able to talk to the colonel in her wonted manner; but there was no great glory for her as had been the glory of little cranbury brook. on the next morning she was taken back to london and handed over to her aunt in kingsbury crescent without another word having been spoken by colonel stubbs in reference to his love. chapter 27 lady albury's letter "i have had a letter from lady albury," said aunt margaret, almost as soon as ayala had taken off her hat and cloak. "yes, i know, aunt margaret. she wrote to ask that i might stay for four more days. i hope it was not wrong." "i have had another letter since that, on monday about it; i have determined to show it you. there it is. you had better read it by yourself, and i will come to you again in half an hour." then, very solemnly, but with no trace of ill-humour, mrs dosett left the room. there was something in her tone and gait so exceedingly solemn that ayala was almost frightened. of course, the letter must be about colonel stubbs, and, of course, the writer of it would find fault with her. she was conscious that she was adding one to her terribly long list of sins in not consenting to marry colonel stubbs. it was her misfortune that all her friends found fault with everything that she did. among them there was not one, not even nina, who fully sympathised with her. not even to lucy could she expatiate with a certainty of sympathy in regard to the angel of light. and now, though her aunt was apparently not angry -only solemn -she felt already sure that she was to be told that it was her duty to marry colonel stubbs. it was only the other day that her aunt was preaching to her as to the propriety of marrying her cousin tom. it seemed, she said to herself, that people thought that a girl was bound to marry any man who could provide a house for her, and bread to eat, and clothes to wear. all this passed through her mind as she slowly drew lady albury's letter from the envelope and prepared to read it. the letter was as follows: albury, monday, 18th november, 187 - dear madam, your niece will return to you, as you request, on thursday, but before she reaches you i think it my duty to inform you of a little circumstance which has occurred here. my cousin, colonel jonathan stubbs, who is also the nephew of the marchesa baldoni, has made miss dormer an offer. i am bound to add that i did not think it improbable that it would be so, when i called on your husband, and begged him to allow your niece to come to us. i did not then know my cousin's intention as a fact. i doubt whether he knew it himself; but from what i had heard i thought it probable, and, as i conceive that any young lady would be fortunate in becoming my cousin's wife, i had no scruple. he has proposed to her, and she has rejected him. he has set his heart upon the matter, and i am most anxious that he should succeed, because i know him to be a man who will not easily brook disappointment where he has set his heart. of all men i know he is the most steadfast in his purpose. i took the liberty of speaking to your niece on the subject, and am disposed to think that she is deterred by some feeling of foolish romance, partly because she does not like the name, partly because my cousin is not a handsome man in a girl's eyes -more probably, however, she has built up to herself some poetic fiction, and dreams of she knows not what. if it be so, it is a pity that she should lose an opportunity of settling herself well and happily in life. she gave as a reason that she did not love him. my experience is not so long as yours, perhaps, but such as i have has taught me to think that a wife will love her husband when she finds herself used well at all points. mercenary marriages are, of course, bad; but it is a pity, i think, that a girl, such as your niece, should lose the chance of so much happiness by a freak of romance. colonel stubbs, who is only twenty-eight years of age, has a staff appointment at aldershot. he has private means of his own, on which alone he would be justified in marrying. on the death of his uncle, general stubbs, he will inherit a considerable accession of fortune. he is not, of course, a rich man; but he has ample for the wants of a family. in all other good gifts, temper, manliness, truth, and tenderness, i know no one to excel him. i should trust any young friend of my own into his hands with perfect safety. i have thought it right to tell you this. you will use your own judgment in saying what you think fit to your niece. should she be made to understand that her own immediate friends approve of the offer, she would probably be induced to accept it. i have not heard my cousin say what may be his future plans. i think it possible that, as he is quite in earnest, he will not take one repulse. should he ask again, i hope that your niece may receive him with altered views. pray believe me to be, my dear madam, yours sincerely, rosaline albury ayala read the letter twice over before her aunt returned to her, and, as she read it, felt something of a feeling of renewed kindness come upon her in reference to the writer of it -not that she was in the least changed in her own resolution, but that she liked lady albury for wishing to change her. the reasons given, however, were altogether impotent with her. colonel stubbs had the means of keeping a wife! if that were a reason then also ought she to marry her cousin, tom tringle. colonel stubbs was good and true; but so also very probably was tom tringle. she would not compare the two men. she knew that her cousin tom was altogether distasteful to her, while she took delight in the companionship of the colonel. but the reasons for marrying one were to her thinking as strong as for marrying the other. there could be only one valid excuse for marriage -that of adoring the man -and she was quite sure that she did not adore colonel jonathan stubbs. lady albury had said in her letter, that a girl would be sure to love a man who treated her well after marriage; but that would not suffice for her. were she to marry at all, it would be necessary that she should love the man before her marriage. "have you read the letter, my dear?" said mrs dosett; as she entered the room and closed the door carefully behind her. she spoke almost in a whisper, and seemed to be altogether changed by the magnitude of the occasion. "yes, aunt margaret, i have read it." "i suppose it is true?" "true! it is true in part." "you did meet this colonel stubbs?" "oh, yes; i met him." "and you had met him before?" "yes, aunt margaret. he used to come to brook street. he is the marchesa's nephew." "did he -" this question aunt margaret asked in a very low whisper, and her most solemn voice. "did he make love to you in brook street?" "no," said ayala sharply. "not at all?" "not at all. i never thought of such a thing. i never dreamed of such a thing when he began talking to me out in the woods at stalham on saturday." "had you been -been on friendly terms with him?" "very friendly terms. we were quite friends, and used to talk about all manner of things. i was very fond of him, and never afraid of anything that he said to me. he was nina's cousin and seemed almost to be my cousin too." "then you do like him?" "of course i do. everybody must like him. but that is no reason why i should want to marry him." upon this mrs dosett sat silent for awhile turning the great matter over in her thoughts. it was quite clear to her that every word which ayala had spoken was true; and probable also that lady albury's words were true. in her inmost thoughts she regarded ayala as a fool. here was a girl who had not a shilling of her own, who was simply a burden on relatives whom she did not especially love, who was doomed to a life which was essentially distasteful to her -for all this in respect to herself and her house mrs dosett had sense enough to acknowledge -who seemed devoted to the society of rich and gay people, and yet would not take the opportunities that were offered her of escaping what she disliked and going to that which she loved! two offers had now been made to her, both of them thoroughly eligible, to neither of which would objection have been made by any of the persons concerned. sir thomas had shown himself to be absolutely anxious for the success of his son. and now it seemed that the grand relations of this colonel stubbs were in favour of the match. what it was in ayala that entitled her to such promotion mrs dosett did not quite perceive. to her eyes her niece was a fantastic girl, pretty indeed, but not endowed with that regular tranquil beauty which she thought to be of all feminine graces the most attractive. why tom tringle should have been so deeply smitten with ayala had been a marvel to her; and now this story of colonel stubbs was a greater marvel. "ayala," she said, "you ought to think better of it." "think better of what, aunt margaret?" "you have seen what this lady albury says about her cousin, colonel stubbs." "what has that to do with it?" "you believe what she says? if so why should you not accept him?" "because i can't," said ayala. "have you any idea what is to become of your future life?" said mrs dosett, very gravely. "not in the least," said ayala. but that was a fib, because she had an idea that in the fullness of time it would be her heavenly fate to put her hand into that of the angel of light. "gentlemen won't come running after you always, my dear." this was almost as bad as being told by her aunt emmeline that she had encouraged her cousin tom. "it's a great shame to say that. i don't want anybody to run after me. i never did." "no, my dear; no. i don't think that you ever did." mrs dosett, who was justice itself, did acknowledge to herself that of any such fault as that suggested, ayala was innocent. her fault was quite in the other direction, and consisted of an unwillingness to settle herself and to free her relations of the burden of maintaining her when proper opportunities arose for doing so. "i only want to explain to you that people must -must -must make their hay while the sun shines. you are young now." "i am not one-and-twenty yet," said ayala, proudly. "one-and-twenty is a very good time for a girl to marry -that is to say if a proper sort of gentleman asks her." "i don't think i ought to be scolded because they don't seem to me to be the proper sort. i don't want anybody to come. nobody ought to be talked to about it at all. if i cared about anyone that you or uncle reginald did not approve, then you might talk to me. but i don't think that anything ought to be said about anybody unless i like him myself." so the conversation was over, and mrs dosett felt that she had been entirely vanquished. lady albury's letter was shown to mr dosett but he refused to say a word to his niece on the subject. in the argument which followed between him and his wife he took his niece's part, opposing altogether that idea that hay should be made while the sun shines. "it simply means selling herself," declared mr dosett. "that is nonsense, reginald. of course such a girl as ayala has to do the best she can with her good looks. what else has she to depend upon?" "my brother-in-law will do something for her." "i hope he will -though i do not think that a very safe reed to depend upon as she has twice offended him. but of course a girl thinks of marrying. ayala would be very much disgusted if she were told that she was to be an old maid, and live upon l#100 a year supplied by sir thomas's bounty. it might have been that she would have to do it -but now that chances are open she ought to take them. she should choose between her cousin tom and this colonel stubbs; and you should tell her that, if she will not, you will no longer be responsible for her." to this mr dosett turned altogether a deaf ear. he was quite sure that his responsibility must be continued till ayala should marry, or till he should die, and he would not make a threat which he would certainly be unable to carry out. he would be very glad if ayala could bring herself to marry either of the young men. it was a pity that she should feel herself compelled to refuse offers so excellent. but it was a matter for her own judgment, and one in which he would not interfere. for two days this almost led to a coldness between the man and his wife, during which the sufferings of poor mrs dosett were heartrending. not many days after ayala's return her sister lucy came to see her. certain reasons had caused lady tringle to stay at glenbogie longer than usual, and the family was now passing through london on their way to merle park. perhaps it was the fact that the trafficks had been effectually extruded from glenbogie, but would doubtless turn up at merle park, should lady tringle take up her residence there before the autumn was over. that they should spend their christmas at merle park was an acknowledged thing -to mamma tringle an acknowledged benefit, because she liked to have her daughter with her; to papa tringle an acknowledged evil, because he could not endure to be made to give more than he intended to give. that they should remain there afterwards through january, and till the meeting of parliament, was to be expected. but it was hoped that they might be driven to find some home for themselves if they were left homeless by sir thomas for a while. the little plan was hardly successful, as mr traffick had put his wife into lodgings at hastings, ready to pounce down on merle park as soon as lady tringle should have occupied the house a few days. lady tringle was now going there with the rest of the family, sir thomas having been in town for the last six weeks. lucy took advantage of the day which they passed in london, and succeeded in getting across to the crescent. at this time she had heard nothing of colonel stubbs, and was full indeed of her own troubles. "you haven't seen him?" she said to her sister. "seen who?" asked ayala, who had two "hims" to her bow -and thought at the moment rather of her own two "hims" than of lucy's one. "isadore. he said that he would call here." ayala explained that she had not seen him, having been absent from town during the last ten days -during which mr hamel had in fact called at the house. "ayala," concluded lucy, "what am i to do?" "stick to him," said ayala, firmly. "of course i shall. but aunt emmeline thinks that i ought to give him up or -" "or what?" "or go away," said lucy, very gravely. "where would you go to?" "oh, where indeed? of course he would have me, but it would be ruin to him to marry a wife without a penny when he earns only enough for his own wants. his father has quarrelled with him altogether. he says that nobody can prevent our being married if we please, and that he is quite ready to make a home for me instantly; but i know that last year he hardly earned more than two hundred pounds after paying all his expenses, and were i to take him at his word i should ruin him." "would uncle tom turn you out?" "he has been away almost ever since mr hamel came to glenbogie, and i do not know what he will say. aunt emmeline declares that i can only stay with them just as though i were her daughter, and that a daughter would be bound to obey her." "does gertrude obey her about mr houston?" "gertrude has her own way with her mother altogether. and of course a daughter cannot really be turned out. if she tells me to go i suppose i must go." "i should ask uncle tom," said ayala. "she could not make you go out into the street. when she had to get rid of me, she could send me here in exchange; but she can't say now that you don't suit, and have me back again." "oh, ayala, it is so miserable. i feel that i do not know what to do with myself." "nor do i," said ayala, jumping up from the bed on which she was sitting. "it does seem to be so cross-grained. nobody will let you marry, and everybody will make me." "do they still trouble you about tom?" "it is not tom now, lucy. another man has come up." "as a lover?" "oh, yes; quite so. his name is -such a name, lucy -his name is colonel jonathan stubbs." "that is isadore's friend -the man who lives at drumcaller. "exactly. he told me that mr hamel was at drumcaller with him. and now he wants me to be his wife." "do you not like him?" "that is the worst part of it all, lucy. if i did not like him i should not mind it half so much. it is just because i like him so very much that i am so very unhappy. "his hair is just the colour of aunt emmeline's big shawl." "what does that signify?" "and his mouth stretches almost from ear to ear." "i shouldn't care a bit for his mouth." "i don't think i do much, because he does look so good-natured when he laughs. indeed he is always the most good-natured man that ever lived." "has he got an income enough for marriage?" asked lucy, whose sorrows were already springing from that most fertile source of sorrowing. "plenty they tell me -though i do not in the least know what plenty means." "then, ayala, why should you not have him?" "because i can't," said ayala. "how is a girl to love a man if she does not love him? liking has nothing to do with it. you don't think liking ought to have anything to do with it?" this question had not been answered when aunt margaret came into the room, declaring that the tringle manservant, who had walked across the park with miss dormer, was waxing impatient. the sisters, therefore, were separated, and lucy returned to queen's gate. chapter 28 miss docimer "i tell you fairly that i think you altogether wrong -that it is cowardly, unmanly, and disgraceful. i don't mean, you see, to put what you call a fine point upon it." "no, you don't." "it is one of those matters on which a person must speak the truth or not speak at all. i should not have spoken unless you forced it upon me. you don't care for her in the least." "that's true. i do not know that i am especially quick at what you call caring for young ladies. if i care for anybody it is for you." "i suppose so; but that may as well be dropped for the present. you mean to marry this girl simply because she has got a lot of money?" "exactly that -as you before long will marry some gentleman only because he has got money." "you have no right to say so because i am engaged to no man. but if i were so it is quite different. unless i marry i can be nobody. i can have no existence that i can call my own. i have no other way of pushing myself into the world's notice. you are a man." "you mean to say that i could become a merchant or a lawyer -be a lord chancellor in time, or perhaps an archbishop of canterbury." "you can live and eat and drink and go where you wish without being dependent on anyone. if i had your freedom and your means do you think that i would marry for money?" in this dialogue the main part was taken by mr frank houston, whose ambition it was to marry miss gertrude tringle, and the lady's part by his cousin and intimate friend, miss imogene docimer. the scene was a walk through a pine forest on the southern slopes of the tyrolean alps, and the occasion had been made a little more exhilarating than usual by the fact that imogene had been strongly advised both by her brother, mr mudbury docimer, and by her sister-in law, mrs mudbury docimer, not to take any more distant rambles with her far-away cousin frank houston. in the teeth of that advice this walk was taken, and the conversation in the pine wood had at the present moment arrived at the point above given. "i do not know that any two persons were ever further asunder in an argument than you and i in this," said frank, not in the least disconcerted by the severe epithets which had been applied to him. "i conceive that you are led away by a desire to deceive yourself, whereas hypocrisy should only be used with the object of deceiving others." "how do i deceive myself?" "in making believe that men are generally different from what they are -in trying to suppose that i ought to be, if i am not, a hero. you shall not find a man whose main object is not that of securing an income. the clergyman who preaches against gold licks the ground beneath the minister's feet in order that he may become a bishop. the barrister cares not with what case he may foul his hands so long as he may become rich. the man in trade is so aware of his own daily dishonesty that he makes two separate existences for himself, and endeavours to atone for his rascality in the city by his performance of all duties at the west end. i regard myself to be so infinitely cleaner in my conscience than other men that i could not bring myself to be a bishop, an attorney-general, or a great merchant. of all the ways open to me this seems to me to be the least sordid. i give her the only two things which she desires -myself and a position. she will give me the only thing i desire, which is some money. when you marry you'll make an equally fine bargain -only your wares will be your beauty." "you will not give her yourself -not your heart." "yes, i shall. i shall make the most of her, and shall do so by becoming as fond of her as i can. of course i like breeding. of course i like beauty. of course i like that aroma of feminine charm which can only be produced by a mixture of intellect, loveliness, taste, and early association. i don't pretend to say that my future would not be much sweeter before me with you as my wife -if only either of us had a sufficiency of income. i acknowledge that. but then i acknowledge also that i prefer miss tringle, with l#100,000, to you with nothing; and i do not think that i ought to be called unmanly, disgraceful, and a coward, because i have courage enough to speak the truth openly to a friend whom i trust. my theory of life shocks you, not because it is uncommon, but because it is not commonly declared." they were silent for a while as they went on through the path, and then miss docimer spoke to him in an altered voice. "i must ask you not to speak to me again as one who by any possibility could have been your wife." "very well. you will not wish me to abandon the privilege of thinking of past possibilities?" "i would -if it were possible." "quite impossible! one's thoughts, i imagine, are always supposed to be one's own." "you know what i mean. a gentleman will always spare a woman if he can do so; and there are cases such as have been ours, in which it is a most imperative duty to do so. you should not have followed us when you had made up your mind about this young lady." "i took care to let you know, beforehand, that i intended it." "you should not have thrown the weight upon me. you should not even have written to me." "i wonder what you would have said then -how loudly you would have abused me -had i not written! would you not have told me then that i had not the courage to be open with you?" he paused for an answer, but she made none. "but i do recognize the necessity of my becoming subject to abuse in this state of affairs. i have been in no respect false, nor in any way wanting in affection. when i suggested to you that 600 pounds a year between us, with an increasing family, and lodgings in marylebone, would be uncomfortable, you shuddered at the prospect. when i explained to you that you would have the worst of it because my club would be open to me, you were almost angry with me because i seemed to imply that there could be any other than one decision." "there could only be one decision -unless you were man enough to earn your bread." "but i wasn't. but i ain't. you might as well let that accident pass, sans dire. was there ever a moment in which you thought that i should earn my bread?" "never for a moment did i endow you with the power of doing anything so manly." "then why throw it in my teeth now? that is not fair. however, i do own that i have to be abused. i don't see any way in which you and i are to part without it. but you need not descend to billingsgate." "i have not descended to billingsgate, mr houston." "upper-world billingsgate! cowardice, as an accusation from a woman to a man, is upper-world billingsgate. but it doesn't matter. of course i know what it means. do you think your brother wants me to go away at once?" "at once," she said. "that would be disagreeable and absurd. you mean to sit to me for that head?" "certainly not." "i cannot in the least understand why not. what has a question of art to do with marriage or giving in marriage? and why should mrs docimer be so angry with me, when she has known the truth all along?" "there are questions which it is of no avail to answer. i have come out with you now because i thought it well that we should have a final opportunity of understanding each other. you understand me at any rate." "perfectly," he said. "you have taken especial care on this occasion to make yourself intelligible." "so i intended. and as you do understand me, and know how far i am from approving your philosophy, you can hardly wish to remain with us longer." then they walked on together in absolute silence for above a mile. they had come out of the wood, and were descending, by a steep and narrow path, to the village in which stood the hotel at which the party was staying. another ten minutes would take them down to the high road. the path here ran by the side of a rivulet, the course of which was so steep that the waters made their way down in a succession of little cataracts. from the other side of the path was a fence, so close to it, that on this particular spot there was room only for one to walk. here frank houston stepped in front of his companion, so as to stop her. "imogene," he said, "if it is intended that i am to start by the diligence for innsbruck this evening, you had better bid me farewell at once." "i have bidden you farewell," she said. "then you have done it in so bitter a mood that you had better try your hand at it again. heaven only knows in what manner you or i may meet again." "what does it matter?" she asked. "i have always felt that the hearts of men are softer than the hearts of women. a woman's hand is soft, but she can steel her heart when she thinks it necessary, as no man can do. does it occur to you at this moment that there has been some true affection between you and me in former days?" "i wish it did not." "it may be so that i wish it also but there is the fact. no wishing will enable me to get rid of it. no wishing will save me from the memory of early dreams and sweet longings and vain triumphs. there is the remembrance of bright glory made very sad to me by the meanness of the existing truth. i do not say but that i would obliterate it if i could; but it is not to be obliterated; the past will not be made more pleasant to me by any pretence of present indignation. i should have thought that it would have been the same with you." "there has been no glory," she said, "though i quite acknowledge the meanness." "there has been at any rate some love." "misplaced. you had better let me pass on. i have, as you say, steeled myself. i will not condescend to any tenderness. in my brother's presence and my sister's i will wish you goodbye and express a hope that you may be successful in your enterprises. here, by the brook-side, out upon the mountain path, where there is no one to hear us but our two selves, i will bid you no farewell softer than that already spoken. go and do as you propose. you have my leave. when it shall have been done there shall never be a word spoken by me against it. but, when you ask me whether you are right, i will only say that i think you to be wrong. it may be that you owe nothing to me; but you owe something to her, and something also to yourself. now, mr houston, i shall be glad to pass on." he shrugged his shoulders and then stepped out of the path, thinking as he did so how ignorant he had been, after all that had passed, of much of the character of imogene docimer. it could not be, he had thought, but that she would melt into softness at last. "i will not condescend to any tenderness," she had said, and it seemed that she would be as good as her word. he then walked down before her in silence, and in silence they reached the inn. "mr houston," said mrs docimer, before they sat down to dinner together, "i thought it was understood that you and imogene should not go out alone together again." "i have taken my place to innsbruck by the diligence this evening," he answered. "perhaps it will be better so, though both mudbury and i will be sorry to lose your company." "yes, mrs docimer, i have taken my place. your sister seemed to think that there would be great danger if i waited till tomorrow morning when i could have got a pleasant lift in a return carriage. i hate travelling at night and i hate diligences. i was quite prepared to post all the way, though it would have ruined me -only for this accursed diligence." "i am sorry you should be inconvenienced." "it does not signify. what a man without a wife may suffer in that way never does signify. it's just fourteen hours. you wouldn't like docimer to come with me." "that's nonsense. you needn't go the whole way unless you like. you could sleep at brunecken." "brunecken is only twelve miles, and it might be dangerous." "of course you choose to turn everything into ridicule." "better that than tears, mrs docimer. what's the good of crying? i can't make myself an elder son. i can't endow imogene with a hundred thousand pounds. she told me just now that i might earn my bread, but she knows that i can't. it's very sad. but what can be got by being melancholy?" "at any rate you had better be away from her." "i am going -this evening. shall i walk on, half a stage, at once, without any dinner? i wish you had heard the kind of things she said to me. you would not have thought that i had gone to walk with her for my own pleasure." "have you not deserved them?" "i think not -but nevertheless i bore them. a woman, of course, can say what she pleases. there's docimer -i hope he won't call me a coward." mr docimer came out on the terrace, on which the two were standing, looking as sour as death. "he is going by the diligence to innsbruck this afternoon," said mrs docimer. "why did he come? a man with a grain of feeling would have remained away." "now, docimer," said frank, "pray do not make yourself unpleasant. your sister has been abusing me all the morning like a pickpocket, and your wife looks at me as though she would say just as much if she dared. after all, what is it i have done that you think so wicked?" "what will everybody think at home", said mrs docimer, "when they know that you're with us again? what chance is she to have if you follow her about in this way?" "i shall not follow her very long," said frank. "my wings will soon be cut, and then i shall never fly again." they were at this time walking up and down the terrace together, and it seemed for a while that neither of them had another word to say in the matter of the dispute between them. then houston went on again in his own defence. "of course it is all bad," he said. "of course we have all been fools. you knew it, and allowed it; and have no right to say a word to me." "we thought that when your uncle died there would have been money," said docimer, with a subdued growl. "exactly; and so did i. you do not mean to say that i deceived either you or her?" "there should have been an end of it when that hope was over." "of course there should. there should never have been a dream that she or i could marry on six hundred a year. had not all of us been fools, we should have taken our hats off and bade each other farewell for ever when the state of the old man's affairs was known. we were fools; but we were fools together; and none of us have a right to abuse the others. when i became acquainted with this young lady at rome, it had been settled among us that imogene and i must seek our fortunes apart." "then why did you come after her?" again asked mr docimer. at this moment imogene herself joined them on the terrace. "mary," she said to her sister-in-law, "i hope you are not carrying on this battle with mr houston. i have said what there was to be said." "you should have held your tongue and said nothing," growled her brother. "be that as it may i have said it, and he quite understands what i think about it. let us eat our dinner in peace and quietness, and then let him go on his travels. he has the world free before him, which he no doubt will open like an oyster, though he does not carry a sword." soon after this they did dine, and contented themselves with abusing the meat and the wine, and finding fault with tyrolese cookery, just as though they had no deeper cares near their hearts. precisely at six the heavy diligence stopped before the hotel door, and houston, who was then smoking with docimer on the terrace, got up to bid them adieu. mrs docimer was kind and almost affectionate, with a tear in her eye. "well old fellow," said docimer, "take care of yourself. perhaps everything will turn up right some of these days." "goodbye, mr houston," said imogene, just giving him her hand to touch in the lightest manner possible. "god bless you, imogene," said he. and there was a tear also in his eye. but there was none in hers, as she stood looking at him while he prepared himself for his departure; nor did she say another word to him as he went. "and now", said she, when the three of them were left upon the terrace, "i will ask a great favour of you both. i will beg you not to let there be another word about mr houston among us." after that she rambled out by herself, and was not seen again by either of them that evening. when she was alone she too shed her tears, though she felt impatient and vexed with herself as they came into her eyes. it was not perhaps only for her lost love that she wept. had no one known that her love had been given and then lost she might have borne it without weeping. but now, in carrying on this vain affair of hers, in devoting herself to a lover who had, with her own consent, passed away from her, she had spent the sweet fresh years of her youth, and all those who knew her would know that it had been so. he had told her that it would be her fate to purchase for herself a husband with her beauty. it might be so. at any rate she did not doubt her own beauty. but, if it were to be so, then the romance and the charm of her life were gone. she had quite agreed that six hundred a year, and lodgings in marylebone, would be quite unendurable; but what was there left for her that would be endurable? he could be happy with the prospect of gertrude tringle's money. she could not be happy, looking forward to that unloved husband who was to be purchased by her beauty. chapter 29 at merle park. no. 1 sir thomas took the real holiday of the year at glenbogie -where he was too far removed from lombard street to be drawn daily into the vortex of his millions. he would stay usually six weeks at glenbogie -which were by no means the happiest weeks of the year. of all the grand things of the world which his energy and industry had produced for him, he loved his millions the best. it was not because they were his -as indeed they were not. a considerable filing off them -what he regarded as his percentage -annually became his own; but it was not this that he loved. in describing a man's character it is the author's duty to give the man his due. sir thomas liked his own wealth well enough. where is the rich man who does not? -or where is the poor man who does not wish that he had it to like? but what he loved were the millions with which travers and treason dealt. he was travers and treason, though his name did not even appear in the firm, and he dealt with the millions. he could affect the rate of money throughout europe, and emissaries from national treasuries would listen to his words. he had been governor and deputy-governor of the bank of england. all the city respected him, not so much because he was rich, as that he was one who thoroughly understood millions. if russia required to borrow some infinite number of roubles, he knew how to arrange it, and could tell to a rouble at what rate money could be made by it, and at what rate money would certainly be lost. he liked his millions, and was therefore never quite comfortable at glenbogie. but at merle park he was within easy reach of london. at merle park he was not obliged to live, from week's end to week's end, without a sight of lombard street. the family might be at merle park, while he might come down on a friday and remain till tuesday morning. that was the plan proposed for merle park. as a fact he would spend four days in town, and only two down in the country. therefore, though he spent his so-named holiday at glenbogie, merle park was the residence which he loved. in this autumn he went up to london long before his family, and then found them at merle park on the saturday after their arrival there. they had gone down on the previous wednesday. on the saturday, when he entered the house, the first thing he saw was mr traffick's hat in the hall. this was saturday, 23rd november, and there would be three months before parliament would meet! a curse was not muttered, but just formed between his teeth, as he saw the hat. sir thomas, in his angriest mood, never went so far as quite to mutter his curses. will one have to expiate the anathemas which are well kept within the barrier of the teeth, or only those which have achieved some amount of utterance? sir thomas went on, with a servant at his heels, chucking about the doors rather violently, till he found mr traffick alone in the drawing-room. mr traffick had had a glass of sherry and bitters brought in for his refreshment and sir thomas saw the glass on the mantelpiece. he never took sherry and bitters himself. one glass of wine, with his two o'clock mutton chop, sufficed him till dinner. it was all very well to be a member of parliament, but, after all, members of parliament never do anything. men who work don't take sherry and bitters! men who work don't put their hats in other people's halls without leave from the master of the house! "where's your mistress?" said sir thomas, to the man, without taking any notice of his son-in-law. the ladies had only just come in from driving, were very cold, and had gone up to dress. sir thomas went out of the room, again banging the door, and again taking no notice of mr traffick. mr traffick put his hand up to the mantelpiece, and finished his sherry and bitters. "my dear," said mr traffick to his wife, up in her bedroom, "your father has come down in one of his tantrums." "i knew he would," said augusta. "but it does not signify the least. give him a kiss when you see him, and don't seem to notice it. there is not a man in the world has a higher regard for me than your father, but if anyone were to see him in one of his tantrums they would suppose he meant to be uncivil." "i hope he won't be downright unkind, septimus," said his wife. "never fear! the kindest-hearted man in the world is your father." "so he's here!" that was the first word of greeting which sir thomas addressed to his wife in her bedroom. "yes, tom -they're here." "when did they come?" "well -to tell the truth, we found them here." "the -!" but sir thomas restrained the word on the right, or inside, of the teeth. "they thought we were to be here a day sooner, and so they came on the wednesday morning. they were to come, you know." "i wish i knew when they were to go." "you don't want to turn your own daughter out of your own house?" "why doesn't he get a house of his own for her? for her sake why doesn't he do it? he has the spending of l#6,000 a year of my money, and yet i am to keep him! no -i don't want to turn my daughter out of my house; but it'll end in my turning him out." when a week had passed by mr traffick had not been as yet turned out. sir thomas, when he came back to merle park on the following friday, condescended to speak to his son-in-law, and to say something to him as to the news of the day; but this he did in an evident spirit of preconceived hostility. "everything is down again," he said. "fluctuations are always common at this time of the year," said traffick; "but i observe that trade always becomes brisk a little before christmas." "to a man with a fixed income like you, it doesn't much matter," said sir thomas. "i was looking at it in a public light." "exactly. a man who has an income, and never spends it, need not trouble himself with private views as to the money market." mr traffick rubbed his hands, and asked whether the new buildings at the back of the lombard street premises were nearly finished. mr traffick's economy had a deleterious effect upon gertrude, which she, poor girl, did not deserve. sir thomas, deeply resolving in his mind that he would, at some not very distant date, find means by which he would rid himself of mr traffick, declared to himself that he would not, at any rate, burden himself with another son-in-law of the same kind. frank houston was, to his thinking, of the same kind, and therefore he hardened his heart against frank houston. now frank houston, could he have got his wife with l#6,000 a year -as mr traffick had done -would certainly not have troubled the tringle mansions with too much of his presence. it would have been his object to remove himself as far as possible from the tringles, and to have enjoyed his life luxuriously with the proceeds of his wife's fortune. but his hopes in this respect were unjustly impeded by mr traffick's parsimony. soon after leaving the hotel in the tyrol at which we lately saw him, frank houston wrote to his lady-love, declaring the impatience of his ardour, and suggesting that it would be convenient if everything could be settled before christmas. in his letter he declared to gertrude how very uncomfortable it was to him to have to discuss money matters with her father. it was so disagreeable that he did not think that he could bring himself to do it again. but, if she would only be urgent with her father, she would of course prevail. acting upon this gertrude determined to be urgent with her father on his second coming to merle park, when, as has been explained, sir thomas was in a frame of mind very much opposed to impecunious sons-in-law. previous to attacking her father gertrude had tried her hand again upon her mother, but lady tringle had declined. "if anything is to be done you must do it yourself," lady tringle had said. "papa," said gertrude, having followed him into a little sitting-room where he digested and arranged his telegrams when at merle park, "i wish something could be settled about mr houston." sir thomas at this moment was very angry. mr traffick had not only asked for the loan of a carriage to take him into hastings, but had expressed a wish that there might be a peculiar kind of claret served at dinner with which he was conversant and to which he was much attached. "then", said he, "you may as well have it all settled at once." "how, papa?" "you may understand for good and all that i will have nothing to do with mr houston." "papa, that would be very cruel." "my dear, if you call me cruel i will not allow you to come and talk to me at all. cruel indeed! what is your idea of cruelty?" "everybody knows that we are attached to each other." "everybody knows nothing of the kind. i know nothing of the kind. and you are only making a fool of yourself. mr houston is a penniless adventurer and is only attached to my money. he shall never see a penny of it." "he is not an adventurer, papa. he is much less like an adventurer than mr traffick. he has an income of his own, only it is not much." "about as much as would pay his bill at the club for cigars and champagne. you may make your mind at rest, for i will not give mr houston a shilling. why should a man expect to live out of my earnings who never did a day's work in his life?" gertrude left the room despondently, as there was nothing more to be done on the occasion. but it seemed to her as though she were being used with the utmost cruelty. augusta had been allowed to marry her man without a shilling, and had been enriched with l#120,000. why should she be treated worse than augusta? she was very strongly of opinion that frank houston was very much better than septimus traffick. mr traffick's aptitude for saving his money was already known to the whole household. frank would never wish to save. frank would spend her income for her like a gentleman. frank would not hang about glenbogie or merle park till he should be turned out. everybody was fond of frank. but she, gertrude, had already learnt to despise mr traffick, member of parliament though he was. she had already begun to think that having been chosen by frank houston, who was decidedly a man of fashion, she had proved herself to be of higher calibre than her sister augusta. but her father's refusal to her had been not only very rough but very decided. she would not abandon her frank. such an idea never for a moment crossed her mind. but what step should she next take? thinking over it during the whole of the day she did at last form a plan. but she greatly feared that the plan would not recommend itself to mr frank houston. she was not timid, but he might be so. in spite of her father's anger and roughness she would not doubt his ultimate generosity; but frank might doubt it. if frank could be induced to come and carry her off from merle park and marry her in some manner approved for such occasions, she would stand the risk of getting the money afterwards. but she was greatly afraid that the risk would be too much for frank. she did not, however, see any other scheme before her. as to waiting patiently till her father's obdurate heart should be softened by the greater obduracy of her own love, there was a tedium and a prolonged dullness in such a prospect which were anything but attractive to her. had it been possible she would have made a bargain with her father. "if you won't give us l#120,000 let us begin with l#60,000." but even this she feared would not altogether be agreeable to frank. let her think of it how she would, that plan of being run away with seemed alone to be feasible -and not altogether disagreeable. it was necessary that she should answer her lover's letter. no embargo had as yet been put upon her correspondence, and therefore she could send her reply without external difficulty: dear frank, [she said,] i quite agree with you about christmas. it ought to be settled. but i have very bad news to send to you. i have been to papa as you told me, but he was very unkind. nothing could be worse. he said that you ought to earn your bread, which is, of course, all humbug. he didn't understand that there ought to be some gentlemen who never earn their bread. i am sure, if you had been earning your bread by going to lombard street every day, i shouldn't have ever cared for you. he says that he will not give a single shilling. i think he is angry because augusta's husband will come and live here always. that is disgusting, of course. but it isn't my fault. it is either that, or else some money has gone wrong -or perhaps he had a very bad fit of indigestion. he was, however, so savage, that i really do not know how to go to him again. mamma is quite afraid of him, and does not dare say a word, because it was she who managed about mr traffick. what ought to be done? of course, i don't like to think that you should be kept waiting. i am not sure that i quite like it myself. i will do anything you propose, and am not afraid of running a little risk. if we could get married without his knowing anything about it, i am sure he would give the money afterwards -because he is always so good-natured in the long run, and so generous. he can be very savage, but he would be sure to forgive. how would it be if i were to go away? i am of age, and i believe that no one could stop me. if you could manage that we should get married in that way, i would do my best. i know people can get themselves married at ostend. i do not see what else is to be done. you can write to me at present here, and nothing wrong will come of it. but augusta says that if papa were to begin to suspect anything about my going away he would stop my letters. dear frank, i am yours always, and always most lovingly, gertrude "you needn't be a bit afraid but that i should be quite up to going off if you could arrange it." "i believe, papa," said mrs traffick, on the afternoon of the day on which this was written, "that gertrude is thinking of doing something wrong, and therefore i feel it to be my duty to bring you this letter." augusta had not been enabled to read the letter, but had discussed with her sister the propriety of eloping. "i won't advise it," she had said, "but, if you do, mr houston should arrange to be married at ostend. i know that can be done." some second thought had perhaps told her that any such arrangement would be injurious to the noble blood of the traffick family, and she had therefore "felt it to be her duty" to extract the letter from the family letter-box, and to give it to her father. a daughter who could so excellently do her duty would surely not be turned out before parliament met. sir thomas took the letter and said not a word to his elder child. when he was alone he doubted. he was half-minded to send the letter on. what harm could the two fools do by writing to each other? while he held the strings of the purse there could be no marriage. then he bethought himself of his paternal authority, of the right he had to know all that his daughter did -and he opened the letter. "there ought to be gentlemen who don't earn their bread!" "ought there?" said he to himself. if so, these gentlemen ought not to come to him for bread. he was already supporting one such, and that was quite enough. "mamma is quite afraid of him, and doesn't dare say a word." that he rather liked. "i am sure he would give the money afterwards." "i am sure he would do no such thing," he said to himself, and he reflected that in such a condition he should rather be delighted than otherwise in watching the impecunious importunities of his baffled son-in-law. the next sentence reconciled his girl to him almost entirely. "he is always so good-natured in the long run, and so generous!" for "good-natured" he did not care much, but he liked to be thought generous. then he calmly tore the letter in little bits, and threw them into the waste paper basket. he sat for ten minutes thinking what he had better do, finding the task thus imposed upon him to be much more difficult than the distribution of a loan. at last he determined that, if he did nothing, things would probably settle themselves. mr houston, when he received no reply from his lady-love, would certainly be quiescent, and gertrude, without any assent from her lover, could hardly arrange her journey to ostend. perhaps it might be well that he should say a word of caution to his wife; but as to that he did not at present quite make up his mind, as he was grievously disturbed while he was considering the subject. "if you please, sir thomas," said the coachman, hurrying into the room almost without the ceremony of knocking -"if you please, phoebe mare has been brought home with both her knees cut down to the bone." "what!" exclaimed sir thomas, who indulged himself in a taste for horseflesh, and pretended to know one animal from another. "yes, indeed, sir thomas, down to the bone," said the coachman, who entertained all that animosity against mr traffick which domestics feel for habitual guests who omit the ceremony of tipping. "mr traffick brought her down on windover hill, sir thomas, and she'll never be worth a feed of oats again. i didn't think a man was born who could throw that mare off her feet, sir thomas." now mr traffick, when he had borrowed the phaeton and pair of horses that morning to go into hastings, had dispensed with the services of a coachman, and had insisted on driving himself. chapter 30 at merle park. no. 2 has any irascible reader -any reader who thoroughly enjoys the pleasure of being in a rage -encountered suddenly some grievance which, heavy as it may be, has been more than compensated by the privilege it has afforded of blowing-up the offender? such was the feeling of sir thomas as he quickly followed his coachman out of the room. he had been very proud of his phoebe mare, who could trot with him from the station to the house at the rate of twelve miles an hour. but in his present frame of mind he had liked the mare less than he disliked his son-in-law. mr traffick had done him this injury, and he now had mr traffick on the hip. there are some injuries for which a host cannot abuse his guest. if your best venetian decanter be broken at table you are bound to look as though you liked it. but if a horse be damaged a similar amount of courtesy is hardly required. the well-nurtured gentleman, even in that case, will only look unhappy and not say a word. sir thomas was hardly to be called a well-nurtured gentleman; and then it must be remembered that the offender was his son-in-law. "good heavens!" he exclaimed, hurrying into the yard. "what is this?" the mare was standing out on the pavement with three men around her, of whom one was holding her head, another was down on his knees washing her wounds, and the third was describing the fatal nature of the wounds which she had received. traffick was standing at a little distance, listening in silence to the implied rebukes of the groom. "good heavens, what is this?" repeated sir thomas, as he joined the conclave. "there are a lot of loose stones on that hill," said traffick, "and she tripped on one and came down, all in a lump, before you could look at her. i'm awfully sorry, but it might have happened to anyone." sir thomas knew how to fix his darts better than by throwing them direct at his enemy. "she has utterly destroyed herself," said he, addressing himself to the head groom, who was busily employed with the sponge in his hand. "i'm afraid she has, sir thomas. the joint-oil will be sure to run on both knees; the gashes is so mortal deep." "i've driven that mare hundreds of times down that hill," said sir thomas, "and i never knew her to trip before." "never, sir thomas," said the groom. "she'd have come down with you today," said mr traffick, defending himself. "it was my own fault, bunsum. that's all that can be said about it." bunsum the groom, kneeling as he was, expressed, by his grimaces, his complete agreement with this last opinion of his master. "of course i ought to have known that he couldn't drive," said sir thomas. "a horse may fall down with anybody," said mr traffick. "you'd better take her and shoot her," said sir thomas, still addressing the groom. "she was the best thing we had in the stable, but now she is done for." with that he turned away from the yard without having as yet addressed a word to his son-in-law. this was so intolerable that even mr traffick could not bear it in silence. "i have told you that i am very sorry," said he, following sir thomas closely, "and i don't know what a man can do more." "nothing -unless it be not to borrow a horse again." "you may be sure i will never do that." "i'm not sure of it at all. if you wanted another tomorrow you'd ask for him if you thought you could get him." "i call that very uncivil, sir thomas -and very unkind." "bother!" said sir thomas. "it is no good in being kind to a fellow like you. did you ever hear what the cabman did who had a sovereign given to him for driving a mile? he asked the fool who gave it him to make it a guinea. i am the fool, and, by george, you are the cabman!" with this sir thomas turned into the house by a small door, leaving his son-in-law to wander round to the front by himself. "your father has insulted me horribly," he said to his wife, whom he found up in her bedroom. "what is the matter now, septimus?" "that little mare of his, which i have no doubt has come down half a score of times before, fell with me and cut her knees." "that's phoebe," said augusta. "she was his favourite." "it's a kind of thing that might happen to anyone, and no gentleman thinks of mentioning it. he said such things to me that upon my word i don't think i can stop in the house any longer." "oh, yes, you will," said the wife. "of course, it is a difference coming from one's father-in-law. it's almost the same as from one's father." "he didn't mean it, septimus." "i suppose not. if he had, i really couldn't have borne it. he does become very rough sometimes, but i know that at bottom he has a thorough respect for me. it is only that induces me to bear it." then it was settled between husband and wife that they should remain in their present quarters, and that not a word further should be said, at any rate by them, about the phoebe mare. nor did sir thomas say another word about the mare, but he added a note to those already written in the tablets of his memory as to his son-in-law, and the note declared that no hint, let it be ever so broad, would be effectual with mr traffick. the next day was a sunday, and then another trouble awaited sir thomas. at this time it was not customary with tom to come often to merle park. he had his own lodgings in london and his own club, and did not care much for the rural charms of merle park. but on this occasion he had condescended to appear, and on the sunday afternoon informed his father that there was a matter which he desired to discuss with him. "father," said he, "i am getting confoundedly sick of all this." "confounded", said sir thomas, "is a stupid foolish word, and it means nothing." "there is a sort of comfort in it, sir," said tom; "but if it's objectionable i'll drop it." "it is objectionable." "i'll drop it, sir. but nevertheless i am very sick of it." "what are you sick of, tom?" "all this affair with my cousin." "then, if you take my advice, you'll drop that too." "i couldn't do that, father. a word is all very well. a man can drop a word; but a girl is a different sort of thing. one can't drop a girl, even if one tries." "have you tried, tom?" "yes, i have. i've done my best to try. i put it out of my mind for a fortnight and wouldn't think of her. i had a bottle of champagne every day at dinner and then went to the theatre. but it was all of no use. i have set my heart on it and i can't give her up. i'll tell you what i'd like to do. i'd like to give her a diamond necklace." "it wouldn't be the slightest use," said sir thomas, shaking his head. "why not? it's what other men do. i mean it to be something handsome -about three hundred pounds." "that's a large sum of money for a necklace." "some of them cost a deal more than that." "and you'd only throw away your money." "if she took it, she'd take me too. if she didn't -why i should still have the diamonds. i mean to try any way." "then it's of no use your coming to me." "i thought you'd let me have the money. it's no good running into debt for them. and then if you'd add something of your own -a locket, or something of that kind -i think it would have an effect. i have seen a necklace at ricolay's, and if i could pay ready money for it i could have twenty percent off it. the price named is three hundred guineas. that would make it l#254 5s. l#250 would buy it if the cheque was offered." there was a spirit about the son which was not displeasing to the father. that idea that the gift, if accepted, would be efficacious, or if not that it would be rejected -so that tom would not lose his hopes and his diamonds together -seemed to be sound. sir thomas, therefore, promised the money, with the distinct understanding that if the gift were not accepted by ayala it should be consigned to his own hands. but as for any present from himself, he felt that this would not be the time for it. he had called upon his niece and solicited her himself, and she had been deaf to his words. after that he could not condescend to send her gifts. "should she become my promised daughter-in-law then i would send her presents," said sir thomas. the poor man certainly received less pleasure from his wealth than was credited to him by those who knew his circumstances. yet he endeavoured to be good to those around him, and especially good to his children. there had been present to him ever since the beginning of his successes -ever since his marriage -a fixed resolution that he would not be a curmudgeon with his money, that he would endeavour to make those happy who depended on him, and that he would be liberal in such settlements for his children as might be conducive to their happiness and fortunes in life. in this way he had been very generous to mr traffick. the man was a member of parliament, the son of a peer, and laborious. why should he expect more? money was wanting, but he could supply the money. so he had supplied it, and had been content to think that a good man should be propped up in the world by his means. what that had come to the reader knows. he thoroughly detested his son-in-law, and would have given much to have had his money back again -so that mr traffick should have had no share in it. then there was his second daughter! what should be done with gertrude? the money should be forthcoming for her too if the fitting man could be found. but he would have nothing further to do with a penniless lover, let his position in the world of fashion, or even in the world of politics, be what it might. the man should either have wealth of his own, or should be satisfied to work for it. houston had been unfortunate in the moment of his approaches. sir thomas had been driven by his angry feelings to use hard, sharp words, and now was forced to act up to his words. he declared roughly that mr houston should not have a shilling of his money -as he had certainly been justified for doing; and his daughter, who had always been indulged in every kind of luxury, had at once concocted a plot for running away from her home! as he thought of the plot it seemed to be wonderful to him that she should be willing to incur such a danger -to be ready without a penny to marry a penniless man -till he confessed to himself that, were she to do so, she would certainly have the money sooner or later. he was capable of passion, capable of flying out and saying a very severe thing to septimus traffick or another when his temper was hot; but he was incapable of sustained wrath. he was already aware that if mr traffick chose to stay he would stay -that if mr houston were brave enough to be persistent he might have both the money and the girl. as he thought of it all he was angry with himself, wishing that he were less generous, less soft, less forgiving. and now here was tom -whom at the present moment he liked the best of all his children, who of the three was the least inclined to run counter to him -ready to break his heart, because he could not get a little chit of a girl of whom he would probably be tired in twelve months after he possessed her! remembering what tom had been, he was at a loss to understand how such a lad should be so thoroughly in love. at the present moment, had ayala been purchaseable, he would have been willing to buy her at a great price, because he would fain have pleased tom had it been possible. but ayala, who had not a penny in the world -who never would have a penny unless he should give it her -would not be purchased, and would have nothing to do with tom! the world was running counter to him, so that he had no pleasure in his home, no pleasure in his money, no pleasure in his children. the little back parlour in lombard street was sweeter to him than merle park, with all its charms. his daughter gertrude wanted to run away from him, while by no inducement could he get mr traffick to leave the house. while he was in this humour he met his niece lucy roaming about the garden. he knew the whole story of lucy's love, and had been induced by his wife to acknowledge that her marriage with the sculptor was not to be sanctioned. he had merely expressed his scorn when the unfortunate circumstances of hamel's birth had been explained to him again and again. he had ridiculed the horror felt by his wife at the equally ill-born brothers and sisters in rome. he had merely shaken his head when he was told that hamel's father never went inside any place of worship. but when it was explained to him that the young man had, so to say, no income at all, then he was forced to acknowledge that the young man ought not to be allowed to marry his niece. to lucy herself he had as yet said nothing on the subject since he had asked the lover in to lunch at glenbogie. he heard bad accounts of her. he had been told by his wife, on different occasions -not in the mere way of conversation, but with premeditated energy of fault-finding -that lucy was a disobedient girl. she was worse than ayala. she persisted in saying that she would marry the penniless artist as soon as he should profess himself to be ready. it had been different, she had tried to explain to her aunt, before she had been engaged to him. now she considered herself to be altogether at his disposal. this had been her plea, but her plea had been altogether unacceptable to aunt emmeline. "she can do as she pleases, of course," sir thomas had said. that might be all very well; but aunt emmeline was strongly of opinion that an adopted daughter of queen's gate, of glenbogie, and merle park, ought not to be allowed to do as she pleased with herself. a girl ought not to be allowed to have the luxuries of palatial residences, and the luxuries of free liberty of choice at the same time. more than once it had occurred to sir thomas that he would put an end to all these miseries by a mere scratch of his pen. it need not be l#120,000, or l#100,000, as with a daughter. a few modest thousands would do it. and then this man hamel, though the circumstances of his birth had been unfortunate, was not an idler like frank houston. as far as sir thomas could learn, the man did work, and was willing to work. the present small income earned would gradually become more. he had a kindly feeling towards lucy, although he had been inclined to own that her marriage with hamel was out of the question. "my dear," he said to her, "why are you walking about alone?" she did not like to say that she was walking alone because she had no one to walk with her -no such companion as isadore would be if isadore were allowed to come to merle park; so she simply smiled, and went on by her uncle's side. "do you like this place as well as glenbogie?" he asked. "oh; yes." "perhaps you will be glad to get back to london again?" "oh; no." "which do you like best, then?" "they are all so nice, if -" "if what, lucy?" "caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt," lucy might have said, had she known the passage. as it was she put the same feeling into simpler words, "i should like one as well as the other, uncle tom, if things went comfortably." "there's a great deal in that," he said. "i suppose the meaning is, that you do not get on well with your aunt?" "i am afraid she is angry with me, uncle tom." "why do you make her angry, lucy? when she tells you what is your duty, why do you not endeavour to do it?" "i cannot do what she tells me," said lucy; "and, as i cannot, i think i ought not to be here." "have you anywhere else to go to?" to this she made no reply, but walked on in silence. "when you say you ought not to be here, what idea have you formed in your own mind as to the future?" "that i shall marry mr hamel, some day." "do you think it would be well to marry any man without an income to live upon? would it be a comfort to him seeing that he had just enough to maintain himself, and no more?" these were terrible questions to her -questions which she could not answer, but yet as to which her mind entertained an easy answer. a little help from him, who was willing to indulge her with so many luxuries while she was under his roof, would enable her to be an assistance rather than a burden to her lover. but of this she could not utter a word. "love is all very well," continued sir thomas, in his gruffest voice; "but love should be regulated by good sense. it is a crime when two beggars think of marrying each other -two beggars who are not prepared to live as beggars do." "he is not a beggar," said lucy, indignantly. "he has begged nothing; nor have i." "pshaw!" said sir thomas; "i was laying down a general rule. i did not mean to call anybody a beggar. you shouldn't take me up like that." "i beg your pardon, uncle tom," she said piteously. "very well; very well; that will do." but still he went on walking with her, and she felt she could not leave him till he gave her some signal that she was to go. they continued in this way till they had come nearly round the large garden; when he stopped, as he was walking, and addressed her again. "i suppose you write to him sometimes." "yes," said lucy, boldly. "write to him at once, and tell him to come and see me in lombard street on tuesday, at two o'clock. give me the letter, and i will take care it is sent to him directly i get to town. now you had better go in, for it is getting very cold." chapter 31 the diamond necklace tom went up to london intent upon his diamonds. to tell the truth he had already made the purchase subject to some question of ready money. he now paid for it after considerable chaffering as to the odd pounds, which he succeeded in bringing to a successful termination. then he carried the necklace away with him, revolving in his mind the different means of presentation. he thought that a letter might be best if only he was master of the language in which such a letter should properly be written. but he entirely doubted his own powers of composition. he was so modest in this respect that he would not even make an attempt. he knew himself well enough to be aware that he was in many respects ignorant. he would have endeavoured to take the necklace personally to ayala had he not been conscious that he could not recommend his present with such romantic phrases and touches of poetry as would be gratifying to her fine sense. were he to find himself in her presence with the necklace he must depend on himself for his words; but a letter might be sent in his own handwriting, the poetry and romance of which might be supplied by another. now it had happened that tom had formed a marvellous friendship in rome with colonel stubbs. they had been hunting together in the campagna, and tom had been enabled to accommodate the colonel with the loan of a horse when his own had been injured. they had since met in london, and stubbs had declared to more than one of his friends that tom, in spite of his rings and his jewelry, was a very good fellow at bottom. tom had been greatly flattered by the intimacy, and had lately been gratified by an invitation to aldershot in order that the military glories of the camp might be shown to him. he had accepted the invitation, and a day in the present week had been fixed. then it occurred to him suddenly that he knew no one so fitted to write such a letter as that demanded as his friend colonel jonathan stubbs. he had an idea that the colonel, in spite of his red hair and in spite of a certain aptitude for drollery which pervaded him, had a romantic side to his character; and he felt confident that, as to the use of language, the colonel was very great indeed. he therefore, when he went to aldershot, carefully put the bracelet in his breast pocket and determined to reveal his secret and to ask for aid. the day of his arrival was devoted to the ordinary pursuits of aldershot and the evening to festivities, which were prolonged too late into the night to enable him to carry out his purpose before he went to bed. he arranged to leave on the next morning by a train between ten and eleven, and was told that three or four men would come in to breakfast at half-past nine. his project then seemed to be all but hopeless. but at last with great courage he made an effort. "colonel," said he, just as they were going to bed, "i wonder if you could give me half an hour before breakfast. it is a matter of great importance." tom, as he said this, assumed a most solemn face. "an hour if you like, my dear boy. i am generally up soon after six, and am always out on horseback before breakfast as soon as the light serves." "then if you'll have me called at half past seven i shall be ever so much obliged to you." the next morning at eight the two were closeted together, and tom immediately extracted the parcel from his pocket and opened the diamonds to view. "upon my word that is a pretty little trinket," said the colonel, taking the necklace in his hand. "three hundred guineas!" said tom, opening his eyes very wide. "i daresay." "that is, it would have been three hundred guineas unless i had come down with the ready. i made the fellow give me twenty percent off. you should always remember this when you are buying jewelry." "and what is to be done with this pretty thing? i suppose it is intended for some fair lady's neck." "oh, of course." "and why has it been brought down to aldershot? there are plenty of fellows about this place who will get their hands into your pocket if they know that you have such a trinket as that about you." "i will tell you why i brought it," said tom, very gravely. "it is, as you say, for a young lady. i intend to make that young lady my wife. of course this is a secret, you know." "it shall be as sacred as the pope's toe," said stubbs. "don't joke about it, colonel, if you please. it's life and death to me." "i'll keep your secret and will not joke. now what can i do for you?" "i must send this as a present with a letter. i must first tell you that she has -well, refused me." "that never means much the first time, old boy." "she has refused me half a dozen times, but i mean to go on with it. if she refuses me two dozen times i'll try her a third dozen." "then you are quite in earnest?" "i am. it's a kind of thing i know that men laugh about, but i don't mind telling you that i am downright in love with her. the governor approves of it." "she has got money, probably?" "not a shilling -not as much as would buy a pair of gloves. but i don't love her a bit the less for that. as to income, the governor will stump up like a brick. now i want you to write the letter." "it's a kind of thing a third person can't do," said the colonel, when he had considered the request for a moment. "why not? yes, you can." "do it yourself, and say just the simplest words as they come up. they are sure to go further with any girl than what another man may write. it is impossible that another man should be natural on such a task as that." "natural! i don't know about natural," said tom, who was anxious now to explain the character of the lady in question. "i don't know that a letter that was particularly natural would please her. a touch of poetry and romance would go further than anything natural." "who is the lady?" asked the colonel, who certainly was by this time entitled to be so far inquisitive. "she is my cousin -ayala dormer." "who?" "ayala dormer -my cousin. she was at rome, but i do not think you ever saw her there." "i have seen her since," said the colonel. "have you? i didn't know." "she was with my aunt, the marchesa baldoni." "dear me! so she was. i never put the two things together. don't you admire her?" "certainly i do. my dear fellow, i can't write this letter for you." then he put down the pen which he had taken up as though he had intended to comply with his friend's request. "you may take it as settled that i cannot write it." "no?" "impossible. one man should never write such a letter for another man. you had better give the thing in person -that is, if you mean to go on with the matter." "i shall certainly go on with it," said tom, stoutly. "after a certain time, you know, reiterated offers do, you know -do -do -partake of the nature of persecution." "reiterated refusals are the sort of persecution i don't like." "it seems to me that ayala -miss dormer, i mean -should be protected by a sort of feeling -feeling of -of what i may perhaps call her dependent position. she is peculiarly -peculiarly situated." "if she married me she would be much better situated. i could give her everything she wants." "it isn't an affair of money, mr tringle." tom felt, from the use of the word mister, that he was in some way giving offence; but felt also that there was no true cause for offence. "when a man offers everything," he said, "and asks for nothing, i don't think he should be said to persecute." "after a time it becomes persecution. i am sure ayala would feel it so." "my cousin can't suppose that i am ill-using her," said tom, who disliked the "ayala" quite as much as he did the "mister". "miss dormer, i meant. i can have nothing further to say about it. i can't write the letter, and i should not imagine that ayala -miss dormer -would be moved in the least by any present that could possibly be made to her. i must go out now, if you don't mind, for half an hour; but i shall be back in time for breakfast." then tom was left alone with the necklace lying on the table before him. he knew that something was wrong with the colonel, but could not in the least guess what it might be. he was quite aware that early in the interview the colonel had encouraged him to persevere with the lady, and had then, suddenly, not only advised him to desist, but had told him in so many words that he was bound to desist out of consideration for the lady. and the colonel had spoken of his cousin in a manner that was distasteful to him. he could not analyse his feelings. he did not exactly know why he was displeased, but he was displeased. the colonel, when asked for his assistance, was, of course, bound to talk about the lady -would be compelled, by the nature of the confidence, to mention the lady's name -would even have been called on to write her christian name. but this he should have done with a delicacy -almost with a blush. instead of that ayala's name had been common on his tongue. tom felt himself to be offended, but hardly knew why. and then, why had he been called mister tringle? the breakfast, which was eaten shortly afterwards in the company of three or four other men, was not eaten in comfort -and then tom hurried back to london and to lombard street. after this failure tom felt it to be impossible to go to another friend for assistance. there had been annoyance in describing his love to colonel stubbs, and pain in the treatment he had received. even had there been another friend to whom he could have confided the task, he could not have brought himself to encounter the repetition of such treatment. he was as firmly fixed as ever in his conviction that he could not write the letter himself. and, as he thought of the words with which he should accompany a personal presentation of the necklace, he reflected that in all probability he might not be able to force his way into ayala's presence. then a happy thought struck him. mrs dosett was altogether on his side. everybody was on his side except ayala herself, and that pigheaded colonel. would it not be an excellent thing to entrust the necklace to the hands of his aunt dosett, in order that she might give it over to ayala with all the eloquence in her power? satisfied with this project he at once wrote a note to mrs dosett. my dear aunt, i want to see you on most important business. if i shall not be troubling you, i will call upon you tomorrow at ten o'clock, before i go to my place of business. yours affectionately, t. tringle, junior on the following morning he apparelled himself with all his rings. he was a good-hearted, well-intentioned young man, with excellent qualities; but he must have been slow of intellect when he had not as yet learnt the deleterious effect of all those rings. on this occasion he put on his rings, his chains, and his bright waistcoat, and made himself a thing disgusting to be looked at by any well-trained female. as far as his aunt was concerned he would have been altogether indifferent as to his appearance, but there was present to his mind some small hope that he might be allowed to see ayala, as the immediate result of the necklace. should he see ayala, then how unfortunate it would be that he should present himself before the eyes of his mistress without those adornments which he did not doubt would be grateful to her. he had heard from ayala's own lips that all things ought to be pretty. therefore he endeavoured to make himself pretty. of course he failed -as do all men who endeavour to make themselves pretty -but it was out of the question that he should understand the cause of his failure. "aunt dosett, i want you to do me a very great favour," he began, with a solemn voice. "are you going to a party, tom?" she said. "a party! no -who gives a party in london at this time of the day? oh, you mean because i have just got a few things on. when i call anywhere i always do. i have got another lady to see, a lady of rank, and so i just made a change." but this was a fib. "what can i do for you, tom?" "i want you to look at that." then he brought out the necklace, and, taking it out of the case, displayed the gems tastefully upon the table. "i do believe they are diamonds," said mrs dosett. "yes; they are diamonds. i am not the sort of fellow to get anything sham. what do you think that little thing cost, aunt dosett?" "i haven't an idea. sixty pounds, perhaps!" "sixty pounds! do you go into a jeweller's shop and see what you could do among diamonds with sixty pounds!" "i never go into jewellers' shops, tom." "nor i, very often. it's a sort of place where a fellow can drop a lot of money. but i did go into one after this. it don't look much, does it?" "it is very pretty." "i think it is pretty. well, aunt dosett, the price for that little trifle was three -hundred -guineas!" as he said this he looked into his aunt's face for increased admiration. "you gave three hundred guineas for it!" "i went with ready money in my hand, when i tempted the man with a cheque to let me have it for two hundred and fifty pounds. in buying jewelry you should always do that." "i never buy jewelry," said mrs dosett, crossly. "if you should, i mean. now, i'll tell you what i want you to do. this is for ayala." "for ayala!" "yes, indeed. i am not the fellow to stick at a trifle when i want to carry my purpose. i bought this the other day and gave ready money for it -two hundred and fifty pounds -on purpose to give it to ayala. in naming the value -of course you'll do that when you give it her -you might as well say three hundred guineas. that was the price on the ticket. i saw it myself -so there won't be any untruth you know." "am i to give it her?" "that's just what i want. when i talk to her she flares up, and, as likely as not, she'd fling the necklace at my head." "she wouldn't do that, i hope." "it would depend upon how the thing went. when i do talk to her it always seems that nothing i say can be right. now, if you will give it her you can put in all manner of pretty things." "this itself will be the prettiest thing," said mrs dosett. "that's just what i was thinking. everybody agrees that diamonds will go further with a girl than anything else. when i told the governor he quite jumped at the idea." "sir thomas knows you are giving it?" "oh, dear, yes. i had to get the rhino from him. i don't go about with two hundred and fifty pounds always in my own pocket." "if he had sent the money to ayala how much better it would have been," said poor mrs dosett. "i don't think that at all. who ever heard of making a present to a young lady in money? ayala is romantic, and that would have been the most unromantic thing out. that would not have done me the least good in the world. it would simply have gone to buy boots and petticoats and such like. a girl would never be brought to think of her lover merely by putting on a pair of boots. when she fastens such a necklace as this round her throat he ought to have a chance. don't you think so, aunt dosett?" "tom, shall i tell you something?" said the aunt. "what is it, aunt dosett?" "i don't believe that you have a chance." "do you mean that?" he asked, sorrowfully. "i do." "you think that the necklace will do no good?" "not the least. of course i will offer it to her if you wish it, because her uncle and i quite approve of you as a husband for ayala. but i am bound to tell you the truth. i do not think the necklace will do you any good." then he sat silent for a time, meditating upon his condition. it might be imprudent -it might be a wrong done to his father to jeopardise the necklace. how would it be if ayala were to take the necklace and not to take him? "am i to give it?" she asked. "yes," said he, bravely, but with a sigh; "give it her all the same." "from you or from sir thomas?" "oh, from me -from me. if she were told it came from the governor she'd keep it whether or no. i am sure i hope she will keep it," he said, trying to remove the bad impression which his former words might perhaps have left. "you may be sure she will not keep it," said mrs dosett, "unless she should intend to accept your hand. of that i can hold out no hope to you. there is a matter, tom, which i think i should tell you as you are so straightforward in your offer. another gentleman has asked her to marry him." "she has accepted him!" exclaimed tom. "no, she has not accepted him. she has refused him." "then i'm just where i was," said tom. "she has refused him, but i think that she is in a sort of way attached to him; and though he too has been refused i imagine that his chance is better than yours." "and who the d - is he?" said tom, jumping up from his seat in great excitement. "tom!" exclaimed mrs dosett. "i beg your pardon; but you see this is very important. who is the fellow?" "he is one colonel jonathan stubbs." "who?" "colonel jonathan stubbs." "impossible! it can't be colonel stubbs. i know colonel stubbs." "i can assure you it is true, tom. i have had a letter from a lady -a relative of colonel stubbs -telling me the whole story." "colonel stubbs!" he said. "that passes anything i ever heard. she has refused him?" "yes, she has refused him." "and has not accepted him since?" "she certainly has not accepted him yet." "you may give her the necklace all the same," said tom, hurrying out of the room. that colonel stubbs should have made an offer to ayala, and yet have accepted his, tom tringle's confidence! chapter 32 tom's despair the reader will understand that the fate of the necklace was very soon decided. ayala declared that it was very beautiful. she had, indeed, a pretty taste for diamonds, and would have been proud enough to call this necklace her own; but, as she declared to her aunt, she would not accept tom though he were made of diamonds from head to foot. accept tom, when she could not even bring herself to think of becoming the wife of jonathan stubbs! if colonel stubbs could not be received by her imagination as an angel of light, how immeasurably distant from anything angelic must be tom tringle! "of course it must go back," she said, when the question had to be decided as to the future fate of the necklace. as a consequence poor mr dosett was compelled to make a special journey into the city, and to deposit a well-sealed parcel in the hands of tom tringle himself. "your cousin sends her kind regards," he said, "but cannot bring herself to accept your magnificent present." tom had been very much put about since his visit to the crescent. had his aunt merely told him that his present would be inefficacious, he would have taken that assurance as being simply her opinion, and would have still entertained some hopes in the diamonds. but these tidings as to another lover crushed him altogether. and such a lover! the very man whom he had asked to write his letter for him! why had not colonel stubbs told him the truth when thus his own secret had become revealed by an accident? he understood it all now -the "ayala", and the "mister", and the reason why the colonel could not write the letter. then he became very angry with the colonel, whom he bitterly accused of falsehood and treason. what right had the colonel to meddle with his cousin at all? and how false he had been to say nothing of what he himself had done when his rival had told him everything! in this way he made up his mind that it was his duty to hate colonel stubbs, and if possible to inflict some personal punishment upon him. he was reckless of himself now, and, if he could only get one good blow at the colonel's head with a thick stick, would be indifferent as to what the law might do with him afterwards. or perhaps he might be able to provoke colonel stubbs to fight with him. he had an idea that duels at present were not in fashion. but nevertheless, in such a case as this, a man ought to fight. he could at any rate have the gratification of calling the colonel a coward if he should refuse to fight. he was the more wretched because his spirit within him was cowed by the idea of the colonel. he did acknowledge to himself that his chance could be but bad while such a rival as colonel stubbs stood in his way. he tried to argue with himself that it was not so. as far as he knew, colonel stubbs was and would remain a very much less rich man than himself. he doubted very much whether colonel stubbs could keep a carriage in london for his wife, while it had been already arranged that he was to be allowed to do so should he succeed in marrying ayala. to be a partner in the house of travers and treason was a much greater thing than to be a colonel. but, though he assured himself of all this again and again, still he was cowed. there was something about the colonel which did more than redeem his red hair and ugly mouth. and of this something poor tom was sensible. nevertheless, if occasion should arise he thought that he could "punch the colonel's head' -not without evil consequence to himself -but still that he could "punch the colonel's head", not minding the consequences. such had been his condition of mind when he left the crescent, and it was not improved by the receipt of the parcel. he hardly said a word when his uncle put it into his hands, merely muttering something and consigning the diamonds to his desk. he did not tell himself that ayala must now be abandoned. it would have been better for him if he could have done so. but all real, springing, hopeful hope departed from his bosom. this came from the colonel, rather than from the rejected necklace. "did you send that jewelry?" his father asked him some days afterwards. "yes; i sent it." "and what has now become of it?" "it is in my desk there." "did she send it back again?" "it came back. my uncle dosett brought it. i do not want to say anything more about it, if you please." "i am sorry for that, tom -very sorry. as you had set your heart upon it i wish it could have been as you would have it. but the necklace should not be left there." tom shook his head in despair. "you had better let me have the necklace. it is not that i should grudge it to you, tom, if it could do you any good." "you shall have it, sir." "it will be better so. that was the understanding." then the necklace was transferred to some receptacle belonging to sir thomas himself, the lock of which might probably be more secure than that of tom's desk, and there it remained in its case, still folded in the various papers in which mrs dosett had encased it. then tom found it necessary to adopt some other mode of life for his own consolation and support. he had told his father on one occasion that he had devoted himself for a fortnight to champagne and the theatres. but this had been taken as a joke. he had been fairly punctual at his place of business and had shown no symptoms of fast living. but now it occurred to him that fast living would be the only thing for him. he had been quite willing to apply himself to marriage and a steady life; but fortune had not favoured him. if he drank too much now, and lay in bed, and became idle, it was not his fault. there came into his head an idea that ayala and colonel stubbs between them must look to that. could he meet ayala he would explain to her how his character as a moral man had been altogether destroyed by her conduct -and should he meet colonel stubbs he would explain something to him also. a new club had been established in london lately called the mountaineers, which had secured for itself handsome lodgings in piccadilly, and considered itself to be, among clubs, rather a comfortable institution than otherwise. it did not as yet affect much fashion, having hitherto secured among its members only two lords -and they were lords by courtesy. but it was a pleasant, jovial place, in which the delights of young men were not impeded by the austerity of their elders. its name would be excused only on the plea that all other names available for a club had already been appropriated in the metropolis. there was certainly nothing in the club peculiarly applicable to mountains. but then there are other clubs in london with names which might be open to similar criticism. it was the case that many young men engaged in the city had been enrolled among its members, and it was from this cause, no doubt, that tom tringle was regarded as being a leading light among the mountaineers. it was here that the champagne had been drunk to which tom had alluded when talking of his love to his father. now, in his despair, it seemed good to him to pass a considerable portion of his time among the mountaineers. "you'll dine here, faddle?" he said one evening to a special friend of his, a gentleman also from the city, with whom he had been dining a good deal during the last week. "i suppose i shall," said faddle, "but ain't we coming it a little strong? they want to know at the gardens what the deuce it is i'm about." the gardens was a new row of houses, latterly christened badminton gardens, in which resided the father and mother of faddle. "i've given up all that kind of thing," said tom. "your people are not in london." "it will make no difference when they do come up. i call an evening in the bosom of one's family about the slowest thing there is. the bosom must do without me for the future." "won't your governor cut up rough?" "he must cut up as he pleases. but i rather fancy he knows all about it. i shan't spend half as much money this way as if i had a house and wife and family -and what we may call a bosom of one's own." then they had dinner and went to the theatre, and played billiards, and had supper, and spent the night in a manner very delightful, no doubt, to themselves, but of which their elder friends could hardly have approved. there was a good deal of this following upon the episode of the necklace, and it must be told with regret that our young hero fell into certain exploits which were by no means creditable to him. more than one good-humoured policeman had helped him home to his lodgings; but alas, on christmas eve, he fell into the hands of some guardian of the peace who was not quite sufficiently good-natured, and tom passed the night and the greater part of the following morning, recumbent, he in one cell, and his friend faddle in the next, with an intimation that they would certainly be taken before a magistrate on the day after christmas day. oh, ayala! ayala! it must be acknowledged that you were in a measure responsible -and not only for the lamentable condition of your lover, but also of that of his friend. for, in his softer moments, tom had told everything to faddle, and faddle had declared that he would be true to the death to a friend suffering such unmerited misfortune. perhaps the fidelity of faddle may have owed something to the fact that tom's pecuniary allowances were more generous than those accorded to himself. to ayala must be attributed the occurrence of these misfortunes. but tom in his more fiery moments -those moments which would come between the subsidence of actual sobriety and the commencement of intoxication -attributed all his misfortunes to the colonel. "faddle," he would say in these moments, "of course i know that i'm a ruined man. of course i'm aware that all this is only a prelude to some ignominious end. i have not sunk to this kind of thing without feeling it." "you'll be right enough some day, old fellow," faddle would reply. "i shall live to be godfather to the first boy." "never, faddle!" tom replied. "all those hopes have vanished. you'll never live to see any child of mine. and i know well where to look for my enemy. stubbs indeed! i'll stubbs him. if i can only live to be revenged on that traitor then i shall die contented. though he shot me through the heart, i should die contented." this had happened a little before that unfortunate christmas eve. up to this time sir thomas, though he had known well that his son had not been living as he should do, had been mild in his remonstrances, and had said nothing at merle park to frighten lady tringle. but the affair of christmas eve came to his ears with all its horrors. a policeman whom tom had struck with his fist in the pit of the stomach had not been civil enough to accept this mark of familiarity with good humour. he had been much inconvenienced by the blow, and had insisted upon giving testimony to this effect before the magistrate. there had been half an hour, he said, in which he had hung dubious between this world and the next, so great had been the violence of the blow and so deadly its direction! the magistrate was one of those just men who find a pleasure and a duty in protecting the police of the metropolis. it was no case, he declared, for a fine. what would be a fine to such a one as thomas tringle, junior! and tom -tom tringle, the only son of sir thomas tringle, the senior partner in the great house of travers and treason -was ignominiously locked up for a week. faddle, who had not struck the blow, was allowed to depart with a fine and a warning. oh, ayala, ayala, this was thy doing! when the sentence was known sir thomas used all his influence to extricate his unfortunate son, but in vain. tom went through his penalty, and, having no help from champagne, doubtless had a bad time of it. ayala, stubbs, the policeman, and the magistrate, seemed to have conspired to destroy him. but the week at last dragged itself out, and then tom found himself confronted with his father in the back parlour of the house in queen's gate. "tom," he said, "this is very bad!" "it is bad, sir," said tom. "you have disgraced me, and your mother, and yourself. you have disgraced travers and treason!" poor tom shook his head. "it will be necessary, i fear, that you should leave the house altogether." tom stood silent without a word. "a young man who has been locked up in prison for a week for maltreating a policeman can hardly expect to be entrusted with such concerns as those of travers and treason. i and your poor mother cannot get rid of you and the disgrace which you have entailed upon us. travers and treason can easily get rid of you." tom knew very well that his father was, in fact, travers and treason, but he did not yet feel that an opportunity had come in which he could wisely speak a word. "what have you got to say for yourself, sir?" demanded sir thomas. "of course, i'm very sorry," muttered tom. "sorry, tom! a young man holding your position in travers and treason ought not to have to be sorry for having been locked up in prison for a week for maltreating a policeman! what do you think must be done, yourself?" "the man had been hauling me about in the street." "you were drunk, no doubt." "i had been drinking. i am not going to tell a lie about it. but he needn't have done as he did. faddle knows that, and can tell you." "what can have driven you to associate with such a young man as faddle? that is the worst part of it. do you know what faddle and company are -stock jobbers, who ten years ago hadn't a thousand pounds in the way of capital among them! they've been connected with a dozen companies, none of which are floating now, and have made money out of them all! do you think that travers and treason will accept a young man as a partner who associates with such people as that?" "i have seen old faddle's name and yours on the same prospectus together, sir." "what has that to do with it? you never saw him inside our counter. what a name to appear along with yours in such an affair as this! if it hadn't been for that, you might have got over it. young men will be young men. faddle! i think you will have to go abroad for a time, till it has been forgotten." "i should like to stay, just at present, sir" said tom. "what good can you do?" "all the same, i should like to stay, sir." "i was thinking that, if you were to take a tour through the united states, go across to san francisco, then up to japan, and from thence through some of the chinese cities down to calcutta and bombay, you might come back by the euphrates valley to constantinople, see something of bulgaria and those countries, and so home by vienna and paris. the euphrates valley railway will be finished by that time, perhaps, and bulgaria will be as settled as hertfordshire. you'd see something of the world, and i could let it be understood that you were travelling on behalf of travers and treason. by the time that you were back, people in the city would have forgotten the policeman, and if you could manage to write home three or four letters about our trade with japan and china, they would be willing to forget faddle." "but, sir -" "shouldn't you like a tour of that kind?" "very much indeed, sir -only -" "only what, tom?" "ayala!" said tom, hardly able to suppress a sob as he uttered the fatal name. "tom, don't be a fool. you can't make a young woman have you if she doesn't choose. i have done all that i could for you, because i saw that you'd set your heart upon it. i went to her myself, and then i gave two hundred and fifty pounds for that bauble. i am told i shall have to lose a third of the sum in getting rid of it." "ricolay told me that he'd take it back at two hundred and twenty," said tom, whose mind, prostrate as it was, was still alive to consideration of profit and loss. "never mind that for the present," said sir thomas. "don't you remember the old song? -'if she will, she will, you may depend on't. and if she won't, she won't; and there's an end on't.' you ought to be a man and pluck up your spirits. are you going to allow a little girl to knock you about in that way?" tom only shook his head, and looked as if he was very ill. in truth, the champagne, and the imprisonment, and ayala together, had altogether altered his appearance. "we've done what we could about it, and now it is time to give it over. let me hear you say that you will give it over." tom stood speechless before his father. "speak the word, and the thing will be done," continued sir thomas, endeavouring to encourage the young man. "i can't," said tom, sighing. "nonsense!" "i have tried, and i can't." "tom, do you mean to say that you are going to lose everything because a chit of a girl like that turns up her nose at you?" "it's no use my going while things are like this," said tom. "if i were to get to new york, i should come back by the next ship. as for letters about business, i couldn't settle my mind to anything of the kind." "then you're not the man i took you to be," said the father. "i could be man enough", said tom, clenching his fist, "if i could get hold of colonel stubbs." "colonel who?" "stubbs! jonathan stubbs! i know what i'm talking about. i'm not going to america, nor china, nor anything else, till i've polished him off. it's all very well your abusing me, but you don't know what it is i have suffered. as for being called a man i don't care about it. what i should like best would be to get ayala on one side and stubbs on the other, and then all three to go off the duke of york's column together. it's no good talking about travers and treason. i don't care for travers and treason as i am now. if you'll get ayala to say that she'll have me, i'll go to the shop every morning at eight and stay till nine; and as for the mountaineers it may all go to the d - for me." then he rushed out of the room, banging the door after him. sir thomas, when he was thus left, stood for a while with his hands in his trousers' pockets, contemplating the condition of his son. it was wonderful to him that a boy of his should be afflicted in this manner. when he had been struck by the juvenile beauties of emmeline dosett he had at once asked the young lady to share his fortunes with him, and the young lady had speedily acceded to his request. then he had been married, and that was all he had ever known of the troubles of love. he could not but think, looking back at it as he did now from a distance, that had emmeline been hardhearted he would have endured the repulse and have passed on speedily to some other charmer. but tom had been wounded after a fashion which seemed to him to have been very uncommon. it might be possible that he should recover in time, but while undergoing recovery he would be ruined -so great were the young man's sufferings! now sir thomas, though he had spoken to tom with all the severity which he had been able to assume, though he had abused faddle, and had vindicated the injured dignity of travers and treason with all his eloquence; though he had told tom it was unmanly to give way to his love, yet, of living creatures, tom was at this moment the dearest to his heart. he had never for an instant entertained the idea of expelling tom from travers and treason because of the policeman, or because of faddle. what should he do for the poor boy now? was there any argument, any means of persuasion, by which he could induce that foolish little girl to accept all the good things which he was ready to do for her? could he try yet once again himself, with any chance of success? thinking of all this, he stood there for an hour alone with his hands in his trousers' pockets. chapter 33 isadore hamel in lombard street in following the results of tom's presentation of the necklace we have got beyond the period which our story is presumed to have reached. tom was in durance during the christmas week, but we must go back to the promise which had been made by her uncle, sir thomas, to lucy about six weeks before that time. the promise had extended only to an undertaking on the part of sir thomas to see isadore hamel if he would call at the house in lombard street at a certain hour on a certain day. lucy was overwhelmed with gratitude when the promise was made. a few moments previously she had been indignant because her uncle had appeared to speak of her and her lover as two beggars -but sir thomas had explained and in some sort apologised, and then had come the promise which to lucy seemed to contain an assurance of effectual aid. sir thomas would not have asked to see the lover had he intended to be hostile to the lover. something would be done to solve the difficulty which had seemed to lucy to be so grave. she would not any longer be made to think that she should give up either her lover or her home under her uncle's roof. this had been terribly distressing to her because she had been well aware that on leaving her uncle's house she could be taken in only by her lover, to whom an immediate marriage would be ruinous. and yet she could not undertake to give up her lover. therefore her uncle's promise had made her very happy, and she forgave the ungenerous allusion to the two beggars. the letter was written to isadore in high spirits. "i do not know what uncle tom intends, but he means to be kind. of course you must go to him, and if i were you i would tell him everything about everything. he is not strict and hard like aunt emmeline. she means to be good too, but she is sometimes so very hard. i am happier now because i think something will be done to relieve you from the terrible weight which i am to you. i sometimes wish that you had never come to me in kensington gardens, because i have become such a burden to you." there was much more in which lucy no doubt went on to declare that, burden as she was, she intended to be persistent. hamel, when he received this letter, was resolved to keep the appointment made for him, but his hopes were not very high. he had been angry with lady tringle -in the first place, because of her treatment of himself at glenbogie, and then much more strongly, because she had been cruel to lucy. nor did he conceive himself to be under any strong debt of gratitude to sir thomas, though he had been invited to lunch. he was aware that the tringles had despised him, and he repaid the compliment with all his heart by despising the tringles. they were to him samples of the sort of people which he thought to be of all the most despicable. they were not only vulgar and rich, but purse-proud and conceited as well. to his thinking there was nothing of which such people were entitled to be proud. of course they make money -money out of money, an employment which he regarded as vile -creating nothing either useful or beautiful. to create something useful was, to his thinking, very good. to create something beautiful was almost divine. to manipulate millions till they should breed other millions was the meanest occupation for a life's energy. it was thus, i fear, that mr hamel looked at the business carried on in lombard street, being as yet very young in the world and seeing many things with distorted eyes. he was aware that some plan would be proposed to him which might probably accelerate his marriage, but was aware also that he would be very unwilling to take advice from sir thomas. sir thomas, no doubt, would be coarse and rough, and might perhaps offer him pecuniary assistance in a manner which would make it impossible for him to accept it. he had told himself a score of times that, poor as he was, he did not want any of the tringle money. his father's arbitrary conduct towards him had caused him great misery. he had been brought up in luxury, and had felt it hard enough to be deprived of his father's means because he would not abandon the mode of life that was congenial to him. but having been thus, as it were, cast off by his father, he had resolved that it behoved him to depend only on himself. in the matter of his love he was specially prone to be indignant and independent. no one had a right to dictate to him, and he would follow the dictation of none. to lucy alone did he acknowledge any debt, and to her he owed everything. but even for her sake he could not condescend to accept sir thomas's money, and with his money his advice. lucy had begged him in her letter to tell everything to her uncle. he would tell sir thomas everything as to his income, his prospects, and his intentions, because sir thomas as lucy's uncle would be entitled to such information. but he thought it very improbable that he should accept any counsel from sir thomas. such being the condition of hamel's mind it was to be feared that but little good would come from his visit to lombard street. lucy had simply thought that her uncle, out of his enormous stores, would provide an adequate income. hamel thought that sir thomas, out of his enormous impudence, would desire to dictate everything. sir thomas was, in truth, anxious to be good-natured, and to do a kindness to his niece; but was not willing to give his money without being sure that he was putting it into good hands. "oh, you're hamel," said a young man to him, speaking to him across the counter in the lombard street office. this was tom, who, as the reader will remember, had not yet got into his trouble on account of the policeman. tom and hamel had never met but once before, for a few moments in the coliseum at rome, and the artist, not remembering him, did not know by whom he was accosted in this familiar manner. "that is my name, sir," said hamel. "here is my card. perhaps you will do me the kindness to take it to sir thomas tringle." "all right, old fellow; i know all about it. he has got puxley with him from the bank of england just at this moment. come through into this room. he'll soon have polished off old puxley." tom was no more to hamel than any other clerk, and he felt himself to be aggrieved; but he followed tom into the room as he was told, and then prepared to wait in patience for the convenience of the great man. "so you and lucy are going to make a match of it," said tom. this was terrible to hamel. could it be possible that all the clerks in lombard street talked of his lucy in this way, because she was the niece of their senior partner? were all the clerks, as a matter of course, instructed in the most private affairs of the tringle family? "i am here in obedience to directions from sir thomas," said hamel, ignoring altogether the impudent allusion which the young man had made. "of course you are. perhaps you don't know who i am?" "not in the least," said hamel. "i am thomas tringle, junior," said tom, with a little accession of dignity. "i beg your pardon; i did not know," said hamel. "you and i ought to be thick", rejoined tom, "because i'm going in for ayala. perhaps you've heard that before?" hamel had heard it and was well aware that tom was to ayala an intolerable burden, like the old man of the sea. he had heard of tom as poor ayala's pet aversion -as a lover not to be shaken off though he had been refused a score of times. ayala was to the sculptor only second in sacredness to lucy. and now he was told by tom himself that he was -"going in for ayala". the expression was so distressing to his feelings that he shuddered when he heard it. was it possible that anyone should say of him that he was "going in" for lucy? at that moment sir thomas opened the door, and grasping hamel by the hand led him away into his own sanctum. "and now, mr hamel," said sir thomas, in his cheeriest voice, "how are you?" hamel declared that he was very well, and expressed a hope that sir thomas was the same. "i am not so young as i was, mr hamel. my years are heavier and so is my work. that's the worst of it. when one is young and strong one very often hasn't enough to do. i daresay you find it so sometimes." "in our profession", said hamel, "we go on working though very often we do not sell what we do." "that's bad," said sir thomas. "it is the case always with an artist before he has made a name for himself. it is the case with many up to the last day of a life of labour. an artist has to look for that, sir thomas." "dear me! that seems very sad. you are a sculptor, i believe?" "yes, sir thomas." "and the things you make must take a deal of room and be very heavy." at this mr hamel only smiled. "don't you think if you were to call an auction you'd get something for them?" at this suggestion the sculptor frowned but condescended to make no reply. sir thomas went on with his suggestion. "if you and half a dozen other beginners made a sort of gallery among you, people would buy them as they do those things in the marylebone road and stick them up somewhere about their grounds. it would be better than keeping them and getting nothing." hamel had in his studio at home an allegorical figure of italia united, and another of a prostrate roman catholic church, which in his mind's eye he saw for a moment stuck here or there about the gardens of some such place as glenbogie! into them had been infused all the poetry of his nature and all the conviction of his intelligence. he had never dreamed of selling them. he had never dared to think that any lover of art would encourage him to put into marble those conceptions of his genius which now adorned his studio, standing there in plaster of paris. but to him they were so valuable, they contained so much of his thoughts, so many of his aspirations, that even had the marble counterparts been ordered and paid for nothing would have induced him to part with the originals. now he was advised to sell them by auction in order that he might rival those grotesque tradesmen whose business it is to populate the gardens of wealthy but tasteless britons! it was thus that the idea represented itself to him. he simply smiled; but sir thomas did not fail to appreciate the smile. "and now about this young lady?" said sir thomas, not altogether in so good a humour as he had been when he began his suggestion. "it's a bad look out for her when, as you say, you cannot sell your work when you've done it." "i think you do not quite understand the matter, sir thomas." "perhaps not. it certainly does seem unintelligible that a man should lumber himself up with a lot of things which he cannot sell. a tradesman would know that he must get into the bankruptcy court if he were to go on like that. and what is sauce for the goose will be sauce for the gander also." mr hamel again smiled but held his tongue. "if you can't sell your wares how can you keep a wife?" "my wares, as you call them, are of two kinds. one, though no doubt made for sale, is hardly saleable. the other is done to order. such income as i make comes from the latter." "heads," suggested sir thomas. "busts they are generally called." "well, busts. i call them heads. they are heads. a bust, i take it, is -well, never mind." sir thomas found a difficulty in defining his idea of a bust. "a man wants to have something more or less like someone to put up in a church and then he pays you." "or perhaps in his library. but he can put it where he likes when he has bought it." "just so. but there ain't many of those come in your way, if i understand right." "not as many as i would wish." "what can you net at the end of the year? that's the question." lucy had recommended him to tell sir thomas everything; and he had come there determined to tell at any rate everything referring to money. he had not the slightest desire to keep the amount of his income from sir thomas. but the questions were put to him in so distasteful a way that he could not bring himself to be confidential. "it varies with various circumstances, but it is very small." "very small? five hundred a year?" this was ill-natured, because sir thomas knew that mr hamel did not earn five hundred a year. but he was becoming acerbated by the young man's manner. "oh dear, no," said hamel. "four hundred?" "nor four hundred -nor three. i have never netted three hundred in one year after paying the incidental expenses." "that seems to me to be uncommonly little for a man who is thinking of marrying. don't you think you had better give it up?" "i certainly think nothing of the kind." "does your father do anything for you?" "nothing at all." "he also makes heads?" "heads -and other things." "and sells them when he has made them." "yes, sir thomas; he sells them. he had a hard time once, but now he is run after. he refuses more orders than he can accept." "and he won't do anything for you." "nothing. he has quarrelled with me." "that is very bad. well now, mr hamel, would you mind telling me what your ideas are?" sir thomas, when he asked the question, still intended to give assistance, was still minded that the young people should by his assistance be enabled to marry. but he was strongly of opinion that it was his duty, as a rich and protecting uncle, to say something about imprudence, and to magnify difficulties. it certainly would be wrong for an uncle, merely because he was rich, to give away his money to dependent relatives without any reference to those hard principles which a possessor of money always feels it to be his business to inculcate. and up to this point hamel had done nothing to ingratiate himself. sir thomas was beginning to think that the sculptor was an impudent prig, and to declare to himself that, should the marriage ever take place, the young couple would not be made welcome at glenbogie or merle park. but still he intended to go on with his purpose, for lucy's sake. therefore he asked the sculptor as to his ideas generally. "my idea is that i shall marry miss dormer, and support her on the earnings of my profession. my idea is that i shall do so before long, in comfort. my idea also is, that she will be the last to complain of any discomfort which may arise from my straitened circumstances at present. my idea is that i am preparing for myself a happy and independent life. my idea also is -and i assure you that of all my ideas this is the one to which i cling with the fondest assurance -that i will do my very best to make her life happy when she comes to grace my home." there was a manliness in this which would have touched sir thomas had he been in a better humour, but, as it was, he had been so much irritated by the young man's manner, that he could not bring himself to be just. "am i to understand that you intend to marry on something under three hundred a year? hamel paused for a moment before he made his reply. "how am i to answer such a question," he said, at last, "seeing that miss dormer is in your hands, and that you are unlikely to be influenced by anything that i may say?" "i shall be very much influenced," said sir thomas. "were her father still alive, i think we should have put our heads together, and between us decided on what might have been best for lucy's happiness." "do you think that i'm indifferent to her happiness?" demanded sir thomas. "i should have suggested to him," continued hamel, not noticing the last question, "that she should remain in her own home till i could make one for her worthy of her acceptance. and then we should have arranged among us what would have been best for her happiness. i cannot do this with you. if you tell her tomorrow that she must give up either your protection or her engagement with me, then she must come to me, and make the best of all the little that i can do for her." "who says that i'm going to turn her out?" said sir thomas, rising angrily from his chair. "i do not think that anyone has said this of you." "then why do you throw it in my teeth?" "because your wife has threatened it." then sir thomas boiled over in his anger. "no one has threatened it. it is untrue. you are guilty both of impertinence and untruth in saying so." here hamel rose from his chair, and took up his hat. "stop, young man, and hear what i have to say to you. i have done nothing but good to my niece." "nevertheless, it is true, sir thomas, that she has been told by your wife that she must either abandon me or the protection of your roof. i find no fault with lady tringle for saying so. it may have been the natural expression of a judicious opinion. but when you ask after my intentions in reference to your niece i am bound to tell you that i propose to subject her to the undoubted inconveniences of my poor home, simply because i find her to be threatened with the loss of another." "she has not been threatened, sir." "you had better ask your wife, sir thomas. and, if you find that what i have said is true, i think you will own that i have been obliged to explain as i have done. as you have told me to my face that i have been guilty of untruth, i shall now leave you." with this he walked out of the room, and the words which sir thomas threw after him had no effect in recalling him. it must be acknowledged that hamel had been very foolish in referring to aunt emmeline's threat. who does not know that words are constantly used which are intended to have no real effect? who does not know that an angry woman will often talk after this fashion? but it was certainly the fact that aunt emmeline had more than once declared to lucy that she could not be allowed to remain one of that family unless she would give up her lover. lucy, in her loyal endeavours to explain to her lover her own position, had told him of the threat, and he, from that moment, had held himself prepared to find a home for his future wife should that threat be carried into execution. sir thomas was well aware that such words had been spoken, but he knew his wife, and knew how little such words signified. his wife, without his consent, would not have the power to turn a dog from merle park. the threat had simply been an argument intended to dissuade lucy from her choice; and now it had been thrown in his teeth just when he had intended to make provision for this girl, who was not, in truth, related to him, in order that he might ratify her choice! he was very angry with the young prig who had thus rushed out of his presence. he was angry, too, with his wife, who had brought him into his difficulty by her foolish threat. but he was angry, also, with himself, knowing that he had been wrong to accuse the man of a falsehood. chapter 34 "i never threatened to turn you out" then there were written the following letters, which were sent and received before sir thomas went to merle park, and therefore, also, before he again saw lucy: dearest, dearest love, i have been, as desired, to lombard street, but i fear that my embassy has not led to any good. i know myself to be about as bad an ambassador as anyone can send. an ambassador should be soft and gentle -willing to make the best of everything, and never prone to take offence, nor should he be addicted specially to independence. i am ungentle, and apt to be suspicious -especially if anything be said derogatory to my art. i am proud of being an artist, but i am often ashamed of myself because i exhibit my pride. i may say the same of my spirit of independence. i am determined to be independent if i live -but i find my independence sometimes kicking up its heels, till i hate it myself. from this you will perceive that i have not had a success in lombard street. i was quite willing to answer your uncle any questions he could ask about money. indeed, i had no secret from him on any subject. but when he subjected me to cross-examination, forcing me into a bathos of poverty, as he thought, i broke down. "not five hundred a year!" "not four!!" "not three!!!" "oh, heavens! and you propose to take a wife!" you will understand how i writhed and wriggled under the scorn. and then there came something worse than this -or rather, if i remember rightly, the worst thing came first. you were over in my studio, and will remember, perhaps, some of my own abortive treasures, those melancholy but soul-inspiring creations of which i have thought so much, and others have thought so little? that no one else should value them is natural, but to me it seems unnatural, almost cruel, that anyone should tell me to my face that they were valueless. your uncle, of course, had never seen them, but he knew that sculptors are generally burdened with these 'wares,' as he called them; and he suggested that i should sell them by auction for what they might fetch -in order that the corners which they occupy might be vacant. he thought that, perhaps, they might do for country gentlemen to stick about among their shrubs. you, knowing my foolish soreness on the subject, will understand how well i must have been prepared by this to endure your uncle's cross-examination. then he asked me as to my ideas -not art ideas, but ideas as to bread and cheese for the future. i told him as exactly as i could. i explained to him that if you were left in possession of a comfortable home, such as would have been that of your father, i should think it best for your sake to delay our marriage till i should be prepared to do something better for you than i can at present; but that i hold myself ready to give you all that i have to give at a moment's notice, should you be required to leave his house. and, lucy, speaking in your name, i said something further, and declared my belief that you, for my sake, would bear the inconveniences of so poor a home without complaining. then there arose anger both on his side and on mine; and i must say, insult on his. he told me that i had no business to suggest that you would be expelled from his house. i replied that the threat had come, if not from him, then from lady tringle. upon this he accused me of positive falsehood, asserting that your aunt had said nothing of the kind. i then referred him to lady tringle herself, but refused to stay any longer in the room with him, because he had insulted me. so you will see that i did less than nothing by my embassy. i told myself that it would be so as i descended into the underground cavern at the gloucester road station. you are not to suppose that i blame him more, or, indeed, so much as i do myself. it was not to be expected that he should behave as a gentleman of fine feeling. but, perhaps, it ought to have been expected that i should behave like a man of common sense. i ought to have taken his advice about the auction, apparently, in good part. i ought not to have writhed when he scorned my poor earnings. when he asked as to my ideas, i should not have alluded to your aunt's threat as to turning you out. i should have been placid and humble; and then his want of generous feeling would have mattered nothing. but spilt milk and broken eggs are past saving. whatever good things may have come from your uncle's generosity had i brushed his hair for him aright, are now clean gone, seeing that i scrubbed him altogether the wrong way. for myself, i do not know that i should regret it very much. i have an idea that no money should be sweet to a man except that which he earns. and i have enough belief in myself to be confident that sooner or later i shall earn a sufficiency. but, dearest, i own that i feel disgusted with myself when i think that i have diminished your present comfort, or perhaps lessened for the future resources which would have been yours rather than mine. but the milk has been spilt, and now we must only think what we can best do without it. it seems to me that only two homes are possible for you -one with sir thomas as his niece, and the other with me as my wife. i am conceited enough to think that you will prefer the latter even with many inconveniences. neither can your uncle or your aunt prevent you from marrying at a very early day, should you choose to do so. there would be some preliminary ceremony, of the nature of which i am thoroughly ignorant, but which could, i suppose, be achieved in a month. i would advise you to ask your aunt boldly whether she wishes you to go or to stay with her, explaining, of course, that you intend to hold to your engagement, and explaining at the same time that you are quite ready to be married at once if she is anxious to be quit of you. that is my advice. and now, dear, one word of something softer! for did any lover ever write to the lady of his heart so long a letter so abominably stuffed with matters of business? how shall i best tell you how dearly i love you? perhaps i may do it by showing you that as far as i myself am concerned i long to hear that your aunt emmeline and your uncle tom are more hardhearted and obdurate than were ever uncle and aunt before them. i long to hear that you have been turned out into the cold, because i know that then you must come to me, though it be even less than three hundred a year. i wish you could have seen your uncle's face as those terribly mean figures reached his ears. i do not for a moment fear that we should want. orders come slow enough, but they come a little quicker than they did. i have never for a moment doubted my own ultimate success, and if you were with me i should be more confident than ever. nevertheless, should your aunt bid you to stay, and should you think it right to comply with her desire, i will not complain. adieu! this comes from one who is altogether happy in his confidence that at any rate before long you will have become his wife. isadore hamel "i quite expect to be scolded for my awkwardness. indeed i shall be disappointed if i am not." the same post which brought hamel's long letter to lucy brought also a short but very angry scrawl from sir thomas to his wife. no eyes but those of lady tringle saw this epistle, and no other eyes shall see it. but the few words which it contained were full of marital wrath. why had she threatened to turn her own niece out of his doors? why had she subjected him to the necessity of defending her by a false assertion? those dormer nieces of hers were giving him an amount of trouble and annoyance which he certainly had not deserved. lucy, though not a word was said to her of this angry letter, was conscious that something had been added to her aunt's acerbity. indeed for the last day or two her aunt's acerbity towards her had been much diminished. lady tringle had known that her husband intended to do something by which the hamel marriage would be rendered possible; and she, though she altogether disapproved of the hamel marriage, would be obliged to accede to it if sir thomas acceded to it and encouraged it by his money. let them be married, and then, as far as the tringles were concerned, let there be an end of these dormer troubles for ever. to that idea lady tringle had reconciled herself as soon as sir thomas had declared his purpose, but now -as she declared to herself -"all the fat was again in the fire". she received lucy's salutations on that morning with a very bad grace. but she had been desired to give no message, and therefore she was silent on the subject to lucy. to the honourable mrs traffick she said a few words. "after all ayala was not half as bad as lucy," said lady tringle. "there, mamma, i think you are wrong," said the honourable mrs traffick. "of all the upsetting things i ever knew ayala was the worst. think of her conduct with septimus." lady tringle made a little grimace, which, however, her daughter did not see. "and then with that marchesa!" "that was the marchesa's fault." "and with tom!" "i don't think she was so much to blame with tom. if she were, why doesn't she take him now she can have him? he is just as foolish about her as ever. upon my word i think tom will make himself ill about it." "you haven't heard it all, mamma." "what haven't i heard?" "ayala has been down with the alburys at stalham." "i did hear that." "and another man has turned up. what on earth they see in her is what i can't understand." "another man has offered to her! who is he?" "there was a colonel stubbs down there. septimus heard it all from young batsby at the club. she got this man to ride about the country with her everywhere, going to the meets with him and coming home. and in this way she got him to propose to her. i don't suppose he means anything; but that is why she won't have anything to do with tom now. do you mean to say she didn't do all she could to catch tom down at glenbogie, and then at rome? everybody saw it. i don't think lucy has ever been so bad as that." "it's quite different, my dear." "she has come from a low father," said the honourable mrs traffick, proudly, "and therefore she has naturally attached herself to a low young man. there is nothing to be wondered at in that. i suppose they are fond of each other, and the sooner they are married the better." "but he can't marry her because he has got nothing." "papa will do something." "that's just what your papa won't. the man has been to your father in the city and there has been ever such a row. he spoke ill of me because i endeavoured to do my duty by the ungrateful girl. i am sure i have got a lesson as to taking up other people's children. i endeavoured to do an act of charity, and see what has come of it. i don't believe in charity." "that is wicked, mamma. faith, hope, and charity! but you've got to be charitable before you begin the others." "i don't think it is wicked. people would do best if they were made to go along on what they've got of their own." this seemed to augusta to be a direct blow at septimus and herself. "of course i know what you mean, mamma." "i didn't mean anything." "but, if people can't stay for a few weeks in their own parents' houses, i don't know where they are to stay." "it isn't weeks, augusta; it's months. and as to parents, lord boardotrade is mr traffick's parent. why doesn't he go and stay with lord boardotrade?" then augusta got up and marched with stately step out of the room. after this it was not possible that lucy would find much immediate grace in her aunt's eyes. from the moment that lucy had received her letter there came upon her the great burden of answering it. she was very anxious to do exactly as hamel had counselled her. she was quite alive to the fact that hamel had been imprudent in lombard street; but not the less was she desirous to do as he bade her -thinking it right that a woman should obey someone, and that her obedience could be due only to him. but in order to obey him she must consult her aunt. "aunt emmeline," she said that afternoon, "i want to ask you something." "what is it now?" said aunt emmeline, crossly. "about mr hamel." "i don't want to hear any more about mr hamel. i have heard quite enough of mr hamel." "of course i am engaged to him, aunt emmeline." "so i hear you say. i do not think it very dutiful of you to come and talk to me about him, knowing as you do what i think about him." "what i want to ask is this. ought i to stay here or ought i to go away?" "i never heard such a girl! where are you to go to? what makes you ask the question?" "because you said that i ought to go if i did not give him up." "you ought to give him up." "i cannot do that, aunt." "then you had better hold your tongue and say nothing further about it. i don't believe he earns enough to give you bread to eat and decent clothes to wear. what would you do if children were to come year after year? if you really love him i wonder how you can think of being such a millstone round a man's neck!" this was very hard to bear. it was so different from the delicious comfort of his letter. "i do not for a moment believe that we should want." "i have never for one moment doubted my own ultimate success." but after all was there not more of truth in her aunt's words, hard and cruel as they were? and on these words, such as they were, she must found her answer to her lover; for he had bade her ask her aunt what she was to do as to staying or preparing herself for an immediate marriage. then, before the afternoon was over, she wrote to hamel as follows: dear isadore, i have got ever so much to say, but i shall begin by doing as you told me in your postscript. i won't quite scold you, but i do think you might have been a little gentler with poor uncle tom. i do not say this because i at all regret anything which perhaps he might have done for us. if you do not want assistance from him certainly i do not. but i do think that he meant to be kind; and, though he may not be quite what you call a gentleman of fine feeling, yet he has taken me into his house when i had no other to go to, and in many respects has been generous to me. when he said that you were to go to him in lombard street, i am sure that he meant to be generous. and, though it has not ended well, yet he meant to be kind to both of us. there is what you will call my scolding; though, indeed, dearest, i do not intend to scold at all. nor am i in the least disappointed except in regard to you. this morning i have been to aunt emmeline, as you desired, and i must say that she was very cross. of course i know that it is because she is my own aunt that uncle tom has me here at all; and i feel that i ought to be very grateful to her. but, in spite of all that you say, laughing at uncle tom because he wants you to sell your grand work by auction, he is much more good-natured than aunt emmeline. i am quite sure my aunt never liked me, and that she will not be comfortable till i am gone. but when i asked her whether i ought to stay, or to go, she told me to hold my tongue, and say nothing further about it. of course, by this, she meant that i was to remain, at any rate for the present. my own dearest, i do think this will be best, though i need not tell you how i look forward to leaving this, and being always with you. for myself i am not a bit afraid, though aunt emmeline said dreadful things about food and clothes, and all the rest of it. but i believe much more in what you say, that success will be sure to come. but still will it not be wise to wait a little longer? whatever i may have to bear here, i shall think that i am bearing it for your dear sake; and then i shall be happy. believe me to be always and always your own lucy this was written and sent on a wednesday, and nothing further was said either by lucy herself, or by her aunt, as to the lover, till sir thomas came down to merle park on the saturday evening. on his arrival he seemed inclined to be gracious to the whole household, even including mr traffick, who received any attention of that kind exactly as though the most amicable arrangements were always existing between him and his father-in-law. aunt emmeline, when it seemed that she was to encounter no further anger on account of the revelation which hamel had made in lombard street, also recovered her temper, and the evening was spent as though there were no causes for serious family discord. in this spirit, on the following morning, they all went to church, and it was delightful to hear the flattering words with which mr traffick praised merle park, and everything belonging to it, during the hour of lunch. he went so far as to make some delicately laudatory hints in praise of hospitality in general, and especially as to that so nobly exercised by london merchant princes. sir thomas smiled as he heard him, and, as he smiled, he resolved that, as soon as the christmas festivities should be over, the honourable septimus traffick should certainly be turned out of that house. after lunch there came a message to lucy by a page-boy, who was supposed to attend generally to the personal wants of aunt emmeline, saying that her uncle would be glad of her attendance for a walk. "my dear," said he, "have you got your thick boots on? then go and put 'em on. we will go down to the lodge, and then come home round by windover hill." she did as she was bade, and then they started. "i want to tell you", said he, "that this mr hamel of yours came to me in lombard street." "i know that, uncle tom." "he has written to you, then, and told you all about it?" "he has written to me, certainly, and i have answered him." "no doubt. well, lucy, i had intended to be kind to your mr hamel, but, as you are probably aware, i was not enabled to carry out my intentions. he seems to be a very independent sort of young man." "he is independent, i think." "i have not a word to say against it. if a man can be independent it is so much the better. if a man can do everything for himself, so as to require neither to beg nor to borrow, it will be much better for him. but, my dear, you must understand that a man cannot be independent with one hand, and accept assistance with the other, at one and the same time." "that is not his character, i am sure," said lucy, striving to hide her indignation while she defended her lover's character. "i do not think it is. therefore he must remain independent, and i can do nothing for him." "he knows that, uncle tom." "very well. then there's an end of it. i only want to make you understand that i was willing to assist him, but that he was unwilling to be assisted. i like him all the better for it, but there must be an end of it." "i quite understand, uncle tom." "then there's one other thing i've got to say. he accused me of having threatened to turn you out of my house. now, my dear -" hereupon lucy struggled to say a word, hardly knowing what word she ought to say, but he interrupted her -"just hear me out till i've done, and then there need not be another word about it. i never threatened to turn you out." "not you, uncle tom," she said, endeavouring to press his arm with her hand. "if your aunt said a word in her anger you should not have made enough of it to write and tell him." "i thought she meant me to go, and then i didn't know whom else to ask." "neither i nor she, nor anybody else, ever intended bo turn you out. i have meant to be kind to you both -to you and ayala; and if things have gone wrong i cannot say that it has been my fault. now, you had better stay here, and not say a word more about it till he is ready to take you. that can't be yet for a long time. he is making, at present, not more than two hundred a year. and i am sure it must be quite as much as he can do to keep a coat on his back with such an income as that. you must make up your mind to wait -probably for some years. as i told you before, if a man chooses to have the glory of independence he must also bear the inconvenience. now, my dear, let there be an end of this, and never say again that i want to turn you out of my house." chapter 35 tom tringle sends a challenge the next six weeks went on tranquilly at merle park without a word spoken about hamel. sir thomas, who was in the country as little as possible, showed his scorn to his son-in-law simply by the paucity of his words, speaking to him, when he did speak to him, with a deliberate courtesy which mr traffick perfectly understood. it was that dangerous serenity which so often presages a storm. "there is something going to be up with your father," he said to augusta. augusta replied that she had never seen her father so civil before. "it would be a great convenience", continued the member of parliament, "if he could be made to hold his tongue till parliament meets; but i'm afraid that's too good to expect." in other respects things were comfortable at merle park, though they were not always comfortable up in london. tom, as the reader knows, was misbehaving himself sadly at the mountaineers. this was the period of unlimited champagne, and of almost total absence from lombard street. it was seldom that sir thomas could get hold of his son, and when he did that broken-hearted youth would reply to his expostulations simply by asserting that if his father would induce ayala to marry him everything should go straight in lombard street. then came the final blow. tom was of course expected at merle park on christmas eve, but did not make his appearance either then or on christmas day. christmas fell on a wednesday, and it was intended that the family should remain in the country till the following monday. on the thursday sir thomas went up to town to make inquiries respecting his heir, as to whom lady tringle had then become absolutely unhappy. in london he heard the disastrous truth. tom, in his sportive mood, had caused serious inconvenience to a most respectable policeman, and was destined to remain another week in the hands of the philistines. then, for a time, all the other tringle troubles were buried and forgotten in this great trouble respecting tom. lady tringle was unable to leave her room during the period of incarceration. mr traffick promised to have the victim liberated by the direct interference of the secretary of state, but failed to get anything of the kind accomplished. the girls were completely cowed by the enormity of the misfortune; so that tom's name was hardly mentioned except in sad and confidential whispers. but of all the sufferers sir thomas suffered the most. to him it was a positive disgrace, weighing down every moment of his life. at travers and treason he could not hold up his head boldly and open his mouth loudly as had always been his wont. at travers and treason there was not a clerk who did not know that "the governor" was an altered man since this misfortune had happened to the hope of the firm. what passed between sir thomas and his son on the occasion has already been told in a previous chapter. that sir thomas, on the whole, behaved with indulgence must be acknowledged; but he felt that his son must in truth absent himself from lombard street for a time. tom had been advised by his father to go forth and see the world. a prolonged tour had been proposed to him which to most young men might seem to have great attraction. to him it would have had attraction enough, had it not been for ayala. there would have been hardly any limit to the allowance made to him, and he would have gone forth armed with introductions, which would have made every port a happy home to him. but as soon as the tour was suggested he resolved at once that he could not move himself to a distance from ayala. what he expected -what he even hoped -he could not tell himself. but while ayala was in london, and ayala was unmarried, he could not be made to take himself far away. he was thoroughly ashamed of himself. he was not at all the man who could bear a week of imprisonment and not think himself disgraced. for a day or two he shut himself up altogether in his lodgings, and never once showed himself at the mountaineers. faddle came to him, but he snubbed faddle at first, remembering all the severe things his father had said about the faddles in general. but he soon allowed that feeling to die away when the choice seemed to be between faddle and solitude. then he crept out in the dark and ate his dinners with faddle at some tavern, generally paying the bill for both of them. after dinner he would play half a dozen games of billiards with his friend at some unknown billiard-room, and then creep home to his lodgings -a blighted human being! at last, about the end of the first week in january, he was induced to go down to merle park. there mr and mrs traffick were still sojourning, the real grief which had afflicted sir thomas having caused him to postpone his intention in regard to his son-in-law. at merle park tom was cosseted and spoilt by the women very injudiciously. it was not perhaps the fact that they regarded him as a hero simply because he had punched a policeman in the stomach and then been locked up in vindication of the injured laws of his country; but that incident in combination with his unhappy love did seem to make him heroic. even lucy regarded him with favour because of his constancy to her sister; whereas the other ladies measured their admiration for his persistency by the warmth of their anger against the silly girl who was causing so much trouble. his mother told him over and over again that his cousin was not worth his regard; but then, when he would throw himself on the sofa in an agony of despair -weakened perhaps as much by the course of champagne as by the course of his love -then she, too, would bid him hope, and at last promised that she herself would endeavour to persuade ayala to look at the matter in a more favourable light. "it would all be right if it were not for that accursed stubbs," poor tom would say to his mother. "the man whom i called my friend! the man i lent a horse to when he couldn't get one anywhere else! the man to whom i confided everything, even about the necklace! if it hadn't been for stubbs i never should have hurt that policeman! when i was striking him i thought that it was stubbs!" then the mother would heap feminine maledictions on the poor colonel's head, and so together they would weep and think of revenge. from the moment tom had heard colonel stubbs's name mentioned as that of his rival he had meditated revenge. it was quite true when he said that he had been thinking of stubbs when he struck the policeman. he had consumed the period of his confinement in gnashing his teeth, all in regard to our poor friend jonathan. he told his father that he could not go upon his long tour because of ayala. but in truth his love was now so mixed up with ideas of vengeance that he did not himself know which prevailed. if he could first have slaughtered stubbs then perhaps he might have started! but how was he to slaughter stubbs? various ideas occurred to his mind. at first he thought that he would go down to aldershot with the biggest cutting-whip he could find in any shop in piccadilly; but then it occurred to him that at aldershot he would have all the british army against him, and that the british army might do something to him worse even than the london magistrate. then he would wait till the colonel could be met elsewhere. he ascertained that the colonel was still at stalham, where he had passed the christmas, and he thought how it might be if he were to attack the colonel in the presence of his friends, the alburys. he assured himself that, as far as personal injury went, he feared nothing. he had no disinclination to be hit over the head himself, if he could be sure of hitting the colonel over the head. if it could be managed that they two should fly at each other with their fists, and be allowed to do the worst they could to each other for an hour, without interference, he would be quite satisfied. but down at stalham that would not be allowed. all the world would be against him, and nobody there to see that he got fair play. if he could encounter the man in the streets of london it would be better; but were he to seek the man down at stalham he would probably find himself in the county lunatic asylum. what must he do for his revenge? he was surely entitled to it. by all the laws of chivalry, as to which he had his own ideas, he had a right to inflict an injury upon a successful -even upon an unsuccessful -rival. was it not a shame that so excellent an institution as duelling should have been stamped out? wandering about the lawns and shrubberies at merle park he thought of all this, and at last he came to a resolution. the institution had been stamped out, as far as great britain was concerned. he was aware of that. but it seemed to him that it had not been stamped out in other more generous countries. he had happened to notice that a certain enthusiastic politician in france had enjoyed many duels, and had never been severely repressed by the laws of his country. newspaper writers were always fighting in france, and were never guillotined. the idea of being hanged was horrible to him -so distasteful that he saw at a glance that a duel in england was out of the question. but to have his head cut off, even if it should come to that, would be a much less affair. but in belgium, in italy, in germany, they never did cut off the heads of the very numerous gentlemen who fought duels. and there were the southern states of the american union, where he fancied that men might fight duels as they pleased. he would be ready to go even to new orleans at a day's notice if only he could induce colonel stubbs to meet him there. and he thought that, if colonel stubbs really possessed half the spirit which seemed to be attributed to him by the british army generally, he would come, if properly invoked, and fight such a duel as this, whether at new orleans or at some other well-chosen blood-allowing spot on the world's surface. tom was prepared to go anywhere for blood. but the invocation must be properly made. when he had wanted another letter of another kind to be written for him, the colonel himself was the man to whom he had gone for assistance. and, had his present enemy been any other than the colonel himself, he would have gone to the colonel in preference to anyone else for aid in this matter. there was no one, in truth, in whom he believed so thoroughly as in the colonel. but that was out of the question. then he reflected what friend might now stand him in stead. he would have gone to houston, who wanted to marry his sister; but houston seemed to have disappeared, and he did not know where he might be found. there was his brother-in-law, traffick -but he feared lest traffick might give him over once more into the hands of the police. he thought of hamel, as being in a way connected with the family; but he had seen so little of hamel, and had so much disliked what he had seen, that he was obliged to let that hope go by. there was no one left but faddle whom he could trust. faddle would do anything he was told to do. faddle would carry the letter, no doubt, or allow himself to be named as a proposed second. but faddle could not write the letter. he felt that he could write the letter himself better than faddle. he went up to town, having sent a mysterious letter to faddle, bidding his friend attend him in his lodgings. he did not yet dare to go to the mountaineers, where faddle would have been found. but faddle came, true to the appointment. "what is it, now?" said the faithful friend. "i hope you are going back to travers and treasons'. that is what i should do, and walk in just as though nothing had happened." "not if you were me, you wouldn't." "that makes a difference, of course." "there is something else to be done before i can again darken the doors of travers and treason -if i should ever do so!" "something particular?" "something very particular. faddle, i do think you are a true friend." "you may say that. i have stuck to you always -though you don't know the kind of things my people say to me about it. they say i am going to ruin myself because of you. the governor threatened to put me out of the business altogether. but i'm a man who will be true to my friend, whatever happens. i think you have been a little cool to me, lately; but even that don't matter." "cool! if you knew the state that i'm in you wouldn't talk of a fellow being cool! i'm so knocked about it all that i don't know what i'm doing." "i do take that into consideration." "now, i'll tell you what i'm going to do." then he stood still, and looked faddle full in the face. faddle, sitting awe-struck on his chair, returned the gaze. he knew that a moment of supreme importance was at hand. "faddle, i'll shoot that fellow down like a dog." "will you, indeed?" "like a dog -if i can get at him. i should have no more compunction in taking his life than a mere worm. why should i, when i know that he has sapped the very juice of my existence?" "do you mean -do you mean -that you would -murder him?" "it would not be murder. of course it might be that he would shoot me instead. upon the whole, i think i should like that best." "oh; a duel!" said faddle. "that's what i mean. murder him! certainly not. though i should like nothing half so well as to thrash him within an inch of his life. i would not murder him. my plan is this -i shall write to him a letter inviting him to meet me in any corner of the globe that he may select. torrid zone or arctic circle will be all the same to me. you will have to accompany me as my second." faddle shivered with excitement and dread of coming events. among other ideas there came the thought that it might be difficult to get back from the arctic circle without money if his friend tom should happen to be shot dead in that locality. "but first of all", continued tom, "you will have to carry a letter." "to the colonel?" suggested faddle. "of course. the man is now staying with friends of his named albury at a place called stalham. from what i hear they are howling swells. sir harry albury is master of the hounds, and lady albury when she is up in london has all the royal family constantly at her parties. stubbs is a cousin of his; but you must go right away up to him among 'em all, and deliver the letter into his hands without minding 'em a bit. "couldn't it go by post?" "no; this kind of letter mustn't go by post. you have to be able to swear that you delivered it yourself into his own hands. and then you must wait for an answer. even though he should want a day to think of it, you must wait." "where am i to stay, tom?" "well; it may be they'll ask you to the house, because, though you carry the letter for me, you are not supposed to be his enemy. if so, put a jolly face on it, and enjoy yourself as well as you can. you must seem, you know, to be just as big a swell as anybody there. but if they don't ask you, you must go to the nearest inn. i'll pay the bill." "shall i go today?" asked faddle. "i've got to write the letter first. it'll take a little time, so that you'd better put it off till tomorrow. if you will leave me now i'll write it, and if you will come back at six we'll go and have a bit of dinner at bolivia's." this was an eating-house in the neighbourhood of leicester square, to which the friends had become partial during this troubled period of their existence. "why not come to the mountaineers, old boy?" tom shook his head, showing that he was not yet up to such festivity as that; and then faddle took his departure. tom at once got out his pen and paper, and began to write his letter. it may be imagined that it was not written off-hand, or without many struggles. when it was written it ran as follows: sir, you will not, i think, be surprised to hear from me in anything but a friendly spirit. i went down to you at aldershot as to a friend whom i could trust with my bosom's dearest secret, and you have betrayed me. i told you of my love, a love which has long burned in my heart, and you received my confidence with a smile, knowing all the time that you were my rival. i leave it to you to say what reply you can make as to conduct so damning, so unmanly, so dastardly -and so very unlike a friend as this! however, there is no place here for words. you have offered me the greatest insult and the greatest injury which one man can inflict upon another! there is no possibility of an apology, unless you are inclined to say that you will renounce for ever your claim upon the hand of miss ayala dormer. this i do not expect, and, therefore, i call upon you to give me that satisfaction which is all that one gentleman can offer to another. after the injury you have done me i think it quite impossible that you should refuse. of course, i know that duels cannot be fought in england because of the law. i am sorry that the law should have been altered, because it allows so many cowards to escape the punishment they deserve. [tom, as he wrote this, was very proud of the keenness of the allusion.] i am quite sure, however, that a man who bears the colours of a colonel in the british army will not try to get off by such a pretext. [he was proud, too, about the colours.] france, belgium, italy, the united states, and all the world, are open! i will meet you wherever you may choose to arrange a meeting. i presume that you will prefer pistols. i send this by the hands of my friend, mr faddle, who will be prepared to make arrangements with you or with any friend on your behalf. he will bring back your reply, which no doubt will be satisfactory. i am, sir, your most obedient servant, thomas tringle, junior when, after making various copies, tom at last read the letter as finally prepared, he was much pleased with it, doubting whether the colonel himself could have written it better, had the task been confided to his hands. when faddle came, he read it to him with much pride, and then committed it to his custody. after that they went out and ate their dinner at bolivia's with much satisfaction, but still with a bearing of deep melancholy, as was proper on such an occasion. chapter 36 tom tringle gets an answer faddle as he went down into the country made up his mind that the law which required such letters to be delivered by hand was an absurd law. the post would have done just as well, and would have saved a great deal of trouble. these gloomy thoughts were occasioned by a conviction that he could not carry himself easily or make himself happy among such "howling swells" as these alburys. if they should invite him to the house the matter would be worse that way than the other. he had no confidence in his dress coat, which he was aware had been damaged by nocturnal orgies. it is all very well to tell a fellow to be as "big a swell" as anybody else, as tom had told him. but faddle acknowledged to himself the difficulty of acting up to such advice. even the eyes of colonel stubbs turned upon him after receipt of the letter would oppress him. nevertheless he must do his best, and he took a gig at the station nearest to albury. he was careful to carry his bag with him, but still he lived in hope that he would be able to return to london the same day. when he found himself within the lodges of stalham park he could hardly keep himself from shivering and, when he asked the footman at the door whether colonel stubbs was there, he longed to be told that colonel stubbs had gone away on the previous day to some -he did not care what -distant part of the globe. but colonel stubbs had not gone away. colonel stubbs was in the house. our friend the colonel had not suffered as tom had suffered since his rejection -but nevertheless he had been much concerned. he had set his heart upon ayala before he had asked her, and could not bring himself to change his heart because she had refused him. he had gone down to aldershot and had performed his duties, abstaining for the present from repeating his offer. the offer of course must be repeated, but as to the when, the where, and the how, he had not as yet made up his mind. then tom tringle had come to him at aldershot communicating to him the fact that he had a rival -and also the other fact that the other rival like himself had hitherto been unsuccessful. it seemed improbable to him that such a girl as ayala should attach herself to such a man as her cousin tom. but nevertheless he was uneasy. he regarded tom tringle as a miracle of wealth, and felt certain that the united efforts of the whole family would be used to arrange the match. ayala had refused him also, and therefore, up to the present moment, the chances of the other man were no better than his own. when tom left him at aldershot he hardly remembered that tom knew nothing of his secret, whereas tom had communicated to him his own. it never for a moment occurred to him that tom would quarrel with him; although he had seen that the poor fellow had been disgusted because he had refused to write the letter. on christmas eve he had gone down to stalham, and there he had remained discussing the matter of his love with lady albury. to no one else in the house had the affair been mentioned, and by sir harry he was supposed to remain there only for the sake of the hunting. with sir harry he was of all guests the most popular, and thus it came to pass that his prolonged presence at stalham was not matter of special remark. much of his time he did devote to hunting, but there were half hours devoted in company with lady albury to ayala's perfection and ayala's obstinacy. lady albury was almost inclined to think that ayala should be given up. married ladies seldom estimate even the girls they like best at their full value. it seems to such a one as lady albury almost a pity that such a one as colonel stubbs should waste his energy upon anything so insignificant as ayala dormer. the speciality of the attraction is of course absent to the woman, and unless she has considered the matter so far as to be able to clothe her thoughts in male vestments, as some women do, she cannot understand the longing that is felt for so small a treasure. lady albury thought that young ladies were very well, and that ayala was very well among young ladies; but ayala in getting colonel stubbs for a husband would, as lady albury thought, have received so much more than her desert that she was now almost inclined to be angry with the colonel. "my dear friend," he said to her one day, "you might as well take it for granted. i shall go after my princess with all the energy which a princess merits." "the question is whether she be a princess," said lady albury. "allow me to say that that is a point on which i cannot admit a doubt. she is a princess to me, and just at present i must be regarded as the only judge in the matter." "she shall be a goddess, if you please," said lady albury. "goddess, princess, pink, or pearl -any name you please supposed to convey perfection shall be the same to me. it may be that she is in truth no better, or more lovely, or divine, than many another young lady who is at the present moment exercising the heart of many another gentleman. you know enough of the world to be aware that every jack has his gill. she is my gill, and that's an end of it." "i hope then that she may be your gill." "and, in order that she may, you must have her here again. i should absolutely not know how to go to work were i to find myself in the presence of aunt dosett in kingsbury crescent." in answer to this lady albury assured him that she would be quite willing to have the girl again at stalham if it could be managed. she was reminding him, however, how difficult it had been on a previous occasion to overcome the scruples of mrs dosett, when a servant brought in word to colonel stubbs that there was a man in the hall desirous of seeing him immediately on particular business. then the servant presented our friend faddle's card. mr samuel faddle, 1, badminton gardens. "yes, sir;" said the servant. "he says he has a letter which he must put into your own particular hands." "that looks like a bailiff," said lady albury, laughing. colonel stubbs, declaring that he had no special reason to be afraid of any bailiff, left the room and went down into the hall. at stalham the real hall of the house was used as a billiard-room, and here, leaning against the billiard table, the colonel found poor faddle. when a man is compelled by some chance circumstance to address another man whom he does not know, and whom by inspection he feels he shall never wish to know, he always hardens his face, and sometimes also his voice. so it was with the colonel when he looked at faddle. a word he did say, not in words absolutely uncivil, as to the nature of the business in hand. then faddle, showing his emotion by a quaver in his voice, suggested that as the matter was one of extreme delicacy some more private apartment might be provided. upon this stubbs led the way into a little room which was for the most part filled with hunting gear, and offered the stranger one of the three chairs which it contained. faddle sat down, finding himself so compelled, though the colonel still remained standing, and then extracted the fatal epistle from his pocket. "colonel stubbs," said he, handing up the missive, "i am directed by my friend, mr thomas tringle, junior, to put this letter into your own hand. when you have read it i shall be ready to consult with you as to its contents." these few words he had learnt by heart on his journey down, having practised them continually. the colonel took the letter, and turning to the window read it with his back to the visitor. he read it twice from beginning to end in order that he might have time to resolve whether he would laugh aloud at both faddle and tringle, or whether it might not be better to endeavour to soften the anger of poor tom by a message which should be at any rate kindly worded. "this is from my friend, tom tringle," he said. "from mr thomas tringle, junior," said faddle, proudly. "so i perceive. i am sorry to think that he should be in so much trouble. he is one of the best fellows i know, and i am really grieved that he should be unhappy. this, you know, is all nonsense." "it is not nonsense at all, colonel stubbs." "you must allow me to be the judge of that, mr faddle. it is at any rate nonsense to me. he wants me to go somewhere and fight a duel -which i should not do with any man under any circumstances. here there is no possible ground for any quarrel whatsoever -as i will endeavour to explain, myself, to my friend, mr tringle. i shall be sure to write to him at once -and so i will bid you good afternoon." but this did not at all suit poor faddle after so long a journey. "i thought it probable that you would write, colonel stubbs, and therefore i am prepared to wait. if i cannot be accommodated here i will wait -will wait elsewhere." "that will not be at all necessary. we have a post to london twice a day." "you must be aware, colonel stubbs, that letters of this sort should not be sent by post." "the kind of letter i shall write may be sent by post very well. it will not be bellicose, and therefore there can be no objection." "i really think, colonel stubbs, that you are making very little of a very serious matter." "mr faddle, i really must manage my own affairs after my own way. would you like a glass of sherry? if not, i need hardly ask you to stay here any longer." upon that he went out into the billiard-room and rang the bell. poor faddle would have liked the glass of sherry, but he felt that it would be incompatible with the angry dignity which he assumed, and he left the house without another word or even a gesture of courtesy. then he returned to london, having taken his bag and dress coat all the way to stalham for nothing. tom's letter was almost too good to be lost, but there was no one to whom the joke could be made known except lady albury. she, he was sure, would keep poor tom's secret as well as his own, and to her he showed the letter. "i pity him from the bottom of my heart," he said. lady albury declared that the writer of such a letter was too absurd for pity. "not at all. unless he really loved her he wouldn't have been so enraged. i suppose he does think that i injured him. he did tell me his story, and i didn't tell him mine. i can understand it all, though i didn't imagine he was such a fool as to invite me to travel all round the world because of the harsh laws of great britain. nevertheless, i shall write to him quite an affectionate letter, remembering that, should i succeed myself, he will be my first cousin by marriage." before he went to bed that night he wrote his letter, and the reader may as well see the whole correspondence: my dear tringle, if you will think of it all round you will see that you have got no cause of quarrel with me any more than i have with you. if it be the case that we are both attached to your cousin, we must abide her decision whether it be in favour of either of us, or, as may be too probably the case, equally adverse to both of us. if i understand your letter rightly, you think that i behaved unfairly when i did not tell you of my own affairs upon hearing yours from your own lips. why should i? why should i have been held to be constrained to tell my secret because you, for your own sake, had told me yours? had i been engaged to your cousin -which i regret to say is very far from the case -i should have told you, naturally. i should have regarded the matter as settled, and should have acquainted you with a fact which would have concerned you. but as such was not a fact, i was by no means bound to tell you how my affairs stood. this ought to be clear to you, and i hope will be when you have read what i say. i may as well go on to declare that under no circumstances should i fight a duel with you. if i thought i had done wrong in the matter i would beg your pardon. i can't do that as it is -though i am most anxious to appease you -because i have done you no wrong. pray forget your animosity -which is in truth unfounded -and let us be friends as we were before. yours very sincerely, jonathan stubbs faddle reached london the evening before the colonel's letter, and again dined with his friend at bolivia's. at first they were both extremely angry, acerbating each other's wrath. now that he was safe back in london faddle thought that he would have enjoyed an evening among the "swells" of stalham, and felt himself to be injured by the inhospitable treatment he had received -"after going all the way down there, hardly to be asked to sit down." "not asked to sit down!" "well, yes, i was -on a miserable cane-bottomed chair in a sort of cupboard. and he didn't sit down. you may call them swells, but i think your colonel stubbs is a very vulgar sort of fellow. when i told him the post isn't the proper thing for such a letter, he only laughed. i suppose he doesn't know what is the kind of thing among gentlemen." "i should think he does know," said tom. "then why doesn't he act accordingly? would you believe it; he never so much as asked me whether i had a mouth on. it was just luncheon time, too." "i suppose they lunch late." "they might have asked me. i shouldn't have taken it. he did say something about a glass of sherry, but it was in that sort of tone which tells a fellow that he is expected not to take it. and then he pretended to laugh. i could see that he was shaking in his shoes at the idea of having to fight. he go to the torrid zone! he would much rather go to a police office if he thought that there was any fighting on hand. i should dust his jacket with a stick if i were you." later on in the evening tom declared that this was what he would do, but, before he came to that, a third bottle of signor bolivia's champagne had been made to appear. the evening passed between them not without much enjoyment. on the opening of that third cork the wine was declared to be less excellent than what had gone before, and signor bolivia was evoked in person. a gentleman named walker, who looked after the establishment, made his appearance, and with many smiles, having been induced to swallow a bumper of the compound himself, declared, with a knowing shake of the head and an astute twinkle of the eye, that the wine was not equal to the last. he took a great deal of trouble, he assured them, to import an article which could not be surpassed, if it could be equalled, in london, always visiting epernay himself once a year for the purpose of going through the wine-vaults. let him do what he would an inferior bottle -or, rather, a bottle somewhat inferior -would sometimes make its way into his cellar. would mr tringle let him have the honour of drawing another cork, so that the exact amount of difference might be ascertained? tom gave his sanction; the fourth cork was drawn; and mr walker, sitting down and consuming the wine with his customers, was enabled to point out to a hair's breadth the nature and the extent of the variation. tringle still thought that the difference was considerable. faddle was, on the whole, inclined to agree with signor bolivia. it need hardly be said that the four bottles were paid for -or rather scored against tringle, who at the present time had a little account at the establishment. "show a fellar fellar's letters morrer." such or something like it was faddle's last request to his friend as they bade each other farewell for the night in pall mall. but faddle was never destined to see the colonel's epistle. on his attempting to let himself in at badminton gardens, he was kidnapped by his father in his night-shirt and dressing-gown; and was sent out of london on the following morning by long sea down to aberdeen, whither he was intrusted to the charge of a stern uncle. our friend tom saw nothing more of his faithful friend till years had rolled over both their heads. by the morning post, while tom was still lying sick with headache -for even with signor bolivia's wine the pulling of many corks is apt to be dangerous -there came the letter from the colonel. bad as tom was, he felt himself constrained to read it at once, and learned that neither the torrid zone or arctic circle would require his immediate attendance. he was very sick, and perhaps, therefore, less high in courage than on the few previous days. partly, perhaps, from that cause, but partly, also, from the colonel's logic, he did find that his wrath was somewhat abated. not but what it was still present to his mind that if two men loved the same girl as ardently, as desperately, as eternally as he loved ayala, the best thing for them would be to be put together like the kilkenny cats, till whatever remnant should be left of one might have its chance with the young lady. he still thought that it would be well that they should fight to the death, but a glimmering of light fell upon his mind as to the colonel's abnegation of all treason in the matter. "i suppose it wasn't to be expected that he should tell," he said to himself. "perhaps i shouldn't have told in the same place. but as to forgetting animosity that is out of the question! how is a man to forget his animosity when two men want to marry the same girl?" about three o'clock on that day he dressed himself, and sat waiting for faddle to come to him. he knew how anxious his friend would be to see the colonel's letter. but faddle by this time had passed the nore, and had added seasickness to his other maladies. faddle came to him no more, and the tedious hours of the afternoon wore themselves away in his lodgings till he found his solitude to be almost more unbearable than his previous misfortunes. at last came the time when he must go out for his dinner. he did not dare to attempt the mountaineers. and as for bolivia, bolivia with his corks, and his eating-house, and his vintages, was abominable to him. about eight o'clock he slunk into a quiet little house on the north side of oxford street, and there had two mutton chops, some buttered toast, and some tea. as he drank his tea he told himself that on the morrow he would go back to his mother at merle park, and get from her such consolation as might be possible. chapter 37 gertrude is unsuccessful it was now the middle of january, and gertrude tringle had received no reply from her lover to the overture which she had made him. nor, indeed, had she received any letter from him since that to which this overture had been a reply. it was now two months since her proposition had been made, and during that time her anger had waxed very hot against mr houston. after all, it might be a question whether mr houston was worth all the trouble which she, with her hundred thousand pounds, was taking on his behalf. she did not like the idea of abandoning him, because, by doing so, she would seem to yield to her father. having had a young man of her own, it behoved her to stick to her young man in spite of her parents. but what is a girl to do with a lover who, at the end of two months, has made no reply to an offer from herself that he should run away with her, and take her to ostend? she was in this frame of mind when, lo and behold, she found her own letter, still inclosed in her own envelope -but opened, and thrust in among her father's papers. it was evident enough that the letter had never passed from out of the house. there had been treachery on the part of some servant -or perhaps her father might have condescended to search the little box -or, more probable still, augusta had betrayed her! then she reflected that she had communicated her purpose to her sister, that her sister had abstained from any questions since the letter had been written, and that her sister, therefore, no doubt, was the culprit. there, however, was the letter, which had never reached her lover's hands, and, as a matter of course, her affections returned with all their full ardour to the unfortunate ill-used man. that her conduct was now watched would, she thought, be a matter of course. her father knew her purpose, and, like stern parents in general, would use all his energies to thwart it. sir thomas had, in truth, thought but little about the matter since he had first thrust the letter away. tom's troubles, and the disgrace brought by them upon travers and treason generally, had so occupied his mind that he cared but little for gertrude and her lover. but gertrude had no doubt that she was closely watched, and in these circumstances was driven to think how she could best use her wits so as to countermine her father. to run away from queen's gate would, she thought, be more difficult, and more uncomfortable, than to perform the same operation at merle park. it was intended that the family should remain in the country, at any rate, till easter, and gertrude resolved that there might yet be time for another effort before easter should be past, if only she could avoid those hundred argus eyes, which were, no doubt, fixed upon her from all sides. she prepared another letter to her lover, which she addressed to him at his club in london. in this she told him nothing of her former project, except that a letter written by her in november had fallen in to the hands of enemies. then she gave him to understand that there was need of the utmost caution; but that, if adequate caution were used, she did not doubt they might succeed. she said nothing about her great project, but suggested to him that he should run down into sussex, and meet her at a certain spot indicated, outside the park palings, half an hour after dusk. it might be, she said, impossible that the meeting should be effected, but she thought that she could so manage as to leave the house unwatched at the appointed hour. with the object of being especially safe she began and concluded her letter without any names, and then managed to deposit it herself in the box of the village post-office. houston, when he received this letter, at once made up his mind that he would not be found on the outer side of the park palings on the evening named. he told himself that he was too old for the romance of love-making, and that should he be received, when hanging about in the dark, by some custodian with a cudgel, he would have nothing to thank but his own folly. he wrote back therefore to say that he regarded the outside of the park palings as indiscreet, but that he would walk up through the lodge gate to the house at three o'clock in the afternoon of the day named, and he would take it as an additional mark of her favour if she would meet him on the road. gertrude had sent him a mysterious address; he was to direct the letter to "o.p.q., post office, hastings," and she was prepared to hire a country boy to act as love's messenger on the occasion. but of this instruction frank took no notice, addressing the letter to merle park in the usual way. gertrude received her letter without notice from anyone. on that occasion argus, with all his eyes, was by chance asleep. she was very angry with her lover -almost determined to reject him altogether, almost disposed to yield to her angry parents and look out for some other lover who might be accepted in better part; but still, when the day came she put on her hat and walked down the road towards the lodge. as fortune had it -fortune altogether unfavourable to those perils for which her soul was longing -no one watched her, no one dogged her steps, no one took any notice of her, till she met frank houston when he had passed about a hundred yards through the gates. "and so you have come," she said. "oh, yes; i have come. i was sure to come when i said so. no man is more punctual than i am in these matters. i should have come before -only i did not get your letter." "oh, frank!" "well, my darling. you are looking uncommonly well, and i am so glad to see you. how are they all?" "frank!" "what is it?" "oh, frank, what are we to do?" "the governor will give way at last, i should say." "never -that is while we are as we are now. if we were married -" "ah -i wish we were! wouldn't it be nice?" "do you really think so?" "of course i do. i'm ready tomorrow for the matter of that." "but could you do something great?" "something great! as to earning my bread, you mean? i do not think i could do that. i didn't turn my hand to it early enough." "i wasn't thinking of -your bread." "you said -could i do something great?" "frank, i wrote you a letter and described it all. how i got the courage to do it i do not know. i feel as though i could not bring myself to say it now. i wonder whether you would have the courage." "i should say so. i don't know quite what sort of thing it is; but i generally have pluck enough for anything in a common way." "this is something in an uncommon way." "i couldn't break open travers and treason, and get at the safe, or anything in that way." "it is another sort of safe of which you must break the lock, frank; another treasure you must steal. do you not understand me?" "not in the least." "there is tom," said gertrude. "he is always wandering about the place now like a ghost. let us go back to the gate." then frank turned. "you heard, i suppose, of that dreadful affair about the policeman." "there was a row, i was told." "did you feel that the family were disgraced?" "not in the least. he had to pay five shillings -hadn't he -for telling a policeman to go about his business?" "he was -locked up," said gertrude, solemnly. "it's just the same. nobody thinks anything about that kind of thing. now, what is it i have got to do? we had better turn back again as soon as we can, because i must go up to the house before i go." "you will?" "certainly. i will not leave it to your father to say that i came skulking about the place, and was ashamed to show my face. that would not be the way to make him give you your money." "i am sure he'd give it -if we were once married." "if we were married without having it assured beforehand we should look very blue if things went wrong afterwards." "i asked you whether you had courage." "courage enough, i think, when my body is concerned; but i am an awful coward in regard to money. i wouldn't mind hashed mutton and baked potatoes for myself, but i shouldn't like to see you eating them, dearest, after all the luxuries to which you have been accustomed." "i should think nothing of it." "did you ever try? i never came absolutely to hashed mutton, but i've known how very uncomfortable it is not to be able to pay for the hot joints. i'm willing to own honestly that married life without an income would not have attractions for me." "but if it was sure to come?" "ah, then indeed -with you! i have just said how nice it would be." "have you ever been at ostend?" she asked, suddenly. "ostend. oh, yes. there was a man there who used to cheat horribly at ecarte. he did me out of nearly a hundred pounds one night." "but there's a clergyman there, i'm told." "i don't think this man was in orders. but he might have been. parsons come out in so many shapes! this man called himself a count. it was seven years ago." "i am speaking of today." "i've not been there since." "would you like to go there -with me?" "it isn't a nice sort of place, i should say, for a honeymoon. but you shall choose. when we are married you shall go where you like." "to be married!" she exclaimed. "married at ostend! would your mother like that?" "mother! oh, dear!" "i'll be shot if i know what you're after, gertrude. if you've got anything to say you'd better speak out. i want to go up to the house now." they had now taken one or two turns between the lodge and a point in the road from which the house could be observed, and at which tom could still be seen wandering about, thinking no doubt of ayala. here frank stopped as though determined not to turn to the lodge again. it was wonderful to gertrude that he should not have understood what she had already said. when he talked of her mother going with them to the ostend marriage she was almost beside herself. this lover of hers was a man of the world and must have heard of elopements. but now had come a time in which she must be plain, unless she made up her mind to abandon her plan altogether. "frank," she said, "if you were to run away with me, then we could be married at ostend." "run away with you!" "it wouldn't be the first time that such a thing has been done." "the commonest thing in the world, my dear, when a girl has got her money in her own hands. nothing i should like so much." "money! it's always money. it's nothing but the money, i believe." "that's unkind, gertrude." "ain't you unkind? you won't do anything i ask." "my darling, that hashed mutton and those baked potatoes are too clear before my eyes." "you think of nothing, i believe, but your dinner." "i think, unfortunately, of a great many other things. hashed mutton is simply symbolical. under the head of hashed mutton i include poor lodgings, growlers when we get ourselves asked to eat a dinner at somebody's table, limited washing bills, table napkins rolled up in their dirt every day for a week, antimacassars to save the backs of the chairs, a picture of you darning my socks while i am reading a newspaper hired at a halfpenny from the public house round the corner, a pint of beer in the pewter between us -and perhaps two babies in one cradle because we can't afford to buy a second." "don't, sir." "in such an emergency i am bound to give you the advantage both of my experience and imagination." "experience!" "not about the cradles! that is imagination. my darling, it won't do. you and i have not been brought up to make ourselves happy on a very limited income." "papa would be sure to give us the money," she said, eagerly. "in such a matter as this, where your happiness is concerned, my dear, i will trust no one." "my happiness!" "yes, my dear, your happiness! i am quite willing to own the truth. i am not fitted to make you happy, if i were put upon the hashed mutton regime as i have described to you. i will not run the risk -for your sake." "for your own, you mean," she said. "nor for my own, if you wish me to add that also." then they walked up towards the house for some little way in silence. "what is it you intend, then?" she asked. "i will ask your father once again." "he will simply turn you out of the house," she said. upon this he shrugged his shoulders, and they walked on to the hall door in silence. sir thomas was not at merle park, nor was he expected home that evening. frank houston could only therefore ask for lady tringle, and her he saw together with mr and mrs traffick. in presence of them all nothing could be said of love affairs; and, after sitting for half an hour, during which he was not entertained with much cordiality, he took his leave, saying that he would do himself the honour of calling on sir thomas in the city. while he was in the drawing-room gertrude did not appear. she had retired to her room, and was there resolving that frank houston was not such a lover as would justify a girl in breaking her heart for him. and frank as he went to town brought his mind to the same way of thinking. the girl wanted something romantic to be done, and he was not disposed to do anything romantic for her. he was not in the least angry with her, acknowledging to himself that she had quite as much a right to her way of looking at things as he had to his. but he felt almost sure that the tringle alliance must be regarded as impossible. if so, should he look out for another heiress, or endeavour to enjoy life, stretching out his little income as far as might be possible -or should he assume altogether a new character, make a hero of himself, and ask imogene docimer to share with him a little cottage in whatever might be the cheapest spot to be found in the civilised parts of europe? if it was to be hashed mutton and a united cradle he would prefer imogene docimer to gertrude tringle for his companion. but there was still open to him the one further chance with sir thomas; and this chance he could try with the comfortable feeling that he might be almost indifferent as to what sir thomas might say. to be prepared for either lot is very self-assuring when any matter of difficulty has to be taken in hand. on arriving at the house in lombard street he soon found himself ushered once more into sir thomas's presence. "well, mr houston, what can i do for you today?" asked the man of business, with a pleasant smile. "it is the old story, sir thomas." "don't you think, mr houston, that there is something -a little -unmanly shall i call it, in coming so often about the same thing?" "no, sir thomas, i do not. i think my conduct has been manly throughout." "weak, perhaps, would have been a better word. i do not wish to be uncourteous, and i will therefore withdraw unmanly. is it not weak to encounter so many refusals on the same subject?" "i should feel myself to have been very strong if after so many refusals i were to be successful at last." "there is not the least chance of it." "why should there be no chance if your daughter's happiness depends upon it?" "there is no chance, because i do not believe that my daughter's happiness does depend upon it. she is foolish, and has made a foolish proposition to you." "what proposition?" asked houston, in surprise, having heard nothing of that intercepted letter. "that journey to ostend, with the prospect of finding a good-natured clergyman in the town! i hardly think you would be fool enough for that." "no, sir thomas, i should not do that. i should think it wrong." this he said quite gravely, asking no questions; but was very much at a loss to know where sir thomas had got his information. "i am sure you would think it foolish: and it would be foolish. i pledge you my word, that were you to do such a thing i should not give you a shilling. i should not let my girl starve; but i should save her from suffering in such a manner as to let you have no share of the sustenance i provided for her." "there is no question of that kind," said frank, angrily. "i hope not -only as i know that the suggestion has been made i have thought it well to tell you what would be my conduct if it were carried out." "it will not be carried out by me," said frank. "very well; i am glad to hear it. to tell the truth, i never thought that you would run the risk. a gentleman of your sort, when he is looking for a wife with money, likes to have the money quite certain." "no doubt," said frank, determined not to be browbeaten. "and now, mr houston, let me say one word more to you and then we may part, as i hope, good friends. i do not mean my daughter gertrude to marry any man such as you are -by that i mean an idle gentleman without means. should she do so in my teeth she would have to bear the punishment of sharing that poor gentleman's idleness and poverty. while i lived she would not be allowed absolutely to want, and when i died there would be some trifle for her, sufficient to keep the wolf from the door. but i give you my solemn word and honour that she shall never be the means of supplying wealth and luxury to such a husband as you would be. i have better purposes for my hard-earned money. now, good-day." with that he rose from his chair and put out his hand. frank rose also from his chair, took the hand that was offered him, and stepped out of travers and treason into lombard street, with no special desire to shake the dust off his feet as he did so. he felt that sir thomas had been reasonable -and he felt also that gertrude tringle would perhaps have been dear at the money. two or three days afterwards he despatched the following little note to poor gertrude at merle park: dear gertrude, i have seen your father again, and found him to be absolutely obdurate. i am sure he is quite in earnest when he tells me that he will not give his daughter to an impoverished idle fellow such as i am. who shall say that he is wrong? i did not dare to tell him so, anxious as i was that he should change his purpose. i feel myself bound in honour, believing, as i do, that he is quite resolved in his purpose, to release you from your promise. i should feel that i was only doing you an injury were i to ask you to be bound by an engagement which could not, at any rate for many years, be brought to a happy termination. as we may part as sincere friends i hope you will consent to keep the little token of my regard which i gave you. frank houston chapter 38 frank houston is penitent "and now the adriatic's free to wed another," said houston to himself, as he put himself into a cab, and had himself carried to his club. there he wrote that valedictory letter to gertrude which is given at the end of the last chapter. had he reason to complain of his fate, or to rejoice? he had looked the question of an establishment full in the face -an establishment to be created by sir thomas tringle's money, to be shared with sir thomas tringle's daughter, and had made up his mind to accept it, although the prospects were not, as he told himself, "altogether rosy". when he first made up his mind to marry gertrude -on condition that gertrude should bring with her, at any rate, not less than three thousand a year -he was quite aware that he would have to give up all his old ways of life, and all his little pleasures. he would become son-in-law to sir thomas tringle, with a comfortable house to live in; with plenty to eat and drink, and, probably, a horse or two to ride. if he could manage things at their best, perhaps he might be able to settle himself at pau, or some other place of the kind, so as to be as far away as possible from tringle influences. but his little dinners at one club, his little rubbers of whist at the other club, his evenings at the opera, the pleasant smiles of the ladies, whom he loved in a general way -these would be done with for ever! earn his own bread! why, he was going to earn his bread, and that in most disagreeable manner. he would set up an establishment, not because such an establishment would have any charms for him, but because he was compelled by lack of money to make some change in his present manner of life. and yet the time had been when he had looked forward to a marriage as the happiest thing that could befall him. as far as his nature could love, he had loved imogene docimer. there had come a glimpse upon him of something better than the little dinners and the little rubbers. there had been a prospect of an income -not ample, as would have been that forthcoming from sir thomas -but sufficient for a sweet and modest home, in which he thought that it would have sufficed for his happiness to paint a few pictures, and read a few books, and to love his wife and children. even as to that there had been a doubt. there was a regret as to the charms of london life. but, nevertheless, he had made up his mind -and she, without any doubt, had made up hers. then that wicked uncle had died, and was found to have expended on his own pursuits the money which was to have been left to his nephew. upon that there was an explanation between frank and imogene; and it was agreed that their engagement should be over, while a doubtful and dangerous friendship was to be encouraged between them. such was the condition of things when frank first met gertrude tringle at rome, now considerably more than twelve months since. when gertrude had first received his proposition favourably he had written to imogene a letter in that drolling spirit common to him, in which he declared his purpose -or rather, not his purpose, but his untoward fate, should the gods be unkind to him. she had answered him after the same fashion, saying, that in regard to his future welfare she hoped that the gods would prove unkind. but had he known how to read all that her letter expressed between the lines, he would have perceived that her heart was more strongly moved than his own. since that time he had learned the lesson. there had been a letter or two; and then there had been that walk in the wood on the italian side of the tyrolese alps. the reader may remember how he was hurried away in the diligence for innsbruck, because it was considered that his further sojourn in the same house with imogene was dangerous. he had gone, and even as he went had attempted to make a joke of the whole affair. but it had not been quite a joke to him even then. there was imogene's love and imogene's anger -and together with these an aversion towards the poor girl whom he intended to marry -which became the stronger the more strongly he was convinced both of imogene's love and of her anger. nevertheless, he persevered -not with the best success, as has already been told. now, as he left the house in lombard street, and wrote what was intended to be his last epistle to gertrude, he was driven again to think of miss docimer. indeed he had in his pocket, as he sat at his club, a little note which he had lately received from that lady, which, in truth, had disturbed him much when he made his last futile efforts at merle park and in lombard street. the little note was as follows: dear frank, one little friendly word in spite of our storm on the tyrolese hillside! if miss tringle is to be the arbiter of "your fate -why, then, let there be an end of everything between us. i should not care to be called upon to receive such a mrs frank houston as a dear friend. but if tringle pere should at the last moment prove hardhearted, then let me see you again. yours, i. with this letter in his pocket he had gone down to merle park, determined to put an end to the tringle affair in one way or the other. his duty, as he had planned it to himself, would not be altered by imogene's letter; but if that duty should become impracticable -why, then, it would be open to him to consider whatever imogene might have to say to him. the docimers were now in london, where it was their custom to live during six months of the year,; but houston had not been at their house since he had parted from them in the tyrol. he had spent but little of his time in london since the autumn, and, when there, had not been anxious to see people who had, at any rate, treated him somewhat roughly. but now it would be necessary that he should answer imogene's letter. what should be the nature of such answer he certainly had not as yet decided; nor could he have decided before those very convincing assurances of sir thomas pringle. that matter was at any rate over, and now the "adriatic might wed another," -if the adriatic thought well to do so. the matter, however, was one which required a good deal of consideration. he gave to it ten minutes of intense thought, during which he consumed a cup of coffee and a cigarette; and then, throwing away the burnt end of the paper, he hurried into the morning-room, and wrote to the lady as follows: dear imogene, you will not have to press to your bosom as my wife the second daughter of sir thomas tringle, bart. the high honour of that alliance has at last been refused by him in very plain language. had she become mrs frank houston, i do not doubt but you would have done your duty to your own cousin. that lot, however, has not been written for me in the book of fates. the father is persistent in looking upon me as an idle profligate adventurer; and though he has been kind enough to hint more than once that it might be possible for me to achieve the young lady, he has succeeded in convincing me that i never should achieve anything beyond the barren possession of her beauty. a wife and family on my present very moderate income would be burdensome; and, therefore, with infinite regrets, i have bade adieu to miss tringle. i have not hitherto been to see either you or your brother or mrs docimer because i have been altogether unaware whether you or your brother or mrs docimer would be glad to see me. as you say yourself, there was a storm on the tyrolese hillside -in which there was more than one wind blowing at the same time. i do not find fault with anybody -perhaps a storm was needed to clear the air. but i hate storms. i do not pretend to be a very grand fellow, but i do endeavour not to be disagreeable. your brother, if you remember, was a little hard. but, in truth, i say this only to account for my apparent incivility. and, perhaps, with another object -to gain a little time before i plunge into the stern necessity of answering all that you say in your very comprehensive letter of five lines. the first four lines i have answered. there will be no such mrs frank houston as that suggested. and then, as to the last line. of course, you will see me again, and that very speedily. so it would seem that the whole letter is answered. but yet it is not answered. there is so much in it that whole sheets would not answer it. a quire of notepaper stuffed full would hardly contain all that i might find to say in answer to it -on one side and the other. nay, i might fill as many reams of folio as are required for a three-volume novel. and then i might call it by one of two names, the doubts of frank houston, or the constancy of imogene docimer -as i should at last bring my story to one ending or the other. but the novel would contain that fault which is so prevalent in the novels of the present day. the hero would be a very namby-pamby sort of a fellow, whereas the heroine would be too perfect for human nature. "the hero would be always repeating to himself a certain line out of a latin poet, which, of all lines, is the most heart-breaking: the better course i see and know -the worser one is where i go. but then in novels the most indifferent hero comes out right at last. some god comes out of a theatrical cloud and leaves the poor devil ten thousand a year and a title. he isn't much of a hero when he does go right under such inducements, but he suffices for the plot, and everything is rose-coloured. i would be virtuous at a much cheaper rate -if only a young man with his family might have enough to eat and drink. what is your idea of the lowest income at which a prudent -say not idiotically-quixotic hero -might safely venture to become heroic? now i have written to you a long letter, and think that i have indicated to you the true state of my feelings. whatever may turn up i do not think i shall go fortune-hunting again. if half a million in female hands were to throw itself at my head, there is no saying whether i might not yield. but i do not think that i shall again make inquiry as to the amount of booty supposed to be within the walls of a city, and then sit down to besiege the city with regular lines of approach. it is a disgusting piece of work. i do not say but what i can lie, and did lie foully on the last siege operation; but i do not like it. and then to be told that one is unmanly by the father, and a coward by the young lady, as occurred to me in this affair, is disheartening. they were both right, though i repudiated their assertions. this might be borne as a prelude to success; but, as part of a failure, it is disgusting. at the present moment i am considering what economy might effect as to a future bachelor life, and am meditating to begin with a couple of mutton chops and half a pint of sherry for my dinner today. i know i shall break down and have a woodcock and some champagne. i will come to you about three on sunday. if you can manage that your brother should go out and make his calls, and your sister attend divine service in the afternoon, it would be a comfort. yours always, f. houston it was a long rambling letter, without a word in it of solid clearly-expressed meaning; but imogene, as she read it, understood very well its real purport. she understood more than its purport, for she could see by it -more clearly than the writer did himself -how far her influence over the man had been restored, and how far she might be able to restore it. but was it well that she should regain her influence? her influence regained would simply mean a renewed engagement. no doubt the storm on the hillside had come from the violence of true love on her part! no doubt her heart had been outraged by the idea that he should give himself up to another woman after all that had passed between them. she had been devoted to him altogether; but yet she had been taught by him to regard her love as a passion which of its nature contained something of the ridiculous. he had never ceased gently to laugh at himself, even in her presence, because he had subjected himself to her attraction. she had caught up the same spirit -or at any rate the expression of spirit -and, deceived by that, he had thought that to relieve herself from the burden of her love would be as easy to her as to him. in making this mistake he had been ignorant of the intrinsic difference in the nature of a man's and of a woman's heart, and had been unaware that that, which to a man at his best can only be a part of his interest in his life's concerns, will to a woman be everything. she had attempted to follow his lead when it did not seem that by doing so she would lose anything. but when the moment of trial came she had not in truth followed his lead at all. she made the attempt, and in making the attempt gave him her permission to go from her; but when she realised the fact that he was gone -or going -then she broke down utterly. then there came these contentions between her and her brother, and that storm on the hillside. after that she passed some months of wretchedness. there was no possibility for her to droll away her love. she had taught herself to love the man whether he were good or whether he were bad -whether he were strong-hearted or whether he were fickle -and the thing was there present to her, either as a permanent blessing, or, much more probably, a permanent curse. as the months went on she learned, though she never saw frank himself, that his purpose of marrying gertrude tringle was not likely to be carried out. then at last she wrote that comprehensive letter of five lines -as houston had called it. it had been intended to be comprehensive, and did, in fact, contain much more than it seemed to say. "if you can bring yourself to return to me, and to endure whatever inconveniences may be incidental to your doing so, i hereby declare that i will do the same; and i declare also that i can find for myself no other content in the world except what may come to me from such an agreement between us." it was this that she said in that last line, in which she had begged him to come to her if at the last moment "tringle pere" should prove to be hardhearted. all troubles of poverty, all the lingering annoyance of waiting, all her possible doubts as to his future want of persistency, would be preferable to the great loss which she found herself unable to endure. yes; it would be very well that both her brother and her sister-in-law should be absent when he came to her. to neither of them had she said a word of her last correspondence -to neither of them a word of her renewed hopes. for the objections which might be raised by either of them would she care little if she could succeed with frank. but while that success was still doubtful it would be well to get at any rate the assistance of her sister-in-law. on the sunday afternoon mr docimer would certainly be away from the house. it was his custom to go off among his friends almost immediately after lunch, and his absence might be counted on as assured. but with his wife it was different. the project of sending her to church was quite out of the question. mrs docimer generally went to church of a sunday morning, and then always considered herself to have performed the duties of the day. nor did imogene like the idea of this appointment with her lover without a word spoken about it to her sister-in-law. "mary," she said, "frank houston is coming here on sunday." "frank!" exclaimed mrs docimer. "i thought we were to consider ourselves as altogether separated from that fortunate youth." "i don't see why." "well; he left us not with the kindest possible feelings in the tyrol; and he has allowed ever so many months to pass by without coming to see us. i asked mudbury whether we should have him to dinner one day last week, and he said it would be better to let him go his own way." "nevertheless, he is coming here on sunday." "has he written to you?" "yes, he has written to me -in answer to a line from me. i told him that i wished to see him." "was that wise?" "wise or not, i did so." "why should you wish to see him?" "am i to tell you the truth or a lie?" "not a lie, certainly. i will not ask for the truth if the truth be unpalatable to you." "it is unpalatable -but yet i might as well tell it you. i wrote to ask him to come and see me, because i love him so dearly." "oh, imogene!" "it is the truth." "did you tell him so?" "no; i told him nothing. i merely said, that, if this match was over between him and that girl of sir thomas tringle, then he might come and see me again. that was all that i said. his letter was very much longer, but yet it did not say much. however, he is to come, and i am prepared to renew our engagement should he declare that he is willing to do so." "what will mudbury say?" "i do not care very much what he says. i do not know that i am bound to care. if i have resolved to entangle myself with a long engagement, and mr houston is willing to do the same, i do not think that my brother should interfere. i am my own mistress, and am dealing altogether with my own happiness. "imogene, we have discussed this so often before." "not a doubt; and with such effect that with my permission frank was enabled to ask this young woman with a lot of money to marry him. had it been arranged, i should have had no right to find fault with him, however sore of heart i might have been. all that has fallen through, and i consider myself quite entitled to renew my engagement again. i shall not ask him, you may be sure of that." "it comes to the same thing, imogene." "very likely. it often happens that ladies mean that to be expressed which it does not become them to say out loud. so it may be with me on this occasion. nevertheless, the word, if it have to be spoken, will have to be spoken by him. what i want you to do now is to let me have the drawing-room alone at three o'clock on sunday. if anything has to be said it will have to be said without witnesses." with some difficulty mrs docimer was induced to accede to the request, and to promise that, at any rate for the present, nothing should be said to her husband on the subject. chapter 39 captain batsby in the meantime, poor ayala, whose days were running on in a very melancholy manner under her aunt's wings in kingsbury crescent, was creating further havoc and disturbing the bosom of another lover. at stalham she had met a certain captain batsby, and had there attracted his attention. captain batsby had begged her to ride with him on one of those hunting days, and had offered to give her a lead -having been at the moment particularly jealous of colonel stubbs. on that day both ayala and nina had achieved great honour -but this, to the great satisfaction of captain batsby, had not been achieved under the leadership of colonel stubbs. larry twentyman, long famous among the riding-men of the ufford and rufford united hunt, had been the hero of the hour. thus captain batsby's feelings had been spared, and after that he had imagined that any kindly feelings which ayala might have had for the colonel had sunk into abeyance. then he had sought some opportunity to push himself into ayala's favour, but hitherto his success in that direction had not been great. captain batsby was regarded by the inhabitants of stalham as a nuisance -but as a nuisance which could not be avoided. he was half-brother to sir harry, whose mother had married, as her second husband, a certain opulent mr batsby out of lancashire. they were both dead now, and nothing of them remained but this captain. he was good-natured, simple, and rich, and in the arrangement of the albury-cum-batsby affairs, which took place after the death of mrs batsby, made himself pleasant to everybody concerned. sir harry, who certainly had no particular affection for his half-brother, always bore with him on this account; and lady albury was equally gracious, mindful of the wisdom of keeping on good terms with a rich relation. it was as yet quite on the cards that the batsby money might come to some of the albury scions. but the captain was anxious to provide himself with a wife who might be the mother of scions of his own. in fact he had fallen fearfully in love with ayala, and was quite resolved to ask her to be his wife when he found that she was just on the point of flying from stalham. he had intended to be quicker in his operations, but had lacked opportunity. on that last hunting day the colonel had always been still in his way, and circumstances had never seemed to favour him when he endeavoured to have a few words in private with the young lady. then she was gone, and he could only learn respecting her that she lived with her aunt, mrs dosett, in kingsbury crescent. "i'm blessed if benjamin isn't smitten with that girl!" benjamin was captain batsby, and that girl was of course ayala dormer. the man who blessed himself was sir harry albury, and the observation was addressed to his wife. this took place within an hour of ayala's departure from stalham. "benjamin in love with ayala dormer! i don't believe a word of it," said lady albury. it was not surprising that she should not believe it. there was her special favourite, colonel stubbs, infatuated by the same girl; and, as she was aware, tom tringle, the heir of travers and treason, was in the same melancholy condition. and, after all, according to her thinking, there was nothing in the girl to justify all this fury. in her eyes ayala was pretty, but no more. she would have declared that ayala had neither bearing, nor beauty, nor figure. a bright eye, a changing colour, and something of vivacity about her mouth, was all of which ayala had to boast. yet here were certainly the heir of the man of millions, and that crichton of a colonel, both knocked off their legs. and now she was told that captain batsby, who always professed himself hard to please in the matter of young ladies, was in the same condition. "do you mean to say he told you?" she asked. "no," said sir harry; "he is not at all the man to do that. in such a matter he is sure to have a great secret, and be sure also to let his secret escape in every word that he speaks. you will find that what i say is truth." before the day was out lady albury did find her husband to be correct. captain batsby, though he was very jealous of his secret, acknowledged to himself the necessity of having one confidant. he could hardly, he thought, follow ayala without some assistance. he knew nothing of mrs dosett, nothing of kingsbury crescent, and very little as to ayala herself. he regarded lady albury as his chosen friend, and generally communicated to her whatever troubles he might have. these had consisted chiefly of the persecutions to which he had been subjected by the mothers of portionless young ladies. how not to get married off against his will had been the difficulty of his life. his half-sister-in-law had hitherto preserved him, and therefore to her he now went for assistance in this opposite affair. "rosalind," he said in his gravest voice, "what do you think i have to tell you?" lady albury knew what was coming, but of course she hid her knowledge. "i hope mrs motherly has not written to you again," she said. mrs motherly was a lady who had been anxious that her daughter should grace captain batsby's table, and had written to him letters, asking him his intentions. "oh, dear; nothing of that kind. i do not care a straw for mrs motherly or the girl either. i never said a word to her that anyone could make a handle of. but i want to say a word to somebody now." "what sort of a word is it to be, ben?" "ah," he groaned. "rosalind, you must understand that i never was so much in earnest in my life!" "you are always in earnest." then he sighed very deeply. "i shall expect you to help me through this matter, rosalind." "do i not always help you?" "yes; you do. but you must stick to me now like wax. what do you think of that young lady, miss dormer?" "i think she is a pretty girl; and the gentlemen tell me that she rides bravely." "don't you consider her divine?" he asked. "my dear ben, one lady never considers another to be divine. among ourselves we are terribly human, if not worse. do you mean to tell me that you are in love with ayala dormer?" "you have guessed it," said he. "you always do guess everything." "i generally do guess as much as that, when young gentlemen find young ladies divine. do you know anything about miss dormer?" "nothing but her beauty -nothing but her wit -nothing but her grace! i know all that, and i don't seem to want to know any more." "then you must be in love! in the first place she hasn't got a sixpence in the world." "i don't want sixpences," said the captain, proudly. "and in the next place i am not at all sure that you would like her people. father and mother she has none." "then i cannot dislike them." "but she has uncles and aunts, who are, i am afraid, objectionable. she lives with a mr dosett, who is a clerk in somerset house -a respectable man, no doubt, but one whom you would not perhaps want at your house very often." "i don't care about uncles and aunts," said captain batsby. "uncles and aunts can always be dropped much easier than fathers and mothers. at any rate i am determined to go on, and i want you to put me in the way. how must i find her?" "go to no. 10, kingsbury crescent, bayswater. ask for mrs dosett and tell her what you've come about. when she knows that you are well off she will not turn a deaf ear to you. what the girl may do it is beyond me to say. she is very peculiar." "peculiar?" said the captain with another sigh. lady albury did, in truth, think ayala was very peculiar, seeing that she had refused two such men as tom tringle in spite of his wealth, and colonel stubbs in spite of his position. this she had done though she had no prospects of her own before her, and no comfortable home at the present! might it not be more than probable that she would also refuse captain batsby, who was less rich than the one and certainly less known to the world than the other? but as to this it was not necessary that she should say anything. to assist colonel stubbs she was bound by true affection for the man. in regard to her husband's half-brother she was only bound to seem to assist him. "i can write a line to mrs dosett, if you wish it," she said, "or to miss dormer." "i wish you would. it would be best to the aunt, and just tell her that i am fairly well off. she'll tell ayala i could make quite a proper settlement on her. that kind of thing does go a long way with young ladies." "it ought to do at any rate," said lady albury. "it certainly does with the old ladies." then the matter was settled. she was to write to mrs dosett and inform that lady that captain batsby intended to call at kingsbury crescent in the form of a suitor for miss ayala dormer's hand. she would go on to explain that captain batsby was quite in a position to marry and maintain a wife. "and if she should accept me you'll have her down here, rosalind?" here was a difficulty, as it was already understood that ayala was to be again brought down to stalham on the colonel's account; but lady albury could make the promise, as, should the captain be accepted, no harm would in that case be done to the colonel. she was, however, tolerably sure that the captain would not be accepted. "and, if she shouldn't take me all at once, still you might have her," suggested the lover. as to this, which was so probable, there would be a great difficulty. ayala was to be seduced into coming again to stalham if possible -but specially on the colonel's behoof. in such a case it must be done behind the captain's back. lady albury saw the troubles which were coming, but nevertheless she promised that she would see what could be done. all this having been settled, captain batsby took his leave and went off to london. mrs dosett, when she received lady albury's letter, was very much surprised. she too failed to understand what there was in ayala to produce such a multiplicity of suitors, one after another. when lucy came to her and had begun to be objectionable, she had thought that she might some day be relieved from her troubles by the girl's marriage. lucy, to her eyes, was beautiful, and mistress of a manner likely to be winning in a man's eyes, though ungracious to herself. but in regard to ayala she had expressed nothing of the kind. ayala was little, and flighty, and like an elf -as she had remarked to her husband. but now, within twelve months, three lovers had appeared, and each of them suitable for matrimonial purposes. she could only tell her husband, and then tell ayala. "captain batsby! i don't believe it!" said ayala, almost crying. if colonel stubbs could not be made to assume the garb of an angel of light what was she to think of captain batsby? "you can read lady albury's letter." "i don't want to read lady albury's letter. i won't see him. i don't care what my uncle says. i don't care what anybody says. yes, i do know him. i remember him very well. i spoke to him once or twice, and i did not like him at all." "you said the same of colonel stubbs." "i didn't say the same of colonel stubbs. he is a great deal worse than colonel stubbs." "and you said just the same of tom." "he is the same as tom -just as bad. it is no good going on about him, aunt margaret. i won't see him. if i were locked up in a room with him i wouldn't speak a word to him. he has no right to come." "a gentleman, my dear, has always a right to ask a lady to be his wife if he has got means." "you always say so, aunt margaret, but i don't believe it. there should be -there should have been -i don't know what; but i am quite sure the man has no right to come to me, and i won't see him." to this resolution ayala clung, and, as she was very firm about it, mrs dosett, after consultation with her husband, at last gave way, and consented to see captain batsby herself. in due time captain batsby came. at any knock heard at the door during this period ayala flew out of the drawing-room into her own chamber; and at the captain's knock she flew with double haste, feeling sure that his was the special knock. the man was shown up, and in a set speech declared his purpose to mrs dosett, and expressed a hope that lady albury might have written on the subject. might he be allowed to see the young lady? "i fear that would be of no service, captain batsby." "of no service?" "on receiving lady albury's letter i was of course obliged to tell my niece the honour you proposed to do her." "i am quite in earnest, you know," said the captain. "so i suppose, as lady albury would not have written, nor would you have come on such a mission. but so is my niece in earnest." "she will, at any rate, hear what i have got to say." "she would rather not," said mrs dosett. "she thinks that it would only be painful to both of you. as she has quite made up her mind that she cannot accept the honour you propose to do her, what good would it serve?" "is miss dormer at home?" asked the captain, suddenly. mrs dosett hesitated for a while, anxious to tell a lie on the matter, but fearing to do so. "i suppose she is at home," continued the urgent lover. "miss dormer is at present in her own chamber." "then i think i ought to see her," continued the captain. "she can't know at present what is my income." "lady albury has told us that it is sufficient." "but that means nothing. your niece cannot be aware that i have a very pretty little place of my own down in berkshire. "i don't think it would make a difference," said mrs dosett. "or that i shall be willing to settle upon her a third of my income. it is not many gentlemen who will do as much as that for a young lady, when the young lady has nothing of her own." "i am sure you are very generous." "yes, i am. i always was generous. and i have no impediments to get rid of; not a trouble of that kind in all the world. and i don't owe a shilling. very few young men, who have lived as much in the world as i have, can say that." "i am sure your position is all that is desirable." "that's just it. no position could be more desirable. i should give up the service immediately as soon as i was married." at that mrs dosett bowed, not knowing what words to find for further conversation. "after that," continued the captain, "do you mean to say that i am not to be allowed to see the young lady?" "i cannot force her to come down, captain batsby." "i would if i were you." "force a young lady?" "something ought to be done," said he, beginning almost to whine. "i have come here on purpose to see her, and i am quite prepared to do what is handsome. my half-sister, lady albury, had her down at stalham, and is quite anxious to have her there again. i suppose you have no objection to make to me, mrs dosett?" "oh, dear no." "or mr dosett?" "i do not say that he has, captain batsby; but this is a matter in which a young lady's word must be paramount. we cannot force her to marry you, or even to speak to you." the captain still went on with entreaties, till mrs dosett found herself so far compelled to accede to him as to go up to ayala's room and beg her to come down and answer this third suitor with her own voice. but ayala was immovable. when her aunt came near her she took hold of the bed as though fearing an attempt would be made to drag her out of the room. she again declared that if she were forced into the room below nothing could oblige her to speak even a word. "as for thanking him," she said, "you can do that yourself, aunt margaret, if you like. i am not a bit obliged to him; but, if you choose to say so, you may; only pray do tell him to go away -and tell him never, never to come back any more." then mrs dosett returned to the drawing-room, and declared that her embassy had been quite in vain. "in all my life," said captain batsby, as he took his leave, "i never heard of such conduct before." nevertheless, as he went away he made up his mind that lady albury should get ayala again down to stalham. he was very angry, but his love remained as hot as ever. "as i did not succeed in seeing her," he said, in a letter to his half-sister, "of course i do not know what she might have said to me herself. i might probably have induced her to give me another hearing. i put it all down to that abominable aunt, who probably has some scheme of her own, and would not let miss dormer come down to me. if you will have her again at stalham, everything may be made to go right." at home, in kingsbury crescent, when ayala had gone to bed, both mr and mrs dosett expressed themselves as much troubled by the peculiarity of ayala's nature. mrs dosett declared her conviction that that promised legacy from uncle tom would never be forthcoming, because he had been so much offended by the rejection of his own son. and even should the legacy remain written in sir thomas's will, where would ayala find a home if mr dosett were to die before the baronet? this rejection of suitors -of fit, well-to-do, unobjectionable suitors -was held by mrs dosett to be very wicked, and a direct flying in the face of providence. "does she think", said mrs dosett, urging the matter with all her eloquence to her husband, "that young men with incomes are to be coming after her always like this?" mr dosett shook his head and scratched it at the same time, which was always a sign with him that he was not at all convinced by the arguments used, but that he did not wish to incur further hostility by answering them. "why shouldn't she see an eligible man when he comes recommended like this?" "i suppose, my dear, she didn't think him nice enough." "nice! pshaw! i call it a direct flying in the face of providence. if he were ever so nasty and twice as old she ought to think twice about it in her position. there is poor tom, they say, absolutely ill. the housekeeper was over here from queen's gate the other day, and she declares that that affair about the policeman all came from his being in love. and now he has left the business and has gone to merle park, because he is so knocked in a heap that he cannot hold up his head." "i don't see why love should make a man punch a policeman's breath out of him," said mr dosett. "of course tom was foolish; but he would do very well if she would have him. of course your sister, and sir thomas, and all of them, will be very furious. what right will she have to expect money after that?" "tom is an ass," said mr dosett. "i suppose colonel stubbs is an ass too. what i want to know is what it is she looks for. like any other girl, she expects to get married some day, i suppose; but she has been reading poetry, and novels, and trash, till she has got her head so full of nonsense that she doesn't know what it is she does want. i should like to shake her till i shook all the romance out of her. if there is anything i do hate it is romance, while bread and meat, and coals, and washing, are so dear." with this mrs dosett took herself and her troubles up to her bedroom. mr dosett sat for a while gazing with speculative eyes at the embers of the fire. he was conscious in his heart that some part of that attack upon romance in general was intended for himself. though he did not look to be romantic, especially when seated at his desk in somerset house, with his big index-book before him, still there was left about him some touch of poetry, and an appreciation of the finer feelings of our nature. though he could have wished that ayala should have been able to take one of these three well-to-do suitors, who were so anxious to obtain her hand, still he could not bring himself not to respect her, still he was unable not to love her, because she was steadfastly averse to accept as a husband a man for whom she had no affection. as he looked at the embers he asked himself how it ought to be. here was a girl whose only gift in life was her own personal charm. that that charm must be powerful was evident from the fact that she could attract such men as these. of the good things of the world, of a pleasant home, of ample means, and of all that absence of care which comes from money, poor mr dosett had by no means a poor appreciation. that men are justified in seeking these good things by their energy, industry, and talents, he was quite confident. how was it with a girl who had nothing else but her beauty -or, perhaps, her wit -in lieu of energy and industry? was she justified in carrying her wares also into the market, and making the most of them? the embers had burned so low, and he had become so cold before he had settled the question in his own mind, that he was obliged to go up to bed, leaving it unsettled. chapter 40 aunt emmeline's new proposition a few days after this, just as the bread and cheese had been put on the table for the modest mid-day meal at kingsbury crescent, there came a most unwonted honour on mrs dosett. it was a call from no less a person than lady tringle herself, who had come all the way up from merle park on purpose. it was a saturday. she had travelled by herself and intended to go back on the same day with her husband. this was an amount of trouble which she very seldom gave herself, not often making a journey to london during the periods of her rural sojourn; and, when she began by assuring her sister-in-law that she made the journey with no object but that of coming to kingsbury crescent, mrs dosett was aware that something very important was to be communicated. mrs dosett and ayala were together in the dining-room when lady tringle appeared, and the embracings were very affectionate. they were particularly affectionate towards ayala, who was kissed as though nothing had ever happened to interfere with the perfect love existing between the aunt and the niece. they were more than friendly, almost sisterly towards mrs dosett, whom in truth lady tringle met hardly more than once in a year. it was very manifest that aunt emmeline wanted to have something done. "now, my darling," she said, turning to ayala, "if you would not mind going away for ten minutes, i could say a few words on very particular business to your aunt." then she gave her niece a tender little squeeze and assumed her sweetest smile. it will be as well to go back a little and tell the cause which had produced this unexpected visit. there had been very much of real trouble at merle park. everything was troublesome. gertrude had received her final letter from her lover, had declared herself to be broken-hearted, and was evincing her sorrow by lying in bed half the day, abstaining from her meals, and relieving herself from famine by sly visits to the larder. it was supposed that her object was to bend the stony heart of her father, but the process added an additional trouble to her mother. then the trafficks were a sore vexation. it was now nearly the end of january and they were still at merle park. there had been a scene in which sir thomas had been very harsh. "my dear," he had said to his wife, "i find that something must be done to the chimney of the north room. the workmen must be in it by the first of february. see and have all the furniture taken out before they come." now the north room was the chamber in which the trafficks slept, and the trafficks were present when the order was given. no one believed the story of the chimney. this was the mode of expulsion which sir thomas had chosen on the spur of the moment. mr traffick said not a word, but in the course of the morning augusta expostulated with her mother. this was also disagreeable. then the condition of tom was truly pitiable. all his trust in champagne, all his bellicose humour, had deserted him. he moped about the place the most miserable of human beings, spending hour after hour in imploring his mother's assistance. but lucy with her quiet determination, and mute persistency in waiting, was a source of almost greater annoyance to her aunt than even her own children. that lucy should in any degree have had her way with mr hamel, had gone against the grain with her. mr hamel, to her thinking, was a person to be connected with whom would be a disgrace. she was always speaking of his birth, of his father's life, and of those roman iniquities. she had given way for a time when she had understood that her husband intended to give the young people money enough to enable them to marry. in that case lucy would at once be taken away from the house. but now all that had come to an end. sir thomas had given no money, and had even refused to give any money. nevertheless he was peacefully indulgent to lucy, and was always scolding his wife because she was hostile to lucy's lover. in this emergency she induced him to accede to a proposition, by which one of her miseries would be brought to an end and another might perhaps be remedied. a second exchange should be made. lucy should be sent back to kingsbury crescent, and ayala should once more be brought into favour at merle park, queen's gate, and glenbogie. "your brother will never put up with it," said sir thomas. lady tringle was not afraid of her brother, and thought that by soft words she might even talk over her sister-in-law. ayala, she knew, had been troublesome in kingsbury crescent. she was sure, she said, ayala's whims would of their nature be more troublesome to such a woman as mrs dosett than lucy's obstinacy. ayala had no doubt been pert and disobedient at glenbogie and at rome, but there had been an unbending obduracy about lucy which had been more distasteful to aunt emmeline than even ayala's pert disobedience. "it will be the only way", she had said to sir thomas, "to put tom on his legs again. if the girl comes back here she will be sure to have him at last." there was much in this which to sir thomas was weak and absurd. that prolonged journey round by san francisco, japan, and pekin, was the remedy which recommended itself to him. but he was less able to despatch tom at once to japan than the elder faddle had been to send off the younger faddle to the stern realities of life in aberdeen. he was quite willing that tom should marry ayala if it could be arranged, and therefore he gave his consent. so armed, lady tringle had come up to kingsbury crescent, and was now about to undertake a task, which she acknowledged to herself to be difficult. she, in the first place, had had her choice and had selected a niece. then she had quarrelled with her own selection, and had changed nieces. this had been done to accommodate her own fancy; and now she wanted to change the nieces back again! she felt aware that her request was unreasonable, and came, therefore, determined to wrap it up in her blandest smiles. when ayala had left the room mrs dosett sat mute in attention. she was quite aware that something very much out of the ordinary way was to be asked of her. in her ordinary way lady tringle never did smile when she came to kingsbury crescent. she would be profuse in finery, and would seem to throw off sparks of wealth at every word she spoke. now even her dress had been toned down to her humbler manner, and there was no touch of her husband's purse in her gait. "margaret," she said, "i have a proposition of great importance to make to you." mrs dosett opened her eyes wider and sat still mute. "that poor girl is not -is not -is not doing perhaps the very best for herself here at kingsbury crescent." "why is she not doing the best for herself?" asked mrs dosett, angrily. "do not for a moment suppose that i am finding fault either with you or my brother." "you'd be very wrong if you did." "no doubt -but i am not finding fault. i know how very generous you have both been. of course sir thomas is a rich man, and what he gives to one of the girls comes to nothing. of course it is different with you. it is hard upon my brother to have any such burden put upon him; and it is very good both in him and you to bear it." "what is it you want us to do now, emmeline?" "well -i was going to explain. i do think it a great pity that tom and ayala should not become man and wife. if ever any young man ever did love a girl i believe that he loves her." "i think he does." "it is dreadful. i never saw anything like it. he is just for all the world like those young men we read of who do all manner of horrible things for love -smothering themselves and their young women with charcoal, or throwing them into the regent's canal. i am constantly afraid of something happening. it was all because of ayala that he got into that terrible row at the police court -and then we were afraid he was going to take to drink. he has given all that up now." "i am very glad he has given drink up. that wouldn't do him any good." "he is quite different now. the poor fellow hardly takes anything. he will sit all the afternoon smoking cigarettes and sipping tea. it is quite sad to see him. then he comes and talks to me, and is always asking me to make ayala have him." "i don't think that anybody can ever make ayala do anything." "not quite by talking to her. i dare say not. i did not mean to say a word to her about it just now." "we can do nothing, i fear," said mrs dosett. "i was going to suggest something. but i wanted first to say a word or two about poor lucy." they were just at present all "poor" to lady tringle -ayala, lucy, tom, and gertrude. even augusta was poor because she was to be turned out of her bedroom. "is she in trouble?" "oh, dear, yes. but," she added, thinking well to correct herself, so that mrs dosett might not imagine that she would have to look forward to troubles with lucy, "she could arrange her affairs, no doubt, if she were not with us. she is engaged to that mr isadore hamel, the sculptor." "so i have heard." "he does not earn very much just at present, i fear. sir thomas did offer to help him, but he was perhaps a little hoity-toity, giving himself airs. that, however, did not come off, and there they are, waiting. i don't mean to say a word against poor lucy. i think it a pity, you know; but perhaps it was natural enough. he isn't what i should have liked for a niece who was living with me just as though she was my daughter; but i couldn't help that." "but what are we to do, emmeline?" "let them just change places again." "change again! ayala go to you and lucy come back here!" "just that. if ayala were with us she would be sure to get used to tom at last. and then lucy could manage her affairs with mr hamel so much better if she were with you." "why should she manage her affairs better if she were with us?" lady tringle was aware that this was the weak part of her case. on the poor ayala and poor tom side of the question there was a good deal which might be said. then, though she might not convince, she might be eloquent. but, touching lucy, she could say nothing which did not simply signify that she wanted to get rid of the girl. now, mrs dosett had also wanted to get rid of lucy when the former exchange had been made. "what i mean is, that, if she were away, sir thomas would be more likely to do something for her." this was an invention at the spur of the moment. "do you not feel that the girls should not be chucked about like balls from a battledore?" asked mrs dosett. "for their own good, margaret. i only propose it for their own good. you can't but think it would be a good thing for ayala to be married to our tom." "if she liked him." "why shouldn't she like him? you know what that means. poor ayala is young, and a little romantic. she would be a great deal happier if all that could be knocked out of her. she has to marry somebody, and the sooner she settles down the better. sir thomas will do anything for them -a horse and carriage, and anything she could set her heart upon! there is nothing sir thomas would not do for tom so as to get him put upon his legs again." "i don't think ayala would go." "she must, you know," whispered lady tringle, "if we both tell her." "and lucy?" "she must too," again whispered lady tringle. "it they are told they are to go, what else can they do? why shouldn't ayala wish to come?" "there were quarrels before." "yes -because of augusta. augusta is married now." lady tringle could not quite say that augusta was gone. "will you speak to ayala?" "perhaps it would come better from you, margaret, if you agree with me." "i am not sure that i do. i am quite sure that your brother would not force her to go, whether she wished it or not. no doubt we should be glad if the marriage could be arranged. but we cannot force a girl to marry, and her aversion in this case is so strong -" "aversion!" "aversion to being married, i mean. it is so strong that i do not think she will go of her own accord to any house where she is likely to meet her cousin. i dare say she may be a fool. i say nothing about that. of course, she shall be asked; and, if she wishes to go, then lucy can be asked too. but of course it must all depend upon what your brother says." then lady tringle took her leave without again seeing ayala herself, and as she went declared her intention of calling at somerset house. she would not think it right, she said, in a matter of such importance, to leave london without consulting her brother. it might be possible, she thought, that she would be able to talk her brother over; whereas his wife, if she had the first word, might turn him the other way. "is aunt emmeline gone?" asked ayala, when she came down. "i am glad she has gone, because i never know how to look when she calls me dear. i know she hates me." "i hope not, ayala." "i am sure she does, because i hated augusta. i do hate augusta, and my aunt hates me. the only one of the lot i like is uncle tom." then the proposition was made, ayala sitting with her mouth wide open as the details, one after another, were opened out to her. her aunt did it with exquisite fairness, abstaining from opening out some of the details which might be clear enough to ayala without any explanation. her aunt emmeline was very anxious to have her back again -the only reason for her former expulsion having been the enmity of augusta. her uncle tom and her aunt, and, no doubt, gertrude, would be very glad to receive her. not a word was said about tom. then something was urged as to the material comforts of the tringle establishments, and of the necessary poverty of kingsbury crescent. "and lucy is to have the poverty?" said ayala, indignantly. "i think it probable, my dear, that before long lucy will become the wife of mr hamel." "and you want to get rid of me?" demanded ayala. "no, my dear; not so. you must not think that for a moment. the proposition has not originated with me at all. i am endeavouring to do my duty by explaining to you the advantages which you would enjoy by going to your aunt emmeline, and which you certainly cannot have if you remain here. and i must tell you, that, if you return to sir thomas, he will probably provide for you. you know what i mean by providing for you?" "no, i don't," said ayala, who had in her mind some dim idea that her cousin tom was supposed to be a provision. she was quite aware that her aunt margaret, in her explanation as hitherto given, had not mentioned tom's name, and was sure that it had not been omitted without reason. "by providing, i mean that if you are living in his house he will leave you something in his will -as would be natural that he should do for a child belonging to him. your uncle reginald' -this she said in a low and very serious tone -"will, i fear, have nothing to leave to you." then there was silence for some minutes, after which mrs dosett asked the important question, "well, ayala, what do you think about it?" "must i go?" said ayala. "may i stay?" "yes, my dear; you may certainly stay if you wish it." "then i will stay," said ayala, jumping up on to her feet. "you do not want to turn me out, aunt margaret?" then she went down on her knees, and, leaning on her aunt's lap, looked up into her face. "if you will keep me i will try to be good." "my dear, you are good. i have nothing to complain of. of course we will keep you. nobody has thought for a moment of bidding you go. but you should understand that when your aunt made the proposition i was bound to tell it you." then there was great embracing and kissing, and ayala felt that she was relieved from a terrible danger. she had often declared that no one could make her marry her cousin tom; but it had seemed to her for a moment that if she were given up bodily to the tringles no mode of escape would be open to her short of suicide. there had been a moment almost of regret that she had never brought herself to regard jonathan stubbs as an angel of light. at somerset house lady tringle made her suggestion to her brother with even more flowery assurance of general happiness than she had used in endeavouring to persuade his wife. ayala would, of course, be married to tom in the course of the next six months, and during the same period lucy, no doubt, would be married to that very enterprising but somewhat obstinate young man, mr hamel. thus there would be an end to all the dormer troubles; "and you, reginald," she said, "will be relieved from a burden which never ought to have been laid upon your shoulder." "we will think of it," he said very gravely, over and over again. beyond that "we will think of it" he could not be induced to utter a word. chapter 41 "a cold prospect!" three days were allowed to frank houston to consider within his own mind what he would say for himself and what he would propose finally to do when he should see miss docimer on the appointed sunday. he was called upon to decide whether, after so many resolutions made to the contrary, he would now at last bring himself to encounter poverty and a family -genteel poverty with about seven hundred and fifty pounds a year between himself and his wife. he had hitherto been very staunch on the subject, and had unfortunately thought that imogene docimer had been as firmly fixed in her determination. his theory had in itself been good. if two people marry they are likely, according to the laws of nature, to have very soon more than two. in the process of a dozen years they may not improbably become ever so many more than two. funds which were barely enough, if enough, for two, would certainly fail to be enough for half a dozen. his means were certainly not enough for himself, as he had hitherto found them. imogene's means were less even than his own. therefore, it was clear that he and imogene ought not to marry and encounter the danger of all those embryo mouths. there was a logic about it which had seemed to him to be unanswerable. it was a logic which applied to his case above all others. the man who had a hope of earning money need not be absolutely bound by it. to him the money might come as quickly as the mouths. with the cradles would arrive the means of buying the cradles. and to the man who had much more than enough for himself -to such a man as he had expected to be while he was looking forward to the coffin of that iniquitous uncle -the logic did not apply at all. in defending himself, both to himself and to imogene, he was very strong upon that point. a man who had plenty and would not divide his plenty with another might with truth be called selfish. rich old bachelors might with propriety be called curmudgeons. but was it right that a man should be abused -even by a young lady to whom, under more propitious circumstances, he had offered his heart -when he declared himself unwilling to multiply suffering by assisting to bring into the world human beings whom he would be unable to support? he had felt himself to be very strong in his logic, and had unfortunately made the mistake of supposing that it was as clear to imogene as to himself. then he had determined to rectify the inconvenience of his position. it had become manifest to him whilst he was waiting for his uncle's money that not only were his own means insufficient for married life but even for single comfort. it would always come to pass that when he had resolved on two mutton chops and half a pint of sherry the humble little meal would spread itself into woodcock and champagne. he regarded it as an unkindness in providence that he should not have been gifted with economy. therefore, he had to look about him for a remedy; and, as imogene was out of the question, he found a remedy in gertrude tringle. he had then believed that everything was settled for him -not, indeed, in a manner very pleasant, but after a fashion that would make life possible to him. sir thomas had given one of his daughters, with a large sum of money, to such a man as septimus traffick -a man more impecunious than himself, one whom frank did not hesitate to pronounce to be much less of a gentleman. that seat in the house of commons was to him nothing. there were many men in the house of commons to whom he would hardly condescend to speak. to be the younger son of a latter-day peer was to him nothing. he considered himself in all respects to be a more eligible husband than septimus traffick. therefore he had entertained but little doubt when he found himself accepted by gertrude herself and her mother. then by degrees he had learned to know something of the young lady to whom he intended to devote himself; and it had come to pass that the better he had known the less he had liked her. nevertheless he had persevered, groaning in spirit as he thought of the burden with which he was about to inflict himself. then had come the release. sir thomas had explained to him that no money would be forthcoming; and the young lady had made to him a foolish proposition, which, as he thought, fully justified him in regarding the match as at an end. and then he had three days in which to make up his mind. it may be a question whether three days are ever much better than three minutes for such a purpose. a man's mind will very generally refuse to make itself up until it be driven and compelled by emergency. the three days are passed not in forming but in postponing judgment. in nothing is procrastination so tempting as in thought. so it came to pass, that through the thursday, the friday, and the saturday, frank houston came to no conclusion, though he believed that every hour of the time was devoted to forming one. then, as he ate his dinner on saturday night at his club, a letter was brought to him, the handwriting of which was familiar to him. this letter assisted him little in thinking. the letter was from gertrude tringle, and need not be given in its entirety. there was a good deal of reproach, in that he had been so fickle as to propose to abandon her at the first touch of adversity. then she had gone on to say, that, knowing her father a great deal better than he could do, she was quite satisfied that the money would be all right. but the last paragraph of the letter shall be given. "papa has almost yielded already. i have been very ill' -here the extent of her malady was shown by the strength of the underscoring with which the words were made significant -"very ill indeed," she went on to say, "as you will understand if you have ever really loved me. i have kept my bed almost ever since i got your cruel letter." bed and cruel were again strenuously underscored. "it has made papa very unhappy, and, though he has said nothing to myself, he has told mamma that if i am really in earnest he will do something for us." the letter was long, but this is all the reader need see of it. but it must be explained that the young lady had greatly exaggerated her mother's words, and that her mother had exaggerated those which sir thomas had spoken. "she is a stupid idiot," sir thomas had said to his wife. "if she is obedient, and does her duty, of course i shall do something for her some day." this had been stretched to that promise of concession which gertrude communicated to her lover. this was the assistance which frank houston received in making up his mind on saturday night. if what the girl said was true, there was still open to him the manner of life which he had prepared for himself; and he did believe the announcement to be true. though sir thomas had been so persistent in his refusals, his experience in life had taught him to believe that a parent's sternness is never a match for a daughter's obstinacy. had there been a touch of tenderness in his heart to the young lady herself he would not have abandoned her so easily. but he had found his consolation when giving up his hope of sir thomas's money. now, should he again take to the girl, and find his consolation in accepting the money? should he resolve upon doing so, this would materially affect any communication which he might make to imogene on the following day. while thus in doubt he went into the smoking-room and there he found any thinking to be out of the question. a great question was being debated as to club law. one man had made an assertion. he had declared that another man had been seen playing cards in a third man's company. a fourth man had, thereupon, put his hat on his head, and had declared contumaciously that the "assertion was not true". having so declared he had contumaciously stalked out of the room, and had banged the door after him -very contumaciously indeed. the question was whether the contumacious gentleman had misbehaved himself in accordance with the rules of the club, and, if so, what should be done to him. not true is as bad as "false", "false". applied to a gentleman in a club, must be matter either of an apology or expulsion. the objectionable word had, no doubt, been said in defence of an absent man, and need not, perhaps, have been taken up had the speaker not at once put on his hat and stalked out of the room, and banged the door. it was asserted that a lie may be given by the way in which a door is banged. and yet no club punishes the putting on of hats, or stalking off, or the banging of doors. it was a difficult question, and occupied frank houston till two o'clock in the morning, to the exclusion of gertrude tringle and imogene docimer. on the sunday morning he was not up early, nor did he go to church. the contumacious gentleman was a friend of his, whom he knew that no arguments would induce to apologise. he believed also that gentleman no. 3 might have been seen playing cards with gentleman no. 2 -so that there was no valid excuse for the banging of the door. he was much exercised by the points to be decided, so that when he got into a cab to be taken to mrs docimer's house he had hardly come to any other conclusion than that one which had arisen to him from a comparison between the two young ladies. imogene was nearly perfect, and gertrude was as nearly the reverse as a young lady could be with the proper number of eyes in her head and a nose between them. the style of her letter was abominable to him. "very ill indeed -as you will understand, if you ever really loved me!" there was a mawkish clap-trap about it which thoroughly disgusted him. everything from imogene was straightforward and downright whether it were love or whether it were anger. but then to be settled with an income of l#3,000 a year would relieve him from such a load of care! "and so tringle pere does not see the advantage of such a son-in-law," said imogene, after the first greetings were over between them. the greetings had been very simple -just a touch of the hand, just a civil word -civil, but not in the least tender, just an inclination of the head, and then two seats occupied with all the rug between them. "yes, indeed!" said frank. "the man is a fool, because he will probably get somebody who will behave less well to his daughter, and make a worse use of his money. "just so. one can only be astonished at his folly. is there no hope left?" "a glimmer there is." "oh, indeed!" "i got a letter last night from my lady-love, in which she tells me that she is very ill, and that her sickness is working upon her father's bowels." "frank!" "it is the proper language -working upon her father's bowels of compassion. fathers always have bowels of compassion at last." "you will return then, of course?" "what do you say?" "as for myself -or as for you?" "as a discreet and trusty counsellor. to me you have always been a trusty counsellor." "then i should put a few things into a bag, go down to merle park, and declare that, in spite of all the edicts that ever came from a father's mouth, you cannot absent yourself while you know that your gertrude is ill." "and so prepare a new cousin for you to press to your bosom." "if you can endure her for always, why should not i for an hour or two, now and again?" "why not, indeed? in fact, imogene, this enduring, and not enduring -even this living, and not living -is, after all, but an affair of the imagination. who can tell but that, as years roll on, she may be better looking even than you?" "certainly." "and have as much to say for herself?" "a great deal more that is worth hearing." "and behave herself as a mother of a family with quite as much propriety?" "in all that i do not doubt that she would be my superior." "more obedient i am sure she would be." "or she would be very disobedient." "and then she can provide me and my children with ample comforts." "which i take it is the real purpose for which a wife should be married." "therefore," said he -and then he stopped. "and therefore there should be no doubt." "though i hate her", he said, clenching his fist with violence as he spoke, "with every fibre of my heart -still you think there should be no doubt?" "that, frank, is violent language -and foolish." "and though i love you so intensely that whenever i see her the memory of you becomes an agony to me." "such language is only more violent and more foolish." "surely not, if i have made up my mind at last, that i never will willingly see miss tringle again. here he got up, and walking across the rug, stood over her, and waited as though expecting some word from her. but she, putting her two hands up to her head, and brushing her hair away from her forehead, looked up to him for what further words might come to him. "surely not," he continued, "if i have made up my mind at last, that nothing shall ever again serve to rob me of your love -if i may still hope to possess it." "oh, frank!'she said, "how mean i am to be a creature obedient to the whistle of such a master as you!" "but are you obedient?" "you know that well enough. i have had no gertrude with whom i have vacillated, whether for the sake of love or lucre. whatever you may be -whether mean or noble -you are the only man with whom i can endure to live, for whom i would endure to die. of course i had not expected that your love should be like mine. how should it be so, seeing that you are a man and that i am but a woman." here he attempted to seat himself by her on the sofa, which she occupied, but she gently repulsed him, motioning him towards the chair which he had occupied. "sit there, frank," she said, "so that we may look into each other's faces and talk seriously. is it to come to this then, that i am to ruin you at last?" "there will be no ruin." "but there will, if we are married now. shall i tell you the kind of life which would satisfy me?" "some little place abroad?" he asked. "oh, dear, no! no place to which you would be confined at all. if i may remain as i am, knowing that you intend to marry no one else, feeling confident that there is a bond binding us together even though we should never become man and wife, i should be, if not happy, at least contented." "that is a cold prospect." "cold -but not ice-cold, as would have been the other. cold, but not wretchedly cold, as would be the idea always present to me that i had reduced you to poverty. frank, i am so far selfish that i cannot bear to abandon the idea of your love. but i am not so far selfish as to wish to possess it at the expense of your comfort. shall it be so?" "be how?" said he, speaking almost in anger. "let us remain just as we are. only you will promise me, that as i cannot be your wife there shall be no other. i need hardly promise you that there will be no other husband." now he sat frowning at her, while she, still pressing back her hair with her hands, looked eagerly into his face. "if this will be enough for you," she said, "it shall be enough for me." "no, by g -d!" "frank!" "it will certainly not be enough for me. i will have nothing to do with so damnable a compact." "damnable!" "yes; that is what i call it. that is what any man would call it -and any woman too, who would speak her mind." "then, sir, perhaps you will be kind enough to make your proposition. i have made mine, such as it is, and am sorry that it should not have been received at any rate with courtesy." but as she said this there was a gleam of a bright spirit in her eyes, such as he had not seen since first the name of gertrude had been mentioned to her. "yes," said he. "you have made your proposition, and now it is only fair that i should make mine. indeed, i made it already when i suggested that little place abroad. let it be abroad or at home, or of what nature it may -so that you shall be there, and i with you, it shall be enough for me. that is my proposition; and, if it be not accepted, then i shall return to miss tringle and all the glories of lombard street." "frank -" she said. then, before she could speak another word, he had risen from his seat, and she was in his arms. "frank," she continued, pushing back his kisses, "how impossible it is that i should not be obedient to you in all things! i know -i know that i am agreeing to that which will cause you some day to repent." "by heavens, no!" said he. "i am changed in all that." "a man cannot change at once. your heart is soft, but your nature remains the same. frank, i could be so happy at this moment if i could forget the picture which my imagination points to me of your future life. your love, and your generous words, and the look out of your dear eyes, are sweet to me now, as when i was a child, whom you first made so proud by telling her that she owned your heart. if i could only revel in the return of your affections -" "it is no return," said he. "there has never been a moment in which my affections have not been the same." "well, then -in these permitted signs of your affection -if it were not that i cannot shut out the future! do not press me to name any early day, because no period of my future life will be so happy to me as this." "is there any reason why i should not intrude?" said mrs docimer, opening the door when the above conversation had been extended for perhaps another hour. "not in the least, as far as i'm concerned," said frank. "a few words have been spoken between us, all of which may be repeated to you if imogene can remember them." "every one of them," said imogene; "but i hardly think that i shall repeat them." "i suppose they have been very much a matter of course," said mrs docimer -"the old story repeated between you two for the fourth or fifth time. considering all things, do you think that i should congratulate you?" "i ask for no congratulation," said imogene. "you may certainly congratulate me," said frank. after that the conversation became tame, and the happy lover soon escaped from the house into the street. when there he found very much to occupy his mind. he had certainly made his resolution at last, and had done so in a manner which would now leave him no power of retrogression. the whole theory of his life had -with a vengeance -been thrown to the winds. "the little place abroad," -or elsewhere -was now a settled certainty. he had nearly got the better of her. he had all but succeeded in putting down his own love and hers by a little gentle ridicule, and by a few half-wise phrases which she at the moment had been unable to answer; but she now had in truth vanquished him by the absolute sincerity of her love. chapter 42 another duel frank houston on that sunday afternoon became an altered man. the reader is not to suppose by this that he is declared to have suddenly thrown off all his weaknesses, and to have succeeded in clothing himself in an armour of bright steel, proof for the rest of his life against all temptations. such suits of armour are not to be had at a moment's notice; nor, as i fear, can a man ever acquire one quite perfect at all points who has not begun to make it for himself before houston's age. but he did on that day dine off the two mutton chops, and comforted himself with no more than the half pint of sherry. it was a great beginning. throughout the whole evening he could not be got for a moment to join any of the club juntas which were discussing the great difficulty of the contumacious gentleman. "i think he must really be going to be married at last!" one club pundit said when a question was asked as to houston's singular behaviour on the occasion. he was indeed very sober -so sober that he left the smoking-room as soon as his one silent cigar was finished, and went out alone in order that he might roam the streets in thoughtful solitude. it was a clear frosty night, and as he buttoned his greatcoat around him he felt that the dry cold air would do him good, and assist his meditations. at last then everything was arranged for him, and he was to encounter exactly that mode of life which he had so often told himself to be most unfit for him. there were to be the cradles always full, and his little coffer so nearly empty! and he had done it all for himself. she, imogene, had proposed a mode of life to him which would at any rate have saved him from this; but it had been impossible that he should accept a plan so cruel to her when the proposition came from herself. it must all soon be done now. she had asked that a distant day might be fixed for their marriage. even that request, coming from her, made it almost imperative upon him to insist upon an early day. it would be well for him to look upon tomorrow, or a few morrows whose short distance would be immaterial, as the time fixed. no -there should be no going back now! so he declared to himself, endeavouring to prepare the suit of armour for his own wearing. pau might be the best place -or perhaps one of those little towns in brittany. dresden would not do, because there would be society at dresden, and he must of course give up all ideas of society. he would have liked rome; but rome would be far too expensive and then residents in rome require to be absent three or four months every year. he and his wife and large family -he had no doubt in life as to the large family -would not be able to allow themselves any recreation such as that. he thought he had heard that the ordinary comforts of life were cheap in the west of ireland -or, if not cheap, unobtainable, which would be the same thing. perhaps castlebar might be a good locality for his nursery. there would be nothing to do at castlebar -no amusement whatever for such a one as himself, no fitting companion for imogene. but then amusement for himself and companions for imogene must of course be out of the question. he thought that perhaps he might turn his hand to a little useful gardening -parsnips instead of roses -while imogene would be at work in the nursery. he would begin at once and buy two or three dozen pipes, because tobacco would be so much cheaper than cigars. he knew a shop at which were to be had some very pretty new-fashioned meerschaums, which, he had been told, smokers of pipes found to be excellent. but, whether it should be pau or whether it should be castlebar, whether it should be pipes, or whether, in regard to economy, no tobacco at all, the question now was at any rate settled for him. he felt rather proud of his gallantry, as he took himself home to bed, declaring to himself that he would answer that last letter from gertrude in a very few words and in a very decided tone. there would be many little troubles. on the monday morning he got up early thinking that as a family man such a practice would be necessary for him. when he had disturbed the house and nearly driven his own servant mad by demanding breakfast at an altogether unaccustomed hour, he found that he had nothing to do. there was that head of imogene for which she had only once sat, and at which he had occasionally worked from memory because of her refusal to sit again; and he thought for a moment that this might be good employment for him now. but his art was only an expense to him. he could not now afford for himself paint and brushes and canvas, so he turned the half-finished head round upon his easel. then he took out his banker's book, a bundle of bills and some blotted scraps of ruled paper, with which he set himself to work to arrange his accounts. when he did this he must certainly have been in earnest. but he had not as yet succeeded in seeing light through his figures when he was interrupted by the arrival of a letter which altogether arrested his attention. it was from mudbury docimer, and this was the letter - dear houston, of course i think that you and imogene are two fools. she has told me what took place here yesterday, and i have told her the same as i tell you. i have no power to prevent it; but you know as well as i do that you and she cannot live together on the interest of sixteen thousand pounds. when you've paid everything that you owe i don't suppose there will be so much as that. it had been arranged between you that everything should be over; and if i had thought that anything of the kind would have occurred again i would have told them not to let you into the house. what is the good of two such people as you making yourselves wretched for ever, just to satisfy the romance of a moment? i call it wicked. so i told imogene, and so i tell you. you have changed your mind so often that of course you may change it again. i am sure that imogene expects that you will. indeed i can hardly believe that you intend to be such a quixote. but at any rate i have done my duty. she is old enough to look after herself, but as long as she lives with me as my sister. i shall tell her what i think; and until she becomes your wife -which i hope she never will be -i shall tell you the same. yours truly mudbury docimer "he always was a hard, unfeeling fellow," said frank to himself. then he put the letter by with a crowd of others, assuring himself that it was one which required no answer. on the afternoon he called at the house, as he did again on the tuesday; but on neither day did he succeed in seeing imogene. this he thought to be hard, as the pleasure of her society was as sweet to him as ever, though he was doubtful as to his wisdom in marrying her. on the wednesday morning he received a note from her asking him not to come at once because mudbury had chosen to put himself into a bad humour. then a few words of honey were added; "of course you know that nothing that he can say will make a change. i am too well satisfied to allow of any change that shall not come from you yourself." he was quite alive to the sweetness of the honey, and declared to himself that mudbury docimer's ill-humour was a matter to him of no concern whatever. but on the wednesday there came also another letter -in regard to which it will be well that we should travel down again to merle park. an answer altogether averse to the proposed changes as to the nieces had been received from mrs dosett. "as ayala does not wish it, of course nothing can be done." such was the decision as conveyed by mrs dosett. it seemed to lady tringle that this was absurd. it was all very well extending charity to the children of her deceased sister, mrs dormer; but all the world was agreed that beggars should not be choosers. "as ayala does not wish it." why should not ayala wish it? what a fool must ayala be not to wish it! why should not ayala be made to do as she was told, whether she wished it or not? such were the indignant questions which lady tringle asked of her husband. he was becoming sick of the young ladies altogether -of her own girls as well as the dormer girls. "they are a pack of idiots together," he said, "and tom is the worst of the lot." with this he rushed off to london, and consoled himself with his millions. mrs dosett's letter had reached merle park on the tuesday morning, sir thomas having remained down in the country over the monday. gertrude, having calculated the course of the post with exactness, had hoped to get a reply from frank to that last letter of hers -dated from her sick bed, but written in truth after a little surreptitious visit to the larder after the servants' dinner -on the sunday morning. this had been possible, and would have evinced a charming alacrity on the part of her lover. but this she had hardly ventured to expect. then she had looked with anxiety to the arrival of letters on the monday afternoon, but had looked in vain. on the tuesday morning she had felt so certain that she had contrived to open the post-bag herself in spite of illness -but there had been nothing for her. then she sent the dispatch which reached frank on the wednesday morning, and immediately afterwards took to her bed again with such a complication of disorders that the mare with the broken knees was sent at once into hastings for the doctor. "a little rice will be the best thing for her," said the doctor. "but the poor child takes nothing -literally nothing," said lady tringle, who was frightened for her child. then the doctor went on to say that arrowroot would be good, and sago, but offered no other prescription. lady tringle was disgusted by his ignorance, and thought that it might be well to send up to london for some great man. the doctor bowed, and made up his mind that lady tringle was an ass. but, being an honest man, and also tender-hearted, he contrived to get hold of tom before he left the house. "your sister's health is generally good?" he said. tom assented. as far as he knew, gertrude had always been as strong as a horse. "eats well?" asked the doctor. tom, who occasionally saw the family at lunch, gave a description of his sister's general performance. "she is a fine healthy young lady," said the doctor. tom gave a brother's ready adhesion to the word healthy, but passed over the other epithet as being superfluous. "now, i'll tell you what it is," said the doctor. "of course i don't want to inquire into any family secrets." "my father, you know," said tom, "won't agree about the man she's engaged to." "that is it? i knew there was some little trouble, but i did not want to ask any questions. your mother is unnecessarily frightened, and i have not wished to disturb her. your sister is taking plenty of nourishment?" "she does not come to table, nor yet have it in her own room." "she gets it somehow. i can say that it is so. her veins are full, and her arms are strong. perhaps she goes into the kitchen. have a little tray made ready for her, with something nice. she will be sure to find it, and when she has found it two or three times she will know that she has been discovered. if lady tringle does send for a physician from london you could perhaps find an opportunity of telling him what i have suggested. her mamma need know nothing about it." this took place on the tuesday, and on the wednesday morning gertrude knew that she had been discovered -at any rate by tom and the doctor. "i took care to keep a wing for you," said tom; "i carved them myself at dinner." as he so addressed her he came out from his hiding-place in the kitchen about midnight, and surprised her in the larder. she gave a fearful scream, which, however, luckily was not heard through the house. "you won't tell mamma, tom, will you?" tom promised that he would not, on condition that she would come down to breakfast on the following morning. this she did, and the london physician was saved a journey. but, in the meantime, gertrude's second letter had gone up to frank, and also a very heartrending epistle from lady tringle to her husband. "poor gertrude is in a very bad state. if ever there was a girl really broken-hearted on account of love, she is one. i did not think she would ever set her heart upon a man with such violent affection. i do think you might give way when it becomes a question of life and death. there isn't anything really against mr houston." sir thomas, as he read this, was a little shaken. he had hitherto been inclined to agree with rosalind, "that men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love." but now he did not know what to think about it. there was tom undoubtedly in a bad way, and here was gertrude brought to such a condition, simply by her love, that she refused to take her meals regularly! was the world come to such a pass that a father was compelled to give his daughter with a large fortune to an idle adventurer, or else to be responsible for his daughter's life? would augusta have pined away and died had she not been allowed to marry her traffick? would lucy pine and die unless money were given to her sculptor? upon the whole, sir thomas thought that the cares of his family were harder to bear than those of his millions. in regard to gertrude, he almost thought that he would give way, if only that he might be rid of that trouble. it must be acknowledged that frank houston, when he received the young lady's letter, was less soft-hearted than her father. the letter was, or should have been, heart-rending: you cruel man, you must have received my former letter, and though i told you that i was ill and almost dying you have not heeded it! three posts have come, and i have not had a line from you. in your last you were weak enough to say that you were going to give it all up because you could not make papa do just what you wanted all at once. do you know what it is to have taken possession of a young lady's heart; or is it true, as augusta says of you, that you care for nothing but the money? if it is so, say it at once and let me die. as it is i am so very ill that i cannot eat a mouthful of anything, and have hardly strength left to me to write this letter. but i cannot really believe what augusta says, though i daresay it may have been so with mr traffick. perhaps you have not been to your club, and so you have not got my former letter. or it may be that you are ill yourself. if so, i do wish that i could come and nurse you, though indeed i am so ill that i am quite unable to leave my bed. at any rate, pray write immediately -and do come! mamma seems to think that papa will give way because i am so ill. if so, i shall think my illness the luckiest thing in the world. you must believe, dearest frank, that i am now, as ever, yours most affectionately, gertrude frank houston was less credulous than sir thomas, and did not believe much in the young lady's sickness. it was evident that the young lady was quite up to the work of deceiving her father and mother, and would no doubt be willing to deceive himself if anything could be got by it. but, whether she were ill or whether she were well, he could offer her no comfort. nevertheless, he was bound to send her some answer, and with a troubled spirit he wrote as follows: my dear miss tringle, it is to me a matter of inexpressible grief that i should have to explain again that i am unable to persist in seeking the honour of your hand in opposition to the absolute and repeated refusals which i have received from your father. it is so evident that we could not marry without his consent that i need not now go into that matter. but i think myself bound to say that, considering the matter in all its bearing, i must regard our engagement as finally at an end. were i to hesitate in saying this very plainly i think i should be doing you an injury. i am sorry to hear that you are unwell, and trust that you may soon recover your health. your sincere friend, frank houston on the next morning gertrude was still in her bed, having there received her letter, when she sent a message to her brother. would tom come and see her? tom attended to her behest, and then sat down by her bedside on being told in a mysterious voice that she had to demand from him a great service. "tom," she said, "that man has treated me most shamefully and most falsely." "what man?" "what man? why, frank houston. there has never been any other man. after all that has been said and done he is going to throw me over." "the governor threw him over," said tom. "that amounts to nothing. the governor would have given way, of course, and if he hadn't that was no matter of his. after he had had my promise he was bound to go on with it. don't you think so?" "perhaps he was," said tom, dubiously. "of course he was. what else is the meaning of a promise? now i'll tell you what you must do. you must go up to london and find him out. you had better take a stick with you, and then ask him what he means to do." "and if he says he'll do nothing?" "then, tom, you should call him out. it is just the position in which a brother is bound to do that kind of thing for his sister. when he has been called out, then probably he'll come round, and all will be well." the prospect was one which tom did not at all like. he had had one duel on his hands on his own account, and had not as yet come through it with flying colours. there were still momentum which he felt that he would be compelled at last to take to violence in reference to colonel stubbs. he was all but convinced that were he to do so he would fall into some great trouble, but still it was more than probable that his outraged feelings would not allow him to resist. but this second quarrel was certainly unnecessary. "that's all nonsense, gertrude," he said, "i can do nothing of the kind." "you will not?" "certainly not. it would be absurd. you ask septimus and he will tell you that it is so." "septimus, indeed!" "at any rate, i won't. men don't call each other out nowadays. i know what ought to be done in these kind of things, and such interference as that would be altogether improper." "then, tom," said she, raising herself in bed, and looking round upon him, "i will never call you my brother again!' chapter 43 once more! "probably you are not aware, sir, that i am not at present the young lady's guardian." this was said at the office in lombard street by sir thomas, in answer to an offer made to him by captain batsby for ayala's hand. captain batsby had made his way boldly into the great man's inner room, and had there declared his purpose in a short and businesslike manner. he had an ample income of his own, he said, and was prepared to make a proper settlement on the young lady. if necessary, he would take her without any fortune -but it would, of course, be for the lady's comfort and for his own if something in the way of money were forthcoming. so much he added, having heard of this uncle's enormous wealth, and having also learned the fact that if sir thomas were not at this moment ayala's guardian he had been not long ago. sir thomas listened to him with patience, and then replied to him as above. "just so, sir thomas. i did hear that. but i think you were once; and you are still her uncle." "yes; i am her uncle." "and when i was so ill-treated in kingsbury crescent i thought i would come to you. it could not be right that a gentleman making an honourable proposition -and very liberal, as you must acknowledge -should not be allowed to see the young lady. it was not as though i did not know her. i had been ten days in the same house with her. don't you think, sir thomas, i ought to have been allowed to see her?" "i have nothing to do with her," said sir thomas -"that is, in the way of authority." nevertheless, before captain batsby left him, he became courteous to that gentleman, and though he could not offer any direct assurance he acknowledged that the application was reasonable. he was, in truth, becoming tired of ayala, and would have been glad to find a husband whom she would accept, so that she might be out of tom's way. he had been quite willing that tom should marry the girl if it were possible, but he began to be convinced that it was impossible. he had offered again to open his house to her, with all its wealth, but she had refused to come into it. his wife had told him that, if ayala could be brought back in place of lucy, she would surely yield. but ayala would not allow herself to be brought back. and there was tom as bad as ever. if ayala were once married then tom could go upon his travels, and come back, no doubt, a sane man. sir thomas thought it might be well to make inquiry about this captain, and then see if a marriage might be arranged. mrs dosett, he told himself, was a hard stiff woman, and would never get the girl married unless she allowed such a suitor as this captain batsby to have access to the house. he did make inquiry, and before the week was over had determined that if ayala would become mrs batsby there might probably be an end to one of his troubles. as he went down to merle park he arranged his plan. he would, in the first place, tell tom that ayala had as many suitors as penelope, and that one had come up now who would probably succeed. but when he reached home he found that his son was gone. tom had taken a sudden freak, and had run up to london. "he seemed quite to have got a change," said lady tringle. "i hope it was a change for the better as to that stupid girl." lady tringle could not say that there had been any change for the better, but she thought that there had been a change about the girl. tom had, as she said, quite "brisked up", had declared that he was not going to stand this thing any longer, had packed up three or four portmanteaus, and had had himself carried off to the nearest railway station in time for an afternoon train up to london. "what is he going to do when he gets there?" asked sir thomas. lady tringle had no idea what her son intended to do, but thought that something special was intended in regard to ayala. "he is an ass," said the father "you always say he is an ass," said the mother complaining. "no doubt i do. what else am i to call him?" then he went on and developed his scheme. "let ayala be asked to merle park for a week -just for a week -and assured that during that time tom would not be there. then let captain batsby also be invited." upon this there followed an explanation as to captain batsby and his aspirations. tom must be relieved after some fashion, and sir thomas declared that no better fashion seemed to present itself. lady tringle received her orders with sundry murmurings, still grieving for her son's grief -but she assented, as she always did assent, to her husband's propositions. now we will accompany tom up to london. the patient reader will perhaps have understood the condition of his mind when in those days of his sharpest agony he had given himself up to faddle and champagne. by these means he had brought himself into trouble and disgrace, of which he was fully conscious. he had fallen into the hands of the police and had been harassed during the whole period by headache and nausea. then had come the absurdity of his challenge to colonel stubbs, the folly of which had been made plain to him by the very letter which his rival had written to him. there was good sense enough about the poor fellow to enable him to understand that the police court, and the prison, that faddle and the orgies at bolivia's, that his challenge and the reply to it, were alike dishonourable to him. then had come a reaction, and he spent a miserable fortnight down at merle park, doing nothing, resolving on nothing, merely moping about and pouring the oft-repeated tale of his woes into his mother's bosom. these days at merle park gave him back at any rate his health, and rescued him from the intense wretchedness of his condition on the day after the comparison of bolivia's wines. in this improved state he told himself that it behoved him even yet to do something as a man, and he came suddenly to the bold resolution of having -as he called it to himself -another "dash at ayala". how the "dash" was to be made he had not determined when he left home. but to this he devoted the whole of the following sunday. he had received a lachrymose letter from his friend faddle, at aberdeen, in which the unfortunate youth had told him that he was destined to remain in that wretched northern city for the rest of his natural life. he had not as yet been to the mountaineers since his mishap with the police, and did not care to show himself there at present. he was therefore altogether alone, and, walking all alone the entire round of the parks, he at last formed his resolution. on the following morning when mr dosett entered his room at somerset house, a little after half past ten o'clock, he found his nephew tom there before him, and waiting for him. mr dosett was somewhat astonished, for he too had heard of tom's misfortunes. some ill-natured chronicle of tom's latter doings had spread itself among the tringle and dosett sets, and uncle reginald was aware that his nephew had been forced to relinquish his stool in lombard street. the vices of the young are perhaps too often exaggerated, so that mr dosett had heard of an amount of champagne consumed and a number of policemen wounded, of which his nephew had not been altogether guilty. there was an idea at kingsbury crescent that tom had gone nearly mad, and was now kept under paternal care at merle park. when, therefore, he saw tom blooming in health, and brighter than usual in general appearance, he was no doubt rejoiced, but also surprised, at the change. "what, tom!" he said; "i'm glad to see you looking so well. are you up in london again?" "i'm in town for a day or two," said tom. "and what can i do for you?" "well, uncle reginald, you can do a great deal for me if you will. of course you've heard of all those rows of mine?" "i have heard something." "everybody has heard," said tom, mournfully. "i don't suppose anybody was ever knocked so much about as i've been for the last six months." "i'm sorry for that, tom." "i'm sure you are, because you're always good-natured. now i wonder if you will do a great thing to oblige me." "let us hear what it is," said uncle reginald. "i suppose you know that there is only one thing in the world that i want. "mr dosett thought that it would be discreet to make no reply to this, but, turning his chair partly round, he prepared to listen very attentively to what his nephew might have to say to him. "all this about the policeman and the rest of it has simply come from my being so unhappy about ayala." "it wouldn't be taken as a promise of your being a good husband, tom, when you get into such a mess as that." "that's because people don't understand," said tom. "it is because i am so earnest about it, and because i can't bear the disappointment! there isn't one at travers and treason who doesn't know that if i'd married ayala i should have settled down as quiet a young man as there is in all london. you ask the governor else himself. as long as i thought there was any hope i used to be there steady as a rock at half past nine. everybody knew it. so i should again, if she'd only come round." "you can't make a young lady come round, as you call it." "not make her; no. of course you can't make a girl. but persuading goes a long way. why shouldn't she have me? as to all these rows, she ought to feel at any rate that they're her doing. and what she's done it stands to reason she could undo if she would. it only wants a word from her to put me all right with the governor -and to put me all right with travers and treason too. nobody can love her as i do." "i do believe that nobody could love her better," said mr dosett, who was beginning to be melted by his nephew's earnestness. "oughtn't that to go for something? and then she would have everything that she wishes. she might live anywhere she pleased -so that i might go to the office every day. she would have her own carriage, you know." "i don't think that would matter much with ayala." "it shows that i'm in a position to ask her," said tom. "if she could only bring herself not to hate me -" "there is a difference, tom, between hating and not loving." "if she would only begin to make a little way, then i could hope again. uncle reginald, could you not tell her that at any rate i would be good to her?" "i think you would be good to her," he said. "indeed, i would. there is nothing i would not do for her. now will you let me see her just once again, and have one other chance?" this was the great thing which tom desired from his uncle, and mr dosett was so much softened by his nephew's earnestness that he did promise to do as much as this -to do as much as this, at least, if it were in his power. of course, ayala must be told. no good could be done by surprising her by a visit. but he would endeavour so to arrange it that, if tom were to come to him on the following afternoon, they two should go to the crescent together, and then tom should remain and dine there -or go away before dinner, as he might please, after the interview. this was settled, and tom left somerset house, rejoicing greatly at his success. it seemed to him that now at last a way was open to him. uncle reginald, on his return home, took his niece aside and talked to her very gently and very kindly. "whether you like him or whether you do not, my dear, he is so true to you that you are bound to see him again when he asks it." at first she was very stout, declaring that she would not see him. of what good could it be, seeing that she would rather throw herself into the thames than marry him? had she not told him so over and over again, as often as he had spoken to her? why would he not just leave her alone? but against all this her uncle pleaded gently but persistently. he had considered himself bound to promise so much on her behalf, and for his sake she must do as he asked. to this, of course, she yielded. and then he said many good things of poor tom. his constancy was a great virtue. a man so thoroughly in love would no doubt make a good husband. and then there would be the assent of all the family, and an end, as far as ayala was concerned, of all pecuniary trouble. in answer to this she only shook her head, promising, however, that she would be ready to give tom an audience when he should be brought to the crescent on the following day. punctually at four tom made his appearance at somerset house, and started with his uncle as soon as the index-books had been put in their places. tom was very anxious to take his uncle home in a cab, but mr dosett would not consent to lose his walk. along the embankment they went, and across charing cross into st james's park, and then by green park, hyde park, and kensington gardens, all the way to notting hill. mr dosett did not walk very fast, and tom thought they would never reach kingsbury crescent. his uncle would fain have talked about the weather, of politics, or the hardships of the civil service generally; but tom would not be diverted from his one subject. would ayala be gracious to him? mr dosett had made up his mind to say nothing on the subject. tom must plead his own cause. uncle reginald thought that he knew such pleading would be useless, but still would not say a word to daunt the lover. neither could he say a word expressive of hope. as they were fully an hour and a half on their walk, this reticence was difficult. immediately on his arrival, tom was taken up into the drawing-room. this was empty, for it had been arranged that mrs dosett should be absent till the meeting was over. "now i'll look for this child," said uncle reginald, in his cheeriest voice as he left tom alone in the room. tom, as he looked round at the chairs and tables, remembered that he had never received as much as a kind word or look in the room, and then great drops of perspiration broke out all over his brow. all that he had to hope for in the world must depend upon the next five minutes -might depend perhaps upon the very selection of the words which he might use. then ayala entered the room and stood before him. "ayala," he said, giving her his hand. "uncle reg says that you would like to see me once again." "of course i want to see you once, and twice -and always. ayala, if you could know it! if you could only know it!" then he clasped his two hands high upon his breast, not as though appealing to her heart, but striking his bosom in very agony. "ayala, i feel that, if i do not have you as my own, i can only die for the want of you. ayala, do you believe me?" "i suppose i believe you, but how can i help it?" "try to help it! try to try and help it! say a word that you will perhaps help it by and bye." then there came a dark frown upon her brow -not, indeed, from anger, but from a feeling that so terrible a task should be thrown upon her. "i know you think that i am common." "i have never said a word, tom, but that i could not love you." "but i am true -true as the sun. would i come again after all if it were not that i cannot help coming? you have heard that i have been -been misbehaving myself?" "i have not thought about that." "it has been so because i have been so wretched. ayala, you have made me so unhappy. ayala, you can make me the happiest man there is in london this day. i seem to want nothing else. as for drink, or clubs, or billiards, and all that, they are nothing to me -unless when i try to forget that you are so -so unkind to me!" "it is not unkind, not to do as you ask me." "to do as i ask you -that would be kind. oh, ayala, cannot you be kind to me?" she shook her head, still standing in the place which she had occupied from the beginning. "may i come again? will you give me three months, and then think of it? if you would only say that, i would go back to my work and never leave it." but she still shook her head. "must i never hope?" "not for that, tom. how can i help it?" "not help it?" "no. how can i help it? one does not fall in love by trying -nor by trying prevent it." "by degrees you might love me -a little." she had said all that she knew how to say, and again shook her head. "it is that accursed colonel," he exclaimed, forgetting himself as he thought of his rival. "he is not accursed," said ayala, angrily. "then you love him?" "no! but you should not ask. you have no right to ask. it is not proper." "you are not engaged to him?" "no; i am not engaged to him. i do not love him. as you will ask, i tell you. but you should not ask; and he is not accursed. he is better than you -though i do not love him. you should not have driven me to say this. i do not ask you questions." "there is none that i would not answer. stay, ayala," for now she was going to leave the room. "stay yet a moment. do you know that you are tearing my heart in pieces? why is it that you should make me so wretched? dear ayala -dearest ayala -stay yet a moment." "tom, there is nothing more that i can say. i am very, very sorry if you are unhappy. i do think that you are good and true; and if you will shake hands with me, there is my hand. but i cannot say what you want me to say." tom took her by the hand and tried to hold her, without, however, speaking to her again. but she slid away from him and left the room, not having for a moment sat down in his presence. when the door was closed he stood awhile looking round him, trying to resolve what he might do or what he might say next. he was now at any rate in the house with her, and did not know whether such an opportunity as that might ever occur to him again. he felt that there were words within his bosom which, if he could only bring them up to his mouth, would melt the heart of a stone. there was his ineffable love, his whole happiness at stake, his purpose -his holy purpose -to devote himself, and all that he had, to her well-being. of all this he had a full conception within his own heart, if only he could express it so that others should believe him! but of what use was it now? he had had this further liberty of speech accorded to him, and in it he had done nothing, made no inch of progress. she had hardly spoken a dozen words to him, but of those she had spoken two remained clear upon his memory. he must never hope, she had said; and she had said also that that other man was better than he. had she said that he was dearer, the word would hardly have been more bitter. all the old feeling came upon him of rage against his rival, and of a desire that something desperate should be done by which he might wreak his vengeance. but there he was standing alone in mrs dosett's drawing-room, and it was necessary that he should carry himself off. as for dining in that house, sitting down to eat and drink in ayala's presence after such a conversation as that which was past, that he felt to be quite out of the question. he crammed his hat upon his head, left the room, and hurried down the stairs towards the door. in the passage he was met by his uncle, coming out of the dining-room. "tom," he said, "you'll stay and eat your dinner?" "no, indeed," said tom, angrily. "you shouldn't let yourself be disturbed by little trifles such as these," said his uncle, trying to put a good face upon the matter. "trifles!" said tom tringle. "trifles!" and he banged the door after him as he left the house. chapter 44 in the haymarket it was now the beginning of february. as tom and his uncle had walked from somerset house the streets were dry and the weather fine; but, as mr dosett had remarked, the wind was changing a little out of the east and threatened rain. when tom left the house it was already falling. it was then past six, and the night was very dark. he had walked there with a top coat and umbrella, but he had forgotten both as he banged the door after him in his passion; and, though he remembered them as he hurried down the steps, he would not turn and knock at the door and ask for them. he was in that humour which converts outward bodily sufferings almost into a relief. when a man has been thoroughly ill-used in greater matters it is almost a consolation to him to feel that he has been turned out into the street to get wet through without his dinner -even though he may have turned himself out. he walked on foot, and as he walked became damp and dirty, till he was soon wet through. as soon as he reached lancaster gate he went into the park, and under the doubtful glimmer of the lamps trudged on through the mud and slush, not regarding his path, hardly thinking of the present moment in the full appreciation of his real misery. what should he do with himself? what else was there now left to him? he had tried everything and had failed. as he endeavoured to count himself up, as it were, and tell himself whether he were worthy of a happier fate than had been awarded to him, he was very humble -humble, though so indignant! he knew himself to be a poor creature in comparison with jonathan stubbs. though he could not have been stubbs had he given his heart for it, though it was absolutely beyond him to assume one of those tricks of bearing one of those manly, winning ways, which in his eyes was so excellent in the other man, still he saw them and acknowledged them, and told himself that they would be all powerful with such a girl as ayala. though he trusted to his charms and his rings, he knew that his charms and his rings were abominable, as compared with that outside look and natural garniture which belonged to stubbs, as though of right -as though it had been born with him. not exactly in those words, but with a full inward sense of the words, he told himself that colonel stubbs was a gentleman -whereas he acknowledged himself to be a cad. how could he have hoped that ayala should accept such a one, merely because he would have a good house of his own and a carriage? as he thought of all this, be hardly knew which he hated most -himself or jonathan stubbs. he went down to the family house in queen's gate, which was closed and dark -having come there with no special purpose, but having found himself there, as though by accident, in the neighbourhood. then he knocked at the door, which, after a great undoing of chains, was opened by an old woman, who with her son had the custody of the house when the family were out of town. sir thomas in these days had rooms of his own in lombard street in which he loved to dwell, and would dine at a city club, never leaving the precincts of the city throughout the week. the old woman was an old servant, and her son was a porter at the office. "mr tom! be that you? why you are as wet as a mop!" he was wet as any mop, and much dirtier than a mop should be. there was no fire except in the kitchen, and there he was taken. he asked for a greatcoat, but there was no such thing in the house, as the young man had not yet come home. nor was there any food that could be offered him, or anything to drink; as the cellar was locked up, and the old woman was on board wages. but he sat crouching over the fire, watching the steam as it came up from his damp boots and trousers. "and ain't you had no dinner, mr tom?" said the old woman. tom only shook his head. "and ain't you going to have none?" the poor wretch again shook his head. "that's bad, mr tom." then she looked up into his face. "there is something wrong i know, mr tom. i hears that from jem. of course he hears what they do be saying in lombard street." "what is it they say, mrs tapp?" "well -that you ain't there as you used to be. things is awk'ard, and sir thomas, they say, isn't best pleased. but of course it isn't no affair of mine, mr tom." "do they know why?" he asked. "they do say it's some'at about a young lady." "yes; by heavens!" said tom, jumping up out of his chair. "oh, mrs tapp, you can't tell the condition i'm in. a young lady indeed! d - the fellow!" "don't 'ee now, mr tom." "d - the fellow! but there's no good in my standing here cursing. i'll go off again. you needn't say that i've been here, mrs tapp?" "but you won't go out into the rain, mr tom?" "rain -what matters the rain?" then he started again, disregarding all her prayers, and went off eastward on foot, disdaining the use of a cab because he had settled in his mind on no place to which he would go. yes; they knew all about it, down to the very porters at the office. everyone had heard of his love for ayala; and everyone had heard also that ayala had scorned him. not a man or woman connected by ever so slight a tie to the establishment was unaware that he had been sent away from his seat because of ayala! all this might have been borne easily had there been any hope; but now he was forced to tell himself that there was none. he saw no end to his misery -no possibility of escape. where was he to go in this moment of his misery for any shred of comfort? the solitude of his lodgings was dreadful to him; nor had he heart enough left to him to seek companionship at his club. at about ten o'clock he found himself, as it were, by accident, close to mr bolivia's establishment. he was thoroughly wet through, jaded, wretched, and in want of sustenance. he turned in, and found the place deserted. the diners had gone away, and the hour had not come at which men in quest of later refreshment were wont to make their appearance. but there were still one or two gas-lights burning; and he threw himself wearily into a little box or partition nearest to the fire. here signor bolivia himself came to him, asking in commiserating accents what had brought him thither in so wretched a plight. "i have left my coat and umbrella behind," said tom, trying to pluck up a little spirit -"and my dinner too." "no dinner, mr tringle; and you wet through like that! what shall i get you, mr tringle?" but tom declared that he would have no dinner. he was off his appetite altogether, he said. he would have a bottle of champagne and a devilled biscuit. mr walker, who, as we are aware, put himself forward to the world generally as signor bolivia, felt for the moment a throb of pity, which overcame in his heart the innkeeper's natural desire to make the most he could of his customer. "better have a mutton chop and a little drop of brandy and water hot." "i ain't up to it, bolivia," said the young man. "i couldn't swallow it if i had it. give us the bottle of champagne and the devilled biscuit." then mr walker -for bolivia was in truth walker -fetched the wine and ordered the biscuit; and poor tom was again brought back to the miserable remedy to which he had before applied himself in his misfortune. there he remained for about an hour, during a part of which he slept; but before he left the house he finished the wine. as he got up to take his departure mr walker scanned his gait and bearing, having a friendly feeling for the young man, and not wishing him to fall again into the hands of the police. but tom walked forth apparently as sober as a judge, and as melancholy as a hangman. as far as mr walker could see the liquor had made no impression on him. "if i were you, mr tringle," said the keeper of the eating-house, "i'd go home at once, because you are so mortal wet." "all right," said tom, going out into the pouring rain. it was then something after eleven, and tom instead of taking the friendly advice which had been offered to him, walked, as fast as he could, round leicester square; and as he walked the fumes of the wine mounted into his head. but he was not drunk -not as yet so drunk as to misbehave himself openly. he did not make his way round the square without being addressed, but he simply shook off from him those who spoke to him. his mind was still intent upon ayala. but now he was revengeful rather than despondent. the liquor had filled him once again with a desire to do something. if he could destroy himself and the colonel by one and the same blow, how fitting a punishment would that be for ayala! but how was he to do it? he would throw himself down from the top of the duke of york's column, but that would be nothing unless he could force the colonel to take the jump with him! he had called the man out and he wouldn't come! now, with the alcohol in his brain, he again thought that the man was a coward for not coming. had not such a meeting been from time immemorial the resource of gentlemen injured as he now was injured? the colonel would not come when called -but could he not get at him so as to strike him? if he could do the man a real injury he would not care what amount of punishment he might be called upon to bear. he hurried at last out of the square into coventry street and down the haymarket. his lodgings were in duke street, turning out of piccadilly -but he could not bring himself to go home to his bed. he was unutterably wretched, but yet he kept himself going with some idea of doing something, or of fixing some purpose. he certainly was tipsy now, but not so drunk as to be unable to keep himself on his legs. he gloried in the wet, shouting inwardly to himself that he in his misery was superior to all accidents of the weather. then he stood for awhile watching the people as they came out of the haymarket theatre. he was at this time a sorry sight to be seen. his hat was jammed on to his head and had been almost smashed in the jamming. his coat reeking wet through was fastened by one button across his chest. his two hands were thrust into his pockets, and the bottle of champagne was visible in his face. he was such a one -to look at -that no woman would have liked to touch nor any man to address. in this guise he stood there amidst the crowd, foremost among those who were watching the ladies as they got into their vehicles. "and she might be as good as the best of them, and i might be here to hand her into her own carriage' -said he to himself -"if it were not for that intruder!" at that moment the intruder was there before him, and on his arm was a lady whom he was taking across to a carriage, at the door of which a servant in livery was standing. they were followed closely by a pretty young girl who was picking her steps after them alone. these were lady albury and nina, whom colonel stubbs had escorted to the play. "you will be down by the twentieth?" said the elder lady. "punctual as the day comes," said the colonel. "and mind you have ayala with you," said the younger. "if lady albury can manage it with her aunt of course i will wait upon her," said the colonel. then the door of the carriage was shut, and the colonel was left to look for a cab. he had on an overcoat and an opera hat, but otherwise was dressed as for dinner. on one side a link-boy was offering him assistance, and on another a policeman tendering him some service. he was one of those who by their outward appearance always extort respect from those around them. as long as the ladies had been there -during the two minutes which had been occupied while they got into the carriage -tom had been restrained by their presence. he had been restrained by their presence even though he had heard ayala's name and had understood the commission given to the man whom he hated. had colonel stubbs luckily followed the ladies into the carriage tom, in his fury, would have taken himself off to his bed. but now -there was his enemy within a yard of him! here was the opportunity the lack of which seemed, a few moments since, to be so grievous to him! he took two steps out from the row in which he stood and struck his rival high on his breast with his fist. he had aimed at the colonel's face but in his eagerness had missed his mark. "there," said he, "there! you would not fight me, and now you have got it." stubbs staggered, and would have fallen but for the policeman. tom, though no hero, was a strong young man, and had contrived to give his blow with all his force. the colonel did not at first see from whom the outrage had come, but at once claimed the policeman's help. "we've got him, sir -we've got him," said the policeman. "you've got me," said tom, "but i've had my revenge." then, though two policemen and one waterman were now holding him, he stretched himself up to his full height and glared at his enemy in the face. "it's the chap who gave that hawful blow to thompson in the bow'ls!" said one of the policemen, who by this time had both tom's arms locked behind his own. then the colonel knew who had struck him. "i know him," said the colonel to the policeman. "it is a matter of no consequence." "so do we, sir. he's thomas tringle, junior." "he's a friend of mine," said the colonel. "you must let him come with me." "a friend, is he?" said an amateur attendant. the policeman, who had remembered the cruel onslaught made on his comrade, looked very grave, and still held tom tight by the arms. "a very hugly sort of friend," said the amateur. tom only stretched himself still higher, but remained speechless. "tringle," said the colonel, "this was very foolish, you know -a most absurd thing to do! come with me, and we will talk it all over." "he must come along with us to the watch-house just at present," said the policeman. "and you, sir, if you can, had better please to come with us. it ain't far across to vine street, but of course you can have a cab if you like it." this was ended by two policemen walking off with tom between them, and by the colonel following in a cab, after having administered divers shillings to the amateur attendants. though the journey in the cab did not occupy above five minutes, it sufficed him to determine what step he should take when he found himself before the night officers of the watch. when he found himself in the presence of the night officer he had considerable difficulty in carrying out his purpose. that tom should be locked up for the night, and be brought before the police magistrate next morning to answer for the outrage he had committed, seemed to the officers to be a matter of course. it was long before the colonel could persuade the officer that this little matter between him and mr tringle was a private affair, of which he at least wished to take no further notice. "no doubt," he said, "he had received a blow on his chest, but it had not hurt him in the least." "'e 'it the gen'leman with all his might and main," said the policeman. "it is quite a private affair," said the colonel. "my name is colonel stubbs; here is my card. sir - is a particular friend of mine." he named a pundit of the peace, very high in the estimation of all policemen. "if you will let the gentleman come away with me i will be responsible for him tomorrow, if it should be necessary to take any further step in the matter." this he said very eagerly, and with all the authority which he knew how to use. tom, in the meantime, stood perfectly motionless, with his arms folded akimbo on his breast, wet through, muddy, still tipsy, a sight miserable to behold. the card and the colonel's own name, and the name of the pundit of the peace together, had their effect, and after a while. tom was dismissed in the colonel's care. the conclusion of the evening's affair was, for the moment, one which tom found very hard to bear. it would have been better for him to have been dragged off to a cell, and there to have been left to his miserable solitude. but as he went down through the narrow ways leading from the police office out into the main street he felt that he was altogether debarred from making any further attack upon his protector. he could not strike him again, as he might have done had he escaped from the police by his own resources. his own enemy had saved him from durance, and he could not, therefore, turn again upon his enemy. "in heaven's name, my dear fellow," said the colonel, "what good do you expect to get by that? you have hit me a blow when you knew that i was unprepared, and, therefore, unarmed. was that manly?" to this tom made no reply. "i suppose you have been drinking?" and stubbs, as he asked this question, looked into his companion's face. "i see you have been drinking. what a fool you are making of yourself!" "it is that girl," said tom. "does that seem to you to be right? can you do yourself any good by that? will she be more likely to listen to you when she hears that you have got drunk, and have assaulted me in the street? have i done you any harm?" "she says that you are better than me," replied tom. "if she does, is that my doing? come, old fellow, try to be a man. try to think of this thing rightly. if you can win the girl you love, win her; but, if you cannot, do not be such an ass as to suppose that she is to love no one because she will not love you. it is a thing which a man must bear if it comes in his way. as far as miss dormer is concerned, i am in the same condition as you. but do you think that i should attack you in the street if she began to favour you tomorrow?" "i wish she would; and then i shouldn't care what you did." "i should think you a happy fellow, certainly; and for a time i might avoid you, because your happiness would remind me of my own disappointment; but i should not come behind your back and strike you! now, tell me where you live, and i will see you home." then tom told him where he lived, and in a few minutes the colonel had left him within his own hall door. chapter 45 there is something of the angel about him the little accident which was recorded at the close of the last chapter occurred on a tuesday night. on the following afternoon tom tringle, again very much out of spirits, returned to merle park. there was now nothing further for him to do in london. he had had his last chance with ayala, and the last chance had certainly done him no good. fortune, whether kindly or unkindly, had given him an opportunity of revenging himself upon the colonel; he had taken advantage of the opportunity, but did not find himself much relieved by what he had done. his rival's conduct had caused him to be thoroughly ashamed of himself. it had at any rate taken from him all further hope of revenge. so that now there was nothing for him but to take himself back to merle park. on the wednesday he heard nothing further of the matter; but on the thursday sir thomas came down from london, and, showing to poor tom a paragraph in one of the morning papers, asked whether he knew anything of the circumstance to which reference was made. the paragraph was as follows: that very bellicose young city knight who at christmas time got into trouble by thrashing a policeman within an inch of his life in the streets, and who was then incarcerated on account of his performance, again exhibited his prowess on tuesday night by attacking colonel - an officer than whom none in the army is more popular -under the portico of the haymarket theatre. we abstain from mentioning the officer's name -which is, however, known to us. the city knight again fell into the hands of the police and was taken to the watch-house. but colonel - who knew something of his family, accompanied him, and begged his assailant off. the officer on duty was most unwilling to let the culprit go; but the colonel used all his influence and was successful. this may be all very well between the generous colonel and the valiant knight. but if the young man has any friends they had better look to him. a gentleman with such a desire for the glories of battle must be restrained if he cannot control his propensities when wandering about the streets of the metropolis. "yes," said tom -who scorned to tell a lie in any matter concerning ayala. "it was me. i struck colonel stubbs, and he got me off at the police office." "and you're proud of what you've done?" "no, sir, i'm not. i'm not proud of anything. whatever i do or whatever i say seems to go against me." "he didn't go against you as you call it." "i wish he had with all my heart. i didn't ask him to get me off. i struck him because i hated him; and whatever might have happened i would sooner have borne it than be like this." "you would sooner have been locked up again in prison?" "i would sooner anything than be as i am." "i tell you what it is, tom," said the father. "if you remain here any longer with this bee in your bonnet you will be locked up in a lunatic asylum, and i shall not be able to get you out again. you must go abroad." to this tom made no immediate answer. lamentable as was his position, he still was unwilling to leave london while ayala was living there. were he to consent to go away for any lengthened period, by doing so he would seem to abandon his own claim. hope he knew there was none; but yet, even yet, he regarded himself as one of ayala's suitors. "do you think it well", continued the father, "that you should remain in london while such paragraphs as these are being written about you?" "i am not in london now," said tom. "no, you are not in london while you are at merle park -of course. and you will not go up to london without my leave. do you understand that?" here tom again was silent. "if you do," continued his father, "you shall not be received down here again, nor at queen's gate, nor will the cheques for your allowance be honoured any longer at the bank. in fact if you do not obey me i will throw you off altogether. this absurdity about your love has been carried on long enough." and so it came to be understood in the family that tom was to be kept in mild durance at merle park till everything should have been arranged for his extended tour about the world. to this tom himself gave no positive assent, but it was understood that when the time came he would yield to his father's commands. it had thus come to pass that the affray at the door of the haymarket became known to so much of the world at large as interested itself in the affairs either of colonel stubbs or of the tringles. other paragraphs were written in which the two heroes of the evening were designated as colonel j - s - and as t - t - junior, of the firm of t - and t - in the city. all who pleased could read these initials, and thus the world was aware that our colonel had received a blow, and had resented the affront only by rescuing his assailant from the hands of the police. a word was said at first which seemed to imply that the colonel had not exhibited all the spirit which might have been expected from him. having been struck should he not have thrashed the man who struck him -or at any rate have left the ruffian in the hands of the policemen for proper punishment? but many days had not passed over before the colonel's conduct had been viewed in a different light, and men and women were declaring that he had done a manly and a gallant thing. the affair had in this way become sufficiently well known to justify the allusion made to it in the following letter from lady albury to ayala: stalham, tuesday, 11th february, 187 - my dear ayala, it is quite indispensable for the happiness of everybody, particularly that of myself and sir harry that you should come down here on the twentieth. nina will be here on her farewell visit before her return to her mother. of course you have heard that it is all arranged between her and lord george bideford, and this will be the last opportunity which any of us will have of seeing her once again before her martyrdom. the world is to be told that he is to follow her to rome, where they are to be married -no doubt by the pope himself under the dome of st peter's. but my belief is that lord george is going to travel with her all the way. if he is the man i take him to be he will do so, but of course it would be very improper. you, however, must of course come and say pretty things to your friend; and, as you cannot go to rome to see her married, you must throw your old shoe after her when she takes her departure from stalham. i have written a line to your aunt to press my request for this visit. this she will no doubt show to you, and you, if you please, can show her mine in return. and now, my dear, i must explain to you one or two other arrangements. a certain gentleman will certainly not be here. it was not my fault that a certain gentleman went to kingsbury crescent. the certain gentleman is, as you are aware, a great friend of ours, and was entitled to explain himself if it so seemed good to him; but the certain gentleman was not favoured in that enterprise by the stalham interest. at any rate, the certain gentleman will not be at stalham on this occasion. so much for the certain gentleman. colonel stubbs will be here, and, as he will be coming down on the twentieth, would be glad to travel by the same train, so that he may look after your ticket and your luggage, and be your slave for the occasion. he will leave the paddington station by the 4 p.m. train if that will suit you. we all think that he behaved beautifully in that little affair at the haymarket theatre. i should not mention it only that everybody has heard of it. almost any other man would have struck the poor fellow again; but he is one of the very few who always know what to do at the moment without taking time to think of it. mind you come like a good girl. your affectionate friend, rosaline albury it was in this way that ayala heard what had taken place between her cousin tom and colonel stubbs. some hint of a fracas between the two men had reached her ears; but now she asked various questions of her aunt, and at last elicited the truth. tom had attacked her other lover in the street -had attacked colonel stubbs because of his injured love, and had grossly misbehaved himself. as a consequence he would have been locked up by the police had not the colonel himself interfered on his behalf. this to ayala seemed to be conduct worthy almost of an angel of light. then the question of the proposed visit was discussed -first with her aunt, and then with herself. mrs dosett was quite willing that her niece should go to stalham. to mrs dosett's thinking, a further journey to stalham would mean an engagement with colonel stubbs. when she had read lady albury's letter she was quite sure that that had been lady albury's meaning. captain batsby was not to receive the stalham interest -but that interest was to be used on the part of colonel stubbs. she had not the slightest objection. it was clear to her that ayala would have to be married before long. it was out of the question that one man after another should fall in love with her violently, and that nothing should come of it. mrs dosett had become quite despondent about tom. there was an amount of dislike which it would be impossible to overcome. and as for captain batsby there could be no chance for a man whom the young lady could not be induced even to see. but the other lover, whom the lady would not admit that she loved -as to whom she had declared that she could never love him -was held in very high favour. "i do think it was so noble not to hit tom again," she had said. therefore, as colonel stubbs had a sufficient income, there could be no reason why ayala should not go again to stalham. so it was that mrs dosett argued with herself, and such was the judgment which she expressed to ayala. but there were difficulties. ayala's little stock of cash was all gone. she could not go to stalham without money, and that money must come out of her uncle reginald's pocket. she could not go to stalham without some expenditure, which, as she well knew, it would be hard for him to bear. and then there was that terrible question of her clothes! when that suggestion had been made of a further transfer of the nieces a cheque had come from sir thomas. "if ayala comes to us she will want a few things," sir thomas had said in a note to mrs dosett. but mr dosett had chosen that the cheque should be sent back when it was decided that the further transfer should not take place. the cheque had been sent back, and there had been an end of it. there must be a morning dress, and there must be another hat, and there must be boots. so much mrs dosett acknowledged. let them do what they might with the old things, mrs dosett acknowledged that so much as that would at least be necessary. "we will both go to work," mrs dosett said, "and we will ask your uncle what he can do for us." i think she felt that she had received some recompense when ayala kissed her. it was after this that ayala discussed the matter with herself. she had longed to go once again to stalham -"dear stalham", as she called it to herself. and as she thought of the place she told herself that she loved it because lady albury had been so kind to her, and because of nina, and because of the hunting, and because of the general pleasantness and luxury of the big comfortable house. and yes; there was something to be said, too, of the pleasantness of colonel stubbs. till he had made love to her he had been, perhaps, of all these fine new friends the pleasantest. how joyous his voice had sounded to her! how fraught with gratification to her had been his bright ugly face! how well he had known how to talk to her, and to make her talk, so that everything had been easy with her! how thoroughly she remembered all his drollery on that first night at the party in london -and all his keen sayings at the theatre -and the way he had insisted that she should hunt! she thought of little confidences she had had with him, almost as though he had been her brother! and then he had destroyed it all by becoming her lover! was he to be her lover still; and if so would it be right that she should go again to stalham, knowing that she would meet him there? would it be right that she should consent to travel with him -under his special escort? were she to do so would she not be forced to do more -if he should again ask her? it was so probable that he would not ask her again! it was so strange that such a one should have asked her! but if he did ask her? certainly he was not like that angel of light whom she had never seen, but of whom the picture in her imagination was as clearly drawn as though she were in his presence daily. no -there was a wave of hair and a shape of brow, and a peculiarity of the eye, with a nose and mouth cut as sharp as chisel could cut them out of marble, all of which graced the angel but none of which belonged to the colonel. nor were these the chief of the graces which made the angel so glorious to her. there was a depth of poetry about him, deep and clear, pellucid as a lake among grassy banks, which made all things of the world mean when compared to it. the angel of light lived on the essence of all that was beautiful, altogether unalloyed by the grossness of the earth. that such a one should come in her way! oh, no; she did not look for it! but, having formed such an image of an angel for herself, would it be possible that she should have anything less divine, less beautiful, less angelic? yes; there was something of the angel about him; even about him, colonel jonathan stubbs. but he was so clearly an angel of the earth, whereas the other one, though living upon the earth, would be of the air, and of the sky, of the clouds, and of the heaven, celestial. such a one she knew she had never seen. she partly dreamed that she was dreaming. but if so had not her dream spoilt her for all else? oh, yes; indeed he was good, this red-haired ugly stubbs. how well had he behaved to tom! how kind he had been to herself! how thoughtful of her he was! if it were not a question of downright love -of giving herself up to him, body and soul, as it were -how pleasant would it be to dwell with him! for herself she would confess that she loved earthly things -such as jumping over the brook with larry twentyman before her to show her the way. but for her love, it was necessary that there should be an angel of light. had she not read that angels had come from heaven and taken in marriage the daughters of men? but was it right that she should go to stalham, seeing that there were two such strong reasons against it? she could not go without costing her uncle money, which he could ill afford; and if she did go would she -would she not confess that she had abandoned her objection to the colonel's suit? she, too, understood something of that which had made itself so plain to her aunt. "your uncle thinks it is right that you should go," her aunt said to her in the drawing-room that evening; "and we will set to work tomorrow and do the best that we can to make you smart." her uncle was sitting in the room at the time and ayala felt herself compelled to go to him and kiss him, and thank him for all his kindness. "i am so sorry to cost you so much money, uncle reginald," she said. "it will not be very much, my dear," he answered. "it is hard that young people should not have some amusement. i only hope they will make you happy at stalham." "they always make people happy at stalham," said ayala, energetically. "and now, ayala," said her aunt, "you can write your letter to lady albury before we go out tomorrow. give her my compliments, and tell her that as you are writing i need not trouble her." ayala, when she was alone in her bedroom, felt almost horrified as she reflected that in this manner the question had been settled for her. it had been impossible for her to reject her uncle's liberal offer when it had been made. she could not find the courage at that moment to say that she had thought better of it all, and would decline the visit. before she was well aware of what she was doing she had assented, and had thus, as it were. thrown over all the creations of her dream. and yet, as she declared herself, not even lady albury could make her marry this man, merely because she was at her house. she thought that, if she could only avoid that first journey with colonel stubbs in the railway, still she might hold her own. but, were she to travel with him of her own accord, would it not be felt that she would be wilfully throwing herself in his way? then she made a little plan for herself, which she attempted to carry out when writing her letter to lady albury on the following morning. what was the nature of her plan, and how she effected it, will be seen in the letter which she wrote: kingsbury crescent, thursday dear lady albury, it is so very good of you to ask me again, and i shall be so happy to visit stalham once more! i should have been very sorry not to see dear nina before her return to italy. i have written to congratulate her of course, and have told her what a happy girl i think she is. though i have not seen lord george i take all that from her description. as she is going to be his wife immediately, i don't at all see why he should not go back with her to rome. as for being married by the pope, i don't think he ever does anything so useful as that. i believe he sits all day and has his toe kissed. that is what they told me at rome. i am very glad of what you tell me about the certain gentleman, because i don't think i could have been happy at stalham if he had been there. it surprised me so much that i could not think that he meant it in earnest. we never hardly spoke to each other when we were in the house together. perhaps, if you don't mind, and i shan't be in the way, [here she began to display the little plan which she had made for her own protection] i will come down by an earlier train than you mention. there is one at 2.15, and then i need not be in the dark all the way. you need not say anything about this to colonel stubbs, because i do not at all mind travelling by myself. yours affectionately, ayala this was her little plan. but she was very innocent when she thought that lady albury would be blind to such a scheme as that. she got three words from lady albury, saying that the 2.15 train would do very well, and that the carriage would be at the station to meet her. lady albury did not also say in her note that she had communicated with colonel stubbs on the subject, and informed him that he must come up from aldershot earlier than he intended in order that he might adapt himself to ayala's whims. "foolish little child!" said lady albury to herself. "as if that would make any difference!" it was clear to lady albury that ayala must surrender now that she was coming to stalham a second time, knowing that the colonel would be there. chapter 46 ayala goes again to stalham the correspondence between lady albury and colonel stubbs was close and frequent, the friendship between them being very close. ayala had sometimes asked herself why lady albury should have been so kind and affectionate to her, and had failed to find any sufficient answer. she had been asked to stalham at first -so far as she knew -because she had been intimate at rome with the marchesa baldoni. hence had apparently risen lady albury's great friendship, which had seemed even to herself to be strange. but in truth the marchesa had had very little to do with it -nor had lady albury become attached to ayala for ayala's own sake. to lady albury colonel stubbs was -as she declared to herself very often -"her own real brother". she had married a man very rich, well known in the world, whom she loved very well; and she was not a woman who in such a position would allow herself to love another man. that there might certainly be no danger of this kind she was continually impressing on her friend the expediency of marriage -if only he could find someone good enough to marry. then the colonel had found ayala. lady albury at the beginning of all this was not inclined to think that ayala was good enough. judging at first from what she heard and then from what she saw, she had not been very favourable to ayala. but when her friend had insisted -had declared that his happiness depended on it -had shown by various signs that he certainly would carry out his intentions, if not at stalham then elsewhere, lady albury had yielded herself to him, and had become ayala's great friend. if it was written in the book that ayala was to become mrs stubbs then it would certainly be necessary that she and ayala should be friends. and she herself had such confidence in jonathan stubbs as a man of power, that she did not doubt of his success in any matter to which he might choose to devote himself. the wonder had been that ayala should have rejected the chance when it had come in her way. the girl had been foolish, allowing herself to be influenced by the man's red hair and ill-sounding name -not knowing a real pearl when she saw it. so lady albury had thought -having only been partially right in so thinking -not having gone to the depth of ayala's power of dreaming. she was very confident, however, that the girl, when once again at stalham, would yield herself easily; and therefore she went to work, doing all that she could to smoothen love's road for her friend jonathan. her woman's mind had seen all those difficulties about clothes, and would have sent what was needful herself had she not feared to offend both the dosetts and ayala. therefore she prepared a present which she could give to the girl at stalham without offence. if it was to be the girl's high fate to become mrs jonathan stubbs, it would be proper that she should be adorned and decked, and made beautiful among others of her class -as would become the wife of such a hero. of all that passed between her and ayala word was sent down to aldershot. "the stupid little wretch will throw you out, i know," wrote lady albury, "by making you start two hours before you have done your work. but you must let your work do itself for this occasion. there is nothing like a little journey together to make people understand each other." the colonel was clearly determined to have the little journey together. whatever might be the present military duties at aldershot, the duties of love were for the nonce in the colonel's mind more imperative. though his royal highness had been coming that afternoon to inspect all the troops, still he would have resolved so to have arranged matters as to travel down with ayala to stalham. but not only was he determined to do this, but he found it necessary also to arrange a previous meeting with lady albury before that important twentieth of the month. this he did by making his friend believe that her presence in london for a few hours would be necessary for various reasons. she came up as he desired, and there he met her at her hotel in jermyn street. on his arrival here he felt that he was almost making a fool of himself by the extent of his anxiety. in his nervousness about this little girl he was almost as insane as poor tom tringle, who, when she despised his love, was altogether unable to control himself. "if i cannot persuade her at last, i shall be knocking somebody over the head, as he did." it was thus he was talking to himself as he got out of the cab at the door of the hotel. "and now, jonathan," said lady albury, "what can there possibly be to justify you in giving me all this trouble? "you know you had to come up about that cook's character." "i know that i have given that as a reason to sir harry; but i know also that i should have gone without a cook for a twelve month had you not summoned me." "the truth is i could not get down to stalham and back without losing an additional day, which i cannot possibly spare. with you it does not very much matter how many days you spare." "nor how much money i spend, nor how much labour i take, so that i obey all the commands of colonel jonathan stubbs! what on earth is there that i can say or do for you more?" "there are one or two things", said he, "that i want you to understand. in the first place, i am quite in earnest about this." "don't i know that you're in earnest?" "but perhaps you do not understand the full extent of my earnestness. if she were to refuse me ultimately i should go away." "go away! go where?" "oh; that i have not at all thought of -probably to india, as i might manage to get a regiment there. but in truth it would matter very little." "you are talking like a goose." "that is very likely, because in this matter i think and feel like a goose. it is not a great thing in a man to be turned out of his course by some undefined feeling which he has as to a young woman. but the thing has occurred before now, and will occur again, in my case, if i am thrown over." "what on earth is there about the girl?" asked lady albury. "there is that precious brother-in-law of ours going to hang himself incontinently because she will not look at him. and that unfortunate friend of yours, tom tringle, is, if possible, worse than ben batsby or yourself." "if two other gentlemen are in the same condition it only makes it the less singular that i should be the third. at any rate, i am the third." "you do not mean to liken yourself to them?" "indeed i do. as to our connection with miss dormer, i can see no difference. we are all in love with her, and she has refused us all. it matters little whether a man's ugliness or his rings or his natural stupidity may have brought about this result. "you are very modest, jonathan." "i always was, only you never could see it. i am modest in this matter; but not for that reason the less persistent in doing the best i can for myself. my object now in seeing you is to let you understand that it is -well, not life and death, because she will not suffice either to kill me or to keep me alive -but one of those matters which, in a man's career, are almost as important to him as life and death. she was very decided in her refusal." "so is every girl when a first offer is made to her. how is any girl so to arrange her thoughts at a moment's notice as to accept a man off-hand?" "girls do do so." "very rarely, i think; and when they do they are hardly worth having," said lady albury, laying down the law on the matter with great precision. "if a girl accept a man all at once when she has had, as it were, no preparation for such a proposal, she must always surely be in a state of great readiness for matrimonial projects. when there has been a prolonged period of spooning then of course it is quite a different thing. the whole thing has in fact been arranged before the important word has been spoken." "what a professor in the art you are!" said he. "the odd thing is, that such a one as you should be so ignorant. can't you understand that she would not come to stalham if her mind were made up against you? i said nothing of you as a lover, but i took care to let her know that you were coming. you are very ready to put yourself in the same boat with poor ben batsby or that other unfortunate wretch. would she, do you think, have consented to come had she known that ben would have been there, or your friend tom tringle?" there was much more of it, but the upshot was -as the colonel had intended that it should be -that lady albury was made to understand that ayala's goodwill was essential to his happiness. "of course i will do my best," she said, as he parted from her. "though i am not quite as much in love with her myself as you are, yet i will do my best." then when she was left alone, and was prosecuting her inquiries about the new cook, and travelling back in the afternoon to stalham, she again considered how wonderful a thing it was such a girl as ayala, so small, apparently so unimportant, so childish in her manner, with so little to say for herself, should become a person of such terrible importance. the twentieth came, and at ten minutes before two ayala was at the paddington railway station. the train, which was to start at 2.15, had been chosen by herself so that she might avoid the colonel, and there she was, with her aunt, waiting for it. mrs dosett had thought it to be her duty to see her off, and had come with her in the cab. there were the two boxes laden with her wardrobe, such as it was. both she and her aunt had worked hard; for though -as she had declared to herself -there was no special reason for it, still she had wished to look her best. as she saw the boxes put into the van, and had told herself how much shabbier they were than the boxes of other young ladies who went visiting to such houses as stalham, she rejoiced that colonel stubbs was not there to see them. and she considered whether it was possible that colonel stubbs should recognise a dress which she had worn at stalham before, which was now to appear in a quite altered shape. she wondered also whether it would be possible that colonel stubbs should know how poor she was. as she was thinking of all this there was colonel stubbs on the platform. she had never doubted but that her little plan would be efficacious. nor had her aunt doubted -who had seen through the plan, though not a word had been spoken between them on the subject. mrs dosett had considered it to be impossible that a colonel engaged on duties of importance at aldershot should run away from them to wait upon a child like ayala -even though he had professed himself to be in love with the child. she had never seen the colonel, and on this occasion did not expect to see him. but there he was, all suddenly, shaking hands with ayala. "my aunt, mrs dosett," whispered ayala. then the colonel began to talk to the elder lady as though the younger lady were a person of very much less importance. yes, he had run up from aldershot a little earlier than he had intended. there had been nothing particular to keep him down at aldershot. it had always been his intention to go to stalham on this day, and he was glad of the accident which was bringing miss dormer there just at the same time. he spent a good deal of his time at stalham because sir harry and he, who were in truth cousins, were as intimate as brothers. he always lived at stalham when he could get away from duty and was not in london. stalham was a very nice place certainly; one of the most comfortable houses he knew in england. so he went on till he almost made mrs dosett believe, and did make ayala believe, that his visit to stalham had nothing to do with herself. and yet mrs dosett knew that the offer had been made. ayala bethought herself that she did not care so much for the re-manufactured frock after all, nor yet for the shabby appearance of the boxes. the real angel of light would not care for her frock nor for her boxes; and certainly would not be indifferent after the fashion of -of -! then she began to reflect that she was making a fool of herself. she was put into the carriage, mr dosett having luckily decided against the use of the second class. going to such a house as stalham ayala ought, said mr dosett, to go as any other lady would. had it been himself or his wife it would have been very different; but for ayala, on such an occasion as this, he would be extravagant. ayala was therefore put into her seat while the colonel stood at the door outside, still talking to mrs dosett. "i don't think she will be let to come away at the end of a week," said the colonel. "sir harry doesn't like people to come away very soon." ayala heard this, and thought that she remembered that sir harry himself was very indifferent as to the coming and going of the visitors. "they go up to london about the end of march," said the colonel, "and if miss dormer were to return about a week before it would do very well." "oh, no," said ayala, putting her head out of the window; "i couldn't think of staying so long as that." then the last final bustle was made by the guard; the colonel got in, the door was shut, and mrs dosett, standing on the platform, nodded her head for the last time. there were only four persons in the carriage. in the opposite corner there were two old persons probably a husband and wife, who had been very careful as to a foot-warming apparatus, and were muffled up very closely in woollen and furs. "if you don't mind shutting the door, sir," said the old gentleman, rather testily, "because my wife has a pain in her face." the door absolutely was shut when the words were spoken, but the colonel made some sign of closing all the apertures. but there was a ventilator above, which the old lady spied. "it you don't mind shutting that hole up there, sir, because my husband is very bad with neuralgia." the colonel at once got up and found that the ventilator was fast closed, so as not to admit a breath of air. "there are draughts come in everywhere," said the old gentleman. "the company ought to be prosecuted." "i believe the more people they kill the better they like it," said the old lady. then the colonel looked at ayala with a very grave face, with no hint at a smile, with a face which must have gratified even the old lady and gentleman. but ayala understood the face, and could not refrain from a little laugh. she laughed only with her eyes -but the colonel saw it. "the weather has been very severe all day," said the colonel, in a severe voice. ayala protested that she had not found it cold at all. "then, miss, i think you must be made of granite," said the old lady. "i hope you'll remember that other people are not so fortunate." ayala again smiled, and the colonel made another effort as though to prevent any possible breath of air from making its way into the interior of the vehicle. there was silence among them for some minutes, and then ayala was quite surprised by the tone in which her friend addressed her. "what an ill-natured girl you must be", said he, "to have put me to such a terrible amount of trouble all on purpose." "i didn't," said ayala. "yes, you did. why wouldn't you come down by the four o'clock train as i told you? now i've left everything undone, and i shouldn't wonder if i get into such a row at the horse guards that i shall never hear the end of it. and now you are not a bit grateful." "yes, i am grateful; but i didn't want you to come at all," she said. "of course i should come. i didn't think you were so perverse." "i'm not perverse, colonel stubbs." "when young persons are perverse, it is my opinion they oughtn't to be encouraged," said the old lady from her corner. "my dear, you know nothing about it," said the old gentleman. "yes, i do," said the old lady. "i know all about it. whatever she does a young lady ought not to be perverse. i do hate perversity. i am sure that hole up there must be open, sir, for the wind does come in so powerful." colonel stubbs again jumped up and poked at the ventilator. in the meantime ayala was laughing so violently that she could with difficulty prevent herself from making a noise, which; she feared, would bring down increased wrath upon her from the old lady. that feigned scolding from the colonel at once brought back upon her the feeling of sudden and pleasant intimacy which she had felt when he had first come and ordered her to dance with him at the ball in london. it was once again with her as though she knew this man almost more intimately, and certainly more pleasantly, than any of her other acquaintances. whatever he said she could answer him now, and pretend to scold him, and have her joke with him as though no offer had ever been made. she could have told him now all the story of that turned dress, if that subject had come naturally to her, or have laughed with him at her own old boxes, and confided to him any other of the troubles of her poverty, as if they were jokes which she could share at any rate with him. then he spoke again. "i do abominate a perverse young woman," he said. upon this ayala could no longer constrain herself, but burst into loud laughter. after a while the two old people became quite familiar, and there arose a contest, in which the lady took part with the colonel, and the old man protected ayala. the colonel spoke as though he were quite in earnest, and went on to declare that the young ladies of the present time were allowed far too much licence. "they never have their own bread to earn," he said, "and they ought to make themselves agreeable to other people who have more to do." "i quite agree with you, sir," said the old lady. "they should run about and be handy. i like to see a girl that can jump about the house and make herself useful." "young ladies ought to be young ladies," said the old man, putting his mouth for a moment up out of his comforter. "and can't a young lady be useful and yet be a young lady?" said the colonel. "it is her special province to be ornamental," said the old gentleman. "i like to see young ladies ornamental. i don't think young ladies ought to be scolded, even if they are a little fractious." "i quite agree with you, sir," said ayala. and so the fight went on with sundry breaks and changes in the matter under discussion till the station for stalham had been reached. the old gentleman, indeed, seemed to lose his voice before the journey was half over, but the lady persevered, so that she and the colonel became such fast friends that she insisted on shaking hands with him when he left the carriage. "how could you be so wicked as to go on hoaxing her like that?" said ayala, as soon as they were on the platform. "there was no hoax at all. i was quite in earnest. was not every word true that i said? now come and get into the carriage quickly, or you will be as bad as the old gentleman himself." ayala did get into the carriage quickly, where she found nina. the two girls were full of conversation as they went to stalham; but through it all ayala could not refrain from thinking how the jonathan stubbs of today had been exactly like that jonathan stubbs she had first known -and how very unlike a lover. chapter 47 captain batsby at merle park when ayala went to stalham captain batsby went to merle park. they had both been invited by lady tringle, and when the letter was written to ayala she was assured that tom should not be there. at that time tom's last encounter with the police had not as yet become known to the tringles, and the necessity of keeping tom at the house in the country was not manifest. the idea had been that captain batsby should have an opportunity of explaining himself to ayala. the captain came; but, as to ayala, mrs dosett sent word to say that she had been invited to stay some days just at that time with her friend lady albury at stalham. what to do with captain batsby had been felt to be a difficulty by lady albury. it was his habit to come to stalham some time in march and there finish the hunting season. it might be hoped that ayala's little affair might be arranged early in march, and then, whether he came or whether he did not, it would be the same to ayala. but the captain himself would be grievously irate when he should hear the trick which would have been played upon him. lady albury had already desired him not to come till after the first week in march, having fabricated an excuse. she had been bound to keep the coast clear both for ayala's sake and the colonel's; but she knew that when her trick should be discovered there would be unmeasured wrath. "why the deuce don't you let the two men come and then the best man may win!" said sir harry who did not doubt but that, in such a case, the colonel would prove to be the best man. here too there was another difficulty. when lady albury attempted to explain that ayala would not come unless she were told that she would not meet the captain, sir harry declared that there should be no such favour. "who the deuce is this little girl," he asked, "that everybody should be knocked about in this way for her?" lady albury was able to pacify the husband, but she feared that any pacifying of the captain would be impossible. there would be a family quarrel -but even that must be endured for the colonel's sake. in the meantime the captain was kept in absolute ignorance of ayala's movements, and went down to merle park hoping to meet her there. he must have been very much in love, for merle park was by no means a spot well adapted for hunting. hounds there were in the neighbourhood, but he turned up his nose at the offer when sir thomas suggested that he might bring down a hunter. captain batsby, when he went on hunting expeditions, never stirred without five horses, and always confined his operations to six or seven favoured counties. but ayala just at present was more to him than hunting, and therefore, though it was now the end of february, he went to merle park. "it was all sir thomas's doing." it was thus that lady tringle endeavoured to console herself when discussing the matter with her daughters. the honourable septimus traffick had now gone up to london, and was inhabiting a single room in the neighbourhood of the house. augusta was still at merle park, much to the disgust of her father. he did not like to tell her to be gone; and would indeed have been glad enough of her presence had it not been embittered by the feeling that he was being "done". but there she remained, and in discussing the affairs of the captain with her mother and gertrude was altogether averse to the suggested marriage for ayala. to her thinking ayala was not entitled to a husband at all. augusta had never given way in the affair of tom -had declared her conviction that stubbs had never been in earnest;, and was of opinion that captain batsby would be much better off at merle park without ayala than he would have been in that young lady's presence. when he arrived nothing was said to him at once about ayala. gertrude, who recovered from the great sickness occasioned by mr houston's misconduct, though the recovery was intended only to be temporary, made herself as pleasant as possible. captain batsby was made welcome, and remained three days before he sought an opportunity of asking a question about ayala. during this time he found gertrude to be a very agreeable companion, but he made mrs traffick his first confidant. "well, you know, captain batsby, to tell you the truth, we are not very fond of our cousin." "sir thomas told me she was to be here." "so we know. my father is perhaps a little mistaken about ayala." "was she not asked?" demanded captain batsby, beginning to think that he had been betrayed. "oh, yes; she was asked. she has been asked very often, because she is mamma's niece, and did live with us once for a short time. but she did not come. in fact she won't go anywhere, unless -" "unless what?" "you know colonel stubbs?" "jonathan stubbs. oh dear, yes; very intimately. he is a sort of connection of mine. he is my half-brother's second cousin by the father's side.' "oh indeed! does that make him very near?" "not at all. i don't like him, if you mean that. he always takes everything upon himself down at stalham." "what we hear is that ayala is always running after him." "ayala running after jonathan?" "haven't you heard of that?" asked mrs traffick. "why -she is at stalham with the alburys this moment, and i do not doubt that colonel stubbs is there also. she would not have gone had she not been sure of meeting him." this disturbed the captain so violently that for two or three hours he kept himself apart, not knowing what to do with himself or where to betake himself. could this be true about jonathan stubbs? there had been moments of deep jealousy down at stalham; but then he had recovered from that, having assured himself that he was wrong. it had been larry twentyman and not jonathan stubbs who had led the two girls over the brook -into which stubbs had simply fallen, making himself an object of pity. but now again the captain believed it all. it was on this account, then, that his half-sister-in-law, rosaline, had desired him to stay away from stalham for the present! he knew well how high in favour with lady albury was that traitor stubbs; how it was by her favour that stubbs, who was no more than a second cousin, was allowed to do just what be pleased in the stables, while sir harry himself, the master of the hounds, confined himself to the kennel! he was determined at first to leave merle park and start instantly for stalham, and had sent for his servant to begin the packing of his things; but as he thought of it more maturely he considered that his arrival at stalham would be very painful to himself as well as to others. for the others he did not much care, but he saw clearly that the pain to himself would be very disagreeable. no one at stalham would be glad to see him. sir harry would be disturbed, and the other three persons with whom he was concerned -lady albury, stubbs, and ayala -would be banded together in hostility against him. what chance would he have under such circumstances? therefore he determined that he would stay at merle park yet a little longer. and, after all, was ayala worth the trouble which he had proposed to take for her? how much had he offered her, how scornfully had his offer been received, and how little had she to give him in return! and now he had been told that she was always running after jonathan stubbs! could it be worth his while to run after a girl who was always running after jonathan stubbs? was he not much higher in the world than jonathan stubbs, seeing that he had, at any rate, double stubbs's income? stubbs was a red-haired, ugly, impudent fellow, who made his way wherever he went simply by "cheek'! upon reflection, he found that it would be quite beneath him to run after any girl who could so demean herself as to run after jonathan stubbs. therefore he came down to dinner on that evening with all his smiles, and said not a word about ayala to sir thomas, who had just returned from london. "is he very much provoked?" sir thomas asked his wife that evening. "provoked about what?" "he was expressly told that he would meet ayala here." "he seems to be making himself very comfortable, and hasn't said a word to me about ayala. i am sick of ayala. poor tom is going to be really ill." then sir thomas frowned, and said nothing more on that occasion. tom was certainly in an uncomfortable position, and never left his bed till after noon. then he would mope about the place, moping even worse than he did before, and would spend the evening all alone in the housekeeper's room, with a pipe in his mouth, which he seemed hardly able to take the trouble to keep alight. there were three or four other guests in the house, including two honourable miss trafficks, and a couple of young men out of the city, whom lady tringle hoped might act as antidotes to houston and hamel. but with none of them would tom associate. with captain batsby he did form some little intimacy; driven to it, no doubt, by a community of interest. "i believe you were acquainted with my cousin, miss dormer, at stalham?" asked tom. at that moment the two were sitting over the fire in the housekeeper's room, and captain batsby was smoking a cigar, while tom was sucking an empty pipe. "oh, yes," said captain batsby, pricking up his ears, "i saw a good deal of her." "a wonderful creature!" ejaculated tom. "yes, indeed!" "for a real romantic style of beauty, i don't suppose that the world ever saw her like before. did you?" "are you one among your cousin's admirers?" demanded the captain. "am i?" asked tom, surprised that there should be anybody who had not as yet heard his tragic story. "am i one of her admirers? why -rather! haven't you heard about me and stubbs?" "no, indeed." "i thought that everybody had heard that. i challenged him, you know." "to fight a duel?." "yes; to fight a duel. i sent my friend faddle down with a letter to stalham, but it was of no use. why should a man fight a duel when he has got such a girl as ayala to love him?" "that is quite true, then?" "i fear so! i fear so! oh, yes; it is too true. then you know;" -and as he came to this portion of his story he jumped up from his chair and frowned fiercely -"then, you know, i met him under the portico of the haymarket, and struck him." "oh -was that you?" "indeed it was." "and he did not do anything to you?" "he behaved like a hero," said tom. "i do think that he behaved like a hero -though of course i hate him." the bitterness of expression was here very great. "he wouldn't let them lock me up. though, in the matter of that, i should have been best pleased if they would have locked me up for ever, and kept me from the sight of the world. admire that girl, captain batsby! i don't think that i ever heard of a man who loved a girl as i love her. i do not hesitate to say that i continue to walk the world -in the way of not committing suicide, i mean -simply because there is still a possibility while she has not as yet stood at the hymeneal altar with another man. i would have shot stubbs willingly, though i knew i was to be tried for it at the old bailey -and hung! i would have done it willingly -willingly; or any other man." after that captain batsby thought it might be prudent not to say anything especial as to his own love. and how foolish would it be for a man like himself, with a good fortune of his own, to marry any girl who had not a sixpence! the captain was led into this vain thought by the great civility displayed to him by the ladies of the house. with lucy, whom he knew to be ayala's sister, he had not prospered very well. it came to his ears that she was out of favour with her aunt, and he therefore meddled with her but little. the tringle ladies, however, were very kind to him -so kind that he was tempted to think less than ever of one who had been so little courteous to him as ayala. mrs traffick was of course a married woman, and it amounted to nothing. but gertrude -! all the world knew that septimus traffick without a shilling of his own had become the happy possessor of a very large sum of money. he, batsby, had more to recommend him than traffick! why should not he also become a happy possessor? he went away for a week's hunting into northamptonshire, and then, at lady tringle's request, came back to merle park. at this time miss tringle had quite recovered her health. she had dropped all immediate speech as to mr houston. had she not been provoked, she would have allowed all that to drop into oblivion. but a married sister may take liberties. "you are well rid of him, i think," said augusta. gertrude heaved a deep sigh. she did not wish to acknowledge herself to be rid of him until another string were well fitted to her bow. "after all, a man with nothing to do in the world, with no profession, no occupation, with no money -" "mr traffick had not got very much money of his own." "he has a seat in parliament, which is very much more than fortune, and will undoubtedly be in power when his party comes in. and he is a man of birth. but frank houston had nothing to recommend him." "birth!" said gertrude, turning up her nose. "the queen, who is the fountain of honour, made his father a nobleman, and that constitutes birth." this the married sister said with stern severity of manner, and perfect reliance on the constitutional privileges of her sovereign. "i don't know that we need talk about it," said gertrude. "not at all. mr houston has behaved very badly, and i suppose there is an end of him as far as this house is concerned. captain batsby seems to me to be a very nice young man, and i suppose he has got money. a man should certainly have got money -or an occupation." "he has got both," said gertrude, which, however, was not true, as captain batsby had left the service. "have you forgotten my cousin so soon?" gertrude asked one day, as she was walking with the happy captain in the park. the captain, no doubt, had been saying soft things to her. "do you throw that in my teeth as an offence?" "inconstancy in men is generally considered as an offence," said gertrude. what it might be in women she did not just then declare. "after all i have heard of your cousin since i have been here, i should hardly have thought that it would be reckoned so in this case." "you have heard nothing against her from me." "i am told that she has treated your brother very badly." "poor tom!" "and that she is flirting with a man i particularly dislike." "i suppose she does make herself rather peculiar with that colonel stubbs." "and, after all, only think how little i saw of her! she is pretty." "so some people think. i never saw it myself," said gertrude. "we always thought her a mass of affectation. we had to turn her out of the house once, you know. she was living here, and then it was that her sister had to come in her place. it is not their fault that they have got nothing -poor girls! they are mamma's nieces, and so papa always has one of them." after that forgiveness was accorded to the captain on account of his fickle conduct, and gertrude consented to accept of his services in the guise of a lover. that this was so mrs traffick was well aware. nor was lady tringle very much in the dark. frank houston was to be considered as good as gone, and if so it would be well that her daughter should have another string. she was tired of the troubles of the girls around her, and thought that as captain batsby was supposed to have an income he would do as a son-in-law. but she had not hitherto been consulted by the young people, who felt among themselves that there still might be a difficulty. the difficulty lay with sir thomas. sir thomas had brought captain batsby there to merle park as ayala's lover, and as he had been very little at home was unaware of the changes which had taken place. and then gertrude was still supposed to be engaged to mr houston, although this lover had been so violently rejected by himself. the ladies felt that, as he was made of sterner stuff than they, so would it be more difficult to reconcile him to the alterations which were now proposed in the family arrangements. who was to bell the cat? "let him go to papa in the usual way, and ask his leave," said mrs traffick. "i did suggest that," said gertrude, "but he seems not to like to do it quite yet." "is he such a coward as that?" "i do not know that he is more a coward than anybody else. i remember when septimus was quite afraid to go near papa. but then benjamin has got money of his own, which does make a difference." "it's quite untrue saying that septimus was ever afraid of papa. of course he knows his position as a member of parliament too well for that. i suppose the truth is, it's about ayala." "it is a little odd about ayala," said gertrude, resuming her confidential tone. "it is so hard to make papa understand about these kind of things. i declare i believe he thinks that i never ought to speak to another man because of that scoundrel frank houston." all this was in truth so strange to sir thomas that he could not understand any of the existing perplexities. why did captain batsby remain as a guest at merle park? he had no special dislike to the man, and when lady tringle had told him that she had asked the captain to prolong his visit he had made no objection. but why should the man remain there, knowing as he did now that there was no chance of ayala's coming to merle park? at last, on a certain saturday evening, he did make inquiry on the subject. "what on earth is that man staying here for?" he said to his wife. "i think he likes the place." "perhaps he likes the place as well as septimus traffick, and means to live here always!" such allusions as these were constant with sir thomas, and were always received by lady tringle with dismay and grief. "when does he mean to go away?" asked sir thomas, gruffly. lady tringle had felt that the time had come in which some word should be said as to the captain's intentions; but she feared to say it. she dreaded to make the clear explanation to her husband. "perhaps", said she, "he is becoming fond of some of the young ladies." "young ladies! what young ladies? do you mean lucy?" "oh dear no!" said lady tringle. "then what the deuce do you mean? he came here after ayala, because i wanted to have all that nonsense settled about tom. ayala is not here, nor likely to be here; and i don't know why he should stay here philandering away his time. i hate men in a country house who are thorough idlers. you had better take an opportunity of letting him know that he has been here long enough." all this was repeated by lady tringle to mrs traffick, and by mrs traffick to gertrude. then they felt that this was no time for captain batsby to produce himself to sir thomas as a suitor for his youngest daughter. chapter 48 the journey to ostend "no doubt it will be very hard to make papa understand." this was said by gertrude to her new lover a few days after that order had been given that the lover should be sent away from merle park. the purport of the order in all its severity had not been conveyed to captain batsby. the ladies had felt -gertrude had felt very strongly -that were he informed that the master of the house demanded his absence he would take himself off at once. but still something had to be said -and something done. captain batsby was, just at present, in a matrimonial frame of mind. he had come to merle park to look for a wife, and, as he had missed one, was, in his present mood, inclined to take another. but there was no knowing how long this might last. augusta had hinted that "something must be done, either with papa's consent or without it". then there had come the conversation in which gertrude acknowledged the existing difficulty. "papa, too, probably, would not consent quite at once." "he must think it very odd that i am staying here," said the captain. "of course it is odd. if you could go to him and tell him everything!" but the captain, looking at the matter all round, thought that he could not go to sir thomas and tell him anything. then she began gently to introduce the respectable clergyman at ostend. it was not necessary that she should refer at length to the circumstances under which she had studied the subject, but she gave captain batsby to understand that it was one as to which she had picked up a good deal of information. but the money! "if sir thomas were made really angry, the consequences would be disastrous," said the captain. but gertrude was of a different way of thinking. her father was, no doubt, a man who could be very imperious, and would insist upon having his own way as long as his own way was profitable to him. but he was a man who always forgave. "if you mean about the money," said gertrude, "i am quite sure that it would all come right." he did mean about the money, and was evidently uneasy in his mind when the suggested step was made manifest to him. gertrude was astonished to see how long and melancholy his face could become. "papa was never unkind about money in his life," said gertrude. "he could not endure to have any of us poor." on the next saturday sir thomas again came down, and still found his guest at merle park. we are now a little in advance of our special story, which is, or ought to be, devoted to ayala. but, with the affairs of so many lovers and their loves, it is almost impossible to make the chronicle run at equal periods throughout. it was now more than three weeks since ayala went to stalham, and lady albury had written to the captain confessing something of her sin, and begging to be forgiven. this she had done in her anxiety to keep the captain away. he had not answered his sister-in-law's letter, but, in his present frame of mind, was not at all anxious to finish up the hunting season at stalham. sir thomas, on his arrival, was very full of tom's projected tour. he had arranged everything -except in regard to tom's own assent. he had written to new york, and had received back a reply from his correspondent assuring him that tom should be made most heartily welcome. it might be that tom's fighting propensities had not been made known to the people of new york. sir thomas had taken a berth on board of one of the cunard boats, and had even gone so far as to ask the captain to come down for a day or two to merle park. he was so much employed with tom that he could hardly afford time and consideration to captain batsby and his affairs. nevertheless he did ask a question, and received an answer with which he seemed to be satisfied. "what on earth is that man staying here for?" he said to his wife. "he is going on friday," replied lady tringle, doubtingly -almost as though she thought that she would be subjected to further anger because of this delay. but sir thomas dropped the subject, and passed on to some matter affecting tom's outfit. lady tringle was very glad to change the subject, and promised that everything should be supplied befitting the hottest and coldest climates on the earth's surface. "she sails on the nineteenth of april." said sir thomas to his son. "i don't think i could go as soon as that, sir," replied tom, whining. "why not? there are more than three weeks yet, and your mother will have everything ready for you. what on earth is there to hinder you?" "i don't think i could go -not on the nineteenth of april." "well then, you must. i have taken your place, and firkin expects you at new york. they'll do everything for you there, and you'll find quite a new life. i should have thought you'd have been delighted to get away from your wretched condition here." "it is wretched," said tom; "but i'd rather not go quite so soon." "why not?" "well, then -" "what is it, tom? it makes me unhappy when i see you such a fool." "i am a fool! i know i am a fool!" "then make a new start of it. cut and run, and begin the world again. you're young enough to forget all this." "so i would, only -" "only what?" "i suppose she is engaged to that man stubbs! if i knew it for certain then i would go. if i went before, i should only come back as soon as i got to new york. if they were once married and it were all done with i think i could make a new start." in answer to this his father told him that he must go on the nineteenth of april, whether ayala were engaged or disengaged, married or unmarried -that his outfit would be bought, his cabin would be ready, circular notes for his use would be prepared, and everything would be arranged to make his prolonged tour as comfortable as possible; but that if he did not start on that day all the tringle houses would be closed against him, and he would be turned penniless out into the world. "you'll have to learn that i'm in earnest," said sir thomas, as he turned his back and walked away. tom took himself off to reflect whether it would not be a grand thing to be turned penniless out into the world -and all for love! by the early train on monday sir thomas returned to london, having taken little or no heed of captain batsby during his late visit to the country. even at merle park captain batsby's presence was less important than it would otherwise have been to lady tringle and mrs traffick, because of the serious nature of sir thomas's decision as to his son. lady tringle perhaps suspected something. mrs traffick, no doubt, had her own ideas as to her sister's position; but nothing was said and nothing was done. both on the wednesday and on the thursday lady tringle went up to town to give the required orders on tom's behalf. on the thursday her elder daughter accompanied her, and returned with her in the evening. on their arrival they learnt that neither captain batsby nor miss gertrude had been seen since ten o'clock; that almost immediately after lady tringle's departure in the morning captain batsby had caused all his luggage to be sent into hastings; and that it had since appeared that a considerable number of miss gertrude's things were missing. there could be no doubt that she had caused them to be packed up with the captain's luggage. "they have gone to ostend, mamma," said augusta. "i was sure of it, because i've heard gertrude say that people can always get themselves married at ostend. there is a clergyman there on purpose to do it." it was at this time past seven o'clock, and lady tringle when she heard the news was so astounded that she did not at first know how to act. it was not possible for her to reach dover that night before the night boat for ostend should have started -even could she have done any good by going there. tom was in such a condition that she hardly dared to trust him; but it was settled at last that she should telegraph at once to sir thomas, in lombard street, and that tom should travel up to london by the night train. on the following morning lady tringle received a letter from gertrude, posted by that young lady at dover as she passed through on her road to ostend. it was as follows: dear mamma, you will be surprised on your return from london to find that we have gone. after much thinking about it we determined it would be best, because we had quite made up our mind not to be kept separated. ben was so eager about it that i was obliged to yield. we were afraid that if we asked papa at once he would not have given his consent. pray give him my most dutiful love, and tell him that i am sure he will never have occasion to be ashamed of his son-in-law. i don't suppose he knows, but it is the fact that captain batsby has about three thousand a year of his own. it is very different from having nothing, like that wretch frank houston, or, for that matter, mr traffick. ben was quite in a position to ask papa, but things had happened which made us both feel that papa would not like it just at present. we mean to be married at ostend, and then will come back as soon as you and papa say that you will receive us. in the meantime i wish you would send some of my clothes after me. of course i had to come away with very little luggage, because i was obliged to have my things mixed up with ben's. i did not dare to have my boxes brought down by the servants. could you send me the green silk in which i went to church the last two sundays, and my pink gauze, and the grey poplin? please send two or three flannel petticoats, as i could not put them among his things, and as many cuffs and collars as you can cram in. i suppose i can get boots at ostend, but i should like to have the hat with the little brown feather. there is my silk jacket with the fur trimming; i should like to have that. i suppose i shall have to be married without any regular dress, but i am sure papa will make up my trousseau to me afterwards. i lent a little lace fichu to augusta; tell her i shall so like to have it. give papa my best love, and augusta, and poor tom, and accept the same from your affectionate daughter, gertrude "i suppose i must not add the other name yet." sir thomas did not receive the telegram till eleven o'clock, when he returned from dinner, and could do nothing that night. on the next morning he was disturbed soon after five o'clock by tom, who had come on the same errand. "idiots!" exclaimed sir thomas, "what on earth can they have gone to ostend for? and what can you do by coming up?" "my mother thought that i might follow them to ostend." "they wouldn't care for you. no one will care for you until you have got rid of all this folly. i must go. idiots! who is to marry them at ostend? if they are fools enough to want to be married, why shouldn't they get married in england?" "i suppose they thought you wouldn't consent." "of course i shan't consent. but why should i consent a bit more because they have gone to ostend? i don't suppose anybody ever had such a set of fools about him as i have." this would have been hard upon tom had it not been that he had got beyond the feeling of any hardness from contempt or contumely. as he once said of himself, all sense of other injury had been washed out of him by ayala's unkindness. on that very day sir thomas started for ostend, and reached the place about two o'clock. captain batsby and gertrude had arrived only during the previous night, and gertrude, as she had been very sick was still in bed. captain batsby was not in bed. captain batsby had been engaged since an early hour in the morning looking for that respectable clergyman of the church of england of whose immediate services he stood in need. by the time that sir thomas had reached ostend he had found that no such clergyman was known in the place. there was a regular english clergyman who would be very happy to marry him -and to accept the usual fees -after the due performance of certain preliminaries as ordained by the law, and as usual at ostend. the lady, no doubt, could be married at ostend, after such preliminaries -as she might have been married also in england. all this was communicated by the captain to gertrude -who was still very unwell -at her bedroom door. her conduct during this trying time was quite beyond reproach -and also his -as captain batsby afterwards took an opportunity of assuring her father. "what on earth, sir, is the meaning of all this?" said sir thomas, encountering the man who was not his son-in-law in the sitting-room of the hotel. "i have just run away with your daughter, sir thomas. that is the simple truth." "and i have got the trouble of taking her back again." "i have behaved like a gentleman through it all, sir thomas," said the captain, thus defending his own character and the lady's. "you have behaved like a fool. what on earth am i to think of it, sir? you were asked down to my house because you gave me to understand that you proposed to ask my niece, miss dormer, to be your wife; and now you have run away with my daughter. is that behaviour like a gentleman?" "i must explain myself." "well, sir?" captain batsby found the explanation very difficult; and hummed and hawed a great deal. "do you mean to say that it was a lie from beginning to end about miss dormer?" great liberties of speech are allowed to gentlemen whose daughters have been run away with, and whose hospitality has been outraged. "oh dear no. what i said then was quite true. it was my intention. but -but -." the perspiration broke out upon the unhappy man's brow as the great immediate trouble of his situation became clear to him. "there was no lie -no lie at all. i beg to assure you, sir thomas, that i am not a man to tell a lie." "how has it all been, then?" "when i found how very superior a person your daughter was!" "it isn't a month since she was engaged to somebody else," said the angry father, forgetting all propriety in his indignation. "gertrude?" demanded captain batsby. "you are two fools. so you gave up my niece?" "oh dear yes, altogether. she didn't come to merle park, you know. how was i to say anything to her when you didn't have her there?" "why didn't you go away then, instead of remaining under a false pretence? or why, at any rate, didn't you tell me the truth?" "and what would you have me to do now?" asked captain batsby. "go to the d -" said sir thomas, as he left the room, and went to his daughter's chamber. gertrude had heard that her father was in the house, and endeavoured to hurry herself into her clothes while the interview was going on between him and her father. but she was not yet perfectly arrayed when her father burst into her room. "oh, papa," she said, going down on her knees, "you do mean to forgive us?" "i mean to do nothing of the kind. i mean to carry you home and have you locked up." "but we may be married!" "not with my leave. why didn't you come and ask if you wanted to get yourselves married? why didn't you tell me?" "we were ashamed." "what has become of mr houston, whom you loved so dearly?" "oh, papa!" "and the captain was so much attached to ayala!" "oh, papa!" "get up, you stupid girl. why is it that my children are so much more foolish than other people's? i don't suppose you care for the man in the least." "i do, i do. i love him with all my heart." "and as for him -how can he care for you when it is but the other day he was in love with your cousin?" "oh, papa!" "what he wants is my money, of course." "he has got plenty of money, papa." "i can understand him, fool as he is. there is something for him to get. he won't get it, but he might think it possible. as for you, i cannot understand you at all. what do you expect? it can't be for love of a hatchet-faced fellow like that, whom you had never seen a fortnight ago." "it is more than a month ago, papa." "frank houston was, at any rate, a manly-looking fellow." "he was a scoundrel," said gertrude, now standing up for the first time. "a good-looking fellow was frank houston; that at least may be said for him," continued the father, determined to exasperate his daughter to the utmost. "i had half a mind to give way about him, because he was a manly, outspoken fellow, though he was such an idle dog. if you'd gone off with him, i could have understood it -and perhaps forgiven it," he added. "he was a scoundrel!" screamed gertrude, remembering her ineffectual attempts to make her former lover perform this same journey. "but this fellow! i cannot bring myself to believe that you really care for him." "he has a good income of his own, while houston was little better than a beggar." "i'm glad of that," said sir thomas, "because there will be something for you to live upon. i can assure you that captain batsby will never get a shilling of my money. now, you had better finish dressing yourself, and come down and eat your dinner with me if you've got any appetite. you will have to go back to dover by the boat tonight." "may ben dine with us?" asked gertrude, timidly. "ben may go to the d -. at any rate he had better not show himself to me again," said sir thomas. the lovers, however, did get an opportunity of exchanging a few words, during which it was settled between them that as the young lady must undoubtedly obey her father's behests, and return to dover that night, it would be well for captain batsby to remain behind at ostend. indeed, he spoke of making a little tour as far as brussels, in order that he might throw off the melancholy feelings which had been engendered. "you will come to me again, ben," she said. upon this he looked very grave. "you do not mean to say that after all this you will desert me?" "he has insulted me so horribly!" "what does that signify? of course he is angry. if you could only hear how he has insulted me." "he says that you were in love with somebody else not a month since." "so were you, ben, for the matter of that." he did, however, before they parted, make her a solemn promise that their engagement should remain an established fact, in spite both of father and mother. gertrude, who had now recovered the effects of her seasickness -which, however, she would have to encounter again so very quickly -contrived to eat a hearty dinner with her father. there, however, arose a little trouble. how should she contrive to pack up the clothes which she had brought with her, and which had till lately been mixed with the captain's garments? she did, however, at last succeed in persuading the chamber-maid to furnish her with a carpet-bag, with which in her custody she arrived safely on the following day at merle park. chapter 49 the new frock ayala's arrival at stalham was full of delight to her. there was nina with all her new-fledged hopes and her perfect assurance in the absolute superiority of lord george bideford to any other man either alive or dead. ayala was quite willing to allow this assurance to pass current, as her angel of light was as yet neither alive nor dead. but she was quite certain -wholly certain -that when the angel should come forth he would be superior to lord george. the first outpourings of all this took place in the carriage as nina and ayala were driven from the station to the house, while the colonel went home alone in a dog-cart. it had been arranged that nothing should be said to ayala about the colonel, and in the carriage the colonel's name was not mentioned. but when they were all in the hall at stalham, taking off their cloaks and depositing their wraps, standing in front of the large fire, colonel stubbs was there. lady albury was present also, welcoming her guests, and sir harry, who had already come home from hunting, with one or two other men in red coats and top breeches, and a small bevy of ladies who were staying in the house. lady albury was anxious to know how her friend had sped with ayala, but at such a moment no question could be asked. but ayala's spirits were so high that lady albury was at a loss to understand whether the whole thing had been settled by jonathan with success -or whether, on the other hand, ayala was so happy because she had not been troubled by a word of love. "he has behaved so badly, lady albury," said ayala. "what -stubbs?" asked sir harry, not quite understanding all the ins and outs of the matter. "yes, sir harry. there was an old lady and an old gentleman. they were very funny and he would laugh at them." "i deny it," said the colonel. "why shouldn't he laugh at them if they were funny?" asked lady albury. "he knew it would make me laugh out loud. i couldn't help myself, but he could be as grave as a judge all the time. so he went on till the old woman scolded me dreadfully." "but the old man took your part," said the colonel. "yes -he did. he said that i was ornamental." "a decent and truth-speaking old gentleman," said one of the sportsmen in top boots. "quite so -but then the old lady said that i was perverse, and colonel stubbs took her part. if you had been there, lady albury, you would have thought that he had been in earnest." "so i was," said the colonel. all this was very pleasant to ayala. it was a return to the old joyousness when she had first discovered the delight of having such a friend as colonel stubbs. had he flattered her, paid her compliments, been soft and delicate to her -as a lover might have been -she would have been troubled in spirit and heavy at heart. but now it seemed as though all that love-making had been an episode which had passed away, and that the old pleasant friendship still remained. as yet, while they were standing there in the hall, there had come no moment for her to feel whether there was anything to regret in this. but certainly there had been comfort in it. she had been able to appear before all her stalham friends, in the presence even of the man himself, without any of that consciousness which would have oppressed her had he come there simply as her acknowledged lover, and had she come there conscious before all the guests that it was so. then they sat for a while drinking tea and eating buttered toast in the drawing-room. a supply of buttered toast fully to gratify the wants of three or four men just home from hunting has never yet been created by the resources of any establishment. but the greater marvel is that the buttered toast has never the slightest effect on the dinner which is to follow in an hour or two. during this period the conversation turned chiefly upon hunting -which is of all subjects the most imperious. it never occurs to a hunting man to suppose that either a lady, or a bishop, or a political economist, can be indifferent to hunting. there is something beyond millinery -beyond the interests of the church -beyond the price of wheat -in that great question whether the hounds did or did not change their fox in gobblegoose wood. on the present occasion sir harry was quite sure that the hounds did carry their fox through gobblegoose wood, whereas captain glomax, who had formerly been master of the pack which now obeyed sir harry, was perfectly certain that they had got upon another animal, who went away from gobblegoose as fresh as paint. he pretended even to ridicule sir harry for supposing that any fox could have run at that pace up buddlecombe hill who had travelled all the way from stickborough gorse. to this sir harry replied resentfully that the captain did not know what were the running powers of a dog-fox in march. then he told various stories of what had been done in this way at this special period of the year. glomax, however, declared that he knew as much of a fox as any man in england, and that he would eat both the foxes, and the wood, and sir harry, and, finally, himself, if the animal which had run up buddlecombe hill was the same which they brought with them from stickborough gorse into gobblegoose wood. so the battle raged, and the ladies no doubt were much interested -as would have been the bishop had he been there, or the political economist. after this ayala was taken up into her room, and left to sit there by herself for a while till lady albury should send her maid. "my dear," said lady albury, "there is something on the bed which i expect you to wear tonight. i shall be broken-hearted if it doesn't fit you. the frock is a present from sir harry; the scarf comes from me. don't say a word about it. sir harry always likes to make presents to young ladies." then she hurried out of the room while ayala was still thanking her. lady albury had at first intended to say something about the colonel as they were sitting together over ayala's fire, but she had made up her mind against this as soon as she saw their manner towards each other on entering the house. if ayala had accepted him at a word as they were travelling together, then there would be need of no further interference in the matter. but if not, it would be better that she should hold her peace for the present. ayala's first instinct was to look at the finery which had been provided for her. it was a light grey silk, almost pearl colour, as to which she thought she had never seen anything so lovely before. she measured the waist with her eye, and knew at once that it would fit her. she threw the gauzy scarf over her shoulders and turned herself round before the large mirror which stood near the fireplace. "dear lady albury!" she exclaimed; "dear lady albury!" it was impossible that she should have understood that lady albury's affection had been shown to jonathan stubbs much rather than to her when those presents were prepared. she got rid of her travelling dress and her boots, and let down her hair, and seated herself before the fire that she might think of it all in her solitude. was she or was she not glad -glad in sober earnest, glad now the moment of her mirth had passed by, the mirth which had made her return to stalham so easy for her -was she or was she not glad that this change had come upon the colonel, this return to his old ways? she had got her friend again, but she had lost her lover. she did not want the lover. she was sure of that. she was still sure that if a lover would come to her who would be in truth acceptable -such a lover as would enable her to give herself up to him altogether, and submit herself to him as her lord and master -he must be something different from jonathan stubbs. that had been the theory of her life for many months past, a theory on which she had resolved to rely with all her might from the moment in which this man had spoken to her of his love. would she give way and render up herself and all her dreams simply because the man was one to be liked? she had declared to herself again and again that it should not be so. there should come the angel of light or there should come no lover for her. on that very morning as she was packing up her boxes at kingsbury crescent she had arranged the words in which, should he speak to her on the subject in the railway train, she would make him understand that it could never be. surely he would understand if she told him so simply, with a little prayer that his suit might not be repeated. his suit had not been repeated. nothing apparently had been further from his intention. he had been droll, pleasant, friendly -just like his old dear self. for in truth the pleasantness and the novelty of his friendship had made him dear to her. he had gone back of his own accord to the old ways, without any little prayer from her. now was she contented? as the question would thrust itself upon her in opposition to her own will, driving out the thoughts which she would fain have welcomed, she gazed listlessly at the fire. if it were so, then for what purpose, then for what reason, had lady albury procured for her the pale grey pearl-coloured dress? and why were all these grand people at stalham so good to her -to her, a poor little girl, whose ordinary life was devoted to the mending of linen and to the furtherance of economy in the use of pounds of butter and legs of mutton? why was she taken out of her own sphere and petted in this new luxurious world? she had a knowledge belonging to her -if not quite what we may call common sense -which told her that there must be some cause. of some intellectual capacity, some appreciation of things and words which were divine in their beauty, she was half conscious. it could not be, she felt, that without some such capacity she should have imaged to herself that angel of light. but not for such capacity as that had she been made welcome at stalham. as for her prettiness, her beauty of face and form, she thought about them not at all -almost not at all. in appearing in that pale-pearl silk, with that gauzy scarf upon her shoulders, she would take pride. not to be shamed among other girls by the poorness of her apparel was a pride to her. perhaps to excel some others by the prettiness of her apparel might be a pride to her. but of feminine beauty, as a great gift bestowed upon her, she thought not at all. she would look in the mirror for the effect of the scarf, but not for the effect of the neck and shoulders beneath it. could she have looked in any mirror for the effect of the dreams she had thus dreamed -ah! that would have been the mirror in which she would have loved yet feared to look! why was lady albury so kind to her? perhaps lady albury did not know that colonel stubbs had changed his mind. she would know it very soon, and then, maybe, everything would be changed. as she thought of this she longed to put the pearl silk dress aside, and not to wear it as yet -to put it aside so that it might never be worn by her if circumstances should so require. it was to be hoped that the man had changed his mind -and to be hoped that lady albury would know that he had done so. then she would soon see whether there was a change. could she not give a reason why she should not wear the dress this night? as she sat gazing at the fire a tear ran down her cheek. was it for the dress she would not wear, or for the lover whom she would not love? the question as to the dress was settled for her very soon. lady albury's maid came into the room -not a chit of a girl without a thought of her own except as to her own grandness in being two steps higher than the kitchen-maid -but a well-grown, buxom, powerful woman, who had no idea of letting such a young lady as ayala do anything in the matter of dress but what she told her. when ayala suggested something as to the next evening in reference to the pale-pearl silk the buxom powerful woman pooh-poohed her down in a moment. what -after sir harry had taken so much trouble about having it made; having actually inquired about it with his own mouth. "tonight, miss; you must wear it tonight! my lady would be quite angry!" "my lady not know what you wear! my lady knows what all the ladies wear -morning, noon, and night." that little plan of letting the dress lie by till she should know how she should be received after colonel stubbs's change of mind had been declared, fell to the ground altogether under the hands of the buxom powerful woman. when she went into the drawing-room some of the guests were assembled. sir harry and lady albury were there, and so was colonel stubbs. as she walked in sir harry was standing well in front of the fire, in advance of the rug, so as to be almost in the middle of the room. captain glomax was there also, and the discussion about the foxes was going on. it had occurred to ayala that as the dress was a present from sir harry she must thank him. so she walked up to him and made a little curtsey just before him. "am i nice, sir harry?" she said. "upon my word", said sir harry, "that is the best spent ten-pound note i ever laid out in my life." then he took her by the hand and gently turned her round, so as to look at her and her dress. "i don't know whether i am nice, but you are," she said, curtseying again. everybody felt that she had had quite a little triumph as she subsided into a seat close by lady albury, who called her. as she seated herself she caught the colonel's eye, who was looking at her. she fancied that there was a tear in it. then he turned himself and looked away into the fire. "you have won his heart for ever," said lady albury. "whose heart?" asked ayala, in her confusion. "sir harry's heart. as for the other, cela va sans dire. you must go on wearing it every night for a week or sir harry will want to know why you have left it off. if the woman had made it on you it couldn't have fitted better. baker' -baker was the buxom female -"said that she knew it was right.you did that very prettily to sir harry. now go up and ask colonel stubbs what he thinks of it." "indeed, i won't," said ayala. lady albury, a few minutes afterwards, when she saw ayala walking away towards the drawing-room leaning on the colonel's arm, acknowledged to herself that she did at last understand it. the colonel had been able to see it all, even without the dress, and she confessed in her mind that the colonel had eyes with which to see, and ears with which to hear, and a judgment with which to appreciate. "don't you think that girl very lovely?" she said to lord rufford, on whose arm she was leaning. "something almost more than lovely," said lord rufford, with unwonted enthusiasm. it was acknowledged now by everybody. "is it true about colonel stubbs and miss dormer?" whispered lady rufford to her hostess in the drawing-room. "upon my word, i never inquire into those things," said lady albury. "i suppose he does admire her. everybody must admire her." "oh yes;" said lady rufford. "she is certainly very pretty. who is she, lady albury?" lady rufford had been a miss penge, and the penges were supposed to be direct descendants from boadicea. "she is miss ayala dormer. her father was an artist, and her mother was a very handsome woman. when a girl is as beautiful as miss dormer, and as clever, it doesn't much signify who she is." then the direct descendant from boadicea withdrew holding an opinion much at variance with that expressed by her hostess. "who is that young lady who sat next to you?" asked captain glomax of colonel stubbs, after the ladies had gone. "she is a miss ayala dormer." "did i not see her out hunting with you once or twice early in the season?" "you saw her out hunting, no doubt, and i was there. i did not specially bring her. she was staying here, and rode one of albury's horses." "take her top and bottom, and all round," said captain glomax, "she is the prettiest little thing i've seen for many a day. when she curtseyed to sir harry in the drawing-room i almost thought that i should like to be a marrying man myself." stubbs did not carry on the conversation, having felt displeased rather than otherwise by the admiration expressed. "i didn't quite understand before", said sir harry to his wife that night, "what it was that made jonathan so furious about that girl; but i think i see it now." "fine feathers make fine birds," said his wife, laughing. "feathers ever so fine," said sir harry, "don't make well-bred birds." "to tell the truth," said lady albury, "i think we shall all have to own that jonathan has been right." this took place upstairs, but before they left the drawing-room lady albury whispered a few words to her young friend. "we have had a terrible trouble about you, ayala." "a trouble about me, lady albury? i should be so sorry." "it is not exactly your fault -but we haven't at all known what to do with that unfortunate man." "what man?" asked ayala, forgetful at the moment of all men except colonel stubbs. "you naughty girl! don't you know that my brother-in-law is broken-hearted about you?" "captain batsby!" whispered ayala, in her faintest voice. "yes; captain batsby. a captain has as much right to be considered as a colonel in such a matter as this." here ayala frowned, but said nothing. "of course, i can't help it, who may break his heart, but poor ben is always supposed to be at stalham just at this time of the year, and now i have been obliged to tell him one fib upon another to keep him away. when he comes to know it all, what on earth will he say to me?" "i am sure it has not been my fault," said ayala. "that's what young ladies always say when gentlemen break their hearts." when ayala was again in her room, and had got rid of the buxom female who came to assist her in taking off her new finery, she was aware of having passed the evening triumphantly. she was conscious of admiration. she knew that sir harry had been pleased by her appearance. she was sure that lady albury was satisfied with her, and she had seen something in the colonel's glance that made her feel that he had not been indifferent. but in their conversation at the dinner table he had said nothing which any other man might not have said, if any other man could have made himself as agreeable. those hunting days were all again described with their various incidents, with the great triumph over the brook, and twentyman's wife and baby, and fat lord rufford, who was at the moment sitting there opposite to them; and the ball in london, with the lady who was thrown out of the window; and the old gentleman and the old lady of today who had been so peculiar in their remarks. there had been nothing else in their conversation, and it surely was not possible that a man who intended to put himself forward as a lover should have talked in such fashion as that! but then there were other things which occurred to her. why had there been that tear in his eye? and that "cela va sans dire" which had come from lady albury in her railing mood -what had that meant? lady albury, when she said that, could not have known that the colonel had changed his purpose. but, after all, what is a dress, let it be ever so pretty? the angel of light would not care for her dress, let her wear what she might. were he to seek her because of her dress, he would not be the angel of light of whom she had dreamed. it was not by any dress that she could prevail over him. she did rejoice because of her little triumph -but she knew that she rejoiced because she was not an angel of light herself. her only chance lay in this, that the angels of yore did come down from heaven to ask for love and worship from the daughters of men. as she went to bed, she determined that she would still be true to her dream. not because folk admired a new frock would she be ready to give herself to a man who was only a man -a man of the earth really; who had about him no more than a few of the real attributes of an angel of light. chapter 50 gobblegoose wood on sunday the next two days were not quite so triumphant to ayala as had been the evening of her arrival. there was hunting on both of those days, the gentlemen having gone on the friday away out of sir harry's country to the brake hounds. ayala and the colonel had arrived on the thursday. ayala had not expected to be asked to hunt again -had not even thought about it. it had been arranged before on nina's account, and nina now was not to hunt any more. lord george did not altogether approve of it, and nina was quite in accord with lord george -though she had held up her whip and shaken it in triumph when she jumped over the cranbury brook. and the horse which ayala had ridden was no longer in the stables. "my dear, i am so sorry; but i'm afraid we can't mount you," lady albury said. in answer to this ayala declared that she had not thought of it for a moment. but yet the days seemed to be dull with her. lady rufford was -well -perhaps a little patronising to her, and patronage such as that was not at all to ayala's taste. "lady albury seems to be quite a kind friend to you," lady rufford said. nothing could be more true. the idea implied was true also -the idea that such a one as ayala was much in luck's way to find such a friend as lady albury. it was true no doubt; but, nevertheless, it was ungracious, and had to be resented. "a very kind friend, indeed. some people only make friends of those who are as grand as themselves." "i am sure we should be very glad to see you at rufford if you remain long in the country," said lady rufford, a little time afterwards. but even in this there was not a touch of that cordiality which might have won ayala's heart. "i am not at all likely to stay," said ayala. "i live with my uncle and aunt at notting hill, and i very rarely go away from home." lady rufford, however, did not quite understand it. it had been whispered to her that morning that ayala was certainly going to marry colonel stubbs; and, if so, why should she not come to rufford? on that day, the friday, she was taken in to dinner by captain glomax. "i remember quite as if it were yesterday," said the captain. "it was the day we rode the cranbury brook." ayala looked up into his face, also remembering everything as well as it were yesterday. "mr twentyman rode over it," she said, "and colonel stubbs rode into it." "oh, yes; stubbs got a ducking; so he did." the captain had not got a ducking, but then he had gone round by the road. "it was a good run that." "i thought so." "we haven't been lucky since sir harry has had the hounds somehow. there doesn't seem to be the dash about 'em there used to be when i was here. i had them before sir harry, you know." all this was nearly in a whisper. "were you master?" asked ayala, with a tone of surprise which was not altogether pleasing to the captain. "indeed i was, but the fag of it was too great, and the thanks too small, so i gave it up. they used to get four days a week out of me." during the two years that the captain had had the hounds, there had been, no doubt, two or three weeks in which he had hunted four days. ayala liked hunting, but she did not care much for captain glomax, who, having seen her once or twice on horseback, would talk to her about nothing else. a little away on the other side of the table nina was sitting next to colonel stubbs, and she could hear their voices and almost their words. nina and jonathan were first cousins, and, of course, could be happy together without giving her any cause for jealousy -but she almost envied nina. yet she had hoped that it might not fall to her lot to be taken out again that evening by the colonel. hitherto she had not even spoken to him during the day. they had started to the meet very early, and the gentlemen had almost finished their breakfast before she had come down. if there had been any fault it was her fault, but yet she almost felt that there was something of a disruption between them. it was so evident to her that he was perfectly happy whilst he was talking to nina. after dinner it seemed to be very late before the men came into the drawing-room, and then they were still engaged upon that weary talk about hunting, till lady rufford, in order to put a stop to it, offered to sing. "i always do", she said, "if rufford ventures to name a fox in the drawing-room after dinner." she did sing, and ayala thought that the singing was more weary than the talk about hunting. while this was going on, the colonel had got himself shut up in a corner of the room. lady albury had first taken him there, and afterwards he had been hemmed in when lady rufford sat down to the piano. ayala had hardly ventured even to glance at him, but yet she knew all that he did, and heard almost every word that he spoke. the words were not many, but still when he did speak his voice was cheerful. nina now and again had run up to him, and lady rufford had asked him some questions about the music. but why didn't he come and speak to her? thought ayala. though all that nonsense about love was over, still he ought not to have allowed a day to pass at stalham without speaking to her. he was the oldest friend there in that house except nina. it was indeed no more than nine months since she had first seen him, but still it seemed to her that he was an old friend. she did feel, as she endeavoured to answer the questions that lord rufford was asking her, that jonathan stubbs was treating her unkindly. then came the moment in which lady albury marshalled her guests out of the room towards their chambers. "have you found yourself dull without the hunting?" the colonel said to ayala. "oh dear no; i must have a dull time if i do, seeing that i have only hunted three days in my life." there was something in the tone of her voice which, as she herself was aware, almost expressed dissatisfaction. and yet not for worlds would she have shown herself to be dissatisfied with him could she have helped it. "i thought that perhaps you might have regretted the little pony," he said. "because a thing has been very pleasant, it should not be regretted because it cannot be had always." "to me a thing may become so pleasant, that unless i can have it always my life must be one long regret." "the pony is not quite like that," said ayala, smiling as she followed the other ladies out of the room. on the next morning the meet was nearer, and some of the ladies were taken there in an open carriage. lady rufford went, and mrs gosling, and nina and ayala. "of course there is a place for you," lady albury had said to her. "had i wanted to go i would have made sir harry send the drag; but i've got to stop at home and see that the buttered toast is ready by the time the gentlemen all come back." the morning was almost warm, so that the sportsmen were saying evil things of violets and primroses, as is the wont of sportsmen on such occasions, and at the meet the ladies got out of the carriage and walked about among the hounds, making civil speeches to old tony. "no, my lady," said tony, "i don't like these sunshiny mornings at all; there ain't no kind of scent, and i goes riding about these big woods, up and down, till my shirt is as wet on my back with the sweat as though i'd been pulled through the river." then lady rufford walked away and did not ask tony any more questions. ayala was patting one of the hounds when the colonel, who had given his horse to a groom, came and joined her. "if you don't regret that pony," said he, "somebody else does." "i do regret him in one way, of course. i did like it very much; but i don't think it nice, when much has been done for me, to say that i want to have more done." "of course i knew what you meant." "perhaps you would go and tell sir harry and then he would think me very ungrateful." "ayala," he said, "i will never say anything of you that will make anybody think evil of you. but, between ourselves, as sir harry is not here, i suppose i may confess that i regret the pony." "i should like it, of course," whispered ayala. "and so should i -so much! i suppose all these men here would think me an ass if they knew how little i care about the day's work -whether we find, or whether we run, or whether we kill -just because the pony is not here. if the pony were here i should have that feeling of expectation of joy, which is so common to girls when some much-thought-of ball or promised pleasure is just before them." then tony went off with his hounds, and jonathan, mounting his horse, followed with the ruck. ayala knew very well what the pony meant, as spoken of by the colonel. when he declared that he regretted the pony, it was because the pony might have carried herself. he had meant her to understand that the much-thought-of ball or promised pleasure would have been the delight of again riding with herself. and then he had again called her ayala. she could remember well every occasion on which he had addressed her by her christian name. it had been but seldom. once, however, it had occurred in the full flow of their early intimacy, before that love-making had been begun. it had struck her as being almost wrong, but still as very pleasant. if it might be made right by some feeling of brotherly friendship, how pleasant would it be! and now she would like it again, if only it might be taken as a sign of friendship rather than of love. it never occurred to her to be angry as she would have been angry with any other man. how she would have looked at captain batsby had he dared to call her ayala! colonel stubbs should call her ayala as long as he pleased -if it were done only in friendship. after that they were driven about for a while, seeing what tony did with the hounds, as tidings came to them now and again that one fox had broken this way and another had gone the other. but ayala, through it all, could not interest herself about the foxes. she was thinking only of jonathan stubbs. she knew that she was pleased because he had spoken to her, and had said kind, pleasant words to her. she knew that she had been displeased while he had sat apart from her, talking to others. but yet she could not explain to herself why she had been either pleased or displeased. she feared that there was more than friendship -than mere friendship, in that declaration of his that he did in truth regret the pony. his voice had been, oh, so sweet as he had said it! something told her that men do not speak in mere friendship after that fashion. not even in the softness of friendship between a man and a woman will the man's voice become as musical as that! young as she was, child as she was, there was an instinct in her breast which declared to her that it was so. but then, if it were so, was not everything again wrong with her? if it were so, then must that condition of things be coming back which it had been, and still was, her firm resolve to avoid. and yet, as the carriage was being driven about, and as the frequent exclamations came that the fox had traversed this way or that, her pride was gratified and she was happy. "what was colonel stubbs saying to you?" asked nina, when they were at home at the house after lunch. "he was talking about the dear pony which i used to ride." "about nothing else?" "no -about nothing else." this ayala said with a short, dry manner of utterance which she would assume when she was determined not to have a subject carried on. "ayala, why do you not tell me everything? i told you everything as soon as it happened." "nothing has happened." "i know he asked you," said nina. "and i answered him." "is that to be everything?" "yes -that is to be everything," said ayala, with a short, dry manner of utterance. it was so plain, that even nina could not pursue the subject. there was nothing done on that day in the way of sport. glomax thought that tony had been idle, and had made a holiday of the day from the first. but sir harry declared that there had not been a yard of scent. the buttered toast, however, was eaten, and the regular sporting conversation was carried on. ayala, however, was not there to hear it. ayala was in her own room dreaming. she was taken in to dinner by a curate in the neighbourhood -to whom she endeavoured to make herself very pleasant, while the colonel sat at her other side. the curate had a good deal to say as to lawn tennis. if the weather remained as it was, it was thought that they could all play lawn tennis on the tuesday -when there would be no hunting. the curate was a pleasant young fellow, and ayala devoted herself to him and to their joint hopes for next tuesday. colonel stubbs never once attempted to interfere with the curate's opportunity. there was lady rufford on the other side of him, and to lady rufford he said all that he did say during dinner. at one period of the repast she was more than generally lively, because she felt herself called upon to warn her husband that an attack of the gout was imminent, and would be certainly produced instantaneously if he could not deny himself the delight of a certain dish which was going the round of the table. his lordship smiled and denied himself -thinking, as he did so, whether another wife, plus the gout, would or would not have been better for him. all this either amused colonel stubbs sufficiently, or else made him so thoughtful, that he made no attempt to interfere with the curate. in the evening there was again music -which resulted in a declaration made upstairs by sir harry to his wife that that wife of rufford's was a confounded bore. "we all knew that, my dear, as soon as he married her," said lady albury. "why did he marry a bore?" "because he wanted a wife to look after himself, and not to amuse his friends. the wonder used to be that he had done so well." not a word had there been -not a word, since that sound of "ayala" had fallen upon her ears. no -he was not handsome, and his name was jonathan stubbs -but surely no voice so sweet had ever fallen from a man's lips! so she sat and dreamed far into the night. he, the angel of light, would certainly have a sweeter voice! that was an attribute without which no angel could be angelic! as to the face and the name, that would not perhaps signify. but he must have an intellect high soaring, a soul tuned to music, and a mind versed in nothing but great matters. he might be an artist, or more probably a poet -or perhaps a musician. yet she had read of poets, artists, and musicians, who had misused their wives, been fond of money, and had perhaps been drunkards. the angel of light must have the gifts, and must certainly be without the vices. the next day was sunday and they all went to church. in the afternoon they, as many of them as pleased, were to walk as far as gobblegoose wood, which was only three miles from the house. they could not hunt and therefore they must go to the very scene of the late contest and again discuss it there. sir harry and the captain would walk and so would ayala and nina and some others. lord rufford did not like walking, and lady rufford would stay at home to console him. ayala used her little wiles to keep herself in close company with nina; but the colonel's wiles were more effective -and then, perhaps, nina assisted the colonel rather than ayala. it came to pass that before they had left gobblegoose wood ayala and the colonel were together. when it was so he did not beat about the bush for a moment longer. he had fixed his opportunity for himself and he put it to use at once. "ayala," he said, "am i to have any other answer?" "what answer?" "nay, my dearest -my own, own dearest as i fain would have you -who shall say what answer but you? ayala, you know that i love you!" "i thought you had given it up." "given it up. never -never! does a man give up his joy -the pride of his life -the one only delight on which his heart has set itself! no, my darling, i have not given it up. because you would not have it as i wished when i first spoke to you, i have not gone on troubling you. i thought i would wait till you were used again to the look of me, and to my voice. i shall never give it up, ayala. when you came into the room that night with your new frock on -" then he paused, and she glanced round upon him, and saw that a tear again was in his eye. "when you came in and curtseyed to sir harry i could hardly keep within myself because i thought you were so beautiful." "it was the new gown which he had given me." "no, my pet -no! you may add a grace to a dress, but it can do but little for you. it was the little motion, the little word, the light in your eye! it twinkles at me sometimes when you glance about, so that i do not know whether it is meant for me or not. i fear that it is never meant for me." "it is meant for nothing," said ayala. "and yet it goes into my very bosom. when you were talking to that clergyman at dinner i could see every sparkle that came from it. then i wonder to myself whether you can ever be thinking of me as i am always thinking of you." she knew that she had been thinking of him every waking moment since she had been at albury and through many of her sleeping moments also. "ayala, one little word, one other glance from your eyes, one slightest touch from your hand upon my arm, shall tell me -shall tell me -shall tell me that i am the happiest, the proudest man in all the world." she walked on steadfastly, closing her very teeth against a word, with her eyes fixed before her so that no slightest glance should wander. her two hands were in her little muff, and she kept them with her fingers clasped together, as though afraid lest one might rebel, and fly away, and touch the sleeve of his coat. "ayala, how is it to be with me?" "i cannot," she said sternly. and her eyes were still fixed before her, and her fingers were still bound in one with another. and yet she loved him. yet she knew that she loved him. she could have hung upon his arm and smiled up into his face, and frowned her refusal only with mock anger as he pressed to his bosom -only that those dreams were so palpable to her and so dear, had been to her so vast a portion of her young life! "i cannot," she said again. "i cannot." "is that to be your answer for ever?" to this she made no immediate reply. "must it be so, ayala?" "i cannot," she said. but the last little word was so impeded by the sobs which she could not restrain as almost to be inaudible. "i will not make you unhappy, ayala." yes, she was unhappy. she was unhappy because she knew that she could not rule herself to her own happiness; because, even at this moment, she was aware that she was wrong. if she could only release part of herself from the other, then could she fly into his arms and tell him that that spirit which had troubled her had flown. but the spirit was too strong for her, and would not fly. "shall we go and join them?" he asked her in a voice altered, but still so sweet to her ears. "if you think so," she replied. "perhaps it will be best, ayala. do not be angry with me now. i will not call you so again." angry! oh, no! she was not angry with him! but it was very bitter to her to be told that she should never hear the word again from his lips. "the hunted fox never went up buddlecombe hill -never. if he did i'll eat every fox in the rufford and offord country." this was heard, spoken in most angry tones by captain glomax, as the colonel and ayala joined the rest of the party. chapter 51 "no!" ayala, on her return from the walk to the wood, spent the remainder of the afternoon in tears. during the walk she kept close to sir harry, pretending to listen to the arguments about the fox, but she said nothing. her ears were really intent on endeavouring to catch the tones of her lover's voice as he went on in front of them talking to nina. nothing could be more pleasant than the sound as he said a word or two now and again, encouraging nina in her rhapsodies as to lord george and all lord george's family. but ayala learned nothing from that. she had come to know the man well enough to be aware that he could tune his voice to the occasion, and could hide his feelings let them be ever so strong. she did not doubt his love now. she did not doubt but that at this moment his heart was heavy with rejected love. she quite believed in him. but nevertheless his words were pleasant and kind as he encouraged nina. nor did she doubt her own love. she was alone in her room that afternoon till she told herself at last the truth. oh, yes; she loved him. she was sure of that. but now he was gone! why had she been so foolish? then it seemed as though at that moment the separation took place between herself and the spirit which had haunted her. she seemed to know now -now at this very moment -that the man was too good for her. the knowledge had been coming to her. it had almost come when he had spoken to her in the wood. if it could only have been that he should have delayed his appeal to her for yet another day or two! she thought now that if he could have delayed it but for a few hours the cure would have been complete. if he had talked to her as he so well knew how to talk while they were in the wood together, while they were walking home -so as to have exorcised the spirit from her by the sweetness of his words -and then have told her that there was his love to have if she chose to have it, then she thought she would have taken it. but he had come to her while those words which she had prepared under the guidance of the spirit were yet upon her tongue. "i cannot," she had said. "i cannot." but she had not told him that she did not love him. "i did love him," she said to herself, almost acknowledging that the spirit had been wholly exorcised. the fashion of her mind was altogether different from that which had so strongly prevailed with her. he was an honest, noble man, high in the world's repute, clever, a gentleman, a man of taste, and possessed of that gentle ever-present humour which was so inexpressibly delightful to her. she never again spoke to herself even in her thoughts of that angel of light -never comforted herself again with the vision of that which was to come! there had appeared to her a man better than all other men, and when he had asked her for her hand she had simply said -"i cannot." and yet she had loved him all the time. how foolish, how false, how wicked she had been! it was thus that she thought of it all as she sat there alone in her bedroom through the long hours of the afternoon. when they sent up for her asking her to come down, she begged that she might be allowed to remain there till dinner-time, because she was tired with her walk. he would not come again now. oh, no -he was too proud, too firm, too manly for that. it was not for such a one as he to come whining after a girl -like her cousin tom. would it be possible that she should even yet tell him? could she say to him one little word, contradicting that which she had so often uttered in the wood? "now i can," once whispered in his ear, would do it all. but as to this she was aware that there was no room for hope. to speak such a word, low as it might be spoken, simple and little as it might be, was altogether impossible. she had had her chance and had lost it -because of those idle dreams. that the dreams had been all idle she declared to herself -not aware that the ayala whom her lover had loved would not have been an ayala to be loved by him, but for the dreams. now she must go back to her uncle and aunt and to kingsbury crescent, with the added sorrow that the world of dreams was closed to her for ever. when the maid came to her she consented to have the frock put on, the frock which sir harry had given her, boldly resolving to struggle through her sorrow till lady albury should have dismissed her to her home. nobody would want her now at stalham, and the dismissal would soon come. while she had been alone in her room the colonel had been closeted with lady albury. they had at least been thus shut up together for some half hour during which he had told his tale. "i have to own," said he, half-laughing as he began his tale, "that i thoroughly respect miss dormer." "why is she to be called miss dormer?" "because she has shown herself worthy of my respect." "what is it that you mean, jonathan?" "she knew her own mind when she told me at first that she could not accept the offer which i did myself the honour of making her, and now she sticks to her purpose. i think that a young lady who will do that should be respected." "she has refused you again?" "altogether." "as how?" "well, i hardly know that i am prepared to explain the 'as how' even to you. i am about as thick-skinned a man in such matters as you may find anywhere, but i do not know that even i can bring myself to tell the 'as how'. the 'as how' was very clear in one respect. it was manifest that she knew her own mind, which is a knowledge not in the possession of all young ladies. she told me that she could not marry me." "i do not believe it." "not that she told me so?" "not that she knew her own mind. she is a little simple fool, who with some vagary in her brain is throwing away utterly her own happiness, while she is vexing you." "as to the vexation you are right." "cross-grained little idiot!" "an idiot she certainly is not; and as to being cross-grained i have never found it. a human being with the grains running more directly all in the same way i have never come across." "do not talk to me, jonathan, like that," she said. "when i call her cross-grained i mean that she is running counter to her own happiness." "i cannot tell anything about that. i should have endeavoured, i think, to make her happy. she has certainly run counter to my happiness." "and now?" "what -as to this very moment! i shall leave stalham tomorrow." "why should you do that? let her go if one must go." "that is just what i want to prevent. why should she lose her little pleasure?" "you don't suppose that we can make the house happy to her now! why should we care to do so when she will have driven you away?" he sat silent for a minute or two looking at the fire, with his hands on his two knees. "you must acknowledge, jonathan," continued she, "that i have taken kindly to this ayala of yours." "i do acknowledge it." "but it cannot be that she should be the same to us simply as a young lady, staying here as it were on her own behalf, as she was when we regarded her as your possible wife. then every little trick and grace belonging to her endeared itself to us because we regarded her as one who was about to become one of ourselves. but what are her tricks and graces to us now?" "they are all the world to me," said the colonel. "but you must wipe them out of your memory -unless, indeed, you mean to ask her again." "ah! -that is it." "you will ask her again?" "i do not say so; but i do not wish to rob myself of the chance. it may be that i shall. of course i should tomorrow if i thought there was a hope. tomorrow there would be none -but i should like to know, that i could find her again in hands so friendly as yours, if at the end of a month i should think myself strong enough to encounter the risk of another refusal. would sir harry allow her to remain here for another month?" "he would say, probably, nothing about it." "my plan is this," he continued; "let her remain here, say, for three weeks or a month. do you continue all your kindness to her -if not for her sake then for mine. let her feel that she is made one of yourselves, as you say." "that will be hard," said lady albury. "it would not be hard if you thought that she was going to become so at last. try it, for my sake. say not a word to her about me -though not shunning my name. be to her as though i had told you nothing of this. then when the period is over i will come again -if i find that i can do so. if my love is still stronger than my sense of self-respect, i shall do so." all this lady albury promised to do, and then the interview between them was over. "colonel stubbs is going to aldershot tomorrow," said she to ayala in the drawing-room after dinner. "he finds now that he cannot very well remain away." there was no hesitation in her voice as she said this, and no look in her eye which taught ayala to suppose that she had heard anything of what had occurred in the wood. "is he indeed?" said ayala, trying, but in vain, to be equally undemonstrative. "it is a great trouble to us, but we are quite unable to prevent it -unless you indeed can control him." "i cannot control him," said ayala, with that fixed look of resolution with which lady albury had already become familiar. that evening before they went to bed the colonel bade them all goodbye, as he intended to start early in the morning. "i never saw such a fellow as you are for sudden changes," said sir harry. "what is the good of staying here for hunting when the ground and tony's temper are both as hard as brick-bats? if i go now i can get another week further on in march if the rain should come." with this sir harry seemed to be satisfied; but ayala felt sure that tony's temper and the rain had had nothing to do with it. "goodbye, miss dormer," he said, with his pleasantest smile, and his pleasantest voice. "goodbye," she repeated. what would she not have given that her voice should be as pleasant as his, and her smile! but she failed so utterly that the little word was inaudible -almost obliterated by the choking of a sob. how bitterly severe had that word, miss dormer, sounded from his mouth! could he not have called her ayala for the last time -even though all the world should have heard it? she was wide awake in the morning and heard the wheels of his cart as he was driven off. as the sound died away upon her ear she felt that he was gone from her for ever. how had it been that she had said, "i cannot," so often, when all her heart was set upon "i can?" and now it remained to her to take herself away from stalham as fast as she might. she understood perfectly all those ideas which lady albury had expressed to her well-loved friend. she was nothing to anybody at stalham, simply a young lady staying in the house -as might be some young lady connected with them by blood, or some young lady whose father and mother had been their friends. she had been brought there to stalham, now this second time, in order that jonathan stubbs might take her as his wife. driven by some madness she had refused her destiny, and now nobody would want her at stalham any longer. she had better begin to pack up at once -and go. the coldness of the people, now that she had refused to do as she had been asked, would be unbearable to her. and yet she must not let it appear that stalham was no longer dear to her merely because colonel stubbs had left it. she would let a day go by, and then say with all the ease she could muster that she would take her departure on the next. after that her life before her would be a blank. she had known up to this -so at least she told herself -that jonathan stubbs would afford her at any rate another chance. now there could be no other chance. the first blank day passed away, and it seemed to her almost as though she had no right to speak to anyone. she was sure that lady rufford knew what had occurred, because nothing more was said as to the proposed visit. mrs colonel stubbs would have been welcome anywhere, but who was ayala dormer? even though lady albury bade her come out in the carriage, it seemed to her to be done as a final effort of kindness. of course they would be anxious to be rid of her. that evening the buxom woman did not come to help her dress herself. it was an accident. the buxom woman was wanted here and there till it was too late, and ayala had left her room. ayala, in truth, required no assistance in dressing. when the first agonizing moment of the new frock had been passed over, she would sooner have arrayed herself without assistance. but now it seemed as though the buxom woman was running away because she, ayala, was thought to be no longer worthy of her services. on the next morning she began her little speech to lady albury. "going away tomorrow?" said lady albury. "or perhaps the next day," suggested ayala. "my dear, it has been arranged that you should stay here for another three weeks." "no." "i say it was arranged. everybody understood it. i am sure your aunt understood it. because one person goes, everybody else isn't to follow so as to break up a party. honour among thieves!" "thieves!" "well -anything else you like to call us all. the party has been made up. and to tell the truth i don't think that young ladies have the same right of changing their minds and rushing about as men assume. young ladies ought to be more steady. where am i to get another young lady at a moment's notice to play lawn tennis with mr greene? compose yourself and stay where you are like a good girl." "what will sir harry say?" "sir harry will probably go on talking about the stillborough fox and quarrelling with that odious captain glomax. that is, if you remain here. if you go all of a sudden, he will perhaps hint -" "hint what, lady albury?" "never mind. he shall make no hints if you are a good girl." nothing was said at the moment about the colonel -nothing further than the little allusion made above. then there came the lawn tennis, and ayala regained something of her spirits as she contrived with the assistance of sir harry to beat nina and the curate. but on the following day lady albury spoke out more plainly. "it was because of colonel stubbs that you said that you would go away." ayala paused for a moment, and then answered stoutly, "yes, it was because of colonel stubbs." "and why?" ayala paused again and the stoutness almost deserted her. "because -" "well, my dear?" "i don't think i ought to be asked," said ayala. "well, you shall not be asked. i will not be cruel to you. but do you not know that if i ask anything it is with a view to your own good?" "oh, yes," said ayala. "but though i may not ask i suppose i may speak." to this ayala made no reply, either assenting or dissenting. "you know, do you note that i and colonel stubbs love each other like brother and sister -more dearly than many brothers and sisters?" "i suppose so." "and that therefore he tells me everything. he told me what took place in the wood -and because of that he has gone away." "of course you are angry with me -because he has gone away." "i am sorry that he has gone -because of the cause of it. i always wish that he should have everything that he desires; and now i wish that he should have this thing because he desires it above all other things." does he desire it above all other things? -thought ayala to herself. and, if it be really so, cannot i now tell her that he shall have it? cannot i say that i too long to get it quite as eagerly as he long to have it? the suggestion rushed quickly to her mind; but the answer to it came as quickly. no -she would not do so. no offer of the kind would come from her. by what she had said must she abide -unless, indeed, he should come to her again. "but why should you go, ayala, because he has gone? why should you say aloud that you had come here to listen to his offer, and that you had gone away as soon as you had resolved that, for this reason or that, it was not satisfactory to you?" "oh, lady albury." "that would be the conclusion drawn. remain here with us, and see if you can like us well enough to be one of us." "dear lady albury, i do love you dearly." "what he may do i cannot say. whether he may bring himself to try once again i do not know -nor will i ask you whether there might possibly be any other answer were he to do so." "no!" said ayala, driven by a sudden fit of obstinacy which she could not control. "i ask no questions about it, but i am sure it will be better for you to remain here for a few weeks. we will make you happy if we can, and you can learn to think over what has passed without emotion." thus it was decided that ayala should prolong her visit into the middle of march. she could not understand her own conduct when she again found herself alone. why had she ejaculated that sudden "no," when lady albury had suggested to her the possibility of changing her purpose? she knew that she would fain change it if it were possible; and yet when the idea was presented to her she replied with a sudden denial of its possibility. but still there was hope, even though the hope was faint. "whether he may bring himself to try again i do not know." so it was that lady albury had spoken of him, and of what lady albury said to her she now believed every word. "whether he could bring himself!" surely such a one as he would not condescend so far as that. but if he did one word should be sufficient. by no one else would she allow it to be thought, for an instant, that she would wish to reverse her decision. it must still be no to any other person from whom such suggestion might come. but should he give her the chance she would tell him instantly the truth of everything. "can i love you! oh, my love, it is impossible that i should not love you!" it would be thus that the answer should be given to him, should he allow her the chance of making it. chapter 52 "i call it folly." three weeks passed by, and ayala was still at stalham. colonel stubbs had not yet appeared, and very little had been said about him. sir henry would sometimes suggest that if he meant to see any more hunting he had better come at once, but this was not addressed to ayala. she made up her mind that he would not come, and was sure that she was keeping him away by her presence. he could not -"bring himself to try over again," as lady albury had put it! why should he -"bring himself' -to do anything on behalf of one who had treated him so badly? it had been settled that she should remain to the 25th of march, when the month should be up from the time in which lady albury had decided upon that as the period of her visit. of her secret she had given no slightest hint. if he ever did come again it should not be because she had asked for his coming. as far as she knew how to carry out such a purpose, she concealed from lady albury anything like a feeling of regret. and she was so far successful that lady albury thought it expedient to bring in other assistance to help her cause -as will be seen by a letter which ayala received when the three weeks had passed by. in the meantime there had been at first dismay, then wonder, and lastly, some amusement, at the condition of captain batsby. when captain batsby had first learned at merle park that ayala and jonathan stubbs were both at stalham, he wrote very angrily to lady albury. in answer to this his sister-in-law had pleaded guilty -but still defending herself. how could she make herself responsible for the young lady -who did not indeed seem ready to bestow her affections on any of her suitors? but still she acknowledged that a little favour was being shown to colonel stubbs -wishing to train the man to the idea that, in this special matter, colonel stubbs must be recognised as the stalham favourite. then no further letters were received from the captain, but there came tidings that he was staying at merle park. ayala heard continually from her sister, and lucy sent some revelations as to the captain. he seemed to be very much at home at merle park, said lucy; and then, at last, she expressed her own opinion that captain batsby and gertrude were becoming very fond of each other. and yet the whole story of gertrude and mr houston was known, of course, to lucy, and through lucy to ayala. to ayala these sudden changes were very amusing, as she certainly did not wish to retain her own hold on the captain, and was not specially attached to her cousin gertrude. from ayala the tidings went to lady albury, and in this way the fears which had been entertained as to the captain's displeasure were turned to wonder and amusement. but up to this period nothing had been heard of the projected trip to ostend. then came the letter to ayala, to which allusion has been made, a letter from her old friend the marchesa, who was now at rome. it was ostensibly in answer to a letter from ayala herself, but was written in great part in compliance with instructions received from lady albury. it was as follows: dear ayala, i was glad to get your letter about nina. she is very happy, and lord george is here. indeed, to tell the truth, they arrived together -which was not at all proper; but everything will be made proper on tuesday, 8th april, which is the day at last fixed for the wedding. i wish you could have been here to be one of the bridesmaids. nina says that you will have it that the pope is to marry her. instead of that it is going to be done by lord george's uncle, the dean of dorchester, who is coming for this purpose. then they are going up to a villa they have taken on como, where we shall join them some time before the spring is over. after that they seem to have no plans -except plans of connubial bliss, which is never to know any interruption. now that i have come to connubial bliss, and feel so satisfied as to nina's prospects, i have a word or two to say about the bliss of somebody else. nina is my own child, and of course comes first. but one jonathan stubbs is my nephew, and is also very near to my heart. from all that i hear, i fancy that he has set his mind also on connubial bliss. have you not heard that it is so? a bird has whispered to me that you have not been kind to him. why should it be so? nobody knows better than i do that a young lady is entitled to the custody of her own heart, and that she should not be compelled, or even persuaded, to give her hand in opposition to her own feelings. if your feelings and your heart are altogether opposed to the poor fellow, of course there must be an end of it. but i had thought that from the time you first met him he had been a favourite of yours -so much so that there was a moment in which i feared that you might think too much of the attentions of a man who has ever been a favourite with all who have known him. but i have found that in this i was altogether mistaken. when he came that evening to see the last of you at the theatre, taking, as i knew he did, considerable trouble to release himself from other engagements, i was pretty sure how it was going to be. he is not a man to be in love with a girl for a month and then to be in love with another the next month. when once he allowed himself to think that he was in love, the thing was done and fixed either for his great delight -or else to his great trouble. i knew how it was to be, and so it has been. am i not right in saying that on two occasions, at considerable intervals, he has come to you and made distinct offers of his hand? i fear, though i do not actually know it, that you have just as distinctly rejected those offers. i do not know it, because none but you and he can know the exact words with which you received from him the tender of all that he had to give you. i can easily believe that he, with all his intelligence, might be deceived by the feminine reserve and coyness of such a girl as you. if it be so, i do pray that no folly may be allowed to interfere with his happiness and with yours. i call it folly, not because i am adverse to feminine reserve, not because i am prone to quarrel even with what i call coyness; but because i know his nature so well, and feel that he would not bear rebuffs of which many another man would think nothing; that he would not bring himself to ask again, perhaps even for a seventh time, as they might do. and, if it be that by some frequent asking his happiness and yours could be ensured, would it not be folly that such happiness should be marred by childish disinclination on your part to tell the truth? as i said before, if your heart be set against him, there must be an end of it. i can understand that a girl so young as you should fail to see the great merit of such a man. i therefore write as i do, thinking it possible that in this respect you may be willing to accept from my mouth something as to the man which shall be regarded as truth. it is on the inner man, on his nature and disposition, that the happiness of a wife must depend. a more noble nature, a more truthful spirit than his, i have never met. he is one on whom in every phase of life you may depend -or i may depend -as on a rock. he is one without vacillation, always steady to his purpose, requiring from himself in the way of duty and conduct infinitely more than he demands from those around him. if ever there was a man altogether manly, he is one. and yet no woman, no angel, ever held a heart more tender within his bosom. see him with children! think of his words when he has spoken to yourself! remember the estimation in which those friends hold him who know him best -such as i and your friend, lady albury, and sir harry, and his cousin nina. i could name many others, but these are those with whom you have seen him most frequently. if you can love such a man, do you not think that he would make you happy? and if you cannot, must there not be something wrong in your heart -unless indeed it be already predisposed to someone else? think of all this, dear ayala, and remember that i am always your affectionate friend, julia baldoni ayala's first feeling as she read the letter was a conviction that her friend had altogether wasted her labour in writing it. of what use was it to tell her of the man's virtues -to tell her that the man's heart was as tender as an angel's, his truth as assured as a god's, his courage that of a hero -that he was possessed of all those attributes which should by right belong to an angel of light? she knew all that without requiring the evidence of a lady from rome -having no need of any evidence on that matter from any other human being. of what use could any evidence be on such a subject from the most truthful lips that ever spoke? had she not found it all out herself would any words from others have prevailed with her? but she had found it out herself. it was already her gospel. that he was tender and true, manly, heroic -as brightly angelic as could be any angel of light -was already an absolute fact to her. no! -her heart had never been predisposed to anyone else. it was of him she had always dreamed even long before she had seen him. he was the man, perfect in all good things, who was to come and take her with him -if ever man should come and take her. she wanted no marchesa baldoni now to tell her that the angel had in truth come and realised himself before her in all his glory. but she had shown herself to be utterly unfit for the angel. though she recognised him now, she had not recognised him in time -and even when she had recognised him she had been driven by her madness to reject him. feminine reserve and coyness! folly! yes, indeed; she knew all that, too, without need of telling from her elders. the kind of coyness which she had displayed had been the very infatuation of feminine imbecility. it was because nature had made her utterly unfit for such a destiny that she had been driven by coyness and feminine reserve to destroy herself! it was thus that ayala conversed with herself. "i know his nature so well, and feel that he would not bear rebuffs of which many another man would think nothing." thus, she did not doubt, the marchesa had spoken very truly. but of what value was all that now? she could not recall the rebuff. she could not now eradicate the cowardice which had made her repeat those wicked fatal words -"i cannot." "i cannot." "i cannot." the letter had come too late, for there was nothing she could do to amend her doom. she must send some answer to her friend in italy, but there could be nothing in her answer to her to assist her. the feminine reserve and coyness had become odious to her -as it had been displayed by herself to him. but it still remained in full force as to any assistance from others. she could not tell another to send him back to her. she could not implore help in her trouble. if he would come himself -himself of his own accord -himself impelled once more by his great tenderness of heart -himself once more from his real, real love; then there should be no more coyness. "if you will still have me -oh yes!" but there was the letter to be written. she so wrote it that by far the greater part of it -the larger part at least -had reference to nina and her wedding. "i will think of her on the 8th of april," she said. "i shall then be at home at kingsbury crescent, and i shall have nothing else to think of." in that was her first allusion to her own condition with her lover. but on the last side of the sheet it was necessary that she should say more than that. something must be said thoughtfully, carefully, and gratefully in reply to so much thought, and care, and friendship, as had been shown to her. but it must be so written that nothing of her secret should be read in it. the task was so troublesome that she was compelled to recopy the whole of her long letter, because the sentences as first written did not please her. "i am so much obliged to you", she said, "by your kindness about colonel stubbs. he did do me the honour of asking me to be his wife. and i felt it so. you are not to suppose that i did not understand that. it is all over now, and i cannot explain to you why i felt that it would not do. it is all over, and therefore writing about it is no good. only i want you to be sure of two things -that there is no one else, and that i do love you so much for all your kindness. and you may be sure of a third thing, too -that it is all over. i do hope that he will still let me be his friend. as a friend i have always liked him so much." it was brave and bold, she thought, in answer to such words as the marchesa's; but she did not know how to do it any better. on tuesday, the 25th of march, she was to return to kingsbury crescent. various little words were said at stalham indicating an intended break in the arrangement. "the captain certainly won't come now," said lady albury, alluding to the arrangement as though it had been made solely with the view of saving ayala from an encounter with her objectionable lover. "croppy has come back," said sir harry one day -croppy being the pony which ayala had ridden. "miss dormer can have him now for what little there is left of the hunting." this was said on the saturday before she was to go. how could she ride croppy for the rest of the hunting when she would be at kingsbury crescent? on neither of these occasions did she say a word, but she assumed that little look of contradiction which her friends at stalham already knew how to read. then, on the sunday morning, there came a letter for lady albury. "what does he say?" asked sir harry, at breakfast. "i'll show it you before you go to church," answered his wife. then ayala knew that the letter was from colonel stubbs. but she did not expect that the letter should be shown to her -which, however, came to be the case. when she was in the library, waiting to start to church, lady albury came in and threw the letter to her across the table. "that concerns you," she said, "you had better read it." there was another lady in the room, also waiting to start on their walk across the park, and therefore it was natural that nothing else should be said at the moment. ayala read the letter, returned it to the envelope, and then handed it back to lady albury -so that there was no word spoken about it before church. the letter, which was very short, was as follows: "i shall be at stalham by the afternoon train on sunday, 30th -in time for dinner, if you will send the dog-cart. i could not leave this most exigeant of all places this week. i suppose albury will go on in the woodlands for a week or ten days in april, and i must put up with that. i hear that batsby is altogether fixed by the fascinations of merle park. i hope that you and albury will receive consolation in the money." then there was a postscript. "if croppy can be got back again, miss dormer might see me tumble into another river." it was evident that lady albury did not expect anything to be said at present. she put the letter into her pocket, and there, for the moment, was the end of it. it may be feared that ayala's attention was not fixed that morning so closely as it should have been on the services of the church. there was so much in that little letter which insisted on having all her attention! had there been no postscript, the letter would have been very different. in that case the body of the letter itself would have intended to have no reference to her -or rather it would have had a reference altogether opposite to that which the postscript gave it. in that case it would have been manifest to her that he had intentionally postponed his coming till she had left stalham. then his suggestion about the hunting would have had no interest for her. everything would have been over. she would have been at kingsbury crescent, and he would have been at stalham. but the postscript declared his intention of finding her still in the old quarters. she would not be there -as she declared to herself. after this there would be but one other day, and then she would be gone. but even this allusion to her and to the pony made the letter something to her of intense interest. had it not been so lady albury would not have shown it to her. as it was, why had lady albury shown it to her in that quiet, placid, friendly way -as though it were natural that any letter from colonel stubbs to stalham should be shown to her? at lunch sir harry began about the pony at once. "miss dormer," he said, "the pony will hardly be fit tomorrow, and the distances during the rest of the week are all too great for you; you had better wait till monday week, when stubbs will be here to look after you." "but i am going home on tuesday," said ayala. "i've had the pony brought on purpose for you," said sir harry. "you are not going at all," said lady albury. "all that has to be altered. i'll write to mrs dosett." "i don't think -" began ayala. "i shall take it very much amiss", said sir harry, "if you go now. stubbs is coming on purpose." "i don't think -" began ayala again. "my dear ayala, it isn't a case for thinking," said lady albury. "you most positively will not leave this house till some day in april, which will have to be settled hereafter. do not let us have a word more about it." then, on that immediate occasion, no further word about it was spoken. ayala was quite unable to speak as she sat attempting to eat her lunch. chapter 53 how lucy's affairs arranged themselves we must go again to merle park, where the tringle family was still living -and from which gertrude had not as yet been violently abducted at the period to which the reader has been brought in the relation which has been given of the affairs at stalham. jonathan stubbs's little note to lady albury was received on sunday, 23rd march, and gertrude was not abducted till the 29th. on sunday, the 30th, she was brought back -not in great triumph. at that time the house was considerably perturbed. sir thomas was very angry with his daughter augusta, having been led to believe that she had been privy to gertrude's escapade -so angry that very violent words had been spoken as to her expulsion from the house. tom also was ill, absolutely ill in bed, with a doctor to see him -and all from love, declaring that he would throw himself over the ship's side and drown himself while there was yet a chance left to him for ayala. and in the midst of this lady tringle herself was by no means exempt from the paternal wrath. she was told that she must have known what was going on between her daughter and that idiot captain -that she encouraged the trafficks to remain -that she coddled up her son till he was sick from sheer lackadaisical idleness. the only one in the house who seemed to be exempt from the wrath of sir thomas was lucy -and therefore it was upon lucy's head that fell the concentrated energy of aunt emmeline's revenge. when captain batsby was spoken of with contumely in the light of a husband -this being always done by sir thomas -lady tringle would make her rejoinder to this, when sir thomas had turned his back, by saying that a captain in her majesty's army, with good blood in his veins and a competent fortune, was at any rate better than a poor artist, who had, so to say, no blood, and was unable to earn his bread; and when tom was ridiculed for his love for ayala she would go on to explain -always after sir thomas's back had been turned -that poor tom had been encouraged by his father, whereas lucy had taken upon herself to engage herself in opposition to her pastors and masters. and then came the climax. it was all very well to say that augusta was intruding -but there were people who intruded much worse than augusta, without half so much right. when this was said the poor sore-hearted woman felt her own cruelty, and endeavoured to withdraw the harsh words; but the wound had been given, and the venom rankled so bitterly that lucy could no longer bear her existence among the tringles. "i ought not to remain after that," she wrote to her lover. "though i went into the poorhouse i ought not to remain." "i wrote to mr hamel," she said to her aunt, "and told him that as you did not like my being here i had better -better go away." "but where are you to go? and i didn't say that i didn't like you being here. you oughtn't to take me up in that way." "i do feel that i am in the way, aunt, and i think that i had better go." "but where are you to go? i declare that everybody says everything to break my heart. of course you are to remain here till he has got a house to keep you in." but the letter had gone and a reply had come telling lucy that whatever might be the poorhouse to which she would be destined he would be there to share it with her. hamel wrote this with high heart. he had already resolved, previous to this, that he would at once prepare a home for his coming bride, though he was sore distressed by the emergency of his position. his father had become more and more bitter with him as he learned that his son would in no respect be guided by him. there was a sum of money which he now declared to be due to him, and which isadore acknowledged to have been lent to him. of this the father demanded repayment. "if", said he, "you acknowledge anything of the obedience of a son, that money is at your disposal -and any other that you may want. but, if you determine to be as free from my control and as deaf to my advice as might be any other young man, then you must be to me as might be any other young man." he had written to his father saying that the money should be repaid as soon as possible. the misfortune had come to him at a trying time. it was, however, before he had received lucy's last account of her own misery at merle park, so that when that was received he was in part prepared. our colonel, in writing to lady albury, had declared aldershot to be a most exigeant place -by which he had intended to imply that his professional cares were too heavy to allow his frequent absence; but nevertheless he would contrive occasionally to fly up to london for a little relief. once when doing so he had found himself sitting in the sculptor's studio, and there listening to hamel's account of lucy's troubles at merle park. hamel said nothing as to his own difficulties, but was very eager in explaining the necessity of removing lucy from the tyranny to which she was subjected. it will perhaps be remembered that hamel down in scotland had declared to his friend his purpose of asking lucy dormer to be his wife, and also the success of his enterprise after he had gone across the lake to glenbogie. it will be borne in mind also that should the colonel succeed in winning ayala to his way of thinking the two men would become the husbands of the two sisters. each fully sympathised with the other, and in this way they had become sincere and intimate friends. "is she like her sister?" asked the colonel, who was not as yet acquainted with lucy. "hardly like her, although in truth there is a family likeness. lucy is taller, with perhaps more regular features, and certainly more quiet in her manner." "ayala can be very quiet too," said the lover. "oh, yes -because she varies in her moods. i remember her almost as a child, when she would remain perfectly still for a quarter of an hour, and then would be up and about the house everywhere, glancing about like a ray of the sun reflected from a mirror as you move it in your hand." "she has grown steadier since that," said the colonel. "i cannot imagine her to be steady -not as lucy is steady. lucy, if it be necessary, can sit and fill herself with her own thoughts for the hour together." "which of them was most like their father?" "they were both of them like him in their thorough love for things beautiful -but they are both of them unlike him in this, that he was self-indulgent, while they, like women in general, are always devoting themselves to others." she will not devote herself to me, thought jonathan stubbs to himself, but that may be because, like her father, she loves things beautiful. "my poor lucy", continued hamel, "would fain devote herself to those around her if they would only permit it." "she would probably prefer devoting herself to you," said the colonel. "no doubt she would -if it were expedient. if i may presume that she loves me, i may presume also that she would wish to live with me." "is it not expedient?" asked the other. "it will be so, i trust, before long." "but it seems to be so necessary just at present." to this the sculptor at the moment made no reply. "if", continued stubbs, "they treat her among them as you say, she ought at any rate to be relieved from her misery." "she ought to be relieved certainly. she shall be relieved." "but you say that it is not expedient." "i only meant that there were difficulties -difficulties which will have to be got over. i think that all difficulties are got over when a man looks at them steadily." "this, i suppose, is an affair of money." "well, yes. all difficulties seem to me to be an affair of money. a man, of course, would wish to earn enough before he marries to make his wife comfortable. i would struggle on as i am, and not be impatient, were it not that i fear she is more uncomfortable as she is now than she would be here in the midst of my poverty." "after all, hamel, what is the extent of the poverty? what are the real circumstances? as you have gone so far you might as well tell me everything." then after considerable pressure the sculptor did tell him everything. there was an income of less than three hundred a year -which would probably become about four within the next twelvemonth. there were no funds prepared with which to buy the necessary furniture for the incoming of a wife, and there was that debt demanded by his father. "must that be paid?" asked the colonel. "i would starve rather than not pay it," said hamel, "if i alone were to be considered. it would certainly be paid within the next six months if i were alone, even though i should starve." then his friend told him that the debt should be paid at once. it amounted to but little more than a hundred pounds. and then, of course, the conversation was carried further. when a friend inquires as to the pecuniary distresses of a friend he feels himself as a matter of course bound to relieve him. he would supply also the means necessary for the incoming of the young wife. with much energy, and for a long time, hamel refused to accept the assistance offered to him; but the colonel insisted in the first place on what he considered to be due from himself to ayala's sister, and then on the fact that he doubted not in the least the ultimate success which would attend the professional industry of his friend. and so before the day was over it was settled among them. the money was to be forthcoming at once, so that the debt might be paid and the preparations made, and hamel was to write to lucy and declare that he should be ready to receive her as soon as arrangements should be made for their immediate marriage. then came the further outrage -that cruel speech as to intruders, and lucy wrote to her lover, owning that it would be well for her that she should be relieved. the news was, of course, declared to the family at merle park. "i never knew anything so hard," said aunt emmeline. "of course you have told him that it was all my fault." when lucy made no answer to this, she went on with her complaint. "i know that you have told him that i have turned you out -which is not true." "i told him it was better i should go, as you did not like my being here." "i suppose lucy was in a little hurry to have the marriage come off," said augusta -who would surely have spared her cousin if at the moment she had remembered the haste which had been displayed by her sister. "i thought it best," said lucy. "i'm sure i don't know how it is to be done," said aunt emmeline. "you must tell your uncle yourself. i don't know how you are to be married from here, seeing the trouble we are in." "we shall be up in london before that" said gertrude. "or from queen's gate either," continued aunt emmeline. "i don't suppose that will much signify. i shall just go to the church." "like a servant-maid?" asked gertrude. "yes -like a servant-maid," said lucy. "that is to say, a servant-maid would, i suppose, simply walk in and be married; and i shall do the same." "i think you had better tell your uncle," said aunt emmeline. "but i am sure i did not mean that you were to go away like this. it will be your own doing, and i cannot help it if you will do it." then lucy did tell her uncle. "and you mean to live upon three hundred a year!" exclaimed sir thomas. "you don't know what you are talking about." "i think mr hamel knows." "he is as ignorant as a babe unborn -i mean about that kind of thing. i don't doubt he can make things in stone as well as anybody." "in marble, uncle tom." "marble is stone, i suppose -or in iron." "bronze, uncle tom." "very well. there is iron in bronze, i suppose. but he doesn't know what a wife will cost. has he bought any furniture?" "he is going to buy it -just a little -what will do." "why should you want to bring him into this?" lucy looked wistfully up into his face. he himself had been personally kind to her, and she found it to be impossible to complain to him of her aunt. "you are not happy here?" "my aunt and cousins think that i am wrong; but i must be married to him now, uncle tom." "why did he kick up his heels when i wanted to help him?" nevertheless, he gave his orders on the subject very much in lucy's favour. she was to be married from queen's gate, and gertrude must be her bridesmaid. ayala no doubt would be the other. when his wife expostulated, he consented that the marriage should be very quiet, but still he would have it as he had said. then he bestowed a cheque upon lucy -larger in amount than stubbs's loan -saying that after what had passed in lombard street he would not venture to send money to so independent a person as mr isadore hamel; but adding that lucy, perhaps, would condescend to accept it. there was a smile in his eye as he said the otherwise ill-natured word, so that lucy, without any wound to her feelings, could kiss him and accept his bounty. "i suppose i am to have nothing to do in settling the day," said aunt emmeline. it was, however, settled between them that the marriage should take place on a certain day in may. upon this lucy was of course overjoyed, and wrote to her lover in a full flow of spirits. and she sent him the cheque, having written her name with great pride on the back of it. there was a little trouble about this as a part of it had to come back as her trousseau, but still the arrangement was pleasantly made. then sir thomas again became more kind to her, in his rough manner -even when his troubles were at the worst after the return of gertrude. "if it will not be altogether oppressive to his pride you may tell him that i shall make you an allowance of a hundred a year as my niece -just for your personal expenses." "i don't know that he is so proud, uncle tom." "he seemed so to me. but if you say nothing to him about it, and just buy a few gowns now and again, he will perhaps be so wrapt up in the higher affairs of his art as not to take any notice." "i am sure he will notice what i wear," said lucy. however she communicated her uncle's intentions to her lover, and he sent back his grateful thanks to sir thomas. as one effect of all this the colonel's money was sent back to him, with an assurance that as things were now settling themselves such pecuniary assistance was not needed. but this was not done till ayala had heard what the angel of light had done on her sister's behalf. but as to ayala's feelings in that respect we must be silent here, as otherwise we should make premature allusion to the condition in which ayala found herself before she had at last managed to escape from stalham park. "papa," said gertrude, to her father one evening, "don't you think you could do something for me too now?" just at this time sir thomas, greatly to his own annoyance, was coming down to merle park every evening. according to their plans as at present arranged, they were to stay in the country till after easter, and then they were to go up to town in time to despatch poor tom upon his long journey round the world. but poor tom was now in bed, apparently ill, and there seemed to be great doubt whether he could be made to go on the appointed day in spite of the taking of his berth and the preparation of his outfit. tom, if well enough, was to sail on the nineteenth of april, and there now wanted not above ten days to that time. "don't you think you could do something for me now?" asked gertrude. hitherto sir thomas had extended no sign of pardon to his youngest daughter, and never failed to allude to her and to captain batsby as "those two idiots" whenever their names were mentioned before him. "yes, my dear; i will endeavour to do a good deal for you if you will behave yourself." "what do you call behaving myself, papa?" "in the first place telling me that you are very sorry for your misbehaviour with that idiot." "of course i am sorry if i have offended you." "well, that shall go for something. but how about the idiot?" "papa!" she exclaimed. "was he not an idiot? would anyone but an idiot have gone on such an errand as that?" "gentlemen and ladies have done it before, papa." "i doubt it," he said. "gentlemen have run away with young ladies before, and generally have behaved very badly when they have done so. he behaved very badly indeed, because he had come to my house, with my sanction, with the express purpose of expressing his affection for another young lady. but i think that his folly in this special running away was worse even than his conduct. how did he come to think that he could get himself married merely by crossing over the sea to ostend? i should be utterly ashamed of him as a son-in-law -chiefly because he has shown himself to be an idiot." "but, papa, you will accept him, won't you?" "no, my dear, i will not." "not though i love him?" "if i were to give you a choice which would you take, him or mr houston?" "houston is a scoundrel." "very likely; but then he is not an idiot. my choice would be altogether in favour of mr houston. shall i tell you what i will do, my dear? i will consent to accept captain batsby as my son-in-law if he will consent to become your husband without having a shilling with you." "would that be kind, papa?" "i do not think i could show you any greater kindness than to protect you from a man who i am quite sure does not care a farthing about you. he has, you tell me, an ample income of his own." "oh yes, papa." "then he can afford to marry you without a fortune. poor mr houston could not have done so, because he had nothing of his own. i declare, as i think of it all, i am becoming very tender-hearted towards mr houston. don't you think we had better have mr houston back again? i suppose he would come if you were to send for him." then she burst into tears and went away and hid herself. chapter 54 tom's last attempt while gertrude was still away on her ill-omened voyage in quest of a parson, lady tringle was stirred up to a great enterprise on behalf of her unhappy son. there wanted now little more than a fortnight before the starting of the ship which his father still declared should carry him out across the world, and he had progressed so far in contemplating the matter as to own to himself that it would be best for him to obey his father if there was no hope. but his mind was still swayed by a theory of love and constancy. he had heard of men who had succeeded after a dozen times of asking. if stubbs, the hated but generous stubbs, were in truth a successful rival, then indeed the thing would be over -then he would go, the sooner the better; and, as he told his mother half a dozen times a day, it would matter nothing to him whether he were sent to japan, or the rocky mountains, or the north pole. in such a case he would be quite content to go, if only for the sake of going. but how was he to be sure? he was, indeed, nearly sure in the other direction. if ayala were in truth engaged to colonel stubbs it would certainly be known through lucy. then he had heard, through lucy, that, though ayala was staying at stalham, the colonel was not there. he had gone, and ayala had remained week after week without him. then, towards the end of march, he wrote a letter to his uncle reginald, which was very piteous in its tone: dear uncle reginald, [the letter said] i don't know whether you have heard of it, but i have been very ill -and unhappy. i am now in bed, and nobody here knows that i am sending this letter to you. it is all about ayala, and i am not such a fool as to suppose that you can do anything for me. if you could i think you would -but of course you can't. she must choose for herself -only i do so wish that she should choose me. nobody would ever be more kind to her. but you can tell me really how it is. is she engaged to marry colonel stubbs? i know that she refused him, because he told me so himself. if she is not engaged to him i think that i would have another shy at it. you know what the poet says -"faint heart never won fair lady". do tell me if she is or is not engaged. i know that she is with those alburys, and that colonel stubbs is their friend. but they can't make her marry colonel stubbs any more than my friends can make her marry me. i wish they could. i mean my friends, not his. "if she were really engaged i would go away and hide myself in the furthermost corner of the world. siberia or central africa would be the same to me. they would have little trouble in getting rid of me if i knew that it was all over with me. but i will never stir from these realms till i know my fate! therefore, waiting your reply, i am your affectionate nephew, thomas tringle, junior mr dosett, when he received this letter, consulted his wife before he replied to it, and then did so very shortly: my dear tom, as far as i know, or her aunt, your cousin ayala is not engaged to marry anyone. but i should deceive you if i did not add my belief that she is resolved not to accept the offer you have done her the honour to make her. your affectionate uncle, reginald dosett the latter portion of this paragraph had no influence whatsoever on tom. did he not know all that before? had he ever attempted to conceal from his relations the fact that ayala had refused him again and again? was not that as notorious to the world at large as a minister's promise that the income-tax should be abolished? but the income-tax was not abolished -and, as yet, ayala was not married to anyone else. ayala was not even engaged to any other suitor. why should she not change her mind as well as the minister? certainly he would not go either to the north pole or to new york as long as there should be a hope of bliss for him in england. then he called his mother to his bedside. "go to stalham, my dear!" said his mother. "why not? they can't eat you. lady albury is no more than a baronet's wife -just the same as you." "it isn't about eating me, tom. i shouldn't know what to say to them." "you need not tell them anything. say that you had come to call upon your niece." "but it would be such an odd thing to do. i never do call on ayala -even when i am in london." "what does it matter being odd? you could learn the truth at any rate. if she does not care for anyone else why shouldn't she have me? i could make her a baronet's wife -that is, some day when the governor -" "don't, tom -don't talk in that way." "i only mean in the course of nature. sons do come after their fathers, you know. and as for money, i suppose the governor is quite as rich as those alburys." "i don't think that would matter." "it does count, mother. i suppose ayala is the same as other girls in that respect. i am sure i don't know why it is that she should have taken such an aversion to me. i suppose it is that she doesn't think me so much -quite such a swell as some other men." "one can't account for such things, tom." "no -that is just it. and therefore she might come round without accounting for it. at any rate, you might try. you might tell her that it is ruining me -that i shall have to go about wandering over all the world because she is so hardhearted." "i don't think i could, my dear," said lady tringle, after considering the matter for a while. "why not? is it because of the trouble?" "no, my dear; a mother does not think what trouble she may take for her child, if any good may be done. it is not the trouble. i would walk all round england to get her for you if that would do it." "why not, then? at any rate you might get an answer from her. she would tell you something of her intention. mother, i shall never go away till i know more about it than i do now. the governor says that he will turn me out. let him turn me out. that won't make me go away." "oh, tom, he doesn't mean it." "but he says it. if i knew that it was all over -that every chance was gone, then i would go away." "it is not the alburys that i am afraid of," said lady tringle. "what then?" "it is your father. i cannot go if he will not let me." nevertheless she promised before she left his bedside that she would ask sir thomas when he came home whether he would permit her to make the journey. all this occurred while sir thomas was away in quest of his daughter. and it may be imagined that immediately after his return he was hardly in a humour to yield to any such request as that which had been suggested. he was for the moment almost sick of his children, sick of merle park, sick of his wife, and inclined to think that the only comfort to be found in the world was to be had among his millions, in that little back parlour in lombard street. it was on a sunday that he returned, and on that day he did not see his son. on the monday morning he went into the room, and tom was about to press upon him the prayer which he had addressed to his mother when his lips were closed by his father's harshness. "tom," he said, "you will be pleased to remember that you start on the nineteenth." "but, father -" "you start on the nineteenth," said sir thomas. then he left the room, closing the door behind him with none of the tenderness generally accorded to an invalid. "you have not asked him?" tom said to his mother shortly afterwards. "not yet, my dear. his mind is so disturbed by this unfortunate affair." "and is not my mind disturbed? you may tell him that i will not go, though he should turn me out a dozen times, unless i know more about it than i do now." sir thomas came home again that evening, very sour in temper, and nothing could be said to him. he was angry with everybody, and lady tringle hardly dared to go near him, either then or on the following morning. on the tuesday evening, however, he returned somewhat softened in his demeanour. the millions had perhaps gone right, though his children would go so wrong. when he spoke either to his younger daughter or of her he did so in that jeering tone which he afterwards always assumed when allusion was made to captain batsby, and which, disagreeable as it was, seemed to imply something of forgiveness. and he ate his dinner, and drank his glass of wine, without making any allusion to the parsimonious habits of his son-in-law, mr traffick. lady tringle, therefore, considered that she might approach him with tom's request. "you go to stalham!" he exclaimed. "well, my dear, i suppose i could see her?" "and what could you learn from her?" "i don't suppose i could learn much. she was always a pigheaded, stiff-necked creature. i am sure it wouldn't be any pleasure to me to see her." "what good would it do?" demanded sir thomas. "well, my dear; he says that he won't go unless he can get a message from her. i am sure i don't want to go to stalham. nothing on earth could be so disagreeable. but perhaps i could bring back a word or two which would make him go upon his journey." "what sort of word?" "why -if i were to say that she were engaged to this colonel stubbs, then he would go. he says that he would start at once if he knew that his cousin were really engaged to somebody else." "but if she be not?" "perhaps i could just colour it a little. it would be such a grand thing to get him away, and he in this miserable condition! if he were once on his travels, i do think he would soon begin to forget it all." "of course he would," said sir thomas. "then i might as well try. he has set his heart upon it, and if he thinks that i have done his bidding then he will obey you. as for turning him out, tom, of course you do not really mean that!" in answer to this sir thomas said nothing. he knew well enough that tom couldn't be turned out. that turning out of a son is a difficult task to accomplish, and one altogether beyond the power of sir thomas. the chief cause of his sorrow lay in the fact that he, as the head of travers and treason, was debarred from the assistance and companionship of his son. all travers and treason was nothing to him, because his son would run so far away from the right path. there was nothing he would not do to bring him back. if ayala could have been bought by any reasonable, or even unreasonable, amount of thousands, he would have bought her willingly for his boy's delight. it was a thing wonderful to him that tom should have been upset so absolutely by his love. he did appreciate the feeling so far that he was willing to condone all those follies already committed if tom would only put himself in the way of recovery. that massacreing of the policeman, those ill-spent nights at the mountaineers and at bolivia's, that foolish challenge, and the almost more foolish blow under the portico at the haymarket, should all be forgiven if tom would only consent to go through some slight purgation which would again fit him for travers and treason. and the purgation should be made as pleasant as possible. he should travel about the world with his pocket full of money and with every arrangement for luxurious comfort. only he must go. there was no other way in which he could be so purged as to be again fit for travers and treason. he did not at all believe that ayala could now be purchased. whether pigheaded or not, ayala was certainly self-willed. no good such as tom expected would come from this projected visit to stalham. but if he would allow it to be made in obedience to tom's request -then perhaps some tidings might be brought back which, whether strictly true or not, might induce tom to allow himself to be put on board the ship. arguing thus with himself, sir thomas at last gave his consent. it was a most disagreeable task which the mother thus undertook. she could not go from merle park to stalham and back in one day. it was necessary that she should sleep two nights in london. it was arranged, therefore, that she should go up to london on the thursday; then make her journey down to stalham and back on the friday, and get home on the saturday. there would then still remain nearly a fortnight before tom would have to leave merle park. after much consideration it was decided that a note should be written to ayala apprising her of her aunt's coming. "i hope lady albury will not be surprised at my visit," said the note, "but i am so anxious to see you, just for half an hour, upon a matter of great importance, that i shall run my chance." she would prefer to have seen the girl without any notice; but then, had no notice been given, the girl would perhaps have been out of the way. as it was a telegram was received back in reply. "i shall be at home. lady albury will be very glad to see you at lunch. she says there shall be a room all ready if you will sleep." "i certainly shall not stay there," lady tringle said to mrs traffick, "but it is as well to know that they will be civil to me." "they are stuck-up sort of people i believe," said augusta; "just like that marchesa baldoni, who is one of them. but, as to their being civil, that is a matter of course. they would hardly be uncivil to anyone connected with lord boardotrade!" then came the thursday on which the journey was to be commenced. as the moment came near lady tringle was very much afraid of the task before her. she was afraid even of her niece ayala, who had assumed increased proportions in her eyes since she had persistently refused not only tom but also colonel stubbs and captain batsby, and then in spite of her own connexion with lord boardotrade -of whom since her daughter's marriage she had learned to think less than she had done before -she did feel that the alburys were fashionable people, and that ayala as their guest had achieved something for herself. stalham was, no doubt, superior in general estimation to merle park, and with her there had been always a certain awe of ayala which she had not felt in reference to lucy. ayala's demand that augusta should go upstairs and fetch the scrap-book had had its effect -as had also her success in going up st peter's and to the marchesa's dance; and then there would be lady albury herself -and all the alburys! only that tom was very anxious, she would even now have abandoned the undertaking. "mother," said tom, on the last morning, "you will do the best you can for me." "oh, yes, my dear." "i do think that, if you would make her understand the real truth, she might have me yet. she wouldn't like that a fellow should die." "i am afraid that she is hardhearted, tom." "i do not believe it, mother. i have seen her when she wouldn't kill even a fly. it she could only be made to see all the good she could do." "i am afraid she won't care for that unless she can bring herself really to love you." "why shouldn't she love me?" "ah, my boy; how am i to tell you? perhaps if you hadn't loved her so well it might have been different. if you had scorned her -" "scorn her! i couldn't scorn her. i have heard of that kind of thing before, but how is one to help oneself? you can't scorn a friend just because you choose to say so to yourself. when i see her she is something so precious to me that i could not be rough to her to save my life. when she first came it wasn't so. i could laugh at her then. but now -! they talk about goddesses, but i am sure she is a goddess to me." "if you had made no more than a woman of her it might have been better, tom." all that was too late now. the doctrine which lady tringle was enunciating to her son, and which he repudiated, is one that has been often preached and never practised. a man when he is conscious of the presence of a mere woman, to whom he feels that no worship is due, may for his own purpose be able to tell a lie to her, and make her believe that he acknowledges a divinity in her presence. but, when he feels the goddess, he cannot carry himself before her as though she were a mere woman, and, as such, inferior to himself in her attributes. poor tom had felt the touch of something divine, and had fallen immediately prostrate before the shrine with his face to the ground. his chance with ayala could in no circumstances have been great; but she was certainly not one to have yielded to a prostrate worshipper. "mother!" said tom, recalling lady tringle as she was leaving the room. "what is it, my dear? i must really go now or i shall be too late for the train." "mother, tell her, tell her -tell her that i love her." his mother ran back, kissed his brow, and then left the room. lady tringle spent that evening in queen's gate, where sir thomas remained with her. the hours passed heavily, as they had not much present to their mind with which to console each other. sir thomas had no belief whatever in the journey except in so far as it might help to induce his son to proceed upon his travels -but his wife had been so far softened by poor tom's sorrows as to hope a little, in spite of her judgment, that ayala might yet relent. her heart was soft towards her son, so that she felt that the girl would deserve all manner of punishment unless she would at last yield to tom's wishes. she was all but sure that it could not be so, and yet, in spite of her convictions, she hoped. on the next morning the train took her safely to the stalham road station, and as she approached the end of her journey her heart became heavier within her. she felt that she could not but fail to give any excuse to the alburys for such a journey -unless, indeed, ayala should do as she would have her. at the station she found the albury carriage, with the albury coachman, and the albury footman, and the albury liveries, waiting for her. it was a closed carriage, and for a moment she thought that ayala might be there. in that case she could have performed her commission in the carriage, and then have returned to london without going to the house at all. but ayala was not there. lady tringle was driven up to the house, and then taken through the hall into a small sitting-room, where for a moment she was alone. then the door opened, and ayala, radiant with beauty, in all the prettiness of her best morning costume, was in a moment in her arms. she seemed in her brightness to be different from that ayala who had been known before at glenbogie and in rome. "dear aunt," said ayala, "i am so delighted to see you at stalham!' chapter 55 in the castle there lived a knight ayala was compelled to consent to remain at stalham. the "i don't think" which she repeated so often was, of course, of no avail to her. sir harry would be angry, and lady albury would be disgusted, were she to go -and so she remained. there was to be a week before colonel stubbs would come, and she was to remain not only for the week but also for some short time afterwards -so that there might be yet a few days left of hunting under the colonel. it could not, surely, have been doubtful to her after she had read that letter -with the postscript -that if she remained her happiness would be ensured! he would not have come again and insisted on her being there to receive him if nothing were to come of it. and yet she had fought for permission to return to kingsbury crescent after her little fashion, and had at last yielded, as she told lady albury -because sir harry seemed to wish it. "of course he wishes it," said lady albury. "he has got the pony on purpose, and nobody likes being disappointed when he has done a thing so much as sir harry." ayala, delighted as she was, did not make her secret known. she was fluttered, and apparently uneasy -so that her friend did not know what to make of it, or which way to take it. ayala's secret was to herself a secret still to be maintained with holy reticence. it might still be possible that jonathan stubbs should never say another word to her of his love. if he did -why then all the world might know. then there would be no secret. then she could sit and discuss her love, and his love, all night long with lady albury, if lady albury would listen to her. in the meantime the secret must be a secret. to confess her love, and then to have her love disappointed -that would be death to her! and thus it went on through the whole week, lady albury not quite knowing what to make of it. once she did say a word, thinking that she would thus extract the truth, not as yet understanding how potent ayala could be to keep her secret. "that man has, at any rate, been very true to you," she said. ayala frowned, and shook her head, and would not say a word upon the subject. "if she did not mean to take him now, surely she would have gone," lady albury said to her husband. "she is a pretty little girl enough," said sir harry, "but i doubt whether she is worth all the trouble." "of course she is not. what pretty little girl ever was? but as long as he thinks her worth it the trouble has to be taken." "of course she'll accept him?" "i am not at all so sure of it. she has been made to believe that you wanted her to stay, and therefore she has stayed. she is quite master enough of herself to ride out hunting with him again and then to refuse him." and so lady albury doubted up to the sunday, and all through the sunday -up to the very moment when the last preparations were to be made for the man's arrival. the train reached the stalham road station at 7 p.m., and the distance was five miles. on sundays they usually dined at stalham at 7.30. the hour fixed was to be 8 on this occasion -and even with this there would be some bustling. the house was now nearly empty, there being no visitors there except mr and mrs gosling and ayala. lady albury gave many thoughts to the manner of the man's reception, and determined at last that jonathan should have an opportunity of saying a word to ayala immediately on his arrival if he so pleased. "mind you are down at half past seven," she said to ayala, coming to her in her bedroom. "i thought we should not dine till eight." "there is no knowing. sir harry is so fussy. i shall be down, and i should like you to be with me." then ayala promised. "and mind you have his frock on." "you'll make me wear it out before anyone else sees it," she said, laughing. but again she promised. she got a glimmer of light from it all, nearly understanding what lady albury intended. but against such intentions as these she had no reason to fight. why should she not be ready to see him? why should she not have on her prettiest dress when he came? if he meant to say the word -then her prettiest dress would be all too poor, and her readiest ears not quick enough to meet so great a joy. if he were not to say the other word -then should she shun him by staying behind, or be afraid of the encounter? should she be less gaily attired because it would be unnecessary to please his eye? oh, no! "i'll be there at half past seven," she said. "but i know the train will be late, and sir harry won't get his dinner till nine." "then, my dear, great as the colonel is, he may come in and get what is left for him in the middle. sir harry will not wait a minute after eight." the buxom woman came and dressed her. the buxom woman probably knew what was going to happen -was perhaps more keenly alive to the truth than lady albury herself. "we have taken great care of it, haven't we, miss?" she said, as she fastened the dress behind. "it's just as new still." "new!" said ayala. "it has got to be new with me for the next two years." "i don't know much about that, miss. somebody will have to pay for a good many more new dresses before two years are over, i take it." to this ayala made no answer, but she was quite sure that the buxom woman intended to imply that colonel stubbs would have to pay for the new dresses. punctually at half past seven she was in the drawing-room, and there she remained alone for a few minutes. she endeavoured to sit down and be quiet, but she found it impossible to compose herself. almost immediately he would be there, and then -as she was quite sure -her fate would be known to her instantly. she knew that the first moment of his presence in the room with her would tell her everything. if that were told to her which she desired to hear, everything should be re-told to him as quickly. but, if it were otherwise, then she thought that when the moment came she would still have strength enough to hide her sorrow. if he had come simply for the hunting -simply that they two might ride a-hunting together so that he might show to her that all traces of his disappointment were gone -then she would know how to teach him to think that her heart towards him was as it had ever been. the thing to be done would be so sad as to call from her tears almost of blood in her solitude; but it should be so done that no one should know that any sorrow such as this had touched her bosom. not even to lucy should this secret be told. there was a clock on the mantelpiece to which her eye was continually turned. it now wanted twenty minutes to eight, and she was aware that if the train was punctual he might now be at the hall door. at this moment lady albury entered the room. "your knight has come at last," she said; "i hear his wheels on the gravel." "he is no knight of mine," said ayala, with that peculiar frown of hers. "whose ever knight he is, there he is. knight or not, i must go and welcome him." then lady albury hurried out of the room and ayala was again alone. the door had been left partly open, so that she could hear the sound of voices and steps across the inner hall or billiard-room. there were the servants waiting upon him, and sir harry bidding him to go up and dress at once so as not to keep the whole house waiting, and lady albury declaring that there was yet ample time as the dinner certainly would not be on the table for half an hour. she heard it all, and heard him to whom all her thoughts were now given laughing as he declared that he had never been so cold in his life, and that he certainly would not dress himself till he had warmed his fingers. she was far away from the door, not having stirred from the spot on which she was standing when lady albury left her; but she fancied that she heard the murmur of some slight whisper, and she told herself that lady albury was telling him where to seek her. then she heard the sound of the man's step across the billiard-room, she heard his hand upon the door, and there he was in her presence! when she thought of it all afterwards, as she did so many scores of times, she never could tell how it had occurred. when she accused him in her playfulness, telling him that he had taken for granted that of which he had had no sign, she never knew whether there had been aught of truth in her accusation. but she did know that he had hardly closed the door behind him when she was in his arms, and felt the burning love of his kisses upon her cheeks. there had been no more asking whether he was to have any other answer. of that she was quite sure. had there been such further question she would have answered him, and some remembrance of her own words would have remained with her. she was quite sure that she had answered no question. some memory of mingled granting and denying, of repulses and assents all quickly huddled upon one another, of attempts to escape while she was so happy to remain, and then of a deluge of love terms which fell upon her ears -"his own one, his wife, his darling, his ayala, at last his own sweet ayala," -this was what remained to her of that little interview. she had not spoken a word. she thought she was sure of that. her breath had left her -so that she could not speak. and yet it had been taken for granted -though on former occasions he had pleaded with slow piteous words! how had it been that he had come to know the truth so suddenly? then she became aware that lady albury was speaking to mrs gosling in the billiard-room outside, detaining her other guest till the scene within should be over. at that moment she did speak a word which she remembered afterwards. "go -go; you must go now." then there had been one other soft repulse, one other sweet assent and the man had gone. there was just a moment for her, in which to tell herself that the angel of light had come for her, and had taken her to himself. mrs gosling, who was a pretty little woman, crept softly into the room, hiding her suspicion if she had any. lady albury put out her hand to ayala behind the other woman's back, not raising it high, but just so that her young friend might touch it if she pleased. ayala did touch it, sliding her little fingers into the offered grasp. "i thought it would be so," whispered lady albury. "i thought it would be so." "what the deuce are you all up to?" said sir harry, bursting into the room. "it's eight now, and that man has only just gone up to his room." "he hasn't been in the house above five minutes yet," said lady albury, "and i think he has been very quick." ayala thought so too. during dinner and afterwards they were very full of hunting for the next day. it was wonderful to ayala that there should be thought for such a trifle when there was such a thing as love in the world. while there was so much to fill her heart, how could there be thoughts of anything else? but jonathan -he was jonathan to her now, her jonathan, her angel of light -was very keen upon the subject. there was but one week left. he thought that croppy might manage three days as there was to be but one week. croppy would have leisure and rest enough afterwards. "it's a little sharp," said sir harry. "oh, pray don't," said ayala. but lady albury and jonathan together silenced sir harry, and mrs gosling proved the absurdity of the objection by telling the story of a pony who had carried a lady three days running. "i should not have liked to be either the pony, or the owner, or the lady," said sir harry. but he was silenced. what did it matter though the heavens fell, so that ayala was pleased? what is too much to be done for a girl who proves herself to be an angel by accepting the right man at the right time? she had but one moment alone with her lover that night. "i always loved you," she whispered to him as she fled away. the colonel did not quite understand the assertion, but he was contented with it as he sat smoking his cigar with sir harry and mr gosling. but, though she could have but one word that night with her lover, there were many words between her and lady albury before they went to bed. "and so, like wise people, you have settled it all between you at last," said lady albury. "i don't know whether he is wise." "we will take that for granted. at any rate he has been very true." "oh, yes." "and you -you knew all about it." "no -i knew nothing. i did not think he would ever ask again. i only hoped." "but why on earth did you give him so much trouble?" "i can't tell you," said ayala, shaking her head. "do you mean that there is still a secret?" "no, not that. i would tell you anything that i could tell, because you have been so very, very good to me. but i cannot tell. i cannot explain even to myself. oh, lady albury, why have you been so good to me?" "shall i say because i have loved you?" "yes -if it be true." "but it is not true." "oh, lady albury!" "i do love you dearly. i shall always love you now. i do hope i shall love you now, because you will be his wife. but i have not been kind to you as you call it because i loved you." "then why?" "because i loved him. cannot you understand that? because i was anxious that he should have all that he wanted. was it not necessary that there should be some house in which he might meet you? could there have been much of a pleasant time for wooing between you in your aunt's drawing-room in kingsbury crescent?" "oh, no," said ayala. "could he have taken you out hunting unless you had been here? how could he and you have known each other at all unless i had been kind to you? now you will understand." "yes," said ayala, "i understand now. did he ask you?" "well -he consulted me. we talked you all over, and made up our minds, between us, that if we petted you down here that would be the best way to win you. were we not right?" "it was a very nice way. i do so like to be petted." "sir harry was in the secret, and he did his petting by buying the frock. that was a success too, i think." "did he care about that, lady albury?" "what he?" "jonathan," said ayala, almost stumbling over the word, as she pronounced it aloud for the first time. "i think he liked it. but whether he would have persevered without it you must ask yourself. if he tells you that he would never have said another word to you only for this frock, then i think you ought to thank sir harry, and give him a kiss." "i am sure he will not tell me that," said ayala, with mock indignation. "and now, my dear, as i have told you all my secret, and have explained to you how we laid our heads together, and plotted against you, i think you ought to tell me your secret. why was it that you refused him so pertinaciously on that sunday when you were out walking, and yet you knew your mind about it so clearly as soon as he arrived today?" "i can't explain it," said ayala. "you must know that you liked him." "i always liked him." "you must have more than liked on that sunday." "i adored him." "then i don't understand you." "lady albury, i think i fell in love with him the first moment i saw him. the marchesa took me to a party in london, and there he was." "did he say anything to you then?" "no. he was very funny -as he often is. don't you know his way? i remember every word he said to me. he came up without any introduction and ordered me to dance with him." "and you did?" "oh yes. whatever he told me i should have done. then he scolded me because i did not stand up quick enough. and he invented some story about a woman who was engaged to him and would not marry him because he had red hair and his name was jonathan. i knew it was all a joke, and yet i hated the woman." "that must have been love at first sight." "i think it was. from that day to this i have always been thinking about him." "and yet you refused him twice over?" "yes." "at ever so long an interval?" ayala bobbed her head at her companion. "and why?" "ah -that i can't tell. i shall try to tell him some day, but i know that i never shall. it was because -. but, lady albury, i cannot tell it. did you ever picture anything to yourself in a waking dream?" "build castles in the air?" suggested lady albury. "that's just it." "very often. but they never come true." "never have come true -exactly. i had a castle in the air, and in the castle lived a knight." she was still ashamed to say that the inhabitant of the castle was an angel of light. "i wanted to find out whether he was the knight who lived there. he was." "and you were not quite sure till today?" "i have been sure a long time. but when we walked out on that sunday i was such an idiot that i did not know how to tell him. oh, lady albury, i was such a fool! what should i have done if he hadn't come back?" "sent for him." "never -never! i should have been miserable always! but now i am so happy." "he is the real knight?" "oh, yes; indeed. he is the real -real knight, that has always been living in my castle." ayala's promotion was now so firmly fixed that the buxom female came to assist her off with her clothes when lady albury had left her. from this time forth it was supposed that such assistance would be necessary. "i take it, miss," said the buxom female, "there will be a many new dresses before the end of this time two years." from which ayala was quite sure that everybody in the house knew all about it. but it was now, now when she was quite alone, that the great sense of her happiness came to her. in the fulness of her dreams there had never been more than the conviction that such a being, and none other, could be worthy of her love. there had never been faith in the hope that such a one would come to her -never even though she would tell herself that angels had come down from heaven and had sought in marriage the hands of the daughters of men. her dreams had been to her a barrier against love rather than an encouragement. but now he that she had in truth dreamed of had come for her. then she brought out the marchesa's letter and read that description of her lover. yes; he was all that; true, brave, tender -a very hero. but then he was more than all that -for he was in truth the very "angel of light". chapter 56 gobblegoose wood again the monday was devoted to hunting. i am not at all sure that riding about the country with a pack of hounds is an amusement specially compatible with that assured love entertainment which was now within the reach of ayala and her angel. for the rudiments of love-making, for little endearing attentions, for a few sweet words to be whispered with shortened breath as one horse gallops beside another, perhaps for a lengthened half hour together, amidst the mazes of a large wood when opportunities are no doubt given for private conversation, hunting may be very well. but for two persons who are engaged, with the mutual consent of all their friends, a comfortable sofa is perhaps preferable. ayala had heard as yet but very little of her lover's intentions -was acquainted only with that one single intention which he had declared in asking her to be his wife. there were a thousand things to be told -the how, the where, and the when. she knew hitherto the why, and that was all. nothing could be told her while she was galloping about a big wood on croppy's back. "i am delighted to see you again in these parts, miss," said larry twentyman, suddenly. "oh, mr twentyman; how is the baby?" "the baby is quite well, miss. his mamma has been out ever so many times." "i ought to have asked for her first. does baby come out too?" "not quite. but when the hounds are near mamma comes for an hour or so. we have had a wonderful season -quite wonderful. you have heard, perhaps, of our great run from dillsborough wood. we found him there, close to my place, you know, and run him down in the brake country after an hour and forty minutes. there were only five or six of them. you'd have been one, miss, to a moral, if you'd have been here on the pony. i say we never changed our fox." ayala was well disposed towards larry twentyman, and was quite aware that, according to the records and established usages of that hunt, he was a man with whom she might talk safely. but she did not care about the foxes so much as she had done before. there was nothing now for which she cared much, except jonathan stubbs. he was always riding near her throughout the day, so that he might be with her should there arise anything special to be done; but he was not always close to her -as she would have had him. he had gained his purpose, and he was satisfied. she had entered in upon the fruition of positive bliss, but enjoyed it in perfection only when she heard the sound of his voice, or could look into his eyes as she spoke to him. she did not care much about the great run from dillsborough, or even for the compliment with which mr twentyman finished his narrative. they were riding about the big woods all day, not without killing a fox, but with none of the excitement of a real run. "after that croppy will be quite fit to come again on wednesday," suggested the colonel on their way home. to which sir harry assented. "what do you folks mean to do today?" asked lady albury at breakfast on the following morning. ayala had her own little plan in her head, but did not dare to propose it publicly. "will you choose to be driven, or will you choose to walk?" said lady albury, addressing herself to ayala. ayala, in her present position, was considered to be entitled to special consideration. ayala thought she would prefer to walk. at last there came a moment in which she could make her request to the person chiefly concerned. "walk with me to the wood with that absurd name," suggested ayala. "gobblegoose wood," suggested the colonel. then that was arranged according to ayala's wishes. a walk in a wood is perhaps almost as good as a comfortable seat in a drawing-room, and is, perhaps, less liable to intrusion. they started and walked the way which ayala remembered so well when she had trudged along, pretending to listen to sir harry and captain glomax as they carried on their discussion about the hunted fox, but giving all her ears to the colonel, and wondering whether he would say anything to her before the day was over. then her mind had been in a perturbed state which she herself had failed to understand. she was sure that she would say "no" to him, should he speak, and yet she desired that it should be "yes". what a fool she had been, she told herself as she walked along now, and how little she had deserved all the good that had come to her! the conversation was chiefly with him as they went. he told her much now of the how, and the when, and the where. he hoped there might be no long delay. he would live, he said, for the next year or two at aldershot, and would be able to get a house fit for her on condition that they should be married at once. he did not explain why the house could not be taken even though their marriage were delayed two or three months -but as to this she asked no questions. of course they must be married in london if mrs dosett wished it; but if not it might be arranged that the wedding should take place at stalham. upon all this and many other things he had much to propose, and all that he said ayala accepted as gospel. as the angel of light had appeared -as the knight who was lord of the castle had come forth -of course he must be obeyed in everything. he could hardly have made a suggestion to which she would not have acceded. when they had entered the wood ayala in her own quiet way led him to the very spot in which on that former day he had asked her his question. "do you remember this path?" she asked. "i remember that you and i were walking here together," he said. "ay, but this very turn? do you remember this branch?" "well, no; not the branch." "you put your hand on it when you said that 'never -never,' to me." "did i say 'never -never'?" "yes, you did -when i was so untrue to you." "were you untrue?" he asked. "jonathan, you remember nothing about it. it has all passed away from you just as though you were talking to captain glomax about the fox." "has it, dear?" "i remember every word of it. i remember how you stood and how you looked, even to the hat you wore and the little switch you held in your hand -when you asked for one little word, one glance, one slightest touch. there, now -you shall have all my weight to bear." then she leant upon him with both her hands, turned round her arm, glanced up into his face, and opened her lips as though speaking that little word. "do you remember that i said i thought you had given it all up?" "i remember that, certainly." "and was not that untrue? oh, jonathan, that was such a story. had i thought so i should have been miserable." "then why did you swear to me so often that you could not love me?" "i never said so," replied ayala; "never." "did you not?" he asked. "i never said so. i never told you such a story as that. i did love you then, almost as well as i do now. oh, i had loved you for so long a time!" "then why did you refuse me?" "ah; that is what i would explain to you now -here on this very spot -if i could. does it not seem odd that a girl should have all that she wants offered to her, and yet not be able to take it?" "was it all that you wanted!" "indeed it was. when i was in church that morning i told myself that i never, never could be happy unless you came to me again." "but when i did come you would not have me." "i knew how to love you," she said, "but i did not know how to tell you that i loved you. i can tell you now; cannot i?" and then she looked up at him and smiled. "yes, i think i shall never be tired of telling you now. it is sweet to hear you say that you love me, but it is sweeter still to be always telling you. and yet i could not tell you then. suppose you had taken me at my word?" "i told you that i should never give you up." "it was only that that kept me from being altogether wretched. i think that i was ashamed to tell you the truth when i had once refused to do as you would have me. i had given you so much trouble all for nothing. i think that if you had asked me on that first day at the ball in london i should have said yes, if i had told the truth." "that would have been very sudden. i had never seen you before that." "nevertheless it was so. i don't mind owning it to you now, though i never, never, would own it to anyone else. when you came to us at the theatre i was sure that no one else could ever have been so good: i certainly did love you then." "hardly that, ayala." "i did," she said. "now i have told you everything, and if you choose to think i have been bad -why you must think so, and i must put up with it." "bad, my darling?" "i suppose it was bad to fall in love with a man like that; and very bad to give him the trouble of coming so often. but now i have made a clean breast of it, and if you want to scold me you must scold me now. you may do it now, but you must never scold me afterwards -because of that." it may be left to the reader to imagine the nature of the scolding which she received. then on their way home she thanked him for all the good that he had done to all those belonging to her. "i have heard it all from lucy -how generous you have been to isadore." "that has all come to nothing," he said. "how come to nothing? i know that you sent him the money." "i did offer to lend him something, and, indeed, i sent him a cheque; but two days afterwards he returned it. that tremendous uncle of yours -" "uncle tom?" "yes, your uncle tom; the man of millions! he came forward and cut me out altogether. i don't know what went on down there in sussex, but when he heard that they intended to be married shortly he put his hand into his pocket, as a magnificent uncle, overflowing with millions, ought to do." "i did not hear that." "hamel sent my money back at once." "and poor tom! you were so good to poor tom." "i like tom." "but he did behave badly." "well; yes. one gentleman shouldn't strike another, even though he be ever so much in love. it's an uncomfortable proceeding, and never has good results. but then, poor fellow, he has been so much in earnest." "why couldn't he take a no when he got it?" "why didn't i take a no when i got it?" "that was very different. he ought to have taken it. if you had taken it you would have been very wrong, and have broken a poor girl's heart. i am sure you knew that all through." "did i?" "and then you were too good-natured. that was it. i don't think you really love me -not as i love you. oh, jonathan, if you were to change your mind now! suppose you were to tell me that it was a mistake! suppose i were to awake and find myself in bed at kingsbury crescent?" "i hope there may be no such waking as that!" "i should go mad -stark mad. shake me till i find out whether it is real waking, downright, earnest. but, jonathan, why did you call me miss dormer when you went away? that was the worst of all. i remember when you called me ayala first. it went through and through me like an electric shock. but you never saw it -did you?" on that afternoon when she returned home she wrote to her sister lucy, giving a sister's account to her sister of all her happiness. "i am sure isadore is second best, but jonathan is best. i don't want you to say so; but if you contradict me i shall stick to it. you remember my telling you that the old woman in the railway said that i was perverse. she was a clever old woman, and knew all about it, for i was perverse. however, it has come all right now, and jonathan is best of all. oh, my man -my man! is it not sweet to have a man of one's own to love?" if this letter had been written on the day before -as would have been the case had not ayala been taken out hunting -it would have reached merle park on the wednesday, the news would have been made known to aunt emmeline, and so conveyed to poor tom, and that disagreeable journey from merle park to stalham would have been saved. but there was no time for writing on the monday. the letter was sent away in the stalham post-bag on the tuesday evening, and did not reach merle park till the thursday, after lady tringle had left the house. had it been known on that morning that ayala was engaged to colonel stubbs that would have sufficed to send tom away upon his travels without any more direct messenger from stalham. on the wednesday there was more hunting, and on this day ayala, having liberated her mind to her lover in gobblegoose wood, was able to devote herself more satisfactorily to the amusement in hand. her engagement was now an old affair. it had already become matter for joking to sir harry, and had been discussed even with mrs gosling. it was, of course, "a joy for ever' -but still she was beginning to descend from the clouds and to walk the earth -no more than a simple queen. when, therefore, the hounds went away and larry told her that he knew the best way out of the wood, she collected her energies and rode "like a little brick", as sir harry said when they got back to stalham. on that afternoon she received the note from her aunt and replied to it by telegram. on the thursday she stayed at home and wrote various letters. the first was to the marchesa, and then one to nina -in both of which much had to be said about "jonathan." to nina also she could repeat her idea of the delight of having a man to love. then there was a letter to aunt margaret -which certainly was due, and another to aunt emmeline -which was not however received until after lady tringle's visit to stalham. there was much conversation between her and lady albury as to the possible purpose of the visit which was to be made on the morrow. lady albury was of opinion that lady tringle had heard of the engagement, and was coming with the intention of setting it on one side on tom's behalf. "but she can't do that, you know," said ayala, with some manifest alarm. "she is nothing to me now, lady albury. she got rid of me, you know. i was changed away for lucy." "if there had been no changing away, she could do nothing," said lady albury. about a quarter of an hour before the time for lunch on the following day lady tringle was shown into the small sitting-room which has been mentioned in a previous chapter, and ayala, radiant with happiness and beauty, appeared before her. there was a look about her of being at home at stalham, as though she were almost a daughter of the house, that struck her aunt with surprise. there was nothing left of that submissiveness which, though ayala herself had not been submissive, belonged, as of right, to girls so dependent as she and her sister lucy. "i am so delighted to see you at stalham," said ayala, as she embraced her aunt. "i am come to you", said lady tringle, "on a matter of very particular business." then she paused, and assumed a look of peculiar solemnity. "have you got my letter?" demanded ayala. "i got your telegram, and i thought it very civil of lady albury. but i cannot stay. your poor cousin tom is in such a condition that i cannot leave him longer than i can help." "but you have not got my letter?" "i have had no letter from you, ayala." "i have sent you such news -oh, such news, aunt emmeline!" "what news, my dear?" lady tringle as she asked the question seemed to become more solemn than ever. "oh, aunt emmeline -i am -" "you are what, ayala?" "i am engaged to be married to colonel jonathan stubbs." "engaged!" "yes, aunt emmeline -engaged. i wrote to you on tuesday to tell you all about it. i hope you and uncle tom will approve. there cannot possibly be any reason against it -except only that i have nothing to give him in return; that is in the way of money. colonel stubbs, aunt emmeline, is not what uncle tom will call a rich man, but everybody here says that he has got quite enough to be comfortable. if he had nothing in the world it could not make any difference to me. i don't understand how anybody is to love anyone or not to love him just because he is rich or poor." "but you are absolutely engaged!" exclaimed lady tringle. "oh dear yes. perhaps you would like to ask lady albury about it. he did want it before, you know. "but now you are engaged to him?" in answer to this ayala thought it sufficient simply to nod her head. "it is all over then?" "all over!" exclaimed ayala. "it is just going to begin." "all over for poor tom," said lady tringle. "oh yes. it was always over for him, aunt emmeline. i told him ever so many times that it never could be so. don't you know, aunt emmeline, that i did?" "but you said that to this man just the same." "aunt emmeline," said ayala, putting on all the serious dignity which she knew how to assume, "i am engaged to colonel stubbs, and nothing on earth that anybody can say can change it. if you want to hear all about it, lady albury will tell you. she knows that you are my aunt, and therefore she will be quite willing to talk to you. only nothing that anybody can say can change it." "poor tom!" ejaculated the rejected lover's mother. "i am very sorry if my cousin is displeased." "he is ill -terribly ill. he will have to go away and travel all about the world, and i don't know that ever he will come back again. i am sure this stubbs will never love you as he has done." "oh, aunt, what is the use of that?" "and then tom will have twice as much. but, however -" ayala stood silent, not seeing that any good could be done by addition to her former assurances. "i will go and tell him, my dear, that's all. will you not send him some message, ayala?" "oh, yes; any message that i can that shall go along with my sincere attachment to colonel stubbs. you must tell him that i am engaged to colonel stubbs. you will tell him, aunt emmeline?" "oh, yes; if it must be so." "it must," said ayala. "then you may give him my love, and tell him that i am very unhappy that i should have been a trouble to him, and that i hope he will soon be well, and come back from his travels." by this time aunt emmeline was dissolved in tears. "i could not help it, aunt emmeline, could i?" her aunt had once terribly outraged her feelings by telling her that she had encouraged tom. ayala remembered at this moment the cruel words and the wound which they had inflicted on her; but, nevertheless, she behaved tenderly, and endeavoured to be respectful and submissive. "i could not help it -could i, aunt emmeline?" "i suppose not, my dear." after that lady tringle declared that she would return to london at once. no -she would rather not go in to lunch. she would rather go back at once to the station if they would take her. she had been weeping, and did not wish to show her tears. therefore, at ayala's request, the carriage came round again -to the great disgust, no doubt, of the coachman -and lady tringle was taken back to the station without having seen any of the albury family. chapter 57 captain batsby in lombard street it was not till colonel stubbs had been three or four days at stalham, basking in the sunshine of ayala's love, that any of the stalham family heard of the great event which had occurred in the life of ayala's third lover. during that walk to and from gobblegoose wood something had been said between the lovers as to captain batsby -something, no doubt, chiefly in joke. the idea of the poor captain having fallen suddenly into so melancholy a condition was droll enough. "but he never spoke to me," said ayala. "he doesn't speak very much to anyone," said the colonel, "but he thinks a great deal about things. he has had ever so many affairs with ever so many ladies, who generally, i fancy, want to marry him because of his money. how he has escaped so long nobody knows." a man when he has just engaged himself to be married is as prone as ever to talk of other men "escaping", feeling that, though other young ladies were no better than evils to be avoided, his young lady is to be regarded as almost a solitary instance of a blessing. then, two days afterwards, arrived the news of the trip to ostend. sir harry received a letter from a friend in which an account was given of his half-brother's adventure. "what do you think has happened?" said sir harry, jumping up from his chair at the breakfast table. "what has happened?" asked his wife. "benjamin has run off to ostend with a young lady." "benjamin -with a young lady!" exclaimed lady albury. ayala and stubbs were equally astonished, each of them knowing that the captain had been excluded from stalham because of the ardour of his unfortunate love for ayala. "ayala, that is your doing!" "no!" said ayala. "but i am very glad if he's happy." "who is the young lady?" asked stubbs. "it is that which makes it so very peculiar," said sir harry, looking at ayala. he had learned something of the tringle family, and was aware of ayala's connection with them. "who is it, harry?" demanded her ladyship. "sir thomas tringle's younger daughter." "gertrude!" exclaimed ayala, who also knew of the engagement with mr houston. "but the worst of it is", continued sir harry, "that he is not at all happy. the young lady has come back, while nobody knows what has become of benjamin." "benjamin never will get a wife," said lady albury. thus all the details of the little event became known at stalham -except the immediate condition and whereabouts of the lover. of the captain's condition and whereabouts something must be told. when the great disruption came, and he had been abused and ridiculed by sir thomas at ostend, he felt that he could neither remain there where the very waiters knew what had happened, nor could he return to dover in the same vessel with sir thomas and his daughter. he therefore took the first train and went to brussels. but brussels did not offer him many allurements in his present frame of mind. he found nobody there whom he particularly knew, and nothing particular to do. solitude in a continental town with no amusements beyond those offered by the table d'hote and the theatre is oppressing. his time he endeavoured to occupy with thinking of the last promise he had made to gertrude. should he break it or should he keep it? sir thomas tringle was, no doubt, a very rich man -and then there was the fact which would become known to all the world, that he had run off with a young lady. should he ultimately succeed in marrying the young lady the enterprise would bear less of an appearance of failure than it would do otherwise. but then, should the money not be forthcoming, the consolation coming from the possession of gertrude herself would hardly suffice to make him a happy man. sir thomas, when he came to consider the matter, would certainly feel that his daughter had compromised herself by the journey, and that it would be good for her to be married to the man who had taken her. it might be that sir thomas would yield, and consent to make, at any rate, some compromise. a rumour had reached his ears that traffick had received l#200,000 with the elder daughter. he would consent to take half that sum. after a week spent amidst the charms of brussels he returned to london, without any public declaration of his doing so -"sneaked back", as a friend of his said of him at the club -and then went to work to carry out his purpose as best he might. all that was known of it at stalham was that he had returned to his lodgings in london. on friday, the 11th of april, when ayala was a promised bride of nearly two weeks' standing and all the uncles and aunts were aware that her lot in life had been fixed for her, sir thomas was alone in the back room in lombard street, with his mind sorely diverted from the only joy of his life. the whole family were now in town, and septimus traffick with his wife was actually occupying a room in queen's gate. how it had come to pass sir thomas hardly knew. some word had been extracted from him signifying a compliance with a request that augusta might come to the house for a night or two until a fitting residence should be prepared for her. something had been said of lord boardotrade's house being vacated for her and her husband early in april. an occurrence to which married ladies are liable was about to take place with augusta, and sir thomas certainly understood that the occurrence was to be expected under the roof of the coming infant's noble grandfather. something as to ancestral halls had been thrown out in the chance way of conversation. then he certainly had assented to some minimum of london hospitality for his daughter -as certainly not including the presence of his son-in-law; and now both of them were domiciled in the big front spare bedroom at queen's gate! this perplexed him sorely. and then tom had been brought up from the country still as an invalid, his mother moaning and groaning over him as though he were sick almost past hope of recovery. and yet the nineteenth of the month, now only eight days distant, was still fixed for his departure. tom, on the return of his mother from stalham, had to a certain extent accepted as irrevocable the fact of which she bore the tidings. ayala was engaged to stubbs, and would, doubtless, with very little delay, become mrs jonathan stubbs. "i knew it," he said; "i knew it. nothing could have prevented it unless i had shot him through the heart. he told me that she had refused him; but no man could have looked like that after being refused by ayala." then he never expressed a hope again. it was all over for him as regarded ayala. but he still refused to be well, or even, for a day or two, to leave his bed. he had allowed his mother to understand that if the fact of her engagement were indubitably brought home to him he would gird up his loins for his journey and proceed at once wherever it might be thought good to send him. his father had sternly reminded him of his promise; but, when so reminded, tom had turned himself in his bed and uttered groans instead of replies. now he had been brought up to london and was no longer actually in bed; but even yet he had not signified his intention of girding up his loins and proceeding upon his journey. nevertheless the preparations were going on, and, under sir thomas's directions, the portmanteaus were already being packed. gertrude also was a source of discomfort to her father. she considered herself to have been deprived of her two lovers, one after the other, in a spirit of cruel parsimony. and with this heavy weight upon her breast she refused to take any part in the family conversations. everything had been done for augusta, and everything was to be done for tom. for her nothing had been done, and nothing had been promised -and she was therefore very sulky. with these troubles all around him, sir thomas was sitting oppressed and disheartened in lombard street on friday, the 11th of april. then there entered to him one of the junior clerks with a card announcing the name of captain batsby. he looked at it for some seconds before he gave any notification of his intention, and then desired the young man to tell the gentleman that he would not see him. the message had been delivered, and captain batsby with a frown of anger on his brow was about to shake the dust off from his feet on the uncourteous threshold when there came another message, saying that captain batsby could go in and see sir thomas if he wished it. upon this he turned round and was shown into the little sitting-room. "well, captain batsby," said sir thomas; "what can i do for you now? i am glad to see that you have come back safely from foreign parts." "i have called", said the captain, "to say something about your daughter." "what more can you have to say about her?" at this the captain was considerably puzzled. of course sir thomas must know what he had to say. "the way in which we were separated at ostend was very distressing to my feelings." "i daresay." "and also i should think to miss tringle's." "not improbably. i have always observed that when people are interrupted in the performance of some egregious stupidity their feelings are hurt. as i said before, what can i do for you now?" "i am very anxious to complete the alliance which i have done myself the honour to propose to you." "i did not know that you had proposed anything. you came down to my house under a false pretence; and then you persuaded my daughter -or else she persuaded you -to go off together to ostend. is that what you call an alliance?" "that, as far as it went, was -was an elopement." "am i to understand that you now want to arrange another elopement, and that you have come to ask my consent?" "oh dear no." "then what do you mean by completing an alliance?" "i want to make", said the captain, "an offer for the young lady's hand in a proper form. i consider myself to be in a position which justifies me in doing so. i am possessed of the young lady's affections, and have means of my own equal to those which i presume you will be disposed to give her." "very much better means i hope, captain batsby. otherwise i do not see what you and your wife would have to live upon. i will tell you exactly what my feelings are in this matter. my daughter has gone off with you, forgetting all the duty that she owed to me and to her mother, and throwing aside all ideas of propriety. after that i will not say that you shall not marry her if both of you think fit. i do not doubt your means, and i have no reason for supposing that you would be cruel to her. you are two fools, but after all fools must live in the world. what i do say is, that i will not give a sixpence towards supporting you in your folly. now, captain batsby, you can complete the alliance or not as you please." captain batsby had been called a fool also at ostend, and there, amidst the distressing circumstances of his position, had been constrained to bear the opprobrious name, little customary as it is for one gentleman to allow himself to be called a fool by another; but now he had collected his thoughts, had reminded himself of his position in the world, and had told himself that it did not become him to be too humble before this city man of business. it might have been all very well at ostend; but he was not going to be called a fool in london without resenting it. "sir thomas," said he, "fool and folly are terms which i cannot allow you to use to me." "if you do not present yourself to me here, captain batsby, or at my own house -or, perhaps i may say, at ostend -i will use no such terms to you." "i suppose you will acknowledge that i am entitled to ask for your daughter's hand." "i suppose you will acknowledge that when a man runs away with my daughter i am entitled to express my opinion of his conduct." "that is all over now, sir thomas. what i did i did for love. there is no good in crying over spilt milk. the question is as to the future happiness of the young lady." "that is the only wise word i have heard you say, captain batsby. there is no good in crying after spilt milk. our journey to ostend is done and gone. it was not very agreeable, but we have lived through it. i quite think that you show a good judgment in not intending to go there again in quest of a clergyman. if you want to be married there are plenty of them in london. i will not oppose your marriage, but i will not give you a shilling. no man ever had a better opportunity of showing the disinterestedness of his affection. now, good morning." "but, sir thomas -" "captain batsby, my time is precious. i have told you all that there is to tell." then he stood up, and the captain with a stern demeanour and angry brow left the room and took himself in silence away from lombard street. "do you want to marry captain batsby?" sir thomas said to his daughter that evening, having invited her to come apart with him after dinner. "yes, i do." "you think that you prefer him on the whole to mr houston?" "mr houston is a scoundrel. i wish that you would not talk about him, papa." "i like him so much the best of the two," said sir thomas. "but of course it is for you to judge. i could have brought myself to give something to houston. luckily, however, captain batsby has got an income of his own." "he has, papa." "and you are sure that you would like to take him as your husband?" "yes, papa." "very well. he has been with me today." "is he in london?" "i tell you that he has been with me today in lombard street." "what did he say? did he say anything about me?" "yes, my dear. he came to ask me for your hand." "well, papa." "i told him that i should make no objection -that i should leave it altogether to you. i only interfered with one small detail as to my own wishes. i assured him that i should never give him or you a single shilling. i don't suppose it will matter much to him, as he has, you know, means of his own." it was thus that sir thomas punished his daughter for her misconduct. captain batsby and the trafficks were acquainted with each other. the member of parliament had, of course, heard of the journey to ostend from his wife, and had been instigated by her to express an opinion that the young people ought to be married. "it is such a very serious thing", said augusta to her husband, "to be four hours on the sea together! and then you know -!" mr traffick acknowledged that it was serious, and was reminded by his wife that he, in the capacity of brother, was bound to interfere on his sister's behalf. "papa, you know, understands nothing about these kind of things. you, with your family interest, and your seat in parliament, ought to be able to arrange it." mr traffick probably knew how far his family interest and his seat in parliament would avail. they had, at any rate, got him a wife with a large fortune. they were promising for him, still further, certain domiciliary advantages. he doubted whether he could do much for batsby; but still he promised to try. if he could arrange these matters it might be that he would curry fresh favour with sir thomas by doing so. he therefore made it his business to encounter captain batsby on the sunday afternoon at a club to which they both belonged. "so you have come back from your little trip?" said the member of parliament. the captain was not unwilling to discuss the question of their family relations with mr traffick. if anybody would have influence with sir thomas it might probably be mr traffick. "yes; i have come back." "without your bride." "without my bride -as yet. that is a kind of undertaking in which a man is apt to run many dangers before he can carry it through." "i dare say. i never did anything of the kind myself. of course you know that i am the young lady's brother-in-law." "oh yes." "and therefore you won't mind me speaking. don't you think you ought to do something further?" "something further! by george, i should think so," said the captain, exultingly. "i mean to do a great many things further. you don't suppose i am going to give it up?" "you oughtn't, you know. when a man has taken a girl off with him in that way, he should go on with it. it's a deuced serious thing, you know." "it was his fault in coming after us." "that was a matter of course. if he hadn't done it, i must. i have made the family my own, and, of course, must look after its honour." the noble scion of the house of traffick, as he said this, showed by his countenance that he perfectly understood the duty which circumstances had imposed upon him. "he made himself very rough, you know," said the captain. "i dare say he would." "and said things -well -things which he ought not to have said." "in such a case as that a father may say pretty nearly what comes uppermost." "that was just it. he did say what came uppermost -and very rough it was." "what does it matter?" "not much if he'd do as he ought to do now. as you are her brother-in-law, i'll tell you just how it stands. i have been to him and made a regular proposal." "since you have been back?" "yes; the day before yesterday. and what do you think he says?" "what does he say?" "he gives his consent; only -" "only what?" "he won't give her a shilling! such an idea, you know! as though she were to be punished after marriage for running away with the man she did marry." "take your chance, batsby," said the member of parliament. "what chance?" "take your chance of the money. i'd have done it; only, of course, it was different with me. he was glad to catch me, and therefore the money was settled." "i've got a tidy income of my own, you know," said the captain, thinking that he was entitled to be made more welcome as a son-in-law than the younger son of a peer who had no income. "take your chance," continued traffick. "what on earth can a man like tringle do with his money except give it to his children? he is rough, as you say, but he is not hardhearted, nor yet stubborn. i can do pretty nearly what i like with him." "can you, though?" "yes; by smoothing him down the right way. you run your chance, and we'll get it all put right for you." the captain hesitated, rubbing his head carefully to encourage the thoughts which were springing up within his bosom. the honourable mr traffick might perhaps succeed in getting the affair put right, as he called it, in the interest rather of the elder than of the second daughter. "i don't see how you can hesitate now, as you have been off with the girl," said mr traffick. "i don't know about that. i should like to see the money settled." "there would have been nothing settled if you had married her at ostend." "but i didn't," said the captain. "i tell you what you might do. you might talk him over and make him a little more reasonable. i should be ready tomorrow if he'd come forward." "what's the sum you want?" "the same as yours, i suppose." "that's out of the question," said mr traffick, shaking his head. "suppose we say sixty thousand pounds." then after some chaffering on the subject it was decided between them that mr traffick should use his powerful influence with his father-in-law to give his daughter on her marriage -say a hundred thousand pounds if it were possible, or sixty thousand pounds at the least. chapter 58 mr traffick in lombard street mr traffick entertained some grand ideas as to the house of travers and treason. why should not he become a member, and ultimately the leading member, of that firm? sir thomas was not a young man, though he was strong and hearty. tom had hitherto succeeded only in making an ass of himself. as far as transacting the affairs of the firm, tom -so thought mr traffick -was altogether out of the question. he might perish in those extensive travels which he was about to take. mr traffick did not desire any such catastrophe -but the young man might perish. there was a great opening. mr traffick, with his thorough knowledge of business, could not but see that there was a great opening. besides tom, there were but two daughters, one of whom was his own wife. augusta, his wife, was, he thought, certainly the favourite at the present moment. sir thomas could, indeed, say rough things even to her; but then sir thomas was of his nature rough. now, at this time, the rough things said to gertrude were very much the rougher. in all these circumstances the wisdom of interfering in gertrude's little affairs was very clear to mr traffick. gertrude would, of course, get herself married sooner or later, and almost any other husband would obtain a larger portion than that which would satisfy batsby. sir thomas was now constantly saying good things about mr houston. mr houston would be much more objectionable than captain batsby -much more likely to interfere. he would require more money at once, and might possibly come forward himself in the guise of a partner. mr traffick saw his way clearly. it was incumbent upon him to see that gertrude should become mrs batsby with as little delay as possible. but one thing he did not see. one thing he had failed to see since his first introduction to the tringle family. he had not seen the peculiar nature of his father-in-law's foibles. he did not understand either the weakness or the strength of sir thomas -either the softness or the hardness. mr traffick himself was blessed with a very hard skin. in the carrying out of a purpose there was nothing which his skin was not sufficiently serviceable to endure. but sir thomas, rough as he was, had but a thin skin -a thin skin and a soft heart. had houston and gertrude persevered he would certainly have given way. for tom, in his misfortune, he would have made any sacrifice. though he had given the broadest hints which he had been able to devise he had never as yet brought himself absolutely to turn traffick out of his house. when ayala was sent away he still kept her name in his will, and added also that of lucy as soon as lucy had been entrusted to him. had things gone a little more smoothly between him and hamel when they met -had he not unluckily advised that all the sculptor's grand designs should be sold by auction for what they would fetch -he would have put hamel and lucy upon their legs. he was a soft-hearted man -but there never was one less willing to endure interference in his own affairs. at the present moment he was very sore as to the presence of traffick in queen's gate. the easter parliamentary holidays were just at hand, and there was no sign of any going. augusta had whispered to her mother that the poky little house in mayfair would be very uncomfortable for the coming event -and lady tringle, though she had not dared to say even as much as that in plain terms to her husband, had endeavoured to introduce the subject by little hints -which sir thomas had clearly understood. he was hardly the man to turn a daughter and an expected grandchild into the streets; but he was, in his present mood, a father-in-law who would not unwillingly have learned that his son-in-law was without a shelter except that afforded by the house of commons. why on earth should he have given up one hundred and twenty thousand pounds -l#6,000 a year as it was under his fostering care -to a man who could not even keep a house over his wife's head? this was the humour of sir thomas when mr traffick undertook to prevail with him to give an adequate fortune to his youngest daughter on her marriage with captain batsby. the conversation between traffick and batsby took place on a sunday. on the following day the captain went down to the house and saw the member. "no; i have not spoken to him yet." "i was with him on friday, you know," said batsby. "i can't well go and call on the ladies in queen's gate till i hear that he has changed his mind." "i should. i don't see what difference it would make." then captain batsby was again very thoughtful. "it would make a difference, you know. if i were to say a word to gertrude now -as to being married or anything of that kind -it would seem that i meant to go on whether i got anything or not." "and you should seem to want to go on," said traffick, with all that authority which the very surroundings of the house of commons always give to the words and gait of a member. "but then i might find myself dropped in a hole at last." "my dear batsby, you made that hole for yourself when you ran off with the young lady." "we settled all that before." "not quite. what we did settle was that we'd do our best to fill the hole up. of course you ought to go and see them. you went off with the young lady -and since that have been accepted as her suitor by her father. you are bound to go and see her." "do you think so?" "certainly! certainly! it never does to talk to tringle about business at his own house. i'll make an hour to see him in the city tomorrow. i'm so pressed by business that i can hardly get away from the house after twelve -but i'll do it. but, while i'm in lombard street, do you go to queen's gate." the captain after further consideration said that he would go to queen's gate. at three o'clock on the next day he did go to queen's gate. he had many misgivings, feeling that by such a step he would be committing himself to matrimony with or without the money. no doubt he could so offer himself, even to lady tringle, as a son-in-law, that it should be supposed that the offer would depend upon the father-in-law's goodwill. but then the father-in-law had told him that he would be welcome to the young lady -without a farthing. should he go on with his matrimonial purpose, towards which this visit would be an important step, he did not see the moment in which he could stop the proceedings by a demand for money. nevertheless he went, not being strong enough to oppose mr traffick. yes -the ladies were at home, and he found himself at once in lady tringle's presence. there was at the time no one with her, and the captain acknowledged to himself that a trying moment had come to him. "dear me! captain batsby!" said her ladyship, who had not seen him since he and gertrude had gone off together. "yes, lady tringle. as i have come back from abroad i thought that i might as well come and call. i did see sir thomas in the city." "was not that a very foolish thing you did?" "perhaps it was, lady tringle. perhaps it would have been better to ask permission to address your daughter in the regular course of things. there was, perhaps -perhaps a little romance in going off in that way." "it gave sir thomas a deal of trouble." "well, yes; he was so quick upon us, you know. may i be allowed to see gertrude now?" "upon my word i hardly know," said lady tringle, hesitating. "i did see sir thomas in the city." "but did he say you were to come and call?" "he gave his consent to the marriage." "but i am afraid there was to be no money," whispered lady tringle. "if money is no matter i suppose you may see her." but before the captain had resolved how he might best answer this difficult suggestion the door opened, and the young lady herself entered the room, together with her sister. "benjamin," said gertrude, "is this really you?" and then she flew into his arms. "my dear," said augusta, "do control your emotions." "yes, indeed, gertrude," said the mother. "as the things are at present you should control yourself. nobody as yet knows what may come of it." "oh, benjamin!" again exclaimed gertrude, tearing herself from his arms, throwing herself on the sofa, and covering her face with both her hands. "oh, benjamin -so you have come at last." "i am afraid he has come too soon," said augusta, who however had received her lesson from her husband, and had communicated some portion of her husband's tidings to her sister. "why too soon?" exclaimed gertrude. "it can never be too soon. oh, mamma, tell him that you make him welcome to your bosom as your second son-in-law." "upon my word, my dear, i do not know, without consulting your father." "but papa has consented," said gertrude. "but only if -" "oh, mamma," said mrs traffick, "do not talk about matters of business on such an occasion as this. all that must be managed between the gentlemen. if he is here as gertrude's acknowledged lover, and if papa has told him that he shall be accepted as such, i don't think that we ought to say a word about money. i do hate money. it does make things so disagreeable." "nobody can be more noble in everything of that kind than benjamin," said gertrude. "it is only because he loves me with all his heart that he is here. why else was it that he took me off to ostend?" captain batsby as he listened to all this felt that he ought to say something. and yet how dangerous might a word be! it was apparent to him, even in his perturbation, that the ladies were in fact asking him to renew his offer, and to declare that he renewed it altogether independently of any money consideration. he could not bring himself quite to agree with that noble sentiment in expressing which mrs traffick had declared her hatred of money. in becoming the son-in-law of a millionaire he would receive the honest congratulations of all his friends -on condition that he received some comfortable fraction out of the millions, but he knew well that he would subject himself to their ridicule were he to take the girl and lose the plunder. if he were to answer them now as they would have him answer he would commit himself to the girl without any bargain as to the plunder. and yet what else was there for him to do? he must be a brave man who can stand up before a girl and declare that he will love her for ever -on condition that she shall have so many thousand pounds; but he must be more than brave, he will be heroic, who can do so in the presence not only of the girl but of the girl's mother and married sister as well. captain batsby was no such hero. "of course," he said at last. "of course what?" asked augusta. "it was because i loved her." "i knew that he loved me," sobbed gertrude. "and you are here, because you intend to make her your wife in presence of all men?" asked augusta. "oh certainly." "then i suppose that it will be all right," said lady tringle. "it will be all right," said augusta. "and now, mamma, i think that we may leave them alone together." but to this lady tringle would not give her assent. she had not had confided to her the depth of mr traffick's wisdom, and declared herself opposed to any absolute overt love-making until sir thomas should have given his positive consent. "it is all the same thing, benjamin, is it not?" said augusta, assuming already the familiarity of a sister-in-law. "oh quite," said the captain. but gertrude looked as though she did not think it to be exactly the same. such deficiency as that, however, she had to endure; and she received from her sister after the captain's departure full congratulations as to her lover's return. "to tell you the truth," said augusta, "i didn't think that you would ever see him again. after what papa said to him in the city he might have got off and nobody could have said a word to him. now he's fixed." captain batsby effected his escape as quickly as he could, and went home a melancholy man. he, too, was aware that he was fixed; and, as he thought of this, a dreadful idea fell upon him that the honourable mr traffick had perhaps played him false. in the meantime mr traffick was true to his word and went into the city. in the early days of his married life his journeys to lombard street were frequent. the management and investing of his wife's money had been to him a matter of much interest, and he had felt a gratification in discussing any money matter with the man who handled millions. in this way he had become intimate with the ways of the house, though latterly his presence there had not been encouraged. "i suppose i can go in to sir thomas," he said, laying his hand upon a leaf in the counter, which he had been accustomed to raise for the purpose of his own entrance. but here he was stopped. his name should be taken in, and sir thomas duly apprised. in the meantime he was relegated to a dingy little waiting room, which was odious to him, and there he was kept waiting for half an hour. this made him angry, and he called to one of the clerks. "will you tell sir thomas that i must be down at the house almost immediately, and that i am particularly anxious to see him on business of importance?" for another ten minutes he was still kept, and then he was shown into his father-in-law's presence. "i am very sorry, traffick," said sir thomas, "but i really can't turn two directors of the bank of england out of my room, even for you." "i only thought i would just let you know that i am in a hurry." "so am i, for the matter of that. have you gone to your father's house today, so that you would not be able to see me in queen's gate?" this was intended to be very severe, but mr traffick bore it. it was one of those rough things which sir thomas was in the habit of saying, but which really meant nothing. "no. my father is still at his house as yet, though they are thinking of going every day. it is about another matter, and i did not want to trouble you with it at home." "let us hear what it is." "captain batsby has been with me." "oh, he has, has he?" "i've known him ever so long. he's a foolish fellow." "so he seems." "but a gentleman." "perhaps i am not so good a judge of that. his folly i did perceive." "oh, yes; he's a gentleman. you may take my word for that. and he has means." "that's an advantage." "while that fellow houston is hardly more than a beggar. and batsby is quite in earnest about gertrude." "if the two of them wish it he can have her tomorrow. she has made herself a conspicuous ass by running away with him, and perhaps it's the best thing she can do." "that's just it. augusta sees it quite in the same light." "augusta was never tempted. you wouldn't have run away." "it wasn't necessary, sir thomas, was it? there he is -ready to marry her tomorrow. but, of course, he is a little anxious about the money." "i dare say he is." "i've been talking to him -and the upshot is, that i have promised to speak to you. he isn't at all a bad fellow." "he'd keep a house over his wife's head, you think?" sir thomas had been particularly irate that morning, and before the arrival of his son-in-law had sworn to himself that traffick should go. augusta might remain, if she pleased, for the occurrence; but the honourable septimus should no longer eat and drink as an inhabitant of his house. "he'd do his duty by her as a man should do," said traffick, determined to ignore the disagreeable subject. "very well. there she is." "but of course he would like to hear something about money." "would he?" "that's only natural." "you found it so -did you not? what's the good of giving a girl money when her husband won't spend it? perhaps this captain batsby would expect to live at queen's gate or merle park." it was impossible to go on enduring this without notice. mr traffick, however, only frowned and shook his head. it was clear at last that sir thomas intended to be more than rough, and it was almost imperative upon mr traffick to be rough in return. "i am endeavouring to do my duty by the family," he said. "oh indeed." "gertrude has eloped with this man, and the thing is talked about everywhere. augusta feels it very much." "she does, does she?" "and i have thought it right to ask his intentions." "he didn't knock you down, or anything of that sort?" "knock me down?" "for interfering. but he hasn't pluck for that. houston would have done it immediately. and i should have said he was right. but if you have got anything to say, you had better say it. when you have done, then i shall have something to say." "i've told him that he couldn't expect as much as you would have given her but for this running away." "you told him that?" "yes; i told him that. then some sum had to be mentioned. he suggested a hundred thousand pounds." "how very modest! why should he have put up with less than you, seeing that he has got something of his own?" "he hasn't my position, sir. you know that well enough. now to make a long and short of it, i suggested sixty." "out of your own pocket?" "not exactly." "but out of mine?" "you're her father, and i suppose you intend to provide for her." "and you have come here to dictate to me the provision which i am to make for my own child! that is an amount of impudence which i did not expect even from you. but suppose that i agree to the terms. will he, do you think, consent to have a clause put into the settlement?" "what clause?" "something that shall bind him to keep a house for his own wife's use, so that he should not take my money and then come and live upon me afterwards." "sir thomas," said the member of parliament, "that is a mode of expression so uncourteous that i cannot bear it even from you." "is there any mode of expression that you cannot bear?" "if you want me to leave your house, say it at once." "why, i have been saying it for the last six months! i have been saying it almost daily since you were married." "if so you should have spoken more clearly, for i have not understood you." "heavens and earth!" ejaculated sir thomas. "am i to understand that you wish your child to leave your roof during this inclement weather in her present delicate condition?" "are you in a delicate condition?" asked sir thomas. to this mr traffick could condescend to make no reply. "because, if not, you, at any rate, had better go -unless you find the weather too inclement." "of course i shall go," said mr traffick. "no consideration on earth shall induce me to eat another meal under your roof until you have thought good to have expressed regret for what you have said." "then it is very long before i shall have to give you another meal." "and now what shall i say to captain batsby?" "tell him from me," said sir thomas, "that he cannot possibly set about his work more injudiciously than by making you his ambassador." then mr traffick took his departure. it may be as well to state here that mr traffick kept his threat religiously -at any rate, to the end of the session. he did not eat another meal during that period under his father-in-law's roof. but he slept there for the next two or three days until he had suited himself with lodgings in the neighbourhood of the house. in doing this, however, he contrived to get in and out without encountering sir thomas. his wife in her delicate condition -and because of the inclemency of the weather -awaited the occurrence at queen's gate. chapter 59 tregothnan the writer, in giving a correct chronicle of the doings of the tringle family at this time, has to acknowledge that gertrude, during the prolonged absence of captain batsby at brussels -an absence that was cruelly prolonged for more than a week -did make another little effort in another direction. her father, in his rough way, had expressed an opinion that she had changed very much for the worse in transferring her affections from mr houston to captain batsby, and had almost gone so far as to declare that had she been persistent with her houston the money difficulty might have been overcome. this was imprudent -unless, indeed, he was desirous of bringing back mr houston into the bosom of the tringles. it instigated gertrude to another attempt -which, however, she did not make till captain batsby had been away from her for at least four days without writing a letter. then it occurred to her that if she had a preference it certainly was for frank houston. no doubt the general desirability of marriage was her chief actuating motive. will the world of british young ladies be much scandalised if i say that such is often an actuating motive? they would be justly scandalised if i pretended that many of its members were capable of the speedy transitions which miss tringle was strong enough to endure; but transitions do take place, and i claim, on behalf of my young lady, that she should be regarded as more strong-minded and more determined than the general crowd of young ladies. she had thought herself to be off with the old love before she was on with the new. then the "new" had gone away to brussels -or heaven only knows where -and there seemed to be an opportunity of renewing matters with the "old". having perceived the desirability of matrimony, she simply carried out her purpose with a determined will. it was with a determined will, but perhaps with deficient judgment, that she had written as follows: "papa has altered his mind altogether. he speaks of you in the highest terms, and says that had you persevered he would have yielded about the money. do try him again. when hearts have been united it is terrible that they should be dragged asunder." mr traffick had been quite right in telling his father-in-law that "the thing had been talked about everywhere." the thing talked about had been gertrude's elopement. the daughter of a baronet and a millionaire cannot go off with the half-brother of another baronet and escape that penalty. the journey to ostend was in everybody's mouth, and had surprised frank houston the more because of the recent termination of his own little affair with the lady. that he should already have re-accommodated himself with imogene was intelligible to him, and seemed to admit of valid excuse before any jury of matrons. it was an old affair, and the love -real, true love -was already existing. he, at any rate, was going back to the better course -as the jury of matrons would have admitted. but gertrude's new affair had had to be arranged from the beginning, and shocked him by its celerity. "already!" he had said to himself -"gone off with another man already?" he felt himself to have been wounded in a tender part, and was conscious of a feeling that he should like to injure the successful lover -blackball him at a club, or do him some other mortal mischief. when, therefore, he received from the young lady the little billet above given, he was much surprised. could it be a hoax? it was certainly the young lady's handwriting. was he to be enticed once again into lombard street, in order that the clerks might set upon him in a body and maltreat him? was he to be decoyed into queen's gate, and made a sacrifice of by the united force of the housemaids? not understanding the celerity of the young lady, he could hardly believe the billet. when he received the note of which we have here spoken two months had elapsed since he had seen imogene and had declared to her his intention of facing the difficulties of matrimony in conjunction with herself as soon as she would be ready to undergo the ceremony with him. the reader will remember that her brother, mudbury docimer, had written to him with great severity, abusing both him and imogene for the folly of their intention. and houston, as he thought of their intention, thought to himself that perhaps they were foolish. the poverty, and the cradles, and the cabbages, were in themselves evils. but still he encouraged himself to think that there might be an evil worse even than folly. after that scene with imogene, in which she had offered to sacrifice herself altogether, and to be bound to him, even though they should never be married, on condition that he should take to himself no other wife, he had quite resolved that it behoved him not to be exceeded by her in generosity. he had stoutly repudiated her offer, which he had called a damnable compact. and then there had been a delightful scene between them, in which it had been agreed that they should face the cradles and the cabbages with bold faces. since that he had never allowed himself to fluctuate in his purpose. had sir thomas come to him with gertrude in one hand and the much-desired l#120,000 in the other, he would have repudiated the lot of them. he declared to himself with stern resolution that he had altogether washed his hands from dirt of that kind. cabbages and cradles for ever was the unpronounced cry of triumph with which he buoyed up his courage. he set himself to work earnestly, if not altogether steadfastly, to alter the whole tenor of his life. the champagne and the woodcocks -or whatever might be the special delicacies of the season -he did avoid. for some few days he absolutely dined upon a cut of mutton at an eating-house, and as he came forth from the unsavoury doors of the establishment regarded himself as a hero. cabbages and cradles for ever! he would say to himself, as he went away to drink a cup of tea with an old maiden aunt, who was no less surprised than gratified by his new virtue. therefore, when it had at last absolutely come home to him that the last little note had in truth been written by gertrude with no object of revenge, but with the intention of once more alluring him into the wealth of lombard street, he simply put it into his breastcoat-pocket, and left it there unanswered. mudbury docimer did not satisfy himself with writing the very uncourteous letter which the reader has seen, but proceeded to do his utmost to prevent the threatened marriage. "she is old enough to look after herself," he had said, as though all her future actions must be governed by her own will. but within ten days of the writing of that letter he had found it expedient to go down into the country, and to take his sister with him. as the head of the docimer family he possessed a small country house almost in the extremity of cornwall; and thither he went. it was a fraternal effort made altogether on his sister's behalf, and was so far successful that imogene was obliged to accompany him. it was all very well for her to feel that as she was of age she could do as she pleased. but a young lady is constrained by the exigencies of society to live with somebody. she cannot take a lodging by herself, as her brother may do. therefore, when mudbury docimer went down to cornwall, imogene was obliged to accompany him. "is this intended for banishment?" she said to him when they had been about a week in the country. "what do you call banishment? you used to like the country in the spring." it was now the middle of april. "so i do, and in summer also. but i like nothing under constraint." "i am sorry that circumstances should make it imperative upon me to remain here just at present." "why cannot you tell the truth, mudbury?" "have i told you any falsehood?" "why do you not say outright that i have been brought down here to be out of frank houston's way?" "because frank houston is a name which i do not wish to mention to you again -at any rate for some time." "what would you do it he were to show himself here?" she asked. "tell him at once that he was not welcome. in other words, i would not have him here. it is very improbable i should think that he would come without a direct invitation from me. that invitation he will never have until i feel satisfied that you and he have changed your mind again, and that you mean to stick to it." "i do not think we shall do that." "then he shall not come down here; nor, as far as i am able to arrange it, shall you go up to london." "then i am a prisoner?" "you may put it as you please," said her brother. "i have no power of detaining you. whatever influence i have i think it right to use. i am altogether opposed to this marriage, believing it to be an absurd infatuation. i think that he is of the same opinion." "no!" said she, indignantly. "that i believe to be his feeling," he continued, taking no notice of her assertion. "he is as perfectly aware as i am that you two are not adapted to live happily together on an income of a few hundreds a year. some time ago it was agreed between you that it was so. you both were quite of one mind, and i was given to understand that the engagement was at an end. it was so much at an end that he made an arrangement for marrying another woman. but your feelings are stronger than his, and you allowed them to get the better of you. then you enticed him back from the purpose on which you had both decided." "enticed!" said she. "i did nothing of the kind!" "would he have changed his mind if you had not enticed him?" "i did nothing of the kind. i offered to remain just as we are." "that is all very well. of course he could not accept such an offer. thinking as i do, it is my duty to keep you apart as long as i can. if you contrive to marry him in opposition to my efforts, the misery of both of you must be on your head. i tell you fairly that i do not believe he wishes anything of the kind." "i am quite sure he does," said imogene. "very well. do you leave him alone; stay down here, and see what will come of it. i quite agree that such a banishment, as you call it, is not a happy prospect for you -but it is happier than that of a marriage with frank houston. give that up, and then you can go back to london and begin the world again." begin the world again! she knew what that meant. she was to throw herself into the market, and look for such other husband as providence might send her. she had tried that before, and had convinced herself that providence could never send her any that could be acceptable. the one man had taken possession of her, and there never could be a second. she had not known her own strength -or her own weakness as the case might be -when she had agreed to surrender the man she loved because there had been an alteration in their prospects of an income. she had struggled with herself, had attempted to amuse herself with the world, had told herself that somebody would come who would banish that image from her thoughts and heart. she had bade herself to submit to the separation for his welfare. then she had endeavoured to quiet herself by declaring to herself that the man was no hero -was unworthy of so much thinking. but it had all been of no avail. gertrude tringle had been a festering sore to her. frank, whether a hero or only a commonplace man, was -as she owned to herself -hero enough for her. then came the opening for a renewal of the engagement. frank had been candid with her, and had told her everything. the tringle money would not be forthcoming on his behalf. then -not resolving to entice him back again -she had done so. the word was odious to her, and was rejected with disdain when used against her by her brother -but, when alone, she acknowledged to herself that it was true. she had enticed her lover back again -to his great detriment. yes; she certainly had enticed him back. she certainly was about to sacrifice him because of her love. "if i could only die, and there be an end of it!" she exclaimed to herself. though tregothnan hall, as the docimers' house was called, was not open to frank houston, there was the post running always. he had written to her half a dozen times since she had been in cornwall, and had always spoken of their engagement as an affair at last irrevocably fixed. she, too, had written little notes, tender and loving, but still tinged by that tone of despondency which had become common to her. "as for naming a day," she said once, "suppose we fix the first of january, ten years hence. mudbury's opposition will be worn out by old age, and you will have become thoroughly sick of the pleasures of london." but joined to this there would be a few jokes and then some little word of warmest, most enduring, most trusting love. "don't believe me if i say that i am not happy in knowing that i am altogether your own." then there would come a simple "i" as a signature, and after that some further badinage respecting her "cerberus", as she called her brother. but after that word, that odious word, "enticed," there went another letter up to london of altogether another nature. i have changed my mind again [she said] and have become aware that, though i should die in doing it -though we should both die if it were possible -there should be an end of everything between you and me. yes, frank; there! i send you back your troth, and demand my own in return. after all why should not one die -hang oneself if it be necessary? to be self-denying is all that is necessary -at any rate to a woman. hanging or lying down and dying, or lingering on and saying one's prayers and knitting stockings, is altogether immaterial. i have sometimes thought mudbury to be brutal to me, but i have never known him to be untrue -or even, as i believe, mistaken. he sees clearly and knows what will happen. he tells me that i have enticed you back. i am not true as he is. so i threw him back the word in his teeth -though its truth at the moment was going like a dagger through my heart. i know myself to have been selfish, unfeeling, unfeminine, when i induced you to surrender yourself to a mode of life which will make you miserable. i have sometimes been proud of myself because i have loved you so truly; but now i hate myself and despise myself because i have been incapable of the first effort which love should make. love should at any rate be unselfish. he tells me that you will be miserable and that the misery will be on my head -and i believe him. there shall be an end of it. i want no promise from you. there may, perhaps, be a time in which imogene docimer as a sturdy old maid shall be respected and serene of mind. as a wife who had enticed her husband to his misery she would be respected neither by him nor by herself -and as for serenity it would be quite out of the question. i have been unfortunate. that is all -but not half so unfortunate as others that i see around me. pray, pray, pray, take this as final, and thus save me from renewed trouble and renewed agony. now i am yours truly, never again will i be affectionate to anyone with true feminine love, imogene docimer houston when he received the above letter of course had no alternative but to declare that it could not possibly be regarded as having any avail. and indeed he had heart enough in his bosom to be warmed to something like true heat by such words as these. the cabbages and cradles ran up in his estimation. the small house at pau, which in some of his more despondent moments had assumed an unqualified appearance of domestic discomfort, was now ornamented and accoutred till it seemed to be a little paradise. the very cabbages blossomed into roses, and the little babies in the cradles produced a throb of paternal triumph in his heart. if she were woman enough to propose to herself such an agony of devotion, could he not be man enough to demand from her a devotion of a different kind? as to mudbury docimer's truth, he believed in it not at all, but was quite convinced of the man's brutality. yes; she should hang herself -but it should be round his neck. the serenity should be displayed by her not as an aunt but as a wife and mother. as for enticing, did he not now -just in this moment of his manly triumph -acknowledge to himself that she had enticed him to his happiness, to his glory, to his welfare? in this frame of mind he wrote his answer as follows: my dearest, you have no power of changing your mind again. there must be some limit to vacillations, and that has been reached. something must be fixed at last. something has been fixed at last, and i most certainly shall not consent to any further unfixing. what right has mudbury to pretend to know my feelings? or, for the matter of that, what right have you to accept his description of them? i tell you now that i place my entire happiness in the hope of making you my wife. i call upon you to ignore all the selfish declarations as to my own ideas which i have made in times past. the only right which you could now possibly have to separate yourself from me would come from your having ceased to love me. you do not pretend to say that such is the case; and therefore, with considerable indignation, but still very civilly, i desire that mudbury with his hardhearted counsels may go to the - enticed! of course you have enticed me. i suppose that women do as a rule entice men, either to their advantage or disadvantage. i will leave it to you to say whether you believe that such enticement, if it be allowed its full scope, will lead to one or the other as far as i am concerned. i never was so happy as when i felt that you had enticed me back to the hopes of former days. now i am yours, as always, and most affectionately, frank houston "i shall expect the same word back from you by return of post scored under as eagerly as those futile 'prays'." imogene when she received this was greatly disturbed -not knowing how to carry herself in her great resolve -or whether indeed that resolve must not be again abandoned. she had determined, should her lover's answer be as she had certainly intended it to be when she wrote her letter, to go at once to her brother and to declare to him that the danger was at an end, and that he might return to london without any fear of a relapse on her part. but she could not do so with such a reply as that she now held in her pocket. if that reply could, in very truth, be true, then there must be another revulsion, another change of purpose, another yielding to absolute joy. if it could be the case that frank houston no longer feared the dangers that he had feared before, if he had in truth reconciled himself to a state of things which he had once described as simple poverty, if he really placed his happiness on the continuation of his love, then -then, why should she make the sacrifice? why should she place such implicit confidence in her brother's infallibility against error, seeing that by doing so she would certainly shipwreck her own happiness -and his too, if his words were to be trusted? he called upon her to write to him again by return of post. she was to write to him and unsay those prayers, and comfort him with a repetition of that dear word which she had declared that she would never use again with all its true meaning. that was his express order to her. should she obey it, or should she not obey it? should she vacillate again, or should she leave his last letter unanswered with stern obduracy? she acknowledged to herself that it was a dear letter, deserving the best treatment at her hands, giving her lover credit, probably, for more true honesty than he deserved. what was the best treatment? her brother had plainly shown his conviction that the best treatment would be to leave him without meddling with him any further. her sister-in-law, though milder in her language, was, she feared, of the same opinion. would it not be better for him not to be meddled with? ought not that to be her judgment, looking at the matter all round? she did not at any rate obey him at all points, for she left his letter in her pocket for three or four days, while she considered the matter backwards and forwards. chapter 60 aunt rosina during this period of heroism it had been necessary to houston to have some confidential friend to whom from time to time he could speak of his purpose. he could not go on eating slices of boiled mutton at eating-houses, and drinking driblets of bad wine out of little decanters no bigger than the bottles in a cruet stand, without having someone to encourage him in his efforts. it was a hard apprenticeship, and, coming as it did rather late in life for such a beginning, and after much luxurious indulgence, required some sympathy and consolation. there were tom shuttlecock and lord john battledore at the club. lord john was the man as to whose expulsion because of his contumacious language so much had been said, but who lived through that and various other dangers. these had been his special friends, and to them he had confided everything in regard to the tringle marriage. shuttlecock had ridiculed the very idea of love, and had told him that everything else was to be thrown to the dogs in pursuit of a good income. battledore had reminded him that there was "a deuced deal of cut-and-come-again in a hundred and twenty thousand pounds." they had been friends, not always altogether after his own heart, but friends who had served his purpose when he was making his raid upon lombard street. but they were not men to whom he could descant on the wholesomeness of cabbages as an article of daily food, or who would sympathise with the struggling joys of an embryo father. to their thinking, women were occasionally very convenient as being the depositaries of some of the accruing wealth of the world. frank had been quite worthy of their friendship as having "spotted" and nearly "run down" for himself a well-laden city heiress. but now tom shuttlecock and lord john battledore were distasteful to him -as would he be to them. but he found the confidential friend in his maiden aunt. miss houston was an old lady -older than her time, as are some people -who lived alone in a small house in green street. she was particular in calling it green street, hyde park. she was very anxious to have it known that she never occupied it during the months of august, september, and october -though it was often the case with her that she did not in truth expatriate herself for more than six weeks. she was careful to have a fashionable seat in a fashionable church. she dearly loved to see her name in the papers when she was happy enough to be invited to a house whose entertainments were chronicled. there were a thousand little tricks -i will not be harsh enough to call them unworthy -by which she served mammon. but she did not limit her service to the evil spirit. when in her place in church she sincerely said her prayers. when in london, or out of it, she gave a modicum of her slender income to the poor. and, though she liked to see her name in the papers as one of the fashionable world, she was a great deal too proud of the blood of the houstons to toady anyone or to ask for any favour. she was a neat, clean, nice-looking old lady, who understood that if economies were to be made in eating and drinking they should be effected at her own table and not at that of the servants who waited upon her. this was the confidential friend whom frank trusted in his new career. it must be explained that aunt rosina, as miss houston was called, had been well acquainted with her nephew's earlier engagement, and had approved of imogene as his future wife. then had come the unexpected collapse in the uncle's affairs, by which aunt rosina as well as others in the family had suffered -and frank, much to his aunt's displeasure, had allowed himself to be separated from the lady of his love on account of his comparative poverty. she had heard of gertrude tringle and all her money, but from a high standing of birth and social belongings had despised all the tringles and all their money. to her, as a maiden lady, truth in love was everything. to her, as a well-born lady, good blood was everything. therefore, though there had been no quarrel between her and frank, there had been a cessation of sympathetic interest, and he had been thrown into the hands of the battledores and shuttlecocks. now again the old sympathies were revived, and frank found it convenient to drink tea with his aunt when other engagements allowed it. "i call that an infernal interference," he said to his aunt, showing her imogene's letters. "my dear frank, you need not curse and swear," said the old lady. "infernal is not cursing nor yet swearing." then miss houston, having liberated her mind by her remonstrance, proceeded to read the letter. "i call that abominable," said frank, alluding of course to the allusions made in the letter to mudbury docimer. "it is a beautiful letter -just what i should have expected from imogene. my dear, i will tell you what i propose. remain as you are both of you for five years." "five years. that's sheer nonsense." "five years, my dear, will run by like a dream. five years to look back upon is as nothing." "but these five years are five years to be looked forward to. it is out of the question." "but you say that you could not live as a married man." "live! i suppose we could live." then he thought of the cabbages and the cottage at pau. "there would be seven hundred a year, i suppose." "couldn't you do something, frank?" "what, to earn money? no; i don't think i could. if i attempted to break stones i shouldn't break enough to pay for the hammers." "couldn't you write a book?" "that would be worse than the stones. i sometimes thought i could paint a picture -but, if i did, nobody would buy it. as to making money that is hopeless. i could save some, by leaving off gloves and allowing myself only three clean shirts a-week." "that would be dreadful, frank." "it would be dreadful, but it is quite clear that i must do something. an effort has to be made." this he said with a voice the tone of which was almost heroic. then they discussed the matter at great length, in doing which aunt rosina thoroughly encouraged him in his heroism. that idea of remaining unmarried for another short period of five years was allowed to go by the board, and when they parted on that night it was understood that steps were to be taken to bring about a marriage as speedily as possible. "perhaps i can do a little to help," said aunt bosina, in a faint whisper as frank left the room. frank houston, when he showed imogene's letter to his aunt, had already answered it. then he waited a day or two, not very patiently, for a further rejoinder from imogene -in which she of course was to unsay all that she had said before. but when, after four or five days, no rejoinder had come, and his fervour had been increased by his expectation, then he told his aunt that he should immediately take some serious step. the more ardent he was the better his aunt loved him. could he have gone down and carried off his bride, and married her at once, in total disregard of the usual wedding cake and st george's, hanover square ceremonies to which the houston family had always been accustomed, she could have found it in her heart to forgive him. "do not be rash, frank," she said. he merely shook his head, and as he again left her declared that he was not going to be driven this way or that by such a fellow as mudbury docimer. "as i live, there's frank coming through the gate." this was said by imogene to her sister-in-law, as they were walking up and down the road which led from the lodge to the tregothnan house. the two ladies were at that moment discussing imogene's affairs. no rejoinder had as yet been made to frank's last letter, which, to imogene's feeling, was the most charming epistle which had ever come from the hands of a true lover. there had been passion and sincerity in every word of it -even when he had been a little too strong in his language as he denounced the hardhearted counsels of her brother. but yet she had not responded to all this sincerity, nor had she as yet withdrawn the resolution which she had herself declared. mrs docimer was of opinion that that resolution should not be withdrawn, and had striven to explain that the circumstances were now the same as when, after full consideration, they had determined that the engagement should come to an end. at this very moment she was speaking words of wisdom to this effect and as she did so frank appeared, walking up from the gate. "what will mudbury say?" was mrs docimer's first ejaculation. but imogene, before she had considered how this danger might be encountered, rushed forward and gave herself up -i fear we must confess -into the arms of her lover. after that it was felt at once that she had withdrawn all her last resolution and had vacillated again. there was no ground left even for an argument now that she had submitted herself to be embraced. frank's words of affection need not here be repeated, but they were of a nature to leave no doubt on the minds of either of the ladies. mudbury had declared that he would not receive houston in his house as his sister's lover, and had expressed his opinion that even houston would not have the face to show his face there. but houston had come, and something must be done with him. it was soon ascertained that he had walked over from penzance, which was but two miles off, and had left his portmanteau behind him. "i wouldn't bring anything," said he. "mudbury would find it easier to maltreat my things than myself. it would look so foolish to tell the man with a fly to carry them back at once. is he in the house?" "he is about the place," said mrs docimer, almost trembling. "is he very fierce against me?" "he thinks it had better be all over." "i am of a different way of thinking, you see. i cannot acknowledge that he has any right to dictate to imogene." "nor can i," said imogene. "of course he can turn me out." "if he does i shall go with you," said imogene. "we have made up our minds to it," said frank, "and he had better let us do as we please. he can make himself disagreeable, of course; but he has got no power to prevent us." now they had reached the house, and frank was of course allowed to enter. had he not entered neither would imogene, who was so much taken by this further instance of her lover's ardour that she was determined now to be led by him in everything. his explanation of that word "enticed" had been so thoroughly satisfactory to her that she was no longer in the least angry with herself because she had enticed him. she had quite come to see that it is the duty of a young woman to entice a young man. frank and imogene were soon left alone, not from any kindness of feeling on the part of mrs docimer, but because the wife felt it necessary to find her husband. "oh, mudbury, who do you think has come? he is here!" "houston?" "yes; frank houston!, "in the house?" "he is in the house. but he hasn't brought anything. he doesn't mean to stay." "what does that matter? he shall not be asked even to dine here." "if he is turned out she will go with him! if she says so she will do it. you cannot prevent her. that's what would come of it if she were to insist on going up to london with him." "he is a scoundrel!" "no, mudbury -not a scoundrel. you cannot call him a scoundrel. there is something firm about him isn't there?" "to come to my house when i told him not?" "but he does really love her." "bother!" "at any rate there they are in the breakfast-parlour, and something must be done. i couldn't tell him not to come in. and she wouldn't have come without him. there will be enough for them to live upon. don't you think you'd better?" docimer, as he returned to the house, declared that he "did not think he'd better". but he had to confess to himself that, whether it were better or whether it were worse, he could do very little to prevent it. the greeting of the two men was anything but pleasant. "what i have got to say i would rather say outside," said docimer. "certainly," said frank. "i suppose i'm to be allowed to return?" "if he does not," -said imogene, who at her brother's request had left the room, but still stood at the open door -"if he does not i shall go to him in penzance. you will hardly attempt to keep me a prisoner." "who says that he is not to return? i think that you are two idiots, but i am quite aware that i cannot prevent you from being married if you are both determined." then he led the way out through the hall, and frank followed him. "i cannot understand that any man should be so fickle," he said, when they were both out on the walk together. "constant, i should suppose you mean." "i said fickle, and i meant it. it was at your own suggestion that you and imogene were to be separated." "no doubt; it was at my suggestion, and with her consent. but you see that we have changed our minds." "and will change them again." "we are steady enough in our purpose now, at any rate. you hear what she says. if i came down here to persuade her to alter her purpose -to talk her into doing something of which you disapproved, and as to which she agreed with you -then you might do something by quarrelling with me. but what's the use of it, when she and i are of one mind? you know that you cannot talk her over." "where do you mean to live?" "i'll tell you all about that if you'll allow me to send into penzance for my things. i cannot discuss matters with you if you proclaim yourself to be my enemy. you say we are both idiots." "i do." "very well. then you had better put up with two idiots. you can't cure their idiocy. nor have you any authority to prevent them from exhibiting it." the argument was efficacious though the idiocy was acknowledged. the portmanteau was sent for, and before the evening was over frank had again been received at tregothnan as imogene's accepted lover. then frank had his story to tell and his new proposition to make. aunt rosina had offered to join her means with his. the house in green street, no doubt, was small, but room it was thought could be made, at any rate till the necessity had come for various cribs and various cradles. "i cannot imagine that you will endure to live with aunt rosina," said the brother. "why on earth should i object to aunt rosina?" said imogene. "she and i have always been friends." in her present mood she would hardly have objected to live with any old woman, however objectionable. "and we shall be able to have a small cottage somewhere," said frank. "she will keep the house in london, and we shall keep the cottage." "and what on earth will you do with yourself?" "i have thought of that too," said frank. "i shall take to painting pictures in earnest -portraits probably. i don't see why i shouldn't do as well as anybody else." "that head of yours of old mrs jones", said imogene "was a great deal better than dozens of things one sees every year in the academy." "bother!" exclaimed docimer. "i don't see why he should not succeed, if he really will work hard," said mrs docimer. "bother!" "why should it be bother?" said frank, put upon his mettle. "ever so many fellows have begun and have got on, older than i am. and, even if i don't earn anything, i've got an employment." "and is the painting-room to be in green street also?" asked docimer. "just at present i shall begin by copying things at the national gallery," explained houston, who was not as yet prepared with his answer to that difficulty as to a studio in the little house in green street. when the matter had been carried as far as this it was manifest enough that anything like opposition to imogene's marriage was to be withdrawn. houston remained at tregothnan for a couple of days and then returned to london. a week afterwards the docimers followed him, and early in the following june the two lovers, after all their troubles and many vacillations, were made one at st george's church, to the great delight of aunt rosina. it cannot be said that the affair gave equal satisfaction to all the bridegroom's friends, as may be learnt from the following narration of two conversations which took place in london very shortly after the wedding. "fancy after all that fellow houston going and marrying such a girl as imogene docimer, without a single blessed shilling to keep themselves alive." this was said in the smoking-room of houston's club by lord john battledore to tom shuttlecock; but it was said quite aloud, so that houston's various acquaintances might be enabled to offer their remarks on so interesting a subject; and to express their pity for the poor object of their commiseration. "it's the most infernal piece of folly i ever heard in my life," said shuttlecock. "there was that tringle girl with l#200,000 to be had just for the taking -traffick's wife's sister, you know." "there was something wrong about that," said another. "benjamin batsby, that stupid fellow who used to be in the twentieth, ran off with her just when everything had been settled between houston and old tringle." "not a bit of it," said battledore. "tringle had quarrelled with houston before that. batsby did go with her, but the governor wouldn't come down with the money. then the girl was brought back and there was no marriage." upon that the condition of poor gertrude in reference to her lovers and her fortune was discussed by those present with great warmth; but they all agreed that houston had proved himself to be a bigger fool than any of them had expected. "by george, he's going to set up for painting portraits," said lord john, with great disgust. in queen's gate the matter was discussed by the ladies there very much in the same spirit. at this time gertrude was engaged to captain batsby, if not with the full approbation at any rate with the consent both of her father and mother, and therefore she could speak of frank houston and his bride, if with disdain, still without wounded feelings. "here it is in the papers, francis houston and imogene docimer," said mrs traffick. "so she has really caught him at last!" said gertrude. "there was not much to catch," rejoined mrs traffick. "i doubt whether they have got l#500 a year between them." "it does seem so very sudden," said lady tringle. "sudden!" said gertrude. "they have been about it for the last five years. of course he has tried to wriggle out of it all through. i am glad that she has succeeded at last, if only because he deserves it." "i wonder where they'll find a place to live in," said augusta. this took place in the bedroom which mrs traffick still occupied in queen's gate, when she had been just a month a mother. thus, with the kind assistance of aunt rosina, frank houston and imogene docimer were married at last, and the chronicler hereby expresses a hope that it may not be long before frank may see a picture of his own hanging on the walls of the academy, and that he may live to be afraid of the coming of no baby. chapter 61 tom tringle goes upon his travels we must again go back and pick up our threads to april, having rushed forward to be present at the wedding of frank houston and imogene docimer, which did not take place till near midsummer. this we must do at once in regard to tom tringle, who, if the matter be looked at aright, should be regarded as the hero of this little history. ayala indeed, who is no doubt the real heroine among so many young ladies who have been more or less heroic, did not find in him the angel of whom she had dreamed, and whose personal appearance on earth was necessary to her happiness. but he had been able very clearly to pick out an angel for himself, and, though he had failed in his attempts to take the angel home with him, had been constant in his endeavours as long as there remained to him a chance of success. he had shown himself to be foolish, vulgar, and ignorant. he had given way to bolivian champagne and faddle intimacies. he had been silly enough to think that he could bribe his ayala with diamonds for herself, and charm her with cheaper jewelry on his own person. he had thought to soar high by challenging his rival to a duel, and had then been tempted by pot courage to strike him in the streets. a very vulgar and foolish young man! but a young man capable of a persistent passion! young men not foolish and not vulgar are, perhaps, common enough. but the young men of constant heart and capable of such persistency as tom's are not to be found every day walking about the streets of the metropolis. jonathan stubbs was constant, too; but it may be doubted whether the colonel ever really despaired. the merit is to despair and yet to be constant. when a man has reason to be assured that a young lady is very fond of him, he may always hope that love will follow -unless indeed the love which he seeks has been already given away elsewhere. moreover, stubbs had many substantial supports at his back; the relationship of the marchesa, the friendship of lady albury, the comforts of stalham -and not least, if last, the capabilities and prowess of croppy. then, too, he was neither vulgar nor foolish nor ignorant. tom tringle had everything against him -everything that would weigh with ayala; and yet he fought his battle out to the last gasp. therefore, i desire my hearers to regard tom tringle as the hero of the transactions with which they have been concerned, and to throw their old shoes after him as he starts away upon his grand tour. "tom, my boy, you have to go, you know, in four days," said his father to him. at this time tom had as yet given no positive consent as to his departure. he had sunk into a low state of moaning and groaning, in which he refused even to accede to the doctrine of the expediency of a manly bearing. "what's the good of telling a lie about it?" he would say to his mother. "what's the good of manliness when a fellow would rather be drowned?" he had left his bed indeed, and had once or twice sauntered out of the house. he had been instigated by his sister to go down to his club, under the idea that by such an effort he would shake off the despondency which overwhelmed him. but he had failed in the attempts, and had walked by the doors of the mountaineers, finding himself unable to face the hall porter. but still the preparations for his departure were going on. it was presumed that he was to leave london for liverpool on the friday, and his father had now visited him in his own room on the tuesday evening with the intention of extorting from him his final consent. sir thomas had on that morning expressed himself very freely to his son-in-law mr traffick, and on returning home had been glad to find that his words had been of avail, at any rate as regarded the dinner-hour. he was tender-hearted towards his son, and disposed to tempt him rather than threaten him into obedience. "i haven't ever said i would go," replied tom. "but you must, you know. everything has been packed up, and i want to make arrangements with you about money. i have got a cabin for you to yourself, and captain merry says that you will have a very pleasant passage. the equinoxes are over." "i don't care about the equinoxes," said tom. "i should like bad weather if i am to go." "perhaps you may have a touch of that, too." "if the ship could be dashed against a rock i should prefer it!" exclaimed tom. "that's nonsense. the cunard ships never are dashed against rocks. by the time you've been three days at sea you'll be as hungry as a hunter. now, tom, how about money?" "i don't care about money," said tom. "don't you? then you're very unlike anybody else that i meet. i think i had better give you power to draw at new york, san francisco, yokohama, pekin, and calcutta." "am i to go to pekin?" asked tom, with renewed melancholy. "well, yes -i think so. you had better see what the various houses are doing in china. and then from calcutta you can go up the country. by that time i dare say we shall have possession of kabul. with such a government as we have now, thank god! the russians will have been turned pretty nearly out of asia by this time next year."?ss1?ee "am i to be away more than a year?" "if i were you," said the father, glad to catch the glimmer of assent which was hereby implied -"if i were you i would do it thoroughly whilst i was about it. had i seen so much when i was young i should have been a better man of business." "it's all the same to me," said tom. "say ten years, if you like it! say twenty! i shan't ever want to come back again. where am i to go after kabul?" "i didn't exactly fix it that you should go to kabul. of course you will write home and give me your own opinion as you travel on. you will stay two or three months probably in the states." "am i to go to niagara?" he asked. "of course you will, if you wish it. the falls of niagara, i am told, are very wonderful." "if a man is to drown himself," said tom, "it's the sort of place to do it effectually." "oh, tom!" exclaimed his father. "do not speak to me in that way when i am doing everything in my power to help you in your trouble!" "you cannot help me," said tom. "circumstances will. time will do it. employment will do it. a sense of your dignity as a man will do it, when you find yourself amongst others who know nothing of what you have suffered. you revel in your grief now because those around you know that you have failed. all that will be changed when you are with strangers. you should not talk to your father of drowning yourself!" "that was wrong. i know it was wrong," said tom, humbly. "i won't do it if i can help it -but perhaps i had better not go there. and how long ought i to stay at yokohama? perhaps you had better put it all down on a bit of paper." then sir thomas endeavoured to explain to him that all that he said now was in the way of advice. that it would be in truth left to himself to go almost where he liked and to stay at each place almost as long as he liked -that he would be his own master, and that within some broad and undefined limits he would have as much money as he pleased to spend. surely no preparations for a young man's tour were ever made with more alluring circumstances! but tom could not be tempted into any expression of satisfaction. this, however, sir thomas did gain -that before he left his son's room it was definitely settled -that tom should take his departure on the friday, going down to liverpool by an afternoon train on that day. "i tell you what," said sir thomas; "i'll go down with you, see you on board the ship, and introduce you to captain merry. i shall be glad of an opportunity of paying a visit to liverpool." and so the question of tom's departure was settled. on the wednesday and thursday he seemed to take some interest in his bags and portmanteaus, and began himself to look after those assuagements of the toils of travel which are generally dear to young men. he interested himself in a fur coat, in a well-arranged despatch box, and in a very neat leathern case which was intended to hold two brandy flasks. he consented to be told of the number of his shirts, and absolutely expressed an opinion that he should want another pair of dress-boots. when this occurred every female bosom in the house, from lady tringle's down to the kitchen-maid's, rejoiced at the signs of recovery which evinced themselves. but neither lady tringle nor the kitchen-maid, nor did any of the intermediate female bosoms, know how he employed himself when he left the house on that thursday afternoon. he walked across the park, and, calling at kingsbury crescent, left a note addressed to his aunt. it was as follows: "i start tomorrow afternoon -i hardly know whither. it may be for years or it may be for ever. i should wish to say a word to ayala before i go. will she see me if i come at twelve o'clock exactly tomorrow morning? i will call for an answer in half an hour. t.t., junior. of course i am aware that ayala is to become the bride of colonel jonathan stubbs." in half an hour he returned, and got his answer. "ayala will be glad to have an opportunity of saying goodbye to you tomorrow morning." from this it will be seen that ayala had at that time returned from stalham to kingsbury crescent. she had come back joyful in heart, thoroughly triumphant as to her angel, with everything in the world sweet and happy before her -desirous if possible to work her fingers on in mending the family linen, if only she could do something for somebody in return for all the joy that the world was giving her. when she was told that tom wished to see her for the last time -for the last time at any rate before her marriage -she assented at once. "i think you should see him as he asks it," said her aunt. "poor tom! of course i will see him." and so the note was written which tom received when he called the second time at the door. at half past eleven he skulked out of the house in queen's gate, anxious to avoid his mother and sisters, who were on their side anxious to devote every remaining minute of the time to his comfort and welfare. i am afraid it must be acknowledged that he went with all his jewelry. it could do no good. at last he was aware of that. but still he thought that she would like him better with his jewelry than without it. stubbs wore no gems, not even a ring, and ayala when she saw her cousin enter the room could only assure herself that the male angels certainly were never bejewelled. she was alone in the drawing-room, mrs dosett having arranged that at the expiration of ten minutes, which were to be allowed to tom for his private adieux, she would come down to say goodbye to her nephew. "ayala!" said tom. "so you are going away -for a very long journey, tom." "yes, ayala; for a very long journey; to pekin and kabul, if i live through to get to those sort of places." "i hope you will live through, tom." "thank you, ayala. thank you. i dare say i shall. they tell me i shall get over it. i don't feel like getting over it now." "you'll find some beautiful young lady at pekin, perhaps." "beauty will never have any effect upon me again, ayala. beauty indeed! think what i have suffered from beauty! from the first moment in which you came down to glenbogie i have been a victim to it. it has destroyed me -destroyed me!" "i am sure you will come back quite well," said ayala, hardly knowing how to answer the last appeal. "perhaps i may. if i can only get my heart to turn to stone, then i shall. i don't know why i should have been made to care so much about it. other people don't." "and now we must say, goodbye, i suppose." "oh, yes -goodbye! i did want to say one or two words if you ain't in a hurry. of course you'll be his bride now." "i hope so," said ayala. "i take that for granted. of course i hate him." "oh, tom; you shan't say that." "it's human nature! i can tell a lie if you want it. i'd do anything for you. but you may tell him this: i'm very sorry i struck him." "he knows that, tom. he has said so to me." "he behaved well to me -very well -as he always does to everybody." "now, tom, that is good of you. i do like you so much for saying that." "but i hate him!" "no!" "the evil spirits always hate the good ones. i am conscious of an evil spirit within my bosom. it is because my spirit is evil that you would not love me. he is good, and you love him." "yes; i do," said ayala. "and now we will change the conversation. ayala, i have got a little present which you must take from me." "oh, no!" said ayala, thinking of the diamond necklace. "it's only a little thing -and i hope you will." then he brought out from his pocket a small brooch which he had selected from his own stock of jewelry for the occasion. "we are cousins, you know." "yes, we are cousins," said ayala, accepting the brooch, but still accepting it unwillingly. "he must be very disdainful if he would object to such a little thing as this," said tom, referring to the colonel. "he is not at all disdainful. he will not object in the least. i am sure of that, tom. i will take it then, and i will wear it sometimes as a memento that we have parted like friends -as cousins should do." "yes, as friends," said tom, who thought that even that word was softer to his ear than cousins. then he took her by the hand and looked into her face wistfully, thinking what might be the effect if for the last and for the first time he should snatch a kiss. had he done so i think she would have let it pass without rebuke under the guise of cousinship. it would have been very disagreeable -but then he was going away for so long a time, for so many miles! but at the moment mrs dosett came in, and ayala was saved. "goodbye," he said; "goodbye," and without waiting to take the hand which his aunt offered him he hurried out of the room, out of the house, and back across the gardens to queen's gate. at queen's gate there was an early dinner, at three o'clock, at which sir thomas did not appear, as he had arranged to come out of the city and meet his son at the railway station. there were, therefore, sitting at the board for the last time the mother and the two sisters with the intending traveller. "oh, tom," said lady tringle, as soon as the servant had left them together, "i do so hope you will recover." "of course he will recover," said augusta. "why shouldn't he recover?" asked gertrude. "it's all in a person's mind. if he'd only make up his mind not to think about her the thing would be done, and there would be nothing the matter with him." "there are twenty others, ever so much better than ayala, would have him tomorrow," said his mother. "and be glad to catch him," said gertrude. "he's not like one of those who haven't got anything to make a wife comfortable with." "as for ayala," said augusta, "she didn't deserve such good luck. i am told that that colonel stubbs can't afford to keep any kind of carriage for her. but then, to be sure, she has never been used to a carriage." "oh, tom, do look up," said his mother, "and say that you will try to be happy." "he'll be all right in new york," said gertrude. "there's no place in the world, they say, where the girls put themselves forward so much, and make things so pleasant for the young men." "he will soon find someone there", said augusta, "with a good deal more to say for herself than ayala, and a great deal better looking." "i hope he will find someone who will really love him," said his mother. tom sat silent while he listened to all this encouragement, turning his face from one speaker to the other. it was continued, with many other similar promises of coming happiness, and assurances that he had been a gainer in losing all that he had lost, when he suddenly turned sharply upon them, and strongly expressed his feelings to his sisters. "i don't believe that either of you know anything about it," he said. "don't know anything about what?" said augusta, who, as a lady who had been married over twelve months and was soon about to become a mother, felt that she certainly did know all about it. "why don't we know as well as you?" asked, gertrude, who had also had her experiences. "i don't believe you do know anything about it -that's all," said tom. "and now there's the cab. goodbye, mother! goodbye, augusta. i hope you'll be all right." this alluded to the baby. "goodbye, gertrude. i hope you'll get all right too some day." this alluded to gertrude's two lovers. then he left them, and as he got into his cab declared to himself that neither of them had ever, or would ever, know anything of that special trouble which had so nearly overwhelmed himself. "upon my word, tom," said his father, walking about the vessel with him, "i wish i were going to new york myself with you -it all looks so comfortable." "yes," said tom, "it's very nice." "you'll enjoy yourself amazingly. there is that mrs thompson has two as pretty daughters with her as ever a man wished to see." tom shook his head. "and you're fond of smoking. did you see the smoking-room? they've got everything on board these ships now. upon my word i envy you the voyage." "it's as good as anything else, i dare say," said tom. "perhaps it's better than london." then his father, who had been speaking aloud to him, whispered a word in his ear. "shake yourself, tom -shake yourself, and get over it." "i am trying," said tom. "love is a very good thing, tom, when a man can enjoy it, and make himself warm with it, and protect himself by it from selfishness and hardness of heart. but when it knocks a man's courage out of him, and makes him unfit for work, and leaves him to bemoan himself, there's nothing good in it. it's as bad as drink. don't you know that i am doing the best i can for you, to make a man of you?" "i suppose so." "then shake yourself, as i call it. it is to be done, if you set about it in earnest. now, god bless you, my boy." then sir thomas got into his boat, and left his son to go upon his travels and get himself cured by a change of scene. i have no doubt that tom was cured, if not before he reached new york, at any rate before he left that interesting city -so that when he reached niagara, which he did do in company with mrs thompson and her charming daughters, he entertained no idea of throwing himself down the falls. we cannot follow him on that prolonged tour to japan and china, and thence to calcutta and bombay. i fancy that he did not go on to kabul, as before that time the ministry in england was unfortunately changed, and the russians had not as yet been expelled from asia -but i have little doubt that he obtained a great deal of very useful mercantile information, and that he will live to have a comfortable wife and a large family, and become in the course of years the senior partner in the great house of travers and treason. let us, who have soft hearts, now throw our old shoes after him. 1 it has to be stated that this story was written in 1878. chapter 62 how very much he loved her we have seen how mr traffick was finally turned out of his father-in-law's house -or, rather, not quite finally when we last saw him, as he continued to sleep at queen's gate for two or three nights after that, until he had found shelter for his head. this he did without encountering sir thomas, sir thomas pretending the while to believe that he was gone; and then in very truth his last pair of boots was removed. but his wife remained, awaiting the great occurrence with all the paternal comforts around her, mr traffick having been quite right in surmising that the father would not expose his daughter in her delicate condition to the inclemencies of the weather. but this no more than natural attention on the part of the father and grandfather to the needs of his own daughter and grandchild did not in the least mitigate in the bosom of the member of parliament the wrath which he felt at his own expulsion. it was not, as he said to himself, the fact that he was expelled, but the coarseness of the language used. "the truth is," he said to a friend in the house, "that, though it was arranged that i should remain there till after my wife's confinement, i could not bear his language." it will probably be acknowledged that the language was of a nature not to be borne. when, therefore, captain batsby went down to the house on the day of tom's departure to see his counsellor he found mr traffick full rather of anger than of counsel. "oh, yes," said the member, walking with the captain up and down some of the lobbies, "i spoke to him, and told him my mind very freely. when i say i'll do a thing, i always do it. and as for tringle, nobody knows him better than i. it does not do to be afraid of him. there is a little bit of the cur about him." "what did he say?" "he didn't like it. the truth is -. you know i don't mind speaking to you openly." "oh, no," said batsby. "he thinks he ought to do as well with the second girl as he has done with the first." captain batsby at this opened his eyes, but he said nothing. having a good income of his own, he thought much of it. not being the younger son of a lord, and not being a member of parliament, he thought less of the advantages of those high privileges. it did not suit him, however, to argue the question at the present moment. "he is proud of his connection with our family, and looks perhaps even more than he ought to do to a seat in the house." "i could get in myself if i cared for it," said batsby. "very likely. it is more difficult than ever to find a seat just now. a family connection of course does help one. i had to trust to that a good deal before i was known myself." "but what did sir thomas say?" "he made himself uncommonly disagreeable -i can tell you that. he couldn't very well abuse me, but he wasn't very particular in what he said about you. of course he was cut up about the elopement. we all felt it. augusta was very much hurt. in her precarious state it was so likely to do a mischief." "it can't be undone now." "no -it can't be undone. but it makes one feel that you can't make a demand for money as though you set about it in the other way. when i made up my mind to marry i stated what i thought i had a right to demand, and i got it. he knew very well that i shouldn't take a shilling less. it does make a difference when he knows very well that you've got to marry the girl whether with or without money." "i haven't got to marry the girl at all." "haven't you? i rather think you have, old fellow. it is generally considered that when a gentleman has gone off with a girl he means to marry her." "not if the father comes after her and brings her back." "and when he has gone afterwards to the family house and proposed himself again in the mother's presence." in all this mr traffick had received an unfair advantage from the communications which were made to him by his wife. "of course you must marry her. sir thomas knows that, and, knowing it, why should he be flush with his money? i never allowed myself to say a single word they could use against me till the ready-money-down had been all settled." "what was it he did say?" batsby was thoroughly sick of hearing his counsellor tell so many things as to his own prudence and his own success, and asked the question in an angry tone. "he said that he would not consider the question of money at all till the marriage had been solemnised. of course he stands on his right. why shouldn't he? but, rough as he is, he isn't stingy. give him his due. he isn't stingy. the money's there all right; and the girl is his own child. you'll have to wait his time -that's all." "and have nothing to begin with?" "that'll be about it, i think. but what does it matter, batsby? you are always talking about your income." "no, i ain't; not half so much as you do of your seat in parliament -which everybody says you are likely to lose at the next election." then, of course, there was a quarrel. mr traffick took his offended dignity back to the house -almost doubting whether it might not be his duty to bring captain batsby to the bar for contempt of privilege; and the captain took himself off in thorough disgust. nevertheless there was the fact that he had engaged himself to the young lady a second time. he had run away with her with the object of marrying her, and had then, according to his own theory in such matters -been relieved from his responsibility by the appearance of the father and the re-abduction of the young lady. as the young lady had been taken away from him it was to be supposed that the intended marriage was negatived by a proper authority. when starting for brussels he was a free man; and had he been wise he would have remained there, or at some equally safe distance from the lady's charms. then, from a distance, he might have made his demand for money, and the elopement would have operated in his favour rather than otherwise. but he had come back, and had foolishly allowed himself to be persuaded to show himself at queen's gate. he had obeyed traffick's advice, and now traffick had simply thrown him over and quarrelled with him. he had too promised, in the presence both of the mother and the married sister, that he would marry the young lady without any regard to money. he felt it all and was very angry with himself, consoling himself as best he might with the reflection that sir thomas's money was certainly safe, and that sir thomas himself was a liberal man. in his present condition it would be well for him, he thought, to remain inactive and see what circumstances would do for him. but circumstances very quickly became active. on his return to his lodgings, after leaving mr traffick, he found a note from queen's gate. "dearest ben -mamma wants you to come and lunch tomorrow. papa has taken poor tom down to liverpool, and won't be back till dinner-time. -g." he did not do as he was bid, alleging some engagement of business. but the persecution was continued in such a manner as to show him that all opposition on his part would be hopeless unless he were to proceed on some tour as prolonged as that of his future brother-in-law. "come and walk at three o'clock in kensington gardens tomorrow." this was written on the saturday after his note had been received. what use would there be in continuing a vain fight? he was in their hands, and the more gracefully he yielded the more probable it would be that the father would evince his generosity at an early date. he therefore met his lady-love on the steps of the albert memorial, whither she had managed to take herself all alone from the door of the family mansion. "ben," she said, as she greeted him, "why did you not come for me to the house?" "i thought you would like it best." "why should i like it best? of course mamma knows all about it. augusta would have come with me just to see me here, only that she cannot walk out just at present." then he said something to her about the monument, expressed his admiration of the prince's back, abused the east wind, remarked that the buds were coming on some of the trees, and suggested that the broad road along by the round pond would be drier than the little paths. it was not interesting, as gertrude felt, but she had not expected him to be interesting. the interest she knew must be contributed by herself. "ben," she said, "i was so happy to hear what you said to mamma the other day." "what did i say?" "why, of course, that, as papa has given his consent, our engagement is to go on just as if -" "just as if what?" "as if we had found the clergyman at ostend." "if we had done that we should have been married now," suggested batsby. "exactly. and it's almost as good as being married -isn't it? "i suppose it comes to the same thing." "hadn't you better go to papa again and have it all finished?" "he makes himself so very unpleasant." "that's only because he wants to punish us for running away. i suppose it was wrong. i shall never be sorry, because it made me know how very, very much you loved me. didn't it make you feel how very, very dearly i loved you -to trust myself all alone with you in that way?" "oh, yes; of course." "and papa can't bite you, you know. you go to him, and tell him that you hope to be received in the house as my -my future husband, you know." "shall i say nothing else?" "you mean about the day?" "i was meaning about money." "i don't think i would. he is very generous, but he does not like to be asked. when augusta was to be married he arranged all that himself after they were engaged." "but traffick demanded a certain sum?" this question captain batsby asked with considerable surprise, remembering what mr traffick had said to him in reference to augusta's fortune. "not at all. septimus knew nothing about it till after the engagement. he was only too glad to get papa's consent. you mustn't believe all that septimus says, you know. you may be sure of this -that you can trust papa's generosity." then, before he landed her at the door in queen's gate, he had promised that he would make another journey to lombard street, with the express purpose of obtaining sir thomas's sanction to the marriage -either with or without money. "how are you again?" said sir thomas, when the captain was for the third time shown into the little back parlour. "have you had another trip to the continent since i saw you?" sir thomas was in a good humour. tom had gone upon his travels; mr traffick had absolutely taken himself out of the house; and the millions were accommodating themselves comfortably. "no, sir thomas; i haven't been abroad since then. i don't keep on going abroad constantly in that way." "and what can i do for you now?" "of course it's about your daughter. i want to have your permission to consider ourselves engaged." "i explained to you before that if you and gertrude choose to marry each other i shall not stand in your way." "thank you, sir." "i don't know that it is much to thank me for. only that she made a fool of herself by running away with you i should have preferred to wait till some more sensible candidate had proposed himself for her hand. i don't suppose you'll ever set the thames on fire." "i did very well in the army." "it's a pity you did not remain there, and then, perhaps, you would not have gone to ostend with my daughter. as it is, there she is. i think she might have done better with herself; but that is her fault. she has made her bed and she must lie upon it." "if we are to be married i hope you won't go on abusing me always, sir thomas." "that's as you behave. you didn't suppose that i should allow such a piece of tomfoolery as that to be passed over without saying anything about it! if you marry her and behave well to her i will -" then he paused. "what will you do, sir thomas?" "i'll say as little as possible about the ostend journey." "and as to money, sir thomas?" "i think i have promised quite enough for you. you are not in a position, captain batsby, to ask me as to money -nor is she. you shall marry her without a shilling -or you shall not marry her at all. which is it to be? i must have an end put to all this. i won't have you hanging about my house unless i know the reason why. are you two engaged to each other?" "i suppose we are," said batsby, lugubriously. "suppose is not enough." "we are," said batsby, courageously. "very well. then, from this moment, ostend shall be as though there weren't such a seaport anywhere in europe. i will never allude to the place again -unless, perhaps, you should come and stay with me too long when i am particularly anxious to get rid of you. now you had better go and settle about the time and all that with lady tringle, and tell her that you mean to come and dine tomorrow or next day, or whenever it suits. come and dine as often as you please, only do not bring your wife to live with me pertinaciously when you're not asked." all this captain batsby did not understand, but, as he left lombard street, he made up his mind that of all the men he had ever met, sir thomas tringle, his future father-in-law, was the most singular. "he's a better fellow than traffick," said sir thomas to himself when he was alone, "and as he has trusted me so far i'll not throw him over." the captain now had no hesitation in taking himself to queen's gate. as he was to be married he might as well make the best of such delights as were to be found in the happy state of mutual affection. "my dear, dearest benjamin, i am so happy," said lady tringle, dissolved in tears as she embraced her son-in-law that was to be. "you will always be so dear to me!" in this she was quite true. traffick was not dear to her. she had at first thought much of mr traffick's position and noble blood, but, of late, she too had become very tired of mr traffick. augusta took almost too much upon herself, and mr traffick's prolonged presence had been an eyesore. captain batsby was softer, and would be much more pleasant as a son-in-law. even the journey to ostend had had a good effect in producing a certain humility. "my dear benjamin," said augusta, "we shall always be so happy to entertain you as a brother. mr traffick has a great regard for you, and said from the first that if you behaved as you ought to do after that little journey he would arrange that everything should go straight between you and papa. i was quite sure that you would come forward at once as a man." but gertrude's delight was, of course, the strongest, and gertrude's welcoming the warmest -as was proper. "when i think of it," she said to him, "i don't know how i should ever have looked anybody in the face again -after our going away with our things mixed up in that way." "i am glad rather now that we didn't find the clergyman." "oh, certainly," said gertrude. "i don't suppose anybody would have given me anything. now there'll be a regular wedding, and, of course, there will be the presents." "and, though nothing is to be settled, i suppose he will do something." "and it would have been very dreadful, not having a regular trousseau," said gertrude. "mamma will, of course, do now just as she did about augusta. he allowed her l#300! only think -if we had been married at ostend you would have had to buy things for me before the first month was out. i hadn't more than half a dozen pair of stockings with me." "he can't but say now that we have done as he would have us," added the captain. "i do suppose that he will not be so unnatural as not to give something when augusta had l#200,000." "indeed, she had not. but you'll see that sooner or later papa will do for me quite as well as for augusta." in this way they were happy together, consoling each other for any little trouble which seemed for a while to cloud their joys, and basking in the full sunshine of their permitted engagement. the day was soon fixed, but fixed not entirely in reference to the wants of gertrude and her wedding. lucy had also to be married from the same house, and the day for her marriage had already been arranged. sir thomas had ordered that everything should be done for lucy as though she were a daughter of the house, and her wedding had been arranged for the last week in may. when he heard that ayala and colonel stubbs were also engaged he was anxious that the two sisters should be "buckled", as he called it, on the same occasion -and he magnanimously offered to take upon himself the entire expense of the double arrangement, intimating that the people in kingsbury crescent had hardly room enough for a wedding. but ayala, acting probably under stalham influences, would not consent to this. lady albury, who was now in london, was determined that ayala's marriage should take place from her own house; and, as aunt margaret and uncle reginald had consented, that matter was considered as settled. but sir thomas, having fixed his mind upon a double wedding, resolved that gertrude and lucy should be the joint brides. gertrude, who still suffered perhaps a little in public estimation from the ostend journey, was glad enough to wipe out that stain as quickly as possible, and did not therefore object to the arrangement. but to the captain there was something in it by which his more delicate feelings were revolted. it was a matter of course that ayala should be present at her sister's wedding, and would naturally appear there in the guise of a bridesmaid. she would also, now, act as a bridesmaid to gertrude -her future position as mrs colonel stubbs giving her, as was supposed, sufficient dignity for that honourable employment. but captain batsby, not so very long ago, had appeared among the suitors for ayala's hand; and therefore, as he said to gertrude, he felt a little shamefaced about it. "what does that signify?" said gertrude. "if you say nothing to her about it, i'll be bound she'll say nothing to you." and so it was on the day of the wedding. ayala did not say a word to captain batsby, nor did captain batsby say very much to ayala. on the day before his marriage captain batsby paid a fourth visit to lombard street in obedience to directions from sir thomas. "there, my boy," said he, "though you and gertrude did take a little journey on the sly to a place which we will not mention, you shan't take her altogether emptyhanded." then he explained certain arrangements which he had made for endowing gertrude with an allowance, which under the circumstances the bridegroom could not but feel to be liberal. it must be added, that, considering the shortness of time allowed for getting them together, the amount of wedding presents bestowed was considered by gertrude to be satisfactory. as lucy's were exhibited at the same time the show was not altogether mean. "no doubt i had twice as much as the two put together," said mrs traffick to ayala up in her bedroom, "but then of course lord boardotrade's rank would make people give." chapter 63 ayala again in london after that last walk in gobblegoose wood, after lady tringle's unnecessary journey to stalham on the friday, and the last day's hunting with sir harry's hounds -which took place on the saturday -ayala again became anxious to go home. her anxiety was in its nature very different from that which had prompted her to leave stalham on an appointed day lest she should seem to be waiting for the coming of colonel stubbs. "no; i don't want to run away from him any more," she said to lady albury. "i want to be with him always, and i hope he won't run away from me. but i've got to be somewhere where i can think about it all for a little time." "can't you think about it here?" "no -one can never think about a thing where it has all taken place. i must be up in my own little room in kingsbury crescent, and must have aunt margaret's work around me -so that i may realise what is going to come. not but what i mean to do a great deal of work always." "mend his stockings?" "yes -if he wears stockings. i know he doesn't. he always wears socks. he told me so. whatever he has, i'll mend -or make if he wants me. i can bake and i can brew;and i can make an irish stew;wash a shirt and iron it too." then, as she sang her little song, she clapped her hands together. "where did you get all your poetry?" "he taught me that. we are not going to be fine people -except sometimes when we may be invited to stalham. but i must go on thursday, lady albury. i came for a week, and i have been here ever since the middle of february. it seems years since the old woman told me i was perverse, and he said that she was right." "think how much you have done since that time." "yes, indeed. i very nearly destroyed myself -didn't i?" "not very nearly." "i thought i had. it was only when you showed me his letter on that sunday morning that i began to have any hopes. i wonder what mr greene preached about that morning. i didn't hear a word. i kept on repeating what he said in the postscript." "was there a postscript?" "of course there was. don't you remember?" "no, indeed; not i." "the letter would have been nothing without the postscript. he said that croppy was to come back for me. i knew he wouldn't say that unless he meant to be good to me. and yet i wasn't quite sure of it. i know it now; don't i? but i must go, lady albury. i ought to let aunt margaret know all about it." then it was settled that she should go on the thursday -and on the thursday she went. as it was now considered quite wrong that she should travel by the railway alone -in dread, probably, lest the old lady should tell her again how perverse she had been -colonel stubbs accompanied her. it had then been decided that the wedding must take place at stalham, and many messages were sent to mr and mrs dosett assuring them that they would be made very welcome on the occasion. "my own darling lucy will be away at that time with her own young man," said ayala, in answer to further invitations from lady albury. "and so you've taken colonel stubbs at last," said her aunt margaret. "he has taken me, aunt. i didn't take him." "but you refused him ever so often." "well -yes. i don't think i quite refused him." "i thought you did." "it was a dreadful muddle, aunt margaret -but it has come right at last, and we had better not talk about that part of it." "i was so sure you didn't like him." "not like him? i always liked him better than anybody else in the world that i ever saw." "dear me!" "of course i shouldn't say so if it hadn't come right at last. i may say whatever i please about it now, and i declare that i always loved him. a girl can be such a fool! i was, i know. i hope you are glad, aunt." "of course i am. i am glad of anything that makes you happy. it seemed such a pity that, when so many gentlemen were falling in love with you all round, you couldn't like anybody." "but i did like somebody, aunt margaret. and i did like the best -didn't i?" in answer to this mrs dosett made no reply, having always had an aunt's partiality for poor tom, in spite of all his chains. her uncle's congratulations were warmer even than her aunt's. "my dear girl," he said, "i am rejoiced indeed that you should have before you such a prospect of happiness. i always felt how sad for you was your residence here, with two such homely persons as your aunt and myself." "i have always been happy with you," said ayala -perhaps straining the truth a little in her anxiety to be courteous. "and i know", she added, "how much lucy and i have always owed you since poor papa's death." "nevertheless, it has been dull for a young girl like you. now you will have your own duties, and if you endeavour to do them properly the world will never be dull to you." and then there were some few words about the wedding. "we have no feeling, my dear," said her uncle, "except to do the best we can for you. we should have been glad to see you married from here if that had suited. but, as this lover of yours has grand friends of his own, i dare say their place may be the better." ayala could hardly explain to her uncle that she had acceded to lady albury's proposal because, by doing so, she would spare him the necessary expense of the wedding. but ayala's great delight was in meeting her sister. the two girls had not seen each other since the engagement of either of them had been ratified by their friends. the winter and spring, as passed by lucy at merle park, had been very unhappy for her. things at merle park had not been pleasant to any of the residents there, and lucy had certainly had her share of the unpleasantness. her letters to ayala had not been triumphant when aunt emmeline had more than once expressed her wish to be rid of her, and when the news reached her that uncle tom and hamel had failed to be gracious to each other. nor had ayala written in a spirit of joy before she had been able to recognise the angel of light in jonathan stubbs. but now they were to meet after all their miseries, and each could be triumphant. it was hard for them to know exactly how to begin. to lucy, isadore hamel was, at the present moment, the one hero walking the face of this sublunary globe; and to ayala, as we all know, jonathan stubbs was an angel of light, and, therefore, more even than a hero. as each spoke, the "he's" intended took a different personification; so that to anyone less interested than the young ladies themselves there might be some confusion as to which "he" might at that moment be under discussion. "it was bad", said lucy, "when uncle tom told him to sell those magnificent conceptions of his brain by auction!" "i did feel for him certainly," said ayala. "and then when he was constrained to say that he would take me at once without any preparation because aunt emmeline wanted me to go, i don't suppose any man ever behaved more beautifully than he did." "yes indeed," said ayala. and then she felt herself constrained to change the subject by the introduction of an exaggerated superlative in her sister's narrative. hamel, no doubt, had acted beautifully, but she was not disposed to agree that nothing could be more beautiful. "oh, lucy," she said, "i was so miserable when he went away after that walk in the wood. i thought he never would come back again when i had behaved so badly. but he did. was not that grand in him?" "i suppose he was very fond of you." "i hope he was. i hope he is. but what should i have done if he had not come back? no other man would have come back after that. you never behaved unkindly to isadore?" "i think he would have come back a thousand times," said lucy; "only i cannot imagine that i should ever have given him the necessity of coming back even a second. but then i had known him so much longer." "it wasn't that i hadn't known him long enough," said ayala. "i seemed to know all about him almost all at once. i knew how good he was, and how grand he was, long before i had left the marchesa up in london. but i think it astounded me that such a one as he should care for me." and so it went on through an entire morning, each of the sisters feeling that she was bound to listen with rapt attention to the praises of the other's "him" if she wished to have an opportunity of singing those of her own. but lucy's marriage was to come first by more than two months, and therefore in that matter she was allowed precedence. and at her marriage ayala would be present, whereas with ayala's lucy would have no personal concern. though she did think that uncle tom had been worse than any vandal in that matter of selling her lover's magnificent works, still she was ready to tell of his generosity. in a manner of his own he had sent the money which hamel had so greatly needed, and had now come forward to provide, with a generous hand, for the immediate necessities, and more than the necessities, of the wedding. it was not only that she was to share the honours of the two wedding cakes with gertrude, and that she was to be taken as a bride from the gorgeous mansion in queen's gate, but that he had provided for her bridal needs almost as fully as for those of his own daughter. "never mind what she'll be able to do afterwards," he said to his wife, who ventured on some slight remonstrance with him as to the unnecessary luxuries he was preparing for the wife of a poor man. "she won't be the worse for having a dozen new petticoats in her trunk, and, if she don't want to blow her nose with as many handkerchiefs this year as gertrude does, she'll be able to keep them for next year." then aunt emmeline obeyed without further hesitation the orders which were given her. nor was his generosity confined to the niece who for the last twelve months had been his property. lucy was still living in queen's gate, though at the time she spent much of each day in kingsbury crescent, and on one occasion she brought with her a little note from uncle tom. "dear ayala," said the little note, as you are going to be married too, you, i suppose, will want some new finery. i therefore send a cheque. write your name on the back of it, and give it to your uncle. he will let you have the money as you want it. yours affectionately, t. tringle "i hope your colonel stubbs will come and see me some day." "you must go and see him," she said to her colonel stubbs, when he called one day in kingsbury crescent. "only for him i shouldn't have any clothes to speak of at all, and i should have to be married in my old brown morning frock." "it would be just as good as any other for my purpose," said the colonel. "but it wouldn't for mine, sir. fine feathers make fine birds, and i mean to be as fine as lady albury's big peacock. so if you please you'll go to queen's gate, and lombard street too, and show yourself. oh, jonathan, i shall be so proud that everybody who knows me should see what sort of a man has chosen to love me." then there was a joint visit paid by the two sisters to mr hamel's studio -an expedition which was made somewhat on the sly. aunt margaret in kingsbury crescent knew all about it, but aunt emmeline was kept in the dark. even now, though the marriage was sanctioned and was so nearly at hand, aunt emmeline would not have approved of such a visit. she still regarded the sculptor as improper -at any rate not sufficiently proper to be treated with full familiarity -partly on account of his father's manifest improprieties, and partly because of his own relative poverty and unauthorised position in the world. but aunt margaret was more tolerant, and thought that the sister-in-law was entitled to visit the workshop in which her sister's future bread was to be earned. and then, starting from kingsbury crescent, they could go in a cab; whereas any such proceeding emanating from queen's gate would have required the carriage. there was a wickedness in this starting off in a hansom cab to call on an unmarried young man, doing it in a manner successfully concealed from aunt emmeline, on which ayala expatiated with delight when she next saw colonel stubbs. "you don't come and call on me," said the colonel. "what! -all the way down to aldershot? i should like, but i don't quite dare to do that." the visit was very successful. though it was expected, hamel was found in his artist's costume, with a blouse or loose linen tunic fitted close round his throat, and fastened with a belt round his waist. lucy thought that in this apparel he was certainly as handsome as could ever have been any apollo -and so thinking, had contrived her little plans in such a way that he should certainly be seen at his best. to her thinking colonel stubbs was not a handsome man. hamel's hair was nearly black, and she preferred dark hair. hamel's features were regular, whereas the colonel's hair was red, and he was known for a large mouth and broad nose, which were not obliterated though they were enlightened by the brightness of his eyes. "yes," said ayala to herself, as she looked at hamel; "he is very good looking, but nobody would take him for an angel of light." "ayala has come to see you at your work," said lucy, as they entered the studio. "i am delighted to see her. do you remember where we last met, miss dormer?" "miss dormer, indeed," said ayala. "i am not going to call you mr hamel. yes; it was high up among the seats of the coliseum. there has a great deal happened to us all since then." "and i remember you at the bijou." "i should think so. i knew then so well what was going to happen," said ayala. "what did you know?" "that you and lucy were to fall in love with each other." "i had done my part of it already," said he. "hardly that, isadore," said lucy, "or you would not have passed me in kensington gardens without speaking to me." "but i did speak to you. it was then i learned where to find you." "that was the second time. if i had remained away as i ought to have done, i suppose you never would have found me." ayala was then taken round to see all those magnificent groups and figures which sir thomas would have disposed of at so many shillings apiece under the auctioneer's hammer. "it was cruel. -was it not?" said lucy. "he never saw them, you know," said ayala, putting in a good-natured word for her uncle. "if he had," said the sculptor, "he would have doubted the auctioneer's getting anything. i have turned it all in my mind very often since, and i think that sir thomas was right." "i am sure he was wrong," said lucy. "he is very good-natured, and nobody can be more grateful to another person than i am to him -but i won't agree that he was right about that." "he never would have said it if he had seen them," again pleaded ayala. "they will never fetch anything as they are," continued the sculptor, "and i don't suppose that when i made them i thought they would. they have served their purpose, and i sometimes feel inclined to break them up and have them carted away." "isadore!" exclaimed lucy. "for what purpose?" asked ayala. "they were the lessons which i had to teach myself, and the play which i gave to my imagination. who wants a great figure of beelzebub like that in his house?" "i call it magnificent," said ayala. "his name is lucifer -not beelzebub," said lucy. "you call him beelzebub merely to make little of him." "it is difficult to do that, because he is nearly ten feet high. and who wants a figure of bacchus? the thing is, whether, having done a figure of bacchus, i may not be better able to do a likeness of mr jones, when he comes to sit for his bust at the request of his admiring friends. for any further purpose that it will answer, bacchus might just as well be broken up and carted away in the dust-cart." to this, however, the two girls expressed their vehement opposition, and were of opinion that the time would come when beelzebub and bacchus, transferred to marble, would occupy places of honour in some well-proportioned hall built for the purpose of receiving them. "i shall be quite content," said hamel, "if the whole family of the jones's will have their busts done about the size of life, and stand them up over their bookshelves. my period for beelzebubs has gone by." the visit, on the whole, was delightful. lucy was contented with the almost more than divine beauty of her lover, and the two sisters, as they made their return journey to kingsbury crescent in another hansom, discussed questions of art in a spirit that would have been delightful to any aspiring artist who might have heard them. then came the wedding, of which some details were given at the close of the last chapter, at which two brides who were very unlike to each other were joined in matrimony to two bridegrooms as dissimilar. but the captain made himself gracious to the sculptor who was now to be connected with him, and declared that he would always look upon lucy as a second sister to his dear gertrude. and gertrude was equally gracious, protesting, when she was marshalled to walk up to the altar first, that she did not like to go before her darling lucy. but the dimensions of the church admitted but of one couple at a time, and gertrude was compelled to go in advance. colonel stubbs was there acting as best man to hamel, while lord john battledore performed the same service for captain batsby. lord john was nearly broken-hearted by the apostacy of a second chum, having heard that the girl whom frank houston had not succeeded in marrying was now being taken by batsby without a shilling. "somebody had to bottle-hold for him," said lord john, defending himself at the club afterwards, "and i didn't like to throw the fellow over, though he is such a fool! and there was stubbs, too," continued his lordship, "going to take the other girl without a shilling! there's stubbs, and houston, and batsby, all gone and drowned themselves. it's just the same as though they'd drowned themselves!" lord john was horrified -nay, disgusted -by the folly of the world. nevertheless, before the end of the year, he was engaged to marry a very pretty girl as devoid of fortune as our ayala. chapter 64 ayala's marriage now we have come to our last chapter, and it may be doubted whether any reader -unless he be someone specially gifted with a genius for statistics -will have perceived how very many people have been made happy by matrimony. if marriage be the proper ending for a novel -the only ending, as this writer takes it to be, which is not discordant -surely no tale was ever so properly ended, or with so full a concord, as this one. infinite trouble has been taken not only in arranging these marriages but in joining like to like -so that, if not happiness, at any rate sympathetic unhappiness, might be produced. our two sisters will, it is trusted, be happy. they have chosen men from their hearts, and have been chosen after the same fashion. those two other sisters have been so wedded that the one will follow the idiosyncrasies of her husband, and the other bring her husband to follow her idiosyncrasies, without much danger of mutiny or revolt. as to miss docimer there must be room for fear. it may be questioned whether she was not worthy of a better lot than has been achieved for her by joining her fortunes to those of frank houston. but i, speaking for myself, have my hopes of frank houston. it is hard to rescue a man from the slough of luxury and idleness combined. if anything can do it, it is a cradle filled annually. it may be that he will yet learn that a broad back with a heavy weight upon it gives the best chance of happiness here below. of lord john's married prospects i could not say much as he came so very lately on the scene; but even he may perhaps do something in the world when he finds that his nursery is filling. for our special friend tom tringle, no wife has been found. in making his effort -which he did manfully -he certainly had not chosen the consort who would be fit for him. he had not seen clearly, as had done his sisters and cousins. he had fallen in love too young -it being the nature of young men to be much younger than young ladies, and, not knowing himself, had been as might be a barn-door cock who had set his heart upon some azure-plumaged, high-soaring lady of the woods. the lady with the azure plumes had, too, her high-soaring tendencies, but she was enabled by true insight to find the male who would be fit for her. the barndoor cock, when we left him on board the steamer going to new york, had not yet learned the nature of his own requirements. the knowledge will come to him. there may be doubts as to frank houston, but we think that there need be none as to tom tringle. the proper wife will be forthcoming; and in future years, when he will probably have a glenbogie and a merle park of his own, he will own that fortune did well for him in making his cousin ayala so stern to his prayers. but ayala herself -ayala our pet heroine -had not been yet married when the last chapter was written, and now there remains a page or two in which the reader must bid adieu to her as she stands at the altar with her angel of light. she was at stalham for a fortnight before her marriage, in order, as lady albury said, that the buxom lady's-maid might see that everything had been done rightly in reference to the trousseau. "my dear," said lady albury, "it is important, you know. i dare say you can bake and brew, because you say so; but you don't know anything about clothes." ayala, who by this time was very intimate with her friend, pouted her lips, and said that if "jonathan did not like her things as she chose to have them he might do the other thing." but lady albury had her way, inducing sir harry to add something even to uncle tom's liberality, and the buxom woman went about her task in such a fashion that if colonel stubbs were not satisfied he must have been a very unconscionable colonel. he probably would know nothing about it -except that his bride in her bridal array had not looked so well as in any other garments, which, i take it, is invariably the case -till at the end of the first year a glimmer of the truth as to a lady's wardrobe would come upon him. "i told you there would be a many new dresses before two years were over, miss," said the buxom female, as she spread all the frocks and all the worked petticoats and all the collars and all the silk stockings and all the lace handkerchiefs about the bedroom to be inspected by lady albury, mrs gosling, and one or two other friends, before they were finally packed up. then came the day on which the colonel was to reach stalham, that day being a monday, whereas the wedding was to take place on wednesday. it was considered to be within the bounds of propriety that the colonel should sleep at stalham on the monday, under the same roof with his bride; but on the tuesday it was arranged that he should satisfy the decorous feeling of the neighbourhood by removing himself to the parsonage, which was distant about half a mile across the park, and was contiguous to the church. here lived mr greene, the bachelor curate, the rector of the parish being an invalid and absent in italy. "i don't see why he is to be sent away after dinner to walk across the park in the dark," said ayala, when the matter was discussed before the colonel's coming. "it is a law, my dear," said lady albury, "and has to be obeyed whether you understand it or not like other laws. mr greene will be with him, so that no one shall run away with him in the dark. then he will be able to go into church without dirtying his dress boots." "but i thought there would be half a dozen carriages at least." "but there won't be room in one of them for him. he is to be nobody until he comes forth from the church as your husband. then he is to be everybody. that is the very theory of marriage." "i think we managed it all very well between us," said lady albury afterwards, "but you really cannot guess the trouble we took." "why should there have been trouble?" "because you were such a perverse creature, as the old lady said. i am not sure that you were not right, because a girl does so often raise herself in her lover's estimation by refusing him half a dozen times. but you were not up to that." "indeed i was not. i am sure i did not intend to give any trouble to anybody." "but you did. only think of my going up to london to meet him, and of him coming from aldershot to meet me, simply that we might put our heads together how to overcome the perversity of such a young woman as you!" there then came a look almost of pain on ayala's brow. "but i do believe it was for the best. in this way he came to understand how absolutely necessary you were to him." "am i necessary to him?" "he thinks so." "oh, if i can only be necessary to him always! but there should have been no going up to london. i should have rushed into his arms at once." "that would have been unusual." "but so is he unusual," said ayala. it is probable that the colonel did not enjoy his days at stalham before his marriage, except during the hour or two in which he was allowed to take ayala out for a last walk. such days can hardly be agreeable to the man of whom it is known by all around him that he is on the eve of committing matrimony. there is always, on such occasions, a feeling of weakness, as though the man had been subdued, brought at length into a cage and tamed, so as to be made fit for domestic purposes, and deprived of his ancient freedom amongst the woods; whereas the girl feels herself to be the triumphant conqueror, who has successfully performed this great act of taming. such being the case, the man had perhaps better keep away till he is forced to appear at the church door. nevertheless our colonel did enjoy his last walk. "oh, yes," she said, "of course we will go to the old wood. where else? i am so glad that poor fox went through gobblegoose -otherwise we should never have gone there, and then who knows whether you and i would ever have been friends again any more?" "if one wood hadn't been there, i think another would have been found." "ah, that's just it. you can know that you had a purpose, and perhaps were determined to carry it out." "well, rather." "but i couldn't be sure of that. i couldn't carry out my purpose, even if i had one. i had to doubt, and to be unhappy, and to hate myself, because i had been perverse. i declare, i do think you men have so much the best of it. how glorious would it have been to be able to walk straight up and say, jonathan stubbs, i love you better than all the world. will you be my husband?" "but suppose the jonathan stubbs of the occasion were to decline the honour. where would you be then?" "that would be disagreeable," said ayala. "it is disagreeable -as you made me feel twice over." "oh, jonathan, i am so sorry." "therefore it is possible that you may have the best of it." "and so you never will take another walk with ayala dormer?" she said, as they were returning home. "never another," he replied. "you cannot think how i regret it. of course i am glad to become your wife. i do not at all want to have it postponed. but there is something so sweet in having a lover -and you know that though i shall have a husband i shall never have a lover again -and i never had one before, jonathan. there has been very little of it. when a thing has been so sweet it is sad to think that it must be gone for ever!" then she leaned upon him with both her hands, and looked up at him and smiled, with her lips a little open -as she knew that he liked her to lean upon him and to look -for she had caught by her instinct the very nature of the man, and knew how to witch him with her little charms. "ah me! i wonder whether you'll like me to lean upon you when a dozen years have gone by." "that depends on how heavy you may be." "i shall be a fat old woman, perhaps. but i shall lean upon you -always, always. what else shall i ever have to lean upon now?" "what else should you want?" "nothing -nothing -nothing! i want nothing else. i wonder whether there is anybody in all the world who has got so completely everything that she ever dreamed of wanting as i have. but if you could have been only my lover for a little longer -!" then he assured her that he would be her lover just the same, even though they were husband and wlfe. alas, no! there he had promised more than it is given to a man to perform. faith, honesty, steadiness of purpose, joined to the warmest love and the truest heart, will not enable a husband to maintain the sweetness of that aroma which has filled with delight the senses of the girl who has leaned upon his arm as her permitted lover. "what a happy fellow you are!" said mr greene, as, in the intimacy of the moment, they walked across the park together. "why don't you get a wife for yourself?" "yes; with l#120 a year!" "with a little money you might." "i don't want to have to look for the money; and if i did i shouldn't get it. i often think how very unfairly things are divided in this world." "that will all be made up in the next." "not if one covets one's neighbour's wife -or even his ass," said mr greene. on the return of the two lovers to the house from their walk there were mr and mrs dosett, who would much rather have stayed away had they not been unwilling not to show their mark of affection to their niece. i doubt whether they were very happy, but they were at any rate received with every distinction. sir thomas and aunt emmeline were asked, but they made some excuse. sir thomas knew very well that he had nothing in common with sir harry albury; and, as for aunt emmeline, her one journey to stalham had been enough for her. but sir thomas was again very liberal, and sent down as his contribution to the wedding presents the very necklace which ayala had refused from her cousin tom. "upon my word, your uncle is magnificent," said lady albury, upon which the whole story was told to her. lucy and her husband were away on their tour, as were gertrude and hers on theirs. this was rather a comfort, as captain batsby's presence at the house would have been a nuisance. but there was quite enough of guests to make the wedding, as being a country wedding, very brilliant. among others, old tony tappett was there, mindful of the manner in which cranbury brook had been ridden, and of croppy's presence when the hounds ran their fox into dillsborough wood. "i hope she be to ride with us, off and on, colonel," said tony, when the ceremony had been completed. "now and then, tony, when we can get hold of croppy." "because, when they come out like that, colonel, it's a pity to lose 'em, just because they's got their husbands to attend to." and lord rufford was there, with his wife, who on this occasion was very pressing with her invitations. she had heard that colonel stubbs was likely to rise high in his profession, and there were symptoms, of which she was an excellent judge, that mrs colonel stubbs would become known as a professional beauty. and larry twentyman was there, who, being in the neighbourhood, was, to his great delight, invited to the breakfast. thus, to her own intense satisfaction, ayala was handed over to her angel of light. [end of ayala's angel] . 1827 dreams by edgar allan poe dreams oh! that my young life were a lasting dream! my spirit not awakening, till the beam of an eternity should bring the morrow. yes! tho' that long dream were of hopeless sorrow, 'twere better than the cold reality of waking life, to him whose heart must be, and hath been still, upon the lovely earth, a chaos of deep passion, from his birth. but should it bethat dream eternally continuingas dreams have been to me in my young boyhoodshould it thus be given, 'twere folly still to hope for higher heaven. for i have revell'd, when the sun was bright i' the summer sky, in dreams of living light and loveliness,have left my very heart in climes of my imagining, apart from mine own home, with beings that have been of mine own thoughtwhat more could i have seen? 'twas onceand only onceand the wild hour from my remembrance shall not passsome power or spell had bound me'twas the chilly wind came o'er me in the night, and left behind its image on my spiritor the moon shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon too coldlyor the starshowe'er it was that dream was as that night-windlet it pass. i have been happy, tho' in a dream. i have been happyand i love the theme: dreams! in their vivid coloring of life, as in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife of semblance with reality, which brings to the delirious eye, more lovely things of paradise and loveand all our own! than young hope in his sunniest hour hath known. -the end. 1792 vindication of the rights of woman by mary wollstonecraft dedication to m. talleyrand-perigord, late bishop of autun. sir, having read with great pleasure a pamphlet which you have lately published, i dedicate this volume to you; to induce you to reconsider the subject, and maturely weigh what i have advanced respecting the rights of woman and national education: and i call with the firm tone of humanity; for my arguments, sir, are dictated by a disinterested spiriti plead for my sexnot for myself. independence i have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtueand independence i will ever secure by contracting my wants, though i were to live on a barren heath. it is then an affection for the whole human race that makes my pen dart rapidly along to support what i believe to be the cause of virtue: and the same motive leads me earnestly to wish to see woman placed in a station in which she would advance, instead of retarding, the progress of those glorious principles that give a substance to morality. my opinion, indeed, respecting the rights and duties of woman, seems to flow so naturally from these simple principles, that i think it scarcely possible, but that some of the enlarged minds who formed your admirable constitution, will coincide with me. in france there is undoubtedly a more general diffusion of knowledge than in any part of the european world, and i attribute it, in a great measure, to the social intercourse which has long subsisted between the sexes. it is true, i utter my sentiments with freedom, that in france the very essence of sensuality has been extracted to regale the voluptuary, and a kind of sentimental lust has prevailed, which, together with the system of duplicity that the whole tenour of their political and civil government taught, have given a sinister sort of sagacity to the french character, properly termed finesse; from which naturally flow a polish of manners that injures the substance, by hunting sincerity out of society.and, modesty, the fairest garb of virtue! has been more grossly insulted in france than even in england, till their women have treated as prudish that attention to decency, which brutes instinctively observe. manners and morals are so nearly allied that they have often been confounded; but, though the former should only be the natural reflection of the latter, yet, when various causes have produced factitious and corrupt manners, which are very early caught, morality becomes an empty name. the personal reserve, and sacred respect for cleanliness and delicacy in domestic life, which french women almost despise, are the graceful pillars of modesty; but, far from despising them, if the pure flame of patriotism have reached their bosoms, they should labour to improve the morals of their fellow-citizens, by teaching men, not only to respect modesty in women, but to acquire it themselves, as the only way to merit their esteem. contending for the rights of woman, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue; for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice. and how can woman be expected to co-operate unless she know why she ought to be virtuous? unless freedom strengthen her reason till she comprehend her duty, and see in what manner it is connected with her real good? if children are to be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues spring, can only be produced by considering the moral and civil interest of mankind; but the education and situation of woman, at present, shuts her out from such investigations. in this work i have produced many arguments, which to me were conclusive, to prove that the prevailing notion respecting a sexual character was subversive of morality, and i have contended, that to render the human body and mind more perfect, chastity must more universally prevail, and that chastity will never be respected in the male world till the person of a woman is not, as it were, idolized, when little virtue or sense embellish it with the grand traces of mental beauty, or the interesting simplicity of affection. consider, sir, dispassionately, these observations for a glimpse of this truth seemed to open before you when you observed, 'that to see one half of the human race excluded by the other from all participation of government, was a political phaenomenon that, according to abstract principles, it was impossible to explain.' if so, on what does your constitution rest? if the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of woman, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test: though a different opinion prevails in this country, built on the very arguments which you use to justify the oppression of womanprescription. consider, i address you as a legislator, whether, when men contend for their freedom, and to be allowed to judge for themselves respecting their own happiness, it be not inconsistent and unjust to subjugate women, even though you firmly believe that you are acting in the manner best calculated to promote their happiness? who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him the gift of reason? in this style, argue tyrants of every denomination, from the weak king to the weak father of a family; they are all eager to crush reason; yet always assert that they usurp its throne only to be useful. do you not act a similar part, when you force all women, by denying them civil and political rights, to remain immured in their families groping in the dark? for surely, sir, you will not assert, that a duty can be binding which is not founded on reason? if indeed this be their destination, arguments may be drawn from reason: and thus augustly supported, the more understanding women acquire, the more they will be attached to their dutycomprehending itfor unless they comprehend it, unless their morals be fixed on the same immutable principle as those of man, no authority can make them discharge it in a virtuous manner. they may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent. but, if women are to be excluded, without having a voice, from a participation of the natural rights of mankind, prove first, to ward off the charge of injustice and inconsistency, that they want reasonelse this flaw in your new constitution will ever shew that man must, in some shape, act like a tyrant, and tyranny, in whatever part of society it rears its brazen front, will ever undermine morality. i have repeatedly asserted, and produced what appeared to me irrefragable arguments drawn from matters of fact, to prove my assertion, that women cannot, by force, be confined to domestic concerns; for they will, however ignorant, intermeddle with more weighty affairs, neglecting private duties only to disturb, by cunning tricks, the orderly plans of reason which rise above their comprehension. besides, whilst they are only made to acquire personal accomplishments, men will seek for pleasure in variety, and faithless husbands will make faithless wives; such ignorant beings, indeed, will be very excusable when, not taught to respect public good, nor allowed any civil rights, they attempt to do themselves justice by retaliation. the box of mischief thus opened in society, what is to preserve private virtue, the only security of public freedom and universal happiness? let there be then no coercion established in society, and the common law of gravity prevailing, the sexes will fall into their proper places. and, now that more equitable laws are forming your citizens, marriage may become more sacred: your young men may choose wives from motives of affection, and your maidens allow love to root out vanity. the father of a family will not then weaken his constitution and debase his sentiments, by visiting the harlot, nor forget, in obeying the call of appetite, the purpose for which it was implanted. and, the mother will not neglect her children to practise the arts of coquetry, when sense and modesty secure her the friendship of her husband. but, till men become attentive to the duty of a father, it is vain to expect women to spend that time in their nursery which they, 'wise in their generation,' choose to spend at their glass; for this exertion of cunning is only an instinct of nature to enable them to obtain indirectly a little of that power of which they are unjustly denied a share: for, if women are not permitted to enjoy legitimate rights, they will render both men and themselves vicious, to obtain illicit privileges. i wish, sir, to set some investigations of this kind afloat in france; and should they lead to a confirmation of my principles, when your constitution is revised the rights of woman may be respected, if it be fully proved that reason calls for this respect, and loudly demands justice for one half of the human race. i am sir, your's respectfully, m. w. advertisement advertisement. when i began to write this work, i divided it into three parts, supposing that one volume would contain a full discussion of the arguments which seemed to me to rise naturally from a few simple principles; but fresh illustrations occurring as i advanced, i now present only the first part to the public. many subjects, however, which i have cursorily alluded to, call for particular investigation, especially the laws relative to women, and the consideration of their peculiar duties. these will furnish ample matter for a second volume,* which in due time will be published, to elucidate some of the sentiments, and complete many of the sketches begun in the first. * the second volume was never published, and so far as is known, it was never written.ed. introduction introduction. after considering the historic page, and viewing the living world with anxious solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful indignation have depressed my spirits, and i have sighed when obliged to confess, that either nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the civilization which has hitherto taken place in the world has been very partial. i have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result?a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery i deplore; and that women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty conclusion. the conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity.one cause of this barren blooming i attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect. in a treatise, therefore, on female rights and manners, the works which have been particularly written for their improvement must not be overlooked; especially when it is asserted, in direct terms, that the minds of women are enfeebled by false refinement; that the books of instruction, written by men of genius, have had the same tendency as more frivolous productions; and that, in the true style of mahometanism, they are treated as a kind of subordinate beings, and not as a part of the human species, when improveable reason is allowed to be the dignified distinction which raises men above the brute creation, and puts a natural sceptre in a feeble hand. yet, because i am a woman, i would not lead my readers to suppose that i mean violently to agitate the contested question respecting the equality or inferiority of the sex; but as the subject lies in my way, and i cannot pass it over without subjecting the main tendency of my reasoning to misconstruction, i shall stop a moment to deliver, in a few words, my opinion.in the government of the physical world it is observable that the female in point of strength is, in general, inferior to the male. this is the law of nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. a degree of physical superiority cannot, therefore, be deniedand it is a noble prerogative! but not content with this natural pre-eminence, men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow creatures who find amusement in their society. i am aware of an obvious inference:from every quarter have i heard exclamations against masculine women; but where are they to be found? if by this appellation men mean to inveigh against their ardour in hunting, shooting, and gaming, i shall most cordially join in the cry; but if it be against the imitation of manly virtues, or, more properly speaking, the attainment of those talents and virtues, the exercise of which ennobles the human character, and which raise females in the scale of animal being, when they are comprehensively termed mankind;all those who view them with a philosophic eye must, i should think, wish with me, that they may every day grow more and more masculine. this discussion naturally divides the subject. i shall first consider women in the grand light of human creatures, who, in common with men, are placed on this earth to unfold their faculties; and afterwards i shall more particularly point out their peculiar designation. i wish also to steer clear of an error which many respectable writers have fallen into; for the instruction which has hitherto been addressed to women, has rather been applicable to ladies, if the little indirect advice, that is scattered through sandford and merton, be excepted; but, addressing my sex in a firmer tone, i pay particular attention to those in the middle class, because they appear to be in the most natural state. perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and affections of their race, in a premature unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society! as a class of mankind they have the strongest claim to pity; the education of the rich tends to render them vain and helpless, and the unfolding mind is not strengthened by the practice of those duties which dignify the human character.they only live to amuse themselves, and by the same law which in nature invariably produces certain effects, they soon only afford barren amusement. but as i purpose taking a separate view of the different ranks of society, and of the moral character of women, in each, this hint is, for the present, sufficient; and i have only alluded to the subject, because it appears to me to be the very essence of an introduction to give a cursory account of the contents of the work it introduces. my own sex, i hope, will excuse me, if i treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. i earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consistsi wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt. dismissing then those pretty feminine phrases, which the men condescendingly use to soften our slavish dependence, and despising that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners, supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel, i wish to shew that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex; and that secondary views should be brought to this simple touchstone. this is a rough sketch of my plan; and should i express my conviction with the energetic emotions that i feel whenever i think of the subject, the dictates of experience and reflection will be felt by some of my readers. animated by this important object, i shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style;i aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for, wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments, than dazzle by the elegance of my language, i shall not waste my time in rounding periods, or in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart.i shall be employed about things, not words!and, anxious to render my sex more respectable members of society, i shall try to avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels, and from novels into familiar letters and conversation. these pretty superlatives, dropping glibly from the tongue, vitiate the taste, and create a kind of sickly delicacy that turns away from simple unadorned truth; and a deluge of false sentiments and over-stretched feelings, stifling the natural emotions of the heart, render the domestic pleasures insipid, that ought to sweeten the exercise of those severe duties, which educate a rational and immortal being for a nobler field of action. the education of women has, of late, been more attended to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavour by satire or instruction to improve them. it is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments; meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves,the only way women can rise in the world,by marriage. and this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry they act as such children may be expected to act:they dress; they paint, and nickname god's creatures.surely these weak beings are only fit for a seraglio!can they be expected to govern a family with judgment, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world? if then it can be fairly deduced from the present conduct of the sex, from the prevalent fondness for pleasure which takes place of ambition and those nobler passions that open and enlarge the soul; that the instruction which women have hitherto received has only tended, with the constitution of civil society, to render them insignificant objects of desiremere propagators of fools!if it can be proved that in aiming to accomplish them, without cultivating their understandings, they are taken out of their sphere of duties, and made ridiculous and useless when the short-lived bloom of beauty is over,* i presume that rational men will excuse me for endeavouring to persuade them to become more masculine and respectable. * a lively writer, i cannot recollect his name, asks what business women turned of forty have to do in the world? indeed the word masculine is only a bugbear: there is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude; for their apparent inferiority with respect to bodily strength, must render them, in some degree, dependent on men in the various relations of life; but why should it be increased by prejudices that give a sex to virtue, and confound simple truths with sensual reveries? women are, in fact, so much degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence, that i do not mean to add a paradox when i assert, that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantine airs that undermine esteem even whilst they excite desire. let men become more chaste and modest, and if women do not grow wiser in the same ratio, it will be clear that they have weaker understandings. it seems scarcely necessary to say, that i now speak of the sex in general. many individuals have more sense than their male relatives; and, as nothing preponderates where there is a constant struggle for an equilibrium, without it has naturally more gravity, some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern. chap. i. the rights and involved duties of mankind considered. in the present state of society it appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground. to clear my way, i must be allowed to ask some plain questions, and the answers will probably appear as unequivocal as the axioms on which reasoning is built; though, when entangled with various motives of action, they are formally contradicted, either by the words or conduct of men. in what does man's pre-eminence over the brute creation consist? the answer is as clear as that a half is less than the whole; in reason. what acquirement exalts one being above another? virtue; we spontaneously reply. for what purpose were the passions implanted? that man by struggling with them might attain a degree of knowledge denied to the brutes; whispers experience. consequently the perfection of our nature and capability of happiness, must be estimated by the degree of reason, virtue, and knowledge, that distinguish the individual, and direct the laws which bind society: and that from the exercise of reason, knowledge and virtue naturally flow, is equally undeniable, if mankind be viewed collectively. the rights and duties of man thus simplified, it seems almost impertinent to attempt to illustrate truths that appear so incontrovertible; yet such deeply rooted prejudices have clouded reason, and such spurious qualities have assumed the name of virtues, that it is necessary to pursue the course of reason as it has been perplexed and involved in error, by various adventitious circumstances, comparing the simple axiom with casual deviations. men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they can scarcely trace how, rather than to root them out. the mind must be strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it by halves. yet the imperfect conclusions thus drawn, are frequently very plausible, because they are built on partial experience, on just, though narrow, views. going back to first principles, vice skulks, with all its native deformity, from close investigation; but a set of shallow reasoners are always exclaiming that these arguments prove too much, and that a measure rotten at the core may be expedient. thus expediency is continually contrasted with simple principles, till truth is lost in a mist of words, virtue, in forms, and knowledge rendered a sounding nothing, by the specious prejudices that assume its name. that the society is formed in the wisest manner, whose constitution is founded on the nature of man, strikes, in the abstract, every thinking being so forcibly, that it looks like presumption to endeavour to bring forward proofs; though proof must be brought, or the strong hold of prescription will never be forced by reason; yet to urge prescription as an argument to justify the depriving men (or women) of their natural rights, is one of the absurd sophisms which daily insult common sense. the civilization of the bulk of the people of europe is very partial; nay, it may be made a question, whether they have acquired any virtues in exchange for innocence, equivalent to the misery produced by the vices that have been plastered over unsightly ignorance, and the freedom which has been bartered for splendid slavery. the desire of dazzling by riches, the most certain pre-eminence that man can obtain, the pleasure of commanding flattering sycophants, and many other complicated low calculations of doting self-love, have all contributed to overwhelm the mass of mankind, and make liberty a convenient handle for mock patriotism. for whilst rank and titles are held of the utmost importance, before which genius "must hide its diminished head," it is, with a few exceptions, very unfortunate for a nation when a man of abilities, without rank or property, pushes himself forward to notice.alas! what unheard of misery have thousands suffered to purchase a cardinal's hat for an intriguing obscure adventurer, who longed to be ranked with princes, or lord it over them by seizing the triple crown! such, indeed, has been the wretchedness that has flowed from hereditary honours, riches, and monarchy, that men of lively sensibility have almost uttered blasphemy in order to justify the dispensations of providence. man has been held out as independent of his power who made him, or as a lawless planet darting from its orbit to steal the celestial fire of reason; and the vengeance of heaven, lurking in the subtile flame, like pandora's pent up mischiefs, sufficiently punished his temerity, by introducing evil into the world. impressed by this view of the misery and disorder which pervaded society, and fatigued with jostling against artificial fools, rousseau became enamoured of solitude, and, being at the same time an optimist, he labours with uncommon eloquence to prove that man was naturally a solitary animal. misled by his respect for the goodness of god, who certainlyfor what man of sense and feeling can doubt it!gave life only to communicate happiness, he considers evil as positive, and the work of man; not aware that he was exalting one attribute at the expence of another, equally necessary to divine perfection. reared on a false hypothesis his arguments in favour of a state of nature are plausible, but unsound. i say unsound; for to assert that a state of nature is preferable to civilization, in all its possible perfection, is, in other words, to arraign supreme wisdom; and the paradoxical exclamation, that god has made all things right, and that error has been introduced by the creature, whom he formed, knowing what he formed, is as unphilosophical as impious. when that wise being who created us and placed us here, saw the fair idea, he willed, by allowing it to be so, that the passions should unfold our reason, because he could see that present evil would produce future good. could the helpless creature whom he called from nothing break loose from his providence, and boldly learn to know good by practising evil, without his permission? no.how could that energetic advocate for immortality argue so inconsistently? had mankind remained for ever in the brutal state of nature, which even his magic pen cannot paint as a state in which a single virtue took root, it would have been clear, though not to the sensitive unreflecting wanderer, that man was born to run the circle of life and death, and adorn god's garden for some purpose which could not easily be reconciled with his attributes. but if, to crown the whole, there were to be rational creatures produced, allowed to rise in excellence by the exercise of powers implanted for that purpose; if benignity itself thought fit to call into existence a creature above the brutes,* who could think and improve himself, why should that inestimable gift, for a gift it was, if man was so created as to have a capacity to rise above the state in which sensation produced brutal ease, be called, in direct terms, a curse? a curse it might be reckoned, if the whole of our existence were bounded by our continuance in this world; for why should the gracious fountain of life give us passions, and the power of reflecting, only to imbitter our days and inspire us with mistaken notions of dignity? why should he lead us from love of ourselves to the sublime emotions which the discovery of his wisdom and goodness excites, if these feelings were not set in motion to improve our nature, of which they make a part,*(2) and render us capable of enjoying a more godlike portion of happiness? firmly persuaded that no evil exists in the world that god did not design to take place, i build my belief on the perfection of god. * contrary to the opinion of anatomists, who argue by analogy from the formation of the teeth, stomach, and intestines, rousseau will not allow a man to be a carnivorous animal. and, carried away from nature by a love of system, he disputes whether man be a gregarious animal, though the long and helpless state of infancy seems to point him out as particularly impelled to pair, the first step towards herding. *(2) what would you say to a mechanic whom you had desired to make a watch to point out the hour of the day, if, to show his ingenuity, he added wheels to make it a repeater, &c. that perplexed the simple mechanism; should he urge, to excuse himselfhad you not touched a certain spring, you would have known nothing of the matter, and that he should have amused himself by making an experiment without doing you any harm: would you not retort fairly upon him, by insisting that if he had not added those needless wheels and springs, the accident could not have happened? rousseau exerts himself to prove that all was right originally: a crowd of authors that all is now right: and i, that all will be right. but, true to his first position, next to a state of nature, rousseau celebrates barbarism, and apostrophizing the shade of fabricius, he forgets that, in conquering the world, the romans never dreamed of establishing their own liberty on a firm basis, or of extending the reign of virtue. eager to support his system, he stigmatizes, as vicious, every effort of genius; and, uttering the apotheosis of savage virtues, he exalts those to demi-gods, who were scarcely humanthe brutal spartans, who, in defiance of justice and gratitude, sacrificed, in cold blood, the slaves who had shewn themselves heroes to rescue their oppressors. disgusted with artificial manners and virtues, the citizen of geneva, instead of properly sifting the subject, threw away the wheat with the chaff, without waiting to inquire whether the evils which his ardent soul turned from indignantly, were the consequence of civilization or the vestiges of barbarism. he saw vice tramping on virtue, and the semblance of goodness taking place of the reality; he saw talents bent by power to sinister purposes, and never thought of tracing the gigantic mischief up to arbitrary power, up to the hereditary distinctions that clash with the mental superiority that naturally raises a man above his fellows. he did not perceive that regal power, in a few generations, introduces idiotism into the noble stem, and holds out baits to render thousands idle and vicious. nothing can set the regal character in a more contemptible point of view, than the various crimes that have elevated men to the supreme dignity.vile intrigues, unnatural crimes, and every vice that degrades our nature, have been the steps to this distinguished eminence; yet millions of men have supinely allowed the nerveless limbs of the posterity of such rapacious prowlers to rest quietly on their ensanguined thrones.* * could there be a greater insult offered to the rights of man than the beds of justice in france, when an infant was made the organ of the detestable dubois! what but a pestilential vapour can hover over society when its chief director is only instructed in the invention of crimes, or the stupid routine of childish ceremonies? will men never be wise?will they never cease to expect corn from tares, and figs from thistles? it is impossible for any man, when the most favourable circumstances concur, to acquire sufficient knowledge and strength of mind to discharge the duties of a king, entrusted with uncontrouled power; how then must they be violated when his very elevation is an insuperable bar to the attainment of either wisdom or virtue; when all the feelings of a man are stifled by flattery, and reflection shut out by pleasure! surely it is madness to make the fate of thousands depend on the caprice of a weak fellow creature, whose very station sinks him necessarily below the meanest of his subjects! but one power should not be thrown down to exalt anotherfor all power inebriates weak man; and its abuse proves that the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society. but this and any similar maxim deduced from simple reason, raises an outcrythe church or the state is in danger, if faith in the wisdom of antiquity is not implicit; and they who, roused by the sight of human calamity, dare to attack human authority, are reviled as despisers of god, and enemies of man. these are bitter calumnies, yet they reached one of the best of men,* whose ashes still preach peace, and whose memory demands a respectful pause, when subjects are discussed that lay so near his heart * dr. [richard] price. after attacking the sacred majesty of kings, i shall scarcely excite surprise by adding my firm persuasion that every profession, in which great subordination of rank constitutes its power, is highly injurious to morality. a standing army, for instance, is incompatible with freedom; because subordination and rigour are the very sinews of military discipline; and despotism is necessary to give vigour to enterprizes that one will directs. a spirit inspired by romantic notions of honour, a kind of morality founded on the fashion of the age, can only be felt by a few officers, whilst the main body must be moved by command, like the waves of the sea; for the strong wind of authority pushes the crowd of subalterns forward, they scarcely know or care why, with headlong fury. besides, nothing can be so prejudicial to the morals of the inhabitants of country towns as the occasional residence of a set of idle superficial young men, whose only occupation is gallantry, and whose polished manners render vice more dangerous, by concealing its deformity under gay ornamental drapery. an air of fashion, which is but a badge of slavery, and proves that the soul has not a strong individual character, awes simple country people into an imitation of the vices, when they cannot catch the slippery graces, of politeness. every corps is a chain of despots, who, submitting and tyrannizing without exercising their reason, become dead weights of vice and folly on the community. a man of rank or fortune, sure of rising by interest, has nothing to do but to pursue some extravagant freak; whilst the needy gentleman, who is to rise, as the phrase turns, by his merit, becomes a servile parasite or vile pander. sailors, the naval gentlemen, come under the same description, only their vices assume a different and a grosser cast. they are more positively indolent, when not discharging the ceremonials of their station; whilst the insignificant fluttering of soldiers may be termed active idleness. more confined to the society of men, the former acquire a fondness for humour and mischievous tricks; whilst the latter, mixing frequently with well-bred women, catch a sentimental cant.but mind is equally out of the question, whether they indulge the horse-laugh, or polite simper. may i be allowed to extend the comparison to a profession where more mind is certainly to be found; for the clergy have superior opportunities of improvement, though subordination almost equally cramps their faculties? the blind submission imposed at college to forms of belief serves as a novitiate to the curate, who must obsequiously respect the opinion of his rector or patron, if he mean to rise in his profession. perhaps there cannot be a more forcible contrast than between the servile dependent gait of a poor curate and the courtly mien of a bishop. and the respect and contempt they inspire render the discharge of their separate functions equally useless. it is of great importance to observe that the character of every man is, in some degree, formed by his profession. a man of sense may only have a cast of countenance that wears off as you trace his individuality, whilst the weak, common man has scarcely ever any character, but what belongs to the body; at least, all his opinions have been so steeped in the vat consecrated by authority, that the faint spirit which the grape of his own vine yields cannot be distinguished. society, therefore, as it becomes more enlightened, should be very careful not to establish bodies of men who must necessarily be made foolish or vicious by the very constitution of their profession. in the infancy of society, when men were just emerging out of barbarism, chiefs and priests, touching the most powerful springs of savage conduct, hope and fear, must have had unbounded sway. an aristocracy, of course, is naturally the first form of government. but, clashing interests soon losing their equipoise, a monarchy and hierarchy break out of the confusion of ambitious struggles, and the foundation of both is secured by feudal tenures. this appears to be the origin of monarchical and priestly power, and the dawn of civilization. but such combustible materials cannot long be pent up; and, getting vent in foreign wars and intestine insurrections, the people acquire some power in tumult, which obliges their rulers to gloss over their oppression with a shew of right. thus, as wars, agriculture, commerce, and literature, expand the mind, despots are compelled, to make covert corruption hold fast the power which was formerly snatched by open force.* and this baneful lurking gangrene is most quickly spread by luxury and superstition, the sure dregs of ambition. the indolent puppet of a court first becomes a luxurious monster, or fastidious sensualist, and then makes the contagion which his unnatural state spread, the instrument of tyranny. * men of abilities scatter seeds that grow up and have a great influence on the forming opinion; and when once the public opinion preponderates, through the exertion of reason, the overthrow of arbitrary power is not very distant. it is the pestiferous purple which renders the progress of civilization a curse, and warps the understanding, till men of sensibility doubt whether the expansion of intellect produces a greater portion of happiness or misery. but the nature of the poison points out the antidote; and had rousseau mounted one step higher in his investigation, or could his eye have pierced through the foggy atmosphere, which he almost disdained to breathe, his active mind would have darted forward to contemplate the perfection of man in the establishment of true civilization, instead of taking his ferocious flight back to the night of sensual ignorance. chap. ii. the prevailing opinion of a sexual character discussed. to account for, and excuse the tyranny of man, many ingenious arguments have been brought forward to prove, that the two sexes, in the acquirement of virtue, ought to aim at attaining a very different character: or, to speak explicitly, women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue. yet it should seem, allowing them to have souls, that there is but one way appointed by providence to lead mankind to either virtue or happiness. if then women are not a swarm of ephemeron triflers, why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence? men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex, when they do not keenly satirize our headstrong passions and groveling vices.behold, i should answer, the natural effect of ignorance! the mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force. women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives. thus milton describes our first frail mother; though when he tells us that women are formed for softness and sweet attractive grace, i cannot comprehend his meaning, unless, in the true mahometan strain, he meant to deprive us of souls, and insinuate that we were beings only designed by sweet attractive grace, and docile blind obedience, to gratify the senses of man when he can no longer soar on the wing of contemplation. how grossly do they insult us who thus advise us only to render ourselves gentle, domestic brutes! for instance, the winning softness so warmly, and frequently, recommended, that governs by obeying. what childish expressions, and how insignificant is the beingcan it be an immortal one? who will condescend to govern by such sinister methods! 'certainly,' says lord bacon, 'man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to god by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature!' men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood. rousseau was more consistent when he wished to stop the progress of reason in both sexes, for if men eat of the tree of knowledge, women will come in for a taste; but, from the imperfect cultivation which their understandings now receive, they only attain a knowledge of evil. children, i grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness. for if it be allowed that women were destined by providence to acquire human virtues, and by the exercise of their understandings, that stability of character which is the firmest ground to rest our future hopes upon, they must be permitted to turn to the fountain of light, and not forced to shape their course by the twinkling of a mere satellite. milton, i grant, was of a very different opinion; for he only bends to the indefeasible right of beauty, though it would be difficult to render two passages which i now mean to contrast, consistent. but into similar inconsistencies are great men often led by their senses. 'to whom thus eve with perfect beauty adorn'd. 'my author and disposer, what thou bidst 'unargued i obey; so god ordains; 'god is thy law, thou mine: to know no more 'is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise.' these are exactly the arguments that i have used to children; but i have added, your reason is now gaining strength, and, till it arrives at some degree of maturity, you must look up to me for advicethen you ought to think, and only rely on god. yet in the following lines milton seems to coincide with me; when he makes adam thus expostulate with his maker. 'hast thou not made me here thy substitute, 'and these inferior far beneath me set? 'among unequals what society 'can sort, what harmony or true delight? 'which must be mutual, in proportion due 'giv'n and receiv'd; but in disparity 'the one intense, the other still remiss 'cannot well suit with either, but soon prove 'tedious alike: of fellowship i speak 'such as i seek, fit to participate 'all rational delight in treating, therefore, of the manners of women, let us, disregarding sensual arguments, trace what we should endeavour to make them in order to co-operate, if the expression be not too bold, with the supreme being. by individual education, i mean, for the sense of the word is not precisely defined, such an attention to a child as will slowly sharpen the senses, form the temper, regulate the passions as they begin to ferment, and set the understanding to work before the body arrives at maturity; so that the man may only have to proceed, not to begin, the important task of learning to think and reason. to prevent any misconstruction, i must add, that i do not believe that a private education can work the wonders which some sanguine writers have attributed to it. men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in. in every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century. it may then fairly be inferred, that, till society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected from education. it is, however, sufficient for my present purpose to assert, that, whatever effect circumstances have on the abilities, every being may become virtuous by the exercise of its own reason; for if but one being was created with vicious inclinations, that is positively bad, what can save us from atheism? or if we worship a god, is not that god a devil? consequently, the most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent. in fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason. this was rousseau's opinion respecting men: i extend it to women, and confidently assert that they have been drawn out of their sphere by false refinement, and not by an endeavour to acquire masculine qualities. still the regal homage which they receive is so intoxicating, that till the manners of the times are changed, and formed on more reasonable principles, it may be impossible to convince them that the illegitimate power, which they obtain, by degrading themselves, is a curse, and that they must return to nature and equality, if they wish to secure the placid satisfaction that unsophisticated affections impart. but for this epoch we must waitwait, perhaps, till kings and nobles, enlightened by reason, and, preferring the real dignity of man to childish state, throw off their gaudy hereditary trappings: and if then women do not resign the arbitrary power of beautythey will prove that they have less mind than man. i may be accused of arrogance; still i must declare what i firmly believe, that all the writers who have written on the subject of female education and manners from rousseau to dr. gregory, have contributed to render women more artificial, weak characters, than they would otherwise have been; and, consequently, more useless members of society. i might have expressed this conviction in a lower key; but i am afraid it would have been the whine of affectation, and not the faithful expression of my feelings, of the clear result, which experience and reflection have led me to draw. when i come to that division of the subject, i shall advert to the passages that i more particularly disapprove of, in the works of the authors i have just alluded to; but it is first necessary to observe, that my objection extends to the whole purport of those books, which tend, in my opinion, to degrade one half of the human species, and render women pleasing at the expense of every solid virtue. though, to reason on rousseau's ground, if man did attain a degree of perfection of mind when his body arrived at maturity, it might be proper, in order to make a man and his wife one, that she should rely entirely on his understanding; and the graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty would be equally conspicuous. but, alas! husbands, as well as their helpmates, are often only overgrown children; nay, thanks to early debauchery, scarcely men in their outward form and if the blind lead the blind, one need not come from heaven to tell us the consequence. many are the causes that, in the present corrupt state of society, contribute to enslave women by cramping their understandings and sharpening their senses. one, perhaps, that silently does more mischief than all the rest, is their disregard of order. to do every thing in an orderly manner, is a most important precept, which women, who, generally speaking, receive only a disorderly kind of education, seldom attend to with that degree of exactness that men, who from their infancy are broken into method, observe. this negligent kind of guess-work, for what other epithet can be used to point out the random exertions of a sort of instinctive common sense, never brought to the test of reason? prevents their generalizing matters of factso they do to-day, what they did yesterday, merely because they did it yesterday. this contempt of the understanding in early life has more baneful consequences than is commonly supposed; for the little knowledge which women of strong minds attain, is, from various circumstances, of a more desultory kind than the knowledge of men, and it is acquired more by sheer observations on real life, than from comparing what has been individually observed with the results of experience generalized by speculation. led by their dependent situation and domestic employments more into society, what they learn is rather by snatches; and as learning is with them, in general, only a secondary thing, they do not pursue any one branch with that persevering ardour necessary to give vigour to the faculties, and clearness to the judgment. in the present state of society, a little learning is required to support the character of a gentleman; and boys are obliged to submit to a few years of discipline. but in the education of women, the cultivation of the understanding is always subordinate to the acquirement of some corporeal accomplishment; even while enervated by confinement and false notions of modesty, the body is prevented from attaining that grace and beauty which relaxed half-formed limbs never exhibit. besides, in youth their faculties are not brought forward by emulation; and having no serious scientific study, if they have natural sagacity it is turned too soon on life and manners. they dwell on effects, and modifications, without tracing them back to causes; and complicated rules to adjust behaviour are a weak substitute for simple principles. as a proof that education gives this appearance of weakness to females, we may instance the example of military men, who are, like them, sent into the world before their minds have been stored with knowledge or fortified by principles. the consequences are similar; soldiers acquire a little superficial knowledge, snatched from the muddy current of conversation, and, from continually mixing with society, they gain, what is termed a knowledge of the world; and this acquaintance with manners and customs has frequently been confounded with a knowledge of the human heart. but can the crude fruit of casual observation, never brought to the test of judgment, formed by comparing speculation and experience, deserve such a distinction? soldiers, as well as women, practice the minor virtues with punctilious politeness. where is then the sexual difference, when the education has been the same? all the difference that i can discern, arises from the superior advantage of liberty, which enables the former to see more of life. it is wandering from my present subject, perhaps, to make a political remark; but, as it was produced naturally by the train of my reflections, i shall not pass it silently over. standing armies can never consist of resolute, robust men; they may be well disciplined machines, but they will seldom contain men under the influence of strong passions, or with very vigorous faculties. and as for any depth of understanding, i will venture to affirm, that it is as rarely to be found in the army as amongst women; and the cause, i maintain, is the same. it may be further observed, that officers are also particularly attentive to their persons, fond of dancing, crowded rooms, adventures, and ridicule.* like the fair sex, the business of their lives is gallantry.they were taught to please, and they only live to please. yet they do not lose their rank in the distinction of sexes, for they are still reckoned superior to women, though in what their superiority consists, beyond what i have just mentioned, it is difficult to discover. * why should women be censured with petulant acrimony, because they seem to have a passion for a scarlet coat? has not education placed them more on a level with soldiers than any other class of men? the great misfortune is this, that they both acquire manners before morals, and a knowledge of life before they have, from reflection, any acquaintance with the grand ideal outline of human nature. the consequence is natural; satisfied with common nature, they become a prey to prejudices, and taking all their opinions on credit, they blindly submit to authority. so that, if they have any sense, it is a kind of instinctive glance, that catches proportions, and decides with respect to manners; but fails when arguments are to be pursued below the surface, or opinions analyzed. may not the same remark be applied to women? nay, the argument may be carried still further, for they are both thrown out of a useful station by the unnatural distinctions established in civilized life. riches and hereditary honours have made cyphers of women to give consequence to the numerical figure; and idleness has produced a mixture of gallantry and despotism into society, which leads the very men who are the slaves of their mistresses to tyrannize over their sisters, wives, and daughters. this is only keeping them in rank and file, it is true. strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing. the sensualist, indeed, has been the most dangerous of tyrants, and women have been duped by their lovers, as princes by their ministers, whilst dreaming that they reigned over them. i now principally allude to rousseau, for his character of sophia is, undoubtedly, a captivating one, though it appears to me grossly unnatural; however it is not the superstructure, but the foundation of her character, the principles on which her education was built, that i mean to attack; nay, warmly as i admire the genius of that able writer, whose opinions i shall often have occasion to cite, indignation always takes place of admiration, and the rigid frown of insulted virtue effaces the smile of complacency which his eloquent periods are wont to raise, when i read his voluptuous reveries. is this the man, who, in his ardour for virtue, would banish all the soft arts of peace, and almost carry us back to spartan discipline? is this the man who delights to paint the useful struggles of passion, the triumphs of good dispositions, and the heroic flights which carry the glowing soul out of itself?how are these mighty sentiments lowered when he describes the pretty foot and enticing airs of his little favourite! but, for the present, i wave the subject, and, instead of severely reprehending the transient effusions of overweening sensibility, i shall only observe, that whoever has cast a benevolent eye on society, must often have been gratified by the sight of a humble mutual love, not dignified by sentiment, or strengthened by a union in intellectual pursuits. the domestic trifles of the day have afforded matters for cheerful converse, and innocent caresses have softened toils which did not require great exercise of mind or stretch of thought: yet, has not the sight of this moderate felicity excited more tenderness than respect? an emotion similar to what we feel when children are playing, or animals sporting,* whilst the contemplation of the noble struggles of suffering merit has raised admiration, and carried our thoughts to that world where sensation will give place to reason. * similar feelings has milton's pleasing picture of paradisiacal happiness ever raised in my mind; yet, instead of envying the lovely pair, i have, with conscious dignity, or satanic pride, turned to hell for sublimer objects. in the same style, when viewing some noble monument of human art, i have traced the emanation of the deity in the order i admired, till, descending from that giddy height, i have caught myself contemplating the grandest of all human sights,for fancy quickly placed, in some solitary recess, an outcast of fortune, rising superior to passion and discontent. women are, therefore, to be considered either as moral beings, or so weak that they must be entirely subjected to the superior faculties of men. let us examine this question. rousseau declares that a woman should never, for a moment, feel herself independent, that she should be governed by fear to exercise her natural cunning, and made a coquetish slave in order to render her a more alluring object of desire, a sweeter companion to man, whenever he chooses to relax himself. he carries the arguments, which he pretends to draw from the indications of nature, still further, and insinuates that truth and fortitude, the corner stones of all human virtue, should be cultivated with certain restrictions, because, with respect to the female character, obedience is the grand lesson which ought to be impressed with unrelenting rigour. what nonsense! when will a great man arise with sufficient strength of mind to puff away the fumes which pride and sensuality have thus spread over the subject! if women are by nature inferior to men, their virtues must be the same in quality, if not in degree, or virtue is a relative idea; consequently, their conduct should be founded on the same principles, and have the same aim. connected with man as daughters, wives, and mothers, their moral character may be estimated by their manner of fulfilling those simple duties; but the end, the grand end of their exertions should be to unfold their own faculties and acquire the dignity of conscious virtue. they may try to render their road pleasant; but ought never to forget, in common with man, that life yields not the felicity which can satisfy an immortal soul. i do not mean to insinuate, that either sex should be so lost in abstract reflections or distant views, as to forget the affections and duties that lie before them, and are, in truth, the means appointed to produce the fruit of life; on the contrary, i would warmly recommend them, even while i assert, that they afford most satisfaction when they are considered in their true, sober light. probably the prevailing opinion, that woman was created for man, may have taken its rise from moses's poetical story; yet, as very few, it is presumed, who have bestowed any serious thought on the subject, ever supposed that eve was, literally speaking, one of adam's ribs, the deduction must be allowed to fall to the ground; or, only be so far admitted as it proves that man, from the remotest antiquity, found it convenient to exert his strength to subjugate his companion, and his invention to shew that she ought to have her neck bent under the yoke, because the whole creation was only created for his convenience or pleasure. let it not be concluded that i wish to invert the order of things; i have already granted, that, from the constitution of their bodies, men seem to be designed by providence to attain a greater degree of virtue. i speak collectively of the whole sex; but i see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their virtues should differ in respect to their nature. in fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? i must therefore, if i reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they have the same simple direction, as that there is a god. it follows then that cunning should not be opposed to wisdom, little cares to great exertions, or insipid softness, varnished over with the name of gentleness, to that fortitude which grand views alone can inspire. i shall be told that woman would then lose many of her peculiar graces, and the opinion of a well known poet might be quoted to refute my unqualified assertion. for pope has said, in the name of the whole male sex, 'yet ne'er so sure our passion to create, 'as when she touch'd the brink of all we hate.' in what light this sally places men and women, i shall leave to the judicious to determine; meanwhile i shall content myself with observing, that i cannot discover why, unless they are mortal, females should always be degraded by being made subservient to love or lust. to speak disrespectfully of love is, i know, high treason against sentiment and fine feelings; but i wish to speak the simple language of truth, and rather to address the head than the heart. to endeavour to reason love out of the world, would be to out quixote cervantes, and equally offend against common sense; but an endeavour to restrain this tumultuous passion, and to prove that it should not be allowed to dethrone superior powers, or to usurp the sceptre which the understanding should ever coolly wield, appears less wild. youth is the season for love in both sexes; but in those days of thoughtless enjoyment provision should be made for the more important years of life, when reflection takes place of sensation. but rousseau, and most of the male writers who have followed his steps, have warmly inculcated that the whole tendency of female education ought to be directed to one point:to render them pleasing. let me reason with the supporters of this opinion who have any knowledge of human nature, do they imagine that marriage can eradicate the habitude of life? the woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that her charms are oblique sunbeams, and that they cannot have much effect on her husband's heart when they are seen every day, when the summer is passed and gone. will she then have sufficient native energy to look into herself for comfort, and cultivate her dormant faculties? or, is it not more rational to expect that she will try to please other men; and, in the emotions raised by the expectation of new conquests, endeavour to forget the mortification her love or pride has received? when the husband ceases to be a loverand the time will inevitably come, her desire of pleasing will then grow languid, or become a spring of bitterness; and love, perhaps, the most evanescent of all passions, gives place to jealousy or vanity. i now speak of women who are restrained by principle or prejudice; such women, though they would shrink from an intrigue with real abhorrence, yet, nevertheless, wish to be convinced by the homage of gallantry that they are cruelly neglected by their husbands; or, days and weeks are spent in dreaming of the happiness enjoyed by congenial souls till their health is undermined and their spirits broken by discontent. how then can the great art of pleasing be such a necessary study? it is only useful to a mistress; the chaste wife, and serious mother, should only consider her power to please as the polish of her virtues, and the affection of her husband as one of the comforts that render her task less difficult and her life happier.but, whether she be loved or neglected, her first wish should be to make herself respectable, and not to rely for all her happiness on a being subject to like infirmities with herself. the worthy dr. gregory fell into a similar error. i respect his heart; but entirely disapprove of his celebrated legacy to his daughters. he advises them to cultivate a fondness for dress, because a fondness for dress, he asserts, is natural to them. i am unable to comprehend what either he or rousseau mean, when they frequently use this indefinite term. if they told us that in a pre-existent state the soul was fond of dress, and brought this inclination with it into a new body, i should listen to them with a half smile, as i often do when i hear a rant about innate elegance.but if he only meant to say that the exercise of the faculties will produce this fondnessi deny it.it is not natural; but arises, like false ambition in men, from a love of power. dr. gregory goes much further; he actually recommends dissimulation, and advises an innocent girl to give the lie to her feelings, and not dance with spirit, when gaiety of heart would make her feel eloquent without making her gestures immodest. in the name of truth and common sense, why should not one woman acknowledge that she can take more exercise than another? or, in other words, that she has a sound constitution; and why, to damp innocent vivacity, is she darkly to be told that men will draw conclusions which she little thinks of?let the libertine draw what inference he pleases; but, i hope, that no sensible mother will restrain the natural frankness of youth by instilling such indecent cautions. out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh; and a wiser than solomon hath said, that the heart should be made clean, and not trivial ceremonies observed, which it is not very difficult to fulfill with scrupulous exactness when vice reigns in the heart. women ought to endeavour to purify their heart; but can they do so when their uncultivated understandings make them entirely dependent on their senses for employment and amusement, when no noble pursuit sets them above the little vanities of the day, or enables them to curb the wild emotions that agitate a reed over which every passing breeze has power? to gain the affections of a virtuous man is affectation necessary? nature has given woman a weaker frame than man; but, to ensure her husband's affections, must a wife, who by the exercise of her mind and body whilst she was discharging the duties of a daughter, wife, and mother, has allowed her constitution to retain its natural strength, and her nerves a healthy tone, is she, i say, to condescend to use art and feign a sickly delicacy in order to secure her husband's affection? weakness may excite tenderness, and gratify the arrogant pride of man; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind that pants for, and deserves to be respected. fondness is a poor substitute for friendship! in a seraglio, i grant, that all these arts are necessary; the epicure must have his palate tickled, or he will sink into apathy; but have women so little ambition as to be satisfied with such a condition? can they supinely dream life away in the lap of pleasure, or the languor of weariness, rather than assert their claim to pursue reasonable pleasures and render themselves conspicuous by practising the virtues which dignify mankind? surely she has not an immortal soul who can loiter life away merely employed to adorn her person, that she may amuse the languid hours, and soften the cares of a fellow-creature who is willing to be enlivened by her smiles and tricks, when the serious business of life is over. besides, the woman who strengthens her body and exercises her mind will, by managing her family and practising various virtues, become the friend, and not the humble dependent of her husband; and if she, by possessing such substantial qualities, merit his regard, she will not find it necessary to conceal her affection, nor to pretend to an unnatural coldness of constitution to excite her husband's passions. in fact, if we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex. nature, or, to speak with strict propriety, god, has made all things right; but man has sought him out many inventions to mar the work. i now allude to that part of dr. gregory's treatise, where he advises a wife never to let her husband know the extent of her sensibility or affection. voluptuous precaution, and as ineffectual as absurd.love, from its very nature, must be transitory. to seek for a secret that would render it constant, would be as wild a search as for the philosopher's stone, or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. the most holy band of society is friendship. it has been well said, by a shrewd satirist, "that rare as true love is, true friendship is still rarer." this is an obvious truth, and the cause not lying deep, will not elude a slight glance of inquiry. love, the common passion, in which chance and sensation take place of choice and reason, is, in some degree, felt by the mass of mankind; for it is not necessary to speak, at present, of the emotions that rise above or sink below love. this passion, naturally increased by suspense and difficulties, draws the mind out of its accustomed state, and exalts the affections; but the security of marriage, allowing the fever of love to subside, a healthy temperature is thought insipid, only by those who have not sufficient intellect to substitute the calm tenderness of friendship, the confidence of respect, instead of blind admiration, and the sensual emotions of fondness. this is, must be, the course of nature.friendship or indifference inevitably succeeds love.and this constitution seems perfectly to harmonize with the system of government which prevails in the moral world. passions are spurs to action, and open the mind; but they sink into mere appetites, become a personal and momentary gratification, when the object is gained, and the satisfied mind rests in enjoyment. the man who had some virtue whilst he was struggling for a crown, often becomes a voluptuous tyrant when it graces his brow; and, when the lover is not lost in the husband, the dotard, a prey to childish caprices, and fond jealousies, neglects the serious duties of life, and the caresses which should excite confidence in his children are lavished on the overgrown child, his wife. in order to fulfil the duties of life, and to be able to pursue with vigour the various employments which form the moral character, a master and mistress of a family ought not to continue to love each other with passion. i mean to say that they ought not to indulge those emotions which disturb the order of society, and engross the thoughts that should be otherwise employed. the mind that has never been engrossed by one object wants vigourif it can long be so, it is weak. a mistaken education, a narrow, uncultivated mind, and many sexual prejudices, tend to make women more constant than men; but, for the present, i shall not touch on this branch of the subject. i will go still further, and advance, without dreaming of a paradox, that an unhappy marriage is often very advantageous to a family, and that the neglected wife is, in general, the best mother. and this would almost always be the consequence if the female mind were more enlarged: for, it seems to be the common dispensation of providence, that what we gain in present enjoyment should be deducted from the treasure of life, experience; and that when we are gathering the flowers of the day and revelling in pleasure, the solid fruit of toil and wisdom should not be caught at the same time. the way lies before us, we must turn to the right or left; and he who will pass life away in bounding from one pleasure to another, must not complain if he acquire neither wisdom nor respectability of character. supposing, for a moment, that the soul is not immortal, and that man was only created for the present scene,i think we should have reason to complain that love, infantine fondness, ever grew insipid and palled upon the sense. let us eat, drink, and love, for to-morrow we die, would be, in fact, the language of reason, the morality of life; and who but a fool would part with a reality for a fleeting shadow? but, if awed by observing the improbable powers of the mind, we disdain to confine our wishes or thoughts to such a comparatively mean field of action; that only appears grand and important, as it is connected with a boundless prospect and sublime hopes, what necessity is there for falsehood in conduct, and why must the sacred majesty of truth be violated to detain a deceitful good that saps the very foundation of virtue? why must the female mind be tainted by coquetish arts to gratify the sensualist, and prevent love from subsiding into friendship, or compassionate tenderness, when there are not qualities on which friendship can be built? let the honest heart shew itself, and reason teach passion to submit to necessity; or, let the dignified pursuit of virtue and knowledge raise the mind above those emotions which rather imbitter than sweeten the cup of life, when they are not restrained within due bounds. i do not mean to allude to the romantic passion, which is the concomitant of genius.who can clip its wing? but that grand passion not proportioned to the puny enjoyments of life, is only true to the sentiment, and feeds on itself. the passions which have been celebrated for their durability have always been unfortunate. they have acquired strength by absence and constitutional melancholy.the fancy has hovered round a form of beauty dimly seenbut familiarity might have turned admiration into disgust; or, at least, into indifference, and allowed the imagination leisure to start fresh game. with perfect propriety, according to this view of things, does rousseau make the mistress of his soul, eloisa, love st. preux, when life was fading before her; but this is no proof of the immortality of the passion. of the same complexion is dr. gregory's advice respecting delicacy of sentiment, which he advises a woman not to acquire, if she have determined to marry. this determination, however, perfectly consistent with his former advice, he calls indelicate, and earnestly persuades his daughters to conceal it, though it may govern their conduct;as if it were indelicate to have the common appetites of human nature. noble morality! and consistent with the cautious prudence of a little soul that cannot extend its views beyond the present minute division of existence. if all the faculties of woman's mind are only to be cultivated as they respect her dependence on man; if, when a husband be obtained, she have arrived at her goal, and meanly proud rests satisfied with such a paltry crown, let her grovel contentedly, scarcely raised by her employments above the animal kingdom; but, if, struggling for the prize of her high calling, she look beyond the present scene, let her cultivate her understanding without stopping to consider what character the husband may have whom she is destined to marry. let her only determine, without being too anxious about present happiness, to acquire the qualities that ennoble a rational being, and a rough inelegant husband may shock her taste without destroying her peace of mind. she will not model her soul to suit the frailties of her companion, but to bear with them: his character may be a trial, but not an impediment to virtue. if dr. gregory confined his remark to romantic expectations of constant love and congenial feelings, he should have recollected that experience will banish what advice can never make us cease to wish for, when the imagination is kept alive at the expence of reason. i own it frequently happens that women who have fostered a romantic unnatural delicacy of feeling, waste their* lives in imagining how happy they should have been with a husband who could love them with a fervid increasing affection every day, and all day. but they might as well pine married as singleand would not be a jot more unhappy with a bad husband than longing for a good one. that a proper education; or, to speak with more precision, a well stored mind, would enable a woman to support a single life with dignity, i grant; but that she should avoid cultivating her taste, lest her husband should occasionally shock it, is quitting a substance for a shadow. to say the truth, i do not know of what use is an improved taste, if the individual be not rendered more independent of the casualties of life; if new sources of enjoyment, only dependent on the solitary operations of the mind, are not opened. people of taste, married or single, without distinction, will ever be disgusted by various things that touch not less observing minds. on this conclusion the argument must not be allowed to hinge; but in the whole sum of enjoyment is taste to be denominated a blessing? * for example, the herd of novelists. the question is, whether it procures most pain or pleasure? the answer will decide the propriety of dr. gregory's advice, and shew how absurd and tyrannic it is thus to lay down a system of slavery; or to attempt to educate moral beings by any other rules than those deduced from pure reason, which apply to the whole species. gentleness of manners, forbearance and long-suffering, are such amiable godlike qualities, that in sublime poetic strains the deity has been invested with them; and, perhaps, no representation of his goodness so strongly fastens on the human affections as those that represent him abundant in mercy and willing to pardon. gentleness, considered in this point of view, bears on its front all the characteristics of grandeur, combined with the winning graces of condescension; but what a different aspect it assumes when it is the submissive demeanour of dependence, the support of weakness that loves, because it wants protection; and is forbearing, because it must silently endure injuries; smiling under the lash at which it dare not snarl. abject as this picture appears, it is the portrait of an accomplished woman, according to the received opinion of female excellence, separated by specious reasoners from human excellence. or, they* kindly restore the rib, and make one moral being of a man and woman; not forgetting to give her all the 'submissive charms.' * vide rousseau, and swedenborg. how women are to exist in that state where there is to be neither marrying nor giving in marriage, we are not told. for though moralists have agreed that the tenor of life seems to prove that man is prepared by various circumstances for a future state, they constantly concur in advising woman only to provide for the present. gentleness, docility, and a spaniel-like affection are, on this ground, consistently recommended as the cardinal virtues of the sex; and, disregarding the arbitrary economy of nature, one writer has declared that it is masculine for a woman to be melancholy. she was created to be the toy of man, his rattle, and it must jingle in his ears whenever, dismissing reason, he chooses to be amused. to recommend gentleness, indeed, on a broad basis is strictly philosophical. a frail being should labour to be gentle. but when forbearance confounds right and wrong, it ceases to be a virtue; and, however convenient it may be found in a companionthat companion will ever be considered as an inferior, and only inspire a vapid tenderness, which easily degenerates into contempt. still, if advice could really make a being gentle, whose natural disposition admitted not of such a fine polish, something towards the advancement of order would be attained; but if, as might quickly be demonstrated, only affectation be produced by this indiscriminate counsel, which throws a stumbling-block in the way of gradual improvement, and true melioration of temper, the sex is not much benefited by sacrificing solid virtues to the attainment of superficial graces, though for a few years they may procure the individuals regal sway. as a philosopher, i read with indignation the plausible epithets which men use to soften their insults; and, as a moralist, i ask what is meant by such heterogeneous associations, as fair defects, amiable weaknesses, &c.? if there be but one criterion of morals, but one archetype for man, women appear to be suspended by destiny, according to the vulgar tale of mahomet's coffin; they have neither the unerring instinct of brutes, nor are allowed to fix the eye of reason on a perfect model. they were made to be loved, and must not aim at respect, lest they should be hunted out of society as masculine. but to view the subject in another point of view. do passive indolent women make the best wives? confining our discussion to the present moment of existence, let us see how such weak creatures perform their part? do the women who, by the attainment of a few superficial accomplishments, have strengthened the prevailing prejudice, merely contribute to the happiness of their husbands? do they display their charms merely to amuse them? and have women, who have early imbibed notions of passive obedience, sufficient character to manage a family or educate children? so far from it, that, after surveying the history of woman, i cannot help, agreeing with the severest satirist, considering the sex as the weakest as well as the most oppressed half of the species. what does history disclose but marks of inferiority, and how few women have emancipated themselves from the galling yoke of sovereign man?so few, that the exceptions remind me of an ingenious conjecture respecting newton: that he was probably a being of a superior order, accidentally caged in a human body. following the same train of thinking, i have been led to imagine that the few extraordinary women who have rushed in eccentrical directions out of the orbit prescribed to their sex, were male spirits, confined by mistake in female frames. but if it be not philosophical to think of sex when the soul is mentioned, the inferiority must depend on the organs; or the heavenly fire, which is to ferment the clay, is not given in equal portions. but avoiding, as i have hitherto done, any direct comparison of the two sexes collectively, or frankly acknowledging the inferiority of woman, according to the present appearance of things, i shall only insist that men have increased that inferiority till women are almost sunk below the standard of rational creatures. let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale. yet let it be remembered, that for a small number of distinguished women i do not ask a place. it is difficult for us purblind mortals to say to what height human discoveries and improvements may arrive when the gloom of despotism subsides, which makes us stumble at every step; but, when morality shall be settled on a more solid basis, then, without being gifted with a prophetic spirit, i will venture to predict that woman will be either the friend or slave of man. we shall not, as at present, doubt whether she is a moral agent, or the link which unites man with brutes. but, should it then appear, that like the brutes they were principally created for the use of man, he will let them patiently bite the bridle, and not mock them with empty praise; or, should their rationality be proved, he will not impede their improvement merely to gratify his sensual appetites. he will not, with all the graces of rhetoric, advise them to submit implicitly their understanding to the guidance of man. he will not, when he treats of the education of women, assert that they ought never to have the free use of reason, nor would he recommend cunning and dissimulation to beings who are acquiring, in like manner as himself, the virtues of humanity. surely there can be but one rule of right, if morality has an eternal foundation, and whoever sacrifices virtue, strictly so called, to present convenience, or whose duty it is to act in such a manner, lives only for the passing day, and cannot be an accountable creature. the poet then should have dropped his sneer when he says, 'if weak women go astray, 'the stars are more in fault than they.' for that they are bound by the adamantine chain of destiny is most certain, if it be proved that they are never to exercise their own reason, never to be independent, never to rise above opinion, or to feel the dignity of a rational will that only bows to god, and often forgets that the universe contains any being but itself and the model of perfection to which its ardent gaze is turned, to adore attributes that, softened into virtues, may be imitated in kind, though the degree overwhelms the enraptured mind. if, i say, for i would not impress by declamation when reason offers her sober light, if they be really capable of acting like rational creatures, let them not be treated like slaves; or, like the brutes who are dependent on the reason of man, when they associate with him; but cultivate their minds, give them the salutary, sublime curb of principle, and let them attain conscious dignity by feeling themselves only dependent on god. teach them, in common with man, to submit to necessity instead of giving, to render them more pleasing, a sex to morals. further, should experience prove that they cannot attain the same degree of strength of mind, perseverance, and fortitude, let their virtues be the same in kind, though they may vainly struggle for the same degree; and the superiority of man will be equally clear, if not clearer; and truth, as it is a simple principle, which admits of no modification, would be common to both. nay, the order of society as it is at present regulated would not be inverted, for woman would then only have the rank that reason assigned her, and arts could not be practised to bring the balance even, much less to turn it. these may be termed utopian dreams.thanks to that being who impressed them on my soul, and gave me sufficient strength of mind to dare to exert my own reason, till, becoming dependent only on him for the support of my virtue, i view, with indignation, the mistaken notions that enslave my sex. i love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man. in fact, the conduct of an accountable being must be regulated by the operations of its own reason; or on what foundation rests the throne of god? it appears to me necessary to dwell on these obvious truths, because females have been insulated, as it were; and, while they have been stripped of the virtues that should clothe humanity, they have been decked with artificial graces that enable them to exercise a short-lived tyranny. love, in their bosoms, taking place of every nobler passion, their sole ambition is to be fair, to raise emotion instead of inspiring respect; and this ignoble desire, like the servility in absolute monarchies, destroys all strength of character. liberty is the mother of virtue, and if women be, by their very constitution, slaves, and not allowed to breathe the sharp invigorating air of freedom, they must ever languish like exotics, and be reckoned beautiful flaws in nature. as to the argument respecting the subjection in which the sex has ever been held, it retorts on man. the many have always been enthralled by the few; and monsters, who scarcely have shewn any discernment of human excellence, have tyrannized over thousands of their fellow-creatures. why have men of superiour endowments submitted to such degradation? for, is it not universally acknowledged that kings, viewed collectively, have ever been inferior, in abilities and virtue, to the same number of men taken from the common mass of mankindyet, have they not, and are they not still treated with a degree of reverence that is an insult to reason? china is not the only country where a living man has been made a god. men have submitted to superior strength to enjoy with impunity the pleasure of the momentwomen have only done the same, and therefore till it is proved that the courtier, who servilely resigns the birthright of a man, is not a moral agent, it cannot be demonstrated that woman is essentially inferior to man because she has always been subjugated. brutal force has hitherto governed the world, and that the science of politics is in its infancy, is evident from philosophers scrupling to give the knowledge most useful to man that determinate distinction. i shall not pursue this argument any further than to establish an obvious inference, that as sound politics diffuse liberty, mankind, including woman, will become more wise and virtuous. chap. iii. the same subject continued. bodily strength from being the distinction of heroes is now sunk into such unmerited contempt that men, as well as women, seem to think it unnecessary: the latter, as it takes from their feminine graces, and from that lovely weakness the source of their undue power; and the former, because it appears inimical to the character of a gentleman. that they have both by departing from one extreme run into another, may easily be proved; but first it may be proper to observe, that a vulgar error has obtained a degree of credit, which has given force to a false conclusion, in which an effect has been mistaken for a cause. people of genius have, very frequently, impaired their constitutions by study or careless inattention to their health, and the violence of their passions bearing a proportion to the vigour of their intellects, the sword's destroying the scabbard has become almost proverbial, and superficial observers have inferred from thence, that men of genius have commonly weak, or, to use a more fashionable phrase, delicate constitutions. yet the contrary, i believe, will appear to be the fact; for, on diligent inquiry, i find that strength of mind has, in most cases, been accompanied by superior strength of body,natural soundness of constitution,not that robust tone of nerves and vigour of muscles, which arise from bodily labour, when the mind is quiescent, or only directs the hands. dr. priestley has remarked, in the preface to his biographical chart, that the majority of great men have lived beyond forty-five. and, considering the thoughtless manner in which they have lavished their strength, when investigating a favourite science they have wasted the lamp of life, forgetful of the midnight hour; or, when, lost in poetic dreams, fancy has peopled the scene, and the soul has been disturbed, till it shook the constitution, by the passions that meditation had raised; whose objects, the baseless fabric of a vision, faded before the exhausted eye, they must have had iron frames. shakspeare never grasped the airy dagger with a nerveless hand, nor did milton tremble when he led satan far from the confines of his dreary prison.these were not the ravings of imbecility, the sickly effusions of distempered brains; but the exuberance of fancy, that 'in a fine phrenzy' wandering, was not continually reminded of its material shackles. i am aware that this argument would carry me further than it may be supposed i wish to go; but i follow truth, and, still adhering to my first position, i will allow that bodily strength seems to give man a natural superiority over woman; and this is the only solid basis on which the superiority of the sex can be built. but i still insist, that not only the virtue, but the knowledge of the two sexes should be the same in nature, if not in degree, and that women, considered not only as moral, but rational creatures, ought to endeavour to acquire human virtues (or perfections) by the same means as men, instead of being educated like a fanciful kind of half beingone of rousseau's wild chimeras.* * 'researches into abstract and speculative truths, the principles and axioms of sciences, in short, every thing which tends to generalize our ideas, is not the proper province of women; their studies should be relative to points of practice; it belongs to them to apply those principles which men have discovered; and it is their part to make observations, which direct men to the establishment of general principles. all the ideas of women, which have not the immediate tendency to points of duty, should be directed to the study of men, and to the attainment of those agreeable accomplishments which have taste for their object; for as to works of genius, they are beyond their capacity; neither have they sufficient precision or power of attention to succeed in sciences which require accuracy: and as to physical knowledge, it belongs to those only who are most active, most inquisitive; who comprehend the greatest variety of objects: in short, it belongs to those who have the strongest powers, and who exercise them most, to judge of the relations between sensible beings and the laws of nature. a woman who is naturally weak, and does not carry her ideas to any great extent, knows how to judge and make a proper estimate of those movements which she sets to work, in order to aid her weakness; and these movements are the passions of men. the mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours; for all her levers move the human heart. she must have the skill to incline us to do every thing which her sex will not enable her to do herself, and which is necessary or agreeable to her; therefore she ought to study the mind of man thoroughly, not the mind of man in general, abstractedly, but the dispositions of those men to whom she is subject, either by the laws of her country or by the force of opinion. she should learn to penetrate into their real sentiments from their conversation, their actions, their looks, and gestures. she should also have the art, by her own conversation, actions, looks, and gestures, to communicate those sentiments which are agreeable to them, without seeming to intend it. men will argue more philosophically about the human heart; but women will read the heart of man better than they. it belongs to women, if i may be allowed the expression, to form an experimental morality, and to reduce the study of man to a system. women have most wit, men have most genius; women observe, men reason: from the concurrence of both we derive the clearest light and the most perfect knowledge, which the human mind is, of itself, capable of attaining. in one word, from hence we acquire the most intimate acquaintance, both with ourselves and others, of which our nature is capable; and it is thus that art has a constant tendency to perfect those endowments which nature has bestowed,the world is the book of women.'rousseau's emilius. i hope my readers still remember the comparison, which i have brought forward, between women and officers. but, if strength of body be, with some shew of reason, the boast of men, why are women so infatuated as to be proud of a defect? rousseau has furnished them with a plausible excuse, which could only have occurred to a man, whose imagination had been allowed to run wild, and refine on the impressions made by exquisite senses;that they might, forsooth, have a pretext for yielding to a natural appetite without violating a romantic species of modesty, which gratifies the pride and libertinism of man. women, deluded by these sentiments, sometimes boast of their weakness, cunningly obtaining power by playing on the weakness of men; and they may well glory in their illicit sway, for, like turkish bashaws, they have more real power than their masters: but virtue is sacrificed to temporary gratifications, and the respectability of life to the triumph of an hour. women, as well as despots, have now, perhaps, more power than they would have if the world, divided and subdivided into kingdoms and families, were governed by laws deduced from the exercise of reason; but in obtaining it, to carry on the comparison, their character is degraded, and licentiousness spread through the whole aggregate of society. the many become pedestal to the few. i, therefore, will venture to assert, that till women are more rationally educated, the progress of human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks. and if it be granted that woman was not created merely to gratify the appetite of man, or to be the upper servant, who provides his meals and takes care of his linen, it must follow, that the first care of those mothers or fathers, who really attend to the education of females, should be, if not to strengthen the body, at least, not to destroy the constitution by mistaken notions of beauty and female excellence; nor should girls ever be allowed to imbibe the pernicious notion that a defect can, by any chemical process of reasoning, become an excellence. in this respect, i am happy to find, that the author of one of the most instructive books, that our country has produced for children, coincides with me in opinion; i shall quote his pertinent remarks to give the force of his respectable authority to reason.* * 'a respectable old man gives the following sensible account of the method he pursued when educating his daughter. "i endeavoured to give both to her mind and body a degree of vigour, which is seldom found in the female sex. as soon as she was sufficiently advanced in strength to be capable of the lighter labours of husbandry and gardening, i employed her as my constant companion. selene, for that was her name, soon acquired a dexterity in all these rustic employments, which i considered with equal pleasure and admiration. if women are in general feeble both in body and mind, it arises less from nature than from education. we encourage a vicious indolence and inactivity, which we falsely call delicacy; instead of hardening their minds by the severer principles of reason and philosophy, we breed them to useless arts, which terminate in vanity and sensuality. in most of the countries which i had visited, they are taught nothing of an higher nature than a few modulations of the voice, or useless postures of the body; their time is consumed in sloth or trifles, and trifles become the only pursuits capable of interesting them. we seem to forget, that it is upon the qualities of the female sex that our own domestic comforts and the education of our children must depend. and what are the comforts or the education which a race of beings, corrupted from their infancy, and unacquainted with all the duties of life are fitted to bestow? to touch a musical instrument with useless skill, to exhibit their natural or affected graces to the eyes of indolent and debauched young men, to dissipate their husband's patrimony in riotous and unnecessary expences, these are the only arts cultivated by women in most of the polished nations i had seen. and the consequences are uniformly such as may be expected to proceed from such polluted sources, private misery and public servitude. '"but selene's education was regulated by different views, and conducted upon severer principles; if that can be called severity which opens the mind to a sense of moral and religious duties, and most effectually arms it against the inevitable evils of life."' mr. day's sandford and merton, vol. iii. but should it be proved that woman is naturally weaker than man, whence does it follow that it is natural for her to labour to become still weaker than nature intended her to be? arguments of this cast are an insult to common sense, and savour of passion. the divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is to be hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger, and, though conviction may not silence many boisterous disputants, yet, when any, prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation. the mother, who wishes to give true dignity of character to her daughter, must, regardless of the sneers of ignorance, proceed on a plan diametrically opposite to that which rousseau has recommended with all the deluding charms of eloquence and philosophical sophistry: for his eloquence renders absurdities plausible, and his dogmatic conclusions puzzle, without convincing, those who have not ability to refute them. throughout the whole animal kingdom every young creature requires almost continual exercise, and the infancy of children, conformable to this intimation, should be passed in harmless gambols, that exercise the feet and hands, without requiring very minute direction from the head, or the constant attention of a nurse. in fact, the care necessary for self-preservation is the first natural exercise of the understanding, as little inventions to amuse the present moment unfold the imagination. but these wise designs of nature are counteracted by mistaken fondness or blind zeal. the child is not left a moment to its own direction, particularly a girl, and thus rendered dependentdependence is called natural. to preserve personal beauty, woman's glory! the limbs and faculties are cramped with worse than chinese bands, and the sedentary life which they are condemned to live, whilst boys frolic in the open air, weakens the muscles and relaxes the nerves.as for rousseau's remarks, which have since been echoed by several writers, that they have naturally, that is from their birth, independent of education, a fondness for dolls, dressing, and talkingthey are so puerile as not to merit a serious refutation. that a girl, condemned to sit for hours together listening to the idle chat of weak nurses, or to attend at her mother's toilet, will endeavour to join the conversation, is, indeed, very natural; and that she will imitate her mother or aunts, and amuse herself by adorning her lifeless doll, as they do in dressing her, poor innocent babe! is undoubtedly a most natural consequence. for men of the greatest abilities have seldom had sufficient strength to rise above the surrounding atmosphere; and, if the page of genius have always been blurred by the prejudices of the age, some allowance should be made for a sex, who, like kings, always see things through a false medium. pursuing these reflections, the fondness for dress, conspicuous in women, may be easily accounted for, without supposing it the result of a desire to please the sex on which they are dependent. the absurdity, in short, of supposing that a girl is naturally a coquette, and that a desire connected with the impulse of nature to propagate the species, should appear even before an improper education has, by heating the imagination, called it forth prematurely, is so unphilosophical, that such a sagacious observer as rousseau would not have adopted it, if he had not been accustomed to make reason give way to his desire of singularity, and truth to a favourite paradox. yet thus to give a sex to mind was not very consistent with the principles of a man who argued so warmly, and so well, for the immortality of the soul.but what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis! rousseau respectedalmost adored virtueand yet he allowed himself to love with sensual fondness. his imagination constantly prepared inflammable fewel for his inflammable senses; but, in order to reconcile his respect for self-denial, fortitude, and those heroic virtues, which a mind like his could not coolly admire, he labours to invert the law of nature, and broaches a doctrine pregnant with mischief and derogatory to the character of supreme wisdom. his ridiculous stories, which tend to prove that girls are naturally attentive to their persons, without laying any stress on daily example, are below contempt.and that a little miss should have such a correct taste as to neglect the pleasing amusement of making o's, merely because she perceived that it was an ungraceful attitude, should be selected with the anecdotes of the learned pig.* * 'i once knew a young person who learned to write before she learned to read, and began to write with her needle before she could use a pen. at first, indeed, she took it into her head to make no other letter than the o: this letter she was constantly making of all sizes, and always the wrong way. unluckily, one day, as she was intent on this employment, she happened to see herself in the looking-glass; when, taking a dislike to the constrained attitude in which she sat while writing, she threw away her pen, like another pallas, and determined against making the o any more. her brother was also equally adverse to writing: it was the confinement, however, and not the constrained attitude, that most disgusted him.'rousseau's emilius. i have, probably, had an opportunity of observing more girls in their infancy than j. j. rousseaui can recollect my own feelings, and i have looked steadily around me; yet, so far from coinciding with him in opinion respecting the first dawn of the female character, i will venture to affirm, that a girl, whose spirits have not been damped by inactivity, or innocence tainted by false shame, will always be a romp, and the doll will never excite attention unless confinement allows her no alternative. girls and boys, in short, would play harmlessly together, if the distinction of sex was not inculcated long before nature makes any difference.i will go further, and affirm, as an indisputable fact, that most of the women, in the circle of my observation, who have acted like rational creatures, or shewn any vigour of intellect, have accidentally been allowed to run wildas some of the elegant formers of the fair sex would insinuate. the baneful consequences which flow from inattention to health during infancy, and youth, extend further than is supposeddependence of body naturally produces dependence of mind; and how can she be a good wife or mother, the greater part of whose time is employed to guard against or endure sickness? nor can it be expected that a woman will resolutely endeavour to strengthen her constitution and abstain from enervating indulgencies, if artificial notions of beauty, and false descriptions of sensibility, have been early entangled with her motives of action. most men are sometimes obliged to bear with bodily inconveniencies, and to endure, occasionally, the inclemency of the elements; but genteel women are, literally speaking, slaves to their bodies, and glory in their subjection. i once knew a weak woman of fashion, who was more than commonly proud of her delicacy and sensibility. she thought a distinguishing taste and puny appetite the height of all human perfection, and acted accordingly.i have seen this weak sophisticated being neglect all the duties of life, yet recline with self-complacency on a sofa, and boast of her want of appetite as a proof of delicacy that extended to, or, perhaps, arose from, her exquisite sensibility: for it is difficult to render intelligible such ridiculous jargon.yet, at the moment, i have seen her insult a worthy old gentlewoman, whom unexpected misfortunes had made dependent on her ostentatious bounty, and who, in better days, had claims on her gratitude. is it possible that a human creature could have become such a weak and depraved being, if, like the sybarites, dissolved in luxury every thing like virtue had not been worn away, or never impressed by precept, a poor substitute, it is true, for cultivation of mind, though it serves as a fence against vice? such a woman is not a more irrational monster than some of the roman emperors, who were depraved by lawless power. yet, since kings have been more under the restraint of law, and the curb, however weak, of honour, the records of history are not filled with such unnatural instances of folly and cruelty, nor does the despotism that kills virtue and genius in the bud, hover over europe with that destructive blast which desolates turkey, and renders the men, as well as the soil, unfruitful. women are every where in this deplorable state; for, in order to preserve their innocence, as ignorance is courteously termed, truth is hidden from them, and they are made to assume an artificial character before their faculties have acquired any strength. taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. men have various employments and pursuits which engage their attention, and give a character to the opening mind; but women, confined to one, and having their thoughts constantly directed to the most insignificant part of themselves, seldom extend their views beyond the triumph of the hour. but were their understanding once emancipated from the slavery to which the pride and sensuality of man and their short-sighted desire, like that of dominion in tyrants, of present sway, has subjected them, we should probably read of their weaknesses with surprise. i must be allowed to pursue the argument a little farther. perhaps, if the existence of an evil being were allowed, who, in the allegorical language of scripture, went about seeking whom he should devour, he could not more effectually degrade the human character than by giving a man absolute power. this argument branches into various ramifications.birth, riches, and every extrinsic advantage that exalt a man above his fellows, without any mental exertion, sink him in reality below them. in proportion to his weakness, he is played upon by designing men, till the bloated monster has lost all traces of humanity. and that tribes of men, like flocks of sheep, should quietly follow such a leader, is a solecism that only a desire of present enjoyment and narrowness of understanding can solve. educated in slavish dependence, and enervated by luxury and sloth, where shall we find men who will stand forth to assert the rights of man;or claim the privilege of moral beings, who should have but one road to excellence? slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long in freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished. let not men then in the pride of power, use the same arguments that tyrannic kings and venal ministers have used, and fallaciously assert that woman ought to be subjected because she has always been so.but, when man, governed by reasonable laws, enjoys his natural freedom, let him despise woman, if she do not share it with him; and, till that glorious period arrives, in descanting on the folly of the sex, let him not overlook his own. women, it is true, obtaining power by unjust means, by practising or fostering vice, evidently lose the rank which reason would assign them, and they become either abject slaves or capricious tyrants. they lose all simplicity, all dignity of mind, in acquiring power, and act as men are observed to act when they have been exalted by the same means. it is time to effect a revolution in female mannerstime to restore to them their lost dignityand make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. it is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.if men be demi-godswhy let us serve them! and if the dignity of the female soul be as disputable as that of animalsif their reason does not afford sufficient light to direct their conduct whilst unerring instinct is deniedthey are surely of all creatures the most miserable! and, bent beneath the iron hand of destiny, must submit to be a fair defect in creation. but to justify the ways of providence respecting them, by pointing out some irrefragable reason for thus making such a large portion of mankind accountable and not accountable, would puzzle the subtilest casuist. the only solid foundation for morality appears to be the character of the supreme being; the harmony of which arises from a balance of attributes;and, to speak with reverence, one attribute seems to imply the necessity of another. he must be just, because he is wise, he must be good, because be is omnipotent. for to exalt one attribute at the expence of another equally noble and necessary, bears the stamp of the warped reason of manthe homage of passion. man, accustomed to bow down to power in his savage state, can seldom divest himself of this barbarous prejudice, even when civilization determines how much superior mental is to bodily strength; and his reason is clouded by these crude opinions, even when he thinks of the deity.his omnipotence is made to swallow up, or preside over his other attributes, and those mortals are supposed to limit his power irreverently, who think that it must be regulated by his wisdom. i disclaim that specious humility which, after investigating nature, stops at the author.the high and lofty one, who inhabiteth eternity, doubtless possesses many attributes of which we can form no conception; but reason tells me that they cannot clash with those i adoreand i am compelled to listen to her voice. it seems natural for man to search for excellence, and either to trace it in the object that he worships, or blindly to invest it with perfection, as a garment. but what good effect can the latter mode of worship have on the moral conduct of a rational being? he bends to power; he adores a dark cloud, which may open a bright prospect to him, or burst in angry, lawless fury, on his devoted head he knows not why. and, supposing that the deity acts from the vague impulse of an undirected will, man must also follow his own, or act according to rules, deduced from principles which he disclaims as irreverent. into this dilemma have both enthusiasts and cooler thinkers fallen, when they laboured to free men from the wholesome restraints which a just conception of the character of god imposes. it is not impious thus to scan the attributes of the almighty: in fact, who can avoid it that exercises his faculties? for to love god as the fountain of wisdom, goodness, and power, appears to be the only worship useful to a being who wishes to acquire either virtue or knowledge. a blind unsettled affection may, like human passions, occupy the mind and warm the heart, whilst, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our god, is forgotten. i shall pursue this subject still further, when i consider religion in a light opposite to that recommended by dr. gregory, who treats it as a matter of sentiment or taste. to return from this apparent digression. it were to be wished that women would cherish an affection for their husbands, founded on the same principle that devotion ought to rest upon. no other firm base is there under heavenfor let them beware of the fallacious light of sentiment; too often used as a softer phrase for sensuality. it follows then, i think, that from their infancy women should either be shut up like eastern princes, or educated in such a manner as to be able to think and act for themselves. why do men halt between two opinions, and expect impossibilities? why do they expect virtue from a slave, from a being whom the constitution of civil society has rendered weak, if not vicious? still i know that it will require a considerable length of time to eradicate the firmly rooted prejudices which sensualists have planted; it will also require some time to convince women that they act contrary to their real interest on an enlarged scale, when they cherish or affect weakness under the name of delicacy, and to convince the world that the poisoned source of female vices and follies, if it be necessary, in compliance with custom, to use synonymous terms in a lax sense, has been the sensual homage paid to beauty:to beauty of features; for it has been shrewdly observed by a german writer, that a pretty woman, as an object of desire, is generally allowed to be so by men of all descriptions; whilst a fine woman, who inspires more sublime emotions by displaying intellectual beauty, may be overlooked or observed with indifference, by those men who find their happiness in the gratification of their appetites. i foresee an obvious retortwhilst man remains such an imperfect being as he appears hitherto to have been, he will, more or less, be the slave of his appetites; and those women obtaining most power who gratify a predominant one, the sex is degraded by a physical, if not by a moral necessity. this objection has, i grant, some force; but while such a sublime precept exists, as, 'be pure as your heavenly father is pure;' it would seem that the virtues of man are not limited by the being who alone could limit them; and that be may press forward without considering whether he steps out of his sphere by indulging such a noble ambition. to the wild billows it has been said, 'thus far shalt thou go, and no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.' vainly then do they beat and foam, restrained by the power that confines the struggling planets in their orbits, matter yields to the great governing spirit.but an immortal soul, not restrained by mechanical laws and struggling to free itself from the shackles of matter, contributes to, instead of disturbing, the order of creation, when, co-operating with the father of spirits, it tries to govern itself by the invariable rule that, in a degree, before which our imagination faints, regulates the universe. besides, if women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop? are they to be considered as viceregents allowed to reign over a small domain, and answerable for their conduct to a higher tribunal, liable to error? it will not be difficult to prove that such delegates will act like men subjected by fear, and make their children and servants endure their tyrannical oppression. as they submit without reason, they will, having no fixed rules to square their conduct by, be kind, or cruel, just as the whim of the moment directs; and we ought not to wonder if sometimes, galled by their heavy yoke, they take a malignant pleasure in resting it on weaker shoulders. but, supposing a woman, trained up to obedience, be married to a sensible man, who directs her judgment without making her feel the servility of her subjection, to act with as much propriety by this reflected light as can be expected when reason is taken at second hand, yet she cannot ensure the life of her protector; he may die and leave her with a large family. a double duty devolves on her; to educate them in the character of both father and mother; to form their principles and secure their property. but, alas! she has never thought, much less acted for herself. she has only learned to please* men, to depend gracefully on them; yet, encumbered with children, how is she to obtain another protectora husband to supply the place of reason? a rational man, for we are not treading on romantic ground, though he may think her a pleasing docile creature, will not choose to marry a family for love, when the world contains many more pretty creatures. what is then to become of her? she either falls an easy prey to some mean fortune-hunter, who defrauds her children of their paternal inheritance, and renders her miserable; or becomes the victim of discontent and blind indulgence. unable to educate her sons, or impress them with respect; for it is not a play on words to assert, that people are never respected, though filling an important station, who are not respectable; she pines under the anguish of unavailing impotent regret. the serpent's tooth enters into her very soul, and the vices of licentious youth bring her with sorrow, if not with poverty also, to the grave. * 'in the union of the sexes, both pursue one common object, but not in the same manner. from their diversity in this particular, arises the first determinate difference between the moral relations of each. the one should be active and strong, the other passive and weak: it is necessary the one should have both the power and the will, and that the other should make little resistance. 'this principle being established, it follows that woman is expressly formed to please the man: if the obligation be reciprocal also, and the man ought to please in his turn, it is not so immediately necessary: his great merit is in his power, and he pleases merely because he is strong. this, i must confess, is not one of the refined maxims of love; it is, however, one of the laws of nature, prior to love itself. 'if woman be formed to please and be subjected to man, it is her place, doubtless, to render herself agreeable to him, instead of challenging his passion, the violence of his desires depends on her charms; it is by means of these she should urge him to the exertion of those powers which nature hath given him. the most successful method of exciting them, is, to render such exertion necessary by resistance; as, in that case, self-love is added to desire, and the one triumphs in the victory which the other obliged to acquire. hence arise the various modes of attack and defence between the sexes; the boldness of one sex and the timidity of the other; and, in a word, that bashfulness and modesty with which nature hath armed the weak, in order to subdue the strong.'rousseau's emilius. i shall make no other comment on this ingenious passage, than just to observe, that it is the philosophy of lasciviousness. this is not an overcharged picture; on the contrary, it is a very possible case, and something similar must have fallen under every attentive eye. i have, however, taken it for granted, that she was well-disposed, though experience shews, that the blind may as easily be led into a ditch as along the beaten road. but supposing, no very improbable conjecture, that a being only taught to please must still find her happiness in pleasing;what an example of folly, not to say vice, will she be to her innocent daughters! the mother will be lost in the coquette, and, instead of making friends of her daughters, view them with eyes askance, for they are rivalsrivals more cruel than any other, because they invite a comparison, and drive her from the throne of beauty, who has never thought of a seat on the bench of reason. it does not require a lively pencil, or the discriminating outline of a caricature, to sketch the domestic miseries and petty vices which such a mistress of a family diffuses. still she only acts as a woman ought to act, brought up according to rousseau's system. she can never be reproached for being masculine, or turning out of her sphere; nay, she may observe another of his grand rules, and, cautiously preserving her reputation free from spot, be reckoned a good kind of woman. yet in what respect can she be termed good? she abstains, it is true, without any great struggle, from committing gross crimes; but how does she fulfil her duties? duties!in truth she has enough to think of to adorn her body and nurse a weak constitution. with respect to religion, she never presumed to judge for herself; but conformed, as a dependent creature should, to the ceremonies of the church which she was brought up in, piously believing that wiser heads than her own have settled that business:and not to doubt is her point of perfection. she therefore pays her tythe of mint and cumminand thanks her god that she is not as other women are. these are the blessed effects of a good education! these the virtues of man's help-mate!* * 'o how lovely,' exclaims rousseau, speaking of sophia, 'is her ignorance! happy is he who is destined to instruct her! she will never pretend to be the tutor of her husband, but will be content to be his pupil. far from attempting to subject him to her taste, she will accommodate herself to his. she will be more estimable to him, than if she was learned: he will have a pleasure in instructing her.'rousseau's emilius. i shall content myself with simply asking, how friendship can subsist, when love expires, between the master and his pupil? i must relieve myself by drawing a different picture. let fancy now present a woman with a tolerable understanding, for i do not wish to leave the line of mediocrity, whose constitution, strengthened by exercise, has allowed her body to acquire its full vigour; her mind, at the same time, gradually expanding itself to comprehend the moral duties of life, and in what human virtue and dignity consist. formed thus by the discharge of the relative duties of her station, she marries from affection, without losing sight of prudence, and looking beyond matrimonial felicity, she secures her husband's respect before it is necessary to exert mean arts to please him and feed a dying flame, which nature doomed to expire when the object became familiar, when friendship and forbearance take place of a more ardent affection.this is the natural death of love, and domestic peace is not destroyed by struggles to prevent its extinction. i also suppose the husband to be virtuous; or she is still more in want of independent principles. fate, however, breaks this tie.she is left a widow, perhaps, without a sufficient provision; but she is not desolate! the pang of nature is felt; but after time has softened sorrow into melancholy resignation, her heart turns to her children with redoubled fondness, and anxious to provide for them, affection gives a sacred heroic cast to her maternal duties. she thinks that not only the eye sees her virtuous efforts from whom all her comfort now must flow, and whose approbation is life; but her imagination, a little abstracted and exalted by grief, dwells on the fond hope that the eyes which her trembling hand closed, may still see how she subdues every wayward passion to fulfil the double duty of being the father as well as the mother of her children. raised to heroism by misfortunes, she represses the first faint dawning of a natural inclination, before it ripens into love, and in the bloom of life forgets her sexforgets the pleasure of an awakening passion, which might again have been inspired and returned. she no longer thinks of pleasing, and conscious dignity prevents her from priding herself on account of the praise which her conduct demands. her children have her love, and her brightest hopes are beyond the grave, where her imagination often strays. i think i see her surrounded by her children, reaping the reward of her care. the intelligent eye meets hers, whilst health and innocence smile on their chubby cheeks, and as they grow up the cares of life are lessened by their grateful attention. she lives to see the virtues which she endeavoured to plant on principles, fixed into habits, to see her children attain a strength of character sufficient to enable them to endure adversity without forgetting their mother's example. the task of life thus fulfilled, she calmly waits for the sleep of death, and rising from the grave, may saybehold, thou gavest me a talentand here are five talents. i wish to sum up what i have said in a few words, for i here throw down my gauntlet, and deny the existence of sexual virtues, not excepting modesty. for man and woman, truth, if i understand the meaning of the word, must be the same; yet the fanciful female character, so prettily drawn by poets and novelists, demanding the sacrifice of truth and sincerity, virtue becomes a relative idea, having no other foundation than utility, and of that utility men pretend arbitrarily to judge, shaping it to their own convenience. women, i allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, i sturdily maintain, must be the same. to become respectable, the exercise of their understanding is necessary, there is no other foundation for independence of character; i mean explicitly to say that they must only bow to the authority of reason, instead of being the modest slaves of opinion. in the superior ranks of life how seldom do we meet with a man of superior abilities, or even common acquirements? the reason appears to me clear, the state they are born in was an unnatural one. the human character has ever been formed by the employments the individual, or class, pursues; and if the faculties are not sharpened by necessity, they must remain obtuse. the argument may fairly be extended to women; for, seldom occupied by serious business, the pursuit of pleasure gives that insignificancy to their character which renders the society of the great so insipid. the same want of firmness, produced by a similar cause, forces them both to fly from themselves to noisy pleasures, and artificial passions, till vanity takes place of every social affection, and the characteristics of humanity can scarcely be discerned. such are the blessings of civil governments, as they are at present organized, that wealth and female softness equally tend to debase mankind, and are produced by the same cause; but allowing women to be rational creatures, they should be incited to acquire virtues which they may call their own, for how can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions? chap. iv. observations on the state of degradation to which woman is reduced by various causes. that woman is naturally weak, or degraded by a concurrence of circumstances, is, i think, clear. but this position i shall simply contrast with a conclusion, which i have frequently heard fall from sensible men in favour of an aristocracy: that the mass of mankind cannot be anything, or the obsequious slaves, who patiently allow themselves to be driven forward, would feel their own consequence, and spurn their chains. men, they further observe, submit every where to oppression, when they have only to lift up their heads to throw off the yoke; yet, instead of asserting their birthright, they quietly lick the dust, and say, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. women, i argue from analogy, are degraded by the same propensity to enjoy the present moment; and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain. but i must be more explicit. with respect to the culture of the heart, it is unanimously allowed that sex is out of the question; but the line of subordination in the mental powers is never to be passed over.* only 'absolute in loveliness,' the portion of rationality granted to woman, is, indeed, very scanty; for, denying her genius and judgment, it is scarcely possible to divine what remains to characterize intellect. * into what inconsistencies do men fall when they argue without the compass of principles. women, weak women, are compared with angels; yet, a superiour order of beings should be supposed to possess more intellect than man; or, in what does their superiority consist? in the same strain, to drop the sneer, they are allowed to possess more goodness of heart, piety, and benevolence.i doubt the fact, though it be courteously brought forward, unless ignorance be allowed to be the mother of devotion; for i am firmly persuaded that, on an average, the proportion between virtue and knowledge, is more upon a par than is commonly granted. the stamen of immortality, if i may be allowed the phrase, is the perfectibility of human reason; for, were man created perfect, or did a flood of knowledge break in upon him, when he arrived at maturity, that precluded error, i should doubt whether his existence would be continued after the dissolution of the body. but, in the present state of things, every difficulty in morals that escapes from human discussion, and equally baffles the investigation of profound thinking, and the lightning glance of genius, is an argument on which i build my belief of the immortality of the soul. reason is, consequentially, the simple power of improvement; or, more properly speaking, of discerning truth. every individual is in this respect a world in itself. more or less may be conspicuous in one being than another; but the nature of reason must be the same in all, if it be an emanation of divinity, the tie that connects the creature with the creator; for, can that soul be stamped with the heavenly image, that is not perfected by the exercise of its own reason?* yet outwardly ornamented with elaborate care, and so adorned to delight man, 'that with honour he may love,'*(2) the soul of woman is not allowed to have this distinction, and man, ever placed between her and reason, she is always represented as only created to see through a gross medium, and to take things on trust. but dismissing these fanciful theories, and considering woman as a whole, let it be what it will, instead of a part of man, the inquiry is whether she have reason or not. if she have, which, for a moment, i will take for granted, she was not created merely to be the solace of man, and the sexual should not destroy the human character. * 'the brutes,' says lord monboddo, 'remain in the state in which nature has placed them, except in so far as their natural instinct is improved by the culture we bestow upon them.' *(2) vide milton. into this error men have, probably, been led by viewing education in a false light; not considering it as the first step to form a being advancing gradually towards perfection;* but only as a preparation for life. on this sensual error, for i must call it so, has the false system of female manners been reared, which robs the whole sex of its dignity, and classes the brown and fair with the smiling flowers that only adorn the land. this has ever been the language of men, and the fear of departing from a supposed sexual character, has made even women of superiour sense adopt the same sentiments.*(2) thus understanding, strictly speaking, has been denied to woman; and instinct, sublimated into wit and cunning, for the purposes of life, has been substituted in its stead. * this word is not strictly just, but i cannot find a better. *(2) 'pleasure's the potion of th' inferior kind; but glory, virtue, heaven for man design'd.' after writing these lines, how could mrs. [anna letitia] barbauld write the following ignoble comparison? 'to a lady, with some painted flowers. 'flowers to the fair: to you these flowers i bring, and strive to greet you with an earlier spring. flowers sweet, and gay, and delicate like you; emblems of innocence, and beauty too. with flowers the graces bind their yellow hair, and flowery wreaths consenting lovers wear. flowers, the sole luxury which nature knew, in eden's pure and guiltless garden grew. to loftier forms are rougher tasks assign'd; the sheltering oak resists the stormy wind, the tougher yew repels invading foes, and the tall pine for future navies grows; but this soft family, to cares unknown, were born for pleasure and delight alone. gay without toil, and lovely without art, they spring to cheer the sense, and glad the heart. nor blush, my fair, to own you copy these; your best, your sweetest empire isto please.' so the men tell us; but virtue, says reason, must be acquired by rough toils, and useful struggles with worldly cares. the power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement, for an immortal being, that really deserves the name of knowledge. merely to observe, without endeavouring to account for any thing, may (in a very incomplete manner) serve as the common sense of life; but where is the store laid up that is to clothe the soul when it leaves the body? this power has not only been denied to women; but writers have insisted that it is inconsistent, with a few exceptions, with their sexual character. let men prove this, and i shall grant that woman only exists for man. i must, however, previously remark, that the power of generalizing ideas, to any great extent, is not very common amongst men or women. but this exercise is the true cultivation of the understanding; and every thing conspires to render the cultivation of the understanding more difficult in the female than the male world. i am naturally led by this assertion to the main subject of the present chapter, and shall now attempt to point out some of the causes that degrade the sex, and prevent women from generalizing their observations. i shall not go back to the remote annals of antiquity to trace the history of woman; it is sufficient to allow that she has always been either a slave, or a despot, and to remark, that each of these situations equally retards the progress of reason. the grand source of female folly and vice has ever appeared to me to arise from narrowness of mind; and the very constitution of civil governments has put almost insuperable obstacles in the way to prevent the cultivation of the female understanding:yet virtue can be built on no other foundation! the same obstacles are thrown in the way of the rich, and the same consequences ensue. necessity has been proverbially termed the mother of inventionthe aphorism may be extended to virtue. it is an acquirement, and an acquirement to which pleasure must be sacrificedand who sacrifices pleasure when it is within the grasp, whose mind has not been opened and strengthened by adversity, or the pursuit of knowledge goaded on by necessity?happy is it when people have the cares of life to struggle with; for these struggles prevent their becoming a prey to enervating vices, merely from idleness! but, if from their birth men and women be placed in a torrid zone, with the meridian sun of pleasure darting directly upon them, how can they sufficiently brace their minds to discharge the duties of life, or even to relish the affections that carry them out of themselves? pleasure is the business of woman's life, according to the present modification of society, and while it continues to be so, little can be expected from such weak beings. inheriting, in a lineal descent from the first fair defect in nature, the sovereignty of beauty, they have, to maintain their power, resigned the natural rights, which the exercise of reason might have procured them, and chosen rather to be short-lived queens than labour to obtain the sober pleasures that arise from equality. exalted by their inferiority (this sounds like a contradiction), they constantly demand homage as women, though experience should teach them that the men who pride themselves upon paying this arbitrary insolent respect to the sex, with the most scrupulous exactness, are most inclined to tyrannize over, and despise, the very weakness they cherish. often do they repeat mr. hume's sentiments; when, comparing the french and athenian character, he alludes to women. 'but what is more singular in this whimsical nation, say i to the athenians, is, that a frolick of yours during the saturnalia, when the slaves are served by their masters, is seriously continued by them through the whole year, and through the whole course and through the whole course of their lives; accompanied too with some circumstances, which still further augment the absurdity and ridicule. your sport only elevates for a few days those whom fortune has thrown down, and whom she too, in sport, may really elevate for ever above you. but this nation gravely exalts those, whom nature has subjected to them, and whose inferiority and infirmities are absolutely incurable. the women, though without virtue, are their masters and sovereigns.' ah! why do women, i write with affectionate solicitude, condescend to receive a degree of attention and respect from strangers, different from that reciprocation of civility which the dictates of humanity and the politeness of civilization authorise between man and man? and, why do they not discover, when 'in the noon of beauty's power,' that they are treated like queens only to be deluded by hollow respect, till they are led to resign, or not assume, their natural prerogatives? confined then in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves, and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch. it is true they are provided with food and raiment, for which they neither toil nor spin; but health, liberty, and virtue, are given in exchange. but, where, amongst mankind, has been found sufficient strength of mind to enable a being to resign these adventitious prerogatives; one who, rising with the calm dignity of reason above opinion, dared to be proud of the privileges inherent in man? and it is vain to expect it whilst hereditary power chokes the affections and nips reason in the bud. the passions of men have thus placed women on thrones, and, till mankind become more reasonable, it is to be feared that women will avail themselves of the power which they attain with the least exertion, and which is the most indisputable. they will smile,yes, they will smile, though told that 'in beauty's empire is no mean, 'and woman, either slave or queen, 'is quickly scorn'd when not ador'd.' but the adoration comes first, and the scorn is not anticipated. lewis the xivth, in particular, spread factitious manners, and caught, in a specious way, the whole nation in his toils; for, establishing an artful chain of despotism, he made it the interest of the people at large, individually to respect his station and support his power. and women, whom he flattered by a puerile attention to the whole sex, obtained in his reign that prince-like distinction so fatal to reason and virtue. a king is always a kingand a woman always a woman:* his authority and her sex, ever stand between them and rational converse. with a lover, i grant, she should be so, and her sensibility will naturally lead her to endeavour to excite emotion, not to gratify her vanity, but her heart. this i do not allow to be coquetry, it is the artless impulse of nature, i only exclaim against the sexual desire of conquest when the heart is out of the question. * and a wit, always a wit, might be added; for the vain fooleries of wits and beauties to obtain attention, and make conquests, are much upon a par. this desire is not confined to women; 'i have endeavoured,' says lord chesterfield, 'to gain the hearts of twenty women, whose persons i would not have given a fig for.' the libertine, who, in a gust of passion, takes advantage of unsuspecting tenderness, is a saint when compared with this cold-hearted rascal; for i like to use significant words. yet only taught to please, women are always on the watch to please, and with true heroic ardour endeavour to gain hearts merely to resign or spurn them, when the victory is decided, and conspicuous. i must descend to the minutiae of the subject. i lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions, which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority. it is not condescension to bow to an inferior. so ludicrous, in fact, do these ceremonies appear to me, that i scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when i see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude, to lift a handkerchief, or shut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two. a wild wish has just flown from my heart to my head, and i will not stifle it though it may excite a horse-laugh.i do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behaviour. for this distinction is, i am firmly persuaded, the foundation of the weakness of character ascribed to woman; is the cause why the understanding is neglected, whilst accomplishments are acquired with sedulous care: and the same cause accounts for their preferring the graceful before the heroic virtues. mankind, including every description, wish to be loved and respected by something; and the common herd will always take the nearest road to the completion of their wishes. the respect paid to wealth and beauty is the most certain, and unequivocal; and, of course, will always attract the vulgar eye of common minds. abilities and virtues are absolutely necessary to raise men from the middle rank of life into notice; and the natural consequence is notorious, the middle rank contains most virtue and abilities. men have thus, in one station, at least an opportunity of exerting themselves with dignity, and of rising by the exertions which really improve a rational creature; but the whole female sex are, till their character is formed, in the same condition as the rich: for they are born, i now speak of a state of civilization, with certain sexual privileges, and whilst they are gratuitously granted them, few will ever think of works of supererogation, to obtain the esteem of a small number of superiour people. when do we hear of women who, starting out of obscurity, boldly claim respect on account of their great abilities or daring virtues? where are they to be found?'to be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation, are all the advantages which they seek.'true! my male readers will probably exclaim; but let them, before they draw any conclusion, recollect that this was not written originally as descriptive of women, but of the rich. in dr. smith's theory of moral sentiments, i have found a general character of people of rank and fortune, that, in my opinion, might with the greatest propriety be applied to the female sex. i refer the sagacious reader to the whole comparison; but must be allowed to quote a passage to enforce an argument that i mean to insist on, as the one most conclusive against a sexual character. for if, excepting warriors, no great men, of any denomination, have ever appeared amongst the nobility, may it not be fairly inferred that their local situation swallowed up the man, and produced a character similar to that of women, who are localized, if i may be allowed the word, by the rank they are placed in, by courtesy? women, commonly called ladies, are not to be contradicted in company, are not allowed to exert any manual strength; and from them the negative virtues only are expected, when any virtues are expected, patience, docility, good-humour, and flexibility; virtues incompatible with any vigorous exertion of intellect. besides, by living more with each other, and being seldom absolutely alone, they are more under the influence of sentiments than passions. solitude and reflection are necessary to give to wishes the force of passions, and to enable the imagination to enlarge the object, and make it the most desirable. the same may be said of the rich; they do not sufficiently deal in general ideas, collected by impassioned thinking, or calm investigation, to acquire that strength of character on which great resolves are built. but hear what an acute observer says of the great. 'do the great seem insensible of the easy price at which they may acquire the publick admiration; or do they seem to imagine that to them, as to other men, it must be the purchase either of sweat or of blood? by what important accomplishments is the young nobleman instructed to support the dignity of his rank, and to render himself worthy of that superiority over his fellow-citizens, to which the virtue of his ancestors had raised them? is it by knowledge, by industry, by patience, by self-denial, or by virtue of any kind? as all his words, as all his motions are attended to, he learns an habitual regard to every circumstance of ordinary behaviour, and studies to perform all those small duties with the most exact propriety. as he is conscious how much he is observed, and how much mankind are disposed to favour all his inclinations, he acts, upon the most indifferent occasions, with that freedom and elevation which the thought of this naturally inspires. his air, his manner, his deportment, all mark that elegant and graceful sense of his own superiority, which those who are born to inferior station can hardly ever arrive at. these are the arts by which he proposes to make mankind more easily submit to his authority, and to govern their inclinations according to his own pleasure: and in this he is seldom disappointed. these arts, supported by rank and pre-eminence, are, upon ordinary occasions, sufficient to govern the world. lewis xiv during the greater part of his reign, was regarded, not only in france, but over all europe, as the most perfect model of a great prince. but what were the talents and virtues by which he acquired this great reputation? was it by the scrupulous and inflexible justice of all his undertakings, by the immense dangers and difficulties with which they were attended, or by the unwearied and unrelenting application with which he pursued them? was it by his extensive knowledge, by his exquisite judgment, or by his heroic valour? it was by none of these qualities. but he was, first of all, the most powerful prince in europe, and consequently held the highest rank among kings; and then, says his historian, "he surpassed all his courtiers in the gracefulness of his shape, and the majestic beauty of his features. the sound of his voice, noble and affecting, gained those hearts which his presence intimidated. he had a step and a deportment which could suit only him and his rank, and which would have been ridiculous in any other person. the embarrassment which he occasioned to those who spoke to him, flattered that secret satisfaction with which he felt his own superiority." these frivolous accomplishments, supported by his rank, and, no doubt too, by a degree of other talents and virtues, which seems, however, not to have been much above mediocrity, established this prince in the esteem of his own age, and have drawn, even from posterity, a good deal of respect for his memory. compared with these, in his own times, and in his own presence, no other virtue, it seems, appeared to have any merit. knowledge, industry, valour, and beneficence, trembled, were abashed, and lost all dignity before them.' woman also thus 'in herself complete,' by possessing all these frivolous accomplishments, so changes the nature of things -'that what she wills to do or say 'seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best; 'all higher knowledge in her presence falls 'degraded. wisdom in discourse with her 'loses discountenanc'd, and, like folly, shows; 'authority and reason on her wait.' and all this is built on her loveliness! in the middle rank of life, to continue the comparison, men, in their youth, are prepared for professions, and marriage is not considered as the grand feature in their lives; whilst women, on the contrary, have no other scheme to sharpen their faculties. it is not business, extensive plans, or any of the excursive flights of ambition, that engross their attention; no, their thoughts are not employed in rearing such noble structures. to rise in the world, and have the liberty of running from pleasure to pleasure, they must marry advantageously, and to this object their time is sacrificed, and their persons often legally prostituted. a man when he enters any profession has his eye steadily fixed on some future advantage (and the mind gains great strength by having all its efforts directed to one point), and, full of his business, pleasure is considered as mere relaxation; whilst women seek for pleasure as the main purpose of existence. in fact, from the education, which they receive from society, the love of pleasure may be said to govern them all; but does this prove that there is a sex in souls? it would be just as rational to declare that the courtiers in france, when a destructive system of despotism had formed their character, were not men, because liberty, virtue, and humanity, were sacrificed to pleasure and vanity.fatal passions, which have ever domineered over the whole race! the same love of pleasure, fostered by the whole tendency of their education, gives a trifling turn to the conduct of women in most circumstances: for instance, they are ever anxious about secondary things; and on the watch for adventures, instead of being occupied by duties. a man, when he undertakes a journey, has, in general, the end in view; a woman thinks more of the incidental occurrences, the strange things that may possibly occur on the road; the impression that she may make on her fellow-travellers; and, above all, she is anxiously intent on the care of the finery that she carries with her, which is more than ever a part of herself, when going to figure on a new scene; when, to use an apt french turn of expression, she is going to produce a sensation.can dignity of mind exist with such trivial cares? in short, women, in general, as well as the rich of both sexes, have acquired all the follies and vices of civilization, and missed the useful fruit. it is not necessary for me always to premise, that i speak of the condition of the whole sex, leaving exceptions out of the question. their senses are inflamed, and their understandings neglected, consequently they become the prey of their senses, delicately termed sensibility and are blown about by every momentary gust of feeling. civilized women are, therefore, so weakened by false refinement, that, respecting morals, their condition is much below what it would be were they left in a state nearer to nature. ever restless and anxious, their over exercised sensibility not only renders them uncomfortable themselves, but troublesome, to use a soft phrase, to others. all their thoughts turn on things calculated to excite emotion; and feeling, when they should reason, their conduct is unstable, and their opinions are waveringnot the wavering produced by deliberation or progressive views, but by contradictory emotions. by fits and starts they are warm in many pursuits; yet this warmth, never concentrated into perseverance, soon exhausts itself; exhaled by its own heat, or meeting with some other fleeting passion, to which reason has never given any specific gravity, neutrality ensues. miserable, indeed, must be that being whose cultivation of mind has only tended to inflame its passions! a distinction should be made between inflaming and strengthening them. the passions thus pampered, whilst the judgment is left unformed, what can be expected to ensue?undoubtedly, a mixture of madness and folly! this observation should not be confined to the fair sex; however, at present, i only mean to apply it to them. novels, music, poetry, and gallantry, all tend to make women the creatures of sensation, and their character is thus formed in the mould of folly during the time they are acquiring accomplishments, the only improvement they are excited, by their station in society, to acquire. this overstretched sensibility naturally relaxes the other powers of the mind, and prevents intellect from attaining that sovereignty which it ought to attain to render a rational creature useful to others, and content with its own station: for the exercise of the understanding, as life advances, is the only method pointed out by nature to calm the passions. satiety has a very different effect, and i have often been forcibly struck by an emphatical description of damnation:when the spirit is represented as continually hovering with abortive eagerness round the defiled body, unable to enjoy any thing without the organs of sense. yet, to their senses, are women made slaves, because it is by their sensibility that they obtain present power. and will moralists pretend to assert, that this is the condition in which one half of the human race should be encouraged to remain with listless inactivity and stupid acquiescence? kind instructors! what were we created for? to remain, it may be said, innocent; they mean in a state of childhood.we might as well never have been born, unless it were necessary that we should be created to enable man to acquire the noble privilege of reason, the power of discerning good from evil, whilst we lie down in the dust from whence we were taken, never to rise again. it would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion, that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness: 'fine by defect, and amiably weak!' and, made by this amiable weakness entirely dependent, excepting what they gain by illicit sway, on man, not only for protection, but advice, is it surprising that, neglecting the duties that reason alone points out, and shrinking from trials calculated to strengthen their minds, they only exert themselves to give their defects a graceful covering, which may serve to heighten their charms in the eye of the voluptuary, though it sink them below the scale of moral excellence? fragile in every sense of the word, they are obliged to look up to man for every comfort. in the most trifling dangers they cling to their support, with parasitical tenacity, piteously demanding succour; and their natural protector extends his arm, or lifts up his voice, to guard the lovely tremblerfrom what? perhaps the frown of an old cow, or the jump of a mouse; a rat, would be a serious danger. in the name of reason, and even common sense, what can save such beings from contempt; even though they be soft and fair? these fears, when not affected, may produce some pretty attitudes; but they shew a degree of imbecility which degrades a rational creature in a way women are not aware offor love and esteem are very distinct things. i am fully persuaded that we should hear of none of these infantine airs, if girls were allowed to take sufficient exercise, and not confined in close rooms till their muscles are relaxed, and their powers of digestion destroyed. to carry the remark still further, if fear in girls, instead of being cherished, perhaps, created, were treated in the same manner as cowardice in boys, we should quickly see women with more dignified aspects. it is true, they could not then with equal propriety be termed the sweet flowers that smile in the walk of man; but they would be more respectable members of society, and discharge the important duties of life by the light of their own reason. 'educate women like men,' says rousseau, 'and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.' this is the very point i aim at. i do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves. in the same strain have i heard men argue against instructing the poor; for many are the forms that aristocracy assumes. 'teach them to read and write,' say they, 'and you take them out of the station assigned them by nature.' an eloquent frenchman has answered them, i will borrow his sentiments. but they know not, when they make man a brute, that they may expect every instant to see him transformed into a ferocious beast. without knowledge there can be no morality! ignorance is a frail base for virtue! yet, that it is the condition for which woman was organized, has been insisted upon by the writers who have most vehemently argued in favour of the superiority of man; a superiority not in degree, but essence; though, to soften the argument, they have laboured to prove, with chivalrous generosity, that the sexes ought not to be compared; man was made to reason, woman to feel: and that together, flesh and spirit, they make the most perfect whole, by blending happily reason and sensibility into one character. and what is sensibility? 'quickness of sensation; quickness of perception; delicacy.' thus is it defined by dr. johnson; and the definition gives me no other idea than of the most exquisitely polished instinct. i discern not a trace of the image of god in either sensation or matter. refined seventy times seven, they are still material; intellect dwells not there; nor will fire ever make lead gold! i come round to my old argument; if woman be allowed to have an immortal soul, she must have, as the employment of life, an understanding to improve. and when, to render the present state more complete, though every thing proves it to be but a fraction of a mighty sum, she is incited by present gratification to forget her grand destination, nature is counteracted, or she was born only to procreate and rot. or, granting brutes, of every description, a soul, though not a reasonable one, the exercise of instinct and sensibility may be the step, which they are to take, in this life, towards the attainment of reason in the next; so that through all eternity they will lag behind man, who, why we cannot tell, had the power given him of attaining reason in his first mode of existence. when i treat of the peculiar duties of women, as i should treat of the peculiar duties of a citizen or father, it will be found that i do not mean to insinuate that they should be taken out of their families, speaking of the majority. 'he that hath wife and children,' says lord bacon, 'hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men.' i say the same of women. but, the welfare of society is not built on extraordinary exertions; and were it more reasonably organized, there would be still less need of great abilities, or heroic virtues. in the regulation of a family, in the education of children, understanding, in an unsophisticated sense, is particularly required: strength both of body and mind; yet the men who, by their writings, have most earnestly laboured to domesticate women, have endeavoured, by arguments dictated by a gross appetite, which satiety had rendered fastidious, to weaken their bodies and cramp their minds. but, if even by these sinister methods they really persuaded women, by working on their feelings, to stay at home, and fulfil the duties of a mother and mistress of a family, i should cautiously oppose opinions that led women to right conduct, by prevailing on them to make the discharge of such important duties the main business of life, though reason were insulted. yet, and i appeal to experience, if by neglecting the understanding they be as much, nay, more detached from these domestic employments, than they could be by the most serious intellectual pursuit, though it may be observed, that the mass of mankind will never vigorously pursue an intellectual object,* i may be allowed to infer that reason is absolutely necessary to enable a woman to perform any duty properly, and i must again repeat, that sensibility is not reason. * the mass of mankind are rather the slaves of their appetites than of their passions. the comparison with the rich still occurs to me; for, when men neglect the duties of humanity, women will follow their example; a common stream hurries them both along with thoughtless celerity. riches and honours prevent a man from enlarging his understanding, and enervate all his powers by reversing the order of nature, which has ever made true pleasure the reward of labour. pleasureenervating pleasure is, likewise, within women's reach without earning it. but, till hereditary possessions are spread abroad, how can we expect men to be proud of virtue? and, till they are, women will govern them by the most direct means, neglecting their dull domestic duties to catch the pleasure that sits lightly on the wing of time. 'the power of the woman,' says some author, 'is her sensibility;' and men, not aware of the consequence, do all they can to make this power swallow up every other. those who constantly employ their sensibility will have most: for example; poets, painters, and composers.* yet, when the sensibility is thus increased at the expence of reason, and even the imagination, why do philosophical men complain of their fickleness? the sexual attention of man particularly acts on female sensibility, and this sympathy has been exercised from their youth up. a husband cannot long pay those attentions with the passion necessary to excite lively emotions, and the heart, accustomed to lively emotions, turns to a new lover, or pines in secret, the prey of virtue or prudence. i mean when the heart has really been rendered susceptible, and the taste formed; for i am apt to conclude, from what i have seen in fashionable life, that vanity is oftener fostered than sensibility by the mode of education, and the intercourse between the sexes, which i have reprobated; and that coquetry more frequently proceeds from vanity than from that inconstancy, which overstrained sensibility naturally produces. * men of these descriptions pour it into their compositions, to amalgamate the gross materials; and, moulding them with passion, give to the inert body a soul; but, in woman's imagination, love alone concentrates these ethereal beams. another argument that has had great weight with me, must, i think, have some force with every considerate benevolent heart. girls who have been thus weakly educated, are often cruelly left by their parents without any provision; and, of course, are dependent on, not only the reason, but the bounty of their brothers. these brothers are, to view the fairest side of the question, good sort of men, and give as a favour, what children of the same parents had an equal right to. in this equivocal humiliating situation, a docile female may remain some time, with a tolerable degree of comfort. but, when the brother marries, a probable circumstance, from being considered as the mistress of the family, she is viewed with averted looks as an intruder, an unnecessary burden on the benevolence of the master of the house, and his new partner. who can recount the misery, which many unfortunate beings, whose minds and bodies are equally weak, suffer in such situationsunable to work, and ashamed to beg? the wife, a cold-hearted, narrow-minded, woman, and this is not an unfair supposition; for the present mode of education does not tend to enlarge the heart any more than the understanding, is jealous of the little kindness which her husband shews to his relations; and her sensibility not rising to humanity, she is displeased at seeing the property of her children lavished on an helpless sister. these are matters of fact, which have come under my eye again and again. the consequence is obvious, the wife has recourse to cunning to undermine the habitual affection, which she is afraid openly to oppose; and neither tears nor caresses are spared till the spy is worked out of her home, and thrown on the world, unprepared for its difficulties; or sent, as a great effort of generosity, or from some regard to propriety, with a small stipend, and an uncultivated mind, into joyless solitude. these two women may be much upon a par, with respect to reason and humanity; and changing situations, might have acted just the same selfish part; but had they been differently educated, the case would also have been very different. the wife would not have had that sensibility, of which self is the centre, and reason might have taught her not to expect, and not even to be flattered by, the affection of her husband, if it led him to violate prior duties. she would wish not to love him merely because he loved her, but on account of his virtues; and the sister might have been able to struggle for herself instead of eating the bitter bread of dependence. i am, indeed, persuaded that the heart, as well as the understanding, is opened by cultivation; and by, which may not appear so clear, strengthening the organs; i am not now talking of momentary flashes of sensibility, but of affections. and, perhaps, in the education of both sexes, the most difficult task is so to adjust instruction as not to narrow the understanding, whilst the heart is warmed by the generous juices of spring, just raised by the electric fermentation of the season; nor to dry up the feelings by employing the mind in investigations remote from life. with respect to women, when they receive a careful education, they are either made fine ladies, brimful of sensibility, and teeming with capricious fancies; or mere notable women. the latter are often friendly, honest creatures, and have a shrewd kind of good sense joined with worldly prudence, that often render them more useful members of society than the fine sentimental lady, though they possess neither greatness of mind nor taste. the intellectual world is shut against them; take them out of their family or neighbourhood, and they stand still; the mind finding no employment, for literature affords a fund of amusement which they have never sought to relish, but frequently to despise. the sentiments and taste of more cultivated minds appear ridiculous, even in those whom chance and family connections have led them to love; but in mere acquaintance they think it all affectation. a man of sense can only love such a woman on account of her sex, and respect her, because she is a trusty servant. he lets her, to preserve his own peace, scold the servants, and go to church in clothes made of the very best materials. a man of her own size of understanding would, probably, not agree so well with her; for he might wish to encroach on her prerogative, and manage some domestic concerns himself. yet women, whose minds are not enlarged by cultivation, or the natural selfishness of sensibility expanded by reflection, are very unfit to manage a family; for, by an undue stretch of power, they are always tyrannizing to support a superiority that only rests on the arbitrary distinction of fortune. the evil is sometimes more serious, and domestics are deprived of innocent indulgences, and made to work beyond their strength, in order to enable the notable woman to keep a better table, and outshine her neighbours in finery and parade. if she attend to her children, it is, in general, to dress them in a costly mannerand, whether this attention arise from vanity or fondness, it is equally pernicious. besides, how many women of this description pass their days; or, at least, their evenings, discontentedly. their husbands acknowledge that they are good managers, and chaste wives; but leave home to seek for more agreeable, may i be allowed to use a significant french word, piquant society; and the patient drudge, who fulfils her task, like a blind horse in a mill, is defrauded of her just reward; for the wages due to her are the caresses of her husband; and women who have so few resources in themselves, do not very patiently bear this privation of a natural right. a fine lady, on the contrary, has been taught to look down with contempt on the vulgar employments of life; though she has only been incited to acquire accomplishments that rise a degree above sense; for even corporeal accomplishments cannot be acquired with any degree of precision unless the understanding has been strengthened by exercise. without a foundation of principles taste is superficial, grace must arise from something deeper than imitation. the imagination, however, is heated, and the feelings rendered fastidious, if not sophisticated; or, a counterpoise of judgment is not acquired, when the heart still remains artless, though it becomes too tender. these women are often amiable; and their hearts are really more sensible to general benevolence, more alive to the sentiments that civilize life, than the square-elbowed family drudge; but, wanting a due proportion of reflection and self-government, they only inspire love; and are the mistresses of their husbands, whilst they have any hold on their affections; and the platonic friends of his male acquaintance. these are the fair defects in nature; the women who appear to be created not to enjoy the fellowship of man, but to save him from sinking into absolute brutality, by rubbing off the rough angles of his character; and by playful dalliance to give some dignity to the appetite that draws him to them.gracious creator of the whole human race! hast thou created such a being as woman, who can trace thy wisdom in thy works, and feel that thou alone art by thy nature exalted above her,for no better purpose?can she believe that she was only made to submit to man, her equal, a being, who, like her, was sent into the world to acquire virtue?can she consent to be occupied merely to please him; merely to adorn the earth, when her soul is capable of rising to thee?and can she rest supinely dependent on man for reason, when she ought to mount with him the arduous steeps of knowledge? yet, if love be the supreme good, let women be only educated to inspire it, and let every charm be polished to intoxicate the senses; but, if they be moral beings, let them have a chance to become intelligent; and let love to man be only a part of that glowing flame of universal love, which, after encircling humanity, mounts in grateful incense to god. to fulfil domestic duties much resolution is necessary, and a serious kind of perseverance that requires a more firm support than emotions, however lively and true to nature. to give an example of order, the soul of virtue, some austerity of behaviour must be adopted, scarcely to be expected from a being who, from its infancy, has been made the weathercock of its own sensations. whoever rationally means to be useful must have a plan of conduct; and, in the discharge of the simplest duty, we are often obliged to act contrary to the present impulse of tenderness or compassion. severity is frequently the most certain, as well as the most sublime proof of affection; and the want of this power over the feelings, and of that lofty, dignified affection, which makes a person prefer the future good of the beloved object to a present gratification, is the reason why so many fond mothers spoil their children, and has made it questionable whether negligence or indulgence be most hurtful, but i am inclined to think, that the latter has done most harm. mankind seem to agree that children should be left under the management of women during their childhood. now, from all the observation that i have been able to make, women of sensibility are the most unfit for this task, because they will infallibly, carried away by their feelings, spoil a child's temper. the management of the temper, the first, and most important branch of education, requires the sober steady eye of reason; a plan of conduct equally distant from tyranny and indulgence: yet these are the extremes that people of sensibility alternately fall into; always shooting beyond the mark. i have followed this train of reasoning much further, till i have concluded, that a person of genius is the most improper person to be employed in education, public or private. minds of this rare species see things too much in masses, and seldom, if ever, have a good temper. that habitual cheerfulness, termed good-humour, is, perhaps, as seldom united with great mental powers, as with strong feelings. and those people who follow, with interest and admiration, the flights of genius; or, with cooler approbation suck in the instruction which has been elaborately prepared for them by the profound thinker, ought not to be disgusted, if they find the former choleric, and the latter morose; because liveliness of fancy, and a tenacious comprehension of mind, are scarcely compatible with that pliant urbanity which leads a man, at least, to bend to the opinions and prejudices of others, instead of roughly confronting them. but, treating of education or manners, minds of a superior class are not to be considered, they may be left to chance; it is the multitude, with moderate abilities, who call for instruction, and catch the colour of the atmosphere they breathe. this respectable concourse, i contend, men and women, should not have their sensations heightened in the hot-bed of luxurious indolence, at the expence of their understanding; for, unless there be a ballast of understanding, they will never become either virtuous or free: an aristocracy, founded on property, or sterling talents, will ever sweep before it, the alternately timid, and ferocious, slaves of feeling. numberless are the arguments, to take another view of the subject, brought forward with a shew of reason, because supposed to be deduced from nature, that men have used morally and physically, to degrade the sex. i must notice a few. the female understanding has often been spoken of with contempt, as arriving sooner at maturity than the male. i shall not answer this argument by alluding to the early proofs of reason, as well as genius, in cowley, milton, and pope,* but only appeal to experience to decide whether young men, who are early introduced into company (and examples now abound), do not acquire the same precocity. so notorious is this fact, that the bare mentioning of it must bring before people, who at all mix in the world, the idea of a number of swaggering apes of men, whose understandings are narrowed by being brought into the society of men when they ought to have been spinning a top or twirling a hoop. * many other names might be added. it has also been asserted, by some naturalists, that men do not attain their full growth and strength till thirty; but that women arrive at maturity by twenty. i apprehend that they reason on false ground, led astray by the male prejudice, which deems beauty the perfection of womanmere beauty of features and complexion, the vulgar acceptation of the word, whilst male beauty is allowed to have some connection with the mind. strength of body, and that character of countenance, which the french term a physionomie, women do not acquire before thirty, any more than men. the little artless tricks of children, it is true, are particularly pleasing and attractive; yet, when the pretty freshness of youth is worn off, these artless graces become studied airs, and disgust every person of taste. in the countenance of girls we only look for vivacity and bashful modesty; but, the spring-tide of life over, we look for soberer sense in the face, and for traces of passion, instead of the dimples of animal spirits; expecting to see individuality of character, the only fastener of the affections.* we then wish to converse, not to fondle; to give scope to our imaginations as well as to the sensations of our hearts. * the strength of an affection is, generally, in the same proportion as the character of the species in the object beloved. at twenty the beauty of both sexes is equal; but the libertinism of man leads him to make the distinction, and superannuated coquettes are commonly of the same opinion; for, when they can no longer inspire love, they pay for the vigour and vivacity of youth. the french, who admit more of mind into their notions of beauty, give the preference to women of thirty. i mean to say that they allow women to be in their most perfect state, when vivacity gives place to reason, and to that majestic seriousness of character, which marks maturity;or, the resting point. in youth, till twenty, the body shoots out, till thirty the solids are attaining a degree of density; and the flexible muscles, growing daily more rigid, give character to the countenance; that is, they trace the operations of the mind with the iron pen of fate, and tell us not only what powers are within, but how they have been employed. it is proper to observe, that animals who arrive slowly at maturity, are the longest lived, and of the noblest species. men cannot, however, claim any natural superiority from the grandeur of longevity; for in this respect nature has not distinguished the male. polygamy is another physical degradation; and a plausible argument for a custom, that blasts every domestic virtue, is drawn from the well-attested fact, that in the countries where it is established, more females are born than males. this appears to be an indication of nature, and to nature, apparently reasonable speculations must yield. a further conclusion obviously presented itself; if polygamy be necessary, woman must be inferior to man, and made for him. with respect to the formation of the fetus in the womb, we are very ignorant; but it appears to me probable, that an accidental physical cause may account for this phenomenon, and prove it not to be a law of nature. i have met with some pertinent observations on the subject in forster's account of the isles of the south-sea, that will explain my meaning. after observing that of the two sexes amongst animals, the most vigorous and hottest constitution always prevails, and produces its kind; he adds,'if this be applied to the inhabitants of africa, it is evident that the men there, accustomed to polygamy, are enervated by the use of so many women, and therefore less vigorous; the women, on the contrary, are of a hotter constitution, not only on account of their more irritable nerves, more sensible organization, and more lively fancy; but likewise because they are deprived in their matrimony of that share of physical love which, in a monogamous condition, would all be theirs; and thus, for the above reasons, the generality of children are born females. 'in the greater part of europe it has been proved by the most accurate lists of mortality, that the proportion of men to women is nearly equal, or, if any difference takes place, the males born are more numerous, in the proportion of 105 to 100.' the necessity of polygamy, therefore, does not appear; yet when a man seduces a woman, it should, i think, be termed a left-handed marriage, and the man should be legally obliged to maintain the woman and her children, unless adultery, a natural divorcement, abrogated the law. and this law should remain in force as long as the weakness of women caused the word seduction to be used as an excuse for their frailty and want of principle; nay, while they depend on man for a subsistence, instead of earning it by the exertion of their own hands or heads. but these women should not, in the full meaning of the relationship, be termed wives, or the very purpose of marriage would be subverted, and all those endearing charities that flow from personal fidelity, and give a sanctity to the tie, when neither love nor friendship unites the hearts, would melt into selfishness. the woman who is faithful to the father of her children demands respect, and should not be treated like a prostitute; though i readily grant that if it be necessary for a man and woman to live together in order to bring up their offspring, nature never intended that a man should have more than one wife. still, highly as i respect marriage, as the foundation of almost every social virtue, i cannot avoid feeling the most lively compassion for those unfortunate females who are broken off from society, and by one error torn from all those affections and relationships that improve the heart and mind. it does not frequently even deserve the name of error; for many innocent girls become the dupes of a sincere, affectionate heart, and still more are, as it may emphatically be termed, ruined before they know the difference between virtue and vice:and thus prepared by their education for infamy, they become infamous. asylums and magdalenes are not the proper remedies for these abuses. it is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world! a woman who has lost her honour, imagines that she cannot fall lower, and as for recovering her former station, it is impossible; no exertion can wash this stain away. losing thus every spur, and having no other means of support, prostitution becomes her only refuge, and the character is quickly depraved by circumstances over which the poor wretch has little power, unless she possesses an uncommon portion of sense and loftiness of spirit. necessity never makes prostitution the business of men's lives; though numberless are the women who are thus rendered systematically vicious. this, however, arises, in a great degree, from the state of idleness in which women are educated, who are always taught to look up to man for a maintenance, and to consider their persons as the proper return for his exertions to support them. meretricious airs, and the whole science of wantonness, have then a more powerful stimulus than either appetite or vanity; and this remark gives force to the prevailing opinion, that with chastity all is lost that is respectable in woman. her character depends on the observance of one virtue, though the only passion fostered in her heartis love. nay, the honour of a woman is not made even to depend on her will. when richardson* makes clarissa tell lovelace that he had robbed her of her honour, he must have had strange notions of honour and virtue. for, miserable beyond all names of misery is the condition of a being, who could be degraded without its own consent! this excess of strictness i have heard vindicated as a salutary error. i shall answer in the words of leibnitz'errors are often useful; but it is commonly to remedy other errors.' * dr. young supports the same opinion, in his plays, when he talks of the misfortune that shunned the light of day. most of the evils of life arise from a desire of present enjoyment that outruns itself. the obedience required of women in the marriage state comes under this description; the mind, naturally weakened by depending on authority, never exerts its own powers, and the obedient wife is thus rendered a weak indolent mother. or, supposing that this is not always the consequence, a future state of existence is scarcely taken into the reckoning when only negative virtues are cultivated. for, in treating of morals, particularly when women are alluded to, writers have too often considered virtue in a very limited sense, and made the foundation of it solely worldly utility; nay, a still more fragile base has been given to this stupendous fabric, and the wayward fluctuating feelings of men have been made the standard of virtue. yes, virtue as well as religion, has been subjected to the decisions of taste. it would almost provoke a smile of contempt, if the vain absurdities of man did not strike us on all sides, to observe, how eager men are to degrade the sex from whom they pretend to receive the chief pleasure of life; and i have frequently with full conviction retorted pope's sarcasm on them; or to speak explicitly, it has appeared to me applicable to the whole human race. a love of pleasure or sway seems to divide mankind, and the husband who lords it in his little haram thinks only of his pleasure or his convenience. to such lengths, indeed, does an intemperate love of pleasure carry some prudent men, or worn out libertines, who marry to have a safe bed-fellow, that they seduce their own wives.hymen banishes modesty, and chaste love takes its flight. love, considered as an animal appetite, cannot long feed on itself without expiring. and this extinction in its own flame, may be termed the violent death of love. but the wife who has thus been rendered licentious, will probably endeavour to fill the void left by the loss of her husband's attentions; for she cannot contentedly become merely an upper servant after having been treated like a goddess. she is still handsome, and, instead of transferring her fondness to her children, she only dreams of enjoying the sunshine of life. besides, there are many husbands so devoid of sense and parental affection, that during the first effervescence of voluptuous fondness they refuse to let their wives suckle their children. they are only to dress and live to please them: and loveeven innocent love, soon sinks into lasciviousness when the exercise of a duty is sacrificed to its indulgence. personal attachment is a very happy foundation for friendship; yet, when even two virtuous young people marry, it would, perhaps, be happy if some circumstances checked their passion; if the recollection of some prior attachment, or disappointed affection, made it on one side, at least, rather a match founded on esteem. in that case they would look beyond the present moment, and try to render the whole of life respectable, by forming a plan to regulate a friendship which only death ought to dissolve. friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time. the very reverse may be said of love. in a great degree, love and friendship cannot subsist in the same bosom; even when inspired by different objects they weaken or destroy each other, and for the same object can only be felt in succession. the vain fears and fond jealousies, the winds which fan the flame of love, when judiciously or artfully tempered, are both incompatible with the tender confidence and sincere respect of friendship. love, such as the glowing pen of genius has traced, exists not on earth, or only resides in those exalted, fervid imaginations that have sketched such dangerous pictures. dangerous, because they not only afford a plausible excuse, to the voluptuary who disguises sheer sensuality under a sentimental veil; but as they spread affectation, and take from the dignity of virtue. virtue, as the very word imports, should have an appearance of seriousness, if not of austerity; and to endeavour to trick her out in the garb of pleasure, because the epithet has been used as another name for beauty, is to exalt her on a quicksand; a most insidious attempt to hasten her fall by apparent respect. virtue and pleasure are not, in fact, so nearly allied in this life as some eloquent writers have laboured to prove. pleasure prepares the fading wreath, and mixes the intoxicating cup; but the fruit which virtue gives, is the recompence of toil: and, gradually seen as it ripens, only affords calm satisfaction; nay, appearing to be the result of the natural tendency of things, it is scarcely observed. bread, the common food of life, seldom thought of as a blessing, supports the constitution and preserves health; still feasts delight the heart of man, though disease and even death lurk in the cup or dainty that elevates the spirits or tickles the palate. the lively heated imagination likewise, to apply the comparison, draws the picture of love, as it draws every other picture, with those glowing colours, which the daring hand will steal from the rainbow that is directed by a mind, condemned in a world like this, to prove its noble origin by panting after unattainable perfection; ever pursuing what it acknowledges to be a fleeting dream. an imagination of this vigorous cast can give existence to insubstantial forms, and stability to the shadowy reveries which the mind naturally falls into when realities are found vapid. it can then depict love with celestial charms, and dote on the grand ideal objectit can imagine a degree of mutual affection that shall refine the soul, and not expire when it has served as a 'scale to heavenly;' and, like devotion, make it absorb every meaner affection and desire. in each others arms, as in a temple, with its summit lost in the clouds, the world is to be shut out, and every thought and wish, that do not nurture pure affection and permanent virtue.permanent virtue! alas! rousseau, respectable visionary! thy paradise would soon be violated by the entrance of some unexpected guest. like milton's it would only contain angels, or men sunk below the dignity of rational creatures. happiness is not material, it cannot be seen or felt! yet the eager pursuit of the good which every one shapes to his own fancy, proclaims man the lord of this lower world, and to be an intelligential creature, who is not to receive, but acquire happiness. they, therefore, who complain of the delusions of passion, do not recollect that they are exclaiming against a strong proof of the immortality of the soul. but leaving superior minds to correct themselves, and pay dearly for their experience, it is necessary to observe, that it is not against strong, persevering passions; but romantic wavering feelings that i wish to guard the female heart by exercising the understanding: for these paradisiacal reveries are oftener the effect of idleness than of a lively fancy. women have seldom sufficient serious employment to silence their feelings; a round of little cares, or vain pursuits frittering away all strength of mind and organs, they become naturally only objects of sense.in short, the whole tenour of female education (the education of society) tends to render the best disposed romantic and inconstant; and the remainder vain and mean. in the present state of society this evil can scarcely be remedied, i am afraid, in the slightest degree; should a more laudable ambition ever gain ground they may be brought nearer to nature and reason, and become more virtuous and useful as they grow more respectable. but, i will venture to assert that their reason will never acquire sufficient strength to enable it to regulate their conduct, whilst the making an appearance in the world is the first wish of the majority of mankind. to this weak wish the natural affections, and the most useful virtues are sacrificed. girls marry merely to better themselves, to borrow a significant vulgar phrase, and have such perfect power over their hearts as not to permit themselves to fall in love till a man with a superiour fortune offers. on this subject i mean to enlarge in a future chapter; it is only necessary to drop a hint at present, because women are so often degraded by suffering the selfish prudence of age to chill the ardour of youth. from the same source flows an opinion that young girls ought to dedicate great part of their time to needle-work; yet, this employment contracts their faculties more than any other that could have been chosen for them, by confining their thoughts to their persons. men order their thoughts to be made, and have done with the subject; women make their own clothes, necessary or ornamental, and are continually talking about them; and their thoughts follow their hands. it is not indeed the making of necessaries that weakens the mind; but the frippery of dress. for when a woman in the lower rank of life makes her husband's and children's clothes, she does her duty, this is her part of the family business; but when women work only to dress better than they could otherwise afford, it is worse than sheer loss of time. to render the poor virtuous they must be employed, and women in the middle rank of life, did they not ape the fashions of the nobility, without catching their ease, might employ them, whilst they themselves managed their families, instructed their children, and exercised their own minds. gardening, experimental philosophy, and literature, would afford them subjects to think of and matter for conversation, that in some degree would exercise their understandings. the conversation of french women, who are not so rigidly nailed to their chairs to twist lappets, and knot ribands, is frequently superficial; but, i contend, that it is not half so insipid as that of those english women whose time is spent in making caps, bonnets, and the whole mischief of trimmings, not to mention shopping, bargain-hunting, &c. &c.: and it is the decent, prudent women, who are most degraded by these practices; for their motive is simply vanity. the wanton who exercises her taste to render her passion alluring, has something more in view. these observations all branch out of a general one, which i have before made, and which cannot be too often insisted upon, for, speaking of men, women, or professions, it will be found that the employment of the thoughts shapes the character both generally and individually. the thoughts of women ever hover round their persons, and is it surprising that their persons are reckoned most valuable? yet sonic degree of liberty of mind is necessary even to form the person; and this may be one reason why some gentle wives have so few attractions beside that of sex. add to this, sedentary employments render the majority of women sicklyand false notions of female excellence make them proud of this delicacy though it be another fetter, that by calling the attention continually to the body, cramps the activity of the mind. women of quality seldom do any of the manual part of their dress, consequently only their taste is exercised, and they acquire, by thinking less of the finery, when the business of their toilet is over, that ease, which seldom appears in the deportment of women, who dress merely for the sake of dressing. in fact, the observation with respect to the middle rank, the one in which talents thrive best, extends not to women; for those of the superior class, by catching, at least, a smattering of literature, and conversing more with men, on general topics, acquire more knowledge than the women who ape their fashions and faults without sharing their advantages. with respect to virtue, to use the word in a comprehensive sense, i have seen most in low life. many poor women maintain their children by the sweat of their brow, and keep together families that the vices of the fathers would have scattered abroad; but gentlewomen are too indolent to be actively virtuous, and are softened rather than refined by civilization. indeed, the good sense which i have met with, among the poor women who have had few advantages of education, and yet have acted heroically, strongly confirmed me in the opinion that trifling employments have rendered woman a trifler. man, taking her* body the mind is left to rust; so that while physical love enervates man, as being his favourite recreation, he will endeavour to enslave woman:and, who can tell, how many generations may be necessary to give vigour to the virtue and talents of the freed posterity of abject slaves?*(2) * 'i take her body,' says ranger. *(2) 'supposing that women are voluntary slavesslavery of any kind is unfavourable to human happiness and improvement.'knox's essays. in tracing the causes that, in my opinion, have degraded woman, i have confined my observations to such as universally act upon the morals and manners of the whole sex, and to me it appears clear that they all spring from want of understanding. whether this arise from a physical or accidental weakness of faculties, time alone can determine; for i shall not lay any great stress on the example of a few women* who, from having received a masculine education, have acquired courage and resolution; i only contend that the men who have been placed in similar situations, have acquired a similar characteri speak of bodies of men, and that men of genius and talents have started out of a class, in which women have never yet been placed. * sappho, eloisa, mrs. macaulay, the empress of russia, madame d'eon, &c. these, and many more, may be reckoned exceptions; and, are not all heroes, as well as heroines, exceptions to general rules? i wish to see women neither heroines nor brutes; but reasonable creatures. chap. v. animadversions on some of the writers who have rendered women objects of pity, bordering on contempt the opinions speciously supported, in some modern publications on the female character and education, which have given the tone to most of the observations made, in a more cursory manner, on the sex, remain now to be examined. sect. i. i shall begin with rousseau, and give a sketch of his character of woman, in his own words, interspersing comments and reflections. my comments, it is true, will all spring from a few simple principles, and might have been deduced from what i have already said; but the artificial structure has been raised with so much ingenuity, that it seems necessary to attack it in a more circumstantial manner, and make the application myself. sophia, says rousseau, should be as perfect a woman as emilius is a man, and to render her so, it is necessary to examine the character which nature has given to the sex. he then proceeds to prove that woman ought to be weak and passive, because she has less bodily strength than man; and hence infers, that she was formed to please and to be subject to him; and that it is her duty to render herself agreeable to her masterthis being the grand end of her existence.* still, however, to give a little mock dignity to lust, he insists that man should not exert his strength, but depend on the will of the woman, when he seeks for pleasure with her. * i have already inserted the passage, [see note to fifth paragraph in chapter iii.]. 'hence we deduce a third consequence from the different constitutions of the sexes; which is, that the strongest should be master in appearance, and be dependent in fact on the weakest; and that not from any frivolous practice of gallantry or vanity of protectorship, but from an invariable law of nature, which, furnishing woman with a greater facility to excite desires than she has given man to satisfy them, makes the latter dependent on the good pleasure of the former, and compels him to endeavour to please in his turn, in order to obtain her consent that he should be strongest.* on these occasions, the most delightful circumstance a man finds in his victory is, to doubt whether it was the woman's weakness that yielded to his superior strength, or whether her inclinations spoke in his favour: the females are also generally artful enough to leave this matter in doubt. the understanding of women answers in this respect perfectly to their constitution: so far from being ashamed of their weakness, they glory in it; their tender muscles make no resistance; they affect to be incapable of lifting the smallest burthens, and would blush to be thought robust and strong. to what purpose is all this? not merely for the sake of appearing delicate, but through an artful precaution: it is thus they provide an excuse beforehand, and a right to be feeble when they think it expedient.' * what nonsense! i have quoted this passage, lest my readers should suspect that i warped the author's reasoning to support my own arguments. i have already asserted that in educating women these fundamental principles lead to a system of cunning and lasciviousness. supposing woman to have been formed only to please, and be subject to man, the conclusion is just, she ought to sacrifice every other consideration to render herself agreeable to him: and let this brutal desire of self-preservation be the grand spring of all her actions, when it is proved to be the iron bed of fate, to fit which her character should be stretched or contracted, regardless of all moral or physical distinctions. but, if, as i think, may be demonstrated, the purposes, of even this life, viewing the whole, be subverted by practical rules built upon this ignoble base, i may be allowed to doubt whether woman was created for man: and, though the cry of irreligion, or even atheism, be raised against me, i will simply declare, that were an angel from heaven to tell me that moses's beautiful, poetical cosmogony, and the account of the fall of man, were literally true, i could not believe what my reason told me was derogatory to the character of the supreme being: and, having no fear of the devil before mine eyes, i venture to call this a suggestion of reason, instead of resting my weakness on the broad shoulders of the first seducer of my frail sex. 'it being once demonstrated,' continues rousseau, 'that man and woman are not, nor ought to be, constituted alike in temperament and character, it follows of course that they should not be educated in the same manner. in pursuing the directions of nature, they ought indeed to act in concert, but they should not be engaged in the same employments: the end of their pursuits should be the same, but the means they should take to accomplish them, and of consequence their tastes and inclinations, should be different.' 'whether i consider the peculiar destination of the sex, observe their inclinations, or remark their duties, all things equally concur to point out the peculiar method of education best adapted to them. woman and man were made for each other; but their mutual dependence is not the same. the men depend on the women only on account of their desires; the women on the men both on account of their desires and their necessities: we could subsist better without them than they without us.' 'for this reason, the education of the women should be always relative to the men. to please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young, and take care of us when grown up, to advise, to console us, to render our lives easy and agreeable: these are the duties of women at all times, and what they should be taught in their infancy. so long as we fail to recur to this principle, we run wide of the mark, and all the precepts which are given them contribute neither to their happiness nor our own.' 'girls are from their earliest infancy fond of dress. not content with being pretty, they are desirous of being thought so; we see, by all their little airs, that this thought engages their attention; and they are hardly capable of understanding what is said to them, before they are to be governed by talking to them of what people will think of their behaviour. the same motive, however, indiscreetly made use of with boys, has not the same effect: provided they are let pursue their amusements at pleasure, they care very little what people think of them. time and pains are necessary to subject boys to this motive. 'whencesoever girls derive this first lesson, it is a very good one. as the body is born, in a manner, before the soul, our first concern should be to cultivate the former; this order is common to both sexes, but the object of that cultivation is different. in the one sex it is the developement of corporeal powers; in the other, that of personal charms: not that either the quality of strength or beauty ought to be confined exclusively to one sex; but only that the order of the cultivation of both is in that respect reversed. women certainly require as much strength as to enable them to move and act gracefully, and men as much address as to qualify them to act with ease.' 'children of both sexes have a great many amusements in common; and so they ought; have they not also many such when they are grown up? each sex has also its peculiar taste to distinguish in this particular. boys love sports of noise and activity; to beat the drum, to whip the top, and to drag about their little carts: girls, on the other hand, are fonder of things of show and ornament; such as mirrours, trinkets, and dolls: the doll is the peculiar amusement of the females; from whence we see their taste plainly adapted to their destination. the physical part of the art of pleasing lies in dress; and this is all which children are capacitated to cultivate of that art.' 'here then we see a primary propensity firmly established, which you need only to pursue and regulate. the little creature will doubtless be very desirous to know how to dress up her doll, to make its sleeve-knots, its flounces, its head-dress, &c. she is obliged to have so much recourse to the people about her, for their assistance in these articles, that it would be much more agreeable to her to owe them all to her own industry. hence we have a good reason for the first lessons that are usually taught these young females: in which we do not appear to be setting them a task, but obliging them, by instructing them in what is immediately useful to themselves. and, in fact, almost all of them learn with reluctance to read and write; but very readily apply themselves to the use of their needles. they imagine themselves already grown up, and think with pleasure that such qualifications will enable them to decorate themselves.' this is certainly only an education of the body; but rousseau is not the only man who has indirectly said that merely the person of a young woman, without any mind, unless animal spirits come under that description, is very pleasing. to render it weak, and what some may call beautiful, the understanding is neglected, and girls forced to sit still, play with dolls and listen to foolish conversations;the effect of habit is insisted upon as an undoubted indication of nature. i know it was rousseau's opinion that the first years of youth should be employed to form the body, though in educating emilius he deviates from this plan; yet, the difference between strengthening the body, on which strength of mind in a great measure depends, and only giving it an easy motion, is very wide. rousseau's observations, it is proper to remark, were made in a country where the art of pleasing was refined only to extract the grossness of vice. he did not go back to nature, or his ruling appetite disturbed the operations of reason, else he would not have drawn these crude inferences. in france boys and girls, particularly the latter, are only educated to please, to manage their persons, and regulate their exterior behaviour; and their minds are corrupted, at a very early age, by the wordly and pious cautions they receive to guard them against immodesty. i speak of past times. the very confessions which mere children were obliged to make, and the questions asked by the holy men, i assert these facts on good authority, were sufficient to impress a sexual character; and the education of society was a school of coquetry and art. at the age of ten or eleven; nay, often much sooner, girls began to coquet, and talked, unreproved, of establishing themselves in the world by marriage. in short, they were treated like women, almost from their very birth, and compliments were listened to instead of instruction. these, weakening the mind, nature was supposed to have acted like a step-mother, when she formed this after-thought of creation. not allowing them understanding, however, it was but consistent to subject them to authority independent of reason; and to prepare them for this subjection, he gives the following advice: 'girls ought to be active and diligent; nor is that all; they should also be early subjected to restraint. this misfortune, if it really be one, is inseparable from their sex; nor do they ever throw it off but to suffer more cruel evils. they must be subject, all their lives, to the most constant and severe restraint, which is that of decorum: it is, therefore, necessary to accustom them early to such confinement, that it may not afterwards cost them too dear; and to the suppression of their caprices, that they may the more readily submit to the will of others. if, indeed, they be fond of being always at work, they should be sometimes compelled to lay it aside. dissipation, levity, and inconstancy, are faults that readily spring up from their first propensities, when corrupted or perverted by too much indulgence. to prevent this abuse, we should teach them, above all things, to lay a due restraint on themselves. the life of a modest woman is reduced, by our absurd institutions, to a perpetual conflict with herself: not but it is just that this sex should partake of the sufferings which arise from those evils it hath caused us.' and why is the life of a modest woman a perpetual conflict? i should answer, that this very system of education makes it so. modesty, temperance, and self-denial, are the sober offspring of reason; but when sensibility is nurtured at the expence of the understanding, such weak beings must be restrained by arbitrary means, and be subjected to continual conflicts; but give their activity of mind a wider range, and nobler passions and motives will govern their appetites and sentiments. 'the common attachment and regard of a mother, nay, mere habit, will make her beloved by her children, if she do nothing to incur their hate. even the constraint she lays them under, if well directed, will increase their affection, instead of lessening it; because a state of dependence being natural to the sex, they perceive themselves formed for obedience.' this is begging the question; for servitude not only debases the individual, but its effects seem to be transmitted to posterity. considering the length of time that women have been dependent, is it surprising that some of them hug their chains, and fawn like the spaniel? 'these dogs,' observes a naturalist, 'at first kept their ears erect; but custom has superseded nature, and a token of fear is become a beauty.' 'for the same reason,' adds rousseau, 'women have, or ought to have, but little liberty; they are apt to indulge themselves excessively in what is allowed them. addicted in every thing to extremes, they are even more transported at their diversions than boys.' the answer to this is very simple. slaves and mobs have always indulged themselves in the same excesses, when once they broke loose from authority.the bent bow recoils with violence, when the hand is suddenly relaxed that forcibly held it; and sensibility, the play-thing of outward circumstances, must be subjected to authority, or moderated by reason. 'there results,' he continues, 'from this habitual restraint a tractableness which women have occasion for during their whole lives, as they constantly remain either under subjection to the men, or to the opinions of mankind; and are never permitted to set themselves above those opinions. the first and most important qualification in a woman is good-nature or sweetness of temper: formed to obey a being so imperfect as man, often full of vices, and always full of faults, she ought to learn betimes even to suffer injustice, and to bear the insults of a husband without complaint; it is not for his sake, but her own, that she should be of a mild disposition. the perverseness and ill-nature of the women only serve to aggravate their own misfortunes, and the misconduct of their husbands; they might plainly perceive that such are not the arms by which they gain the superiority.' formed to live with such an imperfect being as man, they ought to learn from the exercise of their faculties the necessity of forbearance; but all the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience; or, the most sacred rights belong only to man. the being who patiently endures injustice, and silently bears insults, will soon become unjust, or unable to discern right from wrong. besides, i deny the fact, this is not the true way to form or meliorate the temper; for, as a sex, men have better tempers than women, because they are occupied by pursuits that interest the head as well as the heart; and the steadiness of the head gives a healthy temperature to the heart. people of sensibility have seldom good tempers. the formation of the temper is the cool work of reason, when, as life advances, she mixes with happy art, jarring elements. i never knew a weak or ignorant person who had a good temper, though that constitutional good humour, and that docility, which fear stamps on the behaviour, often obtains the name. i say behaviour, for genuine meekness never reached the heart or mind, unless as the effect of reflection; and that simple restraint produces a number of peccant humours in domestic life, many sensible men will allow, who find some of these gentle irritable creatures, very troublesome companions. 'each sex,' he further argues, 'should preserve its peculiar tone and manner; a meek husband may make a wife impertinent; but mildness of disposition on the woman's side will always bring a man back to reason, at least if he be not absolutely a brute, and will sooner or later triumph over him.' perhaps the mildness of reason might sometimes have this effect; but abject fear always inspires contempt; and tears are only eloquent when they flow down fair cheeks. of what materials can that heart be composed, which can melt when insulted, and instead of revolting at injustice, kiss the rod? is it unfair to infer that her virtue is built on narrow views and selfishness, who can caress a man, with true feminine softness, the very moment when he treats her tyrannically? nature never dictated such insincerity;and, though prudence of this sort be termed a virtue, morality becomes vague when any part is supposed to rest on falsehood. these are mere expedients, and expedients are only useful for the moment. let the husband beware of trusting too implicitly to this servile obedience; for if his wife can with winning sweetness caress him when angry, and when she ought to be angry, unless contempt had stifled a natural effervescence, she may do the same after parting with a lover. these are all preparations for adultery; or, should the fear of the world, or of hell, restrain her desire of pleasing other men, when she can no longer please her husband, what substitute can be found by a being who was only formed, by nature and art, to please man? what can make her amends for this privation, or where is she to seek for a fresh employment? where find sufficient strength of mind to determine to begin the search, when her habits are fixed, and vanity has long ruled her chaotic mind? but this partial moralist recommends cunning systematically and plausibly. 'daughters should be always submissive; their mothers, however, should not be inexorable. to make a young person tractable, she ought not to be made unhappy, to make her modest she ought not to be rendered stupid. on the contrary, i should not be displeased at her being permitted to use some art, not to elude punishment in case of disobedience, but to exempt herself from the necessity of obeying. it is not necessary to make her dependence burdensome, but only to let her feel it. subtilty is a talent natural to the sex; and, as i am persuaded, all our natural inclinations are right and good in themselves, i am of opinion this should be cultivated as well as the others: it is requisite for us only to prevent its abuse.' 'whatever is, is right,' he then proceeds triumphantly to infer. granted;yet, perhaps, no aphorism ever contained a more paradoxical assertion. it is a solemn truth with respect to god. he, reverentially i speak, sees the whole at once, and saw its just proportions in the womb of time; but man, who can only inspect disjointed parts, finds many things wrong; and it is a part of the system, and therefore right, that he should endeavour to alter what appears to him to be so, even while he bows to the wisdom of his creator, and respects the darkness he labours to disperse. the inference that follows is just, supposing the principle to be sound. 'the superiority of address, peculiar to the female sex, is a very equitable indemnification for their inferiority in point of strength: without this, woman would not be the companion of man; but his slave: it is by her superiour art and ingenuity that she preserves her equality, and governs him while she affects to obey. woman has every thing against her, as well our faults, as her own timidity and weakness; she has nothing in her favour, but her subtilty and her beauty. is it not very reasonable, therefore, she should cultivate both?' greatness of mind can never dwell with cunning, or address; for i shall not boggle about words, when their direct signification is insincerity and falsehood, but content myself with observing, that if any class of mankind be so created that it must necessarily be educated by rules not strictly deducible from truth, virtue is an affair of convention. how could rousseau dare to assert, after giving this advice, that in the grand end of existence the object of both sexes should be the same, when he well knew that the mind, formed by its pursuits, is expanded by great views swallowing up little ones, or that it becomes itself little? men have superiour strength of body; but were it not for mistaken notions of beauty, women would acquire sufficient to enable them to earn their own subsistence, the true definition of independence; and to bear those bodily inconveniencies and exertions that are requisite to strengthen the mind. let us then, by being allowed to take the same exercise as boys, not only during infancy, but youth, arrive at perfection of body, that we may know how far the natural superiority of man extends. for what reason or virtue can be expected from a creature when the seed-time of life is neglected? nonedid not the winds of heaven casually scatter many useful seeds in the fallow ground. 'beauty cannot be acquired by dress, and coquetry is an art not so early and speedily attained. while girls are yet young, however, they are in a capacity to study agreeable gesture, a pleasing modulation of voice, an easy carriage and behaviour; as well as to take the advantage of gracefully adapting their looks and attitudes to time, place, and occasion. their application, therefore, should not be solely confined to the arts of industry and the needle, when they come to display other talents, whose utility is already apparent.' 'for my part, i would have a young englishwoman cultivate her agreeable talents, in order to please her future husband, with as much care and assiduity as a young circassian cultivates her's, to fit her for the haram of an eastern bashaw.' to render women completely insignificant, he adds'the tongues of women are very voluble; they speak earlier, more readily, and more agreeably, than the men; they are accused also of speaking much more: but so it ought to be, and i should be very ready to convert this reproach into a compliment; their lips and eyes have the same activity, and for the same reason. a man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her; the one requires knowledge, the other taste; the principal object of a man's discourse should be what is useful, that of a woman's what is agreeable. there ought to be nothing in common between their different conversation but truth. 'we ought not, therefore, to restrain the prattle of girls, in the same manner as we should that of boys, with that severe question; to what purpose are you talking? but by another, which is no less difficult to answer, how will your discourse be received? in infancy, while they are as yet incapable to discern good from evil, they ought to observe it, as a law, never to say any thing disagreeable to those whom they are speaking to: what will render the practice of this rule also the more difficult, is, that it must ever be subordinate to the former, of never speaking falsely or telling an untruth.' to govern the tongue in this manner must require great address indeed; and it is too much practised both by men and women.out of the abundance of the heart how few speak! so few, that i, who love simplicity, would gladly give up politeness for a quarter of the virtue that has been sacrificed to an equivocal quality which at best should only be the polish of virtue. but, to complete the sketch. 'it is easy to be conceived, that if male children be not in a capacity to form any true notions of religion, those ideas must be greatly above the conception of the females: it is for this very reason, i would begin to speak to them the earlier on this subject; for if we were to wait till they were in a capacity to discuss methodically such profound questions, we should run a risk of never speaking to them on this subject as long as they lived. reason in women is a practical reason, capacitating them artfully to discover the means of attaining a known end, but which would never enable them to discover that end itself. the social relations of the sexes are indeed truly admirable: from their union there results a moral person, of which woman may be termed the eyes, and man the hand, with this dependence on each other, that it is from the man that the woman is to learn what she is to see, and it is of the woman that man is to learn what he ought to do. if woman could recur to the first principles of things as well as man, and man was capacitated to enter into their minutae as well as woman, always independent of each other, they would live in perpetual discord, and their union could not subsist. but in the present harmony which naturally subsists between them, their different faculties tend to one common end; it is difficult to say which of them conduces the most to it: each follows the impulse of the other; each is obedient, and both are masters. 'as the conduct of a woman is subservient to the public opinion, her faith in matters of religion should, for that very reason, be subject to authority. every daughter ought to be of the same religion as her mother, and every wife to be of the same religion as her husband: for, though such religion should be false, that docility which induces the mother and daughter to submit to the order of nature, takes away, in the sight of god, the criminality of their error.* as they are not in a capacity to judge for themselves, they ought to abide by the decision of their fathers and husbands as confidently as by that of the church. * what is to be the consequence, if the mother's and husband's opinion should chance to not agree? an ignorant person cannot be reasoned out of an errorand when persuaded to give up one prejudice for another the mind is unsettled. indeed, the husband may not have any religion to teach her, though in such a situation she will be in great want of a support to her virtue, independent of worldly considerations. 'as authority ought to regulate the religion of the women, it is not so needful to explain to them the reasons for their belief, as to lay down precisely the tenets they are to believe: for the creed, which presents only obscure ideas to the mind, is the source of fanaticism; and that which presents absurdities, leads to infidelity.' absolute, uncontroverted authority, it seems, must subsist somewhere: but is not this a direct and exclusive appropriation of reason? the rights of humanity have been thus confined to the male line from adam downwards. rousseau would carry his male aristocracy still further, for he insinuates, that he should not blame those, who contend for leaving woman in a state of the most profound ignorance, if it were not necessary in order to preserve her chastity and justify the man's choice, in the eyes of the world, to give her a little knowledge of men, and the customs produced by human passions; else she might propagate at home without being rendered less voluptuous and innocent by the exercise of her understanding: excepting, indeed, during the first year of marriage, when she might employ it to dress like sophia. 'her dress is extremely modest in appearance, and yet very coquettish in fact: she does not make a display of her charms, she conceals them; but in concealing them, she knows how to affect your imagination. every one who sees her will say, there is a modest and discreet girl; but while you are near her, your eyes and affections wander all over her person, so that you cannot withdraw them; and you would conclude, that every part of her dress, simple as it seems, was only put in its proper order to be taken to pieces by the imagination.' is this modesty? is this a preparation for immortality? again.what opinion are we to form of a system of education, when the author says of his heroine, 'that with her, doing things well, is but a secondary concern; her principal concern is to do them neatly.' secondary, in fact, are all her virtues and qualities, for, respecting religion, he makes her parents thus address her, accustomed to submission'your husband will instruct you in good time.' after thus cramping a woman's mind, if, in order to keep it fair, he have not made it quite a blank, he advises her to reflect, that a reflecting man may not yawn in her company, when he is tired of caressing her.what has she to reflect about who must obey? and would it not be a refinement on cruelty only to open her mind to make the darkness and misery of her fate visible? yet, these are his sensible remarks; how consistent with what i have already been obliged to quote, to give a fair view of the subject, the reader may determine. 'they who pass their whole lives in working for their daily bread, have no ideas beyond their business or their interest, and all their understanding seems to lie in their fingers' ends. this ignorance is neither prejudicial to their integrity nor their morals; it is often of service to them. sometimes, by means of reflection, we are led to compound with our duty, and we conclude by substituting a jargon of words, in the room of things. our own conscience is the most enlightened philosopher. there is no need to be acquainted with tully's offices, to make a man of probity: and perhaps the most virtuous woman in the world, is the least acquainted with the definition of virtue. but it is no less true, that an improved understanding only can render society agreeable; and it is a melancholy thing for a father of a family, who is fond of home, to be obliged to be always wrapped up in himself, and to have nobody about him to whom he can impart his sentiments. 'besides, how should a woman void of reflection be capable of educating her children? how should she discern what is proper for them? how should she incline them to those virtues she is unacquainted with, or to that merit of which she has no idea? she can only sooth or chide them; render them insolent or timid; she will make them formal coxcombs, or ignorant blockheads; but will never make them sensible or amiable.' how indeed should she, when her husband is not always at hand to lend her his reason?when they both together make but one moral being. a blind will, 'eyes without hands,' would go a very little way; and perchance his abstract reason, that should concentrate the scattered beams of her practical reason, may be employed in judging of the flavour of wine, descanting on the sauces most proper for turtle; or, more profoundly intent at a card-table, he may be generalizing his ideas as he bets away his fortune, leaving all the minutae of education to his helpmate, or to chance. but, granting that woman ought to be beautiful, innocent, and silly, to render her a more alluring and indulgent companion;what is her understanding sacrificed for? and why is all this preparation necessary only, according to rousseau's own account, to make her the mistress of her husband, a very short time? for no man ever insisted more on the transient nature of love. thus speaks the philosopher. 'sensual pleasures are transient. the habitual state of the affections always loses by their gratification. the imagination, which decks the object of our desires, is lost in fruition. excepting the supreme being, who is self-existent, there is nothing beautiful but what is ideal.' but he returns to his unintelligible paradoxes again, when he thus addresses sophia. 'emilius, in becoming your husband, is become your master; and claims your obedience. such is the order of nature. when a man is married, however, to such a wife as sophia, it is proper he should be directed by her: this is also agreeable to the order of nature: it is, therefore, to give you as much authority over his heart as his sex gives him over your person, that i have made you the arbiter of his pleasures. it may cost you, perhaps, some disagreeable self-denial; but you will be certain of maintaining your empire over him, if you can preserve it over yourselfwhat i have already observed, also, shows me, that this difficult attempt does not surpass your courage. 'would you have your husband constantly at your feet? keep him at some distance from your person. you will long maintain the authority in love, if you know but how to render your favours rare and valuable. it is thus you may employ even the arts of coquetry in the service of virtue, and those of love in that of reason.' i shall close my extracts with a just description of a comfortable couple. 'and yet you must not imagine, that even such management will always suffice. whatever precaution be taken, enjoyment will, by degrees, take off the edge of passion. but when love hath lasted as long as possible, a pleasing habitude supplies its place, and the attachment of a mutual confidence succeeds to the transports of passion. children often form a more agreeable and permanent connection between married people than even love itself. when you cease to be the mistress of emilius, you will continue to be his wife and friend, you will be the mother of his children.'* * rousseau's emilius. children, he truly observes, form a much more permanent connexion between married people than love. beauty, he declares, will not be valued, or even seen after a couple have lived six months together; artificial graces and coquetry will likewise pall on the senses: why then does he say that a girl should be educated for her husband with the same care as for an eastern haram? i now appeal from the reveries of fancy and refined licentiousness to the good sense of mankind, whether, if the object of education be to prepare women to become chaste wives and sensible mothers, the method so plausibly recommended in the foregoing sketch, be the one best calculated to produce those ends? will it be allowed that the surest way to make a wife chaste, is to teach her to practise the wanton arts of a mistress, termed virtuous coquetry, by the sensualist who can no longer relish the artless charms of sincerity, or taste the pleasure arising from a tender intimacy, when confidence is unchecked by suspicion, and rendered interesting by sense? the man who can be contented to live with a pretty, useful companion, without a mind, has lost in voluptuous gratifications a taste for more refined enjoyments; he has never felt the calm satisfaction, that refreshes the parched heart, like the silent dew of heaven,of being beloved by one who could understand him.in the society of his wife he is still alone, unless when the man is sunk in the brute. 'the charm of life,' says a grave philosophical reasoner, is 'sympathy; nothing pleases us more than to observe in other men a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breast.' but, according to the tenour of reasoning, by which women are kept from the tree of knowledge, the important years of youth, the usefulness of age, and the rational hopes of futurity, are all to be sacrificed to render women an object of desire for a short time. besides, how could rousseau expect them to be virtuous and constant when reason is neither allowed to be the foundation of their virtue, nor truth the object of their inquiries? but all rousseau's errors in reasoning arose from sensibility, and sensibility to their charms women are very ready to forgive! when he should have reasoned he became impassioned, and reflection inflamed his imagination instead of enlightening his understanding. even his virtues also led him farther astray; for, born with a warm constitution and lively fancy, nature carried him toward the other sex with such eager fondness, that he soon became lascivious. had he given way to these desires, the fire would have extinguished itself in a natural manner; but virtue, and a romantic kind of delicacy, made him practise self-denial; yet, when fear, delicacy, or virtue, restrained him, he debauched his imagination, and reflecting on the sensations to which fancy gave force, he traced them in the most glowing colours, and sunk them deep into his soul. he then sought for solitude, not to sleep with the man of nature; or calmly investigate the causes of things under the shade where sir isaac newton indulged contemplation, but merely to indulge his feelings. and so warmly has he painted, what he forcibly felt, that, interesting the heart and inflaming the imagination of his readers; in proportion to the strength of their fancy, they imagine that their understanding is convinced when they only sympathize with a poetic writer, who skilfully exhibits the objects of sense, most voluptuously shadowed or gracefully veiledand thus making us feel whilst dreaming that we reason, erroneous conclusions are left in the mind. why was rousseau's life divided between ecstasy and misery? can any other answer be given than this, that the effervescence of his imagination produced both; but, had his fancy been allowed to cool, it is possible that he might have acquired more strength of mind. still, if the purpose of life be to educate the intellectual part of man, all with respect to him was right; yet, had not death led to a nobler scene of action, it is probable that he would have enjoyed more equal happiness on earth, and have felt the calm sensations of the man of nature instead of being prepared for another stage of existence by nourishing the passions which agitate the civilized man. but peace to his manes! i war not with his ashes, but his opinions. i war only with the sensibility that led him to degrade woman by making her the slave of love. -'curs'd vassalage, 'first idoliz'd till love's hot fire be o'er, 'then slaves to those who courted us before.' dryden. the pernicious tendency of those books, in which the writers insidiously degrade the sex whilst they are prostrate before their personal charms, cannot be too often or too severely exposed. let us, my dear contemporaries, arise above such narrow prejudices! if wisdom be desirable on its own account, if virtue, to deserve the name, must be founded on knowledge; let us endeavour to strengthen our minds by reflection, till our heads become a balance for our hearts; let us not confine all our thoughts to the petty occurrences of the day, or our knowledge to an acquaintance with our lovers' or husbands' hearts; but let the practice of every duty be subordinate to the grand one of improving our minds, and preparing our affections for a more exalted state! beware then, my friends, of suffering the heart to be moved by every trivial incident: the reed is shaken by a breeze, and annually dies, but the oak stands firm, and for ages braves the storm! were we, indeed, only created to flutter our hour out and diewhy let us then indulge sensibility, and laugh at the severity of reason.yet, alas! even then we should want strength of body and mind, and life would be lost in feverish pleasures or wearisome languor. but the system of education, which i earnestly wish to see exploded, seems to presuppose what ought never to be taken for granted, that virtue shields us from the casualties of life; and that fortune, slipping off her bandage, will smile on a well-educated female, and bring in her hand an emilius or a telemachus. whilst, on the contrary, the reward which virtue promises to her votaries is confined, it seems clear, to their own bosoms; and often must they contend with the most vexatious worldly cares, and bear with the vices and humours of relations for whom they can never feel a friendship. there have been many women in the world who, instead of being supported by the reason and virtue of their fathers and brothers, have strengthened their own minds by struggling with their vices and follies; yet have never met with a hero, in the shape of a husband; who, paying the debt that mankind owed them, might chance to bring back their reason to its natural dependent state, and restore the usurped prerogative, of rising above opinion, to man. sect. ii. dr. fordyce's sermons have long made a part of a young woman's library; nay, girls at school are allowed to read them; but i should instantly dismiss them from my pupil's, if i wished to strengthen her understanding, by leading her to form sound principles on a broad basis; or, were i only anxious to cultivate her taste; though they must be allowed to contain many sensible observations. dr. fordyce may have had a very laudable end in view; but these discourses are written in such an affected style, that were it only on that account, and had i nothing to object against his mellifluous precepts, i should not allow girls to peruse them, unless i designed to hunt every spark of nature out of their composition, melting every human quality into female meekness and artificial grace. i say artificial, for true grace arises from some kind of independence of mind. children, careless of pleasing, and only anxious to amuse themselves, are often very graceful; and the nobility who have mostly lived with inferiours, and always had the command of money, acquire a graceful case of deportment, which should rather be termed habitual grace of body, than that superiour gracefulness which is truly the expression of the mind. this mental grace, not noticed by vulgar eyes, often flashes across a rough countenance, and irradiating every feature, shows simplicity and independence of mind.it is then we read characters of immortality in the eye, and see the soul in every gesture, though when at rest, neither the face nor limbs may have much beauty to recommend them; or the behaviour, any thing peculiar to attract universal attention. the mass of mankind, however, look for more tangible beauty; yet simplicity is, in general, admired, when people do not consider what they admire; and can there be simplicity without sincerity? but, to have done with remarks that are in some measure desultory, though naturally excited by the subject in declamatory periods dr. fordyce spins out rousseau's eloquence; and in most sentimental rant, details his opinions respecting the female character, and the behaviour which woman ought to assume to render her lovely. he shall speak for himself, for thus he makes nature address man. 'behold these smiling innocents, whom i have graced with my fairest gifts, and committed to your protection; behold them with love and respect; treat them with tenderness and honour. they are timid and want to be defended. they are frail; o do not take advantage of their weakness! let their fears and blushes endear them. let their confidence in you never be abused.but is it possible, that any of you can be such barbarians, so supremely wicked, as to abuse it? can you find in your hearts* to despoil the gentle, trusting creatures of their treasure, or do any thing to strip them of their native robe of virtue? curst be the impious hand that would dare to violate the unblemished form of chastity! thou wretch! thou ruffian! forbear; nor venture to provoke heaven's fiercest vengeance.' i know not any comment that can be made seriously on this curious passage, and i could produce many similar ones; and some, so very sentimental, that i have heard rational men use the word indecent, when they mentioned them with disgust. * can you?can you? would be the most emphatical comment, were it drawled out in a whining voice. throughout there is a display of cold artificial feelings, and that parade of sensibility which boys and girls should be taught to despise as the sure mark of a little vain mind. florid appeals are made to heaven, and to the beauteous innocents, the fairest images of heaven here below, whilst sober sense is left far behind.this is not the language of the heart, nor will it ever reach it, though the ear may be tickled. i shall be told, perhaps, that the public have been pleased with these volumes.trueand hervey's meditations are still read, though he equally sinned against sense and taste. i particularly object to the lover-like phrases of pumped up passion, which are every where interspersed. if women be ever allowed to walk without leading-strings, why must they be cajoled into virtue by artful flattery and sexual compliments?speak to them the language of truth and soberness, and away with the lullaby strains of condescending endearment! let them be taught to respect themselves as rational creatures, and not led to have a passion for their own insipid persons. it moves my gall to hear a preacher descanting on dress and needle-work; and still more, to hear him address the british fair, the fairest of the fair, as if they had only feelings. even recommending piety he uses the following argument. 'never, perhaps, does a fine woman strike more deeply, than when, composed into pious recollection, and possessed with the noblest considerations, she assumes, without knowing it, superiour dignity and new graces; so that the beauties of holiness seem to radiate about her, and the by-standers are almost induced to fancy her already worshipping amongst her kindred angels!' why are women to be thus bred up with a desire of conquest? the very word, used in this sense. gives me a sickly qualm! do religion and virtue offer no stronger motives, no brighter reward? must they always be debased by being made to consider the sex of their companions? must they be taught always to be pleasing? and when levelling their small artillery at the heart of man, is it necessary to tell them that a little sense is sufficient to render their attention incredibly soothing? 'as a small degree of knowledge entertains in a woman, so from a woman, though for a different reason, a small expression of kindness delights, particularly if she have beauty!" i should have supposed for the same reason. why are girls to be told that they resemble angels; but to sink them below women? or, that a gentle innocent female is an object that comes nearer to the idea which we have formed of angels than any other. yet they are told, at the same time, that they are only like angels when they are young and beautiful; consequently, it is their persons, not their virtues, that procure them this homage. idle empty words! what can such delusive flattery lead to, but vanity and folly? the lover, it is true, has a poetic licence to exalt his mistress; his reason is the bubble of his passion, and he does not utter a falsehood when he borrows the language of adoration. his imagination may raise the idol of his heart, unblamed, above humanity; and happy would it be for women, if they were only flattered by the men who loved them; i mean, who love the individual, not the sex; but should a grave preacher interlard his discourses with such fooleries? in sermons or novels, however, voluptuousness is always true to its text. men are allowed by moralists to cultivate, as nature directs, different qualities, and assume the different characters, that the same passions, modified almost to infinity, give to each individual. a virtuous man may have a choleric or a sanguine constitution, be gay or grave, unreproved; be firm till be is almost over-bearing, or, weakly submissive, have no will or opinion of his own; but all women are to be levelled, by meekness and docility, into one character of yielding softness and gentle compliance. i will use the preacher's own words. 'let it be observed, that in your sex manly exercises are never graceful; that in them a tone and figure, as well as an air and deportment, of the masculine kind, are always forbidding; and that men of sensibility desire in every woman soft features, and a flowing voice, a form, not robust, and demeanour delicate and gentle.' is not the following portraitthe portrait of a house slave? 'i am astonished at the folly of many women, who are still reproaching their husbands for leaving them alone, for preferring this or that company to theirs, for treating them with this and the other mark of disregard or indifference; when, to speak the truth, they have themselves in a great measure to blame. not that i would justify the men in any thing wrong on their part. but had you behaved to them with more respectful observance, and a more equal tenderness; studying their humours, overlooking their mistakes, submitting to their opinions in matters indifferent, passing by little instances of unevenness, caprice, or passion, giving soft answers to hasty words, complaining as seldom as possible, and making it your daily care to relieve their anxieties and prevent their wishes, to enliven the hour of dulness, and call up the ideas of felicity: had you pursued this conduct, i doubt not but you would have maintained and even increased their esteem, so far as to have secured every degree of influence that could conduce to their virtue, or your mutual satisfaction; and your house might at this day have been the abode of domestic bliss.' such a woman ought to be an angelor she is an assfor i discern not a trace of the human character, neither reason nor passion in this domestic drudge, whose being is absorbed in that of a tyrant's. still dr. fordyce must have very little acquaintance with the human heart, if he really supposed that such conduct would bring back wandering love, instead of exciting contempt. no, beauty, gentleness, &c. &c. may gain a heart; but esteem, the only lasting affection, can alone be obtained by virtue supported by reason. it is respect for the understanding that keeps alive tenderness for the person. as these volumes are so frequently put into the hands of young people, i have taken more notice of them than, strictly speaking, they deserve; but as they have contributed to vitiate the taste, and enervate the understanding of many of my fellow-creatures, i could not pass them silently over. sect. iii. such paternal solicitude pervades dr. gregory's legacy to his daughters, that i enter on the task of criticism with affectionate respect; but as this little volume has many attractions to recommend it to the notice of the most respectable part of my sex, i cannot silently pass over arguments that so speciously support opinions which, i think, have had the most baneful effect on the morals and manners of the female world. his easy familiar style is particularly suited to the tenor of his advice, and the melancholy tenderness which his respect for the memory of a beloved wife, diffuses through the whole work, renders it very interesting; yet there is a degree of concise elegance conspicuous in many passages that disturbs this sympathy; and we pop on the author, when we only expected to meet thefather. besides, having two objects in view, he seldom adhered steadily to either; for wishing to make his daughters amiable, and fearing lest unhappiness should only be the consequence, of instilling sentiments that might draw them out of the track of common life without enabling them to act with consonant independence and dignity, he checks the natural flow of his thoughts, and neither advises one thing nor the other. in the preface he tells them a mournful truth, 'that they will hear, at least once in their lives, the genuine sentiments of a man who has no interest in deceiving them.' hapless woman! what can be expected from thee when the beings on whom thou art said naturally to depend for reason and support, have all an interest in deceiving thee! this is the root of the evil that has shed a corroding mildew on all thy virtues; and blighting in the bud thy opening faculties, has rendered thee the weak thing thou art! it is this separate interestthis insidious state of warfare, that undermines morality, and divides mankind! if love have made some women wretchedhow many more has the cold unmeaning intercourse of gallantry rendered vain and useless! yet this heartless attention to the sex is reckoned so manly, so polite that, till society is very differently organized, i fear, this vestige of gothic manners will not be done away by a more reasonable and affectionate mode of conduct. besides, to strip it of its imaginary dignity, i must observe, that in the most uncivilized european states this lip-service prevails in a very great degree, accompanied with extreme dissoluteness of morals. in portugal, the country that i particularly allude to, it takes place of the most serious moral obligations; for a man is seldom assassinated when in the company of a woman. the savage hand of rapine is unnerved by this chivalrous spirit; and, if the stroke of vengeance cannot be stayedthe lady is entreated to pardon the rudeness and depart in peace, though sprinkled, perhaps, with her husband's or brother's blood. i shall pass over his strictures on religion, because i mean to discuss that subject in a separate chapter. the remarks relative to behaviour, though many of them very sensible, i entirely disapprove of, because it appears to me to be beginning, as it were, at the wrong end. a cultivated understanding, and an affectionate heart, will never want starched rules of decorumsomething more substantial than seemliness will be the result; and, without understanding the behaviour here recommended, would be rank affectation. decorum, indeed, is the one thing needful!decorum is to supplant nature, and banish all simplicity and variety of character out of the female world. yet what good end can all this superficial counsel produce? it is, however, much easier to point out this or that mode of behaviour, than to set the reason to work; but, when the mind has been stored with useful knowledge, and strengthened by being employed, the regulation of the behaviour may safely be left to its guidance. why, for instance, should the following caution be given when art of every kind must contaminate the mind; and why entangle the grand motives of action, which reason and religion equally combine to enforce, with pitiful worldly shifts and slight of hand tricks to gain the applause of gaping tasteless fools? 'be even cautious in displaying your good sense.* it will be thought you assume a superiority over the rest of the companybut if you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound secret, especially from the men who generally look with a jealous and malignant eye on a woman of great parts, and a cultivated understanding.' if men of real merit, as he afterwards observes, be superior to this meanness, where is the necessity that the behaviour of the whole sex should be modulated to please fools, or men, who having little claim to respect as individuals, choose to keep close in their phalanx. men, indeed, who insist on their common superiority, having only this sexual superiority, are certainly very excusable. * let women once acquire good senseand if it deserve the name, it will teach them; or, of what use will it be? how to employ it. there would be no end to rules for behaviour, if it be proper always to adopt the tone of the company; for thus, for ever varying the key, a flat would often pass for a natural note. surely it would have been wiser to have advised women to improve themselves till they rose above the fumes of vanity; and then to let the public opinion come roundfor where are rules of accommodation to stop? the narrow path of truth and virtue inclines neither to the right nor leftit is a straightforward business, and they who are earnestly pursuing their road, may bound over many decorous prejudices, without leaving modesty behind. make the heart clean, and give the head employment, and i will venture to predict that there will be nothing offensive in the behaviour. the air of fashion, which many young people are so eager to attain, always strikes me like the studied attitudes of some modern pictures, copied with tasteless servility after the antiques;the soul is left out, and none of the parts are tied together by what may properly be termed character. this varnish of fashion, which seldom sticks very close to sense, may dazzle the weak; but leave nature to itself, and it will seldom disgust the wise. besides, when a woman has sufficient sense not to pretend to any thing which she does not understand in some degree, there is no need of determining to hide her talents under a bushel. let things take their natural course, and all will be well. it is this system of dissimulation, throughout the volume, that i despise. women are always to seem to be this and thatyet virtue might apostrophize them, in the words of hamletseems! i know not seems!have that within that passeth show! still the same tone occurs; for in another place, after recommending, without sufficiently discriminating delicacy, he adds, 'the men will complain of your reserve. they will assure you that a franker behaviour would make you more amiable. but, trust me, they are not sincere when they tell you so.i acknowledge that on some occasions it might render you more agreeable as companions, but it would make you less amiable as women: an important distinction, which many of your sex are not aware of.' this desire of being always women, is the very consciousness that degrades the sex. excepting with a lover, i must repeat with emphasis, a former observation,it would be well if they were only agreeable or rational companions.but in this respect his advice is even inconsistent with a passage which i mean to quote with the most marked approbation. 'the sentiment, that a woman may allow all innocent freedoms, provided her virtue is secure, is both grossly indelicate and dangerous, and has proved fatal to many of your sex.' with this opinion i perfectly coincide. a man, or a woman, of any feeling, must always wish to convince a beloved object that it is the caresses of the individual, not the sex, that are received and returned with pleasure; and, that the heart, rather than the senses, is moved. without this natural delicacy, love becomes a selfish personal gratification that soon degrades the character. i carry this sentiment still further. affection, when love is out of the question, authorises many personal endearments, that naturally, flowing from an innocent heart, give life to the behaviour; but the personal intercourse of appetite, gallantry, or vanity, is despicable. when a man squeezes the hand of a pretty woman, handing her to a carriage, whom he has never seen before, she will consider such an impertinent freedom in the light of an insult, if she have any true delicacy, instead of being flattered by this unmeaning homage to beauty. these are the privileges of friendship, or the momentary homage which the heart pays to virtue, when it flashes suddenly on the noticemere animal spirits have no claim to the kindnesses of affection! wishing to feed the affections with what is now the food of vanity, i would fain persuade my sex to act from simpler principles. let them merit love, and they will obtain it, though they may never be told that'the power of a fine woman over the hearts of men, of men of the finest parts, is even beyond what she conceives.' i have already noticed the narrow cautions with respect to duplicity, female softness, delicacy of constitution; for these are the changes which he rings round without ceasingin a more decorous manner, it is true, than rousseau; but it all comes home to the same point, and whoever is at the trouble to analyze these sentiments, will find the first principles not quite so delicate as the superstructure. the subject of amusements is treated in too cursory a manner, but with the same spirit. when i treat of friendship, love, and marriage, it will be found that we materially differ in opinion; i shall not then forestall what i have to observe on these important subjects; but confine my remarks to the general tenor of them, to that cautious family prudence, to those confined views of partial unenlightened affection, which exclude pleasure and improvement, by vainly wishing to ward off sorrow and errorand by thus guarding the heart and mind, destroy also all their energy.it is far better to be often deceived than never to trust; to be disappointed in love than never to love; to lose a husband's fondness than forfeit his esteem. happy would it be for the world, and for individuals, of course, if all this unavailing solicitude to attain worldly happiness, on a confined plan, were turned into an anxious desire to improve the understanding.'wisdom is the principal thing: therefore get wisdom; and with all thy gettings get understanding.''how long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity, and hate knowledge?' saith wisdom to the daughters of men! sect. iv. i do not mean to allude to all the writers who have written on the subject of female mannersit would, in fact, be only beating over the old ground, for they have, in general, written in the same strain; but attacking the boasted prerogative of manthe prerogative that may emphatically be called the iron sceptre of tyranny, the original sin of tyrants, i declare against all power built on prejudices, however hoary. if the submission demanded be founded on justicethere is no appealing to a higher powerfor god is justice itself. let us then, as children of the same parent, if not bastardized by being the younger born, reason together, and learn to submit to the authority of reasonwhen her voice is distinctly heard. but, if it be proved, that this throne of prerogative only rests on a chaotic mass of prejudices, that have no inherent principle of order to keep them together, or on an elephant, tortoise, or even the mighty shoulders of a son of the earth, they may escape, who dare to brave the consequence, without any breach of duty, without sinning against the order of things. whilst reason raises man above the brutal herd, and death is big with promises, they alone are subject to blind authority who have no reliance on their own strength. 'they are freewho will be free!'-* * 'he is the true man, whom truth makes free!'cowper. the being who can govern itself has nothing to fear in life; but if any thing be dearer than its own respect, the price must be paid to the last farthing. virtue, like every thing valuable, must be loved for herself alone; or she will not take up her abode with us. she will not impart that peace, 'which passeth understanding,' when she is merely made the stilts of reputation; and respected, with pharisaical exactness, because 'honesty is the best policy.' that the plan of life which enables us to carry some knowledge and virtue into another world, is the one best calculated to ensure content in this, cannot be denied; yet few people act according to this principle, though it be universally allowed that it admits not of dispute. present pleasure, or present power, carry before it these sober convictions; and it is for the day, not for life, that man bargains with happiness. how few!how very few! have sufficient foresight, or resolution, to endure a small evil at the moment, to avoid a greater hereafter. woman in particular, whose virtue* is built on mutable prejudices, seldom attains to this greatness of mind; so that, becoming the slave of her own feelings, she is easily subjugated by those of others. thus degraded, her reason, her misty reason! is employed rather to burnish than to snap her chains. * i mean to use a word that comprehends more than chastity, the sexual virtue. indignantly have i heard women argue in the same track as men, and adopt the sentiments that brutalize them, with all the pertinacity of ignorance. i must illustrate my assertion by a few examples. mrs. piozzi, who often repeated by rote, what she did not understand, comes forward with johnsonian periods. 'seek not for happiness in singularity; and dread a refinement of wisdom as a deviation into folly.' thus she dogmatically addresses a new married man; and to elucidate this pompous exordium, she adds, 'i said that the person of your lady would not grow more pleasing to you, but pray let her never suspect that it grows less so: that a woman will pardon an affront to her understanding much sooner than one to her person, is well known; nor will any of us contradict the assertion. all our attainments, all our arts, are employed to gain and keep the heart of man; and what mortification can exceed the disappointment, if the end be not obtained? there is no reproof however pointed, no punishment however severe, that a woman of spirit will not prefer to neglect; and if she can endure it without complaint, it only proves that she means to make herself amends by the attention of others for the slights of her husband!' these are truly masculine sentiments.'all our arts are employed to gain and keep the heart of man:'and what is the inference?if her person, and was there ever a person, though formed with medicean symmetry, that was not slighted? be neglected, she will make herself amends by endeavouring to please other men. noble morality! but thus is the understanding of the whole sex affronted, and their virtue deprived of the common basis of virtue. a woman must know, that her person cannot be as pleasing to her husband as it was to her lover, and if she be offended with him for being a human creature, she may as well whine about the loss of his heart as about any other foolish thing.and this very want of discernment or unreasonable anger, proves that he could not change his fondness for her person into affection for her virtues or respect for her understanding. whilst women avow, and act up to such opinions, their understandings, at least, deserve the contempt and obloquy that men, who never insult their persons, have pointedly levelled at the female mind. and it is the sentiments of these polite men, who do not wish to be encumbered with mind, that vain women thoughtlessly adopt. yet they should know, that insulted reason alone can spread that sacred reserve about the person, which renders human affections, for human affections have always some base alloy, as permanent as is consistent with the grand end of existencethe attainment of virtue. the baroness de stael speaks the same language as the lady just cited, with more enthusiasm. her eulogium on rousseau was accidentally put into my hands, and her sentiments, the sentiments of too many of my sex, may serve as the text for a few comments. 'though rousseau,' she observes, 'has endeavoured to prevent women from interfering in public affairs, and acting a brilliant part in the theatre of politics; yet in speaking of them, how much has he done it to their satisfaction! if he wished to deprive them of some rights foreign to their sex, how has he for ever restored to them all those to which it has a claim! and in attempting to diminish their influence over the deliberations of men, how sacredly has he established the empire they have over their happiness! in aiding them to descend from an usurped throne, he has firmly seated them upon that to which they were destined by nature; and though he be full of indignation against them when they endeavour to resemble men, yet when they come before him with all the charms, weaknesses, virtues and errors, of their sex, his respect for their persons amounts almost to adoration.' true!for never was there a sensualist who paid more fervent adoration at the shrine of beauty. so devout, indeed, was his respect for the person, that excepting the virtue of chastity, for obvious reasons, he only wished to see it embellished by charms, weaknesses, and errors. he was afraid lest the austerity of reason should disturb the soft playfulness of love. the master wished to have a meretricious slave to fondle, entirely dependent on his reason and bounty; he did not want a companion, whom he should be compelled to esteem, or a friend to whom he could confide the care of his children's education, should death deprive them of their father, before he had fulfilled the sacred task. he denies woman reason, shuts her out from knowledge, and turns her aside from truth; yet his pardon is granted, because 'he admits the passion of love.' it would require some ingenuity to shew why women were to be under such an obligation to him for thus admitting love; when it is clear that he admits it only for the relaxation of men, and to perpetuate the species; but he talked with passion, and that powerful spell worked on the sensibility of a young encomiast. 'what signifies it,' pursues this rhapsodist, 'to women, that his reason disputes with them the empire, when his heart is devotedly theirs.' it is not empire,but equality, that they should contend for. yet, if they only wished to lengthen out their sway, they should not entirely trust to their persons, for though beauty may gain a heart, it cannot keep it, even while the beauty is in full bloom, unless the mind lend, at least, some graces. when women are once sufficiently enlightened to discover their real interest, on a grand scale, they will, i am persuaded, be very ready to resign all the prerogatives of love, that are not mutual, speaking of them as lasting prerogatives, for the calm satisfaction of friendship, and the tender confidence of habitual esteem. before marriage they will not assume any insolent airs, or afterwards abjectly submit; but endeavouring to act like reasonable creatures, in both situations, they will not be tumbled from a throne to a stool. madame genlis has written several entertaining books for children; and her letters on education afford many useful hints, that sensible parents will certainly avail themselves of; but her views are narrow, and her prejudices as unreasonable as strong. i shall pass over her vehement argument in favour of the eternity of future punishments, because i blush to think that a human being should ever argue vehemently in such a cause, and only make a few remarks on her absurd manner of making the parental authority supplant reason. for every where does she inculcate not only blind submission to parents; but to the opinion of the world.* * a person is not to act in this or that way, though convinced they are right in so doing, because some equivocal circumstances may lead the world to suspect that they acted from different motives.this is sacrificing the substance for a shadow. let people but watch their own hearts, and act rightly, as far as they can judge, and they may patiently wait till the opinion of the world comes round. it is best to be directed by a simple motivefor justice has too often been sacrificed to propriety;another word for convenience. she tells a story of a young man engaged by his father's express desire to a girl of fortune. before the marriage could take place, she is deprived of her fortune, and thrown friendless on the world. the father practises the most infamous arts to separate his son from her, and when the son detects his villany, and following the dictates of honour marries the girl, nothing but misery ensues, because forsooth he married without his father's consent. on what ground can religion or morality rest when justice is thus set as defiance? with the same view she represents an accomplished young woman, as ready to marry any body that her mama pleased to recommend; and, as actually marrying the young man of her own choice, without feeling any emotions of passion, because that a well educated girl had not time to be in love. is it possible to have much respect for a system of education that thus insults reason and nature? many similar opinions occur in her writings, mixed with sentiments that do honour to her head and heart. yet so much superstition is mixed with her religion, and so much worldly wisdom with her morality, that i should not let a young person read her works, unless i could afterwards converse on the subjects, and point out the contradictions. mrs. chapone's letters are written with such good sense, and unaffected humility, and contain so many useful observations, that i only mention them to pay the worthy writer this tribute of respect. i cannot, it is true, always coincide in opinion with her; but i always respect her. the very word respect brings mrs. macaulay to my remembrance. the woman of the greatest abilities, undoubtedly, that this country has ever produced.and yet this woman has been suffered to die without sufficient respect being paid to her memory. posterity, however, will be more just; and remember that catharine macaulay was an example of intellectual acquirements supposed to be incompatible with the weakness of her sex. in her style of writing, indeed, no sex appears, for it is like the sense it conveys, strong and clear. i will not call hers a masculine understanding, because i admit not of such an arrogant assumption of reason; but i contend that it was a sound one, and that her judgment, the matured fruit of profound thinking, was a proof that a woman can acquire judgment, in the full extent of the word. possessing more penetration than sagacity, more understanding than fancy, she writes with sober energy and argumentative closeness; yet sympathy and benevolence give an interest to her sentiments, and that vital heat to arguments, which forces the reader to weigh them.* * coinciding in opinion with mrs. macaulay relative to many branches of education, i refer to her valuable work, instead of quoting her sentiments to support my own. when i first thought of writing these strictures i anticipated mrs. macaulay's approbation, with a little of that sanguine ardour, which it has been the business of my life to depress; but soon heard with the sickly qualm of disappointed hope; and the still seriousness of regretthat she was no more! sect. v. taking a view of the different works which have been written on education, lord chesterfield's letters must not be silently passed over. not that i mean to analyze his unmanly, immoral system, or even to cull any of the useful, shrewd remarks which occur in his epistlesno, i only mean to make a few reflections on the avowed tendency of themthe art of acquiring an early knowledge of the world. an art, i will venture to assert, that preys secretly, like the worm in the bud, on the expanding powers, and turns to poison the generous juices which should mount with vigour in the youthful frame, inspiring warm affections and great resolves.* * that children ought to be constantly guarded against the vices and follies of the world, appears, to me, a very mistaken opinion; for in the course of experience, and my eyes have looked abroad, i never knew a youth educated in this manner, who had early imbibed these chilling suspicions, and repeated by rote the hesitating if of age, that did not prove a selfish character. for every thing, saith the wise man, there is a season;and who would look for the fruits of autumn during the genial months of spring? but this is mere declamation, and i mean to reason with those worldly-wise instructors, who, instead of cultivating the judgment, instill prejudices, and render hard the heart that gradual experience would only have cooled. an early acquaintance with human infirmities; or, what is termed knowledge of the world, is the surest way, in my opinion, to contract the heart and damp the natural youthful ardour which produces not only great talents, but great virtues. for the vain attempt to bring forth the fruit of experience, before the sapling has thrown out its leaves, only exhausts its strength, and prevents its assuming a natural form; just as the form and strength of subsiding metals are injured when the attraction of cohesion is disturbed. tell me, ye who have studied the human mind, is it not a strange way to fix principles by showing young people that they are seldom stable? and how can they be fortified by habits when they are proved to be fallacious by example? why is the ardour of youth thus to be damped, and the luxuriancy of fancy cut to the quick? this dry caution may, it is true, guard a character from worldly mischances; but will infallibly preclude excellence in either virtue or knowledge.* the stumbling-block thrown across every path by suspicion, will prevent any vigorous exertions of genius or benevolence, and life will be stripped of its most alluring charm long before its calm evening, when man should retire to contemplation for comfort and support. * i have already observed that an early knowledge of the world, obtained in a natural way, by mixing in the world, has the same effect: instancing officers and women. a young man who has been bred up with domestic friends, and led to store his mind with as much speculative knowledge as can be acquired by reading and the natural reflections which youthful ebullitions of animal spirits and instinctive feelings inspire, will enter the world with warm and erroneous expectations. but this appears to be the course of nature; and in morals, as well as in works of taste, we should be observant of her sacred indications, and not presume to lead when we ought obsequiously to follow. in the world few people act from principle; present feelings, and early habits, are the grand springs: but how would the former be deadened, and the latter rendered iron corroding fetters, if the world were shewn to young people just as it is; when no knowledge of mankind or their own hearts, slowly obtained by experience, rendered them forbearing? their fellow creatures would not then be viewed as frail beings; like themselves, condemned to struggle with human infirmities, and sometimes displaying the light, and sometimes the dark side of their character; extorting alternate feelings of love and disgust; but guarded against as beasts of prey, till every enlarged social feeling, in a word,humanity, was eradicated. in life, on the contrary, as we gradually discover the imperfections of our nature, we discover virtues, and various circumstances attach us to our fellow creatures, when we mix with them, and view the same objects, that are never thought of in acquiring a hasty unnatural knowledge of the world. we see a folly swell into a vice, by almost imperceptible degrees, and pity while we blame; but, if the hideous monster burst suddenly on our sight, fear and disgust rendering us more severe than man ought to be, might lead us with blind zeal to usurp the character of omnipotence, and denounce damnation on our fellow mortals, forgetting that we cannot read the heart, and that we have seeds of the same vices lurking in our own. i have already remarked that we expect more from instruction, than mere instruction can produce: for, instead of preparing young people to encounter the evils of life with dignity and to acquire wisdom and virtue by the exercise of their own faculties, precepts are heaped upon precepts, and blind obedience required, when conviction should be brought home to reason. suppose, for instance, that a young person in the first ardour of friendship deifies the beloved objectwhat harm can arise from this mistaken enthusiastic attachment? perhaps it is necessary for virtue first to appear in a human form to impress youthful hearts; the ideal model, which a more matured and exalted mind looks up to, and shapes for itself, would elude their sight. he who loves not his brother whom be hath seen, how can he love god? asked the wisest of men. it is natural for youth to adorn the first object of its affection with every good quality, and the emulation produced by ignorance, or, to speak with more propriety, by inexperience, brings forward the mind capable of forming such an affection, and when, in the lapse of time, perfection is found not to be within the reach of mortals, virtue, abstractedly, is thought beautiful, and wisdom sublime. admiration then gives place to friendship, properly so called, because it is cemented by esteem; and the being walks alone only dependent on heaven for that emulous panting after perfection which ever glows in a noble mind. but this knowledge a man must gain by the exertion of his own faculties; and this is surely the blessed fruit of disappointed hope! for he who delighteth to diffuse happiness and shew mercy to the weak creatures, who are learning to know him, never implanted a good propensity to be a tormenting ignis fatuus. our trees are now allowed to spread with wild luxuriance, nor do we expect by force to combine the majestic marks of time with youthful graces; but wait patiently till they have struck deep their root, and braved many a storm.is the mind then, which, in proportion to its dignity, advances more slowly towards perfection, to be treated with less respect? to argue from analogy, every thing around us is in a progressive state; and when an unwelcome knowledge of life produces almost a satiety of life, and we discover by the natural course of things that all that is done under the sun is vanity, we are drawing near the awful close of the drama. the days of activity and hope are over, and the opportunities which the first stage of existence has afforded of advancing in the scale of intelligence, must soon be summed up.a knowledge at this period of the futility of life, or earlier, if obtained by experience, is very useful, because it is natural; but when a frail being is shewn the follies and vices of man, that be may be taught prudently to guard against the common casualties of life by sacrificing his heartsurely it is not speaking harshly to call it the wisdom of this world, contrasted with the nobler fruit of piety and experience. i will venture a paradox, and deliver my opinion without reserve; if men were only born to form a circle of life and death, it would be wise to take every step that foresight could suggest to render life happy. moderation in every pursuit would then be supreme wisdom; and the prudent voluptuary might enjoy a degree of content, though he neither cultivated his understanding nor kept his heart pure. prudence, supposing we were mortal, would be true wisdom, or, to be more explicit, would procure the greatest portion of happiness, considering the whole of life, but knowledge beyond the conveniences of life would be a curse. why should we injure our health by close study? the exalted pleasure which intellectual pursuits afford would scarcely be equivalent to the hours of languor that follow; especially, if it be necessary to take into the reckoning the doubts and disappointments that cloud our researches. vanity and vexation close every inquiry: for the cause which we particularly wished to discover flies like the horizon before us as we advance. the ignorant, on the contrary, resemble children, and suppose, that if they could walk straight forward they should at last arrive where the earth and clouds meet. yet, disappointed as we are in our researches, the mind gains strength by the exercise, sufficient, perhaps, to comprehend the answers which, in another step of existence, it may receive to the anxious questions it asked, when the understanding with feeble wing was fluttering round the visible effects to dive into the hidden cause. the passions also, the winds of life, would be useless, if not injurious, did the substance which composes our thinking being, after we have thought in vain, only become the support of vegetable life, and invigorate a cabbage, or blush in a rose. the appetites would answer every earthly purpose, and produce more moderate and permanent happiness. but the powers of the soul that are of little use here, and, probably, disturb our animal enjoyments, even while conscious dignity makes us glory in possessing them, prove that life is merely an education, a state of infancy, to which the only hopes worth cherishing should not be sacrificed. i mean, therefore, to infer, that we ought to have a precise idea of what we wish to attain by education, for the immortality of the soul is contradicted by the actions of many people who firmly profess the belief. if you mean to secure ease and prosperity on earth as the first consideration, and leave futurity to provide for itself; you act prudently in giving your child an early insight into the weaknesses of his nature. you may not, it is true, make an inkle of him; but do not imagine that he will stick to more than the letter of the law, who has very early imbibed a mean opinion of human nature; nor will he think it necessary to rise much above the common standard. he may avoid gross vices, because honesty is the best policy; but he will never aim at attaining great virtues. the example of writers and artists will illustrate this remark. i must therefore venture to doubt whether what has been thought an axiom in morals may not have been a dogmatical assertion made by men who have coolly seen mankind through the medium of books, and say, in direct contradiction to them, that the regulation of the passions is not, always, wisdom.on the contrary, it should seem, that one reason why men have superiour judgment, and more fortitude than women, is undoubtedly this, that they give a freer scope to the grand passions, and by more frequently going astray enlarge their minds. if then by the exercise of their own* reason they fix on some stable principle, they have probably to thank the force of their passions, nourished by false views of life, and permitted to overleap the boundary that secures content. but if, in the dawn of life, we could soberly survey the scenes before as in perspective, and see every thing in its true colours, how could the passions gain sufficient strength to unfold the faculties? * 'i find that all is but lip-wisdom which wants experience,' says sidney. let me now as from an eminence survey the world stripped of all its false delusive charms. the clear atmosphere enables me to see each object in its true point of view, while my heart is still. i am calm as the prospect in a morning when the mists, slowly dispersing, silently unveil the beauties of nature, refreshed by rest. in what light will the world now appear?i rub my eyes and think, perchance, that i am just awaking from a lively dream. i see the sons and daughters of men pursuing shadows, and anxiously wasting their powers to feed passions which have no adequate objectif the very excess of these blind impulses, pampered by that lying, yet constantly trusted guide, the imagination, did not, by preparing them for some other state, render short-sighted mortals wiser without their own concurrence; or, what comes to the same thing, when they were pursuing some imaginary present good. after viewing objects in this light, it would not be very fanciful to imagine that this world was a stage on which a pantomime is daily performed for the amusement of superiour beings. how would they be diverted to see the ambitious man consuming himself by running after a phantom, and, 'pursuing the bubble fame in the cannon's mouth' that was to blow him to nothing: for when consciousness is lost, it matters not whether we mount in a whirlwind or descend in rain. and should they compassionately invigorate his sight and shew him the thorny path which led to eminence, that like a quicksand sinks as he ascends, disappointing his hopes when almost within his grasp, would he not leave to others the honour of amusing them, and labour to secure the present moment, though from the constitution of his nature he would not find it very easy to catch the flying stream? such slaves are we to hope and fear! but, vain as the ambitious man's pursuits would be, he is often striving for something more substantial than famethat indeed would be the veriest meteor, the wildest fire that could lure a man to ruin.what! renounce the most trifling gratification to be applauded when he should be no more! wherefore this struggle, whether man be mortal or immortal, if that noble passion did not really raise the being above his fellows? and love! what diverting scenes would it producepantaloon's tricks must yield to more egregious folly. to see a mortal adorn an object with imaginary charms, and then fall down and worship the idol which he had himself set uphow ridiculous! but what serious consequences ensue to rob man of that portion of happiness, which the deity by calling him into existence has (or, on what can his attributes rest?) indubitably promised: would not all the purposes of life have been much better fulfilled if he had only felt what had been termed physical love? and, would not the sight of the object, not seen through the medium of the imagination, soon reduce the passion to an appetite, if reflection, the noble distinction of man, did not give it force, and make it an instrument to raise him above this earthy dross, by teaching him to love the centre of all perfection; whose wisdom appears clearer and clearer in the works of nature, in proportion as reason is illuminated and exalted by contemplation, and by acquiring that love of order which the struggles of passion produce? the habit of reflection, and the knowledge attained by fostering any passion, might be shewn to be equally useful, though the object be proved equally fallacious; for they would all appear in the same light, if they were not magnified by the governing passion implanted in us by the author of all good, to call forth and strengthen the faculties of each individual, and enable it to attain all the experience that an infant can obtain, who does certain things, it cannot tell why. i descend from my height, and mixing with my fellow-creatures, feel myself hurried along the common stream; ambition, love, hope, and fear, exert their wonted power, though we be convinced by reason that their present and most attractive promises are only lying dreams; but had the cold hand of circumspection damped each generous feeling before it had left any permanent character, or fixed some habit, what could be expected, but selfish prudence and reason just rising above instinct? who that has read dean swift's disgusting description of the yahoos, and insipid one of houyhnhnm with a philosophical eye, can avoid seeing the futility of degrading the passions, or making man rest in contentment? the youth should act; for had he the experience of a grey head he would be fitter for death than life, though his virtues, rather residing in his head than his heart, could produce nothing great, and his understanding, prepared for this world, would not, by its noble flights, prove that it had a title to a better. besides, it is not possible to give a young person a just view of life; he must have struggled with his own passions before he can estimate the force of the temptation which betrayed his brother into vice. those who are entering life, and those who are departing, see the world from such very different points of view, that they can seldom think alike, unless the unfledged reason of the former never attempted a solitary flight. when we hear of some daring crimeit comes full on us in the deepest shade of turpitude, and raises indignation; but the eye that gradually saw the darkness thicken, must observe it with more compassionate forbearance. the world cannot be seen by an unmoved spectator, we must mix in the throng, and feel as men feel before we can judge of their feelings. if we mean, in short, to live in the world to grow wiser and better, and not merely to enjoy the good things of life, we must attain a knowledge of others at the same time that we become acquainted with ourselvesknowledge acquired any other way only hardens the heart and perplexes the understanding. i may be told, that the knowledge thus acquired, is sometimes purchased at too dear a rate. i can only answer that i very much doubt whether any knowledge can be attained without labour and sorrow; and those who wish to spare their children both, should not complain, if they are neither wise nor virtuous. they only aimed at making them prudent; and prudence, early in life, is but the cautious craft of ignorant self-love. i have observed that young people, to whose education particular attention has been paid, have, in general, been very superficial and conceited, and far from pleasing in any respect, because they had neither the unsuspecting warmth of youth, nor the cool depth of age. i cannot help imputing this unnatural appearance principally to that hasty premature instruction, which leads them presumptuously to repeat all the crude notions they have taken upon trust, so that the careful education which they received, makes them all their lives the slaves of prejudices. mental as well as bodily exertion is, at first, irksome; so much so, that the many would fain let others both work and think for them. an observation which i have often made will illustrate my meaning. when in a circle of strangers, or acquaintances, a person of moderate abilities asserts an opinion with heat, i will venture to affirm, for i have traced this fact home, very often, that it is a prejudice. these echoes have a high respect for the understanding of some relation or friend, and without fully comprehending the opinions, which they are so eager to retail, they maintain them with a degree of obstinacy, that would surprise even the person who concocted them. i know that a kind of fashion now prevails of respecting prejudices; and when any one dares to face them, though actuated by humanity and armed by reason, be is superciliously asked whether his ancestors were fools. no, i should reply; opinions, at first, of every description, were all, probably, considered, and therefore were founded on some reason; yet not unfrequently, of course, it was rather a local expedient than a fundamental principle, that would be reasonable at all times. but, moss-covered opinions assume the disproportioned form of prejudices, when they are indolently adopted only because age has given them a venerable aspect, though the reason on which they were built ceases to be a reason, or cannot be traced. why are we to love prejudices, merely because they are prejudices?* a prejudice is a fond obstinate persuasion for which we can give no reason; for the moment a reason can be given for an opinion, it ceases to be a prejudice, though it may be an error in judgment: and are we then advised to cherish opinions only to set reason at defiance? this mode of arguing, if arguing it may be called, reminds me of what is vulgarly termed a woman's reason. for women sometimes declare that they love, or believe, certain things, because they love, or believe them. * vide mr. burke. it is impossible to converse with people to any purpose, who only use affirmatives and negatives. before you can bring them to a point, to start fairly from, you must go back to the simple principles that were antecedent to the prejudices broached by power; and it is ten to one but you are stopped by the philosophical assertion, that certain principles are as practically false as they are abstractly true.* nay, it may be inferred, that reason has whispered some doubts, for it generally happens that people assert their opinions with the greatest heat when they begin to waver; striving to drive out their own doubts by convincing their opponent, they grow angry when those gnawing doubts are thrown back to prey on themselves. * 'convince a man against his will, he's of the same opinion still.' the fact is, that men expect from education, what education cannot give. a sagacious parent or tutor may strengthen the body and sharpen the instruments by which the child is to gather knowledge; but the honey must be the reward of the individual's own industry. it is almost as absurd to attempt to make a youth wise by the experience of another, as to expect the body to grow strong by the exercise which is only talked of, or seen.* many of those children whose conduct has been most narrowly watched, become the weakest men, because their instructors only instill certain notions into their minds, that have no other foundation than their authority; and if they be loved or respected, the mind is cramped in its exertions and wavering in its advances. the business of education in this case, is only to conduct the shooting tendrils to a proper pole; yet after laying precept upon precept, without allowing a child to acquire judgment itself, parents expect them to act in the same manner by this borrowed fallacious light, as if they had illuminated it themselves; and be, when they enter life, what their parents are at the close. they do not consider that the tree, and even the human body, does not strengthen its fibres till it has reached its full growth. * 'one sees nothing when one is content to contemplate only; it is necessary to act oneself to be able to see how others act.'rousseau. there appears to be something analogous in the mind. the senses and the imagination give a form to the character, during childhood and youth; and the understanding, as life advances, gives firmness to the first fair purposes of sensibilitytill virtue, arising rather from the clear conviction of reason than the impulse of the heart, morality is made to rest on a rock against which the storms of passion vainly beat. i hope i shall not be misunderstood when i say, that religion will not have this condensing energy, unless it be founded on reason. if it be merely the refuge of weakness or wild fanaticism, and not a governing principle of conduct, drawn from self-knowledge, and a rational opinion respecting the attributes of god, what can it be expected to produce? the religion which consists in warming the affections, and exalting the imagination, is only the poetical part, and may afford the individual pleasure without rendering it a more moral being. it may be a substitute for worldly pursuits; yet narrow, instead of enlarging the heart: but virtue must be loved as in itself sublime and excellent, and not for the advantages it procures or the evils it averts, if any great degree of excellence be expected. men will not become moral when they only build airy castles in a future world to compensate for the disappointments which they meet with in this; if they turn their thoughts from relative duties to religious reveries. most prospects in life are marred by the shuffling worldly wisdom of men, who, forgetting that they cannot serve god and mammon, endeavour to blend contradictory things.if you wish to make your son rich, pursue one courseif you are only anxious to make him virtuous, you must take another; but do not imagine that you can bound from one road to the other without losing your way.* * see an excellent essay on this subject by mrs. barbauld, in miscellaneous pieces in prose. chap. vi. the effect which an early association of ideas has upon the character. educated in the enervating style recommended by the writers on whom i have been animadverting; and not having a chance, from their subordinate state in society, to recover their lost ground, is it surprising that women every where appear a defect in nature? is it surprising, when we consider what a determinate effect an early association of ideas has on the character, that they neglect their understandings, and turn all their attention to their persons? the great advantages which naturally result from storing the mind with knowledge, are obvious from the following considerations. the association of our ideas is either habitual or instantaneous; and the latter mode seems rather to depend on the original temperature of the mind than on the will. when the ideas, and matters of fact, are once taken in, they lie by for use, till some fortuitous circumstance makes the information dart into the mind with illustrative force, that has been received at very different periods of our lives. like the lightning's flash are many recollections; one idea assimilating and explaining another, with astonishing rapidity. i do not now allude to that quick perception of truth, which is so intuitive that it baffles research, and makes us at a loss to determine whether it is reminiscence or ratiocination, lost sight of in its celerity, that opens the dark cloud. over those instantaneous associations we have little power; for when the mind is once enlarged by excursive flights, or profound reflection, the raw materials will, in some degree, arrange themselves. the understanding, it is true, may keep us from going out of drawing when we group our thoughts, or transcribe from the imagination the warm sketches of fancy; but the animal spirits, the individual character, give the colouring. over this subtile electric fluid,* how little power do we possess, and over it how little power can reason obtain! these fine intractable spirits appear to be the essence of genius, and beaming in its eagle eye, produce in the most eminent degree the happy energy of associating thoughts that surprise, delight, and instruct. these are the glowing minds that concentrate pictures for their fellow-creatures; forcing them to view with interest the objects reflected from the impassioned imagination, which they passed over in nature. * i have sometimes, when inclined to laugh at materialists, asked whether, as the most powerful effects in nature are apparently produced by fluids, the magnetic, &c. the passions might not be fine volatile fluids that embraced humanity, keeping the more refractory elementary parts togetheror whether they were simply a liquid fire that pervaded the more sluggish materials, giving them life and heat? i must be allowed to explain myself. the generality of people cannot see or feel poetically, they want fancy, and therefore fly from solitude in search of sensible objects; but when an author lends them his eyes they can see as he saw, and be amused by images they could not select, though lying before them. education thus only supplies the man of genius with knowledge to give variety and contrast to his associations; but there is an habitual association of ideas, that grows 'with our growth,' which has a great effect on the moral character of mankind; and by which a turn is given to the mind that commonly remains throughout life. so ductile is the understanding, and yet so stubborn, that the associations which depend on adventitious circumstances, during the period that the body takes to arrive at maturity, can seldom be disentangled by reason. one idea calls up another, its old associate, and memory, faithful to the first impressions, particularly when the intellectual powers are not employed to cool our sensations, retraces them with mechanical exactness. this habitual slavery, to first impressions, has a more baneful effect on the female than the male character, because business and other dry employments of the understanding, tend to deaden the feelings and break associations that do violence to reason. but females, who are made women of when they are mere children, and brought back to childhood when they ought to leave the go-cart forever, have not sufficient strength of mind to efface the superinductions of art that have smothered nature. every thing that they see or hear serves to fix impressions, call forth emotions, and associate ideas, that give a sexual character to the mind. false notions of beauty and delicacy stop the growth of their limbs and produce a sickly soreness, rather than delicacy of organs; and thus weakened by being employed in unfolding instead of examining the first associations, forced on them by every surrounding object, how can they attain the vigour necessary to enable them to throw off their factitious character?where find strength to recur to reason and rise superiour to a system of oppression, that blasts the fair promises of spring? this cruel association of ideas, which every thing conspires to twist into all their habits of thinking, or, to speak with more precision, of feeling, receives new force when they begin to act a little for themselves; for they then perceive that it is only through their address to excite emotions in men, that pleasure and power are to be obtained. besides, the books professedly written for their instruction, which make the first impression on their minds, all inculcate the same opinions. educated then in worse than egyptian bondage, it is unreasonable, as well as cruel, to upbraid them with faults that can scarcely be avoided, unless a degree of native vigour be supposed, that falls to the lot of very few amongst mankind. for instance, the severest sarcasms have been levelled against the sex, and they have been ridiculed for repeating 'a set of phrases learnt by rote,' when nothing could be more natural, considering the education they receive, and that their 'highest praise is to obey, unargued'the will of man. if they be not allowed to have reason sufficient to govern their own conductwhy, all they learnmust be learned by rote! and when all their ingenuity is called forth to adjust their dress, 'a passion for a scarlet coat,' is so natural, that it never surprised me; and, allowing pope's summary of their character to be just, 'that every woman is at heart a rake,' why should they be bitterly censured for seeking a congenial mind, and preferring a rake to a man of sense? rakes know how to work on their sensibility, whilst the modest merit of reasonable men has, of course, less effect on their feelings, and they cannot reach the heart by the way of the understanding, because they have few sentiments in common. it seems a little absurd to expect women to be more reasonable than men in their likings, and still to deny them the uncontrouled use of reason. when do men fall-in-love with sense? when do they, with their superiour powers and advantages, turn from the person to the mind? and how can they then expect women, who are only taught to observe behaviour, and acquire manners rather than morals, to despise what they have been all their lives labouring to attain? where are they suddenly to find judgment enough to weigh patiently the sense of an awkward virtuous man, when his manners, of which they are made critical judges, are rebuffing, and his conversation cold and dull, because it does not consist of pretty repartees, or well turned compliments? in order to admire or esteem any thing for a continuance, we must, at least, have our curiosity excited by knowing, in some degree, what we admire; for we are unable to estimate the value of qualities and virtues above our comprehension. such a respect, when it is felt, may be very sublime; and the confused consciousness of humility may render the dependent creature an interesting object, in some points of view; but human love must have grosser ingredients; and the person very naturally will come in for its shareand, an ample share it mostly has! love is, in a great degree, an arbitrary passion, and will reign, like some other stalking mischiefs, by its own authority, without deigning to reason; and it may also be easily distinguished from esteem, the foundation of friendship, because it is often excited by evanescent beauties and graces, though, to give an energy to the sentiment, something more solid must deepen their impression and set the imagination to work, to make the most fairthe first good. common passions are excited by common qualities.men look for beauty and the simper of good-humoured docility: women are captivated by easy manners; a gentleman-like man seldom fails to please them, and their thirsty ears eagerly drink the insinuating nothings of politeness, whilst they turn from the unintelligible sounds of the charmerreason, charm he never so wisely. with respect to superficial accomplishments, the rake certainly has the advantage; and of these females can form an opinion, for it is their own ground. rendered gay and giddy by the whole tenor of their lives, the very aspect of wisdom, or the severe graces of virtue, must have a lugubrious appearance to them; and produce a kind of restraint from which they and love, sportive child, naturally revolt. without taste, excepting of the lighter kind, for taste is the offspring of judgment, how can they discover that true beauty and grace must arise from the play of the mind? and how can they be expected to relish in a lover what they do not, or very imperfectly, possess themselves? the sympathy that unites hearts, and invites to confidence, in them is so very faint, that it cannot take fire, and thus mount to passion. no, i repeat it, the love cherished by such minds, must have grosser fewel! the inference is obvious; till women are led to exercise their understandings, they should not be satirized for their attachment to rakes; or even for being rakes at heart, when it appears to be the inevitable consequence of their education. they who live to pleasemust find their enjoyments, their happiness, in pleasure! it is a trite, yet true remark, that we never do any thing well, unless we love it for its own sake. supposing, however, for a moment, that women were, in some future revolution of time, to become, what i sincerely wish them to be, even love would acquire more serious dignity, and be purified in its own fires; and virtue giving true delicacy to their affections, they would turn with disgust from a rake. reasoning then, as well as feeling, the only province of woman, at present, they might easily guard against exteriour graces, and quickly learn to despise the sensibility that had been excited and hackneyed in the ways of women, whose trade was vice; and allurements, wanton airs. they would recollect that the flame, one must use appropriated expressions, which they wished to light up, had been exhausted by lust, and that the sated appetite, losing all relish for pure and simple pleasures, could only be roused by licentious arts or variety. what satisfaction could a woman of delicacy promise herself in a union with such a man, when the very artlessness of her affection might appear insipid? thus does dryden describe the situation, -'where love is duty, on the female side, 'on theirs mere sensual gust, and sought with surly pride.' but one grand truth women have yet to learn, though much it imports them to act accordingly. in the choice of a husband, they should not be led astray by the qualities of a loverfor a lover the husband, even supposing him to be wise and virtuous, cannot long remain. were women more rationally educated, could they take a more comprehensive view of things, they would be contented to love but once in their lives; and after marriage calmly let passion subside into friendshipinto that tender intimacy, which is the best refuge from care; yet is built on such pure, still affections, that idle jealousies would not be allowed to disturb the discharge of the sober duties of life, or to engross the thoughts that ought to be otherwise employed. this is a state in which many men live; but few, very few women. and the difference may easily be accounted for, without recurring to a sexual character. men, for whom we are told women were made, have too much occupied the thoughts of women; and this association has so entangled love with all their motives of action; and, to harp a little on an old string, having been solely employed either to prepare themselves to excite love, or actually putting their lessons in practice, they cannot live without love. but, when a sense of duty, or fear of shame, obliges them to restrain this pampered desire of pleasing beyond certain lengths, too far for delicacy, it is true, though far from criminality, they obstinately determine to love, i speak of the passion, their husbands to the end of the chapterand then acting the part which they foolishly exacted from their lovers, they become abject wooers, and fond slaves. men of wit and fancy are often rakes; and fancy is the food of love. such men will inspire passion. half the sex, in its present infantine state, would pine for a lovelace; a man so witty, so graceful, and so valiant: and can they deserve blame for acting according to principles so constantly inculcated? they want a lover, and protector; and behold him kneeling before thembravery prostrate to beauty! the virtues of a husband are thus thrown by love into the background, and gay hopes, or lively emotions, banish reflection till the day of reckoning comes; and come it surely will, to turn the sprightly lover into a surly suspicious tyrant, who contemptuously insults the very weakness he fostered. or, supposing the rake reformed, he cannot quickly get rid of old habits. when a man of abilities is first carried away by his passions, it is necessary that sentiment and taste varnish the enormities of vice, and give a zest to brutal indulgences; but when the gloss of novelty is worn off, and pleasure palls upon the sense, lasciviousness becomes barefaced, and enjoyment only the desperate effort of weakness flying from reflection as from a legion of devils. oh! virtue, thou art not an empty name! all that life can givethou givest! if much comfort cannot be expected from the friendship of a reformed rake of superiour abilities, what is the consequence when he lacketh sense, as well as principles? verily misery, in its most hideous shape. when the habits of weak people are consolidated by time, a reformation is barely possible; and actually makes the beings miserable who have not sufficient mind to be amused by innocent pleasure; like the tradesman who retires from the hurry of business, nature presents to them only a universal blank; and the restless thoughts prey on the damped spirits.* their reformation, as well as his retirement, actually makes them wretched because it deprives them of all employment, by quenching the hopes and fears that set in motion their sluggish minds. * i have frequently seen this exemplified in women whose beauty could no longer be repaired. they have retired from the noisy scenes of dissipation; but, unless they became methodists, the solitude of the select society of their family connections or acquaintance, has presented only a fearful void; consequently, nervous complaints, and all the vapourish train of idleness, rendered them quite as useless, and far more unhappy, than when they joined the giddy throng. if such be the force of habit; if such be the bondage of folly, how carefully ought we to guard the mind from storing up vicious associations; and equally careful should we be to cultivate the understanding, to save the poor wight from the weak dependent state of even harmless ignorance. for it is the right use of reason alone which makes us independent of every thingexcepting the unclouded reason'whose service is perfect freedom.' chap. vii. modesty.comprehensively considered, and not as a sexual virtue. modesty! sacred offspring of sensibility and reason!true delicacy of mind!may i unblamed presume to investigate thy nature, and trace to its covert the mild charm, that mellowing each harsh feature of a character, renders what would otherwise only inspire cold admirationlovely!thou that smoothest the wrinkles of wisdom, and softenest the tone of the sublimest virtues till they all melt into humanity;thou that spreadest the ethereal cloud that, surrounding love, heightens every beauty, it half shades, breathing those coy sweets that steal into the heart, and charm the sensesmodulate for me the language of persuasive reason, till i rouse my sex from the flowery bed, on which they supinely sleep life away! in speaking of the association of our ideas, i have noticed two distinct modes; and in defining modesty, it appears to me equally proper to discriminate that purity of mind, which is the effect of chastity, from a simplicity of character that leads us to form a just opinion of ourselves, equally distant from vanity or presumption, though by no means incompatible with a lofty consciousness of our own dignity. modesty, in the latter signification of the term, is, that soberness of mind which teaches a man not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, and should be distinguished from humility, because humility is a kind of self-abasement. a modest man often conceives a great plan, and tenaciously adheres to it, conscious of his own strength, till success gives it a sanction that determines its character. milton was not arrogant when he suffered a suggestion of judgment to escape him that proved a prophesy; nor was general washington when he accepted of the command of the american forces. the latter has always been characterized as a modest man; but had he been merely humble, he would probably have shrunk back irresolute, afraid of trusting to himself the direction of an enterprise, on which so much depended. a modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous:this is the judgment, which the observation of many characters, has led me to form. jesus christ was modest, moses was humble, and peter vain. thus, discriminating modesty from humility in one case, i do not mean to confound it with bashfulness in the other. bashfulness, in fact, is so distinct from modesty, that the most bashful lass, or raw country lout, often become the most impudent; for their bashfulness being merely the instinctive timidity of ignorance, custom soon changes it into assurance.* * 'such is the country-maiden's fright, when first a red-coat is in sight; behind the door she hides her face; next time at distance eyes the lace: she now can all his terrors stand, nor from his squeeze withdraws her hand, she plays familiar in his arms, and every soldier hath his charms; from tent to tent she spreads her flame; for custom conquers fear and shame.'[john] gay. the shameless behaviour of the prostitutes, who infest the streets of this metropolis, raising alternate emotions of pity and disgust, may serve to illustrate this remark. they trample on virgin bashfulness with a sort of bravado, and glorying in their shame, become more audaciously lewd than men, however depraved, to whom this sexual quality has not been gratuitously granted, ever appear to be. but these poor ignorant wretches never had any modesty to lose, when they consigned themselves to infamy; for modesty is a virtue, not a quality. no, they were only bashful, shame-faced innocents; and losing their innocence, their shame-facedness was rudely brushed off; a virtue would have left some vestiges in the mind, had it been sacrificed to passion, to make us respect the grand ruin. purity of mind, or that genuine delicacy, which is the only virtuous support of chastity, is near akin to that refinement of humanity, which never resides in any but cultivated minds. it is something nobler than innocence, it is the delicacy of reflections, and not the coyness of ignorance. the reserve of reason, which, like habitual cleanliness, is seldom seen in any great degree, unless the soul is active, may easily be distinguished from rustic shyness or wanton skittishness; and, so far from being incompatible with knowledge, it is its fairest fruit. what a gross idea of modesty had the writer of the following remark! 'the lady who asked the question whether women may be instructed in the modern system of botany, consistently with female delicacy?was accused of ridiculous prudery: nevertheless, if she had proposed the question to me, i should certainly have answeredthey cannot.' thus is the fair book of knowledge to be shut with an everlasting seal! on reading similar passages i have reverentially lifted up my eyes and heart to him who liveth for ever and ever, and said, o my father, hast thou by the very constitution of her nature forbid thy child to seek thee in the fair forms of truth? and, can her soul be sullied by the knowledge that awfully calls her to thee? i have then philosophically pursued these reflections till i inferred that those women who have most improved their reason must have the most modestythough a dignified sedateness of deportment may have succeeded the playful, bewitching bashfulness of youth.* * modesty, is the graceful calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness, the charm of vivacious youth. and thus have i argued. to render chastity the virtue from which unsophisticated modesty will naturally flow, the attention should be called away from employments which only exercise the sensibility; and the heart made to beat time to humanity, rather than to throb with love. the woman who has dedicated a considerable portion of her time to pursuits purely intellectual, and whose affections have been exercised by humane plans of usefulness, must have more purity of mind, as a natural consequence, than the ignorant beings whose time and thoughts have been occupied by gay pleasures or schemes to conquer hearts.* the regulation of the behaviour is not modesty, though those who study rules of decorum are, in general, termed modest women. make the heart clean, let it expand and feel for all that is human, instead of being narrowed by selfish passions; and let the mind frequently contemplate subjects that exercise the understanding, without heating the imagination, and artless modesty will give the finishing touches to the picture. * i have considered, as man with man, with medical men, on anatomical subjects; and compared the proportions of the human body with artistsyet such modesty did i meet with, that i was never reminded by word or look of my sex, of the absurd rules which make modesty a pharisaical cloak of weakness. and i am persuaded that in the pursuit of knowledge women would never be insulted by sensible men, and rarely by men of any description, if they did not by mock modesty remind them that they were women; actuated by the same spirit as the portugueze ladies, who would think their charms insulted if, when left alone with a man, he did not, at least, attempt to be grossly familiar with their persons. men are not always men in the company of women, nor would women always remember that they are women, if they were allowed to acquire more understanding. she who can discern the dawn of immortality, in the streaks that shoot athwart the misty night of ignorance, promising a clearer day, will respect, as a sacred temple, the body that enshrines such an improvable soul. true love, likewise, spreads this kind of mysterious sanctity round the beloved object, making the lover most modest when in her presence.* so reserved is affection that, receiving or returning personal endearments, it wishes, not only to shun the human eye, as a kind of profanation; but to diffuse an encircling cloudy obscurity to shut out even the saucy sparkling sunbeams. yet, that affection does not deserve the epithet of chaste, which does not receive a sublime gloom of tender melancholy, that allows the mind for a moment to stand still and enjoy the present satisfaction, when a consciousness of the divine presence is feltfor this must ever be the food of joy! * male or female, for the world contains many modest men. as i have always been fond of tracing to its source in nature any prevailing custom, i have frequently thought that it was a sentiment of affection for whatever had touched the person of an absent or lost friend, which gave birth to that respect for relicks, so much abused by selfish priests. devotion, or love, may be allowed to hallow the garments as well as the person; for the lover must want fancy who has not a sort of sacred respect for the glove or slipper of his mistress. he could not confound them with vulgar things of the same kind. this fine sentiment, perhaps, would not bear to be analyzed by the experimental philosopherbut of such stuff is human rapture made up!a shadowy phantom glides before us, obscuring every other object; yet when the soft cloud is grasped, the form melts into common air, leaving a solitary void, or sweet perfume, stolen from the violet, that memory long holds dear. but, i have tripped unawares on fairy ground, feeling the balmy gale of spring stealing on me, though november frowns. as a sex, women are more chaste than men, and as modesty is the effect of chastity, they may deserve to have this virtue ascribed to them in rather an appropriated sense; yet, i must be allowed to add an hesitating if:for i doubt whether chastity will produce modesty, though it may propriety of conduct, when it is merely a respect for the opinion of the world,* and when coquetry and the lovelorn tales of novelists employ the thoughts. nay, from experience, and reason, i should be led to expect to meet with more modesty amongst men than women, simply because men exercise their understandings more than women. * the immodest behaviour of many married women, who are nevertheless faithful to their husbands' beds, will illustrate this remark. but, with respect to propriety of behaviour, excepting one class of females, women have evidently the advantage. what can be more disgusting than that impudent dross of gallantry, thought so manly, which makes many men stare insultingly at every female they meet? can it be termed respect for the sex? no, this loose behaviour shews such habitual depravity, such weakness of mind, that it is vain to expect much public or private virtue, till both men and women grow more modesttill men, curbing a sensual fondness for the sex, or an affectation of manly assurance, more properly speaking, impudence, treat each other with respectunless appetite or passion give the tone, peculiar to it, to their behaviour. i mean even personal respectthe modest respect of humanity, and fellow-feelingnot the libidinous mockery of gallantry, nor the insolent condescension of protectorship. to carry the observation still further, modesty must heartily disclaim, and refuse to dwell with that debauchery of mind, which leads a man coolly to bring forward, without a blush, indecent allusions, or obscene witticisms, in the presence of a fellow creature; women are now out of the question, for then it is brutality. respect for man, as man, is the foundation of every noble sentiment. how much more modest is the libertine who obeys the call of appetite or fancy, than the lewd joker who sets the table in a roar! this is one of the many instances in which the sexual distinction respecting modesty has proved fatal to virtue and happiness. it is, however, carried still further, and woman, weak woman! made by her education the slave of sensibility, is required, on the most trying occasions, to resist that sensibility. 'can any thing,' says knox, 'be more absurd than keeping women in a state of ignorance, and yet so vehemently to insist on their resisting temptation?'thus when virtue or honour make it proper to check a passion, the burden is thrown on the weaker shoulders, contrary to reason and true modesty, which, at least, should render the self-denial mutual, to say nothing of the generosity of bravery, supposed to be a manly virtue. in the same strain runs rousseau's and dr. gregory's advice respecting modesty, strangely miscalled! for they both desire a wife to leave it in doubt whether sensibility or weakness led her to her husband's arms.the woman is immodest who can let the shadow of such a doubt remain in her husband's mind a moment. but to state the subject in a different light.the want of modesty, which i principally deplore as subversive of morality, arises from the state of warfare so strenuously supported by voluptuous men as the very essence of modesty, though, in fact, its bane; because it is a refinement on lust, that men fall into who have not sufficient virtue to relish the innocent pleasures of love. a man of delicacy carries his notions of modesty still further, for neither weakness nor sensibility will gratify himhe looks for affection. again; men boast of their triumphs over women, what do they boast of? truly the creature of sensibility was surprised by her sensibility into follyinto vice;* and the dreadful reckoning falls heavily on her own weak head, when reason wakes. for where art thou to find comfort, forlorn and disconsolate one? he who ought to have directed thy reason, and supported thy weakness, has betrayed thee! in a dream of passion thou consented to wander through flowery lawns, and heedlessly stepping over the precipice to which thy guide, instead of guarding, lured thee, thou startest from thy dream only to face a sneering, frowning world, and to find thyself alone in a waste, for he that triumphed in thy weakness is now pursuing new conquests; but for theethere is no redemption on this side the grave!and what resource hast thou in an enervated mind to raise a sinking heart? * the poor moth fluttering round a candle, burns its wings. but, if the sexes be really to live in a state of warfare, if nature have pointed it out, let them act nobly, or let pride whisper to them, that the victory is mean when they merely vanquish sensibility. the real conquest is that over affection not taken by surprisewhen, like heloisa, a woman gives up all the world, deliberately, for love. i do not now consider the wisdom or virtue of such a sacrifice, i only contend that it was a sacrifice to affection, and not merely to sensibility, though she had her share.and i must be allowed to call her a modest woman, before i dismiss this part of the subject, by saying, that till men are more chaste women will be immodest. where, indeed, could modest women find husbands from whom they would not continually turn with disgust? modesty must be equally cultivated by both sexes, or it will ever remain a sickly hot-house plant, whilst the affectation of it, the fig leaf borrowed by wantonness, may give a zest to voluptuous enjoyments. men will probably still insist that woman ought to have more modesty than man; but it is not dispassionate reasoners who will most earnestly oppose my opinion. no, they are the men of fancy, the favourites of the sex, who outwardly respect and inwardly despise the weak creatures whom they thus sport with. they cannot submit to resign the highest sensual gratification, nor even to relish the epicurism of virtueself-denial. to take another view of the subject, confining my remarks to women. the ridiculous falsities* which are told to children, from mistaken notions of modesty, tend very early to inflame their imaginations and set their little minds to work, respecting subjects, which nature never intended they should think of till the body arrived at some degree of maturity; then the passions naturally begin to take place of the senses, as instruments to unfold the understanding, and form the moral character. * children very early see cats with their kittens, birds with their young ones, &c. why then, are they not to be told that their mothers carry and nourish them in the same way? as there would then be no appearance of mystery they would never think of the subject more. truth may always be told to children, if it be told gravely; but it is the immodesty of affected modesty, that does all the mischief, and this smoke heats the imagination by vainly endeavouring to obscure certain objects. if, indeed, children could be kept entirely from improper company, we should never allude to any such subjects; but as this is impossible, it is best to tell the truth, especially as such information, not interesting them, will make no impression on their imagination. in nurseries, and boarding-schools, i fear, girls are first spoiled; particularly in the latter. a number of girls sleep in the same room, and wash together. and, though i should be sorry to contaminate an innocent creature's mind by instilling false delicacy, or those indecent prudish notions, which early cautions respecting the other sex naturally engender, i should be very anxious to prevent their acquiring nasty, or immodest habits; and as many girls have learned very nasty tricks, from ignorant servants, the mixing them thus indiscriminately together, is very improper. to say the truth women are, in general, too familiar with each other, which leads to that gross degree of familiarity that so frequently renders the marriage state unhappy. why in the name of decency are sisters, female intimates, or ladies and their waiting-women, to be so grossly familiar as to forget the respect which one human creature owes to another? that squeamish delicacy which shrinks from the most disgusting offices when affection* or humanity lead us to watch at a sick pillow, is despicable. but, why women in health should be more familiar with each other than men are, when they boast of their superiour delicacy, is a solecism in manners which i could never solve. * affection would rather make one choose to perform these offices, to spare the delicacy of a friend, by still keeping a veil over them, for the personal helplessness, produced by sickness, is of an humbling nature. in order to preserve health and beauty, i should earnestly recommend frequent ablutions, to dignify my advice that it may not offend the fastidious ear; and, by example, girls ought to be taught to wash and dress alone, without any distinction of rank; and if custom should make them require some little assistance, let them not require it till that part of the business is over which ought never to be done before a fellow-creature; because it is an insult to the majesty of human nature. not on the score of modesty, but decency; for the care which some modest women take, making at the same time a display of that care, not to let their legs be seen, is as childish as immodest.* * i remember to have met with a sentence, in a book of education, that made me smile: 'it would be needless to caution you against putting your hand, by chance, under your neck-handkerchief, for a modest woman never did so!' i could proceed still further, till i animadverted on some still more nasty customs, which men never fall into. secrets are toldwhere silence ought to reign; and that regard to cleanliness, which some religious sects have, perhaps, carried too far, especially the essenes, amongst the jews, by making that an insult to god which is only an insult to humanity, is violated in a beastly manner. how can delicate women obtrude on notice that part of the animal oeconomy, which is so very disgusting? and is it not very rational to conclude, that the women who have not been taught to respect the human nature of their own sex, in these particulars, will not long respect the mere difference of sex in their husbands? after their maidenish bashfulness is once lost, i, in fact, have generally observed, that women fall into old habits; and treat their husbands as they did their sisters or female acquaintance. besides, women from necessity, because their minds are not cultivated, have recourse very often to what i familiarly term bodily wit; and their intimacies are of the same kind. in short, with respect to both mind and body, there are too intimate. that decent personal reserve which is the foundation of dignity of character, must be kept up between woman and woman, or their minds will never gain strength or modesty. on this account also, i object to many females being shut up together in nurseries, schools, or convents. i cannot recollect without indignation, the jokes and hoyden tricks, which knots of young women indulge themselves in, when in my youth accident threw me, an awkward rustic, in their way. they were almost on a par with the double meanings, which shake the convivial table when the glass has circulated freely. but, it is vain to attempt to keep the heart pure, unless the head is furnished with ideas, and set to work to compare them, in order to acquire judgment, by generalizing simple ones; and modesty, by making the understanding damp the sensibility. it may be thought that i lay too great a stress on personal reserve; but it is ever the handmaid of modesty. so that were i to name the graces that ought to adorn beauty, i should instantly exclaim, cleanliness, neatness, and personal reserve. it is obvious, i suppose, that the reserve i mean, has nothing sexual in it, and that i think it equally necessary in both sexes. so necessary, indeed, is that reserve and cleanliness which indolent women too often neglect, that i will venture to affirm that when two or three women live in the same house, the one will be most respected by the male part of the family, who reside with them, leaving love entirely out of the question, who pays this kind of habitual respect to her person. when domestic friends meet in a morning, there will naturally prevail an affectionate seriousness, especially, if each look forward to the discharge of daily duties; and it may be reckoned fanciful, but this sentiment has frequently risen spontaneously in my mind, i have been pleased after breathing the sweet-bracing morning air, to see the same kind of freshness in the countenances i particularly loved; i was glad to see them braced, as it were, for the day, and ready to run their course with the sun. the greetings of affection in the morning are by these means more respectful than the familiar tenderness which frequently prolongs the evening talk. nay, i have often felt hurt, not to say disgusted, when a friend has appeared, whom i parted with full dressed the evening before, with her clothes huddled on, because she chose to indulge herself in bed till the last moment. domestic affection can only be kept alive by these neglected attentions; yet if men and women took half as much pains to dress habitually neat, as they do to ornament, or rather to disfigure, their persons, much would be done towards the attainment of purity of mind. but women only dress to gratify men of gallantry; for the lover is always best pleased with the simple garb that fits close to the shape. there is an impertinence in ornaments that rebuffs affection; because love always clings round the idea of home. as a sex, women are habitually indolent; and every thing tends to make them so. i do not forget the spurts of activity which sensibility produces; but as these flights of feelings only increase the evil, they are not to be confounded with the slow, orderly walk of reason. so great in reality is their mental and bodily indolence, that till their body be strengthened and their understanding enlarged by active exertions, there is little reason to expect that modesty will take place of bashfulness. they may find it prudent to assume its semblance; but the fair veil will only be worn on gala days. perhaps, there is not a virtue that mixes so kindly with every other as modesty.it is the pale moon-beam that renders more interesting every virtue it softens, giving mild grandeur to the contracted horizon. nothing can be more beautiful than the poetical fiction, which makes diana with her silver crescent, the goddess of chastity. i have sometimes thought, that wandering with sedate step in some lonely recess, a modest dame of antiquity must have felt a glow of conscious dignity when, after contemplating the soft shadowy landscape, she has invited with placid fervour the mild reflection of her sister's beams to turn to her chaste bosom. a christian has still nobler motives to incite her to preserve her chastity and acquire modesty, for her body has been called the temple of the living god; of that god who requires more than modesty of mien. his eye searcheth the heart; and let her remember, that if she hope to find favour in the sight of purity itself, her chastity must be founded on modesty, and not on worldly prudence; or verily a good reputation will be her only reward; for that awful intercourse, that sacred communication, which virtue establishes between man and his maker, must give rise to the wish of being pure as he is pure! after the foregoing remarks, it is almost superfluous to add, that i consider all those feminine airs of maturity, which succeed bashfulness, to which truth is sacrificed, to secure the heart of a husband, or rather to force him to be still a lover when nature would, had she not been interrupted in her operations, have made love give place to friendship, as immodest. the tenderness which a man will feel for the mother of his children is an excellent substitute for the ardour of unsatisfied passion; but to prolong that ardour it is indelicate, not to say immodest, for women to feign an unnatural coldness of constitution. women as well as men ought to have the common appetites and passions of their nature, they are only brutal when unchecked by reason: but the obligation to check them is the duty of mankind, not a sexual duty. nature, in these respects, may safely be left to herself; let women only acquire knowledge and humanity, and love will teach them modesty.* there is no need of falsehoods, disgusting as futile, for studied rules of behaviour only impose on shallow observers; a man of sense soon sees through, and despises the affectation. * the behaviour of many newly married women has often disgusted me. the seem anxious never to let their husbands forget the privilege of marriage; and to find no pleasure in his society unless he is acting the lover. short, indeed, must be the reign of love, when the flame is thus constantly blown up, without its receiving any solid fewel! the behaviour of young people, to each other, as men and women, is the last thing that should be thought of in education. in fact, behaviour in most circumstances is now so much thought of, that simplicity of character is rarely to be seen: yet, if men were only anxious to cultivate each virtue, and let it take root firmly in the mind, the grace resulting from it, its natural exteriour mark, would soon strip affectation of its flaunting plumes; because, fallacious as unstable, is the conduct that is not founded upon truth! would ye, o my sisters, really possess modesty, ye must remember that the possession of virtue, of any denomination, is incompatible with ignorance and vanity! ye must acquire that soberness of mind, which the exercise of duties, and the pursuit of knowledge, alone inspire, or ye will still remain in a doubtful dependent situation, and only be loved whilst ye are fair! the downcast eye, the rosy blush, the retiring grace, are all proper in their season; but modesty, being the child of reason, cannot long exist with the sensibility that is not tempered by reflection. besides, when love, even innocent love, is the whole employ of your lives, your hearts will be too soft to afford modesty that tranquil retreat, where she delights to dwell, in close union with humanity. chap. viii. morality undermined by sexual notions of the importance of a good reputation. it has long since occurred to me that advice respecting behaviour, and all the various modes of preserving a good reputation, which have been so strenuously inculcated on the female world, were specious poisons, that incrusting morality eat away the substance. and, that this measuring of shadows produced a false calculation, because their length depends so much on the height of the sun, and other adventitious circumstances. whence arises the easy fallacious behaviour of a courtier? from his situation, undoubtedly: for standing in need of dependents, he is obliged to learn the art of denying without giving offence, and, of evasively feeding hope with the chameleon's food: thus does politeness sport with truth, and eating away the sincerity and humanity natural to man, produce the fine gentleman. women likewise acquire, from a supposed necessity, an equally artificial mode of behaviour. yet truth is not with impunity to be sported with, for the practised dissembler, at last, becomes the dupe of his own arts, loses that sagacity, which has been justly termed common sense; namely, a quick perception of common truths: which are constantly received as such by the unsophisticated mind, though it might not have had sufficient energy to discover them itself, when obscured by local prejudices. the greater number of people take their opinions on trust to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human. 'women,' says some author, i cannot recollect who, 'mind not what only heaven sees.' why, indeed, should they? it is the eye of man that they have been taught to dreadand if they can lull their argus to sleep, they seldom think of heaven or themselves, because their reputation is safe; and it is reputation, not chastity and all its fair train, that they are employed to keep free from spot, not as a virtue, but to preserve their station in the world. to prove the truth of this remark, i need only advert to the intrigues of married women, particularly in high life, and in countries where women are suitably married, according to their respective ranks, by their parents. if an innocent girl become a prey to love, she is degraded for ever, though her mind was not polluted by the arts which married women, under the convenient cloak of marriage, practise; nor has she violated any dutybut the duty of respecting herself. the married woman, on the contrary, breaks a most sacred engagement, and becomes a cruel mother when she is a false and faithless wife. if her husband have still an affection for her, the arts which she must practise to deceive him, will render her the most contemptible of human beings; and, at any rate, the contrivances necessary to preserve appearances, will keep her mind in that childish, or vicious, tumult, which destroys all its energy. besides, in time, like those people who habitually take cordials to raise their spirits, she will want an intrigue to give life to her thoughts, having lost all relish for pleasures that are not highly seasoned by hope or fear. sometimes married women act still more audaciously; i will mention an instance. a woman of quality, notorious for her gallantries, though as she still lived with her husband, nobody chose to place her in the class where she ought to have been placed, made a point of treating with the most insulting contempt a poor timid creature, abashed by a sense of her former weakness, whom a neighbouring gentleman had seduced and afterwards married. this woman had actually confounded virtue with reputation; and, i do believe, valued herself on the propriety of her behaviour before marriage, though when once settled to the satisfaction of her family, she and her lord were equally faithless,so that the half alive heir to an immense estate came from heaven knows where! to view this subject in another light. i have known a number of women who, if they did not love their husbands, loved nobody else, give themselves entirely up to vanity and dissipation, neglecting every domestic duty; nay, even squandering away all the money which should have been saved for their helpless younger children, yet have plumed themselves on their unsullied reputation, as if the whole compass of their duty as wives and mothers was only to preserve it. whilst other indolent women, neglecting every personal duty, have thought that they deserved their husbands' affection, because, forsooth, they acted in this respect with propriety. weak minds are always fond of resting in the ceremonials of duty, but morality offers much simpler motives; and it were to be wished that superficial moralists had said less respecting behaviour, and outward observances, for unless virtue, of any kind, be built on knowledge, it will only produce a kind of insipid decency. respect for the opinion of the world, has, however, been termed the principal duty of woman in the most express words, for rousseau declares, 'that reputation is no less indispensable than chastity.' 'a man,' adds he, 'secure in his own good conduct, depends only on himself, and may brave the public opinion: but a woman, in behaving well, performs but half her duty; as what is thought of her, is as important to her as what she really is. it follows hence, that the system of a woman's education should, in this respect, be directly contrary to that of ours. opinion is the grave of virtue among the men; but its throne among women.' it is strictly logical to infer that the virtue that rests on opinion is merely worldly, and that it is the virtue of a being to whom reason has been denied. but, even with respect to the opinion of the world, i am convinced that this class of reasoners are mistaken. this regard for reputation, independent of its being one of the natural rewards of virtue, however, took its rise from a cause that i have already deplored as the grand source of female depravity, the impossibility of regaining respectability by a return to virtue, though men preserve theirs during the indulgence of vice. it was natural for women then to endeavour to preserve what once lostwas lost for ever, till this care swallowing up every other care, reputation for chastity, became the one thing needful to the sex. but vain is the scrupulosity of ignorance, for neither religion nor virtue, when they reside in the heart, require such a puerile attention to mere ceremonies, because the behaviour must, upon the whole, be proper, when the motive is pure. to support my opinion i can produce very respectable authority; and the authority of a cool reasoner ought to have weight to enforce consideration, though not to establish a sentiment. speaking of the general laws of morality, dr. smith observes,'that by some very extraordinary and unlucky circumstance, a good man may come to be suspected of a crime of which he was altogether incapable, and upon that account be most unjustly exposed for the remaining part of his life to the horror and aversion of mankind. by an accident of this kind he may be said to lose his all, notwithstanding his integrity and justice, in the same manner as a cautious man, notwithstanding his utmost circumspection, may be ruined by an earthquake or an inundation. accidents of the first kind, however, are perhaps still more rare, and still more contrary to the common course of things than those of the second; and it still remains true, that the practice of truth, justice, and humanity, is a certain and almost infallible method of acquiring what those virtues chiefly aim at, the confidence and love of those we live with. a person may be easily misrepresented with regard to a particular action; but it is scarce possible that he should be so with regard to the general tenor of his conduct. an innocent man may be believed to have done wrong: this, however, will rarely happen. on the contrary, the established opinion of the innocence of his manners will often lead us to absolve him where he has really been in the fault, notwithstanding very strong presumptions.' i perfectly coincide in opinion with this writer, for i verily believe that few of either sex were ever despised for certain vices without deserving to be despised. i speak not of the calumny of the moment, which hovers over a character, like one of the dense morning fogs of november, over this metropolis, till it gradually subsides before the common light of day, i only contend that the daily conduct of the majority prevails to stamp their character with the impression of truth. quietly does the clear light, shining day after day, refute the ignorant surmise, or malicious tale, which has thrown dirt on a pure character. a false light distorted, for a short time, its shadowreputation; but it seldom fails to become just when the cloud is dispersed that produced the mistake in vision. many people, undoubtedly, in several respects obtain a better reputation than, strictly speaking, they deserve; for unremitting industry will mostly reach its goal in all races. they who only strive for this paltry prize, like the pharisees, who prayed at the corners of streets, to be seen of men, verily obtain the reward they seek; for the heart of man cannot be read by man! still the fair fame that is naturally reflected by good actions, when the man is only employed to direct his steps aright, regardless of the lookers-on, is, in general, not only more true, but more sure. there are, it is true, trials when the good man must appeal to god from the injustice of man; and amidst the whining candour or hissings of envy, erect a pavilion in his own mind to retire to till the rumour be overpast; nay, the darts of undeserved censure may pierce an innocent tender bosom through with many sorrows; but these are all exceptions to general rules. and it is according to common laws that human behaviour ought to be regulated. the eccentric orbit of the comet never influences astronomical calculations respecting the invariable order established in the motion of the principal bodies of the solar system. i will then venture to affirm, that after a man is arrived at maturity, the general outline of his character in the world is just, allowing for the before-mentioned exceptions to the rule. i do not say that a prudent, worldly-wise man, with only negative virtues and qualities, may not sometimes obtain a smoother reputation than a wiser or a better man. so far from it, that i am apt to conclude from experience, that where the virtue of two people is nearly equal, the most negative character will be liked best by the world at large, whilst the other may have more friends in private life. but the hills and dales, clouds and sunshine, conspicuous in the virtues of great men, set off each other; and though they afford envious weakness a fairer mark to shoot at, the real character will still work its way to light, though bespattered by weak affection, or ingenious malice.* * i allude to various biographical writings, but particularly to boswell's life of johnson. with respect to that anxiety to preserve a reputation hardly earned, which leads sagacious people to analyze it, i shall not make the obvious comment; but i am afraid that morality is very insidiously undermined, in the female world, by the attention being turned to the shew instead of the substance. a simple thing is thus made strangely complicated; nay, sometimes virtue and its shadow are set at variance. we should never, perhaps, have heard of lucretia, had she died to preserve her chastity instead of her reputation. if we really deserve our own good opinion we shall commonly be respected in the world; but if we pant after higher improvement and higher attainments, it is not sufficient to view ourselves as we suppose that we are viewed by others, though this has been ingeniously argued, as the foundation of our moral sentiments.* because each by-stander may have his own prejudices, beside the prejudices of his age or country. we should rather endeavour to view ourselves as we suppose that being views us who seeth each thought ripen into action, and whose judgment never swerves from the eternal rule of right. righteous are all his judgmentsjust as merciful! * smith. the humble mind that seeketh to find favour in his sight, and calmly examines its conduct when only his presence is felt, will seldom form a very erroneous opinion of its own virtues. during the still hour of self-collection the angry brow of offended justice will be fearfully deprecated, or the tie which draws man to the deity will be recognized in the pure sentiment of reverential adoration, that swells the heart without exciting any tumultuous emotions. in these solemn moments man discovers the germ of those vices, which like the java tree shed a pestiferous vapour arounddeath is in the shade! and he perceives them without abhorrence, because he feels himself drawn by some cord of love to all his fellow-creatures, for whose follies he is anxious to find every extenuation in their naturein himself. if i, he may thus argue, who exercise my own mind, and have been refined by tribulation, find the serpent's egg in some fold of my heart, and crush it with difficulty, shall not i pity those who have stamped with less vigour, or who have heedlessly nurtured the insidious reptile till it poisoned the vital stream it sucked? can i, conscious of my secret sins, throw off my fellow-creatures, and calmly see them drop into the chasm of perdition, that yawns to receive them.no! no! the agonized heart will cry with suffocating impatiencei too am a man! and have vices, hid, perhaps, from human eye, that bend me to the dust before god, and loudly tell me, when all is mute, that we are formed of the same earth, and breathe the same element. humanity thus rises naturally out of humility, and twists the cords of love that in various convolutions entangle the heart. this sympathy extends still further, till a man well pleased observes force in arguments that do not carry conviction to his own bosom, and he gladly places in the fairest light, to himself, the shews of reason that have led others astray, rejoiced to find some reason in all the errors of man; though before convinced that he who rules the day makes his sun to shine on all. yet, shaking hands thus as it were with corruption, one foot on earth, the other with bold stride mounts to heaven, and claims kindred with superiour natures. virtues, unobserved by man, drop their balmy fragrance at this cool hour, and the thirsty land, refreshed by the pure streams of comfort that suddenly gush out, is crowned with smiling verdure; this is the living green on which that eye may look with complacency that is too pure to behold iniquity! but my spirits flag; and i must silently indulge the reverie these reflections lead to, unable to describe the sentiments, that have calmed my soul, when watching the rising sun, a soft shower drizzling through the leaves of neighbouring trees, seemed to fall on my languid, yet tranquil spirits, to cool the heart that had been heated by the passions which reason laboured to tame. the leading principles which run through all my disquisitions, would render it unnecessary to enlarge on this subject, if a constant attention to keep the varnish of the character fresh, and in good condition, were not often inculcated as the sum total of female duty; if rules to regulate the behaviour, and to preserve the reputation, did not too frequently supersede moral obligations. but, with respect to reputation, the attention is confined to a single virtuechastity. if the honour of a woman, as it is absurdly called, be safe, she may neglect every social duty; nay, ruin her family by gaming and extravagance; yet still present a shameless frontfor truly she is an honourable woman! mrs. macaulay has justly observed, that 'there is but one fault which a woman of honour may not commit with impunity.' she then justly and humanely adds'this has given rise to the trite and foolish observation, that the first fault against chastity in woman has a radical power to deprave the character. but no such frail beings come out of the hands of nature. the human mind is built of nobler materials than to be easily corrupted; and with all their disadvantages of situation and education, women seldom become entirely abandoned till they are thrown into a state of desperation, by the venomous rancour of their own sex.' but, in proportion as this regard for the reputation of chastity is prized by women, it is despised by men: and the two extremes are equally destructive to morality. men are certainly more under the influence of their appetites than women; and their appetites are more depraved by unbridled indulgence and the fastidious contrivances of satiety. luxury has introduced a refinement in eating, that destroys the constitution; and, a degree of gluttony which is so beastly, that a perception of seemliness of behaviour must be worn out before one being could eat immoderately in the presence of another, and afterwards complain of the oppression that his intemperance naturally produced. some women, particularly french women, have also lost a sense of decency in this respect; for they will talk very calmly of an indigestion. it were to be wished that idleness was not allowed to generate, on the rank soil of wealth, those swarms of summer insects that feed on putrefaction, we should not then be disgusted by the sight of such brutal excesses. there is one rule relative to behaviour that, i think, ought to regulate every other; and it is simply to cherish such an habitual respect for mankind as may prevent us from disgusting a fellow-creature for the sake of a present indulgence. the shameful indolence of many married women, and others a little advanced in life, frequently leads them to sin against delicacy. for, though convinced that the person is the band of union between the sexes, yet, how often do they from sheer indolence, or, to enjoy some trifling indulgence, disgust? the depravity of the appetite which brings the sexes together, has had a still more fatal effect. nature must ever be the standard of taste, the gauge of appetiteyet how grossly is nature insulted by the voluptuary. leaving the refinements of love out of the question; nature, by making the gratification of an appetite, in this respect, as well as every other, a natural and imperious law to preserve the species, exalts the appetite, and mixes a little mind and affection with a sensual gust. the feelings of a parent mingling with an instinct merely animal, give it dignity; and the man and woman often meeting on account of the child, a mutual interest and affection is excited by the exercise of a common sympathy. women then having necessarily some duty to fulfil, more noble than to adorn their persons, would not contentedly be the slaves of casual lust; which is now the situation of a very considerable number who are, literally speaking, standing dishes to which every glutton may have access. i may be told that great as this enormity is, it only affects a devoted part of the sexdevoted for the salvation of the rest. but, false as every assertion might easily be proved, that recommends the sanctioning a small evil to produce a greater good; the mischief does not stop here, for the moral character, and peace of mind, of the chaster part of the sex, is undermined by the conduct of the very women to whom they allow no refuge from guilt: whom they inexorably consign to the exercise of arts that lure their husbands from them, debauch their sons, and force them, let not modest women start, to assume, in some degree, the same character themselves. for i will venture to assert, that all the causes of female weakness, as well as depravity, which i have already enlarged on, branch out of one grand causewant of chastity in men. this intemperance, so prevalent, depraves the appetite to such a degree, that a wanton stimulus is necessary to rouse it; but the parental design of nature is forgotten, and the mere person, and that for a moment, alone engrosses the thoughts. so voluptuous, indeed, often grows the lustful prowler, that he refines on female softness. something more soft than woman is then sought for; till, in italy, and portugal, men attend the levees of equivocal beings, to sigh for more than female languor. to satisfy this genus of men, women are made systematically voluptuous, and though they may not all carry their libertinism to the same height, yet this heartless intercourse with the sex, which they allow themselves, depraves both sexes, because the taste of men is vitiated; and women, of all classes, naturally square their behaviour to gratify the taste by which they obtain pleasure and power. women becoming, consequently, weaker, in mind and body, than they ought to be, were one of the grand ends of their being taken into the account, that of bearing and nursing children, have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection, that ennobles instinct, either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born. nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity. the weak enervated women who particularly catch the attention of libertines, are unfit to be mothers, though they may conceive; so that the rich sensualist, who has rioted among women, spreading depravity and misery, when he wishes to perpetuate his name, receives from his wife only an half-formed being that inherits both its father's and mother's weakness. contrasting the humanity of the present age with the barbarism of antiquity, great stress has been laid on the savage custom of exposing the children whom their parents could not maintain; whilst the man of sensibility, who thus, perhaps, complains, by his promiscuous amours produces a most destructive barrenness and contagious flagitiousness of manners. surely nature never intended that women, by satisfying an appetite, should frustrate the very purpose for which it was implanted? i have before observed, that men ought to maintain the women whom they have seduced; this would be one means of reforming female manners, and stopping an abuse that has an equally fatal effect on population and morals. another, no less obvious, would be to turn the attention of woman to the real virtue of chastity; for to little respect has that woman a claim, on the score of modesty, though her reputation may be white as the driven snow, who smiles on the libertine whilst she spurns the victims of his lawless appetites and their own folly. besides, she has a taint of the same folly, pure as she esteems herself, when she studiously adorns her person only to be seen by men, to excite respectful sighs, and all the idle homage of what is called innocent gallantry. did women really respect virtue for its own sake, they would not seek for a compensation in vanity, for the self-denial which they are obliged to practise to preserve their reputation, nor would they associate with men who set reputation at defiance. the two sexes mutually corrupt and improve each other. this i believe to be an indisputable truth, extending it to every virtue. chastity, modesty, public spirit, and all the noble train of virtues, on which social virtue and happiness are built, should be understood and cultivated by all mankind, or they will be cultivated to little effect. and, instead of furnishing the vicious or idle with a pretext for violating some sacred duty, by terming it a sexual one, it would be wiser to shew that nature has not made any difference, for that the unchaste man doubly defeats the purpose of nature, by rendering women barren, and destroying his own constitution, though he avoids the shame that pursues the crime in the other sex. these are the physical consequences, the moral are still more alarming; for virtue is only a nominal distinction when the duties of citizens, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, and directors of families, become merely the selfish ties of convenience. why then do philosophers look for public spirit? public spirit must be nurtured by private virtue, or it will resemble the factitious sentiment which makes women careful to preserve their reputation, and men their honour. a sentiment that often exists unsupported by virtue, unsupported by that sublime morality which makes the habitual breach of one duty a breach of the whole moral law. chap. ix. of the pernicious effects which arise from the unnatural distinctions established in society. from the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind. for it is in the most polished society that noisome reptiles and venomous serpents lurk under the rank herbage; and there is voluptuousness pampered by the still sultry air, which relaxes every good disposition before it ripens into virtue. one class presses on another; for all are aiming to procure respect on account of their property: and property, once gained, will procure the respect due only to talents and virtue. men neglect the duties incumbent on man, yet are treated like demi-gods; religion is also separated from morality by a ceremonial veil, yet men wonder that the world is almost, literally speaking, a den of sharpers or oppressors. there is a homely proverb, which speaks a shrewd truth, that whoever the devil finds idle he will employ. and what but habitual idleness can hereditary wealth and titles produce? for man is so constituted that he can only attain a proper use of his faculties by exercising them, and will not exercise them unless necessity, of some kind, first set the wheels in motion. virtue likewise can only be acquired by the discharge of relative duties; but the importance of these sacred duties will scarcely be felt by the being who is cajoled out of his humanity by the flattery of sycophants. there must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground, and this virtuous equality will not rest firmly even when founded on a rock, if one half of mankind be chained to its bottom by fate, for they will be continually undermining it through ignorance or pride. it is vain to expect virtue from women till they are, in some degree, independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural affection, which would make them good wives and mothers. whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands they will be cunning, mean, and selfish, and the men who can be gratified by the fawning fondness of spaniel-like affection, have not much delicacy, for love is not to be bought, in any sense of the words, its silken wings are instantly shrivelled up when any thing beside a return in kind is sought. yet whilst wealth enervates men; and women live, as it were, by their personal charms, how can we expect them to discharge those ennobling duties which equally require exertion and self-denial. hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it, if i may so express myself, swathed from their birth, seldom exert the locomotive faculty of body or mind; and, thus viewing every thing through one medium, and that a false one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness consist. false, indeed, must be the light when the drapery of situation hides the man, and makes him stalk in masquerade, dragging from one scene of dissipation to another the nerveless limbs that hang with stupid listlessness, and rolling round the vacant eye which plainly tells us that there is no mind at home. i mean, therefore, to infer that the society is not properly organized which does not compel men and women to discharge their respective duties, by making it the only way to acquire that countenance from their fellow-creatures, which every human being wishes some way to attain. the respect, consequently, which is paid to wealth and mere personal charms, is a true north-east blast, that blights the tender blossoms of affection and virtue. nature has wisely attached affections to duties, to sweeten toil, and to give that vigour to the exertions of reason which only the heart can give. but, the affection which is put on merely because it is the appropriated insignia of a certain character, when its duties are not fulfilled, is one of the empty compliments which vice and folly are obliged to pay to virtue and the real nature of things. to illustrate my opinion, i need only observe, that when a woman is admired for her beauty, and suffers herself to be so far intoxicated by the admiration she receives, as to neglect to discharge the indispensable duty of a mother, she sins against herself by neglecting to cultivate an affection that would equally tend to make her useful and happy. true happiness, i mean all the contentment, and virtuous satisfaction, that can be snatched in this imperfect state, must arise from well regulated affections; and an affection includes a duty. men are not aware of the misery they cause, and the vicious weakness they cherish, by only inciting women to render themselves pleasing; they do not consider that they thus make natural and artificial duties clash, by sacrificing the comfort and respectability of a woman's life to voluptuous notions of beauty, when in nature they all harmonize. cold would be the heart of a husband, were he not rendered unnatural by early debauchery, who did not feel more delight at seeing his child suckled by its mother, than the most artful wanton tricks could ever raise; yet this natural way of cementing the matrimonial tie, and twisting esteem with fonder recollections, wealth leads women to spurn. to preserve their beauty, and wear the flowery crown of the day, which gives them a kind of right to reign for a short time over the sex, they neglect to stamp impressions on their husbands' hearts, that would be remembered with more tenderness when the snow on the head began to chill the bosom, than even their virgin charms. the maternal solicitude of a reasonable affectionate woman is very interesting, and the chastened dignity with which a mother returns the caresses that she and her child receive from a father who has been fulfilling the serious duties of his station, is not only a respectable, but a beautiful sight. so singular, indeed, are my feelings, and i have endeavoured not to catch factitious ones, that after having been fatigued with the sight of insipid grandeur and the slavish ceremonies that with cumberous pomp supplied the place of domestic affections, i have turned to some other scene to relieve my eye by resting it on the refreshing green every where scattered by nature. i have then viewed with pleasure a woman nursing her children, and discharging the duties of her station with, perhaps, merely a servant maid to take off her hands the servile part of the household business. i have seen her prepare herself and children, with only the luxury of cleanliness, to receive her husband, who returning weary home in the evening found smiling babes and a clean hearth. my heart has loitered in the midst of the group, and has even throbbed with sympathetic emotion, when the scraping of the well known foot has raised a pleasing tumult. whilst my benevolence has been gratified by contemplating this artless picture, i have thought that a couple of this description, equally necessary and independent of each other, because each fulfilled the respective duties of their station, possessed all that life could give.raised sufficiently above abject poverty not to be obliged to weigh the consequence of every farthing they spend, and having sufficient to prevent their attending to a frigid system of oeconomy, which narrows both heart and mind. i declare, so vulgar are my conceptions, that i know not what is wanted to render this the happiest as well as the most respectable situation in the world, but a taste for literature, to throw a little variety and interest into social converse, and some superfluous money to give to the needy and to buy books. for it is not pleasant when the heart is opened by compassion and the head active in arranging plans of usefulness, to have a prim urchin continually twitching back the elbow to prevent the hand from drawing out an almost empty purse, whispering at the same time some prudential maxim about the priority of justice. destructive, however, as riches and inherited honours are to the human character, women are more debased and cramped, if possible, by them, than men, because men may still, in some degree, unfold their faculties by becoming soldiers and statesmen. as soldiers, i grant, they can now only gather, for the most part, vain glorious laurels, whilst they adjust to a hair the european balance, taking especial care that no bleak northern nook or sound incline the beam. but the days of true heroism are over, when a citizen fought for his country like a fabricius or a washington, and then returned to his farm to let his virtuous fervour run in a more placid, but not a less salutary, stream. no, our british heroes are oftener sent from the gaming table than from the plow; and their passions have been rather inflamed by hanging with dumb suspense on the turn of a die, than sublimated by panting after the adventurous march of virtue in the historic page. the statesman, it is true, might with more propriety quit the faro bank, or card-table, to guide the helm, for he has still but to shuffle and trick. the whole system of british politics, if system it may courteously be called, consisting in multiplying dependents and contriving taxes which grind the poor to pamper the rich; thus a war. or any wild goose chace, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place. it is not necessary then that he should have bowels for the poor, so he can secure for his family the odd trick. or should some shew of respect, for what is termed with ignorant ostentation an englishman's birth-right, be expedient to bubble the gruff mastiff that he has to lead by the nose, he can make an empty shew, very safely, by giving his single voice, and suffering his light squadron to file off to the other side. and when a question of humanity is agitated he may dip a sop in the milk of human kindness, to silence cerberus, and talk of the interest which his heart takes in an attempt to make the earth no longer cry for vengeance as it sucks in its children's blood, though his cold hand may at the very moment rivet their chains, by sanctioning the abominable traffick. a minister is no longer a minister, than while he can carry a point, which he is determined to carry.yet it is not necessary that a minister should feel like a man, when a bold push might shake his seat. but, to have done with these episodical observations, let me return to the more specious slavery which chains the very soul of woman, keeping her for ever under the bondage of ignorance. the preposterous distinctions of rank, which render civilization a curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants, and cunning envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class of people, because respectability is not attached to the discharge of the relative duties of life, but to the station, and when the duties are not fulfilled the affections cannot gain sufficient strength to fortify the virtue of which they are the natural reward. still there are some loop-holes out of which a man may creep, and dare to think and act for himself; but for a woman it is an herculean task, because she has difficulties peculiar to her sex to overcome, which require almost superhuman powers. a truly benevolent legislator always endeavours to make it the interest of each individual to be virtuous; and thus private virtue becoming the cement of public happiness, an orderly whole is consolidated by the tendency of all the parts towards a common centre. but, the private or public virtue of woman is very problematical; for rousseau, and a numerous list of male writers, insist that she should all her life be subjected to a severe restraint, that of propriety. why subject her to proprietyblind propriety, if she be capable of acting from a nobler spring, if she be an heir of immortality? is sugar always to be produced by vital blood? is one half of the human species, like the poor african slaves, to be subject to prejudices that brutalize them, when principles would be a surer guard, only to sweeten the cup of man? is not this indirectly to deny woman reason? for a gift is a mockery, if it be unfit for use. women are, in common with men, rendered weak and luxurious by the relaxing pleasures which wealth procures; but added to this they are made slaves to their persons, and must render them alluring that man may lend them his reason to guide their tottering steps aright. or should they be ambitious, they must govern their tyrants by sinister tricks, for without rights there cannot be any incumbent duties. the laws respecting woman, which i mean to discuss in a future part, make an absurd unit of a man and his wife; and then, by the easy transition of only considering him as responsible, she is reduced to a mere cypher. the being who discharges the duties of its station is independent; and, speaking of women at large, their first duty is to themselves as rational creatures, and the next, in point of importance, as citizens, is that, which includes so many, of a mother. the rank in life which dispenses with their fulfilling this duty, necessarily degrades them by making them mere dolls. or, should they turn to something more important than merely fitting drapery upon a smooth block, their minds are only occupied by some soft platonic attachment; or, the actual management of an intrigue may keep their thoughts in motion; for when they neglect domestic duties, they have it not in their power to take the field and march and counter-march like soldiers, or wrangle in the senate to keep their faculties from rusting. i know that, as a proof of the inferiority of the sex, rousseau has exultingly exclaimed, how can they leave the nursery for the camp!and the camp has by some moralists been termed the school of the most heroic virtues; though, i think, it would puzzle a keen casuist to prove the reasonableness of the greater number of wars that have dubbed heroes. i do not mean to consider this question critically; because, having frequently viewed these freaks of ambition as the first natural mode of civilization, when the ground must be torn up, and the woods cleared by fire and sword, i do not choose to call them pests; but surely the present system of war has little connection with virtue of any denomination, being rather the school of finesse and effeminacy, than of fortitude. yet, if defensive war, the only justifiable war, in the present advanced state of society, where virtue can shew its face and ripen amidst the rigours which purify the air on the mountain's top, were alone to be adopted as just and glorious, the true heroism of antiquity might again animate female bosoms.but fair and softly, gentle reader, male or female, do not alarm thyself, for though i have compared the character of a modern soldier with that of a civilized woman, i am not going to advise them to turn their distaff into a musket, though i sincerely wish to see the bayonet converted into a pruning-hook. i only recreated an imagination, fatigued by contemplating the vices and follies which all proceed from a feculent stream of wealth that has muddied the pure rills of natural affection, by supposing that society will some time or other be so constituted, that man must necessarily fulfil the duties of a citizen, or be despised, and that while he was employed in any of the departments of civil life, his wife, also an active citizen, should be equally intent to manage her family, educate her children, and assist her neighbours. but, to render her really virtuous and useful, she must not, if she discharge her civil duties, want, individually, the protection of civil laws; she must not be dependent on her husband's bounty for her subsistence during his life, or support after his deathfor how can a being be generous who has nothing of its own? or, virtuous, who is not free? the wife, in the present state of things, who is faithful to her husband, and neither suckles nor educates her children, scarcely deserves the name of a wife, and has no right to that of a citizen. but take away natural rights, and duties become null. women then must be considered as only the wanton solace of men, when they become so weak in mind and body, that they cannot exert themselves, unless to pursue some frothy pleasure, or to invent some frivolous fashion. what can be a more melancholy sight to a thinking mind, than to look into the numerous carriages that drive helter-skelter about this metropolis in a morning full of pale-faced creatures who are flying from themselves. i have often wished, with dr. johnson, to place some of them in a little shop with half a dozen children looking up to their languid countenances for support. i am much mistaken, if some latent vigour would not soon give health and spirit to their eyes, and some lines drawn by the exercise of reason on the blank cheeks, which before were only undulated by dimples, might restore lost dignity to the character, or rather enable it to attain the true dignity of its nature. virtue is not to be acquired even by speculation, much less by the negative supineness that wealth naturally generates. besides, when poverty is more disgraceful than even vice, is not morality cut to the quick? still to avoid misconstruction, though i consider that women in the common walks of life are called to fulfil the duties of wives and mothers, by religion and reason, i cannot help lamenting that women of a superiour cast have not a road open by which they can pursue more extensive plans of usefulness and independence. i may excite laughter, by dropping an hint, which i mean to pursue, some future time, for i really think that women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without having any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government. but, as the whole system of representation is now, in this country, only a convenient handle for despotism, they need not complain, for they are as well represented as a numerous class of hard working mechanics, who pay for the support of royalty when they can scarcely stop their children's mouths with bread. how are they represented whose very sweat supports the splendid stud of an heir apparent, or varnishes the chariot of some female favourite who looks down on shame? taxes on the very necessaries of life, enable an endless tribe of idle princes and princesses to pass with stupid pomp before a gaping crowd, who almost worship the very parade which costs them so dear. this is mere gothic grandeur, something like the barbarous useless parade of having sentinels on horseback at whitehall, which i could never view without a mixture of contempt and indignation. how strangely must the mind be sophisticated when this sort of state impresses it! but, till these monuments of folly are levelled by virtue, similar follies will leaven the whole mass. for the same character, in some degree, will prevail in the aggregate of society: and the refinements of luxury, or the vicious repinings of envious poverty, will equally banish virtue from society, considered as the characteristic of that society, or only allow it to appear as one of the stripes of the harlequin coat, worn by the civilized man. in the superiour ranks of life, every duty is done by deputies, as if duties could ever be waved, and the vain pleasures which consequent idleness forces the rich to pursue, appear so enticing to the next rank, that the numerous scramblers for wealth sacrifice every thing to tread on their heels. the most sacred trusts are then considered as sinecures, because they were procured by interest, and only sought to enable a man to keep good company. women, in particular, all want to be ladies. which is simply to have nothing to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where, for they cannot tell what. but what have women to do in society? i may be asked, but to loiter with easy grace; surely you would not condemn them all to suckle fools and chronicle small beer! no. women might certainly study the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurses. and midwifery, decency seems to allot to them, though i am afraid the word midwife, in our dictionaries, will soon give place to accoucheur, and one proof of the former delicacy of the sex be effaced from the language. they might, also, study politics, and settle their benevolence on the broadest basis; for the reading of history will scarcely be more useful than the perusal of romances, if read as mere biography; if the character of the times, the political improvements, arts, &c. be not observed. in short, if it be not considered as the history of man; and not of particular men, who filled a niche in the temple of fame, and dropped into the black rolling stream of time, that silently sweeps all before it, into the shapeless void calledeternity.for shape, can it be called, 'that shape hath none?' business of various kinds, they might likewise pursue, if they were educated in a more orderly manner, which might save many from common and legal prostitution. women would not then marry for a support, as men accept of places under government, and neglect the implied duties; nor would an attempt to earn their own subsistence, a most laudable one! sink them almost to the level of those poor abandoned creatures who live by prostitution. for are not milliners and mantua-makers reckoned the next class? the few employments open to women, so far from being liberal, are menial; and when a superiour education enables them to take charge of the education of children as governesses, they are not treated like the tutors of sons, though even clerical tutors are not always treated in a manner calculated to render them respectable in the eyes of their pupils, to say nothing of the private comfort of the individual. but as women educated like gentlewomen, are never designed for the humiliating situation which necessity sometimes forces them to fill; these situations are considered in the light of a degradation; and they know little of the human heart, who need to be told, that nothing so painfully sharpens sensibility as such a fall in life. some of these women might be restrained from marrying by a proper spirit or delicacy, and others may not have had it in their power to escape in this pitiful way from servitude; is not that government then very defective, and very unmindful of the happiness of one half of its members, that does not provide for honest, independent women, by encouraging them to fill respectable stations? but in order to render their private virtue a public benefit, they must have a civil existence in the state, married or single; else we shall continually see some worthy woman, whose sensibility has been rendered painfully acute by undeserved contempt, droop like 'the lily broken down by a plow-share.' it is a melancholy truth; yet such is the blessed effect of civilization! the most respectable women are the most oppressed; and, unless they have understandings far superiour to the common run of understandings, taking in both sexes, they must, from being treated like contemptible beings, become contemptible. how many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre; nay, i doubt whether pity and love are so near akin as poets feign, for i have seldom seen much compassion excited by the helplessness of females, unless they were fair; then, perhaps, pity was the soft handmaid of love, or the harbinger of lust. how much more respectable is the woman who earns her own bread by fulfilling any duty, than the most accomplished beauty!beauty did i say?so sensible am i of the beauty of moral loveliness, or the harmonious propriety that attunes the passions of a well-regulated mind, that i blush at making the comparison; yet i sigh to think how few women aim at attaining this respectability by withdrawing from the giddy whirl of pleasure, or the indolent calm that stupifies the good sort of women it sucks in. proud of their weakness, however, they must always be protected, guarded from care, and all the rough toils that dignify the mind.if this be the fiat of fate, if they will make themselves insignificant and contemptible, sweetly to waste 'life away,' let them not expect to be valued when their beauty fades, for it is the fate of the fairest flowers to be admired and pulled to pieces by the careless hand that plucked them. in how many ways do i wish, from the purest benevolence, to impress this truth on my sex; yet i fear that they will not listen to a truth that dear bought experience has brought home to many an agitated bosom, nor willingly resign the privileges of rank and sex for the privileges of humanity, to which those have no claim who do not discharge its duties. those writers are particularly useful, in my opinion, who make man feel for man, independent of the station he fills, or the drapery of factitious sentiments. i then would fain convince reasonable men of the importance of some of my remarks, and prevail on them to weigh dispassionately the whole tenor of my observations.i appeal to their understandings; and, as a fellow-creature, claim, in the name of my sex, some interest in their hearts. i entreat them to assist to emancipate their companion, to make her a help meet for them! would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothersin a word, better citizens. we should then love them with true affection, because we should learn to respect ourselves; and the peace of mind of a worthy man would not be interrupted by the idle vanity of his wife, nor the babes sent to nestle in a strange bosom, having never found a home in their mother's. chap. x. parental affection. parental affection is, perhaps, the blindest modification of perverse self-love; for we have not, like the french* two terms to distinguish the pursuit of a natural and reasonable desire, from the ignorant calculations of weakness. parents often love their children in the most brutal manner, and sacrifice every relative duty to promote their advancement in the world.to promote, such is the perversity of unprincipled prejudices, the future welfare of the very beings whose present existence they imbitter by the most despotic stretch of power. power, in fact, is ever true to its vital principle, for in every shape it would reign without controul or inquiry. its throne is built across a dark abyss, which no eye must dare to explore, lest the baseless fabric should totter under investigation. obedience, unconditional obedience, is the catch-word of tyrants of every description, and to render 'assurance doubly sure,' one kind of despotism supports another. tyrants would have cause to tremble if reason were to become the rule of duty in any of the relations of life, for the light might spread till perfect day appeared. and when it did appear, how would men smile at the sight of the bugbears at which they started during the night of ignorance, or the twilight of timid inquiry. * l'amour propre. l'amour de soi meme. parental affection, indeed, in many minds, is but a pretext to tyrannize where it can be done with impunity, for only good and wise men are content with the respect that will bear discussion. convinced that they have a right to what they insist on, they do not fear reason, or dread the sifting of subjects that recur to natural justice: because they firmly believe that the more enlightened the human mind becomes the deeper root will just and simple principles take. they do not rest in expedients, or grant that what is metaphysically true can be practically false; but disdaining the shifts of the moment they calmly wait till time, sanctioning innovation, silences the hiss of selfishness or envy. if the power of reflecting on the past, and darting the keen eye of contemplation into futurity, be the grand privilege of man, it must be granted that some people enjoy this prerogative in a very limited degree. every thing new appears to them wrong; and not able to distinguish the possible from the monstrous, they fear where no fear should find a place, running from the light of reason, as if it were a firebrand; yet the limits of the possible have never been defined to stop the sturdy innovator's hand. woman, however, a slave in every situation to prejudice, seldom exerts enlightened maternal affection; for she either neglects her children, or spoils them by improper indulgence. besides, the affection of some women for their children is, as i have before termed it, frequently very brutish: for it eradicates every spark of humanity. justice, truth, every thing is sacrificed by these rebekah's, and for the sake of their own children they violate the most sacred duties, forgetting the common relationship that binds the whole family on earth together. yet, reason seems to say, that they who suffer one duty, or affection, to swallow up the rest, have not sufficient heart or mind to fulfil that one conscientiously. it then loses the venerable aspect of a duty, and assumes the fantastic form of a whim. as the care of children in their infancy is one of the grand duties annexed to the female character by nature, this duty would afford many forcible arguments for strengthening the female understanding, if it were properly considered. the formation of the mind must be begun very early, and the temper, in particular, requires the most judicious attentionan attention which women cannot pay who only love their children because they are their children, and seek no further for the foundation of their duty, than in the feelings of the moment. it is this want of reason in their affections which makes women so often run into extremes, and either be the most fond or most careless and unnatural mothers. to be a good mothera woman must have sense, and that independence of mind which few women possess who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands. meek wives are, in general, foolish mothers; wanting their children to love them best, and take their part, in secret, against the father, who is held up as a scarecrow. when chastisement is necessary, though they have offended the mother, the father must inflict the punishment; he must be the judge in all disputes: but i shall more fully discuss this subject when i treat of private education, i now only mean to insist, that unless the understanding of woman be enlarged, and her character rendered more firm, by being allowed to govern her own conduct, she will never have sufficient sense or command of temper to manage her children properly. her parental affection, indeed, scarcely deserves the name, when it does not lead her to suckle her children, because the discharge of this duty is equally calculated to inspire maternal and filial affection: and it is the indispensable duty of men and women to fulfil the duties which give birth to affections that are the surest preservatives against vice. natural affection, as it is termed, i believe to be a very faint tie, affections must grow out of the habitual exercise of a mutual sympathy; and what sympathy does a mother exercise who sends her babe to a nurse, and only takes it from a nurse to send it to a school? in the exercise of their maternal feelings providence has furnished women with a natural substitute for love, when the lover becomes only a friend, and mutual confidence takes place of overstrained admirationa child then gently twists the relaxing cord, and a mutual care produces a new mutual sympathy.but a child, though a pledge of affection, will not enliven it, if both father and mother be content to transfer the charge to hirelings; for they who do their duty by proxy should not murmur if they miss the reward of dutyparental affection produces filial duty. chap. xi. duty to parents. there seems to be an indolent propensity in man to make prescription always take place of reason, and to place every duty on an arbitrary foundation. the rights of kings are deduced in a direct line from the king of kings; and that of parents from our first parent. why do we thus go back for principles that should always rest on the same base, and have the same weight to-day that they had a thousand years agoand not a jot more? if parents discharge their duty they have a strong hold and sacred claim on the gratitude of their children; but few parents are willing to receive the respectful affection of their offspring on such terms. they demand blind obedience, because they do not merit a reasonable service: and to render these demands of weakness and ignorance more binding, a mysterious sanctity is spread round the most arbitrary principle; for what other name can be given to the blind duty of obeying vicious or weak beings merely because they obeyed a powerful instinct? the simple definition of the reciprocal duty, which naturally subsists between parent and child, may be given in a few words: the parent who pays proper attention to helpless infancy has a right to require the same attention when the feebleness of age comes upon him. but to subjugate a rational being to the mere will of another, after he is of age to answer to society for his own conduct, is a most cruel and undue stretch of power; and, perhaps, as injurious to morality as those religious systems which do not allow right and wrong to have any existence, but in the divine will. i never knew a parent who had paid more than common attention to his children, disregarded; * on the contrary, the early habit of relying almost implicitly on the opinion of a respected parent is not easily shook, even when matured reason convinces the child that his father is not the wisest man in the world. this weakness, for a weakness it is, though the epithet amiable may be tacked to it, a reasonable man must steel himself against; for the absurd duty, too often inculcated, of obeying a parent only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason. * dr. johnson makes the same observation. i distinguish between the natural and accidental duty due to parents. the parent who sedulously endeavours to form the heart and enlarge the understanding of his child, has given that dignity to the discharge of a duty, common to the whole animal world, that only reason can give. this is the parental affection of humanity, and leaves instinctive natural affection far behind. such a parent acquires all the rights of the most sacred friendship, and his advice, even when his child is advanced in life, demands serious consideration. with respect to marriage, though after one and twenty a parent seems to have no right to withhold his consent on any account; yet twenty years of solicitude call for a return, and the son ought, at least, to promise not to marry for two or three years, should the object of his choice not entirely meet with the approbation of his first friend. but, respect for parents is, generally speaking, a much more debasing principle; it is only a selfish respect for property. the father who is blindly obeyed, is obeyed from sheer weakness, or from motives that degrade the human character. a great proportion of the misery that wanders, in hideous forms, around the world, is allowed to rise from the negligence of parents; and still these are the people who are most tenacious of what they term a natural right, though it be subversive of the birth-right of man, the right of acting according to the direction of his own reason. i have already very frequently had occasion to observe, that vicious or indolent people are always eager to profit by enforcing arbitrary privileges; and, generally, in the same proportion as they neglect the discharge of the duties which alone render the privileges reasonable. this is at the bottom a dictate of common sense, or the instinct of self-defence, peculiar to ignorant weakness; resembling that instinct, which makes a fish muddy the water it swims in to elude its enemy, instead of boldly facing it in the clear stream. from the clear stream of argument, indeed, the supporters of prescription, of every denomination, fly; and, taking refuge in the darkness, which, in the language of sublime poetry, has been supposed to surround the throne of omnipotence, they dare to demand that implicit respect which is only due to his unsearchable ways. but, let me not be thought presumptuous, the darkness which bides our god from us, only respects speculative truthsit never obscures moral ones, they shine clearly, for god is light, and never, by the constitution of our nature, requires the discharge of a duty, the reasonableness of which does not beam on us when we open our eyes. the indolent parent of high rank may, it is true, extort a shew of respect from his child, and females on the continent are particularly subject to the views of their families, who never think of consulting their inclination, or providing for the comfort of the poor victims of their pride. the consequence is notorious; these dutiful daughters become adulteresses, and neglect the education of their children, from whom they, in their turn, exact the same kind of obedience. females, it is true, in all countries, are too much under the dominion of their parents; and few parents think of addressing their children in the following manner, though it is in this reasonable way that heaven seems to command the whole human race. it is your interest to obey me till you can judge for yourself; and the almighty father of all has implanted an affection in me to serve as a guard to you whilst your reason is unfolding; but when your mind arrives at maturity, you must only obey me, or rather respect my opinions, so far as they coincide with the light that is breaking in on your own mind. a slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind; and mr. locke very judiciously observes, that 'if the mind be curbed and humbled too much in children; if their spirits be abased and broken much by too strict an hand over them; they lose all their vigour and industry.' this strict hand may in some degree account for the weakness of women; for girls, from various causes, are more kept down by their parents, in every sense of the word, than boys. the duty expected from them is, like all the duties arbitrarily imposed on women, more from a sense of propriety, more out of respect for decorum, than reason; and thus taught slavishly to submit to their parents, they are prepared for the slavery of marriage. i may be told that a number of women are not slaves in the marriage state. true, but they then become tyrants; for it is not rational freedom, but a lawless kind of power resembling the authority exercised by the favourites of absolute monarchs, which they obtain by debasing means. i do not, likewise, dream of insinuating that either boys or girls are always slaves, i only insist that when they are obliged to submit to authority blindly, their faculties are weakened, and their tempers rendered imperious or abject. i also lament that parents, indolently availing themselves of a supposed privilege, damp the first faint glimmering of reason, rendering at the same time the duty, which they are so anxious to enforce, an empty name; because they will not let it rest on the only basis on which a duty can rest securely: for unless it be founded on knowledge, it cannot gain sufficient strength to resist the squalls of passion, or the silent sapping of self-love. but it is not the parents who have given the surest proof of their affection for their children, or, to speak more properly, who by fulfilling their duty, have allowed a natural parental affection to take root in their hearts, the child of exercised sympathy and reason, and not the over-weening offspring of selfish pride, who most vehemently insist on their children submitting to their will merely because it is their will. on the contrary, the parent, who sets a good example, patiently lets that example work; and it seldom fails to produce its natural effectfilial reverence. children cannot be taught too early to submit to reason, the true definition of that necessity, which rousseau insisted on, without defining it; for to submit to reason is to submit to the nature of things, and to that god, who formed them so, to promote our real interest. why should the minds of children be warped as they just begin to expand, only to favour the indolence of parents, who insist on a privilege without being willing to pay the price fixed by nature? i have before had occasion to observe, that a right always includes a duty, and i think it may, likewise, fairly be inferred, that they forfeit the right, who do not fulfil the duty. it is easier, i grant, to command than reason; but it does not follow from hence that children cannot comprehend the reason why they are made to do certain things habitually: for, from a steady adherence to a few simple principles of conduct flows that salutary power which a judicious parent gradually gains over a child's mind. and this power becomes strong indeed, if tempered by an even display of affection brought home to the child's heart. for, i believe, as a general rule, it must be allowed that the affection which we inspire always resembles that we cultivate; so that natural affections, which have been supposed almost distinct from reason, may be found more nearly connected with judgment than is commonly allowed. nay, as another proof of the necessity of cultivating the female understanding, it is but just to observe, that the affections seem to have a kind of animal capriciousness when they merely reside in the heart. it is the irregular exercise of parental authority that first injures the mind, and to these irregularities girls are more subject than boys. the will of those who never allow their will to be disputed, unless they happen to be in a good humour, when they relax proportionally, is almost always unreasonable. to elude this arbitrary authority girls very early learn the lessons which they afterwards practise on their husbands; for i have frequently seen a little sharp-faced miss rule a whole family, excepting that now and then mamma's angry will burst out of some accidental cloud;either her hair was ill dressed,* or she had lost more money at cards, the night before, than she was willing to own to her husband; or some such moral cause of anger. * i myself heard a little girl once say to a servant, 'my mama has been scolding me finely this morning, because her hair was not dressed to please her.' though this remark was pert, it was just. and what respect could a girl acquire for such a parent without doing violence to reason? after observing sallies of this kind, i have been led into a melancholy train of reflection respecting females, concluding that when their first affection must lead them astray, or make their duties clash till they rest on mere whims and customs, little can be expected from them as they advance in life. how indeed can an instructor remedy this evil? for to teach them virtue on any solid principle is to teach them to despise their parents. children cannot, ought not, to be taught to make allowance for the faults of their parents, because every such allowance weakens the force of their parents, because every such allowance weakens the force of reason in their minds, and makes them still more indulgent to their own. it is one of the most sublime virtues of maturity that leads us to be severe with respect to ourselves, and forbearing to others; but children should only be taught the simple virtues, for if they begin too early to make allowance for human passions and manners, they wear off the fine edge of the criterion by which they should regulate their own, and become unjust in the same proportion as they grow indulgent. the affections of children, and weak people, are always selfish; they love their relatives, because they are beloved by them, and not on account of their virtues. yet, till esteem and love are blended together in the first affection, and reason made the foundation of the first duty, morality will stumble at the threshold. but, till society is very differently constituted, parents, i fear, will still insist on being obeyed, because they will be obeyed, and constantly endeavour to settle that power on a divine right which will not bear the investigation of reason. chap. xii. on national education. the good effects resulting from attention to private education will ever be very confined, and the parent who really puts his own hand to the plow, will always, in some degree, be disappointed, till education becomes a grand national concern. a man cannot retire into a desert with his child, and if he did he could not bring himself back to childhood, and become the proper friend and play-fellow of an infant or youth. and when children are confined to the society of men and women, they very soon acquire that kind of premature manhood which stops the growth of every vigorous power of mind or body. in order to open their faculties they should be excited to think for themselves; and this can only be done by mixing a number of children together, and making them jointly pursue the same objects. a child very soon contracts a benumbing indolence of mind, which he has seldom sufficient vigour afterwards to shake off, when he only asks a question instead of seeking for information, and then relies implicitly on the answer he receives. with his equals in age this could never be the case, and the subjects of inquiry, though they might be influenced, would not be entirely under the direction of men, who frequently damp, if not destroy, abilities, by bringing them forward too hastily: and too hastily they will infallibly be brought forward, if the child could be confined to the society of a man, however sagacious that man may be. besides, in youth the seeds of every affection should be sown, and the respectful regard, which is felt for a parent, is very different from the social affections that are to constitute the happiness of life as it advances. of these equality is the basis, and an intercourse of sentiments unclogged by that observant seriousness which prevents disputation, though it may not inforce submission. let a child have ever such an affection for his parent, he will always languish to play and prattle with children; and the very respect he feels, for filial esteem always has a dash of fear mixed with it, will, if it do not teach him cunning, at least prevent him from pouring out the little secrets which first open the heart to friendship and confidence, gradually leading to more expansive benevolence. added to this, he will never acquire that frank ingenuousness of behaviour, which young people can only attain by being frequently in society where they dare to speak what they think; neither afraid of being reproved for their presumption, nor laughed at for their folly. forcibly impressed by the reflections which the sight of schools, as they are at present conducted, naturally suggested, i have formerly delivered my opinion rather warmly in favour of a private education; but further experience has led me to view the subject in a different light. i still, however, think schools, as they are now regulated, the hot-beds of vice and folly, and the knowledge of human nature, supposed to be attained there, merely cunning selfishness. at school boys become gluttons and slovens, and, instead of cultivating domestic affections, very early rush into the libertinism which destroys the constitution before it is formed; hardening the heart as it weakens the understanding. i should, in fact, be averse to boarding-schools, if it were for no other reason than the unsettled state of mind which the expectation of the vacations produce. on these the children's thoughts are fixed with eager anticipating hopes, for, at least, to speak with moderation, half of the time, and when they arrive they are spent in total dissipation and beastly indulgence. but, on the contrary, when they are brought up at home, though they may pursue a plan of study in a more orderly manner than can be adopted when near a fourth part of the year is actually spent in idleness, and as much more in regret and anticipation; yet they there acquire too high an opinion of their own importance, from being allowed to tyrannize over servants, and from the anxiety expressed by most mothers, on the score of manners, who, eager to teach the accomplishments of a gentleman, stifle, in their birth, the virtues of a man. thus brought into company when they ought to be seriously employed, and treated like men when they are still boys, they become vain and effeminate. the only way to avoid two extremes equally injurious to morality, would be to contrive some way of combining a public and private education. thus to make men citizens two natural steps might be taken, which seem directly to lead to the desired point; for the domestic affections, that first open the heart to the various modifications of humanity, would be cultivated, whilst the children were nevertheless allowed to spend great part of their time, on terms of equality, with other children. i still recollect, with pleasure, the country day school; where a boy trudged in the morning, wet or dry, carrying his books, and his dinner, if it were at a considerable distance; a servant did not then lead master by the hand, for, when he had once put on coat and breeches, he was allowed to shift for himself, and return alone in the evening to recount the feats of the day close at the parental knee. his father's house was his home, and was ever after fondly remembered; nay, i appeal to many superiour men, who were educated in this manner, whether the recollection of some shady lane where they conned their lesson; or, of some stile, where they sat making a kite, or mending a bat, has not endeared their country to them? but, what boy ever recollected with pleasure the years he spent in close confinement, at an academy near london? unless, indeed, he should, by chance, remember the poor scare-crow of an usher, whom he tormented; or, the tartman, from whom he caught a cake, to devour it with a cattish appetite of selfishness. at boarding-schools of every description, the relaxation of the junior boys is mischief; and of the senior, vice. besides, in great schools, what can be more prejudicial to the moral character than the system of tyranny and abject slavery which is established amongst the boys, to say nothing of the slavery to forms, which makes religion worse than a farce? for what good can be expected from the youth who receives the sacrament of the lord's supper, to avoid forfeiting half a guinea, which he probably afterwards spends in some sensual manner? half the employment of the youths is to elude the necessity of attending public worship; and well they may, for such a constant repetition of the same thing must be a very irksome restraint on their natural vivacity. as these ceremonies have the most fatal effect on their morals, and as a ritual performed by the lips, when the heart and mind are far away, is not now stored up by our church as a bank to draw on for the fees of the poor souls in purgatory, why should they not be abolished? but the fear of innovation, in this country, extends to every thing.this is only a covert fear, the apprehensive timidity of indolent slugs, who guard, by sliming it over, the snug place, which they consider in the light of an hereditary estate; and eat, drink, and enjoy themselves, instead of fulfilling the duties, excepting a few empty forms, for which it was endowed. these are the people who most strenuously insist on the will of the founder being observed, crying out against all reformation, as if it were a violation of justice. i am now alluding particularly to the relicks of popery retained in our colleges, when the protestant members seem to be such sticklers for the established church; but their zeal never makes them lose sight of the spoil of ignorance, which rapacious priests of superstitious memory have scraped together. no, wise in their generation, they venerate the prescriptive right of possession, as a strong hold, and still let the sluggish bell tinkle to prayers, as during the days when the elevation of the host was supposed to atone for the sins of the people, lest one reformation should lead to another, and the spirit kill the letter. these romish customs have the most baneful effect on the morals of our clergy; for the idle vermin who two or three times a day perform in the most slovenly manner a service which they think useless, but call their duty, soon lose a sense of duty. at college, forced to attend or evade public worship, they acquire an habitual contempt for the very service, the performance of which is to enable them to live in idleness. it is mumbled over as an affair of business, as a stupid boy repeats his task, and frequently the college cant escapes from the preacher the moment after he has left the pulpit, and even whilst he is eating the dinner which he earned in such a dishonest manner. nothing, indeed, can be more irreverent than the cathedral service as it is now performed in this country, neither does it contain a set of weaker men than those who are the slaves of this childish routine. a disgusting skeleton of the former state is still exhibited; but all the solemnity that interested the imagination, if it did not purify the heart, is stripped off. the performance of high mass on the continent must impress every mind, where a spark of fancy glows, with that awful melancholy, that sublime tenderness, so near akin to devotion. i do not say that these devotional feelings are of more use, in a moral sense, than any other emotion of taste; but i contend that the theatrical pomp which gratifies our senses, is to be preferred to the cold parade that insults the understanding without reaching the heart. amongst remarks on national education, such observations cannot be misplaced, especially as the supporters of these establishments, degenerated into puerilities, affect to be the champions of religion.religion, pure source of comfort in this vale of tears! how has thy clear stream been muddied by the dabblers, who have presumptuously endeavoured to confine in one narrow channel, the living waters that ever flow towards godthe sublime ocean of existence! what would life be without that peace which the love of god, when built on humanity, alone can impart? every earthly affection turns back, at intervals, to prey upon the heart that feeds it; and the purest effusions of benevolence, often rudely damped by man, must mount as a free-will offering to him who gave them birth, whose bright image they faintly reflect. in public schools, however, religion, confounded with irksome ceremonies and unreasonable restraints, assumes the most ungracious aspect: not the sober austere one that commands respect whilst it inspires fear; but a ludicrous cast, that serves to point a pun. for, in fact, most of the good stories and smart things which enliven the spirits that have been concentrated at whist, are manufactured out of the incidents to which the very men labour to give a droll turn who countenance the abuse to live on the spoil. there is not, perhaps, in the kingdom, a more dogmatical, or luxurious set of men, than the pedantic tyrants who reside in colleges and preside at public schools. the vacations are equally injurious to the morals of the masters and pupils, and the intercourse, which the former keep up with the nobility, introduces the same vanity and extravagance into their families, which banish domestic duties and comforts from the lordly mansion, whose state is awkwardly aped. the boys, who live at a great expence with the masters and assistants, are never domesticated, though placed there for that purpose; for, after a silent dinner, they swallow a hasty glass of wine, and retire to plan some mischievous trick, or to ridicule the person or manners of the very people they have just been cringing to, and whom they ought to consider as the representatives of their parents. can it then be a matter of surprise that boys become selfish and vicious who are thus shut out from social converse? or that a mitre often graces the brow of one of these diligent pastors? the desire of living in the same style, as the rank just above them, infects each individual and every class of people, and meanness is the concomitant of this ignoble ambition; but those professions are most debasing whose ladder is patronage; yet, out of one of these professions the tutors of youth are, in general, chosen. but, can they be expected to inspire independent sentiments, whose conduct must be regulated by the cautious prudence that is ever on the watch for preferment? so far, however, from thinking of the morals of boys, i have heard several masters of schools argue, that they only undertook to teach latin and greek; and that they had fulfilled their duty, by sending some good scholars to college. a few good scholars, i grant, may have been formed by emulation and discipline; but, to bring forward these clever boys, the health and morals of a number have been sacrificed. the sons of our gentry and wealthy commoners are mostly educated at these seminaries, and will any one pretend to assert that the majority, making every allowance, come under the description of tolerable scholars? it is not for the benefit of society that a few brilliant men should be brought forward at the expence of the multitude. it is true, that great men seem to start up, as great revolutions occur, at proper intervals, to restore order, and to blow aside the clouds that thicken over the face of truth; but let more reason and virtue prevail in society, and these strong winds would not be necessary. public education, of every denomination, should be directed to form citizens; but if you wish to make good citizens, you must first exercise the affections of a son and a brother. this is the only way to expand the heart; for public affections, as well as public virtues, must ever grow out of the private character, or they are merely meteors that shoot athwart a dark sky, and disappear as they are gazed at and admired. few, i believe, have had much affection for mankind, who did not first love their parents, their brothers, sisters, and even the domestic brutes, whom they first played with. the exercise of youthful sympathies forms the moral temperature; and it is the recollection of these first affections and pursuits that gives life to those that are afterwards more under the direction of reason. in youth, the fondest friendships are formed, the genial juices mounting at the same time, kindly mix; or, rather the heart, tempered for the reception of friendship, is accustomed to seek for pleasure in something more noble than the churlish gratification of appetite. in order then to inspire a love of home and domestic pleasures, children ought to be educated at home, for riotous holidays only make them fond of home for their own sakes. yet, the vacations, which do not foster domestic affections, continually disturb the course of study, and render any plan of improvement abortive which includes temperance; still, were they abolished, children would be entirely separated from their parents, and i question whether they would become better citizens by sacrificing the preparatory affections, by destroying the force of relationships that render the marriage state as necessary as respectable. but, if a private education produce self-importance, or insulate a man in his family, the evil is only shifted, not remedied. this train of reasoning brings me back to a subject, on which i mean to dwell, the necessity of establishing proper day-schools. but, these should be national establishments, for whilst schoolmasters are dependent on the caprice of parents, little exertion can be expected from them, more than is necessary to please ignorant people. indeed, the necessity of a master's giving the parents some sample of the boys abilities, which during the vacation is shewn to every visitor,* is productive of more mischief than would at first be supposed. for it is seldom done entirely to speak with moderation, by the child itself; thus the master countenances falsehood, or winds the poor machine up to some extraordinary exertion, that injures the wheels, and stops the progress of gradual improvement. the memory is loaded with unintelligible words, to make a shew of, without the understanding's acquiring any distinct ideas; but only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of mind, which teaches young people how to begin to think. the imagination should not be allowed to debauch the understanding before it gained strength, or vanity will become the forerunner of vice: for every way of exhibiting the acquirements of a child is injurious to its moral character. * i now particularly allude to the numerous academies in and about london, and to the behaviour of the trading part of this great city. how much time is lost in teaching them to recite what they do not understand? whilst, seated on benches, all in their best array, the mammas listen with astonishment to the parrot-like prattle, uttered in solemn cadences, with all the pomp of ignorance and folly. such exhibitions only serve to strike the spreading fibres of vanity through the whole mind; for they neither teach children to speak fluently, nor behave gracefully. so far from it, that these frivolous pursuits might comprehensively be termed the study of affectation; for we now rarely see a simple, bashful boy, though few people of taste were ever disgusted by that awkward sheepishness so natural to the age, which schools and an early introduction into society, have changed into impudence and apish grimace. yet, how can these things be remedied whilst school-masters depend entirely on parents for a subsistence; and, when so many rival schools hang out their lures, to catch the attention of vain fathers and mothers, whose parental affection only leads them to wish that their children should outshine those of their neighbours? without great good luck, a sensible, conscientious man, would starve before he could raise a school, if he disdained to bubble weak parents by practising the secret tricks of the craft. in the best regulated schools, however, where swarms are not crammed together, many bad habits must be acquired; but, at common schools, the body, heart, and understanding, are equally stunted, for parents are often only in quest of the cheapest school, and the master could not live, if he did not take a much greater number than he could manage himself; nor will the scanty pittance, allowed for each child, permit him to hire ushers sufficient to assist in the discharge of the mechanical part of the business. besides, whatever appearance the house and garden may make, the children do not enjoy the comfort of either, for they are continually reminded by irksome restrictions that they are not at home, and the state-rooms, garden, &c. must be kept in order for the recreation of the parents; who, of a sunday, visit the school, and are impressed by the very parade that renders the situation of their children uncomfortable. with what disgust have i heard sensible women, for girls are more restrained and cowed than boys, speak of the wearisome confinement, which they endured at school. not allowed, perhaps, to step out of one broad walk in a superb garden, and obliged to pace with steady deportment stupidly backwards and forwards, holding up their heads and turning out their toes, with shoulders braced back, instead of bounding, as nature directs to complete her own design, in the various attitudes so conducive to health.* the pure animal spirits, which make both mind and body shoot out, and unfold the tender blossoms of hope, are turned sour, and vented in vain wishes or pert repinings, that contract the faculties and spoil the temper; else they mount to the brain, and sharpening the understanding before it gains proportionable strength, produce that pitiful cunning which disgracefully characterizes the female mindand i fear will ever characterize it whilst women remain the slaves of power! * i remember a circumstance that once came under my own observation, and raised my indignation. i went to visit a little boy at a school where young children were prepared for a larger one. the master took me into the school-room, &c. but whilst i walked down a broad gravel walk, i could not help observing that the grass grew very luxuriantly on each side of me. i immediately asked the child some questions, and found that the poor boys were not allowed to stir off the walk, and that the master sometimes permitted sheep to be turned in to crop the untrodden grass. the tyrant of this domain used to sit by a window that overlooked the prison yard, and one nook turning from it, where the unfortunate babes could sport freely, he enclosed, and planted it with potatoes. the wife likewise was equally anxious to keep the children in order, lest they should dirty or tear their clothes. the little respect paid to chastity in the male world is, i am persuaded, the grand source of many of the physical and moral evils that torment mankind, as well as of the vices and follies that degrade and destroy women; yet at school, boys infallibly lose that decent bashfulness, which might have ripened into modesty, at home. and what nasty indecent tricks do they not also learn from each other, when a number of them pig together in the same bedchamber, not to speak of the vices, which render the body weak, whilst they effectually prevent the acquisition of any delicacy of mind. the little attention paid to the cultivation of modesty, amongst men, produces great depravity in all the relationships of society; for, to purify the heart, and first call forth all the youthful powers, to prepare the man to discharge the benevolent duties of life, is sacrificed to premature lust; but, all the social affections are deadened by the selfish gratifications, which very early pollute the mind, and dry up the generous juices of the heart. in what an unnatural manner is innocence often violated; and what serious consequences ensue to render private vices a public pest. besides, an habit of personal order, which has more effect on the moral character, than is, in general, supposed, can only be acquired at home, where that respectable reserve is kept up which checks the familiarity, that sinking into beastliness, undermines the affection it insults. i have already animadverted on the bad habits which females acquire when they are shut up together; and, i think, that the observation may fairly be extended to the other sex, till the natural inference is drawn which i have had in view throughoutthat to improve both sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public schools, to be educated together. if marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship, nor will women ever fulfil the peculiar duties of their sex, till they become enlightened citizens, till they become free by being enabled to earn their own subsistence, independent of men; in the same manner, i mean, to prevent misconstruction, as one man is independent of another. nay, marriage will never be held sacred till women, by being brought up with men, are prepared to be their companions rather than their mistresses; for the mean doublings of cunning will ever render them contemptible, whilst oppression renders them timid. so convinced am i of this truth, that i will venture to predict that virtue will never prevail in society till the virtues of both sexes are founded on reason; and, till the affections common to both are allowed to gain their due strength by the discharge of mutual duties. were boys and girls permitted to pursue the same studies together, those graceful decencies might early be inculcated which produce modesty without those sexual distinctions that taint the mind. lessons of politeness, and that formulary of decorum, which treads on the heels of falsehood, would be rendered useless by habitual propriety of behaviour. not, indeed, put on for visitors like the courtly robe of politeness, but the sober effect of cleanliness of mind. would not this simple elegance of sincerity be a chaste homage paid to domestic affections, far surpassing the meretricious compliments that shine with false lustre in the heartless intercourse of fashionable life? but, till more understanding preponderates in society there will ever be a want of heart and taste, and the harlot's rouge will supply the place of that celestial suffusion which only virtuous affections can give to the face. gallantry, and what is called love, may subsist without simplicity of character; but the main pillars of friendship, are respect and confidenceesteem is never founded on it cannot tell what! a taste for the fine arts requires great cultivation; but not more than a taste for the virtuous affections; and both suppose that enlargement of mind which opens so many sources of mental pleasure. why do people hurry to noisy scenes, and crowded circles? i should answer, because they want activity of mind, because they have not cherished the virtues of the heart. they only, therefore, see and feel in the gross, and continually pine after variety, finding every thing that is simple insipid. this argument may be carried further than philosophers are aware of, for if nature destined woman, in particular, for the discharge of domestic duties, she made her susceptible of the attached affections in a great degree. now women are notoriously fond of pleasure; and, naturally must be so according to my definition, because they cannot enter into the minutiae of domestic taste; lacking judgment, the foundation of all taste. for the understanding, in spite of sensual cavillers, reserves to itself the privilege of conveying pure joy to the heart. with what a languid yawn have i seen an admirable poem thrown down, that a man of true taste returns to, again and again with rapture; and, whilst melody has almost suspended respiration, a lady has asked me where i bought my gown. i have seen also an eye glanced coldly over a most exquisite picture, rest, sparkling with pleasure, on a caricature rudely sketched; and whilst some terrific feature in nature has spread a sublime stillness through my soul, i have been desired to observe the pretty tricks of a lap-dog, that my perverse fate forced me to travel with. is it surprising that such a tasteless being should rather caress this dog than her children? or, that she should prefer the rant of flattery to the simple accents of sincerity? to illustrate this remark, i must be allowed to observe, that men of the first genius, and most cultivated minds, have appeared to have the highest relish for the simple beauties of nature; and they must have forcibly felt, what they have so well described, the charm which natural affections, and unsophisticated feelings spread round the human character. it is this power of looking into the heart, and responsively vibrating with each emotion, that enables the poet to personify each passion, and the painter to sketch with a pencil of fire. true taste is ever the work of the understanding employed in observing natural effects; and till women have more understanding, it is vain to expect them to possess domestic taste. their lively senses will ever be at work to harden their hearts, and the emotions struck out of them will continue to be vivid and transitory, unless a proper education store their mind with knowledge. it is the want of domestic taste, and not the acquirement of knowledge, that takes women out of their families, and tears the smiling babe from the breast that ought to afford it nourishment. women have been allowed to remain in ignorance, and slavish dependence, many, very many years, and still we hear of nothing but their fondness of pleasure and sway, their preference of rakes and soldiers, their childish attachment to toys, and the vanity that makes them value accomplishments more than virtues. history brings forward a fearful catalogue of the crimes which their cunning has produced, when the weak slaves have had sufficient address to over-reach their masters. in france, and in how many other countries, have men been the luxurious despots, and women the crafty ministers?does this prove that ignorance and dependence domesticate them? is not their folly the by-word of the libertines, who relax in their society; and do not men of sense continually lament that an immoderate fondness for dress and dissipation carries the mother of a family for ever from home? their hearts have not been debauched by knowledge, or their minds led astray by scientific pursuits; yet, they do not fulfil the peculiar duties which as women they are called upon by nature to fulfil. on the contrary, the state of warfare which subsists between the sexes, makes them employ those wiles, that often frustrate the more open designs of force. when, therefore, i call women slaves, i mean in a political and civil sense; for, indirectly they obtain too much power, and are debased by their exertions to obtain illicit sway. let an enlightened nation* then try what effect reason would have to bring them back to nature, and their duty; and allowing them to share the advantages of education and government with man, see whether they will become better, as they grow wiser and become free. they cannot be injured by the experiment; for it is not in the power of man to render them more insignificant than they are at present. * france. to render this practicable, day schools, for particular ages, should be established by government, in which boys and girls might be educated together. the school for the younger children, from five to nine years of age, ought to be absolutely free and open to all classes.* a sufficient number of masters should also be chosen by a select committee, in each parish, to whom any complaint of negligence, &c. might be made, if signed by six of the children's parents. * treating this part of the subject, i have borrowed some hints from a very sensible pamphlet, written by the late bishop of autun on public education. ushers would then be unnecessary; for i believe experience will ever prove that this kind of subordinate authority is particularly injurious to the morals of youth. what, indeed, can tend to deprave the character more than outward submission and inward contempt? yet how can boys be expected to treat an usher with respect, when the master seems to consider him in the light of a servant, and almost to countenance the ridicule which becomes the chief amusement of the boys during the play hours? but nothing of this kind could occur in an elementary day-school, where boys and girls, the rich and poor, should meet together. and to prevent any of the distinctions of vanity, they should be dressed alike, and all obliged to submit to the same discipline, or leave the school. the school-room ought to be surrounded by a large piece of ground, in which the children might be usefully exercised, for at this age they should not be confined to any sedentary employment for more than an hour at a time. but these relaxations might all be rendered a part of elementary education, for many things improve and amuse the senses, when introduced as a kind of show, to the principles of which, dryly laid down, children would turn a deaf ear. for instance, botany, mechanics, and astronomy. reading, writing, arithmetic, natural history, and some simple experiments in natural philosophy, might fill up the day; but these pursuits should never encroach on gymnastic plays in the open air. the elements of religion, history, the history of man, and politics, might also be taught by conversations, in the socratic form. after the age of nine, girls and boys, intended for domestic employments, or mechanical trades, ought to be removed to other schools, and receive instruction, in some measure appropriated to the destination of each individual, the two sexes being still together in the morning; but in the afternoon, the girls should attend a school, where plain-work, mantua-making, millinery, &c. would be their employment. the young people of superior abilities, or fortune, might now be taught, in another school, the dead and living languages, the elements of science, and continue the study of history and politics, on a more extensive scale, which would not exclude polite literature. girls and boys still together? i hear some readers ask: yes. and i should not fear any other consequence than that some early attachment might take place; which, whilst it had the best effect on the moral character of the young people, might not perfectly agree with the views of the parents, for it will be a long time, i fear, before the world will be so far enlightened that parents, only anxious to render their children virtuous, shall allow them to choose companions for life themselves. besides, this would be a sure way to promote early marriages, and from early marriages the most salutary physical and moral effects naturally flow. what a different character does a married citizen assume from the selfish coxcomb, who lives, but for himself, and who is often afraid to marry lest he should not be able to live in a certain style. great emergencies excepted, which would rarely occur in a society of which equality was the basis, a man can only be prepared to discharge the duties of public life, by the habitual practice of those inferiour ones which form the man. in this plan of education the constitution of boys would not be ruined by the early debaucheries, which now make men so selfish, or girls rendered weak and vain, by indolence, and frivolous pursuits. but, i presuppose, that such a degree of equality should be established between the sexes as would shut out gallantry and coquetry, yet allow friendship and love to temper the heart for the discharge of higher duties. these would be schools of moralityand the happiness of man, allowed to flow from the pure springs of duty and affection, what advances might not the human mind make? society can only be happy and free in proportion as it is virtuous; but the present distinctions, established in society, corrode all private, and blast all public virtue. i have already inveighed against the custom of confining girls to their needle, and shutting them out from all political and civil employments; for by thus narrowing their minds they are rendered unfit to fulfil the peculiar duties which nature has assigned them. only employed about the little incidents of the day, they necessarily grow up cunning. my very soul has often sickened at observing the sly tricks practised by women to gain some foolish thing on which their silly hearts were set. not allowed to dispose of money, or call any thing their own, they learn to turn the market penny; or, should a husband offend, by staying from home, or give rise to some emotions of jealousya new gown, or any pretty bawble, smooths juno's angry brow. but these littlenesses would not degrade their character, if women were led to respect themselves, if political and moral subjects were opened to them; and, i will venture to affirm, that this is the only way to make them properly attentive to their domestic duties.an active mind embraces the whole circle of its duties, and finds time enough for all. it is not, i assert, a bold attempt to emulate masculine virtues; it is not the enchantment of literary pursuits, or the steady investigation of scientific subjects, that leads women astray from duty. no, it is indolence and vanitythe love of pleasure and the love of sway, that will reign paramount in an empty mind. i say empty emphatically, because the education which women now receive scarcely deserves the name. for the little knowledge that they are led to acquire, during the important years of youth, is merely relative to accomplishments; and accomplishments without a bottom, for unless the understanding be cultivated, superficial and monotonous is every grace. like the charms of a made up face, they only strike the senses in a crowd; but at home, wanting mind, they want variety. the consequence is obvious; in gay scenes of dissipation we meet the artificial mind and face, for those who fly from solitude dread, next to solitude, the domestic circle; not having it in their power to amuse or interest, they feel their own insignificance, or find nothing to amuse or interest themselves. besides, what can be more indelicate than a girl's coming out in the fashionable world? which, in other words, is to bring to market a marriageable miss, whose person is taken from one public place to another, richly caparisoned. yet, mixing in the giddy. circle under restraint, these butterflies long to flutter at large, for the first affection of their souls is their own persons, to which their attention has been called with the most sedulous care whilst they were preparing for the period that decides their fate for life. instead of pursuing this idle routine, sighing for tasteless shew, and heartless state, with what dignity would the youths of both sexes form attachments in the schools that i have cursorily pointed out; in which, as life advanced, dancing, music, and drawing, might be admitted as relaxations, for at these schools young people of fortune ought to remain, more or less, till they were of age. those, who were designed for particular professions, might attend, three or four mornings in the week, the schools appropriated for their immediate instruction. i only drop these observations at present, as hints; rather, indeed, as an outline of the plan i mean, than a digested one; but i must add, that i highly approve of one regulation mentioned in the pamphlet* already alluded to, that of making the children and youths independent of the masters respecting punishments. they should be tried by their peers, which would be an admirable method of fixing sound principles of justice in the mind, and might have the happiest effect on the temper, which is very early soured or irritated by tyranny, till it becomes peevishly cunning, or ferociously overbearing. * the bishop of autun's. my imagination darts forward with benevolent fervour to greet these amiable and respectable groups, in spite of the sneering of cold hearts, who are at liberty to utter, with frigid self-importance, the damning epithetromantic; the force of which i shall endeavour to blunt by repeating the words of an eloquent moralist.'i know not whether the allusions of a truly humane heart, whose zeal renders every thing easy, be not preferable to that rough and repulsing reason, which always finds in indifference for the public good, the first obstacle to whatever would promote it.' i know that libertines will also exclaim, that woman would be unsexed by acquiring strength of body and mind, and that beauty, soft bewitching beauty! would no longer adorn the daughters of men. i am of a very different opinion, for i think that, on the contrary, we should then see dignified beauty, and true grace; to produce which, many powerful physical and moral causes would concur.not relaxed beauty, it is true, or the graces of helplessness; but such as appears to make us respect the human body as a majestic pile fit to receive a noble inhabitant, in the relics of antiquity. i do not forget the popular opinion that the grecian statues were not modelled after nature. i mean, not according to the proportions of a particular man; but that beautiful limbs and features were selected from various bodies to form an harmonious whole. this might, in some degree, be true. the fine ideal picture of an exalted imagination might be superiour to the materials which the statuary found in nature, and thus it might with propriety be termed rather the model of mankind than of a man. it was not, however, the mechanical selection of limbs and features; but the ebullition of an heated fancy that burst forth, and the fine senses and enlarged understanding of the artist selected the solid matter, which he drew into this glowing focus. i observed that it was not mechanical, because a whole was produceda model of that grand simplicity, of those concurring energies, which arrest our attention and command our reverence. for only insipid lifeless beauty is produced by a servile copy of even beautiful nature. yet, independent of these observations, i believe that the human form must have been far more beautiful than it is at present, because extreme indolence, barbarous ligatures, and many causes, which forcibly act on it, in our luxurious state of society, did not retard its expansion, or render it deformed. exercise and cleanliness appear to be not only the surest means of preserving health, but of promoting beauty, the physical causes only considered; yet, this is not sufficient, moral ones must concur, or beauty will be merely of that rustic kind which blooms on the innocent, wholesome, countenances of some country people, whose minds have not been exercised. to render the person perfect, physical and moral beauty ought to be attained at the same time; each lending and receiving force by the combination. judgment must reside on the brow, affection and fancy beam in the eye, and humanity curve the cheek, or vain is the sparkling of the finest eye or the elegantly turned finish of the fairest features: whilst in every motion that displays the active limbs and well-knit joints, grace and modesty should appear. but this fair assemblage is not to be brought together by chance; it is the reward of exertions calculated to support each other; for judgment can only be acquired by reflection, affection by the discharge of duties, and humanity by the exercise of compassion to every living creature. humanity to animals should be particularly inculcated as a part of national education, for it is not at present one of our national virtues. tenderness for their humble dumb domestics, amongst the lower class, is oftener to be found in a savage than a civilized state. for civilization prevents that intercourse which creates affection in the rude hut, or mud hovel, and leads uncultivated minds who are only depraved by the refinements which prevail in the society, where they are trodden under foot by the rich, to domineer over them to revenge the insults that they are obliged to bear from their superiours. this habitual cruelty is first caught at school, where it is one of the rare sports of the boys to torment the miserable brutes that fall in their way. the transition, as they grow up, from barbarity to brutes to domestic tyranny over wives, children, and servants, is very easy. justice, or even benevolence, will not be a powerful spring of action unless it extend to the whole creation; nay, i believe that it may be delivered as an axiom, that those who can see pain, unmoved, will soon learn to inflict it. the vulgar are swayed by present feelings, and the habits which they have accidentally acquired; but on partial feelings much dependence cannot be placed, though they be just; for, when they are not invigorated by reflection, custom weakens them, till they are scarcely perceptible. the sympathies of our nature are strengthened by pondering cogitations, and deadened by thoughtless use. macbeth's heart smote him more for one murder, the first, than for a hundred subsequent ones, which were necessary to back it. but, when i used the epithet vulgar, i did not mean to confine my remark to the poor, for partial humanity, founded on present sensations, or whim, is quite as conspicuous, if not more so, amongst the rich. the lady who sheds tears for the bird starved in a snare, and execrates the devils in the shape of men, who goad to madness the poor ox, or whip the patient ass, tottering under a burden above its strength, will, nevertheless, keep her coachman and horses whole hours waiting for her, when the sharp frost bites, or the rain beats against the well-closed windows which do not admit a breath of air to tell her how roughly the wind blows without. and she who takes her dogs to bed, and nurses them with a parade of sensibility, when sick, will suffer her babes to grow up crooked in a nursery. this illustration of my argument is drawn from a matter of fact. the woman whom i allude to was handsome, reckoned very handsome, by those who do not miss the mind when the face is plump and fair; but her understanding had not been led from female duties by literature, nor her innocence debauched by knowledge. no, she was quite feminine, according to the masculine acceptation of the word; and, so far from loving these spoiled brutes that filled the place which her children ought to have occupied, she only lisped out a pretty mixture of french and english nonsense, to please the men who flocked round her. the wife, mother, and human creature, were all swallowed up by the factitious character which an improper education and the selfish vanity of beauty had produced. i do not like to make a distinction without a difference, and i own that i have been as much disgusted by the fine lady who took her lap-dog to her bosom instead of her child; as by the ferocity of a man, who, beating his horse, declared, that he knew as well when he did wrong, as a christian. this brood of folly shews how mistaken they are who, if they allow women to leave their harams, do not cultivate their understandings, in order to plant virtues in their hearts. for had they sense, they might acquire that domestic taste which would lead them to love with reasonable subordination their whole family, from their husband to the house-dog; nor would they ever insult humanity in the person of the most menial servant by paying more attention to the comfort of a brute, than to that of a fellow-creature. my observations on national education are obviously hints; but i principally wish to enforce the necessity of educating the sexes together to perfect both, and of making children sleep at home that they may learn to love home; yet to make private support, instead of smothering, public affections, they should be sent to school to mix with a number of equals, for only by the jostlings of equality can we form a just opinion of ourselves. to render mankind more virtuous, and happier of course, both sexes must act from the same principle; but how can that be expected when only one is allowed to see the reasonableness of it? to render also the social compact truly equitable, and in order to spread those enlightening principles, which alone can meliorate the fate of man, women must be allowed to found their virtue on knowledge, which is scarcely possible unless they be educated by the same pursuits as men. for they are now made so inferiour by ignorance and low desires, as not to deserve to be ranked with them; or, by the serpentine wrigglings of cunning they mount the tree of knowledge, and only acquire sufficient to lead men astray. it is plain from the history of all nations, that women cannot be confined to merely domestic pursuits, for they will not fulfil family duties, unless their minds take a wider range, and whilst they are kept in ignorance they become in the same proportion the slaves of pleasure as they are the slaves of man. nor can they be shut out if great enterprises, though the narrowness of their minds often make them mar, what they are unable to comprehend. the libertinism, and even the virtues of superiour men, will always give women, of some description, great power over them; and these weak women, under the influence of childish passions and selfish vanity, will throw a false light over the objects which the very men view with their eyes, who ought to enlighten their judgment. men of fancy, and those sanguine characters who mostly hold the helm of human affairs, in general, relax in the society of women; and surely i need not cite to the most superficial reader of history the numerous examples of vice and oppression which the private intrigues of female favourites have produced; not to dwell on the mischief that naturally arises from the blundering interposition of well-meaning folly. for in the transactions of business it is much better to have to deal with a knave than a fool, because a knave adheres to some plan; and any plan of reason may be seen through much sooner than a sudden flight of folly. the power which vile and foolish women have had over wise men, who possessed sensibility, is notorious; i shall only mention one instance. who ever drew a more exalted female character than rousseau? though in the lump he constantly endeavoured to degrade the sex. and why was he thus anxious? truly to justify to himself the affection which weakness and virtue had made him cherish for that fool theresa. he could not raise her to the common level of her sex; and therefore he laboured to bring woman down to her's. he found her a convenient humble companion, and pride made him determine to find some superiour virtues in the being whom he chose to live with; but did not her conduct during his life, and after his death, clearly shew how grossly he was mistaken who called her a celestial innocent. nay, in the bitterness of his heart, he himself laments, that when his bodily infirmities made him no longer treat her like a woman, she ceased to have an affection for him. and it was very natural that she should, for having so few sentiments in common, when the sexual tie was broken, what was to hold her? to hold her affection whose sensibility was confined to one sex, nay, to one man, it requires sense to turn sensibility into the broad channel of humanity; many women have not mind enough to have an affection for a woman, or a friendship for a man. but the sexual weakness that makes woman depend on man for a subsistence, produces a kind of cattish affection which leads a wife to purr about her husband as she would about any man who fed and caressed her. men are, however, often gratified by this kind of fondness, which is confined in a beastly manner to themselves; but should they ever become more virtuous, they will wish to converse at their fire-side with a friend, after they cease to play with a mistress. besides, understanding is necessary to give variety and interest to sensual enjoyments, for low, indeed, in the intellectual scale, is the mind that can continue to love when neither virtue nor sense give a human appearance to an animal appetite. but sense will always preponderate; and if women be not, in general, brought more on a level with men, some superiour woman, like the greek courtezans, will assemble the men of abilities around them, and draw from their families many citizens, who would have stayed at home had their wives had more sense, or the graces which result from the exercise of the understanding and fancy, the legitimate parents of taste. a woman of talents, if she be not absolutely ugly, will always obtain great power, raised by the weakness of her sex; and in proportion as men acquire virtue and delicacy, by the exertion of reason, they will look for both in women, but they can only acquire them in the same way that men do. in france or italy, have the women confined themselves to domestic life? though they have not hitherto had a political existence, yet, have they not illicitly had great sway? corrupting themselves and the men with whose passions they played. in short, in whatever light i view the subject, reason and experience convince me that the only method of leading women to fulfil their peculiar duties, is to free them from all restraint by allowing them to participate in the inherent rights of mankind. make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of men will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet. let men take their choice, man and woman were made for each other, though not to become one being; and if they will not improve women, they will deprave them! i speak of the improvement and emancipation of the whole sex, for i know that the behaviour of a few women, who, by accident, or following a strong bent of nature, have acquired a portion of knowledge superiour to that of the rest of their sex, has often been over-bearing; but there have been instances of women who, attaining knowledge, have not discarded modesty, nor have they always pedantically appeared to despise the ignorance which they laboured to disperse in their own minds. the exclamations then which any advice respecting female learning, commonly produces, especially from pretty women, often arise from envy. when they chance to see that even the lustre of their eyes, and the flippant sportiveness of refined coquetry will not always secure them attention, during a whole evening, should a woman of a more cultivated understanding endeavour to give a rational turn to the conversation, the common source of consolation is, that such women seldom get husbands. what arts have i not seen silly women use to interrupt by flirtation, a very significant word to describe such a manoeuvre, a rational conversation which made the men forget that they were pretty women. but, allowing what is very natural to man, that the possession of rare abilities is really calculated to excite over-weening pride, disgusting in both men and womenin what a state of inferiority must the female faculties have rusted when such a small portion of knowledge as those women attained, who have sneeringly been termed learned women, could be singular?sufficiently so to puff up the possessor, and excite envy in her contemporaries, and some of the other sex. nay, has not a little rationality exposed many women to the severest censure? i advert to well known facts, for i have frequently heard women ridiculed, and every little weakness exposed, only because they adopted the advice of some medical men, and deviated from the beaten track in their mode of treating their infants. i have actually heard this barbarous aversion to innovation carried still further, and a sensible woman stigmatized as an unnatural mother, who has thus been wisely solicitous to preserve the health of her children, when in the midst of her care she has lost one by some of the casualties of infancy, which no prudence can ward off. her acquaintance have observed, that this was the consequence of new-fangled notionsthe new-fangled notions of ease and cleanliness. and those who pretending to experience, though they have long adhered to prejudices that have, according to the opinion of the most sagacious physicians, thinned the human race, almost rejoiced at the disaster that gave a kind of sanction to prescription. indeed, if it were only on this account, the national education of women is of the utmost consequence, for what a number of human sacrifices are made to that moloch prejudice! and in how many ways are children destroyed by the lasciviousness of man? the want of natural affection, in many women, who are drawn from their duty by the admiration of men, and the ignorance of others, render the infancy of man a much more perilous state than that of brutes; yet men are unwilling to place women in situations proper to enable them to acquire sufficient understanding to know how even to nurse their babes. so forcibly does this truth strike me, that i would rest the whole tendency of my reasoning upon it, for whatever tends to incapacitate the maternal character, takes woman out of her sphere. but it is vain to expect the present race of weak mothers either to take that reasonable care of a child's body, which is necessary to lay the foundation of a good constitution, supposing that it do not suffer for the sins of its fathers; or, to manage its temper so judiciously that the child will not have, as it grows up, to throw off all that its mother, its first instructor, directly or indirectly taught; and unless the mind have uncommon vigour, womanish follies will stick to the character throughout life. the weakness of the mother will be visited on the children! and whilst women are educated to rely on their husbands for judgment, this must ever be the consequence, for there is no improving an understanding by halves, nor can any being act wisely from imitation, because in every circumstance of life there is a kind of individuality, which requires an exertion of judgment to modify general rules. the being who can think justly in one track, will soon extend its intellectual empire; and she who has sufficient judgment to manage her children, will not submit, right or wrong, to her husband, or patiently to the social laws which make a nonentity of a wife. in public schools women, to guard against the errors of ignorance, should be taught the elements of anatomy and medicine, not only to enable them to take proper care of their own health, but to make them rational nurses of their infants, parents, and husbands; for the bills of mortality are swelled by the blunders of self-willed old women, who give nostrums of them own without knowing any thing of the human frame. it is likewise proper only in a domestic view, to make women acquainted with the anatomy of the mind, by allowing the sexes to associate together in every pursuit; and by leading them to observe the progress of the human understanding in the improvement of the sciences and arts; never forgetting the science of morality, or the study of the political history of mankind. a man has been termed a microcosm; and every family might also be called a state. states, it is true, have mostly been governed by arts that disgrace the character of man; and the want of a just constitution, and equal laws, have so perplexed the notions of the worldly wise, that they more than question the reasonableness of contending for the rights of humanity. thus morality, polluted in the national reservoir, sends off streams of vice to corrupt the constituent parts of the body politic; but should more noble, or rather, more just principles regulate the laws, which ought to be the government of society, and not those who execute them, duty might become the rule of private conduct. besides, by the exercise of their bodies and minds women would acquire that mental activity so necessary in the maternal character, united with the fortitude that distinguishes steadiness of conduct from the obstinate perverseness of weakness. for it is dangerous to advise the indolent to be steady, because they instantly become rigorous, and to save themselves trouble, punish with severity faults that the patient fortitude of reason might have prevented. but fortitude presupposes strength of mind; and is strength of mind to be acquired by indolent acquiescence? by asking advice instead of exerting the judgment? by obeying through fear, instead of practising the forbearance, which we all stand in need of ourselves?the conclusion which i wish to draw, is obvious; make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives, and mothers; that isif men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers. discussing the advantages which a public and private education combined, as i have sketched, might rationally be expected to produce, i have dwelt most on such as are particularly relative to the female world, because i think the female world oppressed; yet the gangrene, which the vices engendered by oppression have produced, is not confined to the morbid part, but pervades society at large: so that when i wish to see my sex become more like moral agents, my heart bounds with the anticipation of the general diffusion of that sublime contentment which only morality can diffuse. chap. xiii. some instances of the folly which the ignorance of women generates; with concluding reflections on the moral improvement that a revolution in female manners might naturally be expected to produce. there are many follies, in some degree, peculiar to women: sins against reason of commission as well as of omission; but all flowing from ignorance or prejudice, i shall only point out such as appear to be particularly injurious to their moral character. and in animadverting on them, i wish especially to prove, that the weakness of mind and body, which men have endeavoured, impelled by various motives, to perpetuate, prevents their discharging the peculiar duty of their sex: for when weakness of body will not permit them to suckle their children, and weakness of mind makes them spoil their tempersis woman in a natural state? sect. i. one glaring instance of the weakness which proceeds from ignorance, first claims attention, and calls for severe reproof. in this metropolis a number of lurking leeches infamously gain a subsistence by practising on the credulity of women, pretending to cast nativities, to use the technical phrase; and many females who, proud of their rank and fortune, look down on the vulgar with sovereign contempt, shew by this credulity, that the distinction is arbitrary, and that they have not sufficiently cultivated their minds to rise above vulgar prejudices. women, because they have not been led to consider the knowledge of their duty as the one thing necessary to know, or, to live in the present moment by the discharge of it, are very anxious to peep into futurity, to learn what they have to expect to render life interesting, and to break the vacuum of ignorance. i must be allowed to expostulate seriously with the ladies who follow these idle inventions; for ladies, mistresses of families, are not ashamed to drive in their own carriages to the door of the cunning man.* and if any of them should peruse this work, i entreat them to answer to their own hearts the following questions, not forgetting that they are in the presence of god. * i once lived in the neighbourhood of one of these men, a handsome man, and saw with surprise and indignation, women, whose appearance and attendance bespoke that rank in which females are supposed to receive a superiour education, flock to his door. do you believe that there is but one god, and that he is powerful, wise, and good? do you believe that all things were created by him, and that all beings are dependent on him? do you rely on his wisdom, so conspicuous in his works, and in your own frame, and are you convinced that he has ordered all things which do not come under the cognizance of your senses, in the same perfect harmony, to fulfil his designs? do you acknowledge that the power of looking into futurity, and seeing things that are not, as if they were, is an attribute of the creator? and should he, by an impression on the minds of his creatures, think fit to impart to them some event hid in the shades of time yet unborn, to whom would the secret be revealed by immediate inspiration? the opinion of ages will answer this questionto reverend old men, to people distinguished for eminent piety. the oracles of old were thus delivered by priests dedicated to the service of the god who was supposed to inspire them. the glare of worldly pomp which surrounded these impostors, and the respect paid to them by artful politicians, who knew how to avail themselves of this useful engine to bend the necks of the strong under the dominion of the cunning, spread a sacred mysterious veil of sanctity over their lies and abominations. impressed by such solemn devotional parade, a greek, or roman lady might be excused, if she inquired of the oracle, when she was anxious to pry into futurity, or inquire about some dubious event: and her inquiries, however contrary to reason, could not be reckoned impious.but, can the professors of christianity ward off that imputation? can a christian suppose that the favourites of the most high, the highly favoured, would be obliged to lurk in disguise, and practise the most dishonest tricks to cheat silly women out of the moneywhich the poor cry for in vain? say not that such questions are an insult to common sensefor it is your own conduct, o ye foolish women! which throws an odium on your sex! and these reflections should make you shudder at your thoughtlessness, and irrational devotion.for i do not suppose that all of you laid aside your religion, such as it is, when you entered those mysterious dwellings. yet, as i have throughout supposed myself talking to ignorant women, for ignorant ye are in the most emphatical sense of the word, it would be absurd to reason with you on the egregious folly of desiring to know what the supreme wisdom has concealed. probably you would not understand me, were i to attempt to shew you that it would be absolutely inconsistent with the grand purpose of life, that of rendering human creatures wise and virtuous: and that, were it sanctioned by god, it would disturb the order established in creation; and if it be not sanctioned by god, do you expect to hear truth? can events be foretold, events which have not yet assumed a body to become subject to mortal inspection, can they be foreseen by a vicious worldling, who pampers his appetites by preying on the foolish ones? perhaps, however, you devoutly believe in the devil, and imagine, to shift the question, that he may assist his votaries; but, if really respecting the power of such a being, an enemy to goodness and to god, can you go to church after having been under such an obligation to him? from these delusions to those still more fashionable deceptions, practised by the whole tribe of magnetisers, the transition is very natural. with respect to them, it is equally proper to ask women a few questions. do you know any thing of the construction of the human frame? if not, it is proper that you should be told what every child ought to know, that when its admirable oeconomy has been disturbed by intemperance or indolence, i speak not of violent disorders, but of chronical diseases, it must be brought into a healthy state again, by slow degrees, and if the functions of life have not been materially injured, regimen, another word for temperance, air, exercise, and a few medicines, prescribed by persons who have studied the human body, are the only human means, yet discovered, of recovering that inestimable blessing health, that will bear investigation. do you then believe that these magnetisers, who, by hocus pocus tricks, pretend to work a miracle, are delegated by god, or assisted by the solver of all these kind of difficultiesthe devil? do they, when they put to flight, as it is said, disorders that have baffled the powers of medicine, work in conformity to the light of reason? or, do they effect these wonderful cures by supernatural aid? by a communication, an adept may answer, with the world of spirits. a noble privilege, it must be allowed. some of the ancients mention familiar daemons, who guarded them from danger by kindly intimating, we cannot guess in what manner, when any danger was nigh; or, pointed out what they ought to undertake. yet the men who laid claim to this privilege, out of the order of nature, insisted that it was the reward, or consequence, of superiour temperance and piety. but the present workers of wonders are not raised above their fellows by superiour temperance or sanctity. they do not cure for the love of god, but money. these are the priests of quackery, though it is true they have not the convenient expedient of selling masses for souls in purgatory, or churches where they can display crutches, and models of limbs made sound by a touch or a word. i am not conversant with the technical terms, or initiated into the arcana, therefore, i may speak improperly; but it is clear that men who will not conform to the law of reason, and earn a subsistence in an honest way, by degrees, are very fortunate in becoming acquainted with such obliging spirits. we cannot, indeed, give them credit for either great sagacity or goodness, else they would have chosen more noble instruments, when they wished to shew themselves the benevolent friends of man. it is, however, little short of blasphemy to pretend to such powers! from the whole tenour of the dispensations of providence, it appears evident to sober reason, that certain vices produce certain effects; and can any one so grossly insult the wisdom of god, as to suppose that a miracle will be allowed to disturb his general laws, to restore to health the intemperate and vicious, merely to enable them to pursue the same course with impunity? be whole, and sin no more, said jesus. and, are greater miracles to be performed by those who do not follow his footsteps, who healed the body to reach the mind? the mentioning of the name of christ, after such vile impostors, may displease some of my readersi respect their warmth; but let them not forget that the followers of these delusions bear his name, and profess to be the disciples of him, who said, by their works we should know who were the children of god or the servants of sin. i allow that it is easier to touch the body of a saint, or to be magnetised, than to restrain our appetites or govern our passions; but health of body or mind can only be recovered by these means, or we make the supreme judge partial and revengeful. is he a man that he should change, or punish out of resentment? hethe common father, wounds but to heal, says reason, and our irregularities producing certain consequences, we are forcibly shewn the nature of vice; that thus learning to know good from evil, by experience, we may hate one and love the other, in proportion to the wisdom which we attain. the poison contains the antidote; and we either reform our evil habits and cease to sin against our own bodies, to use the forcible language of scripture, or a premature death, the punishment of sin, snaps the thread of life. here an awful stop is put to our inquiries.but, why should i conceal my sentiments? considering the attributes of god, i believe that whatever punishment may follow, will tend, like the anguish of disease, to shew the malignity of vice, for the purpose of reformation. positive punishment appears so contrary to the nature of god, discoverable in all his works, and in our own reason, that i could sooner believe that the deity paid no attention to the conduct of men, than that he punished without the benevolent design of reforming. to suppose only that an all-wise and powerful being, as good as he is great, should create a being foreseeing, that after fifty or sixty years of feverish existence, it would be plunged into never ending woeis blasphemy. on what will the worm feed that is never to die? on folly, on ignorance, say yei should blush indignantly at drawing the natural conclusion could i insert it, and wish to withdraw myself from the wing of my god! on such a supposition, i speak with reverence, he would be a consuming fire. we should wish, though vainly, to fly from his presence when fear absorbed love, and darkness involved all his counsels! i know that many devout people boast of submitting to the will of god blindly, as to an arbitrary sceptre or rod, on the same principle as the indians worship the devil. in other words, like people in the common concerns of life, they do homage to power, and cringe under the foot that can crush them. rational religion, on the contrary, is a submission to the will of a being so perfectly wise, that all he wills must be directed by the proper motivemust be reasonable. and, if thus we respect god, can we give credit to the mysterious insinuations, which insult his laws? can we believe, though it should stare us in the face, that he would work a miracle to authorize confusion by sanctioning an error? yet we must either allow these impious conclusions, or treat with contempt every promise to restore health to a diseased body by supernatural means, or to foretell the incidents that can only be foreseen by god. sect. ii. another instance of that feminine weakness of character, often produced by a confined education, is a romantic twist of the mind, which has been very properly termed sentimental. women subjected by ignorance to their sensations, and only taught to look for happiness in love, refine on sensual feelings, and adopt metaphysical notions respecting that passion, which lead them shamefully to neglect the duties of life, and frequently in the midst of these sublime refinements they plump into actual vice. these are the women who are amused by the reveries of the stupid novelists, who, knowing little of human nature, work up stale tales, and describe meretricious scenes, all retailed in a sentimental jargon, which equally tend to corrupt the taste, and draw the heart aside from its daily duties. i do not mention the understanding, because never having been exercised, its slumbering energies rest inactive, like the lurking particles of fire which are supposed universally to pervade matter. females, in fact, denied all political privileges, and not allowed, as married women, excepting in criminal cases, a civil existence, have their attention naturally drawn from the interest of the whole community to that of the minute parts, though the private duty of any member of society must be very imperfectly performed when not connected with the general good. the mighty business of female life is to please, and restrained from entering into more important concerns by political and civil oppression, sentiments become events, and reflection deepens what it should, and would have effaced, if the understanding had been allowed to take a wider range. but, confined to trifling employments, they naturally imbibe opinions which the only kind of reading calculated to interest an innocent frivolous mind, inspires. unable to grasp any thing great, is it surprising that they find the reading of history a very dry task, and disquisitions addressed to the understanding intolerably tedious, and almost unintelligible? thus are they necessarily dependent on the novelist for amusement. yet, when i exclaim against novels, i mean when contrasted with those works which exercise the understanding and regulate the imagination.for any kind of reading i think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers; besides, even the productions that are only addressed to the imagination, raise the reader a little above the gross gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a shade of delicacy. this observation is the result of experience; for i have known several notable women, and one in particular, who was a very good womanas good as such a narrow mind would allow her to be, who took care that her daughters (three in number) should never see a novel. as she was a woman of fortune and fashion, they had various masters to attend them, and a sort of menial governess to watch their footsteps. from their masters they learned how tables, chairs, &c. were called in french and italian; but as the few books thrown in their way were far above their capacities, or devotional, they neither acquired ideas nor sentiments, and passed their time, when not compelled to repeat words, in dressing, quarrelling with each other, or conversing with their maids by stealth, till they were brought into company as marriageable. their mother, a widow, was busy in the mean time in keeping up her connections, as she termed a numerous acquaintance, lest her girls should want a proper introduction into the great world. and these young ladies, with minds vulgar in every sense of the word, and spoiled tempers, entered life puffed up with notions of their own consequence, and looking down with contempt on those who could not vie with them in dress and parade. with respect to love, nature, or their nurses, had taken care to teach them the physical meaning of the word; and, as they had few topics of conversation, and fewer refinements of sentiment, they expressed their gross wishes not in very delicate phrases, when they spoke freely, talking of matrimony. could these girls have been injured by the perusal of novels? i almost forgot a shade in the character of one of them; she affected a simplicity bordering on folly, and with a simper would utter the most immodest remarks and questions, the full meaning of which she had learned whilst secluded from the world, and afraid to speak in her mother's presence, who governed with a high hand: they were all educated, as she prided herself, in a most exemplary, manner; and read their chapters and psalms before breakfast, never touching a silly novel. this is only one instance; but i recollect many other women who, not led by degrees to proper studies, and not permitted to choose for themselves, have indeed been overgrown children; or have obtained, by mixing in the world, a little of what is termed common sense: that is, a distinct manner of seeing common occurrences, as they stand detached: but what deserves the name of intellect, the power of gaining general or abstract ideas, or even intermediate ones, was out of the question. their minds were quiescent, and when they were not roused by sensible objects and employments of that kind, they were low-spirited, would cry, or go to sleep. when, therefore, i advise my sex not to read such flimsy works, it is to induce them to read something superiour; for i coincide in opinion with a sagacious man, who, having a daughter and niece under his care, pursued a very different plan with each. the niece, who had considerable abilities, had, before she was left to his guardianship, been indulged in desultory reading. her he endeavoured to lead, and did lead to history and moral essays; but his daughter, whom a fond weak mother had indulged, and who consequently was averse to every thing like application, he allowed to read novels: and used to justify his conduct by saying, that if she ever attained a relish for reading them, he should have some foundation to work upon; and that erroneous opinions were better than none at all. in fact the female mind has been so totally neglected, that knowledge was only to be acquired from this muddy source, till from reading novels some women of superiour talents learned to despise them. the best method, i believe, that can be adopted to correct a fondness for novels is to ridicule them: not indiscriminately, for then it would have little effect; but, if a judicious person, with some turn for humour, would read several to a young girl, and point out both by tones, and apt comparisons with pathetic incidents and heroic characters in history, how foolishly and ridiculously they caricatured human nature, just opinions might be substituted instead of romantic sentiments. in one respect, however, the majority of both sexes resemble, and equally shew a want of taste and modesty. ignorant women, forced to be chaste to preserve their reputation, allow their imagination to revel in the unnatural and meretricious scenes sketched by the novel writers of the day, slighting as insipid the sober dignity and matron graces of history,* whilst men carry the same vitiated taste into life, and fly for amusement to the wanton, from the unsophisticated charms of virtue, and the grave respectability of sense. * i am not now alluding to that superiority of mind which leads to the creation of ideal beauty, when he, surveyed with a penetrating eye, appears a tragicomedy, in which little can be seen to satisfy the heart without the help of fancy. besides, the reading of novels makes women, and particularly ladies of fashion, very fond of using strong expressions and superlatives in conversation; and, though the dissipated artificial life which they lead prevents their cherishing any strong legitimate passion, the language of passion in affected tones slips for ever from their glib tongues, and every trifle produces those phosphoric bursts which only mimick in the dark the flame of passion. sect. iii. ignorance and the mistaken cunning that nature sharpens in weak heads as a principle of self-preservation, render women very fond of dress, and produce all the vanity which such a fondness may naturally be expected to generate, to the exclusion of emulation and magnanimity. i agree with rousseau that the physical part of the art of pleasing consists in ornaments, and for that very reason i should guard girls against the contagious fondness for dress so common to weak women, that they may not rest in the physical part. yet, weak are the women who imagine that they can long please without the aid of the mind, or, in other words, without the moral art of pleasing. but the moral art, if it be not a profanation to use the word art, when alluding to the grace which is an effect of virtue, and not the motive of action, is never to be found with ignorance; the sportiveness of innocence, so pleasing to refined libertines of both sexes, is widely different in its essence from this superiour gracefulness. a strong inclination for external ornaments ever appears in barbarous states, only the men not the women adorn themselves; for where women are allowed to be so far on a level with men, society has advanced, at least, one step in civilization. the attention to dress, therefore, which has been thought a sexual propensity, i think natural to mankind. but i ought to express myself with more precision. when the mind is not sufficiently opened to take pleasure in reflection, the body will be adorned with sedulous care; and ambition will appear in tattooing or painting it. so far is this first inclination carried, that even the hellish yoke of slavery cannot stifle the savage desire of admiration which the black heroes inherit from both their parents, for all the hardly earned savings of a slave are commonly expended in a little tawdry finery. and i have seldom known a good male or female servant that was not particularly fond of dress. their clothes were their riches; and, i argue from analogy, that the fondness for dress, so extravagant in females, arises from the same causewant of cultivation of mind. when men meet they converse about business, politics, or literature; but, says swift, 'how naturally do women apply their hands to each others lappets and ruffles.' and very natural is itfor they have not any business to interest them, have not a taste for literature, and they find politics dry, because they have not acquired a love for mankind by turning their thoughts to the grand pursuits that exalt the human race, and promote general happiness. besides, various are the paths to power and fame which by accident or choice men pursue, and though they jostle against each other, for men of the same profession are seldom friends, yet there is a much greater number of their fellow-creatures with whom they never clash. but women are very differently situated with respect to each otherfor they are all rivals. before marriage it is their business to please men; and after, with a few exceptions, they follow the same scent with all the persevering pertinacity of instinct. even virtuous women never forget their sex in company, for they are for ever trying to make themselves agreeable. a female beauty, and a male wit, appear to be equally anxious to draw the attention of the company to themselves; and the animosity of contemporary wits is proverbial. is it then surprising that when the sole ambition of woman centres in beauty, and interest gives vanity additional force, perpetual rivalships should ensue? they are all running the same race, and would rise above the virtue of mortals, if they did not view each other with a suspicious and even envious eye. an immoderate fondness for dress, for pleasure, and for sway, are the passions of savages; the passions that occupy those uncivilized beings who have not yet extended the dominion of the mind, or even learned to think with the energy necessary to concatenate that abstract train of thought which produces principles. and that women from their education and the present state of civilized life, are in the same condition, cannot, i think, be controverted. to laugh at them then, or satirize the follies of a being who is never to be allowed to act freely from the light of her own reason, is as absurd as cruel; for, that they who are taught blindly to obey authority, will endeavour cunningly to elude it, is most natural and certain. yet let it be proved that they ought to obey man implicitly, and i shall immediately agree that it is woman's duty to cultivate a fondness for dress, in order to please, and a propensity to cunning for her own preservation. the virtues, however, which are supported by ignorance must ever be waveringthe house built on sand could not endure a storm. it is almost unnecessary to draw the inference.if women are to be made virtuous by authority, which is a contradiction in terms, let them be immured in seraglios and watched with a jealous eye.fear not that the iron will enter into their soulsfor the souls that can bear such treatment are made of yielding materials, just animated enough to give life to the body. 'matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, 'and best distinguish'd by black, brown, or fair.' the most cruel wounds will of course soon heal, and they may still people the world, and dress to please manall the purposes which certain celebrated writers have allowed that they were created to fulfil. sect. iv. women are supposed to possess more sensibility, and even humanity, than men, and their strong attachments and instantaneous emotions of compassion are given as proofs; but the clinging affection of ignorance has seldom any thing noble in it, and may mostly be resolved into selfishness, as well as the affection of children and brutes. i have known many weak women whose sensibility was entirely engrossed by their husbands; and as for their humanity, it was very faint indeed, or rather it was only a transient emotion of compassion. humanity does not consist 'in a squeamish ear,' says an eminent orator. 'it belongs to the mind as well as the nerves.' but this kind of exclusive affection, though it degrades the individual, should not be brought forward as a proof of the inferiority of the sex, because it is the natural consequence of confined views: for even women of superior sense, having their attention turned to little employments, and private plans, rarely rise to heroism, unless when spurred on by love! and love, as an heroic passion, like genius, appears but once in an age. i therefore agree with the moralist who asserts, 'that women have seldom so much generosity as men;' and that their narrow affections, to which justice and humanity are often sacrificed, render the sex apparently inferior, especially, as they are commonly inspired by men; but i contend that the heart would expand as the understanding gained strength, if women were not depressed from their cradles. i know that a little sensibility, and great weakness, will produce a strong sexual attachment, and that reason must cement friendship; consequently, i allow that more friendship is to be found in the male than the female world, and that men have a higher sense of justice. the exclusive affections of women seem indeed to resemble cato's most unjust love for his country. he wished to crush carthage, not to save rome, but to promote its vain-glory; and, in general, it is to similar principles that humanity is sacrificed, for genuine duties support each other. besides, how can women be just or generous, when they are the slaves of injustice? sect. v. as the rearing of children, that is, the laying a foundation of sound health both of body and mind in the rising generation, has justly been insisted on as the peculiar destination of woman, the ignorance that incapacitates them must be contrary to the order of things. and i contend that their minds can take in much more, and ought to do so, or they will never become sensible mothers. many men attend to the breeding of horses, and overlook the management of the stable, who would, strange want of sense and feeling! think themselves degraded by paying any attention to the nursery; yet, how many children are absolutely murdered by the ignorance of women! but when they escape, and are destroyed neither by unnatural negligence nor blind fondness, how few are managed properly with respect to the infant mind! so that to break the spirit, allowed to become vicious at home, a child is sent to school; and the methods taken there, which must be taken to keep a number of children in order, scatter the seeds of almost every vice in the soil thus forcibly torn up. i have sometimes compared the struggles of these poor children, who ought never to have felt restraint, nor would, had they been always held in with an even hand, to the despairing plunges of a spirited filly, which i have seen breaking on a strand: its feet sinking deeper and deeper in the sand every time it endeavoured to throw its rider, till at last it sullenly submitted. i have always found horses, animals i am attached to, very tractable when treated with humanity and steadiness, so that i doubt whether the violent methods taken to break them, do not essentially injure them; i am, however, certain that a child should never be thus forcibly tamed after it has injudiciously been allowed to run wild; for every violation of justice and reason, in the treatment of children, weakens their reason. and, so early do they catch a character, that the base of the moral character, experience leads me to infer, is fixed before their seventh year, the period during which women are allowed the sole management of children. afterwards it too often happens that half the business of education is to correct, and very imperfectly is it done, if done hastily, the faults, which they would never have acquired if their mothers had had more understanding. one striking instance of the folly of women must not be omitted.the manner in which they treat servants in the presence of children, permitting them to suppose that they ought to wait on them, and bear their humours. a child should always be made to receive assistance from a man or woman as a favour; and, as the first lesson of independence, they should practically be taught, by the example of their mother, not to require that personal attendance, which it is an insult to humanity to require, when in health; and instead of being led to assume airs of consequence, a sense of their own weakness should first make them feel the natural equality of man. yet, how frequently have i indignantly heard servants imperiously called to put children to bed, and sent away again and again, because master or miss hung about mamma, to stay a little longer. thus made slavishly to attend the little idol, all those most disgusting humours were exhibited which characterize a spoiled child. in short, speaking of the majority of mothers, they leave their children entirely to the care of servants; or, because they are their children, treat them as if they were little demi-gods, though i have always observed, that the women who thus idolize their children, seldom shew common humanity to servants, or feel the least tenderness for any children but their own. it is, however, these exclusive affections, and an individual manner of seeing things, produced by ignorance, which keep women for ever at a stand, with respect to improvement, and make many of them dedicate their lives to their children only to weaken their bodies and spoil their tempers, frustrating also any plan of education that a more rational father may adopt; for unless a mother concur, the father who restrains will ever be considered as a tyrant. but, fulfilling the duties of a mother, a woman with a sound constitution, may still keep her person scrupulously neat, and assist to maintain her family, if necessary, or by reading and conversations with both sexes, indiscriminately, improve her mind. for nature has so wisely ordered things, that did women suckle their children, they would preserve their own health, and there would be such an interval between the birth of each child, that we should seldom see a houseful of babes. and did they pursue a plan of conduct, and not waste their time in following the fashionable vagaries of dress, the management of their household and children need not shut them out from literature, or prevent their attaching themselves to a science, with that steady eye which strengthens the mind, or practising one of the fine arts that cultivate the taste. but, visiting to display finery, card-playing, and balls, not to mention the idle bustle of morning trifling, draw women from their duty to render them insignificant, to render them pleasing, according to the present acceptation of the word, to every man, but their husband. for a round of pleasures in which the affections are not exercised, cannot be said to improve the understanding, though it be erroneously called seeing the world; yet the heart is rendered cold and averse to duty, by such a senseless intercourse, which becomes necessary from habit even when it has ceased to amuse. but, we shall not see women affectionate till more equality be established in society, till ranks are confounded and women freed, neither shall we see that dignified domestic happiness, the simple grandeur of which cannot be relished by ignorant or vitiated minds; nor will the important task of education ever be properly begun till the person of a woman is no longer preferred to her mind. for it would be as wise to expect corn from tares, or figs from thistles, as that a foolish ignorant woman should be a good mother. sect. vi. it is not necessary to inform the sagacious reader, now i enter on my concluding reflections, that the discussion of this subject merely consists in opening a few simple principles, and clearing away the rubbish which obscured them. but, as all readers are not sagacious, i must be allowed to add some explanatory remarks to bring the subject home to reasonto that sluggish reason, which supinely takes opinions on trust, and obstinately supports them to spare itself the labour of thinking. moralists have unanimously agreed, that unless virtue be nursed by liberty, it will never attain due strengthand what they say of man i extend to mankind, insisting that in all cases morals must be fixed on immutable principles; and, that the being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason. to render women truly useful members of society, i argue that they should be led, by having their understandings cultivated on a large scale, to acquire a rational affection for their country, founded on knowledge, because it is obvious that we are little interested about what we do not understand. and to render this general knowledge of due importance, i have endeavoured to shew that private duties are never properly fulfilled unless the understanding enlarges the heart; and that public virtue is only an aggregate of private. but, the distinctions established in society undermine both, by beating out the solid gold of virtue, till it becomes only the tinsel-covering of vice; for whilst wealth renders a man more respectable than virtue, wealth will be sought before virtue; and, whilst women's persons are caressed, when a childish simper shews an absence of mindthe mind will lie fallow. yet, true voluptuousness must proceed from the mindfor what can equal the sensations produced by mutual affection, supported by mutual respect? what are the cold, or feverish caresses of appetite, but sin embracing death, compared with the modest overflowings of a pure heart and exalted imagination? yes, let me tell the libertine of fancy when he despises understanding in womanthat the mind, which he disregards, gives life to the enthusiastic affection from which rapture, short-lived as it is, alone can flow! and, that, without virtue, a sexual attachment must expire, like a tallow candle in the socket, creating intolerable disgust. to prove this, i need only observe, that men who have wasted great part of their lives with women, and with whom they have sought for pleasure with eager thirst, entertain the meanest opinion of the sex.virtue, true refiner of joy!if foolish men were to fright thee from earth, in order to give loose to all their appetites without a checksome sensual wight of taste would scale the heavens to invite thee back, to give a zest to pleasure! that women at present are by ignorance rendered foolish or vicious, is, i think, not to be disputed; and, that the most salutary effects tending to improve mankind might be expected from a revolution in female manners, appears, at least, with a face of probability, to rise out of the observation. for as marriage has been termed the parent of those endearing charities which draw man from the brutal herd, the corrupting intercourse that wealth, idleness, and folly, produce between the sexes, is more universally injurious to morality than all the other vices of mankind collectively considered. to adulterous lust the most sacred duties are sacrificed, because before marriage, men, by a promiscuous intimacy with women, learned to consider love as a selfish gratificationlearned to separate it not only from esteem, but from the affection merely built on habit, which mixes a little humanity with it. justice and friendship are also set at defiance, and that purity of taste is vitiated which would naturally lead a man to relish an artless display of affection rather than affected airs. but that noble simplicity of affection, which dares to appear unadorned, has few attractions for the libertine, though it be the charm, which by cementing the matrimonial tie, secures to the pledges of a warmer passion the necessary parental attention; for children will never be properly educated till friendship subsists between parents. virtue flies from a house divided against itselfand a whole legion of devils take up their residence there. the affection of husbands and wives cannot be pure when they have so few sentiments in common, and when so little confidence is established at home, as must be the case when their pursuits are so different. that intimacy from which tenderness should flow, will not, cannot subsist between the vicious. contending, therefore, that the sexual distinction which men have so warmly insisted upon, is arbitrary, i have dwelt on an observation, that several sensible men, with whom i have conversed on the subject, allowed to be well founded; and it is simply this, that the little chastity to be found amongst men, and consequent disregard of modesty, tend to degrade both sexes; and further, that the modesty of women, characterized as such, will often be only the artful veil of wantonness instead of being the natural reflection of purity, till modesty be universally respected. from the tyranny of man, i firmly believe, the greater number of female follies proceed; and the cunning, which i allow makes at present a part of their character, i likewise have repeatedly endeavoured to prove, is produced by oppression. were not dissenters, for instance, a class of people, with strict truth, characterized as cunning? and may i not lay some stress on this fact to prove, that when any power but reason curbs the free spirit of man, dissimulation is practised, and the various shifts of art are naturally called forth? great attention to decorum, which was carried to a degree of scrupulosity, and all that puerile bustle about trifles and consequential solemnity, which butler's caricature of a dissenter, brings before the imagination, shaped their persons as well as their minds in the mould of prim littleness. i speak collectively, for i know how many ornaments to human nature have been enrolled amongst sectaries; yet, i assert, that the same narrow prejudice for their sect, which women have for their families, prevailed in the dissenting part of the community, however worthy in other respects; and also that the same timid prudence, or headstrong efforts, often disgraced the exertions of both. oppression thus formed many of the features of their character perfectly to coincide with that of the oppressed half of mankind; or is it not notorious that dissenters were, like women, fond of deliberating together, and asking advice of each other, till by a complication of little contrivances, some little end was brought about? a similar attention to preserve their reputation was conspicuous in the dissenting and female world, and was produced by a similar cause. asserting the rights which women in common with men ought to contend for, i have not attempted to extenuate their faults; but to prove them to be the natural consequence of their education and station in society. if so, it is reasonable to suppose that they will change their character, and correct their vices and follies, when they are allowed to be free in a physical, moral, and civil sense.* * i had further enlarged on the advantages which might reasonably be expected to result from an improvement in female manners, towards the general reformation of society; but it appeared to me that such reflections would more properly close the last volume. let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated, or justify the authority that chains such a weak being to her duty.if the latter, it will be expedient to open a fresh trade with russia for whips; a present which a father should always make to his son-in-law on his wedding day, that a husband may keep his whole family in order by the same means; and without any violation of justice reign, wielding this sceptre, sole master of his house, because he is the only being in it who has reason:the divine, indefeasible earthly sovereignty breathed into man by the master of the universe. allowing this position, women have not any inherent rights to claim; and, by the same rule, their duties vanish, for rights and duties are inseparable. be just then, o ye men of understanding! and mark not more severely what women do amiss, than the vicious tricks of the horse or the ass for whom ye provide provenderand allow her the privileges of ignorance, to whom ye deny the rights of reason, or ye will be worse than egyptian task-masters, expecting virtue where nature has not given understanding! the end . 1829 al aaraaf by edgar allan poe part i o! nothing earthly save the ray (thrown back from flowers) of beauty's eye, as in those gardens where the day springs from the gems of circassy o! nothing earthly save the thrill of melody in woodland rill or (music of the passion-hearted) joy's voice so peacefully departed that like the murmur in the shell, its echo dwelleth and will dwell oh, nothing of the dross of ours yet all the beautyall the flowers that list our love, and deck our bowers adorn yon world afar, afar the wandering star. 'twas a sweet time for nesacefor there her world lay lolling on the golden air, near four bright sunsa temporary rest an oasis in desert of the blest. awayaway'mid seas of rays that roll empyrean splendor o'er th' unchained soul the soul that scarce (the billows are so dense) can struggle to its destin'd eminence, to distant spheres, from time to time, she rode and late to ours, the favor'd one of god but, now, the ruler of an anchor'd realm, she throws aside the sceptreleaves the helm, and, amid incense and high spiritual hymns, laves in quadruple light her angel limbs. now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely earth, whence sprang the "idea of beauty" into birth, (falling in wreaths thro' many a startled star, like woman's hair 'mid pearls, until, afar, it lit on hills achaian, and there dwelt) she looked into infinityand knelt. rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled fit emblems of the model of her world seen but in beautynot impeding sight of other beauty glittering thro' the light a wreath that twined each starry form around, and all the opal'd air in color bound. all hurriedly she knelt upon a bed of flowers: of lilies such as rear'd the head on the fair capo deucato, and sprang so eagerly around about to hang upon the flying footsteps ofdeep pride of her who lov'd a mortaland so died. the sephalica, budding with young bees, upreared its purple stem around her knees: and gemmy flower, of trebizond misnam'd inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham'd all other loveliness:its honied dew (the fabled nectar that the heathen knew) deliriously sweet, was dropp'd from heaven, and fell on gardens of the unforgiven in trebizondand on a sunny flower so like its own above that, to this hour, it still remaineth, torturing the bee with madness, and unwonted reverie: in heaven, and all its environs, the leaf and blossom of the fairy plant in grief disconsolate lingergrief that hangs her head, repenting follies that full long have red, heaving her white breast to the balmy air, like guilty beauty, chasten'd and more fair: nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light she fears to perfume, perfuming the night: and clytia, pondering between many a sun, while pettish tears adown her petals run: and that aspiring flower that sprang on earth, and died, ere scarce exalted into birth, bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing its way to heaven, from garden of a king: and valisnerian lotus, thither flown" from struggling with the waters of the rhone: and thy most lovely purple perfume, zante! isola d'oro!fior di levante! and the nelumbo bud that floats for ever with indian cupid down the holy river fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given to bear the goddess' song, in odors, up to heaven: "spirit! that dwellest where, in the deep sky, the terrible and fair, in beauty vie! beyond the line of blue the boundary of the star which turneth at the view of thy barrier and thy bar of the barrier overgone by the comets who were cast from their pride and from their throne to be drudges till the last to be carriers of fire (the red fire of their heart) with speed that may not tire and with pain that shall not part who livestthat we know in eternitywe feel but the shadow of whose brow what spirit shall reveal? tho' the beings whom thy nesace, thy messenger hath known have dream'd for thy infinity a model of their own thy will is done, o god! the star hath ridden high thro' many a tempest, but she rode beneath thy burning eye; and here, in thought, to thee in thought that can alone ascend thy empire and so be a partner of thy throne by winged fantasy, my embassy is given, till secrecy shall knowledge be in the environs of heaven." she ceas'dand buried then her burning cheek abash'd, amid the lilies there, to seek a shelter from the fervor of his eye; for the stars trembled at the deity. she stirr'd notbreath'd notfor a voice was there how solemnly pervading the calm air! a sound of silence on the startled ear which dreamy poets name "the music of the sphere." ours is a world of words: quiet we call "silence"which is the merest word of all. all nature speaks, and ev'n ideal things flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings but ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high the eternal voice of god is passing by, and the red winds are withering in the sky: "what tho 'in worlds which sightless cycles run, linked to a little system, and one sun where all my love is folly and the crowd still think my terrors but the thunder cloud, the storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath (ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?) what tho' in worlds which own a single sun the sands of time grow dimmer as they run, yet thine is my resplendency, so given to bear my secrets thro' the upper heaven! leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly, with all thy train, athwart the moony sky apartlike fire-flies in sicilian night, and wing to other worlds another light! divulge the secrets of thy embassy to the proud orbs that twinkleand so be to ev'ry heart a barrier and a ban lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!" up rose the maiden in the yellow night, the single-mooned eve!on earth we plight our faith to one loveand one moon adore the birth-place of young beauty had no more. as sprang that yellow star from downy hours up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers, and bent o'er sheeny mountains and dim plain her way, but left not yet her therasaean reign. part ii high on a mountain of enamell'd head such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed of giant pasturage lying at his ease, raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees with many a mutter'd "hope to be forgiven" what time the moon is quadrated in heaven of rosy head that, towering far away into the sunlit ether, caught the ray of sunken suns at eveat noon of night, while the moon danc'd with the fair stranger light uprear'd upon such height arose a pile of gorgeous columns on th' unburthen'd air, flashing from parian marble that twin smile far down upon the wave that sparkled there, and nursled the young mountain in its lair. of molten stars their pavement, such as fall thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall of their own dissolution, while they die adorning then the dwellings of the sky. a dome, by linked light from heaven let down, sat gently on these columns as a crown a window of one circular diamond, there, look'd out above into the purple air, and rays from god shot down that meteor chain and hallow'd all the beauty twice again, save, when, between th' empyrean and that ring, some eager spirit flapp'd his dusky wing. but on the pillars seraph eyes have seen the dimness of this world: that greyish green that nature loves the best beauty's grave lurk'd in each cornice, round each architrave and every sculptur'd cherub thereabout that from his marble dwelling peered out, seem'd earthly in the shadow of his niche achaian statues in a world so rich! friezes from tadmor and persepolis from balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss of beautiful gomorrah! o, the wave is now upon theebut too late to save! sound loves to revel in a summer night: witness the murmur of the grey twilight that stole upon the ear, in eyraco, of many a wild star-gazer long ago that stealeth ever on the ear of him who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim, and sees the darkness coming as a cloud is not its formits voicemost palpable and loud? but what is this?it cometh, and it brings a music with it'tis the rush of wings a pauseand then a sweeping, falling strain and nesace is in her halls again. from the wild energy of wanton haste her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart; and zone that clung around her gentle waist had burst beneath the heaving of her heart. within the centre of that hall to breathe, she paused and panted, zanthe! all beneath, the fairy light that kiss'd her golden hair and long'd to rest, yet could but sparkle there. young flowers were whispering in melody to happy flowers that nightand tree to tree; fountains were gushing music as they fell in many a star-lit grove, or moon-lit dell; yet silence came upon material things fair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings and sound alone that from the spirit sprang bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang: "'neath the blue-bell or streamer or tufted wild spray that keeps, from the dreamer, the moonbeam away bright beings! that ponder, with half closing eyes, on the stars which your wonder hath drawn from the skies, till they glance thro' the shade, and come down to your brow likeeyes of the maiden who calls on you now arise! from your dreaming in violet bowers, to duty beseeming these star-litten hours and shake from your tresses encumber'd with dew the breath of those kisses that cumber them too (o! how, without you, love! could angels be blest?) those kisses of true love that lull'd ye to rest! up!shake from your wing each hindering thing: the dew of the night it would weigh down your flight and true love caresses o, leave them apart! they are light on the tresses, but lead on the heart. ligeia! ligeia! my beautiful one! whose harshest idea will to melody run, o! is it thy will on the breezes to toss? or, capriciously still, like the lone albatros, incumbent on night (as she on the air) to keep watch with delight on the harmony there? ligeia! wherever thy image may be, no magic shall sever thy music from thee. thou hast bound many eyes in a dreamy sleep but the strains still arise which thy vigilance keep the sound of the rain, which leaps down to the flower and dances again in the rhythm of the shower the murmur that springs from the growing of grass are the music of things but are modell'd, alas! away, then, my dearest, oh! hie thee away to the springs that lie clearest beneath the moon-ray to lone lake that smiles, in its dream of deep rest, at the many star-isles that enjewel its breast where wild flowers, creeping, have mingled their shade, on its margin is sleeping full many a maid some have left the cool glade, and have slept with the bee arouse them, my maiden, on moorland and lea go! breathe on their slumber, all softly in ear, thy musical number they slumbered to hear for what can awaken an angel so soon, whose sleep hath been taken beneath the cold moon, as the spell which no slumber of witchery may test, the rhythmical number which lull'd him to rest?" spirits in wing, and angels to the view, a thousand seraphs burst th' empyrean thro', young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight seraphs in all but "knowledge," the keen light that fell, refracted, thro' thy bounds, afar, o death! from eye of god upon that star: sweet was that errorsweeter still that death sweet was that erroreven with us the breath of science dims the mirror of our joy to them 'twere the simoom, and would destroy for what (to them) availeth it to know that truth is falsehoodor that bliss is woe? sweet was their deathwith them to die was rife with the last ecstasy of satiate life beyond that death no immortality but sleep that pondereth and is not "to be'! and thereoh! may my weary spirit dwell apart from heaven's eternityand yet how far from hell! what guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim, heard not the stirring summons of that hymn? but two: they fell: for heaven no grace imparts to those who hear not for their beating hearts. a maiden-angel and her seraph-lover o! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over) was love, the blind, near sober duty known? unguided love hath fallen'mid "tears of perfect moan." he was a goodly spirithe who fell: a wanderer by moss-y-mantled well a gazer on the lights that shine above a dreamer in the moonbeam by his love: what wonder? for each star is eye-like there, and looks so sweetly down on beauty's hair and they, and ev'ry mossy spring were holy to his love-haunted heart and melancholy. the night had found (to him a night of woe) upon a mountain crag, young angelo beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky, and scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie. here sat he with his lovehis dark eye bent with eagle gaze along the firmament: now turn'd it upon herbut ever then it trembled to the orb of earth again. "ianthe, dearest, seehow dim that ray! how lovely 'tis to look so far away! she seem'd not thus upon that autumn eve i left her gorgeous hallsnor mourn'd to leave. that evethat evei should remember well the sun-ray dropp'd in lemnos, with a spell on th' arabesque carving of a gilded hall wherein i sate, and on the draperied wall and on my eyelidso the heavy light! how drowsily it weigh'd them into night! on flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran with persian saadi in his gulistan: but o that light!i slumber'ddeath, the while, stole o'er my senses in that lovely isle so softly that no single silken hair awoke that sleptor knew that he was there. "the last spot of earth's orb i trod upon was a proud temple call'd the parthenon; more beauty clung around her column'd wall than ev'n thy glowing bosom beats withal, and when old time my wing did disenthral thence sprang ias the eagle from his tower, and years i left behind me in an hour. what time upon her airy bounds i hung, one half the garden of her globe was flung unrolling as a chart unto my view tenantless cities of the desert too! ianthe, beauty crowded on me then, and half i wish'd to be again of men." "my angelo! and why of them to be? a brighter dwelling-place is here for thee and greener fields than in yon world above, and woman's lovelinessand passionate love." "but, list, ianthe! when the air so soft fail'd, as my pennon'd spirit leapt aloft, perhaps my brain grew dizzybut the world i left so late was into chaos hurl'd sprang from her station, on the winds apart. and roll'd, a flame, the fiery heaven athwart. methought, my sweet one, then i ceased to soar and fellnot swiftly as i rose before, but with a downward, tremulous motion thro' light, brazen rays, this golden star unto! nor long the measure of my falling hours, for nearest of all stars was thine to ours dread star! that came, amid a night of mirth, a red daedalion on the timid earth." "we cameand to thy earthbut not to us be given our lady's bidding to discuss: we came, my love; around, above, below, gay fire-fly of the night we come and go, nor ask a reason save the angel-nod she grants to us, as granted by her god but, angelo, than thine grey time unfurl'd never his fairy wing o'er fairier world! dim was its little disk, and angel eyes alone could see the phantom in the skies, when first al aaraaf knew her course to be headlong thitherward o'er the starry sea but when its glory swell'd upon the sky, as glowing beauty's bust beneath man's eye, we paused before the heritage of men, and thy star trembledas doth beauty then!" thus, in discourse, the lovers whiled away the night that waned and waned and brought no day. they fell: for heaven to them no hope imparts who hear not for the beating of their hearts. -the end. 1850 hans phaall by edgar allan poe there is, strictly speaking, but little similarity between this sketchy trifle and the very celebrated and very beautiful "moon-story" of mr. lockebut as both have the character of hoaxes, (although one is in the tone of banter, the other of downright earnest) and as both hoaxes are on the same subject, the moonthe author of "hans phaall" thinks it necessary to say, in self-defence, that his own jeu-d'esprit was published, in the southern literary messenger, about three weeks previously to the appearance of mr. l's in the new york "sun." fancying a similarity which does not really exist, some of the new york papers copied "hans phaall," and collated it with the hoaxwith the view of detecting the writer of the one in the writer of the other. by late accounts from rotterdam, that city seems to be in a high state of philosophical excitement. indeed, phenomena have there occurred of a nature so completely unexpectedso entirely novelso utterly at variance with preconceived opinionsas to leave no doubt on my mind that long ere this all europe is in an uproar, all physics in a ferment, all reason and astronomy together by the ears. date), a vast crowd of people, for purposes not specifically mentioned, were assembled in the great square of the exchange in the well-conditioned city of rotterdam. the day was warmunusually so for the seasonthere was hardly a breath of air stirring; and the multitude were in no bad humor at being now and then besprinkled with friendly showers of momentary duration, that fell from large white masses of cloud which chequered in a fitful manner the blue vault of the firmament. nevertheless, about noon, a slight but remarkable agitation became apparent in the assembly: the clattering of ten thousand tongues succeeded; and, in an instant afterward, ten thousand faces were upturned toward the heavens, ten thousand pipes descended simultaneously from the corners of ten thousand mouths, and a shout, which could be compared to nothing but the roaring of niagara, resounded long, loudly, and furiously, through all the environs of rotterdam. the origin of this hubbub soon became sufficiently evident. from behind the huge bulk of one of those sharply-defined masses of cloud already mentioned, was seen slowly to emerge into an open area of blue space, a queer, heterogeneous, but apparently solid substance, so oddly shaped, so whimsically put together, as not to be in any manner comprehended, and never to be sufficiently admired, by the host of sturdy burghers who stood open-mouthed below. what could it be? in the name of all the vrows and devils in rotterdam, what could it possibly portend? no one knew, no one could imagine; no onenot even the burgomaster mynheer superbus von underdukhad the slightest clew by which to unravel the mystery; so, as nothing more reasonable could be done, every one to a man replaced his pipe carefully in the corner of his mouth, and cocking up his right eye towards the phenomenon, puffed, paused, waddled about, and grunted significantlythen waddled back, grunted, paused, and finallypuffed again. in the meantime, however, lower and still lower toward the goodly city, came the object of so much curiosity, and the cause of so much smoke. in a very few minutes it arrived near enough to be accurately discerned. it appeared to beyes! it was undoubtedly a species of balloon; but surely no such balloon had ever been seen in rotterdam before. for who, let me ask, ever heard of a balloon manufactured entirely of dirty newspapers? no man in holland certainly; yet here, under the very noses of the people, or rather at some distance above their noses was the identical thing in question, and composed, i have it on the best authority, of the precise material which no one had ever before known to be used for a similar purpose. it was an egregious insult to the good sense of the burghers of rotterdam. as to the shape of the phenomenon, it was even still more reprehensible. being little or nothing better than a huge foolscap turned upside down. and this similitude was regarded as by no means lessened when, upon nearer inspection, there was perceived a large tassel depending from its apex, and, around the upper rim or base of the cone, a circle of little instruments, resembling sheep-bells, which kept up a continual tinkling to the tune of betty martin. but still worse. suspended by blue ribbons to the end of this fantastic machine, there hung, by way of car, an enormous drab beaver bat, with a brim superlatively broad, and a hemispherical crown with a black band and a silver buckle. it is, however, somewhat remarkable that many citizens of rotterdam swore to having seen the same hat repeatedly before; and indeed the whole assembly seemed to regard it with eyes of familiarity; while the vrow grettel phaall, upon sight of it, uttered an exclamation of joyful surprise, and declared it to be the identical hat of her good man himself. now this was a circumstance the more to be observed, as phaall, with three companions, had actually disappeared from rotterdam about five years before, in a very sudden and unaccountable manner, and up to the date of this narrative all attempts had failed of obtaining any intelligence concerning them whatsoever. to be sure, some bones which were thought to be human, mixed up with a quantity of odd-looking rubbish, had been lately discovered in a retired situation to the east of rotterdam, and some people went so far as to imagine that in this spot a foul murder had been committed, and that the sufferers were in all probability hans phaall and his associates. but to return. the balloon (for such no doubt it was) had now descended to within a hundred feet of the earth, allowing the crowd below a sufficiently distinct view of the person of its occupant. this was in truth a very droll little somebody. he could not have been more than two feet in height; but this altitude, little as it was, would have been sufficient to destroy his equilibrium, and tilt him over the edge of his tiny car, but for the intervention of a circular rim reaching as high as the breast, and rigged on to the cords of the balloon. the body of the little man was more than proportionately broad, giving to his entire figure a rotundity highly absurd. his feet, of course, could not be seen at all, although a horny substance of suspicious nature was occasionally protruded through a rent in the bottom of the car, or to speak more properly, in the top of the hat. his hands were enormously large. his hair was extremely gray, and collected in a cue behind. his nose was prodigiously long, crooked, and inflammatory; his eyes full, brilliant, and acute; his chin and cheeks, although wrinkled with age, were broad, puffy, and double; but of ears of any kind or character there was not a semblance to be discovered upon any portion of his head. this odd little gentleman was dressed in a loose surtout of sky-blue satin, with tight breeches to match, fastened with silver buckles at the knees. his vest was of some bright yellow material; a white taffety cap was set jauntily on one side of his head; and, to complete his equipment, a blood-red silk handkerchief enveloped his throat, and fell down, in a dainty manner, upon his bosom, in a fantastic bow-knot of super-eminent dimensions. having descended, as i said before, to about one hundred feet from the surface of the earth, the little old gentleman was suddenly seized with a fit of trepidation, and appeared disinclined to make any nearer approach to terra firma. throwing out, therefore, a quantity of sand from a canvas bag, which, he lifted with great difficulty, he became stationary in an instant. he then proceeded, in a hurried and agitated manner, to extract from a side-pocket in his surtout a large morocco pocket-book. this he poised suspiciously in his hand, then eyed it with an air of extreme surprise, and was evidently astonished at its weight. he at length opened it, and drawing there from a huge letter sealed with red sealing-wax and tied carefully with red tape, let it fall precisely at the feet of the burgomaster, superbus von underduk. his excellency stooped to take it up. but the aeronaut, still greatly discomposed, and having apparently no farther business to detain him in rotterdam, began at this moment to make busy preparations for departure; and it being necessary to discharge a portion of ballast to enable him to reascend, the half dozen bags which he threw out, one after another, without taking the trouble to empty their contents, tumbled, every one of them, most unfortunately upon the back of the burgomaster, and rolled him over and over no less than one-and-twenty times, in the face of every man in rotterdam. it is not to be supposed, however, that the great underduk suffered this impertinence on the part of the little old man to pass off with impunity. it is said, on the contrary, that during each and every one of his one-and twenty circumvolutions he emitted no less than one-and-twenty distinct and furious whiffs from his pipe, to which he held fast the whole time with all his might, and to which he intends holding fast until the day of his death. in the meantime the balloon arose like a lark, and, soaring far away above the city, at length drifted quietly behind a cloud similar to that from which it had so oddly emerged, and was thus lost forever to the wondering eyes of the good citiezns of rotterdam. all attention was now directed to the letter, the descent of which, and the consequences attending thereupon, had proved so fatally subversive of both person and personal dignity to his excellency, the illustrious burgomaster mynheer superbus von underduk. that functionary, however, had not failed, during his circumgyratory movements, to bestow a thought upon the important subject of securing the packet in question, which was seen, upon inspection, to have fallen into the most proper hands, being actually addressed to himself and professor rub-a-dub, in their official capacities of president and vice-president of the rotterdam college of astronomy. it was accordingly opened by those dignitaries upon the spot, and found to contain the following extraordinary, and indeed very serious, communications. to their excellencies von underduk and rub-a-dub, president and vice-president of the states' college of astronomers, in the city of rotterdam. your excellencies may perhaps be able to remember an humble artizan, by name hans phaall, and by occupation a mender of bellows, who, with three others, disappeared from rotterdam, about five years ago, in a manner which must have been considered by all parties at once sudden, and extremely unaccountable. if, however, it so please your excellencies, i, the writer of this communication, am the identical hans phaall himself. it is well known to most of my fellow citizens, that for the period of forty years i continued to occupy the little square brick building, at the head of the alley called sauerkraut, in which i resided at the time of my disappearance. my ancestors have also resided therein time out of mindthey, as well as myself, steadily following the respectable and indeed lucrative profession of mending of bellows. for, to speak the truth, until of late years, that the heads of all the people have been set agog with politics, no better business than my own could an honest citizen of rotterdam either desire or deserve. credit was good, employment was never wanting, and on all hands there was no lack of either money or good-will. but, as i was saying, we soon began to feel the effects of liberty and long speeches, and radicalism, and all that sort of thing. people who were formerly, the very best customers in the world, had now not a moment of time to think of us at all. they had, so they said, as much as they could do to read about the revolutions, and keep up with the march of intellect and the spirit of the age. if a fire wanted fanning, it could readily be fanned with a newspaper, and as the government grew weaker, i have no doubt that leather and iron acquired durability in proportion, for, in a very short time, there was not a pair of bellows in all rotterdam that ever stood in need of a stitch or required the assistance of a hammer. this was a state of things not to be endured. i soon grew as poor as a rat, and, having a wife and children to provide for, my burdens at length became intolerable, and i spent hour after hour in reflecting upon the most convenient method of putting an end to my life. duns, in the meantime, left me little leisure for contemplation. my house was literally besieged from morning till night, so that i began to rave, and foam, and fret like a caged tiger against the bars of his enclosure. there were three fellows in particular who worried me beyond endurance, keeping watch continually about my door, and threatening me with the law. upon these three i internally vowed the bitterest revenge, if ever i should be so happy as to get them within my clutches; and i believe nothing in the world but the pleasure of this anticipation prevented me from putting my plan of suicide into immediate execution, by blowing my brains out with a blunderbuss. i thought it best, however, to dissemble my wrath, and to treat them with promises and fair words, until, by some good turn of fate, an opportunity of vengeance should be afforded me. one day, having given my creditors the slip, and feeling more than usually dejected, i continued for a long time to wander about the most obscure streets without object whatever, until at length i chanced to stumble against the corner of a bookseller's stall. seeing a chair close at hand, for the use of customers, i threw myself doggedly into it, and, hardly knowing why, opened the pages of the first volume which came within my reach. it proved to be a small pamphlet treatise on speculative astronomy, written either by professor encke of berlin or by a frenchman of somewhat similar name. i had some little tincture of information on matters of this nature, and soon became more and more absorbed in the contents of the book, reading it actually through twice before i awoke to a recollection of what was passing around me. by this time it began to grow dark, and i directed my steps toward home. but the treatise had made an indelible impression on my mind, and, as i sauntered along the dusky streets, i revolved carefully over in my memory the wild and sometimes unintelligible reasonings of the writer. there are some particular passages which affected my imagination in a powerful and extraordinary manner. the longer i meditated upon these the more intense grew the interest which had been excited within me. the limited nature of my education in general, and more especially my ignorance on subjects connected with natural philosophy, so far from rendering me diffident of my own ability to comprehend what i had read, or inducing me to mistrust the many vague notions which had arisen in consequence, merely served as a farther stimulus to imagination; and i was vain enough, or perhaps reasonable enough, to doubt whether those crude ideas which, arising in ill-regulated minds, have all the appearance, may not often in effect possess all the force, the reality, and other inherent properties, of instinct or intuition; whether, to proceed a step farther, profundity itself might not, in matters of a purely speculative nature, be detected as a legitimate source of falsity and error. in other words, i believed, and still do believe, that truth, is frequently of its own essence, superficial, and that, in many cases, the depth lies more in the abysses where we seek her, than in the actual situations wherein she may be found. nature herself seemed to afford me corroboration of these ideas. in the contemplation of the heavenly bodies it struck me forcibly that i could not distinguish a star with nearly as much precision, when i gazed on it with earnest, direct and undeviating attention, as when i suffered my eye only to glance in its vicinity alone. i was not, of course, at that time aware that this apparent paradox was occasioned by the center of the visual area being less susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the exterior portions of the retina. this knowledge, and some of another kind, came afterwards in the course of an eventful five years, during which i have dropped the prejudices of my former humble situation in life, and forgotten the bellows-mender in far different occupations. but at the epoch of which i speak, the analogy which a casual observation of a star offered to the conclusions i had already drawn, struck me with the force of positive conformation, and i then finally made up my mind to the course which i afterwards pursued. it was late when i reached home, and i went immediately to bed. my mind, however, was too much occupied to sleep, and i lay the whole night buried in meditation. arising early in the morning, and contriving again to escape the vigilance of my creditors, i repaired eagerly to the bookseller's stall, and laid out what little ready money i possessed, in the purchase of some volumes of mechanics and practical astronomy. having arrived at home safely with these, i devoted every spare moment to their perusal, and soon made such proficiency in studies of this nature as i thought sufficient for the execution of my plan. in the intervals of this period, i made every endeavor to conciliate the three creditors who had given me so much annoyance. in this i finally succeededpartly by selling enough of my household furniture to satisfy a moiety of their claim, and partly by a promise of paying the balance upon completion of a little project which i told them i had in view, and for assistance in which i solicited their services. by these meansfor they were ignorant meni found little difficulty in gaining them over to my purpose. matters being thus arranged, i contrived, by the aid of my wife and with the greatest secrecy and caution, to dispose of what property i had remaining, and to borrow, in small sums, under various pretences, and without paying any attention to my future means of repayment, no inconsiderable quantity of ready money. with the means thus accruing i proceeded to procure at intervals, cambric muslin, very fine, in pieces of twelve yards each; twine; a lot of the varnish of caoutchouc; a large and deep basket of wicker-work, made to order; and several other articles necessary in the construction and equipment of a balloon of extraordinary dimensions. this i directed my wife to make up as soon as possible, and gave her all requisite information as to the particular method of proceeding. in the meantime i worked up the twine into a net-work of sufficient dimensions; rigged it with a hoop and the necessary cords; bought a quadrant, a compass, a spy-glass, a common barometer with some important modifications, and two astronomical instruments not so generally known. i then took opportunities of conveying by night, to a retired situation east of rotterdam, five iron-bound casks, to contain about fifty gallons each, and one of a larger size; six tinned ware tubes, three inches in diameter, properly shaped, and ten feet in length; a quantity of a particular metallic substance, or semi-metal, which i shall not name, and a dozen demijohns of a very common acid. the gas to be formed from these latter materials is a gas never yet generated by any other person than myselfor at least never applied to any similar purpose. the secret i would make no difficulty in disclosing, but that it of right belongs to a citizen of nantz, in france, by whom it was conditionally communicated to myself. the same individual submitted to me, without being at all aware of my intentions, a method of constructing balloons from the membrane of a certain animal, through which substance any escape of gas was nearly an impossibility. i found it, however, altogether too expensive, and was not sure, upon the whole, whether cambric muslin with a coating of gum caoutchouc, was not equally as good. i mention this circumstance, because i think it probable that hereafter the individual in question may attempt a balloon ascension with the novel gas and material i have spoken of, and i do not wish to deprive him of the honor of a very singular invention. on the spot which i intended each of the smaller casks to occupy respectively during the inflation of the balloon, i privately dug a hole two feet deep; the holes forming in this manner a circle twenty-five feet in diameter. in the centre of this circle, being the station designed for the large cask, i also dug a hole three feet in depth. in each of the five smaller holes, i deposited a canister containing fifty pounds, and in the larger one a keg holding one hundred and fifty pounds, of cannon powder. thesethe keg and canistersi connected in a proper manner with covered trains; and having let into one of the canisters the end of about four feet of slow match, i covered up the hole, and placed the cask over it, leaving the other end of the match protruding about an inch, and barely visible beyond the cask. i then filled up the remaining holes, and placed the barrels over them in their destined situation. besides the articles above enumerated, i conveyed to the depot, and there secreted, one of m. grimm's improvements upon the apparatus for condensation of the atmospheric air. i found this machine, however, to require considerable alteration before it could be adapted to the purposes to which i intended making it applicable. but, with severe labor and unremitting perseverance, i at length met with entire success in all my preparations. my balloon was soon completed. it would contain more than forty thousand cubic feet of gas; would take me up easily, i calculated, with all my implements, and, if i managed rightly, with one hundred and seventy-five pounds of ballast into the bargain. it had received three coats of varnish, and i found the cambric muslin to answer all the purposes of silk itself, quite as strong and a good deal less expensive. everything being now ready, i exacted from my wife an oath of secrecy in relation to all my actions from the day of my first visit to the bookseller's stall; and promising, on my part, to return as soon as circumstances would permit, i gave her what little money i had left, and bade her farewell. indeed i had no fear on her account. she was what people call a notable woman, and could manage matters in the world without my assistance. i believe, to tell the truth, she always looked upon me as an idle boy, a mere make-weight, good for nothing but building castles in the air, and was rather glad to get rid of me. it was a dark night when i bade her good-bye, and taking with me, as aides-de-camp, the three creditors who had given me so much trouble, we carried the balloon, with the car and accoutrements, by a roundabout way, to the station where the other articles were deposited. we there found them all unmolested, and i proceeded immediately to business. it was the first of april. the night, as i said before, was dark; there was not a star to be seen; and a drizzling rain, falling at intervals, rendered us very uncomfortable. but my chief anxiety was concerning the balloon, which, in spite of the varnish with which it was defended, began to grow rather heavy with the moisture; the powder also was liable to damage. i therefore kept my three duns working with great diligence, pounding down ice around the central cask, and stirring the acid in the others. they did not cease, however, importuning me with questions as to what i intended to do with all this apparatus, and expressed much dissatisfaction at the terrible labor i made them undergo. they could not perceive, so they said, what good was likely to result from their getting wet to the skin, merely to take a part in such horrible incantations. i began to get uneasy, and worked away with all my might, for i verily believe the idiots supposed that i had entered into a compact with the devil, and that, in short, what i was now doing was nothing better than it should be. i was, therefore, in great fear of their leaving me altogether. i contrived, however, to pacify them by promises of payment of all scores in full, as soon as i could bring the present business to a termination. to these speeches they gave, of course, their own interpretation; fancying, no doubt, that at all events i should come into possession of vast quantities of ready money; and provided i paid them all i owed, and a trifle more, in consideration of their services, i dare say they cared very little what became of either my soul or my carcass. in about four hours and a half i found the balloon sufficiently inflated. i attached the car, therefore, and put all my implements in itnot forgetting the condensing apparatus, a copious supply of water, and a large quantity of provisions, such as pemmican, in which much nutriment is contained in comparatively little bulk. i also secured in the car a pair of pigeons and a cat. it was now nearly daybreak, and i thought it high time to take my departure. dropping a lighted cigar on the ground, as if by accident, i took the opportunity, in stooping to pick it up, of igniting privately the piece of slow match, whose end, as i said before, protruded a very little beyond the lower rim of one of the smaller casks. this manoeuvre was totally unperceived on the part of the three duns; and, jumping into the car, i immediately cut the single cord which held me to the earth, and was pleased to find that i shot upward, carrying with all ease one hundred and seventy-five pounds of leaden ballast, and able to have carried up as many more. scarcely, however, had i attained the height of fifty yards, when, roaring and rumbling up after me in the most horrible and tumultuous manner, came so dense a hurricane of fire, and smoke, and sulphur, and legs and arms, and gravel, and burning wood, and blazing metal, that my very heart sunk within me, and i fell down in the bottom of the car, trembling with unmitigated terror. indeed, i now perceived that i had entirely overdone the business, and that the main consequences of the shock were yet to be experienced. accordingly, in less than a second, i felt all the blood in my body rushing to my temples, and immediately thereupon, a concussion, which i shall never forget, burst abruptly through the night and seemed to rip the very firmament asunder. when i afterward had time for reflection, i did not fail to attribute the extreme violence of the explosion, as regarded myself, to its proper causemy situation directly above it, and in the line of its greatest power. but at the time, i thought only of preserving my life. the balloon at first collapsed, then furiously expanded, then whirled round and round with horrible velocity, and finally, reeling and staggering like a drunken man, hurled me with great force over the rim of the car, and left me dangling, at a terrific height, with my head downward, and my face outwards, by a piece of slender cord about three feet in length, which hung accidentally through a crevice near the bottom of the wicker-work, and in which, as i fell, my left foot became most providentially entangled. it is impossibleutterly impossibleto form any adequate idea of the horror of my situation. i gasped convulsively for breatha shudder resembling a fit of the ague agitated every nerve and muscle of my framei felt my eyes starting from their socketsa horrible nausea overwhelmed meand at length i fainted away. how long i remained in this state it is impossible to say. it must, however, have been no inconsiderable time, for when i partially recovered the sense of existence, i found the day breaking, the balloon at a prodigious height over a wilderness of ocean, and not a trace of land to be discovered far and wide within the limits of the vast horizon. my sensations, however, upon thus recovering, were by no means so rife with agony as might have been anticipated. indeed, there was much of incipient madness in the calm survey which i began to take of my situation. i drew up to my eyes each of my hands, one after the other, and wondered what occurrence could have given rise to the swelling of the veins, and the horrible blackness of the fingemails. i afterward carefully examined my head, shaking it repeatedly, and feeling it with minute attention, until i succeeded in satisfying myself that it was not, as i had more than half suspected, larger than my balloon. then, in a knowing manner, i felt in both my breeches pockets, and, missing therefrom a set of tablets and a toothpick case, endeavored to account for their disappearance, and not being able to do so, felt inexpressibly chagrined. it now occurred to me that i suffered great uneasiness in the joint of my left ankle, and a dim consciousness of my situation began to glimmer through my mind. but, strange to say! i was neither astonished nor horror-stricken. if i felt any emotion at all, it was a kind of chuckling satisfaction at the cleverness i was about to display in extricating myself from this dilemma; and i never, for a moment, looked upon my ultimate safety as a question susceptible of doubt. for a few minutes i remained wrapped in the profoundest meditation. i have a distinct recollection of frequently compressing my lips, putting my forefinger to the side of my nose, and making use of other gesticulations and grimaces common to men who, at ease in their arm-chairs, meditate upon matters of intricacy or importance. having, as i thought, sufficiently collected my ideas, i now, with great caution and deliberation, put my hands behind my back, and unfastened the large iron buckle which belonged to the waistband of my inexpressibles. this buckle had three teeth, which, being somewhat rusty, turned with great difficulty on their axis. i brought them, however, after some trouble, at right angles to the body of the buckle, and was glad to find them remain firm in that position. holding the instrument thus obtained within my teeth, i now proceeded to untie the knot of my cravat. i had to rest several times before i could accomplish this manoeuvre, but it was at length accomplished. to one end of the cravat i then made fast the buckle, and the other end i tied, for greater security, tightly around my wrist. drawing now my body upwards, with a prodigious exertion of muscular force, i succeeded, at the very first trial, in throwing the buckle over the car, and entangling it, as i had anticipated, in the circular rim of the wicker-work. my body was now inclined towards the side of the car, at an angle of about forty-five degrees; but it must not be understood that i was therefore only forty-five degrees below the perpendicular. so far from it, i still lay nearly level with the plane of the horizon; for the change of situation which i had acquired, had forced the bottom of the car considerably outwards from my position, which was accordingly one of the most imminent and deadly peril. it should be remembered, however, that when i fell in the first instance, from the car, if i had fallen with my face turned toward the balloon, instead of turned outwardly from it, as it actually was; or if, in the second place, the cord by which i was suspended had chanced to hang over the upper edge, instead of through a crevice near the bottom of the car,i say it may be readily conceived that, in either of these supposed cases, i should have been unable to accomplish even as much as i had now accomplished, and the wonderful adventures of hans phaall would have been utterly lost to posterity, i had therefore every reason to be grateful; although, in point of fact, i was still too stupid to be anything at all, and hung for, perhaps, a quarter of an hour in that extraordinary manner, without making the slightest farther exertion whatsoever, and in a singularly tranquil state of idiotic enjoyment. but this feeling did not fail to die rapidly away, and thereunto succeeded horror, and dismay, and a chilling sense of utter helplessness and ruin. in fact, the blood so long accumulating in the vessels of my head and throat, and which had hitherto buoyed up my spirits with madness and delirium, had now begun to retire within their proper channels, and the distinctness which was thus added to my perception of the danger, merely served to deprive me of the self-possession and courage to encounter it. but this weakness was, luckily for me, of no very long duration. in good time came to my rescue the spirit of despair, and, with frantic cries and struggles, i jerked my way bodily upwards, till at length, clutching with a vise-like grip the long-desired rim, i writhed my person over it, and fell headlong and shuddering within the car. it was not until some time afterward that i recovered myself sufficiently to attend to the ordinary cares of the balloon. i then, however, examined it with attention, and found it, to my great relief, uninjured. my implements were all safe, and, fortunately, i had lost neither ballast nor provisions. indeed, i had so well secured them in their places, that such an accident was entirely out of the question. looking at my watch, i found it six o'clock. i was still rapidly ascending, and my barometer gave a present altitude of three and three-quarter miles. immediately beneath me in the ocean, lay a small black object, slightly oblong in shape, seemingly about the size, and in every way bearing a great resemblance to one of those childish toys called a domino. bringing my telescope to bear upon it, i plainly discerned it to be a british ninety four-gun ship, close-hauled, and pitching heavily in the sea with her head to the w.s.w. besides this ship, i saw nothing but the ocean and the sky, and the sun, which had long arisen. it is now high time that i should explain to your excellencies the object of my perilous voyage. your excellencies will bear in mind that distressed circumstances in rotterdam had at length driven me to the resolution of committing suicide. it was not, however, that to life itself i had any, positive disgust, but that i was harassed beyond endurance by the adventitious miseries attending my situation. in this state of mind, wishing to live, yet wearied with life, the treatise at the stall of the bookseller opened a resource to my imagination. i then finally made up my mind. i determined to depart, yet liveto leave the world, yet continue to existin short, to drop enigmas, i resolved, let what would ensue, to force a passage, if i could, to the moon. now, lest i should be supposed more of a madman than i actually am, i will detail, as well as i am able, the considerations which led me to believe that an achievement of this nature, although without doubt difficult, and incontestably full of danger, was not absolutely, to a bold spirit, beyond the confines of the possible. the moon's actual distance from the earth was the first thing to be attended to. now, the mean or average interval between the centres of the two planets is 59.9643 of the earth's equatorial radii, or only about 237,000 miles. i say the mean or average interval. but it must be borne in mind that the form of the moon's orbit being an ellipse of eccentricity amounting to no less than 0.05484 of the major semi-axis of the ellipse itself, and the earth's centre being situated in its focus, if i could, in any manner, contrive to meet the moon, as it were, in its perigee, the above mentioned distance would be materially diminished. but, to say nothing at present of this possibility, it was very certain that, at all events, from the 237,000 miles i would have to deduct the radius of the earth, say 4,000, and the radius of the moon, say 1080, in all 5,080, leaving an actual interval to be traversed, under average circumstances, of 231,920 miles. now this, i reflected, was no very extraordinary distance. travelling on land has been repeatedly accomplished at the rate of thirty miles per hour, and indeed a much greater speed may be anticipated. but even at this velocity, it would take me no more than 322 days to reach the surface of the moon. there were, however, many particulars inducing me to believe that my average rate of travelling might possibly very much exceed that of thirty miles per hour, and, as these considerations did not fail to make a deep impression upon my mind, i will mention them more fully hereafter. the next point to be regarded was a matter of far greater importance. from indications afforded by the barometer, we find that, in ascensions from the surface of the earth we have, at the height of 1,000 feet, left below us about one-thirtieth of the entire mass of atmospheric air, that at 10,600 we have ascended through nearly one-third; and that at 18,000, which is not far from the elevation of cotopaxi, we have surmounted one-half the material, or, at all events, one-half the ponderable, body of air incumbent upon our globe. it is also calculated that at an altitude not exceeding the hundredth part of the earth's diameterthat is, not exceeding eighty milesthe rarefaction would be so excessive that animal life could in no manner be sustained, and, moreover, that the most delicate means we possess of ascertaining the presence of the atmosphere would be inadequate to assure us of its existence. but i did not fail to perceive that these latter calculations are founded altogether on our experimental knowledge of the properties of air, and the mechanical laws regulating its dilation and compression, in what may be called, comparatively speaking, the immediate vicinity of the earth itself; and, at the same time, it is taken for granted that animal life is and must be essentially incapable of modification at any given unattainable distance from the surface. now, all such reasoning and from such data must, of course, be simply analogical. the greatest height ever reached by man was that of 25,000 feet, attained in the aeronautic expedition of messieurs gay-lussac and biot. this is a moderate altitude, even when compared with the eighty miles in question; and i could not help thinking that the subject admitted room for doubt and great latitude for speculation. but, in point of fact, an ascension being made to any given altitude, the ponderable quantity of air surmounted in any farther ascension is by no means in proportion to the additional height ascended (as may be plainly seen from what has been stated before), but in a ratio constantly decreasing. it is therefore evident that, ascend as high as we may, we cannot, literally speaking, arrive at a limit beyond which no atmosphere is to be found. it must exist, i argued; although it may exist in a state of infinite rarefaction. on the other hand, i was aware that arguments have not been wanting to prove the existence of a real and definite limit to the atmosphere, beyond which there is absolutely no air whatsoever. but a circumstance which has been left out of view by those who contend for such a limit seemed to me, although no positive refutation of their creed, still a point worthy very serious investigation. on comparing the intervals between the successive arrivals of encke's comet at its perihelion, after giving credit, in the most exact manner, for all the disturbances due to the attractions of the planets, it appears that the periods are gradually diminishing; that is to say, the major axis of the comet's ellipse is growing shorter, in a slow but perfectly regular decrease. now, this is precisely what ought to be the case, if we suppose a resistance experienced from the comet from an extremely rare ethereal medium pervading the regions of its orbit. for it is evident that such a medium must, in retarding the comet's velocity, increase its centripetal, by weakening its centrifugal force. in other words, the sun's attraction would be constantly attaining greater power, and the comet would be drawn nearer at every revolution. indeed, there is no other way of accounting for the variation in question. but again. the real diameter of the same comet's nebulosity is observed to contract rapidly as it approaches the sun, and dilate with equal rapidity in its departure towards its aphelion. was i not justifiable in supposing with m. valz, that this apparent condensation of volume has its origin in the compression of the same ethereal medium i have spoken of before, and which is only denser in proportion to its solar vicinity? the lenticular-shaped phenomenon, also called the zodiacal light, was a matter worthy of attention. this radiance, so apparent in the tropics, and which cannot be mistaken for any meteoric lustre, extends from the horizon obliquely upward, and follows generally the direction of the sun's equator. it appeared to me evidently in the nature of a rare atmosphere extending from the sun outward, beyond the orbit of venus at least, and i believed indefinitely farther.* indeed, this medium i could not suppose confined to the path of the comet's ellipse, or to the immediate neighborhood of the sun. it was easy, on the contrary, to imagine it pervading the entire regions of our planetary system, condensed into what we call atmosphere at the planets themselves, and perhaps at some of them modified by considerations, so to speak, purely geological. *the zodiacal light is probably what the ancients called trabes. emicant trabes quos docos vocant.pliny, lib. 2, p. 26. having adopted this view of the subject, i had little further hesitation. granting that on my passage i should meet with atmosphere essentially the same as at the surface of the earth, i conceived that, by means of the very ingenious apparatus of m. grimm, i should readily be enabled to condense it in sufficient quantity for the purposes of respiration. this would remove the chief obstacle in a journey to the moon. i had indeed spent some money and great labor in adapting the apparatus to the object intended, and confidently looked forward to its successful application, if i could manage to complete the voyage within any reasonable period. this brings me back to the rate at which it might be possible to travel. it is true that balloons, in the first stage of their ascensions from the earth, are known to rise with a velocity comparatively moderate. now, the power of elevation lies altogether in the superior lightness of the gas in the balloon compared with the atmospheric air; and, at first sight, it does not appear probable that, as the balloon acquires altitude, and consequently arrives successively in atmospheric strata of densities rapidly diminishingi say, it does not appear at all reasonable that, in this its progress upwards, the original velocity should be accelerated. on the other hand, i was not aware that, in any recorded ascension, a diminution was apparent in the absolute rate of ascent; although such should have been the case, if on account of nothing else, on account of the escape of gas through balloons ill-constructed, and varnished with no better material than the ordinary varnish. it seemed, therefore, that the effect of such escape was only sufficient to counterbalance the effect of some accelerating power. i now considered that, provided in my passage i found the medium i had imagined, and provided that it should prove to be actually and essentially what we denominate atmospheric air, it could make comparatively little difference at what extreme state of rarefaction i should discover itthat is to say, in regard to my power of ascendingfor the gas in the balloon would not only be itself subject to rarefaction partially similar (in proportion to the occurrence of which, i could suffer an escape of so much as would be requisite to prevent explosion), but, being what it was, would, at all events, continue specifically lighter than any compound whatever of mere nitrogen and oxygen. in the meantime, the force of gravitation would be constantly diminishing, in proportion to the squares of the distances, and thus, with a velocity prodigiously accelerating, i should at length arrive in those distant regions where the force of the earth's attraction would be superseded by that of the moon. in accordance with these ideas, i did not think it worth while to encumber myself with more provisions than would be sufficient for a period of forty days. there was still, however, another difficulty, which occasioned me some little disquietude. it has been observed, that, in balloon ascensions to any considerable height, besides the pain attending respiration, great uneasiness is experienced about the head and body, often accompanied with bleeding at the nose, and other symptoms of an alarming kind, and growing more and more inconvenient in proportion to the altitude attained.* this was a reflection of a nature somewhat startling. was it not probable that these symptoms would increase indefinitely, or at least until terminated by death itself? i finally thought not. their origin was to be looked for in the progressive removal of the customary atmospheric pressure upon the surface of the body, and consequent distention of the superficial blood-vesselsnot in any positive disorganization of the animal system, as in the case of difficulty in breathing, where the atmospheric density is chemically insufficient for the due renovation of blood in a ventricle of the heart. unless for default of this renovation, i could see no reason, therefore, why life could not be sustained even in a vacuum; for the expansion and compression of chest, commonly called breathing, is action purely muscular, and the cause, not the effect, of respiration. in a word, i conceived that, as the body should become habituated to the want of atmospheric pressure, the sensations of pain would gradually diminishand to endure them while they continued, i relied with confidence upon the iron hardihood of my constitution. *since the original publication of hans phaall, i find that mr. green, of nassau balloon notoriety, and other late aeronauts, deny the assertions of humboldt, in this respect, and speak of a decreasing inconvenience,precisely in accordance with the theory here urged in a mere spirit of banter. thus, may it please your excellencies, i have detailed some, though by no means all, the considerations which led me to form the project of a lunar voyage. i shall now proceed to lay before you the result of an attempt so apparently audacious in conception, and, at all events, so utterly unparalleled in the annals of mankind. having attained the altitude before mentioned, that is to say three miles and three-quarters, i threw out from the car a quantity of feathers, and found that i still ascended with sufficient rapidity; there was, therefore, no necessity for discharging any ballast. i was glad of this, for i wished to retain with me as much weight as i could carry, for reasons which will be explained in the sequel. i as yet suffered no bodily inconvenience, breathing with great freedom, and feeling no pain whatever in the head. the cat was lying very demurely upon my coat, which i had taken off, and eyeing the pigeons with an air of nonchalance. these latter being tied by the leg, to prevent their escape, were busily employed in picking up some grains of rice scattered for them in the bottom of the car. at twenty minutes past six o'clock, the barometer showed an elevation of 26,400 feet, or five miles to a fraction. the prospect seemed unbounded. indeed, it is very easily calculated by means of spherical geometry, what a great extent of the earth's area i beheld. the convex surface of any segment of a sphere is, to the entire surface of the sphere itself, as the versed sine of the segment to the diameter of the sphere. now, in my case, the versed sinethat is to say, the thickness of the segment beneath mewas about equal to my elevation, or the elevation of the point of sight above the surface. "as five miles, then, to eight thousand," would express the proportion of the earth's area seen by me. in other words, i beheld as much as a sixteen-hundredth part of the whole surface of the globe. the sea appeared unruffled as a mirror, although, by means of the spy-glass, i could perceive it to be in a state of violent agitation. the ship was no longer visible, having drifted away, apparently to the eastward. i now began to experience, at intervals, severe pain in the head, especially about the earsstill, however, breathing with tolerable freedom. the cat and pigeons seemed to suffer no inconvenience whatsoever. at twenty minutes before seven, the balloon entered a long series of dense cloud, which put me to great trouble, by damaging my condensing apparatus and wetting me to the skin. this was, to be sure, a singular recontre, for i had not believed it possible that a cloud of this nature could be sustained at so great an elevation. i thought it best, however, to throw out two five-pound pieces of ballast, reserving still a weight of one hundred and sixty-five pounds. upon so doing, i soon rose above the difficulty, and perceived immediately, that i had obtained a great increase in my rate of ascent. in a few seconds after my leaving the cloud, a flash of vivid lightning shot from one end of it to the other, and caused it to kindle up, throughout its vast extent, like a mass of ignited and glowing charcoal. this, it must be remembered, was in the broad light of day. no fancy may picture the sublimity which might have been exhibited by a similar phenomenon taking place amid the darkness of the night. hell itself might have been found a fitting image. even as it was, my hair stood on end, while i gazed afar down within the yawning abysses, letting imagination descend, as it were, and stalk about in the strange vaulted halls, and ruddy gulfs, and red ghastly chasms of the hideous and unfathomable fire. i had indeed made a narrow escape. had the balloon remained a very short while longer within the cloudthat is to sayhad not the inconvenience of getting wet, determined me to discharge the ballast, inevitable ruin would have been the consequence. such perils, although little considered, are perhaps the greatest which must be encountered in balloons. i had by this time, however, attained too great an elevation to be any longer uneasy on this head. i was now rising rapidly, and by seven o'clock the barometer indicated an altitude of no less than nine miles and a half. i began to find great difficulty in drawing my breath. my head, too, was excessively painful; and, having felt for some time a moisture about my cheeks, i at length discovered it to be blood, which was oozing quite fast from the drums of my ears. my eyes, also, gave me great uneasiness. upon passing the hand over them they seemed to have protruded from their sockets in no inconsiderable degree; and all objects in the car, and even the balloon itself, appeared distorted to my vision. these symptoms were more than i had expected, and occasioned me some alarm. at this juncture, very imprudently, and without consideration, i threw out from the car three five-pound pieces of ballast. the accelerated rate of ascent thus obtained, carried me too rapidly, and without sufficient gradation, into a highly rarefied stratum of the atmosphere, and the result had nearly proved fatal to my expedition and to myself. i was suddenly seized with a spasm which lasted for more than five minutes, and even when this, in a measure, ceased, i could catch my breath only at long intervals, and in a gasping mannerbleeding all the while copiously at the nose and ears, and even slightly at the eyes. the pigeons appeared distressed in the extreme, and struggled to escape; while the cat mewed piteously, and, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth, staggered to and fro in the car as if under the influence of poison. i now too late discovered the great rashness of which i had been guilty in discharging the ballast, and my agitation was excessive. i anticipated nothing less than death, and death in a few minutes. the physical suffering i underwent contributed also to render me nearly incapable of making any exertion for the preservation of my life. i had, indeed, little power of reflection left, and the violence of the pain in my head seemed to be greatly on the increase. thus i found that my senses would shortly give way altogether, and i had already clutched one of the valve ropes with the view of attempting a descent, when the recollection of the trick i had played the three creditors, and the possible consequences to myself, should i return, operated to deter me for the moment. i lay down in the bottom of the car, and endeavored to collect my faculties. in this i so far succeeded as to determine upon the experiment of losing blood. having no lancet, however, i was constrained to perform the operation in the best manner i was able, and finally succeeded in opening a vein in my right arm, with the blade of my penknife. the blood had hardly commenced flowing when i experienced a sensible relief, and by the time i had lost about half a moderate basin full, most of the worst symptoms had abandoned me entirely. i nevertheless did not think it expedient to attempt getting on my feet immediately; but, having tied up my arm as well as i could, i lay still for about a quarter of an hour. at the end of this time i arose, and found myself freer from absolute pain of any kind than i had been during the last hour and a quarter of my ascension. the difficulty of breathing, however, was diminished in a very slight degree, and i found that it would soon be positively necessary to make use of my condenser. in the meantime, looking toward the cat, who was again snugly stowed away upon my coat, i discovered to my infinite surprise, that she had taken the opportunity of my indisposition to bring into light a litter of three little kittens. this was an addition to the number of passengers on my part altogether unexpected; but i was pleased at the occurrence. it would afford me a chance of bringing to a kind of test the truth of a surmise, which, more than anything else, had influenced me in attempting this ascension. i had imagined that the habitual endurance of the atmospheric pressure at the surface of the earth was the cause, or nearly so, of the pain attending animal existence at a distance above the surface. should the kittens be found to suffer uneasiness in an equal degree with their mother, i must consider my theory in fault, but a failure to do so i should look upon as a strong confirmation of my idea. by eight o'clock i had actually attained an elevation of seventeen miles above the surface of the earth. thus it seemed to me evident that my rate of ascent was not only on the increase, but that the progression would have been apparent in a slight degree even had i not discharged the ballast which i did. the pains in my head and ears returned, at intervals, with violence, and i still continued to bleed occasionally at the nose; but, upon the whole, i suffered much less than might have been expected. i breathed, however, at every moment, with more and more difficulty, and each inhalation was attended with a troublesome spasmodic action of the chest. i now unpacked the condensing apparatus, and got it ready for immediate use. the view of the earth, at this period of my ascension, was beautiful indeed. to the westward, the northward, and the southward, as far as i could see, lay a boundless sheet of apparently unruffled ocean, which every moment gained a deeper and a deeper tint of blue and began already to assume a slight appearance of convexity. at a vast distance to the eastward, although perfectly discernible, extended the islands of great britain, the entire atlantic coasts of france and spain, with a small portion of the northern part of the continent of africa. of individual edifices not a trace could be discovered, and the proudest cities of mankind had utterly faded away from the face of the earth. from the rock of gibraltar, now dwindled into a dim speck, the dark mediterranean sea, dotted with shining islands as the heaven is dotted with stars, spread itself out to the eastward as far as my vision extended, until its entire mass of waters seemed at length to tumble headlong over the abyss of the horizon, and i found myself listening on tiptoe for the echoes of the mighty cataract. overhead, the sky was of a jetty black, and the stars were brilliantly visible. the pigeons about this time seeming to undergo much suffering, i determined upon giving them their liberty. i first untied one of them, a beautiful gray-mottled pigeon, and placed him upon the rim of the wicker-work. he appeared extremely uneasy, looking anxiously around him, fluttering his wings, and making a loud cooing noise, but could not be persuaded to trust himself from off the car. i took him up at last, and threw him to about half a dozen yards from the balloon. he made, however, no attempt to descend as i had expected, but struggled with great vehemence to get back, uttering at the same time very shrill and piercing cries. he at length succeeded in regaining his former station on the rim, but had hardly done so when his head dropped upon his breast, and be fell dead within the car. the other one did not prove so unfortunate. to prevent his following the example of his companion, and accomplishing a return, i threw him downward with all my force, and was pleased to find him continue his descent, with great velocity, making use of his wings with ease, and in a perfectly natural manner. in a very short time he was out of sight, and i have no doubt he reached home in safety. puss, who seemed in a great measure recovered from her illness, now made a hearty meal of the dead bird and then went to sleep with much apparent satisfaction. her kittens were quite lively, and so far evinced not the slightest sign of any uneasiness whatever. at a quarter-past eight, being no longer able to draw breath without the most intolerable pain, i proceeded forthwith to adjust around the car the apparatus belonging to the condenser. this apparatus will require some little explanation, and your excellencies will please to bear in mind that my object, in the first place, was to surround myself and cat entirely with a barricade against the highly rarefied atmosphere in which i was existing, with the intention of introducing within this barricade, by means of my condenser, a quantity of this same atmosphere sufficiently condensed for the purposes of respiration. with this object in view i had prepared a very strong perfectly air-tight, but flexible gum-elastic bag. in this bag, which was of sufficient dimensions, the entire car was in a manner placed. that is to say, it (the bag) was drawn over the whole bottom of the car, up its sides, and so on, along the outside of the ropes, to the upper rim or hoop where the net-work is attached. having pulled the bag up in this way, and formed a complete enclosure on all sides, and at botttom, it was now necessary to fasten up its top or mouth, by passing its material over the hoop of the net-workin other words, between the net-work and the hoop. but if the net-work were separated from the hoop to admit this passage, what was to sustain the car in the meantime? now the net-work was not permanently fastened to the hoop, but attached by a series of running loops or nooses. i therefore undid only a few of these loops at one time, leaving the car suspended by the remainder. having thus inserted a portion of the cloth forming the upper part of the bag, i refastened the loopsnot to the hoop, for that would have been impossible, since the cloth now intervenedbut to a series of large buttons, affixed to the cloth itself, about three feet below the mouth of the bag, the intervals between the buttons having been made to correspond to the intervals between the loops. this done, a few more of the loops were unfastened from the rim, a farther portion of the cloth introduced, and the disengaged loops then connected with their proper buttons. in this way it was possible to insert the whole upper part of the bag between the net-work and the hoop. it is evident that the hoop would now drop down within the car, while the whole weight of the car itself, with all its contents, would be held up merely by the strength of the buttons. this, at first sight, would seem an inadequate dependence; but it was by no means so, for the buttons were not only very strong in themselves, but so close together that a very slight portion of the whole weight was supported by any one of them. indeed, had the car and contents been three times heavier than they were, i should not have been at all uneasy. i now raised up the hoop again within the covering of gum-elastic, and propped it at nearly its former height by means of three light poles prepared for the occasion. this was done, of course, to keep the bag distended at the top, and to preserve the lower part of the net-work in its proper situation. all that now remained was to fasten up the mouth of the enclosure; and this was readily accomplished by gathering the folds of the material together, and twisting them up very tightly on the inside by means of a kind of stationary tourniquet. in the sides of the covering thus adjusted round the car, had been inserted three circular panes of thick but clear glass, through which i could see without difficulty around me in every horizontal direction. in that portion of the cloth forming the bottom, was likewise, a fourth window, of the same kind, and corresponding with a small aperture in the floor of the car itself. this enabled me to see perpendicularly down, but having found it impossible to place any similar contrivance overhead, on account of the peculiar manner of closing up the opening there, and the consequent wrinkles in the cloth, i could expect to see no objects situated directly in my zenith. this, of course, was a matter of little consequence; for had i even been able to place a window at top, the balloon itself would have prevented my making any use of it. about a foot below one of the side windows was a circular opening, eight inches in diameter, and fitted with a brass rim adapted in its inner edge to the windings of a screw. in this rim was screwed the large tube of the condenser, the body of the machine being, of course, within the chamber of gum-elastic. through this tube a quantity of the rare atmosphere circumjacent being drawn by means of a vacuum created in the body of the machine, was thence discharged, in a state of condensation, to mingle with the thin air already in the chamber. this operation being repeated several times, at length filled the chamber with atmosphere proper for all the purposes of respiration. but in so confined a space it would, in a short time, necessarily become foul, and unfit for use from frequent contact with the lungs. it was then ejected by a small valve at the bottom of the carthe dense air readily sinking into the thinner atmosphere below. to avoid the inconvenience of making a total vacuum at any moment within the chamber, this purification was never accomplished all at once, but in a gradual mannerthe valve being opened only for a few seconds, then closed again, until one or two strokes from the pump of the condenser had supplied the place of the atmosphere ejected. for the sake of experiment i had put the cat and kittens in a small basket, and suspended it outside the car to a button at the bottom, close by the valve, through which i could feed them at any moment when necessary. i did this at some little risk, and before closing the mouth of the chamber, by reaching under the car with one of the poles before mentioned to which a hook had been attached. by the time i had fully completed these arrangements and filled the chamber as explained, it wanted only ten minutes of nine o'clock. during the whole period of my being thus employed, i endured the most terrible distress from difficulty of respiration, and bitterly did i repent the negligence or rather fool-hardiness, of which i had been guilty, of putting off to the last moment a matter of so much importance. but having at length accomplished it, i soon began to reap the benefit of my invention. once again i breathed with perfect freedom and easeand indeed why should i not? i was also agreeably surprised to find myself, in a great measure, relieved from the violent pains which had hitherto tormented me. a slight headache, accompanied with a sensation of fulness or distention about the wrists, the ankles, and the throat, was nearly all of which i had now to complain. thus it seemed evident that a greater part of the uneasiness attending the removal of atmospheric pressure had actually worn off, as i had expected, and that much of the pain endured for the last two hours should have been attributed altogether to the effects of a deficient respiration. at twenty minutes before nine o'clockthat is to say, a short time prior to my closing up the mouth of the chamber, the mercury attained its limit, or ran down, in the barometer, which, as i mentioned before, was one of an extended construction. it then indicated an altitude on my part of 132,000 feet, or five-and-twenty miles, and i consequently surveyed at that time an extent of the earth's area amounting to no less than the three hundred-and-twentieth part of its entire superficies. at nine o'clock i had again lost sight of land to the eastward, but not before i became aware that the balloon was drifting rapidly to the n. n. w. the convexity of the ocean beneath me was very evident indeed, although my view was often interrupted by the masses of cloud which floated to and fro. i observed now that even the lightest vapors never rose to more than ten miles above the level of the sea. at half past nine i tried the experiment of throwing out a handful of feathers through the valve. they did not float as i had expected; but dropped down perpendicularly, like a bullet, en masse, and with the greatest velocitybeing out of sight in a very few seconds. i did not at first know what to make of this extraordinary phenomenon; not being able to believe that my rate of ascent had, of a sudden, met with so prodigious an acceleration. but it soon occurred to me that the atmosphere was now far too rare to sustain even the feathers; that they actually fell, as they appeared to do, with great rapidity; and that i had been surprised by the united velocities of their descent and my own elevation. by ten o'clock i found that i had very little to occupy my immediate attention. affairs went swimmingly, and i believed the balloon to be going upward witb a speed increasing momently although i had no longer any means of ascertaining the progression of the increase. i suffered no pain or uneasiness of any kind, and enjoyed better spirits than i had at any period since my departure from rotterdam, busying myself now in examining the state of my various apparatus, and now in regenerating the atmosphere within the chamber. this latter point i determined to attend to at regular intervals of forty minutes, more on account of the preservation of my health, than from so frequent a renovation being absolutely necessary. in the meanwhile i could not help making anticipations. fancy revelled in the wild and dreamy regions of the moon. imagination, feeling herself for once unshackled, roamed at will among the ever-changing wonders of a shadowy and unstable land. now there were boary and time-honored forests, and craggy precipices, and waterfalls tumbling with a loud noise into abysses without a bottom. then i came suddenly into still noonday solitudes, where no wind of heaven ever intruded, and where vast meadows of poppies, and slender, lily-looking flowers spread themselves out a weary distance, all silent and motionless forever. then again i journeyed far down away into another country where it was all one dim and vague lake, with a boundary line of clouds. and out of this melancholy water arose a forest of tall eastern trees, like a wilderness of dreams. and i have in mind that the shadows of the trees which fell upon the lake remained not on the surface where they fell, but sunk slowly and steadily down, and commingled with the waves, while from the trunks of the trees other shadows were continually coming out, and taking the place of their brothers thus entombed. "this then," i said thoughtfully, "is the very reason why the waters of this lake grow blacker with age, and more melancholy as the hours run on." but fancies such as these were not the sole possessors of my brain. horrors of a nature most stern and most appalling would too frequently obtrude themselves upon my mind, and shake the innermost depths of my soul with the bare supposition of their possibility. yet i would not suffer my thoughts for any length of time to dwell upon these latter speculations, rightly judging the real and palpable dangers of the voyage sufficient for my undivided attention. at five o'clock, p.m., being engaged in regenerating the atmosphere within the chamber, i took that opportunity of observing the cat and kittens through the valve. the cat herself appeared to suffer again very much, and i had no hesitation in attributing her uneasiness chiefly to a difficulty in breathing; but my experiment with the kittens had resulted very strangely. i had expected, of course, to see them betray a sense of pain, although in a less degree than their mother, and this would have been sufficient to confirm my opinion concerning the habitual endurance of atmospheric pressure. but i was not prepared to find them, upon close examination, evidently enjoying a high degree of health, breathing with the greatest ease and perfect regularity, and evincing not the slightest sign of any uneasiness whatever. i could only account for all this by extending my theory, and supposing that the highly rarefied atmosphere around might perhaps not be, as i had taken for granted, chemically insufficient for the purposes of life, and that a person born in such a medium might, possibly, be unaware of any inconvenience attending its inhalation, while, upon removal to the denser strata near the earth, he might endure tortures of a similar nature to those i had so lately experienced. it has since been to me a matter of deep regret that an awkward accident, at this time, occasioned me the loss of my little family of cats, and deprived me of the insight into this matter which a continued experiment might have afforded. in passing my hand through the valve, with a cup of water for the old puss, the sleeves of my shirt became entangled in the loop which sustained the basket, and thus, in a moment, loosened it from the bottom. had the whole actually vanished into air, it could not have shot from my sight in a more abrupt and instantaneous manner. positively, there could not have intervened the tenth part of a second between the disengagement of the basket and its absolute and total disappearance with all that it contained. my good wishes followed it to the earth, but of course, i had no hope that either cat or kittens would ever live to tell the tale of their misfortune. at six o'clock, i perceived a great portion of the earth's visible area to the eastward involved in thick shadow, which continued to advance with great rapidity, until, at five minutes before seven, the whole surface in view was enveloped in the darkness of night. it was not, however, until long after this time that the rays of the setting sun ceased to illumine the balloon; and this circumstance, although of course fully anticipated, did not fail to give me an infinite deal of pleasure. it was evident that, in the morning, i should behold the rising luminary many hours at least before the citizens of rotterdam, in spite of their situation so much farther to the eastward, and thus, day after day, in proportion to the height ascended, would i enjoy the light of the sun for a longer and a longer period. i now determined to keep a journal of my passage, reckoning the days from one to twenty-four hours continuously, without taking into consideration the intervals of darkness. at ten o'clock, feeling sleepy, i determined to lie down for the rest of the night; but here a difficulty presented itself, which, obvious as it may appear, had escaped my attention up to the very moment of which i am now speaking. if i went to sleep as i proposed, how could the atmosphere in the chamber be regenerated in the interim? to breathe it for more than an hour, at the farthest, would be a matter of impossibility, or, if even this term could be extended to an hour and a quarter, the most ruinous consequences might ensue. the consideration of this dilemma gave me no little disquietude; and it will hardly be believed, that, after the dangers i had undergone, i should look upon this business in so serious a light, as to give up all hope of accomplishing my ultimate design, and finally make up my mind to the necessity of a descent. but this hesitation was only momentary. i reflected that man is the veriest slave of custom, and that many points in the routine of his existence are deemed essentially important, which are only so at all by his having rendered them habitual. it was very certain that i could not do without sleep; but i might easily bring myself to feel no inconvenience from being awakened at intervals of an hour during the whole period of my repose. it would require but five minutes at most to regenerate the atmosphere in the fullest manner, and the only real difficulty was to contrive a method of arousing myself at the proper moment for so doing. but this was a question which, i am willing to confess, occasioned me no little trouble in its solution. to be sure, i had heard of the student who, to prevent his falling asleep over his books, held in one hand a ball of copper, the din of whose descent into a basin of the same metal on the floor beside his chair, served effectually to startle him up, if, at any moment, he should be overcome with drowsiness. my own case, however, was very different indeed, and left me no room for any similar idea; for i did not wish to keep awake, but to be aroused from slumber at regular intervals of time. i at length hit upon the following expedient, which, simple as it may seem, was hailed by me, at the moment of discovery, as an invention fully equal to that of the telescope, the steam-engine, or the art of printing itself. it is necessary to premise, that the balloon, at the elevation now attained, continued its course upward with an even and undeviating ascent, and the car consequently followed with a steadiness so perfect that it would have been impossible to detect in it the slightest vacillation whatever. this circumstance favored me greatly in the project i now determined to adopt. my supply of water had been put on board in kegs containing five gallons each, and ranged very securely around the interior of the car. i unfastened one of these, and taking two ropes tied them tightly across the rim of the wicker-work from one side to the other; placing them about a foot apart and parallel so as to form a kind of shelf, upon which i placed the keg, and steadied it in a horizontal position. about eight inches immediately below these ropes, and four feet from the bottom of the car i fastened another shelfbut made of thin plank, being the only similar piece of wood i had. upon this latter shelf, and exactly beneath one of the rims of the keg, a small earthern pitcher was deposited. i now bored a hole in the end of the keg over the pitcher, and fitted in a plug of soft wood, cut in a tapering or conical shape. this plug i pushed in or pulled out, as might happen, until, after a few experiments, it arrived at that exact degree of tightness, at which the water, oozing from the hole, and falling into the pitcher below, would fill the latter to the brim in the period of sixty minutes. this, of course, was a matter briefly and easily ascertained, by noticing the proportion of the pitcher filled in any given time. having arranged all this, the rest of the plan is obvious. my bed was so contrived upon the floor of the car, as to bring my head, in lying down, immediately below the mouth of the pitcher. it was evident, that, at the expiration of an hour, the pitcher, getting full, would be forced to run over, and to run over at the mouth, which was somewhat lower than the rim. it was also evident, that the water thus falling from a height of more than four feet, could not do otherwise than fall upon my face, and that the sure consequences would be, to waken me up instantaneously, even from the soundest slumber in the world. it was fully eleven by the time i had completed these arrangements, and i immediately betook myself to bed, with full confidence in the efficiency of my invention. nor in this matter was i disappointed. punctually every sixty minutes was i aroused by my trusty chronometer, when, having emptied the pitcher into the bung-hole of the keg, and performed the duties of the condenser, i retired again to bed. these regular interruptions to my slumber caused me even less discomfort than i had anticipated; and when i finally arose for the day, it was seven o'clock, and the sun had attained many degrees above the line of my horizon. april 3d. i found the balloon at an immense height indeed, and the earth's apparent convexity increased in a material degree. below me in the ocean lay a cluster of black specks, which undoubtedly were islands. far away to the northward i perceived a thin, white, and exceedingly brilliant line, or streak, on the edge of the horizon, and i had no hesitation in supposing it to be the southern disk of the ices of the polar sea. my curiosity was greatly excited, for i had hopes of passing on much farther to the north, and might possibly, at some period, find myself placed directly above the pole itself. i now lamented that my great elevation would, in this case, prevent my taking as accurate a survey as i could wish. much, however, might be ascertained. nothing else of an extraordinary nature occurred during the day. my apparatus all continued in good order, and the balloon still ascended without any perceptible vacillation. the cold was intense, and obliged me to wrap up closely in an overcoat. when darkness came over the earth, i betook myself to bed, although it was for many hours afterward broad daylight all around my immediate situation. the water-clock was punctual in its duty, and i slept until next morning soundly, with the exception of the periodical interruption. april 4th. arose in good health and spirits, and was astonished at the singular change which had taken place in the appearance of the sea. it had lost, in a great measure, the deep tint of blue it had hitherto worn, being now of a grayish-white, and of a lustre dazzling to the eye. the islands were no longer visible; whether they had passed down the horizon to the southeast, or whether my increasing elevation had left them out of sight, it is impossible to say. i was inclined, however, to the latter opinion. the rim of ice to the northward was growing more and more apparent. cold by no means so intense. nothing of importance occurred, and i passed the day in reading, having taken care to supply myself with books. april 5th. beheld the singular phenomenon of the sun rising while nearly the whole visible surface of the earth continued to be involved in darkness. in time, however, the light spread itself over all, and i again saw the line of ice to the northward. it was now very distinct, and appeared of a much darker hue than the waters of the ocean. i was evidently approaching it, and with great rapidity. fancied i could again distinguish a strip of land to the eastward, and one also to the westward, but could not be certain. weather moderate. nothing of any consequence happened during the day. went early to bed. april 6th. was surprised at finding the rim of ice at a very moderate distance, and an immense field of the same material stretching away off to the horizon in the north. it was evident that if the balloon held its present course, it would soon arrive above the frozen ocean, and i had now little doubt of ultimately seeing the pole. during the whole of the day i continued to near the ice. toward night the limits of my horizon very suddenly and materially increased, owing undoubtedly to the earth's form being that of an oblate spheroid, and my arriving above the flattened regions in the vicinity of the arctic circle. when darkness at length overtook me, i went to bed in great anxiety, fearing to pass over the object of so much curiosity when i should have no opportunity of observing it. april 7th. arose early, and, to my great joy, at length beheld what there could be no hesitation in supposing the northern pole itself. it was there, beyond a doubt, and immediately beneath my feet; but, alas! i had now ascended to so vast a distance, that nothing could with accuracy be discerned. indeed, to judge from the progression of the numbers indicating my various altitudes, respectively, at different periods, between six a.m. on the second of april, and twenty minutes before nine a.m. of the same day (at which time the barometer ran down), it might be fairly inferred that the balloon had now, at four o'clock in the morning of april the seventh, reached a height of not less, certainly, than 7,254 miles above the surface of the sea. this elevation may appear immense, but the estimate upon which it is calculated gave a result in all probability far inferior to the truth. at all events i undoubtedly beheld the whole of the earth's major diameter; the entire northern hemisphere lay beneath me like a chart orthographically projected: and the great circle of the equator itself formed the boundary line of my horizon. your excellencies may, however, readily imagine that the confined regions hitherto unexplored within the limits of the arctic circle, although situated directly beneath me, and therefore seen without any appearance of being foreshortened, were still, in themselves, comparatively too diminutive, and at too great a distance from the point of sight, to admit of any very accurate examination. nevertheless, what could be seen was of a nature singular and exciting. northwardly from that huge rim before mentioned, and which, with slight qualification, may be called the limit of human discovery in these regions, one unbroken, or nearly unbroken, sheet of ice continues to extend. in the first few degrees of this its progress, its surface is very sensibly flattened, farther on depressed into a plane, and finally, becoming not a little concave, it terminates, at the pole itself, in a circular centre, sharply defined, wbose apparent diameter subtended at the balloon an angle of about sixty-five seconds, and whose dusky hue, varying in intensity, was, at all times, darker than any other spot upon the visible hemisphere, and occasionally deepened into the most absolute and impenetrable blackness. farther than this, little could be ascertained. by twelve o'clock the circular centre had materially decreased in circumference, and by seven p.m. i lost sight of it entirely; the balloon passing over the western limb of the ice, and floating away rapidly in the direction of the equator. april 8th. found a sensible diminution in the earth's apparent diameter, besides a material alteration in its general color and appearance. the whole visible area partook in different degrees of a tint of pale yellow, and in some portions had acquired a brilliancy even painful to the eye. my view downward was also considerably impeded by the dense atmosphere in the vicinity of the surface being loaded with clouds, between whose masses i could only now and then obtain a glimpse of the earth itself. this difficulty of direct vision had troubled me more or less for the last forty-eight hours; but my present enormous elevation brought closer together, as it were, the floating bodies of vapor, and the inconvenience became, of course, more and more palpable in proportion to my ascent. nevertheless, i could easily perceive that the balloon now hovered above the range of great lakes in the continent of north america, and was holding a course, due south, which would bring me to the tropics. this circumstance did not fail to give me the most heartful satisfaction, and i hailed it as a happy omen of ultimate success. indeed, the direction i had hitherto taken, had filled me with uneasiness; for it was evident that, had i continued it much longer, there would have been no possibility of my arriving at the moon at all, whose orbit is inclined to the ecliptic at only the small angle of 5 degrees 8' 48". april 9th. to-day the earth's diameter was greatly diminished, and the color of the surface assumed hourly a deeper tint of yellow. the balloon kept steadily on her course to the southward, and arrived, at nine p.m., over the northern edge of the mexican gulf. april 10th. i was suddenly aroused from slumber, about five o'clock this morning, by a loud, crackling, and terrific sound, for which i could in no manner account. it was of very brief duration, but, while it lasted resembled nothing in the world of which i had any previous experience. it is needless to say that i became excessively alarmed, having, in the first instance, attributed the noise to the bursting of the balloon. i examined all my apparatus, however, with great attention, and could discover nothing out of order. spent a great part of the day in meditating upon an occurrence so extraordinary, but could find no means whatever of accounting for it. went to bed dissatisfied, and in a state of great anxiety and agitation. april 11th. found a startling diminution in the apparent diameter of the earth, and a considerable increase, now observable for the first time, in that of the moon itself, which wanted only a few days of being full. it now required long and excessive labor to condense within the chamber sufficient atmospheric air for the sustenance of life. april 12th. a singular alteration took place in regard to the direction of the balloon, and although fully anticipated, afforded me the most unequivocal delight. having reached, in its former course, about the twentieth parallel of southern latitude, it turned off suddenly, at an acute angle, to the eastward, and thus proceeded throughout the day, keeping nearly, if not altogether, in the exact plane of the lunar elipse. what was worthy of remark, a very perceptible vacillation in the car was a consequence of this change of routea vacillation which prevailed, in a more or less degree, for a period of many hours. april 13th. was again very much alarmed by a repetition of the loud, crackling noise which terrified me on the tenth. thought long upon the subject, but was unable to form any satisfactory conclusion. great decrease in the earth's apparent diameter, which now subtended from the balloon an angle of very little more than twenty-five degrees. the moon could not be seen at all, being nearly in my zenith. i still continued in the plane of the elipse, but made little progress to the eastward. april 14th. extremely rapid decrease in the diameter of the earth. to-day i became strongly impressed with the idea, that the balloon was now actually running up the line of apsides to the point of perigeein other words, holding the direct course which would bring it immediately to the moon in that part of its orbit the nearest to the earth. the moon iself was directly overhead, and consequently hidden from my view. great and long-continued labor necessary for the condensation of the atmosphere. april 15th. not even the outlines of continents and seas could now be traced upon the earth with anything approaching distinctness. about twelve o'clock i became aware, for the third time, of that appalling sound which had so astonished me before. it now, however, continued for some moments, and gathered intensity as it continued. at length, while, stupefied and terror-stricken, i stood in expectation of i knew not what hideous destruction, the car vibrated with excessive violence, and a gigantic and flaming mass of some material which i could not distinguish, came with a voice of a thousand thunders, roaring and booming by the balloon. when my fears and astonishment had in some degree subsided, i had little difficulty in supposing it to be some mighty volcanic fragment ejected from that world to which i was so rapidly approaching, and, in all probability, one of that singular class of substances occasionally picked up on the earth, and termed meteoric stones for want of a better appellation. april 16th. to-day, looking upward as well as i could, through each of the side windows alternately, i beheld, to my great delight, a very small portion of the moon's disk protruding, as it were, on all sides beyond the huge circumference of the balloon. my agitation was extreme; for i had now little doubt of soon reaching the end of my perilous voyage. indeed, the labor now required by the condenser had increased to a most oppressive degree, and allowed me scarcely any respite from exertion. sleep was a matter nearly out of the question. i became quite ill, and my frame trembled with exhaustion. it was impossible that human nature could endure this state of intense suffering much longer. during the now brief interval of darkness a meteoric stone again passed in my vicinity, and the frequency of these phenomena began to occasion me much apprehension. april 17th. this morning proved an epoch in my voyage. it will be remembered that, on the thirteenth, the earth subtended an angular breadth of twenty-five degrees. on the fourteenth this had greatly diminished; on the fifteenth a still more remarkable decrease was observable; and, on retiring on the night of the sixteenth, i had noticed an angle of no more than about seven degrees and fifteen minutes. what, therefore, must have been my amazement, on awakening from a brief and disturbed slumber, on the morning of this day, the seventeenth, at finding the surface beneath me so suddenly and wonderfully augmented in volume, as to subtend no less than thirty-nine degrees in apparent angular diameter! i was thunderstruck! no words can give any adequate idea of the extreme, the absolute horror and astonishment, with which i was seized possessed, and altogether overwhelmed. my knees tottered beneath memy teeth chatteredmy hair started up on end. "the balloon, then, had actually burst!" these were the first tumultuous ideas that hurried through my mind: "the balloon had positively burst!i was fallingfalling with the most impetuous, the most unparalleled velocity! to judge by the immense distance already so quickly passed over, it could not be more than ten minutes, at the farthest, before i should meet the surface of the earth, and be hurled into annihilation!" but at length reflection came to my relief. i paused; i considered; and i began to doubt. the matter was impossible. i could not in any reason have so rapidly come down. besides, although i was evidently approaching the surface below me, it was with a speed by no means commensurate with the velocity i had at first so horribly conceived. this consideration served to calm the perturbation of my mind, and i finally succeeded in regarding the phenomenon in its proper point of view. in fact, amazement must have fairly deprived me of my senses, when i could not see the vast difference, in appearance, between the surface below me, and the surface of my mother earth. the latter was indeed over my head, and completely hidden by the balloon, while the moonthe moon itself in all its glorylay beneath me, and at my feet. the stupor and surprise produced in my mind by this extraordinary change in the posture of affairs was perhaps, after all, that part of the adventure least susceptible of explanation. for the bouleversement in itself was not only natural and inevitable, but had been long actually anticipated as a circumstance to be expected whenever i should arrive at that exact point of my voyage where the attraction of the planet should be superseded by the attraction of the satelliteor, more precisely, where the gravitation of the balloon toward the earth should be less powerful than its gravitation toward the moon. to be sure i arose from a sound slumber, with all my senses in confusion, to the contemplation of a very startling phenomenon, and one which, although expected, was not expected at the moment. the revolution itself must, of course, have taken place in an easy and gradual manner, and it is by no means clear that, had i even been awake at the time of the occurrence, i should have been made aware of it by any internal evidence of an inversionthat is to say, by any inconvenience or disarrangement, either about my person or about my apparatus. it is almost needless to say that, upon coming to a due sense of my situation, and emerging from the terror which had absorbed every faculty of my soul, my attention was, in the first place, wholly directed to the contemplation of the general physical appearance of the moon. it lay beneath me like a chartand although i judged it to be still at no inconsiderable distance, the indentures of its surface were defined to my vision with a most striking and altogether unaccountable distinctness. the entire absence of ocean or sea, and indeed of any lake or river, or body of water whatsoever, struck me, at first glance, as the most extraordinary feature in its geological condition. yet, strange to say, i beheld vast level regions of a character decidedly alluvial, although by far the greater portion of the hemisphere in sight was covered with innumerable volcanic mountains, conical in shape, and having more the appearance of artificial than of natural protuberance. the highest among them does not exceed three and three-quarter miles in perpendicular elevation; but a map of the volcanic districts of the campi phlegraei would afford to your excellencies a better idea of their general surface than any unworthy description i might think proper to attempt. the greater part of them were in a state of evident eruption, and gave me fearfully to understand their fury and their power, by the repeated thunders of the miscalled meteoric stones, which now rushed upward by the balloon with a frequency more and more appalling. april 18th. to-day i found an enormous increase in the moon's apparent bulkand the evidently accelerated velocity of my descent began to fill me with alarm. it will be remembered, that, in the earliest stage of my speculations upon the possibility of a passage to the moon, the existence, in its vicinity, of an atmosphere, dense in proportion to the bulk of the planet, had entered largely into my calculations; this too in spite of many theories to the contrary, and, it may be added, in spite of a general disbelief in the existence of any lunar atmosphere at all. but, in addition to what i have already urged in regard to encke's comet and the zodiacal light, i had been strengthened in my opinion by certain observations of mr. schroeter, of lilienthal. he observed the moon when two days and a half old, in the evening soon after sunset, before the dark part was visible, and continued to watch it until it became visible. the two cusps appeared tapering in a very sharp faint prolongation, each exhibiting its farthest extremity faintly illuminated by the solar rays, before any part of the dark hemisphere was visible. soon afterward, the whole dark limb became illuminated. this prolongation of the cusps beyond the semicircle, i thought, must have arisen from the refraction of the sun's rays by the moon's atmosphere. i computed, also, the height of the atmosphere (which could refract light enough into its dark hemisphere to produce a twilight more luminous than the light reflected from the earth when the moon is about 32 degrees from the new) to be 1,356 paris feet; in this view, i supposed the greatest height capable of refracting the solar ray, to be 5,376 feet. my ideas on this topic had also received confirmation by a passage in the eighty-second volume of the philosophical transactions, in which it is stated that at an occultation of jupiter's satellites, the third disappeared after having been about 1" or 2" of time indistinct, and the fourth became indiscernible near the limb.* *havelius writes that he has several times found, in skies perfectly clear, when even stars of the sixth and seventh magnitude were conspicuous, that, at the same altitude of the moon, at the same elongation from the earth, and with one and the same excellent telescope, the moon and its maculae did not appear equally lucid at all times. from the circumstances of the observation, it is evident that the cause of this phenomenon is not either in our air, in the tube, in the moon, or in the eye of the spectator, but must be looked for in something (an atmosphere?) existing about the moon. cassini frequently observed saturn, jupiter, and the fixed stars, when approaching the moon to occultation, to have their circular figure changed into an oval one; and, in other occultations, he found no alteration of figure at all. hence it might be supposed, that at some times and not at others, there is a dense matter encompassing the moon wherein the rays of the stars are refracted. upon the resistance or, more properly, upon the support of an atmosphere, existing in the state of density imagined, i had, of course, entirely depended for the safety of my ultimate descent. should i then, after all, prove to have been mistaken, i had in consequence nothing better to expect, as a finale to my adventure, than being dashed into atoms against the rugged surface of the satellite. and, indeed, i had now every reason to be terrified. my distance from the moon was comparatively trifling, while the labor required by the condenser was diminished not at all, and i could discover no indication whatever of a decreasing rarity in the air. april 19th. this morning, to my great joy, about nine o'clock, the surface of the moon being frightfully near, and my apprehensions excited to the utmost, the pump of my condenser at length gave evident tokens of an alteration in the atmosphere. by ten, i had reason to believe its density considerably increased. by eleven, very little labor was necessary at the apparatus; and at twelve o'clock, with some hesitation, i ventured to unscrew the tourniquet, when, finding no inconvenience from having done so, i finally threw open the gum-elastic chamber, and unrigged it from around the car. as might have been expected, spasms and violent headache were the immediate consequences of an experiment so precipitate and full of danger. but these and other difficulties attending respiration, as they were by no means so great as to put me in peril of my life, i determined to endure as i best could, in consideration of my leaving them behind me momently in my approach to the denser strata near the moon. this approach, however, was still impetuous in the extreme; and it soon became alarmingly certain that, although i had probably not been deceived in the expectation of an atmosphere dense in proportion to the mass of the satellite, still i had been wrong in supposing this density, even at the surface, at all adequate to the support of the great weight contained in the car of my balloon. yet this should have been the case, and in an equal degree as at the surface of the earth, the actual gravity of bodies at either planet supposed in the ratio of the atmospheric condensation. that it was not the case, however, my precipitous downfall gave testimony enough; why it was not so, can only be explained by a reference to those possible geological disturbances to which i have formerly alluded. at all events i was now close upon the planet, and coming down with the most terrible impetuosity. i lost not a moment, accordingly, in throwing overboard first my ballast, then my water-kegs, then my condensing apparatus and gum-elastic chamber, and finally every article within the car. but it was all to no purpose. i still fell with horrible rapidity, and was now not more than half a mile from the surface. as a last resource, therefore, having got rid of my coat, hat, and boots, i cut loose from the balloon the car itself, which was of no inconsiderable weight, and thus, clinging with both hands to the net-work, i had barely time to observe that the whole country, as far as the eye could reach, was thickly interspersed with diminutive habitations, ere i tumbled headlong into the very heart of a fantastical-looking city, and into the middle of a vast crowd of ugly little people, who none of them uttered a single syllable, or gave themselves the least trouble to render me assistance, but stood, like a parcel of idiots, grinning in a ludicrous manner, and eyeing me and my balloon askant, with their arms set a-kimbo. i turned from them in contempt, and, gazing upward at the earth so lately left, and left perhaps for ever, beheld it like a huge, dull, copper shield, about two degrees in diameter, fixed immovably in the heavens overhead, and tipped on one of its edges with a crescent border of the most brilliant gold. no traces of land or water could be discovered, and the whole was clouded with variable spots, and belted with tropical and equatorial zones. thus, may it please your excellencies, after a series of great anxieties, unheard of dangers, and unparalleled escapes, i had, at length, on the nineteenth day of my departure from rotterdam, arrived in safety at the conclusion of a voyage undoubtedly the most extraordinary, and the most momentous, ever accomplished, undertaken, or conceived by any denizen of earth. but my adventures yet remain to be related. and indeed your excellencies may well imagine that, after a residence of five years upon a planet not only deeply interesting in its own peculiar character, but rendered doubly so by its intimate connection, in capacity of satellite, with the world inhabited by man, i may have intelligence for the private ear of the states' college of astronomers of far more importance than the details, however wonderful, of the mere voyage which so happily concluded. this is, in fact, the case. i have muchvery much which it would give me the greatest pleasure to communicate. i have much to say of the climate of the planet; of its wonderful alternations of heat and cold, of unmitigated and burning sunshine for one fortnight, and more than polar frigidity for the next; of a constant transfer of moisture, by distillation like that in vacuo, from the point beneath the sun to the point the farthest from it; of a variable zone of running water, of the people themselves; of their manners, customs, and political institutions; of their peculiar physical construction; of their ugliness; of their want of ears, those useless appendages in an atmosphere so peculiarly modified; of their consequent ignorance of the use and properties of speech; of their substitute for speech in a singular method of inter-communication; of the incomprehensible connection between each particular individual in the moon with some particular individual on the eartha connection analogous with, and depending upon, that of the orbs of the planet and the satellites, and by means of which the lives and destinies of the inhabitants of the one are interwoven with the lives and destinies of the inhabitants of the other; and above all, if it so please your excellenciesabove all, of those dark and hideous mysteries which lie in the outer regions of the moonregions which, owing to the almost miraculous accordance of the satellite's rotation on its own axis with its sidereal revolution about the earth, have never yet been turned, and, by god's mercy, never shall be turned, to the scrutiny of the telescopes of man. all this, and moremuch morewould i most willingly detail. but, to be brief, i must have my reward. i am pining for a return to my family and to my home, and as the price of any farther communication on my partin consideration of the light which i have it in my power to throw upon many very important branches of physical and metaphysical sciencei must solicit, through the influence of your honorable body, a pardon for the crime of which i have been guilty in the death of the creditors upon my departure from rotterdam. this, then, is the object of the present paper. its bearer, an inhabitant of the moon, whom i have prevailed upon, and properly instructed, to be my messenger to the earth, will await your excellencies' pleasure, and return to me with the pardon in question, if it can, in any manner, be obtained. i have the honor to be, etc., your excellencies' very humble servant, hans phaall. upon finishing the perusal of this very extraordinary document, professor rub-a-dub, it is said, dropped his pipe upon the ground in the extremity of his surprise, and mynheer superbus von underduk having taken off his spectacles, wiped them, and deposited them in his pocket, so far forgot both himself and his dignity, as to turn round three times upon his heel in the quintessence of astonishment and admiration. there was no doubt about the matterthe pardon should be obtained. so at least swore, with a round oath, professor rub-a-dub, and so finally thought the illustrious von underduk, as he took the arm of his brother in science, and without saying a word, began to make the best of his way home to deliberate upon the measures to be adopted. having reached the door, however, of the burgomaster's dwelling, the professor ventured to suggest that as the messenger had thought proper to disappearno doubt frightened to death by the savage appearance of the burghers of rotterdamthe pardon would be of little use, as no one but a man of the moon would undertake a voyage to so vast a distance. to the truth of this observation the burgomaster assented, and the matter was therefore at an end. not so, however, rumors and speculations. the letter, having been published, gave rise to a variety of gossip and opinion. some of the over-wise even made themselves ridiculous by decrying the whole business; as nothing better than a hoax. but hoax, with these sort of people, is, i believe, a general term for all matters above their comprehension. for my part, i cannot conceive upon what data they have founded such an accusation. let us see what they say: imprimus. that certain wags in rotterdam have certain especial antipathies to certain burgomasters and astronomers. don't understand at all. secondly. that an odd little dwarf and bottle conjurer, both of whose ears, for some misdemeanor, have been cut off close to his head, has been missing for several days from the neighboring city of bruges. wellwhat of that? thirdly. that the newspapers which were stuck all over the little balloon were newspapers of holland, and therefore could not have been made in the moon. they were dirty papersvery dirtyand gluck, the printer, would take his bible oath to their having been printed in rotterdam. he was mistakenundoubtedlymistaken. fourthly, that hans phaall himself, the druken villain, and the three very idle gentlemen styled his creditors, were all seen, no longer than two or three days ago, in a tippling house in the suburbs, having just returned, with money in their pockets, from a trip beyond the sea. don't believe itdon't believe a word of it. lastly. that it is an opinion very generally received, or which ought to be generally received, that the college of astronomers in the city of rotterdam, as well as other colleges in all other parts of the world,not to mention colleges and astronomers in general,are, to say the least of the matter, not a whit better, nor greater, nor wiser than they ought to be. the end . 1838 ligeia by edgar allan poe ligeia ligeia and the will therein lieth, which dieth not. who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? for god is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will. joseph glanvill. i cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, i first became acquainted with the lady ligeia. long years have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering. or, perhaps, i cannot now bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and stealthily progressive that they have been unnoticed and unknown. yet i believe that i met her first and most frequently in some large, old, decaying city near the rhine. of her family --i have surely heard her speak. that it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. ligeia! ligeia! in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word alone --by ligeia --that i bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more. and now, while i write, a recollection flashes upon me that i have never known the paternal name of her who was my friend and my betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally the wife of my bosom. was it a playful charge on the part of my ligeia? or was it a test of my strength of affection, that i should institute no inquiries upon this point? or was it rather a caprice of my own --a wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion? i but indistinctly recall the fact itself --what wonder that i have utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it? and, indeed, if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged ashtophet of idolatrous egypt, presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over mine. there is one dear topic, however, on which my memory falls me not. it is the person of ligeia. in stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. i would in vain attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease, of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall. she came and departed as a shadow. i was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble hand upon my shoulder. in beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. it was the radiance of an opium-dream --an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered vision about the slumbering souls of the daughters of delos. yet her features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen. "there is no exquisite beauty," says bacon, lord verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty, without some strangeness in the proportion." yet, although i saw that the features of ligeia were not of a classic regularity --although i perceived that her loveliness was indeed "exquisite," and felt that there was much of "strangeness" pervading it, yet i have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own perception of "the strange." i examined the contour of the lofty and pale forehead --it was faultless --how cold indeed that word when applied to a majesty so divine! --the skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the homeric epithet, "hyacinthine!" i looked at the delicate outlines of the nose --and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the hebrews had i beheld a similar perfection. there were the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. i regarded the sweet mouth. here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly --the magnificent turn of the short upper lip --the soft, voluptuous slumber of the under --the dimples which sported, and the color which spoke --the teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of the holy light which fell upon them in her serene and placid, yet most exultingly radiant of all smiles. i scrutinized the formation of the chin --and here, too, i found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the majesty, the fullness and the spirituality, of the greek --the contour which the god apollo revealed but in a dream, to cleomenes, the son of the athenian. and then i peered into the large eves of ligeia. for eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. it might have been, too, that in these eves of my beloved lay the secret to which lord verulam alludes. they were, i must believe, far larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race. they were even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of nourjahad. yet it was only at intervals --in moments of intense excitement --that this peculiarity became more than slightly noticeable in ligeia. and at such moments was her beauty --in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps --the beauty of beings either above or apart from the earth --the beauty of the fabulous houri of the turk. the hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black, and, far over them, hung jetty lashes of great length. the brows, slightly irregular in outline, had the same tint. the "strangeness," however, which i found in the eyes, was of a nature distinct from the formation, or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be referred to the expression. ah, word of no meaning! behind whose vast latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the spiritual. the expression of the eyes of ligeia! how for long hours have i pondered upon it! how have i, through the whole of a midsummer night, struggled to fathom it! what was it --that something more profound than the well of democritus --which lay far within the pupils of my beloved? what was it? i was possessed with a passion to discover. those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of leda, and i to them devoutest of astrologers. there is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact --never, i believe, noticed in the schools --that, in our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. and thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of ligeia's eyes, have i felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression --felt it approaching --yet not quite be mine --and so at length entirely depart! and (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) i found, in the commonest objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to theat expression. i mean to say that, subsequently to the period when ligeia's beauty passed into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, i derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as i felt always aroused within me by her large and luminous orbs. yet not the more could i define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. i recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly-growing vine --in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. i have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. i have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people. and there are one or two stars in heaven --(one especially, a star of the sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be found near the large star in lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of which i have been made aware of the feeling. i have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books. among innumerable other instances, i well remember something in a volume of joseph glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its quaintness --who shall say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment; --"and the will therein lieth, which dieth not. who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? for god is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will." length of years, and subsequent reflection, have enabled me to trace, indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the english moralist and a portion of the character of ligeia. an intensity in thought, action, or speech, was possibly, in her, a result, or at least an index, of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse, failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence. of all the women whom i have ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the ever-placid ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. and of such passion i could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me --by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity of her very low voice --and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered. i have spoken of the learning of ligeia: it was immense --such as i have never known in woman. in the classical tongues was she deeply proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the modern dialects of europe, i have never known her at fault. indeed upon any theme of the most admired, because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition of the academy, have i ever found ligeia at fault? how singularly --how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife has forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! i said her knowledge was such as i have never known in woman --but where breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of moral, physical, and mathematical science? i saw not then what i now clearly perceive, that the acquisitions of ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet i was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which i was most busily occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. with how vast a triumph --with how vivid a delight --with how much of all that is ethereal in hope --did i feel, as she bent over me in studies but little sought --but less known --that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path, i might at length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden! how poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some years, i beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves and fly away! without ligeia i was but as a child groping benighted. her presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. wanting the radiant lustre of her eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew duller than saturnian lead. and now those eyes shone less and less frequently upon the pages over which i pored. ligeia grew ill. the wild eyes blazed with a too --too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave, and the blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the gentle emotion. i saw that she must die --and i struggled desperately in spirit with the grim azrael. and the struggles of the passionate wife were, to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. there had been much in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to her, death would have come without its terrors; --but not so. words are impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with which she wrestled with the shadow. i groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle. would have soothed --i would have reasoned; but, in the intensity of her wild desire for life, --for life --but for life --solace and reason were the uttermost folly. yet not until the last instance, amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was shaken the external placidity of her demeanor. her voice grew more gentle --grew more low --yet i would not wish to dwell upon the wild meaning of the quietly uttered words. my brain reeled as i hearkened entranced, to a melody more than mortal --to assumptions and aspirations which mortality had never before known. that she loved me i should not have doubted; and i might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion. but in death only, was i fully impressed with the strength of her affection. for long hours, detaining my hand, would she pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate devotion amounted to idolatry. how had i deserved to be so blessed by such confessions? --how had i deserved to be so cursed with the removal of my beloved in the hour of her making them, but upon this subject i cannot bear to dilate. let me say only, that in ligeia's more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all unworthily bestowed, i at length recognized the principle of her longing with so wildly earnest a desire for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away. it is this wild longing --it is this eager vehemence of desire for life --but for life --that i have no power to portray --no utterance capable of expressing. at high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me, peremptorily, to her side, she bade me repeat certain verses composed by herself not many days before. i obeyed her. --they were these: lo! 'tis a gala night within the lonesome latter years! an angel throng, bewinged, bedight in veils, and drowned in tears, sit in a theatre, to see a play of hopes and fears, while the orchestra breathes fitfully the music of the spheres. mimes, in the form of god on high, mutter and mumble low, and hither and thither fly - mere puppets they, who come and go at bidding of vast formless things that shift the scenery to and fro, flapping from out their condor wings invisible wo! that motley drama! --oh, be sure it shall not be forgot! with its phantom chased forever more, by a crowd that seize it not, through a circle that ever returneth in to the self-same spot, and much of madness and more of sin and horror the soul of the plot. but see, amid the mimic rout, a crawling shape intrude! a blood-red thing that writhes from out the scenic solitude! it writhes! --it writhes! --with mortal pangs the mimes become its food, and the seraphs sob at vermin fangs in human gore imbued. out --out are the lights --out all! and over each quivering form, the curtain, a funeral pall, comes down with the rush of a storm, and the angels, all pallid and wan, uprising, unveiling, affirm that the play is the tragedy, "man," and its hero the conqueror worm. "o god!" half shrieked ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as i made an end of these lines --"o god! o divine father! --shall these things be undeviatingly so? --shall this conqueror be not once conquered? are we not part and parcel in thee? who --who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will." and now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to fall, and returned solemnly to her bed of death. and as she breathed her last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. i bent to them my ear and distinguished, again, the concluding words of the passage in glanvill --"man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will." she died; --and i, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the rhine. i had no lack of what the world calls wealth. ligeia had brought me far more, very far more than ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals. after a few months, therefore, of weary and aimless wandering, i purchased, and put in some repair, an abbey, which i shall not name, in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair england. the gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored memories connected with both, had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of the country. yet although the external abbey, with its verdant decay hanging about it, suffered but little alteration, i gave way, with a child-like perversity, and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a display of more than regal magnificence within. --for such follies, even in childhood, i had imbibed a taste and now they came back to me as if in the dotage of grief. alas, i feel how much even of incipient madness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in the solemn carvings of egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted gold! i had become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a coloring from my dreams. but these absurdities must not pause to detail. let me speak only of that one chamber, ever accursed, whither in a moment of mental alienation, i led from the altar as my bride --as the successor of the unforgotten ligeia --the fair-haired and blue-eyed lady rowena trevanion, of tremaine. there is no individual portion of the architecture and decoration of that bridal chamber which is not now visibly before me. where were the souls of the haughty family of the bride, when, through thirst of gold, they permitted to pass the threshold of an apartment so bedecked, a maiden and a daughter so beloved? i have said that i minutely remember the details of the chamber --yet i am sadly forgetful on topics of deep moment --and here there was no system, no keeping, in the fantastic display, to take hold upon the memory. the room lay in a high turret of the castellated abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size. occupying the whole southern face of the pentagon was the sole window --an immense sheet of unbroken glass from venice --a single pane, and tinted of a leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or moon, passing through it, fell with a ghastly lustre on the objects within. over the upper portion of this huge window, extended the trellice-work of an aged vine, which clambered up the massy walls of the turret. the ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi-gothic, semi-druidical device. from out the most central recess of this melancholy vaulting, depended, by a single chain of gold with long links, a huge censer of the same metal, saracenic in pattern, and with many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as if endued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of parti-colored fires. some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of eastern figure, were in various stations about --and there was the couch, too --bridal couch --of an indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with a pall-like canopy above. in each of the angles of the chamber stood on end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the kings over against luxor, with their aged lids full of immemorial sculpture. but in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! the chief phantasy of all. the lofty walls, gigantic in height --even unproportionably so --were hung from summit to foot, in vast folds, with a heavy and massive-looking tapestry --tapestry of a material which was found alike as a carpet on the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as a canopy for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes of the curtains which partially shaded the window. the material was the richest cloth of gold. it was spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about a foot in diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black. but these figures partook of the true character of the arabesque only when regarded from a single point of view. by a contrivance now common, and indeed traceable to a very remote period of antiquity, they were made changeable in aspect. to one entering the room, they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities; but upon a farther advance, this appearance gradually departed; and step by step, as the visitor moved his station in the chamber, he saw himself surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition of the norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk. the phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial introduction of a strong continual current of wind behind the draperies --giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the whole. in halls such as these --in a bridal chamber such as this --i passed, with the lady of tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the first month of our marriage --passed them with but little disquietude. that my wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper --that she shunned me and loved me but little --i could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise. i loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man. my memory flew back, (oh, with what intensity of regret!) to ligeia, the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed. i revelled in recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty, her ethereal nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love. now, then, did my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. in the excitement of my opium dreams (for i was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug) i would call aloud upon her name, during the silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, i could restore her to the pathway she had abandoned --ah, could it be forever? --upon the earth. about the commencement of the second month of the marriage, the lady rowena was attacked with sudden illness, from which her recovery was slow. the fever which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy; and in her perturbed state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and about the chamber of the turret, which i concluded had no origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. she became at length convalescent --finally well. yet but a brief period elapsed, ere a second more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering; and from this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether recovered. her illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians. with the increase of the chronic disease which had thus, apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be eradicated by human means, i could not fall to observe a similar increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her excitability by trivial causes of fear. she spoke again, and now more frequently and pertinaciously, of the sounds --of the slight sounds --and of the unusual motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly alluded. one night, near the closing in of september, she pressed this distressing subject with more than usual emphasis upon my attention. she had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and i had been watching, with feelings half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her emaciated countenance. i sat by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of the ottomans of india. she partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest low whisper, of sounds which she then heard, but which i could not hear --of motions which she then saw, but which i could not perceive. the wind was rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and i wished to show her (what, let me confess it, i could not all believe) that those almost inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations of the figures upon the wall, were but the natural effects of that customary rushing of the wind. but a deadly pallor, overspreading her face, had proved to me that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. she appeared to be fainting, and no attendants were within call. i remembered where was deposited a decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. but, as i stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a startling nature attracted my attention. i had felt that some palpable although invisible object had passed lightly by my person; and i saw that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich lustre thrown from the censer, a shadow --a faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect --such as might be fancied for the shadow of a shade. but i was wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of opium, and heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them to rowena. having found the wine, i recrossed the chamber, and poured out a gobletful, which i held to the lips of the fainting lady. she had now partially recovered, however, and took the vessel herself, while i sank upon an ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened upon her person. it was then that i became distinctly aware of a gentle footfall upon the carpet, and near the couch; and in a second thereafter, as rowena was in the act of raising the wine to her lips, i saw, or may have dreamed that i saw, fall within the goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room, three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby colored fluid. if this i saw --not so rowena. she swallowed the wine unhesitatingly, and i forbore to speak to her of a circumstance which must, after all, i considered, have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination, rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady, by the opium, and by the hour. yet i cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immediately subsequent to the fall of the ruby-drops, a rapid change for the worse took place in the disorder of my wife; so that, on the third subsequent night, the hands of her menials prepared her for the tomb, and on the fourth, i sat alone, with her shrouded body, in that fantastic chamber which had received her as my bride. --wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before me. i gazed with unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying figures of the drapery, and upon the writhing of the parti-colored fires in the censer overhead. my eyes then fell, as i called to mind the circumstances of a former night, to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where i had seen the faint traces of the shadow. it was there, however, no longer; and breathing with greater freedom, i turned my glances to the pallid and rigid figure upon the bed. then rushed upon me a thousand memories of ligeia --and then came back upon my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that unutterable wo with which i had regarded her thus enshrouded. the night waned; and still, with a bosom full of bitter thoughts of the one only and supremely beloved, i remained gazing upon the body of rowena. it might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for i had taken no note of time, when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my revery. --i felt that it came from the bed of ebony --the bed of death. i listened in an agony of superstitious terror --but there was no repetition of the sound. i strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse --but there was not the slightest perceptible. yet i could not have been deceived. i had heard the noise, however faint, and my soul was awakened within me. i resolutely and perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body. many minutes elapsed before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the mystery. at length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble, and barely noticeable tinge of color had flushed up within the cheeks, and along the sunken small veins of the eyelids. through a species of unutterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality has no sufficiently energetic expression, i felt my heart cease to beat, my limbs grow rigid where i sat. yet a sense of duty finally operated to restore my self-possession. i could no longer doubt that we had been precipitate in our preparations --that rowena still lived. it was necessary that some immediate exertion be made; yet turret was altogether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the servants --there were none within call --i had no means of summoning them to my aid without leaving the room for many minutes --and this i could not venture to do. i therefore struggled alone in my endeavors to call back the spirit ill hovering. in a short period it was certain, however, that a relapse had taken place; the color disappeared from both eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the lips became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of death; a repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous illness immediately supervened. i fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which i had been so startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate waking visions of ligeia. an hour thus elapsed when (could it be possible?) i was a second time aware of some vague sound issuing from the region of the bed. i listened --in extremity of horror. the sound came again --it was a sigh. rushing to the corpse, i saw --distinctly saw --a tremor upon the lips. in a minute afterward they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly teeth. amazement now struggled in my bosom with the profound awe which had hitherto reigned there alone. i felt that my vision grew dim, that my reason wandered; and it was only by a violent effort that i at length succeeded in nerving myself to the task which duty thus once more had pointed out. there was now a partial glow upon the forehead and upon the cheek and throat; a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame; there was even a slight pulsation at the heart. the lady lived; and with redoubled ardor i betook myself to the task of restoration. i chafed and bathed the temples and the hands, and used every exertion which experience, and no little. medical reading, could suggest. but in vain. suddenly, the color fled, the pulsation ceased, the lips resumed the expression of the dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole body took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the intense rigidity, the sunken outline, and all the loathsome peculiarities of that which has been, for many days, a tenant of the tomb. and again i sunk into visions of ligeia --and again, (what marvel that i shudder while i write,) again there reached my ears a low sob from the region of the ebony bed. but why shall i minutely detail the unspeakable horrors of that night? why shall i pause to relate how, time after time, until near the period of the gray dawn, this hideous drama of revivification was repeated; how each terrific relapse was only into a sterner and apparently more irredeemable death; how each agony wore the aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe; and how each struggle was succeeded by i know not what of wild change in the personal appearance of the corpse? let me hurry to a conclusion. the greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had been dead, once again stirred --and now more vigorously than hitherto, although arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter hopelessness than any. i had long ceased to struggle or to move, and remained sitting rigidly upon the ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions, of which extreme awe was perhaps the least terrible, the least consuming. the corpse, i repeat, stirred, and now more vigorously than before. the hues of life flushed up with unwonted energy into the countenance --the limbs relaxed --and, save that the eyelids were yet pressed heavily together, and that the bandages and draperies of the grave still imparted their charnel character to the figure, i might have dreamed that rowena had indeed shaken off, utterly, the fetters of death. but if this idea was not, even then, altogether adopted, i could at least doubt no longer, when, arising from the bed, tottering, with feeble steps, with closed eyes, and with the manner of one bewildered in a dream, the thing that was enshrouded advanced boldly and palpably into the middle of the apartment. i trembled not --i stirred not --for a crowd of unutterable fancies connected with the air, the stature, the demeanor of the figure, rushing hurriedly through my brain, had paralyzed --had chilled me into stone. i stirred not --but gazed upon the apparition. there was a mad disorder in my thoughts --a tumult unappeasable. could it, indeed, be the living rowena who confronted me? could it indeed be rowena at all --the fair-haired, the blue-eyed lady rowena trevanion of tremaine? why, why should i doubt it? the bandage lay heavily about the mouth --but then might it not be the mouth of the breathing lady of tremaine? and the cheeks-there were the roses as in her noon of life --yes, these might indeed be the fair cheeks of the living lady of tremaine. and the chin, with its dimples, as in health, might it not be hers? --but had she then grown taller since her malady? what inexpressible madness seized me with that thought? one bound, and i had reached her feet! shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and there streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of long and dishevelled hair; it was blacker than the raven wings of the midnight! and now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me. "here then, at least," i shrieked aloud, "can i never --can i never be mistaken --these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes --of my lost love --of the lady --of the lady ligeia." -the end. just david, by eleanor h. porter digitized by cardinalis press, c.e.k. posted to wiretap in july 1993, as justdav.txt. this text is in the public domain. just david by eleanor h. (hodgman) porter author of pollyanna, miss billy married, etc. with illustrations by helen mason grose new york grosset & dunlap publishers copyright 1916, by eleanor h. porter all rights reserved published march 1916 158th thousand to my friend mrs. james harness contents i. the mountain home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ii. the trail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 iii. the valley. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 iv. two letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 v. discords. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 vi. nuisances, necessary and otherwise. . . . . . . . 72 vii. "you're wanted--you're wanted!" . . . . . . . . . 89 viii. the puzzling "dos" and "don'ts" . . . . . . . . .102 ix. joe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 x. the lady of the roses . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131 xi. jack and jill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145 xii. answers that did not answer . . . . . . . . . . .155 xiii. a surprise for mr. jack . . . . . . . . . . . . .163 xiv. the tower window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176 xv. secrets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .187 xvi. david's castle in spain . . . . . . . . . . . . .199 xvii. "the princess and the pauper" . . . . . . . . . .210 xviii. david to the rescue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .225 xix. the unbeautiful world . . . . . . . . . . . . . .241 xx. the unfamiliar way. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .252 xxi. heavy hearts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .264 xxii. as perry saw it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .274 xxiii. puzzles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .284 xxiv. a story remodeled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .298 xxv. the beautiful world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .308 chapter i the mountain home far up on the mountain-side stood alone in the clearing. it was roughly yet warmly built. behind it jagged cliffs broke the north wind, and towered gray-white in the sunshine. before it a tiny expanse of green sloped gently away to a point where the mountain dropped in another sharp descent, wooded with scrubby firs and pines. at the left a footpath led into the cool depths of the forest. but at the right the mountain fell away again and disclosed to view the picture david loved the best of all: the far-reaching valley; the silver pool of the lake with its ribbon of a river flung far out; and above it the grays and greens and purples of the mountains that climbed one upon another's shoulders until the topmost thrust their heads into the wide dome of the sky itself. there was no road, apparently, leading away from the cabin. there was only the footpath that disappeared into the forest. neither, anywhere, was there a house in sight nearer than the white specks far down in the valley by the river. within the shack a wide fireplace dominated one side of the main room. it was june now, and the ashes lay cold on the hearth; but from the tiny lean-to in the rear came the smell and the sputter of bacon sizzling over a blaze. the furnishings of the room were simple, yet, in a way, out of the common. there were two bunks, a few rude but comfortable chairs, a table, two music-racks, two violins with their cases, and everywhere books, and scattered sheets of music. nowhere was there cushion, curtain, or knickknack that told of a woman's taste or touch. on the other hand, neither was there anywhere gun, pelt, or antlered head that spoke of a man's strength and skill. for decoration there were a beautiful copy of the sistine madonna, several photographs signed with names well known out in the great world beyond the mountains, and a festoon of pine cones such as a child might gather and hang. from the little lean-to kitchen the sound of the sputtering suddenly ceased, and at the door appeared a pair of dark, wistful eyes. "daddy!" called the owner of the eyes. there was no answer. "father, are you there?" called the voice, more insistently. from one of the bunks came a slight stir and a murmured word. at the sound the boy at the door leaped softly into the room and hurried to the bunk in the corner. he was a slender lad with short, crisp curls at his ears, and the red of perfect health in his cheeks. his hands, slim, long, and with tapering fingers like a girl's, reached forward eagerly. "daddy, come! i've done the bacon all myself, and the potatoes and the coffee, too. quick, it's all getting cold!" slowly, with the aid of the boy's firm hands, the man pulled himself half to a sitting posture. his cheeks, like the boy's, were red--but not with health. his eyes were a little wild, but his voice was low and very tender, like a caress. "david--it's my little son david!" "of course it's david! who else should it be?" laughed the boy. "come!" and he tugged at the man's hands. the man rose then, unsteadily, and by sheer will forced himself to stand upright. the wild look left his eyes, and the flush his cheeks. his face looked suddenly old and haggard. yet with fairly sure steps he crossed the room and entered the little kitchen. half of the bacon was black; the other half was transparent and like tough jelly. the potatoes were soggy, and had the unmistakable taste that comes from a dish that has boiled dry. the coffee was lukewarm and muddy. even the milk was sour. david laughed a little ruefully. "things are n't so nice as yours, father," he apologized." i'm afraid i'm nothing but a discord in that orchestra to-day! somehow, some of the stove was hotter than the rest, and burnt up the bacon in spots; and all the water got out of the potatoes, too,--though that did n't matter, for i just put more cold in. i forgot and left the milk in the sun, and it tastes bad now; but i'm sure next time it'll be better--all of it." the man smiled, but he shook his head sadly. "but there ought not to be any 'next time,' david." "why not? what do you mean? are n't you ever going to let me try again, father?" there was real distress in the boy's voice. the man hesitated. his lips parted with an indrawn breath, as if behind them lay a rush of words. but they closed abruptly, the words still unsaid. then, very lightly, came these others:- "well, son, this is n't a very nice way to treat your supper, is it? now, if you please, i'll take some of that bacon. i think i feel my appetite coming back." if the truant appetite "came back," however, it could not have stayed; for the man ate but little. he frowned, too, as he saw how little the boy ate. he sat silent while his son cleared the food and dishes away, and he was still silent when, with the boy, he passed out of the house and walked to the little bench facing the west. unless it stormed very hard, david never went to bed without this last look at his "silver lake," as he called the little sheet of water far down in the valley. "daddy, it's gold to-night--all gold with the sun!" he cried rapturously, as his eyes fell upon his treasure. "oh, daddy!" it was a long-drawn cry of ecstasy, and hearing it, the man winced, as with sudden pain. 'daddy, i'm going to play it--i've got to play it!" cried the boy, bounding toward the cabin. in a moment he had returned, violin at his chin. the man watched and listened; and as he watched and listened, his face became a battle-ground whereon pride and fear, hope and despair, joy and sorrow, fought for the mastery. it was no new thing for david to "play" the sunset. always, when he was moved, david turned to his violin. always in its quivering strings he found the means to say that which his tongue could not express. across the valley the grays and blues of the mountains had become all purples now. above, the sky in one vast flame of crimson and gold, was a molten sea on which floated rosepink cloud-boats. below, the valley with its lake and river picked out in rose and gold against the shadowy greens of field and forest, seemed like some enchanted fairyland of loveliness. and all this was in david's violin, and all this, too, was on david's uplifted, rapturous face. as the last rose-glow turned to gray and the last strain quivered into silence, the man spoke. his voice was almost harsh with self-control. "david, the time has come. we'll have to give it up--you and i." the boy turned wonderingly, his face still softly luminous. "give what up?" "this--all this." "this! why, father, what do you mean? this is home!" the man nodded wearily. "i know. it has been home; but, david, you did n't think we could always live here, like this, did you?" david laughed softly, and turned his eyes once more to the distant sky-line. why not?" he asked dreamily. "what better place could there be? i like it, daddy." the man drew a troubled breath, and stirred restlessly. the teasing pain in his side was very bad to-night, and no change of position eased it. he was ill, very ill; and he knew it, yet he also knew that, to david, sickness, pain, and death meant nothing--or, at most, words that had always been lightly, almost unconsciously passed over. for the first time he wondered if, after all, his training--some of it--had been wise. for six years he had had the boy under his exclusive care and guidance. for six years the boy had eaten the food, worn the clothing, and studied the books of his father's choosing. for six years that father had thought, planned, breathed, moved, lived for his son. there had been no others in the little cabin. there had been only the occasional trips through the woods to the little town on the mountain-side for food and clothing, to break the days of close companionship. all this the man had planned carefully. he had meant that only the good and beautiful should have place in david's youth. it was not that he intended that evil, unhappiness, and death should lack definition, only definiteness, in the boy's mind. it should be a case where the good and the beautiful should so fill the thoughts that there would be no room for anything else. this had been his plan. and thus far he had succeeded--succeeded so wonderfully that he began now, in the face of his own illness, and of what he feared would come of it, to doubt the wisdom of that planning. as he looked at the boy's rapt face, he remembered david's surprised questioning at the first dead squirrel he had found in the woods. david was six then. "why, daddy, he's asleep, and he won't wake up!" he had cried. then, after a gentle touch: "and he's cold--oh, so cold!" the father had hurried his son away at the time, and had evaded his questions; and david had seemed content. but the next day the boy had gone back to the subject. his eyes were wide then, and a little frightened. "father, what is it to be--dead?" "what do you mean, david?" "the boy who brings the milk--he had the squirrel this morning. he said it was not asleep. it was--dead." "it means that the squirrel, the real squirrel under the fur, has gone away, david." "where?" "to a far country, perhaps." "will he come back?" "no." "did he want to go?" "we'll hope so." "but he left his--his fur coat behind him. did n't he need--that?" "no, or he'd have taken it with him." david had fallen silent at this. he had remained strangely silent indeed for some days; then, out in the woods with his father one morning, he gave a joyous shout. he was standing by the ice-covered brook, and looking at a little black hole through which the hurrying water could be plainly seen. "daddy, oh, daddy, i know now how it is, about being--dead." "why--david!" "it's like the water in the brook, you know; that's going to a far country, and it is n't coming back. and it leaves its little cold ice-coat behind it just as the squirrel did, too. it does n't need it. it can go without it. don't you see? and it's singing--listen!--it's singing as it goes. it wants to go!" "yes, david." and david's father had sighed with relief that his son had found his own explanation of the mystery, and one that satisfied. later, in his books, david found death again. it was a man, this time. the boy had looked up with startled eyes. "do people, real people, like you and me, be dead, father? do they go to a far country? "yes, son in time--to a far country ruled over by a great and good king they tell us. david's father had trembled as he said it, and had waited fearfully for the result. but david had only smiled happily as he answered: "but they go singing, father, like the little brook. you know i heard it!" and there the matter had ended. david was ten now, and not yet for him did death spell terror. because of this david's father was relieved; and yet--still because of this--he was afraid. "david," he said gently. "listen to me." the boy turned with a long sigh. "yes, father." "we must go away. out in the great world there are men and women and children waiting for you. you've a beautiful work to do; and one can't do one's work on a mountain-top." "why not? i like it here, and i've always been here." "not always, david; six years. you were four when i brought you here. you don't remember, perhaps." david shook his head. his eyes were again dreamily fixed on the sky. "i think i'd like it--to go--if i could sail away on that little cloud-boat up there," he murmured. the man sighed and shook his head." we can't go on cloud-boats. we must walk, david, for a way--and we must go soon--soon," he added feverishly." i must get you back--back among friends, before--" he rose unsteadily, and tried to walk erect. his limbs shook, and the blood throbbed at his temples. he was appalled at his weakness. with a fierceness born of his terror he turned sharply to the boy at his side. "david, we've got to go! we've got to go--to-morrow!" "father!" "yes, yes, come!" he stumbled blindly, yet in some way he reached the cabin door. behind him david still sat, inert, staring. the next minute the boy had sprung to his feet and was hurrying after his father. chapter ii the trail a curious strength seemed to have come to the man. with almost steady hands he took down the photographs and the sistine madonna, packing them neatly away in a box to be left. from beneath his bunk he dragged a large, dusty traveling-bag, and in this he stowed a little food, a few garments, and a great deal of the music scattered about the room. david, in the doorway, stared in dazed wonder. gradually into his eyes crept a look never seen there before. "father, where are we going?" he asked at last in a shaking voice, as he came slowly into the room. "back, son; we're going back." "to the village, where we get our eggs and bacon?" "no, no, lad, not there. the other way. we go down into the valley this time." "the valley--my valley, with the silver lake?" "yes, my son; and beyond--far beyond." the man spoke dreamily. he was looking at a photograph in his hand. it had slipped in among the loose sheets of music, and had not been put away with the others. it was the likeness of a beautiful woman. for a moment david eyed him uncertainly; then he spoke. "daddy, who is that? who are all these people in the pictures? you've never told me about any of them except the little round one that you wear in your pocket. who are they?" instead of answering, the man turned faraway eyes on the boy and smiled wistfully. "ah, david, lad, how they'll love you! how they will love you! but you must n't let them spoil you, son. you must remember--remember all i've told you." once again david asked his question, but this time the man only turned back to the photograph, muttering something the boy could not understand. after that david did not question any more. he was too amazed, too distressed. he had never before seen his father like this. with nervous haste the man was setting the little room to rights, crowding things into the bag, and packing other things away in an old trunk. his cheeks were very red, and his eyes very bright. he talked, too, almost constantly, though david could understand scarcely a word of what was said. later, the man caught up his violin and played; and never before had david heard his father play like that. the boy's eyes filled, and his heart ached with a pain that choked and numbed--though why, david could not have told. still later, the man dropped his violin and sank exhausted into a chair; and then david, worn and frightened with it all, crept to his bunk and fell asleep. in the gray dawn of the morning david awoke to a different world. his father, white-faced and gentle, was calling him to get ready for breakfast. the little room, dismantled of its decorations, was bare and cold. the bag, closed and strapped, rested on the floor by the door, together with the two violins in their cases, ready to carry. "we must hurry, son. it's a long tramp before we take the cars." "the cars--the real cars? do we go in those?" david was fully awake now. "yes." "and is that all we're to carry?" "yes. hurry, son." "but we come back--sometime?" there was no answer. "father, we're coming back--sometime?" david's voice was insistent now. the man stooped and tightened a strap that was already quite tight enough. then he laughed lightly. "why, of course you're coming back sometime, david. only think of all these things we're leaving!" when the last dish was put away, the last garment adjusted, and the last look given to the little room, the travelers picked up the bag and the violins, and went out into the sweet freshness of the morning. as he fastened the door the man sighed profoundly; but david did not notice this. his face was turned toward the east--always david looked toward the sun. "daddy, let's not go, after all! let's stay here," he cried ardently, drinking in the beauty of the morning. "we must go, david. come, son." and the man led the way across the green slope to the west. it was a scarcely perceptible trail, but the man found it, and followed it with evident confidence. there was only the pause now and then to steady his none-too-sure step, or to ease the burden of the bag. very soon the forest lay all about them, with the birds singing over their heads, and with numberless tiny feet scurrying through the underbrush on all sides. just out of sight a brook babbled noisily of its delight in being alive; and away up in the treetops the morning sun played hide-and-seek among the dancing leaves. and david leaped, and laughed, and loved it all, nor was any of it strange to him. the birds, the trees, the sun, the brook, the scurrying little creatures of the forest, all were friends of his. but the man--the man did not leap or laugh, though he, too, loved it all. the man was afraid. he knew now that he had undertaken more than he could carry out. step by step the bag had grown heavier, and hour by hour the insistent, teasing pain in his side had increased until now it was a torture. he had forgotten that the way to the valley was so long; he had not realized how nearly spent was his strength before he even started down the trail. throbbing through his brain was the question, what if, after all, he could not--but even to himself he would not say the words. at noon they paused for luncheon, and at night they camped where the chattering brook had stopped to rest in a still, black pool. the next morning the man and the boy picked up the trail again, but without the bag. under some leaves in a little hollow, the man had hidden the bag, and had then said, as if casually." i believe, after all, i won't carry this along. there's nothing in it that we really need, you know, now that i've taken out the luncheon box, and by night we'll be down in the valley." "of course!" laughed david. "we don't need that." and he laughed again, for pure joy. little use had david for bags or baggage! they were more than halfway down the mountain now, and soon they reached a grass-grown road, little traveled, but yet a road. still later they came to where four ways crossed, and two of them bore the marks of many wheels. by sundown the little brook at their side murmured softly of quiet fields and meadows, and david knew that the valley was reached. david was not laughing now. he was watching his father with startled eyes. david had not known what anxiety was. he was finding out now--though he but vaguely realized that something was not right. for some time his father had said but little, and that little had been in a voice that was thick and unnatural-sounding. he was walking fast, yet david noticed that every step seemed an effort, and that every breath came in short gasps. his eyes were very bright, and were fixedly bent on the road ahead, as if even the haste he was making was not haste enough. twice david spoke to him, but he did not answer; and the boy could only trudge along on his weary little feet and sigh for the dear home on the mountain-top which they had left behind them the morning before. they met few fellow travelers, and those they did meet paid scant attention to the man and the boy carrying the violins. as it chanced, there was no one in sight when the man, walking in the grass at the side of the road, stumbled and fell heavily to the ground. david sprang quickly forward. "father, what is it? what is it?" there was no answer. "daddy, why don't you speak to me? see, it's david!" with a painful effort the man roused himself and sat up. for a moment he gazed dully into the boy's face; then a half-forgotten something seemed to stir him into feverish action. with shaking fingers he handed david his watch and a small ivory miniature. then he searched his pockets until on the ground before him lay a shining pile of gold-pieces--to david there seemed to be a hundred of them. "take them--hide them--keep them. david, until you--need them," panted the man. "then go--go on. i can't." "alone? without you?" demurred the boy, aghast. "why, father, i could n't! i don't know the way. besides, i'd rather stay with you," he added soothingly, as he slipped the watch and the miniature into his pocket;" then we can both go." and he dropped himself down at his father's side. the man shook his head feebly, and pointed again to the gold-pieces. "take them, david,--hide them," he chattered with pale lips. almost impatiently the boy began picking up the money and tucking it into his pockets. "but, father, i'm not going without you," he declared stoutly, as the last bit of gold slipped out of sight, and a horse and wagon rattled around the turn of the road above. the driver of the horse glanced disapprovingly at the man and the boy by the roadside; but he did not stop. after he had passed, the boy turned again to his father. the man was fumbling once more in his pockets. this time from his coat he produced a pencil and a small notebook from which he tore a page, and began to write, laboriously, painfully. david sighed and looked about him. he was tired and hungry, and he did not understand things at all. something very wrong, very terrible, must be the matter with his father. here it was almost dark, yet they had no place to go, no supper to eat, while far, far up on the mountain-side was their own dear home sad and lonely without them. up there, too, the sun still shone, doubtless,--at least there were the rose-glow and the silver lake to look at, while down here there was nothing, nothing but gray shadows, a long dreary road, and a straggling house or two in sight. from above, the valley might look to be a fairyland of loveliness, but in reality it was nothing but a dismal waste of gloom, decided david. david's father had torn a second page from his book and was beginning another note, when the boy suddenly jumped to his feet. one of the straggling houses was near the road where they sat, and its presence had given david an idea. with swift steps he hurried to the front door and knocked upon it. in answer a tall, unsmiling woman appeared, and said, "well?" david removed his cap as his father had taught him to do when one of the mountain women spoke to him. "good evening, lady; i'm david," he began frankly. "my father is so tired he fell down back there, and we should like very much to stay with you all night, if you don't mind." the woman in the doorway stared. for a moment she was dumb with amazement. her eyes swept the plain, rather rough garments of the boy, then sought the half-recumbent figure of the man by the roadside. her chin came up angrily. "oh, would you, indeed! well, upon my word!" she scouted." humph! we don't accommodate tramps, little boy." and she shut the door hard. it was david's turn to stare. just what a tramp might be, he did not know; but never before had a request of his been so angrily refused. he knew that. a fierce something rose within him--a fierce new something that sent the swift red to his neck and brow. he raised a determined hand to the doorknob--he had something to say to that woman!--when the door suddenly opened again from the inside." see here, boy," began the woman, looking out at him a little less unkindly, "if you're hungry i'll give you some milk and bread. go around to the back porch and i'll get it for you." and she shut the door again. david's hand dropped to his side. the red still stayed on his face and neck, however, and that fierce new something within him bade him refuse to take food from this woman.... but there was his father--his poor father, who was so tired; and there was his own stomach clamoring to be fed. no, he could not refuse. and with slow steps and hanging head david went around the corner of the house to the rear. as the half-loaf of bread and the pail of milk were placed in his hands, david remembered suddenly that in the village store on the mountain, his father paid money for his food. david was glad, now, that he had those gold-pieces in his pocket, for he could pay money. instantly his head came up. once more erect with self-respect, he shifted his burdens to one hand and thrust the other into his pocket. a moment later he presented on his outstretched palm a shining disk of gold. "will you take this, to pay, please, for the bread and milk?" he asked proudly. the woman began to shake her head; but, as her eyes fell on the money, she started, and bent closer to examine it. the next instant she jerked herself upright with an angry exclamation. "it's gold! a ten-dollar gold-piece! so you're a thief, too, are you, as well as a tramp? humph! well, i guess you don't need this then," she finished sharply, snatching the bread and the pail of milk from the boy's hand. the next moment david stood alone on the doorstep, with the sound of a quickly thrown bolt in his ears. a thief! david knew little of thieves, but he knew what they were. only a month before a man had tried to steal the violins from the cabin; and he was a thief, the milk-boy said. david flushed now again, angrily, as he faced the closed door. but he did not tarry. he turned and ran to his father. "father, come away, quick! you must come away," he choked. so urgent was the boy's voice that almost unconsciously the sick man got to his feet. with shaking hands he thrust the notes he had been writing into his pocket. the little book, from which he had torn the leaves for this purpose, had already dropped unheeded into the grass at his feet. "yes, son, yes, we'll go," muttered the man. "i feel better now. i can--walk." and he did walk, though very slowly, ten, a dozen, twenty steps. from behind came the sound of wheels that stopped close beside them. "hullo, there! going to the village?" called a voice. "yes, sir." david's answer was unhesitating. where "the village" was, he did not know; he knew only that it must be somewhere away from the woman who had called him a thief. and that was all he cared to know. "i'm going 'most there myself. want a lift?" asked the man, still kindly. "yes, sir. thank you!" cried the boy joyfully. and together they aided his father to climb into the roomy wagon-body. there were few words said. the man at the reins drove rapidly, and paid little attention to anything but his horses. the sick man dozed and rested. the boy sat, wistful-eyed and silent, watching the trees and houses flit by. the sun had long ago set, but it was not dark, for the moon was round and bright, and the sky was cloudless. where the road forked sharply the man drew his horses to a stop. "well, i'm sorry, but i guess i'll have to drop you here, friends. i turn off to the right; but 't ain't more 'n a quarter of a mile for you, now" he finished cheerily, pointing with his whip to a cluster of twinkling lights. "thank you, sir, thank you," breathed david gratefully, steadying his father's steps. "you've helped us lots. thank you!" in david's heart was a wild desire to lay at his good man's feet all of his shining gold-pieces as payment for this timely aid. but caution held him back: it seemed that only in stores did money pay; outside it branded one as a thief! alone with his father, david faced once more his problem. where should they go for the night? plainly his father could not walk far. he had begun to talk again, too,--low, half-finished sentences that david could not understand, and that vaguely troubled him. there was a house near by, and several others down the road toward the village; but david had had all the experience he wanted that night with strange houses, and strange women. there was a barn, a big one, which was nearest of all; and it was toward this barn that david finally turned his father's steps. "we'll go there, daddy, if we can get in," he proposed softly." and we'll stay all night and rest." chapter iii the valley the long twilight of the june day had changed into a night that was scarcely darker, so bright was the moonlight. seen from the house, the barn and the low buildings beyond loomed shadowy and unreal, yet very beautiful. on the side porch of the house sat simeon holly and his wife, content to rest mind and body only because a full day's work lay well done behind them. it was just as simeon rose to his feet to go indoors that a long note from a violin reached their ears. "simeon!" cried the woman. "what was that?" the man did not answer. his eyes were fixed on the barn. "simeon, it's a fiddle!" exclaimed mrs. holly, as a second tone quivered on the air "and it's in our barn!" simeon's jaw set. with a stern ejaculation he crossed the porch and entered the kitchen. in another minute he had returned, a lighted lantern in his hand. "simeon, d--don't go," begged the woman, tremulously. "you--you don't know what's there." "fiddles are not played without hands, ellen," retorted the man severely. "would you have me go to bed and leave a half-drunken, ungodly minstrel fellow in possession of our barn? to-night, on my way home, i passed a pretty pair of them lying by the roadside--a man and a boy with two violins. they're the culprits, likely,--though how they got this far, i don't see. do you think i want to leave my barn to tramps like them?" "n--no, i suppose not," faltered the woman, as she rose tremblingly to her feet, and followed her husband's shadow across the yard. once inside the barn simeon holly and his wife paused involuntarily. the music was all about them now, filling the air with runs and trills and rollicking bits of melody. giving an angry exclamation, the man turned then to the narrow stairway and climbed to the hayloft above. at his heels came his wife, and so her eyes, almost as soon as his fell upon the man lying back on the hay with the moonlight full upon his face. instantly he music dropped to a whisper, and a low voice came out of the gloom beyond the square of moonlight which came from the window in the roof. "if you'll please be as still as you can, sir. you see he's asleep and he's so tired," said the voice. for a moment the man and the woman on the stairway paused in amazement, then the man lifted his lantern and strode toward the voice. "who are you? what are you doing here?" he demanded sharply. a boy's face, round, tanned, and just now a bit anxious, flashed out of the dark. "oh, please, sir, if you would speak lower," pleaded the boy. "he's so tired! i'm david, sir, and that's father. we came in here to rest and sleep." simeon holly's unrelenting gaze left the boy's face and swept that of the man lying back on the hay. the next instant he lowered the lantern and leaned nearer, putting forth a cautious hand. at once he straightened himself, muttering a brusque word under his breath. then he turned with the angry question:- "boy, what do you mean by playing a jig on your fiddle at such a time as this?" "why, father asked me to play" returned the boy cheerily." he said he could walk through green forests then, with the ripple of brooks in his ears, and that the birds and the squirrels--" "see here, boy, who are you?" cut in simeon holly sternly." where did you come from?" "from home, sir." "where is that?" "why, home, sir, where i live. in the mountains, 'way up, up, up--oh, so far up! and there's such a big, big sky, so much nicer than down here." the boy's voice quivered, and almost broke, and his eyes constantly sought the white face on the hay. it was then that simeon holly awoke to the sudden realization that it was time for action. he turned to his wife. "take the boy to the house," he directed incisively. "we'll have to keep him to-night, i suppose. i'll go for higgins. of course the whole thing will have to be put in his hands at once. you can't do anything here," he added, as he caught her questioning glance. "leave everything just as it is. the man is dead." "dead?" it was a sharp cry from the boy, yet there was more of wonder than of terror in it." do you mean that he has gone--like the water in the brook--to the far country?" he faltered. simeon holly stared. then he said more distinctly:- "your father is dead, boy." "and he won't come back any more?" david's voice broke now. there was no answer. mrs. holly caught her breath convulsively and looked away. even simeon holly refused to meet the boy's pleading eyes. with a quick cry david sprang to his father's side. "but he's here--right here," he challenged shrilly. "daddy, daddy, speak to me! it's david!" reaching out his hand, he gently touched his father's face. he drew back then, at once, his eyes distended with terror. "he is n't! he is--gone," he chattered frenziedly. "this is n't the father-part that knows. it's the other--that they leave. he's left it behind him--like the squirrel, and the water in the brook." suddenly the boy's face changed. it grew rapt and luminous as he leaped to his feet, crying joyously: "but he asked me to play, so he went singing--singing just as he said that they did. and i made him walk through green forests with the ripple of the brooks in his ears! listen--like this!" and once more the boy raised the violin to his chin, and once more the music trilled and rippled about the shocked, amazed ears of simeon holly and his wife. for a time neither the man nor the woman could speak. there was nothing in their humdrum, habit-smoothed tilling of the soil and washing of pots and pans to prepare them for a scene like this--a moonlit barn, a strange dead man, and that dead man's son babbling of brooks and squirrels, and playing jigs on a fiddle for a dirge. at last, however, simeon found his voice. "boy, boy, stop that!" he thundered." are you mad--clean mad? go into the house, i say!" and the boy, dazed but obedient, put up his violin, and followed the woman, who, with tear-blinded eyes, was leading the way down the stairs. mrs. holly was frightened, but she was also strangely moved. from the long ago the sound of another violin had come to her--a violin, too, played by a boy's hands. but of this, all this, mrs. holly did not like to think. in the kitchen now she turned and faced her young guest. "are you hungry, little boy?" david hesitated; he had not forgotten the woman, the milk, and the gold-piece. "are you hungry--dear?" stammered mrs. holly again; and this time david's clamorous stomach forced a "yes" from his unwilling lips; which sent mrs. holly at once into the pantry for bread and milk and a heaped-up plate of doughnuts such as david had never seen before. like any hungry boy david ate his supper; and mrs. holly, in the face of this very ordinary sight of hunger being appeased at her table, breathed more freely, and ventured to think that perhaps this strange little boy was not so very strange, after all. "what is your name?" she found courage to ask then. "david." "david what?" "just david." "but your father's name?" mrs. holly had almost asked, but stopped in time. she did not want to speak of him. "where do you live?" she asked instead. "on the mountain, 'way up, up on the mountain where i can see my silver lake every day, you know." "but you did n't live there alone?" "oh, no; with father--before he--went away" faltered the boy. the woman flushed red and bit her lip. "no, no, i mean--were there no other houses but yours?" she stammered. "no, ma'am." "but, was n't your mother--anywhere?" "oh, yes, in father's pocket." "your mother--in your father's pocket!" so plainly aghast was the questioner that david looked not a little surprised as he explained. "you don't understand. she is an angelmother, and angel-mothers don't have anything only their pictures down here with us. and that's what we have, and father always carried it in his pocket." "oh----h," murmured mrs. holly, a quick mist in her eyes. then, gently: "and did you always live there--on the mountain?" "six years, father said." "but what did you do all day? weren't you ever--lonesome?" "lonesome?" the boy's eyes were puzzled. "yes. did n't you miss things--people, other houses, boys of your own age, and--and such things?" david's eyes widened. "why, how could i?" he cried. "when i had daddy, and my violin, and my silver lake, and the whole of the great big woods with everything in them to talk to, and to talk to me?" "woods, and things in them to--to talk to you!" "why, yes. it was the little brook, you know, after the squirrel, that told me about being dead, and--" "yes, yes; but never mind, dear, now," stammered the woman, rising hurriedly to her feet--the boy was a little wild, after all, she thought. "you--you should go to bed. have n't you a--a bag, or--or anything?" "no, ma'am; we left it," smiled david apologetically. "you see, we had so much in it that it got too heavy to carry. so we did n't bring it." "so much in it you did n't bring it, indeed!" repeated mrs. holly, under her breath, throwing up her hands with a gesture of despair. "boy, what are you, anyway?" it was not meant for a question, but, to the woman's surprise, the boy answered, frankly, simply:--" father says that i'm one little instrument in the great orchestra of life, and that i must see to it that i'm always in tune, and don't drag or hit false notes." "my land!" breathed the woman, dropping back in her chair, her eyes fixed on the boy. then, with an effort, she got to her feet. "come, you must go to bed," she stammered." i'm sure bed is--is the best place you. i think i can find what--what you need," she finished feebly. in a snug little room over the kitchen some minutes later, david found himself at last alone. the room, though it had once belonged to a boy of his own age, looked very strange to david. on the floor was a rag-carpet rug, the first he had ever seen. on the walls were a fishing-rod, a toy shotgun, and a case full of bugs and moths, each little body impaled on a pin, to david's shuddering horror. the bed had four tall posts at the corners, and a very puffy top that filled david with wonder as to how he was to reach it, or stay there if he did gain it. across a chair lay a boy's long yellow-white nightshirt that the kind lady had left, after hurriedly wiping her eyes with the edge of its hem. in all the circle of the candlelight there was just one familiar object to david's homesick eyes--the long black violin case which he had brought in himself, and which held his beloved violin. with his back carefully turned toward the impaled bugs and moths on the wall, david undressed himself and slipped into the yellow-white nightshirt, which he sniffed at gratefully, so like pine woods was the perfume that hung about its folds. then he blew out the candle and groped his way to the one window the little room contained. the moon still shone, but little could be seen through the thick green branches of the tree outside. from the yard below came the sound of wheels, and of men's excited voices. there came also the twinkle of lanterns borne by hurrying hands, and the tramp of shuffling feet. in the window david shivered. there were no wide sweep of mountain, hill, and valley, no silver lake, no restful hush, no daddy,--no beautiful things that were. there was only the dreary, hollow mockery of the things they had become. long minutes later, david, with the violin in his arms, lay down upon the rug, and, for the first time since babyhood, sobbed himself to sleep--but it was a sleep that brought no rest; for in it he dreamed that he was a big, white-winged moth pinned with a star to an ink-black sky. chapter iv two letters in the early gray dawn david awoke. his first sensation was the physical numbness and stiffness that came from his hard bed on the floor. "why, daddy," he began, pulling himself half-erect, "i slept all night on--" he stopped suddenly, brushing his eyes with the backs of his hands. "why, daddy, where--" then full consciousness came to him. with a low cry he sprang to his feet and ran to the window. through the trees he could see the sunrise glow of the eastern sky. down in the yard no one was in sight; but the barn door was open, and, with a quick indrawing of his breath, david turned back into the room and began to thrust himself into his clothing. the gold in his sagging pockets clinked and jingled musically; and once half a dozen pieces rolled out upon the floor. for a moment the boy looked as if he were going to let them remain where they were. but the next minute, with an impatient gesture, he had picked them up and thrust them deep into one of his pockets, silencing their jingling with his handkerchief. once dressed, david picked up his violin and stepped softly into the hall. at first no sound reached his ears; then from the kitchen below came the clatter of brisk feet and the rattle of tins and crockery. tightening his clasp on the violin, david slipped quietly down the back stairs and out to the yard. it was only a few seconds then before he was hurrying through the open doorway of the barn and up the narrow stairway to the loft above. at the top, however, he came to a sharp pause, with a low cry. the next moment he turned to see a kindly-faced man looking up at him from the foot of the stairs. "oh, sir, please--please, where is he? what have you done with him?" appealed the boy, almost plunging headlong down the stairs in his haste to reach the bottom. into the man's weather-beaten face came a look of sincere but awkward sympathy. "oh, hullo, sonny! so you're the boy, are ye?" he began diffidently. "yes, yes, i'm david. but where is he-my father, you know? i mean the--the part he--he left behind him?" choked the boy. "the part like--the ice-coat?" the man stared. then, involuntarily, he began to back away. "well, ye see, i--i--" "but, maybe you don't know," interrupted david feverishly. "you are n't the man i saw last night. who are you? where is he--the other one, please?" "no, i--i wa' n't here--that is, not at the first," spoke up the man quickly, still unconsciously backing away. "me--i'm only larson, perry larson, ye know. 't was mr. holly you see last night--him that i works for." "then, where is mr. holly, please?" faltered the boy, hurrying toward the barn door. "maybe he would know--about father. oh, there he is!" and david ran out of the barn and across the yard to the kitchen porch. it was an unhappy ten minutes that david spent then. besides mr. holly, there were mrs. holly, and the man, perry larson. and they all talked. but little of what they said could david understand. to none of his questions could he obtain an answer that satisfied. neither, on his part, could he seem to reply to their questions in a way that pleased them. they went in to breakfast then, mr. and mrs. holly, and the man, perry larson. they asked david to go--at least, mrs. holly asked him. but david shook his head and said "no, no, thank you very much; i'd rather not, if you please--not now." then he dropped himself down on the steps to think. as if he could eat--with that great choking lump in his throat that refused to be swallowed! david was thoroughly dazed, frightened, and dismayed. he knew now that never again in this world would he see his dear father, or hear him speak. this much had been made very clear to him during the last ten minutes. why this should be so, or what his father would want him to do, he could not seem to find out. not until now had he realized at all what this going away of his father was to mean to him. and he told himself frantically that he could not have it so. he could not have it so! but even as he said the words, he knew that it was so--irrevocably so. david began then to long for his mountain home. there at least he would have his dear forest all about him, with the birds and the squirrels and the friendly little brooks. there he would have his silver lake to look at, too, and all of them would speak to him of his father. he believed, indeed, that up there it would almost seem as if his father were really with him. and, anyway, if his father ever should come back, it would be there that he would be sure to seek him--up there in the little mountain home so dear to them both. back to the cabin he would go now, then. yes; indeed he would! with a low word and a passionately intent expression, david got to his feet, picked up his violin, and hurried, firm-footed, down the driveway and out upon the main highway, turning in the direction from whence he had come with his father the night before. the hollys had just finished breakfast when higgins, the coroner, drove into the yard accompanied by william streeter, the town's most prominent farmer,--and the most miserly one, if report was to be credited. "well, could you get anything out of the boy? " demanded higgins, without ceremony, as simeon holly and larson appeared on the kitchen porch. "very little. really nothing of importance," answered simeon holly. "where is he now?" "why, he was here on the steps a few minutes ago." simeon holly looked about him a bit impatiently. "well, i want to see him. i've got a letter for him." "a letter!" exclaimed simeon holly and larson in amazed unison. "yes. found it in his father's pocket," nodded the coroner, with all the tantalizing brevity of a man who knows he has a choice morsel of information that is eagerly awaited. "it's addressed to 'my boy david,' so i calculated we'd better give it to him first without reading it, seeing it's his. after he reads it, though, i want to see it. i want to see if what it says is any nearer being horse-sense than the other one is." "the other one!" exclaimed the amazed chorus again. "oh, yes, there's another one," spoke up william streeter tersely." and i've read it--all but the scrawl at the end. there could n't anybody read that!" higgins laughed. "well, i'm free to confess 't is a sticker--that name," he admitted." and it's the name we want, of course, to tell us who they are-since it seems the boy don't know, from what you said last night. i was in hopes, by this morning, you'd have found out more from him." simeon holly shook his head. "'t was impossible." "gosh! i should say 't was," cut in perry larson, with emphasis. "an' queer ain't no name for it. one minute he'd be talkin' good common sense like anybody: an' the next he'd be chatterin' of coats made o' ice, an' birds an' squirrels an' babbling brooks. he sure is dippy! listen. he actually don't seem ter know the diff'rence between himself an' his fiddle. we was tryin' ter find out this mornin' what he could do, an' what he wanted ter do, when if he did n't up an' say that his father told him it did n't make so much diff'rence what he did so long as he kept hisself in tune an' did n't strike false notes. now, what do yer think o' that?" "yes, i, know" nodded higgins musingly. "there was something queer about them, and they weren't just ordinary tramps. did i tell you? i overtook them last night away up on the fairbanks road by the taylor place, and i gave 'em a lift. i particularly noticed what a decent sort they were. they were clean and quiet-spoken, and their clothes were good, even if they were rough. yet they did n't have any baggage but them fiddles." "but what was that second letter you mentioned?" asked simeon holly. higgins smiled oddly, and reached into his pocket. "the letter? oh, you're welcome to read the letter," he said, as he handed over a bit of folded paper. simeon took it gingerly and examined it. it was a leaf torn apparently from a note book. it was folded three times, and bore on the outside the superscription "to whom it may concern." the handwriting was peculiar, irregular, and not very legible. but as near as it could be deciphered, the note ran thus:- now that the time has come when i must give david back to the world, i have set out for that purpose. but i am ill--very ill, and should death have swifter feet than i, i must leave my task for others to complete. deal gently with him. he knows only that which is good and beautiful. he knows nothing of sin nor evil. then followed the signature--a thing of scrawls and flourishes that conveyed no sort of meaning to simeon holly's puzzled eyes. "well?" prompted higgins expectantly. simeon holly shook his head. "i can make little of it. it certainly is a most remarkable note." "could you read the name?" "no." "well, i could n't. neither could half a dozen others that's seen it. but where's the boy? mebbe his note'll talk sense." "i'll go find him," volunteered larson. "he must be somewheres 'round." but david was very evidently not "somewheres'round." at least he was not in the barn, the shed, the kitchen bedroom, nor anywhere else that larson looked; and the man was just coming back with a crestfallen, perplexed frown, when mrs. holly hurried out on to the porch. "mr. higgins," she cried, in obvious excitement, "your wife has just telephoned that her sister mollie has just telephoned her that that little tramp boy with the violin is at her house." "at mollie's!" exclaimed higgins. "why, that's a mile or more from here." "so that's where he is!" interposed larson, hurrying forward. "doggone the little rascal! he must 'a' slipped away while we was eatin breakfast." "yes. but, simeon,--mr. higgins,--we had n't ought to let him go like that," appealed mrs. holly tremulously. "your wife said mollie said she found him crying at the crossroads, because he did n't know which way to take. he said he was going back home. he means to that wretched cabin on the mountain, you know; and we can't let him do that alone--a child like that!" "where is he now?" demanded higgins. "in mollie's kitchen eating bread and milk; but she said she had an awful time getting him to eat. and she wants to know what to do with him. that's why she telephoned your wife. she thought you ought to know he was there." "yes, of course. well, tell her to tell him to come back." "mollie said she tried to have him come back, but that he said, no, thank you, he'd rather not. he was going home where his father could find him if he should ever want him. mr. higgins, we--we can't let him go off like that. why, the child would die up there alone in those dreadful woods, even if he could get there in the first place--which i very much doubt." "yes, of course, of course," muttered higgins, with a thoughtful frown. "there's his letter, too. say!" he added, brightening, "what'll you bet that letter won't fetch him? he seems to think the world and all of his daddy. here," he directed, turning to mrs. holly, "you tell my wife to tell--better yet, you telephone mollie yourself, please, and tell her to tell the boy we've got a letter here for him from his father, and he can have it if he'll come back.". "i will, i will," called mrs. holly, over her shoulder, as she hurried into the house. in an unbelievably short time she was back, her face beaming. "he's started, so soon," she nodded. "he's crazy with joy, mollie said. he even left part of his breakfast, he was in such a hurry. so i guess we'll see him all right." "oh, yes, we'll see him all right," echoed simeon holly grimly. "but that is n't telling what we'll do with him when we do see him." "oh, well, maybe this letter of his will help us out on that," suggested higgins soothingly. "anyhow, even if it does n't, i'm not worrying any. i guess some one will want him--a good healthy boy like that." "did you find any money on the body?" asked streeter. "a little change--a few cents. nothing to count. if the boy's letter does n't tell us where any of their folks are, it'll be up to the town to bury him all right." "he had a fiddle, did n't he? and the boy had one, too. would n't they bring anything?" streeter's round blue eyes gleamed shrewdly. higgins gave a slow shake of his head. "maybe--if there was a market for 'em. but who'd buy 'em? there ain't a soul in town plays but jack gurnsey; and he's got one. besides, he's sick, and got all he can do to buy bread and butter for him and his sister without taking in more fiddles, i guess. he would n't buy 'em." "hm--m; maybe not, maybe not," grunted streeter. "an', as you say, he's the only one that's got any use for 'em here; an' like enough they ain't worth much, anyway. so i guess 't is up to the town all right." "yes; but--if yer'll take it from me,"--interrupted larson,--"you'll be wise if ye keep still before the boy. it's no use askin' him anythin'. we've proved that fast enough. an' if he once turns 'round an' begins ter ask you questions, yer done for!" "i guess you're right," nodded higgins, with a quizzical smile. "and as long as questioning can't do any good, why, we'll just keep whist before the boy. meanwhile i wish the little rascal would hurry up and get here. i want to see the inside of that letter to him. i'm relying on that being some help to unsnarl this tangle of telling who they are." "well, he's started," reiterated mrs. holly, as she turned back into the house; "so i guess he'll get here if you wait long enough." "oh, yes, he'll get here if we wait long enough," echoed simeon holly again, crustily. the two men in the wagon settled themselves more comfortably in their seats, and perry larson, after a half-uneasy, half-apologetic glance at his employer, dropped himself onto the bottom step. simeon holly had already sat down stiffly in one of the porch chairs. simeon holly never "dropped himself" anywhere. indeed, according to perry larson, if there were a hard way to do a thing, simeon holly found it--and did it. the fact that, this morning, he had allowed, and was still allowing, the sacred routine of the day's work to be thus interrupted, for nothing more important than the expected arrival of a strolling urchin, was something larson would not have believed had he not seen it. even now he was conscious once or twice of an involuntary desire to rub his eyes to make sure they were not deceiving him. impatient as the waiting men were for the arrival of david, they were yet almost surprised, so soon did he appear, running up the driveway." oh, where is it, please?" he panted." they said you had a letter for me from daddy!" "you're right, sonny; we have. and here it is," answered higgins promptly, holding out the folded paper. plainly eager as he was, david did not open the note till he had first carefully set down the case holding his violin; then he devoured it with eager eyes. as he read, the four men watched his face. they saw first the quick tears that had to be blinked away. then they saw the radiant glow that grew and deepened until the whole boyish face was aflame with the splendor of it. they saw the shining wonder of his eyes, too, as he looked up from the letter. "and daddy wrote this to me from the far country?" he breathed. simeon holly scowled. larson choked over a stifled chuckle. william streeter stared and shrugged his shoulders; but higgins flushed a dull red. "no, sonny," he stammered. "we found it on the--er--i mean, it--er--your father left it in his pocket for you," finished the man, a little explosively. a swift shadow crossed the boy's face. "oh, i hoped i'd heard--" he began. then suddenly he stopped, his face once more alight. "but it's 'most the same as if he wrote it from there, is n't it? he left it for me, and he told me what to do." "what's that, what's that?" cried higgins, instantly alert." did he tell you what to do? then, let's have it, so we, ll know. you will let us read it, won't you, boy?" "why, y--yes," stammered david, holding it out politely, but with evident reluctance. "thank you," nodded higgins, as he reached for the note. david's letter was very different from the other one. it was longer, but it did not help much, though it was easily read. in his letter, in spite of the wavering lines, each word was formed with a care that told of a father's thought for the young eyes that would read it. it was written on two of the notebook's leaves, and at the end came the single word "daddy." david, my boy [read higgins aloud], in the far country i am waiting for you. do not grieve, for that will grieve me. i shall not return, but some day you will come to me, your violin at your chin, and the bow drawn across the strings to greet me. see that it tells me of the beautiful world you have left--for it is a beautiful world, david; never forget that. and if sometime you are tempted to think it is not a beautiful world, just remember that you yourself can make it beautiful if you will. you are among new faces, surrounded by things and people that are strange to you. some of them you will not understand; some of them you may not like. but do not fear, david, and do not plead to go back to the hills. remember this, my boy,--in your violin lie all the things you long for. you have only to play, and the broad skies of your mountain home will be over you, and the dear friends and comrades of your mountain forests will be about you. daddy. "gorry! that's worse than the other," groaned higgins, when he had finished the note. "there's actually nothing in it! would n't you think--if a man wrote anything at such a time--that he'd 'a' wrote something that had some sense to it--something that one could get hold of, and find out who the boy is?" there was no answering this. the assembled men could only grunt and nod in agreement, which, after all, was no real help. chapter v discords the dead man found in farmer holly's barn created a decided stir in the village of hinsdale. the case was a peculiar one for many reasons. first, because of the boy--hinsdale supposed it knew boys, but it felt inclined to change its mind after seeing this one. second, because of the circumstances. the boy and his father had entered the town like tramps, yet higgins, who talked freely of his having given the pair a "lift" on that very evening, did not hesitate to declare that he did not believe them to be ordinary tramps at all. as there had been little found in the dead man's pockets, save the two notes, and as nobody could be found who wanted the violins, there seemed to be nothing to do but to turn the body over to the town for burial. nothing was said of this to david; indeed, as little as possible was said to david about anything after that morning when higgins had given him his father's letter. at that time the men had made one more effort to "get track of something," as higgins had despairingly put it. but the boy's answers to their questions were anything but satisfying, anything but helpful, and were often most disconcerting. the boy was, in fact, regarded by most of the men, after that morning, as being "a little off"; and was hence let severely alone. who the man was the town authorities certainly did not know, neither could they apparently find out. his name, as written by himself, was unreadable. his notes told nothing; his son could tell little more--of consequence. a report, to be sure, did come from the village, far up the mountain, that such a man and boy had lived in a hut that was almost inaccessible; but even this did not help solve the mystery. david was left at the holly farmhouse, though simeon holly mentally declared that he should lose no time in looking about for some one to take the boy away. on that first day higgins, picking up the reins preparatory to driving from the yard, had said, with a nod of his head toward david:- "well, how about it, holly? shall we leave him here till we find somebody that wants him?" "why, y--yes, i suppose so," hesitated simeon holly, with uncordial accent. but his wife, hovering in the background, hastened forward at once. "oh, yes; yes, indeed," she urged. "i'm sure he--he won't be a mite of trouble, simeon." "perhaps not," conceded simeon holly darkly. "neither, it is safe to say, will he be anything else--worth anything." "that's it exactly," spoke up streeter, from his seat in the wagon. "if i thought he'd be worth his salt, now, i'd take him myself; but--well, look at him this minute," he finished, with a disdainful shrug. david, on the lowest step, was very evidently not hearing a word of what was being said. with his sensitive face illumined, he was again poring over his father's letter. something in the sudden quiet cut through his absorption as the noisy hum of voices had not been able to do, and he raised his head. his eyes were starlike. "i'm so glad father told me what to do," he breathed. "it'll be easier now." receiving no answer from the somewhat awkwardly silent men, he went on, as if in explanation:- "you know he's waiting for me--in the far country, i mean. he said he was. and when you've got somebody waiting, you don't mind staying behind yourself for a little while. besides, i've got to stay to find out about the beautiful world, you know, so i can tell him, when i go. that's the way i used to do back home on the mountain, you see,--tell him about things. lots of days we'd go to walk; then, when we got home, he'd have me tell him, with my violin, what i'd seen. and now he says i'm to stay here." "here!" it was the quick, stern voice of simeon holly. "yes," nodded david earnestly;" to learn about the beautiful world. don't you remember? and he said i was not to want to go back to my mountains; that i would not need to, anyway, because the mountains, and the sky, and the birds and squirrels and brooks are really in my violin, you know. and--" but with an angry frown simeon holly stalked away, motioning larson to follow him; and with a merry glance and a low chuckle higgins turned his horse about and drove from the yard. a moment later david found himself alone with mrs. holly, who was looking at him with wistful, though slightly fearful eyes. "did you have all the breakfast you wanted?" she asked timidly, resorting, as she had resorted the night before, to the everyday things of her world in the hope that they might make this strange little boy seem less wild, and more nearly human. "oh, yes, thank you." david's eyes had strayed back to the note in his hand. suddenly he looked up, a new something in his eyes. "what is it to be a--a tramp?" he asked. "those men said daddy and i were tramps." "a tramp? oh--er--why, just a--a tramp," stammered mrs. holly. "but never mind that, david. i--i would n't think any more about it." "but what is a tramp?" persisted david, a smouldering fire beginning to show in his eyes." because if they meant thieves--" "no, no, david," interrupted mrs. holly soothingly. "they never meant thieves at all." "then, what is it to be a tramp?" "why, it's just to--to tramp," explained mrs. holly desperately;--"walk along the road from one town to another, and--and not live in a house at all." "oh!" david's face cleared. "that's all right, then. i'd love to be a tramp, and so'd father. and we were tramps, sometimes, too, 'cause lots of times, in the summer, we did n't stay in the cabin hardly any--just lived out of doors all day and all night. why, i never knew really what the pine trees were saying till i heard them at night, lying under them. you know what i mean. you've heard them, have n't you?" "at night? pine trees?" stammered mrs. holly helplessly. "yes. oh, have n't you ever heard them at night?" cried the boy, in his voice a very genuine sympathy as for a grievous loss. "why, then, if you've only heard them daytimes, you don't know a bit what pine trees really are. but i can tell you. listen! this is what they say," finished the boy, whipping his violin from its case, and, after a swift testing of the strings, plunging into a weird, haunting little melody. in the doorway, mrs. holly, bewildered, yet bewitched, stood motionless, her eyes half-fearfully, half-longingly fixed on david's glorified face. she was still in the same position when simeon holly came around the corner of the house. "well, ellen," he began, with quiet scorn, after a moment's stern watching of the scene before him, "have you nothing better to do this morning than to listen to this minstrel fellow?" "oh, simeon! why, yes, of course. i--i forgot--what i was doing," faltered mrs. holly, flushing guiltily from neck to brow as she turned and hurried into the house. david, on the porch steps, seemed to have heard nothing. he was still playing, his rapt gaze on the distant sky-line, when simeon holly turned upon him with disapproving eyes. "see here, boy, can't you do anything but fiddle?" he demanded. then, as david still continued to play, he added sharply: "did n't you hear me, boy?" the music stopped abruptly. david looked up with the slightly dazed air of one who has been summoned as from another world. "did you speak to me, sir?" he asked. "i did--twice. i asked if you never did anything but play that fiddle." "you mean at home?" david's face expressed mild wonder without a trace of anger or resentment. "why, yes, of course. i could n't play all the time, you know. i had to eat and sleep and study my books; and every day we went to walk--like tramps, as you call them," he elucidated, his face brightening with obvious delight at being able, for once, to explain matters in terms that he felt sure would be understood. "tramps, indeed!" muttered simeon holly, under his breath. then, sharply: "did you never perform any useful labor, boy? were your days always spent in this ungodly idleness?" again david frowned in mild wonder. "oh, i was n't idle, sir. father said i must never be that. he said every instrument was needed in the great orchestra of life; and that i was one, you know, even if i was only a little boy. and he said if i kept still and did n't do my part, the harmony would n't be complete, and--" "yes, yes, but never mind that now, boy," interrupted simeon holly, with harsh impatience." i mean, did he never set you to work--real work?" "work?" david meditated again. then suddenly his face cleared. "oh, yes, sir, he said i had a beautiful work to do, and that it was waiting for me out in the world. that's why we came down from the mountain, you know, to find it. is that what you mean?" "well, no," retorted the man, "i can't say that it was. i was referring to work--real work about the house. did you never do any of that?" david gave a relieved laugh. "oh, you mean getting the meals and tidying up the house," he replied. "oh, yes, i did that with father, only"--his face grew wistful--"i'm afraid i did n't do it very well. my bacon was never as nice and crisp as father's, and the fire was always spoiling my potatoes." "humph! bacon and potatoes, indeed!" scorned simeon holly. "well, boy, we call that women's work down here. we set men to something else. do you see that woodpile by the shed door?" "yes, sir." "very good. in the kitchen you'll find an empty woodbox. do you think you could fill it with wood from that woodpile? you'll find plenty of short, small sticks already chopped." "oh, yes, sir, i'd like to," nodded david, hastily but carefully tucking his violin into its case. a minute later he had attacked the woodpile with a will; and simeon holly, after a sharply watchful glance, had turned away. but the woodbox, after all, was not filled. at least, it was not filled immediately. for at the very beginning of gathering the 'second armful of wood, david picked up a stick that had long lain in one position on the ground, thereby disclosing sundry and diverse crawling things of many legs, which filled david's soul with delight, and drove away every thought of the empty woodbox. it was only a matter of some strength and more patience, and still more time, to overturn other and bigger sticks, to find other and bigger of the many-legged, many-jointed creatures. one, indeed, was so very wonderful that david, with a whoop of glee, summoned mrs. holly from the shed doorway to come and see. so urgent was his plea that mrs. holly came with hurried steps--but she went away with steps even more hurried; and david, sitting back on his woodpile seat, was left to wonder why she should scream and shudder and say "ugh-h-h!" at such a beautiful, interesting thing as was this little creature who lived in her woodpile. even then david did not think of that empty woodbox waiting behind the kitchen stove. this time it was a butterfly, a big black butterfly banded with gold; and it danced and fluttered all through the back yard and out into the garden, david delightedly following with soft-treading steps, and movements that would not startle. from the garden to the orchard, and from the orchard back to the garden danced the butterfly--and david; and in the garden, near the house, david came upon mrs. holly's pansy-bed. even the butterfly was forgotten then, for down in the path by the pansy-bed david dropped to his knees in veritable worship. "why, you're just like little people," he cried softly. "you've got faces; and some of you are happy, and some of you are sad. and you--you big spotted yellow one--you're laughing at me. oh, i'm going to play you--all of you. you'll make such a pretty song, you're so different from each other!" and david leaped lightly to his feet and ran around to the side porch for his violin. five minutes later, simeon holly, coming into the kitchen, heard the sound of a violin through the open window. at the same moment his eyes fell on the woodbox, empty save for a few small sticks at the bottom. with an angry frown he strode through the outer door and around the corner of the house to the garden. at once then he came upon david, sitting turk-fashion in the middle of the path before the pansy-bed, his violin at his chin, and his whole face aglow. "well, boy, is this the way you fill the woodbox?" demanded the man crisply. david shook his head. "oh, no, sir, this is n't filling the woodbox," he laughed, softening his music, but not stopping it. "did you think that was what i was playing? it's the flowers here that i'm playing--the little faces, like people, you know. see, this is that big yellow one over there that's laughing," he finished, letting the music under his fingers burst into a gay little melody. simeon holly raised an imperious hand; and at the gesture david stopped his melody in the middle of a run, his eyes flying wide open in plain wonderment. "you mean--i'm not playing--right?" he asked. "i'm not talking of your playing," retorted simeon holly severely. "i'm talking of that woodbox i asked you to fill." david's face cleared. "oh, yes, sir. i'll go and do it," he nodded, getting cheerfully to his feet. "but i told you to do it before." david's eyes grew puzzled again. "i know, sir, and i started to," he answered, with the obvious patience of one who finds himself obliged to explain what should be a self-evident fact; "but i saw so many beautiful things, one after another, and when i found these funny little flower-people i just had to play them. don't you see?" "no, i can't say that i do, when i'd already told you to fill the woodbox," rejoined the man, with uncompromising coldness. "you mean--even then that i ought to have filled the woodbox first?" "i certainly do." david's eyes flew wide open again. "but my song--i'd have lost it!" he exclaimed." and father said always when a song came to me to play it at once. songs are like the mists of the morning and the rainbows, you know, and they don't stay with you long. you just have to catch them quick, before they go. now, don't you see?" but simeon holly, with a despairingly scornful gesture, had turned away; and david, after a moment's following him with wistful eyes, soberly walked toward the kitchen door. two minutes later he was industriously working at his task of filling the woodbox. that for david the affair was not satisfactorily settled was evidenced by his thoughtful countenance and preoccupied air, however; nor were matters helped any by the question david put to mr. holly just before dinner. "do you mean," he asked, "that because i did n't fill the woodbox right away, i was being a discord?" "you were what?" demanded the amazed simeon holly. "being a discord--playing out of tune, you know," explained david, with patient earnestness. "father said--" but again simeon holly had turned irritably away; and david was left with his perplexed questions still unanswered. chapter vi nuisances, necessary and otherwise for some time after dinner, that first day, david watched mrs. holly in silence while she cleared the table and began to wash the dishes. "do you want me to--help?" he asked at last, a little wistfully. mrs. holly, with a dubious glance at the boy's brown little hands, shook her head. "no, i don't. no, thank you," she amended her answer. for another sixty seconds david was silent; then, still more wistfully, he asked:--" are all these things you've been doing all day 'useful labor'?" mrs. holly lifted dripping hands from the dishpan and held them suspended for an amazed instant. "are they--why, of course they are! what a silly question! what put that idea into your head, child?" "mr. holly; and you see it's so different from what father used to call them." "different?" "yes. he said they were a necessary nuisance,--dishes, and getting meals, and clearing up,--and he did n't do half as many of them as you do, either." "nuisance, indeed!" mrs. holly resumed her dishwashing with some asperity. "well, i should think that might have been just about like him." "yes, it was. he was always that way," nodded david pleasantly. then, after a moment, he queried: "but are n't you going to walk at all to-day?" "to walk? where?" "why, through the woods and fields--anywhere." "walking in the woods, now--just walking? land's sake, boy, i've got something else to do!" "oh, that's too bad, is n't it?" david's face expressed sympathetic regret." and it's such a nice day! maybe it'll rain by tomorrow." "maybe it will," retorted mrs. holly, with slightly uplifted eyebrows and an expressive glance." but whether it does or does n't won't make any difference in my going to walk, i guess." "oh, won't it?" beamed david, his face changing. "i'm so glad! i don't mind the rain, either. father and i used to go in the rain lots of times, only, of course, we could n't take our violins then, so we used to like the pleasant days better. but there are some things you find on rainy days that you could n't find any other time, are n't there? the dance of the drops on the leaves, and the rush of the rain when the wind gets behind it. don't you love to feel it, out in the open spaces, where the wind just gets a good chance to push?" mrs. holly stared. then she shivered and threw up her hands with a gesture of hopeless abandonment. "land's sake, boy!" she ejaculated feebly, as she turned back to her work. from dishes to sweeping, and from sweeping to dusting, hurried mrs. holly, going at last into the somber parlor, always carefully guarded from sun and air. watching her, mutely, david trailed behind, his eyes staring a little as they fell upon the multitude of objects that parlor contained: the haircloth chairs, the long sofa, the marble-topped table, the curtains, cushions, spreads, and "throws," the innumerable mats and tidies, the hair-wreath, the wax flowers under their glass dome, the dried grasses, the marvelous bouquets of scarlet, green, and purple everlastings, the stones and shells and many-sized, many-shaped vases arranged as if in line of battle along the corner shelves. "y--yes, you may come in," called mrs. holly, glancing back at the hesitating boy in the doorway. "but you must n't touch anything. i'm going to dust." "but i have n't seen this room before," ruminated david. "well, no," deigned mrs. holly, with just a touch of superiority. "we don't use this room common, little boy, nor the bedroom there, either. this is the company room, for ministers and funerals, and--" she stopped hastily, with a quick look at david; but the boy did not seem to have heard. "and does n't anybody live here in this house, but just you and mr. holly, and mr. perry larson?" he asked, still looking wonderingly about him. "no, not--now." mrs. holly drew in her breath with a little catch, and glanced at the framed portrait of a little boy on the wall. "but you've got such a lot of rooms and--and things," remarked david. "why, daddy and i only had two rooms, and not hardly any things. it was so--different, you know, in my home." "i should say it might have been!" mrs. holly began to dust hurriedly, but carefully. her voice still carried its hint of superiority. "oh, yes," smiled david. "but you say you don't use this room much, so that helps." "helps!" in her stupefaction mrs. holly stopped her work and stared. "why, yes. i mean, you've got so many other rooms you can live in those. you don't have to live in here." " 'have to live in here'!" ejaculated the woman, still too uncomprehending to be anything but amazed. "yes. but do you have to keep all these things, and clean them and clean them, like this, every day? could n't you give them to somebody, or throw them away?" "throw--these--things--away!" with a wild sweep of her arms, the horrified woman seemed to be trying to encompass in a protective embrace each last endangered treasure of mat and tidy. "boy, are you crazy? these things are--are valuable. they cost money, and time and--and labor. don't you know beautiful things when you see them?" "oh, yes, i love beautiful things," smiled david, with unconsciously rude emphasis. "and up on the mountain i had them always. there was the sunrise, and the sunset, and the moon and the stars, and my silver lake, and the cloud-boats that sailed--" but mrs. holly, with a vexed gesture, stopped him. "never mind, little boy. i might have known--brought up as you have been. of course you could not appreciate such things as these. throw them away, indeed!" and she fell to work again; but this time her fingers carried a something in their touch that was almost like the caress a mother might bestow upon an aggrieved child. david, vaguely disturbed and uncomfortable, watched her with troubled eyes; then, apologetically, he explained:- "it was only that i thought if you did n't have to clean so many of these things, you could maybe go to walk more--to-day, and other days, you know. you said--you did n't have time," he reminded her. but mrs. holly only shook her head and sighed:- "well, well, never mind, little boy. i dare say you meant all right. you could n't understand, of course." and david, after another moment's wistful eyeing of the caressing fingers, turned about and wandered out onto the side porch. a minute later, having seated himself on the porch steps, he had taken from his pocket two small pieces of folded paper. and then, through tear-dimmed eyes, he read once more his father's letter. "he said i must n't grieve, for that would grieve him," murmured the boy, after a time, his eyes on the far-away hills. "and he said if i'd play, my mountains would come to me here, and i'd really be at home up there. he said in my violin were all those things i'm wanting--so bad!" with a little choking breath, david tucked the note back into his pocket and reached for his violin. some time later, mrs. holly, dusting the chairs in the parlor, stopped her work, tiptoed to the door, and listened breathlessly. when she turned back, still later, to her work, her eyes were wet. "i wonder why, when he plays, i always get to thinking of--john," she sighed to herself, as she picked up her dusting-cloth. after supper that night, simeon holly and his wife again sat on the kitchen porch, resting from the labor of the day. simeon's eyes were closed. his wife's were on the dim outlines of the shed, the barn, the road, or a passing horse and wagon. david, sitting on the steps, was watching the moon climb higher and higher above the tree-tops. after a time he slipped into the house and came out with his violin. at the first long-drawn note of sweetness, simeon holly opened his eyes and sat up, stern-lipped. but his wife laid a timid hand on his arm. "don't say anything, please," she entreated softly. "let him play, just for to-night. he's lonesome--poor little fellow." and simeon holly, with a frowning shrug of his shoulders, sat back in his chair. later, it was mrs. holly herself who stopped the music by saying: "come, david, it's bedtime for little boys. i'll go upstairs with you." and she led the way into the house and lighted the candle for him. upstairs, in the little room over the kitchen, david found himself once more alone. as before, the little yellow-white nightshirt lay over the chair-back; and as before, mrs. holly had brushed away a tear as she had placed it there. as before, too, the big four-posted bed loomed tall and formidable in the corner. but this time the coverlet and sheet were turned back invitingly--mrs. holly had been much disturbed to find that david had slept on the floor the night before. once more, with his back carefully turned toward the impaled bugs and moths on the wall, david undressed himself. then, before blowing out the candle, he went to the window kneeled down, and looked up at the moon through the trees. david was sorely puzzled. he was beginning to wonder just what was to become of himself. his father had said that out in the world there was a beautiful work for him to do; but what was it? how was he to find it? or how was he to do it if he did find it? and another thing; where was he to live? could he stay where he was? it was not home, to be sure; but there was the little room over the kitchen where he might sleep, and there was the kind woman who smiled at him sometimes with the sad, far-away look in her eyes that somehow hurt. he would not like, now, to leave her--with daddy gone. there were the gold-pieces, too; and concerning these david was equally puzzled. what should he do with them? he did not need them--the kind woman was giving him plenty of food, so that he did not have to go to the store and buy; and there was nothing else, apparently, that he could use them for. they were heavy, and disagreeable to carry; yet he did not like to throw them away, nor to let anybody know that he had them: he had been called a thief just for one little piece, and what would they say if they knew he had all those others? david remembered now, suddenly, that his father had said to hide them--to hide them until he needed them. david was relieved at once. why had he not thought of it before? he knew just the place, too,--the little cupboard behind the chimney there in this very room! and with a satisfied sigh, david got to his feet, gathered all the little yellow disks from his pockets, and tucked them well out of sight behind the piles of books on the cupboard shelves. there, too, he hid the watch; but the little miniature of the angel-mother he slipped back into one of his pockets. david's second morning at the farmhouse was not unlike the first, except that this time, when simeon holly asked him to fill the woodbox, david resolutely ignored every enticing bug and butterfly, and kept rigorously to the task before him until it was done. he was in the kitchen when, just before dinner, perry larson came into the room with a worried frown on his face. "mis' holly, would ye mind just steppin' to the side door? there's a woman an' a little boy there, an' somethin' ails 'em. she can't talk english, an' i'm blest if i can make head nor tail out of the lingo she does talk. but maybe you can." "why, perry, i don't know--" began mrs. holly. but she turned at once toward the door. on the porch steps stood a very pretty, but frightened-looking young woman with a boy perhaps ten years old at her side. upon catching sight of mrs. holly she burst into a torrent of unintelligible words, supplemented by numerous and vehement gestures. mrs. holly shrank back, and cast appealing eyes toward her husband who at that moment had come across the yard from the barn. "simeon, can you tell what she wants?" at sight of the newcomer on the scene, the strange woman began again, with even more volubility. "no," said simeon holly, after a moment's scowling scrutiny of the gesticulating woman. "she's talking french, i think. and she wants--something." "gosh! i should say she did," muttered perry larson. "an' whatever 't is, she wants it powerful bad." "are you hungry?" questioned mrs. holly timidly. "can't you speak english at all?" demanded simeon holly. the woman looked from one to the other with the piteous, pleading eyes of the stranger in the strange land who cannot understand or make others understand. she had turned away with a despairing shake of her head, when suddenly she gave a wild cry of joy and wheeled about, her whole face alight. the hollys and perry larson saw then that david had come out onto the porch and was speaking to the woman--and his words were just as unintelligible as the woman's had been. mrs. holly and perry larson stared. simeon holly interrupted david with a sharp- "do you, then, understand this woman, boy?" "why, yes! did n't you? she's lost her way, and--" but the woman had hurried forward and was pouring her story into david's ears. at its conclusion david turned to find the look of stupefaction still on the others' faces. "well, what does she want?" asked simeon holly crisply. "she wants to find the way to franccis lavelle's house. he's her husband's brother. she came in on the train this morning. her husband stopped off a minute somewhere, she says, and got left behind. he could talk english, but she can't. she's only been in this country a week. she came from france." "gorry! won't ye listen ter that, now?" cried perry larson admiringly. "reads her just like a book, don't he? there's a french family over in west hinsdale--two of 'em, i think. what'll ye bet 't ain't one o' them?" "very likely," acceded simeon holly, his eyes bent disapprovingly on david's face. it was plain to be seen that simeon holly's attention was occupied by david, not the woman. "an', say, mr. holly," resumed perry larson, a little excitedly, "you know i was goin' over ter west hinsdale in a day or two ter see harlow about them steers. why can't i go this afternoon an' tote her an' the kid along?" "very well," nodded simeon holly curtly, his eyes still on david's face. perry larson turned to the woman, and by a flourish of his arms and a jumble of broken english attempted to make her understand that he was to take her where she undoubtedly wished to go. the woman still looked uncomprehending, however, and david promptly came to the rescue, saying a few rapid words that quickly brought a flood of delighted understanding to the woman's face. "can't you ask her if she's hungry?" ventured mrs. holly, then. "she says no, thank you," translated david, with a smile, when he had received his answer. "but the boy says he is, if you please." "then, tell them to come into the kitchen," directed mrs. holly, hurrying into the house. "so you're french, are you?" said simeon holly to david. "french? oh, no, sir," smiled david, proudly. "i'm an american. father said i was. he said i was born in this country." "but how comes it you can speak french like that?" "why, i learned it." then, divining that his words were still unconvincing, he added: "same as i learned german and other things with father, out of books, you know. did n't you learn french when you were a little boy?" "humph!" vouchsafed simeon holly, stalking away without answering the question. immediately after dinner perry larson drove away with the woman and the little boy. the woman's face was wreathed with smiles, and her last adoring glance was for david, waving his hand to her from the porch steps. in the afternoon david took his violin and went off toward the hill behind the house for a walk. he had asked mrs. holly to accompany him, but she had refused, though she was not sweeping or dusting at the time. she was doing nothing more important, apparently, than making holes in a piece of white cloth, and sewing them up again with a needle and thread. david had then asked mr. holly to go; but his refusal was even more strangely impatient than his wife's had been. "and why, pray, should i go for a useless walk now--or any time, for that matter?" he demanded sharply. david had shrunk back unconsciously, though he had still smiled. "oh, but it would n't be a useless walk, sir. father said nothing was useless that helped to keep us in tune, you know." "in tune!" "i mean, you looked as father used to look sometimes, when he felt out of tune. and he always said there was nothing like a walk to put him back again. i--i was feeling a little out of tune myself to-day, and i thought, by the way you looked, that you were, too. so i asked you to go to walk." "humph! well, i--that will do, boy. no impertinence, you understand!" and he had turned away in very obvious anger. david, with a puzzled sorrow in his heart had started alone then, on his walk. chapter vii "you're wanted--you're wanted!" it was saturday night, and the end of david's third day at the farmhouse. upstairs, in the hot little room over the kitchen, the boy knelt at the window and tried to find a breath of cool air from the hills. downstairs on the porch simeon holly and his wife discussed the events of the past few days, and talked of what should be done with david. "but what shall we do with him?" moaned mrs. holly at last, breaking a long silence that had fallen between them. "what can we do with him? does n't anybody want him?" "no, of course, nobody wants him," retorted her husband relentlessly. and at the words a small figure in a yellow-white nightshirt stopped short. david, violin in hand, had fled from the little hot room, and stood now just inside the kitchen door. "who can want a child that has been brought up in that heathenish fashion?" continued simeon holly. "according to his own story, even his father did nothing but play the fiddle and tramp through the woods day in and day out, with an occasional trip to the mountain village to get food and clothing when they had absolutely nothing to eat and wear. of course nobody wants him!" david, at the kitchen door, caught his breath chokingly. then he sped across the floor to the back hall, and on through the long sheds to the hayloft in the barn--the place where his father seemed always nearest. david was frightened and heartsick. nobody wanted him. he had heard it with his own ears, so there was no mistake. what now about all those long days and nights ahead before he might go, violin in hand, to meet his father in that far-away country? how was he to live those days and nights if nobody wanted him? how was his violin to speak in a voice that was true and pure and full, and tell of the beautiful world, as his father had said that it must do? david quite cried aloud at the thought. then he thought of something else that his father had said: "remember this, my boy,--in your violin lie all the things you long for. you have only to play, and the broad skies of your mountain home will be over you, and the dear friends and comrades of your mountain forests will be all about you." with a quick cry david raised his violin and drew the bow across the strings. back on the porch at that moment mrs. holly was saying:- "of course there's the orphan asylum, or maybe the poorhouse--if they'd take him; but--simeon," she broke off sharply, "where's that child playing now?" simeon listened with intent ears. "in the barn, i should say." "but he'd gone to bed!" "and he'll go to bed again," asserted simeon holly grimly, as he rose to his feet and stalked across the moonlit yard to the barn. as before, mrs. holly followed him, and as before, both involuntarily paused just inside the barn door to listen. no runs and trills and rollicking bits of melody floated down the stairway to-night. the notes were long-drawn, and plaintively sweet; and they rose and swelled and died almost into silence while the man and the woman by the door stood listening. they were back in the long ago--simeon holly and his wife--back with a boy of their own who had made those same rafters ring with shouts of laughter, and who, also, had played the violin--though not like this; and the same thought had come to each: "what if, after all, it were john playing all alone in the moonlight!" it had not been the violin, in the end, that had driven john holly from home. it had been the possibilities in a piece of crayon. all through childhood the boy had drawn his beloved "pictures" on every inviting space that offered,--whether it were the "best-room" wall-paper, or the fly leaf of the big plush album,--and at eighteen he had announced his determination to be an artist. for a year after that simeon holly fought with all the strength of a stubborn will, banished chalk and crayon from the house, and set the boy to homely tasks that left no time for anything but food and sleep--then john ran away. that was fifteen years ago, and they had not seen him since; though two unanswered letters in simeon holly's desk testified that perhaps this, at least, was not the boy's fault. it was not of the grown-up john, the willful boy and runaway son, however, that simeon holly and his wife were thinking, as they stood just inside the barn door; it was of baby john, the little curly-headed fellow that had played at their knees, frolicked in this very barn, and nestled in their arms when the day was done. mrs. holly spoke first--and it was not as she had spoken on the porch. "simeon," she began tremulously, "that dear child must go to bed!" and she hurried across the floor and up the stairs, followed by her husband. "come, david," she said, as she reached the top; "it's time little boys were asleep! come!" her voice was low, and not quite steady. to david her voice sounded as her eyes looked when there was in them the far-away something that hurt. very slowly he came forward into the moonlight, his gaze searching the woman's face long and earnestly. "and do you--want me?" he faltered. the woman drew in her breath with a little sob. before her stood the slender figure in the yellow-white gown--john's gown. into her eyes looked those other eyes, dark and wistful,--like john's eyes. and her arms ached with emptiness. "yes, yes, for my very own--and for always!" she cried with sudden passion, clasping the little form close. "for always!" and david sighed his content. simeon holly's lips parted, but they closed again with no words said. the man turned then, with a curiously baffled look, and stalked down the stairs. on the porch long minutes later, when once more david had gone to bed, simeon holly said coldly to his wife:- "i suppose you realize, ellen, just what you've pledged yourself to, by that absurd outburst of yours in the barn to-night--and all because that ungodly music and the moonshine had gone to your head!" "but i want the boy, simeon. he--he makes me think of--john." harsh lines came to the man's mouth, but there was a perceptible shake in his voice as he answered:- "we're not talking of john, ellen. we're talking of this irresponsible, hardly sane boy upstairs. he can work, i suppose, if he's taught, and in that way he won't perhaps be a dead loss. still, he's another mouth to feed, and that counts now. there's the note, you know,--it's due in august." "but you say there's money--almost enough for it--in the bank." mrs. holly's voice was anxiously apologetic. "yes, i know" vouchsafed the man. "but almost enough is not quite enough." "but there's time--more than two months. it is n't due till the last of august, simeon." "i know, i know. meanwhile, there's the boy. what are you going to do with him?" "why, can't you use him--on the farm--a little?" "perhaps. i doubt it, though," gloomed the man. "one can't hoe corn nor pull weeds with a fiddle-bow--and that's all he seems to know how to handle." "but he can learn--and he does play beautifully," murmured the woman; whenever before had ellen holly ventured to use words of argument with her husband, and in extenuation, too, of an act of her own! there was no reply except a muttered" humph!" under the breath. then simeon holly rose and stalked into the house. the next day was sunday, and sunday at the farmhouse was a thing of stern repression and solemn silence. in simeon holly's veins ran the blood of the puritans, and he was more than strict as to what he considered right and wrong. when half-trained for the ministry, ill-health had forced him to resort to a less confining life, though never had it taken from him the uncompromising rigor of his views. it was a distinct shock to him, therefore, on this sunday morning to be awakened by a peal of music such as the little house had never known before. all the while that he was thrusting his indignant self into his clothing, the runs and turns and crashing chords whirled about him until it seemed that a whole orchestra must be imprisoned in the little room over the kitchen, so skillful was the boy's double stopping. simeon holly was white with anger when he finally hurried down the hall and threw open david's bedroom door. "boy, what do you mean by this?" he demanded. david laughed gleefully. "and did n't you know?" he asked. "why, i thought my music would tell you. i was so happy, so glad! the birds in the trees woke me up singing, 'you're wanted--you're wanted;' and the sun came over the hill there and said, 'you're wanted--you're wanted;' and the little tree-branch tapped on my window pane and said "you're wanted--you're wanted!' and i just had to take up my violin and tell you about it!" "but it's sunday--the lord's day," remonstrated the man sternly. david stood motionless, his eyes questioning. "are you quite a heathen, then?" catechised the man sharply." have they never told you anything about god, boy?" "oh, 'god'?--of course," smiled david, in open relief. "god wraps up the buds in their little brown blankets, and covers the roots with--" "i am not talking about brown blankets nor roots," interrupted the man severely. "this is god's day, and as such should be kept holy." " 'holy'?" "yes. you should not fiddle nor laugh nor sing." "but those are good things, and beautiful things," defended david, his eyes wide and puzzled. "in their place, perhaps," conceded the man, stiffly. "but not on god's day." "you mean--he would n't like them?" "yes." "oh!"--and david's face cleared. "that's all right, then. your god is n't the same one, sir, for mine loves all beautiful things every day in the year." there was a moment's silence. for the first time in his life simeon holly found himself without words. "we won't talk of this any more, david," he said at last; "but we'll put it another way--i don't wish you to play your fiddle on sunday. now, put it up till to-morrow." and he turned and went down the hall. breakfast was a very quiet meal that morning. meals were never things of hilarious joy at the holly farmhouse, as david had already found out; but he had not seen one before quite so somber as this. it was followed immediately by a half-hour of scripture-reading and prayer, with mrs. holly and perry larson sitting very stiff and solemn in their chairs, while mr. holly read. david tried to sit very stiff and solemn in his chair, also; but the roses at the window were nodding their heads and beckoning; and the birds in the bushes beyond were sending to him coaxing little chirps of "come out, come out!" and how could one expect to sit stiff and solemn in the face of all that, particularly when one's fingers were tingling to take up the interrupted song of the morning and tell the whole world how beautiful it was to be wanted! yet david sat very still,--or as still as he could sit,--and only the tapping of his foot, and the roving of his wistful eyes told that his mind was not with farmer holly and the children of israel in their wanderings in the wilderness. after the devotions came an hour of subdued haste and confusion while the family prepared for church. david had never been to church. he asked perry larson what it was like; but perry only shrugged his shoulders and said, to nobody, apparently:--" sugar! won't ye hear that, now?"--which to david was certainly no answer at all. that one must be spick and span to go to church, david soon found out--never before had he been so scrubbed and brushed and combed. there was, too, brought out for him to wear a little clean white blouse and a red tie, over which mrs. holly cried a little as she had over the nightshirt that first evening. the church was in the village only a quarter of a mile away; and in due time david, open-eyed and interested, was following mr. and mrs. holly down its long center aisle. the hollys were early as usual, and service had not begun. even the organist had not taken his seat beneath the great pipes of blue and gold that towered to the ceiling. it was the pride of the town--that organ. it had been given by a great man (out in the world) whose birthplace the town was. more than that, a yearly donation from this same great man paid for the skilled organist who came every sunday from the city to play it. to-day, as the organist took his seat, he noticed a new face in the holly pew, and he almost gave a friendly smile as he met the wondering gaze of the small boy there; then he lost himself, as usual, in the music before him. down in the holly pew the small boy held his breath. a score of violins were singing in his ears; and a score of other instruments that he could not name, crashed over his head, and brought him to his feet in ecstasy. before a detaining hand could stop him, he was out in the aisle, his eyes on the blue-and-gold pipes from which seemed to come those wondrous sounds. then his gaze fell on the man and on the banks of keys; and with soft steps he crept along the aisle and up the stairs to the organ-loft. for long minutes he stood motionless, listening; then the music died into silence and the minister rose for the invocation. it was a boy's voice, and not a man's, however, that broke the pause. "oh, sir, please," it said, "would you--could you teach me to do that?" the organist choked over a cough, and the soprano reached out and drew david to her side, whispering something in his ear. the minister, after a dazed silence, bowed his head; while down in the holly pew an angry man and a sorely mortified woman vowed that, before david came to church again, he should have learned some things. chapter viii the puzzling "dos" and "don'ts" with the coming of monday arrived a new life for david--a curious life full of" don'ts" and "dos." david wondered sometimes why all the pleasant things were "don'ts" and all the unpleasant ones "dos." corn to be hoed, weeds to be pulled, woodboxes to be filled; with all these it was "do this, do this, do this." but when it came to lying under the apple trees, exploring the brook that ran by the field, or even watching the bugs and worms that one found in the earth--all these were "don'ts." as to farmer holly--farmer holly himself awoke to some new experiences that monday morning. one of them was the difficulty in successfully combating the cheerfully expressed opinion that weeds were so pretty growing that it was a pity to pull them up and let them all wither and die. another was the equally great difficulty of keeping a small boy at useful labor of any sort in the face of the attractions displayed by a passing cloud, a blossoming shrub, or a bird singing on a tree-branch. in spite of all this, however, david so evidently did his best to carry out the "dos" and avoid the "don'ts," that at four o'clock that first monday he won from the stern but would-be-just farmer holly his freedom for the rest of the day; and very gayly he set off for a walk. he went without his violin, as there was the smell of rain in the air; but his face and his step and the very swing of his arms were singing (to david) the joyous song of the morning before. even yet, in spite of the vicissitudes of the day's work, the whole world, to david's homesick, lonely little heart, was still caroling that blessed "you're wanted, you're wanted, you're wanted!" and then he saw the crow. david knew crows. in his home on the mountain he had had several of them for friends. he had learned to know and answer their calls. he had learned to admire their wisdom and to respect their moods and tempers. he loved to watch them. especially he loved to see the great birds cut through the air with a wide sweep of wings, so alive, so gloriously free! but this crow- this crow was not cutting through the air with a wide sweep of wing. it was in the middle of a cornfield, and it was rising and falling and flopping about in a most extraordinary fashion. very soon david, running toward it, saw why. by a long leather strip it was fastened securely to a stake in the ground. "oh, oh, oh!" exclaimed david, in sympathetic consternation. "here, you just wait a minute. i'll fix it." with confident celerity david whipped out his jackknife to cut the thong; but he found then that to "fix it" and to say he would "fix it" were two different matters. the crow did not seem to recognize in david a friend. he saw in him, apparently, but another of the stone-throwing, gun-shooting, torturing humans who were responsible for his present hateful captivity. with beak and claw and wing, therefore, he fought this new evil that had come presumedly to torment; and not until david had hit upon the expedient of taking off his blouse, and throwing it over the angry bird, could the boy get near enough to accomplish his purpose. even then david had to leave upon the slender leg a twist of leather. a moment later, with a whir of wings and a frightened squawk that quickly turned into a surprised caw of triumphant rejoicing, the crow soared into the air and made straight for a distant tree-top. david, after a minute's glad surveying of his work, donned his blouse again and resumed his walk. it was almost six o'clock when david got back to the holly farmhouse. in the barn doorway sat perry larson. "well, sonny," the man greeted him cheerily, "did ye get yer weedin' done?" "y--yes," hesitated david. "i got it done; but i did n't like it." " 't is kinder hot work." "oh, i did n't mind that part," returned david. "what i did n't like was pulling up all those pretty little plants and letting them die." "weeds--'pretty little plants'!" ejaculated the man. "well, i'll be jiggered!" "but they were pretty," defended david, reading aright the scorn in perry larson's voice. "the very prettiest and biggest there were, always. mr. holly showed me, you know,--and i had to pull them up." "well, i'll be jiggered!" muttered perry larson again. "but i've been to walk since. i feel better now." "oh, ye do!" "oh, yes. i had a splendid walk. i went 'way up in the woods on the hill there. i was singing all the time--inside, you know. i was so glad mrs. holly--wanted me. you know what it is, when you sing inside." perry larson scratched his head. "well, no, sonny, i can't really say i do," he retorted. "i ain't much on singin'." "oh, but i don't mean aloud. i mean inside. when you're happy, you know." "when i'm--oh!" the man stopped and stared, his mouth falling open. suddenly his face changed, and he grinned appreciatively. "well, if you ain't the beat 'em, boy! 't is kinder like singin'--the way ye feel inside, when yer 'specially happy, ain't it? but i never thought of it before." "oh, yes. why, that's where i get my songs--inside of me, you know--that i play on my violin. and i made a crow sing, too. only he sang outside." "sing--a crow!" scoffed the man." shucks! it'll take more 'n you ter make me think a crow can sing, my lad." "but they do, when they're happy," maintained the boy. "anyhow, it does n't sound the same as it does when they're cross, or plagued over something. you ought to have heard this one to-day. he sang. he was so glad to get away. i let him loose, you see." "you mean, you caught a crow up there in them woods?" the man's voice was skeptical. "oh, no, i did n't catch it. but somebody had, and tied him up. and he was so unhappy!" "a crow tied up in the woods!" "oh, i did n't find that in the woods. it was before i went up the hill at all." "a crow tied up--look a-here, boy, what are you talkin' about? where was that crow?" perry larson's whole self had become suddenly alert. "in the field 'way over there. and some-body--" "the cornfield! jingo! boy, you don't mean you touched that crow?" "well, he would n't let me touch him," half-apologized david. "he was so afraid, you see. why, i had to put my blouse over his head before he'd let me cut him loose at all." "cut him loose!" perry larson sprang to his feet. "you did n't--you did n't let that crow go!" david shrank back. "why, yes; he wanted to go. he--" but the man before him had fallen back despairingly to his old position. "well, sir, you've done it now. what the boss'll say, i don't know; but i know what i'd like ter say to ye. i was a whole week, off an' on, gettin' hold of that crow, an' i would n't have got him at all if i had n't hid half the night an' all the mornin' in that clump o' bushes, watchin' a chance ter wing him, jest enough an' not too much. an' even then the job wa'n't done. let me tell yer, 't wa'n't no small thing ter get him hitched. i'm wearin' the marks of the rascal's beak yet. an' now you've gone an' let him go--just like that," he finished, snapping his fingers angrily. in david's face there was no contrition. there was only incredulous horror. "you mean, you tied him there, on purpose?" "sure i did!" "but he did n't like it. could n't you see he did n't like it?" cried david. "like it! what if he did n't? i did n't like ter have my corn pulled up, either. see here, sonny, you no need ter look at me in that tone o' voice. i did n't hurt the varmint none ter speak of--ye see he could fly, did n't ye?--an' he wa'n't starvin'. i saw to it that he had enough ter eat an' a dish o' water handy. an' if he did n't flop an' pull an' try ter get away he need n't 'a' hurt hisself never. i ain't ter blame for what pullin' he done." "but would n't you pull if you had two big wings that could carry you to the top of that big tree there, and away up, up in the sky, where you could talk to the stars?--would n't you pull if somebody a hundred times bigger'n you came along and tied your leg to that post there?" the man, perry, flushed an angry red. "see here, sonny, i wa'n't askin' you ter do no preachin'. what i did ain't no more'n any man 'round here does--if he's smart enough ter catch one. rigged-up broomsticks ain't in it with a live bird when it comes ter drivin' away them pesky, thievin' crows. there ain't a farmer 'round here that hain't been green with envy, ever since i caught the critter. an' now ter have you come along an' with one flip o' yer knife spile it all, i--well, it jest makes me mad, clean through! that's all." "you mean, you tied him there to frighten away the other crows?" "sure! there ain't nothin' like it." "oh, i'm so sorry!" "well, you'd better be. but that won't bring back my crow!" david's face brightened. "no, that's so, is n't it? i'm glad of that. i was thinking of the crows, you see. i'm so sorry for them! only think how we'd hate to be tied like that--" but perry larson, with a stare and an indignant snort, had got to his feet, and was rapidly walking toward the house. very plainly, that evening, david was in disgrace, and it took all of mrs. holly's tact and patience, and some private pleading, to keep a general explosion from wrecking all chances of his staying longer at the farmhouse. even as it was, david was sorrowfully aware that he was proving to be a great disappointment so soon, and his violin playing that evening carried a moaning plaintiveness that would have been very significant to one who knew david well. very faithfully, the next day, the boy tried to carry out all the "dos," and though he did not always succeed, yet his efforts were so obvious, that even the indignant owner of the liberated crow was somewhat mollified; and again simeon holly released david from work at four o'clock. alas, for david's peace of mind, however; for on his walk to-day, though he found no captive crow to demand his sympathy, he found something else quite as heartrending, and as incomprehensible. it was on the edge of the woods that he came upon two boys, each carrying a rifle, a dead squirrel, and a dead rabbit. the threatened rain of the day before had not materialized, and david had his violin. he had been playing softly when he came upon the boys where the path entered the woods. "oh!" at sight of the boys and their burden david gave an involuntary cry, and stopped playing. the boys, scarcely less surprised at sight of david and his violin, paused and stared frankly." it's the tramp kid with his fiddle," whispered one to the other huskily. david, his grieved eyes on the motionless little bodies in the boys' hands, shuddered. "are they--dead, too?" the bigger boy nodded self-importantly. "sure. we just shot 'em--the squirrels. ben here trapped the rabbits." he paused, manifestly waiting for the proper awed admiration to come into david's face. but in david's startled eyes there was no awed admiration, there was only disbelieving horror. "you mean, you sent them to the far country?" "we--what?" "sent them. made them go yourselves--to the far country?" the younger boy still stared. the older one grinned disagreeably. "sure," he answered with laconic indifference. "we sent 'em to the far country, all right." "but--how did you know they wanted to go?" "wanted--eh?" exploded the big boy. then he grinned again, still more disagreeably. "well, you see, my dear, we did n't ask 'em," he gibed. real distress came into david's face. "then you don't know at all. and maybe they did n't want to go. and if they did n't, how could they go singing, as father said? father was n't sent. he went. and he went singing. he said he did. but these--how would you like to have somebody come along and send you to the far country, without even knowing if you wanted to go?" there was no answer. the boys, with a growing fear in their eyes, as at sight of something inexplicable and uncanny, were sidling away; and in a moment they were hurrying down the hill, not, however, without a backward glance or two, of something very like terror. david, left alone, went on his way with troubled eyes and a thoughtful frown. david often wore, during those first few days at the holly farmhouse, a thoughtful face and a troubled frown. there were so many, many things that were different from his mountain home. over and over, as those first long days passed, he read his letter until he knew it by heart--and he had need to. was he not already surrounded by things and people that were strange to him? and they were so very strange--these people! there were the boys and men who rose at dawn--yet never paused to watch the sun flood the world with light; who stayed in the fields all day--yet never raised their eyes to the big fleecy clouds overhead; who knew birds only as thieves after fruit and grain, and squirrels and rabbits only as creatures to be trapped or shot. the women--they were even more incomprehensible. they spent the long hours behind screened doors and windows, washing the same dishes and sweeping the same floors day after day. they, too, never raised their eyes to the blue sky outside, nor even to the crimson roses that peeped in at the window. they seemed rather to be looking always for dirt, yet not pleased when they found it-especially if it had been tracked in on the heel of a small boy's shoe! more extraordinary than all this to david, however, was the fact that these people regarded him, not themselves, as being strange. as if it were not the most natural thing in the world to live with one's father in one's home on the mountain-top, and spend one's days trailing through the forest paths, or lying with a book beside some babbling little stream! as if it were not equally natural to take one's violin with one at times, and learn to catch upon the quivering strings the whisper of the winds through the trees! even in winter, when the clouds themselves came down from the sky and covered the earth with their soft whiteness,--even then the forest was beautiful; and the song of the brook under its icy coat carried a charm and mystery that were quite wanting in the chattering freedom of summer. surely there was nothing strange in all this, and yet these people seemed to think there was! chapter ix joe day by day, however, as time passed, david diligently tried to perform the "dos" and avoid the "don'ts"; and day by day he came to realize how important weeds and woodboxes were, if he were to conform to what was evidently farmer holly's idea of "playing in, tune" in this strange new orchestra of life in which he found himself. but, try as he would, there was yet an unreality about it all, a persistent feeling of uselessness and waste, that would not be set aside. so that, after all, the only part of this strange new life of his that seemed real to him was the time that came after four o'clock each day, when he was released from work. and how full he filled those hours! there was so much to see, so much to do. for sunny days there were field and stream and pasture land and the whole wide town to explore. for rainy days, if he did not care to go to walk, there was his room with the books in the chimney cupboard. some of them david had read before, but many of them he had not. one or two were old friends; but not so "dare devil dick," and "the pirates of pigeon cove" (which he found hidden in an obscure corner behind a loose board). side by side stood "the lady of the lake," "treasure island," and "david copperfield"; and coverless and dogeared lay "robinson crusoe," "the arabian nights," and "grimm's fairy tales." there were more, many more, and david devoured them all with eager eyes. the good in them he absorbed as he absorbed the sunshine; the evil he cast aside unconsciously--it rolled off, indeed, like the proverbial water from the duck's back. david hardly knew sometimes which he liked the better, his imaginative adventures between the covers of his books or his real adventures in his daily strolls. true, it was not his mountain home--this place in which he found himself; neither was there anywhere his silver lake with its far, far-reaching sky above. more deplorable yet, nowhere was there the dear father he loved so well. but the sun still set in rose and gold, and the sky, though small, still carried the snowy sails of its cloud-boats; while as to his father--his father had told him not to grieve, and david was trying very hard to obey. with his violin for company david started out each day, unless he elected to stay indoors with his books. sometimes it was toward the village that he turned his steps; sometimes it was toward the hills back of the town. whichever way it was, there was always sure to be something waiting at the end for him and his violin to discover, if it was nothing more than a big white rose in bloom, or a squirrel sitting by the roadside. very soon, however, david discovered that there was something to be found in his wanderings besides squirrels and roses; and that was--people. in spite of the strangeness of these people, they were wonderfully interesting, david thought. and after that he turned his steps more and more frequently toward the village when four o'clock released him from the day's work. at first david did not talk much to these people. he shrank sensitively from their bold stares and unpleasantly audible comments. he watched them with round eyes of wonder and interest, however,--when he did not think they were watching him. and in time he came to know not a little about them and about the strange ways in which they passed their time. there was the greenhouse man. it would be pleasant to spend one's day growing plants and flowers--but not under that hot, stifling glass roof, decided david. besides, he would not want always to pick and send away the very prettiest ones to the city every morning, as the greenhouse man did. there was the doctor who rode all day long behind the gray mare, making sick folks well. david liked him, and mentally vowed that he himself would be a doctor sometime. still, there was the stage-driver--david was not sure but he would prefer to follow this man's profession for a life-work; for in his, one could still have the freedom of long days in the open, and yet not be saddened by the sight of the sick before they had been made well--which was where the stage-driver had the better of the doctor, in david's opinion. there were the blacksmith and the storekeepers, too, but to these david gave little thought or attention. though he might not know what he did want to do, he knew very well what he did not. all of which merely goes to prove that david was still on the lookout for that great work which his father had said was waiting for him out in the world. meanwhile david played his violin. if he found a crimson rambler in bloom in a door-yard, he put it into a little melody of pure delight--that a woman in the house behind the gambler heard the music and was cheered at her task, david did not know. if he found a kitten at play in the sunshine, he put it into a riotous abandonment of tumbling turns and trills--that a fretful baby heard and stopped its wailing, david also did not know. and once, just because the sky was blue and the air was sweet, and it was so good to be alive, david lifted his bow and put it all into a rapturous paean of ringing exultation--that a sick man in a darkened chamber above the street lifted his head, drew in his breath, and took suddenly a new lease of life, david still again did not know. all of which merely goes to prove that david had perhaps found his work and was doing it--although yet still again david did not know. it was in the cemetery one afternoon that david came upon the lady in black. she was on her knees putting flowers on a little mound before her. she looked up as david approached. for a moment she gazed wistfully at him; then as if impelled by a hidden force, she spoke. "little boy, who are you?" "i'm david." "david! david who? do you live here? i've seen you here before." "oh, yes, i've been here quite a lot of times." purposely the boy evaded the questions. david was getting tired of questions--especially these questions. "and have you--lost one dear to you, little boy?" "lost some one?" "i mean--is your father or mother--here?" "here? oh, no, they are n't here. my mother is an angel-mother, and my father has gone to the far country. he is waiting for me there, you know." "but, that's the same--that is--" she stopped helplessly, bewildered eyes on david's serene face. then suddenly a great light came to her own. "oh, little boy, i wish i could understand that--just that," she breathed. "it would make it so much easier--if i could just remember that they are n't here--that they're waiting--over there!" but david apparently did not hear. he had turned and was playing softly as he walked away. silently the lady in black knelt, listening, looking after him. when she rose some time later and left the cemetery, the light on her face was still there, deeper, more glorified. toward boys and girls--especially boys--of his own age, david frequently turned wistful eyes. david wanted a friend, a friend who would know and understand; a friend who would see things as he saw them, who would understand what he was saying when he played. it seemed to david that in some boy of his own age he ought to find such a friend. he had seen many boys--but he had not yet found the friend. david had begun to think, indeed, that of all these strange beings in this new life of his, boys were the strangest. they stared and nudged each other unpleasantly when they came upon him playing. they jeered when he tried to tell them what he had been playing. they had never heard of the great orchestra of life, and they fell into most disconcerting fits of laughter, or else backed away as if afraid, when he told them that they themselves were instruments in it, and that if they did not keep themselves in tune, there was sure to be a discord somewhere. then there were their games and frolics. such as were played with balls, bats, and bags of beans, david thought he would like very much. but the boys only scoffed when he asked them to teach him how to play. they laughed when a dog chased a cat, and they thought it very, very funny when tony, the old black man, tripped on the string they drew across his path. they liked to throw stones and shoot guns, and the more creeping, crawling, or flying creatures that they could send to the far country, the happier they were, apparently. nor did they like it at all when he asked them if they were sure all these creeping, crawling, flying creatures wanted to leave this beautiful world and to be made dead. they sneered and called him a sissy. david did not know what a sissy was; but from the way they said it, he judged it must be even worse to be a sissy than to be a thief. and then he discovered joe. david had found himself in a very strange, very unlovely neighborhood that afternoon. the street was full of papers and tin cans, the houses were unspeakably forlorn with sagging blinds and lack of paint. untidy women and blear-eyed men leaned over the dilapidated fences, or lolled on mud-tracked doorsteps. david, his shrinking eyes turning from one side to the other, passed slowly through the street, his violin under his arm. nowhere could david find here the tiniest spot of beauty to "play." he had reached quite the most forlorn little shanty on the street when the promise in his father's letter occurred to him. with a suddenly illumined face, he raised his violin to position and plunged into a veritable whirl of trills and runs and tripping melodies. "if i did n't just entirely forget that i did n't need to see anything beautiful to play," laughed david softly to himself. "why, it's already right here in my violin!" david had passed the tumble-down shanty, and was hesitating where two streets crossed, when he felt a light touch on his arm. he turned to confront a small girl in a patched and faded calico dress, obviously outgrown. her eyes were wide and frightened. in the middle of her outstretched dirty little palm was a copper cent. "if you please, joe sent this--to you," she faltered. "to me? what for?" david stopped playing and lowered his violin. the little girl backed away perceptibly, though she still held out the coin. "he wanted you to stay and play some more. he said to tell you he'd 'a' sent more money if he could. but he did n't have it. he just had this cent." david's eyes flew wide open. "you mean he wants me to play? he likes it?" he asked joyfully. "yes. he said he knew 't wa'n't much--the cent. but he thought maybe you'd play a little for it." "play? of course i'll, play" cried david. "oh, no, i don't want the money," he added, waving the again-proffered coin aside. "i don't need money where i'm living now. where is he--the one that wanted me to play?" he finished eagerly. "in there by the window. it's joe. he's my brother." the little girl, in spite of her evident satisfaction at the accomplishment of her purpose, yet kept quite aloof from the boy. nor did the fact that he refused the money appear to bring her anything but uneasy surprise. in the window david saw a boy apparently about his own age, a boy with sandy hair, pale cheeks, and wide-open, curiously intent blue eyes. "is he coming? did you get him? will he play?" called the boy at the window eagerly. "yes, i'm right here. i'm the one. can't you see the violin? shall i play here or come in?" answered david, not one whit less eagerly. the small girl opened her lips as if to explain something; but the boy in the window did not wait. "oh, come in. will you come in?" he cried unbelievingly. "and will you just let me touch it--the fiddle? come! you will come? see, there is n't anybody home, only just betty and me." "of course i will!" david fairly stumbled up the broken steps in his impatience to reach the wide-open door. "did you like it--what i played? and did you know what i was playing? did you understand? could you see the cloud-boats up in the sky, and my silver lake down in the valley? and could you hear the birds, and the winds in the trees, and the little brooks? could you? oh, did you understand? i've so wanted to find some one that could! but i would n't think that you--here--" with a gesture, and an expression on his face that were unmistakable, david came to a helpless pause. "there, joe, what'd i tell you," cried the little girl, in a husky whisper, darting to her brother's side. "oh, why did you make me get him here? everybody says he's crazy as a loon, and--" but the boy reached out a quickly silencing hand. his face was curiously alight, as if from an inward glow. his eyes, still widely intent, were staring straight ahead. "stop, betty, wait," he hushed her. "maybe--i think i do understand. boy, you mean--inside of you, you see those things, and then you try to make your fiddle tell what you are seeing. is that it?" "yes, yes," cried david. "oh, you do understand. and i never thought you could. i never thought that anybody could that did n't have anything to look at but him--but these things." " 'anything but these to look at'!" echoed the boy, with a sudden anguish in his voice. "anything but these! i guess if i could see anything, i would n't mind what i see! an' you would n't, neither, if you was--blind, like me." "blind!" david fell back. face and voice were full of horror. "you mean you can't see--anything, with your eyes?" "nothin'." "oh! i never saw any one blind before. there was one in a book--but father took it away. since then, in books down here, i've found others--but--" "yes, yes. well, never mind that," cut in the blind boy, growing restive under the pity in the other's voice. "play. won't you?" "but how are you ever going to know what a beautiful world it is?" shuddered david." how can you know? and how can you ever play in tune? you're one of the instruments. father said everybody was. and he said everybody was playing something all the time; and if you did n't play in tune--" "joe, joe, please," begged the little girl "won't you let him go? i'm afraid. i told you--" "shucks, betty! he won't hurt ye," laughed joe, a little irritably. then to david he turned again with some sharpness. "play, won't ye? you said you'd play!" "yes, oh, yes, i'll play," faltered david, bringing his violin hastily to position, and testing the strings with fingers that shook a little. "there!" breathed joe, settling back in his chair with a contented sigh. "now, play it again--what you did before." but david did not play what he did before--at first. there were no airy cloud-boats, no far-reaching sky, no birds, or murmuring forest brooks in his music this time. there were only the poverty-stricken room, the dirty street, the boy alone at the window, with his sightless eyes--the boy who never, never would know what a beautiful world he lived in. then suddenly to david came a new thought. this boy, joe, had said before that he understood. he had seemed to know that he was being told of the sunny skies and the forest winds, the singing birds and the babbling brooks. perhaps again now he would understand. what if, for those sightless eyes, one could create a world? possibly never before had david played as he played then. it was as if upon those four quivering strings, he was laying the purple and gold of a thousand sunsets, the rose and amber of a thousand sunrises, the green of a boundless earth, the blue of a sky that reached to heaven itself--to make joe understand. "gee!" breathed joe, when the music came to an end with a crashing chord. "say, wa'n't that just great? won't you let me, please, just touch that fiddle?" and david, looking into the blind boy's exalted face, knew that joe had indeed--understood. chapter x the lady of the roses it was a new world, indeed, that david created for joe after that--a world that had to do with entrancing music where once was silence; delightful companionship where once was loneliness; and toothsome cookies and doughnuts where once was hunger. the widow glaspell, joe's mother, worked out by the day, scrubbing and washing; and joe, perforce, was left to the somewhat erratic and decidedly unskillful ministrations of betty. betty was no worse, and no better, than any other untaught, irresponsible twelve-year-old girl, and it was not to be expected, perhaps, that she would care to spend all the bright sunny hours shut up with her sorely afflicted and somewhat fretful brother. true, at noon she never failed to appear and prepare something that passed for a dinner for herself and joe. but the glaspell larder was frequently almost as empty as were the hungry stomachs that looked to it for refreshment; and it would have taken a far more skillful cook than was the fly-away betty to evolve anything from it that was either palatable or satisfying. with the coming of david into joe's life all this was changed. first, there were the music and the companionship. joe's father had "played in the band" in his youth, and (according to the widow glaspell) had been a "powerful hand for music." it was from him, presumably, that joe had inherited his passion for melody and harmony; and it was no wonder that david recognized so soon in the blind boy the spirit that made them kin. at the first stroke of david's bow, indeed, the dingy walls about them would crumble into nothingness, and together the two boys were off in a fairy world of loveliness and joy. nor was listening always joe's part. from "just touching" the violin--his first longing plea--he came to drawing a timid bow across the strings. in an incredibly short time, then, he was picking out bits of melody; and by the end of a fortnight david had brought his father's violin for joe to practice on. "i can't give it to you--not for keeps," david had explained, a bit tremulously, "because it was daddy's, you know; and when i see it, it seems almost as if i was seeing him. but you may take it. then you can have it here to play on whenever you like." after that, in joe's own hands lay the power to transport himself into another world, for with the violin for company he knew no loneliness. nor was the violin all that david brought to the house. there were the doughnuts and the cookies. very early in his visits david had discovered, much to his surprise, that joe and betty were often hungry. "but why don't you go down to the store and buy something?" he had queried at once. upon being told that there was no money to buy with, david's first impulse had been to bring several of the gold-pieces the next time he came; but upon second thoughts david decided that he did not dare. he was not wishing to be called a thief a second time. it would be better, he concluded, to bring some food from the house instead. in his mountain home everything the house afforded in the way of food had always been freely given to the few strangers that found their way to the cabin door. so now david had no hesitation in going to mrs. holly's pantry for supplies, upon the occasion of his next visit to joe glaspell's. mrs. holly, coming into the kitchen, found him merging from the pantry with both hands full of cookies and doughnuts. "why, david, what in the world does this mean?" she demanded. "they're for joe and betty," smiled david happily. "for joe and--but those doughnuts and cookies don't belong to you. they're mine!" "yes, i know they are. i told them you had plenty," nodded david. "plenty! what if i have?" remonstrated mrs. holly, in growing indignation." that does n't mean that you can take--" something in david's face stopped the words half-spoken. "you don't mean that i can't take them to joe and betty, do you? why, mrs. holly, they're hungry! joe and betty are. they don't have half enough to eat. betty said so. and we've got more than we want. there's food left on the table every day. why, if you were hungry, would n't you want somebody to bring--" but mrs. holly stopped him with a despairing gesture. "there, there, never mind. run along. of course you can take them. i'm--i'm glad to have you," she finished, in a desperate attempt to drive from david's face that look of shocked incredulity with which he was still regarding her. never again did mrs. holly attempt to thwart david's generosity to the glaspells; but she did try to regulate it. she saw to it that thereafter, upon his visits to the house, he took only certain things and a certain amount, and invariably things of her own choosing. but not always toward the glaspell shanty did david turn his steps. very frequently it was in quite another direction. he had been at the holly farmhouse three weeks when he found his lady of the roses. he had passed quite through the village that day, and had come to a road that was new to him. it was a beautiful road, smooth, white, and firm. two huge granite posts topped with flaming nasturtiums marked the point where it turned off from the main highway. beyond these, as david soon found, it ran between wide-spreading lawns and flowering shrubs, leading up the gentle slope of a hill. where it led to, david did not know, but he proceeded unhesitatingly to try to find out. for some time he climbed the slope in silence, his violin, mute, under his arm; but the white road still lay in tantalizing mystery before him when a by-path offered the greater temptation, and lured him to explore its cool shadowy depths instead. had david but known it, he was at sunny-crest, hinsdale's one "show place," the country home of its one really rich resident, miss barbara holbrook. had he also but known it, miss holbrook was not celebrated for her graciousness to any visitors, certainly not to those who ventured to approach her otherwise than by a conventional ring at her front doorbell. but david did not know all this; and he therefore very happily followed the shady path until he came to the wonder at the end of it. the wonder, in hinsdale parlance, was only miss holbrook's garden, but in david's eyes it was fairyland come true. for one whole minute he could only stand like a very ordinary little boy and stare. at the end of the minute he became himself once more; and being himself, he expressed his delight at once in the only way he knew how to do--by raising his violin and beginning to play. he had meant to tell of the limpid pool and of the arch of the bridge it reflected; of the terraced lawns and marble steps, and of the gleaming white of the sculptured nymphs and fauns; of the splashes of glorious crimson, yellow, blush-pink, and snowy white against the green, where the roses rioted in luxurious bloom. he had meant, also, to tell of the queen rose of them all--the beauteous lady with hair like the gold of sunrise, and a gown like the shimmer of the moon on water--of all this he had meant to tell; but he had scarcely begun to tell it at all when the beauteous lady of the roses sprang to her feet and became so very much like an angry young woman who is seriously displeased that david could only lower his violin in dismay. "why, boy, what does this mean?" she demanded. david sighed a little impatiently as he came forward into the sunlight. "but i was just telling you," he remonstrated, "and you would not let me finish." "telling me!" "yes, with my violin. could n't you understand?" appealed the boy wistfully. "you looked as if you could!" "looked as if i could!" "yes. joe understood, you see, and i was surprised when he did. but i was just sure you could--with all this to look at." the lady frowned. half-unconsciously she glanced about her as if contemplating flight. then she turned back to the boy. "but how came you here? who are you?" she cried. "i'm david. i walked here through the little path back there. i did n't know where it went to, but i'm so glad now i found out!" "oh, are you!" murmured the lady, with slightly uplifted brows. she was about to tell him very coldly that now that he had found his way there he might occupy himself in finding it home again, when the boy interposed rapturously, his eyes sweeping the scene before him:- "yes. i did n't suppose, anywhere, down here, there was a place one half so beautiful!" an odd feeling of uncanniness sent a swift exclamation to the lady's lips. " 'down here'! what do you mean by that? you speak as if you came from--above," she almost laughed. "i did," returned david simply. "but even up there i never found anything quite like this,"--with a sweep of his hands,--"nor like you, o lady of the roses," he finished with an admiration that was as open as it was ardent. this time the lady laughed outright. she even blushed a little. "very prettily put, sir flatterer" she retorted; "but when you are older, young man, you won't make your compliments quite so broad. i am no lady of the roses. i am miss holbrook; and--and i am not in the habit of receiving gentlemen callers who are uninvited and--unannounced," she concluded, a little sharply. pointless the shaft fell at david's feet. he had turned again to the beauties about him, and at that moment he spied the sundial--something he had never seen before. "what is it?" he cried eagerly, hurrying forward. "it isn 't exactly pretty, and yet it looks as if 't were meant for--something." "it is. it is a sundial. it marks the time by the sun." even as she spoke, miss holbrook wondered why she answered the question at all; why she did not send this small piece of nonchalant impertinence about his business, as he so richly deserved. the next instant she found herself staring at the boy in amazement. with unmistakable ease, and with the trained accent of the scholar, he was reading aloud the latin inscription on the dial: " 'horas non numero nisi serenas,' 'i count--no--hours but--unclouded ones,' " he translated then, slowly, though with confidence. "that's pretty; but what does it mean--about 'counting'?" miss holbrook rose to her feet. "for heaven's sake, boy, who, and what are you?" she demanded." can you read latin?" "why, of course! can't you?" with a disdainful gesture miss holbrook swept this aside. "boy, who are you?" she demanded again imperatively. "i'm david. i told you." "but david who? where do you live?" the boy's face clouded. "i'm david--just david. i live at farmer holly's now; but i did live on the mountain with--father, you know." a great light of understanding broke over miss holbrook's face. she dropped back into her seat. "oh, i remember," she murmured. "you're the little--er--boy whom he took. i have heard the story. so that is who you are," she added, the old look of aversion coming back to her eyes. she had almost said "the little tramp boy"--but she had stopped in time. "yes. and now what do they mean, please,--those words,-'i count no hours but unclouded ones'?" miss holbrook stirred in her seat and frowned. "why, it means what it says, of course, boy. a sundial counts its hours by the shadow the sun throws, and when there is no sun there is no shadow; hence it's only the sunny hours that are counted by the dial," she explained a little fretfully. david's face radiated delight. "oh, but i like that!" he exclaimed. "you like it!" "yes. i should like to be one myself, you know." "well, really! and how, pray?" in spite of herself a faint gleam of interest came into miss holbrook's eyes. david laughed and dropped himself easily to the ground at her feet. he was holding his violin on his knees now. "why, it would be such fun," he chuckled, "to just forget all about the hours when the sun did n't shine, and remember only the nice, pleasant ones. now for me, there would n't be any hours, really, until after four o'clock, except little specks of minutes that i'd get in between when i did see something interesting." miss holbrook stared frankly. "what an extraordinary boy you are, to be sure," she murmured. "and what, may i ask, is it that you do every day until four o'clock, that you wish to forget? " david sighed. "well, there are lots of things. i hoed potatoes and corn, first, but they're too big now, mostly; and i pulled up weeds, too, till they were gone. i've been picking up stones, lately, and clearing up the yard. then, of course, there's always the woodbox to fill, and the eggs to hunt, besides the chickens to feed,--though i don't mind them so much; but i do the other things, 'specially the weeds. they were so much prettier than the things i had to let grow, 'most always." miss holbrook laughed. "well, they were; and really" persisted the boy, in answer to the merriment in her eyes; "now would n't it be nice to be like the sundial, and forget everything the sun did n't shine on? would n't you like it? is n't there anything you want to forget?" miss holbrook sobered instantly. the change in her face was so very marked, indeed, that involuntarily david looked about for something that might have cast upon it so great a shadow. for a long minute she did not speak; then very slowly, very bitterly, she said aloud--yet as if to herself:- "yes. if i had my way i'd forget them every one--these hours; every single one!" "oh, lady of the roses!" expostulated david in a voice quivering with shocked dismay. "you don't mean--you can't mean that you don't have any--sun!" "i mean just that," bowed miss holbrook wearily, her eyes on the somber shadows of the pool; "just that!" david sat stunned, confounded. across the marble steps and the terraces the shadows lengthened, and david watched them as the sun dipped behind the tree-tops. they seemed to make more vivid the chill and the gloom of the lady's words--more real the day that had no sun. after a time the boy picked up his violin and began to play, softly, and at first with evident hesitation. even when his touch became more confident, there was still in the music a questioning appeal that seemed to find no answer--an appeal that even the player himself could not have explained. for long minutes the young woman and the boy sat thus in the twilight. then suddenly the woman got to her feet. "come, come, boy, what can i be thinking of?" she cried sharply." i must go in and you must go home. good-night." and she swept across the grass to the path that led toward the house. chapter xi jack and jill david was tempted to go for a second visit to his lady of the roses, but something he could not define held him back. the lady was in his mind almost constantly, however; and very vivid to him was the picture of the garden, though always it was as he had seen it last with the hush and shadow of twilight, and with the lady's face gloomily turned toward the sunless pool. david could not forget that for her there were no hours to count; she had said it herself. he could not understand how this could be so; and the thought filled him with vague unrest and pain. perhaps it was this restlessness that drove david to explore even more persistently the village itself, sending him into new streets in search of something strange and interesting. one day the sound of shouts and laughter drew him to an open lot back of the church where some boys were at play. david still knew very little of boys. in his mountain home he had never had them for playmates, and he had not seen much of them when he went with his father to the mountain village for supplies. there had been, it is true, the boy who frequently brought milk and eggs to the cabin; but he had been very quiet and shy, appearing always afraid and anxious to get away, as if he had been told not to stay. more recently, since david had been at the holly farmhouse, his experience with boys had been even less satisfying. the boys--with the exception of blind joe--had very clearly let it be understood that they had little use for a youth who could find nothing better to do than to tramp through the woods and the streets with a fiddle under his arm. to-day, however, there came a change. perhaps they were more used to him; or perhaps they had decided suddenly that it might be good fun to satisfy their curiosity, anyway, regardless of consequences. whatever it was, the lads hailed his appearance with wild shouts of glee. "golly, boys, look! here's the fiddlin' kid," yelled one; and the others joined in the "hurrah!" he gave. david smiled delightedly; once more he had found some one who wanted him--and it was so nice to be wanted! truth to tell, david had felt not a little hurt at the persistent avoidance of all those boys and girls of his own age. "how--how do you do?" he said diffidently, but still with that beaming smile. again the boys shouted gleefully as they hurried forward. several had short sticks in their hands. one had an old tomato can with a string tied to it. the tallest boy had something that he was trying to hold beneath his coat. " 'h--how do you do?' " they mimicked. "how do you do, fiddlin' kid?" "i'm david; my name is david." the reminder was graciously given, with a smile. "david! david! his name is david," chanted the boys, as if they were a comic-opera chorus. david laughed outright. "oh, sing it again, sing it again!" he crowed. "that sounded fine!" the boys stared, then sniffed disdainfully, and cast derisive glances into each other's eyes--it appeared that this little sissy tramp boy did not even know enough to discover when he was being laughed at! "david! david! his name is david," they jeered into his face again. "come on, tune her up! we want ter dance." "play? of course i'll play," cried david joyously, raising his violin and testing a string for its tone. "here, hold on," yelled the tallest boy. "the queen o' the ballet ain't ready". and he cautiously pulled from beneath his coat a struggling kitten with a perforated bag tied over its head. "sure! we want her in the middle," grinned the boy with the tin can. "hold on till i get her train tied to her," he finished, trying to capture the swishing, fluffy tail of the frightened little cat. david had begun to play, but he stopped his music with a discordant stroke of the bow. "what are you doing? what is the matter with that cat?" he demanded. "'matter'!" called a derisive voice. "sure, nothin' 's the matter with her. she's the queen o' the ballet--she is!" "what do you mean?" cried david. at that moment the string bit hard into the captured tail, and the kitten cried out with the pain. "look out! you're hurting her," cautioned david sharply. only a laugh and a jeering word answered. then the kitten, with the bag on its head and the tin can tied to its tail, was let warily to the ground, the tall boy still holding its back with both hands. "ready, now! come on, play," he ordered; "then we'll set her dancing." david's eyes flashed. "i will not play--for that." the boys stopped laughing suddenly. "eh? what?" they could scarcely have been more surprised if the kitten itself had said the words. "i say i won't play--i can't play--unless you let that cat go." "hoity-toity! won't ye hear that now?" laughed a mocking voice. "and what if we say we won't let her go, eh?" "then i'll make you," vowed david, aflame with a newborn something that seemed to have sprung full-grown into being. "yow!" hooted the tallest boy, removing both hands from the captive kitten. the kitten, released, began to back frantically. the can, dangling at its heels, rattled and banged and thumped, until the frightened little creature, crazed with terror, became nothing but a whirling mass of misery. the boys, formed now into a crowing circle of delight, kept the kitten within bounds, and flouted david mercilessly. "ah, ha!--stop us, will ye? why don't ye stop us?" they gibed. for a moment david stood without movement, his eyes staring. the next instant he turned and ran. the jeers became a chorus of triumphant shouts then--but not for long. david had only hurried to the woodpile to lay down his violin. he came back then, on the run--and before the tallest boy could catch his breath he was felled by a stinging blow on the jaw. over by the church a small girl, red-haired and red-eyed, clambered hastily over the fence behind which for long minutes she had been crying and wringing her hands. "he'll be killed, he'll be killed," she moaned. "and it's my fault, 'cause it's my kitty--it's my kitty," she sobbed, straining her eyes to catch a glimpse of the kitten's protector in the squirming mass of legs and arms. the kitten, unheeded now by the boys, was pursuing its backward whirl to destruction some distance away, and very soon the little girl discovered her. with a bound and a choking cry she reached the kitten, removed the bag and unbound the cruel string. then, sitting on the ground, a safe distance away, she soothed the palpitating little bunch of gray fur, and watched with fearful eyes the fight. and what a fight it was! there was no question, of course, as to its final outcome, with six against one; but meanwhile the one was giving the six the surprise of their lives in the shape of well-dealt blows and skillful twists and turns that caused their own strength and weight to react upon themselves in a most astonishing fashion. the one unmistakably was getting the worst of it, however, when the little girl, after a hurried dash to the street, brought back with her to the rescue a tall, smooth-shaven young man whom she had hailed from afar as "jack." jack put a stop to things at once. with vigorous jerks and pulls he unsnarled the writhing mass, boy by boy, each one of whom, upon catching sight of his face, slunk hurriedly away, as if glad to escape so lightly. there was left finally upon the ground only david alone. but when david did at last appear, the little girl burst into tears anew. "oh, jack, he's killed--i know he's killed," she wailed. "and he was so nice and--and pretty. and now--look at him! ain't he a sight?" david was not killed, but he was--a sight. his blouse was torn, his tie was gone, and his face and hands were covered with dirt and blood. above one eye was an ugly-looking lump, and below the other was a red bruise. somewhat dazedly he responded to the man's helpful hand, pulled himself upright, and looked about him. he did not see the little girl behind him. "where's the cat?" he asked anxiously. the unexpected happened then. with a sobbing cry the little girl flung herself upon him, cat and all. "here, right here," she choked." and it was you who saved her--my juliette! and i'll love you, love you, love you always for it!" "there, there, jill," interposed the man a little hurriedly. "suppose we first show our gratitude by seeing if we can't do something to make our young warrior here more comfortable." and he began to brush off with his handkerchief some of the accumulated dirt. "why can't we take him home, jack, and clean him up 'fore other folks see him?" suggested the girl. the boy turned quickly. "did you call him 'jack'?" "yes." "and he called you, jill'?" "yes." "the real 'jack and jill' that 'went up the hill'?" the man and the girl laughed; but the girl shook her head as she answered,- "not really--though we do go up a hill, all right, every day. but those are n't even our own names. we just call each other that for fun. don't you ever call things--for fun?" david's face lighted up in spite of the dirt, the lump, and the bruise. "oh, do you do that?" he breathed." say, i just know i'd like to play to you! you'd understand!" "oh, yes, and he plays, too," explained the little girl, turning to the man rapturously. "on a fiddle, you know, like you." she had not finished her sentence before david was away, hurrying a little unsteadily across the lot for his violin. when he came back the man was looking at him with an anxious frown. "suppose you come home with us, boy," he said. "it is n't far--through the hill pasture, 'cross lots,--and we'll look you over a bit. that lump over your eye needs attention." "thank you," beamed david. "i'd like to go, and--i'm glad you want me!" he spoke to the man, but he looked at the little red-headed girl, who still held the gray kitten in her arms. chapter xii answers that did not answer "jack and jill," it appeared, were a brother and sister who lived in a tiny house on a hill directly across the creek from sunnycrest. beyond this david learned little until after bumps and bruises and dirt had been carefully attended to. he had then, too, some questions to answer eoncerning himself. "and now, if you please," began the man smilingly, as he surveyed the boy with an eye that could see no further service to be rendered, "do you mind telling me who you are, and how you came to be the center of attraction for the blows and cuffs of six boys?" "i'm david, and i wanted the cat," returned the boy simply. "well, that's direct and to the point, to say the least," laughed the man. "evidently, however, you're in the habit of being that. but, david, there were six of them,--those boys,--and some of them were larger than you." "yes, sir." "and they were so bad and cruel," chimed in the little girl. the man hesitated, then questioned slowly. "and may i ask you where you--er--learned to--fight like that?" "i used to box with father. he said i must first be well and strong. he taught me jiujitsu, too, a little; but i could n't make it work very well--with so many" "i should say not," adjudged the man grimly. "but you gave them a surprise or two, i'll warrant," he added, his eyes on the cause of the trouble, now curled in a little gray bunch of content on the window sill. "but i don't know yet who you are. who is your father? where does he live?" david shook his head. as was always the case when his father was mentioned, his face grew wistful and his eyes dreamy. "he does n't live here anywhere," murmured the boy. "in the far country he is waiting for me to come to him and tell him of the beautiful world i have found, you know." "eh? what?" stammered the man, not knowing whether to believe his eyes, or his ears. this boy who fought like a demon and talked like a saint, and who, though battered and bruised, prattled of the "beautiful world" he had found, was most disconcerting. "why, jack, don't you know?" whispered the little girl agitatedly. "he's the boy at mr. holly's that they took." then, still more softly: "he's the little tramp boy. his father died in the barn." "oh," said the man, his face clearing, and his eyes showing a quick sympathy. "you're the boy at the holly farmhouse, are you?" "yes, sir." "and he plays the fiddle everywhere," volunteered the little girl, with ardent admiration. "if you had n't been shut up sick just now, you'd have heard him yourself. he plays everywhere--everywhere he goes." "is that so?" murmured jack politely, shuddering a little at what he fancied would come from a violin played by a boy like the one before him. (jack could play the violin himself a little--enough to know it some, and love it more.)" hm-m; well, and what else do you do? " "nothing, except to go for walks and read." "nothing!--a big boy like you--and on simeon holly's farm?" voice and manner showed that jack was not unacquainted with simeon holly and his methods and opinions. david laughed gleefully. "oh, of course, really i do lots of things, only i don't count those any more. 'horas non numero nisi serenas,' you knew," he quoted pleasantly, smiling into the man's astonished eyes. "jack, what was that--what he said?" whispered the little girl. "it sounded foreign. is he foreign?" "you've got me, jill," retorted the man, with a laughing grimace." heaven only knows what he is--i don't. what he said was latin; i do happen to know that. still"--he turned to the boy ironically--"of course you know the translation of that," he said. "oh, yes. 'i count no hours but unclouded ones'--and i liked that. 't was on a sundial, you know; and i'm going to be a sundial, and not count, the hours i don't like--while i'm pulling up weeds, and hoeing potatoes, and picking up stones, and all that. don't you see?" for a moment the man stared dumbly. then he threw back his head and laughed. "well, by george!" he muttered. "by george!" and he laughed again. then: "and did your father teach you that, too?" he asked. "oh, no,--well, he taught me latin, and so of course i could read it when i found it. but those 'special words i got off the sundial where my lady of the roses lives." "your--lady of the roses! and who is she?" "why, don't you know? you live right in sight of her house," cried david, pointing to the towers of sunnycrest that showed above the trees. "it's over there she lives. i know those towers now, and i look for them wherever i go. i love them. it makes me see all over again the roses--and her." "you mean--miss holbrook?" the voice was so different from the genial tones that he had heard before that david looked up in surprise. "yes; she said that was her name," he answered, wondering at the indefinable change that had come to the man's face. there was a moment's pause, then the man rose to his feet. "how's your head? does it ache?" he asked briskly. "not much--some. i--i think i'll be going," replied david, a little awkwardly, reaching for his violin, and unconsciously showing by his manner the sudden chill in the atmosphere. the little girl spoke then. she overwhelmed him again with thanks, and pointed to the contented kitten on the window sill. true, she did not tell him this time that she would love, love, love him always; but she beamed upon him gratefully and she urged him to come soon again, and often. david bowed himself off, with many a backward wave of the hand, and many a promise to come again. not until he had quite reached the bottom of the hill did he remember that the man, "jack," had said almost nothing at the last. as david recollected him, indeed, he had last been seen standing beside one of the veranda posts, with gloomy eyes fixed on the towers of sunnycrest that showed red-gold above the tree-tops in the last rays of the setting sun. it was a bad half-hour that david spent at the holly farmhouse in explanation of his torn blouse and bruised face. farmer holly did not approve of fights, and he said so, very sternly indeed. even mrs. holly, who was usually so kind to him, let david understand that he was in deep disgrace, though she was very tender to his wounds. david did venture to ask her, however, before he went upstairs to bed:- "mrs. holly, who are those people--jack and jill--that were so good to me this afternoon?" "they are john gurnsey and his sister, julia; but the whole town knows them by the names they long ago gave themselves, 'jack' and 'jill.' " "and do they live all alone in the little house?" "yes, except for the widow glaspell, who comes in several times a week, i believe, to cook and wash and sweep. they are n't very happy, i'm afraid, david, and i'm glad you could rescue the little girl's kitten for her--but you must n't fight. no good can come of fighting!" "i got the cat--by fighting." "yes, yes, i know; but--" she did not finish her sentence, and david was only waiting for a pause to ask another question. "why are n't they happy, mrs. holly?" "tut, tut, david, it's a long story, and you would n't understand it if i told it. it's only that they're all alone in the world, and jack gurnsey is n't well. he must be thirty years old now. he had bright hopes not so long ago studying law, or something of the sort, in the city. then his father died, and his mother, and he lost his health. something ails his lungs, and the doctors sent him here to be out of doors. he even sleeps out of doors, they say. anyway, he's here, and he's making a home for his sister; but, of course, with his hopes and ambitions--but there, david, you don't understand, of course!" "oh, yes, i do," breathed david, his eyes pensively turned toward a shadowy corner. "he found his work out in the world, and then he had to stop and could n't do it. poor mr. jack!" chapter xiii a surprise for mr. jack life at the holly farmhouse was not what it had been. the coming of david had introduced new elements that promised complications. not because he was another mouth to feed--simeon holly was not worrying about that part any longer. crops showed good promise, and all ready in the bank even now was the necessary money to cover the dreaded note, due the last of august. the complicating elements in regard to david were of quite another nature. to simeon holly the boy was a riddle to be sternly solved. to ellen holly he was an everpresent reminder of the little boy of long ago, and as such was to be loved and trained into a semblance of what that boy might have become. to perry larson, david was the "derndest checkerboard of sense an' nonsense goin' "--a game over which to chuckle. at the holly farmhouse they could not underderstand{sic} a boy who would leave a supper for a sunset, or who preferred a book to a toy pistol--as perry larson found out was the case on the fourth of july; who picked flowers, like a girl, for the table, yet who unhesitatingly struck the first blow in a fight with six antagonists: who would not go fishing because the fishes would not like it, nor hunting for any sort of wild thing that had life; who hung entranced for an hour over the "millions of lovely striped bugs" in a field of early potatoes, and who promptly and stubbornly refused to sprinkle those same "lovely bugs" with paris green when discovered at his worship. all this was most perplexing, to say the least. yet david worked, and worked well, and in most cases he obeyed orders willingly. he learned much, too, that was interesting and profitable; nor was he the only one that made strange discoveries during those july days. the hollys themselves learned much. they learned that the rose of sunset and the gold of sunrise were worth looking at; and that the massing of the thunderheads in the west meant more than just a shower. they learned, too, that the green of the hilltop and of the far-reaching meadow was more than grass, and that the purple haze along the horizon was more than the mountains that lay between them and the next state. they were beginning to see the world with david's eyes. there were, too, the long twilights and evenings when david, on the wings of his violin, would speed away to his mountain home, leaving behind him a man and a woman who seemed to themselves to be listening to the voice of a curly-headed, rosy-cheeked lad who once played at their knees and nestled in their arms when the day was done. and here, too, the hollys were learning; though the thing thus learned was hidden deep in their hearts. it was not long after david's first visit that the boy went again to "the house that jack built," as the gurnseys called their tiny home. (though in reality it had been jack's father who had built the house. jack and jill, however, did not always deal with realities.) it was not a pleasant afternoon. there was a light mist inthe air, and david was without his violin. "i came to--to inquire for the cat--juliette," he began, a little bashfully. "i thought i'd rather do that than read to-day," he explained to jill in the doorway. "good! i'm so glad! i hoped you'd come," the little girl welcomed him." come in and--and see juliette," she added hastily, remembering at the last moment that her brother had not looked with entire favor on her avowed admiration for this strange little boy. juliette, roused from her nap, was at first inclined to resent her visitor's presence. in five minutes, however, she was purring in his lap. the conquest of the kitten once accomplished, david looked about him a little restlessly. he began to wonder why he had come. he wished he had gone to see joe glaapell instead. he wished that jill would not sit and stare at him like that. he wished that she would say something--anything. but jill, apparently struck dumb with embarrassment, was nervously twisting the corner of her apron into a little knot. david tried to recollect what he had talked about a few days before, and he wondered why he had so enjoyed himself then. he wished that something would happen--anything!--and then from an inner room came the sound of a violin. david raised his head. "it's jack," stammered the little girl--who also had been wishing something would happen. "he plays, same as you do, on the violin." "does he?" beamed david. "but--" he paused, listening, a quick frown on his face. over and over the violin was playing a single phrase--and the variations in the phrase showed the indecision of the fingers and of the mind that controlled them. again and again with irritating sameness, yet with a still more irritating difference, came the succession of notes. and then david sprang to his feet, placing juliette somewhat unceremoniously on the floor, much to that petted young autocrat's disgust. "here, where is he? let me show him," cried the boy, and at the note of command in his voice, jill involuntarily rose and opened the door to jack's den. "oh, please, mr. jack," burst out david, hurrying into the room. "don't you see? you don't go at that thing right. if you'll just let me show you a minute, we'll have it fixed in no time!" the man with the violin stared, and lowered his bow. a slow red came to his face. the phrase was peculiarly a difficult one, and beyond him, as he knew; but that did not make the present intrusion into his privacy any the more welcome. "oh, will we, indeed!" he retorted, a little sharply." don't trouble yourself, i beg of you, boy." "but it is n't a mite of trouble, truly," urged david, with an ardor that ignored the sarcasm in the other's words. "i want to do it." despite his annoyance, the man gave a short laugh. "well, david, i believe you. and i'll warrant you'd tackle this brahms concerto as nonchalantly as you did those six hoodlums with the cat the other day--and expect to win out, too!" "but, truly, this is easy, when you know how," laughed the boy. "see!" to his surprise, the man found himself relinquishing the violin and bow into the slim, eager hands that reached for them. the next moment he fell back in amazement. clear, distinct, yet connected like a string of rounded pearls fell the troublesome notes from david's bow. "you see," smiled the boy again, and played the phrase a second time, more slowly, and with deliberate emphasis at the difficult part. then, as if in answer to some irresistible summons within him, he dashed into the next phrase and, with marvelous technique, played quite through the rippling cadenza that completed the movement. "well, by george!" breathed the man dazedly, as he took the offered violin. the next moment he had demanded vehemently: "for heaven's sake, who are you, boy?" david's face wrinkled in grieved surprise. "why, i'm david. don't you remember? i was here just the other day!" "yes, yes; but who taught you to play like that?" "father." " 'father'!" the man echoed the word with a gesture of comic despair. "first latin, then jiujitsu, and now the violin! boy, who was your father?" david lifted his head and frowned a little. he had been questioned so often, and so unsympathetically, about his father that he was beginning to resent it. "he was daddy--just daddy; and i loved him dearly." "but what was his name?" "i don't know. we did n't seem to have a name like--like yours down here. anyway, if we did, i did n't know what it was." "but, david,"--the man was speaking very gently now. he had motioned the boy to a low seat by his side. the little girl was standing near, her eyes alight with wondering interest. "he must have had a name, you know, just the same. did n't you ever hear any one call him anything? think, now." "no." david said the single word, and turned his eyes away. it had occurred to him, since he had come to live in the valley, that perhaps his father did not want to have his name known. he remembered that once the milk-and-eggs boy had asked what to call him; and his father had laughed and answered: "i don't see but you'll have to call me 'the old man of the mountain,' as they do down in the village." that was the only time david could recollect hearing his father say anything about his name. at the time david had not thought much about it. but since then, down here where they appeared to think a name was so important, he had wondered if possibly his father had not preferred to keep his to himself. if such were the case, he was glad now that he did not know this name, so that he might not have to tell all these inquisitive people who asked so many questions about it. he was glad, too, that those men had not been able to read his father's name at the end of his other note that first morning--if his father really did not wish his name to be known. "but, david, think. where you lived, was n't there ever anybody who called him by name?" david shook his head. "i told you. we were all alone, father and i, in the little house far up on the mountain." "and--your mother?" again david shook his head. "she is an angel-mother, and angel-mothers don't live in houses, you know." there was a moment's pause; then gently the man asked:- "and you always lived there?" "six years, father said." "and before that?" "i don't remember." there was a touch of injured reserve in the boy's voice which the man was quick to perceive. he took the hint at once. "he must have been a wonderful man--your father!" he exclaimed. the boy turned, his eyes luminous with feeling. "he was--he was perfect! but they--down here--don't seem to know--or care," he choked. "oh, but that's because they don't understand," soothed the man. "now, tell me--you must have practiced a lot to play like that." "i did--but i liked it." "and what else did you do? and how did you happen to come--down here?" once again david told his story, more fully, perhaps, this time than ever before, because of the sympathetic ears that were listening. "but now" he finished wistfully, "it's all, so different, and i'm down here alone. daddy went, you know, to the far country; and he can't come back from there." "who told you--that?" "daddy himself. he wrote it to me." "wrote it to you!" cried the man, sitting suddenly erect. "yes. it was in his pocket, you see. they--found it." david's voice was very low, and not quite steady. "david, may i see--that letter?" the boy hesitated; then slowly he drew it from his pocket. "yes, mr. jack. i'll let you see it." reverently, tenderly, but very eagerly the man took the note and read it through, hoping somewhere to find a name that would help solve the mystery. with a sigh he handed it back. his eyes were wet. "thank you, david. that is a beautiful letter," he said softly. "and i believe you'll do it some day, too. you'll go to him with your violin at your chin and the bow drawn across the strings to tell him of the beautiful world you have found." "yes, sir," said david simply. then, with a suddenly radiant smile: "and now i can't help finding it a beautiful world, you know, 'cause i don't count the hours i don't like." "you don't what?--oh, i remember," returned mr. jack, a quick change coming to his face. "yes, the sundial, you know, where my lady of the roses lives." "jack, what is a sundial?" broke in jill eagerly. jack turned, as if in relief. "hullo, girlie, you there?--and so still all this time? ask david. he'll tell you what a sundial is. suppose, anyhow, that you two go out on the piazza now. i've got--er-some work to do. and the sun itself is out; see?--through the trees there. it came out just to say 'good-night,' i'm sure. run along, quick!" and he playfully drove them from the room. alone, he turned and sat down at his desk. his work was before him, but he did not do it. his eyes were out of the window on the golden tops of the towers of sunnycrest. motionless, he watched them until they turned gray-white in the twilight. then he picked up his pencil and began to write feverishly. he went to the window, however, as david stepped off the veranda, and called merrily:--" remember, boy, that when there's another note that baffles me, i'm going to send for you." "he's coming anyhow. i asked him," announced jill. and david laughed back a happy "of course i am!" chapter xiv the tower window it is not to be expected that when one's thoughts lead so persistently to a certain place, one's feet will not follow, if they can; and david's could--so he went to seek his lady of the roses. at four o'clock one afternoon, with his violin under his arm, he traveled the firm white road until he came to the shadowed path that led to the garden. he had decided that he would go exactly as he went before. he expected, in consequence, to find his lady exactly as he had found her before, sitting reading under the roses. great was his surprise and disappointment, therefore, to find the garden with no one in it. he had told himself that it was the sundial, the roses, the shimmering pool, the garden itself that he wanted to see; but he knew now that it was the lady--his lady of the roses. he did not even care to play, though all around him was the beauty that had at first so charmed his eye. very slowly he walked across the sunlit, empty space, and entered the path that led to the house. in his mind was no definite plan; yet he walked on and on, until he came to the wide lawns surrounding the house itself. he stopped then, entranced. stone upon stone the majestic pile raised itself until it was etched, clean-cut, against the deep blue of the sky. the towers--his towers--brought to david's lips a cry of delight. they were even more enchanting here than when seen from afar over the tree-tops, and david gazed up at them in awed wonder. from somewhere came the sound of music--a curious sort of music that david had never heard before. he listened intently, trying to place it; then slowly he crossed the lawn, ascended the imposing stone steps, and softly opened one of the narrow screen doors before the wide-open french window. once within the room david drew a long breath of ecstasy. beneath his feet he felt the velvet softness of the green moss of the woods. above his head he saw a sky-like canopy of blue carrying fleecy clouds on which floated little pink-and-white children with wings, just as david himself had so often wished that he could float. on all sides silken hangings, like the green of swaying vines, half-hid other hangings of feathery, snowflake lace. everywhere mirrored walls caught the light and reflected the potted ferns and palms so that david looked down endless vistas of loveliness that seemed for all the world like the long sunflecked aisles beneath the tall pines of his mountain home. the music that david had heard at first had long since stopped; but david had not noticed that. he stood now in the center of the room, awed, and trembling, but enraptured. then from somewhere came a voice--a voice so cold that it sounded as if it had swept across a field of ice. "well, boy, when you have quite finished your inspection, perhaps you will tell me to what i am indebted for this visit," it said. david turned abruptly. "o lady of the roses, why did n't you tell me it was like this--in here?" he breathed. "well, really," murmured the lady in the doorway, stiffly, "it had not occurred to me that that was hardly--necessary." "but it was!--don't you see? this is new, all new. i never saw anything like it before; and i do so love new things. it gives me something new to play; don't you understand?" "new--to play?" "yes--on my violin," explained david, a little breathlessly, softly testing his violin. "there's always something new in this, you know," he hurried on, as he tightened one of the strings, "when there's anything new outside. now, listen! you see i don't know myself just how it's going to sound, and i'm always so anxious to find out." and with a joyously rapt face he began to play. "but, see here, boy,--you must n't! you--" the words died on her lips; and, to her unbounded amazement, miss barbara holbrook, who had intended peremptorily to send this persistent little tramp boy about his business, found herself listening to a melody so compelling in its sonorous beauty that she was left almost speechless at its close. it was the boy who spoke. "there, i told you my violin would know what to say!" " 'what to say'!--well, that's more than i do" laughed miss holbrook, a little hysterically. "boy, come here and tell me who you are." and she led the way to a low divan that stood near a harp at the far end of the room. it was the same story, told as david had told it to jack and jill a few days before, only this time david's eyes were roving admiringly all about the room, resting oftenest on the harp so near him. "did that make the music that i heard?" he asked eagerly, as soon as miss holbrook's questions gave him opportunity. "it's got strings." "yes. i was playing when you came in. i saw you enter the window. really, david, are you in the habit of walking into people's houses like this? it is most disconcerting--to their owners." "yes--no--well, sometimes." david's eyes were still on the harp. "lady ofthe roses, won't you please play again--on that?" "david, you are incorrigible! why did you come into my house like this?" "the music said 'come'; and the towers, too. you see, i know the towers." "you know them!" "yes. i can see them from so many places, and i always watch for them. they show best of anywhere, though, from jack and jill's. and now won't you play?" miss holbrook had almost risen to her feet when she turned abruptly. "from--where?" she asked. "from jack and jill's--the house that jack built, you know." "you mean--mr. john gurnsey's house?" a deeper color had come into miss holbrook's cheeks. "yes. over there at the top of the little hill across the brook, you know. you can't see their house from here, but from over there we can see the towers finely, and the little window--oh, lady of the roses," he broke off excitedly, at the new thought that had come to him, "if we, now, were in that little window, we could see their house. let's go up. can't we?" explicit as this was, miss holbrook evidently did not hear, or at least did not understand, this request. she settled back on the divan, indeed, almost determinedly. her cheeks were very red now. "and do you know--this mr. jack?" she asked lightly. "yes, and jill, too. don't you? i like them, too. do you know them?" again miss holbrook ignored the question put to her. "and did you walk into their house, unannounced and uninvited, like this?" she queried. "no. he asked me. you see he wanted to get off some of the dirt and blood before other folks saw me." "the dirt and--and--why, david, what do you mean? what was it--an accident?" david frowned and reflected a moment. "no. i did it on purpose. i had to, you see," he finally elucidated. "but there were six of them, and i got the worst of it." "david!" miss holbrook's voice was horrified. "you don't mean--a fight!" "yes'm. i wanted the cat--and i got it, but i would n't have if mr. jack had n't come to help me." "oh! so mr. jack--fought, too?" "well, he pulled the others off, and of course that helped me," explained david truthfully. "and then he took me home--he and jill." "jill! was she in it?" "no, only her cat. they had tied a bag over its head and a tin can to its tail, and of course i could n't let them do that. they were hurting her. and now, lady of the roses, won't you please play?" for a moment miss holbrook did not speak. she was gazing at david with an odd look in her eyes. at last she drew a long sigh. "david, you are the--the limit!" she breathed, as she rose and seated herself at the harp. david was manifestly delighted with her playing, and begged for more when she had finished; but miss holbrook shook her head. she seemed to have grown suddenly restless, and she moved about the room calling david's attention to something new each moment. then, very abruptly, she suggested that they go upstairs. from room to room she hurried the boy, scarcely listening to his ardent comments, or answering his still more ardent questions. not until they reached the highest tower room, indeed, did she sink wearily into a chair, and seem for a moment at rest. david looked about him in surprise. even his untrained eye could see that he had entered a different world. there were no sumptuous rugs, no silken hangings; no mirrors, no snowflake curtains. there were books, to be sure, but besides those there were only a plain low table, a work-basket, and three or four wooden-seated though comfortable chairs. with increasing wonder he looked into miss holbrook's eyes. "is it here that you stay--all day?" he asked diffidently. miss holbrook's face turned a vivid scarlet. "why, david, what a question! of course not! why should you think i did?" "nothing; only i've been wondering all the time i've been here how you could--with all those beautiful things around you downstairs--say what you did." "say what?--when?" "that other day in the garden--about all your hours being cloudy ones. so i did n't know to-day but what you lived up here, same as mrs. holly does n't use her best rooms; and that was why your hours were all cloudy ones." with a sudden movement miss holbrook rose to her feet. "nonsense, david! you should n't always remember everything that people say to you. come, you have n't seen one of the views from the windows yet. we are in the larger tower, you know. you can see hinsdale village on this side, and there's a fine view of the mountains over there. oh yes, and from the other side there's your friend's house--mr. jack's. by the way, how is mr. jack these days?" miss holbrook stooped as she asked the question and picked up a bit of thread from the rug. david ran at once to the window that looked toward the house that jack built. from the tower the little house appeared to be smaller than ever. it was in the shadow, too, and looked strangely alone and forlorn. unconsciously, as he gazed at it, david compared it with the magnificence he had just seen. his voice choked as he answered. "he is n't well, lady of the roses, and he's unhappy. he's awfully unhappy." miss holbrook's slender figure came up with a jerk. "what do you mean, boy? how do you know he's unhappy? has he said so?" "no; but mrs. holly told me about him. he's sick; and he'd just found his work to do out in the world when he had to stop and come home. but--oh, quick, there he is! see?" instead of coming nearer miss holbrook fell back to the center of the room; but her eyes were still turned toward the little house. "yes, i see," she murmured. the next instant she had snatched a handkerchief from david's outstretched hand. "no--no--i would n't wave," she remonstrated hurriedly. "come--come downstairs with me." "but i thought--i was sure he was looking this way," asserted david, turning reluctantly from the window. "and if he had seen me wave to him, he'd have been so glad; now, would n't he?" there was no answer. the lady of the roses did not apparently hear. she had gone on down the stairway. chapter xv secrets david had so much to tell jack and jill that he went to see them the very next day after his second visit to sunnycrest. he carried his violin with him. he found, however, only jill at home. she was sitting on the veranda steps. there was not so much embarrassment between them this time, perhaps because they were in the freedom of the wide out-of-doors, and david felt more at ease. he was plainly disappointed, however, that mr. jack was not there. "but i wanted to see him! i wanted to see him 'specially," he lamented. "you'd better stay, then. he'll be home by and by," comforted jill. "he's gone pot-boiling." "pot-boiling! what's that?" jill chuckled.. "well, you see, really it's this way: he sells something to boil in other people's pots so he can have something to boil in ours, he says. it's stuff from the garden, you know. we raise it to sell. poor jack--and he does hate it so!" david nodded sympathetically. "i know--and it must be awful, just hoeing and weeding all the time." "still, of course he knows he's got to do it, because it's out of doors, and he just has to be out of doors all he can," rejoined the girl. "he's sick, you know, and sometimes he's so unhappy! he does n't say much. jack never says much--only with his face. but i know, and it--it just makes me want to cry." at david's dismayed exclamation jill jumped to her feet. it owned to her suddenly that she was telling this unknown boy altogether too many of the family secrets. she proposed at once a race to the foot of the hill; and then, to drive david's mind still farther away from the subject under recent consideration, she deliberately lost, and proclaimed him the victor. very soon, however, there arose new complications in the shape of a little gate that led to a path which, in its turn, led to a footbridge across the narrow span of the little stream. above the trees on the other side peeped the top of sunnycrest's highest tower. "to the lady of the roses!" cried david eagerly. "i know it goes there. come, let's see!" the little girl shook her head. "i can't." "why not?" "jack won't let me." "but it goes to a beautiful place; i was there yesterday," argued david. "and i was up in the tower and almost waved to mr. jack on the piazza back there. i saw him. and maybe she'd let you and me go up there again to-day." "but i can't, i say," repeated jill, a little impatiently. "jack won't let me even start." "why not? maybe he does n't know where it goes to." jill hung her head. then she raised it defiantly. "oh, yes, he does, 'cause i told him. i used to go when i was littler and he was n't here. i went once, after he came,--halfway,--and he saw me and called to me. i had got halfway across the bridge, but i had to come back. he was very angry, yet sort of--queer, too. his face was all stern and white, and his lips snapped tight shut after every word. he said never, never, never to let him find me the other side of that gate." david frowned as they turned to go up the hill. unhesitatingly he determined to instruct mr. jack in this little matter. he would tell him what a beautiful place sunnycrest was, and he would try to convince him how very desirable it was that he and jill, and even mr. jack himself, should go across the bridge at the very first opportunity that offered. mr. jack came home before long, but david quite forgot to speak of the footbridge just then, chiefly because mr. jack got out his violin and asked david to come in and play a duet with him. the duet, however, soon became a solo, for so great was mr. jack's delight in david's playing that he placed before the boy one sheet of music after another, begging and still begging for more. david, nothing loath, played on and on. most of the music he knew, having already learned it in his mountain home. like old friends the melodies seemed, and so glad was david to see their notes again that he finished each production with a little improvised cadenza of ecstatic welcome--to mr. jack's increasing surprise and delight. "great scott! you're a wonder, david," he exclaimed, at last. "pooh! as if that was anything wonderful," laughed the boy. "why, i knew those ages ago, mr. jack. it's only that i'm so glad to see them again--the notes, you know. you see, i have n't any music now. it was all in the bag (what we brought), and we left that on the way." "you left it!" "yes, 't was so, heavy" murmured david abstractedly, his fingers busy with the pile of music before him. "oh, and here's another one," he cried exultingly. "this is where the wind sighs, oou--oou--oou' through the pines. listen!" and he was away again on the wings of his violin. when he had returned mr. jack drew a long breath." david, you are a wonder," he declared again. "and that violin of yours is a wonder, too, if i'm not mistaken,--though i don't know enough to tell whether it's really a rare one or not. was it your father's?" "oh, no. he had one, too, and they both are good ones. father said so. joe's got father's now." "joe?" "joe glaspell." "you don't mean widow glaspell's joe, the blind boy? i did n't know he could play." "he could n't till i showed him. but he likes to hear me play. and he understood--right away, i mean." "understood!" "what i was playing, you know. and he was almost the first one that did--since father went away. and now i play every time i go there. joe says he never knew before how trees and grass and sunsets and sunrises and birds and little brooks did look, till i told him with my violin. now he says he thinks he can see them better than i can, because as long as his outside eyes can't see anything, they can't see those ugly things all around him, and so he can just make his inside eyes see only the beautiful things that he'd like to see. and that's the kind he does see when i play. that's why i said he understood." for a moment there was silence. in mr. jack's eyes there was an odd look as they rested on david's face. then, abruptly, he spoke. "david, i wish i had money. i'd put you then where you belonged," he sighed. "do you mean--where i'd find my work to do?" asked the boy softly. "well--yes; you might say it that way," smiled the man, after a moment's hesitation--not yet was mr. jack quite used to this boy who was at times so very un-boylike. "father told me 't was waiting for me--somewhere." mr. jack frowned thoughtfully. "and he was right, david. the only trouble is, we like to pick it out for ourselves, pretty well,--too well, as we find out sometimes, when we're called off--for another job." "i know, mr. jack, i know," breathed david. and the man, looking into the glowing dark eyes, wondered at what he found there. it was almost as if the boy really understood about his own life's disappointment--and cared; though that, of course, could not be!" and it's all the harder to keep ourselves in tune then, too, is n't it?" went on david, a little wistfully. "in tune?" "with the rest of the orchestra." "oh!" and mr. jack, who had already heard about the "orchestra of life," smiled a bit sadly. "that's just it, my boy. and if we're handed another instrument to play on than the one we want to play on, we're apt to--to let fly a discord. anyhow, i am. but"--he went on more lightly--"now, in your case, david, little as i know about the violin, i know enough to understand that you ought to be where you can take up your study of it again; where you can hear good music, and where you can be among those who know enough to appreciate what you do." david's eyes sparkled. "and where there would n't be any pulling weeds or hoeing dirt?" "well, i had n't thought of including either of those pastimes." "my, but i would like that, mr. jack!--but that would n't be work, so that could n't be what father meant." david's face fell. "hm-m; well, i would n't worry about the 'work' part," laughed mr. jack, "particularly as you are n't going to do it just now. there's the money, you know,--and we have n't got that." "and it takes money?" "well--yes. you can't get those things here in hinsdale, you know; and it takes money, to get away, and to live away after you get there." a sudden light transfigured david's face. "mr. jack, would gold do it?--lots of little round gold-pieces?" "i think it would, david, if there were enough of them." "many as a hundred?" "sure--if they were big enough. anyway, david, they'd start you, and i'm thinking you would n't need but a start before you'd be coining gold-pieces of your own out of that violin of yours. but why? anybody you know got as 'many as a hundred' gold-pieces he wants to get rid of?" for a moment david, his delighted thoughts flying to the gold-pieces in the chimney cupboard of his room, was tempted to tell his secret. then he remembered the woman with the bread and the pail of milk, and decided not to. he would wait. when he knew mr. jack better--perhaps then he would tell; but not now. now mr. jack might think he was a thief, and that he could not bear. so he took up his violin and began to play; and in the charm of the music mr. jack seemed to forget the gold-pieces-which was exactly what david had intended should happen. not until david had said good-bye some time later, did he remember the purpose--the special purpose--for which he had come. he turned back with a radiant face. "oh, and mr. jack, i 'most forgot," he cried. "i was going to tell you. i saw you yesterday--i did, and i almost waved to you." "did you? where were you?" "over there in the window--the tower window" he crowed jubilantly. "oh, you went again, then, i suppose, to see miss holbrook." the man's voice sounded so oddly cold and distant that david noticed it at once. he was reminded suddenly of the gate and the footbridge which jill was forbidden to cross; but he dared not speak of it then--not when mr. jack looked like that. he did say, however:- "oh, but, mr. jack, it's such a beautiful place! you don't know what a beautiful place it is." "is it? then, you like it so much?" "oh, so much! but--did n't you ever--see it?" "why, yes, i believe i did, david, long ago," murmured mr. jack with what seemed to david amazing indifference. "and did you see her--my lady of the roses?" "why, y--yes--i believe so." "and is that all you remember about it?" resented david, highly offended. the man gave a laugh--a little short, hard laugh that david did not like. "but, let me see; you said you almost waved, did n't you? why did n't you, quite?" asked the man. david drew himself suddenly erect. instinctively he felt that his lady of the roses needed defense. "because she did n't want me to; so i did n't, of course," he rejoined with dignity. "she took away my handkerchief." "i'll warrant she did," muttered the man, behind his teeth. aloud he only laughed again, as he turned away. david went on down the steps, dissatisfied vaguely with himself, with mr. jack, and even with the lady of the roses. chapter xvi david's castle in spain on his return from the house that jack built, david decided to count his gold-pieces. he got them out at once from behind the books, and stacked them up in little shining rows. as he had surmised, there were a hundred of them. there were, indeed, a hundred and six. he was pleased at that. one hundred and six were surely enough to give him a "start." a start! david closed his eyes and pictured it. to go on with his violin, to hear good music, to be with people who understood what he said when he played! that was what mr. jack had said a "start" was. and this gold--these round shining bits of gold--could bring him this! david swept the little piles into a jingling heap, and sprang to his feet with both fists full of his suddenly beloved wealth. with boyish glee he capered about the room, jingling the coins in his hands. then, very soberly, he sat down again, and began to gather the gold to put away. he would be wise--he would be sensible. he would watch his chance, and when it came he would go away. first, however, he would tell mr. jack and joe, and the lady of the roses; yes, and the hollys, too. just now there seemed to be work, real work that he could do to help mr. holly. but later, possibly when september came and school,--they had said he must go to school,--he would tell them then, and go away instead. he would see. by that time they would believe him, perhaps, when he showed the gold-pieces. they would not think he had--stolen them. it was august now; he would wait. but meanwhile he could think--he could always be thinking of the wonderful thing that this gold was one day to bring to him. even work, to david, did not seem work now. in the morning he was to rake hay behind the men with the cart. yesterday he had not liked it very well; but now--nothing mattered now. and with a satisfied sigh david put his precious gold away again behind the books in the cupboard. david found a new song in his violin the next morning. to be sure, he could not play it--much of it--until four o'clock in the afternoon came; for mr. holly did not like violins to be played in the morning, even on days that were not especially the lord's. there was too much work to do. so david could only snatch a strain or two very, very softly, while he was dressing; but that was enough to show him what a beautiful song it was going to be. he knew what it was, at once, too. it was the gold-pieces, and what they would bring. all through the day it tripped through his consciousness, and danced tantalizingly just out of reach. yet he was wonderfully happy, and the day seemed short in spite of the heat and the weariness. at four o'clock he hurried home and put his violin quickly in tune. it came then--that dancing sprite of tantalization--and joyously abandoned itself to the strings of the violin, so that david knew, of a surety, what a beautiful song it was. it was this song that sent him the next afternoon to see his lady of the roses. he found her this time out of doors in her garden. unceremoniously, as usual, he rushed headlong into her presence. "oh, lady--lady of the roses," he panted. "i've found out, and i came quickly to tell you." "why, david, what--what do you mean?" miss holbrook looked unmistakably startled. "about the hours, you know,--the unclouded ones," explained david eagerly. "you know you said they were all cloudy to you." miss holbrook's face grew very white. "you mean--you've found out why my hours are--are all cloudy ones?" she stammered. "no, oh, no. i can't imagine why they are," returned david, with an emphatic shake of his head. "it's just that i've found a way to make all my hours sunny ones, and you can do it, too. so i came to tell you. you know you said yours were all cloudy." "oh," ejaculated miss holbrook, falling back into her old listless attitude. then, with some asperity: "dear me, david! did n't i tell you not to be remembering that all the time?" "yes, i know, but i've learned something," urged the boy; "something that you ought to know. you see, i did think, once, that because you had all these beautiful things around you, the hours ought to be all sunny ones. but now i know it is n't what's around you; it's what is in you!" "oh, david, david, you curious boy!" "no, but really! let me tell you," pleaded david. "you know i have n't liked them,--all those hours till four o'clock came,--and i was so glad, after i saw the sundial, to find out that they did n't count, anyhow. but to-day they have counted--they've all counted, lady of the roses; and it's just because there was something inside of me that shone and shone, and made them all sunny--those hours." "dear me! and what was this wonderful thing?" david smiled, but he shook his head. "i can't tell you that yet--in words; but i'll play it. you see, i can't always play them twice alike,--those little songs that i find,--but this one i can. it sang so long in my head, before my violin had a chance to tell me what it really was, that i sort of learned it. now, listen!" and be began to play. it was, indeed, a beautiful song, and miss holbrook said so with promptness and enthusiasm; yet still david frowned. "yes, yes," he answered, "but don't you see? that was telling you about something inside of me that made all my hours sunshiny ones. now, what you want is something inside of you to make yours sunshiny, too. don't you see?" an odd look came into miss holbrook's eyes. "that's all very well for you to say, david, but you have n't told me yet, you know, just what it is that's made all this brightness for you." the boy changed his position, and puckered his forehead into a deeper frown. "i don't seem to explain so you can understand," he sighed. "it is n't the special thing. it's only that it's something. and it's thinking about it that does it. now, mine would n't make yours shine, but--still,"--he broke off, a happy relief in his eyes,--"yours could be like mine, in one way. mine is something that is going to happen to me--something just beautiful; and you could have that, you know,--something that was going to happen to you, to think about." miss holbrook smiled, but only with her lips, her eyes had grown somber. "but there is n't anything 'just beautiful' going to happen to me, david," she demurred. "there could, could n't there?" miss holbrook bit, her lip; then she gave an odd little laugh that seemed, in some way, to go with the swift red that had come to her eheeks. "i used to think there could--once," she admitted; "but i've given that up long ago. it--it did n't happen." "but could n't you just think it was going to?" persisted the boy. "you see i found out yesterday that it's the thinking that does it. all day long i was thinking--only thinking. i was n't doing it, at all. i was really raking behind the cart; but the hours all were sunny." miss holbrook laughed now outright. "what a persistent little mental-science preacher you are!" she exclaimed. "and there's truth--more truth than you know--in it all, too. but i can't do it, david,--not that--not that. 't would take more than thinking--to bring that," she added, under her breath, as if to herself. "but thinking does bring things," maintained david earnestly. "there's joe--joe glaspell. his mother works out all day; and he's blind." "blind? oh-h!" shuddered miss holbrook. "yes; and he has to stay all alone, except for betty, and she is n't there much. he thinks all his things. he has to. he can't see anything with his outside eyes. but he sees everything with his inside eyes--everything that i play. why, lady of the roses, he's even seen this--all this here. i told him about it, you know, right away after i'd found you that first day: the big trees and the long shadows across the grass, and the roses, and the shining water, and the lovely marble people peeping through the green leaves; and the sundial, and you so beautiful sitting here in the middle of it all. then i played it for him; and he said he could see it all just as plain! and that was with his inside eyes! and so, if joe, shut up there in his dark little room, can make his think bring him all that, i should think that you, here in this beautiful, beautiful place, could make your think bring you anything you wanted it to." but miss holbrook sighed again and shook her head. "not that, david, not that," she murmured. "it would take more than thinking to bring--that." then, with a quick change of manner, she cried: "come, come, suppose we don't worry any more about my hours. let's think of yours. tell me, what have you been doing since i saw you last? perhaps you have been again to--to see mr. jack, for instance." "i have; but i saw jill mostly, till the last." david hesitated, then he blurted it out: "lady of the roses, do you know about the gate and the footbridge?" miss holbrook looked up quickly. "know--what, david?" "know about them--that they're there?" "why--yes, of course; at least, i suppose you mean the footbridge that crosses the little stream at the foot of the hill over there." "that's the one." again david hesitated, and again he blurted out the burden of his thoughts. "lady of the roses, did you ever--cross that bridge?" miss holbrook stirred uneasily. "not--recently." "but you don't mind folks crossing it?" "certainly not--if they wish to." "there! i knew 't was n't your blame, " triumphed david. "my blame!" "yes; that mr. jack would n't let jill come across, you know. he called her back when she'd got halfway over once." miss holbrook's face changed color. "but i do object," she cried sharply, "to their crossing it when they don't want to! don't forget that, please." "but jill did want to." "how about her brother--did he want her to?" "n--no." "very well, then. i did n't, either." david frowned. never had he seen his beloved lady of the roses look like this before. he was reminded of what jill had said about jack: "his face was all stern and white, and his lips snapped tight shut after every word." so, too, looked miss holbrook's face; so, too, had her lips snapped tight shut after her last words. david could not understand it. he said nothing more, however; but, as was usually the case when he was perplexed, he picked up his violin and began to play. and as he played, there gradually came to miss holbrook's eyes a softer light, and to her lips lines less tightly drawn. neither the footbridge nor mr. jack, however, was mentioned again that afternoon. chapter xvii "the princess and the pauper" it was in the early twilight that mr. jack told the story. he, jill, and david were on the veranda, as usual watching the towers of sunnycrest turn from gold to silver as the sun dropped behind the hills. it was jill who had asked for the story. "about fairies and princesses, you know," she had ordered. "but how will david like that?" mr. jack had demurred. "maybe he does n't care for fairies and princesses." "i read one once about a prince--'t was 'the prince and the pauper,' and i liked that," averred david stoutly. mr. jack smiled; then his brows drew together in a frown. his eyes were moodily fixed on the towers. "hm-m; well," he said," i might, i suppose, tell you a story about a princess and--a pauper. i--know one well enough." "good!--then tell it," cried both jill and david. and mr. jack began his story. "she was not always a princess, and he was not always a pauper,--and that's where the story came in, i suppose," sighed the man. "she was just a girl, once, and he was a boy; and they played together and--liked each other. he lived in a little house on a hill." "like this?" demanded jill. "eh? oh--er--yes, something like this," returned mr. jack, with an odd half-smile. "and she lived in another bit of a house in a town far away from the boy." "then how could they play together?" questioned david. "they could n't, always. it was only summers when she came to visit in the boy's town. she was very near him then, for the old aunt whom she visited lived in a big stone house with towers, on another hill, in plain sight from the boy's home." "towers like those--where the lady of the roses lives?" asked david. "eh? what? oh--er--yes," murmured mr. jack. "we'll say the towers were something like those over there." he paused, then went on musingly:" the girl used to signal, sometimes, from one of the tower windows. one wave of the handkerchief meant, 'i'm coming, over'; two waves, with a little pause between, meant, 'you are to come over here.' so the boy used to wait always, after that first wave to see if another followed; so that he might know whether he were to be host or guest that day. the waves always came at eight o'clock in the morning, and very eagerly the boy used to watch for them all through the summer when the girl was there." "did they always come, every morning?" asked jill. "no; sometimes the girl had other things to do. her aunt would want her to go somewhere with her, or other cousins were expected whom the girl must entertain; and she knew the boy did not like other guests to be there when he was, so she never asked him to come over at such times. on such occasions she did sometimes run up to the tower at eight o'clock and wave three times, and that meant, 'dead day.' so the boy, after all, never drew a real breath of relief until he made sure that no dreaded third wave was to follow the one or the two." "seems to me," observed david, "that all this was sort of one-sided. did n't the boy say anything?" "oh, yes," smiled mr. jack. "but the boy did not have any tower to wave from, you must remember. he had only the little piazza on his tiny bit of a house. but he rigged up a pole, and he asked his mother to make him two little flags, a red and a blue one. the red meant 'all right'; and the blue meant 'got to work'; and these he used to run up on his pole in answer to her waving 'i'm coming over,' or 'you are to come over here.' so, you see, occasionally it was the boy who had to bring the 'dead day,' as there were times when he had to work. and, by the way, perhaps you would be interested to know that after a while he thought up a third flag to answer her three waves. he found an old black silk handkerchief of his father's, and he made that into a flag. he told the girl it meant 'i'm heartbroken,' and he said it was a sign of the deepest mourning. the girl laughed and tipped her head saucily to one side, and said, 'pooh! as if you really cared!' but the boy stoutly maintained his position, and it was that, perhaps, which made her play the little joke one day. "the boy was fourteen that summer, and the girl thirteen. they had begun their signals years before, but they had not had the black one so long. on this day that i tell you of, the girl waved three waves, which meant, 'dead day,' you remember, and watched until the boy had hoisted his black flag which said, 'i'm heart-broken,' in response. then, as fast as her mischievous little feet could carry her, she raced down one hill and across to the other. very stealthily she advanced till she found the boy bent over a puzzle on the back stoop, and--and he was whistling merrily. "how she teased him then! how she taunted him with, heart-broken, indeed--and whistling like that!' in vain he blushed and stammered, and protested that his whistling was only to keep up his spirits. the girl only laughed and tossed her yellow curls; then she hunted till she found some little jingling bells, and these she tied to the black badge of mourning and pulled it high up on the flagpole. the next instant she was off with a run and a skip, and a saucy wave of her hand; and the boy was left all alone with an hour's work ahead of him to untie the knots from his desecrated badge of mourning. "and yet they were wonderfully good friends--this boy and girl. from the very first, when they were seven and eight, they had said that they would marry each other when they grew up, and always they spoke of it as the expected thing, and laid many happy plans for the time when it should come. to be sure, as they grew older, it was not mentioned quite so often, perhaps; but the boy at least thought--if he thought of it all--that that was only because it was already so well understood." "what did the girl think?" it was jill who asked the question. "eh? the girl? oh," answered mr. jack, a little bitterly "i'm afraid i don't know exactly what the girl did think, but--it was n't that, anyhow--that is, judging from what followed." "what did follow?" "well, to begin with, the old aunt died. the girl was sixteen then. it was in the winter that this happened, and the girl was far away at school. she came to the funeral, however, but the boy did not see her, save in the distance; and then he hardly knew her, so strange did she look in her black dress and hat. she was there only two days, and though he gazed wistfully up at the gray tower, he knew well enough that of course she could not wave to him at such a time as that. yet he had hoped--almost believed that she would wave two waves that last day, and let him go over to see her. "but she did n't wave, and he did n't go over. she went away. and then the town learned a wonderful thing. the old lady, her aunt, who had been considered just fairly rich, turned out to be the possessor of almost fabulous wealth, owing to her great holdings of stock in a western gold mine which had suddenly struck it rich. and to the girl she willed it all. it was then, of course, that the girl became the princess, but the boy did not realize that--just then. to him she was still 'the girl.' "for three years he did not see her. she was at school, or traveling abroad, he heard. he, too, had been away to school, and was, indeed, just ready to enter college. then, that summer, he heard that she was coming to the old home, and his heart sang within him. remember, to him she was still the girl. he knew, of course, that she was not the little girl who had promised to marry him. but he was sure she was the merry comrade, the true-hearted young girl who used to smile frankly into his eyes, and whom he was now to win for his wife. you see he had forgotten--quite forgotten about the princess and the money. such a foolish, foolish boy as he was! "so he got out his flags gleefully, and one day, when his mother was n't in the kitchen, he ironed out the wrinkles and smoothed them all ready to be raised on the pole. he would be ready when the girl waved--for of course she would wave; he would show her that he had not forgotten. he could see just how the sparkle would come to her eyes, and just how the little fine lines of mischief would crinkle around her nose when she was ready to give that first wave. he could imagine that she would like to find him napping; that she would like to take him by surprise, and make him scurry around for his flags to answer her. "but he would show her! as if she, a girl, were to beat him at their old game! he wondered which it would be: 'i'm coming over,' or, 'you are to come over here.' whichever it was, he would answer, of course, with the red 'all right.' still, it would be a joke to run up the blue 'got to work,' and then slip across to see her, just as she, so long ago, had played the joke on him! on the whole, however, he thought the red flag would be better. and it was that one which he laid uppermost ready to his hand, when he arranged them. "at last she came. he heard of it at once. it was already past four o'clock, but he could not forbear, even then, to look toward the tower. it would be like her, after all, to wave then, that very night, just so as to catch him napping, he thought. she did not wave, however. the boy was sure of that, for he watched the tower till dark. "in the morning, long before eight o'clock, the boy was ready. he debated for some time whether to stand out of doors on the piazza, or to hide behind the screened window, where he could still watch the tower. he decided at last that it would be better not to let her see him when she looked toward the house; then his triumph would be all the more complete when he dashed out to run up his answer. "eight o'clock came and passed. the boy waited until nine, but there was no sign of life from the tower. the boy was angry then, at himself. he called himself, indeed, a fool, to hide as he did. of course she would n't wave when he was nowhere in sight--when he had apparently forgotten! and here was a whole precious day wasted! "the next morning, long before eight, the boy stood in plain sight on the piazza. as before he waited until nine; and as before there was no sign of life at the tower window. the next morning he was there again, and the next, and the next. it took just five days, indeed, to convince the boy--as he was convinced at last--that the girl did not intend to wave at all." "but how unkind of her!" exclaimed david. "she could n't have been nice one bit!" decided jill. "you forget," said mr. jack. "she was the princess." "huh!" grunted jill and david in unison. "the boy remembered it then," went on mr. jack, after a pause,--"about the money, and that she was a princess. and of course he knew--when he thought of it--that he could not expect that a princess would wave like a girl--just a girl. besides, very likely she did not care particularly about seeing him. princesses did forget, he fancied,--they had so much, so very much to fill their lives. it was this thought that kept him from going to see her--this, and the recollection that, after all, if she really had wanted to see him, she could have waved. "there came a day, however, when another youth, who did not dare to go alone, persuaded him, and together they paid her a call. the boy understood, then, many things. he found the princess; there was no sign of the girl. the princess was tall and dignified, with a cold little hand and a smooth, sweet voice. there was no frank smile in her eyes, neither were there any mischievous crinkles about her nose and lips. there was no mention of towers or flags; no reference to wavings or to childhood's days. there was only a stiffly polite little conversation about colleges and travels, with a word or two about books and plays. then the callers went home. on the way the boy smiled scornfully to himself. he was trying to picture the beauteous vision he had seen, this unapproachable princess in her filmy lace gown,--standing in the tower window and waving--waving to a bit of a house on the opposite hill. as if that could happen! "the boy, during those last three years, had known only books. he knew little of girls--only one girl--and he knew still less of princesses. so when, three days after the call, there came a chance to join a summer camp with a man who loved books even better than did the boy himself, he went gladly. once he had refused to go on this very trip; but then there had been the girl. now there was only the princess--and the princess did n't count." "like the hours that are n't sunshiny," interpreted david. "yes," corroborated mr. jack. "like the hours when the sun does n't shine." "and then?" prompted jill. "well, then,--there was n't much worth telling," rejoined mr. jack gloomily. "two more years passed, and the princess grew to be twenty-one. she came into full control of her property then, and after a while she came back to the old stone house with the towers and turned it into a fairyland of beauty. she spent money like water. all manner of artists, from the man who painted her ceilings to the man who planted her seeds, came and bowed to her will. from the four corners of the earth she brought her treasures and lavished them through the house and grounds. then, every summer, she came herself, and lived among them, a very princess indeed." "and the boy?--what became of the boy?" demanded david." did n't he see her--ever?" mr. jack shook his head. "not often, david; and when he did, it did not make him any--happier. you see, the boy had become the pauper; you must n't forget that." "but he was n't a pauper when you left him last." "was n't he? well, then, i'll tell you about that. you see, the boy, even though he did go away, soon found out that in his heart the princess was still the girl, just the same. he loved her, and he wanted her to be his wife; so for a little--for a very little--he was wild enough to think that he might work and study and do great things in the world until he was even a prince himself, and then he could marry the princess." "well, could n't he? " "no. to begin with, he lost his health. then, away back in the little house on the hill something happened--a something that left a very precious charge for him to keep; and he had to go back and keep it, and to try to see if he could n't find that lost health, as well. and that is all." "all! you don't mean that that is the end!" exclaimed jill. "that's the end." "but that is n't a mite of a nice end," complained david. "they always get married and live happy ever after--in stories." "do they?" mr. jack smiled a little sadly. "perhaps they do, david,--in stories." "well, can't they in this one?" "i don't see how." "why can't he go to her and ask her to marry him?" mr. jack drew himself up proudly. "the pauper and the princess? never! paupers don't go to princesses, david, and say, 'i love you.' " david frowned. "why not? i don't see why--if they want to do it. seems as if somehow it might be fixed." "it can't be," returned mr. jack, his gaze on the towers that crowned the opposite hill; "not so long as always before the pauper's eyes there are those gray walls behind which he pictures the princess in the midst of her golden luxury." to neither david nor jill did the change to the present tense seem strange. the story was much too real to them for that. "well, anyhow, i think it ought to be fixed," declared david, as he rose to his feet. "so do i--but we can't fix it," laughed jill. "and i'm hungry. let's see what there is to eat!" chapter xviii david to the rescue it was a beautiful moonlight night, but for once david was not thinking of the moon. all the way to the holly farmhouse he was thinking of mr. jack's story, "the princess and the pauper." it held him strangely. he felt that he never could forget it. for some reason that he could not have explained, it made him sad, too, and his step was very quiet as he went up the walk toward the kitchen door. it was after eight o'clock. david had taken supper with mr. jack and jill, and not for some hours had he been at the farmhouse. in the doorway now he stopped short; then instinctively he stepped back into the shadow. in the kitchen a kerosene light was burning. it showed mrs.holly crying at the table, and mr. holly, white-faced and stern-lipped, staring at nothing. then mrs. holly raised her face, drawn and tear-stained, and asked a trembling question. "simeon, have you thought? we might go--to john--for--help." david was frightened then, so angry was the look that came into simeon holly's face. "ellen, we'll have no more of this," said the man harshly. "understand, i'd rather lose the whole thing and--and starve, than go to--john." david fled then. up the back stairs he crept to his room and left his violin. a moment later he stole down again and sought perry larson whom he had seen smoking in the barn doorway. "perry, what is it?" he asked in a trembling voice. "what has happened--in there?" he pointed toward the house. the man puffed for a moment in silence before he took his pipe from his mouth. "well, sonny, i s'pose i may as well tell ye. you'll have ter know it sometime, seein' as 't won't be no secret long. they've had a stroke o' bad luck--mr. an' mis' holly has." "what is it?" the man hitched in his seat. "by sugar, boy, i s'pose if i tell ye, there ain't no sartinty that you'll sense it at all. i reckon it ain't in your class." "but what is it?" "well, it's money--and one might as well talk moonshine to you as money, i s'pose; but here goes it. it's a thousand dollars, boy, that they owed. here, like this," he explained, rummaging his pockets until he had found a silver dollar to lay on his open palm. "now, jest imagine a thousand of them; that's heaps an' heaps--more 'n i ever see in my life." "like the stars?" guessed david. the man nodded. "ex-actly! well, they owed this--mr. an' mis' holly did--and they had agreed ter pay it next sat'day. and they was all right, too. they had it plum saved in the bank, an' was goin' ter draw it thursday, ter make sure. an' they was feelin' mighty pert over it, too, when ter-day along comes the news that somethin's broke kersmash in that bank, an' they've shet it up. an' nary a cent can the hollys git now--an' maybe never. anyhow, not 'fore it's too late for this job." "but won't he wait?--that man they owe it to? i should think he'd have to, if they did n't have it to pay." "not much he will, when it's old streeter that's got the mortgage on a good fat farm like this!" david drew his brows together perplexedly. "what is a--a mortgage?" he asked." is it anything like a porte-cochere? i know what that is, 'cause my lady of the roses has one; but we have n't got that--down here." perry larson sighed in exasperation. "gosh, if that ain't 'bout what i expected of ye! no, it ain't even second cousin to a--a-that thing you're a-talkin' of. in plain wordin', it's jest this: mr. holly, he says ter streeter: 'you give me a thousand dollars and i'll pay ye back on a sartin day; if i don't pay, you can sell my farm fur what it'll bring, an' take yer pay. well, now here 't is. mr. holly can't pay, an' so streeter will put up the farm fur sale." "what, with mr. and mrs. holly living here?" "sure! only they'll have ter git out, ye know." "where'll they go?" "the lord knows; i don't." "and is that what they're crying for--in there?--because they've got to go?" "sure!" "but is n't there anything, anywhere, that can be done to--stop it?" "i don't see how, kid,--not unless some one ponies up with the money 'fore next sat'day,--an' a thousand o' them things don't grow on ev'ry bush," he finished, gently patting the coin in his hand. at the words a swift change came to david's face. his cheeks paled and his eyes dilated in terror. it was as if ahead of him he saw a yawning abyss, eager to engulf him. "and you say--money would--fix it?" he asked thickly. "ex-act-ly!--a thousand o' them, though, 't would take." a dawning relief came into david's eyes--it was as if he saw a bridge across the abyss. "you mean--that there would n't anything do, only silver pieces--like those?" he questioned hopefully. "sugar, kid, 'course there would! gosh, but you be a checkerboard o' sense an' nonsense, an' no mistake! any money would do the job--any money! don't ye see? anything that's money." "would g-gold do it?" david's voice was very faint now. "sure!--gold, or silver, or greenbacks, or--or a check, if it had the dough behind it." david did not appear to hear the last. with an oddly strained look he had hung upon the man's first words; but at the end of the sentence he only murmured, "oh, thank you," and turned away. he was walking slowly now toward the house. his head was bowed. his step lagged. "now, ain't that jest like that chap," muttered the man, "ter slink off like that as if he was a whipped cur. i'll bet two cents an' a doughnut, too, that in five minutes he'll be what he calls 'playin' it' on that 'ere fiddle o' his. an' i'll be derned, too, if i ain't curious ter see what he will make of it. it strikes me this ought ter fetch somethin' first cousin to a dirge!" on the porch steps david paused a breathless instant. from the kitchen came the sound of mrs. holly's sobs and of a stern voice praying. with a shudder and a little choking cry the boy turned then and crept softly upstairs to his room. he played, too, as perry larson had wagered. but it was not the tragedy of the closed bank, nor the honor of the threatened farm-selling that fell from his violin. it was, instead, the swan song of a little pile of gold--gold which lay now in a chimney cupboard, but which was soon to be placed at the feet of the mourning man and woman downstairs. and in the song was the sob of a boy who sees his house of dreams burn to ashes; who sees his wonderful life and work out in the wide world turn to endless days of weed-pulling and dirt-digging in a narrow valley. there was in the song, too, something of the struggle, the fierce yea and nay of the conflict. but, at the end, there was the wild burst of exaltation of renunciation, so that the man in the barn door below fairly sprang to his feet with an angry:- "gosh! if he hain't turned the thing into a jig--durn him! don't he know more'n that at such a time as this?" later, a very little later, the shadowy figure of the boy stood before him. "i've been thinking," stammered david," that maybe i--could help, about that money, you know." "now, look a-here, boy," exploded perry, in open exasperation, "as i said in the first plaee, this ain't in your class. 't ain't no pink cloud sailin' in the sky, nor a bluebird singin' in a blackb'rry bush. an' you might 'play it'--as you call it--till doomsday, an' 't would n't do no good--though i'm free ter confess that your playin' of them 'ere other things sounds real pert an' chirky at times; but 't won't do no good here." david stepped forward, bringing his small, anxious face full into the moonlight. "but 't was the money, perry; i meant about, the money," he explained. "they were good to me and wanted me when there was n't any one else that did; and now i'd like to do something for them. there are n't so many pieces, and they are n't silver. there's only one hundred and six of them; i counted. but maybe they 'd help some. it--it would be a--start." his voice broke over the once beloved word, then went on with renewed strength. "there, see! would these do?" and with both hands he held up to view his cap sagging under its weight of gold. perry larson's jaw fell open. his eyes bulged. dazedly he reached out and touched with trembling fingers the heap of shining disks that seemed in the mellow light like little earth-born children of the moon itself. the next instant he recoiled sharply. "great snakes, boy, where'd you git that money?" he demanded. "of father. he went to the far country, you know." perry larson snorted angrily. "see here, boy, for once, if ye can, talk horse-sense! surely, even you don't expect me ter believe that he's sent you that money from--from where he's gone to!" "oh, no. he left it." "left it! why, boy, you know better! there wa'n't a cent--hardly--found on him." "he gave it to me before--by the roadside." "gave it to you! where in the name of goodness has it been since?" "in the little cupboard in my room, behind the books." "great snakes!" muttered perry larson, reaching out his hand and gingerly picking up one of the gold-pieces. david eyed him anxiously. "won't they--do?" he faltered. "there are n't a thousand; there's only a hundred and six; but--" "do!" cut in the man, excitedly. he had been examining the gold-piece at close range. "do! well, i reckon they'll do. by jiminy!--and ter think you've had this up ver sleeve all this time! well, i'll believe anythin' of yer now--anythin'! you can't stump me with nuthin'! come on." and he hurriedly led the way toward the house. "but they weren't up my sleeve," corrected david, as he tried to keep up with the long strides of the man. "i said they were in the cupboard in my room." there was no answer. larson had reached the porch steps, and had paused there hesitatingly. from the kitchen still came the sound of sobs. aside from that there was silence. the boy, however, did not hesitate. he went straight up the steps and through the open kitchen door. at the table sat the man and the woman, their eyes covered with their hands. with a swift overturning of his cap, david dumped his burden onto the table, and stepped back respectfully. "if you please, sir, would this--help any?" he asked. at the jingle of the coins simeon holly and his wife lifted their heads abruptly. a half-uttered sob died on the woman's lips. a quick cry came from the man's. he reached forth an eager hand and had almost clutched the gold when a sudden change came to his face. with a stern ejaculation he drew back. "boy, where did that money come from?" he challenged. david sighed in a discouraged way. it seemed that, always, the showing of this gold mean't questioning--eternal questioning. "surely," continued simeon holly, "you did not--" with the boy's frank gaze upturned to his, the man could not finish his sentence. before david could answer came the voice of perry larson from the kitchen doorway. "no, sir, he did n't, mr. holly; an' it's all straight, i'm thinkin'--though i'm free ter confess it does sound nutty. his dad give it to him." "his--father! but where--where has it been ever since?" "in the chimney cupboard in his room, he says, sir." simeon holly turned in frowning amazement. "david, what does this mean? why have you kept this gold in a place like that?" "why, there was n't anything else to do wiih it," answered the boy perplexedly." i had n't any use for it, you know, and father said to keep it till i needed it." " 'had n't any use for it'!" blustered larson from the doorway. "jiminy! now, ain't that jest like that boy?" but david hurried on with his explanation. "we never used to use them--father and i--except to buy things to eat and wear; and down here you give me those, you know." "gorry!" interjected perry larson. "do you reckon, boy, that mr. holly himself was give them things he gives ter you?" the boy turned sharply, a startled question in his eyes. "what do you mean? do you mean that--" his face changed suddenly. his cheeks turned a shamed red. "why, he did--he did have to buy them, of course, just as father did. and i never even thought of it before! then, it's yours, anyway--it belongs to you," he argued, turning to farmer holly, and shoving the gold nearer to his hands. "there is n't enough, maybe--but 't will help!" "they're ten-dollar gold pieces, sir," spoke up larson importantly; "an' there's a hundred an' six of them. that's jest one thousand an' sixty dollars, as i make it." simeon holly, self-controlled man that he was, almost leaped from his chair. "one thousand and sixty dollars!" he gasped. then, to david: "boy, in heaven's name, who are you?" "i don't know--only david." the boy spoke wearily, with a grieved sob in his voice. he was very tired, a good deal perplexed, and a little angry. he wished, if no one wanted this gold, that he could take it upstairs again to the chimney cupboard; or, if they objected to that, that they would at least give it to him, and let him go away now to that beautiful music he was to hear, and to those kind people who were always to understand what he said when he played. "of course," ventured perry larson diffidently, "i ain't professin' ter know any great shakes about the hand of the lord, mr. holly, but it do strike me that this 'ere gold comes mighty near bein' proverdential--fur you." simeon holly fell back in his seat. his eyes clung to the gold, but his lips set into rigid lines. "that money is the boy's, larson. it is n't mine," he said. "he's give it to ye." simeon holly shook his head. "david is nothing but a child, perry. he does n't realize at all what he is doing, nor how valuable his gift is." "i know, sir, but you did take him in, when there would n't nobody else do it," argued larson. "an', anyhow, could n't you make a kind of an i o u of it, even if he is a kid? then, some day you could pay him back. meanwhile you'd be a-keepin' him, an' a-schoolin' him; an' that's somethin'." "i know, i know," nodded simeon holly thoughtfully, his eyes going from the gold to david's face. then, aloud, yet as if to himself, he breathed: "boy, boy, who was your father? how came he by all that gold--and he--a tramp!" david drew himself suddenly erect. his eyes flashed. "i don't know, sir. but i do know this: he did n't steal it!" across the table mrs. holly drew a quick breath, but she did not speak--save with her pleading eyes. mrs. holly seldom spoke--save with her eyes--when her husband was solving a knotty problem. she was dumfounded now that he should listen so patiently to the man, larson,--though she was not more surprised than was larson himself. for both of them, however, there came at this moment a still greater surprise. simeon holly leaned forward suddenly, the stern lines quite gone from his lips, and his face working with emotion as he drew david toward him. "you're a good son, boy,--a good loyal son; and--and i wish you were mine! i believe you. he did n't steal it, and i won't steal it, either. but i will use it, since you are so good as to offer it. but it shall be a loan, david, and some day, god helping me, you shall have it back. meanwhile, you're my boy, david,--my boy!" "oh, thank you, sir," rejoiced david. "and, really, you know, being wanted like that is better than the start would be, is n't it?" "better than--what?" david shifted his position. he had not meant to say just that. "n--nothing," he stammered, looking about for a means of quick escape." i--i was just talking," he finished. and he was immeasurably relieved to find that mr. holly did not press the matter further. chapter xix the unbeautiful world in spite of the exaltation of renunciation, and in spite of the joy of being newly and especially "wanted," those early september days were sometimes hard for david. not until he had relinquished all hope of his "start" did he fully realize what that hope had meant to him. there were times, to be sure, when there was nothing but rejoicing within him that he was able thus to aid the hollys. there were other times when there was nothing but the sore heartache because of the great work out in the beautiful world that could now never be done; and because of the unlovely work at hand that must be done. to tell the truth, indeed, david's entire conception of life had become suddenly a chaos of puzzling contradictions. to mr. jack, one day, david went with his perplexities. not that he told him of the gold-pieces and of the unexpected use to which they had been put--indeed, no. david had made up his mind never, if he could help himself, to mention those gold-pieces to any one who did not already know of them. they meant questions, and the questions, explanations. and he had had enough of both on that particular subject. but to mr. jack he said one day, when they were alone together:- "mr. jack, how many folks have you got inside of your head?" "eh--what, david?" david repeated his question and attached an explanation. "i mean, the folks that--that make you do things." mr. jack laughed. "well," he said, "i believe some people make claims to quite a number, and perhaps almost every one owns to a dr. jekyll and a mr. hyde." "who are they?" "never mind, david. i don't think you know the gentlemen, anyhow. they're only something like the little girl with a curl. one is very, very good, indeed, and the other is horrid." "oh, yes, i know them; they're the ones that come to me," returned david, with a sigh. "i've had them a lot, lately." mr. jack stared. "oh, have you?" "yes; and that's what's the trouble. how can you drive them off--the one that is bad, i mean?" "well, really," confessed mr. jack, "i'm not sure i can tell. you see--the gentlemen visit me sometimes." "oh, do they?" "yes." "i'm so glad--that is, i mean," amended david, in answer to mr. jack's uplifted eyebrows, "i'm glad that you understand what i'm talking about. you see, i tried perry larson last night on it, to get him to tell me what to do. but he only stared and laughed. he did n't know the names of 'em, anyhow, as you do, and at last he got really almost angry and said i made him feel so 'buggy' and 'creepy' that he would n't dare look at himself in the glass if i kept on, for fear some one he'd never known was there should jump out at him." mr. jack chuckled. "well, i suspect, david, that perry knew one of your gentlemen by the name of 'conscience,' perhaps; and i also suspect that maybe conscience does pretty nearly fill the bill, and that you've been having a bout with that. eh? now, what is the trouble? tell me about it." david stirred uneasily. instead of answering, he asked another question. "mr. jack, it is a beautiful world, is n't it?" for a moment there was no, answer; then a low voice replied:- "your father said it was, david." again david moved restlessly. "yes; but father was on the mountain. and down here--well, down here there are lots of things that i don't believe he knew about." "what, for instance?" "why, lots of things--too many to tell. of course there are things like catching fish, and killing birds and squirrels and other things to eat, and plaguing cats and dogs. father never would have called those beautiful. then there are others like little jimmy clark who can't walk, and the man at the marstons' who's sick, and joe glaspell who is blind. then there are still different ones like mr. holly's little boy. perry says he ran away years and years ago, and made his people very unhappy. father would n't call that a beautiful world, would he? and how can people like that always play in tune? and there are the princess and the pauper that you told about." "oh, the story?" "yes; and people like them can't be happy and think the world is beautiful, of course." "why not?" "because they did n't end right. they did n't get married and live happy ever after, you know." "well, i don't think i'd worry about that, david,--at least, not about the princess. i fancy the world was very beautiful to her, all right. the pauper--well, perhaps he was n't very happy. but, after all, david, you know happiness is something inside of yourself. perhaps half of these people are happy, in their way." "there! and that's another thing," sighed david. "you see, i found that out--that it was inside of yourself--quite a while ago, and i told the lady of the roses. but now i--can't make it work myself." "what's the matter?" "well, you see then something was going to happen--something that i liked; and i found that just thinking of it made it so that i did n't mind raking or hoeing, or anything like that; and i told the lady of the roses. and i told her that even if it was n't going to happen she could think it was going to, and that that would be just the same, because 't was the thinking that made my hours sunny ones. it was n't the doing at all. i said i knew because i had n't done it yet. see?" "i--think so, david." "well, i've found out that it is n't the same at all; for now that i know that this beautiful thing is n't ever going to happen to me, i can think and think all day, and it does n't do a mite of good. the sun is just as hot, and my back aches just as hard, and the field is just as big and endless as it used to be when i had to call it that those hours did n't count. now, what is the matter?" mr. jack laughed, but he shook his head a little sadly. "you're getting into too deep waters for me, david. i suspect you're floundering in a sea that has upset the boats of sages since the world began. but what is it that was so nice, and that is n't going to happen? perhaps i might help on that." "no, you could n't," frowned david; "and there could n't anybody, either, you see, because i would n't go back now and let it happen, anyhow, as long as i know what i do. why, if i did, there would n't be any hours that were sunny then--not even the ones after four o'clock; i--i'd feel so mean! but what i don't see is just how i can fix it up with the lady of the roses." "what has she to do with it?" "why, at the very first, when she said she did n't have any sunshiny hours, i told her--" "when she said what?" interposed mr. jack, coming suddenly erect in his chair. "that she did n't have any hours to count, you know." "to--count?" "yes; it was the sundial. did n't i tell you? yes, i know i did--about the words on it--not counting any hours that weren't sunny, you know. and she said she would n't have any hours to count; that the sun never shone for her." "why, david," demurred mr. jack in a voice that shook a little," are you sure? did she say just that? you--you must be mistaken--when she has--has everything to make her happy." "i was n't, because i said that same thing to her myself--afterwards. and then i told her--when i found out myself, you know--about its being what was inside of you, after all, that counted; and then is when i asked her if she could n't think of something nice that was going to happen to her sometime." "well, what did she say?" "she shook her head, and said 'no.' then she looked away, and her eyes got soft and dark like little pools in the brook where the water stops to rest. and she said she had hoped once that this something would happen; but that it had n't, and that it would take something more than thinking to bring it. and i know now what she meant, because thinking is n't all that counts, is it?" mr. jack did not answer. he had risen to his feet, and was pacing restlessly up and down the veranda. once or twice he turned his eyes toward the towers of sunnycrest, and david noticed that there was a new look on his face. very soon, however, the old tiredness came back to his eyes, and he dropped into his seat again, muttering "fool! of course it could n't be--that!" "be what?" asked david. mr. jack started. "er--nothing; nothing that you would understand, david. go on--with what you were saying." "there is n't any more. it's all done. it's only that i'm wondering how i'm going to learn here that it's a beautiful world, so that i can--tell father." mr. jack roused himself. he had the air of a man who determinedly throws to one side a heavy burden. "well, david," he smiled, "as i said before, you are still out on that sea where there are so many little upturned boats. there might be a good many ways of answering that question." "mr. holly says," mused the boy, aloud, a little gloomily, "that it does n't make any difference whether we find things beautiful or not; that we're here to do something serious in the world." "that is about what i should have expected of mr. holly" retorted mr. jack grimly. "he acts it--and looks it. but--i don't believe you are going to tell your father just that." "no, sir, i don't believe i am," accorded david soberly. "i have an idea that you're going to find that answer just where your father said you would--in your violin. see if you don't. things that are n't beautiful you'll make beautiful--because we find what we are looking for, and you're looking for beautiful things. after all, boy, if we march straight ahead, chin up, and sing our own little song with all our might and main, we shan't come so far amiss from the goal, i'm thinking. there! that's preaching, and i did n't mean to preach; but--well, to tell the truth, that was meant for myself, for--i'm hunting for the beautiful world, too." "yes, sir, i know," returned david fervently. and again mr. jack, looking into the sympathetic, glowing dark eyes, wondered if, after all, david really could--know. even yet mr. jack was not used to david; there were "so many of him," he told himself. there were the boy, the artist, and a third personality so evanescent that it defied being named. the boy was jolly, impetuous, confidential, and delightful--plainly reveling in all manner of fun and frolic. the artist was nothing but a bunch of nervous alertness, ready to find melody and rhythm in every passing thought or flying cloud. the third--that baffling third that defied the naming--was a dreamy, visionary, untouchable creature who floated so far above one's head that one's hand could never pull him down to get a good square chance to see what he did look like. all this thought mr. jack as he gazed into david's luminous eyes. chapter xx the unfamiliar way in september david entered the village school. school and david did not assimilate at once. very confidently the teacher set to work to grade her new pupil; but she was not so confident when she found that while in latin he was perilously near herself (and in french--which she was not required to teach--disastrously beyond her!), in united states history he knew only the barest outlines of certain portions, and could not name a single battle in any of its wars. in most studies he was far beyond boys of his own age, yet at every turn she encountered these puzzling spots of discrepancy, which rendered grading in the ordinary way out of the question. david's methods of recitation, too, were peculiar, and somewhat disconcerting. he also did not hesitate to speak aloud when he chose, nor to rise from his seat and move to any part of the room as the whim seized him. in time, of course, all this was changed; but it was several days before the boy learned so to conduct himself that he did not shatter to atoms the peace and propriety of the schoolroom. outside of school david had little work to do now, though there were still left a few light tasks about the house. home life at the holly farmhouse was the same for david, yet with a difference--the difference that comes from being really wanted instead of being merely dutifully kept. there were other differences, too, subtle differences that did not show, perhaps, but that still were there. mr. and mrs. holly, more than ever now, were learning to look at the world through david's eyes. one day--one wonderful day--they even went to walk in the woods with the boy; and whenever before had simeon holly left his work for so frivolous a thing as a walk in the woods! it was not accomplished, however, without a struggle, as david could have told. the day was a saturday, clear, crisp, and beautiful, with a promise of october in the air; and david fairly tingled to be free and away. mrs. holly was baking--and the birds sang unheard outside her pantry window. mr. holly was digging potatoes--and the clouds sailed unnoticed above his head. all the morning david urged and begged. if for once, just this once, they would leave everything and come, they would not regret it, he was sure. but they shook their heads and said, "no, no, impossible!" in the afternoon the pies were done and the potatoes dug, and david urged and pleaded again. if once, only this once, they would go to walk with him in the woods, he would be so happy, so very happy! and to please the boy--they went. it was a curious walk. ellen holly trod softly, with timid feet. she threw hurried, frightened glances from side to side. it was plain that ellen holly did not know how to play. simeon holly stalked at her elbow, stern, silent, and preoccupied. it was plain that simeon holly not only did not know how to play, but did not even care to find out. the boy tripped ahead and talked. he had the air of a monarch displaying his kingdom. on one side was a bit of moss worthy of the closest attention; on another, a vine that carried allurement in every tendril. here was a flower that was like a story for interest, and there was a bush that bore a secret worth the telling. even simeon holly glowed into a semblance of life when david had unerringly picked out and called by name the spruce, and fir, and pine, and larch, and then, in answer to mrs. holly's murmured: "but, david, where's the difference? they look so much alike!" he had said:- "oh, but they are n't, you know. just see how much more pointed at the top that fir is than that spruce back there; and the branches grow straight out, too, like arms, and they're all smooth and tapering at the ends like a pussy-cat's tail. but the spruce back there--its branches turned down and out--did n't you notice?--and they're all bushy at the ends like a squirrel's tail. oh, they're lots different! that's a larch 'way ahead--that one with the branches all scraggly and close down to the ground. i could start to climb that easy; but i could n't that pine over there. see, it's 'way up, up, before there's a place for your foot! but i love pines. up there on the mountains where i lived, the pines were so tall that it seemed as if god used them sometimes to hold up the sky." and simeon holly heard, and said nothing; and that he did say nothing--especially nothing in answer to david's confident assertions concerning celestial and terrestrial architecture--only goes to show how well, indeed, the man was learning to look at the world through david's eyes. nor were these all of david's friends to whom mr. and mrs. holly were introduced on that memorable walk. there were the birds, and the squirrels, and, in fact, everything that had life. and each one he greeted joyously by name, as he would greet a friend whose home and habits he knew. here was a wonderful woodpecker, there was a beautiful bluejay. ahead, that brilliant bit of color that flashed across their path was a tanager. once, far up in the sky, as they crossed an open space, david spied a long black streak moving southward. "oh, see!" he exclaimed. "the crows! see them?--'way up there? would n't it be fun if we could do that, and fly hundreds and hundreds of miles, maybe a thousand?" "oh, david," remonstrated mrs. holly, unbelievingly. "but they do! these look as if they'd started on their winter journey south, too; but if they have, they're early. most of them don't go till october. they come back in march, you know. though i've had them, on the mountain, that stayed all the year with me." "my! but i love to watch them go," murmured david, his eyes following the rapidly disappearing blackline. "lots of birds you can't see, you know, when they start for the south. they fly at night--the woodpeckers and orioles and cuckoos, and lots of others. they're afraid, i guess, don't. you? but i've seen them. i've watched them. they tell each other when they're going to start." "oh, david," remonstrated mrs. holly, again, her eyes reproving, but plainly enthralled. "but they do tell each other," claimed the boy, with sparkling eyes." they must! for, all of a sudden, some night, you'll hear the signal, and then they'll begin to gather from all directions. i've seen them. then, suddenly, they're all up and off to the south--not in one big flock, but broken up into little flocks, following one after another, with such a beautiful whir of wings. oof--oof--oof!--and they're gone! and i don't see them again till next year. but you've seen the swallows, have n't you? they go in the daytime, and they're the easiest to tell of any of them. they fly so swift and straight. have n't you seen the swallows go?" "why, i--i don't know, david," murmured mrs. holly, with a helpless glance at her husband stalking on ahead. "i--i did n't know there were such things to--to know." there was more, much more, that david said before the walk came to an end. and though, when it did end, neither simeon holly nor his wife said a word of its having been a pleasure or a profit, there was yet on their faces something of the peace and rest and quietness that belonged to the woods they had left. it was a beautiful month--that september, and david made the most of it. out of school meant out of doors for him. he saw mr. jack and jill often. he spent much time, too, with the lady of the roses. she was still the lady of the roses to david, though in the garden now were the purple and scarlet and yellow of the asters, salvia, and golden glow, instead of the blush and perfume of the roses. david was very much at home at sunnycrest. he was welcome, he knew, to go where he pleased. even the servants were kind to him, as well as was the elderly cousin whom he seldom saw, but who, he knew, lived there as company for his lady of the roses. perhaps best, next to the garden, david loved the tower room; possibly because miss holbrook herself so often suggested that they go there. and it was there that they were when he said, dreamily, one day:- "i like this place--up here so high, only sometimes it does make me think of that princess, because it was in a tower like this that she was, you know." "fairy stories, david?" asked miss holbrook lightly. "no, not exactly, though there was a princess in it. mr. jack told it." david's eyes were still out of the window. "oh, mr. jack! and does mr. jack often tell you stories?" "no. he never told only this one--and maybe that's why i remember it so." "well, and what did the princess do?" miss holbrook's voice was still light, still carelesslypreoccupied. her attention, plainly, was given to the sewing in her hand. "she did n't do and that's what was the trouble," sighed i david. "she did n't wave, you know." the needle in miss holbrook's fingers stopped short in mid-air, the thread half-drawn. "did n't--wave!" she stammered. "what do you--mean?" "nothing," laughed the boy, turning away from the window." i forgot that you did n't know the story." "but maybe i do--that is--what was the story?" asked miss holbrook, wetting her lips as if they had grown suddenly very dry. "oh, do you? i wonder now! it was n't 'the prince and the pauper,' but the princess and the pauper," cited david; "and they used to wave signals, and answer with flags. do you know the story?" there was no answer. miss holbrook was putting away her work, hurriedly, and with hands that shook. david noticed that she even pricked herself in her anxiety to get the needle tucked away. then she drew him to a low stool at her side. "david, i want you to tell me that story, please," she said, "just as mr. jack told it to you. now, be careful and put it all in, because i--i want to hear it," she finished, with an odd little laugh that seemed to bring two bright red spots to her cheeks. "oh, do you want to hear it? then i will tell it," cried david joyfully. to david, almost as delightful as to hear a story was to tell one himself. "you see, first--" and he plunged headlong into the introduction. david knew it well--that story: and there was, perhaps, little that he forgot. it might not have been always told in mr. jack's language; but his meaning was there, and very intently miss holbrook listened while david told of the boy and the girl, the wavings, and the flags that were blue, black, and red. she laughed once,--that was at the little joke with the bells that the girl played,--but she did not speak until sometime later when david was telling of the first home-coming of the princess, and of the time when the boy on his tiny piazza watched and watched in vain for a waving white signal from the tower. "do you mean to say," interposed miss holbrook then, almost starting to her feet," that that boy expected--" she stopped suddenly, and fell back in her chair. the two red spots on her cheeks had become a rosy glow now, all over her face. "expected what?" asked david. "n--nothing. go on. i was so--so interested," explained miss holbrook faintly. "go on." and david did go on; nor did the story lose by his telling. it gained, indeed, something, for now it had woven through it the very strong sympathy of a boy who loved the pauper for his sorrow and hated the princess for causing that sorrow. "and so," he concluded mournfully, "you see it is n't a very nice story, after all, for it did n't end well a bit. they ought to have got married and lived happy ever after. but they did n't." miss holbrook drew in her breath a little uncertainly, and put her hand to her throat. her face now, instead of being red, was very white. "but, david," she faltered, after a moment, "perhaps he--the--pauper--did not--not love the princess any longer." "mr. jack said that he did." the white face went suddenly pink again. "then, why did n't he go to her and--and--tell her?" david lifted his chin. with all his dignity he answered, and his words and accent were mr. jack's. "paupers don't go to princesses, and say "i love you.' " "but perhaps if they did--that is--if--" miss holbrook bit her lips and did not finish her sentence. she did not, indeed, say anything more for a long time. but she had not forgotten the story. david knew that, because later she began to question him carefully about many little points--points that he was very sure he had already made quite plain. she talked about it, indeed, until he wondered if perhaps she were going to tell it to some one else sometime. he asked her if she were; but she only shook her head. and after that she did not question him any more. and a little later david went home. chapter xxi heavy hearts for a week david had not been near the house that jack built, and that, too, when jill had been confined within doors for several days with a cold. jill, indeed, was inclined to be grieved at this apparent lack of interest on the part of her favorite playfellow; but upon her return from her first day of school, after her recovery, she met her brother with startled eyes. "jack, it has n't been david's fault at all," she cried remorsefully." he's sick." "sick!" "yes; awfully sick. they've had to send away for doctors and everything." "why, jill, are you sure? where did you hear this?" "at school to-day. every one was talking about it." "but what is the matter?" "fever--some sort. some say it's typhoid, and some scarlet, and some say another kind that i can't remember; but everybody says he's awfully sick. he got it down to glaspell's, some say,--and some say he did n't. but, anyhow, betty glaspell has been sick with something, and they have n't let folks in there this week," finished jill, her eyes big with terror. "the glaspells? but what was david doing down there?" "why, you know,--he told us once,--teaching joe to play. he's been there lots. joe is blind, you know, and can't see, but he just loves music, and was crazy over david's violin; so david took down his other one--the one that was his father's, you know--and showed him how to pick out little tunes, just to take up his time so he would n't mind so much that he could n't see. now, jack, was n't that just like david? jack, i can't have anything happen to david!" "no, dear, no; of course not! i'm afraid we can't any of us, for that matter," sighed jack, his forehead drawn into anxious lines." i'll go down to the hollys', jill, the first thing tomorrow morning, and see how he is and if there's anything we can do. meanwhile, don't take it too much to heart, dear. it may not be half so bad as you think. school-children always get things like that exaggerated, you must remember," he finished, speaking with a lightness that he did not feel. to himself the man owned that he was troubled, seriously troubled. he had to admit that jill's story bore the earmarks of truth; and overwhelmingly he realized now just how big a place this somewhat puzzling small boy had come to fill in his own heart. he did not need jill's anxious "now, hurry, jack," the next morning to start him off in all haste for the holly farmhouse. a dozen rods from the driveway he met perry larson and stopped him abruptly. "good morning, larson; i hope this is n't true--what i hear--that david is very ill." larson pulled off his hat and with his free hand sought the one particular spot on his head to which he always appealed when he was very much troubled. "well, yes, sir, i'm afraid 't is, mr. jack--er--mr. gurnsey, i mean. he is turrible sick, poor little chap, an' it's too bad--that's what it is--too bad!" "oh, i'm sorry! i hoped the report was exaggerated. i came down to see if--if there was n't something i could do." "well, 'course you can ask--there ain't no law ag'in' that; an' ye needn't be afraid, neither. the report has got 'round that it's ketchin'--what he's got, and that he got it down to the glaspells'; but 't ain't so. the doctor says he did n't ketch nothin', an' he can't give nothin'. it's his head an' brain that ain't right, an' he's got a mighty bad fever. he's been kind of flighty an' nervous, anyhow, lately. "as i was sayin', 'course you can ask, but i'm thinkin' there won't be nothin' you can do ter help. ev'rythin' that can be done is bein' done. in fact, there ain't much of anythin' else that is bein' done down there jest now but, tendin' ter him. they've got one o' them 'ere edyercated nurses from the junction--what wears caps, ye know, an' makes yer feel as if they knew it all, an' you did n't know nothin'. an' then there's mr. an' mis' holly besides. if they had their way, there would n't neither of, em let him out o' their sight fur a minute, they're that cut up about it." "i fancy they think a good deal of the boy --as we all do," murmured the younger man, a little unsteadily. larson winkled his forehead in deep thought. "yes; an' that's what beats me," he answered slowly; " 'bout him,--mr. holly, i mean. 'course we'd 'a' expected it of her--losin' her own boy as she did, an' bein' jest naturally so sweet an' lovin'-hearted. but him--that's diff'rent. now, you know jest as well as i do what mr. holly is--every one does, so i ain't sayin' nothin' sland'rous. he's a good man--a powerful good man; an' there ain't a squarer man goin' ter work fur. but the fact is, he was made up wrong side out, an' the seams has always showed bad--turrible bad, with ravelin's all stickin' out every which way ter ketch an' pull. but, gosh! i'm blamed if that, ere boy ain't got him so smoothed down, you would n't know, scursely, that he had a seam on him, sometimes; though how he's done it beats me. now, there's mis' holly--she's tried ter smooth 'em, i'll warrant, lots of times. but i'm free ter say she hain't never so much as clipped a ravelin' in all them forty years they've lived tergether. fact is, it's worked the other way with her. all that her rubbin' up ag'in' them seams has amounted to is ter git herself so smoothed down that she don't never dare ter say her soul's her own, most generally, --anyhow, not if he happens ter intermate it belongs ter anybody else!" jack gurnsey suddenly choked over a cough. "i wish i could--do something," he murmured uncertainly. " 't ain't likely ye can--not so long as mr. an' mis' holly is on their two feet. why, there ain't nothin' they won't do, an' you'll believe it, maybe, when i tell you that yesterday mr. holly, he tramped all through sawyer's woods in the rain, jest ter find a little bit of moss that the boy was callin' for. think o' that, will ye? simeon holly huntin' moss! an' he got it, too, an' brung it home, an' they say it cut him up somethin' turrible when the boy jest turned away, and did n't take no notice. you understand, 'course, sir, the little chap ain't right in his head, an' so half the time he don't know what he says." "oh, i'm sorry, sorry!" exclaimed gurnsey, as he turned away, and hurried toward the farmhouse. mrs. holly herself answered his low knock. she looked worn and pale. "thank you, sir," she said gratefully, in reply to his offer of assistance, "but there is n't anything you can do, mr. gurnsey. we're having everything done that can be, and every one is very kind. we have a very good nurse, and dr. kennedy has had consultation with dr. benson from the junction. they are doing all in their power, of course, but they say that--that it's going to be the nursing that will count now." "then i don't fear for him "surely" declared the man, with fervor. "i know, but--well, he shall have the very best possible--of that." "i know he will; but is n't there anything--anything that i can do?" she shook her head. "no. of course, if he gets better--" she hesitated; then lifted her chin a little higher; "when he gets better," she corrected with courageous emphasis, "he will want to see you." "and he shall see me," asserted gurnsey. "and he will be better, mrs. holly,--i'm sure he will." "yes, yes, of course, only--oh, mr. jack, he's so sick--so very sick! the doctor says he's a peculiarly sensitive nature, and that he thinks something's been troubling him lately." her voice broke. "poor little chap!" mr. jack's voice, too, was husky. she looked up with swift gratefulness for his sympathy. "and you loved him, too, i know" she choked. "he talks of you often--very often." "indeed i love him! who could help it?" "there could n't anybody, mr. jack,--and that's just it. now, since he's been sick, we've wondered more than ever who he is. you see, i can't help thinking that somewhere he's got friends who ought to know about him--now." "yes, i see," nodded the man. "he is n't an ordinary boy, mr. jack. he's been trained in lots of ways--about his manners, and at the table, and all that. and lots of things his father has told him are beautiful, just beautiful! he is n't a tramp. he never was one. and there's his playing. you know how he can play." "indeed i do! you must miss his playing, too." "i do; he talks of that, also," she hurried on, working her fingers nervously together; "but oftenest he--he speaks of singing, and i can't quite understand that, for he did n't ever sing, you know." "singing? what does he say?" the man asked the question because he saw that it was affording the overwrought little woman real relief to free her mind; but at the first words of her reply he became suddenly alert. "it's 'his song,' as he calls it, that he talks about, always. it is n't much--what he says--but i noticed it because he always says the same thing, like this:, i'll just hold up my chin and march straight on and on, and i'll sing it with all my might and main.' and when i ask him what he's going to sing, he always says, 'my song--my song,' just like that. do you think, mr. jack, he did have--a song?" for a moment the man did not answer. something in his throat tightened, and held the words. then, in a low voice he managed to stammer:- "i think he did, mrs. holly, and--i think he sang it, too." the next moment, with a quick lifting of his hat and a murmured "i'll call again soon," he turned and walked swiftly down the driveway. so very swiftly, indeed, was mr. jack walking, and so self-absorbed was he, that he did not see the carriage until it was almost upon him; then he stepped aside to let it pass. what he saw as he gravely raised his hat was a handsome span of black horses, a liveried coachman, and a pair of startled eyes looking straight into his. what he did not see was the quick gesture with which miss holbrook almost ordered her carriage stopped the minute it had passed him by. chapter xxii as perry saw it one by one the days passed, and there came from the anxious watchers at david's bedside only the words, "there's very little change." often jack gurnsey went to the farmhouse to inquire for the boy. often, too, he saw perry larson; and perry was never loath to talk of david. it was from perry, indeed, that gurnsey began to learn some things of david that he had never known before. "it does beat all," perry larson said to him one day, "how many folks asks me how that boy is--folks that you'd never think knew him, anyhow, ter say nothin' of carin' whether he lived or died. now, there's old mis' somers, fur instance. you know what she is--sour as a lemon an' puckery as a chokecherry. well, if she did n't give me yesterday a great bo-kay o' posies she'd growed herself, an' said they was fur him--that they berlonged ter him, anyhow. " 'course, i did n't exactly sense what she meant by that, so i asked her straight out; an' it seems that somehow, when the boy first come, he struck her place one day an' spied a great big red rose on one of her bushes. it seems he had his fiddle, an' he, played it,--that rose a-growin' (you know his way!), an' she heard an' spoke up pretty sharp an' asked him what in time he was doin'. well, most kids would 'a' run,--knowin' her temper as they does,--but not much david. he stands up as pert as ye please, an' tells her how happy that red rose must be ter make all that dreary garden look so pretty; an' then he goes on, merry as a lark, a-playin' down the hill. "well, mis' somers owned up ter me that she was pretty mad at the time, 'cause her garden did look like tunket, an' she knew it. she said she had n't cared ter do a thing with it since her bessie died that thought so much of it. but after what david had said, even mad as she was, the thing kind o' got on her nerves, an' she could n't see a thing, day or night, but that red rose a-growin' there so pert an' courageous-like, until at last, jest ter quiet herself, she fairly had ter set to an' slick that garden up! she said she raked an' weeded, an' fixed up all the plants there was, in good shape, an' then she sent down to the junction fur some all growed in pots, 'cause 't was too late ter plant seeds. an, now it's doin' beautiful, so she jest could n't help sendin' them posies ter david. when i told mis' holly, she said she was glad it happened, 'cause what mis' somers needed was somethin' ter git her out of herself--an' i'm free ter say she did look better-natured, an' no mistake,--kind o' like a chokecherry in blossom, ye might say." "an' then there's the widder glaspell," continued perry, after a pause." 'course, any one would expect she'd feel bad, seein' as how good david was ter her boy--teachin' him ter play, ye know. but mis' glaspell says joe jest does take on somethin' turrible, an' he won't tech the fiddle, though he was plum carried away with it when david was well an' teachin' of him. an' there's the clark kid. he's lame, ye know, an' he thought the world an' all of david's playin'. " 'course, there's you an' miss holbrook, always askin' an' sendin' things--but that ain't so strange, 'cause you was 'specially his friends. but it's them others what beats me. why, some days it's 'most ev'ry soul i meet, jest askin' how he is, an' sayin' they hopes he'll git well. sometimes it's kids that he's played to, an' i'll be triggered if one of 'em one day did n't have no excuse to offer except that david had fit him--'bout a cat, or somethin'--an' that ever since then he'd thought a heap of him--though he guessed david did n't know it. listen ter that, will ye! "an' once a woman held me up, an' took on turrible, but all i could git from her was that he'd sat on her doorstep an' played ter her baby once or twice;--as if that was anythin'! but one of the derndest funny ones was the woman who said she could wash her dishes a sight easier after she'd a-seen him go by playin'. there was bill dowd, too. you know he really has got a screw loose in his head somewheres, an' there ain't any one but what says he's the town fool, all right. well, what do ye think he said?" mr. jack shook his head. "well, he said he did hope as how nothin' would happen ter that boy" cause he did so like ter see him smile, an' that he always did smile every time he met him! there, what do ye think o' that?" "well, i think, perry," returned.mr. jack soberly, "that bill dowd was n't playing the fool, when he said that, quite so much as he sometimes is, perhaps." "hm-m, maybe not," murmured perry larson perplexedly." still, i'm free ter say i do think 't was kind o' queer." he paused, then slapped his knee suddenly." say, did i tell ye about streeter--old bill streeter an' the pear tree?" again mr. jack shook his head. "well, then, i'm goin' to," declared the other, with gleeful emphasis. "an', say, i don't believe even you can explain this--i don't! well, you know streeter--ev'ry one does, so i ain't sayin' nothin' sland'rous. he was cut on a bias, an' that bias runs ter money every time. you know as well as i do that he won't lift his finger unless there's a dollar stickin' to it, an' that he hain't no use fur anythin' nor anybody unless there's money in it for him. i'm blamed if i don't think that if he ever gits ter heaven, he'll pluck his own wings an' sell the feathers fur what they'll bring." "oh, perry!" remonstrated mr. jack, in a half-stifled voice. perry larson only grinned and went on imperturbably. "well, seein' as we both understand what he is, i'll tell ye what he done. he called me up ter his fence one day, big as life, an' says he, 'how's the boy?' an' you could 'a' knocked me down with a feather. streeter--a-askin' how a boy was that was sick! an' he seemed ter care, too. i hain't seen him look so longfaced since--since he was paid up on a sartin note i knows of, jest as he was smackin' his lips over a nice fat farm that was comin' to him! "well, i was that plum puzzled that i meant ter find out why streeter was takin' sech notice, if i hung fur it. so i set to on a little detective work of my own, knowin', of course, that 't wa'n't no use askin' of him himself. well, an' what do you s'pose i found out? if that little scamp of a boy had n't even got round him--streeter, the skinflint! he had--an' he went there often, the neighbors said; an' streeter doted on him. they declared that actually he give him a cent once--though that part i ain't swallerin' yet. "they said--the neighbors did--that it all started from the pear tree--that big one ter the left of his house. maybe you remember it. well, anyhow, it seems that it's old, an' through bearin' any fruit, though it still blossoms fit ter kill, every year, only a little late 'most always, an' the blossoms stay on longer'n common, as if they knew there wa'n't nothin' doin' later. well, old streeter said it had got ter come down. i reckon he suspected it of swipin' some of the sunshine, or maybe a little rain that belonged ter the tree t'other side of the road what did bear fruit an' was worth somethin'! anyhow, he got his man an' his axe, an' was plum ready ter start in when he sees david an' david sees him. " 't was when the boy first come. he'd gone ter walk an' had struck this pear tree, all in bloom,--an' 'course, you know how the boy would act--a pear tree, bloomin', is a likely sight, i'll own. he danced and laughed and clapped his hands,--he did n't have his fiddle with him,--an' carried on like all possessed. then he sees the man with the axe, an' streeter an' streeter sees him. "they said it was rich then--bill warner heard it all from t'other side of the fence. he said that david, when he found out what was goin' ter happen, went clean crazy, an' rampaged on at such a rate that old streeter could n't do nothin' but stand an' stare, until he finally managed ter growl out:, but i tell ye, boy, the tree ain't no use no more!' "bill says the boy flew all to pieces then. 'no use--no use!' he cries; 'such a perfectly beautiful thing as that no use! why, it don't have ter be any use when it's so pretty. it's jest ter look at an' love, an' be happy with!' fancy sayin' that ter old streeter! i'd like ter seen his face. but bill says that wa'n't half what the boy said. he declared that 't was god's present, anyhow, that trees was; an' that the things he give us ter look at was jest as much use as the things he give us ter eat; an' that the stars an' the sunsets an' the snowflakes an' the little white cloud-boats, an' i don't know what-all, was jest as important in the orchestra of life as turnips an' squashes. an' then, billy says, he ended by jest flingin' himself on ter streeter an' beggin' him ter wait till he could go back an' git his fiddle so he could tell him what a beautiful thing that tree was. "well, if you'll believe it, old streeter was so plum befuzzled he sent the man an' the axe away--an' that tree's a-livin' ter-day--'t is!" he finished; then, with a sudden gloom on his face, larson added, huskily: "an' i only hope i'll be sayin' the same thing of that boy--come next month at this time!" "we'll hope you will," sighed the other fervently. and so one by one the days passed, while the whole town waited and while in the great airy "parlor bedroom" of the holly farmhouse one small boy fought his battle for life. then came the blackest day and night of all when the town could only wait and watch--it had lost its hope; when the doctors shook their heads and refused to meet mrs. holly's eyes; when the pulse in the slim wrist outside the coverlet played hide-and-seek with the cool, persistent fingers that sought so earnestly for it; when perry larson sat for uncounted sleepless hours by the kitchen stove, and fearfully listened for a step crossing the hallway; when mr. jack on his porch, and miss holbrook in her tower widow, went with david down into the dark valley, and came so near the rushing river that life, with its petty prides and prejudices, could never seem quite the same to them again. then, after that blackest day and night, came the dawn--as the dawns do come after the blackest of days and nights. in the slender wrist outside the coverlet the pulse gained and steadied. on the forehead beneath the nurse's fingers, a moisture came. the doctors nodded their heads now, and looked every one straight in the eye. "he will live," they said. "the crisis is passed." out by the kitchen stove perry larson heard the step cross the hall and sprang upright; but at the first glimpse of mrs. holly's tear-wet, yet radiant face, he collapsed limply. "gosh!" he muttered. "say, do you know, i did n't s'pose i did care so much! i reckon i'll go an' tell mr. jack. he'll want ter hear." chapter xxiii puzzles david's convalescence was picturesque, in a way. as soon as he was able, like a king he sat upon his throne and received his subjects; and a very gracious king he was, indeed. his room overflowed with flowers and fruit, and his bed quite groaned with the toys and books and games brought for his diversion, each one of which he hailed with delight, from miss holbrook's sumptuously bound "waverley novels" to little crippled jimmy clark's bag of marbles. only two things puzzled david: one was why everybody was so good to him; and the other was why he never could have the pleasure of both mr. jack's and miss holbrook's company at the same time. david discovered this last curious circumstance concerning mr. jack and miss holbrook very early in his convalescence. it was on the second afternoon that mr. jack had been admitted to the sick-room. david had been hearing all the latest news of jill and joe, when suddenly he noticed an odd change come to his visitor's face. the windows of the holly "parlor bedroom" commanded a fine view of the road, and it was toward one of these windows that mr. jack's eyes were directed. david, sitting up in bed, saw then that down the road was approaching very swiftly a handsome span of black horses and an open carriage which he had come to recognize as belonging to miss holbrook. he watched it eagerly now till he saw the horses turn in at the holly driveway. then he gave a low cry of delight. "it's my lady of the roses! she's coming to see me. look! oh, i'm so glad! now you'll see her, and just know how lovely she is. why, mr. jack, you are n't going now!" he broke off in manifest disappointment, as mr. jack leaped to his feet. "i think i'll have to, if you don't mind, david," returned the man, an oddly nervous haste in his manner. "and you won't mind, now that you'll have miss holbrook. i want to speak to larson. i saw him in the field out there a minute ago. and i guess i'll slip right through this window here, too, david. i don't want to lose him; and i can catch him quicker this way than any other," he finished, throwing up the sash. "oh, but mr. jack, please just wait a minute," begged david. "i wanted you to see my lady of the roses, and--" but mr. jack was already on the ground outside the low window, and the next minute, with a merry nod and smile, he had pulled the sash down after him and was hurrying away. almost at once, then, miss holbrook appeared at the bedroom door. "mrs. holly said i was to walk right in, david, so here i am," she began, in a cheery voice. "oh, you're looking lots better than when i saw you monday, young man!" "i am better," caroled david; "and to-day i'm 'specially better, because mr. jack has been here." "oh, has mr. jack been to see you to-day?" there was an indefinable change in miss holbrook's voice. "yes, right now. why, he was here when you were driving into the yard." miss holbrook gave a perceptible start and looked about her a little wildly. "here when--but i did n't meet him anywhere--in the hall." "he did n't go through the hall," laughed david gleefully. "he went right through that window there." "the window!" an angry flush mounted to miss holbrook's forehead." indeed, did he have to resort to that to escape--" she bit her lip and stopped abruptly. david's eyes widened a little. "escape? oh, he was n't the one that was escaping. it was perry. mr. jack was afraid he'd lose him. he saw him out the window there, right after he'd seen you, and he said he wanted to speak to him and he was afraid he'd get away. so he jumped right through that window there. see?" "oh, yes, i--see," murmured miss holbrook, in a voice david thought was a little queer. "i wanted him to stay," frowned david uncertainly. "i wanted him to see you." "dear me, david, i hope you did n't tell him so." "oh, yes, i did. but he could n't stay, even then. you see, he wanted to catch perry larson." "i've no doubt of it," retorted miss holbrook, with so much emphasis that david again looked at her with a slightly disturbed frown." but he'll come again soon, i'm sure, and then maybe you'll be here, too. i do so want him to see you, lady of the roses!" "nonsense, david!" laughed miss holbrook alittle nervously. "mr.--mr. gurnsey does n't want to see me. he's seen me dozens of times." "oh, yes, he told me he'd seen you long ago," nodded david gravely; "but he did n't act as if he remembered it much." "did n't he, indeed!" laughed miss holbrook, again flushing a little." well, i'm sure, dear, we would n't want to tax the poor gentleman's memory too much, you know. come, suppose you see what i've brought you," she finished gayly. "oh, what is it?" cried david, as, under miss holbrook's swift fingers, the wrappings fell away and disclosed a box which, upon being opened, was found to be filled with quantities of oddly shaped bits of pictured wood--a jumble of confusion. "it's a jig-saw puzzle, david. all these little pieces fitted together make a picture, you see. i tried last night and i could n't do it. i brought it down to see if you could." "oh, thank you! i'd love to," rejoiced the boy. and in the fascination of the marvel of finding one fantastic bit that fitted another, david apparently forgot all about mr. jack--which seemed not unpleasing to his lady of the roses. it was not until nearly a week later that david had his wish of seeing his mr. jack and his lady of the roses meet at his bedside. it was the day miss holbrook brought to him the wonderful set of handsomely bound "waverley novels." he was still glorying in his new possession, in fact, when mr. jack appeared suddenly in the doorway. "hullo my boy, i just--oh, i beg your pardon. i supposed you were--alone," he stammered, lookig very red indeed. "he is--that is, he will be, soon--except for you, mr. gurnsey," smiled miss holbrook, very brightly. she was already on her feet. "no, no, i beg of you," stammered mr. jack, growing still more red. "don't let me drive--that is, i mean, don't go, please. i did n't know. i had no warning--i did n't see--your carriage was not at the door to-day." miss holbrook's eyebrows rose the fraction of an inch. "i sent it home. i am planning to walk back. i have several calls to make on the way; and it's high time i was starting. good-bye, david." "but, lady, of the roses, please, please, don't go," besought david, who had been looking from one to the other in worried dismay. "why, you've just come!" but neither coaxing nor argument availed; and before david really knew just what had happened, he found himself alone with mr. jack. even then disappointment was piled on disappointment, for mr. jack's visit was not the unalloyed happiness it usually was. mr. jack himself was almost cross at first, and then he was silent and restless, moving jerkily about the room in a way that disturbed david very much. mr. jack had brought with him a book; but even that only made matters worse, for when he saw the beautifully bound volumes that miss holbrook had just left, he frowned, and told david that he guessed he did not need his gift at all, with all those other fine books. and david could not seem to make him understand that the one book from him was just exactly as dear as were the whole set of books that his lady of the roses brought. certainly it was not a satisfactory visit at all, and for the first time david was almost glad to have mr. jack go and leave him with his books. the books, david told himself, he could understand; mr. jack he could not--to-day. several times after this david's lady of the roses and mr. jack happened to call at the same hour; but never could david persuade these two friends of his to stay together. always, if one came and the other was there, the other went away, in spite of david's protestations that two people did not tire him at all and his assertions that he often entertained as many as that at once. tractable as they were in all other ways, anxious as they seemed to please him, on this one point they were obdurate: never would they stay together. they were not angry with each other--david was sure of that, for they were always very especially polite, and rose, and stood, and bowed in a most delightful fashion. still, he sometimes thought that they did not quite like each other, for always, after the one went away, the other, left behind, was silent and almost stern--if it was mr. jack; and flushed-faced and nervous--if it was miss holbrook. but why this was so david could not understand. the span of handsome black horses came very frequently to the holly farmhouse now, and as time passed they often bore away behind them a white-faced but happy-eyed boy on the seat beside miss holbrook. "my, but i don't see how every one can be so good to me!" exclaimed the boy, one day, to his lady of the roses. "oh, that's easy, david," she smiled." the only trouble is to find out what you want--you ask for so little." "but i don't need to ask--you do it all beforehand," asserted the, boy. "you and mr. jack, and everybody." "really? that's good." for a brief moment miss holbrook hesitated; then, as if casually, she asked: "and he tells you stories, too, i suppose,--this mr. jack,--just as he used to, does n't he?" "well, he never did tell me but one, you know, before; but he's told me more now, since i've been sick." "oh, yes, i remember, and that one was 'the princess and the pauper'; was n't it? well, has he told you any more--like--that?" the boy shook his head with decision. "no, he does n't tell me any more like that, and--and i don't want him to, either." miss holbrook laughed a little oddly. "why, david, what is the matter with that?" she queried. "the ending; it was n't nice, you know." "oh, yes, i--i remember." "i've asked him to change it," went on david, in a grieved voice. "i asked him just the other day, but he would n't." "perhaps he--he did n't want to." miss holbrook spoke very quickly, but so low that david barely heard the words. "did n't want to? oh, yes, he did! he looked awful sober, and as if he really cared, you know. and he said he'd give all he had in the world if he really could change it, but he could n't." "did he say--just that?" miss holbrook was leaning forward a little breathlessly now. "yes--just that; and that's the part i could n't understand," commented david. "for i don't see why a story--just a story made up out of somebody's head--can't be changed any way you want it. and i told him so." "well, and what did he say to that?" "he did n't say anything for a minute, and i had to ask him again. then he sat up suddenly, just as if he'd been asleep, you know, and said, 'eh, what, david?' and then i told him again what i'd said. this time he shook his head, and smiled that kind of a smile that is n't really a smile, you know, and said something about a real, true-to-life story's never having but one ending, and that was a logical ending. lady of the roses, what is a logical ending?" the lady of the roses laughed unexpectedly. the two little red spots, that david always loved to see, flamed into her cheeks, and her eyes showed a sudden sparkle. when she answered, her words came disconnectedly, with little laughing breaths between. "well, david, i--i'm not sure i can--tell you. but perhaps i--can find out. this much, however, i am sure of: mr. jack's logical ending would n't be--mine!" what she meant david did not know; nor would she tell him when he asked; but a few days later she sent for him, and very gladly david--able now to go where he pleased--obeyed the summons. it was november, and the garden was bleak and cold; but in the library a bright fire danced on the hearth, and before this miss holbrook drew up two low chairs. she looked particularly pretty, david thought. the rich red of her dress had apparently brought out an answering red in her cheeks. her eyes were very bright and her lips smiled; yet she seemed oddly nervous and restless. she sewed a little, with a bit of yellow silk on white--but not for long. she knitted with two long ivory needles flashing in and out of a silky mesh of blue--but this, too, she soon ceased doing. on a low stand at david's side she had placed books and pictures, and for a time she talked of those. then very abruptly she asked:- "david, when will you see--mr. jack again--do you suppose?" "tomorrow. i'm going up to the house that jack built to tea, and i'm to stay all night. it's halloween--that is, it is n't really halloween, because it's too late. i lost that, being sick, you know. so we're going to pretend, and mr. jack is going to show me what it is like. that is what mr. jack and jill always do; when something ails the real thing, they just pretend with the make-believe one. he's planned lots of things for jill and me to do; with nuts and apples and candles, you know. it's to-morrow night. so i'll see him then." "to-morrow? so--so soon?" faltered miss holbrook. and to david, gazing at her with wondering eyes, it seemed for a moment almost as if she were looking about for a place to which she might run and hide. then determinedly, as if she were taking hold of somethig with both hands, she leaned forward, looked david squarely in the eyes, and began to talk hurriedly, yet very distinctly. "david, listen. i've something i want you to say to mr. jack, and i want you to be sure and get it just right. it's about the--the story, 'the princess and the pauper,' you know. you can remember, i think, for you remembered that so well. will you say it to him--what i'm going to tell you--just as i say it?" "why, of course i will!" david's promise was unhesitating, though his eyes were still puzzled. "it's about the--the ending," stammered miss holbrook. "that is, it may--it may have something to do with the ending--perhaps," she finished lamely. and again david noticed that odd shifting of miss holbrook's gaze as if she were searching for some means of escape. then, as before, he saw her chin lift determinedly, as she began to talk faster than ever. "now, listen," she admonished him, earnestly. and david listened. chapter xxiv a story remodeled the pretended halloween was a great suceess. so very excited, indeed, did david become over the swinging apples and popping nuts that he quite forgot to tell mr. jack what the lady of the roses had said until jill had gone up to bed and he himself was about to take from mr. jack's hand the little lighted lamp. "oh, mr. jack, i forgot," he cried then. "there was something i was going to tell you." "never mind to-night, david; it's so late. suppose we leave it until to-morrow," suggested mr. jack, still with the lamp extended in his hand. "but i promised the lady of the roses that i'd say it to-night," demurred the boy, in a troubled voice. the man drew his lamp halfway back suddenly. "the lady of the roses! do you mean--she sent a message--to me?" he demanded. "yes; about the story, 'the princess and the pauper,' you know." with an abrupt exclamation mr. jack set the lamp on the table and turned to a chair. he had apparently lost his haste to go to bed. "see here, david, suppose you come and sit down, and tell me just what you're talking about. and first--just what does the lady of the roses know about that--that 'princess and the pauper'?" "why, she knows it all, of course," returned the boy in surprise. "i told it to her." "you--told--it--to her!" mr. jack relaxed in his chair. "david!" "yes. and she was just as interested as could be." "i don't doubt it!" mr. jack's lips snapped together a little grimly. "only she did n't like the ending, either." mr. jack sat up suddenly. "she did n't like--david, are you sure? did she say that?" david frowned in thought. "well, i don't know as i can tell, exactly, but i'm sure she did n't like it, because just before she told me what to say to you, she said that--that what she was going to say would probably have something to do with the ending, anyway. still--" david paused in yet deeper thought. "come to think of it, there really is n't anything--not in what she said--that changed that ending, as i can see. they did n't get married and live happy ever after, anyhow." "yes, but what did she say?" asked mr. jack in a voice that was not quite steady. "now, be careful, david, and tell it just as she said it." "oh, i will," nodded david." she said to do that, too." "did she?" mr. jack leaned farther forward in his chair. "but tell me, how did she happen to--to say anything about it? suppose you begin at the beginning--away back, david. i want to hear it all--all!" david gave a contented sigh, and settled himself more comfortably. "well, to begin with, you see, i told her the story long ago, before i was sick, and she was ever so interested then, and asked lots of questions. then the other day something came up--i've forgotten how--about the ending, and i told her how hard i'd tried to have you change it, but you would n't. and she spoke right up quick and said probably you did n't want to change it, anyhow. but of course i settled that question without any trouble," went on david confidently, "by just telling her how you said you'd give anything in the world to change it." "and you told her that--just that, david?" cried the man. "why, yes, i had to," answered david, in surprise, "else she would n't have known that you did want to change it. don't you see?" "oh, yes! i--see--a good deal that i'm thinking you don't," muttered mr. jack, fallig back in his chair. "well, then is when i told her about the logical ending--what you said, you know,--oh, yes! and that was when i found out she did n't like the ending, because she laughed such a funny little laugh and colored up, and said that she was n't sure she could tell me what a logical ending was, but that she would try to find out, and that, anyhow, your ending would n't be hers--she was sure of that." "david, did she say that--really?" mr. jack was on his feet now. "she did; and then yesterday she asked me to come over, and she said some more things,--about the story, i mean,--but she did n't say another thing about the ending. she did n't ever say anything about that except that little bit i told you of a minute ago." "yes, yes, but what did she say?" demanded mr. jack, stopping short in his walk up and down the room. "she said: 'you tell mr. jack that i know something about that story of his that perhaps he does n't. in the first place, i know the princess a lot better than he does, and she is n't a bit the kind of girl he's pictured her." "yes! go on--go on!" " 'now, for instance,' she says, 'when the boy made that call, after the girl first came back, and when the boy did n't like it because they talked of colleges and travels, and such things, you tell him that i happen to know that that girl was just hoping and hoping he'd speak of the old days and games; but that she could n't speak, of course, when he had n't been even once to see her during all those weeks, and when he'd acted in every way just as if he'd forgotten.' " "but she had n't waved--that princess had n't waved--once!" argued mr. jack; "and he looked and looked for it." "yes, she spoke of that," returned david. "but she said she shouldn't think the princess would have waved, when she'd got to be such a great big girl as that--waving to a boy! she said that for her part she should have been ashamed of her if she had!" "oh, did she!" murmured mr. jack blankly, dropping suddenly into his chair. "yes, she did," repeated david, with a little virtuous uplifting of his chin. it was plain to be seen that david's sympathies had unaccountably met with a change of heart. "but--the pauper--" "oh, yes, and that's another thing," interrupted david. "the lady of the roses said that she did n't like that name one bit; that it was n't true, anyway, because he was n't a pauper. and she said, too, that as for his picturing the princess as being perfectly happy in all that magnificence, he did n't get it right at all. for she knew that the princess was n't one bit happy, because she was so lonesome for things and people she had known when she was just the girl." again mr. jack sprang to his feet. for a minute he strode up and down the room in silence; then in a shaking voice he asked:--" david, you--you are n't making all this up, are you? you're saying just what--what miss holbrook told you to?" "why, of course, i'm not making it up," protested the boy aggrievedly. "this is the lady of the roses' story--she made it up--only she talked it as if 't was real, of course, just as you did. she said another thing, too. she said that she happened to know that the princess had got all that magnificence around her in the first place just to see if it would n't make her happy, but that it had n't, and that now she had one place--a little room--that was left just as it used to be when she was the girl, and that she went there and sat very often. and she said it was right in sight of where the boy lived, too, where he could see it every day; and that if he had n't been so blind he could have looked right through those gray walls and seen that, and seen lots of other things. and what did she mean by that, mr. jack?" "i don't know--i don't know, david," half-groaned mr. jack. "sometimes i think she means--and then i think that can't be-true." "but do you think it's helped it any--the story?" persisted the boy. "she's only talked a little about the pricess. she did n't really change things any--not the ending." "but she said it might, david--she said it might! don't you remember?" cried the man eagerly. and to david, his eagerness did not seem at all strange. mr. jack had said before--long ago--that he would be very glad indeed to have a happier ending to this tale. "think now," continued the man. "perhaps she said something else, too. did she say anything else, david?" david shook his head slowly. "no, only--yes, there was a little something, but it does n't change things any, for it was only a 'supposing.' she said: 'just supposing, after long years, that the princess found out about how the boy felt long ago, and suppose he should look up at the tower some day, at the old time, and see a one--two wave, which meant, "come over to see me." just what do you suppose he would do?' but of course, that can't do any good," finished david gloomily, as he rose to go to bed, "for that was only a 'supposing.' " "of course," agreed mr. jack steadily; and david did not know that only stern self-control had forced the steadiness into that voice, nor that, for mr. jack, the whole world had burst suddenly into song. neither did david, the next morning, know that long before eight o'clock mr. jack stood at a certain window, his eyes unswervingly fixed on the gray towers of sunnycrest. what david did know, however, was that just after eight, mr. jack strode through the room where he and jill were playing checkers, flung himself into his hat and coat, and then fairly leaped down the steps toward the path that led to the footbridge at the bottom of the hill. "why, whatever in the world ails jack?" gasped jill. then, after a startled pause, she asked. "david, do folks ever go crazy for joy? yesterday, you see, jack got two splendid pieces of news. one was from his doctor. he was examined, and he's fine, the doctor says; all well, so he can go back, now any time, to the city and work. i shall go to school then, you know,--a young ladies' school," she finished, a little importantly. "he's well? how splendid! but what was the other news? you said there were two; only it could n't have been nicer than that was; to be well--all well!" "the other? well, that was only that his old place in the city was waiting for him. he was with a firm of big lawyers, you know, and of course it is nice to have a place all waiting. but i can't see anything in those things to make him act like this, now. can you?" "why, yes, maybe," declared david. "he's found his work--don't you see?--out in the world, and he's going to do it. i know how i'd feel if i had found mine that father told me of! only what i can't understand is, if mr. jack knew all this yesterday, why did n't he act like this then, instead of waiting till to-day?" "i wonder," said jill. chapter xxv the beautiful world david found many new songs in his violin those early winter days, and they were very beautiful ones. to begin with, there were all the kindly looks and deeds that were showered upon him from every side. there was the first snowstorm, too, with the feathery flakes turning all the world to fairy whiteness. this song david played to mr. streeter, one day, and great was his disappointment that the man could not seem to understand what the song said. "but don't you see?" pleaded david. "i'm telling you that it's your pear-tree blossoms come back to say how glad they are that you did n't kill them that day." "pear-tree blossoms--come back!" ejaculated the old man. "well, no, i can't see. where's yer pear-tree blossoms?" "why, there--out of the window--everywhere," urged the boy. "there! by ginger! boy--ye don't mean--ye can't mean the snow!" "of course i do! now, can't you see it? why, the whole tree was just a great big cloud of snowflakes. don't you remember? well, now it's gone away and got a whole lot more trees, and all the little white petals have come dancing down to celebrate, and to tell you they sure are coming back next year." "well, by ginger!" exclaimed the man again. then, suddenly, he threw back his head with a hearty laugh. david did not quite like the laugh, neither did he care for the five-cent piece that the man thrust into his fingers a little later; though--had david but known it--both the laugh and the five-cent piece gift were--for the uncomprehending man who gave them--white milestones along an unfamiliar way. it was soon after this that there came to david the great surprise--his beloved lady of the roses and his no less beloved mr. jack were to be married at the beginning of the new year. so very surprised, indeed, was david at this, that even his violin was mute, and had nothing, at first, to say about it. but to mr. jack, as man to man, david said one day:- "i thought men, when they married women, went courting. in story-books they do. and you--you hardly ever said a word to my beautiful lady of the roses; and you spoke once--long ago--as if you scarcely remembered her at all. now, what do you mean by that?" and mr. jack laughed, but he grew red, too,--and then he told it all,--that it was just the story of "the princess and the pauper," and that he, david, had been the one, as it happened, to do part of their courting for them. and how david had laughed then, and how he had fairly hugged himself for joy! and when next he had picked up his violin, what a beautiful, beautiful song he had found about it in the vibrant strings! it was this same song, as it chanced, that he was playing in his room that saturday afternoon when the letter from simeon holly's long-lost son john came to the holly farmhouse. downstairs in the kitchen, simeon holly stood, with the letter in his hand. "ellen, we've got a letter from--john," he said. that simeon holly spoke of it at all showed how very far along his unfamiliar way he had come since the last letter from john had arrived. "from--john? oh, simeon! from john?" "yes." simeon sat down and tried to hide the shaking of his hand as he ran the point of his knife under the flap of the envelope. "we'll see what--he says." and to hear him, one might have thought that letters from john were everyday occurrences. dear father: twice before i have written [ran the letter], and received no answer. but i'm going to make one more effort for forgiveness. may i not come to you this christmas? i have a little boy of my own now, and my heart aches for you. i know how i should feel, should he, in years to come, do as i did. i'll not deceive you--i have not given up my art. you told me once to choose between you and it--and i chose, i suppose; at least, i ran away. yet in the face of all that, i ask you again, may i not come to you at christmas? i want you, father, and i want mother. and i want you to see my boy. "well?" said simeon holly, trying to speak with a steady coldness that would not show how deeply moved he was. "well, ellen?" "yes, simeon, yes!" choked his wife, a world of mother-love and longing in her pleading eyes and voice. "yes--you'll let it be--'yes'!" "uncle simeon, aunt ellen," called david, clattering down the stairs from his room, "i've found such a beautiful song in my violin, and i'm going to play it over and over so as to be sure and remember it for father--for it is a beautiful world, uncle simeon, is n't it? now, listen!" and simeon holly listened--but it was not the violin that he heard. it was the voice of a little curly-headed boy out of the past. when david stopped playing some time later, only the woman sat watching him--the man was over at his desk, pen in hand. john, john's wife, and john's boy came the day before christmas, and great was the excitement in the holly farmhouse. john was found to be big, strong, and bronzed with the outdoor life of many a sketching trip--a son to be proud of, and to be leaned upon in one's old age. mrs. john, according to perry larson, was "the slickest little woman goin'." according to john's mother, she was an almost unbelievable incarnation of a long-dreamed-of, long-despaired-of daughter--sweet, lovable, and charmingly beautiful. little john--little john was himself; and he could not have been more had he been an angel-cherub straight from heaven--which, in fact, he was, in his doting grandparents' eyes. john holly had been at his old home less than four hours when he chanced upon david's violin. he was with his father and mother at the time. there was no one else in the room. with a sidelong glance at his parents, he picked up the instrument--john holly had not forgotten his own youth. his violin-playing in the old days had not been welcome, he remembered. "a fiddle! who plays?" he asked. "david." "oh, the boy. you say you--took him in? by the way, what an odd little shaver he is! never did i see a boy like him." simeon holly's head came up almost aggressively. "david is a good boy--a very good boy, indeed, john. we think a great deal of him." john holly laughed lightly, yet his brow carried a puzzled frown. two things john holly had not been able thus far to understand: an indefinable change in his father, and the position of the boy david, in the household-john holly was still remembering his own repressed youth. "hm-m," he murmured, softly picking the strings, then drawing across them a tentative bow." i've a fiddle at home that i play sometimes. do you mind if i--tune her up?" a flicker of something that was very near to humor flashed from his father's eyes. "oh, no. we are used to that--now." and again john holly remembered his youth. "jove! but he's got the dandy instrument here," cried the player, dropping his bow after the first half-dozen superbly vibrant tones, and carrying the violin to the window. a moment later he gave an amazed ejaculation and turned on his father a dumfounded face. "great scott, father! where did that boy get this instrument? i know something of violins, if i can't play them much; and this--! where did he get it?" "of his father, i suppose. he had it when he came here, anyway." " 'had it when he came'! but, father, you said he was a tramp, and--oh, come, tell me, what is the secret behind this? here i come home and find calmly reposing on my father's sitting-room table a violin that's priceless, for all i know. anyhow, i do know that its value is reckoned in the thousands, not hundreds: and yet you, with equal calmness, tell me it's owned by this boy who, it's safe to say, does n't know how to play sixteen notes on it correctly, to say nothing of appreciating those he does play; and who, by your own account, is nothing but--" a swiftly uplifted hand of warning stayed the words on his lips. he turned to see david himself in the doorway. "come in, david," said simeon holly quietly. "my son wants to hear you play. i don't think he has heard you." and again there flashed from simeon holly's eyes a something very much like humor. with obvious hesitation john holly relinquished the violin. from the expression on his face it was plain to be seen the sort of torture he deemed was before him. but, as if constrained to ask the question, he did say:- "where did you get this violin, boy?" "i don't know. we've always had it, ever since i could remember--this and the other one." "the other one!" "father's." "oh!" he hesitated; then, a little severely, he observed: "this is a fine instrument, boy,--a very fine instrument." "yes," nodded david, with a cheerful smile. "father said it was. i like it, too. this is an amati, but the other is a stradivarius. i don't know which i do like best, sometimes, only this is mine." with a half-smothered ejaculation john holly fell back limply. "then you--do--know?" he challenged. "know--what?" "the value of that violin in your hands." there was no answer. the boy's eyes were questioning. "the worth, i mean,--what it's worth." "why, no--yes--that is, it's worth everything--to me," answered david, in a puzzled voice. with an impatient gesture john holly brushed this aside. "but the other one--where is that?" "at joe glaspell's. i gave it to him to play on, because he had n't any, and he liked to play so well." "you gave it to him--a stradivarius!" "i loaned it to him," corrected david, in a troubled voice. "being father's, i could n't bear to give it away. but joe--joe had to have something to play on." " 'something to play on'! father, he does n't mean the river street glaspells?" cried john holly. "i think he does. joe is old peleg glaspell's grandson." john holly threw up both his hands. "a stradivarius--to old peleg's grandson! oh, ye gods!" he muttered. "well, i'll be--" he did not finish his sentence. at another word from simeon holly, david had begun to play. from his seat by the stove simeon holly watched his son's face--and smiled. he saw amazement, unbelief, and delight struggle for the mastery; but before the playing had ceased, he was summoned by perry larson to the kitchen on a matter of business. so it was into the kitchen that john holly burst a little later, eyes and cheek aflame. "father, where in heaven's name did you get that boy?" he demanded. "who taught him to play like that? i've been trying to find out from him, but i'd defy sherlock holmes himself to make head or tail of the sort of lingo he talks, about mountain homes and the orchestra of life! father, what does it mean?" obediently simeon holly told the story then, more fully than he had told it before. he brought forward the letter, too, with its mysterious signature. "perhaps you can make it out, son," he laughed. "none of the rest of us can, though i have n't shown it to anybody now for a long time. i got discouraged long ago of anybody's ever making it out." "make it out--make it out!" cried john holly excitedly; "i should say i could! it's a name known the world over. it's the name of one of the greatest violinists that ever lived." "but how--what--how came he in my barn?" demanded simeon holly. "easily guessed, from the letter, and from what the world knows," returned john, his voice still shaking with excitement. "he was always a queer chap, they say, and full of his notions. six or eight years ago his wife died. they say he worshiped her, and for weeks refused even to touch his violin. then, very suddenly, he, with his four-year-old son, disappeared--dropped quite out of sight. some people guessed the reason. i knew a man who was well acquainted with him, and at the time of the disappearance he told me quite a lot about him. he said he was n't a bit surprised at what had happened. that already half a dozen relatives were interfering with the way he wanted to bring the boy up, and that david was in a fair way to be spoiled, even then, with so much attention and flattery. the father had determined to make a wonderful artist of his son, and he was known to have said that he believed--as do so many others--that the first dozen years of a child's life are the making of the man, and that if he could have the boy to himself that long he would risk the rest. so it seems he carried out his notion until he was taken sick, and had to quit--poor chap!" "but why did n't he tell us plainly in that note who he was, then?" fumed simeon holly, in manifest irritation. "he did, he thought," laughed the other. "he signed his name, and he supposed that was so well known that just to mention it would be enough. that's why he kept it so secret while he was living on the mountain, you see, and that's why even david himself did n't know it. of course, if anybody found out who he was, that ended his scheme, and he knew it. so he supposed all he had to do at the last was to sign his name to that note, and everybody would know who he was, and david would at once be sent to his own people. (there's an aunt and some cousins, i believe.) you see he did n't reckon on nobody's being able to read his name! besides, being so ill, he probably was n't quite sane, anyway." "i see, i see," nodded simeon holly, frowning a little. "and of course if we had made it out, some of us here would have known it, probably. now that you call it to mind i think i have heard it myself in days gone by--though such names mean little to me. but doubtless somebody would have known. however, that is all past and gone now." "oh, yes, and no harm done. he fell into good hands, luckily. you'll soon see the last of him now, of course." "last of him? oh, no, i shall keep david," said simeon holly, with decision. "keep him! why, father, you forget who he is! there are friends, relatives, an adoring public, and a mint of money awaiting that boy. you can't keep him. you could never have kept him this long if this little town of yours had n't been buried in this forgotten valley up among these hills. you'll have the whole world at your doors the minute they find out he is here--hills or no hills! besides, there are his people; they have some claim." there was no answer. with a suddenly old, drawn look on his face, the elder man had turned away. half an hour later simeon holly climbed the stairs to david's room, and as gently and plainly as he could told the boy of this great, good thing that had come to him. david was amazed, but overjoyed. that he was found to be the son of a famous man affected him not at all, only so far as it seemed to set his father right in other eyes--in david's own, the man had always been supreme. but the going away--the marvelous going away--filled him with excited wonder. "you mean, i shall go away and study--practice--learn more of my violin?" "yes, david." "and hear beautiful music like the organ in church, only more--bigger--better?" "i suppose so.". "and know people--dear people--who will understand what i say when i play?" simeon holly's face paled a little; still, he knew david had not meant to make it so hard. "yes." "why, it's my, start'--just what i was going to have with the gold-pieces," cried david joyously. then, uttering a sharp cry of consternation, he clapped his fingers to his lips. "your--what?" asked the man. "n--nothing, really, mr. holly,--uncle simeon,--n--nothing." something, either the boy's agitation, or the luckless mention of the gold-pieces sent a sudden dismayed suspicion into simeon holly's eyes. "your 'start'?--the 'gold-pieces'? david, what do you mean?" david shook his head. he did not intend to tell. but gently, persistently, simeon holly questioned until the whole piteous little tale lay bare before him: the hopes, the house of dreams, the sacrifice. david saw then what it means when a strong man is shaken by an emotion that has mastered him; and the sight awed and frightened the boy. "mr. holly, is it because i'm--going--that you care--so much? i never thought--or supposed--you'd--care," he faltered. there was no answer. simeon holly's eyes were turned quite away. "uncle simeon--please! i--i think i don't want to go, anyway. i--i'm sure i don't want to go--and leave you!" simeon holly turned then, and spoke. "go? of course you'll go, david. do you think i'd tie you here to me--now?" he choked. "what don't i owe to you--home, son, happiness! go?--of course you'll go. i wonder if you really think i'd let you stay! come, we'll go down to mother and tell her. i suspect she'll want to start in to-nighlt to get your socks all mended up!" and with head erect and a determined step, simeon holly faced the mighty sacrifice in his turn, and led the way downstairs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the friends, the relatives, the adoring public, the mint of money--they are all david's now. but once each year, man grown though he is, he picks up his violin and journeys to a little village far up among the hills. there in a quiet kitchen he plays to an old man and an old woman; and always to himself he says that he is practicing against the time when, his violin at his chin and the bow drawn across the strings, he shall go to meet his father in the far-away land, and tell him of the beautiful world he has left. [end.] 1 king henry iv dramatis personae king henry the fourth. (king henry iv:) henry, prince of wales (prince henry:) | | sons of the king john of lancaster (lancaster:) | westmoreland: sir walter blunt: thomas percy earl of worcester. (earl of worcester:) henry percy earl of northumberland. (northumberland:) henry percy surnamed hotspur, his son. (hotspur:) edmund mortimer earl of march. (mortimer:) richard scroop archbishop of york. (archbishop of york:) archibald earl of douglas. (douglas:) owen glendower: sir richard vernon (vernon:) sir john falstaff (falstaff:) sir michael a friend to the archbishop of york. poins: gadshill: peto: bardolph: francis a waiter. lady percy wife to hotspur, and sister to mortimer. lady mortimer daughter to glendower, and wife to mortimer. mistress quickly hostess of a tavern in eastcheap. (hostess:) lords, officers, sheriff, vintner, chamberlain, drawers, two carriers, travellers, attendants, and an ostler. (sheriff:) (vintner:) (chamberlain:) (first carrier:) (second carrier:) (first traveller:) (servant:) (messenger:) (ostler:) scene england. 1 king henry iv act i scene i london. the palace. [enter king henry, lord john of lancaster, the earl of westmoreland, sir walter blunt, and others] king henry iv so shaken as we are, so wan with care, find we a time for frighted peace to pant, and breathe short-winded accents of new broils to be commenced in strands afar remote. no more the thirsty entrance of this soil shall daub her lips with her own children's blood; nor more shall trenching war channel her fields, nor bruise her flowerets with the armed hoofs of hostile paces: those opposed eyes, which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven, all of one nature, of one substance bred, did lately meet in the intestine shock and furious close of civil butchery shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks, march all one way and be no more opposed against acquaintance, kindred and allies: the edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife, no more shall cut his master. therefore, friends, as far as to the sepulchre of christ, whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross we are impressed and engaged to fight, forthwith a power of english shall we levy; whose arms were moulded in their mothers' womb to chase these pagans in those holy fields over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd for our advantage on the bitter cross. but this our purpose now is twelve month old, and bootless 'tis to tell you we will go: therefore we meet not now. then let me hear of you, my gentle cousin westmoreland, what yesternight our council did decree in forwarding this dear expedience. westmoreland my liege, this haste was hot in question, and many limits of the charge set down but yesternight: when all athwart there came a post from wales loaden with heavy news; whose worst was, that the noble mortimer, leading the men of herefordshire to fight against the irregular and wild glendower, was by the rude hands of that welshman taken, a thousand of his people butchered; upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse, such beastly shameless transformation, by those welshwomen done as may not be without much shame retold or spoken of. king henry iv it seems then that the tidings of this broil brake off our business for the holy land. westmoreland this match'd with other did, my gracious lord; for more uneven and unwelcome news came from the north and thus it did import: on holy-rood day, the gallant hotspur there, young harry percy and brave archibald, that ever-valiant and approved scot, at holmedon met, where they did spend a sad and bloody hour, as by discharge of their artillery, and shape of likelihood, the news was told; for he that brought them, in the very heat and pride of their contention did take horse, uncertain of the issue any way. king henry iv here is a dear, a true industrious friend, sir walter blunt, new lighted from his horse. stain'd with the variation of each soil betwixt that holmedon and this seat of ours; and he hath brought us smooth and welcome news. the earl of douglas is discomfited: ten thousand bold scots, two and twenty knights, balk'd in their own blood did sir walter see on holmedon's plains. of prisoners, hotspur took mordake the earl of fife, and eldest son to beaten douglas; and the earl of athol, of murray, angus, and menteith: and is not this an honourable spoil? a gallant prize? ha, cousin, is it not? westmoreland in faith, it is a conquest for a prince to boast of. king henry iv yea, there thou makest me sad and makest me sin in envy that my lord northumberland should be the father to so blest a son, a son who is the theme of honour's tongue; amongst a grove, the very straightest plant; who is sweet fortune's minion and her pride: whilst i, by looking on the praise of him, see riot and dishonour stain the brow of my young harry. o that it could be proved that some night-tripping fairy had exchanged in cradle-clothes our children where they lay, and call'd mine percy, his plantagenet! then would i have his harry, and he mine. but let him from my thoughts. what think you, coz, of this young percy's pride? the prisoners, which he in this adventure hath surprised, to his own use he keeps; and sends me word, i shall have none but mordake earl of fife. westmoreland this is his uncle's teaching; this is worcester, malevolent to you in all aspects; which makes him prune himself, and bristle up the crest of youth against your dignity. king henry iv but i have sent for him to answer this; and for this cause awhile we must neglect our holy purpose to jerusalem. cousin, on wednesday next our council we will hold at windsor; so inform the lords: but come yourself with speed to us again; for more is to be said and to be done than out of anger can be uttered. westmoreland i will, my liege. [exeunt] 1 king henry iv act i scene ii london. an apartment of the prince's. [enter the prince of wales and falstaff] falstaff now, hal, what time of day is it, lad? prince henry thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. what a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? unless hours were cups of sack and minutes capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, i see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day. falstaff indeed, you come near me now, hal; for we that take purses go by the moon and the seven stars, and not by phoebus, he,'that wandering knight so fair.' and, i prithee, sweet wag, when thou art king, as, god save thy grace,--majesty i should say, for grace thou wilt have none,- prince henry what, none? falstaff no, by my troth, not so much as will serve to prologue to an egg and butter. prince henry well, how then? come, roundly, roundly. falstaff marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us that are squires of the night's body be called thieves of the day's beauty: let us be diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon; and let men say we be men of good government, being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal. prince henry thou sayest well, and it holds well too; for the fortune of us that are the moon's men doth ebb and flow like the sea, being governed, as the sea is, by the moon. as, for proof, now: a purse of gold most resolutely snatched on monday night and most dissolutely spent on tuesday morning; got with swearing 'lay by' and spent with crying 'bring in;' now in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladder and by and by in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows. falstaff by the lord, thou sayest true, lad. and is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench? prince henry as the honey of hybla, my old lad of the castle. and is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance? falstaff how now, how now, mad wag! what, in thy quips and thy quiddities? what a plague have i to do with a buff jerkin? prince henry why, what a pox have i to do with my hostess of the tavern? falstaff well, thou hast called her to a reckoning many a time and oft. prince henry did i ever call for thee to pay thy part? falstaff no; i'll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all there. prince henry yea, and elsewhere, so far as my coin would stretch; and where it would not, i have used my credit. falstaff yea, and so used it that were it not here apparent that thou art heir apparent--but, i prithee, sweet wag, shall there be gallows standing in england when thou art king? and resolution thus fobbed as it is with the rusty curb of old father antic the law? do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief. prince henry no; thou shalt. falstaff shall i? o rare! by the lord, i'll be a brave judge. prince henry thou judgest false already: i mean, thou shalt have the hanging of the thieves and so become a rare hangman. falstaff well, hal, well; and in some sort it jumps with my humour as well as waiting in the court, i can tell you. prince henry for obtaining of suits? falstaff yea, for obtaining of suits, whereof the hangman hath no lean wardrobe. 'sblood, i am as melancholy as a gib cat or a lugged bear. prince henry or an old lion, or a lover's lute. falstaff yea, or the drone of a lincolnshire bagpipe. prince henry what sayest thou to a hare, or the melancholy of moor-ditch? falstaff thou hast the most unsavoury similes and art indeed the most comparative, rascalliest, sweet young prince. but, hal, i prithee, trouble me no more with vanity. i would to god thou and i knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought. an old lord of the council rated me the other day in the street about you, sir, but i marked him not; and yet he talked very wisely, but i regarded him not; and yet he talked wisely, and in the street too. prince henry thou didst well; for wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it. falstaff o, thou hast damnable iteration and art indeed able to corrupt a saint. thou hast done much harm upon me, hal; god forgive thee for it! before i knew thee, hal, i knew nothing; and now am i, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. i must give over this life, and i will give it over: by the lord, and i do not, i am a villain: i'll be damned for never a king's son in christendom. prince henry where shall we take a purse tomorrow, jack? falstaff 'zounds, where thou wilt, lad; i'll make one; an i do not, call me villain and baffle me. prince henry i see a good amendment of life in thee; from praying to purse-taking. falstaff why, hal, 'tis my vocation, hal; 'tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation. [enter poins] poins! now shall we know if gadshill have set a match. o, if men were to be saved by merit, what hole in hell were hot enough for him? this is the most omnipotent villain that ever cried 'stand' to a true man. prince henry good morrow, ned. poins good morrow, sweet hal. what says monsieur remorse? what says sir john sack and sugar? jack! how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest him on good-friday last for a cup of madeira and a cold capon's leg? prince henry sir john stands to his word, the devil shall have his bargain; for he was never yet a breaker of proverbs: he will give the devil his due. poins then art thou damned for keeping thy word with the devil. prince henry else he had been damned for cozening the devil. poins but, my lads, my lads, to-morrow morning, by four o'clock, early at gadshill! there are pilgrims going to canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to london with fat purses: i have vizards for you all; you have horses for yourselves: gadshill lies to-night in rochester: i have bespoke supper to-morrow night in eastcheap: we may do it as secure as sleep. if you will go, i will stuff your purses full of crowns; if you will not, tarry at home and be hanged. falstaff hear ye, yedward; if i tarry at home and go not, i'll hang you for going. poins you will, chops? falstaff hal, wilt thou make one? prince henry who, i rob? i a thief? not i, by my faith. falstaff there's neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee, nor thou camest not of the blood royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings. prince henry well then, once in my days i'll be a madcap. falstaff why, that's well said. prince henry well, come what will, i'll tarry at home. falstaff by the lord, i'll be a traitor then, when thou art king. prince henry i care not. poins sir john, i prithee, leave the prince and me alone: i will lay him down such reasons for this adventure that he shall go. falstaff well, god give thee the spirit of persuasion and him the ears of profiting, that what thou speakest may move and what he hears may be believed, that the true prince may, for recreation sake, prove a false thief; for the poor abuses of the time want countenance. farewell: you shall find me in eastcheap. prince henry farewell, thou latter spring! farewell, all-hallown summer! [exit falstaff] poins now, my good sweet honey lord, ride with us to-morrow: i have a jest to execute that i cannot manage alone. falstaff, bardolph, peto and gadshill shall rob those men that we have already waylaid: yourself and i will not be there; and when they have the booty, if you and i do not rob them, cut this head off from my shoulders. prince henry how shall we part with them in setting forth? poins why, we will set forth before or after them, and appoint them a place of meeting, wherein it is at our pleasure to fail, and then will they adventure upon the exploit themselves; which they shall have no sooner achieved, but we'll set upon them. prince henry yea, but 'tis like that they will know us by our horses, by our habits and by every other appointment, to be ourselves. poins tut! our horses they shall not see: i'll tie them in the wood; our vizards we will change after we leave them: and, sirrah, i have cases of buckram for the nonce, to immask our noted outward garments. prince henry yea, but i doubt they will be too hard for us. poins well, for two of them, i know them to be as true-bred cowards as ever turned back; and for the third, if he fight longer than he sees reason, i'll forswear arms. the virtue of this jest will be, the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will tell us when we meet at supper: how thirty, at least, he fought with; what wards, what blows, what extremities he endured; and in the reproof of this lies the jest. prince henry well, i'll go with thee: provide us all things necessary and meet me to-morrow night in eastcheap; there i'll sup. farewell. poins farewell, my lord. [exit poins] prince henry i know you all, and will awhile uphold the unyoked humour of your idleness: yet herein will i imitate the sun, who doth permit the base contagious clouds to smother up his beauty from the world, that, when he please again to be himself, being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at, by breaking through the foul and ugly mists of vapours that did seem to strangle him. if all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work; but when they seldom come, they wish'd for come, and nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. so, when this loose behavior i throw off and pay the debt i never promised, by how much better than my word i am, by so much shall i falsify men's hopes; and like bright metal on a sullen ground, my reformation, glittering o'er my fault, shall show more goodly and attract more eyes than that which hath no foil to set it off. i'll so offend, to make offence a skill; redeeming time when men think least i will. [exit] 1 king henry iv act i scene iii london. the palace. [enter the king, northumberland, worcester, hotspur, sir walter blunt, with others] king henry iv my blood hath been too cold and temperate, unapt to stir at these indignities, and you have found me; for accordingly you tread upon my patience: but be sure i will from henceforth rather be myself, mighty and to be fear'd, than my condition; which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down, and therefore lost that title of respect which the proud soul ne'er pays but to the proud. earl of worcester our house, my sovereign liege, little deserves the scourge of greatness to be used on it; and that same greatness too which our own hands have holp to make so portly. northumberland my lord.- king henry iv worcester, get thee gone; for i do see danger and disobedience in thine eye: o, sir, your presence is too bold and peremptory, and majesty might never yet endure the moody frontier of a servant brow. you have good leave to leave us: when we need your use and counsel, we shall send for you. [exit worcester] you were about to speak. [to north] northumberland yea, my good lord. those prisoners in your highness' name demanded, which harry percy here at holmedon took, were, as he says, not with such strength denied as is deliver'd to your majesty: either envy, therefore, or misprison is guilty of this fault and not my son. hotspur my liege, i did deny no prisoners. but i remember, when the fight was done, when i was dry with rage and extreme toil, breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress'd, fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new reap'd show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home; he was perfumed like a milliner; and 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held a pouncet-box, which ever and anon he gave his nose and took't away again; who therewith angry, when it next came there, took it in snuff; and still he smiled and talk'd, and as the soldiers bore dead bodies by, he call'd them untaught knaves, unmannerly, to bring a slovenly unhandsome corse betwixt the wind and his nobility. with many holiday and lady terms he question'd me; amongst the rest, demanded my prisoners in your majesty's behalf. i then, all smarting with my wounds being cold, to be so pester'd with a popinjay, out of my grief and my impatience, answer'd neglectingly i know not what, he should or he should not; for he made me mad to see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet and talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman of guns and drums and wounds,--god save the mark!- and telling me the sovereign'st thing on earth was parmaceti for an inward bruise; and that it was great pity, so it was, this villanous salt-petre should be digg'd out of the bowels of the harmless earth, which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd so cowardly; and but for these vile guns, he would himself have been a soldier. this bald unjointed chat of his, my lord, i answer'd indirectly, as i said; and i beseech you, let not his report come current for an accusation betwixt my love and your high majesty. sir walter blunt the circumstance consider'd, good my lord, whate'er lord harry percy then had said to such a person and in such a place, at such a time, with all the rest retold, may reasonably die and never rise to do him wrong or any way impeach what then he said, so he unsay it now. king henry iv why, yet he doth deny his prisoners, but with proviso and exception, that we at our own charge shall ransom straight his brother-in-law, the foolish mortimer; who, on my soul, hath wilfully betray'd the lives of those that he did lead to fight against that great magician, damn'd glendower, whose daughter, as we hear, the earl of march hath lately married. shall our coffers, then, be emptied to redeem a traitor home? shall we but treason? and indent with fears, when they have lost and forfeited themselves? no, on the barren mountains let him starve; for i shall never hold that man my friend whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost to ransom home revolted mortimer. hotspur revolted mortimer! he never did fall off, my sovereign liege, but by the chance of war; to prove that true needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds, those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took when on the gentle severn's sedgy bank, in single opposition, hand to hand, he did confound the best part of an hour in changing hardiment with great glendower: three times they breathed and three times did they drink, upon agreement, of swift severn's flood; who then, affrighted with their bloody looks, ran fearfully among the trembling reeds, and hid his crisp head in the hollow bank, bloodstained with these valiant combatants. never did base and rotten policy colour her working with such deadly wounds; nor could the noble mortimer receive so many, and all willingly: then let not him be slander'd with revolt. king henry iv thou dost belie him, percy, thou dost belie him; he never did encounter with glendower: i tell thee, he durst as well have met the devil alone as owen glendower for an enemy. art thou not ashamed? but, sirrah, henceforth let me not hear you speak of mortimer: send me your prisoners with the speediest means, or you shall hear in such a kind from me as will displease you. my lord northumberland, we licence your departure with your son. send us your prisoners, or you will hear of it. [exeunt king henry, blunt, and train] hotspur an if the devil come and roar for them, i will not send them: i will after straight and tell him so; for i will ease my heart, albeit i make a hazard of my head. northumberland what, drunk with choler? stay and pause awhile: here comes your uncle. [re-enter worcester] hotspur speak of mortimer! 'zounds, i will speak of him; and let my soul want mercy, if i do not join with him: yea, on his part i'll empty all these veins, and shed my dear blood drop by drop in the dust, but i will lift the down-trod mortimer as high in the air as this unthankful king, as this ingrate and canker'd bolingbroke. northumberland brother, the king hath made your nephew mad. earl of worcester who struck this heat up after i was gone? hotspur he will, forsooth, have all my prisoners; and when i urged the ransom once again of my wife's brother, then his cheek look'd pale, and on my face he turn'd an eye of death, trembling even at the name of mortimer. earl of worcester i cannot blame him: was not he proclaim'd by richard that dead is the next of blood? northumberland he was; i heard the proclamation: and then it was when the unhappy king, --whose wrongs in us god pardon!--did set forth upon his irish expedition; from whence he intercepted did return to be deposed and shortly murdered. earl of worcester and for whose death we in the world's wide mouth live scandalized and foully spoken of. hotspur but soft, i pray you; did king richard then proclaim my brother edmund mortimer heir to the crown? northumberland he did; myself did hear it. hotspur nay, then i cannot blame his cousin king, that wished him on the barren mountains starve. but shall it be that you, that set the crown upon the head of this forgetful man and for his sake wear the detested blot of murderous subornation, shall it be, that you a world of curses undergo, being the agents, or base second means, the cords, the ladder, or the hangman rather? o, pardon me that i descend so low, to show the line and the predicament wherein you range under this subtle king; shall it for shame be spoken in these days, or fill up chronicles in time to come, that men of your nobility and power did gage them both in an unjust behalf, as both of you--god pardon it!--have done, to put down richard, that sweet lovely rose, an plant this thorn, this canker, bolingbroke? and shall it in more shame be further spoken, that you are fool'd, discarded and shook off by him for whom these shames ye underwent? no; yet time serves wherein you may redeem your banish'd honours and restore yourselves into the good thoughts of the world again, revenge the jeering and disdain'd contempt of this proud king, who studies day and night to answer all the debt he owes to you even with the bloody payment of your deaths: therefore, i say- earl of worcester peace, cousin, say no more: and now i will unclasp a secret book, and to your quick-conceiving discontents i'll read you matter deep and dangerous, as full of peril and adventurous spirit as to o'er-walk a current roaring loud on the unsteadfast footing of a spear. hotspur if he fall in, good night! or sink or swim: send danger from the east unto the west, so honour cross it from the north to south, and let them grapple: o, the blood more stirs to rouse a lion than to start a hare! northumberland imagination of some great exploit drives him beyond the bounds of patience. hotspur by heaven, methinks it were an easy leap, to pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon, or dive into the bottom of the deep, where fathom-line could never touch the ground, and pluck up drowned honour by the locks; so he that doth redeem her thence might wear without corrival, all her dignities: but out upon this half-faced fellowship! earl of worcester he apprehends a world of figures here, but not the form of what he should attend. good cousin, give me audience for a while. hotspur i cry you mercy. earl of worcester those same noble scots that are your prisoners,- hotspur i'll keep them all; by god, he shall not have a scot of them; no, if a scot would save his soul, he shall not: i'll keep them, by this hand. earl of worcester you start away and lend no ear unto my purposes. those prisoners you shall keep. hotspur nay, i will; that's flat: he said he would not ransom mortimer; forbad my tongue to speak of mortimer; but i will find him when he lies asleep, and in his ear i'll holla 'mortimer!' nay, i'll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but 'mortimer,' and give it him to keep his anger still in motion. earl of worcester hear you, cousin; a word. hotspur all studies here i solemnly defy, save how to gall and pinch this bolingbroke: and that same sword-and-buckler prince of wales, but that i think his father loves him not and would be glad he met with some mischance, i would have him poison'd with a pot of ale. earl of worcester farewell, kinsman: i'll talk to you when you are better temper'd to attend. northumberland why, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool art thou to break into this woman's mood, tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own! hotspur why, look you, i am whipp'd and scourged with rods, nettled and stung with pismires, when i hear of this vile politician, bolingbroke. in richard's time,--what do you call the place?- a plague upon it, it is in gloucestershire; 'twas where the madcap duke his uncle kept, his uncle york; where i first bow'd my knee unto this king of smiles, this bolingbroke,- 'sblood!- when you and he came back from ravenspurgh. northumberland at berkley castle. hotspur you say true: why, what a candy deal of courtesy this fawning greyhound then did proffer me! look,'when his infant fortune came to age,' and 'gentle harry percy,' and 'kind cousin;' o, the devil take such cozeners! god forgive me! good uncle, tell your tale; i have done. earl of worcester nay, if you have not, to it again; we will stay your leisure. hotspur i have done, i' faith. earl of worcester then once more to your scottish prisoners. deliver them up without their ransom straight, and make the douglas' son your only mean for powers in scotland; which, for divers reasons which i shall send you written, be assured, will easily be granted. you, my lord, [to northumberland] your son in scotland being thus employ'd, shall secretly into the bosom creep of that same noble prelate, well beloved, the archbishop. hotspur of york, is it not? earl of worcester true; who bears hard his brother's death at bristol, the lord scroop. i speak not this in estimation, as what i think might be, but what i know is ruminated, plotted and set down, and only stays but to behold the face of that occasion that shall bring it on. hotspur i smell it: upon my life, it will do well. northumberland before the game is afoot, thou still let'st slip. hotspur why, it cannot choose but be a noble plot; and then the power of scotland and of york, to join with mortimer, ha? earl of worcester and so they shall. hotspur in faith, it is exceedingly well aim'd. earl of worcester and 'tis no little reason bids us speed, to save our heads by raising of a head; for, bear ourselves as even as we can, the king will always think him in our debt, and think we think ourselves unsatisfied, till he hath found a time to pay us home: and see already how he doth begin to make us strangers to his looks of love. hotspur he does, he does: we'll be revenged on him. earl of worcester cousin, farewell: no further go in this than i by letters shall direct your course. when time is ripe, which will be suddenly, i'll steal to glendower and lord mortimer; where you and douglas and our powers at once, as i will fashion it, shall happily meet, to bear our fortunes in our own strong arms, which now we hold at much uncertainty. northumberland farewell, good brother: we shall thrive, i trust. hotspur uncle, adieu: o, let the hours be short till fields and blows and groans applaud our sport! [exeunt] 1 king henry iv act ii scene i rochester. an inn yard. [enter a carrier with a lantern in his hand] first carrier heigh-ho! an it be not four by the day, i'll be hanged: charles' wain is over the new chimney, and yet our horse not packed. what, ostler! ostler [within] anon, anon. first carrier i prithee, tom, beat cut's saddle, put a few flocks in the point; poor jade, is wrung in the withers out of all cess. [enter another carrier] second carrier peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and that is the next way to give poor jades the bots: this house is turned upside down since robin ostler died. first carrier poor fellow, never joyed since the price of oats rose; it was the death of him. second carrier i think this be the most villanous house in all london road for fleas: i am stung like a tench. first carrier like a tench! by the mass, there is ne'er a king christen could be better bit than i have been since the first cock. second carrier why, they will allow us ne'er a jordan, and then we leak in your chimney; and your chamber-lie breeds fleas like a loach. first carrier what, ostler! come away and be hanged! second carrier i have a gammon of bacon and two razors of ginger, to be delivered as far as charing-cross. first carrier god's body! the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved. what, ostler! a plague on thee! hast thou never an eye in thy head? canst not hear? an 'twere not as good deed as drink, to break the pate on thee, i am a very villain. come, and be hanged! hast thou no faith in thee? [enter gadshill] gadshill good morrow, carriers. what's o'clock? first carrier i think it be two o'clock. gadshill i pray thee lend me thy lantern, to see my gelding in the stable. first carrier nay, by god, soft; i know a trick worth two of that, i' faith. gadshill i pray thee, lend me thine. second carrier ay, when? can'st tell? lend me thy lantern, quoth he? marry, i'll see thee hanged first. gadshill sirrah carrier, what time do you mean to come to london? second carrier time enough to go to bed with a candle, i warrant thee. come, neighbour mugs, we'll call up the gentleman: they will along with company, for they have great charge. [exeunt carriers] gadshill what, ho! chamberlain! chamberlain [within] at hand, quoth pick-purse. gadshill that's even as fair as--at hand, quoth the chamberlain; for thou variest no more from picking of purses than giving direction doth from labouring; thou layest the plot how. [enter chamberlain] chamberlain good morrow, master gadshill. it holds current that i told you yesternight: there's a franklin in the wild of kent hath brought three hundred marks with him in gold: i heard him tell it to one of his company last night at supper; a kind of auditor; one that hath abundance of charge too, god knows what. they are up already, and call for eggs and butter; they will away presently. gadshill sirrah, if they meet not with saint nicholas' clerks, i'll give thee this neck. chamberlain no, i'll none of it: i pray thee keep that for the hangman; for i know thou worshippest st. nicholas as truly as a man of falsehood may. gadshill what talkest thou to me of the hangman? if i hang, i'll make a fat pair of gallows; for if i hang, old sir john hangs with me, and thou knowest he is no starveling. tut! there are other trojans that thou dreamest not of, the which for sport sake are content to do the profession some grace; that would, if matters should be looked into, for their own credit sake, make all whole. i am joined with no foot-land rakers, no long-staff sixpenny strikers, none of these mad mustachio purple-hued malt-worms; but with nobility and tranquillity, burgomasters and great oneyers, such as can hold in, such as will strike sooner than speak, and speak sooner than drink, and drink sooner than pray: and yet, zounds, i lie; for they pray continually to their saint, the commonwealth; or rather, not pray to her, but prey on her, for they ride up and down on her and make her their boots. chamberlain what, the commonwealth their boots? will she hold out water in foul way? gadshill she will, she will; justice hath liquored her. we steal as in a castle, cocksure; we have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible. chamberlain nay, by my faith, i think you are more beholding to the night than to fern-seed for your walking invisible. gadshill give me thy hand: thou shalt have a share in our purchase, as i am a true man. chamberlain nay, rather let me have it, as you are a false thief. gadshill go to; 'homo' is a common name to all men. bid the ostler bring my gelding out of the stable. farewell, you muddy knave. [exeunt] 1 king henry iv act ii scene ii the highway, near gadshill. [enter prince henry and poins] poins come, shelter, shelter: i have removed falstaff's horse, and he frets like a gummed velvet. prince henry stand close. [enter falstaff] falstaff poins! poins, and be hanged! poins! prince henry peace, ye fat-kidneyed rascal! what a brawling dost thou keep! falstaff where's poins, hal? prince henry he is walked up to the top of the hill: i'll go seek him. falstaff i am accursed to rob in that thief's company: the rascal hath removed my horse, and tied him i know not where. if i travel but four foot by the squier further afoot, i shall break my wind. well, i doubt not but to die a fair death for all this, if i 'scape hanging for killing that rogue. i have forsworn his company hourly any time this two and twenty years, and yet i am bewitched with the rogue's company. if the rascal hath not given me medicines to make me love him, i'll be hanged; it could not be else: i have drunk medicines. poins! hal! a plague upon you both! bardolph! peto! i'll starve ere i'll rob a foot further. an 'twere not as good a deed as drink, to turn true man and to leave these rogues, i am the veriest varlet that ever chewed with a tooth. eight yards of uneven ground is threescore and ten miles afoot with me; and the stony-hearted villains know it well enough: a plague upon it when thieves cannot be true one to another! [they whistle] whew! a plague upon you all! give me my horse, you rogues; give me my horse, and be hanged! prince henry peace, ye fat-guts! lie down; lay thine ear close to the ground and list if thou canst hear the tread of travellers. falstaff have you any levers to lift me up again, being down? 'sblood, i'll not bear mine own flesh so far afoot again for all the coin in thy father's exchequer. what a plague mean ye to colt me thus? prince henry thou liest; thou art not colted, thou art uncolted. falstaff i prithee, good prince hal, help me to my horse, good king's son. prince henry out, ye rogue! shall i be your ostler? falstaff go, hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters! if i be ta'en, i'll peach for this. an i have not ballads made on you all and sung to filthy tunes, let a cup of sack be my poison: when a jest is so forward, and afoot too! i hate it. [enter gadshill, bardolph and peto] gadshill stand. falstaff so i do, against my will. poins o, 'tis our setter: i know his voice. bardolph, what news? bardolph case ye, case ye; on with your vizards: there 's money of the king's coming down the hill; 'tis going to the king's exchequer. falstaff you lie, ye rogue; 'tis going to the king's tavern. gadshill there's enough to make us all. falstaff to be hanged. prince henry sirs, you four shall front them in the narrow lane; ned poins and i will walk lower: if they 'scape from your encounter, then they light on us. peto how many be there of them? gadshill some eight or ten. falstaff 'zounds, will they not rob us? prince henry what, a coward, sir john paunch? falstaff indeed, i am not john of gaunt, your grandfather; but yet no coward, hal. prince henry well, we leave that to the proof. poins sirrah jack, thy horse stands behind the hedge: when thou needest him, there thou shalt find him. farewell, and stand fast. falstaff now cannot i strike him, if i should be hanged. prince henry ned, where are our disguises? poins here, hard by: stand close. [exeunt prince henry and poins] falstaff now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say i: every man to his business. [enter the travellers] first traveller come, neighbour: the boy shall lead our horses down the hill; we'll walk afoot awhile, and ease our legs. thieves stand! travellers jesus bless us! falstaff strike; down with them; cut the villains' throats: ah! whoreson caterpillars! bacon-fed knaves! they hate us youth: down with them: fleece them. travellers o, we are undone, both we and ours for ever! falstaff hang ye, gorbellied knaves, are ye undone? no, ye fat chuffs: i would your store were here! on, bacons, on! what, ye knaves! young men must live. you are grand-jurors, are ye? we'll jure ye, 'faith. [here they rob them and bind them. exeunt] [re-enter prince henry and poins] prince henry the thieves have bound the true men. now could thou and i rob the thieves and go merrily to london, it would be argument for a week, laughter for a month and a good jest for ever. poins stand close; i hear them coming. [enter the thieves again] falstaff come, my masters, let us share, and then to horse before day. an the prince and poins be not two arrant cowards, there's no equity stirring: there's no more valour in that poins than in a wild-duck. prince henry your money! poins villains! [as they are sharing, the prince and poins set upon them; they all run away; and falstaff, after a blow or two, runs away too, leaving the booty behind them] prince henry got with much ease. now merrily to horse: the thieves are all scatter'd and possess'd with fear so strongly that they dare not meet each other; each takes his fellow for an officer. away, good ned. falstaff sweats to death, and lards the lean earth as he walks along: were 't not for laughing, i should pity him. poins how the rogue roar'd! [exeunt] 1 king henry iv act ii scene iii warkworth castle [enter hotspur, solus, reading a letter] hotspur 'but for mine own part, my lord, i could be well contented to be there, in respect of the love i bear your house.' he could be contented: why is he not, then? in respect of the love he bears our house: he shows in this, he loves his own barn better than he loves our house. let me see some more. 'the purpose you undertake is dangerous;'--why, that's certain: 'tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but i tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. 'the purpose you undertake is dangerous; the friends you have named uncertain; the time itself unsorted; and your whole plot too light for the counterpoise of so great an opposition.' say you so, say you so? i say unto you again, you are a shallow cowardly hind, and you lie. what a lack-brain is this! by the lord, our plot is a good plot as ever was laid; our friends true and constant: a good plot, good friends, and full of expectation; an excellent plot, very good friends. what a frosty-spirited rogue is this! why, my lord of york commends the plot and the general course of action. 'zounds, an i were now by this rascal, i could brain him with his lady's fan. is there not my father, my uncle and myself? lord edmund mortimer, my lord of york and owen glendower? is there not besides the douglas? have i not all their letters to meet me in arms by the ninth of the next month? and are they not some of them set forward already? what a pagan rascal is this! an infidel! ha! you shall see now in very sincerity of fear and cold heart, will he to the king and lay open all our proceedings. o, i could divide myself and go to buffets, for moving such a dish of skim milk with so honourable an action! hang him! let him tell the king: we are prepared. i will set forward to-night. [enter lady percy] how now, kate! i must leave you within these two hours. lady percy o, my good lord, why are you thus alone? for what offence have i this fortnight been a banish'd woman from my harry's bed? tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee thy stomach, pleasure and thy golden sleep? why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth, and start so often when thou sit'st alone? why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks; and given my treasures and my rights of thee to thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy? in thy faint slumbers i by thee have watch'd, and heard thee murmur tales of iron wars; speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed; cry 'courage! to the field!' and thou hast talk'd of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets, of basilisks, of cannon, culverin, of prisoners' ransom and of soldiers slain, and all the currents of a heady fight. thy spirit within thee hath been so at war and thus hath so bestirr'd thee in thy sleep, that beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow like bubbles in a late-disturbed stream; and in thy face strange motions have appear'd, such as we see when men restrain their breath on some great sudden hest. o, what portents are these? some heavy business hath my lord in hand, and i must know it, else he loves me not. hotspur what, ho! [enter servant] is gilliams with the packet gone? servant he is, my lord, an hour ago. hotspur hath butler brought those horses from the sheriff? servant one horse, my lord, he brought even now. hotspur what horse? a roan, a crop-ear, is it not? servant it is, my lord. hotspur that roan shall by my throne. well, i will back him straight: o esperance! bid butler lead him forth into the park. [exit servant] lady percy but hear you, my lord. hotspur what say'st thou, my lady? lady percy what is it carries you away? hotspur why, my horse, my love, my horse. lady percy out, you mad-headed ape! a weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are toss'd with. in faith, i'll know your business, harry, that i will. i fear my brother mortimer doth stir about his title, and hath sent for you to line his enterprise: but if you go,- hotspur so far afoot, i shall be weary, love. lady percy come, come, you paraquito, answer me directly unto this question that i ask: in faith, i'll break thy little finger, harry, an if thou wilt not tell me all things true. hotspur away, away, you trifler! love! i love thee not, i care not for thee, kate: this is no world to play with mammets and to tilt with lips: we must have bloody noses and crack'd crowns, and pass them current too. god's me, my horse! what say'st thou, kate? what would'st thou have with me? lady percy do you not love me? do you not, indeed? well, do not then; for since you love me not, i will not love myself. do you not love me? nay, tell me if you speak in jest or no. hotspur come, wilt thou see me ride? and when i am on horseback, i will swear i love thee infinitely. but hark you, kate; i must not have you henceforth question me whither i go, nor reason whereabout: whither i must, i must; and, to conclude, this evening must i leave you, gentle kate. i know you wise, but yet no farther wise than harry percy's wife: constant you are, but yet a woman: and for secrecy, no lady closer; for i well believe thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know; and so far will i trust thee, gentle kate. lady percy how! so far? hotspur not an inch further. but hark you, kate: whither i go, thither shall you go too; to-day will i set forth, to-morrow you. will this content you, kate? lady percy it must of force. [exeunt] 1 king henry iv act ii scene iv the boar's-head tavern, eastcheap. [enter prince henry and poins] prince henry ned, prithee, come out of that fat room, and lend me thy hand to laugh a little. poins where hast been, hal? prince henry with three or four loggerheads amongst three or four score hogsheads. i have sounded the very base-string of humility. sirrah, i am sworn brother to a leash of drawers; and can call them all by their christen names, as tom, dick, and francis. they take it already upon their salvation, that though i be but the prince of wales, yet i am king of courtesy; and tell me flatly i am no proud jack, like falstaff, but a corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy, by the lord, so they call me, and when i am king of england, i shall command all the good lads in eastcheap. they call drinking deep, dyeing scarlet; and when you breathe in your watering, they cry 'hem!' and bid you play it off. to conclude, i am so good a proficient in one quarter of an hour, that i can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life. i tell thee, ned, thou hast lost much honour, that thou wert not with me in this sweet action. but, sweet ned,--to sweeten which name of ned, i give thee this pennyworth of sugar, clapped even now into my hand by an under-skinker, one that never spake other english in his life than 'eight shillings and sixpence' and 'you are welcome,' with this shrill addition, 'anon, anon, sir! score a pint of bastard in the half-moon,' or so. but, ned, to drive away the time till falstaff come, i prithee, do thou stand in some by-room, while i question my puny drawer to what end he gave me the sugar; and do thou never leave calling 'francis,' that his tale to me may be nothing but 'anon.' step aside, and i'll show thee a precedent. poins francis! prince henry thou art perfect. poins francis! [exit poins] [enter francis] francis anon, anon, sir. look down into the pomgarnet, ralph. prince henry come hither, francis. francis my lord? prince henry how long hast thou to serve, francis? francis forsooth, five years, and as much as to- poins [within] francis! francis anon, anon, sir. prince henry five year! by'r lady, a long lease for the clinking of pewter. but, francis, darest thou be so valiant as to play the coward with thy indenture and show it a fair pair of heels and run from it? francis o lord, sir, i'll be sworn upon all the books in england, i could find in my heart. poins [within] francis! francis anon, sir. prince henry how old art thou, francis? francis let me see--about michaelmas next i shall be- poins [within] francis! francis anon, sir. pray stay a little, my lord. prince henry nay, but hark you, francis: for the sugar thou gavest me,'twas a pennyworth, wast't not? francis o lord, i would it had been two! prince henry i will give thee for it a thousand pound: ask me when thou wilt, and thou shalt have it. poins [within] francis! francis anon, anon. prince henry anon, francis? no, francis; but to-morrow, francis; or, francis, o' thursday; or indeed, francis, when thou wilt. but, francis! francis my lord? prince henry wilt thou rob this leathern jerkin, crystal-button, not-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth-tongue, spanish-pouch,- francis o lord, sir, who do you mean? prince henry why, then, your brown bastard is your only drink; for look you, francis, your white canvas doublet will sully: in barbary, sir, it cannot come to so much. francis what, sir? poins [within] francis! prince henry away, you rogue! dost thou not hear them call? [here they both call him; the drawer stands amazed, not knowing which way to go] [enter vintner] vintner what, standest thou still, and hearest such a calling? look to the guests within. [exit francis] my lord, old sir john, with half-a-dozen more, are at the door: shall i let them in? prince henry let them alone awhile, and then open the door. [exit vintner] poins! [re-enter poins] poins anon, anon, sir. prince henry sirrah, falstaff and the rest of the thieves are at the door: shall we be merry? poins as merry as crickets, my lad. but hark ye; what cunning match have you made with this jest of the drawer? come, what's the issue? prince henry i am now of all humours that have showed themselves humours since the old days of goodman adam to the pupil age of this present twelve o'clock at midnight. [re-enter francis] what's o'clock, francis? francis anon, anon, sir. [exit] prince henry that ever this fellow should have fewer words than a parrot, and yet the son of a woman! his industry is upstairs and downstairs; his eloquence the parcel of a reckoning. i am not yet of percy's mind, the hotspur of the north; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife 'fie upon this quiet life! i want work.' 'o my sweet harry,' says she, 'how many hast thou killed to-day?' 'give my roan horse a drench,' says he; and answers 'some fourteen,' an hour after; 'a trifle, a trifle.' i prithee, call in falstaff: i'll play percy, and that damned brawn shall play dame mortimer his wife. 'rivo!' says the drunkard. call in ribs, call in tallow. [enter falstaff, gadshill, bardolph, and peto; francis following with wine] poins welcome, jack: where hast thou been? falstaff a plague of all cowards, i say, and a vengeance too! marry, and amen! give me a cup of sack, boy. ere i lead this life long, i'll sew nether stocks and mend them and foot them too. a plague of all cowards! give me a cup of sack, rogue. is there no virtue extant? [he drinks] prince henry didst thou never see titan kiss a dish of butter? pitiful-hearted titan, that melted at the sweet tale of the sun's! if thou didst, then behold that compound. falstaff you rogue, here's lime in this sack too: there is nothing but roguery to be found in villanous man: yet a coward is worse than a cup of sack with lime in it. a villanous coward! go thy ways, old jack; die when thou wilt, if manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am i a shotten herring. there live not three good men unhanged in england; and one of them is fat and grows old: god help the while! a bad world, i say. i would i were a weaver; i could sing psalms or any thing. a plague of all cowards, i say still. prince henry how now, wool-sack! what mutter you? falstaff a king's son! if i do not beat thee out of thy kingdom with a dagger of lath, and drive all thy subjects afore thee like a flock of wild-geese, i'll never wear hair on my face more. you prince of wales! prince henry why, you whoreson round man, what's the matter? falstaff are not you a coward? answer me to that: and poins there? poins 'zounds, ye fat paunch, an ye call me coward, by the lord, i'll stab thee. falstaff i call thee coward! i'll see thee damned ere i call thee coward: but i would give a thousand pound i could run as fast as thou canst. you are straight enough in the shoulders, you care not who sees your back: call you that backing of your friends? a plague upon such backing! give me them that will face me. give me a cup of sack: i am a rogue, if i drunk to-day. prince henry o villain! thy lips are scarce wiped since thou drunkest last. falstaff all's one for that. [he drinks] a plague of all cowards, still say i. prince henry what's the matter? falstaff what's the matter! there be four of us here have ta'en a thousand pound this day morning. prince henry where is it, jack? where is it? falstaff where is it! taken from us it is: a hundred upon poor four of us. prince henry what, a hundred, man? falstaff i am a rogue, if i were not at half-sword with a dozen of them two hours together. i have 'scaped by miracle. i am eight times thrust through the doublet, four through the hose; my buckler cut through and through; my sword hacked like a hand-saw--ecce signum! i never dealt better since i was a man: all would not do. a plague of all cowards! let them speak: if they speak more or less than truth, they are villains and the sons of darkness. prince henry speak, sirs; how was it? gadshill we four set upon some dozen- falstaff sixteen at least, my lord. gadshill and bound them. peto no, no, they were not bound. falstaff you rogue, they were bound, every man of them; or i am a jew else, an ebrew jew. gadshill as we were sharing, some six or seven fresh men set upon us- falstaff and unbound the rest, and then come in the other. prince henry what, fought you with them all? falstaff all! i know not what you call all; but if i fought not with fifty of them, i am a bunch of radish: if there were not two or three and fifty upon poor old jack, then am i no two-legged creature. prince henry pray god you have not murdered some of them. falstaff nay, that's past praying for: i have peppered two of them; two i am sure i have paid, two rogues in buckram suits. i tell thee what, hal, if i tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse. thou knowest my old ward; here i lay and thus i bore my point. four rogues in buckram let drive at me- prince henry what, four? thou saidst but two even now. falstaff four, hal; i told thee four. poins ay, ay, he said four. falstaff these four came all a-front, and mainly thrust at me. i made me no more ado but took all their seven points in my target, thus. prince henry seven? why, there were but four even now. falstaff in buckram? poins ay, four, in buckram suits. falstaff seven, by these hilts, or i am a villain else. prince henry prithee, let him alone; we shall have more anon. falstaff dost thou hear me, hal? prince henry ay, and mark thee too, jack. falstaff do so, for it is worth the listening to. these nine in buckram that i told thee of- prince henry so, two more already. falstaff their points being broken,- poins down fell their hose. falstaff began to give me ground: but i followed me close, came in foot and hand; and with a thought seven of the eleven i paid. prince henry o monstrous! eleven buckram men grown out of two! falstaff but, as the devil would have it, three misbegotten knaves in kendal green came at my back and let drive at me; for it was so dark, hal, that thou couldst not see thy hand. prince henry these lies are like their father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable. why, thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson, obscene, grease tallow-catch,- falstaff what, art thou mad? art thou mad? is not the truth the truth? prince henry why, how couldst thou know these men in kendal green, when it was so dark thou couldst not see thy hand? come, tell us your reason: what sayest thou to this? poins come, your reason, jack, your reason. falstaff what, upon compulsion? 'zounds, an i were at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, i would not tell you on compulsion. give you a reason on compulsion! if reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, i would give no man a reason upon compulsion, i. prince henry i'll be no longer guilty of this sin; this sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horseback-breaker, this huge hill of flesh,- falstaff 'sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried neat's tongue, you bull's pizzle, you stock-fish! o for breath to utter what is like thee! you tailor's-yard, you sheath, you bowcase; you vile standing-tuck,- prince henry well, breathe awhile, and then to it again: and when thou hast tired thyself in base comparisons, hear me speak but this. poins mark, jack. prince henry we two saw you four set on four and bound them, and were masters of their wealth. mark now, how a plain tale shall put you down. then did we two set on you four; and, with a word, out-faced you from your prize, and have it; yea, and can show it you here in the house: and, falstaff, you carried your guts away as nimbly, with as quick dexterity, and roared for mercy and still run and roared, as ever i heard bull-calf. what a slave art thou, to hack thy sword as thou hast done, and then say it was in fight! what trick, what device, what starting-hole, canst thou now find out to hide thee from this open and apparent shame? poins come, let's hear, jack; what trick hast thou now? falstaff by the lord, i knew ye as well as he that made ye. why, hear you, my masters: was it for me to kill the heir-apparent? should i turn upon the true prince? why, thou knowest i am as valiant as hercules: but beware instinct; the lion will not touch the true prince. instinct is a great matter; i was now a coward on instinct. i shall think the better of myself and thee during my life; i for a valiant lion, and thou for a true prince. but, by the lord, lads, i am glad you have the money. hostess, clap to the doors: watch to-night, pray to-morrow. gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold, all the titles of good fellowship come to you! what, shall we be merry? shall we have a play extempore? prince henry content; and the argument shall be thy running away. falstaff ah, no more of that, hal, an thou lovest me! [enter hostess] hostess o jesu, my lord the prince! prince henry how now, my lady the hostess! what sayest thou to me? hostess marry, my lord, there is a nobleman of the court at door would speak with you: he says he comes from your father. prince henry give him as much as will make him a royal man, and send him back again to my mother. falstaff what manner of man is he? hostess an old man. falstaff what doth gravity out of his bed at midnight? shall i give him his answer? prince henry prithee, do, jack. falstaff 'faith, and i'll send him packing. [exit falstaff] prince henry now, sirs: by'r lady, you fought fair; so did you, peto; so did you, bardolph: you are lions too, you ran away upon instinct, you will not touch the true prince; no, fie! bardolph 'faith, i ran when i saw others run. prince henry 'faith, tell me now in earnest, how came falstaff's sword so hacked? peto why, he hacked it with his dagger, and said he would swear truth out of england but he would make you believe it was done in fight, and persuaded us to do the like. bardolph yea, and to tickle our noses with spear-grass to make them bleed, and then to beslubber our garments with it and swear it was the blood of true men. i did that i did not this seven year before, i blushed to hear his monstrous devices. prince henry o villain, thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert taken with the manner, and ever since thou hast blushed extempore. thou hadst fire and sword on thy side, and yet thou rannest away: what instinct hadst thou for it? bardolph my lord, do you see these meteors? do you behold these exhalations? prince henry i do. bardolph what think you they portend? prince henry hot livers and cold purses. bardolph choler, my lord, if rightly taken. prince henry no, if rightly taken, halter. [re-enter falstaff] here comes lean jack, here comes bare-bone. how now, my sweet creature of bombast! how long is't ago, jack, since thou sawest thine own knee? falstaff my own knee! when i was about thy years, hal, i was not an eagle's talon in the waist; i could have crept into any alderman's thumb-ring: a plague of sighing and grief! it blows a man up like a bladder. there's villanous news abroad: here was sir john bracy from your father; you must to the court in the morning. that same mad fellow of the north, percy, and he of wales, that gave amamon the bastinado and made lucifer cuckold and swore the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a welsh hook--what a plague call you him? poins o, glendower. falstaff owen, owen, the same; and his son-in-law mortimer, and old northumberland, and that sprightly scot of scots, douglas, that runs o' horseback up a hill perpendicular,- prince henry he that rides at high speed and with his pistol kills a sparrow flying. falstaff you have hit it. prince henry so did he never the sparrow. falstaff well, that rascal hath good mettle in him; he will not run. prince henry why, what a rascal art thou then, to praise him so for running! falstaff o' horseback, ye cuckoo; but afoot he will not budge a foot. prince henry yes, jack, upon instinct. falstaff i grant ye, upon instinct. well, he is there too, and one mordake, and a thousand blue-caps more: worcester is stolen away to-night; thy father's beard is turned white with the news: you may buy land now as cheap as stinking mackerel. prince henry why, then, it is like, if there come a hot june and this civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maidenheads as they buy hob-nails, by the hundreds. falstaff by the mass, lad, thou sayest true; it is like we shall have good trading that way. but tell me, hal, art not thou horrible afeard? thou being heir-apparent, could the world pick thee out three such enemies again as that fiend douglas, that spirit percy, and that devil glendower? art thou not horribly afraid? doth not thy blood thrill at it? prince henry not a whit, i' faith; i lack some of thy instinct. falstaff well, thou wert be horribly chid tomorrow when thou comest to thy father: if thou love me, practise an answer. prince henry do thou stand for my father, and examine me upon the particulars of my life. falstaff shall i? content: this chair shall be my state, this dagger my sceptre, and this cushion my crown. prince henry thy state is taken for a joined-stool, thy golden sceptre for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich crown for a pitiful bald crown! falstaff well, an the fire of grace be not quite out of thee, now shalt thou be moved. give me a cup of sack to make my eyes look red, that it may be thought i have wept; for i must speak in passion, and i will do it in king cambyses' vein. prince henry well, here is my leg. falstaff and here is my speech. stand aside, nobility. hostess o jesu, this is excellent sport, i' faith! falstaff weep not, sweet queen; for trickling tears are vain. hostess o, the father, how he holds his countenance! falstaff for god's sake, lords, convey my tristful queen; for tears do stop the flood-gates of her eyes. hostess o jesu, he doth it as like one of these harlotry players as ever i see! falstaff peace, good pint-pot; peace, good tickle-brain. harry, i do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied: for though the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted the sooner it wears. that thou art my son, i have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion, but chiefly a villanous trick of thine eye and a foolish-hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. if then thou be son to me, here lies the point; why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher and eat blackberries? a question not to be asked. shall the sun of england prove a thief and take purses? a question to be asked. there is a thing, harry, which thou hast often heard of and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch: this pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest: for, harry, now i do not speak to thee in drink but in tears, not in pleasure but in passion, not in words only, but in woes also: and yet there is a virtuous man whom i have often noted in thy company, but i know not his name. prince henry what manner of man, an it like your majesty? falstaff a goodly portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye and a most noble carriage; and, as i think, his age some fifty, or, by'r lady, inclining to three score; and now i remember me, his name is falstaff: if that man should be lewdly given, he deceiveth me; for, harry, i see virtue in his looks. if then the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit by the tree, then, peremptorily i speak it, there is virtue in that falstaff: him keep with, the rest banish. and tell me now, thou naughty varlet, tell me, where hast thou been this month? prince henry dost thou speak like a king? do thou stand for me, and i'll play my father. falstaff depose me? if thou dost it half so gravely, so majestically, both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a rabbit-sucker or a poulter's hare. prince henry well, here i am set. falstaff and here i stand: judge, my masters. prince henry now, harry, whence come you? falstaff my noble lord, from eastcheap. prince henry the complaints i hear of thee are grievous. falstaff 'sblood, my lord, they are false: nay, i'll tickle ye for a young prince, i' faith. prince henry swearest thou, ungracious boy? henceforth ne'er look on me. thou art violently carried away from grace: there is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man; a tun of man is thy companion. why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years? wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? wherein cunning, but in craft? wherein crafty, but in villany? wherein villanous, but in all things? wherein worthy, but in nothing? falstaff i would your grace would take me with you: whom means your grace? prince henry that villanous abominable misleader of youth, falstaff, that old white-bearded satan. falstaff my lord, the man i know. prince henry i know thou dost. falstaff but to say i know more harm in him than in myself, were to say more than i know. that he is old, the more the pity, his white hairs do witness it; but that he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster, that i utterly deny. if sack and sugar be a fault, god help the wicked! if to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that i know is damned: if to be fat be to be hated, then pharaoh's lean kine are to be loved. no, my good lord; banish peto, banish bardolph, banish poins: but for sweet jack falstaff, kind jack falstaff, true jack falstaff, valiant jack falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being, as he is, old jack falstaff, banish not him thy harry's company, banish not him thy harry's company: banish plump jack, and banish all the world. prince henry i do, i will. [a knocking heard] [exeunt hostess, francis, and bardolph] [re-enter bardolph, running] bardolph o, my lord, my lord! the sheriff with a most monstrous watch is at the door. falstaff out, ye rogue! play out the play: i have much to say in the behalf of that falstaff. [re-enter the hostess] hostess o jesu, my lord, my lord! prince henry heigh, heigh! the devil rides upon a fiddlestick: what's the matter? hostess the sheriff and all the watch are at the door: they are come to search the house. shall i let them in? falstaff dost thou hear, hal? never call a true piece of gold a counterfeit: thou art essentially mad, without seeming so. prince henry and thou a natural coward, without instinct. falstaff i deny your major: if you will deny the sheriff, so; if not, let him enter: if i become not a cart as well as another man, a plague on my bringing up! i hope i shall as soon be strangled with a halter as another. prince henry go, hide thee behind the arras: the rest walk up above. now, my masters, for a true face and good conscience. falstaff both which i have had: but their date is out, and therefore i'll hide me. prince henry call in the sheriff. [exeunt all except prince henry and peto] [enter sheriff and the carrier] now, master sheriff, what is your will with me? sheriff first, pardon me, my lord. a hue and cry hath follow'd certain men unto this house. prince henry what men? sheriff one of them is well known, my gracious lord, a gross fat man. carrier as fat as butter. prince henry the man, i do assure you, is not here; for i myself at this time have employ'd him. and, sheriff, i will engage my word to thee that i will, by to-morrow dinner-time, send him to answer thee, or any man, for any thing he shall be charged withal: and so let me entreat you leave the house. sheriff i will, my lord. there are two gentlemen have in this robbery lost three hundred marks. prince henry it may be so: if he have robb'd these men, he shall be answerable; and so farewell. sheriff good night, my noble lord. prince henry i think it is good morrow, is it not? sheriff indeed, my lord, i think it be two o'clock. [exeunt sheriff and carrier] prince henry this oily rascal is known as well as paul's. go, call him forth. peto falstaff!--fast asleep behind the arras, and snorting like a horse. prince henry hark, how hard he fetches breath. search his pockets. [he searcheth his pockets, and findeth certain papers] what hast thou found? peto nothing but papers, my lord. prince henry let's see what they be: read them. peto [reads] item, a capon,. . 2s. 2d. item, sauce,. . . 4d. item, sack, two gallons, 5s. 8d. item, anchovies and sack after supper, 2s. 6d. item, bread, ob. prince henry o monstrous! but one half-penny-worth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack! what there is else, keep close; we'll read it at more advantage: there let him sleep till day. i'll to the court in the morning. we must all to the wars, and thy place shall be honourable. i'll procure this fat rogue a charge of foot; and i know his death will be a march of twelve-score. the money shall be paid back again with advantage. be with me betimes in the morning; and so, good morrow, peto. [exeunt] peto good morrow, good my lord. 1 king henry iv act iii scene i bangor. the archdeacon's house. [enter hotspur, worcester, mortimer, and glendower] mortimer these promises are fair, the parties sure, and our induction full of prosperous hope. hotspur lord mortimer, and cousin glendower, will you sit down? and uncle worcester: a plague upon it! i have forgot the map. glendower no, here it is. sit, cousin percy; sit, good cousin hotspur, for by that name as oft as lancaster doth speak of you, his cheek looks pale and with a rising sigh he wisheth you in heaven. hotspur and you in hell, as oft as he hears owen glendower spoke of. glendower i cannot blame him: at my nativity the front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, of burning cressets; and at my birth the frame and huge foundation of the earth shaked like a coward. hotspur why, so it would have done at the same season, if your mother's cat had but kittened, though yourself had never been born. glendower i say the earth did shake when i was born. hotspur and i say the earth was not of my mind, if you suppose as fearing you it shook. glendower the heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble. hotspur o, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire, and not in fear of your nativity. diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth in strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth is with a kind of colic pinch'd and vex'd by the imprisoning of unruly wind within her womb; which, for enlargement striving, shakes the old beldam earth and topples down steeples and moss-grown towers. at your birth our grandam earth, having this distemperature, in passion shook. glendower cousin, of many men i do not bear these crossings. give me leave to tell you once again that at my birth the front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, the goats ran from the mountains, and the herds were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields. these signs have mark'd me extraordinary; and all the courses of my life do show i am not in the roll of common men. where is he living, clipp'd in with the sea that chides the banks of england, scotland, wales, which calls me pupil, or hath read to me? and bring him out that is but woman's son can trace me in the tedious ways of art and hold me pace in deep experiments. hotspur i think there's no man speaks better welsh. i'll to dinner. mortimer peace, cousin percy; you will make him mad. glendower i can call spirits from the vasty deep. hotspur why, so can i, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them? glendower why, i can teach you, cousin, to command the devil. hotspur and i can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil by telling truth: tell truth and shame the devil. if thou have power to raise him, bring him hither, and i'll be sworn i have power to shame him hence. o, while you live, tell truth and shame the devil! mortimer come, come, no more of this unprofitable chat. glendower three times hath henry bolingbroke made head against my power; thrice from the banks of wye and sandy-bottom'd severn have i sent him bootless home and weather-beaten back. hotspur home without boots, and in foul weather too! how 'scapes he agues, in the devil's name? glendower come, here's the map: shall we divide our right according to our threefold order ta'en? mortimer the archdeacon hath divided it into three limits very equally: england, from trent and severn hitherto, by south and east is to my part assign'd: all westward, wales beyond the severn shore, and all the fertile land within that bound, to owen glendower: and, dear coz, to you the remnant northward, lying off from trent. and our indentures tripartite are drawn; which being sealed interchangeably, a business that this night may execute, to-morrow, cousin percy, you and i and my good lord of worcester will set forth to meet your father and the scottish power, as is appointed us, at shrewsbury. my father glendower is not ready yet, not shall we need his help these fourteen days. within that space you may have drawn together your tenants, friends and neighbouring gentlemen. glendower a shorter time shall send me to you, lords: and in my conduct shall your ladies come; from whom you now must steal and take no leave, for there will be a world of water shed upon the parting of your wives and you. hotspur methinks my moiety, north from burton here, in quantity equals not one of yours: see how this river comes me cranking in, and cuts me from the best of all my land a huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out. i'll have the current in this place damm'd up; and here the smug and silver trent shall run in a new channel, fair and evenly; it shall not wind with such a deep indent, to rob me of so rich a bottom here. glendower not wind? it shall, it must; you see it doth. mortimer yea, but mark how he bears his course, and runs me up with like advantage on the other side; gelding the opposed continent as much as on the other side it takes from you. earl of worcester yea, but a little charge will trench him here and on this north side win this cape of land; and then he runs straight and even. hotspur i'll have it so: a little charge will do it. glendower i'll not have it alter'd. hotspur will not you? glendower no, nor you shall not. hotspur who shall say me nay? glendower why, that will i. hotspur let me not understand you, then; speak it in welsh. glendower i can speak english, lord, as well as you; for i was train'd up in the english court; where, being but young, i framed to the harp many an english ditty lovely well and gave the tongue a helpful ornament, a virtue that was never seen in you. hotspur marry, and i am glad of it with all my heart: i had rather be a kitten and cry mew than one of these same metre ballad-mongers; i had rather hear a brazen canstick turn'd, or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree; and that would set my teeth nothing on edge, nothing so much as mincing poetry: 'tis like the forced gait of a shuffling nag. glendower come, you shall have trent turn'd. hotspur i do not care: i'll give thrice so much land to any well-deserving friend; but in the way of bargain, mark ye me, i'll cavil on the ninth part of a hair. are the indentures drawn? shall we be gone? glendower the moon shines fair; you may away by night: i'll haste the writer and withal break with your wives of your departure hence: i am afraid my daughter will run mad, so much she doteth on her mortimer. [exit glendower] mortimer fie, cousin percy! how you cross my father! hotspur i cannot choose: sometime he angers me with telling me of the mouldwarp and the ant, of the dreamer merlin and his prophecies, and of a dragon and a finless fish, a clip-wing'd griffin and a moulten raven, a couching lion and a ramping cat, and such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff as puts me from my faith. i tell you what; he held me last night at least nine hours in reckoning up the several devils' names that were his lackeys: i cried 'hum,' and 'well, go to,' but mark'd him not a word. o, he is as tedious as a tired horse, a railing wife; worse than a smoky house: i had rather live with cheese and garlic in a windmill, far, than feed on cates and have him talk to me in any summer-house in christendom. mortimer in faith, he is a worthy gentleman, exceedingly well read, and profited in strange concealments, valiant as a lion and as wondrous affable and as bountiful as mines of india. shall i tell you, cousin? he holds your temper in a high respect and curbs himself even of his natural scope when you come 'cross his humour; faith, he does: i warrant you, that man is not alive might so have tempted him as you have done, without the taste of danger and reproof: but do not use it oft, let me entreat you. earl of worcester in faith, my lord, you are too wilful-blame; and since your coming hither have done enough to put him quite beside his patience. you must needs learn, lord, to amend this fault: though sometimes it show greatness, courage, blood,- and that's the dearest grace it renders you,- yet oftentimes it doth present harsh rage, defect of manners, want of government, pride, haughtiness, opinion and disdain: the least of which haunting a nobleman loseth men's hearts and leaves behind a stain upon the beauty of all parts besides, beguiling them of commendation. hotspur well, i am school'd: good manners be your speed! here come our wives, and let us take our leave. [re-enter glendower with the ladies] mortimer this is the deadly spite that angers me; my wife can speak no english, i no welsh. glendower my daughter weeps: she will not part with you; she'll be a soldier too, she'll to the wars. mortimer good father, tell her that she and my aunt percy shall follow in your conduct speedily. [glendower speaks to her in welsh, and she answers him in the same] glendower she is desperate here; a peevish self-wind harlotry, one that no persuasion can do good upon. [the lady speaks in welsh] mortimer i understand thy looks: that pretty welsh which thou pour'st down from these swelling heavens i am too perfect in; and, but for shame, in such a parley should i answer thee. [the lady speaks again in welsh] i understand thy kisses and thou mine, and that's a feeling disputation: but i will never be a truant, love, till i have learned thy language; for thy tongue makes welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn'd, sung by a fair queen in a summer's bower, with ravishing division, to her lute. glendower nay, if you melt, then will she run mad. [the lady speaks again in welsh] mortimer o, i am ignorance itself in this! glendower she bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down and rest your gentle head upon her lap, and she will sing the song that pleaseth you and on your eyelids crown the god of sleep. charming your blood with pleasing heaviness, making such difference 'twixt wake and sleep as is the difference betwixt day and night the hour before the heavenly-harness'd team begins his golden progress in the east. mortimer with all my heart i'll sit and hear her sing: by that time will our book, i think, be drawn glendower do so; and those musicians that shall play to you hang in the air a thousand leagues from hence, and straight they shall be here: sit, and attend. hotspur come, kate, thou art perfect in lying down: come, quick, quick, that i may lay my head in thy lap. lady percy go, ye giddy goose. [the music plays] hotspur now i perceive the devil understands welsh; and 'tis no marvel he is so humorous. by'r lady, he is a good musician. lady percy then should you be nothing but musical for you are altogether governed by humours. lie still, ye thief, and hear the lady sing in welsh. hotspur i had rather hear lady, my brach, howl in irish. lady percy wouldst thou have thy head broken? hotspur no. lady percy then be still. hotspur neither;'tis a woman's fault. lady percy now god help thee! hotspur to the welsh lady's bed. lady percy what's that? hotspur peace! she sings. [here the lady sings a welsh song] hotspur come, kate, i'll have your song too. lady percy not mine, in good sooth. hotspur not yours, in good sooth! heart! you swear like a comfit-maker's wife. 'not you, in good sooth,' and 'as true as i live,' and 'as god shall mend me,' and 'as sure as day,' and givest such sarcenet surety for thy oaths, as if thou never walk'st further than finsbury. swear me, kate, like a lady as thou art, a good mouth-filling oath, and leave 'in sooth,' and such protest of pepper-gingerbread, to velvet-guards and sunday-citizens. come, sing. lady percy i will not sing. hotspur 'tis the next way to turn tailor, or be red-breast teacher. an the indentures be drawn, i'll away within these two hours; and so, come in when ye will. [exit] glendower come, come, lord mortimer; you are as slow as hot lord percy is on fire to go. by this our book is drawn; we'll but seal, and then to horse immediately. mortimer with all my heart. [exeunt] 1 king henry iv act iii scene ii london. the palace. [enter king henry iv, prince henry, and others] king henry iv lords, give us leave; the prince of wales and i must have some private conference; but be near at hand, for we shall presently have need of you. [exeunt lords] i know not whether god will have it so, for some displeasing service i have done, that, in his secret doom, out of my blood he'll breed revengement and a scourge for me; but thou dost in thy passages of life make me believe that thou art only mark'd for the hot vengeance and the rod of heaven to punish my mistreadings. tell me else, could such inordinate and low desires, such poor, such bare, such lewd, such mean attempts, such barren pleasures, rude society, as thou art match'd withal and grafted to, accompany the greatness of thy blood and hold their level with thy princely heart? prince henry so please your majesty, i would i could quit all offences with as clear excuse as well as i am doubtless i can purge myself of many i am charged withal: yet such extenuation let me beg, as, in reproof of many tales devised, which oft the ear of greatness needs must hear, by smiling pick-thanks and base news-mongers, i may, for some things true, wherein my youth hath faulty wander'd and irregular, find pardon on my true submission. king henry iv god pardon thee! yet let me wonder, harry, at thy affections, which do hold a wing quite from the flight of all thy ancestors. thy place in council thou hast rudely lost. which by thy younger brother is supplied, and art almost an alien to the hearts of all the court and princes of my blood: the hope and expectation of thy time is ruin'd, and the soul of every man prophetically doth forethink thy fall. had i so lavish of my presence been, so common-hackney'd in the eyes of men, so stale and cheap to vulgar company, opinion, that did help me to the crown, had still kept loyal to possession and left me in reputeless banishment, a fellow of no mark nor likelihood. by being seldom seen, i could not stir but like a comet i was wonder'd at; that men would tell their children 'this is he;' others would say 'where, which is bolingbroke?' and then i stole all courtesy from heaven, and dress'd myself in such humility that i did pluck allegiance from men's hearts, loud shouts and salutations from their mouths, even in the presence of the crowned king. thus did i keep my person fresh and new; my presence, like a robe pontifical, ne'er seen but wonder'd at: and so my state, seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast and won by rareness such solemnity. the skipping king, he ambled up and down with shallow jesters and rash bavin wits, soon kindled and soon burnt; carded his state, mingled his royalty with capering fools, had his great name profaned with their scorns and gave his countenance, against his name, to laugh at gibing boys and stand the push of every beardless vain comparative, grew a companion to the common streets, enfeoff'd himself to popularity; that, being daily swallow'd by men's eyes, they surfeited with honey and began to loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little more than a little is by much too much. so when he had occasion to be seen, he was but as the cuckoo is in june, heard, not regarded; seen, but with such eyes as, sick and blunted with community, afford no extraordinary gaze, such as is bent on sun-like majesty when it shines seldom in admiring eyes; but rather drowzed and hung their eyelids down, slept in his face and render'd such aspect as cloudy men use to their adversaries, being with his presence glutted, gorged and full. and in that very line, harry, standest thou; for thou has lost thy princely privilege with vile participation: not an eye but is a-weary of thy common sight, save mine, which hath desired to see thee more; which now doth that i would not have it do, make blind itself with foolish tenderness. prince henry i shall hereafter, my thrice gracious lord, be more myself. king henry iv for all the world as thou art to this hour was richard then when i from france set foot at ravenspurgh, and even as i was then is percy now. now, by my sceptre and my soul to boot, he hath more worthy interest to the state than thou the shadow of succession; for of no right, nor colour like to right, he doth fill fields with harness in the realm, turns head against the lion's armed jaws, and, being no more in debt to years than thou, leads ancient lords and reverend bishops on to bloody battles and to bruising arms. what never-dying honour hath he got against renowned douglas! whose high deeds, whose hot incursions and great name in arms holds from all soldiers chief majority and military title capital through all the kingdoms that acknowledge christ: thrice hath this hotspur, mars in swathling clothes, this infant warrior, in his enterprises discomfited great douglas, ta'en him once, enlarged him and made a friend of him, to fill the mouth of deep defiance up and shake the peace and safety of our throne. and what say you to this? percy, northumberland, the archbishop's grace of york, douglas, mortimer, capitulate against us and are up. but wherefore do i tell these news to thee? why, harry, do i tell thee of my foes, which art my near'st and dearest enemy? thou that art like enough, through vassal fear, base inclination and the start of spleen to fight against me under percy's pay, to dog his heels and curtsy at his frowns, to show how much thou art degenerate. prince henry do not think so; you shall not find it so: and god forgive them that so much have sway'd your majesty's good thoughts away from me! i will redeem all this on percy's head and in the closing of some glorious day be bold to tell you that i am your son; when i will wear a garment all of blood and stain my favours in a bloody mask, which, wash'd away, shall scour my shame with it: and that shall be the day, whene'er it lights, that this same child of honour and renown, this gallant hotspur, this all-praised knight, and your unthought-of harry chance to meet. for every honour sitting on his helm, would they were multitudes, and on my head my shames redoubled! for the time will come, that i shall make this northern youth exchange his glorious deeds for my indignities. percy is but my factor, good my lord, to engross up glorious deeds on my behalf; and i will call him to so strict account, that he shall render every glory up, yea, even the slightest worship of his time, or i will tear the reckoning from his heart. this, in the name of god, i promise here: the which if he be pleased i shall perform, i do beseech your majesty may salve the long-grown wounds of my intemperance: if not, the end of life cancels all bands; and i will die a hundred thousand deaths ere break the smallest parcel of this vow. king henry iv a hundred thousand rebels die in this: thou shalt have charge and sovereign trust herein. [enter blunt] how now, good blunt? thy looks are full of speed. sir walter blunt so hath the business that i come to speak of. lord mortimer of scotland hath sent word that douglas and the english rebels met the eleventh of this month at shrewsbury a mighty and a fearful head they are, if promises be kept on every hand, as ever offer'd foul play in the state. king henry iv the earl of westmoreland set forth to-day; with him my son, lord john of lancaster; for this advertisement is five days old: on wednesday next, harry, you shall set forward; on thursday we ourselves will march: our meeting is bridgenorth: and, harry, you shall march through gloucestershire; by which account, our business valued, some twelve days hence our general forces at bridgenorth shall meet. our hands are full of business: let's away; advantage feeds him fat, while men delay. [exeunt] 1 king henry iv act iii scene iii eastcheap. the boar's-head tavern. [enter falstaff and bardolph] falstaff bardolph, am i not fallen away vilely since this last action? do i not bate? do i not dwindle? why my skin hangs about me like an like an old lady's loose gown; i am withered like an old apple-john. well, i'll repent, and that suddenly, while i am in some liking; i shall be out of heart shortly, and then i shall have no strength to repent. an i have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, i am a peppercorn, a brewer's horse: the inside of a church! company, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me. bardolph sir john, you are so fretful, you cannot live long. falstaff why, there is it: come sing me a bawdy song; make me merry. i was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be; virtuous enough; swore little; diced not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house once in a quarter--of an hour; paid money that i borrowed, three of four times; lived well and in good compass: and now i live out of all order, out of all compass. bardolph why, you are so fat, sir john, that you must needs be out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass, sir john. falstaff do thou amend thy face, and i'll amend my life: thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop, but 'tis in the nose of thee; thou art the knight of the burning lamp. bardolph why, sir john, my face does you no harm. falstaff no, i'll be sworn; i make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death's-head or a memento mori: i never see thy face but i think upon hell-fire and dives that lived in purple; for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. if thou wert any way given to virtue, i would swear by thy face; my oath should be 'by this fire, that's god's angel:' but thou art altogether given over; and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. when thou rannest up gadshill in the night to catch my horse, if i did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a ball of wildfire, there's no purchase in money. o, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern: but the sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest chandler's in europe. i have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two and thirty years; god reward me for it! bardolph 'sblood, i would my face were in your belly! falstaff god-a-mercy! so should i be sure to be heart-burned. [enter hostess] how now, dame partlet the hen! have you inquired yet who picked my pocket? hostess why, sir john, what do you think, sir john? do you think i keep thieves in my house? i have searched, i have inquired, so has my husband, man by man, boy by boy, servant by servant: the tithe of a hair was never lost in my house before. falstaff ye lie, hostess: bardolph was shaved and lost many a hair; and i'll be sworn my pocket was picked. go to, you are a woman, go. hostess who, i? no; i defy thee: god's light, i was never called so in mine own house before. falstaff go to, i know you well enough. hostess no, sir john; you do not know me, sir john. i know you, sir john: you owe me money, sir john; and now you pick a quarrel to beguile me of it: i bought you a dozen of shirts to your back. falstaff dowlas, filthy dowlas: i have given them away to bakers' wives, and they have made bolters of them. hostess now, as i am a true woman, holland of eight shillings an ell. you owe money here besides, sir john, for your diet and by-drinkings, and money lent you, four and twenty pound. falstaff he had his part of it; let him pay. hostess he? alas, he is poor; he hath nothing. falstaff how! poor? look upon his face; what call you rich? let them coin his nose, let them coin his cheeks: ill not pay a denier. what, will you make a younker of me? shall i not take mine case in mine inn but i shall have my pocket picked? i have lost a seal-ring of my grandfather's worth forty mark. hostess o jesu, i have heard the prince tell him, i know not how oft, that ring was copper! falstaff how! the prince is a jack, a sneak-cup: 'sblood, an he were here, i would cudgel him like a dog, if he would say so. [enter prince henry and peto, marching, and falstaff meets them playing on his truncheon like a life] how now, lad! is the wind in that door, i' faith? must we all march? bardolph yea, two and two, newgate fashion. hostess my lord, i pray you, hear me. prince henry what sayest thou, mistress quickly? how doth thy husband? i love him well; he is an honest man. hostess good my lord, hear me. falstaff prithee, let her alone, and list to me. prince henry what sayest thou, jack? falstaff the other night i fell asleep here behind the arras and had my pocket picked: this house is turned bawdy-house; they pick pockets. prince henry what didst thou lose, jack? falstaff wilt thou believe me, hal? three or four bonds of forty pound apiece, and a seal-ring of my grandfather's. prince henry a trifle, some eight-penny matter. hostess so i told him, my lord; and i said i heard your grace say so: and, my lord, he speaks most vilely of you, like a foul-mouthed man as he is; and said he would cudgel you. prince henry what! he did not? hostess there's neither faith, truth, nor womanhood in me else. falstaff there's no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune; nor no more truth in thee than in a drawn fox; and for womanhood, maid marian may be the deputy's wife of the ward to thee. go, you thing, go hostess say, what thing? what thing? falstaff what thing! why, a thing to thank god on. hostess i am no thing to thank god on, i would thou shouldst know it; i am an honest man's wife: and, setting thy knighthood aside, thou art a knave to call me so. falstaff setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a beast to say otherwise. hostess say, what beast, thou knave, thou? falstaff what beast! why, an otter. prince henry an otter, sir john! why an otter? falstaff why, she's neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her. hostess thou art an unjust man in saying so: thou or any man knows where to have me, thou knave, thou! prince henry thou sayest true, hostess; and he slanders thee most grossly. hostess so he doth you, my lord; and said this other day you ought him a thousand pound. prince henry sirrah, do i owe you a thousand pound? falstaff a thousand pound, ha! a million: thy love is worth a million: thou owest me thy love. hostess nay, my lord, he called you jack, and said he would cudgel you. falstaff did i, bardolph? bardolph indeed, sir john, you said so. falstaff yea, if he said my ring was copper. prince henry i say 'tis copper: darest thou be as good as thy word now? falstaff why, hal, thou knowest, as thou art but man, i dare: but as thou art prince, i fear thee as i fear the roaring of a lion's whelp. prince henry and why not as the lion? falstaff the king is to be feared as the lion: dost thou think i'll fear thee as i fear thy father? nay, an i do, i pray god my girdle break. prince henry o, if it should, how would thy guts fall about thy knees! but, sirrah, there's no room for faith, truth, nor honesty in this bosom of thine; it is all filled up with guts and midriff. charge an honest woman with picking thy pocket! why, thou whoreson, impudent, embossed rascal, if there were anything in thy pocket but tavern-reckonings, memorandums of bawdy-houses, and one poor penny-worth of sugar-candy to make thee long-winded, if thy pocket were enriched with any other injuries but these, i am a villain: and yet you will stand to if; you will not pocket up wrong: art thou not ashamed? falstaff dost thou hear, hal? thou knowest in the state of innocency adam fell; and what should poor jack falstaff do in the days of villany? thou seest i have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty. you confess then, you picked my pocket? prince henry it appears so by the story. falstaff hostess, i forgive thee: go, make ready breakfast; love thy husband, look to thy servants, cherish thy guests: thou shalt find me tractable to any honest reason: thou seest i am pacified still. nay, prithee, be gone. [exit hostess] now hal, to the news at court: for the robbery, lad, how is that answered? prince henry o, my sweet beef, i must still be good angel to thee: the money is paid back again. falstaff o, i do not like that paying back; 'tis a double labour. prince henry i am good friends with my father and may do any thing. falstaff rob me the exchequer the first thing thou doest, and do it with unwashed hands too. bardolph do, my lord. prince henry i have procured thee, jack, a charge of foot. falstaff i would it had been of horse. where shall i find one that can steal well? o for a fine thief, of the age of two and twenty or thereabouts! i am heinously unprovided. well, god be thanked for these rebels, they offend none but the virtuous: i laud them, i praise them. prince henry bardolph! bardolph my lord? prince henry go bear this letter to lord john of lancaster, to my brother john; this to my lord of westmoreland. [exit bardolph] go, peto, to horse, to horse; for thou and i have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner time. [exit peto] jack, meet me to-morrow in the temple hall at two o'clock in the afternoon. there shalt thou know thy charge; and there receive money and order for their furniture. the land is burning; percy stands on high; and either we or they must lower lie. [exit prince henry] falstaff rare words! brave world! hostess, my breakfast, come! o, i could wish this tavern were my drum! [exit] 1 king henry iv act iv scene i the rebel camp near shrewsbury. [enter hotspur, worcester, and douglas] hotspur well said, my noble scot: if speaking truth in this fine age were not thought flattery, such attribution should the douglas have, as not a soldier of this season's stamp should go so general current through the world. by god, i cannot flatter; i do defy the tongues of soothers; but a braver place in my heart's love hath no man than yourself: nay, task me to my word; approve me, lord. earl of douglas thou art the king of honour: no man so potent breathes upon the ground but i will beard him. hotspur do so, and 'tis well. [enter a messenger with letters] what letters hast thou there?--i can but thank you. messenger these letters come from your father. hotspur letters from him! why comes he not himself? messenger he cannot come, my lord; he is grievous sick. hotspur 'zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick in such a rustling time? who leads his power? under whose government come they along? messenger his letters bear his mind, not i, my lord. earl of worcester i prithee, tell me, doth he keep his bed? messenger he did, my lord, four days ere i set forth; and at the time of my departure thence he was much fear'd by his physicians. earl of worcester i would the state of time had first been whole ere he by sickness had been visited: his health was never better worth than now. hotspur sick now! droop now! this sickness doth infect the very life-blood of our enterprise; 'tis catching hither, even to our camp. he writes me here, that inward sickness- and that his friends by deputation could not so soon be drawn, nor did he think it meet to lay so dangerous and dear a trust on any soul removed but on his own. yet doth he give us bold advertisement, that with our small conjunction we should on, to see how fortune is disposed to us; for, as he writes, there is no quailing now. because the king is certainly possess'd of all our purposes. what say you to it? earl of worcester your father's sickness is a maim to us. hotspur a perilous gash, a very limb lopp'd off: and yet, in faith, it is not; his present want seems more than we shall find it: were it good to set the exact wealth of all our states all at one cast? to set so rich a main on the nice hazard of one doubtful hour? it were not good; for therein should we read the very bottom and the soul of hope, the very list, the very utmost bound of all our fortunes. earl of douglas 'faith, and so we should; where now remains a sweet reversion: we may boldly spend upon the hope of what is to come in: a comfort of retirement lives in this. hotspur a rendezvous, a home to fly unto. if that the devil and mischance look big upon the maidenhead of our affairs. earl of worcester but yet i would your father had been here. the quality and hair of our attempt brooks no division: it will be thought by some, that know not why he is away, that wisdom, loyalty and mere dislike of our proceedings kept the earl from hence: and think how such an apprehension may turn the tide of fearful faction and breed a kind of question in our cause; for well you know we of the offering side must keep aloof from strict arbitrement, and stop all sight-holes, every loop from whence the eye of reason may pry in upon us: this absence of your father's draws a curtain, that shows the ignorant a kind of fear before not dreamt of. hotspur you strain too far. i rather of his absence make this use: it lends a lustre and more great opinion, a larger dare to our great enterprise, than if the earl were here; for men must think, if we without his help can make a head to push against a kingdom, with his help we shall o'erturn it topsy-turvy down. yet all goes well, yet all our joints are whole. earl of douglas as heart can think: there is not such a word spoke of in scotland as this term of fear. [enter sir richard vernon] hotspur my cousin vernon, welcome, by my soul. vernon pray god my news be worth a welcome, lord. the earl of westmoreland, seven thousand strong, is marching hitherwards; with him prince john. hotspur no harm: what more? vernon and further, i have learn'd, the king himself in person is set forth, or hitherwards intended speedily, with strong and mighty preparation. hotspur he shall be welcome too. where is his son, the nimble-footed madcap prince of wales, and his comrades, that daff'd the world aside, and bid it pass? vernon all furnish'd, all in arms; all plumed like estridges that with the wind baited like eagles having lately bathed; glittering in golden coats, like images; as full of spirit as the month of may, and gorgeous as the sun at midsummer; wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls. i saw young harry, with his beaver on, his cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm'd rise from the ground like feather'd mercury, and vaulted with such ease into his seat, as if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds, to turn and wind a fiery pegasus and witch the world with noble horsemanship. hotspur no more, no more: worse than the sun in march, this praise doth nourish agues. let them come: they come like sacrifices in their trim, and to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war all hot and bleeding will we offer them: the mailed mars shall on his altar sit up to the ears in blood. i am on fire to hear this rich reprisal is so nigh and yet not ours. come, let me taste my horse, who is to bear me like a thunderbolt against the bosom of the prince of wales: harry to harry shall, hot horse to horse, meet and ne'er part till one drop down a corse. o that glendower were come! vernon there is more news: i learn'd in worcester, as i rode along, he cannot draw his power this fourteen days. earl of douglas that's the worst tidings that i hear of yet. worcester ay, by my faith, that bears a frosty sound. hotspur what may the king's whole battle reach unto? vernon to thirty thousand. hotspur forty let it be: my father and glendower being both away, the powers of us may serve so great a day come, let us take a muster speedily: doomsday is near; die all, die merrily. earl of douglas talk not of dying: i am out of fear of death or death's hand for this one-half year. [exeunt] 1 king henry iv act iv scene ii a public road near coventry. [enter falstaff and bardolph] falstaff bardolph, get thee before to coventry; fill me a bottle of sack: our soldiers shall march through; we'll to sutton co'fil' tonight. bardolph will you give me money, captain? falstaff lay out, lay out. bardolph this bottle makes an angel. falstaff an if it do, take it for thy labour; and if it make twenty, take them all; i'll answer the coinage. bid my lieutenant peto meet me at town's end. bardolph i will, captain: farewell. [exit] falstaff if i be not ashamed of my soldiers, i am a soused gurnet. i have misused the king's press damnably. i have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. i press me none but good house-holders, yeoman's sons; inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the banns; such a commodity of warm slaves, as had as lieve hear the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild-duck. i pressed me none but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins' heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies, slaves as ragged as lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores; and such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded unjust serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters and ostlers trade-fallen, the cankers of a calm world and a long peace, ten times more dishonourable ragged than an old faced ancient: and such have i, to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you would think that i had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. a mad fellow met me on the way and told me i had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. no eye hath seen such scarecrows. i'll not march through coventry with them, that's flat: nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on; for indeed i had the most of them out of prison. there's but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over the shoulders like an herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at saint alban's, or the red-nose innkeeper of daventry. but that's all one; they'll find linen enough on every hedge. [enter the prince and westmoreland] prince henry how now, blown jack! how now, quilt! falstaff what, hal! how now, mad wag! what a devil dost thou in warwickshire? my good lord of westmoreland, i cry you mercy: i thought your honour had already been at shrewsbury. westmoreland faith, sir john,'tis more than time that i were there, and you too; but my powers are there already. the king, i can tell you, looks for us all: we must away all night. falstaff tut, never fear me: i am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream. prince henry i think, to steal cream indeed, for thy theft hath already made thee butter. but tell me, jack, whose fellows are these that come after? falstaff mine, hal, mine. prince henry i did never see such pitiful rascals. falstaff tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better: tush, man, mortal men, mortal men. westmoreland ay, but, sir john, methinks they are exceeding poor and bare, too beggarly. falstaff 'faith, for their poverty, i know not where they had that; and for their bareness, i am sure they never learned that of me. prince henry no i'll be sworn; unless you call three fingers on the ribs bare. but, sirrah, make haste: percy is already in the field. falstaff what, is the king encamped? westmoreland he is, sir john: i fear we shall stay too long. falstaff well, to the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast fits a dull fighter and a keen guest. [exeunt] 1 king henry iv act iv scene iii the rebel camp near shrewsbury. [enter hotspur, worcester, douglas, and vernon] hotspur we'll fight with him to-night. earl of worcester it may not be. earl of douglas you give him then the advantage. vernon not a whit. hotspur why say you so? looks he not for supply? vernon so do we. hotspur his is certain, ours is doubtful. earl of worcester good cousin, be advised; stir not tonight. vernon do not, my lord. earl of douglas you do not counsel well: you speak it out of fear and cold heart. vernon do me no slander, douglas: by my life, and i dare well maintain it with my life, if well-respected honour bid me on, i hold as little counsel with weak fear as you, my lord, or any scot that this day lives: let it be seen to-morrow in the battle which of us fears. earl of douglas yea, or to-night. vernon content. hotspur to-night, say i. vernon come, come it nay not be. i wonder much, being men of such great leading as you are, that you foresee not what impediments drag back our expedition: certain horse of my cousin vernon's are not yet come up: your uncle worcester's horse came but today; and now their pride and mettle is asleep, their courage with hard labour tame and dull, that not a horse is half the half of himself. hotspur so are the horses of the enemy in general, journey-bated and brought low: the better part of ours are full of rest. earl of worcester the number of the king exceedeth ours: for god's sake. cousin, stay till all come in. [the trumpet sounds a parley] [enter sir walter blunt] sir walter blunt i come with gracious offers from the king, if you vouchsafe me hearing and respect. hotspur welcome, sir walter blunt; and would to god you were of our determination! some of us love you well; and even those some envy your great deservings and good name, because you are not of our quality, but stand against us like an enemy. sir walter blunt and god defend but still i should stand so, so long as out of limit and true rule you stand against anointed majesty. but to my charge. the king hath sent to know the nature of your griefs, and whereupon you conjure from the breast of civil peace such bold hostility, teaching his duteous land audacious cruelty. if that the king have any way your good deserts forgot, which he confesseth to be manifold, he bids you name your griefs; and with all speed you shall have your desires with interest and pardon absolute for yourself and these herein misled by your suggestion. hotspur the king is kind; and well we know the king knows at what time to promise, when to pay. my father and my uncle and myself did give him that same royalty he wears; and when he was not six and twenty strong, sick in the world's regard, wretched and low, a poor unminded outlaw sneaking home, my father gave him welcome to the shore; and when he heard him swear and vow to god he came but to be duke of lancaster, to sue his livery and beg his peace, with tears of innocency and terms of zeal, my father, in kind heart and pity moved, swore him assistance and perform'd it too. now when the lords and barons of the realm perceived northumberland did lean to him, the more and less came in with cap and knee; met him in boroughs, cities, villages, attended him on bridges, stood in lanes, laid gifts before him, proffer'd him their oaths, gave him their heirs, as pages follow'd him even at the heels in golden multitudes. he presently, as greatness knows itself, steps me a little higher than his vow made to my father, while his blood was poor, upon the naked shore at ravenspurgh; and now, forsooth, takes on him to reform some certain edicts and some strait decrees that lie too heavy on the commonwealth, cries out upon abuses, seems to weep over his country's wrongs; and by this face, this seeming brow of justice, did he win the hearts of all that he did angle for; proceeded further; cut me off the heads of all the favourites that the absent king in deputation left behind him here, when he was personal in the irish war. sir walter blunt tut, i came not to hear this. hotspur then to the point. in short time after, he deposed the king; soon after that, deprived him of his life; and in the neck of that, task'd the whole state: to make that worse, suffer'd his kinsman march, who is, if every owner were well placed, indeed his king, to be engaged in wales, there without ransom to lie forfeited; disgraced me in my happy victories, sought to entrap me by intelligence; rated mine uncle from the council-board; in rage dismiss'd my father from the court; broke oath on oath, committed wrong on wrong, and in conclusion drove us to seek out this head of safety; and withal to pry into his title, the which we find too indirect for long continuance. sir walter blunt shall i return this answer to the king? hotspur not so, sir walter: we'll withdraw awhile. go to the king; and let there be impawn'd some surety for a safe return again, and in the morning early shall my uncle bring him our purposes: and so farewell. sir walter blunt i would you would accept of grace and love. hotspur and may be so we shall. sir walter blunt pray god you do. [exeunt] 1 king henry iv act iv scene iv york. the archbishop's palace. [enter the archbishop of york and sir michael] archbishop of york hie, good sir michael; bear this sealed brief with winged haste to the lord marshal; this to my cousin scroop, and all the rest to whom they are directed. if you knew how much they do to import, you would make haste. sir michael my good lord, i guess their tenor. archbishop of york like enough you do. to-morrow, good sir michael, is a day wherein the fortune of ten thousand men must bide the touch; for, sir, at shrewsbury, as i am truly given to understand, the king with mighty and quick-raised power meets with lord harry: and, i fear, sir michael, what with the sickness of northumberland, whose power was in the first proportion, and what with owen glendower's absence thence, who with them was a rated sinew too and comes not in, o'er-ruled by prophecies, i fear the power of percy is too weak to wage an instant trial with the king. sir michael why, my good lord, you need not fear; there is douglas and lord mortimer. archbishop of york no, mortimer is not there. sir michael but there is mordake, vernon, lord harry percy, and there is my lord of worcester and a head of gallant warriors, noble gentlemen. archbishop of york and so there is: but yet the king hath drawn the special head of all the land together: the prince of wales, lord john of lancaster, the noble westmoreland and warlike blunt; and moe corrivals and dear men of estimation and command in arms. sir michael doubt not, my lord, they shall be well opposed. archbishop of york i hope no less, yet needful 'tis to fear; and, to prevent the worst, sir michael, speed: for if lord percy thrive not, ere the king dismiss his power, he means to visit us, for he hath heard of our confederacy, and 'tis but wisdom to make strong against him: therefore make haste. i must go write again to other friends; and so farewell, sir michael. [exeunt] 1 king henry iv act v scene i king henry iv's camp near shrewsbury. [enter king henry, prince henry, lord john of lancaster, earl of westmoreland, sir walter blunt, and falstaff] king henry iv how bloodily the sun begins to peer above yon busky hill! the day looks pale at his distemperature. prince henry the southern wind doth play the trumpet to his purposes, and by his hollow whistling in the leaves foretells a tempest and a blustering day. king henry iv then with the losers let it sympathize, for nothing can seem foul to those that win. [the trumpet sounds] [enter worcester and vernon] how now, my lord of worcester! 'tis not well that you and i should meet upon such terms as now we meet. you have deceived our trust, and made us doff our easy robes of peace, to crush our old limbs in ungentle steel: this is not well, my lord, this is not well. what say you to it? will you again unknit this curlish knot of all-abhorred war? and move in that obedient orb again where you did give a fair and natural light, and be no more an exhaled meteor, a prodigy of fear and a portent of broached mischief to the unborn times? earl of worcester hear me, my liege: for mine own part, i could be well content to entertain the lag-end of my life with quiet hours; for i do protest, i have not sought the day of this dislike. king henry iv you have not sought it! how comes it, then? falstaff rebellion lay in his way, and he found it. prince henry peace, chewet, peace! earl of worcester it pleased your majesty to turn your looks of favour from myself and all our house; and yet i must remember you, my lord, we were the first and dearest of your friends. for you my staff of office did i break in richard's time; and posted day and night to meet you on the way, and kiss your hand, when yet you were in place and in account nothing so strong and fortunate as i. it was myself, my brother and his son, that brought you home and boldly did outdare the dangers of the time. you swore to us, and you did swear that oath at doncaster, that you did nothing purpose 'gainst the state; nor claim no further than your new-fall'n right, the seat of gaunt, dukedom of lancaster: to this we swore our aid. but in short space it rain'd down fortune showering on your head; and such a flood of greatness fell on you, what with our help, what with the absent king, what with the injuries of a wanton time, the seeming sufferances that you had borne, and the contrarious winds that held the king so long in his unlucky irish wars that all in england did repute him dead: and from this swarm of fair advantages you took occasion to be quickly woo'd to gripe the general sway into your hand; forget your oath to us at doncaster; and being fed by us you used us so as that ungentle hull, the cuckoo's bird, useth the sparrow; did oppress our nest; grew by our feeding to so great a bulk that even our love durst not come near your sight for fear of swallowing; but with nimble wing we were enforced, for safety sake, to fly out of sight and raise this present head; whereby we stand opposed by such means as you yourself have forged against yourself by unkind usage, dangerous countenance, and violation of all faith and troth sworn to us in your younger enterprise. king henry iv these things indeed you have articulate, proclaim'd at market-crosses, read in churches, to face the garment of rebellion with some fine colour that may please the eye of fickle changelings and poor discontents, which gape and rub the elbow at the news of hurlyburly innovation: and never yet did insurrection want such water-colours to impaint his cause; nor moody beggars, starving for a time of pellmell havoc and confusion. prince henry in both your armies there is many a soul shall pay full dearly for this encounter, if once they join in trial. tell your nephew, the prince of wales doth join with all the world in praise of henry percy: by my hopes, this present enterprise set off his head, i do not think a braver gentleman, more active-valiant or more valiant-young, more daring or more bold, is now alive to grace this latter age with noble deeds. for my part, i may speak it to my shame, i have a truant been to chivalry; and so i hear he doth account me too; yet this before my father's majesty- i am content that he shall take the odds of his great name and estimation, and will, to save the blood on either side, try fortune with him in a single fight. king henry iv and, prince of wales, so dare we venture thee, albeit considerations infinite do make against it. no, good worcester, no, we love our people well; even those we love that are misled upon your cousin's part; and, will they take the offer of our grace, both he and they and you, every man shall be my friend again and i'll be his: so tell your cousin, and bring me word what he will do: but if he will not yield, rebuke and dread correction wait on us and they shall do their office. so, be gone; we will not now be troubled with reply: we offer fair; take it advisedly. [exeunt worcester and vernon] prince henry it will not be accepted, on my life: the douglas and the hotspur both together are confident against the world in arms. king henry iv hence, therefore, every leader to his charge; for, on their answer, will we set on them: and god befriend us, as our cause is just! [exeunt all but prince henry and falstaff] falstaff hal, if thou see me down in the battle and bestride me, so; 'tis a point of friendship. prince henry nothing but a colossus can do thee that friendship. say thy prayers, and farewell. falstaff i would 'twere bed-time, hal, and all well. prince henry why, thou owest god a death. [exit prince henry] falstaff 'tis not due yet; i would be loath to pay him before his day. what need i be so forward with him that calls not on me? well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks me on. yea, but how if honour prick me off when i come on? how then? can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. what is honour? a word. what is in that word honour? what is that honour? air. a trim reckoning! who hath it? he that died o' wednesday. doth he feel it? no. doth he hear it? no. 'tis insensible, then. yea, to the dead. but will it not live with the living? no. why? detraction will not suffer it. therefore i'll none of it. honour is a mere scutcheon: and so ends my catechism. [exit] 1 king henry iv act v scene ii the rebel camp. [enter worcester and vernon] earl of worcester o, no, my nephew must not know, sir richard, the liberal and kind offer of the king. vernon 'twere best he did. earl of worcester then are we all undone. it is not possible, it cannot be, the king should keep his word in loving us; he will suspect us still and find a time to punish this offence in other faults: suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes; for treason is but trusted like the fox, who, ne'er so tame, so cherish'd and lock'd up, will have a wild trick of his ancestors. look how we can, or sad or merrily, interpretation will misquote our looks, and we shall feed like oxen at a stall, the better cherish'd, still the nearer death. my nephew's trespass may be well forgot; it hath the excuse of youth and heat of blood, and an adopted name of privilege, a hair-brain'd hotspur, govern'd by a spleen: all his offences live upon my head and on his father's; we did train him on, and, his corruption being ta'en from us, we, as the spring of all, shall pay for all. therefore, good cousin, let not harry know, in any case, the offer of the king. vernon deliver what you will; i'll say 'tis so. here comes your cousin. [enter hotspur and douglas] hotspur my uncle is return'd: deliver up my lord of westmoreland. uncle, what news? earl of worcester the king will bid you battle presently. earl of douglas defy him by the lord of westmoreland. hotspur lord douglas, go you and tell him so. earl of douglas marry, and shall, and very willingly. [exit] earl of worcester there is no seeming mercy in the king. hotspur did you beg any? god forbid! earl of worcester i told him gently of our grievances, of his oath-breaking; which he mended thus, by now forswearing that he is forsworn: he calls us rebels, traitors; and will scourge with haughty arms this hateful name in us. [re-enter the earl of douglas] earl of douglas arm, gentlemen; to arms! for i have thrown a brave defiance in king henry's teeth, and westmoreland, that was engaged, did bear it; which cannot choose but bring him quickly on. earl of worcester the prince of wales stepp'd forth before the king, and, nephew, challenged you to single fight. hotspur o, would the quarrel lay upon our heads, and that no man might draw short breath today but i and harry monmouth! tell me, tell me, how show'd his tasking? seem'd it in contempt? vernon no, by my soul; i never in my life did hear a challenge urged more modestly, unless a brother should a brother dare to gentle exercise and proof of arms. he gave you all the duties of a man; trimm'd up your praises with a princely tongue, spoke to your deservings like a chronicle, making you ever better than his praise by still dispraising praise valued in you; and, which became him like a prince indeed, he made a blushing cital of himself; and chid his truant youth with such a grace as if he master'd there a double spirit. of teaching and of learning instantly. there did he pause: but let me tell the world, if he outlive the envy of this day, england did never owe so sweet a hope, so much misconstrued in his wantonness. hotspur cousin, i think thou art enamoured on his follies: never did i hear of any prince so wild a libertine. but be he as he will, yet once ere night i will embrace him with a soldier's arm, that he shall shrink under my courtesy. arm, arm with speed: and, fellows, soldiers, friends, better consider what you have to do than i, that have not well the gift of tongue, can lift your blood up with persuasion. [enter a messenger] messenger my lord, here are letters for you. hotspur i cannot read them now. o gentlemen, the time of life is short! to spend that shortness basely were too long, if life did ride upon a dial's point, still ending at the arrival of an hour. an if we live, we live to tread on kings; if die, brave death, when princes die with us! now, for our consciences, the arms are fair, when the intent of bearing them is just. [enter another messenger] messenger my lord, prepare; the king comes on apace. hotspur i thank him, that he cuts me from my tale, for i profess not talking; only this- let each man do his best: and here draw i a sword, whose temper i intend to stain with the best blood that i can meet withal in the adventure of this perilous day. now, esperance! percy! and set on. sound all the lofty instruments of war, and by that music let us all embrace; for, heaven to earth, some of us never shall a second time do such a courtesy. [the trumpets sound. they embrace, and exeunt] 1 king henry iv act v scene iii plain between the camps. [king henry enters with his power. alarum to the battle. then enter douglas and sir walter blunt] sir walter blunt what is thy name, that in the battle thus thou crossest me? what honour dost thou seek upon my head? earl of douglas know then, my name is douglas; and i do haunt thee in the battle thus because some tell me that thou art a king. sir walter blunt they tell thee true. earl of douglas the lord of stafford dear to-day hath bought thy likeness, for instead of thee, king harry, this sword hath ended him: so shall it thee, unless thou yield thee as my prisoner. sir walter blunt i was not born a yielder, thou proud scot; and thou shalt find a king that will revenge lord stafford's death. [they fight. douglas kills sir walter blunt. enter hotspur] hotspur o douglas, hadst thou fought at holmedon thus, never had triumph'd upon a scot. earl of douglas all's done, all's won; here breathless lies the king. hotspur where? earl of douglas here. hotspur this, douglas? no: i know this face full well: a gallant knight he was, his name was blunt; semblably furnish'd like the king himself. earl of douglas a fool go with thy soul, whither it goes! a borrow'd title hast thou bought too dear: why didst thou tell me that thou wert a king? hotspur the king hath many marching in his coats. earl of douglas now, by my sword, i will kill all his coats; i'll murder all his wardrobe, piece by piece, until i meet the king. hotspur up, and away! our soldiers stand full fairly for the day. [exeunt] [alarum. enter falstaff, solus] falstaff though i could 'scape shot-free at london, i fear the shot here; here's no scoring but upon the pate. soft! who are you? sir walter blunt: there's honour for you! here's no vanity! i am as hot as moulten lead, and as heavy too: god keep lead out of me! i need no more weight than mine own bowels. i have led my ragamuffins where they are peppered: there's not three of my hundred and fifty left alive; and they are for the town's end, to beg during life. but who comes here? [enter prince henry] prince henry what, stand'st thou idle here? lend me thy sword: many a nobleman lies stark and stiff under the hoofs of vaunting enemies, whose deaths are yet unrevenged: i prithee, lend me thy sword. falstaff o hal, i prithee, give me leave to breathe awhile. turk gregory never did such deeds in arms as i have done this day. i have paid percy, i have made him sure. prince henry he is, indeed; and living to kill thee. i prithee, lend me thy sword. falstaff nay, before god, hal, if percy be alive, thou get'st not my sword; but take my pistol, if thou wilt. prince henry give it to me: what, is it in the case? falstaff ay, hal; 'tis hot, 'tis hot; there's that will sack a city. [prince henry draws it out, and finds it to be a bottle of sack] prince henry what, is it a time to jest and dally now? [he throws the bottle at him. exit] falstaff well, if percy be alive, i'll pierce him. if he do come in my way, so: if he do not, if i come in his willingly, let him make a carbonado of me. i like not such grinning honour as sir walter hath: give me life: which if i can save, so; if not, honour comes unlooked for, and there's an end. [exit falstaff] 1 king henry iv act v scene iv another part of the field. [alarum. excursions. enter prince henry, lord john of lancaster, and earl of westmoreland] king henry iv i prithee, harry, withdraw thyself; thou bleed'st too much. lord john of lancaster, go you with him. lancaster not i, my lord, unless i did bleed too. prince henry i beseech your majesty, make up, lest your retirement do amaze your friends. king henry iv i will do so. my lord of westmoreland, lead him to his tent. westmoreland come, my lord, i'll lead you to your tent. prince henry lead me, my lord? i do not need your help: and god forbid a shallow scratch should drive the prince of wales from such a field as this, where stain'd nobility lies trodden on, and rebels' arms triumph in massacres! lancaster we breathe too long: come, cousin westmoreland, our duty this way lies; for god's sake come. [exeunt lancaster and westmoreland] prince henry by god, thou hast deceived me, lancaster; i did not think thee lord of such a spirit: before, i loved thee as a brother, john; but now, i do respect thee as my soul. king henry iv i saw him hold lord percy at the point with lustier maintenance than i did look for of such an ungrown warrior. prince henry o, this boy lends mettle to us all! [exit] [enter douglas] earl of douglas another king! they grow like hydra's heads: i am the douglas, fatal to all those that wear those colours on them: what art thou, that counterfeit'st the person of a king? king henry iv the king himself; who, douglas, grieves at heart so many of his shadows thou hast met and not the very king. i have two boys seek percy and thyself about the field: but, seeing thou fall'st on me so luckily, i will assay thee: so, defend thyself. earl of douglas i fear thou art another counterfeit; and yet, in faith, thou bear'st thee like a king: but mine i am sure thou art, whoe'er thou be, and thus i win thee. [they fight. king henry being in danger, prince henry enters] prince henry hold up thy head, vile scot, or thou art like never to hold it up again! the spirits of valiant shirley, stafford, blunt, are in my arms: it is the prince of wales that threatens thee; who never promiseth but he means to pay. [they fight: douglas flies] cheerly, my lord how fares your grace? sir nicholas gawsey hath for succor sent, and so hath clifton: i'll to clifton straight. king henry iv stay, and breathe awhile: thou hast redeem'd thy lost opinion, and show'd thou makest some tender of my life, in this fair rescue thou hast brought to me. prince henry o god! they did me too much injury that ever said i hearken'd for your death. if it were so, i might have let alone the insulting hand of douglas over you, which would have been as speedy in your end as all the poisonous potions in the world and saved the treacherous labour of your son. king henry iv make up to clifton: i'll to sir nicholas gawsey. [exit] [enter hotspur] hotspur if i mistake not, thou art harry monmouth. prince henry thou speak'st as if i would deny my name. hotspur my name is harry percy. prince henry why, then i see a very valiant rebel of the name. i am the prince of wales; and think not, percy, to share with me in glory any more: two stars keep not their motion in one sphere; nor can one england brook a double reign, of harry percy and the prince of wales. hotspur nor shall it, harry; for the hour is come to end the one of us; and would to god thy name in arms were now as great as mine! prince henry i'll make it greater ere i part from thee; and all the budding honours on thy crest i'll crop, to make a garland for my head. hotspur i can no longer brook thy vanities. [they fight] [enter falstaff] falstaff well said, hal! to it hal! nay, you shall find no boy's play here, i can tell you. [re-enter douglas; he fights with falstaff, who falls down as if he were dead, and exit douglas. hotspur is wounded, and falls] hotspur o, harry, thou hast robb'd me of my youth! i better brook the loss of brittle life than those proud titles thou hast won of me; they wound my thoughts worse than sword my flesh: but thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool; and time, that takes survey of all the world, must have a stop. o, i could prophesy, but that the earthy and cold hand of death lies on my tongue: no, percy, thou art dust and food for- [dies] prince henry for worms, brave percy: fare thee well, great heart! ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk! when that this body did contain a spirit, a kingdom for it was too small a bound; but now two paces of the vilest earth is room enough: this earth that bears thee dead bears not alive so stout a gentleman. if thou wert sensible of courtesy, i should not make so dear a show of zeal: but let my favours hide thy mangled face; and, even in thy behalf, i'll thank myself for doing these fair rites of tenderness. adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven! thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave, but not remember'd in thy epitaph! [he spieth falstaff on the ground] what, old acquaintance! could not all this flesh keep in a little life? poor jack, farewell! i could have better spared a better man: o, i should have a heavy miss of thee, if i were much in love with vanity! death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day, though many dearer, in this bloody fray. embowell'd will i see thee by and by: till then in blood by noble percy lie. [exit prince henry] falstaff [rising up] embowelled! if thou embowel me to-day, i'll give you leave to powder me and eat me too to-morrow. 'sblood,'twas time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant scot had paid me scot and lot too. counterfeit? i lie, i am no counterfeit: to die, is to be a counterfeit; for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man: but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. the better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part i have saved my life.'zounds, i am afraid of this gunpowder percy, though he be dead: how, if he should counterfeit too and rise? by my faith, i am afraid he would prove the better counterfeit. therefore i'll make him sure; yea, and i'll swear i killed him. why may not he rise as well as i? nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me. therefore, sirrah, [stabbing him] with a new wound in your thigh, come you along with me. [takes up hotspur on his back] [re-enter prince henry and lord john of lancaster] prince henry come, brother john; full bravely hast thou flesh'd thy maiden sword. lancaster but, soft! whom have we here? did you not tell me this fat man was dead? prince henry i did; i saw him dead, breathless and bleeding on the ground. art thou alive? or is it fantasy that plays upon our eyesight? i prithee, speak; we will not trust our eyes without our ears: thou art not what thou seem'st. falstaff no, that's certain; i am not a double man: but if i be not jack falstaff, then am i a jack. there is percy: [throwing the body down] if your father will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next percy himself. i look to be either earl or duke, i can assure you. prince henry why, percy i killed myself and saw thee dead. falstaff didst thou? lord, lord, how this world is given to lying! i grant you i was down and out of breath; and so was he: but we rose both at an instant and fought a long hour by shrewsbury clock. if i may be believed, so; if not, let them that should reward valour bear the sin upon their own heads. i'll take it upon my death, i gave him this wound in the thigh: if the man were alive and would deny it, 'zounds, i would make him eat a piece of my sword. lancaster this is the strangest tale that ever i heard. prince henry this is the strangest fellow, brother john. come, bring your luggage nobly on your back: for my part, if a lie may do thee grace, i'll gild it with the happiest terms i have. [a retreat is sounded] the trumpet sounds retreat; the day is ours. come, brother, let us to the highest of the field, to see what friends are living, who are dead. [exeunt prince henry and lancaster] falstaff i'll follow, as they say, for reward. he that rewards me, god reward him! if i do grow great, i'll grow less; for i'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do. [exit] 1 king henry iv act v scene v another part of the field. [the trumpets sound. enter king henry iv, prince henry, lord john lancaster, earl of westmoreland, with worcester and vernon prisoners] king henry iv thus ever did rebellion find rebuke. ill-spirited worcester! did not we send grace, pardon and terms of love to all of you? and wouldst thou turn our offers contrary? misuse the tenor of thy kinsman's trust? three knights upon our party slain to-day, a noble earl and many a creature else had been alive this hour, if like a christian thou hadst truly borne betwixt our armies true intelligence. earl of worcester what i have done my safety urged me to; and i embrace this fortune patiently, since not to be avoided it falls on me. king henry iv bear worcester to the death and vernon too: other offenders we will pause upon. [exeunt worcester and vernon, guarded] how goes the field? prince henry the noble scot, lord douglas, when he saw the fortune of the day quite turn'd from him, the noble percy slain, and all his men upon the foot of fear, fled with the rest; and falling from a hill, he was so bruised that the pursuers took him. at my tent the douglas is; and i beseech your grace i may dispose of him. king henry iv with all my heart. prince henry then, brother john of lancaster, to you this honourable bounty shall belong: go to the douglas, and deliver him up to his pleasure, ransomless and free: his valour shown upon our crests to-day hath taught us how to cherish such high deeds even in the bosom of our adversaries. lancaster i thank your grace for this high courtesy, which i shall give away immediately. king henry iv then this remains, that we divide our power. you, son john, and my cousin westmoreland towards york shall bend you with your dearest speed, to meet northumberland and the prelate scroop, who, as we hear, are busily in arms: myself and you, son harry, will towards wales, to fight with glendower and the earl of march. rebellion in this land shall lose his sway, meeting the cheque of such another day: and since this business so fair is done, let us not leave till all our own be won. [exeunt] 1850 three sundays in a week by edgar allan poe you hard-headed, dunder-headed, obstinate, rusty, crusty, musty, fusty, old savage!" said i, in fancy, one afternoon, to my grand uncle rumgudgeonshaking my fist at him in imagination. only in imagination. the fact is, some trivial discrepancy did exist, just then, between what i said and what i had not the courage to saybetween what i did and what i had half a mind to do. the old porpoise, as i opened the drawing-room door, was sitting with his feet upon the mantel-piece, and a bumper of port in his paw, making strenuous efforts to accomplish the ditty. remplis ton verre vide! vide ton verre plein! "my dear uncle," said i, closing the door gently, and approaching him with the blandest of smiles, "you are always so very kind and considerate, and have evinced your benevolence in so manyso very many waysthatthat i feel i have only to suggest this little point to you once more to make sure of your full acquiescence." "hem!" said he, "good boy! go on!" "i am sure, my dearest uncle [you confounded old rascal!], that you have no design really, seriously, to oppose my union with kate. this is merely a joke of yours, i knowha! ha! ha!how very pleasant you are at times." "ha! ha! ha!" said he, "curse you! yes!" "to be sureof course! i knew you were jesting. now, uncle, all that kate and myself wish at present, is that you would oblige us with your advice asas regards the timeyou know, unclein short, when will it be most convenient for yourself, that the wedding shallshall come off, you know?" "come off, you scoundrel!what do you mean by that?better wait till it goes on." "ha! ha! ha!he! he! he!hi! hi! hi!ho! ho! ho!hu! hu! hu!that's good!oh that's capitalsuch a wit! but all we want just now, you know, uncle, is that you would indicate the time precisely." "ah!precisely?" "yes, unclethat is, if it would be quite agreeable to yourself." "wouldn't it answer, bobby, if i were to leave it at randomsome time within a year or so, for example?must i say precisely?" "if you please, uncleprecisely." "well, then, bobby, my boyyou're a fine fellow, aren't you?since you will have the exact time i'llwhy i'll oblige you for once:" "dear uncle!" "hush, sir!" [drowning my voice]i'll oblige you for once. you shall have my consentand the plum, we mus'n't forget the plumlet me see! when shall it be? to-day's sundayisn't it? well, then, you shall be married preciselyprecisely, now mind!when three sundays come together in a week! do you hear me, sir! what are you gaping at? i say, you shall have kate and her plum when three sundays come together in a weekbut not till thenyou young scapegracenot till then, if i die for it. you know mei'm a man of my wordnow be off!" here he swallowed his bumper of port, while i rushed from the room in despair. a very "fine old english gentleman," was my grand-uncle rumgudgeon, but unlike him of the song, he had his weak points. he was a little, pursy, pompous, passionate semicircular somebody, with a red nose, a thick scull, [sic] a long purse, and a strong sense of his own consequence. with the best heart in the world, he contrived, through a predominant whim of contradiction, to earn for himself, among those who only knew him superficially, the character of a curmudgeon. like many excellent people, he seemed possessed with a spirit of tantalization, which might easily, at a casual glance, have been mistaken for malevolence. to every request, a positive "no!" was his immediate answer, but in the endin the long, long endthere were exceedingly few requests which he refused. against all attacks upon his purse he made the most sturdy defence; but the amount extorted from him, at last, was generally in direct ratio with the length of the siege and the stubbornness of the resistance. in charity no one gave more liberally or with a worse grace. for the fine arts, and especially for the belles-lettres, he entertained a profound contempt. with this he had been inspired by casimir perier, whose pert little query "a quoi un poete est il bon?" he was in the habit of quoting, with a very droll pronunciation, as the ne plus ultra of logical wit. thus my own inkling for the muses had excited his entire displeasure. he assured me one day, when i asked him for a new copy of horace, that the translation of "poeta nascitur non fit" was "a nasty poet for nothing fit"a remark which i took in high dudgeon. his repugnance to "the humanities" had, also, much increased of late, by an accidental bias in favor of what he supposed to be natural science. somebody had accosted him in the street, mistaking him for no less a personage than doctor dubble l. dee, the lecturer upon quack physics. this set him off at a tangent; and just at the epoch of this storyfor story it is getting to be after allmy grand-uncle rumgudgeon was accessible and pacific only upon points which happened to chime in with the caprioles of the hobby he was riding. for the rest, he laughed with his arms and legs, and his politics were stubborn and easily understood. he thought, with horsley, that "the people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them." i had lived with the old gentleman all my life. my parents, in dying, had bequeathed me to him as a rich legacy. i believe the old villain loved me as his own childnearly if not quite as well as he loved katebut it was a dog's existence that he led me, after all. from my first year until my fifth, he obliged me with very regular floggings. from five to fifteen, he threatened me, hourly, with the house of correction. from fifteen to twenty, not a day passed in which he did not promise to cut me off with a shilling. i was a sad dog, it is truebut then it was a part of my naturea point of my faith. in kate, however, i had a firm friend, and i knew it. she was a good girl, and told me very sweetly that i might have her (plum and all) whenever i could badger my grand-uncle rumgudgeon, into the necessary consent. poor girl!she was barely fifteen, and without this consent, her little amount in the funds was not come-at-able until five immeasurable summers had "dragged their slow length along." what, then, to do? at fifteen, or even at twenty-one [for i had now passed my fifth olympiad] five years in prospect are very much the same as five hundred. in vain we besieged the old gentleman with importunities. here was a piece de resistance (as messieurs ude and careme would say) which suited his perverse fancy to a t. it would have stiffed the indignation of job himself, to see how much like an old mouser he behaved to us two poor wretched little mice. in his heart he wished for nothing more ardently than our union. he had made up his mind to this all along. in fact, he would have given ten thousand pounds from his own pocket (kate's plum was her own) if he could have invented any thing like an excuse for complying with our very natural wishes. but then we had been so imprudent as to broach the subject ourselves. not to oppose it under such circumstances, i sincerely believe, was not in his power. i have said already that he had his weak points; but in speaking of these, i must not be understood as referring to his obstinacy: which was one of his strong points"assurement ce n' etait pas sa foible." when i mention his weakness i have allusion to a bizarre old-womanish superstition which beset him. he was great in dreams, portents, et id genus omne of rigmarole. he was excessively punctilious, too, upon small points of honor, and, after his own fashion, was a man of his word, beyond doubt. this was, in fact, one of his hobbies. the spirit of his vows he made no scruple of setting at naught, but the letter was a bond inviolable. now it was this latter peculiarity in his disposition, of which kates ingenuity enabled us one fine day, not long after our interview in the dining-room, to take a very unexpected advantage, and, having thus, in the fashion of all modern bards and orators, exhausted in prolegomena, all the time at my command, and nearly all the room at my disposal, i will sum up in a few words what constitutes the whole pith of the story. it happened thenso the fates ordered itthat among the naval acquaintances of my betrothed, were two gentlemen who had just set foot upon the shores of england, after a year's absence, each, in foreign travel. in company with these gentlemen, my cousin and i, preconcertedly paid uncle rumgudgeon a visit on the afternoon of sunday, october the tenth,just three weeks after the memorable decision which had so cruelly defeated our hopes. for about half an hour the conversation ran upon ordinary topics, but at last, we contrived, quite naturally, to give it the following turn: capt. pratt. "well i have been absent just one year.just one year to-day, as i livelet me see! yes!this is october the tenth. you remember, mr. rumgudgeon, i called, this day year to bid you good-bye. and by the way, it does seem something like a coincidence, does it notthat our friend, captain smitherton, here, has been absent exactly a year alsoa year to-day!" smitherton. "yes! just one year to a fraction. you will remember, mr. rumgudgeon, that i called with capt. pratol on this very day, last year, to pay my parting respects." uncle. "yes, yes, yesi remember it very wellvery queer indeed! both of you gone just one year. a very strange coincidence, indeed! just what doctor dubble l. dee would denominate an extraordinary concurrence of events. doctor dub-" kate. [interrupting.] "to be sure, papa, it is something strange; but then captain pratt and captain smitherton didn't go altogether the same route, and that makes a difference, you know." uncle. "i don't know any such thing, you huzzy! how should i? i think it only makes the matter more remarkable, doctor dubble l. dee kate. why, papa, captain pratt went round cape horn, and captain smitherton doubled the cape of good hope." uncle. "precisely!the one went east and the other went west, you jade, and they both have gone quite round the world. by the by, doctor dubble l. dee myself. [hurriedly.] "captain pratt, you must come and spend the evening with us to-morrowyou and smithertonyou can tell us all about your voyage, and well have a game of whist and pratt. "wist, my dear fellowyou forget. to-morrow will be sunday. some other evening kate. "oh, no. fie!robert's not quite so bad as that. to-day's sunday." pratt. "i beg both your pardonsbut i can't be so much mistaken. i know to-morrow's sunday, because-" smitherton. [much surprised.] "what are you all thinking about? wasn't yesterday, sunday, i should like to know?" all. "yesterday indeed! you are out!" uncle. "to-days sunday, i saydon't i know?" pratt. "oh no!to-morrow's sunday." smitherton. "you are all madevery one of you. i am as positive that yesterday was sunday as i am that i sit upon this chair." kate. [jumping up eagerly.] "i see iti see it all. papa, this is a judgment upon you, aboutabout you know what. let me alone, and i'll explain it all in a minute. it's a very simple thing, indeed. captain smitherton says that yesterday was sunday: so it was; he is right. cousin bobby, and uncle and i say that to-day is sunday: so it is; we are right. captain pratt maintains that to-morrow will be sunday: so it will; he is right, too. the fact is, we are all right, and thus three sundays have come together in a week." smitherton. [after a pause.] "by the by, pratt, kate has us completely. what fools we two are! mr. rumgudgeon, the matter stands thus: the earth, you know, is twenty-four thousand miles in circumference. now this globe of the earth turns upon its own axisrevolvesspins roundthese twenty-four thousand miles of extent, going from west to east, in precisely twenty-four hours. do you understand mr. rumgudgeon?-" uncle. "to be sureto be suredoctor dub-" smitherton. [drowning his voice.] "well, sir; that is at the rate of one thousand miles per hour. now, suppose that i sail from this position a thousand miles east. of course i anticipate the rising of the sun here at london by just one hour. i see the sun rise one hour before you do. proceeding, in the same direction, yet another thousand miles, i anticipate the rising by two hoursanother thousand, and i anticipate it by three hours, and so on, until i go entirely round the globe, and back to this spot, when, having gone twenty-four thousand miles east, i anticipate the rising of the london sun by no less than twenty-four hours; that is to say, i am a day in advance of your time. understand, eh?" uncle. "but double l. dee-" smitherton. [speaking very loud.] "captain pratt, on the contrary, when he had sailed a thousand miles west of this position, was an hour, and when he had sailed twenty-four thousand miles west, was twenty-four hours, or one day, behind the time at london. thus, with me, yesterday was sundaythus, with you, to-day is sundayand thus, with pratt, to-morrow will be sunday. and what is more, mr. rumgudgeon, it is positively clear that we are all right; for there can be no philosophical reason assigned why the idea of one of us should have preference over that of the other." uncle. "my eyes!well, katewell, bobby!this is a judgment upon me, as you say. but i am a man of my wordmark that! you shall have her, boy, (plum and all), when you please. done up, by jove! three sundays all in a row! i'll go, and take dubble l. dee's opinion upon that." the end . measure for measure dramatis personae vincentio the duke. (duke vincentio:) angelo deputy. escalus an ancient lord. claudio a young gentleman. lucio a fantastic. two other gentlemen. (first gentleman:) (second gentleman:) provost. peter (friar peter:) | | two friars. thomas (friar thomas:) | a justice. varrius: elbow a simple constable. froth a foolish gentleman. pompey servant to mistress overdone. abhorson an executioner. barnardine a dissolute prisoner. isabella sister to claudio. mariana betrothed to angelo. juliet beloved of claudio. francisca a nun. mistress overdone a bawd. lords, officers, citizens, boy, and attendant. (servant:) (messenger:) scene vienna. measure for measure act i scene i an apartment in the duke's palace. [enter duke vincentio, escalus, lords and attendants] duke vincentio escalus. escalus my lord. duke vincentio of government the properties to unfold, would seem in me to affect speech and discourse; since i am put to know that your own science exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice my strength can give you: then no more remains, but that to your sufficiency [ ] [ ] as your worth is able, and let them work. the nature of our people, our city's institutions, and the terms for common justice, you're as pregnant in as art and practise hath enriched any that we remember. there is our commission, from which we would not have you warp. call hither, i say, bid come before us angelo. [exit an attendant] what figure of us think you he will bear? for you must know, we have with special soul elected him our absence to supply, lent him our terror, dress'd him with our love, and given his deputation all the organs of our own power: what think you of it? escalus if any in vienna be of worth to undergo such ample grace and honour, it is lord angelo. duke vincentio look where he comes. [enter angelo] angelo always obedient to your grace's will, i come to know your pleasure. duke vincentio angelo, there is a kind of character in thy life, that to the observer doth thy history fully unfold. thyself and thy belongings are not thine own so proper as to waste thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. heaven doth with us as we with torches do, not light them for themselves; for if our virtues did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike as if we had them not. spirits are not finely touch'd but to fine issues, nor nature never lends the smallest scruple of her excellence but, like a thrifty goddess, she determines herself the glory of a creditor, both thanks and use. but i do bend my speech to one that can my part in him advertise; hold therefore, angelo:- in our remove be thou at full ourself; mortality and mercy in vienna live in thy tongue and heart: old escalus, though first in question, is thy secondary. take thy commission. angelo now, good my lord, let there be some more test made of my metal, before so noble and so great a figure be stamp'd upon it. duke vincentio no more evasion: we have with a leaven'd and prepared choice proceeded to you; therefore take your honours. our haste from hence is of so quick condition that it prefers itself and leaves unquestion'd matters of needful value. we shall write to you, as time and our concernings shall importune, how it goes with us, and do look to know what doth befall you here. so, fare you well; to the hopeful execution do i leave you of your commissions. angelo yet give leave, my lord, that we may bring you something on the way. duke vincentio my haste may not admit it; nor need you, on mine honour, have to do with any scruple; your scope is as mine own so to enforce or qualify the laws as to your soul seems good. give me your hand: i'll privily away. i love the people, but do not like to stage me to their eyes: through it do well, i do not relish well their loud applause and aves vehement; nor do i think the man of safe discretion that does affect it. once more, fare you well. angelo the heavens give safety to your purposes! escalus lead forth and bring you back in happiness! duke i thank you. fare you well. [exit] escalus i shall desire you, sir, to give me leave to have free speech with you; and it concerns me to look into the bottom of my place: a power i have, but of what strength and nature i am not yet instructed. angelo 'tis so with me. let us withdraw together, and we may soon our satisfaction have touching that point. escalus i'll wait upon your honour. [exeunt] measure for measure act i scene ii a street. [enter lucio and two gentlemen] lucio if the duke with the other dukes come not to composition with the king of hungary, why then all the dukes fall upon the king. first gentleman heaven grant us its peace, but not the king of hungary's! second gentleman amen. lucio thou concludest like the sanctimonious pirate, that went to sea with the ten commandments, but scraped one out of the table. second gentleman 'thou shalt not steal'? lucio ay, that he razed. first gentleman why, 'twas a commandment to command the captain and all the rest from their functions: they put forth to steal. there's not a soldier of us all, that, in the thanksgiving before meat, do relish the petition well that prays for peace. second gentleman i never heard any soldier dislike it. lucio i believe thee; for i think thou never wast where grace was said. second gentleman no? a dozen times at least. first gentleman what, in metre? lucio in any proportion or in any language. first gentleman i think, or in any religion. lucio ay, why not? grace is grace, despite of all controversy: as, for example, thou thyself art a wicked villain, despite of all grace. first gentleman well, there went but a pair of shears between us. lucio i grant; as there may between the lists and the velvet. thou art the list. first gentleman and thou the velvet: thou art good velvet; thou'rt a three-piled piece, i warrant thee: i had as lief be a list of an english kersey as be piled, as thou art piled, for a french velvet. do i speak feelingly now? lucio i think thou dost; and, indeed, with most painful feeling of thy speech: i will, out of thine own confession, learn to begin thy health; but, whilst i live, forget to drink after thee. first gentleman i think i have done myself wrong, have i not? second gentleman yes, that thou hast, whether thou art tainted or free. lucio behold, behold. where madam mitigation comes! i have purchased as many diseases under her roof as come to- second gentleman to what, i pray? lucio judge. second gentleman to three thousand dolours a year. first gentleman ay, and more. lucio a french crown more. first gentleman thou art always figuring diseases in me; but thou art full of error; i am sound. lucio nay, not as one would say, healthy; but so sound as things that are hollow: thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a feast of thee. [enter mistress overdone] first gentleman how now! which of your hips has the most profound sciatica? mistress overdone well, well; there's one yonder arrested and carried to prison was worth five thousand of you all. second gentleman who's that, i pray thee? mistress overdone marry, sir, that's claudio, signior claudio. first gentleman claudio to prison? 'tis not so. mistress overdone nay, but i know 'tis so: i saw him arrested, saw him carried away; and, which is more, within these three days his head to be chopped off. lucio but, after all this fooling, i would not have it so. art thou sure of this? mistress overdone i am too sure of it: and it is for getting madam julietta with child. lucio believe me, this may be: he promised to meet me two hours since, and he was ever precise in promise-keeping. second gentleman besides, you know, it draws something near to the speech we had to such a purpose. first gentleman but, most of all, agreeing with the proclamation. lucio away! let's go learn the truth of it. [exeunt lucio and gentlemen] mistress overdone thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows and what with poverty, i am custom-shrunk. [enter pompey] how now! what's the news with you? pompey yonder man is carried to prison. mistress overdone well; what has he done? pompey a woman. mistress overdone but what's his offence? pompey groping for trouts in a peculiar river. mistress overdone what, is there a maid with child by him? pompey no, but there's a woman with maid by him. you have not heard of the proclamation, have you? mistress overdone what proclamation, man? pompey all houses in the suburbs of vienna must be plucked down. mistress overdone and what shall become of those in the city? pompey they shall stand for seed: they had gone down too, but that a wise burgher put in for them. mistress overdone but shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs be pulled down? pompey to the ground, mistress. mistress overdone why, here's a change indeed in the commonwealth! what shall become of me? pompey come; fear you not: good counsellors lack no clients: though you change your place, you need not change your trade; i'll be your tapster still. courage! there will be pity taken on you: you that have worn your eyes almost out in the service, you will be considered. mistress overdone what's to do here, thomas tapster? let's withdraw. pompey here comes signior claudio, led by the provost to prison; and there's madam juliet. [exeunt] [enter provost, claudio, juliet, and officers] claudio fellow, why dost thou show me thus to the world? bear me to prison, where i am committed. provost i do it not in evil disposition, but from lord angelo by special charge. claudio thus can the demigod authority make us pay down for our offence by weight the words of heaven; on whom it will, it will; on whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just. [re-enter lucio and two gentlemen] lucio why, how now, claudio! whence comes this restraint? claudio from too much liberty, my lucio, liberty: as surfeit is the father of much fast, so every scope by the immoderate use turns to restraint. our natures do pursue, like rats that ravin down their proper bane, a thirsty evil; and when we drink we die. lucio if could speak so wisely under an arrest, i would send for certain of my creditors: and yet, to say the truth, i had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment. what's thy offence, claudio? claudio what but to speak of would offend again. lucio what, is't murder? claudio no. lucio lechery? claudio call it so. provost away, sir! you must go. claudio one word, good friend. lucio, a word with you. lucio a hundred, if they'll do you any good. is lechery so look'd after? claudio thus stands it with me: upon a true contract i got possession of julietta's bed: you know the lady; she is fast my wife, save that we do the denunciation lack of outward order: this we came not to, only for propagation of a dower remaining in the coffer of her friends, from whom we thought it meet to hide our love till time had made them for us. but it chances the stealth of our most mutual entertainment with character too gross is writ on juliet. lucio with child, perhaps? claudio unhappily, even so. and the new deputy now for the duke- whether it be the fault and glimpse of newness, or whether that the body public be a horse whereon the governor doth ride, who, newly in the seat, that it may know he can command, lets it straight feel the spur; whether the tyranny be in his place, or in his emmence that fills it up, i stagger in:--but this new governor awakes me all the enrolled penalties which have, like unscour'd armour, hung by the wall so long that nineteen zodiacs have gone round and none of them been worn; and, for a name, now puts the drowsy and neglected act freshly on me: 'tis surely for a name. lucio i warrant it is: and thy head stands so tickle on thy shoulders that a milkmaid, if she be in love, may sigh it off. send after the duke and appeal to him. claudio i have done so, but he's not to be found. i prithee, lucio, do me this kind service: this day my sister should the cloister enter and there receive her approbation: acquaint her with the danger of my state: implore her, in my voice, that she make friends to the strict deputy; bid herself assay him: i have great hope in that; for in her youth there is a prone and speechless dialect, such as move men; beside, she hath prosperous art when she will play with reason and discourse, and well she can persuade. lucio i pray she may; as well for the encouragement of the like, which else would stand under grievous imposition, as for the enjoying of thy life, who i would be sorry should be thus foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack. i'll to her. claudio i thank you, good friend lucio. lucio within two hours. claudio come, officer, away! [exeunt] measure for measure act i scene iii a monastery. [enter duke vincentio and friar thomas] duke vincentio no, holy father; throw away that thought; believe not that the dribbling dart of love can pierce a complete bosom. why i desire thee to give me secret harbour, hath a purpose more grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends of burning youth. friar thomas may your grace speak of it? duke vincentio my holy sir, none better knows than you how i have ever loved the life removed and held in idle price to haunt assemblies where youth, and cost, and witless bravery keeps. i have deliver'd to lord angelo, a man of stricture and firm abstinence, my absolute power and place here in vienna, and he supposes me travell'd to poland; for so i have strew'd it in the common ear, and so it is received. now, pious sir, you will demand of me why i do this? friar thomas gladly, my lord. duke vincentio we have strict statutes and most biting laws. the needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds, which for this nineteen years we have let slip; even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave, that goes not out to prey. now, as fond fathers, having bound up the threatening twigs of birch, only to stick it in their children's sight for terror, not to use, in time the rod becomes more mock'd than fear'd; so our decrees, dead to infliction, to themselves are dead; and liberty plucks justice by the nose; the baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart goes all decorum. friar thomas it rested in your grace to unloose this tied-up justice when you pleased: and it in you more dreadful would have seem'd than in lord angelo. duke vincentio i do fear, too dreadful: sith 'twas my fault to give the people scope, 'twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them for what i bid them do: for we bid this be done, when evil deeds have their permissive pass and not the punishment. therefore indeed, my father, i have on angelo imposed the office; who may, in the ambush of my name, strike home, and yet my nature never in the fight to do in slander. and to behold his sway, i will, as 'twere a brother of your order, visit both prince and people: therefore, i prithee, supply me with the habit and instruct me how i may formally in person bear me like a true friar. more reasons for this action at our more leisure shall i render you; only, this one: lord angelo is precise; stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses that his blood flows, or that his appetite is more to bread than stone: hence shall we see, if power change purpose, what our seemers be. [exeunt] measure for measure act i scene iv a nunnery. [enter isabella and francisca] isabella and have you nuns no farther privileges? francisca are not these large enough? isabella yes, truly; i speak not as desiring more; but rather wishing a more strict restraint upon the sisterhood, the votarists of saint clare. lucio [within] ho! peace be in this place! isabella who's that which calls? francisca it is a man's voice. gentle isabella, turn you the key, and know his business of him; you may, i may not; you are yet unsworn. when you have vow'd, you must not speak with men but in the presence of the prioress: then, if you speak, you must not show your face, or, if you show your face, you must not speak. he calls again; i pray you, answer him. [exit] isabella peace and prosperity! who is't that calls [enter lucio] lucio hail, virgin, if you be, as those cheek-roses proclaim you are no less! can you so stead me as bring me to the sight of isabella, a novice of this place and the fair sister to her unhappy brother claudio? isabella why 'her unhappy brother'? let me ask, the rather for i now must make you know i am that isabella and his sister. lucio gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets you: not to be weary with you, he's in prison. isabella woe me! for what? lucio for that which, if myself might be his judge, he should receive his punishment in thanks: he hath got his friend with child. isabella sir, make me not your story. lucio it is true. i would not--though 'tis my familiar sin with maids to seem the lapwing and to jest, tongue far from heart--play with all virgins so: i hold you as a thing ensky'd and sainted. by your renouncement an immortal spirit, and to be talk'd with in sincerity, as with a saint. isabella you do blaspheme the good in mocking me. lucio do not believe it. fewness and truth, 'tis thus: your brother and his lover have embraced: as those that feed grow full, as blossoming time that from the seedness the bare fallow brings to teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb expresseth his full tilth and husbandry. isabella some one with child by him? my cousin juliet? lucio is she your cousin? isabella adoptedly; as school-maids change their names by vain though apt affection. lucio she it is. isabella o, let him marry her. lucio this is the point. the duke is very strangely gone from hence; bore many gentlemen, myself being one, in hand and hope of action: but we do learn by those that know the very nerves of state, his givings-out were of an infinite distance from his true-meant design. upon his place, and with full line of his authority, governs lord angelo; a man whose blood is very snow-broth; one who never feels the wanton stings and motions of the sense, but doth rebate and blunt his natural edge with profits of the mind, study and fast. he--to give fear to use and liberty, which have for long run by the hideous law, as mice by lions--hath pick'd out an act, under whose heavy sense your brother's life falls into forfeit: he arrests him on it; and follows close the rigour of the statute, to make him an example. all hope is gone, unless you have the grace by your fair prayer to soften angelo: and that's my pith of business 'twixt you and your poor brother. isabella doth he so seek his life? lucio has censured him already; and, as i hear, the provost hath a warrant for his execution. isabella alas! what poor ability's in me to do him good? lucio assay the power you have. isabella my power? alas, i doubt- lucio our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. go to lord angelo, and let him learn to know, when maidens sue, men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel, all their petitions are as freely theirs as they themselves would owe them. isabella i'll see what i can do. lucio but speedily. isabella i will about it straight; no longer staying but to give the mother notice of my affair. i humbly thank you: commend me to my brother: soon at night i'll send him certain word of my success. lucio i take my leave of you. isabella good sir, adieu. [exeunt] measure for measure act ii scene i a hall in angelo's house. [enter angelo, escalus, and a justice, provost, officers, and other attendants, behind] angelo we must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to fear the birds of prey, and let it keep one shape, till custom make it their perch and not their terror. escalus ay, but yet let us be keen, and rather cut a little, than fall, and bruise to death. alas, this gentleman whom i would save, had a most noble father! let but your honour know, whom i believe to be most strait in virtue, that, in the working of your own affections, had time cohered with place or place with wishing, or that the resolute acting of your blood could have attain'd the effect of your own purpose, whether you had not sometime in your life err'd in this point which now you censure him, and pull'd the law upon you. angelo 'tis one thing to be tempted, escalus, another thing to fall. i not deny, the jury, passing on the prisoner's life, may in the sworn twelve have a thief or two guiltier than him they try. what's open made to justice, that justice seizes: what know the laws that thieves do pass on thieves? 'tis very pregnant, the jewel that we find, we stoop and take't because we see it; but what we do not see we tread upon, and never think of it. you may not so extenuate his offence for i have had such faults; but rather tell me, when i, that censure him, do so offend, let mine own judgment pattern out my death, and nothing come in partial. sir, he must die. escalus be it as your wisdom will. angelo where is the provost? provost here, if it like your honour. angelo see that claudio be executed by nine to-morrow morning: bring him his confessor, let him be prepared; for that's the utmost of his pilgrimage. [exit provost] escalus [aside] well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all! some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall: some run from brakes of ice, and answer none: and some condemned for a fault alone. [enter elbow, and officers with froth and pompey] elbow come, bring them away: if these be good people in a commonweal that do nothing but use their abuses in common houses, i know no law: bring them away. angelo how now, sir! what's your name? and what's the matter? elbow if it please your honour, i am the poor duke's constable, and my name is elbow: i do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring in here before your good honour two notorious benefactors. angelo benefactors? well; what benefactors are they? are they not malefactors? elbow if it? please your honour, i know not well what they are: but precise villains they are, that i am sure of; and void of all profanation in the world that good christians ought to have. escalus this comes off well; here's a wise officer. angelo go to: what quality are they of? elbow is your name? why dost thou not speak, elbow? pompey he cannot, sir; he's out at elbow. angelo what are you, sir? elbow he, sir! a tapster, sir; parcel-bawd; one that serves a bad woman; whose house, sir, was, as they say, plucked down in the suburbs; and now she professes a hot-house, which, i think, is a very ill house too. escalus how know you that? elbow my wife, sir, whom i detest before heaven and your honour,- escalus how? thy wife? elbow ay, sir; whom, i thank heaven, is an honest woman,- escalus dost thou detest her therefore? elbow i say, sir, i will detest myself also, as well as she, that this house, if it be not a bawd's house, it is pity of her life, for it is a naughty house. escalus how dost thou know that, constable? elbow marry, sir, by my wife; who, if she had been a woman cardinally given, might have been accused in fornication, adultery, and all uncleanliness there. escalus by the woman's means? elbow ay, sir, by mistress overdone's means: but as she spit in his face, so she defied him. pompey sir, if it please your honour, this is not so. elbow prove it before these varlets here, thou honourable man; prove it. escalus do you hear how he misplaces? pompey sir, she came in great with child; and longing, saving your honour's reverence, for stewed prunes; sir, we had but two in the house, which at that very distant time stood, as it were, in a fruit-dish, a dish of some three-pence; your honours have seen such dishes; they are not china dishes, but very good dishes,- escalus go to, go to: no matter for the dish, sir. pompey no, indeed, sir, not of a pin; you are therein in the right: but to the point. as i say, this mistress elbow, being, as i say, with child, and being great-bellied, and longing, as i said, for prunes; and having but two in the dish, as i said, master froth here, this very man, having eaten the rest, as i said, and, as i say, paying for them very honestly; for, as you know, master froth, i could not give you three-pence again. froth no, indeed. pompey very well: you being then, if you be remembered, cracking the stones of the foresaid prunes,- froth ay, so i did indeed. pompey why, very well; i telling you then, if you be remembered, that such a one and such a one were past cure of the thing you wot of, unless they kept very good diet, as i told you,- froth all this is true. pompey why, very well, then,- escalus come, you are a tedious fool: to the purpose. what was done to elbow's wife, that he hath cause to complain of? come me to what was done to her. pompey sir, your honour cannot come to that yet. escalus no, sir, nor i mean it not. pompey sir, but you shall come to it, by your honour's leave. and, i beseech you, look into master froth here, sir; a man of four-score pound a year; whose father died at hallowmas: was't not at hallowmas, master froth? froth all-hallond eve. pompey why, very well; i hope here be truths. he, sir, sitting, as i say, in a lower chair, sir; 'twas in the bunch of grapes, where indeed you have a delight to sit, have you not? froth i have so; because it is an open room and good for winter. pompey why, very well, then; i hope here be truths. angelo this will last out a night in russia, when nights are longest there: i'll take my leave. and leave you to the hearing of the cause; hoping you'll find good cause to whip them all. escalus i think no less. good morrow to your lordship. [exit angelo] now, sir, come on: what was done to elbow's wife, once more? pompey once, sir? there was nothing done to her once. elbow i beseech you, sir, ask him what this man did to my wife. pompey i beseech your honour, ask me. escalus well, sir; what did this gentleman to her? pompey i beseech you, sir, look in this gentleman's face. good master froth, look upon his honour; 'tis for a good purpose. doth your honour mark his face? escalus ay, sir, very well. pompey nay; i beseech you, mark it well. escalus well, i do so. pompey doth your honour see any harm in his face? escalus why, no. pompey i'll be supposed upon a book, his face is the worst thing about him. good, then; if his face be the worst thing about him, how could master froth do the constable's wife any harm? i would know that of your honour. escalus he's in the right. constable, what say you to it? elbow first, an it like you, the house is a respected house; next, this is a respected fellow; and his mistress is a respected woman. pompey by this hand, sir, his wife is a more respected person than any of us all. elbow varlet, thou liest; thou liest, wicked varlet! the time has yet to come that she was ever respected with man, woman, or child. pompey sir, she was respected with him before he married with her. escalus which is the wiser here? justice or iniquity? is this true? elbow o thou caitiff! o thou varlet! o thou wicked hannibal! i respected with her before i was married to her! if ever i was respected with her, or she with me, let not your worship think me the poor duke's officer. prove this, thou wicked hannibal, or i'll have mine action of battery on thee. escalus if he took you a box o' the ear, you might have your action of slander too. elbow marry, i thank your good worship for it. what is't your worship's pleasure i shall do with this wicked caitiff? escalus truly, officer, because he hath some offences in him that thou wouldst discover if thou couldst, let him continue in his courses till thou knowest what they are. elbow marry, i thank your worship for it. thou seest, thou wicked varlet, now, what's come upon thee: thou art to continue now, thou varlet; thou art to continue. escalus where were you born, friend? froth here in vienna, sir. escalus are you of fourscore pounds a year? froth yes, an't please you, sir. escalus so. what trade are you of, sir? pomphey tapster; a poor widow's tapster. escalus your mistress' name? pomphey mistress overdone. escalus hath she had any more than one husband? pompey nine, sir; overdone by the last. escalus nine! come hither to me, master froth. master froth, i would not have you acquainted with tapsters: they will draw you, master froth, and you will hang them. get you gone, and let me hear no more of you. froth i thank your worship. for mine own part, i never come into any room in a tap-house, but i am drawn in. escalus well, no more of it, master froth: farewell. [exit froth] come you hither to me, master tapster. what's your name, master tapster? pompey pompey. escalus what else? pompey bum, sir. escalus troth, and your bum is the greatest thing about you; so that in the beastliest sense you are pompey the great. pompey, you are partly a bawd, pompey, howsoever you colour it in being a tapster, are you not? come, tell me true: it shall be the better for you. pompey truly, sir, i am a poor fellow that would live. escalus how would you live, pompey? by being a bawd? what do you think of the trade, pompey? is it a lawful trade? pompey if the law would allow it, sir. escalus but the law will not allow it, pompey; nor it shall not be allowed in vienna. pompey does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of the city? escalus no, pompey. pompey truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to't then. if your worship will take order for the drabs and the knaves, you need not to fear the bawds. escalus there are pretty orders beginning, i can tell you: it is but heading and hanging. pompey if you head and hang all that offend that way but for ten year together, you'll be glad to give out a commission for more heads: if this law hold in vienna ten year, i'll rent the fairest house in it after three-pence a bay: if you live to see this come to pass, say pompey told you so. escalus thank you, good pompey; and, in requital of your prophecy, hark you: i advise you, let me not find you before me again upon any complaint whatsoever; no, not for dwelling where you do: if i do, pompey, i shall beat you to your tent, and prove a shrewd caesar to you; in plain dealing, pompey, i shall have you whipt: so, for this time, pompey, fare you well. pompey i thank your worship for your good counsel: [aside] but i shall follow it as the flesh and fortune shall better determine. whip me? no, no; let carman whip his jade: the valiant heart is not whipt out of his trade. [exit] escalus come hither to me, master elbow; come hither, master constable. how long have you been in this place of constable? elbow seven year and a half, sir. escalus i thought, by your readiness in the office, you had continued in it some time. you say, seven years together? elbow and a half, sir. escalus alas, it hath been great pains to you. they do you wrong to put you so oft upon 't: are there not men in your ward sufficient to serve it? elbow faith, sir, few of any wit in such matters: as they are chosen, they are glad to choose me for them; i do it for some piece of money, and go through with all. escalus look you bring me in the names of some six or seven, the most sufficient of your parish. elbow to your worship's house, sir? escalus to my house. fare you well. [exit elbow] what's o'clock, think you? justice eleven, sir. escalus i pray you home to dinner with me. justice i humbly thank you. escalus it grieves me for the death of claudio; but there's no remedy. justice lord angelo is severe. escalus it is but needful: mercy is not itself, that oft looks so; pardon is still the nurse of second woe: but yet,--poor claudio! there is no remedy. come, sir. [exeunt] measure for measure act ii scene ii another room in the same. [enter provost and a servant] servant he's hearing of a cause; he will come straight i'll tell him of you. provost pray you, do. [exit servant] i'll know his pleasure; may be he will relent. alas, he hath but as offended in a dream! all sects, all ages smack of this vice; and he to die for't! [enter angelo] angelo now, what's the matter. provost? provost is it your will claudio shall die tomorrow? angelo did not i tell thee yea? hadst thou not order? why dost thou ask again? provost lest i might be too rash: under your good correction, i have seen, when, after execution, judgment hath repented o'er his doom. angelo go to; let that be mine: do you your office, or give up your place, and you shall well be spared. provost i crave your honour's pardon. what shall be done, sir, with the groaning juliet? she's very near her hour. angelo dispose of her to some more fitter place, and that with speed. [re-enter servant] servant here is the sister of the man condemn'd desires access to you. angelo hath he a sister? provost ay, my good lord; a very virtuous maid, and to be shortly of a sisterhood, if not already. angelo well, let her be admitted. [exit servant] see you the fornicatress be removed: let have needful, but not lavish, means; there shall be order for't. [enter isabella and lucio] provost god save your honour! angelo stay a little while. [to isabella] you're welcome: what's your will? isabella i am a woeful suitor to your honour, please but your honour hear me. angelo well; what's your suit? isabella there is a vice that most i do abhor, and most desire should meet the blow of justice; for which i would not plead, but that i must; for which i must not plead, but that i am at war 'twixt will and will not. angelo well; the matter? isabella i have a brother is condemn'd to die: i do beseech you, let it be his fault, and not my brother. provost [aside] heaven give thee moving graces! angelo condemn the fault and not the actor of it? why, every fault's condemn'd ere it be done: mine were the very cipher of a function, to fine the faults whose fine stands in record, and let go by the actor. isabella o just but severe law! i had a brother, then. heaven keep your honour! lucio [aside to isabella] give't not o'er so: to him again, entreat him; kneel down before him, hang upon his gown: you are too cold; if you should need a pin, you could not with more tame a tongue desire it: to him, i say! isabella must he needs die? angelo maiden, no remedy. isabella yes; i do think that you might pardon him, and neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy. angelo i will not do't. isabella but can you, if you would? angelo look, what i will not, that i cannot do. isabella but might you do't, and do the world no wrong, if so your heart were touch'd with that remorse as mine is to him? angelo he's sentenced; 'tis too late. lucio [aside to isabella] you are too cold. isabella too late? why, no; i, that do speak a word. may call it back again. well, believe this, no ceremony that to great ones 'longs, not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, the marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, become them with one half so good a grace as mercy does. if he had been as you and you as he, you would have slipt like him; but he, like you, would not have been so stern. angelo pray you, be gone. isabella i would to heaven i had your potency, and you were isabel! should it then be thus? no; i would tell what 'twere to be a judge, and what a prisoner. lucio [aside to isabella] ay, touch him; there's the vein. angelo your brother is a forfeit of the law, and you but waste your words. isabella alas, alas! why, all the souls that were were forfeit once; and he that might the vantage best have took found out the remedy. how would you be, if he, which is the top of judgment, should but judge you as you are? o, think on that; and mercy then will breathe within your lips, like man new made. angelo be you content, fair maid; it is the law, not i condemn your brother: were he my kinsman, brother, or my son, it should be thus with him: he must die tomorrow. isabella to-morrow! o, that's sudden! spare him, spare him! he's not prepared for death. even for our kitchens we kill the fowl of season: shall we serve heaven with less respect than we do minister to our gross selves? good, good my lord, bethink you; who is it that hath died for this offence? there's many have committed it. lucio [aside to isabella] ay, well said. angelo the law hath not been dead, though it hath slept: those many had not dared to do that evil, if the first that did the edict infringe had answer'd for his deed: now 'tis awake takes note of what is done; and, like a prophet, looks in a glass, that shows what future evils, either new, or by remissness new-conceived, and so in progress to be hatch'd and born, are now to have no successive degrees, but, ere they live, to end. isabella yet show some pity. angelo i show it most of all when i show justice; for then i pity those i do not know, which a dismiss'd offence would after gall; and do him right that, answering one foul wrong, lives not to act another. be satisfied; your brother dies to-morrow; be content. isabella so you must be the first that gives this sentence, and he, that suffer's. o, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant. lucio [aside to isabella] that's well said. isabella could great men thunder as jove himself does, jove would ne'er be quiet, for every pelting, petty officer would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder! merciful heaven, thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man, drest in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he's most assured, his glassy essence, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep; who, with our spleens, would all themselves laugh mortal. lucio [aside to isabella] o, to him, to him, wench! he will relent; he's coming; i perceive 't. provost [aside] pray heaven she win him! isabella we cannot weigh our brother with ourself: great men may jest with saints; 'tis wit in them, but in the less foul profanation. lucio thou'rt i' the right, girl; more o, that. isabella that in the captain's but a choleric word, which in the soldier is flat blasphemy. lucio [aside to isabella] art avised o' that? more on 't. angelo why do you put these sayings upon me? isabella because authority, though it err like others, hath yet a kind of medicine in itself, that skins the vice o' the top. go to your bosom; knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know that's like my brother's fault: if it confess a natural guiltiness such as is his, let it not sound a thought upon your tongue against my brother's life. angelo [aside] she speaks, and 'tis such sense, that my sense breeds with it. fare you well. isabella gentle my lord, turn back. angelo i will bethink me: come again tomorrow. isabella hark how i'll bribe you: good my lord, turn back. angelo how! bribe me? isabella ay, with such gifts that heaven shall share with you. lucio [aside to isabella] you had marr'd all else. isabella not with fond shekels of the tested gold, or stones whose rates are either rich or poor as fancy values them; but with true prayers that shall be up at heaven and enter there ere sun-rise, prayers from preserved souls, from fasting maids whose minds are dedicate to nothing temporal. angelo well; come to me to-morrow. lucio [aside to isabella] go to; 'tis well; away! isabella heaven keep your honour safe! angelo [aside] amen: for i am that way going to temptation, where prayers cross. isabella at what hour to-morrow shall i attend your lordship? angelo at any time 'fore noon. isabella 'save your honour! [exeunt isabella, lucio, and provost] angelo from thee, even from thy virtue! what's this, what's this? is this her fault or mine? the tempter or the tempted, who sins most? ha! not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is i that, lying by the violet in the sun, do as the carrion does, not as the flower, corrupt with virtuous season. can it be that modesty may more betray our sense than woman's lightness? having waste ground enough, shall we desire to raze the sanctuary and pitch our evils there? o, fie, fie, fie! what dost thou, or what art thou, angelo? dost thou desire her foully for those things that make her good? o, let her brother live! thieves for their robbery have authority when judges steal themselves. what, do i love her, that i desire to hear her speak again, and feast upon her eyes? what is't i dream on? o cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint, with saints dost bait thy hook! most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet, with all her double vigour, art and nature, once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid subdues me quite. even till now, when men were fond, i smiled and wonder'd how. [exit] measure for measure act ii scene iii a room in a prison. [enter, severally, duke vincentio disguised as a friar, and provost] duke vincentio hail to you, provost! so i think you are. provost i am the provost. what's your will, good friar? duke vincentio bound by my charity and my blest order, i come to visit the afflicted spirits here in the prison. do me the common right to let me see them and to make me know the nature of their crimes, that i may minister to them accordingly. provost i would do more than that, if more were needful. [enter juliet] look, here comes one: a gentlewoman of mine, who, falling in the flaws of her own youth, hath blister'd her report: she is with child; and he that got it, sentenced; a young man more fit to do another such offence than die for this. duke vincentio when must he die? provost as i do think, to-morrow. i have provided for you: stay awhile, [to juliet] and you shall be conducted. duke vincentio repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry? juliet i do; and bear the shame most patiently. duke vincentio i'll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience, and try your penitence, if it be sound, or hollowly put on. juliet i'll gladly learn. duke vincentio love you the man that wrong'd you? juliet yes, as i love the woman that wrong'd him. duke vincentio so then it seems your most offenceful act was mutually committed? juliet mutually. duke vincentio then was your sin of heavier kind than his. juliet i do confess it, and repent it, father. duke vincentio 'tis meet so, daughter: but lest you do repent, as that the sin hath brought you to this shame, which sorrow is always towards ourselves, not heaven, showing we would not spare heaven as we love it, but as we stand in fear,- juliet i do repent me, as it is an evil, and take the shame with joy. duke vincentio there rest. your partner, as i hear, must die to-morrow, and i am going with instruction to him. grace go with you, benedicite! [exit] juliet must die to-morrow! o injurious love, that respites me a life, whose very comfort is still a dying horror! provost 'tis pity of him. [exeunt] measure for measure act ii scene iv a room in angelo's house. [enter angelo] angelo when i would pray and think, i think and pray to several subjects. heaven hath my empty words; whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue, anchors on isabel: heaven in my mouth, as if i did but only chew his name; and in my heart the strong and swelling evil of my conception. the state, whereon i studied is like a good thing, being often read, grown fear'd and tedious; yea, my gravity, wherein--let no man hear me--i take pride, could i with boot change for an idle plume, which the air beats for vain. o place, o form, how often dost thou with thy case, thy habit, wrench awe from fools and tie the wiser souls to thy false seeming! blood, thou art blood: let's write good angel on the devil's horn: 'tis not the devil's crest. [enter a servant] how now! who's there? servant one isabel, a sister, desires access to you. angelo teach her the way. [exit servant] o heavens! why does my blood thus muster to my heart, making both it unable for itself, and dispossessing all my other parts of necessary fitness? so play the foolish throngs with one that swoons; come all to help him, and so stop the air by which he should revive: and even so the general, subject to a well-wish'd king, quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness crowd to his presence, where their untaught love must needs appear offence. [enter isabella] how now, fair maid? isabella i am come to know your pleasure. angelo that you might know it, would much better please me than to demand what 'tis. your brother cannot live. isabella even so. heaven keep your honour! angelo yet may he live awhile; and, it may be, as long as you or i yet he must die. isabella under your sentence? angelo yea. isabella when, i beseech you? that in his reprieve, longer or shorter, he may be so fitted that his soul sicken not. angelo ha! fie, these filthy vices! it were as good to pardon him that hath from nature stolen a man already made, as to remit their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven's image in stamps that are forbid: 'tis all as easy falsely to take away a life true made as to put metal in restrained means to make a false one. isabella 'tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth. angelo say you so? then i shall pose you quickly. which had you rather, that the most just law now took your brother's life; or, to redeem him, give up your body to such sweet uncleanness as she that he hath stain'd? isabella sir, believe this, i had rather give my body than my soul. angelo i talk not of your soul: our compell'd sins stand more for number than for accompt. isabella how say you? angelo nay, i'll not warrant that; for i can speak against the thing i say. answer to this: i, now the voice of the recorded law, pronounce a sentence on your brother's life: might there not be a charity in sin to save this brother's life? isabella please you to do't, i'll take it as a peril to my soul, it is no sin at all, but charity. angelo pleased you to do't at peril of your soul, were equal poise of sin and charity. isabella that i do beg his life, if it be sin, heaven let me bear it! you granting of my suit, if that be sin, i'll make it my morn prayer to have it added to the faults of mine, and nothing of your answer. angelo nay, but hear me. your sense pursues not mine: either you are ignorant, or seem so craftily; and that's not good. isabella let me be ignorant, and in nothing good, but graciously to know i am no better. angelo thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright when it doth tax itself; as these black masks proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder than beauty could, display'd. but mark me; to be received plain, i'll speak more gross: your brother is to die. isabella so. angelo and his offence is so, as it appears, accountant to the law upon that pain. isabella true. angelo admit no other way to save his life,- as i subscribe not that, nor any other, but in the loss of question,--that you, his sister, finding yourself desired of such a person, whose credit with the judge, or own great place, could fetch your brother from the manacles of the all-building law; and that there were no earthly mean to save him, but that either you must lay down the treasures of your body to this supposed, or else to let him suffer; what would you do? isabella as much for my poor brother as myself: that is, were i under the terms of death, the impression of keen whips i'ld wear as rubies, and strip myself to death, as to a bed that longing have been sick for, ere i'ld yield my body up to shame. angelo then must your brother die. isabella and 'twere the cheaper way: better it were a brother died at once, than that a sister, by redeeming him, should die for ever. angelo were not you then as cruel as the sentence that you have slander'd so? isabella ignomy in ransom and free pardon are of two houses: lawful mercy is nothing kin to foul redemption. angelo you seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant; and rather proved the sliding of your brother a merriment than a vice. isabella o, pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out, to have what we would have, we speak not what we mean: i something do excuse the thing i hate, for his advantage that i dearly love. angelo we are all frail. isabella else let my brother die, if not a feodary, but only he owe and succeed thy weakness. angelo nay, women are frail too. isabella ay, as the glasses where they view themselves; which are as easy broke as they make forms. women! help heaven! men their creation mar in profiting by them. nay, call us ten times frail; for we are soft as our complexions are, and credulous to false prints. angelo i think it well: and from this testimony of your own sex,- since i suppose we are made to be no stronger than faults may shake our frames,--let me be bold; i do arrest your words. be that you are, that is, a woman; if you be more, you're none; if you be one, as you are well express'd by all external warrants, show it now, by putting on the destined livery. isabella i have no tongue but one: gentle my lord, let me entreat you speak the former language. angelo plainly conceive, i love you. isabella my brother did love juliet, and you tell me that he shall die for it. angelo he shall not, isabel, if you give me love. isabella i know your virtue hath a licence in't, which seems a little fouler than it is, to pluck on others. angelo believe me, on mine honour, my words express my purpose. isabella ha! little honour to be much believed, and most pernicious purpose! seeming, seeming! i will proclaim thee, angelo; look for't: sign me a present pardon for my brother, or with an outstretch'd throat i'll tell the world aloud what man thou art. angelo who will believe thee, isabel? my unsoil'd name, the austereness of my life, my vouch against you, and my place i' the state, will so your accusation overweigh, that you shall stifle in your own report and smell of calumny. i have begun, and now i give my sensual race the rein: fit thy consent to my sharp appetite; lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes, that banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother by yielding up thy body to my will; or else he must not only die the death, but thy unkindness shall his death draw out to lingering sufferance. answer me to-morrow, or, by the affection that now guides me most, i'll prove a tyrant to him. as for you, say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true. [exit] isabella to whom should i complain? did i tell this, who would believe me? o perilous mouths, that bear in them one and the self-same tongue, either of condemnation or approof; bidding the law make court'sy to their will: hooking both right and wrong to the appetite, to follow as it draws! i'll to my brother: though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood, yet hath he in him such a mind of honour. that, had he twenty heads to tender down on twenty bloody blocks, he'ld yield them up, before his sister should her body stoop to such abhorr'd pollution. then, isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die: more than our brother is our chastity. i'll tell him yet of angelo's request, and fit his mind to death, for his soul's rest. [exit] measure for measure act iii scene i a room in the prison. [enter duke vincentio disguised as before, claudio, and provost] duke vincentio so then you hope of pardon from lord angelo? claudio the miserable have no other medicine but only hope: i've hope to live, and am prepared to die. duke vincentio be absolute for death; either death or life shall thereby be the sweeter. reason thus with life: if i do lose thee, i do lose a thing that none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, servile to all the skyey influences, that dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool; for him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun and yet runn'st toward him still. thou art not noble; for all the accommodations that thou bear'st are nursed by baseness. thou'rt by no means valiant; for thou dost fear the soft and tender fork of a poor worm. thy best of rest is sleep, and that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear'st thy death, which is no more. thou art not thyself; for thou exist'st on many a thousand grains that issue out of dust. happy thou art not; for what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get, and what thou hast, forget'st. thou art not certain; for thy complexion shifts to strange effects, after the moon. if thou art rich, thou'rt poor; for, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, thou bear's thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee. friend hast thou none; for thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, the mere effusion of thy proper loins, do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, for ending thee no sooner. thou hast nor youth nor age, but, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich, thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, to make thy riches pleasant. what's yet in this that bears the name of life? yet in this life lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear, that makes these odds all even. claudio i humbly thank you. to sue to live, i find i seek to die; and, seeking death, find life: let it come on. isabella [within] what, ho! peace here; grace and good company! provost who's there? come in: the wish deserves a welcome. duke vincentio dear sir, ere long i'll visit you again. claudio most holy sir, i thank you. [enter isabella] isabella my business is a word or two with claudio. provost and very welcome. look, signior, here's your sister. duke vincentio provost, a word with you. provost as many as you please. duke vincentio bring me to hear them speak, where i may be concealed. [exeunt duke vincentio and provost] claudio now, sister, what's the comfort? isabella why, as all comforts are; most good, most good indeed. lord angelo, having affairs to heaven, intends you for his swift ambassador, where you shall be an everlasting leiger: therefore your best appointment make with speed; to-morrow you set on. claudio is there no remedy? isabella none, but such remedy as, to save a head, to cleave a heart in twain. claudio but is there any? isabella yes, brother, you may live: there is a devilish mercy in the judge, if you'll implore it, that will free your life, but fetter you till death. claudio perpetual durance? isabella ay, just; perpetual durance, a restraint, though all the world's vastidity you had, to a determined scope. claudio but in what nature? isabella in such a one as, you consenting to't, would bark your honour from that trunk you bear, and leave you naked. claudio let me know the point. isabella o, i do fear thee, claudio; and i quake, lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain, and six or seven winters more respect than a perpetual honour. darest thou die? the sense of death is most in apprehension; and the poor beetle, that we tread upon, in corporal sufferance finds a pang as great as when a giant dies. claudio why give you me this shame? think you i can a resolution fetch from flowery tenderness? if i must die, i will encounter darkness as a bride, and hug it in mine arms. isabella there spake my brother; there my father's grave did utter forth a voice. yes, thou must die: thou art too noble to conserve a life in base appliances. this outward-sainted deputy, whose settled visage and deliberate word nips youth i' the head and follies doth emmew as falcon doth the fowl, is yet a devil his filth within being cast, he would appear a pond as deep as hell. claudio the prenzie angelo! isabella o, 'tis the cunning livery of hell, the damned'st body to invest and cover in prenzie guards! dost thou think, claudio? if i would yield him my virginity, thou mightst be freed. claudio o heavens! it cannot be. isabella yes, he would give't thee, from this rank offence, so to offend him still. this night's the time that i should do what i abhor to name, or else thou diest to-morrow. claudio thou shalt not do't. isabella o, were it but my life, i'ld throw it down for your deliverance as frankly as a pin. claudio thanks, dear isabel. isabella be ready, claudio, for your death tomorrow. claudio yes. has he affections in him, that thus can make him bite the law by the nose, when he would force it? sure, it is no sin, or of the deadly seven, it is the least. isabella which is the least? claudio if it were damnable, he being so wise, why would he for the momentary trick be perdurably fined? o isabel! isabella what says my brother? claudio death is a fearful thing. isabella and shamed life a hateful. claudio ay, but to die, and go we know not where; to lie in cold obstruction and to rot; this sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit to bathe in fiery floods, or to reside in thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; to be imprison'd in the viewless winds, and blown with restless violence round about the pendent world; or to be worse than worst of those that lawless and incertain thought imagine howling: 'tis too horrible! the weariest and most loathed worldly life that age, ache, penury and imprisonment can lay on nature is a paradise to what we fear of death. isabella alas, alas! claudio sweet sister, let me live: what sin you do to save a brother's life, nature dispenses with the deed so far that it becomes a virtue. isabella o you beast! o faithless coward! o dishonest wretch! wilt thou be made a man out of my vice? is't not a kind of incest, to take life from thine own sister's shame? what should i think? heaven shield my mother play'd my father fair! for such a warped slip of wilderness ne'er issued from his blood. take my defiance! die, perish! might but my bending down reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed: i'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death, no word to save thee. claudio nay, hear me, isabel. isabella o, fie, fie, fie! thy sin's not accidental, but a trade. mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd: 'tis best thou diest quickly. claudio o hear me, isabella! [re-enter duke vincentio] duke vincentio vouchsafe a word, young sister, but one word. isabella what is your will? duke vincentio might you dispense with your leisure, i would by and by have some speech with you: the satisfaction i would require is likewise your own benefit. isabella i have no superfluous leisure; my stay must be stolen out of other affairs; but i will attend you awhile. [walks apart] duke vincentio son, i have overheard what hath passed between you and your sister. angelo had never the purpose to corrupt her; only he hath made an essay of her virtue to practise his judgment with the disposition of natures: she, having the truth of honour in her, hath made him that gracious denial which he is most glad to receive. i am confessor to angelo, and i know this to be true; therefore prepare yourself to death: do not satisfy your resolution with hopes that are fallible: tomorrow you must die; go to your knees and make ready. claudio let me ask my sister pardon. i am so out of love with life that i will sue to be rid of it. duke vincentio hold you there: farewell. [exit claudio] provost, a word with you! [re-enter provost] provost what's your will, father duke vincentio that now you are come, you will be gone. leave me awhile with the maid: my mind promises with my habit no loss shall touch her by my company. provost in good time. [exit provost. isabella comes forward] duke vincentio the hand that hath made you fair hath made you good: the goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair. the assault that angelo hath made to you, fortune hath conveyed to my understanding; and, but that frailty hath examples for his falling, i should wonder at angelo. how will you do to content this substitute, and to save your brother? isabella i am now going to resolve him: i had rather my brother die by the law than my son should be unlawfully born. but, o, how much is the good duke deceived in angelo! if ever he return and i can speak to him, i will open my lips in vain, or discover his government. duke vincentio that shall not be much amiss: yet, as the matter now stands, he will avoid your accusation; he made trial of you only. therefore fasten your ear on my advisings: to the love i have in doing good a remedy presents itself. i do make myself believe that you may most uprighteously do a poor wronged lady a merited benefit; redeem your brother from the angry law; do no stain to your own gracious person; and much please the absent duke, if peradventure he shall ever return to have hearing of this business. isabella let me hear you speak farther. i have spirit to do anything that appears not foul in the truth of my spirit. duke vincentio virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful. have you not heard speak of mariana, the sister of frederick the great soldier who miscarried at sea? isabella i have heard of the lady, and good words went with her name. duke vincentio she should this angelo have married; was affianced to her by oath, and the nuptial appointed: between which time of the contract and limit of the solemnity, her brother frederick was wrecked at sea, having in that perished vessel the dowry of his sister. but mark how heavily this befell to the poor gentlewoman: there she lost a noble and renowned brother, in his love toward her ever most kind and natural; with him, the portion and sinew of her fortune, her marriage-dowry; with both, her combinate husband, this well-seeming angelo. isabella can this be so? did angelo so leave her? duke vincentio left her in her tears, and dried not one of them with his comfort; swallowed his vows whole, pretending in her discoveries of dishonour: in few, bestowed her on her own lamentation, which she yet wears for his sake; and he, a marble to her tears, is washed with them, but relents not. isabella what a merit were it in death to take this poor maid from the world! what corruption in this life, that it will let this man live! but how out of this can she avail? duke vincentio it is a rupture that you may easily heal: and the cure of it not only saves your brother, but keeps you from dishonour in doing it. isabella show me how, good father. duke vincentio this forenamed maid hath yet in her the continuance of her first affection: his unjust unkindness, that in all reason should have quenched her love, hath, like an impediment in the current, made it more violent and unruly. go you to angelo; answer his requiring with a plausible obedience; agree with his demands to the point; only refer yourself to this advantage, first, that your stay with him may not be long; that the time may have all shadow and silence in it; and the place answer to convenience. this being granted in course,--and now follows all,--we shall advise this wronged maid to stead up your appointment, go in your place; if the encounter acknowledge itself hereafter, it may compel him to her recompense: and here, by this, is your brother saved, your honour untainted, the poor mariana advantaged, and the corrupt deputy scaled. the maid will i frame and make fit for his attempt. if you think well to carry this as you may, the doubleness of the benefit defends the deceit from reproof. what think you of it? isabella the image of it gives me content already; and i trust it will grow to a most prosperous perfection. duke vincentio it lies much in your holding up. haste you speedily to angelo: if for this night he entreat you to his bed, give him promise of satisfaction. i will presently to saint luke's: there, at the moated grange, resides this dejected mariana. at that place call upon me; and dispatch with angelo, that it may be quickly. isabella i thank you for this comfort. fare you well, good father. [exeunt severally] measure for measure act iii scene ii the street before the prison. [enter, on one side, duke vincentio disguised as before; on the other, elbow, and officers with pompey] elbow nay, if there be no remedy for it, but that you will needs buy and sell men and women like beasts, we shall have all the world drink brown and white bastard. duke vincentio o heavens! what stuff is here pompey 'twas never merry world since, of two usuries, the merriest was put down, and the worser allowed by order of law a furred gown to keep him warm; and furred with fox and lamb-skins too, to signify, that craft, being richer than innocency, stands for the facing. elbow come your way, sir. 'bless you, good father friar. duke vincentio and you, good brother father. what offence hath this man made you, sir? elbow marry, sir, he hath offended the law: and, sir, we take him to be a thief too, sir; for we have found upon him, sir, a strange picklock, which we have sent to the deputy. duke vincentio fie, sirrah! a bawd, a wicked bawd! the evil that thou causest to be done, that is thy means to live. do thou but think what 'tis to cram a maw or clothe a back from such a filthy vice: say to thyself, from their abominable and beastly touches i drink, i eat, array myself, and live. canst thou believe thy living is a life, so stinkingly depending? go mend, go mend. pompey indeed, it does stink in some sort, sir; but yet, sir, i would prove- duke vincentio nay, if the devil have given thee proofs for sin, thou wilt prove his. take him to prison, officer: correction and instruction must both work ere this rude beast will profit. elbow he must before the deputy, sir; he has given him warning: the deputy cannot abide a whoremaster: if he be a whoremonger, and comes before him, he were as good go a mile on his errand. duke vincentio that we were all, as some would seem to be, from our faults, as faults from seeming, free! elbow his neck will come to your waist,--a cord, sir. pompey i spy comfort; i cry bail. here's a gentleman and a friend of mine. [enter lucio] lucio how now, noble pompey! what, at the wheels of caesar? art thou led in triumph? what, is there none of pygmalion's images, newly made woman, to be had now, for putting the hand in the pocket and extracting it clutch'd? what reply, ha? what sayest thou to this tune, matter and method? is't not drowned i' the last rain, ha? what sayest thou, trot? is the world as it was, man? which is the way? is it sad, and few words? or how? the trick of it? duke vincentio still thus, and thus; still worse! lucio how doth my dear morsel, thy mistress? procures she still, ha? pompey troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is herself in the tub. lucio why, 'tis good; it is the right of it; it must be so: ever your fresh whore and your powdered bawd: an unshunned consequence; it must be so. art going to prison, pompey? pompey yes, faith, sir. lucio why, 'tis not amiss, pompey. farewell: go, say i sent thee thither. for debt, pompey? or how? elbow for being a bawd, for being a bawd. lucio well, then, imprison him: if imprisonment be the due of a bawd, why, 'tis his right: bawd is he doubtless, and of antiquity too; bawd-born. farewell, good pompey. commend me to the prison, pompey: you will turn good husband now, pompey; you will keep the house. pompey i hope, sir, your good worship will be my bail. lucio no, indeed, will i not, pompey; it is not the wear. i will pray, pompey, to increase your bondage: if you take it not patiently, why, your mettle is the more. adieu, trusty pompey. 'bless you, friar. duke vincentio and you. lucio does bridget paint still, pompey, ha? elbow come your ways, sir; come. pompey you will not bail me, then, sir? lucio then, pompey, nor now. what news abroad, friar? what news? elbow come your ways, sir; come. lucio go to kennel, pompey; go. [exeunt elbow, pompey and officers] what news, friar, of the duke? duke vincentio i know none. can you tell me of any? lucio some say he is with the emperor of russia; other some, he is in rome: but where is he, think you? duke vincentio i know not where; but wheresoever, i wish him well. lucio it was a mad fantastical trick of him to steal from the state, and usurp the beggary he was never born to. lord angelo dukes it well in his absence; he puts transgression to 't. duke vincentio he does well in 't. lucio a little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in him: something too crabbed that way, friar. duke vincentio it is too general a vice, and severity must cure it. lucio yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred; it is well allied: but it is impossible to extirp it quite, friar, till eating and drinking be put down. they say this angelo was not made by man and woman after this downright way of creation: is it true, think you? duke vincentio how should he be made, then? lucio some report a sea-maid spawned him; some, that he was begot between two stock-fishes. but it is certain that when he makes water his urine is congealed ice; that i know to be true: and he is a motion generative; that's infallible. duke vincentio you are pleasant, sir, and speak apace. lucio why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a man! would the duke that is absent have done this? ere he would have hanged a man for the getting a hundred bastards, he would have paid for the nursing a thousand: he had some feeling of the sport: he knew the service, and that instructed him to mercy. duke vincentio i never heard the absent duke much detected for women; he was not inclined that way. lucio o, sir, you are deceived. duke vincentio 'tis not possible. lucio who, not the duke? yes, your beggar of fifty; and his use was to put a ducat in her clack-dish: the duke had crotchets in him. he would be drunk too; that let me inform you. duke vincentio you do him wrong, surely. lucio sir, i was an inward of his. a shy fellow was the duke: and i believe i know the cause of his withdrawing. duke vincentio what, i prithee, might be the cause? lucio no, pardon; 'tis a secret must be locked within the teeth and the lips: but this i can let you understand, the greater file of the subject held the duke to be wise. duke vincentio wise! why, no question but he was. lucio a very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow. duke vincentio either this is the envy in you, folly, or mistaking: the very stream of his life and the business he hath helmed must upon a warranted need give him a better proclamation. let him be but testimonied in his own bringings-forth, and he shall appear to the envious a scholar, a statesman and a soldier. therefore you speak unskilfully: or if your knowledge be more it is much darkened in your malice. lucio sir, i know him, and i love him. duke vincentio love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love. lucio come, sir, i know what i know. duke vincentio i can hardly believe that, since you know not what you speak. but, if ever the duke return, as our prayers are he may, let me desire you to make your answer before him. if it be honest you have spoke, you have courage to maintain it: i am bound to call upon you; and, i pray you, your name? lucio sir, my name is lucio; well known to the duke. duke vincentio he shall know you better, sir, if i may live to report you. lucio i fear you not. duke vincentio o, you hope the duke will return no more; or you imagine me too unhurtful an opposite. but indeed i can do you little harm; you'll forswear this again. lucio i'll be hanged first: thou art deceived in me, friar. but no more of this. canst thou tell if claudio die to-morrow or no? duke vincentio why should he die, sir? lucio why? for filling a bottle with a tundish. i would the duke we talk of were returned again: the ungenitured agent will unpeople the province with continency; sparrows must not build in his house-eaves, because they are lecherous. the duke yet would have dark deeds darkly answered; he would never bring them to light: would he were returned! marry, this claudio is condemned for untrussing. farewell, good friar: i prithee, pray for me. the duke, i say to thee again, would eat mutton on fridays. he's not past it yet, and i say to thee, he would mouth with a beggar, though she smelt brown bread and garlic: say that i said so. farewell. [exit] duke vincentio no might nor greatness in mortality can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes. what king so strong can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue? but who comes here? [enter escalus, provost, and officers with mistress overdone] escalus go; away with her to prison! mistress overdone good my lord, be good to me; your honour is accounted a merciful man; good my lord. escalus double and treble admonition, and still forfeit in the same kind! this would make mercy swear and play the tyrant. provost a bawd of eleven years' continuance, may it please your honour. mistress overdone my lord, this is one lucio's information against me. mistress kate keepdown was with child by him in the duke's time; he promised her marriage: his child is a year and a quarter old, come philip and jacob: i have kept it myself; and see how he goes about to abuse me! escalus that fellow is a fellow of much licence: let him be called before us. away with her to prison! go to; no more words. [exeunt officers with mistress overdone] provost, my brother angelo will not be altered; claudio must die to-morrow: let him be furnished with divines, and have all charitable preparation. if my brother wrought by my pity, it should not be so with him. provost so please you, this friar hath been with him, and advised him for the entertainment of death. escalus good even, good father. duke vincentio bliss and goodness on you! escalus of whence are you? duke vincentio not of this country, though my chance is now to use it for my time: i am a brother of gracious order, late come from the see in special business from his holiness. escalus what news abroad i' the world? duke vincentio none, but that there is so great a fever on goodness, that the dissolution of it must cure it: novelty is only in request; and it is as dangerous to be aged in any kind of course, as it is virtuous to be constant in any undertaking. there is scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure; but security enough to make fellowships accurst: much upon this riddle runs the wisdom of the world. this news is old enough, yet it is every day's news. i pray you, sir, of what disposition was the duke? escalus one that, above all other strifes, contended especially to know himself. duke vincentio what pleasure was he given to? escalus rather rejoicing to see another merry, than merry at any thing which professed to make him rejoice: a gentleman of all temperance. but leave we him to his events, with a prayer they may prove prosperous; and let me desire to know how you find claudio prepared. i am made to understand that you have lent him visitation. duke vincentio he professes to have received no sinister measure from his judge, but most willingly humbles himself to the determination of justice: yet had he framed to himself, by the instruction of his frailty, many deceiving promises of life; which i by my good leisure have discredited to him, and now is he resolved to die. escalus you have paid the heavens your function, and the prisoner the very debt of your calling. i have laboured for the poor gentleman to the extremest shore of my modesty: but my brother justice have i found so severe, that he hath forced me to tell him he is indeed justice. duke vincentio if his own life answer the straitness of his proceeding, it shall become him well; wherein if he chance to fail, he hath sentenced himself. escalus i am going to visit the prisoner. fare you well. duke vincentio peace be with you! [exeunt escalus and provost] he who the sword of heaven will bear should be as holy as severe; pattern in himself to know, grace to stand, and virtue go; more nor less to others paying than by self-offences weighing. shame to him whose cruel striking kills for faults of his own liking! twice treble shame on angelo, to weed my vice and let his grow! o, what may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side! how may likeness made in crimes, making practise on the times, to draw with idle spiders' strings most ponderous and substantial things! craft against vice i must apply: with angelo to-night shall lie his old betrothed but despised; so disguise shall, by the disguised, pay with falsehood false exacting, and perform an old contracting. [exit] measure for measure act iv scene i the moated grange at st. luke's. [enter mariana and a boy] [boy sings] take, o, take those lips away, that so sweetly were forsworn; and those eyes, the break of day, lights that do mislead the morn: but my kisses bring again, bring again; seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain. mariana break off thy song, and haste thee quick away: here comes a man of comfort, whose advice hath often still'd my brawling discontent. [exit boy] [enter duke vincentio disguised as before] i cry you mercy, sir; and well could wish you had not found me here so musical: let me excuse me, and believe me so, my mirth it much displeased, but pleased my woe. duke vincentio 'tis good; though music oft hath such a charm to make bad good, and good provoke to harm. i pray, you, tell me, hath any body inquired for me here to-day? much upon this time have i promised here to meet. mariana you have not been inquired after: i have sat here all day. [enter isabella] duke vincentio i do constantly believe you. the time is come even now. i shall crave your forbearance a little: may be i will call upon you anon, for some advantage to yourself. mariana i am always bound to you. [exit] duke vincentio very well met, and well come. what is the news from this good deputy? isabella he hath a garden circummured with brick, whose western side is with a vineyard back'd; and to that vineyard is a planched gate, that makes his opening with this bigger key: this other doth command a little door which from the vineyard to the garden leads; there have i made my promise upon the heavy middle of the night to call upon him. duke vincentio but shall you on your knowledge find this way? isabella i have ta'en a due and wary note upon't: with whispering and most guilty diligence, in action all of precept, he did show me the way twice o'er. duke vincentio are there no other tokens between you 'greed concerning her observance? isabella no, none, but only a repair i' the dark; and that i have possess'd him my most stay can be but brief; for i have made him know i have a servant comes with me along, that stays upon me, whose persuasion is i come about my brother. duke vincentio 'tis well borne up. i have not yet made known to mariana a word of this. what, ho! within! come forth! [re-enter mariana] i pray you, be acquainted with this maid; she comes to do you good. isabella i do desire the like. duke vincentio do you persuade yourself that i respect you? mariana good friar, i know you do, and have found it. duke vincentio take, then, this your companion by the hand, who hath a story ready for your ear. i shall attend your leisure: but make haste; the vaporous night approaches. mariana will't please you walk aside? [exeunt mariana and isabella] duke vincentio o place and greatness! millions of false eyes are stuck upon thee: volumes of report run with these false and most contrarious quests upon thy doings: thousand escapes of wit make thee the father of their idle dreams and rack thee in their fancies. [re-enter mariana and isabella] welcome, how agreed? isabella she'll take the enterprise upon her, father, if you advise it. duke vincentio it is not my consent, but my entreaty too. isabella little have you to say when you depart from him, but, soft and low, 'remember now my brother.' mariana fear me not. duke vincentio nor, gentle daughter, fear you not at all. he is your husband on a pre-contract: to bring you thus together, 'tis no sin, sith that the justice of your title to him doth flourish the deceit. come, let us go: our corn's to reap, for yet our tithe's to sow. [exeunt] measure for measure act iv scene ii a room in the prison. [enter provost and pompey] provost come hither, sirrah. can you cut off a man's head? pompey if the man be a bachelor, sir, i can; but if he be a married man, he's his wife's head, and i can never cut off a woman's head. provost come, sir, leave me your snatches, and yield me a direct answer. to-morrow morning are to die claudio and barnardine. here is in our prison a common executioner, who in his office lacks a helper: if you will take it on you to assist him, it shall redeem you from your gyves; if not, you shall have your full time of imprisonment and your deliverance with an unpitied whipping, for you have been a notorious bawd. pompey sir, i have been an unlawful bawd time out of mind; but yet i will be content to be a lawful hangman. i would be glad to receive some instruction from my fellow partner. provost what, ho! abhorson! where's abhorson, there? [enter abhorson] abhorson do you call, sir? provost sirrah, here's a fellow will help you to-morrow in your execution. if you think it meet, compound with him by the year, and let him abide here with you; if not, use him for the present and dismiss him. he cannot plead his estimation with you; he hath been a bawd. abhorson a bawd, sir? fie upon him! he will discredit our mystery. provost go to, sir; you weigh equally; a feather will turn the scale. [exit] pompey pray, sir, by your good favour,--for surely, sir, a good favour you have, but that you have a hanging look,--do you call, sir, your occupation a mystery? abhorson ay, sir; a mystery pompey painting, sir, i have heard say, is a mystery; and your whores, sir, being members of my occupation, using painting, do prove my occupation a mystery: but what mystery there should be in hanging, if i should be hanged, i cannot imagine. abhorson sir, it is a mystery. pompey proof? abhorson every true man's apparel fits your thief: if it be too little for your thief, your true man thinks it big enough; if it be too big for your thief, your thief thinks it little enough: so every true man's apparel fits your thief. [re-enter provost] provost are you agreed? pompey sir, i will serve him; for i do find your hangman is a more penitent trade than your bawd; he doth oftener ask forgiveness. provost you, sirrah, provide your block and your axe to-morrow four o'clock. abhorson come on, bawd; i will instruct thee in my trade; follow. pompey i do desire to learn, sir: and i hope, if you have occasion to use me for your own turn, you shall find me yare; for truly, sir, for your kindness i owe you a good turn. provost call hither barnardine and claudio: [exeunt pompey and abhorson] the one has my pity; not a jot the other, being a murderer, though he were my brother. [enter claudio] look, here's the warrant, claudio, for thy death: 'tis now dead midnight, and by eight to-morrow thou must be made immortal. where's barnardine? claudio as fast lock'd up in sleep as guiltless labour when it lies starkly in the traveller's bones: he will not wake. provost who can do good on him? well, go, prepare yourself. [knocking within] but, hark, what noise? heaven give your spirits comfort! [exit claudio] by and by. i hope it is some pardon or reprieve for the most gentle claudio. [enter duke vincentio disguised as before] welcome father. duke vincentio the best and wholesomest spirts of the night envelope you, good provost! who call'd here of late? provost none, since the curfew rung. duke vincentio not isabel? provost no. duke vincentio they will, then, ere't be long. provost what comfort is for claudio? duke vincentio there's some in hope. provost it is a bitter deputy. duke vincentio not so, not so; his life is parallel'd even with the stroke and line of his great justice: he doth with holy abstinence subdue that in himself which he spurs on his power to qualify in others: were he meal'd with that which he corrects, then were he tyrannous; but this being so, he's just. [knocking within] now are they come. [exit provost] this is a gentle provost: seldom when the steeled gaoler is the friend of men. [knocking within] how now! what noise? that spirit's possessed with haste that wounds the unsisting postern with these strokes. [re-enter provost] provost there he must stay until the officer arise to let him in: he is call'd up. duke vincentio have you no countermand for claudio yet, but he must die to-morrow? provost none, sir, none. duke vincentio as near the dawning, provost, as it is, you shall hear more ere morning. provost happily you something know; yet i believe there comes no countermand; no such example have we: besides, upon the very siege of justice lord angelo hath to the public ear profess'd the contrary. [enter a messenger] this is his lordship's man. duke vincentio and here comes claudio's pardon. messenger [giving a paper] my lord hath sent you this note; and by me this further charge, that you swerve not from the smallest article of it, neither in time, matter, or other circumstance. good morrow; for, as i take it, it is almost day. provost i shall obey him. [exit messenger] duke vincentio [aside] this is his pardon, purchased by such sin for which the pardoner himself is in. hence hath offence his quick celerity, when it is born in high authority: when vice makes mercy, mercy's so extended, that for the fault's love is the offender friended. now, sir, what news? provost i told you. lord angelo, belike thinking me remiss in mine office, awakens me with this unwonted putting-on; methinks strangely, for he hath not used it before. duke vincentio pray you, let's hear. provost [reads] 'whatsoever you may hear to the contrary, let claudio be executed by four of the clock; and in the afternoon barnardine: for my better satisfaction, let me have claudio's head sent me by five. let this be duly performed; with a thought that more depends on it than we must yet deliver. thus fail not to do your office, as you will answer it at your peril.' what say you to this, sir? duke vincentio what is that barnardine who is to be executed in the afternoon? provost a bohemian born, but here nursed un and bred; one that is a prisoner nine years old. duke vincentio how came it that the absent duke had not either delivered him to his liberty or executed him? i have heard it was ever his manner to do so. provost his friends still wrought reprieves for him: and, indeed, his fact, till now in the government of lord angelo, came not to an undoubtful proof. duke vincentio it is now apparent? provost most manifest, and not denied by himself. duke vincentio hath he born himself penitently in prison? how seems he to be touched? provost a man that apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless of what's past, present, or to come; insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal. duke vincentio he wants advice. provost he will hear none: he hath evermore had the liberty of the prison; give him leave to escape hence, he would not: drunk many times a day, if not many days entirely drunk. we have very oft awaked him, as if to carry him to execution, and showed him a seeming warrant for it: it hath not moved him at all. duke vincentio more of him anon. there is written in your brow, provost, honesty and constancy: if i read it not truly, my ancient skill beguiles me; but, in the boldness of my cunning, i will lay myself in hazard. claudio, whom here you have warrant to execute, is no greater forfeit to the law than angelo who hath sentenced him. to make you understand this in a manifested effect, i crave but four days' respite; for the which you are to do me both a present and a dangerous courtesy. provost pray, sir, in what? duke vincentio in the delaying death. provost a lack, how may i do it, having the hour limited, and an express command, under penalty, to deliver his head in the view of angelo? i may make my case as claudio's, to cross this in the smallest. duke vincentio by the vow of mine order i warrant you, if my instructions may be your guide. let this barnardine be this morning executed, and his head born to angelo. provost angelo hath seen them both, and will discover the favour. duke vincentio o, death's a great disguiser; and you may add to it. shave the head, and tie the beard; and say it was the desire of the penitent to be so bared before his death: you know the course is common. if any thing fall to you upon this, more than thanks and good fortune, by the saint whom i profess, i will plead against it with my life. provost pardon me, good father; it is against my oath. duke vincentio were you sworn to the duke, or to the deputy? provost to him, and to his substitutes. duke vincentio you will think you have made no offence, if the duke avouch the justice of your dealing? provost but what likelihood is in that? duke vincentio not a resemblance, but a certainty. yet since i see you fearful, that neither my coat, integrity, nor persuasion can with ease attempt you, i will go further than i meant, to pluck all fears out of you. look you, sir, here is the hand and seal of the duke: you know the character, i doubt not; and the signet is not strange to you. provost i know them both. duke vincentio the contents of this is the return of the duke: you shall anon over-read it at your pleasure; where you shall find, within these two days he will be here. this is a thing that angelo knows not; for he this very day receives letters of strange tenor; perchance of the duke's death; perchance entering into some monastery; but, by chance, nothing of what is writ. look, the unfolding star calls up the shepherd. put not yourself into amazement how these things should be: all difficulties are but easy when they are known. call your executioner, and off with barnardine's head: i will give him a present shrift and advise him for a better place. yet you are amazed; but this shall absolutely resolve you. come away; it is almost clear dawn. [exeunt] measure for measure act iv scene iii another room in the same. [enter pompey] pompey i am as well acquainted here as i was in our house of profession: one would think it were mistress overdone's own house, for here be many of her old customers. first, here's young master rash; he's in for a commodity of brown paper and old ginger, ninescore and seventeen pounds; of which he made five marks, ready money: marry, then ginger was not much in request, for the old women were all dead. then is there here one master caper, at the suit of master three-pile the mercer, for some four suits of peach-coloured satin, which now peaches him a beggar. then have we here young dizy, and young master deep-vow, and master copperspur, and master starve-lackey the rapier and dagger man, and young drop-heir that killed lusty pudding, and master forthlight the tilter, and brave master shooty the great traveller, and wild half-can that stabbed pots, and, i think, forty more; all great doers in our trade, and are now 'for the lord's sake.' [enter abhorson] abhorson sirrah, bring barnardine hither. pompey master barnardine! you must rise and be hanged. master barnardine! abhorson what, ho, barnardine! barnardine [within] a pox o' your throats! who makes that noise there? what are you? pompey your friends, sir; the hangman. you must be so good, sir, to rise and be put to death. barnardine [within] away, you rogue, away! i am sleepy. abhorson tell him he must awake, and that quickly too. pompey pray, master barnardine, awake till you are executed, and sleep afterwards. abhorson go in to him, and fetch him out. pompey he is coming, sir, he is coming; i hear his straw rustle. abhorson is the axe upon the block, sirrah? pompey very ready, sir. [enter barnardine] barnardine how now, abhorson? what's the news with you? abhorson truly, sir, i would desire you to clap into your prayers; for, look you, the warrant's come. barnardine you rogue, i have been drinking all night; i am not fitted for 't. pompey o, the better, sir; for he that drinks all night, and is hanged betimes in the morning, may sleep the sounder all the next day. abhorson look you, sir; here comes your ghostly father: do we jest now, think you? [enter duke vincentio disguised as before] duke vincentio sir, induced by my charity, and hearing how hastily you are to depart, i am come to advise you, comfort you and pray with you. barnardine friar, not i i have been drinking hard all night, and i will have more time to prepare me, or they shall beat out my brains with billets: i will not consent to die this day, that's certain. duke vincentio o, sir, you must: and therefore i beseech you look forward on the journey you shall go. barnardine i swear i will not die to-day for any man's persuasion. duke vincentio but hear you. barnardine not a word: if you have any thing to say to me, come to my ward; for thence will not i to-day. [exit] duke vincentio unfit to live or die: o gravel heart! after him, fellows; bring him to the block. [exeunt abhorson and pompey] [re-enter provost] provost now, sir, how do you find the prisoner? duke vincentio a creature unprepared, unmeet for death; and to transport him in the mind he is were damnable. provost here in the prison, father, there died this morning of a cruel fever one ragozine, a most notorious pirate, a man of claudio's years; his beard and head just of his colour. what if we do omit this reprobate till he were well inclined; and satisfy the deputy with the visage of ragozine, more like to claudio? duke vincentio o, 'tis an accident that heaven provides! dispatch it presently; the hour draws on prefix'd by angelo: see this be done, and sent according to command; whiles i persuade this rude wretch willingly to die. provost this shall be done, good father, presently. but barnardine must die this afternoon: and how shall we continue claudio, to save me from the danger that might come if he were known alive? duke vincentio let this be done. put them in secret holds, both barnardine and claudio: ere twice the sun hath made his journal greeting to the under generation, you shall find your safety manifested. provost i am your free dependant. duke vincentio quick, dispatch, and send the head to angelo. [exit provost] now will i write letters to angelo,- the provost, he shall bear them, whose contents shall witness to him i am near at home, and that, by great injunctions, i am bound to enter publicly: him i'll desire to meet me at the consecrated fount a league below the city; and from thence, by cold gradation and well-balanced form, we shall proceed with angelo. [re-enter provost] provost here is the head; i'll carry it myself. duke vincentio convenient is it. make a swift return; for i would commune with you of such things that want no ear but yours. provost i'll make all speed. [exit] isabella [within] peace, ho, be here! duke vincentio the tongue of isabel. she's come to know if yet her brother's pardon be come hither: but i will keep her ignorant of her good, to make her heavenly comforts of despair, when it is least expected. [enter isabella] isabella ho, by your leave! duke vincentio good morning to you, fair and gracious daughter. isabella the better, given me by so holy a man. hath yet the deputy sent my brother's pardon? duke vincentio he hath released him, isabel, from the world: his head is off and sent to angelo. isabella nay, but it is not so. duke vincentio it is no other: show your wisdom, daughter, in your close patience. isabella o, i will to him and pluck out his eyes! duke vincentio you shall not be admitted to his sight. isabella unhappy claudio! wretched isabel! injurious world! most damned angelo! duke vincentio this nor hurts him nor profits you a jot; forbear it therefore; give your cause to heaven. mark what i say, which you shall find by every syllable a faithful verity: the duke comes home to-morrow; nay, dry your eyes; one of our convent, and his confessor, gives me this instance: already he hath carried notice to escalus and angelo, who do prepare to meet him at the gates, there to give up their power. if you can, pace your wisdom in that good path that i would wish it go, and you shall have your bosom on this wretch, grace of the duke, revenges to your heart, and general honour. isabella i am directed by you. duke vincentio this letter, then, to friar peter give; 'tis that he sent me of the duke's return: say, by this token, i desire his company at mariana's house to-night. her cause and yours i'll perfect him withal, and he shall bring you before the duke, and to the head of angelo accuse him home and home. for my poor self, i am combined by a sacred vow and shall be absent. wend you with this letter: command these fretting waters from your eyes with a light heart; trust not my holy order, if i pervert your course. who's here? [enter lucio] lucio good even. friar, where's the provost? duke vincentio not within, sir. lucio o pretty isabella, i am pale at mine heart to see thine eyes so red: thou must be patient. i am fain to dine and sup with water and bran; i dare not for my head fill my belly; one fruitful meal would set me to 't. but they say the duke will be here to-morrow. by my troth, isabel, i loved thy brother: if the old fantastical duke of dark corners had been at home, he had lived. [exit isabella] duke vincentio sir, the duke is marvellous little beholding to your reports; but the best is, he lives not in them. lucio friar, thou knowest not the duke so well as i do: he's a better woodman than thou takest him for. duke vincentio well, you'll answer this one day. fare ye well. lucio nay, tarry; i'll go along with thee i can tell thee pretty tales of the duke. duke vincentio you have told me too many of him already, sir, if they be true; if not true, none were enough. lucio i was once before him for getting a wench with child. duke vincentio did you such a thing? lucio yes, marry, did i but i was fain to forswear it; they would else have married me to the rotten medlar. duke vincentio sir, your company is fairer than honest. rest you well. lucio by my troth, i'll go with thee to the lane's end: if bawdy talk offend you, we'll have very little of it. nay, friar, i am a kind of burr; i shall stick. [exeunt] measure for measure act iv scene iv a room in angelo's house. [enter angelo and escalus] escalus every letter he hath writ hath disvouched other. angelo in most uneven and distracted manner. his actions show much like to madness: pray heaven his wisdom be not tainted! and why meet him at the gates, and redeliver our authorities there escalus i guess not. angelo and why should we proclaim it in an hour before his entering, that if any crave redress of injustice, they should exhibit their petitions in the street? escalus he shows his reason for that: to have a dispatch of complaints, and to deliver us from devices hereafter, which shall then have no power to stand against us. angelo well, i beseech you, let it be proclaimed betimes i' the morn; i'll call you at your house: give notice to such men of sort and suit as are to meet him. escalus i shall, sir. fare you well. angelo good night. [exit escalus] this deed unshapes me quite, makes me unpregnant and dull to all proceedings. a deflower'd maid! and by an eminent body that enforced the law against it! but that her tender shame will not proclaim against her maiden loss, how might she tongue me! yet reason dares her no; for my authority bears of a credent bulk, that no particular scandal once can touch but it confounds the breather. he should have lived, save that riotous youth, with dangerous sense, might in the times to come have ta'en revenge, by so receiving a dishonour'd life with ransom of such shame. would yet he had lived! a lack, when once our grace we have forgot, nothing goes right: we would, and we would not. [exit] measure for measure act iv scene v fields without the town. [enter duke vincentio in his own habit, and friar peter] duke vincentio these letters at fit time deliver me [giving letters] the provost knows our purpose and our plot. the matter being afoot, keep your instruction, and hold you ever to our special drift; though sometimes you do blench from this to that, as cause doth minister. go call at flavius' house, and tell him where i stay: give the like notice to valentinus, rowland, and to crassus, and bid them bring the trumpets to the gate; but send me flavius first. friar peter it shall be speeded well. [exit] [enter varrius] duke vincentio i thank thee, varrius; thou hast made good haste: come, we will walk. there's other of our friends will greet us here anon, my gentle varrius. [exeunt] measure for measure act iv scene vi street near the city gate. [enter isabella and mariana] isabella to speak so indirectly i am loath: i would say the truth; but to accuse him so, that is your part: yet i am advised to do it; he says, to veil full purpose. mariana be ruled by him. isabella besides, he tells me that, if peradventure he speak against me on the adverse side, i should not think it strange; for 'tis a physic that's bitter to sweet end. mariana i would friar peter- isabella o, peace! the friar is come. [enter friar peter] friar peter come, i have found you out a stand most fit, where you may have such vantage on the duke, he shall not pass you. twice have the trumpets sounded; the generous and gravest citizens have hent the gates, and very near upon the duke is entering: therefore, hence, away! [exeunt] measure for measure act v scene i the city gate. [mariana veiled, isabella, and friar peter, at their stand. enter duke vincentio, varrius, lords, angelo, escalus, lucio, provost, officers, and citizens, at several doors] duke vincentio my very worthy cousin, fairly met! our old and faithful friend, we are glad to see you. angelo | | happy return be to your royal grace! escalus | duke vincentio many and hearty thankings to you both. we have made inquiry of you; and we hear such goodness of your justice, that our soul cannot but yield you forth to public thanks, forerunning more requital. angelo you make my bonds still greater. duke vincentio o, your desert speaks loud; and i should wrong it, to lock it in the wards of covert bosom, when it deserves, with characters of brass, a forted residence 'gainst the tooth of time and razure of oblivion. give me your hand, and let the subject see, to make them know that outward courtesies would fain proclaim favours that keep within. come, escalus, you must walk by us on our other hand; and good supporters are you. [friar peter and isabella come forward] friar peter now is your time: speak loud and kneel before him. isabella justice, o royal duke! vail your regard upon a wrong'd, i would fain have said, a maid! o worthy prince, dishonour not your eye by throwing it on any other object till you have heard me in my true complaint and given me justice, justice, justice, justice! duke vincentio relate your wrongs; in what? by whom? be brief. here is lord angelo shall give you justice: reveal yourself to him. isabella o worthy duke, you bid me seek redemption of the devil: hear me yourself; for that which i must speak must either punish me, not being believed, or wring redress from you. hear me, o hear me, here! angelo my lord, her wits, i fear me, are not firm: she hath been a suitor to me for her brother cut off by course of justice,- isabella by course of justice! angelo and she will speak most bitterly and strange. isabella most strange, but yet most truly, will i speak: that angelo's forsworn; is it not strange? that angelo's a murderer; is 't not strange? that angelo is an adulterous thief, an hypocrite, a virgin-violator; is it not strange and strange? duke vincentio nay, it is ten times strange. isabella it is not truer he is angelo than this is all as true as it is strange: nay, it is ten times true; for truth is truth to the end of reckoning. duke vincentio away with her! poor soul, she speaks this in the infirmity of sense. isabella o prince, i conjure thee, as thou believest there is another comfort than this world, that thou neglect me not, with that opinion that i am touch'd with madness! make not impossible that which but seems unlike: 'tis not impossible but one, the wicked'st caitiff on the ground, may seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute as angelo; even so may angelo, in all his dressings, characts, titles, forms, be an arch-villain; believe it, royal prince: if he be less, he's nothing; but he's more, had i more name for badness. duke vincentio by mine honesty, if she be mad,--as i believe no other,- her madness hath the oddest frame of sense, such a dependency of thing on thing, as e'er i heard in madness. isabella o gracious duke, harp not on that, nor do not banish reason for inequality; but let your reason serve to make the truth appear where it seems hid, and hide the false seems true. duke vincentio many that are not mad have, sure, more lack of reason. what would you say? isabella i am the sister of one claudio, condemn'd upon the act of fornication to lose his head; condemn'd by angelo: i, in probation of a sisterhood, was sent to by my brother; one lucio as then the messenger,- lucio that's i, an't like your grace: i came to her from claudio, and desired her to try her gracious fortune with lord angelo for her poor brother's pardon. isabella that's he indeed. duke vincentio you were not bid to speak. lucio no, my good lord; nor wish'd to hold my peace. duke vincentio i wish you now, then; pray you, take note of it: and when you have a business for yourself, pray heaven you then be perfect. lucio i warrant your honour. duke vincentio the warrants for yourself; take heed to't. isabella this gentleman told somewhat of my tale,- lucio right. duke vincentio it may be right; but you are i' the wrong to speak before your time. proceed. isabella i went to this pernicious caitiff deputy,- duke vincentio that's somewhat madly spoken. isabella pardon it; the phrase is to the matter. duke vincentio mended again. the matter; proceed. isabella in brief, to set the needless process by, how i persuaded, how i pray'd, and kneel'd, how he refell'd me, and how i replied,- for this was of much length,--the vile conclusion i now begin with grief and shame to utter: he would not, but by gift of my chaste body to his concupiscible intemperate lust, release my brother; and, after much debatement, my sisterly remorse confutes mine honour, and i did yield to him: but the next morn betimes, his purpose surfeiting, he sends a warrant for my poor brother's head. duke vincentio this is most likely! isabella o, that it were as like as it is true! duke vincentio by heaven, fond wretch, thou knowist not what thou speak'st, or else thou art suborn'd against his honour in hateful practise. first, his integrity stands without blemish. next, it imports no reason that with such vehemency he should pursue faults proper to himself: if he had so offended, he would have weigh'd thy brother by himself and not have cut him off. some one hath set you on: confess the truth, and say by whose advice thou camest here to complain. isabella and is this all? then, o you blessed ministers above, keep me in patience, and with ripen'd time unfold the evil which is here wrapt up in countenance! heaven shield your grace from woe, as i, thus wrong'd, hence unbelieved go! duke vincentio i know you'ld fain be gone. an officer! to prison with her! shall we thus permit a blasting and a scandalous breath to fall on him so near us? this needs must be a practise. who knew of your intent and coming hither? isabella one that i would were here, friar lodowick. duke vincentio a ghostly father, belike. who knows that lodowick? lucio my lord, i know him; 'tis a meddling friar; i do not like the man: had he been lay, my lord for certain words he spake against your grace in your retirement, i had swinged him soundly. duke vincentio words against me? this is a good friar, belike! and to set on this wretched woman here against our substitute! let this friar be found. lucio but yesternight, my lord, she and that friar, i saw them at the prison: a saucy friar, a very scurvy fellow. friar peter blessed be your royal grace! i have stood by, my lord, and i have heard your royal ear abused. first, hath this woman most wrongfully accused your substitute, who is as free from touch or soil with her as she from one ungot. duke vincentio we did believe no less. know you that friar lodowick that she speaks of? friar peter i know him for a man divine and holy; not scurvy, nor a temporary meddler, as he's reported by this gentleman; and, on my trust, a man that never yet did, as he vouches, misreport your grace. lucio my lord, most villanously; believe it. friar peter well, he in time may come to clear himself; but at this instant he is sick my lord, of a strange fever. upon his mere request, being come to knowledge that there was complaint intended 'gainst lord angelo, came i hither, to speak, as from his mouth, what he doth know is true and false; and what he with his oath and all probation will make up full clear, whensoever he's convented. first, for this woman. to justify this worthy nobleman, so vulgarly and personally accused, her shall you hear disproved to her eyes, till she herself confess it. duke vincentio good friar, let's hear it. [isabella is carried off guarded; and mariana comes forward] do you not smile at this, lord angelo? o heaven, the vanity of wretched fools! give us some seats. come, cousin angelo; in this i'll be impartial; be you judge of your own cause. is this the witness, friar? first, let her show her face, and after speak. mariana pardon, my lord; i will not show my face until my husband bid me. duke vincentio what, are you married? mariana no, my lord. duke vincentio are you a maid? mariana no, my lord. duke vincentio a widow, then? mariana neither, my lord. duke vincentio why, you are nothing then: neither maid, widow, nor wife? lucio my lord, she may be a punk; for many of them are neither maid, widow, nor wife. duke vincentio silence that fellow: i would he had some cause to prattle for himself. lucio well, my lord. mariana my lord; i do confess i ne'er was married; and i confess besides i am no maid: i have known my husband; yet my husband knows not that ever he knew me. lucio he was drunk then, my lord: it can be no better. duke vincentio for the benefit of silence, would thou wert so too! lucio well, my lord. duke vincentio this is no witness for lord angelo. mariana now i come to't my lord she that accuses him of fornication, in self-same manner doth accuse my husband, and charges him my lord, with such a time when i'll depose i had him in mine arms with all the effect of love. angelo charges she more than me? mariana not that i know. duke vincentio no? you say your husband. mariana why, just, my lord, and that is angelo, who thinks he knows that he ne'er knew my body, but knows he thinks that he knows isabel's. angelo this is a strange abuse. let's see thy face. mariana my husband bids me; now i will unmask. [unveiling] this is that face, thou cruel angelo, which once thou sworest was worth the looking on; this is the hand which, with a vow'd contract, was fast belock'd in thine; this is the body that took away the match from isabel, and did supply thee at thy garden-house in her imagined person. duke vincentio know you this woman? lucio carnally, she says. duke vincentio sirrah, no more! lucio enough, my lord. angelo my lord, i must confess i know this woman: and five years since there was some speech of marriage betwixt myself and her; which was broke off, partly for that her promised proportions came short of composition, but in chief for that her reputation was disvalued in levity: since which time of five years i never spake with her, saw her, nor heard from her, upon my faith and honour. mariana noble prince, as there comes light from heaven and words from breath, as there is sense in truth and truth in virtue, i am affianced this man's wife as strongly as words could make up vows: and, my good lord, but tuesday night last gone in's garden-house he knew me as a wife. as this is true, let me in safety raise me from my knees or else for ever be confixed here, a marble monument! angelo i did but smile till now: now, good my lord, give me the scope of justice my patience here is touch'd. i do perceive these poor informal women are no more but instruments of some more mightier member that sets them on: let me have way, my lord, to find this practise out. duke vincentio ay, with my heart and punish them to your height of pleasure. thou foolish friar, and thou pernicious woman, compact with her that's gone, think'st thou thy oaths, though they would swear down each particular saint, were testimonies against his worth and credit that's seal'd in approbation? you, lord escalus, sit with my cousin; lend him your kind pains to find out this abuse, whence 'tis derived. there is another friar that set them on; let him be sent for. friar peter would he were here, my lord! for he indeed hath set the women on to this complaint: your provost knows the place where he abides and he may fetch him. duke vincentio go do it instantly. [exit provost] and you, my noble and well-warranted cousin, whom it concerns to hear this matter forth, do with your injuries as seems you best, in any chastisement: i for a while will leave you; but stir not you till you have well determined upon these slanderers. escalus my lord, we'll do it throughly. [exit duke] signior lucio, did not you say you knew that friar lodowick to be a dishonest person? lucio 'cucullus non facit monachum:' honest in nothing but in his clothes; and one that hath spoke most villanous speeches of the duke. escalus we shall entreat you to abide here till he come and enforce them against him: we shall find this friar a notable fellow. lucio as any in vienna, on my word. escalus call that same isabel here once again; i would speak with her. [exit an attendant] pray you, my lord, give me leave to question; you shall see how i'll handle her. lucio not better than he, by her own report. escalus say you? lucio marry, sir, i think, if you handled her privately, she would sooner confess: perchance, publicly, she'll be ashamed. escalus i will go darkly to work with her. lucio that's the way; for women are light at midnight. [re-enter officers with isabella; and provost with the duke vincentio in his friar's habit] escalus come on, mistress: here's a gentlewoman denies all that you have said. lucio my lord, here comes the rascal i spoke of; here with the provost. escalus in very good time: speak not you to him till we call upon you. lucio mum. escalus come, sir: did you set these women on to slander lord angelo? they have confessed you did. duke vincentio 'tis false. escalus how! know you where you are? duke vincentio respect to your great place! and let the devil be sometime honour'd for his burning throne! where is the duke? 'tis he should hear me speak. escalus the duke's in us; and we will hear you speak: look you speak justly. duke vincentio boldly, at least. but, o, poor souls, come you to seek the lamb here of the fox? good night to your redress! is the duke gone? then is your cause gone too. the duke's unjust, thus to retort your manifest appeal, and put your trial in the villain's mouth which here you come to accuse. lucio this is the rascal; this is he i spoke of. escalus why, thou unreverend and unhallow'd friar, is't not enough thou hast suborn'd these women to accuse this worthy man, but, in foul mouth and in the witness of his proper ear, to call him villain? and then to glance from him to the duke himself, to tax him with injustice? take him hence; to the rack with him! we'll touse you joint by joint, but we will know his purpose. what 'unjust'! duke vincentio be not so hot; the duke dare no more stretch this finger of mine than he dare rack his own: his subject am i not, nor here provincial. my business in this state made me a looker on here in vienna, where i have seen corruption boil and bubble till it o'er-run the stew; laws for all faults, but faults so countenanced, that the strong statutes stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop, as much in mock as mark. escalus slander to the state! away with him to prison! angelo what can you vouch against him, signior lucio? is this the man that you did tell us of? lucio 'tis he, my lord. come hither, goodman baldpate: do you know me? duke vincentio i remember you, sir, by the sound of your voice: i met you at the prison, in the absence of the duke. lucio o, did you so? and do you remember what you said of the duke? duke vincentio most notedly, sir. lucio do you so, sir? and was the duke a fleshmonger, a fool, and a coward, as you then reported him to be? duke vincentio you must, sir, change persons with me, ere you make that my report: you, indeed, spoke so of him; and much more, much worse. lucio o thou damnable fellow! did not i pluck thee by the nose for thy speeches? duke vincentio i protest i love the duke as i love myself. angelo hark, how the villain would close now, after his treasonable abuses! escalus such a fellow is not to be talked withal. away with him to prison! where is the provost? away with him to prison! lay bolts enough upon him: let him speak no more. away with those giglots too, and with the other confederate companion! duke vincentio [to provost] stay, sir; stay awhile. angelo what, resists he? help him, lucio. lucio come, sir; come, sir; come, sir; foh, sir! why, you bald-pated, lying rascal, you must be hooded, must you? show your knave's visage, with a pox to you! show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an hour! will't not off? [pulls off the friar's hood, and discovers duke vincentio] duke vincentio thou art the first knave that e'er madest a duke. first, provost, let me bail these gentle three. [to lucio] sneak not away, sir; for the friar and you must have a word anon. lay hold on him. lucio this may prove worse than hanging. duke vincentio [to escalus] what you have spoke i pardon: sit you down: we'll borrow place of him. [to angelo] sir, by your leave. hast thou or word, or wit, or impudence, that yet can do thee office? if thou hast, rely upon it till my tale be heard, and hold no longer out. angelo o my dread lord, i should be guiltier than my guiltiness, to think i can be undiscernible, when i perceive your grace, like power divine, hath look'd upon my passes. then, good prince, no longer session hold upon my shame, but let my trial be mine own confession: immediate sentence then and sequent death is all the grace i beg. duke vincentio come hither, mariana. say, wast thou e'er contracted to this woman? angelo i was, my lord. duke vincentio go take her hence, and marry her instantly. do you the office, friar; which consummate, return him here again. go with him, provost. [exeunt angelo, mariana, friar peter and provost] escalus my lord, i am more amazed at his dishonour than at the strangeness of it. duke vincentio come hither, isabel. your friar is now your prince: as i was then advertising and holy to your business, not changing heart with habit, i am still attorney'd at your service. isabella o, give me pardon, that i, your vassal, have employ'd and pain'd your unknown sovereignty! duke vincentio you are pardon'd, isabel: and now, dear maid, be you as free to us. your brother's death, i know, sits at your heart; and you may marvel why i obscured myself, labouring to save his life, and would not rather make rash remonstrance of my hidden power than let him so be lost. o most kind maid, it was the swift celerity of his death, which i did think with slower foot came on, that brain'd my purpose. but, peace be with him! that life is better life, past fearing death, than that which lives to fear: make it your comfort, so happy is your brother. isabella i do, my lord. [re-enter angelo, mariana, friar peter, and provost] duke vincentio for this new-married man approaching here, whose salt imagination yet hath wrong'd your well defended honour, you must pardon for mariana's sake: but as he adjudged your brother,- being criminal, in double violation of sacred chastity and of promise-breach thereon dependent, for your brother's life,- the very mercy of the law cries out most audible, even from his proper tongue, 'an angelo for claudio, death for death!' haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; like doth quit like, and measure still for measure. then, angelo, thy fault's thus manifested; which, though thou wouldst deny, denies thee vantage. we do condemn thee to the very block where claudio stoop'd to death, and with like haste. away with him! mariana o my most gracious lord, i hope you will not mock me with a husband. duke vincentio it is your husband mock'd you with a husband. consenting to the safeguard of your honour, i thought your marriage fit; else imputation, for that he knew you, might reproach your life and choke your good to come; for his possessions, although by confiscation they are ours, we do instate and widow you withal, to buy you a better husband. mariana o my dear lord, i crave no other, nor no better man. duke vincentio never crave him; we are definitive. mariana gentle my liege,- [kneeling] duke vincentio you do but lose your labour. away with him to death! [to lucio] now, sir, to you. mariana o my good lord! sweet isabel, take my part; lend me your knees, and all my life to come i'll lend you all my life to do you service. duke vincentio against all sense you do importune her: should she kneel down in mercy of this fact, her brother's ghost his paved bed would break, and take her hence in horror. mariana isabel, sweet isabel, do yet but kneel by me; hold up your hands, say nothing; i'll speak all. they say, best men are moulded out of faults; and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad: so may my husband. o isabel, will you not lend a knee? duke vincentio he dies for claudio's death. isabella most bounteous sir, [kneeling] look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd, as if my brother lived: i partly think a due sincerity govern'd his deeds, till he did look on me: since it is so, let him not die. my brother had but justice, in that he did the thing for which he died: for angelo, his act did not o'ertake his bad intent, and must be buried but as an intent that perish'd by the way: thoughts are no subjects; intents but merely thoughts. mariana merely, my lord. duke vincentio your suit's unprofitable; stand up, i say. i have bethought me of another fault. provost, how came it claudio was beheaded at an unusual hour? provost it was commanded so. duke vincentio had you a special warrant for the deed? provost no, my good lord; it was by private message. duke vincentio for which i do discharge you of your office: give up your keys. provost pardon me, noble lord: i thought it was a fault, but knew it not; yet did repent me, after more advice; for testimony whereof, one in the prison, that should by private order else have died, i have reserved alive. duke vincentio what's he? provost his name is barnardine. duke vincentio i would thou hadst done so by claudio. go fetch him hither; let me look upon him. [exit provost] escalus i am sorry, one so learned and so wise as you, lord angelo, have still appear'd, should slip so grossly, both in the heat of blood. and lack of temper'd judgment afterward. angelo i am sorry that such sorrow i procure: and so deep sticks it in my penitent heart that i crave death more willingly than mercy; 'tis my deserving, and i do entreat it. [re-enter provost, with barnardine, claudio muffled, and juliet] duke vincentio which is that barnardine? provost this, my lord. duke vincentio there was a friar told me of this man. sirrah, thou art said to have a stubborn soul. that apprehends no further than this world, and squarest thy life according. thou'rt condemn'd: but, for those earthly faults, i quit them all; and pray thee take this mercy to provide for better times to come. friar, advise him; i leave him to your hand. what muffled fellow's that? provost this is another prisoner that i saved. who should have died when claudio lost his head; as like almost to claudio as himself. [unmuffles claudio] duke vincentio [to isabella] if he be like your brother, for his sake is he pardon'd; and, for your lovely sake, give me your hand and say you will be mine. he is my brother too: but fitter time for that. by this lord angelo perceives he's safe; methinks i see a quickening in his eye. well, angelo, your evil quits you well: look that you love your wife; her worth worth yours. i find an apt remission in myself; and yet here's one in place i cannot pardon. [to lucio] you, sirrah, that knew me for a fool, a coward, one all of luxury, an ass, a madman; wherein have i so deserved of you, that you extol me thus? lucio 'faith, my lord. i spoke it but according to the trick. if you will hang me for it, you may; but i had rather it would please you i might be whipt. duke vincentio whipt first, sir, and hanged after. proclaim it, provost, round about the city. is any woman wrong'd by this lewd fellow, as i have heard him swear himself there's one whom he begot with child, let her appear, and he shall marry her: the nuptial finish'd, let him be whipt and hang'd. lucio i beseech your highness, do not marry me to a whore. your highness said even now, i made you a duke: good my lord, do not recompense me in making me a cuckold. duke vincentio upon mine honour, thou shalt marry her. thy slanders i forgive; and therewithal remit thy other forfeits. take him to prison; and see our pleasure herein executed. lucio marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, whipping, and hanging. duke vincentio slandering a prince deserves it. [exit officers with lucio] she, claudio, that you wrong'd, look you restore. joy to you, mariana! love her, angelo: i have confess'd her and i know her virtue. thanks, good friend escalus, for thy much goodness: there's more behind that is more gratulate. thanks, provost, for thy care and secrecy: we shill employ thee in a worthier place. forgive him, angelo, that brought you home the head of ragozine for claudio's: the offence pardons itself. dear isabel, i have a motion much imports your good; whereto if you'll a willing ear incline, what's mine is yours and what is yours is mine. so, bring us to our palace; where we'll show what's yet behind, that's meet you all should know. [exeunt] romeo and juliet dramatis personae escalus prince of verona. (prince:) paris a young nobleman, kinsman to the prince. montague | | heads of two houses at variance with each other. capulet | an old man, cousin to capulet. (second capulet:) romeo son to montague. mercutio kinsman to the prince, and friend to romeo. benvolio nephew to montague, and friend to romeo. tybalt nephew to lady capulet. friar laurence | | franciscans. friar john | balthasar servant to romeo. sampson | | servants to capulet. gregory | peter servant to juliet's nurse. abraham servant to montague. an apothecary. (apothecary:) three musicians. (first musician:) (second musician:) (third musician:) page to paris; (page:) another page; an officer. lady montague wife to montague. lady capulet wife to capulet. juliet daughter to capulet. nurse to juliet. (nurse:) citizens of verona; several men and women, relations to both houses; maskers, guards, watchmen, and attendants. (first citizen:) (servant:) (first servant:) (second servant:) (first watchman:) (second watchman:) (third watchman:) chorus. scene verona: mantua. romeo and juliet prologue two households, both alike in dignity, in fair verona, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. from forth the fatal loins of these two foes a pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; whole misadventured piteous overthrows do with their death bury their parents' strife. the fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, and the continuance of their parents' rage, which, but their children's end, nought could remove, is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; the which if you with patient ears attend, what here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. romeo and juliet act i scene i verona. a public place. [enter sampson and gregory, of the house of capulet, armed with swords and bucklers] sampson gregory, o' my word, we'll not carry coals. gregory no, for then we should be colliers. sampson i mean, an we be in choler, we'll draw. gregory ay, while you live, draw your neck out o' the collar. sampson i strike quickly, being moved. gregory but thou art not quickly moved to strike. sampson a dog of the house of montague moves me. gregory to move is to stir; and to be valiant is to stand: therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn'st away. sampson a dog of that house shall move me to stand: i will take the wall of any man or maid of montague's. gregory that shows thee a weak slave; for the weakest goes to the wall. sampson true; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall: therefore i will push montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall. gregory the quarrel is between our masters and us their men. sampson 'tis all one, i will show myself a tyrant: when i have fought with the men, i will be cruel with the maids, and cut off their heads. gregory the heads of the maids? sampson ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads; take it in what sense thou wilt. gregory they must take it in sense that feel it. sampson me they shall feel while i am able to stand: and 'tis known i am a pretty piece of flesh. gregory 'tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor john. draw thy tool! here comes two of the house of the montagues. sampson my naked weapon is out: quarrel, i will back thee. gregory how! turn thy back and run? sampson fear me not. gregory no, marry; i fear thee! sampson let us take the law of our sides; let them begin. gregory i will frown as i pass by, and let them take it as they list. sampson nay, as they dare. i will bite my thumb at them; which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it. [enter abraham and balthasar] abraham do you bite your thumb at us, sir? sampson i do bite my thumb, sir. abraham do you bite your thumb at us, sir? sampson [aside to gregory] is the law of our side, if i say ay? gregory no. sampson no, sir, i do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but i bite my thumb, sir. gregory do you quarrel, sir? abraham quarrel sir! no, sir. sampson if you do, sir, i am for you: i serve as good a man as you. abraham no better. sampson well, sir. gregory say 'better:' here comes one of my master's kinsmen. sampson yes, better, sir. abraham you lie. sampson draw, if you be men. gregory, remember thy swashing blow. [they fight] [enter benvolio] benvolio part, fools! put up your swords; you know not what you do. [beats down their swords] [enter tybalt] tybalt what, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? turn thee, benvolio, look upon thy death. benvolio i do but keep the peace: put up thy sword, or manage it to part these men with me. tybalt what, drawn, and talk of peace! i hate the word, as i hate hell, all montagues, and thee: have at thee, coward! [they fight] [enter, several of both houses, who join the fray; then enter citizens, with clubs] first citizen clubs, bills, and partisans! strike! beat them down! down with the capulets! down with the montagues! [enter capulet in his gown, and lady capulet] capulet what noise is this? give me my long sword, ho! lady capulet a crutch, a crutch! why call you for a sword? capulet my sword, i say! old montague is come, and flourishes his blade in spite of me. [enter montague and lady montague] montague thou villain capulet,--hold me not, let me go. lady montague thou shalt not stir a foot to seek a foe. [enter prince, with attendants] prince rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, profaners of this neighbour-stained steel,- will they not hear? what, ho! you men, you beasts, that quench the fire of your pernicious rage with purple fountains issuing from your veins, on pain of torture, from those bloody hands throw your mistemper'd weapons to the ground, and hear the sentence of your moved prince. three civil brawls, bred of an airy word, by thee, old capulet, and montague, have thrice disturb'd the quiet of our streets, and made verona's ancient citizens cast by their grave beseeming ornaments, to wield old partisans, in hands as old, canker'd with peace, to part your canker'd hate: if ever you disturb our streets again, your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace. for this time, all the rest depart away: you capulet; shall go along with me: and, montague, come you this afternoon, to know our further pleasure in this case, to old free-town, our common judgment-place. once more, on pain of death, all men depart. [exeunt all but montague, lady montague, and benvolio] montague who set this ancient quarrel new abroach? speak, nephew, were you by when it began? benvolio here were the servants of your adversary, and yours, close fighting ere i did approach: i drew to part them: in the instant came the fiery tybalt, with his sword prepared, which, as he breathed defiance to my ears, he swung about his head and cut the winds, who nothing hurt withal hiss'd him in scorn: while we were interchanging thrusts and blows, came more and more and fought on part and part, till the prince came, who parted either part. lady montague o, where is romeo? saw you him to-day? right glad i am he was not at this fray. benvolio madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun peer'd forth the golden window of the east, a troubled mind drave me to walk abroad; where, underneath the grove of sycamore that westward rooteth from the city's side, so early walking did i see your son: towards him i made, but he was ware of me and stole into the covert of the wood: i, measuring his affections by my own, that most are busied when they're most alone, pursued my humour not pursuing his, and gladly shunn'd who gladly fled from me. montague many a morning hath he there been seen, with tears augmenting the fresh morning dew. adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs; but all so soon as the all-cheering sun should in the furthest east begin to draw the shady curtains from aurora's bed, away from the light steals home my heavy son, and private in his chamber pens himself, shuts up his windows, locks far daylight out and makes himself an artificial night: black and portentous must this humour prove, unless good counsel may the cause remove. benvolio my noble uncle, do you know the cause? montague i neither know it nor can learn of him. benvolio have you importuned him by any means? montague both by myself and many other friends: but he, his own affections' counsellor, is to himself--i will not say how true- but to himself so secret and so close, so far from sounding and discovery, as is the bud bit with an envious worm, ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, or dedicate his beauty to the sun. could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow. we would as willingly give cure as know. [enter romeo] benvolio see, where he comes: so please you, step aside; i'll know his grievance, or be much denied. montague i would thou wert so happy by thy stay, to hear true shrift. come, madam, let's away. [exeunt montague and lady montague] benvolio good-morrow, cousin. romeo is the day so young? benvolio but new struck nine. romeo ay me! sad hours seem long. was that my father that went hence so fast? benvolio it was. what sadness lengthens romeo's hours? romeo not having that, which, having, makes them short. benvolio in love? romeo out- benvolio of love? romeo out of her favour, where i am in love. benvolio alas, that love, so gentle in his view, should be so tyrannous and rough in proof! romeo alas, that love, whose view is muffled still, should, without eyes, see pathways to his will! where shall we dine? o me! what fray was here? yet tell me not, for i have heard it all. here's much to do with hate, but more with love. why, then, o brawling love! o loving hate! o any thing, of nothing first create! o heavy lightness! serious vanity! mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! this love feel i, that feel no love in this. dost thou not laugh? benvolio no, coz, i rather weep. romeo good heart, at what? benvolio at thy good heart's oppression. romeo why, such is love's transgression. griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast, which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest with more of thine: this love that thou hast shown doth add more grief to too much of mine own. love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; being vex'd a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears: what is it else? a madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet. farewell, my coz. benvolio soft! i will go along; an if you leave me so, you do me wrong. romeo tut, i have lost myself; i am not here; this is not romeo, he's some other where. benvolio tell me in sadness, who is that you love. romeo what, shall i groan and tell thee? benvolio groan! why, no. but sadly tell me who. romeo bid a sick man in sadness make his will: ah, word ill urged to one that is so ill! in sadness, cousin, i do love a woman. benvolio i aim'd so near, when i supposed you loved. romeo a right good mark-man! and she's fair i love. benvolio a right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit. romeo well, in that hit you miss: she'll not be hit with cupid's arrow; she hath dian's wit; and, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd, from love's weak childish bow she lives unharm'd. she will not stay the siege of loving terms, nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes, nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold: o, she is rich in beauty, only poor, that when she dies with beauty dies her store. benvolio then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste? romeo she hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste, for beauty starved with her severity cuts beauty off from all posterity. she is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair, to merit bliss by making me despair: she hath forsworn to love, and in that vow do i live dead that live to tell it now. benvolio be ruled by me, forget to think of her. romeo o, teach me how i should forget to think. benvolio by giving liberty unto thine eyes; examine other beauties. romeo 'tis the way to call hers exquisite, in question more: these happy masks that kiss fair ladies' brows being black put us in mind they hide the fair; he that is strucken blind cannot forget the precious treasure of his eyesight lost: show me a mistress that is passing fair, what doth her beauty serve, but as a note where i may read who pass'd that passing fair? farewell: thou canst not teach me to forget. benvolio i'll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act i scene ii a street. [enter capulet, paris, and servant] capulet but montague is bound as well as i, in penalty alike; and 'tis not hard, i think, for men so old as we to keep the peace. paris of honourable reckoning are you both; and pity 'tis you lived at odds so long. but now, my lord, what say you to my suit? capulet but saying o'er what i have said before: my child is yet a stranger in the world; she hath not seen the change of fourteen years, let two more summers wither in their pride, ere we may think her ripe to be a bride. paris younger than she are happy mothers made. capulet and too soon marr'd are those so early made. the earth hath swallow'd all my hopes but she, she is the hopeful lady of my earth: but woo her, gentle paris, get her heart, my will to her consent is but a part; an she agree, within her scope of choice lies my consent and fair according voice. this night i hold an old accustom'd feast, whereto i have invited many a guest, such as i love; and you, among the store, one more, most welcome, makes my number more. at my poor house look to behold this night earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light: such comfort as do lusty young men feel when well-apparell'd april on the heel of limping winter treads, even such delight among fresh female buds shall you this night inherit at my house; hear all, all see, and like her most whose merit most shall be: which on more view, of many mine being one may stand in number, though in reckoning none, come, go with me. [to servant, giving a paper] go, sirrah, trudge about through fair verona; find those persons out whose names are written there, and to them say, my house and welcome on their pleasure stay. [exeunt capulet and paris] servant find them out whose names are written here! it is written, that the shoemaker should meddle with his yard, and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his pencil, and the painter with his nets; but i am sent to find those persons whose names are here writ, and can never find what names the writing person hath here writ. i must to the learned.--in good time. [enter benvolio and romeo] benvolio tut, man, one fire burns out another's burning, one pain is lessen'd by another's anguish; turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning; one desperate grief cures with another's languish: take thou some new infection to thy eye, and the rank poison of the old will die. romeo your plaintain-leaf is excellent for that. benvolio for what, i pray thee? romeo for your broken shin. benvolio why, romeo, art thou mad? romeo not mad, but bound more than a mad-man is; shut up in prison, kept without my food, whipp'd and tormented and--god-den, good fellow. servant god gi' god-den. i pray, sir, can you read? romeo ay, mine own fortune in my misery. servant perhaps you have learned it without book: but, i pray, can you read any thing you see? romeo ay, if i know the letters and the language. servant ye say honestly: rest you merry! romeo stay, fellow; i can read. [reads] 'signior martino and his wife and daughters; county anselme and his beauteous sisters; the lady widow of vitravio; signior placentio and his lovely nieces; mercutio and his brother valentine; mine uncle capulet, his wife and daughters; my fair niece rosaline; livia; signior valentio and his cousin tybalt, lucio and the lively helena.' a fair assembly: whither should they come? servant up. romeo whither? servant to supper; to our house. romeo whose house? servant my master's. romeo indeed, i should have ask'd you that before. servant now i'll tell you without asking: my master is the great rich capulet; and if you be not of the house of montagues, i pray, come and crush a cup of wine. rest you merry! [exit] benvolio at this same ancient feast of capulet's sups the fair rosaline whom thou so lovest, with all the admired beauties of verona: go thither; and, with unattainted eye, compare her face with some that i shall show, and i will make thee think thy swan a crow. romeo when the devout religion of mine eye maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires; and these, who often drown'd could never die, transparent heretics, be burnt for liars! one fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun ne'er saw her match since first the world begun. benvolio tut, you saw her fair, none else being by, herself poised with herself in either eye: but in that crystal scales let there be weigh'd your lady's love against some other maid that i will show you shining at this feast, and she shall scant show well that now shows best. romeo i'll go along, no such sight to be shown, but to rejoice in splendor of mine own. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act i scene iii a room in capulet's house. [enter lady capulet and nurse] lady capulet nurse, where's my daughter? call her forth to me. nurse now, by my maidenhead, at twelve year old, i bade her come. what, lamb! what, ladybird! god forbid! where's this girl? what, juliet! [enter juliet] juliet how now! who calls? nurse your mother. juliet madam, i am here. what is your will? lady capulet this is the matter:--nurse, give leave awhile, we must talk in secret:--nurse, come back again; i have remember'd me, thou's hear our counsel. thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age. nurse faith, i can tell her age unto an hour. lady capulet she's not fourteen. nurse i'll lay fourteen of my teeth,- and yet, to my teeth be it spoken, i have but four- she is not fourteen. how long is it now to lammas-tide? lady capulet a fortnight and odd days. nurse even or odd, of all days in the year, come lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen. susan and she--god rest all christian souls!- were of an age: well, susan is with god; she was too good for me: but, as i said, on lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen; that shall she, marry; i remember it well. 'tis since the earthquake now eleven years; and she was wean'd,--i never shall forget it,- of all the days of the year, upon that day: for i had then laid wormwood to my dug, sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall; my lord and you were then at mantua:- nay, i do bear a brain:--but, as i said, when it did taste the wormwood on the nipple of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool, to see it tetchy and fall out with the dug! shake quoth the dove-house: 'twas no need, i trow, to bid me trudge: and since that time it is eleven years; for then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood, she could have run and waddled all about; for even the day before, she broke her brow: and then my husband--god be with his soul! a' was a merry man--took up the child: 'yea,' quoth he, 'dost thou fall upon thy face? thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit; wilt thou not, jule?' and, by my holidame, the pretty wretch left crying and said 'ay.' to see, now, how a jest shall come about! i warrant, an i should live a thousand years, i never should forget it: 'wilt thou not, jule?' quoth he; and, pretty fool, it stinted and said 'ay.' lady capulet enough of this; i pray thee, hold thy peace. nurse yes, madam: yet i cannot choose but laugh, to think it should leave crying and say 'ay.' and yet, i warrant, it had upon its brow a bump as big as a young cockerel's stone; a parlous knock; and it cried bitterly: 'yea,' quoth my husband,'fall'st upon thy face? thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age; wilt thou not, jule?' it stinted and said 'ay.' juliet and stint thou too, i pray thee, nurse, say i. nurse peace, i have done. god mark thee to his grace! thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er i nursed: an i might live to see thee married once, i have my wish. lady capulet marry, that 'marry' is the very theme i came to talk of. tell me, daughter juliet, how stands your disposition to be married? juliet it is an honour that i dream not of. nurse an honour! were not i thine only nurse, i would say thou hadst suck'd wisdom from thy teat. lady capulet well, think of marriage now; younger than you, here in verona, ladies of esteem, are made already mothers: by my count, i was your mother much upon these years that you are now a maid. thus then in brief: the valiant paris seeks you for his love. nurse a man, young lady! lady, such a man as all the world--why, he's a man of wax. lady capulet verona's summer hath not such a flower. nurse nay, he's a flower; in faith, a very flower. lady capulet what say you? can you love the gentleman? this night you shall behold him at our feast; read o'er the volume of young paris' face, and find delight writ there with beauty's pen; examine every married lineament, and see how one another lends content and what obscured in this fair volume lies find written in the margent of his eyes. this precious book of love, this unbound lover, to beautify him, only lacks a cover: the fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride for fair without the fair within to hide: that book in many's eyes doth share the glory, that in gold clasps locks in the golden story; so shall you share all that he doth possess, by having him, making yourself no less. nurse no less! nay, bigger; women grow by men. lady capulet speak briefly, can you like of paris' love? juliet i'll look to like, if looking liking move: but no more deep will i endart mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly. [enter a servant] servant madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry, and every thing in extremity. i must hence to wait; i beseech you, follow straight. lady capulet we follow thee. [exit servant] juliet, the county stays. nurse go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act i scene iv a street. [enter romeo, mercutio, benvolio, with five or six maskers, torch-bearers, and others] romeo what, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse? or shall we on without a apology? benvolio the date is out of such prolixity: we'll have no cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf, bearing a tartar's painted bow of lath, scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper; nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke after the prompter, for our entrance: but let them measure us by what they will; we'll measure them a measure, and be gone. romeo give me a torch: i am not for this ambling; being but heavy, i will bear the light. mercutio nay, gentle romeo, we must have you dance. romeo not i, believe me: you have dancing shoes with nimble soles: i have a soul of lead so stakes me to the ground i cannot move. mercutio you are a lover; borrow cupid's wings, and soar with them above a common bound. romeo i am too sore enpierced with his shaft to soar with his light feathers, and so bound, i cannot bound a pitch above dull woe: under love's heavy burden do i sink. mercutio and, to sink in it, should you burden love; too great oppression for a tender thing. romeo is love a tender thing? it is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn. mercutio if love be rough with you, be rough with love; prick love for pricking, and you beat love down. give me a case to put my visage in: a visor for a visor! what care i what curious eye doth quote deformities? here are the beetle brows shall blush for me. benvolio come, knock and enter; and no sooner in, but every man betake him to his legs. romeo a torch for me: let wantons light of heart tickle the senseless rushes with their heels, for i am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase; i'll be a candle-holder, and look on. the game was ne'er so fair, and i am done. mercutio tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word: if thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick'st up to the ears. come, we burn daylight, ho! romeo nay, that's not so. mercutio i mean, sir, in delay we waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day. take our good meaning, for our judgment sits five times in that ere once in our five wits. romeo and we mean well in going to this mask; but 'tis no wit to go. mercutio why, may one ask? romeo i dream'd a dream to-night. mercutio and so did i. romeo well, what was yours? mercutio that dreamers often lie. romeo in bed asleep, while they do dream things true. mercutio o, then, i see queen mab hath been with you. she is the fairies' midwife, and she comes in shape no bigger than an agate-stone on the fore-finger of an alderman, drawn with a team of little atomies athwart men's noses as they lie asleep; her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs, the cover of the wings of grasshoppers, the traces of the smallest spider's web, the collars of the moonshine's watery beams, her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film, her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat, not so big as a round little worm prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid; her chariot is an empty hazel-nut made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers. and in this state she gallops night by night through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love; o'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight, o'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees, o'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream, which oft the angry mab with blisters plagues, because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are: sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, and then dreams he of smelling out a suit; and sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep, then dreams, he of another benefice: sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, of breaches, ambuscadoes, spanish blades, of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, and being thus frighted swears a prayer or two and sleeps again. this is that very mab that plats the manes of horses in the night, and bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, which once untangled, much misfortune bodes: this is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, that presses them and learns them first to bear, making them women of good carriage: this is she- romeo peace, peace, mercutio, peace! thou talk'st of nothing. mercutio true, i talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind, who wooes even now the frozen bosom of the north, and, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, turning his face to the dew-dropping south. benvolio this wind, you talk of, blows us from ourselves; supper is done, and we shall come too late. romeo i fear, too early: for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin his fearful date with this night's revels and expire the term of a despised life closed in my breast by some vile forfeit of untimely death. but he, that hath the steerage of my course, direct my sail! on, lusty gentlemen. benvolio strike, drum. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act i scene v a hall in capulet's house. [musicians waiting. enter servingmen with napkins] first servant where's potpan, that he helps not to take away? he shift a trencher? he scrape a trencher! second servant when good manners shall lie all in one or two men's hands and they unwashed too, 'tis a foul thing. first servant away with the joint-stools, remove the court-cupboard, look to the plate. good thou, save me a piece of marchpane; and, as thou lovest me, let the porter let in susan grindstone and nell. antony, and potpan! second servant ay, boy, ready. first servant you are looked for and called for, asked for and sought for, in the great chamber. second servant we cannot be here and there too. cheerly, boys; be brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all. [enter capulet, with juliet and others of his house, meeting the guests and maskers] capulet welcome, gentlemen! ladies that have their toes unplagued with corns will have a bout with you. ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all will now deny to dance? she that makes dainty, she, i'll swear, hath corns; am i come near ye now? welcome, gentlemen! i have seen the day that i have worn a visor and could tell a whispering tale in a fair lady's ear, such as would please: 'tis gone, 'tis gone, 'tis gone: you are welcome, gentlemen! come, musicians, play. a hall, a hall! give room! and foot it, girls. [music plays, and they dance] more light, you knaves; and turn the tables up, and quench the fire, the room is grown too hot. ah, sirrah, this unlook'd-for sport comes well. nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin capulet; for you and i are past our dancing days: how long is't now since last yourself and i were in a mask? second capulet by'r lady, thirty years. capulet what, man! 'tis not so much, 'tis not so much: 'tis since the nuptials of lucentio, come pentecost as quickly as it will, some five and twenty years; and then we mask'd. second capulet 'tis more, 'tis more, his son is elder, sir; his son is thirty. capulet will you tell me that? his son was but a ward two years ago. romeo [to a servingman] what lady is that, which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight? servant i know not, sir. romeo o, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! it seems she hangs upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an ethiope's ear; beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear! so shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, as yonder lady o'er her fellows shows. the measure done, i'll watch her place of stand, and, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand. did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! for i ne'er saw true beauty till this night. tybalt this, by his voice, should be a montague. fetch me my rapier, boy. what dares the slave come hither, cover'd with an antic face, to fleer and scorn at our solemnity? now, by the stock and honour of my kin, to strike him dead, i hold it not a sin. capulet why, how now, kinsman! wherefore storm you so? tybalt uncle, this is a montague, our foe, a villain that is hither come in spite, to scorn at our solemnity this night. capulet young romeo is it? tybalt 'tis he, that villain romeo. capulet content thee, gentle coz, let him alone; he bears him like a portly gentleman; and, to say truth, verona brags of him to be a virtuous and well-govern'd youth: i would not for the wealth of all the town here in my house do him disparagement: therefore be patient, take no note of him: it is my will, the which if thou respect, show a fair presence and put off these frowns, and ill-beseeming semblance for a feast. tybalt it fits, when such a villain is a guest: i'll not endure him. capulet he shall be endured: what, goodman boy! i say, he shall: go to; am i the master here, or you? go to. you'll not endure him! god shall mend my soul! you'll make a mutiny among my guests! you will set cock-a-hoop! you'll be the man! tybalt why, uncle, 'tis a shame. capulet go to, go to; you are a saucy boy: is't so, indeed? this trick may chance to scathe you, i know what: you must contrary me! marry, 'tis time. well said, my hearts! you are a princox; go: be quiet, or--more light, more light! for shame! i'll make you quiet. what, cheerly, my hearts! tybalt patience perforce with wilful choler meeting makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting. i will withdraw: but this intrusion shall now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall. [exit] romeo [to juliet] if i profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. juliet good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. romeo have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? juliet ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. romeo o, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; they pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. juliet saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. romeo then move not, while my prayer's effect i take. thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged. juliet then have my lips the sin that they have took. romeo sin from thy lips? o trespass sweetly urged! give me my sin again. juliet you kiss by the book. nurse madam, your mother craves a word with you. romeo what is her mother? nurse marry, bachelor, her mother is the lady of the house, and a good lady, and a wise and virtuous i nursed her daughter, that you talk'd withal; i tell you, he that can lay hold of her shall have the chinks. romeo is she a capulet? o dear account! my life is my foe's debt. benvolio away, begone; the sport is at the best. romeo ay, so i fear; the more is my unrest. capulet nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone; we have a trifling foolish banquet towards. is it e'en so? why, then, i thank you all i thank you, honest gentlemen; good night. more torches here! come on then, let's to bed. ah, sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late: i'll to my rest. [exeunt all but juliet and nurse] juliet come hither, nurse. what is yond gentleman? nurse the son and heir of old tiberio. juliet what's he that now is going out of door? nurse marry, that, i think, be young petrucio. juliet what's he that follows there, that would not dance? nurse i know not. juliet go ask his name: if he be married. my grave is like to be my wedding bed. nurse his name is romeo, and a montague; the only son of your great enemy. juliet my only love sprung from my only hate! too early seen unknown, and known too late! prodigious birth of love it is to me, that i must love a loathed enemy. nurse what's this? what's this? juliet a rhyme i learn'd even now of one i danced withal. [one calls within 'juliet.'] nurse anon, anon! come, let's away; the strangers all are gone. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act ii prologue [enter chorus] chorus now old desire doth in his death-bed lie, and young affection gapes to be his heir; that fair for which love groan'd for and would die, with tender juliet match'd, is now not fair. now romeo is beloved and loves again, alike betwitched by the charm of looks, but to his foe supposed he must complain, and she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks: being held a foe, he may not have access to breathe such vows as lovers use to swear; and she as much in love, her means much less to meet her new-beloved any where: but passion lends them power, time means, to meet tempering extremities with extreme sweet. [exit] romeo and juliet act ii scene i a lane by the wall of capulet's orchard. [enter romeo] romeo can i go forward when my heart is here? turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out. [he climbs the wall, and leaps down within it] [enter benvolio and mercutio] benvolio romeo! my cousin romeo! mercutio he is wise; and, on my lie, hath stol'n him home to bed. benvolio he ran this way, and leap'd this orchard wall: call, good mercutio. mercutio nay, i'll conjure too. romeo! humours! madman! passion! lover! appear thou in the likeness of a sigh: speak but one rhyme, and i am satisfied; cry but 'ay me!' pronounce but 'love' and 'dove;' speak to my gossip venus one fair word, one nick-name for her purblind son and heir, young adam cupid, he that shot so trim, when king cophetua loved the beggar-maid! he heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not; the ape is dead, and i must conjure him. i conjure thee by rosaline's bright eyes, by her high forehead and her scarlet lip, by her fine foot, straight leg and quivering thigh and the demesnes that there adjacent lie, that in thy likeness thou appear to us! benvolio and if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him. mercutio this cannot anger him: 'twould anger him to raise a spirit in his mistress' circle of some strange nature, letting it there stand till she had laid it and conjured it down; that were some spite: my invocation is fair and honest, and in his mistress' name i conjure only but to raise up him. benvolio come, he hath hid himself among these trees, to be consorted with the humorous night: blind is his love and best befits the dark. mercutio if love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. now will he sit under a medlar tree, and wish his mistress were that kind of fruit as maids call medlars, when they laugh alone. romeo, that she were, o, that she were an open et caetera, thou a poperin pear! romeo, good night: i'll to my truckle-bed; this field-bed is too cold for me to sleep: come, shall we go? benvolio go, then; for 'tis in vain to seek him here that means not to be found. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act ii scene ii capulet's orchard. [enter romeo] romeo he jests at scars that never felt a wound. [juliet appears above at a window] but, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? it is the east, and juliet is the sun. arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief, that thou her maid art far more fair than she: be not her maid, since she is envious; her vestal livery is but sick and green and none but fools do wear it; cast it off. it is my lady, o, it is my love! o, that she knew she were! she speaks yet she says nothing: what of that? her eye discourses; i will answer it. i am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks: two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, having some business, do entreat her eyes to twinkle in their spheres till they return. what if her eyes were there, they in her head? the brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, as daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing and think it were not night. see, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! o, that i were a glove upon that hand, that i might touch that cheek! juliet ay me! romeo she speaks: o, speak again, bright angel! for thou art as glorious to this night, being o'er my head as is a winged messenger of heaven unto the white-upturned wondering eyes of mortals that fall back to gaze on him when he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air. juliet o romeo, romeo! wherefore art thou romeo? deny thy father and refuse thy name; or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and i'll no longer be a capulet. romeo [aside] shall i hear more, or shall i speak at this? juliet 'tis but thy name that is my enemy; thou art thyself, though not a montague. what's montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. o, be some other name! what's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; so romeo would, were he not romeo call'd, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. romeo, doff thy name, and for that name which is no part of thee take all myself. romeo i take thee at thy word: call me but love, and i'll be new baptized; henceforth i never will be romeo. juliet what man art thou that thus bescreen'd in night so stumblest on my counsel? romeo by a name i know not how to tell thee who i am: my name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, because it is an enemy to thee; had i it written, i would tear the word. juliet my ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of that tongue's utterance, yet i know the sound: art thou not romeo and a montague? romeo neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike. juliet how camest thou hither, tell me, and wherefore? the orchard walls are high and hard to climb, and the place death, considering who thou art, if any of my kinsmen find thee here. romeo with love's light wings did i o'er-perch these walls; for stony limits cannot hold love out, and what love can do that dares love attempt; therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me. juliet if they do see thee, they will murder thee. romeo alack, there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet, and i am proof against their enmity. juliet i would not for the world they saw thee here. romeo i have night's cloak to hide me from their sight; and but thou love me, let them find me here: my life were better ended by their hate, than death prorogued, wanting of thy love. juliet by whose direction found'st thou out this place? romeo by love, who first did prompt me to inquire; he lent me counsel and i lent him eyes. i am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far as that vast shore wash'd with the farthest sea, i would adventure for such merchandise. juliet thou know'st the mask of night is on my face, else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek for that which thou hast heard me speak to-night fain would i dwell on form, fain, fain deny what i have spoke: but farewell compliment! dost thou love me? i know thou wilt say 'ay,' and i will take thy word: yet if thou swear'st, thou mayst prove false; at lovers' perjuries then say, jove laughs. o gentle romeo, if thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully: or if thou think'st i am too quickly won, i'll frown and be perverse an say thee nay, so thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world. in truth, fair montague, i am too fond, and therefore thou mayst think my 'havior light: but trust me, gentleman, i'll prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange. i should have been more strange, i must confess, but that thou overheard'st, ere i was ware, my true love's passion: therefore pardon me, and not impute this yielding to light love, which the dark night hath so discovered. romeo lady, by yonder blessed moon i swear that tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops- juliet o, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb, lest that thy love prove likewise variable. romeo what shall i swear by? juliet do not swear at all; or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, which is the god of my idolatry, and i'll believe thee. romeo if my heart's dear love- juliet well, do not swear: although i joy in thee, i have no joy of this contract to-night: it is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; too like the lightning, which doth cease to be ere one can say 'it lightens.' sweet, good night! this bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest come to thy heart as that within my breast! romeo o, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? juliet what satisfaction canst thou have to-night? romeo the exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine. juliet i gave thee mine before thou didst request it: and yet i would it were to give again. romeo wouldst thou withdraw it? for what purpose, love? juliet but to be frank, and give it thee again. and yet i wish but for the thing i have: my bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more i give to thee, the more i have, for both are infinite. [nurse calls within] i hear some noise within; dear love, adieu! anon, good nurse! sweet montague, be true. stay but a little, i will come again. [exit, above] romeo o blessed, blessed night! i am afeard. being in night, all this is but a dream, too flattering-sweet to be substantial. [re-enter juliet, above] juliet three words, dear romeo, and good night indeed. if that thy bent of love be honourable, thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow, by one that i'll procure to come to thee, where and what time thou wilt perform the rite; and all my fortunes at thy foot i'll lay and follow thee my lord throughout the world. nurse [within] madam! juliet i come, anon.--but if thou mean'st not well, i do beseech thee- nurse [within] madam! juliet by and by, i come:- to cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief: to-morrow will i send. romeo so thrive my soul- juliet a thousand times good night! [exit, above] romeo a thousand times the worse, to want thy light. love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books, but love from love, toward school with heavy looks. [retiring] [re-enter juliet, above] juliet hist! romeo, hist! o, for a falconer's voice, to lure this tassel-gentle back again! bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud; else would i tear the cave where echo lies, and make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine, with repetition of my romeo's name. romeo it is my soul that calls upon my name: how silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, like softest music to attending ears! juliet romeo! romeo my dear? juliet at what o'clock to-morrow shall i send to thee? romeo at the hour of nine. juliet i will not fail: 'tis twenty years till then. i have forgot why i did call thee back. romeo let me stand here till thou remember it. juliet i shall forget, to have thee still stand there, remembering how i love thy company. romeo and i'll still stay, to have thee still forget, forgetting any other home but this. juliet 'tis almost morning; i would have thee gone: and yet no further than a wanton's bird; who lets it hop a little from her hand, like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, and with a silk thread plucks it back again, so loving-jealous of his liberty. romeo i would i were thy bird. juliet sweet, so would i: yet i should kill thee with much cherishing. good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, that i shall say good night till it be morrow. [exit above] romeo sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast! would i were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest! hence will i to my ghostly father's cell, his help to crave, and my dear hap to tell. [exit] romeo and juliet act ii scene iii friar laurence's cell. [enter friar laurence, with a basket] friar laurence the grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light, and flecked darkness like a drunkard reels from forth day's path and titan's fiery wheels: now, ere the sun advance his burning eye, the day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry, i must up-fill this osier cage of ours with baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. the earth that's nature's mother is her tomb; what is her burying grave that is her womb, and from her womb children of divers kind we sucking on her natural bosom find, many for many virtues excellent, none but for some and yet all different. o, mickle is the powerful grace that lies in herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities: for nought so vile that on the earth doth live but to the earth some special good doth give, nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse: virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; and vice sometimes by action dignified. within the infant rind of this small flower poison hath residence and medicine power: for this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. two such opposed kings encamp them still in man as well as herbs, grace and rude will; and where the worser is predominant, full soon the canker death eats up that plant. [enter romeo] romeo good morrow, father. friar laurence benedicite! what early tongue so sweet saluteth me? young son, it argues a distemper'd head so soon to bid good morrow to thy bed: care keeps his watch in every old man's eye, and where care lodges, sleep will never lie; but where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign: therefore thy earliness doth me assure thou art up-roused by some distemperature; or if not so, then here i hit it right, our romeo hath not been in bed to-night. romeo that last is true; the sweeter rest was mine. friar laurence god pardon sin! wast thou with rosaline? romeo with rosaline, my ghostly father? no; i have forgot that name, and that name's woe. friar laurence that's my good son: but where hast thou been, then? romeo i'll tell thee, ere thou ask it me again. i have been feasting with mine enemy, where on a sudden one hath wounded me, that's by me wounded: both our remedies within thy help and holy physic lies: i bear no hatred, blessed man, for, lo, my intercession likewise steads my foe. friar laurence be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift; riddling confession finds but riddling shrift. romeo then plainly know my heart's dear love is set on the fair daughter of rich capulet: as mine on hers, so hers is set on mine; and all combined, save what thou must combine by holy marriage: when and where and how we met, we woo'd and made exchange of vow, i'll tell thee as we pass; but this i pray, that thou consent to marry us to-day. friar laurence holy saint francis, what a change is here! is rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear, so soon forsaken? young men's love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes. jesu maria, what a deal of brine hath wash'd thy sallow cheeks for rosaline! how much salt water thrown away in waste, to season love, that of it doth not taste! the sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears, thy old groans ring yet in my ancient ears; lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit of an old tear that is not wash'd off yet: if e'er thou wast thyself and these woes thine, thou and these woes were all for rosaline: and art thou changed? pronounce this sentence then, women may fall, when there's no strength in men. romeo thou chid'st me oft for loving rosaline. friar laurence for doting, not for loving, pupil mine. romeo and bad'st me bury love. friar laurence not in a grave, to lay one in, another out to have. romeo i pray thee, chide not; she whom i love now doth grace for grace and love for love allow; the other did not so. friar laurence o, she knew well thy love did read by rote and could not spell. but come, young waverer, come, go with me, in one respect i'll thy assistant be; for this alliance may so happy prove, to turn your households' rancour to pure love. romeo o, let us hence; i stand on sudden haste. friar laurence wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act ii scene iv a street. [enter benvolio and mercutio] mercutio where the devil should this romeo be? came he not home to-night? benvolio not to his father's; i spoke with his man. mercutio ah, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that rosaline. torments him so, that he will sure run mad. benvolio tybalt, the kinsman of old capulet, hath sent a letter to his father's house. mercutio a challenge, on my life. benvolio romeo will answer it. mercutio any man that can write may answer a letter. benvolio nay, he will answer the letter's master, how he dares, being dared. mercutio alas poor romeo! he is already dead; stabbed with a white wench's black eye; shot through the ear with a love-song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft: and is he a man to encounter tybalt? benvolio why, what is tybalt? mercutio more than prince of cats, i can tell you. o, he is the courageous captain of compliments. he fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion; rests me his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause: ah, the immortal passado! the punto reverso! the hai! benvolio the what? mercutio the pox of such antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents! 'by jesu, a very good blade! a very tall man! a very good whore!' why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these perdona-mi's, who stand so much on the new form, that they cannot at ease on the old bench? o, their bones, their bones! [enter romeo] benvolio here comes romeo, here comes romeo. mercutio without his roe, like a dried herring: flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! now is he for the numbers that petrarch flowed in: laura to his lady was but a kitchen-wench; marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme her; dido a dowdy; cleopatra a gipsy; helen and hero hildings and harlots; thisbe a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose. signior romeo, bon jour! there's a french salutation to your french slop. you gave us the counterfeit fairly last night. romeo good morrow to you both. what counterfeit did i give you? mercutio the ship, sir, the slip; can you not conceive? romeo pardon, good mercutio, my business was great; and in such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy. mercutio that's as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams. romeo meaning, to court'sy. mercutio thou hast most kindly hit it. romeo a most courteous exposition. mercutio nay, i am the very pink of courtesy. romeo pink for flower. mercutio right. romeo why, then is my pump well flowered. mercutio well said: follow me this jest now till thou hast worn out thy pump, that when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain after the wearing sole singular. romeo o single-soled jest, solely singular for the singleness. mercutio come between us, good benvolio; my wits faint. romeo switch and spurs, switch and spurs; or i'll cry a match. mercutio nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, i have done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits than, i am sure, i have in my whole five: was i with you there for the goose? romeo thou wast never with me for any thing when thou wast not there for the goose. mercutio i will bite thee by the ear for that jest. romeo nay, good goose, bite not. mercutio thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce. romeo and is it not well served in to a sweet goose? mercutio o here's a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an inch narrow to an ell broad! romeo i stretch it out for that word 'broad;' which added to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose. mercutio why, is not this better now than groaning for love? now art thou sociable, now art thou romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature: for this drivelling love is like a great natural, that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole. benvolio stop there, stop there. mercutio thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair. benvolio thou wouldst else have made thy tale large. mercutio o, thou art deceived; i would have made it short: for i was come to the whole depth of my tale; and meant, indeed, to occupy the argument no longer. romeo here's goodly gear! [enter nurse and peter] mercutio a sail, a sail! benvolio two, two; a shirt and a smock. nurse peter! peter anon! nurse my fan, peter. mercutio good peter, to hide her face; for her fan's the fairer face. nurse god ye good morrow, gentlemen. mercutio god ye good den, fair gentlewoman. nurse is it good den? mercutio 'tis no less, i tell you, for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon. nurse out upon you! what a man are you! romeo one, gentlewoman, that god hath made for himself to mar. nurse by my troth, it is well said; 'for himself to mar,' quoth a'? gentlemen, can any of you tell me where i may find the young romeo? romeo i can tell you; but young romeo will be older when you have found him than he was when you sought him: i am the youngest of that name, for fault of a worse. nurse you say well. mercutio yea, is the worst well? very well took, i' faith; wisely, wisely. nurse if you be he, sir, i desire some confidence with you. benvolio she will indite him to some supper. mercutio a bawd, a bawd, a bawd! so ho! romeo what hast thou found? mercutio no hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent. [sings] an old hare hoar, and an old hare hoar, is very good meat in lent but a hare that is hoar is too much for a score, when it hoars ere it be spent. romeo, will you come to your father's? we'll to dinner, thither. romeo i will follow you. mercutio farewell, ancient lady; farewell, [singing] 'lady, lady, lady.' [exeunt mercutio and benvolio] nurse marry, farewell! i pray you, sir, what saucy merchant was this, that was so full of his ropery? romeo a gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month. nurse an a' speak any thing against me, i'll take him down, an a' were lustier than he is, and twenty such jacks; and if i cannot, i'll find those that shall. scurvy knave! i am none of his flirt-gills; i am none of his skains-mates. and thou must stand by too, and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure? peter i saw no man use you a pleasure; if i had, my weapon should quickly have been out, i warrant you: i dare draw as soon as another man, if i see occasion in a good quarrel, and the law on my side. nurse now, afore god, i am so vexed, that every part about me quivers. scurvy knave! pray you, sir, a word: and as i told you, my young lady bade me inquire you out; what she bade me say, i will keep to myself: but first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her into a fool's paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behavior, as they say: for the gentlewoman is young; and, therefore, if you should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing. romeo nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. i protest unto thee- nurse good heart, and, i' faith, i will tell her as much: lord, lord, she will be a joyful woman. romeo what wilt thou tell her, nurse? thou dost not mark me. nurse i will tell her, sir, that you do protest; which, as i take it, is a gentlemanlike offer. romeo bid her devise some means to come to shrift this afternoon; and there she shall at friar laurence' cell be shrived and married. here is for thy pains. nurse no truly sir; not a penny. romeo go to; i say you shall. nurse this afternoon, sir? well, she shall be there. romeo and stay, good nurse, behind the abbey wall: within this hour my man shall be with thee and bring thee cords made like a tackled stair; which to the high top-gallant of my joy must be my convoy in the secret night. farewell; be trusty, and i'll quit thy pains: farewell; commend me to thy mistress. nurse now god in heaven bless thee! hark you, sir. romeo what say'st thou, my dear nurse? nurse is your man secret? did you ne'er hear say, two may keep counsel, putting one away? romeo i warrant thee, my man's as true as steel. nurse well, sir; my mistress is the sweetest lady--lord, lord! when 'twas a little prating thing:--o, there is a nobleman in town, one paris, that would fain lay knife aboard; but she, good soul, had as lief see a toad, a very toad, as see him. i anger her sometimes and tell her that paris is the properer man; but, i'll warrant you, when i say so, she looks as pale as any clout in the versal world. doth not rosemary and romeo begin both with a letter? romeo ay, nurse; what of that? both with an r. nurse ah. mocker! that's the dog's name; r is for the--no; i know it begins with some other letter:--and she hath the prettiest sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it. romeo commend me to thy lady. nurse ay, a thousand times. [exit romeo] peter! peter anon! nurse peter, take my fan, and go before and apace. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act ii scene v capulet's orchard. [enter juliet] juliet the clock struck nine when i did send the nurse; in half an hour she promised to return. perchance she cannot meet him: that's not so. o, she is lame! love's heralds should be thoughts, which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams, driving back shadows over louring hills: therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw love, and therefore hath the wind-swift cupid wings. now is the sun upon the highmost hill of this day's journey, and from nine till twelve is three long hours, yet she is not come. had she affections and warm youthful blood, she would be as swift in motion as a ball; my words would bandy her to my sweet love, and his to me: but old folks, many feign as they were dead; unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead. o god, she comes! [enter nurse and peter] o honey nurse, what news? hast thou met with him? send thy man away. nurse peter, stay at the gate. [exit peter] juliet now, good sweet nurse,--o lord, why look'st thou sad? though news be sad, yet tell them merrily; if good, thou shamest the music of sweet news by playing it to me with so sour a face. nurse i am a-weary, give me leave awhile: fie, how my bones ache! what a jaunt have i had! juliet i would thou hadst my bones, and i thy news: nay, come, i pray thee, speak; good, good nurse, speak. nurse jesu, what haste? can you not stay awhile? do you not see that i am out of breath? juliet how art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath to say to me that thou art out of breath? the excuse that thou dost make in this delay is longer than the tale thou dost excuse. is thy news good, or bad? answer to that; say either, and i'll stay the circumstance: let me be satisfied, is't good or bad? nurse well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to choose a man: romeo! no, not he; though his face be better than any man's, yet his leg excels all men's; and for a hand, and a foot, and a body, though they be not to be talked on, yet they are past compare: he is not the flower of courtesy, but, i'll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb. go thy ways, wench; serve god. what, have you dined at home? juliet no, no: but all this did i know before. what says he of our marriage? what of that? nurse lord, how my head aches! what a head have i! it beats as it would fall in twenty pieces. my back o' t' other side,--o, my back, my back! beshrew your heart for sending me about, to catch my death with jaunting up and down! juliet i' faith, i am sorry that thou art not well. sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love? nurse your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome, and, i warrant, a virtuous,--where is your mother? juliet where is my mother! why, she is within; where should she be? how oddly thou repliest! 'your love says, like an honest gentleman, where is your mother?' nurse o god's lady dear! are you so hot? marry, come up, i trow; is this the poultice for my aching bones? henceforward do your messages yourself. juliet here's such a coil! come, what says romeo? nurse have you got leave to go to shrift to-day? juliet i have. nurse then hie you hence to friar laurence' cell; there stays a husband to make you a wife: now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks, they'll be in scarlet straight at any news. hie you to church; i must another way, to fetch a ladder, by the which your love must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark: i am the drudge and toil in your delight, but you shall bear the burden soon at night. go; i'll to dinner: hie you to the cell. juliet hie to high fortune! honest nurse, farewell. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act ii scene vi friar laurence's cell. [enter friar laurence and romeo] friar laurence so smile the heavens upon this holy act, that after hours with sorrow chide us not! romeo amen, amen! but come what sorrow can, it cannot countervail the exchange of joy that one short minute gives me in her sight: do thou but close our hands with holy words, then love-devouring death do what he dare; it is enough i may but call her mine. friar laurence these violent delights have violent ends and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey is loathsome in his own deliciousness and in the taste confounds the appetite: therefore love moderately; long love doth so; too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. [enter juliet] here comes the lady: o, so light a foot will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint: a lover may bestride the gossamer that idles in the wanton summer air, and yet not fall; so light is vanity. juliet good even to my ghostly confessor. friar laurence romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both. juliet as much to him, else is his thanks too much. romeo ah, juliet, if the measure of thy joy be heap'd like mine and that thy skill be more to blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath this neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue unfold the imagined happiness that both receive in either by this dear encounter. juliet conceit, more rich in matter than in words, brags of his substance, not of ornament: they are but beggars that can count their worth; but my true love is grown to such excess i cannot sum up sum of half my wealth. friar laurence come, come with me, and we will make short work; for, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone till holy church incorporate two in one. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act iii scene i a public place. [enter mercutio, benvolio, page, and servants] benvolio i pray thee, good mercutio, let's retire: the day is hot, the capulets abroad, and, if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl; for now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring. mercutio thou art like one of those fellows that when he enters the confines of a tavern claps me his sword upon the table and says 'god send me no need of thee!' and by the operation of the second cup draws it on the drawer, when indeed there is no need. benvolio am i like such a fellow? mercutio come, come, thou art as hot a jack in thy mood as any in italy, and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved. benvolio and what to? mercutio nay, an there were two such, we should have none shortly, for one would kill the other. thou! why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more, or a hair less, in his beard, than thou hast: thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes: what eye but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel? thy head is as fun of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling: thou hast quarrelled with a man for coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun: didst thou not fall out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before easter? with another, for tying his new shoes with old riband? and yet thou wilt tutor me from quarrelling! benvolio an i were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man should buy the fee-simple of my life for an hour and a quarter. mercutio the fee-simple! o simple! benvolio by my head, here come the capulets. mercutio by my heel, i care not. [enter tybalt and others] tybalt follow me close, for i will speak to them. gentlemen, good den: a word with one of you. mercutio and but one word with one of us? couple it with something; make it a word and a blow. tybalt you shall find me apt enough to that, sir, an you will give me occasion. mercutio could you not take some occasion without giving? tybalt mercutio, thou consort'st with romeo,- mercutio consort! what, dost thou make us minstrels? an thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discords: here's my fiddlestick; here's that shall make you dance. 'zounds, consort! benvolio we talk here in the public haunt of men: either withdraw unto some private place, and reason coldly of your grievances, or else depart; here all eyes gaze on us. mercutio men's eyes were made to look, and let them gaze; i will not budge for no man's pleasure, i. [enter romeo] tybalt well, peace be with you, sir: here comes my man. mercutio but i'll be hanged, sir, if he wear your livery: marry, go before to field, he'll be your follower; your worship in that sense may call him 'man.' tybalt romeo, the hate i bear thee can afford no better term than this,--thou art a villain. romeo tybalt, the reason that i have to love thee doth much excuse the appertaining rage to such a greeting: villain am i none; therefore farewell; i see thou know'st me not. tybalt boy, this shall not excuse the injuries that thou hast done me; therefore turn and draw. romeo i do protest, i never injured thee, but love thee better than thou canst devise, till thou shalt know the reason of my love: and so, good capulet,--which name i tender as dearly as my own,--be satisfied. mercutio o calm, dishonourable, vile submission! alla stoccata carries it away. [draws] tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk? tybalt what wouldst thou have with me? mercutio good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives; that i mean to make bold withal, and as you shall use me hereafter, drybeat the rest of the eight. will you pluck your sword out of his pitcher by the ears? make haste, lest mine be about your ears ere it be out. tybalt i am for you. [drawing] romeo gentle mercutio, put thy rapier up. mercutio come, sir, your passado. [they fight] romeo draw, benvolio; beat down their weapons. gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage! tybalt, mercutio, the prince expressly hath forbidden bandying in verona streets: hold, tybalt! good mercutio! [tybalt under romeo's arm stabs mercutio, and flies with his followers] mercutio i am hurt. a plague o' both your houses! i am sped. is he gone, and hath nothing? benvolio what, art thou hurt? mercutio ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough. where is my page? go, villain, fetch a surgeon. [exit page] romeo courage, man; the hurt cannot be much. mercutio no, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. i am peppered, i warrant, for this world. a plague o' both your houses! 'zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic! why the devil came you between us? i was hurt under your arm. romeo i thought all for the best. mercutio help me into some house, benvolio, or i shall faint. a plague o' both your houses! they have made worms' meat of me: i have it, and soundly too: your houses! [exeunt mercutio and benvolio] romeo this gentleman, the prince's near ally, my very friend, hath got his mortal hurt in my behalf; my reputation stain'd with tybalt's slander,--tybalt, that an hour hath been my kinsman! o sweet juliet, thy beauty hath made me effeminate and in my temper soften'd valour's steel! [re-enter benvolio] benvolio o romeo, romeo, brave mercutio's dead! that gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds, which too untimely here did scorn the earth. romeo this day's black fate on more days doth depend; this but begins the woe, others must end. benvolio here comes the furious tybalt back again. romeo alive, in triumph! and mercutio slain! away to heaven, respective lenity, and fire-eyed fury be my conduct now! [re-enter tybalt] now, tybalt, take the villain back again, that late thou gavest me; for mercutio's soul is but a little way above our heads, staying for thine to keep him company: either thou, or i, or both, must go with him. tybalt thou, wretched boy, that didst consort him here, shalt with him hence. romeo this shall determine that. [they fight; tybalt falls] benvolio romeo, away, be gone! the citizens are up, and tybalt slain. stand not amazed: the prince will doom thee death, if thou art taken: hence, be gone, away! romeo o, i am fortune's fool! benvolio why dost thou stay? [exit romeo] [enter citizens, &c] first citizen which way ran he that kill'd mercutio? tybalt, that murderer, which way ran he? benvolio there lies that tybalt. first citizen up, sir, go with me; i charge thee in the princes name, obey. [enter prince, attended; montague, capulet, their wives, and others] prince where are the vile beginners of this fray? benvolio o noble prince, i can discover all the unlucky manage of this fatal brawl: there lies the man, slain by young romeo, that slew thy kinsman, brave mercutio. lady capulet tybalt, my cousin! o my brother's child! o prince! o cousin! husband! o, the blood is spilt o my dear kinsman! prince, as thou art true, for blood of ours, shed blood of montague. o cousin, cousin! prince benvolio, who began this bloody fray? benvolio tybalt, here slain, whom romeo's hand did slay; romeo that spoke him fair, bade him bethink how nice the quarrel was, and urged withal your high displeasure: all this uttered with gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow'd, could not take truce with the unruly spleen of tybalt deaf to peace, but that he tilts with piercing steel at bold mercutio's breast, who all as hot, turns deadly point to point, and, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats cold death aside, and with the other sends it back to tybalt, whose dexterity, retorts it: romeo he cries aloud, 'hold, friends! friends, part!' and, swifter than his tongue, his agile arm beats down their fatal points, and 'twixt them rushes; underneath whose arm an envious thrust from tybalt hit the life of stout mercutio, and then tybalt fled; but by and by comes back to romeo, who had but newly entertain'd revenge, and to 't they go like lightning, for, ere i could draw to part them, was stout tybalt slain. and, as he fell, did romeo turn and fly. this is the truth, or let benvolio die. lady capulet he is a kinsman to the montague; affection makes him false; he speaks not true: some twenty of them fought in this black strife, and all those twenty could but kill one life. i beg for justice, which thou, prince, must give; romeo slew tybalt, romeo must not live. prince romeo slew him, he slew mercutio; who now the price of his dear blood doth owe? montague not romeo, prince, he was mercutio's friend; his fault concludes but what the law should end, the life of tybalt. prince and for that offence immediately we do exile him hence: i have an interest in your hate's proceeding, my blood for your rude brawls doth lie a-bleeding; but i'll amerce you with so strong a fine that you shall all repent the loss of mine: i will be deaf to pleading and excuses; nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses: therefore use none: let romeo hence in haste, else, when he's found, that hour is his last. bear hence this body and attend our will: mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act iii scene ii capulet's orchard. [enter juliet] juliet gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, towards phoebus' lodging: such a wagoner as phaethon would whip you to the west, and bring in cloudy night immediately. spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, that runaway's eyes may wink and romeo leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen. lovers can see to do their amorous rites by their own beauties; or, if love be blind, it best agrees with night. come, civil night, thou sober-suited matron, all in black, and learn me how to lose a winning match, play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods: hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks, with thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold, think true love acted simple modesty. come, night; come, romeo; come, thou day in night; for thou wilt lie upon the wings of night whiter than new snow on a raven's back. come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night, give me my romeo; and, when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun. o, i have bought the mansion of a love, but not possess'd it, and, though i am sold, not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day as is the night before some festival to an impatient child that hath new robes and may not wear them. o, here comes my nurse, and she brings news; and every tongue that speaks but romeo's name speaks heavenly eloquence. [enter nurse, with cords] now, nurse, what news? what hast thou there? the cords that romeo bid thee fetch? nurse ay, ay, the cords. [throws them down] juliet ay me! what news? why dost thou wring thy hands? nurse ah, well-a-day! he's dead, he's dead, he's dead! we are undone, lady, we are undone! alack the day! he's gone, he's kill'd, he's dead! juliet can heaven be so envious? nurse romeo can, though heaven cannot: o romeo, romeo! who ever would have thought it? romeo! juliet what devil art thou, that dost torment me thus? this torture should be roar'd in dismal hell. hath romeo slain himself? say thou but 'i,' and that bare vowel 'i' shall poison more than the death-darting eye of cockatrice: i am not i, if there be such an i; or those eyes shut, that make thee answer 'i.' if he be slain, say 'i'; or if not, no: brief sounds determine of my weal or woe. nurse i saw the wound, i saw it with mine eyes,- god save the mark!--here on his manly breast: a piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse; pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub'd in blood, all in gore-blood; i swounded at the sight. juliet o, break, my heart! poor bankrupt, break at once! to prison, eyes, ne'er look on liberty! vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here; and thou and romeo press one heavy bier! nurse o tybalt, tybalt, the best friend i had! o courteous tybalt! honest gentleman! that ever i should live to see thee dead! juliet what storm is this that blows so contrary? is romeo slaughter'd, and is tybalt dead? my dear-loved cousin, and my dearer lord? then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom! for who is living, if those two are gone? nurse tybalt is gone, and romeo banished; romeo that kill'd him, he is banished. juliet o god! did romeo's hand shed tybalt's blood? nurse it did, it did; alas the day, it did! juliet o serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb! despised substance of divinest show! just opposite to what thou justly seem'st, a damned saint, an honourable villain! o nature, what hadst thou to do in hell, when thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend in moral paradise of such sweet flesh? was ever book containing such vile matter so fairly bound? o that deceit should dwell in such a gorgeous palace! nurse there's no trust, no faith, no honesty in men; all perjured, all forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers. ah, where's my man? give me some aqua vitae: these griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old. shame come to romeo! juliet blister'd be thy tongue for such a wish! he was not born to shame: upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit; for 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd sole monarch of the universal earth. o, what a beast was i to chide at him! nurse will you speak well of him that kill'd your cousin? juliet shall i speak ill of him that is my husband? ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, when i, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it? but, wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin? that villain cousin would have kill'd my husband: back, foolish tears, back to your native spring; your tributary drops belong to woe, which you, mistaking, offer up to joy. my husband lives, that tybalt would have slain; and tybalt's dead, that would have slain my husband: all this is comfort; wherefore weep i then? some word there was, worser than tybalt's death, that murder'd me: i would forget it fain; but, o, it presses to my memory, like damned guilty deeds to sinners' minds: 'tybalt is dead, and romeo--banished;' that 'banished,' that one word 'banished,' hath slain ten thousand tybalts. tybalt's death was woe enough, if it had ended there: or, if sour woe delights in fellowship and needly will be rank'd with other griefs, why follow'd not, when she said 'tybalt's dead,' thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both, which modern lamentations might have moved? but with a rear-ward following tybalt's death, 'romeo is banished,' to speak that word, is father, mother, tybalt, romeo, juliet, all slain, all dead. 'romeo is banished!' there is no end, no limit, measure, bound, in that word's death; no words can that woe sound. where is my father, and my mother, nurse? nurse weeping and wailing over tybalt's corse: will you go to them? i will bring you thither. juliet wash they his wounds with tears: mine shall be spent, when theirs are dry, for romeo's banishment. take up those cords: poor ropes, you are beguiled, both you and i; for romeo is exiled: he made you for a highway to my bed; but i, a maid, die maiden-widowed. come, cords, come, nurse; i'll to my wedding-bed; and death, not romeo, take my maidenhead! nurse hie to your chamber: i'll find romeo to comfort you: i wot well where he is. hark ye, your romeo will be here at night: i'll to him; he is hid at laurence' cell. juliet o, find him! give this ring to my true knight, and bid him come to take his last farewell. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act iii scene iii friar laurence's cell. [enter friar laurence] friar laurence romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful man: affliction is enamour'd of thy parts, and thou art wedded to calamity. [enter romeo] romeo father, what news? what is the prince's doom? what sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand, that i yet know not? friar laurence too familiar is my dear son with such sour company: i bring thee tidings of the prince's doom. romeo what less than dooms-day is the prince's doom? friar laurence a gentler judgment vanish'd from his lips, not body's death, but body's banishment. romeo ha, banishment! be merciful, say 'death;' for exile hath more terror in his look, much more than death: do not say 'banishment.' friar laurence hence from verona art thou banished: be patient, for the world is broad and wide. romeo there is no world without verona walls, but purgatory, torture, hell itself. hence-banished is banish'd from the world, and world's exile is death: then banished, is death mis-term'd: calling death banishment, thou cutt'st my head off with a golden axe, and smilest upon the stroke that murders me. friar laurence o deadly sin! o rude unthankfulness! thy fault our law calls death; but the kind prince, taking thy part, hath rush'd aside the law, and turn'd that black word death to banishment: this is dear mercy, and thou seest it not. romeo 'tis torture, and not mercy: heaven is here, where juliet lives; and every cat and dog and little mouse, every unworthy thing, live here in heaven and may look on her; but romeo may not: more validity, more honourable state, more courtship lives in carrion-flies than romeo: they my seize on the white wonder of dear juliet's hand and steal immortal blessing from her lips, who even in pure and vestal modesty, still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin; but romeo may not; he is banished: flies may do this, but i from this must fly: they are free men, but i am banished. and say'st thou yet that exile is not death? hadst thou no poison mix'd, no sharp-ground knife, no sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean, but 'banished' to kill me?--'banished'? o friar, the damned use that word in hell; howlings attend it: how hast thou the heart, being a divine, a ghostly confessor, a sin-absolver, and my friend profess'd, to mangle me with that word 'banished'? friar laurence thou fond mad man, hear me but speak a word. romeo o, thou wilt speak again of banishment. friar laurence i'll give thee armour to keep off that word: adversity's sweet milk, philosophy, to comfort thee, though thou art banished. romeo yet 'banished'? hang up philosophy! unless philosophy can make a juliet, displant a town, reverse a prince's doom, it helps not, it prevails not: talk no more. friar laurence o, then i see that madmen have no ears. romeo how should they, when that wise men have no eyes? friar laurence let me dispute with thee of thy estate. romeo thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel: wert thou as young as i, juliet thy love, an hour but married, tybalt murdered, doting like me and like me banished, then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair, and fall upon the ground, as i do now, taking the measure of an unmade grave. [knocking within] friar laurence arise; one knocks; good romeo, hide thyself. romeo not i; unless the breath of heartsick groans, mist-like, infold me from the search of eyes. [knocking] friar laurence hark, how they knock! who's there? romeo, arise; thou wilt be taken. stay awhile! stand up; [knocking] run to my study. by and by! god's will, what simpleness is this! i come, i come! [knocking] who knocks so hard? whence come you? what's your will? nurse [within] let me come in, and you shall know my errand; i come from lady juliet. friar laurence welcome, then. [enter nurse] nurse o holy friar, o, tell me, holy friar, where is my lady's lord, where's romeo? friar laurence there on the ground, with his own tears made drunk. nurse o, he is even in my mistress' case, just in her case! o woful sympathy! piteous predicament! even so lies she, blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering. stand up, stand up; stand, and you be a man: for juliet's sake, for her sake, rise and stand; why should you fall into so deep an o? romeo nurse! nurse ah sir! ah sir! well, death's the end of all. romeo spakest thou of juliet? how is it with her? doth she not think me an old murderer, now i have stain'd the childhood of our joy with blood removed but little from her own? where is she? and how doth she? and what says my conceal'd lady to our cancell'd love? nurse o, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps; and now falls on her bed; and then starts up, and tybalt calls; and then on romeo cries, and then down falls again. romeo as if that name, shot from the deadly level of a gun, did murder her; as that name's cursed hand murder'd her kinsman. o, tell me, friar, tell me, in what vile part of this anatomy doth my name lodge? tell me, that i may sack the hateful mansion. [drawing his sword] friar laurence hold thy desperate hand: art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art: thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote the unreasonable fury of a beast: unseemly woman in a seeming man! or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both! thou hast amazed me: by my holy order, i thought thy disposition better temper'd. hast thou slain tybalt? wilt thou slay thyself? and stay thy lady too that lives in thee, by doing damned hate upon thyself? why rail'st thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth? since birth, and heaven, and earth, all three do meet in thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose. fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit; which, like a usurer, abound'st in all, and usest none in that true use indeed which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit: thy noble shape is but a form of wax, digressing from the valour of a man; thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury, killing that love which thou hast vow'd to cherish; thy wit, that ornament to shape and love, misshapen in the conduct of them both, like powder in a skitless soldier's flask, is set afire by thine own ignorance, and thou dismember'd with thine own defence. what, rouse thee, man! thy juliet is alive, for whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead; there art thou happy: tybalt would kill thee, but thou slew'st tybalt; there are thou happy too: the law that threaten'd death becomes thy friend and turns it to exile; there art thou happy: a pack of blessings lights up upon thy back; happiness courts thee in her best array; but, like a misbehaved and sullen wench, thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love: take heed, take heed, for such die miserable. go, get thee to thy love, as was decreed, ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her: but look thou stay not till the watch be set, for then thou canst not pass to mantua; where thou shalt live, till we can find a time to blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends, beg pardon of the prince, and call thee back with twenty hundred thousand times more joy than thou went'st forth in lamentation. go before, nurse: commend me to thy lady; and bid her hasten all the house to bed, which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto: romeo is coming. nurse o lord, i could have stay'd here all the night to hear good counsel: o, what learning is! my lord, i'll tell my lady you will come. romeo do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide. nurse here, sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir: hie you, make haste, for it grows very late. [exit] romeo how well my comfort is revived by this! friar laurence go hence; good night; and here stands all your state: either be gone before the watch be set, or by the break of day disguised from hence: sojourn in mantua; i'll find out your man, and he shall signify from time to time every good hap to you that chances here: give me thy hand; 'tis late: farewell; good night. romeo but that a joy past joy calls out on me, it were a grief, so brief to part with thee: farewell. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act iii scene iv a room in capulet's house. [enter capulet, lady capulet, and paris] capulet things have fall'n out, sir, so unluckily, that we have had no time to move our daughter: look you, she loved her kinsman tybalt dearly, and so did i:--well, we were born to die. 'tis very late, she'll not come down to-night: i promise you, but for your company, i would have been a-bed an hour ago. paris these times of woe afford no time to woo. madam, good night: commend me to your daughter. lady capulet i will, and know her mind early to-morrow; to-night she is mew'd up to her heaviness. capulet sir paris, i will make a desperate tender of my child's love: i think she will be ruled in all respects by me; nay, more, i doubt it not. wife, go you to her ere you go to bed; acquaint her here of my son paris' love; and bid her, mark you me, on wednesday next- but, soft! what day is this? paris monday, my lord, capulet monday! ha, ha! well, wednesday is too soon, o' thursday let it be: o' thursday, tell her, she shall be married to this noble earl. will you be ready? do you like this haste? we'll keep no great ado,--a friend or two; for, hark you, tybalt being slain so late, it may be thought we held him carelessly, being our kinsman, if we revel much: therefore we'll have some half a dozen friends, and there an end. but what say you to thursday? paris my lord, i would that thursday were to-morrow. capulet well get you gone: o' thursday be it, then. go you to juliet ere you go to bed, prepare her, wife, against this wedding-day. farewell, my lord. light to my chamber, ho! afore me! it is so very very late, that we may call it early by and by. good night. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act iii scene v capulet's orchard. [enter romeo and juliet above, at the window] juliet wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: it was the nightingale, and not the lark, that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree: believe me, love, it was the nightingale. romeo it was the lark, the herald of the morn, no nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks do lace the severing clouds in yonder east: night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. i must be gone and live, or stay and die. juliet yon light is not day-light, i know it, i: it is some meteor that the sun exhales, to be to thee this night a torch-bearer, and light thee on thy way to mantua: therefore stay yet; thou need'st not to be gone. romeo let me be ta'en, let me be put to death; i am content, so thou wilt have it so. i'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye, 'tis but the pale reflex of cynthia's brow; nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat the vaulty heaven so high above our heads: i have more care to stay than will to go: come, death, and welcome! juliet wills it so. how is't, my soul? let's talk; it is not day. juliet it is, it is: hie hence, be gone, away! it is the lark that sings so out of tune, straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps. some say the lark makes sweet division; this doth not so, for she divideth us: some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes, o, now i would they had changed voices too! since arm from arm that voice doth us affray, hunting thee hence with hunt's-up to the day, o, now be gone; more light and light it grows. romeo more light and light; more dark and dark our woes! [enter nurse, to the chamber] nurse madam! juliet nurse? nurse your lady mother is coming to your chamber: the day is broke; be wary, look about. [exit] juliet then, window, let day in, and let life out. romeo farewell, farewell! one kiss, and i'll descend. [he goeth down] juliet art thou gone so? love, lord, ay, husband, friend! i must hear from thee every day in the hour, for in a minute there are many days: o, by this count i shall be much in years ere i again behold my romeo! romeo farewell! i will omit no opportunity that may convey my greetings, love, to thee. juliet o think'st thou we shall ever meet again? romeo i doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve for sweet discourses in our time to come. juliet o god, i have an ill-divining soul! methinks i see thee, now thou art below, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb: either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale. romeo and trust me, love, in my eye so do you: dry sorrow drinks our blood. adieu, adieu! [exit] juliet o fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle: if thou art fickle, what dost thou with him. that is renown'd for faith? be fickle, fortune; for then, i hope, thou wilt not keep him long, but send him back. lady capulet [within] ho, daughter! are you up? juliet who is't that calls? is it my lady mother? is she not down so late, or up so early? what unaccustom'd cause procures her hither? [enter lady capulet] lady capulet why, how now, juliet! juliet madam, i am not well. lady capulet evermore weeping for your cousin's death? what, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears? an if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live; therefore, have done: some grief shows much of love; but much of grief shows still some want of wit. juliet yet let me weep for such a feeling loss. lady capulet so shall you feel the loss, but not the friend which you weep for. juliet feeling so the loss, cannot choose but ever weep the friend. lady capulet well, girl, thou weep'st not so much for his death, as that the villain lives which slaughter'd him. juliet what villain madam? lady capulet that same villain, romeo. juliet [aside] villain and he be many miles asunder.- god pardon him! i do, with all my heart; and yet no man like he doth grieve my heart. lady capulet that is, because the traitor murderer lives. juliet ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands: would none but i might venge my cousin's death! lady capulet we will have vengeance for it, fear thou not: then weep no more. i'll send to one in mantua, where that same banish'd runagate doth live, shall give him such an unaccustom'd dram, that he shall soon keep tybalt company: and then, i hope, thou wilt be satisfied. juliet indeed, i never shall be satisfied with romeo, till i behold him--dead- is my poor heart for a kinsman vex'd. madam, if you could find out but a man to bear a poison, i would temper it; that romeo should, upon receipt thereof, soon sleep in quiet. o, how my heart abhors to hear him named, and cannot come to him. to wreak the love i bore my cousin upon his body that slaughter'd him! lady capulet find thou the means, and i'll find such a man. but now i'll tell thee joyful tidings, girl. juliet and joy comes well in such a needy time: what are they, i beseech your ladyship? lady capulet well, well, thou hast a careful father, child; one who, to put thee from thy heaviness, hath sorted out a sudden day of joy, that thou expect'st not nor i look'd not for. juliet madam, in happy time, what day is that? lady capulet marry, my child, early next thursday morn, the gallant, young and noble gentleman, the county paris, at saint peter's church, shall happily make thee there a joyful bride. juliet now, by saint peter's church and peter too, he shall not make me there a joyful bride. i wonder at this haste; that i must wed ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo. i pray you, tell my lord and father, madam, i will not marry yet; and, when i do, i swear, it shall be romeo, whom you know i hate, rather than paris. these are news indeed! lady capulet here comes your father; tell him so yourself, and see how he will take it at your hands. [enter capulet and nurse] capulet when the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew; but for the sunset of my brother's son it rains downright. how now! a conduit, girl? what, still in tears? evermore showering? in one little body thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea, a wind; for still thy eyes, which i may call the sea, do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is, sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs; who, raging with thy tears, and they with them, without a sudden calm, will overset thy tempest-tossed body. how now, wife! have you deliver'd to her our decree? lady capulet ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks. i would the fool were married to her grave! capulet soft! take me with you, take me with you, wife. how! will she none? doth she not give us thanks? is she not proud? doth she not count her blest, unworthy as she is, that we have wrought so worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom? juliet not proud, you have; but thankful, that you have: proud can i never be of what i hate; but thankful even for hate, that is meant love. capulet how now, how now, chop-logic! what is this? 'proud,' and 'i thank you,' and 'i thank you not;' and yet 'not proud,' mistress minion, you, thank me no thankings, nor, proud me no prouds, but fettle your fine joints 'gainst thursday next, to go with paris to saint peter's church, or i will drag thee on a hurdle thither. out, you green-sickness carrion! out, you baggage! you tallow-face! lady capulet fie, fie! what, are you mad? juliet good father, i beseech you on my knees, hear me with patience but to speak a word. capulet hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch! i tell thee what: get thee to church o' thursday, or never after look me in the face: speak not, reply not, do not answer me; my fingers itch. wife, we scarce thought us blest that god had lent us but this only child; but now i see this one is one too much, and that we have a curse in having her: out on her, hilding! nurse god in heaven bless her! you are to blame, my lord, to rate her so. capulet and why, my lady wisdom? hold your tongue, good prudence; smatter with your gossips, go. nurse i speak no treason. capulet o, god ye god-den. nurse may not one speak? capulet peace, you mumbling fool! utter your gravity o'er a gossip's bowl; for here we need it not. lady capulet you are too hot. capulet god's bread! it makes me mad: day, night, hour, tide, time, work, play, alone, in company, still my care hath been to have her match'd: and having now provided a gentleman of noble parentage, of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train'd, stuff'd, as they say, with honourable parts, proportion'd as one's thought would wish a man; and then to have a wretched puling fool, a whining mammet, in her fortune's tender, to answer 'i'll not wed; i cannot love, i am too young; i pray you, pardon me.' but, as you will not wed, i'll pardon you: graze where you will you shall not house with me: look to't, think on't, i do not use to jest. thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise: an you be mine, i'll give you to my friend; and you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, for, by my soul, i'll ne'er acknowledge thee, nor what is mine shall never do thee good: trust to't, bethink you; i'll not be forsworn. [exit] juliet is there no pity sitting in the clouds, that sees into the bottom of my grief? o, sweet my mother, cast me not away! delay this marriage for a month, a week; or, if you do not, make the bridal bed in that dim monument where tybalt lies. lady capulet talk not to me, for i'll not speak a word: do as thou wilt, for i have done with thee. [exit] juliet o god!--o nurse, how shall this be prevented? my husband is on earth, my faith in heaven; how shall that faith return again to earth, unless that husband send it me from heaven by leaving earth? comfort me, counsel me. alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems upon so soft a subject as myself! what say'st thou? hast thou not a word of joy? some comfort, nurse. nurse faith, here it is. romeo is banish'd; and all the world to nothing, that he dares ne'er come back to challenge you; or, if he do, it needs must be by stealth. then, since the case so stands as now it doth, i think it best you married with the county. o, he's a lovely gentleman! romeo's a dishclout to him: an eagle, madam, hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye as paris hath. beshrew my very heart, i think you are happy in this second match, for it excels your first: or if it did not, your first is dead; or 'twere as good he were, as living here and you no use of him. juliet speakest thou from thy heart? nurse and from my soul too; or else beshrew them both. juliet amen! nurse what? juliet well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much. go in: and tell my lady i am gone, having displeased my father, to laurence' cell, to make confession and to be absolved. nurse marry, i will; and this is wisely done. [exit] juliet ancient damnation! o most wicked fiend! is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn, or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue which she hath praised him with above compare so many thousand times? go, counsellor; thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain. i'll to the friar, to know his remedy: if all else fail, myself have power to die. [exit] romeo and juliet act iv scene i friar laurence's cell. [enter friar laurence and paris] friar laurence on thursday, sir? the time is very short. paris my father capulet will have it so; and i am nothing slow to slack his haste. friar laurence you say you do not know the lady's mind: uneven is the course, i like it not. paris immoderately she weeps for tybalt's death, and therefore have i little talk'd of love; for venus smiles not in a house of tears. now, sir, her father counts it dangerous that she doth give her sorrow so much sway, and in his wisdom hastes our marriage, to stop the inundation of her tears; which, too much minded by herself alone, may be put from her by society: now do you know the reason of this haste. friar laurence [aside] i would i knew not why it should be slow'd. look, sir, here comes the lady towards my cell. [enter juliet] paris happily met, my lady and my wife! juliet that may be, sir, when i may be a wife. paris that may be must be, love, on thursday next. juliet what must be shall be. friar laurence that's a certain text. paris come you to make confession to this father? juliet to answer that, i should confess to you. paris do not deny to him that you love me. juliet i will confess to you that i love him. paris so will ye, i am sure, that you love me. juliet if i do so, it will be of more price, being spoke behind your back, than to your face. paris poor soul, thy face is much abused with tears. juliet the tears have got small victory by that; for it was bad enough before their spite. paris thou wrong'st it, more than tears, with that report. juliet that is no slander, sir, which is a truth; and what i spake, i spake it to my face. paris thy face is mine, and thou hast slander'd it. juliet it may be so, for it is not mine own. are you at leisure, holy father, now; or shall i come to you at evening mass? friar laurence my leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now. my lord, we must entreat the time alone. paris god shield i should disturb devotion! juliet, on thursday early will i rouse ye: till then, adieu; and keep this holy kiss. [exit] juliet o shut the door! and when thou hast done so, come weep with me; past hope, past cure, past help! friar laurence ah, juliet, i already know thy grief; it strains me past the compass of my wits: i hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it, on thursday next be married to this county. juliet tell me not, friar, that thou hear'st of this, unless thou tell me how i may prevent it: if, in thy wisdom, thou canst give no help, do thou but call my resolution wise, and with this knife i'll help it presently. god join'd my heart and romeo's, thou our hands; and ere this hand, by thee to romeo seal'd, shall be the label to another deed, or my true heart with treacherous revolt turn to another, this shall slay them both: therefore, out of thy long-experienced time, give me some present counsel, or, behold, 'twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife shall play the umpire, arbitrating that which the commission of thy years and art could to no issue of true honour bring. be not so long to speak; i long to die, if what thou speak'st speak not of remedy. friar laurence hold, daughter: i do spy a kind of hope, which craves as desperate an execution. as that is desperate which we would prevent. if, rather than to marry county paris, thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself, then is it likely thou wilt undertake a thing like death to chide away this shame, that copest with death himself to scape from it: and, if thou darest, i'll give thee remedy. juliet o, bid me leap, rather than marry paris, from off the battlements of yonder tower; or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears; or shut me nightly in a charnel-house, o'er-cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones, with reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls; or bid me go into a new-made grave and hide me with a dead man in his shroud; things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble; and i will do it without fear or doubt, to live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love. friar laurence hold, then; go home, be merry, give consent to marry paris: wednesday is to-morrow: to-morrow night look that thou lie alone; let not thy nurse lie with thee in thy chamber: take thou this vial, being then in bed, and this distilled liquor drink thou off; when presently through all thy veins shall run a cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse shall keep his native progress, but surcease: no warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest; the roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade to paly ashes, thy eyes' windows fall, like death, when he shuts up the day of life; each part, deprived of supple government, shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death: and in this borrow'd likeness of shrunk death thou shalt continue two and forty hours, and then awake as from a pleasant sleep. now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes to rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead: then, as the manner of our country is, in thy best robes uncover'd on the bier thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault where all the kindred of the capulets lie. in the mean time, against thou shalt awake, shall romeo by my letters know our drift, and hither shall he come: and he and i will watch thy waking, and that very night shall romeo bear thee hence to mantua. and this shall free thee from this present shame; if no inconstant toy, nor womanish fear, abate thy valour in the acting it. juliet give me, give me! o, tell not me of fear! friar laurence hold; get you gone, be strong and prosperous in this resolve: i'll send a friar with speed to mantua, with my letters to thy lord. juliet love give me strength! and strength shall help afford. farewell, dear father! [exeunt] romeo and juliet act iv scene ii hall in capulet's house. [enter capulet, lady capulet, nurse, and two servingmen] capulet so many guests invite as here are writ. [exit first servant] sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks. second servant you shall have none ill, sir; for i'll try if they can lick their fingers. capulet how canst thou try them so? second servant marry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers: therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with me. capulet go, be gone. [exit second servant] we shall be much unfurnished for this time. what, is my daughter gone to friar laurence? nurse ay, forsooth. capulet well, he may chance to do some good on her: a peevish self-will'd harlotry it is. nurse see where she comes from shrift with merry look. [enter juliet] capulet how now, my headstrong! where have you been gadding? juliet where i have learn'd me to repent the sin of disobedient opposition to you and your behests, and am enjoin'd by holy laurence to fall prostrate here, and beg your pardon: pardon, i beseech you! henceforward i am ever ruled by you. capulet send for the county; go tell him of this: i'll have this knot knit up to-morrow morning. juliet i met the youthful lord at laurence' cell; and gave him what becomed love i might, not step o'er the bounds of modesty. capulet why, i am glad on't; this is well: stand up: this is as't should be. let me see the county; ay, marry, go, i say, and fetch him hither. now, afore god! this reverend holy friar, our whole city is much bound to him. juliet nurse, will you go with me into my closet, to help me sort such needful ornaments as you think fit to furnish me to-morrow? lady capulet no, not till thursday; there is time enough. capulet go, nurse, go with her: we'll to church to-morrow. [exeunt juliet and nurse] lady capulet we shall be short in our provision: 'tis now near night. capulet tush, i will stir about, and all things shall be well, i warrant thee, wife: go thou to juliet, help to deck up her; i'll not to bed to-night; let me alone; i'll play the housewife for this once. what, ho! they are all forth. well, i will walk myself to county paris, to prepare him up against to-morrow: my heart is wondrous light, since this same wayward girl is so reclaim'd. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act iv scene iii juliet's chamber. [enter juliet and nurse] juliet ay, those attires are best: but, gentle nurse, i pray thee, leave me to myself to-night, for i have need of many orisons to move the heavens to smile upon my state, which, well thou know'st, is cross, and full of sin. [enter lady capulet] lady capulet what, are you busy, ho? need you my help? juliet no, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries as are behoveful for our state to-morrow: so please you, let me now be left alone, and let the nurse this night sit up with you; for, i am sure, you have your hands full all, in this so sudden business. lady capulet good night: get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need. [exeunt lady capulet and nurse] juliet farewell! god knows when we shall meet again. i have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, that almost freezes up the heat of life: i'll call them back again to comfort me: nurse! what should she do here? my dismal scene i needs must act alone. come, vial. what if this mixture do not work at all? shall i be married then to-morrow morning? no, no: this shall forbid it: lie thou there. [laying down her dagger] what if it be a poison, which the friar subtly hath minister'd to have me dead, lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd, because he married me before to romeo? i fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not, for he hath still been tried a holy man. how if, when i am laid into the tomb, i wake before the time that romeo come to redeem me? there's a fearful point! shall i not, then, be stifled in the vault, to whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, and there die strangled ere my romeo comes? or, if i live, is it not very like, the horrible conceit of death and night, together with the terror of the place,- as in a vault, an ancient receptacle, where, for these many hundred years, the bones of all my buried ancestors are packed: where bloody tybalt, yet but green in earth, lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say, at some hours in the night spirits resort;- alack, alack, is it not like that i, so early waking, what with loathsome smells, and shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth, that living mortals, hearing them, run mad:- o, if i wake, shall i not be distraught, environed with all these hideous fears? and madly play with my forefather's joints? and pluck the mangled tybalt from his shroud? and, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone, as with a club, dash out my desperate brains? o, look! methinks i see my cousin's ghost seeking out romeo, that did spit his body upon a rapier's point: stay, tybalt, stay! romeo, i come! this do i drink to thee. [she falls upon her bed, within the curtains] romeo and juliet act iv scene iv hall in capulet's house. [enter lady capulet and nurse] lady capulet hold, take these keys, and fetch more spices, nurse. nurse they call for dates and quinces in the pastry. [enter capulet] capulet come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath crow'd, the curfew-bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock: look to the baked meats, good angelica: spare not for the cost. nurse go, you cot-quean, go, get you to bed; faith, you'll be sick to-morrow for this night's watching. capulet no, not a whit: what! i have watch'd ere now all night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick. lady capulet ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time; but i will watch you from such watching now. [exeunt lady capulet and nurse] capulet a jealous hood, a jealous hood! [enter three or four servingmen, with spits, logs, and baskets] now, fellow, what's there? first servant things for the cook, sir; but i know not what. capulet make haste, make haste. [exit first servant] sirrah, fetch drier logs: call peter, he will show thee where they are. second servant i have a head, sir, that will find out logs, and never trouble peter for the matter. [exit] capulet mass, and well said; a merry whoreson, ha! thou shalt be logger-head. good faith, 'tis day: the county will be here with music straight, for so he said he would: i hear him near. [music within] nurse! wife! what, ho! what, nurse, i say! [re-enter nurse] go waken juliet, go and trim her up; i'll go and chat with paris: hie, make haste, make haste; the bridegroom he is come already: make haste, i say. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act iv scene v juliet's chamber. [enter nurse] nurse mistress! what, mistress! juliet! fast, i warrant her, she: why, lamb! why, lady! fie, you slug-a-bed! why, love, i say! madam! sweet-heart! why, bride! what, not a word? you take your pennyworths now; sleep for a week; for the next night, i warrant, the county paris hath set up his rest, that you shall rest but little. god forgive me, marry, and amen, how sound is she asleep! i must needs wake her. madam, madam, madam! ay, let the county take you in your bed; he'll fright you up, i' faith. will it not be? [undraws the curtains] what, dress'd! and in your clothes! and down again! i must needs wake you; lady! lady! lady! alas, alas! help, help! my lady's dead! o, well-a-day, that ever i was born! some aqua vitae, ho! my lord! my lady! [enter lady capulet] lady capulet what noise is here? nurse o lamentable day! lady capulet what is the matter? nurse look, look! o heavy day! lady capulet o me, o me! my child, my only life, revive, look up, or i will die with thee! help, help! call help. [enter capulet] capulet for shame, bring juliet forth; her lord is come. nurse she's dead, deceased, she's dead; alack the day! lady capulet alack the day, she's dead, she's dead, she's dead! capulet ha! let me see her: out, alas! she's cold: her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff; life and these lips have long been separated: death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field. nurse o lamentable day! lady capulet o woful time! capulet death, that hath ta'en her hence to make me wail, ties up my tongue, and will not let me speak. [enter friar laurence and paris, with musicians] friar laurence come, is the bride ready to go to church? capulet ready to go, but never to return. o son! the night before thy wedding-day hath death lain with thy wife. there she lies, flower as she was, deflowered by him. death is my son-in-law, death is my heir; my daughter he hath wedded: i will die, and leave him all; life, living, all is death's. paris have i thought long to see this morning's face, and doth it give me such a sight as this? lady capulet accursed, unhappy, wretched, hateful day! most miserable hour that e'er time saw in lasting labour of his pilgrimage! but one, poor one, one poor and loving child, but one thing to rejoice and solace in, and cruel death hath catch'd it from my sight! nurse o woe! o woful, woful, woful day! most lamentable day, most woful day, that ever, ever, i did yet behold! o day! o day! o day! o hateful day! never was seen so black a day as this: o woful day, o woful day! paris beguiled, divorced, wronged, spited, slain! most detestable death, by thee beguil'd, by cruel cruel thee quite overthrown! o love! o life! not life, but love in death! capulet despised, distressed, hated, martyr'd, kill'd! uncomfortable time, why camest thou now to murder, murder our solemnity? o child! o child! my soul, and not my child! dead art thou! alack! my child is dead; and with my child my joys are buried. friar laurence peace, ho, for shame! confusion's cure lives not in these confusions. heaven and yourself had part in this fair maid; now heaven hath all, and all the better is it for the maid: your part in her you could not keep from death, but heaven keeps his part in eternal life. the most you sought was her promotion; for 'twas your heaven she should be advanced: and weep ye now, seeing she is advanced above the clouds, as high as heaven itself? o, in this love, you love your child so ill, that you run mad, seeing that she is well: she's not well married that lives married long; but she's best married that dies married young. dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary on this fair corse; and, as the custom is, in all her best array bear her to church: for though fond nature bids us an lament, yet nature's tears are reason's merriment. capulet all things that we ordained festival, turn from their office to black funeral; our instruments to melancholy bells, our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast, our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change, our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse, and all things change them to the contrary. friar laurence sir, go you in; and, madam, go with him; and go, sir paris; every one prepare to follow this fair corse unto her grave: the heavens do lour upon you for some ill; move them no more by crossing their high will. [exeunt capulet, lady capulet, paris, and friar laurence] first musician faith, we may put up our pipes, and be gone. nurse honest goodfellows, ah, put up, put up; for, well you know, this is a pitiful case. [exit] first musician ay, by my troth, the case may be amended. [enter peter] peter musicians, o, musicians, 'heart's ease, heart's ease:' o, an you will have me live, play 'heart's ease.' first musician why 'heart's ease?' peter o, musicians, because my heart itself plays 'my heart is full of woe:' o, play me some merry dump, to comfort me. first musician not a dump we; 'tis no time to play now. peter you will not, then? first musician no. peter i will then give it you soundly. first musician what will you give us? peter no money, on my faith, but the gleek; i will give you the minstrel. first musician then i will give you the serving-creature. peter then will i lay the serving-creature's dagger on your pate. i will carry no crotchets: i'll re you, i'll fa you; do you note me? first musician an you re us and fa us, you note us. second musician pray you, put up your dagger, and put out your wit. peter then have at you with my wit! i will dry-beat you with an iron wit, and put up my iron dagger. answer me like men: 'when griping grief the heart doth wound, and doleful dumps the mind oppress, then music with her silver sound'- why 'silver sound'? why 'music with her silver sound'? what say you, simon catling? musician marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound. peter pretty! what say you, hugh rebeck? second musician i say 'silver sound,' because musicians sound for silver. peter pretty too! what say you, james soundpost? third musician faith, i know not what to say. peter o, i cry you mercy; you are the singer: i will say for you. it is 'music with her silver sound,' because musicians have no gold for sounding: 'then music with her silver sound with speedy help doth lend redress.' [exit] first musician what a pestilent knave is this same! second musician hang him, jack! come, we'll in here; tarry for the mourners, and stay dinner. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act v scene i mantua. a street. [enter romeo] romeo if i may trust the flattering truth of sleep, my dreams presage some joyful news at hand: my bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne; and all this day an unaccustom'd spirit lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts. i dreamt my lady came and found me dead- strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think!- and breathed such life with kisses in my lips, that i revived, and was an emperor. ah me! how sweet is love itself possess'd, when but love's shadows are so rich in joy! [enter balthasar, booted] news from verona!--how now, balthasar! dost thou not bring me letters from the friar? how doth my lady? is my father well? how fares my juliet? that i ask again; for nothing can be ill, if she be well. balthasar then she is well, and nothing can be ill: her body sleeps in capel's monument, and her immortal part with angels lives. i saw her laid low in her kindred's vault, and presently took post to tell it you: o, pardon me for bringing these ill news, since you did leave it for my office, sir. romeo is it even so? then i defy you, stars! thou know'st my lodging: get me ink and paper, and hire post-horses; i will hence to-night. balthasar i do beseech you, sir, have patience: your looks are pale and wild, and do import some misadventure. romeo tush, thou art deceived: leave me, and do the thing i bid thee do. hast thou no letters to me from the friar? balthasar no, my good lord. romeo no matter: get thee gone, and hire those horses; i'll be with thee straight. [exit balthasar] well, juliet, i will lie with thee to-night. let's see for means: o mischief, thou art swift to enter in the thoughts of desperate men! i do remember an apothecary,- and hereabouts he dwells,--which late i noted in tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, culling of simples; meagre were his looks, sharp misery had worn him to the bones: and in his needy shop a tortoise hung, an alligator stuff'd, and other skins of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves a beggarly account of empty boxes, green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds, remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses, were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show. noting this penury, to myself i said 'an if a man did need a poison now, whose sale is present death in mantua, here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.' o, this same thought did but forerun my need; and this same needy man must sell it me. as i remember, this should be the house. being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut. what, ho! apothecary! [enter apothecary] apothecary who calls so loud? romeo come hither, man. i see that thou art poor: hold, there is forty ducats: let me have a dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear as will disperse itself through all the veins that the life-weary taker may fall dead and that the trunk may be discharged of breath as violently as hasty powder fired doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb. apothecary such mortal drugs i have; but mantua's law is death to any he that utters them. romeo art thou so bare and full of wretchedness, and fear'st to die? famine is in thy cheeks, need and oppression starveth in thine eyes, contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back; the world is not thy friend nor the world's law; the world affords no law to make thee rich; then be not poor, but break it, and take this. apothecary my poverty, but not my will, consents. romeo i pay thy poverty, and not thy will. apothecary put this in any liquid thing you will, and drink it off; and, if you had the strength of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight. romeo there is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, doing more murders in this loathsome world, than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. i sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none. farewell: buy food, and get thyself in flesh. come, cordial and not poison, go with me to juliet's grave; for there must i use thee. [exeunt] romeo and juliet act v scene ii friar laurence's cell. [enter friar john] friar john holy franciscan friar! brother, ho! [enter friar laurence] friar laurence this same should be the voice of friar john. welcome from mantua: what says romeo? or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter. friar john going to find a bare-foot brother out one of our order, to associate me, here in this city visiting the sick, and finding him, the searchers of the town, suspecting that we both were in a house where the infectious pestilence did reign, seal'd up the doors, and would not let us forth; so that my speed to mantua there was stay'd. friar laurence who bare my letter, then, to romeo? friar john i could not send it,--here it is again,- nor get a messenger to bring it thee, so fearful were they of infection. friar laurence unhappy fortune! by my brotherhood, the letter was not nice but full of charge of dear import, and the neglecting it may do much danger. friar john, go hence; get me an iron crow, and bring it straight unto my cell. friar john brother, i'll go and bring it thee. [exit] friar laurence now must i to the monument alone; within three hours will fair juliet wake: she will beshrew me much that romeo hath had no notice of these accidents; but i will write again to mantua, and keep her at my cell till romeo come; poor living corse, closed in a dead man's tomb! [exit] romeo and juliet act v scene iii a churchyard; in it a tomb belonging to the capulets. [enter paris, and his page bearing flowers and a torch] paris give me thy torch, boy: hence, and stand aloof: yet put it out, for i would not be seen. under yond yew-trees lay thee all along, holding thine ear close to the hollow ground; so shall no foot upon the churchyard tread, being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves, but thou shalt hear it: whistle then to me, as signal that thou hear'st something approach. give me those flowers. do as i bid thee, go. page [aside] i am almost afraid to stand alone here in the churchyard; yet i will adventure. [retires] paris sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed i strew,- o woe! thy canopy is dust and stones;- which with sweet water nightly i will dew, or, wanting that, with tears distill'd by moans: the obsequies that i for thee will keep nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep. [the page whistles] the boy gives warning something doth approach. what cursed foot wanders this way to-night, to cross my obsequies and true love's rite? what with a torch! muffle me, night, awhile. [retires] [enter romeo and balthasar, with a torch, mattock, &c] romeo give me that mattock and the wrenching iron. hold, take this letter; early in the morning see thou deliver it to my lord and father. give me the light: upon thy life, i charge thee, whate'er thou hear'st or seest, stand all aloof, and do not interrupt me in my course. why i descend into this bed of death, is partly to behold my lady's face; but chiefly to take thence from her dead finger a precious ring, a ring that i must use in dear employment: therefore hence, be gone: but if thou, jealous, dost return to pry in what i further shall intend to do, by heaven, i will tear thee joint by joint and strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs: the time and my intents are savage-wild, more fierce and more inexorable far than empty tigers or the roaring sea. balthasar i will be gone, sir, and not trouble you. romeo so shalt thou show me friendship. take thou that: live, and be prosperous: and farewell, good fellow. balthasar [aside] for all this same, i'll hide me hereabout: his looks i fear, and his intents i doubt. [retires] romeo thou detestable maw, thou womb of death, gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth, thus i enforce thy rotten jaws to open, and, in despite, i'll cram thee with more food! [opens the tomb] paris this is that banish'd haughty montague, that murder'd my love's cousin, with which grief, it is supposed, the fair creature died; and here is come to do some villanous shame to the dead bodies: i will apprehend him. [comes forward] stop thy unhallow'd toil, vile montague! can vengeance be pursued further than death? condemned villain, i do apprehend thee: obey, and go with me; for thou must die. romeo i must indeed; and therefore came i hither. good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man; fly hence, and leave me: think upon these gone; let them affright thee. i beseech thee, youth, put not another sin upon my head, by urging me to fury: o, be gone! by heaven, i love thee better than myself; for i come hither arm'd against myself: stay not, be gone; live, and hereafter say, a madman's mercy bade thee run away. paris i do defy thy conjurations, and apprehend thee for a felon here. romeo wilt thou provoke me? then have at thee, boy! [they fight] page o lord, they fight! i will go call the watch. [exit] paris o, i am slain! [falls] if thou be merciful, open the tomb, lay me with juliet. [dies] romeo in faith, i will. let me peruse this face. mercutio's kinsman, noble county paris! what said my man, when my betossed soul did not attend him as we rode? i think he told me paris should have married juliet: said he not so? or did i dream it so? or am i mad, hearing him talk of juliet, to think it was so? o, give me thy hand, one writ with me in sour misfortune's book! i'll bury thee in a triumphant grave; a grave? o no! a lantern, slaughter'd youth, for here lies juliet, and her beauty makes this vault a feasting presence full of light. death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr'd. [laying paris in the tomb] how oft when men are at the point of death have they been merry! which their keepers call a lightning before death: o, how may i call this a lightning? o my love! my wife! death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, and death's pale flag is not advanced there. tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? o, what more favour can i do to thee, than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain to sunder his that was thine enemy? forgive me, cousin! ah, dear juliet, why art thou yet so fair? shall i believe that unsubstantial death is amorous, and that the lean abhorred monster keeps thee here in dark to be his paramour? for fear of that, i still will stay with thee; and never from this palace of dim night depart again: here, here will i remain with worms that are thy chamber-maids; o, here will i set up my everlasting rest, and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh. eyes, look your last! arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, o you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death! come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide! thou desperate pilot, now at once run on the dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! here's to my love! [drinks] o true apothecary! thy drugs are quick. thus with a kiss i die. [dies] [enter, at the other end of the churchyard, friar laurence, with a lantern, crow, and spade] friar laurence saint francis be my speed! how oft to-night have my old feet stumbled at graves! who's there? balthasar here's one, a friend, and one that knows you well. friar laurence bliss be upon you! tell me, good my friend, what torch is yond, that vainly lends his light to grubs and eyeless skulls? as i discern, it burneth in the capel's monument. balthasar it doth so, holy sir; and there's my master, one that you love. friar laurence who is it? balthasar romeo. friar laurence how long hath he been there? balthasar full half an hour. friar laurence go with me to the vault. balthasar i dare not, sir my master knows not but i am gone hence; and fearfully did menace me with death, if i did stay to look on his intents. friar laurence stay, then; i'll go alone. fear comes upon me: o, much i fear some ill unlucky thing. balthasar as i did sleep under this yew-tree here, i dreamt my master and another fought, and that my master slew him. friar laurence romeo! [advances] alack, alack, what blood is this, which stains the stony entrance of this sepulchre? what mean these masterless and gory swords to lie discolour'd by this place of peace? [enters the tomb] romeo! o, pale! who else? what, paris too? and steep'd in blood? ah, what an unkind hour is guilty of this lamentable chance! the lady stirs. [juliet wakes] juliet o comfortable friar! where is my lord? i do remember well where i should be, and there i am. where is my romeo? [noise within] friar laurence i hear some noise. lady, come from that nest of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep: a greater power than we can contradict hath thwarted our intents. come, come away. thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead; and paris too. come, i'll dispose of thee among a sisterhood of holy nuns: stay not to question, for the watch is coming; come, go, good juliet, [noise again] i dare no longer stay. juliet go, get thee hence, for i will not away. [exit friar laurence] what's here? a cup, closed in my true love's hand? poison, i see, hath been his timeless end: o churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me after? i will kiss thy lips; haply some poison yet doth hang on them, to make die with a restorative. [kisses him] thy lips are warm. first watchman [within] lead, boy: which way? juliet yea, noise? then i'll be brief. o happy dagger! [snatching romeo's dagger] this is thy sheath; [stabs herself] there rust, and let me die. [falls on romeo's body, and dies] [enter watch, with the page of paris] page this is the place; there, where the torch doth burn. first watchman the ground is bloody; search about the churchyard: go, some of you, whoe'er you find attach. pitiful sight! here lies the county slain, and juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead, who here hath lain these two days buried. go, tell the prince: run to the capulets: raise up the montagues: some others search: we see the ground whereon these woes do lie; but the true ground of all these piteous woes we cannot without circumstance descry. [re-enter some of the watch, with balthasar] second watchman here's romeo's man; we found him in the churchyard. first watchman hold him in safety, till the prince come hither. [re-enter others of the watch, with friar laurence] third watchman here is a friar, that trembles, sighs and weeps: we took this mattock and this spade from him, as he was coming from this churchyard side. first watchman a great suspicion: stay the friar too. [enter the prince and attendants] prince what misadventure is so early up, that calls our person from our morning's rest? [enter capulet, lady capulet, and others] capulet what should it be, that they so shriek abroad? lady capulet the people in the street cry romeo, some juliet, and some paris; and all run, with open outcry toward our monument. prince what fear is this which startles in our ears? first watchman sovereign, here lies the county paris slain; and romeo dead; and juliet, dead before, warm and new kill'd. prince search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes. first watchman here is a friar, and slaughter'd romeo's man; with instruments upon them, fit to open these dead men's tombs. capulet o heavens! o wife, look how our daughter bleeds! this dagger hath mista'en--for, lo, his house is empty on the back of montague,- and it mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom! lady capulet o me! this sight of death is as a bell, that warns my old age to a sepulchre. [enter montague and others] prince come, montague; for thou art early up, to see thy son and heir more early down. montague alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night; grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her breath: what further woe conspires against mine age? prince look, and thou shalt see. montague o thou untaught! what manners is in this? to press before thy father to a grave? prince seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, till we can clear these ambiguities, and know their spring, their head, their true descent; and then will i be general of your woes, and lead you even to death: meantime forbear, and let mischance be slave to patience. bring forth the parties of suspicion. friar laurence i am the greatest, able to do least, yet most suspected, as the time and place doth make against me of this direful murder; and here i stand, both to impeach and purge myself condemned and myself excused. prince then say at once what thou dost know in this. friar laurence i will be brief, for my short date of breath is not so long as is a tedious tale. romeo, there dead, was husband to that juliet; and she, there dead, that romeo's faithful wife: i married them; and their stol'n marriage-day was tybalt's dooms-day, whose untimely death banish'd the new-made bridegroom from the city, for whom, and not for tybalt, juliet pined. you, to remove that siege of grief from her, betroth'd and would have married her perforce to county paris: then comes she to me, and, with wild looks, bid me devise some mean to rid her from this second marriage, or in my cell there would she kill herself. then gave i her, so tutor'd by my art, a sleeping potion; which so took effect as i intended, for it wrought on her the form of death: meantime i writ to romeo, that he should hither come as this dire night, to help to take her from her borrow'd grave, being the time the potion's force should cease. but he which bore my letter, friar john, was stay'd by accident, and yesternight return'd my letter back. then all alone at the prefixed hour of her waking, came i to take her from her kindred's vault; meaning to keep her closely at my cell, till i conveniently could send to romeo: but when i came, some minute ere the time of her awaking, here untimely lay the noble paris and true romeo dead. she wakes; and i entreated her come forth, and bear this work of heaven with patience: but then a noise did scare me from the tomb; and she, too desperate, would not go with me, but, as it seems, did violence on herself. all this i know; and to the marriage her nurse is privy: and, if aught in this miscarried by my fault, let my old life be sacrificed, some hour before his time, unto the rigour of severest law. prince we still have known thee for a holy man. where's romeo's man? what can he say in this? balthasar i brought my master news of juliet's death; and then in post he came from mantua to this same place, to this same monument. this letter he early bid me give his father, and threatened me with death, going in the vault, i departed not and left him there. prince give me the letter; i will look on it. where is the county's page, that raised the watch? sirrah, what made your master in this place? page he came with flowers to strew his lady's grave; and bid me stand aloof, and so i did: anon comes one with light to ope the tomb; and by and by my master drew on him; and then i ran away to call the watch. prince this letter doth make good the friar's words, their course of love, the tidings of her death: and here he writes that he did buy a poison of a poor 'pothecary, and therewithal came to this vault to die, and lie with juliet. where be these enemies? capulet! montague! see, what a scourge is laid upon your hate, that heaven finds means to kill your joys with love. and i for winking at your discords too have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd. capulet o brother montague, give me thy hand: this is my daughter's jointure, for no more can i demand. montague but i can give thee more: for i will raise her statue in pure gold; that while verona by that name is known, there shall no figure at such rate be set as that of true and faithful juliet. capulet as rich shall romeo's by his lady's lie; poor sacrifices of our enmity! prince a glooming peace this morning with it brings; the sun, for sorrow, will not show his head: go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; some shall be pardon'd, and some punished: for never was a story of more woe than this of juliet and her romeo. [exeunt] 1850 the narrative of arthur gordon pym of nantucket by edgar allan poe preface preface upon my return to the united states a few months ago, after the extraordinary series of adventure in the south seas and elsewhere, of which an account is given in the following pages, accident threw me into the society of several gentlemen in richmond, va., who felt deep interest in all matters relating to the regions i had visited, and who were constantly urging it upon me, as a duty, to give my narrative to the public. i had several reasons, however, for declining to do so, some of which were of a nature altogether private, and concern no person but myself, others not so much so. one consideration which deterred me was, that, having kept no journal during a greater portion of the time in which i was absent, i feared i should not be able to write, from mere memory, a statement so minute and connected as to have the appearance of that truth it would really possess, barring only the natural and unavoidable exaggeration to which all of us are prone when detailing events which have had powerful influence in exciting the imaginative faculties. another reason was, that the incidents to be narrated were of a nature so positively marvellous, that, unsupported as my assertions must necessarily be (except by the evidence of a single individual, and he a half-breed indian), i could only hope for belief among my family, and those of my friends who have had reason, through life, to put faith in my veracitythe probability being that the public at large would regard what i should put forth as merely an impudent and ingenious fiction. a distrust in my own abilities as a writer was, nevertheless, one of the principal causes which prevented me from complying with the suggestion of my advisers. among those gentlemen in virginia who expressed the greatest interest in my statement, more particularly in regard to that portion of it which related to the antarctic ocean, was mr. poe, lately editor of the southern literary messenger, a monthly magazine, published by mr. thomas w. white, in the city of richmond. he strongly advised me, among others, to prepare at once a full account of what i had seen and undergone, and trust to the shrewdness and common sense of the publicinsisting, with great plausibility, that however roughly, as regards mere authorship, my book should be got up, its very uncouthness, if there were any, would give it all the better chance of being received as truth. notwithstanding this representation, i did not make up my mind to do as he suggested. he afterward proposed (finding that i would not stir in the matter) that i should allow him to draw up, in his own words, a narrative of the earlier portion of my adventures, from facts afforded by myself, publishing it in the southern messenger under the garb of fiction. to this, perceiving no objection, i consented, stipulating only that my real name should be retained. two numbers of the pretended fiction appeared, consequently, in the messenger for january and february, (1837), and, in order that it might certainly be regarded as fiction, the name of mr. poe was affixed to the articles in the table of contents of the magazine. the manner in which this ruse was received has induced me at length to undertake a regular compilation and publication of the adventures in question; for i found that, in spite of the air of fable which had been so ingeniously thrown around that portion of my statement which appeared in the messenger (without altering or distorting a single fact), the public were still not at all disposed to receive it as fable, and several letters were sent to mr. p.'s address, distinctly expressing a conviction to the contrary. i thence concluded that the facts of my narrative would prove of such a nature as to carry with them sufficient evidence of their own authenticity, and that i had consequently little to fear on the score of popular incredulity. this expose being made, it will be seen at once how much of what follows i claim to be my own writing; and it will also be understood that no fact is misrepresented in the first few pages which were written by mr. poe. even to those readers who have not seen the messenger, it will be unnecessary to point out where his portion ends and my own commences; the difference in point of style will be readily perceived. a. g. pym. new-york, july, 1838. chapter i my name is arthur gordon pym. my father was a respectable trader in sea-stores at nantucket, where i was born. my maternal grandfather was an attorney in good practice. he was fortunate in every thing, and had speculated very successfully in stocks of the edgarton new bank, as it was formerly called. by these and other means he had managed to lay by a tolerable sum of money. he was more attached to myself, i believe, than to any other person in the world, and i expected to inherit the most of his property at his death. he sent me, at six years of age, to the school of old mr. ricketts, a gentleman with only one arm and of eccentric mannershe is well known to almost every person who has visited new bedford. i stayed at his school until i was sixteen, when i left him for mr. e. ronald's academy on the hill. here i became intimate with the son of mr. barnard, a sea-captain, who generally sailed in the employ of lloyd and vredenburghmr. barnard is also very well known in new bedford, and has many relations, i am certain, in edgarton. his son was named augustus, and he was nearly two years older than myself. he had been on a whaling voyage with his father in the john donaldson, and was always talking to me of his adventures in the south pacific ocean. i used frequently to go home with him, and remain all day, and sometimes all night. we occupied the same bed, and he would be sure to keep me awake until almost light, telling me stories of the natives of the island of tinian, and other places he had visited in his travels. at last i could not help being interested in what he said, and by degrees i felt the greatest desire to go to sea. i owned a sailboat called the ariel, and worth about seventy-five dollars. she had a half-deck or cuddy, and was rigged sloop-fashioni forget her tonnage, but she would hold ten persons without much crowding. in this boat we were in the habit of going on some of the maddest freaks in the world; and, when i now think of them, it appears to me a thousand wonders that i am alive to-day. i will relate one of these adventures by way of introduction to a longer and more momentous narrative. one night there was a party at mr. barnard's, and both augustus and myself were not a little intoxicated toward the close of it. as usual, in such cases, i took part of his bed in preference to going home. he went to sleep, as i thought, very quietly (it being near one when the party broke up), and without saying a word on his favorite topic. it might have been half an hour from the time of our getting in bed, and i was just about falling into a doze, when he suddenly started up, and swore with a terrible oath that he would not go to sleep for any arthur pym in christendom, when there was so glorious a breeze from the southwest. i never was so astonished in my life, not knowing what he intended, and thinking that the wines and liquors he had drunk had set him entirely beside himself. he proceeded to talk very coolly, however, saying he knew that i supposed him intoxicated, but that he was never more sober in his life. he was only tired, he added, of lying in bed on such a fine night like a dog, and was determined to get up and dress, and go out on a frolic with the boat. i can hardly tell what possessed me, but the words were no sooner out of his mouth than i felt a thrill of the greatest excitement and pleasure, and thought his mad idea one of the most delightful and most reasonable things in the world. it was blowing almost a gale, and the weather was very coldit being late in october. i sprang out of bed, nevertheless, in a kind of ecstasy, and told him i was quite as brave as himself, and quite as tired as he was of lying in bed like a dog, and quite as ready for any fun or frolic as any augustus barnard in nantucket. we lost no time in getting on our clothes and hurrying down to the boat. she was lying at the old decayed wharf by the lumber-yard of pankey & co., and almost thumping her side out against the rough logs. augustus got into her and bailed her, for she was nearly half full of water. this being done, we hoisted jib and mainsail, kept full, and started boldly out to sea. the wind, as i before said, blew freshly from the southwest. the night was very clear and cold. augustus had taken the helm, and i stationed myself by the mast, on the deck of the cuddy. we flew along at a great rateneither of us having said a word since casting loose from the wharf. i now asked my companion what course he intended to steer, and what time he thought it probable we should get back. he whistled for a few minutes, and then said crustily: "i am going to seayou may go home if you think proper." turning my eyes upon him, i perceived at once that, in spite of his assumed nonchalance, he was greatly agitated. i could see him distinctly by the light of the moonhis face was paler than any marble, and his hand shook so excessively that he could scarcely retain hold of the tiller. i found that something had gone wrong, and became seriously alarmed. at this period i knew little about the management of a boat, and was now depending entirely upon the nautical skill of my friend. the wind, too, had suddenly increased, as we were fast getting out of the lee of the landstill i was ashamed to betray any trepidation, and for almost half an hour maintained a resolute silence. i could stand it no longer, however, and spoke to augustus about the propriety of turning back. as before, it was nearly a minute before he made answer, or took any notice of my suggestion. "by-and-by," said he at length"time enoughhome by-and-by." i had expected a similar reply, but there was something in the tone of these words which filled me with an indescribable feeling of dread. i again looked at the speaker attentively. his lips were perfectly livid, and his knees shook so violently together that he seemed scarcely able to stand. "for god's sake, augustus," i screamed, now heartily frightened, "what ails you?what is the matter?what are you going to do?" "matter!" he stammered, in the greatest apparent surprise, letting go the tiller at the same moment, and falling forward into the bottom of the boat"matterwhy, nothing is themattergoing homed-d-don't you see?" the whole truth now flashed upon me. i flew to him and raised him up. he was drunkbeastly drunkhe could no longer either stand, speak or see. his eyes were perfectly glazed; and as i let him go in the extremity of my despair, he rolled like a mere log into the bilge-water, from which i had lifted him. it was evident that, during the evening, he had drunk far more than i suspected, and that his conduct in bed had been the result of a highly-concentrated state of intoxicationa state which, like madness, frequently enables the victim to imitate the outward demeanour of one in perfect possession of his senses. the coolness of the night air, however, had had its usual effectthe mental energy began to yield before its influenceand the confused perception which he no doubt then had of his perilous situation had assisted in hastening the catastrophe. he was now thoroughly insensible, and there was no probability that he would be otherwise for many hours. it is hardly possible to conceive the extremity of my terror. the fumes of the wine lately taken had evaporated, leaving me doubly timid and irresolute. i knew that i was altogether incapable of managing the boat, and that a fierce wind and strong ebb tide were hurrying us to destruction. a storm was evidently gathering behind us; we had neither compass nor provisions; and it was clear that, if we held our present course, we should be out of sight of land before daybreak. these thoughts, with a crowd of others equally fearful, flashed through my mind with a bewildering rapidity, and for some moments paralyzed me beyond the possibility of making any exertion. the boat was going through the water at a terrible ratefull before the windno reef in either jib or mainsailrunning her bows completely under the foam. it was a thousand wonders she did not broach toaugustus having let go the tiller, as i said before, and i being too much agitated to think of taking it myself. by good luck, however, she kept steady, and gradually i recovered some degree of presence of mind. still the wind was increasing fearfully, and whenever we rose from a plunge forward, the sea behind fell combing over our counter, and deluged us with water. i was so utterly benumbed, too, in every limb, as to be nearly unconscious of sensation. at length i summoned up the resolution of despair, and rushing to the mainsail let it go by the run. as might have been expected, it flew over the bows, and, getting drenched with water, carried away the mast short off by the board. this latter accident alone saved me from instant destruction. under the jib only, i now boomed along before the wind, shipping heavy seas occasionally over the counter, but relieved from the terror of immediate death. i took the helm, and breathed with greater freedom as i found that there yet remained to us a chance of ultimate escape. augustus still lay senseless in the bottom of the boat; and as there was imminent danger of his drowning (the water being nearly a foot deep just where he fell), i contrived to raise him partially up, and keep him in a sitting position, by passing a rope round his waist, and lashing it to a ringbolt in the deck of the cuddy. having thus arranged every thing as well as i could in my chilled and agitated condition, i recommended myself to god, and made up my mind to bear whatever might happen with all the fortitude in my power. hardly had i come to this resolution, when, suddenly, a loud and long scream or yell, as if from the throats of a thousand demons, seemed to pervade the whole atmosphere around and above the boat. never while i live shall i forget the intense agony of terror i experienced at that moment. my hair stood erect on my headi felt the blood congealing in my veinsmy heart ceased utterly to beat, and without having once raised my eyes to learn the source of my alarm, i tumbled headlong and insensible upon the body of my fallen companion. i found myself, upon reviving, in the cabin of a large whaling-ship (the penguin) bound to nantucket. several persons were standing over me, and augustus, paler than death, was busily occupied in chafing my hands. upon seeing me open my eyes, his exclamations of gratitude and joy excited alternate laughter and tears from the rough-looking personages who were present. the mystery of our being in existence was now soon explained. we had been run down by the whaling-ship, which was close-hauled, beating up to nantucket with every sail she could venture to set, and consequently running almost at right angles to our own course. several men were on the look-out forward, but did not perceive our boat until it was an impossibility to avoid coming in contacttheir shouts of warning upon seeing us were what so terribly alarmed me. the huge ship, i was told, rode immediately over us with as much ease as our own little vessel would have passed over a feather, and without the least perceptible impediment to her progress. not a scream arose from the deck of the victimthere was a slight grating sound to be heard mingling with the roar of wind and water, as the frail bark which was swallowed up rubbed for a moment along the keel of her destroyerbut this was all. thinking our boat (which it will be remembered was dismasted) some mere shell cut adrift as useless, the captain (captain e. t. v. block, of new london) was for proceeding on his course without troubling himself further about the matter. luckily, there were two of the look-out who swore positively to having seen some person at our helm, and represented the possibility of yet saving him. a discussion ensued, when block grew angry, and, after a while, said that "it was no business of his to be eternally watching for egg-shells; that the ship should not put about for any such nonsense; and if there was a man run down, it was nobody's fault but henderson, the first mate, now took the matter up, being justly indignant, as well as the whole ship's crew, at a speech evincing so base a degree of heartless atrocity. he spoke plainly, seeing himself upheld by the men, told the captain he considered him a fit subject for the gallows, and that he would disobey his orders if he were hanged for it the moment he set his foot on shore. he strode aft, jostling block (who turned pale and made no answer) on one side, and seizing the helm, gave the word, in a firm voice, hard-a-lee! the men flew to their posts, and the ship went cleverly about. all this had occupied nearly five minutes, and it was supposed to be hardly within the bounds of possibility that any individual could be savedallowing any to have been on board the boat. yet, as the reader has seen, both augustus and myself were rescued; and our deliverance seemed to have been brought about by two of those almost inconceivable pieces of good fortune which are attributed by the wise and pious to the special interference of providence. while the ship was yet in stays, the mate lowered the jolly-boat and jumped into her with the very two men, i believe, who spoke up as having seen me at the helm. they had just left the lee of the vessel (the moon still shining brightly) when she made a long and heavy roll to windward, and henderson, at the same moment, starting up in his seat bawled out to his crew to back water. he would say nothing elserepeating his cry impatiently, back water! black water! the men put back as speedily as possible, but by this time the ship had gone round, and gotten fully under headway, although all hands on board were making great exertions to take in sail. in despite of the danger of the attempt, the mate clung to the main-chains as soon as they came within his reach. another huge lurch now brought the starboard side of the vessel out of water nearly as far as her keel, when the cause of his anxiety was rendered obvious enough. the body of a man was seen to be affixed in the most singular manner to the smooth and shining bottom (the penguin was coppered and copper-fastened), and beating violently against it with every movement of the hull. after several ineffectual efforts, made during the lurches of the ship, and at the imminent risk of swamping the boat i was finally disengaged from my perilous situation and taken on boardfor the body proved to be my own. it appeared that one of the timber-bolts having started and broken a passage through the copper, it had arrested my progress as i passed under the ship, and fastened me in so extraordinary a manner to her bottom. the head of the bolt had made its way through the collar of the green baize jacket i had on, and through the back part of my neck, forcing itself out between two sinews and just below the right ear. i was immediately put to bedalthough life seemed to be totally extinct. there was no surgeon on board. the captain, however, treated me with every attentionto make amends, i presume, in the eyes of his crew, for his atrocious behaviour in the previous portion of the adventure. in the meantime, henderson had again put off from the ship, although the wind was now blowing almost a hurricane. he had not been gone many minutes when he fell in with some fragments of our boat, and shortly afterward one of the men with him asserted that he could distinguish a cry for help at intervals amid the roaring of the tempest. this induced the hardy seamen to persevere in their search for more than half an hour, although repeated signals to return were made them by captain block, and although every moment on the water in so frail a boat was fraught to them with the most imminent and deadly peril. indeed, it is nearly impossible to conceive how the small jolly they were in could have escaped destruction for a single instant. she was built, however, for the whaling service, and was fitted, as i have since had reason to believe, with air-boxes, in the manner of some life-boats used on the coast of wales. after searching in vain for about the period of time just mentioned, it was determined to get back to the ship. they had scarcely made this resolve when a feeble cry arose from a dark object that floated rapidly by. they pursued and soon overtook it. it proved to be the entire deck of the ariel's cuddy. augustus was struggling near it, apparently in the last agonies. upon getting hold of him it was found that he was attached by a rope to the floating timber. this rope, it will be remembered, i had myself tied around his waist, and made fast to a ringbolt, for the purpose of keeping him in an upright position, and my so doing, it appeared, had been ultimately the means of preserving his life. the ariel was slightly put together, and in going down her frame naturally went to pieces; the deck of the cuddy, as might have been expected, was lifted, by the force of the water rushing in, entirely from the main timbers, and floated (with other fragments, no doubt) to the surfaceaugustus was buoyed up with it, and thus escaped a terrible death. it was more than an hour after being taken on board the penguin before he could give any account of himself, or be made to comprehend the nature of the accident which had befallen our boat. at length he became thoroughly aroused, and spoke much of his sensations while in the water. upon his first attaining any degree of consciousness, he found himself beneath the surface, whirling round and round with inconceivable rapidity, and with a rope wrapped in three or four folds tightly about his neck. in an instant afterward he felt himself going rapidly upward, when, his head striking violently against a hard substance, he again relapsed into insensibility. upon once more reviving he was in fuller possession of his reasonthis was still, however, in the greatest degree clouded and confused. he now knew that some accident had occurred, and that he was in the water, although his mouth was above the surface, and he could breathe with some freedom. possibly, at this period the deck was drifting rapidly before the wind, and drawing him after it, as he floated upon his back. of course, as long as he could have retained this position, it would have been nearly impossible that he should be drowned. presently a surge threw him directly athwart the deck, and this post he endeavored to maintain, screaming at intervals for help. just before he was discovered by mr. henderson, he had been obliged to relax his hold through exhaustion, and, falling into the sea, had given himself up for lost. during the whole period of his struggles he had not the faintest recollection of the ariel, nor of the matters in connexion with the source of his disaster. a vague feeling of terror and despair had taken entire possession of his faculties. when he was finally picked up, every power of his mind had failed him; and, as before said, it was nearly an hour after getting on board the penguin before he became fully aware of his condition. in regard to myselfi was resuscitated from a state bordering very nearly upon death (and after every other means had been tried in vain for three hours and a half) by vigorous friction with flannels bathed in hot oila proceeding suggested by augustus. the wound in my neck, although of an ugly appearance, proved of little real consequence, and i soon recovered from its effects. the penguin got into port about nine o'clock in the morning, after encountering one of the severest gales ever experienced off nantucket. both augustus and myself managed to appear at mr. barnard's in time for breakfastwhich, luckily, was somewhat late, owing to the party over night. i suppose all at the table were too much fatigued themselves to notice our jaded appearanceof course, it would not have borne a very rigid scrutiny. schoolboys, however, can accomplish wonders in the way of deception, and i verily believe not one of our friends in nantucket had the slightest suspicion that the terrible story told by some sailors in town of their having run down a vessel at sea and drowned some thirty or forty poor devils, had reference either to the ariel, my companion, or myself. we two have since very frequently talked the matter overbut never without a shudder. in one of our conversations augustus frankly confessed to me, that in his whole life he had at no time experienced so excruciating a sense of dismay, as when on board our little boat he first discovered the extent of his intoxication, and felt himself sinking beneath its influence. chapter ii in no affairs of mere prejudice, pro or con, do we deduce inferences with entire certainty, even from the most simple data. it might be supposed that a catastrophe such as i have just related would have effectually cooled my incipient passion for the sea. on the contrary, i never experienced a more ardent longing for the wild adventures incident to the life of a navigator than within a week after our miraculous deliverance. this short period proved amply long enough to erase from my memory the shadows, and bring out in vivid light all the pleasurably exciting points of color, all the picturesqueness, of the late perilous accident. my conversations with augustus grew daily more frequent and more intensely full of interest. he had a manner of relating his stories of the ocean (more than one half of which i now suspect to have been sheer fabrications) well adapted to have weight with one of my enthusiastic temperament and somewhat gloomy although glowing imagination. it is strange, too, that he most strongly enlisted my feelings in behalf of the life of a seaman, when he depicted his more terrible moments of suffering and despair. for the bright side of the painting i had a limited sympathy. my visions were of shipwreck and famine; of death or captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and tears, upon some gray and desolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable and unknown. such visions or desiresfor they amounted to desiresare common, i have since been assured, to the whole numerous race of the melancholy among menat the time of which i speak i regarded them only as prophetic glimpses of a destiny which i felt myself in a measure bound to fulfil. augustus thoroughly entered into my state of mind. it is probable, indeed, that our intimate communion had resulted in a partial interchange of character. about eighteen months after the period of the ariel's disaster, the firm of lloyd and vredenburgh (a house connected in some manner with the messieurs enderby, i believe, of liverpool) were engaged in repairing and fitting out the brig grampus for a whaling voyage. she was an old hulk, and scarcely seaworthy when all was done to her that could be done. i hardly know why she was chosen in preference to other good vessels belonging to the same ownersbut so it was. mr. barnard was appointed to command her, and augustus was going with him. while the brig was getting ready, he frequently urged upon me the excellency of the opportunity now offered for indulging my desire of travel. he found me by no means an unwilling listeneryet the matter could not be so easily arranged. my father made no direct opposition; but my mother went into hysterics at the bare mention of the design; and, more than all, my grandfather, from whom i expected much, vowed to cut me off with a shilling if i should ever broach the subject to him again. these difficulties, however, so far from abating my desire, only added fuel to the flame. i determined to go at all hazards; and, having made known my intentions to augustus, we set about arranging a plan by which it might be accomplished. in the meantime i forbore speaking to any of my relations in regard to the voyage, and, as i busied myself ostensibly with my usual studies, it was supposed that i had abandoned the design. i have since frequently examined my conduct on this occasion with sentiments of displeasure as well as of surprise. the intense hypocrisy i made use of for the furtherance of my projectan hypocrisy pervading every word and action of my life for so long a period of timecould only have been rendered tolerable to myself by the wild and burning expectation with which i looked forward to the fulfilment of my long-cherished visions of travel. in pursuance of my scheme of deception, i was necessarily obliged to leave much to the management of augustus, who was employed for the greater part of every day on board the grampus, attending to some arrangements for his father in the cabin and cabin hold. at night, however, we were sure to have a conference and talk over our hopes. after nearly a month passed in this manner, without our hitting upon any plan we thought likely to succeed, he told me at last that he had determined upon everything necessary. i had a relation living in new bedford, a mr. ross, at whose house i was in the habit of spending occasionally two or three weeks at a time. the brig was to sail about the middle of june (june, 1827), and it was agreed that, a day or two before her putting to sea, my father was to receive a note, as usual, from mr. ross, asking me to come over and spend a fortnight with robert and emmet (his sons). augustus charged himself with the inditing of this note and getting it delivered. having set out as supposed, for new bedford, i was then to report myself to my companion, who would contrive a hiding-place for me in the grampus. this hiding-place, he assured me, would be rendered sufficiently comfortable for a residence of many days, during which i was not to make my appearance. when the brig had proceeded so far on her course as to make any turning back a matter out of question, i should then, he said, be formally installed in all the comforts of the cabin; and as to his father, he would only laugh heartily at the joke. vessels enough would be met with by which a letter might be sent home explaining the adventure to my parents. the middle of june at length arrived, and every thing had been matured. the note was written and delivered, and on a monday morning i left the house for the new bedford packet, as supposed. i went, however, straight to augustus, who was waiting for me at the corner of a street. it had been our original plan that i should keep out of the way until dark, and then slip on board the brig; but, as there was now a thick fog in our favor, it was agreed to lose no time in secreting me. augustus led the way to the wharf, and i followed at a little distance, enveloped in a thick seaman's cloak, which he had brought with him, so that my person might not be easily recognized. just as we turned the second corner, after passing mr. edmund's well, who should appear, standing right in front of me, and looking me full in the face, but old mr. peterson, my grandfather. "why, bless my soul, gordon," said he, after a long pause, "why, why,whose dirty cloak is that you have on?" "sir!" i replied, assuming, as well as i could, in the exigency of the moment, an air of offended surprise, and talking in the gruffest of all imaginable tones"sir! you are a sum'mat mistakenmy name, in the first place, bee'nt nothing at all like goddin, and i'd want you for to know better, you blackguard, than to call my new obercoat a darty one." for my life i could hardly refrain from screaming with laughter at the odd manner in which the old gentleman received this handsome rebuke. he started back two or three steps, turned first pale and then excessively red, threw up his spectacles, then, putting them down, ran full tilt at me, with his umbrella uplifted. he stopped short, however, in his career, as if struck with a sudden recollection; and presently, turning round, hobbled off down the street, shaking all the while with rage, and muttering between his teeth: "won't donew glassesthought it was after this narrow escape we proceeded with greater caution, and arrived at our point of destination in safety. there were only one or two of the hands on board, and these were busy forward, doing something to the forecastle combings. captain barnard, we knew very well, was engaged at lloyd and vredenburgh's, and would remain there until late in the evening, so we had little to apprehend on his account. augustus went first up the vessel's side, and in a short while i followed him, without being noticed by the men at work. we proceeded at once into the cabin, and found no person there. it was fitted up in the most comfortable stylea thing somewhat unusual in a whaling-vessel. there were four very excellent staterooms, with wide and convenient berths. there was also a large stove, i took notice, and a remarkably thick and valuable carpet covering the floor of both the cabin and staterooms. the ceiling was full seven feet high, and, in short, every thing appeared of a more roomy and agreeable nature than i had anticipated. augustus, however, would allow me but little time for observation, insisting upon the necessity of my concealing myself as soon as possible. he led the way into his own stateroom, which was on the starboard side of the brig, and next to the bulkheads. upon entering, he closed the door and bolted it. i thought i had never seen a nicer little room than the one in which i now found myself. it was about ten feet long, and had only one berth, which, as i said before, was wide and convenient. in that portion of the closet nearest the bulkheads there was a space of four feet square, containing a table, a chair, and a set of hanging shelves full of books, chiefly books of voyages and travels. there were many other little comforts in the room, among which i ought not to forget a kind of safe or refrigerator, in which augustus pointed out to me a host of delicacies, both in the eating and drinking department. he now pressed with his knuckles upon a certain spot of the carpet in one corner of the space just mentioned, letting me know that a portion of the flooring, about sixteen inches square, had been neatly cut out and again adjusted. as he pressed, this portion rose up at one end sufficiently to allow the passage of his finger beneath. in this manner he raised the mouth of the trap (to which the carpet was still fastened by tacks), and i found that it led into the after hold. he next lit a small taper by means of a phosphorous match, and, placing the light in a dark lantern, descended with it through the opening, bidding me follow. i did so, and be then pulled the cover upon the hole, by means of a nail driven into the under sidethe carpet, of course, resuming its original position on the floor of the stateroom, and all traces of the aperture being concealed. the taper gave out so feeble a ray that it was with the greatest difficulty i could grope my way through the confused mass of lumber among which i now found myself. by degrees, however, my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and i proceeded with less trouble, holding on to the skirts of my friend's coat. he brought me, at length, after creeping and winding through innumerable narrow passages, to an iron-bound box, such as is used sometimes for packing fine earthenware. it was nearly four feet high, and full six long, but very narrow. two large empty oil-casks lay on the top of it, and above these, again, a vast quantity of straw matting, piled up as high as the floor of the cabin. in every other direction around was wedged as closely as possible, even up to the ceiling, a complete chaos of almost every species of ship-furniture, together with a heterogeneous medley of crates, hampers, barrels, and bales, so that it seemed a matter no less than miraculous that we had discovered any passage at all to the box. i afterward found that augustus had purposely arranged the stowage in this hold with a view to affording me a thorough concealment, having had only one assistant in the labour, a man not going out in the brig. my companion now showed me that one of the ends of the box could be removed at pleasure. he slipped it aside and displayed the interior, at which i was excessively amused. a mattress from one of the cabin berths covered the whole of its bottom, and it contained almost every article of mere comfort which could be crowded into so small a space, allowing me, at the same time, sufficient room for my accommodation, either in a sitting position or lying at full length. among other things, there were some books, pen, ink, and paper, three blankets, a large jug full of water, a keg of sea-biscuit, three or four immense bologna sausages, an enormous ham, a cold leg of roast mutton, and half a dozen bottles of cordials and liqueurs. i proceeded immediately to take possession of my little apartment, and this with feelings of higher satisfaction, i am sure, than any monarch ever experienced upon entering a new palace. augustus now pointed out to me the method of fastening the open end of the box, and then, holding the taper close to the deck, showed me a piece of dark whipcord lying along it. this, he said, extended from my hiding-place throughout an the necessary windings among the lumber, to a nail which was driven into the deck of the hold, immediately beneath the trap-door leading into his stateroom. by means of this cord i should be enabled readily to trace my way out without his guidance, provided any unlooked-for accident should render such a step necessary. he now took his departure, leaving with me the lantern, together with a copious supply of tapers and phosphorous, and promising to pay me a visit as often as he could contrive to do so without observation. this was on the seventeenth of june. i remained three days and nights (as nearly as i could guess) in my hiding-place without getting out of it at all, except twice for the purpose of stretching my limbs by standing erect between two crates just opposite the opening. during the whole period i saw nothing of augustus; but this occasioned me little uneasiness, as i knew the brig was expected to put to sea every hour, and in the bustle he would not easily find opportunities of coming down to me. at length i heard the trap open and shut. and presently he called in a low voice, asking if all was well, and if there was any thing i wanted. "nothing," i replied; "i am as comfortable as can be; when will the brig sail?" "she will be under weigh in less than half an hour," he answered. "i came to let you know, and for fear you should be uneasy at my absence. i shall not have a chance of coming down again for some timeperhaps for three or four days more. all is going on right aboveboard. after i go up and close the trap, do you creep along by the whipcord to where the nail is driven in. you will find my watch thereit may be useful to you, as you have no daylight to keep time by. i suppose you can't tell how long you have been buriedonly three daysthis is the twentieth. i would bring the watch to your box, but am afraid of being missed." with this he went up. in about an hour after he had gone i distinctly felt the brig in motion, and congratulated myself upon having at length fairly commenced a voyage. satisfied with this idea, i determined to make my mind as easy as possible, and await the course of events until i should be permitted to exchange the box for the more roomy, although hardly more comfortable, accommodations of the cabin. my first care was to get the watch. leaving the taper burning, i groped along in the dark, following the cord through windings innumerable, in some of which i discovered that, after toiling a long distance, i was brought back within a foot or two of a former position. at length i reached the nail, and securing the object of my journey, returned with it in safety. i now looked over the books which had been so thoughtfully provided, and selected the expedition of lewis and clarke to the mouth of the columbia. with this i amused myself for some time, when, growing sleepy, i extinguished the light with great care, and soon fell into a sound slumber. upon awakening i felt strangely confused in mind, and some time elapsed before i could bring to recollection all the various circumstances of my situation. by degrees, however, i remembered all. striking a light, i looked at the watch; but it was run down, and there were, consequently, no means of determining how long i slept. my limbs were greatly cramped, and i was forced to relieve them by standing between the crates. presently feeling an almost ravenous appetite, i bethought myself of the cold mutton, some of which i had eaten just before going to sleep, and found excellent. what was my astonishment in discovering it to be in a state of absolute putrefaction! this circumstance occasioned me great disquietude; for, connecting it with the disorder of mind i experienced upon awakening, i began to suppose that i must have slept for an inordinately long period of time. the close atmosphere of the hold might have had something to do with this, and might, in the end, be productive of the most serious results. my head ached excessively; i fancied that i drew every breath with difficulty; and, in short, i was oppressed with a multitude of gloomy feelings. still i could not venture to make any disturbance by opening the trap or otherwise, and, having wound up the watch, contented myself as well as possible. throughout the whole of the next tedious twenty-four hours no person came to my relief, and i could not help accusing augustus of the grossest inattention. what alarmed me chiefly was, that the water in my jug was reduced to about half a pint, and i was suffering much from thirst, having eaten freely of the bologna sausages after the loss of my mutton. i became very uneasy, and could no longer take any interest in my books. i was overpowered, too, with a desire to sleep, yet trembled at the thought of indulging it, lest there might exist some pernicious influence, like that of burning charcoal, in the confined air of the hold. in the meantime the roll of the brig told me that we were far in the main ocean, and a dull humming sound, which reached my ears as if from an immense distance, convinced me no ordinary gale was blowing. i could not imagine a reason for the absence of augustus. we were surely far enough advanced on our voyage to allow of my going up. some accident might have happened to himbut i could think of none which would account for his suffering me to remain so long a prisoner, except, indeed, his having suddenly died or fallen overboard, and upon this idea i could not dwell with any degree of patience. it was possible that we had been baffled by head winds, and were still in the near vicinity of nantucket. this notion, however, i was forced to abandon; for such being the case, the brig must have frequently gone about; and i was entirely satisfied, from her continual inclination to the larboard, that she had been sailing all along with a steady breeze on her starboard quarter. besides, granting that we were still in the neighborhood of the island, why should not augustus have visited me and informed me of the circumstance? pondering in this manner upon the difficulties of my solitary and cheerless condition, i resolved to wait yet another twenty-four hours, when, if no relief were obtained, i would make my way to the trap, and endeavour either to hold a parley with my friend, or get at least a little fresh air through the opening, and a further supply of water from the stateroom. while occupied with this thought, however, i fell in spite of every exertion to the contrary, into a state of profound sleep, or rather stupor. my dreams were of the most terrific description. every species of calamity and horror befell me. among other miseries i was smothered to death between huge pillows, by demons of the most ghastly and ferocious aspect. immense serpents held me in their embrace, and looked earnestly in my face with their fearfully shining eyes. then deserts, limitless, and of the most forlorn and awe-inspiring character, spread themselves out before me. immensely tall trunks of trees, gray and leafless, rose up in endless succession as far as the eye could reach. their roots were concealed in wide-spreading morasses, whose dreary water lay intensely black, still, and altogether terrible, beneath. and the strange trees seemed endowed with a human vitality, and waving to and fro their skeleton arms, were crying to the silent waters for mercy, in the shrill and piercing accents of the most acute agony and despair. the scene changed; and i stood, naked and alone, amidst the burning sand-plains of sahara. at my feet lay crouched a fierce lion of the tropics. suddenly his wild eyes opened and fell upon me. with a conculsive bound he sprang to his feet, and laid bare his horrible teeth. in another instant there burst from his red throat a roar like the thunder of the firmament, and i fell impetuously to the earth. stifling in a paroxysm of terror, i at last found myself partially awake. my dream, then, was not all a dream. now, at least, i was in possession of my senses. the paws of some huge and real monster were pressing heavily upon my bosomhis hot breath was in my earand his white and ghastly fangs were gleaming upon me through the gloom. had a thousand lives hung upon the movement of a limb or the utterance of a syllable, i could have neither stirred nor spoken. the beast, whatever it was, retained his position without attempting any immediate violence, while i lay in an utterly helpless, and, i fancied, a dying condition beneath him. i felt that my powers of body and mind were fast leaving mein a word, that i was perishing, and perishing of sheer fright. my brain swami grew deadly sickmy vision failedeven the glaring eyeballs above me grew dim. making a last strong effort, i at length breathed a faint ejaculation to god, and resigned myself to die. the sound of my voice seemed to arouse all the latent fury of the animal. he precipitated himself at full length upon my body; but what was my astonishment, when, with a long and low whine, he commenced licking my face and hands with the greatest eagerness, and with the most extravagant demonstration of affection and joy! i was bewildered, utterly lost in amazementbut i could not forget the peculiar whine of my newfoundland dog tiger, and the odd manner of his caresses i well knew. it was he. i experienced a sudden rush of blood to my templesa giddy and overpowering sense of deliverance and reanimation. i rose hurriedly from the mattress upon which i had been lying, and, throwing myself upon the neck of my faithful follower and friend, relieved the long oppression of my bosom in a flood of the most passionate tears. as upon a former occasion my conceptions were in a state of the greatest indistinctness and confusion after leaving the mattress. for a long time i found it nearly impossible to connect any ideas; but, by very slow degrees, my thinking faculties returned, and i again called to memory the several incidents of my condition. for the presence of tiger i tried in vain to account; and after busying myself with a thousand different conjectures respecting him, was forced to content myself with rejoicing that he was with me to share my dreary solitude, and render me comfort by his caresses. most people love their dogs, but for tiger i had an affection far more ardent than common; and never, certainly, did any creature more truly deserve it. for seven years he had been my inseparable companion, and in a multitude of instances had given evidence of all the noble qualities for which we value the animal. i had rescued him, when a puppy, from the clutches of a malignant little villain in nantucket who was leading him, with a rope around his neck, to the water; and the grown dog repaid the obligation, about three years afterward, by saving me from the bludgeon of a street robber. getting now hold of the watch, i found, upon applying it to my ear, that it had again run down; but at this i was not at all surprised, being convinced, from the peculiar state of my feelings, that i had slept, as before, for a very long period of time, how long, it was of course impossible to say. i was burning up with fever, and my thirst was almost intolerable. i felt about the box for my little remaining supply of water, for i had no light, the taper having burnt to the socket of the lantern, and the phosphorus-box not coming readily to hand. upon finding the jug, however, i discovered it to be emptytiger, no doubt, having been tempted to drink it, as well as to devour the remnant of mutton, the bone of which lay, well picked, by the opening of the box. the spoiled meat i could well spare, but my heart sank as i thought of the water. i was feeble in the extremeso much so that i shook all over, as with an ague, at the slightest movement or exertion. to add to my troubles, the brig was pitching and rolling with great violence, and the oil-casks which lay upon my box were in momentary danger of falling down, so as to block up the only way of ingress or egress. i felt, also, terrible sufferings from sea-sickness. these considerations determined me to make my way, at all hazards, to the trap, and obtain immediate relief, before i should be incapacitated from doing so altogether. having come to this resolve, i again felt about for the phosphorus-box and tapers. the former i found after some little trouble; but, not discovering the tapers as soon as i had expected (for i remembered very nearly the spot in which i had placed them), i gave up the search for the present, and bidding tiger lie quiet, began at once my journey toward the trap. in this attempt my great feebleness became more than ever apparent. it was with the utmost difficulty i could crawl along at all, and very frequently my limbs sank suddenly from beneath me; when, falling prostrate on my face, i would remain for some minutes in a state bordering on insensibility. still i struggled forward by slow degrees, dreading every moment that i should swoon amid the narrow and intricate windings of the lumber, in which event i had nothing but death to expect as the result. at length, upon making a push forward with all the energy i could command, i struck my forehead violently against the sharp corner of an iron-bound crate. the accident only stunned me for a few moments; but i found, to my inexpressible grief, that the quick and violent roll of the vessel had thrown the crate entirely across my path, so as effectually to block up the passage. with my utmost exertions i could not move it a single inch from its position, it being closely wedged in among the surrounding boxes and ship-furniture. it became necessary, therefore, enfeebled as i was, either to leave the guidance of the whipcord and seek out a new passage, or to climb over the obstacle, and resume the path on the other side. the former alternative presented too many difficulties and dangers to be thought of without a shudder. in my present weak state of both mind and body, i should infallibly lose my way if i attempted it, and perish miserably amid the dismal and disgusting labyrinths of the hold. i proceeded, therefore, without hesitation, to summon up all my remaining strength and fortitude, and endeavour, as i best might, to clamber over the crate. upon standing erect, with this end in view, i found the undertaking even a more serious task than my fears had led me to imagine. on each side of the narrow passage arose a complete wall of various heavy lumber, which the least blunder on my part might be the means of bringing down upon my head; or, if this accident did not occur, the path might be effectually blocked up against my return by the descending mass, as it was in front by the obstacle there. the crate itself was a long and unwieldy box, upon which no foothold could be obtained. in vain i attempted, by every means in my power, to reach the top, with the hope of being thus enabled to draw myself up. had i succeeded in reaching it, it is certain that my strength would have proved utterly inadequate to the task of getting over, and it was better in every respect that i failed. at length, in a desperate effort to force the crate from its ground, i felt a strong vibration in the side next me. i thrust my hand eagerly to the edge of the planks, and found that a very large one was loose. with my pocket-knife, which, luckily, i had with me, i succeeded, after great labour, in prying it entirely off; and getting it through the aperture, discovered, to my exceeding joy, that there were no boards on the opposite sidein other words, that the top was wanting, it being the bottom through which i had forced my way. i now met with no important difficulty in proceeding along the line until i finally reached the nail. with a beating heart i stood erect, and with a gentle touch pressed against the cover of the trap. it did not rise as soon as i had expected, and i pressed it with somewhat more determination, still dreading lest some other person than augustus might be in his state-room. the door, however, to my astonishment, remained steady, and i became somewhat uneasy, for i knew that it had formerly required but little or no effort to remove it. i pushed it stronglyit was nevertheless firm: with all my strengthit still did not give way: with rage, with fury, with despairit set at defiance my utmost efforts; and it was evident, from the unyielding nature of the resistance, that the hole had either been discovered and effectually nailed up, or that some immense weight had been placed upon it, which it was useless to think of removing. my sensations were those of extreme horror and dismay. in vain i attempted to reason on the probable cause of my being thus entombed. i could summon up no connected chain of reflection, and, sinking on the floor, gave way, unresistingly, to the most gloomy imaginings, in which the dreadful deaths of thirst, famine, suffocation, and premature interment crowded upon me as the prominent disasters to be encountered. at length there returned to me some portion of presence of mind. i arose, and felt with my fingers for the seams or cracks of the aperture. having found them, i examined them closely to ascertain if they emitted any light from the state-room; but none was visible. i then forced the blade of my pen-knife through them, until i met with some hard obstacle. scraping against it, i discovered it to be a solid mass of iron, which, from its peculiar wavy feel as i passed the blade along it, i concluded to be a chain-cable. the only course now left me was to retrace my way to the box, and there either yield to my sad fate, or try so to tranquilize my mind as to admit of my arranging some plan of escape. i immediately set about the attempt, and succeeded, after innumerable difficulties, in getting back. as i sank, utterly exhausted, upon the mattress, tiger threw himself at full length by my side, and seemed as if desirous, by his caresses, of consoling me in my troubles, and urging me to bear them with fortitude. the singularity of his behavior at length forcibly arrested my attention. after licking my face and hands for some minutes, he would suddenly cease doing so, and utter a low whine. upon reaching out my hand toward him, i then invariably found him lying on his back, with his paws uplifted. this conduct, so frequently repeated, appeared strange, and i could in no manner account for it. as the dog seemed distressed, i concluded that he had received some injury; and, taking his paws in my hands, i examined them one by one, but found no sign of any hurt. i then supposed him hungry, and gave him a large piece of ham, which he devoured with avidityafterward, however, resuming his extraordinary manoeuvres. i now imagined that he was suffering, like myself, the torments of thirst, and was about adopting this conclusion as the true one, when the idea occurred to me that i had as yet only examined his paws, and that there might possibly be a wound upon some portion of his body or head. the latter i felt carefully over, but found nothing. on passing my hand, however, along his back, i perceived a slight erection of the hair extending completely across it. probing this with my finger, i discovered a string, and tracing it up, found that it encircled the whole body. upon a closer scrutiny, i came across a small slip of what had the feeling of letter paper, through which the string had been fastened in such a manner as to bring it immediately beneath the left shoulder of the animal. chapter iii the thought instantly occurred to me that the paper was a note from augustus, and that some unaccountable accident having happened to prevent his relieving me from my dungeon, he had devised this method of acquainting me with the true state of affairs. trembling with eagerness, i now commenced another search for my phosphorus matches and tapers. i had a confused recollection of having put them carefully away just before falling asleep; and, indeed, previously to my last journey to the trap, i had been able to remember the exact spot where i had deposited them. but now i endeavored in vain to call it to mind, and busied myself for a full hour in a fruitless and vexatious search for the missing articles; never, surely, was there a more tantalizing state of anxiety and suspense. at length, while groping about, with my head close to the ballast, near the opening of the box, and outside of it, i perceived a faint glimmering of light in the direction of the steerage. greatly surprised, i endeavored to make my way toward it, as it appeared to be but a few feet from my position. scarcely had i moved with this intention, when i lost sight of the glimmer entirely, and, before i could bring it into view again, was obliged to feel along by the box until i had exactly resumed my original situation. now, moving my head with caution to and fro, i found that, by proceeding slowly, with great care, in an opposite direction to that in which i had at first started, i was enabled to draw near the light, still keeping it in view. presently i came directly upon it (having squeezed my way through innumerable narrow windings), and found that it proceeded from some fragments of my matches lying in an empty barrel turned upon its side. i was wondering how they came in such a place, when my hand fell upon two or three pieces of taper wax, which had been evidently mumbled by the dog. i concluded at once that he had devoured the whole of my supply of candles, and i felt hopeless of being ever able to read the note of augustus. the small remnants of the wax were so mashed up among other rubbish in the barrel, that i despaired of deriving any service from them, and left them as they were. the phosphorus, of which there was only a speck or two, i gathered up as well as i could, and returned with it, after much difficulty, to my box, where tiger had all the while remained. what to do next i could not tell. the hold was so intensely dark that i could not see my hand, however close i would hold it to my face. the white slip of paper could barely be discerned, and not even that when i looked at it directly; by turning the exterior portions of the retina toward itthat is to say, by surveying it slightly askance, i found that it became in some measure perceptible. thus the gloom of my prison may be imagined, and the note of my friend, if indeed it were a note from him, seemed only likely to throw me into further trouble, by disquieting to no purpose my already enfeebled and agitated mind. in vain i revolved in my brain a multitude of absurd expedients for procuring lightsuch expedients precisely as a man in the perturbed sleep occasioned by opium would be apt to fall upon for a similar purposeeach and all of which appear by turns to the dreamer the most reasonable and the most preposterous of conceptions, just as the reasoning or imaginative faculties flicker, alternately, one above the other. at last an idea occurred to me which seemed rational, and which gave me cause to wonder, very justly, that i had not entertained it before. i placed the slip of paper on the back of a book, and, collecting the fragments of the phosphorus matches which i had brought from the barrel, laid them together upon the paper. i then, with the palm of my hand, rubbed the whole over quickly, yet steadily. a clear light diffused itself immediately throughout the whole surface; and had there been any writing upon it, i should not have experienced the least difficulty, i am sure, in reading it. not a syllable was there, howevernothing but a dreary and unsatisfactory blank; the illumination died away in a few seconds, and my heart died away within me as it went. i have before stated more than once that my intellect, for some period prior to this, had been in a condition nearly bordering on idiocy. there were, to be sure, momentary intervals of perfect sanity, and, now and then, even of energy; but these were few. it must be remembered that i had been, for many days certainly, inhaling the almost pestilential atmosphere of a close hold in a whaling vessel, and for a long portion of that time but scantily supplied with water. for the last fourteen or fifteen hours i had nonenor had i slept during that time. salt provisions of the most exciting kind had been my chief, and, indeed, since the loss of the mutton, my only supply of food, with the exception of the sea-biscuit; and these latter were utterly useless to me, as they were too dry and hard to be swallowed in the swollen and parched condition of my throat. i was now in a high state of fever, and in every respect exceedingly ill. this will account for the fact that many miserable hours of despondency elapsed after my last adventure with the phosphorus, before the thought suggested itself that i had examined only one side of the paper. i shall not attempt to describe my feelings of rage (for i believe i was more angry than any thing else) when the egregious oversight i had committed flashed suddenly upon my perception. the blunder itself would have been unimportant, had not my own folly and impetuosity rendered it otherwisein my disappointment at not finding some words upon the slip, i had childishly torn it in pieces and thrown it away, it was impossible to say where. from the worst part of this dilemma i was relieved by the sagacity of tiger. having got, after a long search, a small piece of the note, i put it to the dog's nose, and endeavored to make him understand that he must bring me the rest of it. to my astonishment, (for i had taught him none of the usual tricks for which his breed are famous,) he seemed to enter at once into my meaning, and, rummaging about for a few moments, soon found another considerable portion. bringing me this, he paused awhile, and, rubbing his nose against my hand, appeared to be waiting for my approval of what he had done. i patted him on the head, when he immediately made off again. it was now some minutes before he came backbut when he did come, he brought with him a large slip, which proved to be all the paper missingit having been torn, it seems, only into three pieces. luckily, i had no trouble in finding what few fragments of the phosphorus were leftbeing guided by the indistinct glow one or two of the particles still emitted. my difficulties had taught me the necessity of caution, and i now took time to reflect upon what i was about to do. it was very probable, i considered, that some words were written upon that side of the paper which had not been examinedbut which side was that? fitting the pieces together gave me no clew in this respect, although it assured me that the words (if there were any) would be found all on one side, and connected in a proper manner, as written. there was the greater necessity of ascertaining the point in question beyond a doubt, as the phosphorus remaining would be altogether insufficient for a third attempt, should i fail in the one i was now about to make. i placed the paper on a book as before, and sat for some minutes thoughtfully revolving the matter over in my mind. at last i thought it barely possible that the written side might have some unevenness on its surface, which a delicate sense of feeling might enable me to detect. i determined to make the experiment and passed my finger very carefully over the side which first presented itself. nothing, however, was perceptible, and i turned the paper, adjusting it on the book. i now again carried my forefinger cautiously along, when i was aware of an exceedingly slight, but still discernable glow, which followed as it proceeded. this, i knew, must arise from some very minute remaining particles of the phosphorus with which i had covered the paper in my previous attempt. the other, or under side, then, was that on which lay the writing, if writing there should finally prove to be. again i turned the note, and went to work as i had previously done. having rubbed in the phosphorus, a brilliancy ensued as beforebut this time several lines of ms. in a large hand, and apparently in red ink, became distinctly visible. the glimmer, although sufficiently bright, was but momentary. still, had i not been too greatly excited, there would have been ample time enough for me to peruse the whole three sentences before mefor i saw there were three. in my anxiety, however, to read all at once, i succeeded only in reading the seven concluding words, which thus appeared"bloodyour life depends upon lying close." had i been able to ascertain the entire contents of the note-the full meaning of the admonition which my friend had thus attempted to convey, that admonition, even although it should have revealed a story of disaster the most unspeakable, could not, i am firmly convinced, have imbued my mind with one tithe of the harrowing and yet indefinable horror with which i was inspired by the fragmentary warning thus received. and "blood," too, that word of all wordsso rife at all times with mystery, and suffering, and terrorhow trebly full of import did it now appearhow chilly and heavily (disjointed, as it thus was, from any foregoing words to qualify or render it distinct) did its vague syllables fall, amid the deep gloom of my prison, into the innermost recesses of my soul! augustus had, undoubtedly, good reasons for wishing me to remain concealed, and i formed a thousand surmises as to what they could bebut i could think of nothing affording a satisfactory solution of the mystery. just after returning from my last journey to the trap, and before my attention had been otherwise directed by the singular conduct of tiger, i had come to the resolution of making myself heard at all events by those on board, or, if i could not succeed in this directly, of trying to cut my way through the orlop deck. the half certainty which i felt of being able to accomplish one of these two purposes in the last emergency, had given me courage (which i should not otherwise have had) to endure the evils of my situation. the few words i had been able to read, however, had cut me off from these final resources, and i now, for the first time, felt all the misery of my fate. in a paroxysm of despair i threw myself again upon the mattress, where, for about the period of a day and night, i lay in a kind of stupor, relieved only by momentary intervals of reason and recollection. at length i once more arose, and busied myself in reflection upon the horrors which encompassed me. for another twenty-four hours it was barely possible that i might exist without waterfor a longer time i could not do so. during the first portion of my imprisonment i had made free use of the cordials with which augustus had supplied me, but they only served to excite fever, without in the least degree assuaging thirst. i had now only about a gill left, and this was of a species of strong peach liqueur at which my stomach revolted. the sausages were entirely consumed; of the ham nothing remained but a small piece of the skin; and all the biscuit, except a few fragments of one, had been eaten by tiger. to add to my troubles, i found that my headache was increasing momentarily, and with it the species of delirium which had distressed me more or less since my first falling asleep. for some hours past it had been with the greatest difficulty i could breathe at all, and now each attempt at so doing was attended with the most depressing spasmodic action of the chest. but there was still another and very different source of disquietude, and one, indeed, whose harassing terrors had been the chief means of arousing me to exertion from my stupor on the mattress. it arose from the demeanor of the dog. i first observed an alteration in his conduct while rubbing in the phosphorus on the paper in my last attempt. as i rubbed, he ran his nose against my hand with a slight snarl; but i was too greatly excited at the time to pay much attention to the circumstance. soon afterward, it will be remembered, i threw myself on the mattress, and fell into a species of lethargy. presently i became aware of a singular hissing sound close at my ears, and discovered it to proceed from tiger, who was panting and wheezing in a state of the greatest apparent excitement, his eyeballs flashing fiercely through the gloom. i spoke to him, when he replied with a low growl, and then remained quiet. presently i relapsed into my stupor, from which i was again awakened in a similar manner. this was repeated three or four times, until finally his behaviour inspired me with so great a degree of fear, that i became fully aroused. he was now lying close by the door of the box, snarling fearfully, although in a kind of undertone, and grinding his teeth as if strongly convulsed. i had no doubt whatever that the want of water or the confined atmosphere of the hold had driven him mad, and i was at a loss what course to pursue. i could not endure the thought of killing him, yet it seemed absolutely necessary for my own safety. i could distinctly perceive his eyes fastened upon me with an expression of the most deadly animosity, and i expected every instant that he would attack me. at last i could endure my terrible situation no longer, and determined to make my way from the box at all hazards, and dispatch him, if his opposition should render it necessary for me to do so. to get out, i had to pass directly over his body, and he already seemed to anticipate my designmissing himself upon his fore. legs (as i perceived by the altered position of his eyes), and displayed the whole of his white fangs, which were easily discernible. i took the remains of the ham-skin, and the bottle containing the liqueur, and secured them about my person, together with a large carving-knife which augustus had left methen, folding my cloak around me as closely as possible, i made a movement toward the mouth of the box. no sooner did i do this, than the dog sprang with a loud growl toward my throat. the whole weight of his body struck me on the right shoulder, and i fell violently to the left, while the enraged animal passed entirely over me. i had fallen upon my knees, with my head buried among the blankets, and these protected me from a second furious assault, during which i felt the sharp teeth pressing vigorously upon the woollen which enveloped my neckyet, luckily, without being able to penetrate all the folds. i was now beneath the dog, and a few moments would place me completely in his power. despair gave me strength, and i rose boldly up, shaking him from me by main force, and dragging with me the blankets from the mattress. these i now threw over him, and before he could extricate himself, i had got through the door and closed it effectually against his pursuit. in this struggle, however, i had been forced to drop the morsel of ham-skin, and i now found my whole stock of provisions reduced to a single gill of liqueur, as this reflection crossed my mind, i felt myself actuated by one of those fits of perverseness which might be supposed to influence a spoiled child in similar circumstances, and, raising the bottle to my lips, i drained it to the last drop, and dashed it furiously upon the floor. scarcely had the echo of the crash died away, when i heard my name pronounced in an eager but subdued voice, issuing from the direction of the steerage. so unexpected was anything of the kind, and so intense was the emotion excited within me by the sound, that i endeavoured in vain to reply. my powers of speech totally failed, and in an agony of terror lest my friend should conclude me dead, and return without attempting to reach me, i stood up between the crates near the door of the box, trembling convulsively, and gasping and struggling for utterance. had a thousand words depended upon a syllable, i could not have spoken it. there was a slight movement now audible among the lumber somewhere forward of my station. the sound presently grew less distinct, then again less so, and still less. shall i ever forget my feelings at this moment? he was goingmy friend, my companion, from whom i had a right to expect so muchhe was goinghe would abandon mehe was gone! he would leave me to perish miserably, to expire in the most horrible and loathesome of dungeonsand one word, one little syllable, would save meyet that single syllable i could not utter! i felt, i am sure, more than ten thousand times the agonies of death itself. my brain reeled, and i fell, deadly sick, against the end of the box. as i fell the carving-knife was shaken out from the waist-band of my pantaloons, and dropped with a rattling sound to the floor. never did any strain of the richest melody come so sweetly to my ears! with the intensest anxiety i listened to ascertain the effect of the noise upon augustusfor i knew that the person who called my name could be no one but himself. all was silent for some moments. at length i again heard the word "arthur!" repeated in a low tone, and one full of hesitation. reviving hope loosened at once my powers of speech, and i now screamed at the top of my voice, "augustus! oh, augustus!" "hush! for god's sake be silent!" he replied, in a voice trembling with agitation; "i will be with you immediatelyas soon as i can make my way through the hold." for a long time i heard him moving among the lumber, and every moment seemed to me an age. at length i felt his hand upon my shoulder, and he placed, at the same moment, a bottle of water to my lips. those only who have been suddenly redeemed from the jaws of the tomb, or who have known the insufferable torments of thirst under circumstances as aggravated as those which encompassed me in my dreary prison, can form any idea of the unutterable transports which that one long draught of the richest of all physical luxuries afforded. when i had in some degree satisfied my thirst, augustus produced from his pocket three or four boiled potatoes, which i devoured with the greatest avidity. he had brought with him a light in a dark lantern, and the grateful rays afforded me scarcely less comfort than the food and drink. but i was impatient to learn the cause of his protracted absence, and he proceeded to recount what had happened on board during my incarceration. chapter iv the brig put to sea, as i had supposed, in about an hour after he had left the watch. this was on the twentieth of june. it will be remembered that i had then been in the hold for three days; and, during this period, there was so constant a bustle on board, and so much running to and fro, especially in the cabin and staterooms, that he had had no chance of visiting me without the risk of having the secret of the trap discovered. when at length he did come, i had assured him that i was doing as well as possible; and, therefore, for the two next days be felt but little uneasiness on my accountstill, however, watching an opportunity of going down. it was not until the fourth day that he found one. several times during this interval he had made up his mind to let his father know of the adventure, and have me come up at once; but we were still within reaching distance of nantucket, and it was doubtful, from some expressions which had escaped captain barnard, whether he would not immediately put back if he discovered me to be on board. besides, upon thinking the matter over, augustus, so he told me, could not imagine that i was in immediate want, or that i would hesitate, in such case, to make myself heard at the trap. when, therefore, he considered everything he concluded to let me stay until he could meet with an opportunity of visiting me unobserved. this, as i said before, did not occur until the fourth day after his bringing me the watch, and the seventh since i had first entered the hold. he then went down without taking with him any water or provisions, intending in the first place merely to call my attention, and get me to come from the box to the trap,when he would go up to the stateroom and thence hand me down a sup. ply. when he descended for this purpose he found that i was asleep, for it seems that i was snoring very loudly. from all the calculations i can make on the subject, this must have been the slumber into which i fell just after my return from the trap with the watch, and which, consequently, must have lasted for more than three entire days and nights at the very least. latterly, i have had reason both from my own experience and the assurance of others, to be acquainted with the strong soporific effects of the stench arising from old fish-oil when closely confined; and when i think of the condition of the hold in which i was imprisoned, and the long period during which the brig had been used as a whaling vessel, i am more inclined to wonder that i awoke at all, after once falling asleep, than that i should have slept uninterruptedly for the period specified above. augustus called to me at first in a low voice and without closing the trapbut i made him no reply. he then shut the trap, and spoke to me in a louder, and finally in a very loud tonestill i continued to snore. he was now at a loss what to do. it would take him some time to make his way through the lumber to my box, and in the meanwhile his absence would be noticed by captain barnard, who had occasion for his services every minute, in arranging and copying papers connected with the business of the voyage. he determined, therefore, upon reflection, to ascend, and await another opportunity of visiting me. he was the more easily induced to this resolve, as my slumber appeared to be of the most tranquil nature, and he could not suppose that i had undergone any inconvenience from my incarceration. he had just made up his mind on these points when his attention was arrested by an unusual bustle, the sound of which proceeded apparently from the cabin. he sprang through the trap as quickly as possible, closed it, and threw open the door of his stateroom. no sooner had he put his foot over the threshold than a pistol flashed in his face, and he was knocked down, at the same moment, by a blow from a handspike. a strong hand held him on the cabin floor, with a tight grasp upon his throat; still he was able to see what was going on around him. his father was tied hand and foot, and lying along the steps of the companion-way, with his head down, and a deep wound in the forehead, from which the blood was flowing in a continued stream. he spoke not a word, and was apparently dying. over him stood the first mate, eyeing him with an expression of fiendish derision, and deliberately searching his pockets, from which he presently drew forth a large wallet and a chronometer. seven of the crew (among whom was the cook, a negro) were rummaging the staterooms on the larboard for arms, where they soon equipped themselves with muskets and ammunition. besides augustus and captain barnard, there were nine men altogether in the cabin, and these among the most ruffianly of the brig's company. the villains now went upon deck, taking my friend with them after having secured his arms behind his back. they proceeded straight to the forecastle, which was fastened downtwo of the mutineers standing by it with axestwo also at the main hatch. the mate called out in a loud voice: "do you hear there below? tumble up with you, one by onenow, mark thatand no grumbling!" it was some minutes before any one appeared:at last an englishman, who had shipped as a raw hand, came up, weeping piteously, and entreating the mate, in the most humble manner, to spare his life. the only reply was a blow on the forehead from an axe. the poor fellow fell to the deck without a groan, and the black cook lifted him up in his arms as he would a child, and tossed him deliberately into the sea. hearing the blow and the plunge of the body, the men below could now be induced to venture on deck neither by threats nor promises, until a proposition was made to smoke them out. a general rush then ensued, and for a moment it seemed possible that the brig might be retaken. the mutineers, however, succeeded at last in closing the forecastle effectually before more than six of their opponents could get up. these six, finding themselves so greatly outnumbered and without arms, submitted after a brief struggle. the mate gave them fair wordsno doubt with a view of inducing those below to yield, for they had no difficulty in hearing all that was said on deck. the result proved his sagacity, no less than his diabolical villainy. all in the forecastle presently signified their intention of submitting, and, ascending one by one, were pinioned and then thrown on their backs, together with the first sixthere being in all, of the crew who were not concerned in the mutiny, twenty-seven. a scene of the most horrible butchery ensued. the bound seamen were dragged to the gangway. here the cook stood with an axe, striking each victim on the head as he was forced over the side of the vessel by the other mutineers. in this manner twenty-two perished, and augustus had given himself up for lost, expecting every moment his own turn to come next. but it seemed that the villains were now either weary, or in some measure disgusted with their bloody labour; for the four remaining prisoners, together with my friend, who had been thrown on the deck with the rest, were respited while the mate sent below for rum, and the whole murderous party held a drunken carouse, which lasted until sunset. they now fell to disputing in regard to the fate of the survivors, who lay not more than four paces off, and could distinguish every word said. upon some of the mutineers the liquor appeared to have a softening effect, for several voices were heard in favor of releasing the captives altogether, on condition of joining the mutiny and sharing the profits. the black cook, however (who in all respects was a perfect demon, and who seemed to exert as much influence, if not more, than the mate himself), would listen to no proposition of the kind, and rose repeatedly for the purpose of resuming his work at the gangway. fortunately he was so far overcome by intoxication as to be easily restrained by the less bloodthirsty of the party, among whom was a line-manager, who went by the name of dirk peters. this man was the son of an indian squaw of the tribe of upsarokas, who live among the fastnesses of the black hills, near the source of the missouri. his father was a fur-trader, i believe, or at least connected in some manner with the indian trading-posts on lewis river. peter himself was one of the most ferocious-looking men i ever beheld. he was short in stature, not more than four feet eight inches high, but his limbs were of herculean mould. his hands, especially, were so enormously thick and broad as hardly to retain a human shape. his arms, as well as legs, were bowed in the most singular manner, and appeared to possess no flexibility whatever. his head was equally deformed, being of immense size, with an indentation on the crown (like that on the head of most negroes), and entirely bald. to conceal this latter deficiency, which did not proceed from old age, he usually wore a wig formed of any hair-like material which presented itselfoccasionally the skin of a spanish dog or american grizzly bear. at the time spoken of, he had on a portion of one of these bearskins; and it added no little to the natural ferocity of his countenance, which betook of the upsaroka character. the mouth extended nearly from ear to ear, the lips were thin, and seemed, like some other portions of his frame, to be devoid of natural pliancy, so that the ruling expression never varied under the influence of any emotion whatever. this ruling expression may be conceived when it is considered that the teeth were exceedingly long and protruding, and never even partially covered, in any instance, by the lips. to pass this man with a casual glance, one might imagine him to be convulsed with laughter, but a second look would induce a shuddering acknowledgment, that if such an expression were indicative of merriment, the merriment must be that of a demon. of this singular being many anecdotes were prevalent among the seafaring men of nantucket. these anecdotes went to prove his prodigious strength when under excitement, and some of them had given rise to a doubt of his sanity. but on board the grampus, it seems, he was regarded, at the time of the mutiny, with feelings more of derision than of anything else. i have been thus particular in speaking of dirk peters, because, ferocious as he appeared, he proved the main instrument in preserving the life of augustus, and because i shall have frequent occasion to mention him hereafter in the course of my narrativea narrative, let me here say, which, in its latter portions, will be found to include incidents of a nature so entirely out of the range of human experience, and for this reason so far beyond the limits of human credulity, that i proceed in utter hopelessness of obtaining credence for all that i shall tell, yet confidently trusting in time and progressing science to verify some of the most important and most improbable of my statements. after much indecision and two or three violent quarrels, it was determined at last that all the prisoners (with the exception of augustus, whom peters insisted in a jocular manner upon keeping as his clerk) should be set adrift in one of the smallest whaleboats. the mate went down into the cabin to see if captain barnard was still livingfor, it will be remembered, he was left below when the mutineers came up. presently the two made their appearance, the captain pale as death, but somewhat recovered from the effects of his wound. he spoke to the men in a voice hardly articulate, entreated them not to set him adrift, but to return to their duty, and promising to land them wherever they chose, and to take no steps for bringing them to justice. he might as well have spoken to the winds. two of the ruffians seized him by the arms and hurled him over the brig's side into the boat, which had been lowered while the mate went below. the four men who were lying on the deck were then untied and ordered to follow, which they did without attempting any resistanceaugustus being still left in his painful position, although he struggled and prayed only for the poor satisfaction of being permitted to bid his father farewell. a handful of sea-biscuit and a jug of water were now handed down; but neither mast, sail, oar, nor compass. the boat was towed astern for a few minutes, during which the mutineers held another consultationit was then finally cut adrift. by this time night had come onthere were neither moon nor stars visibleand a short and ugly sea was running, although there was no great deal of wind. the boat was instantly out of sight, and little hope could be entertained for the unfortunate sufferers who were in it. this event happened, however, in latitude 35 degrees 30' north, longitude 61 degrees 20' west, and consequently at no very great distance from the bermuda islands. augustus therefore endeavored to console himself with the idea that the boat might either succeed in reaching the land, or come sufficiently near to be fallen in with by vessels off the coast. all sail was now put upon the brig, and she continued her original course to the southwestthe mutineers being bent upon some piratical expedition, in which, from all that could be understood, a ship was to be intercepted on her way from the cape verd islands to porto rico. no attention was paid to augustus, who was untied and suffered to go about anywhere forward of the cabin companion-way. dirk peters treated him with some degree of kindness, and on one occasion saved him from the brutality of the cook. his situation was still one of the most precarious, as the men were continually intoxicated, and there was no relying upon their continued good-humor or carelessness in regard to himself. his anxiety on my account be represented, however, as the most distressing result of his condition; and, indeed, i had never reason to doubt the sincerity of his friendship. more than once he had resolved to acquaint the mutineers with the secret of my being on board, but was restrained from so doing, partly through recollection of the atrocities he had already beheld, and partly through a hope of being able soon to bring me relief. for the latter purpose he was constantly on the watch; but, in spite of the most constant vigilance, three days elapsed after the boat was cut adrift before any chance occurred. at length, on the night of the third day, there came on a heavy blow from the eastward, and all hands were called up to take in sail. during the confusion which ensued, he made his way below unobserved, and into the stateroom. what was his grief and horror in discovering that the latter had been rendered a place of deposit for a variety of sea-stores and ship-furniture, and that several fathoms of old chain-cable, which had been stowed away beneath the companion-ladder, had been dragged thence to make room for a chest, and were now lying immediately upon the trap! to remove it without discovery was impossible, and he returned on deck as quickly as he could. as be came up, the mate seized him by the throat, and demanding what he had been doing in the cabin, was about flinging him over the larboard bulwark, when his life was again preserved through the interference of dirk peters. augustus was now put in handcuffs (of which there were several pairs on board), and his feet lashed tightly together. he was then taken into the steerage, and thrown into a lower berth next to the forecastle bulkheads, with the assurance that he should never put his foot on deck again "until the brig was no longer a brig." this was the expression of the cook, who threw him into the berthit is hardly possible to say what precise meaning intended by the phrase. the whole affair, however, proved the ultimate means of my relief, as will presently appear. chapter v for some minutes after the cook had left the forecastle, augustus abandoned himself to despair, never hoping to leave the berth alive. he now came to the resolution of acquainting the first of the men who should come down with my situation, thinking it better to let me take my chance with the mutineers than perish of thirst in the hold,for it had been ten days since i was first imprisoned, and my jug of water was not a plentiful supply even for four. as he was thinking on this subject, the idea came all at once into his head that it might be possible to communicate with me by the way of the main hold. in any other circumstances, the difficulty and hazard of the undertaking would have pre. vented him from attempting it; but now he had, at all events, little prospect of life, and consequently little to lose, he bent his whole mind, therefore, upon the task. his handcuffs were the first consideration. at first he saw no method of removing them, and feared that he should thus be baffled in the very outset; but upon a closer scrutiny he discovered that the irons could be slipped off and on at pleasure, with very little effort or inconvenience, merely by squeezing his hands through them,this species of manacle being altogether ineffectual in confining young persons, in whom the smaller bones readily yield to pressure. he now untied his feet, and, leaving the cord in such a manner that it could easily be readjusted in the event of any person's coming down, proceeded to examine the bulkhead where it joined the berth. the partition here was of soft pine board, an inch thick, and he saw that he should have little trouble in cutting his way through. a voice was now heard at the forecastle companion-way, and he had just time to put his right hand into its handcuff (the left had not been removed) and to draw the rope in a slipknot around his ankle, when dirk peters came below, followed by tiger, who immediately leaped into the berth and lay down. the dog had been brought on board by augustus, who knew my attachment to the animal, and thought it would give me pleasure to have him with me during the voyage. he went up to our house for him immediately after first taking me into the hold, but did not think of mentioning the circumstance upon his bringing the watch. since the mutiny, augustus had not seen him before his appearance with dirk peters, and had given him up for lost, supposing him to have been thrown overboard by some of the malignant villains belonging to the mate's gang. it appeared afterward that he had crawled into a hole beneath a whale-boat, from which, not having room to turn round, he could not extricate himself. peters at last let him out, and, with a species of good feeling which my friend knew well how to appreciate, had now brought him to him in the forecastle as a companion, leaving at the same time some salt junk and potatoes, with a can of water, he then went on deck, promising to come down with something more to eat on the next day. when he had gone, augustus freed both hands from the manacles and unfastened his feet. he then turned down the head of the mattress on which he had been lying, and with his penknife (for the ruffians had not thought it worth while to search him) commenced cutting vigorously across one of the partition planks, as closely as possible to the floor of the berth. he chose to cut here, because, if suddenly interrupted, he would be able to conceal what had been done by letting the head of the mattress fall into its proper position. for the remainder of the day, however, no disturbance occurred, and by night he had completely divided the plank. it should here be observed that none of the crew occupied the forecastle as a sleeping-place, living altogether in the cabin since the mutiny, drinking the wines and feasting on the sea-stores of captain barnard, and giving no more heed than was absolutely necessary to the navigation of the brig. these circumstances proved fortunate both for myself and augustus; for, had matters been otherwise, he would have found it impossible to reach me. as it was, he proceeded with confidence in his design. it was near daybreak, however, before he completed the second division of the board (which was about a foot above the first cut), thus making an aperture quite large enough to admit his passage through with facility to the main orlop deck. having got here, he made his way with but little trouble to the lower main hatch, although in so doing he had to scramble over tiers of oil-casks piled nearly as high as the upper deck, there being barely room enough left for his body. upon reaching the hatch he found that tiger had followed him below, squeezing between two rows of the casks. it was now too late, however, to attempt getting to me before dawn, as the chief difficulty lay in passing through the close stowage in the lower hold. he therefore resolved to return, and wait till the next night. with this design, he proceeded to loosen the hatch, so that he might have as little detention as possible when he should come again. no sooner had he loosened it than tiger sprang eagerly to the small opening produced, snuffed for a moment, and then uttered a long whine, scratching at the same time, as if anxious to remove the covering with his paws. there could be no doubt, from his behaviour, that he was aware of my being in the hold, and augustus thought it possible that he would be able to get to me if he put him down. he now hit upon the expedient of sending the note, as it was especially desirable that i should make no attempt at forcing my way out at least under existing circumstances, and there could be no certainty of his getting to me himself on the morrow as he intended. after-events proved how fortunate it was that the idea occurred to him as it did; for, had it not been for the receipt of the note, i should undoubtedly have fallen upon some plan, however desperate, of alarming the crew, and both our lives would most probably have been sacrificed in consequence. having concluded to write, the difficulty was now to procure the mate. rials for so doing. an old toothpick was soon made into a pen; and this by means of feeling altogether, for the between-decks was as dark as pitch. paper enough was obtained from the back of a lettera duplicate of the forged letter from mr. ross. this had been the original draught; but the handwriting not being sufficiently well imitated, augustus had written another, thrusting the first, by good fortune, into his coat-pocket, where it was now most opportunely discovered. ink alone was thus wanting, and a substitute was immediately found for this by means of a slight incision with the pen-knife on the back of a finger just above the naila copious flow of blood ensuing, as usual, from wounds in that vicinity. the note was now written, as well as it could be in the dark and under the circumstances. it briefly explained that a mutiny had taken place; that captain barnard was set adrift; and that i might expect immediate relief as far as provisions were concerned, but must not venture upon making any disturbance. it concluded with these words: "i have scrawled this with bloodyour life depends upon lying close." this slip of paper being tied upon the dog, he was now put down the hatchway, and augustus made the best of his way back to the forecastle, where be found no reason to believe that any of the crew had been in his absence. to conceal the hole in the partition, he drove his knife in just above it, and hung up a pea-jacket which he found in the berth. his handcuffs were then replaced, and also the rope around his ankles. these arrangements were scarcely completed when dirk peters came below, very drunk, but in excellent humour, and bringing with him my friend's allowance of provision for the day. this consisted of a dozen large irish potatoes roasted, and a pitcher of water. he sat for some time on a chest by the berth, and talked freely about the mate and the general concerns of the brig. his demeanour was exceedingly capricious, and even grotesque. at one time augustus was much alarmed by odd conduct. at last, however, he went on deck, muttering a promise to bring his prisoner a good dinner on the morrow. during the day two of the crew (harpooners) came down, accompanied by the cook, all three in nearly the last stage of intoxication. like peters, they made no scruple of talking unreservedly about their plans. it appeared that they were much divided among themselves as to their ultimate course, agreeing in no point, except the attack on the ship from the cape verd islands, with which they were in hourly expectation of meeting. as far as could be ascertained, the mutiny had not been brought about altogether for the sake of booty; a private pique of the chief mate's against captain barnard having been the main instigation. there now seemed to be two principal factions among the crewone headed by the mate, the other by the cook. the former party were for seizing the first suitable vessel which should present itself, and equipping it at some of the west india islands for a piratical cruise. the latter division, however, which was the stronger, and included dirk peters among its partisans, were bent upon pursuing the course originally laid out for the brig into the south pacific; there either to take whale, or act otherwise, as circumstances should suggest. the representations of peters, who had frequently visited these regions, had great weight, apparently, with the mutineers, wavering, as they were, between half-engendered notions of profit and pleasure. he dwelt on the world of novelty and amusement to be found among the innumerable islands of the pacific, on the perfect security and freedom from all restraint to be enjoyed, but, more particularly, on the deliciousness of the climate, on the abundant means of good living, and on the voluptuous beauty of the women. as yet, nothing had been absolutely determined upon; but the pictures of the hybrid line-manager were taking strong hold upon the ardent imaginations of the seamen, and there was every possibility that his intentions would be finally carried into effect. the three men went away in about an hour, and no one else entered the forecastle all day. augustus lay quiet until nearly night. he then freed himself from the rope and irons, and prepared for his attempt. a bottle was found in one of the berths, and this he filled with water from the pitcher left by peters, storing his pockets at the same time with cold potatoes. to his great joy he also came across a lantern, with a small piece of tallow candle in it. this he could light at any moment, as be had in his possession a box of phosphorus matches. when it was quite dark, he got through the hole in the bulkhead, having taken the precaution to arrange the bedclothes in the berth so as to convey the idea of a person covered up. when through, he hung up the pea-jacket on his knife, as before, to conceal the aperturethis manoeuvre being easily effected, as he did not readjust the piece of plank taken out until afterward. he was now on the main orlop deck, and proceeded to make his way, as before, between the upper deck and the oil-casks to the main hatchway. having reached this, he lit the piece of candle, and descended, groping with extreme difficulty among the compact stowage of the hold. in a few moments he became alarmed at the insufferable stench and the closeness of the atmosphere. he could not think it possible that i had survived my confinement for so long a period breathing so oppressive an air. he called my name repeatedly, but i made him no reply, and his apprehensions seemed thus to be confirmed. the brig was rolling violently, and there was so much noise in consequence, that it was useless to listen for any weak sound, such as those of my breathing or snoring. he threw open the lantern, and held it as high as possible, whenever an opportunity occurred, in order that, by observing the light, i might, if alive, be aware that succor was approaching. still nothing was heard from me, and the supposition of my death began to assume the character of certainty. he determined, nevertheless, to force a passage, if possible, to the box, and at least ascertain beyond a doubt the truth of his surmises. he pushed on for some time in a most pitiable state of anxiety, until, at length, he found the pathway utterly blocked up, and that there was no possibility of making any farther way by the course in which he had set out. overcome now by his feelings, he threw himself among the lumber in despair, and wept like a child. it was at this period that he heard the crash occasioned by the bottle which i had thrown down. fortunate, indeed, was it that the incident occurredfor, upon this incident, trivial as it appears, the thread of my destiny depended. many years elapsed, however, before i was aware of this fact. a natural shame and regret for his weakness and indecision prevented augustus from confiding to me at once what a more intimate and unreserved communion afterward induced him to reveal. upon finding his further progress in the hold impeded by obstacles which he could not overcome, he had resolved to abandon his attempt at reaching me, and return at once to the forecastle. before condemning him entirely on this head, the harassing circumstances which embarrassed him should be taken into consideration. the night was fast wearing away, and his absence from the forecastle might be discovered; and indeed would necessarily be so, if be should fail to get back to the berth by daybreak. his candle was expiring in the socket, and there would be the greatest difficulty in retracing his way to the hatchway in the dark. it must be allowed, too, that he had every good reason to believe me dead; in which event no benefit could result to me from his reaching the box, and a world of danger would be encountered to no purpose by himself. he had repeatedly called, and i had made him no answer. i had been now eleven days and nights with no more water than that contained in the jug which he had left with mea supply which it was not at all probable i had boarded in the beginning of my confinement, as i had every cause to expect a speedy release. the atmosphere of the hold, too, must have appeared to him, coming from the comparatively open air of the steerage, of a nature absolutely poisonous, and by far more intolerable than it had seemed to me upon my first taking up my quarters in the boxthe hatchways at that time having been constantly open for many months previous. add to these considerations that of the scene of bloodshed and terror so lately witnessed by my friend; his confinement, privations, and narrow escapes from death, together with the frail and equivocal tenure by which he still existedcircumstances all so well calculated to prostrate every energy of mindand the reader will be easily brought, as i have been, to regard his apparent falling off in friendship and in faith with sentiments rather of sorrow than of anger. the crash of the bottle was distinctly heard, yet augustus was not sure that it proceeded from the hold. the doubt, however, was sufficient inducement to persevere. he clambered up nearly to the orlop deck by means of the stowage, and then, watching for a lull in the pitchings of the vessel, he called out to me in as loud a tone as he could command, regardless, for the moment, of being overheard by the crew. it will be remembered that on this occasion the voice reached me, but i was so entirely overcome by violent agitation as to be incapable of reply. confident, now, that his worst apprehensions were well founded, be descended, with a view of getting back to the forecastle without loss of time. in his haste some small boxes were thrown down, the noise occasioned by which i heard, as will be recollected. he had made considerable progress on his return when the fall of the knife again caused him to hesitate. he retraced his steps immediately, and, clambering up the stowage a second time, called out my name, loudly as before, having watched for a lull. this time i found voice to answer. overjoyed at discovering me to be still alive, he now resolved to brave every difficulty and danger in reaching me. having extricated himself as quickly as possible from the labyrinth of lumber by which he was hemmed in, he at length struck into an opening which promised better, and finally, after a series of struggles, arrived at the box in a state of utter exhaustion. chapter vi the leading particulars of this narration were all that augustus communicated to me while we remained near the box. it was not until afterward that he entered fully into all the details. he was apprehensive of being missed, and i was wild with impatience to leave my detested place of confinement. we resolved to make our way at once to the hole in the bulkhead, near which i was to remain for the present, while he went through to reconnoiter. to leave tiger in the box was what neither of us could endure to think of, yet, how to act otherwise was the question. he now seemed to be perfectly quiet, and we could not even distinguish the sound of his breathing upon applying our ears closely to the box. i was convinced that he was dead, and determined to open the door. we found him lying at full length, apparently in a deep stupor, yet still alive. no time was to be lost, yet i could not bring myself to abandon an animal who had now been twice instrumental in saving my life, without some attempt at preserving him. we therefore dragged him along with us as well as we could, although with the greatest difficulty and fatigue; augustus, during part of the time, being forced to clamber over the impediments in our way with the huge dog in his armsa feat to which the feebleness of my frame rendered me totally inadequate. at length we succeeded in reaching the hole, when augustus got through, and tiger was pushed in afterward. all was found to be safe, and we did not fail to return sincere thanks to god for our deliverance from the imminent danger we had escaped. for the present, it was agreed that i should remain near the opening, through which my companion could readily supply me with a part of his daily provision, and where i could have the advantages of breathing an atmosphere comparatively pure. in explanation of some portions of this narrative, wherein i have spoken of the stowage of the brig, and which may appear ambiguous to some of my readers who may have seen a proper or regular stowage, i must here state that the manner in which this most important duty had been per formed on board the grampus was a most shameful piece of neglect on the part of captain barnard, who was by no means as careful or as experienced a seaman as the hazardous nature of the service on which he was employed would seem necessarily to demand. a proper stowage cannot be accomplished in a careless manner, and many most disastrous accidents, even within the limits of my own experience, have arisen from neglect or ignorance in this particular. coasting vessels, in the frequent hurry and bustle attendant upon taking in or discharging cargo, are the most liable to mishap from the want of a proper attention to stowage. the great point is to allow no possibility of the cargo or ballast shifting position even in the most violent rollings of the vessel. with this end, great attention must be paid, not only to the bulk taken in, but to the nature of the bulk, and whether there be a full or only a partial cargo. in most kinds of freight the stowage is accomplished by means of a screw. thus, in a load of tobacco or flour, the whole is screwed so tightly into the hold of the vessel that the barrels or hogsheads, upon discharging, are found to be completely flattened, and take some time to regain their original shape. this screwing, however, is resorted to principally with a view of obtaining more room in the hold; for in a full load of any such commodities as flour or tobacco, there can be no danger of any shifting whatever, at least none from which inconvenience can result. there have been instances, indeed, where this method of screwing has resulted in the most lamentable consequences, arising from a cause altogether distinct from the danger attendant upon a shifting of cargo. a load of cotton, for example, tightly screwed while in certain conditions, has been known, through the expansion of its bulk, to rend a vessel asunder at sea. there can be no doubt either that the same result would ensue in the case of tobacco, while undergoing its usual course of fermentation, were it not for the interstices consequent upon the rotundity of the hogsheads. it is when a partial cargo is received that danger is chiefly to be apprehended from shifting, and that precautions should be always taken to guard against such misfortune. only those who have encountered a violent gale of wind, or rather who have experienced the rolling of a vessel in a sudden calm after the gale, can form an idea of the tremendous force of the plunges, and of the consequent terrible impetus given to all loose articles in the vessel. it is then that the necessity of a cautious stowage, when there is a partial cargo, becomes obvious. when lying-to (especially with a small bead sail), a vessel which is not properly modelled in the bows is frequently thrown upon her beam-ends; this occurring even every fifteen or twenty minutes upon an average, yet without any serious consequences resulting, provided there be a proper stowage. if this, however, has not been strictly attended to, in the first of these heavy lurches the whole of the cargo tumbles over to the side of the vessel which lies upon the water, and, being thus prevented from regaining her equilibrium, as she would otherwise necessarily do, she is certain to fill in a few seconds and go down. it is not too much to say that at least one-half of the instances in which vessels have foundered in heavy gales at sea may be attributed to a shifting of cargo or of ballast. when a partial cargo of any kind is taken on board, the whole, after being first stowed as compactly as may be, should be covered with a layer of stout shifting-boards, extending completely across the vessel. upon these boards strong temporary stanchions should be erected, reaching to the timbers above, and thus securing every thing in its place. in cargoes consisting of grain, or any similar matter, additional precautions are requisite. a hold filled entirely with grain upon leaving port will be found not more than three fourths full upon reaching its destinationthis, too, although the freight, when measured bushel by bushel by the consignee, will overrun by a vast deal (on account of the swelling of the grain) the quantity consigned. this result is occasioned by settling during the voyage, and is the more perceptible in proportion to the roughness of the weather experienced. if grain loosely thrown in a vessel, then, is ever so well secured by shifting-boards and stanchions, it will be liable to shift in a long passage so greatly as to bring about the most distressing calamities. to prevent these, every method should be employed before leaving port to settle the cargo as much as possible; and for this there are many contrivances, among which may be mentioned the driving of wedges into the grain. even after all this is done, and unusual pains taken to secure the shifting-boards, no seaman who knows what he is about will feel altogether secure in a gale of any violence with a cargo of grain on board, and, least of all, with a partial cargo. yet there are hundreds of our coasting vessels, and, it is likely, many more from the ports of europe, which sail daily with partial cargoes, even of the most dangerous species, and without any precaution whatever. the wonder is that no more accidents occur than do actually happen. a lamentable instance of this heedlessness occurred to my knowledge in the case of captain joel rice of the schooner firefly, which sailed from richmond, virginia, to madeira, with a cargo of corn, in the year 1825. the captain had gone many voyages without serious accident, although he was in the habit of paying no attention whatever to his stowage, more than to secure it in the ordinary manner. he had never before sailed with a cargo of grain, and on this occasion had the corn thrown on board loosely, when it did not much more than half fill the vessel. for the first portion of the voyage he met with nothing more than light breezes; but when within a day's sail of madeira there came on a strong gale from the n. n. e. which forced him to lie-to. he brought the schooner to the wind under a double-reefed foresail alone, when she rode as well as any vessel could be expected to do, and shipped not a drop of water. toward night the gale somewhat abated, and she rolled with more unsteadiness than before, but still did very well, until a heavy lurch threw her upon her beam-ends to starboard. the corn was then heard to shift bodily, the force of the movement bursting open the main hatchway. the vessel went down like a shot. this happened within hail of a small sloop from madeira, which picked up one of the crew (the only person saved), and which rode out the gale in perfect security, as indeed a jolly boat might have done under proper management. the stowage on board the grampus was most clumsily done, if stowage that could be called which was little better than a promiscuous huddling together of oil-casks* and ship furniture. i have already spoken of the condition of articles in the hold. on the orlop deck there was space enough for my body (as i have stated) between the oil-casks and the upper deck; a space was left open around the main hatchway; and several other large spaces were left in the stowage. near the hole cut through the bulkhead by augustus there was room enough for an entire cask, and in this space i found myself comfortably situated for the present. * whaling vessels are usually fitted with iron oil-tankswhy the grampus was not i have never been able to ascertain. by the time my friend had got safely into the berth, and readjusted his handcuffs and the rope, it was broad daylight. we had made a narrow escape indeed; for scarcely had he arranged all matters, when the mate came below, with dirk peters and the cook. they talked for some time about the vessel from the cape verds, and seemed to be excessively anxious for her appearance. at length the cook came to the berth in which augustus was lying, and seated himself in it near the head. i could see and hear every thing from my hiding-place, for the piece cut out had not been put back, and i was in momentary expectation that the negro would fall against the pea-jacket, which was hung up to conceal the aperture, in which case all would have been discovered, and our lives would, no doubt, have been instantly sacrificed. our good fortune prevailed, however; and although he frequently touched it as the vessel rolled, he never pressed against it sufficiently to bring about a discovery. the bottom of the jacket had been carefully fastened to the bulkhead, so that the hole might not be seen by its swinging to one side. all this time tiger was lying in the foot of the berth, and appeared to have recovered in some measure his faculties, for i could see him occasionally open his eyes and draw a long breath. after a few minutes the mate and cook went above, leaving dirk peters behind, who, as soon as they were gone, came and sat himself down in the place just occupied by the mate. he began to talk very sociably with augustus, and we could now see that the greater part of his apparent intoxication, while the two others were with him, was a feint. he answered all my companion's questions with perfect freedom; told him that he had no doubt of his father's having been picked up, as there were no less than five sail in sight just before sundown on the day he was cut adrift; and used other language of a consolatory nature, which occasioned me no less surprise than pleasure. indeed, i began to entertain hopes, that through the instrumentality of peters we might be finally enabled to regain possession of the brig, and this idea i mentioned to augustus as soon as i found an opportunity. he thought the matter possible, but urged the necessity of the greatest caution in making the attempt, as the conduct of the hybrid appeared to be instigated by the most arbitrary caprice alone; and, indeed, it was difficult to say if be was at any moment of sound mind. peters went upon deck in about an hour, and did not return again until noon, when he brought augustus a plentiful supply of junk beef and pudding. of this, when we were left alone, i partook heartily, without returning through the hole. no one else came down into the forecastle during the day, and at night, i got into augustus' berth, where i slept soundly and sweetly until nearly daybreak, when he awakened me upon hearing a stir upon deck, and i regained my hiding-place as quickly as possible. when the day was fully broke, we found that tiger had recovered his strength almost entirely, and gave no indications of hydrophobia, drinking a little water that was offered him with great apparent eagerness. during the day he regained all his former vigour and appetite. his strange conduct had been brought on, no doubt, by the deleterious quality of the air of the hold, and had no connexion with canine madness. i could not sufficiently rejoice that i had persisted in bringing him with me from the box. this day was the thirtieth of june, and the thirteenth since the grampus made sad from nantucket. on the second of july the mate came below drunk as usual, and in an excessively good-humor. he came to augustus's berth, and, giving him a slap on the back, asked him if he thought he could behave himself if he let him loose, and whether he would promise not to be going into the cabin again. to this, of course, my friend answered in the affirmative, when the ruffian set him at liberty, after making him drink from a flask of rum which he drew from his coat-pocket. both now went on deck, and i did not see augustus for about three hours. he then came below with the good news that he had obtained permission to go about the brig as be pleased anywhere forward of the mainmast, and that he had been ordered to sleep, as usual, in the forecastle. he brought me, too, a good dinner, and a plentiful supply of water. the brig was still cruising for the vessel from the cape verds, and a sail was now in sight, which was thought to be the one in question. as the events of the ensuing eight days were of little importance, and had no direct bearing upon the main incidents of my narrative, i will here throw them into the form of a journal, as i do not wish to omit them altogether. july 3.augustus furnished me with three blankets, with which i contrived a comfortable bed in my hiding-place. no one came below, except my companion, during the day. tiger took his station in the berth just by the aperture, and slept heavily, as if not yet entirely recovered from the effects of his sickness. toward night a flaw of wind struck the brig before sail could be taken in, and very nearly capsized her. the puff died away immediately, however, and no damage was done beyond the splitting of the foretopsail. dirk peters treated augustus all this day with great kindness and entered into a long conversation with him respecting the pacific ocean, and the islands he had visited in that region. he asked him whether be would not like to go with the mutineers on a kind of exploring and pleasure voyage in those quarters, and said that the men were gradually coming over to the mate's views. to this augustus thought it best to reply that he would be glad to go on such an adventure, since nothing better could be done, and that any thing was preferable to a piratical life. july 4.the vessel in sight proved to be a small brig from liverpool, and was allowed to pass unmolested. augustus spent most of his time on deck, with a view of obtaining all the information in his power respecting the intentions of the mutineers. they had frequent and violent quarrels among themselves, in one of which a harpooner, jim bonner, was thrown overboard. the party of the mate was gaining ground. jim bonner belonged to the cook's gang, of which peters was a partisan. july 5.about daybreak there came on a stiff breeze from the west, which at noon freshened into a gale, so that the brig could carry nothing more than her trysail and foresail. in taking in the foretopsail, simms, one of the common hands, and belonging also to the cook's gang, fell overboard, being very much in liquor, and was drownedno attempt being made to save him. the whole number of persons on board was now thirteen, to wit: dirk peters; seymour, the of the cook's party; the mate, whose name i never learned; absalom party;besides augustus and myself. july 6.the gale lasted all this day, blowing in heavy squalls, accompanied with rain. the brig took in a good deal of water through her seams, and one of the pumps was kept continually going, augustus being forced to take his turn. just at twilight a large ship passed close by us, without having been discovered until within hail. the ship was supposed to be the one for which the mutineers were on the lookout. the mate hailed her, but the reply was drowned in the roaring of the gale. at eleven, a sea was shipped amidships, which tore away a great portion of the larboard bulwarks, and did some other slight damage. toward morning the weather moderated, and at sunrise there was very little wind. july 7.there was a heavy swell running all this day, during which the brig, being light, rolled excessively, and many articles broke loose in the hold, as i could hear distinctly from my hiding-place. i suffered a great deal from sea-sickness. peters had a long conversation this day with augustus, and told him that two of his gang, greely and allen, had gone over to the mate, and were resolved to turn pirates. he put several questions to augustus which he did not then exactly understand. during a part of this evening the leak gained upon the vessel; and little could be done to remedy it, as it was occasioned by the brigs straining, and taking in the water through her seams. a sail was thrummed, and got under the bows, which aided us in some measure, so that we began to gain upon the leak. july 8.a light breeze sprang up at sunrise from the eastward, when the mate headed the brig to the southwest, with the intention of making some of the west india islands in pursuance of his piratical designs. no opposition was made by peters or the cookat least none in the hearing of augustus. all idea of taking the vessel from the cape verds was abandoned. the leak was now easily kept under by one pump going every three quarters of an hour. the sail was drawn from beneath the bows. spoke two small schooners during the day. july 9.fine weather. all hands employed in repairing bulwarks. peters had again a long conversation with augustus, and spoke more plainly than he had done heretofore. he said nothing should induce him to come into the mate's views, and even hinted his intention of taking the brig out of his hands. he asked my friend if he could depend upon his aid in such case, to which augustus said, "yes," without hesitation. peters then said he would sound the others of his party upon the subject, and went away. during the remainder of the day augustus had no opportunity of speaking with him privately. chapter vii july 10.spoke a brig from rio, bound to norfolk. weather hazy, with a light baffling wind from the eastward. to-day hartman rogers died, having been attacked on the eighth with spasms after drinking a glass of grog. this man was of the cook's party, and one upon whom peters placed his main reliance. he told augustus that he believed the mate had poisoned him, and that he expected, if he did not be on the look-out, his own turn would come shortly. there were now only himself, jones, and the cook belonging to his own gangon the other side there were five. he had spoken to jones about taking the command from the mate; but the project having been coolly received, he had been deterred from pressing the matter any further, or from saying any thing to the cook. it was well, as it happened, that he was so prudent, for in the afternoon the cook expressed his determination of siding with the mate, and went over formally to that party; while jones took an opportunity of quarrelling with peters, and hinted that he would let the mate know of the plan in agitation. there was now, evidently, no time to be lost, and peters expressed his determination of attempting to take the vessel at all hazards, provided augustus would lend him his aid. my friend at once assured him of his willingness to enter into any plan for that purpose, and, thinking the opportunity a favourable one, made known the fact of my being on board. at this the hybrid was not more astonished than delighted, as he had no reliance whatever upon jones, whom he already considered as belonging to the party of the mate. they went below immediately, when augustus called to me by name, and peters and myself were soon made acquainted. it was agreed that we should attempt to retake the vessel upon the first good opportunity, leaving jones altogether out of our councils. in the event of success, we were to run the brig into the first port that offered, and deliver her up. the desertion of his party had frustrated peters' design of going into the pacifican adventure which could not be accomplished without a crew, and he depended upon either getting acquitted upon trial, on the score of insanity (which he solemnly avowed had actuated him in lending his aid to the mutiny), or upon obtaining a pardon, if found guilty, through the representations of augustus and myself. our deliberations were interrupted for the present by the cry of, "all hands take in sail," and peters and augustus ran up on deck. as usual, the crew were nearly all drunk; and, before sail could be properly taken in, a violent squall laid the brig on her beam-ends. by keeping her away, however, she righted, having shipped a good deal of water. scarcely was everything secure, when another squall took the vessel, and immediately afterward anotherno damage being done. there was every appearance of a gale of wind, which, indeed, shortly came on, with great fury, from the northward and westward. all was made as snug as possible, and we laid-to, as usual, under a close-reefed foresail. as night drew on, the wind increased in violence, with a remarkably heavy sea. peters now came into the forecastle with augustus, and we resumed our deliberations. we agreed that no opportunity could be more favourable than the present for carrying our designs into effect, as an attempt at such a moment would never be anticipated. as the brig was snugly laid-to, there would be no necessity of manoeuvring her until good weather, when, if we succeeded in our attempt, we might liberate one, or perhaps two of the men, to aid us in taking her into port. the main difficulty was the great disproportion in our forces. there were only three of us, and in the cabin there were nine. all the arms on board, too, were in their possession, with the exception of a pair of small pistols which peters had concealed about his person, and the large seaman's knife which he always wore in the waistband of his pantaloons. from certain indications, toosuch, for example, as there being no such thing as an axe or a handspike lying in their customary placeswe began to fear that the mate had his suspicions, at least in regard to peters, and that he would let slip no opportunity of getting rid of him. it was clear, indeed, that what we should determine to do could not be done too soon. still the odds were too much against us to allow of our proceeding without the greatest caution. peters proposed that he should go up on deck, and enter into conversation with the watch (allen), when he would be able to throw him into the sea without trouble, and without making any disturbance, by seizing a good opportunity, that augustus and myself should then come up, and endeavour to provide ourselves with some kind of weapons from the deck, and that we should then make a rush together, and secure the companion-way before any opposition could be offered. i objected to this, because i could not believe that the mate (who was a cunning fellow in all matters which did not affect his superstitious prejudices) would suffer himself to be so easily entrapped. the very fact of there being a watch on deck at all was sufficient proof that he was upon the alert,it not being usual except in vessels where discipline is most rigidly enforced, to station a watch on deck when a vessel is lying-to in a gale of wind. as i address myself principally, if not altogether, to persons who have never been to sea, it may be as well to state the exact condition of a vessel under such circumstances. lying-to, or, in sea-parlance, "laying-to," is a measure resorted to for various purposes, and effected in various manners. in moderate weather it is frequently done with a view of merely bringing the vessel to a stand-still, to wait for another vessel or any similar object. if the vessel which lies-to is under full sail, the manoeuvre is usually accomplished by throwing round some portion of her sails, so as to let the wind take them aback, when she becomes stationary. but we are now speaking of lying-to in a gale of wind. this is done when the wind is ahead, and too violent to admit of carrying sail without danger of capsizing; and sometimes even when the wind is fair, but the sea too heavy for the vessel to be put before it. if a vessel be suffered to scud before the wind in a very heavy sea, much damage is usually done her by the shipping of water over her stern, and sometimes by the violent plunges she makes forward. this manoeuvre, then, is seldom resorted to in such case, unless through necessity. when the vessel is in a leaky condition she is often put before the wind even in the heaviest seas; for, when lying-to, her seams are sure to be greatly opened by her violent straining, and it is not so much the case when scudding. often, too, it becomes necessary to scud a vessel, either when the blast is so exceedingly furious as to tear in pieces the sail which is employed with a view of bringing her head to the wind, or when, through the false modelling of the frame or other causes, this main object cannot be effected. vessels in a gale of wind are laid-to in different manners, according to their peculiar construction. some lie-to best under a foresail, and this, i believe, is the sail most usually employed. large square-rigged vessels have sails for the express purpose, called storm-staysails. but the jib is occasionally employed by itself,sometimes the jib and foresail, or a double-reefed foresail, and not unfrequently the after-sails, are made use of. foretopsails are very often found to answer the purpose better than any other species of sail. the grampus was generally laid-to under a close-reefed foresail. when a vessel is to be laid-to, her head is brought up to the wind just so nearly as to fill the sail under which she lies when hauled flat aft, that is, when brought diagonally across the vessel. this being done, the bows point within a few degrees of the direction from which the wind issues, and the windward bow of course receives the shock of the waves. in this situation a good vessel will ride out a very heavy gale of wind without shipping a drop of water, and without any further attention being requisite on the part of the crew. the helm is usually lashed down, but this is altogether unnecessary (except on account of the noise it makes when loose), for the rudder has no effect upon the vessel when lying-to. indeed, the helm had far better be left loose than lashed very fast, for the rudder is apt to be torn off by heavy seas if there be no room for the helm to play. as long as the sail holds, a well modelled vessel will maintain her situation, and ride every sea, as if instinct with life and reason. if the violence of the wind, however, should tear the sail into pieces (a feat which it requires a perfect hurricane to accomplish under ordinary circumstances), there is then imminent danger. the vessel falls off from the wind, and, coming broadside to the sea, is completely at its mercy: the only resource in this case is to put her quietly before the wind, letting her scud until some other sail can be set. some vessels will lie-to under no sail whatever, but such are not to be trusted at sea. but to return from this digression. it had never been customary with the mate to have any watch on deck when lying-to in a gale of wind, and the fact that he had now one, coupled with the circumstance of the missing axes and handspikes, fully convinced us that the crew were too well on the watch to be taken by surprise in the manner peters had suggested. something, however, was to be done, and that with as little delay as practicable, for there could be no doubt that a suspicion having been once entertained against peters, he would be sacrificed upon the earliest occasion, and one would certainly be either found or made upon the breaking of the gale. augustus now suggested that if peters could contrive to remove, under any pretext, the piece of chain-cable which lay over the trap in the stateroom, we might possibly be able to come upon them unawares by means of the hold; but a little reflection convinced us that the vessel rolled and pitched too violently for any attempt of that nature. by good fortune i at length hit upon the idea of working upon the superstitious terrors and guilty conscience of the mate. it will be remembered that one of the crew, hartman rogers, had died during the morning, having been attacked two days before with spasms after drinking some spirits and water. peters had expressed to us his opinion that this man had been poisoned by the mate, and for this belief he had reasons, so he said, which were incontrovertible, but which he could not be pre. vailed upon to explain to usthis wayward refusal being only in keeping with other points of his singular character. but whether or not he had any better grounds for suspecting the mate than we had ourselves, we were easily led to fall in with his suspicion, and determined to act accordingly. rogers had died about eleven in the forenoon, in violent convulsions; and the corpse presented in a few minutes after death one of the most horrid and loathsome spectacles i ever remember to have seen. the stomach was swollen immensely, like that of a man who has been drowned and lain under water for many weeks. the hands were in the same condition, while the face was shrunken, shrivelled, and of a chalky whiteness, except where relieved by two or three glaring red blotches like those occasioned by the erysipelas: one of these blotches extended diagonally across the face, completely covering up an eye as if with a band of red velvet. in this disgusting condition the body had been brought up from the cabin at noon to be thrown overboard, when the mate getting a glimpse of it (for he now saw it for the first time), and being either touched with remorse for his crime or struck with terror at so horrible a sight, ordered the men to sew the body up in its hammock, and allow it the usual rites of sea-burial. having given these directions, he went below, as if to avoid any further sight of his victim. while preparations were making to obey his orders, the gale came on with great fury, and the design was abandoned for the present. the corpse, left to itself, was washed into the larboard scuppers, where it still lay at the time of which i speak, floundering about with the furious lurches of the brig. having arranged our plan, we set about putting it in execution as speedily as possible. peters went upon deck, and, as he had anticipated, was immediately accosted by allen, who appeared to be stationed more as a watch upon the forecastle than for any other purpose. the fate of this villain, however, was speedily and silently decided; for peters, approaching him in a careless manner, as if about to address him, seized him by the throat, and, before he could utter a single cry, tossed him over the bulwarks. he then called to us, and we came up. our first precaution was to look about for something with which to arm ourselves, and in doing this we had to proceed with great care, for it was impossible to stand on deck an instant without holding fast, and violent seas broke over the vessel at every plunge forward. it was indispensable, too, that we should be quick in our operations, for every minute we expected the mate to be up to set the pumps going, as it was evident the brig must be taking in water very fast. after searching about for some time, we could find nothing more fit for our purpose than the two pump-handles, one of which augustus took, and i the other. having secured these, we stripped off the shirt of the corpse and dropped the body overboard. peters and myself then went below, leaving augustus to watch upon deck, where he took his station just where allen had been placed, and with his back to the cabin companionway, so that, if any of the mates gang should come up, he might suppose it was the watch. as soon as i got below i commenced disguising myself so as to represent the corpse of rogers. the shirt which we had taken from the body aided us very much, for it was of singular form and character, and easily recognizablea kind of smock, which the deceased wore over his other clothing. it was a blue stockinett, with large white stripes running across. having put this on, i proceeded to equip myself with a false stomach, in imitation of the horrible deformity of the swollen corpse. this was soon effected by means of stuffing with some bedclothes. i then gave the same appearance to my hands by drawing on a pair of white woollen mittens, and filling them in with any kind of rags that offered themselves. peters then arranged my face, first rubbing it well over with white chalk, and afterward blotching it with blood, which he took from a cut in his finger. the streak across the eye was not forgotten and presented a most shocking appearance. chapter viii as i viewed myself in a fragment of looking-glass which hung up in the cabin, and by the dim light of a kind of battle-lantern, i was so impressed with a sense of vague awe at my appearance, and at the recollection of the terrific reality which i was thus representing, that i was seized with a violent tremour, and could scarcely summon resolution to go on with my part. it was necessary, however, to act with decision, and peters and myself went upon deck. we there found everything safe, and, keeping close to the bulwarks, the three of us crept to the cabin companion-way. it was only partially closed, precautions having been taken to prevent its being suddenly pushed to from without, by means of placing billets of wood on the upper step so as to interfere with the shutting. we found no difficulty in getting a full view of the interior of the cabin through the cracks where the hinges were placed. it now proved to have been very fortunate for us that we had not attempted to take them by surprise, for they were evidently on the alert. only one was asleep, and he lying just at the foot of the companion-ladder, with a musket by his side. the rest were seated on several mattresses, which had been taken from the berths and thrown on the floor. they were engaged in earnest conversation; and although they had been carousing, as appeared from two empty jugs, with some tin tumblers which lay about, they were not as much intoxicated as usual. all had knives, one or two of them pistols, and a great many muskets were lying in a berth close at hand. we listened to their conversation for some time before we could make up our minds how to act, having as yet resolved on nothing determinate, except that we would attempt to paralyze their exertions, when we should attack them, by means of the apparition of rogers. they were discussing their piratical plans, in which all we could hear distinctly was, that they would unite with the crew of a schooner hornet, and, if possible, get the schooner herself into their possession preparatory to some attempt on a large scale, the particulars of which could not be made out by either of us. one of the men spoke of peters, when the mate replied to him in a low voice which could not be distinguished, and afterward added more loudly, that "he could not understand his being so much forward with the captain's brat in the forecastle, and he thought the sooner both of them were overboard the better." to this no answer was made, but we could easily perceive that the hint was well received by the whole party, and more particularly by jones. at this period i was excessively agitated, the more so as i could see that neither augustus nor peters could determine how to act. i made up my mind, however, to sell my life as dearly as possible, and not to suffer myself to be overcome by any feelings of trepidation. the tremendous noise made by the roaring of the wind in the rigging, and the washing of the sea over the deck, prevented us from hearing what was said, except during momentary lulls. in one of these, we all distinctly heard the mate tell one of the men to "go forward, have an eye upon them, for he wanted no such secret doings on board the brig." it was well for us that the pitching of the vessel at this moment was so violent as to prevent this order from being carried into instant execution. the cook got up from his mattress to go for us, when a tremendous lurch, which i thought would carry away the masts, threw him headlong against one of the larboard stateroom doors, bursting it open, and creating a good deal of other confusion. luckily, neither of our party was thrown from his position, and we had time to make a precipitate retreat to the forecastle, and arrange a hurried plan of action before the messenger made his appearance, or rather before he put his head out of the companion-hatch, for he did not come on deck. from this station he could not notice the absence of allen, and he accordingly bawled out, as if to him, repeating the orders of the mate. peters cried out, "ay, ay," in a disguised voice, and the cook immediately went below, without entertaining a suspicion that all was not right. my two companions now proceeded boldly aft and down into the cabin, peters closing the door after him in the same manner he had found it. the mate received them with feigned cordiality, and told augustus that, since he had behaved himself so well of late, he might take up his quarters in the cabin and be one of them for the future. he then poured him out a tumbler half full of rum, and made him drink it. all this i saw and heard, for i followed my friends to the cabin as soon as the door was shut, and took up my old point of observation. i had brought with me the two pump-handles, one of which i secured near the companion-way, to be ready for use when required. i now steadied myself as well as possible so as to have a good view of all that was passing within, and endeavoured to nerve myself to the task of descending among the mutineers when peters should make a signal to me, as agreed upon. presently he contrived to turn the conversation upon the bloody deeds of the mutiny, and by degrees led the men to talk of the thousand superstitions which are so universally current among seamen. i could not make out all that was said, but i could plainly see the effects of the conversation in the countenances of those present. the mate was evidently much agitated, and presently, when some one mentioned the terrific appearance of rogers' corpse, i thought he was upon the point of swooning. peters now asked him if he did not think it would be better to have the body thrown overboard at once as it was too horrible a sight to see it floundering about in the scuppers. at this the villain absolutely gasped for breath, and turned his head slowly round upon his companions, as if imploring some one to go up and perform the task. no one, however, stirred, and it was quite evident that the whole party were wound up to the highest pitch of nervous excitement. peters now made me the signal. i immediately threw open the door of the companion-way, and, descending, without uttering a syllable, stood erect in the midst of the party. the intense effect produced by this sudden apparition is not at all to be wondered at when the various circumstances are taken into consideration. usually, in cases of a similar nature, there is left in the mind of the spectator some glimmering of doubt as to the reality of the vision before his eyes; a degree of hope, however feeble, that he is the victim of chicanery, and that the apparition is not actually a visitant from the old world of shadows. it is not too much to say that such remnants of doubt have been at the bottom of almost every such visitation, and that the appalling horror which has sometimes been brought about, is to be attributed, even in the cases most in point, and where most suffering has been experienced, more to a kind of anticipative horror, lest the apparition might possibly be real, than to an unwavering belief in its reality. but, in the present instance, it will be seen immediately, that in the minds of the mutineers there was not even the shadow of a basis upon which to rest a doubt that the apparition of rogers was indeed a revivification of his disgusting corpse, or at least its spiritual image. the isolated situation of the brig, with its entire inaccessibility on account of the gale, confined the apparently possible means of deception within such narrow and definite limits, that they must have thought themselves enabled to survey them all at a glance. they had now been at sea twenty-four days, without holding more than a speaking communication with any vessel whatever. the whole of the crew, tooat least all whom they had the most remote reason for suspecting to be on boardwere assembled in the cabin, with the exception of allen, the watch; and his gigantic stature (be was six feet six inches high) was too familiar in their eyes to permit the notion that he was the apparition before them to enter their minds even for an instant. add to these considerations the awe-inspiring nature of the tempest, and that of the conversation brought about by peters; the deep impression which the loathsomeness of the actual corpse had made in the morning upon the imaginations of the men; the excellence of the imitation in my person, and the uncertain and wavering light in which they beheld me, as the glare of the cabin lantern, swinging violently to and fro, fell dubiously and fitfully upon my figure, and there will be no reason to wonder that the deception had even more than the entire effect which we had anticipated. the mate sprang up from the mattress on which he was lying, and, without uttering a syllable, fell back, stone dead, upon the cabin floor, and was hurled to the leeward like a log by a heavy roll of the brig. of the remaining seven, there were but three who had at first any degree of presence of mind. the four others sat for some time rooted apparently to the floor, the most pitiable objects of horror and utter despair my eyes ever encountered. the only opposition we experienced at all was from the cook, john hunt, and richard parker; but they made but a feeble and irresolute defence. the two former were shot instantly by peters, and i felled parker with a blow on the head from the pump-handle which i had brought with me. in the meantime, augustus seized one of the muskets lying on the floor now but three remaining; but by this time they had become aroused from their lethargy, and perhaps began to see that a deception had been practised upon them, for they fought with great resolution and fury, and, but for the immense muscular strength of peters, might have the floor, stabbed him in several places along the right arm, and would no doubt have soon dispatched him (as neither peters nor myself could immediately get rid of our own antagonists) had it not been for the timely aid of a friend, upon whose assistance we, surely, had never depended. this friend was no other than tiger. with a low growl, he bounded into the cabin, at a most critical moment for augustus, and throwing himself upon jones, pinned him to the floor in an instant. my friend, however, was now too much injured to render us any aid whatever, and i was so encumbered with my disguise that i could do but little. the dog would not leave his hold upon the throat of jonespeters, nevertheless, was far more than a match for the two men who remained, and would, no doubt, have dispatched them sooner, had it not been for the narrow space in which he had to act, and the tremendous lurches of the vessel. presently he was enabled to get hold of a heavy stool, several of which lay about the floor. with this he beat out the brains of greely as he was in the act of discharging a musket at me, and immediately afterward a roll of the brig throwing him in contact with hicks, he seized him by the throat, and, by dint of sheer strength, strangled him instantaneously. thus, in far less time than i have taken to tell it, we found ourselves masters of the brig. the only person of our opponents who was left alive was richard parker. this man, it will be remembered, i had knocked down with a blow from the pump-handle at the commencement of the attack. he now lay motionless by the door of the shattered stateroom; but, upon peters touching him with his foot, he spoke, and entreated for mercy. his head was only slightly cut, and otherwise he had received no injury, having been merely stunned by the blow. he now got up, and, for the present, we secured his hands behind his back. the dog was still growling over jones; but, upon examination, we found him completely dead, the blood issuing in a stream from a deep wound in the throat, inflicted, no doubt, by the sharp teeth of the animal. it was now about one o'clock in the morning, and the wind was still blowing tremendously. the brig evidently laboured much more than usual, and it became absolutely necessary that something should be done with a view of easing her in some measure. at almost every roll to leeward she shipped a sea, several of which came partially down into the cabin during our scuffle, the hatchway having been left open by myself when i descended. the entire range of bulwarks to larboard had been swept away, as well as the caboose, together with the jollyboat from the counter. the creaking and working of the mainmast, too, gave indication that it was nearly sprung. to make room for more stowage in the afterhold, the heel of this mast had been stepped between decks (a very reprehensible practice, occasionally resorted to by ignorant ship-builders), so that it was in imminent danger of working from its step. but, to crown all our difficulties, we plummed the well, and found no less than seven feet of water. leaving the bodies of the crew lying in the cabin, we got to work immediately at the pumpsparker, of course, being set at liberty to assist us in the labour. augustus's arm was bound up as well as we could effect it, and he did what he could, but that was not much. however, we found that we could just manage to keep the leak from gaining upon us by having one pump constantly going. as there were only four of us, this was severe labour; but we endeavoured to keep up our spirits, and looked anxiously for daybreak, when we hoped to lighten the brig by cutting away the mainmast. in this manner we passed a night of terrible anxiety and fatigue, and, when the day at length broke, the gale had neither abated in the least, nor were there any signs of its abating. we now dragged the bodies on deck and threw them overboard. our next care was to get rid of the mainmast. the necessary preparations having been made, peters cut away at the mast (having found axes in the cabin), while the rest of us stood by the stays and lanyards. as the brig gave a tremendous lee-lurch, the word was given to cut away the weather-lanyards, which being done, the whole mass of wood and rigging plunged into the sea, clear of the brig, and without doing any material injury. we now found that the vessel did not labour quite as much as before, but our situation was still exceedingly precarious, and in spite of the utmost exertions, we could not gain upon the leak without the aid of both pumps. the little assistance which augustus could render us was not really of any importance. to add to our distress, a heavy sea, striking the brig to the windward, threw her off several points from the wind, and, before she could regain her position, another broke completely over her, and hurled her full upon her beam-ends. the ballast now shifted in a mass to leeward (the stowage had been knocking about perfectly at random for some time), and for a few moments we thought nothing could save us from capsizing. presently, however, we partially righted; but the ballast still retaining its place to larboard, we lay so much along that it was useless to think of working the pumps, which indeed we could not have done much longer in any case, as our hands were entirely raw with the excessive labour we had undergone, and were bleeding in the most horrible manner. contrary to parker's advice, we now proceeded to cut away the foremast, and at length accomplished it after much difficulty, owing to the position in which we lay. in going overboard the wreck took with it the bowsprit, and left us a complete hulk. so far we had had reason to rejoice in the escape of our longboat, which had received no damage from any of the huge seas which had come on board. but we had not long to congratulate ourselves; for the foremast having gone, and, of course, the foresail with it, by which the brig had been steadied, every sea now made a complete breach over us, and in five minutes our deck was swept from stern to stern, the longboat and starboard bulwarks torn off, and even the windlass shattered into fragments. it was, indeed, hardly possible for us to be in a more pitiable condition. at noon there seemed to be some slight appearance of the gale's abating, but in this we were sadly disappointed, for it only lulled for a few minutes to blow with redoubled fury. about four in the afternoon it was utterly impossible to stand up against the violence of the blast; and, as the night closed in upon us, i had not a shadow of hope that the vessel would hold together until morning. by midnight we had settled very deep in the water, which was now up to the orlop deck. the rudder went soon afterward, the sea which tore it away lifting the after portion of the brig entirely from the water, against which she thumped in her descent with such a concussion as would be occasioned by going ashore. we had all calculated that the rudder would hold its own to the last, as it was unusually strong, being rigged as i have never seen one rigged either before or since. down its main timber there ran a succession of stout iron hooks, and others in the same manner down the stern-post. through these hooks there extended a very thick wrought-iron rod, the rudder being thus held to the stern-post and swinging freely on the rod. the tremendous force of the sea which tore it off may be estimated by the fact, that the hooks in the stern-post, which ran entirely through it, being clinched on the inside, were drawn every one of them completely out of the solid wood. we had scarcely time to draw breath after the violence of this shock, when one of the most tremendous waves i had then ever known broke right on board of us, sweeping the companion-way clear off, bursting in the hatchways, and firing every inch of the vessel with water. chapter ix luckily, just before night, all four of us had lashed ourselves firmly to the fragments of the windlass, lying in this manner as flat upon the deck as possible. this precaution alone saved us from destruction. as it was, we were all more or less stunned by the immense weight of water which tumbled upon us, and which did not roll from above us until we were nearly exhausted. as soon as i could recover breath, i called aloud to my companions. augustus alone replied, saying: "it is all over with us, and may god have mercy upon our souls!" by-and-by both the others were enabled to speak, when they exhorted us to take courage, as there was still hope; it being impossible, from the nature of the cargo, that the brig could go down, and there being every chance that the gale would blow over by the morning. these words inspired me with new life; for, strange as it may seem, although it was obvious that a vessel with a cargo of empty oil-casks would not sink, i had been hitherto so confused in mind as to have overlooked this consideration altogether; and the danger which i had for some time regarded as the most imminent was that of foundering. as hope revived within me, i made use of every opportunity to strengthen the lashings which held me to the remains of the windlass, and in this occupation i soon discovered that my companions were also busy. the night was as dark as it could possibly be, and the horrible shrieking din and confusion which surrounded us it is useless to attempt describing. our deck lay level with the sea, or rather we were encircled with a towering ridge of foam, a portion of which swept over us even instant. it is not too much to say that our heads were not fairly out of the water more than one second in three. although we lay close together, no one of us could see the other, or, indeed, any portion of the brig itself, upon which we were so tempestuously hurled about. at intervals we called one to the other, thus endeavouring to keep alive hope, and render consolation and encouragement to such of us as stood most in need of it. the feeble condition of augustus made him an object of solicitude with us all; and as, from the lacerated condition of his right arm, it must have been impossible for him to secure his lashings with any degree of firmness, we were in momentary expectation of finding that he had gone overboardyet to render him aid was a thing altogether out of the question. fortunately, his station was more secure than that of any of the rest of us; for the upper part of his body lying just beneath a portion of the shattered windlass, the seas, as they tumbled in upon him, were greatly broken in their violence. in any other situation than this (into which he had been accidentally thrown after having lashed himself in a very exposed spot) he must inevitably have perished before morning. owing to the brig's lying so much along, we were all less liable to be washed off than otherwise would have been the case. the heel, as i have before stated, was to larboard, about one half of the deck being constantly under water. the seas, therefore, which struck us to starboard were much broken, by the vessel's side, only reaching us in fragments as we lay flat on our faces; while those which came from larboard being what are called back-water seas, and obtaining little hold upon us on account of our posture, had not sufficient force to drag us from our fastenings. in this frightful situation we lay until the day broke so as to show us more fully the horrors which surrounded us. the brig was a mere log, rolling about at the mercy of every wave; the gale was upon the increase, if any thing, blowing indeed a complete hurricane, and there appeared to us no earthly prospect of deliverance. for several hours we held on in silence, expecting every moment that our lashings would either give way, that the remains of the windlass would go by the board, or that some of the huge seas, which roared in every direction around us and above us, would drive the hulk so far beneath the water that we should be drowned before it could regain the surface. by the mercy of god, however, we were preserved from these imminent dangers, and about midday were cheered by the light of the blessed sun. shortly afterward we could perceive a sensible diminution in the force of the wind, when, now for the first time since the latter part of the evening before, augustus spoke, asking peters, who lay closest to him, if he thought there was any possibility of our being saved. as no reply was at first made to this question, we all concluded that the hybrid had been drowned where he lay; but presently, to our great joy, he spoke, although very feebly, saying that he was in great pain, being so cut by the tightness of his lashings across the stomach, that he must either find means of loosening them or perish, as it was impossible that he could endure his misery much longer. this occasioned us great distress, as it was altogether useless to think of aiding him in any manner while the sea continued washing over us as it did. we exhorted him to bear his sufferings with fortitude, and promised to seize the first opportunity which should offer itself to relieve him. he replied that it would soon be too late; that it would be all over with him before we could help him; and then, after moaning for some minutes, lay silent, when we concluded that he had perished. as the evening drew on, the sea had fallen so much that scarcely more than one wave broke over the hulk from windward in the course of five minutes, and the wind had abated a great deal, although still blowing a severe gale. i had not heard any of my companions speak for hours, and now called to augustus. he replied, although very feebly, so that i could not distinguish what he said. i then spoke to peters and to parker, neither of whom returned any answer. shortly after this period i fell into a state of partial insensibility, during which the most pleasing images floated in my imagination; such as green trees, waving meadows of ripe grain, processions of dancing girls, troops of cavalry, and other phantasies. i now remember that, in all which passed before my mind's eye, motion was a predominant idea. thus, i never fancied any stationary object, such as a house, a mountain, or any thing of that kind; but windmills, ships, large birds, balloons, people on horseback, carriages driving furiously, and similar moving objects, presented themselves in endless succession. when i recovered from this state, the sun was, as near as i could guess, an hour high. i had the greatest difficulty in bringing to recollection the various circumstances connected with my situation, and for some time remained firmly convinced that i was still in the hold of the brig, near the box, and that the body of parker was that of tiger. when i at length completely came to my senses, i found that the wind blew no more than a moderate breeze, and that the sea was comparatively calm; so much so that it only washed over the brig amidships. my left arm had broken loose from its lashings, and was much cut about the elbow; my right was entirely benumbed, and the hand and wrist swollen prodigiously by the pressure of the rope, which had worked from the shoulder downward. i was also in great pain from another rope which went about my waist, and had been drawn to an insufferable degree of tightness. looking round upon my companions, i saw that peters still lived, although a thick line was pulled so forcibly around his loins as to give him the appearance of being cut nearly in two; as i stiffed, he made a feeble motion to me with his hand, pointing to the rope. augustus gave no indication of life whatever, and was bent nearly double across a splinter of the windlass. parker spoke to me when he saw me moving, and asked me if i had not sufficient strength to release him from his situation, saying that if i would summon up what spirits i could, and contrive to untie him, we might yet save our lives; but that otherwise we must all perish. i told him to take courage, and i would endeavor to free him. feeling in my pantaloons' pocket, i got hold of my penknife, and, after several ineffectual attempts, at length succeeded in opening it. i then, with my left hand, managed to free my right from its fastenings, and afterward cut the other ropes which held me. upon attempting, however, to move from my position, i found that my legs failed me altogether, and that i could not get up; neither could i move my right arm in any direction. upon mentioning this to parker, he advised me to lie quiet for a few minutes, holding on to the windlass with my left hand, so as to allow time for the blood to circulate. doing this, the numbness presently began to die away so that i could move first one of my legs, and then the other, and, shortly afterward i regained the partial use of my right arm. i now crawled with great caution toward parker, without getting on my legs, and soon cut loose all the lashings about him, when, after a short delay, he also recovered the partial use of his limbs. we now lost no time in getting loose the rope from peters. it had cut a deep gash through the waistband of his woollen pantaloons, and through two shirts, and made its way into his groin, from which the blood flowed out copiously as we removed the cordage. no sooner had we removed it, however, than he spoke, and seemed to experience instant reliefbeing able to move with much greater ease than either parker or myselfthis was no doubt owing to the discharge of blood. we had little hopes that augustus would recover, as he evinced no signs of life; but, upon getting to him, we discovered that he had merely swooned from the loss of blood, the bandages we had placed around his wounded arm having been torn off by the water; none of the ropes which held him to the windlass were drawn sufficiently tight to occasion his death. having relieved him from the fastenings, and got him clear of the broken wood about the windlass, we secured him in a dry place to windward, with his head somewhat lower than his body, and all three of us busied ourselves in chafing his limbs. in about half an hour he came to himself, although it was not until the next morning that he gave signs of recognizing any of us, or had sufficient strength to speak. by the time we had thus got clear of our lashings it was quite dark, and it began to cloud up, so that we were again in the greatest agony lest it should come on to blow hard, in which event nothing could have saved us from perishing, exhausted as we were. by good fortune it continued very moderate during the night, the sea subsiding every minute, which gave us great hopes of ultimate preservation. a gentle breeze still blew from the n. w., but the weather was not at all cold. augustus was lashed carefully to windward in such a manner as to prevent him from slipping overboard with the rolls of the vessel, as he was still too weak to hold on at all. for ourselves there was no such necessity. we sat close together, supporting each other with the aid of the broken ropes about the windlass, and devising methods of escape from our frightful situation. we derived much comfort from taking off our clothes and wringing the water from them. when we put them on after this, they felt remarkably warm and pleasant, and served to invigorate us in no little degree. we helped augustus off with his, and wrung them for him, when he experienced the same comfort. our chief sufferings were now those of hunger and thirst, and when we looked forward to the means of relief in this respect, our hearts sunk within us, and we were induced to regret that we had escaped the less dreadful perils of the sea. we endeavoured, however, to console ourselves with the hope of being speedily picked up by some vessel and encouraged each other to bear with fortitude the evils that might happen. the morning of the fourteenth at length dawned, and the weather still continued clear and pleasant, with a steady but very light breeze from the n. w. the sea was now quite smooth, and as, from some cause which we could not determine, the brig did not he so much along as she had done before, the deck was comparatively dry, and we could move about with freedom. we had now been better than three entire days and nights without either food or drink, and it became absolutely necessary that we should make an attempt to get up something from below. as the brig was completely full of water, we went to this work despondently, and with but little expectation of being able to obtain anything. we made a kind of drag by driving some nails which we broke out from the remains of the companion-hatch into two pieces of wood. tying these across each other, and fastening them to the end of a rope, we threw them into the cabin, and dragged them to and fro, in the faint hope of being thus able to entangle some article which might be of use to us for food, or which might at least render us assistance in getting it. we spent the greater part of the morning in this labour without effect, fishing up nothing more than a few bedclothes, which were readily caught by the nails. indeed, our contrivance was so very clumsy that any greater success was hardly to be anticipated. we now tried the forecastle, but equally in vain, and were upon the brink of despair, when peters proposed that we should fasten a rope to his body, and let him make an attempt to get up something by diving into the cabin. this proposition we hailed with all the delight which reviving hope could inspire. he proceeded immediately to strip off his clothes with the exception of his pantaloons; and a strong rope was then carefully fastened around his middle, being brought up over his shoulders in such a manner that there was no possibility of its slipping. the undertaking was one of great difficulty and danger; for, as we could hardly expect to find much, if any, provision in the cabin itself, it was necessary that the diver, after letting himself down, should make a turn to the right, and proceed under water a distance of ten or twelve feet, in a narrow passage, to the storeroom, and return, without drawing breath. everything being ready, peters now descended in the cabin, going down the companion-ladder until the water reached his chin. he then plunged in, head first, turning to the right as he plunged, and endeavouring to make his way to the storeroom. in this first attempt, however, he was altogether unsuccessful. in less than half a minute after his going down we felt the rope jerked violently (the signal we had agreed upon when he desired to be drawn up). we accordingly drew him up instantly, but so incautiously as to bruise him badly against the ladder. he had brought nothing with him, and had been unable to penetrate more than a very little way into the passage, owing to the constant exertions he found it necessary to make in order to keep himself from floating up against the deck. upon getting out he was very much exhausted, and had to rest full fifteen minutes before he could again venture to descend. the second attempt met with even worse success; for he remained so long under water without giving the signal, that, becoming alarmed for his safety, we drew him out without it, and found that he was almost at the last gasp, having, as he said, repeatedly jerked at the rope without our feeling it. this was probably owing to a portion of it having become entangled in the balustrade at the foot of the ladder. this balustrade was, indeed, so much in the way, that we determined to remove it, if possible, before proceeding with our design. as we had no means of getting it away except by main force, we all descended into the water as far as we could on the ladder, and giving a pull against it with our united strength, succeeded in breaking it down. the third attempt was equally unsuccessful with the two first, and it now became evident that nothing could be done in this manner without the aid of some weight with which the diver might steady himself, and keep to the floor of the cabin while making his search. for a long time we looked about in vain for something which might answer this purpose; but at length, to our great joy, we discovered one of the weather-forechains so loose that we had not the least difficulty in wrenching it off. having fastened this securely to one of his ankles, peters now made his fourth descent into the cabin, and this time succeeded in making his way to the door of the steward's room. to his inexpressible grief, however, he found it locked, and was obliged to return without effecting an entrance, as, with the greatest exertion, he could remain under water not more, at the utmost extent, than a single minute. our affairs now looked gloomy indeed, and neither augustus nor myself could refrain from bursting into tears, as we thought of the host of difficulties which encompassed us, and the slight probability which existed of our finally making an escape. but this weakness was not of long duration. throwing ourselves on our knees to god, we implored his aid in the many dangers which beset us; and arose with renewed hope and vigor to think what could yet be done by mortal means toward accomplishing our deliverance. chapter x shortly afterward an incident occurred which i am induced to look upon as more intensely productive of emotion, as far more replete with the extremes first of delight and then of horror, than even any of the thousand chances which afterward befell me in nine long years, crowded with events of the most startling and, in many cases, of the most unconceived and unconceivable character. we were lying on the deck near the companion-way, and debating the possibility of yet making our way into the storeroom, when, looking toward augustus, who lay fronting myself, i perceived that he had become all at once deadly pale, and that his lips were quivering in the most singular and unaccountable manner. greatly alarmed, i spoke to him, but he made me no reply, and i was beginning to think that he was suddenly taken ill, when i took notice of his eyes, which were glaring apparently at some object behind me. i turned my head, and shall never forget the ecstatic joy which thrilled through every particle of my frame, when i perceived a large brig bearing down upon us, and not more than a couple of miles off. i sprung to my feet as if a musket bullet had suddenly struck me to the heart; and, stretching out my arms in the direction of the vessel, stood in this manner, motionless, and unable to articulate a syllable. peters and parker were equally affected, although in different ways. the former danced about the deck like a madman, uttering the most extravagant rhodomontades, intermingled with howls and imprecations, while the latter burst into tears, and continued for many minutes weeping like a child. the vessel in sight was a large hermaphrodite brig, of a dutch build, and painted black, with a tawdry gilt figure-head. she had evidently seen a good deal of rough weather, and, we supposed, had suffered much in the gale which had proved so disastrous to ourselves; for her foretopmast was gone, and some of her starboard bulwarks. when we first saw her, she was, as i have already said, about two miles off and to windward, bearing down upon us. the breeze was very gentle, and what astonished us chiefly was, that she had no other sails set than her foremast and mainsail, with a flying jibof course she came down but slowly, and our impatience amounted nearly to phrensy. the awkward manner in which she steered, too, was remarked by all of us, even excited as we were. she yawed about so considerably, that once or twice we thought it impossible she could see us, or imagined that, having seen us, and discovered no person on board, she was about to tack and make off in another direction. upon each of these occasions we screamed and shouted at the top of our voices, when the stranger would appear to change for a moment her intention, and again hold on toward usthis singular conduct being repeated two or three times, so that at last we could think of no other manner of accounting for it than by supposing the helmsman to be in liquor. no person was seen upon her decks until she arrived within about a quarter of a mile of us. we then saw three seamen, whom by their dress we took to be hollanders. two of these were lying on some old sails near the forecastle, and the third, who appeared to be looking at us with great curiosity, was leaning over the starboard bow near the bowsprit. this last was a stout and tall man, with a very dark skin. he seemed by his manner to be encouraging us to have patience, nodding to us in a cheerful although rather odd way, and smiling constantly, so as to display a set of the most brilliantly white teeth. as his vessel drew nearer, we saw a red flannel cap which he had on fall from his head into the water; but of this he took little or no notice, continuing his odd smiles and gesticulations. i relate these things and circumstances minutely, and i relate them, it must be understood, precisely as they appeared to us. the brig came on slowly, and now more steadily than before, andi cannot speak calmly of this event-our hearts leaped up wildly within us, and we poured out our whole souls in shouts and thanksgiving to god for the complete, unexpected, and glorious deliverance that was so palpably at hand. of a sudden, and all at once, there came wafted over the ocean from the strange vessel (which was now close upon us) a smell, a stench, such as the whole world has no name forno conception ofhellishutterly suffocatinginsufferable, inconceivable. i gasped for breath, and turning to my companions, perceived that they were paler than marble. but we had now no time left for question or surmisethe brig was within fifty feet of us, and it seemed to be her intention to run under our counter, that we might board her without putting out a boat. we rushed aft, when, suddenly, a wide yaw threw her off full five or six points from the course she had been running, and, as she passed under our stern at the distance of about twenty feet, we had a full view of her decks. shall i ever forget the triple horror of that spectacle? twenty-five or thirty human bodies, among whom were several females, lay scattered about between the counter and the galley in the last and most loathsome state of putrefaction. we plainly saw that not a soul lived in that fated vessel! yet we could not help shouting to the dead for help! yes, long and loudly did we beg, in the agony of the moment, that those silent and disgusting images would stay for us, would not abandon us to become like them, would receive us among their goodly company! we were raving with horror and despairthoroughly mad through the anguish of our grievous disappointment. as our first loud yell of terror broke forth, it was replied to by something, from near the bowsprit of the stranger, so closely resembling the scream of a human voice that the nicest ear might have been startled and deceived. at this instant another sudden yaw brought the region of the forecastle for a moment into view, and we beheld at once the origin of the sound. we saw the tall stout figure still leaning on the bulwark, and still nodding his head to and fro, but his face was now turned from us so that we could not behold it. his arms were extended over the rail, and the palms of his hands fell outward. his knees were lodged upon a stout rope, tightly stretched, and reaching from the heel of the bowsprit to a cathead. on his back, from which a portion of the shirt had been torn, leaving it bare, there sat a huge sea-gull, busily gorging itself with the horrible flesh, its bill and talons deep buried, and its white plumage spattered all over with blood. as the brig moved farther round so as to bring us close in view, the bird, with much apparent difficulty, drew out its crimsoned head, and, after eyeing us for a moment as if stupefied, arose lazily from the body upon which it had been feasting, and, flying directly above our deck, hovered there a while with a portion of clotted and liver-like substance in its beak. the horrid morsel dropped at length with a sullen splash immediately at the feet of parker. may god forgive me, but now, for the first time, there flashed through my mind a thought, a thought which i will not mention, and i felt myself making a step toward the ensanguined spot. i looked upward, and the eyes of augustus met my own with a degree of intense and eager meaning which immediately brought me to my senses. i sprang forward quickly, and, with a deep shudder, threw the frightful thing into the sea. the body from which it had been taken, resting as it did upon the rope, had been easily swayed to and fro by the exertions of the carnivorous bird, and it was this motion which had at first impressed us with the belief of its being alive. as the gull relieved it of its weight, it swung round and fell partially over, so that the face was fully discovered. never, surely, was any object so terribly full of awe! the eyes were gone, and the whole flesh around the mouth, leaving the teeth utterly naked. this, then, was the smile which had cheered us on to hope! this thebut i forbear. the brig, as i have already told, passed under our stern, and made its way slowly but steadily to leeward. with her and with her terrible crew went all our gay visions of deliverance and joy. deliberately as she went by, we might possibly have found means of boarding her, had not our sudden disappointment and the appalling nature of the discovery which accompanied it laid entirely prostrate every active faculty of mind and body. we had seen and felt, but we could neither think nor act, until, alas! too late. how much our intellects had been weakened by this incident may be estimated by the fact, that when the vessel had proceeded so far that we could perceive no more than the half of her hull, the proposition was seriously entertained of attempting to overtake her by swimming! i have, since this period, vainly endeavoured to obtain some clew to the hideous uncertainty which enveloped the fate of the stranger. her build and general appearance, as i have before stated, led us to the belief that she was a dutch trader, and the dresses of the crew also sustained this opinion. we might have easily seen the name upon her stern, and, indeed, taken other observations, which would have guided us in making out her character; but the intense excitement of the moment blinded us to every thing of that nature. from the saffron-like hue of such of the corpses as were not entirely decayed, we concluded that the whole of her company had perished by the yellow fever, or some other virulent disease of the same fearful kind. if such were the case (and i know not what else to imagine), death, to judge from the positions of the bodies, must have come upon them in a manner awfully sudden and overwhelming, in a way totally distinct from that which generally characterizes even the most deadly pestilences with which mankind are acquainted. it is possible, indeed, that poison, accidentally introduced into some of their sea-stores, may have brought about the disaster, or that the eating of some unknown venomous species of fish, or other marine animal, or oceanic bird, might have induced it,but it is utterly useless to form conjectures where all is involved, and will, no doubt, remain for ever involved, in the most appalling and unfathomable mystery. chapter xi we spent the remainder of the day in a condition of stupid lethargy, gazing after the retreating vessel until the darkness, hiding her from our sight, recalled us in some measure to our senses. the pangs of hunger and thirst then returned, absorbing all other cares and considerations. nothing, however, could be done until the morning, and, securing ourselves as well as possible, we endeavoured to snatch a little repose. in this i succeeded beyond my expectations, sleeping until my companions, who had not been so fortunate, aroused me at daybreak to renew our attempts at getting up provisions from the hull. it was now a dead calm, with the sea as smooth as i have ever known it,the weather warm and pleasant. the brig was out of sight. we commenced our operations by wrenching off, with some trouble, another of the forechains; and having fastened both to peters' feet, he again made an endeavour to reach the door of the storeroom, thinking it possible that he might be able to force it open, provided he could get at it in sufficient time; and this he hoped to do, as the hulk lay much more steadily than before. he succeeded very quickly in reaching the door, when, loosening one of the chains from his ankle, be made every exertion to force the passage with it, but in vain, the framework of the room being far stronger than was anticipated. he was quite exhausted with his long stay under water, and it became absolutely necessary that some other one of us should take his place. for this service parker immediately volunteered; but, after making three ineffectual efforts, found that he could never even succeed in getting near the door. the condition of augustus's wounded arm rendered it useless for him to attempt going down, as he would be unable to force the room open should be reach it, and it accordingly now devolved upon me to exert myself for our common deliverance. peters had left one of the chains in the passage, and i found, upon plunging in, that i had not sufficient balance to keep me firmly down. i determined, therefore, to attempt no more, in my first effort, than merely to recover the other chain. in groping along the floor of the passage for this, i felt a hard substance, which i immediately grasped, not having time to ascertain what it was, but returning and ascending instantly to the surface. the prize proved to be a bottle, and our joy may be conceived when i say that it was found to be full of port wine. giving thanks to god for this timely and cheering assistance, we immediately drew the cork with my penknife, and, each taking a moderate sup, felt the most indescribable comfort from the warmth, strength, and spirits with which it inspired us. we then carefully recorked the bottle, and, by means of a handkerchief, swung it in such a manner that there was no possibility of its getting broken. having rested a while after this fortunate discovery, i again descended, and now recovered the chain, with which i instantly came up. i then fastened it on and went down for the third time, when i became fully satisfied that no exertions whatever, in that situation, would enable me to force open the door of the storeroom. i therefore returned in despair. there seemed now to be no longer any room for hope, and i could perceive in the countenances of my companions that they had made up their minds to perish. the wine had evidently produced in them a species of delirium, which, perhaps, i had been prevented from feeling by the immersion i had undergone since drinking it. they talked incoherently, and about matters unconnected with our condition, peters repeatedly asking me questions about nantucket. augustus, too, i remember, approached me with a serious air, and requested me to lend him a pocket-comb, as his hair was full of fish-scales, and he wished to get them out before going on shore. parker appeared somewhat less affected, and urged me to dive at random into the cabin, and bring up any article which might come to hand. to this i consented, and, in the first attempt, after staying under a full minute, brought up a small leather trunk belonging to captain barnard. this was immediately opened in the faint hope that it might contain something to eat or drink. we found nothing, however, except a box of razors and two linen shirts. i now went down again, and returned without any success. as my head came above water i heard a crash on deck, and, upon getting up, saw that my companions had ungratefully taken advantage of my absence to drink the remainder of the wine, having let the bottle fall in the endeavour to replace it before i saw them. i remonstrated with them on the heartlessness of their conduct, when augustus burst into tears. the other two endeavoured to laugh the matter off as a joke, but i hope never again to behold laughter of such a species: the distortion of countenance was absolutely frightful. indeed, it was apparent that the stimulus, in the empty state of their stomachs, had taken instant and violent effect, and that they were all exceedingly intoxicated. with great difficulty i prevailed upon them to lie down, when they fell very soon into a heavy slumber, accompanied with loud stertorous breathing. i now found myself, as it were, alone in the brig, and my reflections, to be sure, were of the most fearful and gloomy nature. no prospect offered itself to my view but a lingering death by famine, or, at the best, by being overwhelmed in the first gale which should spring up, for in our present exhausted condition we could have no hope of living through another. the gnawing hunger which i now experienced was nearly insupportable, and i felt myself capable of going to any lengths in order to appease it. with my knife i cut off a small portion of the leather trunk, and endeavoured to eat it, but found it utterly impossible to swallow a single morsel, although i fancied that some little alleviation of my suffering was obtained by chewing small pieces of it and spitting them out. toward night my companions awoke, one by one, each in an indescribable state of weakness and horror, brought on by the wine, whose fumes had now evaporated. they shook as if with a violent ague, and uttered the most lamentable cries for water. their condition affected me in the most lively degree, at the same time causing me to rejoice in the fortunate train of circumstances which had prevented me from indulging in the wine, and consequently from sharing their melancholy and most distressing sensations. their conduct, however, gave me great uneasiness and alarm; for it was evident that, unless some favourable change took place, they could afford me no assistance in providing for our common safety. i had not yet abandoned all idea being able to get up something from below; but the attempt could not possibly be resumed until some one of them was sufficiently master of himself to aid me by holding the end of the rope while i went down. parker appeared to be somewhat more in possession of his senses than the others, and i endeavoured, by every means in my power, to rouse him. thinking that a plunge in the sea-water might have a beneficial effect, i contrived to fasten the end of a rope around his body, and then, leading him to the companion-way (he remaining quite passive all the while), pushed him in, and immediately drew him out. i had good reason to congratulate myself upon having made this experiment; for he appeared much revived and invigorated, and, upon getting out, asked me, in a rational manner, why i had so served him. having explained my object, he expressed himself indebted to me, and said that he felt greatly better from the immersion, afterward conversing sensibly upon our situation. we then resolved to treat augustus and peters in the same way, which we immediately did, when they both experienced much benefit from the shock. this idea of sudden immersion had been suggested to me by reading in some medical work the good effect of the shower-bath in a case where the patient was suffering from mania a potu. finding that i could now trust my companions to hold the end of the rope, i again made three or four plunges into the cabin, although it was now quite dark, and a gentle but long swell from the northward rendered the hulk somewhat unsteady. in the course of these attempts i succeeded in bringing up two case-knives, a three-gallon jug, empty, and a blanket, but nothing which could serve us for food. i continued my efforts, after getting these articles, until i was completely exhausted, but brought up nothing else. during the night parker and peters occupied themselves by turns in the same manner; but nothing coming to hand, we now gave up this attempt in despair, concluding that we were exhausting ourselves in vain. we passed the remainder of this night in a state of the most intense mental and bodily anguish that can possibly be imagined. the morning of the sixteenth at length dawned, and we looked eagerly around the horizon for relief, but to no purpose. the sea was still smooth, with only a long swell from the northward, as on yesterday. this was the sixth day since we had tasted either food or drink, with the exception of the bottle of port wine, and it was clear that we could hold out but a very little while longer unless something could be obtained. i never saw before, nor wish to see again, human beings so utterly emaciated as peters and augustus. had i met them on shore in their present condition i should not have had the slightest suspicion that i had ever beheld them. their countenances were totally changed in character, so that i could not bring myself to believe them really the same individuals with whom i had been in company but a few days before. parker, although sadly reduced, and so feeble that he could not raise his head from his bosom, was not so far gone as the other two. he suffered with great patience, making no complaint, and endeavouring to inspire us with hope in every manner he could devise. for myself, although at the commencement of the voyage i had been in bad health, and was at all times of a delicate constitution, i suffered less than any of us, being much less reduced in frame, and retaining my powers of mind in a surprising degree, while the rest were completely prostrated in intellect, and seemed to be brought to a species of second childhood, generally simpering in their expressions, with idiotic smiles, and uttering the most absurd platitudes. at intervals, however, they would appear to revive suddenly, as if inspired all at once with a consciousness of their condition, when they would spring upon their feet in a momentary flash of vigour, and speak, for a short period, of their prospects, in a manner altogether rational, although full of the most intense despair. it is possible, however, that my companions may have entertained the same opinion of their own condition as i did of mine, and that i may have unwittingly been guilty of the same extravagances and imbecilities as themselvesthis is a matter which cannot be determined. about noon parker declared that he saw land off the larboard quarter, and it was with the utmost difficulty i could restrain him from plunging into the sea with the view of swimming toward it. peters and augustus took little notice of what he said, being apparently wrapped up in moody contemplation. upon looking in the direction pointed out, i could not perceive the faintest appearance of the shoreindeed, i was too well aware that we were far from any land to indulge in a hope of that nature. it was a long time, nevertheless, before i could convince parker of his mistake. he then burst into a flood of tears, weeping like a child, with loud cries and sobs, for two or three hours, when becoming exhausted, he fell asleep. peters and augustus now made several ineffectual efforts to swallow portions of the leather. i advised them to chew it and spit it out; but they were too excessively debilitated to be able to follow my advice. i continued to chew pieces of it at intervals, and found some relief from so doing; my chief distress was for water, and i was only prevented from taking a draught from the sea by remembering the horrible consequences which thus have resulted to others who were similarly situated with ourselves. the day wore on in this manner, when i suddenly discovered a sail to the eastward, and on our larboard bow. she appeared to be a large ship, and was coming nearly athwart us, being probably twelve or fifteen miles distant. none of my companions had as yet discovered her, and i forbore to tell them of her for the present, lest we might again be disappointed of relief. at length upon her getting nearer, i saw distinctly that she was heading immediately for us, with her light sails filled. i could now contain myself no longer, and pointed her out to my fellow-sufferers. they immediately sprang to their feet, again indulging in the most extravagant demonstrations of joy, weeping, laughing in an idiotic manner, jumping, stamping upon the deck, tearing their hair, and praying and cursing by turns. i was so affected by their conduct, as well as by what i considered a sure prospect of deliverance, that i could not refrain from joining in with their madness, and gave way to the impulses of my gratitude and ecstasy by lying and rolling on the deck, clapping my hands, shouting, and other similar acts, until i was suddenly called to my recollection, and once more to the extreme human misery and despair, by perceiving the ship all at once with her stern fully presented toward us, and steering in a direction nearly opposite to that in which i had at first perceived her. it was some time before i could induce my poor companions to believe that this sad reverse in our prospects had actually taken place. they replied to all my assertions with a stare and a gesture implying that they were not to be deceived by such misrepresentations. the conduct of augustus most sensibly affected me. in spite of all i could say or do to the contrary, he persisted in saying that the ship was rapidly nearing us, and in making preparations to go on board of her. some seaweed floating by the brig, he maintained that it was the ship's boat, and endeavoured to throw himself upon it, howling and shrieking in the most heartrending manner, when i forcibly restrained him from thus casting himself into the sea. having become in some degree pacified, we continued to watch the ship until we finally lost sight of her, the weather becoming hazy, with a light breeze springing up. as soon as she was entirely gone, parker turned suddenly toward me with an expression of countenance which made me shudder. there was about him an air of self-possession which i had not noticed in him until now, and before he opened his lips my heart told me what he would say. he proposed, in a few words, that one of us should die to preserve the existence of the others. chapter xii i had for some time past, dwelt upon the prospect of our being reduced to this last horrible extremity, and had secretly made up my mind to suffer death in any shape or under any circumstances rather than resort to such a course. nor was this resolution in any degree weakened by the present intensity of hunger under which i laboured. the proposition had not been heard by either peters or augustus. i therefore took parker aside; and mentally praying to god for power to dissuade him from the horrible purpose he entertained, i expostulated with him for a long time, and in the most supplicating manner, begging him in the name of every thing which he held sacred, and urging him by every species of argument which the extremity of the case suggested, to abandon the idea, and not to mention it to either of the other two. he heard all i said without attempting to controvert any of my arguments, and i had begun to hope that he would be prevailed upon to do as i desired. but when i had ceased speaking, he said that he knew very well all i had said was true, and that to resort to such a course was the most horrible alternative which could enter into the mind of man; but that he had now held out as long as human nature could be sustained; that it was unnecessary for all to perish, when, by the death of one, it was possible, and even probable, that the rest might be finally preserved; adding that i might save myself the trouble of trying to turn him from his purpose, his mind having been thoroughly made up on the subject even before the appearance of the ship, and that only her heaving in sight had prevented him from mentioning his intention at an earlier period. i now begged him, if he would not be prevailed upon to abandon his design, at least to defer it for another day, when some vessel might come to our relief; again reiterating every argument i could devise, and which i thought likely to have influence with one of his rough nature. he said, in reply, that he had not spoken until the very last possible moment, that he could exist no longer without sustenance of some kind, and that therefore in another day his suggestion would be too late, as regarded himself at least. finding that he was not to be moved by anything i could say in a mild tone, i now assumed a different demeanor, and told him that he must be aware i had suffered less than any of us from our calamities; that my health and strength, consequently, were at that moment far better than his own, or than that either of peters or augustus; in short, that i was in a condition to have my own way by force if i found it necessary; and that if he attempted in any manner to acquaint the others with his bloody and cannibal designs, i would not hesitate to throw him into the sea. upon this he immediately seized me by the throat, and drawing a knife, made several ineffectual efforts to stab me in the stomach; an atrocity which his excessive debility alone prevented him from accomplishing. in the meantime, being roused to a high pitch of anger, i forced him to the vessel's side, with the full intention of throwing him overboard. he was saved from his fate, however, by the interference of peters, who now approached and separated us, asking the cause of the disturbance. this parker told before i could find means in any manner to prevent him. the effect of his words was even more terrible than what i had anticipated. both augustus and peters, who, it seems, had long secretly entertained the same fearful idea which parker had been merely the first to broach, joined with him in his design and insisted upon its immediately being carried into effect. i had calculated that one at least of the two former would be found still possessed of sufficient strength of mind to side with myself in resisting any attempt to execute so dreadful a purpose, and, with the aid of either one of them, i had no fear of being able to prevent its accomplishment. being disappointed in this expectation, it became absolutely necessary that i should attend to my own safety, as a further resistance on my part might possibly be considered by men in their frightful condition a sufficient excuse for refusing me fair play in the tragedy that i knew would speedily be enacted. i now told them i was willing to submit to the proposal, merely requesting a delay of about one hour, in order that the fog which had gathered around us might have an opportunity of lifting, when it was possible that the ship we had seen might be again in sight. after great difficulty i obtained from them a promise to wait thus long; and, as i had anticipated (a breeze rapidly coming in), the fog lifted before the hour had expired, when, no vessel appearing in sight, we prepared to draw lots. it is with extreme reluctance that i dwell upon the appalling scene which ensued; a scene which, with its minutest details, no after events have been able to efface in the slightest degree from my memory, and whose stern recollection will embitter every future moment of my existence. let me run over this portion of my narrative with as much haste as the nature of the events to be spoken of will permit. the only method we could devise for the terrific lottery, in which we were to take each a chance, was that of drawing straws. small splinters of wood were made to answer our purpose, and it was agreed that i should be the holder. i retired to one end of the hulk, while my poor companions silently took up their station in the other with their backs turned toward me. the bitterest anxiety which i endured at any period of this fearful drama was while i occupied myself in the arrangement of the lots. there are few conditions into which man can possibly fall where he will not feel a deep interest in the preservation of his existence; an interest momentarily increasing with the frailness of the tenure by which that existence may be held. but now that the silent, definite, and stern nature of the business in which i was engaged (so different from the tumultuous dangers of the storm or the gradually approaching horrors of famine) allowed me to reflect on the few chances i had of escaping the most appalling of deathsa death for the most appalling of purposesevery particle of that energy which had so long buoyed me up departed like feathers before the wind, leaving me a helpless prey to the most abject and pitiable terror. i could not, at first, even summon up sufficient strength to tear and fit together the small splinters of wood, my fingers absolutely refusing their office, and my knees knocking violently against each other. my mind ran over rapidly a thousand absurd projects by which to avoid becoming a partner in the awful speculation. i thought of falling on my knees to my companions, and entreating them to let me escape this necessity; of suddenly rushing upon them, and, by putting one of them to death, of rendering the decision by lot uselessin short, of every thing but of going through with the matter i had in hand. at last, after wasting a long time in this imbecile conduct, i was recalled to my senses by the voice of parker, who urged me to relieve them at once from the terrible anxiety they were enduring. even then i could not bring myself to arrange the splinters upon the spot, but thought over every species of finesse by which i could trick some one of my fellow-sufferers to draw the short straw, as it had been agreed that whoever drew the shortest of four splinters from my hand was to die for the preservation of the rest. before any one condemn me for this apparent heartlessness, let him be placed in a situation precisely similar to my own. at length delay was no longer possible, and, with a heart almost bursting from my bosom, i advanced to the region of the forecastle, where my companions were awaiting me. i held out my hand with the splinters, and peters immediately drew. he was freehis, at least, was not the shortest; and there was now another chance against my escape. i summoned up all my strength, and passed the lots to augustus. he also drew immediately, and he also was free; and now, whether i should live or die, the chances were no more than precisely even. at this moment all the fierceness of the tiger possessed my bosom, and i felt toward my poor fellow-creature, parker, the most intense, the most diabolical hatred. but the feeling did not last; and, at length, with a convulsive shudder and closed eyes, i held out the two remaining splinters toward him. it was fully five minutes before he could summon resolution to draw, during which period of heartrending suspense i never once opened my eyes. presently one of the two lots was quickly drawn from my hand. the decision was then over, yet i knew not whether it was for me or against me. no one spoke, and still i dared not satisfy myself by looking at the splinter i held. peters at length took me by the hand, and i forced myself to look up, when i immediately saw by the countenance of parker that i was safe, and that he it was who had been doomed to suffer. gasping for breath, i fell senseless to the deck. i recovered from my swoon in time to behold the consummation of the tragedy in the death of him who had been chiefly instrumental in bringing it about. he made no resistance whatever, and was stabbed in the back by peters, when he fell instantly dead. i must not dwell upon the fearful repast which immediately ensued. such things may be imagined, but words have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality. let it suffice to say that, having in some measure appeased the raging thirst which consumed us by the blood of the victim, and having by common consent taken off the hands, feet, and head, throwing them together with the entrails, into the sea, we devoured the rest of the body, piecemeal, during the four ever memorable days of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth of the month. on the nineteenth, there coming on a smart shower which lasted fifteen or twenty minutes, we contrived to catch some water by means of a sheet which had been fished up from the cabin by our drag just after the gale. the quantity we took in all did not amount to more than half a gallon; but even this scanty allowance supplied us with comparative strength and hope. on the twenty-first we were again reduced to the last necessity. the weather still remained warm and pleasant, with occasional fogs and light breezes, most usually from n. to w. on the twenty-second, as we were sitting close huddled together, gloomily revolving over our lamentable condition, there flashed through my mind all at once an idea which inspired me with a bright gleam of hope. i remembered that, when the foremast had been cut away, peters, being in the windward chains, passed one of the axes into my hand, requesting me to put it, if possible, in a place of security, and that a few minutes before the last heavy sea struck the brig and filled her i had taken this axe into the forecastle and laid it in one of the larboard berths. i now thought it possible that, by getting at this axe, we might cut through the deck over the storeroom, and thus readily supply ourselves with provisions. when i communicated this object to my companions, they uttered a feeble shout of joy, and we all proceeded forthwith to the forecastle. the difficulty of descending here was greater than that of going down in the cabin, the opening being much smaller, for it will be remembered that the whole framework about the cabin companion-hatch had been carried away, whereas the forecastle-way, being a simple hatch of only about three feet square, had remained uninjured. i did not hesitate, however, to attempt the descent; and a rope being fastened round my body as before, i plunged boldly in, feet foremost, made my way quickly to the berth, and at the first attempt brought up the axe. it was hailed with the most ecstatic joy and triumph, and the ease with which it had been obtained was regarded as an omen of our ultimate preservation. we now commenced cutting at the deck with all the energy of rekindled hope, peters and myself taking the axe by turns, augustus's wounded arm not permitting him to aid us in any degree. as we were still so feeble as to be scarcely able to stand unsupported, and could consequently work but a minute or two without resting, it soon became evident that many long hours would be necessary to accomplish our taskthat is, to cut an opening sufficiently large to admit of a free access to the storeroom. this consideration, however, did not discourage us; and, working all night by the light of the moon, we succeeded in effecting our purpose by daybreak on the morning of the twenty-third. peters now volunteered to go down; and, having made all arrangements as before, he descended, and soon returned bringing up with him a small jar, which, to our great joy, proved to be full of olives. having shared these among us, and devoured them with the greatest avidity, we proceeded to let him down again. this time he succeeded beyond our utmost expectations, returning instantly with a large ham and a bottle of madeira wine. of the latter we each took a moderate sup, having learned by experience the pernicious consequences of indulging too freely. the ham, except about two pounds near the bone, was not in a condition to be eaten, having been entirely spoiled by the salt water. the sound part was divided among us. peters and augustus, not being able to restrain their appetite, swallowed theirs upon the instant; but i was more cautious, and ate but a small portion of mine, dreading the thirst which i knew would ensue. we now rested a while from our labors, which had been intolerably severe. by noon, feeling somewhat strengthened and refreshed, we again renewed our attempt at getting up provisions, peters and myself going down alternately, and always with more or less success, until sundown. during this interval we had the good fortune to bring up, altogether, four more small jars of olives, another ham, a carboy containing nearly three gallons of excellent cape madeira wine, and, what gave us still more delight, a small tortoise of the gallipago breed, several of which had been taken on board by captain barnard, as the grampus was leaving port, from the schooner mary pitts, just returned from a sealing voyage in the pacific. in a subsequent portion of this narrative i shall have frequent occasion to mention this species of tortoise. it is found principally, as most of my readers may know, in the group of islands called the gallipagos, which, indeed, derive their name from the animalthe spanish word gallipago meaning a fresh-water terrapin. from the peculiarity of their shape and action they have been sometimes called the elephant tortoise. they are frequently found of an enormous size. i have myself seen several which would weigh from twelve to fifteen hundred pounds, although i do not remember that any navigator speaks of having seen them weighing more than eight hundred. their appearance is singular, and even disgusting. their steps are very slow, measured, and heavy, their bodies being carried about a foot from the ground. their neck is long, and exceedingly slender, from eighteen inches to two feet is a very common length, and i killed one, where the distance from the shoulder to the extremity of the head was no less than three feet ten inches. the head has a striking resemblance to that of a serpent. they can exist without food for an almost incredible length of time, instances having been known where they have been thrown into the hold of a vessel and lain two years without nourishment of any kindbeing as fat, and, in every respect, in as good order at the expiration of the time as when they were first put in. in one particular these extraordinary animals bear a resemblance to the dromedary, or camel of the desert. in a bag at the root of the neck they carry with them a constant supply of water. in some instances, upon killing them after a full year's deprivation of all nourishment, as much as three gallons of perfectly sweet and fresh water have been found in their bags. their food is chiefly wild parsley and celery, with purslain, sea-kelp, and prickly pears, upon which latter vegetable they thrive wonderfully, a great quantity of it being usually found on the hillsides near the shore wherever the animal itself is discovered. they are excellent and highly nutritious food, and have, no doubt, been the means of preserving the lives of thousands of seamen employed in the whale-fishery and other pursuits in the pacific. the one which we had the good fortune to bring up from the storeroom was not of a large size, weighing probably sixty-five or seventy pounds. it was a female, and in excellent condition, being exceedingly fat, and having more than a quart of limpid and sweet water in its bag. this was indeed a treasure; and, falling on our knees with one accord, we returned fervent thanks to god for so seasonable a relief. we had great difficulty in getting the animal up through the opening, as its struggles were fierce and its strength prodigious. it was upon the point of making its escape from peter's grasp, and slipping back into the water, when augustus, throwing a rope with a slipknot around its throat, held it up in this manner until i jumped into the hole by the side of peters, and assisted him in lifting it out. the water we drew carefully from the bag into the jug; which, it will be remembered, had been brought up before from the cabin. having done this, we broke off the neck of a bottle so as to form, with the cork, a kind of glass, holding not quite half a gill. we then each drank one of these measures full, and resolved to limit ourselves to this quantity per day as long as it should hold out. during the last two or three days, the weather having been dry and pleasant, the bedding we had obtained from the cabin, as well as our clothing, had become thoroughly dry, so that we passed this night (that of the twenty-third) in comparative comfort, enjoying a tranquil repose, after having supped plentifully on olives and ham, with a small allowance of the wine. being afraid of losing some of our stores overboard during the night, in the event of a breeze springing up, we secured them as well as possible with cordage to the fragments of the windlass. our tortoise, which we were anxious to preserve alive as long as we could, we threw on its back, and otherwise carefully fastened. chapter xiii july 24.this morning saw us wonderfully recruited in spirits and strength. notwithstanding the perilous situation in which we were still placed, ignorant of our position, although certainly at a great distance from land, without more food than would last us for a fortnight even with great care, almost entirely without water, and floating about at the mercy of every wind and wave on the merest wreck in the world, still the infinitely more terrible distresses and dangers from which we had so lately and so providentially been delivered caused us to regard what we now endured as but little more than an ordinary evilso strictly comparative is either good or ill. at sunrise we were preparing to renew our attempts at getting up something from the storeroom, when, a smart shower coming on, with some lightning, we turn our attention to the catching of water by means of the sheet we had used before for this purpose. we had no other means of collecting the rain than by holding the sheet spread out with one of the forechain-plates in the middle of it. the water, thus conducted to the centre, was drained through into our jug. we had nearly filled it in this manner, when, a heavy squall coming on from the northward, obliged us to desist, as the hulk began once more to roll so violently that we could no longer keep our feet. we now went forward, and, lashing ourselves securely to the remnant of the windlass as before, awaited the event with far more calmness than could have been anticipated or would have been imagined possible under the circumstances. at noon the wind had freshened into a two-reef breeze, and by night into a stiff gale, accompanied with a tremendously heavy swell. experience having taught us, however, the best method of arranging our lashings, we weathered this dreary night in tolerable security, although thoroughly drenched at almost every instant by the sea, and in momentary dread of being washed off. fortunately, the weather was so warm as to render the water rather grateful than otherwise. july 25.this morning the gale had diminished to a mere ten-knot breeze, and the sea had gone down with it so considerably that we were able to keep ourselves dry upon the deck. to our great grief, however, we found that two jars of our olives, as well as the whole of our ham, had been washed overboard, in spite of the careful manner in which they had been fastened. we determined not to kill the tortoise as yet, and contented ourselves for the present with a breakfast on a few of the olives, and a measure of water each, which latter we mixed half and half, with wine, finding great relief and strength from the mixture, without the distressing intoxication which had ensued upon drinking the port. the sea was still far too rough for the renewal of our efforts at getting up provision from the storeroom. several articles, of no importance to us in our present situation, floated up through the opening during the day, and were immediately washed overboard. we also now observed that the hulk lay more along than ever, so that we could not stand an instant without lashing ourselves. on this account we passed a gloomy and uncomfortable day. at noon the sun appeared to be nearly vertical, and we had no doubt that we had been driven down by the long succession of northward and northwesterly winds into the near vicinity of the equator. toward evening saw several sharks, and were somewhat alarmed by the audacious manner in which an enormously large one approached us. at one time, a lurch throwing the deck very far beneath the water, the monster actually swam in upon us, floundering for some moments just over the companion-hatch, and striking peters violently with his tail. a heavy sea at length hurled him overboard, much to our relief. in moderate weather we might have easily captured him. july 26.this morning, the wind having greatly abated, and the sea not being very rough, we determined to renew our exertions in the storeroom. after a great deal of hard labor during the whole day, we found that nothing further was to be expected from this quarter, the partitions of the room having been stove during the night, and its contents swept into the hold. this discovery, as may be supposed, filled us with despair. july 27.the sea nearly smooth, with a light wind, and still from the northward and westward. the sun coming out hotly in the afternoon, we occupied ourselves in drying our clothes. found great relief from thirst, and much comfort otherwise, by bathing in the sea; in this, however, we were forced to use great caution, being afraid of sharks, several of which were seen swimming around the brig during the day. july 28.good weather still. the brig now began to lie along so alarmingly that we feared she would eventually roll bottom up. prepared ourselves as well as we could for this emergency, lashing our tortoise, waterjug, and two remaining jars of olives as far as possible over to the windward, placing them outside the hull below the main-chains. the sea very smooth all day, with little or no wind. july 29.a continuance of the same weather. augustus's wounded arm began to evince symptoms of mortification. he complained of drowsiness and excessive thirst, but no acute pain. nothing could be done for his relief beyond rubbing his wounds with a little of the vinegar from the olives, and from this no benefit seemed to be experienced. we did every thing in our power for his comfort, and trebled his allowance of water. july 30.an excessively hot day, with no wind. an enormous shark kept close by the hulk during the whole of the forenoon. we made several unsuccessful attempts to capture him by means of a noose. augustus much worse, and evidently sinking as much from want of proper nourishment as from the effect of his wounds. he constantly prayed to be relieved from his sufferings, wishing for nothing but death. this evening we ate the last of our olives, and found the water in our jug so putrid that we could not swallow it at all without the addition of wine. determined to kill our tortoise in the morning. july 31.after a night of excessive anxiety and fatigue, owing to the position of the hulk, we set about killing and cutting up our tortoise. he proved to be much smaller than we had supposed, although in good condition,the whole meat about him not amounting to more than ten pounds. with a view of preserving a portion of this as long as possible, we cut it into fine pieces, and filled with them our three remaining olive jars and the wine-bottle (all of which had been kept), pouring in afterward the vinegar from the olives. in this manner we put away about three pounds of the tortoise, intending not to touch it until we had consumed the rest. we concluded to restrict ourselves to about four ounces of the meat per day; the whole would thus last us thirteen days. a brisk shower, with severe thunder and lightning, came on about dusk, but lasted so short a time that we only succeeded in catching about half a pint of water. the whole of this, by common consent, was given to augustus, who now appeared to be in the last extremity. he drank the water from the sheet as we caught it (we holding it above him as he lay so as to let it run into his mouth), for we had now nothing left capable of holding water, unless we had chosen to empty out our wine from the carboy, or the stale water from the jug. either of these expedients would have been resorted to had the shower lasted. the sufferer seemed to derive but little benefit from the draught. his arm was completely black from the wrist to the shoulder, and his feet were like ice. we expected every moment to see him breathe his last. he was frightfully emaciated; so much so that, although he weighed a hundred and twenty-seven pounds upon his leaving nantucket, he now did not weigh more than forty or fifty at the farthest. his eyes were sunk far in his head, being scarcely perceptible, and the skin of his cheeks hung so loosely as to prevent his masticating any food, or even swallowing any liquid, without great difficulty. august 1.a continuance of the same calm weather, with an oppressively hot sun. suffered exceedingly from thirst, the water in the jug being absolutely putrid and swarming with vermin. we contrived, nevertheless, to swallow a portion of it by mixing it with wine; our thirst, however, was but little abated. we found more relief by bathing in the sea, but could not avail ourselves of this expedient except at long intervals, on account of the continual presence of sharks. we now saw clearly that augustus could not be saved; that he was evidently dying. we could do nothing to relieve his sufferings, which appeared to be great. about twelve o'clock he expired in strong convulsions, and without having spoken for several days. his death filled us with the most gloomy forebodings, and had so great an effect upon our spirits that we sat motionless by the corpse during the whole day, and never addressed each other except in a whisper. it was not until some time after dark that we took courage to get up and throw the body overboard. it was then loathsome beyond expression, and so far decayed that, as peters attempted to lift it, an entire leg came off in his grasp. as the mass of putrefaction slipped over the vessel's side into the water, the glare of phosphoric light with which it was surrounded plainly discovered to us seven or eight large sharks, the clashing of whose horrible teeth, as their prey was torn to pieces among them, might have been heard at the distance of a mile. we shrunk within ourselves in the extremity of horror at the sound. august 2.the same fearfully calm and hot weather. the dawn found us in a state of pitiable dejection as well as bodily exhaustion. the water in the jug was now absolutely useless, being a thick gelatinous mass; nothing but frightful-looking worms mingled with slime. we threw it out, and washed the jug well in the sea, afterward pouring a little vinegar in it from our bottles of pickled tortoise. our thirst could now scarcely be endured, and we tried in vain to relieve it by wine, which seemed only to add fuel to the flame, and excited us to a high degree of intoxication. we afterward endeavoured to relieve our sufferings by mixing the wine with seawater; but this instantly brought about the most violent retchings, so that we never again attempted it. during the whole day we anxiously sought an opportunity of bathing, but to no purpose; for the hulk was now entirely besieged on all sides with sharksno doubt the identical monsters who had devoured our poor companion on the evening before, and who were in momentary expectation of another similar feast. this circumstance occasioned us the most bitter regret and filled us with the most depressing and melancholy forebodings. we had experienced indescribable relief in bathing, and to have this resource cut off in so frightful a manner was more than we could bear. nor, indeed, were we altogether free from the apprehension of immediate danger, for the least slip or false movement would have thrown us at once within reach of those voracious fish, who frequently thrust themselves directly upon us, swimming up to leeward. no shouts or exertions on our part seemed to alarm them. even when one of the largest was struck with an axe by peters and much wounded, he persisted in his attempts to push in where we were. a cloud came up at dusk, but, to our extreme anguish, passed over without discharging itself. it is quite impossible to conceive our sufferings from thirst at this period. we passed a sleepless night, both on this account and through dread of the sharks. august 3.no prospect of relief, and the brig lying still more and more along, so that now we could not maintain a footing upon deck at all. busied ourselves in securing our wine and tortoise-meat, so that we might not lose them in the event of our rolling over. got out two stout spikes from the forechains, and, by means of the axe, drove them into the hull to windward within a couple of feet of the water, this not being very far from the keel, as we were nearly upon our beam-ends. to these spikes we now lashed our provisions, as being more secure than their former position beneath the chains. suffered great agony from thirst during the whole dayno chance of bathing on account of the sharks, which never left us for a moment. found it impossible to sleep. august 4.a little before daybreak we perceived that the hulk was heeling over, and aroused ourselves to prevent being thrown off by the movement. at first the roll was slow and gradual, and we contrived to clamber over to windward very well, having taken the precaution to leave ropes hanging from the spikes we had driven in for the provision. but we had not calculated sufficiently upon the acceleration of the impetus; for, presently the heel became too violent to allow of our keeping pace with it; and, before either of us knew what was to happen, we found ourselves hurled furiously into the sea, and struggling several fathoms beneath the surface, with the huge hull immediately above us. in going under the water i had been obliged to let go my hold upon the rope; and finding that i was completely beneath the vessel, and my strength nearly exhausted, i scarcely made a struggle for life, and resigned myself, in a few seconds, to die. but here again i was deceived, not having taken into consideration the natural rebound of the hull to windward. the whirl of the water upward, which the vessel occasioned in tolling partially back, brought me to the surface still more violently than i had been plunged beneath. upon coming up i found myself about twenty yards from the hulk, as near as i could judge. she was lying keel up, rocking furiously from side to side, and the sea in all directions around was much agitated, and full of strong whirlpools. i could see nothing of peters. an oil-cask was floating within a few feet of me, and various other articles from the brig were scattered about. my principal terror was now on account of the sharks, which i knew to be in my vicinity. in order to deter these, if possible, from approaching me, i splashed the water vigorously with both hands and feet as i swam towards the hulk, creating a body of foam. i have no doubt that to this expedient, simple as it was, i was indebted for my preservation; for the sea all round the brig, just before her rolling over, was so crowded with these monsters, that i must have been, and really was, in actual contact with some of them during my progress. by great good fortune, however, i reached the side of the vessel in safety, although so utterly weakened by the violent exertion i had used that i should never have been able to get upon it but for the timely assistance of peters, who, now, to my great joy, made his appearance (having scrambled up to the keel from the opposite side of the hull), and threw me the end of a ropeone of those which had been attached to the spikes. having barely escaped this danger, our attention was now directed to the dreadful imminency of anotherthat of absolute starvation. our whole stock of provision had been swept overboard in spite of all our care in securing it; and seeing no longer the remotest possibility of obtaining more, we gave way both of us to despair, weeping aloud like children, and neither of us attempting to offer consolation to the other. such weakness can scarcely be conceived, and to those who have never been similarly situated will, no doubt, appear unnatural; but it must be remembered that our intellects were so entirely disordered by the long course of privation and terror to which we had been subjected, that we could not justly be considered, at that period, in the light of rational beings. in subsequent perils, nearly as great, if not greater, i bore up with fortitude against all the evils of my situation, and peters, it will be seen, evinced a stoical philosophy nearly as incredible as his present childlike supineness and imbecilitythe mental condition made the difference. the overturning of the brig, even with the consequent loss of the wine and turtle, would not, in fact, have rendered our situation more deplorable than before, except for the disappearance of the bedclothes by which we had been hitherto enabled to catch rainwater, and of the jug in which we had kept it when caught; for we found the whole bottom, from within two or three feet of the bends as far as the keel, together with the keel itself, thickly covered with large barnacles, which proved to be excellent and highly nutritious food. thus, in two important respects, the accident we had so greatly dreaded proved to be a benefit rather than an injury; it had opened to us a supply of provisions which we could not have exhausted, using it moderately, in a month; and it had greatly contributed to our comfort as regards position, we being much more at ease, and in infinitely less danger, than before. the difficulty, however, of now obtaining water blinded us to all the benefits of the change in our condition. that we might be ready to avail ourselves, as far as possible, of any shower which might fall we took off our shirts, to make use of them as we had of the sheetsnot hoping, of course, to get more in this way, even under the most favorable circumstances, than half a gill at a time. no signs of a cloud appeared during the day, and the agonies of our thirst were nearly intolerable. at night, peters obtained about an hour's disturbed sleep, but my intense sufferings would not permit me to close my eyes for a single moment. august 5.to-day, a gentle breeze springing up carried us through a vast quantity of seaweed, among which we were so fortunate as to find eleven small crabs, which afforded us several delicious meals. their shells being quite soft, we ate them entire, and found that they irritated our thirst far less than the barnacles. seeing no trace of sharks among the seaweed, we also ventured to bathe, and remained in the water for four or five hours, during which we experienced a very sensible diminution of our thirst. were greatly refreshed, and spent the night somewhat more comfortably than before, both of us snatching a little sleep. august 6.this day we were blessed by a brisk and continual rain, lasting from about noon until after dark. bitterly did we now regret the loss of our jug and carboy; for, in spite of the little means we had of catching the water, we might have filled one, if not both of them. as it was, we contrived to satisfy the cravings of thirst by suffering the shirts to become saturated, and then wringing them so as to let the grateful fluid trickle into our mouths. in this occupation we passed the entire day. august 7.just at daybreak we both at the same instant descried a sail to the eastward, and evidently coming towards us! we hailed the glorious sight with a long, although feeble shout of rapture; and began instantly to make every signal in our power, by flaring the shirts in the air, leaping as high as our weak condition would permit, and even by hallooing with all the strength of our lungs, although the vessel could not have been less than fifteen miles distant. however, she still continued to near our hulk, and we felt that, if she but held her present course, she must eventually come so close as to perceive us. in about an hour after we first discovered her, we could clearly see the people on her decks. she was a long, low, and rakish-looking topsail schooner, with a black ball in her foretopsail, and had, apparently, a full crew. we now became alarmed, for we could hardly imagine it possible that she did not observe us, and were apprehensive that she meant to leave us to perish as we werean act of fiendish barbarity, which, however incredible it may appear, has been repeatedly perpetuated at sea, under circumstances very nearly similar, and by beings who were regarded as belonging to the human species.* in this instance, however, by the mercy of god, we were destined to be most happily deceived; for, presently we were aware of a sudden commotion on the deck of the stranger, who immediately afterward ran up a british flag, and, hauling her wind, bore up directly upon us. in half an hour more we found ourselves in her cabin. she proved to be the jane guy, of liverpool, captain guy, bound on a sealing and trading voyage to the south seas and pacific. * the case of the brig polly, of boston, is one so much in point, and her fate, in many respects, so remarkably similar to our own, that i cannot forbear alluding to it here. this vessel, of one hundred and thirty tons burden, sailed from boston, with a cargo of lumber and provisions, for santa croix, on the twelfth of december, 1811, under the command of captain casneau. there were eight souls on board besides the captainthe mate, four seamen, and the cook, together with a mr. hunt, and a negro girl belonging to him. on the fifteenth, having cleared the shoal of georges, she sprung a leak in a gale of wind from the southeast, and was finally capsized; but, the masts going by the board, she afterward righted. they remained in this situation, without fire, and with very little provision, for the period of one hundred and ninety-one days (from december the fifteenth to june the twentieth), when captain casneau and samuel badger, the only survivors, were taken off the wreck by the fame, of hull, captain featherstone, bound home from rio janeiro. when picked up, they were in latitude 28 degrees n., longitude 13 degrees w., having drifted above two thousand miles! on the ninth of july the fame fell in with the brig dromero, captain perkins, who landed the two sufferers in kennebeck. the narrative from which we gather these details ends in the following words: "it is natural to inquire how they could float such a vast distance, upon the most frequented part of the atlantic, and not be discovered all this time. they were passed by more than a dozen sail, one of which came so nigh them that they could distinctly see the people on deck and on the rigging looking at them; but, to the inexpressible disappointment of the starving and freezing men, they stifled the dictates of compassion, hoisted sail, and cruelly abandoned them to their fate." chapter xiv the jane guy was a fine-looking topsail schooner of a hundred and eighty tons burden. she was unusually sharp in the bows, and on a wind, in moderate weather, the fastest sailer i have ever seen. her qualities, however, as a rough sea-boat, were not so good, and her draught of water was by far too great for the trade to which she was destined. for this peculiar service, a larger vessel, and one of a light proportionate draught, is desirablesay a vessel of from three hundred to three hundred and fifty tons. she should be bark-rigged, and in other respects of a different construction from the usual south sea ships. it is absolutely necessary that she should be well armed. she should have, say ten or twelve twelve-pound carronades, and two or three long twelves, with brass blunderbusses, and water-tight arm-chests for each top. her anchors and cables should be of far greater strength than is required for any other species of trade, and, above all, her crew should be numerous and efficientnot less, for such a vessel as i have described, than fifty or sixty able-bodied men. the jane guy had a crew of thirty-five, all able seamen, besides the captain and mate, but she was not altogether as well armed or otherwise equipped, as a navigator acquainted with the difficulties and dangers of the trade could have desired. captain guy was a gentleman of great urbanity of manner, and of considerable experience in the southern traffic, to which he had devoted a great portion of his life. he was deficient, however, in energy, and, consequently, in that spirit of enterprise which is here so absolutely requisite. he was part owner of the vessel in which he sailed, and was invested with discretionary powers to cruise in the south seas for any cargo which might come most readily to hand. he had on board, as usual in such voyages, beads, looking-glasses, tinder-works, axes, hatchets, saws, adzes, planes, chisels, gouges, gimlets, files, spokeshaves, rasps, hammers, nails, knives, scissors, razors, needles, thread, crockery-ware, calico, trinkets, and other similar articles. the schooner sailed from liverpool on the tenth of july, crossed the tropic of cancer on the twenty-fifth, in longitude twenty degrees west, and reached sal, one of the cape verd islands, on the twenty-ninth, where she took in salt and other necessaries for the voyage. on the third of august, she left the cape verds and steered southwest, stretching over toward the coast of brazil, so as to cross the equator between the meridians of twenty-eight and thirty degrees west longitude. this is the course usually taken by vessels bound from europe to the cape of good hope, or by that route to the east indies. by proceeding thus they avoid the calms and strong contrary currents which continually prevail on the coast of guinea, while, in the end, it is found to be the shortest track, as westerly winds are never wanting afterward by which to reach the cape. it was captain guy's intention to make his first stoppage at kerguelen's landi hardly know for what reason. on the day we were picked up the schooner was off cape st. roque, in longitude thirty-one degrees west; so that, when found, we had drifted probably, from north to south, not less than five-and-twenty degrees! on board the jane guy we were treated with all the kindness our distressed situation demanded. in about a fortnight, during which time we continued steering to the southeast, with gentle breezes and fine weather, both peters and myself recovered entirely from the effects of our late privation and dreadful sufferings, and we began to remember what had passed rather as a frightful dream from which we had been happily awakened, than as events which had taken place in sober and naked reality. i have since found that this species of partial oblivion is usually brought about by sudden transition, whether from joy to sorrow or from sorrow to joythe degree of forgetfulness being proportioned to the degree of difference in the exchange. thus, in my own case, i now feel it impossible to realize the full extent of the misery which i endured during the days spent upon the hulk. the incidents are remembered, but not the feelings which the incidents elicited at the time of their occurrence. i only know, that when they did occur, i then thought human nature could sustain nothing more of agony. we continued our voyage for some weeks without any incidents of greater moment than the occasional meeting with whaling-ships, and more frequently with the black or right whale, so called in contradistinction to the spermaceti. these, however, were chiefly found south of the twenty-fifth parallel. on the sixteenth of september, being in the vicinity of the cape of good hope, the schooner encountered her first gale of any violence since leaving liverpool. in this neighborhood, but more frequently to the south and east of the promontory (we were to the westward), navigators have often to contend with storms from the northward, which rage with great fury. they always bring with them a heavy sea, and one of their most dangerous features is the instantaneous chopping round of the wind, an occurrence almost certain to take place during the greatest force of the gale. a perfect hurricane will be blowing at one moment from the northward or northeast, and in the next not a breath of wind will be felt in that direction, while from the southwest it will come out all at once with a violence almost inconceivable. a bright spot to the southward is the sure forerunner of the change, and vessels are thus enabled to take the proper precautions. it was about six in the morning when the blow came on with a white squall, and, as usual, from the northward. by eight it had increased very much, and brought down upon us one of the most tremendous seas i had then ever beheld. every thing had been made as snug as possible, but the schooner laboured excessively, and gave evidence of her bad qualities as a seaboat, pitching her forecastle under at every plunge and with the greatest difficulty struggling up from one wave before she was buried in another. just before sunset the bright spot for which we had been on the look-out made its appearance in the southwest, and in an hour afterward we perceived the little headsail we carried flapping listlessly against the mast. in two minutes more, in spite of every preparation, we were hurled on our beam-ends, as if by magic, and a perfect wilderness of foam made a clear breach over us as we lay. the blow from the southwest, however, luckily proved to be nothing more than a squall, and we had the good fortune to right the vessel without the loss of a spar. a heavy cross sea gave us great trouble for a few hours after this, but toward morning we found ourselves in nearly as good condition as before the gale. captain guy considered that he had made an escape little less than miraculous. on the thirteenth of october we came in sight of prince edward's island, in latitude 46 degrees 53' s., longitude 37 degrees 46' e. two days afterward we found ourselves near possession island, and presently passed the islands of crozet, in latitude 42 degrees 59' s., longitude 48 degrees e. on the eighteenth we made kerguelen's or desolation island, in the southern indian ocean, and came to anchor in christmas harbour, having four fathoms of water. this island, or rather group of islands, bears southeast from the cape of good hope, and is distant therefrom nearly eight hundred leagues. it was first discovered in 1772, by the baron de kergulen, or kerguelen, a frenchman, who, thinking the land to form a portion of an extensive southern continent carried home information to that effect, which produced much excitement at the time. the government, taking the matter up, sent the baron back in the following year for the purpose of giving his new discovery a critical examination, when the mistake was discovered. in 1777, captain cook fell in with the same group, and gave to the principal one the name of desolation island, a title which it certainly well deserves. upon approaching the land, however, the navigator might be induced to suppose otherwise, as the sides of most of the hills, from september to march, are clothed with very brilliant verdure. this deceitful appearance is caused by a small plant resembling saxifrage, which is abundant, growing in large patches on a species of crumbling moss. besides this plant there is scarcely a sign of vegetation on the island, if we except some coarse rank grass near the harbor, some lichen, and a shrub which bears resemblance to a cabbage shooting into seed, and which has a bitter and acrid taste. the face of the country is hilly, although none of the hills can be called lofty. their tops are perpetually covered with snow. there are several harbors, of which christmas harbour is the most convenient. it is the first to be met with on the northeast side of the island after passing cape francois, which forms the northern shore, and, by its peculiar shape, serves to distinguish the harbour. its projecting point terminates in a high rock, through which is a large hole, forming a natural arch. the entrance is in latitude 48 degrees 40' s., longitude 69 degrees 6' e. passing in here, good anchorage may be found under the shelter of several small islands, which form a sufficient protection from all easterly winds. proceeding on eastwardly from this anchorage you come to wasp bay, at the head of the harbour. this is a small basin, completely landlocked, into which you can go with four fathoms, and find anchorage in from ten to three, hard clay bottom. a ship might lie here with her best bower ahead all the year round without risk. to the westward, at the head of wasp bay, is a small stream of excellent water, easily procured. some seal of the fur and hair species are still to be found on kerguelen's island, and sea elephants abound. the feathered tribes are discovered in great numbers. penguins are very plenty, and of these there are four different kinds. the royal penguin, so called from its size and beautiful plumage, is the largest. the upper part of the body is usually gray, sometimes of a lilac tint; the under portion of the purest white imaginable. the head is of a glossy and most brilliant black, the feet also. the chief beauty of plumage, however, consists in two broad stripes of a gold color, which pass along from the head to the breast. the bill is long, and either pink or bright scarlet. these birds walk erect; with a stately carriage. they carry their heads high with their wings drooping like two arms, and, as their tails project from their body in a line with the legs, the resemblance to a human figure is very striking, and would be apt to deceive the spectator at a casual glance or in the gloom of the evening. the royal penguins which we met with on kerguelen's land were rather larger than a goose. the other kinds are the macaroni, the jackass, and the rookery penguin. these are much smaller, less beautiful in plumage, and different in other respects. besides the penguin many other birds are here to be found, among which may be mentioned sea-hens, blue peterels, teal, ducks, port egmont hens, shags, cape pigeons, the nelly, sea swallows, terns, sea gulls, mother carey's chickens, mother carey's geese, or the great peterel, and, lastly, the albatross. the great peterel is as large as the common albatross, and is carnivorous. it is frequently called the break-bones, or osprey peterel. they are not at all shy, and, when properly cooked, are palatable food. in flying they sometimes sail very close to the surface of the water, with the wings expanded, without appearing to move them in the least degree, or make any exertion with them whatever. the albatross is one of the largest and fiercest of the south sea birds. it is of the gull species, and takes its prey on the wing, never coming on land except for the purpose of breeding. between this bird and the penguin the most singular friendship exists. their nests are constructed with great uniformity upon a plan concerted between the two speciesthat of the albatross being placed in the centre of a little square formed by the nests of four penguins. navigators have agreed in calling an assemblage of such encampments a rookery. these rookeries have been often described, but as my readers may not all have seen these descriptions, and as i shall have occasion hereafter to speak of the penguin and albatross, it will not be amiss to say something here of their mode of building and living. when the season for incubation arrives, the birds assemble in vast numbers, and for some days appear to be deliberating upon the proper course to be pursued. at length they proceed to action. a level piece of ground is selected, of suitable extent, usually comprising three or four acres, and situated as near the sea as possible, being still beyond its reach. the spot is chosen with reference to its evenness of surface, and that is preferred which is the least encumbered with stones. this matter being arranged, the birds proceed, with one accord, and actuated apparently by one mind, to trace out, with mathematical accuracy, either a square or other parallelogram, as may best suit the nature of the ground, and of just sufficient size to accommodate easily all the birds assembled, and no morein this particular seeming determined upon preventing the access of future stragglers who have not participated in the labor of the encampment. one side of the place thus marked out runs parallel with the water's edge, and is left open for ingress or egress. having defined the limits of the rookery, the colony now begin to clear it of every species of rubbish, picking up stone by stone, and carrying them outside of the lines, and close by them, so as to form a wall on the three inland sides. just within this wall a perfectly level and smooth walk is formed, from six to eight feet wide, and extending around the encampmentthus serving the purpose of a general promenade. the next process is to partition out the whole area into small squares exactly equal in size. this is done by forming narrow paths, very smooth, and crossing each other at right angles throughout the entire extent of the rookery. at each intersection of these paths the nest of an albatross is constructed, and a penguin's nest in the centre of each squarethus every penguin is surrounded by four albatrosses, and each albatross by a like number of penguins. the penguin's nest consists of a hole in the earth, very shallow, being only just of sufficient depth to keep her single egg from rolling. the albatross is somewhat less simple in her arrangements, erecting a hillock about a foot high and two in diameter. this is made of earth, seaweed, and shells. on its summit she builds her nest. the birds take especial care never to leave their nests unoccupied for an instant during the period of incubation, or, indeed, until the young progeny are sufficiently strong to take care of themselves. while the male is absent at sea in search of food, the female remains on duty, and it is only upon the return of her partner that she ventures abroad. the eggs are never left uncovered at allwhile one bird leaves the nest the other nestling in by its side. this precaution is rendered necessary by the thieving propensities prevalent in the rookery, the inhabitants making no scruple to purloin each other's eggs at every good opportunity. although there are some rookeries in which the penguin and albatross are the sole population, yet in most of them a variety of oceanic birds are to be met with, enjoying all the privileges of citizenship, and scattering their nests here and there, wherever they can find room, never interfering, however, with the stations of the larger species. the appearance of such encampments, when seen from a distance, is exceedingly singular. the whole atmosphere just above the settlement is darkened with the immense number of the albatross (mingled with the smaller tribes) which are continually hovering over it, either going to the ocean or returning home. at the same time a crowd of penguins are to be observed, some passing to and fro in the narrow alleys, and some marching with the military strut so peculiar to them, around the general promenade ground which encircles the rookery. in short, survey it as we will, nothing can be more astonishing than the spirit of reflection evinced by these feathered beings, and nothing surely can be better calculated to elicit reflection in every well-regulated human intellect. on the morning after our arrival in christmas harbour the chief mate, mr. patterson, took the boats, and (although it was somewhat early in the season) went in search of seal, leaving the captain and a young relation of his on a point of barren land to the westward, they having some business, whose nature i could not ascertain, to transact in the interior of the island. captain guy took with him a bottle, in which was a sealed letter, and made his way from the point on which he was set on shore toward one of the highest peaks in the place. it is probable that his design was to leave the letter on that height for some vessel which he expected to come after him. as soon as we lost sight of him we proceeded (peters and myself being in the mate's boat) on our cruise around the coast, looking for seal. in this business we were occupied about three weeks, examining with great care every nook and corner, not only of kerguelen's land, but of the several small islands in the vicinity. our labours, however, were not crowned with any important success. we saw a great many fur seal, but they were exceedingly shy, and with the greatest exertions, we could only procure three hundred and fifty skins in all. sea elephants were abundant, especially on the western coast of the mainland, but of these we killed only twenty, and this with great difficulty. on the smaller islands we discovered a good many of the hair seal, but did not molest them. we returned to the schooner: on the eleventh, where we found captain guy and his nephew, who gave a very bad account of the interior, representing it as one of the most dreary and utterly barren countries in the world. they had remained two nights on the island, owing to some misunderstanding, on the part of the second mate, in regard to the sending a jollyboat from the schooner to take them off. chapter xv on the twelfth we made sail from christmas harbour retracing our way to the westward, and leaving marion's island, one of crozet's group, on the larboard. we afterward passed prince edward's island, leaving it also on our left, then, steering more to the northward, made, in fifteen days, the islands of tristan d'acunha, in latitude 37 degrees 8' s, longitude 12 degrees 8' w. this group, now so well known, and which consists of three circular islands, was first discovered by the portuguese, and was visited afterward by the dutch in 1643, and by the french in 1767. the three islands together form a triangle, and are distant from each other about ten miles, there being fine open passages between. the land in all of them is very high, especially in tristan d'acunha, properly so called. this is the largest of the group, being fifteen miles in circumference, and so elevated that it can be seen in clear weather at the distance of eighty or ninety miles. a part of the land toward the north rises more than a thousand feet perpendicularly from the sea. a tableland at this height extends back nearly to the centre of the island, and from this tableland arises a lofty cone like that of teneriffe. the lower half of this cone is clothed with trees of good size, but the upper region is barren rock, usually hidden among the clouds, and covered with snow during the greater part of the year. there are no shoals or other dangers about the island, the shores being remarkably bold and the water deep. on the northwestern coast is a bay, with a beach of black sand where a landing with boats can be easily effected, provided there be a southerly wind. plenty of excellent water may here be readily procured; also cod and other fish may be taken with hook and line. the next island in point of size, and the most westwardly of the group, is that called the inaccessible. its precise situation is 37 degrees 17' s. latitude, longitude 12 degrees 24' w. it is seven or eight miles in circumference, and on all sides presents a forbidding and precipitous aspect. its top is perfectly flat, and the whole region is sterile, nothing growing upon it except a few stunted shrubs. nightingale island, the smallest and most southerly, is in latitude 37 degrees 26' s., longitude 12 degrees 12' w. off its southern extremity is a high ledge of rocky islets; a few also of a similar appearance are seen to the northeast. the ground is irregular and sterile, and a deep valley partially separates it. the shores of these islands abound, in the proper season, with sea lions, sea elephants, the hair and fur seal, together with a great variety of oceanic birds. whales are also plenty in their vicinity. owing to the ease with which these various animals were here formerly taken, the group has been much visited since its discovery. the dutch and french frequented it at a very early period. in 1790, captain patten, of the ship industry, of philadelphia, made tristan d'acunha, where he remained seven months (from august, 1790, to april, 1791) for the purpose of collecting sealskins. in this time he gathered no less than five thousand six hundred, and says that he would have had no difficulty in loading a large ship with oil in three weeks. upon his arrival he found no quadrupeds, with the exception of a few wild goats; the island now abounds with all our most valuable domestic animals, which have been introduced by subsequent navigators. i believe it was not long after captain patten's visit that captain colquhoun, of the american brig betsey, touched at the largest of the islands for the purpose of refreshment. he planted onions, potatoes, cabbages, and a great many other vegetables, an abundance of all which is now to be met with. in 1811, a captain haywood, in the nereus, visited tristan. he found there three americans, who were residing upon the island to prepare sealskins and oil. one of these men was named jonathan lambert, and he called himself the sovereign of the country. he had cleared and cultivated about sixty acres of land, and turned his attention to raising the coffee-plant and sugar-cane, with which he had been furnished by the american minister at rio janeiro. this settlement, however, was finally abandoned, and in 1817 the islands were taken possession of by the british government, who sent a detachment for that purpose from the cape of good hope. they did not, however, retain them long; but, upon the evacuation of the country as a british possession, two or three english families took up their residence there independently of the government. on the twenty-fifth of march, 1824, the berwick, captain jeffrey, from london to van diemen's land, arrived at the place, where they found an englishman of the name of glass, formerly a corporal in the british artillery. he claimed to be supreme governor of the islands, and had under his control twenty-one men and three women. he gave a very favourable account of the salubrity of the climate and of the productiveness of the soil. the population occupied themselves chiefly in collecting sealskins and sea elephant oil, with which they traded to the cape of good hope, glass owning a small schooner. at the period of our arrival the governor was still a resident, but his little community had multiplied, there being fifty-six persons upon tristan, besides a smaller settlement of seven on nightingale island. we had no difficulty in procuring almost every kind of refreshment which we requiredsheep, hogs, bullocks, rabbits, poultry, goats, fish in great variety, and vegetables were abundant. having come to anchor close in with the large island, in eighteen fathoms, we took all we wanted on board very conveniently. captain guy also purchased of glass five hundred sealskins and some ivory. we remained here a week, during which the prevailing winds were from the northward and westward, and the weather somewhat hazy. on the fifth of november we made sail to the southward and westward, with the intention of having a thorough search for a group of islands called the auroras, respecting whose existence a great diversity of opinion has existed. these islands are said to have been discovered as early as 1762, by the commander of the ship aurora. in 1790, captain manuel de oyarvido,, in the ship princess, belonging to the royal philippine company, sailed, as he asserts, directly among them. in 1794, the spanish corvette atrevida went with the determination of ascertaining their precise situation, and, in a paper published by the royal hydrographical society of madrid in the year 1809, the following language is used respecting this expedition: "the corvette atrevida practised, in their immediate vicinity, from the twenty-first to the twenty-seventh of january, all the necessary observations, and measured by chronometers the difference of longitude between these islands and the port of soledad in the manillas. the islands are three, they are very nearly in the same meridian; the centre one is rather low, and the other two may be seen at nine leagues' distance." the observations made on board the atrevida give the following results as the precise situation of each island. the most northern is in latitude 52 degrees 37' 24" s., longitude 47 degrees, 43' 15" w.; the middle one in latitude 53 degrees 2' 40" s., longitude 47 degrees 55' 15" w.; and the most southern in latitude 53 degrees 15' 22" s., longitude 47 degrees 57' 15" w. on the twenty-seventh of january, 1820, captain james weddel, of the british navy, sailed from staten land also in search of the auroras. he reports that, having made the most diligent search and passed not only immediately over the spots indicated by the commander of the atrevida, but in every direction throughout the vicinity of these spots, he could discover no indication of land. these conflicting statements have induced other navigators to look out for the islands; and, strange to say, while some have sailed through every inch of sea where they are supposed to lie without finding them, there have been not a few who declare positively that they have seen them; and even been close in with their shores. it was captain guy's intention to make every exertion within his power to settle the question so oddly in dispute.* * among the vessels which at various times have professed to meet with the auroras may be mentioned the ship san miguel, in 1769; the ship aurora, in 1774; the brig pearl, in 1779; and the ship dolores, in 1790. they all agree in giving the mean latitude fifty-three degrees south. we kept on our course, between the south and west, with variable weather, until the twentieth of the month, when we found ourselves on the debated ground, being in latitude 53 degrees 15' s., longitude 47 degrees 58' w.that is to say, very nearly upon the spot indicated as the situation of the most southern of the group. not perceiving any sip of land, we continued to the westward of the parallel of fifty-three degrees south, as far as the meridian of fifty degrees west. we then stood to the north as far as the parallel of fifty-two degrees south, when we turned to the eastward, and kept our parallel by double altitudes, morning and evening, and meridian altitudes of the planets and moon. having thus gone eastwardly to the meridian of the western coast of georgia, we kept that meridian until we were in the latitude from which we set out. we then took diagonal courses throughout the entire extent of sea circumscribed, keeping a lookout constantly at the masthead, and repeating our examination with the greatest care for a period of three weeks, during which the weather was remarkably pleasant and fair, with no haze whatsoever. of course we were thoroughly satisfied that, whatever islands might have existed in this vicinity at any former period, no vestige of them remained at the present day. since my return home i find that the same ground was traced over, with equal care, in 1822, by captain johnson, of the american schooner henry, and by captain morrell in the american schooner waspin both cases with the same result as in our own. chapter xvi it had been captain guy's original intention, after satisfying himself about the auroras, to proceed through the strait of magellan, and up along the western coast of patagonia; but information received at tristan d'acunha induced him to steer to the southward, in the hope of falling in with some small islands said to lie about the parallel of 60 degrees s., longitude 41 degrees 20' w. in the event of his not discovering these lands, he designed, should the season prove favourable, to push on toward the pole. accordingly, on the twelfth of december, we made sail in that direction. on the eighteenth we found ourselves about the station indicated by glass, and cruised for three days in that neighborhood without finding any traces of the islands he had mentioned. on the twenty-first, the weather being unusually pleasant, we again made sail to the southward, with the resolution of penetrating in that course as far as possible. before entering upon this portion of my narrative, it may be as well, for the information of those readers who have paid little attention to the progress of discovery in these regions, to give some brief account of the very few attempts at reaching the southern pole which have hitherto been made. that of captain cook was the first of which we have any distinct account. in 1772 he sailed to the south in the resolution, accompanied by lieutenant furneaux in the adventure. in december he found himself as far as the fifty-eighth parallel of south latitude, and in longitude 26 degrees 57' e. here he met with narrow fields of ice, about eight or ten inches thick, and running northwest and southeast. this ice was in large cakes, and usually it was packed so closely that the vessel had great difficulty in forcing a passage. at this period captain cook supposed, from the vast number of birds to be seen, and from other indications, that he was in the near vicinity of land. he kept on to the southward, the weather being exceedingly cold, until he reached the sixty-fourth parallel, in longitude 38 degrees 14' w.. here he had mild weather, with gentle breezes, for five days, the thermometer being at thirty-six. in january, 1773, the vessels crossed the antarctic circle, but did not succeed in penetrating much farther; for upon reaching latitude 67 degrees 15' they found all farther progress impeded by an immense body of ice, extending all along the southern horizon as far as the eye could reach. this ice was of every varietyand some large floes of it, miles in extent, formed a compact mass, rising eighteen or twenty feet above the water. it being late in the season, and no hope entertained of rounding these obstructions, captain cook now reluctantly turned to the northward. in the november following he renewed his search in the antarctic. in latitude 59 degrees 40' he met with a strong current setting to the southward. in december, when the vessels were in latitude 67 degrees 31', longitude 142 degrees 54' w., the cold was excessive, with heavy gales and fog. here also birds were abundant; the albatross, the penguin, and the peterel especially. in latitude 70 degrees 23' some large islands of ice were encountered, and shortly afterward the clouds to the southward were observed to be of a snowy whiteness, indicating the vicinity of field ice. in latitude 71 degrees 10', longitude 106 degrees 54' w., the navigators were stopped, as before, by an immense frozen expanse, which filled the whole area of the southern horizon. the northern edge of this expanse was ragged and broken, so firmly wedged together as to be utterly impassible, and extending about a mile to the southward. behind it the frozen surface was comparatively smooth for some distance, until terminated in the extreme background by gigantic ranges of ice mountains, the one towering above the other. captain cook concluded that this vast field reached the southern pole or was joined to a continent. mr. j. n. reynolds, whose great exertions and perseverance have at length succeeded in getting set on foot a national expedition, partly for the purpose of exploring these regions, thus speaks of the attempt of the resolution. "we are not surprised that captain cook was unable to go beyond 71 degrees 10', but we are astonished that he did attain that point on the meridian of 106 degrees 54' west longitude. palmer's land lies south of the shetland, latitude sixty-four degrees, and tends to the southward and westward farther than any navigator has yet penetrated. cook was standing for this land when his progress was arrested by the ice; which, we apprehend, must always be the case in that point, and so early in the season as the sixth of januaryand we should not be surprised if a portion of the icy mountains described was attached to the main body of palmer's land, or to some other portions of land lying farther to the southward and westward." in 1803, captains kreutzenstern and lisiausky were dispatched by alexander of russia for the purpose of circumnavigating the globe. in endeavouring to get south, they made no farther than 59 degrees 58', in longitude 70 degrees 15' w. they here met with strong currents setting eastwardly. whales were abundant, but they saw no ice. in regard to this voyage, mr. reynolds observes that, if kreutzenstern had arrived where he did earlier in the season, he must have encountered iceit was march when he reached the latitude specified. the winds, prevailing, as they do, from the southward and westward, had carried the floes, aided by currents, into that icy region bounded on the north by georgia, east by sandwich land and the south orkneys, and west by the south shetland islands. in 1822, captain james weddell, of the british navy, with two very small vessels, penetrated farther to the south than any previous navigator, and this, too, without encountering extraordinary difficulties. he states that although he was frequently hemmed in by ice before reaching the seventy-second parallel, yet, upon attaining it, not a particle was to be discovered, and that, upon arriving at the latitude of 74 degrees 15', no fields, and only three islands of ice were visible. it is somewhat remarkable that, although vast flocks of birds were seen, and other usual indications of land, and although, south of the shetlands, unknown coasts were observed from the masthead tending southwardly, weddell discourages the idea of land existing in the polar regions of the south. on the 11th of january, 1823, captain benjamin morrell, of the american schooner wasp, sailed from kerguelen's land with a view of penetrating as far south as possible. on the first of february he found himself in latitude 64 degrees 52' s., longitude 118 degrees 27' e. the following passage is extracted from his journal of that date. "the wind soon freshened to an eleven-knot breeze, and we embraced this opportunity of making to the west,; being however convinced that the farther we went south beyond latitude sixty-four degrees, the less ice was to be apprehended, we steered a little to the southward, until we crossed the antarctic circle, and were in latitude 69 degrees 15' e. in this latitude there was no field ice, and very few ice islands in sight. under the date of march fourteenth i find also this entry. the sea was now entirely free of field ice, and there were not more than a dozen ice islands in sight. at the same time the temperature of the air and water was at least thirteen degrees higher (more mild) than we had ever found it between the parallels of sixty and sixty-two south. we were now in latitude 70 degrees 14' s., and the temperature of the air was forty-seven, and that of the water forty-four. in this situation i found the variation to be 14 degrees 27' easterly, per azimuth.... i have several times passed within the antarctic circle, on different meridians, and have uniformly found the temperature, both of the air and the water, to become more and more mild the farther i advanced beyond the sixty-fifth degree of south latitude, and that the variation decreases in the same proportion. while north of this latitude, say between sixty and sixty-five south, we frequently had great difficulty in finding a passage for the vessel between the immense and almost innumerable ice islands, some of which were from one to two miles in circumference, and more than five hundred feet above the surface of the water." being nearly destitute of fuel and water, and without proper instruments, it being also late in the season, captain morrell was now obliged to put back, without attempting any further progress to the westward, although an entirely open, sea lay before him. he expresses the opinion that, had not these overruling considerations obliged him to retreat, he could have penetrated, if not to the pole itself, at least to the eighty-fifth parallel. i have given his ideas respecting these matters somewhat at length, that the reader may have an opportunity of seeing how far they were borne out by my own subsequent experience. in 1831, captain briscoe, in the employ of the messieurs enderby, whale-ship owners of london, sailed in the brig lively for the south seas, accompanied by the cutter tula. on the twenty-eighth of february, being in latitude 66 degrees 30' s., longitude 47 degrees 31' e., he descried land, and "clearly discovered through the snow the black peaks of a range of mountains running e. s. e." he remained in this neighbourhood during the whole of the following month, but was unable to approach the coast nearer than within ten leagues, owing to the boisterous state of the weather. finding it impossible to make further discovery during this season, he returned northward to winter in van diemen's land. in the beginning of 1832 he again proceeded southwardly, and on the fourth of february was seen to the southeast in latitude 67 degrees 15' longitude 69 degrees 29' w. this was soon found to be an island near the headland of the country he had first discovered. on the twenty-first of the month he succeeded in landing on the latter, and took possession of it in the name of william iv, calling it adelaide's island, in honour of the english queen. these particulars being made known to the royal geographical society of london, the conclusion was drawn by that body "that there is a continuous tract of land extending from 47 degrees 30' e. to 69 degrees 29' w. longitude, running the parallel of from sixty-six to sixty-seven degrees south latitude." in respect to this conclusion mr. reynolds observes: "in the correctness of it we by no means concur; nor do the discoveries of briscoe warrant any such indifference. it was within these limits that weddel proceeded south on a meridian to the east of georgia, sandwich land, and the south orkney and shetland islands." my own experience will be found to testify most directly to the falsity of the conclusion arrived at by the society. these are the principal attempts which have been made at penetrating to a high southern latitude, and it will now be seen that there remained, previous to the voyage of the jane, nearly three hundred degrees of longitude in which the antarctic circle had not been crossed at all. of course a wide field lay before us for discovery, and it was with feelings of most intense interest that i heard captain guy express his resolution of pushing boldly to the southward. chapter xvii we kept our course southwardly for four days after giving up the search for glass's islands, without meeting with any ice at all. on the twenty-sixth, at noon, we were in latitude 63 degrees 23' s., longitude 41 degrees 25' w. we now saw several large ice islands, and a floe of field ice, not, however, of any great extent. the winds generally blew from the southeast, or the northeast, but were very light. whenever we had a westerly wind, which was seldom, it was invariably attended with a rain squall. every day we had more or less snow. the thermometer, on the twenty-seventh stood at thirty-five. january 1, 1828.this day we found ourselves completely hemmed in by the ice, and our prospects looked cheerless indeed. a strong gale blew, during the whole forenoon, from the northeast, and drove large cakes of the drift against the rudder and counter with such violence that we all trembled for the consequences. toward evening, the gale still blowing with fury, a large field in front separated, and we were enabled, by carrying a press of sail to force a passage through the smaller flakes into some open water beyond. as we approached this space we took in sail by degrees, and having at length got clear, lay-to under a single. reefed foresail. january 2.we had now tolerably pleasant weather. at noon we found ourselves in latitude 69 degrees 10' s, longitude 42 degrees 20' w, having crossed the antarctic circle. very little ice was to be seen to the southward, although large fields of it lay behind us. this day we rigged some sounding gear, using a large iron pot capable of holding twenty gallons, and a line of two hundred fathoms. we found the current setting to the north, about a quarter of a mile per hour. the temperature of the air was now about thirty-three. here we found the variation to be 14 degrees 28' easterly, per azimuth. january 5.we had still held on to the southward without any very great impediments. on this morning, however, being in latitude 73 degrees 15' e., longitude 42 degrees 10' w, we were again brought to a stand by an immense expanse of firm ice. we saw, nevertheless, much open water to the southward, and felt no doubt of being able to reach it eventually. standing to the eastward along the edge of the floe, we at length came to a passage of about a mile in width, through which we warped our way by sundown. the sea in which we now were was thickly covered with ice islands, but had no field ice, and we pushed on boldly as before. the cold did not seem to increase, although we had snow very frequently, and now and then hail squalls of great violence. immense flocks of the albatross flew over the schooner this day, going from southeast to northwest. january 7.the sea still remained pretty well open, so that we had no difficulty in holding on our course. to the westward we saw some icebergs of incredible size, and in the afternoon passed very near one whose summit could not have been less than four hundred fathoms from the surface of the ocean. its girth was probably, at the base, three-quarters of a league, and several streams of water were running from crevices in its sides. we remained in sight of this island two days, and then only lost it in a fog. january 10.early this morning we had the misfortune to lose a man overboard. he was an american named peter vredenburgh, a native of new york, and was one of the most valuable hands on board the schooner. in going over the bows his foot slipped, and he fell between two cakes of ice, never rising again. at noon of this day we were in latitude 78 degrees 30', longitude 40 degrees 15' w. the cold was now excessive, and we had hail squalls continually from the northward and eastward. in this direction also we saw several more immense icebergs, and the whole horizon to the eastward appeared to be blocked up with field ice, rising in tiers, one mass above the other. some driftwood floated by during the evening, and a great quantity of birds flew over, among which were nellies, peterels, albatrosses, and a large bird of a brilliant blue plumage. the variation here, per azimuth, was less than it had been previously to our passing the antarctic circle. january 12.-our passage to the south again looked doubtful, as nothing was to be seen in the direction of the pole but one apparently limitless floe, backed by absolute mountains of ragged ice, one precipice of which arose frowningly above the other. we stood to the westward until the fourteenth, in the hope of finding an entrance. january 14.-this morning we reached the western extremity of the field which had impeded us, and, weathering it, came to an open sea, without a particle of ice. upon sounding with two hundred fathoms, we here found a current setting southwardly at the rate of half a mile per hour. the temperature of the air was forty-seven, that of the water thirtyfour. we now sailed to the southward without meeting any interruption of moment until the sixteenth, when, at noon, we were in latitude 81 degrees 21', longitude 42 degrees w. we here again sounded, and found a current setting still southwardly, and at the rate of three quarters of a mile per hour. the variation per azimuth had diminished, and the temperature of the air was mild and pleasant, the thermometer being as high as fifty-one. at this period not a particle of ice was to be discovered. all hands on board now felt certain of attaining the pole. january 17.this day was full of incident. innumerable flights of birds flew over us from the southward, and several were shot from the deck, one of them, a species of pelican, proved to be excellent eating. about midday a small floe of ice was seen from the masthead off the larboard bow, and upon it there appeared to be some large animal. as the weather was good and nearly calm, captain guy ordered out two of the boats to see what it was. dirk peters and myself accompanied the mate in the larger boat. upon coming up with the floe, we perceived that it was in the possession of a gigantic creature of the race of the arctic bear, but far exceeding in size the largest of these animals. being well armed, we made no scruple of attacking it at once. several shots were fired in quick succession, the most of which took effect, apparently, in the head and body. nothing discouraged, however, the monster threw himself from the ice, and swam with open jaws, to the boat in which were peters and myself. owing to the confusion which ensued among us at this unexpected turn of the adventure, no person was ready immediately with a second shot, and the bear had actually succeeded in getting half his vast bulk across our gunwale, and seizing one of the men by the small of his back, before any efficient means were taken to repel him. in this extremity nothing but the promptness and agility of peters saved us from destruction. leaping upon the back of the huge beast, he plunged the blade of a knife behind the neck, reaching the spinal marrow at a blow. the brute tumbled into the sea lifeless, and without a struggle, rolling over peters as he fell. the latter soon recovered himself, and a rope being thrown him, returned in triumph to the schooner, towing our trophy behind us. this bear, upon admeasurement, proved to be full fifteen feet in his greatest length. his wool was perfectly white, and very coarse, curling tightly. the eyes were of a blood red, and larger than those of the arctic bear, the snout also more rounded, rather resembling the snout of the bulldog. the meat was tender, but excessively rank and fishy, although the men devoured it with avidity, and declared it excellent eating. scarcely had we got our prize alongside, when the man at the masthead gave the joyful shout of "land on the starboard bow!" all hands were now upon the alert, and, a breeze springing up very opportunely from the northward and eastward, we were soon close in with the coast. it proved to be a low rocky islet, of about a league in circumference, and altogether destitute of vegetation, if we except a species of prickly pear. in approaching it from the northward, a singular ledge of rock is seen projecting into the sea, and bearing a strong resemblance to corded bales of cotton. around this ledge to the westward is a small bay, at the bottom of which our boats effected a convenient landing. it did not take us long to explore every portion of the island, but, with one exception, we found nothing worthy of our observation. in the southern extremity, we picked up near the shore, half buried in a pile of loose stones, a piece of wood, which seemed to have formed the prow of a canoe. there had been evidently some attempt at carving upon it, and captain guy fancied that he made out the figure of a tortoise, but the resemblance did not strike me very forcibly. besides this prow, if such it were, we found no other token that any living creature had ever been here before. around the coast we discovered occasional small floes of icebut these were very few. the exact situation of the islet (to which captain guy gave the name of bennet's islet, in honour of his partner in the ownership of the schooner) is 82 degrees 50' s. latitude, 42 degrees 20' w. longitude. we had now advanced to the southward more than eight degrees farther than any previous navigators, and the sea still lay perfectly open before us. we found, too, that the variation uniformly decreased as we proceeded, and, what was still more surprising, that the temperature of the air, and latterly of the water, became milder. the weather might even be called pleasant, and we had a steady but very gentle breeze always from some northern point of the compass. the sky was usually clear, with now and then a slight appearance of thin vapour in the southern horizonthis, however, was invariably of brief duration. two difficulties alone presented themselves to our view; we were getting short of fuel, and symptoms of scurvy had occurred among several of the crew. these considerations began to impress upon captain guy the necessity of returning, and he spoke of it frequently. for my own part, confident as i was of soon arriving at land of some description upon the course we were pursuing, and having every reason to believe, from present appearances, that we should not find it the sterile soil met with in the higher arctic latitudes, i warmly pressed upon him the expediency of persevering, at least for a few days longer, in the direction we were now holding. so tempting an opportunity of solving the great problem in regard to an antarctic continent had never yet been afforded to man, and i confess that i felt myself bursting with indignation at the timid and ill-timed suggestions of our commander. i believe, indeed, that what i could not refrain from saying to him on this head had the effect of inducing him to push on. while, therefore, i cannot but lament the most unfortunate and bloody events which immediately arose from my advice, i must still be allowed to feel some degree of gratification at having been instrumental, however remotely, in opening to the eye of science one of the most intensely exciting secrets which has ever engrossed its attention. chapter xviii january 18.this morning* we continued to the southward, with the same pleasant weather as before. the sea was entirely smooth, the air tolerably warm and from the northeast, the temperature of the water fifty-three. we now again got our sounding-gear in order, and, with a hundred and fifty fathoms of line, found the current setting toward the pole at the rate of a mile an hour. this constant tendency to the southward, both in the wind and current, caused some degree of speculation, and even of alarm, in different quarters of the schooner, and i saw distinctly that no little impression had been made upon the mind of captain guy. he was exceedingly sensitive to ridicule, however, and i finally succeeded in laughing him out of his apprehensions. the variation was now very trivial. in the course of the day we saw several large whales of the right species, and innumerable flights of the albatross passed over the vessel. we also picked up a bush, full of red berries, like those of the hawthorn, and the carcass of a singular-looking land-animal. it was three feet in length, and but six inches in height, with four very short legs, the feet armed with long claws of a brilliant scarlet, and resembling coral in substance. the body was covered with a straight silky hair, perfectly white. the tail was peaked like that of a rat, and about a foot and a half long. the head resembled a cat's, with the exception of the earsthese were flopped like the ears of a dog. the teeth were of the same brilliant scarlet as the claws. * the terms morning and evening, which i have made use of to avoid confusion in my narrative, as far as possible, must not, of course, be taken in their ordinary sense. for a long time past we had had no night at all, the daylight being continual. the dates throughout are according to nautical time, and the bearing must be understood as per compass. i would also remark, in this place, that i cannot, in the first portion of what is here written, pretend to strict accuracy in respect to dates, or latitudes and longitudes, having kept no regular journal until after the period of which this first portion treats. in many instances i have relied altogether upon memory. january 19.to-day, being in latitude 83 degrees 20', longitude 43 degrees 5' w. (the sea being of an extraordinarily dark colour), we again saw land from the masthead, and, upon a closer scrutiny, found it to be one of a group of very large islands. the shore was precipitous, and the interior seemed to be well wooded, a circumstance which occasioned us great joy. in about four hours from our first discovering the land we came to anchor in ten fathoms, sandy bottom, a league from the coast, as a high surf, with strong ripples here and there, rendered a nearer approach of doubtful expediency. the two largest boats were now ordered out, and a party, well armed (among whom were peters and myself), proceeded to look for an opening in the reef which appeared to encircle the island. after searching about for some time, we discovered an inlet, which we were entering, when we saw four large canoes put off from the shore, filled with men who seemed to be well armed. we waited for them to come up, and, as they moved with great rapidity, they were soon within hail. captain guy now held up a white handkerchief on the blade of an oar, when the strangers made a full stop, and commenced a loud jabbering all at once, intermingled with occasional shouts, in which we could distinguish the words anamoo-moo! and lama-lama! they continued this for at least half an hour, during which we had a good opportunity of observing their appearance. in the four canoes, which might have been fifty feet long and five broad, there were a hundred and ten savages in all. they were about the ordinary stature of europeans, but of a more muscular and brawny frame. their complexion a jet black, with thick and long woolly hair. they were clothed in skins of an unknown black animal, shaggy and silky, and made to fit the body with some degree of skill, the hair being inside, except where turned out about the neck, wrists, and ankles. their arms consisted principally of clubs, of a dark, and apparently very heavy wood. some spears, however, were observed among them, headed with flint, and a few slings. the bottoms of the canoes were full of black stones about the size of a large egg. when they had concluded their harangue (for it was clear they intended their jabbering for such), one of them who seemed to be the chief stood up in the prow of his canoe, and made signs for us to bring our boats alongside of him. this hint we pretended not to understand, thinking it the wiser plan to maintain, if possible, the interval between us, as their number more than quadrupled our own. finding this to be the case, the chief ordered the three other canoes to hold back, while he advanced toward us with his own. as soon as he came up with us he leaped on board the largest of our boats, and seated himself by the side of captain guy, pointing at the same time to the schooner, and repeating the word anamoo-moo! and lama-lama! we now put back to the vessel, the four canoes following at a little distance. upon getting alongside, the chief evinced symptoms of extreme surprise and delight, clapping his hands, slapping his thighs and breast, and laughing obstreperously. his followers behind joined in his merriment, and for some minutes the din was so excessive as to be absolutely deafening. quiet being at length restored, captain guy ordered the boats to be hoisted up, as a necessary precaution, and gave the chief (whose name we soon found to be too-wit) to understand that we could admit no more than twenty of his men on deck at one time. with this arrangement he appeared perfectly satisfied, and gave some directions to the canoes, when one of them approached, the rest remaining about fifty yards off. twenty of the savages now got on board, and proceeded to ramble over every part of the deck, and scramble about among the rigging, making themselves much at home, and examining every article with great inquisitiveness. it was quite evident that they had never before seen any of the white racefrom whose complexion, indeed, they appeared to recoil. they believed the jane to be a living creature, and seemed to be afraid of hurting it with the points of their spears, carefully turning them up. our crew were much amused with the conduct of too-wit in one instance. the cook was splitting some wood near the galley, and, by accident, struck his axe into the deck, making a gash of considerable depth. the chief immediately ran up, and pushing the cook on one side rather roughly, commenced a half whine, half howl, strongly indicative of sympathy in what he considered the sufferings of the schooner, patting and smoothing the gash with his hand, and washing it from a bucket of seawater which stood by. this was a degree of ignorance for which we were not prepared, and for my part i could not help thinking some of it affected. when the visitors had satisfied, as well as they could, their curiosity in regard to our upper works, they were admitted below, when their amazement exceeded all bounds. their astonishment now appeared to be far too deep for words, for they roamed about in silence, broken only by low ejaculations. the arms afforded them much food for speculation, and they were suffered to handle and examine them at leisure. i do not believe that they had the least suspicion of their actual use, but rather took them for idols, seeing the care we had of them, and the attention with which we watched their movements while handling them. at the great guns their wonder was redoubled. they approached them with every mark of the profoundest reverence and awe, but forbore to examine them minutely. there were two large mirrors in the cabin, and here was the acme of their amazement. too-wit was the first to approach them, and he had got in the middle of the cabin, with his face to one and his back to the other, before he fairly perceived them. upon raising his eyes and seeing his reflected self in the glass, i thought the savage would go mad; but, upon turning short round to make a retreat, and beholding himself a second time in the opposite direction, i was afraid he would expire upon the spot. no persuasion could prevail upon him to take another look; throwing himself upon the floor, with his face buried in his hands, he remained thus until we were obliged to drag him upon deck. the whole of the savages were admitted on board in this manner, twenty at a time, too-wit being suffered to remain during the entire period. we saw no disposition to thievery among them, nor did we miss a single article after their departure. throughout the whole of their visit they evinced the most friendly manner. there were, however, some points in their demeanour which we found it impossible to understand; for example, we could not get them to approach several very harmless objectssuch as the schooner's sails, an egg, an open book, or a pan of flour. we endeavoured to ascertain if they had among them any articles which might be turned to account in the way of traffic, but found great difficulty in being comprehended. we made out, nevertheless, what greatly astonished us, that the islands abounded in the large tortoise of the gallipagos, one of which we saw in the canoe of too-wit. we saw also some biche de mer in the hands of one of the savages, who was greedily devouring it in its natural state. these anomaliesfor they were such when considered in regard to the latitudeinduced captain guy to wish for a thorough investigation of the country, in the hope of making a profitable speculation in his discovery. for my own part, anxious as i was to know something more of these islands, i was still more earnestly bent on prosecuting the voyage to the southward without delay. we had now fine weather, but there was no telling how long it would last; and being already in the eighty-fourth parallel, with an open sea before us, a current setting strongly to the southward, and the wind fair, i could not listen with any patience to a proposition of stopping longer than was absolutely necessary for the health of the crew and the taking on board a proper supply of fuel and fresh provisions. i represented to the captain that we might easily make this group on our return, and winter here in the event of being blocked up by the ice. he at length came into my views (for in some way, hardly known to myself, i had acquired much influence over him), and it was finally resolved that, even in the event of our finding biche de mer, we should only stay here a week to recruit, and then push on to the southward while we might. accordingly we made every necessary preparation, and, under the guidance of too-wit, got the jane through the reef in safety, coming to anchor about a mile from the shore, in an excellent bay, completely landlocked, on the southeastern coast of the main island, and in ten fathoms of water, black sandy bottom. at the head of this bay there were three fine springs (we were told) of good water, and we saw abundance of wood in the vicinity. the four canoes followed us in, keeping, however, at a respectful distance. too-wit himself remained on board, and, upon our dropping anchor, invited us to accompany him on shore, and visit his village in the interior. to this captain guy consented; and ten savages being left on board as hostages, a party of us, twelve in all, got in readiness to attend the chief. we took care to be well armed, yet without evincing any distrust. the schooner had her guns run out, her boarding-nettings up, and every other proper precaution was taken to guard against surprise. directions were left with the chief mate to admit no person on board during our absence, and, in the event of our not appearing in twelve hours, to send the cutter, with a swivel, around the island in search of us. at every step we took inland the conviction forced itself upon us that we were in a country differing essentially from any hitherto visited by civilized men. we saw nothing with which we had been formerly conversant. the trees resembled no growth of either the torrid, the temperate, of the northern frigid zones, and were altogether unlike those of the lower southern latitudes we had already traversed. the very rocks were novel in their mass, their color, and their stratification; and the streams themselves, utterly incredible as it may appear, had so little in common with those of other climates, that we were scrupulous of tasting them, and, indeed, had difficulty in bringing ourselves to believe that their qualities were purely those of nature. at a small brook which crossed our path (the first we had reached) too-wit and his attendants halted to drink. on account of the singular character of the water, we refused to taste it, supposing it to be polluted; and it was not until some time afterward we came to understand that such was the appearance of the streams throughout the whole group. i am at a loss to give a distinct idea of the nature of this liquid, and cannot do so without many words. although it flowed with rapidity in all declivities where common water would do so, yet never, except when falling in a cascade, had it the customary appearance of limpidity. it was, nevertheless, in point of fact, as perfectly limpid as any limestone water in existence, the difference being only in appearance. at first sight, and especially in cases where little declivity was found, it bore re. semblance, as regards consistency, to a thick infusion of gum arabic in common water. but this was only the least remarkable of its extraordinary qualities. it was not colourless, nor was it of any one uniform colourpresenting to the eye, as it flowed, every possible shade of purple; like the hues of a changeable silk. this variation in shade was produced in a manner which excited as profound astonishment in the minds of our party as the mirror had done in the case of too-wit. upon collecting a basinful, and allowing it to settle thoroughly, we perceived that the whole mass of liquid was made up of a number of distinct veins, each of a distinct hue; that these veins did not commingle; and that their cohesion was perfect in regard to their own particles among themselves, and imperfect in regard to neighbouring veins. upon passing the blade of a knife athwart the veins, the water closed over it immediately, as with us, and also, in withdrawing it, all traces of the passage of the knife were instantly obliterated. if, however, the blade was passed down accurately between the two veins, a perfect separation was effected, which the power of cohesion did not immediately rectify. the phenomena of this water formed the first definite link in that vast chain of apparent miracles with which i was destined to be at length encircled. chapter xix we were nearly three hours in reaching the village, it being more than nine miles in the interior, and the path lying through a rugged country. as we passed along, the party of too-wit (the whole hundred and ten savages of the canoes) was momentarily strengthened by smaller detachments, of from two to six or seven, which joined us, as if by accident, at different turns of the road. there appeared so much of system in this that i could not help feeling distrust, and i spoke to captain guy of my apprehensions. it was now too late, however, to recede, and we concluded that our best security lay in evincing a perfect confidence in the good faith of too-wit. we accordingly went on, keeping a wary eye upon the manoeuvres of the savages, and not permitting them to divide our numbers by pushing in between. in this way, passing through a precipitous ravine, we at length reached what we were told was the only collection of habitations upon the island. as we came in sight of them, the chief set up a shout, and frequently repeated the word klock-klock, which we sup. posed to be the name of the village, or perhaps the generic name for villages. the dwellings were of the most miserable description imaginable, and, unlike those of even the lowest of the savage races with which mankind are acquainted, were of no uniform plan. some of them (and these we found belonged to the wampoos or yampoos, the great men of the land) consisted of a tree cut down at about four feet from the root, with a large black skin thrown over it, and hanging in loose folds upon the ground. under this the savage nestled. others were formed by means of rough limbs of trees, with the withered foliage upon them, made to recline, at an angle of forty-five degrees, against a bank of clay, heaped up, without regular form, to the height of five or six feet. others, again, were mere holes dug in the earth perpendicularly, and covered over with similar branches, these being removed when the tenant was about to enter, and pulled on again when he had entered. a few were built among the forked limbs of trees as they stood, the upper limbs being partially cut through, so as to bend over upon the lower, thus forming thicker shelter from the weather. the greater number, however, consisted of small shallow caverns, apparently scratched in the face of a precipitous ledge of dark stone, resembling fuller's earth, with which three sides of the village were bounded. at the door of each of these primitive caverns was a small rock, which the tenant carefully placed before the entrance upon leaving his residence, for what purpose i could not ascertain, as the stone itself was never of sufficient size to close up more than a third of the opening. this village, if it were worthy of the name, lay in a valley of some depth, and could only be approached from the southward, the precipitous ledge of which i have already spoken cutting off all access in other directions. through the middle of the valley ran a brawling stream of the same magical-looking water which has been described. we saw several strange animals about the dwellings, all appearing to be thoroughly domesticated. the largest of these creatures resembled our common hog in the structure of the body and snout; the tail, however, was bushy, and the legs slender as those of the antelope. its motion was exceedingly awkward and indecisive, and we never saw it attempt to run. we noticed also several animals very similar in appearance, but of a greater length of body, and covered with a black wool. there were a great variety of tame fowls running about, and these seemed to constitute the chief food of the natives. to our astonishment we saw black albatross among these birds in a state of entire domestication, going to sea periodically for food, but always returning to the village as a home, and using the southern shore in the vicinity as a place of incubation. there they were joined by their friends the pelicans as usual, but these latter never followed them to the dwellings of the savages. among the other kinds of tame fowls were ducks, differing very little from the canvass-back of our own country, black gannets, and a large bird not unlike the buzzard in appearance, but not carnivorous. of fish there seemed to be a great abundance. we saw, during our visit, a quantity of dried salmon, rock cod, blue dolphins, mackerel, blackfish, skate, conger eels, elephantfish, mullets, soles, parrotfish, leather-jackets, gurnards, hake, flounders, paracutas, and innumerable other varieties. we noticed, too, that most of them were similar to the fish about the group of lord auckland islands, in a latitude as low as fifty-one degrees south. the gallipago tortoise was also very plentiful. we saw but few wild animals, and none of a large size, or of a species with which we were familiar. one or two serpents of a formidable aspect crossed our path, but the natives paid them little attention, and we concluded that they were not venomous. as we approached the village with too-wit and his party, a vast crowd of the people rushed out to meet us, with loud shouts, among which we could only distinguish the everlasting anamoo-moo! and lama-lama! we were much surprised at perceiving that, with one or two exceptions, these new comers were entirely naked, and skins being used only by the men of the canoes. all the weapons of the country seemed also to be in the possession of the latter, for there was no appearance of any among the villagers. there were a great many women and children, the former not altogether wanting in what might be termed personal beauty. they were straight, tall, and well formed, with a grace and freedom of carriage not to be found in civilized society. their lips, however, like those of the men, were thick and clumsy, so that, even when laughing, the teeth were never disclosed. their hair was of a finer texture than that of the males. among these naked villagers there might have been ten or twelve who were clothed, like the party of too-wit, in dresses of black skin, and armed with lances and heavy clubs. these appeared to have great influence among the rest, and were always addressed by the title wampoo. these, too, were the tenants of the black skin palaces. that of too-wit was situated in the centre of the village, and was much larger and somewhat better constructed than others of its kind. the tree which formed its support was cut off at a distance of twelve feet or thereabouts from the root, and there were several branches left just below the cut, these serving to extend the covering, and in this way prevent its flapping about the trunk. the covering, too, which consisted of four very large skins fastened together with wooden skewers, was secured at the bottom with pegs driven through it and into the ground. the floor was strewed with a quantity of dry leaves by way of carpet. to this hut we were conducted with great solemnity, and as many of the natives crowded in after us as possible. too-wit seated himself on the leaves, and made signs that we should follow his example. this we did, and presently found ourselves in a situation peculiarly uncomfortable, if not indeed critical. we were on the ground, twelve in number, with the savages, as many as forty, sitting on their hams so closely around us that, if any disturbance had arisen, we should have found it impossible to make use of our arms, or indeed to have risen to our feet. the pressure was not only inside the tent, but outside, where probably was every individual on the whole island, the crowd being prevented from trampling us to death only by the incessant exertions and vociferations of too-wit. our chief security lay, however, in the presence of too-wit himself among us, and we resolved to stick by him closely, as the best chance of extricating ourselves from the dilemma, sacrificing him immediately upon the first appearance of hostile design. after some trouble a certain degree of quiet was restored, when the chief addressed us in a speech of great length, and very nearly resembling the one delivered in the canoes, with the exception that the anamoo-moos! were now somewhat more strenuously insisted upon than the lama-lamas! we listened in profound silence until the conclusion of this harangue, when captain guy replied by assuring the chief of his eternal friendship and goodwill, concluding what he had to say be a present of several strings of blue beads and a knife. at the former the monarch, much to our surprise, turned up his nose with some expression of contempt, but the knife gave him the most unlimited satisfaction, and he immediately ordered dinner. this was handed into the tent over the heads of the attendants, and consisted of the palpitating entrails of a specials of unknown animal, probably one of the slim-legged hogs which we had observed in our approach to the village. seeing us at a loss how to proceed, he began, by way of setting us an example, to devour yard after yard of the enticing food, until we could positively stand it no longer, and evinced such manifest symptoms of rebellion of stomach as inspired his majesty with a degree of astonishment only inferior to that brought about by the looking-glasses. we declined, however, partaking of the delicacies before us, and endeavoured to make him understand that we had no appetite whatever, having just finished a hearty dejeuner. when the monarch had made an end of his meal, we commenced a series of cross-questioning in every ingenious manner we could devise, with a view of discovering what were the chief productions of the country, and whether any of them might be turned to profit. at length he seemed to have some idea of our meaning, and offered to accompany us to a part of coast where he assured us the biche de mer (pointing to a specimen of that animal) was to be found in great abundance. we were glad of this early opportunity of escaping from the oppression of the crowd, and signified our eagerness to proceed. we now left the tent, and, accompanied by the whole population of the village, followed the chief to the southeastern extremity of the island, nor far from the bay where our vessel lay at anchor. we waited here for about an hour, until the four canoes were brought around by some of the savages to our station. the whole of our party then getting into one of them, we were paddled along the edge of the reef before mentioned, and of another still farther out, where we saw a far greater quantity of biche de mer than the oldest seamen among us had ever seen in those groups of the lower latitudes most celebrated for this article of commerce. we stayed near these reefs only long enough to satisfy ourselves that we could easily load a dozen vessels with the animal if necessary, when we were taken alongside the schooner, and parted with too-wit, after obtaining from him a promise that he would bring us, in the course of twenty-four hours, as many of the canvass-back ducks and gallipago tortoises as his canoes would hold. in the whole of this adventure we saw nothing in the demeanour of the natives calculated to create suspicion, with the single exception of the systematic manner in which their party was strengthened during our route from the schooner to the village. chapter xx the chief was as good as his word, and we were soon plentifully sup. plied with fresh provisions. we found the tortoises as fine as we had ever seen, and the ducks surpassed our best species of wild fowl, being exceedingly tender, juicy, and well-flavoured. besides these, the savages brought us, upon our making them comprehend our wishes, a vast quantity of brown celery and scurvy grass, with a canoe-load of fresh fish and some dried. the celery was a treat indeed, and the scurvy grass proved of incalculable benefit in restoring those of our men who had shown symptoms of disease. in a very short time we had not a single person on the sick-list. we had also plenty of other kinds of fresh provisions, among which may be mentioned a species of shellfish resembling the mussel in shape, but with the taste of an oyster. shrimps, too, and prawns were abundant, and albatross and other birds' eggs with dark shells. we took in, too, a plentiful stock of the flesh of the hog which i have mentioned before. most of the men found it a palpatable food, but i thought it fishy and otherwise disagreeable. in return for these good things we presented the natives with blue beads, brass trinkets, nails, knives, and pieces of red cloth, they being fully delighted in the exchange. we established a regular market on shore, just under the guns of the schooner, where our barterings were carried on with every appearance of good faith, and a degree of order which their conduct at the village of klock-klock had not led us to expect from the savages. matters went on thus very amicably for several days, during which parties of the natives were frequently on board the schooner, and parties of our men frequently on shore, making long excursions into the interior, and receiving no molestation whatever. finding the ease with which the vessel might be loaded with biche de mer, owing to the friendly disposition of the islanders, and the readiness with which they would render us assistance in collecting it, captain guy resolved to enter into negotiations with too-wit for the erection of suitable houses in which to cure the article, and for the services of himself and tribe in gathering as much as possible, while he himself took advantage of the fine weather to prosecute his voyage to the southward. upon mentioning this project to the chief he seemed very willing to enter into an agreement. a bargain was accordingly struck, perfectly satisfactory to both parties, by which it was arranged that, after making the necessary preparations, such as laying off the proper grounds, erecting a portion of the buildings, and doing some other work in which the whole of our crew would be required, the schooner should proceed on her route, leaving three of her men on the island to superintend the fulfilment of the project, and instruct the natives in drying the biche de mer. in regard to terms, these were made to depend upon the exertions of the savages in our absence. they were to receive a stipulated quantity of blue beads, knives, red cloth, and so forth, for every certain number of piculs of the biche de mer which should be ready on our return. a description of the nature of this important article of commerce, and the method of preparing it, may prove of some interest to my readers, and i can find no more suitable place than this for introducing an account of it. the following comprehensive notice of the substance is taken from a modern history of a voyage to the south seas. "it is that mollusca from the indian seas which is known to commerce by the french name bouche de mer (a nice morsel from the sea). if i am not much mistaken, the celebrated cuvier calls it gasteropeda pulmonifera. it is abundantly gathered in the coasts of the pacific islands, and gathered especially for the chinese market, where it commands a great price, perhaps as much as their much-talked-of edible birds' nests, which are properly made up of the gelatinous matter picked up by a species of swallow from the body of these molluscae. they have no shell, no legs, nor any prominent part, except an absorbing and an excretory, opposite organs; but, by their elastic wings, like caterpillars or worms, they creep in shallow waters, in which, when low, they can be seen by a kind of swallow, the sharp bill of which, inserted in the soft animal, draws a gummy and filamentous substance, which, by drying, can be wrought into the solid walls of their nest. hence the name of gasteropeda pulmonifera. "this mollusca is oblong, and of different sizes, from three to eighteen inches in length; and i have seen a few that were not less than two feet long. they were nearly round, a little flattish on one side, which lies next to the bottom of the sea; and they are from one to eight inches thick. they crawl up into shallow water at particular seasons of the year, probably for the purpose of gendering, as we often find them in pairs. it is when the sun has the most power on the water, rendering it tepid, that they approach the shore; and they often go up into places so shallow that, on the tide's receding, they are left dry, exposed to the beat of the sun. but they do not bring forth their young in shallow water, as we never see any of their progeny, and full-grown ones are always observed coming in from deep water. they feed principally on that class of zoophytes which produce the coral. "the biche de mer is generally taken in three or four feet of water; after which they are brought on shore, and split at one end with a knife, the incision being one inch or more, according to the size of the mollusca. through this opening the entrails are forced out by pressure, and they are much like those of any other small tenant of the deep. the article is then washed, and afterward boiled to a certain degree, which must not be too much or too little. they are then buried in the ground for four hours, then boiled again for a short time, after which they are dried, either by the fire or the sun. those cured by the sun are worth the most; but where one picul (133 1/3 lbs.) can be cured that way, i can cure thirty piculs by the fire. when once properly cured, they can be kept in a dry place for two or three years without any risk; but they should be examined once in every few months, say four times a year, to see if any dampness is likely to affect them. "the chinese, as before stated, consider biche de mer a very great luxury, believing that it wonderfully strengthens and nourishes the system, and renews the exhausted system of the immoderate voluptuary. the first quality commands a high price in canton, being worth ninety dollars a picul; the second quality, seventy-five dollars; the third, fifty dollars; the fourth, thirty dollars; the fifth, twenty dollars; the sixth, twelve dollars; the seventh, eight dollars; and the eighth, four dollars; small cargoes, however, will often bring more in manilla, singapore, and batavia." an agreement having been thus entered into, we proceeded immediately to land everything necessary for preparing the buildings and clearing the ground. a large flat space near the eastern shore of the bay was selected, where there was plenty of both wood and water, and within a convenient distance of the principal reefs on which the biche de mer was to be procured. we now all set to work in good earnest, and soon, to the great astonishment of the savages, had felled a sufficient number of trees for our purpose, getting them quickly in order for the framework of the houses, which in two or three days were so far under way that we could safely trust the rest of the work to the three men whom we intended to leave behind. these i believe), who volunteered their services in this respect. by the last of the month we had everything in readiness for departure. we had agreed, however, to pay a formal visit of leave-taking to the village, and too-wit insisted so pertinaciously upon our keeping the promise that we did not think it advisable to run the risk of offending him by a final refusal. i believe that not one of us had at this time the slightest suspicion of the good faith of the savages. they had uniformly behaved with the greatest decorum, aiding us with alacrity in our work, offering us their commodities, frequently without price, and never, in any instance, pilfering a single article, although the high value they set upon the goods we had with us was evident by the extravagant demonstrations of joy always manifested upon our making them a present. the women especially were most obliging in every respect, and, upon the whole, we should have been the most suspicious of human beings had we entertained a single thought of perfidy on the part of a people who treated us so well. a very short while sufficed to prove that this apparent kindness of disposition was only the result of a deeply laid plan for our destruction, and that the islanders for whom we entertained such inordinate feelings of esteem, were among the most barbarous, subtle, and bloodthirsty wretches that ever contaminated the face of the globe. it was on the first of february that we went on shore for the purpose of visiting the village. although, as said before, we entertained not the slightest suspicion, still no proper precaution was neglected. six men were left in the schooner, with instructions to permit none of the savages to approach the vessel during our absence, under any pretence whatever, and to remain constantly on deck. the boarding-nettings were up, the guns double-shotted with grape and canister, and the swivels loaded with canisters of musket-balls. she lay, with her anchor apeak, about a mile from the shore, and no canoe could approach her in any direction without being distinctly seen and exposed to the full fire of our swivels immediately. the six men being left on board, our shore-party consisted of thirty. two persons in all. we were armed to the teeth, having with us muskets, pistols, and cutlasses; besides, each had a long kind of seaman's knife, somewhat resembling the bowie knife now so much used throughout our western and southern country. a hundred of the black skin warriors met us at the landing for the purpose of accompanying us on our way. we noticed, however, with some surprise, that they were now entirely without arms; and, upon questioning too-wit in relation to this circumstance, he merely answered that mattee non we pa pa simeaning that there was no need of arms where all were brothers. we took this in good part, and proceeded. we had passed the spring and rivulet of which i before spoke, and were now entering upon a narrow gorge leading through the chain of soapstone hills among which the village was situated. this gorge was very rocky and uneven, so much so that it was with no little difficulty we scrambled through it on our first visit to klock-klock. the whole length of the ravine might have been a mile and a half, or probably two miles. it wound in every possible direction through the hills (having apparently formed, at some remote period, the bed of a torrent), in no instance proceeding more than twenty yards without an abrupt turn. the sides of this dell would have averaged, i am sure, seventy or eighty feet in perpendicular altitude throughout the whole of their extent, and in some portions they arose to an astonishing height, overshadowing the pass so completely that but little of the light of day could penetrate. the general width was about forty feet, and occasionally it diminished so as not to allow the passage of more than five or six persons abreast. in short, there could be no place in the world better adapted for the consummation of an ambuscade, and it was no more than natural that we should look carefully to our arms as we entered upon it. when i now think of our egregious folly, the chief subject of astonishment seems to be, that we should have ever ventured, under any circumstances, so completely into the power of unknown savages as to permit them to march both before and behind us in our progress through this ravine. yet such was the order we blindly took up, trusting foolishly to the force of our party, the unarmed condition of too-wit and his men, the certain efficacy of our firearms (whose effect was yet a secret to the natives), and, more than all, to the long-sustained pretension of friendship kept up by these infamous wretches. five or six of them went on before, as if to lead the way, ostentatiously busying themselves in removing the larger stones and rubbish from the path. next came our own party. we walked closely together, taking care only to prevent separation. behind followed the main body of the savages, observing unusual order and decorum. dirk peters, a man named wilson allen, and myself were on the right of our companions, examining, as we went along, the singular stratification of the precipice which overhung us. a fissure in the soft rock attracted our attention. it was about wide enough for one person to enter without squeezing, and extended back into the hill some eighteen or twenty feet in a straight course, sloping afterward to the left. the height of the opening, is far as we could see into it from the main gorge, was perhaps sixty or seventy feet. there were one or two stunted shrubs growing from the crevices, bearing a species of filbert which i felt some curiosity to examine, and pushed in briskly for that purpose, gathering five or six of the nuts at a grasp, and then hastily retreating. as i turned, i found that peters and allen had followed me. i desired them to go back, as there was not room for two persons to pass, saying they should have some of my nuts. they accordingly turned, and were scrambling back, allen being close to the mouth of the fissure, when i was suddenly aware of a concussion resembling nothing i had ever before experienced, and which impressed me with a vague conception, if indeed i then thought of anything, that the whole foundations of the solid globe were suddenly rent asunder, and that the day of universal dissolution was at hand. chapter xxi as soon as i could collect my scattered senses, i found myself nearly suffocated, and grovelling in utter darkness among a quantity of loose earth, which was also falling upon me heavily in every direction, threatening to bury me entirely. horribly alarmed at this idea, i struggled to gain my feet, and at last succeeded. i then remained motionless for some moments, endeavouring to conceive what had happened to me, and where i was. presently i heard a deep groan just at my ear, and afterward the smothered voice of peters calling to me for aid in the name of god. i scrambled one or two paces forward, when i fell directly over the head and shoulders of my companion, who, i soon discovered, was buried in a loose mass of earth as far as his middle, and struggling desperately to free himself from the pressure. i tore the dirt from around him with all the energy i could command, and at length succeeded in getting him out. as soon as we sufficiently recovered from our fright and surprise to be capable of conversing rationally, we both came to the conclusion that the walls of the fissure in which we had ventured had, by some convulsion of nature, or probably from their own weight, caved in overhead, and that we were consequently lost for ever, being thus entombed alive. for a long time we gave up supinely to the most intense agony and despair, such as cannot be adequately imagined by those who have never been in a similar position. i firmly believed that no incident ever occurring in the course of human events is more adapted to inspire the supremeness of mental and bodily distress than a case like our own, of living inhumation. the blackness of darkness which envelops the victim, the terrific oppression of lungs, the stifling fumes from the damp earth, unite with the ghastly considerations that we are beyond the remotest confines of hope, and that such is the allotted portion of the dead, to carry into the human heart a degree of appalling awe and horror not to be toleratednever to be conceived. at length peters proposed that we should endeavour to ascertain precisely the extent of our calamity, and grope about our prison; it being barely possible, he observed, that some opening might yet be left us for escape. i caught eagerly at this hope, and, arousing myself to exertion, attempted to force my way through the loose earth. hardly had i advanced a single step before a glimmer of light became perceptible, enough to convince me that, at all events, we should not immediately perish for want of air. we now took some degree of heart, and encouraged each other to hope for the best. having scrambled over a bank of rubbish which impeded our farther progress in the direction of the light, we found less difficulty in advancing and also experienced some relief from the excessive oppression of lungs which had tormented us. presently we were enabled to obtain a glimpse of the objects around, and discovered that we were near the extremity of the straight portion of the fissure, where it made a turn to the left. a few struggles more, and we reached the bend, when to our inexpressible joy, there appeared a long seam or crack extending upward a vast distance, generally at an angle of about forty-five degrees, although sometimes much more precipitous. we could not see through the whole extent of this opening; but, as a good deal of light came down it, we had little doubt of finding at the top of it (if we could by any means reach the top) a clear passage into the open air. i now called to mind that three of us had entered the fissure from the main gorge, and that our companion, allen, was still missing; we determined at once to retrace our steps and look for him. after a long search, and much danger from the farther caving in of the earth above us, peters at length cried out to me that he had hold of our companion's foot, and that his whole body was deeply buried beneath the rubbish beyond the possibility of extricating him. i soon found that what he said was too true, and that, of course, life had been long extinct. with sorrowful hearts, therefore, we left the corpse to its fate, and again made our way to the bend. the breadth of the seam was barely sufficient to admit us, and, after one or two ineffectual efforts at getting up, we began once more to despair. i have before said that the chain of hills through which ran the main gorge was composed of a species of soft rock resembling soap. stone. the sides of the cleft we were now attempting to ascend were of the same material, and so excessively slippery, being wet, that we could get but little foothold upon them even in their least precipitous parts; in some places, where the ascent was nearly perpendicular, the difficulty was, of course, much aggravated; and, indeed, for some time we thought insurmountable. we took courage, however, from despair, and what, by dint of cutting steps in the soft stone with our bowie knives, and swinging at the risk of our lives, to small projecting points of a harder species of slaty rock which now and then protruded from the general mass, we at length reached a natural platform, from which was perceptible a patch of blue sky, at the extremity of a thickly-wooded ravine. looking back now, with somewhat more leisure, at the passage through which we had thus far proceeded, we clearly saw from the appearance of its sides, that it was of late formation, and we concluded that the concussion, whatever it was, which had so unexpectedly overwhelmed us, had also, at the same moment, laid open this path for escape. being quite exhausted with exertion, and indeed, so weak that we were scarcely able to stand or articulate, peters now proposed that we should endeavour to bring our companions to the rescue by firing the pistols which still remained in our girdlesthe muskets as well as cutlasses had been lost among the loose earth at the bottom of the chasm. subsequent events proved that, had we fired, we should have sorely repented it, but luckily a half suspicion of foul play had by this time arisen in my mind, and we forbore to let the savages know of our whereabouts. after having reposed for about an hour, we pushed on slowly up the ravine, and had gone no great way before we heard a succession of tremendous yells. at length we reached what might be called the surface of the ground; for our path hitherto, since leaving the platform, had lain beneath an archway of high rock and foliage, at a vast distance overhead. with great caution we stole to a narrow opening, through which we had a clear sight of the surrounding country, when the whole dreadful secret of the concussion broke upon us in one moment and at one view. the spot from which we looked was not far from the summit of the highest peak in the range of the soapstone hills. the gorge in which our party of thirty-two had entered ran within fifty feet to the left of us. but, for at least one hundred yards, the channel or bed of this gorge was entirely filled up with the chaotic ruins of more than a million tons of earth and stone that had been artificially tumbled within it. the means by which the vast mass had been precipitated were not more simple than evident, for sure traces of the murderous work were yet remaining. in several spots along the top of the eastern side of the gorge (we were now on the western) might be seen stakes of wood driven into the earth. in these spots the earth had not given way, but throughout the whole extent of the face of the precipice from which the mass had fallen, it was clear, from marks left in the soil resembling those made by the drill of the rock blaster, that stakes similar to those we saw standing had been inserted, at not more than a yard apart, for the length of perhaps three hundred feet, and ranging at about ten feet back from the edge of the gulf. strong cords of grape vine were attached to the stakes still remaining on the hill, and it was evident that such cords had also been attached to each of the other stakes. i have already spoken of the singular stratification of these soapstone hills; and the description just given of the narrow and deep fissure through which we effected our escape from inhumation will afford a further conception of its nature. this was such that almost every natural convulsion would be sure to split the soil into perpendicular layers or ridges running parallel with one another, and a very moderate exertion of art would be sufficient for effecting the same purpose. of this stratification the savages had availed themselves to accomplish their treacherous ends. there can be no doubt that, by the continuous line of stakes, a partial rupture of the soil had been brought about probably to the depth of one or two feet, when by means of a savage pulling at the end of each of the cords (these cords being attached to the tops of the stakes, and extending back from the edge of the cliff), a vast leverage power was obtained, capable of hurling the whole face of the hill, upon a given signal, into the bosom of the abyss below. the fate of our poor companions was no longer a matter of uncertainty. we alone had escaped from the tempest of that overwhelming destruction. we were the only living white men upon the island. chapter xxii our situation, as it now appeared, was scarcely less dreadful than when we had conceived ourselves entombed forever. we saw before us no prospect but that of being put to death by the savages, or of dragging out a miserable existence in captivity among them. we might, to be sure, conceal ourselves for a time from their observation among the fastnesses of the hills, and, as a final resort, in the chasm from which we had just issued; but we must either perish in the long polar winter through cold and famine, or be ultimately discovered in our efforts to obtain relief. the whole country around us seemed to be swarming with savages, crowds of whom, we now perceived, had come over from the islands to the southward on flat rafts, doubtless with a view of lending their aid in the capture and plunder of the jane. the vessel still lay calmly at anchor in the bay, those on board being apparently quite unconscious of any danger awaiting them. how we longed at that moment to be with them! either to aid in effecting their escape, or to perish with them in attempting a defence. we saw no chance even of warning them of their danger without bringing immediate destruction upon our own heads, with but a remote hope of benefit to them. a pistol fired might suffice to apprise them that something wrong had occurred; but the report could not possibly inform them that their only prospect of safety lay in getting out of the harbour forthwithnor tell them no principles of honour now bound them to remain, that their companions were no longer among the living. upon hearing the discharge they could not be more thoroughly prepared to meet the foe, who were now getting ready to attack, than they already were, and always had been. no good, therefore, and infinite harm, would result from our firing, and after mature deliberation, we forbore. our next thought was to attempt to rush toward the vessel, to seize one of the four canoes which lay at the head of the bay, and endeavour to force a passage on board. but the utter impossibility of succeeding in this desperate task soon became evident. the country, as i said before, was literally swarming with the natives, skulking among the bushes and recesses of the hills, so as not to be observed from the schooner. in our immediate vicinity especially, and blockading the sole path by which we could hope to attain the shore at the proper point were stationed the whole party of the black skin warriors, with too-wit at their head, and apparently only waiting for some re-enforcement to commence his onset upon the jane. the canoes, too, which lay at the head of the bay, were manned with savages, unarmed, it is true, but who undoubtedly had arms within reach. we were forced, therefore, however unwillingly, to remain in our place of concealment, mere spectators of the conflict which presently ensued. in about half an hour we saw some sixty or seventy rafts, or flatboats, with outriggers, filled with savages, and coming round the southern bight of the harbor. they appeared to have no arms except short clubs, and stones which lay in the bottom of the rafts. immediately afterward another detachment, still larger, appeared in an opposite direction, and with similar weapons. the four canoes, too, were now quickly filled with natives, starting up from the bushes at the head of the bay, and put off swiftly to join the other parties. thus, in less time than i have taken to tell it, and as if by magic, the jane saw herself surrounded by an immense multitude of desperadoes evidently bent upon capturing her at all hazards. that they would succeed in so doing could not be doubted for an instant. the six men left in the vessel, however resolutely they might engage in her defence, were altogether unequal to the proper management of the guns, or in any manner to sustain a contest at such odds. i could hardly imagine that they would make resistance at all, but in this was deceived; for presently i saw them get springs upon the cable, and bring the vessel's starboard broadside to bear upon the canoes, which by this time were within pistol range, the rafts being nearly a quarter of a mile to windward. owing to some cause unknown, but most probably to the agitation of our poor friends at seeing themselves in so hopeless a situation, the discharge was an entire failure. not a canoe was hit or a single savage injured, the shots striking short and ricocheting over their heads. the only effect produced upon them was astonishment at the unexpected report and smoke, which was so excessive that for some moments i almost thought they would abandon their design entirely, and return to the shore. and this they would most likely have done had our men followed up their broadside by a discharge of small arms, in which, as the canoes were now so near at hand, they could not have failed in doing some execution, sufficient, at least, to deter this party from a farther advance, until they could have given the rafts also a broadside. but, in place of this, they left the canoe party to recover from their panic, and, by looking about them, to see that no injury had been sustained, while they flew to the larboard to get ready for the rafts. the discharge to larboard produced the most terrible effect. the star and double-headed shot of the large guns cut seven or eight of the rafts completely asunder, and killed, perhaps, thirty or forty of the savages outright, while a hundred of them, at least, were thrown into the water, the most of them dreadfully wounded. the remainder, frightened out of their senses, commenced at once a precipitate retreat, not even waiting to pick up their maimed companions, who were swimming about in every direction, screaming and yelling for aid. this great success, however, came too late for the salvation of our devoted people. the canoe party were already on board the schooner to the number of more than a hundred and fifty, the most of them having succeeded in scrambling up the chains and over the boarding-netting even before the matches had been applied to the larboard guns. nothing now could withstand their brute rage. our men were borne down at once, overwhelmed, trodden under foot, and absolutely torn to pieces in an instant. seeing this, the savages on the rafts got the better of their fears, and came up in shoals to the plunder. in five minutes the jane was a pitiable scene indeed of havoc and tumultuous outrage. the decks were split open and ripped up; the cordage, sails, and everything movable on deck demolished as if by magic, while, by dint of pushing at the stern, towing with the canoes, and hauling at the sides, as they swam in thousands around the vessel, the wretches finally forced her on shore (the cable having been slipped), and delivered her over to the good offices of too-wit, who, during the whole of the engagement, had maintained, like a skilful general, his post of security and reconnaissance among the hills, but, now that the victory was completed to his satisfaction, condescended to scamper down with his warriors of the black skin, and become a partaker in the spoils. too-wit's descent left us at liberty to quit our hiding place and reconnoitre the hill in the vicinity of the chasm. at about fifty yards from the mouth of it we saw a small spring of water, at which we slaked the burning thirst that now consumed us. not far from the spring we discovered several of the filbert-bushes which i mentioned before. upon tasting the nuts we found them palatable, and very nearly resembling in flavour the common english filbert. we collected our hats full immediately, deposited them within the ravine, and returned for more. while we were busily employed in gathering these, a rustling in the bushes alarmed us, and we were upon the point of stealing back to our covert, when a large black bird of the bittern species strugglingly and slowly arose above the shrubs. i was so much startled that i could do nothing, but peters had sufficient presence of mind to run up to it before it could make its escape, and seize it by the neck. its struggles and screams were tremendous, and we had thoughts of letting it go, lest the noise should alarm some of the savages who might be still lurking in the neighbourhood. a stab with a bowie knife, however, at length brought it to the ground, and we dragged it into the ravine, congratulating ourselves that, at all events, we had thus obtained a supply of food enough to last us for a week. we now went out again to look about us, and ventured a considerable distance down the southern declivity of the hill, but met with nothing else which could serve us for food. we therefore collected a quantity of dry wood and returned, seeing one or two large parties of the natives on their way to the village, laden with the plunder of the vessel, and who, we were apprehensive, might discover us in passing beneath the hill. our next care was to render our place of concealment as secure as possible, and with this object, we arranged some brushwood over the aperture which i have before spoken of as the one through which we saw the patch of blue sky, on reaching the platform from the interior of the chasm. we left only a very small opening just wide enough to admit of our seeing the, bay, without the risk of being discovered from below. having done this, we congratulated ourselves upon the security of the position; for we were now completely excluded from observation, as long as we chose to remain within the ravine itself, and not venture out upon the hill, we could perceive no traces of the savages having ever been within this hollow; but, indeed, when we came to reflect upon the probability that the fissure through which we attained it had been only just now created by the fall of the cliff opposite, and that no other way of attaining it could be perceived, we were not so much rejoiced at the thought of being secure from molestation as fearful lest there should be absolutely no means left us for descent. we resolved to explore the summit of the hill thoroughly, when a good opportunity should offer. in the meantime we watched the motions of the savages through our loophole. they had already made a complete wreck of the vessel, and were now preparing to set her on fire. in a little while we saw the smoke ascending in huge volumes from her main hatchway, and, shortly afterward, a dense mass of flame burst up from the forecastle. the rigging, masts and what remained of the sails caught immediately, and the fire spread rapidly along the decks. still a great many of the savages retained their stations about her, hammering with large stones, axes, and cannon balls at the bolts and other iron and copper work. on the beach, and in canoes and rafts, there were not less, altogether, in the immediate vicinity of the schooner, than ten thousand natives, besides the shoals of them who, laden with booty, were making their way inland and over to the neighbouring islands. we now anticipated a catastrophe, and were not disappointed. first of all there came a smart shock (which we felt as distinctly where we were as if we had been slightly galvanized), but unattended with any visible signs of an explosion. the savages were evidently startled, and paused for an instant from their labours and yellings. they were upon the point of recommencing, when suddenly a mass of smoke puffed up from the decks, resembling a black and heavy thundercloudthen, as if from its bowels, arose a tall stream of vivid fire to the height, apparently, of a quarter of a milethen there came a sudden circular expansion of the flamethen the whole atmosphere was magically crowded, in a single instant, with a wild chaos of wood, and metal, and human limbs-and, lastly, came the concussion in its fullest fury, which hurled us impetuously from our feet, while the hills echoed and re-echoed the tumult, and a dense shower of the minutest fragments of the ruins tumbled headlong in every direction around us. the havoc among the savages far exceeded our utmost expectation, and they had now, indeed, reaped the full and perfect fruits of their treachery. perhaps a thousand perished by the explosion, while at least an equal number were desperately mangled. the whole surface of the bay was literally strewn with the struggling and drowning wretches, and on shore matters were even worse. they seemed utterly appalled by the suddenness and completeness of their discomfiture, and made no efforts at assisting one another. at length we observed a total change in their demeanour. from absolute stupor, they appeared to be, all at once, aroused to the highest pitch of excitement, and rushed wildly about, going to and from a certain point on the beach, with the strangest expressions of mingled horror, rage, and intense curiosity depicted on their countenances, and shouting, at the top of their voices, "tekeli-li! tekeli-li!" presently we saw a large body go off into the hills, whence they returned in a short time, carrying stakes of wood. these they brought to the station where the crowd was the thickest, which now separated so as to afford us a view of the object of all this excitement. we perceived something white lying upon the ground, but could not immediately make out what it was. at length we saw that it was the carcass of the strange animal with the scarlet teeth and claws which the schooner had picked up at sea on the eighteenth of january. captain guy had had the body preserved for the purpose of stuffing the skin and taking it to england. i remember he had given some directions about it just before our making the island, and it had been brought into the cabin and stowed away in one of the lockers. it had now been thrown on shore by the explosion; but why it had occasioned so much concern among the savages was more than we could comprehend. although they crowded around the carcass at a little distance, none of them seemed willing to approach it closely. by-and-by the men with the stakes drove them in a circle around it, and no sooner was this arrangement completed, than the whole of the vast assemblage rushed into the interior of the island, with loud screams of "tekeli-li! tekeli-li!" chapter xxiii during the six or seven days immediately following we remained in our hiding-place upon the hill, going out only occasionally, and then with the greatest precaution, for water and filberts. we had made a kind of penthouse on the platform, furnishing it with a bed of dry leaves, and placing in it three large flat stones, which served us for both fireplace and table. we kindled a fire without difficulty by rubbing two pieces of dry wood together, the one soft, the other hard. the bird we had taken in such good season proved excellent eating, although somewhat tough. it was not an oceanic fowl, but a species of bittern, with jet black and grizzly plumage, and diminutive wings in proportion to its bulk. we afterward saw three of the same kind in the vicinity of the ravine, apparently seeking for the one we had captured; but, as they never alighted, we had no opportunity of catching them. as long as this fowl lasted we suffered nothing from our situation, but it was now entirely consumed, and it became absolutely necessary that we should look out for provision. the filberts would not satisfy the cravings of hunger, afflicting us, too, with severe gripings of the bowels, and, if freely indulged in, with violent headache. we had seen several large tortoises near the seashore to the eastward of the hill, and perceived they might be easily taken, if we could get at them without the observation of the natives. it was resolved, therefore, to make an attempt at descending. we commenced by going down the southern declivity, which seemed to offer the fewest difficulties, but had not proceeded a hundred yards before (as we had anticipated from appearances on the hilltop) our progress was entirely arrested by a branch of the gorge in which our companions had perished. we now passed along the edge of this for about a quarter of a mile, when we were again stopped by a precipice of immense depth, and, not being able to make our way along the brink of it, we were forced to retrace our steps by the main ravine. we now pushed over to the eastward, but with precisely similar fortune. after an hour's scramble, at the risk of breaking our necks, we discovered that we had merely descended into a vast pit of black granite, with fine dust at the bottom, and whence the only egress was by the rugged path in which we had come down. toiling again up this path, we now tried the northern edge of the hill. here we were obliged to use the greatest possible caution in our manoeuvres, as the least indiscretion would expose us to the full view of the savages in the village. we crawled along, therefore, on our hands and knees, and, occasionally, were even forced to throw ourselves at full length, dragging our bodies along by means of the shrubbery. in this careful manner we had proceeded but a little way, when we arrived at a chasm far deeper than any we had yet seen, and leading directly into the main gorge. thus our fears were fully confirmed, and we found ourselves cut off entirely from access to the world below. thoroughly exhausted by our exertions, we made the best of our way back to the platform, and throwing ourselves upon the bed of leaves, slept sweetly and soundly for some hours. for several days after this fruitless search we were occupied in exploring every part of the summit of the hill, in order to inform ourselves of its actual resources. we found that it would afford us no food, with the exception of the unwholesome filberts, and a rank species of scurvy grass, which grew in a little patch of not more than four rods square, and would be soon exhausted. on the fifteenth of february, as near as i can remember, there was not a blade of this left, and the nuts were growing scarce; our situation, therefore, could hardly be more lamentable.* on the sixteenth we again went round the walls of our prison, in hope of finding some avenue of escape; but to no purpose. we also descended the chasm in which we had been overwhelmed, with the faint expectation of discovering, through this channel, some opening to the main ravine. here, too, we were disappointed, although we found and brought up with us a musket. * this day was rendered remarkable by our observing in the south several huge wreaths of the grayish vapour i have spoken of. on the seventeenth we set out with the determination of examining more thoroughly the chasm of black granite into which we had made our way in the first search. we remembered that one of the fissures in the sides of this pit had been but partially looked into, and we were anxious to explore it, although with no expectation of discovering here any opening. we found no great difficulty in reaching the bottom of the hollow as before, and were now sufficiently calm to survey it with some attention. it was, indeed, one of the most singular-looking places imaginable, and we could scarcely bring ourselves to believe it altogether the work of nature. the pit, from its eastern to its western extremity, was about five hundred yards in length, when all its windings were threaded; the distance from east to west in a straight line not being more (i should suppose, having no means of accurate examination) than forty or fifty yards. upon first descending into the chasm, that is to say, for a hundred feet downward from the summit of the hill, the sides of the abyss bore little resemblance to each other, and, apparently, had at no time been connected, the one surface being of the soapstone, and the other of marl, granulated with some metallic matter. the average breadth or interval between the two cliffs was probably here sixty feet, but there seemed to be no regularity of formation. passing down, however, beyond the limit spoken of, the interval rapidly contracted, and the sides began to run parallel, although, for some distance farther, they were still dissimilar in their material and form of surface. upon arriving within fifty feet of the bottom, a perfect regularity commenced. the sides were now entirely uniform in substance, in colour, and in lateral direction, the material being a very black and shining granite, and the distance between the two sides, at all points facing each other, exactly twenty yards. the precise formation of the chasm will be best understood by means of a delineation taken upon the spot; for i had luckily with me a pocketbook and pencil, which i preserved with great care through a long series of subsequent adventure, and to which i am indebted for memoranda of many subjects which would otherwise have been crowded from my remembrance. this figure (see fig. 1) gives the general outlines of the chasm, without the minor cavities in the sides, of which there were several, each cavity having a corresponding protuberance opposite. the bottom of the gulf was covered to the depth of three or four inches with a powder almost impalpable, beneath which we found a continuation of the black granite. to the right, at the lower extremity, will be noticed the appearance of a small opening; this is the fissure alluded to above, and to examine which more minutely than before was the object of our second visit. we now pushed into it with vigor, cutting away a quantity of brambles which impeded us, and removing a vast heap of sharp flints somewhat resembling arrowheads in shape. we were encouraged to persevere, however, by perceiving some little light proceeding from the farther end. we at length squeezed our way for about thirty feet, and found that the aperture was a low and regularly formed arch, having a bottom of the same impalpable powder as that in the main chasm. a strong light now broke upon us, and, turning a short bend, we found ourselves in another lofty chamber, similar to the one we had left in every respect but longitudinal form. its general figure is here given. (see fig. 2.) the total length of this chasm, commencing at the opening a and proceeding round the curve b to the extremity d, is five hundred and fifty yards. at c we discovered a small aperture similar to the one through which we had issued from the other chasm, and this was choked up in the same manner with brambles and a quantity of the white arrowhead flints. we forced our way through it, finding it about forty feet long, and emerged into a third chasm. this, too, was precisely like the first, except in its longitudinal shape, which was thus. (see fig. 3.) we found the entire length of the third chasm three hundred and twenty yards. at the point a was an opening about six feet wide, and extending fifteen feet into the rock, where it terminated in a bed of marl, there being no other chasm beyond, as we had expected. we were about leaving this fissure, into which very little light was admitted, when peters called my attention to a range of singular-looking indentures in the surface of the marl forming the termination of the cul-de-sac. with a very slight exertion of the imagination, the left, or most northern of these indentures might have been taken for the intentional, although rude, representation of a human figure standing erect, with outstretched arm. the rest of them bore also some little resemblance to alphabetical characters, and peters was willing, at all events, to adopt the idle opinion that they were really such. i convinced him of his error, finally, by directing his attention to the floor of the fissure, where, among the powder, we picked up, piece by piece, several large flakes of the marl, which had evidently been broken off by some convulsion from the surface where the indentures were found, and which had projecting points exactly fitting the indentures; thus proving them to have been the work of nature. fig. 4 presents an accurate copy of the whole. after satisfying ourselves that these singular caverns afforded us no means of escape from our prison, we made our way back, dejected and dispirited, to the summit of the hill. nothing worth mentioning occurred during the next twenty-four hours, except that, in examining the ground to the eastward of the third chasm, we found two triangular holes of great depth, and also with black granite sides. into these holes we did not think it worth while to attempt descending, as they had the appearance of mere natural wells, without outlet. they were each about twenty yards in circumference, and their shape, as well as relative position in regard to the third chasm, is shown in figure 5. chapter xxiv on the twentieth of the month, finding it altogether impossible to subsist any longer upon the filberts, the use of which occasioned us the most excruciating torment, we resolved to make a desperate attempt at descending the southern declivity of the hill. the face of the precipice was here of the softest species of soapstone, although nearly perpendicular throughout its whole extent (a depth of a hundred and fifty feet at the least), and in many places even overarching. after long search we discovered a narrow ledge about twenty feet below the brink of the gulf; upon this peters contrived to leap, with what assistance i could render him by means of our pocket-handkerchiefs tied together. with somewhat more difficulty i also got down; and we then saw the possibility of descending the whole way by the process in which we had clambered up from the chasm when we had been buried by the fall of the hillthat is, by cutting steps in the face of the soapstone with our knives. the extreme hazard of the attempt can scarcely be conceived; but, as there was no other resource, we determined to undertake it. upon the ledge where we stood there grew some filbert bushes; and to one of these we made fast an end of our rope of handkerchiefs. the other end being tied round peters' waist, i lowered him down over the edge of the precipice until the handkerchiefs were stretched tight. he now proceeded to dig a deep hole in the soapstone (as far in as eight or ten inches), sloping away the rock above to the height of a foot, or thereabout, so as to allow of his driving, with the butt of a pistol, a tolerably strong peg into the levelled surface. i then drew him up for about four feet when he made a hole similar to the one below, driving in a peg as before and having thus a resting place for both feet and hands. i now unfastened the handkerchiefs from the bush, throwing him the end, which he tied to the peg in the uppermost hole, letting himself down gently to a station about three feet lower than he had yet beenthat is, to the full extent of the handkerchiefs. here he dug another hole, and drove another peg. he then drew himself up, so as to rest his feet in the hole just cut, taking hold with his hands upon the peg in the one above. it was now necessary to untie the handkerchiefs from the topmost peg, with the view of fastening them to the second; and here he found that an error had been committed in cutting the holes at so great a distance apart. however, after one or two unsuccessful and dangerous attempts at reaching the knot (having to hold on with his left hand while he laboured to undo the fastening with his right), he at length cut the string, leaving six inches of it affixed to the peg. tying the handkerchiefs now to the second peg, he descended to a station below the third, taking care not to go too far down. by these means (means which i should never have conceived of myself, and for which we were indebted altogether to peters' ingenuity and resolution) my companion finally succeeded, with the occasional aid of projections in the cliff, in reaching the bottom without accident. it was some time before i could summon sufficient resolution to follow him; but i did at length attempt it. peters had taken off his shirt before descending, and this, with my own, formed the rope necessary for the adventure. after throwing down the musket found in the chasm, i fastened this rope to the bushes, and let myself down rapidly, striving, by the vigour of my movements, to banish the trepidation which i could overcome in no other manner. this answered sufficiently well for the first four or five steps; but presently i found my imagination growing terribly excited by thoughts of the vast depths yet to be descended, and the precarious nature of the pegs and soapstone holes which were my only support. it was in vain i endeavoured to banish these reflections, and to keep my eyes steadily bent upon the flat surface of the cliff before me. the more earnestly i struggled not to think, the more intensely vivid became my conceptions, and the more horribly distinct. at length arrived that crisis of fancy, so fearful in all similar cases, the crisis in which we begin to anticipate the feelings with which we shall fallto picture to ourselves the sickness, and dizziness, and the last struggle, and the half swoon, and the final bitterness of the rushing and headlong descent. and now i found these fancies creating their own realities, and all imagined horrors crowding upon me in fact. i felt my knees strike violently together, while my fingers were gradually but certainly relaxing their grasp. there was a ringing in my ears, and i said, "this is my knell of death!" and now i was consumed with the irrepressible desire of looking below. i could not, i would not, confine my glances to the cliff; and, with a wild, indefinable emotion, half of horror, half of a relieved oppression, i threw my vision far down into the abyss. for one moment my fingers clutched convulsively upon their hold, while, with the movement, the faintest possible idea of ultimate escape wandered, like a shadow, through my mindin the next my whole soul was pervaded with a longing to fall; a desire, a yearning, a passion utterly uncontrollable. i let go at once my grasp upon the and, turning half round from the precipice, remained tottering for an instant against its naked face. but now there came a spinning of the brain; a shrill-sounding and phantom voice screamed within my ears; a dusky, fiendish, and filmy figure stood immediately beneath me; and, sighing, i sunk down with a bursting heart, and plunged within its arms. i had swooned, and peters had caught me as i fell. he had observed my proceedings from his station at the bottom of the cliff; and perceiving my imminent danger, had endeavoured to inspire me with courage by every suggestion he could devise; although my confusion of mind had been so great as to prevent my hearing what he said, or being conscious that he had even spoken to me at all. at length, seeing me totter, he hastened to ascend to my rescue, and arrived just in time for my preservation. had i fallen with my full weight, the rope of linen would inevitably have snapped, and i should have been precipitated into the abyss; as it was, he contrived to let me down gently, so as to remain suspended without danger until animation returned. this was in about fifteen minutes. on recovery, my trepidation had entirely vanished; i felt a new being, and, with some little further aid from my companion, reached the bottom also in safety. we now found ourselves not far from the ravine which had proved the tomb of our friends, and to the southward of the spot where the hill had fallen. the place was one of singular wildness, and its aspect brought to my mind the descriptions given by travellers of those dreary regions marking the site of degraded babylon. not to speak of the ruins of the disrupted cliff, which formed a chaotic barrier in the vista to the northward, the surface of the ground in every other direction was strewn with huge tumuli, apparently the wreck of some gigantic structures of art; although, in detail, no semblance of art could be detected. scoria were abundant, and large shapeless blocks of the black granite, intermingled with others of marl,* and both granulated with metal. of vegetation there were no traces whatsoever throughout the whole of the desolate area within sight. several immense scorpions were seen, and various reptiles not elsewhere to be found in the high latitudes. * the marl was also black; indeed, we noticed no light-coloured substances of any kind upon the island. as food was our most immediate object, we resolved to make our way to the seacoast, distant not more than half a mile, with a view of catching turtle, several of which we had observed from our place of concealment on the hill. we had proceeded some hundred yards, threading our route cautiously between the huge rocks and tumuli, when, upon turning a corner, five savages sprung upon us from a small cavern, felling peters to the ground with a blow from a club. as he fell the whole party rushed upon him to secure their victim, leaving me time to recover from my astonishment. i still had the musket, but the barrel had received so much injury in being thrown from the precipice that i cast it aside as useless, preferring to trust my pistols, which had been carefully preserved in order. with these i advanced upon the assailants, firing one after the other in quick succession. two savages fell, and one, who was in the act of thrusting a spear into peters, sprung to his feet without accomplishing his purpose. my companion being thus released, we had no further difficulty. he had his pistols also, but prudently declined using them, confiding in his great personal strength, which far exceeded that of any person i have ever known. seizing a club from one of the savages who had fallen, he dashed out the brains of the three who remained, killing each instantaneously with a single blow of the weapon, and leaving us completely masters of the field. so rapidly had these events passed, that we could scarcely believe in their reality, and were standing over the bodies of the dead in a species of stupid contemplation, when we were brought to recollection by the sound of shouts in the distance. it was clear that the savages had been alarmed by the firing, and that we had little chance of avoiding discovery. to regain the cliff, it would be necessary to proceed in the direction of the shouts; and even should we succeed in arriving at its base, we should never be able to ascend it without being seen. our situation was one of the greatest peril, and we were hesitating in which path to commence a flight, when one of the savages whom i had shot, and supposed dead, sprang briskly to his feet, and attempted to make his escape. we overtook him, however, before he had advanced many paces, and were about to put him to death, when peters suggested that we might derive some benefit from forcing him to accompany us in our attempt to escape. we therefore dragged him with us, making him understand that we would shoot him if he offered resistance. in a few minutes he was perfectly submissive, and ran by our sides as we pushed in among the rocks, making for the seashore. so far, the irregularities of the ground we had been traversing hid the sea, except at intervals, from our sight, and, when we first had it fairly in view, it was perhaps, two hundred yards distant. as we emerged into the open beach we saw, to our great dismay, an immense crowd of the natives pouring from the village, and from all visible quarters of the island, making toward us with gesticulations of extreme fury, and howling like wild beasts. we were upon the point of turning upon our steps, and trying to secure a retreat among the fastnesses of the rougher ground, when i discovered the bows of two canoes projecting from behind a large rock which ran out into the water. toward these we now ran with all speed, and, reaching them, found them unguarded, and without any other freight than three of the large gallipago turtles and the usual supply of paddles for sixty rowers. we instantly took possession of one of them, and, forcing our captive on board, pushed out to sea with an the strength we could command. we had not made, however, more than fifty yards from the shore before we became sufficiently calm to perceive the great oversight of which we had been guilty in leaving the other canoe in the power of the savages, who, by this time, were not more than twice as far from the beach as ourselves, and were rapidly advancing to the pursuit. no time was now to be lost. our hope was, at best, a forlorn one, but we had none other. it was very doubtful whether, with the utmost exertion, we could get back in time to anticipate them in taking possession of the canoe; but yet there was a chance that we could. we might save ourselves if we succeeded, while not to make the attempt was to resign ourselves to inevitable butchery. the canoe was modelled with the bow and stern alike, and, in place of turning it round, we merely changed our position in paddling. as soon as the savages perceived this they redoubled their yells, as well as their speed, and approached with inconceivable rapidity. we pulled, however, with all the energy of desperation, and arrived at the contested point before more than one of the natives had attained it. this man paid dearly for his superior agility, peters shooting him through the head with a pistol as he approached the shore. the foremost among the rest of his party were probably some twenty or thirty paces distant as we seized upon the canoe. we at first endeavoured to pull her into the deep water, beyond the reach of the savages, but, finding her too firmly aground, and there being no time to spare, peters, with one or two heavy strokes from the butt of the musket, succeeded in dashing out a large portion of the bow and of one side. we then pushed off. two of the natives by this time had got hold of our boat, obstinately refusing to let go, until we were forced to despatch them with our knives. we were now clear off, and making great way out to sea. the main body of the savages, upon reaching the broken canoe, set up the most tremendous yell of rage and disappointment conceivable. in truth, from every thing i could see of these wretches, they appeared to be the most wicked, hypocritical, vindictive, bloodthirsty, and altogether fiendish race of men upon the face of the globe. it is clear we should have had no mercy had we fallen into their hands. they made a mad attempt at following us in the fractured canoe, but, finding it useless, again vented their rage in a series of hideous vociferations, and rushed up into the hills. we were thus relieved from immediate danger, but our situation was still sufficiently gloomy. we knew that four canoes of the kind we had were at one time in the possession of the savages, and were not aware of the fact (afterward ascertained from our captive) that two of these had been blown to pieces in the explosion of the jane guy. we calculated, therefore, upon being yet pursued, as soon as our enemies could get round to the bay (distant about three miles) where the boats were usually laid up. fearing this, we made every exertion to leave the island behind us, and went rapidly through the water, forcing the prisoner to take a paddle. in about half an hour, when we had gained, probably, five or six miles to the southward, a large fleet of the flat-bottomed canoes or rafts were seen to emerge from the bay evidently with the design of pursuit. presently they put back, despairing to overtake us. chapter xxv we now found ourselves in the wide and desolate antarctic ocean, in a latitude exceeding eighty-four degrees, in a frail canoe, and with no provision but the three turtles. the long polar winter, too, could not be considered as far distant, and it became necessary that we should deliberate well upon the course to be pursued. there were six or seven islands in sight belonging to the same group, and distant from each other about five or six leagues; but upon neither of these had we any intention to venture. in coming from the northward in the jane guy we had been gradually leaving behind us the severest regions of icethis, however little it may be in accordance with the generally received notions respecting the antarctic, was a fact experience would not permit us to deny. to attempt, therefore, getting back would be follyespecially at so late a period of the season. only one course seemed to be left open for hope. we resolved to steer boldly to the southward, where there was at least a probability of discovering lands, and more than a probability of finding a still milder climate. so far we had found the antarctic, like the arctic ocean, peculiarly free from violent storms or immoderately rough water, but our canoe was, at best, of frail structure, although large, and we set busily to work with a view of rendering her as safe as the limited means in our possession would admit. the body of the boat was of no better material than barkthe bark of a tree unknown. the ribs were of a tough osier, well adapted to the purpose for which it was used. we had fifty feet room from stern to stern, from four to six in breadth, and in depth throughout four feet and a halfthe boats thus differing vastly in shape from those of any other inhabitants of the southern ocean with whom civilized nations are acquainted. we never did believe them the workmanship of the ignorant islanders who owned them; and some days after this period discovered, by questioning our captive, that they were in fact made by the natives of a group to the southwest of the country where we found them, having fallen accidentally into the hands of our barbarians. what we could do for the security of our boat was very little indeed. several wide rents were discovered near both ends, and these we contrived to patch up with pieces of woollen jacket. with the help of the superfluous paddles, of which there were a great many, we erected a kind of framework about the bow, so as to break the force of any seas which might threaten to fill us in that quarter. we also set up two paddle blades for masts, placing them opposite each other, one by each gunwale, thus saving the necessity of a yard. to these masts we attached a sail made of our shirtsdoing this with some difficulty, as here we could get no assistance from our prisoner whatever, although he had been willing enough to labour in all the other operations. the sight of the linen seemed to affect him in a very singular manner. he could not be prevailed upon to touch it or go near it, shuddering when we attempted to force him, and shrieking out, "tekeli-li!" having completed our arrangements in regard to the security of the canoe, we now set sail to the south southeast for the present, with the view of weathering the most southerly of the group in sight. this being done, we turned the bow full to the southward. the weather could by no means be considered disagreeable. we had a prevailing and very gentle wind from the northward, a smooth sea, and continual daylight. no ice whatever was to be seen; nor did i ever see one particle of this after leaving the parallel of bennet's islet. indeed, the temperature of the water was here far too warm for its existence in any quantity. having killed the largest of our tortoises, and obtained from him not only food but a copious supply of water, we continued on our course, without any incident of moment, for perhaps seven or eight days, during which period we must have proceeded a vast distance to the southward, as the wind blew constantly with us, and a very strong current set continually in the direction we were pursuing. march 1.*many unusual phenomena now indicated that we were entering upon a region of novelty and wonder. a high range of light gray vapour appeared constantly in the southern horizon, flaring up occasionally in lofty streaks, now darting from east to west, now from west to east, and again presenting a level and uniform summitin short, having all the wild variations of the aurora borealis. the average height of this vapour, as apparent from our station, was about twenty-five degrees. the temperature of the sea seemed to be increasing momentarily, and there was a very perceptible alteration in its colour. * for obvious reasons i cannot pretend to strict accuracy in these dates. they are given principally with a view to perspicuity of narration, and as set down in my pencil memorandum. march 2.to-day by repeated questioning of our captive, we came to the knowledge of many particulars in regard to the island of the massacre, its inhabitants, and customsbut with these how can i now detain the reader? i may say, however, that we learned there were eight islands in the groupthat they were governed by a common king, named tsalemon or psalemoun, who resided in one of the smallest of the islands; that the black skins forming the dress of the warriors came from an animal of huge size to be found only in a valley near the court of the kingthat the inhabitants of the group fabricated no other boats than the flat-bottomed rafts; the four canoes being all of the kind in their possession, and these having been obtained, by mere accident, from some large island in the southwestthat his own name was nu-nuthat he had no knowledge of bennet's isletand that the appellation of the island he had left was tsalal. the commencement of the words tsalemon and tsalal was given with a prolonged hissing sound, which we found it impossible to imitate, even after repeated endeavours, and which was precisely the same with the note of the black bittern we had eaten up on the summit of the hill. march 3.the heat of the water was now truly remarkable, and in colour was undergoing a rapid change, being no longer transparent, but of a milky consistency and hue. in our immediate vicinity it was usually smooth, never so rough as to endanger the canoebut we were frequently surprised at perceiving, to our right and left, at different distances, sudden and extensive agitations of the surfacethese, we at length noticed, were always preceded by wild flickerings in the region of vapour to the southward. march 4.to-day, with the view of widening our sail, the breeze from the northward dying away perceptibly, i took from my coat-pocket a white handkerchief. nu-nu was seated at my elbow, and the linen accidentally flaring in his face, he became violently affected with convulsions. these were succeeded by drowsiness and stupor, and low murmurings of "tekeli-li! tekeli-li!" march 5.the wind had entirely ceased, but it was evident that we were still hurrying on to the southward, under the influence of a powerful current. and now, indeed, it would seem reasonable that we should experience some alarm at the turn events were takingbut we felt none. the countenance of peters indicated nothing of this nature, although it wore at times an expression i could not fathom. the polar winter appeared to be coming onbut coming without its terrors. i felt a numbness of body and minda dreaminess of sensationbut this was all. march 6.the gray vapour had now arisen many more degrees above the horizon, and was gradually losing its grayness of tint. the heat of the water was extreme, even unpleasant to the touch, and its milky hue was more evident than ever. to-day a violent agitation of the water occurred very close to the canoe. it was attended, as usual, with a wild flaring up of the vapour at its summit, and a momentary division at its base. a fine white powder, resembling ashesbut certainly not suchfell over the canoe and over a large surface of the water, as the flickering died away among the vapour and the commotion subsided in the sea. nu-nu now threw himself on his face in the bottom of the boat, and no persuasions could induce him to arise. march 7.this day we questioned nu-nu concerning the motives of his countrymen in destroying our companions; but he appeared to be too utterly overcome by terror to afford us any rational reply. he still obstinately lay in the bottom of the boat; and, upon reiterating the questions as to the motive, made use only of idiotic gesticulations, such as raising with his forefinger the upper lip, and displaying the teeth which lay beneath it. these were black. we had never before seen the teeth of an inhabitant of tsalal. march 8.to-day there floated by us one of the white animals whose appearance upon the beach at tsalal had occasioned so wild a commotion among the savages. i would have picked it up, but there came over me a sudden listlessness, and i forbore. the heat of the water still increased, and the hand could no longer be endured within it. peters spoke little, and i knew not what to think of his apathy. nu-nu breathed, and no more. march 9.the whole ashy material fell now continually around us, and in vast quantities. the range of vapour to the southward had arisen prodigiously in the horizon, and began to assume more distinctness of form. i can liken it to nothing but a limitless cataract, rolling silently into the sea from some immense and far-distant rampart in the heaven, the gigantic curtain ranged along the whole extent of the southern horizon. it emitted no sound. march 21.a sullen darkness now hovered above usbut from out the milky depths of the ocean a luminous glare arose, and stole up along the bulwarks of the boat. we were nearly overwhelmed by the white ashy shower which settled upon us and upon the canoe, but melted into the water as it fell. the summit of the cataract was utterly lost in the dimness and the distance. yet we were evidently approaching it with a hideous velocity. at intervals there were visible in it wide, yawning, but momentary rents, and from out these rents, within which was a chaos of flitting and indistinct images, there came rushing and mighty, but soundless winds, tearing up the enkindled ocean in their course. march 22.the darkness had materially increased, relieved only by the glare of the water thrown back from the white curtain before us. many gigantic and pallidly white birds flew continuously now from beyond the veil, and their scream was the eternal tekeli-li! as they retreated from our vision. hereupon nu-nu stirred in the bottom of the boat; but upon touching him, we found his spirit departed. and now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us. but there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. and the hue of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow. note note the circumstances connected with the late sudden and distressing death of mr. pym are already well known to the public through the medium of the daily press. it is feared that the few remaining chapters which were to have completed his narrative, and which were retained by him, while the above were in type, for the purpose of revision, have been irrecoverably lost through the accident by which he perished himself. this, however, may prove not to be the case, and the papers, if ultimately found, will be given to the public. no means have been left untried to remedy the deficiency. the gentleman whose name is mentioned in the preface, and who, from the statement there made, might be supposed able to fill the vacuum, has declined the taskthis for satisfactory reasons connected with the general inaccuracy of the details afforded him, and his disbelief in the entire truth of the latter portions of the narration. peters, from whom some information might be expected, is still alive, and a resident of illinois, but cannot be met with at present. he may hereafter be found, and will, no doubt, afford material for a conclusion of mr. pym's account. the loss of the two or three final chapters (for there were but two or three) is the more deeply to be regretted, as, it cannot be doubted, they contained matter relative to the pole itself, or at least to regions in its very near proximity; and as, too, the statements of the author in relation to these regions may shortly be verified or contradicted by means of the governmental expedition now preparing for the southern ocean. on one point in the narrative some remarks may be well offered; and it would afford the writer of this appendix much pleasure if what he may here observe should have a tendency to throw credit, in any degree, upon the very singular pages now published. we allude to the chasms found in the island of tsalal, and to the whole of the figures presented in chapter xxiii. mr. pym has given the figures of the chasm without comment, and speaks decidedly of the indentures found at the extremity of the most easterly of these chasms as having but a fanciful resemblance to alphabetical characters, and, in short, as being positively not such. this assertion is made in a manner so simple, and sustained by a species of demonstration so conclusive (viz., the fitting of the projections of the fragments found among the dust into the indentures upon the wall), that we are forced to believe the writer in earnest; and no reasonable reader should suppose otherwise. but as the facts in relation to all the figures are most singular (especially when taken in connexion with statements made in the body of the narrative), it may be as well to say a word or two concerning them allthis, too, the more especially as the facts in question have, beyond doubt, escaped the attention of mr. poe. figure 1, then figure 2, figure 3, and figure 5, when conjoined with one another in the precise order which the chasms themselves presented, and when deprived of the small lateral branches or arches (which, it will be remembered, served only as means of communication between the main chambers, and were of totally distinct character), constitute an ethiopian verbal rootthe root (see illustration) "to be shady"whence all the inflections of shadow or darkness. in regard to the "left or most northwardly" of the indentures in figure 4, it is more than probable that the opinion of peters was correct, and that the hieroglyphical appearance was really the work of art, and intended as the representation of a human form. the delineation is before the reader, and he may, or may not, perceive the resemblance suggested; but the rest of the indentures afford strong confirmation of peters' idea. the upper range is evidently the arabic verbal root (see illustration) "to be white," whence all the inflections of brilliancy and whiteness. the lower range is not so immediately perspicuous. the characters are somewhat broken and disjointed; nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that, in their perfect state, they formed the full egyptian word (see illustration), "the region of the south." it should be observed that these interpretations confirm the opinion of peters in regard to the "most northwardly" of the figures. the arm is outstretched towards the south. conclusions such as these open a wide field for speculation and exciting conjecture. they should be regarded, perhaps, in connexion with some of the most faintly-detailed incidents of the narrative; although in no visible manner is this chain of connexion complete. tekeli-li! was the cry of the affrighted natives of tsalal upon discovering the carcass of the white animal picked up at sea. this also was the shuddering exclamation of the captive tsalalian upon encountering the white materials in possession of mr. pym. this also was the shriek of the swift-flying, white, and gigantic birds which issued from the vapoury white curtain of the south. nothing white was to be found at tsalal, and nothing otherwise in the subsequent voyage to the region beyond. it is not impossible that "tsalal," the appellation of the island of the chasms, may be found, upon minute philological scrutiny, to betray either some alliance with the chasms themselves, or some reference to the ethiopian characters so mysteriously written in their windings. "i have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock." the end . freckles, by gene stratton-porter. digitized by cardinalis etext press, c.e.k. posted to wiretap in july 1993, as freckles.gsp. italics are indicated as _italics_. this text is in the public domain. freckles gene stratton-porter grosset & dunlap new york copyright, 1904,1916, by doubleday, page & company all rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the scandinavian printed in the united states of america by arrangement with doubleday & co., inc. to all good irishmen in general and one charles darwin porter in particular characters freckles, a plucky waif who guards the limberlost timber leases and dreams of angels. the swamp angel, in whom freckles' sweetest dream materializes. mclean, a member of a grand rapids lumber company, who befriends freckles mrs. duncan, who gives mother-love and a home to freckles. duncan, head teamster of mclean's timber gang. lord and lady o'more, who come from ireland in quest of a lost relative. the man of affairs, brusque of manner, but big of heart. wessner, a dutch timber thief who wants rascality made easy. black jack, a villain to whom thought of repentance comes too late. sears, camp cook. contents i wherein great risks are taken and the limberlost guard is hired ii wherein freckles proves his mettle and finds friends iii wherein a feather falls and a soul is born iv wherein freckles faces trouble bravely and opens the way for new experiences v wherein an angel materializes and a man worships vi wherein a fight occurs and women shoot straight vii wherein freckles wins honor and finds a footprint on the trail viii wherein freckles meets a man of affairs and loses nothing by the encounter ix wherein the limberlost falls upon mrs. duncan and freckles comes to the rescue x wherein freckles strives mightily and the swamp angel rewards him xi wherein the butterflies go on a spree and freckles informs the bird woman xii wherein black jack captures freckles and the angel captures jack xiii wherein the angel releases freckles, and the curse of black jack falls upon her xiv wherein freckles nurses a heartache and black jack drops out xv wherein freckles and the angel try taking a picture, and little chicken furnishes the subject xvi wherein the angel locates a rare tree and dines with the gang xvii wherein freckles offers his life for his love and gets a broken body xviii wherein freckles refuses love without wnowledge of honorable birth, and the angel goes in quest of it xix wherein freckles finds his birthright and the angel loses her heart xx wherein freckles returns to the limberlost, and lord o'more sails for ireland without him chapter i wherein great risks are taken and the limberlost guard is hired freckles came down the corduroy that crosses the lower end of the limberlost. at a glance he might have been mistaken for a tramp, but he was truly seeking work. he was intensely eager to belong somewhere and to be attached to almost any enterprise that would furnish him food and clothing. long before he came in sight of the camp of the grand rapids lumber company, he could hear the cheery voices of the men, the neighing of the horses, and could scent the tempting odors of cooking food. a feeling of homeless friendlessness swept over him in a sickening wave. without stopping to think, he turned into the newly made road and followed it to the camp, where the gang was making ready for supper and bed. the scene was intensely attractive. the thickness of the swamp made a dark, massive background below, while above towered gigantic trees. the men were calling jovially back and forth as they unharnessed tired horses that fell into attitudes of rest and crunched, in deep content, the grain given them. duncan, the brawny scotch head-teamster, lovingly wiped the flanks of his big bays with handfuls of pawpaw leaves, as he softly whistled, "o wha will be my dearie,. o!" and a cricket beneath the leaves at his feet accompanied him. the green wood fire hissed and crackled merrily. wreathing tongues of flame wrapped around the big black kettles, and when the cook lifted the lids to plunge in his testing-fork, gusts of savory odors escaped. freckles approached him. "i want to speak with the boss," he said. the cook glanced at him and answered carelessly: "he can't use you." the color flooded freckles' face, but he said simply: "if you will be having the goodness to point him out, we will give him a chance to do his own talking." with a shrug of astonishment, the cook led the way to a rough board table where a broad, square-shouldered man was bending over some account-books. "mr. mclean, here's another man wanting to be taken on the gang, i suppose," he said. "all right," came the cheery answer. "i never needed a good man more than i do just now." the manager turned a page and carefully began a new line. "no use of your bothering with this fellow," volunteered the cook. "he hasn't but one hand." the flush on freckles' face burned deeper. his lips thinned to a mere line. he lifted his shoulders, took a step forward, and thrust out his right arm, from which the sleeve dangled empty at the wrist. "that will do, sears," came the voice of the boss sharply. "i will interview my man when i finish this report." he turned to his work, while the cook hurried to the fires. freckles stood one instant as he had braced himself to meet the eyes of the manager; then his arm dropped and a wave of whiteness swept him. the boss had not even turned his head. he had used the possessive. when he said "my man," the hungry heart of freckles went reaching toward him. the boy drew a quivering breath. then he whipped off his old hat and beat the dust from it carefully. with his left hand he caught the right sleeve, wiped his sweaty face, and tried to straighten his hair with his fingers. he broke a spray of ironwort beside him and used the purple bloom to beat the dust from his shoulders and limbs. the boss, busy over his report, was, nevertheless, vaguely alive to the toilet being made behind him, and scored one for the man. mclean was a scotchman. it was his habit to work slowly. and methodically. the men of his camps never had known him to be in a hurry or to lose his temper. discipline was inflexible, but the boss was always kind. his habits were simple. he shared camp life with his gangs. the only visible signs of wealth consisted of a big, shimmering diamond stone of ice and fire that glittered and burned on one of his fingers, and the dainty, beautiful thoroughbred mare he rode between camps and across the country on business. no man of mclean's gangs could honestly say that he ever had been overdriven or underpaid. the boss never had exacted any deference from his men, yet so intense was his personality that no man of them ever had attempted a familiarity. they all knew him to be a thorough gentleman, and that in the great timber city several millions stood to his credit. he was the only son of that mclean who had sent out the finest ships ever built in scotland. that his son should carry on this business after the father's death had been his ambition. he had sent the boy through the universities of oxford and edinburgh, and allowed him several years' travel before he should attempt his first commission for the firm. then he was ordered to southern canada and michigan to purchase a consignment of tall, straight timber for masts, and south to indiana for oak beams. the young man entered these mighty forests, parts of which lay untouched since the dawn of the morning of time. the clear, cool, pungent atmosphere was intoxicating. the intense silence, like that of a great empty cathedral, fascinated him. he gradually learned that, to the shy wood creatures that darted across his path or peeped inquiringly from leafy ambush, he was brother. he found himself approaching, with a feeling of reverence, those majestic trees that had stood through ages of sun, wind, and snow. soon it became difficult to fell them. when he had filled his order and returned home, he was amazed to learn that in the swamps and forests he had lost his heart and it was calling--forever calling him. when he inherited his father's property, he promptly disposed of it, and, with his mother, founded a home in a splendid residence in the outskirts of grand rapids. with three partners, he organized a lumber company. his work was to purchase, fell, and ship the timber to the mills. marshall managed the milling process and passed the lumber to the factory. from the lumber, barthol made beautiful and useful furniture, which uptegrove scattered all over the world from a big wholesale house. of the thousands who saw their faces reflected on the polished surfaces of that furniture and found comfort in its use, few there were to whom it suggested mighty forests and trackless swamps, and the man, big of soul and body, who cut his way through them, and with the eye of experience doomed the proud trees that were now entering the homes of civilization for service. when mclean turned from his finished report, he faced a young man, yet under twenty, tall, spare, heavily framed, closely freckled, and red-haired, with a homely irish face, but in the steady gray eyes, straightly meeting his searcbing ones of blue, there was unswerving candor and the appearance of longing not to be ignored. he was dressed in the roughest of farm clothing, and seemed tired to the point of falling. "you are looking for work?" questioned mclean. "yis," answered freckles. "i am very sorry," said the boss with genuine sympathy in his every tone, "but there is only one man i want at present--a hardy, big fellow with a stout heart and a strong body. i hoped that you would do, but i am afraid you are too young and scarcely strong enough." freckles stood, hat in hand, watching mclean. "and what was it you thought i might be doing?" he asked. the boss could scarcely repress a start. somewhere before accident and poverty there had been an ancestor who used cultivated english, even with an accent. the boy spoke in a mellow irish voice, sweet and pure. it was scarcely definite enough to be called brogue, yet there was a trick in the turning of the sentence, the wrong sound of a letter here and there, that was almost irresistible to mclean, and presaged a misuse of infinitives and possessives with which he w as very familiar and which touched him nearly. he was of foreign birth, and despite years of alienation, in times of strong feeling he.committed inherited sins of accent and construction. "it's no child's job," answered mclean. "i am the field manager of a big lumber company. we have just leased two thousand acres of the limberlost. many of these trees are of great value. we can't leave our camp, six miles south, for almost a year yet; so we have blazed a trail and strung barbed wires securely around this lease. before we return to our work, i must put this property in the hands of a reliable, brave, strong man who will guard it every hour of the day, and sleep with one eye open at night. i shall require the entire length of the trail to be walked at least twice each day, to make sure that our lines are up and that no one has been trespassing." freckles was leaning forward, absorbing every word with such intense eagerness that he was beguiling the boss into explanations he had never intended making.. "but why wouldn't that be the finest job in the world for me?" he pleaded. "i am never sick. i could walk the trail twice, three times every day, and i'd be watching sharp all the while." "it's because you are scarcely more than a boy, and this will be a trying job for a work-hardened man," answered mclean. "you see, in the first place, you would be afraid. in stretching our lines, we killed six rattlesnakes almost as long as your body and as thick as your arm. it's the price of your life to start through the marshgrass surrounding the swamp unless you are covered with heavy leather above your knees. "you should be able to swim in case high water undermines the temporary bridge we have built where sleepy snake creek enters the swamp. the fall and winter changes of weather are abrupt and severe, while i would want strict watch kept every day. you would always be alone, and i don't guarantee what is in the limberlost. it is lying here as it has lain since the beginning of time, and it is alive with forms and voices. i don't pretend to say what all of them come from; but from a few slinking shapes i've seen, and hair-raising yells i've heard, i'd rather not confront their owners myself; and i am neither weak nor fearful. "worst of all, any man who will enter the swamp to mark and steal timber is desperate. one of my employees at the south camp, john carter, compelled me to discharge him for a number of serious reasons. he came here, entered the swamp alone, and succeeded in locating and marking a number of valuable trees that he was endeavoring to sell to a rival company when we secured the lease. he has sworn to have these trees if he has to die or to kill others to get them; and he is a man that the strongest would not care to meet." "but if he came to steal trees, wouldn't he bring teams and men enough: that all anyone could do would be to watch and be after you?" queried the boy. "yes," replied mclean. "then why couldn't i be watching just as closely, and coming as fast, as an older, stronger man?" asked freckles. "why, by george, you could!" exclaimed mclean. "i don't know as the size of a man would be half so important as his grit and faithfulness, come to think of it. sit on that log there and we will talk it over. what is your name?" freckles shook his head at the proffer of a seat, and folding his arms, stood straight as the trees around him. he grew a shade whiter, but his eyes never faltered. "freckles!" he said. "good enough for everyday," laughed mclean, "but i scarcely can put `freckles' on the company's books. tell me your name." "i haven't any name," replied the boy. "i don't understand," said mclean. "i was thinking from the voice and the face of you that you wouldn't," said freckles slowly. "i've spent more time on it than i ever did on anything else in all me life, and i don't understand. does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home, to the care of strangers? that's what somebody did to me." mclean stared aghast. he had no reply ready, and presently in a low voice he suggested: "and after?" "the home people took me in, and i w as there the full legal age and several years over. for the most part we were a lot of little irishmen together. they could always find homes for the other children, but nobody would ever be wanting me on account of me arm." "were they kind to you?" mclean regretted the question the minute it was asked. "i don't know," answered freckles. the reply sounded so hopeless, even to his own ears, that he hastened to qualify it by adding: "you see, it's like this, sir. kindnesses that people are paid to lay off in job lots and that belong equally to several hundred others, ain't going to be soaking into any one fellow so much." "go on," said mclean, nodding comprehendingly. "there's nothing worth the taking of your time to tell," replied freckles. "the home was in chicago, and i was there all me life until three months ago. when i was too old for the training they gave to the little children, they sent me to the closest ward school as long as the law would let them; but i was never like any of the other children, and they all knew it. i'd to go and come like a prisoner, and be working around the home early and late for me board and clothes. i always wanted to learn mighty bad, but i was glad when that was over. "every few days, all me life, i'd to be called up, looked over, and refused a home and love, on account of me hand and ugly face; but it was all the home i'd ever known, and i didn't seem to belong to any place else. "then a new superintendent was put in. he wasn't for being like any of the others, and he swore he'd weed me out the first thing he did. he made a plan to send me down the state to a man he said he knew who needed a boy he wasn't for remembering to tell that man that i was a hand short, and he knocked me down the minute he found i w as the boy who had been sent him. between noon and that evening, he and his son close my age had me in pretty much the same shape in which i was found in the beginning, so i lay awake that night and ran away. i'd like to have squared me account with that boy before i left, but i didn't dare for fear of waking the old man, and i knew i couldn't handle the two of them; but i'm hoping to meet him alone some day before i die." mclean tugged at his mustache to hide the smile on his lips, but he liked the boy all the better for this confession. "i didn't even have to steal clothes to get rid of starting in me home ones," freckles continued, "for they had already taken all me clean, neat things for the boy and put me into his rags, and that went almost as sore as the beatings, for where i was we were always kept tidy and sweet-smelling, anyway. i hustled clear into this state before i learned that man couldn't have kept me if he'd wanted to. when i thought i was good and away from him, i commenced hunting work, but it is with everybody else just as it is with you, sir. big, strong, whole men are the only ones for being wanted." "i have been studying over this matter," answered mclean. "i am not so sure but that a man no older than you and similar in every way could do this work very well, if he were not a coward, and had it in him to be trustworthy and industrious." freckles came forward a step. "if you will give me a job where i can earn me food, clothes, and a place to sleep," he said, "if i can have a boss to work for like other men, and a place i feel i've a right to, i will do precisely what you tell me or die trying." he spoke so convincingly that mclean believed, although in his heart he knew that to employ a stranger would be wretched business for a man with the interests he had involved. "very well," the boss found himself answering, "i will enter you on my pay rolls. we'll have supper, and then i will provide you with clean clothing, wading-boots, the wire-mending apparatus, and a revolver. the first thing in the morning, i will take you the length of the trail myself and explain fully what i want done. all i ask of yon is to come to me at once at the south camp and tell me as a man if you find this job too hard for you. it will not surprise me. it is work that few men would perform faithfully. what name shall i put down?" freckles' gaze never left mclean's face, and the boss saw the swift spasm of pain that swept his lonely, sensitive features. "i haven't any name," he said stubbornly, "no more than one somebody clapped on to me when they put me on the home books, with not the thought or care they'd name a house cat. i've seen how they enter those poor little abandoned devils often enough to know. what they called me is no more my name than it is yours. i don't know what mine is, and i never will; but i am going to be your man and do your work, and i'll be glad to answer to any name you choose to call me. won't you please be giving me a name, mr. mclean?" the boss wheeled abruptly and began stacking his books. what he was thinking was probably what any other gentleman would have thought in the circumstances. with his eyes still downcast, and in a voice harsh with huskiness, he spoke. "i will tell you what we will do, my lad," he said. "my father was my ideal man, and i loved him better than any other i have ever known. he went out five years ago, but that he would have been proud to leave you his name i firmly believe. if i give to you the name of my nearest kin and the man i loved best--will that do?" freckles' rigid attitude relaxed suddenly. his head dropped, and big tears splashed on the soiled calico shirt. mclean was not surprised at the silence, for he found that talking came none too easily just then. "all right," he said. "i will write it on the roll--james ross mclean." "thank you mightily," said freckles. "that makes me feel almost as if i belonged, already." "you do," said mclean. "until someone armed with every right comes to claim you, you are mine. now, come and take a bath, have some supper, and go to bed." as freckles followed into the lights and sounds of the camp, his heart and soul were singing for joy. chapter ii wherein freckles proves his mettle and finds friends next morning found freckles in clean, whole clothing, fed, and rested. then mclean outfitted him and gave him careful instruction in the use of his weapon. the boss showed him around the timber-line, and engaged him a place to board with the family of his head teamster, duncan, whom he had brought from scotland with him, and who lived in a small clearing he was working out between the swamp and the corduroy. when the gang was started for the south camp, freckles was left to guard a fortune in the limberlost. that he was under guard himself those first weeks he never knew. each hour was torture to the boy. the restricted life of a great city orphanage was the other extreme of the world compared with the limberlost. he was afraid for his life every minute. the heat was intense. the heavy wading-boots rubbed his feet until they bled. he was sore and stiff from his long tramp and outdoor exposure. the seven miles of trail was agony at every step. he practiced at night, under the direction of duncan, until he grew sure in the use of his revolver. he cut a stout hickory cudgel, with a knot on the end as big as his fist; this never left his hand. what he thought in those first days he himself could not recall clearly afterward. his heart stood still every time he saw the beautiful marsh-grass begin a sinuous waving against the play of the wind, as mclean had told him it would. he bolted half a mile with the first boom of the bittern, and his hat lifted with every yelp of the sheitpoke. once he saw a lean, shadowy form following him, and fired his revolver. then he was frightened worse than ever for fear it might have been duncan's collie. the first afternoon that he found his wires down, and he was compelled to plunge knee deep into the black swamp-muck to restring them, he became so ill from fear and nervousness that he scarcely could control his shaking hand to do the work. with every step, he felt that he would miss secure footing and be swallowed in that clinging sea of blackness. in dumb agony he plunged forward, clinging to the posts and trees until he had finished restringing and testing the wire. he had consumed much time. night closed in. the limberlost stirred gently, then shook herself, growled, and awoke around him. there seemed to be a great owl hooting from every hollow tree, and a little one screeching from every knothole. the bellowing of big bullfrogs was not sufficiently deafening to shut out the wailing of whip-poor-wills that seemed to come from every bush. nighthawks swept past him with their shivering cry, and bats struck his face. a prowling wildcat missed its catch and screamed with rage. a straying fox bayed incessantly for its mate. the hair on the back of freckles' neck arose as bristles, and his knees wavered beneath him. he could not see whether the dreaded snakes were on the trail, or, in the pandemonium, hear the rattle for which mclean had cautioned him to listen. he stood motionless in an agony of fear. his breath whistled between his teeth. the perspiration ran down his face and body in little streams. something big, black, and heavy came crashing through the swamp close to him, and with a yell of utter panic freckles ran--how far he did not know; but at last he gained control over himself and retraced his steps. his jaws set stiffly and the sweat dried on his body. when he reached the place from which he had started to run, he turned and with measured steps made his way down the line. after a time he realized that he was only walking, so he faced that sea of horrors again. when he came toward the corduroy, the cudgel fell to test the wire at each step. sounds that curdled his blood seemed to encompass him, and shapes of terror to draw closer and closer. fear had so gained the mastery that he did not dare look behind him; and just when he felt that he would fall dead before he ever reached the clearing, came duncan's rolling call: "freckles! freckles!" a shuddering sob burst in the boy's dry throat; but he only told duncan that finding the wire down had caused the delay. the next morning he started on time. day after day, with his heart pounding, he ducked, dodged, ran when he could, and fought when he was brought to bay. if he ever had an idea of giving up, no one knew it; for he clung to his job without the shadow of wavering. all these things, in so far as he guessed them, duncan, who had been set to watch the first weeks of freckles' work, carried to the boss at the south camp; but the innermost, exquisite torture of the thing the big scotchman never guessed, and mclean, with his finer perceptions, came only a little closer. after a few weeks, when freckles learned that he was still living, that he had a home, and the very first money he ever had possessed was safe in his pockets, he began to grow proud. he yet side-stepped, dodged, and hurried to avoid being late again, but he was gradually developing the fearlessness that men ever acquire of dangers to which they are hourly accustomed. his heart seemed to be leaping when his first rattler disputed the trail with him, but he mustered courage to attack it with his club. after its head had been crushed, he mastered an irishman's inborn repugnance for snakes sufficiently to cut off its rattles to show duncan. with this victory, his greatest fear of them was gone. then he began to realize that with the abundance of food in the swamp, flesh-hunters would not come on the trail and attack him, and he had his revolver for defence if they did. he soon learned to laugh at the big, floppy birds that made horrible noises. one day, watching behind a tree, he saw a crane solemnly performing a few measures of a belated nuptial song-and-dance with his mate. realizing that it was intended in tenderness, no matter how it appeared, the lonely, starved heart of the boy sympathized with them. before the first month passed, he was fairly easy about his job; by the next he rather liked it. nature can be trusted to work her own miracle in the heart of any man whose daily task keeps him alone among her sights, sounds, and silences. when day after day the only thing that relieved his utter loneliness was the companionship of the birds and beasts of the swamp, it was the most natural thing in the world that freckles should turn to them for friendship. he began by instinctively protecting the weak and helpless. he was astonished at the quickness with which they became accustomed to him and the disregard they showed for his movements, when they learned that he was not a hunter, while the club he carried was used more frequently for their benefit than his own. he scarcely could believe what he saw. from the effort to protect the birds and animals, it was only a short step to the possessive feeling, and with that sprang the impulse to caress and provide. through fall, when brooding was finished and the upland birds sought the swamp in swarms to feast on its seeds and berries, freckles was content with watching them and speculating about them. outside of half a dozen of the very commonest they were strangers to him. the likeness of their actions to humanity was an hourly surprise. when black frost began stripping the limberlost, cutting the ferns, shearing the vines from the trees, mowing the succulent green things of the swale, and setting the leaves swirling down, he watched the departing troops of his friends with dismay. he began to realize that he would be left alone. he made especial efforts toward friendliness with the hope that he could induce some of them to stay. it was then that he conceived the idea of carrying food to the birds; for he saw that they were leaving for lack of it; but he could not stop them. day after day, flocks gathered and departed: by the time the first snow whitened his trail around the limberlost, there were left only the little black-and-white juncos, the sapsuckers, yellowhammers, a few patriarchs among the flaming cardinals, the blue jays, the crows, and the quail. then freckles began his wizard work. he cleared a space of swale, and twice a day he spread a birds' banquet. by the middle of december the strong winds of winter had beaten most of the seed from the grass and bushes. the snow fell, covering the swamp, and food was very scarce and difficult to find. the birds scarcely waited until freckles' back was turned to attack his provisions. in a few weeks they flew toward the clearing to meet him. during the bitter weather of january they came halfway to the cabin every morning, and fluttered around him as doves all the way to the feeding-ground. before february they were so accustomed to him, and so hunger-driven, that they would perch on his head and shoulders, and the saucy jays would try to pry into his pockets. then freckles added to wheat and crumbs, every scrap of refuse food he could find at the cabin. he carried to his pets the parings of apples, turnips, potatoes, stray cabbage-leaves, and carrots, and tied to the bushes meat-bones having scraps of fat and gristle. one morning, coming to his feeding-ground unusually early, he found a gorgeous cardinal and a rabbit side by side sociably nibbling a cabbage-leaf, and that instantly gave to him the idea of cracking nuts, from the store he had gathered for duncan's children, for the squirrels, in the effort to add them to his family. soon he had them coming--red, gray, and black; then he became filled with a vast impatience that he did not know their names or habits. so the winter passed. every week mclean rode to the limberlost; never on the same day or at the same hour. always he found freckles at his work, faithful and brave, no matter how severe the weather. the boy's earnings constituted his first money'. and when the boss explained to him that he could leave them safe at a bank and carry away a scrap of paper that represented the amount, he went straight on every payday and made his deposit, keeping out barely what was necessary for his board and clothing. what he wanted to do with his money he did not know, but it gave to him a sense of freedom and power to feel that it was there--it was his and he could have it when he chose. in imitation of mclean, he bought a small pocket account-book, in which he carefully set down every dollar he earned and every penny he spent. as his expenses were small and the boss paid him generously, it was astonishing how his little hoard grew. that winter held the first hours of real happiness in freckles' life. he was free. he was doing a man's work faithfully, through every rigor of rain, snow, and blizzard. he was gathering a wonderful strength of body, paying his way, and saving money. every man of the gang and of that locality knew that he was under the protection of mclean, who was a power., this had the effect of smoothing freckles' path in many directions. mrs. duncan showed him that individual kindness for which his hungry heart was longing. she had a hot drink ready for him when he came from a freezing day on the trail. she knit him a heavy mitten for his left hand, and devised a way to sew and pad the right sleeve that protected the maimed arm in bitter weather. she patched his clothing--frequently torn by the wire--and saved kitchen scraps for his birds, not because she either knew or cared anything about them, but because she herself was close enough to the swamp to be touched by its utter loneliness. when duncan laughed at her for this, she retorted: "my god, mannie, if freckles hadna the birds and the beasts he would be always alone. it was never meant for a human being to be so solitary. he'd get touched in the head if he hadna them to think for and to talk to." "how much answer do ye think he gets to his talkin', lass?" laughed duncan. "he gets the answer that keeps the eye bricht, the heart happy, and the feet walking faithful the rough path he's set them in," answered mrs. duncan earnestly. duncan walked away appearing very thoughtful. the next morning he gave an ear from the corn he was shelling for his chickens to freckles, and told him to carry it to his wild chickens in the limberlost. freckles laughed delightedly. "me chickens!" he said. "why didn't i ever think of that before? of course they are! they are just little, brightly colored cocks and hens! but `wild' is no good. what would you say to me `wild chickens' being a good deal tamer than yours here in your yard?" "hoot, lad!" cried duncan. "make yours light on your head and eat out of your hands and pockets," challenged freckles. "go and tell. your fairy tales to the wee people! they're juist brash on believin' things," said duncan. "ye canna invent any story too big to stop them from callin' for a bigger." "i dare you to come see!" retorted freckles. "take ye!" said duncan. "if ye make juist ane bird licht on your heid or eat frae your hand, ye are free to help yoursel' to my corncrib and wheat bin the rest of the winter." freckles sprang in air and howled in glee. "oh, duncan! you're too, aisy" he cried. "when will you come?" "i'll come next sabbath," said duncan. "and i'll believe the birds of the limberlost are tame as barnyard fowl when i see it, and no sooner!" after that freckles always spoke of the birds as his chickens, and the duncans followed his example. the very next sabbath, duncan, with his wife and children, followed freckles to the swamp. they saw a sight so wonderful it will keep them talking all the remainder of their lives, and make them unfailing friends of all the birds. freckles' chickens were awaiting him at the edge of the clearing. they cut the frosty air around his head into curves and circles of crimson, blue, and black. they chased each other from freckles, and swept so closely themselves that they brushed him with their outspread wings. at their feeding-ground freckles set down his old pail of scraps and swept the snow from a small level space with a broom improvised of twigs. as soon as his back was turned, the birds clustered over the food, snatching scraps to carry to the nearest bushes. several of the boldest, a big crow and a couple of jays, settled on the rim and feasted at leisure, while a cardinal, that hesitated to venture, fumed and scolded from a twig overhead. then freckles scattered his store. at once the ground resembled the spread mantle of montezuma, except that this mass of gaily colored feathers was on the backs of living birds. while they feasted, duncan gripped his wife's arm and stared in astonishment; for from the bushes and dry grass, with gentle cheeping and queer, throaty chatter, as if to encourage each other, came flocks of quail. before anyone saw it arrive, a big gray rabbit sat in the midst of the feast, contentedly gnawing a cabbageleaf. "weel, i be drawed on!" came mrs. duncan's tense whisper. "shu-shu," cautioned duncan. lastly freckles removed his cap. he began filling it with handfuls of wheat from his pockets. in a swarm the grain-eaters arose around him as a flock of tame pigeons. they perched on his arms and the cap, and in the stress of hunger, forgetting all caution, a brilliant cock cardinal and an equally gaudy jay fought for a perching-place on his head. "weel, i'm beat," muttered duncan, forgetting the silence imposed on his wife. "i'll hae to give in. `seein' is believin'., aman wad hae to see that to believe it. we mauna let the boss miss that sight, for it's a chance will no likely come twice in a life. everything is snowed under and thae craturs near starved, but trustin' freckles that complete they are tamer than our chickens. look hard, bairns!" he whispered. "ye winna see the like o' yon again, while god lets ye live. notice their color against the ice and snow, and the pretty skippin' ways of them! and spunky! weel, i'm heat fair!" freckles emptied his cap, turned his pockets and scattered his last grain. then he waved his watching friends good-bye and started down the timber-line. a week later, duncan and freckles arose from breakfast to face the bitterest morning of the winter. when freckles, warmly capped and gloved, stepped to the corner of the kitchen for his scrap-pail, he found a big pan of steaming boiled wheat on the top of it. he wheeled to mrs. duncan with a shining face. "were you fixing this warm food for me chickens or yours?" he asked. "it's for yours, freckles," she said. "i was afeared this cold weather they wadna lay good without a warm bite now and then." duncan laughed as he stepped to the other room for his pipe; but freckles faced mrs. duncan with a trace of every pang of starved mother-hunger he ever had suffered written large on his homely, splotched, narrow features. "oh, how i wish you were my mother!" he cried. mrs. duncan attempted an echo of her husband's laugh. "lord love the lad!" she exclaimed. "why, freckles, are ye no bricht enough to learn without being taught by a woman that i am your mither? if a great man like yoursel' dinna ken that, learn it now and ne'er forget it. ance a woman is the wife of any man, she becomes wife to all men for having had the wifely experience she kens! ance a man-child has beaten his way to life under the heart of a woman, she is mither to all men, for the hearts of mithers are everywhere the same. bless ye, laddie, i am your mither!" she tucked the coarse scarf she had knit for him closer over his chest and pulled his cap lower over his ears, but freckles, whipping it off and holding it under his arm, caught her rough, reddened hand and pressed it to his lips in a long kiss. then he hurried away to hide the happy, embarrassing tear.s that were coming straight from his swelling heart. mrs. duncan, sobbing unrestrainedly, swept into the adjoining room and threw herself into duncan's arms. "oh, the puir lad!" she wailed. "oh, the puir mither-hungry lad! he breaks my heart!" duncan's arms closed convulsively around his wife. with a big, brown hand he lovingly stroked her rough, sorrel hair. "sarah, you're a guid woman!" he said. "you're a michty guid woman! ye hae a way o' speakin' out at times that's like the inspired prophets of the lord. if that had been put to me, now, i'd `a' felt all i kent how to and been keen enough to say the richt thing; but dang it, i' d, a' stuttered and stammered and got naething out that would ha' done onybody a mite o' good. but ye, sarah! did ye see his face, woman? ye sent him off lookin' leke a white light of holiness had passed ower and settled on him. ye sent the lad away too happy for mortal words, sarah. and ye made me that proud o' ye! i wouldna trade ye an' my share o' the limberlost with ony king ye could mention." he relaxed his clasp, and setting a heavy hand on each shoulder, he looked straight into her eyes. "ye're prime, sarah! juist prime!" he said. sarah duncan stood alone in the middle of her two-roomed log cabin and lifted a bony, clawlike pair of hands, reddened by frequent immersion in hot water, cracked and chafed by exposure to cold, black-lined by constant battle with sw amp-loam, calloused with burns, and stared at them w onderingly. "pretty-lookin' things ye are!" she whispered. "but ye hae juist been kissed. and by such a man! fine as god ever made at his verra best. duncan wouldna trade wi' a king! na! nor i wadna trade with a queen wi' a palace, an' velvet gowns, an' diamonds big as hazelnuts, an' a hundred visitors a day into the bargain. ye've been that honored i'm blest if i can bear to souse ye in dish-water. still, that kiss winna come off! naething can take it from me, for it's mine till i dee. lord, if i amna proud! kisses on these old claws! weel, i be drawed on!" chapter iii wherein a feather falls and a soul is born so freckles fared through the bitter winter. he was very happy. he had hungered for freedom, love, and appreciation so long! he had been unspeakably lonely at the home; and the utter loneliness of a great desert or forest is not so difficult to endure as the loneliness of being constantly surrounded by crowds of people who do not care in the least whether one is living or dead. all through the winter freckles' entire energy was given to keeping up his lines and his "chickens" from freezing or starving. when the first breath of spring touched the limberlost, and the snow receded before it; when the catkins began to bloom; when there came a hint of green to the trees, bushes, and sw ale; when the rushes lifted their heads, and the pulse of the newly resurrected season beat strongly in the heart of nature, something new stirred in the breast of the hoy. nature always levies her tribute. now she laid a powerful hand on the soul of freckles, to which the boy's whole being responded, though he had not the least idea what was troubling him. duncan accepted his wife's theory that it was a touch of spring fever, but freckles knew better. he never had been so well. clean, hot, and steady the blood pulsed in his veins. he was always hungry, and his most difficult work tired him not at all. for long months, without a single intermission, he had tramped those seven miles of trail twice each day, through every conceivable state of weather. with the heavy club he gave his wires a sure test, and between sections, first in play, afterward to keep his circulation going, he had acquired the skill of an expert drum major. in his work there was exercise for every muscle of his body each hour of the day, at night a bath, wholesome food, and sound sleep in a room that never knew fire. he had gained flesh and color, and developed a greater strength and endurance than anyone ever could have guessed. nor did the limberlost contain last year's terrors. he had been with her in her hour of desolation, when stripped bare and deserted, she had stood shivering, as if herself afraid. he had made excursions into the interior until he was familiar with every path and road that ever had been cut. he had sounded the depths of her deepest pools, and had learned why the trees grew so magnificently. he had found that places of swamp and swale were few compared with miles of solid timber-land, concealed by summer's luxuriant undergrowth. the sounds that at first had struck cold fear into his soul he now knew had left on wing and silent foot at the approach of winter. as flock after flock of the birds returned and he recognized the old echoes reawakening, he found to his surprise that he had been lonely for them and was hailing their return with great joy. all his fears were forgotten. instead, he was possessed of an overpowering desire to know what they were, to learn where they had been, and whether they would make friends with him as the winter birds had done; and if they did, would they be as fickle? for, with the running sap, creeping worm, and winging bug, most of freckles' "chickens" had deserted him, entered the swamp, and feasted to such a state of plethora on its store that they cared little for his supply, so that in the strenuous days of mating and nest-building the boy was deserted. he chafed at the birds' ingratitude, but he found speedy consolation in watching and befriending the newcomers. he surely would have been proud and highly pleased if he had known that many of the former inhabitants of the interior swamp now grouped their nests beside the timber-line solely for the sake of his protection and company. the yearly resurrection of the limberlost is a mighty revival. freckles stood back and watched with awe and envy the gradual reclothing and repopulation of the swamp. keen-eyed and alert through danger and loneliness, he noted every stage of development, from the first piping frog and unsheathing bud, to full leafage and the return of the last migrant. the knowledge of his complete loneliness and utter insignificance was hourly thrust upon him. he brooded and fretted until he was in a fever; yet he never guessed the cause. he was filled with a vast impatience, a longing that he scarcely could endure. it was june by the zodiac, june by the limberlost, and by every delight of a newly resurrected season it should have been june in the hearts of all men. yet freckles scowled darkly as he came down the trail, and the running tap, tap that tested the sagging wire and telegraphed word of his coming to his furred and feathered friends of the swamp, this morning carried the story of his discontent a mile ahead of him. freckles' special pet, a dainty, yellow-coated, black-sleeved, cock goldfincb, had remained on tbe wire for several days past the bravest of all; and freckles, absorbed with the cunning and beauty of the tiny fellow, never guessed that he was being duped. for the goldfinch was skipping, flirting, and swinging for the express purpose of so holding his attention that he would not look up and see a small cradle of thistledown and wool perilously near his head. in the beginning of brooding, the spunky little homesteader had clung heroically to the wire when he was almost paralyzed with fright. when day after day passed and brought only softly whistled repetitions of his call, a handful of crumbs on the top of a locust line-post, and gently worded coaxings, he grew in confidence. of late he had sung and swung during the passing of freckles, who, not dreaming of the nest and the solemn-eyed little hen so close above, thought himself unusually gifted in his power to attract the birds. this morning the goldfinch scarcely could believe his ears, and clung to the wire until an unusually vicious rap sent him spinning a foot in air, and his "ptseet" came with a squall of utter panic. the wires were ringing with a story the birds could not translate, and freckles was quite as ignorant of the trouble as they. a peculiar movement beneath a small walnut tree caught his attention. he stopped to investigate. there was an unusually large luna cocoon, and the moth was bursting the upper end in its struggles to reach light and air. freckles stood and stared. "there's something in there trying to get out," he muttered. "wonder if i could help it? guess i best not be trying. if i hadn't happened along, there wouldn't have been anyone to do anything, and maybe i'd only be hurting it. it's--it's----oh, skaggany! it's just being born!" freckles gasped with surprise. the moth cleared the opening, and with many wabblings and contortions climbed up the tree. he stared speechless with amazement as the moth crept around a limb and clung to the under side. there was a big pursy body, almost as large as his thumb, and of the very snowiest white that freckles ever had seen. tbere was a band of delicate lavender across its forehead, and its feet were of the same colour; there were antlers, like tiny, straw-colored ferns, on its head, and from its shoulders hung the crumpled wet wings. as freckles gazed, tense with astonishment, he saw that these were expanding, drooping, taking on color, and small, oval markings were beginning to show. the minutes passed. freckles' steady gaze never wavered. without realizing it, he was trembling with eagerness and anxiety. as he saw what was taking place, "it's going to fly," he breathed in hushed wonder. the morning sun fell on the moth and dried its velvet down, while the warm air made it fluffy. the rapidly growing wings began to show the most delicate green, with lavender fore-ribs, transparent, eye-shaped markings, edged with lines of red, tan, and black, and long, crisp trailers. freckles was whispering to himself for fear of disturbing the moth. it began a systematic exercise of raising and lowering its exquisite wings to dry them and to establish circulation. the boy realized that soon it would be able to spread them and sail away. his long-coming soul sent up its first shivering cry. "i don't know what it is! oh, i wish i knew! how i wish i knew! it must be something grand! it can't be a butterfly! it's away too big. oh, i wish there was someone to tell me what it is!" he climbed on the locust post, and balancing himself with the wire, held a finger in the line of the moth's advance up the twig. it unhesitatingly climbed on, so he stepped to the path, holding it to the light and examining it closely. then he held it in the shade and turned it, gloating over its markings and beautiful coloring. when he held the moth to the limb, it climbed on, still waving those magnificent wings. "my, but i'd like to be staying with you!" he said. "but if i was to stand here all day you couldn't grow any prettier than you are right now, and i wouldn't grow smart enough to tell what you are. i suppose there's someone who knows. of course there is! mr. m clean said there were people who knew every leaf, bird, and flower in the limberlost. oh lord! how i wish you'd be telling me just this one thing!" the goldfinch had ventured back to the wire, for there was his mate, only a few inches above the man-creature's head; and indeed, he simply must not be allowed to look up, so the brave little fellow rocked on the wire and piped, as he had done every day for a week: "see me? see me?" "see you! of course i see you," growled freckles. "i see you day after day, and what good is it doing me? i might see you every morning for a year, and then not be able to be telling anyone about it. `seen a bird with black silk wings--little, and yellow as any canary.' that's as far as i'd get. what you doing here, anyway? have you a mate? what's your name? `see you?' i reckon i see you; but i might as well be blind, for any good it's doing me!" freckles impatiently struck the wire. with a screech of fear, the goldfinch fled precipitately. his mate arose from the nest with a whirr--freckles looked up and saw it. "o-ho!" he cried. "so that's what you are doing here! you have a wife. and so close my head i have been mighty near wearing a bird on my bonnet, and never knew it!" freckles laughed at his own jest, while in better humor he climbed to examine the neat, tiny cradle and its contents. the hen darted at him in a frenzy. "now, where do you come in?" he demanded, when he saw that she was not similar to the goldfinch. "you be clearing out of here! this is none of your fry. this is the nest of me little, yellow friend of the wire, and you shan't be touching it. don't blame you for wanting to see, though. my, but it's a fine nest and beauties of eggs. will you be keeping away, or will i fire this stick at you?" freckles dropped to the trail. the hen darted to the nest and settled on it with a tender, coddling movement. he of the yellow coat flew to the edge to make sure that everything was right. it would have been plain to the veriest novice tbat they were partners in that cradle. "well, i'll be switched!" muttered freckles. "if that ain't both their nest! and he's yellow and she's green, or she's yellow and he's green. of course, i don't know, and i haven't any way to find out, but it's plain as the nose on your face that they are both ready to be fighting for that nest, so, of course, they belong. doesn't that beat you? say, that's what's been sticking me all of this week on that grass nest in the thorn tree down the line. one day a blue bird is setting, so i think it is hers. the next day a brown bird is on, and i chase it off because the nest is blue's. next day the brown bird is on again, and i let her be, because i think it must be hers. next day, be golly, blue's on, and off i send her because it's brown's; and now, i bet my hat, it's both their nest and i've only been bothering them and making a big fool of mesilf. pretty specimen i am, pretending to be a friend to the birds, and so blamed ignorant i don't know which ones go in pairs, and blue and brown are a pair, of course, if yellow and green are--and there's the red birds! i never thought of them! he's red and she's gray--and now i want to be knowing, are they all different? why no! of course, they ain't! there's the jays all blue, and the crows all black." the tide of freckles' discontent welled until he almost choked with anger and chagrin. he plodded down the trail, scowling blackly and viciously spanging the wire. at the finches' nest he left the line and peered into the thorn tree. there was no bird brooding. he pressed closer to take a peep at the snowy, spotless little eggs he had found so beautiful, when at the slight noise up raised four tiny baby heads with wide-open mouths, uttering hunger cries. freckles stepped back. the brown bird alighted on the edge and closed one cavity with a wiggling green worm, while not two minutes later the hlue filled another with a white. that settled it. the blue and brown were mates. once again freckles repeated his "how i wish i knew!" around the bridge spanning sleepy snake creek the swale spread widely, the timber was scattering, and willows, rushes, marsh-grass, and splendid wild flowers grew abundantly. here lazy, big, black water snakes, for which the creek was named, sunned on the bushes, wild ducks and grebe chattered, cranes and herons fished, and muskrats plowed the bank in queer, rolling furrows. it was always a place full of interest, so freckles loved to linger on the bridge, watching the marsh and water people. he also transacted affairs of importance with the wild flowers and sweet marsh-grass. he enjoyed splashing through the shallow pools on either side of the bridge. then, too, where the creek entered the swamp was a place of unusual beauty. the water spread in darksome, mossy, green pools. water-plants and lilies grew luxuriantly, throwing up large, rank, green leaves. nowhere else in the limberlost could be found frog-music to equal that of the mouth of the creek. the drumming and piping rolled in never-ending orchestral effect, while the full chorus rang to its accompaniment throughout the season. freckles slowly followed the path leading from the bridge to the line. it was the one spot at which he might relax his vigilance. the boldest timber thief the swamp ever had known would not have attempted to enter it by the mouth of the creek, on account of the water and because there was no protection from surrounding trees. he was bending the rank grass with his cudgel, and thinking of the shade the denser swamp afforded, when he suddenly dodged sidewise; the cudgel whistled sharply through the air and freckles sprang back. from the clear sky above him, first level with his face, then skimming, dipping, tilting, whirling until it struck, quill down, in the path in front of him, came a glossy, iridescent, big black feather. as it touched the ground, f reckles snatched it up with almost a continuous movement facing the sky. there was not a tree of any size in a large open space. there was no wind to carry it. from the clear sky it had fallen, and freckles, gazing eagerly into the arch of june blue with a few lazy clouds floating high in the sea of ether, had neither mind nor knowledge to dream of a bird hanging as if frozen there. he turned the big quill questioningly, and again his awed eyes swept the sky. "a feather dropped from heaven!" he breathed reverently. "are the holy angels moulting? but no; if they were, it would be white. maybe all the angels are not for being white. what if the angels of god are white and those of the devil are black? but a black one has no business up there. maybe some poor black angel is so tired of being punished it's for slipping to the gates, beating its wings trying to make the master hear!" again and again freckles searched the sky, but there was no answering gleam of golden gates, no form of sailing bird; then he went slowly on his way, turning the feather and wondering about it. it was a wing quill, eighteen inches in length, with a heavy spine, gray at the base, shading to jet black at the tip, and it caught the play of the sun's rays in slanting gleams of green and bronze. again freckles' "old man of the sea" sat sullen and heavy on his shoulders and weighted him down until his step lagged and his heart ached. "where did it come from? what is it? oh, how i wish i knew!" he kept repeating as he turned and studied the feather, with almost unseeing eyes, so intently was he thinking. before him spread a large, green pool, filled with rotting logs and leaves, bordered with delicate ferns and grasses among which lifted the creamy spikes of the arrow-head, the blue of water-hyacinth, and the delicate yellow of the jewel-flower. as freckles leaned, handling the feather and staring at it, then into the depths of the pool, he once more gave voice to his old query: "i wonder what it is!" straight across from him, couched in the mosses of a soggy old log, a big green bullfrog, with palpitant throat and batting eyes, lifted his head and bellowed in answer. "fin' dout! fin' dout!" "wha--what's that?" stammered freckles, almost too much bewildered to speak. "i--i know you are only a bullfrog, but, be jabbers, that sounded mightily like speech. wouldn't you please to be saying it over?" the bullfrog cuddled contentedly in the ooze. then suddenly he lifted his voice, and, as an imperative drumbeat, rolled it again: "fin' dout! fin' dout! find out!" freckles had the answer. something seemed to snap in his brain. there was a wavering flame before his eyes. then his mind cleared. his head lifted in a new poise, his shoulders squared, while his spine straightened. the agony was over. his soul floated free. freckles came into his birthright. "before god, i will!" he uttered the oath so impressively that the recording angel never winced as he posted it in the prayer column. freckles set his hat over the top of one of the locust posts used between trees to hold up the wire while he fastened the feather securely in the band. then he started down the line, talking to himself as men who have worked long alone always fall into the habit of doing. "what a fool i have been!" he muttered. "of course that's what i have to do! there wouldn't likely anybody be doing it for me. of course i can! what am i a man for? if i was a fourfooted thing of the swamp, maybe i couldn't; but a man can do anything if he's the grit to work hard enough and stick at it, mr. mclean is alway saying, and here's the way i am to do it. he said, too, that there were people that knew everything in the swamp. of course they have written books! the thing for me to be doing is to quit moping and be buying some. never bought a book in me life, or anything else of much account, for that matter. oh, ain't i glad i didn't waste me money! i'll surely be having enough to get a few. let me see." freckles sat on a log, took his pencil and account-book, and figured on a back page. he had walked the timber-line ten months. his pay was thirty dollars a month, and his board cost him eight. that left twenty-two dollars a month, and his clothing had cost him very little. at the least he had two hundred dollars in the bank. he drew a deep breath and smiled at the sky with satisfaction. "i'll be having a book about all the birds, trees, flowers, butterflies, and yes, by gummy! i'll be having one about the frogs --if it takes every cent i have," he promised himself. he put away the account-book, that was his most cherished possession, caught up his stick, and started down the line. the even tap, tap, and the cheery, gladsome whistle carried far ahead of him the message that freckles was himself again. he fell into a rapid pace, for he had lost time that morning; when he rounded the last curve he was almost running. there was a chance that the boss might be there for his weekly report. then, wavering, flickering, darting here and there over the sweet marsh-grass, came a large black shadow, sweeping so closely before him that for the second time that morning freckles dodged and sprang back. he had seen some owls and hawks of the swamp that he thought might be classed as large birds, but never anything like tbis, for six feet it spread its big, shining wings. its strong feet could be seen drawn among its featbers. the sun glinted on its sharp, hooked beak. its eyes glowed, caught the light, and seemed able to pierce the ground at his feet. it cared no more for freckles than if he had not been there; for it perched on a low tree, while a second later it awkwardly hopped to the trunk of a lightning-riven elm, turned its back, and began searching the blue. freckles looked just in tinme to see a second shadow sweep the grass; and another bird, a trifle smaller and not quite so brilliant in the light, slowly sailed down to perch beside the first. evidently they were mates, for with a queer, rolling hop the first-comer shivered his bronze wings, sidled to the new arrival, and gave her a silly little peck on her wing. then he coquettishly drew away and ogled her. he lifted his head, waddled from her a few steps, awkwardly ambled back, and gave her such a simple sort of kiss on her beak that freckles burst into a laugh, but clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle the sound. the lover ducked and side-stepped a few feet. he spread his wings and slowly and softly waved them precisely as if he were fanning his charmer, which was indeed the result he accomplished. then a wave of uncontrollable tenderness moved him so he hobbled to his bombardment once more. he faced her squarely this time, and turned his head from side to side with queer little jerks and indiscriminate peckings at her wings and head, and smirkings that really should have been irresistible. she yawned and shuffled away indifferently. freckles reached up, pulled the quill from his hat, and looking from it to the birds, nodded in settled conviction. "so you're me black angels, ye spalpeens! no wonder you didn't get in! but i'll back you to come closer it than any other birds ever did. you fly higher than i can see. have you picked the limberlost for a good thing and come to try it? well, you can be me chickens if you want to, but i'm blest if you ain't cool for new ones. why don't you take this stick for a gun and go skinning a mile?" freckles broke into an unrestrained laugh, for the bird-lover was keen about his courting, while evidently his mate was diffident. when he approached too boisterously, she relieved him of a goodly tuft of feathers and sent him backward in a series of squirmy little jumps that gave the boy an idea of what had happened up-sky to send the falling feather across his pathway. "score one for the lady! i'll be umpiring this," volunteered freckles. with a ravishing swagger, half-lifted wings, and deep, guttural hissing, the lover approached again. he suddenly lifted his body, but she coolly rocked forward on the limb, glided gracefully beneath him, and slowly sailed into the limberlost. he recovered himself and gazed after her in astonishment. freckles hurried down the trail, shaking with laughter. when he neared the path to the clearing and saw the boss sitting motionless on the mare that was the pride of his heart, the bov. broke into a run. "oh, mr. mclean!" he cried. "i hope i haven't kept you waiting very long! and the sun is getting hot! i have been so slow this morning! i could have gone faster, only there were that many things to keep me, and i didn't know you would be here. i'll hurry after this. i've never had to be giving excuses before. the line wasn't down, and there wasn't a sign of trouble; it was other things that were making me late." mclean, smiling on the boy, immediately noticed the difference in him. this flushed, panting, talkative lad was not the same creature who had sought him in despair and bitterness. he watched in wonder as freckles mopped the perspiration from his forehead and began to laugh. then, forgetting all his customary reserve with the boss, the pent-up boyishness in the lad broke forth. with an eloquence of which he never dreamed he told his story. he talked with such enthusiasm that mclean never took his eyes from his face or shifted in the saddle until he described the strange bird-lover, and then the boss suddenly bent over the pommel and laughed with the boy. freckles decorated his story with keen appreciation and rare touches of irish wit and drollery that made it most interesting as well as very funny. it was a first attempt at descriptive narration. with an inborn gift for striking the vital point, a naturalist's dawning enthusiasm for the wonders of the limberlost, and the welling joy of his newly found happiness, he made mclean see the struggles of the moth and its freshly painted wings, the dainty, brilliant bird-mates of different colors, the feather sliding through the clear air, the palpitant throat and batting eyes of the, frog. while his version of the big bird's courtship won for the boss the best laugh he had enjoyed for years. "they're in the middle of a swamp now" said freckles. "do you suppose there is any chance of them staying with me chickens? if they do, they'll be about the queerest i have; but i tell you, sir, i am finding some plum good ones. there's a new kind over at the mouth of the creek that uses its wings like feet and walks on all fours. it travels like a thrashing machine. there's another, tall as me waist, with a bill a foot long, a neck near two, not the thickness of me wrist and an elegant color. he's some blue and gray, touched up with black, white, and brown. the voice of him is such that if he' d be going up and standing beside a tree and crying at it a few times he could be sawing it square off. i don't know but it would be a good idea to try him on the gang, sir." mclean laughed. "those must be hlue herons, freckles," he said. "and it doesn't seem possible, but your description of the big black birds sounds like genuine black vultures. they are common enough in the south. i've seen them numerous around the lumber camps of georgia, but i never before heard of any this far north. they must be strays. you have described perfectly our nearest equivalent to a branch of these birds called in europe pharaoh's chickens, but if they are coming to the limberlost they will have to drop pharaoh and become freckles' chickens, like the remainder of the birds; won't they? or are they too odd and ugly to interest you?" "oh, not at all, at all!" cried freckles, bursting into pure brogue in his haste. "i don't know as i'd be calling them exactly pretty, and they do move like a rocking-horse loping, but they are so big and fearless. they have a fine color for black birds, and their feet and beaks seem so strong. you never saw anything so keen as their eyes! and. fly? why, just think, sir, they must be flying miles straight up, for they were out of sight completely when the feather fell. i don't suppose i've a chicken in the swamp that can go as close heaven as those big, black fellows, and then" freckles' voice dragged and he hesitated. "then what?" interestedly urged mclean. "he was loving her so," answered freckles in a hushed voice. "i know it looked awful funny, and i laughed and told on him, but if i'd taken time to think i don't helieve i'd have done it. you see, i've seen such a little bit of loving in me life. you easily can be understanding that at the home it was every day the old story of neglect and desertion. always people that didn't even care enough for their children to keep them, so you see, sir, i had to like him for trying so hard to make her know how he loved her. of course, they're only birds, but if they are caring for each other like that, why, it's just the same as people, ain't it?" freckles lifted his brave, steady eyes to the boss. "if anybody loved me like that, mr. mclean, i wouldn't be spending any time on how they looked or moved. all i'd be thinking of would be how they felt toward me. if they will stay, i'll be caring as much for them as any chickens i have. if i did laugh at them i thought he was just fine!" the face of mclean was a study; but the honest eyes of the boy were so compelling that he found himself answering: "you are right, freckles. he's a gentleman, isn't he? and the only real chicken you have. of course he'll remain! the limberlost will be paradise for his family. and now, freckles, what has been the trouble all spring? you have done your work as faithfully as anyone could ask, but i can't help seeing that there is something wrong. are you tired of your job?" "i love it," answered freckles. "it will almost break me heart when the gang comes and begins tearing up the swamp and scaring away me chickens." "then what is the trouble?" insisted mclean. "i think, sir, it's been books," answered freckles. "you see, i didn't realize it meself until the bullfrog told me this morning. i hadn't ever even heard about a place like this. anyway, i wasn't understanding how it would be, if i had. being among these beautiful things every day, i got so anxious like to be knowing and naming them, that it got to eating into me and went and made me near sick, when i was well as i could be. of course, i learned to read, write, and figure some at school, but there was nothing there, or in any of the city that i ever got to see, that would make a fellow even be dreaming of such interesting things as there are here. i've seen the parks--but good lord, they ain't even beginning to be in it with the limberlost! it's all new and strange to me. i don't know a thing about any of it. the bullfrog told me to `find out,' plain as day, and books are the only way; ain't they?" "of course," said mclean, astonished at himself for his heartfelt relief. he had not guessed until that minute what it would have meant to him to have freckles give up. "you know enough to study out what you want yourself, if you have the books; don't you?" "i am pretty sure i do," said freckles. "i learned all i'd the chance at in the home, and me schooling was good as far as it went. wouldn't let you go past fourteen, you know. i alwavs did me sums perfect, and loved me history books. i had them almost by heart. i never could get me grammar to suit them. they said it was just born in me to go wrong talking, and if it hadn,t been i suppose i would have picked it up from the other children; but i'd the best voice of any of them in the home or at school. i could knock them all out singing. i was always leader in the home, and once one of the superintendents gave me carfare and let me go into the city and sing in a boys' choir. the master said i'd the swatest voice of them all until it got rough like, and then he made me quit for awhile, but he said it would be coming back by now, and i'm railly thinking it is, sir, for i've tried on the line a bit of late and it seems to go smooth again and lots stronger. that and me chickens have been all the company i've been having, and it will be all i'll want if i can have some books and learn the real names of things, where they come from, and why they do such interesting things. it's been fretting me more than i knew to be shut up here among all these wonders and not knowing a thing. i wanted to ask you what some books would cost me, and if you'd be having the goodness to get me the right ones. i think i have enough money" freckles offered his account-book and the boss studied it gravely. "you needn't touch your account, freckles," he said. "t en dollars from this month's pay will provide you everything you need to start on. i will write a friend in grand rapids today to select you the very best and send them at once." freckles' eyes were shining. "never owned a book in me life!" he said. "even me schoolbooks were never mine. lord! how i used to wish i could have just one of them for me very own! won't it be fun to see me sawbird and me little yellow fellow looking at me from the pages of a book, and their real names and all about them printed alongside? how long will it be taking, sir?" "ten days should do it nicely," said mclean. then, seeing freckles' lengthening face, he added: "i'll have duncan bring you a ten-bushel store-box the next time he goes to town. he can haul it to the west entrance and set it up wherever you want it. you can put in your spare time filling it with the specimens you find until the books come, and then you can study out what you have. i suspect you could collect specimens that i could send to naturalists in the city and sell for you; things like that winged creature, this morning. i don't know much in that line, but it must have been a moth, and it might have been rare. i've seen them by the thousand in museums, and in all nature i don't remember rarer coloring than their wings. i'll order you a butterfly-net and box and show you how scientists pin specimens. possibly you can make a fine collection of these swamp beauties. it will be all right for you to take a pair of different moths and butterflies, but i don't want to hear of your killing any birds. they are protected by heavy fines." mclean rode away leaving freckles staring aghast. then he saw the point and smiled. standing on the trail, he twirled the feather and thought over the morning. "well, if life ain't getting to be worth living!" he said wonderingly. "biggest streak of luck i ever had! `bout time something was coming my way, but i wouldn't ever thought anybody could strike such magnificent prospects through only a falling feather." chapter iv wherein freckles faces trouble bravely and opens the way for new experiences on duncan's return from his next trip to town there was a big store-box loaded on the back of his wagon. he drove to the west entrance of the swamp, set the box on a stump that freckles had selected in a beautiful, sheltered place, and made it secure on its foundations with a tree at its back. "it seems most a pity to nail into that tree," said duncan. "i haena the time to examine into the grain of it, but it looks as if it might be a rare ane. anyhow, the nailin' winna hurt it deep, and havin' the case by it will make it safer if it is a guid ane." "isn't it an oak?" asked freckles. "ay," said duncan. "it looks like it might be ane of thae finegrained white anes that mak' such grand furniture." when the body of the case was secure, duncan made a door from the lid and fastened it with hinges. he drove a staple, screwed on a latch, and gave freckles a small padlock--so that he nmight fasten in his treasures safely. he made a shelf at the top for his books, and last of all covered the case with oilcloth. it was the first time in freckles' life that anyone ever had done that much for his pleasure, and it warmed his heart with pure joy. if the interior of the box already had been covered with the rarest measures of the limberlost he could have been no happier. when the big teamster stood back to look at his work he laughingly quoted," `neat, but no' gaudy, as mclean says. all we're, needing now is a coat of paint to make a cupboard that would turn sarah green with envy. ye'll find that safe an' dry, lad, an' that's all that's needed." "mr. duncan," said freckles, "i don't know why you are being so mighty good to me; but if you have any jobs at the cabin that i could do for you or mrs. duncan, hours off the line, it would make me mighty happy." duncan laughed. "ye needna feel ye are obliged to me, lad. ye mauna think i could take a half-day off in the best hauling season and go to town for boxes to rig up, and spend of my little for fixtures." "i knew mr. mclean sent you," said freckles, his eyes wide and bright with happiness. "it's so good of him. how i wish i could do something that would please him as much!" "why, freckles," said duncan, as he knelt and began collecting his tools, "i canna see that it will hurt ye to be told that ye are doing every day a thing that pleases the boss as much as anything ye could do. ye're being uncommon faithful, lad, and honest as old father time. mclean is trusting ye as he would his own flesh and blood." "oh, duncan!" cried the happy boy. "are you sure?" "why i know," answered duncan. "i wadna venture to say so else. in those first days he cautioned me na to tell ye, but now he wadna care. d'ye ken, freckles, that some of the single trees ye are guarding are worth a thousand dollars?" freckles caught his breath and stood speechless. "ye see," said duncan, "that's why they maun be watched so closely. they tak', say, for instance, a burl maple--bird's eye they call it in the factory, because it's full o' wee knots and twists that look like the eve of a bird. they saw it out in sheets no muckle thicker than writin' paper. then they make up the funiture out of cheaper wood and cover it with the maple--veneer, they call it. when it's all done and polished ye never saw onythin' grander. gang into a retail shop the next time ye are in town and see some. by sawin' it thin that way they get finish for thousands of dollars' worth of furniture from a single tree. if ye dinna watch faithful, and black jack gets out a few he has marked, it means the loss of more money than ye ever dreamed of, lad. the other night, down at camp, some son of balaam was suggestin' that ye might be sellin' the boss out to jack and lettin' him tak' the trees secretly, and nobody wad ever ken till the gang gets here." a wave of scarlet flooded freckles' face and he blazed hotly at the insult. "and the boss," continued duncan, coolly ignoring freckles' anger, "he lays back just as cool as cowcumbers an' says: `i'll give a thousand dollars to ony man that will show me a fresh stump when we reach the limberlost,' says he. some of the men just snapped him op that tbey'd find some. so you see bow tbe boss is trustin' ye, lad." "i am gladder than i can ever expriss," said freckles. "and now will i be walking double time to keep some of them from cutting a tree to get all that money!" "mither o' moses!" howled duncan. "ye can trust the scotch to bungle things a'thegither. mclean was only meanin' to show ye all confidence and honor. he's gone and set a high price for some dirty whelp to ruin ye. i was just tryin' to show ye how he felt toward ye, and i've gone an' give ye that worry to bear. damn the scotch! they're so slow an' so dumb!" "exciptin' prisint company?" sweetly inquired freckles. "no!" growled duncan. "headin' the list! he'd nae business to set a price on ye, lad, for that's about the amount of it, an' i'd nae right to tell ye. we've both done ye ill, an' both meanin' the verra best. juist what i'm always sayin' to sarah." "i am mighty proud of what you have been telling me, duncan," said freckles. "i need the warning, sure. for with the books coming i might be timpted to neglect me work when double watching is needed. thank you more than i can say for putting me on to it. what you've told me may be the saving of me. i won't stop for dinner now. i'll be getting along the east line, and when i come around about three, maybe mother duncan will let me have a glass of milk and a bite of something." "ye see now!" cried duncan in disgust. "ye'll start on that seven-mile tramp with na bite to stay your stomach. what was it i told ye?" "you told me that the scotch had the hardest heads and the softest hearts of any people that's living," answered freckles. duncan grunted in gratified disapproval. freckles picked up his club and started down the line, whistling cheerily, for he had an unusually long repertoire upon which to draw. duncan went straight to the lower camp, and calling mclean aside, repeated the conversation verbatim, ending: "and nae matter what happens now or ever, dinna ye dare let onythin' make ye believe that freckles hasna guarded faithful as ony man could." "i don't think anything could shake my faith in the lad," answered mclean. freckles was whistling merrily. he kept one eye religiously on the line. the other he divided between the path, his friends of the wire, and a search of the sky for his latest arrivals. every day since their coming he had seen them, either hanging as small, black clouds above the swamp or bobbing over logs and trees with their queer, tilting walk. whenever he could spare time, he entered the swamp and tried to make friends with them, for they were the tamest of all his unnumbered subjects. they ducked, dodged, and ambled around him, over logs and bushes, and not even a near approach would drive them to flight. for two weeks he had found them circling over the limberlost regularly, but one morning the female was missing and only the big black chicken hung sentinel above the swamp. his mate did not reappear in the following days, and freckles grew very anxious. he spoke of it to mrs. duncan, and she quieted his fears by raising a delightful hope in their stead. "why, freckles, if it's the hen-bird ye are missing, it's ten to one she's safe," she said. "she's laid, and is setting, ye silly! watch him and mark whaur he lichts. then follow and find the nest. some sabbath we'll all gang see it." accepting this theory, freckles began searching for the nest. because these "chickens" were large, as the hawks, he looked among the treetops until he almost sprained the back of his neck. he had half the crow and hawk nests in the swamp located. he searched for this nest instead of collecting subjects for his case. he found the pair the middle of one forenoon on the elm where he had watched their love-making. the big black chicken was feeding his mate; so it was proved that they were a pair, they were both alive, and undoubtedly she was brooding. after that freckles' nest-hunting continued with renewed zeal, but as he had no idea where to look and duncan could offer no helpful suggestion, the nest was no nearer to being found. coming from a long day on the trail, freckles saw duncan's children awaiting him much closer the swale than they usually ventured, and from their wild gestures he knew that something had happened. he began to run, but the cry that reached him was: "the books have come!" how they hurried! freckles lifted the youngest to his shoulder, the second took his club and dinner pail, and when they reached mrs. duncan they found her at work on a big box. she had loosened the lid, and then she laughingly sat on it. "ye canna have a peep in here until ye have washed and eaten supper," she said. "it's all ready on the table. ance ye begin on this, ye'll no be willin' to tak' your nose o' it till bedtime, and i willna get my work done the nicht. we've eaten long ago." it was difficult work, but freckles smiled bravely. he made himself neat, swallowed a few bites, then came so eagerly that mrs. duncan yielded, although she said she very well knew all the time that his supper would be spoiled. lifting the lid, they removed the packing and found in that box books on birds, trees, flowers, moths, and butterflies. there was also one containing freckles' bullfrog, true to life. besides these were a butterfly-net, a naturalist's tin specimen-box, a bottle of cyanide, a box of cotton, a paper of long, steel specimen-pins, and a letter telling what all these things were and how to use them. at the discovery of each new treasure, freckles shouted: "will you be looking at this, now?" mrs. duncan cried: "weel, i be drawed on!" the eldest boy turned a somersault for every extra, while the baby, trying to follow his example, bunched over in a sidewise sprawl and cut his foot on the axe with which his mother had prized up the box-lid. that sobered them, they carried the books indoors. mrs. duncan had a top shelf in her closet cleared for them, far above the reach of meddling little fingers. when freckles started for the trail next morning, the shining new specimen-box flashed on his back. the black "chicken," a mere speck in the blue, caught the gleanm of it. tbe folded net hung beside the boy's hatchet, and the bird book was in the box. he walked the line and tested each section scrupulously, watching every foot of the trail, for he was determined not to slight his work; but if ever a boy "made haste slowly" in a hurry, it was freckles that morning. when at last he reached the space he had cleared and planted around his case, his heart swelled with the pride of possessing even so much that he could call his own, while his quick eyes feasted on the beauty of it. he had made a large room with the door of the case set even with one side of it. on tbree sides, fine big bushes of wild rose climbed to the lower branches of the trees. part of his walls were mallow, part alder, thorn, willow, and dogwood. below there filled in a solid mass of pale pink sheep-laurel, and yellow st. john's wort, while the amber threads of the dodder interlaced everywhere. at one side the swamp came close, here cattails grew in profusion. in front of them he had planted a row of water-hyacinths without disturbing in the least the state of their azure bloom, and where the ground arose higher for his floor, a row of foxfire, that soon would be open. to the left he had discovered a queer natural arrangement of the trees, that grew to giant size and were set in a gradually narrowing space so that a long, open vista stretched away until lost in the dim recesses of the swamp. a little trimming of underbush, rolling of dead logs, levelling of floor and carpeting with moss, made it easy to understand why freckles had named this the "cathedral"; yet he never had been taught that "the groves were god's first temples." on either side of the trees that constituted the first arch of this dim vista of the swamp he planted ferns that grew waist-high thus early in the season, and so skilfully the work had been done that not a frond drooped because of the change. opposite, he cleared a space and made a flower bed. he filled one end with every delicate, lacy vine and fern he could transplant successfully. the body of the bed was a riot of color. here he set growing dainty blue-eyed-marys and blue-eyed grass side by side. he planted harebells; violets, blue, white, and yellow; wild geranium, cardinal-flower, columbine, pink snake's mouth, buttercups, painted trilliums, and orchis. here were blood-root, moccasinflower, hepatica, pitcher-plant, jack-in-the-pulpit, and every other flower of the limberlost that was in bloom or bore a bud presaging a flower. every day saw the addition of new specimens. the place would have driven a botanist wild with envy. on the line side he left the bushes thick for concealment, entering by a narrow path he and duncan had cleared in setting up the case. he called tbis the front door, though he used every precaution to hide it. he built rustic seats between several of the trees, leveled the floor, and thickly carpeted it with rank, heavy, woolly-dog moss. around the case he planted wild clematis, bittersweet, and wild-grapevines, and trained them over it until it was almost covered. every day he planted new flowers, cut back rough bushes, and coaxed out graceful ones. his pride in his room was very great, but he had no idea how surprisingly beautiful it would appear to anyone who had not witnessed its growth and construction. this morning freckles walked straight to his case, unlocked it, and set his apparatus and dinner inside. he planted a new specimen he had found close the trail, and, bringing his old scrapbucket from the corner in which it was hidden, from a near-by pool he dipped water to pour over his carpet and flowers. then he took out the bird book, settled comfortably on a bench, and with a deep sigh of satisfaction turned to the section headed. "v" past "veery" and "vireo" he went, down the line until his finger, trembling with eagerness, stopped at "vulture." " `great black california vulture,'" he read. "humph! this side the rockies will do for us." " `common turkey-buzzard.' " "well, we ain't hunting common turkeys. mclean said chickens, and what he says goes." " `black vulture of the south.' " "here we are arrived at once." freckles' finger followed the line, and he read scraps aloud. " `common in the south. sometimes called jim crow. nearest equivalent to c-a-t-h-a-r-t-e-s a-t-r-a-t-a.," "how the divil am i ever to learn them corkin' big words by mesel'?" " `--the pharaoh's chickens of european species. sometimes stray north as far as virginia and kentucky," "and sometimes farther," interpolated freckles," `cos i got them right here in indiana so like these pictures i can just see me big chicken bobbing up to get his ears boxed.. hey?" " `light-blue eggs," "golly! i got to be seeing them!" " `--big as a common turkey's, but shaped like a hen's, heavily splotched with chocolate," "caramels, i suppose. and" " `--in hollow logs or stumps.'" "oh, hagginy! wasn't i harking up the wrong tree, though? ought to been looking close the ground all this time. now it's all to do over, and i suspect the sooner i start the sooner i'll be likely to find them." freckles put away his book, dampened the smudge-fire, without which the mosquitoes made the swamp almost unbearable, took his cudgel and lunch, and went to the line. he sat on a log, ate at dinnertime and drank his last drop of water. the heat of june was growing intense. even on the west of the swamp, where one had full benefit of the breeze from the upland, it was beginning to be unpleasant in the middle of the day. he brushed the crumbs from his knees and sat resting awhile and watching the sky to see if his big chicken were hanging up there. but he came to the earth abruptly, for there were steps coming down the trail that were neither mclean's nor duncan's --and there never had been others. freckles' heart leaped hotly. he ran a quick hand over his belt to feel if his revolver and hatchet were there, caught up his cudgel and laid it across his knees--then sat quietly, waiting. was it black jack, or someone even worse? forced to do something to brace his nerves, he puckered his stiffening lips and began whistling a tune he had led in his clear tenor every year of his life at the home christmas exercises. "who comes this way, so blithe and gay, upon a merry christmas day?" his quick irish wit roused to the ridiculousness of it until he broke into a laugh that steadied him amazingly. through the bushes he caught a glimpse of the oncoming figure. his heart flooded with joy, for it w as a man from the gang. wessner had been his bunk-mate the night he came down the corduroy. he knew him as well as any of mclean's men. this was no timber-thief. no doubt the boss had sent him with a message. freckles sprang up and called cheerily, a warm welcome on his face. "well, it's good telling if you're glad to see me," said wessner, with something very like a breath of relief. "we been hearing down at the camp you were so mighty touchy you didn't allow a man within a rod of the line." "no more do i," answered freckles, "if he's a stranger, but you're from mclean, ain't you?" "oh, damn mclean!" said wessner. freckles gripped the cudgel until his knuckles slowlv turned purple. "and are you railly saying so?" he inquired with elaborate politeness. "yes, i am," said wessner. "so would every man of the gang if they wasn't too big cowards to say anything, unless mavbe that other slobbering old scotchman, duncan. grinding the lives out of us! working us like dogs, and paying us starvation wages, while he rolls up his millions and lives like a prince!" green lights began to play through the gray of freckles' eyes. "wessner," he said impressively, "you'd make a fine pattern for the father of liars! every man on that gang is strong and hilthy, paid all he earns, and treated with the courtesy of a gentle_. man! as for the boss living like a prince, he shares fare with you every day of your lives!" wessner was not a born diplomat, bnt he saw he was on the wrong tack, so he tried another. "how would you like to make a good big pile of money, without even lifting your hand?" he asked. "humph!" said freckles. "have you been up to chicago and cornered wheat, and are vou offering me a friendly tip on the invistment of me fortune?" wessner came close. "freckles, old fellow," he said, "if you let me give you a pointer, i can put you on to making a cool five hundred without stepping out of your tracks." freckles drew back. "you needn't be afraid of speaking up," he said. "there isn't a soul in the limberlost save the birds and the beasts, unless some of your sort's come along and's crowding the privileges of the legal tinints." "none of my friends along," said wessner. "nobody knew i came but black, i--i mean a friend of mine. if you want to hear sense and act with reason, he can see you later, but it ain't necessary. we can make all the plans needed. the trick's so dead small and easy." "must be if you have the engineering of it," said freckles. but he beard, with a sigh of relief, that they were alone. wessner was impervious. "you just bet it is! why, only think, freckles, slavin' away at a measly little thirty dollars a month, and here is a chance to clear five hundred in a day! you surely won't be the fool to miss it!" "and how was you proposing for me to stale it?" inquired freckles. "or am i just to find it laying in me path beside the line?" "that's it, freckles," blustered the dutchman, "you're just to find it. you needn't do a thing. you needn't know a thing. you name a morning when you will walk up the west side of the swamp and then turn round and walk hack down the same side again and the money is yours. couldn't anything be easier than that, could it?" "depinds entirely on the man," said freckles. the lilt of a lark hanging above the swale beside them was not sweeter than the sweetness of his voice. "to some it would seem to come aisy as breathing; and to some, wringin' the last drop of their heart's blood couldn't force thim! i'm not the man that goes into a scheme like that with the blindfold over me eyes, for, you see, it manes to break trust with the boss; and i've served him faithful as i knew. you'll have to be making the thing very clear to me understanding." "it's so dead easy," repeated wessner, "it makes me tired of the simpleness of it. you see there's a few trees in the swamp that's real gold mines. there's three especial. two are back in, but one's square on the line. why, your pottering old scotch fool of a boss nailed the wire to it with his own hands! he never noticed where the bark had been peeled, or saw what it was. if you will stay on this side of the trail just one day we can have it cut, loaded, and ready to drive out at night. next morning you can find it, report, and be the busiest man in the search for us. we know where to fix it all safe and easy. then mclean has a bet up with a couple of the gang that there can't be a raw stump found in the limberlost. there's plenty of witnesses to swear to it, and i know three that will. there's a cool thousand, and this tree is worth all of that, raw. say, it's a gold mine, i tell you, and just five hundred of it is yours. there's no danger on earth to you, for you've got mclean that bamboozled you could sell out the whole swamp and he'd never mistrust you. what do you. say?" freckles' soul was satisfied. "is that all?" he asked. "no, it ain't," said wessner. "if you really want to brace up and be a man and go into the thing for keeps, you can make five times that in a week. my friend knows a dozen others we could get out in a few days, and all you'd have to do would be to keep out of sight. then you could take your money and skip some night, and begin life like a gentleman somewhere else. what do you think about it?" freckles purred like a kitten. " `twould be a rare joke on the boss," he said, "to be stalin' from him the very thing he's trusted me to guard, and be getting me wages all winter throwed in free. and you're making the pay awful high. me to be getting five hundred for such a simple little thing as that. you're trating me most royal indade! it's away beyond all i'd be expecting. sivinteen cints would be a big price for that job. it must be looked into thorough. just you wait here until i do a minute's turn in the swamp, and then i'll be eschorting you out of the clearing and giving you the answer." freckles lifted the overhanging bushes and hurried to the case. he unslung the specimen-box and laid it inside with his hatchet and revolver. he sipped the key in his pocket and went back to wessner. "now for the answer," he said. "stand up!" there was iron in his voice, and he was commanding as an outraged general. "anything. vou want to be taking off?" he questioned. wessner looked the astonishment he felt. "why, no, freckles," he said. "have the goodness to be calling me mister mclean," snapped freckles. "i'm after resarvin' me pet name for the use of me friends! you may stand with your back to the light or be taking any advantage you want." "why, what do you mean?" spluttered wessner. "i'm manin'," said freckles tersely, "to lick a quarter-section of hell out of you, and may the holy vargin stay me before i leave you here carrion, for your carcass would turn the stummicks of me chickens!" at the camp that morning, wessner's conduct had been so palpable an excuse to force a discharge that duncan moved near mclean and whispered, "think of the boy, sir?" mclean was so troubled that, an hour later, he mounted nellie and followed wessner to his home in wildcat hollow, only to find that he had left there shortly before, heading for the limberlost. mclean rode at top speed. when mrs. duncan told him that a man answering wessner's description had gone down the west side of the swamp close noon, he left the mare in her charge and followed on foot. when he heard voices he entered the swamp and silently crept close just in time to hear wessner whine: "but i can't fight you, freckles. i hain't done nothing to you. i'm away bigger than you, and you've only one hand." the boss slid off his coat and crouched among the bushes, ready to spring,. but as f reckles' voice reached him be held himself, with a strong effort, to learn what mettle was in the boy. "don't you be wasting of me good time in the numbering of me hands," cried freckles. "the stringth of me cause will make up for the weakness of me mimbers, and the size of a cowardly thief doesn't count. you'll think all the wildcats of the limherlost are turned loose on you whin i come against you, and as for me cause----i slept with you, wessner, the night i came down the corduroy like a dirty, friendless tramp, and the boss was for taking me up, washing, clothing, and feeding me, and giving me a home full of love and tinderness, and a master to look to, and good, well-earned money in the bank. he's trusting me his heartful, and here comes you, you spotted toad of the big road, and insults me, as is an honest irish gintleman, by hinting that you concaive i'd be willing to shut me eyes and hold fast while you rob him of the thing i was set and paid to guard, and then act the sneak and liar to him, and ruin and eternally blacken the soul of me. you damned rascal," raved freckles, "be fighting before i forget the laws of a gintlemin's game and split your dirty head with me stick!" wessner backed away, mumhling, "but i don't want to hurt you, freckles!" "oh, don't you!" raged the boy, now fairly frothing. "well, you ain't resembling me none, for i'm itching like death to git me fingers in the face of you." he danced up, and as wessner lunged in self-defense, ducked under his arm as a bantam and punched him in the pit of the stomach so that he doubled with a groan. before wessner could straighten himself, freckles was on him, fighting like the wildest fury that ever left the beautiful island. the dutchman dealt thundering blows that sometimes landed and sent freckles reeling, and sometimes missed, while he went plunging into the swale with the impetus of them. freckles could not strike with half wessner's force, but he could land three blows to the dutchman's one. it was here that the boy's days of alert watching on the line, the perpetual swinging of the heavy cudgel, and the endurance of all weather stood him in good stead; for he was tough, and agile. he skipped, ducked, and dodged. for the first five minutes he endured fearful punishment. then wessner's breath commenced to whistle between his teeth, when freckles only had begun fighting. he sprang back with shrill laughter. "begolly! and will your honor be whistling the hornpipe for me to be dancing of?', he cried. spang! went his fist into wessner's face, and he was past him into the swale. "and would you be pleased to tune up a little livelier?" he gasped, and clipped his ear as he sprang back. wessner lunged at him in blind fury. freckles, seeing an opening, forgot the laws of a gentleman's game and drove the toe of his heavy wadingboot in wessner's middle until he doubled and fell heavily. in a flash freckles was on him. for a time mclean could not see what was happening. "go! go to him now!" he commanded himself, but so intense was his desire to see the boy win alone that he did not stir. at last freckles sprang up and backed away. "time!" he yelled as a fury. "be getting up, mr. wessner, and don't he afraid of hurting me. i'll let you throw in an extra hand and lick you to me complate satisfaction all the same. did you hear me call the limit? will you get up and be facing me?" as wessner struggled to his feet, he resembled a battlefield, for his clothing was in ribbons and his face and hands streaming blood. "i--i guess i got enough," he mumbled. "oh, you do?" roared freckles. "well this ain't your say. you come on to me ground, lying about me boss and intimatin' i'd stale from his very pockets. now will you be standing up and taking your medicine ike a man, or getting it poured down the throat of you like a baby? i ain't got enough! this is only just the beginning with me. be looking out there!" he sprang against wessner and sent him rolling. he attacked the unresisting figure and fought him until he lay limp and quiet and freckles had no strength left to lift an arm. then he arose and stepped back, gasping for breath. with his first lungful of air he shouted: "time!" but the figure of wessner lay motionless. freckles watched him with regardful eye and saw at last that he was completely exhausted. he bent over him, and catching him by the back of the neck, jerked him to his knees. wessner lifted the face of a whipped cur, and fearing further punishment, burst into shivering sobs, while the tears washed tiny rivulets through the blood and muck. freckles stepped back, glaring at wessner, but suddenly the scowl of anger and the ugly disfiguring red faded from the boy's face. he dabbed at a cut on his temple from which issued a tiny crimson stream, and jauntily shook back his hair. his face took on the innocent look of a cherub, and his voice rivaled that of a brooding dove, but into his eyes crept a look of diabolical mischief. he glanced vaguely around him until he saw his club, seized and twirled it as a drum major, stuck it upright in the muck, and marched on tiptoe to wessner, mechanically, as a puppet worked by a string. bending over, freckles reached an arm around wessner's waist and helped him to his feet. "careful, now" he cautioned, "be careful, freddy. there's danger of you hurting me." drawing a handkerchief from a back pocket, freckles tenderly wiped wessner's eyes and nose. "come, freddy, me child," he admonished wessner, "it's time ittle boys were going home. i've me work to do, and can't be entertaining you any more today. come back tomorrow, if you ain't through yet, and we'll repate the perfarmance. don't be staring at me so wild like! i would eat you, but i can't afford it. me earnings, being honest, come slow, and i've no money to be squanderin' on the pailful of dyspeptic's delight it would be to taking to work you out of my innards!" again an awful wrenching seized mclean. freckles stepped back as wessner, tottering and reeling, as a thoroughly drunken man, came toward the path, appearing indeed as if wildcats had attacked him. the cudgel spun high in air, and catching it with an expertness acquired by long practice on the ine, the boy twirled it a second, shook back his thick hair bonnily, and stepping into the trail, followed wessner. because freckles was irish, it was impossible to do it silently, so presently his clear tenor rang out, though there were bad catches where he was hard pressed for breath: "it was the dutch. it was the dutch. do you think it was the irish hollered help? not much! it was the dutch. it was the dutch----" wessner turned and mumbled: "what you following me for? what are you going to do with me?" freckles called the limberlost to witness: "how's that for the ingratitude of a beast? and me troubling mesilf to show him off me territory with the honors of war!" then he changed his tone completely and added: "belike it's this, freddy. you see, the boss might come riding down this trail any minute, and the ittle mare's so wheedlesome that if she'd come on to you in your prisint state all of a sudden, she'd stop that short she'd send mr. mclean out over the ears of her. no disparagement intinded to the sinse of the. mare!" he added hastily. wessner belched a fearful oath, while freckles laughed merrily. "that's a sample of the thanks a generous act's always for getting," he continued. "here's me negictin' me work to eschort you out proper, and you saying such awful words. freddy," he demanded sternly, "do you want me to soap out your mouth? you don't seem to be realizing it, but if you was to buck into mr. mclean in your prisint state, without me there to explain matters the chance is he'd cut the iver out of you; and i shouldn't think you'd be wanting such a fine gintleman as him to see that it's white!" wessner grew ghastly under his grime and broke inyo a staggering run. "and now will you be looking at the manners of him?" questioned freckles plaintively. "going without even a `thank you,' right in the face of all the pains i've taken to make it interestig for him!" freckles twirled the club and stood as a soldier at attention until wessner left the clearing, but it was the last scene of that performance. when the boy turned, there was deathly illness on his face, while his legs wavered beneath his weight. he staggered to the case, and opening it he took out a piece of cloth. he dipped it into the water, and sitting on a bench, he wiped the blood and grime from his face, while his breath sucked between his clenched teeth. he was shivering with pain and excitement in spite of himself. he unbuttoned the band of his right sleeve, and turning it back, exposed the blue-lined, calloused whiteness of his maimed arm, now vividly streaked with contusions, while in a series of circular dots the blood oozed slowly. here wessner had succeeded in setting his teeth. when freckles saw what it was he forgave himself the kick in the pit of wessner's stomach, and cursed fervently and deep. "freckles, freckles," said mclean's voice. freckles snatched down his sleeve and arose to his feet. "excuse me, sir," he said. "you'll surely be belavin' i thought meself alone." mclean pushed him carefully to the seat, and bending over him, opened a pocket-case that he carried as regularly as his revolver and watch, for cuts and bruises were of daily occurrence among the gang. taking the hurt arm, he turned back the sleeve and bathed and bound the wounds. he examined freckles' head and body and convinced himself that there was no permanent injury, although the cruelty of the punishment the boy had borne set the boss shuddering. then he closed the case, shoved it into his pocket, and sat beside freckles. all the indescribable beauty of the place was strong around him, but he saw only the bruised face of the suffering boy, who had hedged for the information he wanted as a diplomat, argued as a judge, fought as a sheik, and triumphed as a devil. when the pain lessened and breath reieved freckles' pounding heart, he watched the boss covertly. how had mclean gotten there and how long had he been there? freckles did not dare ask. at last he arose, and going to the case, took out his revolver and the wire-mending apparatus and locked the door. then he turned to mclean. "have you any orders, sir?" he asked. "yes," said mclean, "i have, and you are to follow them to the letter. turn over that apparatus to me and go straight home. soak yourself in the hottest bath your skin will bear and go to bed at once. now hurry." "mr. mclean," said freckles, "it's sorry i am to be telling you, but the afternoon's walking of the line ain't done. you see, i was just for getting to me feet to start, and i w as on time, when up came a gintleman, and we got into a little heated argument. it's either settled, or it's just begun, but between us, i'm that late i haven't started for the afternoon yet. i must be going at once, for there's a tree i must find before the day's over." "you plucky ittle idiot," growled mclean. "you can't walk the line! i doubt if you can reach duncan's. don't you know when you are done up? you go to bed; i'll finish your work." "niver!" protested freckles. "i was just a little done up for the prisint, a minute ago. i'm all right now. riding-boots are far too low. the day's hot and the walk a good seven miles, sir. niver!" as he reached for the outfit he pitched forward and his eyes closed. mclean stretched him on the moss and applied restoratives. when freckles returned to consciousness, mclean ran to the cabin to tell mrs. duncan to have a hot bath ready, and to bring nellie. that worthy woman promptly filled the wash-boiler, starting a roaring fire under it. she pushed the horse-trough from its base and rolled it to the kitchen. by the time mclean came again, leading nelie and holding freckles on her back, mrs. duncan was ready for business. she and the boss laid freckles in the trough and poured on hot water until he squirmed. they soaked and massaged him. then they drew off the hot water and closed his pores with cold. lastly they stretched him on the floor and chafed, rubbed, and kneaded him until he cried out for mercy. as they rolled him into bed, his eyes dropped shut, but a ittle later they flared open. "mr. mclean," he cried, "the tree! oh, do be looking after the tree!" mclean bent over him. "which tree, freckles?" "i don't know exact" sir. but it's on the east line, and the wire is fastened to it. he bragged that you nailed it yourself, sir. you'll know it by the bark having been laid open to the grain somewhere low down. five hundred dollars he offered me--to be selling you out--sir!" freckles' head rolled over and his eyes dropped shut. mclean towered above the lad. his bright hair waved on the pillow. his face was swollen, and purple with bruises. his left arm, with the hand battered almost out of shape, stretched beside him, and the right, with no hand at all, lay across a chest that was a mass of purple welts. mclean's mind traveled to the night, almost a year before, when he had engaged freckles, a stranger. the boss bent, covering the hurt arm with one hand and hying the other with a caress on the boy's forehead. f reckles stirred at his touch, and whispered as softly as the swallows under the eaves: "if you're coming this way--tomorrow--be pleased to step over --and we'll repate--the chorus softly!" "bless the gritty devil," muttered mclean. then he went out and told mrs. duncan to keep close watch on freckles, also to send duncan to him at the swamp the minute he came home. following the trail to the ine and back to the scent of the fight, the boss entered freckles' study quietly, as if his spirit, keeping there, might be roused, and gazed around with astonished eyes. how had the boy conceived it? what a picture he had wrought in iving colors! he had the heart of a painter. he had the soul of a poet. the boss stepped carefully over the velvet carpet to touch the walls of crisp verdure with gentle fingers. he stood long beside the flower bed, and gazed at the banked wall of bright bloom as if he doubted its reality. where had freckles ever found, and how had he transplanted such ferns? as mclean turned from them he stopped suddenly. he had reached the door of the cathedral. that which freckles had attempted would have been patent to anyone. what had been in the heart of the shy, silent boy when he had found that long, dim stretch of forest, decorated its entrance, cleared and smoothed its aisle, and carpeted its altar? what veriest work of god was in these mighty iving pillars and the arched dome of green! how similar to stained cathedral windows were the long openings between the trees, filled with rifts of blue, rays of gold, and the shifting emerald of leaves! where could be found mosaics to match this aisle paved with iving color and glowing light? was freckles a devout christian, and did he worship here? or was he an untaught heathen, and down this vista of entrancing loveliness did pan come piping, and dryads, nymphs, and fairies dance for him? who can fathom the heart of a boy? mclean had been thinking of freckles as a creature of unswerving honesty, courage, and faithfulness. here was evidence of a heart aching for beauty, art, companionship, worship. it was writ large all over the floor, walls, and furnishing of that little limberlost clearing. when duncan came, mclean told him the story of the fight, and they laughed until they cried. then they started around the line in search of the tree. said duncan: "now the boy is in for sore trouble!" "i hope not," answered mclean. "you never in all your life saw a cur whipped so completely. he won't come back for the repetition of the chorus. we surely can find the tree. if we can't, freckles can. i will bring enough of the gang to take it out at once. that will insure peace for a time, at least, and i am hoping that in a month more the whole gang may be moved here. it soon will be fall, and then, if he will go, i intend to send freckles to my mother to be educated. with his quickness of mind and body and a few years' good help he can do anything. why, duncan, i'd give a hundred-dollar bill if you could have been here and seen for yourself." "yes, and i'd `a' done murder," muttered the big teamster. "i hope, sir, ye will make good your plans for freckles, though i'd as soon see ony born child o' my ain taken from our home. we love the lad, me and sarah." locating the tree was easy, because it was so well identified. when the rumble of the big lumber wagons passing the cabin on the way to the swamp wakened freckles next morning, he sprang up and was soon following them. he was so sore and stiff that every movement was torture at first, but he grew easier, and shortly did not suffer so much. mclean scolded him for coming, yet in his heart triumphed over every new evidence of fineness in the boy. the tree was a giant maple, and so precious that they almost dug it out by the roots. when it was down, cut in lengths, and loaded, there was yet an empty wagon. as they were gathering up their tools to go, duncan said: "there's a big hollow tree somewhere mighty close here that i've been wanting for a wateringtrough for my stock; the one i have is so small. the portland company cut this for elm butts last year, and it's six feet diameter and hollow for forty feet. it was a buster! while the men are here and there is an empty wagon, why mightn't i load it on and tak' it up to the barn as we pass?" mclean said he was very willing, ordered the driver to break line and load the log, detailing men to assist. he told freckles to ride on a section of the maple with him, but now the boy asked to enter the swamp with duncan. "i don't see why you want to go," said mclean. "i have no business to let you out today at all." "it's me chickens," whispered freckles in distress. "you see, i was just after finding yesterday, from me new book, how they do be nesting in hollow trees, and there ain't any too many in the swamp. there's just a chance that they might be in that one." "go ahead," said mclean. "that's a different story. if they happen to be there, why tell duncan he must give up the tree until they have finished with it." then he climbed on a wagon and was driven away. freckles hurried into the swamp. he was a little behind, yet he could see the men. before he overtook them, they had turned from the west road and had entered the swamp toward the east. they stopped at the trunk of a monstrous prostrate log. it had been cut three feet from the ground, over three-fourths of the way through, and had fallen toward the east, the body of the log still resting on the stump. the underbrush was almost impenetrable, but duncan plunged in and with a crowbar began tapping along the trunk to decide how far it was hollow, so that they would know where to cut. as they waited his decision, there came from the mouth of it--on wings--a large hlack hird that swept over their heads. freckles danced wildly. "it's me chickens! oh, it's me chickens!" he shouted. "oh, duncan, come quick! you've found the nest of me precious chickens!" duncan hurried to the mouth of the log, but freckles was before him. he crashed through poison-vines and underbrush regardless of any danger, and climbed on the stump. when duncan came he was shouting like a wild man. "it's hatched!" he yelled. "oh, me big chicken has hatched out me ittle chicken, and there's another egg. i can see it plain, and oh, the funny little white baby! oh, duncan, can you see me little white chicken?" duncan could easily see it; so could everyone else. freckles crept into the log and tenderly carried the hissing, hlinking little bird to the light in a leaf-lined hat. the men found it sufficiently wonderful to satisfy even freckles, who had forgotten he was ever sore or stiff, and coddled over it with every blarneying term of endearment he knew. duncan gathered his tools. "deal's off, boys!" he said cheerfully. "this log mauna be touched until freckles' chaukies have finished with it. we might as weel gang. better put it back, freckles. it's just out, and it may chill. ye will probably hae twa the morn." freckles crept into the log and carefully deposited the baby beside the egg. when he came back, he said: "i made a hig mistake not to be bringing the egg out with the baby, but i was fearing to touch it. it's shaped ike a hen's egg, and it's big as a turkey's, and the beautifulest blue--just splattered with big brown splotches, like me book said, precise. bet you never saw such a sight as it made on the yellow of the rotten wood beside that funny leathery-faced little white baby." "tell you what, freckles," said one of the teamsters. "have you ever heard of this bird woman who goes all over the country with a camera and makes pictures? she made some on my brother jim's place last summer, and jim's so wild about them he quits plowing and goes after her about every nest he finds. he helps her all he can to take them, and then she gives him a picture. jim's so proud of what he has he keeps them in the bible. he shows them to everybody that comes, and brags about how he helped. if you're smart, you'll send for her and she'll come and make a picture just like life. if you help her, she will give you one. it would be uncommon pretty to keep, after your birds are gone. i dunno what they are. i never see their like before. they must be something rare. any you fellows ever see a bird like that hereabouts?" no one ever had. "well," said the teamster, "failing to get this log lets me off till noon, and i'm going to town. i go right past her place. i've a hig notion to stop and tell her. if she drives straight back in the swamp on the west road, and turns east at this hig sycamore, she can't miss finding the tree, even if f reckles ain't here to show her. jim says her work is a credit to the state she lives in, and any man is a measly creature who isn't willing to help her all he can. my old daddy used to say that all there was to religion was doing to the other fellow what you'd want him to do to you, and if i was making a living taking hird pictures, seems to me i'd be mighty glad for a chance to take one like that. so i'll just stop and tell her, and hy gummy! maybe she will give me a picture of the little white sucker for my trouble." freckles touched his arm. "will she be rough with it?" he asked. "government land! no!" said the teamster. "she's dead down on anybody that shoots a bird or tears up a nest. why, she's half killing herself in all kinds of places and weather to teach people to love and protect the birds. she's that plum careful of them that jim's wife says she has jim a standin' like a big fool holding an ombrelly over them when they are young and tender until she gets a focus, whatever that is. jim says there ain't a bird on his place that don't actually seem to like having her around after she has wheedled them a few days, and the pictures she takes nobody would ever believe who didn't stand by and see." "will you he sure to tell her to come?', asked freckles. duncan slept at home that night. he heard freckles slipping out early the next morning, but he was too sleepy to wonder why, until he came to do his morning chores. when he found that none of his stock was at all thirsty, and saw the water-trough brimming, he knew that the boy was trying to make up to him for the loss of the big trough that he had been so anxious to have. "bless his fool little hot heart!" said duncan. "and him so sore it is tearing him to move for anything. nae wonder he has us all loving him!" freckles was moving briskly, and his heart was so happy that he forgot all about the bruises. he hurried around the trail, and on his way down the east side he went to see the chickens. the mother hird was on the nest. he was afraid the other egg might be hatching, so he did not venture to disturb her. he made the round and reached his study early. he ate his lunch, but did not need to start on the second trip until the middle of the afternoon. he would have long hours to work on his flower bed, improve his study, and learn ahout his chickens. lovingly he set his room in order and watered the flowers and carpet. he had chosen for his resting-place the coolest spot on the west side, where there was almost always a hreeze; but today the heat was so intense that it penetrated even there. "i'm mighty glad there's nothing calling me inside!" he said. "there's no bit of air stirring, and it will just be steaming. oh, but it's luck duncan found the nest before it got so unbearing hot! i might have missed it altogether. wouldn't it have heen a shame to lose that sight? the cunning ittle divil! when he gets to toddling down that log to meet me, won't he be a circus? wonder if he'll be as graceful a performer afoot as his father and mother?" the heat became more insistent. noon came; freckles ate his dinner and settled for an hour or two on a bench with a book. chapter v wherein an angel materializes and a man worships perhaps there was a hreath of sound--freckles never afterward could remember--but for some reason he lifted his head as the bushes parted and the face of an angel looked between. saints, nymphs, and fairies had floated down his cathedral aisle for him many times, with forms and voices of exquisite beauty. parting the wild roses at the entrance was beauty of which freckles never had dreamed. was it real or would it vanish as the other dreams? he dropped his book, and rising to his feet, went a step closer, gazing intently. this was real flesh and blood. it was in every way kin to the limberlost, for no bird of its branches swung with easier grace than this dainty young thing rocked on the bit of morass on which she stood. a sapling beside her was not straighter or rounder than her slender form. her soft, waving hair clung around her face from the heat, and curled over her shoulders. it w as all of one piece with the gold of the sun that filtered between the branches. her eyes were the deepest blue of the iris, her lips the reddest red of the foxfire, while her cheeks were exactly of the same satin as the wild rose petals caressing them. she was smiling at freckles in perfect confidence, and she cried: "oh, i'm so delighted that i've found you!" the wildly leaping heart of freckles burst from his body and fell in the black swamp-muck at her feet with such a thud that he did not understand how she could avoid hearing. he really felt that if she looked down she would see. incredulous, he quavered: "an'--an' was you looking for me?" "i hoped i might find you," said the angel. "you see, i didn't do as i was told, and i'm lost. the bird woman said i should wait in the carriage until she came back. she's been gone hours. it's a perfect turkish bath in there, and i'm all lumpy with mosquito bites. just when i thought that i couldn't bear it another minute, along came the biggest p apilio ajax you ever saw. i knew how pleased she'd he, so i ran after it. it flew so slow and so low that i thought a dozen times i had it. then all at once it went from sight above the trees, and i couldn't find my way back to save me. i think i've walked more than an hour. i have been mired to my knees. a thorn raked my arm until it is bleeding, and i'm so tired and warm." she parted the bushes farther. freckles saw that her hlue cotton frock clung to her, limp with perspiration. it was torn across the breast. one sleeve hung open from shoulder to elbow. a thorn had torn her arm until it was covered with blood, and the gnats and mosquitoes were clustering around it. her feet were in lace hose and low shoes. freckles gasped. in the limberlost in low shoes! he caught an armful of moss from his carpet and huried it in the ooze in front of her for a footing. "come out here so i can see where you are stepping. quick, for the life of you!" he ordered. she smiled on him indulgently. "why?" she inquired. "did anybody let you come here and not he telling you of the snakes?" urged freckles. "we met mr. mclean on the corduroy, and he did say something about snakes, i helieve. the bird woman put oh leather leggings, and a nice, parboiled time she must be having! worst dose i ever endured, and i'd nothing to do but swelter." "will you be coming out of there?" groaned freckles. she laughed as if it were a fine joke. "mayhe if i'd be telling you i killed a rattler curled upon that same place you're standing, as long as me body and the thickness of me arm, you'd he moving where i can see your footing," he urged insistently. "what a perfectly delightful little brogue you speak," she said. "my father is irish, and half should be enough to entitle me to that much. `maybe--if i'd--he telling you,' " she imitated, rounding and accenting each word carefully. freckles was beginning to feel a wildness in his head. he had derided wessner at that same hour yesterday. now his own eyes were filling with tears. "if you were understanding the danger!" he continued desperately. "oh, i don't think there is much!" she tilted on the morass. "if you killed one snake here, it's probably all there is near., and. anywav, the bird woman says a rattlesnake is a gentleman and always gives warning before he strikes. i don't hear any rattling. do you?" "would you he knowing it if you did?" asked freckles, almost impatiently. how the laugh of the young thing rippled! " `would i he knowing it?' " she mocked. "you should see the swamps of michigan where they dump rattlers from the marldredgers three and four at a time!" freckles stood astounded. she did know. she was not in the least afraid. she was depending on a rattlesnake to live up to his share of the contract and rattle in time for her to move. the one characteristic an irishman admires in a woman, above all others, is courage. freckles worshiped anew. he changed his tactics. "i'd he pleased to he receiving you at me front door," he said, "but as you have arrived at the hack, will you come in and be seated?" he waved toward a bench. the angel came instantly. "oh, how lovely and cool!" she cried. as she moved across his room, freckles had difficult work to keep from faling on his knees; for they were very weak, while he was hard driven by an impulse to worship. "did you arrange this?" she asked. "yis," said freckles simply. "someone must come with a big canvas and copy each side of it," she said. "i never saw anything so beautiful! how i wish i might remain here with you! i will, some day, if you will let me; but now, if you can spare the time, will you help me find the carriage? if the bird woman comes back and i am gone, she will be almost distracted." "did you come on the west road?" asked freckles. "i think so," she said. "the man who told the bird woman said that was the only place the wires were down. we drove away in, and it was dreadful--over stumps and logs, and we mired to the hubs. i suppose you know, though. i should have stayed in the carriage, but i was so tired. i never dreamed of getting lost. i suspect i will be scolded finely. i go with the bird woman half the time during the summer vacations. my father says i learn a lot more than i do at school, and get it straight. i never came within a smell of being lost before. i thought, at first, it was going to he horrid; but since i've found you, maybe it will be good fun after all." freckles was amazed to hear himself excusing: "it was so hot in there. you couldn't he expected to bear it for hours and not be moving. i can take you around the trail almost to where you were. then you can sit in the carriage, and i will go find the bird woman." "you'll be killed if you. do! when she stays this long, it means that she has a focus on something. you see, when she has a focus, and lies in the weeds and water for hours, and the sun bakes her, and things crawl over her, and then someone comes along and scares her bird away just as she has it coaxed up--why, she kills them. if i melt, you won't go after her. she's probably blistered and half eaten up; but she never will quit until she is satisfied." "then it will be safer to be taking care of you," suggested freckles. "now you're talking sense!" said the angel. "may i try to help your arm?" he asked. "have you any idea how it hurts?" she parried. "a little," said freckles. "well, mr. mclean said we'd probably find his son here" "his son!" cried freckles. "that's what he said. and that you would do anything you could for us; and that we could trust you with our lives. but i would have trusted you anyway, if i hadn't known a thing about you. say, your father is rampaging proud of you, isn't he?" "i don't know," answered the dazed freckles. "well, call on me if you want reliable information. he's so proud of you he is all swelled up like the toad in aesop's fables. if you have ever had an arm hurt like this, and can do anything, why, for pity sake, do it!" she turned back her sleeve, holding toward freckles an arm of palest cameo, shaped so exquisitely that no sculptor could have chiseled it. freckles unlocked his case, and taking out some cotton cloth, he tore it in strips. then he hrought a bucket of the cleanest water he could find. she yielded herself to his touch as a haby, and he bathed away the blood and handaged the ugly, ragged wound. he finished his surgery by lapping the torn sleeve over the cloth and binding it down with a piece of twine, with the angel's help about the knots. freckles worked with trembling fingers and a face tense with earnestness. "is it feeling any better?" he asked. "oh, it's well now!" cried the angel. "it doesn't hurt at all, any more." "i'm mighty glad," said freckles. "but you had best go and be having your doctor fix it right; the minute you get home." "oh, bother! a little scratch like that!" jeered the angel. "my blood is perfectly pure. it will heal in three days." "it's cut cruel deep. it might be making a scar" faltered freckles, his eyes on the ground." `twould--'twould be an awful pity. a doctor might know something to prevent it." "why, i never thought of that!" exclaimed the angel. "i noticed you didn't," said freckles softly. "i don't know much about it, but it seems as if most girls would." the angel thought intently, while freckles still knelt beside her. suddenly she gave herself an impatient little shake, lifted her glorious eyes full to his, and the smile that swept her sweet, young face was the loveliest thing that freckles ever had seen. "don't let's bother about it," she proposed, with the faintest hint of a confiding gesture toward him. "it won't make a scar. why, it couldn't, when you have dressed it so nicely." the velvety touch of her warm arm was tingling in freckles' fingertips. dainty lace and fine white ribbon peeped through ber torn dress. there were beautiful rings on her fingers. every article she wore was of the finest material and in excellent taste. there was the trembling limberlost guard in his coarse clothing, with his cotton rags and his old pail of swamp water. freckles was sufficiently accustomed to contrasts to notice them, and sufficiently fine to be hurt by them always. he lifted his eyes with a shadowy pain in them to hers, and found them of serene, unconscious purity. what she had said w as straight from a kind, untainted, young heart. she meant every word of it. freckles' soul sickened. he scarcely knew whether he could muster strength to stand. "we must go and hunt for tbe carriage," said the angel, rising. in instant alarm for her, freckles sprang up, grasped the cudgel, and led the way, sharply watching every step. he went as close the log as he felt that he dared, and with a little searching found the carriage. he cleared a path for the angel, and with a sigh of relief saw her enter it safely. the heat was intense. she pushed the damp hair from her temples. "this is a shame!" said freckles. "you'll never be coming here again." "oh yes i shall!" said the angel. "the bird woman says that these birds remain over a month in the nest and she would like to make a picture every few days for seven or eight weeks, perhaps." freckles barely escaped crying aloud for joy. "then don't you ever be torturing yourself and your horse to be coming in here again," he said. "i'll show you a way to drive almost to the nest on the east trail, and then you can come around to my room and stay while the bird woman works. it's nearly always cool there, and there's comfortable seats, and water." "oh! did you have drinking-water there?" she cried. "i was never so thirsty or so hungry in my life, but i thought i wouldn't mention it." "and i had not the wit to be seeing!" wailed freckles. "i can be getting you a good drink in no time." he turned to the trail. "please wait a minute," called the angel. "what's vour name? i want to think about you while you are gone." f reckles lifted his face with the brown rift across it and smiled quizzically. "freckles?" she guessed, witb a peal of laughter. "and mine is----" "i'm knowing yours," interrupted freckles. "i don't believe you do. what is it?" asked the girl. "you won't be getting angry?" "not until i've had the water, at least." it was freckles' turn to laugh. he whipped off his big, floppy straw hat, stood uncovered before her, and said, in the sweetest of all the sweet tones of his voice: "there's nothing you could be but the swamp angel." the girl laughed happily. once out of her sight, freckles ran every step of the way to the cabin. mrs. duncan gave him a small bucket of water, cool from the well. he carried it in the crook of his right arm, and a basket filled with bread and butter, cold meat, apple pie, and pickles, in his left hand. "pickles are kind o' cooling," said mrs. duncan. then freckles ran again. the angel was on her knees, reaching for the bucket, as he came up. "be drinking slow," he cautioned her. "oh!" she cried, with a long breath of satisfaction. "it's so good! you are more than kind to bring it!" freckles stood binking in the dazzling glory of her smile nntil he scarcely could see to lift the basket. "mercy!" she exclaimned. "i think i had better be naming you the `angel.' my guardian angel." "yis," said freckles. "i look the character every day--but today most emphatic!" "angels don't go by looks," laughed the girl. "your father told us you had been scrapping. but he told us why. i'd gladly wear all vour cuts and bruises if i could do anything that would make my father look as peacocky as yours did. he strutted about proper. i never saw anyone look prouder." "did he say he was proud of me?', marveled freckles. "he didn't need to," answered the angel. "he was radiating pride from every pore. now, have you brought me your dinner?" "i had my dinner two hours ago," answered freckles. "honest injun?" bantered the angel. "honest! i brought that on purpose for you." "well, if you knew how hungry i am, you would know how thankful i am, to the dot," said the angel. "then you be eating," cried the happy freckles. the angel sat on a big camera, spread the lunch on the carriage seat, and divided it in halves. the daintiest parts she could select she carefully put back into the basket. the remainder she ate. again freckles found her of the swamp, for though she was almost ravenous, she managed her food as gracefully as his little yellow fellow, and her every movement was easy and charming. as he watched her with famished eyes, freckles told her of his birds, flowers, and books, and never realized what he was doing. he led the horse to a deep pool that he knew of, and the tortured creature drank greedily, and lovingly rubbed him with its nose as he wiped down its welted body with grass. suddenly the angel cried: "there comes the bird woman!" freckles had intended leaving before she came, but now he was glad indeed to be there, for a warmer, more worn, and worse bitten creature he never had seen. she was staggering under a load of cameras and paraphernaia. f reckles ran to her aid. he took all he could carry of her load, stowed it in the back of the carriage, and helped her in. the angel gave her water, knelt and unfastened the leggings, bathed her face, and offered the lunch. freckles brought the horse. he was not sure about the harness, but the angel knew, and soon they left the swamp. then he showed them how to reach the chicken tree from the outside, indicated a cooler place for the horse, and told them how, the next time they came, the angel could find his room while she waited. the bird woman finished her lunch, and lay back, almost too tired to speak. "were you for getting little chicken's picture?" freckles asked. "finely!" she answered. "he posed splendidly. but i couldn't do anything with his mother. she will require coaxing." "the lord be praised!" muttered freckles under his breath. the bird woman began to feel better. "why do you call the baby vulture `little chicken'?" she asked, leaning toward freckles in an interested manner. " `twas duncan began it," said freckles. "you see, through the fierce cold of winter the birds of the swamp were almost starving. it is mighty lonely here, and they were all the company i was having. i got to carrying scraps and grain down to them. duncan was that ginerous he was giving me of his wheat and corn from his chickens' feed, and he called the birds me swamp chickens. then when these big black fellows came, mr. mclean said they were our nearest kind to some in the old world that they called `pharaoh's chickens,' and he called mine `freckles' chickens.'" "good enough!" cried the bird woman, her splotched purple face lighting with interest. "you must shoot something for them occasionally, and i'll bring more food when i come. if you will help me keep them until i get my series, i'll give you a copy of each study i make, mounted in a book." freckles drew a deep breath. "i'll be doing me very best," he promised, and from the deeps he meant it. "i wonder if that other egg is going to hatch?" mused the bird woman. "i am afraid not. it should have pipped today. isn't it a beauty! i never before saw either an egg or the young. they are rare this far north." "so mr. mclean said," answered freckles. before they drove away, the bird woman thanked him for his kindness to the angel and to her. she gave him her hand at parting, and freckles joyfully realized that this was going to be another person for him to love. he could not remember, after they had driven away, that they even had noticed his missing hand, and for the first time in his life he had forgotten it. when the bird woman and the angel were on the home road, she told of the little corner of paradise into which she had strayed and of her new name. the bird woman looked at the girl and guessed its appropriateness. "did you know mr. mclean had a son?" asked the angel. "isn't the little accent he has, and the way he twists a sentence, too dear? and isn't it too old-fashioned and funny to hear him call his father `mister'?" "it sounds too good to be true," said the bird woman, answering the last question first. "i am so tired of these present-day young men who patronizingly call their fathers `dad,' `governor,' `old man" and `old chap,' that the boy's attitude of respect and deference appealed to me as being fine as silk. there must be something rare about that young man." she did not find it necessary to tell the angel that for several years she had known the man who so proudly proclaimed himself freckles' father to be a bachelor and a scotchman. the bird woman had a fine way of attending strictly to her own business. freckles turned to the trail, but he stopped at every wild brier to study the pink satin of the petals. she was not of his world, and better than any other he knew it; but she might be his angel, and he was dreaming of naught but blind, silent worship. he finished the happiest day of his life, and that night he returned to the swamp as if drawn by invisible force. that wessner would try for his revenge, he knew. that he would be abetted by black jack was almost certain, but fear had fled the happy heart of freckles. he had kept his trust. he had won the respect of the boss. no one ever could wipe from his heart the flood of holy adoration that had welled with the coming of his angel. he would do his best, and trust for strength to meet the dark day of reckoning that he knew would come sooner or later. he swung round the trail, briskly tapping the wire, and singing in a voice that scarcely could have been surpassed for sweetness. at the edge of the clearing he came into the bright moonlight and there sat mclean on his mare. freckles hurried to him. "is there trouble?" he inquired anxiously. "that's what i wanted to ask you," said the boss. "i stopped at the cabin to see you a minute, before i turned in, and they said you had come down here. you must not do it, freckles. the swamp is none too healthful at any time, and at night it is rank poison." freckles stood combing his fingers through nellie's mane, while the dainty creature was twisting her head for his caresses. he pushed back his hat and looked into mclean's face. "it's come to the `sleep with one eye open,' sir. i'm not looking for anything to be happening for a week or two, but it's bound to come, and soon. if i'm to keep me trust as i've promised you and meself, i've to [?] chapter vi wherein a fight occurs and women shoot straight the following morning freckles, inexpressibly happy, circled the limberlost. he kept snatches of song ringing, as well as the wires. his heart was so full that tears of joy glistened in his eyes. he rigorously strove to divide his thought evenly between mclean and the angel. he realized to the fullest the debt he already owed the boss and the magnitude of last night's declaration and promises. he was hourly planning to deliver his trust and then enter with equal zeal on whatever task his beloved boss saw fit to set him next. he wanted to be ready to meet every device that wessner and black jack could think of to outwit him. he recognized their double leverage, for if they succeeded in felling even one tree mclean became liable for his wager. freckles' brow wrinkled in his effort to think deeply and strongly, but from every swaying wild rose the angel beckoned to him. when he crossed sleepy snake creek and the goldfinch, waiting as ever, challenged: "see me?" freckles saw the dainty swaying grace of the angel instead. what is a man to do with an angel who dismembers herself and scatters over a whole swamp, thrusting a vivid reminder upon him at every turn? freckles counted the days. this first one he could do little but test his wires, sing broken snatches, and dream; but before the week would bring her again he could do many things. he would carry all his books to the swamp to show to her. he would complete his flower bed, arrange every detail he had planned for his room, and make of it a bower fairies might envv. he must devise a way to keep water cool. he would ask mrs. duncan for a double lunch and an especially nice one the day of her next coming, so that if the bird woman happened to be late, the angel might not suffer from thirst and hunger. he would tell her to bring heavy leather leggings, so that he might take her on a trip around the trail. she should make friends with all of his chickens and see their nests. on the line he talked of her incessantly. "you needn't be thinking," he said to the goldfinch, "that because i'm coming down this line alone day after dav., it's always to be so. some of these times you'll be swinging on this wire, and you'll see me coming, and you'll swing, skip, and flirt yourself around, and chip up right spunky.. `see me?' i'll be saying `see you? oh, lord! see her!' you'll look, and there she'll stand. the sunshine won't look gold any more, or the roses pink, or the sky blue, because she'll be the pinkest, bluest, goldest thing of all. you'll be yelling yourself hoarse with the jealousv of her. the sawbird will stretch his neck out of joint, and she'll turn the heads of all the flowers. wherever she goes, i can go back afterward and see the things she's seen, walk the path she's walked, hear the grasses whispering over all she's said; and if there's a place too swampy for her bits of feet; holy mother! maybe--maybe she'd be putting the beautiful arms of her around me neck and letting me carry her over!" freckles shivered as with a chill. he sent the cudgel whirling skyward, dexterously caught it, and set it spinning. "you damned presumptuous fool!" he cried. "the thing for you to be thinking of would be to stretch in the muck for the feet of her to be walking over, and then you could hold yourself holy to be even of that service to her. "maybe she'll be wanting the cup me blue-and-brown chickens raised their babies in. perhaps she'd like to stop at the pool and see me bullfrog that had the goodness to take on human speech to show me the way out of me trouble. if there's any feathers falling that day, why, it's from the wings of me chickens--it's sure to be, for the only angel outside the gates will be walking this timberline, and every step of the way i'll be holding me breath and praying that she don't unfold wings and sail away before the hungry eyes of me." so freckles dreamed his dreams, made his plans, and watched his line. he counted not only the days, but the hours of each day. as he told them off, every one bringing her closer, be grew happier in the prospect of her coming. he managed daily to leave some offering at the big elm log for his black chickens. he slipped under the line at every passing, and went to make sure that nothing was molesting tbem. though it was a long trip, he paid them several extra visits a day for fear a snake, hawk, or fox might have found the baby. for now his chickens not only represented all his former interest in them, but they furnished the inducement that was bringing his angel. possibly he could find other subjects that the bird woman wanted. the teamster had said that his brother went after her every time he found a nest. he never had counted the nests that he knew of, and it might be that among all the birds of the swamp some would be rare to her. the feathered folk of the limberlost were practically undisturbed save by their natural enemies. it was very probable that among his chickens others as odd as the big black ones could be found. if she wanted pictures of half-grown birds, he could pick up fifty in one morning's trip around the line, for he had fed, handled, and made friends with them ever since their eyes opened. he had gathered bugs and worms all spring as he noticed them on the grass and bushes, and dropped them into the first little open mouth he had found. the babies gladly had accepted this queer tri-parent addition to their natural providers. when the week had passed, freckles had his room crisp and glowing with fresh living things that represented every color of the swamp. he carried bark and filled all the muckiest places of the trail. it was middle july. the heat of the past few days had dried the water around and through the limberlost, so that it was possible to cross it on foot in almost any direction--if one had an idea of direction and did not become completely lost in its rank tangle of vegetation and bushes. the hrighter-hued flowers were opening. the trumpet-creepers were flaunting their gorgeous horns of red and gold sweetness from the tops of lordly oak and elm, and below entire pools were pink-sheeted in mallow bloom. the heat was doing one other thing that was bound to make freckles, as a good irishman, shiver. as the swale dried, its inhabitants were seeking the cooler depths of the swamp. they liked neither tbe heat nor leaving the field mice, moles, and young rabbits of their chosen location. he saw them crossing the trail every day as the heat grew intense. the rattlers were sadly forgetting their manners, for they struck on no provocation whatever, and did not even remember to rattle afterward. daily freckles was compelled to drive big black snakes and blue racers from the nests of his chickens. often the terrified squalls of the parent birds would reach him far down the line and he would run to rescue the babies. he saw the angel when the carriage turned from the corduroy into the clearing. they stopped at the west entrance to the swamp, waiting for him to precede them down the trail, as he had told them it was safest for the horse that he should do. they followed the east line to a point opposite the big chickens' tree, and freckles carried in the cameras and showed the bird woman a path he had cleared to the log. he explained to her the effect the heat was having on the snakes, and creeping back to little chicken, brought him to the light. as she worked at setting up her camera, he told her of the birds of the line, while she stared at him, wideeyed and incredulous. they arranged that freckles should drive the carriage into the east entrance in the shade and then take the horse toward the north to a better place he knew. then he was to entertain the angel at his study or on the line until the bird woman finished her work and came to them. "this will take only a little time," she said. "i know where to set the camera now, and little chicken is big enough to be good and too small to run away or to act very ugly, so i will be coming soon to see about those nests. i have ten plates along, and i surely won't use more than two on him; so perhaps i can get some nests or young birds this morning." freckles almost flew, for his dream had come true so soon. he was walking the timber-line and the angel was following him. he asked to be excused for going first, because he wanted to be sure the trail was safe for her. she laughed at his fears, telling him that it was the polite thing for him to do, anyway. "oh!" said freckles, "so you was after knowing that? well,. i didn't s'pose you did, and i was afraid you'd think me wanting in respect to be preceding you!" the astonished angel looked at him, caught the irrepressible gleam of irish fun in his eyes, so they stood and laughed together. freckles did not realize how he was talking that morning. he showed her many of the beautiful nests and eggs of the line. she could identify a number of them, but of some she was ignorant, so they made notes of the number and color of the eggs, material, and construction of nest, color, size, and shape of the birds, and went to find them in the book. at his room, when freckles had lifted the overhanging bushes and stepped back for her to enter, his heart was all out of time and place. the study was vastly more beautiful than a week previous. the angel drew a deep breath and stood gazing first at one side, then at another, then far down the cathedral aisle. "it's just fairyland!" she cried ecstatically. then she turned and stared at freckles as she had at his handiwork. "what are you planning to be?" she asked wonderingly. "whatever mr. mclean wants me to," he replied. "what do you do most?" she asked. "watch me lines." "i don't mean work!" "oh, in me spare time i keep me room and study in me books." "do you work on the room or the books most?" "on the room only what it takes to keep it up, and the rest of the time on me books." the angel studied him closely. "well, maybe you are going to be a great scholar," she said, "but you don't look it. your face isn't right for that, but it's got something big in it--something really great. i must find out what it is and then you must work on it. your father is expecting you to do something. one can tell by the way he talks. you should begin right away. you've wasted too much time already." poor freckles hung his head. he never had wasted an hour in his life. there never had been one that was his to waste. the angel, studying him intently, read the thought in his face. "oh, i don't mean that!" she cried, with the frank dismay of sixteen. "of course, you're not. lazy! no one ever would think that from your appearance. it's this i mean: there is something fine, strong, and full of power in your face. there is something you are to do in this world, and no matter how you work at all these other things, or how successfully you do them, it is all wasted until you find the one t hing that you can do best. if you hadn't a thing in the world to keep you, and could go anywhere you please and do anything you want, what would you do?" persisted the angel. "i'd go to chicago and sing in the first episcopal choir," answered freckles promptly. the angel dropped on a seat--the hat she had removed and held in her fingers rolled to her feet. "there!" she exclaimed vehemently. "you can see what i'm going to be. nothing! absolutely nothing! you can sing? of course you can sing! it is written all over you." "anyone with half wit could have seen he could sing, without having to be told," she thought. "it's in the slenderness of his fingers and his quick nervous touch. it is in the brightness of his hair, the fire of his eyes, the breadth of his chest, tbe muscles of his throat and neck; and above all, it's in every tone of his voice, for even as he speak it's the sweetest sound i ever heard from the throat of a mortal." "will you do something for me?" she asked. "i'll do anything in the world you want me to," said freckles largely, "and if i can't do what you want, i'll go to work at once and i'll try `til i can." "good! that's business!" said the angel. "you go over there and stand before that hedge and sing something. just anything you think of first." freckles faced the angel from his banked wall of brown, blue, and crimson, with its background of solid green, and lifting his face to the sky, he sang the first thing that came into his mind. it was a children's song that he had led for tbe little folks at the home many times, recalled to his mind by the angel's exclamation: "to fairyland we go, with a song of joy, heigh-o. in dreams we'll stand upon that shore and all the realm behold; we'll see the sights so grand that belong to fairyland, its mysteries we will explore, its beauties will unfold. oh, tra, la, la, oh, ha, ha, ha! we're happy now as we can be, our welcome song we will prolong, and greet you with our melody. o fairyland, sweet fairyland, we love to sing----" no song could have given the intense sweetness and rollicking quality of freckles' voice better scope. he forgot everything but pride in bis work. he was singing the chorus, and the angel was sbivering in ecstasy, when clip! clip! came the sharply beating feet of a swiftly ridden horse down the trail from the north. they both sprang toward the entrance. "freckles! freckles!" called the voice of the bird woman. they were at the trail on the instant. "both those revolvers loaded?" she asked. "yes," said freckles. "is there a way you can cut across the swamp and reach the chicken tree in a few minutes, and with little noise?" "yes." "then go flying," said the bird woman. "give the angel a lift behind me, and we will ride the horse back where you left him and wait for you. i finished little chicken in no time and put him back. his mother came so close, i felt sure she would enter the log. the light was fine, so i set and focused the camera and covered it with branches, attached the long hose, and went away over a hundred feet and hid in some bushes to wait. a short, stout man and a tall, dark one passed me so closely i almost could have reached out and touched them. they carried a big saw on their shoulders. they said they could work until near noon, and then they must lay off until you passed and then try to load and get out at night. they went on--not entirely from sight--and began cutting a tree. mr. mclean told me the other day what would probably happen here, and if they fell that tree he loses his wager on you. keep to the east and north and hustle. we'll meet you at the carriage. i always am armed. give angel one of your revolvers, and you keep the other. we will separate and creep toward them from different sides and give them a fusillade that will send them flying. you hurry,. now!" she lifted the reins and started briskly down the trail. the angel, hatless and with sparkling eyes, was clinging around her waist. freckles wheeled and ran. he worked his way witb much care, dodging limbs and bushes with noiseless tread, and cutting as closely where he thought the men were as he felt that he dared if he were to remain unseen. as he ran he tried to think. it was wessner, burning for his revenge, aided by the bully of the locality, that he was going to meet. he was accustomed to that thought but not to the complication of having two women on his hands who undoubtedly would have to be taken care of in spite of the bird woman's offer to help him. his heart was jarring as it never had before with running. he must follow the bird woman's plan and meet them at the carriage, but if they really did intend to try to help him, he must not allow it. allow the angel to try to handle a revolver in his defence? never! not for all the trees in the limberlost! she might shoot herself. she might forget to watch sharply and run across a snake that was not particularly well behaved that morning. freckles permitted himself a grim smile as he went speeding on. when he reached the carriage, the bird woman and the angel had the horse hitched, the outfit packed, and were calmly waiting. the bird woman held a revolver in her hand. she wore dark clothing. they had pinned a big focusing cloth over the front of the angel's light dress. "give angel one of your revolvers, quick!" said the bird woman. "we will creep up until we are in fair range. the underbrush is so thick and they are so busy that they will never notice us, if we don't make a noise. you fire first, then i will pop in from my direction, and then you, angel, and shoot quite high, or else very low. we mustn't really hit them. we'll go close enough to the cowards to make it interesting, and keep it up until we have them going." freckles protested. the bird woman reached over, and, taking the smaller revolver from his belt, handed it to the angel. "keep your nerve steady, dear. watch where you step, and shoot high," she said. "go straight at them from wbere you are. wait until vou hear freckles' first shot, then follow me as closely as you can, to let them know that we outnumber them. if you want to save mclean's wager on you, now you go!" she commanded freckles, who, with an agonized glance at the angel, ran tow ard the east. the bird woman chose the middle distance, and for a last time cautioned the angel as she moved away to lie down and shoot high. through the underbrush the bird woman crept even more closely than she had intended, found a clear range, and waited for freckles' shot. there was one long minute of sickening suspense. the men straightened for breath. work was difficult with a handsaw in the heat of the swamp. as they rested, the big dark fellow took a bottle from his pocket and began oiling the saw. "we got to keep mighty quiet," he said, "and wait to fell it until that damned guard has gone to his dinner." again they bent to their work. freckles' revolver spat fire. lead spanged on steel. the saw-handle flew from wessner's hand and he reeled from the jar of the shock. black jack straightened, uttering a fearful oath. the hat sailed from his head from the far northeast. the angel had not waited for the bird woman, and her shot scarcely could have been called high. at almost the same instant the third shot whistled from the east. black jack sprang into the air with a yell of complete panic, for it ripped a heel from his boot. freckles emptied his second chamber, and the earth spattered over wessner. shots poured in rapidly. witbout even reaching for a weapon, both men ran toward the east road in great leaping bounds, while leaden slugs sung and hissed around them in deadly earnest. freckles was trimming his corners as closely as he dared, but if the angel did not really intend to hit, she was taking risks in a scandalous manner. when the men reached the trail, freckles yelled at the top of his voice: "head them off on the south, boys! fire from the south!" as he had hoped, jack and wessner instantly plunged into the swale. a spattering of lead followed them. they crossed the swale, running low, with not even one backward glance, and entered the woods beyond the corduroy. then the little party gathered at the tree. "i'd better fix this saw so they can't be using it if they come back," said freckles, taking out his hatchet and making sawteeth fly. "now we must leave here without being seen," said the bird woman to the angel. "it won't do for me to make enemies of these men, for i am likely to meet them while at work any day." "you can do it by driving straight north on this road," said freckles. "i will go ahead and cut the wires for you. the swale is almost dry. you will only be sinking a little. in a few rods you will strike a cornfield. i will take down the fence and let you into that. follow the furrows and drive straight across it until you come to the other side. be following the fence south until you come to a road through the woods east of it. then take that road and follow east until you reach the pike. you will come out on your way back to town, and two miles north of anywhere they are likely to be. don't for your lives ever let it out that you did this," he earnestly cautioned, "for it's black enemies you would be making." freckles clipped the wires and they drove through. the angel leaned from the carriage and held out his revolver. freckles looked at her in surprise. her eyes were black, while her face was a deeper rose than usual. he felt that his own was white. "did i shoot high enough?" she asked sweetly. "i really forgot about lying down." freckles winced. did the child know how close she had gone? surely she could not! or was it possible that she had the nerve and skill to fire like that purposely? "i will send the first reliable man i meet for mclean," said the bird woman, gathering up the lines. "if i don't meet one when we reach town, we will send a messenger. if it wasn't for having the gang see me, i would go myself; but i will promise you that you will have help in a little over two hours. you keep well hidden. they must think some of the gang is with you now. there isn't a chance that they will be back, but don't run any risks. remain under cover. if they should come, it probably would be for their saw." she laughed as at a fine joke. chapter vii wherein freckles wins honor and finds a footprint on the trail round-eyed, freckles watched the bird woman and the angel drive away. after they were from sight and he was safely hidden among the branches of a small tree, he remembered that he neither had thanked them nor said good-bye. considering what they had been through, they never would come again. his heart sank until he had palpitation in his wading-boots. stretching the length of the limb, he thought deeply, though he was not thinking of black jack or wessner. would the bird woman and the angel come again? no other woman whom he ever had known would. but did they resemble any other women he ever had known? he thought of the bird woman's unruffled face and the angel's revolver practice, and presently he was not so sure that they would not return. what were the people in the big world like? his knowledge was so very limited. there had been people at the home, who exchanged a stilted, perfunctory kindness for their salaries. the visitors who called on receiving days he had divided into three classes: the psalm-singing kind, who came with a tear in the eye and hypocrisy in every feature of their faces; the kind who dressed in silks and jewels, and handed to those poor little motherhungry souls worn toys that their children no longer cared for, in exactly the same spirit in which they pitched biscuits to the monkeys at the zoo, and for the same reason--to see how they would take them and be amused by what they would do; and the third class, whom he considered real people. they made him feel they cared that he was there, and that they would have been glad to see him elsewhere. now here was another class, that had all they needed of the world's best and were engaged in doing work that counted. they had things worth while to be proud of; and they had met him as a son and brother. with them he could, for the only time in his life, forget the lost hand that every day tortured him with a new pang. what kind of people were they and where did they belong among the classes he knew? he failed to decide, because he never had known others similar to them; but how he loved them! in the world where he was going soon, were the majority like them, or were they of the hypocrite and hun-throwing classes? he had forgotten tbe excitement of the morning and the passing of time when distant voices aroused him, and he gently lifted his head. nearer and nearer they came, and as the heavy wagons rumbled down the east trail he could hear them plainly. the gang were shouting themselves hoarse for the limberlost guard. freckles did not feel that he deserved it. he would have given much to he able to go to the men and explain, but to mclean only could he tell his story. at the sight of freckles the men threw up their hats and cheered. mclean shook hands with him warmly, but big duncan gathered him into his arms and hugged him as a bear and choked over a few words of praise. the gang drove in and finished felling the tree. mclean was angry beyond measure at this attempt on his property, for in their haste to fell the tree the thieves had cut too high and wasted a foot and a half of valuable timber. when the last wagon rolled away, mclean sat on the stump and freckles told the story he was aching to tell. the boss scarcely could believe his senses. also, he w as much disappointed. "i have been almost praying all the way over, freckles," he said, "that you would have some evidence by which we could arrest those fellows and get them out of our way, but this will never do. we can't mix up those women in it. they have helped you save me the tree and my wager as well. going across the country as she does, the bird woman never could be expected to testify against them." "no, indeed; nor the angel, either, sir," said freckles. "the angel?" queried the astonished mclean. the boss listened in silence while freckles told of the coming and christening of the angel. "i know her father well," said mclean at last, "and i have often seen her. you are right; she is a beautiful young girl, and she appears to be utterly free from the least particle of false pride or foolishness. i do not understand why her father risks such a jewel in this place." "he's daring it because she is a jewel, sir," said freckles, eagerly. "why, she's trusting a rattlesnake to rattle before it strikes her, and of course, she think she can trust mankind as well. the man isn't made who wouldn't lay down the life of him for her. she doesn't need any care. her face and the pretty ways of her are all the protection she would need in a band of howling savages." "did you say she handled one of the revolvers?" asked mclean. "she scared all the breath out of me body," admitted freckles. "seems that her father has taught her to shoot. the bird woman told her distinctly to lie low and blaze away high, just to help scare them. the spunky little thing followed them right out into the west road, spitting lead like hail, and clipping all around the heads and heels of them; and i'm damned, sir, if i believe she' d cared a rap if she'd hit. i never saw much shooting, but if that wasn't the nearest to miss i ever want to see! scared the life near out of me body with the fear that she'd drop one of them. as long as i'd no one to help me but a couple of women that didn't dare be mixed up in it, all i could do was to let them get away." "now, will they come back?" asked mclean. "of course!" said freckles. "they're not going to be taking that. you could stake your life on it, they'll be coming back. at least, black jack will. wessner may not have tbe pluck, unless he is half drunk. then he'd be a terror. and the next time" freckles hesitated. "what?" "it will be a question of who shoots first and straightest." "then the only thing for me to do is to double the guard and bring the gang here the first minute possible. as soon as i feel that we have the rarest of the stuff out below, we will come. the fact is, in many cases, until it is felled it's difficult to tell what a tree will prove to be. it won't do to leave you here longer alone. jack has been shooting twenty years to your one, and it stands to reason that you are no match for him. who of the gang would you like best to have with you?" "no one, sir," said freckles emphatically. "next time is where i run. i won't try to fight them alone. i'll just be getting wind of them, and then make track for you. i'll need to come like lightning, and duncan has no extra horse, so i'm thinking you'd best get me one--or perhaps a wheel would be better. i used to do extra work for the home doctor, and he would let me take his bicycle to ride around the place. and at times the head nurse would loan me his for an hour. a wheel would cost less and be faster than a horse, and would take less care. i believe, if you are going to town soon, you had best pick up any kind of an old one at some second-hand store, for if i'm ever called to use it in a hurry there won't be the handlebars left after crossing the corduroy." "yes," said mclean; "and if you didn't have a first-class wheel, you never could cross the corduroy on it at all." as they walked to the cahin, mclean insisted on another guard, but freckles was stubbornly set on fighting his battle alone. he made one mental condition. if the bird woman was going to give up the little chicken series, he would yield to the second guard, solely for the sake of her work and the presence of the angel in the limberlost. he did not propose to have a second man unless it were absolutely necessary, for he had been alone so long that he loved the solitude, his chickens, and flowers. the thought of having a stranger to all his ways come and meddle with his arrangements, frighten his pets, pull his flowers, and interrupt him when he wanted to study, so annoyed him that he was blinded to his real need for help. with mclean it was a case of letting his sober, better judgment be overridden by the boy he was growing so to love that he could not endure to oppose him, and to have freckles keep his trust and win alone meant more tban any money the boss might lose. the following morning mclean brought the wheel, and freckles took it to the trail to test it. it was new, chainless, with as little as possible to catch in hurried riding, and in every way the best of its kind. freckles went skimming around the trail on it on a preliminary trip before he locked it in his case and started his minute examination of his line on foot. he glanced around his room as he left it, and then stood staring. on the moss before his prettiest seat lay the angel's hat. in the excitement of yesterday all of them had forgotten it. he went and picked it up, oh! so carefully, gazing at it with hungry eyes, but touching it only to carry it to his case, where he hung it on the shining handlebar of the new wheel and locked it among his treasures. then he went to the trail, with a new expression on his face and a strange throbbing in his heart. he was not in the least afraid of anything that morning. he felt he was the veriest daniel, but all his lions seemed weak and harmless. what black jack's next move would be he could not imagine, but that there would be a move of some kind was certain. the big bully was not a man to give up his purpose, or to have the hat swept from his head with a bullet and bear it meekly. moreover, wessner would cling to his revenge with a dutchman's singleness of mind. freckles tried to think connectedly, but there were too many places on the trail where the angel's footprints were yet visible. she had stepped in one mucky spot and left a sharp impression. the afternoon sun had baked it hard, and the horses' hoofs had not obliterated any part of it, as they had in so many places. freckles stood fascinated, gazing at it. he measured it lovingly with his eye. he would not have ventured a caress on her hat any more than on her person, but this was different. surely a footprint on a trail migbt belong to anyone who found and wanted it. he stooped under the wires and entered the swamp. with a little searching, he found a big piece of thick bark loose on a log and carefully peeling it, carried it out and covered the print so that the first rain would not obliterate it. when he reached his room, he tenderly laid the hat upon his bookshelf, and to wear off his awkwardness, mounted his wheel and went spinning on trail again. it was like flying, for the path was worn smooth with his feet and baked hard with the sun almost all the way. when he came to the bark, he veered far to one side and smiled at it in passing. suddenly he was off the wheel, kneeling beside it. he removed his hat, carefully lifted the bark, and gazed lovingly at the imprint. "i wonder what she was going to say of me voice," he whispered. "she never got it said, but from the face of her, i believe she was liking it fairly well. perhaps she was going to sav that singing was the big thing i was to be doing. that's what thev all thought at the home. well, if it is, i'll just shut me eyes, think of me little room, the face of her watching, and the heart of her beating, and i'll raise them. damn them, if singing will do it, i'll raise them from the benches!" with this dire threat, freckles knelt, as at a wayside spring, and deliberately laid his lips on the footprint. then he arose, appearing as if he had been drinking at the fountain of gladness. chapter viii wherein freckles meets a man of affairs and loses nothing by the encounter "weel, i be drawed on!" exclaimed mrs. duncan. freckles stood before her, holding the angel's hat. "i've been thinking this long time that ye or duncan would see that sunbonnets werena braw enough for a woman of my standing, and ye're a guid laddie to bring me this beautiful hat." she turned it around, examining the weave of the straw and the foliage trimmings, passing her rough fingers over the satin ties delightedly. as she held it up, admiring it, freckles' astonished eyes saw a new side of sarah duncan. she was jesting, but under the jest the fact loomed strong that, though poor, overworked, and with none but god-given refinement, there was something in her soul crying after that bit of feminine finerv, and it made his heart ache for her. he resolved that when he reached the city he would send her a hat, if it took fifty dollars to do it. she lingeringly handed it back to him. "it's unco guid of ye to think of me," she said lightly, "but i maun question your taste a wee. d'ye no think ye had best return this and get a woman with half her hair gray a little plainer headdress? seems like that's far ower gay for me. i'm no' saying that it's no' exactly what i'd like to hae, but i mauna mak mysel' ridiculous. ye'd best give this to somebody young and pretty, say about sixteen. where did ye come by it, freckles? if there's anything been dropping lately, ye hae forgotten to mention it." "do you see anything heavenly about that hat?" queried freckles, holding it up. the morning breeze waved the ribbons gracefully, binding one around freckles' sleeve and the other across his chest, where they caught and clung as if magnetized. "yes," said sarah duncan. "it's verra plain and simple, but it juist makes ye feel that it's all of the finest stuff. it's exactly what i'd call a heavenly hat." "sure," said freckles, "for it's belonging to an angel!" then he told her about the hat and asked her what he should do with it. "take it to her, of course!" said sarah duncan. "like it's the only ane she has and she may need it badly." freckles smiled. he had a clear idea about the hat being the only one the angel had. however, there was a thing he felt he should do and wanted to do, but he was not sure. "you think i might be taking it home?" he said. "of course ye must," said mrs. duncan. "and without another hour's delay. it's been here two days noo, and she may want it, and be too busy or afraid to come." "but how can i take it?" asked freckles. "gang spinning on your wheel. ye can do it easy in an hour." "but in that hour, what if----?" "nonsense!" interrupted sarah duncan. "ye've watched that timber-line until ye're grown fast to it, lad. give me your boots and club and i'll gae walk the south end and watch doon the east and west sides until ye come back." "mrs. duncan! you never would be doing it," cried freckles. "why not?" inquired she. "but you know you're mortal afraid of snakes and a lot of other things in the swamp." "i am afraid of snakes," said mrs. duncan, "but likely they've gone into the swamp this hot weather. i'll juist stay on the trail and watch, and ye might hurry the least bit. the davis so bright it feels like storm. i can put the bairns on the woodpile to play until i get back. ye gang awa and take the blessed little angel her beautiful hat." "are you sure it will be all right?" urged freckles. "do you think if mr. mclean came he would care?" "na," said mrs. duncan; "i dinna. if ye and me agree that a thing ought to be done, and i watch in your place, why, it's bound to be all right with mclean. let me pin the hat in a paper, and ye jump on your wheel and gang flying. ought ye put on your sabbath-day clothes?" freckles shook his head. he knew what he should do, but there was no use in taking time to try to explain it to mrs. duncan while he was so hurried. he exchanged his w ading-boots for shoes, gave her his club, and went spinning toward town. he knew very well where the angel lived. he had seen her home many times, and he passed it again without even raising his eyes from the street, steering straight for her father's place of business. carrying the hat, freckles passed a long line of clerks, and at the door of the private office asked to see the proprietor. when he had waited a moment, a tall, spare, keen-eyed man faced him, and in brisk, nervous tones asked: "how can i serve you, sir?" freckles handed him the package and answered, "by delivering to your daughter this hat, which she was after leaving at me place the other day, when she went away in a hurry. and by saying to her and the bird woman that i'm more thankful than i'll he having words to express for the brave things they was doing for me. i'm mclean's limberlost guard, sir." "why don't you take it yourself?" questioned the man or affairs. freckles' clear gray eyes met those of the angel's father squarely, and he asked: "if you were in my place, would you take it to her yourself?" "no, i would not," said that gentleman quicklv. "then why ask why i did not?" came freckles' lamb-like query. "bless me!" said the angel's father. he stared at the package, then at the lifted chin of the boy, and then at the package again, and muttered, "excuse me!" freckles bowed. "it would be favoring me greatly if you would deliver the hat and the message. good morning, sir," and he turned away. "one minute," said the angel's father. "suppose i give you permission to return this hat in person and make your own acknowledgments." freckles stood one moment thinking intently, and then he lifted those eyes of unswerving truth and asked: "why should you, sir? you are kind, indade, to mention it, and it's thanking you i am for your good intintions, but my wanting to go or your being willing to have me ain't proving that your daughter would be wanting me or care to bother with me." the angel's father looked keenly into the face of this extraordinary young man, for he found it to his liking. "there's one other thing i meant to say," said freckles. "every day i see something, and at times a lot of things, that i think the bird woman would be wanting pictures of badly, if she knew. you might be speaking of it to her, and if she'd want me to, i can send her word when i find things she wouldn't likely get elsewhere." "if that's the case," said the angel's father, "and you feel under obligations for her assistance the other day, you can discharge them in that way. she is spending all her time in the fields and woods searching for subjects. if you run across things, perhaps rarer than she may find, about your work, it would save her the time she spends searching for subjects, and she could work in security under your protection. by all means let her know if you find subjects you think she could use, and we will do anything we can for you, if you will give her what help you can and see that she is as safe as possible." "it's hungry for human beings i am," said freckles, "and it's like heaven to me to have them come. of course, i'll be telling or sending her word every time me work can spare me. anything i can do it would make me uncommon happy, but"--again truth had to be told, because it was freckles who was speaking--"when it conies to protecting them, i'd risk me life, to be sure, but even that mightn't do any good in some cases. there are many dangers to be reckoned with in the swamp, sir, that call for every person to look sharp. if there wasn't really thieving to guard against, why, mclean wouldn't need be paying out good money for a guard. i'd love them to be coming, and i'll do all i can, but you must be told that there's danger of them running into timber thieves again any day, sir." "yes," said the angel's father, "and i suppose there's danger of the earth opening up and swallowing the town any day, but i'm damned if i quit business for fear it will, and the bird woman won't, either. everyone knows her and her work, and there is no danger in the world of anyone in any way molesting her, even if he were stealing a few of mclean's gold-plated trees. she's as safe in the limberlost as she is at home, so far as timber thieves are concerned. all i am ever uneasy about are the snakes, poison-vines, and insects; and those are risks she must run anywhere. you need not hesitate a minute about that. i shall be glad to tell them what you wish. thank you very much, and good day, sir." there was no way in which freckles could know it, but by following his best instincts and being what he conceived a gentleman should be, he surprised the man of affairs into thinking of him and seeing his face over his books many times that morning; whereas, if he had gone to the angel as he had longed to do, her father never would have given him a second thought. on the street he drew a deep breath. how had he acquitted himself? he only knew that he had lived up to his best impulse, and that is all anyone can do. he glanced over his wheel to see that it was all right, and just as he stepped to the curb to mount he heard a voice that thrilled him through and through: "freckles! oh freckles!" the angel separated from a group of laughing, sweet-faced girls and came hurrying to him. she was in snowy white--a quaint little frock, with a marvel of soft lace around her throat and wrists. through the sheer sleeves of it her beautiful, rounded arms showed distinctly, and it was cut just to the base of her perfect neck. on her head was a pure white creation of fancy braid, with folds on folds of tulle, soft and silken as cobwebs, lining the brim; while a mass of white roses clustered against the gold of her hair, crept around the crown, and fell in a riot to her shoulders at the back. there were gleams of gold with settings of blue on her fingers, and altogether she was the daintiest, sweetest sight he ever had seen. freckles, standing on the curb, forgot himself in his cotton shirt, corduroys, and his belt to which his wire-cutter and pliers were hanging, and gazed as a man gazes when first he sees the woman he adores with all her charms enhanced by appropriate and beautiful clothing. "oh freckles," she cried as she came to him. "i was wondering about you the other day. do you know i never saw you in town before. you watch that old line so closely! why did you come? is there any trouble? are you just starting to the limberlost?" "i came to bring your hat," said freckles. "you forgot it in the rush the other day. i have left it with your father, and a message trying to ixpriss the gratitude of me for how you and the bird woman were for helping me out." the angel nodded gravely, then freckles saw that he had done the proper thing in going to her father. his heart bounded until it jarred his body, for she was saying that she scarcely could wait for the time to come for the next picture of the little chicken series. "i want to hear the remainder of that song, and i hadn't even begun seeing your room yet," she complained. "as for singing, if you can sing like that every day, i never can get enough of it. i wonder if i couldn't bring my banjo and some of the songs i like best. i'll play and you sing, and we'll put the birds out of commission." freckles stood on the curb with drooped eyes, for he felt that if he lifted them the tumult of tender adoration in them would show and frighten her. "i was afraid your ixperience the other day would scare you so that you'd never be coming again," he found himself saying. the angel laughed gaily. "did i seem scared?" she questioned. "no," said freckles, "you did not." "oh, i just enjoved that," she cried. "those hateful, stealing old things! i had a big notion to pink one of them, but i thought maybe someway it would be best for you that i shouldn't. they needed it. that didn't scare me; and as for the bird woman, she's accustomed to finding snakes, tramps, cross dogs, sheep, cattle, and goodness knows what! you can't frighten her when she's after a picture. did they come back?" "no," said freckles. "the gang got there a little after noon and took out the tree, but i must tell you, and you must tell the bird woman, that there's no doubt but they will be coming back, and they will have to make it before long now, for it's soon the gang will be there to work on the swamp." "oh, what a shame!" cried the angel. "they'll clear out roads, cut down the beautiful trees, and tear up everything. they'll drive away the birds and spoil the cathedral. when they have done their worst, then all these mills close here will follow in and take out the cheap timber. then the landowners will dig a few ditches, build some fires, and in two summers more the limberlost will be in corn and potatoes." they looked at each other, and groaned despairingly in unison. "you like it, too," said freckles. "yes," said the angel, "i love it. your room is a little piece right out of the heart of fairyland, and the cathedral is god's work, not yours. you only found it and opened the door after he had it completed. the birds, flowers, and vines are all so lovely. the bird woman says it is really a fact that the mallows, foxfire, iris, and lilies are larger and of richer coloring there than in the remainder of the country. she says it's because of the rich loam and muck. i hate seeing the swamp torn up, and to you it will be like losing your best friend; won't it?" "something like," said freckles. "still, i've the limberlost in me heart so that all of it will be real to me while i live, no matter what they do to it. i'm glad past telling if you will be coming a few more times, at least until the gang arrives. past that time i don't allow mesilf to be thinking." "come, have a cool drink before you start back," said the angel. "i couldn't possibly," said freckles. "i left mrs. duncan on the trail, and she's terribly afraid of a lot of things. if she even sees a big snake, i don't know what she'll do." "it won't take but a minute, and you can ride fast enough to. make up for it. please. i want to think of something fine for you, to make up a little for what you did for me that first day." freckles looked in sheer wonderment into the beautiful face of the angel. did she truly mean it? would she walk down that street with him, crippled, homely, in mean clothing, with the tools of his occupation on him, and share with him the treat she was offering? he could not believe it, even of the angel. still, in justice to the candor of her pure, sweet face, he would not think that she would make the offer and not mean it. she really did mean just what she said, but when it came to carrying out her offer and he saw the stares of her friends, the sneers of her enemies --if such as she could have enemies--and heard the whispered jeers of the curious, then she would see her mistake and be sorry. it would be only a manly thing for him to think this out, and save her from the results of her own blessed bigness of heart. "i railly must be off," said freckles earnestly, "but i'm thanking you more than you'll ever know for your kindness. i'll just be drinking bowls of icy things all me way home in the thoughts of it." down came the angel's foot. her eyes flashed indignantly. "there's no sense in that," she said. "how do you think you would have felt when you knew i was warm and thirsty and you went and brought me a drink and i wouldn't take it because-because goodness knows why! you can ride faster to make up for the time. i've just thought out what i want to fix for you." she stepped to his side and deliberately slipped her hand under his arm--that right arm that ended in an empty sleeve. "you are coming," she said firmly. "i won't have it." freckles could not have told how he felt, neither could anyone else. his blood rioted and his head swam, but he kept his wits. he bent over her. "please don't, angel," he said softly. "you don't understand." how freckles came to understand was a problem. "it's this," he persisted. "if your father met me on the street, in my station and dress, with you on me arm, he'd have every right to be caning me before the people, and not a finger would i lift to stay him." the angel's eyes snapped. "if you think my father cares about my doing anything that is right and kind, and that makes me happy to do--why, then you completely failed in reading my father, and i'll ask him and just show you." she dropped freckles' arm and turned toward the entrance to the building. "why, look there!" she exclaimed. her father stood in a big window fronting the street, a bundle of papers in his hand, interestedly watching the little scene, with eyes that comprehended quite as thoroughly as if he had heard every word. the angel caught his glance and made a despairing little gesture toward freckles. the man of affairs answered her with a look of infinite tenderness. he nodded his head and waved the papers in the direction she had indicated, and the veriest dolt could have read the words his lips formed: "take him along!" a sudden trembling seized freckles. at sight of the angel's father he had stepped back as far from her as he could, leaned the wheel against him, and snatched off his hat. the angel turned on him with triumphing eyes. she was highly strung and not accustomed to being thwarted. "did you see that?" she demanded. "now are you satisfied? will you come, or must i call a policeman to bring you?" freckles went. there was nothing else to do. guiding his wheel, he walked down the street beside her. on every hand she was kept busy giving and receiving the cheeriest greetings. she walked into the parlors exactly as if she owned them. a clerk came hurrying to meet her. "there's a table vacant beside a window where it is cool. i'll save it for you," and he started back. "please not," said the angel. "i've taken this man unawares, when he's in a rush. i'm afraid if we sit down we'll take too much time and afterward he will blame me." she walked to the fountain, and a long row of people stared with all the varying degrees of insolence and curiosity that freckles had felt they would. he glanced at the angel. now would she see? "on my soul!" he muttered under his breath. "they don't aven touch her!" she laid down her sunshade and gloves. she walked to the end of the counter and turned the full battery of her eyes on the attendant. "please," she said. the white-aproned individual stepped back and gave delighted assent. the angel stepped beside him, and selecting a tall, flaring glass, of almost paper thinness, she stooped and rolled it in a tray of cracked ice. "i want to mix a drink for my friend," she said. "he has a long, hot ride before him, and i don't want him started off with one of those old palate-teasing sweetnesses that you mix just on purpose to drive a man back in ten minutes.', there was an appreciative laugh from the line at the counter. "i want a clear, cool, sparkling drink that has a tang of acid in it. where's the cherry phosphate? that, not at all sweet, would be good; don't you think?" the attendant did think. he pointed out the different taps, and the angel compounded the drink, while freckles, standing so erect he almost leaned backward, gazed at her and paid no attention to anyone else. when she had the glass brimming, she tilted a little of its contents into a second glass and tasted it. "that's entirely too sweet for a thirsty man," she said. she poured out half the mixture, and refilling the glass, tasted it a second time. she submitted that result to the attendant. "isn't that about the thing?" she asked. he replied enthusiastically. "i'd get my wages raised ten a month if i could learn that trick." the angel carried the brimming, frosty glass to freckles. he removed his hat, and lifting the icy liquid even with her eyes and looking straight into them, he said in the mellowest of all the mellow tones of his voice: "i'll be drinking it to the swamp angel." as he had said to her that first day, she now cautioned him: "be drinking slowly" when the screen-door swung behind them, one of the men at the counter asked of the attendant: "now, what did that mean?" "exactly what you saw," replied he, rather curtly. "we're accustomed to it here. hardly a day passes, this hot weather, but she's picking up some poor, god-forsaken mortal and bringing him in. then she comes behind the counter herself and fixes up a drink to suit the occasion. she's all sorts of fancies about what's what for all kinds of times and conditions, and you bet she can just hit the spot! ain't a clerk here can put up a drink to touch her. she's a sort of knack at it. every once in a while, when the boss sees her, he calls out to her to mix him a drink." "and does she?" asked the man with an interested grin. "well, i guess! but first she goes back and sees how long it is since he's had a drink. what he drank last. how warm he is. when he ate last. then she comes here and mixes a glass of fizz with a little touch of acid, and a bit of cherry, lemon, grape, pineapple, or something sour and cooling, and it bits tbe spot just as no spot was ever hit before. i honestly believe that the _interest_ she takes in it is half the trick, for i watch her closely and i can't come within gunshot of her concoctions. she has a running bill here. her father settles once a month. she gives nine-tenths of it away. hardly ever touches it herself, but when she does she makes me mix it. she's just old persimmons. even the scrub-boy of this establishment would fight for her. it lasts the year round, for in winter it's some poor, frozen cuss that she's warming up on hot coffee or chocolate." "mighty queer specimen she had this time," volunteered another. "irish, hand off, straight as a ramrod, and something worth while in his face. notice that hat peel off, and the eyes of him? there's a case of `fight for her!, wonder who he is?" "i think," said a third, "that he's mclean's limberlost guard, and i suspect she's gone to the swamp with the bird woman for pictures and knows him that w ay. i've heard that he is a master hand with the birds, and that would just suit the bird woman to a t." on the street the angel walked beside freckles to the first crossing and there she stopped. "now, will you promise to ride fast enough to make up for the five minutes that took?" she asked. "i am a little uneasy about mrs. duncan." freckles turned his wheel into the street. it seemed to him he had poured that delicious icy liquid into every vein in his body instead of his stomach. it even went to his brain. "did you insist on fixing that drink because you knew how intoxicating `twould be?" he asked. there was subtlety in the compliment and it delighted the angel. she laughed gleefully. "next time, maybe you won't take so much coaxing," she teased. "i wouldn't this, if i had known your father and been understanding you better. do you really think the bird woman will be coming again?" the angel jeered. "wild horses couldn't drag her away," she cried. "she will have hard work to wait the week out. i shouldn't be in the least surprised to see her start any hour." freckles could not endure the suspense; it had to come. "and you?" he questioned, but he dared not lift his eyes. "wild horses me, too," she laughed, "couldn't keep me away either! i dearly love to come, and the next time i am going to bring my banjo, and i'll play, and you sing for me some of the songs i like best; won't you?" "yis," said freckles, because it was all he was capable of saying just then. "it's beginning to act stormy," she said. "if you hurry you will just about make it. now, good-bye." chapter ix wherein the limberlost falls upon mrs. duncan and freckles comes to the rescue freckles was halfway to the limberlost when he dismounted. he could ride no farther, because he could not see the road. he sat under a tree, and, leaning against it, sobs shook, twisted, and rent him. if they would remind him of his position, speak condescendingly, or notice his hand, he could endure it, but this-it surely would kill him! his hot, pulsing irish blood was stirred deeply. what did they mean? why did they do it? were they like that to everyone? was it. pity? it could not be, for he knew that the bird woman and the angel's father must know that he was not really mclean's son, and it did not matter to them in the least. in spite of accident and poverty, they evidently expected him to do something w orth while in the world. that must be his remedy. he must work on his education. he must get away. he must find and do the great thing of which the angel talked. for the first time, his thoughts turned anxiously toward the city and the beginning of his studies. mclean and the duncans spoke of him as "the boy," but he was a man. he must face life bravely and act a man's part. the angel was a mere child. he must not allow her to torture him past endurance with her frank comradeship that meant to him high heaven, earth's richness, and all that lay between, and not hing to her. there was an ominous growl of thunder, and amazed at himself, freckles snatched up his wheel and raced toward the swamp. he was worried to find his boots lying at the cabin door. the children playing on the woodpile told him that "mither" said they were so heavy she couldn't walk in them, and she had come back and taken them off. thoroughly frightened, he stopped onlv long enough to slip them on, and then sped with all his strength for the limberlost. to the west, the long, black, hard-beaten trail lay clear; but far up the east side, straight across the path, he could see what was certainly a limp, brown figure. freckles spun with all his might. face down, sarah duncan lay across the trail. when freckles turned her over, his blood chilled at the look of horror settled on her face. there was a low humming and something spatted against him. glancing around, freckles shivered in terror, for there was a swarm of wild bees settled on a scrub-thorn only a few yards away. the air was filled with excited, unsettled bees making ready to lead farther in search of a suitable location. then he thought he understood, and with a prayer of thankfulness in his heart that she had escaped, even so narrowly, he caught her up and hurried down the trail until they were well out of danger. he laid her in the shade, and carrying water from the swamp in the crown of his hat, he bathed her face and hands; but she lay in unbroken stillness, without a sign of life. she had found freckles' boots so large and heavy that she had gone back and taken them off, although she was mortally afraid to approach the swamp without them. the thought of it made her nervous, and the fact that she never had been there alone added to her fears. she had not followed the trail many rods when her trouble began. she was not freckles, so not a bird of the line was going to be fooled into thinking she was. they began jumping from their nests and darting from unexpected places around her head and feet, with quick whirs, that kept her starting and dodging. before freckles was halfway to the town, poor mrs. duncan was hysterical, and the limberlost had neither sung nor performed for her. but there was trouble brewing. it was quiet and intensely hot, with that stifling stillness that precedes a summer storm, and feathers and fur were tense and nervous. the birds were singing only a few broken snatches, and flying around, seeking places of shelter. one moment everything seemed devoid of life, the next there was an unexpected whir, buzz, and sharp cry. inside, a pandemonium of growling, spatting, snarling, and grunting broke loose. the swale bent flat before heavy gusts of wind, and the big black chicken swept lower and lower above the swamp. patches of clouds gathered, shutting out the sun and making it very dark, and the next moment were swept away. the sun poured with fierce, burning brightness, and everything was quiet. it was at the first growl of thunder that freckles really had noticed the weather, and putting his own troubles aside resolutely, raced for the swamp. sarah duncan paused on the line. "weel, i wouldna stay in this place for a million a month," she said aloud, and the sound of her voice brought no comfort, for it was so little like she had thought it that she glanced hastily around to see if it had really been she that spoke. she tremblingly wiped the perspiration from her face with the skirt of her sunbonnet. "awfu' hot," she panted huskily. "b'lieve there's going to be a big storm. i do hope freckles will hurry." her chin was quivering as a terrified child's. she lifted her bonnet to replace it and brushed against a bush beside her. whirr, almost into her face, went a nighthawk stretched along a limb for its daytime nap. mrs. duncan cried out and sprang down the trail, alighting on a frog that was hopping across. the horrible croak it gave as she crushed it sickened her. she screamed wildly and jumped to one side. that carried her into the sw ale, where the grasses reached almost to her waist, and her horror of snakes returning, she made a flying leap for an old log lying beside the line. she alighted squarely, but it was so damp and rotten that she sank straight through it to her knees. she caught at the wire as she went down, and missing, raked her wrist across a barb until she tore a bleeding gash. her fingers closed convulsively around the second strand. she was too frightened to scream now. her tongue stiffened. she clung frantically to the sagging wire, and finally managed to grasp it with the other hand. then she could reach the top wire, and so she drew herself up and found solid footing. she picked up the club that she had dropped in order to extricate herself. leaning heavily on it, she managed to return to the trail, but she was trembling so that she scarcely could walk. going a few steps farther, she came to the stump of the first tree that had been taken out. she sat bolt upright and very still, trying to collect her thoughts and reason away her terror. a squirrel above her dropped a nut, and as it came rattling down, bouncing from branch to branch, every nerve in her tugged wildly. when the disgusted squirrel barked loudly, she sprang to the trail. the wind arose higher, the changes from light to darkness were more abrupt, while the thunder came closer and louder at every peal. in swarms the blackbirds arose from the swale and came flocking to the interior, with a clamoring cry. "_t'check_, _t'check_." grackles marshaled to the tribal call: "_trall-a-hee_, _trall-a-hee_." red-winged blackbirds swept low, calling to belated mates: "_fol-low-me_, _fol-low-me_." big, jetty crows gathered close to her, crying, as if warning her to flee before it was everlastingly too late. a heron, fishing the near-by pool for freckles' "find-out" frog, fell into trouble with a muskrat and uttered a rasping note that sent mrs. duncan a rod down the line without realizing that she had moved. she was too shaken to run far. she stopped and looked around her fearfully.. several bees struck her and were angrily buzzing before she noticed them. then the humming swelled on all sides. a convulsive sob shook her, and she ran into the bushes, now into the swale, anywhere to avoid the swarming bees, ducking, dodging, fighting for her very life. presently the humming seemed to become a little fainter. she found the trail again, and rau with all her might from a few of her angry pursuers. as she ran, straining every muscle, she suddenly became aware that, crossing the trail before her, was a big, round, black body, with brown markings on its back, like painted geometrical patterns. she tried to stop, but the louder buzzing bebind warned her she dared not. gathering her skirts higher, with hair flying around her face and her eyes almost bursting from their sockets, she ran straight toward it. the sound of her feet and the humming of the bees alarmed the rattler, so it stopped across the trail, lifting its head above the grasses of the swale and rattling inquiringly--rattled until the bees were outdone. straight toward it went the panic-stricken woman, running wildly and uncontrollably. she took one leap, clearing its body on the path, then flew ahead with winged feet. the snake, coiled to strike, missed mrs. duncan and landed among the bees instead. they settled over and around it, and realizing that it had found trouble, it sank among the grasses and went threshing toward its den in the deep willow-fringed low ground. the swale appeared as if a reaper were cutting a wide swath. the mass of enraged bees darted angrily around, searching for it, and striking the scrub-thorn, began a temporary settling there to discover whether it were a suitable place. completely exhausted, mrs. duncan staggered on a few steps farther, fell facing the path, where freckles found her, and lay quietly. freckles worked over her until she drew a long, quivering breath and opened her eyes. when she saw him bending above her, she closed them tightly, and gripping him, struggled to her feet. he helped her, and with his arm around and half carrying her, they made their way to the clearing. she clung to him with all her remaining strength, but open her eyes she would not until her children came clustering around her. then, brawny, big scotswoman though she was, she quietly keeled over again. the children added their wailing to freckles' panic. this time he was so close the cabin that he could carry ber into the house and lay ber on the bed. he sent the oldest boy scudding down tbe corduroy for the nearest neighbor, and between them they undressed mrs. duncan and discovered that she was not bitten. they bathed and bound the bleeding wrist and coaxed her back to consciousness. she lay sobbing and shuddering. the first intelligent word she said was: "freckles, look at that jar on the kitchen table and see if my yeast is no running ower." several days passed before she could give duncan and freckles any detailed account of what had happened to her, even then she could not do it without crying as the least of her babies. freckles was almost heartbroken, and nursed her as well as any woman could have done; while big duncan, with a heart full for them both, worked early and late to chink every crack of the cabin and examine every spot that possibly could harbor a snake. the effects of her morning on the trail kept her shivering half the time. she could not rest until she sent for mclean and begged him to save freckles from further risk, in that place of horrors. the boss went to the swamp with his mind fully determined to do so. freckles stood and laughed at him. "why, mr. mclean, don't you let a woman's nervous system set you worrying about me," he said. "i'm not denying how she felt, because i've been through it meself, but that's all over and gone. it's the height of me glory to fight it out with the old swamp, and all that's in it, or will be coming to it, and then to turn it over to you as i promised you and meself i'd do, sir. you couldn't break the heart of me entire quicker than to be taking it from me now, when i'm just on the home-stretch. it won't be over three or four weeks yet, and when i've gone it almost a year, why, what's that to me, sir? you mustn't let a woman get mixed up with business, for i've always heard about how it's bringing trouble." mclean smiled. "what about that last tree?" he said. freckles blushed and grinned appreciatively. "angels and bird women don't count in the common run, sir," he affirmed shamelessly. mclean sat in the saddle and laughed. chapter x wherein freckles strives mightily and the swamp angel rewards him the bird woman and the angel did not seem to count in the common run, for they arrived on time for the third of the series and found mclean on the line talking to freckles. the boss was filled with enthusiasm over a marsh article of the bird woman's that he just had read. he begged to be allowed to accompany her into the swamp and watch the method by which she secured an illustration in such a location. the bird woman explained to him that it was an easy matter with the subject she then had in hand; and as little chicken was too small to be frightened by him, and big enough to be growing troublesome, she was glad for his company. they went to the chicken log together, leaving to the happy freckles the care of the angel, who had brought her banjo and a roll of songs that she wanted to hear him sing. the bird woman told them that they might practice in freckles' room until she finished with little chicken, and then she and mclean would come to the concert. it was almost three hours before they finished and came down the west trail for their rest and lunch. mclean walked ahead, keeping sharp watch on the trail and clearing it of fallen limbs from overhanging trees. he sent a big piece of bark flying into the swale, and then stopped short and stared at the trail. the bird woman bent forward. together they studied that imprint of the angel's foot. at last their eyes met, the bird woman's filled with astonishment, and mclean's humid with pity. neither said a word, but they knew. mclean entered the swale and hunted up the bark. he replaced it, and the bird woman carefully stepped over. as they reached the bushes at the entrance, the voice of the angel stopped them, for it was commanding and filled with much impatience. "freckles james ross mclean!" she was saying. "you fill me with dark-blue despair! you're singing as if your voice were glass and might break at any minute. why don't you sing as you did a week ago? answer me that, please." freckles smiled confusedly at the angel, who sat on one of his fancy seats, playing his accompaniment on her banjo. "you are a fraud," she said. "here you went last week and led me to think that there was the making of a great singer in you, and now you are singing--do you know how badly you are singing?" "yis," said freckles meekly. "i'm thinking i'm too happy to be singing well today. the music don't come right only when i'm lonesome and sad. the world's for being all sunshine at prisint, for among you and mr. mclean and the bird woman i'm after being that happy that i can't keep me thoughts on me notes. it's more than sorry i am to be disappointing you. play it over, and i'll be beginning again, and this time i'll hold hard." "well," said the angel disgustedly, "it seems to me that if i had all the things to be proud of that you have, i'd lift up my head and sing!" "and what is it i've to be proud of, ma'am?" politely inquired freckles. "why, a whole worldful of things," cried the angel explosively. "for one thing, you can be good and proud over the way you've kept the timber thieves out of this lease, and the trust your father has in you. you can he proud that you've never even once disappointed him or failed in what he believed you could do. you can be proud over the way everyone speaks of you with trust and honor, and about how brave of heart and strong of body you are i heard a big man say a few days ago that the limberlost was full of disagreeable things--positive dangers, unhealthful as it could be, and that since the memory of the first settlers it has been a rendezvous for runaways, thieves, and murderers. this swamp is named for a man that was lost here and wandered around `til he starved. that man i was talking with said he wouldn't take your job for a thousand dollars a month--in fact, he said he wouldn't have it for any money, and you've never missed a day or lost a tree. proud! why, i should think you would just parade around about proper over that! "and you can always be proud that you are born an irishman. my father is irish, and if you want to see him get up and strut give him a teeny opening to enlarge on his race. he says that if the irish had decent territory they'd lead the world. he says they've always been handicapped by lack of space and of fertile soil. he says if ireland had been as big and fertile as indiana, why, england wouldn't ever have had the upper hand. she'd only be an appendage. fancy england an appendage! he says ireland has the finest orators and the keenest statesmen in europe today, and when england wants to fight, with whom does she fill her trenches? irishmen, of course! ireland has the greenest grass and trees, the finest stones and lakes, and they've jaunting-cars. i don't know just exactly what they are, but ireland has all there are, anyway. they've a lot of great actors, and a few singers, and there never was a sweeter poet than one of theirs. you should hear my father recite `dear harp of my country.' he does it this way." the angel arose, made an elaborate old-time bow, and holding up the banjo, recited in cupping feet and meter, with rhythmic swing and a touch of brogue that was simply irresistible: "dear harp of my country" [the angel ardently clasped the banjo], "in darkness i found thee" [she held it to the light], "the cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long" [she muted the strings with her rosy palm]; "then proudly, my own irish harp, i unbound thee" [she threw up her head and swept a ringing harmony]; "and gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song" [she crashed into the notes of the accompaniment she had been playing for freckles]. "that's what you want to be thinking of!" she cried. "not darkness, and lonesomeness, and sadness, but `light, freedom, and song.' i can't begin to think offhand of all the big, splendid things an irishman has to be proud of; but whatever they are, they are all yours, and you are a part of them. i just despise that `saddest-when-i-sing' business. you can sing! now you go over there and do it! ireland has had her statesmen, warriors, actors, and poets; now you be her voice! you stand right out there before the cathedral door, and i'm going to come down the aisle playing that accompaniment, and when i stop in front of you--you sing!" the angel's face wore an unusual flush. her eyes were flashing and she was palpitating with earnestness. she parted the bushes and disappeared. freckles, straight and tense, stood waiting. presently, before he saw she was there, she was coming down the aisle toward him, playing compellingly, and rifts of light were touching her with golden glory. freckles stood as if transfixed. the cathedral was majestically beautiful, from arched dome of frescoed gold, green, and blue in never-ending shades and harmonies, to the mosaic aisle she trod, richly inlaid in choicest colors, and gigantic pillars that were god' s handiwork fashioned and perfected through ages of sunshine and rain. but the fair young face and divinely molded form of the angel were his most perfect work of all. never had she appeared so surpassingly beautiful. she was smiling encouragingly now, and as she came toward him, she struck the chords full and strong. the heart of poor freckles almost burst with dull pain and his great love for her. in his desire to fulfill her expectations he forgot everything else, and when she reached his initial chord he was ready. he literally burst forth: "three little leaves of irish green, united on one stem, love, truth, and valor do they mean, they form a magic gem." the angel's eyes widened curiously and her lips parted. a deep color swept into her cheeks. she had intended to arouse him. she had more than succeeded. she was too young to know that in the effort to rouse a man, women frequently kindle fires that they neither can quench nor control. freckles was looking over her head now and singing that song, as it never had been sung before, for her alone; and instead of her helping him, as she had intended, he was carrying her with him on the waves of his voice, away, away into another world. when he struck into the chorus, wide-eyed and panting, she was swaying toward him and playing with all her might. "oh, do you love? oh, say you love you love the shamrock green!" at the last note, freckles' voice ceased and he looked at the angel. he had given his best and his all. he fell on his knees and folded his arms across his breast. the angel, as if magnetized, walked straight down the aisle to him, and running her fingers into the crisp masses of his red hair, tilted his head back and laid her lips on his forehead. then she stepped back and faced him. "good boy!". she said, in a voice that wavered from the throbbing of her shaken heart. "dear boy! i knew you could do it! i knew it was in you! freckles, when you go into the world, if you can face a big audience and sing like that, just once, you will be immortal, and anything you want will be yours." "anything!" gasped freckles. "anything," said the angel. freckles arose, muttered something, and catching up his old bucket, plunged into the swamp blindly on a pretence of bringing water. the angel walked slowly across the study, sat on the rustic bench, and, through narrowed lids, intently studied the tip of her shoe. on the trail the bird woman wheeled to mclean with a dumbfounded look. "god!" muttered he. at last the bird woman spoke. "do you think the angel knew she did that?" she asked softly. "no," said mclean; "i do not. but the poor boy knew it. heaven help him!" the bird woman stared across the gently waving swale. "i don't see how i am going to blame her," she said at last. "it's so exactly what i would have done myself." "say the remainder," demanded mclean hoarsely. "do him justice." "he was born a gentleman," conceded the bird woman. "he took no advantage. he never even offered to touch her. whatever that kiss meant to him, he recognized that it was the loving impulse of a child under stress of strong emotion. he was fine and manly as any man ever could have been." mclean lifted his hat. "thank you," he said simply, and parted the bushes for her to enter freckles' room. it was her first visit. before she left she sent for her cameras and made studies of each side of it and of the cathedral. she was entranced with the delicate beauty of the place, while her eyes kept following freckles as if she could not believe that it could be his conception and work. that was a happy day. the bird woman had brought a lunch, and they spread it, with freckles' dinner, on the studv floor and sat, resting and enjoying themselves. but the angel put her banjo into its case, silently gathered her music, and no one mentioned the concert. the bird woman left mclean and the angel to clear away the lunch, and with freckles examined the walls of his room and told him all she knew about his shrubs and flowers. she analyzed a cardinal-flower and showed him what he had wanted to know all summer--why the bees buzzed ineffectually around it while the humming-birds found in it an ever-ready feast. some of his specimens were so rare that she was unfamiliar with them, and with the flower book between them they knelt, studying the different varieties. she wandered the length of the cathedral aisle with him, and it was at her suggestion that he lighted his altar with a row of flaming foxfire. as freckles came to the cabin from his long day at the swamp he saw mrs. chicken sweeping to the south and wondered where she was going. he stepped into the bright, cosy little kitchen, and as he reached down the wash-basin he asked mrs. duncan a question. "mother duncan, do kisses wash off?" so warm a wave swept her heart that a half-flush mantled her face. she straightened her shoulders and glanced at her hands tenderly. "lord, na! freckles," she cried. "at least, the anes ye get from people ye love dinna. they dinna stay on the outside. they strike in until they find the center of your heart and make their stopping-place there, and naething can take them from ye--i doubt if even death na, lad, ye can be reet sure kisses dinna wash. off!" freckles set the basin down and muttered as he plunged his hot, tired face into the water, "i needn't be afraid to be washing, then, for that one struck in." chapter xi wherein the butterflies go on a spree and freckles informs the bird woman "i wish," said freckles at breakfast one morning, "that i had some way to be sending a message to the bird woman. i've something at tbe swamp that i'm believing never happened before, and surelv she'll be wanting it." "what now, freckles?" asked mrs. duncan. "why, the oddest thing you ever heard of," said freckles; "the whole insect tribe gone on a spree. i'm supposing it's my doings, but it all happened by accident, like. you see, on the swale side of the line, right against me trail, there's one of these scrub wild crabtrees. where the grass grows thick around it, is the finest place you ever conceived of for snakes. having women about has set me trying to clean out those fellows a bit, and yesterday i noticed that tree in passing. it struck me that it would be a good idea to be taking it out. first i thought i'd take me hatchet and cut it down, for it ain't thicker than me upper arm. then i remembered how it was blooming in the spring and filling all the air with sweetness. the coloring of the blossoms is beautiful, and i hated to be killing it. i just cut the grass short all around it. then i started at the ground, trimmed up the trunk near the height of me shoulder, and left the top spreading. that made it look so truly ornamental that, idle like, i chips off the rough places neat, and this morning, on me soul, it's a sight! you see,. cutting off the limbs and trimming up the trunk sets the sap running. in this hot sun it ferments in a few hours. there isn't much room for more things to crowd on that tree than there are, and to get drunker isn't noways possible." "weel, i be drawed on!" exclaimed mrs. duncan. "what kind of things do ye mean, freckles?" "why, just an army of black ants. some of them are sucking away like old topers. some of them are setting up on their tails asd hind legs, fiddling with their fore-feet and wiping their eyes. some are rolling around on the ground, contented. there are quantities of big bluebottle flies over the bark and hanging on the grasses around, too drunk to steer a course flying; so they just buzz away like flying, and all the time sitting still. the snakefeeders are too full to feed asything--even more sap to themselves. there's a lot of hard-backed bugs--beetles, i guess--colored like the brown, blue, and black of a peacock's tail. they hang on until the legs of them are so wake they can't stick a minute longer, and then they break away and fall to the ground. they just lay there on their backs, fably clawing air. when it wears off a bit, up they get, and go crawling back for more, and they so full they bump into each other and roll over. sometimes they can't climb the tree until they wait to sober up a little. there's a lot of big black-and-gold bumblebees, done for entire, stumbling over the bark and rolling on the ground. they just lay there on their backs, rocking from side to side, singing to themselves like fat, happy babies. the wild bees keep up a steady buzzing with the beating of their wings. "the butterflies are the worst old topers of them all. they're just a circus! you never saw the like of the beauties! they come every color you could be naming, and every shape you could be thinking up. they drink and drink until, if i'm driving them away, they stagger as they fly and turn somersaults in the air. if i lave them alone, they cling to the grasses, shivering happy like; and i'm blest, mother duncan, if the best of them could be unlocking the front door with a lead pencil, even." "i never heard of anything sae surprising," said mrs. duncan. "it's a rare sight to watch them, and no one ever made a picture of a thing like that before, i'mn for thinking," said freckles earnestly. "na," said mrs. duncan. "ye can be pretty sure there didna. the bird woman must have word in some way, if ye walk the line and i walk to town and tell her. if ye think ye can wait until after supper, i am most sure ye can gang yoursel', for duncan is coming home and he'd be glad to watch for ye. if he does na come, and na ane passes that i can send word with today, i really will gang early in the morning and tell her mysel'." freckles took his lunch and went to the swamp. he walked and watched eagerly. he could find no trace of anything, yet he felt a tense nervousness, as if trouble might be brooding. he examined every section of the wire, and kept watchful eyes on the grasses of the swale, in an effort to discover if anyone had passed through them; but he could discover no trace of anything to justify his fears. he tilted his hat brim to shade his face and looked for his chickess. they were hasging almost beyond sight in the sky. "gee!" he said. "if i only had your sharp eyes and convenient location now, i wouldn't need be troubling so." he reached his room and cautiously scanned the entrance before he stepped in. then he pushed the bushes apart with his right arm and entered, his left hand on the butt of his favorite revolver. isstantly he knew that someone had been there. he stepped to the center of the room, closely scanning each wall and the floor. he could find no trace of a clue to confirm his belief, yet so intimate was he with the spirit of the place that he knew. how he knew he could not have told, yet he did know that someone had entered his room, sat on his benches, and walked over his floor. he was surest around the case. nothing was disturbed, yet it seemed to freckles that he could see where prying fingers had tried the lock. he stepped behind the case, carefully examining the ground all around it, and close beside the tree to which it was nailed he found a deep, fresh footprint in the spongy soil--a long, narrow print, that was never made by the foot of wessner. his heart tugged in his breast as he mentally measured the print, but he did not linger, for now the feeling arose that he was being watched. it seemed to him that he could feel the eyes of some intruder at his back. he knew he was examining thing too closely. if anyone were watching, he did not want him to know that he felt it. he took the most open way, and carried water for his flowers and moss as usual; but he put himself into no position in which he was fully exposed, and his hand was close his revolver constantly. growing restive at last under the strain, he plunged boldly into the swamp and searched minutely all around his room, but he could not discover the least thing to give him further cause for alarm. he unlocked his case, took out his wheel, and for the remainder of the day he rode and watched as he never had before. several times he locked the wheel and crossed the swamp on foot, zigzagging to cover all the space possible. every rod he traveled he used the caution that sprang from knowledge of danger and the direction from which it probably would come. several times he thought of sending for mclean, but for his life he could not make up his mind to do it with nothing more tangible than one footprint to justify him. he waited until he was sure duncan would be at home, if he were coming for the night, before he west to supper. the first thing he saw as he crossed the swale was the big bays in the yard. there had been no one passing that day, and duncan readily agreed to watch until freckles rode to town. he told duncan of the footprint, and urged him to guard closely. duncan said he might rest easy, and filling his pipe and taking a good revolver, the big man went to the limberlost. freckles made himself clean and neat, and raced to town, but it was night and the stars were shining before he reached the home of the bird woman. from afar he could see that the house was ablaze with lights. the lawn and veranda were strung with fancy lanterns and alive with people. he thought his errand important, so to turn back never occurred to freckles. this was all the time or opportunity he would have. he must see the bird woman, and see her at once. he leaned his wheel inside the fence and walked up the broad front entrance. as he neared the steps, he saw that the place was swarming with young people, and the angel, with an excuse to a group that surrounded her, came hurrying to him. "oh freckles!" she cried delightedly. "so you could come? we were so afraid you could not! i'm as glad as i can be!" "i don't understand," said freckles. "were you expecting me?" "why of course!" exclaimed the angel. "haven't you come to mv party? didn't you get my invitation? i sent you one." "by mail?" asked freckles. "yes," said the angel. "i had to help with the preparations, and i couldn't find time to drive out; but i wrote you a letter, and told you that the bird woman w as giving a party for me, and we wanted you to come, surely. i told them at the office to put it with mr. duncan's mail." "then that's likely where it is at present," said freckles. "duncan comes to town only once a week, and at times not that. he's home tonight for the first in a week. he's watching an hour for me until i come to the bird woman with a bit of work i thought she'd be caring to hear about bad. is she where i can see her?" the angel's face clouded. "what a disappointment!" she cried. "i did so want all my friends to know you. can't you stay anyway?" freckles glanced from his wading-boots to the patent leathers of some of the angel's friends, and smiled whimsically, but there was no danger of his ever misjudging her again. "you know i cannot, angel," he said. "i am afraid i do," she said ruefully. "it's too bad! but there is a thing i want for you more than to come to my party, and that is to hang on and win with your work. i think of you every day, and i just pray that those thieves are not getting ahead of you. oh, freckles, do watch closely!" she was so lovely a picture as she stood before bim, ardent in his cause, that freckles could not take his eyes from her to notice what her friends were thinking. if she did not mind, why should he? anyway, if they really were the angel's friends, probably they were better accustomed to her ways than he. her face and bared neck and arms were like the wild rose bloom. her soft frock of white tulle lifted and stirred around her with the gentle evening air. the beautiful golden hair, that crept around her temples and ears as if it loved to cling there, was caught back and bound with broad blue satin ribbon. there was a sash of blue at her waist, and knots of it catching up her draperies. "must i go after the bird woman?" she pleaded. "indade, you must," answered freckles firmly. the angel went away, but returned to say that the bird woman was telling a story to those inside and she could not come for a short time. "you won't come in?" she pleaded. "i must not," said freckles. "i am not dressed to be among your friends, and i might be forgetting meself and stay too long." "then," said the angel, "we mustn't go through the house, because it would disturb the story'. but i want you to come the outside way to the conservatory and have some of my birthday lunch and some cake to take to mrs. duncan and the babies. won't that be fun?" freckles thought that it would be more than fun, and followed delightedly. the angel gave him a big glass, brimming with some icy, sparkling liquid that struck his palate as it never had been touched before, because a combination of frosty fruit juices had not been a frequent beverage with him. the night was warm, and the angel most beautiful and kind. a triple delirium of spirit, mind, and body seized upon him and developed a boldness all unnatural. he slightly parted the heavy curtains that separated the conservatory from the company and looked between. he almost stopped breathing. he had read of things like that, but he never had seen them. the open space seemed to stretch through half a dozen rooms, all ablaze with lights, perfumed with flowers, and filled with elegantly dressed people. there were glimpses of polished floors, sparkling glass, and fine furnishings. from somewhere, the voice of his beloved bird woman arose and fell. the angel crowded beside him and was watching also. "doesn't it look pretty?" she whispered. "do you suppose heaven is any finer than that?" asked freckles. the angel began to laugh. "do you want to be laughing harder than that?" queried freckles. "a laugh is always good," said the angel. "a little more avoirdupois won't hurt me. go ahead." "well then," said freckles, "it's only that i feel all over as if i belonged there. i could wear fine clothes, and move over those floors, and hold me own against the best of them." "but where does my laugh come in?" demanded the angel, as if she had been defrauded. "and you ask me where the laugh comes in, looking me in the face after that," marveled freckles. "i wouldn't be so foolish as to laugh at such a manifest truth as that," said the angel. "anyone who knows you even half as well as i do, knows that you are never guilty of a discourtesy, and you move with twice the grace of any man here. why shouldn't you feel as if you belonged where people are graceful and courteous?" "on me soul!" said freckles, "you are kind to be thinking it. you are doubly kind to be saying it." the curtains parted and a woman came toward them. her silks and laces trailed across the polished floors. the lights gleamed on her neck and arms, and flashed from rare jewels. she was smiling brightly'. and until she spoke, freckles had not realized fully that it was his loved bird woman. noticing his bewilderment, she cried: "why, freckles! don't you know me in my war clothes?" "i do in the uniform in which you fight the limberlost," said freckles. the bird woman laughed. then he told her why he had come, but she scarcely could believe him. she could not say exactly when she would go, but she would make it as soon as possible, for she was most anxious for the study. while they talked, the angel was busy packing a box of sandwiches, cake, fruit, and flowers. she gave him a last frosty glass, thanked him repeatedly for bringing news of new material; then freckles went into the night. he rode toward the limberlost with his eyes on the stars. presently he removed his hat, hung it to his belt, and ruffled his hair to the sweep of the night wind. he filled. the air all the way with snatches of oratorios, gospel hymns, and dialect and coon songs, in a startlingly varied programme. the one thing freckles knew that he could do was to sing. the duncans heard him coming a mile up the corduroy and could not believe their senses. freckles unfastened the box from his belt, and gave mrs. duncan and the children all the eatables it contained, except one big piece of cake that he carried to the sweet-loving duncan. he put the flowers back in the box and set it among his books. he did not say anything, but they understood it was not to be touched. "thae's freckles' flow'rs," said a tiny scotsman, "but," he added cheerfully, "it's oor sweeties!" freckles' face slowly flushed as he took duncan's cake and started toward the swamp. while duncan ate, freckles told him something about the evening, as well as he could find words to express himself, and the big man was so amazed he kept forgetting the treat in his hands. then freckles mounted his wheel and began a spin that terminated only when the biggest plymouth rock in duncan's coop saluted a new day, and long lines of light reddened the east. as he rode he sang, while he sang he worshiped, but the god he tried to glorify was a dim and faraway mystery. the angel was warm flesh and hlood. every time he passed the little bark-covered imprint on the trail he dismounted, removed his hat, solemnly knelt and laid his lips on the impression. because he kept no account himself, only the laughing-faced old man of the moon knew how often it happened; and as from the beginning, to the follies of earth that gentleman has ever been kind. with the near approach of dawn freckles tuned his last note. wearied almost to falling, he turned from the trail into the path leading to the cabin for a few hours' rest. chapter xii wherein black jack captures freckles and the angel captures jack as freckles left the trail, from the swale close the south entrance, four large muscular men arose and swiftly and carefully entered the swamp by the wagon road. two of them carried a big saw, the third, coils of rope and wire, and all of them were heavily armed. they left one man on guard at the entrance. the other three made their way through the darkness as best they could, and were soon at freckles' room. he had left the swamp on his wheel from the west trail. they counted on his returning on the wheel and circling the east line before he came there. a little below the west entrance to freckles' room, black jack stepped into the swale, and binding a wire tightly around a scrub oak, carried it below the waving grasses, stretched it taut across the trail, and fastened it to a tree in the swamp. then he obliterated all signs of his work, and arranged the grass over the wire until it was so completely covered that only minute examination would reveal it. they entered freckles' room with coarse oaths and jests. in a few moments, his specimen case with its precious contents was rolled into the swamp, while the saw was eating into one of the finest trees of the limberlost. the first report from the man on watch was that duncan had driven to the south camp; the second, that freckles was coming. the man watching was sent to see on which side the boy turned into the path; as they had expected, he took the east. he was a little tired and his head was rather stupid, for he had not been able to sleep as he had hoped, but he was very happv. although he watched until his eyes ached, he could see no sign of anyone having entered the swamp. he called a cheery greeting to all his chickens. at sleepy snake creek he almost fell from his wheel with surprise: the saw-bird was surrounded by four lanky youngsters clamoring for breakfast. the father was strutting with all the importance of a drum major. "no use to expect the bird woman today," said freckles; "but now wouldn't she be jumping for a chance at that?" as soon as freckles was far down the east line, the watch was posted below the room on the west to report his coming. it was only a few moments before the signal came. then the saw stopped, and the rope was brought out and uncoiled close to a sapling. wessner and black jack crowded to the very edge of the swamp a little above the wire, and crouched, waiting. they heard freckles before they saw him. he came gliding down the line swiftly, and as he rode he was singing softly: "oh, do you love, oh, say you love----" he got no farther. the sharply driven wheel struck the tense wire and bounded back. freckles shot over the handlebar and coasted down the trail on his chest. as he struck, black jack and wessner were upon him. wessner caught off an old felt hat and clapped it over freckles' mouth, while black jack twisted the boy's arms behind him and they rushed him into his room. almost before he realized that anything had happened, he was trussed to a tree and securely gagged. then three of the men resumed work on the tree. the other followed the path freckles had worn to little chicken's tree, and presently he reported that the wires were down and two teams with the loading apparatus coming to take out the timber. all the time the saw was slowly eating, eating into the big tree. wessner went to the trail and removed the wire. he picked up freckles' wheel, that did not seem to be injured, and leaned it against the bushes so that if anyone did pass on the trail he would not see it doubled in the swamp-grass. then he came and stood in front of freckles and laughed in devilish hate. to his own amazement, freckles found himself looking fear in the face, and marveled that he was not afraid. four to one! the tree halfway eaten through, the wagons coming up the inside road--he, bound and gagged! the men with black jack and wessner had belonged to mclean's gang when last he had heard of them, but who those coming with the wagons might be he could not guess. if they secured that tree, mclean lost its value, lost his wager, and lost his faith in him. the words of the angel hammered in his ears. "oh, freckles, do watch closely!" the saw worked steadily. when the tree was down and loaded, what would they do? pull out, and leave him there to report them? it was not to be hoped for. the place always had been lawless. it could mean but one thing. a mist swept before his eyes, while his head swam. was it only last night that he had worshiped the angel in a delirium of happiness? and now, what? wessner, released from a turn at the saw, walked to the flower bed, and tearing up a handful of rare ferns by the roots, started toward freckles. his intention was obvious. black jack stopped him, with an oath. "you see here, dutchy," he bawled, "mebby you think you'll wash his face with that, but you won't. a contract's a contract. we agreed to take out these trees and leave him for you to dispose of whatever way you please, provided you shut him up eternally on this deal. but i'll not see a tied man tormented by a fellow that he can lick up the ground with, loose, and that's flat. it raises my gorge to think what he'll get when we're gone, but you needn't think you're free to begin before. don't you lay a hand on him while i'm here! what do you say, boys?" "i say yes," growled one of mclean's latest deserters. "what's more, we're a pack of fools to risk the dirty work of silencing him. you had him face down and you on his back; why the hell didn't you cover his head and roll him into the bushes until we were gone? when i went into this, i didn't understand that he was to see all of us and that there was murder on the ticket. i'm not up to it. i don't mind lifting trees we came for, but i'm cursed if i want blood on my hands." "well, you ain't going to get it," bellowed jack. "you fellows only contracted to help me get out my marked trees. he belong to wessner, and it ain't in our deal what happens to him." "yes, and if wessner finishes him safely, we are practically in for murder as well as stealing the trees; and if he don't, all hell' s to pay. i think you've made a damnable bungle of this thing; that's what i think!" "then keep your thoughts to yourself," cried jack. "we're doing this, and it's all planned safe and sure. as for killing that buck--come to think of it, killing is what he needs. he's away too good for this world of woe, anyhow. i tell you, it's all safe enough. his dropping out won't be the only secret the old limberlost has never told. it's too dead easy to make it look like he helped take the timber and then cut. why, he's played right into our hands. he was here at the swamp all last night, and back again in an hour or so. when we get our plan worked out, even old fool duncan won't lift a finger to look for his carcass. we couldn't have him going in better shape." "you just bet," said wessner. "i owe him all he'll get, and be damned to you, but i'll pay!" he snarled at freckles. so it was killing, then. they were not only after this one tree, but many, and with his body it was their plan to kill his honor. to brand him a thief, with them, before the angel, the bird woman, the dear boss, and the duncans--freckles, in sick despair, sagged against the ropes. then he gathered his forces and thought swiftly. there was no hope of mclean's coming. they had chosen a day when they knew he had a big contract at the south camp. the boss could not come before tomorrow hy any possibility, and there would be no tomorrow for the boy. duncan was on his way to the south camp, and the bird woman had said she would come as soon as she could. after the fatigue of the party, it was useless to expect her and the angel today, and god save them from coming! the angel's father had said they would be as safe in the limberlost as at home. what would he think of this? the sweat hroke on freckles' forehead. he tugged at the ropes whenever he felt that he dared, but they were passed around the tree and his body several times, and knotted on his chest. he was helpless. there was no hope, no help. and after they had conspired to make him appear a runaway thief to his loved ones, what was it that wessner would do to him? whatever it was, freckles lifted his head and resolved that he would bear in mind what he had once heard the bird woman say. he would go out bonnily. n ever would he let them see, if he grew afraid. after all, what did it matter what they did to his body if by some scheme of the devil they could encompass his disgrace? then hope suddenly rose high in freckles' breast. thev could not do that! the angel would not believe. neither would mclean. he would keep up his courage. kill him they could; dishonor him they could not. yet, summon all the fortitude he might, that saw eating into the tree rasped his nerves worse and worse. with whirling brain he gazed into the limberlost, searching for something, he knew not what, and in blank horror found his eyes focusing on the angel. she was quite a distance away, but he could see her white lips and angry expression. last week he had taken her and the bird woman across the swamp over the path he followed in going from his room to the chicken tree. he had told them the night before, that the butterfly tree was on the line close to this path. in figuring on their not coming that day, he failed to reckon with the enthusiasm of the bird woman. they must be there for the study, and the angel had risked crossing the swamp in search of him. or was there something in his room they needed? the blood surged in his ears as the roar of the limberlost in the wrath of a storm. he looked again, and it had been a dream. she was not there. had she been? for his life, freckles could not tell whether he really had seen the angel, or whether his strained senses had played him the most cruel trick of all. or was it not the kindest? now he could go with the vision of her lovely face fresh with him. "thank you for that, oh god!" whispered freckles." `twas more than kind of you and i don't s'pose i ought to be wanting anything else., but if you can, oh, i wish i could know before this ends, if `twas me mother" --freckles could not even whisper the words, for he hesitated a second and ended--"if `twas me mother did it!" "freckles! freckles! oh, freckles!" the voice of the angel came calling. freckles swayed forward and wrenched at the rope until it cut deeply into his body. "hell!" cried black jack. "who is that? do you know?" freckles nodded. jack whipped out a revolver and snatched the gag from freckles' mouth. "say quick, or it's up with you right now, and whoever that is with you!" "it's the girl the bird woman takes with her," whispered freckles through dry, swollen lips. "they ain't due here for five days yet," said wessner. "we got on to that last week." "yes," said freckles, "but i found a tree covered with butterflies and things along the east line yesterday that i thought the bird woman would want extra, and i went to town to tell her last night. she said she'd come soon, but she didn't say when. they must be here. i take care of the girl while the bird woman works. untie me quick until she is gone. i'll try to send her back, and then you can go on with your dirty work." "he ain't lying," volunteered wessner. "i saw that tree covered with butterflies and him watching around it when we were spying on him yesterday." "no, he leaves lying to your sort," snapped black jack, as he undid the rope and pitched it across the room. "remember that you're covered every move you make, mv buck," he cautioned. "freckles! freckles!" came the angel's impatient voice, closer and closer. "i must be answering," said freckles, and jack nodded. "right here!" he called, and to the men: "you go on with your work, and remember one thing yourselves. the work of the bird woman is known all over the world. this girl's father is a rich man, and she is all he has. if you offer hurt of any kind to either of them, this world has no place far enough away or dark enough for you to be hiding in. hell will be easv to what any man will get if he touches either of them!" "freckles, where are you?" demanded the angel. soulsick with fear for her, freckles went toward her and parted the bushes that she might enter. she came through without apparently giving him a glance, and the first words she said were: "why have the gang come so soon? i didn't know you expected them for three weeks yet. or is this some especial tree that mr. mclean needs to fill an order right now?" freckles hesitated. would a man dare lie to save himself? no. but to save the angel--surely that was different. he opened his lips, but the angel was capable of saving herself. she walked among them, exactly as if she had been reared in a lumber camp, and never waited for an answer. "why, your specimen case!" she cried. "look! haven't you noticed that it's tipped over? set it straight, quickly!" a couple of the men stepped out and carefully righted the case. "there! that's better," she said. "freckles, i'm surprised at your being so careless. it would be a shame to break those lovely butterflies for one old tree! is that a valuable tree? why didn't you tell us last night you were going to take out a tree this morning? oh, say, did you put your case there to protect that tree from that stealing old black jack and his gang? i bet you did! well, if that wasn't bright! what kind of a tree is it?" "it's a white oak," said freckles. "like those they make dining-tables and sideboards from?" "yes." "my! how interesting!" she cr.ied. "i don't know a thing about timber, but my father wants me o learn just everything i can. i am going to ask him to let me come here and watch you until i know enough to boss a gang myself. do you like to cut trees, gentlemen?" she asked with angelic sweetness of the men. some of them appeared foolish and some grim, but one managed to say they did. then the angel's eyes turned full on black jack, and she gave the most natural little start of astonishment. "oh! i almost thought that you were a ghost!" she cried. "but i see now that you are really and truly. were you ever in colorado?" "no," said jack. "i see you aren't the same man," said the angel. "you know, we were in colorado last year, and there was a cowboy who was the handsomest man anywhere around. he'd come riding into town every night, and all we girls just adored him! oh, but he was a beauty! i thought at first glance you were really he, but i see now he wasn't nearly so tall nor so broad as you, and only half as handsome." the men began to laugh while jack flushed crimson. the angel joined in the laugh. "well, i'll leave it to you! isn't he handsome?" she challenged. "as for that cowboy's face, it couldn't be compared with yours. the only trouble with you is that your clothes are spoiling you. it's the dress those cowboys wear that makes half their attraction. if you were properly clothed, you could break the heart of the prettiest girl in the country." with one accord the other men looked at black jack, and for the first time realized that he was a superb specimen of manhood, for he stood six feet tall, was broad, well-rounded, and had dark, even skin, big black eyes, and full red lips. "i'll tell you what!" exclaimed the angel. "i'd just love to see you on horseback. nothing sets a handsome man off so splendidly. do you ride?" "yes," said jack, and his eyes were burning on the angel as if he would fathom the depths of her soul. "well," said the angel winsomely, "i know what i just wish you'd do. i wish you would let your hair grow a little longer. then wear a blue flannel shirt a little open at the throat, a red tie, and a broad-brimmed felt hat, and ride past my house of evenings. i'm always at home then, and almost always on the veranda, and,. oh! but i would like to see you! will you do that for me?" it is impossible to describe the art with which the angel asked the question. she was looking straight into jack's face, coarse and hardened with sin and careless living, which was now taking on a wholly different expression. the evil lines of it were softening and fading under her clear gaze. a dull red flamed into his bronze cheeks, while his eyes were growing brightly tender. "yes," he said, and the glance he gave the men was of such a nature that no one saw fit even to change countenance. "oh, goody!" she cried, tilting on her toes. "i'll ask all the girls to come see, but they needn't stick in! we can get along without them, can't we?" jack leaned toward her. he was the charmed fluttering bird, while the angel was the snake. "well, i rather guess!" he cried. the angel drew a deep breath and surveyed him rapturously. "my, but you're tall!" she commented. "do you suppose i ever will grow to reach your shoulders?" she stood on tiptoe and measured the distance with her eyes. then she developed timid confusion, while her glance sought the ground. "i wish i could do something," she half whispered. jack seemed to increase an inch in height. "what?" he asked hoarsely. "lariat bill used always to have a bunch of red flowers in his shirt pocket. the red lit up his dark eyes and olive cheeks and made him splendid. may i put some red flowers on you?" freckles stared as he wheezed for breath. he wished the earth would open and swallow him. was he dead or alive? since his angel had seen black jack she never had glanced his way. was she completely bewitched? would she throw herself at the man's feet before them all? couldn't she give him even one thought? hadn't she seen that he was gagged and bound? did she truly think that these were mclean's men? why, she could not! it was only a few days ago that she had been close enough to this man and angry enough with him to peel the hat from his head with a shot! suddenly a thing she had said jestingly to him one day came back with startling force: "you must take angels on trust." of course you must! she was his angel. she must have seen! his life, and what was far more, her own, was in her hands. there was nothing he could do but trust her. surely she was working out some plan. the angel knelt beside his flower bed and recklessly tore up by the roots a hig bunch of foxfire. "these stems are so tough and sticky," she said. "i can't break them. loan me your knife,', she ordered freckles. as she reached for the knife, her back was for one second toward the men. she looked into his eyes and deliberately winked. she severed the stems, tossed the knife to freckles, and walking to jack, laid the flowers over his heart. freckles broke into a sweat of agony. he had said she would be safe in a herd of howling savages. would she? if black jack even made a motion toward touching her, freckles knew that from somewhere he would muster the strength to kill him. he mentally measured the distance to where his club lay and set his muscles for a spring. but no--by the splendor of god! the big fellow w as baring his head with a hand that was unsteady. the angel pulled one of the long silver pins from her hat and fastened her flowers securely. freckles was quaking. what was to come next? what was she planning, and oh! did she understand the danger of her presence among those men; the real necessity for action? as the angel stepped from jack, she turned her head to one side and peered at him, quite as freckles had seen the little yellow fellow do on the line a hundred times, and said: "well, that does the trick! isn't that fine? see how it sets him off, boys? don't you forget the tie is to be red, and the first ride soon. i can't wait very long. n ow i must go. the bird woman will be ready to start, and she will come here hunting me next, for she is busy today. what did i come here for anyway?" she glanced inquiringly around, and several of the men laughed. oh, the delight of it! she had forgotten her errand for him! jack had a second increase in height. the angel glanced helplessly as if seeking a clue. then her eyes fell, as if by accident, on freckles, and she cried, "oh, i know now! it was those magazines the bird woman promised you. i came to tell you that we put them under the box where we hide things, at the entrance to the swamp as we came in. i knew i would need my hands crossing the swamp, so i hid them there. you'll find them at the same old place." then freckles spoke. "it's mighty risky for you to be crossing the swamp alone," he said. "i'm surprised that the bird woman would be letting you try it. i know it's a little farther, but it's hegging you i am to be going back by the trail. that's bad enough, but it's far safer than the swamp." the angel laughed merrily. "oh stop your nonsense!" she cried. "i'm not afraid! not in the least! the bird woman didn't want me to try following a path that i'd been over only once, but i was sure i could do it, and i'm rather proud of the performance. now, don't go babying! you know i'm not afraid!" "no," said freckles gently, "i know you're not; but that has nothing to do with the fact that your friends are afraid for you. on the trail you can see your way a bit ahead, and you've all the world a better chance if you meet a snake." then freckles had an inspiration. he turned to jack imploringly. "you tell her!" he pleaded. "tell her to go by the trail. she will for you." the implication of this statement was so gratifying to black jack that he seemed again to expand and take on increase before their very eyes. "you bet!" exclaimed jack. and to the angel: "you better take freckles' word for it, miss. he knows the old swamp better than any of us, except me, and if he says `go by the trail,' you' d best do it." the angel hesitated. she wanted to recross the swamp and try to reach the horse. she knew freckles would brave any danger to save her crossing the swamp alone, but she really was not afraid, while the trail added over a mile to the walk. she knew the path. she intended to run for dear life the instant she felt herself from their sight, and tucked in the folds of her blouse was a fine little 32-caliber revolver that her father had presented her for her share in what he was pleased to call her military exploit. one last glance at freckles showed her the agony in his eyes, and immediately she imagined he had some other reason. she would follow the trail. "all right," she said, giving jack a thrilling glance. "if you say so, i'll return by the trail to please you. good-bye, everybody." she lifted the bushes and started toward the entrance. "you damned fool! stop. her!" growled wessner. "keep her till we're loaded, anyhow. you're playing hell! can't you see that when this thing is found out, there she'll be to ruin all of us. if you let her go, every man of us has got to cut, and some of us will be caught sure." jack sprang forward. freckles' heart muffled in his throat. the angel seemed to divine jack's coming. she was humming a little song. she deliherately stopped and hegan pulling the heads of the curious grasses that grew all around her. when she straightened, she took a step hackward and called: "ho! freckles, the bird woman wants that natural history pamphlet returned. it belongs to a set she is going to have bound. that's one of the reasons we put it under the box. you be sure to get them as you go home tonight, for fear it rains or becomes damp with the heavy dews." "all right," said freckles, but it was in a voice that he never had heard before. then the angel turned and sent a parting glance at jack. she was overpoweringly human and bewitchingly lovely. "you won't forget that ride and the red tie," she half asserted, half questioned. jack succumbed. freckles was his captive, but he was the angel's, soul and body. his face wore the holiest look it ever had known as he softly re-echoed freckles' "all right." with her head held well up, the angel walked slowly away' and jack turned to the men. "drop your damned staring and saw wood," he shouted. "don't you know anything at all about how to treat a lady?" it might have been a question which of the cronies that crouched over green wood fires in the cabins of wildcat hollow, eternally sucking a corncob pipe and stirring the endless kettles of stewing coon and opossum, had taught him to do even as well as he had by the angel. the men muttered and threatened among themselves, but they began working desperately. someone suggested that a man be sent to follow the angel and to watch her and the bird woman leave the swamp. freckles' heart sank within him, but jack was in a delirium and past all caution. "yes," he sneered. "mebby all of you had better give over on the saw and run after the girl. i guess not! seems to me i got the favors. i didn't see no bouquets on the rest of you! if anybody follows her, i do, and i'm needed here among such a pack of idiots. there's no danger in that baby face. she wouldn't give me. away! you double and work like forty, while me and wessner will take the axes and begin to cut in on the other side." "what about the noise?" asked wessner. "no difference about the noise," answered jack. "she took us to be from mclean's gang, slick as grease. make the chips fly!" so all of them attacked the big tree. freckles sat on one of his benches and waited. in their haste to fell the tree and load it, so that the teamsters could start, and leave them free to attack another, they had forgotten to rebind him. the angel was on the trail and safely started. the cold perspiration made freckles' temples clammy and ran in little streams down his chest. it would take her more time to follow the trail, but her safety was freckles' sole thought in urging her to go that way. he tried to figure on how long it would require to walk to the carriage. he wondered if the bird woman had unhitched. he followed the angel every step of the way. he figured on when she would cross the path of the clearing, pass the deep pool where his "find-out" frog lived, cross sleepy snake creek, and reach the carriage. he wondered what she would say to the bird woman, and how long it would take them to pack and start. he knew now that they would understand, and the angel would try to get the boss there in time to save his wager. she could never do it, for the saw was over half through, and jack and wessner cutting into the opposite side of the tree. it appeared as if they could fell at least that tree, before mclean could come, and if they did he lost his wager. when it was down, would they rebind him and leave him for wessner to wreak his insane vengeance on, or would they take him along to the next tree and dispose of him when they had stolen all the timber they could? jack had said that he should not be touched until he left. surely he would not run all that risk for one tree, when he had many others of far greater value marked. freckles felt that he had some hope to cling to now, but he found himself praying that the angel would hurry. once jack came to freckles and asked if he had any water. freckles arose and showed him where he kept his drinking-water. jack drank in great gulps, and as he passed back the bucket, he said:" when a man's got a chance of catching a fine girl like that, he ought not be mixed up in any dirty business. i wish to god i was out of this!" freckles answered heartily: "i wish i was, too!" jack stared at him a minute and then broke into a roar of rough laughter. "blest if i blame you," he said. "but you had your chance! we offered you a fair thing and you gave wessner his answer. i ain't envying you when he gives you his." "you're six to one," answered freckles. "it will be easy enough for you to be killing the body of me, but, curse you all, you can't blacken me soul!" "well, i'd give anything you could name if i had your honesty," said jack. when the mighty tree fell, the limberlost shivered and screamed with the echo. freckles groaned in despair, but the gang took heart. that was so much accomplished. they knew where to dispose of it safely, with no questions asked. before the day was over, they could remove three others, all suitable for veneer and worth far more than this. then they would leave freckles to wessner and scatter for safety, with more money than they had ever hoped for in their possession. chapter xiii whwerein the angel releases freckles, and the curse of black jack falls upon her on the line, the angel gave one backward glance at black jack, to see that he had returned to his work. then she gathered her skirts above her knees and leaped forward on the run. in the first three yards she passed freckles' wheel. instantly she imagined that was why he had insisted on her coming by the trail. she seized it and sprang on. the saddle was too high, but she was an expert rider and could catch the pedals as they came up. she stopped at duncan's cabin long enough to remedy this, telling mrs. duncan while working what was happening, and for her to follow the east trail until she found the bird woman, and told her that she had gone after mclean and for her to leave the swamp as quickly as possible. even with her fear for freckles to spur her, sarah duncan blanched and began shivering at the idea of facing the limberlost. the angel looked her in the eyes. "no matter how afraid you are, you have to go," she said. "if you don't the bird woman will go to freckles' room, hunting me, and they will have trouble with her. if she isn't told to leave at once, they may follow me, and, finding i'm gone, do some terrible thing to freckles. i can't go--that's flat--for if they caught me, then there'd be no one to go for help. you don't suppose they are going to take out the trees they're after and then leave freckles to run and tell? they are going to murder the, boy. that's what they are going to do. you run, and run for life! for freckles' life! you can ride back with the bird woman." the angel saw mrs. duncan started; then began her race. those awful miles of corduroy! would they never end? she did not dare use the wheel too roughly, for if it broke she never could arrive on time afoot. where her way was impassable for the wheel, she jumped off, and pushing it beside her or carrying it, she ran as fast as she could. the day was fearfully warm. the sun poured with the fierce baking heat of august. the bushes claimed her hat, and she did not stop for it. where it was at all possible, the angel mounted and pounded over the corduroy again. she was panting for breath and almost worn out when she reached the level pike. she had no idea how long she had been--and only two miles covered. she leaned over the bars, almost standing on the pedals, racing with all the strength in her body. the blood surged in her ears while her head swam, but she kept a straight course, and rode and rode. it seemed to her that she was standing still, while the trees and houses were racing past her. once a farmer's big dog rushed angrily into the road and she swerved until she almost fell, but she regained her balance, and setting her muscles, pedaled as fast as she could. at last she lifted her head. surely it could not be over a mile more. she had covered two of corduroy and at least three of gravel, and it was only six in all. she was reeling in the saddle, but she gripped the bars with new energy, and raced desperately. the sun beat on her bare head and hands. just when she was choking with dust, and almost prostrate with heat and exhaustion--crash, she ran into a broken bottle. snap! went the tire; the wheel swerved and pitched over. the angel rolled into the thick yellow dust of the road and lay quietly. from afar, duncan began to notice a strange, dust-covered object in the road, as he headed toward town with the first load of the day's felling. he chirruped to the bays and hurried them all he could. as he neared the angel, he saw it was a woman and a broken wheel. he was beside her in an instant. he carried her to a shaded fencecorner, stretched her on the grass, and wiped the dust from the lovely face all dirt-streaked, crimson, and bearing a startling whiteness around the mouth and nose. wheels were common enough. many of the farmers' daughters owned and rode them, but he knew these same farmers' daughters; this face was a stranger's. he glanced at the angel's tumbled clothing, the silkiness of her hair, with its pale satin ribbon, and noticed that she had lost her hat. her lips tightened in an ominous quiver. he left her and picked up the wheel: as he had surmised, he knew it. this, then, was freckles' swamp angel. there was trouble in the limberlost, and she had broken down racing to mclean. duncan turned the bays into a fence-corner, tied one of them, unharnessed the other, fastened up the trace chains, and hurried to the nearest farmhouse to send help to the angel. he found a woman, who took a bottle of camphor, a jug of water, and some towels, and started on the run. then duncan put the bay to speed and raced to camp. the angel, left alone, lay still for a second, then she shivered and opened her eyes. she saw that she was on the grass and the broken wheel beside her. instantly she realized that someone had carried her there and gone after help. she sat up and looked around. she noticed the load of logs and the one horse. someone was riding after help for her! "oh, poor freckles!" she wailed. "they may be killing him by now. oh, how much time have i wasted?" she hurried to the other bay, her fingers flying as she set him free. snatching up a big blacksnake whip that lay on the ground, she caught the hames, stretched along the horse's neck, and, for the first time, the fine, big fellow felt on his back the quality of the lash that duncan was accustomed to crack over him. he was frightened, and ran at top speed. the angel passed a wildly waving, screaming woman on the road, and a little later a man riding as if he, too, were in great haste. the man called to her, but she only lay lower and used the whip. soon the feet of the man's horse sounded farther and farther away. at the south camp they were loading a second wagon, when the angel appeared riding one of duncan's bays, lathered and dripping, and cried: "everybody go to freckles! there are thieves stealing trees, and they had him bound. they're going to kill him!" she wheeled the horse toward the limberlost. the alarm sounded through camp. the gang were not unprepared. mclean sprang to nellie's back and raced after the angel. as they passed duncan, he wheeled and followed. soon the pike was an irregular procession of barebacked riders, wildly driving flying horses toward the swamp. the boss rode neck-and-neck with the angel. he repeatedly commanded her to stop and fall out of line, until he remembered that he would need her to lead him to freckles. then he gave up and rode beside her, for she was sending the bay at as sharp a pace as the other horses could keep and hold out. he could see that she was not hearing him. he glanced back and saw that duncan was close. there was something terri.fying in the appearance of the big man, and the manner in which he sat his beast and rode. it would be a sad day for the man on whom duncan's wrath broke. there were four others close behind him, and the pike filling with the remainder of the gang; so mclean took heart and raced beside the angel. over and over he asked her where the trouble was, but she only gripped the hames, leaned along the bay's neck, and slashed away with the blacksnake. the steaming horse, with crimson nostrils and heaving sides, stretched out and ran for home with all the speed there was in him. when they passed the cabin, the bird woman's carriage was there and mrs. duncan in the door wringing her hands, but the bird woman was nowhere to be seen. the angel sent the bay along the path and turned into the west trail, while the men bunched and followed her. when she reached the entrance to freckles' room, there were four men with her, and two more very close behind. she slid from the horse, and snatching the little revolver from her pocket, darted toward the bushes. mclean caught them back, and with drawn weapon, pressed beside her. there they stopped in astonishment. the bird woman blocked the entrance. over a small limb lay her revolver. it was trained at short range on black jack and wessner, who stood with their hands above their heads. freckles, with the blood trickling down his face, from an ugly cut in his temple, was gagged and bound to the tree again; the remainder of the men were gone. black jack was raving as a maniac, and when they looked closer it was only the left arm that he raised. his right, with the hand shattered, hung helpless at his side, while his revolver lay at freckles' feet. wessner's weapon was in his belt, and beside him freckles' club. freckles' face was white, with colorless lips, but in his eyes was the strength of undying courage. mclean pushed past the bird woman crying. "hold steady on them only one minute more!" he snatched the revolver from wessner's belt, and stooped for jack's. at that instant the angel rushed past. she tore the gag from freckles, and seizing the rope knotted on his chest, she tugged at it desperately. under her fingers it gave way, and she hurled it to mclean. the men were crowding in, and duncan seized wessner. as the angel saw freckles stand out, free, she reached her arms to him and pitched forward. a fearful oath burst from the lips of black jack. to have saved his life, freckles could not have avoided the glance of triumph he gave jack, when.folding the angel in his arms and stretching her on the mosses. the bird woman cried out sharply for water as she ran to them. someone sprang to bring that, and another to break open the case for brandy. as mclean arose from binding wessner, there was a cry that jack was escaping. he was already far in the swamp, running for its densest part in leaping bounds. every man who could be spared plunged after him. other members of the gang arriving, were sent to follow the tracks of the wagons. the teamsters had driven from the west entrance, and crossing the swale, had taken the same route the bird woman and the angel had before them. there had been ample time for the drivers to reach the road; after that they could take any one of four directions. traffic was heavy, and lumber wagons were passing almost constantly, so the men turned back and joined the more exciting hunt for a man. the remainder of the gang joined them, also farmers of the region and travelers attracted by the disturbance. watchers were set along the trail at short intervals. they patrolled the line and roads through the swamp that night, with lighted torches, and the next day mclean headed as thorough a search as he felt could be made of one side, while duncan covered the other; but black jack could not be found. spies were set around his home, in wildcat hollow, to ascertain if he reached there or aid was being sent in any direction to him; but it was soon clear that his relatives were ignorant of his hiding-place, and were searching for him. great is the elasticity of youth. a hot bath and a sound night's sleep renewed freckles' strength, and it needed but little more to work the same result with the angel. freckles was on the trail early the next morning. besides a crowd of people anxious to witness jack's capture, he found four stalwart guards, one at each turn. in his heart he was compelled to admit that he was glad to have them there. close noon, mclean placed his men in charge of duncan, and taking freckles, drove to town to see how the angel fared. mclean visited a greenhouse and bought an armload of its finest products; but freckles would have none of them. he would carry his message in a glowing mass of the limberlost's first goldenrod. the bird woman received them, and in answer to their eager inquiries, said that the angel was in no way seriously injured, only so bruised and shaken that their doctor had ordered her to lie quietly for the day. though she was sore and stiff, thev were having work to keep her in bed. her callers sent up their flowers with their grateful regards, and the angel promptly returned word that she wanted to see them. she reached both hands to mclean. "what if one old tree is gone? you don't care, sir? you feel that freckles has kept his trust as nobody ever did before, don't you? you won't forget all those long first days of fright that you told us of, the fearful cold of winter, the rain, heat, and lonesomeness, and the brave days, and lately, nights, too, and let him feel that his trust is broken? oh, mr. mclean," she begged, "say something to him! do something to make him feel that it isn't for nothing he has watched and suffered it out with that old ilimberlost. make him see how great and fine it is, and how far, far better he has done than you or any of us expected! what's one old tree, anyway?" she cried passionately. "i was thinking before you came. those other men were rank big cowards. they were scared for their lives. if they were the drivers, i wager you gloves against gloves they never took those logs out to the pike. my coming upset them. before you feel bad any more, you go look and see if they didn't lose courage the minute they left wessner and black jack, dump that timber and run. i don't believe they ever had the grit to drive out with it in daylight. go see if they didn't figure on leaving the way we did the other morning, and you'll find the logs before you reach the road. they never risked taking them into the open, when they got away and had time to think. of course they didn't! "and, then, another thing. you haven't lost your wager! it never will be claimed, because you made it with a stout, dark, red-faced man who drives a bay and a gray. he was right back of you, mr. mclean, when i came yesterday. he went deathly white and shook on his feet when he saw those men probably would be caught. some one of them was something to him, and you can just spot him for one of the men at the bottom of your troubles, and urging those younger fellows to steal from you. i suppose he'd promised to divide. you settle with him, and that business will stop." she turned to freckles. "and you be the happiest man alive, because you have kept your trust. go look where i tell you and you'll find the logs. i can see just about where they are. when they go up that steep little hill, into the next woods after the cornfield, why, they could unloose the chains and the logs would roll from the wagons themselves. now, you go look; and mr. mclean, you do feel that freckles has been hrave and faithful? you won't love him any the less even if you don't find the logs" the angel's nerve gave way and she began to cry. freckles could not endure it. he almost ran from the room, with the tears in his eyes; but mclean took the angel from the bird woman's arms, and kissed her brave little face, stroked her hair, and petted her into quietness hefore he left. as they drove to the swamp, mclean so earnestly seconded all that the angel had said that he soon had the boy feeling much better. "freckles, your angel has a spice of the devil in her, but she's superb! you needn't spend any time questioning or bewailing anything she does. just worship blindly, my boy. by heaven! she's sense, courage, and beauty for half a dozen girls," said mclean. "it's altogether right you are, sir," affirmed freckles heartily. presently he added, "there's no question but the series is over now." "don't think it!" answered mclean. "the bird woman is working for success, and success along any line is not won by being scared out. she will be back on the usual day, and ten to one, the angel will be with her. they are made of pretty stern stuff, and they don't scare worth a cent. before i left, i told the bird woman it would be safe; and it will. you may do your usual walking, but those four guards are there to remain. they are under your orders absolutely. they are prohibited from firing on any bird or molesting anything that you w ant to protect, but there they remain, and this time it is useless for you to say one word. i have listened to your pride too long. you are too precious to me, and that voice of yours is too precious to the world to run any more risks." "i am sorry to have anything spoil the series," said freckles, "and i'd love them to be coming, the angel especial, but it can't be. you'll have to tell them so. you see, jack would have been ready to stake his life she meant what she said and did to him. when the teams pulled out, wessner seized me; then he and jack went to quarreling over whether they should finish me then or take me to the next tree they were for felling. between them they were pulling me around and hurting me bad. wessner wanted to get at me right then, and jack said he shouldn't be touching me till the last tree was out and all the rest of them gone. i'm belaving jack really hated to see me done for in the beginning; and i think, too, he was afraid if wessner finished me then he'd lose his nerve and cut, and they couldn't be managing the felling without him; anyway, they were hauling me round like i was already past all feeling, and they tied me up again. to keep me courage up, i twits wessner about having to tie me and needing another man to help handle me. i told him what i' d do to him if i was free, and he grabs up me own club and lays open me head with it. when the blood came streaming, it set jack raving, and he cursed and damned wessner for a coward and a softy. then wessner turned on jack and gives it to him for letting the angel make a fool of him. tells him she was just playing with him, and beyond all manner of doubt she'd gone after you, and there was nothing to do on account of his foolishness but finish me, get out, and let the rest of the timber go, for likely you was on the way right then. that drove jack plum crazy. "i don't think he was for having a doubt of the angel before, but then he just raved. he grabbed out his gun and turned on wessner. spang! it went out of his fist, and the order comes: `hands up!' wessner reached for kingdom come like he was expecting to grab hold and pull himself up. jack puts up what he has left. then he leans over to me and tells me what he'll do to me if he ever gets out of there alive. then, just like a snake hissing, he spits out what he'll do to her for playing him. he did get away, and with his strength, that wound in his hand won't be bothering him long. he'll do to me just what he said, and when he hears it really was she that went after you, why, he'll keep his oath about her. "he's lived in the swamp all his life, sir, and everybody says it's always been the home of cutthroats, outlaws, and runaways. he knows its most secret places as none of the others. he's alive. he's in there now, sir. some way he'll keep alive. if you'd seen his face, all scarlet with passion, twisted with pain, and black with hate, and heard him swearing that oath, you'd know it was a sure thing. i ain't done with him yet, and i've brought this awful thing on her." "and i haven't begun with him yet," said mclean, setting his teeth. "i've been away too slow and too easy, believing there'd be no greater harm than the loss of a tree. i've sent for a couple of first-class detectives. we will put them on his track, and rout him out and rid the country of him. i don't propose for him to stop either our work or our pleasure. as for his being in the swamp now, i don't helieve it. he'd find a way out last night, in spite of us. don't you worry! i am at the helm now, and i'll see to that gentleman in my own way." "i wish to my soul you had seen and heard him!" said freckles, unconvinced. they entered the swamp, taking the route followed by the bird woman and the angel. they really did find the logs, almost where the angel had predicted they would be. mclean went to the south camp and had an interview with crowen that completely convinced him that the angel was correct there also. but he had no proof, so all he could do was to discharge the man, although his guilt was so apparent that he offered to withdraw the wager. then mclean sent for a pack of bloodhounds and put them on the trail of black jack. they clung to it, on and on, into the depths of the swamp, leading their followers through what had been considered impassable and impenetrable ways, and finally, around near the west entrance and into the swale. here the dogs bellowed, raved, and fell over each other in their excitement. they raced back and forth from swamp to swale, but follow the scent farther they would not, even though cruelly driven. at last their owner attributed their actions to snakes, and as they were very valuable dogs, abandoned the effort to urge them on. so that all they really established was the fact that black jack had eluded their vigilance and crossed the trail some time in the night. he had escaped to the swale; from there he probably crossed the corduroy, and reaching the lower end of the swamp, had found friends. it was a great relief to feel that he was not in the swamp, and it raised the spirits of every man on the line, though manv of them expressed regrets that he who was undoubtedly most to blame should escape, while wessner, who in the beginning was only his tool, should be left to punishment. but for freckles, with jack's fearful oath ringing in his ears, there was neither rest nor peace. he was almost ill when the day for the next study of the series arrived and he saw the bird woman and the angel coming down the corduroy. the guards of the east line he left at their customary places, but those of the west he brought over and placed, one near little chicken's tree, and the other at the carriage. he was firm about the angel's remaining in the carriage, that he did not offer to have unhitched. he went with the bird woman to secure the picture, which was the easiest matter it had been at any time yet, for the simple reason that the placing of the guards and the unusual movement around the swamp had made mr. and mrs. chicken timid, and they had not carried little chicken the customary amount of food. freckles, in the anxiety of the past few days, had neglected him, and he had been so hungry, much of the time, that when the bird woman held up a sweet-bread, although he had started toward the recesses of the log at her coming, he stopped; with slightly opened beak, he waited anxiously for the treat, and gave a study of great value, showing every point of his head, also his wing and tail development. when the bird woman proposed to look for other subjects close the line, freckles went so far as to tell her that jack had made fearful threats against the angel. he implored her to take the angel home and keep her under unceasing guard until jack was located. he wanted to tell her all about it, but he knew how dear the angel was to her, and he dreaded to burden her with his fears when they might prove groundless. he allowed her to go, but afterward blamed himself severely for having done so. chapter xiv wherein freckles nurses a heartache and black jack drops out "mclean," said mrs. duncan, as the boss paused to greet her in passing the cabin, "do you know that freckles hasna been in bed the past five nights and all he's eaten in that many days ye could pack into a pint cup?" "why, what does the boy mean?" demanded mclean. "there's no necessity for him being on guard, with the watch i've set on the line. i had no idea he was staying down there." "he's no there," said mrs. duncan. "he goes somewhere else. he leaves on his wheel juist after we're abed and rides in close cockcrow or a little earlier, and he's looking like death and nothing short of it." "but where does he go?" asked mclean in astonishment. "i'm no given to bearing tales out of scbool," said sarah duncan" `but in tbis case i'd tell ye if i could. what the trouble is i dinna ken. if it is no' stopped, he's in for dreadful sickness, and i thought ye could find out and help him. he's in sair trouble; that's all i know." mclean sat brooding as he stroked nellie's neck. at last he said: "i suspect i understand. at any rate, i think i can find out. thank you for telling me." "ye'll no need telling, once ye clap your eyes on him," prophesied mrs. duncan. "his face is all a glist'ny yellow, and he's peaked as a starving caged bird." mclean rode to the limberlost, and stopping in the shade, sat waiting for freckles, whose hour for passing the foot of the lease had come. along the north line came freckles, fairly staggering. when he turned east and reached sleepy snake creek, sliding through the swale as the long black snake for which it was named, he sat on the bridge and closed his burning eyes, but they would not remain shut. as if pulled by wires, the heavy lids flew open, while the outraged nerves and muscles of his body danced, twitched, and tingled. he bent forward and idly watched the limpid little stream flowing beneath his feet. stretching into the swale, it came creeping between an impenetrable wall of magnificent wild flowers, vines, and ferns. milkweed, goldenrod, ironwort, fringed gentians, cardinal-flowers, and turtle-head stood on the very edge of the creek, and every flower of them had a double in the water. wild clematis crowned with snow the heads of trees scattered here and there on the bank. from afar the creek appeared to be murky, dirty water. really it was clear and sparkling. the tinge of blackness was gained from its bed of muck showing through the transparent current. he could see small and wonderfully marked fish. what became of them when the creek spread into the swamp? for one thing, they would make mighty fine eating for the family of that self-satisfied old blue heron. freckles sat so quietly that soon tbe brim of bis hat was covered with snake-feeders, rasping their crisp wings and singing while they rested. some of them settled on the club, and one on his shoulder. he w as so motionless; feathers, fur, and gauze were so accustomed to him, that all through the swale they continued their daily life and forgot he was there. the heron family were wading the mouth of the creek. freckles idly wondered whether the nerve-racking rasps they occasionally emitted indicated domestic felicity or a raging quarrel. he could not decide. a sheitpoke, with flaring crest, went stalking across a bare space close to the creek's mouth. a stately brown bittern waded into the clear-flowing water, lifting his feet high at every step, and setting them down carefully, as if he dreaded wetting them, and with slightly parted beak, stood eagerly watching around him for worms. behind him were some mighty trees of the swamp above, and below the bank glowed a solid wall of goldenrod. no wonder the ancients had chosen yellow as the color to represent victory, for the fierce, conquering hue of the sun was in it. they had done well, too, in selecting purple as the emblem of royalty. it was a dignified, compelling color, while in its warm tone there was a hint of blood. it was the limberlost's hour to proclaim her sovereignty and triumph. everywhere she flaunted her yellow banner and trailed the purple of her mantle, that was paler in the thistle-heads, took on strength in the first opening asters, and glowed and burned in the ironwort. he gazed into her damp, mossy recesses where high-piled riven trees decayed under coats of living green, where dainty vines swayed and clambered, and here and there a yellow leaf, fluttering down, presaged the coming of winter. his love of the swamp laid hold of him and shook him with its force. compellingly beautiful was the limberlost, but cruel withal; for inside bleached the uncoffined bones of her victims, while she had missed cradling him, oh! so narrowly. he shifted restlessly; the movement sent the snake-feeders skimming. the hum of life swelled and roared in his strained ears. small turtles, that had climbed on a log to sun, splashed clumsily into the water. somewhere in the timber of the bridge a bloodthirsty little frog cried sharply. "keel'im! keel'im!" freckles muttered: "it's worse than that black jack swore to do to me, little fellow" a muskrat waddled down the bank and swam for the swamp, its pointed nose riffling the water into a shining trail in its wake. then, below the turtle-log, a dripping silver-gray head, with shining eyes, was cautiously lifted, and freckles' hand slid to his revolver. higher and higher came the head, a long, heavy, furcoated body arose, now half, now three-fourths from the water. freckles looked at his shaking hand and doubted, but he gathered his forces, the shot rang, and the otter lay quiet. he hurried down and tried to lift it. he scarcely could muster strength to carry it to the bridge. the consciousness that he really could go no farther with it made freckles realize the fact that he was close the limit of human endurance. he could bear it little, if any, longer. every hour the dear face of the angel wavered before him, and behind it the awful distorted image of black jack, as he had sworn to the punishment he would mete out to her. he must either see mclean, or else make a trip to town and find her father. which should he do? he was almost a stranger, so the angel's father might not be impressed with what he said as he would if mclean went to him. then he remembered that mclean had said he would come that morning. freckles never had forgotten before. he hurried on the east trail as fast as his tottering legs would carry him. he stopped when he came to the first guard, and telling him of his luck, asked him to get the otter and carry it to the cabin, as he was anxious to meet mclean. freckles passed the second guard without seeing him, and hurried to the boss. he took off his hat, wiped his forehead, and stood silent under the eyes of mclean. the boss was dumbfounded. mrs. duncan had led him to expect that he would find a change in freckles, but this was almost deathly. the fact was apparent that the boy scarcely knew what he was doing. his eyes had a glazed, far-sighted appearance, that wrung the heart of the man who loved him. without a thought of preliminaries, mclean leaned in the saddle and drew freckles to him. "my poor lad!" he said. "my poor, dear lad! tell me, and we. will try to right it!" freckles had twisted his fingers in nellie's mane. at the kind words his face dropped on mclean's thigh and he shook with a nervous chill. mclean gathered him closer and waited. when the guard came with the otter, mclean without a word motioned him to lay it down and leave them. "freckles," said mclean at last, "will you tell me, or must i set to work in the dark and try to find the trouble?" "oh, i want to tell you! i must tell you, sir," shuddered freckles. "i cannot be bearing it the day out alone. i was coming to you when i remimbered you would be here." he lifted his face and gazed across the swale, with his jaws set firmly a minute, as if gathering his forces. then he spoke. "it's the angel, sir," he said. instinctively mclean's grip on him tightened, and freckles looked into the boss's face in wonder. "i tried, the other day," said freckles, "and i couldn't seem to make you see. it's only that there hasn't been an hour, waking or sleeping, since the day she parted the bushes and looked into me room, that the face of her hasn't been before me in all the tinderness, beauty, and mischief of it. she talked to me friendly like. she trusted me entirely to take right care of her. she helped me with things about me books. she traited me like i was born a gintleman, and shared with me as if i were of her own blood. she walked the streets of the town with me before her friends with all the pride of a queen. she forgot herself and didn't mind the bird woman, and run big risks to help me out that first day, sir. this last time she walked into that gang of murderers, took their leader, and twisted him to the will of her. she outdone him and raced the life almost out of her trying to save me. "since i can remimber, whatever the thing was that happened to me in the beginning has been me curse. i've been hitter, hard, and smarting under it hopelessly. she came by, and found me voice, and put hope of life and success like other men into me in spite of it." freckles held up his maimed arm. "look at it, sir!" he said. "a thousand times i've cursed it, hanging there helpless. she took it on the street, before all the people, just as if she didn't see that it was a thing to hide and shrink from. again and again i've had the feeling with her, if i didn't entirely forget it, that she didn't see it was gone and i must he pointing it out to her. her touch on it was so sacred-like, at times since i've caught meself looking at the awful thing near like i was proud of it, sir. if i had been born your son she couldn't be traiting me more as her equal, and she can't help knowing you ain't truly me father. nobody can know the homeliness or the ignorance of me better than i do, and all me lack of birth, relatives, and money, and what's it all to her?" freckles stepped back, squared his shoulders, and with a royal lift of his head looked straight into the boss's eyes. "you saw her in the beautiful little room of her, and you can't be forgetting how she begged and plead with you for me. she touched me body, and `twas sanctified. she laid her lips on my brow, and `twas sacrament. nobody knows the height of her better than me. nobody's studied my depths closer. there's no hridge for the great distance between us, sir, and clearest of all, i'm for realizing it: hut she risked terrible things when she came to me among that gang of thieves. she wore herself past bearing to save me from such an easy thing as death! now, here's me, a man, a big, strong man, and letting her live under that fearful oath, so worse than any death `twould be for her, and lifting not a finger to save her. i cannot hear it, sir. it's killing me hy inches! black jack's hand may not have heen hurt so bad. any hour he may be creeping up behind her! any minute the awful revenge he swore to be taking may in some way fall on her, and i haven't even warned her father. i can't stay here doing nothing another hour. the five nights gone i've watched under her windows, but there's the whole of the day. she's her own horse and little cart, and's free to be driving through the town and country as she pleases. if any evil comes to her through black jack, it comes from her angel-like goodness to me. somewhere he's hiding! somewhere he is waiting his chance! somewhere he is reaching out for her! i tell you i cannot, i dare not be bearing it longer!" "freckles, be quiet!" said mclean, his eyes humid and his voice quivering with the pity of it all. "believe me, i did not understand. i know the angel's father well. i will go to him at once. i have transacted business with him for the past three years. i will make him see! i am only beginning to realize your agony, and the real danger there is for the angel. believe me, i will see that she is fully protected every hour of the day and night until jack is located and disposed of. and i promise you further, that if i fail to move her father or make him understand the danger, i will maintain a guard over her until jack is caught. now will you go bathe, drink some milk, go to bed, and sleep for hours, and then be my brave, bright old boy again?" "yis," said freckles simply. but mclean could see the flesh was twitching on the lad's bones. "what was it the guard brought there?" mclean asked in an effort to distract f reckles' thoughts. "oh!" freckles said, glancing where the boss pointed, "i forgot it! `tis an otter, and fine past believing, for this warm weather. i shot it at the creek this morning. `twas a good shot, considering. i expected to miss." freckles picked up the animal and started toward mclean with it, but nellie pricked up her dainty little ears, danced into the swale, and snorted with fright. freckles dropped the otter and ran to her head. "for pity's sake, get her on the trail, sir," he begged. "she's just about where the old king rattler crosses to go into the swamp-the old buster duncan and i have been telling you of. i haven't a doubt but it was the one mother duncan met. `twas down the trail there, just a little farther on, that i found her, and it's sure to be close yet." mclean slid from nellie's back, led her into the trail farther down the line, and tied her to a bush. then he went to examine the otter. it was a rare, big specimen, with exquisitely fine, long, silky hair. "what do you want to do with it, freckles?" asked mclean, as he stroked the soft fur lingeringly. "do you know that it is very valuable?" "i was for almost praying so, sir," said freckles. "as i saw it coming up the bank i thought this: once somewhere in a book there was a picture of a young girl, and she was just a breath like the heautifulness of the angel. her hands were in a muff as big as her body, and i thought it was so pretty. i think she was some queen, or the like. do you suppose i could have this skin tanned and made into such a muff as that?--an enormous big one, sir?" "of course you can," said mclean. "that's a fine idea and it's easy enough. we must hox and express the otter, cold storage,. bv the first train. you stand guard a minute and i'll tell hall to carry it to the cabin. i'll put nellie to duncan's rig, and we'll drive to town and call on the angel's father. then we'll start the otter while it is fresh, and i'll write your instructions later. it would be a mighty fine thing for you to give to the angel as a little reminder of the limberlost before it is despoiled, and as a souvenir of her trip for you." freckles lifted a face with a glow of happy color creeping into it and eyes lighting with a former brightness. throwing his arms around mclean, he cried: "oh, how i love you! oh, i wish i could make you know how i love you!" mclean strained him to his breast. "god bless you, freckles," he said. "i do know! we're going to have some good old times out of this world together, and we can't begin too soon. would you rather sleep first, or have a bite of lunch, take the drive with me, and then rest? i don't know but sleep will come sooner and deeper to take the ride and have youir mind set at ease before you lie down. suppose you go." "suppose i do," said freckles, with a glimmer of the old light in his eyes and newly found strength to shoulder the otter. together they turned into the trail. mclean noticed and spoke of the big black chickens. "they've heen hanging round out there for several days past," said freckles. "i'll tell you what i think it means. i think the old rattler has killed something too big for him to swallow, and he's keeping guard and won't let me chickens have it. i'm just sure, from the way the birds have acted out there all summer, that it is the rattler's den. you watch them now. see the way they dip and then rise, frightened like!" suddenly mclean turned toward him with blanching face "freckles!" he cried. "my god, sir!" shuddered freckles. he dropped the otter, caught up his club, and plunged into the swale. reaching for his revolver, mclean followed. the chickens circled higher at their coming, and the big snake lifted his head and rattled angrily. it sank in sinuous coils at the report of mclean's revolver, and together he and freckles stood heside black jack. his fate was evident and most horrible. "come," said the boss at last. "we don't dare touch him. we will get a sheet from mrs. duncan and tuck over him, to keep these swarms of insects away, and set hall on guard, while we find the officers." freckles' lips closed resolutely. he deliherately thrust his club under black jack's body, and, raising him, rested it on his knee. he pulled a long silver pin from the front of the dead man's shirt and sent it spinning into the swale. then he gathered up a few crumpled bright flowers and dropped them into the pool far away. "my soul is sick with the horror of this thing," said mclean, as he and freckles drove toward town. "i can't uuderstand how jack dared risk creeping through the swale, even in desperation. no one knew its dangers better than he. and why did he choose the rankest, muckiest place to cross the swamp?" "don't you think, sir, it was because it was on a line with the limberlost south of the corduroy? the grass was tallest there, and he counted on those willows to screen him. once he got among them, he would have been safe to walk by stooping. if he'd made it past that place, he'd been sure to get out." "well, i'm as sorry for jack as i know how to be," said mclean, "but i can't help feeling relieved that our troubles are over, for now they are. with so dreadful a punishment for jack, wessner under arrest, and warrants for the others, we can count on their going away and remaining. as for anyone else, i don't think they will care to attempt stealing my timber after the experience of these men. there is no other man here with jack's fine ability in woodcraft. he was an expert." "did you ever hear of anyone who ever tried to locate any trees excepting him?" asked freckles. "no, i never did," said mclean. "i am sure there was no one besides him. you see, it was only with the arrival of our company that the other fellows scented good stuff in the limberlost, and tried to work in. jack knew the swamp better than anyone here. when he found there were two companies trying to lease, he wanted to stand in with the one from which he could realize the most. even then he had trees marked that he was trying to dispose of. i think his sole intention in forcing me to discharge him from my gang was to come here and try to steal timber. we had no idea, when we took the lease, what a gold mine it was." "that's exactly what wessner said that first day," said freckles eagerly. "that `twas a `gold mine'! he said he didn't know where the marked trees were, but he knew a man who did, and if i would hold off and let them get the marked ones, there were a dozen they could get out in a few days." "freckles!" cried mclean. "you don't mean a dozen!" "that's what he said, sir--a dozen. he said they couldn't tell how the grain of all of them would work up, of course, but they were all worth taking out, and five or six were real gold mines. this makes three they've tried, so there must be nine more marked, and several of them for heing just fine." "well, i wish i knew which they are," said mclean, "so i could get them out first." "i have been thinking," said freckles. "i believe if you will leave one of the guards on the line--say hall--that i will begin on the swamp, at the north end, and lay it off in sections, and try to hunt out the marked trees. i suppose they are all marked something like that first maple on the line was. wessner mentioned another good one not so far from that. he said it was best of all. i'd be having the swelled head if i could find that. of course, i don't know a thing about the trees, but i could hunt for the marks. jack was so good at it he could tell some of them by the bark, but all he wanted to take that we've found so far have just had a deep chip cut out, rather low down, and where the bushes were thick over it. i believe i could be finding some of them." "good head!" said mclean. "we will do that. you may begin as soon as you are rested. and about things you come across in the swamp, freckles--the most trifling little thing that you think the bird woman would want, take your wheel and go after her at any time. i'll leave two men on the line, so that you will have one on either side, and you can come and go as you please. have you stopped to think of all we owe her, my boy?" "yis; and the angel--we owe her a lot, too," said freckles. "i owe her me life and honor. it's lying awake nights i'll have to be trying to think how i'm ever to pay her up." "well, begin with the muff," suggested mclean. "that should be fine." he bent down and ruffled the rich fur of the otter lying at his feet. "i don't exactly see how it comes to be in such splendid fur in summer. their coats are always thick in cold weather, but this scarcely could be improved. i'll wire cooper to be watching for it. they must have it fresh. when it's tanned we won't spare any expense in making it up. it should be a royal thing, and some way i think it will exactly suit the angel. i can't think of anything that would be more appropriate for her." "neither can i," agreed freckles heartily. "when i reach the city there's one other thing, if i've the money after the muff is finished." he told mclean of mrs. duncan's desire for a hat similar to the angel's. he hesitated a little in the telling, keeping sharp watch on mclean's face. when he saw the boss's eyes were full of comprehension and sympathy, he loved him anew, for, as ever, mclean was quick to understand. instead of laughing, he said: "i think you'll have to let me in on that, too. you mustn't be selfish, you know. i'll tell you what we'll do. send it for christmas. i'll be home then, and we can fill a box. you get the hat. i'll add a dress and wrap. you buy duncan a hat and gloves. i'll send him a big overcoat, and we'll put in a lot of little stuff for the babies. won't that be fun?" freckles fairly shivered with delight. "that would be away too serious for fun," he said. "that would be heavenly. how long will it be?" he began counting the time, and mclean deliberately set himself to encourage freckles and keep his thoughts from the trouble of the past few days, for he had been overwrought and needed quiet and rest. chapter xv wherein freckles and the angel try taking a picture, and little chicken furnishes the subject a week later everything at the limberlost was precisely as it had been before the tragedy, except the case in freckles' room now rested on the stump of the newly felled tree. enough of the vines were left to cover it prettily, and every vestige of the havoc of a few days before was gone. new guards were patrolling the trail. freckles was roughly laying off the swamp in sections and searching for marked trees. in that time he had found one deeply chipped and the chip cunningly replaced and tacked in. it promised to be quite rare, so he was jubilant. he also found so many subjects for the bird woman that her coming was of almost daily occurrence, and the hours he spent with her and the angel were nothing less than golden. the limberlost was now arrayed as the queen of sheba in all her glory. the first frosts of autumn had bejewelled her crown in flashing topaz, ruby, and emerald. around her feet trailed the purple of her garments, while in her hand was her golden scepter. everything was at full tide. it seemed as if nothing could grow lovelier, and it was all standing still a few weeks, waiting coming destruction. the swamp was palpitant with life. every pair of birds that had flocked to it in the spring w as now multiplied by from two to ten. the young were tame from freckles' tri-parenthood, and so plump and sleek that they were quite as beautiful as their elders??? even if in many cases they lacked their brilliant plumage. it was the same story of increase everywhere. there were chubby little ground-hogs scudding on the trail. there were cunning baby coons and opossums peeping from hollow logs and trees. young muskrats followed their parents across the lagoons. if you could come upon a family of foxes that had not yet disbanded, and see the young playing with a wild duck's carcass that their mother had brought, and note the pride and satisfaction in her eyes as she lay at one side guarding them, it would be a picture not to be forgotten. freckles never tired of studying the devotion of a fox mother to her babies. to him, whose early life had been so embittered by continual proof of neglect and cruelty in human parents toward their children, the love of these furred and feathered folk of the limberlost was even more of a miracle than to the bird woman and the angel. the angel liked the baby rabbits and squirrels. earlier in the season, when the young were yet very small, it so happened that at times freckles could give into her hands one of these little ones. then it was pure joy to stand back and watch her heaving breast, flushed cheek, and shining eyes. hers were such lovely eyes. freckles had discovered lately that they were not so dark as he had thought them at first, but that the length and thickness of lash, by which they were shaded, made them appear darker than they really were. they were forever changing. now sparkling and darkling with wit, now humid with sympathy, now burning with the fire of courage, now taking on strength of color with ambition, now flashing indignantly at the abuse of any creature. she had carried several of the squirrel and bunny babies home, and had littered the conservatory with them. her care of them was perfect. she was learning her natural history from nature, and having much healthful exercise. to her, they were the most interesting of all, but the bird woman preferred the birds, witn a close second in the moths and butterflies. brown butterfly time had come. the edge of the swale was filled with milkweed, and other plants beloved of them, and the air was golden with the flashing satin wings of the monarch, viceroy, and argynnis. they outnumbered those of any other color three to one. among the birds it really seemed as if the little yellow fellows were in the preponderance. at least, they were until the redwinged blackbirds and bobolinks, that had nested on the upland, suddenly saw in the swamp the garden of the lord and came swarming by hundreds to feast and adventure upon it these last few weeks before migration. never was there a finer feast spread for the birds. the grasses were filled with seeds: so, too, were weeds of every variety. fall berries were ripe. wild grapes and black haws were ready. bugs were creeping everywhere. the muck was yeasty with worms. insects filled the air. nature made glorious pause for holiday before her next change, and by none of the frequenters of the swamp was this more appreciated than by the big black chickens. they seemed to feel the new reign of peace and fullness most of all. as for food, they did not even have to hunt for themselves these days, for the feasts now being spread before little chicken were more than he could use, and he was glad to have his parents come down and help him. he was a fine, big, overgrown fellow, and his wings, with quills of jetty black, gleaming with bronze, were so strong they almost lifted his body. he had three inches of tail, and his beak and claws were sharp. his muscles began to clamor for exercise. he raced the forty feet of his home back and forth many times every hour of the day. after a few days of that, he began lifting and spreading his wings, and flopping them until the down on his back was filled with elm fiber. then he commenced jumping. the funny little hops, springs, and sidewise bounds he gave set freckles and the angel, hidden in the swamp, watching him, into smothered chuckles of delight. sometimes he fell to coquetting with himself; and that was the funniest thing of all, for he turned his head up, down, from side to side, and drew in his chin with prinky little jerks and tilts. he would stretch his neck, throw up his head, turn it to one side and smirk--actually smirk, the most complacent and self-satisfied smirk that anyone ever saw on the face of a bird. it was so comical that freckles and the angel told the bird woman of it one day. when she finished her work on little chicken, she left them the camera ready for use, telling them they might hide in the bushes and watch. if little chicken came out and truly smirked, and they could squeeze the bulb at the proper moment to snap him, she would be more than delighted. freckles and the angel quietly curled beside a big log, and with eager eyes and softest breathing they patiently waited; but little chicken had feasted before they told of his latest accomplishment. he was tired and sleepy, so he went into the log to bed, and for an hour he never stirred. they were becoming anxious, for the light soon would be gone, and they had so wanted to try for the picture. at last little chicken lifted his head, opened his beak, and gaped widely. he dozed a minute or two more. the angel said that was his beauty sleep. then he lazily gaped again and stood up, stretching and yawning. he ambled leisurely toward the gateway, and the angel said: "now, we may have a chance, at last." "i do hope so," shivered f reckles. with one accord they arose to their knees and trained their eyes on the mouth of the log. the light was full and strong. little chicken prospected again with no results. he dressed his plumage, polished his beak, and when he felt fine and in full toilet he began to flirt with himself. freckles' eyes snapped and his breath sucked between his clenched teeth. "he's going to do it!" whispered the angel. "that will come next. you'll best give me that bulb!" "yis," assented freckles, but he was looking at the log and he made no move to relinquish the bulb. little chicken nodded daintily and ruffled his feathers. he gave his head sundry little sidewise jerks and rapidly shifted his point of vision. once there was the fleeting little ghost of a smirk. "now!--no!" snapped the angel. freckles leaned toward the bird. tensely he waited. unconsciously the hand of the angel clasped his. he scarcely knew it was there. suddenly little chicken sprang straight in the air and landed with a thud. the angel started slightly, but freckles was immovable. then, as if in approval of his last performance, the big, overgrown baby wheeled until he was more than three-quarters, almost full side, toward the camera, straightened on his legs, squared his shoulders, stretched his neck full height, drew in his chin and smirked his most pronounced smirk, directly in the face of the lens. freckles' fingers closed on the bulb convulsively, and the angel's closed on his at the instant. then she heaved a great sigh of relief and lifted her hands to push back the damp, clustering hair from her face. "how soon do you s'pose it will be finished?" came freckles' strident whisper. for the first time the angel looked at him. he was on his knees,. leaning forward, his eyes directed toward the bird, the perspiration running in little streams down his red, mosquito-bitten face. his hat was awry, his bright hair rampant, his breast heaving with excitement, while he yet gripped the bulb with every ounce of strength in his body. "do you think we were for getting it?" he asked. the angel could only nod. freckles heaved a deep sigh of relief. "well, if that ain't the hardest work i ever did in me life!" he exclaimed. "it's no wonder the bird woman's for coming out of the swamp looking as if she's been through a fire, a flood, and a famine, if that's what she goes through day after day. but if you think we got it, why, it's worth all it took, and i'm glad as ever you are, sure!" they put the holders in the case, carefully closed the camera, set it in also, and carried it to the road. then freckles exulted. "now, let's be telling the bird woman about it!" he shouted, wildly dancing and swinging his hat. "we got it! we got it! i bet a farm we got it!" hand in hand they ran to the north end of the swamp, yelling "we got. it!" like young comanches, and never gave a thought to what they might do until a big blue-gray bird, with long neck and trailing legs, arose on flapping wings and sailed over the limberlost. the angel became white to the lips and gripped freckles with both hands. he gulped with mortification and turned his back. to frighten her subject away carelessly! it was the head crime in the bird woman's category. she extended her hands as she arose, baked, blistered, and dripping, and exclaimed: "bless you, my children! bless you!" and it truly sounded as if she meant it. "why, why----" stammered the bewildered angel. freckles hurried into the breach. "you must be for blaming it every bit on me. i was thinking we got little chicken's picture real good. i was so drunk with the joy of it i lost all me senses and, `let's run tell the bird woman,' says i. like a fool i was for running, and i sort of dragged the angel along." "oh freckles!" expostulated the angel. "are you loony? of course, it was all my fault! i've been with her hundreds of times. i knew perfectly well that i wasn't to let anything--not anyt hing --scare her bird. away! i was so crazy i forgot. the blame is all mine, and she'll never forgive me." "she will, too!" cried freckles. "wasn't you for telling me that very first day that when people scared her birds away she just killed them! it's all me foolishness, and i'll never forgive meself!" the bird woman plunged into the sw ale at the mouth of sleepy snake creek, and came wading toward them, with a couple of cameras and dripping tripods. "if you will permit me a word, my infants," she said, "i will explain to you that i have had three shots at that fellow." the angel heaved a deep sigh of relief, and freckles' face cleared a little. "two of them," continued the bird woman, "in the rushes-one facing, crest lowered; one light on back, crest flared; and the last on wing, when you came up. i simply had been praying for something to make him arise from that side, so that he would fly toward the camera, for he had waded around until in my position i couldn't do it myself. see? behold in yourselves the answer to the prayers of the long-suffering!" freckles took a step toward her. "are you really meaning that?" he asked wonderingly. "only think, angel, we did the right. thing! she won't lose her picture through the carelessness of us, when she's waited and soaked nearly two hours. she's not angry with us!" "never was in a sweeter temper in my life," said the bird woman, busily cleaning and packing the cameras. freckles removed his hat and solemnly held out his hand. with equal solemnity the angel grasped it. the bird woman laughed alone, for to them the situation had been too serious to develop any of the elements of fun. then they loaded the carriage, and the bird woman and the angel started for their homes. it had been a difficult time for all of them, so they were very tired, but they were joyful. freckles was so happy it seemed to him that life could hold little more. as the bird woman was ready to drive away he laid his hand on the lines and looked into her face. "do you suppose we got it?" he asked, so eagerly that she would have given much to be able to say yes with conviction. "why, my dear, i don't know," she said. "i've no way to judge. if you made the exposure just before you came to me, there was yet a fine light. if you waited until little chicken was close the entrance, you should have something good, even if you didn't catch just the fleeting expression for which you hoped. of course, i can't say surely, but i think there is every reason to believe that you have it all right. i will develop the plate tonight, make you a proof from it early in the morning, and bring it when we come. it's only a question of a day or two now until the gang arrives. i want to work in all the studies i can before that time, for they are bound to disturb the birds. mr. mclean will need you then, and i scarcely see how we are to do without you." moved by an impulse she never afterward regretted, she bent and laid her lips on freckles' forehead, kissing him gently and thanking him for his many kindnesses to her in her loved work. freckles started away so happy that he felt inclined to keep watching behind to see if the trail were not curling up and rolling down the line after him. chapter xvi wherein the angel locates a rare tree and dines with the gang from afar freckles saw them coming. the angel was standing, waving her hat. he sprang on his wheel and raced, jolting and pounding, down the corduroy to meet them. the bird woman stopped the horse and the angel gave him the bit of print paper. freckles leaned the wheel against a tree and took the proof with eager fingers. he never before had seen a study from any of his chickens. he stood staring. when he turned his face toward them it was transfigured with delight. "you see!" he exclaimed, and began gazing again. "oh, me little chicken!" he cried. "oh me ilegant little chicken! i'd be giving all me money in the bank for you!" then he thought of the angel's muff and mrs. duncan's hat, and added, "or at least, all but what i'm needing bad for something else. would you mind stopping at the cabin a minute and showing this to mother duncan?" he asked. "give me that little book in your pocket," said the bird woman. she folded the outer edges of the proof so that it would fit into the book, explaining as she did so its perishable nature in that state. freckles went hurrying ahead, and they arrived in time to see mrs. duncan gazing as if awestruck, and to hear her bewildered "weel i be drawed on!" freckles and the angel helped the bird woman to establish herself for a long day at the mouth of sleepy snake creek. then she sent them away and waited what luck would bring to her. "now, what shall we do?" inquired the angel, who was a bundle of nerves and energy. "would you like to go to me room awhile?" asked freckles. "if you don't care to very much, i'd rather not," said the angel. "i'll tell you. let's go help mrs. duncan with dinner and play with the baby. i love a nice, clean baby." they started toward the cabin. every few minutes they stopped to investigate something or to chatter over some natural history wonder. the angel had quick eyes; she seemed to see everything, but freckles' were even quicker; for life itself had depended on their sharpness ever since the beginning of his work at the swamp. they saw it at the same time. "someone has been making a flagpole," said the angel, running the toe of her shoe around the stump, evidently made that season. "freckles, what would anyone cut a tree as small as that. for?" "i don't know," said freckles. "well, but i want to know!" said the angel. "no one came away here and cut it for fun. they've taken it away. let's go back and see if we can see it anywhere around there." she turned, retraced her footsteps, and began eagerly searching. freckles did the same. "there it is!" he exclaimed at last" `leaning against tbe trunk of that big maple." "yes, and leaning there has killed a patcb of dried bark," said the angel. "see how dried it appears?" freckles stared at her. "angel!" he shouted, "i bet you it's a marked tree!" "course it is!" cried tbe angel. "no one would cut that sapling and carry it away there and lean it up for nothing. i'll tell you! this is one of jack's marked trees. he's climbed up there above anyone's head, peeled the bark, and cut into the grain enough to be sure. then he's laid the bark back and fastened it with that pole to mark it. you see, there're a lot of other big maples close around it. can you climb to that place?" "yes," said freckles; "if i take off my wading-boots i can." "then take them off," said the angel, "and do hurry! can't you see that i am almost crazy to know if this tree is a marked one?" when they pushed the sapling over, a piece of bark as big as the crown of freckles' hat fell away. "i believe it looks kind of nubby," encouraged the angel, backing away, with her face all screwed into a twist in an effort to intensify her vision. freckles reached the opening, then slid rapidly to the ground. he was almost breathless while his eyes were flashing. "the bark's been cut clean with a knife, the sap scraped away, and a big chip taken out deep. the trunk is the twistiest thing you ever saw. it's full of eyes as a bird is of featbers!" the angel was dancing and shaking his hand. "oh, freckles," she cried, "i'm so delighted that you found it!" "but i didn't," said the astonished freckles. "that tree isn't my find; it's yours. i forgot it and was going on; you wouldn't give up, and kept talking about it, and turned back. you found. it!" "you'd best be looking after your reputation for truth and veracity," said the angel. "you know you saw that sapling first!" "yes, after you took me back and set me looking for it," scoffed freckles. the clear, ringing echo of strongly swung axes came crashing through the limberlost. " `tis the gang!" shouted freckles. "they're clearing a place to make the camp. let's go help!" "hadn't we better mark that tree again?" cautioned the angel. "it's away in here. there's such a lot of them, and all so much alike. we'd feel good and green to find it and then lose it." freckles lifted the sapling to replace it, but the angel motioned him away. "use your hatchet," she said. "i predict this is the most valuable tree in the swamp. you found it. i'm going to play that you're my knight. now, you nail my colors on it." she reached up, and pulling a blue bow from her hair, untied and doubled it against the tree. freckles turned bis eyes from her and managed the fastening with shaking fingers. the angel had called him her knight! dear lord, how he loved. her! she must not see his face, or surely her quick eyes would read what he was fighting to hide. he did not dare lay his lips on that ribbon then, but that night he would return to it. when they had gone a little distance, they both looked back, and the morning breeze set the bit of blue waving them a farewell. they walked at a rapid pace. "i am sorry about scaring the birds," said the angel, "but it's almost time for them to go anyway. i feel dreadfully over having the swamp ruined, but isn't it a delight to hear the good, honest ring of those axes, instead of straining your ears for stealthy sounds? isn't it fine to go openly and freely, with nothing worse than a snake or a poison-vine to fear?" "ah!" said freckles, with a long breath, "it's better than you can dream, angel. nobody will ever be guessing some of the things i've been through trying to keep me promise to the boss, and to hold out until this day. that it's come with only one fresh stump, and the log from that saved, and this new tree to report, isn't it grand? maybe mr. mclean will be forgetting that stump when he sees this tree, angel!" "he can't forget it," said the angel; and in answer to freckles' startled eyes she added, "because he never had any reason to remember it. he couldn't have done a whit better himself. my father says so. you're all right, freckles!" she reached him her hand, and as two children, they broke into a run when they came closer the gang. they left the swamp by the west road and followed the trail until they found the men. to the angel it seemed complete charm. in the shadiest spot on the west side of the line, at the edge of the swamp and very close freckles' room, they were cutting bushes and clearing space for a big tent for the men's sleeping-quarters, another for a dininghall, and a board shack for the cook. the teamsters were unloading, the horses were cropping leaves from the bushes, while each man was doing his part toward the construction of the new limberlost quarters. freckles helped the angel climb on a wagonload of canvas in the shade. she removed her leggings, wiped her heated face, and glowed with happiness and interest. the gang had been sifted carefully. mclean now felt that there was not a man in it who was not trustworthv. they all had heard of the angel's plucky ride for freckles' relief; several of them had been in the rescue party. others, new since that time, had heard the tale rehearsed in its every aspect around the smudge-fires at night. almost all of them knew the angel by sight from her trips with the bird woman to their leases. they all knew her father, her position, and the luxuries of her home. whatever course she had chosen with them they scarcely would have resented it, but the angel never had been known to choose a course. her spirit of friendliness was inborn and inbred. she loved everyone, so she sympathized with everyone. her generosity was only limited by what was in her power to give. she came down the trail, hand in hand with the red-haired, freckled timber guard whom she had worn herself past the limit of endurance to save only a few weeks before, racing in her eagerness to reach them, and laughing her "good morning, gentlemen," right and left. when she was ensconced on the wagonload of tenting, she sat on a roll of canvas as a queen on her throne. there was not a man of the gang who did not respect her. she was a living exponent of universal brotherhood. there was no man among them who needed her exquisite face or dainty clothing to teach him that the deference due a gentlewoman should be paid her. that the spirit of good fellowship she radiated levied an especial tribute of its own, and it became their delight to honor and please her. as they raced toward the wagon--"let me tell about the tree, please?" she begged freckles. "why, sure!" said freckles. he probably would have said the same to anything she suggested. when mclean came, he found the angel flushed and glowing, sitting on the wagon, her hands already filled. one of the men, who was cutting a scrub-oak, had carried to her a handful of crimson leaves. another had gathered a bunch of delicate marsh-grass heads for her. someone else, in taking out a bush, had found a daintily built and lined little nest, fresh as when made. she held up her treasures and greeted mclean, "goodmorning, mr. boss of the limberlost!" the gang shouted, while he bowed profoundly before her. "everyone listen!" cried the angel, climbing a roll of canvas. "i have something to say! freckles has been guarding here over a year now, and he presents the limberlost to you, with every tree in it saved; for good measure he has this morning located the rarest one of them all: the one in from the east line, that wessner spoke of the first day--nearest the one you took out. all together! everyone! hurrah for freckles!" with flushing cheeks and gleaming eyes, gaily waving the grass above her head, she led in three cheers and a tiger. freckles slipped into the swamp and hid himself, for fear he could not conceal his pride and his great surging, throbbing love for her. the angel subsided on the canvas and explained to mclean about the maple. the boss was mightily pleased. he took freckles and set out to re-locate and examine the tree. the angel was interested in the making of the camp, so she preferred to remain with the men. with her sharp eyes she was watching every detail of construction; but when it came to the stretching of the dininghall canvas she proceeded to take command. the men were driving the rope-pins, when the angel arose on the wagon and, meaning forward, spoke to duncan, who was directing the work. "i believe if you will swing that around a few feet farther, you will find it better, mr. duncan," she said. "that way will let the hot sun in at noon, while the sides will cut off the best breeze." "that's a fact," said duncan, studying the conditions. so, by shifting the pins a little, they obtained comfort for which they blessed the angel every day. when they came to the sleeping-tent, they consulted her about that. she explained the general direction of the night breeze and indicated the best position for the tent. before anyone knew how it happened, the angel was standing on the wagon, directing the location and construction of the cooking-shack, the erection of the crane for the big boiling-pots, and the building of the storeroom. she superintended the laying of the floor of the sleeping-tent lengthwise, so that it would be easier to sweep, and suggested a new arrangement of the cots that would afford all the men an equal share of night breeze. she left the wagon, and climbing on the newly erected dining-table, advised with the cook in placing his stove, table, and kitchen utensils. when freckles returned from the tree to join in the work around the camp, he caught glimpses of her enthroned on a soapbox, cleaning beans. she called to him that they were invited for dinner, and that they had accepted the invitation. when the beans were steaming in the pot, the angel advised the cook to soak them overnight the next time, so that they would cook more quickly and not burst. she was sure their cook at home did that w ay, and the c hef of the gang thought it would be a good idea. the next freckles saw of her she was paring potatoes. a little later she arranged the table. she swept it with a broom, instead of laying a cloth; took the hatchet and hammered the deepest dents from the tin plates, and nearly skinned her fingers scouring the tinware with rushes. she set the plates an even distance apart, and laid the forks and spoons beside them. when the cook threw away half a dozen fruit-cans, sbe gathered them up and melted off the tops, although she almost blistered her face and quite blistered her fingers doing it. then she neatly covered these improvised vases with the manila paper from the groceries, tying it with wisps of marshgrass. these she filled with fringed gentians, blazing-star, asters, goldenrod, and ferns, placing them the length of the dining-table. in one of the end cans she arranged her red leaves, and in the other the fancy grass. two men, watching her, went away proud of themselves and said that she was "a born lady." she laughingly caught up a paper bag and fitted it jauntily to her head in imitation of a cook's cap. then she ground the coffee, and beat a couple of eggs to put in, "because there is company," she gravely explained to the cook. she asked that delighted individual if he did not like it best that way, and he said he did not know, because he never had a chance to taste it. the angel said that was her case exactly--she never had, either; she was not allowed anything stronger than milk. then they laughed together. she told the cook about camping with her father, and explained that he made his coffee that way. when the steam began to rise from the big boiler, she stuffed the spout tightly with clean marshgrass, to keep the aroma in, placed the boiler where it would only simmer, and explained why. the influence of the angel's visit lingered with the cook through the remainder of his life, while the men prayed for her frequent return. she was having a happy time, when mclean came back jubilant, from his trip to the tree. how jubilant he told only the angel, for he had been obliged to lose faith in some trusted men of late, and had learned discretion by what he suffered. he planned to begin clearing out a road to the tree that same afternoon, and to set two guards every night, for it promised to be a rare treasure, so he was eager to see it on the way to the mills. "i am coming to see it felled," cried the angel. "i feel a sort of motherly interest in that tree." mclean was highly amused. he would have staked his life on the honesty of either the angel or freckles; yet their versions of the finding of the tree differed widely. "tell me, angel," the boss said jestingly. "i think i have a, right to know. who really did locate that tree?" "freckles," she answered promptly and emphatically. "but he says quite as positively that it was you. i don't understand." the angel's legal look flashed into her face. her eyes grew tense with earnestness. she glanced around, and seeing no towel or basin, held out her hand for sears to pour water over them. then, using the skirt of her dress to dry them, she climbed on the wagon. "i'll tell you, word for word, how it happened," she said, "and then you shall decide, and freckles and i will agree with you." when she had finished her version, "tell us, `oh, most learned judge!'" she laughingly quoted, "which of us located that tree?" "blest if i know who located it!" exclaimed mclean. "but i have a fairly accurate idea as to who put the blue ribbon on it." the boss smiled significantly at freckles, who just had come, for they had planned that they would instruct the company to reserve enough of the veneer from that very tree to make the most beautiful dressing table they could design for the angel's share of the discovery. "what will you have for vours?" mclean had asked of freckles. "if it's all the same to you, i'll be taking mine out in music lessons--begging your pardon--voice culture," said freckles with a grimace. mclean laughed, for freckles needed to see or hear only once to absorb learning as the thirsty earth sucks up water. the angel placed mclean at the head of the table. she took the foot, with freckles on her right, while the lumber gang, washed, brushed, and straightened until they felt unfamiliar with themselves and each other, filled the sides. that imposed a slight constraint. then, too, the men were afraid of the flowers, the polished tableware, and above all, of the dainty grace of the angel. nowhere do men so display lack of good breeding and culture as in dining. to sprawl on the table, scoop with their knives, chew loudly, gulp coffee, and duck their heads as snappingturtles for every bite, had not been noticed by them until the angel, sitting straightly, suddenly made them remember that they, too, were possessed of spines. instinctively every man at the table straightened. chapter xvii wherein freckles offers his life for his love and gets a broken body to reach the tree was a more difficult task than mclean had supposed. the gang could approach nearest on the outside toward the east, but after they reached the end of the east entrance there was yet a mile of most impenetrable thicket, trees big and little, and bushes of every variety and stage of growth. in many places the muck had to be filled to give the horses and wagons a solid foundation over which to haul heavy loads. it was several days before they completed a road to the noble, big tree and were ready to fell it. when the sawing began, freckles was watching down the road where it met the trail leading from little chicken's tree. he had gone to the tree ahead of the gang to remove the blue ribbon. carefully folded, it now lay over his heart. he was promising himself much comfort with that ribbon, when he would leave for the city next month to begin his studies and dream the summer over again. it would help to make things tangible. when he was dressed as other men, and at his work, he knew where he meant to home that precious bit of blue. it should be his good-luck token, and he would wear it always to keep bright in memory the day on which the angel had called him her knight. how he would study, and oh, how he would sing! if only he could fulfill mclean's expectations, and make the angel proud of him! if only he could be a real knight! he could not understand why the angel had failed to come. she had wanted to see their tree felled. she would be too late if she did not arrive soon. he had told her it would be ready that morning, and she had said she surely would be there. why, of all mornings, was she late on this? mclean had ridden to town. if he had been there, freckles would have asked that they delay the felling, but he scarcely liked to ask the gang. he really had no authority, although he thought the men would w ait; but some way he found such embarrassment in framing the request that he waited until the work was practically ended. the saw was out, and the men were cutting into the felling side of the tree when the boss rode in. his first word was to inquire for the angel. when freckles said she had not yet come, the boss at once gave orders to stop work on the tree until she arrived; for he felt that she virtuallv had located it, and if she desired to see it felled, she should. as the men stepped back, a stiff morning breeze caught the top, that towered high above its fellows. there was an ominous grinding at the base, a shiver of the mighty trunk, then directly in line of its fall the bushes swung apart and the laughing face of the angel looked on them. a groan of horror burst from the dry throats of the men, and reading the agony in their faces, she stopped short, glanced up, and understood. "south!" shouted mclean. "run south!" the angel was helpless. it was apparent that she did not know which way south was. there was another slow shiver of the big tree. the remainder of the gang stood motionless, but freckles sprang past the trunk and went leaping in big bounds. he caught up the angel and dashed through the thicket for safety. the swaying trunk was half over when, for an instant, a near-by tree stayed its fall. they saw freckles' foot catch, and with the angel he plunged headlong. a terrible cry broke from the men, while mclean covered his face. instantly freckles was up, with the angel in his arms, struggling on. the outer limbs were on them when they saw freckles hurl the angel, face down, in the muck, as far from him as he could send her. springing after, in an attempt to cover her body with his own, he whirled to see if they were yet in danger, and with outstretched arms braced himself for the shock. the branches shut them from sight, and the awful crash rocked the earth. mclean and duncan ran with axes and saws. the remainder of the gang followed, and they worked desperately. it seemed a long time before they caught a glimpse of the angel's blue dress, but it renewed their vigor. duncan fell on his knees beside her and tore the muck from underneath her with his hands. in a few seconds he dragged her out, choking and stunned, but surely not fatally hurt. freckles lay a little farther under the tree, a big limb pinning him down. his eyes were wide open. he w as perfectly conscious. duncan began mining beneath him, but freckles stopped him. "you can't be moving me," he said. "you must cut off the limb and lift it. i. know" two men ran for the big saw. a number of them laid hold of the limb and bore up. in a short time it was removed, and freckles lay free. the men bent over to lift him, but he motioned them away. "don't be touching me until i rest a bit," he pleaded. then he twisted his head until he saw the angel, who was wiping muck from her eyes and face on the skirt of her dress. "try to get up," he begged. mclean laid hold of the angel and helped her to her feet. "do you think any bones are broken?" gasped freckles. the angel shook her head and wiped muck. "you see if you can find any, sir," freckles commanded. the angel yielded herself to mclean's touch, and he assured freckles that she was not seriously injured. freckles settled back, a smile of ineffable tenderness on his face. "thank the lord!" he hoarsely whispered. the angel leaned toward him. "now, freckles,. you!" she cried. "it's your turn. please get. up!" a pitiful spasm swept freckles' face. the sight of it washed every vestige of color from the angel's. she took hold of his hands. "freckles, get up!" it was half command, half entreaty. "easy, angel, easy! let me rest a bit first!" implored freckles. she knelt beside him. he reached his arm around her and drew her closely. he looked at mclean in an agony of entreaty that brought the boss to his knees on the other side. "oh, freckles!" mclean cried. "not that! surely we can do something! we must! let me see!" he tried to unfasten freckles' neckband, but his fingers shook so clumsily that the angel pushed them away and herself laid freckles' chest bare. with one hasty glance she gathered the clothing together and slipped her arm under his head. freckles lifted his eyes of agony to hers. "you see?" he said. the angel nodded dumbly. freckles turned to mclean. "thank you for everything," he panted. "where are the boys?" "they are all here," said the boss, "except a couple who have gone for doctors, mrs. duncan and the bird woman." "it's no use trying to do anything," said freckles. "you won't forget the muff and the christmas box. the muff especial?" there was a movement above them so pronounced that it attracted freckles' attention, even in that extreme hour. he looked up, and a pleased smile flickered on his drawn face. "why, if it ain't me little chicken!" he cried hoarsely. "he must be making his very first trip from the log. now duncan can have his big watering-trough." "it was little chicken that made me late," faltered the angel. "i was so anxious to get here early i forgot to bring his breakfast from the carriage. he must have been hungry, for when i passed the log he started after me. he was so wabbly, and so slow flying from tree to tree and through the bushes, i just had to wait on him, for i couldn't drive him back." "of course you couldn't! me bird has too amazing good sinse to go back when he could be following you," exulted freckles, exactly as if he did not realize what the delay had cost him. then he lay silently thinking, but presently he asked slowly.. "and so `twas me little chicken that was making you late, angel?" "yes," said the angel. a spasm of fierce pain shook freckles, and a look of uncertainty crossed his face. "all summer i've been thanking god for the falling of the feather and all the delights it's brought me," he muttered, "but this looks as if" he stopped short and raised questioning eyes to mclean. "i can't help being irish, but i can help being superstitious," he said. "i mustn't be laying it to the almighty, or to me bird, must i?" "no, dear lad," said mclean, stroking the brilliant hair. "the choice lay with you. you could have stood a rooted dolt like all the remainder of us. it was through your great love and your high courage that you made the sacrifice." "don't you be so naming it,. sir!" cried freckles. "it's just the reverse. if i could be giving me body the hundred times over to save hers from this, i'd be doing it and take joy with every pain." he turned with a smile of adoring tenderness to the angel. she was ghastly white, and her eyes were dull and glazed. she scarcely seemed to hear or understand what was coming, but she bravely tried to answer that smile. "is my forehead covered with dirt?" he asked. she shook her head. "you did once," he gasped. instantly she laid her lips on his forehead, then on each cheek, and then in a long kiss on his lips. mclean bent over him. "freckles," he said brokenly, "you will never know how i love you. you won't go without saying good-bye to me?" that word stung the angel to quick comprehension. she started as if arousing from sleep. "good-bye?" she cried sharply, her eyes widening and the color rushing into her white face. "good-bye! why, what do you mean? who's saying good-bye? where could freckles go, when he is hurt like this, save to the hospital? you needn't say good-bye for that. of course, we will all go with him! you call up the men. we must start right away." "it's no use, angel," said freckles. "i'm thinking ivry bone in me breast is smashed. you'll have to be letting me go!" "i will not," said the angel flatly. "it's no use wasting precious time talking about it. you are alive. you are breathing; and no matter how badly your bones are broken, what are great surgeons for but to fix you up and make you well again? you promise me that you'll just grit your teeth and hang on when we hurt you, for we must start with you as quickly as it can be done. i don't know what has been the matter with me. here's good time wasted already." "oh, angel!" moaned freckles, "i can't! you don't know how bad it is. i'll die the minute you are for trying to lift me!" "of course you will, if you make up your mind to do it," said the angel. "but if you are determined you won't, and set yourself to breathing deep and strong, and hang on to me tight, i can get you out. really you must, freckles, no matter how it hurts, for you did this for me, and now i must save you, so you might as well promise." she bent over him, trying to smile encouragement with her fear-stiffened lips. "you will promise, freckles?" big drops of cold sweat ran together on freckles' temples. "angel, darlin' angel," he pleaded, taking her hand in his. "you ain't understanding, and i can't for the life of me be telling you, but indade, it's best to be letting me go. this is my chance. please say good-bye, and let me slip off quick!" he appealed to mclean. "dear boss, you know! you be telling her that, for mne, living is far worse pain than dying. tell her you know death is the best thing that could ever be happening to me!" "merciful heaven!" burst in the angel. "i can't endure this delay!" she caught freckles' hand to her breast, and bending over him, looked deeply into his stricken eyes. " `angel, i give you my word of honor that i will keep right on breathing.' that's what you are going to promise me," she said. "do you say it?" freckles hesitated. "freckles!" imploringly commanded the angel, "you do say it!" "yis," gasped freckles. the angel sprang to her feet. "then that's all right," she said, with a tinge of her old-time briskness. "you just keep breathing away like a steam engine, and i will do all the remainder." the eager men gathered around her. "it's going to be a tough pull to get freckles out," she said, "but it's our only chance, so listen closely and don't for the lives of you fail me in doing quickly what i tell you. there's no time to spend falling down over each other; we must have some system. you four there get on those wagon horses and ride to the sleeping-tent. get the stoutest cot, a couple of comforts, and a pillow. ride back with them some way to save time. if you meet any other men of the gang, send them here to help carry the cot. we won't risk the jolt of driving with him. the others clear a path out to the road; and mr. mclean, you take nellie and ride to town. tell my father how freckles is hurt and that he risked it to save me. tell him i'm going to take freckles to chicago on the noon train, and i want him to hold it if we are a little late. if he can't, then have a special ready at the station and another on the. pittsburgh at fort wayne, so we can go straight through. you needn't mind leaviug us. the bird woman will be here soon. we will rest awhile." she dropped into the muck beside freckles and began stroking his hair and hand. he lay with his face of agony turned to hers, and fought to smother the groans that would tell her what he was suffering. when they stood ready to lift him, the angel bent over him in a passion of tenderness. "dear old limberlost guard, we're going to lift you now," she said. "i suspect you will faint from the pain of it, but we will be as easy as ever we can, and don't you dare forget your promise!" a whimsical half-smile touched freckles' quivering lips. "angel, can a man be remembering a promise when he ain't knowing?" he asked. "you can," said the angel stoutly, "because a promise means so much more to you than it does to most men." a look of strength flashed into freckles' face at her words. "i am ready," he said. with the first touch his eyes closed, a mighty groan was wrenched from him, and he lay senseless. the angel gave duncan one panic-stricken look. then she set her lips and gathered her forces again. "i guess that's a good thing," she said. "maybe he won't feel how we are hurting him. oh boys, are you being quick and gentle?" she stepped to the side of the cot and bathed freckles' face. taking his hand in hers, she gave the word to start. she told the men to ask every able-bodied man they met to join them so that they could change carriers often and make good time. the bird woman insisted upon taking the angel into the carriage and following the cot, but she refused to leave freckles, and suggested that the bird woman drive ahead, pack them some clothing, and be at the station ready to accompany them to chicago. all the way the angel walked beside the cot, shading freckles' face with a branch, and holding his hand. at every pause to change carriers she moistened his face and lips and watched each breath with heart-breaking anxiety. she scarcely knew when her father joined them, and taking the branch from her, slipped an arm around her waist and almost carried her. to the city streets and the swarm of curious, staring faces she paid no more attention than she had to the trees of the limberlost. when the train came and the gang placed freckles aboard, big duncan made a place for the angel beside the cot. with the best physician to be found, and with the bird woman and mclean in attendance, the four-hours' run to chicago began. the angel constantly watched over freckles; bathed his face, stroked his hand, and gently fanned him. not for an instant would she yield her place, or allow anyone else to do anything for him. the bird woman and mclean regarded her in amazement. there seemed to be no end to her resources and courage. the only time she spoke was to ask mclean if he were sure the special would be ready on the pittsburgh road. he replied that it was made up and waiting. at five o'clock freckles lay stretched on the operating-table of lake view hospital, while three of the greatest surgeons in chicago bent over him. at their command, mclean picked up the unwilling angel and carried her to the nurses to be bathed, have her bruises attended, and to be put to bed. in a place where it is difficult to surprise people, they were astonished women as they removed the angel's dainty stained and torn clothing, drew off hose muck-baked to her limbs, soaked the dried loam from her silken hair, and washed the beautiful scratched, bruised, dirt-covered body. the angel fell fast asleep long before they had finished, and lay deeply unconscious, while the fight for freckles' life was being waged. three days later she was the same angel as of old, except that freckles was constantly in her thoughts. the anxiety and responsibility that she felt for his condition had bred in her a touch of womanliness and authority that was new. that morning she arose early and hovered near freckles' door. she had been allowed to remain with him constantly, for the nurses and surgeons had learned, with his returning consciousness, that for her alone would the active, highly strung, pain-racked sufferer be quiet and obey orders. when she was dropping from loss of sleep, the threat that she would fall ill had to be used to send her to bed. then by telling freckles that the angel was asleep and they would waken her the moment he moved, they were able to control him for a short time. the surgeon was with freckles. the angel had been told that the word he brought that morning would be final, so she curled in a window seat, dropped the curtains behind her, and in dire anxiety, waited the opening of the door. just as it unclosed, mclean came hurrying down the hall and to the surgeon, but with one glance at his face he stepped back in dismay; while the angel, who had arisen, sank to the seat again, too dazed to come forward. the men faced each other. the angel, with parted lips and frightened eyes, bent forward in tense anxiety. "i--i thought he was doing nicely?" faltered mclean. "he bore the operation well," replied the surgeon, "and his wounds are not necessarily fatal. i told you that yesterday, but i did not tell you that something else probably would kill him; and it will. he need not die from the accident, but he will not live the day out." "but why? what is it?" asked mclean hurriedly. "we all dearly love the boy. we have millions among us to do anything that money can accomplish. why must he die, if those broken bones are not the cause?" "that is what i am going to give you the opportunity to tell me," replied the surgeon. "he need not die from the accident, yet he is dying as fast as his splendid physical condition will permit, and it is because he so evidently prefers death to life. if he were full of hope and ambition to live, my work would be easy. if all of you love him as you prove you do, and there is unlimited means to give him anything he wants, why should he desire death?" "is he dying?" demanded mclean. "he is," said the surgeon. "he will not live this day out, unless some strong reaction sets in at once. he is so low, that preferring death to life, nature cannot overcome his inertia. if he is to live, he must be made to desire life. now he undoubtedly wishes for death, and that it come quickly." "then he must die," said mclean. his broad shoulders shook convulsively. his strong hands opened and closed mechanically. "does that mean that you know what he desires and cannot, or will not, supply it?" mclean groaned in misery. "it means," he said desperately, "that i know what he wants, but it is as far removed from my power to help him as it would be to give him a star. the thing for which he will die, he can never have." "then you must prepare for the end very shortly" said the surgeon, turning abruptly away. mclean caught his arm roughly. "you look here!" he cried in desperation. "you say that as if i could do something if i would. i tell you the.boy is dear to me past expression. i would do anything--spend any sum. you have noticed and repeatedly commented on the young girl with me. it is that child that he wants! he worships her to adoration, and knowing he can never be anything to her, he prefers death to life. in god's name, what can i do about it?" "barring that missing hand, i never examined a finer man," said the surgeon, "and she seemed perfectly devoted to him; why cannot he have her?" "why?" echoed mclean. "why? well, for many reasons! i told you he was my son. you probably knew that he was not. a little over a year ago i never had seen him. he joined one of my lumber gangs from the road. he is a stray, left at one of your homes for the friendless here in chicago. when he grew up the superintendent bound him to a brutal man. he ran away and landed in one of my lumber camps. he has no name or knowledge of legal birth. the angel--we have talked of her. you see what she is, physically and mentally. she has ancestors reaching back to plymouth rock, and across the sea for generations before that. she is an idolized, petted only child, and there is great wealth. life holds everything for her, nothing for him. he sees it more plainly than anyone else could. there is nothing for the boy but death, if it is the angel that is required to save him." the angel stood between them. "well, i just guess not!" she cried. "if freckles wants me, all he has to do is to say so, and he can have me!" the amazed men stepped back, staring at her. "that he will never say," said mclean at last, "and you don't understand, angel. i don't know how you came here. i wouldn't have had you hear that for the world, but since you have, dear girl, you must be told that it isn't your friendship or your kindness freckles wants; it is your love." the angel looked straight into the great surgeon's eyes with her clear, steady orbs of blue, and then into mclean's with unwavering frankness. "well, i do love him," she said simply. mclean's arms dropped helplessly. "you don't understand," he reiterated patiently. "it isn't the love of a friend, or a comrade, or a sister, that freckles wants from you; it is the love of a sweetheart. and if to save the life he has offered for you, you are thinking of being generous and impulsive enough to sacrifice your future--in the absence of your father, it will become my plain duty, as the protector in whose hands he has placed you, to prevent such rashness. the very words you speak, and the manner in which you say them, prove that you are a mere child, and have not dreamed what love is." then the angel grew splendid. a rosy flush swept the pallor of fear from her face. her big eyes widened and dilated with intense lights. she seemed to leap to the height and the dignity of superb womanhood before their wondering gaze. "i never have had to dream of love," she said proudly. "i never have known anything else, in all my life, but to love everyone and to have everyone love me. and there never has been anyone so dear as freckles. if you will remember, we have been through a good deal together. i do love freckles, just as i say i do. i don't know anything about the love of sweethearts, but i love him with all the love in my heart, and i think that will satisfy him." "surely it should!" muttered the man of knives and lancets. mclean reached to take hold of the angel, but she saw the movement and swiftly stepped back. "as for my father," she continued, "he at once told me what he learned from you about freckles. i've known all you know for several weeks. that knowledge didn't change your love for him a particle. i think the bird woman loved him more. why should you two have all the fine perceptions there are? can't i see how brave, trustworthy, and splendid he is? can't i see how his soul vibrates with his music, his love of beautiful things and the pangs of loneliness and heart hunger? must you two love him with all the love there is, and i give him none? my father is never unreasonable. he won't expect me not to love freckles, or not to tell him so, if the telling will save him.". she darted past mclean into freckles' room, closed the door, and turned the key. chapter xviii wherein freckles refuses love without knowledge of honorable birth, and the angel goes in quest of it freckles lay on a flat pillow, his body immovable in a plaster cast, his maimed arm, as always, hidden. his greedy gaze fastened at once on the angel's face. she crossed to him with light step and bent over him with infinite tenderness. her heart ached at the change in his appearance. he seemed so weak, heart hungry, so utterly hopeless, so alone. she could see that the night had been one long terror. for the first time she tried putting herself in freckles' place. what would it mean to have no parents, no home, no name? no name! that was the worst of all. that was to be lost--indeed --utterly and hopelessly lost. the angel lifted her hands to her dazed head and reeled, as she tried to face that proposition. she dropped on her knees beside the bed, slipped her arm under the pillow, and leaning over freckles, set her lips on his forehead. he smiled faintlv, but his wistful face appeared worse for it. it hurt the angel to the heart. "dear freckles," she said, "there is a story in your eyes this morning, tell me?" freckles drew a long, wavering breath. "angel," he begged, "be generous! be thinking of me a little. i'm so homesick and worn out, dear angel, be giving me back me promise. let me go?" "why freckles!" faltered the angel. "you don't know what you are asking. `let you go!' i cannot! i love you better than anyone, freckles. i think you are the very finest person i ever knew. i have our lives all planned. i w ant you to be educated and learn all there is to know about singing, just as soon as you are well enough. by the time you have completed your education i will have finished college, and then i want," she choked a second, "i want you to be my real knight, freckles, and come to me and tell me that you--like me--a little. i have been counting on you for my sweetheart from the very first, freckles. i can't give you up, unless you don't like me. but you do like me--just a little--don't you, freckles?" freckles lay whiter than the coverlet, his staring eyes on the ceiling and his breath wheezing between dry lips. the angel awaited his answer a second, and when none came, she dropped her crimsoning face beside him on the pillow and whispered in his ear: "freckles, i--i'm trying to make love to you. oh, can't you help me only a little bit? it's awful hard all alone! i don't know how, when i really mean it, but freckles, i love you. i must have you, and now i guess--i guess maybe i'd better kiss you next." she lifted her shamed face and bravely laid her feverish, quivering lips on his. her breath, like clover-bloom, was in his nostrils, and her hair touched his face. then she looked into his eyes with reproach. "freckles," she panted, "freckles! i didn't think it was in you to be mean!" "mean, angel! mean to you?" gasped freckles. "yes," said the angel. "downright mean. when i kiss you, if you had any mercy at all you'd kiss back, just a little bit." freckles' sinewy fist knotted into the coverlet. his chin pointed ceilingward while his head rocked on the pillow. "oh, jesus!" burst from him in agony. "you ain't the only one that was crucified!" the angel caught freckles' hand and carried it to her breast. "freckles!" she wailed in terror, "freckles! it is a mistake? is it that you don't want me?" freckles' head rolled on in wordless suffering. "wait a bit, angel?" he panted at last. "be giving me a little time!" the angel arose with controlled features. she bathed his face, straightened his hair, and held water to his lips. it seemed a long time before he reached toward her. instantlv she knelt again, carried his hand to her breast, and leaned her cheek upon it. "tell me, freckles," she whispered softly. "if i can," said freckles in agony. "it's just this. angels are from above. outcasts are from below. you've a sound body and you're beautifulest of all. you have everything that loving, careful raising and money can give you. i have so much less than nothing that i don't suppose i had any right to be born. it's a sure thing-nobody wanted me afterward, so of course, they didn't before. some of them should have been telling you long ago." "if that's all you have to sav, freckles, i've known that quite a while," said the angel stoutly. "mr. mclean told my father, and he told me. that only makes me love you more, to pay for all you've missed." "then i'm wondering at you," said freckles in a voice of awe. "can't you see that if you were willing and your father would come and offer you to me, i couldn't be touching the soles of your feet, in love--me, whose people brawled over me, cut off me hand, and throwed me away to freeze and to die! me, who has no name just as much because i've no right to any, as because i don't know it. when i was little, i planned to find me father and mother when i grew up. now i know me mother deserted me, and me father was maybe a thief and surely a liar. the pity for me suffering and the watching over me have gone to your head, dear angel, and it's me must be thinking for you. if you could be forgetting me lost hand, where i was raised, and that i had no name to give vou, and if you would be taking me as i am, some day people such as mine must be, might come upon you. i used to pray ivery night and morning and many times the day to see me mother. now i only pray to die quickly and never risk the sight of her. `tain't no ways possible, angel! it's a wildness of your dear head. oh, do for mercy sake, kiss me once more and be letting me go!" "not for a minute!" cried the angel. "not for a minute, if those are all the reasons you have. it's you who are wild in your head, but i can understand just how it happened. being shut in that home most of your life, and seeing children every day whose parents did neglect and desert them, makes you sure yours did the same; and yet there are so many other things that could have happened so much more easily than that. there are thousands of young couples who come to this country and start a family with none of their relatives here. chicago is a big, wicked city, and grown people could disappear in many ways, and who would there ever be to find to whom their little children belonged? the minute my father told me how you felt, i began to study this thing over, and i've made up my mind you are dead wrong. i meant to ask my father or the bird woman to talk to you before you went away to school, but as matters are right now i guess i'll just do it myself. it's all so plain to me. oh, if i could only make you see!" she buried her face in the pillow and presently lifted it, transfigured. "now i have it!" she cried. "oh, dear heart! i can make it so plain! freckles, can you imagine you see the old limberlost trail? well when we followed it, you know there were places where ugly, prickly thistles overgrew the path, and you went ahead with your club and bent them back to keep them from stinging through my clothing. other places there were big shining pools where lovely, snow-white lilies grew, and you waded in and gathered them for me. oh dear heart, don't you see? it's this! everywhere the wind carried that thistledown, other thistles sprang up and grew prickles; and wherever those lily seeds sank to the mire, the pure white of other lilies bloomed. but, freckles, there was never a place anywhere in the limberlost, or in the whole world, where the thistledown floated and sprang up and blossomed into white lilies! thistles grow from thistles, and lilies from other lilies. dear freckles, think hard! you must see it! you are a lily, straight through. you never, never could have drifted from the thistlepatch. "where did you find the courage to go into the limberlost and face its terrors? you inherited it from the blood of a brave father, dear heart. where did you get the pluck to hold for over a year a job that few men would have taken at all? you got it from a plucky mother, you bravest of boys. you attacked single-handed a man almost twice your size, and fought as a demon, merely at the suggestion that you be deceptive and dishonest. could your mother or your father have been untruthful? here you are, so hungry and starved that you are dying for love. where did you get all that capacity for loving? you didn't inherit it from hardened, heartless people, who would disfigure you and purposely leave you to die, that's one sure thing. you once told me of saving your big bullfrog from a rattlesnake. you knew you risked a horrible death when you did it. yet you will spend miserable years torturing yourself with the idea that your own mother might have cut off that hand. shame on you, freckles! your mother would have done this" the angel deliberately turned back the cover, slipped up the sleeve, and laid her lips on the scars. "freckles! wake up!" she cried, almost shaking him. "come to your senses! be a thinking, reasoning man! you have brooded too much, and been all your life too much alone. it's all as plain as plain can be to me. you must see it! like breeds like in this world! you must be some sort of a reproduction of your parents, and i am not afraid to vouch for them, not for a minute! "and then, too, if more proof is needed, here it is: mr. mclean says that you never once have failed in tact and courtesy. he says that you are the most perfect gentleman he ever knew, and he has traveled the world over. how does it happen, freckles? no one at that home taught you. hundreds of men couldn't be taught, even in a school of etiquette; so it must be instinctive with you. if it is, why, that means that it is born in you, and a direct inheritance from a race of men that have been gentlemen for ages, and couldn't be anything else. "then there's your singing. i don't believe there ever was a mortal with a sweeter voice than yours, and while that doesn't prove anything, there is a point that does. the little training you had from that choirmaster won't account for the wonderful accent and ease with which you sing. somewhere in your close blood is a marvelously trained vocalist; we every one of us believe that, freckles. "why does my father refer to you constantly as being of fine perceptions and honor? because you are, freckles. why does the bird woman leave her precious work and come here to help look after you? i never heard of her losing any time over anyone else. it's because she loves you. and why does mr. mclean turn all of his valuable business over to hired men and w atch you person. ally? and why is he hunting excuses every day to spend money on you? my father says mclean is full scotch-close with a dollar. he is a hardheaded husiness man, freckles, and he is doing it because he finds you worthy of it. worthy of all we all can do and more than we know how to do, dear heart! freckles, are you listening to me? oh! won't you see it? won't you believe it?" "oh, angel!" chattered the bewildered freckles," are you truly maning it? gould it be?" "of course it could," flashed the angel, "because it just is!" "but you can't prove it," wailed freckles. "it ain't giving me a name, or me honor!" "freckles," said the angel sternly, "you are unreasonable! why, i didprove every word i said! everything proves it! you look here! if you knew for sure that i could give you a name and your honor, and prove to you that your mother did love you, why, then, would you just go to breathing like perpetual motion and hang on for dear life and get well?" a bright light shone in freckles' eyes. "if i knew that, angel," he said solemnly, "you couldn't be killing me if you felled the biggest tree in the limberlost smash on. me!" "then you go right to work," said the angel, "and before night i'll prove one thing to you: i can show you easily enough how much your mother loved you. that will be the first step, and then the remainder will all come. if my father and mr. mclean are so anxious to spend some money, i'll give them a chance. i don't see why we haven't comprehended how you felt and so have been at work weeks ago. we've been awfully selfish. we've all been so comfortable, we never stopped to think what other people were suffering before our eyes. none of us has understood. i'll hire the finest detective in chicago, and we'll go to work together. this is nothing compared with things people do find out. we'll go at it, beak and claw, and we'll show you a thing or two." freckles caught her sleeve. "me mother, angel! me mother!" he marveled hoarsely. "did you say you could he finding out today if me mother loved me? how? oh, angel! nothing matters, if only me mother didn't do it! " "then you rest easy," said the angel, with large confidence. "your mother didn't do it! mothers of sons such as you don't do things like that. i'll go to work at once and prove it to you. the first thing to do is to go to that home where you were and get the clothes you wore the night you were left there. i know that they are required to save those things carefully. we can find out almost all there is to know about your mother from them. did you ever see them?" "yis," he replied. "freckles! were they white?" she cried. "maybe they were once. they're all yellow with laying, and brown with bloodstains now" said freckles, the old note of bitterness creeping in. "you can't be telling anything at all by them, angel!" "well, but i just can!" said the angel positively. "i can see from the quality what kind of goods your mother could afford to buy. i can see from the cut whether she had good taste. i can see from the care she took in making them how much she loved and wanted you." "but how? angel, tell me how!". implored freckles with trembling eagerness. "why, easily enough," said the angel. "i thought you'd understand. people that can afford anything at all, always buy white for little new babies--linen and lace, and the veryfinest things to be had. there's a young woman living near us who cut up her wedd ding clothes to have fine things for her baby. mothers who love and want their babies don't buy little rough, readymade thing, and they don't run up what they make on an old sewing machine. they make fine seams, and tucks, and put on lace and trimming by hand. they sit and stitch, and stitch--little, even stitches, every one just as careful. their eyes shine and their faces glow. when they have to quit to do something else, they look sorry, and fold up their work so particularly. there isn't much worth knowing about your mother that those little clothes won't tell. i can see her putting the little stitches into them and smiling with shining eyes over your coming. freckles, i'll wager you a dollar those little clothes of yours are just alive with the dearest, tiny handmade stitches." a new light dawned in freckles' eyes. a tinge of warm color swept into his face. renewed strength was noticeable in his grip of her hands. "oh angel! will you go now? will you be hurrying?" he cried. "right away," said the angel. "i won't stop for a thing, and i'll hurry with all my might." she smoothed his pillow, straightened the cover, gave him one steady look in the eyes, and went quietly from the room. outside the door, mclean and the surgeon anxiously awaited her. mclean caught her shoulders. "angel, what have you done?" he demanded. the angel smiled defiance into his eyes. " `what have i done?'" she repeated. "i've tried to save freckles." "what will your father say?" groaned mclean. "it strikes me," said the angel, "that what freckles said would be to the point." "freckles!" exclaimed mclean. "what could he say?" "he seemed to be able to say several things," answered the angel sweetly. "i fancy the one that concerns you most at present was, that if mny father should offer me to him he would not have me." "and no one knows why better than i do," cried mclean. "every day he must astonish me with some new fineness." he turned to the surgeon. "save him!" he commanded. "save him!" he implored. "he is too fine to be sacrificed." "his salvation lies here," said the surgeon, stroking the angel's sunshiny hair, "and i can read in the face of her that she knows how she is going to work it out. don't trouble for the bov. she will save him!" the angel laughingly sped down the hall, and into the street, just as she was. "i have come," she said to the matron of the home, "to ask if you will allow me to examine, or, better yet, to take with me, the little clothes that a boy you called freckles, discharged last fall, wore the night he was left here." the woman looked at her in greater astonishment than the occasion demanded. "well, i'd be glad to let you see them," she said at last, "but the fact is we haven't them. i do hope we haven't made some mistake. i was thoroughly convinced, and so was the superintendent. we let his people take those things away yesterday. who are you, and what do you want with them?" the angel stood dazed and speechless, staring at the matron. "there couldn't have been a mistake," continued the matron, seeing the angel's distress. "freckles was here when i took charge, ten years ago. these people had it all proved that he belonged to them. they had him traced to where he ran away in illinois last fall, and there they completely lost track of him. i'm sorry you seem so disappointed, but it is all right. the man is his uncle, and as like the boy as he possibly could be. he is almost killed to go back without him. if you know where freckles is, they'd give big money to find out." the angel laid a hand along each cheek to steady her chattering teeth. "who are they?". she stammered. "where are they going?" "they are irish folks, miss," said the matron. "they have been in ghicago and over the country for the past three months, hunting him everywhere. they have given up, and are starting home today. they" "did they leave an address? where could i find them?" interrupted the angel. "they left a card, and i notice the morning paper has the man's picture and is full of them. they've advertised a great deal in the city papers. it's a wonder you haven't seen something." "trains don't run right. we never get chicago papers," said the angel. "please give me that card quickly. they may. escape me. i simply must catch them!" the matron hurried to the secretary and came back with a card. "their addresses are there," she said. "both in chicago and at their home. they made them full and plain, and i was to cable at once if i got the least clue of him at any time. if they've left the city, you can stop them in new york. you're sure to catch them before they sail--if you hurry." the matron caught up a paper and thrust it into the angel's hand as she ran to the street. the angel glanced at the card. the chicago address was suite eleven, auditorium. she laid her hand on her driver's sleeve and looked into his eyes. "there is a fast-driving limit?" she asked. "yes, miss." "will vou crowd it all you can without danger of arrest? i will pay well. i must catch some people!" then she smiled at him. the hospital, an orphans' home, and the auditorium seemed a queer combination to that driver, but the angel was always and everywhere the angel, and her methods were strictly her own. "i will take you there as quickly as any man could with a team," he said promptly. the angel clung to the card and paper, and as best she could in the lurching, swaying cab, read the addresses over. "o'more, suite eleven, auditorium." " `o'more,'" she repeated. "seems to fit freckles to a dot. wonder if that could be his name? `suite eleven' means that you are pretty well fixed. suites in the auditorium come high." then she turned the card and read on its reverse, lord maxwell o'more, m. p., killvany place, county clare, ireland. the angel sat on the edge of the seat, bracing her feet against the one opposite, as the cab pitched and swung around corners and past vehicles. she mechanically fingered the pasteboard and stared straight ahead. then she drew a deep breath and read the card again. "a lord-man!" she groaned despairingly. "a lord-man! bet my hoecake's scorched! here i've gone and pledged my word to freckles i'd find him some decent relatives, that he could be proud of, and now there isn't a chance out of a dozen that he'll have to be ashamed of them after all. it's too mean!" the tears of vexation rolled down the tired, nerve-racked angel's cheeks. "this isn't going to do," she said, resolutely wiping her eyes with the palm of her hand and gulping down the nervous spasm in her throat. "i must read this paper before i meet lord o'more." she blinked back the tears and spreading the paper on her knee, read: "after three months' fruitless search, lord o'more gives up the quest of his lost nephew, and leaves chicago today for his home in ireland." she read on, and realized every word. the likeness settled any doubt. it was freckles over again, only older and well dressed. "well, i must catch you if i can," muttered the angel. "but when i do, if you are a gentleman in name only, you shan't have freckles; that's flat. you're not his father and he is twenty. anyway, if the law will give him to you for one year, you can't spoil him, because nobody could, and," she added, brightening, "he'll probably do you a lot of good. freckles and i both must study years yet, and you should be something that will save him. i guess it will come out all right. at least, i don't believe you can take him away if i say no." "thank you; and wait, no matter how long," she said to her driver. catching up the paper, she hurried to the desk and laid down lord o'more's card. "has my uncle started yet?" she asked sweetly. the surprised clerk stepped back on a bellboy, and covertly kicked him for being in the way. "his lordship is in his room," he said, with a low bow. "all right," said the angel, picking up the card. "i thought he might have started. i'll see him." the clerk shoved the bellboy toward the angel. "show her ladyship to the elevator and lord o'more's suite," he said, bowing double. "aw, thanks," said the angel with a slight nod, as she turned away. "i'm not sure," she muttered to herself as the elevator sped upward, "whether it's the irish or the english who say: `aw, thanks,' but it's probable he isn't either; and anyway, i just had to do something to counteract that `all right.' how stupid of me!" at the bellboy's tap, the door swung open and the liveried servant thrust a cardtray before the angel. the opening of the door created a current that swayed a curtain aside, and in an adjoining room, lounging in a big chair, with a paper in his hand, sat a man who was, beyond question, of freckles' blood and race. with perfect control the angel dropped lord o'more's card in the tray, stepped past his servant, and stood before his lordship. "good morning," she said with tense politeness. lord o'more said nothing. he carelessly glanced her over with amused curiosity, until her color began to deepen and her blood to run hotly. "well, my dear," he said at last, "how can i serve you?" instantly the angel became indignant. she had been so shielded in the midst of almost entire freedom, owing to the circumstances of her life, that the words and the look appeared to her as almost insulting. she lifted her head with a proud gesture. "i am not your `dear,'" she said with slow distinctness. "there isn't a thing in the world you can do for me. i came here to see if i could do something--a very great something--for you; but if i don't like you, i won't do it!" then lord o'more did stare. suddenly he broke into a ringing laugh. without a change of attitude or expression, the angel stood looking steadily at him. there was a silken rustle, then a beautiful woman with cheeks of satiny pink, dark hair, and eyes of pure irish blue, moved to lord o'more's side, and catching his arm, shook him impatiently. "terence! have you lost your senses?" she cried. "didn't you understand what the child said? look at her face! see what she has!" lord o'more opened his eyes widely and sat up. he did look at the angel's face intently, and suddenly found it so good that it was difficult to follow the next injunction. he arose instantly. "i beg your pardon," he said. "the fact is, i am leaving chicago sorely disappointed. it makes me bitter and reckless. i thought you one more of those queer, useless people who have thrust themselves on me constantly, and i was careless. forgive me, and tell me why you came." "i will if i like you," said the angel stoutly, "and if i don't, i won't!" "but i began all wrong, and now i don't know how to make you like me," said his lordship, with sincere penitence in his tone. the angel found herself yielding to his voice. he spoke in a soft, mellow, smoothly flowing irish tone, and although his speech was perfectly correct, it was so rounded, and accented, and the sentences so turned, that it was freckles over again. still, it was a matter of the very greatest importance, and she must be sure; so she looked into the beautiful woman's face. "are you his wife?" she asked. "yes," said the woman, "i am his wife." "well," said the angel judicially, "the bird woman says no one in the whole world knows all a man's bignesses and all his littlenesses as his wife does. what you think of him should do for me. do you like him?" the question was so earnestly asked that it met with equal earnestness. the dark head moved caressingly against lord o'more's sleeve. "better than anyone in the whole world," said lady o'more promptly. the angel mused a second, and then her legal tinge came to the fore again. "yes, but have you anyone you could like better, if he wasn't all right?" she persisted. "i have three of his sons, two little daughters, a father, mother, and several brothers and sisters," came the quick reply. "and you like him best?" persisted the angel with finality. "i love him so much that i would give up every one of them with dry eyes if by so doing i could save him," cried lord o' more's wife. "oh!" cried the angel. "oh, my!" she lifted her clear eyes to lord o'more's and shook her head. "she never, never could do that!" she said. "but it's a mighty big thing to your credit that she thinks she could. i guess i'll tell you why i came." she laid down the paper, and touched the portrait. "when you were only a boy, did people call you freckles?" she asked. "dozens of good fellows all over ireland and the continent are doing it today," answered lord o'more. the angel's face wore her most beautiful smile. "i was sure of it," she said winningly. "that's what we call him, and he is so like you, i doubt if any one of those three boys of yours are more so. but it's been twenty years. seems to me vou've been a long time coming!" lord o'more caught the angel's wrists and his wife slipped her arms around her. "steady, my girl!" said the man's voice hoarsely. "don't make me think you've brought word of the boy at this last hour, unless you know surely." "it's all right," said the angel. "we have him, and there's no chance of a mistake. if i hadn't gone to that home for his little clothes, and heard of you and been hunting you, and had met you on the street, or anywhere, i would have stopped you and asked you who you were, just because you are so like him. it's all right. i can tell you where freckles is; but whether you deserve to know--that's another matter!" lord o'more did not hear her. he dropped in his chair, and covering his face, burst into those terrible sobs that shake and rend a strong man. lady o'more hovered over him, weeping. "umph! looks pretty fair for freckles," muttered the angel. "lots of things can be explained; now perhaps they can explain this." they did explain so satisfactorily that in a few minutes the angel was on her feet, hurrying lord and lady o'more to reach the hospital. "you said freckles' old nurse knew his mother's picture instantly," said the angel. "i want that picture and the bundle of little clothes." lady o'more gave them into her hands. the likeness was a large miniature, painted on ivory, with a frame of beaten gold. surrounded by masses of dark hair was a delicately cut face. in the upper part of it there was no trace of freckles, but the lips curving in a smile were his very own. the angel gazed at it steadily. then with a quivering breath she laid the portrait aside and reached both hands to lord o'more. "that will save freckles' life and insure his happiness," she said positively. "thank you, oh thank you for coming!" she opened the bundle of yellow and brown linen and gave only a glance at the texture and work. then she gathered the little clothes and the picture to her heart and led the way to the cab. ushering lord and lady o'more into the reception room, she said to mclean, "please go call up my father and ask him to come on the first train." she closed the door after him. "these are freckles' people," she said to the bird woman. "you can find out about each other; i'm going to him." chapter xix wherein freckles finds his birthright and the angel loses her heart the nurse left the room quietly, as the angel entered, carrying the bundle and picture. when they were alone, she turned to freckles and saw that the crisis was indeed at hand. that she had good word to give him was his salvation, for despite the heavy plaster jacket that held his body immovable, his head w as lifted from the pillow. both arms reached for her. his lips and cheeks flamed, while his eyes flashed with excitement. "angel," he panted. "oh angel! did you find them? are they white? are the little stitches there? o h angel! did me mother love me?" the words seemed to leap from his burning lips. the angel dropped the bundle on the bed and laid the picture face down across his knees. she gently pushed his head to the pillow and caught his arms in a firm grasp. "yes, dear heart," she said with fullest assurance. "no little clothes were ever whiter. i never in all my life saw such dainty, fine, little stitches; and as for loving you, no boy's mother ever loved him more!" a nervous trembling seized freckles. "sure? are you sure?" he urged with clicking teeth. "i know," said the angel firmly. "and freckles, while you rest and be glad, i want to tell you a story. when you feel stronger we will look at the clothes together. they are here. they are all right. but while i was at the home getting them, i heard of some people that were hunting a lost boy. i went to see them, and what they told me was all so exactly like what might have happened to you that i must tell you. then you'll understand that things could be very different from what you always have tortured yourself with thinking. are you strong enough to listen? may i tell you?" "maybe `twasn't me mother! maybe someone else made those little stitches!" "now, goosie, don't you begin that," said the angel, "because i know that it was!" "know!" cried freckles, his head springing from the pillow. "know! how can you know?" the angel gently soothed him back. "why, because nobody else would ever sit and do it the way it is done. that's how i know," she said emphatically. "now you listen while i tell you about this lost boy and his people, who have hunted for months and can't find him." freckles lay quietly under her touch, but he did not hear a word that she was saying until his roving eyes rested on her face; he immediately noticed a remarkable thing. for the first time she was talking to him and avoiding his eyes. that was not like the angel at all. it was the delight of hearing her speak that she looked one squarely in the face and with perfect frankness. there were no side glances and down-drooping eyes when the angel talked; she was business straight through. instantly freckles' wandering thoughts fastened on her words. "--and he was a sour, grumpy, old man," she was saying. "he always had been spoiled, because he was an only son, so he had a title, and a big estate. he would have just his way, no matter about his sweet little wife, or his boys, or anyone. so when his elder son fell in love with a beautiful girl having a title, the very girl of all the world his father wanted him to, and added a big adjoining estate to his, why, that pleased him mightily. "then he went and ordered his younger son to marry a poky kind of a girl, that no one liked, to add another big estate on the other side, and that was different. that was all the world different, because the elder son had been in love all his life with the girl he married, and, oh, freckles, it's no wonder, for i saw her! she's a beauty and she has the sweetest way. "but that poor younger son, he had been in love with the village vicar's daughter all his life. that' s no wonder either, for she was more beautiful yet. she could sing as the angels, but she hadn't a cent. she loved him to death, too, if he was bony and freckled and red-haired--i don't mean that! they didn't say what color his hair was, but his father's must have been the reddest ever, for when he found out about them, and it wasn't anything so terrible, _he just caved_! "the old man went to see the girl--the pretty one with no money, of course--and he hurt her feelings until she ran away. she went to london and began studying music. soon she grew to be a fine singer, so she joined a company and came to this country. "when the younger son found that she had left london, he followed her. when she got here all alone, and afraid, and saw him coming to her, why, she was so glad she up and married him, just like anybody else would have done. he didn't want her to travel with the troupe, so when they reached chicago they thought that would be a good place, and they stopped, while he hunted work. it was slow business, because he never had been taught to do a useful thing, and he didn't even know how to hunt work, least of all to do it when he found it; so pretty soon things were going wrong. but if he couldn't find work, she could always sing, so she sang at night, and made little things in the daytime. he didn't like her to sing in public, and he wouldn't allow her when he could _help_ himself; but winter came, it was very cold, and fire was expensive. rents went up, and they had to move farther out to cheaper and cheaper places; and you were coming--i mean, the boy that is lost was coming--and they were almost distracted. then the man wrote and told his father all about it; and his father sent the letter back unopened with a line telling him never to write again. when the baby came, there was very little left to pawn for food and a doctor, and nothing at all for a nurse; so an old neighbor woman went in and took care of the young mother and the little baby, because she was so sorry for them. by that time they were away in the suburbs on the top floor of a little wooden house, among a lot of big factories, and it kept growing colder, with less to eat. then the man grew desperate and he went just to find something to eat and the woman was desperate, too. she got up, left the old woman to take care of her baby, and went into the city to sing for some money. the woman became so cold she put the baby in bed and went home. then a boiler blew up in a big factory beside the little house and set it on fire. a piece of iron was pitched across and broke through the roof. it came down smnash, and cut just one little hand off the poor baby. it screamed and screamed; and the fire kept coming closer and closer. "the old woman ran out with the other people and saw what had happened. she knew there wasn't going to be time to wait for firemen or anything, so she ran into the building. she could hear the baby screaming, and she couldn't stand that; so she worked her way to it. there it was, all hurt and bleeding. then she was almost scared to death over thinking what its mother would do to her for going away and leaving it, so she ran to a home for little friendless babies, that was close, and banged on the door. then she hid across the street until the baby was taken in, and then she ran back to see if her own house was burning. the big factory and the little house and a lot of others were all gone. the people there told her that the beautiful lady came back and ran into the house to find her baby. she had just gone in when her husband came, and he went in after her, and the house fell over both of them." freckles lay rigidly, with his eyes on the angel's face, while she talked rapidly to the ceiling. "then the old woman was sick about that poor little baby. she was afraid to tell them at the home, because she knew she never should have left it, but she wrote a letter and sent it to where the beautiful woman, when she was ill, had said her husband's people lived. she told all about the little baby that she could remember: when it was born, how it was named for the man's elder brother, that its hand had been cut off in the fire, and where she had put it to be doctored and taken care of. she told them that its mother and father were both burned, and she begged and implored them to come after it. "you'd think that would have melted a heart of ice, but that old man hadn't any heart to melt, for he got that letter and read it. he hid it away among his papers and never told a soul. a few months ago he died. when his elder son went to settle his business, he found the letter almost the first thing. he dropped everything, and came, with his wife, to hunt that baby, because he always had loved his brother dearly, and wanted him back. he had hunted for him all he dared all these years, but when he got here you were gone--i mean the baby was gone, and i had to tell you, freckles, for you see, it might have happened to you like that just as easy as to that other lost boy." freckles reached up and turned the angel's face until he compelled her eyes to meet his. "angel," he asked quietly, "why don't you look at me when you are telling about that lost boy?" "i--i didn't know i wasn't," faltered the angel. "it seems to me," said freckles, his breath beginning to come in sharp wheezes, "that you got us rather mixed, and it ain't like you to be mixing things till one can't be knowing. if they were telling you so much, did they say which hand was for being off that lost boy?" the angel's eyes escaped again. "it--it was the same as yours," she ventured, barely breathing in her fear. still freckles lay rigid and whiter than the coverlet. "would that boy be as old as me?" he asked. "yes," said the angel faintly. "angel," said freckles at last, catching her wrist, "are you trying to tell me that there is somebody hunting a boy that you're thinking might be me? are you belavin' you've found me relations?" then the angel's eyes came home. the time had come. she pinioned freckles' arms to his sides and bent above him. "how strong are you, dear heart?" she breathed. "how brave are you? can you bear it? dare i tell you that?" "no!" gasped freckles. "not if you're sure! i can't bear it! i'll die if you do!" the day had been one unremitting strain with the angel. nerve tension was drawn to the finest thread. it snapped suddenly. "die!" she flamed. "die, if i tell you that! you said this morning that you would die if you didn't know your name, and if your people were honorable. now i've gone and found you a name that stands for ages of honor, a mother who loved you enough to go into the fire and die for you, and the nicest kind of relatives, and you turn round and say you'll die over that! _you just try dying and you'll get a good slap_!" the angel stood glaring at him. one second freckles lay paralyzed and dumb with astonishment. the next the irish in his soul arose above everything. a laugh burst from him. the terrified angel caught him in her arms and tried to stifle the sound. she implored and commanded. when he was too worn to utter another sound, his eyes laughed silently. after a long time, when he was quiet and rested, the angel commenced talking to him gently, and this time her big eyes, humid with tenderness and mellow with happiness, seemed as if they could not leave his face. "dear freckles," she was saying, "across your knees there is the face of the mother who went into the fire for you, and i know the name--old and full of honor--to which you were born. dear heart, which will you have first?" freckles was very tired; the big drops of perspiration ran together on his temples; but the watching angel caught the words his lips formed, "me mother!" she lifted the lovely pictured face and set it in the nook of his arm. freckles caught her hand and drew her beside him, and together they gazed at the picture while the tears slid over their cheeks. "me mother! oh, me mother! can you ever be forgiving me? oh, me beautiful little mother!" chanted freckles over and over in exalted wonder, until he was so completely exhausted that his lips refused to form the question in his weary eyes. "wait!" cried the angel with inborn refinement, for she could no more answer that question than he could ask. "wait, i will write it!" she hurried to the table, caught up the nurse's pencil, and on the back of a prescription tablet scrawled it: "terence maxwell o'more, dunderry house, county clare, ireland." before she had finished came f reckles' voice:, `angel, are you hurrying?" "yes," said the angel; "i am. but there is a good deal of it. i have to put in your house and country, so that you will feel located." "me house?" marveled freckles. "of course," said the angel. "your uncle says your grandmother left your father her dower house and estate, because she knew his father would cut him off. you get that, and all your share of your grandfather's property besides. it is all set off for you and waiting. lord o'more told me so. i suspect you are richer than mclean, freckles." she closed his fingers over the slip and straightened his hair. "now you are all right, dear limberlost guard," she said. "you go to sleep and don't think of a thing but just pure joy, joy, joy! i'll keep your people until you wake up. you are too tired to see anyone else just. now!" freckles caught her skirt as she turned from him. "i'll go to sleep in five minutes," he said, "if you will be doing just one thing more for me. send for your father! oh, angel, send for him quick! how will i ever be waiting until he comes?" one instant the angel stood looking at him. the next a crimson wave darkly stained her lovely face. her chin began a spasmodic quivering and the tears sprang into her eyes. her hands caught at her chest as if she were stifling. f reckles' grasp on her tightened until he drew her beside him. h e slipped his arm around her and drew her face to his pillow. "don't, angel; for the love of mercy don't be doing that," he implored. "i can't be bearing it. tell me. you must tell me." the angel shook her head. "that ain't fair, angel," said freckles. "you made me tell you when it was like tearing the heart raw from me breast. and you was for making everything heaven--just heaven and nothing else for me. if i'm so much more now than i was an hour ago, maybe i can be thinking of some way to fix things. you will be telling me?" he coaxed, moving his cheek against her hair. the angel's head moved in negation. freckles did a moment of intent thinking. "maybe i can be guessing," he whispered. "will you be giving me three chances?" there was the faintest possible assent. "you didn't want me to be knowing me name," guessed freckles. the angel's head sprang from the pillow and her tear-stained face flamed with outraged indignation. "why, i did too!" she cried angrily. "one gone," said freckles calmly. "you didn't want me to have relatives, a home, and money." "i did!" exclaimed the angel. "didn't i go myself, all alone, into the city, and find them when i was afraid as death? i did. too!" "two gone," said freckles. "you didn't want the beautifulest girl in the world to be telling me" down went the angel's face and a heavy sob shook her. freckles' clasp tightened around her shoulders, while his face, in its conflicting emotions, was a study. he was so stunned and bewildered by the miracle that had been performed in bringing to light his name and relatives that he had no strength left for elaborate mental processes. despite all it meant to him to know his name at last, and that he was of honorable birth--knowledge without which life was an eternal disgrace and burden the one thing that was hammering in freckles' heart and beating in his brain, past any attempted expression, was the fact that, while nameless and possibly born in shame, the angel had told him that she loved him. he could find no word with which to begin to voice the rapture of his heart over that. but if she regretted it--if it had been a thing done out of her pitv for his condition, or her feeling of responsibility, if it killed him after all, there was only one thing left to do. not for mclean, not for the bird woman, not for the duncans would freckles have done it--but for the angel-if it would make her happy--he would do anything. "angel," whispered freckles, with his lips against her hair, "you haven't learned your history book very well, or else you've forgotten." "forgotten what?" sobbed the angel. "forgotten about the real knight, ladybird," breathed freckles. "don't you know that, if anything happened that made his lady sorry, a real knight just simply couldn't be remembering it? angel, darling little swamp angel, you be listening to me. there was one night on the trail, one solemn, grand, white night, that there wasn't ever any other like before or since, when the dear boss put his arm around me and told me that he loved me; but if you care, angel, if you don't want it that way, why, i ain't remembering that anyone else ever did--not in me whole life." the angel lifted her head and looked into the depths of freckles' honest gray eyes, and they met hers unwaveringly,. but the pain in them was pitiful. "do you mean," she demanded, "that you don't remember that a brazen, forward girl told you, when you hadn't asked her, that she" --the angel choked on it a second, but she gave a gulp and brought it out bravely--"that she loved you?" "no!" cried freckles. "no! i don't remember anything of the kind!" but all the songbirds of his soul burst into melody over that one little clause: "when you hadn't asked her." "but you will," said the angel. "you may live to be an old, old man, and then you will." "i will not!" cried freckles. "how can you think it, angel?" "you won't even look as if you remember?" "i will not!" persisted freckles. "i'll be swearing to it if you want me to. if you wasn't too tired to think this thing out straight, you'd be seeing that i couldn't--that i just simply couldn't! i'd rather give it all up now and go into eternity alone, without ever seeing a soul of me same blood, or me home, or hearing another man call me by the name i w as born to, than to remember anything that would be hurting you, angel. i should think you'd be understanding that it ain't no ways possible for me to do it." the angel's tear-stained face flashed into dazzling beauty. a half-hysterical little laugh broke from her heart and bubbled over her lips. "oh, freckles, forgive me!" she cried. "i've been through so much that i'm scarcely myself, or i wouldn't be here bothering you when you should be sleeping. of course you couldn't! i knew it all the time! i was just scared! i was forgetting that you were you! you're too good a knight to remember a thing like that. of course you are! and when you don't remember, why, then it's the same as if it never happened. i was almost killed because i'd gone and spoiled everything, but now it will be all right. now vou can go on and do things like other men, and i can have some flowers, and letters, and my sweetheart coming, and when you are sure, why, then you can tell me things, can't you? oh, freckles, i'm so glad! oh, i'm so happy! it's dear of you not to remember, freckles; perfectly dear! it's no wonder i love you so. the wonder would be if i did not. oh, i should like to know how i'm ever going to make you understand how much i love you!" pillow and all, she caught him to her breast one long second; then she was gone. freckles lay dazed with astonishment. at last his amazed eyes searched the room for something approaching the human to which he could appeal, and falling on his mother's portrait, he set it before him. "for the love of life! me little mother," he panted, "did you hear that? did you hear it! tell me, am i living, or am i dead and all heaven come true this minute? did you hear it?" he shook the frame in his impatience at receiving no answer. "you are only a pictured face," he said at last, "and of course you can't talk; but the soul of you must be somewhere, and surely in this hour you are close enough to be hearing. tell me, did you hear that? i can't ever be telling a living soul; but darling little mother, who gave your life for mine, i can always be talking of it to you! every day we'll talk it over and try to understand the miracle of it. tell me, are all women like that? were you like me swamp angel? if you were, then i'm understanding why me father followed across the ocean and went into the fire." chapter xx wherein freckles returns to the limberlost, and lord o'more sails for ireland without him freckles' voice ceased, his eyes closed, and his head rolled back from exhaustion. later in the day he insisted on seeing lord and lady o'more, but he fainted before the resemblance of another man to him, and gave all of his friends a terrible fright. the next morning, the man of affairs, with a heart filled with misgivings, undertook the interview on which freckles insisted. his fears were without cause. freckles was the soul of honor and simplicity. "have they been telling you what's come to me?" he asked without even waiting for a greeting. "yes," said the angel's father. "do you think you have the very worst of it clear to your understanding?" under freckles' earnest eyes the man of affairs answered soberly: "i think i have, mr. o'more." that was the first time freckles heard his name from the lips of another. one second he lay overcome; the next, tears filled his eyes, and he reached out his hand. then the angel's father understood, and he clasped that hand and held it in a strong, firm grasp. "terence, my boy," he said, "let me do the talking. i came here with the understanding that you wanted to ask me for my only child. i should like, at the proper time, to regard her marriage, if she has found the man she desires to marry, not as losing all i have, but as gaining a man on whom i can depend to love as a son and to take charge of my affairs for her when i retire from business. bend all of your energies toward rapid recovery, and from this hour understand that my daughter and my home are yours." "you're not forgetting this?" freckles lifted his right arm. "terence, i'm sorrier than i have words to express about that," said the man of affairs. "it's a damnable pity! but if it's for me to choose whether i give all i have left in this world to a man lacking a hand, or to one of these gambling, tippling, immoral spendthrifts of today, with both hands and feet off their souls, and a rotten spot in the core, i choose you; and it seems that my daughter does the same. put what is left you of that right arm to the best uses you can in this world, and never again mention or feel that it is defective so long as you live. good day, sir!" "one minute more," said freckles. "yesterday the angel was telling me that there was money coming to me from two sources. she said that me grandmother had left me father all of her fortune and her house, because she knew that bis father would be cutting him off, and also that me uncle had set aside for me what would be me father's interest in his father's estate. "whatever the sum is that me grandmother left me father, because she loved him and wanted him to be having it, that i'll be taking. `twas hers from her father, and she had the right to be giving it as she chose. anything from the man that knowingly left me father and me mother to go cold and hungry, and into the fire in misery, when just a little would have made life so beautiful to them, and saved me this crippled body--money that he willed from me when he knew i was living, of his blood and on charity among strangers, i don't touch, not if i freeze, starve, and burn too! if there ain't enough besides that, and i can't be earning enough to fix things for the angel" "we are not discussing money!" burst in the man of affairs. "we don't want any blood-money! we have all we need without it. if you don't feel right and easy over it, don't you touch a cent of any of it." "it's right i should have what me grandmother intinded for me father, and i want it," said freckles, "but i'd die before i'd touch a cent of me grandfather's money!" "now," said the angel, "we are all going home. we have done all we can for freckles. his people are here. he should know them. they are very anxious to become acquainted with him. we'll resign him to them. when he is well, why, then he will be perfectly free to go to ireland or come to the limberlost, just as he chooses. we will go at once." mclean held out for a week, and then he could endure it no longer. he was heart hungry for freckles. communing with himself in the long, soundful nights of the swamp, he had learned to his astonishment that for the past year his heart had been circling the limberlost with freckles. he began to wish that he had not left him. perhaps the boy--his boy by first right, after all--was being neglected. if the boss had been a nervous old woman, he scarcely could have imagined more things that might be going wrong. he started for chicago, loaded with a big box of goldenrod, asters, fringed gentians, and crimson leaves, that the angel carefully had gathered from freckles' room, and a little, long slender package. he traveled with biting, stinging jealousy in his heart. he would not admit it even to himself, but he was unable to remain longer away from freckles and leave him to the care of lord o'more. in a few minutes' talk, while mclean awaited admission to freckles' room, his lordship had chatted genially of freckles' rapid recovery, of his delight that he was unspotted by his early surroundings, and his desire to visit the limberlost with freckles before they sailed; he expressed the hope that he could prevail upon the angel's father to place her in his wife's care and have her education finished in paris. he said they were anxious to do all they could to help bind freckles' arrangements with the angel, as both he and lady o'more regarded her as the most promising girl theyknew, and one who could be fitted to fill the high position in which freckles would place her. every word he uttered was pungent with bitterness to mclean. the swamp had lost its flavor without freckles; and yet, as lord o'more talked, mclean fervently wished himself in the heart of it. as he entered freckles' room he almost lost his breath. everything was changed. freckles lay beside a window where he could follow lake michigan's blue until the horizon dipped into it. he could see big soft clouds, white-capped waves, shimmering sails, and puffing steamers trailing billowing banners of lavender and gray across the sky. gulls and curlews wheeled over the water and dipped their wings in the foam. the room was filled with every luxury that taste and money could introduce. all the tan and sunburn had been washed from freckles' face in sweats of agony. it was a smooth, even white, its brown rift scarcely showing. what the nurses and lady o'more had done to freckles' hair mclean could not guess, but it was the most beautiful that he ever had seen. fine as floss, bright in color, waving and crisp, it fell around the white face. they had gotten his arms into and his chest covered with a finely embroidered, pale-blue silk shirt, with soft, white tie at the throat. among the many changes that had taken place during his absence, the fact that freckles was most attractive and barely escaped being handsome remained almost unnoticed by the boss, so great was his astonishment at seeing both cuffs turned back and the right arm in view. freckles was using the maimed arm that previously he always had hidden. "oh lord, sir, but i'm glad to see you!" cried freckles, almost rolling from the bed as he reached toward mclean. "tell me quick, is the angel well and happy? can me little chicken spread six feet of wing and sail to his mother? how's me new father, the bird woman, duncans, and nellie--darling little high-stepping nelie? me aunt alice is going to choose the hat just as soon as i'm mended enough to be going with her. how are all the gang? have they found any more good trees? i've been thinking a lot, sir. i believe i can find others near that last one. me aunt alice thinks maybe i can, and uncle terence says it's likely. golly, but they're nice, ilegant people. i tell you i'm proud to be same blood with them! come closer, quick! i was going to do this yesterday, and somehow i just felt that you'd surely be coming today and i waited. i'm selecting the angel's ring stone. the ring she ordered for me is finished and they sent it to keep me company. see? it's an emerald--just me color, lord o'more says." freckles flourished his hand. "ain't that fine? never took so much comfort with anything in me life. every color of the old swamp is in it. i asked the angel to have a little shamrock leaf cut on it, so every time i saw it i'd be thinking of the `love, truth, and valor' of that song she was teaching me. ain't that a beautiful song? some of these days i'm going to make it echo. i'm a ittle afraid to be doing it with me voice yet, but me heart's tuning away on it every blessed hour. will you be looking at these now?" freckles tilted a tray of unset stones from peacock's that would have ransomed several valuable kings. he held them toward mclean, stirring them with his right arm. "i tell you i'm glad to see you, sir" he said. "i tried to tell me uncle what i wanted, but this ain't for him to be mixed up in, anyway, and i don't think i made it clear to him. i couldn't seem to say the words i wanted. i can be telling you, sir." mclean's heart began to thump as a lover's. "go on, freckles," he said assuringly. "it's this," said freckles. "i told him that i would pay only three hundred dollars for the angel's stone. i'm thinking that with what he has laid up for me, and the bigness of things that the angel did for me, it seems like a stingy little sum to him. i know he thinks i should be giving much more, but i feel as if i just had to be buying that stone with money i earned meself; and that is all i have saved of me wages. i don't mind paying for the muff, or the drexing table, or mrs. duncan's things, from that other money, and later the angel can have every last cent of me grandmother's, if she'll take it; but just now--oh, sir, can't you see that i have to be buying this stone with what i have in the bank? i'm feeling that i couldn't do any other way, and don't you think the angel would rather have the best stone i can buy with the money i earned meself than a finer one paid for with other money?" "in other words, freckles," said the boss in a husky voice, "you don't want to buy the angel's ring with money. you want to give for it your first awful fear of the swamp. you want to pay for it with the loneliness and heart hunger you have suffered there, with last winter's freezing on the line and this summer's burning in the sun. you want it to stand to her for every hour in which you risked your life to fulfill your contract honorably. you want the price of that stone to be the fears that have chilled your heart-the sweat and blood of your body." freckles' eyes were filled with tears and his face quivering with feeing. "dear mr. mclean," he said, reaching with a carex over the boss's black hair and his cheek. "dear boss, that's why i've wanted you so. i knew you would know. now you will be looking at these? i don't want emeralds, because that's what she gave me." he pushed the green stones into a little heap of rejected ones. then he singled out all the pearls. "ain't they pretty things?" he said. "i'll be getting her some of those later. they are like lily faces, turtle-head flowers, dewdrops in the shade or moonlight; but they haven't the life in them that i want in the stone i give to the angel right. now" freckles heaped the pearls with the emeralds. he studied the diamonds a long time. "these things are so fascinating like they almost tempt one, though they ain't quite the proper thing," he said. "i've always dearly loved to be watching yours, sir. i must get her some of these big ones, too, some day. they're like the limberlost in january, when it's all ice-coated, and the sun is in the west and shines through and makes all you can see of the whole world look like fire and ice; but fire and ice ain't like the angel." the diamonds joined the emeralds and pearls. there was left a little red heap, and freckles' fingers touched it with a new tenderness. his eyes were flashing. "i'm thinking here's me angel's stone," he exulted. "the limberlost, and me with it, grew in mine; but it's going to bloom, and her with it, in this! there's the red of the wild poppies, the cardinal-flowers, and the little bunch of crushed foxfire that we found where she put it to save me. there's the light of the campfire, and the sun setting over sleepy snake creek. there's the red of the blood we were willing to give for each other. it's ike her ips, and like the drops that dried on her beautiful arm that first day, and i'm thinking it must be like the brave, tender, clean, red heart of her." freckles lifted the ruby to his lips and handed it to mclean. "i'll be signing me cheque and you have it set," he said. "i want you to draw me money and pay for it with those very same dollars, sir." again the heart of mclean took hope. "freckles, may i ask you something?" he said. "why, sure," said freckles. "there's nothing you would be asking that it wouldn't be giving me joy to be telling you." mclean's eyes traveled to freckles' right arm with which he was moving the jewels. "oh, that!" cried freckles with a laugh. "you're wanting to know where all the bitterness is gone? well sir, `twas carried from me soul, heart, and body on the lips of an angel. seems that hurt was necessary in the beginning to make today come true. the wound had always been raw, but the angel was healing it. if she doesn't care, i don't. me dear new father doesn't, nor me aunt and uncle, and you never did. why should i be fretting all me life about what can't be helped. the real truth is, that since what happened to it last week, i'm so everlastingly proud of it i catch meself sticking it out on display a bit." freckles looked the boss in the eyes and began to laugh. "well thank heaven!" said mclean. "now it's me turn," said freckles. "i don't know as i ought to be asking you, and yet i can't see a reason good enough to keep me from it. it's a thing i've had on me mind every hour since i've had time to straighten things out a little. may i be asking you a question?" mclean reached over and took freckles' hand. his voice was shaken with feeling as he replied: "freckles, you almost hurt me. will you never learn how much you are to me--how happy you make me in coming to me with anything, no matter what?" "then it's this," said freckles, gripping the hand of mclean strongly. "if this accident, and all that's come to me since, had never happened, where was it you had planned to send me to school? what was it you meant for me to do?" "why, freckles," answered mclean, "i'm scarcely prepared to state definitely. my ideas were rather hazy. i thought we would make a beginning and see which way things went. i figured on taking you to grand rapids first, and putting you in the care of my mother. i had an idea it would be best to secure a private tutor to coach you for a year or two, until you were ready to enter ann arbor or the chicago university in good shape. then i thought we'd finish in this country at yale or harvard, and end with oxford, to get a good, all-round flavor." "is that all?" asked freckles. "no; that's leaving the music out," said mclean. "i intended to have your voice tested by some master, and if you really were endowed for a career as a great musician, and had inclinations that way, i wished to have you drop some of the college work and make music your chief study. finally, i wanted us to take a trip through europe and clear around the circle together" "and then what?" queried freckles breathlessly. "why, then," said mclean, "you know that my heart is hopelessly in the woods. i never will quit the timber business while there is timber to handle and breath in my body. i thought if you didn't make a profession of music, and had any inclination my way, we would stretch the partnership one more and take you into the firm, placing your work with me. those plans may sound tumbled in the telling, but they have grown steadily on me, freckles, as you have grown dear to me." freckles lifted anxious and eager eyes to mclean. "you told me once on the trail, and again when we thought that i was dying, that you loved me. do these things that have come to me make any difference in any way with your feeing toward me?" "none," said mclean. "how could they, freckles? nothing could make me love you more, and you never will do anything that will make me love you less." "glory be to god!" cried freckles. "glory to the almighty! hurry and be telling your mother i'm coming! just as soon as i can get on me feet i'll be taking that ring to me angel, and then i'll go to grand rapids and be making me start just as you planned, only that i can be paying me own way. when i'm educated enough, we'll all--the angel and her father, the bird woman, you, and me--all of us will go together and see me house and me relations and be taking that trip. when we get back, we'll add o'more to the lumber company, and golly, sir, but we'll make things hum! good land, sir! don't do that! why, mr. mclean, dear boss, dear father, don't be doing that! what is it?" "nothing, nothing!" boomed mclean's deep bass; "nothing at all!" he abruptly turned, and hurried to the window. "this is a mighty fine view," he said. "lake's beautiful this morning. no wonder chicago people are so proud of their city's location on its shore. but, freckles, what is lord o'more going to say to this?" "i don't know," said freckles. "i am going to be cut deep if he cares, for he's been more than good to me, and lady alice is next to me angel. he's made me feel me blood and race me own possession. she's talked to me by the hour of me father and mother and me grandmother. she's made them all that real i can lay claim to them and feel that they are mine. i'm very sorry to be hurting them, if it will, but it can't be changed. nobody ever puts the width of the ocean between me and the angel. from here to the limberlost is all i can be bearing peaceable. i want the education, and then i want to work and ive here in the country where i was born, and where the ashes of me father and mother rest. "i'll be glad to see ireland, and glad especial to see those little people who are my kin, but i ain't ever staying long. all me heart is the angel's, and the limberlost is calling every minute. you're thinking, sir, that when i look from that window i see the beautiful water, ain't you? i'm not. "i see soft, slow clouds oozing across the blue, me big black chickens hanging up there, and a great feather softly sliding down. i see mighty trees, swinging vines, bright flowers, and always masses of the wild roses, with the wild rose face of me ladybird looking through. i see the swale rocking, smell the sweetness of the blooming things, and the damp, mucky odor of the swamp; and i hear me birds sing, me squirrels bark, the rattlers hiss, and the step of wessner or black jack coming; and whether it's the things that i loved or the things that i feared, it's all a part of the day. "me heart's all me swamp angel's, and me love is all hers, and i have her and the swamp so confused in me mind i never can be separating them. when i look at her, i see blue sky, the sun rifting through the leaves and pink and red flowers; and when i look at the limberlost i see a pink fa ce with blue eyes, gold hair, and red lips, and, it's the truth, sir, they're mixed till they're one to me! "i'm afraid it will be hurting some, but i have the feeing that i can be making my dear people understand, so that they will be willing to let me come back home. send lady o'more to put these flowers god made in the place of these glass-house ilegancies, and please be cutting the string of this ittle package the angel's sent me." as freckles held up the package, the lights of the limberlost flashed from the emerald on his finger. on the cover was printed: "to the limberlost guard!" under it was a big, crisp, iridescent black feather. [end.] . 1818 frankenstein or, the modern prometheus by mary wollstonecraft shelley preface preface the event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by dr. darwin, and some of the physiological writers of germany, as not of impossible occurrence. i shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, i have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. the event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantment. it was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it develops; and, however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield. i have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human nature, while i have not scrupled to innovate upon their combinations. the iliad, the tragic poetry of greeceshakespeare, in the tempest/and midsummer night's dreamand most especially milton, in paradise lost, conform to this rule; and the most humble novelist, who seeks to confer or receive amusement from his labours, may, without presumption, apply to prose fiction a licence, or rather a rule, from the adoption of which so many exquisite combinations of human feeling have resulted in the highest specimens of poetry. the circumstance on which my story rests was suggested in casual conversation. it was commenced partly as a source of amusement, and partly as an expedient for exercising any untried resources of mind. other motives were mingled with these as the work proceeded. i am by no means indifferent to the manner in which whatever moral tendencies exist in the sentiments or characters it contains shall affect the reader; yet my chief concern in this respect has been limited to avoiding the enervating effects of the novels of the present day and to the exhibition of the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue. the opinions which naturally spring from the and situation of the hero are by no means to be conceived as existing always in my own conviction; nor is any inference justly to be drawn from the following pages as prejudicing any philosophical doctrine of whatever kind. it is a subject also of additional interest to the author that this story was begun in the majestic region where the scene is principally laid, and in society which cannot cease to be regretted. i passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of geneva. the season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves with some german stories of ghosts, which happened to fall into our hands. these tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. two other friends (a tale from the pen of one of whom would be far more acceptable to the public than anything i can ever hope to produce) and myself agreed to write each a story founded on some supernatural occurrence. the weather, however, suddenly became serene; and my two friends left me on a journey among the alps, and lost, in the magnificent scenes which they present, all memory of their ghostly visions. the following tale is the only one which has been completed. marlow, september, 1817. letter i to mrs. saville, england. you will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. i arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking. i am already far north of london; and as i walk in the streets of petersburgh, i feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with delight. do you understand this feeling? this breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which i am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. inspirited by this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid. i try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. there, margaret, the sun is for ever visible its broad disc just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour. therefor with your leave, my sister, i will put some trust in preceding navigatorsthere snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we play be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. what may not be expected in a country of eternal light? i may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent forever. i shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. these are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. but, supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which i shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine. these reflections have dispelled the agitation with which i began my letter, and i feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purposea point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. this expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. i have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the north pacific ocean through the seas which surround the pole. you may remember that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good uncle thomas's library. my education was neglected, yet i was passionately fond of reading. these volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which i had felt, as a child, on learning that my father's dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life. these visions faded when i perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul, and lifted it to heaven. i also became a poet, and for one year lived in a paradise of my own creation; i imagined that i also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of homer and shakespeare are consecrated. you are well acquainted with my failure, and how heavily i bore the disappointment. but just at that time i inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent. six years have passed since i resolved on my present undertaking. i can, even now, remember the hour from which i dedicated myself to this great enterprise. i commenced by inuring my body to hardship. i accompanied the whale-fishers on several expeditions to the north sea; i voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; i often worked harder than the common sailors during the day, and devoted my nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage. twice i actually hired myself as an under-mate in a greenland whaler, and acquitted myself to admiration. i must own i felt a little proud when my captain offered me the second dignity in the vessel, and entreated me to remain with the greatest earnestness; so valuable did he consider my services. and now, dear margaret, do i not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? my life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but i preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! my courage and my resolution are firm; but my hopes fluctuate and my spirits are often depressed. i am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: i am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing. this is the most favourable period for travelling in russia. they fly quickly over the snow in their sledges; the motion is pleasant, and, in my opinion, far more agreeable than that of an english stage-coach. the cold is not excessive, if you are wrapped in fursa dress which i have already adopted; for there is a great difference between walking the deck and remaining seated motionless for hours, when no exercise prevents the blood from actually freezing in your veins. i have no ambition to lose my life on the post-road between st. petersburgh and archangel. i shall depart for the latter town in a fortnight or three weeks; and my intention is to hire a ship there, which can easily be done by paying the insurance for the owner, and to engage as many sailors as i think necessary among those who are accustomed to the whale-fishing. i do not intend to sail until the month of june and when shall i return? ah, dear sister, how can i answer this question? if i succeed, many, many months, perhaps years, will pass before you and i may meet. if i fail, you will see me again soon, or never. farewell, my dear, excellent margaret. heaven shower down blessings on you, and save me, that i may again and again testify my gratitude for all your love and kindness.your affectionate brother, r. walton. letter ii how slowly the time passes here, encompassed as i am by frost and snow! yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. i have hired a vessel, and am occupied in collecting my sailors; those whom i have already engaged appear to be men on whom i can depend, and are certainly possessed of dauntless courage. but i have one want which i have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which i now feel as a most severe evil. i have no friend, margaret: when i am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if i am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. i shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. i desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. you may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but i bitterly feel the want of a friend. i have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. how would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! i am too ardent in execution, and too impatient of difficulties. but it is a still greater evil to me that i am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life i ran wild on a common, and read nothing but our uncle thomas's books of voyages. at that age i became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction that i perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country. now i am twenty-eight, and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. it is true that i have thought more, and that my day dreams are more extended and magnificent; but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and i greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind. well, these are useless complaints; i shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in archangel, among merchants and seamen. yet some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in these rugged bosoms. my lieutenant, for instance, is a man of wonderful courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory: or rather, to word my phrase more characteristically, of advancement in his profession. he is an englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest endowments of humanity. i first became acquainted with him on board a whale vessel: finding that he was unemployed in this city, i easily engaged him to assist in my enterprise. the master is a person of an excellent disposition, and is remarkable in the ship for his gentleness and the mildness of his discipline. this circumstance, added to his well known integrity and dauntless courage, made me very desirous to engage him. a youth passed in solitude, my best years spent under your gentle and feminine fosterage, has so refined the groundwork of my character that i cannot overcome an intense distaste to the usual brutality exercised on board ship: have never believed it to be necessary; and when i heard of a mariner equally noted for his kindliness of heart, and the respect and obedience paid to him by his crew, i felt myself peculiarly fortunate in being able to secure his services. i heard of him first in rather a romantic manner, from a lady who owes to him the happiness of her life. this, briefly, is his story. some years ago he loved a young russian lady of moderate fortune; and having amassed a considerable sum in prize-money, the father of the girl consented to the match. he saw his mistress once before the destined ceremony; but she was bathed in tears, and, throwing herself at his feet, entreated him to spare her, confessing at the same time that she loved another, but that he was poor, and that her father would never consent to the union. my generous friend reassured the suppliant, and on being informed of the name of her lover, instantly abandoned his pursuit. he had already bought a farm with his money, on which he had designed to pass the remainder of his life; but he bestowed the whole on his rival, together with the remains of his prize-money to purchase stock, and then himself solicited the young woman's father to consent to her marriage with her lover. but the old man decidedly refused, thinking himself bound in honour to my friend; who, when he found the father inexorable, quitted his country, nor returned until he heard that his former mistress was married according to her inclinations. "what a noble fellow!" you will exclaim. he is so; but then he is wholly uneducated: he is as silent as a turk, and a kind of ignorant carelessness attends him, which, while it renders his conduct the more astonishing, detracts from the interest and sympathy which otherwise he would command. yet do not suppose, because i complain a little, or because i can conceive a consolation for my toils which i may never know that i am wavering in my resolutions. those are as fixed as fate; and my voyage is only now delayed until the weather shall permit my embarkation. the winter has been dreadfully severe; but the spring promises well, and it is considered as a remarkably early season; so that perhaps i may sail sooner than i expected. i shall do nothing rashly: you know me sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness whenever the safety of others is committed to my care. i cannot describe to you my sensations on the near prospect of undertaking. it is impossible to communicate to you a conception of the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which i am preparing to depart. i am going to unexplored regions, to "the land of mist and snow"; but i shall kill no albatross, therefore do not be alarmed for my safety, or if i should come back to you as worn and woeful as the "ancient mariner." you will smile at my allusion but i will disclose a secret. i have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of ocean, to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets. there is something at work in my soul which i do not understand. i am practically industriouspainstaking;a workman to execute with perseverance and labour:but besides this, there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions i am about to explore. but to return to dearer considerations. shall i meet you again, after having traversed immense seas, and returned by the most southern cape of africa or america? i dare not expect such success, yet i cannot bear to look on the reverse of the picture. continue for the present to write to me by every opportunity; i may receive your letters on some occasions when i need them most to support my spirits. i love you very tenderly. remember me with affection, should you never hear from me again.your affectionate brother, robert walton. letter iii my dear sister,i write a few lines in haste, to say that i am safe, and well advanced on my voyage. this letter will reach england by a merchantman now on its homeward voyage from archangel; more fortunate than i, who may not see my native land, perhaps, for many years. i am, however, in good spirits: my men are bold, and apparently firm of purpose; nor do the floating sheets of ice that continually pass us, indicating the dangers of the region towards which we are advancing, appear to dismay them. we have already reached a very high latitude; but it is the height of summer, and although not so warm as in england, the southern gales, which blow us speedily towards those shores which i so ardently desire to attain, breathe a degree of renovating warmth which i had not expected. no incidents have hitherto befallen us that would make a figure in a letter. one or two stiff gales, and the springing of a leak, are accidents which experienced navigators scarcely remember to record; and i shall be well content if nothing worse happen to us during our voyage. adieu, my dear margaret. be assured that for my own sake, as well as yours, i will not rashly encounter danger. i will be cool, persevering, and prudent. but success shall crown my endeavours. wherefore not? thus far i have gone, tracing a secure way over the pathless seas: the very stars themselves being witnesses and testimonies of my triumph. why not still proceed over the untamed yet obedient element? what can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man? my swelling heart involuntarily pours itself out thus. but i must finish. heaven bless my beloved sister! r.w. letter iv so strange an accident has happened to us that i cannot forbear recording it, although it is very probable that you will see me before these papers can come into your possession. last monday (july 31st), we were nearly surrounded by ice, which closed in the ship on all sides, scarcely leaving her the sea-room in which she floated. our situation was somewhat dangerous, especially as we were compassed round by a very thick fog. we accordingly lay to, hoping that some change would take place in the atmosphere and weather. about two o'clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld, stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end. some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted our attention, and diverted our solicitude from our own situation. we perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a mile: a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat in the sledge, and guided the dogs. we watched the rapid progress of the traveller with our telescopes, until he was lost among the distant inequalities of the ice. this appearance excited our unqualified wonder. we were, as we believed, many hundred miles from any land; but this apparition seemed to denote that it was not, in reality, so distant as we had supposed. shut in, however, by ice, it was impossible to follow his track, which we had observed with the greatest attention. about two hours after this occurrence, we heard the ground sea; and before night the ice broke, and freed our ship. we, however, lay to until the morning, fearing to encounter in the dark those large loose masses which float about after the breaking up of the ice. i profited of this time to rest for a few hours. in the morning, however, as soon as it was light, i went upon the deck, and found all the sailors busy on one side of the vessel, apparently talking to some one in the sea. it was, in fact, a sledge, like that we had seen before, which had drifted towards us in the night, on a large fragment of ice. only one dog remained alive; but there was a human being within it, whom the sailors were persuading to enter the vessel. he was not, as the other traveller seemed to be, a savage inhabitant of some undiscovered island, but an european. when i appeared on deck, the master said, "here is our captain, and he will not allow you to perish on the open sea." on perceiving me, the stranger addressed me in english, although with a foreign accent. "before i come on board your vessel," said he, "will you have the kindness to inform me whither you are bound?" you may conceive my astonishment on hearing such a question addressed to me from a man on the brink of destruction, and to whom i should have supposed that my vessel would have been a resource which he would not have exchanged for the most precious wealth the earth can afford. i replied, however, that we were on a voyage of discovery towards the northern pole. upon hearing this he appeared satisfied, and consented to come on board. good god! margaret, if you had seen the man who thus capitulated for his safety, your surprise would have been boundless. his limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. i never saw a man in so wretched a condition. we attempted to carry him into the cabin; but as soon as he had quitted the fresh air, he fainted. we accordingly brought him back to the deck, and restored him to animation by rubbing him with brandy, and forcing him to swallow a small quantity. as soon as he showed signs of life we wrapped him up in blankets, and placed him near the chimney of the kitchen stove. by slow degrees he recovered, and ate a little soup, which restored him wonderfully. two days passed in this manner before he was able to speak; and i often feared that his sufferings had deprived him of understanding. when he had in some measure recovered, i removed him to my own cabin, and attended on him as much as my duty would permit. i never saw a more interesting creature: his eyes have generally an expression of wildness, and even madness, but there are moments when, if anyone performs an act of kindness towards him, or does him any the most trifling service, his whole countenance is lighted up, as it were, with a beam of benevolence and sweetness that i never saw equalled. but he is generally melancholy and despairing; and sometimes he gnashes his teeth, as if impatient of the weight of woes that oppresses him. when my guest was a little recovered, i had great trouble to keep off the men, who wished to ask him a thousand questions; but i would not allow him to be tormented by their idle curiosity, in a state of body and mind whose restoration evidently depended upon entire repose. once, however, the lieutenant asked, why he had come so far upon the ice in so strange a vehicle? his countenance instantly assumed an aspect of the deepest gloom; and he replied, "to seek one who fled from me." "and did the man whom you pursued travel in the same fashion?" "yes." "then i fancy we have seen him; for the day before we picked you up, we saw some dogs drawing a sledge, with a man in it, across the ice." this aroused the stranger's attention; and he asked a multitude of questions concerning the route which the daemon, as he called him, had pursued. soon after, when he was alone with me, he said,"i have, doubtless, excited your curiosity, as well as that of these good people; but you are too considerate to make inquiries." "certainly; it would indeed be very impertinent and inhuman in me to trouble you with any inquisitiveness of mine." "and yet you rescued me from a strange and perilous situation; you have benevolently restored me to life." soon after this he inquired if i thought that the breaking up of the ice had destroyed the other sledge? i replied that i could not answer with any degree of certainty; for the ice had not broken until near midnight, and the traveller might have arrived at a place of safety before that time; but of this i could not judge. from this time a new spirit of life animated the decaying frame of the stranger. he manifested the greatest eagerness to be upon deck, to watch for the sledge which had before appeared; but i have persuaded him to remain in the cabin, for he is far too weak to sustain the rawness of the atmosphere. i have promised that some one should watch for him, and give him instant notice if any new object should appear in sight. such is my journal of what relates to this strange occurrence up to the present day. the stranger has gradually improved in health, but is very silent, and appears uneasy when any one except myself enters his cabin. yet his manners are so conciliating and gentle that the sailors are all interested in him, although they have had very little communication with him. for my own part, i begin to love him as a brother; and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion. he must have been a noble creature in his better days, being even now in wreck so attractive and amiable. i said in one of my letters, my dear margaret, that i should find no friend on the wide ocean; yet i have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, i should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart. i shall continue my journal concerning the stranger at intervals, should i have any fresh incidents to record. my affection for my guest increases every day. he excites at once my admiration and my pity to an astonishing degree. how can i see so noble a creature destroyed by misery, without feeling the most poignant grief? he is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated; and when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence. he is now much recovered from his illness, and is continually on deck, apparently watching for the sledge that preceded his own. yet, although unhappy, he is not so utterly occupied by his own misery but that he interests himself deeply in the projects of others. he has frequently conversed with me on mine, which i have communicated to him without disguise. he entered attentively into all my arguments in favour of my eventual success, and into every minute detail of the measures i had taken to secure it. i was easily led by the sympathy which he evinced to use the language of my heart; to give utterance to the burning ardour of my soul; and to say, with all the fervour that warmed me, how gladly i would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprise. one man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which i sought; for the dominion i should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race. as i spoke, a dark gloom spread over my listener's countenance. at first i perceived that he tried to suppress his emotion; he placed his hands before his eyes; and my voice quivered and failed me, as i beheld tears trickle fast from between his fingersa groan burst from his heaving breast. i paused;at length he spoke, in broken accents:"unhappy man! do you share my madness? have you drank also of the intoxicating draught? hear melet me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!" such words, you may imagine, strongly excited my curiosity; but the paroxysm of grief that had seized the stranger overcame his weakened powers, and many hours of repose and tranquil conversation were necessary to restore his composure. having conquered the violence of his feelings, he appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion; and quelling the dark tyranny of despair, he led me again to converse concerning myself personally. he asked me the history of my earlier years. the tale was quickly told: but it awakened various trains of reflection. i spoke of my desire of finding a friendof my thirst for a more intimate sympathy with a fellow mind than had ever fallen to my lot; and expressed my conviction that a man could boast of little happiness, who did not enjoy this blessing. "i agree with you," replied the stranger; "we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves such a friend ought to bedo not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures. i once had a friend, the most noble of human creatures, and am entitled, therefore, to judge respecting friendship. you have hope, and the world before you, and have no cause for despair. but ii have lost everything, and cannot begin life anew." as he said this, his countenance became expressive of a calm settled grief that touched me to the heart. but he was silent, and presently retired to his cabin. even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. the starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seem still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures. will you smile at the enthusiasm i express concerning this divine wanderer? you would not if you saw him. you have been tutored and refined by books and retirement from the world, and you are, therefore, somewhat fastidious; but this only renders you the more fit to appreciate the extraordinary merits of this wonderful man. sometimes i have endeavoured to discover what quality it is which he possesses that elevates him so immeasurably above any other person i ever knew. i believe it to be an intuitive discernment; a quick but never-failing power of judgment; a penetration into the causes of things, unequalled for clearness and precision; add to this a facility of expression, and a voice whose varied intonations are soul-subduing music. yesterday the stranger said to me, "you may easily perceive, captain walton, that i have suffered great and unparalleled misfortunes. i had determined, at one time, that the memory of these evils should die with me; but you have won me to alter my determination. you seek for knowledge and wisdom, as i once did; and i ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. i do not know that the relation of my disasters will be useful to you; yet, when i reflect that you are pursuing the same course, exposing yourself to the same dangers which have rendered me what i am, i imagine that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale; one that may direct you if you succeed in your undertaking, and console you in case of failure. prepare to hear of occurrences which are usually deemed marvellous. were we among the tamer scenes of nature, i might fear to encounter your unbelief, perhaps your ridicule; but many things will appear possible in these wild and mysterious regions which would provoke the laughter of those unacquainted with the ever-varied powers of nature:nor can i doubt but that my tale conveys in its series internal evidence of the truth of the events of which it is composed." you may easily imagine that i was much gratified by the offered communication; yet i could not endure that he should renew his grief by a recital of his misfortunes. i felt the greatest eagerness to hear the promised narrative, partly from curiosity, and partly from a strong desire to ameliorate his fate, if it were in my power. i expressed these feelings in my answer. "i thank you," he replied, "for your sympathy, but it is useless; my fate is nearly fulfilled. i wait but for one event, and then i shall repose in peace. i understand your feeling," continued he, perceiving that i wished to interrupt him; "but you are mistaken, my friend, if thus you will allow me to name you; nothing can alter my destiny: listen to my history, and you will perceive how irrevocably it is determined." he then told me that he would commence his narrative the next day when i should be at leisure. this promise drew from me the warmest thanks. i have resolved every night, when i am not imperatively occupied by my duties, to record, as nearly as possible in his own words, what he has related during the day. if i should be engaged, i will at least make notes. this manuscript will doubtless afford you the greatest pleasure; but to me, who know him, and who hear it from his own lips, with what interest and sympathy shall i read it in some future day! even now, as i commence my task, his full-toned voice swells in my ears; his lustrous eyes dwell on me with all their melancholy sweetness; i see his thin hand raised in animation, while the lineaments of his face are irradiated by the soul within. strange and harrowing must be his story; frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course, and wrecked itthus! chapter i i am by birth a genevese; and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic. my ancestors had been for many years counsellors and syndics; and my father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation. he was respected by all who knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business. he passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country; a variety of circumstances had prevented his marrying early, nor was it until the decline of life that he became a husband and the father of a family. as the circumstances of his marriage illustrate his character, i cannot refrain from relating them. one of his most intimate friends was a merchant, who, from a flourishing state, fell, through numerous mischances, into poverty. this man, whose name was beaufort, was of a proud and unbending disposition, and could not bear to live in poverty and oblivion in the same country where he had formerly been distinguished for his rank and magnificence. having paid his debts, therefore, in the most honourable manner, he retreated with his daughter to the town of lucerne, where he lived unknown and in wretchedness. my father loved beaufort with the truest friendship, and was deeply grieved by his retreat in these unfortunate circumstances. he bitterly deplored the false pride which led his friend to a conduct so little worthy of the affection that united them. he lost no time in endeavouring to seek him out, with the hope of persuading him to begin the world again through his credit and assistance. beaufort had taken effectual measures to conceal himself; and it was ten months before my father discovered his abode. overjoyed at this discovery, he hastened to the house, which was situated in a mean street, near the reuss. but when he entered, misery and despair alone welcomed him. beaufort had saved but a very small sum of money from the wreck of his fortunes; but it was sufficient to provide him with sustenance for some months, and in the meantime he hoped to procure some respectable employment in a merchant's house. the interval was, consequently, spent in inaction; his grief only became more deep and rankling when he had leisure for reflection; and at length it took so fast hold of his mind that at the end of three months he lay on a bed of sickness, incapable any exertion. his daughter attended him with the greatest tendernessbut she saw with despair that their little fund was rapidly decreasing, and that there was no other prospect of support. but caroline beaufort possessed a mind of an uncommon mould; and her courage rose to support her in her adversity. she procured plain work; she plaited straw; and by various means contrived to earn a pittance scarcely sufficient to support life. several months passed in this manner. her father grew worse; her time was more entirely occupied in attending him; her means of subsistence decreased; and in the tenth month her father died in her arms, leaving her an orphan and a beggar. this last blow overcame her; and she knelt by beaufort's coffin, weeping bitterly, when my father entered the chamber. he came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who committed herself to his care; and after the interment of his friend, he conducted her to geneva, and placed her under the protection of a relation. two years after this event caroline became his wife. there was a considerable difference between the ages of my parents, but this circumstance seemed to unite them only closer in bonds of devoted affection. there was a sense of justice in my father's upright mind, which rendered it necessary that he should approve highly to love strongly. perhaps during former years he had suffered from the late-discovered unworthiness of one beloved, and so was disposed to set a greater value on tried worth. there was a show of gratitude and worship in his attachment to my mother, differing wholly from the doating fondness of age, for it was inspired by reverence for her virtues, and a desire to be the means of, in some degree, recompensing her for the sorrows she had endured, but which gave inexpressible grace to his behaviour to her. everything was made to yield to her wishes and her convenience. he strove to shelter her, as a fair exotic is sheltered by the gardener, from every rougher wind, and to surround her with all that could tend to excite pleasurable emotion in her soft and benevolent mind. her health, and even the tranquillity of her hitherto constant spirit, had been shaken by what she had gone through. during the two years that had elapsed previous to their marriage my father had gradually relinquished all his public functions; and immediately after their union they sought the pleasant climate of italy, and the change of scene and interest attendant on a tour through that land of wonders, as a restorative for her weakened frame. from italy they visited germany and france. i, their eldest child, was born in naples, and as an infant accompanied them in their rambles. i remained for several years their only child. much as they were attached to each other, they seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of affection from a very mine of love to bestow them upon me. my mother's tender caresses, and my father's smile of benevolent pleasure while regarding me, are my first recollections. i was their plaything and their idol, and something bettertheir child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness fulfilled their duties towards me. with this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life, added to the active spirit of tenderness that animated both, it may be imagined that while during every hour of my infant life i received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control, i was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me. for a long time i was their only care. my mother had much desired to have a daughter, but i continued their single offspring. when i was about five years old, while making an excursion beyond the frontiers of italy, they passed a week on the shores of the lake of como. their benevolent disposition often made them enter the cottages of the poor. this, to my mother, was more than a duty; it was a necessity, a passionremembering what she had suffered, and how she had been relievedfor her to act in her turn the guardian angel to the afflicted. during one of their walks a poor cot in the foldings of a vale attracted their notice as being singularly disconsolate, while the number of half-clothed children gathered about it spoke of penury in its worst shape. one day, when my father had gone by himself to milain, my mother, accompanied by me, visited this abode. she found a peasant and his wife, hard working, bent down by care and labour, distributing a scanty meal to five hungry babes. among these there was one which attracted my mother far above all the rest. she appeared of a different stock. the four others were dark-eyed, hardy little vagrants; this child was thin, and very fair. her hair was the brightest living gold, and despite the poverty of her clothing, seemed to set a crown of distinction on her head. her brow was clear and ample, her blue eyes cloudless, and her lips and the moulding of her face so expressive of sensibility and sweetness, that none could behold her without looking on her as of a distinct species, a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features. the peasant woman, perceiving that my mother fixed eyes of wondering admiration on this lovely girl, eagerly communicated her history. she was not her child, but the daughter of a milanese nobleman. her mother was a german, and had died on giving her birth. the infant had been placed with these good people to nurse: they were better off then. they had not been long married, and their eldest child was but just born. the father of their charge was one of those italians nursed in the memory of the antique glory of italyone among the schiaviognor frementi, who exerted himself to obtain the liberty of his country. he became the victim of weakness. whether he had died, or still lingered in the dungeons of austria, was not known. his property was confiscated, his child became an orphan and a beggar. she continued with her foster parents, and bloomed in their rude abode, fairer than a garden rose among dark-leaved brambles. when my father returned from milan, he found playing with me in the hall of our villa a child fairer than pictured cheruba creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks, and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois of the hills. the apparition was soon explained. with his permission my mother prevailed on her rustic guardians to yield their charge to her. they were fond of the sweet orphan. her presence had seemed a blessing to them; but it would be unfair to her to keep her in poverty and want, when providence afforded her such powerful protection. they consulted their village priest, and the result was that elizabeth lavenza became the inmate of my parents' housemy more than sisterthe beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and my pleasures. everyone loved elizabeth. the passionate and almost reverential attachment with which all regarded her became, while i shared it, my pride and my delight. on the evening previous to her being brought to my home, my mother had said playfully"i have a pretty present for my victortomorrow he shall have it." and when, on the morrow, she presented elizabeth to me as her promised gift, i, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally, and looked upon elizabeth as minemine to protect, love, and cherish. all praises bestowed on her, i received as made to a possession of my own. we called each other familiarly by the name of cousin. no word, no expression could body forth the kind of relation in which she stood to memy more than sister, since till death she was to be mine only. chapter ii we were brought up together; there was not quite a year difference in our ages. i need not say that we were strangers to any species of disunion or dispute. harmony was the soul of our companionship, and the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew us nearer together. elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated disposition; but, with all my ardour, i was capable of a more intense application, and was more deeply smitten with a thirst for knowledge. she busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets; and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our swiss homethe sublime shapes of the mountains; the changes of the seasons; tempest and calm; the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence of our alpine summersshe found ample scope for admiration and delight. while my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things, i delighted in investigating their causes. the world was to me a secret which i desired to divine. curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations i can remember. on the birth of a second son, my junior by seven years, my parents gave up entirely their wandering life, and fixed themselves in their native country. we possessed a house in geneva, and a campagne on belrive, the eastern shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than a league from the city. we resided principally in the latter, and the lives of my parents were passed in considerable seclusion. it was my temper to avoid a crowd, and to attach myself fervently to a few. i was indifferent, therefore, to my schoolfellows in general; but i united myself in the bonds of the closest friendship to one among them. henry clerval was the son of a merchant of geneva. he was a boy of singular talent and fancy. he loved enterprise, hardship, and even danger, for its own sake. he was deeply read in books of chivalry and romance. he composed heroic songs, and began to write many a tale of enchantment and knightly adventure. he tried to make us act plays, and to enter into masquerades, in which the characters were drawn from the heroes of roncesvalles, of the round table of king arthur, and the chivalrous train who shed their blood to redeem the holy sepulchre from the hands of the infidels. no human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. my parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence. we felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed. when i mingled with other families, i distinctly discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and gratitude assisted the development of filial love. my temper was sometimes violent, and my passions vehement; but by some law in my temperature they were turned, not towards childish pursuits, but to an eager desire to learn, and not to learn all things indiscriminately. i confess that neither the structure of languages, nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states, possessed attractions for me. it was the secrets of heaven and earth that i desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or, in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world. meanwhile clerval occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral relations of things. the busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes, and the actions of men, were his theme; and his hope and his dream was to become one among those whose names are recorded in story, as the gallant and adventurous benefactors of our species. the saintly soul of elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our peaceful home. her sympathy was ours; her smile, her soft voice, the sweet glance of her celestial eyes, were ever there to bless and animate us. she was the living spirit of love to soften and attract: i might have become sullen in my study, rough through the ardour of my nature, but that she was there to subdue me to a semblance of her own gentleness. and clervalcould aught ill entrench on the noble spiritof clerval?yet he might not have been so perfectly humane, so thoughtful in his generosityso full of kindness and tenderness amidst his passion for adventurous exploit, had she not unfolded to him the real loveliness of beneficence, and made the doing good the end and aim of his soaring ambition. i feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. besides, drawing the picture of early days, i also record those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery: for when i would account to myself for the birth of that passion, which afterwards ruled my destiny, i find it arise like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources but, swelling as it as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys. natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; i desire, therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science. when i was thirteen years of age, we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near thonon: the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. in this house i chanced to find a volume of the works of cornelius agrippa. i opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate, and the wonderful facts which he relates, soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. a new light seemed to dawn upon my mind; and, bounding with joy, i communicated my discovery to my father. my father looked carelessly at the title page of my book, and said, "ah! cornelius agrippa! my dear victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash." if, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of agrippa had been entirely exploded, and that a modern system of science had been introduced, which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical; under such circumstances, i should certainly have thrown agrippa aside, and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. it is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. but the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents; and i continued to read with the greatest avidity. when i returned home, my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of paracelsus and albertus magnus. i read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few beside myself i have described myself as always having been embued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature. in spice of the intense labour and wonderful discoveries of modern philosophers, i always came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied. sir isaac newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth. those of his successors in each branch of natural philosophy with whom i was acquainted appeared, even to my boys apprehensions, as tyros engaged in the same pursuit. the untaught peasant beheld the elements around him, and was acquainted with their practical uses. the most learned philosopher knew little more. he had partially unveiled the face of nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. he might dissect, anatomise, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause, causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him. i had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and ignorantly i had repined. but here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew more. i took their word for all that they averred, and i became their disciple. it may appear strange that such should arise in the eighteenth century; but while i followed the routine of education in the schools of geneva, i was, to a great degree, self taught with regard to my favourite studies. my father was not scientific, and i was left to struggle with a child's blindness, added to a student's thirst for knowledge. under the guidance of my new preceptors, i entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life; but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention. wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend the discovery, if i could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death! nor were these my only visions. the raising of ghosts or devils was a promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors, the fulfillment of which i most eagerly sought; and if my incantations were always unsuccessful, i attributed the failure rather to my own inexperience and mistake than to a want of skill or fidelity in my instructors. and thus for a time i was occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand contradictory theories, and floundering desperately in a very slough of multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas. when i was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. it advanced from behind the mountains of jura; and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. i remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight. as i stood at the door, on a sudden i beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. when we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner. it was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribands of wood. i never beheld anything so utterly destroyed. before this i was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of electricity. on this occasion a man of great research in natural philosophy was with us, and, excited by this catastrophe, he entered on the explanation of a theory which he had formed on the subject of electricity and galvanism, which was at once new and astonishing to me. all that he said threw greatly into the shade cornelius agrippa, albertus magnus, and paracelsus, the lords of my imagination; but by some fatality the overthrow of these men disinclined me to pursue my accustomed studies. it seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever be known. all that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew despicable. by one of those caprices of the mind, which we are perhaps most subject to in early youth, i at once gave up my former occupations; set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation; and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science, which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge. in this mood of mind i betook myself to the mathematics, and the branches of study appertaining to that science, as being built upon secure foundations, and so worthy of my consideration. thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin. when i look back, it seems to me as if this almost miraculous change of inclination and will was the immediate suggestion of the guardian angel of my lifethe last effort made by the spirit of preservation to avert the storm that was even then hanging in the stars, and ready to envelope me. her victory was announced by an unusual tranquillity and gladness of soul, which followed the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly tormenting studies. it was thus that i was to be taught to associate evil with their prosecution, happiness with their disregard. it was a strong effort of the spirit of good; but it was ineffectual. destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction. chapter iii when i had attained the age of seventeen, my parents resolved that i should become a student at the university of ingolstadt. i had hitherto attended the schools of geneva; but my father thought it necessary, for the completion of my education, that i should be made acquainted with other customs than those of my native country. my departure was therefore fixed at an early date; but before the day resolved upon could arrive, the first misfortune of my life occurredan omen, as it were, of my future misery. elizabeth had caught the scarlet fever; her illness was severe, and she was in the greatest danger. during her illness, many arguments had been urged to persuade my mother to refrain from attending upon her. she had, at first, yielded to our entreaties; but when she heard that the life of her favourite was menaced, she could no longer control her anxiety. she attended her sick bedher watchful attentions triumphed over the malignity of the distemperelizabeth was saved, but the consequences of this imprudence were fatal to her preserver. on the third day my mother sickened; her fever was accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the worst event. on her death-bed the fortitude and benignity of this best of women did not desert her. she joined the hands of elizabeth and myself:"my children," she said, "my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union. this expectation will now be the consolation of your father. elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to my younger children. alas! i regret that i am taken from you; and, happy and beloved as i have been, is it not hard to quit you all? but these are not thoughts befitting me; i will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death, and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world." she died calmly; and her countenance expressed affection even in death. i need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil; the void that presents itself to the soul; and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. it is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she, whom we saw every day, and whose very existence appeared a part of our own, can have departed for everthat the brightness of beloved eye can have been extinguished, and the sound of a voice so familiar, and dear to the ear, can be hushed, never more to be heard. these are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? and why should i describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? the time at length arrives, when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished. my mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform; we must continue our course with the rest, and learn to think ourselves fortunate, whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized. my departure for ingolstadt, which had been deferred by these events, was now again determined upon. i obtained from my father a respite of some weeks. it appeared to me sacrilege so soon to leave the repose, akin to death, of the house of mourning, and to rush into the thick of life. i was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me. i was unwilling to quit the sight of those that remained to me; and, above all, i desired to see my sweet elizabeth in some degree consoled. she indeed veiled her grief, and strove to act the comforter to us all. she looked steadily on life, and assumed its duties with courage and zeal. she devoted herself to those whom she had been taught to call her uncle and cousins. never was she so enchanting as at this time when she recalled the sunshine of her smiles and spent them upon us. she forgot even her own regret in her endeavours to make us forget. the day of my departure at length arrived. clerval spent the last evening with us. he had endeavoured to persuade his father to permit him to accompany me, and to become my fellow student; but in vain. his father was a narrow-minded trader, and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son. henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education. he said little; but when he spoke, i read in his kindling eye and in his animated glance a restrained but firm resolve not to be chained to the miserable details of commerce. we sat late. we could not tear ourselves away from each other, nor persuade ourselves to say the word "farewell!" it was said; and we retired under the pretence of seeking repose, each fancying that the other was deceived: but when at morning's dawn i descended to the carriage which was to convey me away, they were all theremy father again to bless me, clerval to press my hand once more, my elizabeth to renew her entreaties that i would write often, and to bestow the last feminine attentions on her playmate and friend. i threw myself into the chaise that was to convey me away, and indulged in the most melancholy reflections. i, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavouring to bestow mutual pleasure, i was now alone. in the university, whither i was going, i must form my own friends, and be my own protector. my life had hitherto been remarkably secluded and domestic; and this had given me invincible repugnance to new countenances. i loved my brothers, elizabeth, and clerval; these were "old familiar faces"; but i believed myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers. such were my reflections as i commenced my journey; but as i proceeded my spirits and hopes rose. i ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge. i had often, when at home, thought it hard to remain during my youth cooped up in one place, and had longed to enter the world, and take my station among other human beings. now my desires were complied with, and it would, indeed, have been folly to repent. i had sufficient leisure for these and many other reflections during my journey to ingolstadt, which was long and fatiguing. at length the high white steeple of the town met my eyes. i alighted, and was conducted to my solitary apartment, to spend the evening as i pleased. the next morning i delivered my letters of introduction and paid a visit to some of the principal professors. chanceor rather the evil influence, the angel of destruction, which asserted omnipotent sway over me from the moment i turned my reluctant steps from my father's doorled me first to m. krempe, professor of natural philosophy. he was an uncouth man, but deeply embued in the secrets of his science. he asked me several questions concerning my progress in the different branches of science appertaining to natural philosophy. i replied carelessly; and, partly in contempt, mentioned the names of my alchymists as the principal authors i had studied. the professor stared; "have you," he said, "really spent your time in studying such nonsense?" i replied in the affirmative. "every minute," continued m. krempe with warmth, "every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost. you have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names. good god! in what desert land have you lived, where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies, which you have so greedily imbibed, are a thousand years old, and as musty as they are ancient? i little expected, in this enlightened and scientific age, to find a disciple of albertus magnus and paracelsus. my dear sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew." so saying, he stepped aside, and wrote down a list of several books treating of natural philosophy, which he desired me to procure; and dismissed me, after mentioning that in the beginning of the following week he intended to commence a course of lectures upon natural philosophy in its general relations, and that m. waldman, fellow-professor, would lecture upon chemistry the alternate days that he omitted. i returned home, not disappointed, for i have said that i had long considered those authors useless whom the professor reprobated; but i returned, not at all the more inclined to recur to these studies in any shape. m. krempe was a little squat man, with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favour of his pursuits. in rather a too philosophical and connected a strain, perhaps, i have given an account of the conclusions i had come to concerning them in my early years. as a child, i had not been content with the results promised by the modern professors of natural science. with a confusion of ideas only to be accounted for by my extreme youth, and my want of a guide on such matters, i had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time, and exchanged the discoveries of recent inquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchymists. besides, i had a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy. it was very different when the masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed. the ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. i was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth. such were my reflections during the first two or three days of my residence at ingolstadt, which were chiefly spent in becoming acquainted with the localities, and the principal residents in my new abode. but as the ensuing week commenced, i thought of the information which m. krempe had given me concerning the lectures. and although i could not consent to go and hear that little conceited fellow deliver sentences out of a pulpit, i recollected what he had said of m. waldman, whom i had never seen, as he had hitherto been out of town. partly from curiosity, and partly from idleness, i went into the lecturing room, which m. waldman entered shortly after. this professor was very unlike his colleague. he appeared about fifty years of age, but with an aspect expressive of the greatest benevolence; a few grey hairs covered his temples, but those at the back of his head were nearly black. his person was short, but remarkably erect; and his voice the sweetest i had ever heard. he began his lecture by a recapitulation of the history of chemistry, and the various improvements made by different men of learning, pronouncing with fervour the names of the most distinguished discoverers. he then took a cursory view of the present state of the science, and explained many of its elementary terms. after having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which i shall never forget: "the ancient teachers of this science," said he, "promised impossibilities, and performed nothing. the modern masters promise very little they know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera. but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. they penetrate into the recesses of nature, and show how she works in her hiding places. they ascend into the heavens: they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. they have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows." such were the professor's wordsrather let me say such the words of fate, enounced to destroy me. as he went on, i felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being: chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. so much has been done, exclaimed the soul of frankensteinmore, far more, will i achieve: treading in the steps already marked, i will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation. i closed not my eyes that night. my internal being was in a state of insurrection and turmoil; i felt that order would thence arise, but i had no power to produce it. by degrees after the morning's dawn, sleep came. i awoke, and my yesternight's thoughts were as a dream. there only remained a resolution to return to my ancient studies, and to devote myself to a science for which i believed myself to possess a natural talent. on the same day, i paid m. waldman a visit. his manners in private were even more mild and attractive than in public; for there was a certain dignity in his mien during his lecture, which in his own house was replaced by the greatest affability and kindness. i gave him pretty nearly the same account of my former pursuits as i had given to his fellow-professor. he heard with attention the little narration concerning my studies, and smiled at the names of cornelius agrippa and paracelsus, but without the contempt that m. krempe had exhibited. he said, that "these were men to whose indefatigable zeal modern philosophers were indebted for most of the foundations of their knowledge. they had left to us, as an easier task, to give new names, and arrange in connected classifications, the facts which they in a great degree had been the instruments of bringing to light. the labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind." i listened to his statement, which was delivered without any presumption or affectation; and then added, that his lecture had removed my prejudices against modern chemists; i expressed myself in measured terms, with the modesty and deference due from a youth to his instructor, without letting escape (inexperience in life would have made me ashamed) any of the enthusiasm which stimulated my intended labours. i requested his advice concerning the books i ought to procure. "i am happy," said m. waldman, "to have gained a disciple; and if your application equals your ability, i have no doubt of your success. chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been and may be made: it is on that account that i have made it my peculiar study; but at the same time i have not neglected the other branches of science. a man would make but a very sorry chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone. if your wish is to become really a man of science, and not merely a petty experimentalist, i should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics." he then took me into his laboratory, and explained to me the uses of his various machines; instructing me as to what i ought to procure, and promising me the use of his own when i should have advanced far enough in the science not to derange their mechanism. he also gave me the list of books which i had requested; and i took my leave. thus ended a day memorable to me: it decided my future destiny. chapter iv from this memorable day natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, became nearly my sole occupation. i read with ardour those works, so full of genius and discrimination, which modern inquirers have written on these subjects. i attended the lectures, and cultivated the acquaintance, of the men of science of the university; and i found even in m. krempe a great deal of sound sense and real information, combined, it is true, with a repulsive physiognomy and manners, but not on that account the less valuable. in m. waldman i found a true friend. his gentleness was never tinged by dogmatism and his instructions were given with an air of frankness and good nature that banished every idea of pedantry. in a thousand ways he smoothed for me the path of knowledge, and made the most abstruse inquiries clear and facile to my apprehension. my application was at first fluctuating and uncertain; it gained strength as i proceeded, and soon became so ardent and eager that the stars often disappeared in the light of morning whilst i was yet engaged in my laboratory. as i applied so closely, it may be easily conceived that my progress was rapid. my ardour was indeed the astonishment of the students, and my proficiency that of the masters. professor krempe often asked me, with a sly smile, how cornelius agrippa went on? whilst m. waldman expressed the most heartfelt exultation in my progress. two years passed in this manner, during which i paid no visit to geneva, but was engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries, which i hoped to make. none but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science. in other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder. a mind of moderate capacity, which closely pursues one study, must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study; and i, who continually sought the attainment of one object of pursuit, and was solely wrapped up in this, improved so rapidly that, at the end of two years, i made some discoveries in the improvement of some chemical instruments which procured me great esteem and admiration at the university. when i had arrived at this point, and had become as well acquainted with the theory and practice of natural philosophy as depended on the lessons of any of the professors at ingolstadt, my residence there being no longer conducive to my improvement, i thought of returning to my friends and my native town, when an incident happened that protracted my stay. one of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life. whence, i often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? it was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. i revolved these circumstances in my mind, and determined thenceforth to apply myself more particularly to those branches of natural philosophy which relate to physiology. unless i had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome, and almost intolerable. to examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. i became acquainted with the science of, anatomy: but this was not sufficient; i must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body. in my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. i do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition, or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. darkness had no effect upon my fancy; and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm. now i was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay, and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses. my attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. i saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; i beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; i saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. i paused, examining and analysing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon mea light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while i became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, i was surprised, that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that i alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret. remember, i am not recording the vision of a madman. the sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens, than that which i now affirm is true. some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were distinct and probable. after days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, i succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, i became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. the astonishment which i had at first experienced on this discovery soon gave place to delight and rapture. after so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils. but this discovery was so great and overwhelming that all the steps by which i had been progressively led to it were obliterated, and i beheld only the result. what had been the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world was now within my grasp. not that, like a magic scene, it all opened upon me at once: the information i had obtained was of a nature rather to direct my endeavours so soon as i should point them towards the object of my search, than to exhibit that object already accomplished. i was like the arabian who had been buried with the dead, and found a passage to life, aided only by one glimmering, and seemingly ineffectual, light. i see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with which i am acquainted; that cannot be: listen patiently until the end of my story, and you will easily perceive why i am reserved upon that subject. i will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent as i then was, to your destruction and infallible misery. learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow. when i found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, i hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which i should employ it. although i possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles, and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour. i doubted at first whether i should attempt the creation of a being like myself, or one of simpler organisation; but my imagination was too much exalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man. the materials at present within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an undertaking; but i doubted not that i should ultimately succeed. i prepared myself for a multitude of reverses; my operations might be incessantly baffled, and at last my work be imperfect: yet, when i considered the improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics, i was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success. nor could i consider the magnitude and complexity of my plan as any argument of its impracticability. it was with these feelings that i began the creation of a human being. as the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, i resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature; that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large. after having formed this determination, and having spent some months in successfully collecting and arranging my materials, i began. no one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which i should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. a new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. no father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as i should deserve theirs. pursuing these reflections, i thought, that if i could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, i might in process of time (although i now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption. these thoughts supported my spirits, while i pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardour. my cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement. sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, i failed; yet still i clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realise. one secret which i alone possessed was the hope to which i had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, i pursued nature to her hiding-places. who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil, as i dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured the living animal, to animate the lifeless clay? my limbs now tremble and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic, impulse urged me forward; i seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. it was indeed but a passing trance that only made me feel with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to operate, i had returned to my old habits. i collected bones from charnel-houses; and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. in a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, i kept my workshop of filthy creation: my eye-balls were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. the dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, i brought my work near to a conclusion. the summer months passed while i was thus engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit. it was a most beautiful season; never did the fields bestow a more plentiful harvest, or the vines yield a more luxuriant vintage: but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. and the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom i had not seen for so long a time. i knew my silence disquieted them; and i well remembered the words of my father: "i know that while you are pleased with yourself, you will think of us with affection, and we shall hear regularly from you. you must pardon me if i regard any interruption in your correspondence as a proof that your other duties are equally neglected." i knew well, therefore, what would be my father's feelings; but i could not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. i wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed. i then thought that my father would be unjust if he ascribed my neglect to vice, or faultiness on my part; but i am now convinced that he was justified in conceiving that i should not be altogether free from blame. a human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity. i do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. if the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. if this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, greece had not been enslaved, caesar would have spared his country; america would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of mexico and peru had not been destroyed. but i forget that i am moralising in the most interesting part of my tale; and your looks remind me to proceed. my father made no reproach in his letters, and only took notice of my silence by inquiring into my occupations more particularly than before. winter, spring, and summer passed away during my labours; but i did not watch the blossom or the expanding leavessights which before always yielded me supreme delightso deeply was i engrossed in my occupation. the leaves of that year had withered before my work drew near to a close; and now every day showed me more plainly how well i had succeeded. but my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and i appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade, than an artist occupied by his favourite employment. every night i was oppressed by a slow fever, and i became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and i shunned my fellow-creatures as if i had been guilty of a crime. sometimes i grew alarmed at the wreck i perceived that i had becomethe energy of my purpose alone sustained me: my labours would soon end, and i believed that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease; and i promised myself both of these when my creation should be complete. chapter v it was on a dreary night of november that i beheld the accomplishment of my toils. with an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, collected the instruments of life around me, that i might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. it was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, i saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. how can i describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care i had endeavoured to form? his limbs were in proportion, and i had selected his features as beautiful. beautiful!great god! his yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. the different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. i had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. for this i had deprived myself of rest and health. i had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that i had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. unable to endure the aspect of the being i had created, i rushed out of the room, continued a long time traversing my bed chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. at length lassitude succeeded to the tumult i had before endured; and i threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. but it was in vain: i slept, indeed, but i was disturbed by the wildest dreams. i thought i saw elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of ingolstadt. delighted and surprised, i embraced her; but as i imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and i thought that i held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and i saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel. i started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed: when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, i beheld the wretchthe miserable monster whom i had created. he held up the curtain of the bed and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. his jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. he might have spoken, but i did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but i escaped, and rushed down stairs. i took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which i inhabited; where i remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which i had so miserably given life. oh! no mortal could support the horror of that countenance. a mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. i had gazed on him while unfinished he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even dante could not have conceived. i passed the night wretchedly. sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that i felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, i nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. mingled with this horror, i felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete! morning, dismal and wet, at length dawned, and discovered to my sleepless and aching eyes the church of ingolstadt, white steeple and clock, which indicated the sixth hour. the porter opened the gates of the court, which had that night been my asylum, and i issued into the streets, pacing them with quick steps, as if i sought to avoid the wretch whom i feared every turning of the street would present to my view. i did not dare return to the apartment which i inhabited, but felt impelled to hurry on, although drenched by the rain which poured from a black and comfortless sky. i continued walking in this manner for some time, endeavouring, by bodily exercise, to ease the load that weighed upon my mind. i traversed the streets, without any clear conception of where i was, or what i was doing. my heart palpitated in the sickness of fear; and i hurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me: "like one who, on a lonely road, doth walk in fear and dread, and, having once turned round, walks on, and turns no more his head; because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread."* * coleridge's ancient mariner continuing thus, i came at length opposite to the inn at which the various diligences and carriages usually stopped. here i paused, i knew not why; but i remained some minutes with my eyes fixed on a coach that was coming towards me from the other end of the street. as it drew nearer, i observed that it was the swiss diligence: it stopped just where i was standing, and, on the door being opened, i perceived henry clerval, who, on seeing me, instantly sprung out. "my dear frankenstein," exclaimed he, "how glad i am to see you! how fortunate that you should be here at the very moment of my alighting!" nothing could equal my delight on seeing clerval; his presence brought back to my thoughts my father, elizabeth, and all those scenes of home so dear to my recollection. i grasped his hand, and in a moment forgot my horror and misfortune; i felt suddenly, and for the first time during many months, calm and serene joy. i welcomed my friend, therefore, in the most cordial manner, and we walked towards my college. clerval continued talking for some time about our mutual friends, and his own good fortune in being permitted to come to ingolstadt. "you may easily believe," said he, "how great was the difficulty to persuade my father that all necessary knowledge was not comprised in the noble art of bookkeeping; and, indeed, i believe i left him incredulous to the last, for his constant answer to my unwearied entreaties was the same as that of the dutch school-master in the vicar of wakefield:'i have ten thousand florins a year without greek, i eat heartily without greek.' but his affection for me at length overcame his dislike of learning, and he has permitted me to undertake a voyage of discovery to the land of knowledge." "it gives me the greatest delight to see you; but tell me how you left my father, brothers, and elizabeth." "very well, and very happy, only a little uneasy that they hear from you so seldom. by the by, i mean to lecture you a little upon their account myself.but, my dear frankenstein," continued he, stopping short, and gazing full in my face, "i did not before remark how very ill you appear; so thin and pale; you look as if you had been watching for several nights." "you have guessed right; i have lately been so deeply engaged in one occupation that i have not allowed myself sufficient rest, as you see: but i hope, i sincerely hope, that all these employments are now at an end, and that i am at length free." i trembled excessively; i could not endure to think of, and far less to allude to, the occurrences of the preceding night. i walked with a quick pace, and we soon arrived at my college. i then reflected, and the thought made me shiver, that the creature whom i had left in my apartment might still be there, alive, and walking about. i dreaded to behold this monster; but i feared still more that henry should see him. entreating him, therefore, to remain a few minutes at the bottom of the stairs, i darted up towards my own room. my hand was already on the lock of the door before i recollected myself i then paused; and a cold shivering came over me. i threw the door forcibly open, as children are accustomed to do when they expect a spectre to stand in waiting for them on the other side; but nothing appeared. i stepped fearfully in: the apartment was empty; and my bedroom was also freed from its hideous guest. i could hardly believe that so great a good fortune could have befallen me; but when i became assured that my enemy had indeed fled, i clapped my hands for joy, and ran down to clerval. we ascended into my room, and the servant presently brought breakfast; but i was unable to contain myself it was not joy only that possessed me; i felt my flesh tingle with excess of sensitiveness, and my pulse beat rapidly. i was unable to remain for a single instant in the same place; i jumped over the chairs, clapped my hands, and laughed aloud. clerval at first attributed my unusual spirits to joy on his arrival; but when he observed me more attentively he saw a wildness in my eyes for which he could not account; and my loud, unrestrained, heartless laughter frightened and astonished him. "my dear victor," cried he, "what, for god's sake, is the matter? do not laugh in that manner. how ill you are! what is the cause of all this?" "do not ask me," cried i, putting my hands before my eyes for i thought i saw the dreaded spectre glide into the room; "he can tell.oh, save me! save me!" i imagined that the monster seized me; i struggled furiously, and fell down in a fit. poor clerval! what must have been his feelings? a meeting, which he anticipated with such joy, so strangely turned to bitterness. but i was not the witness of his grief, for i was lifeless, and did not recover my senses for a long, long time. this was the commencement of a nervous fever, which confined me for several months. during all that time henry was my only nurse. i afterwards learned that, knowing my father's advanced age, and unfitness for so long a journey, and how wretched my sickness would make elizabeth, he spared them this grief by concealing the extent of my disorder. he knew that i could not have a more kind and attentive nurse than himself; and, firm in the hope he felt of my recovery, he did not doubt that, instead of doing harm, he performed the kindest action that he could towards them. but i was in reality very ill; and surely nothing but the unbounded and unremitting attentions of my friend could have restored me to life. the form of the monster on whom i had bestowed existence was forever before my eyes, and i raved incessantly concerning him. doubtless my words surprised henry: he at first believed them to be the wanderings of my disturbed imagination; but the pertinacity with which i continually recurred to the same subject, persuaded him that my disorder indeed owed its origin to some uncommon and terrible event. by very slow degrees, and with frequent relapses that alarmed and grieved my friend, i recovered. i remember the first time i became capable of observing outward objects with any kind of pleasure, i perceived that the fallen leaves had disappeared, and that the young buds were shooting forth from the trees that shaded my window. it was a divine spring; and the season contributed greatly to my convalescence. i felt also sentiments of joy and affection revive in my bosom; my gloom disappeared, and in a short time i became as cheerful as before i was attacked by the fatal passion. "dearest clerval," exclaimed i, "how kind, how very good you are to me. this whole winter, instead of being spent in study, as you promised yourself, has been consumed in my sick room. how shall i ever repay you? i feel the greatest remorse for the disappointment of which i have been the occasion; but you will forgive me." "you will repay me entirely if you do not discompose yourself, but get well as fast as you can; and since you appear in such good spirits, i may speak to you on one subject, may i not?" i trembled. one subject! what could it be? could he allude to an object on whom i dared not even think? "compose yourself," said clerval, who observed my change of colour, "i will not mention it, if it agitates you; but your father and cousin would be very happy if they received a letter from you in your own handwriting. they hardly know how ill you have been, and are uneasy at your long silence." "is that all, my dear henry? how could you suppose that my first thoughts would not fly towards those dear, dear friends whom i love, and who are so deserving of my love." "if this is your present temper, my friend, you will perhaps be glad to see a letter that has been lying here some days for you; it is from your cousin, i believe." chapter vi clerval then put the following letter into hands. it was from my own elizabeth: my dearest cousin,you have been ill, very ill, and even the constant letters of dear kind henry are not sufficient to reassure me on your account. you are forbidden to writeto hold a pen; yet one word from you, dear victor, is necessary to calm our apprehensions. for a long time i have thought that each post would bring this line, and my persuasions have restrained my uncle from undertaking a journey to ingolstadt. i have prevented his encountering the inconveniences and perhaps dangers of so long a journey; yet how often have i regretted not being able to perform it myself! i figure to myself that the task of attending on your sick bed has devolved on some mercenary old nurse, who could never guess your wishes, nor minister to them with the care and affection of your poor cousin. yet that is over now: clerval writes that indeed you are getting better. i eagerly hope that you will confirm this intelligence soon in your own handwriting. get welland return to us. you will find a happy, cheerful home, and friends who love you dearly. your father's health is vigorous, and he asks but to see youbut to be assured that you are well; not a care will ever cloud his benevolent countenance. how pleased you would be to remark the improvement of our ernest! he is now sixteen, and full of activity and spirit. he is desirous to be a true swiss, and to enter into foreign service; but we cannot part with him, at least until his elder brother return to us. my uncle is not pleased with the idea of a military career in a distant country; but ernest never had your powers of application. he looks upon study as an odious fetter;his time is spent in the open air, climbing the hills or rowing on the lake. i fear that he will become an idler, unless we yield the point, and permit him to enter on the profession which he has selected. little alteration, except the growth of our dear children, has taken place since you left us. the blue lake, and snow-clad mountains, they never change;and i think our placid home and our contented hearts are regulated by the same immutable laws. my trifling occupations take up my time and amuse me, and i am rewarded for any exertions by seeing none but happy, kind faces around me. since you left us, but one change has taken place in our little household. do you remember on what occasion justine moritz entered our family? probably you do not; i will relate her history, therefore, in a few words. madame moritz, her mother, was a widow with four children, of whom justine was the third. this girl had always been the favourite of her father; but through a strange perversity, her mother could not endure her, and after the death of m. moritz, treated her very ill. my aunt observed thisand, when justine was twelve years of age, prevailed on her mother to allow her to live at our house. the republican institutions of our country have produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it. hence there is less distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the lower orders, being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined and moral. a servant in geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant in france and england. justine, thus received in our family, learned the duties of a servant, a condition which, in our fortunate country, does not include the idea of ignorance, and a sacrifice of the dignity of a human being. justine, you may remember, was a great favourite of yours; and i recollect you once remarked, that if you were in an ill-humour, one glance from justine could dissipate it, for the same reason that ariosto gives concerning the beauty of angelicashe looked so frank-hearted and happy. my aunt conceived a great attachment for her, by which she was induced to give her an education superior to that which she had at first intended. this benefit was fully repaid; justine was the most grateful little creature in the world: i do not mean that she made any professions; i never heard one pass her lips; but you could see by her eyes that she almost adored her protectress. although her disposition was gay, and in many respects inconsiderate, yet she paid the greatest attention to every gesture of my aunt. she thought her the model of all excellence, and endeavoured to imitate her phraseology and manners, so that even now she often reminds me of her. when my dearest aunt died, everyone was too much occupied in their own grief to notice poor justine, who had attended her during her illness with the most anxious affection. poor justine was very ill; but other trials were reserved for her. one by one, her brothers and sister died; and her mother, with the exception of her neglected daughter, was left childless. the conscience of the woman was troubled; she began to think that the deaths of her favourites was a judgment from heaven to chastise her partiality. she was a roman catholic; and i believe her confessor confirmed the idea which she had conceived. accordingly, a few months after your departure for ingolstadt, justine was called home by her repentant mother. poor girl! she wept when she quitted our house; she was much altered since the death of my aunt; grief had given softness and a winning mildness to her manners, which had before been remarkable for vivacity. nor was her residence at her mother's house of a nature to restore her gaiety. the poor woman was very vacillating in her repentance. she sometimes begged justine to forgive her unkindness, but much oftener accused her of having caused the deaths of her brothers and sister. perpetual fretting at length threw madame moritz into a decline, which at first increased her irritability, but she is now at peace forever. she died on the first approach of cold weather, at the beginning of this last winter. justine has returned to us; and i assure you i love her tenderly. she is very clever and gentle, and extremely pretty; as i mentioned before, her mien and her expressions continually remind me of my dear aunt. i must say also a few words to you, my dear cousin, of little darling william. i wish you could see him; he is very tall for his age, with sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eyelashes, and curling hair. when he smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek, which are rosy with health. he has already had one or two little wives, but louisa biron is his favourite, a pretty little girl five years of age. now, dear victor, i dare say you wish to be indulged in a little gossip concerning the good people of geneva. the pretty miss mansfield has already received the congratulatory visits on her approaching marriage with a young englishman, john melbourne, esq. her ugly sister, manon, married m. duvillard, the rich banker, last autumn. your favourite schoolfellow, louis manoir, has suffered several misfortunes since the departure of clerval from geneva. but he has already recovered his spirits, and is reported to be on the point of marrying a very lively pretty frenchwoman, madame tavernier. she is a widow, and much older than manoir; but she is very much admired, and a favourite with everybody. i have written myself into better spirits, dear cousin; but my anxiety returns upon me as i conclude. write, dearest victorone lineone word will be a blessing to us. ten thousand thanks to henry for his kindness, his affection, and his many letters: we are sincerely grateful. adieu! my cousin; take care of yourself; and, i entreat you, write! elizabeth lavenza. "dear, dear elizabeth!" i exclaimed, when i had read her letter, "i will write instantly, and relieve them from the anxiety they must feel." i wrote, and this exertion greatly fatigued me; but my convalescence had commenced, and proceeded regularly. in another fortnight i was able to leave my chamber. one of my first duties on my recovery was to introduce clerval to the several professors of the university. in doing this, i underwent a kind of rough usage, ill befitting the wounds that my mind had sustained. ever since the fatal night, the end of my labours, add the beginning of my misfortunes, i had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy. when i was otherwise quite restored to health, the sight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony of my nervous symptoms. henry saw this, and had removed all my apparatus from my view. he had also changed my apartment; for he perceived that i had acquired a dislike for the room which had previously been my laboratory. but these cares of clerval were made of no avail when i visited the professors. m. waldman inflicted torture when he praised, with kindness and warmth, the astonishing progress i had made in the sciences. he soon perceived that i disliked the subject; but not guessing the real cause, he attributed my feelings to modesty, and changed the subject from my improvement, to the science itself, with a desire, as i evidently saw, of drawing me out. what could i do? he meant to please, and he tormented me. i felt as if he had placed carefully, one by one, in my view those instruments which were to be afterwards used in putting me to a slow and cruel death. i writhed under his words, yet dared not exhibit the pain i felt. clerval, whose eyes and feelings were always quick in discerning the sensations of others, declined the subject, alleging, in excuse, his total ignorance; and the conversation took a more general turn. i thanked my friend from my heart, but i did not speak. i saw plainly that he was surprised, but he never attempted to draw my secret from me; and although i loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds, yet i could never persuade myself to confide to him that event which was so often present to my recollection, but which i feared the detail to another would only impress more deeply. m. krempe was not equally docile; and in my condition at that time, of almost insupportable sensitiveness, his harsh blunt encomiums gave me even more pain than the benevolent approbation of m. he has outstript us all. ay, stare if you please; but it is nevertheless true. a youngster who, but a few years ago, believed in cornelius agrippa as firmly as in the gospel, has now set himself at the head of the university; and if he is not soon pulled down, we shall all be out of countenance.ay, ay," continued he, observing my face expressive of suffering, "m. frankenstein is modest; an excellent quality in a young man. young men should be diffident of themselves, you know, m. clerval: i was myself when young; but that wears out in a very short time." m. krempe had now commenced an eulogy on himself, which happily turned the conversation from a subject that was so annoying to me. clerval had never sympathised in my tastes for natural science; and his literary pursuits differed wholly from those which had occupied me. he came to the university with the design of making himself complete master of the oriental languages, as thus he should open a field for the plan of life he had marked out for himself resolved to pursue no inglorious career, he turned his eyes toward the east, as affording scope for his spirit of enterprise. the persian, arabic, and sanscrit languages engaged his attention, and i was easily induced to enter on the same studies. idleness had ever been irksome to me, and now that i wished to fly from reflection, and hated my former studies, i felt great relief in being the fellow-pupil with my friend, and found not only instruction but consolation in the works of the orientalists. i did not, like him, attempt a critical knowledge of their dialects, for i did not contemplate making any other use of them than temporary amusement. i read merely to understand their meaning, and they well repaid my labours. their melancholy is soothing, and their elevating, to a degree i never experienced in studying the authors of any other country. when you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and a garden of rosesin the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own heart. how different from the manly and heroical poetry of greece and rome! summer passed away in these occupations, and my return to geneva was fixed for the latter end of autumn; but being delayed by several accidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable, and my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring. i felt this delay very bitterly for i longed to see my native town and my beloved friends. my return had only been delayed so long from an unwillingness to leave clerval in a strange place, before he had become acquainted with any of its inhabitants. the winter, however, was spent cheerfully; and although the spring was uncommonly late, when it came its beauty compensated for its dilatoriness. the month of may had already commenced, and i expected the letter daily which was to fix the date of my departure, when henry proposed a pedestrian tour in the environs of ingolstadt, that i might bid a personal farewell to the country i had so long inhabited. i acceded with pleasure to this proposition: i was fond of exercise, and clerval had always been my favourite companion in the rambles of this nature that i had taken among the scenes of my native country. we passed a fortnight in these perambulations: my health and spirits had long been restored, and they gained additional strength from the salubrious air i breathed, the natural incidents of our progress, and the conversation of my friend. study had before secluded me from the intercourse of my fellow-creatures, and rendered me unsocial; but clerval called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught me to love the aspect of nature, and the cheerful faces of children. excellent friend! how sincerely did you love me, and endeavour to elevate my mind until it was on a level with your own! a selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me, until your gentleness and affection warmed and opened my senses; i became the same happy creature who, a few years ago, loved and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care. when happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations. a serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy. the present season was indeed divine; the flowers of spring bloomed in the hedges, while those of summer were already in bud. i was undisturbed by thoughts which during the preceding year had pressed upon me, notwithstanding my endeavours to throw them off, with an invincible burden. henry rejoiced in my gaiety, and sincerely sympathised in my feelings: he exerted himself to amuse me, while he expressed the sensations that filled his soul. the resources of his mind on this occasion were truly astonishing: his conversation was full of imagination; and very often, in imitation of the persian and arabic writers, he invented tales of wonderful fancy and passion. at other times he repeated my favourite poems, or drew me out into arguments, which he supported with great ingenuity. we returned to our college on a sunday afternoon: the peasants were dancing, and every one we met appeared gay and happy. my own spirits were high, and i bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity. chapter vii on my return, i found the following letter from my father, my dear victor,you have probably waited impatiently for a letter to fix the date of your return to us; and i was at first tempted to write only a few lines, merely mentioning the day on which i should expect you. but that would be a cruel kindness, and i dare not do it. what would be your surprise, my son, when you expected a happy and glad welcome, to behold, on the contrary, tears and wretchedness? and how, victor, can i relate our misfortune? absence cannot have rendered you callous to our joys and griefs; and how shall i inflict pain on my long absent son? i wish to prepare you for the woeful news, but i know it is impossible; even now your eye skims over the page, to seek the words which are to convey to you the horrible tidings. william is dead!that sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed my heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay! victor, he is murdered! i will not attempt to console you; but will simply relate the circumstances of the transaction. last thursday (may 7th), i, my niece, and your two brothers, went to walk in plainpalais. the evening was warm and serene, and we prolonged our walk farther than usual. it was already dusk before we thought of returning; and then we discovered that william and ernest, who had gone on before, were not to be found. we accordingly rested on a seat until they should return. presently ernest came, and inquired if we had seen his brother: he said, that he had been playing with him, that william had run away to hide himself, and that he vainly sought for him, and afterwards waited for him a long time, but that he did not return. this account rather alarmed us, and we continued to search for him until night fell, when elizabeth conjectured that he might have returned to the house. he was not there. we returned again, with torches; for i could not rest, when i thought that my sweet boy had lost himself, and was exposed to all the damps and dews of night; elizabeth also suffered extreme anguish. about five in the morning i discovered my lovely boy, whom the night before i had seen blooming and active in health, stretched on the grass livid and motionless; the print of the murderer's finger was on his neck. he was conveyed home, and the anguish that was visible in my countenance betrayed the secret to elizabeth. she was very earnest to see the corpse. at first i attempted to prevent herbut she persisted, and entering the room where it lay, hastily examined the neck of the victim, and clasping her hands, exclaimed, "o god! i have murdered my darling child!" she fainted, and was restored with extreme difficulty. when she again lived, it was only to weep and sigh. she told me that that same evening william had teased her to let him wear a very valuable miniature that she possessed of your mother. this picture is gone, and was doubtless the temptation which urged the murderer to the deed. we have no trace of him at present, although our exertions to discover him are unremitted; but they will not restore my beloved wilham! come, dearest victor; you alone can console elizabeth. she weeps continually, and accuses herself unjustly as the cause of his death; her words pierce my heart. we are all unhappy; but will not that be an additional motive for you, my son, to return and be our comforter? your dear mother! alas, victor! i now say, thank god she did not live to witness the cruel, miserable death of her youngest darling! come, victor; not brooding thoughts of vengeance against the assassin, but with feelings of peace and gentleness, that will heal, instead of festering, the wounds of our minds. enter the house of mourning, my friend, but with kindness and affection for those who love you, and not with hatred for your enemies.your affectionate and afflicted father, alphonse frankenstein. clerval, who had watched my countenance as i read this letter, was surprised to observe the despair that succeeded to the joy i at first expressed on receiving news from my friends. i threw the letter on the table, and covered my face with my hands. "my dear frankenstein," exclaimed henry, when he perceived me weep with bitterness, "are you always to be unhappy? my dear friend, what has happened?" i motioned to him to take up the letter, while i walked up and down the room in the extremest agitation. tears also gushed from the eyes of clerval, as he read the account of my misfortune. "i can offer you no consolation, my friend," said he; "your disaster is irreparable. what do you intend to do?" "to go instantly to geneva: come with me, henry, to order the horses." during our walk, clerval endeavoured to say a few words of consolation; he could only express his heartfelt sympathy. "poor william!" said he, "dear lovely child, he now sleeps with his angel mother! who that had seen him bright and joyous in his young beauty, but must weep over his untimely loss! to die so miserably; to feel the murderer's grasp! how much more a murderer, that could destroy such radiant innocence! poor little fellow! one only consolation have we; his friends mourn and weep, but he is at rest. the pang is over, his sufferings are at an end for ever. a sod covers his gentle form, and he knows no pain. he can no longer be a subject for pity; we must reserve that for his miserable survivors." clerval spoke thus as we hurried through the streets; the words impressed themselves on my mind, and i remembered them afterwards in solitude. but now, as soon as the horses arrived, i hurried into a cabriolet, and bade farewell to my friend. my journey was very melancholy. at first i wished to hurry on, for i longed to console and sympathise with my loved and sorrowing friends; but when i drew near my native town, i slackened my progress. i could hardly sustain the multitude of feelings that crowded into my mind. i passed through scenes familiar to my youth, but which i had not seen for nearly six years. how altered everything might be during that time! one sudden and desolating change had taken place; but a thousand little circumstances might have by degrees worked other alterations, which, although they were done more tranquilly, might not be the less decisive. fear overcame me; i dared not advance, dreading a thousand nameless evils that made me tremble, although i was unable to define them. i remained two days at lausanne, in this painful state of mind. i contemplated the lake: the waters were placid; all around was calm; and the snowy mountains, "the palaces of nature," were not changed. by degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me, and i continued my journey towards geneva. the road ran by the side of the lake, which became narrower as i approached my native town. i discovered more distinctly the black sides of jura, and the bright summit of mont blanc. i wept like a child. "dear mountains! my own beautiful lake! how do you welcome your wanderer? your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?" i fear, my friend, that i shall render myself tedious by dwelling on these preliminary circumstances; but they were days of comparative happiness, and i think of them with pleasure. my country, my beloved country! who but a native can tell the delight i took in again beholding thy streams, thy mountains, and, more than all, thy lovely lake! yet, as i drew nearer home, grief and fear again overcame me. night also closed around; and when i could hardly see the dark mountains, i felt still more gloomily. the picture appeared a vast and dim scene of evil, and i foresaw obscurely that i was destined to become the most wretched of human beings. alas! i prophesied truly, and failed only in one single circumstance, that in all the misery i imagined and dreaded, i did not conceive the hundredth part of the anguish i was destined to endure. it was completely dark when i arrived in the environs of geneva; the gates of the town were already shut; and i was obliged to pass the night at secheron, a village at the distance of half a league from the city. the sky was serene; and, as i was unable to rest, i resolved to visit the spot where my poor william had been murdered. as i could not pass through the town, i was obliged to cross the lake in a boat to arrive at plainpalais. during this short voyage i saw the lightnings playing on the summit of mont blanc in the most beautiful figures. the storm appeared to approach rapidly; and, on landing, i ascended a low hill, that i might observe its progress. it advanced; the heavens were clouded, and i soon felt the rain coming slowly in large drops, but its violence quickly increased. i quitted my seat, and walked on, although the darkness and storm increased every minute, and the thunder burst with a terrific crash over my head. it was echoed from saleve, the juras, and the alps of savoy; vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an instant everything seemed of a pitchy darkness, until the eye recovered itself from the preceding flash. the storm, as is often the case in switzerland, appeared at once in various parts of the heavens. the most violent storm hung exactly north of the town, over that part of the lake which lies between the promontory of belrive and the village of copet. another storm enlightened jura with faint flashes; and another darkened and sometimes disclosed the mole, a peaked mountain to the east of the lake. while i watched the tempest, so beautiful yet terrific, i wandered on with a hasty step. this noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; i clasped my hands, and exclaimed aloud, "william, dear angel! this is thy funeral, this thy dirge!" as i said these words, i perceived in the gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; i stood fixed, gazing intently: i could not be mistaken. a flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy daemon, to whom i had given life. what did he there? could he be (i shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? no sooner did that idea cross my imagination, than i became convinced of its truth; my teeth chattered, and i was forced to lean against a tree for support. the figure passed me quickly, and i lost it in the gloom. nothing in human shape could have destroyed that fair child. he was the murderer! i could not doubt it. the mere presence of the idea was an irresistible proof of the fact. i thought of pursuing the devil; but it would have been in vain, for another flash discovered him to me hanging among the rocks of the nearly perpendicular ascent of mont. saleve, a hill that bounds plainpalais on the south. he soon reached the summit, and disappeared. i remained motionless. the thunder ceased; but the rain still continued, and the scene was enveloped in an impenetrable darkness. i revolved in my mind the events which i had until now sought to forget: the whole train of my progress towards the creation; the appearance of the work of my own hands alive at my bedside; its departure. two years had now nearly elapsed since the night on which he first received life; and was this his first crime? alas! i had turned loose into the world a depraved wretch, whose delight was in carnage and misery; had he not murdered my brother? no one can conceive the anguish i suffered during the remainder of the night, which i spent, cold and wet, in the open air. but i did not feel the inconvenience of the weather; my imagination was busy in scenes of evil and despair. i considered the being whom i had cast among mankind, and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror, such as the deed which he had now done, nearly in the light of my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to destroy all that was dear to me. day dawned; and i directed my steps towards the town. the gates were open, and i hastened to my father's house. my first thought was to discover what i knew of the murderer and cause instant pursuit to be made. but i paused when i reflected on the story that i had to tell. a being whom i myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain. i remembered also the nervous fever with which i had been seized just at the time that i dated my creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a tale otherwise so utterly improbable. i well knew that if any other had communicated such a relation to me, i should have looked upon it as the ravings of insanity. besides, the strange nature of the animal would elude all pursuit, even if i were so far credited as to persuade my relatives to commence it. and then of what use would be pursuit? who could arrest a creature capable of scaling the overhanging sides of mont saleve? these reflections determined me, and i resolved to remain silent. it was about five in the morning when i entered my father's house. i told the servants not to disturb the family, and went into the library to attend their usual hour of rising. six years had elapsed, passed as a dream but for one indelible trace, and i stood in the same place where i had last embraced my father before my departure for ingolstadt. beloved and venerable parent! he still remained to me. i gazed on the picture of my mother, which stood over the mantel-piece. it was an historical subject, painted at my father's desire, and represented caroline beaufort in an agony of despair, kneeling by the coffin of her dead father. her garb was rustic, and her cheek pale; but there was an air of dignity and beauty, that hardly permitted the sentiment of pity. below this picture was a miniature of william; and my tears flowed when i looked upon it. while i was thus engaged, ernest entered: he had heard me arrive, and hastened to welcome me. he expressed a sorrowful delight to see me: "welcome, my dearest victor," said he. "ah! i wish you had come three months ago, and then you would have found us all joyous and delighted! you come to us now to share a misery which nothing can alleviate; yet your presence will, i hope, revive our father, who seems sinking under his misfortune; and your persuasions will induce poor elizabeth to cease her vain and tormenting self-accusations.poor william! he was our darling and our pride!" tears, unrestrained, fell from my brother's eyes; a sense of mortal agony crept over my frame. before, i had only imagined the' wretchedness of my desolated home; the reality came on me as a new, and a not less terrible, disaster. i tried to calm ernest; i inquired more minutely concerning my father and her i named my cousin. "she most of all," said ernest, "requires consolation; she accused herself of having caused the death of my brother, and that made her very wretched. but since the murderer has been discovered-" "the murderer discovered! good god! how can that be? who could attempt to pursue him? it is impossible; one might as well try to overtake the winds, or confine a mountain-stream with a straw. i saw him too; he was free last night!" "i do not know what you mean," replied my brother, in accents of wonder, "but to us the discovery we have made completes our misery. no one would believe it at first; and even now elizabeth will not be convinced, notwithstanding all the evidence. indeed, who would credit that justine moritz, who was so amiable, and fond of all the family, could suddenly become capable of so frightful, so appalling a crime?" "justine moritz! poor, poor girl, is she the accused? but it is wrongfully; every one knows that; no one believes it, surely, ernest?" "no one did at first; but several circumstances came out, that have almost forced conviction upon us; and her own behaviour has been so confused, as to add to the evidence of facts a weight that, i fear, leaves no hope for doubt. but she will be tried to-day, and you will then hear all." he related that, the morning on which the murder of poor wilham had been discovered, justine had been taken ill, and confined to her bed for several days. during this interval, one of the servants, happening to examine the apparel she had worn on the night of the murder, had discovered in her pocket the picture of my mother, which had been judged to be the temptation of the murderer. the servant instantly showed it to one of the others, who, without saying a word to any of the family, went to a magistrate; and, upon their deposition, justine was apprehended. on being charged with the fact, the poor girl confirmed the suspicion in a great measure by her extreme confusion of manner. this was a strange tale, but it did not shake my faith; and i replied earnestly, "you are all mistaken; i know the murderer justine, poor, good justine, is innocent." at that instant my father entered. i saw unhappiness deeply impressed on his countenance, but he endeavoured to welcome me cheerfully; and, after we had exchanged our mournful greeting, would have introduced some other topic than that of our disaster, had not ernest exclaimed, "good god, papa! victor says that he knows who was the murderer of poor william." "we do also, unfortunately," replied my father; "for indeed i had rather have been for ever ignorant than have discovered so much depravity and ingratitude in one i valued so highly." "my dear father, you are mistaken; justine is innocent." "if she is, god forbid that she should suffer as guilty. she is to be tried to-day, and i hope, i sincerely hope, that she will be acquitted." this speech calmed me. i was firmly convinced in my own mind that justine, and indeed every human being, was guiltless of this murder. i had no fear, therefore, that any circumstantial evidence could be brought forward strong enough to convict her. my tale was not one to announce publicly; its astounding horror would be looked upon as madness by the vulgar. did any one indeed exist, except i, the creator, who would believe, unless his senses convinced him, in the existence of the living monument of presumption and rash ignorance which i had let loose upon the world? we were soon joined by elizabeth. time had altered her since i last beheld her; it had endowed her with loveliness surpassing the beauty of her childish years. there was the same candour, the same vivacity, but it was allied to an expression more full of sensibility and intellect. she welcomed me with the greatest affection. "your arrival, my dear cousin," said she, "fills me with hope. you perhaps will find some means to justify my poor guiltless justine. alas! who is safe, if she be convicted of crime? i rely on her innocence as certainly as i do upon my own. our misfortune is doubly hard to us; we have not only lost that lovely darling boy, but this poor girl, whom i sincerely love, is to be torn away by even a worse fate. if she is condemned, i never shall know joy more. but she will not, i am sure she will not; and then i shall be happy again, even after the sad death of my little william." "she is innocent, my elizabeth," said i, "and that shall be proved; fear nothing, but let your spirits be cheered by the assurance of her acquittal." "how kind and generous you are! every one else believes in her guilt, and that made me wretched, for i knew that it was impossible: and to see everyone else prejudiced in so deadly a manner rendered me hopeless and despairing." she wept. "dearest niece," said my father, "dry your tears. if she is, as you believe, innocent, rely on the justice of our laws, and the activity with which i shall prevent the slightest shadow of partiality." chapter viii we passed a few sad hours, until eleven o'clock, when the trial was to commence. my father and the rest of the family being obliged to attend as witnesses, i accompanied them to the court. during the whole of this wretched mockery of justice i suffered living torture. it was to be decided, whether the result of my curiosity and lawless devices would cause the death of two of my fellow-beings: one a smiling babe, full of innocence and joy; the other far more dreadfully murdered, with every aggravation of infamy that could make the murder memorable in horror. justine also was a girl of merit, and possessed qualities which promised to render her life happy: now all was to be obliterated in an ignominious grave; and i the cause! a thousand times rather would i have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to justine; but i was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been considered as the ravings of a madman, and would not have exculpated her who suffered through me. the appearance of justine was calm. she was dressed in mourning; and her countenance, always engaging, was rendered, by the solemnity of her feelings, exquisitely beautiful. yet she appeared confident in innocence, and did not tremble, although gazed on and execrated by thousands; for all the kindness which her beauty might otherwise have excited, was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the imagination of the enormity she was supposed to have committed. she was tranquil, yet her tranquillity was evidently constrained; and as her confusion had before been adduced as a proof of her guilt, she worked up her mind to an appearance of courage. when she entered the court, she threw her eyes round it, and quickly discovered where we were seated. a tear seemed to dim her eye when she saw us; but she quickly recovered herself, and a look of sorrowful affection seemed to attest her utter guiltlessness. the trial began; and, after the advocate against her had stated the charge, several witnesses were called. several strange facts combined against her, which might have staggered anyone who had not such proof of her innocence as i had. she had been out the whole of the night on which the murder had been committed, and towards morning had been perceived by a market-woman not far from the spot where the body of the murdered child had been afterwards found. the woman asked her what she did there; but she looked very strangely, and only returned a confused and unintelligible answer. she returned to the house about eight o'clock; and, when one inquired where she had passed the night, she replied that she had been looking for the child, and demanded earnestly if anything had been heard concerning him. when shown the body, she fell into violent hysterics, and kept her bed for several days. the picture was then produced, which the servant had found in her pocket; and when elizabeth, in a faltering voice, proved that it was the same which, an hour before the child had been missed, she had placed round his neck, a murmur of horror and indignation filled the court. justine was called on for her defence. as the trial had proceeded, her countenance had altered. surprise, horror, and misery were strongly expressed. sometimes she struggled with her tears; but, when she was desired to plead, she collected her powers, and spoke, in an audible, although variable voice. "god knows," she said, "how entirely i am innocent. but i do not pretend that my protestations should acquit me: i rest my innocence on a plain and simple explanation of the facts which have been adduced against me; and i hope the character i have always borne will incline my judges to a favourable interpretation, where any circumstance appears doubtful or suspicious." she then related that, by the permission of elizabeth, she had passed the evening of the night on which the murder had been committed at the house of an aunt at chene, a village situated at about a league from geneva. on her return, at about nine o'clock, she met a man, who asked her if she had seen anything of the child who was lost. she was alarmed by this account, and passed several hours in looking for him, when the gates of geneva were shut, and she was forced to remain several hours of the night in a barn belonging to a cottage, being unwilling to call up the inhabitants, to whom she was well known. most of the night she spent here watching; towards morning she believed that she slept for a few minutes; some steps disturbed her, and she awoke. it was dawn, and she quitted her asylum, that she might again endeavour to find my brother. if she had gone near the spot where his body lay, it was without her knowledge. that she had been bewildered when questioned by the market-woman was not surprising, since she had passed a sleepless night, and the fate of poor william was yet uncertain. concerning the picture she could give no account. "i know," continued the unhappy victim, "how heavily and fatally this one circumstance weighs against me, but i have no power of explaining it; and when i have expressed my utter ignorance, i am only left to conjecture concerning the probabilities by which it might have been placed in my pocket. but here also i am checked. i believe that i have no enemy on earth, and none surely would have been so wicked as to destroy me wantonly. did the murderer place it there? i know of no opportunity afforded him for so doing; or, if i had, why should he have stolen the jewel, to part with it again so soon? "i commit my cause to the justice of my judges, yet i see no room for hope. i beg permission to have a few witnesses examined concerning my character; and if their testimony shall not overweigh my supposed guilt, i must be condemned, although i would pledge my salvation on my innocence." several witnesses were called, who had known her for many years, and they spoke well of her; but fear and hatred of the crime of which they supposed her guilty rendered them timorous, and unwilling to come forward. elizabeth saw even this last resource, her excellent dispositions and irreproachable conduct, about to fail the accused, when, although violently agitated, she desired permission to address the court. "i am," said she, "the cousin of the unhappy child who was murdered, or rather his sister, for i was educated by, and have lived with his parents ever since and even long before, his birth. it may, therefore, be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when i see a fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, i wish to be allowed to speak, that i may say what i know of her character. i am well acquainted with the accused. i have lived in the same house with her, at one time for five and at another for nearly two years. during all that period she appeared to me the most amiable and benevolent of human creatures. she nursed madame frankenstein, my aunt, in her last illness, with the greatest affection and care; and afterwards attended her own mother during a tedious illness, in a manner that excited the admiration of all who knew her; after which she again lived in my uncle's house, where she was beloved by all the family. she was warmly attached to the child who is now dead, and acted towards him like a most affectionate mother. for my own part, i do not hesitate to say, that, notwithstanding all the evidence produced against her, i believe and rely on her perfect innocence. she had no temptation for such an action: as to the bauble on which the chief proof rests, if she had earnestly desired it, i should have willingly given it to her; so much do i esteem and value her." a murmur of approbation followed elizabeth's simple and powerful appeal but it was excited by her generous interference, and not in turned with renewed violence, on whom the public indignation was turned with renewed violence, charging her with the blackest ingratitude. she herself wept as elizabeth spoke, but she did not answer. my own agitation and anguish was extreme during the whole trial. i believed in her innocence; i knew it. could the daemon, who had (i did not for a minute doubt) murdered my brother, also in his hellish sport have betrayed the innocent to death and ignominy? i could not sustain the horror of my situation; and when i perceived that the popular voice, and the countenances of the judges, had already condemned my unhappy victim, i rushed out of the court in agony. the tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom, and would not forego their hold. i passed a night of unmingled wretchedness. in the morning i went to the court; my lips and throat were parched. i dared not ask the fatal question; but i was known, and the officer guessed the cause of my visit. the ballots had been thrown; they were all black, and justine was condemned. i cannot pretend to describe what i then felt. i had before experienced sensations of horror; and i have endeavoured to bestow upon them adequate expressions, but words cannot convey an idea of the heart-sickening despair that i then endured. the person to whom i addressed myself added, that justine had already confessed her guilt. "that evidence," he observed, "was hardly required in so glaring a case, but i am glad of it; and, indeed, none of our judges like to condemn a criminal upon circumstantial evidence, be it ever so decisive." this was strange and unexpected intelligence; what could it mean? had my eyes deceived me? and was i really as mad as the whole world would believe me to be, if i disclosed the object of my suspicions? i hastened to return home, and elizabeth eagerly demanded the result. "my cousin," replied i, "it is decided as you may have expected; all judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer, than that one guilty should escape. but she has confessed." this was a dire blow to poor elizabeth, who had relied with firmness upon justine's innocence. "alas!" said she, "how shall i ever again believe in human goodness? justine, whom i loved and esteemed as my sister, how could she put on those smiles of innocence only to betray? her mild eyes seemed incapable of any severity or guile, and yet she has committed a murder." soon after we heard that the poor victim had expressed a desire to see my cousin. my father wished her not to go; but said, that he left it to her own judgment and feelings to decide. "yes," said elizabeth, "i will go, although she is guilty; and you, victor, shall accompany me: i cannot go alone." the idea of this visit was torture to me, yet i could not refuse. we entered the gloomy prison-chamber, and beheld justine sitting on some straw at the farther end; her hands were manacled, and her head rested on her knees. she rose on seeing us enter; and when we were left alone with her, she threw herself at the feet of elizabeth, weeping bitterly. my cousin wept also. "oh, justine!" said she, "why did you rob me of my last consolation? i relied on your innocence; and although i was then very wretched, i was not so miserable as i am now." "and do you also believe that i am so very, very wicked? do you also join with my enemies to crush me, to condemn me as a murderer?" her voice was suffocated with sobs. "rise, my poor girl," said elizabeth, "why do you kneel, if you are innocent? i am not one of your enemies; i believed you guiltless, notwithstanding every evidence, until i heard that you had yourself declared your guilt. that report, you say, is false; and be assured, dear justine, that nothing can shake my confidence in you for a moment, but your own confession." "i did confess; but i confessed a lie. i confessed, that i might obtain absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my other sins. the god of heaven forgive me! ever since i was condemned, my confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced, until i almost began to think that i was the monster that he said i was. he threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments, if i continued obdurate. dear lady, i had none to support me; all looked on me as a wretch doomed to ignominy and perdition. what could i do? in an evil hour i subscribed to a lie; and now only am i truly miserable." she paused, weeping, and then continued"i thought with horror, my sweet lady, that you should believe your justine, whom your blessed aunt had so highly honoured, and whom you loved, was a creature capable of a crime which none but the devil himself could go have perpetrated. dear william! dearest blessed child! i soon shall see you again in heaven, where we shall all be happy; and that consoles me, going as i am to suffer ignominy and death." "oh, justine! forgive me for having for one moment distrusted you. why did you confess? but do not mourn, dear girl. do not fear. i will proclaim, i will prove your innocence. i will melt the stony hearts of your enemies by my tears and prayers. you shall not die! no! no! i never could survive so horrible a misfortune." justine shook her head mournfully. "i do not fear to die," she said; "that pang is past. i leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me, and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, i am resigned to the fate awaiting me. learn from me, dear lady, to submit in patience to the will of heaven!" during this conversation i had retired to a corner of the prison-room, where i could conceal the horrid anguish that possessed me. i gnashed my teeth, and ground them together, uttering a groan that came from my inmost soul. justine started. when she saw who it was, she approached me, and said, "dear sir, you are kind to visit me; you, i hope, do not believe that i am guilty?" i could not answer. "no, justine," said elizabeth; "he is more convinced of your innocence than i was; for even when he heard that you had confessed, he did not credit it." "i truly thank him. in these last moments i feel the sincerest gratitude towards those who think of me with kindness. how sweet is the affection of others to such a wretch as i am! it removes more than half my misfortune; and i feel as if i could die in peace, now that my innocence is acknowledged by you, dear lady, and your cousin." thus the poor sufferer tried to comfort others and herself. she indeed gained the resignation she desired. but i, the true murderer, felt the never-dying worm alive in my bosom, which allowed of no hope or consolation. elizabeth also wept, and was unhappy; but hers also was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides but cannot tarnish its brightness. justine assumed an air of cheerfulness, while she with difficulty repressed her bitter tears. she embraced elizabeth, and said, in a voice of half-suppressed emotion, "farewell, sweet lady, dearest elizabeth, my beloved and only friend; may this be the last misfortune that you will ever suffer! live, and be happy, and make others so." and on the morrow justine died. elizabeth's heartrending eloquence failed to move the judges from their settled conviction in the criminality of the saintly sufferer. my passionate and indignant appeals were lost upon them. and when i received their cold answers, and heard the harsh unfeeling reasoning of these men, my purposed avowal died away on my lips. thus i might proclaim myself a madman, but not revoke the sentence passed upon my wretched victim. she perished on the scaffold as a murderess! from the tortures of my own heart, i turned to contemplate the deep and voiceless grief of my elizabeth. this also was my doing! and my father's woe, and the desolation of that late so smiling homeall was the work of my thriceaccursed hands! ye weep, unhappy ones; but these are not your last tears! again shall you raise the funeral wall, and the sound of your lamentations shall again and again be heard! frankenstein, your son, your kinsman, your early, much-loved friendhe bids you weepto shed countless tears; happy beyond his hopes, if thus inexorable fate be satisfied, and if the destruction pause before the peace of the grave have succeeded to your sad torments! thus spoke my prophetic soul, as, torn by remorse, horror, and despair, i beheld those i loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of william and justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts! chapter ix nothing is more painful to the human mind, than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows, and deprives the soul both of hope and fear. justine died; she rested; and i was alive. the blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart, which nothing could remove. sleep fled from my eyes; i wandered like an evil spirit, for i had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more (i persuaded myself), was yet behind. yet my heart overflowed with kindness and the love of virtue. i had begun life with benevolent intentions, and thirsted for the moment when i should put them in practice, and make myself useful to my fellow-beings. now all was blasted: instead of that serenity of conscience, which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, i was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe. this state of mind preyed upon my health, which had perhaps never entirely recovered from the first shock it had sustained. i shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolationdeep, dark, deathlike solitude. my father observed with pain the alteration perceptible in my disposition and habits, and endeavoured by arguments deduced from the feelings of his serene conscience and guiltless life, to inspire me with fortitude, and awaken in me the courage to dispel the dark cloud which brooded over me. "do you think, victor," said he, "that i do not suffer also? no one could love a child more than i loved your brother" (tears came into his eyes as he spoke); "but is it not a duty to the survivors, that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? it is also a duty owed to yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society." this advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case; i should have been the first to hide my grief, and console my friends, if remorse had not mingled its bitterness, and terror its alarm with my other sensations. now i could only answer my father with a look of despair, and endeavour to hide myself from his view. about this time we retired to our house at belrive. this change was particularly agreeable to me. the shutting of the gates regularly at ten o'clock, and the impossibility of remaining on the lake after that hour, had rendered our residence within the walls of geneva very irksome to me. i was now free. often, after the rest of the family had retired for the night, i took the boat, and passed many hours upon the water. sometimes, with my sails set, i was carried by the wind; and sometimes, after rowing into the middle of the lake, i left the boat to pursue its own course, and gave way to my own miserable reflections. i was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and i the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenlyif i except some bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard only when i approached the shoreoften, i say, i was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities for ever. but i was restrained, when i thought of the heroic and suffering elizabeth, whom i tenderly loved, and whose existence was bound up in mine. i thought also of my father and surviving brother: should i by my base desertion leave them exposed and unprotected to the malice of the fiend whom i had let loose among them? at these moments i wept bitterly, and wished that peace would revisit my mind only that i might afford them consolation and happiness. but that could not be. remorse extinguished every hope. i had been the author of unalterable evils; and i lived in daily fear, lest the monster whom i had created should perpetrate some new wickedness. i had an obscure feeling that all was not over, and that he would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past. there was always scope for fear, so long as anything i loved remained behind. my abhorrence of this fiend cannot be conceived. when i thought of him, i gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and i ardently wished to extinguish that life which i had so thoughtlessly bestowed. when i reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation. i would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the andes, could i, when there, have precipitated him to their base. i wished to see him again, that i might wreak the utmost extent of abhorrence on his head, and avenge the deaths of william and justine. our house was the house of mourning. my father's health was deeply shaken by the horror of the recent events. elizabeth was sad and desponding; she no longer took delight in her ordinary occupations; all pleasure seemed to her sacrilege toward the dead; eternal woe and tears she then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence so blasted and destroyed. she was no longer that happy creature, who in earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake, and talked with ecstasy of our future prospects. the first of those sorrows which are sent to wean us from the earth, had visited her, and its dimming influence quenched her dearest smiles. "when i reflect, my dear cousin," said she, "on the miserable death of justine moritz, i no longer see the world and its works as they before appeared to me. before, i looked upon the accounts of vice and injustice, that i read in books or heard from others, as tales of ancient days, or imaginary evils; at least they were remote, and more familiar to reason than to the imagination; but now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood. yet i am certainly unjust. everybody believed that poor girl to be guilty; and if she could have committed the crime for which she suffered, assuredly she would have been the most depraved of human creatures. for the sake of a few jewels, to have murdered the son of her benefactor and friend, a child whom she had nursed from its birth, and appeared to love as if it had been her own! i could not consent to the death of any human being; but certainly i should have thought such a creature unfit to remain in the society of men. but she was innocent. i know, i feel she was innocent; you are of the same opinion, and that confirms me. alas! victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness? i feel if i were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding, and endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss. william and justine were assassinated, and the murderer escapes; he walks about the world free, and perhaps respected. but even if i were condemned to suffer on the scaffold for the same crimes, i would not change places with such a wretch." i listened to this discourse with the extremest agony. i, not in deed, but in effect, was the true murderer. elizabeth read my anguish in my countenance, and kindly taking my hand, said, "my dearest friend, you must calm yourself these events have affected me, god knows how deeply; but i am not so wretched as you are. there is an expression of despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance, that makes me tremble. dear victor, banish these dark passions. remember the friends around you, who centre all their hopes in you. have we lost the power of rendering you happy? ah! while we lovewhile we are true to each other, here in this land of peace and beauty, your native country, we may reap every tranquil blessingwhat can disturb our peace?" and could not such words from her whom i fondly prized before every other gift of fortune, suffice to chase away the fiend that lurked in my heart? even as she spoke i drew near to her, as if in terror; lest at that very moment the destroyer had been near to rob me of her. thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth, nor of heaven, could redeem my soul from woe: the very accents of love were ineffectual. i was encompassed by a cloud which no beneficial influence could penetrate. the wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to diewas but a type of me. sometimes i could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me: but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable sensations. it was during an access of this kind that i suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows. my wanderings were directed towards the valley of chamounix. i had visited it frequently during my boyhood. six years had passed since then: i was a wreckbut nought had changed in those savage and enduring scenes. i performed the first part of my journey on horseback. i afterwards hired a mule, as the more sure-footed, and least liable to receive injury on these rugged roads. the weather was fine: it was about the middle of the month of august, nearly two months after the death of justine; that miserable epoch from which i dated all my woe. the weight upon my spirit was sensibly lightened as i plunged yet deeper in the ravine of arve. the immense mountains and precipices that overhung me on every sidethe sound of the river raging among the rocks, and the dashing of the waterfalls around, spoke of a power mighty as omnipotenceand i ceased to fear, or to bend before any being less almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements, here displayed in their most terrific guise. still, as i ascended higher, the valley assumed a more magnificent and astonishing character. ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains; the impetuous arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from among the trees, formed a scene of singular beauty. but it was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty alps, whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings. i passed the bridge of pelissier, where the ravine, which the river forms, opened before me, and i began to ascend the mountain that overhangs it. soon after i entered the valley of chamounix. this valley is more wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and picturesque, as that of servox, through which i had just passed. the high and snowy mountains were its immediate boundaries; but i saw no more ruined castles and fertile fields. immense glaciers approached the road; i heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche, and marked the smoke of its passage. mont blanc, the supreme and magnificent mont blanc, raised itself from the surrounding aiguilles, and its tremendous dome overlooked the valley. a tingling long-lost sense of pleasure often came across me during this journey. some turn in the road, some new object suddenly perceived and recognised, reminded me of days gone by, and were associated with the light-hearted gaiety of boyhood. the very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal nature bade me weep no more. then again the kindly influence ceased to acti found myself fettered again to grief, and indulging in all the misery of reflection. then i spurred on my animal, striving so to forget the world, my fears, and, more than all, myselfor, in a more desperate fashion, i alighted, and threw myself on the grass, weighed down by horror and despair. at length i arrived at the village of chamounix. exhaustion succeeded to the extreme fatigue both of body and of mind which i had endured. for a short space of time i remained at the window, watching the pallid lightnings that played above mont blanc, and listening to the rushing of the arve, which pursued its noisy way beneath. the same lulling sounds acted as a lullaby to my too keen sensations: when i placed my head upon my pillow, sleep crept over me; i felt it as it came, and blest the giver of oblivion. chapter x i spent the following day roaming through the valley. i stood beside the sources of the arveiron, which take their rise in a glacier, that with slow pace is advancing down from the summit of the hills, to barricade the valley. the abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me; the icy wall of the glacier overhung me; a few shattered pines were scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial nature was broken only by the brawling waves, or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of the avalanche, or the cracking reverberated along the mountains of the accumulated ice, which, by the silent working of immutable laws, was ever and anon rent and tom, if it had been but a plaything in their hands. these sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation that i was capable of receiving. they elevated me from all littleness of feeling; and although they did not remove my grief, they subdued and tranquillised it. in some degree, also, they diverted my mind from the thoughts over which it had brooded for the last month. i retired to rest at night; my slumbers, as it were, waited on and ministered to by the assemblance of grand shapes which i had contemplated during the day. they congregated round me; the unstained snowy mountaintop, the glittering pinnacle, the pine woods, and ragged bare ravine; the eagle, soaring amidst the cloudsthey all gathered round me, and bade me be at peace. where had they fled when the next morning i awoke? all of soul-inspiriting fled with sleep, and dark melancholy clouded every thought. the rain was pouring in torrents, and thick mists hid the summits of the mountains, so that i even saw not the faces of those mighty friends. still i would penetrate their misty veil, and seek them in their cloudy retreats. what were rain and storm to me? my mule was brought to the door, and i resolved to ascend to the summit of montanvert. i remembered the effect that the view of the tremendous and ever-moving glacier had produced upon my mind when i first saw it. it had then filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul, and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy. the sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnising my mind, and causing me to forget the passing cares of life. i determined to go without a guide, for i was well acquainted with the path, and the presence of another would destroy the solitary grandeur of the scene. the ascent is precipitous, but the path is cut into continual and short windings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity of the mountain. it is a scene terrifically desolate. in a thousand spots the traces of the winter avalanche may be perceived, where trees lie broken and strewed on the ground; some entirely destroyed, others bent, leaning upon the jutting rocks of the mountain, or transversely upon other trees. the path, as you ascend higher, is intersected by ravines of snow, down which stones continually roll from above; one of them is particularly dangerous, as the slightest sound, such as even speaking in a loud voice, produces a concussion of air sufficient to draw destruction upon the head of the speaker. the pines are not tall or luxuriant, but they are sombre, and add an air of severity to the scene. i looked on the valley beneath; vast mists were rising from the rivers which ran through it, and curling in thick wreaths around the opposite mountains, whose summits were hid in the uniform clouds, while rain poured from the dark sky, and added to the melancholy impression i received from the objects around me. alas! why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings. if our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows, and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us. "we rest; a dream has power to poison sleep. we rise; one wandering thought pollutes the day. we feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep, embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away; it is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow, the path of its departure still is free. man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; nought may endure but mutability!" it was nearly noon when i arrived at the top of the ascent. for some time i sat upon the rock that overlooks the sea of ice. a mist covered both that and the surrounding mountains. presently a breeze dissipated the cloud, and i descended upon the glacier. the surface is very uneven, rising like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and interspersed by rifts that sink deep. the field of ice is almost a league in width, but i spent nearly two hours in crossing it. the opposite mountain is a bare perpendicular rock. from the side where i now stood montanvert was exactly opposite, at the distance of a league; and above it rose mont blanc, in awful majesty. i remained in a recess of the rock, gazing on this wonderful and stupendous scene. the sea, or rather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains, whose aerial summits hung over its recesses. their icy and glittering peaks shone in the sunlight over the clouds. my heart, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; i exclaimed"wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life." as i said this, i suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. he bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which i had walked with caution; his stature, also, as he approached, seemed to exceed that of man. i was troubled: a mist came over my eyes, and i felt a faintness seize me; but i was quickly restored by the cold gale of the mountains. i perceived, as the shape came nearer (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom i had created. i trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach, and then close with him in mortal combat. he approached; his countenance bespoke bitter, anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes. but i scarcely observed this; rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance, and i recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt. "devil," i exclaimed, "do you dare approach me? and do not you fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head? begone, vile insect! or rather, stay, that i may trample you to dust! and, oh! that i could, with the extinction of your miserable existence, restore those victims whom you have so diabolically murdered!" "i expected this reception," said the daemon. "all men hate the wretched; how, then, must i be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. you purpose to kill me. how dare you sport thus with life? do your duty towards me, and i will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. if you will comply with my conditions, i will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, i will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends." "abhorred monster! fiend that thou art! the tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes. wretched devil! you reproach me with your creation; come on, then, that i may extinguish the spark which i so negligently bestowed." my rage was without bounds; i sprang on him, impelled by all the feelings which can arm one being against the existence of another. he easily eluded me, and said "be calm! i entreat you to hear me, before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. have i not suffered enough that you seek to increase my misery? life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and i will defend it. remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine; my joints more supple. but i will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. i am thy creature, and i will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me. oh, frankenstein, be not equitable to every other, and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. remember that i am thy creature; i ought to be thy adam; but i am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. everywhere i see bliss, from which i alone am irrevocably excluded. i was benevolent and goodmisery made me a fiend. make me happy, and i shall again be virtuous." "begone! i will not hear you. there can be no community between you and me; we are enemies. begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in which one must fall." "how can i move thee? will no entreaties cause thee to turn a favourable eye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion? believe me, frankenstein: i was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity: but am i not alone, miserably alone? you, my creator, abhor me; what hope can i gather from your fellow-creatures, who owe me nothing? they spurn and hate me. the desert mountains and dreary glaciers are my refuge. i have wandered here many days; the caves of ice, which i only do not fear, are a dwelling to me, and the only one which man does not grudge. these bleak skies i had, for they are kinder to me than your fellow-beings. if the multitude of mankind knew of my existence, they would do as you do, and arm themselves for my destruction. shall i not then hate them who abhor me? i will keep no terms with my enemies. i am miserable, and they shall share my wretchedness. yet it is in your power to recompense me, and deliver them from an evil which it only remains for you to make so great that not only you and your family, but thousands of others, shall be swallowed up in the whirlwinds of its rage. let your compassion be moved, and do not disdain me. listen to my tale: when you have heard that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall judge that i deserve. but hear me. the guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. listen to me, frankenstein. you accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. oh, praise the eternal justice of man! yet i ask you not to spare me: listen to me; and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your; hands." "why do you call to my remembrance," i rejoined, "circumstances, of which i shudder to reflect, that i have been the miserable origin and author? cursed be the day, abhorred devil, in which you first saw light! cursed (although i curse myself) be the hands that formed you! you have made me wretched beyond expression. you have left me no power to consider whether i am just to you or not. begone! relieve me from the sight of your detested form." "thus i relieve thee, my creator," he said, and placed his hated hands before my eyes, which i flung from me with violence; "thus i take from thee a sight which you abhor. still thou canst listen to me, and grant me thy compassion. by the virtues that i once possessed, i demand this from you. hear my tale; it is long and strange, and the temperature of this place is not fitting to your fine sensations; come to the hut upon the mountain. the sun is yet high in the heavens; before it descends to hide itself behind yon snowy precipices, and illuminate another world, you will have heard my story, and can decide. on you it rests whether i quit forever the neighbourhood of man, and lead a harmless life, or become the scourge of your fellow-creatures, and the author of your own speedy ruin." as he said this, he led the way across the ice: i followed. my heart was full, i did not answer him; but, as i proceeded, i weighed the various arguments that he had used, and determined at least to listen to his tale. i was partly urged by curiosity, and compassion confirmed my resolution. i had hitherto supposed him to be the murderer of my brother, and i eagerly sought a confirmation or denial of this opinion. for the first time, also, i felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were, and that i ought to render him happy before i complained of his wickedness. these motives urged me to comply with his demand. we crossed the ice, therefore, and ascended the opposite rock. the air was cold, and the rain again began to descend: we entered the hut, the fiend with an air of exultation, i with a heavy heart and depressed spirits. but i consented to listen; and, seating myself by the fire which my odious companion had lighted, he thus began his tale. chapter xi "it is with considerable difficulty that i remember the original era of being: all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct. a strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and i saw, felt, heard, and smelt, at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before i learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses. by degrees, i remember, a stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that i was obliged to shut my eyes. darkness then came over me, and troubled me; but hardly had i felt this, when, by opening my eyes, as i now suppose, the light poured in upon me again. i walked, and, i believe, descended; but i presently found a great alteration in my sensations. before, dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me, impervious to my touch or sight; but i now found that i could wander on at liberty, with no obstacles which i could not either surmount or avoid. the light became more and more oppressive to me; and, the heat wearying me as i walked, i sought a place where i could receive shade. this was the forest near ingolstadt; and here i lay by the side of a brook resting from my fatigue, until i felt tormented by hunger and thirst. this roused me from my nearly dormant state, and i ate some berries which i found hanging on the trees, or lying on the ground. i slaked my thirst at the brook; and then lying down, was overcome by sleep. "it was dark when i awoke; i felt cold also, and half-frightened, as it were instinctively, finding myself so desolate. before i had quitted your apartment, on a sensation of cold, i had covered myself with some clothes; but these were insufficient to secure me from the dews of night. i was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch; i knew, and could distinguish, nothing; but feeling pain invade me on all sides, i sat down and wept. "soon a gentle light stole over the heavens, and gave me a sensation of pleasure. i started up, and beheld a radiant form rise from among the trees.* i gazed with a kind of wonder. it moved slowly, but it enlightened my path; and i again went out in search of berries. i was still cold, when under one of the trees i found a huge cloak, with which i covered myself, and sat down upon the ground. no distinct ideas occupied my mind; all was confused. i felt light, and hunger, and thirst, and darkness; innumerable sounds rung in my ears, and on all sides various scents saluted me: the only object that i could distinguish was the bright moon, and i fixed my eyes on that with pleasure. * the moon. "several changes of day and night passed, and the orb of night had greatly lessened, when i began to distinguish my sensations from each other. i gradually saw plainly the clear stream that supplied me with drink, and the trees that shaded me with their foliage. i was delighted when i first discovered that a pleasant sound, which often saluted my ears, proceeded from the throats of the little winged animals who had often intercepted the light from my eyes. i began also to observe, with greater accuracy, the forms that surrounded me, and to perceive the boundaries of the radiant roof of light which canopied me. sometimes i tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds, but was unable. sometimes i wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again. "the moon had disappeared from the night, and again, with a lessened form, showed itself, while i still remained in the forest. my sensations had, by this time, become distinct, and my mind received every day additional ideas. my eyes became accustomed to the light, and to perceive objects in their right forms; i distinguished the insect from the herb, and, by degrees, one herb from another. i found that the sparrow uttered none but harsh notes, whilst those of the blackbird and thrush were sweet and enticing. "one day, when i was oppressed by cold, i found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the warmth i experienced from it. in my joy i thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain. how strange, i thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects! i examined the materials of the fire, and to my joy found it to be composed of wood. i quickly collected some branches; but they were wet, and would not burn. i was pained at this, and sat still watching the operation of the fire. the wet wood which i had placed near the heat dried, and itself became inflamed. i reflected on this; and by touching the various branches, i discovered the cause, and busied myself in collecting a great quantity of wood, that i might dry it, and have a plentiful supply of fire. when night came on, and brought sleep with it, i was in the greatest fear lest my fire should be extinguished. i covered it carefully with dry wood and leaves, and placed wet branches upon it; and then, spreading my cloak, i lay on the ground, and sunk into sleep. "it was morning when i awoke, and my first care was to visit the fire. i uncovered it, and a gentle breeze quickly fanned it into a flame. i observed this also, and contrived a fan of branches, which roused the embers when they were nearly extinguished. when night came again, i found, with pleasure, that the fire gave light as well as heat; and that the discovery of this element was useful to me in my food; for i found some of the offals that the travellers had left had been roasted, and tasted much more savoury than the berries i gathered from the trees. i tried, therefore, to dress my food in the same manner, placing it on the live embers. i found that the berries were spoiled by this operation, and the nuts and roots much improved. "food, however, became scarce; and i often spent the whole day searching in vain for a few acorns to assuage the pangs of hunger. when i found this, i resolved to quit the place that i had hitherto inhabited, to seek for one where the few wants i experienced would be more easily satisfied. in this emigration, i exceedingly lamented the loss of the fire which i had obtained through accident, and knew not how to reproduce it. i gave several hours to the serious consideration of this difficulty; but i was obliged to relinquish all attempt to supply it; and, wrapping myself up in my cloak, i struck across the wood towards the setting sun. i passed three days in these rambles, and at length discovered the open country. a great fall of snow had taken place the night before, and the fields were of one uniform white; the appearance was disconsolate, and i found my feet chilled by the cold damp substance that covered the ground. "it was about seven in the morning, and i longed to obtain food and shelter; at length i perceived a small hut, on a rising ground, which had doubtless been built for the convenience of some shepherd. this was a new sight to me; and i examined the structure with great curiosity. finding the door open, i entered. an old man sat in it, near a fire, over which he was preparing his breakfast. he turned on hearing a noise; and, perceiving me, shrieked loudly, and, quitting the hut, ran across the fields with a speed of which his debilitated form hardly appeared capable. his appearance, different from any i had ever before seen, and his flight, somewhat surprised me. but i was enchanted by the appearance of the hut: here the snow and rain could not penetrate; the ground was dry; and it presented to me then as exquisite and divine a retreat as pandaemonium appeared to the daemons of hell after their sufferings in the lake of fire. i greedily devoured the remnants of the shepherd's breakfast, which consisted of bread, cheese, milk, and wine; the latter, however, i did not like. then, overcome by fatigue, i lay down among some straw, and fell asleep. "it was noon when i awoke; and, allured by the warmth of the sun, which shone brightly on the white ground, i determined to recommence my travels; and, depositing the remains of the peasant's breakfast in a wallet i found, i proceeded across the fields for several hours, until at sunset i arrived at a village. how miraculous did this appear! the huts, the neater cottages, and stately houses, engaged my admiration by turns. the vegetables in the gardens, the milk and cheese that i saw placed at the windows of some of the cottages, allured my appetite. one of the best of these i entered; but i had hardly placed my foot within the door, before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted. the whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, i escaped to the open country, and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel, quite bare, and making a wretched appearance after the palaces i had beheld in the village. this hovel, however, joined a cottage of a neat and pleasant appearance; but, after my late dearly bought experience, i dared not enter it. my place of refuge was constructed of wood, but so low that i could with difficulty sit upright in it. no wood, however, was placed on the earth, which formed the floor, but it was dry; and although the wind entered it by innumerable chinks, i found it an agreeable asylum from the snow and rain. "here then i retreated, and lay down happy to have found a shelter, however miserable, from the inclemency of the season, and still more from the barbarity of man. "as soon as morning dawned, i crept from my kennel, that i might view the adjacent cottage, and discover if i could remain in the habitation i had found. it was situated against the back of the cottage, and surrounded on the sides which were exposed by a pig-sty and a clear pool of water. one part was open, and by that i had crept in; but now i covered every crevice by which i might be perceived with stones and wood, yet in such a manner that i might move them on occasion to pass out: all the light i enjoyed came through the sty, and that was sufficient for me. "having thus arranged my dwelling, and carpeted it with clean straw, i retired; for i saw the figure of a man at a distance, and i remembered too well my treatment the night before to trust myself in his power. i had first, however, provided for my sustenance for that day, by a loaf of course bread, which i purloined, and a cup with which i could drink, more conveniently than from my hand, of the pure water which flowed by my retreat. the floor was a little raised, so that it was kept perfectly dry, and by its vicinity to the chimney of the cottage it was tolerably warm. "being thus provided, i resolved to reside in this hovel until something should occur which might alter my determination. it was indeed a paradise compared to the bleak forest, my former residence, the rain-dropping branches, and dank earth. i ate my breakfast with pleasure, and was about to remove a plank to procure myself a little water, when i heard a step, and looking through a small chink, i beheld a young creature, with a pail on her head, passing before my hovel. the girl was young, and of gentle demeanour, unlike what i have since found cottagers and farm-house servants to be. yet she was meanly dressed, a coarse blue petticoat and a linen jacket being her only garb; her fair hair was plaited, but not adorned: she looked patient, yet sad. i lost sight of her; and in about a quarter of an hour she returned, bearing the pail, which was now partly filled with milk. as she walked along, seemingly incommoded by the burden, a young man met her, whose countenance expressed a deeper despondence. uttering a few sounds with an air of melancholy, he took the pail from her head, and bore it to the cottage himself. she followed, and they disappeared. presently i saw the young man again, with some tools in his hand, cross the field behind the cottage; and the girl was also busied, sometimes in the house, and sometimes in the yard. "on examining my dwelling, i found that one of the windows of the cottage had formerly occupied a part of it, but the panes had been filled up with wood. in one of these was a small and almost imperceptible chink, through which the eye could just penetrate. through this crevice a small room was visible, whitewashed and clean, but very bare of furniture. in one corner, near a small fire, sat an old man, leaning his head on his hands in a disconsolate attitude. the young girl was occupied in arranging the cottage; but presently she took something out of a drawer, which employed her hands, and she sat down beside the old man, who, taking up an instrument, began to play, and to produce sounds sweeter than the voice of the thrush or the nightingale. it was a lovely sight, even to me, poor wretch! who had never beheld aught beautiful before. the silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged cottager won my reverence, while the gentle manners of the girl enticed my love. he played a sweet mournful air, which i perceived drew tears from the eyes of his amiable companion, of which the old man took no notice, until she sobbed audibly; he then pronounced a few sounds, and the fair creature, leaving her work, knelt at his feet. he raised her, and smiled with such kindness and affection that i felt sensations of a peculiar and over-powering nature: they were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as i had never before experienced, either from hunger or cold, warmth or food; and i withdrew from the window, unable to bear these emotions. "soon after this the young man returned, bearing on his shoulders a load of wood. the girl met him at the door, helped to relieve him of his burden, and, taking some of the fuel into the cottage, placed it on the fire; then she and the youth went apart into a nook of the cottage and he showed her a large loaf and a piece of cheese. she seemed pleased, and went into the garden for some roots and plants, which she placed in water, and then upon the fire. she afterwards continued her work, whilst the young man went into the garden, and appeared busily employed in digging and pulling up roots. after he had been employed thus about an hour, the young woman joined him, and they entered the cottage together. "the old man had, in the meantime, been pensive; but, on the appearance of his companions, he assumed a more cheerful air, and they sat down to eat. the meal was quickly despatched. the young woman was again occupied in arranging the cottage; the old man walked before the cottage in the sun for a few minutes, leaning on the arm of the youth. nothing could exceed in beauty the contrast between these two excellent creatures. one was old, with silver hairs and a countenance beaming with benevolence and love: the younger was slight and graceful in his figure, and his features were moulded with the finest symmetry; yet his eyes and attitude expressed the utmost sadness and despondency. the old man returned to the cottage; and the youth, with tools different from those he had used in the morning, directed his steps across the fields. "night quickly shut in, but to my extreme wonder, i found that the cottagers had a means of prolonging light by the use of tapers, and was delighted to find that the setting of the sun did not put an end to the pleasure i experienced in watching my human neighbours. in the evening, the young girl and her companion were employed in various occupations which i did not understand; and the old man again took up the instrument which produced the divine sounds that had enchanted me in the morning. so soon as he had finished, the youth began, not to play, but to utter sounds that were monotonous, and neither resembling the harmony of the old man's instrument nor the songs of the birds: i since found that he read aloud, but at that time i knew nothing of the science of words or letters. "the family, after having been thus occupied for a short time, extinguished their lights, and retired, as i conjectured, to rest. chapter xii "i lay on my straw, but i could not sleep. i thought of the occurrences of the day. what chiefly struck me was the gentle manners of these people; and i longed to join them, but dared not. i remembered too well the treatment i had suffered the night before from the barbarous villagers, and resolved, whatever course of conduct i might hereafter think it right to pursue, that for the present i would remain quietly in my hovel, watching, and endeavouring to discover the motives which influenced their actions. "the cottagers arose the next morning before the sun. the young woman arranged the cottage, and prepared the food; and the youth departed after the first meal. "this day was passed in the same routine as that which preceded it. the young man was constantly employed out of doors, and the girl in various laborious occupations within. the old man, whom i soon perceived to be blind, employed his leisure hours on his instrument or in contemplation. nothing could exceed the love and respect which the younger cottagers exhibited towards their venerable companion. they performed towards him every little office of affection and duty with gentleness; and he rewarded them by his benevolent smiles. "they were not entirely happy. the young man and his companion often went apart, and appeared to weep. i saw no cause for their unhappiness; but i was deeply affected by it. if such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that i, an imperfect and solitary being, should be wretched. yet why were these gentle beings unhappy? they possessed a delightful house (for such it was in my eyes) and every luxury; they had a fire to warm them when chill, and delicious viands when hungry; they were dressed in excellent clothes; and, still more, they enjoyed one another's company and speech, interchanging each day looks of affection and kindness. what did their tears imply? did they really express pain? i was at first unable to solve these questions; but perpetual attention and time explained to me many appearances which were at first enigmatic. "a considerable period elapsed before i discovered one of the causes of the uneasiness of this amiable family: it was poverty; and they suffered that evil in a very distressing degree. their nourishment consisted entirely of the vegetables of their garden, and the milk of one cow, which gave very little during the winter, when its masters could scarcely procure food to support it. they often, i believe, suffered the pangs of hunger very poignantly, especially the two younger cottagers; for several times they placed food before the old man when they reserved none for themselves. "this trait of kindness moved me sensibly. i had been accustomed, during the night to steal a part of their store for my own consumption; but when i found that in doing this i inflicted pain on the cottagers, i abstained, and satisfied myself with berries, nuts, and roots, which i gathered from a neighbouring wood. "i discovered also another means through which i was enabled to assist their labours. i found that the youth spent a great part of each day in collecting wood for the family fire; and, during the night, i often took his tools, the use of which i quickly discovered, and brought home firing sufficient for the consumption of several days. "i remember the first time that i did this the young woman, when she opened the door in the morning, appeared greatly astonished on seeing a great pile of wood on the outside. she uttered some words in a loud voice, and the youth joined her, who also expressed surprise. i observed, with pleasure, that he did not go to the forest that day, but spent it in repairing the cottage and cultivating the garden. "by degrees i made a discovery of still greater moment. i found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another by articulate sounds. i perceived that the words they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in the minds and countenances of the hearers. this was indeed a godlike science, and i ardently desired to become acquainted with it. but i was baffled in every attempt i made for this purpose. their pronunciation was quick; and the words they uttered, not having any apparent connection with visible objects, i was unable to discover any clue by which i could unravel the mystery of their reference. by great application, however, and after having remained during the space of several revolutions of the moon in my hovel, i discovered the names that were given to some of the most familiar objects of discourse; i learned and applied the words, fire, milk, bread, and wood. i learned also the names of the cottagers themselves. the youth and his companion had each of them several names, but the old man had only one, which was father. the girl was called sister, or agatha; and the youth felix, brother, or son. i cannot describe the delight i felt when i learned the ideas appropriated to each of these sounds, and was able to pronounce them. i distinguished several other words, without being able as yet to understand or apply them; such as good, dearest, unhappy. "i spent the winter in this manner. the gentle manners and beauty of the cottagers greatly endeared them to me: when they were unhappy, i felt depressed; when they rejoiced, i sympathised in their joys. i saw few human beings beside them; and if any other happened to enter the cottage, their harsh manners and rude gait only enhanced to me the superior accomplishments of my friends. the old man, i could perceive, often endeavoured to encourage his children, as sometimes i found that he called them, to cast off their melancholy. he would talk in a cheerful accent, with an expression of goodness that bestowed pleasure even upon me. agatha listened with respect, her eyes sometimes filled with tears, which she endeavoured to wipe away unperceived; but i generally found that her countenance and tone were more cheerful after having listened to the exhortations of her father. it was not thus with felix. he was always the saddest of the group; and, even to my unpractised senses, he appeared to have suffered more deeply than his friends. but if his countenance was more sorrowful, his voice was more cheerful than that of his sister, especially when he addressed the old man. "i could mention innumerable instances, which, although slight, marked the dispositions of these amiable cottagers. in the midst of poverty and want, felix carried with pleasure to his sister the first little white flower that peeped out from beneath the snowy ground. early in the morning, before she had risen, he cleared away the snow that obstructed her path to the milkhouse, drew water from the well, and brought the wood from the out-house, where, to his perpetual astonishment, he found his store always replenished by an invisible hand. in the day, i believe, he worked sometimes for a neighbouring farmer, because he often went forth, and did not return until dinner, yet brought no wood with him. at other times he worked in the garden; but, as there was little to do in the frosty season, he read to the old man and agatha. "this reading had puzzled me extremely at first; but, by degrees, i discovered that he uttered many of the same sounds when he read as when he talked. i conjectured, therefore, that he found on the paper signs for speech which he understood, and i ardently longed to comprehend these also; but how was that possible, when i did not even understand the sounds for which they stood as signs? i improved, however, sensibly in this science, but not sufficiently to follow up any kind of conversation, although i applied my whole mind to the endeavour: for i easily perceived that, although i eagerly longed to discover myself to the cottagers, i ought not to make the attempt until i had first become master of their language; which knowledge might enable me to make them overlook the deformity of my figure; for with this also the contrast perpetually presented to my eyes had made me acquainted. "i had admired the perfect forms of my cottagerstheir grace, beauty, and delicate complexions: but how was i terrified when i viewed myself in a transparent pool! at first i started back, unable to believe that it was indeed i who was reflected in the mirror; and when i became fully convinced that i was in reality the monster that i am, i was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. alas! i did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity. "as the sun became warmer, and the light of day longer, the snow vanished, and i beheld the bare trees and the black earth. from this time felix was more employed; and the heart-moving indications of impending famine disappeared. their food, as i afterwards found, was coarse, but it was wholesome; and they procured a sufficiency of it. several new kinds of plants sprung up in the garden, which they dressed; and these signs of comfort increased daily as the season advanced. "the old man, leaning on his son, walked each day at noon, when it did not rain, as i found it was called when the heavens poured forth its waters. this frequently took place; but a high wind quickly dried the earth, and the season became far more pleasant than it had been. "my mode of life in my hovel was uniform. during the morning, i attended the motions of the cottagers; and when they were dispersed in various occupations i slept: the remainder of the day was spent in observing my friends. when they had retired to rest, if there was any moon, or the night was star-light, i went into the woods, and collected my own food and fuel for the cottage. when i returned, as often as it was necessary, i cleared their path of the snow, and performed those offices that i had seen done by felix. i afterwards found that these labours, performed by an invisible hand, greatly astonished them; and once or twice i heard them, on these occasions, utter the words good spirit, wonderful; but i did not then understand the signification of these terms. "my thoughts now became more active, and i longed to discover the motives and feelings of these lovely creatures; i was inquisitive to know why felix appeared so miserable and agatha so sad. i thought (foolish wretch!) that it might be in my power to restore happiness to these deserving people. when i slept, or was absent, the forms of the venerable blind father, the gentle agatha, and the excellent felix flitted before me, i looked upon them as superior beings, who would be the arbiters of my future destiny. i formed in my imagination a thousand pictures of presenting myself to them, and their reception of me. i imagined that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle demeanour and conciliating words, i should first win their favour, and afterwards their love. "these thoughts exhilarated me, and led me to apply with fresh ardour to the acquiring the art of language. my organs were indeed harsh, but supple: and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their tones, yet i pronounced such words as i understood with tolerable ease. it was as the ass and the lap-dog; yet surely the gentle ass whose intentions were affectionate, although his manners were rude, deserved better treatment than blows and execration. "the pleasant showers and genial warmth of spring greatly altered the aspect of the earth. men, who before this change seemed to have been hid in caves, dispersed themselves, and were employed in various arts of cultivation. the birds sang in more cheerful notes, and the leaves began to bud forth on the trees. happy, happy earth! fit habitation for gods, which, so short a time before, was bleak, damp, and unwholesome. my spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the future gilded by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy." chapter xiii "i now hasten to the more moving part of my story. i shall relate events that impressed me with feelings which, from what i had been, have made me what i am. "spring advanced rapidly; the weather became fine, and the skies cloudless. it surprised me that what before was desert and gloomy should now bloom with the most beautiful flowers and verdure. my senses were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight, and a thousand sights of beauty. "it was on one of these days, when my cottagers periodically rested from labourthe old man played on his guitar, and the children listened to himthat i observed the countenance of felix was melancholy beyond expression; he sighed frequently; and once his father paused in his music, and i conjectured by his manner that he inquired the cause of his son's sorrow. felix replied in a cheerful accent, and the old man was recommencing his music when some one tapped at the door. "it was a lady on horseback, accompanied by a countryman as a guide. the lady was dressed in a dark suit, and covered with a thick black veil. agatha asked a question; to which the stranger only replied by pronouncing, in a sweet accent, the name of felix. her voice was musical, but unlike that of either of my friends. on hearing this word, felix came up hastily to the lady; who, when she saw him, threw up her veil, and i beheld a countenance of angelic beauty and expression. her hair of a shining raven black, and curiously braided; her eyes were dark, but gentle, although animated; her features of a regular proportion, and her complexion wondrously fair, each cheek tinged with a lovely pink. "felix seemed ravished with delight when he saw her, every trait of sorrow vanished from his face, and it instantly expressed a degree of ecstatic joy, of which i could hardly have believed it capable; his eyes sparkled as his cheek flushed with pleasure; and at that moment i thought him as beautiful as the stranger. she appeared affected by different feelings; wiping a few tears from her lovely eyes, she held out her hand to felix, who kissed it rapturously, and called her, as well as i could distinguish, his sweet arabian. she did not appear to understand him, but smiled. he assisted her to dismount, and dismissing her guide, conducted her into the cottage. some conversation took place between him and his father; and the young stranger knelt at the old man's feet, and would have kissed his hand, but he raised her, and embraced her affectionately. "i soon perceived that, although the stranger uttered articulate sounds, and appeared to have a language of her own, she was neither understood by, nor herself understood, the cottagers. they made many signs which i did not comprehend; but i saw that her presence diffused gladness through the cottage, dispelling their sorrow as the sun dissipates the morning mists. felix seemed peculiarly happy, and with smiles of delight welcomed his arabian. agatha, the ever-gentle agatha, kissed the hands of the lovely stranger; and, pointing to her brother, made signs which appeared to me to mean that he had been sorrowful until she came. some hours passed thus, while they, by their countenances, expressed joy, the cause of which i did not comprehend. presently i found, by the frequent recurrence of some sound which the stranger repeated after them, that she was endeavouring to learn their language; and the idea instantly occurred to me that i should make use of the same instructions to the same end. the stranger learned about twenty words at the first lesson, most of them, indeed, were those which i had before understood, but i profited by the others. "as night came on, agatha and the arabian retired early. when they separated, felix kissed the hand of the stranger, and said, 'good night, sweet safie.' he sat up much longer, conversing with his father; and, by the frequent repetition of her name, i conjectured that their lovely guest was the subject of their conversation. i ardently desired to understand them, and bent every faculty towards that purpose, but found it utterly impossible. "the next morning felix went out to his work; and, after the usual occupations of agatha were finished, the arabian sat at the feet of the old man, and, taking his guitar, played some airs so entrancingly beautiful that they at once drew tears of sorrow and delight from my eyes. she sang, and her voice flowed in a rich cadence, swelling or dying away, like a nightingale of the woods. "when she had finished, she gave the guitar to agatha, who at first declined it. she played a simple air, and her voice accompanied it in sweet accents, but unlike the wondrous strain of the stranger. the old man appeared enraptured, and said some words, which agatha endeavoured to explain to safie, and by which he appeared to wish to express that she bestowed on him the greatest delight by her music. "the days now passed as peacefully as before, with the sole alteration that joy had taken the place of sadness in the countenances of my friends. safie was always gay and happy; she and i improved rapidly in the knowledge of language, so that in two months i began to comprehend most of the words uttered by my protectors. "in the meanwhile also the black ground was covered with herbage, and the green banks interspersed with innumerable flowers, sweet to the scent and the eyes, stars of pale radiance among the moonlight woods; the sun became warmer, the nights clear and balmy, and my nocturnal rambles were an extreme pleasure to me, although they were considerably shortened by the late setting and early rising of the sun; for i never ventured abroad during daylight, fearful of meeting with the same treatment i had formerly endured in the first village which i entered. "my days were spent in close attention, that i might more speedily master the language; and i may boast that i improved more rapidly than the arabian, who understood very little, and conversed in broken accents, whilst i comprehended and could imitate almost every word that was spoken. "while i improved in speech, i also learned the science of letters, as it was taught to the stranger; and this opened before me a wide field for wonder and delight. "the book from which felix instructed safie was volney's ruins of empires. i should not have understood the purport of this book, had not felix, in reading it, given very minute explanations. he had chosen this work, he said, because the declamatory style was framed in imitation of the eastern authors. through this work i obtained a cursory knowledge of history, and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world it gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations of the earth. i heard of the slothful asiatics; of the stupendous genius and mental activity of the grecians; of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early romansof their subsequent degeneratingof the decline of that mighty empire; of chivalry, christianity, and kings. i heard of the discovery of the american hemisphere, and wept with safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants. "these wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? he appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. to be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. for a long time i could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when i heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and i turned away with disgust and loathing. "every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to me. while i listened to the instructions which felix bestowed upon the arabian, the strange system of human society was explained to me. i heard of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty; of rank, descent, and noble blood. "the words induced me to turn towards myself. i learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow-creatures were high and unsullied descent united with riches. a man might be respected with only one of these advantages but, without either, he was considered, except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few! and what was i? of my creation and creator i was absolutely ignorant; but i knew that i possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. i was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; i was not even of the same nature as men. i was more agile than they, and could subsist upon coarser diet; i bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. when i looked around, i saw and heard of none like me. was i then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned? "i cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me: i tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge. oh, that i had forever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat! "of what a strange nature is knowledge! it clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock. i wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling; but i learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was deatha state which i feared yet did not understand. i admired virtue and good feelings, and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my cottagers; but i was shut out from intercourse with them, except through means which i obtained by stealth, when i was unseen and unknown, and which rather increased than satisfied the desire i had of becoming one among my fellows. the gentle words of agatha, and the animated smiles of the charming arabian, were not for me. the mild exhortations of the old man, and the lively conversation of the loved felix, were not for me. miserable, unhappy wretch! "other lessons were impressed upon me even more deeply. i heard of the difference of sexes; and the birth and growth of children; how the father doated on the smiles of the infant, and the lively sallies of the older child; how all the life and cares of the mother were wrapped up in the precious charge; how the mind of youth expanded and gained knowledge; of brother, sister, and all the various relationships which bind one human being to another in mutual bonds. "but where were my friends and relations? no father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which i distinguished nothing. from my earliest remembrance i had been as i then was in height and proportion. i had never yet seen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. what was i? the question again recurred, to be answered only with groans. "i will soon explain to what these feelings tended; but allow me now to return to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various feelings of indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated in additional love and reverence for my protectors (for so i loved, in an innocent, half painful self-deceit, to call them)." chapter xiv "some time elapsed before i learned the history of my friends. it was one which could not fail to impress itself deeply on my mind, unfolding as it did a number of circumstances, each interesting and wonderful to one so utterly inexperienced as i was. "the name of the old man was de lacey. he was descended from a good family in france, where he had lived for many years in affluence, respected by his superiors and beloved by his equals. his son was bred in the service of his country; and agatha had ranked with ladies of the highest distinction. a few months before my arrival they had lived in a large and luxurious city called paris, surrounded by friends, and possessed of every enjoyment which virtue, refinement of intellect, or taste, accompanied by a moderate fortune, could afford. "the father of safie had been the cause of their ruin. he was a turkish merchant, and had inhabited paris for many years,when, for some reason which i could not learn, he became obnoxious to the government. he was seized and cast into prison the very day that safie arrived from constantinople to join him. he was tried and condemned to death. the injustice of his sentence was very flagrant; all paris was indignant; and it was judged that his religion and wealth, rather than the crime alleged against him, had been the cause of his condemnation. "felix had accidentally been present at the trial; his horror and indignation were uncontrollable when he heard the decision of the court. he made, at that moment, a solemn vow to deliver him, and then looked around for the means. after many fruitless attempts to gain admittance to the prison, he found a strongly grated window in an unguarded part of the building which lighted the dungeon of the unfortunate mahometan; who, loaded with chains, waited in despair the execution of the barbarous sentence. felix visited the grate at night, and made known to the prisoner his intentions in his favour. the turk, amazed and delighted, endeavoured to kindle the zeal of his deliverer by promises of reward and wealth. felix rejected his offers with contempt; yet when he saw the lovely safie, who was allowed to visit her father, and who, by her gestures, expressed her lively gratitude, the youth could not help owning to his own mind that the captive possessed a treasure which would fully reward his toil and hazard. "the turk quickly perceived the impression that his daughter had made on the heart of felix, and endeavoured to secure him more entirely in his interests by the promise of her hand in marriage, so soon as he should be conveyed to a place of safety. felix was too delicate to accept this offer; yet he looked forward to the probability of the event as to the consummation of his happiness. "during the ensuing days, while the preparations were going forward for the escape of the merchant, the zeal of felix was warmed by several letters that he received from this lovely girl, who found means to express her thoughts in the language of her lover by the aid of an old man, a servant of her father, who understood french. she thanked him in the most ardent terms for his intended services towards her parent; and at the same time deeply deplored her own fate. "i have copies of these letters; for i found means, during my residence in the hovel, to procure the implements of writing; and the letters were often in the hands of felix or agatha. before i depart, i will give them to you, they will prove the truth of my tale; but at present, as the sun is already far declined, i shall only have time to repeat the substance of them to you. "safie related that her mother was a christian arab, seized and made a slave by the turks; recommended by her beauty, she had won the heart of the father of safie, who married her. the young girl spoke in high and enthusiastic terms of her mother, who, born in freedom, spumed the bondage to which she was now reduced. she instructed her daughter in the tenets of her religion, and taught her to aspire to higher powers of intellect, and an independence of spirit, forbidden to the female followers of mahomet. this lady died; but her lessons were indelibly impressed on the mind of safie, who sickened at the prospect of again returning to asia and being immured within the walls of a harem, allowed only to occupy herself with infantile amusements, ill suited to the temper of her soul, now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble emulation for virtue. the prospect of marrying a christian, and remaining in a country where women were allowed to take a rank in society, was enchanting to her. "the day for the execution of the turk was fixed; but, on the night previous to it, he quitted his prison, and before morning was distant many leagues from paris. felix had procured passports in the name of his father, sister, and himself. he had previously communicated his plan to the former, who aided the deceit by quitting his house, under the pretence of a journey, and concealed himself, with his daughter, in an obscure part of paris. "felix conducted the fugitives through france to lyons, and across mont cenis to leghorn, where the merchant had decided to wait a favourable opportunity of passing into some part of the turkish dominions. "safie resolved to remain with her father until the moment of his departure, before which time the turk renewed his promise that she should be united to his deliverer; and felix remained with them in expectation of that event; and in the meantime he enjoyed the society of the arabian, who exhibited towards him the simplest and tenderest affection. they conversed with one another through the means of an interpreter, and sometimes with the interpretation of looks; and safie sang to him the divine airs of her native country. "the turk allowed this intimacy to take place, and encouraged the hopes of the youthful lovers, while in his heart he had formed far other plans. he loathed the idea that his daughter should be united to a christian; but he feared the resentment of felix, if he should appear luke-warm; for he knew that he was still in the power of his deliverer, if he should choose to betray him to the italian state which they inhabited. he revolved a thousand plans by which he should be enabled to prolong the deceit until it might be no longer necessary, and secretly to take his daughter with him when he departed. his plans were facilitated by the news which arrived from paris. "the government of france were greatly enraged at the escape of their victim, and spared no pains to detect and punish his deliverer. the plot of felix was quickly discovered, and de lacey and agatha were thrown into prison. the news reached felix, and roused him from his dream of pleasure. his blind and aged father, and his gentle sister, lay in a noisome dungeon, while he enjoyed the free air and the society of her whom he loved. this idea was torture to him. he quickly arranged with the turks that if the latter should find a favourable opportunity for escape before felix could return to italy, safie should remain as a boarder at a convent at leghorn; and then, quitting the lovely arabian, he hastened to paris, and delivered himself up to the vengeance of the law, hoping to free de lacey and agatha by this proceeding. "he did not succeed. they remained confined for five months before the trial took place; the result of which deprived them of their fortune, and condemned them to a perpetual exile from their native country. "they found a miserable asylum in the cottage in germany where i discovered them. felix soon learned that the treacherous turk, for whom he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and ruin, became a traitor to good feeling and honour, and had quitted italy with his daughter, insultingly sending felix a pittance of money, to aid him, as he said, in some plan of future maintenance. "such were the events that preyed on the heart of felix, and rendered him, when i first saw him, the most miserable of his family. he could have endured poverty; and while this distress had been the meed of his virtue, he gloried in it: but the ingratitude of the turk, and the loss of his beloved safie, were misfortunes more bitter and irreparable. the arrival of the arabian now infused new life into his soul. "when the news reached leghorn that felix was deprived of his wealth and rank, the merchant commanded his daughter to think no more of her lover, but to prepare to return to her native country. the generous nature of safie was outraged by this command; she attempted to expostulate with her father, but he left her angrily, reiterating his tyrannical mandate. "a few days after, the turk entered his daughter's apartment, and told her hastily that he had reason to believe that his residence at leghorn had been divulged, and that he should speedily be delivered up to the french government; he had, consequently, hired a vessel to convey him to constantinople, for which city he should sail in a few hours. he intended to leave his daughter under the care of a confidential servant, to follow at her leisure with the greater part of his property, which had not yet arrived at leghorn. "when alone, safie resolved in her own mind the plan of conduct that it would become her to pursue in this emergency. a residence in turkey was abhorrent to her; her religion and her feelings were alike adverse to it. by some papers of her father, which fell into her hands, she heard of the exile of her lover, and learnt the name of the spot where he then resided. she hesitated some time, but at length she formed her determination. taking with her some jewels that belonged to her, and a sum of money, she quitted italy with an attendant, a native of leghorn, but who understood the common language of turkey, and departed for germany. "she arrived in safety at a town about twenty leagues from the cottage of de lacey, when her attendant fell dangerously ill. safie nursed her with the most devoted affection; but the poor girl died, and the arabian was left alone, unacquainted with the language of the country, and utterly ignorant of the customs of the world. she fell, however, into good hands. the italian had mentioned the name of the spot for which they were bound and, after her death, the woman of the house in which they had lived took care that safie should arrive in safety at the cottage of her lover." chapter xv "such was the history of my beloved cottagers. it impressed me deeply. i learned, from the views of social life which it developed, to admire their virtues, and to deprecate the vices of mankind. "as yet i looked upon crime as a distant evil; benevolence and generosity were ever present before me, inciting within me a desire to become an actor in the busy scene where so many admirable qualities were called forth and displayed. but, in giving an account of the progress of my intellect, i must not omit a circumstance which occurred in the beginning of the month of august of the same year. "one night, during my accustomed visit to the neighbouring wood, where i collected my own food, and brought home firing for my protectors, i found on the ground a leathern portmanteau, containing several articles of dress and some books. i eagerly seized the prize, and returned with it to my hovel. fortunately the books were written in the language the elements of which i had acquired at the cottage; they consisted of paradise lost, a volume of plutarch's lives, and the sorrows of werter. the possession of these treasures gave me extreme delight; i now continually studied and exercised my mind upon these histories, whilst my friends were employed in their ordinary occupations. "i can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. they produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection. in the sorrows of werter, besides the interest of its simple and affecting story, so many opinions are canvassed, and so many lights thrown upon what had hitherto been to me obscure subjects, that i found in it a never-ending source of speculation and astonishment. the gentle and domestic manners it described, combined with lofty sentiments and feelings, which had for their object something out of self, accorded well with my experience among my protectors, and with the wants which were for ever alive in my own bosom. but i thought werter himself a more divine being than i had ever beheld or imagined; his character contained no pretension, but it sunk deep. the disquisitions upon death and suicide were calculated to fill me with wonder. i did not pretend to enter into the merits of the case, yet i inclined towards the opinions of the hero, whose extinction i wept, without precisely understanding it. "as i read, however, i applied much personally to my own feelings and condition. i found myself similar, yet at the same time strangely unlike to the beings concerning whom i read, and to whose conversation i was a listener. i sympathised with, and partly understood them, but i was unformed in mind; i was dependent on none and related to none. 'the path of my departure was free'; and there was none to lament my annihilation. my person was hideous and my stature gigantic. what did this mean? who was i? what was i? whence did i come? what was my destination? these questions continually recurred, but i was unable to solve them. "the volume of plutarch's lives, which i possessed, contained the histories of the first founders of the ancient republics. this book had a far different effect upon me from the sorrows of werter. i learned from werter's imaginations despondency and gloom: but plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections to admire and love the heroes of past ages. many things i read surpassed my understanding and experience. i had a very confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and boundless seas. but i was perfectly unacquainted with towns, and large assemblages of men. the cottage of my protectors had been the only school in which i had studied human nature; but this book developed new and mightier scenes of action. i read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. i felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice, as far as i understood the signification of those terms, relative as they were, as i applied them, to pleasure and pain alone. induced by these feelings, i was of course led to admire peaceable lawgivers, numa, solon, and lycurgus, in preference to romulus and theseus. the patriarchal lives of my protectors caused these impressions to take a firm hold on my mind; perhaps, if my first introduction to humanity had been made by a young soldier, burning for glory and slaughter, i should have been imbued with different sensations. "but paradise lost excited different and far deeper emotions. i read it, as i had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history. it moved every feeling of wonder and awe that the picture of an omnipotent god warring with his creatures was capable of exciting. i often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck me, to my own. like adam, i was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. he had come forth from the hands of god a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his creator; he was allowed to converse with, and acquire knowledge from, beings of a superior nature: but i was wretched, helpless, and alone. many times i considered satan as the fitter emblem of my condition; for often, like him, when i viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me. "another circumstance strengthened and confirmed these feelings. soon after my arrival in the hovel, i discovered some papers in the pocket of the dress which i had taken from your laboratory. at first i had neglected them; but now that i was able to decipher the characters in which they were written, i began to study them with diligence. it was your journal of the four months that preceded my creation. you minutely described in these papers every step you took in the progress of your work; this history was mingled with accounts of domestic occurrences. you, doubtless, recollect these papers. here they are. everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own horrors and rendered mine indelible. i sickened as i read. 'hateful day when i received life!' i exclaimed in agony. 'accursed creator! why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? god, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but i am solitary and abhorred.' "these were the reflections of my hours of despondency and solitude; but when i contemplated the virtues of the cottagers, their amiable and benevolent dispositions, i persuaded myself that when they should become acquainted with my admiration of their virtues, they would compassionate me, and overlook my personal deformity. could they turn from their door one, however monstrous, who solicited their compassion and friendship? i resolved, at least not to despair, but in every way to fit myself for an interview with them which would decide my fate. i postponed this attempt for some months longer; for the importance attached to its success inspired me with a dread lest i should fail. besides, i found that my understanding improved so much with every day's experience that i was unwilling to commence this undertaking until a few more months should have added to my sagacity. "several changes, in the meantime, took place in the cottage. the presence of safie diffused happiness among its inhabitants; and i also found that a greater degree of plenty reigned there. felix and agatha spent more time in amusement and conversation, and were assisted in their labours by servants. they did not appear rich, but they were contented and happy; their feelings were serene and peaceful, while mine became every day more tumultuous. increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast i was. i cherished hope, it is true; but it vanished when i beheld my person reflected in water, or my shadow in the moonshine, even as that frail image and that inconstant shade. "i endeavoured to crush these fears, and to fortify myself for the trial which in a few months i resolved to undergo; and sometimes i allowed my thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathising with my feelings, and cheering my gloom; their angelic countenances breathed smiles of consolation. but it was all a dream; no eve soothed my sorrows, nor shared my thoughts; i was alone. i remembered adam's supplication to his creator. but where was mine? he had abandoned me: and, in the bitterness of my heart, i cursed him. "autumn passed thus. i saw, with surprise and grief, the leaves decay and fall, and nature again assume the barren and bleak appearance it had worn when i first beheld the woods and the lovely moon. yet i did not heed the bleakness of the weather; i was better fitted by my conformation for the endurance of cold than heat. but my chief delights were the sight of the flowers, the birds, and all the gay apparel of summer; when those deserted me, i turned with more attention towards the cottagers. their happiness was not decreased by the absence of summer. they loved, and sympathised with one another; and their joys, depending on each other, were not interrupted by the casualties that took place around them. the more i saw of them, the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures: to see their sweet looks directed towards me with affection was the utmost limit of my ambition. i dared not think that they would turn them from me with disdain and horror. the poor that stopped at their door were never driven away. i asked, it is true, for greater treasures than a little food or rest: i required kindness and sympathy; but i did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it. "the winter advanced, and an entire revolution of the seasons had taken place since i awoke into life. my attention, at this time, was solely directed towards my plan of introducing myself into the cottage of my protectors. i revolved many projects; but that on which i finally fixed was, to enter the dwelling when the blind old man should be alone. i had sagacity enough to discover that the unnatural hideousness of my person was the chief object of horror with those who had formerly beheld me. my voice, although harsh, had nothing terrible in it; i thought, therefore, that if, in the absence of his children, i could gain the good-will and mediation of the old de lacey, i might, by his means, be tolerated by my younger protectors. "one day, when the sun shone on the red leaves that strewed the ground, and diffused cheerfulness, although it denied warmth, safie, agatha, and felix departed on a long country walk, and the old man, at his own desire, was left alone in the cottage. when his children had departed, he took up his guitar, and played several mournful but sweet airs, more sweet and mournful than i had ever heard him play before. at first his countenance was illuminated with pleasure, but, as he continued, thoughtfulness and sadness succeeded; at length, laying aside the instrument, he sat absorbed in reflection. "my heart beat quick; this was the hour and moment of trial which would decide my hopes or realise my fears. the servants were gone to a neighbouring fair. all was silent in and around the cottage: it was an excellent opportunity; yet, when i proceeded to execute my plan, my limbs failed me, and i sank to the ground. again i rose; and, exerting all the firmness of which i was master, removed the planks which i had placed before my hovel to conceal my retreat. the fresh air revived me, and, with renewed determination, i approached the door of their cottage. "i knocked. 'who is there?' said the old man'come in.' "i entered; 'pardon this intrusion,' said i: 'i am a traveller in want of a little rest; you would greatly oblige me if you would allow me to remain a few minutes before the fire.' "'enter,' said de lacey; 'and i will try to relieve your wants; but, unfortunately, my children are from home, and, as i am blind, i am afraid i shall find it difficult to procure food for you.' "'do not trouble yourself, my kind host, i have food; it is warmth and rest only that i need.' "i sat down, and a silence ensued. i knew that every minute was precious to me, yet i remained irresolute in what manner to commence the interview; when the old man addressed me "'by your language, stranger, i suppose you are my countrymanare you french?' "'no; but i was educated by a french family, and understand that language only. i am now going to claim the protection of some friends, whom i sincerely love, and of whose favour i have some hopes.' "'are they germans?' "'no, they are french. but let us change the subject. i am an unfortunate and deserted creature; i look around, and i have no relation or friend upon earth. these amiable people to whom i go have never seen me, and know little of me. i am full of fears; for if i fail there, i am an outcast in the world for ever.' "'do not despair. to be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate; but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity. rely, therefore, on your hopes; and if these friends are good and amiable, do not despair.' "'they are kindthey are the most excellent creatures in the world; but, unfortunately, they are prejudiced against me. i have good dispositions; my life has been hitherto harmless, and in some degree beneficial; but a fatal prejudice clouds their eyes, and where they ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold only a detestable monster.' "'that is indeed unfortunate; but if you are really blameless, cannot you undeceive them?' "'i am about to undertake that task; and it is on that account that i feel so many overwhelming terrors. i tenderly love these friends; i have, unknown to them, been for many months in the habits of daily kindness towards them; but they believe that i wish to injure them, and it is that prejudice which i wish to overcome.' "'where do these friends reside?' "'near this spot.' "the old man paused, and then continued, 'if you will unreservedly confide to me the particulars of your tale, i perhaps may be of use in undeceiving them. i am blind, and cannot judge of your countenance, but there is something in your words which persuades me that you are sincere. i am poor, and an exile; but it will afford me true pleasure to be in any way serviceable to a human creature.' "'excellent man! i thank you, and accept your generous offer. you raise me from the dust by this kindness; and i trust that, by your aid, i shall not be driven from the society and sympathy of your fellow-creatures.' "'heaven forbid! even if you were really criminal; for that can only drive you to desperation, and not instigate you to virtue. i also am unfortunate; i and my family have been condemned, although innocent: judge, therefore, if i do not feel for your misfortunes.' "'how can i thank you, my best and only benefactor? from your lips first have i heard the voice of kindness directed towards me; i shall be for ever grateful; and your present humanity assures me of success with those friends whom i am on the point of meeting.' "'may i know the names and residence of those friends?' "i paused. this, i thought, was the moment of decision, which was to rob me of, or bestow happiness on me forever. i struggled vainly for firmness sufficient to answer him, but the effort destroyed all my remaining strength; i sank on the chair, and sobbed aloud. at that moment i heard the steps of my younger protectors. i had not a moment to lose; but, seizing the hand of the old man, i cried, 'now is the time!save and protect me! you and your family are the friends whom i seek. do not you desert me in the hour of trial!' "'great god!' exclaimed the old man, 'who are you?' "at that instant the cottage door was opened, and felix, safie, and agatha entered. who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me? agatha fainted; and safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage. felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees i clung: in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick. i could have torn him limb from limb, as a lion rends the antelope. but my heart sunk within me as with bitter sickness, and i refrained. i saw him on the point of repeating his blow, when, overcome by pain and anguish, i quitted the cottage and in the general tumult escaped unperceived to my hovel. chapter xvi "cursed, cursed creator! why did i live? why, in that instant, did i not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? i know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge. i could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants, and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery. "when night came, i quitted my retreat, and wandered in the wood; and now, no longer restrained by the fear of discovery, i gave vent to my anguish in fearful howlings. i was like a wild beast that had broken the toils; destroying the objects that obstructed me, and ranging through the wood with a stag-like swiftness. o! what a miserable night i passed! the cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their branches above me: now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth amidst the universal stillness. all, save i, were at rest or in enjoyment: i, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me; and, finding myself unsympathised with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin. "but this was a luxury of sensation that could not endure; i became fatigued with excess of bodily exertion, and sank on the damp grass in the sick impotence of despair. there was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should i feel kindness towards my enemies? no: from that moment i declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me, and sent me forth to this insupportable misery. "the sun rose; i heard the voices of men, and knew that it was impossible to return to my retreat during that day. accordingly i hid myself in some thick underwood, determining to devote the ensuing hours to reflection on my situation. "the pleasant sunshine, and the pure air of day, restored me to some degree of tranquillity; and when i considered what had passed at the cottage, i could not help believing that i had been too hasty in my conclusions. i had certainly acted imprudently. it was apparent that my conversation had interested the father in my behalf, and i was a fool in having exposed my person to the horror of his children. i ought to have familiarised the old de lacey to me, and by degrees to have discovered myself to the rest of his family, when they should have been prepared for my approach. but i did not believe my errors to be irretrievable; and, after much consideration, i resolved to return to the cottage, seek the old man, and by my representations win him to my party. "these thoughts calmed me, and in the afternoon i sank into a profound sleep; but the fever of my blood did not allow me to be visited by peaceful dreams. the horrible scene of the preceding day was forever acting before my eyes; the females were flying, and the enraged felix tearing me from his father's feet. i awoke exhausted; and, finding that it was already night, i crept forth from my hiding place, and went in search of food. "when my hunger was appeased, i directed my steps towards the well-known path that conducted to the cottage. all there was at peace. i crept into my hovel, and remained in silent expectation of the accustomed hour when the family arose. that hour passed, the sun mounted high in the heavens, but the cottagers did not appear. i trembled violently, apprehending some dreadful misfortune. the inside of the cottage was dark, and i heard no motion; i cannot describe the agony of this suspense. "presently two countrymen passed by; but, pausing near the cottage, they entered into conversation, using violent gesticulations; but i did not understand what they said, as they spoke the language of the country, which differed from that of my protectors. soon after, however, felix approached with another man: i was surprised, as i knew that he had not quitted the cottage that morning, and waited anxiously to discover, from his discourse, the meaning of these unusual appearances. "'do you consider,' said his companion to him, 'that you will be obliged to pay three months' rent, and to lose the produce of your garden? i do not wish to take any unfair advantage, and i beg therefore that you will take some days to consider of your determination.' "'it is utterly useless,' replied felix; 'we can never again inhabit your cottage. the life of my father is in the greatest danger, owing to the dreadful circumstance that i have related. my wife and my sister will never recover their horror. i entreat you not to reason with me any more. take possession of your tenement, and let me fly from this place.' "felix trembled violently as he said this. he and his companion entered the cottage, in which they remained for a few minutes, and then departed. i never saw any of the family of de lacey more. "i continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of utter and stupid despair. my protectors had departed, and had broken the only link that held me to the world. for the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and i did not strive to control them; but, allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, i bent my mind towards injury and death. when i thought of my friends, of the mild voice of de lacey, the gentle eyes of agatha, and the exquisite beauty of the arabian, these thoughts vanished, and a gush of tears somewhat soothed me. but again, when i reflected that they had spurned and deserted me, anger returned, a rage of anger; and, unable to injure anything human, i turned my fury towards inanimate objects. as night advanced, i placed a variety of combustibles around the cottage; and, after having destroyed every vestige of cultivation in the garden, i waited with forced impatience until the moon had sunk to commence my operations. "as the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods, and quickly dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens: the blast tore along like a mighty avalanche, and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits that burst all bounds of reason and reflection. i lighted the dry branch of a tree, and danced with fury around the devoted cottage, my eyes still fixed on the western horizon, the edge of which the moon nearly touched. a part of its orb was at length hid, and i waved my brand; it sunk, and with a loud scream, i fired the straw, and heath, and bushes, which i had collected. the wind fanned the fire, and the cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it, and licked it with their forked and destroying tongues. "as soon as i was convinced that no assistance could save any part of the habitation, i quitted the scene and sought for refuge in the woods. "and now, with the world before me, whither should i bend my steps? i resolved to fly far from the scene of my misfortunes; but to me, hated and despised, every country must be equally horrible. at length the thought of you crossed my mind. i learned from your papers that you were my father, my creator; and to whom could i apply with more fitness than to him who had given me life? among the lessons that felix had bestowed upon safie, geography had not been omitted. i had learned from these the relative situations of the different countries of the earth. you had mentioned geneva as the name of your native town; and towards this place i resolved to proceed. "but how was i to direct myself? i knew that i must travel in a south-westerly direction to reach my destination; but the sun was my only guide. i did not know the names of the towns that i was to pass through, nor could i ask information from a single human being; but i did not despair. from you only could i hope for succour, although towards you i felt no sentiment but that of hatred. unfeeling, heartless creator! you had endowed me with perceptions and passions, and then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind. but on you only had i any claim for pity and redress, and from you i determined to seek that justice which i vainly attempted to gain from any other being that wore the human form. "my travels were long, and the sufferings i endured intense. it was late in autumn when i quitted the district where i had so long resided. i travelled only at night, fearful of encountering the visage of a human being. nature decayed around me, and the sun became heatless; rain and snow poured around me; mighty rivers were frozen; the surface of the earth was hard, and chill, and bare, and i found no shelter. oh, earth! how often did i imprecate curses on the cause of my being! the mildness of my nature had fled, and all within me was turned to gall and bitterness. the nearer i approached to your habitation, the more deeply did i feel the spirit of revenge enkindled in my heart. snow fell, and the waters were hardened; but i rested not. a few incidents now and then directed me, and i possessed a map of the country; but i often wandered wide from my path. the agony of my feelings allowed me no respite: no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food; but a circumstance that happened when i arrived on the confines of switzerland, when the sun had recovered its warmth, and the earth again began to look green, confirmed in an especial manner the bitterness and horror of my feelings. "i generally rested during the day, and travelled only when i was secured by night from the view of man. one morning, however, finding that my path lay through a deep wood, i ventured to continue my journey after the sun had risen; the day, which was one of the first of spring, cheered even me by the loveliness of its sunshine and the balminess of the air. i felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, i allowed myself to be borne away by them; and, forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy. soft tears again bedewed my cheeks, and i even raised my humid eyes with thankfulness towards the blessed sun which bestowed such joy upon me. "i continued to wind among the paths of the wood, until i came to its boundary, which was skirted by a deep and rapid river, into which many of the trees bent their branches, now budding with the fresh spring. here i paused, not exactly knowing what path to pursue, when i heard the sound of voices that induced me to conceal myself under the shade of a cypress. i was scarcely hid, when a young girl came running towards the spot where i was concealed, laughing, as if she ran from some one in sport. she continued her course along the precipitous sides of the river, when suddenly her foot slipt, and she fell into the rapid stream. i rushed from my hiding-place; and, with extreme labour from the force of the current, saved her, and dragged her to shore. she was senseless; and i endeavoured by every means in my power to restore animation, when i was suddenly interrupted by the approach of rustic, who was probably the person from whom she had playfully fled. on seeing me, he darted towards me, and tearing the girl from my arms, hastened towards the deeper parts of the wood. i followed speedily, hardly knew why; but when the man saw me draw near, he aimed a gun, which he carried, at my body, and fired. i sunk to the ground, and my injurer, with increased swiftness, escaped into the wood. "this was then the reward of my benevolence! i had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense, i now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound, which shattered the flesh and bone. the feelings of kindness and gentleness which i had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. inflamed by pain, i vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind. but the agony of my wound overcame me; my pulses paused, and i fainted. "for some weeks i led a miserable life in the woods, endeavouring to cure the wound which i had received. the ball had entered my shoulder, and i knew not whether it had remained there or passed through; at any rate i had no means of extracting it. my sufferings were augmented also by the oppressive sense of the injustice and ingratitude of their infliction. my daily vows rose for revengea deep and deadly revenge, such as would alone compensate for the outrages and anguish i had endured. "after some weeks my wound healed, and i continued my journey. the labours i endured were no longer to be alleviated by the bright sun or gentle breezes of spring; all joy was but a mockery, which insulted my desolate state, and made me feel more painfully that i was not made for the enjoyment of pleasure. "but my toils now drew near a close; and in two months from this time i reached the environs of geneva. "it was evening when i arrived, and i retired to a hiding-place among the fields that surround it, to meditate in what manner i should apply to you. i was oppressed by fatigue and hunger, and far too unhappy to enjoy the gentle breezes of evening, or the prospect of the sun setting behind the stupendous mountains of jura. "at this time a slight sleep relieved me from the pain of reflection, which was disturbed by the approach of a beautiful child, who came running into the recess i had chosen, with all the sportiveness of infancy. suddenly, as i gazed on him, an idea seized me, that this little creature was unprejudiced, and had lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity. if, therefore, i could seize him, and educate him as my companion and friend, i should not be so desolate in this peopled earth. "urged by this impulse, i seized on the boy as he passed and drew him towards me. as soon as he beheld my form, he placed his hands before his eyes and uttered a shrill scream: i drew his hand forcibly from his face, and said, 'child, what is the meaning of this? i do not intend to hurt you; listen to me.' "he struggled violently. 'let me go,' he cried; 'monster! ugly wretch! you wish to eat me, and tear me to piecesyou are an ogrelet me go, or i will tell my papa.' "'boy, you will never see your father again; you must come with me.' "'hideous monster! let me go. my papa is a syndiche is m. frankensteinhe will punish you. you dare not keep me.' "'frankenstein! you belong then to my enemyto him towards whom i have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.' "the child still struggled, and loaded me with epithets which carried despair to my heart; i grasped his throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead at my feet. "i gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph: clapping my hands, i exclaimed, 'i, too, can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.' "as i fixed my eyes on the child, i saw something glittering on his breast. i took it; it was a portrait of a most lovely woman. in spite of malignity, it softened and attracted me. for a few moments i gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips; but presently my rage returned: i remembered that i was for ever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow; and that she whose resemblance i contemplated would, in regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust and affright. "can you wonder that such thoughts transported me with rage? i only wonder that at that moment, instead of venting my sensations in exclamations and agony, i did not rush among mankind and perish in the attempt to destroy them. "while i was overcome by these feelings, i left the spot where i had committed the murder, and seeking a more secluded hiding-place, i entered a barn which had appeared to me to be empty. a woman was sleeping on some straw; she was young: not indeed so beautiful as her whose portrait i held; but of an agreeable aspect, and blooming in the loveliness of youth and health. here, i thought, is one of those whose joy-imparting smiles are bestowed on all but me. and then i bent over her, and whispered, 'awake, fairest, thy lover is nearhe who would give his life but to obtain one look of affection from thine eyes: my beloved, awake!' "the sleeper stirred; a thrill of terror ran through me. should she indeed awake, and see me, and curse me, and denounce the murderer? thus would she assuredly act, if her darkened eyes opened and she beheld me. the thought was madness; it stirred the fiend within menot i, but she shall suffer: the murder i have committed because i am forever robbed of all that she could give me, she shall atone. the crime had its source in her: be hers the punishment! thanks to the lessons of felix and the sanguinary laws of man, i had learned now to work mischief i bent over her, and placed the portrait securely in one of the folds of her dress. she moved again, and i fled. "for some days i haunted the spot where these scenes had taken place; sometimes wishing to see you, sometimes resolved to quit the world and its miseries forever. at length i wandered towards these mountains, and have ranged through their immense recesses, consumed by a burning passion which you alone can gratify. we may not part until you have promised to comply with my requisition. i am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. my companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects. this being you must create." chapter xvii the being finished speaking, and fixed his looks upon me in expectation of a reply. but i was bewildered, perplexed, and unable to arrange my ideas sufficiently to understand the full extent of his proposition. he continued: "you must create a female for me, with whom i can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. this you alone can do; and i demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede." the latter part of his tale had kindled anew in me the anger that had died away while he narrated his peaceful life among the cottagers, and, as he said this, i could no longer suppress the rage that burned within me. "i do refuse it," i replied; "and no torture shall ever extort a consent from me. you may render me the most miserable of men, but you shall never make me base in my own eyes. shall i create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world! begone! i have answered you; you may torture me, but i will never consent." "you are in the wrong," replied the fiend; "and, instead of threatening, i am content to reason with you. i am malicious because i am miserable. am i not shunned and hated by all mankind? you, my creator, would tear me to pieces, and triumph; remember that, and tell me why i should pity man more than he pities me? you would not call it murder if you could precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts, and destroy my frame, the work of your own hands. shall i respect man when he contemns me? let him live with me in the interchange of kindness; and, instead of injury, i would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. but that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union. yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. i will revenge my injuries: if i cannot inspire love, i will cause fear; and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do i swear inextinguishable hatred. have a care: i will work at your destruction, nor finish until i desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth." a fiendish rage animated him as he said this; his face was wrinkled into contortions too horrible for human eyes to behold; but presently he calmed himself and proceeded "i intended to reason. this passion is detrimental to me; for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess. if any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, should return them an hundred and an hundred fold; for that one creature's sake, i would make peace with the whole kind! but i now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be realised. what i ask of is reasonable and moderate; i demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it is all that i can receive, and it shall content me. it is true we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless, and free from the misery i now feel. oh! my creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit! let me see that i excite the sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my request!" i was moved. i shuddered when i thought of the possible consequences of my consent; but i felt that there was some justice in his argument. his tale, and the feelings he now expressed, proved him to be a creature of fine sensations; and did i not as his maker owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow? he saw my change of feeling and continued "if you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again: i will go to the vast wilds of south america. my food is not that of man; i do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. my companion will be of the same nature as myself, and will be content with the same fare. we shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food. the picture i present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty. pitiless as you have been towards me, i now see compassion in your eyes; me seize the favourable moment, and persuade you to promise what. i so ardently desire." "you propose," replied i, "to fly from the habitations of man, to dwell in those wilds where the beasts of the field will be your only companions. how can you, who long for the love and sympathy of man, persevere in this exile? you will return, and again seek their kindness, and you will meet with their detestation; your evil passions will be renewed, and you will then have a companion to aid you in the task of destruction. this may not be: cease to argue the point, for i cannot consent." "how inconstant are your feelings! but a moment ago you were moved by my representations, and why do you again harden yourself to my complaints? i swear to you, by the earth which i inhabit, and by you that made me, that, with the companion you bestow, i will quit the neighbourhood of man, and dwell as it may chance in the most savage of places. my evil passions will have fled, for i shall meet with sympathy! my life will flow quietly away, and, in my dying moments, i shall not curse my maker." his words had a strange effect upon me. i compassionated him, and sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when i looked upon him, when i saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened, and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred. i tried to stifle these sensations; i thought that, as i could not sympathise with him, i had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which was yet in my power to bestow. "you swear", i said, "to be harmless; but have you not already shown a degree of malice that should reasonably make me distrust you? may not even this be a feint that will increase your triumph by affording a wider scope for your revenge." "how is this? i must not be trifled with: and i demand an answer. if i have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and i shall become a thing of whose existence every one will be ignorant. my vices are the children of a forced solitude that i abhor; and my virtues will necessarily arise when i live in communion with an equal. i shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become linked to the chain of existence and events, from which i am now excluded." i paused some time to reflect on all he had related, and the various arguments which he had employed. i thought of the promise of virtues which he had displayed on the opening of his existence, and the subsequent blight of all kindly feeling by the loathing and scorn which his protectors had manifested towards him. his power and threats were not omitted in my calculations: a creature who could exist in the ice-caves of the glaciers, and hide himself from pursuit among the ridges of inaccessible precipices, was a being possessing faculties it would be vain to cope with. after a long pause of reflection, i concluded that the justice due both to him and my fellow-creatures demanded of me that i should comply with his request. turning to him, therefore, i said "i consent to your demand, on your solemn oath to quit europe for ever, and every other place in the neighbourhood of man, as soon as i shall deliver into your hands a female who will accompany you in your exile." "i swear," he cried, "by the sun, and by the blue sky of heaven, and by the fire of love that burns my heart, that if you grant my prayer, while they exist you shall never behold me again. depart to your home, and commence your labours: i shall watch their progress with unutterable anxiety; and fear not but that when you are ready i shall appear." saying this, he suddenly quitted me, fearful, perhaps, of any change in my sentiments. i saw him descend the mountain with greater speed than the flight of an eagle, and quickly lost among the undulations of the sea of ice. his tale had occupied the whole day; and the sun was upon the verge of the horizon when he departed. i knew that i ought to hasten my descent towards the valley, as i should soon be encompassed in darkness; but my heart was heavy, and my steps slow. the labour of winding among the little paths of the mountains, and fixing my feet firmly as i advanced, perplexed me, occupied as i was by the emotions which the occurrences of the day had produced. night was far advanced when i came to the half-way resting-place, and seated myself beside the fountain. the stars shone at intervals, as the clouds passed from over them the dark pines rose before me, and every here and there a broken tree lay on the ground: it was a scene of wonderful solemnity, and stirred strange thoughts within me. i wept bitterly; and clasping my hands in agony, i exclaimed, "oh! stars, and clouds, and winds, ye are all about to mock me: if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, leave me in darkness." these were wild and miserable thoughts; but i cannot describe to you how the eternal twinkling of the stars weighed upon me, and how i listened to every blast of wind as if it were a dull ugly siroc on its way to consume me. morning dawned before i arrived at the village of chamounix; i took no rest, but returned immediately to geneva. even in my own heart i could give no expression to my sensationsthey weighed on me with a mountain's weight, and their excess destroyed my agony beneath them. thus i returned home, and entering the house, presented myself to the family. my haggard and wild appearance awoke intense alarm; but i answered no question, scarcely did i speak. i felt as if i were placed under a banas if i had no right to claim their sympathiesas if never more might i enjoy companionship with them. yet even thus i loved them to adoration; and to save them, i resolved to dedicate myself to my most abhorred task. the prospect of such an occupation made every other circumstance of existence pass before me like a dream; and that thought only had to me the reality of life. chapter xviii day after day, week after week, passed away on my return to geneva; and i could not collect the courage to recommence my work. i feared the vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet i was unable to overcome my repugnance to the task which was enjoined me. i found that i could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition. i had heard of some discoveries having been made by an english philosopher, the knowledge of which was material to my success, and i sometimes thought of obtaining my father's consent to visit england for this purpose; but i clung to every pretence of delay, and shrunk from taking the first step in an undertaking whose immediate necessity began to appear less absolute to me. a change indeed had taken place in me: my health, which had hitherto declined, was now much restored; and my spirits, when unchecked by the memory of my unhappy promise, rose proportionably. my father saw this change with pleasure, and he turned his thoughts towards the best method of eradicating the remains of my melancholy, which every now and then would return by fits, and with a devouring blackness overcast the approaching sunshine. at these moments i took refuge in the most perfect solitude. i passed whole days on the lake alone in a little boat, watching the clouds, and listening to the rippling of the waves, silent and listless. but the fresh air and bright sun seldom failed to restore me to some degree of composure; and, on my return, i met the salutations of my friends with a readier smile and a more cheerful heart. it was after my return from one of these rambles, that my father, calling me aside, thus addressed me: "i am happy to remark, my dear son, that you have resumed your former pleasures, and seem to be returning to yourself. and yet you are still unhappy, and still avoid our society. for some time i was lost in conjecture as to the cause of this; but yesterday an idea struck me, and if it is well founded, i conjure you to avow it. reserve on such a point would be not only useless, but draw down treble misery on us all." i trembled violently at this exordium, and my father continued: "i confess, my son, that i have always looked forward to your marriage with our dear elizabeth as the tie of our domestic comfort, and the stay of my declining years. you were attached to each other from your earliest infancy; you studied together, and appeared, in dispositions and tastes, entirely suited to one another. but so blind is the experience of man that what i conceived to be the best assistants to my plan may have entirely destroyed it. you, perhaps, regard her as your sister, without any wish that she might become your wife. nay, you may have met with another whom you may love; and, considering yourself as bound in honour to elizabeth, this struggle may occasion the poignant misery which you appear to feel." "my dear father, reassure yourself i love my cousin tenderly and sincerely. i never saw any woman who excited, as elizabeth does, my warmest admiration and affection. my future hopes and prospects are entirely bound up in the expectation of our union." "the expression of your sentiments on this subject, my dear victor, gives me more pleasure than i have for some time experienced. if you feel thus, we shall assuredly be happy, however present events may cast a gloom over us. but it is this gloom, which appears to have taken so strong a hold of your mind, that i wish to dissipate. tell me, therefore, whether you object to an immediate solemnisation of the marriage. we have been unfortunate, and recent events have drawn us from that every-day tranquillity befitting my years and infirmities. you are younger; yet i do not suppose, possessed as you are of a competent fortune, that an early marriage would at all interfere with any future plans of honour and utility that you may have formed. do not suppose, however, that i wish to dictate happiness to you, or that a delay on your part would cause me any serious uneasiness. interpret my words with candour, and answer me, i conjure you, with confidence and sincerity." i listened to my father in silence, and remained for some time incapable of offering any reply. i revolved rapidly in my mind a multitude of thoughts, and endeavoured to arrive at some conclusion. alas! to me the idea of an immediate union with my elizabeth was one of horror and dismay. i was bound by a solemn promise, which i had not yet fulfilled, and dared not break; or, if i did, what manifold miseries might not impend over me and my devoted family! could i enter into a festival with this deadly weight yet hanging round my neck, and bowing me to the ground? i must perform my engagement and let the monster depart with his mate, before i allowed myself to enjoy the delight of an union from which i expected peace. i remembered also the necessity imposed upon me of either journeying to england, or entering into a long correspondence with those philosophers of that country, whose knowledge and discoveries were of indispensable use to me in my present undertaking. the latter method of obtaining the desired intelligence was dilatory and unsatisfactory: besides, i had an insurmountable aversion to the idea of engaging myself in my loathsome task in my father's house, while in habits of familiar intercourse with those i loved. i knew that a thousand fearful accidents might occur, the slightest of which would disclose a tale to thrill all connected with me with horror. i was aware also that i should often lose all self-command, all capacity of hiding the harrowing sensations that would possess me during the progress of my unearthly occupation. i must absent myself from all i loved while thus employed. once commenced, it would quickly be achieved, and i might be restored to my family in peace and happiness. my promise fulfilled, the monster would depart forever. or (so my fond fancy imaged) some accident might meanwhile occur to destroy him, and put an end to my slavery for ever. these feelings dictated my answer to my father. i expressed a wish to visit england; but, concealing the true reasons of this request, i clothed my desires under a guise which excited no suspicion, while i urged my desire with an earnestness that easily induced my father to comply. after so long a period of an absorbing melancholy, that resembled madness in its intensity and effects, he was glad to find that i was capable of taking pleasure in the idea of such a journey, and he hoped that change of scene and varied amusement would, before my return, have restored me entirely to myself. the duration of my absence was left to my own choice; a few months, or at most a year, was the period contemplated. one paternal kind precaution he had taken to ensure my having a companion. without previously communicating with me, he had, in concert with elizabeth, arranged that clerval should join me at strasburgh. this interfered with the solitude i coveted for the prosecution of my task; yet at the commencement of my journey the presence of my friend could in no way be an impediment, and truly i rejoiced that thus i should be saved many hours of lonely, maddening reflection. nay, henry might stand between me and the intrusion of my foe. if i were alone, would he not at times force his abhorred presence on me, to remind me of my task, or to contemplate its progress? to england, therefore, i was bound, and it was understood that my union with elizabeth should take place immediately on my return. my father's age rendered him extremely averse to delay. for myself, there was one reward i promised myself from my detested toilsone consolation for my unparalleled sufferings; it was the prospect of that day when, enfranchised from my miserable slavery, i might claim elizabeth, and forget the past in my union with her. i now made arrangements for my journey; but one feeling haunted me, which filled me with fear and agitation. during my absence i should leave my friends unconscious of the existence of their enemy, and unprotected from his attacks, exasperated as he might be by my departure. but he had promised to follow me wherever i might go; and would he not accompany me to england? this imagination was dreadful in itself, but soothing, inasmuch as it supposed the safety of my friends. i was agonised with the idea of the possibility that the reverse of this might happen. but through the whole period during which i was the slave of my creature, i allowed myself to be governed by the impulses of the moment; and my present sensations strongly intimated that the fiend would follow me, and exempt my family from the danger of his machinations. it was in the latter end of september that i again quitted my native country. my journey had been my own suggestion, and elizabeth, therefore, acquiesced: but she was filled with disquiet at the idea of my suffering, away from her, the inroads of misery and grief. it had been her care which provided me a companion in clervaland yet a man is blind to a thousand minute circumstances, which call forth a woman's sedulous attention. she longed to bid me hasten my return,a thousand conflicting emotions rendered her mute as she bade me a tearful silent farewell. i threw myself into the carriage that was to convey me away, hardly knowing whither i was going, and careless of what was passing around. i remembered only, and it was with a bitter anguish that i reflected on it, to order that my chemical instruments should be packed to go with me. filled with dreary imaginations, i passed through many beautiful and majestic scenes; but my eyes were fixed and unobserving. i could only think of the bourne of my travels, and the work which was to occupy me whilst they endured. after some days spent in listless indolence, during which i traversed many leagues, i arrived at strasburgh, where i waited two days for clerval. he came. alas, how great was the contrast between us! he was alive to every new scene; joyful when he saw the beauties of the setting sun, and more happy when he beheld it rise, and recommence a new day. he pointed out to me the shifting colours of the landscape, and the appearances of the sky. "this is what it is to live," he cried, "now i enjoy existence! but you, frankenstein, wherefore are you desponding and sorrowful!" in truth, i was occupied by gloomy thoughts, and neither saw the descent of the evening star, nor the golden sunrise reflected in the rhine.and you, my friend, would be far more amused with the journal of clerval, who observed the scenery with an eye of feeling and delight, than in listening to my reflections. i, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment. we had agreed to descend the rhine in a boat from strasburgh to rotterdam, whence we might take shipping for london. during this voyage, we passed many willowy islands, and saw several beautiful towns. we stayed a day at manheim, and, on the fifth from our departure from strasburgh, arrived at mayence. the course of the rhine below mayence becomes much more picturesque. the river descends rapidly, and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. we saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. this part of the rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. in one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark rhine rushing beneath; and, on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards, with green sloping banks, and a meandering river, and populous towns occupy the scene. we travelled at the time of the vintage, and heard the song of the labourers, as we glided down the stream. even i, depressed in mind, and my spirits continually agitated by gloomy feelings, even i was pleased. i lay at the bottom of the boat, and, as i gazed on the cloudless blue sky, i seemed to drink in a tranquillity to which i had long been a stranger. and if these were my sensations, who can describe those of henry? he felt as if he had been transported to fairyland, and enjoyed a happiness seldom tasted by man. "i have seen," he said, "the most beautiful scenes of my own country; i have visited the lakes of lucerne and uri, where the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the water, casting black and impenetrable shades, which would cause a gloomy and mournful appearance, were it not for the most verdant islands that relieve the eye by their gay appearance; i have seen this lake agitated by a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water, and gave you an idea of what the waterspout must be on the great ocean; and the waves dash with fury the base of the mountain, where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche, and where their dying voices are still said to be heard amid the pauses of the nightly wind; i have seen the mountains of la valais, and the pays de vaud: but this country, victor, pleases me more than all those wonders. the mountains of switzerland are more majestic and strange; but there is a charm in the banks of this divine river, that i never before saw equalled. look at that castle which overhangs yon precipice; and that also on the island, almost concealed amongst the foliage of those lovely trees; and now that group of labourers coming from among their vines; and that village half hid in the recess of the mountain. oh, surely, the spirit that inhabits and guards this place has a soul more in harmony with man than those who pile the glacier, or retire to the inaccessible peaks of the mountains of our own country." clerval! beloved friend! even now it delights me to record your words; and to dwell on the praise of which you are so eminently deserving. he was a being formed in the "very poetry of nature." his wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. his soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the worldy-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination. but even human sympathies were not sufficient to satisfy his eager mind. the scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour: "the sounding cataract haunted him like a passion: the tall rock, the mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, their colours and their forms, were then to him an appetite; a feeling, and a love, that had no need of a remoter charm, by thought supplied, or any interest unborrow'd from the eye."* * wordsworth's tintern abbey. and where does he now exist? is this gentle and lovely being lost forever? has this mind, so replete with ideas, imaginations fanciful and magnificent, which formed a world, whose existence depended on the life of its creator;has the mind perished? does it now only exist in my memory? no, it is not thus; your form so divinely wrought, and beaming with beauty, has decayed, but your spirit still visits and consoles your unhappy friend. pardon this gush of sorrow; these ineffectual words are but a slight tribute to the unexampled worth of henry, but they soothe my heart, overflowing with the anguish which his remembrance creates. i will proceed with my tale. beyond cologne we descended to the plains of holland; and we resolved to post the remainder of our way; for the wind was contrary, and the stream of the river was too gentle to aid us. our journey here lost the interest arising from beautiful scenery; but we arrived in a few days at rotterdam, whence we proceeded by sea to england. it was on a clear morning, in the latter days of october, that i first saw the white cliffs of britain. the banks of the thames presented a new scene; they were flat, but fertile, and almost every town was marked by the remembrance of some story. we saw tilbury fort, and remembered the spanish armada; gravesend, woolwich, and greenwich, places which i had heard of even in my country. at length we saw the numerous steeples of london, st. paul's towering above all, and the tower famed in english history. chapter xix london was our present point of rest; we determined to remain several months in this wonderful and celebrated city. clerval desired the intercourse of the men of genius and talent who flourished at this time; but this was with me a secondary object; i was principally occupied with the means of obtaining the information necessary for the completion of my promise, and quickly availed myself of the letters of introduction that i had brought with me, addressed to the most distinguished natural philosophers. if this journey had taken place during my days of study and happiness, it would have afforded me inexpressible pleasure. but a blight had come over my existence, and i only visited these people for the sake of the information they might give me on the subject in which my interest was so terribly profound. company was irksome to me; when alone, i could fill my mind with the sights of heaven and earth; the voice of henry soothed me, and i could thus cheat myself into a transitory peace. but busy uninteresting joyous faces brought back despair to my heart. i saw an insurmountable barrier placed between me and my fellow-men this barrier was sealed with the blood of william and justine; and to reflect on the events connected with those names filled my soul with anguish. but in clerval i saw the image of my former self; he was inquisitive, and anxious to gain experience and instruction. the difference of manners which he observed was to him an inexhaustible source of instruction and amusement. he was also pursuing an object he had long had in view. his design was to visit india, in the belief that he had in his knowledge of its various languages, and in the views he had taken of its society, the means of materially assisting the progress of european colonisation and trade. in britain only could he further the execution of his plan. he was for ever busy; and the only check to his enjoyments was my sorrowful and dejected mind. i tried to conceal this as much as possible, that i might not debar him from the pleasures natural to one who was entering on a new scene of life, undisturbed by any care or bitter recollection. i often refused to accompany him, alleging another engagement, that i might remain alone. i now also began to collect the materials necessary for my new creation, and this was to me like the torture of single drops of water continually falling on the head. every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme anguish, and every word that i spoke in allusion to it caused my lips to quiver, and my heart to palpitate. after passing some months in london, we received a letter from a person in scotland, who had formerly been our visitor at geneva. he mentioned the beauties of his native country, and asked us if those were not sufficient allurements to induce us to prolong our journey as far north as perth, where he resided. clerval eagerly desired to accept this invitation; and i, although i abhorred society, wished to view again mountains and streams, and all the wondrous works with which nature adorns her chosen dwelling-places. we had arrived in england at the beginning of october, and it was now february. we accordingly determined to commence our journey towards the north at the expiration of another month. in this expedition we did not intend to follow the great road to edinburgh, but to visit windsor, oxford, matlock, and the cumberland lakes, resolving to arrive at the completion of this tour about the end of july. i packed up my chemical instruments, and the materials i had collected, resolving to finish my labours in some obscure nook in the northern highlands of scotland. we quitted london on the 27th of march, and remained a few days at windsor, rambling in its beautiful forest. this was a new scene to us mountaineers; the majestic oaks, the quantity of game, and the herds of stately deer, were all novelties to us. from thence we proceeded to oxford. as we entered this city, our minds were filled with the remembrance of the events that had been transacted there more than a century and a half before. it was here that charles i. had collected his forces. this city had remained faithful to him, after the whole nation had forsaken his cause to join the standard of parliament and liberty. the memory of that unfortunate king, and his companions, the amiable falkland, the insolent goring, his queen, and son, gave a peculiar interest to every part of the city which they might be supposed to have inhabited. the spirit of elder days found a dwelling here, and we delighted to trace its footsteps. if these feelings had not found an imaginary gratification, the appearance of the city had yet in itself sufficient beauty to obtain our admiration. the colleges are ancient and picturesque; the streets are almost magnificent; and the lovely isis, which flows beside it through meadows of exquisite verdure, is spread forth into a placid expanse of waters, which reflects its majestic assemblage of towers, and spires, and domes, embosomed among aged trees. i enjoyed this scene; and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the memory of the past, and the anticipation of the future. i was formed for peaceful happiness. during my youthful days discontent never visited my mind; and if i was ever overcome by ennui, the sight of what is beautiful in nature, or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man, could always interest my heart, and communicate elasticity to my spirits. but i am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and i felt then that i should survive to exhibit, what i shall soon cease to bea miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others, and intolerable to myself. we passed a considerable period at oxford, rambling among its environs, and endeavouring to identify every spot which might relate to the most animating epoch of english history. our little voyages of discovery were often prolonged by the successive objects that presented themselves. we visited the tomb of the illustrious hampden, and the field on which that patriot fell. for a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears, to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and self-sacrifice, of which these sights were the monuments and the remembrancers. for an instant i dared to shake off my chains, and look around me with a free and lofty spirit; but the iron had eaten into my flesh, and i sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self. we left oxford with regret, and proceeded to matlock, which was our next place of rest. the country in the neighbourhood of this village resembles, to a greater degree, the scenery of switzerland; but everything is on a lower scale, and the green hills want the crown of distant white alps, which always attend on the piny mountains of my native country. we visited the wondrous cave, and the little cabinets of natural history, where the curiosities are disposed in the same manner as in the collections at servox and chamounix. the latter name made me tremble when pronounced by henry; and i hastened to quit matlock, with which that terrible scene was thus associated. from derby, still journeying northward, we passed two months in cumberland and westmoreland. i could now almost fancy mr self among the swiss mountains. the little patches of snow which yet lingered on the northern sides of the mountains, the lakes, and the dashing of the rocky streams, were all familiar and dear sights to me. here also we made some acquaintances, who almost contrived to cheat me into happiness. the delight of clerval was proportionably greater than mine; his mind expanded in the company of men of talent, and he found in his own nature greater capacities and resources than he could have imagined himself to have possessed while he associated with his inferiors. "i could pass my life here," said he to me; "and among these mountains i should scarcely regret switzerland and the rhine." but he found that a traveller's life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments. his feelings are forever on the stretch; and when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties. we had scarcely visited the various lakes of cumberland and westmoreland, and conceived an affection for some of the inhabitants, when the period of our appointment with our scotch friend approached, and we left them to travel on. for my own part i was not sorry. i had now neglected my promise for some time, and i feared the effects of the daemon's disappointment. he might remain in switzerland, and wreak his vengeance on my relatives. this idea pursued me, and tormented me at every moment from which i might otherwise have snatched repose and peace. i waited for my letters with feverish impatience: if they were delayed, i was miserable, and overcome by a thousand fears; and when they arrived, and i saw the superscription of elizabeth or my father, i hardly dared to read and ascertain my fate. sometimes i thought that the fiend followed me, and might expedite my remissness by murdering my companion. when these thoughts possessed me, i would not quit henry for a moment, but followed him as his shadow, to protect him from the fancied rage of his destroyer. i felt as if i had committed some great crime, the consciousness of which haunted me. i was guiltless, but i had indeed drawn down a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal as that of crime. i visited edinburgh with languid eyes and mind; and yet that city might have interested the most unfortunate being. clerval did not like it so well as oxford: for the antiquity of the latter city was more pleasing to him. but the beauty and regularity of the new town of edinburgh, its romantic castle, and its environs, the most delightful in the world, arthur's seat, st. bernard's well, and the pentland hills, compensated him for the change, and filled him with cheerfulness and admiration. but i was impatient to arrive at the termination of my journey. we left edinburgh in a week, passing through coupar, st. andrew's, and along the banks of the tay, to perth, where our friend expected us. but i was in no mood to laugh and talk with strangers, or enter into their feelings or plans with the good humour expected from a guest; and accordingly i told clerval that i wished to make the tour of scotland alone. "do you," said i, "enjoy yourself, and let this be our rendezvous. i may be absent a month or two; but do not interfere with my motions, i entreat you: leave me to peace and solitude for a short time; and when i return, i hope it will be with a lighter heart, more congenial to your own temper." henry wished to dissuade me; but, seeing me bent on this plan, ceased to remonstrate. he entreated me to write often. "i had rather be with you," he said, "in your solitary rambles, than with these scotch people, whom i do not know: hasten then, my dear friend, to return, that i may again feel myself somewhat at home, which i cannot do in your absence." having parted from my friend, i determined to visit some remote spot of scotland, and finish my work in solitude. i did not doubt but that the monster followed me, and would discover himself me when i should have finished, that he might receive his companion. with this resolution i traversed the northern highlands, and fixed on one of the remotest of the orkneys as the scene of my labours. it was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock, whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves. the soil was barren, scarcely affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggy limbs gave tokens of their miserable fare. vegetables and bread, when they indulged in such luxuries, and even fresh water, was to be procured from the mainland, which was about five miles distant. on the whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one of these was vacant when i arrived. this i hired. it contained but two rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable penury. the thatch had fallen in, the walls were unplastered, and the door was off its hinges. i ordered it to be repaired, bought some furniture, and took possession; an incident which would, doubtless, have occasioned some surprise, had not all the senses of the cottagers been benumbed by want and squalid poverty. as it was, i lived ungazed at and unmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and clothes which i gave; so much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men. in this retreat i devoted the morning to labour; but in the evening, when the weather permitted, i walked on the stony beach of the sea, to listen to the waves as they roared and dashed at my feet. it was a monotonous yet ever-changing scene. i thought of switzerland; it was far different from this desolate and appalling landscape. its hills are covered with vines, and its cottages are scattered thickly in the plains. its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky; and, when troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant, when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean. in this manner i distributed my occupations when i first arrived; but, as i proceeded in my labour, it became every day more horrible and irksome to me. sometimes i could not prevail on myself to enter my laboratory for several days; and at other times i toiled day and night in order to complete my work. it was, indeed, a filthy process in which i was engaged. during my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment; my mind was intently fixed on the consummation of my labour, and my eyes were shut to the horror of my proceedings. but now i went to it in cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my hands. thus situated, employed in the most detestable occupation, immersed in a solitude where nothing could for an instant call my attention from the actual scene in which i was engaged, my spirits became unequal; i grew restless and nervous. every moment i feared to meet my persecutor. sometimes i sat with my eyes fixed on the ground, fearing to raise them, lest they should encounter the object which i so much dreaded to behold. i feared to wander from the sight of my fellow-creatures, lest when alone he should come to claim his companion. in the meantime i worked on, and my labour was already considerably advanced. i looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager hope, which i dared not trust myself to question, but which was intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil, that made my heart sicken in my bosom. chapter xx i sat one evening in my laboratory; the sun had set, and the moon was just rising from the sea; i had not sufficient light for my employment, and i remained idle, in a pause of consideration of whether i should leave my labour for the night, or hasten its conclusion by an unremitting attention to it. as i sat, a train of reflection occurred to me, which led me to consider the effects of what i was now doing. three years before i was engaged in the same manner, and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart, and filled it for ever with the bitterest remorse. i was now about to form another being, of whose dispositions i was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness. he had sworn to quit the neighbourhood of man, and hide himself in deserts; but she had not; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. they might even hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed his own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for it when it came before his eyes in the female form? she also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species. even if they were to leave europe, and inhabit the deserts of the new world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror. had i right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? i had before been moved by the sophisms of the being i had created; i had been struck senseless by his fiendish threats: but now, for the first time, the wickedness of my promise burst upon me; i shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace, at the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race. i trembled, and my heart failed within me; when, on looking up, i saw, by the light of the moon, the daemon at the casement. a ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where i sat fulfilling the task which he had allotted to me. yes, he had followed me in my travels; he had loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide and desert heaths; and he now came to mark my progress, and claim the fulfillment of my promise. as i looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of malice and treachery. i thought with a sensation of madness on my promise to create another like him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which i was engaged. the wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and, with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew. i left the room, and, locking the door, made a solemn vow in my own heart never to resume my labours; and then, with trembling steps, sought my own apartment. i was alone; none were near me to dissipate the gloom, and relieve me from the sickening oppression of the most terrible reveries. several hours passed, and i remained near my window gazing on the sea; it was almost motionless, for the winds were hushed, and all nature reposed under the eye of the quiet moon. a few fishing vessels alone specked the water, and now and then the gentle breeze wafted the sound of voices, as the fishermen called to one another. i felt the silence, although i was hardly conscious of its extreme profundity, until my ear was suddenly arrested by the paddling of oars near the shore, and a person landed close to my house. in a few minutes after, i heard the creaking of my door, as if some one endeavoured to open it softly. i trembled from head to foot; i felt a presentiment of who it was, and wished to rouse one of the peasants who dwelt in a cottage not far from mine; but i was overcome by the sensation of helplessness, so often felt in frightful dreams, when you in vain endeavour to fly from an impending danger, and was rooted to the spot. presently i heard the sound of footsteps along the passage; the door opened, and the wretch whom i dreaded appeared. shutting the door, he approached me, and said, in a smothered voice "you have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you intend? do you dare to break your promise? i have endured toil and misery: i left switzerland with you; i crept along the shores of the rhine, among its willow islands, and over the summits of its hills. i have dwelt many months in the heaths of england, and among the deserts of scotland. i have endured incalculable fatigue, and cold, and hunger; do you dare destroy my hopes?" "begone! i do break my promise; never will i create another like yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness." "slave, i before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. remember that i have power; you believe yourself miserable, but i can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. you are my creator, but i am your master;obey!" "the hour of my irresolution is past, and the period of your power is arrived. your threats cannot move me to do an act of wickedness; but they confirm me in a determination of not creating you a companion in vice. shall i, in cool blood, set loose upon the earth a daemon, whose delight is in death and wretchedness? begone! i am firm, and your words will only exasperate my rage." the monster saw my determination in my face, and gnashed his teeth in the impotence of anger. "shall each man," cried he, "find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and i be alone? i had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. man! you may hate; but beware! your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness for ever. are you to be happy while i grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? you can blast my other passions; but revenge remainsrevenge, henceforth dearer than light or food! i may die; but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. beware; for i am fearless, and therefore powerful. i will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that i may sting with its venom. man, you shall repent of the injuries you inflict." "devil, cease; and do not poison the air with these sounds of malice. i have declared my resolution to you, and i am no coward to bend beneath words. leave me; i am inexorable." "it is well. i go; but remember, i shall be with you on your wedding-night." i started forward, and exclaimed, "villain! before you sign my death-warrant, be sure that you are yourself safe." i would have seized him; but he eluded me, and quitted the house with precipitation. in a few moments i saw him in his boat, which shot across the waters with an arrowy swiftness and was soon lost amidst the waves. all was again silent; but his words rung in my ears. i burned with rage to pursue the murderer of my peace and precipitate him into the ocean. i walked up and down my room hastily and perturbed, while my imagination conjured up a thousand images to torment and sting me. why had i not followed him, and closed with him in mortal strife? but i had suffered him to depart, and he had directed his course towards the main land. i shuddered to think who might be the next victim sacrificed to his insatiate revenge. and then i thought again of his words"i will be with you on your wedding-night." that then was the period fixed for the fulfillment of my destiny. in that hour i should die, and at once satisfy and extinguish his malice. the prospect did not move me to fear; yet when i thought of my beloved elizabeth,of her tears and endless sorrow, when she should find her lover so barbarously snatched from her,tears, the first i had shed for many months, streamed from my eyes, and i resolved not to fall before my enemy without a bitter struggle. the night passed away, and the sun rose from the ocean; my feelings became calmer, if it may be called calmness, when the violence of rage sinks into the depths of despair. i left the house, the horrid scene of the last night's contention, and walked on the beach of the sea, which i almost regarded as an insuperable barrier between me and my fellow-creatures; nay, a wish that such should prove the fact stole across me. i desired that i might pass my life on that barren rock, wearily, it is true, but uninterrupted by any sudden shock of misery. if i returned, it was to be sacrificed, or to see those whom i most loved die under the grasp of a daemon whom i had myself created. i walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it loved, and miserable in the separation. when it became noon, and the sun rose higher, i lay down on the grass, and was overpowered by a deep sleep. i had been awake the whole of the preceding night, my nerves were agitated, and my eyes inflamed by watching and misery. the sleep into which i now sunk refreshed me; and when i awoke, i again felt as if i belonged to a race of human beings like myself, and i began to reflect upon what had passed with greater composure; yet still the words of the fiend rung in my ears like a death-knell, they appeared like a dream, yet distinct and oppressive as a reality. the sun had far descended, and i still sat on the shore, satisfying my appetite, which had become ravenous, with an oaten cake, when i saw a fishing-boat land close to me, and one of the men brought me a packet; it contained letters from geneva, and one from clerval, entreating me to join him. he said that he was wearing away his time fruitlessly where he was; that letters from the friends he had formed in london desired his return to complete the negotiation they had entered into for his indian enterprise. he could not any longer delay his departure; but as his journey to london might be followed, even sooner than he now conjectured, by his longer voyage, he entreated me to bestow as much of my society on him as i could spare. he besought me, therefore, to leave my solitary isle, and to meet him at perth, that we might proceed southwards together. this letter in a degree recalled me to life, and i determined to quit my island at the expiration of two days. yet, before i departed, there was a task to perform, on which i shuddered to reflect: i must pack up my chemical instruments; and for that purpose i must enter the room which had been the scene of my odious work, and i must handle those utensils, the sight of which was sickening to me. the next morning, at daybreak, i summoned sufficient courage, and unlocked the door of my laboratory. the remains of the half-finished creature, whom i had destroyed, lay scattered on the floor, and i almost felt as if i had mangled the living flesh of a human being. i paused to collect myself, and then entered the chamber. with trembling hand i conveyed the instruments out of the room; but i reflected that i ought not to leave the relics of my work to excite the horror and suspicion of the peasants; and i accordingly put them into a basket, with a great quantity of stones, and, laying them up, determined to throw them into the sea that very night; and in the meantime i sat upon the beach, employed in cleaning and arranging my chemical apparatus. nothing could be more complete than the alteration that had taken place in my feelings since the night of the appearance of the daemon. i had before regarded my promise with a gloomy despair, as a thing that, with whatever consequences, must be fulfilled; but i now felt as if a film had been taken from before my eyes, and that i, for the first time, saw clearly. the idea of renewing my labours did not for one instant occur to me; the threat i had heard weighed on my thoughts, but i did not reflect that a voluntary act of mine could avert it. i had resolved in my own mind, that to create another like the fiend i had first made would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness; and i banished from my mind every thought that could lead to a different conclusion. between two and three in the morning the moon rose; and i then, putting my basket aboard a little skill, sailed out about four miles from the shore. the scene was perfectly solitary: a few boats were returning towards land, but i sailed away from them. i felt as if i was about the commission of a dreadful crime, and avoided with shuddering anxiety any encounter with my fellow-creatures. at one time the moon, which had before been clear, was suddenly overspread by a thick cloud, and i took advantage of the moment of darkness, and cast my basket into the sea: i listened to the gurgling sound as it sunk, and then sailed away from the spot. the sky became clouded; but the air was pure, although chilled by the north-east breeze that was then rising. but it refreshed me, and filled me with such agreeable sensations, that i resolved to prolong my stay on the water; and, fixing the rudder in a direct position, stretched myself at the bottom of the boat. clouds hid the moon, everything was obscure, and i heard only the sound of the boat, as its keel cut through the waves; the murmur lulled me, and in a short time i slept soundly. i do not know how long i remained in this situation, but when i awoke i found that the sun had already mounted considerably. the wind was high, and the waves continually threatened the safety of my little skill. i found that the wind was north-east, and must have driven me far from the coast from which i had embarked. i endeavoured to change my course, but quickly found that, if i again made the attempt, the boat would be instantly filled with water. thus situated, my only resource was to drive before the wind. i confess that i felt a few sensations of terror. i had no compass with me, and was so slenderly acquainted with the geography of this part of the world, that the sun was of little benefit to me. i might be driven into the wide atlantic, and feel all the tortures of starvation, or be swallowed up in the immeasurable waters that roared and buffeted around me. i had already been out many hours, and felt the torment of a burning thirst, a prelude to my other sufferings. i looked on the heavens, which were covered by clouds that flew before the wind, only to be replaced by others: i looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave. "fiend," i exclaimed, "your task is already fulfilled!" i thought of elizabeth, of my father, and of clerval; all left behind, on whom the monster might satisfy his sanguinary and merciless passions. this idea plunged me into a revery, so despairing and frightful, that even now, when the scene is on the point of closing before me forever, i shudder to reflect on it. some hours passed thus; but by degrees, as the sun declined towards the horizon, the wind died away into a gentle breeze, and the sea became free from breakers. but these gave place to a heavy swell: i felt sick, and hardly able to hold the rudder, when suddenly i saw a line of high land towards the south. almost spent, as i was, by fatigue, and the dreadful suspense i endured for several hours, this sudden certainty of life rushed like a flood of warm joy to my heart, and tears gushed from my eyes. how mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery! i constructed another sail with a part of my dress, and eagerly steered my course towards the land. it had a wild and rocky appearance; but, as i approached nearer, i easily perceived the traces of cultivation. i saw vessels near the shore, and found myself suddenly transported back to the neighbourhood of civilised man. i carefully traced the windings of the land, and hailed a steeple which i at length saw issuing from behind a small promontory. as i was in a state of extreme debility, i resolved to sail directly towards the town, as a place where i could most easily procure nourishment. fortunately i had money with me. as i turned the promontory, i perceived a small neat town and a good harbour, which i entered, my heart bounding with joy at my unexpected escape. as i was occupied in fixing the boat and arranging the sails several people crowded towards the spot. they seemed much surprised at my appearance; but, instead of offering me any assistance, whispered together with gestures that at any other time might have produced in me a slight sensation of alarm. as it was, i merely remarked that they spoke english; and i therefore addressed them in that language: "my good friends," said i, "will you be so kind as to tell me the name of this town, and inform me where i am?" "you will know that soon enough," replied a man with a hoarse voice. "may be you are come to a place that will not prove much to your taste; but you will not be consulted as to your quarters, promise you." i was exceedingly surprised on receiving so rude an answer from a stranger; and i was also disconcerted on perceiving the frowning and angry countenances of his companions. "why do you answer me so roughly?" i replied; "surely it is not the custom of englishmen to receive strangers so inhospitably." "i do not know," said the man, "what the custom of the english may be; but it is the custom of the irish to hate villains." while this strange dialogue continued, i perceived the crowd rapidly increase. their faces expressed a mixture of curiosity and anger, which annoyed, and in some degree alarmed me. i inquired the way to the inn; but no one replied. i then moved forward, and a murmuring sound arose from the crowd as they followed and surrounded me; when an ill-looking man approaching, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, "come sir, you must follow me to mr. kirwins, to give an account of yourself." "who is mr. kirwin? why am i to give an account of myself? is not this a free country?" "ay, sir, free enough for honest folks. mr. kirwin is a magistrate; and you are to give an account of the death of a gentleman who was found murdered here last night." this answer startled me; but i presently recovered myself. i was innocent; that could easily be proved: accordingly i followed my conductor in silence, and was led to one of the best houses in the town. i was ready to sink from fatigue and hunger; but, being surrounded by a crowd, i thought it politic to rouse all my strength, that no physical debility might be construed into apprehension or conscious guilt. little did i then expect the calamity that was in a few moments to overwhelm me, and extinguish in horror and despair all fear of ignominy or death. i must pause here; for it requires all my fortitude to recall the memory of the frightful events which i am about to relate, in proper detail, to my recollection. chapter xxi i was soon introduced into the presence of the magistrate, an old benevolent man, with calm and mild manners. he looked upon me, however, with some degree of severity: and then, turning towards my conductors, he asked who appeared as witnesses on this occasion. about half a dozen men came forward; and one being selected by the magistrate, he deposed that he had been out fishing the night before with his son and brother-in-law, daniel nugent, when, about ten o'clock, they observed a strong northerly blast rising, and they accordingly put in for port. it was a very dark night, as the moon had not yet risen; they did not land at the harbour, but, as they had been accustomed, at a creek about two miles below. he walked on first, carrying a part of the fishing tackle, and his companions followed him at some distance. as he was proceeding along the sands, he struck his foot against something, and fell at his length on the ground. his companions came up to assist him; and, by the light of their lantern, they found that he had fallen on the body of a man who was to all appearance dead. their first supposition was that it was the corpse of some person who had been drowned, and was thrown on shore by the waves; but, on examination, they found that the clothes were not wet, and even that the body was not then cold. they instantly carried it to the cottage of an old woman near the spot, and endeavoured, but in vain, to restore it to life. it appeared to be a handsome young man, about five and twenty years of age. he had apparently been strangled; for there was no sign of any violence, except the black mark of fingers on his neck. the first part of this deposition did not in the least interest me; but when the mark of the fingers was mentioned, i remembered the murder of my brother, and felt myself extremely agitated; my limbs trembled, and a mist came over my eyes, which obliged me to lean on a chair for support. the magistrate observed me with a keen eye, and of course drew an unfavourable augury from my manner. the son confirmed his father's account: but when daniel nugent was called, he swore positively that, just before the fall of his companion, he saw a boat, with a single man in it, at a short distance from the shore; and, as far as he could judge by the light of a few stars, it was the same boat in which i had just landed. a woman deposed that she lived near the beach, and was standing at the door of her cottage, waiting for the return of the fishermen, about an hour before she heard of the discovery of the body, when she saw a boat, with only one man in it, push off from that part of the shore where the corpse was afterwards found. another woman confirmed the account of the fishermen having brought the body into her house; it was not cold. they put it into a bed, and rubbed it; and daniel went to the town for an apothecary, but life was quite gone. several other men were examined concerning my landing; and they agreed that, with the strong north wind that had arisen during the night, it was very probable that i had beaten about for many hours, and had been obliged to return nearly to the same spot from which i had departed. besides, they observed that it appeared that i had brought the body from another place, and it was likely that, as i did not appear to know the shore, i might have put into the harbour ignorant of the distance of the town offrom the place where i had deposited the corpse. mr. kirwin on hearing this evidence, desired that i should be taken into the room where the body lay for interment, that it might be observed what effect the sight of it would produce upon me. this idea was probably suggested by the extreme agitation i had exhibited when the mode of the murder had been described. i was accordingly conducted, by the magistrate and several other persons, to the inn. i could not help being struck by the strange coincidences that had taken place during this eventful night; but knowing that i had been conversing with several persons in the island i had inhabited about the time that the body had been found, i was perfectly tranquil as to the consequences of the affair. i entered the room where the corpse lay, and was led up to the coffin. how can i describe my sensations on beholding it? i feel yet parched with horror, nor can i reflect on that terrible moment without shuddering and agony. the examination, the presence of the magistrate and witnesses, passed like a dream from my memory, when i saw the lifeless form of henry clerval stretched before me. i gasped for breath; and, throwing myself on the body, i exclaimed, "have my murderous machinations deprived you also, my dearest henry, of life? two i have already destroyed; other victims await their destiny: but you, clerval, my friend, my benefactor-" the human frame could no longer support the agonies that i endured, and i was carried out of the room in strong convulsions. a fever succeeded to this. i lay for two months on the point of death: my ravings, as i afterwards heard, were frightful; i called myself the murderer of william, of justine, and of clerval. sometimes i entreated my attendants to assist me in the destruction of the fiend by whom i was tormented; and at others i felt the fingers of the monster already grasping my neck, and screamed aloud with agony and terror. fortunately, as i spoke my native language, mr. kirwin alone understood me; but my gestures and bitter cries were sufficient to affright the other witnesses. why did i not die? more miserable than man ever was before, why did i not sink into forgetfulness and rest? death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doating parents: how many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! of what materials was i made, that i could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture? but i was doomed to live; and, in two months, found myself as awaking from a dream, in a stretched on a wretched bed, surrounded by gaolers, turnkeys, bolts, and all the miserable apparatus of a dungeon. it was morning, i remember, when i thus awoke to understanding: i had forgotten the particulars of what had happened, and only felt as if some great misfortune had suddenly overwhelmed me; but when i looked around, and saw the barred windows, and the squalidness of the room in which i was, all flashed across my memory, and i groaned bitterly. this sound disturbed an old woman who was sleeping in a chair beside me. she was a hired nurse, the wife of one of the turnkeys, and her countenance expressed all those bad qualities which often characterise that class. the lines of her face were hard and rude, like that of persons accustomed to see without sympathising in sights of misery. her tone expressed her entire indifference; she addressed me in english, and the voice struck me as one that i had heard during my sufferings: "are you better now, sir?" said she. i replied in the same language, with a feeble voice, "i believe i am; but if it be all true, if indeed i did not dream, i am sorry that i am still alive to feel this misery and horror." "for that matter," replied the old woman, "if you mean about the gentleman you murdered, i believe that it were better for you if you were dead, for i fancy it will go hard with you! however, that's none of my business; i am sent to nurse you, and get you well; i do my duty with a safe conscience; it were well if everybody did the same." i turned with loathing from the woman who could utter so unfeeling a speech to a person just saved, on the very edge of death; but i felt languid, and unable to reflect on all that had passed. the whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; i sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality. as the images that floated before me became more distinct, i grew feverish; a darkness pressed around me: no one was near me who soothed me with the gentle voice of love; no dear hand supported me. the physician came and prescribed medicines, and the old woman prepared them for me; but utter carelessness was visible in the first, and the expression of brutality was strongly marked in the visage of the second. who could be interested in the fate of a murderer, but the hangman who would gain his fee? these were my first reflections; but i soon learned that mr. kirwin had shown me extreme kindness. he had caused the best room in the prison to be prepared for me (wretched indeed was the best); and it was he who had provided a physician and a nurse. it is true, he seldom came to see me; for, although he ardently desired to relieve the sufferings of every human creature, he did not wish to be present at the agonies and miserable ravings of a murderer. he came, therefore, sometimes, to see that i was not neglected but his visits were short, and with long intervals. one day, while i was gradually recovering, i was seated in a chair, my eyes half open, and my cheeks livid like those in death. i was overcome by gloom and misery, and often reflected i had better seek death than desire to remain in a world which to me was replete with wretchedness. at one time i considered whether i should not declare myself guilty, and suffer the penalty of the law, less innocent than poor justine had been. such were my thoughts when the door of my apartment was opened and mr. kirwin entered. his countenance expressed sympathy and compassion; he drew a chair close to mine, and addressed me in french "i fear that this place is very shocking to you; can i do anything to make you more comfortable?" "i thank you; but all that you mention is nothing to me: on the whole earth there is no comfort which i am capable of receiving." "i know that the sympathy of a stranger can be but of little relief to one borne down as you are by so strange a misfortune. but you will, i hope, soon quit this melancholy abode; for, doubtless, evidence can easily be brought to free you from the criminal charge." "that is my least concern: i am, by a course of strange events, become the most miserable of mortals. persecuted and tortured as i am and have been, can death be any evil to me?" "nothing indeed could be more unfortunate and agonising than the strange chances that have lately occurred. you were thrown, by some surprising accident, on this shore renowned its hospitality, seized immediately, and charged with murder. the first sight that was presented to your eyes was the body of your friend, murdered in so unaccountable a manner, and placed, as it were, by some fiend across your path." as mr. kirwin said this, notwithstanding the agitation i endured on this retrospect of my sufferings, i also felt considerable surprise at the knowledge he seemed to possess concerning me. suppose some astonishment was exhibited in my countenance for mr. kirwin hastened to say "immediately upon your being taken ill, all the papers that were on your person were brought me, and i examined them that i might discover some trace by which i could send to your relations an account of your misfortune and illness. i found several letters, and, among others, one which i discovered from its commencement to be from your father. i instantly wrote to geneva: nearly two months have elapsed since the departure of my letter.but you are ill; even now you tremble: you are unfit for agitation of any kind." "this suspense is a thousand times worse than the most horrible event: tell me what new scene of death has been acted, and whose murder i am now to lament?" "your family is perfectly well," said mr. kirwin, with gentleness; "and some one, a friend, is come to visit you." i know not by what chain of thought the idea presented itself, but it instantly darted into my mind that the murderer had come to mock at my misery, and taunt me with the death of clerval, as a new incitement for me to comply with his hellish desires. i put my hand before my eyes and cried out in agony "oh! take him away! i cannot see him; for god's sake do not let him enter!" mr. kirwin regarded me with a troubled countenance. he could not help regarding my exclamation as a presumption of my guilt, and said, in rather a severe tone "i should have thought, young man, that the presence of your father would have been welcome instead of inspiring such violent repugnance." "my father!" cried i, while every feature and every muscle was relaxed from anguish to pleasure: "is my father indeed come? how kind, how very kind! but where is he, why does he not hasten to me?" my change of manner surprised and pleased the magistrate; perhaps he thought that my former exclamation was a momentary return of delirium, and now he instantly resumed his former benevolence. he rose and quitted the room with my nurse, and in a moment my father entered it. nothing, at this moment, could have given me greater pleasure than the arrival of my father. i stretched out my hand to him and cried "are you then safeand elizabethand ernest?" my father calmed me with assurances of their welfare, and endeavoured, by dwelling on these subjects so interesting to my heart, to raise my desponding spirits; but he soon felt that a prison cannot be the abode of cheerfulness. "what a place is this that you inhabit, my son!" said he, looking mournfully at the barred windows and wretched appearance of the room. "you travelled to seek happiness, but a fatality seems to pursue you. and poor clerval-" the name of my unfortunate and murdered friend was an agitation too great to be endured in my weak state; i shed tears. "alas! yes, my father," replied i; "some destiny of the most horrible kind hangs over me, and i must live to fulfill it, or surely i should have died on the coffin of henry." we were not allowed to converse for any length of time, for the precarious state of my health rendered every precaution necessary that could ensure tranquillity. mr. kirwin came in and insisted that my strength should not be exhausted by too much exertion. but the appearance of my father was to me like that of my good angel, and i gradually recovered my health. as my sickness quitted me, i was absorbed by a gloomy and black melancholy that nothing could dissipate. the image of clerval was forever before me, ghastly and murdered. more than once the agitation into which these reflections threw me made my friends dread a dangerous relapse. alas! why did they preserve so miserable and detested a life? it was surely that i might fulfill my destiny, which is now drawing to a close. soon, oh! very soon, will death extinguish these throbbings, and relieve me from the mighty weight of anguish that bears me to the dust; and, in executing the award of justice, i shall also sink to rest. then the appearance of death was distant although the wish was ever present to my thoughts; and i often sat for hours motionless and speechless, wishing for some mighty revolution that might bury me and my destroyer in its ruins. the season of the assizes approached. i had already been three months in prison; and although i was still weak, and in continual danger of a relapse, i was obliged to travel nearly a hundred miles to the county-town where the court was held. mr. kirwin charged himself with every care of collecting witnesses and arranging my defence. i was spared the disgrace of appearing publicly as a criminal, as the case was not brought before the court that decides on life and death. the grand jury rejected the bill on its being proved that i was on the orkney islands at the hour the body of my friend was found; and a fortnight after my removal i was liberated from prison. my father was enraptured on finding me freed from the vexations of a criminal charge, that i was again allowed to breathe the fresh atmosphere, and permitted to return to my native country. i did not participate in these feelings; for to me the walls of a dungeon or a palace were alike hateful. the cup of life was poisoned forever; and although the sun shone upon me as upon the happy and gay of heart, i saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me. sometimes they were the expressive eyes of henry languishing in death, the dark orbs nearly covered by the lids, and the long black lashes that fringed them; sometimes it was the watery, clouded eyes of the monster as i first saw them in my chamber at ingolstadt. my father tried to awaken in me the feelings of affection. he talked of geneva, which i should soon visitof elizabeth and ernest; but these words only drew deep groans from me. sometimes, indeed, i felt a wish for happiness; and thought, with melancholy delight, of my beloved cousin; or longed, with a devouring maladie du pays, to see once more the blue lake and rapid rhone that had been so dear to me in early childhood: but my general state of feeling was a torpor in which a prison was as welcome a residence as the divinest scene in nature; and these fits were seldom interrupted but by paroxysms of anguish and despair. at these moments i often endeavoured to put an end to the existence i loathed; and it required unceasing attendance and vigilance to restrain me from committing some dreadful act of violence. yet one duty remained to me, the recollection of which finally triumphed over my selfish despair. it was necessary that i should return without delay to geneva, there to watch over the lives of those i so fondly loved; and to lie in wait for the murderer, that if any chance led me to the place of his concealment, or if he dared again to blast me by his presence, i might, with unfailing aim, put an end to the existence of the monstrous image which i had endued with the mockery of a soul still more monstrous. my father still desired to delay our departure, fearful that i could not sustain the fatigues of a journey: for i was a shattered wreckthe shadow of a human being. my strength was gone. i was a mere skeleton; and fever night and day preyed upon my wasted frame. still, as i urged our leaving ireland with such inquietude and impatience, my father thought it best to yield. we took our passage on board a vessel bound for havre-de-grace, and sailed with a fair wind from the irish shores. it was midnight. i lay on the deck looking at the stars and listening to the dashing of the waves. i hailed the darkness that shut ireland from my sight; and my pulse beat with a feverish joy when i reflected that i should soon see geneva. the past appeared to me in the light of a frightful dream; yet the vessel in which i was, the wind that blew me from the detested shore of ireland, and the sea which surrounded me, told me too forcibly that i was deceived by no vision, and that clerval, my friend and dearest companion, had fallen a victim to me and the monster of my creation. i repassed, in my memory, my whole life; my quiet happiness while residing with my family in geneva, the death of my mother, and my departure for ingolstadt. i remembered, shuddering, the mad enthusiasm that hurried me on to the creation of my hideous enemy, and i called to mind the night in which he first lived. i was unable to pursue the train of thought; a thousand feelings pressed upon me, and i wept bitterly. ever since my recovery from the fever i had been in the custom of taking every night a small quantity of laudanum; for it was by means of this drug only that i was enabled to gain the rest necessary for the preservation of life. oppressed by the recollection of my various misfortunes, i now swallowed double my usual quantity and soon slept profoundly. but sleep did not afford me respite from thought and misery; my dreams presented a thousand objects that scared me. towards morning i was possessed by a kind of nightmare; i felt the fiend's grasp in my neck, and could not free myself from it; groans and cries rung in my ears. my father, who was watching over me, perceiving my restlessness, awoke me; the dashing waves were around: the cloudy sky above; the fiend was not here: a sense of security, a feeling that a truce mas established between the present hour and the irresistible, disastrous future, imparted to me a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly susceptible. chapter xxii the voyage came to an end. we landed and proceeded to paris. i soon found that i had overtaxed my strength, and that i must repose before i could continue my journey. my father's care and attentions were indefatigable; but he did not know the origin of my sufferings, and sought erroneous methods to remedy the incurable ill. he wished me to seek amusement in society. i abhorred the face of man. oh, not abhorred! they were my brethren, my fellow beings, and i felt attracted even to the most repulsive among them as to creatures of an angelic nature and celestial mechanism. but i felt that i had no right to share their intercourse. i had unchained an enemy among them, whose it was to shed their blood and to revel in their groans. how they would, each and all, abhor me, and hunt me from the world, did they know my unhallowed acts and the crimes which had their source in me! my father yielded at length to my desire to avoid society, and strove by various arguments to banish my despair. sometimes he thought that i felt deeply the degradation of being obliged to answer a charge of murder, and he endeavoured to prove to me the futility of pride. "alas! my father," said i, "how little do you know me. human beings, their feelings and passions, would indeed be degraded if such a wretch as i felt pride. justine, poor unhappy justine, was as innocent as i, and she suffered the same charge; she died for it; and i am the cause of thisi murdered her. william, justine, and henrythey all died by my hands." my father had often, during my imprisonment, heard me make the same assertion; when i thus accused myself he sometimes seemed to desire an explanation, and at others he appeared to consider it as the offspring of delirium, and that, during my illness, some idea of this kind had presented itself to my imagination, the remembrance of which i preserved in my convalescence. i avoided explanation, and maintained a continual silence concerning the wretch i had created. i had a persuasion that i should be supposed mad; and this in itself would forever have chained my tongue. but, besides, i could not bring myself to disclose a secret which would fill my hearer with consternation, and make fear and unnatural horror the inmates of his breast. i checked, therefore, my impatient thirst for sympathy, and was silent when i would have given the world to have confided the fatal secret. yet still words like those i have recorded would burst uncontrollably from me. i could offer no explanation of them; but their truth in part relieved the burden of my mysterious woe. upon this occasion my father said, with an expression of unbounded wonder, "my dearest victor, what infatuation is this? my dear son, i entreat you never to make such an assertion again." "i am not mad," i cried energetically; "the sun and the heavens, who have viewed my operations, can bear witness of my truth. i am the assassin of those most innocent victims; they died by my machinations. a thousand times would i have shed my own blood, drop by drop, to have saved their lives; but i could not, my father, indeed i could not sacrifice the whole human race." the conclusion of this speech convinced my father that my ideas were deranged, and he instantly changed the subject of our conversation and endeavoured to alter the course of thoughts. he wished as much as possible to obliterate the memory of the scenes that had taken place in ireland, and never alluded to them, or suffered me to speak of my misfortunes. as time passed away i became more calm: misery had her dwelling in my heart, but i no longer talked in the same incoherent manner of my own crimes; sufficient for me was the consciousness of them. by the utmost self-violence, i curbed the imperious voice of wretchedness, which sometimes desired to declare itself to the whole world; and my manners were calmer and more composed than they had ever been since my journey to the sea of ice. a few days before we left paris on our way to switzerland, i received the following letter from elizabeth: my dear friend,it gave me the greatest pleasure to receive a letter from my uncle dated at paris; you are no longer at a formidable distance, and i may hope to see you in less than a fortnight. my poor cousin, how much you must have suffered! i expect to see you looking even more ill than when you quitted geneva. this winter has been passed most miserably, tortured as i have been by anxious suspense; yet i hope to see peace in your countenance, and to find that your heart is not totally void of comfort and tranquillity. yet i fear that the same feelings now exist that made you so miserable a year ago, even perhaps augmented by time. i would not disturb you at this period when so many misfortunes weigh upon you; but a conversation that i had with my uncle previous to his departure renders some explanation necessary before we meet. explanation! you may possibly say; what can elizabeth have to explain? if you really say this, my questions are answered, and all my doubts satisfied. but you are distant from me, and it is possible that you may dread, and yet be pleased with this explanation; and, in a probability of this being the case, i dare not any longer postpone writing what, during your absence, i have often wished to express to you, but have never had the courage to begin. you well know, victor, that our union has been the favourite plan of your parents ever since our infancy. we were told this when young, and taught to look forward to it as an event that would certainly take place. we were affectionate play-fellows during childhood, and dear and valued friends to one another as we grew older. but as brother and sister often entertain a lively affection towards each other without desiring a more intimate union, may not such also be our case? tell me, dearest victor. answer me, i conjure you by our mutual happiness, with simple truthdo you not love another? you have travelled; you have spent several years of your life at ingolstadt; and i confess to you, my friend, that when i saw you last autumn so unhappy, flying to solitude, from the society of every creature, i could not help supposing that you might regret our connection, and believe yourself bound in honour to fulfill the wishes of your parents although they opposed themselves to your inclinations. but this is false reasoning. i confess to you, my friend, that i love you, and that in my air dreams of futurity you have been my constant friend and companion. but it is your happiness i desire as well as my own when i declare to you that our marriage would render me eternally miserable unless it were the dictate of your own free choice. even now i weep to think that, borne down as you are by the cruellest misfortunes, you may stifle, by the word honour, all hope of that love and happiness which would alone restore you to yourself. i who have so disinterested an affection for you, may increase your miseries tenfold by being an obstacle to your wishes. ah! victor, be assured that your cousin and playmate has too sincere a love for you not to be made miserable by this supposition. be happy, my friend; and if you obey me in this one request, remain satisfied that nothing on earth will have the power to interrupt my tranquillity. do not let this letter disturb you; do not answer tomorrow, or the next day, or even until you come, if it will give you pain. my uncle will send me. news of your health; and if i see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, i shall need no other happiness. elizabeth lavenza. this letter revived in my memory what i had before forgotten, the threat of the fiend"i be with you on your wedding-night!" such was my sentence, and on that night would the daemon employ every art to destroy me, and tear me from the glimpse of happiness which promised partly to console my sufferings. on that night he had determined to consummate his crimes by my death. well, be it so; a deadly struggle would then assuredly take place, in which if he were victorious i should be at peace, and his power over me be at an end. if he were vanquished i should be a free man. alas! what freedom? such as the peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, penniless and alone, but free. such would be my liberty except that in my elizabeth i possessed a treasure; alas! balanced by those horrors of remorse and guilt which would pursue me until death. sweet and beloved elizabeth! i read and re-read her letter and some softened feelings stole into my heart and dared to whisper paradisaical dreams of love and joy; but the apple was already eaten, and the angel's arm bared to drive me from all hope. yet i would die to make her happy. if the monster executed his threat, death was inevitable; yet, again, i considered whether my marriage would hasten my fate. my destruction might indeed arrive a few months sooner; but if my torturer should suspect that i postponed it influenced by his menaces he would surely find other and perhaps more dreadful means of revenge. he had vowed to be with me on my wedding-night, yet he did not consider that threat as binding him to peace in the meantime; for, as if to show me that he was not yet satiated with blood, he had murdered clerval immediately after the enunciation of his threats. i resolved, therefore, that if my immediate union with my cousin would conduce either to hers or my father's happiness, my adversary's designs against my life should not retard it a single hour. in this state of mind i wrote to elizabeth. my letter was calm and affectionate. "i fear, my beloved girl," i said, "little happiness remains for us on earth; yet all that i may one day enjoy is centred in you. chase away your idle fears; to you alone do i consecrate my life and my endeavours for contentment. i have one secret, elizabeth, a dreadful one; when revealed to you it will chill your frame with horror, and then, far from being surprised at my misery, you will only wonder that i survive what i have endured. i will confide this tale of misery and terror to you the day after our marriage shall take place; for, my sweet cousin, there must be perfect confidence between us. but until then, i conjure you, do not mention or allude to it. this i most earnestly entreat, and i know you will comply." in about a week after the arrival of elizabeth's letter we returned to geneva. the sweet girl welcomed me with warm affection; yet tears were in her eyes as she beheld my emaciated frame and feverish cheeks. i saw a change in her also. she was thinner and had lost much of that heavenly vivacity that had before charmed me; but her gentleness and soft looks of compassion made her a more fit companion for one blasted and miserable as i was. the tranquillity which i now enjoyed did not endure. memory brought madness with it; and when i thought of what had passed a real insanity possessed me; sometimes i was furious and burnt with rage; sometimes low and despondent. i neither spoke nor looked at any one, but sat motionless, bewildered by the multitude of miseries that overcame me. elizabeth alone had the power to draw me from these fits; her gentle voice would soothe me when transported by passion, and inspire me with human feelings when sunk in torpor. she wept with me and for me. when reason returned she would remonstrate and endeavour to inspire me with resignation. ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace. the agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief. soon after my arrival, my father spoke of my immediate marriage with elizabeth. i remained silent. "have you, then, some other attachment?" "none on earth. i love elizabeth, and look forward to our union with delight. let the day therefore be fixed; and on it i will consecrate myself, in life or death, to the happiness of my cousin." "my dear victor, do not speak thus. heavy misfortunes have befallen us; but let us only cling closer to what remains, and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. our circle will be small, but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. and when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those. of whom we have been so cruelly deprived." such were the lessons of my father. but to me the remembrance of the threat returned: nor can you wonder that, omnipotent as the fiend had yet been in his deeds of blood, i should almost regard him as invincible, and that when he had pronounced the words, "i shall be with you on your wedding-night," i should regard the threatened fate as unavoidable. but death was no evil to me if the loss of elizabeth were balanced with it; and i therefore, with a contented and even cheerful countenance, agreed with my father that, if my cousin would consent, the ceremony should take place in ten days, and thus put, as i imagined, the seal to my fate. great god! if for one instant i had thought what might be the hellish intention of my fiendish adversary, i would rather have banished myself for ever from my native country, and wandered a friendless outcast over the earth, than to have consented to this miserable marriage. but, if possessed of magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real intentions; and when i thought that i had prepared only my own death, i hastened that of a far dearer victim. as the period fixed for our marriage drew nearer, whether from cowardice or a prophetic feeling, i felt my heart sink within me. but i concealed my feelings by an appearance of hilarity, that brought smiles and joy to the countenance of my father, but hardly deceived the ever-watchful and nicer eye of elizabeth. she looked forward to our union with placid contentment, not unmingled with a little fear, which past misfortunes had impressed, that what now appeared certain and tangible happiness might soon dissipate into an airy dream, and leave no trace but deep and everlasting regret. preparations were made for the event; congratulatory visits were received; and all wore a smiling appearance. i shut up, as well as i could, in my own heart the anxiety that preyed there, and entered with seeming earnestness into the plans of my father, although they might only serve as the decorations of my tragedy. through my father's exertions, a part of the inheritance of elizabeth had been restored to her by the austrian government. a small possession on the shores of como belonged to her. it was agreed that, immediately after our union, we should proceed to villa lavenza, and spend our first days of happiness beside the beautiful lake near which it stood. in the meantime i took every precaution to defend my person in case the fiend should openly attack me. i carried pistols and a dagger constantly about me, and was ever on the watch to prevent artifice and by these means gained a greater degree of tranquillity. indeed, as the period approached, the threat appeared more as a delusion, not to be regarded as worthy to disturb my peace, while the happiness i hoped for in my marriage wore a greater appearance of certainty as the day fixed for its solemnisation drew nearer and i heard it continually spoken of as an occurrence which no accident could possibly prevent. elizabeth seemed happy; my tranquil demeanour contributed greatly to calm her mind. but on the day that was to fulfill my wishes and my destiny she was melancholy, and a presentiment of evil pervaded her; and perhaps also she thought of the dreadful secret which i had promised to reveal to her on the following day. my father was in the meantime overjoyed, and, in the bustle of preparation, only recognised in the melancholy of his niece the diffidence of a bride. after the ceremony was performed a large party assembled at my father's; but it was agreed that elizabeth and i should commerce our journey by water, sleeping that night at evian, and continuing our voyage on the following day. the day was fair, the wind favourable, all smiled on our nuptial embarkation. those were the last moments of my life during which i enjoyed the feeling of happiness. we passed rapidly along: the sun was hot, but we were sheltered from its rays by a kind of canopy, while we enjoyed the beauty of the scene, sometimes on one side of the lake, where we saw mont saleve, the pleasant banks of montalegre, and at a distance, surmounting all, the beautiful mont blanc, and the assemblage of snowy mountains that in vain endeavour to emulate her; sometimes coasting the opposite banks, we saw the mighty jura opposing its dark side to the ambition that would quit its native country, and an almost insurmountable barrier to the invader who should wish to enslave it. i took the hand of elizabeth: "you are sorrowful, my love. ah! if you knew what i have suffered, and what i may yet endure, you would endeavour to let me taste the quiet and freedom from despair that this one day at least permits me to enjoy." "be happy, my dear victor," replied elizabeth; "there is, i hope, nothing to distress you; and be assured that if a lively joy is not painted in my face, my heart is contented. something whispers to me not to depend too much on the prospect that is opened before us; but i will not listen to such a sinister voice. observe how fast we move along, and how the clouds, which sometimes obscure and sometimes rise above the dome of mont blanc, render this scene of beauty still more interesting. look also at the innumerable fish that are swimming in the clear waters, where we can distinguish every pebble that lies at the bottom. what a divine day! how happy and serene all nature appears!" thus elizabeth endeavoured to divert her thoughts and mine from all reflection upon melancholy subjects. but her temper was fluctuating; joy for a few instants shone in her eyes, but it continually gave place to distraction and reverie. the sun sunk lower in the heavens; we passed the river drance, and observed its path through the chasms of the higher, and the glens of the lower hills. the alps here come closer to the lake, and we approached the amphitheatre of mountains which forms its eastern boundary. the spire of evian shone under the woods that surrounded it, and the range of mountain above mountain by which it was overhung. the wind, which had hitherto carried us along with amazing rapidity, sunk at sunset to a light breeze; the soft air just ruffled the water, and caused a pleasant motion among the trees as we approached the shore, from which it wafted the most delightful scent of flowers and hay. the sun sunk beneath the horizon as we landed; and as i touched the shore, i felt those cares and fears revive which soon were to clasp me and cling to me for ever. chapter xxiii it was eight o'clock when we landed; we walked for a short time on the shore enjoying the transitory light, and then retired to the inn and contemplated the lovely scene of waters, woods, and mountains, obscured in darkness, yet still displaying their black outlines. the wind, which had fallen in the south, now rose with great violence in the west. the moon had reached her summit in the heavens and was beginning to descendthe clouds swept across it swifter than the flight of the vulture and dimmed her rays, while the lake reflected the scene of the busy heavens, rendered still busier by the restless waves that were beginning to rise. suddenly a heavy storm of rain descended. i had been calm during the day; but so soon as night obscured the shapes of objects, a thousand fears arose in my mind. i was anxious and watchful, while my right band grasped a pistol which was hidden in my bosom; every sound terrified me; but i resolved that i would sell my life dearly, and not shrink from the conflict until my own life, or that of my adversary, was extinguished. elizabeth observed my agitation for some time in timid and fearful silence; but there was something in my glance which communicated terror to her, and trembling she asked, "what is it that agitates you, my dear victor? what is it you fear?" "oh! peace, my love," replied i; "this night and all will be safe: but this night is dreadful, very dreadful." i passed an hour in this state of mind, when suddenly i reflected how fearful the combat which i momentarily expected would be to my wife, and i earnestly entreated her to retire, resolving not to join her until i had obtained some knowledge as to the situation of my enemy. she left me, and i continued some time walking up and down the passages of the house, and inspecting every corner that might afford a retreat to my adversary. but i discovered no trace of him, and was beginning to conjecture that some fortunate chance had intervened to prevent the execution of his menaces, when suddenly i heard a shrill and dreadful scream. it came from the room into which elizabeth had retired. as i heard it, the whole truth rushed into my mind, my arms dropped, the motion of every muscle and fibre was suspended; i could feel the blood trickling in my veins and tingling in the extremities of my limbs. this state lasted but for an instant; the scream was repeated, and i rushed into the room. great god! why did i not then expire! why am i here to relate the destruction of the best hope and the purest creature of earth? she was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair. everywhere i turn i see the same figureher bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer on its bridal bier. could i behold this and live? alas! life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated. for a moment only did i lose recollection; i fell senseless on the ground. when i recovered, i found myself surrounded by the people of the inn; their countenances expressed a breathless terror: but the horror of others appeared only as a mockery, a shadow of the feelings that oppressed me. i escaped from them to the room where lay the body of elizabeth, my love, my wife, so lately living, so dear, so worthy. she had been moved from the posture in which i had first beheld her; and now, as she lay, her head upon her arm, and a handkerchief thrown across her face and neck, i might have supposed her asleep. i rushed towards her, and embraced her with ardour; but the deadly languor and coldness of the limbs told me that what i now held in my arms had ceased to be the elizabeth whom i had loved and cherished. the murderous mark of the fiend's grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from her lips. while i still hung over her in the agony of despair, i happened to look up. the windows of the room had before been darkened, and i felt a kind of panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon illuminate the chamber. the shutters had been thrown back; and, with a sensation of horror not to be described, i saw at the open window a figure the most hideous and abhorred. a grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife. i rushed towards the window and, drawing a pistol from my bosom, fired; but he eluded me, leaped from his station, and, running with the swiftness of lightning, plunged into the lake. the report of the pistol brought a crowd into the room. i pointed to the spot where he had disappeared, and we followed the track with boats; nets were cast, but in vain. after passing several hours, we returned hopeless, most of my companions believing it to have been a form conjured up by my fancy. after having landed, they proceeded to search the country, parties going in different directions among the woods and vines. i attempted to accompany them, and proceeded a short distance from the house; but my head whirled round, my steps were like those of a drunken man, i fell at last in a state of utter exhaustion; a film covered my eyes, and my skin was parched with the heat of fever. in this state i was carried back and placed on a bed, hardly conscious of what had happened; my eyes wandered round the room as if to seek something that i had lost. after an interval i arose and, as if by instinct, crawled into the room where the corpse of my beloved lay. there were women weeping aroundi hung over it, and joined my sad tears to theirsall this time no distinct idea presented itself to my mind; but my thoughts rambled to various subjects, reflecting confusedly on my misfortunes and their cause. i was bewildered in a cloud of wonder and horror. the death of william, the execution of justine, the murder of clerval, and lastly of my wife; even at that moment i knew not that my only remaining friends were safe from the malignity of the fiend; my father even now might be writhing under his grasp, and ernest might be dead at his feet. this idea made me shudder and recalled me to action. i started up and resolved to return to geneva with all possible speed. there were no horses to be procured, and i must return by the lake; but the wind was unfavourable and the rain fell in torrents. however, it was hardly morning, and i might reasonably hope to arrive by night. i hired men to row, and took an oar myself; for i had always experienced relief from mental torment in bodily exercise. but the overflowing misery i now felt, and the excess of agitation that i endured, rendered me incapable of any exertion. i threw down the oar, and leaning my head upon my hands gave way to every gloomy idea that arose. if i looked up, i saw the scenes which were familiar to me in my happier time, and which i had contemplated but the day before in the company of her who was now but a shadow and a recollection. tears streamed from my eyes. the rain had ceased for a moment, and i saw the fish play in the waters as they had done a few hours before; they had then been observed by elizabeth. nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. the sun might shine or the clouds might lower: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before. a fiend had snatched from me to me as it every hope of future happiness: no creature had ever been so miserable as i was; so frightful an event is single in the history of man. but why should i dwell upon the incidents that followed this last overwhelming event? mine has been a tale of horrors; i have reached their acme, and what i must now relate can but be tedious to you. know that, one by one, my friends were snatched away; i was left desolate. my own strength is exhausted; and i must tell, in a few words, what remains of my hideous narration. i arrived at geneva. my father and ernest yet lived; but the former sunk under the tidings that i bore. i see him now, excellent and venerable old man! his eyes wandered in vacancy, for they had lost their charm and their delighthis elizabeth, his more than daughter, whom he doated on with all that affection which a man feels, who in the decline of life, having few affections, clings more earnestly to those that remain. cursed, cursed be the fiend that brought misery on his grey hairs, and doomed him to waste in wretchedness! he could not live under the horrors that were accumulated around him; the springs of existence suddenly gave way: he was unable to rise from his bed, and in a few days he died in my arms. what then became of me? i know not; i lost sensation, and chains and darkness were the only objects that pressed upon me. sometimes, indeed, i dreamt that i wandered in flowery meadows and pleasant vales with the friends of my youth; but i awoke, and. found myself in a dungeon. melancholy followed, but by degrees i gained a clear conception of my miseries and situation, and was then released from my prison. for they had called me mad; and during many months, as i understood, a solitary cell had been my habitation. liberty, however, had been an useless gift to me had i not, as i awakened to reason, at the same time awakened to revenge. as the memory of past misfortunes pressed upon me, i began to reflect on their causethe monster whom i had created, the miserable daemon whom i had sent abroad into the world for my destruction. i was possessed by a maddening rage when i thought of him, and desired and ardently prayed that i might have him within my grasp to wreak a great and signal revenge on his cursed head. nor did my hate long confine itself to useless wishes; i began to reflect on the best means of securing him; and for this purpose, about a month after my release, i repaired to a criminal judge in the town, and told him that i had an accusation to make; and that i knew the destroyer of my family; and that i required him to exert his whole authority for the apprehension of the murderer. the magistrate listened to me with attention and kindness. "be assured, sir," said he "no pains or exertions on my part shall be spared to discover the villain." "i thank you," replied i; "listen, therefore, to the deposition that i have to make. it is indeed a tale so strange that i should fear you would not credit it were there not something in truth which, however wonderful, forces conviction. the story is too connected to be mistaken for a dream, and i have no motive for falsehood." my manner as i thus addressed him, was impressive but calm; i had formed in my heart a resolution to pursue my destroyer to death; and this purpose quieted my agony, and for an interval reconciled me to life. i now related my history, briefly, but with firmness and precision, marking the dates with accuracy, and never deviating into or exclamation. the magistrate appeared at first perfectly incredulous, but as i continued he became more attentive and interested; i saw him sometimes shudder with horror, at others a lively surprise, unmingled with disbelief, was painted on his countenance. when i had concluded my narration, i said, "this is the being whom i accuse, and for whose seizure and punishment i call upon you to exert your whole power. it is your duty as a magistrate, and i believe and hope that your feelings as a man will not revolt from the execution of those functions on this occasion." this address caused a considerable change in the physiognomy of my own auditor. he had heard my story with that half kind of belief that is given to a tale of spirits and supernatural events; but when he was called upon to act officially in consequence, the whole tide of his incredulity returned. he, however, answered mildly, "i would willingly afford you every aid in your pursuit; but the creature of whom you speak appears to have powers which would put all my exertions to defiance. who can follow an animal which can traverse the sea of ice, and inhabit caves and dens where no man would venture to intrude? besides, some months have elapsed since the commission of his crimes, and no one can conjecture to what place he has wandered, or what region he may now inhabit." "i do not doubt that he hovers near the spot which i inhabit; and if he has indeed taken refuge in the alps, he may be hunted like the chamois, and destroyed as a beast of prey. but i perceive your thoughts: you do not credit my narrative, and do not intend to pursue my enemy with the punishment which is his desert." as i spoke, rage sparkled in my eyes; the magistrate was intimidated:"you are mistaken," said he, "i will exert myself, if it is in my power to seize the monster, be assured that he shall suffer punishment proportionate to his crimes. but i fear, from what you have yourself described to be his properties, that this will prove impracticable; and thus, while every proper measure is pursued, you should make up your mind to disappointment." "that cannot be; but all that i can say will be of little avail. my revenge is of no moment to you; yet, while i allow it to be a vice, i confess that it is the devouring and only passion of my soul. my rage is unspeakable when i reflect that the murderer, whom i have turned loose upon society, still exists. you refuse my just demand: i have but one resource; and i devote myself, either in my life or death, to his destruction." i trembled with excess of agitation as i said this; there was a frenzy in my manner and something, i doubt not, of that haughty fierceness which the martyrs of old are said to have possessed. but to a genevan magistrate, whose mind was occupied by far other ideas than those of devotion and heroism, this elevation of mind had much the appearance of madness. he endeavoured to soothe me as a nurse does a child, and reverted to my tale as the effects of delirium. "man," i cried, "how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! cease; you know not what it is you say." i broke from the house angry and disturbed, and retired to meditate on some other mode of action. chapter xxiv my present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was swallowed up and lost. i was hurried away by fury; revenge alone endowed me with strength and composure; it moulded my feelings, and allowed me to be calculating and calm, at periods when otherwise delirium or death would have been my portion. my first resolution was to quit geneva forever; my country, which, when i was happy and beloved, was dear to me, now, in my adversity, became hateful. i provided myself with a sum of money, together with a few jewels which had belonged to my mother, and departed. and now my wanderings began, which are to cease but with life. i have traversed a vast portion of the earth, and have endured all the hardships which travellers, in deserts and barbarous countries, are wont to meet. how i have lived i hardly know; many times have i stretched my failing limbs upon the sandy plain and prayed for death. but revenge kept me alive; i dared not die and leave my adversary in being. when i quitted geneva my first labour was to gain some clue by which i might trace the steps of my fiendish enemy. but my plan was unsettled; and i wandered many hours round the confines of the town, uncertain what path i should pursue. as night approached, i found myself at the entrance of the cemetery where william, elizabeth, and my father reposed. i entered it and approached the tomb which marked their graves. everything was silent, except the leaves of the trees, which were gently agitated by the wind; the night was nearly dark; and the scene would have been solemn and affecting even to an uninterested observer. the spirits of the departed seemed to flit around and to cast a shadow, which was felt but not seen, around the head of the mourner. the deep grief which this scene had at first excited quickly gave way to rage and despair. they were dead, and i lived; their murderer also lived, and to destroy him i must drag out my weary existence. i knelt on the grass and kissed the earth, and with quivering lips exclaimed, "by the sacred earth on which i kneel, by the shades that claimed, i wander near me, by the deep and eternal grief that i feel, i swear; and by thee, o night, and the spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the daemon who caused this misery until he or i shall perish in mortal conflict. for this purpose i will preserve my life: to execute this dear revenge will i again behold the sun and tread the green herbage of earth, which otherwise should vanish from my eyes forever. and i call on you, spirits of the dead; and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. let the cursed and hellish monster drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me." i had begun my abjuration with solemnity and an awe which almost assured me that the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my devotion; but the furies possessed me as i concluded, and rage choked my utterance. i was answered through the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish laugh. it rung on my ears long and heavily; the mountains re-echoed it, and i felt as if all hell surrounded me with mockery and laughter. surely in that moment i should have been possessed by frenzy, and have destroyed my miserable existence, but that my vow was heard and that i was reserved for vengeance. the laughter died away; when a well-known and abhorred voice, apparently close to my ear, addressed me in an audible whisper"i am satisfied: miserable wretch! you have determined to live, and i am satisfied." i darted towards the spot from which the sound proceeded; but the devil eluded my grasp. suddenly the broad disk of the moon arose and shone full upon his ghastly and distorted shape as he fled with more than mortal speed. i pursued him; and for many months this has been my task. guided by a slight clue i followed the windings of the rhone, but vainly. the blue mediterranean appeared; and, by a strange chance, i saw the fiend enter by night and hide himself in a vessel bound for the black sea. i took my passage in the same ship; but he escaped, i know not how. amidst the wilds of tartary and russia, although he still evaded me, i have ever followed in his track. sometimes the peasants, scared by this horrid apparition, informed me of his path; sometimes he himself, who feared that if i lost all trace of him i should despair and die, left some mark to guide me. the snows descended on my head, and i saw the print of his huge step on the white plain. to you first entering on life, to whom care is new and agony unknown, how can you understand what i have felt and still feel? cold, want, and fatigue were the least pains which i was destined to endure; i was cursed by some devil, and carried about with me my eternal hell; yet still a spirit of good followed and directed my steps; and, when i most murmured, would suddenly extricate me from seemingly insurmountable difficulties. sometimes, when nature, overcome by hunger, sunk under the exhaustion, a repast was prepared for me in the desert that restored and inspirited me. the fare was, indeed, coarse, such as the peasants of the country ate; but i will not doubt that it was set there by the spirits that i had invoked to aid me. often, when all was dry, the heavens cloudless, and i was parched by thirst, a slight cloud would bedim the sky, shed the few drops that revived me, and vanish. i followed, when i could, the courses of the rivers; but the daemon generally avoided these, as it was here that the population of the country chiefly collected. in other places human beings were seldom seen; and i generally subsisted on the wild animals that crossed my path. i had money with me, and gained the friendship of the villagers by distributing it; or i brought with me some food that i had killed, which, after taking a small part, i always presented to those who had provided me with fire and utensils for cooking. my life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to me, and it was during sleep alone that i could taste joy. o blessed sleep! often, when most miserable, i sank to repose, and my dreams lulled me even to rapture. the spirits that guarded me had provided these moments, or rather hours, of happiness, that i might retain strength to fulfill my pilgrimage. deprived of this respite, i should have sunk under my hardships. during the day i was sustained and inspirited by the hope of night: for in sleep i saw my friends, my wife, and my beloved country; again i saw the benevolent countenance of my father, heard the silver tones of my elizabeth's voice, and beheld clerval enjoying health and youth. often, when wearied by a toilsome march, i persuaded myself that i was dreaming, until night should come, and that i should then enjoy reality in the arms of my dearest friends. what agonising fondness did i feel for them! how did i cling to their dear forms, as sometimes they haunted even my waking hours, and persuade myself that they still lived! at such moments vengeance, that burned within me, died in my heart, and i pursued my path towards the destruction of the daemon more as a task enjoined by heaven, as the mechanical impulse of some power of which i was unconscious, than as the ardent desire of my soul. what his feelings were whom i pursued i cannot know. sometimes, indeed, he left marks in writing on the barks of the trees, or cut in stone, that guided me and instigated my fury. "my reign is not yet over" (these words were legible in one of these inscriptions); "you live, and my power is complete. follow me; i seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost to which i am impassive. you will find near this place, if you follow not too tardily, a dead hare; eat and be refreshed. come on, enemy; we have yet to wrestle for our lives; but many hard and miserable hours must you endure until that period shall arrive." scoffing devil! again do i vow vengeance; again do i devote thee, miserable fiend, to torture and death. never will i give up my search until he or i perish; and then with what ecstasy shall i join my elizabeth and my departed friends, who even now prepare for me the reward of my tedious toil and horrible pilgrimage! as i still pursued my journey to the northward, the snows thickened and the cold increased in a degree almost too severe to support. the peasants were shut up in their hovels, and only a few of the most hardy ventured forth to seize the animals whom starvation had forced from their hiding-places to seek for prey. the rivers were covered with ice and no fish could be procured; and thus i was cut off from my chief article of maintenance. the triumph of my enemy increased with the difficulty of my labours. one inscription that he left was in these words:"prepare! your toils only begin: wrap yourself in furs and provide food; for we shall soon enter upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred." my courage and perseverance were invigorated by these scoffing words; i resolved not to fail in my purpose; and, calling on heaven to support me, i continued with unabated fervour to traverse immense deserts until the ocean appeared at a distance and formed the utmost boundary of the horizon. oh! how unlike it was to the blue seas of the south! covered with ice, it was only to be distinguished from land by its superior wildness and ruggedness. the greeks wept for joy when they beheld the mediterranean from the hills of asia, and hailed with rapture the boundary of their toils. i did not weep; but i knelt down and, with a full heart, thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in safety to the place where i hoped, notwithstanding my adversary's gibe, to meet and grapple with him. some weeks before this period i had procured a sledge and dogs, and thus traversed the snows with inconceivable speed. i know not whether the fiend possessed the same advantages; but i found that, as before i had daily lost ground in the pursuit, i now gained on him: so much so that, when i first saw the ocean, he was but one day's journey in advance, and i hoped to intercept him before he should reach the beach. with new courage, therefore, i pressed on, and in two days arrived at a wretched hamlet on the sea-shore. i inquired of the inhabitants concerning the fiend, and gained accurate information. a gigantic monster, they said, had arrived the night armed with a gun and many pistols, putting to flight the inhabitants of a solitary cottage through fear of his terrific appearance. he had carried off their store of winter food, and placing it in a sledge, to draw which he had seized on a numerous drove of trained dogs, he had harnessed them, and the same night, to the joy of the horror-struck villagers, had pursued his journey across the sea in a direction that led to no land; and they conjectured that he must speedily be destroyed by the breaking of the ice or frozen by the eternal frosts. on hearing this information, i suffered a temporary access of despair. he had escaped me; and i must commence a destructive and almost endless journey across the mountainous ices of the oceanamidst cold that few of the inhabitants could long endure, and which i, the native of a genial and sunny climate, could not hope to survive. yet at the idea that the fiend should live and be triumphant, my rage and vengeance returned, and, like a mighty tide, overwhelmed every other feeling. after a slight repose, during which the spirits of the dead hovered round and instigated me to toil and revenge, i prepared for my journey. i exchanged my land-sledge for one fashioned for the inequalities of the frozen ocean; and purchasing a plentiful stock of provisions, i departed from land. i cannot guess how many days have passed since then; but i have endured misery which nothing but the eternal sentiment of a just retribution burning within my heart could have enabled me to support. immense and rugged mountains of ice often barred up my passage, and i often heard the thunder of the ground sea which threatened my destruction. but again the frost came and made the paths of the sea secure. by the quantity of provision which i had consumed, i should guess that i had passed three weeks in this journey; and the continual protraction of hope, returning back upon the heart, often wrung bitter drops of despondency and grief from my eyes. despair had indeed almost secured her prey, and i should soon have sunk beneath this misery. once, after the poor animals that conveyed me had with incredible toil gained the summit of a sloping ice-mountain, and one, sinking under his fatigue, died, i viewed the expanse before me with anguish, when suddenly my eye caught a dark speck upon the dusky plain. i strained my sight to discover what it could be, and uttered a wild cry of ecstasy when i distinguished a sledge and the distorted proportions of a well-known form within. oh! with what a burning gush did hope revisit my heart! warm tears filled my eyes, which i hastily wiped away that they might not intercept the view i had of the daemon; but still my sight was dimmed by the burning drops until, giving way to the emotions that oppressed me, i wept aloud. but this was not the time for delay: i disencumbered the dogs of their dead companion, gave them a plentiful portion of food; and, after an hour's rest, which was absolutely necessary, and yet which was bitterly irksome to me, i continued my route. the sledge was still visible; nor did i again lose sight of it except at the moments when for a short time some ice-rock concealed it with its intervening crags. i indeed perceptibly gained on it; and when, after nearly two days' journey, i beheld my enemy at no more than a mile distant, my heart bounded within me. but now, when i appeared almost within grasp of my foe, my, hopes were suddenly extinguished, and i lost all trace of him more utterly than i had ever done before. a ground sea was heard; the thunder of its progress, as the waters rolled and swelled beneath me, became every moment more ominous and terrific. i pressed on, but in vain. the wind arose; the sea roared; and, as with the mighty shock of an earthquake, it split and cracked with a tremendous and overwhelming sound. the work was soon finished: in a few minutes a tumultuous sea rolled between me and my enemy, and i was left drifting on a scattered piece of ice, that was continually lessening, and thus preparing for me a hideous death. in this manner many appalling hours passed; several of my dogs died; and i myself was about to sink under the accumulation of distress when i saw your vessel riding at anchor, and holding forth to me hopes of succour and life. i had no conception that vessels ever came so far north, and was astonished at the sight. i quickly destroyed part of my sledge to construct oars; and by these means was enabled, with infinite fatigue, to move my ice-raft in the direction of your ship. i had determined, if you were going southward, still to trust myself to the mercy of the seas rather than abandon my purpose. i hoped to induce you to grant me a boat with which i could pursue my enemy. but your direction was northward. you took me on board when my vigour was exhausted, and i should soon have sunk under my multiplied hardships into a death which i still dreadfor my task is unfulfilled. oh! when will my guiding spirit, in conducting me to the daemon, allow me the rest i so much desire; or must i die and he yet live? if i do, swear to me, walton, that he shall not escape; that you will seek him and satisfy my vengeance in his death. and do i dare to ask of you to undertake my pilgrimage, to endure the hardships that i have undergone? no; i am not so selfish. yet, when i am dead, if he should appear; if the ministers of vengeance should conduct him to you, swear that he shall not liveswear that he shall not triumph over my accumulated woes, and survive to add to the list of his dark crimes. he is eloquent and persuasive; and once his words had even power over my heart: but trust him not. his soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiendish malice. hear him not; call on the names of william, justine, clerval, elizabeth, my father, and of the wretched victor, and thrust your sword into his heart. i will hover near and direct the steel aright. you have read this strange and terrific story, margaret; and do you not feel your blood congeal with horror like that which even now curdles mine? sometimes, seized with sudden agony, he could not continue his tale; at others, his voice broken, yet piercing, uttered with difficulty the words so replete with anguish. his fine and lovely eyes were now lighted up with indignation, now subdued to downcast sorrow, and quenched in infinite wretchedness. sometimes he commanded his countenance and tones, and related the most horrible incidents with a tranquil voice, suppressing every mark of agitation; then, like a volcano bursting forth, his face would suddenly change to an expression of the wildest rage, as he shrieked out imprecations on his persecutor. his tale is connected, and told with an appearance of the simplest truth; yet i own to you that the letters of felix and safie, which he showed me, and the apparition of the monster seen from our ship, brought to me a greater conviction of the truth of his narrative than his asseverations, however earnest and connected. such a monster has then really existence! i cannot doubt it; yet i am lost in surprise and admiration. sometimes i endeavoured to gain from frankenstein the particulars of his creature's formation: but on this point he was impenetrable. "are you mad, my friend?" said he; "or whither does your senseless curiosity lead you? would you also create for yourself and the world a daemoniacal enemy? peace, peace! learn my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own." frankenstein discovered that i made notes concerning his history: he asked to see them, and then himself corrected and augmented them in many places; but principally in giving the life and spirit to the conversations he held with his enemy. "since you have preserved my narration," said he, "i would not that a mutilated one should go down to posterity." thus has a week passed away, while i have listened to the strangest tale that ever imagination formed. my thoughts, and every feeling of my soul, have been drunk up by the interest for my guest, which this tale, and his own elevated and gentle manners, have created. i wish to soothe him; yet can i counsel one so infinitely miserable, so destitute of every hope of consolation, to live? oh, no! the only joy that he can now know will be when he composes his shattered spirit to peace and death. yet he enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium: he believes that, when in dreams he holds converse with his friends and derives from that communion consolation for his miseries or excitements to his vengeance, they are not the creations of his fancy, but the beings themselves who visit him from the regions of a remote world. this faith gives a solemnity to his reveries that render them to me almost as imposing and interesting as truth. our conversations are not always confined to his own history and misfortunes. on every point of general literature he displays unbounded knowledge and a quick and piercing apprehension. his eloquence is forcible and touching; nor can i heir him, when he relates a pathetic incident, or endeavours to move the passions of pity or love, without tears. what a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin! he seems to feel his own worth and the greatness of his fall. "when younger," said he, "i believed myself destined for some great enterprise. my feelings are profound; but i possessed a coolness of judgment that fitted me for illustrious achievements. this sentiment of the worth of my nature supported me when others would have been oppressed; for i deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow-creatures. when i reflected on the work i had completed, no less a one than the creation of a sensitive and rational animal, could not rank myself with the herd of common projectors. but this thought, which supported me in the commencement of my career, now serves only to plunge me lower in the dust. all my speculations and hopes are as nothing; and, like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, i am chained in an eternal hell. my imagination was vivid, yet my powers of analysis and application were intense; by the union of these qualities i conceived the idea and executed the creation of a man. even now i cannot recollect without passion my reveries while the work was incomplete. i trod heaven in my thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects. from my infancy i was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition; but how am i sunk! oh! my friend, if you had known me as i once was you would not recognise me in this state of degradation. despondency rarely visited my heart; a high destiny seemed to bear me on until i fell, never, never again to rise." must i then lose this admirable being? i have longed for a friend; i have sought one who would sympathise with and love me. behold, on these desert seas i have found such a one; but i fear i have gained him only to know his value and lose him. i would reconcile him to life, but he repulses the idea. "i thank you, walton, "he said, "for your kind intentions towards so miserable a wretch; but when you speak of new ties and fresh affections, think you that any can replace those who are gone? can any man be to me as clerval was; or any woman another elizabeth? even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. they know our infantile dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives. a sister or a brother can never, unless indeed such symptoms have been shown early, suspect the other of fraud or false dealing, when another friend, however strongly he may be attached, may, in spite of himself, be contemplated with suspicion. but i enjoyed friends, dear not only through habit and association, but from their own merits; and wherever i am the soothing voice of my elizabeth and the conversation of clerval will be ever whispered in my ear. they are dead, and but one feeling in such a solitude can persuade me to preserve my life. if i were engaged in any high undertaking or design, fraught with extensive utility to my fellow-creatures, then could i live to fulfill it. but such is not my destiny; i must pursue and destroy the being to whom i gave existence; then my lot on earth will be fulfilled and i may die." september 2nd. my beloved sister,i write to you encompassed by peril and ignorant whether i am ever doomed to see again dear england, and the dearer friends that inhabit it. i am surrounded by mountains of ice which admit of no escape and threaten every moment to crush my vessel. the brave fellows whom i have persuaded to be my companions look towards me for aid; but i have none to bestow. there is something terribly appalling in our situation, yet my courage and hopes do not desert me. yet it is terrible to reflect that the lives of all these men are endangered through me. if we are lost, my mad schemes are the cause. and what, margaret, will be the state of your mind? you will not hear of my destruction, and you will anxiously await my return. years will pass, and you will have visitings of despair, and yet be tortured by hope. oh! my beloved sister, the sickening failing of your heartfelt expectations is, in prospect, more terrible to me than my own death. but you have a husband and lovely children; you may be happy: heaven bless you and make you so! my unfortunate guest regards me with the tenderest compassion. he endeavours to fill me with hope; and talks as if life were a possession which he valued. he reminds me how often the same accidents have happened to other navigators who have attempted this sea, and, in spite of myself, he fills me with cheerful auguries. even the sailors feel the power of his eloquence: when he speaks they no longer despair; he rouses their energies and, while they hear his voice, they believe these vast mountains of ice are mole-hills which will vanish before the resolutions of man. these feelings are transitory; each day of expectation delayed fills them with fear, and i almost dread a mutiny caused by this despair. september 5th. a scene has just passed of such uncommon interest that although it is highly probable that these papers may never reach you, yet i cannot forbear recording it. we are still surrounded by mountains of ice, still in imminent danger of being crushed in their conflict. the cold is excessive, and many of my unfortunate comrades have already found a grave amidst this scene of desolation. frankenstein has daily declined in health: a feverish fire still glimmers in his eyes; but he is exhausted, and when suddenly roused to any exertion he speedily sinks again into apparent lifelessness. i mentioned in my last letter the fears i entertained of a mutiny. this morning, as i sat watching the wan countenance of my friendhis eyes half closed, and his limbs hanging listlesslyi was roused by half a dozen of the sailors who demanded admission into the cabin. they entered, and their leader addressed me. he told me that he and his companions had been chosen by the other sailors to come in deputation to me, to make me a requisition which, in justice, i could not refuse. we were immured in ice and should probably never escape; but they feared that if, as was possible, the ice should dissipate, and a free passage be opened, i should be rash enough to continue my voyage and lead them into fresh dangers after they might happily have surmounted this. they insisted, therefore, that i should engage with a solemn promise that if the vessel should be freed i would instantly direct my course southward. this speech troubled me. i had not despaired; nor had i yet conceived the idea of returning if set free. yet could i, in justice, or even in possibility, refuse this demand? i hesitated before i answered; when frankenstein, who had at first been silent, and, indeed, appeared hardly to have force enough to attend, now roused himself; his eyes sparkled, and his cheeks flushed with momentary vigour. turning towards the men he said "what do you mean? what do you demand of your captain? are you then so easily turned from your design? did you not call this a glorious expedition? and wherefore was it glorious? not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror; because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth and your courage exhibited; because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were to brave and overcome. for this was it a glorious, for this was it an honourable undertaking. you were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species; your names adored as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honour and the benefit of mankind. and now, behold, with the first imagination of danger, or, if you will, the first mighty and terrific trial of your courage, you shrink away, and are content to be handed down as men who had not strength enough to endure cold and peril; and so, poor souls, they were chilly and returned to their warm firesides. why that requires not this preparation; ye need not have come thus far, and dragged your captain to the shame of a defeat, merely to prove yourselves cowards. oh! be men, or be more than men. be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. this ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe." he spoke this with a voice so modulated to the different feelings expressed in his speech, with an eye so full of lofty design and heroism, that can you wonder that these men were moved? they looked at one another and were unable to reply. i spoke; i told them to retire and consider of what had been said: that i would not lead them farther north if they strenuously desired the contrary; but that i hoped that, with reflection, their courage would return. they retired, and i turned towards my friend; but he was sunk in languor and almost deprived of life. how all this will terminate i know not; but i had rather die than return shamefullymy purpose unfulfilled. yet i fear such will be my fate; the men, unsupported by ideas of glory and honour, can never willingly continue to endure their present hardships. september 7th. the die is cast; i have consented to return if we are not destroyed. thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; i come back ignorant and disappointed. it requires more philosophy than i possess to bear this injustice with patience. september 12th. it is past; i am returning to england. i have lost my hopes of utility and glory;i have lost my friend. but i will endeavour to detail these bitter circumstances to you, my dear sister; and while i am wafted towards england, and towards you, i will not despond. september 9th, the ice began to move, and roarings like thunder were heard at a distance as the islands split and cracked in every direction. we were in the most imminent peril; but, as we could only remain passive, my chief attention was occupied by unfortunate quest, whose illness increased in such a degree that he was entirely confined to his bed. the ice cracked behind us, and was driven with force towards the north; a breeze sprung from the west, and on the 11th the passage towards the south became perfectly free. when the sailors saw this, and that their return to their native country was apparently assured, a shout of tumultuous joy broke from them, loud and long continued. frankenstein, who was dozing, awoke and asked the cause of the tumult. "they shout," i said, "because they will soon return to england." "do you then really return?" "alas! yes; i cannot withstand their demands. i cannot lead them unwillingly to danger, and i must return." "do so, if you will; but i will not. you may give up your purpose, but mine is assigned to me by heaven, and i dare not. i am weak; but surely the spirits who assist my vengeance will endow me with sufficient strength." saying this, he endeavoured to spring from the bed, but the exertion was too great for him; he fell back and fainted. it was long before he was restored; and i often thought that life was entirely extinct. at length he opened his eyes; he breathed with difficulty, and was unable to speak. the surgeon gave him a composing draught and ordered us to leave him undisturbed. in the meantime he told me that my friend had not many hours to live. his sentence was pronounced, and i could only grieve and be patient. i sat by his bed watching him; his eyes were closed, and i thought he slept; but presently he called to me in a feeble voice, and bidding me come near, said"alas! the strength i relied on is gone; i feel that i shall soon die, and he, my enemy and persecutor, may still be in being. think not, walten, that in the last moments of my existence i feel that burning hatred: and ardent desire of revenge i once expressed; but i feel myself justified in desiring the death of my adversary. during these last days i have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do i find it blamable. in a fit of enthusiastic madness i created a rational creature, and was bound towards him, to assure, as far as was in my power, his happiness and well-being. this was my duty; but there was another still paramount to that. my duties towards the beings of my own species had greater claims to my attention, because they included a greater proportion of happiness or misery. urged by this view, i refused, and i did right in refusing, to create a companion for the first creature. he showed unparalleled malignity and selfishness, in evil: he destroyed my friends; he devoted to destruction beings who possessed exquisite sensations, happiness, and wisdom; nor do i know where this thirst for vengeance may end. miserable himself, that he may render no other wretched he ought to die. the task of his destruction was mine, but i have failed. when actuated by selfish and vicious motives i asked you to undertake my unfinished work; and i renew this request now when i am only induced by reason and virtue. "yet i cannot ask you to renounce your country and friends to fulfill this task; and now that you are returning to england you will have little chance of meeting with him. but the consideration of these points, and the well balancing of what you may esteem your duties, i leave to you; my judgment and ideas are already disturbed by the near approach of death. i dare not ask you to do what i think right, for i may still be misled by passion. "that he should live to be an instrument of mischief disturbs me; in other respects, this hour, when i momentarily expect my release, is the only happy one which i have enjoyed for several years. the forms of the beloved dead flit before me and i hasten to their arms. farewell, walton! seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. yet why do i say this? i have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed." his voice became fainter as he spoke; and at length, exhausted by his effort, he sunk into silence. about half an hour afterwards he attempted again to speak, but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and his eyes closed forever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed away from his lips. margaret, what comment can i make on the untimely extinction of this glorious spirit? what can i say that will enable you to understand the depth of my sorrow? all that i should express would be inadequate and feeble. my tears flow; my mind is overshadowed by a cloud of disappointment. but i journey towards england, and i may there find consolation. i am interrupted. what do these sounds portend? it is midnight; the breeze blows fairly, and the watch on deck scarcely stir. again; there is a sound as of a human voice, but hoarser; it comes from the cabin where the remains of frankenstein still lie. i must arise and examine. good night, my sister. great god! what a scene has just taken place! i am yet dizzy with the remembrance of it. i hardly know whether i shall have the power to detail it; yet the tale which i have recorded would be incomplete without this final and wonderful catastrophe. i entered the cabin where lay the remains of my ill-fated and admirable friend. over him hung a form which i cannot find words to describe; gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions. as he hung over the coffin his face was concealed by long locks of ragged hair; but one vast hand was extended, in colour and apparent texture like that of a mummy. when he heard the sound of my approach he ceased to utter exclamations of grief and horror and sprung towards the window. never did i behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome yet appalling hideousness. i shut my eyes involuntarily and endeavoured to recollect what were my duties with regard to this destroyer. i called on him to stay. he paused, looking on me with wonder; and, again turning towards the lifeless form of his creator, he seemed to forget my presence, and every feature and gesture seemed instigated by the wildest rage of some uncontrollable passion. "that is also my victim!" he exclaimed: "in his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! oh, frankenstein! generous and self-devoted being! what does it avail that i now ask thee to pardon me? i, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovest. alas! he is cold, he cannot answer me." his voice seemed suffocated; and my first impulses, which had suggested to me the duty of obeying the dying request of my friend, in destroying his enemy, were now suspended by a mixture of curiosity and compassion. i approached this tremendous being; i dared not again raise my eyes to his face, there was something so scaring and unearthly in his ugliness. i attempted to speak, but the words died away on my lips. the monster continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. at length i gathered resolution to address him in a pause of the tempest of his passion: "your repentance," i said, "is now superfluous. if you had listened to the voice of conscience, and heeded the stings of remorse, before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, frankenstein would yet have lived." "and do you dream?" said the daemon; "do you think that i was then dead to agony and remorse?he," he continued, pointing to the corpse, "he suffered not in the consummation of the deedoh! not the ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the lingering detail of its execution. a frightful selfishness hurried me on, while my heart was poisoned with remorse. think you that the groans of clerval were music to my ears? my heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine. "after the murder of clerval i returned to switzerland heartbroken and overcome. i pitied frankenstein; my pity amounted to horror: i abhorred myself but when i discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness; that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me he sought his own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the indulgence of which i was forever barred, then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance. i recollected my threat and resolved that it should be accomplished. i knew that i was preparing for myself a deadly torture; but i was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which i detested, yet could not disobey. yet when she died!nay, then i was not miserable. i had cast off all feeling, subdued all anguish, to riot in the excess of my despair. evil thenceforth became my good. urged thus far, i had no choice but to adapt my nature to an element which i had willingly chosen. the completion of my daemoniacal design became an insatiable passion. and now it is ended; there is my last victim!" i was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet, when i called to mind what frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and persuasion, and when i again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my friend, indignation was rekindled within me. "wretch!" i said, "it is well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you have made. you throw a torch into a pile of buildings; and when they are consumed you sit among the ruins and lament the fall. hypocritical fiend! if he whom you mourn still lived, still would he be the object, again would he become the prey, of your accursed vengeance. it is not pity that you feel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity is withdrawn from your power." "oh, it not thusnot thus," interrupted the being; "yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my actions. yet i seek not a fellow-feeling in my misery. no sympathy may i ever find. when i first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that i wished to be participated. but now that virtue has become to me a shadow and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should i seek for sympathy? i am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure: when i die, i am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. once i falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which i was capable of unfolding. i was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. but now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. no guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. when i run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, i cannot believe that i am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. but it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. yet even that enemy of god and man had friends and associates in his desolation; i am alone. "you, who call frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes. but in the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which i endured, wasting in impotent passions. for while i destroyed his hopes, i did not satisfy my own desires. they were for ever ardent and craving; still i desired love and fellowship, and i was still spurned. was there no injustice in this? am i to be thought the only criminal when all human kind sinned against me? why do you not hate felix who drove his friend from his door with contumely? why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the saviour of his child? nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings! i, the miserable and abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned, and kicked at, and trampled on. even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice. "but it is true that i am a wretch. i have murdered the lovely and the helpless; i have strangled the innocent as they slept, and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. i have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; i have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin. there he lies, white and cold in death. you hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which i regard myself i look on the hands which executed the deed; think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived, and long for the moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more. "fear not that i shall be the instrument of future mischief. my work is nearly complete. neither yours nor any man's death is needed to consummate the series of my being, and accomplish that which must be done; but it requires my own. do not think that i shall be slow to perform this sacrifice. i shall quit your vessel on the ice-raft which brought me thither, and shall seek the most northern extremity of the globe; i shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such another as i have been. i shall die. i shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me, or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. he is dead who called me into being; and when i shall be no more the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. i shall no longer see the sun or stars, or feel the winds play on my cheeks. light, feeling, and sense will pass away; and in this condition must i find my happiness. some years ago, when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when i felt the cheering warmth of summer, and heard the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, i should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. polluted by crimes, and tom by the bitterest remorse, where can i find rest but in death? "farewell! i leave you, and in you the last of human kind whom these eyes will ever behold. farewell, frankenstein! if thou wert yet alive, and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better satiated in my life than in my destruction. but it was not so; thou didst seek my extinction that i might not cause greater wretchedness; and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hast not ceased to think and feel, thou wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than that which i feel. blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine; for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them for ever. "but soon," he cried, with sad and solemn enthusiasm, "i shall die, and what i now feel be no longer felt. soon these burning miseries will be extinct. i shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. the light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. my spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. farewell." he sprung from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft which lay close to the vessel. he was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance. the end . [pg/etext94/tramp10.txt] a tramp abroad, by mark twain [pseudonym of samuel clemems] march, 1994 [etext #119] this text is in the public domain. a tramp abroad by mark twain (samuel l. clemens) first published in 1880 * * * * * * chapter i [the knighted knave of bergen] one day it occurred to me that it had been many years since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man adventurous enough to undertake a journey through europe on foot. after much thought, i decided that i was a person fitted to furnish to mankind this spectacle. so i determined to do it. this was in march, 1878. i looked about me for the right sort of person to accompany me in the capacity of agent, and finally hired a mr. harris for this service. it was also my purpose to study art while in europe. mr. harris was in sympathy with me in this. he was as much of an enthusiast in art as i was, and not less anxious to learn to paint. i desired to learn the german language; so did harris. toward the middle of april we sailed in the holsatia, captain brandt, and had a very peasant trip, indeed. after a brief rest at hamburg, we made preparations for a long pedestrian trip southward in the soft spring weather, but at the last moment we changed the program, for private reasons, and took the express-train. we made a short halt at frankfort-on-the-main, and found it an interesting city. i would have liked to visit the birthplace of gutenburg, but it could not be done, as no memorandum of the site of the house has been kept. so we spent an hour in the goethe mansion instead. the city permits this house to belong to private parties, instead of gracing and dignifying herself with the honor of possessing and protecting it. frankfort is one of the sixteen cities which have the distinction of being the place where the following incident occurred. charlemagne, while chasing the saxons (as he said), or being chased by them (as they said), arrived at the bank of the river at dawn, in a fog. the enemy were either before him or behind him; but in any case he wanted to get across, very badly. he would have given anything for a guide, but none was to be had. presently he saw a deer, followed by her young, approach the water. he watched her, judging that she would seek a ford, and he was right. she waded over, and the army followed. so a great frankish victory or defeat was gained or avoided; and in order to commemorate the episode, charlemagne commanded a city to be built there, which he named frankfort--the ford of the franks. none of the other cities where this event happened were named for it. this is good evidence that frankfort was the first place it occurred at. frankfort has another distinction--it is the birthplace of the german alphabet; or at least of the german word for alphabet --buchstaben. they say that the first movable types were made on birch sticks--buchstabe--hence the name. i was taught a lesson in political economy in frankfort. i had brought from home a box containing a thousand very cheap cigars. by way of experiment, i stepped into a little shop in a queer old back street, took four gaily decorated boxes of wax matches and three cigars, and laid down a silver piece worth 48 cents. the man gave me 43 cents change. in frankfort everybody wears clean clothes, and i think we noticed that this strange thing was the case in hamburg, too, and in the villages along the road. even in the narrowest and poorest and most ancient quarters of frankfort neat and clean clothes were the rule. the little children of both sexes were nearly always nice enough to take into a body's lap. and as for the uniforms of the soldiers, they were newness and brightness carried to perfection. one could never detect a smirch or a grain of dust upon them. the street-car conductors and drivers wore pretty uniforms which seemed to be just out of the bandbox, and their manners were as fine as their clothes. in one of the shops i had the luck to stumble upon a book which has charmed me nearly to death. it is entitled the legends of the rhine from basle to rotterdam, by f. j. kiefer; translated by l. w. garnham, b.a. all tourists mention the rhine legends--in that sort of way which quietly pretends that the mentioner has been familiar with them all his life, and that the reader cannot possibly be ignorant of them--but no tourist ever tells them. so this little book fed me in a very hungry place; and i, in my turn, intend to feed my reader, with one or two little lunches from the same larder. i shall not mar garnharn's translation by meddling with its english; for the most toothsome thing about it is its quaint fashion of building english sentences on the german plan-and punctuating them accordingly to no plan at all. in the chapter devoted to "legends of frankfort," i find the following: "the knave of bergen" "in frankfort at the romer was a great mask-ball, at the coronation festival, and in the illuminated saloon, the clanging music invited to dance, and splendidly appeared the rich toilets and charms of the ladies, and the festively costumed princes and knights. all seemed pleasure, joy, and roguish gaiety, only one of the numerous guests had a gloomy exterior; but exactly the black armor in which he walked about excited general attention, and his tall figure, as well as the noble propriety of his movements, attracted especially the regards of the ladies. who the knight was? nobody could guess, for his vizier was well closed, and nothing made him recognizable. proud and yet modest he advanced to the empress; bowed on one knee before her seat, and begged for the favor of a waltz with the queen of the festival. and she allowed his request. with light and graceful steps he danced through the long saloon, with the sovereign who thought never to have found a more dexterous and excellent dancer. but also by the grace of his manner, and fine conversation he knew to win the queen, and she graciously accorded him a second dance for which he begged, a third, and a fourth, as well as others were not refused him. how all regarded the happy dancer, how many envied him the high favor; how increased curiosity, who the masked knight could be. "also the emperor became more and more excited with curiosity, and with great suspense one awaited the hour, when according to mask-law, each masked guest must make himself known. this moment came, but although all other unmasked; the secret knight still refused to allow his features to be seen, till at last the queen driven by curiosity, and vexed at the obstinate refusal; commanded him to open his vizier. he opened it, and none of the high ladies and knights knew him. but from the crowded spectators, 2 officials advanced, who recognized the black dancer, and horror and terror spread in the saloon, as they said who the supposed knight was. it was the executioner of bergen. but glowing with rage, the king commanded to seize the criminal and lead him to death, who had ventured to dance, with the queen; so disgraced the empress, and insulted the crown. the culpable threw himself at the emperor, and said-"'indeed i have heavily sinned against all noble guests assembled here, but most heavily against you my sovereign and my queen. the queen is insulted by my haughtiness equal to treason, but no punishment even blood, will not be able to wash out the disgrace, which you have suffered by me. therefore oh king! allow me to propose a remedy, to efface the shame, and to render it as if not done. draw your sword and knight me, then i will throw down my gauntlet, to everyone who dares to speak disrespectfully of my king.' "the emperor was surprised at this bold proposal, however it appeared the wisest to him; 'you are a knave he replied after a moment's consideration, however your advice is good, and displays prudence, as your offense shows adventurous courage. well then, and gave him the knight-stroke so i raise you to nobility, who begged for grace for your offense now kneels before me, rise as knight; knavish you have acted, and knave of bergen shall you be called henceforth, and gladly the black knight rose; three cheers were given in honor of the emperor, and loud cries of joy testified the approbation with which the queen danced still once with the knave of bergen." chapter ii heidelberg [landing a monarch at heidelberg] we stopped at a hotel by the railway-station. next morning, as we sat in my room waiting for breakfast to come up, we got a good deal interested in something which was going on over the way, in front of another hotel. first, the personage who is called the portier (who is not the porter, but is a sort of first-mate of a hotel) [1. see appendix a] appeared at the door in a spick-and-span new blue cloth uniform, decorated with shining brass buttons, and with bands of gold lace around his cap and wristbands; and he wore white gloves, too. he shed an official glance upon the situation, and then began to give orders. two women-servants came out with pails and brooms and brushes, and gave the sidewalk a thorough scrubbing; meanwhile two others scrubbed the four marble steps which led up to the door; beyond these we could see some men-servants taking up the carpet of the grand staircase. this carpet was carried away and the last grain of dust beaten and banged and swept our of it; then brought back and put down again. the brass stair-rods received an exhaustive polishing and were returned to their places. now a troop of servants brought pots and tubs of blooming plants and formed them into a beautiful jungle about the door and the base of the staircase. other servants adorned all the balconies of the various stories with flowers and banners; others ascended to the roof and hoisted a great flag on a staff there. now came some more chamber-maids and retouched the sidewalk, and afterward wiped the marble steps with damp cloths and finished by dusting them off with feather brushes. now a broad black carpet was brought out and laid down the marble steps and out across the sidewalk to the curbstone. the portier cast his eye along it, and found it was not absolutely straight; he commanded it to be straightened; the servants made the effort--made several efforts, in fact--but the portier was not satisfied. he finally had it taken up, and then he put it down himself and got it right. at this stage of the proceedings, a narrow bright red carpet was unrolled and stretched from the top of the marble steps to the curbstone, along the center of the black carpet. this red path cost the portier more trouble than even the black one had done. but he patiently fixed and refixed it until it was exactly right and lay precisely in the middle of the black carpet. in new york these performances would have gathered a mighty crowd of curious and intensely interested spectators; but here it only captured an audience of half a dozen little boys who stood in a row across the pavement, some with their school-knapsacks on their backs and their hands in their pockets, others with arms full of bundles, and all absorbed in the show. occasionally one of them skipped irreverently over the carpet and took up a position on the other side. this always visibly annoyed the portier. now came a waiting interval. the landlord, in plain clothes, and bareheaded, placed himself on the bottom marble step, abreast the portier, who stood on the other end of the same steps; six or eight waiters, gloved, bareheaded, and wearing their whitest linen, their whitest cravats, and their finest swallow-tails, grouped themselves about these chiefs, but leaving the carpetway clear. nobody moved or spoke any more but only waited. in a short time the shrill piping of a coming train was heard, and immediately groups of people began to gather in the street. two or three open carriages arrived, and deposited some maids of honor and some male officials at the hotel. presently another open carriage brought the grand duke of baden, a stately man in uniform, who wore the handsome brass-mounted, steel-spiked helmet of the army on his head. last came the empress of germany and the grand duchess of baden in a closed carriage; these passed through the low-bowing groups of servants and disappeared in the hotel, exhibiting to us only the backs of their heads, and then the show was over. it appears to be as difficult to land a monarch as it is to launch a ship. but as to heidelberg. the weather was growing pretty warm, --very warm, in fact. so we left the valley and took quarters at the schloss hotel, on the hill, above the castle. heidelberg lies at the mouth of a narrow gorge--a gorge the shape of a shepherd's crook; if one looks up it he perceives that it is about straight, for a mile and a half, then makes a sharp curve to the right and disappears. this gorge--along whose bottom pours the swift neckar-is confined between (or cloven through) a couple of long, steep ridges, a thousand feet high and densely wooded clear to their summits, with the exception of one section which has been shaved and put under cultivation. these ridges are chopped off at the mouth of the gorge and form two bold and conspicuous headlands, with heidelberg nestling between them; from their bases spreads away the vast dim expanse of the rhine valley, and into this expanse the neckar goes wandering in shining curves and is presently lost to view. now if one turns and looks up the gorge once more, he will see the schloss hotel on the right perched on a precipice overlooking the neckar--a precipice which is so sumptuously cushioned and draped with foliage that no glimpse of the rock appears. the building seems very airily situated. it has the appearance of being on a shelf half-way up the wooded mountainside; and as it is remote and isolated, and very white, it makes a strong mark against the lofty leafy rampart at its back. this hotel had a feature which was a decided novelty, and one which might be adopted with advantage by any house which is perched in a commanding situation. this feature may be described as a series of glass-enclosed parlors clinging to the outside of the house, one against each and every bed-chamber and drawing-room. they are like long, narrow, high-ceiled bird-cages hung against the building. my room was a corner room, and had two of these things, a north one and a west one. from the north cage one looks up the neckar gorge; from the west one he looks down it. this last affords the most extensive view, and it is one of the loveliest that can be imagined, too. out of a billowy upheaval of vivid green foliage, a rifle-shot removed, rises the huge ruin of heidelberg castle, [2. see appendix b] with empty window arches, ivy-mailed battlements, moldering towers--the lear of inanimate nature--deserted, discrowned, beaten by the storms, but royal still, and beautiful. it is a fine sight to see the evening sunlight suddenly strike the leafy declivity at the castle's base and dash up it and drench it as with a luminous spray, while the adjacent groves are in deep shadow. behind the castle swells a great dome-shaped hill, forest-clad, and beyond that a nobler and loftier one. the castle looks down upon the compact brown-roofed town; and from the town two picturesque old bridges span the river. now the view broadens; through the gateway of the sentinel headlands you gaze out over the wide rhine plain, which stretches away, softly and richly tinted, grows gradually and dreamily indistinct, and finally melts imperceptibly into the remote horizon. i have never enjoyed a view which had such a serene and satisfying charm about it as this one gives. the first night we were there, we went to bed and to sleep early; but i awoke at the end of two or three hours, and lay a comfortable while listening to the soothing patter of the rain against the balcony windows. i took it to be rain, but it turned out to be only the murmur of the restless neckar, tumbling over her dikes and dams far below, in the gorge. i got up and went into the west balcony and saw a wonderful sight. away down on the level under the black mass of the castle, the town lay, stretched along the river, its intricate cobweb of streets jeweled with twinkling lights; there were rows of lights on the bridges; these flung lances of light upon the water, in the black shadows of the arches; and away at the extremity of all this fairy spectacle blinked and glowed a massed multitude of gas-jets which seemed to cover acres of ground; it was as if all the diamonds in the world had been spread out there. i did not know before, that a half-mile of sextuple railway-tracks could be made such an adornment. one thinks heidelberg by day--with its surroundings-is the last possibility of the beautiful; but when he sees heidelberg by night, a fallen milky way, with that glittering railway constellation pinned to the border, he requires time to consider upon the verdict. one never tires of poking about in the dense woods that clothe all these lofty neckar hills to their beguiling and impressive charm in any country; but german legends and fairy tales have given these an added charm. they have peopled all that region with gnomes, and dwarfs, and all sorts of mysterious and uncanny creatures. at the time i am writing of, i had been reading so much of this literature that sometimes i was not sure but i was beginning to believe in the gnomes and fairies as realities. one afternoon i got lost in the woods about a mile from the hotel, and presently fell into a train of dreamy thought about animals which talk, and kobolds, and enchanted folk, and the rest of the pleasant legendary stuff; and so, by stimulating my fancy, i finally got to imagining i glimpsed small flitting shapes here and there down the columned aisles of the forest. it was a place which was peculiarly meet for the occasion. it was a pine wood, with so thick and soft a carpet of brown needles that one's footfall made no more sound than if he were treading on wool; the tree-trunks were as round and straight and smooth as pillars, and stood close together; they were bare of branches to a point about twenty-five feet above-ground, and from there upward so thick with boughs that not a ray of sunlight could pierce through. the world was bright with sunshine outside, but a deep and mellow twilight reigned in there, and also a deep silence so profound that i seemed to hear my own breathings. when i had stood ten minutes, thinking and imagining, and getting my spirit in tune with the place, and in the right mood to enjoy the supernatural, a raven suddenly uttered a horse croak over my head. it made me start; and then i was angry because i started. i looked up, and the creature was sitting on a limb right over me, looking down at me. i felt something of the same sense of humiliation and injury which one feels when he finds that a human stranger has been clandestinely inspecting him in his privacy and mentally commenting upon him. i eyed the raven, and the raven eyed me. nothing was said during some seconds. then the bird stepped a little way along his limb to get a better point of observation, lifted his wings, stuck his head far down below his shoulders toward me and croaked again--a croak with a distinctly insulting expression about it. if he had spoken in english he could not have said any more plainly that he did say in raven, "well, what do you want here?" i felt as foolish as if i had been caught in some mean act by a responsible being, and reproved for it. however, i made no reply; i would not bandy words with a raven. the adversary waited a while, with his shoulders still lifted, his head thrust down between them, and his keen bright eye fixed on me; then he threw out two or three more insults, which i could not understand, further than that i knew a portion of them consisted of language not used in church. i still made no reply. now the adversary raised his head and called. there was an answering croak from a little distance in the wood--evidently a croak of inquiry. the adversary explained with enthusiasm, and the other raven dropped everything and came. the two sat side by side on the limb and discussed me as freely and offensively as two great naturalists might discuss a new kind of bug. the thing became more and more embarrassing. they called in another friend. this was too much. i saw that they had the advantage of me, and so i concluded to get out of the scrape by walking out of it. they enjoyed my defeat as much as any low white people could have done. they craned their necks and laughed at me (for a raven can laugh, just like a man), they squalled insulting remarks after me as long as they could see me. they were nothing but ravens--i knew that--what they thought of me could be a matter of no consequence--and yet when even a raven shouts after you, "what a hat!" "oh, pull down your vest!" and that sort of thing, it hurts you and humiliates you, and there is no getting around it with fine reasoning and pretty arguments. animals talk to each other, of course. there can be no question about that; but i suppose there are very few people who can understand them. i never knew but one man who could. i knew he could, however, because he told me so himself. he was a middle-aged, simple-hearted miner who had lived in a lonely corner of california, among the woods and mountains, a good many years, and had studied the ways of his only neighbors, the beasts and the birds, until he believed he could accurately translate any remark which they made. this was jim baker. according to jim baker, some animals have only a limited education, and some use only simple words, and scarcely ever a comparison or a flowery figure; whereas, certain other animals have a large vocabulary, a fine command of language and a ready and fluent delivery; consequently these latter talk a great deal; they like it; they are so conscious of their talent, and they enjoy "showing off." baker said, that after long and careful observation, he had come to the conclusion that the bluejays were the best talkers he had found among birds and beasts. said he: "there's more to a bluejay than any other creature. he has got more moods, and more different kinds of feelings than other creatures; and, mind you, whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into language. and no mere commonplace language, either, but rattling, out-and-out book-talk--and bristling with metaphor, too--just bristling! and as for command of language--why you never see a bluejay get stuck for a word. no man ever did. they just boil out of him! and another thing: i've noticed a good deal, and there's no bird, or cow, or anything that uses as good grammar as a bluejay. you may say a cat uses good grammar. well, a cat does--but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use. now i've never heard a jay use bad grammar but very seldom; and when they do, they are as ashamed as a human; they shut right down and leave. "you may call a jay a bird. well, so he is, in a measure-but he's got feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhaps; but otherwise he is just as much human as you be. and i'll tell you for why. a jay's gifts, and instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground. a jay hasn't got any more principle than a congressman. a jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise. the sacredness of an obligation is such a thing which you can't cram into no bluejay's head. now, on top of all this, there's another thing; a jay can out-swear any gentleman in the mines. you think a cat can swear. well, a cat can; but you give a bluejay a subject that calls for his reserve-powers, and where is your cat? don't talk to me--i know too much about this thing; in the one little particular of scolding--just good, clean, out-and-out scolding-a bluejay can lay over anything, human or divine. yes, sir, a jay is everything that a man is. a jay can cry, a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason and plan and discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal, a jay has got a sense of humor, a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do--maybe better. if a jay ain't human, he better take in his sign, that's all. now i'm going to tell you a perfectly true fact about some bluejays. chapter iii baker's bluejay yarn [what stumped the blue jays] "when i first begun to understand jay language correctly, there was a little incident happened here. seven years ago, the last man in this region but me moved away. there stands his house--been empty ever since; a log house, with a plank roof--just one big room, and no more; no ceiling--nothing between the rafters and the floor. well, one sunday morning i was sitting out here in front of my cabin, with my cat, taking the sun, and looking at the blue hills, and listening to the leaves rustling so lonely in the trees, and thinking of the home away yonder in the states, that i hadn't heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejay lit on that house, with an acorn in his mouth, and says, 'hello, i reckon i've struck something.' when he spoke, the acorn dropped out of his mouth and rolled down the roof, of course, but he didn't care; his mind was all on the thing he had struck. it was a knot-hole in the roof. he cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put the other one to the hole, like a possum looking down a jug; then he glanced up with his bright eyes, gave a wink or two with his wings--which signifies gratification, you understand--and says, 'it looks like a hole, it's located like a hole--blamed if i don't believe it is a hole!' "then he cocked his head down and took another look; he glances up perfectly joyful, this time; winks his wings and his tail both, and says, 'oh, no, this ain't no fat thing, i reckon! if i ain't in luck! --why it's a perfectly elegant hole!' so he flew down and got that acorn, and fetched it up and dropped it in, and was just tilting his head back, with the heavenliest smile on his face, when all of a sudden he was paralyzed into a listening attitude and that smile faded gradually out of his countenance like breath off'n a razor, and the queerest look of surprise took its place. then he says, 'why, i didn't hear it fall!' he cocked his eye at the hole again, and took a long look; raised up and shook his head; stepped around to the other side of the hole and took another look from that side; shook his head again. he studied a while, then he just went into the details-walked round and round the hole and spied into it from every point of the compass. no use. now he took a thinking attitude on the comb of the roof and scratched the back of his head with his right foot a minute, and finally says, 'well, it's too many for me, that's certain; must be a mighty long hole; however, i ain't got no time to fool around here, i got to "tend to business"; i reckon it's all right--chance it, anyway.' "so he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped it in, and tried to flirt his eye to the hole quick enough to see what become of it, but he was too late. he held his eye there as much as a minute; then he raised up and sighed, and says, 'confound it, i don't seem to understand this thing, no way; however, i'll tackle her again.' he fetched another acorn, and done his level best to see what become of it, but he couldn't. he says, 'well, i never struck no such a hole as this before; i'm of the opinion it's a totally new kind of a hole.' then he begun to get mad. he held in for a spell, walking up and down the comb of the roof and shaking his head and muttering to himself; but his feelings got the upper hand of him, presently, and he broke loose and cussed himself black in the face. i never see a bird take on so about a little thing. when he got through he walks to the hole and looks in again for half a minute; then he says, 'well, you're a long hole, and a deep hole, and a mighty singular hole altogether--but i've started in to fill you, and i'm damned if i don't fill you, if it takes a hundred years!' "and with that, away he went. you never see a bird work so since you was born. he laid into his work like a nigger, and the way he hove acorns into that hole for about two hours and a half was one of the most exciting and astonishing spectacles i ever struck. he never stopped to take a look anymore--he just hove 'em in and went for more. well, at last he could hardly flop his wings, he was so tuckered out. he comes a-dropping down, once more, sweating like an ice-pitcher, dropped his acorn in and says, 'now i guess i've got the bulge on you by this time!' so he bent down for a look. if you'll believe me, when his head come up again he was just pale with rage. he says, 'i've shoveled acorns enough in there to keep the family thirty years, and if i can see a sign of one of 'em i wish i may land in a museum with a belly full of sawdust in two minutes!' "he just had strength enough to crawl up on to the comb and lean his back agin the chimbly, and then he collected his impressions and begun to free his mind. i see in a second that what i had mistook for profanity in the mines was only just the rudiments, as you may say. "another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devotions, and stops to inquire what was up. the sufferer told him the whole circumstance, and says, 'now yonder's the hole, and if you don't believe me, go and look for yourself.' so this fellow went and looked, and comes back and says, "how many did you say you put in there?' 'not any less than two tons,' says the sufferer. the other jay went and looked again. he couldn't seem to make it out, so he raised a yell, and three more jays come. they all examined the hole, they all made the sufferer tell it over again, then they all discussed it, and got off as many leather-headed opinions about it as an average crowd of humans could have done. "they called in more jays; then more and more, till pretty soon this whole region 'peared to have a blue flush about it. there must have been five thousand of them; and such another jawing and disputing and ripping and cussing, you never heard. every jay in the whole lot put his eye to the hole and delivered a more chuckle-headed opinion about the mystery than the jay that went there before him. they examined the house all over, too. the door was standing half open, and at last one old jay happened to go and light on it and look in. of course, that knocked the mystery galley-west in a second. there lay the acorns, scattered all over the floor.. he flopped his wings and raised a whoop. 'come here!' he says, 'come here, everybody; hang'd if this fool hasn't been trying to fill up a house with acorns!' they all came a-swooping down like a blue cloud, and as each fellow lit on the door and took a glance, the whole absurdity of the contract that that first jay had tackled hit him home and he fell over backward suffocating with laughter, and the next jay took his place and done the same. "well, sir, they roosted around here on the housetop and the trees for an hour, and guffawed over that thing like human beings. it ain't any use to tell me a bluejay hasn't got a sense of humor, because i know better. and memory, too. they brought jays here from all over the united states to look down that hole, every summer for three years. other birds, too. and they could all see the point except an owl that come from nova scotia to visit the yo semite, and he took this thing in on his way back. he said he couldn't see anything funny in it. but then he was a good deal disappointed about yo semite, too." humor, a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do--maybe better. if a jay ain't human, he better take in his sign, that's all. now i'm going to tell you a perfectly true fact about some bluejays." chapter iv student life [the laborious beer king] the summer semester was in full tide; consequently the most frequent figure in and about heidelberg was the student. most of the students were germans, of course, but the representatives of foreign lands were very numerous. they hailed from every corner of the globe--for instruction is cheap in heidelberg, and so is living, too. the anglo-american club, composed of british and american students, had twenty-five members, and there was still much material left to draw from. nine-tenths of the heidelberg students wore no badge or uniform; the other tenth wore caps of various colors, and belonged to social organizations called "corps." there were five corps, each with a color of its own; there were white caps, blue caps, and red, yellow, and green ones. the famous duel-fighting is confined to the "corps" boys. the "kneip" seems to be a specialty of theirs, too. kneips are held, now and then, to celebrate great occasions, like the election of a beer king, for instance. the solemnity is simple; the five corps assemble at night, and at a signal they all fall loading themselves with beer, out of pint-mugs, as fast as possible, and each man keeps his own count--usually by laying aside a lucifer match for each mud he empties. the election is soon decided. when the candidates can hold no more, a count is instituted and the one who has drank the greatest number of pints is proclaimed king. i was told that the last beer king elected by the corps--or by his own capabilities--emptied his mug seventy-five times. no stomach could hold all that quantity at one time, of course--but there are ways of frequently creating a vacuum, which those who have been much at sea will understand. one sees so many students abroad at all hours, that he presently begins to wonder if they ever have any working-hours. some of them have, some of them haven't. each can choose for himself whether he will work or play; for german university life is a very free life; it seems to have no restraints. the student does not live in the college buildings, but hires his own lodgings, in any locality he prefers, and he takes his meals when and where he pleases. he goes to bed when it suits him, and does not get up at all unless he wants to. he is not entered at the university for any particular length of time; so he is likely to change about. he passes no examinations upon entering college. he merely pays a trifling fee of five or ten dollars, receives a card entitling him to the privileges of the university, and that is the end of it. he is now ready for business--or play, as he shall prefer. if he elects to work, he finds a large list of lectures to choose from. he selects the subjects which he will study, and enters his name for these studies; but he can skip attendance. the result of this system is, that lecture-courses upon specialties of an unusual nature are often delivered to very slim audiences, while those upon more practical and every-day matters of education are delivered to very large ones. i heard of one case where, day after day, the lecturer's audience consisted of three students--and always the same three. but one day two of them remained away. the lecturer began as usual -"gentlemen," --then, without a smile, he corrected himself, saying -"sir," --and went on with his discourse. it is said that the vast majority of the heidelberg students are hard workers, and make the most of their opportunities; that they have no surplus means to spend in dissipation, and no time to spare for frolicking. one lecture follows right on the heels of another, with very little time for the student to get out of one hall and into the next; but the industrious ones manage it by going on a trot. the professors assist them in the saving of their time by being promptly in their little boxed-up pulpits when the hours strike, and as promptly out again when the hour finishes. i entered an empty lecture-room one day just before the clock struck. the place had simple, unpainted pine desks and benches for about two hundred persons. about a minute before the clock struck, a hundred and fifty students swarmed in, rushed to their seats, immediately spread open their notebooks and dipped their pens in ink. when the clock began to strike, a burly professor entered, was received with a round of applause, moved swiftly down the center aisle, said "gentlemen," and began to talk as he climbed his pulpit steps; and by the time he had arrived in his box and faced his audience, his lecture was well under way and all the pens were going. he had no notes, he talked with prodigious rapidity and energy for an hour--then the students began to remind him in certain well-understood ways that his time was up; he seized his hat, still talking, proceeded swiftly down his pulpit steps, got out the last word of his discourse as he struck the floor; everybody rose respectfully, and he swept rapidly down the aisle and disappeared. an instant rush for some other lecture-room followed, and in a minute i was alone with the empty benches once more. yes, without doubt, idle students are not the rule. out of eight hundred in the town, i knew the faces of only about fifty; but these i saw everywhere, and daily. they walked about the streets and the wooded hills, they drove in cabs, they boated on the river, they sipped beer and coffee, afternoons, in the schloss gardens. a good many of them wore colored caps of the corps. they were finely and fashionably dressed, their manners were quite superb, and they led an easy, careless, comfortable life. if a dozen of them sat together and a lady or a gentleman passed whom one of them knew and saluted, they all rose to their feet and took off their caps. the members of a corps always received a fellow-member in this way, too; but they paid no attention to members of other corps; they did not seem to see them. this was not a discourtesy; it was only a part of the elaborate and rigid corps etiquette. there seems to be no chilly distance existing between the german students and the professor; but, on the contrary, a companionable intercourse, the opposite of chilliness and reserve. when the professor enters a beer-hall in the evening where students are gathered together, these rise up and take off their caps, and invite the old gentleman to sit with them and partake. he accepts, and the pleasant talk and the beer flow for an hour or two, and by and by the professor, properly charged and comfortable, gives a cordial good night, while the students stand bowing and uncovered; and then he moves on his happy way homeward with all his vast cargo of learning afloat in his hold. nobody finds fault or feels outraged; no harm has been done. it seemed to be a part of corps etiquette to keep a dog or so, too. i mean a corps dog--the common property of the organization, like the corps steward or head servant; then there are other dogs, owned by individuals. on a summer afternoon in the castle gardens, i have seen six students march solemnly into the grounds, in single file, each carrying a bright chinese parasol and leading a prodigious dog by a string. it was a very imposing spectacle. sometimes there would be as many dogs around the pavilion as students; and of all breeds and of all degrees of beauty and ugliness. these dogs had a rather dry time of it; for they were tied to the benches and had no amusement for an hour or two at a time except what they could get out of pawing at the gnats, or trying to sleep and not succeeding. however, they got a lump of sugar occasionally--they were fond of that. it seemed right and proper that students should indulge in dogs; but everybody else had them, too--old men and young ones, old women and nice young ladies. if there is one spectacle that is unpleasanter than another, it is that of an elegantly dressed young lady towing a dog by a string. it is said to be the sign and symbol of blighted love. it seems to me that some other way of advertising it might be devised, which would be just as conspicuous and yet not so trying to the proprieties. it would be a mistake to suppose that the easy-going pleasure-seeking student carries an empty head. just the contrary. he has spent nine years in the gymnasium, under a system which allowed him no freedom, but vigorously compelled him to work like a slave. consequently, he has left the gymnasium with an education which is so extensive and complete, that the most a university can do for it is to perfect some of its profounder specialties. it is said that when a pupil leaves the gymnasium, he not only has a comprehensive education, but he knows what he knows--it is not befogged with uncertainty, it is burnt into him so that it will stay. for instance, he does not merely read and write greek, but speaks it; the same with the latin. foreign youth steer clear of the gymnasium; its rules are too severe. they go to the university to put a mansard roof on their whole general education; but the german student already has his mansard roof, so he goes there to add a steeple in the nature of some specialty, such as a particular branch of law, or diseases of the eye, or special study of the ancient gothic tongues. so this german attends only the lectures which belong to the chosen branch, and drinks his beer and tows his dog around and has a general good time the rest of the day. he has been in rigid bondage so long that the large liberty of the university life is just what he needs and likes and thoroughly appreciates; and as it cannot last forever, he makes the most of it while it does last, and so lays up a good rest against the day that must see him put on the chains once more and enter the slavery of official or professional life. chapter v at the students' dueling-ground [dueling by wholesale] one day in the interest of science my agent obtained permission to bring me to the students' dueling-place. we crossed the river and drove up the bank a few hundred yards, then turned to the left, entered a narrow alley, followed it a hundred yards and arrived at a two-story public house; we were acquainted with its outside aspect, for it was visible from the hotel. we went upstairs and passed into a large whitewashed apartment which was perhaps fifty feet long by thirty feet wide and twenty or twenty-five high. it was a well-lighted place. there was no carpet. across one end and down both sides of the room extended a row of tables, and at these tables some fifty or seventy-five students [1. see appendix c] were sitting. some of them were sipping wine, others were playing cards, others chess, other groups were chatting together, and many were smoking cigarettes while they waited for the coming duels. nearly all of them wore colored caps; there were white caps, green caps, blue caps, red caps, and bright-yellow ones; so, all the five corps were present in strong force. in the windows at the vacant end of the room stood six or eight, narrow-bladed swords with large protecting guards for the hand, and outside was a man at work sharpening others on a grindstone. he understood his business; for when a sword left his hand one could shave himself with it. it was observable that the young gentlemen neither bowed to nor spoke with students whose caps differed in color from their own. this did not mean hostility, but only an armed neutrality. it was considered that a person could strike harder in the duel, and with a more earnest interest, if he had never been in a condition of comradeship with his antagonist; therefore, comradeship between the corps was not permitted. at intervals the presidents of the five corps have a cold official intercourse with each other, but nothing further. for example, when the regular dueling-day of one of the corps approaches, its president calls for volunteers from among the membership to offer battle; three or more respond--but there must not be less than three; the president lays their names before the other presidents, with the request that they furnish antagonists for these challengers from among their corps. this is promptly done. it chanced that the present occasion was the battle-day of the red cap corps. they were the challengers, and certain caps of other colors had volunteered to meet them. the students fight duels in the room which i have described, two days in every week during seven and a half or eight months in every year. this custom had continued in germany two hundred and fifty years. to return to my narrative. a student in a white cap met us and introduced us to six or eight friends of his who also wore white caps, and while we stood conversing, two strange-looking figures were led in from another room. they were students panoplied for the duel. they were bareheaded; their eyes were protected by iron goggles which projected an inch or more, the leather straps of which bound their ears flat against their heads were wound around and around with thick wrappings which a sword could not cut through; from chin to ankle they were padded thoroughly against injury; their arms were bandaged and rebandaged, layer upon layer, until they looked like solid black logs. these weird apparitions had been handsome youths, clad in fashionable attire, fifteen minutes before, but now they did not resemble any beings one ever sees unless in nightmares. they strode along, with their arms projecting straight out from their bodies; they did not hold them out themselves, but fellow-students walked beside them and gave the needed support. there was a rush for the vacant end of the room, now, and we followed and got good places. the combatants were placed face to face, each with several members of his own corps about him to assist; two seconds, well padded, and with swords in their hands, took their stations; a student belonging to neither of the opposing corps placed himself in a good position to umpire the combat; another student stood by with a watch and a memorandum-book to keep record of the time and the number and nature of the wounds; a gray-haired surgeon was present with his lint, his bandages, and his instruments. after a moment's pause the duelists saluted the umpire respectfully, then one after another the several officials stepped forward, gracefully removed their caps and saluted him also, and returned to their places. everything was ready now; students stood crowded together in the foreground, and others stood behind them on chairs and tables. every face was turned toward the center of attraction. the combatants were watching each other with alert eyes; a perfect stillness, a breathless interest reigned. i felt that i was going to see some wary work. but not so. the instant the word was given, the two apparitions sprang forward and began to rain blows down upon each other with such lightning rapidity that i could not quite tell whether i saw the swords or only flashes they made in the air; the rattling din of these blows as they struck steel or paddings was something wonderfully stirring, and they were struck with such terrific force that i could not understand why the opposing sword was not beaten down under the assault. presently, in the midst of the sword-flashes, i saw a handful of hair skip into the air as if it had lain loose on the victim's head and a breath of wind had puffed it suddenly away. the seconds cried "halt!" and knocked up the combatants' swords with their own. the duelists sat down; a student official stepped forward, examined the wounded head and touched the place with a sponge once or twice; the surgeon came and turned back the hair from the wound-and revealed a crimson gash two or three inches long, and proceeded to bind an oval piece of leather and a bunch of lint over it; the tally-keeper stepped up and tallied one for the opposition in his book. then the duelists took position again; a small stream of blood was flowing down the side of the injured man's head, and over his shoulder and down his body to the floor, but he did not seem to mind this. the word was given, and they plunged at each other as fiercely as before; once more the blows rained and rattled and flashed; every few moments the quick-eyed seconds would notice that a sword was bent--then they called "halt!" struck up the contending weapons, and an assisting student straightened the bent one. the wonderful turmoil went on--presently a bright spark sprung from a blade, and that blade broken in several pieces, sent one of its fragments flying to the ceiling. a new sword was provided and the fight proceeded. the exercise was tremendous, of course, and in time the fighters began to show great fatigue. they were allowed to rest a moment, every little while; they got other rests by wounding each other, for then they could sit down while the doctor applied the lint and bandages. the laws is that the battle must continue fifteen minutes if the men can hold out; and as the pauses do not count, this duel was protracted to twenty or thirty minutes, i judged. at last it was decided that the men were too much wearied to do battle longer. they were led away drenched with crimson from head to foot. that was a good fight, but it could not count, partly because it did not last the lawful fifteen minutes (of actual fighting), and partly because neither man was disabled by his wound. it was a drawn battle, and corps law requires that drawn battles shall be refought as soon as the adversaries are well of their hurts. during the conflict, i had talked a little, now and then, with a young gentleman of the white cap corps, and he had mentioned that he was to fight next--and had also pointed out his challenger, a young gentleman who was leaning against the opposite wall smoking a cigarette and restfully observing the duel then in progress. my acquaintanceship with a party to the coming contest had the effect of giving me a kind of personal interest in it; i naturally wished he might win, and it was the reverse of pleasant to learn that he probably would not, because, although he was a notable swordsman, the challenger was held to be his superior. the duel presently began and in the same furious way which had marked the previous one. i stood close by, but could not tell which blows told and which did not, they fell and vanished so like flashes of light. they all seemed to tell; the swords always bent over the opponents' heads, from the forehead back over the crown, and seemed to touch, all the way; but it was not so--a protecting blade, invisible to me, was always interposed between. at the end of ten seconds each man had struck twelve or fifteen blows, and warded off twelve or fifteen, and no harm done; then a sword became disabled, and a short rest followed whilst a new one was brought. early in the next round the white corps student got an ugly wound on the side of his head and gave his opponent one like it. in the third round the latter received another bad wound in the head, and the former had his under-lip divided. after that, the white corps student gave many severe wounds, but got none of the consequence in return. at the end of five minutes from the beginning of the duel the surgeon stopped it; the challenging party had suffered such injuries that any addition to them might be dangerous. these injuries were a fearful spectacle, but are better left undescribed. so, against expectation, my acquaintance was the victor. chapter vi [a sport that sometimes kills] the third duel was brief and bloody. the surgeon stopped it when he saw that one of the men had received such bad wounds that he could not fight longer without endangering his life. the fourth duel was a tremendous encounter; but at the end of five or six minutes the surgeon interfered once more: another man so severely hurt as to render it unsafe to add to his harms. i watched this engagement as i watched the others--with rapt interest and strong excitement, and with a shrink and a shudder for every blow that laid open a cheek or a forehead; and a conscious paling of my face when i occasionally saw a wound of a yet more shocking nature inflicted. my eyes were upon the loser of this duel when he got his last and vanquishing wound--it was in his face and it carried away his--but no matter, i must not enter into details. i had but a glance, and then turned quickly, but i would not have been looking at all if i had known what was coming. no, that is probably not true; one thinks he would not look if he knew what was coming, but the interest and the excitement are so powerful that they would doubtless conquer all other feelings; and so, under the fierce exhilaration of the clashing steel, he would yield and look after all. sometimes spectators of these duels faint--and it does seem a very reasonable thing to do, too. both parties to this fourth duel were badly hurt so much that the surgeon was at work upon them nearly or quite an hour--a fact which is suggestive. but this waiting interval was not wasted in idleness by the assembled students. it was past noon, therefore they ordered their landlord, downstairs, to send up hot beefsteaks, chickens, and such things, and these they ate, sitting comfortable at the several tables, whilst they chatted, disputed and laughed. the door to the surgeon's room stood open, meantime, but the cutting, sewing, splicing, and bandaging going on in there in plain view did not seem to disturb anyone's appetite. i went in and saw the surgeon labor awhile, but could not enjoy; it was much less trying to see the wounds given and received than to see them mended; the stir and turmoil, and the music of the steel, were wanting here--one's nerves were wrung by this grisly spectacle, whilst the duel's compensating pleasurable thrill was lacking. finally the doctor finished, and the men who were to fight the closing battle of the day came forth. a good many dinners were not completed, yet, but no matter, they could be eaten cold, after the battle; therefore everybody crowded forth to see. this was not a love duel, but a "satisfaction" affair. these two students had quarreled, and were here to settle it. they did not belong to any of the corps, but they were furnished with weapons and armor, and permitted to fight here by the five corps as a courtesy. evidently these two young men were unfamiliar with the dueling ceremonies, though they were not unfamiliar with the sword. when they were placed in position they thought it was time to begin--and then did begin, too, and with a most impetuous energy, without waiting for anybody to give the word. this vastly amused the spectators, and even broke down their studied and courtly gravity and surprised them into laughter. of course the seconds struck up the swords and started the duel over again. at the word, the deluge of blows began, but before long the surgeon once more interfered--for the only reason which ever permits him to interfere--and the day's war was over. it was now two in the afternoon, and i had been present since half past nine in the morning. the field of battle was indeed a red one by this time; but some sawdust soon righted that. there had been one duel before i arrived. in it one of the men received many injuries, while the other one escaped without a scratch. i had seen the heads and faces of ten youths gashed in every direction by the keen two-edged blades, and yet had not seen a victim wince, nor heard a moan, or detected any fleeting expression which confessed the sharp pain the hurts were inflicting. this was good fortitude, indeed. such endurance is to be expected in savages and prize-fighters, for they are born and educated to it; but to find it in such perfection in these gently bred and kindly natured young fellows is matter for surprise. it was not merely under the excitement of the sword-play that this fortitude was shown; it was shown in the surgeon's room where an uninspiring quiet reigned, and where there was no audience. the doctor's manipulations brought out neither grimaces nor moans. and in the fights it was observable that these lads hacked and slashed with the same tremendous spirit, after they were covered with streaming wounds, which they had shown in the beginning. the world in general looks upon the college duels as very farcical affairs: true, but considering that the college duel is fought by boys; that the swords are real swords; and that the head and face are exposed, it seems to me that it is a farce which had quite a grave side to it. people laugh at it mainly because they think the student is so covered up with armor that he cannot be hurt. but it is not so; his eyes are ears are protected, but the rest of his face and head are bare. he can not only be badly wounded, but his life is in danger; and he would sometimes lose it but for the interference of the surgeon. it is not intended that his life shall be endangered. fatal accidents are possible, however. for instance, the student's sword may break, and the end of it fly up behind his antagonist's ear and cut an artery which could not be reached if the sword remained whole. this has happened, sometimes, and death has resulted on the spot. formerly the student's armpits were not protected--and at that time the swords were pointed, whereas they are blunt, now; so an artery in the armpit was sometimes cut, and death followed. then in the days of sharp-pointed swords, a spectator was an occasional victim--the end of a broken sword flew five or ten feet and buried itself in his neck or his heart, and death ensued instantly. the student duels in germany occasion two or three deaths every year, now, but this arises only from the carelessness of the wounded men; they eat or drink imprudently, or commit excesses in the way of overexertion; inflammation sets in and gets such a headway that it cannot be arrested. indeed, there is blood and pain and danger enough about the college duel to entitle it to a considerable degree of respect. all the customs, all the laws, all the details, pertaining to the student duel are quaint and naive. the grave, precise, and courtly ceremony with which the thing is conducted, invests it with a sort of antique charm. this dignity and these knightly graces suggest the tournament, not the prize-fight. the laws are as curious as they are strict. for instance, the duelist may step forward from the line he is placed upon, if he chooses, but never back of it. if he steps back of it, or even leans back, it is considered that he did it to avoid a blow or contrive an advantage; so he is dismissed from his corps in disgrace. it would seem natural to step from under a descending sword unconsciously, and against one's will and intent--yet this unconsciousness is not allowed. again: if under the sudden anguish of a wound the receiver of it makes a grimace, he falls some degrees in the estimation of his fellows; his corps are ashamed of him: they call him "hare foot," which is the german equivalent for chicken-hearted. chapter vii [how bismark fought] in addition to the corps laws, there are some corps usages which have the force of laws. perhaps the president of a corps notices that one of the membership who is no longer an exempt--that is a freshman-has remained a sophomore some little time without volunteering to fight; some day, the president, instead of calling for volunteers, will appoint this sophomore to measure swords with a student of another corps; he is free to decline--everybody says so--there is no compulsion. this is all true--but i have not heard of any student who did decline; to decline and still remain in the corps would make him unpleasantly conspicuous, and properly so, since he knew, when he joined, that his main business, as a member, would be to fight. no, there is no law against declining--except the law of custom, which is confessedly stronger than written law, everywhere. the ten men whose duels i had witnessed did not go away when their hurts were dressed, as i had supposed they would, but came back, one after another, as soon as they were free of the surgeon, and mingled with the assemblage in the dueling-room. the white-cap student who won the second fight witnessed the remaining three, and talked with us during the intermissions. he could not talk very well, because his opponent's sword had cut his under-lip in two, and then the surgeon had sewed it together and overlaid it with a profusion of white plaster patches; neither could he eat easily, still he contrived to accomplish a slow and troublesome luncheon while the last duel was preparing. the man who was the worst hurt of all played chess while waiting to see this engagement. a good part of his face was covered with patches and bandages, and all the rest of his head was covered and concealed by them. it is said that the student likes to appear on the street and in other public places in this kind of array, and that this predilection often keeps him out when exposure to rain or sun is a positive danger for him. newly bandaged students are a very common spectacle in the public gardens of heidelberg. it is also said that the student is glad to get wounds in the face, because the scars they leave will show so well there; and it is also said that these face wounds are so prized that youths have even been known to pull them apart from time to time and put red wine in them to make them heal badly and leave as ugly a scar as possible. it does not look reasonable, but it is roundly asserted and maintained, nevertheless; i am sure of one thing--scars are plenty enough in germany, among the young men; and very grim ones they are, too. they crisscross the face in angry red welts, and are permanent and ineffaceable. some of these scars are of a very strange and dreadful aspect; and the effect is striking when several such accent the milder ones, which form a city map on a man's face; they suggest the "burned district" then. we had often noticed that many of the students wore a colored silk band or ribbon diagonally across their breasts. it transpired that this signifies that the wearer has fought three duels in which a decision was reached--duels in which he either whipped or was whipped--for drawn battles do not count. [1] after a student has received his ribbon, he is "free"; he can cease from fighting, without reproach--except some one insult him; his president cannot appoint him to fight; he can volunteer if he wants to, or remain quiescent if he prefers to do so. statistics show that he does not prefer to remain quiescent. they show that the duel has a singular fascination about it somewhere, for these free men, so far from resting upon the privilege of the badge, are always volunteering. a corps student told me it was of record that prince bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer term when he was in college. so he fought twenty-nine after his badge had given him the right to retire from the field. 1. from my diary.--dined in a hotel a few miles up the neckar, in a room whose walls were hung all over with framed portrait-groups of the five corps; some were recent, but many antedated photography, and were pictured in lithography--the dates ranged back to forty or fifty years ago. nearly every individual wore the ribbon across his breast. in one portrait-group representing (as each of these pictures did) an entire corps, i took pains to count the ribbons: there were twenty-seven members, and twenty-one of them wore that significant badge. the statistics may be found to possess interest in several particulars. two days in every week are devoted to dueling. the rule is rigid that there must be three duels on each of these days; there are generally more, but there cannot be fewer. there were six the day i was present; sometimes there are seven or eight. it is insisted that eight duels a week--four for each of the two days--is too low an average to draw a calculation from, but i will reckon from that basis, preferring an understatement to an overstatement of the case. this requires about four hundred and eighty or five hundred duelists a year--for in summer the college term is about three and a half months, and in winter it is four months and sometimes longer. of the seven hundred and fifty students in the university at the time i am writing of, only eighty belonged to the five corps, and it is only these corps that do the dueling; occasionally other students borrow the arms and battleground of the five corps in order to settle a quarrel, but this does not happen every dueling-day. [2] consequently eighty youths furnish the material for some two hundred and fifty duels a year. this average gives six fights a year to each of the eighty. this large work could not be accomplished if the badge-holders stood upon their privilege and ceased to volunteer. 2. they have to borrow the arms because they could not get them elsewhere or otherwise. as i understand it, the public authorities, all over germany, allow the five corps to keep swords, but do not allow them to use them. this is law is rigid; it is only the execution of it that is lax. of course, where there is so much fighting, the students make it a point to keep themselves in constant practice with the foil. one often sees them, at the tables in the castle grounds, using their whips or canes to illustrate some new sword trick which they have heard about; and between the duels, on the day whose history i have been writing, the swords were not always idle; every now and then we heard a succession of the keen hissing sounds which the sword makes when it is being put through its paces in the air, and this informed us that a student was practicing. necessarily, this unceasing attention to the art develops an expert occasionally. he becomes famous in his own university, his renown spreads to other universities. he is invited to go"ttingen, to fight with a go"ttingen expert; if he is victorious, he will be invited to other colleges, or those colleges will send their experts to him. americans and englishmen often join one or another of the five corps. a year or two ago, the principal heidelberg expert was a big kentuckian; he was invited to the various universities and left a wake of victory behind him all about germany; but at last a little student in strasburg defeated him. there was formerly a student in heidelberg who had picked up somewhere and mastered a peculiar trick of cutting up under instead of cleaving down from above. while the trick lasted he won in sixteen successive duels in his university; but by that time observers had discovered what his charm was, and how to break it, therefore his championship ceased. a rule which forbids social intercourse between members of different corps is strict. in the dueling-house, in the parks, on the street, and anywhere and everywhere that the students go, caps of a color group themselves together. if all the tables in a public garden were crowded but one, and that one had two red-cap students at it and ten vacant places, the yellow-caps, the blue-caps, the white caps, and the green caps, seeking seats, would go by that table and not seem to see it, nor seem to be aware that there was such a table in the grounds. the student by whose courtesy we had been enabled to visit the dueling-place, wore the white cap--prussian corps. he introduced us to many white caps, but to none of another color. the corps etiquette extended even to us, who were strangers, and required us to group with the white corps only, and speak only with the white corps, while we were their guests, and keep aloof from the caps of the other colors. once i wished to examine some of the swords, but an american student said, "it would not be quite polite; these now in the windows all have red hilts or blue; they will bring in some with white hilts presently, and those you can handle freely. "when a sword was broken in the first duel, i wanted a piece of it; but its hilt was the wrong color, so it was considered best and politest to await a properer season. it was brought to me after the room was cleared, and i will now make a "life-size" sketch of it by tracing a line around it with my pen, to show the width of the weapon. [figure 1] the length of these swords is about three feet, and they are quite heavy. one's disposition to cheer, during the course of the duels or at their close, was naturally strong, but corps etiquette forbade any demonstrations of this sort. however brilliant a contest or a victory might be, no sign or sound betrayed that any one was moved. a dignified gravity and repression were maintained at all times. when the dueling was finished and we were ready to go, the gentlemen of the prussian corps to whom we had been introduced took off their caps in the courteous german way, and also shook hands; their brethren of the same order took off their caps and bowed, but without shaking hands; the gentlemen of the other corps treated us just as they would have treated white caps--they fell apart, apparently unconsciously, and left us an unobstructed pathway, but did not seem to see us or know we were there. if we had gone thither the following week as guests of another corps, the white caps, without meaning any offense, would have observed the etiquette of their order and ignored our presence. [how strangely are comedy and tragedy blended in this life! i had not been home a full half-hour, after witnessing those playful sham-duels, when circumstances made it necessary for me to get ready immediately to assist personally at a real one--a duel with no effeminate limitation in the matter of results, but a battle to the death. an account of it, in the next chapter, will show the reader that duels between boys, for fun, and duels between men in earnest, are very different affairs.] chapter viii the great french duel [i second gambetta in a terrific duel] much as the modern french duel is ridiculed by certain smart people, it is in reality one of the most dangerous institutions of our day. since it is always fought in the open air, the combatants are nearly sure to catch cold. m. paul de cassagnac, the most inveterate of the french duelists, had suffered so often in this way that he is at last a confirmed invalid; and the best physician in paris has expressed the opinion that if he goes on dueling for fifteen or twenty years more--unless he forms the habit of fighting in a comfortable room where damps and draughts cannot intrude--he will eventually endanger his life. this ought to moderate the talk of those people who are so stubborn in maintaining that the french duel is the most health-giving of recreations because of the open-air exercise it affords. and it ought also to moderate that foolish talk about french duelists and socialist-hated monarchs being the only people who are immoral. but it is time to get at my subject. as soon as i heard of the late fiery outbreak between m. gambetta and m. fourtou in the french assembly, i knew that trouble must follow. i knew it because a long personal friendship with m. gambetta revealed to me the desperate and implacable nature of the man. vast as are his physical proportions, i knew that the thirst for revenge would penetrate to the remotest frontiers of his person. i did not wait for him to call on me, but went at once to him. as i had expected, i found the brave fellow steeped in a profound french calm. i say french calm, because french calmness and english calmness have points of difference. he was moving swiftly back and forth among the debris of his furniture, now and then staving chance fragments of it across the room with his foot; grinding a constant grist of curses through his set teeth; and halting every little while to deposit another handful of his hair on the pile which he had been building of it on the table. he threw his arms around my neck, bent me over his stomach to his breast, kissed me on both cheeks, hugged me four or five times, and then placed me in his own arm-chair. as soon as i had got well again, we began business at once. i said i supposed he would wish me to act as his second, and he said, "of course." i said i must be allowed to act under a french name, so that i might be shielded from obloquy in my country, in case of fatal results. he winced here, probably at the suggestion that dueling was not regarded with respect in america. however, he agreed to my requirement. this accounts for the fact that in all the newspaper reports m. gambetta's second was apparently a frenchman. first, we drew up my principal's will. i insisted upon this, and stuck to my point. i said i had never heard of a man in his right mind going out to fight a duel without first making his will. he said he had never heard of a man in his right mind doing anything of the kind. when he had finished the will, he wished to proceed to a choice of his "last words." he wanted to know how the following words, as a dying exclamation, struck me: "i die for my god, for my country, for freedom of speech, for progress, and the universal brotherhood of man!" i objected that this would require too lingering a death; it was a good speech for a consumptive, but not suited to the exigencies of the field of honor. we wrangled over a good many ante-mortem outburts, but i finally got him to cut his obituary down to this, which he copied into his memorandum-book, purposing to get it by heart: "i die that france might live." i said that this remark seemed to lack relevancy; but he said relevancy was a matter of no consequence in last words, what you wanted was thrill. the next thing in order was the choice of weapons. my principal said he was not feeling well, and would leave that and the other details of the proposed meeting to me. therefore i wrote the following note and carried it to m. fourtou's friend: sir: m. gambetta accepts m. fourtou's challenge, and authorizes me to propose plessis-piquet as the place of meeting; tomorrow morning at daybreak as the time; and axes as the weapons. i am, sir, with great respect, mark twain. m. fourtou's friend read this note, and shuddered. then he turned to me, and said, with a suggestion of severity in his tone: "have you considered, sir, what would be the inevitable result of such a meeting as this?" "well, for instance, what would it be?" "bloodshed!" "that's about the size of it," i said. "now, if it is a fair question, what was your side proposing to shed?" i had him there. he saw he had made a blunder, so he hastened to explain it away. he said he had spoken jestingly. then he added that he and his principal would enjoy axes, and indeed prefer them, but such weapons were barred by the french code, and so i must change my proposal. i walked the floor, turning the thing over in my mind, and finally it occurred to me that gatling-guns at fifteen paces would be a likely way to get a verdict on the field of honor. so i framed this idea into a proposition. but it was not accepted. the code was in the way again. i proposed rifles; then double-barreled shotguns; then colt's navy revolvers. these being all rejected, i reflected awhile, and sarcastically suggested brickbats at three-quarters of a mile. i always hate to fool away a humorous thing on a person who has no perception of humor; and it filled me with bitterness when this man went soberly away to submit the last proposition to his principal. he came back presently and said his principal was charmed with the idea of brickbats at three-quarters of a mile, but must decline on account of the danger to disinterested parties passing between them. then i said: "well, i am at the end of my string, now. perhaps you would be good enough to suggest a weapon? perhaps you have even had one in your mind all the time?" his countenance brightened, and he said with alacrity: "oh, without doubt, monsieur!" so he fell to hunting in his pockets--pocket after pocket, and he had plenty of them--muttering all the while, "now, what could i have done with them?" at last he was successful. he fished out of his vest pocket a couple of little things which i carried to the light and ascertained to be pistols. they were single-barreled and silver-mounted, and very dainty and pretty. i was not able to speak for emotion. i silently hung one of them on my watch-chain, and returned the other. my companion in crime now unrolled a postage-stamp containing several cartridges, and gave me one of them. i asked if he meant to signify by this that our men were to be allowed but one shot apiece. he replied that the french code permitted no more. i then begged him to go and suggest a distance, for my mind was growing weak and confused under the strain which had been put upon it. he named sixty-five yards. i nearly lost my patience. i said: "sixty-five yards, with these instruments? squirt-guns would be deadlier at fifty. consider, my friend, you and i are banded together to destroy life, not make it eternal." but with all my persuasions, all my arguments, i was only able to get him to reduce the distance to thirty-five yards; and even this concession he made with reluctance, and said with a sigh, "i wash my hands of this slaughter; on your head be it." there was nothing for me but to go home to my old lion-heart and tell my humiliating story. when i entered, m. gambetta was laying his last lock of hair upon the altar. he sprang toward me, exclaiming: "you have made the fatal arrangements--i see it in your eye!" "i have." his face paled a trifle, and he leaned upon the table for support. he breathed thick and heavily for a moment or two, so tumultuous were his feelings; then he hoarsely whispered: "the weapon, the weapon! quick! what is the weapon?" "this!" and i displayed that silver-mounted thing. he cast but one glance at it, then swooned ponderously to the floor. when he came to, he said mournfully: "the unnatural calm to which i have subjected myself has told upon my nerves. but away with weakness! i will confront my fate like a man and a frenchman." he rose to his feet, and assumed an attitude which for sublimity has never been approached by man, and has seldom been surpassed by statues. then he said, in his deep bass tones: "behold, i am calm, i am ready; reveal to me the distance." "thirty-five yards." ... i could not lift him up, of course; but i rolled him over, and poured water down his back. he presently came to, and said: "thirty-five yards--without a rest? but why ask? since murder was that man's intention, why should he palter with small details? but mark you one thing: in my fall the world shall see how the chivalry of france meets death." after a long silence he asked: "was nothing said about that man's family standing up with him, as an offset to my bulk? but no matter; i would not stoop to make such a suggestion; if he is not noble enough to suggest it himself, he is welcome to this advantage, which no honorable man would take." he now sank into a sort of stupor of reflection, which lasted some minutes; after which he broke silence with: "the hour--what is the hour fixed for the collision?" "dawn, tomorrow." he seemed greatly surprised, and immediately said: "insanity! i never heard of such a thing. nobody is abroad at such an hour." "that is the reason i named it. do you mean to say you want an audience?" "it is no time to bandy words. i am astonished that m. fourtou should ever have agreed to so strange an innovation. go at once and require a later hour." i ran downstairs, threw open the front door, and almost plunged into the arms of m. fourtou's second. he said: "i have the honor to say that my principal strenuously objects to the hour chosen, and begs you will consent to change it to half past nine." "any courtesy, sir, which it is in our power to extend is at the service of your excellent principal. we agree to the proposed change of time." "i beg you to accept the thanks of my client." then he turned to a person behind him, and said, "you hear, m. noir, the hour is altered to half past nine. " whereupon m. noir bowed, expressed his thanks, and went away. my accomplice continued: "if agreeable to you, your chief surgeons and ours shall proceed to the field in the same carriage as is customary." "it is entirely agreeable to me, and i am obliged to you for mentioning the surgeons, for i am afraid i should not have thought of them. how many shall i want? i supposed two or three will be enough?" "two is the customary number for each party. i refer to 'chief' surgeons; but considering the exalted positions occupied by our clients, it will be well and decorous that each of us appoint several consulting surgeons, from among the highest in the profession. these will come in their own private carriages. have you engaged a hearse?" "bless my stupidity, i never thought of it!" i will attend to it right away. i must seem very ignorant to you; but you must try to overlook that, because i have never had any experience of such a swell duel as this before. i have had a good deal to do with duels on the pacific coast, but i see now that they were crude affairs. a hearse--sho! we used to leave the elected lying around loose, and let anybody cord them up and cart them off that wanted to. have you anything further to suggest?" "nothing, except that the head undertakers shall ride together, as is usual. the subordinates and mutes will go on foot, as is also usual. i will see you at eight o'clock in the morning, and we will then arrange the order of the procession. i have the honor to bid you a good day." i returned to my client, who said, "very well; at what hour is the engagement to begin?" "half past nine." "very good indeed.; have you sent the fact to the newspapers?" "sir! if after our long and intimate friendship you can for a moment deem me capable of so base a treachery--" "tut, tut! what words are these, my dear friend? have i wounded you? ah, forgive me; i am overloading you with labor. therefore go on with the other details, and drop this one from your list. the bloody-minded fourtou will be sure to attend to it. or i myself--yes, to make certain, i will drop a note to my journalistic friend, m. noir--" "oh, come to think of it, you may save yourself the trouble; that other second has informed m. noir." "h'm! i might have known it. it is just like that fourtou, who always wants to make a display." at half past nine in the morning the procession approached the field of plessis-piquet in the following order: first came our carriage--nobody in it but m. gambetta and myself; then a carriage containing m. fourtou and his second; then a carriage containing two poet-orators who did not believe in god, and these had ms. funeral orations projecting from their breast pockets; then a carriage containing the head surgeons and their cases of instruments; then eight private carriages containing consulting surgeons; then a hack containing a coroner; then the two hearses; then a carriage containing the head undertakers; then a train of assistants and mutes on foot; and after these came plodding through the fog a long procession of camp followers, police, and citizens generally. it was a noble turnout, and would have made a fine display if we had had thinner weather. there was no conversation. i spoke several times to my principal, but i judge he was not aware of it, for he always referred to his note-book and muttered absently, "i die that france might live." "arrived on the field, my fellow-second and i paced off the thirty-five yards, and then drew lots for choice of position. this latter was but an ornamental ceremony, for all the choices were alike in such weather. these preliminaries being ended, i went to my principal and asked him if he was ready. he spread himself out to his full width, and said in a stern voice, "ready! let the batteries be charged." the loading process was done in the presence of duly constituted witnesses. we considered it best to perform this delicate service with the assistance of a lantern, on account of the state of the weather. we now placed our men. at this point the police noticed that the public had massed themselves together on the right and left of the field; they therefore begged a delay, while they should put these poor people in a place of safety. the request was granted. the police having ordered the two multitudes to take positions behind the duelists, we were once more ready. the weather growing still more opaque, it was agreed between myself and the other second that before giving the fatal signal we should each deliver a loud whoop to enable the combatants to ascertain each other's whereabouts. i now returned to my principal, and was distressed to observe that he had lost a good deal of his spirit. i tried my best to hearten him. i said, "indeed, sir, things are not as bad as they seem. considering the character of the weapons, the limited number of shots allowed, the generous distance, the impenetrable solidity of the fog, and the added fact that one of the combatants is one-eyed and the other cross-eyed and near-sighted, it seems to me that this conflict need not necessarily be fatal. there are chances that both of you may survive. therefore, cheer up; do not be downhearted." this speech had so good an effect that my principal immediately stretched forth his hand and said, "i am myself again; give me the weapon." i laid it, all lonely and forlorn, in the center of the vast solitude of his palm. he gazed at it and shuddered. and still mournfully contemplating it, he murmured in a broken voice: "alas, it is not death i dread, but mutilation." i heartened him once more, and with such success that he presently said, "let the tragedy begin. stand at my back; do not desert me in this solemn hour, my friend." i gave him my promise. i now assisted him to point his pistol toward the spot where i judged his adversary to be standing, and cautioned him to listen well and further guide himself by my fellow-second's whoop. then i propped myself against m. gambetta's back, and raised a rousing "whoop-ee!" this was answered from out the far distances of the fog, and i immediately shouted: "one--two--three--fire!" two little sounds like spit! spit! broke upon my ear, and in the same instant i was crushed to the earth under a mountain of flesh. bruised as i was, i was still able to catch a faint accent from above, to this effect: "i die for... for ... perdition take it, what is it i die for? ... oh, yes--france! i die that france may live!" the surgeons swarmed around with their probes in their hands, and applied their microscopes to the whole area of m. gambetta's person, with the happy result of finding nothing in the nature of a wound. then a scene ensued which was in every way gratifying and inspiriting. the two gladiators fell upon each other's neck, with floods of proud and happy tears; that other second embraced me; the surgeons, the orators, the undertakers, the police, everybody embraced, everybody congratulated, everybody cried, and the whole atmosphere was filled with praise and with joy unspeakable. it seems to me then that i would rather be a hero of a french duel than a crowned and sceptered monarch. when the commotion had somewhat subsided, the body of surgeons held a consultation, and after a good deal of debate decided that with proper care and nursing there was reason to believe that i would survive my injuries. my internal hurts were deemed the most serious, since it was apparent that a broken rib had penetrated my left lung, and that many of my organs had been pressed out so far to one side or the other of where they belonged, that it was doubtful if they would ever learn to perform their functions in such remote and unaccustomed localities. they then set my left arm in two places, pulled my right hip into its socket again, and re-elevated my nose. i was an object of great interest, and even admiration; and many sincere and warm-hearted persons had themselves introduced to me, and said they were proud to know the only man who had been hurt in a french duel in forty years. i was placed in an ambulance at the very head of the procession; and thus with gratifying 'eclat i was marched into paris, the most conspicuous figure in that great spectacle, and deposited at the hospital. the cross of the legion of honor has been conferred upon me. however, few escape that distinction. such is the true version of the most memorable private conflict of the age. i have no complaints to make against any one. i acted for myself, and i can stand the consequences. without boasting, i think i may say i am not afraid to stand before a modern french duelist, but as long as i keep in my right mind i will never consent to stand behind one again. chapter ix [what the beautiful maiden said] one day we took the train and went down to mannheim to see "king lear" played in german. it was a mistake. we sat in our seats three whole hours and never understood anything but the thunder and lightning; and even that was reversed to suit german ideas, for the thunder came first and the lightning followed after. the behavior of the audience was perfect. there were no rustlings, or whisperings, or other little disturbances; each act was listened to in silence, and the applauding was done after the curtain was down. the doors opened at half past four, the play began promptly at half past five, and within two minutes afterward all who were coming were in their seats, and quiet reigned. a german gentleman in the train had said that a shakespearian play was an appreciated treat in germany and that we should find the house filled. it was true; all the six tiers were filled, and remained so to the end--which suggested that it is not only balcony people who like shakespeare in germany, but those of the pit and gallery, too. another time, we went to mannheim and attended a shivaree-otherwise an opera--the one called "lohengrin." the banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyond belief. the racking and pitiless pain of it remains stored up in my memory alongside the memory of the time that i had my teeth fixed. there were circumstances which made it necessary for me to stay through the hour hours to the end, and i stayed; but the recollection of that long, dragging, relentless season of suffering is indestructible. to have to endure it in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder. i was in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers, of the two sexes, and this compelled repression; yet at times the pain was so exquisite that i could hardly keep the tears back. at those times, as the howlings and wailings and shrieking of the singers, and the ragings and roarings and explosions of the vast orchestra rose higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and fiercer and fiercer, i could have cried if i had been alone. those strangers would not have been surprised to see a man do such a thing who was being gradually skinned, but they would have marveled at it here, and made remarks about it no doubt, whereas there was nothing in the present case which was an advantage over being skinned. there was a wait of half an hour at the end of the first act, and i could not trust myself to do it, for i felt that i should desert to stay out. there was another wait of half an hour toward nine o'clock, but i had gone through so much by that time that i had no spirit left, and so had no desire but to be let alone. i do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there were like me, for, indeed, they were not. whether it was that they naturally liked that noise, or whether it was that they had learned to like it by getting used to it, i did not at the time know; but they did like--this was plain enough. while it was going on they sat and looked as rapt and grateful as cats do when one strokes their backs; and whenever the curtain fell they rose to their feet, in one solid mighty multitude, and the air was snowed thick with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanes of applause swept the place. this was not comprehensible to me. of course, there were many people there who were not under compulsion to stay; yet the tiers were as full at the close as they had been at the beginning. this showed that the people liked it. it was a curious sort of a play. in the manner of costumes and scenery it was fine and showy enough; but there was not much action. that is to say, there was not much really done, it was only talked about; and always violently. it was what one might call a narrative play. everybody had a narrative and a grievance, and none were reasonable about it, but all in an offensive and ungovernable state. there was little of that sort of customary thing where the tenor and the soprano stand down by the footlights, warbling, with blended voices, and keep holding out their arms toward each other and drawing them back and spreading both hands over first one breast and then the other with a shake and a pressure--no, it was every rioter for himself and no blending. each sang his indictive narrative in turn, accompanied by the whole orchestra of sixty instruments, and when this had continued for some time, and one was hoping they might come to an understanding and modify the noise, a great chorus composed entirely of maniacs would suddenly break forth, and then during two minutes, and sometimes three, i lived over again all that i suffered the time the orphan asylum burned down. we only had one brief little season of heaven and heaven's sweet ecstasy and peace during all this long and diligent and acrimonious reproduction of the other place. this was while a gorgeous procession of people marched around and around, in the third act, and sang the wedding chorus. to my untutored ear that was music--almost divine music. while my seared soul was steeped in the healing balm of those gracious sounds, it seemed to me that i could almost resuffer the torments which had gone before, in order to be so healed again. there is where the deep ingenuity of the operatic idea is betrayed. it deals so largely in pain that its scattered delights are prodigiously augmented by the contrasts. a pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anywhere else, i suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere. i have since found out that there is nothing the germans like so much as an opera. they like it, not in a mild and moderate way, but with their whole hearts. this is a legitimate result of habit and education. our nation will like the opera, too, by and by, no doubt. one in fifty of those who attend our operas likes it already, perhaps, but i think a good many of the other forty-nine go in order to learn to like it, and the rest in order to be able to talk knowingly about it. the latter usually hum the airs while they are being sung, so that their neighbors may perceive that they have been to operas before. the funerals of these do not occur often enough. a gentle, old-maidish person and a sweet young girl of seventeen sat right in front of us that night at the mannheim opera. these people talked, between the acts, and i understood them, though i understood nothing that was uttered on the distant stage. at first they were guarded in their talk, but after they had heard my agent and me conversing in english they dropped their reserve and i picked up many of their little confidences; no, i mean many of her little confidences--meaning the elder party--for the young girl only listened, and gave assenting nods, but never said a word. how pretty she was, and how sweet she was! i wished she would speak. but evidently she was absorbed in her own thoughts, her own young-girl dreams, and found a dearer pleasure in silence. but she was not dreaming sleepy dreams--no, she was awake, alive, alert, she could not sit still a moment. she was an enchanting study. her gown was of a soft white silky stuff that clung to her round young figure like a fish's skin, and it was rippled over with the gracefulest little fringy films of lace; she had deep, tender eyes, with long, curved lashes; and she had peachy cheeks, and a dimpled chin, and such a dear little rosebud of a mouth; and she was so dovelike, so pure, and so gracious, so sweet and so bewitching. for long hours i did mightily wish she would speak. and at last she did; the red lips parted, and out leaps her thought--and with such a guileless and pretty enthusiasm, too: "auntie, i just know i've got five hundred fleas on me!" that was probably over the average. yes, it must have been very much over the average. the average at that time in the grand duchy of baden was forty-five to a young person (when alone), according to the official estimate of the home secretary for that year; the average for older people was shifty and indeterminable, for whenever a wholesome young girl came into the presence of her elders she immediately lowered their average and raised her own. she became a sort of contribution-box. this dear young thing in the theater had been sitting there unconsciously taking up a collection. many a skinny old being in our neighborhood was the happier and the restfuler for her coming. in that large audience, that night, there were eight very conspicuous people. these were ladies who had their hats or bonnets on. what a blessed thing it would be if a lady could make herself conspicuous in our theaters by wearing her hat. it is not usual in europe to allow ladies and gentlemen to take bonnets, hats, overcoats, canes, or umbrellas into the auditorium, but in mannheim this rule was not enforced because the audiences were largely made up of people from a distance, and among these were always a few timid ladies who were afraid that if they had to go into an anteroom to get their things when the play was over, they would miss their train. but the great mass of those who came from a distance always ran the risk and took the chances, preferring the loss of a train to a breach of good manners and the discomfort of being unpleasantly conspicuous during a stretch of three or four hours. chapter x [how wagner operas bang along] three or four hours. that is a long time to sit in one place, whether one be conspicuous or not, yet some of wagner's operas bang along for six whole hours on a stretch! but the people sit there and enjoy it all, and wish it would last longer. a german lady in munich told me that a person could not like wagner's music at first, but must go through the deliberate process of learning to like it--then he would have his sure reward; for when he had learned to like it he would hunger for it and never be able to get enough of it. she said that six hours of wagner was by no means too much. she said that this composer had made a complete revolution in music and was burying the old masters one by one. and she said that wagner's operas differed from all others in one notable respect, and that was that they were not merely spotted with music here and there, but were all music, from the first strain to the last. this surprised me. i said i had attended one of his insurrections, and found hardly any music in it except the wedding chorus. she said "lohengrin" was noisier than wagner's other operas, but that if i would keep on going to see it i would find by and by that it was all music, and therefore would then enjoy it. i could have said, "but would you advise a person to deliberately practice having a toothache in the pit of his stomach for a couple of years in order that he might then come to enjoy it?" but i reserved that remark. this lady was full of the praises of the head-tenor who had performed in a wagner opera the night before, and went on to enlarge upon his old and prodigious fame, and how many honors had been lavished upon him by the princely houses of germany. here was another surprise. i had attended that very opera, in the person of my agent, and had made close and accurate observations. so i said: "why, madam, my experience warrants me in stating that that tenor's voice is not a voice at all, but only a shriek--the shriek of a hyena." "that is very true," she said; "he cannot sing now; it is already many years that he has lost his voice, but in other times he sang, yes, divinely! so whenever he comes now, you shall see, yes, that the theater will not hold the people. jawohl bei gott! his voice is wunderscho"n in that past time." i said she was discovering to me a kindly trait in the germans which was worth emulating. i said that over the water we were not quite so generous; that with us, when a singer had lost his voice and a jumper had lost his legs, these parties ceased to draw. i said i had been to the opera in hanover, once, and in mannheim once, and in munich (through my authorized agent) once, and this large experience had nearly persuaded me that the germans preferred singers who couldn't sing. this was not such a very extravagant speech, either, for that burly mannheim tenor's praises had been the talk of all heidelberg for a week before his performance took place--yet his voice was like the distressing noise which a nail makes when you screech it across a window-pane. i said so to heidelberg friends the next day, and they said, in the calmest and simplest way, that that was very true, but that in earlier times his voice had been wonderfully fine. and the tenor in hanover was just another example of this sort. the english-speaking german gentleman who went with me to the opera there was brimming with enthusiasm over that tenor. he said: "ach gott! a great man! you shall see him. he is so celebrate in all germany--and he has a pension, yes, from the government. he not obliged to sing now, only twice every year; but if he not sing twice each year they take him his pension away." very well, we went. when the renowned old tenor appeared, i got a nudge and an excited whisper: "now you see him!" but the "celebrate" was an astonishing disappointment to me. if he had been behind a screen i should have supposed they were performing a surgical operation on him. i looked at my friend--to my great surprise he seemed intoxicated with pleasure, his eyes were dancing with eager delight. when the curtain at last fell, he burst into the stormiest applause, and kept it up--as did the whole house--until the afflictive tenor had come three times before the curtain to make his bow. while the glowing enthusiast was swabbing the perspiration from his face, i said: "i don't mean the least harm, but really, now, do you think he can sing?" "him? no! gott im himmel, aber, how he has been able to sing twenty-five years ago?" [then pensively.] "ach, no, now he not sing any more, he only cry. when he think he sing, now, he not sing at all, no, he only make like a cat which is unwell." where and how did we get the idea that the germans are a stolid, phlegmatic race? in truth, they are widely removed from that. they are warm-hearted, emotional, impulsive, enthusiastic, their tears come at the mildest touch, and it is not hard to move them to laughter. they are the very children of impulse. we are cold and self-contained, compared to the germans. they hug and kiss and cry and shout and dance and sing; and where we use one loving, petting expressions they pour out a score. their language is full of endearing diminutives; nothing that they love escapes the application of a petting diminutive--neither the house, nor the dog, nor the horse, nor the grandmother, nor any other creature, animate or inanimate. in the theaters at hanover, hamburg, and mannheim, they had a wise custom. the moment the curtain went up, the light in the body of the house went down. the audience sat in the cool gloom of a deep twilight, which greatly enhanced the glowing splendors of the stage. it saved gas, too, and people were not sweated to death. when i saw "king lear" played, nobody was allowed to see a scene shifted; if there was nothing to be done but slide a forest out of the way and expose a temple beyond, one did not see that forest split itself in the middle and go shrieking away, with the accompanying disenchanting spectacle of the hands and heels of the impelling impulse--no, the curtain was always dropped for an instant--one heard not the least movement behind it--but when it went up, the next instant, the forest was gone. even when the stage was being entirely reset, one heard no noise. during the whole time that "king lear" was playing the curtain was never down two minutes at any one time. the orchestra played until the curtain was ready to go up for the first time, then they departed for the evening. where the stage waits never each two minutes there is no occasion for music. i had never seen this two-minute business between acts but once before, and that was when the "shaughraun" was played at wallack's. i was at a concert in munich one night, the people were streaming in, the clock-hand pointed to seven, the music struck up, and instantly all movement in the body of the house ceased--nobody was standing, or walking up the aisles, or fumbling with a seat, the stream of incomers had suddenly dried up at its source. i listened undisturbed to a piece of music that was fifteen minutes long--always expecting some tardy ticket-holders to come crowding past my knees, and being continuously and pleasantly disappointed--but when the last note was struck, here came the stream again. you see, they had made those late comers wait in the comfortable waiting-parlor from the time the music had begin until it was ended. it was the first time i had ever seen this sort of criminals denied the privilege of destroying the comfort of a house full of their betters. some of these were pretty fine birds, but no matter, they had to tarry outside in the long parlor under the inspection of a double rank of liveried footmen and waiting-maids who supported the two walls with their backs and held the wraps and traps of their masters and mistresses on their arms. we had no footmen to hold our things, and it was not permissible to take them into the concert-room; but there were some men and women to take charge of them for us. they gave us checks for them and charged a fixed price, payable in advance--five cents. in germany they always hear one thing at an opera which has never yet been heard in america, perhaps--i mean the closing strain of a fine solo or duet. we always smash into it with an earthquake of applause. the result is that we rob ourselves of the sweetest part of the treat; we get the whiskey, but we don't get the sugar in the bottom of the glass. our way of scattering applause along through an act seems to me to be better than the mannheim way of saving it all up till the act is ended. i do not see how an actor can forget himself and portray hot passion before a cold still audience. i should think he would feel foolish. it is a pain to me to this day, to remember how that old german lear raged and wept and howled around the stage, with never a response from that hushed house, never a single outburst till the act was ended. to me there was something unspeakably uncomfortable in the solemn dead silences that always followed this old person's tremendous outpourings of his feelings. i could not help putting myself in his place--i thought i knew how sick and flat he felt during those silences, because i remembered a case which came under my observation once, and which--but i will tell the incident: one evening on board a mississippi steamboat, a boy of ten years lay asleep in a berth--a long, slim-legged boy, he was, encased in quite a short shirt; it was the first time he had ever made a trip on a steamboat, and so he was troubled, and scared, and had gone to bed with his head filled with impending snaggings, and explosions, and conflagrations, and sudden death. about ten o'clock some twenty ladies were sitting around about the ladies' saloon, quietly reading, sewing, embroidering, and so on, and among them sat a sweet, benignant old dame with round spectacles on her nose and her busy knitting-needles in her hands. now all of a sudden, into the midst of this peaceful scene burst that slim-shanked boy in the brief shirt, wild-eyed, erect-haired, and shouting, "fire, fire! jump and run, the boat's afire and there ain't a minute to lose!" all those ladies looked sweetly up and smiled, nobody stirred, the old lady pulled her spectacles down, looked over them, and said, gently: "but you mustn't catch cold, child. run and put on your breastpin, and then come and tell us all about it." it was a cruel chill to give to a poor little devil's gushing vehemence. he was expecting to be a sort of hero--the creator of a wild panic--and here everybody sat and smiled a mocking smile, and an old woman made fun of his bugbear. i turned and crept away--for i was that boy--and never even cared to discover whether i had dreamed the fire or actually seen it. i am told that in a german concert or opera, they hardly ever encore a song; that though they may be dying to hear it again, their good breeding usually preserves them against requiring the repetition. kings may encore; that is quite another matter; it delights everybody to see that the king is pleased; and as to the actor encored, his pride and gratification are simply boundless. still, there are circumstances in which even a royal encore-but it is better to illustrate. the king of bavaria is a poet, and has a poet's eccentricities--with the advantage over all other poets of being able to gratify them, no matter what form they may take. he is fond of opera, but not fond of sitting in the presence of an audience; therefore, it has sometimes occurred, in munich, that when an opera has been concluded and the players were getting off their paint and finery, a command has come to them to get their paint and finery on again. presently the king would arrive, solitary and alone, and the players would being at the beginning and do the entire opera over again with only that one individual in the vast solemn theater for audience. once he took an odd freak into his head. high up and out of sight, over the prodigious stage of the court theater is a maze of interlacing water-pipes, so pierced that in case of fire, innumerable little thread-like streams of water can be caused to descend; and in case of need, this discharge can be augmented to a pouring flood. american managers might want to make a note of that. the king was sole audience. the opera proceeded, it was a piece with a storm in it; the mimic thunder began to mutter, the mimic wind began to wail and sough, and the mimic rain to patter. the king's interest rose higher and higher; it developed into enthusiasm. he cried out: "it is very, very good, indeed! but i will have real rain! turn on the water!" the manager pleaded for a reversal of the command; said it would ruin the costly scenery and the splendid costumes, but the king cried: "no matter, no matter, i will have real rain! turn on the water!" so the real rain was turned on and began to descend in gossamer lances to the mimic flower-beds and gravel walks of the stage. the richly dressed actresses and actors tripped about singing bravely and pretending not to mind it. the king was delighted--his enthusiasm grew higher. he cried out: "bravo, bravo! more thunder! more lightning! turn on more rain!" the thunder boomed, the lightning glared, the storm-winds raged, the deluge poured down. the mimic royalty on the stage, with their soaked satins clinging to their bodies, slopped about ankle-deep in water, warbling their sweetest and best, the fiddlers under the eaves of the state sawed away for dear life, with the cold overflow spouting down the backs of their necks, and the dry and happy king sat in his lofty box and wore his gloves to ribbons applauding. "more yet!" cried the king; "more yet--let loose all the thunder, turn on all the water! i will hang the man that raises an umbrella!" when this most tremendous and effective storm that had ever been produced in any theater was at last over, the king's approbation was measureless. he cried: "magnificent, magnificent! encore! do it again!" but the manager succeeded in persuading him to recall the encore, and said the company would feel sufficiently rewarded and complimented in the mere fact that the encore was desired by his majesty, without fatiguing him with a repetition to gratify their own vanity. during the remainder of the act the lucky performers were those whose parts required changes of dress; the others were a soaked, bedraggled, and uncomfortable lot, but in the last degree picturesque. the stage scenery was ruined, trap-doors were so swollen that they wouldn't work for a week afterward, the fine costumes were spoiled, and no end of minor damages were done by that remarkable storm. it was royal idea--that storm--and royally carried out. but observe the moderation of the king; he did not insist upon his encore. if he had been a gladsome, unreflecting american opera-audience, he probably would have had his storm repeated and repeated until he drowned all those people. chapter xi [i paint a "turner"] the summer days passed pleasantly in heidelberg. we had a skilled trainer, and under his instructions we were getting our legs in the right condition for the contemplated pedestrian tours; we were well satisfied with the progress which we had made in the german language, [1. see appendix d for information concerning this fearful tongue.] and more than satisfied with what we had accomplished in art. we had had the best instructors in drawing and painting in germany--ha"mmerling, vogel, mu"ller, dietz, and schumann. ha"mmerling taught us landscape-painting. vogel taught us figure-drawing, mu"ller taught us to do still-life, and dietz and schumann gave us a finishing course in two specialties--battle-pieces and shipwrecks. whatever i am in art i owe to these men. i have something of the manner of each and all of them; but they all said that i had also a manner of my own, and that it was conspicuous. they said there was a marked individuality about my style--insomuch that if i ever painted the commonest type of a dog, i should be sure to throw a something into the aspect of that dog which would keep him from being mistaken for the creation of any other artist. secretly i wanted to believe all these kind sayings, but i could not; i was afraid that my masters' partiality for me, and pride in me, biased their judgment. so i resolved to make a test. privately, and unknown to any one, i painted my great picture, "heidelberg castle illuminated"--my first really important work in oils--and had it hung up in the midst of a wilderness of oil-pictures in the art exhibition, with no name attached to it. to my great gratification it was instantly recognized as mine. all the town flocked to see it, and people even came from neighboring localities to visit it. it made more stir than any other work in the exhibition. but the most gratifying thing of all was, that chance strangers, passing through, who had not heard of my picture, were not only drawn to it, as by a lodestone, the moment they entered the gallery, but always took it for a "turner." apparently nobody had ever done that. there were ruined castles on the overhanging cliffs and crags all the way; these were said to have their legends, like those on the rhine, and what was better still, they had never been in print. there was nothing in the books about that lovely region; it had been neglected by the tourist, it was virgin soil for the literary pioneer. meantime the knapsacks, the rough walking-suits and the stout walking-shoes which we had ordered, were finished and brought to us. a mr. x and a young mr. z had agreed to go with us. we went around one evening and bade good-by to our friends, and afterward had a little farewell banquet at the hotel. we got to bed early, for we wanted to make an early start, so as to take advantage of the cool of the morning. we were out of bed at break of day, feeling fresh and vigorous, and took a hearty breakfast, then plunged down through the leafy arcades of the castle grounds, toward the town. what a glorious summer morning it was, and how the flowers did pour out their fragrance, and how the birds did sing! it was just the time for a tramp through the woods and mountains. we were all dressed alike: broad slouch hats, to keep the sun off; gray knapsacks; blue army shirts; blue overalls; leathern gaiters buttoned tight from knee down to ankle; high-quarter coarse shoes snugly laced. each man had an opera-glass, a canteen, and a guide-book case slung over his shoulder, and carried an alpenstock in one hand and a sun-umbrella in the other. around our hats were wound many folds of soft white muslin, with the ends hanging and flapping down our backs--an idea brought from the orient and used by tourists all over europe. harris carried the little watch-like machine called a "pedometer," whose office is to keep count of a man's steps and tell how far he has walked. everybody stopped to admire our costumes and give us a hearty "pleasant march to you!" when we got downtown i found that we could go by rail to within five miles of heilbronn. the train was just starting, so we jumped aboard and went tearing away in splendid spirits. it was agreed all around that we had done wisely, because it would be just as enjoyable to walk down the neckar as up it, and it could not be needful to walk both ways. there were some nice german people in our compartment. i got to talking some pretty private matters presently, and harris became nervous; so he nudged me and said: "speak in german--these germans may understand english." i did so, it was well i did; for it turned out that there was not a german in that party who did not understand english perfectly. it is curious how widespread our language is in germany. after a while some of those folks got out and a german gentleman and his two young daughters got in. i spoke in german of one of the latter several times, but without result. finally she said: "ich verstehe nur deutch und englishe,"--or words to that effect. that is, "i don't understand any language but german and english." and sure enough, not only she but her father and sister spoke english. so after that we had all the talk we wanted; and we wanted a good deal, for they were agreeable people. they were greatly interested in our customs; especially the alpenstocks, for they had not seen any before. they said that the neckar road was perfectly level, so we must be going to switzerland or some other rugged country; and asked us if we did not find the walking pretty fatiguing in such warm weather. but we said no. we reached wimpfen--i think it was wimpfen--in about three hours, and got out, not the least tired; found a good hotel and ordered beer and dinner--then took a stroll through the venerable old village. it was very picturesque and tumble-down, and dirty and interesting. it had queer houses five hundred years old in it, and a military tower 115 feet high, which had stood there more than ten centuries. i made a little sketch of it. i kept a copy, but gave the original to the burgomaster. i think the original was better than the copy, because it had more windows in it and the grass stood up better and had a brisker look. there was none around the tower, though; i composed the grass myself, from studies i made in a field by heidelberg in ha"mmerling's time. the man on top, looking at the view, is apparently too large, but i found he could not be made smaller, conveniently. i wanted him there, and i wanted him visible, so i thought out a way to manage it; i composed the picture from two points of view; the spectator is to observe the man from bout where that flag is, and he must observe the tower itself from the ground. this harmonizes the seeming discrepancy. [figure 2] near an old cathedral, under a shed, were three crosses of stone--moldy and damaged things, bearing life-size stone figures. the two thieves were dressed in the fanciful court costumes of the middle of the sixteenth century, while the saviour was nude, with the exception of a cloth around the loins. we had dinner under the green trees in a garden belonging to the hotel and overlooking the neckar; then, after a smoke, we went to bed. we had a refreshing nap, then got up about three in the afternoon and put on our panoply. as we tramped gaily out at the gate of the town, we overtook a peasant's cart, partly laden with odds and ends of cabbages and similar vegetable rubbish, and drawn by a small cow and a smaller donkey yoked together. it was a pretty slow concern, but it got us into heilbronn before dark--five miles, or possibly it was seven. we stopped at the very same inn which the famous old robber-knight and rough fighter go"tz von berlichingen, abode in after he got out of captivity in the square tower of heilbronn between three hundred and fifty and four hundred years ago. harris and i occupied the same room which he had occupied and the same paper had not quite peeled off the walls yet. the furniture was quaint old carved stuff, full four hundred years old, and some of the smells were over a thousand. there was a hook in the wall, which the landlord said the terrific old go"tz used to hang his iron hand on when he took it off to go to bed. this room was very large--it might be called immense-and it was on the first floor; which means it was in the second story, for in europe the houses are so high that they do not count the first story, else they would get tired climbing before they got to the top. the wallpaper was a fiery red, with huge gold figures in it, well smirched by time, and it covered all the doors. these doors fitted so snugly and continued the figures of the paper so unbrokenly, that when they were closed one had to go feeling and searching along the wall to find them. there was a stove in the corner--one of those tall, square, stately white porcelain things that looks like a monument and keeps you thinking of death when you ought to be enjoying your travels. the windows looked out on a little alley, and over that into a stable and some poultry and pig yards in the rear of some tenement-houses. there were the customary two beds in the room, one in one end, the other in the other, about an old-fashioned brass-mounted, single-barreled pistol-shot apart. they were fully as narrow as the usual german bed, too, and had the german bed's ineradicable habit of spilling the blankets on the floor every time you forgot yourself and went to sleep. a round table as large as king arthur's stood in the center of the room; while the waiters were getting ready to serve our dinner on it we all went out to see the renowned clock on the front of the municipal buildings. chapter xii [what the wives saved] the rathhaus, or municipal building, is of the quaintest and most picturesque middle-age architecture. it has a massive portico and steps, before it, heavily balustraded, and adorned with life-sized rusty iron knights in complete armor. the clock-face on the front of the building is very large and of curious pattern. ordinarily, a gilded angel strikes the hour on a big bell with a hammer; as the striking ceases, a life-sized figure of time raises its hour-glass and turns it; two golden rams advance and butt each other; a gilded cock lifts its wings; but the main features are two great angels, who stand on each side of the dial with long horns at their lips; it was said that they blew melodious blasts on these horns every hour--but they did not do it for us. we were told, later, than they blew only at night, when the town was still. within the rathhaus were a number of huge wild boars' heads, preserved, and mounted on brackets along the wall; they bore inscriptions telling who killed them and how many hundred years ago it was done. one room in the building was devoted to the preservation of ancient archives. there they showed us no end of aged documents; some were signed by popes, some by tilly and other great generals, and one was a letter written and subscribed by go"tz von berlichingen in heilbronn in 1519 just after his release from the square tower. this fine old robber-knight was a devoutly and sincerely religious man, hospitable, charitable to the poor, fearless in fight, active, enterprising, and possessed of a large and generous nature. he had in him a quality of being able to overlook moderate injuries, and being able to forgive and forget mortal ones as soon as he had soundly trounced the authors of them. he was prompt to take up any poor devil's quarrel and risk his neck to right him. the common folk held him dear, and his memory is still green in ballad and tradition. he used to go on the highway and rob rich wayfarers; and other times he would swoop down from his high castle on the hills of the neckar and capture passing cargoes of merchandise. in his memoirs he piously thanks the giver of all good for remembering him in his needs and delivering sundry such cargoes into his hands at times when only special providences could have relieved him. he was a doughty warrior and found a deep joy in battle. in an assault upon a stronghold in bavaria when he was only twenty-three years old, his right hand was shot away, but he was so interested in the fight that he did not observe it for a while. he said that the iron hand which was made for him afterward, and which he wore for more than half a century, was nearly as clever a member as the fleshy one had been. i was glad to get a facsimile of the letter written by this fine old german robin hood, though i was not able to read it. he was a better artist with his sword than with his pen. we went down by the river and saw the square tower. it was a very venerable structure, very strong, and very ornamental. there was no opening near the ground. they had to use a ladder to get into it, no doubt. we visited the principal church, also--a curious old structure, with a towerlike spire adorned with all sorts of grotesque images. the inner walls of the church were placarded with large mural tablets of copper, bearing engraved inscriptions celebrating the merits of old heilbronn worthies of two or three centuries ago, and also bearing rudely painted effigies of themselves and their families tricked out in the queer costumes of those days. the head of the family sat in the foreground, and beyond him extended a sharply receding and diminishing row of sons; facing him sat his wife, and beyond her extended a low row of diminishing daughters. the family was usually large, but the perspective bad. then we hired the hack and the horse which go"tz von berlichingen used to use, and drove several miles into the country to visit the place called weibertreu--wife's fidelity i suppose it means. it was a feudal castle of the middle ages. when we reached its neighborhood we found it was beautifully situated, but on top of a mound, or hill, round and tolerably steep, and about two hundred feet high. therefore, as the sun was blazing hot, we did not climb up there, but took the place on trust, and observed it from a distance while the horse leaned up against a fence and rested. the place has no interest except that which is lent it by its legend, which is a very pretty one--to this effect: the legend in the middle ages, a couple of young dukes, brothers, took opposite sides in one of the wars, the one fighting for the emperor, the other against him. one of them owned the castle and village on top of the mound which i have been speaking of, and in his absence his brother came with his knights and soldiers and began a siege. it was a long and tedious business, for the people made a stubborn and faithful defense. but at last their supplies ran out and starvation began its work; more fell by hunger than by the missiles of the enemy. they by and by surrendered, and begged for charitable terms. but the beleaguering prince was so incensed against them for their long resistance that he said he would spare none but the women and children--all men should be put to the sword without exception, and all their goods destroyed. then the women came and fell on their knees and begged for the lives of their husbands. "no," said the prince, "not a man of them shall escape alive; you yourselves shall go with your children into houseless and friendless banishment; but that you may not starve i grant you this one grace, that each woman may bear with her from this place as much of her most valuable property as she is able to carry." very well, presently the gates swung open and out filed those women carrying their husbands on their shoulders. the besiegers, furious at the trick, rushed forward to slaughter the men, but the duke stepped between and said: "no, put up your swords--a prince's word is inviolable." when we got back to the hotel, king arthur's round table was ready for us in its white drapery, and the head waiter and his first assistant, in swallow-tails and white cravats, brought in the soup and the hot plates at once. mr. x had ordered the dinner, and when the wine came on, he picked up a bottle, glanced at the label, and then turned to the grave, the melancholy, the sepulchral head waiter and said it was not the sort of wine he had asked for. the head waiter picked up the bottle, cast his undertaker-eye on it and said: "it is true; i beg pardon." then he turned on his subordinate and calmly said, "bring another label." at the same time he slid the present label off with his hand and laid it aside; it had been newly put on, its paste was still wet. when the new label came, he put it on; our french wine being now turned into german wine, according to desire, the head waiter went blandly about his other duties, as if the working of this sort of miracle was a common and easy thing to him. mr. x said he had not known, before, that there were people honest enough to do this miracle in public, but he was aware that thousands upon thousands of labels were imported into america from europe every year, to enable dealers to furnish to their customers in a quiet and inexpensive way all the different kinds of foreign wines they might require. we took a turn around the town, after dinner, and found it fully as interesting in the moonlight as it had been in the daytime. the streets were narrow and roughly paved, and there was not a sidewalk or a street-lamp anywhere. the dwellings were centuries old, and vast enough for hotels. they widened all the way up; the stories projected further and further forward and aside as they ascended, and the long rows of lighted windows, filled with little bits of panes, curtained with figured white muslin and adorned outside with boxes of flowers, made a pretty effect. the moon was bright, and the light and shadow very strong; and nothing could be more picturesque than those curving streets, with their rows of huge high gables leaning far over toward each other in a friendly gossiping way, and the crowds below drifting through the alternating blots of gloom and mellow bars of moonlight. nearly everybody was abroad, chatting, singing, romping, or massed in lazy comfortable attitudes in the doorways. in one place there was a public building which was fenced about with a thick, rusty chain, which sagged from post to post in a succession of low swings. the pavement, here, was made of heavy blocks of stone. in the glare of the moon a party of barefooted children were swinging on those chains and having a noisy good time. they were not the first ones who have done that; even their great-great-grandfathers had not been the first to do it when they were children. the strokes of the bare feet had worn grooves inches deep in the stone flags; it had taken many generations of swinging children to accomplish that. everywhere in the town were the mold and decay that go with antiquity, and evidence of it; but i do not know that anything else gave us so vivid a sense of the old age of heilbronn as those footworn grooves in the paving-stones. chapter xiii [my long crawl in the dark] when we got back to the hotel i wound and set the pedometer and put it in my pocket, for i was to carry it next day and keep record of the miles we made. the work which we had given the instrument to do during which had just closed had not fatigued it perceptibly. we were in bed by ten, for we wanted to be up and away on our tramp homeward with the dawn. i hung fire, but harris went to sleep at once. i hate a man who goes to sleep at once; there is a sort of indefinable something about it which is not exactly an insult, and yet is an insolence; and one which is hard to bear, too. i lay there fretting over this injury, and trying to go to sleep; but the harder i tried, the wider awake i grew. i got to feeling very lonely in the dark, ith no company but an undigested dinner. my mind got a start by and by, and began to consider the beginning of every subject which has ever been thought of; but it never went further than the beginning; it was touch and go; it fled from topic to topic with a frantic speed. at the end of an hour my head was in a perfect whirl and i was dead tired, fagged out. the fatigue was so great that it presently began to make some head against the nervous excitement; while imagining myself wide awake, i would really doze into momentary unconsciousness, and come suddenly out of it with a physical jerk which nearly wrenched my joints apart--the delusion of the instant being that i was tumbling backward over a precipice. after i had fallen over eight or nine precipices and thus found out that one half of my brain had been asleep eight or nine times without the wide-awake, hard-working other half suspecting it, the periodical unconsciousnesses began to extend their spell gradually over more of my brain-territory, and at last i sank into a drowse which grew deeper and deeper and was doubtless just on the very point of being a solid, blessed dreamless stupor, when--what was that? my dulled faculties dragged themselves partly back to life and took a receptive attitude. now out of an immense, a limitless distance, came a something which grew and grew, and approached, and presently was recognizable as a sound-it had rather seemed to be a feeling, before. this sound was a mile away, now--perhaps it was the murmur of a storm; and now it was nearer--not a quarter of a mile away; was it the muffled rasping and grinding of distant machinery? no, it came still nearer; was it the measured tramp of a marching troop? but it came nearer still, and still nearer--and at last it was right in the room: it was merely a mouse gnawing the woodwork. so i had held my breath all that time for such a trifle. well, what was done could not be helped; i would go to sleep at once and make up the lost time. that was a thoughtless thought. without intending it--hardly knowing it--i fell to listening intently to that sound, and even unconsciously counting the strokes of the mouse's nutmeg-grater. presently i was deriving exquisite suffering from this employment, yet maybe i could have endured it if the mouse had attended steadily to his work; but he did not do that; he stopped every now and then, and i suffered more while waiting and listening for him to begin again than i did while he was gnawing. along at first i was mentally offering a reward of five--six--seven--ten--dollars for that mouse; but toward the last i was offering rewards which were entirely beyond my means. i close-reefed my ears-that is to say, i bent the flaps of them down and furled them into five or six folds, and pressed them against the hearing-orifice--but it did no good: the faculty was so sharpened by nervous excitement that it was become a microphone and could hear through the overlays without trouble. my anger grew to a frenzy. i finally did what all persons before me have done, clear back to adam,--resolved to throw something. i reached down and got my walking-shoes, then sat up in bed and listened, in order to exactly locate the noise. but i couldn't do it; it was as unlocatable as a cricket's noise; and where one thinks that that is, is always the very place where it isn't. so i presently hurled a shoe at random, and with a vicious vigor. it struck the wall over harris's head and fell down on him; i had not imagined i could throw so far. it woke harris, and i was glad of it until i found he was not angry; then i was sorry. he soon went to sleep again, which pleased me; but straightway the mouse began again, which roused my temper once more. i did not want to wake harris a second time, but the gnawing continued until i was compelled to throw the other shoe. this time i broke a mirror--there were two in the room--i got the largest one, of course. harris woke again, but did not complain, and i was sorrier than ever. i resolved that i would suffer all possible torture before i would disturb him a third time. the mouse eventually retired, and by and by i was sinking to sleep, when a clock began to strike; i counted till it was done, and was about to drowse again when another clock began; i counted; then the two great rathhaus clock angels began to send forth soft, rich, melodious blasts from their long trumpets. i had never heard anything that was so lovely, or weird, or mysterious--but when they got to blowing the quarter-hours, they seemed to me to be overdoing the thing. every time i dropped off for the moment, a new noise woke me. each time i woke i missed my coverlet, and had to reach down to the floor and get it again. at last all sleepiness forsook me. i recognized the fact that i was hopelessly and permanently wide awake. wide awake, and feverish and thirsty. when i had lain tossing there as long as i could endure it, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to dress and go out in the great square and take a refreshing wash in the fountain, and smoke and reflect there until the remnant of the night was gone. i believed i could dress in the dark without waking harris. i had banished my shoes after the mouse, but my slippers would do for a summer night. so i rose softly, and gradually got on everything--down to one sock. i couldn't seem to get on the track of that sock, any way i could fix it. but i had to have it; so i went down on my hands and knees, with one slipper on and the other in my hand, and began to paw gently around and rake the floor, but with no success. i enlarged my circle, and went on pawing and raking. with every pressure of my knee, how the floor creaked! and every time i chanced to rake against any article, it seemed to give out thirty-five or thirty-six times more noise than it would have done in the daytime. in those cases i always stopped and held my breath till i was sure harris had not awakened--then i crept along again. i moved on and on, but i could not find the sock; i could not seem to find anything but furniture. i could not remember that there was much furniture in the room when i went to bed, but the place was alive with it now --especially chairs--chairs everywhere-had a couple of families moved in, in the mean time? and i never could seem to glance on one of those chairs, but always struck it full and square with my head. my temper rose, by steady and sure degrees, and as i pawed on and on, i fell to making vicious comments under my breath. finally, with a venomous access of irritation, i said i would leave without the sock; so i rose up and made straight for the door--as i supposed--and suddenly confronted my dim spectral image in the unbroken mirror. it startled the breath out of me, for an instant; it also showed me that i was lost, and had no sort of idea where i was. when i realized this, i was so angry that i had to sit down on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the roof off with an explosion of opinion. if there had been only one mirror, it might possibly have helped to locate me; but there were two, and two were as bad as a thousand; besides, these were on opposite sides of the room. i could see the dim blur of the windows, but in my turned-around condition they were exactly where they ought not to be, and so they only confused me instead of helping me. i started to get up, and knocked down an umbrella; it made a noise like a pistol-shot when it struck that hard, slick, carpetless floor; i grated my teeth and held my breath--harris did not stir. i set the umbrella slowly and carefully on end against the wall, but as soon as i took my hand away, its heel slipped from under it, and down it came again with another bang. i shrunk together and listened a moment in silent fury-no harm done, everything quiet. with the most painstaking care and nicety, i stood the umbrella up once more, took my hand away, and down it came again. i have been strictly reared, but if it had not been so dark and solemn and awful there in that lonely, vast room, i do believe i should have said something then which could not be put into a sunday-school book without injuring the sale of it. if my reasoning powers had not been already sapped dry by my harassments, i would have known better than to try to set an umbrella on end on one of those glassy german floors in the dark; it can't be done in the daytime without four failures to one success. i had one comfort, though--harris was yet still and silent--he had not stirred. the umbrella could not locate me--there were four standing around the room, and all alike. i thought i would feel along the wall and find the door in that way. i rose up and began this operation, but raked down a picture. it was not a large one, but it made noise enough for a panorama. harris gave out no sound, but i felt that if i experimented any further with the pictures i should be sure to wake him. better give up trying to get out. yes, i would find king arthur's round table once more--i had already found it several times--and use it for a base of departure on an exploring tour for my bed; if i could find my bed i could then find my water pitcher; i would quench my raging thirst and turn in. so i started on my hands and knees, because i could go faster that way, and with more confidence, too, and not knock down things. by and by i found the table--with my head--rubbed the bruise a little, then rose up and started, with hands abroad and fingers spread, to balance myself. i found a chair; then a wall; then another chair; then a sofa; then an alpenstock, then another sofa; this confounded me, for i had thought there was only one sofa. i hunted up the table again and took a fresh start; found some more chairs. it occurred to me, now, as it ought to have done before, that as the table was round, it was therefore of no value as a base to aim from; so i moved off once more, and at random among the wilderness of chairs and sofas-wandering off into unfamiliar regions, and presently knocked a candlestick and knocked off a lamp, grabbed at the lamp and knocked off a water pitcher with a rattling crash, and thought to myself, "i've found you at last--i judged i was close upon you." harris shouted "murder," and "thieves," and finished with "i'm absolutely drowned." the crash had roused the house. mr. x pranced in, in his long night-garment, with a candle, young z after him with another candle; a procession swept in at another door, with candles and lanterns--landlord and two german guests in their nightgowns and a chambermaid in hers. i looked around; i was at harris's bed, a sabbath-day's journey from my own. there was only one sofa; it was against the wall; there was only one chair where a body could get at it--i had been revolving around it like a planet, and colliding with it like a comet half the night. i explained how i had been employing myself, and why. then the landlord's party left, and the rest of us set about our preparations for breakfast, for the dawn was ready to break. i glanced furtively at my pedometer, and found i had made 47 miles. but i did not care, for i had come out for a pedestrian tour anyway. chapter xiv [rafting down the neckar] when the landlord learned that i and my agents were artists, our party rose perceptibly in his esteem; we rose still higher when he learned that we were making a pedestrian tour of europe. he told us all about the heidelberg road, and which were the best places to avoid and which the best ones to tarry at; he charged me less than cost for the things i broke in the night; he put up a fine luncheon for us and added to it a quantity of great light-green plums, the pleasantest fruit in germany; he was so anxious to do us honor that he would not allow us to walk out of heilbronn, but called up go"tz von berlichingen's horse and cab and made us ride. i made a sketch of the turnout. it is not a work, it is only what artists call a "study"--a thing to make a finished picture from. this sketch has several blemishes in it; for instance, the wagon is not traveling as fast as the horse is. this is wrong. again, the person trying to get out of the way is too small; he is out of perspective, as we say. the two upper lines are not the horse's back, they are the reigns; there seems to be a wheel missing-this would be corrected in a finished work, of course. this thing flying out behind is not a flag, it is a curtain. that other thing up there is the sun, but i didn't get enough distance on it. i do not remember, now, what that thing is that is in front of the man who is running, but i think it is a haystack or a woman. this study was exhibited in the paris salon of 1879, but did not take any medal; they do not give medals for studies. [figure 3] we discharged the carriage at the bridge. the river was full of logs--long, slender, barkless pine logs--and we leaned on the rails of the bridge, and watched the men put them together into rafts. these rafts were of a shape and construction to suit the crookedness and extreme narrowness of the neckar. they were from fifty to one hundred yards long, and they gradually tapered from a nine-log breadth at their sterns, to a three-log breadth at their bow-ends. the main part of the steering is done at the bow, with a pole; the three-log breadth there furnishes room for only the steersman, for these little logs are not larger around than an average young lady's waist. the connections of the several sections of the raft are slack and pliant, so that the raft may be readily bent into any sort of curve required by the shape of the river. the neckar is in many places so narrow that a person can throw a dog across it, if he has one; when it is also sharply curved in such places, the raftsman has to do some pretty nice snug piloting to make the turns. the river is not always allowed to spread over its whole bed--which is as much as thirty, and sometimes forty yards wide--but is split into three equal bodies of water, by stone dikes which throw the main volume, depth, and current into the central one. in low water these neat narrow-edged dikes project four or five inches above the surface, like the comb of a submerged roof, but in high water they are overflowed. a hatful of rain makes high water in the neckar, and a basketful produces an overflow. there are dikes abreast the schloss hotel, and the current is violently swift at that point. i used to sit for hours in my glass cage, watching the long, narrow rafts slip along through the central channel, grazing the right-bank dike and aiming carefully for the middle arch of the stone bridge below; i watched them in this way, and lost all this time hoping to see one of them hit the bridge-pier and wreck itself sometime or other, but was always disappointed. one was smashed there one morning, but i had just stepped into my room a moment to light a pipe, so i lost it. while i was looking down upon the rafts that morning in heilbronn, the daredevil spirit of adventure came suddenly upon me, and i said to my comrades: "_i_ am going to heidelberg on a raft. will you venture with me?" their faces paled a little, but they assented with as good a grace as they could. harris wanted to cable his mother--thought it his duty to do that, as he was all she had in this world--so, while he attended to this, i went down to the longest and finest raft and hailed the captain with a hearty "ahoy, shipmate!" which put us upon pleasant terms at once, and we entered upon business. i said we were on a pedestrian tour to heidelberg, and would like to take passage with him. i said this partly through young z, who spoke german very well, and partly through mr. x, who spoke it peculiarly. i can understand german as well as the maniac that invented it, but i talk it best through an interpreter. the captain hitched up his trousers, then shifted his quid thoughtfully. presently he said just what i was expecting he would say--that he had no license to carry passengers, and therefore was afraid the law would be after him in case the matter got noised about or any accident happened. so i chartered the raft and the crew and took all the responsibilities on myself. with a rattling song the starboard watch bent to their work and hove the cable short, then got the anchor home, and our bark moved off with a stately stride, and soon was bowling along at about two knots an hour. our party were grouped amidships. at first the talk was a little gloomy, and ran mainly upon the shortness of life, the uncertainty of it, the perils which beset it, and the need and wisdom of being always prepared for the worst; this shaded off into low-voiced references to the dangers of the deep, and kindred matters; but as the gray east began to redden and the mysterious solemnity and silence of the dawn to give place to the joy-songs of the birds, the talk took a cheerier tone, and our spirits began to rise steadily. germany, in the summer, is the perfection of the beautiful, but nobody has understood, and realized, and enjoyed the utmost possibilities of this soft and peaceful beauty unless he has voyaged down the neckar on a raft. the motion of a raft is the needful motion; it is gentle, and gliding, and smooth, and noiseless; it calms down all feverish activities, it soothes to sleep all nervous hurry and impatience; under its restful influence all the troubles and vexations and sorrows that harass the mind vanish away, and existence becomes a dream, a charm, a deep and tranquil ecstasy. how it contrasts with hot and perspiring pedestrianism, and dusty and deafening railroad rush, and tedious jolting behind tired horses over blinding white roads! we went slipping silently along, between the green and fragrant banks, with a sense of pleasure and contentment that grew, and grew, all the time. sometimes the banks were overhung with thick masses of willows that wholly hid the ground behind; sometimes we had noble hills on one hand, clothed densely with foliage to their tops, and on the other hand open levels blazing with poppies, or clothed in the rich blue of the corn-flower; sometimes we drifted in the shadow of forests, and sometimes along the margin of long stretches of velvety grass, fresh and green and bright, a tireless charm to the eye. and the birds!--they were everywhere; they swept back and forth across the river constantly, and their jubilant music was never stilled. it was a deep and satisfying pleasure to see the sun create the new morning, and gradually, patiently, lovingly, clothe it on with splendor after splendor, and glory after glory, till the miracle was complete. how different is this marvel observed from a raft, from what it is when one observes it through the dingy windows of a railway-station in some wretched village while he munches a petrified sandwich and waits for the train. chapter xv down the river [charming waterside pictures] men and women and cattle were at work in the dewy fields by this time. the people often stepped aboard the raft, as we glided along the grassy shores, and gossiped with us and with the crew for a hundred yards or so, then stepped ashore again, refreshed by the ride. only the men did this; the women were too busy. the women do all kinds of work on the continent. they dig, they hoe, they reap, they sow, they bear monstrous burdens on their backs, they shove similar ones long distances on wheelbarrows, they drag the cart when there is no dog or lean cow to drag it--and when there is, they assist the dog or cow. age is no matter--the older the woman the stronger she is, apparently. on the farm a woman's duties are not defined--she does a little of everything; but in the towns it is different, there she only does certain things, the men do the rest. for instance, a hotel chambermaid has nothing to do but make beds and fires in fifty or sixty rooms, bring towels and candles, and fetch several tons of water up several flights of stairs, a hundred pounds at a time, in prodigious metal pitchers. she does not have to work more than eighteen or twenty hours a day, and she can always get down on her knees and scrub the floors of halls and closets when she is tired and needs a rest. as the morning advanced and the weather grew hot, we took off our outside clothing and sat in a row along the edge of the raft and enjoyed the scenery, with our sun-umbrellas over our heads and our legs dangling in the water. every now and then we plunged in and had a swim. every projecting grassy cape had its joyous group of naked children, the boys to themselves and the girls to themselves, the latter usually in care of some motherly dame who sat in the shade of a tree with her knitting. the little boys swam out to us, sometimes, but the little maids stood knee-deep in the water and stopped their splashing and frolicking to inspect the raft with their innocent eyes as it drifted by. once we turned a corner suddenly and surprised a slender girl of twelve years or upward, just stepping into the water. she had not time to run, but she did what answered just as well; she promptly drew a lithe young willow bough athwart her white body with one hand, and then contemplated us with a simple and untroubled interest. thus she stood while we glided by. she was a pretty creature, and she and her willow bough made a very pretty picture, and one which could not offend the modesty of the most fastidious spectator. her white skin had a low bank of fresh green willows for background and effective contrast--for she stood against them--and above and out of them projected the eager faces and white shoulders of two smaller girls. toward noon we heard the inspiring cry: "sail ho!" "where away?" shouted the captain. "three points off the weather bow!" we ran forward to see the vessel. it proved to be a steamboat--for they had begun to run a steamer up the neckar, for the first time in may. she was a tug, and one of a very peculiar build and aspect. i had often watched her from the hotel, and wondered how she propelled herself, for apparently she had no propeller or paddles. she came churning along, now, making a deal of noise of one kind or another, and aggravating it every now and then by blowing a hoarse whistle. she had nine keel-boats hitched on behind and following after her in a long, slender rank. we met her in a narrow place, between dikes, and there was hardly room for us both in the cramped passage. as she went grinding and groaning by, we perceived the secret of her moving impulse. she did not drive herself up the river with paddles or propeller, she pulled herself by hauling on a great chain. this chain is laid in the bed of the river and is only fastened at the two ends. it is seventy miles long. it comes in over the boat's bow, passes around a drum, and is payed out astern. she pulls on that chain, and so drags herself up the river or down it. she has neither bow or stern, strictly speaking, for she has a long-bladed rudder on each end and she never turns around. she uses both rudders all the time, and they are powerful enough to enable her to turn to the right or the left and steer around curves, in spite of the strong resistance of the chain. i would not have believed that that impossible thing could be done; but i saw it done, and therefore i know that there is one impossible thing which can be done. what miracle will man attempt next? we met many big keel-boats on their way up, using sails, mule power, and profanity--a tedious and laborious business. a wire rope led from the foretopmast to the file of mules on the tow-path a hundred yards ahead, and by dint of much banging and swearing and urging, the detachment of drivers managed to get a speed of two or three miles an hour out of the mules against the stiff current. the neckar has always been used as a canal, and thus has given employment to a great many men and animals; but now that this steamboat is able, with a small crew and a bushel or so of coal, to take nine keel-boats farther up the river in one hour than thirty men and thirty mules can do it in two, it is believed that the old-fashioned towing industry is on its death-bed. a second steamboat began work in the neckar three months after the first one was put in service. [figure 4] at noon we stepped ashore and bought some bottled beer and got some chickens cooked, while the raft waited; then we immediately put to sea again, and had our dinner while the beer was cold and the chickens hot. there is no pleasanter place for such a meal than a raft that is gliding down the winding neckar past green meadows and wooded hills, and slumbering villages, and craggy heights graced with crumbling towers and battlements. in one place we saw a nicely dressed german gentleman without any spectacles. before i could come to anchor he had got underway. it was a great pity. i so wanted to make a sketch of him. the captain comforted me for my loss, however, by saying that the man was without any doubt a fraud who had spectacles, but kept them in his pocket in order to make himself conspicuous. below hassmersheim we passed hornberg, go"tz von berlichingen's old castle. it stands on a bold elevation two hundred feet above the surface of the river; it has high vine-clad walls enclosing trees, and a peaked tower about seventy-five feet high. the steep hillside, from the castle clear down to the water's edge, is terraced, and clothed thick with grape vines. this is like farming a mansard roof. all the steeps along that part of the river which furnish the proper exposure, are given up to the grape. that region is a great producer of rhine wines. the germans are exceedingly fond of rhine wines; they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. one tells them from vinegar by the label. the hornberg hill is to be tunneled, and the new railway will pass under the castle. the cave of the specter two miles below hornberg castle is a cave in a low cliff, which the captain of the raft said had once been occupied by a beautiful heiress of hornberg--the lady gertrude-in the old times. it was seven hundred years ago. she had a number of rich and noble lovers and one poor and obscure one, sir wendel lobenfeld. with the native chuckleheadedness of the heroine of romance, she preferred the poor and obscure lover. with the native sound judgment of the father of a heroine of romance, the von berlichingen of that day shut his daughter up in his donjon keep, or his oubliette, or his culverin, or some such place, and resolved that she should stay there until she selected a husband from among her rich and noble lovers. the latter visited her and persecuted her with their supplications, but without effect, for her heart was true to her poor despised crusader, who was fighting in the holy land. finally, she resolved that she would endure the attentions of the rich lovers no longer; so one stormy night she escaped and went down the river and hid herself in the cave on the other side. her father ransacked the country for her, but found not a trace of her. as the days went by, and still no tidings of her came, his conscience began to torture him, and he caused proclamation to be made that if she were yet living and would return, he would oppose her no longer, she might marry whom she would. the months dragged on, all hope forsook the old man, he ceased from his customary pursuits and pleasures, he devoted himself to pious works, and longed for the deliverance of death. now just at midnight, every night, the lost heiress stood in the mouth of her cave, arrayed in white robes, and sand a little love ballad which her crusader had made for her. she judged that if he came home alive the superstitious peasants would tell him about the ghost that sang in the cave, and that as soon as they described the ballad he would know that none but he and she knew that song, therefore he would suspect that she was alive, and would come and find her. as time went on, the people of the region became sorely distressed about the specter of the haunted cave. it was said that ill luck of one kind or another always overtook any one who had the misfortune to hear that song. eventually, every calamity that happened thereabouts was laid at the door of that music. consequently, no boatmen would consent to pass the cave at night; the peasants shunned the place, even in the daytime. but the faithful girl sang on, night after night, month after month, and patiently waited; her reward must come at last. five years dragged by, and still, every night at midnight, the plaintive tones floated out over the silent land, while the distant boatmen and peasants thrust their fingers into their ears and shuddered out a prayer. and now came the crusader home, bronzed and battle-scarred, but bringing a great and splendid fame to lay at the feet of his bride. the old lord of hornberg received him as his son, and wanted him to stay by him and be the comfort and blessing of his age; but the tale of that young girl's devotion to him and its pathetic consequences made a changed man of the knight. he could not enjoy his well-earned rest. he said his heart was broken, he would give the remnant of his life to high deeds in the cause of humanity, and so find a worthy death and a blessed reunion with the brave true heart whose love had more honored him than all his victories in war. when the people heard this resolve of his, they came and told him there was a pitiless dragon in human disguise in the haunted cave, a dread creature which no knight had yet been bold enough to face, and begged him to rid the land of its desolating presence. he said he would do it. they told him about the song, and when he asked what song it was, they said the memory of it was gone, for nobody had been hardy enough to listen to it for the past four years and more. toward midnight the crusader came floating down the river in a boat, with his trusty cross-bow in his hands. he drifted silently through the dim reflections of the crags and trees, with his intent eyes fixed upon the low cliff which he was approaching. as he drew nearer, he discerned the black mouth of the cave. now--is that a white figure? yes. the plaintive song begins to well forth and float away over meadow and river--the cross-bow is slowly raised to position, a steady aim is taken, the bolt flies straight to the mark--the figure sinks down, still singing, the knight takes the wool out of his ears, and recognizes the old ballad--too late! ah, if he had only not put the wool in his ears! the crusader went away to the wars again, and presently fell in battle, fighting for the cross. tradition says that during several centuries the spirit of the unfortunate girl sang nightly from the cave at midnight, but the music carried no curse with it; and although many listened for the mysterious sounds, few were favored, since only those could hear them who had never failed in a trust. it is believed that the singing still continues, but it is known that nobody has heard it during the present century. chapter xvi an ancient legend of the rhine [the lorelei] the last legend reminds one of the "lorelei"--a legend of the rhine. there is a song called "the lorelei." germany is rich in folk-songs, and the words and airs of several of them are peculiarly beautiful--but "the lorelei" is the people's favorite. i could not endure it at first, but by and by it began to take hold of me, and now there is no tune which i like so well. it is not possible that it is much known in america, else i should have heard it there. the fact that i never heard it there, is evidence that there are others in my country who have fared likewise; therefore, for the sake of these, i mean to print the words and music in this chapter. and i will refresh the reader's memory by printing the legend of the lorelei, too. i have it by me in the legends of the rhine, done into english by the wildly gifted garnham, bachelor of arts. i print the legend partly to refresh my own memory, too, for i have never read it before. the legend lore (two syllables) was a water nymph who used to sit on a high rock called the ley or lei (pronounced like our word lie) in the rhine, and lure boatmen to destruction in a furious rapid which marred the channel at that spot. she so bewitched them with her plaintive songs and her wonderful beauty that they forgot everything else to gaze up at her, and so they presently drifted among the broken reefs and were lost. in those old, old times, the count bruno lived in a great castle near there with his son, the count hermann, a youth of twenty. hermann had heard a great deal about the beautiful lore, and had finally fallen very deeply in love with her without having seen her. so he used to wander to the neighborhood of the lei, evenings, with his zither and "express his longing in low singing," as garnham says. on one of these occasions, "suddenly there hovered around the top of the rock a brightness of unequaled clearness and color, which, in increasingly smaller circles thickened, was the enchanting figure of the beautiful lore. "an unintentional cry of joy escaped the youth, he let his zither fall, and with extended arms he called out the name of the enigmatical being, who seemed to stoop lovingly to him and beckon to him in a friendly manner; indeed, if his ear did not deceive him, she called his name with unutterable sweet whispers, proper to love. beside himself with delight the youth lost his senses and sank senseless to the earth." after that he was a changed person. he went dreaming about, thinking only of his fairy and caring for naught else in the world. "the old count saw with affliction this changement in his son," whose cause he could not divine, and tried to divert his mind into cheerful channels, but to no purpose. then the old count used authority. he commanded the youth to betake himself to the camp. obedience was promised. garnham says: "it was on the evening before his departure, as he wished still once to visit the lei and offer to the nymph of the rhine his sighs, the tones of his zither, and his songs. he went, in his boat, this time accompanied by a faithful squire, down the stream. the moon shed her silvery light over the whole country; the steep bank mountains appeared in the most fantastical shapes, and the high oaks on either side bowed their branches on hermann's passing. as soon as he approached the lei, and was aware of the surf-waves, his attendant was seized with an inexpressible anxiety and he begged permission to land; but the knight swept the strings of his guitar and sang: "once i saw thee in dark night, in supernatural beauty bright; of light-rays, was the figure wove, to share its light, locked-hair strove. "thy garment color wave-dove by thy hand the sign of love, thy eyes sweet enchantment, raying to me, oh! enchantment. "o, wert thou but my sweetheart, how willingly thy love to part! with delight i should be bound to thy rocky house in deep ground." that hermann should have gone to that place at all, was not wise; that he should have gone with such a song as that in his mouth was a most serious mistake. the lorelei did not "call his name in unutterable sweet whispers" this time. no, that song naturally worked an instant and thorough "changement" in her; and not only that, but it stirred the bowels of the whole afflicted region around about there--for-"scarcely had these tones sounded, everywhere there began tumult and sound, as if voices above and below the water. on the lei rose flames, the fairy stood above, at that time, and beckoned with her right hand clearly and urgently to the infatuated knight, while with a staff in her left hand she called the waves to her service. they began to mount heavenward; the boat was upset, mocking every exertion; the waves rose to the gunwale, and splitting on the hard stones, the boat broke into pieces. the youth sank into the depths, but the squire was thrown on shore by a powerful wave." the bitterest things have been said about the lorelei during many centuries, but surely her conduct upon this occasion entitles her to our respect. one feels drawn tenderly toward her and is moved to forget her many crimes and remember only the good deed that crowned and closed her career. "the fairy was never more seen; but her enchanting tones have often been heard. in the beautiful, refreshing, still nights of spring, when the moon pours her silver light over the country, the listening shipper hears from the rushing of the waves, the echoing clang of a wonderfully charming voice, which sings a song from the crystal castle, and with sorrow and fear he thinks on the young count hermann, seduced by the nymph." here is the music, and the german words by heinrich heine. this song has been a favorite in germany for forty years, and will remain a favorite always, maybe. [figure 5] i have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. when i am the reader, and the author considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite a nice compliment--but if he would do the translating for me i would try to get along without the compliment. if i were at home, no doubt i could get a translation of this poem, but i am abroad and can't; therefore i will make a translation myself. it may not be a good one, for poetry is out of my line, but it will serve my purpose--which is, to give the ungerman young girl a jingle of words to hang the tune on until she can get hold of a good version, made by some one who is a poet and knows how to convey a poetical thought from one language to another. the lorelei i cannot divine what it meaneth, this haunting nameless pain: a tale of the bygone ages keeps brooding through my brain: the faint air cools in the glooming, and peaceful flows the rhine, the thirsty summits are drinking the sunset's flooding wine; the loveliest maiden is sitting high-throned in yon blue air, her golden jewels are shining, she combs her golden hair; she combs with a comb that is golden, and sings a weird refrain that steeps in a deadly enchantment the list'ner's ravished brain: the doomed in his drifting shallop, is tranced with the sad sweet tone, he sees not the yawning breakers, he sees but the maid alone: the pitiless billows engulf him!--so perish sailor and bark; and this, with her baleful singing, is the lorelei's gruesome work. i have a translation by garnham, bachelor of arts, in the legends of the rhine, but it would not answer the purpose i mentioned above, because the measure is too nobly irregular; it don't fit the tune snugly enough; in places it hangs over at the ends too far, and in other places one runs out of words before he gets to the end of a bar. still, garnham's translation has high merits, and i am not dreaming of leaving it out of my book. i believe this poet is wholly unknown in america and england; i take peculiar pleasure in bringing him forward because i consider that i discovered him: the lorelei translated by l. w. garnham, b.a. i do not know what it signifies. that i am so sorrowful? a fable of old times so terrifies, leaves my heart so thoughtful. the air is cool and it darkens, and calmly flows the rhine; the summit of the mountain hearkens in evening sunshine line. the most beautiful maiden entrances above wonderfully there, her beautiful golden attire glances, she combs her golden hair. with golden comb so lustrous, and thereby a song sings, it has a tone so wondrous, that powerful melody rings. the shipper in the little ship it effects with woe sad might; he does not see the rocky slip, he only regards dreaded height. i believe the turbulent waves swallow the last shipper and boat; she with her singing craves all to visit her magic moat. no translation could be closer. he has got in all the facts; and in their regular order, too. there is not a statistic wanting. it is as succinct as an invoice. that is what a translation ought to be; it should exactly reflect the thought of the original. you can't sing "above wonderfully there," because it simply won't go to the tune, without damaging the singer; but it is a most clingingly exact translation of dort oben wunderbar--fits it like a blister. mr. garnham's reproduction has other merits--a hundred of them--but it is not necessary to point them out. they will be detected. no one with a specialty can hope to have a monopoly of it. even garnham has a rival. mr. x had a small pamphlet with him which he had bought while on a visit to munich. it was entitled a catalogue of pictures in the old pinacotek, and was written in a peculiar kind of english. here are a few extracts: "it is not permitted to make use of the work in question to a publication of the same contents as well as to the pirated edition of it." "an evening landscape. in the foreground near a pond and a group of white beeches is leading a footpath animated by travelers." "a learned man in a cynical and torn dress holding an open book in his hand." "st. bartholomew and the executioner with the knife to fulfil the martyr." "portrait of a young man. a long while this picture was thought to be bindi altoviti's portrait; now somebody will again have it to be the self-portrait of raphael." "susan bathing, surprised by the two old man. in the background the lapidation of the condemned." ("lapidation" is good; it is much more elegant than "stoning.") "st. rochus sitting in a landscape with an angel who looks at his plague-sore, whilst the dog the bread in his mouth attents him." "spring. the goddess flora, sitting. behind her a fertile valley perfused by a river." "a beautiful bouquet animated by may-bugs, etc." "a warrior in armor with a gypseous pipe in his hand leans against a table and blows the smoke far away of himself." "a dutch landscape along a navigable river which perfuses it till to the background." "some peasants singing in a cottage. a woman lets drink a child out of a cup." "st. john's head as a boy--painted in fresco on a brick." (meaning a tile.) "a young man of the riccio family, his hair cut off right at the end, dressed in black with the same cap. attributed to raphael, but the signation is false." "the virgin holding the infant. it is very painted in the manner of sassoferrato." "a larder with greens and dead game animated by a cook-maid and two kitchen-boys." however, the english of this catalogue is at least as happy as that which distinguishes an inscription upon a certain picture in rome--to wit: "revelations-view. st. john in patterson's island." but meanwhile the raft is moving on. chapter xvii [why germans wear spectacles] a mile or two above eberbach we saw a peculiar ruin projecting above the foliage which clothed the peak of a high and very steep hill. this ruin consisted of merely a couple of crumbling masses of masonry which bore a rude resemblance to human faces; they leaned forward and touched foreheads, and had the look of being absorbed in conversation. this ruin had nothing very imposing or picturesque about it, and there was no great deal of it, yet it was called the "spectacular ruin." legend of the "spectacular ruin" the captain of the raft, who was as full of history as he could stick, said that in the middle ages a most prodigious fire-breathing dragon used to live in that region, and made more trouble than a tax-collector. he was as long as a railway-train, and had the customary impenetrable green scales all over him. his breath bred pestilence and conflagration, and his appetite bred famine. he ate men and cattle impartially, and was exceedingly unpopular. the german emperor of that day made the usual offer: he would grant to the destroyer of the dragon, any one solitary thing he might ask for; for he had a surplusage of daughters, and it was customary for dragon-killers to take a daughter for pay. so the most renowned knights came from the four corners of the earth and retired down the dragon's throat one after the other. a panic arose and spread. heroes grew cautious. the procession ceased. the dragon became more destructive than ever. the people lost all hope of succor, and fled to the mountains for refuge. at last sir wissenschaft, a poor and obscure knight, out of a far country, arrived to do battle with the monster. a pitiable object he was, with his armor hanging in rags about him, and his strange-shaped knapsack strapped upon his back. everybody turned up their noses at him, and some openly jeered him. but he was calm. he simply inquired if the emperor's offer was still in force. the emperor said it was--but charitably advised him to go and hunt hares and not endanger so precious a life as his in an attempt which had brought death to so many of the world's most illustrious heroes. but this tramp only asked--"were any of these heroes men of science?" this raised a laugh, of course, for science was despised in those days. but the tramp was not in the least ruffled. he said he might be a little in advance of his age, but no matter--science would come to be honored, some time or other. he said he would march against the dragon in the morning. out of compassion, then, a decent spear was offered him, but he declined, and said, "spears were useless to men of science." they allowed him to sup in the servants' hall, and gave him a bed in the stables. when he started forth in the morning, thousands were gathered to see. the emperor said: "do not be rash, take a spear, and leave off your knapsack." but the tramp said: "it is not a knapsack," and moved straight on. the dragon was waiting and ready. he was breathing forth vast volumes of sulphurous smoke and lurid blasts of flame. the ragged knight stole warily to a good position, then he unslung his cylindrical knapsack--which was simply the common fire-extinguisher known to modern times-and the first chance he got he turned on his hose and shot the dragon square in the center of his cavernous mouth. out went the fires in an instant, and the dragon curled up and died. this man had brought brains to his aid. he had reared dragons from the egg, in his laboratory, he had watched over them like a mother, and patiently studied them and experimented upon them while they grew. thus he had found out that fire was the life principle of a dragon; put out the dragon's fires and it could make steam no longer, and must die. he could not put out a fire with a spear, therefore he invented the extinguisher. the dragon being dead, the emperor fell on the hero's neck and said: "deliverer, name your request," at the same time beckoning out behind with his heel for a detachment of his daughters to form and advance. but the tramp gave them no observance. he simply said: "my request is, that upon me be conferred the monopoly of the manufacture and sale of spectacles in germany." the emperor sprang aside and exclaimed: "this transcends all the impudence i ever heard! a modest demand, by my halidome! why didn't you ask for the imperial revenues at once, and be done with it?" but the monarch had given his word, and he kept it. to everybody's surprise, the unselfish monopolist immediately reduced the price of spectacles to such a degree that a great and crushing burden was removed from the nation. the emperor, to commemorate this generous act, and to testify his appreciation of it, issued a decree commanding everybody to buy this benefactor's spectacles and wear them, whether they needed them or not. so originated the wide-spread custom of wearing spectacles in germany; and as a custom once established in these old lands is imperishable, this one remains universal in the empire to this day. such is the legend of the monopolist's once stately and sumptuous castle, now called the "spectacular ruin." on the right bank, two or three miles below the spectacular ruin, we passed by a noble pile of castellated buildings overlooking the water from the crest of a lofty elevation. a stretch of two hundred yards of the high front wall was heavily draped with ivy, and out of the mass of buildings within rose three picturesque old towers. the place was in fine order, and was inhabited by a family of princely rank. this castle had its legend, too, but i should not feel justified in repeating it because i doubted the truth of some of its minor details. along in this region a multitude of italian laborers were blasting away the frontage of the hills to make room for the new railway. they were fifty or a hundred feet above the river. as we turned a sharp corner they began to wave signals and shout warnings to us to look out for the explosions. it was all very well to warn us, but what could we do? you can't back a raft upstream, you can't hurry it downstream, you can't scatter out to one side when you haven't any room to speak of, you won't take to the perpendicular cliffs on the other shore when they appear to be blasting there, too. your resources are limited, you see. there is simply nothing for it but to watch and pray. for some hours we had been making three and a half or four miles an hour and we were still making that. we had been dancing right along until those men began to shout; then for the next ten minutes it seemed to me that i had never seen a raft go so slowly. when the first blast went off we raised our sun-umbrellas and waited for the result. no harm done; none of the stones fell in the water. another blast followed, and another and another. some of the rubbish fell in the water just astern of us. we ran that whole battery of nine blasts in a row, and it was certainly one of the most exciting and uncomfortable weeks i ever spent, either aship or ashore. of course we frequently manned the poles and shoved earnestly for a second or so, but every time one of those spurts of dust and debris shot aloft every man dropped his pole and looked up to get the bearings of his share of it. it was very busy times along there for a while. it appeared certain that we must perish, but even that was not the bitterest thought; no, the abjectly unheroic nature of the death--that was the sting--that and the bizarre wording of the resulting obituary: "shot with a rock, on a raft." there would be no poetry written about it. none could be written about it. example: not by war's shock, or war's shaft,--shot, with a rock, on a raft. no poet who valued his reputation would touch such a theme as that. i should be distinguished as the only "distinguished dead" who went down to the grave unsonneted, in 1878. but we escaped, and i have never regretted it. the last blast was peculiarly strong one, and after the small rubbish was done raining around us and we were just going to shake hands over our deliverance, a later and larger stone came down amongst our little group of pedestrians and wrecked an umbrella. it did no other harm, but we took to the water just the same. it seems that the heavy work in the quarries and the new railway gradings is done mainly by italians. that was a revelation. we have the notion in our country that italians never do heavy work at all, but confine themselves to the lighter arts, like organ-grinding, operatic singing, and assassination. we have blundered, that is plain. all along the river, near every village, we saw little station-houses for the future railway. they were finished and waiting for the rails and business. they were as trim and snug and pretty as they could be. they were always of brick or stone; they were of graceful shape, they had vines and flowers about them already, and around them the grass was bright and green, and showed that it was carefully looked after. they were a decoration to the beautiful landscape, not an offense. wherever one saw a pile of gravel or a pile of broken stone, it was always heaped as trimly and exactly as a new grave or a stack of cannon-balls; nothing about those stations or along the railroad or the wagon-road was allowed to look shabby or be unornamental. the keeping a country in such beautiful order as germany exhibits, has a wise practical side to it, too, for it keeps thousands of people in work and bread who would otherwise be idle and mischievous. as the night shut down, the captain wanted to tie up, but i thought maybe we might make hirschhorn, so we went on. presently the sky became overcast, and the captain came aft looking uneasy. he cast his eye aloft, then shook his head, and said it was coming on to blow. my party wanted to land at once--therefore i wanted to go on. the captain said we ought to shorten sail anyway, out of common prudence. consequently, the larboard watch was ordered to lay in his pole. it grew quite dark, now, and the wind began to rise. it wailed through the swaying branches of the trees, and swept our decks in fitful gusts. things were taking on an ugly look. the captain shouted to the steersman on the forward log: "how's she landing?" the answer came faint and hoarse from far forward: "nor'-east-and-by-nor'--east-by-east, half-east, sir." "let her go off a point!" "aye-aye, sir!" "what water have you got?" "shoal, sir. two foot large, on the stabboard, two and a half scant on the labboard!" "let her go off another point!" "aye-aye, sir!" "forward, men, all of you! lively, now! stand by to crowd her round the weather corner!" "aye-aye, sir!" then followed a wild running and trampling and hoarse shouting, but the forms of the men were lost in the darkness and the sounds were distorted and confused by the roaring of the wind through the shingle-bundles. by this time the sea was running inches high, and threatening every moment to engulf the frail bark. now came the mate, hurrying aft, and said, close to the captain's ear, in a low, agitated voice: "prepare for the worst, sir--we have sprung a leak!" "heavens! where?" "right aft the second row of logs." "nothing but a miracle can save us! don't let the men know, or there will be a panic and mutiny! lay her in shore and stand by to jump with the stern-line the moment she touches. gentlemen, i must look to you to second my endeavors in this hour of peril. you have hats--go forward and bail for your lives!" down swept another mighty blast of wind, clothed in spray and thick darkness. at such a moment as this, came from away forward that most appalling of all cries that are ever heard at sea: "man overboard!" the captain shouted: "hard a-port! never mind the man! let him climb aboard or wade ashore!" another cry came down the wind: "breakers ahead!" "where away?" "not a log's length off her port fore-foot!" we had groped our slippery way forward, and were now bailing with the frenzy of despair, when we heard the mate's terrified cry, from far aft: "stop that dashed bailing, or we shall be aground!" but this was immediately followed by the glad shout: "land aboard the starboard transom!" "saved!" cried the captain. "jump ashore and take a turn around a tree and pass the bight aboard!" the next moment we were all on shore weeping and embracing for joy, while the rain poured down in torrents. the captain said he had been a mariner for forty years on the neckar, and in that time had seen storms to make a man's cheek blanch and his pulses stop, but he had never, never seen a storm that even approached this one. how familiar that sounded! for i have been at sea a good deal and have heard that remark from captains with a frequency accordingly. we framed in our minds the usual resolution of thanks and admiration and gratitude, and took the first opportunity to vote it, and put it in writing and present it to the captain, with the customary speech. we tramped through the darkness and the drenching summer rain full three miles, and reached "the naturalist tavern" in the village of hirschhorn just an hour before midnight, almost exhausted from hardship, fatigue, and terror. i can never forget that night. the landlord was rich, and therefore could afford to be crusty and disobliging; he did not at all like being turned out of his warm bed to open his house for us. but no matter, his household got up and cooked a quick supper for us, and we brewed a hot punch for ourselves, to keep off consumption. after supper and punch we had an hour's soothing smoke while we fought the naval battle over again and voted the resolutions; then we retired to exceedingly neat and pretty chambers upstairs that had clean, comfortable beds in them with heirloom pillowcases most elaborately and tastefully embroidered by hand. such rooms and beds and embroidered linen are as frequent in german village inns as they are rare in ours. our villages are superior to german villages in more merits, excellences, conveniences, and privileges than i can enumerate, but the hotels do not belong in the list. "the naturalist tavern" was not a meaningless name; for all the halls and all the rooms were lined with large glass cases which were filled with all sorts of birds and animals, glass-eyed, ably stuffed, and set up in the most natural eloquent and dramatic attitudes. the moment we were abed, the rain cleared away and the moon came out. i dozed off to sleep while contemplating a great white stuffed owl which was looking intently down on me from a high perch with the air of a person who thought he had met me before, but could not make out for certain. but young z did not get off so easily. he said that as he was sinking deliciously to sleep, the moon lifted away the shadows and developed a huge cat, on a bracket, dead and stuffed, but crouching, with every muscle tense, for a spring, and with its glittering glass eyes aimed straight at him. it made z uncomfortable. he tried closing his own eyes, but that did not answer, for a natural instinct kept making him open them again to see if the cat was still getting ready to launch at him--which she always was. he tried turning his back, but that was a failure; he knew the sinister eyes were on him still. so at last he had to get up, after an hour or two of worry and experiment, and set the cat out in the hall. so he won, that time. chapter xviii [the kindly courtesy of germans] in the morning we took breakfast in the garden, under the trees, in the delightful german summer fashion. the air was filled with the fragrance of flowers and wild animals; the living portion of the menagerie of the "naturalist tavern" was all about us. there were great cages populous with fluttering and chattering foreign birds, and other great cages and greater wire pens, populous with quadrupeds, both native and foreign. there were some free creatures, too, and quite sociable ones they were. white rabbits went loping about the place, and occasionally came and sniffed at our shoes and shins; a fawn, with a red ribbon on its neck, walked up and examined us fearlessly; rare breeds of chickens and doves begged for crumbs, and a poor old tailless raven hopped about with a humble, shamefaced mein which said, "please do not notice my exposure--think how you would feel in my circumstances, and be charitable." if he was observed too much, he would retire behind something and stay there until he judged the party's interest had found another object. i never have seen another dumb creature that was so morbidly sensitive. bayard taylor, who could interpret the dim reasonings of animals, and understood their moral natures better than most men, would have found some way to make this poor old chap forget his troubles for a while, but we have not his kindly art, and so had to leave the raven to his griefs. after breakfast we climbed the hill and visited the ancient castle of hirschhorn, and the ruined church near it. there were some curious old bas-reliefs leaning against the inner walls of the church--sculptured lords of hirschhorn in complete armor, and ladies of hirschhorn in the picturesque court costumes of the middle ages. these things are suffering damage and passing to decay, for the last hirschhorn has been dead two hundred years, and there is nobody now who cares to preserve the family relics. in the chancel was a twisted stone column, and the captain told us a legend about it, of course, for in the matter of legends he could not seem to restrain himself; but i do not repeat his tale because there was nothing plausible about it except that the hero wrenched this column into its present screw-shape with his hands --just one single wrench. all the rest of the legend was doubtful. but hirschhorn is best seen from a distance, down the river. then the clustered brown towers perched on the green hilltop, and the old battlemented stone wall, stretching up and over the grassy ridge and disappearing in the leafy sea beyond, make a picture whose grace and beauty entirely satisfy the eye. we descended from the church by steep stone stairways which curved this way and that down narrow alleys between the packed and dirty tenements of the village. it was a quarter well stocked with deformed, leering, unkempt and uncombed idiots, who held out hands or caps and begged piteously. the people of the quarter were not all idiots, of course, but all that begged seemed to be, and were said to be. i was thinking of going by skiff to the next town, necharsteinach; so i ran to the riverside in advance of the party and asked a man there if he had a boat to hire. i suppose i must have spoken high german--court german--i intended it for that, anyway--so he did not understand me. i turned and twisted my question around and about, trying to strike that man's average, but failed. he could not make out what i wanted. now mr. x arrived, faced this same man, looked him in the eye, and emptied this sentence on him, in the most glib and confident way: "can man boat get here?" the mariner promptly understood and promptly answered. i can comprehend why he was able to understand that particular sentence, because by mere accident all the words in it except "get" have the same sound and the same meaning in german that they have in english; but how he managed to understand mr. x's next remark puzzled me. i will insert it, presently. x turned away a moment, and i asked the mariner if he could not find a board, and so construct an additional seat. i spoke in the purest german, but i might as well have spoken in the purest choctaw for all the good it did. the man tried his best to understand me; he tried, and kept on trying, harder and harder, until i saw it was really of no use, and said: "there, don't strain yourself--it is of no consequence." then x turned to him and crisply said: "machen sie a flat board." i wish my epitaph may tell the truth about me if the man did not answer up at once, and say he would go and borrow a board as soon as he had lit the pipe which he was filling. we changed our mind about taking a boat, so we did not have to go. i have given mr. x's two remarks just as he made them. four of the five words in the first one were english, and that they were also german was only accidental, not intentional; three out of the five words in the second remark were english, and english only, and the two german ones did not mean anything in particular, in such a connection. x always spoke english to germans, but his plan was to turn the sentence wrong end first and upside down, according to german construction, and sprinkle in a german word without any essential meaning to it, here and there, by way of flavor. yet he always made himself understood. he could make those dialect-speaking raftsmen understand him, sometimes, when even young z had failed with them; and young z was a pretty good german scholar. for one thing, x always spoke with such confidence--perhaps that helped. and possibly the raftsmen's dialect was what is called platt-deutsch, and so they found his english more familiar to their ears than another man's german. quite indifferent students of german can read fritz reuter's charming platt-deutch tales with some little facility because many of the words are english. i suppose this is the tongue which our saxon ancestors carried to england with them. by and by i will inquire of some other philologist. however, in the mean time it had transpired that the men employed to calk the raft had found that the leak was not a leak at all, but only a crack between the logs--a crack that belonged there, and was not dangerous, but had been magnified into a leak by the disordered imagination of the mate. therefore we went aboard again with a good degree of confidence, and presently got to sea without accident. as we swam smoothly along between the enchanting shores, we fell to swapping notes about manners and customs in germany and elsewhere. as i write, now, many months later, i perceive that each of us, by observing and noting and inquiring, diligently and day by day, had managed to lay in a most varied and opulent stock of misinformation. but this is not surprising; it is very difficult to get accurate details in any country. for example, i had the idea once, in heidelberg, to find out all about those five student-corps. i started with the white cap corps. i began to inquire of this and that and the other citizen, and here is what i found out: 1. it is called the prussian corps, because none but prussians are admitted to it. 2. it is called the prussian corps for no particular reason. it has simply pleased each corps to name itself after some german state. 3. it is not named the prussian corps at all, but only the white cap corps. 4. any student can belong to it who is a german by birth. 5. any student can belong to it who is european by birth. 6. any european-born student can belong to it, except he be a frenchman. 7. any student can belong to it, no matter where he was born. 8. no student can belong to it who is not of noble blood. 9. no student can belong to it who cannot show three full generations of noble descent. 10. nobility is not a necessary qualification. 11. no moneyless student can belong to it. 12. money qualification is nonsense--such a thing has never been thought of. i got some of this information from students themselves-students who did not belong to the corps. i finally went to headquarters--to the white caps--where i would have gone in the first place if i had been acquainted. but even at headquarters i found difficulties; i perceived that there were things about the white cap corps which one member knew and another one didn't. it was natural; for very few members of any organization know all that can be known about it. i doubt there is a man or a woman in heidelberg who would not answer promptly and confidently three out of every five questions about the white cap corps which a stranger might ask; yet it is a very safe bet that two of the three answers would be incorrect every time. there is one german custom which is universal--the bowing courteously to strangers when sitting down at table or rising up from it. this bow startles a stranger out of his self-possession, the first time it occurs, and he is likely to fall over a chair or something, in his embarrassment, but it pleases him, nevertheless. one soon learns to expect this bow and be on the lookout and ready to return it; but to learn to lead off and make the initial bow one's self is a difficult matter for a diffident man. one thinks, "if i rise to go, and tender my box, and these ladies and gentlemen take it into their heads to ignore the custom of their nation, and not return it, how shall i feel, in case i survive to feel anything." therefore he is afraid to venture. he sits out the dinner, and makes the strangers rise first and originate the bowing. a table d'ho^te dinner is a tedious affair for a man who seldom touches anything after the three first courses; therefore i used to do some pretty dreary waiting because of my fears. it took me months to assure myself that those fears were groundless, but i did assure myself at last by experimenting diligently through my agent. i made harris get up and bow and leave; invariably his bow was returned, then i got up and bowed myself and retired. thus my education proceeded easily and comfortably for me, but not for harris. three courses of a table d'ho^te dinner were enough for me, but harris preferred thirteen. even after i had acquired full confidence, and no longer needed the agent's help, i sometimes encountered difficulties. once at baden-baden i nearly lost a train because i could not be sure that three young ladies opposite me at table were germans, since i had not heard them speak; they might be american, they might be english, it was not safe to venture a bow; but just as i had got that far with my thought, one of them began a german remark, to my great relief and gratitude; and before she got out her third word, our bows had been delivered and graciously returned, and we were off. there is a friendly something about the german character which is very winning. when harris and i were making a pedestrian tour through the black forest, we stopped at a little country inn for dinner one day; two young ladies and a young gentleman entered and sat down opposite us. they were pedestrians, too. our knapsacks were strapped upon our backs, but they had a sturdy youth along to carry theirs for them. all parties were hungry, so there was no talking. by and by the usual bows were exchanged, and we separated. as we sat at a late breakfast in the hotel at allerheiligen, next morning, these young people and took places near us without observing us; but presently they saw us and at once bowed and smiled; not ceremoniously, but with the gratified look of people who have found acquaintances where they were expecting strangers. then they spoke of the weather and the roads. we also spoke of the weather and the roads. next, they said they had had an enjoyable walk, notwithstanding the weather. we said that that had been our case, too. then they said they had walked thirty english miles the day before, and asked how many we had walked. i could not lie, so i told harris to do it. harris told them we had made thirty english miles, too. that was true; we had "made" them, though we had had a little assistance here and there. after breakfast they found us trying to blast some information out of the dumb hotel clerk about routes, and observing that we were not succeeding pretty well, they went and got their maps and things, and pointed out and explained our course so clearly that even a new york detective could have followed it. and when we started they spoke out a hearty good-by and wished us a pleasant journey. perhaps they were more generous with us than they might have been with native wayfarers because we were a forlorn lot and in a strange land; i don't know; i only know it was lovely to be treated so. very well, i took an american young lady to one of the fine balls in baden-baden, one night, and at the entrance-door upstairs we were halted by an official--something about miss jones's dress was not according to rule; i don't remember what it was, now; something was wanting--her back hair, or a shawl, or a fan, or a shovel, or something. the official was ever so polite, and every so sorry, but the rule was strict, and he could not let us in. it was very embarrassing, for many eyes were on us. but now a richly dressed girl stepped out of the ballroom, inquired into the trouble, and said she could fix it in a moment. she took miss jones to the robing-room, and soon brought her back in regulation trim, and then we entered the ballroom with this benefactress unchallenged. being safe, now, i began to puzzle through my sincere but ungrammatical thanks, when there was a sudden mutual recognition --the benefactress and i had met at allerheiligen. two weeks had not altered her good face, and plainly her heart was in the right place yet, but there was such a difference between these clothes and the clothes i had seen her in before, when she was walking thirty miles a day in the black forest, that it was quite natural that i had failed to recognize her sooner. i had on my other suit, too, but my german would betray me to a person who had heard it once, anyway. she brought her brother and sister, and they made our way smooth for that evening. well--months afterward, i was driving through the streets of munich in a cab with a german lady, one day, when she said: "there, that is prince ludwig and his wife, walking along there." everybody was bowing to them--cabmen, little children, and everybody else--and they were returning all the bows and overlooking nobody, when a young lady met them and made a deep courtesy. "that is probably one of the ladies of the court," said my german friend. i said: "she is an honor to it, then. i know her. i don't know her name, but i know her. i have known her at allerheiligen and baden-baden. she ought to be an empress, but she may be only a duchess; it is the way things go in this way." if one asks a german a civil question, he will be quite sure to get a civil answer. if you stop a german in the street and ask him to direct you to a certain place, he shows no sign of feeling offended. if the place be difficult to find, ten to one the man will drop his own matters and go with you and show you. in london, too, many a time, strangers have walked several blocks with me to show me my way. there is something very real about this sort of politeness. quite often, in germany, shopkeepers who could not furnish me the article i wanted have sent one of their employees with me to show me a place where it could be had. chapter xix [the deadly jest of dilsberg] however, i wander from the raft. we made the port of necharsteinach in good season, and went to the hotel and ordered a trout dinner, the same to be ready against our return from a two-hour pedestrian excursion to the village and castle of dilsberg, a mile distant, on the other side of the river. i do not mean that we proposed to be two hours making two miles--no, we meant to employ most of the time in inspecting dilsberg. for dilsberg is a quaint place. it is most quaintly and picturesquely situated, too. imagine the beautiful river before you; then a few rods of brilliant green sward on its opposite shore; then a sudden hill--no preparatory gently rising slopes, but a sort of instantaneous hill-a hill two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet high, as round as a bowl, with the same taper upward that an inverted bowl has, and with about the same relation of height to diameter that distinguishes a bowl of good honest depth--a hill which is thickly clothed with green bushes--a comely, shapely hill, rising abruptly out of the dead level of the surrounding green plains, visible from a great distance down the bends of the river, and with just exactly room on the top of its head for its steepled and turreted and roof-clustered cap of architecture, which same is tightly jammed and compacted within the perfectly round hoop of the ancient village wall. there is no house outside the wall on the whole hill, or any vestige of a former house; all the houses are inside the wall, but there isn't room for another one. it is really a finished town, and has been finished a very long time. there is no space between the wall and the first circle of buildings; no, the village wall is itself the rear wall of the first circle of buildings, a nd the roofs jut a little over the wall a nd thus furnish it with eaves. the general level of the massed roofs is gracefully broken and relieved by the dominating towers of the ruined castle and the tall spires of a couple of churches; so, from a distance dilsberg has rather more the look of a king's crown than a cap. that lofty green eminence and its quaint coronet form quite a striking picture, you may be sure, in the flush of the evening sun. we crossed over in a boat and began the ascent by a narrow, steep path which plunged us at once into the leafy deeps of the bushes. but they were not cool deeps by any means, for the sun's rays were weltering hot and there was little or no breeze to temper them. as we panted up the sharp ascent, we met brown, bareheaded and barefooted boys and girls, occasionally, and sometimes men; they came upon us without warning, they gave us good day, flashed out of sight in the bushes, and were gone as suddenly and mysteriously as they had come. they were bound for the other side of the river to work. this path had been traveled by many generations of these people. they have always gone down to the valley to earn their bread, but they have always climbed their hill again to eat it, and to sleep in their snug town. it is said the the dilsbergers do not emigrate much; they find that living up there above the world, in their peaceful nest, is pleasanter than living down in the troublous world. the seven hundred inhabitants are all blood-kin to each other, too; they have always been blood-kin to each other for fifteen hundred years; they are simply one large family, and they like the home folks better than they like strangers, hence they persistently stay at home. it has been said that for ages dilsberg has been merely a thriving and diligent idiot-factory. i saw no idiots there, but the captain said, "because of late years the government has taken to lugging them off to asylums and otherwheres; and government wants to cripple the factory, too, and is trying to get these dilsbergers to marry out of the family, but they don't like to." the captain probably imagined all this, as modern science denies that the intermarrying of relatives deteriorates the stock. arrived within the wall, we found the usual village sights and life. we moved along a narrow, crooked lane which had been paved in the middle ages. a strapping, ruddy girl was beating flax or some such stuff in a little bit of a good-box of a barn, and she swung her flail with a will--if it was a flail; i was not farmer enough to know what she was at; a frowsy, barelegged girl was herding half a dozen geese with a stick--driving them along the lane and keeping them out of the dwellings; a cooper was at work in a shop which i know he did not make so large a thing as a hogshead in, for there was not room. in the front rooms of dwellings girls and women were cooking or spinning, and ducks and chickens were waddling in and out, over the threshold, picking up chance crumbs and holding pleasant converse; a very old and wrinkled man sat asleep before his door, with his chin upon his breast and his extinguished pipe in his lap; soiled children were playing in the dirt everywhere along the lane, unmindful of the sun. except the sleeping old man, everybody was at work, but the place was very still and peaceful, nevertheless; so still that the distant cackle of the successful hen smote upon the ear but little dulled by intervening sounds. that commonest of village sights was lacking here--the public pump, with its great stone tank or trough of limpid water, and its group of gossiping pitcher-bearers; for there is no well or fountain or spring on this tall hill; cisterns of rain-water are used. our alpenstocks and muslin tails compelled attention, and as we moved through the village we gathered a considerable procession of little boys and girls, and so went in some state to the castle. it proved to be an extensive pile of crumbling walls, arches, and towers, massive, properly grouped for picturesque effect, weedy, grass-grown, and satisfactory. the children acted as guides; they walked us along the top of the highest walls, then took us up into a high tower and showed us a wide and beautiful landscape, made up of wavy distances of woody hills, and a nearer prospect of undulating expanses of green lowlands, on the one hand, and castle-graced crags and ridges on the other, with the shining curves of the neckar flowing between. but the principal show, the chief pride of the children, was the ancient and empty well in the grass-grown court of the castle. its massive stone curb stands up three or four feet above-ground, and is whole and uninjured. the children said that in the middle ages this well was four hundred feet deep, and furnished all the village with an abundant supply of water, in war and peace. they said that in the old day its bottom was below the level of the neckar, hence the water-supply was inexhaustible. but there were some who believed it had never been a well at all, and was never deeper than it is now--eighty feet; that at that depth a subterranean passage branched from it and descended gradually to a remote place in the valley, where it opened into somebody's cellar or other hidden recess, and that the secret of this locality is now lost. those who hold this belief say that herein lies the explanation that dilsberg, besieged by tilly and many a soldier before him, was never taken: after the longest and closest sieges the besiegers were astonished to perceive that the besieged were as fat and hearty as ever, and were well furnished with munitions of war--therefore it must be that the dilsbergers had been bringing these things in through the subterranean passage all the time. the children said that there was in truth a subterranean outlet down there, and they would prove it. so they set a great truss of straw on fire and threw it down the well, while we leaned on the curb and watched the glowing mass descend. it struck bottom and gradually burned out. no smoke came up. the children clapped their hands and said: "you see! nothing makes so much smoke as burning straw--now where did the smoke go to, if there is no subterranean outlet?" so it seemed quite evident that the subterranean outlet indeed existed. but the finest thing within the ruin's limits was a noble linden, which the children said was four hundred years old, and no doubt it was. it had a mighty trunk and a mighty spread of limb and foliage. the limbs near the ground were nearly the thickness of a barrel. that tree had witnessed the assaults of men in mail-how remote such a time seems, and how ungraspable is the fact that real men ever did fight in real armor!--and it had seen the time when these broken arches and crumbling battlements were a trim and strong and stately fortress, fluttering its gay banners in the sun, and peopled with vigorous humanity--how impossibly long ago that seems!--and here it stands yet, and possibly may still be standing here, sunning itself and dreaming its historical dreams, when today shall have been joined to the days called "ancient." well, we sat down under the tree to smoke, and the captain delivered himself of his legend: the legend of dilsberg castle it was to this effect. in the old times there was once a great company assembled at the castle, and festivity ran high. of course there was a haunted chamber in the castle, and one day the talk fell upon that. it was said that whoever slept in it would not wake again for fifty years. now when a young knight named conrad von geisberg heard this, he said that if the castle were his he would destroy that chamber, so that no foolish person might have the chance to bring so dreadful a misfortune upon himself and afflict such as loved him with the memory of it. straightway, the company privately laid their heads together to contrive some way to get this superstitious young man to sleep in that chamber. and they succeeded--in this way. they persuaded his betrothed, a lovely mischievous young creature, niece of the lord of the castle, to help them in their plot. she presently took him aside and had speech with him. she used all her persuasions, but could not shake him; he said his belief was firm, that if he should sleep there he would wake no more for fifty years, and it made him shudder to think of it. catharina began to weep. this was a better argument; conrad could not out against it. he yielded and said she should have her wish if she would only smile and be happy again. she flung her arms about his neck, and the kisses she gave him showed that her thankfulness and her pleasure were very real. then she flew to tell the company her success, and the applause she received made her glad and proud she had undertaken her mission, since all alone she had accomplished what the multitude had failed in. at midnight, that night, after the usual feasting, conrad was taken to the haunted chamber and left there. he fell asleep, by and by. when he awoke again and looked about him, his heart stood still with horror! the whole aspect of the chamber was changed. the walls were moldy and hung with ancient cobwebs; the curtains and beddings were rotten; the furniture was rickety and ready to fall to pieces. he sprang out of bed, but his quaking knees sunk under him and he fell to the floor. "this is the weakness of age," he said. he rose and sought his clothing. it was clothing no longer. the colors were gone, the garments gave way in many places while he was putting them on. he fled, shuddering, into the corridor, and along it to the great hall. here he was met by a middle-aged stranger of a kind countenance, who stopped and gazed at him with surprise. conrad said: "good sir, will you send hither the lord ulrich?" the stranger looked puzzled a moment, then said: "the lord ulrich?" "yes--if you will be so good." the stranger called--"wilhelm!" a young serving-man came, and the stranger said to him: "is there a lord ulrich among the guests?" "i know none of the name, so please your honor." conrad said, hesitatingly: "i did not mean a guest, but the lord of the castle, sir." the stranger and the servant exchanged wondering glances. then the former said: "i am the lord of the castle." "since when, sir?" "since the death of my father, the good lord ulrich more than forty years ago." conrad sank upon a bench and covered his face with his hands while he rocked his body to and fro and moaned. the stranger said in a low voice to the servant: "i fear me this poor old creature is mad. call some one." in a moment several people came, and grouped themselves about, talking in whispers. conrad looked up and scanned the faces about him wistfully. then he shook his head and said, in a grieved voice: "no, there is none among ye that i know. i am old and alone in the world. they are dead and gone these many years that cared for me. but sure, some of these aged ones i see about me can tell me some little word or two concerning them." several bent and tottering men and women came nearer and answered his questions about each former friend as he mentioned the names. this one they said had been dead ten years, that one twenty, another thirty. each succeeding blow struck heavier and heavier. at last the sufferer said: "there is one more, but i have not the courage to--o my lost catharina!" one of the old dames said: "ah, i knew her well, poor soul. a misfortune overtook her lover, and she died of sorrow nearly fifty years ago. she lieth under the linden tree without the court." conrad bowed his head and said: "ah, why did i ever wake! and so she died of grief for me, poor child. so young, so sweet, so good! she never wittingly did a hurtful thing in all the little summer of her life. her loving debt shall be repaid--for i will die of grief for her." his head drooped upon his breast. in the moment there was a wild burst of joyous laughter, a pair of round young arms were flung about conrad's neck and a sweet voice cried: "there, conrad mine, thy kind words kill me--the farce shall go no further! look up, and laugh with us--'twas all a jest!" and he did look up, and gazed, in a dazed wonderment-for the disguises were stripped away, and the aged men and women were bright and young and gay again. catharina's happy tongue ran on: "'twas a marvelous jest, and bravely carried out. they gave you a heavy sleeping-draught before you went to bed, and in the night they bore you to a ruined chamber where all had fallen to decay, and placed these rags of clothing by you. and when your sleep was spent and you came forth, two strangers, well instructed in their parts, were here to meet you; and all we, your friends, in our disguises, were close at hand, to see and hear, you may be sure. ah, 'twas a gallant jest! come, now, and make thee ready for the pleasures of the day. how real was thy misery for the moment, thou poor lad! look up and have thy laugh, now!" he looked up, searched the merry faces about him in a dreamy way, then sighed and said: "i am aweary, good strangers, i pray you lead me to her grave." all the smile vanished away, every cheek blanched, catharina sunk to the ground in a swoon. all day the people went about the castle with troubled faces, and communed together in undertones. a painful hush pervaded the place which had lately been so full of cheery life. each in his turn tried to arouse conrad out of his hallucination and bring him to himself; but all the answer any got was a meek, bewildered stare, and then the words: "good stranger, i have no friends, all are at rest these many years; ye speak me fair, ye mean me well, but i know ye not; i am alone and forlorn in the world--prithee lead me to her grave." during two years conrad spent his days, from the early morning till the night, under the linden tree, mourning over the imaginary grave of his catharina. catharina was the only company of the harmless madman. he was very friendly toward her because, as he said, in some ways she reminded him of his catharina whom he had lost "fifty years ago." he often said: "she was so gay, so happy-hearted--but you never smile; and always when you think i am not looking, you cry." when conrad died, they buried him under the linden, according to his directions, so that he might rest "near his poor catharina." then catharina sat under the linden alone, every day and all day long, a great many years, speaking to no one, and never smiling; and at last her long repentance was rewarded with death, and she was buried by conrad's side. harris pleased the captain by saying it was good legend; and pleased him further by adding: "now that i have seen this mighty tree, vigorous with its four hundred years, i feel a desire to believe the legend for its sake; so i will humor the desire, and consider that the tree really watches over those poor hearts and feels a sort of human tenderness for them." we returned to necharsteinach, plunged our hot heads into the trough at the town pump, and then went to the hotel and ate our trout dinner in leisurely comfort, in the garden, with the beautiful neckar flowing at our feet, the quaint dilsberg looming beyond, and the graceful towers and battlements of a couple of medieval castles (called the "swallow's nest" [1] and "the brothers.") assisting the rugged scenery of a bend of the river down to our right. we got to sea in season to make the eight-mile run to heidelberg before the night shut down. we sailed by the hotel in the mellow glow of sunset, and came slashing down with the mad current into the narrow passage between the dikes. i believed i could shoot the bridge myself, and i went to the forward triplet of logs and relieved the pilot of his pole and his responsibility. 1. the seeker after information is referred to appendix e for our captain's legend of the "swallow's nest" and "the brothers." we went tearing along in a most exhilarating way, and i performed the delicate duties of my office very well indeed for a first attempt; but perceiving, presently, that i really was going to shoot the bridge itself instead of the archway under it, i judiciously stepped ashore. the next moment i had my long-coveted desire: i saw a raft wrecked. it hit the pier in the center and went all to smash and scatteration like a box of matches struck by lightning. i was the only one of our party who saw this grand sight; the others were attitudinizing, for the benefit of the long rank of young ladies who were promenading on the bank, and so they lost it. but i helped to fish them out of the river, down below the bridge, and then described it to them as well as i could. they were not interested, though. they said they were wet and felt ridiculous and did not care anything for descriptions of scenery. the young ladies, and other people, crowded around and showed a great deal of sympathy, but that did not help matters; for my friends said they did not want sympathy, they wanted a back alley and solitude. chapter xx [my precious, priceless tear-jug] next morning brought good news--our trunks had arrived from hamburg at last. let this be a warning to the reader. the germans are very conscientious, and this trait makes them very particular. therefore if you tell a german you want a thing done immediately, he takes you at your word; he thinks you mean what you say; so he does that thing immediately--according to his idea of immediately-which is about a week; that is, it is a week if it refers to the building of a garment, or it is an hour and a half if it refers to the cooking of a trout. very well; if you tell a german to send your trunk to you by "slow freight," he takes you at your word; he sends it by "slow freight," and you cannot imagine how long you will go on enlarging your admiration of the expressiveness of that phrase in the german tongue, before you get that trunk. the hair on my trunk was soft and thick and youthful, when i got it ready for shipment in hamburg; it was baldheaded when it reached heidelberg. however, it was still sound, that was a comfort, it was not battered in the least; the baggagemen seemed to be conscientiously careful, in germany, of the baggage entrusted to their hands. there was nothing now in the way of our departure, therefore we set about our preparations. naturally my chief solicitude was about my collection of ceramics. of course i could not take it with me, that would be inconvenient, and dangerous besides. i took advice, but the best brick-a-brackers were divided as to the wisest course to pursue; some said pack the collection and warehouse it; others said try to get it into the grand ducal museum at mannheim for safe keeping. so i divided the collection, and followed the advice of both parties. i set aside, for the museum, those articles which were the most frail and precious. among these was my etruscan tear-jug. i have made a little sketch of it here; [figure 6] that thing creeping up the side is not a bug, it is a hole. i bought this tear-jug of a dealer in antiquities for four hundred and fifty dollars. it is very rare. the man said the etruscans used to keep tears or something in these things, and that it was very hard to get hold of a broken one, now. i also set aside my henri ii. plate. see sketch from my pencil; [figure 7] it is in the main correct, though i think i have foreshortened one end of it a little too much, perhaps. this is very fine and rare; the shape is exceedingly beautiful and unusual. it has wonderful decorations on it, but i am not able to reproduce them. it cost more than the tear-jug, as the dealer said there was not another plate just like it in the world. he said there was much false henri ii ware around, but that the genuineness of this piece was unquestionable. he showed me its pedigree, or its history, if you please; it was a document which traced this plate's movements all the way down from its birth--showed who bought it, from whom, and what he paid for it--from the first buyer down to me, whereby i saw that it had gone steadily up from thirty-five cents to seven hundred dollars. he said that the whole ceramic world would be informed that it was now in my possession and would make a note of it, with the price paid. [figure 8] there were masters in those days, but, alas--it is not so now. of course the main preciousness of this piece lies in its color; it is that old sensuous, pervading, ramifying, interpolating, transboreal blue which is the despair of modern art. the little sketch which i have made of this gem cannot and does not do it justice, since i have been obliged to leave out the color. but i've got the expression, though. however, i must not be frittering away the reader's time with these details. i did not intend to go into any detail at all, at first, but it is the failing of the true ceramiker, or the true devotee in any department of brick-a-brackery, that once he gets his tongue or his pen started on his darling theme, he cannot well stop until he drops from exhaustion. he has no more sense of the flight of time than has any other lover when talking of his sweetheart. the very "marks" on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy; and i could forsake a drowning relative to help dispute about whether the stopple of a departed buon retiro scent-bottle was genuine or spurious. many people say that for a male person, bric-a-brac hunting is about as robust a business as making doll-clothes, or decorating japanese pots with decalcomanie butterflies would be, and these people fling mud at the elegant englishman, byng, who wrote a book called the bric-a-brac hunter, and make fun of him for chasing around after what they choose to call "his despicable trifles"; and for "gushing" over these trifles; and for exhibiting his "deep infantile delight" in what they call his "tuppenny collection of beggarly trivialities"; and for beginning his book with a picture of himself seated, in a "sappy, self-complacent attitude, in the midst of his poor little ridiculous bric-a-brac junk shop." it is easy to say these things; it is easy to revile us, easy to despise us; therefore, let these people rail on; they cannot feel as byng and i feel--it is their loss, not ours. for my part i am content to be a brick-a-bracker and a ceramiker--more, i am proud to be so named. i am proud to know that i lose my reason as immediately in the presence of a rare jug with an illustrious mark on the bottom of it, as if i had just emptied that jug. very well; i packed and stored a part of my collection, and the rest of it i placed in the care of the grand ducal museum i n mannheim, by permission. my old blue china cat remains there yet. i presented it to that excellent institution. i had but one misfortune with my things. an egg which i had kept back from breakfast that morning, was broken in packing. it was a great pity. i had shown it to the best connoisseurs in heidelberg, and they all said it was an antique. we spent a day or two in farewell visits, and then left for baden-baden. we had a pleasant trip to it, for the rhine valley is always lovely. the only trouble was that the trip was too short. if i remember rightly it only occupied a couple of hours, therefore i judge that the distance was very little, if any, over fifty miles. we quitted the train at oos, and walked the entire remaining distance to baden-baden, with the exception of a lift of less than an hour which we got on a passing wagon, the weather being exhaustingly warm. we came into town on foot. one of the first persons we encountered, as we walked up the street, was the rev. mr. ------, an old friend from america--a lucky encounter, indeed, for his is a most gentle, refined, and sensitive nature, and his company and companionship are a genuine refreshment. we knew he had been in europe some time, but were not at all expecting to run across him. both parties burst forth into loving enthusiasms, and rev. mr. ------said: "i have got a brimful reservoir of talk to pour out on you, and an empty one ready and thirsting to receive what you have got; we will sit up till midnight and have a good satisfying interchange, for i leave here early in the morning." we agreed to that, of course. i had been vaguely conscious, for a while, of a person who was walking in the street abreast of us; i had glanced furtively at him once or twice, and noticed that he was a fine, large, vigorous young fellow, with an open, independent countenance, faintly shaded with a pale and even almost imperceptible crop of early down, and that he was clothed from head to heel in cool and enviable snow-white linen. i thought i had also noticed that his head had a sort of listening tilt to it. now about this time the rev. mr. ------said: "the sidewalk is hardly wide enough for three, so i will walk behind; but keep the talk going, keep the talk going, there's no time to lose, and you may be sure i will do my share." he ranged himself behind us, and straightway that stately snow-white young fellow closed up to the sidewalk alongside him, fetched him a cordial slap on the shoulder with his broad palm, and sung out with a hearty cheeriness: "americans for two-and-a-half and the money up! hey?" the reverend winced, but said mildly: "yes--we are americans." "lord love you, you can just bet that's what _i_ am, every time! put it there!" he held out his sahara of his palm, and the reverend laid his diminutive hand in it, and got so cordial a shake that we heard his glove burst under it. "say, didn't i put you up right?" "oh, yes." "sho! i spotted you for my kind the minute i heard your clack. you been over here long?" "about four months. have you been over long?" "long? well, i should say so! going on two years, by geeminy! say, are you homesick?" "no, i can't say that i am. are you?" "oh, hell, yes!" this with immense enthusiasm. the reverend shrunk a little, in his clothes, and we were aware, rather by instinct than otherwise, that he was throwing out signals of distress to us; but we did not interfere or try to succor him, for we were quite happy. the young fellow hooked his arm into the reverend's, now, with the confiding and grateful air of a waif who has been longing for a friend, and a sympathetic ear, and a chance to lisp once more the sweet accents of the mother-tongue--and then he limbered up the muscles of his mouth and turned himself loose--and with such a relish! some of his words were not sunday-school words, so i am obliged to put blanks where they occur. "yes indeedy! if _i_ ain't an american there ain't any americans, that's all. and when i heard you fellows gassing away in the good old american language, i'm -----if it wasn't all i could do to keep from hugging you! my tongue's all warped with trying to curl it around these ------forsaken wind-galled nine-jointed german words here; now i tell you it's awful good to lay it over a christian word once more and kind of let the old taste soak it. i'm from western new york. my name is cholley adams. i'm a student, you know. been here going on two years. i'm learning to be a horse-doctor! i like that part of it, you know, but ------these people, they won't learn a fellow in his own language, they make him learn in german; so before i could tackle the horse-doctoring i had to tackle this miserable language. "first off, i thought it would certainly give me the botts, but i don't mind now. i've got it where the hair's short, i think; and dontchuknow, they made me learn latin, too. now between you and me, i wouldn't give a ------for all the latin that was ever jabbered; and the first thing _i_ calculate to do when i get through, is to just sit down and forget it. 'twon't take me long, and i don't mind the time, anyway. and i tell you what! the difference between school-teaching over yonder and school-teaching over here--sho! we don't know anything about it! here you're got to peg and peg and peg and there just ain't any let-up--and what you learn here, you've got to know, dontchuknow --or else you'll have one of these ------spavined, spectacles, ring-boned, knock-kneed old professors in your hair. i've been here long enough, and i'm getting blessed tired of it, mind i tell you. the old man wrote me that he was coming over in june, and said he'd take me home in august, whether i was done with my education or not, but durn him, he didn't come; never said why; just sent me a hamper of sunday-school books, and told me to be good, and hold on a while. i don't take to sunday-school books, dontchuknow--i don't hanker after them when i can get pie--but i read them, anyway, because whatever the old man tells me to do, that's the thing that i'm a-going to do, or tear something, you know. i buckled in and read all those books, because he wanted me to; but that kind of thing don't excite me, i like something hearty. but i'm awful homesick. i'm homesick from ear-socket to crupper, and from crupper to hock-joint; but it ain't any use, i've got to stay here, till the old man drops the rag and give the word--yes, sir, right here in this ------country i've got to linger till the old man says come!--and you bet your bottom dollar, johnny, it ain't just as easy as it is for a cat to have twins!" at the end of this profane and cordial explosion he fetched a prodigious "whoosh!" to relieve his lungs and make recognition of the heat, and then he straightway dived into his narrative again for "johnny's" benefit, beginning, "well, ------it ain't any use talking, some of those old american words do have a kind of a bully swing to them; a man can express himself with 'em--a man can get at what he wants to say, dontchuknow." when we reached our hotel and it seemed that he was about to lose the reverend, he showed so much sorrow, and begged so hard and so earnestly that the reverend's heart was not hard enough to hold out against the pleadings-so he went away with the parent-honoring student, like a right christian, and took supper with him in his lodgings, and sat in the surf-beat of his slang and profanity till near midnight, and then left him--left him pretty well talked out, but grateful "clear down to his frogs," as he expressed it. the reverend said it had transpired during the interview that "cholley" adams's father was an extensive dealer in horses in western new york; this accounted for cholley's choice of a profession. the reverend brought away a pretty high opinion of cholley as a manly young fellow, with stuff in him for a useful citizen; he considered him rather a rough gem, but a gem, nevertheless. chapter xxi [insolent shopkeepers and gabbling americans] baden-baden sits in the lap of the hills, and the natural and artificial beauties of the surroundings are combined effectively and charmingly. the level strip of ground which stretches through and beyond the town is laid out in handsome pleasure grounds, shaded by noble trees and adorned at intervals with lofty and sparkling fountain-jets. thrice a day a fine band makes music in the public promenade before the conversation house, and in the afternoon and evening that locality is populous with fashionably dressed people of both sexes, who march back and forth past the great music-stand and look very much bored, though they make a show of feeling otherwise. it seems like a rather aimless and stupid existence. a good many of these people are there for a real purpose, however; they are racked with rheumatism, and they are there to stew it out in the hot baths. these invalids looked melancholy enough, limping about on their canes and crutches, and apparently brooding over all sorts of cheerless things. people say that germany, with her damp stone houses, is the home of rheumatism. if that is so, providence must have foreseen that it would be so, and therefore filled the land with the healing baths. perhaps no other country is so generously supplied with medicinal springs as germany. some of these baths are good for one ailment, some for another; and again, peculiar ailments are conquered by combining the individual virtues of several different baths. for instance, for some forms of disease, the patient drinks the native hot water of baden-baden, with a spoonful of salt from the carlsbad springs dissolved in it. that is not a dose to be forgotten right away. they don't sell this hot water; no, you go into the great trinkhalle, and stand around, first on one foot and then on the other, while two or three young girls sit pottering at some sort of ladylike sewing-work in your neighborhood and can't seem to see you --polite as three-dollar clerks in government offices. by and by one of these rises painfully, and "stretches"--stretches fists and body heavenward till she raises her heels from the floor, at the same time refreshing herself with a yawn of such comprehensiveness that the bulk of her face disappears behind her upper lip and one is able to see how she is constructed inside--then she slowly closes her cavern, brings down her fists and her heels, comes languidly forward, contemplates you contemptuously, draws you a glass of hot water and sets it down where you can get it by reaching for it. you take it and say: "how much?"--and she returns you, with elaborate indifference, a beggar's answer: "nach beliebe" (what you please.) this thing of using the common beggar's trick and the common beggar's shibboleth to put you on your liberality when you were expecting a simple straightforward commercial transaction, adds a little to your prospering sense of irritation. you ignore her reply, and ask again: "how much?" --and she calmly, indifferently, repeats: "nach beliebe." you are getting angry, but you are trying not to show it; you resolve to keep on asking your question till she changes her answer, or at least her annoyingly indifferent manner. therefore, if your case be like mine, you two fools stand there, and without perceptible emotion of any kind, or any emphasis on any syllable, you look blandly into each other's eyes, and hold the following idiotic conversation: "how much?" "nach beliebe." "how much?" "nach beliebe." "how much?" "nach beliebe." "how much?" "nach beliebe." "how much?" "nach beliebe." "how much?" "nach beliebe." i do not know what another person would have done, but at this point i gave up; that cast-iron indifference, that tranquil contemptuousness, conquered me, and i struck my colors. now i knew she was used to receiving about a penny from manly people who care nothing about the opinions of scullery-maids, and about tuppence from moral cowards; but i laid a silver twenty-five cent piece within her reach and tried to shrivel her up with this sarcastic speech: "if it isn't enough, will you stoop sufficiently from your official dignity to say so?" she did not shrivel. without deigning to look at me at all, she languidly lifted the coin and bit it!--to see if it was good. then she turned her back and placidly waddled to her former roost again, tossing the money into an open till as she went along. she was victor to the last, you see. i have enlarged upon the ways of this girl because they are typical; her manners are the manners of a goodly number of the baden-baden shopkeepers. the shopkeeper there swindles you if he can, and insults you whether he succeeds in swindling you or not. the keepers of baths also take great and patient pains to insult you. the frowsy woman who sat at the desk in the lobby of the great friederichsbad and sold bath tickets, not only insulted me twice every day, with rigid fidelity to her great trust, but she took trouble enough to cheat me out of a shilling, one day, to have fairly entitled her to ten. baden-baden's splendid gamblers are gone, only her microscopic knaves remain. an english gentleman who had been living there several years, said: "if you could disguise your nationality, you would not find any insolence here. these shopkeepers detest the english and despise the americans; they are rude to both, more especially to ladies of your nationality and mine. if these go shopping without a gentleman or a man-servant, they are tolerably sure to be subjected to petty insolences-insolences of manner and tone, rather than word, though words that are hard to bear are not always wanting. i know of an instance where a shopkeeper tossed a coin back to an american lady with the remark, snappishly uttered, 'we don't take french money here.' and i know of a case where an english lady said to one of these shopkeepers, 'don't you think you ask too much for this article?' and he replied with the question, 'do you think you are obliged to buy it?' however, these people are not impolite to russians or germans. and as to rank, they worship that, for they have long been used to generals and nobles. if you wish to see what abysses servility can descend, present yourself before a baden-baden shopkeeper in the character of a russian prince." it is an inane town, filled with sham, and petty fraud, and snobbery, but the baths are good. i spoke with many people, and they were all agreed in that. i had the twinges of rheumatism unceasingly during three years, but the last one departed after a fortnight's bathing there, and i have never had one since. i fully believe i left my rheumatism in baden-baden. baden-baden is welcome to it. it was little, but it was all i had to give. i would have preferred to leave something that was catching, but it was not in my power. there are several hot springs there, and during two thousand years they have poured forth a never-diminishing abundance of the healing water. this water is conducted in pipe to the numerous bath-houses, and is reduced to an endurable temperature by the addition of cold water. the new friederichsbad is a very large and beautiful building, and in it one may have any sort of bath that has ever been invented, and with all the additions of herbs and drugs that his ailment may need or that the physician of the establishment may consider a useful thing to put into the water. you go there, enter the great door, get a bow graduated to your style and clothes from the gorgeous portier, and a bath ticket and an insult from the frowsy woman for a quarter; she strikes a bell and a serving-man conducts you down a long hall and shuts you into a commodious room which has a washstand, a mirror, a bootjack, and a sofa in it, and there you undress at your leisure. the room is divided by a great curtain; you draw this curtain aside, and find a large white marble bathtub, with its rim sunk to the level of the floor, and with three white marble steps leading down to it. this tub is full of water which is as clear as crystal, and is tempered to 28 degrees re'aumur (about 95 degrees fahrenheit). sunk into the floor, by the tub, is a covered copper box which contains some warm towels and a sheet. you look fully as white as an angel when you are stretched out in that limpid bath. you remain in it ten minutes, the first time, and afterward increase the duration from day to day, till you reach twenty-five or thirty minutes. there you stop. the appointments of the place are so luxurious, the benefit so marked, the price so moderate, and the insults so sure, that you very soon find yourself adoring the friederichsbad and infesting it. we had a plain, simple, unpretending, good hotel, in baden-baden--the ho^tel de france--and alongside my room i had a giggling, cackling, chattering family who always went to bed just two hours after me and always got up two hours ahead of me. but this is common in german hotels; the people generally go to bed long after eleven and get up long before eight. the partitions convey sound like a drum-head, and everybody knows it; but no matter, a german family who are all kindness and consideration in the daytime make apparently no effort to moderate their noises for your benefit at night. they will sing, laugh, and talk loudly, and bang furniture around in a most pitiless way. if you knock on your wall appealingly, they will quiet down and discuss the matter softly among themselves for a moment--then, like the mice, they fall to persecuting you again, and as vigorously as before. they keep cruelly late and early hours, for such noisy folk. of course, when one begins to find fault with foreign people's ways, he is very likely to get a reminder to look nearer home, before he gets far with it. i open my note-book to see if i can find some more information of a valuable nature about baden-baden, and the first thing i fall upon is this: "baden-baden (no date). lot of vociferous americans at breakfast this morning. talking at everybody, while pretending to talk among themselves. on their first travels, manifestly. showing off. the usual signs--airy, easy-going references to grand distances and foreign places. 'well good-by, old fellow-if i don't run across you in italy, you hunt me up in london before you sail.'" the next item which i find in my note-book is this one: "the fact that a band of 6,000 indians are now murdering our frontiersmen at their impudent leisure, and that we are only able to send 1,200 soldiers against them, is utilized here to discourage emigration to america. the common people think the indians are in new jersey." this is a new and peculiar argument against keeping our army down to a ridiculous figure in the matter of numbers. it is rather a striking one, too. i have not distorted the truth in saying that the facts in the above item, about the army and the indians, are made use of to discourage emigration to america. that the common people should be rather foggy in their geography, and foggy as to the location of the indians, is a matter for amusement, maybe, but not of surprise. there is an interesting old cemetery in baden-baden, and we spent several pleasant hours in wandering through it and spelling out the inscriptions on the aged tombstones. apparently after a man has laid there a century or two, and has had a good many people buried on top of him, it is considered that his tombstone is not needed by him any longer. i judge so from the fact that hundreds of old gravestones have been removed from the graves and placed against the inner walls of the cemetery. what artists they had in the old times! they chiseled angels and cherubs and devils and skeletons on the tombstones in the most lavish and generous way--as to supply--but curiously grotesque and outlandish as to form. it is not always easy to tell which of the figures belong among the blest and which of them among the opposite party. but there was an inscription, in french, on one of those old stones, which was quaint and pretty, and was plainly not the work of any other than a poet. it was to this effect: here reposes in god, caroline de clery, a religieuse of st. denis aged 83 years--and blind. the light was restored to her in baden the 5th of january, 1839 we made several excursions on foot to the neighboring villages, over winding and beautiful roads and through enchanting woodland scenery. the woods and roads were similar to those at heidelberg, but not so bewitching. i suppose that roads and woods which are up to the heidelberg mark are rare in the world. once we wandered clear away to la favorita palace, which is several miles from baden-baden. the grounds about the palace were fine; the palace was a curiosity. it was built by a margravine in 1725, and remains as she left it at her death. we wandered through a great many of its rooms, and they all had striking peculiarities of decoration. for instance, the walls of one room were pretty completely covered with small pictures of the margravine in all conceivable varieties of fanciful costumes, some of them male. the walls of another room were covered with grotesquely and elaborately figured hand-wrought tapestry. the musty ancient beds remained in the chambers, and their quilts and curtains and canopies were decorated with curious handwork, and the walls and ceilings frescoed with historical and mythological scenes in glaring colors. there was enough crazy and rotten rubbish in the building to make a true brick-a-bracker green with envy. a painting in the dining-hall verged upon the indelicate-but then the margravine was herself a trifle indelicate. it is in every way a wildly and picturesquely decorated house, and brimful of interest as a reflection of the character and tastes of that rude bygone time. in the grounds, a few rods from the palace, stands the margravine's chapel, just as she left it--a coarse wooden structure, wholly barren of ornament. it is said that the margravine would give herself up to debauchery and exceedingly fast living for several months at a time, and then retire to this miserable wooden den and spend a few months in repenting and getting ready for another good time. she was a devoted catholic, and was perhaps quite a model sort of a christian as christians went then, in high life. tradition says she spent the last two years of her life in the strange den i have been speaking of, after having indulged herself in one final, triumphant, and satisfying spree. she shut herself up there, without company, and without even a servant, and so abjured and forsook the world. in her little bit of a kitchen she did her own cooking; she wore a hair shirt next the skin, and castigated herself with whips--these aids to grace are exhibited there yet. she prayed and told her beads, in another little room, before a waxen virgin niched in a little box against the wall; she bedded herself like a slave. in another small room is an unpainted wooden table, and behind it sit half-life-size waxen figures of the holy family, made by the very worst artist that ever lived, perhaps, and clothed in gaudy, flimsy drapery. [1] the margravine used to bring her meals to this table and dine with the holy family. what an idea that was! what a grisly spectacle it must have been! imagine it: those rigid, shock-headed figures, with corpsy complexions and fish glass eyes, occupying one side of the table in the constrained attitudes and dead fixedness that distinquish all men that are born of wax, and this wrinkled, smoldering old fire-eater occupying the other side, mumbling her prayers and munching her sausages in the ghostly stillness and shadowy indistinctness of a winter twilight. it makes one feel crawly even to think of it. 1. the savior was represented as a lad of about fifteen years of age. this figure had lost one eye. in this sordid place, and clothed, bedded, and fed like a pauper, this strange princess lived and worshiped during two years, and in it she died. two or three hundred years ago, this would have made the poor den holy ground; and the church would have set up a miracle-factory there and made plenty of money out of it. the den could be moved into some portions of france and made a good property even now. chapter xxii [the black forest and its treasures] from baden-baden we made the customary trip into the black forest. we were on foot most of the time. one cannot describe those noble woods, nor the feeling with which they inspire him. a feature of the feeling, however, is a deep sense of contentment; another feature of it is a buoyant, boyish gladness; and a third and very conspicuous feature of it is one's sense of the remoteness of the work-day world and his entire emancipation from it and its affairs. those woods stretch unbroken over a vast region; and everywhere they are such dense woods, and so still, and so piney and fragrant. the stems of the trees are trim and straight, and in many places all the ground is hidden for miles under a thick cushion of moss of a vivid green color, with not a decayed or ragged spot in its surface, and not a fallen leaf or twig to mar its immaculate tidiness. a rich cathedral gloom pervades the pillared aisles; so the stray flecks of sunlight that strike a trunk here and a bough yonder are strongly accented, and when they strike the moss they fairly seem to burn. but the weirdest effect, and the most enchanting is that produced by the diffused light of the low afternoon sun; no single ray is able to pierce its way in, then, but the diffused light takes color from moss and foliage, and pervades the place like a faint, greet-tinted mist, the theatrical fire of fairyland. the suggestion of mystery and the supernatural which haunts the forest at all times is intensified by this unearthly glow. we found the black forest farmhouses and villages all that the black forest stories have pictured them. the first genuine specimen which we came upon was the mansion of a rich farmer and member of the common council of the parish or district. he was an important personage in the land and so was his wife also, of course. his daughter was the "catch" of the region, and she may be already entering into immortality as the heroine of one of auerbach's novels, for all i know. we shall see, for if he puts her in i shall recognize her by her black forest clothes, and her burned complexion, her plump figure, her fat hands, her dull expression, her gentle spirit, her generous feet, her bonnetless head, and the plaited tails of hemp-colored hair hanging down her back. the house was big enough for a hotel; it was a hundred feet long and fifty wide, and ten feet high, from ground to eaves; but from the eaves to the comb of the mighty roof was as much as forty feet, or maybe even more. this roof was of ancient mud-colored straw thatch a foot thick, and was covered all over, except in a few trifling spots, with a thriving and luxurious growth of green vegetation, mainly moss. the mossless spots were places where repairs had been made by the insertion of bright new masses of yellow straw. the eaves projected far down, like sheltering, hospitable wings. across the gable that fronted the road, and about ten feet above the ground, ran a narrow porch, with a wooden railing; a row of small windows filled with very small panes looked upon the porch. above were two or three other little windows, one clear up under the sharp apex of the roof. before the ground-floor door was a huge pile of manure. the door of the second-story room on the side of the house was open, and occupied by the rear elevation of a cow. was this probably the drawing-room? all of the front half of the house from the ground up seemed to be occupied by the people, the cows, and the chickens, and all the rear half by draught-animals and hay. but the chief feature, all around this house, was the big heaps of manure. we became very familiar with the fertilizer in the forest. we fell unconsciously into the habit of judging of a man's station in life by this outward and eloquent sign. sometimes we said, "here is a poor devil, this is manifest." when we saw a stately accumulation, we said, "here is a banker." when we encountered a country-seat surrounded by an alpine pomp of manure, we said, "doubtless a duke lives here." the importance of this feature has not been properly magnified in the black forest stories. manure is evidently the black-forester's main treasure--his coin, his jewel, his pride, his old master, his ceramics, his bric-a-brac, his darling, his title to public consideration, envy, veneration, and his first solicitude when he gets ready to make his will. the true black forest novel, if it is ever written, will be skeletoned somewhat in this way: skeleton for a black forest novel rich old farmer, named huss. has inherited great wealth of manure, and by diligence has added to it. it is double-starred in baedeker. [1] the black forest artist paints it--his masterpiece. the king comes to see it. gretchen huss, daughter and heiress. paul hoch, young neighbor, suitor for gretchen's hand--ostensibly; he really wants the manure. hoch has a good many cart-loads of the black forest currency himself, and therefore is a good catch; but he is sordid, mean, and without sentiment, whereas gretchen is all sentiment and poetry. hans schmidt, young neighbor, full of sentiment, full of poetry, loves gretchen, gretchen loves him. but he has no manure. old huss forbids him in the house. his heart breaks, he goes away to die in the woods, far from the cruel world--for he says, bitterly, "what is man, without manure?" 1. when baedeker's guide-books mention a thing and put two stars (**) after it, it means well worth visiting. m.t. [interval of six months.] paul hoch comes to old huss and says, "i am at last as rich as you required--come and view the pile." old huss views it and says, "it is sufficient--take her and be happy,"--meaning gretchen. [interval of two weeks.] wedding party assembled in old huss's drawing-room. hoch placid and content, gretchen weeping over her hard fate. enter old huss's head bookkeeper. huss says fiercely, "i gave you three weeks to find out why your books don't balance, and to prove that you are not a defaulter; the time is up--find me the missing property or you go to prison as a thief." bookkeeper: "i have found it." "where?" bookkeeper (sternly--tragically): "in the bridegroom's pile!--behold the thief--see him blench and tremble!" [sensation.] paul hoch: lost, lost!"--falls over the cow in a swoon and is handcuffed. gretchen: "saved!" falls over the calf in a swoon of joy, but is caught in the arms of hans schmidt, who springs in at that moment. old huss: "what, you here, varlet? unhand the maid and quit the place." hans (still supporting the insensible girl): "never! cruel old man, know that i come with claims which even you cannot despise." huss: "what, you? name them." hans: "listen then. the world has forsaken me, i forsook the world, i wandered in the solitude of the forest, longing for death but finding none. i fed upon roots, and in my bitterness i dug for the bitterest, loathing the sweeter kind. digging, three days agone, i struck a manure mine!--a golconda, a limitless bonanza, of solid manure! i can buy you all, and have mountain ranges of manure left! ha-ha, now thou smilest a smile!" [immense sensation.] exhibition of specimens from the mine. old huss (enthusiastically): "wake her up, shake her up, noble young man, she is yours!" wedding takes place on the spot; bookkeeper restored to his office and emoluments; paul hoch led off to jail. the bonanza king of the black forest lives to a good old age, blessed with the love of his wife and of his twenty-seven children, and the still sweeter envy of everybody around. we took our noon meal of fried trout one day at the plow inn, in a very pretty village (ottenho"fen), and then went into the public room to rest and smoke. there we found nine or ten black forest grandees assembled around a table. they were the common council of the parish. they had gathered there at eight o'clock that morning to elect a new member, and they had now been drinking beer four hours at the new member's expense. they were men of fifty or sixty years of age, with grave good-natures faces, and were all dressed in the costume made familiar to us by the black forest stories; broad, round-topped black felt hats with the brims curled up all round; long red waistcoats with large metal buttons, black alpaca coats with the waists up between the shoulders. there were no speeches, there was but little talk, there were no frivolities; the council filled themselves gradually, steadily, but surely, with beer, and conducted themselves with sedate decorum, as became men of position, men of influence, men of manure. we had a hot afternoon tramp up the valley, along the grassy bank of a rushing stream of clear water, past farmhouses, water-mills, and no end of wayside crucifixes and saints and virgins. these crucifixes, etc., are set up in memory of departed friends, by survivors, and are almost as frequent as telegraph-poles are in other lands. we followed the carriage-road, and had our usual luck; we traveled under a beating sun, and always saw the shade leave the shady places before we could get to them. in all our wanderings we seldom managed to strike a piece of road at its time for being shady. we had a particularly hot time of it on that particular afternoon, and with no comfort but what we could get out of the fact that the peasants at work away up on the steep mountainsides above our heads were even worse off than we were. by and by it became impossible to endure the intolerable glare and heat any longer; so we struck across the ravine and entered the deep cool twilight of the forest, to hunt for what the guide-book called the "old road." we found an old road, and it proved eventually to be the right one, though we followed it at the time with the conviction that it was the wrong one. if it was the wrong one there could be no use in hurrying; therefore we did not hurry, but sat down frequently on the soft moss and enjoyed the restful quiet and shade of the forest solitudes. there had been distractions in the carriage-road-school-children, peasants, wagons, troops of pedestrianizing students from all over germany-but we had the old road to ourselves. now and then, while we rested, we watched the laborious ant at his work. i found nothing new in him--certainly nothing to change my opinion of him. it seems to me that in the matter of intellect the ant must be a strangely overrated bird. during many summers, now, i have watched him, when i ought to have been in better business, and i have not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any more sense than a dead one. i refer to the ordinary ant, of course; i have had no experience of those wonderful swiss and african ones which vote, keep drilled armies, hold slaves, and dispute about religion. those particular ants may be all that the naturalist paints them, but i am persuaded that the average ant is a sham. i admit his industry, of course; he is the hardest-working creature in the world--when anybody is looking--but his leather-headedness is the point i make against him. he goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and then what does he do? go home? no--he goes anywhere but home. he doesn't know where home is. his home may be only three feet away--no matter, he can't find it. he makes his capture, as i have said; it is generally something which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else; it is usually seven times bigger than it ought to be; he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it; he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, and starts; not toward home, but in the opposite direction; not calmly and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasteful of his strength; he fetches up against a pebble, and instead of going around it, he climbs over it backward dragging his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side, jumps up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes, moistens his hands, grabs his property viciously, yanks it this way, then that, shoves it ahead of him a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him another moment, gets madder and madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes tearing away in an entirely new direction; comes to a weed; it never occurs to him to go around it; no, he must climb it; and he does climb it, dragging his worthless property to the top--which is as bright a thing to do as it would be for me to carry a sack of flour from heidelberg to paris by way of strasburg steeple; when he gets up there he finds that that is not the place; takes a cursory glance at the scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down, and starts off once more--as usual, in a new direction. at the end of half an hour, he fetches up within six inches of the place he started from and lays his burden down; meantime he as been over all the ground for two yards around, and climbed all the weeds and pebbles he came across. now he wipes the sweat from his brow, strokes his limbs, and then marches aimlessly off, in as violently a hurry as ever. he does not remember to have ever seen it before; he looks around to see which is not the way home, grabs his bundle and starts; he goes through the same adventures he had before; finally stops to rest, and a friend comes along. evidently the friend remarks that a last year's grasshopper leg is a very noble acquisition, and inquires where he got it. evidently the proprietor does not remember exactly where he did get it, but thinks he got it "around here somewhere." evidently the friend contracts to help him freight it home. then, with a judgment peculiarly antic (pun not intended), then take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg a nd begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions. presently they take a rest and confer together. they decide that something is wrong, they can't make out what. then they go at it again, just as before. same result. mutual recriminations follow. evidently each accuses the other of being an obstructionist. they lock themselves together and chew each other's jaws for a while; then they roll and tumble on the ground till one loses a horn or a leg and has to haul off for repairs. they make up and go to work again in the same old insane way, but the crippled ant is at a disadvantage; tug as he may, the other one drags off the booty and him at the end of it. instead of giving up, he hangs on, and gets his shins bruised against every obstruction that comes in the way. by and by, when that grasshopper leg has been dragged all over the same old ground once more, it is finally dumped at about the spot where it originally lay, the two perspiring ants inspect it thoughtfully and decide that dried grasshopper legs are a poor sort of property after all, and then each starts off in a different direction to see if he can't find an old nail or something else that is heavy enough to afford entertainment and at the same time valueless enough to make an ant want to own it. there in the black forest, on the mountainside, i saw an ant go through with such a performance as this with a dead spider of fully ten times his own weight. the spider was not quite dead, but too far gone to resist. he had a round body the size of a pea. the little ant-observing that i was noticing--turned him on his back, sunk his fangs into his throat, lifted him into the air and started vigorously off with him, stumbling over little pebbles, stepping on the spider's legs and tripping himself up, dragging him backward, shoving him bodily ahead, dragging him up stones six inches high instead of going around them, climbing weeds twenty times his own height and jumping from their summits--and finally leaving him in the middle of the road to be confiscated by any other fool of an ant that wanted him. i measured the ground which this ass traversed, and arrived at the conclusion that what he had accomplished inside of twenty minutes would constitute some such job as this--relatively speaking--for a man; to wit: to strap two eight-hundred-pound horses together, carry them eighteen hundred feet, mainly over (not around) boulders averaging six feet high, and in the course of the journey climb up and jump from the top of one precipice like niagara, and three steeples, each a hundred and twenty feet high; and then put the horses down, in an exposed place, without anybody to watch them, and go off to indulge in some other idiotic miracle for vanity's sake. science has recently discovered that the ant does not lay up anything for winter use. this will knock him out of literature, to some extent. he does not work, except when people are looking, and only then when the observer has a green, naturalistic look, and seems to be taking notes. this amounts to deception, and will injure him for the sunday-schools. he has not judgment enough to know what is good to eat from what isn't. this amounts to ignorance, and will impair the world's respect for him. he cannot stroll around a stump and find his way home again. this amounts to idiocy, and once the damaging fact is established, thoughtful people will cease to look up to him, the sentimental will cease to fondle him. his vaunted industry is but a vanity and of no effect, since he never gets home with anything he starts with. this disposes of the last remnant of his reputation and wholly destroys his main usefulness as a moral agent, since it will make the sluggard hesitate to go to him any more. it is strange, beyond comprehension, that so manifest a humbug as the ant has been able to fool so many nations and keep it up so many ages without being found out. the ant is strong, but we saw another strong thing, where we had not suspected the presence of much muscular power before. a toadstool--that vegetable which springs to full growth in a single night--had torn loose and lifted a matted mass of pine needles and dirt of twice its own bulk into the air, and supported it there, like a column supporting a shed. ten thousand toadstools, with the right purchase, could lift a man, i suppose. but what good would it do? all our afternoon's progress had been uphill. about five or half past we reached the summit, and all of a sudden the dense curtain of the forest parted and we looked down into a deep and beautiful gorge and out over a wide panorama of wooded mountains with their summits shining in the sun and their glade-furrowed sides dimmed with purple shade. the gorge under our feet--called allerheiligen--afforded room in the grassy level at its head for a cozy and delightful human nest, shut away from the world and its botherations, and consequently the monks of the old times had not failed to spy it out; and here were the brown and comely ruins of their church and convent to prove that priests had as fine an instinct seven hundred years ago in ferreting out the choicest nooks and corners in a land as priests have today. a big hotel crowds the ruins a little, now, and drives a brisk trade with summer tourists. we descended into the gorge and had a supper which would have been very satisfactory if the trout had not been boiled. the germans are pretty sure to boil a trout or anything else if left to their own devices. this is an argument of some value in support of the theory that they were the original colonists of the wild islands of the coast of scotland. a schooner laden with oranges was wrecked upon one of those islands a few years ago, and the gentle savages rendered the captain such willing assistance that he gave them as many oranges as they wanted. next day he asked them how they liked them. they shook their heads and said: "baked, they were tough; and even boiled, they warn't things for a hungry man to hanker after." we went down the glen after supper. it is beautiful--a mixture of sylvan loveliness and craggy wildness. a limpid torrent goes whistling down the glen, and toward the foot of it winds through a narrow cleft between lofty precipices and hurls itself over a succession of falls. after one passes the last of these he has a backward glimpse at the falls which is very pleasing--they rise in a seven-stepped stairway of foamy and glittering cascades, and make a picture which is as charming as it is unusual. chapter xxiii [nicodemus dodge and the skeleton] we were satisfied that we could walk to oppenau in one day, now that we were in practice; so we set out the next morning after breakfast determined to do it. it was all the way downhill, and we had the loveliest summer weather for it. so we set the pedometer and then stretched away on an easy, regular stride, down through the cloven forest, drawing in the fragrant breath of the morning in deep refreshing draughts, and wishing we might never have anything to do forever but walk to oppenau and keep on doing it and then doing it over again. now, the true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. the walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk. it is no matter whether one talks wisdom or nonsense, the case is the same, the bulk of the enjoyment lies in the wagging of the gladsome jaw and the flapping of the sympathetic ear. and what motley variety of subjects a couple of people will casually rake over in the course of a day's tramp! there being no constraint, a change of subject is always in order, and so a body is not likely to keep pegging at a single topic until it grows tiresome. we discussed everything we knew, during the first fifteen or twenty minutes, that morning, and then branched out into the glad, free, boundless realm of the things we were not certain about. harris said that if the best writer in the world once got the slovenly habit of doubling up his "haves" he could never get rid of it while he lived. that is to say, if a man gets the habit of saying "i should have liked to have known more about it" instead of saying simply and sensibly, "i should have liked to know more about it," that man's disease is incurable. harris said that his sort of lapse is to be found in every copy of every newspaper that has ever been printed in english, and in almost all of our books. he said he had observed it in kirkham's grammar and in macaulay. harris believed that milk-teeth are commoner in men's mouths than those "doubled-up haves." [1] 1. i do not know that there have not been moments in the course of the present session when i should have been very glad to have accepted the proposal of my noble friend, and to have exchanged parts in some of our evenings of work.--[from a speech of the english chancellor of the exchequer, august, 1879.] that changed the subject to dentistry. i said i believed the average man dreaded tooth-pulling more than amputation, and that he would yell quicker under the former operation than he would under the latter. the philosopher harris said that the average man would not yell in either case if he had an audience. then he continued: "when our brigade first went into camp on the potomac, we used to be brought up standing, occasionally, by an ear-splitting howl of anguish. that meant that a soldier was getting a tooth pulled in a tent. but the surgeons soon changed that; they instituted open-air dentistry. there never was a howl afterward--that is, from the man who was having the tooth pulled. at the daily dental hour there would always be about five hundred soldiers gathered together in the neighborhood of that dental chair waiting to see the performance--and help; and the moment the surgeon took a grip on the candidate's tooth and began to lift, every one of those five hundred rascals would clap his hand to his jaw and begin to hop around on one leg and howl with all the lungs he had! it was enough to raise your hair to hear that variegated and enormous unanimous caterwaul burst out! with so big and so derisive an audience as that, a suffer wouldn't emit a sound though you pulled his head off. the surgeons said that pretty often a patient was compelled to laugh, in the midst of his pangs, but that had never caught one crying out, after the open-air exhibition was instituted." dental surgeons suggested doctors, doctors suggested death, death suggested skeletons--and so, by a logical process the conversation melted out of one of these subjects and into the next, until the topic of skeletons raised up nicodemus dodge out of the deep grave in my memory where he had lain buried and forgotten for twenty-five years. when i was a boy in a printing-office in missouri, a loose-jointed, long-legged, tow-headed, jeans-clad countrified cub of about sixteen lounged in one day, and without removing his hands from the depths of his trousers pockets or taking off his faded ruin of a slouch hat, whose broken rim hung limp and ragged about his eyes and ears like a bug-eaten cabbage leaf, stared indifferently around, then leaned his hip against the editor's table, crossed his mighty brogans, aimed at a distant fly from a crevice in his upper teeth, laid him low, and said with composure: "whar's the boss?" "i am the boss," said the editor, following this curious bit of architecture wonderingly along up to its clock-face with his eye. "don't want anybody fur to learn the business, 'tain't likely?" "well, i don't know. would you like to learn it?" "pap's so po' he cain't run me no mo', so i want to git a show somers if i kin, 'taint no diffunce what--i'm strong and hearty, and i don't turn my back on no kind of work, hard nur soft." "do you think you would like to learn the printing business?" "well, i don't re'ly k'yer a durn what i do learn, so's i git a chance fur to make my way. i'd jist as soon learn print'n's anything." "can you read?" "yes--middlin'." "write?" "well, i've seed people could lay over me thar." "cipher?" "not good enough to keep store, i don't reckon, but up as fur as twelve-times-twelve i ain't no slouch. 'tother side of that is what gits me." "where is your home?" "i'm f'm old shelby." "what's your father's religious denomination?" "him? oh, he's a blacksmith." "no, no--i don't mean his trade. what's his religious denomination?" "oh--i didn't understand you befo'. he's a freemason." "no, no, you don't get my meaning yet. what i mean is, does he belong to any church?" "now you're talkin'! couldn't make out what you was a-tryin' to git through yo' head no way. b'long to a church! why, boss, he's ben the pizenest kind of free-will babtis' for forty year. they ain't no pizener ones 'n what he is. mighty good man, pap is. everybody says that. if they said any diffrunt they wouldn't say it whar _i_ wuz-not much they wouldn't." "what is your own religion?" "well, boss, you've kind o' got me, there--and yit you hain't got me so mighty much, nuther. i think 't if a feller he'ps another feller when he's in trouble, and don't cuss, and don't do no mean things, nur noth'n' he ain' no business to do, and don't spell the saviour's name with a little g, he ain't runnin' no resks--he's about as saift as he b'longed to a church." "but suppose he did spell it with a little g--what then?" "well, if he done it a-purpose, i reckon he wouldn't stand no chance--he oughtn't to have no chance, anyway, i'm most rotten certain 'bout that." "what is your name?" "nicodemus dodge." "i think maybe you'll do, nicodemus. we'll give you a trial, anyway." "all right." "when would you like to begin?" "now." so, within ten minutes after we had first glimpsed this nondescript he was one of us, and with his coat off and hard at it. beyond that end of our establishment which was furthest from the street, was a deserted garden, pathless, and thickly grown with the bloomy and villainous "jimpson" weed and its common friend the stately sunflower. in the midst of this mournful spot was a decayed and aged little "frame" house with but one room, one window, and no ceiling--it had been a smoke-house a generation before. nicodemus was given this lonely and ghostly den as a bedchamber. the village smarties recognized a treasure in nicodemus, right away--a butt to play jokes on. it was easy to see that he was inconceivably green and confiding. george jones had the glory of perpetrating the first joke on him; he gave him a cigar with a firecracker in it and winked to the crowd to come; the thing exploded presently and swept away the bulk of nicodemus's eyebrows and eyelashes. he simply said: "i consider them kind of seeg'yars dangersome,"--and seemed to suspect nothing. the next evening nicodemus waylaid george and poured a bucket of ice-water over him. one day, while nicodemus was in swimming, tom mcelroy "tied" his clothes. nicodemus made a bonfire of tom's by way of retaliation. a third joke was played upon nicodemus a day or two later--he walked up the middle aisle of the village church, sunday night, with a staring handbill pinned between his shoulders. the joker spent the remainder of the night, after church, in the cellar of a deserted house, and nicodemus sat on the cellar door till toward breakfast-time to make sure that the prisoner remembered that if any noise was made, some rough treatment would be the consequence. the cellar had two feet of stagnant water in it, and was bottomed with six inches of soft mud. but i wander from the point. it was the subject of skeletons that brought this boy back to my recollection. before a very long time had elapsed, the village smarties began to feel an uncomfortable consciousness of not having made a very shining success out of their attempts on the simpleton from "old shelby." experimenters grew scarce and chary. now the young doctor came to the rescue. there was delight and applause when he proposed to scare nicodemus to death, and explained how he was going to do it. he had a noble new skeleton--the skeleton of the late and only local celebrity, jimmy finn, the village drunkard--a grisly piece of property which he had bought of jimmy finn himself, at auction, for fifty dollars, under great competition, when jimmy lay very sick in the tan-yard a fortnight before his death. the fifty dollars had gone promptly for whiskey and had considerably hurried up the change of ownership in the skeleton. the doctor would put jimmy finn's skeleton in nicodemus's bed! this was done--about half past ten in the evening. about nicodemus's usual bedtime--midnight--the village jokers came creeping stealthily through the jimpson weeds and sunflowers toward the lonely frame den. they reached the window and peeped in. there sat the long-legged pauper, on his bed, in a very short shirt, and nothing more; he was dangling his legs contentedly back and forth, and wheezing the music of "camptown races" out of a paper-overlaid comb which he was pressing against his mouth; by him lay a new jewsharp, a new top, and solid india-rubber ball, a handful of painted marbles, five pounds of "store" candy, and a well-gnawed slab of gingerbread as big and as thick as a volume of sheet-music. he had sold the skeleton to a traveling quack for three dollars and was enjoying the result! just as we had finished talking about skeletons and were drifting into the subject of fossils, harris and i heard a shout, and glanced up the steep hillside. we saw men and women standing away up there looking frightened, and there was a bulky object tumbling and floundering down the steep slope toward us. we got out of the way, and when the object landed in the road it proved to be a boy. he had tripped and fallen, and there was nothing for him to do but trust to luck and take what might come. when one starts to roll down a place like that, there is no stopping till the bottom is reached. think of people farming on a slant which is so steep that the best you can say of it--if you want to be fastidiously accurate--is, that it is a little steeper than a ladder and not quite so steep as a mansard roof. but that is what they do. some of the little farms on the hillside opposite heidelberg were stood up "edgeways." the boy was wonderfully jolted up, and his head was bleeding, from cuts which it had got from small stones on the way. harris and i gathered him up and set him on a stone, and by that time the men and women had scampered down and brought his cap. men, women, and children flocked out from neighboring cottages and joined the crowd; the pale boy was petted, and stared at, and commiserated, and water was brought for him to drink and bathe his bruises in. and such another clatter of tongues! all who had seen the catastrophe were describing it at once, and each trying to talk louder than his neighbor; and one youth of a superior genius ran a little way up the hill, called attention, tripped, fell, rolled down among us, and thus triumphantly showed exactly how the thing had been done. harris and i were included in all the descriptions; how we were coming along; how hans gross shouted; how we looked up startled; how we saw peter coming like a cannon-shot; how judiciously we got out of the way, and let him come; and with what presence of mind we picked him up and brushed him off and set him on a rock when the performance was over. we were as much heroes as anybody else, except peter, and were so recognized; we were taken with peter and the populace to peter's mother's cottage, and there we ate bread and cheese, and drank milk and beer with everybody, and had a most sociable good time; and when we left we had a handshake all around, and were receiving and shouting back leb' wohl's until a turn in the road separated us from our cordial and kindly new friends forever. we accomplished our undertaking. at half past eight in the evening we stepped into oppenau, just eleven hours and a half out of allerheiligen--one hundred and forty-six miles. this is the distance by pedometer; the guide-book and the imperial ordinance maps make it only ten and a quarter--a surprising blunder, for these two authorities are usually singularly accurate in the matter of distances. chapter xxiv [i protect the empress of germany] that was a thoroughly satisfactory walk--and the only one we were ever to have which was all the way downhill. we took the train next morning and returned to baden-baden through fearful fogs of dust. every seat was crowded, too; for it was sunday, and consequently everybody was taking a "pleasure" excursion. hot! the sky was an oven--and a sound one, too, with no cracks in it to let in any air. an odd time for a pleasure excursion, certainly! sunday is the great day on the continent--the free day, the happy day. one can break the sabbath in a hundred ways without committing any sin. we do not work on sunday, because the commandment forbids it; the germans do not work on sunday, because the commandment forbids it. we rest on sunday, because the commandment requires it; the germans rest on sunday because the commandment requires it. but in the definition of the word "rest" lies all the difference. with us, its sunday meaning is, stay in the house and keep still; with the germans its sunday and week-day meanings seem to be the same--rest the tired part, and never mind the other parts of the frame; rest the tired part, and use the means best calculated to rest that particular part. thus: if one's duties have kept him in the house all the week, it will rest him to be out on sunday; if his duties have required him to read weighty and serious matter all the week, it will rest him to read light matter on sunday; if his occupation has busied him with death and funerals all the week, it will rest him to go to the theater sunday night and put in two or three hours laughing at a comedy; if he is tired with digging ditches or felling trees all the week, it will rest him to lie quiet in the house on sunday; if the hand, the arm, the brain, the tongue, or any other member, is fatigued with inanition, it is not to be rested by added a day's inanition; but if a member is fatigued with exertion, inanition is the right rest for it. such is the way in which the germans seem to define the word "rest"; that is to say, they rest a member by recreating, recuperating, restore its forces. but our definition is less broad. we all rest alike on sunday--by secluding ourselves and keeping still, whether that is the surest way to rest the most of us or not. the germans make the actors, the preachers, etc., work on sunday. we encourage the preachers, the editors, the printers, etc., to work on sunday, and imagine that none of the sin of it falls upon us; but i do not know how we are going to get around the fact that if it is wrong for the printer to work at his trade on sunday it must be equally wrong for the preacher to work at his, since the commandment has made no exception in his favor. we buy monday morning's paper and read it, and thus encourage sunday printing. but i shall never do it again. the germans remember the sabbath-day to keep it holy, by abstaining from work, as commanded; we keep it holy by abstaining from work, as commanded, and by also abstaining from play, which is not commanded. perhaps we constructively break the command to rest, because the resting we do is in most cases only a name, and not a fact. these reasonings have sufficed, in a measure, to mend the rent in my conscience which i made by traveling to baden-baden that sunday. we arrived in time to furbish up and get to the english church before services began. we arrived in considerable style, too, for the landlord had ordered the first carriage that could be found, since there was no time to lose, and our coachman was so splendidly liveried that we were probably mistaken for a brace of stray dukes; why else were we honored with a pew all to ourselves, away up among the very elect at the left of the chancel? that was my first thought. in the pew directly in front of us sat an elderly lady, plainly and cheaply dressed; at her side sat a young lady with a very sweet face, and she also was quite simply dressed; but around us and about us were clothes and jewels which it would do anybody's heart good to worship in. i thought it was pretty manifest that the elderly lady was embarrassed at finding herself in such a conspicuous place arrayed in such cheap apparel; i began to feel sorry for her and troubled about her. she tried to seem very busy with her prayer-book and her responses, and unconscious that she was out of place, but i said to myself, "she is not succeeding--there is a distressed tremulousness in her voice which betrays increasing embarrassment." presently the savior's name was mentioned, and in her flurry she lost her head completely, and rose and courtesied, instead of making a slight nod as everybody else did. the sympathetic blood surged to my temples and i turned and gave those fine birds what i intended to be a beseeching look, but my feelings got the better of me and changed it into a look which said, "if any of you pets of fortune laugh at this poor soul, you will deserve to be flayed for it." things went from bad to worse, and i shortly found myself mentally taking the unfriended lady under my protection. my mind was wholly upon her. i forgot all about the sermon. her embarrassment took stronger and stronger hold upon her; she got to snapping the lid of her smelling-bottle--it made a loud, sharp sound, but in her trouble she snapped and snapped away, unconscious of what she was doing. the last extremity was reached when the collection-plate began its rounds; the moderate people threw in pennies, the nobles and the rich contributed silver, but she laid a twenty-mark gold piece upon the book-rest before her with a sounding slap! i said to myself, "she has parted with all her little hoard to buy the consideration of these unpitying people--it is a sorrowful spectacle." i did not venture to look around this time; but as the service closed, i said to myself, "let them laugh, it is their opportunity; but at the door of this church they shall see her step into our fine carriage with us, and our gaudy coachman shall drive her home." then she rose--and all the congregation stood while she walked down the aisle. she was the empress of germany! no--she had not been so much embarrassed as i had supposed. my imagination had got started on the wrong scent, and that is always hopeless; one is sure, then, to go straight on misinterpreting everything, clear through to the end. the young lady with her imperial majesty was a maid of honor--and i had been taking her for one of her boarders, all the time. this is the only time i have ever had an empress under my personal protection; and considering my inexperience, i wonder i got through with it so well. i should have been a little embarrassed myself if i had known earlier what sort of a contract i had on my hands. we found that the empress had been in baden-baden several days. it is said that she never attends any but the english form of church service. i lay abed and read and rested from my journey's fatigues the remainder of that sunday, but i sent my agent to represent me at the afternoon service, for i never allow anything to interfere with my habit of attending church twice every sunday. there was a vast crowd in the public grounds that night to hear the band play the "fremersberg." this piece tells one of the old legends of the region; how a great noble of the middle ages got lost in the mountains, and wandered about with his dogs in a violent storm, until at last the faint tones of a monastery bell, calling the monks to a midnight service, caught his ear, and he followed the direction the sounds came from and was saved. a beautiful air ran through the music, without ceasing, sometimes loud and strong, sometimes so soft that it could hardly be distinguished--but it was always there; it swung grandly along through the shrill whistling of the storm-wind, the rattling patter of the rain, and the boom and crash of the thunder; it wound soft and low through the lesser sounds, the distant ones, such as the throbbing of the convent bell, the melodious winding of the hunter's horn, the distressed bayings of his dogs, and the solemn chanting of the monks; it rose again, with a jubilant ring, and mingled itself with the country songs and dances of the peasants assembled in the convent hall to cheer up the rescued huntsman while he ate his supper. the instruments imitated all these sounds with a marvelous exactness. more than one man started to raise his umbrella when the storm burst forth and the sheets of mimic rain came driving by; it was hardly possible to keep from putting your hand to your hat when the fierce wind began to rage and shriek; and it was not possible to refrain from starting when those sudden and charmingly real thunder-crashes were let loose. i suppose the "fremersberg" is a very low-grade music; i know, indeed, that it must be low-grade music, because it delighted me, warmed me, moved me, stirred me, uplifted me, enraptured me, that i was full of cry all the time, and mad with enthusiasm. my soul had never had such a scouring out since i was born. the solemn and majestic chanting of the monks was not done by instruments, but by men's voices; and it rose and fell, and rose again in that rich confusion of warring sounds, and pulsing bells, and the stately swing of that ever-present enchanting air, and it seemed to me that nothing but the very lowest of low-grade music could be so divinely beautiful. the great crowd which the "fremersberg" had called out was another evidence that it was low-grade music; for only the few are educated up to a point where high-grade music gives pleasure. i have never heard enough classic music to be able to enjoy it. i dislike the opera because i want to love it and can't. i suppose there are two kinds of music--one kind which one feels, just as an oyster might, and another sort which requires a higher faculty, a faculty which must be assisted and developed by teaching. yet if base music gives certain of us wings, why should we want any other? but we do. we want it because the higher and better like it. we want it without giving it the necessary time and trouble; so we climb into that upper tier, that dress-circle, by a lie; we pretend we like it. i know several of that sort of people--and i propose to be one of them myself when i get home with my fine european education. and then there is painting. what a red rag is to a bull, turner's "slave ship" was to me, before i studied art. mr. ruskin is educated in art up to a point where that picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of pleasure as it used to throw me into one of rage, last year, when i was ignorant. his cultivation enables him--and me, now--to see water in that glaring yellow mud, and natural effects in those lurid explosions of mixed smoke and flame, and crimson sunset glories; it reconciles him--and me, now--to the floating of iron cable-chains and other unfloatable things; it reconciles us to fishes swimming around on top of the mud--i mean the water. the most of the picture is a manifest impossibility--that is to say, a lie; and only rigid cultivation can enable a man to find truth in a lie. but it enabled mr. ruskin to do it, and it has enabled me to do it, and i am thankful for it. a boston newspaper reporter went and took a look at the slave ship floundering about in that fierce conflagration of reds and yellows, and said it reminded him of a tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes. in my then uneducated state, that went home to my non-cultivation, and i thought here is a man with an unobstructed eye. mr. ruskin would have said: this person is an ass. that is what i would say, now. [1] 1. months after this was written, i happened into the national gallery in london, and soon became so fascinated with the turner pictures that i could hardly get away from the place. i went there often, afterward, meaning to see the rest of the gallery, but the turner spell was too strong; it could not be shaken off. however, the turners which attracted me most did not remind me of the slave ship. however, our business in baden-baden this time, was to join our courier. i had thought it best to hire one, as we should be in italy, by and by, and we did not know the language. neither did he. we found him at the hotel, ready to take charge of us. i asked him if he was "all fixed." he said he was. that was very true. he had a trunk, two small satchels, and an umbrella. i was to pay him fifty-five dollars a month and railway fares. on the continent the railway fare on a trunk is about the same it is on a man. couriers do not have to pay any board and lodging. this seems a great saving to the tourist--at first. it does not occur to the tourist that somebody pays that man's board and lodging. it occurs to him by and by, however, in one of his lucid moments. chapter xxv [hunted by the little chamois] next morning we left in the train for switzerland, and reached lucerne about ten o'clock at night. the first discovery i made was that the beauty of the lake had not been exaggerated. within a day or two i made another discovery. this was, that the lauded chamois is not a wild goat; that it is not a horned animal; that it is not shy; that it does not avoid human society; and that there is no peril in hunting it. the chamois is a black or brown creature no bigger than a mustard seed; you do not have to go after it, it comes after you; it arrives in vast herds and skips and scampers all over your body, inside your clothes; thus it is not shy, but extremely sociable; it is not afraid of man, on the contrary, it will attack him; its bite is not dangerous, but neither is it pleasant; its activity has not been overstated --if you try to put your finger on it, it will skip a thousand times its own length at one jump, and no eye is sharp enough to see where it lights. a great deal of romantic nonsense has been written about the swiss chamois and the perils of hunting it, whereas the truth is that even women and children hunt it, and fearlessly; indeed, everybody hunts it; the hunting is going on all the time, day and night, in bed and out of it. it is poetic foolishness to hunt it with a gun; very few people do that; there is not one man in a million who can hit it with a gun. it is much easier to catch it that it is to shoot it, and only the experienced chamois-hunter can do either. another common piece of exaggeration is that about the "scarcity" of the chamois. it is the reverse of scarce. droves of one hundred million chamois are not unusual in the swiss hotels. indeed, they are so numerous as to be a great pest. the romancers always dress up the chamois-hunter in a fanciful and picturesque costume, whereas the best way to hut this game is to do it without any costume at all. the article of commerce called chamois-skin is another fraud; nobody could skin a chamois, it is too small. the creature is a humbug in every way, and everything which has been written about it is sentimental exaggeration. it was no pleasure to me to find the chamois out, for he had been one of my pet illusions; all my life it had been my dream to see him in his native wilds some day, and engage in the adventurous sport of chasing him from cliff to cliff. it is no pleasure to me to expose him, now, and destroy the reader's delight in him and respect for him, but still it must be done, for when an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence. lucerne is a charming place. it begins at the water's edge, with a fringe of hotels, and scrambles up and spreads itself over two or three sharp hills in a crowded, disorderly, but picturesque way, offering to the eye a heaped-up confusion of red roofs, quaint gables, dormer windows, toothpick steeples, with here and there a bit of ancient embattled wall bending itself over the ridges, worm-fashion, and here and there an old square tower of heavy masonry. and also here and there a town clock with only one hand--a hand which stretches across the dial and has no joint in it; such a clock helps out the picture, but you cannot tell the time of day by it. between the curving line of hotels and the lake is a broad avenue with lamps and a double rank of low shade trees. the lake-front is walled with masonry like a pier, and has a railing, to keep people from walking overboard. all day long the vehicles dash along the avenue, and nurses, children, and tourists sit in the shade of the trees, or lean on the railing and watch the schools of fishes darting about in the clear water, or gaze out over the lake at the stately border of snow-hooded mountains peaks. little pleasure steamers, black with people, are coming and going all the time; and everywhere one sees young girls and young men paddling about in fanciful rowboats, or skimming along by the help of sails when there is any wind. the front rooms of the hotels have little railed balconies, where one may take his private luncheon in calm, cool comfort and look down upon this busy and pretty scene and enjoy it without having to do any of the work connected with it. most of the people, both male and female, are in walking costume, and carry alpenstocks. evidently, it is not considered safe to go about in switzerland, even in town, without an alpenstock. if the tourist forgets and comes down to breakfast without his alpenstock he goes back and gets it, and stands it up in the corner. when his touring in switzerland is finished, he does not throw that broomstick away, but lugs it home with him, to the far corners of the earth, although this costs him more trouble and bother than a baby or a courier could. you see, the alpenstock is his trophy; his name is burned upon it; and if he has climbed a hill, or jumped a brook, or traversed a brickyard with it, he has the names of those places burned upon it, too. thus it is his regimental flag, so to speak, and bears the record of his achievements. it is worth three francs when he buys it, but a bonanza could not purchase it after his great deeds have been inscribed upon it. there are artisans all about switzerland whose trade it is to burn these things upon the alpenstock of the tourist. and observe, a man is respected in switzerland according to his alpenstock. i found i could get no attention there, while i carried an unbranded one. however, branding is not expected, so i soon remedied that. the effect upon the next detachment of tourists was very marked. i felt repaid for my trouble. half of the summer horde in switzerland is made up of english people; the other half is made up of many nationalities, the germans leading and the americans coming next. the americans were not as numerous as i had expected they would be. the seven-thirty table d'ho^te at the great schweitzerhof furnished a mighty array and variety of nationalities, but it offered a better opportunity to observe costumes than people, for the multitude sat at immensely long tables, and therefore the faces were mainly seen in perspective; but the breakfasts were served at small round tables, and then if one had the fortune to get a table in the midst of the assemblage he could have as many faces to study as he could desire. we used to try to guess out the nationalities, and generally succeeded tolerably well. sometimes we tried to guess people's names; but that was a failure; that is a thing which probably requires a good deal of practice. we presently dropped it and gave our efforts to less difficult particulars. one morning i said: "there is an american party." harris said: "yes--but name the state." i named one state, harris named another. we agreed upon one thing, however--that the young girl with the party was very beautiful, and very tastefully dressed. but we disagreed as to her age. i said she was eighteen, harris said she was twenty. the dispute between us waxed warm, and i finally said, with a pretense of being in earnest: "well, there is one way to settle the matter--i will go and ask her." harris said, sarcastically, "certainly, that is the thing to do. all you need to do is to use the common formula over here: go and say, 'i'm an american!' of course she will be glad to see you." then he hinted that perhaps there was no great danger of my venturing to speak to her. i said, "i was only talking--i didn't intend to approach her, but i see that you do not know what an intrepid person i am. i am not afraid of any woman that walks. i will go and speak to this young girl." the thing i had in my mind was not difficult. i meant to address her in the most respectful way and ask her to pardon me if her strong resemblance to a former acquaintance of mine was deceiving me; and when she should reply that the name i mentioned was not the name she bore, i meant to beg pardon again, most respectfully, and retire. there would be no harm done. i walked to her table, bowed to the gentleman, then turned to her and was about to begin my little speech when she exclaimed: "i knew i wasn't mistaken--i told john it was you! john said it probably wasn't, but i knew i was right. i said you would recognize me presently and come over; and i'm glad you did, for i shouldn't have felt much flattered if you had gone out of this room without recognizing me. sit down, sit down--how odd it is--you are the last person i was ever expecting to see again." this was a stupefying surprise. it took my wits clear away, for an instant. however, we shook hands cordially all around, and i sat down. but truly this was the tightest place i ever was in. i seemed to vaguely remember the girl's face, now, but i had no idea where i had seen it before, or what named belonged with it. i immediately tried to get up a diversion about swiss scenery, to keep her from launching into topics that might betray that i did not know her, but it was of no use, she went right along upon matters which interested her more: "oh dear, what a night that was, when the sea washed the forward boats away--do you remember it?" "oh, don't i!" said i--but i didn't. i wished the sea had washed the rudder and the smoke-stack and the captain away--then i could have located this questioner. "and don't you remember how frightened poor mary was, and how she cried?" "indeed i do!" said i. "dear me, how it all comes back!" i fervently wished it would come back--but my memory was a blank. the wise way would have been to frankly own up; but i could not bring myself to do that, after the young girl had praised me so for recognizing her; so i went on, deeper and deeper into the mire, hoping for a chance clue but never getting one. the unrecognizable continued, with vivacity: "do you know, george married mary, after all?" "why, no! did he?" "indeed he did. he said he did not believe she was half as much to blame as her father was, and i thought he was right. didn't you?" "of course he was. it was a perfectly plain case. i always said so." "why, no you didn't!--at least that summer." "oh, no, not that summer. no, you are perfectly right about that. it was the following winter that i said it." "well, as it turned out, mary was not in the least to blame --it was all her father's fault--at least his and old darley's." it was necessary to say something--so i said: "i always regarded darley as a troublesome old thing." "so he was, but then they always had a great affection for him, although he had so many eccentricities. you remember that when the weather was the least cold, he would try to come into the house." i was rather afraid to proceed. evidently darley wa not a man--he must be some other kind of animal--possibly a dog, maybe an elephant. however, tails are common to all animals, so i ventured to say: "and what a tail he had!" "one! he had a thousand!" this was bewildering. i did not quite know what to say, so i only said: "yes, he was rather well fixed in the matter of tails." "for a negro, and a crazy one at that, i should say he was," said she. it was getting pretty sultry for me. i said to myself, "is it possible she is going to stop there, and wait for me to speak? if she does, the conversation is blocked. a negro with a thousand tails is a topic which a person cannot talk upon fluently and instructively without more or less preparation. as to diving rashly into such a vast subject--" but here, to my gratitude, she interrupted my thoughts by saying: "yes, when it came to tales of his crazy woes, there was simply no end to them if anybody would listen. his own quarters were comfortable enough, but when the weather was cold, the family were sure to have his company--nothing could keep him out of the house. but they always bore it kindly because he had saved tom's life, years before. you remember tom? "oh, perfectly. fine fellow he was, too." "yes he was. and what a pretty little thing his child was!" "you may well say that. i never saw a prettier child." "i used to delight to pet it and dandle it and play with it." "so did i." "you named it. what was that name? i can't call it to mind." it appeared to me that the ice was getting pretty thin, here. i would have given something to know what the child's was. however, i had the good luck to think of a name that would fit either sex--so i brought it out: "i named it frances." "from a relative, i suppose? but you named the one that died, too--one that i never saw. what did you call that one?" i was out of neutral names, but as the child was dead and she had never seen it, i thought i might risk a name for it and trust to luck. therefore i said: "i called that one thomas henry." she said, musingly: "that is very singular ... very singular." i sat still and let the cold sweat run down. i was in a good deal of trouble, but i believed i could worry through if she wouldn't ask me to name any more children. i wondered where the lightning was going to strike next. she was still ruminating over that last child's title, but presently she said: "i have always been sorry you were away at the time--i would have had you name my child." "your child! are you married?" "i have been married thirteen years." "christened, you mean." `"no, married. the youth by your side is my son." "it seems incredible--even impossible. i do not mean any harm by it, but would you mind telling me if you are any over eighteen?--that is to say, will you tell me how old you are?" "i was just nineteen the day of the storm we were talking about. that was my birthday." that did not help matters, much, as i did not know the date of the storm. i tried to think of some non-committal thing to say, to keep up my end of the talk, and render my poverty in the matter of reminiscences as little noticeable as possible, but i seemed to be about out of non-committal things. i was about to say, "you haven't changed a bit since then"--but that was risky. i thought of saying, "you have improved ever so much since then"--but that wouldn't answer, of course. i was about to try a shy at the weather, for a saving change, when the girl slipped in ahead of me and said: "how i have enjoyed this talk over those happy old times-haven't you?" "i never have spent such a half-hour in all my life before!" said i, with emotion; and i could have added, with a near approach to truth, "and i would rather be scalped than spend another one like it." i was holily grateful to be through with the ordeal, and was about to make my good-bys and get out, when the girl said: "but there is one thing that is ever so puzzling to me." "why, what is that?" "that dead child's name. what did you say it was?" here was another balmy place to be in: i had forgotten the child's name; i hadn't imagined it would be needed again. however, i had to pretend to know, anyway, so i said: "joseph william." the youth at my side corrected me, and said: "no, thomas henry." i thanked him--in words--and said, with trepidation: "o yes--i was thinking of another child that i named--i have named a great many, and i get them confused--this one was named henry thompson--" "thomas henry," calmly interposed the boy. i thanked him again--strictly in words--and stammered out: "thomas henry--yes, thomas henry was the poor child's name. i named him for thomas--er--thomas carlyle, the great author, you know--and henry--er--er--henry the eight. the parents were very grateful to have a child named thomas henry." "that makes it more singular than ever," murmured my beautiful friend. "does it? why?" "because when the parents speak of that child now, they always call it susan amelia." that spiked my gun. i could not say anything. i was entirely out of verbal obliquities; to go further would be to lie, and that i would not do; so i simply sat still and suffered --sat mutely and resignedly there, and sizzled--for i was being slowly fried to death in my own blushes. presently the enemy laughed a happy laugh and said: "i have enjoyed this talk over old times, but you have not. i saw very soon that you were only pretending to know me, and so as i had wasted a compliment on you in the beginning, i made up my mind to punish you. and i have succeeded pretty well. i was glad to see that you knew george and tom and darley, for i had never heard of them before and therefore could not be sure that you had; and i was glad to learn the names of those imaginary children, too. one can get quite a fund of information out of you if one goes at it cleverly. mary and the storm, and the sweeping away of the forward boats, were facts--all the rest was fiction. mary was my sister; her full name was mary ------. now do you remember me?" "yes," i said, "i do remember you now; and you are as hard-headed as you were thirteen years ago in that ship, else you wouldn't have punished me so. you haven't change your nature nor your person, in any way at all; you look as young as you did then, you are just as beautiful as you were then, and you have transmitted a deal of your comeliness to this fine boy. there--if that speech moves you any, let's fly the flag of truce, with the understanding that i am conquered and confess it." all of which was agreed to and accomplished, on the spot. when i went back to harris, i said: "now you see what a person with talent and address can do." "excuse me, i see what a person of colossal ignorance and simplicity can do. the idea of your going and intruding on a party of strangers, that way, and talking for half an hour; why i never heard of a man in his right mind doing such a thing before. what did you say to them?" i never said any harm. i merely asked the girl what her name was." "i don't doubt it. upon my word i don't. i think you were capable of it. it was stupid in me to let you go over there and make such an exhibition of yourself. but you know i couldn't really believe you would do such an inexcusable thing. what will those people think of us? but how did you say it?--i mean the manner of it. i hope you were not abrupt." "no, i was careful about that. i said, 'my friend and i would like to know what your name is, if you don't mind.'" "no, that was not abrupt. there is a polish about it that does you infinite credit. and i am glad you put me in; that was a delicate attention which i appreciate at its full value. what did she do?" "she didn't do anything in particular. she told me her name." "simply told you her name. do you mean to say she did not show any surprise?" "well, now i come to think, she did show something; maybe it was surprise; i hadn't thought of that--i took it for gratification." "oh, undoubtedly you were right; it must have been gratification; it could not be otherwise than gratifying to be assaulted by a stranger with such a question as that. then what did you do?" "i offered my hand and the party gave me a shake." "i saw it! i did not believe my own eyes, at the time. did the gentleman say anything about cutting your throat?" "no, they all seemed glad to see me, as far as i could judge." "and do you know, i believe they were. i think they said to themselves, 'doubtless this curiosity has got away from his keeper--let us amuse ourselves with him.' there is no other way of accounting for their facile docility. you sat down. did they ask you to sit down?" "no, they did not ask me, but i suppose they did not think of it." "you have an unerring instinct. what else did you do? what did you talk about?" "well, i asked the girl how old she was." "undoubtedly. your delicacy is beyond praise. go on, go on--don't mind my apparent misery--i always look so when i am steeped in a profound and reverent joy. go on--she told you her age?" "yes, she told me her age, and all about her mother, and her grandmother, and her other relations, and all about herself." "did she volunteer these statistics?" "no, not exactly that. i asked the questions and she answered them." "this is divine. go on--it is not possible that you forgot to inquire into her politics?" "no, i thought of that. she is a democrat, her husband is a republican, and both of them are baptists." "her husband? is that child married?" "she is not a child. she is married, and that is her husband who is there with her." "has she any children." "yes--seven and a half." "that is impossible." "no, she has them. she told me herself." "well, but seven and a half? how do you make out the half? where does the half come in?" "there is a child which she had by another husband-not this one but another one--so it is a stepchild, and they do not count in full measure." "another husband? has she another husband?" "yes, four. this one is number four." "i don't believe a word of it. it is impossible, upon its face. is that boy there her brother?" "no, that is her son. he is her youngest. he is not as old as he looked; he is only eleven and a half." "these things are all manifestly impossible. this is a wretched business. it is a plain case: they simply took your measure, and concluded to fill you up. they seem to have succeeded. i am glad i am not in the mess; they may at least be charitable enough to think there ain't a pair of us. are they going to stay here long?" "no, they leave before noon." "there is one man who is deeply grateful for that. how did you find out? you asked, i suppose?" "no, along at first i inquired into their plans, in a general way, and they said they were going to be here a week, and make trips round about; but toward the end of the interview, when i said you and i would tour around with them with pleasure, and offered to bring you over and introduce you, they hesitated a little, and asked if you were from the same establishment that i was. i said you were, and then they said they had changed their mind and considered it necessary to start at once and visit a sick relative in siberia." "ah, me, you struck the summit! you struck the loftiest altitude of stupidity that human effort has ever reached. you shall have a monument of jackasses' skulls as high as the strasburg spire if you die before i do. they wanted to know i was from the same 'establishment' that you hailed from, did they? what did they mean by 'establishment'?" "i don't know; it never occurred to me to ask." "well _i_ know. they meant an asylum--an idiot asylum, do you understand? so they do think there's a pair of us, after all. now what do you think of yourself?" "well, i don't know. i didn't know i was doing any harm; i didn't mean to do any harm. they were very nice people, and they seemed to like me." harris made some rude remarks and left for his bedroom-to break some furniture, he said. he was a singularly irascible man; any little thing would disturb his temper. i had been well scorched by the young woman, but no matter, i took it out on harris. one should always "get even" in some way, else the sore place will go on hurting. chapter xxvi [the nest of the cuckoo-clock] the hofkirche is celebrated for its organ concerts. all summer long the tourists flock to that church about six o'clock in the evening, and pay their franc, and listen to the noise. they don't stay to hear all of it, but get up and tramp out over the sounding stone floor, meeting late comers who tramp in in a sounding and vigorous way. this tramping back and forth is kept up nearly all the time, and is accented by the continuous slamming of the door, and the coughing and barking and sneezing of the crowd. meantime, the big organ is booming and crashing and thundering away, doing its best to prove that it is the biggest and best organ in europe, and that a tight little box of a church is the most favorable place to average and appreciate its powers in. it is true, there were some soft and merciful passages occasionally, but the tramp-tramp of the tourists only allowed one to get fitful glimpses of them, so to speak. then right away the organist would let go another avalanche. the commerce of lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the souvenir sort; the shops are packed with alpine crystals, photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings. i will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the lion of lucerne are to be had in them. millions of them. but they are libels upon him, every one of them. there is a subtle something about the majestic pathos of the original which the copyist cannot get. even the sun fails to get it; both the photographer and the carver give you a dying lion, and that is all. the shape is right, the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that indescribable something which makes the lion of lucerne the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world, is wanting. the lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff--for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. his size is colossal, his attitude is noble. how head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of france. vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies. around about are green trees and grass. the place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion--and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. the lion of lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is. martyrdom is the luckiest fate that can befall some people. louis xvi did not die in his bed, consequently history is very gentle with him; she is charitable toward his failings, and she finds in him high virtues which are not usually considered to be virtues when they are lodged in kings. she makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest spirit, the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head. none of these qualities are kingly but the last. taken together they make a character which would have fared harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had the ill luck to miss martyrdom. with the best intentions to do the right thing, he always managed to do the wrong one. moreover, nothing could get the female saint out of him. he knew, well enough, that in national emergencies he must not consider how he ought to act, as a man, but how he ought to act as a king; so he honestly tried to sink the man and be the king--but it was a failure, he only succeeded in being the female saint. he was not instant in season, but out of season. he could not be persuaded to do a thing while it could do any good--he was iron, he was adamant in his stubbornness then--but as soon as the thing had reached a point where it would be positively harmful to do it, do it he would, and nothing could stop him. he did not do it because it would be harmful, but because he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve by it the good which it would have done if applied earlier. his comprehension was always a train or two behindhand. if a national toe required amputating, he could not see that it needed anything more than poulticing; when others saw that the mortification had reached the knee, he first perceived that the toe needed cutting off--so he cut it off; and he severed the leg at the knee when others saw that the disease had reached the thigh. he was good, and honest, and well meaning, in the matter of chasing national diseases, but he never could overtake one. as a private man, he would have been lovable; but viewed as a king, he was strictly contemptible. his was a most unroyal career, but the most pitiable spectacle in it was his sentimental treachery to his swiss guard on that memorable 10th of august, when he allowed those heroes to be massacred in his cause, and forbade them to shed the "sacred french blood" purporting to be flowing in the veins of the red-capped mob of miscreants that was raging around the palace. he meant to be kingly, but he was only the female saint once more. some of his biographers think that upon this occasion the spirit of saint louis had descended upon him. it must have found pretty cramped quarters. if napoleon the first had stood in the shoes of louis xvi that day, instead of being merely a casual and unknown looker-on, there would be no lion of lucerne, now, but there would be a well-stocked communist graveyard in paris which would answer just as well to remember the 10th of august by. martyrdom made a saint of mary queen of scots three hundred years ago, and she has hardly lost all of her saintship yet. martyrdom made a saint of the trivial and foolish marie antoinette, and her biographers still keep her fragrant with the odor of sanctity to this day, while unconsciously proving upon almost every page they write that the only calamitous instinct which her husband lacked, she supplied--the instinct to root out and get rid of an honest, able, and loyal official, wherever she found him. the hideous but beneficent french revolution would have been deferred, or would have fallen short of completeness, or even might not have happened at all, if marie antoinette had made the unwise mistake of not being born. the world owes a great deal to the french revolution, and consequently to its two chief promoters, louis the poor in spirit and his queen. we did not buy any wooden images of the lion, nor any ivory or ebony or marble or chalk or sugar or chocolate ones, or even any photographic slanders of him. the truth is, these copies were so common, so universal, in the shops and everywhere, that they presently became as intolerable to the wearied eye as the latest popular melody usually becomes to the harassed ear. in lucerne, too, the wood carvings of other sorts, which had been so pleasant to look upon when one saw them occasionally at home, soon began to fatigue us. we grew very tired of seeing wooden quails and chickens picking and struting around clock-faces, and still more tired of seeing wooden images of the alleged chamois skipping about wooden rocks, or lying upon them in family groups, or peering alertly up from behind them. the first day, i would have bought a hundred and fifty of these clocks if i had the money--and i did buy three-but on the third day the disease had run its course, i had convalesced, and was in the market once more--trying to sell. however, i had no luck; which was just as well, for the things will be pretty enough, no doubt, when i get them home. for years my pet aversion had been the cuckoo clock; now here i was, at last, right in the creature's home; so wherever i went that distressing "hoo'hoo! hoo'hoo! hoo'hoo!" was always in my ears. for a nervous man, this was a fine state of things. some sounds are hatefuler than others, but no sound is quite so inane, and silly, and aggravating as the "hoo'hoo" of a cuckoo clock, i think. i bought one, and am carrying it home to a certain person; for i have always said that if the opportunity ever happened, i would do that man an ill turn. what i meant, was, that i would break one of his legs, or something of that sort; but in lucerne i instantly saw that i could impair his mind. that would be more lasting, and more satisfactory every way. so i bought the cuckoo clock; and if i ever get home with it, he is "my meat," as they say in the mines. i thought of another candidate--a book-reviewer whom i could name if i wanted to--but after thinking it over, i didn't buy him a clock. i couldn't injure his mind. we visited the two long, covered wooden bridges which span the green and brilliant reuss just below where it goes plunging and hurrahing out of the lake. these rambling, sway-backed tunnels are very attractive things, with their alcoved outlooks upon the lovely and inspiriting water. they contain two or three hundred queer old pictures, by old swiss masters--old boss sign-painters, who flourished before the decadence of art. the lake is alive with fishes, plainly visible to the eye, for the water is very clear. the parapets in front of the hotels were usually fringed with fishers of all ages. one day i thought i would stop and see a fish caught. the result brought back to my mind, very forcibly, a circumstance which i had not thought of before for twelve years. this one: the man who put up at gadsby's when my odd friend riley and i were newspaper correspondents in washington, in the winter of '67, we were coming down pennsylvania avenue one night, near midnight, in a driving storm of snow, when the flash of a street-lamp fell upon a man who was eagerly tearing along in the opposite direction. this is lucky! you are mr. riley, ain't you?" riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate person in the republic. he stopped, looked his man over from head to foot, and finally said: "i am mr. riley. did you happen to be looking for me?" "that's just what i was doing," said the man, joyously, "and it's the biggest luck in the world that i've found you. my name is lykins. i'm one of the teachers of the high school--san francisco. as soon as i heard the san francisco postmastership was vacant, i made up my mind to get it--and here i am." "yes," said riley, slowly, "as you have remarked ... mr. lykins ... here you are. and have you got it?" "well, not exactly got it, but the next thing to it. i've brought a petition, signed by the superintendent of public instruction, and all the teachers, and by more than two hundred other people. now i want you, if you'll be so good, to go around with me to the pacific delegation, for i want to rush this thing through and get along home." "if the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we visit the delegation tonight," said riley, in a voice which had nothing mocking in it--to an unaccustomed ear. "oh, tonight, by all means! i haven't got any time to fool around. i want their promise before i go to bed-i ain't the talking kind, i'm the doing kind!" "yes ... you've come to the right place for that. when did you arrive?" "just an hour ago." "when are you intending to leave?" "for new york tomorrow evening--for san francisco next morning." "just so.... what are you going to do tomorrow?" "do! why, i've got to go to the president with the petition and the delegation, and get the appointment, haven't i?" "yes ... very true ... that is correct. and then what?" "executive session of the senate at 2 p.m.--got to get the appointment confirmed--i reckon you'll grant that?" "yes ... yes," said riley, meditatively, "you are right again. then you take the train for new york in the evening, and the steamer for san francisco next morning?" "that's it--that's the way i map it out!" riley considered a while, and then said: "you couldn't stay ... a day ... well, say two days longer?" "bless your soul, no! it's not my style. i ain't a man to go fooling around--i'm a man that does things, i tell you." the storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts. riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie, during a minute or more, then he looked up and said: "have you ever heard about that man who put up at gadsby's, once? ... but i see you haven't." he backed mr. lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened him with his eye, like the ancient mariner, and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a wintry midnight tempest: "i will tell you about that man. it was in jackson's time. gadsby's was the principal hotel, then. well, this man arrived from tennessee about nine o'clock, one morning, with a black coachman and a splendid four-horse carriage and an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond of and proud of; he drove up before gadsby's, and the clerk and the landlord and everybody rushed out to take charge of him, but he said, 'never mind,' and jumped out and told the coachman to wait--said he hadn't time to take anything to eat, he only had a little claim against the government to collect, would run across the way, to the treasury, and fetch the money, and then get right along back to tennessee, for he was in considerable of a hurry. "well, about eleven o'clock that night he came back and ordered a bed and told them to put the horses up--said he would collect the claim in the morning. this was in january, you understand--january, 1834-the 3d of january--wednesday. "well, on the 5th of february, he sold the fine carriage, and bought a cheap second-hand one--said it would answer just as well to take the money home in, and he didn't care for style. "on the 11th of august he sold a pair of the fine horses-said he'd often thought a pair was better than four, to go over the rough mountain roads with where a body had to be careful about his driving--and there wasn't so much of his claim but he could lug the money home with a pair easy enough. "on the 13th of december he sold another horse--said two warn't necessary to drag that old light vehicle with--in fact, one could snatch it along faster than was absolutely necessary, now that it was good solid winter weather and the roads in splendid condition. "on the 17th of february, 1835, he sold the old carriage and bought a cheap second-hand buggy--said a buggy was just the trick to skim along mushy, slushy early spring roads with, and he had always wanted to try a buggy on those mountain roads, anyway. "on the 1st august he sold the buggy and bought the remains of an old sulky--said he just wanted to see those green tennesseans stare and gawk when they saw him come a-ripping along in a sulky--didn't believe they'd ever heard of a sulky in their lives. "well, on the 29th of august he sold his colored coachman--said he didn't need a coachman for a sulky-wouldn't be room enough for two in it anyway--and, besides, it wasn't every day that providence sent a man a fool who was willing to pay nine hundred dollars for such a third-rate negro as that--been wanting to get rid of the creature for years, but didn't like to throw him away. "eighteen months later--that is to say, on the 15th of february, 1837--he sold the sulky and bought a saddle--said horseback-riding was what the doctor had always recommended him to take, and dog'd if he wanted to risk his neck going over those mountain roads on wheels in the dead of winter, not if he knew himself. "on the 9th of april he sold the saddle--said he wasn't going to risk his life with any perishable saddle-girth that ever was made, over a rainy, miry april road, while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was safe--always had despised to ride on a saddle, anyway. "on the 24th of april he sold his horse--said 'i'm just fifty-seven today, hale and hearty--it would be a pretty howdy-do for me to be wasting such a trip as that and such weather as this, on a horse, when there ain't anything in the world so splendid as a tramp on foot through the fresh spring woods and over the cheery mountains, to a man that is a man--and i can make my dog carry my claim in a little bundle, anyway, when it's collected. so tomorrow i'll be up bright and early, make my little old collection, and mosey off to tennessee, on my own hind legs, with a rousing good-by to gadsby's.' "on the 22d of june he sold his dog--said 'dern a dog, anyway, where you're just starting off on a rattling bully pleasure tramp through the summer woods and hills--perfect nuisance--chases the squirrels, barks at everything, goes a-capering and splattering around in the fords-man can't get any chance to reflect and enjoy nature-and i'd a blamed sight ruther carry the claim myself, it's a mighty sight safer; a dog's mighty uncertain in a financial way-always noticed it--well, good-by, boys--last call--i'm off for tennessee with a good leg and a gay heart, early in the morning.'" there was a pause and a silence--except the noise of the wind and the pelting snow. mr. lykins said, impatiently: "well?" riley said: "well,--that was thirty years ago." "very well, very well--what of it?" "i'm great friends with that old patriarch. he comes every evening to tell me good-by. i saw him an hour ago-he's off for tennessee early tomorrow morning--as usual; said he calculated to get his claim through and be off before night-owls like me have turned out of bed. the tears were in his eyes, he was so glad he was going to see his old tennessee and his friends once more." another silent pause. the stranger broke it: "is that all?" "that is all." "well, for the time of night, and the kind of night, it seems to me the story was full long enough. but what's it all for?" "oh, nothing in particular." "well, where's the point of it?" "oh, there isn't any particular point to it. only, if you are not in too much of a hurry to rush off to san francisco with that post-office appointment, mr. lykins, i'd advise you to 'put up at gadsby's' for a spell, and take it easy. good-by. god bless you!" so saying, riley blandly turned on his heel and left the astonished school-teacher standing there, a musing and motionless snow image shining in the broad glow of the street-lamp. he never got that post-office. to go back to lucerne and its fishers, i concluded, after about nine hours' waiting, that the man who proposes to tarry till he sees something hook one of those well-fed and experienced fishes will find it wisdom to "put up at gadsby's" and take it easy. it is likely that a fish has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years; but no matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there all the day long, just the same, and seems to enjoy it. one may see the fisher-loafers just as thick and contented and happy and patient all along the seine at paris, but tradition says that the only thing ever caught there in modern times is a thing they don't fish for at all--the recent dog and the translated cat. chapter xxvii [i spare an awful bore] close by the lion of lucerne is what they call the "glacier garden"--and it is the only one in the world. it is on high ground. four or five years ago, some workmen who were digging foundations for a house came upon this interesting relic of a long-departed age. scientific men perceived in it a confirmation of their theories concerning the glacial period; so through their persuasions the little tract of ground was bought and permanently protected against being built upon. the soil was removed, and there lay the rasped and guttered track which the ancient glacier had made as it moved along upon its slow and tedious journey. this track was perforated by huge pot-shaped holes in the bed-rock, formed by the furious washing-around in them of boulders by the turbulent torrent which flows beneath all glaciers. these huge round boulders still remain in the holes; they and the walls of the holes are worn smooth by the long-continued chafing which they gave each other in those old days. it took a mighty force to churn these big lumps of stone around in that vigorous way. the neighboring country had a very different shape, at that time--the valleys have risen up and become hills, since, and the hills have become valleys. the boulders discovered in the pots had traveled a great distance, for there is no rock like them nearer than the distant rhone glacier. for some days we were content to enjoy looking at the blue lake lucerne and at the piled-up masses of snow-mountains that border it all around--an enticing spectacle, this last, for there is a strange and fascinating beauty and charm about a majestic snow-peak with the sun blazing upon it or the moonlight softly enriching it--but finally we concluded to try a bit of excursioning around on a steamboat, and a dash on foot at the rigi. very well, we had a delightful trip to fluelen, on a breezy, sunny day. everybody sat on the upper deck, on benches, under an awning; everybody talked, laughed, and exclaimed at the wonder scenery; in truth, a trip on that lake is almost the perfection of pleasuring. the mountains were a never-ceasing marvel. sometimes they rose straight up out of the lake, and towered aloft and overshadowed our pygmy steamer with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way. not snow-clad mountains, these, yet they climbed high enough toward the sky to meet the clouds and veil their foreheads in them. they were not barren and repulsive, but clothed in green, and restful and pleasant to the eye. and they were so almost straight-up-and-down, sometimes, that one could not imagine a man being able to keep his footing upon such a surface, yet there are paths, and the swiss people go up and down them every day. sometimes one of these monster precipices had the slight inclination of the huge ship-houses in dockyards-then high aloft, toward the sky, it took a little stronger inclination, like that of a mansard roof--and perched on this dizzy mansard one's eye detected little things like martin boxes, and presently perceived that these were the dwellings of peasants--an airy place for a home, truly. and suppose a peasant should walk in his sleep, or his child should fall out of the front yard?--the friends would have a tedious long journey down out of those cloud-heights before they found the remains. and yet those far-away homes looked ever so seductive, they were so remote from the troubled world, they dozed in such an atmosphere of peace and dreams--surely no one who has learned to live up there would ever want to live on a meaner level. we swept through the prettiest little curving arms of the lake, among these colossal green walls, enjoying new delights, always, as the stately panorama unfolded itself before us and rerolled and hid itself behind us; and now and then we had the thrilling surprise of bursting suddenly upon a tremendous white mass like the distant and dominating jungfrau, or some kindred giant, looming head and shoulders above a tumbled waste of lesser alps. once, while i was hungrily taking in one of these surprises, and doing my best to get all i possibly could of it while it should last, i was interrupted by a young and care-free voice: "you're an american, i think--so'm i." he was about eighteen, or possibly nineteen; slender and of medium height; open, frank, happy face; a restless but independent eye; a snub nose, which had the air of drawing back with a decent reserve from the silky new-born mustache below it until it should be introduced; a loosely hung jaw, calculated to work easily in the sockets. he wore a low-crowned, narrow-brimmed straw hat, with a broad blue ribbon around it which had a white anchor embroidered on it in front; nobby short-tailed coat, pantaloons, vest, all trim and neat and up with the fashion; red-striped stockings, very low-quarter patent-leather shoes, tied with black ribbon; blue ribbon around his neck, wide-open collar; tiny diamond studs; wrinkleless kids; projecting cuffs, fastened with large oxidized silver sleeve-buttons, bearing the device of a dog's face--english pug. he carries a slim cane, surmounted with an english pug's head with red glass eyes. under his arm he carried a german grammar--otto's. his hair was short, straight, and smooth, and presently when he turned his head a moment, i saw that it was nicely parted behind. he took a cigarette out of a dainty box, stuck it into a meerschaum holder which he carried in a morocco case, and reached for my cigar. while he was lighting, i said: "yes--i am an american." "i knew it--i can always tell them. what ship did you come over in?" "holsatia." "we came in the batavia--cunard, you know. what kind of passage did you have?" "tolerably rough." "so did we. captain said he'd hardly ever seen it rougher. where are you from?" "new england." "so'm i. i'm from new bloomfield. anybody with you?" "yes--a friend." "our whole family's along. it's awful slow, going around alone--don't you think so?" "rather slow." "ever been over here before?" "yes." "i haven't. my first trip. but we've been all around--paris and everywhere. i'm to enter harvard next year. studying german all the time, now. can't enter till i know german. i know considerable french--i get along pretty well in paris, or anywhere where they speak french. what hotel are you stopping at?" "schweitzerhof." "no! is that so? i never see you in the reception-room. i go to the reception-room a good deal of the time, because there's so many americans there. i make lots of acquaintances. i know an american as soon as i see him--and so i speak to him and make his acquaintance. i like to be always making acquaintances--don't you?" "lord, yes!" "you see it breaks up a trip like this, first rate. i never got bored on a trip like this, if i can make acquaintances and have somebody to talk to. but i think a trip like this would be an awful bore, if a body couldn't find anybody to get acquainted with and talk to on a trip like this. i'm fond of talking, ain't you? "passionately." "have you felt bored, on this trip?" "not all the time, part of it." "that's it!--you see you ought to go around and get acquainted, and talk. that's my way. that's the way i always do--i just go 'round, 'round, 'round and talk, talk, talk--i never get bored. you been up the rigi yet?" "no." "going?" "i think so." "what hotel you going to stop at?" "i don't know. is there more than one?" "three. you stop at the schreiber--you'll find it full of americans. what ship did you say you came over in?" "city of antwerp." "german, i guess. you going to geneva?" "yes." "what hotel you going to stop at?" "hotel de l''ecu de g'en`eve." "don't you do it! no americans there! you stop at one of those big hotels over the bridge--they're packed full of americans." "but i want to practice my arabic." "good gracious, do you speak arabic?" "yes--well enough to get along." "why, hang it, you won't get along in geneva--they don't speak arabic, they speak french. what hotel are you stopping at here?" "hotel pension-beaurivage." "sho, you ought to stop at the schweitzerhof. didn't you know the schweitzerhof was the best hotel in switzerland?-look at your baedeker." "yes, i know--but i had an idea there warn't any americans there." "no americans! why, bless your soul, it's just alive with them! i'm in the great reception-room most all the time. i make lots of acquaintances there. not as many as i did at first, because now only the new ones stop in there-the others go right along through. where are you from?" "arkansaw." "is that so? i'm from new england--new bloomfield's my town when i'm at home. i'm having a mighty good time today, ain't you?" "divine." "that's what i call it. i like this knocking around, loose and easy, and making acquaintances and talking. i know an american, soon as i see him; so i go and speak to him and make his acquaintance. i ain't ever bored, on a trip like this, if i can make new acquaintances and talk. i'm awful fond of talking when i can get hold of the right kind of a person, ain't you?" "i prefer it to any other dissipation." "that's my notion, too. now some people like to take a book and sit down and read, and read, and read, or moon around yawping at the lake or these mountains and things, but that ain't my way; no, sir, if they like it, let 'em do it, i don't object; but as for me, talking's what _i_ like. you been up the rigi?" "yes." "what hotel did you stop at?" "schreiber." "that's the place!--i stopped there too. full of americans, wasn't it? it always is--always is. that's what they say. everybody says that. what ship did you come over in?" "ville de paris." "french, i reckon. what kind of a passage did ... excuse me a minute, there's some americans i haven't seen before." and away he went. he went uninjured, too--i had the murderous impulse to harpoon him in the back with my alpenstock, but as i raised the weapon the disposition left me; i found i hadn't the heart to kill him, he was such a joyous, innocent, good-natured numbskull. half an hour later i was sitting on a bench inspecting, with strong interest, a noble monolith which we were skimming by--a monolith not shaped by man, but by nature's free great hand--a massy pyramidal rock eighty feet high, devised by nature ten million years ago against the day when a man worthy of it should need it for his monument. the time came at last, and now this grand remembrancer bears schiller's name in huge letters upon its face. curiously enough, this rock was not degraded or defiled in any way. it is said that two years ago a stranger let himself down from the top of it with ropes and pulleys, and painted all over it, in blue letters bigger than those in schiller's name, these words: "try sozodont;" "buy sun stove polish;" "helmbold's buchu;" "try benzaline for the blood." he was captured and it turned out that he was an american. upon his trial the judge said to him: "you are from a land where any insolent that wants to is privileged to profane and insult nature, and, through her, nature's god, if by so doing he can put a sordid penny in his pocket. but here the case is different. because you are a foreigner and ignorant, i will make your sentence light; if you were a native i would deal strenuously with you. hear and obey: --you will immediately remove every trace of your offensive work from the schiller monument; you pay a fine of ten thousand francs; you will suffer two years' imprisonment at hard labor; you will then be horsewhipped, tarred and feathered, deprived of your ears, ridden on a rail to the confines of the canton, and banished forever. the severest penalties are omitted in your case--not as a grace to you, but to that great republic which had the misfortune to give you birth." the steamer's benches were ranged back to back across the deck. my back hair was mingling innocently with the back hair of a couple of ladies. presently they were addressed by some one and i overheard this conversation: "you are americans, i think? so'm i." "yes--we are americans." "i knew it--i can always tell them. what ship did you come over in?" "city of chester." "oh, yes--inman line. we came in the batavia--cunard you know. what kind of a passage did you have?" "pretty fair." "that was luck. we had it awful rough. captain said he'd hardly seen it rougher. where are you from?" "new jersey." "so'm i. no--i didn't mean that; i'm from new england. new bloomfield's my place. these your children?--belong to both of you?" "only to one of us; they are mine; my friend is not married." "single, i reckon? so'm i. are you two ladies traveling alone?" "no--my husband is with us." "our whole family's along. it's awful slow, going around alone--don't you think so?" "i suppose it must be." "hi, there's mount pilatus coming in sight again. named after pontius pilate, you know, that shot the apple off of william tell's head. guide-book tells all about it, they say. i didn't read it--an american told me. i don't read when i'm knocking around like this, having a good time. did you ever see the chapel where william tell used to preach?" "i did not know he ever preached there." "oh, yes, he did. that american told me so. he don't ever shut up his guide-book. he knows more about this lake than the fishes in it. besides, they call it 'tell's chapel'--you know that yourself. you ever been over here before?" "yes." "i haven't. it's my first trip. but we've been all around --paris and everywhere. i'm to enter harvard next year. studying german all the time now. can't enter till i know german. this book's otto's grammar. it's a mighty good book to get the ich habe gehabt haben's out of. but i don't really study when i'm knocking around this way. if the notion takes me, i just run over my little old ich have gehabt, du hast gehabt, er hat gehabt, wir haben gehabt, ihr haben gehabt, sie haben gehabt --kind of 'now-i-lay-me-down-to-sleep' fashion, you know, and after that, maybe i don't buckle to it for three days. it's awful undermining to the intellect, german is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together, and you feel them sloshing around in your head same as so much drawn butter. but french is different; french ain't anything. i ain't any more afraid of french than a tramp's afraid of pie; i can rattle off my little j'ai, tu as, il a, and the rest of it, just as easy as a-b-c. i get along pretty well in paris, or anywhere where they speak french. what hotel are you stopping at?" "the schweitzerhof." "no! is that so? i never see you in the big reception-room. i go in there a good deal of the time, because there's so many americans there. i make lots of acquaintances. you been up the rigi yet?" "no." "going?" "we think of it." "what hotel you going to stop at?" "i don't know." "well, then you stop at the schreiber--it's full of americans. what ship did you come over in?" "city of chester." "oh, yes, i remember i asked you that before. but i always ask everybody what ship they came over in, and so sometimes i forget and ask again. you going to geneva?" "yes." "what hotel you going to stop at?" "we expect to stop in a pension." "i don't hardly believe you'll like that; there's very few americans in the pensions. what hotel are you stopping at here?" "the schweitzerhof." "oh, yes. i asked you that before, too. but i always ask everybody what hotel they're stopping at, and so i've got my head all mixed up with hotels. but it makes talk, and i love to talk. it refreshes me up so--don't it you--on a trip like this?" "yes--sometimes." "well, it does me, too. as long as i'm talking i never feel bored--ain't that the way with you?" "yes--generally. but there are exception to the rule." "oh, of course. _i_ don't care to talk to everybody, myself. if a person starts in to jabber-jabber-jabber about scenery, and history, and pictures, and all sorts of tiresome things, i get the fan-tods mighty soon. i say 'well, i must be going now--hope i'll see you again'--and then i take a walk. where you from?" "new jersey." "why, bother it all, i asked you that before, too. have you seen the lion of lucerne?" "not yet." "nor i, either. but the man who told me about mount pilatus says it's one of the things to see. it's twenty-eight feet long. it don't seem reasonable, but he said so, anyway. he saw it yesterday; said it was dying, then, so i reckon it's dead by this time. but that ain't any matter, of course they'll stuff it. did you say the children are yours--or hers?" "mine." "oh, so you did. are you going up the ... no, i asked you that. what ship ... no, i asked you that, too. what hotel are you ... no, you told me that. let me see ... um .... oh, what kind of voy ... no, we've been over that ground, too. um ... um ... well, i believe that is all. bonjour--i am very glad to have made your acquaintance, ladies. guten tag." chapter xxviii [the jodel and its native wilds] the rigi-kulm is an imposing alpine mass, six thousand feet high, which stands by itself, and commands a mighty prospect of blue lakes, green valleys, and snowy mountains-a compact and magnificent picture three hundred miles in circumference. the ascent is made by rail, or horseback, or on foot, as one may prefer. i and my agent panoplied ourselves in walking-costume, one bright morning, and started down the lake on the steamboat; we got ashore at the village of wa"ggis; three-quarters of an hour distant from lucerne. this village is at the foot of the mountain. we were soon tramping leisurely up the leafy mule-path, and then the talk began to flow, as usual. it was twelve o'clock noon, and a breezy, cloudless day; the ascent was gradual, and the glimpses, from under the curtaining boughs, of blue water, and tiny sailboats, and beetling cliffs, were as charming as glimpses of dreamland. all the circumstances were perfect--and the anticipations, too, for we should soon be enjoying, for the first time, that wonderful spectacle, an alpine sunrise--the object of our journey. there was (apparently) no real need for hurry, for the guide-book made the walking-distance from wa"ggis to the summit only three hours and a quarter. i say "apparently," because the guide-book had already fooled us once--about the distance from allerheiligen to oppenau--and for aught i knew it might be getting ready to fool us again. we were only certain as to the altitudes-we calculated to find out for ourselves how many hours it is from the bottom to the top. the summit is six thousand feet above the sea, but only forty-five hundred feet above the lake. when we had walked half an hour, we were fairly into the swing and humor of the undertaking, so we cleared for action; that is to say, we got a boy whom we met to carry our alpenstocks and satchels and overcoats and things for us; that left us free for business. i suppose we must have stopped oftener to stretch out on the grass in the shade and take a bit of a smoke than this boy was used to, for presently he asked if it had been our idea to hire him by the job, or by the year? we told him he could move along if he was in a hurry. he said he wasn't in such a very particular hurry, but he wanted to get to the top while he was young. we told him to clear out, then, and leave the things at the uppermost hotel and say we should be along presently. he said he would secure us a hotel if he could, but if they were all full he would ask them to build another one and hurry up and get the paint and plaster dry against we arrived. still gently chaffing us, he pushed ahead, up the trail, and soon disappeared. by six o'clock we were pretty high up in the air, and the view of lake and mountains had greatly grown in breadth and interest. we halted awhile at a little public house, where we had bread and cheese and a quart or two of fresh milk, out on the porch, with the big panorama all before us--and then moved on again. ten minutes afterward we met a hot, red-faced man plunging down the mountain, making mighty strides, swinging his alpenstock ahead of him, and taking a grip on the ground with its iron point to support these big strides. he stopped, fanned himself with his hat, swabbed the perspiration from his face and neck with a red handkerchief, panted a moment or two, and asked how far to wa"ggis. i said three hours. he looked surprised, and said: "why, it seems as if i could toss a biscuit into the lake from here, it's so close by. is that an inn, there?" i said it was. "well," said he, "i can't stand another three hours, i've had enough today; i'll take a bed there." i asked: "are we nearly to the top?" "nearly to the top?" why, bless your soul, you haven't really started, yet." i said we would put up at the inn, too. so we turned back and ordered a hot supper, and had quite a jolly evening of it with this englishman. the german landlady gave us neat rooms and nice beds, and when i and my agent turned in, it was with the resolution to be up early and make the utmost of our first alpine sunrise. but of course we were dead tired, and slept like policemen; so when we awoke in the morning and ran to the window it was already too late, because it was half past eleven. it was a sharp disappointment. however, we ordered breakfast and told the landlady to call the englishman, but she said he was already up and off at daybreak--and swearing like mad about something or other. we could not find out what the matter was. he had asked the landlady the altitude of her place above the level of the lake, and she told him fourteen hundred and ninety-five feet. that was all that was said; then he lost his temper. he said that between ------fools and guide-books, a man could acquire ignorance enough in twenty-four hours in a country like this to last him a year. harris believed our boy had been loading him up with misinformation; and this was probably the case, for his epithet described that boy to a dot. we got under way about the turn of noon, and pulled out for the summit again, with a fresh and vigorous step. when we had gone about two hundred yards, and stopped to rest, i glanced to the left while i was lighting my pipe, and in the distance detected a long worm of black smoke crawling lazily up the steep mountain. of course that was the locomotive. we propped ourselves on our elbows at once, to gaze, for we had never seen a mountain railway yet. presently we could make out the train. it seemed incredible that that thing should creep straight up a sharp slant like the roof of a house--but there it was, and it was doing that very miracle. in the course of a couple hours we reached a fine breezy altitude where the little shepherd huts had big stones all over their roofs to hold them down to the earth when the great storms rage. the country was wild and rocky about here, but there were plenty of trees, plenty of moss, and grass. away off on the opposite shore of the lake we could see some villages, and now for the first time we could observe the real difference between their proportions and those of the giant mountains at whose feet they slept. when one is in one of those villages it seems spacious, and its houses seem high and not out of proportion to the mountain that overhands them--but from our altitude, what a change! the mountains were bigger and grander than ever, as they stood there thinking their solemn thoughts with their heads in the drifting clouds, but the villages at their feet--when the painstaking eye could trace them up and find them--were so reduced, almost invisible, and lay so flat against the ground, that the exactest simile i can devise is to compare them to ant-deposits of granulated dirt overshadowed by the huge bulk of a cathedral. the steamboats skimming along under the stupendous precipices were diminished by distance to the daintiest little toys, the sailboats and rowboats to shallops proper for fairies that keep house in the cups of lilies and ride to court on the backs of bumblebees. presently we came upon half a dozen sheep nibbling grass in the spray of a stream of clear water that sprang from a rock wall a hundred feet high, and all at once our ears were startled with a melodious "lul ... l ... l l l llul-lul-lahee-o-o-o!" pealing joyously from a near but invisible source, and recognized that we were hearing for the first time the famous alpine jodel in its own native wilds. and we recognized, also, that it was that sort of quaint commingling of baritone and falsetto which at home we call "tyrolese warbling." the jodeling (pronounced yodling--emphasis on the o) continued, and was very pleasant and inspiriting to hear. now the jodeler appeared--a shepherd boy of sixteen-and in our gladness and gratitude we gave him a franc to jodel some more. so he jodeled and we listened. we moved on, presently, and he generously jodeled us out of sight. after about fifteen minutes we came across another shepherd boy who was jodeling, and gave him half a franc to keep it up. he also jodeled us out of sight. after that, we found a jodeler every ten minutes; we gave the first one eight cents, the second one six cents, the third one four, the fourth one a penny, contributed nothing to nos. 5, 6, and 7, and during the remainder of the day hired the rest of the jodelers, at a franc apiece, not to jodel any more. there is somewhat too much of the jodeling in the alps. about the middle of the afternoon we passed through a prodigious natural gateway called the felsenthor, formed by two enormous upright rocks, with a third lying across the top. there was a very attractive little hotel close by, but our energies were not conquered yet, so we went on. three hours afterward we came to the railway-track. it was planted straight up the mountain with the slant of a ladder that leans against a house, and it seemed to us that man would need good nerves who proposed to travel up it or down it either. during the latter part of the afternoon we cooled our roasting interiors with ice-cold water from clear streams, the only really satisfying water we had tasted since we left home, for at the hotels on the continent they merely give you a tumbler of ice to soak your water in, and that only modifies its hotness, doesn't make it cold. water can only be made cold enough for summer comfort by being prepared in a refrigerator or a closed ice-pitcher. europeans say ice-water impairs digestion. how do they know?--they never drink any. at ten minutes past six we reached the kaltbad station, where there is a spacious hotel with great verandas which command a majestic expanse of lake and mountain scenery. we were pretty well fagged out, now, but as we did not wish to miss the alpine sunrise, we got through our dinner as quickly as possible and hurried off to bed. it was unspeakably comfortable to stretch our weary limbs between the cool, damp sheets. and how we did sleep!--for there is no opiate like alpine pedestrianism. in the morning we both awoke and leaped out of bed at the same instant and ran and stripped aside the window-curtains; but we suffered a bitter disappointment again: it was already half past three in the afternoon. we dressed sullenly and in ill spirits, each accusing the other of oversleeping. harris said if we had brought the courier along, as we ought to have done, we should not have missed these sunrises. i said he knew very well that one of us would have to sit up and wake the courier; and i added that we were having trouble enough to take care of ourselves, on this climb, without having to take care of a courier besides. during breakfast our spirits came up a little, since we found by this guide-book that in the hotels on the summit the tourist is not left to trust to luck for his sunrise, but is roused betimes by a man who goes through the halls with a great alpine horn, blowing blasts that would raise the dead. and there was another consoling thing: the guide-book said that up there on the summit the guests did not wait to dress much, but seized a red bed blanket and sailed out arrayed like an indian. this was good; this would be romantic; two hundred and fifty people grouped on the windy summit, with their hair flying and their red blankets flapping, in the solemn presence of the coming sun, would be a striking and memorable spectacle. so it was good luck, not ill luck, that we had missed those other sunrises. we were informed by the guide-book that we were now 3,228 feet above the level of the lake--therefore full two-thirds of our journey had been accomplished. we got away at a quarter past four, p.m.; a hundred yards above the hotel the railway divided; one track went straight up the steep hill, the other one turned square off to the right, with a very slight grade. we took the latter, and followed it more than a mile, turned a rocky corner, and came in sight of a handsome new hotel. if we had gone on, we should have arrived at the summit, but harris preferred to ask a lot of questions--as usual, of a man who didn't know anything--and he told us to go back and follow the other route. we did so. we could ill afford this loss of time. we climbed and climbed; and we kept on climbing; we reached about forty summits, but there was always another one just ahead. it came on to rain, and it rained in dead earnest. we were soaked through and it was bitter cold. next a smoky fog of clouds covered the whole region densely, and we took to the railway-ties to keep from getting lost. sometimes we slopped along in a narrow path on the left-hand side of the track, but by and by when the fog blew as aside a little and we saw that we were treading the rampart of a precipice and that our left elbows were projecting over a perfectly boundless and bottomless vacancy, we gasped, and jumped for the ties again. the night shut down, dark and drizzly and cold. about eight in the evening the fog lifted and showed us a well-worn path which led up a very steep rise to the left. we took it, and as soon as we had got far enough from the railway to render the finding it again an impossibility, the fog shut down on us once more. we were in a bleak, unsheltered place, now, and had to trudge right along, in order to keep warm, though we rather expected to go over a precipice, sooner or later. about nine o'clock we made an important discovery-that we were not in any path. we groped around a while on our hands and knees, but we could not find it; so we sat down in the mud and the wet scant grass to wait. we were terrified into this by being suddenly confronted with a vast body which showed itself vaguely for an instant and in the next instant was smothered in the fog again. it was really the hotel we were after, monstrously magnified by the fog, but we took it for the face of a precipice, and decided not to try to claw up it. we sat there an hour, with chattering teeth and quivering bodies, and quarreled over all sorts of trifles, but gave most of our attention to abusing each other for the stupidity of deserting the railway-track. we sat with our backs to the precipice, because what little wind there was came from that quarter. at some time or other the fog thinned a little; we did not know when, for we were facing the empty universe and the thinness could not show; but at last harris happened to look around, and there stood a huge, dim, spectral hotel where the precipice had been. one could faintly discern the windows and chimneys, and a dull blur of lights. our first emotion was deep, unutterable gratitude, our next was a foolish rage, born of the suspicion that possibly the hotel had been visible three-quarters of an hour while we sat there in those cold puddles quarreling. yes, it was the rigi-kulm hotel--the one that occupies the extreme summit, and whose remote little sparkle of lights we had often seen glinting high aloft among the stars from our balcony away down yonder in lucerne. the crusty portier and the crusty clerks gave us the surly reception which their kind deal out in prosperous times, but by mollifying them with an extra display of obsequiousness and servility we finally got them to show us to the room which our boy had engaged for us. we got into some dry clothing, and while our supper was preparing we loafed forsakenly through a couple of vast cavernous drawing-rooms, one of which had a stove in it. this stove was in a corner, and densely walled around with people. we could not get near the fire, so we moved at large in the artic spaces, among a multitude of people who sat silent, smileless, forlorn, and shivering--thinking what fools they were to come, perhaps. there were some americans and some germans, but one could see that the great majority were english. we lounged into an apartment where there was a great crowd, to see what was going on. it was a memento-magazine. the tourists were eagerly buying all sorts and styles of paper-cutters, marked "souvenir of the rigi," with handles made of the little curved horn of the ostensible chamois; there were all manner of wooden goblets and such things, similarly marked. i was going to buy a paper-cutter, but i believed i could remember the cold comfort of the rigi-kulm without it, so i smothered the impulse. supper warmed us, and we went immediately to bed--but first, as mr. baedeker requests all tourists to call his attention to any errors which they may find in his guide-books, i dropped him a line to inform him he missed it by just about three days. i had previously informed him of his mistake about the distance from allerheiligen to oppenau, and had also informed the ordnance depart of the german government of the same error in the imperial maps. i will add, here, that i never got any answer to those letters, or any thanks from either of those sources; and, what is still more discourteous, these corrections have not been made, either in the maps or the guide-books. but i will write again when i get time, for my letters may have miscarried. we curled up in the clammy beds, and went to sleep without rocking. we were so sodden with fatigue that we never stirred nor turned over till the blooming blasts of the alpine horn aroused us. it may well be imagined that we did not lose any time. we snatched on a few odds and ends of clothing, cocooned ourselves in the proper red blankets, and plunged along the halls and out into the whistling wind bareheaded. we saw a tall wooden scaffolding on the very peak of the summit, a hundred yards away, and made for it. we rushed up the stairs to the top of this scaffolding, and stood there, above the vast outlying world, with hair flying and ruddy blankets waving and cracking in the fierce breeze. "fifteen minutes too late, at last!" said harris, in a vexed voice. "the sun is clear above the horizon." "no matter," i said, "it is a most magnificent spectacle, and we will see it do the rest of its rising anyway." in a moment we were deeply absorbed in the marvel before us, and dead to everything else. the great cloud-barred disk of the sun stood just above a limitless expanse of tossing white-caps--so to speak--a billowy chaos of massy mountain domes and peaks draped in imperishable snow, and flooded with an opaline glory of changing and dissolving splendors, while through rifts in a black cloud-bank above the sun, radiating lances of diamond dust shot to the zenith. the cloven valleys of the lower world swam in a tinted mist which veiled the ruggedness of their crags and ribs and ragged forests, and turned all the forbidding region into a soft and rich and sensuous paradise. we could not speak. we could hardly breathe. we could only gaze in drunken ecstasy and drink in it. presently harris exclaimed: "why--nation, it's going down!" perfectly true. we had missed the morning hornblow, and slept all day. this was stupefying. harris said: "look here, the sun isn't the spectacle--it's us--stacked up here on top of this gallows, in these idiotic blankets, and two hundred and fifty well-dressed men and women down here gawking up at us and not caring a straw whether the sun rises or sets, as long as they've got such a ridiculous spectacle as this to set down in their memorandum-books. they seem to be laughing their ribs loose, and there's one girl there at appears to be going all to pieces. i never saw such a man as you before. i think you are the very last possibility in the way of an ass." "what have _i_ done?" i answered, with heat. "what have you done?" you've got up at half past seven o'clock in the evening to see the sun rise, that's what you've done." "and have you done any better, i'd like to know? i've always used to get up with the lark, till i came under the petrifying influence of your turgid intellect." "you used to get up with the lark--oh, no doubt-you'll get up with the hangman one of these days. but you ought to be ashamed to be jawing here like this, in a red blanket, on a forty-foot scaffold on top of the alps. and no end of people down here to boot; this isn't any place for an exhibition of temper." and so the customary quarrel went on. when the sun was fairly down, we slipped back to the hotel in the charitable gloaming, and went to bed again. we had encountered the horn-blower on the way, and he had tried to collect compensation, not only for announcing the sunset, which we did see, but for the sunrise, which we had totally missed; but we said no, we only took our solar rations on the "european plan"--pay for what you get. he promised to make us hear his horn in the morning, if we were alive. chapter xxix [looking west for sunrise] he kept his word. we heard his horn and instantly got up. it was dark and cold and wretched. as i fumbled around for the matches, knocking things down with my quaking hands, i wished the sun would rise in the middle of the day, when it was warm and bright and cheerful, and one wasn't sleepy. we proceeded to dress by the gloom of a couple sickly candles, but we could hardly button anything, our hands shook so. i thought of how many happy people there were in europe, asia, and america, and everywhere, who were sleeping peacefully in their beds, and did not have to get up and see the rigi sunrise--people who did not appreciate their advantage, as like as not, but would get up in the morning wanting more boons of providence. while thinking these thoughts i yawned, in a rather ample way, and my upper teeth got hitched on a nail over the door, and while i was mounting a chair to free myself, harris drew the window-curtain, and said: "oh, this is luck! we shan't have to go out at all-yonder are the mountains, in full view." that was glad news, indeed. it made us cheerful right away. one could see the grand alpine masses dimly outlined against the black firmament, and one or two faint stars blinking through rifts in the night. fully clothed, and wrapped in blankets, and huddled ourselves up, by the window, with lighted pipes, and fell into chat, while we waited in exceeding comfort to see how an alpine sunrise was going to look by candlelight. by and by a delicate, spiritual sort of effulgence spread itself by imperceptible degrees over the loftiest altitudes of the snowy wastes--but there the effort seemed to stop. i said, presently: "there is a hitch about this sunrise somewhere. it doesn't seem to go. what do you reckon is the matter with it?" "i don't know. it appears to hang fire somewhere. i never saw a sunrise act like that before. can it be that the hotel is playing anything on us?" "of course not. the hotel merely has a property interest in the sun, it has nothing to do with the management of it. it is a precarious kind of property, too; a succession of total eclipses would probably ruin this tavern. now what can be the matter with this sunrise?" harris jumped up and said: "i've got it! i know what's the matter with it! we've been looking at the place where the sun set last night!" "it is perfectly true! why couldn't you have thought of that sooner? now we've lost another one! and all through your blundering. it was exactly like you to light a pipe and sit down to wait for the sun to rise in the west." "it was exactly like me to find out the mistake, too. you never would have found it out. i find out all the mistakes." "you make them all, too, else your most valuable faculty would be wasted on you. but don't stop to quarrel, now--maybe we are not too late yet." but we were. the sun was well up when we got to the exhibition-ground. on our way up we met the crowd returning--men and women dressed in all sorts of queer costumes, and exhibiting all degrees of cold and wretchedness in their gaits and countenances. a dozen still remained on the ground when we reached there, huddled together about the scaffold with their backs to the bitter wind. they had their red guide-books open at the diagram of the view, and were painfully picking out the several mountains and trying to impress their names and positions on their memories. it was one of the saddest sights i ever saw. two sides of this place were guarded by railings, to keep people from being blown over the precipices. the view, looking sheer down into the broad valley, eastward, from this great elevation--almost a perpendicular mile--was very quaint and curious. counties, towns, hilly ribs and ridges, wide stretches of green meadow, great forest tracts, winding streams, a dozen blue lakes, a block of busy steamboats--we saw all this little world in unique circumstantiality of detail--saw it just as the birds see it--and all reduced to the smallest of scales and as sharply worked out and finished as a steel engraving. the numerous toy villages, with tiny spires projecting out of them, were just as the children might have left them when done with play the day before; the forest tracts were diminished to cushions of moss; one or two big lakes were dwarfed to ponds, the smaller ones to puddles--though they did not look like puddles, but like blue eardrops which had fallen and lodged in slight depressions, conformable to their shapes, among the moss-beds and the smooth levels of dainty green farm-land; the microscopic steamboats glided along, as in a city reservoir, taking a mighty time to cover the distance between ports which seemed only a yard apart; and the isthmus which separated two lakes looked as if one might stretch out on it and lie with both elbows in the water, yet we knew invisible wagons were toiling across it and finding the distance a tedious one. this beautiful miniature world had exactly the appearance of those "relief maps" which reproduce nature precisely, with the heights and depressions and other details graduated to a reduced scale, and with the rocks, trees, lakes, etc., colored after nature. i believed we could walk down to wa"ggis or vitznau in a day, but i knew we could go down by rail in about an hour, so i chose the latter method. i wanted to see what it was like, anyway. the train came along about the middle of the afternoon, and an odd thing it was. the locomotive-boiler stood on end, and it and the whole locomotive-boiler stood on end, and it and the whole locomotive were tiled sharply backward. there were two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open all around. these cars were not tilted back, but the seats were; this enables the passenger to sit level while going down a steep incline. there are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged; the "lantern wheel" of the engine grips its way along these cogs, and pulls the train up the hill or retards its motion on the down trip. about the same speed--three miles an hour--is maintained both ways. whether going up or down, the locomotive is always at the lower end of the train. it pushes in the one case, braces back in the other. the passenger rides backward going up, and faces forward going down. we got front seats, and while the train moved along about fifty yards on level ground, i was not the least frightened; but now it started abruptly downstairs, and i caught my breath. and i, like my neighbors, unconsciously held back all i could, and threw my weight to the rear, but, of course, that did no particular good. i had slidden down the balusters when i was a boy, and thought nothing of it, but to slide down the balusters in a railway-train is a thing to make one's flesh creep. sometimes we had as much as ten yards of almost level ground, and this gave us a few full breaths in comfort; but straightway we would turn a corner and see a long steep line of rails stretching down below us, and the comfort was at an end. one expected to see the locomotive pause, or slack up a little, and approach this plunge cautiously, but it did nothing of the kind; it went calmly on, and went it reached the jumping-off place it made a sudden bow, and went gliding smoothly downstairs, untroubled by the circumstances. it was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of the precipices, after this grisly fashion, and look straight down upon that far-off valley which i was describing a while ago. there was no level ground at the kaltbad station; the railbed was as steep as a roof; i was curious to see how the stop was going to be managed. but it was very simple; the train came sliding down, and when it reached the right spot it just stopped--that was all there was "to it"--stopped on the steep incline, and when the exchange of passengers and baggage had been made, it moved off and went sliding down again. the train can be stopped anywhere, at a moment's notice. there was one curious effect, which i need not take the trouble to describe--because i can scissor a description of it out of the railway company's advertising pamphlet, and say my ink: "on the whole tour, particularly at the descent, we undergo an optical illusion which often seems to be incredible. all the shrubs, fir trees, stables, houses, etc., seem to be bent in a slanting direction, as by an immense pressure of air. they are all standing awry, so much awry that the chalets and cottages of the peasants seem to be tumbling down. it is the consequence of the steep inclination of the line. those who are seated in the carriage do not observe that they are doing down a declivity of twenty to twenty-five degrees (their seats being adapted to this course of proceeding and being bent down at their backs). they mistake their carriage and its horizontal lines for a proper measure of the normal plain, and therefore all the objects outside which really are in a horizontal position must show a disproportion of twenty to twenty-five degrees declivity, in regard to the mountain." by the time one reaches kaltbad, he has acquired confidence in the railway, and he now ceases to try to ease the locomotive by holding back. thenceforth he smokes his pipe in serenity, and gazes out upon the magnificent picture below and about him with unfettered enjoyment. there is nothing to interrupt the view or the breeze; it is like inspecting the world on the wing. however--to be exact--there is one place where the serenity lapses for a while; this is while one is crossing the schnurrtobel bridge, a frail structure which swings its gossamer frame down through the dizzy air, over a gorge, like a vagrant spider-strand. one has no difficulty in remembering his sins while the train is creeping down this bridge; and he repents of them, too; though he sees, when he gets to vitznau, that he need not have done it, the bridge was perfectly safe. so ends the eventual trip which we made to the rigi-kulm to see an alpine sunrise. chapter xxx [harris climbs mountains for me] an hour's sail brought us to lucerne again. i judged it best to go to bed and rest several days, for i knew that the man who undertakes to make the tour of europe on foot must take care of himself. thinking over my plans, as mapped out, i perceived that they did not take in the furka pass, the rhone glacier, the finsteraarhorn, the wetterhorn, etc. i immediately examined the guide-book to see if these were important, and found they were; in fact, a pedestrian tour of europe could not be complete without them. of course that decided me at once to see them, for i never allow myself to do things by halves, or in a slurring, slipshod way. i called in my agent and instructed him to go without delay and make a careful examination of these noted places, on foot, and bring me back a written report of the result, for insertion in my book. i instructed him to go to hospenthal as quickly as possible, and make his grand start from there; to extend his foot expedition as far as the giesbach fall, and return to me from thence by diligence or mule. i told him to take the courier with him. he objected to the courier, and with some show of reason, since he was about to venture upon new and untried ground; but i thought he might as well learn how to take care of the courier now as later, therefore i enforced my point. i said that the trouble, delay, and inconvenience of traveling with a courier were balanced by the deep respect which a courier's presence commands, and i must insist that as much style be thrown into my journeys as possible. so the two assumed complete mountaineering costumes and departed. a week later they returned, pretty well used up, and my agent handed me the following official report of a visit to the furka region. by h. harris, agent about seven o'clock in the morning, with perfectly fine weather, we started from hospenthal, and arrived at the maison on the furka in a little under quatre hours. the want of variety in the scenery from hospenthal made the kahkahponeeka wearisome; but let none be discouraged; no one can fail to be completely r'ecompens'ee for his fatigue, when he sees, for the first time, the monarch of the oberland, the tremendous finsteraarhorn. a moment before all was dullness, but a pas further has placed us on the summit of the furka; and exactly in front of us, at a hopow of only fifteen miles, this magnificent mountain lifts its snow-wreathed precipices into the deep blue sky. the inferior mountains on each side of the pass form a sort of frame for the picture of their dread lord, and close in the view so completely that no other prominent feature in the oberland is visible from this bong-a-bong; nothing withdraws the attention from the solitary grandeur of the finsteraarhorn and the dependent spurs which form the abutments of the central peak. with the addition of some others, who were also bound for the grimsel, we formed a large xhvloj as we descended the steg which winds round the shoulder of a mountain toward the rhone glacier. we soon left the path and took to the ice; and after wandering amongst the crevices un peu, to admire the wonders of these deep blue caverns, and hear the rushing of waters through their subglacial channels, we struck out a course toward l'autre co^t'e and crossed the glacier successfully, a little above the cave from which the infant rhone takes its first bound from under the grand precipice of ice. half a mile below this we began to climb the flowery side of the meienwand. one of our party started before the rest, but the hitze was so great, that we found ihm quite exhausted, and lying at full length in the shade of a large gestein. we sat down with him for a time, for all felt the heat exceedingly in the climb up this very steep bolwoggoly, and then we set out again together, and arrived at last near the dead man's lake, at the foot of the sidelhorn. this lonely spot, once used for an extempore burying-place, after a sanguinary battue between the french and austrians, is the perfection of desolation; there is nothing in sight to mark the hand of man, except the line of weather-beaten whitened posts, set up to indicate the direction of the pass in the owdawakk of winter. near this point the footpath joins the wider track, which connects the grimsel with the head of the rhone schnawp; this has been carefully constructed, and leads with a tortuous course among and over les pierres, down to the bank of the gloomy little swosh-swosh, which almost washes against the walls of the grimsel hospice. we arrived a little before four o'clock at the end of our day's journey, hot enough to justify the step, taking by most of the partie, of plunging into the crystal water of the snow-fed lake. the next afternoon we started for a walk up the unteraar glacier, with the intention of, at all events, getting as far as the hu"tte which is used as a sleeping-place by most of those who cross the strahleck pass to grindelwald. we got over the tedious collection of stones and de'bris which covers the pied of the gletcher, and had walked nearly three hours from the grimsel, when, just as we were thinking of crossing over to the right, to climb the cliffs at the foot of the hut, the clouds, which had for some time assumed a threatening appearance, suddenly dropped, and a huge mass of them, driving toward us from the finsteraarhorn, poured down a deluge of haboolong and hail. fortunately, we were not far from a very large glacier-table; it was a huge rock balanced on a pedestal of ice high enough to admit of our all creeping under it for gowkarak. a stream of puckittypukk had furrowed a course for itself in the ice at its base, and we were obliged to stand with one fuss on each side of this, and endeavor to keep ourselves chaud by cutting steps in the steep bank of the pedestal, so as to get a higher place for standing on, as the wasser rose rapidly in its trench. a very cold bzzzzzzzzeee accompanied the storm, and made our position far from pleasant; and presently came a flash of blitzen, apparently in the middle of our little party, with an instantaneous clap of yokky, sounding like a large gun fired close to our ears; the effect was startling; but in a few seconds our attention was fixed by the roaring echoes of the thunder against the tremendous mountains which completely surrounded us. this was followed by many more bursts, none of welche, however, was so dangerously near; and after waiting a long demi-hour in our icy prison, we sallied out to talk through a haboolong which, though not so heavy as before, was quite enough to give us a thorough soaking before our arrival at the hospice. the grimsel is certainement a wonderful place; situated at the bottom of a sort of huge crater, the sides of which are utterly savage gebirge, composed of barren rocks which cannot even support a single pine arbre, and afford only scanty food for a herd of gmwkwllolp, it looks as if it must be completely begraben in the winter snows. enormous avalanches fall against it every spring, sometimes covering everything to the depth of thirty or forty feet; and, in spite of walls four feet thick, and furnished with outside shutters, the two men who stay here when the voyageurs are snugly quartered in their distant homes can tell you that the snow sometimes shakes the house to its foundations. next morning the hogglebumgullup still continued bad, but we made up our minds to go on, and make the best of it. half an hour after we started, the regen thickened unpleasantly, and we attempted to get shelter under a projecting rock, but being far to nass already to make standing at all agre'able, we pushed on for the handeck, consoling ourselves with the reflection that from the furious rushing of the river aar at our side, we should at all events see the celebrated wasserfall in grande perfection. nor were we nappersocket in our expectation; the water was roaring down its leap of two hundred and fifty feet in a most magnificent frenzy, while the trees which cling to its rocky sides swayed to and fro in the violence of the hurricane which it brought down with it; even the stream, which falls into the main cascade at right angles, and toutefois forms a beautiful feature in the scene, was now swollen into a raging torrent; and the violence of this "meeting of the waters," about fifty feet below the frail bridge where we stood, was fearfully grand. while we were looking at it, glu"cklicheweise a gleam of sunshine came out, and instantly a beautiful rainbow was formed by the spray, and hung in mid-air suspended over the awful gorge. on going into the chalet above the fall, we were informed that a bru"cke had broken down near guttanen, and that it would be impossible to proceed for some time; accordingly we were kept in our drenched condition for ein stunde, when some voyageurs arrived from meiringen, and told us that there had been a trifling accident, aber that we could now cross. on arriving at the spot, i was much inclined to suspect that the whole story was a ruse to make us slowwk and drink the more at the handeck inn, for only a few planks had been carried away, and though there might perhaps have been some difficulty with mules, the gap was certainly not larger than a mmbglx might cross with a very slight leap. near guttanen the haboolong happily ceased, and we had time to walk ourselves tolerably dry before arriving at reichenback, wo we enjoyed a good dine' at the hotel des alps. next morning we walked to rosenlaui, the beau id'eal of swiss scenery, where we spent the middle of the day in an excursion to the glacier. this was more beautiful than words can describe, for in the constant progress of the ice it has changed the form of its extremity and formed a vast cavern, as blue as the sky above, and rippled like a frozen ocean. a few steps cut in the whoopjamboreehoo enabled us to walk completely under this, and feast our eyes upon one of the loveliest objects in creation. the glacier was all around divided by numberless fissures of the same exquisite color, and the finest wood-erdbeeren were growing in abundance but a few yards from the ice. the inn stands in a charmant spot close to the c^ote de la rivie`re, which, lower down, forms the reichenbach fall, and embosomed in the richest of pine woods, while the fine form of the wellhorn looking down upon it completes the enchanting bopple. in the afternoon we walked over the great scheideck to grindelwald, stopping to pay a visit to the upper glacier by the way; but we were again overtaken by bad hogglebumgullup and arrived at the hotel in a solche a state that the landlord's wardrobe was in great request. the clouds by this time seemed to have done their worst, for a lovely day succeeded, which we determined to devote to an ascent of the faulhorn. we left grindelwald just as a thunder-storm was dying away, and we hoped to find guten wetter up above; but the rain, which had nearly ceased, began again, and we were struck by the rapidly increasing froid as we ascended. two-thirds of the way up were completed when the rain was exchanged for gnillic, with which the boden was thickly covered, and before we arrived at the top the gnillic and mist became so thick that we could not see one another at more than twenty poopoo distance, and it became difficult to pick our way over the rough and thickly covered ground. shivering with cold, we turned into bed with a double allowance of clothes, and slept comfortably while the wind howled autour de la maison; when i awoke, the wall and the window looked equally dark, but in another hour i found i could just see the form of the latter; so i jumped out of bed, and forced it open, though with great difficulty from the frost and the quantities of gnillic heaped up against it. a row of huge icicles hung down from the edge of the roof, and anything more wintry than the whole anblick could not well be imagined; but the sudden appearance of the great mountains in front was so startling that i felt no inclination to move toward bed again. the snow which had collected upon la fene^tre had increased the finsterniss oder der dunkelheit, so that when i looked out i was surprised to find that the daylight was considerable, and that the balragoomah would evidently rise before long. only the brightest of les e'toiles were still shining; the sky was cloudless overhead, though small curling mists lay thousands of feet below us in the valleys, wreathed around the feet of the mountains, and adding to the splendor of their lofty summits. we were soon dressed and out of the house, watching the gradual approach of dawn, thoroughly absorbed in the first near view of the oberland giants, which broke upon us unexpectedly after the intense obscurity of the evening before. "kabaugwakko songwashee kum wetterhorn snawpo!" cried some one, as that grand summit gleamed with the first rose of dawn; and in a few moments the double crest of the schreckhorn followed its example; peak after peak seemed warmed with life, the jungfrau blushed even more beautifully than her neighbors, and soon, from the wetterhorn in the east to the wildstrubel in the west, a long row of fires glowed upon mighty altars, truly worthy of the gods. the wlgw was very severe; our sleeping-place could hardly be distinguee' from the snow around it, which had fallen to a depth of a flirk during the past evening, and we heartily enjoyed a rough scramble en bas to the giesbach falls, where we soon found a warm climate. at noon the day before grindelwald the thermometer could not have stood at less than 100 degrees fahr. in the sun; and in the evening, judging from the icicles formed, and the state of the windows, there must have been at least twelve dingblatter of frost, thus giving a change of 80 degrees during a few hours. i said: "you have done well, harris; this report is concise, compact, well expressed; the language is crisp, the descriptions are vivid and not needlessly elaborated; your report goes straight to the point, attends strictly to business, and doesn't fool around. it is in many ways an excellent document. but it has a fault--it is too learned, it is much too learned. what is 'dingblatter'? "'dingblatter' is a fiji word meaning 'degrees.'" "you knew the english of it, then?" "oh, yes." "what is 'gnillic'? "that is the eskimo term for 'snow.'" "so you knew the english for that, too?" "why, certainly." "what does 'mmbglx' stand for?" "that is zulu for 'pedestrian.'" "'while the form of the wellhorn looking down upon it completes the enchanting bopple.' what is 'bopple'?" "'picture.' it's choctaw." "what is 'schnawp'?" "'valley.' that is choctaw, also." "what is 'bolwoggoly'?" "that is chinese for 'hill.'" "'kahkahponeeka'?" "'ascent.' choctaw." "'but we were again overtaken by bad hogglebumgullup.' what does 'hogglebumgullup' mean?" "that is chinese for 'weather.'" "is 'hogglebumgullup' better than the english word? is it any more descriptive?" "no, it means just the same." "and 'dingblatter' and 'gnillic,' and 'bopple,' and 'schnawp'--are they better than the english words?" "no, they mean just what the english ones do." "then why do you use them? why have you used all this chinese and choctaw and zulu rubbish?" "because i didn't know any french but two or three words, and i didn't know any latin or greek at all." "that is nothing. why should you want to use foreign words, anyhow?" "they adorn my page. they all do it." "who is 'all'?" "everybody. everybody that writes elegantly. anybody has a right to that wants to." "i think you are mistaken." i then proceeded in the following scathing manner. "when really learned men write books for other learned men to read, they are justified in using as many learned words as they please--their audience will understand them; but a man who writes a book for the general public to read is not justified in disfiguring his pages with untranslated foreign expressions. it is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers, for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying, 'get the translations made yourself if you want them, this book is not written for the ignorant classes.' there are men who know a foreign language so well and have used it so long in their daily life that they seem to discharge whole volleys of it into their english writings unconsciously, and so they omit to translate, as much as half the time. that is a great cruelty to nine out of ten of the man's readers. what is the excuse for this? the writer would say he only uses the foreign language where the delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in english. very well, then he writes his best things for the tenth man, and he ought to warn the nine other not to buy his book. however, the excuse he offers is at least an excuse; but there is another set of men who are like you; they know a word here and there, of a foreign language, or a few beggarly little three-word phrases, filched from the back of the dictionary, and these are continually peppering into their literature, with a pretense of knowing that language--what excuse can they offer? the foreign words and phrases which they use have their exact equivalents in a nobler language--english; yet they think they 'adorn their page' when they say strasse for street, and bahnhof for railway-station, and so on--flaunting these fluttering rags of poverty in the reader's face and imagining he will be ass enough to take them for the sign of untold riches held in reserve. i will let your 'learning' remain in your report; you have as much right, i suppose, to 'adorn your page' with zulu and chinese and choctaw rubbish as others of your sort have to adorn theirs with insolent odds and ends smouched from half a dozen learned tongues whose a-b abs they don't even know." when the musing spider steps upon the red-hot shovel, he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he shrivels up. similar was the effect of these blistering words upon the tranquil and unsuspecting agent. i can be dreadfully rough on a person when the mood takes me. chapter xxxi [alp-scaling by carriage] we now prepared for a considerable walk--from lucerne to interlaken, over the bru"nig pass. but at the last moment the weather was so good that i changed my mind and hired a four-horse carriage. it was a huge vehicle, roomy, as easy in its motion as a palanquin, and exceedingly comfortable. we got away pretty early in the morning, after a hot breakfast, and went bowling over a hard, smooth road, through the summer loveliness of switzerland, with near and distant lakes and mountains before and about us for the entertainment of the eye, and the music of multitudinous birds to charm the ear. sometimes there was only the width of the road between the imposing precipices on the right and the clear cool water on the left with its shoals of uncatchable fish skimming about through the bars of sun and shadow; and sometimes, in place of the precipices, the grassy land stretched away, in an apparently endless upward slant, and was dotted everywhere with snug little chalets, the peculiarly captivating cottage of switzerland. the ordinary chalet turns a broad, honest gable end to the road, and its ample roof hovers over the home in a protecting, caressing way, projecting its sheltering eaves far outward. the quaint windows are filled with little panes, and garnished with white muslin curtains, and brightened with boxes of blooming flowers. across the front of the house, and up the spreading eaves and along the fanciful railings of the shallow porch, are elaborate carvings--wreaths, fruits, arabesques, verses from scripture, names, dates, etc. the building is wholly of wood, reddish brown in tint, a very pleasing color. it generally has vines climbing over it. set such a house against the fresh green of the hillside, and it looks ever so cozy and inviting and picturesque, and is a decidedly graceful addition to the landscape. one does not find out what a hold the chalet has taken upon him, until he presently comes upon a new house-a house which is aping the town fashions of germany and france, a prim, hideous, straight-up-and-down thing, plastered all over on the outside to look like stone, and altogether so stiff, and formal, and ugly, and forbidding, and so out of tune with the gracious landscape, and so deaf and dumb and dead to the poetry of its surroundings, that it suggests an undertaker at a picnic, a corpse at a wedding, a puritan in paradise. in the course of the morning we passed the spot where pontius pilate is said to have thrown himself into the lake. the legend goes that after the crucifixion his conscience troubled him, and he fled from jerusalem and wandered about the earth, weary of life and a prey to tortures of the mind. eventually, he hid himself away, on the heights of mount pilatus, and dwelt alone among the clouds and crags for years; but rest and peace were still denied him, so he finally put an end to his misery by drowning himself. presently we passed the place where a man of better odor was born. this was the children's friend, santa claus, or st. nicholas. there are some unaccountable reputations in the world. this saint's is an instance. he has ranked for ages as the peculiar friend of children, yet it appears he was not much of a friend to his own. he had ten of them, and when fifty years old he left them, and sought out as dismal a refuge from the world as possible, and became a hermit in order that he might reflect upon pious themes without being disturbed by the joyous and other noises from the nursery, doubtless. judging by pilate and st. nicholas, there exists no rule for the construction of hermits; they seem made out of all kinds of material. but pilate attended to the matter of expiating his sin while he was alive, whereas st. nicholas will probably have to go on climbing down sooty chimneys, christmas eve, forever, and conferring kindness on other people's children, to make up for deserting his own. his bones are kept in a church in a village (sachseln) which we visited, and are naturally held in great reverence. his portrait is common in the farmhouses of the region, but is believed by many to be but an indifferent likeness. during his hermit life, according to legend, he partook of the bread and wine of the communion once a month, but all the rest of the month he fasted. a constant marvel with us, as we sped along the bases of the steep mountains on this journey, was, not that avalanches occur, but that they are not occurring all the time. one does not understand why rocks and landslides do not plunge down these declivities daily. a landslip occurred three quarters of a century ago, on the route from arth to brunnen, which was a formidable thing. a mass of conglomerate two miles long, a thousand feet broad, and a hundred feet thick, broke away from a cliff three thousand feet high and hurled itself into the valley below, burying four villages and five hundred people, as in a grave. we had such a beautiful day, and such endless pictures of limpid lakes, and green hills and valleys, and majestic mountains, and milky cataracts dancing down the steeps and gleaming in the sun, that we could not help feeling sweet toward all the world; so we tried to drink all the milk, and eat all the grapes and apricots and berries, and buy all the bouquets of wild flowers which the little peasant boys and girls offered for sale; but we had to retire from this contract, for it was too heavy. at short distances--and they were entirely too short--all along the road, were groups of neat and comely children, with their wares nicely and temptingly set forth in the grass under the shade trees, and as soon as we approached they swarmed into the road, holding out their baskets and milk bottles, and ran beside the carriage, barefoot and bareheaded, and importuned us to buy. they seldom desisted early, but continued to run and insist--beside the wagon while they could, and behind it until they lost breath. then they turned and chased a returning carriage back to their trading-post again. after several hours of this, without any intermission, it becomes almost annoying. i do not know what we should have done without the returning carriages to draw off the pursuit. however, there were plenty of these, loaded with dusty tourists and piled high with luggage. indeed, from lucerne to interlaken we had the spectacle, among other scenery, of an unbroken procession of fruit-peddlers and tourists carriages. our talk was mostly anticipatory of what we should see on the down-grade of the bru"nig, by and by, after we should pass the summit. all our friends in lucerne had said that to look down upon meiringen, and the rushing blue-gray river aar, and the broad level green valley; and across at the mighty alpine precipices that rise straight up to the clouds out of that valley; and up at the microscopic chalets perched upon the dizzy eaves of those precipices and winking dimly and fitfully through the drifting veil of vapor; and still up and up, at the superb oltschiback and the other beautiful cascades that leap from those rugged heights, robed in powdery spray, ruffled with foam, and girdled with rainbows--to look upon these things, they say, was to look upon the last possibility of the sublime and the enchanting. therefore, as i say, we talked mainly of these coming wonders; if we were conscious of any impatience, it was to get there in favorable season; if we felt any anxiety, it was that the day might remain perfect, and enable us to see those marvels at their best. as we approached the kaiserstuhl, a part of the harness gave way. we were in distress for a moment, but only a moment. it was the fore-and-aft gear that was broken--the thing that leads aft from the forward part of the horse and is made fast to the thing that pulls the wagon. in america this would have been a heavy leathern strap; but, all over the continent it is nothing but a piece of rope the size of your little finger--clothes-line is what it is. cabs use it, private carriages, freight-carts and wagons, all sorts of vehicles have it. in munich i afterward saw it used on a long wagon laden with fifty-four half-barrels of beer; i had before noticed that the cabs in heidelberg used it--not new rope, but rope that had been in use since abraham's time --and i had felt nervous, sometimes, behind it when the cab was tearing down a hill. but i had long been accustomed to it now, and had even become afraid of the leather strap which belonged in its place. our driver got a fresh piece of clothes-line out of his locker and repaired the break in two minutes. so much for one european fashion. every country has its own ways. it may interest the reader to know how they "put horses to" on the continent. the man stands up the horses on each side of the thing that projects from the front end of the wagon, and then throws the tangled mess of gear forward through a ring, and hauls it aft, and passes the other thing through the other ring and hauls it aft on the other side of the other horse, opposite to the first one, after crossing them and bringing the loose end back, and then buckles the other thing underneath the horse, and takes another thing and wraps it around the thing i spoke of before, and puts another thing over each horse's head, with broad flappers to it to keep the dust out of his eyes, and puts the iron thing in his mouth for him to grit his teeth on, uphill, and brings the ends of these things aft over his back, after buckling another one around under his neck to hold his head up, and hitching another thing on a thing that goes over his shoulders to keep his head up when he is climbing a hill, and then takes the slack of the thing which i mentioned a while ago, and fetches it aft and makes it fast to the thing that pulls the wagon, and hands the other things up to the driver to steer with. i never have buckled up a horse myself, but i do not think we do it that way. we had four very handsome horses, and the driver was very proud of his turnout. he would bowl along on a reasonable trot, on the highway, but when he entered a village he did it on a furious run, and accompanied it with a frenzy of ceaseless whip-crackings that sounded like volleys of musketry. he tore through the narrow streets and around the sharp curves like a moving earthquake, showering his volleys as he went, and before him swept a continuous tidal wave of scampering children, ducks, cats, and mothers clasping babies which they had snatched out of the way of the coming destruction; and as this living wave washed aside, along the walls, its elements, being safe, forgot their fears and turned their admiring gaze upon that gallant driver till he thundered around the next curve and was lost to sight. he was a great man to those villagers, with his gaudy clothes and his terrific ways. whenever he stopped to have his cattle watered and fed with loaves of bread, the villagers stood around admiring him while he swaggered about, the little boys gazed up at his face with humble homage, and the landlord brought out foaming mugs of beer and conversed proudly with him while he drank. then he mounted his lofty box, swung his explosive whip, and away he went again, like a storm. i had not seen anything like this before since i was a boy, and the stage used to flourish the village with the dust flying and the horn tooting. when we reached the base of the kaiserstuhl, we took two more horses; we had to toil along with difficulty for an hour and a half or two hours, for the ascent was not very gradual, but when we passed the backbone and approached the station, the driver surpassed all his previous efforts in the way of rush and clatter. he could not have six horses all the time, so he made the most of his chance while he had it. up to this point we had been in the heart of the william tell region. the hero is not forgotten, by any means, or held in doubtful veneration. his wooden image, with his bow drawn, above the doors of taverns, was a frequent feature of the scenery. about noon we arrived at the foot of the bru"nig pass, and made a two-hour stop at the village hotel, another of those clean, pretty, and thoroughly well-kept inns which are such an astonishment to people who are accustomed to hotels of a dismally different pattern in remote country-towns. there was a lake here, in the lap of the great mountains, the green slopes that rose toward the lower crags were graced with scattered swiss cottages nestling among miniature farms and gardens, and from out a leafy ambuscade in the upper heights tumbled a brawling cataract. carriage after carriage, laden with tourists and trunks, arrived, and the quiet hotel was soon populous. we were early at the table d'ho^te and saw the people all come in. there were twenty-five, perhaps. they were of various nationalities, but we were the only americans. next to me sat an english bride, and next to her sat her new husband, whom she called "neddy," though he was big enough and stalwart enough to be entitled to his full name. they had a pretty little lovers' quarrel over what wine they should have. neddy was for obeying the guide-book and taking the wine of the country; but the bride said: "what, that nahsty stuff!" "it isn't nahsty, pet, it's quite good." "it is nahsty." "no, it isn't nahsty." "it's oful nahsty, neddy, and i shahn't drink it." then the question was, what she must have. she said he knew very well that she never drank anything but champagne. she added: "you know very well papa always has champagne on his table, and i've always been used to it." neddy made a playful pretense of being distressed about the expense, and this amused her so much that she nearly exhausted herself with laughter--and this pleased him so much that he repeated his jest a couple of times, and added new and killing varieties to it. when the bride finally recovered, she gave neddy a love-box on the arm with her fan, and said with arch severity: "well, you would have me--nothing else would do-so you'll have to make the best of a bad bargain. do order the champagne, i'm oful dry." so with a mock groan which made her laugh again, neddy ordered the champagne. the fact that this young woman had never moistened the selvedge edge of her soul with a less plebeian tipple than champagne, had a marked and subduing effect on harris. he believed she belonged to the royal family. but i had my doubts. we heard two or three different languages spoken by people at the table and guessed out the nationalities of most of the guests to our satisfaction, but we failed with an elderly gentleman and his wife and a young girl who sat opposite us, and with a gentleman of about thirty-five who sat three seats beyond harris. we did not hear any of these speak. but finally the last-named gentleman left while we were not noticing, but we looked up as he reached the far end of the table. he stopped there a moment, and made his toilet with a pocket comb. so he was a german; or else he had lived in german hotels long enough to catch the fashion. when the elderly couple and the young girl rose to leave, they bowed respectfully to us. so they were germans, too. this national custom is worth six of the other one, for export. after dinner we talked with several englishmen, and they inflamed our desire to a hotter degree than ever, to see the sights of meiringen from the heights of the bru"nig pass. they said the view was marvelous, and that one who had seen it once could never forget it. they also spoke of the romantic nature of the road over the pass, and how in one place it had been cut through a flank of the solid rock, in such a way that the mountain overhung the tourist as he passed by; and they furthermore said that the sharp turns in the road and the abruptness of the descent would afford us a thrilling experience, for we should go down in a flying gallop and seem to be spinning around the rings of a whirlwind, like a drop of whiskey descending the spirals of a corkscrew. i got all the information out of these gentlemen that we could need; and then, to make everything complete, i asked them if a body could get hold of a little fruit and milk here and there, in case of necessity. they threw up their hands in speechless intimation that the road was simply paved with refreshment-peddlers. we were impatient to get away, now, and the rest of our two-hour stop rather dragged. but finally the set time arrived and we began the ascent. indeed it was a wonderful road. it was smooth, and compact, and clean, and the side next the precipices was guarded all along by dressed stone posts about three feet high, placed at short distances apart. the road could not have been better built if napoleon the first had built it. he seems to have been the introducer of the sort of roads which europe now uses. all literature which describes life as it existed in england, france, and germany up to the close of the last century, is filled with pictures of coaches and carriages wallowing through these three countries in mud and slush half-wheel deep; but after napoleon had floundered through a conquered kingdom he generally arranged things so that the rest of the world could follow dry-shod. we went on climbing, higher and higher, and curving hither and thither, in the shade of noble woods, and with a rich variety and profusion of wild flowers all about us; and glimpses of rounded grassy backbones below us occupied by trim chalets and nibbling sheep, and other glimpses of far lower altitudes, where distance diminished the chalets to toys and obliterated the sheep altogether; and every now and then some ermined monarch of the alps swung magnificently into view for a moment, then drifted past an intervening spur and disappeared again. it was an intoxicating trip altogether; the exceeding sense of satisfaction that follows a good dinner added largely to the enjoyment; the having something especial to look forward to and muse about, like the approaching grandeurs of meiringen, sharpened the zest. smoking was never so good before, solid comfort was never solider; we lay back against the thick cushions silent, meditative, steeped in felicity. i rubbed my eyes, opened them, and started. i had been dreaming i was at sea, and it was a thrilling surprise to wake up and find land all around me. it took me a couple seconds to "come to," as you may say; then i took in the situation. the horses were drinking at a trough in the edge of a town, the driver was taking beer, harris was snoring at my side, the courier, with folded arms and bowed head, was sleeping on the box, two dozen barefooted and bareheaded children were gathered about the carriage, with their hands crossed behind, gazing up with serious and innocent admiration at the dozing tourists baking there in the sun. several small girls held night-capped babies nearly as big as themselves in their arms, and even these fat babies seemed to take a sort of sluggish interest in us. we had slept an hour and a half and missed all the scenery! i did not need anybody to tell me that. if i had been a girl, i could have cursed for vexation. as it was, i woke up the agent and gave him a piece of my mind. instead of being humiliated, he only upbraided me for being so wanting in vigilance. he said he had expected to improve his mind by coming to europe, but a man might travel to the ends of the earth with me and never see anything, for i was manifestly endowed with the very genius of ill luck. he even tried to get up some emotion about that poor courier, who never got a chance to see anything, on account of my heedlessness. but when i thought i had borne about enough of this kind of talk, i threatened to make harris tramp back to the summit and make a report on that scenery, and this suggestion spiked his battery. we drove sullenly through brienz, dead to the seductions of its bewildering array of swiss carvings and the clamorous hoo-hooing of its cuckoo clocks, and had not entirely recovered our spirits when we rattled across a bridge over the rushing blue river and entered the pretty town of interlaken. it was just about sunset, and we had made the trip from lucerne in ten hours. chapter xxxii [the jungfrau, the bride, and the piano] we located ourselves at the jungfrau hotel, one of those huge establishments which the needs of modern travel have created in every attractive spot on the continent. there was a great gathering at dinner, and, as usual, one heard all sorts of languages. the table d'ho^te was served by waitresses dressed in the quaint and comely costume of the swiss peasants. this consists of a simple gros de laine, trimmed with ashes of roses, with overskirt of scare bleu ventre saint gris, cut bias on the off-side, with facings of petit polonaise and narrow insertions of pa^te de foie gras backstitched to the mise en sce`ne in the form of a jeu d'esprit. it gives to the wearer a singularly piquant and alluring aspect. one of these waitresses, a woman of forty, had side-whiskers reaching half-way down her jaws. they were two fingers broad, dark in color, pretty thick, and the hairs were an inch long. one sees many women on the continent with quite conspicuous mustaches, but this was the only woman i saw who had reached the dignity of whiskers. after dinner the guests of both sexes distributed themselves about the front porches and the ornamental grounds belonging to the hotel, to enjoy the cool air; but, as the twilight deepened toward darkness, they gathered themselves together in that saddest and solemnest and most constrained of all places, the great blank drawing-room which is the chief feature of all continental summer hotels. there they grouped themselves about, in couples and threes, and mumbled in bated voices, and looked timid and homeless and forlorn. there was a small piano in this room, a clattery, wheezy, asthmatic thing, certainly the very worst miscarriage in the way of a piano that the world has seen. in turn, five or six dejected and homesick ladies approached it doubtingly, gave it a single inquiring thump, and retired with the lockjaw. but the boss of that instrument was to come, nevertheless; and from my own country--from arkansaw. she was a brand-new bride, innocent, girlish, happy in herself and her grave and worshiping stripling of a husband; she was about eighteen, just out of school, free from affections, unconscious of that passionless multitude around her; and the very first time she smote that old wreck one recognized that it had met its destiny. her stripling brought an armful of aged sheet-music from their room-for this bride went "heeled," as you might say--and bent himself lovingly over and got ready to turn the pages. the bride fetched a swoop with her fingers from one end of the keyboard to the other, just to get her bearings, as it were, and you could see the congregation set their teeth with the agony of it. then, without any more preliminaries, she turned on all the horrors of the "battle of prague," that venerable shivaree, and waded chin-deep in the blood of the slain. she made a fair and honorable average of two false notes in every five, but her soul was in arms and she never stopped to correct. the audience stood it with pretty fair grit for a while, but when the cannonade waxed hotter and fiercer, and the discord average rose to four in five, the procession began to move. a few stragglers held their ground ten minutes longer, but when the girl began to wring the true inwardness out of the "cries of the wounded," they struck their colors and retired in a kind of panic. there never was a completer victory; i was the only non-combatant left on the field. i would not have deserted my countrywoman anyhow, but indeed i had no desires in that direction. none of us like mediocrity, but we all reverence perfection. this girl's music was perfection in its way; it was the worst music that had ever been achieved on our planet by a mere human being. i moved up close, and never lost a strain. when she got through, i asked her to play it again. she did it with a pleased alacrity and a heightened enthusiasm. she made it all discords, this time. she got an amount of anguish into the cries of the wounded that shed a new light on human suffering. she was on the war-path all the evening. all the time, crowds of people gathered on the porches and pressed their noses against the windows to look and marvel, but the bravest never ventured in. the bride went off satisfied and happy with her young fellow, when her appetite was finally gorged, and the tourists swarmed in again. what a change has come over switzerland, and in fact all europe, during this century! seventy or eighty years ago napoleon was the only man in europe who could really be called a traveler; he was the only man who had devoted his attention to it and taken a powerful interest in it; he was the only man who had traveled extensively; but now everybody goes everywhere; and switzerland, and many other regions which were unvisited and unknown remotenesses a hundred years ago, are in our days a buzzing hive of restless strangers every summer. but i digress. in the morning, when we looked out of our windows, we saw a wonderful sight. across the valley, and apparently quite neighborly and close at hand, the giant form of the jungfrau rose cold and white into the clear sky, beyond a gateway in the nearer highlands. it reminded me, somehow, of one of those colossal billows which swells suddenly up beside one's ship, at sea, sometimes, with its crest and shoulders snowy white, and the rest of its noble proportions streaked downward with creamy foam. i took out my sketch-book and made a little picture of the jungfrau, merely to get the shape. [figure 9] i do not regard this as one of my finished works, in fact i do not rank it among my works at all; it is only a study; it is hardly more than what one might call a sketch. other artists have done me the grace to admire it; but i am severe in my judgments of my own pictures, and this one does not move me. it was hard to believe that that lofty wooded rampart on the left which so overtops the jungfrau was not actually the higher of the two, but it was not, of course. it is only two or three thousand feet high, and of course has no snow upon it in summer, whereas the jungfrau is not much shorter of fourteen thousand feet high and therefore that lowest verge of snow on her side, which seems nearly down to the valley level, is really about seven thousand feet higher up in the air than the summit of that wooded rampart. it is the distance that makes the deception. the wooded height is but four or five miles removed from us, but the jungfrau is four or five times that distance away. walking down the street of shops, in the fore-noon, i was attracted by a large picture, carved, frame and all, from a single block of chocolate-colored wood. there are people who know everything. some of these had told us that continental shopkeepers always raise their prices on english and americans. many people had told us it was expensive to buy things through a courier, whereas i had supposed it was just the reverse. when i saw this picture, i conjectured that it was worth more than the friend i proposed to buy it for would like to pay, but still it was worth while to inquire; so i told the courier to step in and ask the price, as if he wanted it for himself; i told him not to speak in english, and above all not to reveal the fact that he was a courier. then i moved on a few yards, and waited. the courier came presently and reported the price. i said to myself, "it is a hundred francs too much," and so dismissed the matter from my mind. but in the afternoon i was passing that place with harris, and the picture attracted me again. we stepped in, to see how much higher broken german would raise the price. the shopwoman named a figure just a hundred francs lower than the courier had named. this was a pleasant surprise. i said i would take it. after i had given directions as to where it was to be shipped, the shipped, the shopwoman said, appealingly: "if your please, do not let your courier know you bought it." this was an unexpected remark. i said: "what makes you think i have a courier?" "ah, that is very simple; he told me himself." "he was very thoughtful. but tell me--why did you charge him more than you are charging me?" "that is very simple, also: i do not have to pay you a percentage." "oh, i begin to see. you would have had to pay the courier a percentage." "undoubtedly. the courier always has his percentage. in this case it would have been a hundred francs." "then the tradesman does not pay a part of it-the purchaser pays all of it?" "there are occasions when the tradesman and the courier agree upon a price which is twice or thrice the value of the article, then the two divide, and both get a percentage." "i see. but it seems to me that the purchaser does all the paying, even then." "oh, to be sure! it goes without saying." "but i have bought this picture myself; therefore why shouldn't the courier know it?" the woman exclaimed, in distress: "ah, indeed it would take all my little profit! he would come and demand his hundred francs, and i should have to pay." "he has not done the buying. you could refuse." "i could not dare to refuse. he would never bring travelers here again. more than that, he would denounce me to the other couriers, they would divert custom from me, and my business would be injured." i went away in a thoughtful frame of mind. i began to see why a courier could afford to work for fifty-five dollars a month and his fares. a month or two later i was able to understand why a courier did not have to pay any board and lodging, and why my hotel bills were always larger when i had him with me than when i left him behind, somewhere, for a few days. another thing was also explained, now, apparently. in one town i had taken the courier to the bank to do the translating when i drew some money. i had sat in the reading-room till the transaction was finished. then a clerk had brought the money to me in person, and had been exceedingly polite, even going so far as to precede me to the door and holding it open for me and bow me out as if i had been a distinguished personage. it was a new experience. exchange had been in my favor ever since i had been in europe, but just that one time. i got simply the face of my draft, and no extra francs, whereas i had expected to get quite a number of them. this was the first time i had ever used the courier at the bank. i had suspected something then, and as long as he remained with me afterward i managed bank matters by myself. still, if i felt that i could afford the tax, i would never travel without a courier, for a good courier is a convenience whose value cannot be estimated in dollars and cents. without him, travel is a bitter harassment, a purgatory of little exasperating annoyances, a ceaseless and pitiless punishment--i mean to an irascible man who has no business capacity and is confused by details. without a courier, travel hasn't a ray of pleasure in it, anywhere; but with him it is a continuous and unruffled delight. he is always at hand, never has to be sent for; if your bell is not answered promptly--and it seldom is--you have only to open the door and speak, the courier will hear, and he will have the order attended to or raise an insurrection. you tell him what day you will start, and whither you are going--leave all the rest to him. you need not inquire about trains, or fares, or car changes, or hotels, or anything else. at the proper time he will put you in a cab or an omnibus, and drive you to the train or the boat; he has packed your luggage and transferred it, he has paid all the bills. other people have preceded you half an hour to scramble for impossible places and lose their tempers, but you can take your time; the courier has secured your seats for you, and you can occupy them at your leisure. at the station, the crowd mash one another to pulp in the effort to get the weigher's attention to their trunks; they dispute hotly with these tyrants, who are cool and indifferent; they get their baggage billets, at last, and then have another squeeze and another rage over the disheartening business of trying to get them recorded and paid for, and still another over the equally disheartening business of trying to get near enough to the ticket office to buy a ticket; and now, with their tempers gone to the dogs, they must stand penned up and packed together, laden with wraps and satchels and shawl-straps, with the weary wife and babies, in the waiting-room, till the doors are thrown open--and then all hands make a grand final rush to the train, find it full, and have to stand on the platform and fret until some more cars are put on. they are in a condition to kill somebody by this time. meantime, you have been sitting in your car, smoking, and observing all this misery in the extremest comfort. on the journey the guard is polite and watchful--won't allow anybody to get into your compartment--tells them you are just recovering from the small-pox and do not like to be disturbed. for the courier has made everything right with the guard. at way-stations the courier comes to your compartment to see if you want a glass of water, or a newspaper, or anything; at eating-stations he sends luncheon out to you, while the other people scramble and worry in the dining-rooms. if anything breaks about the car you are in, and a station-master proposes to pack you and your agent into a compartment with strangers, the courier reveals to him confidentially that you are a french duke born deaf and dumb, and the official comes and makes affable signs that he has ordered a choice car to be added to the train for you. at custom-houses the multitude file tediously through, hot and irritated, and look on while the officers burrow into the trunks and make a mess of everything; but you hand your keys to the courier and sit still. perhaps you arrive at your destination in a rain-storm at ten at night--you generally do. the multitude spend half an hour verifying their baggage and getting it transferred to the omnibuses; but the courier puts you into a vehicle without a moment's loss of time, and when you reach your hotel you find your rooms have been secured two or three days in advance, everything is ready, you can go at once to bed. some of those other people will have to drift around to two or three hotels, in the rain, before they find accommodations. i have not set down half of the virtues that are vested in a good courier, but i think i have set down a sufficiency of them to show that an irritable man who can afford one and does not employ him is not a wise economist. my courier was the worst one in europe, yet he was a good deal better than none at all. it could not pay him to be a better one than he was, because i could not afford to buy things through him. he was a good enough courier for the small amount he got out of his service. yes, to travel with a courier is bliss, to travel without one is the reverse. i have had dealings with some very bad couriers; but i have also had dealings with one who might fairly be called perfection. he was a young polander, named joseph n. verey. he spoke eight languages, and seemed to be equally at home in all of them; he was shrewd, prompt, posted, and punctual; he was fertile in resources, and singularly gifted in the matter of overcoming difficulties; he not only knew how to do everything in his line, but he knew the best ways and the quickest; he was handy with children and invalids; all his employer needed to do was to take life easy and leave everything to the courier. his address is, care of messrs. gay & son, strand, london; he was formerly a conductor of gay's tourist parties. excellent couriers are somewhat rare; if the reader is about to travel, he will find it to his advantage to make a note of this one. chapter xxxiii [we climb far--by buggy] the beautiful giesbach fall is near interlaken, on the other side of the lake of brienz, and is illuminated every night with those gorgeous theatrical fires whose name i cannot call just at this moment. this was said to be a spectacle which the tourist ought by no means to miss. i was strongly tempted, but i could not go there with propriety, because one goes in a boat. the task which i had set myself was to walk over europe on foot, not skim over it in a boat. i had made a tacit contract with myself; it was my duty to abide by it. i was willing to make boat trips for pleasure, but i could not conscientiously make them in the way of business. it cost me something of a pang to lose that fine sight, but i lived down the desire, a nd gained in my self-respect through the triumph. i had a finer and a grander sight, however, where i was. this was the mighty dome of the jungfrau softly outlined against the sky and faintly silvered by the starlight. there was something subduing in the influence of that silent and solemn and awful presence; one seemed to meet the immutable, the indestructible, the eternal, face to face, and to feel the trivial and fleeting nature of his own existence the more sharply by the contrast. one had the sense of being under the brooding contemplation of a spirit, not an inert mass of rocks and ice--a spirit which had looked down, through the slow drift of the ages, upon a million vanished races of men, and judged them; and would judge a million more--and still be there, watching, unchanged and unchangeable, after all life should be gone and the earth have become a vacant desolation. while i was feeling these things, i was groping, without knowing it, toward an understanding of what the spell is which people find in the alps, and in no other mountains--that strange, deep, nameless influence, which, once felt, cannot be forgotten--once felt, leaves always behind it a restless longing to feel it again--a longing which is like homesickness; a grieving, haunting yearning which will plead, implore, and persecute till it has its will. i met dozens of people, imaginative and unimaginative, cultivated and uncultivated, who had come from far countries and roamed through the swiss alps year after year--they could not explain why. they had come first, they said, out of idle curiosity, because everybody talked about it; they had come since because they could not help it, and they should keep on coming, while they lived, for the same reason; they had tried to break their chains and stay away, but it was futile; now, they had no desire to break them. others came nearer formulating what they felt; they said they could find perfect rest and peace nowhere else when they were troubled: all frets and worries and chafings sank to sleep in the presence of the benignant serenity of the alps; the great spirit of the mountain breathed his own peace upon their hurt minds and sore hearts, and healed them; they could not think base thoughts or do mean and sordid things here, before the visible throne of god. down the road a piece was a kursaal--whatever that may be-and we joined the human tide to see what sort of enjoyment it might afford. it was the usual open-air concert, in an ornamental garden, with wines, beer, milk, whey, grapes, etc.--the whey and the grapes being necessaries of life to certain invalids whom physicians cannot repair, and who only continue to exist by the grace of whey or grapes. one of these departed spirits told me, in a sad and lifeless way, that there is no way for him to live but by whey, and dearly, dearly loved whey, he didn't know whey he did, but he did. after making this pun he died--that is the whey it served him. some other remains, preserved from decomposition by the grape system, told me that the grapes were of a peculiar breed, highly medicinal in their nature, and that they were counted out and administered by the grape-doctors as methodically as if they were pills. the new patient, if very feeble, began with one grape before breakfast, took three during breakfast, a couple between meals, five at luncheon, three in the afternoon, seven at dinner, four for supper, and part of a grape just before going to bed, by way of a general regulator. the quantity was gradually and regularly increased, according to the needs and capacities of the patient, until by and by you would find him disposing of his one grape per second all the day long, and his regular barrel per day. he said that men cured in this way, and enabled to discard the grape system, never afterward got over the habit of talking as if they were dictating to a slow amanuensis, because they always made a pause between each two words while they sucked the substance out of an imaginary grape. he said these were tedious people to talk with. he said that men who had been cured by the other process were easily distinguished from the rest of mankind because they always tilted their heads back, between every two words, and swallowed a swig of imaginary whey. he said it was an impressive thing to observe two men, who had been cured by the two processes, engaged in conversation--said their pauses and accompanying movements were so continuous and regular that a stranger would think himself in the presence of a couple of automatic machines. one finds out a great many wonderful things, by traveling, if he stumbles upon the right person. i did not remain long at the kursaal; the music was good enough, but it seemed rather tame after the cyclone of that arkansaw expert. besides, my adventurous spirit had conceived a formidable enterprise--nothing less than a trip from interlaken, by the gemmi and visp, clear to zermatt, on foot! so it was necessary to plan the details, and get ready for an early start. the courier (this was not the one i have just been speaking of) thought that the portier of the hotel would be able to tell us how to find our way. and so it turned out. he showed us the whole thing, on a relief-map, and we could see our route, with all its elevations and depressions, its villages and its rivers, as clearly as if we were sailing over it in a balloon. a relief-map is a great thing. the portier also wrote down each day's journey and the nightly hotel on a piece of paper, and made our course so plain that we should never be able to get lost without high-priced outside help. i put the courier in the care of a gentleman who was going to lausanne, and then we went to bed, after laying out the walking-costumes and putting them into condition for instant occupation in the morning. however, when we came down to breakfast at 8 a.m., it looked so much like rain that i hired a two-horse top-buggy for the first third of the journey. for two or three hours we jogged along the level road which skirts the beautiful lake of thun, with a dim and dreamlike picture of watery expanses and spectral alpine forms always before us, veiled in a mellowing mist. then a steady downpour set in, and hid everything but the nearest objects. we kept the rain out of our faces with umbrellas, and away from our bodies with the leather apron of the buggy; but the driver sat unsheltered and placidly soaked the weather in and seemed to like it. we had the road to ourselves, and i never had a pleasanter excursion. the weather began to clear while we were driving up a valley called the kienthal, and presently a vast black cloud-bank in front of us dissolved away and uncurtained the grand proportions and the soaring loftiness of the blumis alp. it was a sort of breath-taking surprise; for we had not supposed there was anything behind that low-hung blanket of sable cloud but level valley. what we had been mistaking for fleeting glimpses of sky away aloft there, were really patches of the blumis's snowy crest caught through shredded rents in the drifting pall of vapor. we dined in the inn at frutigen, and our driver ought to have dined there, too, but he would not have had time to dine and get drunk both, so he gave his mind to making a masterpiece of the latter, and succeeded. a german gentleman and his two young-lady daughters had been taking their nooning at the inn, and when they left, just ahead of us, it was plain that their driver was as drunk as ours, and as happy and good-natured, too, which was saying a good deal. these rascals overflowed with attentions and information for their guests, and with brotherly love for each other. they tied their reins, and took off their coats and hats, so that they might be able to give unencumbered attention to conversation and to the gestures necessary for its illustration. the road was smooth; it led up and over and down a continual succession of hills; but it was narrow, the horses were used to it, and could not well get out of it anyhow; so why shouldn't the drivers entertain themselves and us? the noses of our horses projected sociably into the rear of the forward carriage, and as we toiled up the long hills our driver stood up and talked to his friend, and his friend stood up and talked back to him, with his rear to the scenery. when the top was reached and we went flying down the other side, there was no change in the program. i carry in my memory yet the picture of that forward driver, on his knees on his high seat, resting his elbows on its back, and beaming down on his passengers, with happy eye, and flying hair, and jolly red face, and offering his card to the old german gentleman while he praised his hack and horses, and both teams were whizzing down a long hill with nobody in a position to tell whether we were bound to destruction or an undeserved safety. toward sunset we entered a beautiful green valley dotted with chalets, a cozy little domain hidden away from the busy world in a cloistered nook among giant precipices topped with snowy peaks that seemed to float like islands above the curling surf of the sea of vapor that severed them from the lower world. down from vague and vaporous heights, little ruffled zigzag milky currents came crawling, and found their way to the verge of one of those tremendous overhanging walls, whence they plunged, a shaft of silver, shivered to atoms in mid-descent and turned to an air puff of luminous dust. here and there, in grooved depressions among the snowy desolations of the upper altitudes, one glimpsed the extremity of a glacier, with its sea-green and honeycombed battlements of ice. up the valley, under a dizzy precipice, nestled the village of kandersteg, our halting-place for the night. we were soon there, and housed in the hotel. but the waning day had such an inviting influence that we did not remain housed many moments, but struck out and followed a roaring torrent of ice-water up to its far source in a sort of little grass-carpeted parlor, walled in all around by vast precipices and overlooked by clustering summits of ice. this was the snuggest little croquet-ground imaginable; it was perfectly level, and not more than a mile long by half a mile wide. the walls around it were so gigantic, and everything about it was on so mighty a scale that it was belittled, by contrast, to what i have likened it to--a cozy and carpeted parlor. it was so high above the kandersteg valley that there was nothing between it and the snowy-peaks. i had never been in such intimate relations with the high altitudes before; the snow-peaks had always been remote and unapproachable grandeurs, hitherto, but now we were hob-a-nob--if one may use such a seemingly irreverent expression about creations so august as these. we could see the streams which fed the torrent we had followed issuing from under the greenish ramparts of glaciers; but two or three of these, instead of flowing over the precipices, sank down into the rock and sprang in big jets out of holes in the mid-face of the walls. the green nook which i have been describing is called the gasternthal. the glacier streams gather and flow through it in a broad and rushing brook to a narrow cleft between lofty precipices; here the rushing brook becomes a mad torrent and goes booming and thundering down toward kandersteg, lashing and thrashing its way over and among monster boulders, and hurling chance roots and logs about like straws. there was no lack of cascades along this route. the path by the side of the torrent was so narrow that one had to look sharp, when he heard a cow-bell, and hunt for a place that was wide enough to accommodate a cow and a christian side by side, and such places were not always to be had at an instant's notice. the cows wear church-bells, and that is a good idea in the cows, for where that torrent is, you couldn't hear an ordinary cow-bell any further than you could hear the ticking of a watch. i needed exercise, so i employed my agent in setting stranded logs and dead trees adrift, and i sat on a boulder and watched them go whirling and leaping head over heels down the boiling torrent. it was a wonderfully exhilarating spectacle. when i had had enough exercise, i made the agent take some, by running a race with one of those logs. i made a trifle by betting on the log. after dinner we had a walk up and down the kandersteg valley, in the soft gloaming, with the spectacle of the dying lights of day playing about the crests and pinnacles of the still and solemn upper realm for contrast, and text for talk. there were no sounds but the dulled complaining of the torrent and the occasional tinkling of a distant bell. the spirit of the place was a sense of deep, pervading peace; one might dream his life tranquilly away there, and not miss it or mind it when it was gone. the summer departed with the sun, and winter came with the stars. it grew to be a bitter night in that little hotel, backed up against a precipice that had no visible top to it, but we kept warm, and woke in time in the morning to find that everybody else had left for gemmi three hours before-so our little plan of helping that german family (principally the old man) over the pass, was a blocked generosity. chapter xxxiv [the world's highest pig farm] we hired the only guide left, to lead us on our way. he was over seventy, but he could have given me nine-tenths of his strength and still had all his age entitled him to. he shouldered our satchels, overcoats, and alpenstocks, and we set out up the steep path. it was hot work. the old man soon begged us to hand over our coats and waistcoats to him to carry, too, and we did it; one could not refuse so little a thing to a poor old man like that; he should have had them if he had been a hundred and fifty. when we began that ascent, we could see a microscopic chalet perched away up against heaven on what seemed to be the highest mountain near us. it was on our right, across the narrow head of the valley. but when we got up abreast it on its own level, mountains were towering high above on every hand, and we saw that its altitude was just about that of the little gasternthal which we had visited the evening before. still it seemed a long way up in the air, in that waste and lonely wilderness of rocks. it had an unfenced grass-plot in front of it which seemed about as big as a billiard-table, and this grass-plot slanted so sharply downward, and was so brief, and ended so exceedingly soon at the verge of the absolute precipice, that it was a shuddery thing to think of a person's venturing to trust his foot on an incline so situated at all. suppose a man stepped on an orange peel in that yard; there would be nothing for him to seize; nothing could keep him from rolling; five revolutions would bring him to the edge, and over he would go. what a frightful distance he would fall!--for there are very few birds that fly as high as his starting-point. he would strike and bounce, two or three times, on his way down, but this would be no advantage to him. i would as soon taking an airing on the slant of a rainbow as in such a front yard. i would rather, in fact, for the distance down would be about the same, and it is pleasanter to slide than to bounce. i could not see how the peasants got up to that chalet-the region seemed too steep for anything but a balloon. as we strolled on, climbing up higher and higher, we were continually bringing neighboring peaks into view and lofty prominence which had been hidden behind lower peaks before; so by and by, while standing before a group of these giants, we looked around for the chalet again; there it was, away down below us, apparently on an inconspicuous ridge in the valley! it was as far below us, now, as it had been above us when we were beginning the ascent. after a while the path led us along a railed precipice, and we looked over--far beneath us was the snug parlor again, the little gasternthal, with its water jets spouting from the face of its rock walls. we could have dropped a stone into it. we had been finding the top of the world all along--and always finding a still higher top stealing into view in a disappointing way just ahead; when we looked down into the gasternthal we felt pretty sure that we had reached the genuine top at last, but it was not so; there were much higher altitudes to be scaled yet. we were still in the pleasant shade of forest trees, we were still in a region which was cushioned with beautiful mosses and aglow with the many-tinted luster of innumerable wild flowers. we found, indeed, more interest in the wild flowers than in anything else. we gathered a specimen or two of every kind which we were unacquainted with; so we had sumptuous bouquets. but one of the chief interests lay in chasing the seasons of the year up the mountain, and determining them by the presence of flowers and berries which we were acquainted with. for instance, it was the end of august at the level of the sea; in the kandersteg valley at the base of the pass, we found flowers which would not be due at the sea-level for two or three weeks; higher up, we entered october, and gathered fringed gentians. i made no notes, and have forgotten the details, but the construction of the floral calendar was very entertaining while it lasted. in the high regions we found rich store of the splendid red flower called the alpine rose, but we did not find any examples of the ugly swiss favorite called edelweiss. its name seems to indicate that it is a noble flower and that it is white. it may be noble enough, but it is not attractive, and it is not white. the fuzzy blossom is the color of bad cigar ashes, and appears to be made of a cheap quality of gray plush. it has a noble and distant way of confining itself to the high altitudes, but that is probably on account of its looks; it apparently has no monopoly of those upper altitudes, however, for they are sometimes intruded upon by some of the loveliest of the valley families of wild flowers. everybody in the alps wears a sprig of edelweiss in his hat. it is the native's pet, and also the tourist's. all the morning, as we loafed along, having a good time, other pedestrians went staving by us with vigorous strides, and with the intent and determined look of men who were walking for a wager. these wore loose knee-breeches, long yarn stockings, and hobnailed high-laced walking-shoes. they were gentlemen who would go home to england or germany and tell how many miles they had beaten the guide-book every day. but i doubted if they ever had much real fun, outside of the mere magnificent exhilaration of the tramp through the green valleys and the breezy heights; for they were almost always alone, and even the finest scenery loses incalculably when there is no one to enjoy it with. all the morning an endless double procession of mule-mounted tourists filed past us along the narrow path--the one procession going, the other coming. we had taken a good deal of trouble to teach ourselves the kindly german custom of saluting all strangers with doffed hat, and we resolutely clung to it, that morning, although it kept us bareheaded most of the time a nd was not always responded to. still we found an interest in the thing, because we naturally liked to know who were english and americans among the passers-by. all continental natives responded of course; so did some of the english and americans, but, as a general thing, these two races gave no sign. whenever a man or a woman showed us cold neglect, we spoke up confidently in our own tongue and asked for such information as we happened to need, and we always got a reply in the same language. the english and american folk are not less kindly than other races, they are only more reserved, and that comes of habit and education. in one dreary, rocky waste, away above the line of vegetation, we met a procession of twenty-five mounted young men, all from america. we got answering bows enough from these, of course, for they were of an age to learn to do in rome as rome does, without much effort. at one extremity of this patch of desolation, overhung by bare and forbidding crags which husbanded drifts of everlasting snow in their shaded cavities, was a small stretch of thin and discouraged grass, and a man and a family of pigs were actually living here in some shanties. consequently this place could be really reckoned as "property"; it had a money value, and was doubtless taxed. i think it must have marked the limit of real estate in this world. it would be hard to set a money value upon any piece of earth that lies between that spot and the empty realm of space. that man may claim the distinction of owning the end of the world, for if there is any definite end to the world he has certainly found it. from here forward we moved through a storm-swept and smileless desolation. all about us rose gigantic masses, crags, and ramparts of bare and dreary rock, with not a vestige or semblance of plant or tree or flower anywhere, or glimpse of any creature that had life. the frost and the tempests of unnumbered ages had battered and hacked at these cliffs, with a deathless energy, destroying them piecemeal; so all the region about their bases was a tumbled chaos of great fragments which had been split off and hurled to the ground. soiled and aged banks of snow lay close about our path. the ghastly desolation of the place was as tremendously complete as if dor'e had furnished the working-plans for it. but every now and then, through the stern gateways around us we caught a view of some neighboring majestic dome, sheathed with glittering ice, and displaying its white purity at an elevation compared to which ours was groveling and plebeian, and this spectacle always chained one's interest and admiration at once, and made him forget there was anything ugly in the world. i have just said that there was nothing but death and desolation in these hideous places, but i forgot. in the most forlorn and arid and dismal one of all, where the racked and splintered debris was thickest, where the ancient patches of snow lay against the very path, where the winds blew bitterest and the general aspect was mournfulest and dreariest, and furthest from any suggestion of cheer or hope, i found a solitary wee forget-me-not flourishing away, not a droop about it anywhere, but holding its bright blue star up with the prettiest and gallantest air in the world, the only happy spirit, the only smiling thing, in all that grisly desert. she seemed to say, "cheer up!--as long as we are here, let us make the best of it." i judged she had earned a right to a more hospitable place; so i plucked her up and sent her to america to a friend who would respect her for the fight she had made, all by her small self, to make a whole vast despondent alpine desolation stop breaking its heart over the unalterable, and hold up its head and look at the bright side of things for once. we stopped for a nooning at a strongly built little inn called the schwarenbach. it sits in a lonely spot among the peaks, where it is swept by the trailing fringes of the cloud-rack, and is rained on, and snowed on, and pelted and persecuted by the storms, nearly every day of its life. it was the only habitation in the whole gemmi pass. close at hand, now, was a chance for a blood-curdling alpine adventure. close at hand was the snowy mass of the great altels cooling its topknot in the sky and daring us to an ascent. i was fired with the idea, and immediately made up my mind to procure the necessary guides, ropes, etc., and undertake it. i instructed harris to go to the landlord of the inn and set him about our preparations. meantime, i went diligently to work to read up and find out what this much-talked-of mountain-climbing was like, and how one should go about it--for in these matters i was ignorant. i opened mr. hinchliff's summer months among the alps (published 1857), and selected his account of his ascent of monte rosa. it began: "it is very difficult to free the mind from excitement on the evening before a grand expedition--" i saw that i was too calm; so i walked the room a while and worked myself into a high excitement; but the book's next remark --that the adventurer must get up at two in the morning--came as near as anything to flatting it all out again. however, i reinforced it, and read on, about how mr. hinchliff dressed by candle-light and was "soon down among the guides, who were bustling about in the passage, packing provisions, and making every preparation for the start"; and how he glanced out into the cold clear night and saw that-"the whole sky was blazing with stars, larger and brighter than they appear through the dense atmosphere breathed by inhabitants of the lower parts of the earth. they seemed actually suspended from the dark vault of heaven, and their gentle light shed a fairylike gleam over the snow-fields around the foot of the matterhorn, which raised its stupendous pinnacle on high, penetrating to the heart of the great bear, and crowning itself with a diadem of his magnificent stars. not a sound disturbed the deep tranquillity of the night, except the distant roar of streams which rush from the high plateau of the st. theodule glacier, and fall headlong over precipitous rocks till they lose themselves in the mazes of the gorner glacier." he took his hot toast and coffee, and then about half past three his caravan of ten men filed away from the riffel hotel, and began the steep climb. at half past five he happened to turn around, and "beheld the glorious spectacle of the matterhorn, just touched by the rosy-fingered morning, and looking like a huge pyramid of fire rising out of the barren ocean of ice and rock around it." then the breithorn and the dent blanche caught the radiant glow; but "the intervening mass of monte rosa made it necessary for us to climb many long hours before we could hope to see the sun himself, yet the whole air soon grew warmer after the splendid birth of the day." he gazed at the lofty crown of monte rosa and the wastes of snow that guarded its steep approaches, and the chief guide delivered the opinion that no man could conquer their awful heights and put his foot upon that summit. but the adventurers moved steadily on, nevertheless. they toiled up, and up, and still up; they passed the grand plateau; then toiled up a steep shoulder of the mountain, clinging like flies to its rugged face; and now they were confronted by a tremendous wall from which great blocks of ice and snow were evidently in the habit of falling. they turned aside to skirt this wall, and gradually ascended until their way was barred by a "maze of gigantic snow crevices,"--so they turned aside again, and "began a long climb of sufficient steepness to make a zigzag course necessary." fatigue compelled them to halt frequently, for a moment or two. at one of these halts somebody called out, "look at mont blanc!" and "we were at once made aware of the very great height we had attained by actually seeing the monarch of the alps and his attendant satellites right over the top of the breithorn, itself at least 14,000 feet high!" these people moved in single file, and were all tied to a strong rope, at regular distances apart, so that if one of them slipped on those giddy heights, the others could brace themselves on their alpenstocks and save him from darting into the valley, thousands of feet below. by and by they came to an ice-coated ridge which was tilted up at a sharp angle, and had a precipice on one side of it. they had to climb this, so the guide in the lead cut steps in the ice with his hatchet, and as fast as he took his toes out of one of these slight holes, the toes of the man behind him occupied it. "slowly and steadily we kept on our way over this dangerous part of the ascent, and i dare say it was fortunate for some of us that attention was distracted from the head by the paramount necessity of looking after the feet; for, while on the left the incline of ice was so steep that it would be impossible for any man to save himself in case of a slip, unless the others could hold him up, on the right we might drop a pebble from the hand over precipices of unknown extent down upon the tremendous glacier below. "great caution, therefore, was absolutely necessary, and in this exposed situation we were attacked by all the fury of that grand enemy of aspirants to monte rosa--a severe and bitterly cold wind from the north. the fine powdery snow was driven past us in the clouds, penetrating the interstices of our clothes, and the pieces of ice which flew from the blows of peter's ax were whisked into the air, and then dashed over the precipice. we had quite enough to do to prevent ourselves from being served in the same ruthless fashion, and now and then, in the more violent gusts of wind, were glad to stick our alpenstocks into the ice and hold on hard." having surmounted this perilous steep, they sat down and took a brief rest with their backs against a sheltering rock and their heels dangling over a bottomless abyss; then they climbed to the base of another ridge--a more difficult and dangerous one still: "the whole of the ridge was exceedingly narrow, and the fall on each side desperately steep, but the ice in some of these intervals between the masses of rock assumed the form of a mere sharp edge, almost like a knife; these places, though not more than three or four short paces in length, looked uncommonly awkward; but, like the sword leading true believers to the gates of paradise, they must needs be passed before we could attain to the summit of our ambition. these were in one or two places so narrow, that in stepping over them with toes well turned out for greater security, one end of the foot projected over the awful precipice on the right, while the other was on the beginning of the ice slope on the left, which was scarcely less steep than the rocks. on these occasions peter would take my hand, and each of us stretching as far as we could, he was thus enabled to get a firm footing two paces or rather more from me, whence a spring would probably bring him to the rock on the other side; then, turning around, he called to me to come, and, taking a couple of steps carefully, i was met at the third by his outstretched hand ready to clasp mine, and in a moment stood by his side. the others followed in much the same fashion. once my right foot slipped on the side toward the precipice, but i threw out my left arm in a moment so that it caught the icy edge under my armpit as i fell, and supported me considerably; at the same instant i cast my eyes down the side on which i had slipped, and contrived to plant my right foot on a piece of rock as large as a cricket-ball, which chanced to protrude through the ice, on the very edge of the precipice. being thus anchored fore and aft, as it were, i believe i could easily have recovered myself, even if i had been alone, though it must be confessed the situation would have been an awful one; as it was, however, a jerk from peter settled the matter very soon, and i was on my legs all right in an instant. the rope is an immense help in places of this kind." now they arrived at the base of a great knob or dome veneered with ice and powdered with snow--the utmost, summit, the last bit of solidity between them and the hollow vault of heaven. they set to work with their hatchets, and were soon creeping, insectlike, up its surface, with their heels projecting over the thinnest kind of nothingness, thickened up a little with a few wandering shreds and films of cloud moving in a lazy procession far below. presently, one man's toe-hold broke and he fell! there he dangled in mid-air at the end of the rope, like a spider, till his friends above hauled him into place again. a little bit later, the party stood upon the wee pedestal of the very summit, in a driving wind, and looked out upon the vast green expanses of italy and a shoreless ocean of billowy alps. when i had read thus far, harris broke into the room in a noble excitement and said the ropes and the guides were secured, and asked if i was ready. i said i believed i wouldn't ascend the altels this time. i said alp-climbing was a different thing from what i had supposed it was, and so i judged we had better study its points a little more before we went definitely into it. but i told him to retain the guides and order them to follow us to zermatt, because i meant to use them there. i said i could feel the spirit of adventure beginning to stir in me, and was sure that the fell fascination of alp-climbing would soon be upon me. i said he could make up his mind to it that we would do a deed before we were a week older which would make the hair of the timid curl with fright. this made harris happy, and filled him with ambitious anticipations. he went at once to tell the guides to follow us to zermatt and bring all their paraphernalia with them. chapter xxxv [swindling the coroner] a great and priceless thing is a new interest! how it takes possession of a man! how it clings to him, how it rides him! i strode onward from the schwarenback hostelry a changed man, a reorganized personality. i walked into a new world, i saw with new eyes. i had been looking aloft at the giant show-peaks only as things to be worshiped for their grandeur and magnitude, and their unspeakable grace of form; i looked up at them now, as also things to be conquered and climbed. my sense of their grandeur and their noble beauty was neither lost nor impaired; i had gained a new interest in the mountains without losing the old ones. i followed the steep lines up, inch by inch, with my eye, and noted the possibility or impossibility of following them with my feet. when i saw a shining helmet of ice projecting above the clouds, i tried to imagine i saw files of black specks toiling up it roped together with a gossamer thread. we skirted the lonely little lake called the daubensee, and presently passed close by a glacier on the right-a thing like a great river frozen solid in its flow and broken square off like a wall at its mouth. i had never been so near a glacier before. here we came upon a new board shanty, and found some men engaged in building a stone house; so the schwarenback was soon to have a rival. we bought a bottle or so of beer here; at any rate they called it beer, but i knew by the price that it was dissolved jewelry, and i perceived by the taste that dissolved jewelry is not good stuff to drink. we were surrounded by a hideous desolation. we stepped forward to a sort of jumping-off place, and were confronted by a startling contrast: we seemed to look down into fairyland. two or three thousand feet below us was a bright green level, with a pretty town in its midst, and a silvery stream winding among the meadows; the charming spot was walled in on all sides by gigantic precipices clothed with pines; and over the pines, out of the softened distances, rose the snowy domes and peaks of the monte rosa region. how exquisitely green and beautiful that little valley down there was! the distance was not great enough to obliterate details, it only made them little, and mellow, and dainty, like landscapes and towns seen through the wrong end of a spy-glass. right under us a narrow ledge rose up out of the valley, with a green, slanting, bench-shaped top, and grouped about upon this green-baize bench were a lot of black and white sheep which looked merely like oversized worms. the bench seemed lifted well up into our neighborhood, but that was a deception--it was a long way down to it. we began our descent, now, by the most remarkable road i have ever seen. it wound it corkscrew curves down the face of the colossal precipice--a narrow way, with always the solid rock wall at one elbow, and perpendicular nothingness at the other. we met an everlasting procession of guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing up this steep and muddy path, and there was no room to spare when you had to pass a tolerably fat mule. i always took the inside, when i heard or saw the mule coming, and flattened myself against the wall. i preferred the inside, of course, but i should have had to take it anyhow, because the mule prefers the outside. a mule's preference--on a precipice--is a thing to be respected. well, his choice is always the outside. his life is mostly devoted to carrying bulky panniers and packages which rest against his body--therefore he is habituated to taking the outside edge of mountain paths, to keep his bundles from rubbing against rocks or banks on the other. when he goes into the passenger business he absurdly clings to his old habit, and keeps one leg of his passenger always dangling over the great deeps of the lower world while that passenger's heart is in the highlands, so to speak. more than once i saw a mule's hind foot cave over the outer edge and send earth and rubbish into the bottom abyss; and i noticed that upon these occasions the rider, whether male or female, looked tolerably unwell. there was one place where an eighteen-inch breadth of light masonry had been added to the verge of the path, and as there was a very sharp turn here, a panel of fencing had been set up there at some time, as a protection. this panel was old and gray and feeble, and the light masonry had been loosened by recent rains. a young american girl came along on a mule, and in making the turn the mule's hind foot caved all the loose masonry and one of the fence-posts overboard; the mule gave a violent lurch inboard to save himself, and succeeded in the effort, but that girl turned as white as the snows of mont blanc for a moment. the path was simply a groove cut into the face of the precipice; there was a four-foot breadth of solid rock under the traveler, and four-foot breadth of solid rock just above his head, like the roof of a narrow porch; he could look out from this gallery and see a sheer summitless and bottomless wall of rock before him, across a gorge or crack a biscuit's toss in width-but he could not see the bottom of his own precipice unless he lay down and projected his nose over the edge. i did not do this, because i did not wish to soil my clothes. every few hundred yards, at particularly bad places, one came across a panel or so of plank fencing; but they were always old and weak, and they generally leaned out over the chasm and did not make any rash promises to hold up people who might need support. there was one of these panels which had only its upper board left; a pedestrianizing english youth came tearing down the path, was seized with an impulse to look over the precipice, and without an instant's thought he threw his weight upon that crazy board. it bent outward a foot! i never made a gasp before that came so near suffocating me. the english youth's face simply showed a lively surprise, but nothing more. he went swinging along valleyward again, as if he did not know he had just swindled a coroner by the closest kind of a shave. the alpine litter is sometimes like a cushioned box made fast between the middles of two long poles, and sometimes it is a chair with a back to it and a support for the feet. it is carried by relays of strong porters. the motion is easier than that of any other conveyance. we met a few men and a great many ladies in litters; it seemed to me that most of the ladies looked pale and nauseated; their general aspect gave me the idea that they were patiently enduring a horrible suffering. as a rule, they looked at their laps, and left the scenery to take care of itself. but the most frightened creature i saw, was a led horse that overtook us. poor fellow, he had been born and reared in the grassy levels of the kandersteg valley and had never seen anything like this hideous place before. every few steps he would stop short, glance wildly out from the dizzy height, and then spread his red nostrils wide and pant as violently as if he had been running a race; and all the while he quaked from head to heel as with a palsy. he was a handsome fellow, and he made a fine statuesque picture of terror, but it was pitiful to see him suffer so. this dreadful path has had its tragedy. baedeker, with his customary overterseness, begins and ends the tale thus: "the descent on horseback should be avoided. in 1861 a comtesse d'herlincourt fell from her saddle over the precipice and was killed on the spot." we looked over the precipice there, and saw the monument which commemorates the event. it stands in the bottom of the gorge, in a place which has been hollowed out of the rock to protect it from the torrent and the storms. our old guide never spoke but when spoken to, and then limited himself to a syllable or two, but when we asked him about this tragedy he showed a strong interest in the matter. he said the countess was very pretty, and very young--hardly out of her girlhood, in fact. she was newly married, and was on her bridal tour. the young husband was riding a little in advance; one guide was leading the husband's horse, another was leading the bride's. the old man continued: "the guide that was leading the husband's horse happened to glance back, and there was that poor young thing sitting up staring out over the precipice; and her face began to bend downward a little, and she put up her two hands slowly and met it--so,--and put them flat against her eyes--so--and then she sank out of the saddle, with a sharp shriek, and one caught only the flash of a dress, and it was all over." then after a pause: "ah, yes, that guide saw these things--yes, he saw them all. he saw them all, just as i have told you." after another pause: "ah, yes, he saw them all. my god, that was me. i was that guide!" this had been the one event of the old man's life; so one may be sure he had forgotten no detail connected with it. we listened to all he had to say about what was done and what happened and what was said after the sorrowful occurrence, and a painful story it was. when we had wound down toward the valley until we were about on the last spiral of the corkscrew, harris's hat blew over the last remaining bit of precipice--a small cliff a hundred or hundred and fifty feet high--and sailed down toward a steep slant composed of rough chips and fragments which the weather had flaked away from the precipices. we went leisurely down there, expecting to find it without any trouble, but we had made a mistake, as to that. we hunted during a couple of hours--not because the old straw hat was valuable, but out of curiosity to find out how such a thing could manage to conceal itself in open ground where there was nothing left for it to hide behind. when one is reading in bed, and lays his paper-knife down, he cannot find it again if it is smaller than a saber; that hat was as stubborn as any paper-knife could have been, and we finally had to give it up; but we found a fragment that had once belonged to an opera-glass, and by digging around and turning over the rocks we gradually collected all the lenses and the cylinders and the various odds and ends that go to making up a complete opera-glass. we afterward had the thing reconstructed, and the owner can have his adventurous lost-property by submitting proofs and paying costs of rehabilitation. we had hopes of finding the owner there, distributed around amongst the rocks, for it would have made an elegant paragraph; but we were disappointed. still, we were far from being disheartened, for there was a considerable area which we had not thoroughly searched; we were satisfied he was there, somewhere, so we resolved to wait over a day at leuk and come back and get him. then we sat down to polish off the perspiration and arrange about what we would do with him when we got him. harris was for contributing him to the british museum; but i was for mailing him to his widow. that is the difference between harris and me: harris is all for display, i am all for the simple right, even though i lose money by it. harris argued in favor of his proposition against mine, i argued in favor of mine and against his. the discussion warmed into a dispute; the dispute warmed into a quarrel. i finally said, very decidedly: "my mind is made up. he goes to the widow." harris answered sharply: "and my mind is made up. he goes to the museum." i said, calmly: "the museum may whistle when it gets him." harris retorted: "the widow may save herself the trouble of whistling, for i will see that she never gets him." after some angry bandying of epithets, i said: "it seems to me that you are taking on a good many airs about these remains. i don't quite see what you've got to say about them?" "i? i've got all to say about them. they'd never have been thought of if i hadn't found their opera-glass. the corpse belongs to me, and i'll do as i please with him." i was leader of the expedition, and all discoveries achieved by it naturally belonged to me. i was entitled to these remains, and could have enforced my right; but rather than have bad blood about the matter, i said we would toss up for them. i threw heads and won, but it was a barren victory, for although we spent all the next day searching, we never found a bone. i cannot imagine what could ever have become of that fellow. the town in the valley is called leuk or leukerbad. we pointed our course toward it, down a verdant slope which was adorned with fringed gentians and other flowers, and presently entered the narrow alleys of the outskirts and waded toward the middle of the town through liquid "fertilizer." they ought to either pave that village or organize a ferry. harris's body was simply a chamois-pasture; his person was populous with the little hungry pests; his skin, when he stripped, was splotched like a scarlet-fever patient's; so, when we were about to enter one of the leukerbad inns, and he noticed its sign, "chamois hotel," he refused to stop there. he said the chamois was plentiful enough, without hunting up hotels where they made a specialty of it. i was indifferent, for the chamois is a creature that will neither bite me nor abide with me; but to calm harris, we went to the ho^tel des alpes. at the table d'ho^te, we had this, for an incident. a very grave man--in fact his gravity amounted to solemnity, and almost to austerity--sat opposite us and he was "tight," but doing his best to appear sober. he took up a corked bottle of wine, tilted it over his glass awhile, then set it out of the way, with a contented look, and went on with his dinner. presently he put his glass to his mouth, and of course found it empty. he looked puzzled, and glanced furtively and suspiciously out of the corner of his eye at a benignant and unconscious old lady who sat at his right. shook his head, as much as to say, "no, she couldn't have done it." he tilted the corked bottle over his glass again, meantime searching around with his watery eye to see if anybody was watching him. he ate a few mouthfuls, raised his glass to his lips, and of course it was still empty. he bent an injured and accusing side-glance upon that unconscious old lady, which was a study to see. she went on eating and gave no sign. he took up his glass and his bottle, with a wise private nod of his head, and set them gravely on the left-hand side of his plate-poured himself another imaginary drink--went to work with his knife and fork once more--presently lifted his glass with good confidence, and found it empty, as usual. this was almost a petrifying surprise. he straightened himself up in his chair and deliberately and sorrowfully inspected the busy old ladies at his elbows, first one and then the other. at last he softly pushed his plate away, set his glass directly in front of him, held on to it with his left hand, and proceeded to pour with his right. this time he observed that nothing came. he turned the bottle clear upside down; still nothing issued from it; a plaintive look came into his face, and he said, as if to himself, " 'ic! they've got it all!" then he set the bottle down, resignedly, and took the rest of his dinner dry. it was at that table d'ho^te, too, that i had under inspection the largest lady i have ever seen in private life. she was over seven feet high, and magnificently proportioned. what had first called my attention to her, was my stepping on an outlying flange of her foot, and hearing, from up toward the ceiling, a deep "pardon, m'sieu, but you encroach!" that was when we were coming through the hall, and the place was dim, and i could see her only vaguely. the thing which called my attention to her the second time was, that at a table beyond ours were two very pretty girls, and this great lady came in and sat down between them and me and blotted out my view. she had a handsome face, and she was very finely formed--perfected formed, i should say. but she made everybody around her look trivial and commonplace. ladies near her looked like children, and the men about her looked mean. they looked like failures; and they looked as if they felt so, too. she sat with her back to us. i never saw such a back in my life. i would have so liked to see the moon rise over it. the whole congregation waited, under one pretext or another, till she finished her dinner and went out; they wanted to see her at full altitude, and they found it worth tarrying for. she filled one's idea of what an empress ought to be, when she rose up in her unapproachable grandeur and moved superbly out of that place. we were not at leuk in time to see her at her heaviest weight. she had suffered from corpulence and had come there to get rid of her extra flesh in the baths. five weeks of soaking-five uninterrupted hours of it every day--had accomplished her purpose and reduced her to the right proportions. those baths remove fat, and also skin-diseases. the patients remain in the great tanks for hours at a time. a dozen gentlemen and ladies occupy a tank together, and amuse themselves with rompings and various games. they have floating desks and tables, and they read or lunch or play chess in water that is breast-deep. the tourist can step in and view this novel spectacle if he chooses. there's a poor-box, and he will have to contribute. there are several of these big bathing-houses, and you can always tell when you are near one of them by the romping noises and shouts of laughter that proceed from it. the water is running water, and changes all the time, else a patient with a ringworm might take the bath with only a partial success, since, while he was ridding himself of the ringworm, he might catch the itch. the next morning we wandered back up the green valley, leisurely, with the curving walls of those bare and stupendous precipices rising into the clouds before us. i had never seen a clean, bare precipice stretching up five thousand feet above me before, and i never shall expect to see another one. they exist, perhaps, but not in places where one can easily get close to them. this pile of stone is peculiar. from its base to the soaring tops of its mighty towers, all its lines and all its details vaguely suggest human architecture. there are rudimentary bow-windows, cornices, chimneys, demarcations of stories, etc. one could sit and stare up there and study the features and exquisite graces of this grand structure, bit by bit, and day after day, and never weary his interest. the termination, toward the town, observed in profile, is the perfection of shape. it comes down out of the clouds in a succession of rounded, colossal, terracelike projections--a stairway for the gods; at its head spring several lofty storm-scarred towers, one after another, with faint films of vapor curling always about them like spectral banners. if there were a king whose realms included the whole world, here would be the place meet and proper for such a monarch. he would only need to hollow it out and put in the electric light. he could give audience to a nation at a time under its roof. our search for those remains having failed, we inspected with a glass the dim and distant track of an old-time avalanche that once swept down from some pine-grown summits behind the town and swept away the houses and buried the people; then we struck down the road that leads toward the rhone, to see the famous ladders. these perilous things are built against the perpendicular face of a cliff two or three hundred feet high. the peasants, of both sexes, were climbing up and down them, with heavy loads on their backs. i ordered harris to make the ascent, so i could put the thrill and horror of it in my book, and he accomplished the feat successfully, though a subagent, for three francs, which i paid. it makes me shudder yet when i think of what i felt when i was clinging there between heaven and earth in the person of that proxy. at times the world swam around me, and i could hardly keep from letting go, so dizzying was the appalling danger. many a person would have given up and descended, but i stuck to my task, and would not yield until i had accomplished it. i felt a just pride in my exploit, but i would not have repeated it for the wealth of the world. i shall break my neck yet with some such foolhardy performance, for warnings never seem to have any lasting effect on me. when the people of the hotel found that i had been climbing those crazy ladders, it made me an object of considerable attention. next morning, early, we drove to the rhone valley and took the train for visp. there we shouldered our knapsacks and things, and set out on foot, in a tremendous rain, up the winding gorge, toward zermatt. hour after hour we slopped along, by the roaring torrent, and under noble lesser alps which were clothed in rich velvety green all the way up and had little atomy swiss homes perched upon grassy benches along their mist-dimmed heights. the rain continued to pour and the torrent to boom, and we continued to enjoy both. at the one spot where this torrent tossed its white mane highest, and thundered loudest, and lashed the big boulders fiercest, the canton had done itself the honor to build the flimsiest wooden bridge that exists in the world. while we were walking over it, along with a party of horsemen, i noticed that even the larger raindrops made it shake. i called harris's attention to it, and he noticed it, too. it seemed to me that if i owned an elephant that was a keepsake, and i thought a good deal of him, i would think twice before i would ride him over that bridge. we climbed up to the village of st. nicholas, about half past four in the afternoon, waded ankle-deep through the fertilizer-juice, and stopped at a new and nice hotel close by the little church. we stripped and went to bed, and sent our clothes down to be baked. and the horde of soaked tourists did the same. that chaos of clothing got mixed in the kitchen, and there were consequences. i did not get back the same drawers i sent down, when our things came up at six-fifteen; i got a pair on a new plan. they were merely a pair of white ruffle-cuffed absurdities, hitched together at the top with a narrow band, and they did not come quite down to my knees. they were pretty enough, but they made me feel like two people, and disconnected at that. the man must have been an idiot that got himself up like that, to rough it in the swiss mountains. the shirt they brought me was shorter than the drawers, and hadn't any sleeves to it--at least it hadn't anything more than what mr. darwin would call "rudimentary" sleeves; these had "edging" around them, but the bosom was ridiculously plain. the knit silk undershirt they brought me was on a new plan, and was really a sensible thing; it opened behind, and had pockets in it to put your shoulder-blades in; but they did not seem to fit mine, and so i found it a sort of uncomfortable garment. they gave my bobtail coat to somebody else, and sent me an ulster suitable for a giraffe. i had to tie my collar on, because there was no button behind on that foolish little shirt which i described a while ago. when i was dressed for dinner at six-thirty, i was too loose in some places and too tight in others, and altogether i felt slovenly and ill-conditioned. however, the people at the table d'ho^te were no better off than i was; they had everybody's clothes but their own on. a long stranger recognized his ulster as soon as he saw the tail of it following me in, but nobody claimed my shirt or my drawers, though i described them as well as i was able. i gave them to the chambermaid that night when i went to bed, and she probably found the owner, for my own things were on a chair outside my door in the morning. there was a lovable english clergyman who did not get to the table d'ho^te at all. his breeches had turned up missing, and without any equivalent. he said he was not more particular than other people, but he had noticed that a clergyman at dinner without any breeches was almost sure to excite remark. chapter xxxvi [the fiendish fun of alp-climbing] we did not oversleep at st. nicholas. the church-bell began to ring at four-thirty in the morning, and from the length of time it continued to ring i judged that it takes the swiss sinner a good while to get the invitation through his head. most church-bells in the world are of poor quality, and have a harsh and rasping sound which upsets the temper and produces much sin, but the st. nicholas bell is a good deal the worst one that has been contrived yet, and is peculiarly maddening in its operation. still, it may have its right and its excuse to exist, for the community is poor and not every citizen can afford a clock, perhaps; but there cannot be any excuse for our church-bells at home, for their is no family in america without a clock, and consequently there is no fair pretext for the usual sunday medley of dreadful sounds that issues from our steeples. there is much more profanity in america on sunday than is all in the other six days of the week put together, and it is of a more bitter and malignant character than the week-day profanity, too. it is produced by the cracked-pot clangor of the cheap church-bells. we build our churches almost without regard to cost; we rear an edifice which is an adornment to the town, and we gild it, and fresco it, and mortgage it, and do everything we can think of to perfect it, and then spoil it all by putting a bell on it which afflicts everybody who hears it, giving some the headache, others st. vitus's dance, and the rest the blind staggers. an american village at ten o'clock on a summer sunday is the quietest and peacefulest and holiest thing in nature; but it is a pretty different thing half an hour later. mr. poe's poem of the "bells" stands incomplete to this day; but it is well enough that it is so, for the public reciter or "reader" who goes around trying to imitate the sounds of the various sorts of bells with his voice would find himself "up a stump" when he got to the church-bell-as joseph addison would say. the church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example. it is still clinging to one or two things which were useful once, but which are not useful now, neither are they ornamental. one is the bell-ringing to remind a clock-caked town that it is church-time, and another is the reading from the pulpit of a tedious list of "notices" which everybody who is interested has already read in the newspaper. the clergyman even reads the hymn through--a relic of an ancient time when hymn-books are scarce and costly; but everybody has a hymn-book, now, and so the public reading is no longer necessary. it is not merely unnecessary, it is generally painful; for the average clergyman could not fire into his congregation with a shotgun and hit a worse reader than himself, unless the weapon scattered shamefully. i am not meaning to be flippant and irreverent, i am only meaning to be truthful. the average clergyman, in all countries and of all denominations, is a very bad reader. one would think he would at least learn how to read the lord's prayer, by and by, but it is not so. he races through it as if he thought the quicker he got it in, the sooner it would be answered. a person who does not appreciate the exceeding value of pauses, and does not know how to measure their duration judiciously, cannot render the grand simplicity and dignity of a composition like that effectively. we took a tolerably early breakfast, and tramped off toward zermatt through the reeking lanes of the village, glad to get away from that bell. by and by we had a fine spectacle on our right. it was the wall-like butt end of a huge glacier, which looked down on us from an alpine height which was well up in the blue sky. it was an astonishing amount of ice to be compacted together in one mass. we ciphered upon it and decided that it was not less than several hundred feet from the base of the wall of solid ice to the top of it--harris believed it was really twice that. we judged that if st. paul's, st. peter's, the great pyramid, the strasburg cathedral and the capitol in washington were clustered against that wall, a man sitting on its upper edge could not hang his hat on the top of any one of them without reaching down three or four hundred feet--a thing which, of course, no man could do. to me, that mighty glacier was very beautiful. i did not imagine that anybody could find fault with it; but i was mistaken. harris had been snarling for several days. he was a rabid protestant, and he was always saying: "in the protestant cantons you never see such poverty and dirt and squalor as you do in this catholic one; you never see the lanes and alleys flowing with foulness; you never see such wretched little sties of houses; you never see an inverted tin turnip on top of a church for a dome; and as for a church-bell, why, you never hear a church-bell at all." all this morning he had been finding fault, straight along. first it was with the mud. he said, "it ain't muddy in a protestant canton when it rains." then it was with the dogs: "they don't have those lop-eared dogs in a protestant canton." then it was with the roads: "they don't leave the roads to make themselves in a protestant canton, the people make them--and they make a road that is a road, too." next it was the goats: "you never see a goat shedding tears in a protestant canton--a goat, there, is one of the cheerfulest objects in nature." next it was the chamois: "you never see a protestant chamois act like one of these-they take a bite or two and go; but these fellows camp with you and stay." then it was the guide-boards: "in a protestant canton you couldn't get lost if you wanted to, but you never see a guide-board in a catholic canton." next, "you never see any flower-boxes in the windows, here--never anything but now and then a cat--a torpid one; but you take a protestant canton: windows perfectly lovely with flowers--and as for cats, there's just acres of them. these folks in this canton leave a road to make itself, and then fine you three francs if you 'trot' over it-as if a horse could trot over such a sarcasm of a road." next about the goiter: "they talk about goiter!--i haven't seen a goiter in this whole canton that i couldn't put in a hat." he had growled at everything, but i judged it would puzzle him to find anything the matter with this majestic glacier. i intimated as much; but he was ready, and said with surly discontent: "you ought to see them in the protestant cantons." this irritated me. but i concealed the feeling, and asked: "what is the matter with this one?" "matter? why, it ain't in any kind of condition. they never take any care of a glacier here. the moraine has been spilling gravel around it, and got it all dirty." "why, man, they can't help that." "they? you're right. that is, they won't. they could if they wanted to. you never see a speck of dirt on a protestant glacier. look at the rhone glacier. it is fifteen miles long, and seven hundred feet think. if this was a protestant glacier you wouldn't see it looking like this, i can tell you." "that is nonsense. what would they do with it?" "they would whitewash it. they always do." i did not believe a word of this, but rather than have trouble i let it go; for it is a waste of breath to argue with a bigot. i even doubted if the rhone glacier was in a protestant canton; but i did not know, so i could not make anything by contradicting a man who would probably put me down at once with manufactured evidence. about nine miles from st. nicholas we crossed a bridge over the raging torrent of the visp, and came to a log strip of flimsy fencing which was pretending to secure people from tumbling over a perpendicular wall forty feet high and into the river. three children were approaching; one of them, a little girl, about eight years old, was running; when pretty close to us she stumbled and fell, and her feet shot under the rail of the fence and for a moment projected over the stream. it gave us a sharp shock, for we thought she was gone, sure, for the ground slanted steeply, and to save herself seemed a sheer impossibility; but she managed to scramble up, and ran by us laughing. we went forward and examined the place and saw the long tracks which her feet had made in the dirt when they darted over the verge. if she had finished her trip she would have struck some big rocks in the edge of the water, and then the torrent would have snatched her downstream among the half-covered boulders and she would have been pounded to pulp in two minutes. we had come exceedingly near witnessing her death. and now harris's contrary nature and inborn selfishness were striking manifested. he has no spirit of self-denial. he began straight off, and continued for an hour, to express his gratitude that the child was not destroyed. i never saw such a man. that was the kind of person he was; just so he was gratified, he never cared anything about anybody else. i had noticed that trait in him, over and over again. often, of course, it was mere heedlessness, mere want of reflection. doubtless this may have been the case in most instances, but it was not the less hard to bar on that account--and after all, its bottom, its groundwork, was selfishness. there is no avoiding that conclusion. in the instance under consideration, i did think the indecency of running on in that way might occur to him; but no, the child was saved and he was glad, that was sufficient--he cared not a straw for my feelings, or my loss of such a literary plum, snatched from my very mouth at the instant it was ready to drop into it. his selfishness was sufficient to place his own gratification in being spared suffering clear before all concern for me, his friend. apparently, he did not once reflect upon the valuable details which would have fallen like a windfall to me: fishing the child out--witnessing the surprise of the family and the stir the thing would have made among the peasants--then a swiss funeral--then the roadside monument, to be paid for by us and have our names mentioned in it. and we should have gone into baedeker and been immortal. i was silent. i was too much hurt to complain. if he could act so, and be so heedless and so frivolous at such a time, and actually seem to glory in it, after all i had done for him, i would have cut my hand off before i would let him see that i was wounded. we were approaching zermatt; consequently, we were approaching the renowned matterhorn. a month before, this mountain had been only a name to us, but latterly we had been moving through a steadily thickening double row of pictures of it, done in oil, water, chromo, wood, steel, copper, crayon, and photography, and so it had at length become a shape to us--and a very distinct, decided, and familiar one, too. we were expecting to recognize that mountain whenever or wherever we should run across it. we were not deceived. the monarch was far away when we first saw him, but there was no such thing as mistaking him. he has the rare peculiarity of standing by himself; he is peculiarly steep, too, and is also most oddly shaped. he towers into the sky like a colossal wedge, with the upper third of its blade bent a little to the left. the broad base of this monster wedge is planted upon a grand glacier-paved alpine platform whose elevation is ten thousand feet above sea-level; as the wedge itself is some five thousand feet high, it follows that its apex is about fifteen thousand feet above sea-level. so the whole bulk of this stately piece of rock, this sky-cleaving monolith, is above the line of eternal snow. yet while all its giant neighbors have the look of being built of solid snow, from their waists up, the matterhorn stands black and naked and forbidding, the year round, or merely powdered or streaked with white in places, for its sides are so steep that the snow cannot stay there. its strange form, its august isolation, and its majestic unkinship with its own kind, make it--so to speak--the napoleon of the mountain world. "grand, gloomy, and peculiar," is a phrase which fits it as aptly as it fitted the great captain. think of a monument a mile high, standing on a pedestal two miles high! this is what the matterhorn is--a monument. its office, henceforth, for all time, will be to keep watch and ward over the secret resting-place of the young lord douglas, who, in 1865, was precipitated from the summit over a precipice four thousand feet high, and never seen again. no man ever had such a monument as this before; the most imposing of the world's other monuments are but atoms compared to it; and they will perish, and their places will pass from memory, but this will remain. [1] 1. the accident which cost lord douglas his life (see chapter xii) also cost the lives of three other men. these three fell four-fifths of a mile, and their bodies were afterward found, lying side by side, upon a glacier, whence they were borne to zermatt and buried in the churchyard. the remains of lord douglas have never been found. the secret of his sepulture, like that of moses, must remain a mystery always. a walk from st. nicholas to zermatt is a wonderful experience. nature is built on a stupendous plan in that region. one marches continually between walls that are piled into the skies, with their upper heights broken into a confusion of sublime shapes that gleam white and cold against the background of blue; and here and there one sees a big glacier displaying its grandeurs on the top of a precipice, or a graceful cascade leaping and flashing down the green declivities. there is nothing tame, or cheap, or trivial--it is all magnificent. that short valley is a picture-gallery of a notable kind, for it contains no mediocrities; from end to end the creator has hung it with his masterpieces. we made zermatt at three in the afternoon, nine hours out from st. nicholas. distance, by guide-book, twelve miles; by pedometer seventy-two. we were in the heart and home of the mountain-climbers, now, as all visible things testified. the snow-peaks did not hold themselves aloof, in aristocratic reserve; they nestled close around, in a friendly, sociable way; guides, with the ropes and axes and other implements of their fearful calling slung about their persons, roosted in a long line upon a stone wall in front of the hotel, and waited for customers; sun-burnt climbers, in mountaineering costume, and followed by their guides and porters, arrived from time to time, from breakneck expeditions among the peaks and glaciers of the high alps; male and female tourists, on mules, filed by, in a continuous procession, hotelward-bound from wild adventures which would grow in grandeur very time they were described at the english or american fireside, and at last outgrow the possible itself. we were not dreaming; this was not a make-believe home of the alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations; no, for here was mr. girdlestone himself, the famous englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable alpine summits without a guide. i was not equal to imagining a girdlestone; it was all i could do to even realize him, while looking straight at him at short range. i would rather face whole hyde parks of artillery than the ghastly forms of death which he has faced among the peaks and precipices of the mountains. there is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it. i have not jumped to this conclusion; i have traveled to it per gravel-train, so to speak. i have thought the thing all out, and am quite sure i am right. a born climber's appetite for climbing is hard to satisfy; when it comes upon him he is like a starving man with a feast before him; he may have other business on hand, but it must wait. mr. girdlestone had had his usual summer holiday in the alps, and had spent it in his usual way, hunting for unique chances to break his neck; his vacation was over, and his luggage packed for england, but all of a sudden a hunger had come upon him to climb the tremendous weisshorn once more, for he had heard of a new and utterly impossible route up it. his baggage was unpacked at once, and now he and a friend, laden with knapsacks, ice-axes, coils of rope, and canteens of milk, were just setting out. they would spend the night high up among the snows, somewhere, and get up at two in the morning and finish the enterprise. i had a strong desire to go with them, but forced it down-a feat which mr. girdlestone, with all his fortitude, could not do. even ladies catch the climbing mania, and are unable to throw it off. a famous climber, of that sex, had attempted the weisshorn a few days before our arrival, and she and her guides had lost their way in a snow-storm high up among the peaks and glaciers and been forced to wander around a good while before they could find a way down. when this lady reached the bottom, she had been on her feet twenty-three hours! our guides, hired on the gemmi, were already at zermatt when we reached there. so there was nothing to interfere with our getting up an adventure whenever we should choose the time and the object. i resolved to devote my first evening in zermatt to studying up the subject of alpine climbing, by way of preparation. i read several books, and here are some of the things i found out. one's shoes must be strong and heavy, and have pointed hobnails in them. the alpenstock must be of the best wood, for if it should break, loss of life might be the result. one should carry an ax, to cut steps in the ice with, on the great heights. there must be a ladder, for there are steep bits of rock which can be surmounted with this instrument--or this utensil--but could not be surmounted without it; such an obstruction has compelled the tourist to waste hours hunting another route, when a ladder would have saved him all trouble. one must have from one hundred and fifty to five hundred feet of strong rope, to be used in lowering the party down steep declivities which are too steep and smooth to be traversed in any other way. one must have a steel hook, on another rope--a very useful thing; for when one is ascending and comes to a low bluff which is yet too high for the ladder, he swings this rope aloft like a lasso, the hook catches at the top of the bluff, and then the tourist climbs the rope, hand over hand--being always particular to try and forget that if the hook gives way he will never stop falling till he arrives in some part of switzerland where they are not expecting him. another important thing--there must be a rope to tie the whole party together with, so that if one falls from a mountain or down a bottomless chasm in a glacier, the others may brace back on the rope and save him. one must have a silk veil, to protect his face from snow, sleet, hail and gale, and colored goggles to protect his eyes from that dangerous enemy, snow-blindness. finally, there must be some porters, to carry provisions, wine and scientific instruments, and also blanket bags for the party to sleep in. i closed my readings with a fearful adventure which mr. whymper once had on the matterhorn when he was prowling around alone, five thousand feet above the town of breil. he was edging his way gingerly around the corner of a precipice where the upper edge of a sharp declivity of ice-glazed snow joined it. this declivity swept down a couple of hundred feet, into a gully which curved around and ended at a precipice eight hundred feet high, overlooking a glacier. his foot slipped, and he fell. he says: "my knapsack brought my head down first, and i pitched into some rocks about a dozen feet below; they caught something, and tumbled me off the edge, head over heels, into the gully; the baton was dashed from my hands, and i whirled downward in a series of bounds, each longer than the last; now over ice, now into rocks, striking my head four or five times, each time with increased force. the last bound sent me spinning through the air in a leap of fifty or sixty feet, from one side of the gully to the other, and i struck the rocks, luckily, with the whole of my left side. they caught my clothes for a moment, and i fell back on to the snow with motion arrested. my head fortunately came the right side up, and a few frantic catches brought me to a halt, in the neck of the gully and on the verge of the precipice. baton, hat, and veil skimmed by and disappeared, and the crash of the rocks--which i had started--as they fell on to the glacier, told how narrow had been the escape from utter destruction. as it was, i fell nearly two hundred feet in seven or eight bounds. ten feet more would have taken me in one gigantic leaps of eight hundred feet on to the glacier below. "the situation was sufficiently serious. the rocks could not be let go for a moment, and the blood was spurting out of more than twenty cuts. the most serious ones were in the head, and i vainly tried to close them with one hand, while holding on with the other. it was useless; the blood gushed out in blinding jets at each pulsation. at last, in a moment of inspiration, i kicked out a big lump of snow and struck it as plaster on my head. the idea was a happy one, and the flow of blood diminished. then, scrambling up, i got, not a moment too soon, to a place of safety, and fainted away. the sun was setting when consciousness returned, and it was pitch-dark before the great staircase was descended; but by a combination of luck and care, the whole four thousand seven hundred feet of descent to breil was accomplished without a slip, or once missing the way." his wounds kept him abed some days. then he got up and climbed that mountain again. that is the way with a true alp-climber; the more fun he has, the more he wants. chapter xxxvii [our imposing column starts upward] after i had finished my readings, i was no longer myself; i was tranced, uplifted, intoxicated, by the almost incredible perils and adventures i had been following my authors through, and the triumphs i had been sharing with them. i sat silent some time, then turned to harris and said: "my mind is made up." something in my tone struck him: and when he glanced at my eye and read what was written there, his face paled perceptibly. he hesitated a moment, then said: "speak." i answered, with perfect calmness: "i will ascend the riffelberg." if i had shot my poor friend he could not have fallen from his chair more suddenly. if i had been his father he could not have pleaded harder to get me to give up my purpose. but i turned a deaf ear to all he said. when he perceived at last that nothing could alter my determination, he ceased to urge, and for a while the deep silence was broken only by his sobs. i sat in marble resolution, with my eyes fixed upon vacancy, for in spirit i was already wrestling with the perils of the mountains, and my friend sat gazing at me in adoring admiration through his tears. at last he threw himself upon me in a loving embrace and exclaimed in broken tones: "your harris will never desert you. we will die together." i cheered the noble fellow with praises, and soon his fears were forgotten and he was eager for the adventure. he wanted to summon the guides at once and leave at two in the morning, as he supposed the custom was; but i explained that nobody was looking at that hour; and that the start in the dark was not usually made from the village but from the first night's resting-place on the mountain side. i said we would leave the village at 3 or 4 p.m. on the morrow; meantime he could notify the guides, and also let the public know of the attempt which we proposed to make. i went to bed, but not to sleep. no man can sleep when he is about to undertake one of these alpine exploits. i tossed feverishly all night long, and was glad enough when i heard the clock strike half past eleven and knew it was time to get up for dinner. i rose, jaded and rusty, and went to the noon meal, where i found myself the center of interest and curiosity; for the news was already abroad. it is not easy to eat calmly when you are a lion; but it is very pleasant, nevertheless. as usual, at zermatt, when a great ascent is about to be undertaken, everybody, native and foreign, laid aside his own projects and took up a good position to observe the start. the expedition consisted of 198 persons, including the mules; or 205, including the cows. as follows: chiefs of service subordinates myself 1 veterinary surgeon mr. harris 1 butler 17 guides 12 waiters 4 surgeons 1 footman 1 geologist 1 barber 1 botanist 1 head cook 3 chaplains 9 assistants 15 barkeepers 1 confectionery artist 1 latinist transportation, etc. 27 porters 3 coarse washers and ironers 44 mules 1 fine ditto 44 muleteers 7 cows 2 milkers total, 154 men, 51 animals. grand total, 205. rations, etc. apparatus 16 cases hams 25 spring mattresses 2 barrels flour 2 hair ditto 22 barrels whiskey bedding for same 1 barrel sugar 2 mosquito-nets 1 keg lemons 29 tents 2,000 cigars scientific instruments 1 barrel pies 97 ice-axes 1 ton of pemmican 5 cases dynamite 143 pair crutches 7 cans nitroglycerin 2 barrels arnica 22 40-foot ladders 1 bale of lint 2 miles of rope 27 kegs paregoric 154 umbrellas it was full four o'clock in the afternoon before my cavalcade was entirely ready. at that hour it began to move. in point of numbers and spectacular effect, it was the most imposing expedition that had ever marched from zermatt. i commanded the chief guide to arrange the men and animals in single file, twelve feet apart, and lash them all together on a strong rope. he objected that the first two miles was a dead level, with plenty of room, and that the rope was never used except in very dangerous places. but i would not listen to that. my reading had taught me that many serious accidents had happened in the alps simply from not having the people tied up soon enough; i was not going to add one to the list. the guide then obeyed my order. when the procession stood at ease, roped together, and ready to move, i never saw a finer sight. it was 3,122 feet long--over half a mile; every man and me was on foot, and had on his green veil and his blue goggles, and his white rag around his hat, and his coil of rope over one shoulder and under the other, and his ice-ax in his belt, and carried his alpenstock in his left hand, his umbrella (closed) in his right, and his crutches slung at his back. the burdens of the pack-mules and the horns of the cows were decked with the edelweiss and the alpine rose. i and my agent were the only persons mounted. we were in the post of danger in the extreme rear, and tied securely to five guides apiece. our armor-bearers carried our ice-axes, alpenstocks, and other implements for us. we were mounted upon very small donkeys, as a measure of safety; in time of peril we could straighten our legs and stand up, and let the donkey walk from under. still, i cannot recommend this sort of animal--at least for excursions of mere pleasure--because his ears interrupt the view. i and my agent possessed the regulation mountaineering costumes, but concluded to leave them behind. out of respect for the great numbers of tourists of both sexes who would be assembled in front of the hotels to see us pass, and also out of respect for the many tourists whom we expected to encounter on our expedition, we decided to make the ascent in evening dress. we watered the caravan at the cold stream which rushes down a trough near the end of the village, and soon afterward left the haunts of civilization behind us. about half past five o'clock we arrived at a bridge which spans the visp, and after throwing over a detachment to see if it was safe, the caravan crossed without accident. the way now led, by a gentle ascent, carpeted with fresh green grass, to the church at winkelmatten. without stopping to examine this edifice, i executed a flank movement to the right and crossed the bridge over the findelenbach, after first testing its strength. here i deployed to the right again, and presently entered an inviting stretch of meadowland which was unoccupied save by a couple of deserted huts toward the furthest extremity. these meadows offered an excellent camping-place. we pitched our tents, supped, established a proper grade, recorded the events of the day, and then went to bed. we rose at two in the morning and dressed by candle-light. it was a dismal and chilly business. a few stars were shining, but the general heavens were overcast, and the great shaft of the matterhorn was draped in a cable pall of clouds. the chief guide advised a delay; he said he feared it was going to rain. we waited until nine o'clock, and then got away in tolerably clear weather. our course led up some terrific steeps, densely wooded with larches and cedars, and traversed by paths which the rains had guttered and which were obstructed by loose stones. to add to the danger and inconvenience, we were constantly meeting returning tourists on foot and horseback, and as constantly being crowded and battered by ascending tourists who were in a hurry and wanted to get by. our troubles thickened. about the middle of the afternoon the seventeen guides called a halt and held a consultation. after consulting an hour they said their first suspicion remained intact--that is to say, they believed they were lost. i asked if they did not know it? no, they said, they couldn't absolutely know whether they were lost or not, because none of them had ever been in that part of the country before. they had a strong instinct that they were lost, but they had no proofs--except that they did not know where they were. they had met no tourists for some time, and they considered that a suspicious sign. plainly we were in an ugly fix. the guides were naturally unwilling to go alone and seek a way out of the difficulty; so we all went together. for better security we moved slow and cautiously, for the forest was very dense. we did not move up the mountain, but around it, hoping to strike across the old trail. toward nightfall, when we were about tired out, we came up against a rock as big as a cottage. this barrier took all the remaining spirit out of the men, and a panic of fear and despair ensued. they moaned and wept, and said they should never see their homes and their dear ones again. then they began to upbraid me for bringing them upon this fatal expedition. some even muttered threats against me. clearly it was no time to show weakness. so i made a speech in which i said that other alp-climbers had been in as perilous a position as this, and yet by courage and perseverance had escaped. i promised to stand by them, i promised to rescue them. i closed by saying we had plenty of provisions to maintain us for quite a siege--and did they suppose zermatt would allow half a mile of men and mules to mysteriously disappear during any considerable time, right above their noses, and make no inquiries? no, zermatt would send out searching-expeditions and we should be saved. this speech had a great effect. the men pitched the tents with some little show of cheerfulness, and we were snugly under cover when the night shut down. i now reaped the reward of my wisdom in providing one article which is not mentioned in any book of alpine adventure but this. i refer to the paregoric. but for that beneficent drug, would have not one of those men slept a moment during that fearful night. but for that gentle persuader they must have tossed, unsoothed, the night through; for the whiskey was for me. yes, they would have risen in the morning unfitted for their heavy task. as it was, everybody slept but my agent and me--only we and the barkeepers. i would not permit myself to sleep at such a time. i considered myself responsible for all those lives. i meant to be on hand and ready, in case of avalanches up there, but i did not know it then. we watched the weather all through that awful night, and kept an eye on the barometer, to be prepared for the least change. there was not the slightest change recorded by the instrument, during the whole time. words cannot describe the comfort that that friendly, hopeful, steadfast thing was to me in that season of trouble. it was a defective barometer, and had no hand but the stationary brass pointer, but i did not know that until afterward. if i should be in such a situation again, i should not wish for any barometer but that one. all hands rose at two in the morning and took breakfast, and as soon as it was light we roped ourselves together and went at that rock. for some time we tried the hook-rope and other means of scaling it, but without success--that is, without perfect success. the hook caught once, and harris started up it hand over hand, but the hold broke and if there had not happened to be a chaplain sitting underneath at the time, harris would certainly have been crippled. as it was, it was the chaplain. he took to his crutches, and i ordered the hook-rope to be laid aside. it was too dangerous an implement where so many people are standing around. we were puzzled for a while; then somebody thought of the ladders. one of these was leaned against the rock, and the men went up it tied together in couples. another ladder was sent up for use in descending. at the end of half an hour everybody was over, and that rock was conquered. we gave our first grand shout of triumph. but the joy was short-lived, for somebody asked how we were going to get the animals over. this was a serious difficulty; in fact, it was an impossibility. the courage of the men began to waver immediately; once more we were threatened with a panic. but when the danger was most imminent, we were saved in a mysterious way. a mule which had attracted attention from the beginning by its disposition to experiment, tried to eat a five-pound can of nitroglycerin. this happened right alongside the rock. the explosion threw us all to the ground, and covered us with dirt and debris; it frightened us extremely, too, for the crash it made was deafening, and the violence of the shock made the ground tremble. however, we were grateful, for the rock was gone. its place was occupied by a new cellar, about thirty feet across, by fifteen feet deep. the explosion was heard as far as zermatt; and an hour and a half afterward, many citizens of that town were knocked down and quite seriously injured by descending portions of mule meat, frozen solid. this shows, better than any estimate in figures, how high the experimenter went. we had nothing to do, now, but bridge the cellar and proceed on our way. with a cheer the men went at their work. i attended to the engineering, myself. i appointed a strong detail to cut down trees with ice-axes and trim them for piers to support the bridge. this was a slow business, for ice-axes are not good to cut wood with. i caused my piers to be firmly set up in ranks in the cellar, and upon them i laid six of my forty-foot ladders, side by side, and laid six more on top of them. upon this bridge i caused a bed of boughs to be spread, and on top of the boughs a bed of earth six inches deep. i stretched ropes upon either side to serve as railings, and then my bridge was complete. a train of elephants could have crossed it in safety and comfort. by nightfall the caravan was on the other side and the ladders were taken up. next morning we went on in good spirits for a while, though our way was slow and difficult, by reason of the steep and rocky nature of the ground and the thickness of the forest; but at last a dull despondency crept into the men's faces and it was apparent that not only they, but even the guides, were now convinced that we were lost. the fact that we still met no tourists was a circumstance that was but too significant. another thing seemed to suggest that we were not only lost, but very badly lost; for there must surely be searching-parties on the road before this time, yet we had seen no sign of them. demoralization was spreading; something must be done, and done quickly, too. fortunately, i am not unfertile in expedients. i contrived one now which commended itself to all, for it promised well. i took three-quarters of a mile of rope and fastened one end of it around the waist of a guide, and told him to go find the road, while the caravan waited. i instructed him to guide himself back by the rope, in case of failure; in case of success, he was to give the rope a series of violent jerks, whereupon the expedition would go to him at once. he departed, and in two minutes had disappeared among the trees. i payed out the rope myself, while everybody watched the crawling thing with eager eyes. the rope crept away quite slowly, at times, at other times with some briskness. twice or thrice we seemed to get the signal, and a shout was just ready to break from the men's lips when they perceived it was a false alarm. but at last, when over half a mile of rope had slidden away, it stopped gliding and stood absolutely still--one minute--two minutes--three--while we held our breath and watched. was the guide resting? was he scanning the country from some high point? was he inquiring of a chance mountaineer? stop,--had he fainted from excess of fatigue and anxiety? this thought gave us a shock. i was in the very first act of detailing an expedition to succor him, when the cord was assailed with a series of such frantic jerks that i could hardly keep hold of it. the huzza that went up, then, was good to hear. "saved! saved!" was the word that rang out, all down the long rank of the caravan. we rose up and started at once. we found the route to be good enough for a while, but it began to grow difficult, by and by, and this feature steadily increased. when we judged we had gone half a mile, we momently expected to see the guide; but no, he was not visible anywhere; neither was he waiting, for the rope was still moving, consequently he was doing the same. this argued that he had not found the road, yet, but was marching to it with some peasant. there was nothing for us to do but plod along--and this we did. at the end of three hours we were still plodding. this was not only mysterious, but exasperating. and very fatiguing, too; for we had tried hard, along at first, to catch up with the guide, but had only fagged ourselves, in vain; for although he was traveling slowly he was yet able to go faster than the hampered caravan over such ground. at three in the afternoon we were nearly dead with exhaustion--and still the rope was slowly gliding out. the murmurs against the guide had been growing steadily, and at last they were become loud and savage. a mutiny ensued. the men refused to proceed. they declared that we had been traveling over and over the same ground all day, in a kind of circle. they demanded that our end of the rope be made fast to a tree, so as to halt the guide until we could overtake him and kill him. this was not an unreasonable requirement, so i gave the order. as soon as the rope was tied, the expedition moved forward with that alacrity which the thirst for vengeance usually inspires. but after a tiresome march of almost half a mile, we came to a hill covered thick with a crumbly rubbish of stones, and so steep that no man of us all was now in a condition to climb it. every attempt failed, and ended in crippling somebody. within twenty minutes i had five men on crutches. whenever a climber tried to assist himself by the rope, it yielded and let him tumble backward. the frequency of this result suggested an idea to me. i ordered the caravan to 'bout face and form in marching order; i then made the tow-rope fast to the rear mule, and gave the command: "mark time--by the right flank--forward--march!" the procession began to move, to the impressive strains of a battle-chant, and i said to myself, "now, if the rope don't break i judge this will fetch that guide into the camp." i watched the rope gliding down the hill, and presently when i was all fixed for triumph i was confronted by a bitter disappointment; there was no guide tied to the rope, it was only a very indignant old black ram. the fury of the baffled expedition exceeded all bounds. they even wanted to wreak their unreasoning vengeance on this innocent dumb brute. but i stood between them and their prey, menaced by a bristling wall of ice-axes and alpenstocks, and proclaimed that there was but one road to this murder, and it was directly over my corpse. even as i spoke i saw that my doom was sealed, except a miracle supervened to divert these madmen from their fell purpose. i see the sickening wall of weapons now; i see that advancing host as i saw it then, i see the hate in those cruel eyes; i remember how i drooped my head upon my breast, i feel again the sudden earthquake shock in my rear, administered by the very ram i was sacrificing myself to save; i hear once more the typhoon of laughter that burst from the assaulting column as i clove it from van to rear like a sepoy shot from a rodman gun. i was saved. yes, i was saved, and by the merciful instinct of ingratitude which nature had planted in the breast of that treacherous beast. the grace which eloquence had failed to work in those men's hearts, had been wrought by a laugh. the ram was set free and my life was spared. we lived to find out that that guide had deserted us as soon as he had placed a half-mile between himself and us. to avert suspicion, he had judged it best that the line should continue to move; so he caught that ram, and at the time that he was sitting on it making the rope fast to it, we were imagining that he was lying in a swoon, overcome by fatigue and distress. when he allowed the ram to get up it fell to plunging around, trying to rid itself of the rope, and this was the signal which we had risen up with glad shouts to obey. we had followed this ram round and round in a circle all day--a thing which was proven by the discovery that we had watered the expedition seven times at one and same spring in seven hours. as expert a woodman as i am, i had somehow failed to notice this until my attention was called to it by a hog. this hog was always wallowing there, and as he was the only hog we saw, his frequent repetition, together with his unvarying similarity to himself, finally caused me to reflect that he must be the same hog, and this led me to the deduction that this must be the same spring, also--which indeed it was. i made a note of this curious thing, as showing in a striking manner the relative difference between glacial action and the action of the hog. it is now a well-established fact that glaciers move; i consider that my observations go to show, with equal conclusiveness, that a hog in a spring does not move. i shall be glad to receive the opinions of other observers upon this point. to return, for an explanatory moment, to that guide, and then i shall be done with him. after leaving the ram tied to the rope, he had wandered at large a while, and then happened to run across a cow. judging that a cow would naturally know more than a guide, he took her by the tail, and the result justified his judgment. she nibbled her leisurely way downhill till it was near milking-time, then she struck for home and towed him into zermatt. chapter xxxviii [i conquer the gorner grat] we went into camp on that wild spot to which that ram had brought us. the men were greatly fatigued. their conviction that we were lost was forgotten in the cheer of a good supper, and before the reaction had a chance to set in, i loaded them up with paregoric and put them to bed. next morning i was considering in my mind our desperate situation and trying to think of a remedy, when harris came to me with a baedeker map which showed conclusively that the mountain we were on was still in switzerland--yes, every part of it was in switzerland. so we were not lost, after all. this was an immense relief; it lifted the weight of two such mountains from my breast. i immediately had the news disseminated and the map was exhibited. the effect was wonderful. as soon as the men saw with their own eyes that they knew where they were, and that it was only the summit that was lost and not themselves, they cheered up instantly and said with one accord, let the summit take care of itself. our distresses being at an end, i now determined to rest the men in camp and give the scientific department of the expedition a chance. first, i made a barometric observation, to get our altitude, but i could not perceive that there was any result. i knew, by my scientific reading, that either thermometers or barometers ought to be boiled, to make them accurate; i did not know which it was, so i boiled them both. there was still no result; so i examined these instruments and discovered that they possessed radical blemishes: the barometer had no hand but the brass pointer and the ball of the thermometer was stuffed with tin-foil. i might have boiled those things to rags, and never found out anything. i hunted up another barometer; it was new and perfect. i boiled it half an hour in a pot of bean soup which the cooks were making. the result was unexpected: the instrument was not affecting at all, but there was such a strong barometer taste to the soup that the head cook, who was a most conscientious person, changed its name in the bill of fare. the dish was so greatly liked by all, that i ordered the cook to have barometer soup every day. it was believed that the barometer might eventually be injured, but i did not care for that. i had demonstrated to my satisfaction that it could not tell how high a mountain was, therefore i had no real use for it. changes in the weather i could take care of without it; i did not wish to know when the weather was going to be good, what i wanted to know was when it was going to be bad, and this i could find out from harris's corns. harris had had his corns tested and regulated at the government observatory in heidelberg, and one could depend upon them with confidence. so i transferred the new barometer to the cooking department, to be used for the official mess. it was found that even a pretty fair article of soup could be made from the defective barometer; so i allowed that one to be transferred to the subordinate mess. i next boiled the thermometer, and got a most excellent result; the mercury went up to about 200 degrees fahrenheit. in the opinion of the other scientists of the expedition, this seemed to indicate that we had attained the extraordinary altitude of two hundred thousand feet above sea-level. science places the line of eternal snow at about ten thousand feet above sea-level. there was no snow where we were, consequently it was proven that the eternal snow-line ceases somewhere above the ten-thousand-foot level and does not begin any more. this was an interesting fact, and one which had not been observed by any observer before. it was as valuable as interesting, too, since it would open up the deserted summits of the highest alps to population and agriculture. it was a proud thing to be where we were, yet it caused us a pang to reflect that but for that ram we might just as well been two hundred thousand feet higher. the success of my last experiment induced me to try an experiment with my photographic apparatus. i got it out, and boiled one of my cameras, but the thing was a failure; it made the wood swell up and burst, and i could not see that the lenses were any better than they were before. i now concluded to boil a guide. it might improve him, it could not impair his usefulness. but i was not allowed to proceed. guides have no feeling for science, and this one would not consent to be made uncomfortable in its interest. in the midst of my scientific work, one of those needless accidents happened which are always occurring among the ignorant and thoughtless. a porter shot at a chamois and missed it and crippled the latinist. this was not a serious matter to me, for a latinist's duties are as well performed on crutches as otherwise-but the fact remained that if the latinist had not happened to be in the way a mule would have got that load. that would have been quite another matter, for when it comes down to a question of value there is a palpable difference between a latinist and a mule. i could not depend on having a latinist in the right place every time; so, to make things safe, i ordered that in the future the chamois must not be hunted within limits of the camp with any other weapon than the forefinger. my nerves had hardly grown quiet after this affair when they got another shake-up--one which utterly unmanned me for a moment: a rumor swept suddenly through the camp that one of the barkeepers had fallen over a precipice! however, it turned out that it was only a chaplain. i had laid in an extra force of chaplains, purposely to be prepared for emergencies like this, but by some unaccountable oversight had come away rather short-handed in the matter of barkeepers. on the following morning we moved on, well refreshed and in good spirits. i remember this day with peculiar pleasure, because it saw our road restored to us. yes, we found our road again, and in quite an extraordinary way. we had plodded along some two hours and a half, when we came up against a solid mass of rock about twenty feet high. i did not need to be instructed by a mule this time. i was already beginning to know more than any mule in the expedition. i at once put in a blast of dynamite, and lifted that rock out of the way. but to my surprise and mortification, i found that there had been a chalet on top of it. i picked up such members of the family as fell in my vicinity, and subordinates of my corps collected the rest. none of these poor people were injured, happily, but they were much annoyed. i explained to the head chaleteer just how the thing happened, and that i was only searching for the road, and would certainly have given him timely notice if i had known he was up there. i said i had meant no harm, and hoped i had not lowered myself in his estimation by raising him a few rods in the air. i said many other judicious things, and finally when i offered to rebuild his chalet, and pay for the breakages, and throw in the cellar, he was mollified and satisfied. he hadn't any cellar at all, before; he would not have as good a view, now, as formerly, but what he had lost in view he had gained in cellar, by exact measurement. he said there wasn't another hole like that in the mountains-and he would have been right if the late mule had not tried to eat up the nitroglycerin. i put a hundred and sixteen men at work, and they rebuilt the chalet from its own debris in fifteen minutes. it was a good deal more picturesque than it was before, too. the man said we were now on the feil-stutz, above the schwegmatt--information which i was glad to get, since it gave us our position to a degree of particularity which we had not been accustomed to for a day or so. we also learned that we were standing at the foot of the riffelberg proper, and that the initial chapter of our work was completed. we had a fine view, from here, of the energetic visp, as it makes its first plunge into the world from under a huge arch of solid ice, worn through the foot-wall of the great gorner glacier; and we could also see the furggenbach, which is the outlet of the furggen glacier. the mule-road to the summit of the riffelberg passed right in front of the chalet, a circumstance which we almost immediately noticed, because a procession of tourists was filing along it pretty much all the time. [1] the chaleteer's business consisted in furnishing refreshments to tourists. my blast had interrupted this trade for a few minutes, by breaking all the bottles on the place; but i gave the man a lot of whiskey to sell for alpine champagne, and a lot of vinegar which would answer for rhine wine, consequently trade was soon as brisk as ever. 1. "pretty much" may not be elegant english, but it is high time it was. there is no elegant word or phrase which means just what it means.--m.t. leaving the expedition outside to rest, i quartered myself in the chalet, with harris, proposing to correct my journals and scientific observations before continuing the ascent. i had hardly begun my work when a tall, slender, vigorous american youth of about twenty-three, who was on his way down the mountain, entered and came toward me with that breeze self-complacency which is the adolescent's idea of the well-bred ease of the man of the world. his hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, and he had all the look of an american person who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial, and spell his middle name out. he introduced himself, smiling a smirky smile borrowed from the courtiers of the stage, extended a fair-skinned talon, and while he gripped my hand in it he bent his body forward three times at the hips, as the stage courtier does, and said in the airiest and most condescending and patronizing way--i quite remember his exact language: "very glad to make your acquaintance, 'm sure; very glad indeed, assure you. i've read all your little efforts and greatly admired them, and when i heard you were here, i ..." i indicated a chair, and he sat down. this grandee was the grandson of an american of considerable note in his day, and not wholly forgotten yet--a man who came so near being a great man that he was quite generally accounted one while he lived. i slowly paced the floor, pondering scientific problems, and heard this conversation: grandson. first visit to europe? harris. mine? yes. g.s. (with a soft reminiscent sigh suggestive of bygone joys that may be tasted in their freshness but once.) ah, i know what it is to you. a first visit!--ah, the romance of it! i wish i could feel it again. h. yes, i find it exceeds all my dreams. it is enchantment. i go... g.s. (with a dainty gesture of the hand signifying "spare me your callow enthusiasms, good friend.") yes, _i_ know, i know; you go to cathedrals, and exclaim; and you drag through league-long picture-galleries and exclaim; and you stand here, and there, and yonder, upon historic ground, and continue to exclaim; and you are permeated with your first crude conceptions of art, and are proud and happy. ah, yes, proud and happy--that expresses it. yes-yes, enjoy it--it is right--it is an innocent revel. h. and you? don't you do these things now? g.s. i! oh, that is very good! my dear sir, when you are as old a traveler as i am, you will not ask such a question as that. _i_ visit the regulation gallery, moon around the regulation cathedral, do the worn round of the regulation sights, yet?--excuse me! h. well, what do you do, then? g.s. do? i flit--and flit--for i am ever on the wing--but i avoid the herd. today i am in paris, tomorrow in berlin, anon in rome; but you would look for me in vain in the galleries of the louvre or the common resorts of the gazers in those other capitals. if you would find me, you must look in the unvisited nooks and corners where others never think of going. one day you will find me making myself at home in some obscure peasant's cabin, another day you will find me in some forgotten castle worshiping some little gem or art which the careless eye has overlooked and which the unexperienced would despise; again you will find me as guest in the inner sanctuaries of palaces while the herd is content to get a hurried glimpse of the unused chambers by feeing a servant. h. you are a guest in such places? g.s. and a welcoming one. h. it is surprising. how does it come? g.s. my grandfather's name is a passport to all the courts in europe. i have only to utter that name and every door is open to me. i flit from court to court at my own free will and pleasure, and am always welcome. i am as much at home in the palaces of europe as you are among your relatives. i know every titled person in europe, i think. i have my pockets full of invitations all the time. i am under promise to go to italy, where i am to be the guest of a succession of the noblest houses in the land. in berlin my life is a continued round of gaiety in the imperial palace. it is the same, wherever i go. h. it must be very pleasant. but it must make boston seem a little slow when you are at home. g.s. yes, of course it does. but i don't go home much. there's no life there--little to feed a man's higher nature. boston's very narrow, you know. she doesn't know it, and you couldn't convince her of it--so i say nothing when i'm there: where's the use? yes, boston is very narrow, but she has such a good opinion of herself that she can't see it. a man who has traveled as much as i have, and seen as much of the world, sees it plain enough, but he can't cure it, you know, so the best is to leave it and seek a sphere which is more in harmony with his tastes and culture. i run across there, one a year, perhaps, when i have nothing important on hand, but i'm very soon back again. i spend my time in europe. h. i see. you map out your plans and ... g.s. no, excuse me. i don't map out any plans. i simply follow the inclination of the day. i am limited by no ties, no requirements, i am not bound in any way. i am too old a traveler to hamper myself with deliberate purposes. i am simply a traveler--an inveterate traveler--a man of the world, in a word--i can call myself by no other name. i do not say, "i am going here, or i am going there"--i say nothing at all, i only act. for instance, next week you may find me the guest of a grandee of spain, or you may find me off for venice, or flitting toward dresden. i shall probably go to egypt presently; friends will say to friends, "he is at the nile cataracts"--and at that very moment they will be surprised to learn that i'm away off yonder in india somewhere. i am a constant surprise to people. they are always saying, "yes, he was in jerusalem when we heard of him last, but goodness knows where he is now." presently the grandson rose to leave--discovered he had an appointment with some emperor, perhaps. he did his graces over again: gripped me with one talon, at arm's-length, pressed his hat against his stomach with the other, bent his body in the middle three times, murmuring: "pleasure, 'm sure; great pleasure, 'm sure. wish you much success." then he removed his gracious presence. it is a great and solemn thing to have a grandfather. i have not purposed to misrepresent this boy in any way, for what little indignation he excited in me soon passed and left nothing behind it but compassion. one cannot keep up a grudge against a vacuum. i have tried to repeat this lad's very words; if i have failed anywhere i have at least not failed to reproduce the marrow and meaning of what he said. he and the innocent chatterbox whom i met on the swiss lake are the most unique and interesting specimens of young america i came across during my foreign tramping. i have made honest portraits of them, not caricatures. the grandson of twenty-three referred to himself five or six times as an "old traveler,"and as many as three times (with a serene complacency which was maddening) as a "man of the world." there was something very delicious about his leaving boston to her "narrowness," unreproved and uninstructed. i formed the caravan in marching order, presently, and after riding down the line to see that it was properly roped together, gave the command to proceed. in a little while the road carried us to open, grassy land. we were above the troublesome forest, now, and had an uninterrupted view, straight before us, of our summit-the summit of the riffelberg. we followed the mule-road, a zigzag course, now to the right, now to the left, but always up, and always crowded and incommoded by going and coming files of reckless tourists who were never, in a single instance, tied together. i was obliged to exert the utmost care and caution, for in many places the road was not two yards wide, and often the lower side of it sloped away in slanting precipices eight and even nine feet deep. i had to encourage the men constantly, to keep them from giving way to their unmanly fears. we might have made the summit before night, but for a delay caused by the loss of an umbrella. i was allowing the umbrella to remain lost, but the men murmured, and with reason, for in this exposed region we stood in peculiar need of protection against avalanches; so i went into camp and detached a strong party to go after the missing article. the difficulties of the next morning were severe, but our courage was high, for our goal was near. at noon we conquered the last impediment--we stood at last upon the summit, and without the loss of a single man except the mule that ate the glycerin. our great achievement was achieved--the possibility of the impossible was demonstrated, and harris and i walked proudly into the great dining-room of the riffelberg hotel and stood our alpenstocks up in the corner. yes, i had made the grand ascent; but it was a mistake to do it in evening dress. the plug hats were battered, the swallow-tails were fluttering rags, mud added no grace, the general effect was unpleasant and even disreputable. there were about seventy-five tourists at the hotel-mainly ladies and little children--and they gave us an admiring welcome which paid us for all our privations and sufferings. the ascent had been made, and the names and dates now stand recorded on a stone monument there to prove it to all future tourists. i boiled a thermometer and took an altitude, with a most curious result: the summit was not as high as the point on the mountainside where i had taken the first altitude. suspecting that i had made an important discovery, i prepared to verify it. there happened to be a still higher summit (called the gorner grat), above the hotel, and notwithstanding the fact that it overlooks a glacier from a dizzy height, and that the ascent is difficult and dangerous, i resolved to venture up there and boil a thermometer. so i sent a strong party, with some borrowed hoes, in charge of two chiefs of service, to dig a stairway in the soil all the way up, and this i ascended, roped to the guides. this breezy height was the summit proper--so i accomplished even more than i had originally purposed to do. this foolhardy exploit is recorded on another stone monument. i boiled my thermometer, and sure enough, this spot, which purported to be two thousand feet higher than the locality of the hotel, turned out to be nine thousand feet lower. thus the fact was clearly demonstrated that, above a certain point, the higher a point seems to be, the lower it actually is. our ascent itself was a great achievement, but this contribution to science was an inconceivably greater matter. cavilers object that water boils at a lower and lower temperature the higher and higher you go, and hence the apparent anomaly. i answer that i do not base my theory upon what the boiling water does, but upon what a boiled thermometer says. you can't go behind the thermometer. i had a magnificent view of monte rosa, and apparently all the rest of the alpine world, from that high place. all the circling horizon was piled high with a mighty tumult of snowy crests. one might have imagined he saw before him the tented camps of a beleaguering host of brobdingnagians. but lonely, conspicuous, and superb, rose that wonderful upright wedge, the matterhorn. its precipitous sides were powdered over with snow, and the upper half hidden in thick clouds which now and then dissolved to cobweb films and gave brief glimpses of the imposing tower as through a veil. [2] a little later the matterhorn took to himself the semblance of a volcano; he was stripped naked to his apex-around this circled vast wreaths of white cloud which strung slowly out and streamed away slantwise toward the sun, a twenty-mile stretch of rolling and tumbling vapor, and looking just as if it were pouring out of a crater. later again, one of the mountain's sides was clean and clear, and another side densely clothed from base to summit in thick smokelike cloud which feathered off and flew around the shaft's sharp edge like the smoke around the corners of a burning building. the matterhorn is always experimenting, and always gets up fine effects, too. in the sunset, when all the lower world is palled in gloom, it points toward heaven out of the pervading blackness like a finger of fire. in the sunrise--well, they say it is very fine in the sunrise. 2. note.--i had the very unusual luck to catch one little momentary glimpse of the matterhorn wholly unencumbered by clouds. i leveled my photographic apparatus at it without the loss of an instant, and should have got an elegant picture if my donkey had not interfered. it was my purpose to draw this photograph all by myself for my book, but was obliged to put the mountain part of it into the hands of the professional artist because i found i could not do landscape well. authorities agree that there is no such tremendous "layout" of snowy alpine magnitude, grandeur, and sublimity to be seen from any other accessible point as the tourist may see from the summit of the riffelberg. therefore, let the tourist rope himself up and go there; for i have shown that with nerve, caution, and judgment, the thing can be done. i wish to add one remark, here--in parentheses, so to speak --suggested by the word "snowy," which i have just used. we have all seen hills and mountains and levels with snow on them, and so we think we know all the aspects and effects produced by snow. but indeed we do not until we have seen the alps. possibly mass and distance add something--at any rate, something is added. among other noticeable things, there is a dazzling, intense whiteness about the distant alpine snow, when the sun is on it, which one recognizes as peculiar, and not familiar to the eye. the snow which one is accustomed to has a tint to it--painters usually give it a bluish cast--but there is no perceptible tint to the distant alpine snow when it is trying to look its whitest. as to the unimaginable splendor of it when the sun is blazing down on it--well, it simply is unimaginable. chapter xxxix [we travel by glacier] a guide-book is a queer thing. the reader has just seen what a man who undertakes the great ascent from zermatt to the riffelberg hotel must experience. yet baedeker makes these strange statements concerning this matter: 1. distance--3 hours. 2. the road cannot be mistaken. 3. guide unnecessary. 4. distance from riffelberg hotel to the gorner grat, one hour and a half. 5. ascent simple and easy. guide unnecessary. 6. elevation of zermatt above sea-level, 5,315 feet. 7. elevation of riffelberg hotel above sea-level, 8,429 feet. 8. elevation of the gorner grat above sea-level, 10,289 feet. i have pretty effectually throttled these errors by sending him the following demonstrated facts: 1. distance from zermatt to riffelberg hotel, 7 days. 2. the road can be mistaken. if i am the first that did it, i want the credit of it, too. 3. guides are necessary, for none but a native can read those finger-boards. 4. the estimate of the elevation of the several localities above sea-level is pretty correct--for baedeker. he only misses it about a hundred and eighty or ninety thousand feet. i found my arnica invaluable. my men were suffering excruciatingly, from the friction of sitting down so much. during two or three days, not one of them was able to do more than lie down or walk about; yet so effective was the arnica, that on the fourth all were able to sit up. i consider that, more than to anything else, i owe the success of our great undertaking to arnica and paregoric. my men are being restored to health and strength, my main perplexity, now, was how to get them down the mountain again. i was not willing to expose the brave fellows to the perils, fatigues, and hardships of that fearful route again if it could be helped. first i thought of balloons; but, of course, i had to give that idea up, for balloons were not procurable. i thought of several other expedients, but upon consideration discarded them, for cause. but at last i hit it. i was aware that the movement of glaciers is an established fact, for i had read it in baedeker; so i resolved to take passage for zermatt on the great gorner glacier. very good. the next thing was, how to get down the glacier comfortably--for the mule-road to it was long, and winding, and wearisome. i set my mind at work, and soon thought out a plan. one looks straight down upon the vast frozen river called the gorner glacier, from the gorner grat, a sheer precipice twelve hundred feet high. we had one hundred and fifty-four umbrellas-and what is an umbrella but a parachute? i mentioned this noble idea to harris, with enthusiasm, and was about to order the expedition to form on the gorner grat, with their umbrellas, and prepare for flight by platoons, each platoon in command of a guide, when harris stopped me and urged me not to be too hasty. he asked me if this method of descending the alps had ever been tried before. i said no, i had not heard of an instance. then, in his opinion, it was a matter of considerable gravity; in his opinion it would not be well to send the whole command over the cliff at once; a better way would be to send down a single individual, first, and see how he fared. i saw the wisdom in this idea instantly. i said as much, and thanked my agent cordially, and told him to take his umbrella and try the thing right away, and wave his hat when he got down, if he struck in a soft place, and then i would ship the rest right along. harris was greatly touched with this mark of confidence, and said so, in a voice that had a perceptible tremble in it; but at the same time he said he did not feel himself worthy of so conspicuous a favor; that it might cause jealousy in the command, for there were plenty who would not hesitate to say he had used underhanded means to get the appointment, whereas his conscience would bear him witness that he had not sought it at all, nor even, in his secret heart, desired it. i said these words did him extreme credit, but that he must not throw away the imperishable distinction of being the first man to descend an alp per parachute, simply to save the feelings of some envious underlings. no, i said, he must accept the appointment--it was no longer an invitation, it was a command. he thanked me with effusion, and said that putting the thing in this form removed every objection. he retired, and soon returned with his umbrella, his eye flaming with gratitude and his cheeks pallid with joy. just then the head guide passed along. harris's expression changed to one of infinite tenderness, and he said: "that man did me a cruel injury four days ago, and i said in my heart he should live to perceive and confess that the only noble revenge a man can take upon his enemy is to return good for evil. i resign in his favor. appoint him." i threw my arms around the generous fellow and said: "harris, you are the noblest soul that lives. you shall not regret this sublime act, neither shall the world fail to know of it. you shall have opportunity far transcending this one, too, if i live--remember that." i called the head guide to me and appointed him on the spot. but the thing aroused no enthusiasm in him. he did not take to the idea at all. he said: "tie myself to an umbrella and jump over the gorner grat! excuse me, there are a great many pleasanter roads to the devil than that." upon a discussion of the subject with him, it appeared that he considered the project distinctly and decidedly dangerous. i was not convinced, yet i was not willing to try the experiment in any risky way--that is, in a way that might cripple the strength and efficiency of the expedition. i was about at my wits' end when it occurred to me to try it on the latinist. he was called in. but he declined, on the plea of inexperience, diffidence in public, lack of curiosity, and i didn't know what all. another man declined on account of a cold in the head; thought he ought to avoid exposure. another could not jump well--never could jump well--did not believe he could jump so far without long and patient practice. another was afraid it was going to rain, and his umbrella had a hole in it. everybody had an excuse. the result was what the reader has by this time guessed: the most magnificent idea that was ever conceived had to be abandoned, from sheer lack of a person with enterprise enough to carry it out. yes, i actually had to give that thing up--while doubtless i should live to see somebody use it and take all the credit from me. well, i had to go overland--there was no other way. i marched the expedition down the steep and tedious mule-path and took up as good a position as i could upon the middle of the glacier--because baedeker said the middle part travels the fastest. as a measure of economy, however, i put some of the heavier baggage on the shoreward parts, to go as slow freight. i waited and waited, but the glacier did not move. night was coming on, the darkness began to gather--still we did not budge. it occurred to me then, that there might be a time-table in baedeker; it would be well to find out the hours of starting. i called for the book--it could not be found. bradshaw would certainly contain a time-table; but no bradshaw could be found. very well, i must make the best of the situation. so i pitched the tents, picketed the animals, milked the cows, had supper, paregoricked the men, established the watch, and went to bed--with orders to call me as soon as we came in sight of zermatt. i awoke about half past ten next morning, and looked around. we hadn't budged a peg! at first i could not understand it; then it occurred to me that the old thing must be aground. so i cut down some trees and rigged a spar on the starboard and another on the port side, and fooled away upward of three hours trying to spar her off. but it was no use. she was half a mile wide and fifteen or twenty miles long, and there was no telling just whereabouts she was aground. the men began to show uneasiness, too, and presently they came flying to me with ashy faces, saying she had sprung a leak. nothing but my cool behavior at this critical time saved us from another panic. i order them to show me the place. they led me to a spot where a huge boulder lay in a deep pool of clear and brilliant water. it did look like a pretty bad leak, but i kept that to myself. i made a pump and set the men to work to pump out the glacier. we made a success of it. i perceived, then, that it was not a leak at all. this boulder had descended from a precipice and stopped on the ice in the middle of the glacier, and the sun had warmed it up, every day, and consequently it had melted its way deeper and deeper into the ice, until at last it reposed, as we had found it, in a deep pool of the clearest and coldest water. presently baedeker was found again, and i hunted eagerly for the time-table. there was none. the book simply said the glacier was moving all the time. this was satisfactory, so i shut up the book and chose a good position to view the scenery as we passed along. i stood there some time enjoying the trip, but at last it occurred to me that we did not seem to be gaining any on the scenery. i said to myself, "this confounded old thing's aground again, sure,"--and opened baedeker to see if i could run across any remedy for these annoying interruptions. i soon found a sentence which threw a dazzling light upon the matter. it said, "the gorner glacier travels at an average rate of a little less than an inch a day." i have seldom felt so outraged. i have seldom had my confidence so wantonly betrayed. i made a small calculation: one inch a day, say thirty feet a year; estimated distance to zermatt, three and one-eighteenth miles. time required to go by glacier, a little over five hundred years! i said to myself, "i can walk it quicker--and before i will patronize such a fraud as this, i will do it." when i revealed to harris the fact that the passenger part of this glacier--the central part--the lightning-express part, so to speak--was not due in zermatt till the summer of 2378, and that the baggage, coming along the slow edge, would not arrive until some generations later, he burst out with: "that is european management, all over! an inch a day--think of that! five hundred years to go a trifle over three miles! but i am not a bit surprised. it's a catholic glacier. you can tell by the look of it. and the management." i said, no, i believed nothing but the extreme end of it was in a catholic canton. "well, then, it's a government glacier," said harris. "it's all the same. over here the government runs everything--so everything's slow; slow, and ill-managed. but with us, everything's done by private enterprise--and then there ain't much lolling around, you can depend on it. i wish tom scott could get his hands on this torpid old slab once--you'd see it take a different gait from this." i said i was sure he would increase the speed, if there was trade enough to justify it. "he'd make trade," said harris. "that's the difference between governments and individuals. governments don't care, individuals do. tom scott would take all the trade; in two years gorner stock would go to two hundred, and inside of two more you would see all the other glaciers under the hammer for taxes." after a reflective pause, harris added, "a little less than an inch a day; a little less than an inch, mind you. well, i'm losing my reverence for glaciers." i was feeling much the same way myself. i have traveled by canal-boat, ox-wagon, raft, and by the ephesus and smyrna railway; but when it comes down to good solid honest slow motion, i bet my money on the glacier. as a means of passenger transportation, i consider the glacier a failure; but as a vehicle of slow freight, i think she fills the bill. in the matter of putting the fine shades on that line of business, i judge she could teach the germans something. i ordered the men to break camp and prepare for the land journey to zermatt. at this moment a most interesting find was made; a dark object, bedded in the glacial ice, was cut out with the ice-axes, and it proved to be a piece of the undressed skin of some animal--a hair trunk, perhaps; but a close inspection disabled the hair-trunk theory, and further discussion and examination exploded it entirely--that is, in the opinion of all the scientists except the one who had advanced it. this one clung to his theory with affectionate fidelity characteristic of originators of scientific theories, and afterward won many of the first scientists of the age to his view, by a very able pamphlet which he wrote, entitled, "evidences going to show that the hair trunk, in a wild state, belonged to the early glacial period, and roamed the wastes of chaos in the company with the cave-bear, primeval man, and the other oo"litics of the old silurian family." each of our scientists had a theory of his own, and put forward an animal of his own as a candidate for the skin. i sided with the geologist of the expedition in the belief that this patch of skin had once helped to cover a siberian elephant, in some old forgotten age--but we divided there, the geologist believing that this discovery proved that siberia had formerly been located where switzerland is now, whereas i held the opinion that it merely proved that the primeval swiss was not the dull savage he is represented to have been, but was a being of high intellectual development, who liked to go to the menagerie. we arrived that evening, after many hardships and adventures, in some fields close to the great ice-arch where the mad visp boils and surges out from under the foot of the great gorner glacier, and here we camped, our perils over and our magnificent undertaking successfully completed. we marched into zermatt the next day, and were received with the most lavish honors and applause. a document, signed and sealed by the authorities, was given to me which established and endorsed the fact that i had made the ascent of the riffelberg. this i wear around my neck, and it will be buried with me when i am no more. chapter xl [piteous relics at chamonix] i am not so ignorant about glacial movement, now, as i was when i took passage on the gorner glacier. i have "read up" since. i am aware that these vast bodies of ice do not travel at the same rate of speed; while the gorner glacier makes less than an inch a day, the unter-aar glacier makes as much as eight; and still other glaciers are said to go twelve, sixteen, and even twenty inches a day. one writer says that the slowest glacier travels twenty-give feet a year, and the fastest four hundred. what is a glacier? it is easy to say it looks like a frozen river which occupies the bed of a winding gorge or gully between mountains. but that gives no notion of its vastness. for it is sometimes six hundred feet thick, and we are not accustomed to rivers six hundred feet deep; no, our rivers are six feet, twenty feet, and sometimes fifty feet deep; we are not quite able to grasp so large a fact as an ice-river six hundred feet deep. the glacier's surface is not smooth and level, but has deep swales and swelling elevations, and sometimes has the look of a tossing sea whose turbulent billows were frozen hard in the instant of their most violent motion; the glacier's surface is not a flawless mass, but is a river with cracks or crevices, some narrow, some gaping wide. many a man, the victim of a slip or a misstep, has plunged down on of these and met his death. men have been fished out of them alive; but it was when they did not go to a great depth; the cold of the great depths would quickly stupefy a man, whether he was hurt or unhurt. these cracks do not go straight down; one can seldom see more than twenty to forty feet down them; consequently men who have disappeared in them have been sought for, in the hope that they had stopped within helping distance, whereas their case, in most instances, had really been hopeless from the beginning. in 1864 a party of tourists was descending mont blanc, and while picking their way over one of the mighty glaciers of that lofty region, roped together, as was proper, a young porter disengaged himself from the line and started across an ice-bridge which spanned a crevice. it broke under him with a crash, and he disappeared. the others could not see how deep he had gone, so it might be worthwhile to try and rescue him. a brave young guide named michel payot volunteered. two ropes were made fast to his leather belt and he bore the end of a third one in his hand to tie to the victim in case he found him. he was lowered into the crevice, he descended deeper and deeper between the clear blue walls of solid ice, he approached a bend in the crack and disappeared under it. down, and still down, he went, into this profound grave; when he had reached a depth of eighty feet he passed under another bend in the crack, and thence descended eighty feet lower, as between perpendicular precipices. arrived at this stage of one hundred and sixty feet below the surface of the glacier, he peered through the twilight dimness and perceived that the chasm took another turn and stretched away at a steep slant to unknown deeps, for its course was lost in darkness. what a place that was to be in--especially if that leather belt should break! the compression of the belt threatened to suffocate the intrepid fellow; he called to his friends to draw him up, but could not make them hear. they still lowered him, deeper and deeper. then he jerked his third cord as vigorously as he could; his friends understood, and dragged him out of those icy jaws of death. then they attached a bottle to a cord and sent it down two hundred feet, but it found no bottom. it came up covered with congelations--evidence enough that even if the poor porter reached the bottom with unbroken bones, a swift death from cold was sure, anyway. a glacier is a stupendous, ever-progressing, resistless plow. it pushes ahead of its masses of boulders which are packed together, and they stretch across the gorge, right in front of it, like a long grave or a long, sharp roof. this is called a moraine. it also shoves out a moraine along each side of its course. imposing as the modern glaciers are, they are not so huge as were some that once existed. for instance, mr. whymper says: "at some very remote period the valley of aosta was occupied by a vast glacier, which flowed down its entire length from mont blanc to the plain of piedmont, remained stationary, or nearly so, at its mouth for many centuries, and deposited there enormous masses of debris. the length of this glacier exceeded eighty miles, and it drained a basin twenty-five to thirty-five miles across, bounded by the highest mountains in the alps. the great peaks rose several thousand feet above the glaciers, and then, as now, shattered by sun and frost, poured down their showers of rocks and stones, in witness of which there are the immense piles of angular fragments that constitute the moraines of ivrea. "the moraines around ivrea are of extraordinary dimensions. that which was on the left bank of the glacier is about thirteen miles long, and in some places rises to a height of two thousand one hundred and thirty feet above the floor of the valley! the terminal moraines (those which are pushed in front of the glaciers) cover something like twenty square miles of country. at the mouth of the valley of aosta, the thickness of the glacier must have been at least two thousand feet, and its width, at that part, five miles and a quarter." it is not easy to get at a comprehension of a mass of ice like that. if one could cleave off the butt end of such a glacier--an oblong block two or three miles wide by five and a quarter long and two thousand feet thick-he could completely hide the city of new york under it, and trinity steeple would only stick up into it relatively as far as a shingle-nail would stick up into the bottom of a saratoga trunk. "the boulders from mont blanc, upon the plain below ivrea, assure us that the glacier which transported them existed for a prodigious length of time. their present distance from the cliffs from which they were derived is about 420,000 feet, and if we assume that they traveled at the rate of 400 feet per annum, their journey must have occupied them no less than 1,055 years! in all probability they did not travel so fast." glaciers are sometimes hurried out of their characteristic snail-pace. a marvelous spectacle is presented then. mr. whymper refers to a case which occurred in iceland in 1721: "it seems that in the neighborhood of the mountain kotlugja, large bodies of water formed underneath, or within the glaciers (either on account of the interior heat of the earth, or from other causes), and at length acquired irresistible power, tore the glaciers from their mooring on the land, and swept them over every obstacle into the sea. prodigious masses of ice were thus borne for a distance of about ten miles over land in the space of a few hours; and their bulk was so enormous that they covered the sea for seven miles from the shore, and remained aground in six hundred feet of water! the denudation of the land was upon a grand scale. all superficial accumulations were swept away, and the bedrock was exposed. it was described, in graphic language, how all irregularities and depressions were obliterated, and a smooth surface of several miles' area laid bare, and that this area had the appearance of having been planed by a plane." the account translated from the icelandic says that the mountainlike ruins of this majestic glacier so covered the sea that as far as the eye could reach no open water was discoverable, even from the highest peaks. a monster wall or barrier of ice was built across a considerable stretch of land, too, by this strange irruption: "one can form some idea of the altitude of this barrier of ice when it is mentioned that from hofdabrekka farm, which lies high up on a fjeld, one could not see hjorleifshofdi opposite, which is a fell six hundred and forty feet in height; but in order to do so had to clamber up a mountain slope east of hofdabrekka twelve hundred feet high." these things will help the reader to understand why it is that a man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by. the alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work. the alpine glaciers move--that is granted, now, by everybody. but there was a time when people scoffed at the idea; they said you might as well expect leagues of solid rock to crawl along the ground as expect leagues of ice to do it. but proof after proof as furnished, and the finally the world had to believe. the wise men not only said the glacier moved, but they timed its movement. they ciphered out a glacier's gait, and then said confidently that it would travel just so far in so many years. there is record of a striking and curious example of the accuracy which may be attained in these reckonings. in 1820 the ascent of mont blanc was attempted by a russian and two englishmen, with seven guides. they had reached a prodigious altitude, and were approaching the summit, when an avalanche swept several of the party down a sharp slope of two hundred feet and hurled five of them (all guides) into one of the crevices of a glacier. the life of one of the five was saved by a long barometer which was strapped to his back--it bridged the crevice and suspended him until help came. the alpenstock or baton of another saved its owner in a similar way. three men were lost--pierre balmat, pierre carrier, and auguste tairraz. they had been hurled down into the fathomless great deeps of the crevice. dr. forbes, the english geologist, had made frequent visits to the mont blanc region, and had given much attention to the disputed question of the movement of glaciers. during one of these visits he completed his estimates of the rate of movement of the glacier which had swallowed up the three guides, and uttered the prediction that the glacier would deliver up its dead at the foot of the mountain thirty-five years from the time of the accident, or possibly forty. a dull, slow journey--a movement imperceptible to any eye-but it was proceeding, nevertheless, and without cessation. it was a journey which a rolling stone would make in a few seconds--the lofty point of departure was visible from the village below in the valley. the prediction cut curiously close to the truth; forty-one years after the catastrophe, the remains were cast forth at the foot of the glacier. i find an interesting account of the matter in the histoire du mont blanc, by stephen d'arve. i will condense this account, as follows: on the 12th of august, 1861, at the hour of the close of mass, a guide arrived out of breath at the mairie of chamonix, and bearing on his shoulders a very lugubrious burden. it was a sack filled with human remains which he had gathered from the orifice of a crevice in the glacier des bossons. he conjectured that these were remains of the victims of the catastrophe of 1820, and a minute inquest, immediately instituted by the local authorities, soon demonstrated the correctness of his supposition. the contents of the sack were spread upon a long table, and officially inventoried, as follows: portions of three human skulls. several tufts of black and blonde hair. a human jaw, furnished with fine white teeth. a forearm and hand, all the fingers of the latter intact. the flesh was white and fresh, and both the arm and hand preserved a degree of flexibility in the articulations. the ring-finger had suffered a slight abrasion, and the stain of the blood was still visible and unchanged after forty-one years. a left foot, the flesh white and fresh. along with these fragments were portions of waistcoats, hats, hobnailed shoes, and other clothing; a wing of a pigeon, with black feathers; a fragment of an alpenstock; a tin lantern; and lastly, a boiled leg of mutton, the only flesh among all the remains that exhaled an unpleasant odor. the guide said that the mutton had no odor when he took it from the glacier; an hour's exposure to the sun had already begun the work of decomposition upon it. persons were called for, to identify these poor pathetic relics, and a touching scene ensured. two men were still living who had witnessed the grim catastrophe of nearly half a century before--marie couttet (saved by his baton) and julien davouassoux (saved by the barometer). these aged men entered and approached the table. davouassoux, more than eighty years old, contemplated the mournful remains mutely and with a vacant eye, for his intelligence and his memory were torpid with age; but couttet's faculties were still perfect at seventy-two, and he exhibited strong emotion. he said: "pierre balmat was fair; he wore a straw hat. this bit of skull, with the tuft of blond hair, was his; this is his hat. pierre carrier was very dark; this skull was his, and this felt hat. this is balmat's hand, i remember it so well!" and the old man bent down and kissed it reverently, then closed his fingers upon it in an affectionate grasp, crying out, "i could never have dared to believe that before quitting this world it would be granted me to press once more the hand of one of those brave comrades, the hand of my good friend balmat." there is something weirdly pathetic about the picture of that white-haired veteran greeting with his loving handshake this friend who had been dead forty years. when these hands had met last, they were alike in the softness and freshness of youth; now, one was brown and wrinkled and horny with age, while the other was still as young and fair and blemishless as if those forty years had come and gone in a single moment, leaving no mark of their passage. time had gone on, in the one case; it had stood still in the other. a man who has not seen a friend for a generation, keeps him in mind always as he saw him last, and is somehow surprised, and is also shocked, to see the aging change the years have wrought when he sees him again. marie couttet's experience, in finding his friend's hand unaltered from the image of it which he had carried in his memory for forty years, is an experience which stands alone in the history of man, perhaps. couttet identified other relics: "this hat belonged to auguste tairraz. he carried the cage of pigeons which we proposed to set free upon the summit. here is the wing of one of those pigeons. and here is the fragment of my broken baton; it was by grace of that baton that my life was saved. who could have told me that i should one day have the satisfaction to look again upon this bit of wood that supported me above the grave that swallowed up my unfortunate companions!" no portions of the body of tairraz, other than a piece of the skull, had been found. a diligent search was made, but without result. however, another search was instituted a year later, and this had better success. many fragments of clothing which had belonged to the lost guides were discovered; also, part of a lantern, and a green veil with blood-stains on it. but the interesting feature was this: one of the searchers came suddenly upon a sleeved arm projecting from a crevice in the ice-wall, with the hand outstretched as if offering greeting! "the nails of this white hand were still rosy, and the pose of the extended fingers seemed to express an eloquent welcome to the long-lost light of day." the hand and arm were alone; there was no trunk. after being removed from the ice the flesh-tints quickly faded out and the rosy nails took on the alabaster hue of death. this was the third right hand found; therefore, all three of the lost men were accounted for, beyond cavil or question. dr. hamel was the russian gentleman of the party which made the ascent at the time of the famous disaster. he left chamonix as soon as he conveniently could after the descent; and as he had shown a chilly indifference about the calamity, and offered neither sympathy nor assistance to the widows and orphans, he carried with him the cordial execrations of the whole community. four months before the first remains were found, a chamonix guide named balmat--a relative of one of the lost men--was in london, and one day encountered a hale old gentleman in the british museum, who said: "i overheard your name. are you from chamonix, monsieur balmat?" "yes, sir." "haven't they found the bodies of my three guides, yet? i am dr. hamel." "alas, no, monsieur." "well, you'll find them, sooner or later." "yes, it is the opinion of dr. forbes and mr. tyndall, that the glacier will sooner or later restore to us the remains of the unfortunate victims." "without a doubt, without a doubt. and it will be a great thing for chamonix, in the matter of attracting tourists. you can get up a museum with those remains that will draw!" this savage idea has not improved the odor of dr. hamel's name in chamonix by any means. but after all, the man was sound on human nature. his idea was conveyed to the public officials of chamonix, and they gravely discussed it around the official council-table. they were only prevented from carrying it into execution by the determined opposition of the friends and descendants of the lost guides, who insisted on giving the remains christian burial, and succeeded in their purpose. a close watch had to be kept upon all the poor remnants and fragments, to prevent embezzlement. a few accessory odds and ends were sold. rags and scraps of the coarse clothing were parted with at the rate equal to about twenty dollars a yard; a piece of a lantern and one or two other trifles brought nearly their weight in gold; and an englishman offered a pound sterling for a single breeches-button. chapter xli [the fearful disaster of 1865] one of the most memorable of all the alpine catastrophes was that of july, 1865, on the matterhorn--already sighted referred to, a few pages back. the details of it are scarcely known in america. to the vast majority of readers they are not known at all. mr. whymper's account is the only authentic one. i will import the chief portion of it into this book, partly because of its intrinsic interest, and partly because it gives such a vivid idea of what the perilous pastime of alp-climbing is. this was mr. whymper's ninth attempt during a series of years, to vanquish that steep and stubborn pillar or rock; it succeeded, the other eight were failures. no man had ever accomplished the ascent before, though the attempts had been numerous. mr. whymper's narrative we started from zermatt on the 13th of july, at half past five, on a brilliant and perfectly cloudless morning. we were eight in number--croz (guide), old peter taugwalder (guide) and his two sons; lord f. douglas, mr. hadow, rev. mr. hudson, and i. to insure steady motion, one tourist and one native walked together. the youngest taugwalder fell to my share. the wine-bags also fell to my lot to carry, and throughout the day, after each drink, i replenished them secretly with water, so that at the next halt they were found fuller than before! this was considered a good omen, and little short of miraculous. on the first day we did not intend to ascend to any great height, and we mounted, accordingly, very leisurely. before twelve o'clock we had found a good position for the tent, at a height of eleven thousand feet. we passed the remaining hours of daylight--some basking in the sunshine, some sketching, some collecting; hudson made tea, i coffee, and at length we retired, each one to his blanket bag. we assembled together before dawn on the 14th and started directly it was light enough to move. one of the young taugwalders returned to zermatt. in a few minutes we turned the rib which had intercepted the view of the eastern face from our tent platform. the whole of this great slope was now revealed, rising for three thousand feet like a huge natural staircase. some parts were more, and others were less easy, but we were not once brought to a halt by any serious impediment, for when an obstruction was met in front it could always be turned to the right or to the left. for the greater part of the way there was no occasion, indeed, for the rope, and sometimes hudson led, sometimes myself. at six-twenty we had attained a height of twelve thousand eight hundred feet, and halted for half an hour; we then continued the ascent without a break until nine-fifty-five, when we stopped for fifty minutes, at a height of fourteen thousand feet. we had now arrived at the foot of that part which, seen from the riffelberg, seems perpendicular or overhanging. we could no longer continue on the eastern side. for a little distance we ascended by snow upon the are^te--that is, the ridge--then turned over to the right, or northern side. the work became difficult, and required caution. in some places there was little to hold; the general slope of the mountain was less than forty degrees, and snow had accumulated in, and had filled up, the interstices of the rock-face, leaving only occasional fragments projecting here and there. these were at times covered with a thin film of ice. it was a place which any fair mountaineer might pass in safety. we bore away nearly horizontally for about four hundred feet, then ascended directly toward the summit for about sixty feet, then doubled back to the ridge which descends toward zermatt. a long stride round a rather awkward corner brought us to snow once more. that last doubt vanished! the matterhorn was ours! nothing but two hundred feet of easy snow remained to be surmounted. the higher we rose, the more intense became the excitement. the slope eased off, at length we could be detached, and croz and i, dashed away, ran a neck-and-neck race, which ended in a dead heat. at 1:40 p.m., the world was at our feet, and the matterhorn was conquered! the others arrived. croz now took the tent-pole, and planted it in the highest snow. "yes," we said, "there is the flag-staff, but where is the flag?" "here it is," he answered, pulling off his blouse and fixing it to the stick. it made a poor flag, and there was no wind to float it out, yet it was seen all around. they saw it at zermatt--at the riffel--in the val tournanche... . we remained on the summit for one hour-one crowded hour of glorious life. it passed away too quickly, and we began to prepare for the descent. hudson and i consulted as to the best and safest arrangement of the party. we agreed that it was best for croz to go first, and hadow second; hudson, who was almost equal to a guide in sureness of foot, wished to be third; lord douglas was placed next, and old peter, the strongest of the remainder, after him. i suggested to hudson that we should attach a rope to the rocks on our arrival at the difficult bit, and hold it as we descended, as an additional protection. he approved the idea, but it was not definitely decided that it should be done. the party was being arranged in the above order while i was sketching the summit, and they had finished, and were waiting for me to be tied in line, when some one remembered that our names had not been left in a bottle. they requested me to write them down, and moved off while it was being done. a few minutes afterward i tied myself to young peter, ran down after the others, and caught them just as they were commencing the descent of the difficult part. great care was being taken. only one man was moving at a time; when he was firmly planted the next advanced, and so on. they had not, however, attached the additional rope to rocks, and nothing was said about it. the suggestion was not made for my own sake, and i am not sure that it ever occurred to me again. for some little distance we two followed the others, detached from them, and should have continued so had not lord douglas asked me, about 3 p.m., to tie on to old peter, as he feared, he said, that taugwalder would not be able to hold his ground if a slip occurred. a few minutes later, a sharp-eyed lad ran into the monte rosa hotel, at zermatt, saying that he had seen an avalanche fall from the summit of the matterhorn onto the matterhorn glacier. the boy was reproved for telling idle stories; he was right, nevertheless, and this was what he saw. michel croz had laid aside his ax, and in order to give mr. hadow greater security, was absolutely taking hold of his legs, and putting his feet, one by one, into their proper positions. as far as i know, no one was actually descending. i cannot speak with certainty, because the two leading men were partially hidden from my sight by an intervening mass of rock, but it is my belief, from the movements of their shoulders, that croz, having done as i said, was in the act of turning round to go down a step or two himself; at this moment mr. hadow slipped, fell against him, and knocked him over. i heard one startled exclamation from croz, then saw him and mr. hadow flying downward; in another moment hudson was dragged from his steps, and lord douglas immediately after him. all this was the work of a moment. immediately we heard croz's exclamation, old peter and i planted ourselves as firmly as the rocks would permit; the rope was taut between us, and the jerk came on us both as on one man. we held; but the rope broke midway between taugwalder and lord francis douglas. for a few seconds we saw our unfortunate companions sliding downward on their backs, and spreading out their hands, endeavoring to save themselves. they passed from our sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell from the precipice to precipice onto the matterhorn glacier below, a distance of nearly four thousand feet in height. from the moment the rope broke it was impossible to help them. so perished our comrades! for more than two hours afterward i thought almost every moment that the next would be my last; for the taugwalders, utterly unnerved, were not only incapable of giving assistance, but were in such a state that a slip might have been expected from them at any moment. after a time we were able to do that which should have been done at first, and fixed rope to firm rocks, in addition to being tied together. these ropes were cut from time to time, and were left behind. even with their assurance the men were afraid to proceed, and several times old peter turned, with ashy face and faltering limbs, and said, with terrible emphasis, "i cannot!" about 6 p.m., we arrived at the snow upon the ridge descending toward zermatt, and all peril was over. we frequently looked, but in vain, for traces of our unfortunate companions; we bent over the ridge and cried to them, but no sound returned. convinced at last that they were neither within sight nor hearing, we ceased from our useless efforts; and, too cast down for speech, silently gathered up our things, and the little effects of those who were lost, and then completed the descent. ---------such is mr. whymper's graphic and thrilling narrative. zermatt gossip darkly hints that the elder taugwalder cut the rope, when the accident occurred, in order to preserve himself from being dragged into the abyss; but mr. whymper says that the ends of the rope showed no evidence of cutting, but only of breaking. he adds that if taugwalder had had the disposition to cut the rope, he would not have had time to do it, the accident was so sudden and unexpected. lord douglas' body has never been found. it probably lodged upon some inaccessible shelf in the face of the mighty precipice. lord douglas was a youth of nineteen. the three other victims fell nearly four thousand feet, and their bodies lay together upon the glacier when found by mr. whymper and the other searchers the next morning. their graves are beside the little church in zermatt. chapter xlii [chillon has a nice, roomy dungeon] switzerland is simply a large, humpy, solid rock, with a thin skin of grass stretched over it. consequently, they do not dig graves, they blast them out with power and fuse. they cannot afford to have large graveyards, the grass skin is too circumscribed and too valuable. it is all required for the support of the living. the graveyard in zermatt occupies only about one-eighth of an acre. the graves are sunk in the living rock, and are very permanent; but occupation of them is only temporary; the occupant can only stay till his grave is needed by a later subject, he is removed, then, for they do not bury one body on top of another. as i understand it, a family owns a grave, just as it owns a house. a man dies and leaves his house to his son--and at the same time, this dead father succeeds to his own father's grave. he moves out of the house and into the grave, and his predecessor moves out of the grave and into the cellar of the chapel. i saw a black box lying in the churchyard, with skull and cross-bones painted on it, and was told that this was used in transferring remains to the cellar. in that cellar the bones and skulls of several hundred of former citizens were compactly corded up. they made a pile eighteen feet long, seven feet high, and eight feet wide. i was told that in some of the receptacles of this kind in the swiss villages, the skulls were all marked, and if a man wished to find the skulls of his ancestors for several generations back, he could do it by these marks, preserved in the family records. an english gentleman who had lived some years in this region, said it was the cradle of compulsory education. but he said that the english idea that compulsory education would reduce bastardy and intemperance was an error--it has not that effect. he said there was more seduction in the protestant than in the catholic cantons, because the confessional protected the girls. i wonder why it doesn't protect married women in france and spain? this gentleman said that among the poorer peasants in the valais, it was common for the brothers in a family to cast lots to determine which of them should have the coveted privilege of marrying, and his brethren--doomed bachelors--heroically banded themselves together to help support the new family. we left zermatt in a wagon--and in a rain-storm, too-for st. nicholas about ten o'clock one morning. again we passed between those grass-clad prodigious cliffs, specked with wee dwellings peeping over at us from velvety green walls ten and twelve hundred feet high. it did not seem possible that the imaginary chamois even could climb those precipices. lovers on opposite cliffs probably kiss through a spy-glass, and correspond with a rifle. in switzerland the farmer's plow is a wide shovel, which scrapes up and turns over the thin earthy skin of his native rock--and there the man of the plow is a hero. now here, by our st. nicholas road, was a grave, and it had a tragic story. a plowman was skinning his farm one morning--not the steepest part of it, but still a steep part--that is, he was not skinning the front of his farm, but the roof of it, near the eaves--when he absent-mindedly let go of the plow-handles to moisten his hands, in the usual way; he lost his balance and fell out of his farm backward; poor fellow, he never touched anything till he struck bottom, fifteen hundred feet below. [1] we throw a halo of heroism around the life of the soldier and the sailor, because of the deadly dangers they are facing all the time. but we are not used to looking upon farming as a heroic occupation. this is because we have not lived in switzerland. 1. this was on a sunday.--m.t. from st. nicholas we struck out for visp--or vispach--on foot. the rain-storms had been at work during several days, and had done a deal of damage in switzerland and savoy. we came to one place where a stream had changed its course and plunged down a mountain in a new place, sweeping everything before it. two poor but precious farms by the roadside were ruined. one was washed clear away, and the bed-rock exposed; the other was buried out of sight under a tumbled chaos of rocks, gravel, mud, and rubbish. the resistless might of water was well exemplified. some saplings which had stood in the way were bent to the ground, stripped clean of their bark, and buried under rocky debris. the road had been swept away, too. in another place, where the road was high up on the mountain's face, and its outside edge protected by flimsy masonry, we frequently came across spots where this masonry had carved off and left dangerous gaps for mules to get over; and with still more frequency we found the masonry slightly crumbled, and marked by mule-hoofs, thus showing that there had been danger of an accident to somebody. when at last we came to a badly ruptured bit of masonry, with hoof-prints evidencing a desperate struggle to regain the lost foothold, i looked quite hopefully over the dizzy precipice. but there was nobody down there. they take exceedingly good care of their rivers in switzerland and other portions of europe. they wall up both banks with slanting solid stone masonry--so that from end to end of these rivers the banks look like the wharves at st. louis and other towns on the mississippi river. it was during this walk from st. nicholas, in the shadow of the majestic alps, that we came across some little children amusing themselves in what seemed, at first, a most odd and original way--but it wasn't; it was in simply a natural and characteristic way. they were roped together with a string, they had mimic alpenstocks and ice-axes, and were climbing a meek and lowly manure-pile with a most blood-curdling amount of care and caution. the "guide" at the head of the line cut imaginary steps, in a laborious and painstaking way, and not a monkey budged till the step above was vacated. if we had waited we should have witnessed an imaginary accident, no doubt; and we should have heard the intrepid band hurrah when they made the summit and looked around upon the "magnificent view," and seen them throw themselves down in exhausted attitudes for a rest in that commanding situation. in nevada i used to see the children play at silver-mining. of course, the great thing was an accident in a mine, and there were two "star" parts; that of the man who fell down the mimic shaft, and that of the daring hero who was lowered into the depths to bring him up. i knew one small chap who always insisted on playing both of these parts--and he carried his point. he would tumble into the shaft and die, and then come to the surface and go back after his own remains. it is the smartest boy that gets the hero part everywhere; he is head guide in switzerland, head miner in nevada, head bull-fighter in spain, etc.; but i knew a preacher's son, seven years old, who once selected a part for himself compared to which those just mentioned are tame and unimpressive. jimmy's father stopped him from driving imaginary horse-cars one sunday--stopped him from playing captain of an imaginary steamboat next sunday--stopped him from leading an imaginary army to battle the following sunday--and so on. finally the little fellow said: "i've tried everything, and they won't any of them do. what can i play?" "i hardly know, jimmy; but you must play only things that are suitable to the sabbath-day." next sunday the preacher stepped softly to a back-room door to see if the children were rightly employed. he peeped in. a chair occupied the middle of the room, and on the back of it hung jimmy's cap; one of his little sisters took the cap down, nibbled at it, then passed it to another small sister and said, "eat of this fruit, for it is good." the reverend took in the situation--alas, they were playing the expulsion from eden! yet he found one little crumb of comfort. he said to himself, "for once jimmy has yielded the chief role--i have been wronging him, i did not believe there was so much modesty in him; i should have expected him to be either adam or eve." this crumb of comfort lasted but a very little while; he glanced around and discovered jimmy standing in an imposing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly frown on his face. what that meant was very plain--he was impersonating the deity! think of the guileless sublimity of that idea. we reached vispach at 8 p.m., only about seven hours out from st. nicholas. so we must have made fully a mile and a half an hour, and it was all downhill, too, and very muddy at that. we stayed all night at the ho^tel de soleil; i remember it because the landlady, the portier, the waitress, and the chambermaid were not separate persons, but were all contained in one neat and chipper suit of spotless muslin, and she was the prettiest young creature i saw in all that region. she was the landlord's daughter. and i remember that the only native match to her i saw in all europe was the young daughter of the landlord of a village inn in the black forest. why don't more people in europe marry and keep hotel? next morning we left with a family of english friends and went by train to brevet, and thence by boat across the lake to ouchy (lausanne). ouchy is memorable to me, not on account of its beautiful situation and lovely surroundings--although these would make it stick long in one's memory--but as the place where _i_ caught the london times dropping into humor. it was not aware of it, though. it did not do it on purpose. an english friend called my attention to this lapse, and cut out the reprehensible paragraph for me. think of encountering a grin like this on the face of that grim journal: erratum.--we are requested by reuter's telegram company to correct an erroneous announcement made in their brisbane telegram of the 2d inst., published in our impression of the 5th inst., stating that "lady kennedy had given birth to twins, the eldest being a son." the company explain that the message they received contained the words "governor of queensland, twins first son." being, however, subsequently informed that sir arthur kennedy was unmarried and that there must be some mistake, a telegraphic repetition was at once demanded. it has been received today (11th inst.) and shows that the words really telegraphed by reuter's agent were "governor queensland turns first sod," alluding to the maryborough-gympic railway in course of construction. the words in italics were mutilated by the telegraph in transmission from australia, and reaching the company in the form mentioned above gave rise to the mistake. i had always had a deep and reverent compassion for the sufferings of the "prisoner of chillon," whose story byron had told in such moving verse; so i took the steamer and made pilgrimage to the dungeons of the castle of chillon, to see the place where poor bonnivard endured his dreary captivity three hundred years ago. i am glad i did that, for it took away some of the pain i was feeling on the prisoner's account. his dungeon was a nice, cool, roomy place, and i cannot see why he should have been dissatisfied with it. if he had been imprisoned in a st. nicholas private dwelling, where the fertilizer prevails, and the goat sleeps with the guest, and the chickens roost on him and the cow comes in and bothers him when he wants to muse, it would have been another matter altogether; but he surely could not have had a very cheerless time of it in that pretty dungeon. it has romantic window-slits that let in generous bars of light, and it has tall, noble columns, carved apparently from the living rock; and what is more, they are written all over with thousands of names; some of them--like byron's and victor hugo's--of the first celebrity. why didn't he amuse himself reading these names? then there are the couriers and tourists--swarms of them every day--what was to hinder him from having a good time with them? i think bonnivard's sufferings have been overrated. next, we took the train and went to martigny, on the way to mont blanc. next morning we started, about eight o'clock, on foot. we had plenty of company, in the way of wagon-loads and mule-loads of tourists--and dust. this scattering procession of travelers was perhaps a mile long. the road was uphill--interminable uphill--and tolerably steep. the weather was blisteringly hot, and the man or woman who had to sit on a creeping mule, or in a crawling wagon, and broil in the beating sun, was an object to be pitied. we could dodge among the bushes, and have the relief of shade, but those people could not. they paid for a conveyance, and to get their money's worth they rode. we went by the way of the te^te noir, and after we reached high ground there was no lack of fine scenery. in one place the road was tunneled through a shoulder of the mountain; from there one looked down into a gorge with a rushing torrent in it, and on every hand was a charming view of rocky buttresses and wooded heights. there was a liberal allowance of pretty waterfalls, too, on the te^te noir route. about half an hour before we reached the village of argentie`re a vast dome of snow with the sun blazing on it drifted into view and framed itself in a strong v-shaped gateway of the mountains, and we recognized mont blanc, the "monarch of the alps." with every step, after that, this stately dome rose higher and higher into the blue sky, and at last seemed to occupy the zenith. some of mont blanc's neighbors--bare, light-brown, steeplelike rocks--were very peculiarly shaped. some were whittled to a sharp point, and slightly bent at the upper end, like a lady's finger; one monster sugar-loaf resembled a bishop's hat; it was too steep to hold snow on its sides, but had some in the division. while we were still on very high ground, and before the descent toward argentie`re began, we looked up toward a neighboring mountain-top, and saw exquisite prismatic colors playing about some white clouds which were so delicate as to almost resemble gossamer webs. the faint pinks and greens were peculiarly beautiful; none of the colors were deep, they were the lightest shades. they were bewitching commingled. we sat down to study and enjoy this singular spectacle. the tints remained during several minutes--fitting, changing, melting into each other; paling almost away for a moment, then reflushing--a shifting, restless, unstable succession of soft opaline gleams, shimmering over that air film of white cloud, and turning it into a fabric dainty enough to clothe an angel with. by and by we perceived what those super-delicate colors, and their continuous play and movement, reminded us of; it is what one sees in a soap-bubble that is drifting along, catching changes of tint from the objects it passes. a soap-bubble is the most beautiful thing, and the most exquisite, in nature; that lovely phantom fabric in the sky was suggestive of a soap-bubble split open, and spread out in the sun. i wonder how much it would take to buy a soap-bubble, if there was only one in the world? one could buy a hatful of koh-i-noors with the same money, no doubt. we made the tramp from martigny to argentie`re in eight hours. we beat all the mules and wagons; we didn't usually do that. we hired a sort of open baggage-wagon for the trip down the valley to chamonix, and then devoted an hour to dining. this gave the driver time to get drunk. he had a friend with him, and this friend also had had time to get drunk. when we drove off, the driver said all the tourists had arrived and gone by while we were at dinner; "but," said he, impressively, "be not disturbed by that--remain tranquil--give yourselves no uneasiness--their dust rises far before us-rest you tranquil, leave all to me--i am the king of drivers. behold!" down came his whip, and away we clattered. i never had such a shaking up in my life. the recent flooding rains had washed the road clear away in places, but we never stopped, we never slowed down for anything. we tore right along, over rocks, rubbish, gullies, open fields--sometimes with one or two wheels on the ground, but generally with none. every now and then that calm, good-natured madman would bend a majestic look over his shoulder at us and say, "ah, you perceive? it is as i have said --i am the king of drivers." every time we just missed going to destruction, he would say, with tranquil happiness, "enjoy it, gentlemen, it is very rare, it is very unusual-it is given to few to ride with the king of drivers-and observe, it is as i have said, _i_ am he." he spoke in french, and punctuated with hiccoughs. his friend was french, too, but spoke in german--using the same system of punctuation, however. the friend called himself the "captain of mont blanc," and wanted us to make the ascent with him. he said he had made more ascents than any other man--forty seven--and his brother had made thirty-seven. his brother was the best guide in the world, except himself--but he, yes, observe him well--he was the "captain of mont blanc"--that title belonged to none other. the "king" was as good as his word--he overtook that long procession of tourists and went by it like a hurricane. the result was that we got choicer rooms at the hotel in chamonix than we should have done if his majesty had been a slower artist--or rather, if he hadn't most providentially got drunk before he left argentie`re. chapter xliii [my poor sick friend disappointed] everybody was out-of-doors; everybody was in the principal street of the village--not on the sidewalks, but all over the street; everybody was lounging, loafing, chatting, waiting, alert, expectant, interested--for it was train-time. that is to say, it was diligence-time-the half-dozen big diligences would soon be arriving from geneva, and the village was interested, in many ways, in knowing how many people were coming and what sort of folk they might be. it was altogether the livest-looking street we had seen in any village on the continent. the hotel was by the side of a booming torrent, whose music was loud and strong; we could not see this torrent, for it was dark, now, but one could locate it without a light. there was a large enclosed yard in front of the hotel, and this was filled with groups of villagers waiting to see the diligences arrive, or to hire themselves to excursionists for the morrow. a telescope stood in the yard, with its huge barrel canted up toward the lustrous evening star. the long porch of the hotel was populous with tourists, who sat in shawls and wraps under the vast overshadowing bulk of mont blanc, and gossiped or meditated. never did a mountain seem so close; its big sides seemed at one's very elbow, and its majestic dome, and the lofty cluster of slender minarets that were its neighbors, seemed to be almost over one's head. it was night in the streets, and the lamps were sparkling everywhere; the broad bases and shoulders of the mountains were in a deep gloom, but their summits swam in a strange rich glow which was really daylight, and yet had a mellow something about it which was very different from the hard white glare of the kind of daylight i was used to. its radiance was strong and clear, but at the same time it was singularly soft, and spiritual, and benignant. no, it was not our harsh, aggressive, realistic daylight; it seemed properer to an enchanted land--or to heaven. i had seen moonlight and daylight together before, but i had not seen daylight and black night elbow to elbow before. at least i had not seen the daylight resting upon an object sufficiently close at hand, before, to make the contrast startling and at war with nature. the daylight passed away. presently the moon rose up behind some of those sky-piercing fingers or pinnacles of bare rock of which i have spoken--they were a little to the left of the crest of mont blanc, and right over our heads--but she couldn't manage to climb high enough toward heaven to get entirely above them. she would show the glittering arch of her upper third, occasionally, and scrape it along behind the comblike row; sometimes a pinnacle stood straight up, like a statuette of ebony, against that glittering white shield, then seemed to glide out of it by its own volition and power, and become a dim specter, while the next pinnacle glided into its place and blotted the spotless disk with the black exclamation-point of its presence. the top of one pinnacle took the shapely, clean-cut form of a rabbit's head, in the inkiest silhouette, while it rested against the moon. the unillumined peaks and minarets, hovering vague and phantom-like above us while the others were painfully white and strong with snow and moonlight, made a peculiar effect. but when the moon, having passed the line of pinnacles, was hidden behind the stupendous white swell of mont blanc, the masterpiece of the evening was flung on the canvas. a rich greenish radiance sprang into the sky from behind the mountain, and in this same airy shreds and ribbons of vapor floated about, and being flushed with that strange tint, went waving to and fro like pale green flames. after a while, radiating bars--vast broadening fan-shaped shadows--grew up and stretched away to the zenith from behind the mountain. it was a spectacle to take one's breath, for the wonder of it, and the sublimity. indeed, those mighty bars of alternate light and shadow streaming up from behind that dark and prodigious form and occupying the half of the dull and opaque heavens, was the most imposing and impressive marvel i had ever looked upon. there is no simile for it, for nothing is like it. if a child had asked me what it was, i should have said, "humble yourself, in this presence, it is the glory flowing from the hidden head of the creator." one falls shorter of the truth than that, sometimes, in trying to explain mysteries to the little people. i could have found out the cause of this awe-compelling miracle by inquiring, for it is not infrequent at mont blanc,--but i did not wish to know. we have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. we have lost as much as we gained by prying into the matter. we took a walk down street, a block or two, and a place where four streets met and the principal shops were clustered, found the groups of men in the roadway thicker than ever--for this was the exchange of chamonix. these men were in the costumes of guides and porters, and were there to be hired. the office of that great personage, the guide-in-chief of the chamonix guild of guides, was near by. this guild is a close corporation, and is governed by strict laws. there are many excursion routes, some dangerous and some not, some that can be made safely without a guide, and some that cannot. the bureau determines these things. where it decides that a guide is necessary, you are forbidden to go without one. neither are you allowed to be a victim of extortion: the law states what you are to pay. the guides serve in rotation; you cannot select the man who is to take your life into his hands, you must take the worst in the lot, if it is his turn. a guide's fee ranges all the way up from a half-dollar (for some trifling excursion of a few rods) to twenty dollars, according to the distance traversed and the nature of the ground. a guide's fee for taking a person to the summit of mont blanc and back, is twenty dollars--and he earns it. the time employed is usually three days, and there is enough early rising in it to make a man far more "healthy and wealthy and wise" than any one man has any right to be. the porter's fee for the same trip is ten dollars. several fools--no, i mean several tourists--usually go together, and divide up the expense, and thus make it light; for if only one f--tourist, i mean--went, he would have to have several guides and porters, and that would make the matter costly. we went into the chief's office. there were maps of mountains on the walls; also one or two lithographs of celebrated guides, and a portrait of the scientist de saussure. in glass cases were some labeled fragments of boots and batons, and other suggestive relics and remembrances of casualties on mount blanc. in a book was a record of all the ascents which have ever been made, beginning with nos. 1 and 2--being those of jacques balmat and de saussure, in 1787, and ending with no. 685, which wasn't cold yet. in fact no. 685 was standing by the official table waiting to receive the precious official diploma which should prove to his german household and to his descendants that he had once been indiscreet enough to climb to the top of mont blanc. he looked very happy when he got his document; in fact, he spoke up and said he was happy. i tried to buy a diploma for an invalid friend at home who had never traveled, and whose desire all his life has been to ascend mont blanc, but the guide-in-chief rather insolently refused to sell me one. i was very much offended. i said i did not propose to be discriminated against on the account of my nationality; that he had just sold a diploma to this german gentleman, and my money was a good as his; i would see to it that he couldn't keep his shop for germans and deny his produce to americans; i would have his license taken away from him at the dropping of a handkerchief; if france refused to break him, i would make an international matter of it and bring on a war; the soil should be drenched with blood; and not only that, but i would set up an opposition show and sell diplomas at half price. for two cents i would have done these things, too; but nobody offered me two cents. i tried to move that german's feelings, but it could not be done; he would not give me his diploma, neither would he sell it to me. i told him my friend was sick and could not come himself, but he said he did not care a verdammtes pfennig, he wanted his diploma for himself--did i suppose he was going to risk his neck for that thing and then give it to a sick stranger? indeed he wouldn't, so he wouldn't. i resolved, then, that i would do all i could to injure mont blanc. in the record-book was a list of all the fatal accidents which happened on the mountain. it began with the one in 1820 when the russian dr. hamel's three guides were lost in a crevice of the glacier, and it recorded the delivery of the remains in the valley by the slow-moving glacier forty-one years later. the latest catastrophe bore the date 1877. we stepped out and roved about the village awhile. in front of the little church was a monument to the memory of the bold guide jacques balmat, the first man who ever stood upon the summit of mont blanc. he made that wild trip solitary and alone. he accomplished the ascent a number of times afterward. a stretch of nearly half a century lay between his first ascent and his last one. at the ripe old age of seventy-two he was climbing around a corner of a lofty precipice of the pic du midi--nobody with him--when he slipped and fell. so he died in the harness. he had grown very avaricious in his old age, and used to go off stealthily to hunt for non-existent and impossible gold among those perilous peaks and precipices. he was on a quest of that kind when he lost his life. there was a statue to him, and another to de saussure, in the hall of our hotel, and a metal plate on the door of a room upstairs bore an inscription to the effect that that room had been occupied by albert smith. balmat and de saussure discovered mont blanc--so to speak--but it was smith who made it a paying property. his articles in blackwood and his lectures on mont blanc in london advertised it and made people as anxious to see it as if it owed them money. as we strolled along the road we looked up and saw a red signal-light glowing in the darkness of the mountainside. it seemed but a trifling way up--perhaps a hundred yards, a climb of ten minutes. it was a lucky piece of sagacity in us that we concluded to stop a man whom we met and get a light for our pipes from him instead of continuing the climb to that lantern to get a light, as had been our purpose. the man said that that lantern was on the grands mulets, some sixty-five hundred feet above the valley! i know by our riffelberg experience, that it would have taken us a good part of a week to go up there. i would sooner not smoke at all, than take all that trouble for a light. even in the daytime the foreshadowing effect of this mountain's close proximity creates curious deceptions. for instance, one sees with the naked eye a cabin up there beside the glacier, and a little above and beyond he sees the spot where that red light was located; he thinks he could throw a stone from the one place to the other. but he couldn't, for the difference between the two altitudes is more than three thousand feet. it looks impossible, from below, that this can be true, but it is true, nevertheless. while strolling around, we kept the run of the moon all the time, and we still kept an eye on her after we got back to the hotel portico. i had a theory that the gravitation of refraction, being subsidiary to atmospheric compensation, the refrangibility of the earth's surface would emphasize this effect in regions where great mountain ranges occur, and possibly so even-handed impact the odic and idyllic forces together, the one upon the other, as to prevent the moon from rising higher than 12,200 feet above sea-level. this daring theory had been received with frantic scorn by some of my fellow-scientists, and with an eager silence by others. among the former i may mention prof. h----y; and among the latter prof. t----l. such is professional jealousy; a scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself. there is no feeling of brotherhood among these people. indeed, they always resent it when i call them brother. to show how far their ungenerosity can carry them, i will state that i offered to let prof. h----y publish my great theory as his own discovery; i even begged him to do it; i even proposed to print it myself as his theory. instead of thanking me, he said that if i tried to fasten that theory on him he would sue me for slander. i was going to offer it to mr. darwin, whom i understood to be a man without prejudices, but it occurred to me that perhaps he would not be interested in it since it did not concern heraldry. but i am glad now, that i was forced to father my intrepid theory myself, for, on the night of which i am writing, it was triumphantly justified and established. mont blanc is nearly sixteen thousand feet high; he hid the moon utterly; near him is a peak which is 12,216 feet high; the moon slid along behind the pinnacles, and when she approached that one i watched her with intense interest, for my reputation as a scientist must stand or fall by its decision. i cannot describe the emotions which surged like tidal waves through my breast when i saw the moon glide behind that lofty needle and pass it by without exposing more than two feet four inches of her upper rim above it; i was secure, then. i knew she could rise no higher, and i was right. she sailed behind all the peaks and never succeeded in hoisting her disk above a single one of them. while the moon was behind one of those sharp fingers, its shadow was flung athwart the vacant heavens-a long, slanting, clean-cut, dark ray--with a streaming and energetic suggestion of force about it, such as the ascending jet of water from a powerful fire-engine affords. it was curious to see a good strong shadow of an earthly object cast upon so intangible a field as the atmosphere. we went to bed, at last, and went quickly to sleep, but i woke up, after about three hours, with throbbing temples, and a head which was physically sore, outside and in. i was dazed, dreamy, wretched, seedy, unrefreshed. i recognized the occasion of all this: it was that torrent. in the mountain villages of switzerland, and along the roads, one has always the roar of the torrent in his ears. he imagines it is music, and he thinks poetic things about it; he lies in his comfortable bed and is lulled to sleep by it. but by and by he begins to notice that his head is very sore--he cannot account for it; in solitudes where the profoundest silence reigns, he notices a sullen, distant, continuous roar in his ears, which is like what he would experience if he had sea-shells pressed against them--he cannot account for it; he is drowsy and absent-minded; there is no tenacity to his mind, he cannot keep hold of a thought and follow it out; i f he sits down to write, his vocabulary is empty, no suitable words will come, he forgets what he started to do, and remains there, pen in hand, head tilted up, eyes closed, listening painfully to the muffled roar of a distant train in his ears; in his soundest sleep the strain continues, he goes on listening, always listening intently, anxiously, and wakes at last, harassed, irritable, unrefreshed. he cannot manage to account for these things. day after day he feels as if he had spent his nights in a sleeping-car. it actually takes him weeks to find out that it is those persecuting torrents that have been making all the mischief. it is time for him to get out of switzerland, then, for as soon as he has discovered the cause, the misery is magnified several fold. the roar of the torrent is maddening, then, for his imagination is assisting; the physical pain it inflicts is exquisite. when he finds he is approaching one of those streams, his dread is so lively that he is disposed to fly the track and avoid the implacable foe. eight or nine months after the distress of the torrents had departed from me, the roar and thunder of the streets of paris brought it all back again. i moved to the sixth story of the hotel to hunt for peace. about midnight the noises dulled away, and i was sinking to sleep, when i heard a new and curious sound; i listened: evidently some joyous lunatic was softly dancing a "double shuffle" in the room over my head. i had to wait for him to get through, of course. five long, long minutes he smoothly shuffled away--a pause followed, then something fell with a thump on the floor. i said to myself "there--he is pulling off his boots-thank heavens he is done." another slight pause--he went to shuffling again! i said to myself, "is he trying to see what he can do with only one boot on?" presently came another pause and another thump on the floor. i said "good, he has pulled off his other boot--now he is done." but he wasn't. the next moment he was shuffling again. i said, "confound him, he is at it in his slippers!" after a little came that same old pause, and right after it that thump on the floor once more. i said, "hang him, he had on two pair of boots!" for an hour that magician went on shuffling and pulling off boots till he had shed as many as twenty-five pair, and i was hovering on the verge of lunacy. i got my gun and stole up there. the fellow was in the midst of an acre of sprawling boots, and he had a boot in his hand, shuffling it--no, i mean polishing it. the mystery was explained. he hadn't been dancing. he was the "boots" of the hotel, and was attending to business. chapter xliv [i scale mont blanc--by telescope] after breakfast, that next morning in chamonix, we went out in the yard and watched the gangs of excursioning tourists arriving and departing with their mules and guides and porters; they we took a look through the telescope at the snowy hump of mont blanc. it was brilliant with sunshine, and the vast smooth bulge seemed hardly five hundred yards away. with the naked eye we could dimly make out the house at the pierre pointue, which is located by the side of the great glacier, and is more than three thousand feet above the level of the valley; but with the telescope we could see all its details. while i looked, a woman rode by the house on a mule, and i saw her with sharp distinctness; i could have described her dress. i saw her nod to the people of the house, and rein up her mule, and put her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. i was not used to telescopes; in fact, i had never looked through a good one before; it seemed incredible to me that this woman could be so far away. i was satisfied that i could see all these details with my naked eye; but when i tried it, that mule and those vivid people had wholly vanished, and the house itself was become small and vague. i tried the telescope again, and again everything was vivid. the strong black shadows of the mule and the woman were flung against the side of the house, and i saw the mule's silhouette wave its ears. the telescopulist--or the telescopulariat--i do not know which is right--said a party were making a grand ascent, and would come in sight on the remote upper heights, presently; so we waited to observe this performance. presently i had a superb idea. i wanted to stand with a party on the summit of mont blanc, merely to be able to say i had done it, and i believed the telescope could set me within seven feet of the uppermost man. the telescoper assured me that it could. i then asked him how much i owed him for as far as i had got? he said, one franc. i asked him how much it would cost to make the entire ascent? three francs. i at once determined to make the entire ascent. but first i inquired if there was any danger? he said no--not by telescope; said he had taken a great many parties to the summit, and never lost a man. i asked what he would charge to let my agent go with me, together with such guides and porters as might be necessary. he said he would let harris go for two francs; and that unless we were unusually timid, he should consider guides and porters unnecessary; it was not customary to take them, when going by telescope, for they were rather an encumbrance than a help. he said that the party now on the mountain were approaching the most difficult part, and if we hurried we should overtake them within ten minutes, and could then join them and have the benefit of their guides and porters without their knowledge, and without expense to us. i then said we would start immediately. i believe i said it calmly, though i was conscious of a shudder and of a paling cheek, in view of the nature of the exploit i was so unreflectingly engaged in. but the old daredevil spirit was upon me, and i said that as i had committed myself i would not back down; i would ascend mont blanc if it cost me my life. i told the man to slant his machine in the proper direction and let us be off. harris was afraid and did not want to go, but i heartened him up and said i would hold his hand all the way; so he gave his consent, though he trembled a little at first. i took a last pathetic look upon the pleasant summer scene about me, then boldly put my eye to the glass and prepared to mount among the grim glaciers and the everlasting snows. we took our way carefully and cautiously across the great glacier des bossons, over yawning and terrific crevices and among imposing crags and buttresses of ice which were fringed with icicles of gigantic proportions. the desert of ice that stretched far and wide about us was wild and desolate beyond description, and the perils which beset us were so great that at times i was minded to turn back. but i pulled my pluck together and pushed on. we passed the glacier safely and began to mount the steeps beyond, with great alacrity. when we were seven minutes out from the starting-point, we reached an altitude where the scene took a new aspect; an apparently limitless continent of gleaming snow was tilted heavenward before our faces. as my eye followed that awful acclivity far away up into the remote skies, it seemed to me that all i had ever seen before of sublimity and magnitude was small and insignificant compared to this. we rested a moment, and then began to mount with speed. within three minutes we caught sight of the party ahead of us, and stopped to observe them. they were toiling up a long, slanting ridge of snow--twelve persons, roped together some fifteen feet apart, marching in single file, and strongly marked against the clear blue sky. one was a woman. we could see them lift their feet and put them down; we saw them swing their alpenstocks forward in unison, like so many pendulums, and then bear their weight upon them; we saw the lady wave her handkerchief. they dragged themselves upward in a worn and weary way, for they had been climbing steadily from the grand mulets, on the glacier des dossons, since three in the morning, and it was eleven, now. we saw them sink down in the snow and rest, and drink something from a bottle. after a while they moved on, and as they approached the final short dash of the home-stretch we closed up on them and joined them. presently we all stood together on the summit! what a view was spread out below! away off under the northwestern horizon rolled the silent billows of the farnese oberland, their snowy crests glinting softly in the subdued lights of distance; in the north rose the giant form of the wobblehorn, draped from peak to shoulder in sable thunder-clouds; beyond him, to the right, stretched the grand processional summits of the cisalpine cordillera, drowned in a sensuous haze; to the east loomed the colossal masses of the yodelhorn, the fuddelhorn, and the dinnerhorn, their cloudless summits flashing white and cold in the sun; beyond them shimmered the faint far line of the ghauts of jubbelpore and the aigulles des alleghenies; in the south towered the smoking peak of popocatapetl and the unapproachable altitudes of the peerless scrabblehorn; in the west-south the stately range of the himalayas lay dreaming in a purple gloom; and thence all around the curving horizon the eye roved over a troubled sea of sun-kissed alps, and noted, here and there, the noble proportions and the soaring domes of the bottlehorn, and the saddlehorn, and the shovelhorn, and the powderhorn, all bathed in the glory of noon and mottled with softly gliding blots, the shadows flung from drifting clouds. overcome by the scene, we all raised a triumphant, tremendous shout, in unison. a startled man at my elbow said: "confound you, what do you yell like that for, right here in the street?" that brought me down to chamonix, like a flirt. i gave that man some spiritual advice and disposed of him, and then paid the telescope man his full fee, and said that we were charmed with the trip and would remain down, and not reascend and require him to fetch us down by telescope. this pleased him very much, for of course we could have stepped back to the summit and put him to the trouble of bringing us home if we wanted to. i judged we could get diplomas, now, anyhow; so we went after them, but the chief guide put us off, with one pretext or another, during all the time we stayed in chamonix, and we ended by never getting them at all. so much for his prejudice against people's nationality. however, we worried him enough to make him remember us and our ascent for some time. he even said, once, that he wished there was a lunatic asylum in chamonix. this shows that he really had fears that we were going to drive him mad. it was what we intended to do, but lack of time defeated it. i cannot venture to advise the reader one way or the other, as to ascending mont blanc. i say only this: if he is at all timid, the enjoyments of the trip will hardly make up for the hardships and sufferings he will have to endure. but, if he has good nerve, youth, health, and a bold, firm will, and could leave his family comfortably provided for in case the worst happened, he would find the ascent a wonderful experience, and the view from the top a vision to dream about, and tell about, and recall with exultation all the days of his life. while i do not advise such a person to attempt the ascent, i do not advise him against it. but if he elects to attempt it, let him be warily careful of two things: chose a calm, clear day; and do not pay the telescope man in advance. there are dark stories of his getting advance payers on the summit and then leaving them there to rot. a frightful tragedy was once witnessed through the chamonix telescopes. think of questions and answers like these, on an inquest: coroner. you saw deceased lose his life? witness. i did. c. where was he, at the time? w. close to the summit of mont blanc. c. where were you? w. in the main street of chamonix. c. what was the distance between you? w. a little over five miles, as the bird flies. this accident occurred in 1866, a year and a month after the disaster on the matterhorn. three adventurous english gentlemen, [1] of great experience in mountain-climbing, made up their minds to ascend mont blanc without guides or porters. all endeavors to dissuade them from their project failed. powerful telescopes are numerous in chamonix. these huge brass tubes, mounted on their scaffoldings and pointed skyward from every choice vantage-ground, have the formidable look of artillery, and give the town the general aspect of getting ready to repel a charge of angels. the reader may easily believe that the telescopes had plenty of custom on that august morning in 1866, for everybody knew of the dangerous undertaking which was on foot, and all had fears that misfortune would result. all the morning the tubes remained directed toward the mountain heights, each with its anxious group around it; but the white deserts were vacant. 1. sir george young and his brothers james and albert. at last, toward eleven o'clock, the people who were looking through the telescopes cried out "there they are!"--and sure enough, far up, on the loftiest terraces of the grand plateau, the three pygmies appeared, climbing with remarkable vigor and spirit. they disappeared in the "corridor," and were lost to sight during an hour. then they reappeared, and were presently seen standing together upon the extreme summit of mont blanc. so, all was well. they remained a few minutes on that highest point of land in europe, a target for all the telescopes, and were then seen to begin descent. suddenly all three vanished. an instant after, they appeared again, two thousand feet below! evidently, they had tripped and been shot down an almost perpendicular slope of ice to a point where it joined the border of the upper glacier. naturally, the distant witness supposed they were now looking upon three corpses; so they could hardly believe their eyes when they presently saw two of the men rise to their feet and bend over the third. during two hours and a half they watched the two busying themselves over the extended form of their brother, who seemed entirely inert. chamonix's affairs stood still; everybody was in the street, all interest was centered upon what was going on upon that lofty and isolated stage five miles away. finally the two--one of them walking with great difficulty--were seen to begin descent, abandoning the third, who was no doubt lifeless. their movements were followed, step by step, until they reached the "corridor" and disappeared behind its ridge. before they had had time to traverse the "corridor" and reappear, twilight was come, and the power of the telescope was at an end. the survivors had a most perilous journey before them in the gathering darkness, for they must get down to the grands mulets before they would find a safe stopping-place--a long and tedious descent, and perilous enough even in good daylight. the oldest guides expressed the opinion that they could not succeed; that all the chances were that they would lose their lives. yet those brave men did succeed. they reached the grands mulets in safety. even the fearful shock which their nerves had sustained was not sufficient to overcome their coolness and courage. it would appear from the official account that they were threading their way down through those dangers from the closing in of twilight until two o'clock in the morning, or later, because the rescuing party from chamonix reached the grand mulets about three in the morning and moved thence toward the scene of the disaster under the leadership of sir george young, "who had only just arrived." after having been on his feet twenty-four hours, in the exhausting work of mountain-climbing, sir george began the reascent at the head of the relief party of six guides, to recover the corpse of his brother. this was considered a new imprudence, as the number was too few for the service required. another relief party presently arrived at the cabin on the grands mulets and quartered themselves there to await events. ten hours after sir george's departure toward the summit, this new relief were still scanning the snowy altitudes above them from their own high perch among the ice deserts ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, but the whole forenoon had passed without a glimpse of any living thing appearing up there. this was alarming. half a dozen of their number set out, then early in the afternoon, to seek and succor sir george and his guides. the persons remaining at the cabin saw these disappear, and then ensued another distressing wait. four hours passed, without tidings. then at five o'clock another relief, consisting of three guides, set forward from the cabin. they carried food and cordials for the refreshment of their predecessors; they took lanterns with them, too; night was coming on, and to make matters worse, a fine, cold rain had begun to fall. at the same hour that these three began their dangerous ascent, the official guide-in-chief of the mont blanc region undertook the dangerous descent to chamonix, all alone, to get reinforcements. however, a couple of hours later, at 7 p.m., the anxious solicitude came to an end, and happily. a bugle note was heard, and a cluster of black specks was distinguishable against the snows of the upper heights. the watchers counted these specks eagerly--fourteen--nobody was missing. an hour and a half later they were all safe under the roof of the cabin. they had brought the corpse with them. sir george young tarried there but a few minutes, and then began the long and troublesome descent from the cabin to chamonix. he probably reached there about two or three o'clock in the morning, after having been afoot among the rocks and glaciers during two days and two nights. his endurance was equal to his daring. the cause of the unaccountable delay of sir george and the relief parties among the heights where the disaster had happened was a thick fog--or, partly that and partly the slow and difficult work of conveying the dead body down the perilous steeps. the corpse, upon being viewed at the inquest, showed no bruises, and it was some time before the surgeons discovered that the neck was broken. one of the surviving brothers had sustained some unimportant injuries, but the other had suffered no hurt at all. how these men could fall two thousand feet, almost perpendicularly, and live afterward, is a most strange and unaccountable thing. a great many women have made the ascent of mont blanc. an english girl, miss stratton, conceived the daring idea, two or three years ago, of attempting the ascent in the middle of winter. she tried it--and she succeeded. moreover, she froze two of her fingers on the way up, she fell in love with her guide on the summit, and she married him when she got to the bottom again. there is nothing in romance, in the way of a striking "situation," which can beat this love scene in midheaven on an isolated ice-crest with the thermometer at zero and an artic gale blowing. the first woman who ascended mont blanc was a girl aged twenty-two--mlle. maria paradis--1809. nobody was with her but her sweetheart, and he was not a guide. the sex then took a rest for about thirty years, when a mlle. d'angeville made the ascent --1838. in chamonix i picked up a rude old lithograph of that day which pictured her "in the act." however, i value it less as a work of art than as a fashion-plate. miss d'angeville put on a pair of men's pantaloons to climb it, which was wise; but she cramped their utility by adding her petticoat, which was idiotic. one of the mournfulest calamities which men's disposition to climb dangerous mountains has resulted in, happened on mont blanc in september 1870. m. d'arve tells the story briefly in his histoire du mont blanc. in the next chapter i will copy its chief features. chapter xlv a catastrophe which cost eleven lives [perished at the verge of safety] on the 5th of september, 1870, a caravan of eleven persons departed from chamonix to make the ascent of mont blanc. three of the party were tourists; messrs. randall and bean, americans, and mr. george corkindale, a scotch gentleman; there were three guides and five porters. the cabin on the grands mulets was reached that day; the ascent was resumed early the next morning, september 6th. the day was fine and clear, and the movements of the party were observed through the telescopes of chamonix; at two o'clock in the afternoon they were seen to reach the summit. a few minutes later they were seen making the first steps of the descent; then a cloud closed around them and hid them from view. eight hours passed, the cloud still remained, night came, no one had returned to the grands mulets. sylvain couttet, keeper of the cabin there, suspected a misfortune, and sent down to the valley for help. a detachment of guides went up, but by the time they had made the tedious trip and reached the cabin, a raging storm had set in. they had to wait; nothing could be attempted in such a tempest. the wild storm lasted more than a week, without ceasing; but on the 17th, couttet, with several guides, left the cabin and succeeded in making the ascent. in the snowy wastes near the summit they came upon five bodies, lying upon their sides in a reposeful attitude which suggested that possibly they had fallen asleep there, while exhausted with fatigue and hunger and benumbed with cold, and never knew when death stole upon them. couttet moved a few steps further and discovered five more bodies. the eleventh corpse--that of a porter--was not found, although diligent search was made for it. in the pocket of mr. bean, one of the americans, was found a note-book in which had been penciled some sentences which admit us, in flesh and spirit, as it were, to the presence of these men during their last hours of life, and to the grisly horrors which their fading vision looked upon and their failing consciousness took cognizance of: tuesday, sept. 6. i have made the ascent of mont blanc, with ten persons--eight guides, and mr. corkindale and mr. randall. we reached the summit at half past 2. immediately after quitting it, we were enveloped in clouds of snow. we passed the night in a grotto hollowed in the snow, which afforded us but poor shelter, and i was ill all night. sept. 7--morning. the cold is excessive. the snow falls heavily and without interruption. the guides take no rest. evening. my dear hessie, we have been two days on mont blanc, in the midst of a terrible hurricane of snow, we have lost our way, and are in a hole scooped in the snow, at an altitude of 15,000 feet. i have no longer any hope of descending. they had wandered around, and around, in the blinding snow-storm, hopelessly lost, in a space only a hundred yards square; and when cold and fatigue vanquished them at last, they scooped their cave and lay down there to die by inches, unaware that five steps more would have brought them into the truth path. they were so near to life and safety as that, and did not suspect it. the thought of this gives the sharpest pang that the tragic story conveys. the author of the histoire du mont blanc introduced the closing sentences of mr. bean's pathetic record thus: "here the characters are large and unsteady; the hand which traces them is become chilled and torpid; but the spirit survives, and the faith and resignation of the dying man are expressed with a sublime simplicity." perhaps this note-book will be found and sent to you. we have nothing to eat, my feet are already frozen, and i am exhausted; i have strength to write only a few words more. i have left means for c's education; i know you will employ them wisely. i die with faith in god, and with loving thoughts of you. farewell to all. we shall meet again, in heaven. ... i think of you always. it is the way of the alps to deliver death to their victims with a merciful swiftness, but here the rule failed. these men suffered the bitterest death that has been recorded in the history of those mountains, freighted as that history is with grisly tragedies. chapter xlvi [meeting a hog on a precipice] mr. harris and i took some guides and porters and ascended to the ho^tel des pyramides, which is perched on the high moraine which borders the glacier des bossons. the road led sharply uphill, all the way, through grass and flowers and woods, and was a pleasant walk, barring the fatigue of the climb. from the hotel we could view the huge glacier at very close range. after a rest we followed down a path which had been made in the steep inner frontage of the moraine, and stepped upon the glacier itself. one of the shows of the place was a tunnel-like cavern, which had been hewn in the glacier. the proprietor of this tunnel took candles and conducted us into it. it was three or four feet wide and about six feet high. its walls of pure and solid ice emitted a soft and rich blue light that produced a lovely effect, and suggested enchanted caves, and that sort of thing. when we had proceeded some yards and were entering darkness, we turned about and had a dainty sunlit picture of distant woods and heights framed in the strong arch of the tunnel and seen through the tender blue radiance of the tunnel's atmosphere. the cavern was nearly a hundred yards long, and when we reached its inner limit the proprietor stepped into a branch tunnel with his candles and left us buried in the bowels of the glacier, and in pitch-darkness. we judged his purpose was murder and robbery; so we got out our matches and prepared to sell our lives as dearly as possible by setting the glacier on fire if the worst came to the worst--but we soon perceived that this man had changed his mind; he began to sing, in a deep, melodious voice, and woke some curious and pleasing echoes. by and by he came back and pretended that that was what he had gone behind there for. we believed as much of that as we wanted to. thus our lives had been once more in imminent peril, but by the exercise of the swift sagacity and cool courage which had saved us so often, we had added another escape to the long list. the tourist should visit that ice-cavern, by all means, for it is well worth the trouble; but i would advise him to go only with a strong and well-armed force. i do not consider artillery necessary, yet it would not be unadvisable to take it along, if convenient. the journey, going and coming, is about three miles and a half, three of which are on level ground. we made it in less than a day, but i would counsel the unpracticed--if not pressed for time--to allow themselves two. nothing is gained in the alps by over-exertion; nothing is gained by crowding two days' work into one for the poor sake of being able to boast of the exploit afterward. it will be found much better, in the long run, to do the thing in two days, and then subtract one of them from the narrative. this saves fatigue, and does not injure the narrative. all the more thoughtful among the alpine tourists do this. we now called upon the guide-in-chief, and asked for a squadron of guides and porters for the ascent of the montanvert. this idiot glared at us, and said: "you don't need guides and porters to go to the montanvert." "what do we need, then?" "such as you?--an ambulance!" i was so stung by this brutal remark that i took my custom elsewhere. betimes, next morning, we had reached an altitude of five thousand feet above the level of the sea. here we camped and breakfasted. there was a cabin there--the spot is called the caillet--and a spring of ice-cold water. on the door of the cabin was a sign, in french, to the effect that "one may here see a living chamois for fifty centimes." we did not invest; what we wanted was to see a dead one. a little after noon we ended the ascent and arrived at the new hotel on the montanvert, and had a view of six miles, right up the great glacier, the famous mer de glace. at this point it is like a sea whose deep swales and long, rolling swells have been caught in mid-movement and frozen solid; but further up it is broken up into wildly tossing billows of ice. we descended a ticklish path in the steep side of the moraine, and invaded the glacier. there were tourists of both sexes scattered far and wide over it, everywhere, and it had the festive look of a skating-rink. the empress josephine came this far, once. she ascended the montanvert in 1810--but not alone; a small army of men preceded her to clear the path--and carpet it, perhaps--and she followed, under the protection of sixty-eight guides. her successor visited chamonix later, but in far different style. it was seven weeks after the first fall of the empire, and poor marie louise, ex-empress was a fugitive. she came at night, and in a storm, with only two attendants, and stood before a peasant's hut, tired, bedraggled, soaked with rain, "the red print of her lost crown still girdling her brow, " and implored admittance--and was refused! a few days before, the adulations and applauses of a nation were sounding in her ears, and now she was come to this! we crossed the mer de glace in safety, but we had misgivings. the crevices in the ice yawned deep and blue and mysterious, and it made one nervous to traverse them. the huge round waves of ice were slippery and difficult to climb, and the chances of tripping and sliding down them and darting into a crevice were too many to be comfortable. in the bottom of a deep swale between two of the biggest of the ice-waves, we found a fraud who pretended to be cutting steps to insure the safety of tourists. he was "soldiering" when we came upon him, but he hopped up and chipped out a couple of steps about big enough for a cat, and charged us a franc or two for it. then he sat down again, to doze till the next party should come along. he had collected blackmail from two or three hundred people already, that day, but had not chipped out ice enough to impair the glacier perceptibly. i have heard of a good many soft sinecures, but it seems to me that keeping toll-bridge on a glacier is the softest one i have encountered yet. that was a blazing hot day, and it brought a persistent and persecuting thirst with it. what an unspeakable luxury it was to slake that thirst with the pure and limpid ice-water of the glacier! down the sides of every great rib of pure ice poured limpid rills in gutters carved by their own attrition; better still, wherever a rock had lain, there was now a bowl-shaped hole, with smooth white sides and bottom of ice, and this bowl was brimming with water of such absolute clearness that the careless observer would not see it at all, but would think the bowl was empty. these fountains had such an alluring look that i often stretched myself out when i was not thirsty and dipped my face in and drank till my teeth ached. everywhere among the swiss mountains we had at hand the blessing--not to be found in europe except in the mountains--of water capable of quenching thirst. everywhere in the swiss highlands brilliant little rills of exquisitely cold water went dancing along by the roadsides, and my comrade and i were always drinking and always delivering our deep gratitude. but in europe everywhere except in the mountains, the water is flat and insipid beyond the power of words to describe. it is served lukewarm; but no matter, ice could not help it; it is incurably flat, incurably insipid. it is only good to wash with; i wonder it doesn't occur to the average inhabitant to try it for that. in europe the people say contemptuously, "nobody drinks water here." indeed, they have a sound and sufficient reason. in many places they even have what may be called prohibitory reasons. in paris and munich, for instance, they say, "don't drink the water, it is simply poison." either america is healthier than europe, notwithstanding her "deadly" indulgence in ice-water, or she does not keep the run of her death-rate as sharply as europe does. i think we do keep up the death statistics accurately; and if we do, our cities are healthier than the cities of europe. every month the german government tabulates the death-rate of the world and publishes it. i scrap-booked these reports during several months, and it was curious to see how regular and persistently each city repeated its same death-rate month after month. the tables might as well have been stereotyped, they varied so little. these tables were based upon weekly reports showing the average of deaths in each 1,000 population for a year. munich was always present with her 33 deaths in each 1,000 of her population (yearly average), chicago was as constant with her 15 or 17, dublin with her 48--and so on. only a few american cities appear in these tables, but they are scattered so widely over the country that they furnish a good general average of city health in the united states; and i think it will be granted that our towns and villages are healthier than our cities. here is the average of the only american cities reported in the german tables: chicago, deaths in 1,000 population annually, 16; philadelphia, 18; st. louis, 18; san francisco, 19; new york (the dublin of america), 23. see how the figures jump up, as soon as one arrives at the transatlantic list: paris, 27; glasgow, 27; london, 28; vienna, 28; augsburg, 28; braunschweig, 28; k:onigsberg, 29; cologne, 29; dresden, 29; hamburg, 29; berlin, 30; bombay, 30; warsaw, 31; breslau, 31; odessa, 32; munich, 33; strasburg, 33, pesth, 35; cassel, 35; lisbon, 36; liverpool, 36; prague, 37; madras, 37; bucharest, 39; st. petersburg, 40; trieste, 40; alexandria (egypt), 43; dublin, 48; calcutta, 55. edinburgh is as healthy as new york--23; but there is no city in the entire list which is healthier, except frankfort-on-the-main--20. but frankfort is not as healthy as chicago, san francisco, st. louis, or philadelphia. perhaps a strict average of the world might develop the fact that where one in 1,000 of america's population dies, two in 1,000 of the other populations of the earth succumb. i do not like to make insinuations, but i do think the above statistics darkly suggest that these people over here drink this detestable water "on the sly." we climbed the moraine on the opposite side of the glacier, and then crept along its sharp ridge a hundred yards or so, in pretty constant danger of a tumble to the glacier below. the fall would have been only one hundred feet, but it would have closed me out as effectually as one thousand, therefore i respected the distance accordingly, and was glad when the trip was done. a moraine is an ugly thing to assault head-first. at a distance it looks like an endless grave of fine sand, accurately shaped and nicely smoothed; but close by, it is found to be made mainly of rough boulders of all sizes, from that of a man's head to that of a cottage. by and by we came to the mauvais pas, or the villainous road, to translate it feelingly. it was a breakneck path around the face of a precipice forth or fifty feet high, and nothing to hang on to but some iron railings. i got along, slowly, safely, and uncomfortably, and finally reached the middle. my hopes began to rise a little, but they were quickly blighted; for there i met a hog--a long-nosed, bristly fellow, that held up his snout and worked his nostrils at me inquiringly. a hog on a pleasure excursion in switzerland--think of it! it is striking and unusual; a body might write a poem about it. he could not retreat, if he had been disposed to do it. it would have been foolish to stand upon our dignity in a place where there was hardly room to stand upon our feet, so we did nothing of the sort. there were twenty or thirty ladies and gentlemen behind us; we all turned about and went back, and the hog followed behind. the creature did not seem set up by what he had done; he had probably done it before. we reached the restaurant on the height called the chapeau at four in the afternoon. it was a memento-factory, and the stock was large, cheap, and varied. i bought the usual paper-cutter to remember the place by, and had mont blanc, the mauvais pas, and the rest of the region branded on my alpenstock; then we descended to the valley and walked home without being tied together. this was not dangerous, for the valley was five miles wide, and quite level. we reached the hotel before nine o'clock. next morning we left for geneva on top of the diligence, under shelter of a gay awning. if i remember rightly, there were more than twenty people up there. it was so high that the ascent was made by ladder. the huge vehicle was full everywhere, inside and out. five other diligences left at the same time, all full. we had engaged our seats two days beforehand, to make sure, and paid the regulation price, five dollars each; but the rest of the company were wiser; they had trusted baedeker, and waited; consequently some of them got their seats for one or two dollars. baedeker knows all about hotels, railway and diligence companies, and speaks his mind freely. he is a trustworthy friend of the traveler. we never saw mont blanc at his best until we were many miles away; then he lifted his majestic proportions high into the heavens, all white and cold and solemn, and made the rest of the world seem little and plebeian, and cheap and trivial. as he passed out of sight at last, an old englishman settled himself in his seat and said: "well, i am satisfied, i have seen the principal features of swiss scenery--mont blanc and the goiter--now for home!" chapter xlvii [queer european manners] we spent a few pleasant restful days at geneva, that delightful city where accurate time-pieces are made for all the rest of the world, but whose own clocks never give the correct time of day by any accident. geneva is filled with pretty shops, and the shops are filled with the most enticing gimacrackery, but if one enters one of these places he is at once pounced upon, and followed up, and so persecuted to buy this, that, and the other thing, that he is very grateful to get out again, and is not at all apt to repeat his experiment. the shopkeepers of the smaller sort, in geneva, are as troublesome and persistent as are the salesmen of that monster hive in paris, the grands magasins du louvre--an establishment where ill-mannered pestering, pursuing, and insistence have been reduced to a science. in geneva, prices in the smaller shops are very elastic-that is another bad feature. i was looking in at a window at a very pretty string of beads, suitable for a child. i was only admiring them; i had no use for them; i hardly ever wear beads. the shopwoman came out and offered them to me for thirty-five francs. i said it was cheap, but i did not need them. "ah, but monsieur, they are so beautiful!" i confessed it, but said they were not suitable for one of my age and simplicity of character. she darted in and brought them out and tried to force them into my hands, saying: "ah, but only see how lovely they are! surely monsieur will take them; monsieur shall have them for thirty francs. there, i have said it--it is a loss, but one must live." i dropped my hands, and tried to move her to respect my unprotected situation. but no, she dangled the beads in the sun before my face, exclaiming, "ah, monsieur cannot resist them!" she hung them on my coat button, folded her hand resignedly, and said: "gone,--and for thirty francs, the lovely things--it is incredible!--but the good god will sanctify the sacrifice to me." i removed them gently, returned them, and walked away, shaking my head and smiling a smile of silly embarrassment while the passers-by halted to observe. the woman leaned out of her door, shook the beads, and screamed after me: "monsieur shall have them for twenty-eight!" i shook my head. "twenty-seven! it is a cruel loss, it is ruin-but take them, only take them." i still retreated, still wagging my head. "mon dieu, they shall even go for twenty-six! there, i have said it. come!" i wagged another negative. a nurse and a little english girl had been near me, and were following me, now. the shopwoman ran to the nurse, thrust the beads into her hands, and said: "monsieur shall have them for twenty-five! take them to the hotel--he shall send me the money tomorrow-next day--when he likes." then to the child: "when thy father sends me the money, come thou also, my angel, and thou shall have something oh so pretty!" i was thus providentially saved. the nurse refused the beads squarely and firmly, and that ended the matter. the "sights" of geneva are not numerous. i made one attempt to hunt up the houses once inhabited by those two disagreeable people, rousseau and calvin, but i had no success. then i concluded to go home. i found it was easier to propose to do that than to do it; for that town is a bewildering place. i got lost in a tangle of narrow and crooked streets, and stayed lost for an hour or two. finally i found a street which looked somewhat familiar, and said to myself, "now i am at home, i judge." but i was wrong; this was "hell street." presently i found another place which had a familiar look, and said to myself, "now i am at home, sure." it was another error. this was "purgatory street." after a little i said, "now i've got the right place, anyway ... no, this is 'paradise street'; i'm further from home than i was in the beginning." those were queer names--calvin was the author of them, likely. "hell" and "purgatory" fitted those two streets like a glove, but the "paradise" appeared to be sarcastic. i came out on the lake-front, at last, and then i knew where i was. i was walking along before the glittering jewelry shops when i saw a curious performance. a lady passed by, and a trim dandy lounged across the walk in such an apparently carefully timed way as to bring himself exactly in front of her when she got to him; he made no offer to step out of the way; he did not apologize; he did not even notice her. she had to stop still and let him lounge by. i wondered if he had done that piece of brutality purposely. he strolled to a chair and seated himself at a small table; two or three other males were sitting at similar tables sipping sweetened water. i waited; presently a youth came by, and this fellow got up and served him the same trick. still, it did not seem possible that any one could do such a thing deliberately. to satisfy my curiosity i went around the block, and, sure enough, as i approached, at a good round speed, he got up and lounged lazily across my path, fouling my course exactly at the right moment to receive all my weight. this proved that his previous performances had not been accidental, but intentional. i saw that dandy's curious game played afterward, in paris, but not for amusement; not with a motive of any sort, indeed, but simply from a selfish indifference to other people's comfort and rights. one does not see it as frequently in paris as he might expect to, for there the law says, in effect, "it is the business of the weak to get out of the way of the strong." we fine a cabman if he runs over a citizen; paris fines the citizen for being run over. at least so everybody says--but i saw something which caused me to doubt; i saw a horseman run over an old woman one day--the police arrested him and took him away. that looked as if they meant to punish him. it will not do for me to find merit in american manners-for are they not the standing butt for the jests of critical and polished europe? still, i must venture to claim one little matter of superiority in our manners; a lady may traverse our streets all day, going and coming as she chooses, and she will never be molested by any man; but if a lady, unattended, walks abroad in the streets of london, even at noonday, she will be pretty likely to be accosted and insulted--and not by drunken sailors, but by men who carry the look and wear the dress of gentlemen. it is maintained that these people are not gentlemen, but are a lower sort, disguised as gentlemen. the case of colonel valentine baker obstructs that argument, for a man cannot become an officer in the british army except he hold the rank of gentleman. this person, finding himself alone in a railway compartment with an unprotected girl--but it is an atrocious story, and doubtless the reader remembers it well enough. london must have been more or less accustomed to bakers, and the ways of bakers, else london would have been offended and excited. baker was "imprisoned"--in a parlor; and he could not have been more visited, or more overwhelmed with attentions, if he had committed six murders and then-while the gallows was preparing--"got religion"--after the manner of the holy charles peace, of saintly memory. arkansaw--it seems a little indelicate to be trumpeting forth our own superiorities, and comparisons are always odious, but still--arkansaw would certainly have hanged baker. i do not say she would have tried him first, but she would have hanged him, anyway. even the most degraded woman can walk our streets unmolested, her sex and her weakness being her sufficient protection. she will encounter less polish than she would in the old world, but she will run across enough humanity to make up for it. the music of a donkey awoke us early in the morning, and we rose up and made ready for a pretty formidable walk--to italy; but the road was so level that we took the train.. we lost a good deal of time by this, but it was no matter, we were not in a hurry. we were four hours going to chamb`ery. the swiss trains go upward of three miles an hour, in places, but they are quite safe. that aged french town of chamb`ery was as quaint and crooked as heilbronn. a drowsy reposeful quiet reigned in the back streets which made strolling through them very pleasant, barring the almost unbearable heat of the sun. in one of these streets, which was eight feet wide, gracefully curved, and built up with small antiquated houses, i saw three fat hogs lying asleep, and a boy (also asleep) taking care of them. from queer old-fashioned windows along the curve projected boxes of bright flowers, and over the edge of one of these boxes hung the head and shoulders of a cat--asleep. the five sleeping creatures were the only living things visible in that street. there was not a sound; absolute stillness prevailed. it was sunday; one is not used to such dreamy sundays on the continent. in our part of the town it was different that night. a regiment of brown and battered soldiers had arrived home from algiers, and i judged they got thirsty on the way. they sang and drank till dawn, in the pleasant open air. we left for turin at ten the next morning by a railway which was profusely decorated with tunnels. we forgot to take a lantern along, consequently we missed all the scenery. our compartment was full. a ponderous tow-headed swiss woman, who put on many fine-lady airs, but was evidently more used to washing linen than wearing it, sat in a corner seat and put her legs across into the opposite one, propping them intermediately with her up-ended valise. in the seat thus pirated, sat two americans, greatly incommoded by that woman's majestic coffin-clad feet. one of them begged, politely, to remove them. she opened her wide eyes and gave him a stare, but answered nothing. by and by he preferred his request again, with great respectfulness. she said, in good english, and in a deeply offended tone, that she had paid her passage and was not going to be bullied out of her "rights" by ill-bred foreigners, even if she was alone and unprotected. "but i have rights, also, madam. my ticket entitles me to a seat, but you are occupying half of it." "i will not talk with you, sir. what right have you to speak to me? i do not know you. one would know you came from a land where there are no gentlemen. no gentleman would treat a lady as you have treated me." "i come from a region where a lady would hardly give me the same provocation." "you have insulted me, sir! you have intimated that i am not a lady--and i hope i am not one, after the pattern of your country." "i beg that you will give yourself no alarm on that head, madam; but at the same time i must insist--always respectfully--that you let me have my seat." here the fragile laundress burst into tears and sobs. "i never was so insulted before! never, never! it is shameful, it is brutal, it is base, to bully and abuse an unprotected lady who has lost the use of her limbs and cannot put her feet to the floor without agony!" "good heavens, madam, why didn't you say that at first! i offer a thousand pardons. and i offer them most sincerely. i did not know--i could not know--anything was the matter. you are most welcome to the seat, and would have been from the first if i had only known. i am truly sorry it all happened, i do assure you." but he couldn't get a word of forgiveness out of her. she simply sobbed and sniffed in a subdued but wholly unappeasable way for two long hours, meantime crowding the man more than ever with her undertaker-furniture and paying no sort of attention to his frequent and humble little efforts to do something for her comfort. then the train halted at the italian line and she hopped up and marched out of the car with as firm a leg as any washerwoman of all her tribe! and how sick i was, to see how she had fooled me. turin is a very fine city. in the matter of roominess it transcends anything that was ever dreamed of before, i fancy. it sits in the midst of a vast dead-level, and one is obliged to imagine that land may be had for the asking, and no taxes to pay, so lavishly do they use it. the streets are extravagantly wide, the paved squares are prodigious, the houses are huge and handsome, and compacted into uniform blocks that stretch away as straight as an arrow, into the distance. the sidewalks are about as wide as ordinary european streets, and are covered over with a double arcade supported on great stone piers or columns. one walks from one end to the other of these spacious streets, under shelter all the time, and all his course is lined with the prettiest of shops and the most inviting dining-houses. there is a wide and lengthy court, glittering with the most wickedly enticing shops, which is roofed with glass, high aloft overhead, and paved with soft-toned marbles laid in graceful figures; and at night when the place is brilliant with gas and populous with a sauntering and chatting and laughing multitude of pleasure-seekers, it is a spectacle worth seeing. everything is on a large scale; the public buildings, for instance--and they are architecturally imposing, too, as well as large. the big squares have big bronze monuments in them. at the hotel they gave us rooms that were alarming, for size, and parlor to match. it was well the weather required no fire in the parlor, for i think one might as well have tried to warm a park. the place would have a warm look, though, in any weather, for the window-curtains were of red silk damask, and the walls were covered with the same fire-hued goods--so, also, were the four sofas and the brigade of chairs. the furniture, the ornaments, the chandeliers, the carpets, were all new and bright and costly. we did not need a parlor at all, but they said it belonged to the two bedrooms and we might use it if we chose. since it was to cost nothing, we were not averse to using it, of course. turin must surely read a good deal, for it has more book-stores to the square rod than any other town i know of. and it has its own share of military folk. the italian officers' uniforms are very much the most beautiful i have ever seen; and, as a general thing, the men in them were as handsome as the clothes. they were not large men, but they had fine forms, fine features, rich olive complexions, and lustrous black eyes. for several weeks i had been culling all the information i could about italy, from tourists. the tourists were all agreed upon one thing--one must expect to be cheated at every turn by the italians. i took an evening walk in turin, and presently came across a little punch and judy show in one of the great squares. twelve or fifteen people constituted the audience. this miniature theater was not much bigger than a man's coffin stood on end; the upper part was open and displayed a tinseled parlor--a good-sized handkerchief would have answered for a drop-curtain; the footlights consisted of a couple of candle-ends an inch long; various manikins the size of dolls appeared on the stage and made long speeches at each other, gesticulating a good deal, and they generally had a fight before they got through. they were worked by strings from above, and the illusion was not perfect, for one saw not only the strings but the brawny hand that manipulated them--and the actors and actresses all talked in the same voice, too. the audience stood in front of the theater, and seemed to enjoy the performance heartily. when the play was done, a youth in his shirt-sleeves started around with a small copper saucer to make a collection. i did not know how much to put in, but thought i would be guided by my predecessors. unluckily, i only had two of these, and they did not help me much because they did not put in anything. i had no italian money, so i put in a small swiss coin worth about ten cents. the youth finished his collection trip and emptied the result on the stage; he had some very animated talk with the concealed manager, then he came working his way through the little crowd--seeking me, i thought. i had a mind to slip away, but concluded i wouldn't; i would stand my ground, and confront the villainy, whatever it was. the youth stood before me and held up that swiss coin, sure enough, and said something. i did not understand him, but i judged he was requiring italian money of me. the crowd gathered close, to listen. i was irritated, and said--in english, of course: "i know it's swiss, but you'll take that or none. i haven't any other." he tried to put the coin in my hand, and spoke again. i drew my hand away, and said: "no, sir. i know all about you people. you can't play any of your fraudful tricks on me. if there is a discount on that coin, i am sorry, but i am not going to make it good. i noticed that some of the audience didn't pay you anything at all. you let them go, without a word, but you come after me because you think i'm a stranger and will put up with an extortion rather than have a scene. but you are mistaken this time--you'll take that swiss money or none." the youth stood there with the coin in his fingers, nonplused and bewildered; of course he had not understood a word. an english-speaking italian spoke up, now, and said: "you are misunderstanding the boy. he does not mean any harm. he did not suppose you gave him so much money purposely, so he hurried back to return you the coin lest you might get away before you discovered your mistake. take it, and give him a penny--that will make everything smooth again." i probably blushed, then, for there was occasion. through the interpreter i begged the boy's pardon, but i nobly refused to take back the ten cents. i said i was accustomed to squandering large sums in that way-it was the kind of person i was. then i retired to make a note to the effect that in italy persons connected with the drama do not cheat. the episode with the showman reminds me of a dark chapter in my history. i once robbed an aged and blind beggar-woman of four dollars--in a church. it happened this way. when i was out with the innocents abroad, the ship stopped in the russian port of odessa and i went ashore, with others, to view the town. i got separated from the rest, and wandered about alone, until late in the afternoon, when i entered a greek church to see what it was like. when i was ready to leave, i observed two wrinkled old women standing stiffly upright against the inner wall, near the door, with their brown palms open to receive alms. i contributed to the nearer one, and passed out. i had gone fifty yards, perhaps, when it occurred to me that i must remain ashore all night, as i had heard that the ship's business would carry her away at four o'clock and keep her away until morning. it was a little after four now. i had come ashore with only two pieces of money, both about the same size, but differing largely in value--one was a french gold piece worth four dollars, the other a turkish coin worth two cents and a half. with a sudden and horrified misgiving, i put my hand in my pocket, now, and sure enough, i fetched out that turkish penny! here was a situation. a hotel would require pay in advance --i must walk the street all night, and perhaps be arrested as a suspicious character. there was but one way out of the difficulty--i flew back to the church, and softly entered. there stood the old woman yet, and in the palm of the nearest one still lay my gold piece. i was grateful. i crept close, feeling unspeakably mean; i got my turkish penny ready, and was extending a trembling hand to make the nefarious exchange, when i heard a cough behind me. i jumped back as if i had been accused, and stood quaking while a worshiper entered and passed up the aisle. i was there a year trying to steal that money; that is, it seemed a year, though, of course, it must have been much less. the worshipers went and came; there were hardly ever three in the church at once, but there was always one or more. every time i tried to commit my crime somebody came in or somebody started out, and i was prevented; but at last my opportunity came; for one moment there was nobody in the church but the two beggar-women and me. i whipped the gold piece out of the poor old pauper's palm and dropped my turkish penny in its place. poor old thing, she murmured her thanks--they smote me to the heart. then i sped away in a guilty hurry, and even when i was a mile from the church i was still glancing back, every moment, to see if i was being pursued. that experience has been of priceless value and benefit to me; for i resolved then, that as long as i lived i would never again rob a blind beggar-woman in a church; and i have always kept my word. the most permanent lessons in morals are those which come, not of booky teaching, but of experience. chapter xlviii [beauty of women--and of old masters] in milan we spent most of our time in the vast and beautiful arcade or gallery, or whatever it is called. blocks of tall new buildings of the most sumptuous sort, rich with decoration and graced with statues, the streets between these blocks roofed over with glass at a great height, the pavements all of smooth and variegated marble, arranged in tasteful patterns--little tables all over these marble streets, people sitting at them, eating, drinking, or smoking--crowds of other people strolling by--such is the arcade. i should like to live in it all the time. the windows of the sumptuous restaurants stand open, and one breakfasts there and enjoys the passing show. we wandered all over the town, enjoying whatever was going on in the streets. we took one omnibus ride, and as i did not speak italian and could not ask the price, i held out some copper coins to the conductor, and he took two. then he went and got his tariff card and showed me that he had taken only the right sum. so i made a note--italian omnibus conductors do not cheat. near the cathedral i saw another instance of probity. an old man was peddling dolls and toy fans. two small american children and one gave the old man a franc and three copper coins, and both started away; but they were called back, and the franc and one of the coppers were restored to them. hence it is plain that in italy, parties connected with the drama and the omnibus and the toy interests do not cheat. the stocks of goods in the shops were not extensive, generally. in the vestibule of what seemed to be a clothing store, we saw eight or ten wooden dummies grouped together, clothed in woolen business suits and each marked with its price. one suit was marked forty-five francs--nine dollars. harris stepped in and said he wanted a suit like that. nothing easier: the old merchant dragged in the dummy, brushed him off with a broom, stripped him, and shipped the clothes to the hotel. he said he did not keep two suits of the same kind in stock, but manufactured a second when it was needed to reclothe the dummy. in another quarter we found six italians engaged in a violent quarrel. they danced fiercely about, gesticulating with their heads, their arms, their legs, their whole bodies; they would rush forward occasionally with a sudden access of passion and shake their fists in each other's very faces. we lost half an hour there, waiting to help cord up the dead, but they finally embraced each other affectionately, and the trouble was over. the episode was interesting, but we could not have afforded all the time to it if we had known nothing was going to come of it but a reconciliation. note made--in italy, people who quarrel cheat the spectator. we had another disappointment afterward. we approached a deeply interested crowd, and in the midst of it found a fellow wildly chattering and gesticulating over a box on the ground which was covered with a piece of old blanket. every little while he would bend down and take hold of the edge of the blanket with the extreme tips of his fingertips, as if to show there was no deception--chattering away all the while--but always, just as i was expecting to see a wonder feat of legerdemain, he would let go the blanket and rise to explain further. however, at last he uncovered the box and got out a spoon with a liquid in it, and held it fair and frankly around, for people to see that it was all right and he was taking no advantage--his chatter became more excited than ever. i supposed he was going to set fire to the liquid and swallow it, so i was greatly wrought up and interested. i got a cent ready in one hand and a florin in the other, intending to give him the former if he survived and the latter if he killed himself--for his loss would be my gain in a literary way, and i was willing to pay a fair price for the item --but this impostor ended his intensely moving performance by simply adding some powder to the liquid and polishing the spoon! then he held it aloft, and he could not have shown a wilder exultation if he had achieved an immortal miracle. the crowd applauded in a gratified way, and it seemed to me that history speaks the truth when it says these children of the south are easily entertained. we spent an impressive hour in the noble cathedral, where long shafts of tinted light were cleaving through the solemn dimness from the lofty windows and falling on a pillar here, a picture there, and a kneeling worshiper yonder. the organ was muttering, censers were swinging, candles were glinting on the distant altar and robed priests were filing silently past them; the scene was one to sweep all frivolous thoughts away and steep the soul in a holy calm. a trim young american lady paused a yard or two from me, fixed her eyes on the mellow sparks flecking the far-off altar, bent her head reverently a moment, then straightened up, kicked her train into the air with her heel, caught it deftly in her hand, and marched briskly out. we visited the picture-galleries and the other regulation "sights" of milan--not because i wanted to write about them again, but to see if i had learned anything in twelve years. i afterward visited the great galleries of rome and florence for the same purpose. i found i had learned one thing. when i wrote about the old masters before, i said the copies were better than the originals. that was a mistake of large dimensions. the old masters were still unpleasing to me, but they were truly divine contrasted with the copies. the copy is to the original as the pallid, smart, inane new wax-work group is to the vigorous, earnest, dignified group of living men and women whom it professes to duplicate. there is a mellow richness, a subdued color, in the old pictures, which is to the eye what muffled and mellowed sound is to the ear. that is the merit which is most loudly praised in the old picture, and is the one which the copy most conspicuously lacks, and which the copyist must not hope to compass. it was generally conceded by the artists with whom i talked, that that subdued splendor, that mellow richness, is imparted to the picture by age. then why should we worship the old master for it, who didn't impart it, instead of worshiping old time, who did? perhaps the picture was a clanging bell, until time muffled it and sweetened it. in conversation with an artist in venice, i asked: "what is it that people see in the old masters? i have been in the doge's palace and i saw several acres of very bad drawing, very bad perspective, and very incorrect proportions. paul veronese's dogs to not resemble dogs; all the horses look like bladders on legs; one man had a right leg on the left side of his body; in the large picture where the emperor (barbarossa?) is prostrate before the pope, there are three men in the foreground who are over thirty feet high, if one may judge by the size of a kneeling little boy in the center of the foreground; and according to the same scale, the pope is seven feet high and the doge is a shriveled dwarf of four feet." the artist said: "yes, the old masters often drew badly; they did not care much for truth and exactness in minor details; but after all, in spite of bad drawing, bad perspective, bad proportions, and a choice of subjects which no longer appeal to people as strongly as they did three hundred years ago, there is a something about their pictures which is divine--a something which is above and beyond the art of any epoch since--a something which would be the despair of artists but that they never hope or expect to attain it, and therefore do not worry about it." that is what he said--and he said what he believed; and not only believed, but felt. reasoning--especially reasoning, without technical knowledge--must be put aside, in cases of this kind. it cannot assist the inquirer. it will lead him, in the most logical progression, to what, in the eyes of artists, would be a most illogical conclusion. thus: bad drawing, bad proportion, bad perspective, indifference to truthful detail, color which gets its merit from time, and not from the artist--these things constitute the old master; conclusion, the old master was a bad painter, the old master was not an old master at all, but an old apprentice. your friend the artist will grant your premises, but deny your conclusion; he will maintain that notwithstanding this formidable list of confessed defects, there is still a something that is divine and unapproachable about the old master, and that there is no arguing the fact away by any system of reasoning whatsoever. i can believe that. there are women who have an indefinable charm in their faces which makes them beautiful to their intimates, but a cold stranger who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty would fail. he would say to one of these women: this chin is too short, this nose is too long, this forehead is too high, this hair is too red, this complexion is too pallid, the perspective of the entire composition is incorrect; conclusion, the woman is not beautiful. but her nearest friend might say, and say truly, "your premises are right, your logic is faultless, but your conclusion is wrong, nevertheless; she is an old master--she is beautiful, but only to such as know her; it is a beauty which cannot be formulated, but it is there, just the same." i found more pleasure in contemplating the old masters this time than i did when i was in europe in former years, but still it was a calm pleasure; there was nothing overheated about it. when i was in venice before, i think i found no picture which stirred me much, but this time there were two which enticed me to the doge's palace day after day, and kept me there hours at a time. one of these was tintoretto's three-acre picture in the great council chamber. when i saw it twelve years ago i was not strongly attracted to it--the guide told me it was an insurrection in heaven--but this was an error. the movement of this great work is very fine. there are ten thousand figures, and they are all doing something. there is a wonderful "go" to the whole composition. some of the figures are driving headlong downward, with clasped hands, others are swimming through the cloud-shoals--some on their faces, some on their backs--great processions of bishops, martyrs, and angels are pouring swiftly centerward from various outlying directions--everywhere is enthusiastic joy, there is rushing movement everywhere. there are fifteen or twenty figures scattered here and there, with books, but they cannot keep their attention on their reading--they offer the books to others, but no one wishes to read, now. the lion of st. mark is there with his book; st. mark is there with his pen uplifted; he and the lion are looking each other earnestly in the face, disputing about the way to spell a word--the lion looks up in rapt admiration while st. mark spells. this is wonderfully interpreted by the artist. it is the master-stroke of this imcomparable painting. [figure 10] i visited the place daily, and never grew tired of looking at that grand picture. as i have intimated, the movement is almost unimaginable vigorous; the figures are singing, hosannahing, and many are blowing trumpets. so vividly is noise suggested, that spectators who become absorbed in the picture almost always fall to shouting comments in each other's ears, making ear-trumpets of their curved hands, fearing they may not otherwise be heard. one often sees a tourist, with the eloquent tears pouring down his cheeks, funnel his hands at his wife's ear, and hears him roar through them, "oh, to be there and at rest!" none but the supremely great in art can produce effects like these with the silent brush. twelve years ago i could not have appreciated this picture. one year ago i could not have appreciated it. my study of art in heidelberg has been a noble education to me. all that i am today in art, i owe to that. the other great work which fascinated me was bassano's immortal hair trunk. this is in the chamber of the council of ten. it is in one of the three forty-foot pictures which decorate the walls of the room. the composition of this picture is beyond praise. the hair trunk is not hurled at the stranger's head--so to speak--as the chief feature of an immortal work so often is; no, it is carefully guarded from prominence, it is subordinated, it is restrained, it is most deftly and cleverly held in reserve, it is most cautiously and ingeniously led up to, by the master, and consequently when the spectator reaches it at last, he is taken unawares, he is unprepared, and it bursts upon him with a stupefying surprise. one is lost in wonder at all the thought and care which this elaborate planning must have cost. a general glance at the picture could never suggest that there was a hair trunk in it; the hair trunk is not mentioned in the title even--which is, "pope alexander iii. and the doge ziani, the conqueror of the emperor frederick barbarossa"; you see, the title is actually utilized to help divert attention from the trunk; thus, as i say, nothing suggests the presence of the trunk, by any hint, yet everything studiedly leads up to it, step by step. let us examine into this, and observe the exquisitely artful artlessness of the plan. at the extreme left end of the picture are a couple of women, one of them with a child looking over her shoulder at a wounded man sitting with bandaged head on the ground. these people seem needless, but no, they are there for a purpose; one cannot look at them without seeing the gorgeous procession of grandees, bishops, halberdiers, and banner-bearers which is passing along behind them; one cannot see the procession without feeling the curiosity to follow it and learn whither it is going; it leads him to the pope, in the center of the picture, who is talking with the bonnetless doge--talking tranquilly, too, although within twelve feet of them a man is beating a drum, and not far from the drummer two persons are blowing horns, and many horsemen are plunging and rioting about--indeed, twenty-two feet of this great work is all a deep and happy holiday serenity and sunday-school procession, and then we come suddenly upon eleven and one-half feet of turmoil and racket and insubordination. this latter state of things is not an accident, it has its purpose. but for it, one would linger upon the pope and the doge, thinking them to be the motive and supreme feature of the picture; whereas one is drawn along, almost unconsciously, to see what the trouble is about. now at the very end of this riot, within four feet of the end of the picture, and full thirty-six feet from the beginning of it, the hair trunk bursts with an electrifying suddenness upon the spectator, in all its matchless perfection, and the great master's triumph is sweeping and complete. from that moment no other thing in those forty feet of canvas has any charm; one sees the hair trunk, and the hair trunk only--and to see it is to worship it. bassano even placed objects in the immediate vicinity of the supreme feature whose pretended purpose was to divert attention from it yet a little longer and thus delay and augment the surprise; for instance, to the right of it he has placed a stooping man with a cap so red that it is sure to hold the eye for a moment--to the left of it, some six feet away, he has placed a red-coated man on an inflated horse, and that coat plucks your eye to that locality the next moment--then, between the trunk and the red horseman he has intruded a man, naked to his waist, who is carrying a fancy flour-sack on the middle of his back instead of on his shoulder--this admirable feat interests you, of course--keeps you at bay a little longer, like a sock or a jacket thrown to the pursuing wolf--but at last, in spite of all distractions and detentions, the eye of even the most dull and heedless spectator is sure to fall upon the world's masterpiece, and in that moment he totters to his chair or leans upon his guide for support. descriptions of such a work as this must necessarily be imperfect, yet they are of value. the top of the trunk is arched; the arch is a perfect half-circle, in the roman style of architecture, for in the then rapid decadence of greek art, the rising influence of rome was already beginning to be felt in the art of the republic. the trunk is bound or bordered with leather all around where the lid joins the main body. many critics consider this leather too cold in tone; but i consider this its highest merit, since it was evidently made so to emphasize by contrast the impassioned fervor of the hasp. the highlights in this part of the work are cleverly managed, the motif is admirably subordinated to the ground tints, and the technique is very fine. the brass nail-heads are in the purest style of the early renaissance. the strokes, here, are very firm and bold--every nail-head is a portrait. the handle on the end of the trunk has evidently been retouched--i think, with a piece of chalk-but one can still see the inspiration of the old master in the tranquil, almost too tranquil, hang of it. the hair of this trunk is real hair--so to speak--white in patched, brown in patches. the details are finely worked out; the repose proper to hair in a recumbent and inactive attitude is charmingly expressed. there is a feeling about this part of the work which lifts it to the highest altitudes of art; the sense of sordid realism vanishes away--one recognizes that there is soul here. view this trunk as you will, it is a gem, it is a marvel, it is a miracle. some of the effects are very daring, approaching even to the boldest flights of the rococo, the sirocco, and the byzantine schools--yet the master's hand never falters--it moves on, calm, majestic, confident--and, with that art which conceals art, it finally casts over the tout ensemble, by mysterious methods of its own, a subtle something which refines, subdues, etherealizes the arid components and endures them with the deep charm and gracious witchery of poesy. among the art-treasures of europe there are pictures which approach the hair trunk--there are two which may be said to equal it, possibly--but there is none that surpasses it. so perfect is the hair trunk that it moves even persons who ordinarily have no feeling for art. when an erie baggagemaster saw it two years ago, he could hardly keep from checking it; and once when a customs inspector was brought into its presence, he gazed upon it in silent rapture for some moments, then slowly and unconsciously placed one hand behind him with the palm uppermost, and got out his chalk with the other. these facts speak for themselves. chapter xlix [hanged with a golden rope] one lingers about the cathedral a good deal, in venice. there is a strong fascination about it--partly because it is so old, and partly because it is so ugly. too many of the world's famous buildings fail of one chief virtue--harmony; they are made up of a methodless mixture of the ugly and the beautiful; this is bad; it is confusing, it is unrestful. one has a sense of uneasiness, of distress, without knowing why. but one is calm before st. mark's, one is calm in the cellar; for its details are masterfully ugly, no misplaced and impertinent beauties are intruded anywhere; and the consequent result is a grand harmonious whole, of soothing, entrancing, tranquilizing, soul-satisfying ugliness. one's admiration of a perfect thing always grows, never declines; and this is the surest evidence to him that it is perfect. st. mark's is perfect. to me it soon grew to be so nobly, so augustly ugly, that it was difficult to stay away from it, even for a little while. every time its squat domes disappeared from my view, i had a despondent feeling; whenever they reappeared, i felt an honest rapture--i have not known any happier hours than those i daily spent in front of florian's, looking across the great square at it. propped on its long row of low thick-legged columns, its back knobbed with domes, it seemed like a vast warty bug taking a meditative walk. st. mark's is not the oldest building in the world, of course, but it seems the oldest, and looks the oldest--especially inside. when the ancient mosaics in its walls become damaged, they are repaired but not altered; the grotesque old pattern is preserved. antiquity has a charm of its own, and to smarten it up would only damage it. one day i was sitting on a red marble bench in the vestibule looking up at an ancient piece of apprentice-work, in mosaic, illustrative of the command to "multiply and replenish the earth." the cathedral itself had seemed very old; but this picture was illustrating a period in history which made the building seem young by comparison. but i presently found an antique which was older than either the battered cathedral or the date assigned to the piece of history; it was a spiral-shaped fossil as large as the crown of a hat; it was embedded in the marble bench, and had been sat upon by tourists until it was worn smooth. contrasted with the inconceivable antiquity of this modest fossil, those other things were flippantly modern--jejune--mere matters of day-before-yesterday. the sense of the oldness of the cathedral vanished away under the influence of this truly venerable presence. st. mark's is monumental; it is an imperishable remembrancer of the profound and simply piety of the middle ages. whoever could ravish a column from a pagan temple, did it and contributed his swag to this christian one. so this fane is upheld by several hundred acquisitions procured in that peculiar way. in our day it would be immoral to go on the highway to get bricks for a church, but it was no sin in the old times. st. mark's was itself the victim of a curious robbery once. the thing is set down in the history of venice, but it might be smuggled into the arabian nights and not seem out of place there: nearly four hundred and fifty years ago, a candian named stammato, in the suite of a prince of the house of este, was allowed to view the riches of st. mark's. his sinful eye was dazzled and he hid himself behind an altar, with an evil purpose in his heart, but a priest discovered him and turned him out. afterward he got in again--by false keys, this time. he went there, night after night, and worked hard and patiently, all alone, overcoming difficulty after difficulty with his toil, and at last succeeded in removing a great brick of the marble paneling which walled the lower part of the treasury; this block he fixed so that he could take it out and put it in at will. after that, for weeks, he spent all his midnights in his magnificent mine, inspecting it in security, gloating over its marvels at his leisure, and always slipping back to his obscure lodgings before dawn, with a duke's ransom under his cloak. he did not need to grab, haphazard, and run--there was no hurry. he could make deliberate and well-considered selections; he could consult his esthetic tastes. one comprehends how undisturbed he was, and how safe from any danger of interruption, when it is stated that he even carried off a unicorn's horn--a mere curiosity--which would not pass through the egress entire, but had to be sawn in two-a bit of work which cost him hours of tedious labor. he continued to store up his treasures at home until his occupation lost the charm of novelty and became monotonous; then he ceased from it, contented. well he might be; for his collection, raised to modern values, represented nearly fifty million dollars! he could have gone home much the richest citizen of his country, and it might have been years before the plunder was missed; but he was human--he could not enjoy his delight alone, he must have somebody to talk about it with. so he exacted a solemn oath from a candian noble named crioni, then led him to his lodgings and nearly took his breath away with a sight of his glittering hoard. he detected a look in his friend's face which excited his suspicion, and was about to slip a stiletto into him when crioni saved himself by explaining that that look was only an expression of supreme and happy astonishment. stammato made crioni a present of one of the state's principal jewels--a huge carbuncle, which afterward figured in the ducal cap of state--and the pair parted. crioni went at once to the palace, denounced the criminal, and handed over the carbuncle as evidence. stammato was arrested, tried, and condemned, with the old-time venetian promptness. he was hanged between the two great columns in the piazza--with a gilded rope, out of compliment to his love of gold, perhaps. he got no good of his booty at all--it was all recovered. in venice we had a luxury which very seldom fell to our lot on the continent--a home dinner with a private family. if one could always stop with private families, when traveling, europe would have a charm which it now lacks. as it is, one must live in the hotels, of course, and that is a sorrowful business. a man accustomed to american food and american domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in europe; but i think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die. he would have to do without his accustomed morning meal. that is too formidable a change altogether; he would necessarily suffer from it. he could get the shadow, the sham, the base counterfeit of that meal; but it would do him no good, and money could not buy the reality. to particularize: the average american's simplest and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak; well, in europe, coffee is an unknown beverage. you can get what the european hotel-keeper thinks is coffee, but it resembles the real thing as hypocrisy resembles holiness. it is a feeble, characterless, uninspiring sort of stuff, and almost as undrinkable as if it had been made in an american hotel. the milk used for it is what the french call "christian" milk--milk which has been baptized. after a few months' acquaintance with european "coffee," one's mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream, after all, and a thing which never existed. next comes the european bread--fair enough, good enough, after a fashion, but cold; cold and tough, and unsympathetic; and never any change, never any variety--always the same tiresome thing. next, the butter--the sham and tasteless butter; no salt in it, and made of goodness knows what. then there is the beefsteak. they have it in europe, but they don't know how to cook it. neither will they cut it right. it comes on the table in a small, round pewter platter. it lies in the center of this platter, in a bordering bed of grease-soaked potatoes; it is the size, shape, and thickness of a man's hand with the thumb and fingers cut off. it is a little overdone, is rather dry, it tastes pretty insipidly, it rouses no enthusiasm. imagine a poor exile contemplating that inert thing; and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better land and setting before him a mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with a fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an outlying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place; and imagine that the angel also adds a great cup of american home-made coffee, with a cream a-froth on top, some real butter, firm and yellow and fresh, some smoking hot-biscuits, a plate of hot buckwheat cakes, with transparent syrup--could words describe the gratitude of this exile? the european dinner is better than the european breakfast, but it has its faults and inferiorities; it does not satisfy. he comes to the table eager and hungry; he swallows his soup--there is an undefinable lack about it somewhere; thinks the fish is going to be the thing he wants-eats it and isn't sure; thinks the next dish is perhaps the one that will hit the hungry place--tries it, and is conscious that there was a something wanting about it, also. and thus he goes on, from dish to dish, like a boy after a butterfly which just misses getting caught every time it alights, but somehow doesn't get caught after all; and at the end the exile and the boy have fared about alike; the one is full, but grievously unsatisfied, the other has had plenty of exercise, plenty of interest, and a fine lot of hopes, but he hasn't got any butterfly. there is here and there an american who will say he can remember rising from a european table d'ho^te perfectly satisfied; but we must not overlook the fact that there is also here and there an american who will lie. the number of dishes is sufficient; but then it is such a monotonous variety of unstriking dishes. it is an inane dead-level of "fair-to-middling." there is nothing to accent it. perhaps if the roast of mutton or of beef--a big, generous one--were brought on the table and carved in full view of the client, that might give the right sense of earnestness and reality to the thing; but they don't do that, they pass the sliced meat around on a dish, and so you are perfectly calm, it does not stir you in the least. now a vast roast turkey, stretched on the broad of his back, with his heels in the air and the rich juices oozing from his fat sides ... but i may as well stop there, for they would not know how to cook him. they can't even cook a chicken respectably; and as for carving it, they do that with a hatchet. this is about the customary table d'ho^te bill in summer: soup (characterless). fish--sole, salmon, or whiting--usually tolerably good. roast--mutton or beef--tasteless--and some last year's potatoes. a pa^te, or some other made dish--usually good--"considering." one vegetable--brought on in state, and all alone--usually insipid lentils, or string-beans, or indifferent asparagus. roast chicken, as tasteless as paper. lettuce-salad--tolerably good. decayed strawberries or cherries. sometimes the apricots and figs are fresh, but this is no advantage, as these fruits are of no account anyway. the grapes are generally good, and sometimes there is a tolerably good peach, by mistake. the variations of the above bill are trifling. after a fortnight one discovers that the variations are only apparent, not real; in the third week you get what you had the first, and in the fourth the week you get what you had the second. three or four months of this weary sameness will kill the robustest appetite. it has now been many months, at the present writing, since i have had a nourishing meal, but i shall soon have one--a modest, private affair, all to myself. i have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be hot when i arrive--as follows: radishes. baked apples, with brook-trout, from sierra cream. nevadas. fried oysters; stewed oysters. lake-trout, from tahoe. frogs. sheepshead and croakers from american coffee, with real cream. new orleans. american butter. black-bass from the mississippi. fried chicken, southern style. american roast beef. porterhouse steak. roast turkey, thanksgiving saratoga potatoes. style. broiled chicken, american style. cranberry sauce. celery. hot biscuits, southern style. roast wild turkey. woodcock. hot wheat-bread, southern canvasback-duck, from style. baltimore. hot buckwheat cakes. prairie-hens, from illinois. american toast. clear maple missouri partridges, broiled. syrup. possum. coon. virginia bacon, broiled. boston bacon and beans. blue points, on the half shell. bacon and greens, southern style. cherry-stone clams. hominy. boiled onions. san francisco mussels, steamed. turnips. oyster soup. clam soup. pumpkin. squash. asparagus. philadelphia terrapin soup. butter-beans. sweet-potatoes. oysters roasted in shell--lettuce. succotash. northern style. string-beans. soft-shell crabs. connecticut mashed potatoes. catsup. shad. boiled potatoes, in their skins. baltimore perch. new potatoes, minus the skins. early rose potatoes, roasted in hot egg-bread, southern style. the ashes, southern style, hot light-bread, southern style. served hot. buttermilk. iced sweet milk. sliced tomatoes, with sugar or apple dumplings, with real vinegar. stewed tomatoes. cream. green corn, cut from the ear and apple pie. apple fritters. served with butter and pepper. apple puffs, southern style. green corn, on the ear. peach cobbler, southern style. hot corn-pone, with chitlings, peach pie. american mince pie. southern style. pumpkin pie. squash pie. hot hoe-cake, southern style. all sorts of american pastry. fresh american fruits of all sorts, including strawberries, which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way. ice-water--not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator. americans intending to spend a year or so in european hotels, will do well to copy this bill and carry it along. they will find it an excellent thing to get up an appetite with, in the dispiriting presence of the squalid table d'ho^te. foreigners cannot enjoy our food, i suppose, any more than we can enjoy theirs. it is not strange; for tastes are made, not born. i might glorify my bill of fare until i was tired; but after all, the scotchman would shake his head and say, "where's your haggis?" and the fijian would sigh and say, "where's your missionary?" i have a neat talent in matters pertaining to nourishment. this has met with professional recognition. i have often furnished recipes for cook-books. here are some designs for pies and things, which i recently prepared for a friend's projected cook-book, but as i forgot to furnish diagrams and perspectives, they had to be left out, of course. recipe for an ash-cake take a lot of water and add to it a lot of coarse indian-meal and about a quarter of a lot of salt. mix well together, knead into the form of a "pone," and let the pone stand awhile--not on its edge, but the other way. rake away a place among the embers, lay it there, and cover it an inch deep with hot ashes. when it is done, remove it; blow off all the ashes but one layer; butter that one and eat. n.b.--no household should ever be without this talisman. it has been noticed that tramps never return for another ash-cake. ---------recipe for new english pie to make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as follows: take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency of flour, and construct a bullet-proof dough. work this into the form of a disk, with the edges turned up some three-fourths of an inch. toughen and kiln-dry in a couple days in a mild but unvarying temperature. construct a cover for this redoubt in the same way and of the same material. fill with stewed dried apples; aggravate with cloves, lemon-peel, and slabs of citron; add two portions of new orleans sugars, then solder on the lid and set in a safe place till it petrifies. serve cold at breakfast and invite your enemy. ---------recipe for german coffee take a barrel of water and bring it to a boil; rub a chicory berry against a coffee berry, then convey the former into the water. continue the boiling and evaporation until the intensity of the flavor and aroma of the coffee and chicory has been diminished to a proper degree; then set aside to cool. now unharness the remains of a once cow from the plow, insert them in a hydraulic press, and when you shall have acquired a teaspoon of that pale-blue juice which a german superstition regards as milk, modify the malignity of its strength in a bucket of tepid water and ring up the breakfast. mix the beverage in a cold cup, partake with moderation, and keep a wet rag around your head to guard against over-excitement. ---------to carve fowls in the german fashion use a club, and avoid the joints. chapter l [titian bad and titian good] i wonder why some things are? for instance, art is allowed as much indecent license today as in earlier times-but the privileges of literature in this respect have been sharply curtailed within the past eighty or ninety years. fielding and smollett could portray the beastliness of their day in the beastliest language; we have plenty of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are not allowed to approach them very near, even with nice and guarded forms of speech. but not so with art. the brush may still deal freely with any subject, however revolting or indelicate. it makes a body ooze sarcasm at every pore, to go about rome and florence and see what this last generation has been doing with the statues. these works, which had stood in innocent nakedness for ages, are all fig-leaved now. yes, every one of them. nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can help noticing it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous. but the comical thing about it all, is, that the fig-leaf is confined to cold and pallid marble, which would be still cold and unsuggestive without this sham and ostentatious symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blood paintings which do really need it have in no case been furnished with it. at the door of the uffizzi, in florence, one is confronted by statues of a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulated grime--they hardly suggest human beings-yet these ridiculous creatures have been thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious generation. you enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallery that exists in the world--the tribune--and there, against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses--titian's venus. it isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed--no, it is the attitude of one of her arms and hand. if i ventured to describe that attitude, there would be a fine howl--but there the venus lies, for anybody to gloat over that wants to--and there she has a right to lie, for she is a work of art, and art has its privileges. i saw young girls stealing furtive glances at her; i saw young men gaze long and absorbedly at her; i saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest. how i should like to describe her--just to see what a holy indignation i could stir up in the world--just to hear the unreflecting average man deliver himself about my grossness and coarseness, and all that. the world says that no worded description of a moving spectacle is a hundredth part as moving as the same spectacle seen with one's own eyes--yet the world is willing to let its son and its daughter and itself look at titian's beast, but won't stand a description of it in words. which shows that the world is not as consistent as it might be. there are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure thought--i am well aware of that. i am not railing at such. what i am trying to emphasize is the fact that titian's venus is very far from being one of that sort. without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong. in truth, it is too strong for any place but a public art gallery. titian has two venuses in the tribune; persons who have seen them will easily remember which one i am referring to. in every gallery in europe there are hideous pictures of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures portraying intolerable suffering--pictures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas every day and publicly exhibited--without a growl from anybody--for they are innocent, they are inoffensive, being works of art. but suppose a literary artist ventured to go into a painstaking and elaborate description of one of these grisly things--the critics would skin him alive. well, let it go, it cannot be helped; art retains her privileges, literature has lost hers. somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores and the consistencies of it--i haven't got time. titian's venus defiles and disgraces the tribune, there is no softening that fact, but his "moses" glorifies it. the simple truthfulness of its noble work wins the heart and the applause of every visitor, be he learned or ignorant. after wearying one's self with the acres of stuffy, sappy, expressionless babies that populate the canvases of the old masters of italy, it is refreshing to stand before this peerless child and feel that thrill which tells you you are at last in the presence of the real thing. this is a human child, this is genuine. you have seen him a thousand times--you have seen him just as he is here-and you confess, without reserve, that titian was a master. the doll-faces of other painted babes may mean one thing, they may mean another, but with the "moses" the case is different. the most famous of all the art-critics has said, "there is no room for doubt, here--plainly this child is in trouble." i consider that the "moses" has no equal among the works of the old masters, except it be the divine hair trunk of bassano. i feel sure that if all the other old masters were lost and only these two preserved, the world would be the gainer by it. my sole purpose in going to florence was to see this immortal "moses," and by good fortune i was just in time, for they were already preparing to remove it to a more private and better-protected place because a fashion of robbing the great galleries was prevailing in europe at the time. i got a capable artist to copy the picture; pannemaker, the engraver of dor'e's books, engraved it for me, and i have the pleasure of laying it before the reader in this volume. we took a turn to rome and some other italian cities-then to munich, and thence to paris--partly for exercise, but mainly because these things were in our projected program, and it was only right that we should be faithful to it. from paris i branched out and walked through holland and belgium, procuring an occasional lift by rail or canal when tired, and i had a tolerably good time of it "by and large." i worked spain and other regions through agents to save time and shoe-leather. we crossed to england, and then made the homeward passage in the cunarder gallia, a very fine ship. i was glad to get home--immeasurably glad; so glad, in fact, that it did not seem possible that anything could ever get me out of the country again. i had not enjoyed a pleasure abroad which seemed to me to compare with the pleasure i felt in seeing new york harbor again. europe has many advantages which we have not, but they do not compensate for a good many still more valuable ones which exist nowhere but in our own country. then we are such a homeless lot when we are over there! so are europeans themselves, for the matter. they live in dark and chilly vast tombs--costly enough, maybe, but without conveniences. to be condemned to live as the average european family lives would make life a pretty heavy burden to the average american family. on the whole, i think that short visits to europe are better for us than long ones. the former preserve us from becoming europeanized; they keep our pride of country intact, and at the same time they intensify our affection for our country and our people; whereas long visits have the effect of dulling those feelings--at least in the majority of cases. i think that one who mixes much with americans long resident abroad must arrive at this conclusion. appendix ---------nothing gives such weight and dignity to a book as an appendix. herodotus appendix a the portier omar khay'am, the poet-prophet of persia, writing more than eight hundred years ago, has said: "in the four parts of the earth are many that are able to write learned books, many that are able to lead armies, and many also that are able to govern kingdoms and empires; but few there be that can keep a hotel." a word about the european hotel portier. he is a most admirable invention, a most valuable convenience. he always wears a conspicuous uniform; he can always be found when he is wanted, for he sticks closely to his post at the front door; he is as polite as a duke; he speaks from four to ten languages; he is your surest help and refuge in time of trouble or perplexity. he is not the clerk, he is not the landlord; he ranks above the clerk, and represents the landlord, who is seldom seen. instead of going to the clerk for information, as we do at home, you go to the portier. it is the pride of our average hotel clerk to know nothing whatever; it is the pride of the portier to know everything. you ask the portier at what hours the trains leave--he tells you instantly; or you ask him who is the best physician in town; or what is the hack tariff; or how many children the mayor has; or what days the galleries are open, and whether a permit is required, and where you are to get it, and what you must pay for it; or when the theaters open and close, what the plays are to be, and the price of seats; or what is the newest thing in hats; or how the bills of mortality average; or "who struck billy patterson." it does not matter what you ask him: in nine cases out of ten he knows, and in the tenth case he will find out for you before you can turn around three times. there is nothing he will not put his hand to. suppose you tell him you wish to go from hamburg to peking by the way of jericho, and are ignorant of routes and prices-the next morning he will hand you a piece of paper with the whole thing worked out on it to the last detail. before you have been long on european soil, you find yourself still saying you are relying on providence, but when you come to look closer you will see that in reality you are relying on the portier. he discovers what is puzzling you, or what is troubling you, or what your need is, before you can get the half of it out, and he promptly says, "leave that to me." consequently, you easily drift into the habit of leaving everything to him. there is a certain embarrassment about applying to the average american hotel clerk, a certain hesitancy, a sense of insecurity against rebuff; but you feel no embarrassment in your intercourse with the portier; he receives your propositions with an enthusiasm which cheers, and plunges into their accomplishment with an alacrity which almost inebriates. the more requirements you can pile upon him, the better he likes it. of course the result is that you cease from doing anything for yourself. he calls a hack when you want one; puts you into it; tells the driver whither to take you; receives you like a long-lost child when you return; sends you about your business, does all the quarreling with the hackman himself, and pays him his money out of his own pocket. he sends for your theater tickets, and pays for them; he sends for any possible article you can require, be it a doctor, an elephant, or a postage stamp; and when you leave, at last, you will find a subordinate seated with the cab-driver who will put you in your railway compartment, buy your tickets, have your baggage weighed, bring you the printed tags, and tell you everything is in your bill and paid for. at home you get such elaborate, excellent, and willing service as this only in the best hotels of our large cities; but in europe you get it in the mere back country-towns just as well. what is the secret of the portier's devotion? it is very simple: he gets fees, and no salary. his fee is pretty closely regulated, too. if you stay a week, you give him five marks--a dollar and a quarter, or about eighteen cents a day. if you stay a month, you reduce this average somewhat. if you stay two or three months or longer, you cut it down half, or even more than half. if you stay only one day, you give the portier a mark. the head waiter's fee is a shade less than the portier's; the boots, who not only blacks your boots and brushes your clothes, but is usually the porter and handles your baggage, gets a somewhat smaller fee than the head waiter; the chambermaid's fee ranks below that of the boots. you fee only these four, and no one else. a german gentleman told me that when he remained a week in a hotel, he gave the portier five marks, the head waiter four, the boots three, and the chambermaid two; and if he stayed three months he divided ninety marks among them, in about the above proportions. ninety marks make $22.50. none of these fees are ever paid until you leave the hotel, though it be a year--except one of these four servants should go away in the mean time; in that case he will be sure to come and bid you good-by and give you the opportunity to pay him what is fairly coming to him. it is considered very bad policy to fee a servant while you are still to remain longer in the hotel, because if you gave him too little he might neglect you afterward, and if you gave him too much he might neglect somebody else to attend to you. it is considered best to keep his expectations "on a string" until your stay in concluded. i do not know whether hotel servants in new york get any wages or not, but i do know that in some of the hotels there the feeing system in vogue is a heavy burden. the waiter expects a quarter at breakfast--and gets it. you have a different waiter at luncheon, and so he gets a quarter. your waiter at dinner is another stranger--consequently he gets a quarter. the boy who carries your satchel to your room and lights your gas fumbles around and hangs around significantly, and you fee him to get rid of him. now you may ring for ice-water; and ten minutes later for a lemonade; and ten minutes afterward, for a cigar; and by and by for a newspaper--and what is the result? why, a new boy has appeared every time and fooled and fumbled around until you have paid him something. suppose you boldly put your foot down, and say it is the hotel's business to pay its servants? you will have to ring your bell ten or fifteen times before you get a servant there; and when he goes off to fill your order you will grow old and infirm before you see him again. you may struggle nobly for twenty-four hours, maybe, if you are an adamantine sort of person, but in the mean time you will have been so wretchedly served, and so insolently, that you will haul down your colors, and go to impoverishing yourself with fees. it seems to me that it would be a happy idea to import the european feeing system into america. i believe it would result in getting even the bells of the philadelphia hotels answered, and cheerful service rendered. the greatest american hotels keep a number of clerks and a cashier, and pay them salaries which mount up to a considerable total in the course of a year. the great continental hotels keep a cashier on a trifling salary, and a portier who pays the hotel a salary. by the latter system both the hotel and the public save money and are better served than by our system. one of our consuls told me that a portier of a great berlin hotel paid five thousand dollars a year for his position, and yet cleared six thousand dollars for himself. the position of portier in the chief hotels of saratoga, long branch, new york, and similar centers of resort, would be one which the holder could afford to pay even more than five thousand dollars for, perhaps. when we borrowed the feeing fashion from europe a dozen years ago, the salary system ought to have been discontinued, of course. we might make this correction now, i should think. and we might add the portier, too. since i first began to study the portier, i have had opportunities to observe him in the chief cities of germany, switzerland, and italy; and the more i have seen of him the more i have wished that he might be adopted in america, and become there, as he is in europe, the stranger's guardian angel. yes, what was true eight hundred years ago, is just as true today: "few there be that can keep a hotel." perhaps it is because the landlords and their subordinates have in too many cases taken up their trade without first learning it. in europe the trade of hotel-keeper is taught. the apprentice begins at the bottom of the ladder and masters the several grades one after the other. just as in our country printing-offices the apprentice first learns how to sweep out and bring water; then learns to "roll"; then to sort "pi"; then to set type; and finally rounds and completes his education with job-work and press-work; so the landlord-apprentice serves as call-boy; then as under-waiter; then as a parlor waiter; then as head waiter, in which position he often has to make out all the bills; then as clerk or cashier; then as portier. his trade is learned now, and by and by he will assume the style and dignity of landlord, and be found conducting a hotel of his own. now in europe, the same as in america, when a man has kept a hotel so thoroughly well during a number of years as to give it a great reputation, he has his reward. he can live prosperously on that reputation. he can let his hotel run down to the last degree of shabbiness and yet have it full of people all the time. for instance, there is the ho^tel de ville, in milan. it swarms with mice and fleas, and if the rest of the world were destroyed it could furnish dirt enough to start another one with. the food would create an insurrection in a poorhouse; and yet if you go outside to get your meals that hotel makes up its loss by overcharging you on all sorts of trifles--and without making any denials or excuses about it, either. but the ho^tel de ville's old excellent reputation still keeps its dreary rooms crowded with travelers who would be elsewhere if they had only some wise friend to warn them. appendix b heidelberg castle heidelberg castle must have been very beautiful before the french battered and bruised and scorched it two hundred years ago. the stone is brown, with a pinkish tint, and does not seem to stain easily. the dainty and elaborate ornamentation upon its two chief fronts is as delicately carved as if it had been intended for the interior of a drawing-room rather than for the outside of a house. many fruit and flower clusters, human heads and grim projecting lions' heads are still as perfect in every detail as if they were new. but the statues which are ranked between the windows have suffered. these are life-size statues of old-time emperors, electors, and similar grandees, clad in mail and bearing ponderous swords. some have lost an arm, some a head, and one poor fellow is chopped off at the middle. there is a saying that if a stranger will pass over the drawbridge and walk across the court to the castle front without saying anything, he can made a wish and it will be fulfilled. but they say that the truth of this thing has never had a chance to be proved, for the reason that before any stranger can walk from the drawbridge to the appointed place, the beauty of the palace front will extort an exclamation of delight from him. a ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective. this one could not have been better placed. it stands upon a commanding elevation, it is buried in green words, there is no level ground about it, but, on the contrary, there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks down through shining leaves into profound chasms and abysses where twilight reigns and the sun cannot intrude. nature knows how to garnish a ruin to get the best effect. one of these old towers is split down the middle, and one half has tumbled aside. it tumbled in such a way as to establish itself in a picturesque attitude. then all it lacked was a fitting drapery, and nature has furnished that; she has robed the rugged mass in flowers and verdure, and made it a charm to the eye. the standing half exposes its arched and cavernous rooms to you, like open, toothless mouths; there, too, the vines and flowers have done their work of grace. the rear portion of the tower has not been neglected, either, but is clothed with a clinging garment of polished ivy which hides the wounds and stains of time. even the top is not left bare, but is crowned with a flourishing group of trees and shrubs. misfortune has done for this old tower what it has done for the human character sometimes--improved it. a gentleman remarked, one day, that it might have been fine to live in the castle in the day of its prime, but that we had one advantage which its vanished inhabitants lacked--the advantage of having a charming ruin to visit and muse over. but that was a hasty idea. those people had the advantage of us. they had the fine castle to live in, and they could cross the rhine valley and muse over the stately ruin of trifels besides. the trifels people, in their day, five hundred years ago, could go and muse over majestic ruins that have vanished, now, to the last stone. there have always been ruins, no doubt; and there have always been pensive people to sigh over them, and asses to scratch upon them their names and the important date of their visit. within a hundred years after adam left eden, the guide probably gave the usual general flourish with his hand and said: "place where the animals were named, ladies and gentlemen; place where the tree of the forbidden fruit stood; exact spot where adam and eve first met; and here, ladies and gentlemen, adorned and hallowed by the names and addresses of three generations of tourists, we have the crumbling remains of cain's altar--fine old ruin!" then, no doubt, he taxed them a shekel apiece and let them go. an illumination of heidelberg castle is one of the sights of europe. the castle's picturesque shape; its commanding situation, midway up the steep and wooded mountainside; its vast size--these features combine to make an illumination a most effective spectacle. it is necessarily an expensive show, and consequently rather infrequent. therefore whenever one of these exhibitions is to take place, the news goes about in the papers and heidelberg is sure to be full of people on that night. i and my agent had one of these opportunities, and improved it. about half past seven on the appointed evening we crossed the lower bridge, with some american students, in a pouring rain, and started up the road which borders the neunheim side of the river. this roadway was densely packed with carriages and foot-passengers; the former of all ages, and the latter of all ages and both sexes. this black and solid mass was struggling painfully onward, through the slop, the darkness, and the deluge. we waded along for three-quarters of a mile, and finally took up a position in an unsheltered beer-garden directly opposite the castle. we could not see the castle--or anything else, for that matter--but we could dimly discern the outlines of the mountain over the way, through the pervading blackness, and knew whereabouts the castle was located. we stood on one of the hundred benches in the garden, under our umbrellas; the other ninety-nine were occupied by standing men and women, and they also had umbrellas. all the region round about, and up and down the river-road, was a dense wilderness of humanity hidden under an unbroken pavement of carriage tops and umbrellas. thus we stood during two drenching hours. no rain fell on my head, but the converging whalebone points of a dozen neighboring umbrellas poured little cooling steams of water down my neck, and sometimes into my ears, and thus kept me from getting hot and impatient. i had the rheumatism, too, and had heard that this was good for it. afterward, however, i was led to believe that the water treatment is not good for rheumatism. there were even little girls in that dreadful place. a men held one in his arms, just in front of me, for as much as an hour, with umbrella-drippings soaking into her clothing all the time. in the circumstances, two hours was a good while for us to have to wait, but when the illumination did at last come, we felt repaid. it came unexpectedly, of course--things always do, that have been long looked and longed for. with a perfectly breath-taking suddenness several mast sheaves of varicolored rockets were vomited skyward out of the black throats of the castle towers, accompanied by a thundering crash of sound, and instantly every detail of the prodigious ruin stood revealed against the mountainside and glowing with an almost intolerable splendor of fire and color. for some little time the whole building was a blinding crimson mass, the towers continued to spout thick columns of rockets aloft, and overhead the sky was radiant with arrowy bolts which clove their way to the zenith, paused, curved gracefully downward, then burst into brilliant fountain-sprays of richly colored sparks. the red fires died slowly down, within the castle, and presently the shell grew nearly black outside; the angry glare that shone out through the broken arches and innumerable sashless windows, now, reproduced the aspect which the castle must have borne in the old time when the french spoilers saw the monster bonfire which they had made there fading and spoiling toward extinction. while we still gazed and enjoyed, the ruin was suddenly enveloped in rolling and rumbling volumes of vaporous green fire; then in dazzling purple ones; then a mixture of many colors followed, then drowned the great fabric in its blended splendors. meantime the nearest bridge had been illuminated, and from several rafts anchored in the river, meteor showers of rockets, roman candles, bombs, serpents, and catharine wheels were being discharged in wasteful profusion into the sky--a marvelous sight indeed to a person as little used to such spectacles as i was. for a while the whole region about us seemed as bright as day, and yet the rain was falling in torrents all the time. the evening's entertainment presently closed, and we joined the innumerable caravan of half-drowned strangers, and waded home again. the castle grounds are very ample and very beautiful; and as they joined the hotel grounds, with no fences to climb, but only some nobly shaded stone stairways to descend, we spent a part of nearly every day in idling through their smooth walks and leafy groves. there was an attractive spot among the trees where were a great many wooden tables and benches; and there one could sit in the shade and pretend to sip at his foamy beaker of beer while he inspected the crowd. i say pretend, because i only pretended to sip, without really sipping. that is the polite way; but when you are ready to go, you empty the beaker at a draught. there was a brass band, and it furnished excellent music every afternoon. sometimes so many people came that every seat was occupied, every table filled. and never a rough in the assemblace--all nicely dressed fathers and mothers, young gentlemen and ladies and children; and plenty of university students and glittering officers; with here and there a gray professor, or a peaceful old lady with her knitting; and always a sprinkling of gawky foreigners. everybody had his glass of beer before him, or his cup of coffee, or his bottle of wine, or his hot cutlet and potatoes; young ladies chatted, or fanned themselves, or wrought at their crocheting or embroidering; the students fed sugar to their dogs, or discussed duels, or illustrated new fencing tricks with their little canes; and everywhere was comfort and enjoyment, and everywhere peace and good-will to men. the trees were jubilant with birds, and the paths with rollicking children. one could have a seat in that place and plenty of music, any afternoon, for about eight cents, or a family ticket for the season for two dollars. for a change, when you wanted one, you could stroll to the castle, and burrow among its dungeons, or climb about its ruined towers, or visit its interior shows--the great heidelberg tun, for instance. everybody has heard of the great heidelberg tun, and most people have seen it, no doubt. it is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say it holds eighteen thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. i think it likely that one of these statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. however, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. an empty cask the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me. i do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of expense. what could this cask have been built for? the more one studies over that, the more uncertain and unhappy he becomes. some historians say that thirty couples, some say thirty thousand couples, can dance on the head of this cask at the same time. even this does not seem to me to account for the building of it. it does not even throw light on it. a profound and scholarly englishman--a specialist--who had made the great heidelberg tun his sole study for fifteen years, told me he had at last satisfied himself that the ancients built it to make german cream in. he said that the average german cow yielded from one to two and half teaspoons of milk, when she was not worked in the plow or the hay-wagon more than eighteen or nineteen hours a day. this milk was very sweet and good, and a beautiful transparent bluish tint; but in order to get cream from it in the most economical way, a peculiar process was necessary. now he believed that the habit of the ancients was to collect several milkings in a teacup, pour it into the great tun, fill up with water, and then skim off the cream from time to time as the needs of the german empire demanded. this began to look reasonable. it certainly began to account for the german cream which i had encountered and marveled over in so many hotels and restaurants. but a thought struck me-"why did not each ancient dairyman take his own teacup of milk and his own cask of water, and mix them, without making a government matter of it?' "where could he get a cask large enough to contain the right proportion of water?" very true. it was plain that the englishman had studied the matter from all sides. still i thought i might catch him on one point; so i asked him why the modern empire did not make the nation's cream in the heidelberg tun, instead of leaving it to rot away unused. but he answered as one prepared-"a patient and diligent examination of the modern german cream had satisfied me that they do not use the great tun now, because they have got a bigger one hid away somewhere. either that is the case or they empty the spring milkings into the mountain torrents and then skim the rhine all summer." there is a museum of antiquities in the castle, and among its most treasured relics are ancient manuscripts connected with german history. there are hundreds of these, and their dates stretch back through many centuries. one of them is a decree signed and sealed by the hand of a successor of charlemagne, in the year 896. a signature made by a hand which vanished out of this life near a thousand years ago, is a more impressive thing than even a ruined castle. luther's wedding-ring was shown me; also a fork belonging to a time anterior to our era, and an early bookjack. and there was a plaster cast of the head of a man who was assassinated about sixty years ago. the stab-wounds in the face were duplicated with unpleasant fidelity. one or two real hairs still remained sticking in the eyebrows of the cast. that trifle seemed to almost change the counterfeit into a corpse. there are many aged portraits--some valuable, some worthless; some of great interest, some of none at all. i bought a couple--one a gorgeous duke of the olden time, and the other a comely blue-eyed damsel, a princess, maybe. i bought them to start a portrait-gallery of my ancestors with. i paid a dollar and a half for the duke and a half for the princess. one can lay in ancestors at even cheaper rates than these, in europe, if he will mouse among old picture shops and look out for chances. appendix c the college prison it seems that the student may break a good many of the public laws without having to answer to the public authorities. his case must come before the university for trial and punishment. if a policeman catches him in an unlawful act and proceeds to arrest him, the offender proclaims that he is a student, and perhaps shows his matriculation card, whereupon the officer asks for his address, then goes his way, and reports the matter at headquarters. if the offense is one over which the city has no jurisdiction, the authorities report the case officially to the university, and give themselves no further concern about it. the university court send for the student, listen to the evidence, and pronounce judgment. the punishment usually inflicted is imprisonment in the university prison. as i understand it, a student's case is often tried without his being present at all. then something like this happens: a constable in the service of the university visits the lodgings of the said student, knocks, is invited to come in, does so, and says politely-"if you please, i am here to conduct you to prison." "ah," says the student, "i was not expecting it. what have i been doing?" "two weeks ago the public peace had the honor to be disturbed by you." "it is true; i had forgotten it. very well: i have been complained of, tried, and found guilty--is that it?" "exactly. you are sentenced to two days' solitary confinement in the college prison, and i am sent to fetch you." student. "o, i can't go today." officer. "if you please--why?" student. "because i've got an engagement." officer. "tomorrow, then, perhaps?" student. "no, i am going to the opera, tomorrow." officer. "could you come friday?" student. (reflectively.) "let me see--friday--friday. i don't seem to have anything on hand friday." officer. "then, if you please, i will expect you on friday." student. "all right, i'll come around friday." officer. "thank you. good day, sir." student. "good day." so on friday the student goes to the prison of his own accord, and is admitted. it is questionable if the world's criminal history can show a custom more odd than this. nobody knows, now, how it originated. there have always been many noblemen among the students, and it is presumed that all students are gentlemen; in the old times it was usual to mar the convenience of such folk as little as possible; perhaps this indulgent custom owes its origin to this. one day i was listening to some conversation upon this subject when an american student said that for some time he had been under sentence for a slight breach of the peace and had promised the constable that he would presently find an unoccupied day and betake himself to prison. i asked the young gentleman to do me the kindness to go to jail as soon as he conveniently could, so that i might try to get in there and visit him, and see what college captivity was like. he said he would appoint the very first day he could spare. his confinement was to endure twenty-four hours. he shortly chose his day, and sent me word. i started immediately. when i reached the university place, i saw two gentlemen talking together, and, as they had portfolios under their arms, i judged they were tutors or elderly students; so i asked them in english to show me the college jail. i had learned to take it for granted that anybody in germany who knows anything, knows english, so i had stopped afflicting people with my german. these gentlemen seemed a trifle amused--and a trifle confused, too--but one of them said he would walk around the corner with me and show me the place. he asked me why i wanted to get in there, and i said to see a friend--and for curiosity. he doubted if i would be admitted, but volunteered to put in a word or two for me with the custodian. he rang the bell, a door opened, and we stepped into a paved way and then up into a small living-room, where we were received by a hearty and good-natured german woman of fifty. she threw up her hands with a surprised "ach gott, herr professor!" and exhibited a mighty deference for my new acquaintance. by the sparkle in her eye i judged she was a good deal amused, too. the "herr professor" talked to her in german, and i understood enough of it to know that he was bringing very plausible reasons to bear for admitting me. they were successful. so the herr professor received my earnest thanks and departed. the old dame got her keys, took me up two or three flights of stairs, unlocked a door, and we stood in the presence of the criminal. then she went into a jolly and eager description of all that had occurred downstairs, and what the herr professor had said, and so forth and so on. plainly, she regarded it as quite a superior joke that i had waylaid a professor and employed him in so odd a service. but i wouldn't have done it if i had known he was a professor; therefore my conscience was not disturbed. now the dame left us to ourselves. the cell was not a roomy one; still it was a little larger than an ordinary prison cell. it had a window of good size, iron-grated; a small stove; two wooden chairs; two oaken tables, very old and most elaborately carved with names, mottoes, faces, armorial bearings, etc.--the work of several generations of imprisoned students; and a narrow wooden bedstead with a villainous straw mattress, but no sheets, pillows, blankets, or coverlets--for these the student must furnish at his own cost if he wants them. there was no carpet, of course. the ceiling was completely covered with names, dates, and monograms, done with candle-smoke. the walls were thickly covered with pictures and portraits (in profile), some done with ink, some with soot, some with a pencil, and some with red, blue, and green chalks; and whenever an inch or two of space had remained between the pictures, the captives had written plaintive verses, or names and dates. i do not think i was ever in a more elaborately frescoed apartment. against the wall hung a placard containing the prison laws. i made a note of one or two of these. for instance: the prisoner must pay, for the "privilege" of entering, a sum equivalent to 20 cents of our money; for the privilege of leaving, when his term had expired, 20 cents; for every day spent in the prison, 12 cents; for fire and light, 12 cents a day. the jailer furnishes coffee, mornings, for a small sum; dinners and suppers may be ordered from outside if the prisoner chooses--and he is allowed to pay for them, too. here and there, on the walls, appeared the names of american students, and in one place the american arms and motto were displayed in colored chalks. with the help of my friend i translated many of the inscriptions. some of them were cheerful, others the reverse. i will give the reader a few specimens: "in my tenth semester (my best one), i am cast here through the complaints of others. let those who follow me take warning." "iii tage ohne grund angeblich aus neugierde." which is to say, he had a curiosity to know what prison life was like; so he made a breach in some law and got three days for it. it is more than likely that he never had the same curiosity again. (translation.) "e. glinicke, four days for being too eager a spectator of a row." "f. graf bismarck--27-29, ii, '74." which means that count bismarck, son of the great statesman, was a prisoner two days in 1874. (translation.) "r. diergandt--for love--4 days." many people in this world have caught it heavier than for the same indiscretion. this one is terse. i translate: "four weeks for misinterpreted gallantry." i wish the sufferer had explained a little more fully. a four-week term is a rather serious matter. there were many uncomplimentary references, on the walls, to a certain unpopular dignitary. one sufferer had got three days for not saluting him. another had "here two days slept and three nights lain awake," on account of this same "dr. k." in one place was a picture of dr. k. hanging on a gallows. here and there, lonesome prisoners had eased the heavy time by altering the records left by predecessors. leaving the name standing, and the date and length of the captivity, they had erased the description of the misdemeanor, and written in its place, in staring capitals, "for theft!" or "for murder!" or some other gaudy crime. in one place, all by itself, stood this blood-curdling word: "rache!" [1] 1. "revenge!" there was no name signed, and no date. it was an inscription well calculated to pique curiosity. one would greatly like to know the nature of the wrong that had been done, and what sort of vengeance was wanted, and whether the prisoner ever achieved it or not. but there was no way of finding out these things. occasionally, a name was followed simply by the remark, "ii days, for disturbing the peace," and without comment upon the justice or injustice of the sentence. in one place was a hilarious picture of a student of the green cap corps with a bottle of champagne in each hand; and below was the legend: "these make an evil fate endurable." there were two prison cells, and neither had space left on walls or ceiling for another name or portrait or picture. the inside surfaces of the two doors were completely covered with cartes de visite of former prisoners, ingeniously let into the wood and protected from dirt and injury by glass. i very much wanted one of the sorry old tables which the prisoners had spent so many years in ornamenting with their pocket-knives, but red tape was in the way. the custodian could not sell one without an order from a superior; and that superior would have to get it from his superior; and this one would have to get it from a higher one--and so on up and up until the faculty should sit on the matter and deliver final judgment. the system was right, and nobody could find fault with it; but it did not seem justifiable to bother so many people, so i proceeded no further. it might have cost me more than i could afford, anyway; for one of those prison tables, which was at the time in a private museum in heidelberg, was afterward sold at auction for two hundred and fifty dollars. it was not worth more than a dollar, or possibly a dollar and half, before the captive students began their work on it. persons who saw it at the auction said it was so curiously and wonderfully carved that it was worth the money that was paid for it. among them many who have tasted the college prison's dreary hospitality was a lively young fellow from one of the southern states of america, whose first year's experience of german university life was rather peculiar. the day he arrived in heidelberg he enrolled his name on the college books, and was so elated with the fact that his dearest hope had found fruition and he was actually a student of the old and renowned university, that he set to work that very night to celebrate the event by a grand lark in company with some other students. in the course of his lark he managed to make a wide breach in one of the university's most stringent laws. sequel: before noon, next day, he was in the college prison--booked for three months. the twelve long weeks dragged slowly by, and the day of deliverance came at last. a great crowd of sympathizing fellow-students received him with a rousing demonstration as he came forth, and of course there was another grand lark--in the course of which he managed to make a wide breach of the city's most stringent laws. sequel: before noon, next day, he was safe in the city lockup--booked for three months. this second tedious captivity drew to an end in the course of time, and again a great crowd of sympathizing fellow students gave him a rousing reception as he came forth; but his delight in his freedom was so boundless that he could not proceed soberly and calmly, but must go hopping and skipping and jumping down the sleety street from sheer excess of joy. sequel: he slipped and broke his leg, and actually lay in the hospital during the next three months! when he at last became a free man again, he said he believed he would hunt up a brisker seat of learning; the heidelberg lectures might be good, but the opportunities of attending them were too rare, the educational process too slow; he said he had come to europe with the idea that the acquirement of an education was only a matter of time, but if he had averaged the heidelberg system correctly, it was rather a matter of eternity. appendix d the awful german language a little learning makes the whole world kin. --proverbs xxxii, 7. i went often to look at the collection of curiosities in heidelberg castle, and one day i surprised the keeper of it with my german. i spoke entirely in that language. he was greatly interested; and after i had talked a while he said my german was very rare, possibly a "unique"; and wanted to add it to his museum. if he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it. harris and i had been hard at work on our german during several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the mean time. a person who has not studied german can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is. surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. one is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, "let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions." he runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. so overboard he goes again, to hunt for another ararat and find another quicksand. such has been, and continues to be, my experience. every time i think i have got one of these four confusing "cases" where i am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. for instance, my book inquires after a certain bird--(it is always inquiring after things which are of no sort of no consequence to anybody): "where is the bird?" now the answer to this question--according to the book--is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account of the rain. of course no bird would do that, but then you must stick to the book. very well, i begin to cipher out the german for that answer. i begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the german idea. i say to myself, "regen (rain) is masculine--or maybe it is feminine--or possibly neuter--it is too much trouble to look now. therefore, it is either der (the) regen, or die (the) regen, or das (the) regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when i look. in the interest of science, i will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine. very well--then the rain is der regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without enlargement or discussion--nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it is doing something--that is, resting (which is one of the german grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into the dative case, and makes it dem regen. however, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively,--it is falling--to interfere with the bird, likely--and this indicates movement, which has the effect of sliding it into the accusative case and changing dem regen into den regen." having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, i answer up confidently and state in german that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) den regen." then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the genitive case, regardless of consequences--and therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen des regens." n.b.--i was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there was an "exception" which permits one to say "wegen den regen" in certain peculiar and complex circumstances, but that this exception is not extended to anything but rain. there are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. an average sentence, in a german newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech--not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary--six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam--that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses, making pens with pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it--after which comes the verb, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb--merely by way of ornament, as far as i can make out--the writer shovels in "haben sind gewesen gehabt haven geworden sein," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. i suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's signature--not necessary, but pretty. german books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your head--so as to reverse the construction--but i think that to learn to read and understand a german newspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner. yet even the german books are not entirely free from attacks of the parenthesis distemper--though they are usually so mild as to cover only a few lines, and therefore when you at last get down to the verb it carries some meaning to your mind because you are able to remember a good deal of what has gone before. now here is a sentence from a popular and excellent german novel--which a slight parenthesis in it. i will make a perfectly literal translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for the assistance of the reader--though in the original there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he can: "but when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-coverednow-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) government counselor's wife met," etc., etc. [1] 1. wenn er aber auf der strasse der in sammt und seide gehu"llten jetz sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode gekleideten regierungsrathin begegnet. that is from the old mamselle's secret, by mrs. marlitt. and that sentence is constructed upon the most approved german model. you observe how far that verb is from the reader's base of operations; well, in a german newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page; and i have heard that sometimes after stringing along the exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting to the verb at all. of course, then, the reader is left in a very exhausted and ignorant state. we have the parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one may see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers: but with us it is the mark and sign of an unpracticed writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas with the germans it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen and of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual fog which stands for clearness among these people. for surely it is not clearness--it necessarily can't be clearness. even a jury would have penetration enough to discover that. a writer's ideas must be a good deal confused, a good deal out of line and sequence, when he starts out to say that a man met a counselor's wife in the street, and then right in the midst of this so simple undertaking halts these approaching people and makes them stand still until he jots down an inventory of the woman's dress. that is manifestly absurd. it reminds a person of those dentists who secure your instant and breathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on it with the forceps, and then stand there and drawl through a tedious anecdote before they give the dreaded jerk. parentheses in literature and dentistry are in bad taste. the germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? these things are called "separable verbs." the german grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. a favorite one is reiste ab--which means departed. here is an example which i culled from a novel and reduced to english: "the trunks being now ready, he deafter kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, parted." however, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs. one is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it. personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. for instance, the same sound, sie, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six--and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. but mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. this explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, i generally try to kill him, if a stranger. now observe the adjective. here was a case where simplicity would have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, the inventor of this language complicated it all he could. when we wish to speak of our "good friend or friends," in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form and have no trouble or hard feeling about it; but with the german tongue it is different. when a german gets his hands on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on declining it until the common sense is all declined out of it. it is as bad as latin. he says, for instance: singular nominative--mein guter freund, my good friend. genitives--meines guten freundes, of my good friend. dative--meinem guten freund, to my good friend. accusative--meinen guten freund, my good friend. plural n.--meine guten freunde, my good friends. g.--meiner guten freunde, of my good friends. d.--meinen guten freunden, to my good friends. a.--meine guten freunde, my good friends. now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations, and see how soon he will be elected. one might better go without friends in germany than take all this trouble about them. i have shown what a bother it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object is feminine, and still another when the object is neuter. now there are more adjectives in this language than there are black cats in switzerland, and they must all be as elaborately declined as the examples above suggested. difficult?--troublesome?--these words cannot describe it. i heard a californian student in heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one german adjective. the inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure in complicating it in every way he could think of. for instance, if one is casually referring to a house, haus, or a horse, pferd, or a dog, hund, he spells these words as i have indicated; but if he is referring to them in the dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary e and spells them hause, pferde, hunde. so, as an added e often signifies the plural, as the s does with us, the new student is likely to go on for a month making twins out of a dative dog before he discovers his mistake; and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog in the dative singular when he really supposed he was talking plural--which left the law on the seller's side, of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore a suit for recovery could not lie. in german, all the nouns begin with a capital letter. now that is a good idea; and a good idea, in this language, is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness. i consider this capitalizing of nouns a good idea, because by reason of it you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute you see it. you fall into error occasionally, because you mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing, and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning out of it. german names almost always do mean something, and this helps to deceive the student. i translated a passage one day, which said that "the infuriated tigress broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest" (tannenwald). when i was girding up my loins to doubt this, i found out that tannenwald in this instance was a man's name. every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. there is no other way. to do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. in german, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. see how it looks in print--i translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the german sunday-school books: "gretchen. wilhelm, where is the turnip? "wilhelm. she has gone to the kitchen. "gretchen. where is the accomplished and beautiful english maiden? wilhelm. it has gone to the opera." to continue with the german genders: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female--tomcats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it--for in germany all the women either male heads or sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sex at all. the inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay. now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in germany a man may think he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter closely, he is bound to have his doubts; he finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture; and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with the thought that he can at least depend on a third of this mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second thought will quickly remind him that in this respect he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land. in the german it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a woman is a female; but a wife (weib) is not--which is unfortunate. a wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish is he, his scales are she, but a fishwife is neither. to describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description; that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. a german speaks of an englishman as the engla"nder; to change the sex, he adds inn, and that stands for englishwoman-engla"nderinn. that seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a german; so he precedes the word with that article which indicates that the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die engla"nderinn,"--which means "the she-englishwoman." i consider that that person is over-described. well, after the student has learned the sex of a great number of nouns, he is still in a difficulty, because he finds it impossible to persuade his tongue to refer to things as "he" and "she," and "him" and "her," which it has been always accustomed to refer to it as "it." when he even frames a german sentence in his mind, with the hims and hers in the right places, and then works up his courage to the utterance-point, it is no use-the moment he begins to speak his tongue files the track and all those labored males and females come out as "its." and even when he is reading german to himself, he always calls those things "it," where as he ought to read in this way: tale of the fishwife and its sad fate [2] 2. i capitalize the nouns, in the german (and ancient english) fashion. it is a bleak day. hear the rain, how he pours, and the hail, how he rattles; and see the snow, how he drifts along, and of the mud, how deep he is! ah the poor fishwife, it is stuck fast in the mire; it has dropped its basket of fishes; and its hands have been cut by the scales as it seized some of the falling creatures; and one scale has even got into its eye. and it cannot get her out. it opens its mouth to cry for help; but if any sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the storm. and now a tomcat has got one of the fishes and she will surely escape with him. no, she bites off a fin, she holds her in her mouth--will she swallow her? no, the fishwife's brave mother-dog deserts his puppies and rescues the fin--which he eats, himself, as his reward. o, horror, the lightning has struck the fish-basket; he sets him on fire; see the flame, how she licks the doomed utensil with her red and angry tongue; now she attacks the helpless fishwife's foot--she burns him up, all but the big toe, and even she is partly consumed; and still she spreads, still she waves her fiery tongues; she attacks the fishwife's leg and destroys it; she attacks its hand and destroys her also; she attacks the fishwife's leg and destroys her also; she attacks its body and consumes him; she wreathes herself about its heart and it is consumed; next about its breast, and in a moment she is a cinder; now she reaches its neck--he goes; now its chin-it goes; now its nose--she goes. in another moment, except help come, the fishwife will be no more. time presses--is there none to succor and save? yes! joy, joy, with flying feet the she-englishwoman comes! but alas, the generous she-female is too late: where now is the fated fishwife? it has ceased from its sufferings, it has gone to a better land; all that is left of it for its loved ones to lament over, is this poor smoldering ash-heap. ah, woeful, woeful ash-heap! let us take him up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly shovel, and bear him to his long rest, with the prayer that when he rises again it will be a realm where he will have one good square responsible sex, and have it all to himself, instead of having a mangy lot of assorted sexes scattered all over him in spots. ----------there, now, the reader can see for himself that this pronoun business is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue. i suppose that in all languages the similarities of look and sound between words which have no similarity in meaning are a fruitful source of perplexity to the foreigner. it is so in our tongue, and it is notably the case in the german. now there is that troublesome word verma"hlt: to me it has so close a resemblance--either real or fancied--to three or four other words, that i never know whether it means despised, painted, suspected, or married; until i look in the dictionary, and then i find it means the latter. there are lots of such words and they are a great torment. to increase the difficulty there are words which seem to resemble each other, and yet do not; but they make just as much trouble as if they did. for instance, there is the word vermiethen (to let, to lease, to hire); and the word verheirathen (another way of saying to marry). i heard of an englishman who knocked at a man's door in heidelberg and proposed, in the best german he could command, to "verheirathen" that house. then there are some words which mean one thing when you emphasize the first syllable, but mean something very different if you throw the emphasis on the last syllable. for instance, there is a word which means a runaway, or the act of glancing through a book, according to the placing of the emphasis; and another word which signifies to associate with a man, or to avoid him, according to where you put the emphasis--and you can generally depend on putting it in the wrong place and getting into trouble. there are some exceedingly useful words in this language. schlag, for example; and zug. there are three-quarters of a column of schlags in the dictonary, and a column and a half of zugs. the word schlag means blow, stroke, dash, hit, shock, clap, slap, time, bar, coin, stamp, kind, sort, manner, way, apoplexy, wood-cutting, enclosure, field, forest-clearing. this is its simple and exact meaning--that is to say, its restricted, its fettered meaning; but there are ways by which you can set it free, so that it can soar away, as on the wings of the morning, and never be at rest. you can hang any word you please to its tail, and make it mean anything you want to. you can begin with schlag-ader, which means artery, and you can hang on the whole dictionary, word by word, clear through the alphabet to schlag-wasser, which means bilge-water--and including schlag-mutter, which means mother-in-law. just the same with zug. strictly speaking, zug means pull, tug, draught, procession, march, progress, flight, direction, expedition, train, caravan, passage, stroke, touch, line, flourish, trait of character, feature, lineament, chess-move, organ-stop, team, whiff, bias, drawer, propensity, inhalation, disposition: but that thing which it does not mean--when all its legitimate pennants have been hung on, has not been discovered yet. one cannot overestimate the usefulness of schlag and zug. armed just with these two, and the word also, what cannot the foreigner on german soil accomplish? the german word also is the equivalent of the english phrase "you know," and does not mean anything at all--in talk, though it sometimes does in print. every time a german opens his mouth an also falls out; and every time he shuts it he bites one in two that was trying to get out. now, the foreigner, equipped with these three noble words, is master of the situation. let him talk right along, fearlessly; let him pour his indifferent german forth, and when he lacks for a word, let him heave a schlag into the vacuum; all the chances are that it fits it like a plug, but if it doesn't let him promptly heave a zug after it; the two together can hardly fail to bung the hole; but if, by a miracle, they should fail, let him simply say also! and this will give him a moment's chance to think of the needful word. in germany, when you load your conversational gun it is always best to throw in a schlag or two and a zug or two, because it doesn't make any difference how much the rest of the charge may scatter, you are bound to bag something with them. then you blandly say also, and load up again. nothing gives such an air of grace and elegance and unconstraint to a german or an english conversation as to scatter it full of "also's" or "you knows." in my note-book i find this entry: july 1.--in the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen syllables was successfully removed from a patient--a north german from near hamburg; but as most unfortunately the surgeons had opened him in the wrong place, under the impression that he contained a panorama, he died. the sad event has cast a gloom over the whole community. that paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about one of the most curious and notable features of my subject--the length of german words. some german words are so long that they have a perspective. observe these examples: freundschaftsbezeigungen. dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten. stadtverordnetenversammlungen. these things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. and they are not rare; one can open a german newspaper at any time and see them marching majestically across the page--and if he has any imagination he can see the banners and hear the music, too. they impart a martial thrill to the meekest subject. i take a great interest in these curiosities. whenever i come across a good one, i stuff it and put it in my museum. in this way i have made quite a valuable collection. when i get duplicates, i exchange with other collectors, and thus increase the variety of my stock. here rare some specimens which i lately bought at an auction sale of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter: generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen. alterthumswissenschaften. kinderbewahrungsanstalten. unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen. wiedererstellungbestrebungen. waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen. of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape--but at the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or tunnel through it. so he resorts to the dictionary for help, but there is no help there. the dictionary must draw the line somewhere--so it leaves this sort of words out. and it is right, because these long things are hardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor of them ought to have been killed. they are compound words with the hyphens left out. the various words used in building them are in the dictionary, but in a very scattered condition; so you can hunt the materials out, one by one, and get at the meaning at last, but it is a tedious and harassing business. i have tried this process upon some of the above examples. "freundshaftsbezeigungen" seems to be "friendship demonstrations," which is only a foolish and clumsy way of saying "demonstrations of friendship." "unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen" seems to be "independencedeclarations," which is no improvement upon "declarations of independence," so far as i can see. "generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen" seems to be "general-statesrepresentativesmeetings," as nearly as i can get at it--a mere rhythmical, gushy euphuism for "meetings of the legislature," i judge. we used to have a good deal of this sort of crime in our literature, but it has gone out now. we used to speak of a things as a "never-to-be-forgotten" circumstance, instead of cramping it into the simple and sufficient word "memorable" and then going calmly about our business as if nothing had happened. in those days we were not content to embalm the thing and bury it decently, we wanted to build a monument over it. but in our newspapers the compounding-disease lingers a little to the present day, but with the hyphens left out, in the german fashion. this is the shape it takes: instead of saying "mr. simmons, clerk of the county and district courts, was in town yesterday," the new form put it thus: "clerk of the county and district courts simmons was in town yesterday." this saves neither time nor ink, and has an awkward sound besides. one often sees a remark like this in our papers: "mrs. assistant district attorney johnson returned to her city residence yesterday for the season." that is a case of really unjustifiable compounding; because it not only saves no time or trouble, but confers a title on mrs. johnson which she has no right to. but these little instances are trifles indeed, contrasted with the ponderous and dismal german system of piling jumbled compounds together. i wish to submit the following local item, from a mannheim journal, by way of illustration: "in the daybeforeyesterdayshortlyaftereleveno'clock night, the inthistownstandingtavern called 'the wagoner' was downburnt. when the fire to the onthedownburninghouseresting stork's nest reached, flew the parent storks away. but when the bytheraging, firesurrounded nest itself caught fire, straightway plunged the quickreturning mother-stork into the flames and died, her wings over her young ones outspread." even the cumbersome german construction is not able to take the pathos out of that picture--indeed, it somehow seems to strengthen it. this item is dated away back yonder months ago. i could have used it sooner, but i was waiting to hear from the father-stork. i am still waiting. "also!" if i had not shown that the german is a difficult language, i have at least intended to do so. i have heard of an american student who was asked how he was getting along with his german, and who answered promptly: "i am not getting along at all. i have worked at it hard for three level months, and all i have got to show for it is one solitary german phrase--'zwei glas'" (two glasses of beer). he paused for a moment, reflectively; then added with feeling: "but i've got that solid!" and if i have not also shown that german is a harassing and infuriating study, my execution has been at fault, and not my intent. i heard lately of a worn and sorely tried american student who used to fly to a certain german word for relief when he could bear up under his aggravations no longer--the only word whose sound was sweet and precious to his ear and healing to his lacerated spirit. this was the word damit. it was only the sound that helped him, not the meaning; [3] and so, at last, when he learned that the emphasis was not on the first syllable, his only stay and support was gone, and he faded away and died. 3. it merely means, in its general sense, "herewith." i think that a description of any loud, stirring, tumultuous episode must be tamer in german than in english. our descriptive words of this character have such a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their german equivalents do seem so thin and mild and energyless. boom, burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder, explosion; howl, cry, shout, yell, groan; battle, hell. these are magnificent words; the have a force and magnitude of sound befitting the things which they describe. but their german equivalents would be ever so nice to sing the children to sleep with, or else my awe-inspiring ears were made for display and not for superior usefulness in analyzing sounds. would any man want to die in a battle which was called by so tame a term as a schlacht? or would not a comsumptive feel too much bundled up, who was about to go out, in a shirt-collar and a seal-ring, into a storm which the bird-song word gewitter was employed to describe? and observe the strongest of the several german equivalents for explosion--ausbruch. our word toothbrush is more powerful than that. it seems to me that the germans could do worse than import it into their language to describe particularly tremendous explosions with. the german word for hell--ho"lle--sounds more like helly than anything else; therefore, how necessary chipper, frivolous, and unimpressive it is. if a man were told in german to go there, could he really rise to thee dignity of feeling insulted? having pointed out, in detail, the several vices of this language, i now come to the brief and pleasant task of pointing out its virtues. the capitalizing of the nouns i have already mentioned. but far before this virtue stands another--that of spelling a word according to the sound of it. after one short lesson in the alphabet, the student can tell how any german word is pronounced without having to ask; whereas in our language if a student should inquire of us, "what does b, o, w, spell?" we should be obliged to reply, "nobody can tell what it spells when you set if off by itself; you can only tell by referring to the context and finding out what it signifies--whether it is a thing to shoot arrows with, or a nod of one's head, or the forward end of a boat." there are some german words which are singularly and powerfully effective. for instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful, and affectionate home life; those which deal with love, in any and all forms, from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward the passing stranger, clear up to courtship; those which deal with outdoor nature, in its softest and loveliest aspects--with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers, the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal with any and all forms of rest, respose, and peace; those also which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairyland; and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos, is the language surpassingly rich and affective. there are german songs which can make a stranger to the language cry. that shows that the sound of the words is correct--it interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness; and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart. the germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word when it is the right one. they repeat it several times, if they choose. that is wise. but in english, when we have used a word a couple of times in a paragraph, we imagine we are growing tautological, and so we are weak enough to exchange it for some other word which only approximates exactness, to escape what we wrongly fancy is a greater blemish. repetition may be bad, but surely inexactness is worse. ----------there are people in the world who will take a great deal of trouble to point out the faults in a religion or a language, and then go blandly about their business without suggesting any remedy. i am not that kind of person. i have shown that the german language needs reforming. very well, i am ready to reform it. at least i am ready to make the proper suggestions. such a course as this might be immodest in another; but i have devoted upward of nine full weeks, first and last, to a careful and critical study of this tongue, and thus have acquired a confidence in my ability to reform it which no mere superficial culture could have conferred upon me. in the first place, i would leave out the dative case. it confuses the plurals; and, besides, nobody ever knows when he is in the dative case, except he discover it by accident--and then he does not know when or where it was that he got into it, or how long he has been in it, or how he is going to get out of it again. the dative case is but an ornamental folly--it is better to discard it. in the next place, i would move the verb further up to the front. you may load up with ever so good a verb, but i notice that you never really bring down a subject with it at the present german range--you only cripple it. so i insist that this important part of speech should be brought forward to a position where it may be easily seen with the naked eye. thirdly, i would import some strong words from the english tongue--to swear with, and also to use in describing all sorts of vigorous things in a vigorous ways. [4] 4. "verdammt," and its variations and enlargements, are words which have plenty of meaning, but the sounds are so mild and ineffectual that german ladies can use them without sin. german ladies who could not be induced to commit a sin by any persuasion or compulsion, promptly rip out one of these harmless little words when they tear their dresses or don't like the soup. it sounds about as wicked as our "my gracious." german ladies are constantly saying, "ach! gott!" "mein gott!" "gott in himmel!" "herr gott" "der herr jesus!" etc. they think our ladies have the same custom, perhaps; for i once heard a gentle and lovely old german lady say to a sweet young american girl: "the two languages are so alike--how pleasant that is; we say 'ach! gott!' you say 'goddamn.'" fourthly, i would reorganizes the sexes, and distribute them accordingly to the will of the creator. this as a tribute of respect, if nothing else. fifthly, i would do away with those great long compounded words; or require the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments. to wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are more easily received and digested when they come one at a time than when they come in bulk. intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel. sixthly, i would require a speaker to stop when he is done, and not hang a string of those useless "haven sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden seins" to the end of his oration. this sort of gewgaws undignify a speech, instead of adding a grace. they are, therefore, an offense, and should be discarded. seventhly, i would discard the parenthesis. also the reparenthesis, the re-reparenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-reparentheses, and likewise the final wide-reaching all-enclosing king-parenthesis. i would require every individual, be he high or low, to unfold a plain straightforward tale, or else coil it and sit on it and hold his peace. infractions of this law should be punishable with death. and eighthly, and last, i would retain zug and schlag, with their pendants, and discard the rest of the vocabulary. this would simplify the language. i have now named what i regard as the most necessary and important changes. these are perhaps all i could be expected to name for nothing; but there are other suggestions which i can and will make in case my proposed application shall result in my being formally employed by the government in the work of reforming the language. my philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn english (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, french in thirty days, and german in thirty years. it seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. if it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it. a fourth of july oration in the german tongue, delivered at a banquet of the anglo-american club of students by the author of this book gentlemen: since i arrived, a month ago, in this old wonderland, this vast garden of germany, my english tongue has so often proved a useless piece of baggage to me, and so troublesome to carry around, in a country where they haven't the checking system for luggage, that i finally set to work, and learned the german language. also! es freut mich dass dies so ist, denn es muss, in ein haupts:achlich degree, h:oflich sein, dass man auf ein occasion like this, sein rede in die sprache des landes worin he boards, aussprechen soll. daf:ur habe ich, aus reinische verlegenheit--no, vergangenheit--no, i mean hoflichkeit--aus reinishe hoflichkeit habe ich resolved to tackle this business in the german language, um gottes willen! also! sie mu"ssen so freundlich sein, und verzeih mich die interlarding von ein oder zwei englischer worte, hie und da, denn ich finde dass die deutsche is not a very copious language, and so when you've really got anything to say, you've got to draw on a language that can stand the strain. wenn haber man kann nicht meinem rede verstehen, so werde ich ihm sp:ater dasselbe :ubersetz, wenn er solche dienst verlangen wollen haben werden sollen sein h:atte. (i don't know what wollen haben werden sollen sein ha"tte means, but i notice they always put it at the end of a german sentence--merely for general literary gorgeousness, i suppose.) this is a great and justly honored day--a day which is worthy of the veneration in which it is held by the true patriots of all climes and nationalities--a day which offers a fruitful theme for thought and speech; und meinem freunde--no, meinen freunden--meines freundes--well, take your choice, they're all the same price; i don't know which one is right--also! ich habe gehabt haben worden gewesen sein, as goethe says in his paradise lost--ich--ich--that is to say--ich--but let us change cars. also! die anblich so viele grossbrittanischer und amerikanischer hier zusammengetroffen in bruderliche concord, ist zwar a welcome and inspiriting spectacle. and what has moved you to it? can the terse german tongue rise to the expression of this impulse? is it freundschaftsbezeigungenstadtverordnetenversammlungenfamilieneigenth:umlichkeiten? nein, o nein! this is a crisp and noble word, but it fails to pierce the marrow of the impulse which has gathered this friendly meeting and produced diese anblick--eine anblich welche ist gut zu sehen--gut fu"r die augen in a foreign land and a far country--eine anblick solche als in die gew:ohnliche heidelberger phrase nennt man ein "scho"nes aussicht!" ja, freilich natu"rlich wahrscheinlich ebensowohl! also! die aussicht auf dem k:onigsstuhl mehr gr:osser ist, aber geistlische sprechend nicht so scho"n, lob' gott! because sie sind hier zusammengetroffen, in bruderlichem concord, ein grossen tag zu feirn, whose high benefits were not for one land and one locality, but have conferred a measure of good upon all lands that know liberty today, and love it. hundert jahre voru"ber, waren die engla"nder und die amerikaner feinde; aber heut sind sie herzlichen freunde, gott sei dank! may this good-fellowship endure; may these banners here blended in amity so remain; may they never any more wave over opposing hosts, or be stained with blood which was kindred, is kindred, and always will be kindred, until a line drawn upon a map shall be able to say: "this bars the ancestral blood from flowing in the veins of the descendant!" appendix e legend of the castles called the "swallow's nest" and "the brothers," as condensed from the captain's tale in the neighborhood of three hundred years ago the swallow's nest and the larger castle between it and neckarsteinach were owned and occupied by two old knights who were twin brothers, and bachelors. they had no relatives. they were very rich. they had fought through the wars and retired to private life--covered with honorable scars. they were honest, honorable men in their dealings, but the people had given them a couple of nicknames which were very suggestive--herr givenaught and herr heartless. the old knights were so proud of these names that if a burgher called them by their right ones they would correct them. the most renowned scholar in europe, at the time, was the herr doctor franz reikmann, who lived in heidelberg. all germany was proud of the venerable scholar, who lived in the simplest way, for great scholars are always poor. he was poor, as to money, but very rich in his sweet young daughter hildegarde and his library. he had been all his life collecting his library, book and book, and he lived it as a miser loves his hoarded gold. he said the two strings of his heart were rooted, the one in his daughter, the other in his books; and that if either were severed he must die. now in an evil hour, hoping to win a marriage portion for his child, this simple old man had entrusted his small savings to a sharper to be ventured in a glittering speculation. but that was not the worst of it: he signed a paper--without reading it. that is the way with poets and scholars; they always sign without reading. this cunning paper made him responsible for heaps of things. the rest was that one night he found himself in debt to the sharper eight thousand pieces of gold!--an amount so prodigious that it simply stupefied him to think of it. it was a night of woe in that house. "i must part with my library--i have nothing else. so perishes one heartstring," said the old man. "what will it bring, father?" asked the girl. "nothing! it is worth seven hundred pieces of gold; but by auction it will go for little or nothing." "then you will have parted with the half of your heart and the joy of your life to no purpose, since so mighty of burden of debt will remain behind." "there is no help for it, my child. our darlings must pass under the hammer. we must pay what we can." "my father, i have a feeling that the dear virgin will come to our help. let us not lose heart." "she cannot devise a miracle that will turn nothing into eight thousand gold pieces, and lesser help will bring us little peace." "she can do even greater things, my father. she will save us, i know she will." toward morning, while the old man sat exhausted and asleep in his chair where he had been sitting before his books as one who watches by his beloved dead and prints the features on his memory for a solace in the aftertime of empty desolation, his daughter sprang into the room and gently woke him, saying-"my presentiment was true! she will save us. three times has she appeared to me in my dreams, and said, 'go to the herr givenaught, go to the herr heartless, ask them to come and bid.' there, did i not tell you she would save us, the thrice blessed virgin!" sad as the old man was, he was obliged to laugh. "thou mightest as well appeal to the rocks their castles stand upon as to the harder ones that lie in those men's breasts, my child. they bid on books writ in the learned tongues!--they can scarce read their own." but hildegarde's faith was in no wise shaken. bright and early she was on her way up the neckar road, as joyous as a bird. meantime herr givenaught and herr heartless were having an early breakfast in the former's castle--the sparrow's nest--and flavoring it with a quarrel; for although these twins bore a love for each other which almost amounted to worship, there was one subject upon which they could not touch without calling each other hard names-and yet it was the subject which they oftenest touched upon. "i tell you," said givenaught, "you will beggar yourself yet with your insane squanderings of money upon what you choose to consider poor and worthy objects. all these years i have implored you to stop this foolish custom and husband your means, but all in vain. you are always lying to me about these secret benevolences, but you never have managed to deceive me yet. every time a poor devil has been set upon his feet i have detected your hand in it--incorrigible ass!" "every time you didn't set him on his feet yourself, you mean. where i give one unfortunate a little private lift, you do the same for a dozen. the idea of your swelling around the country and petting yourself with the nickname of givenaught--intolerable humbug! before i would be such a fraud as that, i would cut my right hand off. your life is a continual lie. but go on, i have tried my best to save you from beggaring yourself by your riotous charities--now for the thousandth time i wash my hands of the consequences. a maundering old fool! that's what you are." "and you a blethering old idiot!" roared givenaught, springing up. "i won't stay in the presence of a man who has no more delicacy than to call me such names. mannerless swine!" so saying, herr heartless sprang up in a passion. but some lucky accident intervened, as usual, to change the subject, and the daily quarrel ended in the customary daily living reconciliation. the gray-headed old eccentrics parted, and herr heartless walked off to his own castle. half an hour later, hildegarde was standing in the presence of herr givenaught. he heard her story, and said-"i am sorry for you, my child, but i am very poor, i care nothing for bookish rubbish, i shall not be there." he said the hard words kindly, but they nearly broke poor hildegarde's heart, nevertheless. when she was gone the old heartbreaker muttered, rubbing his hands-"it was a good stroke. i have saved my brother's pocket this time, in spite of him. nothing else would have prevented his rushing off to rescue the old scholar, the pride of germany, from his trouble. the poor child won't venture near him after the rebuff she has received from his brother the givenaught." but he was mistaken. the virgin had commanded, and hildegarde would obey. she went to herr heartless and told her story. but he said coldly-"i am very poor, my child, and books are nothing to me. i wish you well, but i shall not come." when hildegarde was gone, he chuckled and said-"how my fool of a soft-headed soft-hearted brother would rage if he knew how cunningly i have saved his pocket. how he would have flown to the old man's rescue! but the girl won't venture near him now." when hildegarde reached home, her father asked her how she had prospered. she said-"the virgin has promised, and she will keep her word; but not in the way i thought. she knows her own ways, and they are best." the old man patted her on the head, and smiled a doubting smile, but he honored her for her brave faith, nevertheless. ii next day the people assembled in the great hall of the ritter tavern, to witness the auction--for the proprietor had said the treasure of germany's most honored son should be bartered away in no meaner place. hildegarde and her father sat close to the books, silent and sorrowful, and holding each other's hands. there was a great crowd of people present. the bidding began-"how much for this precious library, just as it stands, all complete?" called the auctioneer. "fifty pieces of gold!" "a hundred!" "two hundred." "three!" "four!" "five hundred!" "five twenty-five." a brief pause. "five forty!" a longer pause, while the auctioneer redoubled his persuasions. "five-forty-five!" a heavy drag--the auctioneer persuaded, pleaded, implored--it was useless, everybody remained silent-"well, then--going, going--one--two--" "five hundred and fifty!" this in a shrill voice, from a bent old man, all hung with rags, and with a green patch over his left eye. everybody in his vicinity turned and gazed at him. it was givenaught in disguise. he was using a disguised voice, too. "good!" cried the auctioneer. "going, going--one--two--" "five hundred and sixty!" this, in a deep, harsh voice, from the midst of the crowd at the other end of the room. the people near by turned, and saw an old man, in a strange costume, supporting himself on crutches. he wore a long white beard, and blue spectacles. it was herr heartless, in disguise, and using a disguised voice. "good again! going, going--one--" "six hundred!" sensation. the crowd raised a cheer, and some one cried out, "go it, green-patch!" this tickled the audience and a score of voices shouted, "go it, green-patch!" "going--going--going--third and last call--one--two--" "seven hundred!" "huzzah!--well done, crutches!" cried a voice. the crowd took it up, and shouted altogether, "well done, crutches!" "splendid, gentlemen! you are doing magnificently. going, going--" "a thousand!" "three cheers for green-patch! up and at him, crutches!" "going--going--" "two thousand!" and while the people cheered and shouted, "crutches" muttered, "who can this devil be that is fighting so to get these useless books?--but no matter, he sha'n't have them. the pride of germany shall have his books if it beggars me to buy them for him." "going, going, going--" "three thousand!" "come, everybody--give a rouser for green-patch!" and while they did it, "green-patch" muttered, "this cripple is plainly a lunatic; but the old scholar shall have his books, nevertheless, though my pocket sweat for it." "going--going--" "four thousand!" "huzza!" "five thousand!" "huzza!" "six thousand!" "huzza!" "seven thousand!" "huzza!" "eight thousand!" "we are saved, father! i told you the holy virgin would keep her word!" "blessed be her sacred name!" said the old scholar, with emotion. the crowd roared, "huzza, huzza, huzza--at him again, green-patch!" "going--going--" "ten thousand!" as givenaught shouted this, his excitement was so great that he forgot himself and used his natural voice. he brother recognized it, and muttered, under cover of the storm of cheers-"aha, you are there, are you, besotted old fool? take the books, i know what you'll do with them!" so saying, he slipped out of the place and the auction was at an end. givenaught shouldered his way to hildegarde, whispered a word in her ear, and then he also vanished. the old scholar and his daughter embraced, and the former said, "truly the holy mother has done more than she promised, child, for she has give you a splendid marriage portion-think of it, two thousand pieces of gold!" "and more still," cried hildegarde, "for she has give you back your books; the stranger whispered me that he would none of them--'the honored son of germany must keep them,' so he said. i would i might have asked his name and kissed his hand and begged his blessing; but he was our lady's angel, and it is not meet that we of earth should venture speech with them that dwell above." appendix f german journals the daily journals of hamburg, frankfort, baden, munich, and augsburg are all constructed on the same general plan. i speak of these because i am more familiar with them than with any other german papers. they contain no "editorials" whatever; no "personals"--and this is rather a merit than a demerit, perhaps; no funny-paragraph column; no police-court reports; no reports of proceedings of higher courts; no information about prize-fights or other dog-fights, horse-races, walking-machines, yachting-contents, rifle-matches, or other sporting matters of any sort; no reports of banquet speeches; no department of curious odds and ends of floating fact and gossip; no "rumors" about anything or anybody; no prognostications or prophecies about anything or anybody; no lists of patents granted or sought, or any reference to such things; no abuse of public officials, big or little, or complaints against them, or praises of them; no religious columns saturdays, no rehash of cold sermons mondays; no "weather indications"; no "local item" unveiling of what is happening in town--nothing of a local nature, indeed, is mentioned, beyond the movements of some prince, or the proposed meeting of some deliberative body. after so formidable a list of what one can't find in a german daily, the question may well be asked, what can be found in it? it is easily answered: a child's handful of telegrams, mainly about european national and international political movements; letter-correspondence about the same things; market reports. there you have it. that is what a german daily is made of. a german daily is the slowest and saddest and dreariest of the inventions of man. our own dailies infuriate the reader, pretty often; the german daily only stupefies him. once a week the german daily of the highest class lightens up its heavy columns--that is, it thinks it lightens them up--with a profound, an abysmal, book criticism; a criticism which carries you down, down, down into the scientific bowels of the subject--for the german critic is nothing if not scientific--and when you come up at last and scent the fresh air and see the bonny daylight once more, you resolve without a dissenting voice that a book criticism is a mistaken way to lighten up a german daily. sometimes, in place of the criticism, the first-class daily gives you what it thinks is a gay and chipper essay--about ancient grecian funeral customs, or the ancient egyptian method of tarring a mummy, or the reasons for believing that some of the peoples who existed before the flood did not approve of cats. these are not unpleasant subjects; they are not uninteresting subjects; they are even exciting subjects-until one of these massive scientists gets hold of them. he soon convinces you that even these matters can be handled in such a way as to make a person low-spirited. as i have said, the average german daily is made up solely of correspondences--a trifle of it by telegraph, the rest of it by mail. every paragraph has the side-head, "london," "vienna," or some other town, and a date. and always, before the name of the town, is placed a letter or a sign, to indicate who the correspondent is, so that the authorities can find him when they want to hang him. stars, crosses, triangles, squares, half-moons, suns-such are some of the signs used by correspondents. some of the dailies move too fast, others too slowly. for instance, my heidelberg daily was always twenty-four hours old when it arrived at the hotel; but one of my munich evening papers used to come a full twenty-four hours before it was due. some of the less important dailies give one a tablespoonful of a continued story every day; it is strung across the bottom of the page, in the french fashion. by subscribing for the paper for five years i judge that a man might succeed in getting pretty much all of the story. if you ask a citizen of munich which is the best munich daily journal, he will always tell you that there is only one good munich daily, and that it is published in augsburg, forty or fifty miles away. it is like saying that the best daily paper in new york is published out in new jersey somewhere. yes, the augsburg allgemeine zeitung is "the best munich paper," and it is the one i had in my mind when i was describing a "first-class german daily" above. the entire paper, opened out, is not quite as large as a single page of the new york herald. it is printed on both sides, of course; but in such large type that its entire contents could be put, in herald type, upon a single page of the herald--and there would still be room enough on the page for the zeitung's "supplement" and some portion of the zeitung's next day's contents. such is the first-class daily. the dailies actually printed in munich are all called second-class by the public. if you ask which is the best of these second-class papers they say there is no difference; one is as good as another. i have preserved a copy of one of them; it is called the mu"nchener tages-anzeiger, and bears date january 25, 1879. comparisons are odious, but they need not be malicious; and without any malice i wish to compare this journals of other countries. i know of no other way to enable the reader to "size" the thing. a column of an average daily paper in america contains from 1,800 to 2,500 words; the reading-matter in a single issue consists of from 25,000 to 50,000 words. the reading-matter in my copy of the munich journal consists of a total of 1,654 words --for i counted them. that would be nearly a column of one of our dailies. a single issue of the bulkiest daily newspaper in the world--the london times--often contains 100,000 words of reading-matter. considering that the daily anzeiger issues the usual twenty-six numbers per month, the reading matter in a single number of the london times would keep it in "copy" two months and a half. the anzeiger is an eight-page paper; its page is one inch wider and one inch longer than a foolscap page; that is to say, the dimensions of its page are somewhere between those of a schoolboy's slate and a lady's pocket handkerchief. one-fourth of the first page is taken up with the heading of the journal; this gives it a rather top-heavy appearance; the rest of the first page is reading-matter; all of the second page is reading-matter; the other six pages are devoted to advertisements. the reading-matter is compressed into two hundred and five small-pica lines, and is lighted up with eight pica headlines. the bill of fare is as follows: first, under a pica headline, to enforce attention and respect, is a four-line sermon urging mankind to remember that, although they are pilgrims here below, they are yet heirs of heaven; and that "when they depart from earth they soar to heaven." perhaps a four-line sermon in a saturday paper is the sufficient german equivalent of the eight or ten columns of sermons which the new-yorkers get in their monday morning papers. the latest news (two days old) follows the four-line sermon, under the pica headline "telegrams"--these are "telegraphed" with a pair of scissors out of the augsburger zeitung of the day before. these telegrams consist of fourteen and two-thirds lines from berlin, fifteen lines from vienna, and two and five-eights lines from calcutta. thirty-three small-pica lines news in a daily journal in a king's capital of one hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants is surely not an overdose. next we have the pica heading, "news of the day," under which the following facts are set forth: prince leopold is going on a visit to vienna, six lines; prince arnulph is coming back from russia, two lines; the landtag will meet at ten o'clock in the morning and consider an election law, three lines and one word over; a city government item, five and one-half lines; prices of tickets to the proposed grand charity ball, twenty-three lines--for this one item occupies almost one-fourth of the entire first page; there is to be a wonderful wagner concert in frankfurt-on-the-main, with an orchestra of one hundred and eight instruments, seven and one-half lines. that concludes the first page. eighty-five lines, altogether, on that page, including three headlines. about fifty of those lines, as one perceives, deal with local matters; so the reporters are not overworked. exactly one-half of the second page is occupied with an opera criticism, fifty-three lines (three of them being headlines), and "death notices," ten lines. the other half of the second page is made up of two paragraphs under the head of "miscellaneous news." one of these paragraphs tells about a quarrel between the czar of russia and his eldest son, twenty-one and a half lines; and the other tells about the atrocious destruction of a peasant child by its parents, forty lines, or one-fifth of the total of the reading-matter contained in the paper. consider what a fifth part of the reading-matter of an american daily paper issued in a city of one hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants amounts to! think what a mass it is. would any one suppose i could so snugly tuck away such a mass in a chapter of this book that it would be difficult to find it again in the reader lost his place? surely not. i will translate that child-murder word for word, to give the reader a realizing sense of what a fifth part of the reading-matter of a munich daily actually is when it comes under measurement of the eye: "from oberkreuzberg, january 21st, the donau zeitung receives a long account of a crime, which we shortened as follows: in rametuach, a village near eppenschlag, lived a young married couple with two children, one of which, a boy aged five, was born three years before the marriage. for this reason, and also because a relative at iggensbach had bequeathed m400 ($100) to the boy, the heartless father considered him in the way; so the unnatural parents determined to sacrifice him in the cruelest possible manner. they proceeded to starve him slowly to death, meantime frightfully maltreating him--as the village people now make known, when it is too late. the boy was shut in a hole, and when people passed by he cried, and implored them to give him bread. his long-continued tortures and deprivations destroyed him at last, on the third of january. the sudden (sic) death of the child created suspicion, the more so as the body was immediately clothed and laid upon the bier. therefore the coroner gave notice, and an inquest was held on the 6th. what a pitiful spectacle was disclosed then! the body was a complete skeleton. the stomach and intestines were utterly empty; they contained nothing whatsoever. the flesh on the corpse was not as thick as the back of a knife, and incisions in it brought not one drop of blood. there was not a piece of sound skin the size of a dollar on the whole body; wounds, scars, bruises, discolored extravasated blood, everywhere--even on the soles of the feet there were wounds. the cruel parents asserted that the boy had been so bad that they had been obliged to use severe punishments, and that he finally fell over a bench and broke his neck. however, they were arrested two weeks after the inquest and put in the prison at deggendorf." yes, they were arrested "two weeks after the inquest." what a home sound that has. that kind of police briskness rather more reminds me of my native land than german journalism does. i think a german daily journal doesn't do any good to speak of, but at the same time it doesn't do any harm. that is a very large merit, and should not be lightly weighted nor lightly thought of. the german humorous papers are beautifully printed upon fine paper, and the illustrations are finely drawn, finely engraved, and are not vapidly funny, but deliciously so. so also, generally speaking, are the two or three terse sentences which accompany the pictures. i remember one of these pictures: a most dilapidated tramp is ruefully contemplating some coins which lie in his open palm. he says: "well, begging is getting played out. only about five marks ($1.25) for the whole day; many an official makes more!" and i call to mind a picture of a commercial traveler who is about to unroll his samples: merchant (pettishly).--no, don't. i don't want to buy anything! drummer.--if you please, i was only going to show you-merchant.--but i don't wish to see them! drummer (after a pause, pleadingly).--but do you you mind letting me look at them! i haven't seen them for three weeks! [end.] . the ethics part i concerning god circulated 1673 posthumously published 1677 baruch spinoza 1632 1677 ____________________________________________________________________________ jby notes: 1. the ascii text for this file, e1elwes.txt, was taken from ftp://ftp.archive.org/pub/gutenberg/etext/etext97/1spne10.txt, and (i believe) is from benedict de spinoza's "on the improvement of the understanding", "the ethics" and "correspondence" as published in dover's isbn 0-486-20250-x. 2. the text is that of the translation of "the ethics" by r. h. m. elwes. this text is "an unabridged and unaltered republication of the bohn library edition originally published by george bell and sons in 1883." 3. jby added sentence numbers and search strings. 4. sentence numbers are shown thus (yy:xx). yy = proposition number when given. xx = sentence number. 5. search strings are enclosed in [square brackets]: a. roman numeral, when given before a search string, indicates part number. if a different part, bring up that part and then search. b. include square brackets in search string. c. do not include part number in search string. d. search down with the same string to facilitate return. 6. please report any errors in the text, search formatting, or sentence numbering to jyselman@erols.com. 7. html version: part i http://www.erols.com/jyselman/e1elwes.htm ___________________________________________________________________________ table of contents: [definitions] [axioms] [postulates] [propositions:] [i] . [xi] . [xxi] . [xxxi] . [ii] . [xii] . [xxii] . [xxxii] . [iii] . [xiii] . [xxiii] . [xxxiii] . [iv] . [xiv] . [xxiv] . [xxxiv] . [v] . [xv] . [xxv] . [xxxv] . [vi] . [xvi] . [xxvi] . [xxxvi] . [vii] . [xvii] . [xxvii] . [viii] . [xviii] . [xxviii] . [ix] . [xix] . [xxix] . [x] . [xx] . [xxx] . [appendix] ____________________________________________________________________________ [definitions] [d.i] by that which is self-caused, i mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent. [d.ii] a thing is called finite after its kind, when it can be limited by another thing of the same nature; for instance, a body is called finite because we always conceive another greater body. so, also, a thought is limited by another thought, but a body is not limited by thought, nor a thought by body. [d.iii] by substance, i mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself; in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception. [d.iv] by attribute, i mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance. [d.v] by mode, i mean the modifications ("affectiones") substance, or that which exists in, and is conceived through, something other than itself. [d.vi] by god, i mean a being absolutely infinite--that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality. explanation. i say absolutely infinite, not infinite after its kind: for, of a thing infinite only after its kind, infinite attributes may be denied; but that which is absolutely infinite, contains in its essence whatever expresses reality, and involves no negation. [d.vii] that thing is called free, which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone. on the other hand, that thing is necessary, or rather constrained, which is determined by something external to itself to a fixed and definite method of existence or action. [d.viii] by eternity, i mean existence itself, in so far as it is conceived necessarily to follow solely from the definition of that which is eternal. explanation.-existence of this kind is conceived as an eternal truth, like the essence of a thing, and, therefore, cannot be explained by means of continuance or time, though continuance may be conceived without a beginning or end. ____________________________________________________________________________ [axioms] [a.i] everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else. [a.ii] that which cannot be conceived through anything else must be conceived through itself. [a.iii] from a given definite cause an effect necessarily follows; and, on the other hand, if no definite cause be granted, it is impossible that an effect can follow. [a.iv] the knowledge of an effect depends on and involves the knowledge of a cause. [a.v] things which have nothing in common cannot be understood, the one by means of the other; the conception of one does not involve the conception of the other. [a.vi] a true idea must correspond with its ideate or object. [a.vii] if a thing can be conceived as non-existing, its essence does not involve existence. ____________________________________________________________________________ [propositions:] prop. [i] substance is by nature prior to its modifications. proof.(1:1) this is clear from [d.iii] and [d.v] . prop. [ii] two substances whose attributes are different have nothing in common. proof.(2:1) also evident from [d.iii] . for each must exist in itself, and be conceived through itself; in other words, the conception of one does not imply the conception of the other. prop. [iii] things which have nothing in common cannot be one the cause of the other. proof.(3:1) if they have nothing in common, it follows that one cannot be apprehended by means of the other ([a.v] ), and, therefore, one cannot be the cause of the other ([a.iv] ). q.e.d. prop. [iv] two or more distinct things are distinguished one from the other either by the difference of the attributes of the substances, or by the difference of their modifications. proof.(4:1) everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else ([a.i] ), that is (by [d.iii] and [d.v] ), nothing is granted in addition to the understanding, except substance and its modifications. (2) nothing is, therefore, given besides the understanding, by which several things may be distinguished one from the other, except the substances, or, in other words (see [a.iv] ), their attributes and modifications. q.e.d. prop. [v] there cannot exist in the universe two or more substances having the same nature or attribute. proof.(5:1) if several distinct substances be granted, they must be distinguished one from the other, either by the difference of their attributes, or by the difference of their modifications ([iv] ). (2) if only by the difference of their attributes, it will be granted that there cannot be more than one with an identical attribute. (3) if by the difference of their modifications, as substance is naturally prior to its modifications ([i] ), it follows that setting the modifications aside, and considering substance in itself, that is truly; ([d.iii] and [d.vi] }, there cannot be conceived one substance different from another, that is (by [iv] ), there cannot be granted several substances, but one substance only. q.e.d. prop. [vi] one substance cannot be produced by another substance. proof.(6:1) it is impossible that there should be in the universe two substances with an identical attribute, i.e. which have anything common to them both ([ii] ), and, therefore ([iii] ), one cannot be the cause of another, neither can one be produced by the other. q.e.d. corollary.(6:2) hence it follows that a substance cannot be produced by anything external to itself. (3) for in the universe nothing is granted, save substances and their modifications (as appears from [a.i] and [d.iii] and [d.v] ). (4) now (by [v] ) substance cannot be produced by another substance, therefore it cannot be produced by anything external itself. q.e.d. (6:5) this is shown still more readily by the absurdity of the contradictory. (6) for, if substance be produced by an external cause, the knowledge of it would depend on the knowledge of its cause ([a.iv] ), and (by [d.iii] ) it would itself not be substance. prop. [vii] existence belongs to the nature of substance. proof.(7:1) substance cannot be produced by anything external (corollary, prop. [vi] ), it must, therefore, be its own cause, that is, its essence necessarily involves existence, or existence belongs to its nature. prop. [viii] every substance is necessarily infinite. proof.(8:1) there can be only one substance with an identical attribute, and existence follows from its nature ([vii] ); its nature, therefore, involves existence, either as finite or infinite. (2) it does not exist as finite, for (by [d.ii] ) it would then be limited by something else of the same kind, which would also necessarily exist ([vii] ); and there would be two substances with an identical attribute, which is absurd ([v] ). (3) it therefore exists as infinite. q.e.d. note [n.i](8:4) as finite existence involves a partial negation, and infinite existence is the absolute affirmation of the given nature, it follows (solely from [vii] ) that every substance is necessarily infinite. note [n.ii](8:5) no doubt it will be difficult for those who think about things loosely, and have not been accustomed to know them by their primary causes, to comprehend the demonstrations of [vii] : for such persons make no distinction between the modifications of substances and the substances themselves, and are ignorant of the manner in which things are produced; hence they attribute to substances the beginning which they observe in natural objects. (8:6) those who are ignorant of true causes, make complete confusion, think that trees might talk just as well as men, that men might be formed from stones as well as from seed; and imagine that any form might be changed into any other. (7) so, also, those who confuse the two natures, divine and human, readily attribute human passions to the deity, especially so long as they do not know how passions originate in the mind. (8:8) but, if people would consider the nature of substance, they would have no doubt about the truth of [vii] . (9) in fact, this proposition would be a universal axiom, and accounted a truism. (10) for, by substance, would be understood that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself, that is, something of which the conception requires not the conception of anything else; whereas modifications exist in something external to themselves, and a conception of them is formed by means of a conception of the thing in which they exist. (8:11) therefore, we may have true ideas of non-existent modifications; for, although they may have no actual existence apart from the conceiving intellect, yet their essence is so involved in something external to themselves that they may through it be conceived. (12) whereas the only truth substances can have, external to the intellect, must consist in their existence, because they are conceived through themselves. (8:13) therefore, for a person to say that he has a clear and distinct, that is, a true idea of a substance, but that he is not sure whether such substance exists, would be the same as if he said that he had a true idea, but was not sure whether or not it was false (a little consideration will make this plain); or if anyone affirmed that substance is created, it would be the same as saying that a false idea was true, in short, the height of absurdity. (8:14) it must, then, necessarily be admitted that the existence of substance as its essence is an eternal truth. (8:15) and we can hence conclude by another process of reasoning-that there is but one such substance. (16) i think that this may profitably be done at once; and, in order to proceed regularly with the demonstration, we must premise:- (8:17) 1. the true definition of a thing neither involves nor expresses anything beyond the nature of the thing defined. from this it follows that-(8:18) 2. no definition implies or expresses a certain number of individuals, inasmuch as it expresses nothing beyond the nature of the thing defined. (18a) for instance, the definition of a triangle expresses nothing beyond the actual nature of a triangle: it does not imply any fixed number of triangles. (8:19) 3. there is necessarily for each individual existent thing a cause why it should exist. (8:20) 4. this cause of existence must either be contained in the nature and definition of the thing defined, or must be postulated apart from such definition. (8:21) it therefore follows that, if a given number of individual things exist in nature, there must be some cause for the existence of exactly that number, neither more nor less. (22) for example, if twenty men exist in the universe (for simplicity's sake, i will suppose them existing simultaneously, and to have had no predecessors), and we want to account for the existence of these twenty men, it will not be enough to show the cause of human existence in general; we must also show why there are exactly twenty men, neither more nor less: for a cause must be assigned for the existence of each individual. (8:23) now this cause cannot be contained in the actual nature of man, for the true definition of man does not involve any consideration of the number twenty. (8:24) consequently, the cause for the existence of these twenty men, and, consequently, of each of them, must necessarily be sought externally to each individual. (8:25) hence we may lay down the absolute rule, that everything which may consist of several individuals must have an external cause. (26) and, as it has been shown already that existence appertains to the nature of substance, existence must necessarily be included in its definition; and from its definition alone existence must be deducible. (8:27) but from its definition (as we have shown, notes ii., iii.), we cannot infer the existence of several substances; therefore it follows that there is only one substance of the same nature. q.e.d. prop. [ix] the more reality or being a thing has the greater the number of its attributes ([d.iv] ). prop. [x] each particular attribute of the one substance must be conceived through itself. proof.(10:1) an attribute is that which the intellect perceives of substance, as constituting its essence ([d.iv] ), and, therefore, must be conceived through itself ([d.iii] ). q.e.d. note.(10:2) it is thus evident that, though two attributes are, in fact, conceived as distinct, that is, one without the help of the other, yet we cannot, therefore, conclude that they constitute two entities, or two different substances. (3) for it is the nature of substance that each of its attributes is conceived through itself, inasmuch as all the attributes it has have always existed simultaneously in it, and none could be produced by any other; but each expresses the reality or being of substance. (10:4) it is, then, far from an absurdity to ascribe several attributes to one substance: for nothing in nature is more clear than that each and every entity must be conceived under some attribute, and that its reality or being is in proportion to the number of its attributes expressing necessity or eternity and infinity. (5) consequently it is abundantly clear, that an absolutely infinite being must necessarily be defined as consisting in infinite attributes each of which expresses a certain eternal and infinite essence. (10:6) if anyone now ask, by what sign shall he be able to distinguish different substances, let him read the following propositions, which show that there is but one substance in the universe, and that it is absolutely infinite, wherefore such a sign would be sought for in vain. prop. [xi] god, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists. proof.(11:1) if this be denied, conceive, if possible, that god does not exist: then his essence does not involve existence. (2) but this (by [vii] ) is absurd. (3) therefore god necessarily exists. another proof.(11:4) of everything whatsoever a cause or reason must b assigned, either for its existence, or for its non-existence, e.g., if a triangle exist, a reason or cause must be granted for its existence; if, on the contrary, it does not exist, a cause must also be granted, which prevents it from existing, or annuls its existence. (5) this reason or cause must either be contained in the nature of the thing in question, or be external to it. (6) for instance, the reason for the non-existence of a square circle is indicated in its nature, namely, because it would involve a contradiction. (11:7) on the other hand, the existence of substance follows also solely from its nature, inasmuch as its nature involves existence. (see [vii] ) (11:8) but the reason for the existence of a triangle or a circle does not follow from the nature of those figures, but from the order of universal nature in extension. (9) from the latter it must follow, either that a triangle necessarily exists, or that it is impossible that it should exist. (11:10) so much is self-evident. (11) it follows therefrom that a thing necessarily exists, if no cause or reason be granted which prevents it existence. (11:12) if, then, no cause or reason can be given, which prevents the existence of god, or which destroys his existence, we must certainly conclude that he necessarily does exist. (13) if such a reason or cause hould be given, it must either be drawn from the very nature of god, or be external to him, that is, drawn from another substance of another nature. (11:14) for if it were of the same nature, god, by that very fact, would be admitted to exist. (15) but substance of another nature could have nothing in common with god (by [ii] ), and therefore would be unable either to cause or to destroy his existence. (11:16) as, then, a reason or cause which would annul the divine existence cannot be drawn from anything external to the divine nature, such cause must, perforce, if god does not exist, be drawn from god's own nature, which would involve a contradiction. (17) to make such an affirmation about a being absolutely infinite and supremely perfect, is absurd; therefore, neither in the nature of god; nor externally to his nature, can a cause or reason be assigned which would annul his existence. (11:18) therefore, god necessarily exists. q.e.d. another proof.(11:19) the potentiality of non-existence is a negation of power, and contrariwise the potentiality of existence is a power, as is obvious. (20) if, then, that which necessarily exists is nothing but finite beings, such finite beings are more powerful than a being absolutely infinite, which is obviously absurd; therefore, either nothing exists, or else a being absolutely infinite necessarily exists also. (11:21) now we exist either in ourselves, or in something else which necessarily exists (see [a.i] and [vii] ) (22) therefore a being absolutely infinite, in other words, god ([d.vi] ), necessarily exists. q.e.d. note. (11:23) in this last proof, i have purposely shown god's existence a posteriori, so that the proof might be more easily followed, not because, from the same premises, god's existence does not follow a priori. (11:24) for, as the potentiality of existence is a power, it follows that, in proportion as reality increases in the nature of a thing, so also will it increase its strength for existence. (25) therefore a being absolutely infinite, such as god, has from himself an absolutely infinite power of existence, and hence he does absolutely exist. (26) perhaps there will be many who will be unable to see the force of this proof, inasmuch as they are accustomed only to consider those things which flow from external causes. (27) of such things, they see that those which quickly come to pass, that is, quickly come into existence, quickly also disappear; whereas they regard as more difficult of accomplishment, that is, not so easily brought into existence, those things which they conceive as more complicated. (11:28) however, to do away with this misconception, i need not here show the measure of truth in the proverb, "what comes quickly, goes quickly," nor discuss whether, from the point of view of universal nature, all things are equally easy, or otherwise: i need only remark, that i am not here speaking of things, which come to pass through causes external to themselves, but only of substances which (by [vi] ) cannot be produced by any external cause. (29) things which are produced by external causes, whether they consist of many parts or few, owe whatsoever perfection or reality they possess solely to the efficacy of their external cause, and therefore their existence arises solely from the perfection of their external cause, not from their own. (11:30) contrariwise, whatsoever perfection is possessed by substance is due to no external cause; wherefore the existence of substance must arise solely from its own nature, which is nothing else but its essence. (31) thus, the perfection of a thing does not annul its existence, but, on the contrary, asserts it. (11:32) imperfection, on the other hand, does annul it; therefore we cannot be more certain of the existence of anything, than of the existence of a being absolutely infinite or perfect--that is, of god. (33) for inasmuch as his essence excludes all imperfection, and involves absolute perfection, all cause for doubt concerning his existence is done away, and the utmost certainty on the question is given. (11:34) this, i think, will be evident to every moderately attentive reader. prop. [xii] no attribute of substance can be conceived from which it would follow that substance can be divided. proof.(12:1) the parts into which substance as thus conceived would be divided, either will retain the nature of substance, or they will not. (2) if the former, then (by [viii] ) each part will necessarily be infinite, and (by [vi] ) self-caused, and (by [v] ) will perforce consist of a different attribute, so that, in that case, several substances could be formed out of one substance, which (by [vi] ) is absurd. (12:3) moreover, the parts (by [ii] ) would have nothing in common with their whole, and the whole (by [d.iv] and [x] ) could both exist and be conceived without its parts, which everyone will admit to be absurd. (4) if we adopt the second alternative, namely, that the parts will not retain the nature of substance, then, if the whole substance were divided into equal parts, it would lose the nature of substance, and would cease to exist, which (by [vii] ) is absurd. prop. [xiii] substance absolutely infinite is indivisible. proof.(13:1) if it could be divided, the parts into which it was divided would either retain the nature of absolutely infinite substance, or they would not. (2) if the former, we should have several substances of the same nature, which (by [v] ) is absurd. (3) if the latter, then (by [vii] ) substance absolutely infinite could cease to exist, which ([xi] ) is also absurd. corollary.(13:4) it follows that no substance, and consequently no extended substance, in so far as it is substance, is divisible. note.(13:5) the indivisibility of substance may be more easily understood as follows. (6) the nature of substance can only be conceived as infinite, and by a part of substance, nothing else can be understood than finite substance, which (by [viii] ) involves a manifest contradiction. prop. [xiv] besides god no substance can be granted or conceived. proof.(14:1) as god is a being absolutely infinite, of whom no attribute that expresses the essence of substance can be denied (by [d.vi] ), and he necessarily exists (by [xi] ); if any substance besides god were granted it would have to be explained by some attribute of god, and thus two substances with the same attribute would exist, which (by [v] ) is absurd; therefore, besides god no substance can be granted, or consequently, be conceived. (14:2) if it could be conceived, it would necessarily have to be conceived as existent; but this (by the first part of this proof) is absurd. (3) therefore, besides god no substance can be granted or conceived. q.e.d. corollary i.(14:4) clearly, therefore: 1. god is one, that is (by [d.vi] ) only one substance can be granted in the universe, and that substance is absolutely infinite, as we have already indicated (in the note to [x] ). corollary ii.(14:5) it follows: 2. that extension and thought are either attributes of god or (by [a.i] ) accidents (affectiones) of the attributes of god. prop. [xv] whatsoever is, is in god, and without god nothing can be, or be conceived. proof.(15:1) besides god, no substance is granted or can be conceived (by [xiv] ), that is (by [d.iii] ) nothing which is in itself and is conceived through itself. (2) but modes (by [d.v] ) can neither be, nor be conceived without substance; wherefore they can only be in the divine nature, and can only through it be conceived. (3) but substances and modes form the sum total of existence (by [a.i] ), therefore, without god nothing can be, or be conceived. q.e.d. note.(15:4) some assert that god, like a man, consists of body and mind, and is susceptible of passions. (5) how far such persons have strayed from the truth is sufficiently evident from what has been said. (6) but these i pass over. (7) for all who have in anywise reflected on the divine nature deny that god has a body. (8) of this they find excellent proof in the fact that we understand by body a definite quantity, so long, so broad, so deep, bounded by a certain shape, and it is the height of absurdity to predicate such a thing of god, a being absolutely infinite. (15:9) but meanwhile by the other reasons with which they try to prove their point, they show that they think corporeal or extended substance wholly apart from the divine nature, and say it was created by god. (10) wherefrom the divine nature can have been created, they are wholly ignorant; thus they clearly show, that they do not know the meaning of their own words. (15:11) i myself have proved sufficiently clearly, at any rate in my own judgment (coroll. [vi] , and note 2, [viii] ), that no substance can be produced or created by anything other than itself. (12) further, i showed (in [xiv] ), that besides god no substance can be granted or conceived. (15:13) hence we drew the conclusion that extended substance is one of the infinite attributes of god. (14) however, in order to explain more fully, i will refute the arguments of my adversaries, which all start from the following points:- (15:15) extended substance, in so far as it is substance, consists, as they think, in parts, wherefore they deny that it can be infinite, or, consequently, that it can appertain to god. (16) this they illustrate with many examples, of which i will take one or two. (17) if extended substance, they say, is infinite, let it be conceived to be divided into two parts each part will then be either finite or infinite. (18) if the former, then infinite substance is composed of two finite parts, which is absurd. (19) if the latter, then one infinite will be twice as large as another infinite, which is also absurd. (15:20) further, if an infinite line be measured out in foot lengths, it will consist of an infinite number of such parts; it would equally consist of an infinite number of parts, if each part measured only an inch: therefore, one infinity would be twelve times as great as the other. (15:21) lastly, if from a single point there be conceived to be drawn two diverging lines which at first are at a definite distance apart, but are produced to infinity, it is certain that the distance between the two lines will be continually increased, until at length it changes from definite to indefinable. (22) as these absurdities follow, it is said, from considering quantity as infinite, the conclusion is drawn, that extended substance must necessarily be finite, and, consequently, cannot appertain to the nature of god. (15:23) the second argument is also drawn from god's supreme perfection. (24) god, it is said, inasmuch as he is a supremely perfect being, cannot be passive; but extended substance, in so far as it is divisible, is passive. (25) it follows, therefore, that extended substance does not appertain to the essence of god. (15:26) such are the arguments i find on the subject in writers, who by them try to prove that extended substance is unworthy of the divine nature, and cannot possibly appertain thereto. (27) however, i think an attentive reader will see that i have already answered their propositions; for all their arguments are founded on the hypothesis that extended substance is composed of parts, and such a hypothesis i have shown ([xii] , and coroll. [xiii] ) to be absurd. (15:28) moreover, anyone who reflects will see that all these absurdities (if absurdities they be, which i am not now discussing), from which it is sought to extract the conclusion that extended substance is finite, do not at all follow from the notion of an infinite quantity, but merely from the notion that an infinite quantity is measurable, and composed of finite parts; therefore, the only fair conclusion to be drawn is that infinite quantity is not measureable, and cannot be composed of finite parts. (29) this is exactly what we have already proved (in [xii] ). (15:30) wherefore the weapon which they aimed at us has in reality recoiled upon themselves. (31) if, from this absurdity of theirs, they persist in drawing the conclusion that extended substance must be finite, they will in good sooth be acting like a man who asserts that circles have the properties of squares, and, finding himself thereby landed in absurdities, proceeds to deny that circles have any centre, from which all lines drawn to the circumference are equal. (15:32) for, taking extended substance, which can only be conceived as infinite, one, and indivisible ([viii] , [v] , [xii] ) they assert, in order to prove that it is finite, that it is composed of finite parts, and that it can be multiplied and divided. (15:33) so, also, others, after asserting that a line is composed of points, can produce many arguments to prove that a line cannot be infinitely divided. (34) assuredly it is not less absurd to assert that extended substance is made up of bodies or parts, than it would be to assert that a solid is made up of surfaces, a surface of lines, and a line of points. (35) this must be admitted by all who know clear reason to be infallible, and most of all by those who deny the possibility of a vacuum. (36) for if extended substance could be so divided that its parts were really separate, why should not one part admit of being destroyed, the others remaining joined together as before? (37) and why should all be so fitted into one another as to leave no vacuum? (15:38) surely in the case of things, which are really distinct one from the other, one can exist without the other, and can remain in its original condition. (15:39) as then, there does not exist a vacuum in nature (of which anon), but all parts are bound to come together to prevent it, it follows from this also that the parts cannot be really distinguished, and that extended substance in so far as it is substance cannot be divided. (15:40) if anyone asks me the further question, why are we naturally so prone to divide quantity? (41) i answer, that quantity is conceived by us in two ways; in the abstract and superficially, as we imagine it; or as substance, as we conceive it solely by the intellect. (42) if, then, we regard quantity as it is represented in our imagination, which we often and more easily do, we shall find that it is finite, divisible, and compounded of parts; but if we regard it as it is represented in our intellect, and conceive it as substance, which it is very difficult to do, we shall then, as i have sufficiently proved, find that it is infinite, one, and indivisible. (43) this will be plain enough to all, who make a distinction between the intellect and the imagination, especially if it be remembered, that matter is everywhere the same, that its parts are not distinguishable, except in so far as we conceive matter as diversely modified, whence its parts are distinguished, not really, but modally. (15:44) for instance, water, in so far as it is water, we conceive to be divided, and its parts to be separated one from the other; but not in so far as it is extended substance; from this point of view it is neither separated nor divisible. (45) further, water, in so far as it is water, is produced and corrupted; but, in so far as it is substance, it is neither produced nor corrupted. (15:46) i think i have now answered the second argument; it is, in fact, founded on the same assumption as the first, namely, that matter, in so far as it is substance, is divisible, and composed of parts. (47) even if it were so, i do not know why it should be considered unworthy of the divine nature, inasmuch as besides god (by [xiv] ) no substance can be granted, wherefrom it could receive its modifications. (48) all things, i repeat, are in god, and all things which come to pass, come to pass solely through the laws of the infinite nature of god, and follow (as i will shortly show) from the necessity of his essence. (49) wherefore it can in nowise be said, that god is passive in respect to anything other than himself, or that extended substance is unworthy of the divine nature, even if it be supposed divisible, so long as it is granted to be infinite and eternal. (15:50) but enough of this for the present. prop. [xvi] from the necessity of the divine nature must follow an infinite number of things in infinite ways, that is, all things which can fall within the sphere of infinite intellect. proof.(16:1) this proposition will be clear to everyone, who remembers that from the given definition of any thing the intellect infers several properties, which really necessarily follow therefrom (that is, from the actual essence of the thing defined); and it infers more properties in proportion as the definition of the thing expresses more reality, that is, in proportion as the essence of the thing defined involves more reality. (16:2) now, as the divine nature has absolutely infinite attributes (by [d.vi] ), of which each expresses infinite essence after its kind, it follows that from the necessity of its nature an infinite number of things (that is, everything which can fall within the sphere of an infinite intellect) must necessarily follow. q.e.d. corollary i.(16:3) hence it follows, that god is the efficient cause of all that can fall within the sphere of an infinite intellect. corollary ii.(16:4) it also follows that god is a cause in himself and not through an accident of his nature. corollary iii.(16:5) it follows, thirdly, that god is the absolutely first cause. prop. [xvii] god acts solely by the laws of his own nature, and is not constrained by any one. proof.(17:1) we have just shown (in [xvi] ), that solely from the necessity of the divine nature, or, what is the same thing, solely from the laws of his nature, an infinite number of things absolutely follow in an infinite number of ways; and we proved (in [xv] ), that without god nothing can be, nor be conceived; but that all things are in god. (17:2) wherefore nothing can exist outside himself, whereby he can be conditioned or constrained to act. (3) wherefore god acts solely by the laws of his own nature, and is not constrained by any one. q.e.d. corollary i.(17:4) it follows: i. that there can be no cause which, either extrinsically or intrinsically, besides the perfection of his own nature, moves god to act. corollary ii.(17:5) it follows: 2. that god is the sole free cause. (17:6) for god alone exists by the sole necessity of his nature (by [xi] and [xiv] , coroll. i. ), and acts by the sole necessity of his nature, wherefore god is (by [d.vii] ) the sole free cause. q.e.d. note.(17:7) others think that god is a free cause, because he can, as they think, bring it about, that those things which we have said follow from his nature, that is, which are in his power, should not come to pass, or should not be produced by him. (8) but this is the same as if they said, that god could bring it about, that it should not follow from the nature of a triangle, that its three interior angles should not be equal to two right angles; or that from a given cause no effect should follow, which is absurd. (17:9) moreover, i will show below, without the aid of this proposition, that neither intellect nor will appertain to god's nature. (10) i know that there are many who think that they can show, that supreme intellect and free will do appertain to god's nature; for they say they know of nothing more perfect, which they can attribute to god, than that which is the highest perfection in ourselves. (11) further, although they conceive god as actually supremely intelligent, they yet do not believe, that he can bring into existence everything which he actually understands, for they think that they would thus destroy god's power. (17:12) if, they contend, god had created everything which is in his intellect, he would not be able to create anything more, and this, they think, would clash with god's omnipotence; therefore, they prefer to assert that god is indifferent to all things, and that he creates nothing except that which he has decided, by some absolute exercise of will, to create. (17:13) however, i think i have shown sufficiently clearly (by [xvi] ), that from god's supreme power, or infinite nature, an infinite number of things, that is, all things have necessarily flowed forth in an infinite number of ways, or always follow from the same necessity; in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows from eternity and for eternity, that its three interior angles are equal to two right angles. (17:14) wherefore the omnipotence of god has been displayed from all eternity, and will for all eternity remain in the same state of activity. (15) this manner of treating the question attributes to god an omnipotence, in my opinion, far more perfect. (16) for, otherwise, we are compelled to confess that god understands an infinite number of creatable things, which he will never be able to create, for, if he created all that he understands, he would, according to this showing, exhaust his omnipotence, and render himself imperfect. (17:17) wherefore, in order to establish that god is perfect, we should be reduced to establishing at the same time, that he cannot bring to pass everything over which his power extends; this seems to be an hypothesis most absurd, and most repugnant to god's omnipotence. (17:18) further (to say a word here concerning the intellect and the will which we attribute to god), if intellect and will appertain to the eternal essence of god, we must take these words in some significations quite different from those they usually bear. (19) for intellect and will, which should constitute the essence of god, would perforce be as far apart as the poles from the human intellect and will, in fact, would have nothing in common with them but the name; there would be about as much correspondence between the two as there is between the dog, the heavenly constellation, and a dog, an animal that barks. (20) this i will prove as follows: if intellect belongs to the divine nature, it cannot be in nature, as ours is generally thought to be, posterior to, or simultaneous with the things understood, inasmuch as god is prior to all things by reason of his casualty ([xvi] coroll. i.). (17:21) on the contrary, the truth and formal essence of things is as it is, because it exists by representation as such in the intellect of god; wherefore the intellect of god, in so far as it is conceived to constitute god's essence, is, in reality, the cause of things, both of their essence and of their existence. (22) this seems to have been recognized by those who have asserted, that god's intellect, god's will, and god's power, are one and the same. (17:23) as, therefore, god's intellect is the sole cause of things, namely, both of their essence and existence, it must necessarily differ from them in respect to its essence, and in respect to its existence. (17:24) for a cause differs from a thing it causes, precisely in the quality which the latter gains from the former. (17:25) for example, a man is the cause of another man's existence, not of his essence (for the latter is an eternal truth), and, therefore, the two men may be entirely similar in essence, but must be different in existence; and hence if the existence of one of them cease, the existence of the other will not necessarily cease also; but if the essence of one could be destroyed, and be made false, the essence of the other would be destroyed also. (17:26) wherefore, a thing which is the cause both of the essence and of the existence of a given effect, must differ from such effect both in respect to its essence, and also in respect to its existence. (27) now the intellect of god is the cause of both the essence and the existence of our intellect; therefore the intellect of god in so far as it is conceived to constitute the divine essence, differs from our intellect both in respect to essence and in respect to existence, nor can it in anywise agree therewith save in name, as we said before. 17:(28) the reasoning would be identical, in the case of the will, as anyone can easily see. prop. [xviii] god is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things. proof.(18:1) all things which are, are in god, and must be conceived through god (by [xv] ), therefore (by [xvi] , coroll. i.) god is the cause of those things which are in him. (2) this is our first point. (3) further, besides god there can be no substance (by [xiv] ), that is nothing in itself external to god. (4) this is our second point. god, therefore, is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things. q.e.d. prop. [xix] god, and all the attributes of god, are eternal. proof.(19:1) god (by [d.vi] ) is substance, which (by [xi] ) necessarily exists, that is (by {[vii] ) existence appertains to its nature, or (what is the same thing) follows from its definition; therefore, god is eternal (by [d.viii] ). (2) further, by the attributes of god we must understand that which (by [d.iv] ) expresses the essence of the divine substance, in other words, that which appertains to substance: that, i say, should be involved in the attributes of substance. (3) now eternity appertains to the nature of substance (as i have already shown in [vii] ); therefore, eternity must appertain to each of the attributes, and thus all are eternal. q.e.d. note.(19:4) this proposition is also evident from the manner in which (in [xi] ) (5) i demonstrated the existence of god; it is evident, i repeat, from that proof, that the existence of god, like his essence, is an eternal truth. (6) further (in [xix] of my "principles of the cartesian philosophy"), i have proved the eternity of god, in another manner, which i need not here repeat. prop. [xx] the existence of god and his essence are one and the same. proof.(20:1) god (by the last [xix] ) and all his attributes are eternal, that is (by [d.viii] ) each of his attributes expresses existence. (2) therefore the same attributes of god which explain his eternal essence, explain at the same time his eternal existence, in other words, that which constitutes god's essence constitutes at the same time his existence. (20:3) wherefore god's existence and god's essence are one and the same. q.e.d. corollary i.(20:4) hence it follows that god's existence, like his essence, is an eternal truth. corollary ii.(20:5) secondly, it follows that god, and all the attributes of god, are unchangeable. (6) for if they could be changed in respect to existence, they must also be able to be changed in respect to essence, that is, obviously, be changed from true to false, which is absurd. prop. [xxi] all things which follow from the absolute nature of any attribute of god must always exist and be infinite, or, in other words, are eternal and infinite through the said attribute. proof.(21:1) conceive, if it be possible ( supposing the proposition to be denied), that something in some attribute of god can follow from the absolute nature of the said attribute, and that at the same time it is finite, and has a conditioned existence or duration; for instance, the idea of god expressed in the attribute thought. (2) now thought, in so far as it is supposed to be an attribute of god, is necessarily (by [xi] ) in its nature infinite. (3) but, in so far as it possesses the idea of god, it is supposed finite. it cannot, however, be conceived as finite, unless it be limited by thought (by def. ii.); but it is not limited by thought itself, in so far as it has constituted the idea of god (for so far it is supposed to be finite); therefore, it is limited by thought, in so far as it has not constituted the idea of god, which nevertheless (by [xi] ) must necessarily exist. (21:4) we have now granted, therefore, thought not constituting the idea of god, and, accordingly, the idea of god does not naturally follow from its nature in so far as it is absolute thought (for it is conceived as constituting, and also as not constituting, the idea of god), which is against our hypothesis. (5) wherefore, if the idea of god expressed in the attribute thought, or, indeed, anything else in any attribute of god (for we may take any example, as the proof is of universal application) follows from the necessity of the absolute nature of the said attribute, the said thing must necessarily be infinite, which was our first point. (21:6) furthermore, a thing which thus follows from the necessity of the nature of any attribute cannot have a limited duration. (7) for if it can suppose a thing, which follows from the necessity of the nature of some attribute, to exist in some attribute of god, for instance, the idea of god expressed in the attribute thought, and let it be supposed at some time not to have existed, or to be about not to exist. (21:8) now thought being an attribute of god, must necessarily exist unchanged ( by [xi] , and [xx] , coroll. ii.); and beyond the limits of the duration of the idea of god (supposing the latter at some time not to have existed, or not to be going to exist), thought would perforce have existed without the idea of god, which is contrary to our hypothesis, for we supposed that, thought being given, the idea of god necessarily flowed therefrom. (9) therefore the idea of god expressed in thought, or anything which necessarily follows from the absolute nature of some attribute of god, cannot have a limited duration, but through the said attribute is eternal, which is our second point. (10) bear in mind that the same proposition may be affirmed of anything, which in any attribute necessarily follows from god's absolute nature. prop. [xxii] whatsoever follows from any attribute of god, in so far as it is modified by a modification, which exists necessarily and as infinite, through the said attribute, must also exist necessarily and as infinite. proof.(22:1) the proof of this proposition is similar to that of the preceding one. prop. [xxiii] every mode, which exists both necessarily and as infinite, must necessarily follow either from the absolute nature of some attribute of god, or from an attribute modified by a modification which exists necessarily, and as infinite. proof.(23:1) a mode exists in something else, through which it must be conceived ([d.v] ), that is ([xv] ), it exists solely in god, and solely through god can be conceived. (2) if, therefore, a mode is conceived as necessarily existing and infinite, it must necessarily be inferred or perceived through some attribute of god, in so far as such attribute is conceived as expressing the infinity and necessity of existence, in other words (def. viii.) eternity; that is, in so far as it is considered absolutely. (3) a mode, therefore, which necessarily exists as infinite, must follow from the absolute nature of some attribute of god, either immediately ([xxi] ) or through the means of some modification, which follows from the absolute nature of the said attribute; that is (by [xxii] ), which exists necessarily and as infinite. prop. [xxiv] the essence of things produced by god does not involve existence. proof.(24:1) this proposition is evident from ([d.i] ). (2) for that of which the nature (considered in itself) involves existence is selfcaused, and exists by the sole necessity of its own nature. corollary.(24:3) hence it follows that god is not only the cause of things coming into existence, but also of their continuing in existence, that is, in scholastic phraseology, god is cause of the being of things (essendi rerum). (4) for whether things exist, or do not exist, whenever we contemplate their essence, we see that it involves neither existence nor duration; consequently, it cannot be the cause of either the one or the other. (5) god must be the sole cause, inasmuch as to him alone does existence appertain. ([xiv] coroll. i.) q.e.d. prop. [xxv] god is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence. proof.(25:1) if this be denied, then god is not the cause of the essence of things; and therefore the essence of things can (by [a.iv] ) be conceived without god. (2) this (by [xv] ) is absurd. (3) therefore, god is the cause of the essence of things. q.e.d. note.(25:4) this proposition follows more clearly from [xvi] . (5) for it is evident thereby that, given the divine nature, the essence of things must be inferred from it, no less than their existence, in a word, god must be called the cause of all things, in the same sense as he is called the cause of himself. (6) this will be made still clearer by the following corollary. corollary.(25:7) individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of god, or modes by which the attributes of god are expressed in a fixed and definite manner. (8) the proof appears from [xv] and [d.v] . prop. [xxvi] a thing which is conditioned to act in a particular manner, has necessarily been thus conditioned by god; and that which has not been conditioned by god cannot condition itself to act. proof.(26:1) that by which things are said to be conditioned to act in a particular manner is necessarily something positive ( this is obvious ); therefore both of its essence and of its existence god by the necessity of his nature is the efficient cause ([xxv] and xvi.); this is our first point. (2) our second point is plainly to be inferred therefrom. 26:(3) for if a thing, which has not been conditioned by god, could condition itself, the first part of our proof would be false, and this, as we have shown, is absurd. prop. [xxvii] a thing, which has been conditioned by god to act in a particular way, cannot render itself unconditioned. proof.(27:1) this proposition is evident from the [a.iii] axiom. prop. [xxviii] every individual thing, or everything which is finite and has a conditioned existence, cannot exist or be conditioned to act, unless it be conditioned for existence and action by a cause other than itself, which also is finite, and has a conditioned existence; and likewise this cause cannot in its turn exist, or be conditioned to act, unless it be conditioned for existence and action by another cause, which also is finite, and has a conditioned existence, and so on to infinity. proof.(28:1) whatsoever is conditioned to exist and act, has been thus conditioned by god (by [xxvi] and [xxiv] coroll). (28:2) but that which is finite and has a conditioned existence, cannot be produced by the absolute nature of any attribute of god; for whatsoever follows from the absolute nature of any attribute of god is infinite and eternal (by [xxi] ). (28:3) it must, therefore, follow from some attribute of god, in so far as the said attribute is considered as in some way modified; for substance and modes make up the sum total of existence (by [a.i] and [d.iii] , [d.v] ), while modes are merely modifications of the attributes of god. (4) but from god, or from any of his attributes, in so far as the latter is modified by a modification infinite and eternal, a conditioned thing cannot follow. (28:5) wherefore it must follow from, or be conditioned for, existence and action by god or one of his attributes, in so far as the latter are modified by some modification which is finite and has a conditioned existence. (6) this is our first point. (7) again, this cause or this modification (for the reason by which we established the first part of this proof) must in its turn be conditioned by another cause, which also is finite, and has a conditioned existence, and again, this last by another (for the same reason); and so on (for the same reason) to infinity. q.e.d. note.(28:8) as certain things must be produced immediately by god, namely those things which necessarily follow from his absolute nature, through the means of these primary attributes, which, nevertheless, can neither exist nor be conceived without god, it follows:(28:9) 1. that god is absolutely the proximate cause of those things immediately produced by him. (10) i say absolutely, not after his kind, as is usually stated. (11) for the of god cannot either exist or be conceived without a cause ([xv] and [xxiv] , coroll.). (28:12) 2. that god cannot properly be styled the remote cause of individual things, except for the sake of distinguishing these from what he immediately produces, or rather from what follows from his absolute nature. (13) for, by remote cause, we understand a cause which is in no way conjoined to the effect. (14) but all things which are, are in god, and so depend on god, that without him they can neither be nor be conceived. prop. [xxix] nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature. proof.(29:1) whatsoever is, is in god ( [xv] ). (2) but god cannot be called a thing contingent. (3) for (by [xi] ) he exists necessarily, and not contingently. (4) further, the modes of the divine nature follow therefrom necessarily, and not contingently ([xvi] ); and they thus follow, whether we consider the divine nature absolutely or whether we consider it as in any way conditioned to act ([xxvii] ). (5) further, god is not only the cause of these modes, in so far as they simply exist (by [xxiv] coroll.), but also in so far as they are considered as conditioned for operating in a particular manner ([xxvi] ). (29:6) if they be not conditioned by god ([xxvi] ), it is impossible, and not contingent, that they should condition themselves; contrariwise, if they be conditioned by god, it is impossible, and not contingent that they should render themselves unconditioned. (29:7) wherefore all things are conditioned by the necessity of the divine nature, not only to exist, but also to exist and operate in a particular manner, and there is nothing that is contingent. q.e.d. note.(29:8) before going any further, i wish here to explain, what we should understand by nature viewed as active (natura natarans), and nature viewed as passive (natura naturata). (9) i say to explain, or rather call attention to it, for i think that, from what has been said, it is sufficiently clear, that by nature viewed as active we should understand that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself, or those attributes of substance, which express eternal and infinite essence, in other words ([xiv] coroll. i., and [xvii] coroll. ii.) god, in so far as he is considered as a free cause. (29:10) by nature viewed as passive i understand all that which follows from the necessity of the nature of god, or of any of the attributes of god, that is, all the modes of the attributes of god, in so far as they are considered as things which are in god, and which without god cannot exist or be conceived. prop. [xxx] intellect, in function (actu) finite, or in function infinite, must comprehend the attributes of god and the modifications of god, and nothing else. proof.(30:1) a true idea must agree with its object ([avi] ); in other words (obviously), that which is contained in the intellect in representation must necessarily be granted in nature. (2) but in nature (by [xiv] coroll. i.) there is no substance save god, nor any modifications save those ( [xv] ) which are in god, and cannot without god either be or be conceived. (3) therefore the intellect, in function finite, or in function infinite, must comprehend the attributes of god and the modifications of god, and nothing else. q.e.d. prop. [xxxi] the intellect in function, whether finite or infinite, as will, desire, love, etc., should be referred to passive nature and not to active nature. proof.(31:1) by the intellect we do not (obviously) mean absolute thought, but only a certain mode of thinking, differing from other modes, such as love, desire, etc., and therefore ([d.v] ) requiring to be conceived through absolute thought. (2) it must (by [xv] and [d.vi] ), through some attribute of god which expresses the eternal and infinite essence of thought, be so conceived, that without such attribute it could neither be nor be conceived. (3) it must therefore be referred to nature passive rather than to nature active, as must also the other modes of thinking. q.e.d. note.(31:4) i do not here, by speaking of intellect in function, admit that there is such a thing as intellect in potentiality: but, wishing to avoid all confusion, i desire to speak only of what is most clearly perceived by us, namely, of the very act of understanding, than which nothing is more clearly perceived. (31:5) for we cannot perceive anything without adding to our knowledge of the act of understanding. prop. [xxxii] will cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary cause. proof.(32:1) will is only a particular mode of thinking, like intellect; therefore (by [xxviii] ) no volition can exist, nor be conditioned to act, unless it be conditioned by some cause other than itself, which cause is conditioned by a third cause, and so on to infinity. (2) but if will be supposed infinite, it must also be conditioned to exist and act by god, not by virtue of his being substance absolutely infinite, but by virtue of his possessing an attribute which expresses the infinite and eternal essence of thought ( by [xxiii] ). (3) thus, however it be conceived, whether as finite or infinite, it requires a cause by which it should be conditioned to exist and act. (32:4) thus ([d.vii] ) it cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary or constrained cause. q.e.d. corollary. i.(32:5) hence it follows, first, that god does not act according to freedom of the will. corollary ii.(32:6) it follows secondly, that will and intellect stand in the same relation to the nature of god as do motion, and rest, and absolutely all natural phenomena, which must be conditioned by god ([xxix] ) to exist and act in a particular manner. (7) for will, like the rest, stands in need of a cause, by which it is conditioned to exist and act in a particular manner. (8) and although, when will or intellect be granted, an infinite number of results may follow, yet god cannot on that account be said to act from freedom of the will, any more than the infinite number of results from motion and rest would justify us in saying that motion and rest act by free will. (32:9) wherefore will no more appertains to god than does anything else in nature, but stands in the same relation to him as motion, rest, and the like, which we have shown to follow from the necessity of the divine nature, and to be conditioned by it to exist and act in a particular manner. prop. [xxxiii] things could not have been brought into being by god in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained. proof.(33:1) all things necessarily follow from the nature of god ([xvi] ), and by the nature of god are conditioned to exist and act in a particular way ([xxix] ). (2) if things, therefore, could have been of a different nature, or have been conditioned to act in a different way, so that the order of nature would have been different, god's nature would also have been able to be different from what it now is; and therefore (by [xi] ) that different nature also would have perforce existed, and consequently there would have been able to be two or more gods. (33:3) this (by [xiv] coroll. i.) is absurd. (4) therefore things could not have been brought into being by god in any other manner, etc. q.e.d. note i.(33:5) as i have thus shown, more clearly than the sun at noonday, that there is nothing to justify us in calling things contingent, i wish to explain briefly what meaning we shall attach to the word contingent; but i will first explain the words necessary and impossible. (33:6) a thing is called necessary either in respect to its essence or in respect to its cause; for the existence of a thing necessarily follows, either from its essence and definition, or from a given efficient cause. (7) for similar reasons a thing is said to be impossible; namely, inasmuch as its essence or definition involves a contradiction, or because no external cause is granted, which is conditioned to produce such an effect; but a thing can in no respect be called contingent, save in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge. (33:8) a thing of which we do not know whether the essence does or does not involve a contradiction, or of which knowing that it does not involve a contradiction, we are still in doubt concerning the existence, because the order of causes escapes us,--such a thing, i say, cannot appear to us either necessary or impossible. (9) wherefore we call it contingent or possible. note ii(33:10) it clearly follows from what we have said, that things have been brought into being by god in the highest perfection, inasmuch as they have necessarily followed from a most perfect nature. (11) nor does this prove any imperfection in god, for it has compelled us to affirm his perfection. (12) from its contrary proposition, we should clearly gather (as i have just shown), that god is not supremely perfect, for if things had been brought into being in any other way, we should have to assign to god a nature different from that, which we are bound to attribute to him from the consideration of an absolutely perfect being. (33:13) i do not doubt, that many will scout this idea as absurd, and will refuse to give their minds up to contemplating it, simply because they are accustomed to assign to god a freedom very different from that which we ([d.vii] ) have deduced. (14) they assign to him, in short, absolute free will. (15) however, i am also convinced that if such persons reflect on the matter, and duly weigh in their minds our series of propositions, they will reject such freedom as they now attribute to god, not only as nugatory, but also as a great impediment to organized knowledge. (33:16) there is no need for me to repeat what i said in the note to [xvii] . (17) but, for of my opponents, i will show further, that although it be granted that will appertains to the essence of god, it nevertheless follows from his perfection, that things could not have been by him created other than they are, or in a different order; this is easily proved, if we reflect on what our opponents themselves concede, namely, that it depends solely on the decree and will of god, that each thing is what it is. (18) if it were otherwise, god would not be the cause of all things. (19) further, that all the decrees of god have been ratified from all eternity by god himself. (33:20) if it were otherwise, god would be convicted of imperfection or change. (21) but in eternity there is no such thing as when, before, or after; hence it follows solely from the perfection of god, that god never can decree, or never could have decreed anything but what is; that (god did not exist before his decrees, and would not exist without them. (22) but, it is said, supposing that god had made a different universe, or had ordained other decrees from all eternity concerning nature and her order, we could not therefore conclude any imperfection in god. (23) but persons who say this must admit that god can change his decrees. (24) for if god had ordained any decrees concerning nature and her order, different from those which he has ordained--in other words, if he had willed and conceived something different concerning nature--he would perforce have had a different intellect from that which he has, and also a different will: (33:25) but if it were allowable to assign to god a different intellect and a different will, without any change in his essence or his perfection, what would there be to prevent him changing the decrees which he has made concerning created things, and nevertheless remaining perfect? (26) for his intellect and will concerning things created and their order are the same, in respect to his essence and perfection, however they be conceived. (33:27) further, all the philosophers whom i have read admit that god's intellect is entirely actual, and not at all potential; as they also admit that god's intellect, and god's will, and god's essence are identical, it follows that, if god had had a different actual intellect and a different will, his essence would also have been different; and thus, as i concluded at first, if things had been brought into being by god in a different way from that which has obtained, god's intellect and, will, that is (as is admitted) his essence would perforce have been different, which is absurd. (33:28) as these things could not have been brought into being by god in any but the actual way and order which has obtained; and as the truth of this proposition follows from the supreme perfection of god; we can have no sound reason for persuading ourselves to believe that god did not wish to create all the things which were in his intellect, and to create them in the same perfection as he had understood them. (33:29) but, it will be said, there is in things no perfection nor imperfection; that which is in them, and which causes them to be called perfect or imperfect, good or bad, depends solely on the will of god. (30) if god had so willed, he might have brought it about that what is now perfection should be extreme imperfection, and vice versa. (31) what is such an assertion, but an open declaration that god, who necessarily understands that which he wishes, might bring it about by his will, that he should understand things differently from the way in which he does understand them? (33:32) this (as we have just shown) is the height of absurdity. (33) wherefore, i may turn the argument against its employers, as follows: all things depend on the power of god. (34) in order that things should be different from what they are, god's will would necessarily have to be different. (35) but god's will cannot be different (as we have just most clearly demonstrated) from god's perfection. (36) therefore neither can things be different. (37) i confess that the theory which subjects all things to the will of an indifferent deity, and asserts that they are all dependent on his fiat, is less far from the truth than the theory of those, who maintain that god acts in all things with a view of promoting what is good. (38) for these latter persons seem to set up something beyond god, which does not depend on god, but which god in acting looks to as an exemplar, or which he aims at as a definite goal. (33:39) this is only another name for subjecting god to the dominion of destiny, an utter absurdity in respect to god, whom we have shown to be the first and only free cause of the essence of all things and also of their existence. (33:40) i need, therefore, spend no time in refuting such wild theories. prop. [xxxiv] god's power is identical with his essence. proof.(34:1) from the sole necessity of the essence of god it follows that god is the cause of himself ([xi] ) and of all things ([xvi] and coroll.). (2) wherefore the power of god, by which he and all things are and act, is identical with his essence. q.e.d. prop. [xxxv] whatsoever we conceive to be in the power of god, necessarily exists. proof.(35:1) whatsoever is in god's power, must (by the last [xxxiv] ) be comprehended in his essence in such a manner, that it necessarily follows therefrom, and therefore necessarily exists. q.e.d. prop. [xxxvi] there is no cause from whose nature effect does not follow. proof.(36:1) whatsoever exists expresses god's nature or essence in a given conditioned manner (by [xxv] coroll.); that is (by [xxxiv] ), whatsoever exists, expresses in a given conditioned manner god's power, which is the cause of all things, therefore an effect must (by [xvi] ) necessarily follow. q.e.d. ____________________________________________________________________________ [appendix] (ap:1) in the foregoing i have explained the nature and properties of god. (2) i have shown that he necessarily exists, that he is one: that he is, and acts solely by the necessity of his own nature; that he is the free cause of all things, and how he is so; that all things are in god, and so depend on him, that without him they could neither exist nor be conceived; lastly, that all things are pre-determined by god, not through his free will or absolute fiat, but from the very nature of god or infinite power. (ap:3) i have further, where occasion offered, taken care to remove the prejudices, which might impede the comprehension of my demonstrations. (4) yet there still remain misconceptions not a few, which might and may prove very grave hindrances to the understanding of the concatenation of things, as i have explained it above. (5) i have therefore thought it worth while to bring these misconceptions before the bar of reason. (ap:6) all such opinions spring from the notion commonly entertained, that all things in nature act as men themselves act, namely, with an end in view. (7) it is accepted as certain, that god himself directs all things to a definite goal (for it is said that god made all things for man, and man that he might worship him). (8) i will, therefore, consider this opinion, asking first why it obtains general credence, and why all men are naturally so prone to adopt it ? secondly, i will point out its falsity; and, lastly, i will show how it has given rise to prejudices about good and bad, right and wrong, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and ugliness, and the like. (9) however, this is not the place to deduce these misconceptions from the nature of the human mind: it will be sufficient here, if i assume as a starting point, what ought to be universally admitted, namely, that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, that all have the desire to seek for what is useful to them, and that they are conscious of such desire. (ap:10) herefrom it follows first, that men think themselves free, inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed them to wish and desire. (11) secondly, that men do all things for an end, namely, for that which is useful to them, and which they seek. (12) thus it comes to pass that they only look for a knowledge of the final causes of events, and when these are learned, they are content, as having no cause for further doubt. (13) if they cannot learn such causes from external sources, they are compelled to turn to considering themselves, and reflecting what end would have induced them personally to bring about the given event, and thus they necessarily judge other natures by their own. (ap:14) further, as they find in themselves and outside themselves many means which assist them not a little in their search for what is useful, for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, herbs and animals for yielding food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish, etc., they come to look on the whole of nature as a means for obtaining such conveniences. (15) now as they are aware, that they found these conveniences and did not make them they think they have cause for believing, that some other being has made them for their use. (16) as they look upon things as means, they cannot believe them to be self-created; but, judging from the means which they are accustomed to prepare for themselves, they are bound to believe in some ruler or rulers of the universe endowed with human freedom, who have arranged and adapted everything for human use. (ap:17) they are bound to estimate the nature of such rulers ( having no information on the subject) in accordance with their own nature, and therefore they assert that the gods ordained everything for the use of man, in order to bind man to themselves and obtain from him the highest honors. (ap:18) hence also it follows, that everyone thought out for himself, according to his abilities, a different way of worshipping god, so that god might love him more than his fellows, and direct the whole course of nature for the satisfaction of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice. (ap:19) thus the prejudice developed into superstition, and took deep root in the human mind; and for this reason everyone strove most zealously to understand and explain the final causes of things; but in their endeavor to show that nature does nothing in vain, i.e., nothing which is useless to man, they only seem to have demonstrated that nature, the gods, and men are all mad together. (ap:20) consider, i pray you, the result: among the many helps of nature they were bound to find some hindrances, such as storms, earthquakes, diseases, etc.: so they declared that such things happen, because the gods are angry at some wrong done them by men, or at some fault committed in their worship. (21) experience day by day protested showed by infinite examples, that good and evil fortunes fall to the lot of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their inveterate prejudice, for it was more easy for them to class such contradictions among other unknown things of whose use they were ignorant, and thus to retain their actual and innate condition of ignorance, than to destroy the whole fabric of their reasoning and start afresh. (ap:22) they therefore laid down as an axiom, that god's judgments far transcend human understanding. (ap:23) such a doctrine might well have sufficed to conceal the truth from the human race for all eternity, if mathematics had not furnished another standard of verity in considering solely the essence and properties of figures without regard to their final causes. (24) there are other reasons (which i need not mention here) besides mathematics, which might have caused men's minds to be directed to these general prejudices, and have led them to the knowledge of the truth. (ap:25) i have now sufficiently explained my first point. (26) there is no need to show at length, that nature has no particular goal in view, and that final causes are mere human figments. (27) this, i think, is already evident enough, both from the causes and foundations on which i have shown such prejudice to be based, and also from [xvi] , and the corollary of [xxxii] , and, in fact, all those propositions in which i have shown, that everything in nature proceeds from a sort of necessity, and with the utmost perfection. (28) however, i will add a few remarks, in order to overthrow this doctrine of a final cause utterly. (29) that which is really a cause it considers as an effect, and vice versa: it makes that which is by nature first to be last, and that which is highest and most perfect to be most imperfect. (ap:30) passing over the questions of cause and priority as self-evident, it is plain from [xxi] , [xxii] , [xxiii] that that effect, is most perfect which is produced immediately by god; the effect which requires for its production several intermediate causes is, in that respect, more imperfect. (31) but if those things which were made immediately by god were made to enable him to attain his end, then the things which come after, for the sake of which the first were made, are necessarily the most excellent of all. (ap:32) further, this doctrine does away with the perfection of god: for, if god acts for an object, he necessarily desires something which he lacks. (33) certainly, theologians and metaphysicians draw a distinction between the object of want and the object of assimilation; still they confess that god made all things for the sake of himself, not for the sake of creation. (ap:34) they are unable to point to anything prior to creation, except god himself, as an object for which god should act, and are therefore driven to admit (as they clearly must), that god lacked those things for whose attainment he created means, and further that he desired them. (ap:35) we must not omit to notice that the followers of this doctrine, anxious to display their talent in assigning final causes, have imported a new method of argument in proof of their theory--namely, a reduction, not to the impossible, but to ignorance; thus showing that they have no other method of exhibiting their doctrine. (36) for example, if a stone falls from a roof on to some one's head and kills him, they will demonstrate by their new method, that the stone fell in order to kill the man; for, if it had not by god's will fallen with that object, how could so many circumstances (and there are often many concurrent circumstances) have all happened together by chance? (ap:37) perhaps you will answer that the event is due to the facts that the wind was blowing, and the man was walking that way. (38) "but why," they will insist, "was the wind blowing, and why was the man at that very time walking that way?" (38a) if you again answer, that the wind had then sprung up because the sea had begun to be agitated the day before, the weather being previously calm, and that the man had been invited by a friend, they will again insist: "but why was the sea agitated, and why was the man invited at that time?" (39) so they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of god in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance. (40) so, again, when they survey the frame of the human body, they are amazed; and being ignorant of the causes of so great a work of art conclude that it has been fashioned, not mechanically, but by divine and supernatural skill, and has been so put together that one part shall not hurt another. (ap:41) hence anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. (42) such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also. (ap:43) but i now quit this subject, and pass on to my third point. (ap:44) after men persuaded themselves, that everything which is created is created for their sake, they were bound to consider as the chief quality in everything that which is most useful to themselves, and to account those things the best of all which have the most beneficial effect on mankind. (45) further, they were bound to form abstract notions for the explanation of the nature of things, such as goodness, badness, order, confusion, warmth, cold, beauty, deformity, and so on; and from the belief that they are free agents arose the further notions praise and blame, sin and merit. (ap:46) i will speak of these latter hereafter, when i treat of human nature; the former i will briefly explain here. (ap:47) everything which conduces to health and the worship of god they have called good, everything which hinders these objects they have styled bad; and inasmuch as those who do not understand the nature of things do not verify phenomena in any way, but merely imagine them after a fashion, and mistake their imagination for understanding, such persons firmly believe that there is an order in things, being really ignorant both of things and their own nature. (ap:48) when phenomena are of such a kind, that the impression they make on our senses requires little effort of imagination, and can consequently be easily remembered, we say that they are well-ordered; if the contrary, that they are ill-ordered or confused. (ap:49) further, as things which are easily imagined are more pleasing to us, men prefer order to confusion, as though there were any order in nature, except in relation to our imagination, and say that god has created all things in order; thus, without knowing it, attributing imagination to god, unless, indeed, they would have it that god foresaw human imagination, and arranged everything, so that it should be most easily imagined. (50) if this be their theory they would not, perhaps, be daunted by the fact that we find an infinite number of phenomena, far surpassing our imagination, and very many others which confound its weakness. (51) but enough has been said on this subject. (52) the other abstract notions are nothing but modes of imagining, in which the imagination is differently affected, though they are considered by the ignorant as the chief attributes of things, inasmuch as they believe that everything was created for the sake of themselves; and, according as they are affected by it, style it good or bad, healthy or rotten and corrupt. (ap:53) for instance, if the motion whose objects we see communicate to our nerves be conducive to health, the objects causing it are styled beautiful; if a contrary motion be excited, they are styled ugly. (ap:54) things which are perceived through our sense of smell are styled fragrant or fetid; it through our taste, sweet or bitter, full-flavored or insipid, if through our touch, hard or soft, rough or smooth, etc. (ap:55) whatsoever affects our ears is said to give rise to noise, sound, or harmony. (56) in this last case, there are men lunatic enough to believe that even god himself takes pleasure in harmony; and philosophers are not lacking who have persuaded themselves, that the motion of the heavenly bodies gives rise to harmony; all of which instances sufficiently show that everyone judges of things according to the state of his brain, or rather mistakes for things the forms of his imagination. (57) we need no longer wonder that there have arisen all the controversies we have witnessed and finally skepticism: for, although human bodies in many respects agree, yet in very many others they differ; so that what seems good to one seems bad to another; what seems well ordered to one seems confused to another; what is pleasing to one displeases another, and so on. (ap:58) i need not further enumerate, because this is not the place to treat the subject at length, and also because the fact is sufficiently well known. (59) it is commonly said: "so many men, so many minds; everyone is wise in his own way; brains differ as completely as palates." (ap:60) all of which proverbs show, that men judge of things according to their mental disposition, and rather imagine than understand: for, if they understood phenomena, they would, as mathematics attest, be convinced, if not attracted, by what i have urged. (ap:61) we have now perceived, that all the explanations commonly given of nature are mere modes of imagining, and do not indicate the true nature of anything, but only the constitution of the imagination; and, although they have names, as though they were entities, existing externally to the imagination, i call them entities imaginary rather than real; and, therefore, all arguments against us drawn from such abstractions are easily rebutted. (ap:62) many argue in this way. (63) if all things follow from a necessity of the absolutely perfect nature of god, why are there many imperfections in nature? such, for instance, as things corrupt to the point of putridity, loathsome deformity, confusion, evil, sin, etc. (64) but these reasoners are, as i have said, easily confuted, for the perfection of things is to be reckoned only from their own nature and power; things are not more or less perfect, according as they delight or offend human senses, or according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind. (ap:65) to those who ask why god did not so create all men, that they should be governed only by reason, i give no answer but this: because matter was not lacking to him for the creation of every degree of perfection from highest to lowest; or, more strictly, because the laws of his nature are so vast, as to suffice for the production of everything conceivable by an infinite intelligence, as i have shown in [xvi] . (ap:66) such are the misconceptions i have undertaken to note; if there are any more of the same sort, everyone may easily dissipate them for himself with the aid of a little reflection. ____________________________________________________________________________ end of "the ethics part i" "joseph b. yesselman" <jyselman@erols.com> august 25, 1997 the ethics part ii on the nature and origin of the mind circulated 1673 posthumously published 1677 baruch spinoza 1632 1677 ____________________________________________________________________________ jby notes: 1. text was scanned from benedict de spinoza's "on the improvement of the understanding", "the ethics" and "correspondence" as published in dover's isbn 0-486-20250-x. 2. the text is that of the translation of "the ethics" by r. h. m. elwes. this text is "an unabridged and unaltered republication of the bohn library edition originally published by george bell and sons in 1883." 3. jby added sentence numbers and search strings. 4. sentence numbers are shown thus (yy:xx). yy = proposition number when given. xx = sentence number. 5. search strings are enclosed in [square brackets]: a. roman numeral, when given before a search string, indicates part number. if a different part, bring up that part and then search. b. include square brackets in search string. c. do not include part number in search string. d. search down with the same string to facilitate return. 6. please report any errors in the text, search formatting, or sentence numbering to jyselman@erols.com. 7. html version: part ii http://www.erols.com/jyselman/e2elwes.htm ___________________________________________________________________________ table of contents: [preface] [definitions] [axioms] [lemmas] [postulates] [propositions:] [i] . [xi] . [xxi] . [xxxi] . [xli] . [ii] . [xii] . [xxii] . [xxxii] . [xlii] . [iii] . [xiii] . [xxiii] . [xxxiii] . [xliii] . [iv] . [xiv] . [xxiv] . [xxxiv] . [xliv] . [v] . [xv] . [xxv] . [xxxv] . [xlv] . [vi] . [xvi] . [xxvi] . [xxxvi] . [xlvi] . [vii] . [xvii] . [xxvii] . [xxxvii] . [xlvii] . [viii] . [xviii] . [xxviii] . [xxxviii] . [xlviii] . [ix] . [xix] . [xxix] . [xxxix] . [xlix] . [x] . [xx] . [xxx] . [xl] . ____________________________________________________________________________ [preface] (pr:1) i now pass on to explaining the results, which must necessarily follow from the essence of god, or of the eternal and infinite being; not, indeed, all of them (for we proved in i:[xvi] , that an infinite number must follow in an infinite number of ways), but only those which are able to lead us, as it were by the hand, to the knowledge of the human mind and its highest blessedness. ___________________________________________________________________________ [definitions] [d.i] by body i mean a mode which expresses in a certain determinate manner the essence of god, in so far as he is considered as an extended thing. (see i:[xxv] coroll.) [d.ii] i consider as belonging to the essence of a thing that, which being given, the thing is necessarily given also, and, which being removed, the thing is necessarily removed also; in other words, that without which the thing , can neither be nor be conceived. [d.iii] by idea, i mean the mental conception which is formed by the mind as a thinking thing. explanation.i say conception rather than perception, because the word perception seems to imply that the mind is passive in respect to the object; whereas conception seems to express an activity of the mind. [d.iv] by an adequate idea, i mean an idea which, in so far as it is considered in itself, without relation to the object, has all the properties or intrinsic marks of a true idea. explanation.i say intrinsic, in order to exclude that which is extrinsic, namely, the agreement between the idea and its object (ideatum). [d.v] duration is the indefinite continuance of existing. explanation.i say indefinite, because it cannot be determined through the existence itself of the existing thing, or by its efficient cause, which necessarily gives the existence of the thing, but does not take it away. [d.vi] reality and perfection i use as synonymous terms. [d.vii] by particular things, i mean things which are finite and have a conditioned existence; but if several individual things concur in one action, so as to be all simultaneously the effect of one cause, i consider them all, so far, as one particular thing. ____________________________________________________________________________ [axioms] [a.i] the essence of man does not involve necessary existence, that is, it may, in the order of nature, come to pass that this or that man does or does not exist. [a.ii] man thinks. [a.iii] modes of thinking, such as love, desire, or any other of the passions, do not take place, unless there be in the same individual an idea of the thing loved, desired, &c. but the idea can exist without the presence of any other mode of thinking. [a.iv] we perceive that a certain body is affected in many ways. [a.v] we feel and perceive no particular things, save bodies and modes of thought. [postulates] ____________________________________________________________________________ [propositions] prop.[i] thought is an attribute of god, or god is a thinking thing. proof. (1:1) particular thoughts, or this or that thought, are modes which, in a certain conditioned manner, express the nature of god (i:[xxv] coroll.). (2) god therefore possesses the attribute (i:[d.v] ) of which the concept is involved in all particular thoughts, which latter are conceived thereby. (3) thought, therefore, is one of the infinite attributes of god, which express god's eternal and infinite essence (i:[d.vi] ). (4) in other words, god is a thinking thing. q.e.d. note.(1:5) this proposition is also evident from the fact, that we are able to conceive an infinite thinking being. (6) for, in proportion as a thinking being is conceived as thinking more thoughts, so is it conceived as containing more reality or perfection. (7) therefore a being, which can think an infinite number of things in an infinite number of ways, is, necessarily, in respect of thinking, infinite. (1:8) as, therefore, from the consideration of thought alone we conceive an infinite being, thought is necessarily (i:[d.iv] and i:[d.vi] ) one of the infinite attributes of god, as we were desirous of showing. prop.[ii] extension is an attribute of god, or god is an extended thing. proof.(2:1) the proof of this proposition is similar to that of the last. prop.[iii] in god there is necessarily the idea not only of his essence, but also of all things which necessarily follow from his essence. proof. (3:1) god (by [i] of this part) can think an infinite number of things in infinite ways, or (what is the same thing, by i:[xvi] ) can form the idea of his essence, and of all things which necessarily follow there from. (2) now all that is in the power of god necessarily is. (i:[xxxv] ) (3) therefore, such an idea as we are considering necessarily is, and in god alone. q.e.d. (i:[xv] ) note. (3:4) the multitude understand by the power of god the free will of god, and the right over all things that exist, which latter are accordingly generally considered as contingent. (5) for it is said that god has the power to destroy all things, and to reduce them to nothing. (3:6) further, the power of god is very often likened to the power of kings. (7) but this doctrine we have refuted (i:[xxxii] corolls. i. and ii), and we have shown (i:[xvi] ) that god acts by the same necessity, as that by which he understands himself; in other words, as it follows from the necessity of the divine nature (as all admit), that god understands himself, so also does it follow by the same necessity, that god performs infinite acts in infinite ways. (8) we further showed (i:[xxxiv] ), that god's power is identical with god's essence in action; therefore it is as impossible for us to conceive god as not acting, as to conceive him as nonexistent. (9) if we might pursue the subject further, i could point out, that the power which is commonly attributed to god is not only human (as showing that god is conceived by the multitude as a man, or in the likeness of a man), but involves a negation of power (3:10) however, i am unwilling to go over the same ground so often. (11) i would only beg the reader again and again, to turn over frequently in his mind what i have said in from i:[xvi] to the end. (12) no one will be able to follow my meaning, unless he is scrupulously careful not to confound the power of god with the human power and right of kings. prop.[iv] the idea of god, from which an infinite number of things follow in infinite ways, can only be one. proof.(4:1) infinite intellect comprehends nothing save the attributes of god and his modifications (i:[xxx] ). (2) now god is one (i:[xiv] coroll.). (3) therefore the idea of god, wherefrom an infinite number of things follow in infinite ways, can only be one. q.e.d. prop.[v] the actual being of ideas owns god as its cause, only in so far as he is considered as a thinking thing, not in so far as he is unfolded in any other attribute; that is, the ideas both of the attributes of god and of particular things do not own as their efficient cause their objects (ideata) or the things perceived, but god himself in so far as he is a thinking thing. proof.(5:1) this proposition is evident from [iii] of this part. (2) we there drew the conclusion, that god can form the idea of his essence, and of all things which follow necessarily therefrom, solely because he is a thinking thing, and not because he is the object of his own idea. (3) wherefore the actual being of ideas owns for cause god, in so far as he is a thinking thing. it may be differently proved as follows: the actual being of ideas is (obviously) a mode of thought, that is (i:[xxv] coroll.) a mode which expresses in a certain manner the nature of god, in so far as he is a thinking thing, and therefore (i:[x] ) involves the conception of no other attribute of god, and consequently (by i:[a.iv] ) is not the effect of any attribute save thought. (4) therefore the actual being of ideas owns god as its cause, in so far as he is considered as a thinking thing, &c. q.e.d prop.[vi] the modes of any given attribute are caused by god, in so far as he is considered through the attribute of which they are modes, and not in so far as he is considered through any other attribute. proof.(6:1) each attribute is conceived through itself, without any other (i:[x] ); wherefore the modes of each attribute involve the conception of that attribute, but not of any other. (2)thus (i:[a.iv] ) they are caused by god, only in so far as he is considered through the attribute whose modes they are, and not in so far as he is considered through any other. q.e.d. corollary.(6:3) hence the actual being of things, which are not modes of thought, does not follow from the divine nature, because that nature has prior knowledge of the things. (4) things represented in ideas follow, and are derived from their particular attribute, in the same manner, and with the same necessity as ideas follow (according to what we have shown) from the attribute of thought. prop.[vii] the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. proof.(7:1) this proposition is evident from i:[a.iv] . (2) for the idea of everything that is caused depends on a knowledge of the cause, whereof it is an effect. corollary.(7:3) hence god's power of thinking is equal to his realized power of action that is, whatsoever follows from the infinite nature of god in the world of extension (formaliter), follows without exception in the same order and connection from the idea of god in the world of thought (objective). note.(7:4) before going any further, i wish to recall to mind what has been pointed out above-namely, that whatsoever can be perceived by the infinite intellect as constituting the essence of substance, belongs altogether only to one substance: consequently, substance thinking and substance extended are one and the same substance, comprehended now through one attribute, now through the other. (5) so, also, a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, though expressed in two ways. (6) this truth seems to have been dimly recognized by those jews who maintained that god, god's intellect, and the things understood by god are identical. (7:7) for instance, a circle existing in nature, and the idea of a circle existing, which is also in god, are one and the same thing displayed through different attributes. (8) thus, whether we conceive nature under the attribute of extension, or under the attribute of thought, or under any other attribute, we shall find the same order, or one and the same chain of causes that is, the same things following in either case. (7:9) i said that god is the cause of an idea-for instance, of the idea of a circle,-in so far as he is a thinking thing; and of a circle, in so far as he is an extended thing, simply because the actual being of the idea of a circle can only be perceived as a proximate cause through another mode of thinking, and that again through another, and so on to infinity; so that, so long as we consider things as modes of thinking, we must explain the order of the whole of nature, or the whole chain of causes, through the attribute of thought only. (10) and, in so far as we consider things as modes of extension, we must explain the order of the whole of nature through the attribute of extension only; and so on, in the case of other attributes. (11) wherefore of things as they are in themselves god is really the cause, inasmuch as he consists of infinite attributes. (7:12) i cannot for the present explain my meaning more clearly. prop.[viii] the ideas of particular things, or of modes, that do not exist, must be comprehended in the infinite idea of god, in the same way as the formal essences of particular things or modes are contained in the attributes of god. proof. (8:1) this proposition is evident from [vii] ; it is understood more clearly from the preceding note. corollary.(8:2) hence, so long as particular things do not exist, except in so far as they are comprehended in the attributes of god, their representations in thought or ideas do not exist, except in so far as the infinite idea of god exists; and when particular things are said to exist, not only in so far as they are involved in the attributes of god, but also in so far as they are said to continue, their ideas will also involve existence, through which they are said to continue. note.(8:3) if anyone desires an example to throw more light on this question, i shall, i fear, not be able to give him any, which adequately explains the thing of which i here speak, inasmuch as it is unique; however, i will endeavour to illustrate it as far as possible. (4) the nature of a circle is such that if any number of straight lines intersect within it, the rectangles formed by their segments will be equal to one another; thus, infinite equal rectangles are contained in a circle. (8:5) yet none of these rectangles can be said to exist, except in so far as the circle exists; nor can the idea of any of these rectangles be said to exist, except in so far as they are comprehended in the idea of the circle. (6) let us grant that, from this infinite number of rectangles, two only exist. (8:7) the ideas of these two not only exist in so far as they are contained in the idea of the circle, but also as they involve the existence of those rectangles; wherefore they are distinguished from the remaining ideas of the remaining rectangles. prop.[ix] the idea of an individual thing actually existing is caused by god, not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he is considered as affected by another idea of a thing actually existing, of which he is the cause, in so far as he is affected by a third idea, and so on to infinity. proof.(9:1) the idea of an individual thing actually existing is an individual mode of thinking, and is distinct from other modes (by the corollary and note to [viii] of this part); thus (by [vi] of this part) it is caused by god, in so far only as he is a thinking thing. (2) but not (by i:[xxviii] ) in so far as he is a thing thinking absolutely, only in so far as he is considered as affected by another mode of thinking; and he is the cause of this latter, as being affected by a third, and so on to infinity. (3) now, the order and connection of ideas is (by [vii] of this book) the same as the order and connection of causes. (4) therefore of a given individual idea another individual idea, or god, in so far as he is considered as modified by that idea, is the cause; and of this second idea god is the cause, in so far as he is affected by another idea, and so on to infinity. q.e.d. corollary.(9:5) whatsoever takes place in the individual object of any idea, the knowledge thereof is in god, in so far only as he has the idea of the object. proof.(9:6) whatsoever takes place in the object of any idea, its idea is in god (by [iii] of this part), not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he is considered as affected by another idea of an individual thing (by [x} ); but (by [vii] of this part) the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. (7) the knowledge, therefore, of that which takes place in any individual object will be in god, in so far only as he has the idea of that object. q.e.d. prop.[x] the being of substance does not appertain to the essence of man in other words, substance does not constitute the actual being ("forma") of man. proof.(10:1) the being of substance involves necessary existence (i:[vii] ). (2) if, therefore, the being of substance appertains to the essence of man, substance being granted, man would necessarily be granted also ([d.ii] ), and, consequently, man would necessarily exist, which is absurd ([a.i] ). therefore, &c. q.e.d. note.(10:3) this proposition may also be proved from i:[v] , in which it is shown that there cannot be two substances of the same nature; for as there may be many men, the being of substance is not that which constitutes the actual being of man. (4) again, the proposition is evident from the other properties of substance namely, that substance is in its nature infinite, immutable, indivisible, &c., as anyone may see for himself. corollary.(10:5) hence it follows, that the essence of man is constituted by certain modifications of the attributes of god. (6) for (by [ix] ) the being of substance does not belong to the essence of man. (7) that essence therefore (by i:[xv] ) is something which is in god, and which without god can neither be nor be conceived, whether it be a modification (i:[xxv] coroll.), or a mode which expresses god's nature in a certain conditioned manner. note.(10:8) everyone must surely admit, that nothing can be or be conceived without god. (9) all men agree that god is the one and only cause of all things, both of their essence and of their existence; that is, god is not only the cause of things in respect to their being made (secundum fieri), but also in respect to their being (secundum esse). (10:10) at the same time many assert, that that, without which a thing cannot be nor be conceived, belongs to the essence of that thing; wherefore they believe that either the nature of god appertains to the essence of created things, or else that created things can be or be conceived without god; or else, as is more probably the case, they hold inconsistent doctrines. (10:11) i think the cause for such confusion is mainly, that they do not keep to the proper order of philosophic thinking. (12) the nature of god, which should be reflected on first, inasmuch as it is prior both in the order of knowledge and the order of nature, they have taken to be last in the order of knowledge, and have put into the first place what they call the objects of sensation; hence, while they are considering natural phenomena, they give no attention at all to the divine nature, and, when afterwards they apply their mind to the study of the divine nature, they are quite unable to bear in mind the first hypotheses, with which they have overlaid the knowledge of natural phenomena, inasmuch as such hypotheses are no help towards understanding the divine nature. (10:13) so that it is hardly to be wondered at, that these persons contradict themselves freely. (10:14) however, i pass over this point. (15) my intention here was only to give a reason for not saying, that that, without which a thing cannot be or be conceived, belongs to the essence of that thing: individual things cannot be or be conceived without glod, yet god does not appertain to their essence. (16) i said that "i considered as belonging to the essence of a thing that, which being given, the thing is necessarily given also, and which being removed, the thing is necessarily removed also; or that without which the thing, and which itself without the thing can neither be nor be conceived." ([d.ii] ) prop.[xi] the first element, which constitutes the actual of the human mind, is the idea of some particular thing actually existing. proof.(11:1) the essence of man (by the coroll. of [x] ) is constituted by certain modes of the attributes of god, namely (by [a.ii] ), by the modes of thinking, of all which (by [a.iii] ) the idea is prior in nature, and, when the idea is given, the other modes (namely, those of which the idea is prior in nature) must be in the same individual (by the same axiom). (2) therefore an idea is the first element constituting the human mind. (3) but not the idea of a nonexistent thing, for then ([viii] coroll.) the idea itself cannot be said to exist; it must therefore be the idea of something actually existing. (4) but not of an infinite thing. (5) for an infinite thing (i:[xxi] , i:[xxii] ), must always necessarily exist; this would (by [a.i] ) involve an absurdity. (11:6) therefore the first element, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is the idea of something actually existing. q.e.d. corollary.(11:7) hence it follows, that the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of god; thus when we say, that the human mind perceives this or that, we make the assertion, that god has this or that idea, not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he is displayed through the nature of the human mind, or in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind; and when we say that god has this or that idea, not only in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind, but also in so far as he, simultaneously with the human mind, has the further idea of another thing, we assert that the human mind perceives a thing in part or inadequately. note.(11:8) here, i doubt not, readers will come to a stand, and will call to mind many things which will cause them to hesitate; i therefore beg them to accompany me slowly, step by step, and not to pronounce on my statements, till they have read to the end. prop.[xii] whatsoever comes to pass in the object of the idea, which constitutes the human mind, must be perceived by the human mind, or there will necessarily be an idea in the human mind of the said occurrence. that is, if the object of the idea constituting the human mind be a body, nothing can take place in that body without being perceived by the mind. proof.(12:1) whatsoever comes to pass in the object of any idea, the knowledge thereof is necessarily in god ([ix] , coroll.), in so far as he is considered as affected by the idea of the said object, that is (xi] ), in so far as he constitutes the mind of anything. (2) therefore, whatsoever takes place in the object constituting the idea of the human mind, the knowledge thereof is necessarily in god, in so far as he constitutes the nature of the human mind; that is (by [xi] coroll.) the knowledge of the said thing wild necessarily be in the mind, in other words the mind perceives it. note.(12:3) this proposition is also evident, and is more clearly to be understood from [vii] , which see. prop.[xiii] the object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body, in other words a certain mode of extension which actually exists, and nothing else. proof.(13:1) if indeed the body were not the object of the human mind, the ideas of the modifications a the body would not be in god ([ix] coroll.) in virtue of his constituting our mind, but in virtue of his constituting the mind of something else; that is ([xi] coroll.) the ideas of the modifications of the body would not be in our mind: now (by [a.iv] ) we do possess the ideas of the modifications of the body. (2) therefore the object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body, and the body as it actually exists ([xi] ). (3) further, if there were any other object of the idea constituting the mind besides body, then, as nothing can exist from which some effect does not follow (i:[xxxvi] ) there would necessarily have to be in our mind an idea, which would be the effect of that other object ([xi] ); but ([a.v] ) there is no such idea. (13:4) wherefore the object of our mind is the body as it exists, and nothing else. q.e.d. note.(13:5) we thus comprehend, not only that the human mind is united to the body, but also the nature of the union between mind and body. (6) however, no one will be able to grasp this adequately or distinctly, unless he first has adequate knowledge of the nature of our body. (13:7) the propositions we have advanced hitherto have been entirely general, applying not more to men than to other individual things, all of which, though in different degrees, are animated (animata"). (8) for of everything there is necessarily an idea in god, of which god is the cause, in the same way as there is an idea of the human body; thus whatever we have asserted of the idea of the human body must necessarily also be asserted of the idea of everything else. (13:9) still, on the other hand, we cannot deny that ideas, like objects, differ one from the other, one being more excellent than another and containing more reality, just as the object of one idea is more excellent than the object of another idea, and contains more reality. (13:10) wherefore, in order io determine, wherein the human mind differs from other things, and wherein it surpasses them, it is necessary for us to know the nature of its object, that is, of the human body. (11) what this nature is, i am not able here to explain, nor is it necessary for the proof of what i advance, that i should do so. (12) i will only say generally, that in proportion as any given body is more fitted than others for doing many actions or receiving many impressions at once, so also is the mind, of which it is the object, more fitted than others for forming many simultaneous perceptions; and the more the actions of one body depend on itself alone, and the fewer other bodies concur with it in action, the more fitted is the mind of which it is the object for distinct comprehension. (13:13) we may thus recognize the superiority of one mind over others, and may further see the cause, why we have only a very confused knowledge of our body, and also many kindred questions, which i will, in the following propositions, deduce from what has been advanced. (13:14) wherefore i have thought it worth while to explain and prove more strictly my present statements. (15) in order to do so, i must premise a few propositions concerning the nature of bodies. [axioms] [a.vi] all bodies are either in motion or at rest. [a.vii] every body is moved sometimes more slowly, sometimes more quickly. [lemmas] [l.i] bodies are distinguished from one another in respect of motion and rest, quickness and slowness, and not in respect of substance. proof.the first part of this proposition is, i take it, self-evident. that bodies are not distinguished in respect of substance, is plain both from i:[v]. and i:viii. it is brought out still more clearly from i:[xv] note. [l.ii] all bodies agree in certain respects. proof.all bodies agree in the fact, that they involve the conception of one and the same attribute ([d.i] ). further, in the fact that they may be moved less or more quickly, and may be absolutely in motion or at rest. [l.iii] a body in motion or at rest must be determined to motion or rest by another body, which other body has been determined to motion or rest by a third body, and that third again by a fourth, and so on to infinity. proof.bodies are individual things ([d.i] ), which ([l.i] ) are distinguished one from the other in respect to motion and rest; thus (i:[xxviii] ) each must necessarily be determined to motion or rest by another individual thing, namely ([vi] ), by another body, which other body is also ([a.i] ) in motion or at rest. and this body again can only have been set in motion or caused to rest by being determined by a third body to motion or rest. this third body again by a fourth, and so on to infinity. q.e.d. corollary.(13:16) hence it follows, that a body in motion keeps in motion, until it is determined to a state of rest by some other body; and a body at rest remains so, until it is determined to a state of motion by some other body. (17) this is indeed self-evident. (18) for when i suppose, for instance, that a given body, a, is at rest, and do not take into consideration other bodies in motion, i cannot affirm anything concerning the body a, except that it is at rest. (13:19) if it afterwards comes to pass that a is in motion, this cannot have resulted from its having been at rest, for no other consequence could have been involved than its remaining at rest. (20) if, on the other hand, a be given in motion, we shall, so long as we only consider a, be unable to affirm anything concerning it, except that it is in motion. (13:21) if a is subsequently found to be at rest, this rest cannot be the result of a's previous motion, for such motion can only have led to continued motion; the state of rest therefore must have resulted from something, which was not in a, namely, from an external cause determining a to a state of rest. ____________________________________________________________________________ [axioms] [a.viii] all modes, wherein one body is affected by body, follow simultaneously from the nature of the body affected and the body affecting; so that one and the same body may be moved in different modes, according to the difference in the nature of bodies moving it; on the other hand, different bodies may be moved in different modes by one and the same body. [a.ix] when a body in motion impinges on another body at rest, which it is unable to move, it recoils, in order to continue its motion, and the angle made by the line of motion in the recoil and the plane of the body at rest, whereon the moving body has impinged, will be equal to the angle formed by the line of motion of incidence and the same plane. (13:22) so far we have been speaking only of the most simple bodies, which are only distinguished one from the other by motion and rest, quickness and slowness. (23) we now pass on to compound bodies. [13:24] definition.when any given bodies of the same or different magnitude are compelled by other bodies to remain in contact, or if they be moved at the same or different rates of speed, so that their mutual movements should preserve among themselves a certain fixed relation, we say that such bodies are in union, and that together they compose one body or individual, which is distinguished from other bodies by this fact of union. [axioms] [a.x] in proportion as the parts of an individual, or a compound body, are in contact over a greater or less superficies moved from their position; consequently the individual will, with greater or less difficulty, be brought to assume another form. those bodies, whose parts are in contact over large superficies, are called hard; those, whose parts are in contact over small superficies, are called soft; those, whose parts are in motion among one another, are called fluid. [lemmas] [l.iv] if from a body or individual, compounded of several bodies, be separated, and if, at the same time, an equal number of other bodies of the same nature take their place, the individual will preserve its nature as before, without any change in its actuality (forma). proof.bodies ([l.i] ) are not distinguished in respect of substance: that which constitutes the actuality (formam) of an individual consists (by the last def.) in a union of bodies; but this union, although there is a continual change of bodies, will (by our hypothesis) be maintained; the individual, therefore, will retain its nature as before, both in respect of substance and in respect of mode. q.e.d. [l.v] if the parts composing an individual become greater or less but in such proportion, that they all preserve the same mutual relations of motion and rest, the individual will still preserve its original nature, and its actuality will not be changed. proof.the same as for the last [l.iv] . [l.vi] if certain bodies composing an individual be compelled to change the motion, which they have in one direction, for motion in another direction, but in such a manner, that they be able to continue their motions and their mutual communication in the same relations as before, the individual will retain its own nature without any change of its actuality. proof.this proposition is self-evident, for the individual is supposed to retain all that, which, in its definition, we spoke of as its actual being. [l.vii] furthermore, the individual thus composed preserves its nature, whether it be, as a whole, in motion or at rest, whether it be moved in this or that direction; so long as each part retains its motion, and preserves its communication with other parts as before. proof.this proposition is evident from the definition of an individual prefixed to [l.iv] . ____________________________________________________________________________ note.(13:25) we thus see, how a composite individual may be affected in many different ways, and preserve its nature notwithstanding. (26) thus far we have conceived an individual as composed of bodies only distinguished one from the other in respect of motion and rest, speed and slowness; that is, of bodies of the most simple character. (13:27) if, however, we now conceive another individual composed of several individuals of diverse natures, we shall find that the number of ways in which it can be affected, without losing its nature, will be greatly multiplied. (13:28) each of its parts would consist of several bodies, and therefore (by [lvi] ) each part would admit, without change to its nature, of quicker or slower motion, and would consequently be able to transmit its motions more quickly or more slowly to the remaining parts. (29) if we further conceive a third kind of individuals composed of individuals of this second kind, we shall find that they may be affected in a still greater number of ways without changing their actuality. (13:30) we may easily proceed thus to infinity, and conceive the whole of nature as one individual, whose parts, that is, all bodies, vary in infinite ways, without any change in the individual as a whole. (13:31) i should feel bound to explain and demonstrate this point at more length, if i were writing a special treatise on body. (32) but i have already said that such is not my object, (13:33) i have only touched on the question, because it enables me to prove easily that which i have in view. ____________________________________________________________________________ [postulates] [po.i] the human body is composed of a number of individual parts, of diverse nature, each one of which is in itself extremely complex. [po.ii] of the individual parts composing the human body some are fluid, some soft, some hard. [po.iii] the individual parts composing the human body, and consequently the human body itself, are affected in a variety of ways by external bodies. [po.iv] the human body stands in need for its preservation of a number of other bodies, by which it is continually, so to speak, regenerated. [po.v] when the fluid part of the human body is determined by an external body to impinge often on another soft part, it changes the surface of the latter, and, as it were, leaves the impression thereupon of the external body which impels it. [po.vi] the human body can move external bodies, and arrange them in a variety of ways. ____________________________________________________________________________ prop.[xiv] the human mind is capable of perceiving a great number of things, and is so in proportion as its body is capable of receiving a great number of impressions. proof.(14:1) the human body (by [po.iii] and [po.vi] ) is affected in very many ways by external bodies, and is capable in very many ways of affecting external bodies. (2) but ([xii ] ) the human mind must perceive all that takes place in the human body; the human mind is, therefore, capable of perceiving a great number of things, and is so in proportion, &c. q.e.d. prop.[xv] the idea, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is not simple, but compounded of a great number of ideas. proof.(15:1) the idea constituting the actual being of the human is the idea of the body ([xiii] ), which ([po.i] ) is composed of a great number of complex individual parts. (2) but there is necessarily in god the idea of each individual part whereof the body is composed ([viii] coroll.); therefore ([vii] ), the idea of the human body is composed of these numerous ideas of its component parts. q.e.d. prop.[xvi] the idea of every mode, in which the human body is affected by external bodies, must involve the nature of the human body, and also the nature of the external body. proof.(16:1) all the modes, in which any given body is affected, follow from the nature of the body affected, and also from the nature of the affecting body (by [a.viii] ), wherefore their idea also necessarily (by i:[a.iv] ) involves the nature of both bodies; therefore, the idea of every mode, in which the human body is affected by external bodies, involves the nature of the human body and of the external body. q.e.d. corollary i.(16:2) hence it follows, first, that the human mind perceives the nature of a variety of bodies, together with the nature of its own. corollary ii.(16:3) it follows, secondly, that the ideas, which we have of external bodies, indicate rather the constitution of our own body tha the nature of external bodies. (4) i have amply illustrated this in the i:[appendix] to part i. prop.[xvii] if the human body is affected in a manner which involves the nature of any external body, the mind will regard the said external body as actually existing, or as present to itself, until the body be affected in such a way, as to exclude the existence or the presence of the said external body. proof.(17:1) this proposition is self-evident, for so long as the human body continues to be thus affected, so long will the human mind ([xii] ) regard this modification of the body that is (by [xvi] ), it will have the idea of the mode as actually existing, and this idea involves the nature of the external body. (2) in other words, it will have the idea which does not exclude, but postulates the existence or presence of the nature of the external body; therefore the mind (by [xvi] coroll. i.) will regard the external body as actually existing, until it is affected, &c. q.e.d. corollary.(17:3) the mind is able to regard as present external bodies, by which the human body has once been affected, even though they be no longer in existence or present. proof.(17:4) when external bodies determine the fluid parts of the human body, so that they often impinge on the softer parts, they change the surface of the last named ([po.v] ); hence ([a.viii ] ) they are refracted therefrom in a different manner from that which they followed before such change; and, further, when afterwards they impinge on the new surfaces by their own spontaneous movement, they will be refracted in the same manner, as though they had been impelled towards those surfaces by external bodies; consequently, they will, while they continue to be thus refracted, affect the human body in the same manner, whereof the mind ([xii] ) will again take cognizance that is ([xvii] ), the mind will again regard the external body as present, and will do so, as often as the fluid parts of the human body impinge on the aforesaid surfaces by their own spontaneous motion. (17:5) wherefore, although the external bodies, by which the human body has once been affected, be no longer in existence, the mind will nevertheless regard them as present, as often as this action of the body is repeated. q.e.d. note.(17:6) we thus see how it comes about, as is often the case, that we regard as present things which are not. it is possible that the same result may be brought about by other causes; but i think it suffices for me here to have indicated one possible explanation, just as well as if i had pointed out the true cause. (7) indeed, i do not think i am very far from the truth, for all my assumptions are based on postulates, which rest, almost without exception, on experience, that cannot be controverted by those who have shown, as we have, that the human body, as we feel it, exists (coroll. after [xiii] ). (8) furthermore ([vii] coroll., [xvi] coroll.ii.), we clearly understand what is the difference between the idea, say, of peter, which constitutes the essence of peter's mind, and the idea of the said peter, which is in another man, say, paul. (17:9) the former directly answers to the essence of peter's own body, and only implies existence so long as peter exists; the latter indicates rather the disposition of paul's body than the nature of peter, and, therefore, while this disposition of paul's body lasts, paul's mind will regard peter as present to itself, even though he no longer exists. (17:10) further, to retain the usual phraseology, the modifications of the human body, of which the ideas represent external bodies as present to us, we will call the images of things, though they do not recall the figure of things. (11) when the mind regards bodies in this fashion, we say that it imagines. (12) i will here draw attention to the fact, in order to indicate where error lies, that the imaginations of the mind, looked at in themselves, do not contain error. (13) the mind does not err in the mere act of imagining, but only in so far as it is regarded as being without the idea,-which excludes the existence of such things as it imagines to be present to it. (14) if the mind, while imagining non-existent things as present to it, is at the same time conscious that they do not really exist, this power of imagination must be set down to the efficacy of its nature, and not to a fault, especially if this faculty of imagination depend solely on its own nature that is (i:[d.vii] ), if this faculty of imagination be free. prop.[xviii] if the human body has once been affected by two or more bodies at the same time, when the mind afterwards imagines any of them, it will straightway remember the others also. proof.(18:1) the mind ([xvii] coroll.) imagines any given body, because the human body is affected and disposed by the impressions from an external body, in the same manner as it is affected when certain of its parts are acted on by the said external body; but (by our hypothesis) the body was then so disposed, that the mind imagined two bodies at once; therefore, it will also in the second case imagine two bodies at once, and the mind, when it imagines one, will straightway remember the other. q.e.d. note.(18:2) we now clearly see what memory is. (2a) it is simply a certain association of ideas involving the nature of things outside the human body, which association arises in the mind according to the order and association of the modifications (affectiones) of the human body. (3) i say, first, it is an association of those ideas only, which involve the nature of things outside the human body: not of ideas which answer to the nature of the said things: ideas of the modifications of the human body are, strictly speaking ([xvi] ), those which involve the nature both of the human body and of external bodies. (18:4) i say, secondly, that this association arises according to the order and association of the modifications of the human body, in order to distinguish it from that association of ideas, which arises from the order of the intellect, whereby the mind perceives things through their primary causes, and which is in all men the same. (18:5) and hence we can further clearly understand, why the mind from the thought of one thing, should straightway arrive at the thought of another thing, which has no similarity with the first; for instance, from the thought of the word "pomum" (an apple), a roman would straightway arrive at the thought of the fruit apple, which has no similitude the articulate sound in question, nor anything in common with it, except that the body of the man has often been affected by these two things; that is, that the man has often heard the word "pomum," while he was looking at the fruit; similarly every man will go on from one thought to another, according as his habit has ordered the images of things in his body. (18:6) for a soldier, for instance, when he sees the tracks of a horse in sand, will at once pass from the thought of a horse to the thought of a horseman, and thence to the thought of war, &c.; while a countryman will proceed from the thought of a horse to the thought of a plough, a field, &c. (18:7) thus every man will follow this or that train of thought, according as he has been in the habit of conjoining and associating the mental images of things in this or that manner. prop.[xix] the human mind has no knowledge of the body, and does not know it to exist, save through the ideas of the modifications whereby the body is affected. proof.(19:1) the human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human body ([xiii] ), which ([ix] ) is in god, in so far as he is regarded as affected by another idea of a particular thing actually existing: or, inasmuch as ([po.iv] ) the human body stands in need of very many bodies whereby it is, as it were, continually regenerated; and the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of causes ([vii] ); this idea will therefore be in god, in so far as he is regarded as affected by the ideas of very many particular things. (19:2) thus god has the idea of the human body, or knows the human body, in so far as he is affected by very many other ideas, and not in so far as he constitutes the nature of the human mind; that is (by [xi] coroll.), the human mind does not know the human body. (19:3) but the ideas of the modifications of body are in god, in so far as he constitutes the nature of the human mind, or the human mind perceives those modifications ([xii] ), and consequently ([xvi] ) the human body itself, and as actually existing; therefore the mind perceives thus far only the human body. q.e.d. prop.[xx] the idea or knowledge of the human mind is also is god, following in god in the same manner, and being referred to god in the same manner, as the idea knowledge of the human body. proof.(20:1) thought is an attribute of god ([i] ); therefore ([iii] ) there must necessarily be in god the idea both of thought itself and of all its modifications, consequently also of the human mind ([xi] ). (2) further, this idea or knowledge of the mind does not follow from god, in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he is affected by another idea of an individual thing ([ix] ). (20:3) but ([vii] ) the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of causes; therefore this idea or knowledge of the mind is in god and is referred to god, in the same manner as the idea or knowledge of the body. q.e.d. prop.[xxi] this idea of the mind is united to the mind in the same way as the mind is united to the body. proof.(21:1) that the mind is united to the body we have shown from the fact, that the body is the object of the mind ([xii] and [xiii] ); and so for the same reason the idea of the mind must be united with its object, that is, with the mind in the same manner as the mind is united to the body. q.e.d. note.(21:2) this proposition is comprehended much more clearly from what we said in the note to [vii] . (3) we there showed that the idea of body and body, that is, mind and body ([xiii] ), are one and the same individual conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension; wherefore the idea of the mind and the mind itself are one and the same thing, which is conceived under one and the same attribute, namely, thought. (4) the idea of the mind, i repeat, and the mind itself are in god by the same necessity and follow from him from the same power of thinking. (21:5) strictly speaking, the idea of the mind, that is, the idea of an idea, is nothing but the distinctive quality (forma) of the idea in so far as it is conceived as a mode of thought without reference to the object; if a man knows anything, he, by that very fact, knows that he knows it, and at the same time knows that he knows that he knows it, and so on to infinity. (21:6) but i will treat of this hereafter. prop.[xxii] the human mind perceives not only the modifications of the body, but also the ideas of such modifications. proof.(22:1) the ideas of the ideas of modifications follow in god in the same manner, and are referred to god in the same manner, as the ideas of the said modifications. (2) this is proved in the same way as [xx] . (22:3) but the ideas of the modifications of the body are in the human mind ([xii] ), that is, in god, in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind; therefore the ideas of these ideas will be in god, in so far as he has the knowledge or idea of the human mind, that is ([xxi] ), they will be in the human mind itself, which therefore perceives not only the modifications of the body, but also the ideas of such modifications. q.e.d. prop.[xxiii] the mind does not know itself, except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the modifications of the body. proof.(23:1) the idea or knowledge of the mind ([xx] ) follows in god in the same manner, and is referred to god in the same manner, as the idea or knowledge of the body. (2) but since ([xix] ) the human mind does not know the human body itself, that is ([xi] coroll.), since the knowledge of the human body is not referred to god, in so far as he constitutes the nature of the human mind; therefore, neither is the knowledge of the mind referred to god, in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind; therefore (by the same coroll. of [xi] ), the human mind thus far has no knowledge of itself. (23:3) further the ideas of the modifications, whereby the body is affected, involve the nature of the human body itself ([xvi] ), that is ([xiii] ), they agree with the nature of the mind; wherefore the knowledge of these ideas necessarily involves knowledge of the mind; but (by [xxii] ) the knowledge of these ideas is in the human mind itself; wherefore the human mind thus far only has knowledge of itself. q.e.d. prop.[xxiv] the human mind does not involve an adequate knowledge of the parts composing the human body. proof.(24:1) the parts composing the human body do not belong to the essence of that body, except in so far as they communicate their motions to one another in a certain fixed relation (definition [13:24] ), not in so far as they can be regarded as individuals without relation to the human body. (2) the parts of the human body are highly complex individuals ([po.i] ), whose parts ([l.iv] ) can be separated from the human body without in anyway destroying the nature and distinctive quality of the latter, and they can communicate their motions ([a.viii] ) to other bodies in another relation; therefore ([iii] ) the idea or knowledge of each part will be in god, inasmuch ([ix] ) as he is regarded as affected by another idea of a particular thing, which particular thing is prior in the order of nature to the aforesaid part ([vii] ). (24:3) we may affirm the same thing of each part of each individual composing the human body; therefore, the knowledge of each part composing the human body is in god, in so far as he is affected by very many ideas of things, and not in so far as he has the idea of the human body only, in other words, the idea which constitutes the nature of the human mind ([xiii] ); therefore ([xi] coroll.), the human mind does not involve an adequate knowledge of the human body. q.e.d. prop.[xxv] the idea of each modification of the human body does not involve an adequate knowledge of the external body. proof.(25:1) we have shown that the idea of a modification of the human body involves the nature of an external body, in so far as that external body conditions the human body in a given manner. (2) but, in so far as the external body is an individual, which has no reference to the human body, the knowledge or idea thereof is in god ([ix] ), in so far as god is regarded as affected by the idea of a further thing, which ([vii] ) is naturally prior to the said external body. (25:3) wherefore an adequate knowledge of the external body is not in god, in so far as he has the idea of the modification of the human body; in other words, the idea of the modification of the human body does not involve an adequate knowledge of the external body. q.e.d. prop.[xxvi] the human mind does not perceive any external body as actually existing, except through the ideas of the modifications of its own body. proof.(26:1) if the human body is in no way affected by a given external body, then ([vii] ) neither is the idea of the human body, in other words, the human mind, affected in any way by the idea of the existence of the said external body, nor does it any manner perceive its existence. (2) but, in so far as the human body is affected in any way by a given external body, thus far ([xvi] and coroll.) it perceives that external body. q.e.d. corollary.(26:3) in so far as the human mind imagines an external body, it has not an adequate knowledge thereof. proof.(26:4) when the human mind regards external bodies through the ideas of the modifications of its own body, we say that it imagines (see [xvii] note); now the mind can only imagine external bodies as actually existing. (5) therefore (by [xxv] ), in so far as the mind imagines external bodies, it has not an adequate knowledge of them. q.e.d. prop.[xxvii] the idea of each modification of the human body does not involve an adequate knowledge of human body itself. proof.(27:1) every idea of a modification of the human body involves the nature of the human body, in so far as the human body is regarded as affected in a given manner ([xvi] ). (2) but, inasmuch as the human body is an individual which may, be affected in many other ways, the idea of the said modification, &c. q.e.d. prop.[xxviii] the ideas of the modifications of the human body in so far as they have reference only to the human mind, are not clear and distinct, but confused. proof.(28:1) the ideas of the modifications of the human body, involve the nature both of the human body and of external bodies ([xvi] ); they must involve the nature not only of the human body but also of its part's; for the modifications are modes ([po.iii] ), whereby the parts of the human body, and, consequently, the human body as a whole are affected. (28:2) but (by [xxiv] , [xxv] , the adequate knowledge of external bodies, as also of the parts composing the human body, is not in god, in so far as he is regarded as affected by the human mind, but in so far as he is regarded as affected by other ideas. (28:3) these ideas of modifications, in so far as they are referred to the human mind alone, are as consequences without premisses, in other words, confused ideas. q.e.d. note.(28:4) the idea which constitutes the nature of the human mind is, in the same manner, proved not to be, when considered in itself alone, clear and distinct; as also is the case with the idea of the human mind, and the ideas of the ideas of the modifications of the human body, in so far as they are referred to the mind only, as everyone may easily see. prop.[xxix] the idea of the idea of each modification of the human body does not involve an adequate knowledge of the human mind. proof.(29:1) the idea of a modification of the human body (xxvii] ) does not involve an adequate knowledge of the said body, in other words, does not adequately express its nature; that is ([xiii] .) it does not agree with the nature of the mind adequately; therefore ([a.vi] ) the idea of this idea does not adequately express the nature of the human mind, or does not involve an adequate knowledge thereof. corollary.(29:2) hence it follows that the human mind, when it perceives things after the common order of nature, has not an adequate but only a confused and fragmentary knowledge of itself, of its own body, and of external bodies. (3) for the mind does not know itself, except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the modifications of body ([xxiii] ). (29:4) it only perceives its own body ([xix] ) through the ideas of the modifications, and only perceives external bodies through the same means; thus, in so far as it has such ideas of modification, it has not an adequate knowledge of itself ([xxix] ), nor of its own body ([xxvii] ), nor of external bodies ([xxv] ), but only a fragmentary and confused knowledge thereof ([xxviii] and note.) q.e.d. note.(29:5) i say expressly, that the mind has not an adequate but only a confused knowledge of itself, its own body, and of external bodies, whenever it perceives things after the common order of nature; that is, whenever it is determined from without, namely, by the fortuitous play of circumstance, to regard this or that; not at such times as it is determined from within, that is, by the fact of regarding several things at once, to understand their points of agreement, difference, and contrast. (29:6) whenever it is determined in anywise from within, it regards things clearly and distinctly, as i will show below. prop.[xxx] we can only have a very inadequate knowledge of the duration of our body. proof.(30:1) the duration of our body does not depend on its essence ([a.i] ), nor on the absolute nature of god ([xxi] ). (2) but (i:[xxviii] ) their turn a it is conditioned to exist and operate by causes, which in turn are conditioned to exist and operate in a fixed and definite relation by other causes, these last again being conditioned by others, and so on to infinity. (3) the duration of our body therefore depends on the common order of nature, or the constitution of things. (4) now, however a thing may be constituted, the adequate knowledge of that thing is in god, in so far as he has the ideas of all things, and not in so far as he the idea of the human body only. ([ix] coroll.). (30:5) wherefore the knowledge of the duration of our body is in god very inadequate, in so far as he is only regarded as constituting the nature of the human mind; that is ([xi] coroll.), this knowledge is very inadequate in our mind. q.e.d. prop.[xxxi] we can only have a very inadequate knowledge of the duration of particular things external to ourselves. proof.(31:1) every particular thing, like the human body, must be conditioned by another particular thing to exist and operate in a fixed and definite relation; this other particular thing must likewise be conditioned by a third, and so on to infinity. (i:[xxviii ] ) (2) as we have shown in the foregoing proposition, from this common property of particular things, we have only a very inadequate know ledge of the duration of our body; we must draw a similar conclusion with regard to the duration of particular things, namely, that we can only have a very inadequate knowledge of the duration thereof. q.e.d. corollary.(31:3) hence it follows that all particular things are contingent and perishable. (4) for we can have no adequate idea of their duration (by [xxx] ), and this is what we must understand by the contingency and perishableness of things. (i:[xxxiii] , note i.) (31:5) for (i:[xxix] ), except in this sense, nothing is contingent. prop.[xxxii] all ideas, in so far as they are referred to god, are true. proof.(32:1) all ideas which are in god agree in every respect with their objects ([vii] coroll.), therefore (i:[a.vi] ) they are all true. q.e.d. prop.[xxxiii] there is nothing positive in ideas, which causes them to be called false. proof.(33:1) if this be denied, conceive, if possible, a positive mode of thinking, which should constitute the distinctive quality of falsehood. (2) such a mode of thinking cannot be in god ([xxxii] ); external to god it cannot be or be conceived (i:[xv] ). (3) therefore there is nothing positive in ideas which causes them to be called false. q.e.d. prop.[xxxiv] every idea, which in us is absolute or adequate and perfect, is true. proof.(34:1) when we say that an idea in us is adequate and perfect, we say, in other words ([xi] coroll.), that the idea is adequate and perfect in god, in so far as he constitutes the essence of our mind; consequently ([xxxii] ), we say that such an idea is true. q.e.d. prop.[xxxv] falsity consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve. proof.(35:1) there is nothing positive in ideas, which causes them to be called false ([xxxiii] ); but falsity cannot consist in simple privation (for minds, not bodies, are said to err and to be mistaken), neither can it consist in absolute ignorance, for ignorance and error are not identical; wherefore it consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve. q.e.d. note.(35:2) in the note to [xvii] . i explained how error consists in the privation of knowledge, but in order to throw more light on the subject i will give an example. (3) for instance, men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned. (4) their idea of freedom, therefore, is simply their ignorance of any cause for their actions. (5) as for their saying that human actions depend on the will, this is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond thereto. (35:6) what the will is, and how it moves the body, they none of them know; those who boast of such knowledge, and feign dwellings and habitations for the soul, are wont to provoke either laughter or disgust. (7) so, again, when we look at the sun, we imagine that it is distant from us about two hundred feet; this error does not lie solely in this fancy, but in the fact that, while we thus imagine, we do not know the sun's true distance or the cause of the fancy. (35:8) for although we afterwards learn, that the sun is distant from us more than six hundred of the earth's diameters, we none the less shall fancy it to be near; for we do not imagine the sun as near us, because we are ignorant of its true distance, but because the modification of our body involves the essence of the sun, in so far as our said body is affected thereby. prop.[xxxvi] inadequate and confused ideas follow by the same necessity, as adequate or clear and distinct ideas. proof.(36:1) all ideas are in god (i:[xv] ), and in so far as they are referred to god are true ([xxxii] ) and ([vii] coroll.) adequate; therefore there are no ideas confused or inadequate, except in respect to a particular mind (cf. [xxiv] and [xxviii] ); therefore all ideas, whether adequate or inadequate, follow by the same necessity ([vi] ). q.e.d. prop.[xxxvii] that which is common to all (cf. [l.ii] above), and which is equally in a part and in the whole, does not constitute the essence of any particular thing. proof.(37:1) if this be denied, conceive, if possible, that it constitutes the essence of some particular thing; for instance, the essence of b. (2) then ([d.ii] ) it cannot without b either exist or be conceived; but this is against our hypothesis. (3) therefore it does not appertain to b's essence, nor does it constitute the essence of any particular thing. q.e.d. prop.[xxxviii] those things, which are common to all, and which are equally in a part and in the whole, cannot be conceived except adequately. proof.(38:1) let a be something, which is common to all bodies, and which is equally present in the part of any given body and in the whole. i say a cannot be conceived except adequately. (2) for the idea thereof in god will necessarily be adequate ([vii] coroll.), both in so far as god has the idea of the human body, and also in so far as he has the idea of the modifications of the human body, which ([xvi] , [xxv] , [xxvii] ) involve in part the nature of the human body and the nature of external bodies; that is ([xii] , [xiii] ), the idea in god will necessarily be adequate, both in so far as he constitutes the human mind, and in so far as he has the ideas, which are in the human mind. (38:3) therefore the mind ([xi] coroll.) necessarily perceives a adequately, and has this adequate perception, both in so far as it perceives itself, and in so far as it perceives its own or any external body, nor can a be conceived in any other manner. q.e.d. corollary.(38:4) hence it follows that there are certain ideas or notions common to all men; for (by [l.iii] ) all bodies agree in certain respects, which (by [xxxvii] ) must be adequately or clearly and distinctly perceived by all. prop.xxxix that, which is common to and a property of the human body and such other bodies as are wont to affect the human body, and which is present equally in each part of either, or in the whole, will be represented by an adequate idea in the mind. proof.(39:1) if a be that, which is common to and a property of the human body and external bodies, and equally present in the human body and in the said external bodies, in each part of each external body and in the whole, there will be an adequate idea of a in god ([vii] coroll.), both in so far as he has the idea of the human body, and in so far as he has the ideas of the given external bodies. (39:2) let it now be granted, that the human body is affected by an external body through that, which it has in common therewith, namely, a; the idea of this modification will involve the property a ([xvi] ), and therefore ([vii] coroll.) the idea of this modification, in so far as it involves the property a, will be adequate in god, in so far as god is affected by the idea of the human body; that is ([xiii] ), in so far as he constitutes the nature of the human mind; therefore ([xi] coroll.) this idea is also adequate in the human mind. q.e.d. corollary.(39:3) hence it follows that the mind is fitted to perceive adequately more things, in proportion as its body has more in common with other bodies. prop.[xl] whatsoever ideas in the mind follow from ideas which are therein adequate, are also themselves adequate. proof.(40:1) this proposition is self-evident. (2) for when we say that an idea in the human mind follows from ideas which are therein adequate, we say, in other words ([xi] coroll.), that an idea is in the divine intellect, whereof god is the cause, not in so far as he is infinite, nor in so far as he is affected by the ideas of very many particular things, but only in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind. note i.(40:3) i have thus set forth the cause of those notions, which are common to all men, and which form the basis of our ratiocination. (4) but there are other causes of certain axioms or notions, which it would be to the purpose to set forth by this method of ours; for it would thus appear what notions are more useful than others, and what notions have scarcely any use at all. (40:5) furthermore, we should see what notions are common to all men, and what notions are only clear and distinct to those who are unshackled by prejudice, and we should detect those which are ill-founded. (6) again we should discern whence the notions called secondary derived their origin, and consequently the axioms on which they are founded, and other points of interest connected with these questions. (40:7) but i have decided to pass over the subject here, partly because i have set it aside for another treatise, partly because i am afraid of wearying the reader by too great prolixity. (40:8) nevertheless, in order not to omit anything necessary to be known, i will briefly set down the causes, whence are derived the terms styled transcendental, such as being, thing, something. (9) these terms arose from the fact, that the human body, being limited, is only capable of distinctly forming a certain number of images (what an image is i explained in [xvii] note) within itself at the same time; if this number be exceeded, the images will begin to be confused; if this number of images, which the body is capable of forming distinctly within itself, be largely exceeded, all will become entirely confused one with another. (40:10) this being so, it is evident (from [xvii] coroll. and [xviii] ) that the human mind can distinctly imagine as many things simultaneously, as its body can form images simultaneously. (11) when the images become quite confused in the body, the mind also imagines all bodies confusedly without any distinction, and will comprehend them, as it were, under one attribute, namely, under the attribute of being, thing, &c. (12) the same conclusion can be drawn from the fact that images are not always equally vivid, and from other analogous causes, which there is no need to explain here; for the purpose which we have in view it is sufficient for us to consider one only. (40:13) all may be reduced to this, that these terms represent ideas in the highest degree confused. (14) from similar causes arise those notions, which we call general, such as man, horse, dog, &c. (40:15) they arise, to wit, from the fact that so many images, for instance, of men, are formed simultaneously in the human mind, that the powers of imagination break down, not indeed utterly, but to the extent of the mind losing count of small differences between individuals (e.g. colour, size, &c.) and their definite number, and only distinctly imagining that, in which all the individuals, in so far as the body is affected by them, agree; for that is the point, in which each of the said individuals chiefly affected the body; this the mind expresses by the name man, and this it predicates of an infinite number of particular individuals. (40:16) for, as we have said, it is unable to imagine the definite number of individuals. (16a) we must, however, bear in mind, that these general notions are not formed by all men in the same way, but vary in each individual according as the point varies, whereby the body has been most often affected and which the mind most easily imagines or remembers. (40:17) for instance, those who have most often regarded with admiration the stature of man, will by the name of man understand an animal of erect stature; those who have been accustomed to regard some other attribute, will form a different general image of man, for instance, that man is a laughing animal, a two-footed animal without feathers, a rational animal, and thus, in other cases, everyone will form general images of things according to the habit of his body. (40:18) it is thus not to be wondered at, that among philosophers, who seek to explain things in nature merely by the images formed of them, so many controversies should have arisen. note ii.[40:19] from all that has been said above it is clear, that we, in many cases, perceive and form our general notions: (1.) (40:20) from particular things represented to our intellect fragmentarily, confusedly, and without order through our senses ([xxix] coroll.); i have settled to call such perceptions by the name of knowledge from the mere suggestions of experience. (2.) (40:21) from symbols, e.g., from the fact of having read or heard certain words we remember things and form certain ideas concerning them, similar to those through which we imagine things ([xviii] note). (22) i shall call both these ways of regarding things knowledge of the first kind, opinion, or imagination. (3.) (40:23) from the fact that we have notions common to all men, and adequate ideas of the properties of things ([xxxviii] coroll., [xxxix] and coroll. and [xl] ); this i call reason and knowledge of the second kind. (24) besides these two kinds of knowledge, there is, as i will hereafter show, a third kind of knowledge, which we will call intuition. (25) this kind of knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of the absolute essence of certain attributes of god to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things. (40:26) i will illustrate all three kinds of knowledge by a single example. (27) three numbers are given for finding a fourth, which shall be to the third as the second is to the first. (28) tradesmen without hesitation multiply the second by the third, and divide the product by the first; either because they have not forgotten the rule which they received from a master without any proof, or because they have often made trial of it with simple numbers, or by virtue of the proof of the nineteenth proposition of the seventh book of euclid, namely, in virtue of the general property of proportionals. (40:29) but with very simple numbers there is no need of this. (30) for instance, one, two, three, being given, everyone can see that the fourth proportional is six; and this is much clearer, because we infer the fourth number from an intuitive grasping of the ratio, which the first bears to the second. prop.[xli] knowledge of the first kind is the only source of falsity, knowledge of the second and third kinds is necessarily true. proof.(41:1) to knowledge of the first kind we have (in the foregoing note [40:19] ) assigned all those ideas, which are inadequate and confused; therefore this kind of knowledge is the only source of falsity ([xxxv] ). (2) furthermore, we assigned to the second and third kinds of knowledge those ideas which are adequate; therefore these kinds are necessarily true ([xxxiv] ). q.e.d. prop.[xlii] knowledge of the second and third kinds, not knowledge of the first kind, teaches us to distinguish the true from the false. proof.(42:1) this proposition is self-evident. (2) he, who knows how to distinguish between true and false, must have an adequate idea of true and false. (3) that is ([xl] , second or third kind of knowledge. prop.[xliii] he, who has a true idea, simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the of the thing perceived. proof.(43:1) a true idea in us is an idea which is adequate in god, in so far as he is displayed through the nature of the human mind ([xi] coroll.). (2) let us suppose that there is in god, in so far as he is displayed through the human mind, an adequate idea, a. (3) the idea of this idea must also necessarily be in god, and be referred to him in the same way as the idea a (by [xx] , whereof the proof is of universal application). (4) but the idea a is supposed to be referred to god, in so far as he is displayed through the human mind; therefore, the idea of the idea a must be referred to god in the same manner; that is (by [xi] coroll.), the adequate idea of the idea a will be in the mind, which has the adequate idea a; therefore he, who has an adequate idea or knows a thing truly ([xxxiv] ), must at the same time have an adequate idea or true knowledge of his knowledge; that is, obviously, he must be assured. q.e.d. note.(43:5) i explained in the note to [xxi] what is meant by the idea of an idea; but we may remark that the foregoing [xl] is in itself sufficiently plain. (5a) no one, who has a true idea, is ignorant that a true idea involves the highest certainty. (6) for to have a true idea is only another expression for knowing a thing perfectly, or as well as possible. (7) no one, indeed, can doubt of this, unless he thinks that an idea is something lifeless, like a picture on a panel, and not a mode of thinking namely, the very act of understanding. (43:8) and who, i ask, can know that he understands anything, unless he do first understand it? (9) in other words, who can know that he is sure of a thing, unless he be first sure of that thing? (10) further, what can there be more clear, and more certain, than a true idea as a standard of truth? (11) even as light displays both itself and darkness, so is truth a standard both of itself and of falsity. (43:12) i think i have thus sufficiently answered these questions namely, if a true idea is distinguished from a false idea, only in so far as it is said to agree with its object, a true idea has no more reality or perfection than a false idea (since the two are only distinguished by an extrinsic mark); consequently, neither will a man who has true ideas have any advantage over him who has only false ideas. (13) further, how comes it that men have false ideas? (43:14) lastly, how can anyone be sure, that he has ideas which agree with their objects? (15) these questions, i repeat, i have, in my opinion, sufficiently answered. (16) the difference between a true idea and a false idea is plain: from what was said in [xxxv] , the former is related to the latter as being is to not-being. (43:17) the causes of falsity i have set forth very clearly in [xix] and [xxxv] with the note. (18) from what is there stated, the difference between a man who has true ideas, and a man who has only false ideas, is made apparent. (19) as for the last question as to how a man can be sure that he has ideas that agree with their objects, i have just pointed out, with abundant clearness, that his knowledge arises from the simple fact, that he has an idea which corresponds with its object in other words, that truth is its own standard. (43:20) we may add that our mind, in so far as it perceives things truly, is part of the infinite intellect of god ([xi] coroll.); therefore, the clear and distinct ideas of the mind are as necessarily true as the ideas of god. prop.[xliv] it is not in the nature of reason to regard as contingent, but as necessary. proof.(44:1) it is in the nature of reason to perceive things truly ([xli] ), namely (i:[a.vi] ), as they are in them selves that is (i:[xxix] ), not as contingent, but as necessary. q.e.d. corollary i (44:2) hence it follows, that it is only through our imagination that we consider things, whether in respect to the future or the past, as contingent. note.(44:3) how this way of looking at things arises, i will briefly explain. we have shown above ([xvii] and coroll.) that the mind always regards things as present to itself, even though they be not in existence, until some causes arise which exclude their existence and presence. (44:4) further ([xviii] ), we showed that, if the human body has once been affected by two external bodies simultaneously, the mind, when it afterwards imagines one of the said external bodies, will straightway remember the other that is, it will regard both as present to itself, unless there arise causes which exclude their existence and presence. (44:5) further, no one doubts that we imagine time, from the fact that we imagine bodies to be moved some more slowly than others, some more quickly, some at equal speed. (6) thus, let us suppose that a child yesterday saw peter for the first time in the morning, paul at noon, and simon in the evening; then, that to-day he again sees peter in the morning. (7) it is evident, from [xviii] , that, as soon as he sees the morning light, he will imagine that the sun will traverse the same parts of the sky, as it did when he saw it on the preceding day; in other words, he will imagine a complete day, and, together with his imagination of the morning, he will imagine peter; with noon, he will imagine paul; and with evening, he will imagine simon that is, he will imagine the existence of paul and simon in relation to a future time; on the other hand, if he sees simon in the evening, he will refer peter and paul to a past time, by imagining them simultaneously with the imagination of a past time. (44:8) if it should at any time happen, that on some other evening the child should see james instead of simon, he will, on the following morning, associate with his imagination of evening sometimes simon, sometimes james, not both together: for the child is supposed to have seen, at evening, one or other of them, not both together. (9) his imagination will therefore waver; and, with the imagination of future evenings, he will associate first one, then the other that is, he will imagine them in the future, neither of them as certain, but both as contingent. (44:10) this wavering of the imagination will be the same, if the imagination be concerned with things which we thus contemplate, standing in relation to time past or time present: consequently, we may imagine things as contingent, whether they be referred to time present, past, or future. corollary ii.(44:11) it is in the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity. proof.(44:12) it is in the nature of reason to regard things, not as contingent, but as necessary ([xliv] ). (13) reason perceives this necessity of things ([xli] ) truly that is (i:[a.vi] ), as it is in itself. (14) but (i:[xvi] ) this necessity of things is the very necessity of the eternal nature of god; therefore, it is in the nature of reason to regard things under this form of eternity. (15) we may add that the bases of reason are the notions ([xxxviii] ), which answer to things common to all, and which ([xxxvii] ) do not answer to the essence of any particular thing: which must therefore be conceived without any relation to time, under a certain form of eternity. prop.[xlv] every idea of every body, or of every particular thing actually existing, necessarily involves the eternal and infinite essence of god. proof.(45:1) the idea of a particular thing actually existing necessarily involves both the existence and the essence of the said thing ([viii] ). (2) now particular things cannot be conceived without god (i:[xv] ) ; but, inasmuch as ([vi] ) they have god for their cause, in so far as he is regarded under the attribute of which the things in question are modes, their ideas must necessarily involve (i:[a.iv] ) the conception of the attribute of those ideas that is (i:[vi] ), the eternal and infinite essence of god. q.e.d. note.(45:3) by existence i do not here mean duration that is, existence in so far as it is conceived abstractedly, and as a certain form of quantity. (4) i am speaking of the very nature of existence, which is assigned to particular things, because they follow in infinite numbers and in infinite ways from the eternal necessity of god's nature (i:[xvi] ). (5) i am speaking, i repeat, of the very existence of particular things, in so far as they are in god. (45:6) for although each particular thing be conditioned by another particular thing to exist in a given way, yet the force whereby each particular thing perseveres in existing follows from the eternal necessity of god's nature (cf. i:[xxiv] coroll.). prop.[xlvi] the knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of god which every idea involves is adequate and perfect. proof. (46:1) the proof of the last proposition is universal; and whether a thing be considered as a part or a whole, the idea thereof, whether of the whole or of a part (by [xlv] ), will involve god's eternal and infinite essence. (2) wherefore, that which gives knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of god, is common to all, and is equally in the part and in the whole; therefore ([xxxviii] ) this knowledge will be adequate. q.e.d. prop.[xlvii] the human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of god. proof.(47:1) the human mind has ideas ([xxii] ), from which ([xxiii] ) it perceives itself and its own body ([xix] ) and external bodies ([xvi] coroll.i, [xvii] ) as actually existing; therefore ([xlv] , [xlvi] ) it has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of god. q.e.d. note.(47:2) hence we see, that the infinite essence and the eternity of god are known to all. (3) now as all things are in god, and are conceived through god, we can from this knowledge infer many things, which we may adequately know, and we may form that third kind of knowledge of which we spoke in the (note to [xl] ), and of the excellence and use of which we shall have occasion to speak in part v. (47:4) men have not so clear a knowledge of god as they have of general notions, because they are unable to imagine god as they do bodies, and also because they have associated the name god with images of things that they are in the habit of seeing, as indeed they can hardly avoid doing, being, as they are, men, and continually affected by external bodies. (47:5) many errors, m truth, can be traced to this head, namely, that we do not apply names to things rightly. (6) for instance, when a man says that the lines drawn from the centre of a circle to its circumference are not equal, he then, at all events, assuredly attaches a meaning to the word circle different from that assigned by mathematicians. (47:7) so again, when men make mistakes in calculation, they have one set of figures in their mind, and another on the paper. (8) if we could see into their minds, they do not make a mistake; they seem to do so, because we think, that they have the same numbers in their mind as they have on the paper. (9) if this were not so, we should not believe them to be in error, any more than i thought that a man was in error, whom i lately heard exclaiming that his entrance hall had flown into a neighbour's hen, for his meaning seemed to me sufficiently clear. (10) very many controversies have arisen from the fact, that men do not rightly explain their meaning, or do not rightly interpret the meaning of others. (47:11) for, as a matter of fact, as they flatly contradict themselves, they assume now one side, now another, of the argument, so as to oppose the opinions, which they consider mistaken and absurd in their opponents. prop.[xlviii] in the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity. proof.(48:1) the mind is a fixed and definite mode of thought ([xi] .), therefore it cannot be the free cause of its actions (i:[xvii] coroll.ii.); in other words, it cannot have an absolute faculty of positive or negative volition; but (by i:[xxviii] ) it must be determined by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another, &c. q.e.d. note.(48:2) in the same way it is proved, that there is in the mind no absolute faculty of understanding, desiring, loving, &c. (3) whence it follows, that these and similar faculties are either entirely fictitious, or are merely abstract or general terms, such as we are accustomed to put together from particular things. (4) thus the intellect and the will stand in the same relation to this or that idea, or this or that volition, as "lapidity" to this or that stone, or as "man" to peter and paul. (48:5) the cause which leads men to consider themselves free has been set forth in the i:[appendix] of part 1. (6) but, before i proceed further, i would here remark that, by, the will to affirm and decide, i mean the faculty, not the desire. (7) i mean, i repeat, the faculty, whereby the mind affirms or denies what is true or false, not the desire, wherewith the mind wishes for or turns away from any given thing. (48:8) after we have proved, that these faculties of ours are general notions, which cannot be distinguished from the particular instances on which they are based, we must inquire whether volitions themselves are anything besides the ideas of things. (48:9) we must inquire, i say, whether there is in the mind any affirmation or negation beyond that, which the idea, in so far as it is an idea, involves. (10) on which subject see the following proposition, and [d.iii] , lest the idea of pictures should suggest itself. (11) for by ideas i do not mean images such as are formed at the back of the eye, or in the midst of the brain, but the conceptions of thought. prop.[xlix] there is in the mind no volition or affirmation and negation, save that which an idea, inasmuch as it is an idea, involves. proof.(49:1) there is in the mind no absolute faculty of positive or negative volition, but only particular volitions, namely, this or that affirmation, and this or that negation. (2) now let us conceive a particular volition, namely, the mode of thinking whereby the mind affirms, that the three interior angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. (3) this affirmation involves the conception or idea of a triangle, that is, without the idea of a triangle it cannot be conceived. (49:4) it is the same thing to say, that the concept a must involve the concept b, as it is to say, that a cannot be conceived without b. (5) further, this affirmation cannot be made ([a.iii] ) without the idea of a triangle. (6) therefore, this affirmation can neither be nor be conceived, without the idea of a triangle. (7) again, this idea of a triangle must involve this same affirmation, namely, that its three interior angles are equal to two right angles. (8) wherefore, and vice versa, this idea of a triangle can neither be nor be conceived without this affirmation, therefore, this affirmation belongs to the essence of the idea of a triangle, and is nothing besides. (9) what we have said of this volition (inasmuch as we have selected it at random) may be said of anv other volition, namely, that it is nothing but an idea. q.e.d. corollary.(49:10) will and understanding are one and the same. proof.(49:11) will and understanding are nothing beyond the individual volitions and ideas ([xlviii] and note). (12) but a particular volition and a particular idea are one and the same (by [xlviii] ); therefore, will and under. standing are one and the same. q.e.d. note.(49:13) we have thus removed the cause which is commonly assigned for error. (14) for we have shown above, that falsity consists solely in the privation of knowledge involved in ideas which are fragmentary and confused. (15) wherefore, a false idea, inasmuch as it is false, does not involve certainty. (16) when we say, then, that a man acquiesces in what is false, and that he has no doubts on the subject, we do not say that he is certain, but only that he does not doubt, or that he acquiesces in what is false, inasmuch as there are no reasons, which should cause his imagination to waver (see [xliv] note). (49:17) thus, although the man be assumed to acquiesce in what is false, we shall never say that he is certain. (17a) for by, certainty we mean something positive ([xliii] , and note), not merely the absence of doubt. (49:18) however, in order that the foregoing proposition may be fully, explained, i will draw attention to a few additional points, and i will furthermore answer the objections which may be advanced against our doctrine. (19) lastly,, in order to remove every scruple, i have thought it worth while to point out some of the advantages, which follow therefrom. (20) i say "some," for they will be better appreciated from what we shall set forth in the fifth part. (49:21) i begin, then, with the first point, and warn my readers to make an accurate distinction between an idea, or conception of the mind, and the images of things which we imagine. (22) it is further necessary that they should distinguish between idea and words, whereby we signify things. (23) these three namely, images, words, and ideas are by many persons either are confused together, or not distinguished with sufficient accuracy or care, and hence people are generally in ignorance, how absolutely necessary is a knowledge of this doctrine of the will, both philosophic purposes and for the wise ordering of life. (49:24) those who think that ideas consist in images which are formed in us by contact with external bodies, persuade them selves that, the ideas of those things, whereof we can form no mental picture, are not ideas, but only figments, which we invent by the free decree of our will; they thus regard ideas as though they were inanimate pictures on a panel, and, filled with this misconception, do not see that an idea, inasmuch as it is an idea, involves an affirmation or negation. (49:25) again, those who confuse words with ideas, or with the affirmation which an idea involves, think that they can wish something contrary to what they feel, affirm, or deny. (26) this misconception will easily be laid aside by one, who reflects on the nature of knowledge, and seeing that it in no wise involves the conception of extension, will therefore clearly understand, that an idea (being a mode of thinking) does not consist in the image of anything, nor in words. (49:27) the essence of words and images is put together by bodily motions, which in no wise involve the conception of thought. (49:28) these few words on this subject will suffice: i will therefore pass on to consider the objections, which may be raised against our doctrine. (29) of these, the first is advanced by those, who think that the will has a wider scope than the understanding, and that therefore it is different therefrom. (30) the reason for their holding the belief, that the will has wider scope than the understanding, is that they assert, that they have no need of an increase in their faculty of assent, that is of affirmation or negation, in order to assent to an infinity of things which we do not perceive, but that they have need of an increase in their faculty of understanding. (31) the will is thus distinguished from the intellect, the latter being finite and the former infinite. (49:32) secondly, it may be objected that experience seems to teach us especially clearly, that we are able to suspend our judgment before assenting to things which we perceive; this is confirmed by the fact that no one is said to be deceived, in so far as he perceives anything, but only in so far as he assents or dissents. (49:33) for instance, he who feigns a winged horse, does not therefore admit that a winged horse exists; that is, he is not deceived, unless he admits in addition that a winged horse does exist. (34) nothing therefore seems to be taught more clearly by experience, than that the will or faculty of assent is free and different from the faculty of understanding. (35) thirdly, it may be objected that one affirmation does not apparently contain more reality than another; in other words, that we do not seem to need for affirming, that what is true is true, any greater power than for affirming, that what is false is true. (49:36) we have, however, seen that one idea has more reality or perfection than another, for as objects are some more excellent than others, so also are the ideas of them some more excellent than others; this also seems to point to a difference between the understanding and the will. (37) fourthly, it may be objected, if man does not act from free will, what will happen if the incentives to action are equally balanced, as in the case of buridan's ass? (49:38) will he perish of hunger and thirst? (39) if i say that he would, i shall seem to have in my thoughts an ass or the statue of a man rather than an actual man. (49:40) if i say that he would not, he would then determine his own action, and would consequently possess the faculty of going and doing whatever he liked. (41) other objections might also be raised, but, as i am not bound to put in evidence everything that anyone may dream, i will only set myself to the task of refuting those i have mentioned, and that as briefly as possible. (49:42) to the first objection i answer, that i admit that the will has a wider scope than the understanding, if by the understanding be meant only clear and distinct ideas; but i deny that the will has a wider scope than the perceptions, and the faculty of forming conceptions; nor do i see why the faculty of volition should be called infinite, any more than the faculty of feeling: for, as we are able by the same faculty of volition to affirm an infinite number of things (one after the other, for we cannot affirm an infinite number simultaneously), so also can we, by the same faculty of feeling, feel or perceive (in succession) an infinite number of bodies. (43) if it be said that there is an infinite number of things which we cannot perceive, i answer, that we cannot attain to such things by any thinking, nor, consequently, by any faculty of volition. (49:44) but, it may still be urged, if god wished to bring it about that we should perceive them, he would be obliged to endow us with a greater faculty of perception, but not a greater faculty of volition than we have already. (45) this is the same as to say that, if god wished to bring it about that we should understand an infinite number of other entities, it would be necessary for him to give us a greater understanding, but not a more universal idea of entity than that which we have already, in order to grasp such infinite entities. (49:46) we have shown that will is a universal entity or idea, whereby we explain all particular volitions in other words, that which is common to all such volitions. (49:47) as, then, our opponents maintain that this idea, common universal to all volitions, is a faculty, it is little to be wondered at that they assert, that such a faculty extends itself into the infinite, beyond the limits of the understanding: for what is universal is predicated alike of one, of many, and of an infinite number of individuals. (49:48) to the second objection i reply by denying, that we have a free power of suspending our judgment: for, when we say that anyone suspends his judgment, we merely mean that he sees, that he does not perceive the matter in question adequately. (49) suspension of judgment is, therefore, strictly speaking, a perception, and not free will. 49:(50) in order to illustrate the point, let us suppose a boy imagining a horse, and perceiving nothing else. (51) inasmuch as this imagination involves the existence of the horse ([xvii] coroll.), and the boy does not perceive anything which would exclude the existence of the horse, he will necessarily regard the horse as present: he will not be able to doubt of its existence, although he be not certain thereof. (49:52) we have daily experience of such a state of things in dreams; and i do not suppose that there is anyone, who would maintain that, while he is dreaming, he has the free power of suspending his judgment concerning the things in his dream, and bringing, it about that he should not dream those things, which he dreams that he sees; yet it happens, notwithstanding, that even in dreams we suspend our judgment, namely, when we dream that we are dreaming. (49:53) further, i grant that no one can be deceived, so far as actual perception extends that is, i grant that the mind's, imaginations, regarded in themselves, do not involve error ([xvii] , note); but i deny, that a man does not, in the act of perception, make any affirmation. (49:54) for what is the perception of a winged horse, save affirming that a horse has wings? (55) if the mind could perceive nothing else but the winged horse, it would regard the same as present to itself: it would have no reasons for doubting its existence, nor any, faculty, of dissent, unless the imagination of a winged horse be joined to an idea which precludes the existence of the said horse, or unless the mind perceives that the idea which it possesses of a winged horse is inadequate, in which case it will either necessarily, deny the existence of such a horse, or will necessarily be in doubt on the subject. (49:56) i think that i have anticipated my answer to the third objection, namely, that the will is something universal which is predicated of all ideas, and that it only signifies that which is common to all ideas, namely, an affirmation, whose adequate essence must, therefore, in so far as it is thus conceived in the abstract, be in every idea, and be, in this respect alone, the same in all, not in so far as it is considered as constituting the idea's essence: for, in this respect, particular affirmations differ one from the other, as much as do ideas. (49:57) for instance, the affirmation which involves the idea of a circle, differs from that which involves. the idea of a triangle, as much as the idea of a circle differs from the idea of a triangle. (49:58) further, i absolutely deny, that we are in need of an equal power of thinking, to affirm that that which is true is true, and to affirm that that which is false is true. (59) these two affirmations, if we regard the mind, are in the same relation to one another as being and not-being; for there is nothing positive in ideas, which constitutes the actualreality of falsehood ([xxxv] note, and [xlvii] note). (49:60) we must therefore conclude, that we are easily deceived, when we confuse universals with singulars, and the entities of reason and abstractions with realities. (60a) as for the fourth objection, i am quite ready to admit, that a man placed in the equilibrium described (namely, as perceiving nothing but hunger and thirst, a certain food and a certain drink, each equally distant from him) would die of hunger and thirst. (49:61) if i am asked, whether such an one should not rather be considered an ass than a man; i answer, that i do not know, neither do i know how a man should be considered, who hangs himself, or how we should consider children, fools, madmen, &c. (49:62) it remains to point out the advantages of a knowledge of this doctrine as bearing on conduct, and this may be, easily gathered from what has been said. (63) the doctrine is good:1. (49:64) inasmuch as it teaches us to act solely according to the decree of god, and to be partakers in the divine nature, and so much the more, as we perform more perfect ,actions and more and more understand god. (65) such a doctrine not only completely tranquillizes our spirit, but also shows us where our highest happiness or blessedness is, namely, solely in the knowledge of god, whereby we are led to act only as love and piety shall bid us. (49:66) we may thus clearly, understand, how far astray, from a true estimate of virtue are those who expect to be decorated by god with high rewards for their virtue, and their best actions, as for having endured the direst slavery; as if virtue and the service of god were not in itself happiness and perfect freedom. 2. (49:67) inasmuch as it teaches us, how we ought to conduct ourselves with respect to the gifts of fortune, or matters which are not in our own power, and do not follow from our nature. (68) for it shows us, that we should await and endure fortune's smiles or frowns with an equal mind, seeing that all things follow from the eternal decree of god by the same necessity, as it follows from the essence of a triangle, that the three angles are equal to two right angles. 3. (49:69) this doctrine raises social life, inasmuch as it teaches us to hate no man, neither to despise, to deride, to envy, or to be angry, with any. (70) further, as it tells us that each should be content with his own, and helpful to his neighbour, not from any womanish pity, favour, or superstition, but solely by the guidance of reason, according as the time and occasion demand, as i will show in part iii. 4. (49:71) lastly, this doctrine confers no small advantage on the commonwealth; for it teaches how citizens should be governed and led, not so as to become slaves, but so that they may freely do whatsoever things are best. (49:72) i have thus fulfilled the promise made at the beginning of this note, and i thus bring, the second part of my treatise to a close. (73) i think i have therein explained the nature and properties of the human mind at sufficient length, and, considering the difficulty of the subject, with sufficient clearness. (74) i have laid a foundation, whereon may be raised many excellent conclusions of the highest utility and most necessary to be known, as will, in what follows, be partly made plain. ____________________________________________________________________________ end of "the ethics part ii" "joseph b. yesselman" <jyselman@erols.com> august 25, 1997 the ethics part iii on the nature and origin of the emotions circulated 1673 posthumously published 1677 baruch spinoza 1632 1677 ____________________________________________________________________________ jby notes: 1. text was scanned from benedict de spinoza's "on the improvement of the understanding", "the ethics" and "correspondence" as published in dover's isbn 0-486-20250-x. 2. the text is that of the translation of "the ethics" by r. h. m. elwes. this text is "an unabridged and unaltered republication of the bohn library edition originally published by george bell and sons in 1883." 3. jby added sentence numbers and search strings. 4. sentence numbers are shown thus (yy:xx). yy = proposition number when given. xx = sentence number. 5. search strings are enclosed in [square brackets]: a. roman numeral, when given before a search string, indicates part number. if a different part, bring up that part and then search. b. include square brackets in search string. c. do not include part number in search string. d. search down with the same string to facilitate return. 6. please report any errors in the text, search formatting, or sentence numbering to jyselman@erols.com. 7. html version: part iii http://www.erols.com/jyselman/e3elwes.htm ___________________________________________________________________________ table of contents: [preface] [definitions] [postulates] [propositions:] [i] . [xi] . [xxi] . [xxxi] . [xli] . [li] . [ii] . [xii] . [xxii] . [xxxii] . [xlii] . [lii] . [iii] . [xiii] . [xxiii] . [xxxiii] . [xliii] . [liii] . [iv] . [xiv] . [xxiv] . [xxxiv] . [xliv] . [liv] . [v] . [xv] . [xxv] . [xxxv] . [xlv] . [lv] . [vi] . [xvi] . [xxvi] . [xxxvi] . [xlvi] . [lvi] . [vii] . [xvii] . [xxvii] . [xxxvii] . [xlvii] . [lvii] . [viii] . [xviii] . [xxviii] . [xxxviii] . [xlviii] . [lviii] . [ix] . [xix] . [xxix] . [xxxix] . [xlix] . [lix] . [x] . [xx] . [xxx] . [xl] . [l] . [definitions of the emotions] [general definition of the emotions] ____________________________________________________________________________ [preface] (prf:1) most writers on the emotions and on human conduct seem to be treating rather of matters outside nature than of natural phenomena following nature's general laws. (2) they appear to conceive man to be situated in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom: for they believe that he disturbs rather than follows nature's order, that he has absolute control over his actions, and that he is determined solely by himself. (prf:3) they attribute human infirmities and fickleness, not to the power of nature in general, but to some mysterious flaw in the nature of man, which accordingly they bemoan, deride, despise, or, as usually happens, abuse: he, who succeeds in hitting off the weakness of the human mind more eloquently or more acutely than his fellows, is looked upon as a seer. (4) still there has been no lack of very excellent men (to whose toil and industry i confess myself much indebted), who have written many noteworthy things concerning the right way of life and have given much sage advise to mankind. (prf:5) but no one, so far as i know, has defined the nature and strength of the emotions, and the power of the mind against them for their restraint. (prf:6) i do not forget, that the illustrious descartes, though he believed, that the mind has absolute power over its actions, strove to explain human emotions by their primary causes, and, at the same time, to point out of the way, by which the mind might attain to absolute dominion over them. (7) however, in my opinion, he accomplishes nothing beyond a display of the acuteness of his own great intellect, as i will show in the proper place. (8) for the present i wish to revert to those, who would rather abuse or deride human emotions than understand them. (prf:9) such persons will, doubtless think it strange that i should attempt to treat of human vice and folly geometrically, and should wish to set forth with rigid reasoning those matters which they cry out against as repugnant to reason, frivolous, absurd, and dreadful. (10) however, such is my plan. (prf:11) nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same, and everywhere one and the same in her efficacy and power of action; that is, nature's laws and ordinances, whereby all things come to pass and change from one form to another, are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature's universal laws and rules. (prf:12) thus the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from this same necessity and efficacy of nature; they answer to certain definite causes, through which they are understood, and possess certain properties as worthy of being known as the properties of anything else, whereof the contemplation in itself affords us delight. (prf:13) i shall, therefore, treat of the nature and strength of the emotions according to the same method, as i employed heretofore in my investigations concerning god and the mind. (14) i shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though i were concerned with lines, planes, and solids. ____________________________________________________________________________ [definitions] [d.i] (1) by an adequate cause, i mean a cause through which its effect can be clearly and distinctly perceived. (2) by an inadequate or partial cause, i mean a cause through which, by itself, its effect cannot be understood. [d.ii] (1) i say that we act when anything takes place, either within us or externally to us, whereof we are the adequate cause; that is (by the foregoing definition) when through our nature something takes place within us or externally to us, which can through our nature alone be clearly and distinctly understood. (2) on the other hand, i say that we are passive as regards something when that something takes place within us, or follows from our nature externally, we being only the partial cause. [d.iii] (1) by emotions i mean the modifications of the body, whereby the active power of said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modifications. n.b. (2) if we can be the adequate cause of any of these modifications, i then call the emotion an activity, otherwise i call it a passion, or state wherein the mind is passive. ____________________________________________________________________________ [postulates] post. [po.i] the human body can be affected in many ways, whereby its power of activity is increased or diminished, and also in other ways which do not render its power of activity either greater or less. n.b. this postulate or axiom rests on postulate i. and lemmas v. and vii., which see after (ii:[xiii] ). post. [po.ii] the human body can undergo many changes, and, nevertheless, retain the impressions or traces of objects (cf. ii:[po.v] ), and, consequently, the same images of things (see ii:[xvii] note). ___________________________________________________________________________ [propositions:] prop. [i] our mind is in certain cases active, and in certain cases passive. in so far as it has adequate ideas it is necessarily active, and in so far as it has inadequate ideas, it is necessarily passive. proof.(1:1) in every human mind there are some adequate ideas, and some ideas that are fragmentary and confused (ii:[xl] note). (2) those ideas which are adequate in the mind are adequate also in god, inasmuch as he constitutes the essence of the mind (ii:xl] coroll.), and those which are inadequate in the mind are likewise (by the same coroll.) adequate in god, not inasmuch as lie contains in himself the essence of the given mind alone, but as he, at the same time, contains the minds of other things. (1:3) again, from any given idea some effect must necessarily follow (i:[xxxvi] ); of this effect god is the adequate cause [i] not inasmuch as he is infinite, but inasmuch as he is conceived as affected by the given idea (ii:[ix] ). (4) but of that effect whereof god is the cause, inasmuch as he is affected by an idea which is adequate in a given mind, of that effect, i repeat, the mind in question is the adequate cause (ii:[xi] coroll.). (1:5) therefore our mind, in so far as it has adequate ideas, [d.ii] is in certain cases necessarily, active; this was our first point. (1:6) again, whatsoever necessarily, follows from the idea which is adequate in god, not by virtue of his possessing in himself the mind of one man only, but by virtue of his containing, together with the mind of that one man, the minds of other things also, of such an effect (ii:[xi] coroll.) the mind of the given man is not an adequate, but only, a partial cause; thus, [d.ii] the mind, inasmuch as it has inadequate ideas, is in certain cases necessarily passive; this was our second point. (1:7) therefore our mind, &c. q.e.d. corollary. (1:8) hence it follows that the mind is more or less liable to be acted upon, in proportion as it possesses inadequate ideas, and, contrariwise, is more or less active in proportion as it possesses adequate ideas. prop. [ii] body cannot determine mind to think, neither can mind determine body to motion or rest or any state different from these, if such there be. proof.(2:1) all modes of thinking have for their cause god, by virtue of his being a thinking thing, and not by, virtue of his being displayed under any, other attribute (ii:[vi] ). (2) that, therefore, which determines the mind to thought is a mode of thought, and not a mode of extension; that is (ii:[d.i] ), it is not body. (3) this was our first point. (2:4) again, the motion and rest of a body, must arise from another body, which has also been determined to a state of motion or rest by a third body, and absolutely, everything which takes place in a body, must spring from god, in so far as he is regarded as affected by some mode of extension, and not by some mode of thought (ii:[vi] ); that is, it cannot spring from the mind, which is a mode of thought. (5) this was our second point. (6) therefore body cannot determine mind, &c. q.e.d. note.(2:7) this is made more clear by what was said in the note to ii:[vii] , namely, that mind and body are one and the same thing, conceived first under the attribute of thought, secondly, under the attribute of extension. (8) thus it follows that the order or concatenation of things is identical, whether nature be conceived under the one attribute or the other; consequently the order of states of activity and passivity in our body is simultaneous in nature with the order of states of activity and passivity in the mind. (9) the same conclusion is evident from the manner in which we proved (ii:[xii] ). (2:10) nevertheless, though such is the case, and though there be no further room for doubt, i can scarcely believe, until the fact is proved by experience, that men can be induced to consider the question calmly and fairly, so firmly are they convinced that it is merely at the bidding of the mind, that the body is set in motion or at rest, or performs a variety of actions depending solely on the mind's will or the exercise of thought. (2:11) however, no one has hitherto laid down the limits to the powers of the body, that is, no one has as yet been taught by experience what the body can accomplish solely by the laws of nature, in so far as she is regarded as extension. (12) no one hitherto has gained such an accurate knowledge of the bodily mechanism, that he can explain all its functions; nor need i call attention to the fact that many actions are observed in the lower animals, which far transcend human sagacity, and that somnambulists do many things in their sleep, which they would not venture to do when awake: these instances are enough to show, that the body can by the sole laws of its nature do many things which the mind wonders at. (2:13) again, no one knows how or by what means the mind moves the body, nor how many various degrees of motion it can impart to the body, nor how quickly it can move it. (14) thus, when men say that this or that physical action has its origin in the mind, which latter has dominion over the body, they are using words without meaning, or are confessing in specious phraseology that they are ignorant of the cause of the said action, and do not wonder at it. (2:15) but, they will say,, whether we know or do not know the means whereby the mind acts on the body, we have, at any rate, experience of the fact that unless the human mind is in a fit state to think, the body remains inert. (16) moreover, we have experience, that the mind alone can determine whether we speak or are silent, and a variety of similar states which, accordingly, we say depend on the mind's decree. (17) but, as to the first point, i ask such objectors, whether experience does not also teach, that if the body be inactive the mind is simultaneously unfitted for thinking? (18) for when the body is at rest in sleep, the mind simultaneously is in a state of torpor also, and has no power of thinking, such as it possesses when the body, is awake. (2:19) again, i think everyone's experience will confirm the statement, that the mind is not at all times equally, fit for thinking on a given subject, but according as the body is more or less fitted for being stimulated by, the image of this or that object, so also is the mind more or less fitted for contemplating the said object. (2:20) but, it will be urged, it is impossible that solely from the laws of nature considered as extended substance, we should be able to deduce the causes of buildings, pictures, and things of that kind, which are produced only by, human art; nor would the human body, unless it were determined and led by the mind, be capable of building a single temple. (21) however, i have just pointed out that the objectors cannot fix the limits of the body's power, or say, what can be concluded from a consideration of its sole nature, whereas they, have experience of many things being accomplished solely by the laws of nature, which they would never have believed possible except under the direction of mind: such are the actions performed by, somnambulists while asleep, and wondered at by their performers when awake. (2:22) i would further call attention to the mechanism of the human body, which far surpasses in complexity, all that has been put together by, human art, not to repeat what i have already, shown, namely, that from nature, under whatever attribute she be considered, infinite results follow. (23) as for the second objection, i submit that the world would be much happier, if men were as fully, able to keep silence as they, are to speak. (24) experience abundantly shows that men can govern anything more easily than their tongues, and restrain anything more easily than their appetites; whence it comes about that many believe, that we are only, free in respect to objects which we moderately desire, because our desire for such can easily be controlled by the thought of something else frequently remembered, but that we are by no means free in respect to what we seek with violent emotion, for our desire cannot then be allayed with the remembrance of anything else. (2:25) however, unless such persons had proved by experience that we do many things which we afterwards repent of, and again that we often, when assailed by contrary, emotions, see the better and follow the worse, there would be nothing to prevent their believing that we are free in all things. (2:26) thus an infant believes that of its own free will it desires milk, an angry child believes that it freely desires vengeance, a timid child believes that it freely desires to run away; further, a drunken man believes that he utters from the free decision of his mind words which, when he is sober, he would willingly, have withheld: thus, too, a delirious man, a garrulous woman, a child, and others of like complexion, believe that they speak from the free decision of their mind, when they are in reality unable to restrain their impulse to talk. (2:27) experience teaches us no less clearly, than reason, that men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined; and, further, it is plain that the dictates of the mind are but another name for the appetites, and therefore vary, according to the varying state of the body. (2:28) everyone shapes his actions according to his emotion, those who are assailed by conflicting emotions know not what they wish; those who are not attacked by any emotion are readily swayed this way or that. (29) all these considerations clearly show that a mental decision and a bodily appetite, or determined state, are simultaneous, or rather are one and the same thing, which we call decision, when it is regarded under and explained through the attribute of thought, and a conditioned state, when it is regarded under the attribute of extension, and deduced from the laws of motion and rest. (30) this will appear yet more plainly in the sequel. (31) for the present i wish to call attention to another point, namely, that we cannot act by the decision of the mind, unless we have a remembrance of having done so. (2:32) for instance, we cannot say a word without remembering that we have done so. (33) again, it is not within the free power of the mind to remember or forget a thing at will. (34) therefore the freedom of the mind must in any case be limited to the power of uttering or not uttering something which it remembers. (35) but when we dream that we speak, we believe that we speak from a free decision of the mind, yet we do not speak, or, if we do, it is by a spontaneous motion of the body. (2:36) again, we dream that we are concealing something, and we seem to act from the same decision of the mind as that, whereby we keep silence when awake concerning something we know. (37) lastly, we dream that from the free decision of our mind we do something, which we should not dare to do when awake. (2:38) now i should like to know whether there be in the mind two sorts of decisions, one sort illusive, and the other sort free? (39) if our folly does not carry us so far as this, we must necessarily admit, that the decision of the mind, which is believed to be free, is not distinguishable from the imagination or memory, and is nothing more than the affirmation, which an idea, by virtue of being an idea, necessarily involves (ii:[xlix] ). (2:40) wherefore these decisions of the mind arise in the mind by the same necessity, as the ideas of things actually existing. (41) therefore those who believe, that they speak or keep silence or act in any way from the free decision of their mind, do but dream with their eyes open. prop. [iii] the activities of the mind arise solely from adequate ideas; the passive states of the mind depend solely on inadequate ideas. proof.(3:1) the first element, which constitutes the essence of the mind, is nothing else but the idea of the actually existent body (ii:[xi] and ii:[xiii] ), which (ii:[xv] ) is compounded of many other ideas, whereof some are adequate and some inadequate (ii:[xxix] coroll., ii:[xxxviii] coroll.). (2) whatsoever therefore follows from the nature of mind, and has mind for its proximate cause, through which it must be understood, must necessarily follow either from an adequate or from an inadequate idea. (3:3) but in so far as the mind ([i] ) has inadequate ideas, it is necessarily passive: wherefore the activities of the mind follow solely from adequate ideas, and accordingly the mind is only passive in so far as it has inadequate ideas. q.e.d. note.(3:4) thus we see, that passive states are not attributed to the mind, except in so far as it contains something involving negation, or in so far as it is regarded as a part of nature, which cannot be clearly and distinctly perceived through itself without other parts: i could thus show, that passive states are attributed to individual things in the same way that they are attributed to the mind, they cannot otherwise be perceived, but my purpose is solely to treat of the human mind. prop. [iv] nothing can be destroyed, except by a cause external to itself. proof.(4:1) this proposition is self-evident, for the definition of anything affirms the essence of that thing, but does not negative it; in other words, it postulates the essence of the thing, but does not take it away. (2) so long therefore as we regard only the thing itself, without taking into account external causes, we shall not be able to find in it anything which could destroy it. q.e.d. prop. [v] things are naturally contrary, that is, cannot exist in the same object, in so far as one is capable of destroying the other. proof.(5:1) if they could agree together or co-exist in the same object, there would then be in the said object something which could destroy it; but this, by the foregoing proposition, is absurd, therefore things, &c. q.e.d. prop. [vi] everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being. proof.(6:1) individual things are modes whereby the attributes of god are expressed in a given determinate manner (i:[xxv] coroll.); that is (i:[xxxiv] ), they are things which express in a given determinate manner the power of god, whereby god is and acts; now no thing contains in itself anything whereby it can be destroyed, or which can take away its existence ([iv] ); but contrariwise it is opposed to all could take away its existence [v] . (6:2) therefore, in so far as it can, and in so far as it is in itself, it endeavours to persist in its own being. q.e.d. prop. [vii] the endeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being, is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in question. proof.(7:1) from the given essence of any thing certain consequences necessarily follow (i:[xxxvi] ), nor have things any power save such as necessarily follows from their nature as determined (i:[xxix] ); wherefore the power of any given thing, or the endeavour whereby, either alone or with other things, it acts, or endeavours to act, that is ([vi] ), the power or endeavour, wherewith it endeavours to persist in its own being is nothing else but the given or actual essence of the thing in question. q.e.d. prop. [viii] the endeavour, whereby a thing endeavours to persist in its being, involves no finite time, but an indefinite time. proof.(8:1) if it involved a limited time, which should determine the duration of the thing, it would then follow solely from that power whereby the thing exists, that the thing could not exist beyond the limits of that time, but that it must be destroyed; but this ([iv] ) is absurd. (2) wherefore the endeavour wherewith a thing exists involves no definite time; but, contrariwise, since ([iv] ) it will by the same power whereby it already exists always continue to exist, unless it be destroyed by some external cause, this endeavour involves an indefinite time. prop. [ix] the mind, both in so far as it has clear and distinct ideas, and also in so far as it has confused ideas, endeavours to persist in its being for an indefinite period, and of this endeavour it is conscious. proof.(9:1) the essence of the mind is constituted by adequate and inadequate ideas ([iii] ), therefore ([vii] ), both in so far as it possesses the former, and in so far as it possesses the latter, it endeavours to persist in its own being, and that for an indefinite time ([viii] ). (2) now as the mind (ii:[xxiii] ) is necessarily conscious of itself through the ideas of the modifications of the body, the mind is therefore ([vii] ) conscious of its own endeavour. note.(9:3) this endeavour, when referred solely to the mind, is called will, when referred to the mind and body in conjunction it is called appetite; it is, in fact, nothing else but man's essence, from the nature of which necessarily follow all those results which tend to its preservation; and which man has thus been determined to perform. (9:4) further, between appetite and desire there is no difference, except that the term desire is generally applied to men, in so far as they are conscious of their appetite, and may accordingly be thus defined: desire is appetite with consciousness thereof. (9:5) it is thus plain from what has been said, that in no case do we strive for, wish for, long for, or desire anything, because we deem it to be good, but on the other hand we deem a thing to be good, because we strive for it, wish for it, long for it, or desire it. prop. [x] an idea, which excludes the existence of our body, cannot be postulated in our mind, but is contrary thereto. proof.(10:1) whatsoever can destroy our body, cannot be postulated therein ([v] ). (2) therefore neither can the idea of such a thing occur in god, in so far as he has the idea of our body ([ix] coroll.); that is (ii:[xi] , ii:[xiii] ), the idea of that thing cannot be postulated as in our mind, but contrariwise, since (ii:[xi] , ii:[xiii] ) the first element, that constitutes the essence of the mind, is the idea of the human body as actually existing, it follows that the first and chief endeavour of our mind is the endeavour to affirm the existence of our body: thus, an idea, which negatives the existence of our body, is contrary to our mind, &c. q.e.d. prop. [xi] whatsoever increases or diminishes, helps or hinders the power of activity in our body, the idea thereof increases or diminishes, helps or hinders the power of thought in our mind. proof.(11:1) this proposition is evident from ii:[vii] or from ii:[xiv] . note.(11:2) thus we see, that the mind can undergo many changes, and can pass sometimes to a state of greater perfection, sometimes to a state of lesser perfection. (3) these passive states of transition explain to us the emotions of pleasure and pain. (4) by pleasure therefore in the following propositions i shall signify a passive state wherein the mind passes to a greater perfection. (5) by pain i shall signify a passive state wherein the mind passes to a lesser perfection. (11:6) further, the emotion of pleasure in reference to the body and mind together i shall call stimulation (titillatio) or merriment (hilaritas), the emotion of pain in the same relation i shall call suffering or melancholy. (7) but we must bear in mind, that stimulation and suffering are attributed to man, when one part of his nature is more affected than the rest, merriment and melancholy, when all parts are alike affected. (8) what i mean by desire i have explained in the note to prop.[ix] of this part; beyond these three i recognize no other primary emotion; i will show as i proceed, that all other emotions arise from these three. (11:9) but, before i go further, i should like here to explain at greater length prop.[x] of this part, in order that we may clearly understand how one idea is contrary to another. (10) in the note.[ii:[xvii] ] we showed that the idea, which constitutes the essence of mind, involves the existence of body, so long as the body itself exists. (11:11) again, it follows from what we pointed out in the coroll.ii:[viii] , that the present existence of our mind depends solely on the fact, that the mind involves the actual existence of the body. (12) lastly, we showed (ii:[xvii] , ii:[xviii] note) that the power of the mind, whereby, it imagines and remembers things, also depends on the fact, that it involves the actual existence of the body. (13) whence it follows, that the present existence of the mind and its power of imagining are removed, as soon as the mind ceases to affirm the present existence of the body. (11:14) now the cause, why the mind ceases to affirm this existence of the body, cannot be the mind itself ([iv] ), nor again the fact that the body ceases to exist. (15) for (by [vi] ) the cause, why the mind affirms the existence of the body, is not that the body began to exist; therefore, for the same reason, it does not cease to affirm the existence of the body, because the body ceases to exist; but (ii:[xvii] ) this result follows from another idea, which excludes the present existence of our body and, consequently, of our mind, and which is therefore contrary to the idea constituting the essence of our mind. prop. [xii] the mind, as far as it can, endeavours to conceive those things, which increase or help the power of activity in the body. proof.(12:1) so long as the human body is affected in a mode, which involves the nature of any external body, the human mind will regard that external body as present (ii:[xvii] ), and consequently (ii:[vii] ), so long as the human mind regards an external body as present, that is (ii:[xvii] note), conceives it, the human body is affected in a mode, which involves the nature of the said external body; thus so long as the mind conceives things, which increase or help the power of activity in our body, the body is affected in modes which increase or help its power of activity ([po.i] ); consequently ([xi] ) the mind's power of thinking is for that period increased or helped. (12:2) thus ([vi] , [ix] ) the mind, as far as it can, endeavours to imagine such things. q.e.d. prop. [xiii] when the mind conceives things which diminish or hinder the body's power of activity, it endeavours, as far as possible, to remember things which exclude the existence of the first-named things. proof.(13:1) so long as the mind conceives anything of the kind alluded to, the power of the mind and body is diminished or constrained (cf. [xii] proof); nevertheless it will continue to conceive it, until the mind conceives something else, which excludes the present existence thereof (ii:[xvii] ); that is (as i have just shown), the power of the mind and of the body is diminished, or constrained, until the mind conceives something else, which excludes the existence of the former thing conceived: therefore the mind ([ix] ), as far as it can, will endeavour to conceive or remember the latter. q.e.d. corollary.(13:2) hence it follows, that the mind shrinks from conceiving those things, which diminish or constrain the power of itself and of the body. note.[13:3] from what has been said we may clearly understand the nature of love and hate. (4) love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause: hate is nothing else but pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause. (5) we further see, that he who loves necessarily endeavours to have, and to keep present to him, the object of his love; while he who hates endeavours to remove and destroy the object of his hatred. (6) but i will treat of these matters at more length hereafter. prop. [xiv] if the mind has once been affected by two emotions at the same time, it will, whenever it is afterwards affected by one of the two, be also affected by the other. proof.(14:1) if the human body has once been affected by two bodies at once, whenever afterwards the mind conceives one of them, it will straightway remember the other also (ii:[xviii] ). (2) but the mind's conceptions indicate rather the emotions of our body than the nature of external bodies (ii:[xvi] coroll.ii.); therefore, if the body, and consequently the mind ([d.iii] ) has been once affected by two emotions at the same time, it will, whenever it is afterwards affected by one of the two, be also affected by the other. prop. [xv] anything can, accidentally, be the cause of pleasure, pain, or desire. proof.(15:1) let it be granted that the mind is simultaneously affected by two emotions, of which one neither increases nor diminishes its power of activity, and the other does either increase or diminish the said power ([po.i] ). (2) from the foregoing proposition it is evident that, whenever the mind is afterwards affected by the former, through its true cause, which (by hypothesis) neither increases nor diminishes its power of action, it will be at the same time affected by the latter, which does increase or diminish its power of activity, that is ([xi] note) it will be affected with pleasure or pain. (3) thus the former of the two emotions will, not through itself, but accidentally, be the cause of pleasure or pain. (4) in the same way also it can be easily shown, that a thing may be accidentally the cause of desire. q.e.d. corollary.[15:5] simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it. proof.(15:6) for from this fact alone it arises ([xiv] ), that the mind afterwards conceiving the said thing is affected with the emotion of pleasure or pain, that is ([xi] note), according as the power of the mind and body may be increased or diminished, &c.; and consequently ([xii] ), according as the mind may desire or shrink from the conception of it ([xiii] coroll.), in other words ([xiii] note), according as it may love or hate the same. q.e.d. note.(15:7) hence we understand how it may happen, that we love or hate a thing without any cause for our emotion being known to us; merely, as the phrase is, from sympathy or antipathy. (8) we should refer to the same category those objects, which affect us pleasurably or painfully, simply because they resemble other objects which affect us in the same way. (9) this i will show in the next prop. (10) i am aware that certain authors, who were the first to introduce these terms "sympathy" and "antipathy," wished to signify thereby some occult qualities in things; nevertheless i think we may be permitted to use the same terms to indicate known or manifest qualities. prop. [xvi] simply from the fact that we conceive, that a given object has some point of resemblance with another object which is wont to affect the mind pleasurably or painfully, although the point of resemblance be not the efficient cause of the said emotions, we shall still regard the first-named object with love or hate. proof.(16:1) the point of resemblance was in the object (by hypothesis), when we regarded it with pleasure or pain, thus ([xiv] ), when the mind is affected by the image thereof, it will straightway be affected by one or the other emotion, and consequently the thing, which we perceive to have the same point of resemblance, will be accidentally ([xv] ) a cause of pleasure or pain. (2) thus (by the foregoing corollary [15:5] ), although the point in which the two objects resemble one another be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we shall still regard the firstnamed object with love or hate. q.e.d. prop. [xvii] if we conceive that a thing, which is wont to affect us painfully, has any point of resemblance with another thing which is wont to affect us with an equally strong emotion of pleasure, we shall hate the first-named thing, and at the same time we shall love it. proof.(17:1) the given thing is (by hypothesis) in itself a cause of pain, and ([xiii] note), in so far as we imagine it with this emotion, we shall hate it: further, inasmuch as we conceive that it has some point of resemblance to something else, which is wont to affect us with an equally strong emotion of pleasure, we shall with an equally strong impulse of pleasure love it ([xvi] ); thus we shall both hate and love the same thing. q.e.d. note.(17:2) this disposition of the mind, which arises from two contrary emotions, is called vacillation; it stands to the emotions in the same relation as doubt does to the imagination (ii:[xliv] note); vacillation and doubt do not differ one from the other, except as greater differs from less. (3) but we must bear in mind that i have deduced this vacillation from causes, which give rise through themselves to one of the emotions, and to the other accidentally. (4) i have done this, in order that they might be more easily deduced from what went before; but i do not deny that vacillation of the disposition generally arises from an object, which is the efficient cause of both emotions. (17:5) the human body is composed (ii:[po.i] ) of a variety of individual parts of different nature, and may therefore (ii:[a.viii] ) be affected in a variety of different ways by one and the same body; and contrariwise, as one and the same thing can be affected in many ways, it can also in many different ways affect one and the same part of the body. (6) hence we can easily conceive, that one and the same object may be the cause of many and conflicting emotions. prop. [xviii] a man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present. proof.(18:1) so long as a man is affected by the image of anything, he will regard that thing as present, even though it be non-existent (ii:[xvii] & coroll.), he will not conceive it as past or future, except in so far as its image is joined to the image of time past or future (ii:[xliv] note). (2) wherefore the image of a thing, regarded in itself alone, is identical, whether it be referred to time past, time future, or time present; that is (ii:[xvi] coroll.), the disposition or emotion of the body is identical, whether the image be of a thing past, future, or present. (3) thus the emotion of pleasure or pain is the same, whether the image be of a thing past or future. q.e.d. note i (18:4) i call a thing past or future, according as we either have been or shall be affected thereby. (5) for instance, according as we have seen it, or are about to see it, according as it has recreated us, or will recreate us, according as it has harmed us, or will harm us. (6) for, as we thus conceive it, we affirm its existence; that is, the body is affected by no emotion which excludes the existence of the thing, and therefore (ii:[xvii] ) the body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present. (7) however, as it generally happens that those, who have had many experiences, vacillate, so long as they regard a thing as future or past, and are usually in doubt about its issue (ii:[xliv] note); it follows that the emotions which arise from similar images of things are not so constant, but are generally disturbed by the images of other things, until men become assured of the issue. note ii.(18:8) from what has just been said, we understand what is meant by the terms hope, fear, confidence, despair, joy, and disappointment (conscientio morsus thus rendered by mr. pollock.). (9) hope is nothing else but an inconstant pleasure, arising from the image of something future or past, whereof we do not yet know the issue. (10) fear, on the other hand, is an inconstant pain also arising from the image of something concerning which we are in doubt. (11) if the element of doubt be removed from these emotions, hope becomes confidence and fear becomes despair. (18:12) in other words, pleasure or pain arising from the image of something concerning which we have hoped or feared. (13) again, joy is pleasure arising from the image of something past whereof we doubted the issue. (14) disappointment is the pain opposed to joy. prop. [xix] he who conceives that the object of his love is destroyed will feel pain; if he conceives that it is preserved he will feel pleasure. proof.(19:1) the mind, as far as possible, endeavours to conceive those things which increase or help the body's power of activity ([xii] ); in other words ([xii] note), those things which it loves. (2) but conception is helped by those things which postulate the existence of a thing, and contrariwise is hindered by those which exclude the existence of a thing (ii:[xvii] ); therefore the images of things, which postulate the existence of an object of love, help the mind's endeavour to conceive the object of love, in other words ([xi] note), affect the mind pleasurably; contrariwise those things, which exclude the existence of an object of love, hinder the aforesaid mental endeavour; in other words, affect the mind painfully. (3) he, therefore, who conceives that the object of his love is destroyed will feel pain, &c. q.e.d. prop. [xx] he who conceives that the object of his hate is destroyed will feel pleasure. proof.(20:1) the mind ([xiii] ) endeavours to conceive those things, which exclude the existence of things whereby the body's power of activity is diminished or constrained; that is ([xiii] note), it endeavours to conceive such things as exclude the existence of what it hates; therefore the image of a thing, which excludes the existence mental effort, in other words ([xi] note), affects the mind pleasurably. (2) thus he who conceives that the object of his hate is destroyed will feel pleasure. q.e.d. prop. [xxi] he who conceives, that the object of his love is affected pleasurably or painfully, will himself be affected pleasurably or painfully; and the one or the other emotion will be greater or less in the lover according as it is greater or less in the thing loved. proof.(21:1) the images of things (as we showed in [xix] ) which postulate the existence of the object of love, help the mind's endeavour to conceive the said object. (2) but pleasure postulates the existence of something feeling pleasure, so much the more in proportion as the emotion of pleasure is greater; for it is ([xi] note) a transition to a greater perfection; therefore the image of pleasure in the object of love helps the mental endeavour of the lover; that is, it affects the lover pleasurably, and so much the more, in proportion as this emotion may have been greater in the object of love. (3) this was our first point. (4) further, in so far as a thing is affected with pain, it is to that extent destroyed, the extent being in proportion to the amount of pain ([xi] note); therefore ([xix] ) he who conceives, that the of his love is affected painfully, will himself be affected painfully, in proportion as the said emotion is greater or less in the object of love. q.e.d. prop. [xxii] if we conceive that anything pleasurably affects some object of our love, we shall be affected with love towards that thing. contrariwise, if we conceive that it affects an object of our love painfully, we shall be affected with hatred towards it. proof.(22:1) he, who affects pleasurably or painfully the object of our love, affects us also pleasurably or painfully that is, if we conceive the loved object as affected with the said pleasure or pain ([xxi] ). (2) but this pleasure or pain is postulated to come to us accompanied by the idea of an external cause; therefore ([xiii] note), if we conceive that anyone affects an object of our love pleasurably or painfully, we shall te affected with love or hatred towards him. q.e.d. note.(22:3) [xxi] explains to us the nature of pity, which we may define as pain arising from another's hurt. (4) what term we can use for pleasure arising from another's gain, i know not. (22:5) we will call the love towards him who confers a benefit on another, approval; and the hatred towards him who injures another, we will call indignation. (6) we must further remark, that we not only feel pity for a thing which we have loved (as shown in [xxi] ), but also for a thing which we have hitherto regarded without emotion, provided that we deem that it resembles ourselves (as i will show presently). (7) thus, we bestow approval on one who has benefitted anything resembling ourselves, and contrariwise, are indignant with him who has done it an injury. prop. [xxiii] he who conceives, that an object of his hatred is painfully affected, will feel pleasure. contrariwise, if he thinks that the said object is pleasurably affected, he will feel pain. each of these emotions will be greater or less, according as its contrary is greater or less in the object of hatred. proof.(23:1) in so far as an object of hatred is painfully affected, it is destroyed, to an extent proportioned to the strength of the pain ([xi] note). (2) therefore, he ([xx] ) who conceives, that some object of his hatred is painfully affected, will feel pleasure, to an extent proportioned to the amount of pain he conceives in the object of his hatred. (3) this was our first point. (4) again, pleasure postulates the existence of the pleasurably affected thing ([xi] note), in proportion as the pleasure is greater or less. (23:5) if anyone imagines that an object of his hatred is pleasurably affected, this conception ([xiii] ) will hinder his own endeavour to persist; in other words ([xi] note), he who hates will be painfully affected. q.e.d. note.(23:6) this pleasure can scarcely be felt unalloyed, and without any mental conflict. (7) for (as i am about to show in [xxvii] ), in so far as a man conceives that something similar to himself is affected by pain, he will himself be affected in like manner; and he will have the contrary emotion in contrary circumstances. (8) but here we are regarding hatred only. prop. [xxiv] if we conceive that anyone pleasurably affects an object of our hate, we shall feel, hatred towards him also. if we conceive that he painfully affects the said object, we shall feel love towards him. proof. (24:1) this proposition is proved in the same way as [xxii] , which see. note. (2) these and similar emotions of hatred are attributable to envy, which, accordingly, is nothing else but hatred, in so far as it is regarded as disposing a man to rejoice in another's hurt, and to grieve at another's advantage. prop. xxv. we endeavour to affirm, concerning ourselves, and concerning what we love, everything that we conceive to affect pleasurably ourselves, or the loved object. contrariwise, we endeavour to negative everything, which we conceive to affect painfully ourselves or the loved object. proof.(25:1) that, which we conceive to affect an object of our love pleasurably or painfully, affects us also pleasurably, or painfully ([xxi] ). (2) but the mind ([xii] ) endeavours, as far as possible, to conceive those things which affect us pleasurably; in other words (ii:[xvii] & coroll.), it endeavours to regard them as present. (25:3) and, contrariwise ([xiii] ), it endeavours to exclude the existence of such things as affect us painfully; therefore, we endeavour to affirm concerning ourselves, and concerning the loved object, whatever we conceive to affect ourselves, or the loved object pleasurably. q.e.d. prop. [xxvi] we endeavour to affirm, concerning that which we hate, everything which we conceive to affect it painfully; and, contrariwise, we endeavour to deny, concerning it, everything which we conceive to affect it pleasurably. proof.(26:1) this proposition follows from [xxiii] , as the foregoing proposition followed from [xxi] . note.(26:2) thus we see that it may readily happen, that a man easily think too highly of himself, or a loved object, and, contrariwise, too meanly of a hated object. (3) this feeling is called pride, in reference to the man who thinks too highly of himself, and is a species of madness, wherein a man dreams with his eyes open, thinking that he can accomplish all things that fall within the scope of his conception, and thereupon accounting them real, and exulting in them, so long as he is unable to conceive anything which excludes their existence, and determines his own power of action. (26:4) pride, therefore, is pleasure springing from a man thinking too highly of himself. (5) again, the pleasure which arises from a man thinking too highly of another is called over-esteem. (6) whereas the pleasure which arises from thinking too little of a man is called disdain. prop. [xxvii] by the very fact that we conceive a thing, which is like ourselves, and which we have not regarded with any emotion, to be affected with any emotion, we are ourselves affected with a like emotion (affectus). proof.(27:1) the images of things are modifications of the human body, whereof the ideas represent external bodies as present to us (ii:[xvii] ); in other words (ii:[x] ), whereof the ideas involve the nature of our body, and, at the same time, the nature of external bodies as present. (2) if, therefore, the nature of the external body be similar to the nature of our body, then the idea which we form of the external body will involve a modification of our own body similar to the modification of the external body. (3) consequently, if we conceive anyone similar to ourselves as affected by any emotion, this conception will express a modification of our body similar to that emotion. (27:4) thus, from the fact of conceiving a thing like ourselves to be affected with any emotion, we are ourselves affected with a like emotion. (5) if, however, we hate the said thing like ourselves, we shall, to that extent, be affected by a contrary, and not similar, emotion. q.e.d. note i.(27:6) this imitation of emotions, when it is referred to pain, is called compassion (cf. [xxii] note); when it is referred to desire, it is called emulation, which is nothing else but the desire of anything, engendered in us by the fact that we conceive that others have the like desire. corollary i.(27:7) if we conceive that anyone, whom we have hitherto regarded with no emotion, pleasurably affects something similar to ourselves, we shall be affected with love towards him. (8) if, on the other hand, we conceive that he painfully affects the same, we shall be affected with hatred towards him. proof.(27:9) this is proved from the last proposition in the same manner as iii.[xxii] is proved from [xxi] . corollary ii.(27:10) we cannot hate a thing which we pity, because its misery affects us painfully. proof.(27:11) if we could hate it for this reason, we should rejoice in its pain, which is contrary to the hypothesis. corollary iii.(27:12) we seek to free from misery, as far as we can, a thing which we pity. proof.(27:13) that, which painfully affects the object of our pity, affects us also with similar pain (by the foregoing proposition); therefore, we shall endeavour to recall everything which removes its existence, or which destroys it (cf. [xiii] ); in other words ([ix] note), we shall desire to destroy it, or we shall be determined for its destruction; thus, we shall endeavour to free from misery a thing which we pity. q.e.d. note ii.(27:14) this will or appetite for doing good, which arises from pity of the thing whereon we would confer a benefit, is called benevolence, and is nothing else but desire arising from compassion. (15) concerning love or hate towards him who has done good or harm to something, which we conceive to be like ourselves, see [xxii] note. prop. [xxviii] we endeavour to bring about whatsoever we conceive to conduce to pleasure; but we endeavour to remove or destroy whatsoever we conceive to be truly repugnant thereto, or to conduce to pain. proof.(28:1) we endeavour, as far as possible, to conceive that which we imagine to conduce to pleasure ([xii] ); in other words (ii:[xvii] ) we shall endeavour to conceive it as far as possible as present or actually existing. (2) but the endeavour of the mind, or the mind's power of thought, is equal to, and simultaneous with, the endeavour of the body, or the body's power of action. (3) (this is clear from ii:[vii] coroll. and ii:[xi] coroll.). (4) therefore we make an absolute endeavour for its existence, in other words (which by [ix] note come to the same thing) we desire and strive for it; this was our first point. (28:5) again, if we conceive that something, which we believed to be the cause of pain, that is ([xiii] note), which we hate, is destroyed, we shall rejoice ([xx] ). (6) we shall, therefore (by the first part of this proof), endeavour to destroy, the same, or ([xiii] ) to remove it from us, so that we may not regard it as present; this was our second point. (7) wherefore whatsoever conduces to pleasure, &c. q.e.d. prop. xxix. we shall also endeavour to do whatsoever we conceive men (nb. by "men" in this and the following propositions, i mean men whom we regard without any particular emotion.) to regard with pleasure, and contrariwise we shall shrink from doing that which we conceive men to shrink from. proof.(29:1) from the fact of imagining, that men love or hate anything, we shall love or hate the same thing ([xxvii] ). (2) that is ([xiii] note), from this mere fact we shall feel pleasure or pain at the thing's presence. (3) and so we shall endeavour to do whatever we conceive men to love or regard with pleasure, etc. q.e.d. note.(29:44) this endeavour to do a thing or leave it undone, solely in order to please men, we call ambition, especially when we so eagerly endeavour to please the vulgar, that we do or omit certain things to our own or another's hurt: in other cases it is generally called kindliness. (5) furthermore i give the name of praise to the pleasure, with which we conceive the action of another, whereby he has endeavoured to please us; but of blame to the pain wherewith we feel aversion to his action. prop. [xxx] if anyone has done something which he conceives as affecting other men pleasurably, he will be affected by pleasure, accompanied by the idea of himself as cause; in other words, he will regard himself with pleasure. on the other hand, if he has done anything which he conceives as affecting others painfully, he will regard himself with pain. proof.(30:1) he who conceives, that he affects others with pleasure or pain, will, by that very fact, himself be affected with pleasure or pain ([xxvii] ), but, as a man (ii:[xix] and ii:[xxiii] ) is conscious of himself through the modifications whereby he is determined to action, it follows that he who conceives, that he affects others pleasurably, will be affected with pleasure accompanied by the idea of himself as cause; in other words, will regard himself with pleasure. (2) and so mutatis mutandis in the case of pain. q.e.d. note.(30:3) as love ([xiii] ) is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and hatred is pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause; the pleasure and pain in question will be a species of love and hatred. (4) but, as the terms love and hatred are used in reference to external objects, we will employ other names for the emotions now under discussion: pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause (so van vloten and bruder. the dutch version and camerer read, "an internal cause." "honour" = gloria.) we will style honour, and the emotion contrary thereto we will style shame: i mean in such cases as where pleasure or pain arises from a man's belief, that he is being praised or blamed: otherwise pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause (so van vloten and bruder. the dutch version and camerer read, "an internal cause." is called self-complacency, and its contrary pain is called repentance. (30:5) again, as it may happen (ii:[xvii] coroll.) that the pleasure, wherewith a man conceives that he affects others, may exist solely in his own imagination, and as ([xxv] ) everyone endeavours to conceive concerning himself that which he conceives will affect him with pleasure, it may easily come to pass that a vain man may be proud and may imagine that he is pleasing to all, when in reality he may be an annoyance to all. prop. [xxxi] if we conceive that anyone loves, desires, or hates anything which we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we shall thereupon regard the thing in question with more steadfast love, &c. on the contrary, if we think that anyone shrinks from something that we love, we shall undergo vacillation of soul. proof.(31:1) from the mere fact of conceiving that anyone loves anything we shall ourselves love that thing ([xxvii] ): but we are assumed to love it already; there is, therefore, a new cause of love, whereby our former emotion is fostered; hence we shall thereupon love it more steadfastly. (2) again, from the mere fact of conceiving that anyone shrinks from anything, we shall ourselves shrink from that thing ([xxvii] ). (3) if we assume that we at the same time love it, we shall then simultaneously love it and shrink from it; in other words, we shall be subject to vacillation ([xvii] note). q.e.d. corollary.(31:4) from the foregoing, and also from ii:[xxviii] , it follows that everyone endeavours, as far as possible, to cause others to love what he himself loves, and to hate what he himself hates: as the poet says: " as lovers let us share every hope and every fear: ironhearted were he who should love what the other leaves." (ovid. amores, ii.xix.4, 5. spinoza transposes the verses. "speremus pariter, pariter metuamus amantes; ferreus est, si quis, quod sinit alter, amat.") note.(31:5) this endeavour to bring it about, that our own likes and dislikes should meet with universal approval, is really ambition (see [xxix] note) ; wherefore we see that everyone by nature desires (appetere), that the rest of mankind should live according to his own individual disposition: when such a desire is equally present in all, everyone stands in everyone else's way, and in wishing to be loved or praised by all, all become mutually hateful. prop. [xxxii] if we conceive that anyone takes delight in something, which only one person can possess, we shall endeavour to bring it about that the man in question shall not gain possession thereof. proof.(32:1) from the mere fact of our conceiving that another person takes delight in a thing (ii:[xxvii] & coroll.) we shall ourselves love that thing and desire to take delight therein. (2) but we assumed that the pleasure in question would be prevented by another's delight in its object; we shall, therefore, endeavour to prevent his possession thereof ([xxviii] ). q.e.d. note.(32:3) we thus see that man's nature is generally so constituted, that he takes pity on those who fare ill, and envies those who fare well with an amount of hatred proportioned to his own love for the goods in their possession. (4) further, we see that from the same property of human nature, whence it follows that men are merciful, it follows also that they are envious and ambitious. (5) lastly, if we make appeal to experience, we shall find that she entirely confirms what we have said; more especially if we turn our attention to the first years of our life. (32:6) we find that children, whose body is continually, as it were, in equilibrium, laugh or cry simply because they see others laughing or crying; moreover, they desire forthwith to imitate whatever they see others doing, and to possess themselves whatever they conceive as delighting others: inasmuch as the images of things are, as we have said, modifications of the human body, or modes wherein the human body, is affected and disposed by external causes to act in this or that manner. prop. [xxxiii] when we love a thing similar to ourselves we endeavour, as far as we can, to bring about that it should love us in return. proof.(33:1) that which we love we endeavour, as far as we can, to conceive in preference to anything else ([xii] ). (2) if the thing be similar to ourselves, we shall endeavour to affect it pleasurably in preference to anything else ([xxix] ). (3) in other words, we shall endeavour, as far as we can, to bring it about, that the thing should be affected with pleasure accompanied by the idea of ourselves, that is ([xiii] note), that it should love us in return. q.e.d. prop. [xxxiv] the greater the emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected towards us, the greater will be our complacency. proof.(34:1) we endeavour ([xxxiii] ), as far as we can, to bring about, that what we love should love us in return: in other words, that what we love should be affected with pleasure accompanied by the idea of ourself as cause. (2) therefore, in proportion as the loved object is more pleasurably affected because of us, our endeavour will be assisted that is ([xi] &note) the greater will be our pleasure. (3) but when we take pleasure in the fact, that we pleasurably affect something similar to ourselves, we regard ourselves with pleasure ([xxx] ); therefore the greater the emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected, &c. q.e.d. prop. [xxxv] if anyone conceives, that an object of his love joins itself to another with closer bonds of friendship than he himself has attained to, he will be affected with hatred towards the loved object and with envy towards his rival. proof.(35:1) in proportion as a man thinks, that a loved object is well affected towards him, will be the strength of his self-approval (by the last prop.), that is ([xxx] note), of his pleasure; he will, therefore ([xxviii] ), endeavour, as far as he can, to imagine the loved object as most closely bound to him: this endeavour or desire will be increased, if he thinks that someone else has a similar desire ([xxxi] ). (2) but this endeavour or desire is assumed to be checked by the image of the loved object in conjunction with the image of him whom the loved object has joined to itself ; therefore ([xi] note) he will for that reason be affected with pain, accompanied by the idea of the loved object as a cause in conjunction with the image of his rival; that is, he will be ([xiii] ) affected with hatred towards the loved object and also towards his rival ([xv] coroll.), which latter he will envy as enjoying the beloved object. q.e.d. note.(35:3) this hatred towards an object of love joined with envy is called jealousy, which accordingly is nothing else but a wavering of the disposition arising from combined love and hatred, accompanied by the idea of some rival who is envied. (4) further, this hatred towards the object of love will be greater, in proportion to the pleasure which the jealous man had been wont to derive from the reciprocated love of the said object; and also in proportion to the feelings he had previously entertained towards his rival. (5) if he had hated him, he will forthwith hate the object of his love, because he conceives it is pleasurably affected by one whom he himself hates: and also because he is compelled to associate the image of his loved one with the image of him whom he hates. (35:6) this condition generally comes into play in the case of love for a woman: for he who thinks, that a woman whom be loves prostitutes herself to another, will feel pain, not only because his own desire is restrained, but also because, being compelled to associate the image of her he loves with the parts of shame and the excreta of another, he therefore shrinks from her. (35:7) we must add, that a jealous man is not greeted by his beloved with the same joyful countenance as before, and this also gives him pain as a lover, as i will now show. prop. [xxxvi] he who remembers a thing, in which he has once taken delight, desires to possess it under the same circumstances as when he first took delight therein. proof.(36:1) everything, which a man has seen in conjunction with the object of his love, will be to him accidentally a cause of pleasure ([xv] ); he will, therefore, desire to possess it, in conjunction with that wherein he has taken delight; in other words, he will desire to possess the object of his love under the same circumstances as when he first took delight therein. q.e.d. corollary.(36:2) a lover will, therefore, feel pain if one of the aforesaid attendant circumstances be missing. proof.(36:3) for, in so far as he finds some circumstance to be missing, he conceives something which excludes its existence. (4) as he is assumed to be desirous for love's sake of that thing or circumstance (by, the last prop.), he will, in so far as he conceives it to be missing, feel pain ([xix] ). q.e.d. note. (36:5) this pain, in so far as it has reference to the absence of the object of love, is called regret. prop. [xxxvii] desire arising through pain or pleasure, hatred or love, is greater in proportion as the emotion is greater. proof. (37:1) pain diminishes or constrains man's power of activity ([xi] note), in other words ([vii] ), diminishes or constrains the effort, wherewith he endeavours to persist in his own being; therefore ([v] ) it is contrary to the said endeavour: thus all the endeavours of a man affected by pain are directed to removing that pain. (2) but (by the definition of pain), in proportion as the pain is greater, so also is it necessarily opposed to a greater part of man's power of activity; therefore the greater the pain, the greater the power of activity employed to remove it; that is, the greater will be the desire or appetite in endeavouring to remove it. (3) again, since pleasure ([xi] note) increases or aids a man's power of activity it may easily be shown in like manner, that a man affected by pleasure has no desire further than to preserve it, and his desire will be in proportion to the magnitude of the pleasure. (37:4) lastly, since hatred and love are themselves emotions of pain and pleasure, it follows in like manner that the endeavour, appetite, or desire, which arises through hatred or love, will be greater in proportion to the hatred or love. q.e.d. prop. [xxxviii] if a man has begun to hate an object of his love, so that love is thoroughly destroyed, he will, causes being equal, regard it with more hatred than if he had never loved it, and his hatred will be in proportion to the strength of his former love. proof.(38:1) if a man begins to hate that which he had loved, more of his appetites are put under restraint than if he had never loved it. (2) for love is a pleasure ([xiii] note) which a man endeavours as far as he can to render permanent ([xxviii] ) ; he does so by regarding the object of his love as present, and by affecting it as far as he can pleasurably; this endeavour is greater in proportion as the love is greater, and so also is the endeavour to bring about that the beloved should return his affection ([xxxiii] ). (38:3) now these endeavours are constrained by hatred towards the object of love ([xiii] coroll. and [xxiii] ); wherefore the lover ([xi] note) will for this cause also be affected with pain, the more so in proportion as his love has been greater; that is, in addition to the pain caused by hatred, there is a pain caused by the fact that he has loved the object; wherefore the lover will regard the beloved with greater pain, or in other words, will hate it more than if he had never loved it, and with the more intensity in proportion as his former love was greater. q.e.d. prop. [xxxix] he who hates anyone will endeavour to do him an injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will thereby accrue to himself; on the other hand, he who loves anyone will, by the same law, seek to benefit him. proof.(39:1) to hate a man is ([xiii] note) to conceive him as a cause of pain; therefore he who hates a man will endeavour to remove or destroy him. (2) but if anything more painful, or, in other words, a greater evil, should accrue to the hater thereby and if the hater thinks he can avoid such evil by not carrying out the injury, which he planned against the object of his hate he will desire to abstain from inflicting that injury ([xxviii] ), and the strength of his endeavour ([xxxvii] ) will be greater than his former endeavour to do injury, and will therefore prevail over it, as we asserted. (39:3) the second part of this proof proceeds in the same manner. wherefore he who hates another, etc. q.e.d. note.(39:4) by good i here mean every kind of pleasure, and all that conduces thereto, especially that which satisfies our longings, whatsoever they may be. (5) by evil, i mean every kind of pain, especially that which frustrates our longings. (6) for i have shown ([ix] note) that we in no case desire a thing because we deem it good, but, contrariwise, we deem a thing good because we desire it: consequently we deem evil that which we shrink from; everyone, therefore, according to his particular emotions, judges or estimates what is god, what is bad, what is better, what is worse, lastly, what is best, and what is worst. (7) thus a miser thinks that abundance of money is the best, and want of money the worst; an ambitious man desires nothing so much as glory, and fears nothing so much as shame. (39:8) to an envious man nothing is more delightful than another's misfortune, and nothing more painful than another's success. (9) so every man, according to his emotions, judges a thing to be good or bad, useful or useless. (10) the emotion, which induces a man to turn from that which he wishes, or to wish for that which he turns from, is called timidity, which may accordingly be defined as the fear whereby a man is induced to avoid an evil which he regards as future by encountering a lesser evil ([xxviii] ). (11) but if the evil which he fears be shame, timidity becomes bashfulness. (39:12) lastly, if the desire to avoid a future evil be checked by the fear of another evil, so that the man knows not which to choose, fear becomes consternation, especially if both the evils feared be very great. prop. [xl] he, who conceives himself to be hated by another, and believes that he has given him no cause for hatred, will hate that other in return. proof.(40:1) he who conceives another as affected with hatred, will thereupon be affected himself with hatred ([xxvii] ), that is, with pain, accompanied by the idea of an external cause. (2) but, by the hypothesis, he conceives no cause for this pain except him who is his enemy; therefore, from conceiving that he is hated by some one, he will be affected with pain, accompanied by the idea of his enemy; in other words, he will hate his enemy in return. q.e.d. note.(40:3) he who thinks that he has given just cause for hatred will ([xxx] & note) be affected with shame; but this case ([xxv] ) rarely happens. (4) this reciprocation of hatred may also arise from the hatred, which follows an endeavour to injure the object of our hate ([xxxix] ). (5) he therefore who conceives that he is hated by another will conceive his enemy as the cause of some evil or pain; thus he will be affected with pain or fear, accompanied by the idea of his enemy as cause; in other words, he will be affected with hatred towards his enemy, as i said above. corollary i.(40:6) he who conceives, that one whom he loves hates him, will be a prey to conflicting hatred and love. (7) for, in so far as he conceives that he is an object of hatred, he is determined to hate his enemy in return. (8) but, by the hypothesis, he nevertheless loves him: wherefore he will be a prey to conflicting hatred and love. corollary ii.(40:9) if a man conceives that one, whom he has hitherto regarded without emotion, has done him any injury from motives of hatred, he will forthwith seek to repay the injury in kind. proof.(40:10) he who conceives, that another hates him, will (by the last proposition) hate his enemy in return, and ([xxvi] ) will endeavour to recall everything which can affect him painfully; he will moreover endeavour to do him an injury ([xxxix] ). (11) now the first thing of this sort which he conceives is the injury done to himself; he will, therefore, forthwith endeavour to repay it in kind. q.e.d. note.(40:12) the endeavour to injure one whom we hate is called anger; the endeavour to repay in kind injury done to ourselves is called revenge. prop. [xli] if anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return. (cf. [xv] coroll., and [xvi] ) proof.(41:1) this proposition is proved in the same way as the preceding one. (1a) see also the note appended thereto. note.(41:2) if he believes that he has given just cause for the love he will take pride therein ([xxx] & note) ; this is what most often happens ([xxv] ), and we said that its contrary took place whenever a man conceives himself to be hated by another. (3) (see note to preceding proposition.) (4) this reciprocal love, and consequently the desire of benefitting him who loves us ([xxxix] ), and who endeavours to benefit us, is called gratitude or thankfulness. (5) it thus appears that men are much more prone to take vengeance than to return benefits. corollary.(41:6) he who imagines, that he is loved by one whom he hates, will be a prey to conflicting hatred and love. (7) this is proved in the same way as the first corollary of the preceding proposition. note.-(41:8) if hatred be the prevailing emotion, he will endeavour to injure him who loves him; this emotion is called cruelty, especially if the victim be believed to have given no ordinary cause for hatred. prop. [xlii] he who has conferred a benefit on anyone from motives of love or honour will feel pain, if he sees that the benefit is received without gratitude. proof.(42:1) when a man loves something similar to himself, he endeavours, as far as he can, to bring it about that he should be loved thereby in return ([xxxiii] ). (2) therefore he who has conferred a benefit confers it in obedience to the desire, which he feels of being loved in return; that is ([xxxiv] ) from the hope of honour or ([xxx] note) pleasure; hence he will endeavour, as far as he can, to conceive this cause of honour, or to regard it as actually existing. (42:3) but, by the hypothesis, he conceives something else, which excludes the existence of the said cause of honour: wherefore he will thereat feel pain ([ix] ). q.e.d. prop. [xliii] hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. proof.(43:1) he who conceives, that an object of his hate hates him in return, will thereupon feel a new hatred, while the former hatred (by hypothesis) still remains ([xl] ). (2) but if, on the other hand, he conceives that the object of hate loves him, he will to this extent ([xxxviii] ) regard himself with pleasure, and ([xxix] ) will endeavour to please the cause of his emotion. (3) in other words, he will endeavour not to hate him ([xli] ), and not to affect him painfully; this endeavour ([xxxvii] ) will be greater or less in proportion to the emotion from which it arises. (43:4) therefore, if it be greater than that which arises from hatred, and through which the man endeavours to affect painfully the thing which he hates, it will get the better of it and banish the hatred from his mind. q.e.d. prop. [xliv] hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it. proof.(44:1) the proof proceeds in the same way as ([xxxviii] ) for he who begins to love a thing, which he was wont to hate or regard with pain, from the very fact of loving, feels pleasure. (2) to this pleasure involved in love is added the pleasure arising, from aid given to the endeavour to remove the pain involved in hatred ([xxxvii] ), accompanied by the idea of the former object of hatred as cause. note.(44:3) though this be so, no one will endeavour to hate anything, or to be affected with pain, for the sake of enjoying this greater pleasure; that is, no one will desire that he should be injured, in the hope of recovering from the injury, nor long to be ill for the sake of getting well. (4) for everyone will always endeavour to persist in his being, and to ward off pain as far as he can. (5) if the contrary is conceivable, namely, that a man should desire to hate someone, in order that he might love him the more thereafter, he will always desire to hate him. (44:6) for the strength of the love is proportion to the strength of the hatred, wherefore the man would desire, that the hatred be continually increased more and more, and, for a similar reason, he would desire to become more and more ill, in order that he might take a greater pleasure in being restored to health: in such a case he would always endeavour to be ill, which ([vi] ) is absurd. prop. [xlv] if a man conceives, that anyone similar to himself hates anything also similar to himself, which he loves, he will hate that person. proof.(45:1) the beloved object feels reciprocal hatred twards him who hates it ([xl] ); therefore the lover, in conceiving that anyone hates the beloved object, conceives the beloved thing as affected by hatred, in other words ([xiii] ), by pain; consequently he is himself affected by pain accompanied by the idea of the hater of the beloved thing as cause; that is, he will hate him who hates anything which he himself loves ([xiii] note). q.e.d. prop. [xlvi] if a man has been affected pleasurably or painfully by anyone, of a class or nation different front his own, and if the pleasure or pain has been accompanied by the idea of the said stranger as cause, under the general category of the class or nation: the man will feel love or hatred, not only to the individual stranger, but also to the whole class or nation whereto he belongs. proof.(46:1) this is evident from [xvi] . prop. [xlvii] joy arising from the fact, that anything we hate is destroyed, or suffers other injury, is never unaccompanied by a certain pain in us. proof.(47:1) this is evident from [xxvii] . (2) for in so far as we conceive a thing similar to ourselves to be affected with pain, we ourselves feel pain. note.(47:3) this proposition can also be proved from the corollary to ii:[xvii] . (4) whenever we remember anything, even if it does not actually, exist, we regard it only as present, and the body is affected in the same manner; wherefore, in so far as the remembrance of the thing is strong, a man is determined to regard it with pain; this determination, while the image of the thing in question lasts, is indeed checked by the remembrance of other things excluding the existence of the aforesaid thing, but is not destroyed: hence, a man only feels pleasure in so far as the said determination is checked: for this reason the joy arising from the injury done to what we hate is repeated, every time we remember that object of hatred. (47:5) for, as we have said, when the image of the thing in question is aroused, inasmuch as it involves the thing's existence, it determines the man to regard the thing with the same pain as he was wont to do, when it actually did exist. (6) however, since he has joined to the image of the thing other images, which exclude its existence, this determination to pain is forthwith checked, and the man rejoices afresh as often as the repetition takes place. (7) this is the cause of men's pleasure in recalling past evils, and delight in narrating dangers from which they have escaped. (47:8) for when men conceive a danger, they conceive it as still future, and are determined to fear it; this determination is checked afresh by the idea of freedom, which became associated with the idea of the danger when they escaped therefrom: this renders them secure afresh: therefore they, rejoice afresh. prop. [xlviii] love or hatred towards, for instance, peter is destroyed, if the pleasure involved in the former, or the pain involved in the latter emotion, be associated with the idea of another cause: and will be diminished in proportion as we conceive peter to have been the sole cause of either emotion. proof.(48:1) this prop. is evident from the mere definition of love and hatred ([xiii] note). (2) for pleasure is called love towards peter, and pain is called hatred towards peter, simply in so far as peter is regarded as the cause of one emotion or the other. (3) when this condition of causality is either wholly or partly removed, the emotion towards peter also wholly or in part vanishes. q.e.d. prop. [xlix] love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other conditions being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity. proof.(49:1) a thing which we conceive as free must (i:[d.vii] ) be perceived through itself without anything else. (2) if, therefore, we conceive it as the cause of pleasure or pain, we shall therefore ([xiii] note) love it or hate it, and shall do so with the utmost love or hatred that can arise from the given emotion. (49:3) but if the thing which causes the emotion be conceived as acting by necessity, we shall then (by the same i:[d.vii] ) conceive it not as the sole cause, but as one of the causes of the emotion, and therefore our love or hatred towards it will be less. q.e.d. note.(49:4) hence it follows, that men, thinking themselves to be free, feel more love or hatred towards one another than towards anything else: to this consideration we must add the imitation of emotions treated of in [xxvii] , [xxxiv] , [xl] , and [xliii] . prop. [l] anything whatever can be, accidentally, a cause of hope or fear. proof.(50:1) this proposition is proved in the same way as [xv] , which see, together with [xviii] note. note.(50:2) things which are accidentally the causes of hope or fear are called good or evil omens. (3) now, in so far as such omens are the cause of hope or fear, they are (by the definitions of hope and fear given in [xviii] note) the causes also of pleasure and pain; consequently we, to this extent, regard them with love or hatred, and endeavour either to invoke them as means towards that which we hope for, or to remove them as obstacles, or causes of that which we fear. (4) it follows, further, from [xxv] , that we are naturally so constituted as to believe readily in that which we hope for, and with difficulty in that which we fear; moreover, we are apt to estimate such objects above or below their true value. (50:5) hence there have arisen superstitions, whereby men are everywhere assailed. (6) however, i do not think it worth while to point out here the vacillations springing from hope and fear; it follows from the definition of these emotions, that there can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope, as i will duly explain in the proper place. (50:7) further, in so far as we hope for or fear anything, we regard it with love or hatred; thus everyone can apply by himself to hope and fear what we have said concerning love and hatred. prop. [li] different men may be differently affected by the same object, and the same man may be differently affected at different times by the same object. proof.(51:1) the human body is affected by external bodies in a variety of ways (ii:[po.iii] ). (2) two men may therefore be differently affected at the same time, and therefore (by ii:[a.viii] ) may be differently affected by one and the same object. (3) further (by (ii:[po.iii] )the human body can be affected sometimes in one way, sometimes in another; consequently (by (ii:[a.viii] ) it may be differently affected at different times by one and the same object. q.e.d. note.(51:4) we thus see that it is possible, that what one man loves another may hate, and that what one man fears another may not fear; or, again, that one and the same man may love what he once hated, or may be bold where he once was timid, and so on. (5) again, as everyone judges according to his emotions what is good, what bad, what better, and what worse ([xxxix] note), it follows that men's judgments may vary no less than their emotions, (this is possible, though the human mind part of the divine intellect, as i have shown in ii:[xiii] note.) , hence when we compare some with others, we distinguish them solely by the diversity of their emotions, and style some intrepid, others timid, others by some other epithet. (51:6) for instance, i shall call a man intrepid, if he despises an evil which i am accustomed to fear; if i further take into consideration, that, in his desire to injure his enemies and to benefit those whom he loves, he is not restrained by the fear of an evil which is sufficient to restrain me, i shall call him daring. (51:7) again, a man will appear timid to me, if he fears an evil which i am accustomed to despise; and if i further take into consideration that his desire is restrained by the fear of an evil, which is not sufficient to restrain me, i shall say that he is cowardly; and in like manner will everyone pass judgment. (51:8) lastly, from this inconstancy in the nature of human judgment, inasmuch as a man often judges of things solely by his emotions, and inasmuch as the things which he believes cause pleasure or pain, and therefore endeavours to promote or prevent, are often purely imaginary, not to speak of the uncertainty of things alluded to in [xxviii] ; we may readily conceive that a man may be at one time affected with pleasure, and at another with pain, accompanied by the idea of himself as cause. (51:9) thus we can easily understand what are repentance and self-complacency. (10) repentance is pain, accompanied by the idea of one's self as cause; selfcomplacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of one's self as cause, and these emotions are most intense because men believe themselves to be free ([xlix] ). prop. [lii] an object which we have formerly seen in conjunction with others, and which we do not conceive to have any property that is not common to many, will not be regarded by us for so long, as an object which we conceive to have some property peculiar to itself. proof.(52:1) as soon as we conceive an object which we have seen in conjunction with others, we at once remember those others ([xviii] &note), and thus we pass forthwith from the contemplation of one object to the contemplation of another object. (2) and this is the case with the object, which we conceive to have no property that is not common to many. (3) for we thereupon assume that we are regarding therein nothing, which we have not before seen in conjunction with other objects. (52:4) but when we suppose that we conceive in an object something special, which we have never seen before, we must needs say that the mind, while regarding that object, has in itself nothing which it can fall to regarding instead thereof; therefore it is determined to the contemplation of that object only. (5) therefore an object, &c. q.e.d. note.(52:6) this mental modification, or imagination of a particular thing, in so far as it is alone in the mind, is called wonder; but if it be excited by an object of fear, it is called consternation, because wonder at an evil keeps a man so engrossed in the simple contemplation thereof, that he has no power to think of anything else whereby he might avoid the evil. (52:7) if, however, the object of wonder be a man's prudence, industry, or anything of that sort, inasmuch as the said man is thereby regarded as far surpassing ourselves, wonder is called veneration; otherwise, if a man's anger, envy, &c., be what we wonder at, the emotion is called horror. (52:8) again, if it be the prudence, industry, or what not, of a man we love, that we wonder at, our love will on this account be the greater ([xii] ), and when joined to wonder or veneration is called devotion. (9) we may in like manner conceive hatred, hope, confidence, and the other emotions, as associated with wonder; and we should thus be able to deduce more emotions than those which have obtained names in ordinary, speech. (52:10) whence it is evident, that the names of the emotions have been applied in accordance rather with their ordinary manifestations than with an accurate knowledge of their nature. (52:11) to wonder is opposed to contempt, which generally arises from the fact that, because we see someone wondering at, loving, or fearing something, or because something, at first sight, appears to be like things, which we ourselves wonder at, love, fear, &c., we are, in consequence ([xv] coroll. and [xxvii] ), determined to wonder at, love, or fear that thing. (52:12) but if from the presence, or more accurate contemplation of the said thing, we are compelled to deny concerning it all that. can be the cause of wonder, love, fear, &c., the mind then, by, the presence of the thing, remains determined to think rather of those qualities which are not in it, than of those which are in it; whereas, on the other hand, the presence of the object would cause it more particularly to regard that which is therein. (52:13) as devotion springs from wonder at a thing which we love, so does derision spring from contempt of a thing which we hate or fear, and scorn from contempt of folly, as veneration from wonder at prudence. (14) lastly, we can conceive the emotions of love, hope, honour, &c., in association with contempt, and can thence deduce other emotions, which are not distinguished one from another by any recognized name. prop. [liii] when the mind regards itself and its own power of activity, it feels pleasure: and that pleasure is greater in proportion to the distinctness wherewith it conceives itself and its own power of activity. proof.(53:1) a man does not know himself except through the modifications of his body, and the ideas thereof (ii:[xix] , and ii:[xiii] ). (2) when, therefore, the mind is able to contemplate itself, it is thereby assumed to pass to a greater perfection, or ([xi] note) to feel pleasure; and the pleasure will be greater in proportion to the distinctness, wherewith it is able to conceive itself and its own power of activity. q.e.d. corollary.(53:3) this pleasure is fostered more and more, in proportion as a man conceives himself to be praised by others. (4) for the more he conceives himself as praised by others, the more will he imagine them to be affected with pleasure, accompanied by the idea of himself ([xxix] note); thus he is ([xxvii] ) himself affected with greater pleasure, accompanied by the idea of himself. q.e.d. prop. [liv] the mind endeavours to conceive only such things as assert its power of activity. proof.(54:1) the endeavour or power of the mind is the actual essence thereof ([vii] ); but the essence of the mind obviously only affirms that which the mind is and can do; not that which it neither is nor can do; therefore the mind endeavours to conceive only such things as assert or affirm its power of activity. q.e.d. prop. [lv] when the mind contemplates its own weakness, it feels pain thereat. proof.(55:1) the essence of the mind only affirms that which the mind is, or can do; in other words, it is the mind's nature to conceive only such things as assert its power of activity (last prop.). (2) thus, when we say that the mind contemplates its own weakness, we are merely saying that while the mind is attempting to conceive something which asserts its power of activity, it is checked in its endeavour in other words ([xi] note), it feels pain. q.e.d. corollary.-(55:3) this pain is more and more fostered, if a man conceives that he is blamed by others; this may be proved in the same way as [liii] coroll. note.(55:4) this pain, accompanied by the idea of our own weakness, is called humility; the pleasure, which springs from the contemplation of ourselves, is called self-love or self-complacency. (5) and inasmuch as this feeling is renewed as often as a man contemplates his own virtues, or his own power of activity, it follows that everyone is fond of narrating his own exploits, and displaying the force both of his body and mind, and also that, for this reason, men are troublesome one to another. (55:6) again, it follows that men are naturally envious ([xxiv] note, and [xxxii] note), rejoicing in the shortcomings of their equals, and feeling pain at their virtues. (7) for whenever a man conceives his own actions, he is affected with pleasure ([liii] ), in proportion as his actions display more perfection, and he conceives them more distinctly that is (ii:[xl] note), in proportion as he can distinguish them from others, and regard them as something special. (55:8) therefore, a man will take most pleasure in contemplating himself, when he contemplates some quality which he denies to others. (9) but, if that which he affirms of himself be attributable to the idea of man or animals in general, he will not be so greatly pleased: he will, on the contrary, feel pain, if he conceives that his own actions fall short when compared with those of others. (10) this pain ([xxviii] ) he will endeavour to remove, by putting a wrong construction on the actions of his equals, or by, as far as he can, embellishing his own. (55:11) it is thus apparent that men are naturally prone to hatred and envy, which latter is fostered by their education. (12) for parents are accustomed to incite their children to virtue solely by the spur of honour and envy. (13) but, perhaps, some will scruple to assent to what i have said, because we not seldom admire men's virtues, and venerate their possessors. (14) in order to remove such doubts, i append the following corollary. corollary.(55:15) no one envies the virtue of anyone who is not his equal. proof (55:16) envy is a species of hatred ([xxiv] note) or ([xiii] note) pain, that is ([xi] note), a modification whereby a man's power of activity, or endeavour towards activity, is checked. (17) but a man does not endeavour or desire to do anything, which cannot follow from his nature as it is given; therefore a man will not desire any power of activity or virtue (which is the same thing) to be attributed to him, that is appropriate to another's nature and foreign to his own; hence his desire cannot be checked, nor he himself pained by the contemplation of virtue in some one unlike himself, consequently he cannot envy such an one. (55:18) but he can envy his equal, who is assumed to have the same nature as himself. q.e.d. note.(55:19) when, therefore, as we said in the note to [lii] , we venerate a man, through wonder at his prudence, fortitude, &c., we do so, because we conceive those qualities to be peculiar to him, and not as common to our nature; we, therefore, no more envy their possessor, than we envy trees for being tall, or lions for being courageous. prop. [lvi] there are as many kinds of pleasure, of pain, of desire, and of every emotion compounded of these, such as vacillations of spirit, or derived from these, such as love, hatred, hope, fear, &c., there are kinds of objects whereby we are affected. proof.(56:1) pleasure and pain, and consequently the emotions compounded thereof, or derived therefrom, are passions, or passive states (iii.[xi] note); now we are necessarily passive (iii.[i] ), in so far as we have inadequate ideas; and only in so far as we have such ideas are we passive ([iii] ); that is, we are only necessarily passive (ii:[xl] note), in so far as we conceive, or ([xvii] &note) in so far as we are affected by an emotion, which involves the nature of our own body, and the nature of an external body. (2) wherefore the nature of every passive state must necessarily be so explained, that the nature of the object whereby we are affected be expressed. (56:3) namely, the pleasure, which arises from, say, the object a, involves the nature of that object a, and the pleasure, which arises from the object b, involves the nature of the object b; wherefore these two pleasurable emotions are by nature different, inasmuch as the causes whence they arise are by nature different. (4) so again the emotion of pain, which arises from one object, is by nature different from the pain arising from another object, and, similarly, in the case of love, hatred, hope, fear, vacillation, &c. (56:5) thus, there are necessarily as many kinds of pleasure, pain, love, hatred, &c., as there are kinds of objects whereby we are affected. (6) now desire is each man's essence or nature, in so far as it is conceived as determined to a particular action by any given modification of itself ([ix] note); therefore, according as a man is affected through external causes by this or that kind of pleasure, pain, love, hatred, &c., in other words, according as his nature is disposed in this or that manner, so will his desire be of one kind or another, and the nature of one desire must necessarily differ from the nature of another desire, as widely as the emotions differ, wherefrom each desire arose. (56:7) thus there are as many kinds of desire, as there are kinds of pleasure, pain, love, &c., consequently (by what has been shown) there are as many kinds of desire, as there are kinds of objects whereby we are affected. q.e.d. note.(56:8) among the kinds of emotions, which, by the last proposition, must be very numerous, the chief are luxury, drunkenness, lust, avarice, and ambition, being merely species of love or desire, displaying the nature of those emotions in a manner varying according to the object, with which they are concerned. (9) for by luxury, drunkenness, lust, avarice, ambition, &c., we simply mean the immoderate love of feasting, drinking, venery, riches, and fame. (56:10 )furthermore, these emotions, in so far as we distinguish them from others merely by the objects wherewith they are concerned, have no contraries. (11) for temperance, sobriety, and chastity, which we are wont to oppose to luxury, drunkenness, and lust, are not emotions or passive states, but indicate a power of the mind which moderates the last-named emotions. (12) however, i cannot here explain the remaining kinds of emotions (seeing that they are as numerous as the kinds of objects), nor, if i could, would it be necessary. (56:13) it is sufficient for our purpose, namely, to determine the strength of the emotions, and the mind's power over them, to have a general definition of each emotion. (14) it is sufficient, i repeat, to understand the general properties of the emotions and the mind, to enable us to determine the quality and extent of the mind's power in moderating and checking the emotions. (56:15) thus, though there is a great difference between various emotions of love, hatred, or desire, for instance between love felt towards children, and love felt towards a wife, there is no need for us to take cognizance of such differences, or to track out further the nature and origin of the emotions. prop. [lvii] any emotion of a given individual differs from the emotion of another individual, only in so far as the essence of the one individual differs from the essence of the other. proof.(57:1) this proposition is evident from ii:[a.viii] . (2) nevertheless, we will prove it from the nature of the three primary emotions. (3) all emotions are attributable to desire, pleasure, or pain, as their definitions above given show. (4) but desire is each man's nature or essence ([ix] note); therefore desire in one individual differs from desire in another individual, only in so far as the nature or essence of the one differs from the nature or essence of the other. (5) again, pleasure and pain are passive states or passions, whereby every man's power or endeavour to persist in his being is increased or diminished, helped or hindered ([xi] & note). (57:6) but by the endeavour to persist in its being, in so far as it is attributable to mind and body in conjunction, we mean appetite and desire (iii.[ix] note); therefore pleasure and pain are identical with desire or appetite, in so far as by external causes they are increased or diminished, helped or hindered, in other words, they are every man's nature; wherefore the pleasure and pain felt by one man differ from the pleasure and pain felt by another man, only in so far as the nature or essence of the one man differs from the essence of the other; consequently, any emotion of one individual only differs, &c. q.e.d. note.(57:7) hence it follows, that the emotions of the animals which are called irrational (for after learning the origin of mind we cannot doubt that brutes feel) only differ from man's emotions, to the extent that brute nature differs from human nature. (8) horse and man are alike carried away by the desire of procreation; but the desire of the former is equine, the desire of the latter is human. (9) so also the lusts and appetites of insects, fishes, and birds must needs vary according to the several natures. (57:10) thus, although each individual lives content and rejoices in that nature belonging to him wherein he has his being, yet the life, wherein each is content and rejoices, is nothing else but the idea, or soul, of the said individual, and hence the joy of one only differs in nature from the joy of another, to the extent that the essence of one differs from the essence of another. (57:11) lastly, it follows from the foregoing proposition, that there is no small difference between the joy which actuates, say, a drunkard, and the joy possessed by a philosopher, as i just mention here by the way. (12) thus far i have treated of the emotions attributable to man, in so far as he is passive. (57:13) it remains to add a few words on those attributable to him in so far as he is active. prop. [lviii] besides pleasure and desire, which are passivities or passions, there are other emotions derived from pleasure and desire, which are attributable to us in so far as we are active. proof.(58:1) when the mind conceives itself and its power of activity, it feels pleasure ([liii] ): now the mind necessarily contemplates itself, when it conceives a true or adequate idea (ii:[xliii] ). (2) but the mind does conceive certain adequate ideas (ii:[xl] note 2). (3) therefore, it feels pleasure in so far as it conceives adequate ideas; that is, in so far as it is active ([i] ). (58:4) again, the mind, both in so far as it has clear and distinct ideas, and in so far as it has confused ideas, endeavours to persist in its own being ([ix] ); but by such an endeavour we mean desire (by the note to the same prop.); therefore, desire is also attributable to us, in so far as we understand, or ([i] ) in so far as we are active. q.e.d. prop. [lix] among all the emotions attributable to the mind as active, there are none which cannot be referred to pleasure or desire. proof.(59:1) all emotions can be referred to desire, pleasure, or pain, as their definitions, already given, show. (2) now by pain we mean that the mind's power of thinking is diminished or checked ([xi] &note); therefore, in so far as the mind feels pain, its power of understanding, that is, of activity, is diminished or checked ([i] ); therefore, no painful emotions can be attributed to the mind in virtue of its being active, but only emotions of pleasure and desire, which (by the last prop.) are attributable to the mind in that condition. q.e.d. note.(59:3) all actions following from emotion, which are attributable to the mind in virtue of its understanding, i set down to strength of character (fortitudo), which i divide into courage (animositas) and highmindedness (generositas). (4) by courage i mean the desire whereby every man strives to preserve his own being in accordance solely with the dictates of reason. (5) by highmindedness i mean the desire whereby every man endeavours, solely under the dictates of reason, to aid men and to unite them to himself in friendship. (59:6) those actions, therefore, which have regard solely to the good of the agent i set clown to courage, those which aim at the good of others i set down to highmindedness. (7) thus temperance, sobriety, and presence of mind in danger, &c., are varieties of courage; courtesy, mercy, &c., are varieties of highmindedness. (8) i think i have thus explained, and displayed through their primary causes the principal emotions and vacillations of spirit, which arise from the combination of the three primary emotions, to wit, desire, pleasure, and pain. (59:9) it is evident from what i have said, that we are in many ways driven about by external causes, and that like waves of the sea driven by contrary winds we toss to and fro unwitting of the issue and of our fate. (10) but i have said, that i have only set forth the chief conflicting emotions, not all that might be given. (11) for, by proceeding in the same way as above, we can easily show that love is united to repentance, scorn, shame, &c. (59:12) i think everyone will agree from what has been said, that the emotions may be compounded one with another in so many ways, and so many variations may arise therefrom, as to exceed all possibility of computation. (13) however, for my purpose, it is enough to have enumerated the most important; to reckon up the rest which i have omitted would be more curious than profitable. (14) it remains to remark concerning love, that it very often happens that while we are enjoying a thing which we longed for, the body, from the act of enjoyment, acquires a new disposition, whereby it is determined in another way, other images of things are aroused in it, and the mind begins to conceive and desire something fresh. (59:15) for example, when we conceive something which generally delights us with its flavour, we desire to enjoy, that is, to eat it. (16) but whilst we are thus enjoying, it, the stomach is filled and the body is otherwise disposed. (17) if, therefore, when the body is thus otherwise disposed, the image of the food which is present be stimulated, and consequently the endeavour or desire to eat it be stimulated also, the new disposition of the body will feel repugnance to the desire or attempt, and consequently the presence of the food which we formerly longed for will become odious. (18) this revulsion of feeling is called satiety or weariness. (59:19) for the rest, i have neglected the outward modifications of the body observable in emotions, such, for instance, as trembling, pallor, sobbing, laughter, &c., for these are attributable to the body only, without any reference to the mind. 59:(20) lastly, the definitions of the emotions require to be supplemented in a few points; i will therefore repeat them, interpolating such observations as i think should here and there be added. ____________________________________________________________________________ [definitions of the emotions] [de.i] desire is the actual essence of man, in so far as it is conceived, as determined to a particular activity by some given modification of itself. explanation.(e1:1) we have said above, in the note to ii:[ix] of this part, that desire is appetite, with consciousness thereof; further, that appetite is the essence of man, in so far as it is determined to act in a way tending to promote its own persistence. (2) but, in the same note, i also remarked that strictly speaking, i recognize no distinction between appetite and desire. (3) for whether a man be conscious of his appetite or not, it remains one and the same appetite. (e1:4) thus, in order to avoid the appearance of tautology, i have refrained from explaining desire by appetite; but i have taken care to define it in such a manner, as to, comprehend, under one head, all those endeavours of human nature, which we distinguish by the terms appetite, will, desire, or impulse. (5) i might, indeed, have said, that desire is the essence of man, in so far as it is conceived as determined to a particular activity; but from such a definition (cf. ii:[xxiii] ) it would not follow that the mind can be conscious of its desire or appetite. (e1:6) therefore, in order to imply the cause of such consciousness, it was necessary to add, in so far as it is determined by some given modification, &c. (7) for, by a modification of man's essence, we understand every disposition of the said essence, whether such disposition be innate, or whether it be conceived solely under the attribute of thought, or solely under the attribute of extension, or whether, lastly, it be referred simultaneously to both these attributes. (e1:8) by the term desire, then, i here mean all man's endeavours, impulses, appetites, and volitions, which vary according to each man's disposition, and are, therefore, not seldom opposed one to another, according as a man is drawn in different directions, and knows not where to turn. [de.ii] pleasure is the transition of a man from a less to a greater perfection. [de.iii] pain is the transition of a man from a greater to less perfection. explanation.(e3:1) i say transition: for pleasure is not perfection itself. (2) for, if man were born with the perfection to which he passes, he would possess the same, without the emotion of pleasure. (3) this appears more clearly from the consideration of the contrary emotion, pain. (e3:4) no one can deny, that pain consists in the transition to a less perfection, and not in the less perfection itself: for a man cannot be pained, in so far as he partakes of perfection of any degree. (5) neither can we say, that pain consists in the absence of a greater perfection. (6) for absence is nothing, whereas the emotion of pain is an activity; wherefore this activity can only be the activity of transition from a greater to a less perfection in other words, it is an activity whereby a man's power of action is lessened or constrained (cf. [xi] note). (e3:7) i pass over the definitions of merriment, stimulation, melancholy, and grief,. because these terms are generally used in reference to the body, and are merely kinds of pleasure and pain. [de.iv] wonder is the conception (imaginatio) of anything, wherein the mind comes to a stand, because the particular concept in question has no connection with other concepts (cf. [lii] & note). explanation.(e4:1) in the note to ii:[xviii] we showed the reason, why the mind, from the contemplation of one thing, straightway falls to the contemplation of another thing, namely, because the images of the two things are so associated and arranged, that one follows the other. (2) this state of association is impossible, if the image of the thing be new; the mind will then be at a stand in the contemplation thereof, until it is determined by other causes to think of something else. (e4:3) thus the conception of a new object, considered in itself, is of the same nature as other conceptions; hence, i do not include wonder among the emotions, nor do i see why i should so include it, inasmuch as this distraction of the mind arises from no positive cause drawing away the mind from other objects, but merely, from the absence of a cause, which should determine the mind to pass from the contemplation of one object to the contemplation of another. (e4:4) i, therefore, recognize only three primitive or primary emotions (as i said in i:[xi] note), namely, pleasure, pain, and desire. (5) i have spoken of wonder, simply because it is customary to speak of certain emotions springing from the three primitive ones by, different names, when they are referred to the objects of our wonder. (6) i am led by, the same motive to add a definition of contempt. [de.v] contempt is the conception (imaginatio) of anything which touches the mind so little, that its presence leads the mind to imagine those qualities which are not in it rather than such as are in it (cf. [lii] note). (65:1) the definitions of veneration and scorn [contempt] i here pass over, for i am not aware that any emotions are named after them. [de.vi] love is pleasure, accompanied by the idea of an external cause. explanation.(e6:1) this definition explains sufficiently clearly the essence of love; the definition given by those authors who say that love is the lover's wish to unite himself to the loved object expresses a property, but not the essence of love; and, as such authors have not sufficiently discerned love's essence, they have been unable to acquire a true conception of its properties, accordingly, their definition is on all hands admitted to be very obscure. (e6:2) it must, however, be noted, that when i say, that it is a property of love, that the lover should wish to unite himself to the beloved object, i do not here mean by wish consent, or conclusion, or a free decision of the mind (for i have shown such, in ii:[xlviii] , to be fictitious); neither do i mean a desire of being united to the loved object when it is absent, or of continuing in its presence when it is at hand; for love can be conceived without either of these desires; but by wish i mean the contentment, which is in the lover, on account of the presence of the beloved object, whereby the pleasure of the lover is strengthened, or at least maintained. [de.vii] hatred is pain [a sadness], accompanied by the idea of an external cause. explanation.(e7:1) these observations are easily, grasped after what has been said in the explanation of the proceeding definition (cf. also [xiii] note). [de.viii] inclination (propensio) is pleasure, accompanied by the idea of something which is accidentally a cause of pleasure. [de.ix] aversion (aversio) is pain, accompanied by the idea of something which is accidentally the cause of pain (cf. [xv] note). [de.x] devotion is love towards one whom we admire (admiratio), [wonder at]. explanation.(e10:1) wonder (admiratio) arises (as we have shown, [lii] ) from the novelty of a thing. (2) if, therefore, it happens that the object of our wonder is often conceived by us, we shall cease to wonder at it; thus we see, that the emotion of devotion readily degenerates into simple love. [de.xi] derision is pleasure arising from our conceiving the presence of a quality, which we despise, in an object which we hate. explanation.(e11:1) in so far as we despise a thing which we hate, we deny existence thereof ([lii] note), and to that extent rejoice ([xx] ). (2) but since we assume that man hates that which he derides, it follows that the pleasure in question is not without alloy (cf. [xlvii] note). [de.xii] hope is an inconstant pleasure, arising from the idea of something past or future, whereof we to a certain extent doubt the issue. [de.xiii] fear is an inconstant pain arising from the idea of something past or future, whereof we to a extent doubt the issue (cf. [xviii] note). explanation.(e13:1) from these definitions it follows, that there is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope. (2) for he, who depends on hope and doubts concerning the issue of anything, is assumed to conceive something, which excludes the existence of the said thing in the future; therefore he, to this extent, feels pain (cf. [xix] ); consequently, while dependent on hope, he fears for the issue. (e13:3) contrariwise be, who fears, in other words doubts, concerning the issue of something which he hates, also conceives something which excludes the existence of the thing in question; to this extent he feels pleasure, and consequently to this extent he hopes that it will turn out as he desires ([xx] ). [de.xiv] confidence is pleasure arising from the idea of something past or future, wherefrom all cause of doubt has been removed. [de.xv] despair is pain arising from the idea of something past or future, wherefrom all cause of doubt has been removed. explanation.(e15:1) thus confidence springs from hope, and despair from fear, when all cause for doubt as to the issue of an event has been removed: this comes to pass, because man conceives something past or future as present and regards it as such, or else because he conceives other things, which exclude the existence of the causes of his doubt. (e15:2) for, although we can never be absolutely certain of the issue of any particular event (ii:[xxxi] coroll.), it may nevertheless happen that we feel no doubt concerning it. (3) for we have shown, that to feel no doubt concerning a thing is not the same as to be quite certain of it ([xlix] note). (e15:4) thus it may happen that we are affected by the same emotion of pleasure or pain concerning a thing past or future, as concerning the conception of a thing present; this i have already shown in [xviii] , to which, with its note, i refer the reader. [de.xvi] joy is pleasure accompanied by the idea of something past, which has had an issue beyond our hope. [de.xvii] disappointment is pain accompanied by the idea of something past, which has had an issue contrary to our hope. [de.xviii] pity is pain accompanied by the idea of evil, which has befallen someone else whom we conceive to be like ourselves. (cf. [xxii] note, and [xxvii] note). explanation.(e18:1) between pity and sympathy (misericordia) there seems to be no difference, unless perhaps that the former term is used in reference to a particular action, and the latter in reference to a disposition. [de.xix] approval is love towards one who has done good to another. [de.xx] indignation is hatred towards one who has done evil to another. explanation.(e20:1) i am aware that these terms are employed in senses somewhat different from those usually assigned. (2) but my purpose is to explain, not the meaning of words, but the nature of things. (3) i therefore make use of such terms, as may convey my meaning without any violent departure from their ordinary signification. (4) one statement of my method will suffice. (e20:5) as for the cause of the above-named emotions see [xxvii] coroll.i., and [xxii] note. [de.xxi] partiality is thinking, too highly of anyone because of the love we bear him. [de.xxii] disparagement (despectus) is thinking too meanly of anyone, because we hate him. explanation.(e22:1) thus partiality is an effect of love, and disparagement an effect of hatred: so that partiality may also be defined as love, in so far as it induces a man to think too highly of a beloved object. (2) contrariwise, disparagement may be defined as hatred, in so far as it induces a man to think too meanly of hated object. cf. [xxvi] note. [de.xxiii] envy is hatred, in so far as it induces a man to be pained by another's good fortune, and to rejoice in another's evil fortune. explanation.(e23:1) envy is generally opposed to sympathy, which, by doing some violence to the meaning of the word, may therefore be thus defined: [de.xxiv] sympathy (misericordia) is love, in so far as it induces a man to feel pleasure at another's good fortune, and pain at another's evil fortune. explanation.(e24:1) concerning envy see the notes to [xxiv] note and [xxxii] note. (2) these emotions also arise from pleasure or pain accompanied by the idea of something external, as cause either in itself or accidentally. (3) i now pass on to other emotions, which are accompanied by the idea of something within as a cause. [de.xxv] self-approval is pleasure arising from a man's contemplation of himself and his own power of action. [de.xxvi] humility is pain arising from a man's contemplation of his own weakness of body or mind. explanation.(e26:1) self-complacency is opposed to humility, in so far as we thereby mean pleasure arising from a contemplation of our own power of action; but, in so far as we mean thereby pleasure accompanied by the idea of any action which we believe we have performed by the free decision of our mind, it is opposed to repentance, which we may thus define: [de.xxvii] repentance is pain accompanied by the idea of some action, which we believe we have performed by the free decision of our mind. explanation.(e27:1) the causes of these emotions we have set forth in [li] note, and in [liii] , [liv] , [lv] & note. (2) concerning the free decision of the mind see ii:[xxxv] note. (3) this is perhaps the place to call attention to the fact, that it is nothing wonderful that all those actions, which are commonly called wrong, are followed by pain, and all those, which are called right, are followed by pleasure. (4) we can easily gather from what has been said, that this depends in great measure on education. (e27:5) parents, by reprobating the former class of actions, and by frequently chiding their children because of them, and also by persuading to and praising the latter class, have brought it about, that the former should be associated with pain and the latter with pleasure. (e27:6) this is confirmed by experience. (7) for custom and religion are not the same among all men, but that which some consider sacred others consider profane, and what some consider honourable others consider disgraceful. (8) according as each man has been educated, he feels repentance for a given action or glories therein. [de.xxviii] pride is thinking, too highly of one's self from self-love. explanation.(e28:1) thus pride is different from partiality, for the latter term is used in reference to an external object, but pride is used of a man thinking too highly of himself. (2) however, as partiality is the effect of love, so is pride the effect or property of self-love, which may therefore be thus defined, love of self or self-approval, in so far as it leads a man to think too highly of himself. (3) to this emotion there is no contrary. (4) for no one thinks too meanly of himself because of self-hatred; i say that no one thinks too meanly of himself, in so far as he conceives that he is incapable of doing this or that. (e28:5) for whatsoever a man imagines that he is incapable of doing, he imagines this of necessity, and by that notion he is so disposed, that he really cannot do that which he conceives that he cannot do. (6) for, so long as he conceives that he cannot do it, so long is he not determined to do it, and consequently so long is it impossible for him to do it. (7) however, if we consider such matters as only depend on opinion, we shall find it conceivable that a man may think too meanly of himself; for it may happen, that a man, sorrowfully regarding his own weakness, should imagine that he is despised by all men, while the rest of the world are thinking of nothing less than of despising him. (e28:8) again, a man may think too meanly of himself, if he deny of himself in the present something in relation to a future time of which he is uncertain. (9) as, for instance, if he should say that he is unable to form any clear conceptions, or that he can desire and do nothing but what is wicked and base, &c. (10) we may also say, that a man thinks too meanly, of himself, when we see him from excessive fear of shame refusing to do things which others, his equals, venture. (e28:11) we can, therefore, set down as a contrary to pride an emotion which i will call selfabasement, for as from self-complacency springs pride, so from humility springs self-abasement, which i will accordingly thus define: [de.xxix] self-abasement is thinking too meanly of one's self by reason of pain. explanation.(e29:1) we are nevertheless generally accustomed to oppose pride to humility, but in that case we pay more attention to the effect of either emotion than to its nature. (2) we are wont to call proud the man who boasts too much ([xxx] note), who talks of nothing but his own virtues and other people's faults, who wishes to be first; and lastly who goes through life with a style and pomp suitable to those far above him in station. (e29:3) on the other hand, we call humble the man who too often blushes, who confesses his faults, who sets forth other men's virtues, and who, lastly, walks with bent head and is negligent of his attire. (4) however, these emotions, humility and self-abasement, are extremely rare. (e29:5) for human nature, considered in itself, strives against them as much as it can (see [xiii] , [liv] ); hence those who are believed to be most self-abased and humble, are generally in reality the most ambitious and envious. [de.xxx] honour (gloria) is pleasure accompanied by the idea of some action of our own, which we believe to be praised by others. [de.xxxi] shame is pain accompanied by the idea of some action of our own, which we believe to blamed by others. explanation.(e31:1) on this subject see the note to [xxx] . (2) but we should here remark the difference which exists between shame and modesty [sense of shame]. (3) shame is the pain following the deed whereof we are ashamed. (4) modesty is the fear or dread of shame, which restrains a man from committing a base action. (e31:5) modesty is usually opposed to shamelessness, but the latter is not an emotion, as i will duly show; however, the names of the emotions (as i have remarked already) have regard rather to their exercise than to their nature. (e31:6) i have now fulfilled my task of explaining the emotions arising from pleasure and pain. (7) i therefore proceed to treat of those whic i refer to desire. [de.xxxii] regret is the desire or appetite to possess something, kept alive by the remembrance the said thing, and at the same time constrained by the remembrance of other things which exclude the existence of it. explanation.(e32:1) when we remember a thing, we are by that very fact, as i have already said more than once, disposed to contemplate it with the same emotion as if it were something present; but this disposition or endeavour, while we are awake, is generally checked by the images of things which exclude the existence of that which we remember. (2) thus when we remember something which affected us with a certain pleasure, we by that very fact endeavour to regard it with the same emotion of pleasure as though it were present, but this endeavour is at once checked by the remembrance of things which exclude the existence of the thing in question. (e32:3) wherefore regret is, strictly speaking a pain opposed to that pleasure, which arises from the absence of something we hate (cf. [xlvii] note). (4) but, as the name regret seems to refer to desire, i set this emotion down, among the emotions springing from desire. [de.xxxiii] emulation is the desire of something, engendered in us by our conception that others have the same desire. explanation.(e33:1) he who runs away, because he sees others running away, or he who fears, because he sees others in fear; or again, he who, on seeing that another man has burnt his hand, draws towards him his own hand, and moves his body as though his own hand were burnt; such an one can be said to imitate another's emotion, but not to emulate him; not because the causes of emulation and imitation are different, but because it has become customary to speak of emulation only in him, who imitates that which we deem to be honourable, useful, or pleasant. (e33:2) as to the cause of emulation, cf. [xxvii] & note. (3) the reason why this emotion is generally coupled with envy may be seen from [xxxii] &note. [de.xxxiv] thankfulness or gratitude is the desire or zeal springing from love, whereby we endeavour to benefit him, who with similar feelings of love has conferred a benefit, on us. cf. [xxxix] note and [xl] . [de.xxxv] benevolence is the desire of benefitting one whom we pity. cf. [xxvii] note. [de.xxxvi] anger is the desire, whereby through hatred we are induced to injure one whom we hate. [xxxix] . [de.xxxvii] revenge is the desire whereby we are induced, through mutual hatred, to injure one who, with similar feelings, has injured us. (see ii:[xl] coroll.ii. & note.) [de.xxxviii] cruelty or savageness (saevitia) is the desire, whereby a man is impelled to injure one whom we love or pity. explanation.(e38:1) to cruelty is opposed clemency, which is not a passive state of the mind, but a power whereby man restrains his anger and revenge. [de.xxxix] timidity is the desire to avoid a greater evil, which we dread, by undergoing a lesser evil. cf. [xxxix] note. [de.xl] daring is the desire, whereby a man is set on to do something dangerous which his equals fear to attempt. [de.xli] cowardice is attributed to one, whose desire is checked by the fear of some danger which his equals dare to encounter. explanation.(e41:1) cowardice is, therefore, nothing else but the fear of some evil, which most men are wont not to fear; hence i do not reckon it among the emotions springing from desire. (2) nevertheless, i have chosen to explain it here, because, in so far as we look to the desire, it is truly opposed to the emotion of daring. [de.xlii] consternation is attributed to one, whose desire of avoiding evil is checked by amazement at the evil which he fears. explanation.(e42:1) consternation is, therefore, a species of cowardice. (2) but, inasmuch as consternation arises from a double fear, it may be more conveniently defined as a fear which keeps a man so bewildered and wavering, that he is not able to remove the evil. (3) i say bewildered, in so far as we understand his desire of removing the evil to be constrained by his amazement. (4) i say wavering, in so far as we understand the said desire to be constrained by the fear of another evil, which equally torments him: whence it comes to pass that he knows not, which he may avert of the two. (5) on this subject, see [xxxix] note, and [lii] note. (e42:6) concerning cowardice and daring, see [li] note. [de.xliii] courtesy, or deference (politeness humanitas seu modestia), is the desire of acting in a way that should please men, and refraining from that which should displease them. [de.xliv] ambition is the immoderate desire of power. explanation.(e44:1) ambition is the desire, whereby all the emotions (cf. [xxvii] and [xxxi] ) are fostered and strengthened; therefore this emotion can with difficulty be overcome. (2) for, so long as a man is bound by any desire, he is at the same time necessarily bound by this. (e44:3) "the best men",says cicero, "are especially led by honour. (4) even philosophers, when they write a book contemning honour, sign their names thereto," and so on. [de.xlv] luxury is excessive desire, or even love of living sumptuously. [de.xlvi] intemperance is the excessive desire and love of drinking. [de.xlvii] avarice is the excessive desire and love of riches. [de.xlviii] lust is desire and love in the matter of sexual intercourse. explanation.(e48:1) whether this desire be excessive or not, it is still called lust. (2) these last five emotions (as i have shown in [lvi] ) have no contraries. (3) for deference is a species of ambition. cf. [xxix] note. (e48:4) again, i have already pointed out, that temperance, sobriety, and chastity, indicate rather a power than a passivity of the mind. (5) it may, nevertheless, happen, that an avaricious, an ambitious, or a timid man may abstain from excess in eating, drinking, or sexual indulgence, yet avarice, ambition, and fear are not contraries to luxury, drunkenness, and debauchery. (e48:6) for an avaricious man often is glad to gorge himself with food and drink at another man's expense. (7) an ambitious man will restrain himself in nothing, so long as he thinks his indulgences are secret; and if he lives among drunkards and debauchees, he will, from the mere fact of being ambitious, be more prone to those vices. (8) lastly, a timid man does that which he would not. (e48:9) for though an avaricious man should, for the sake of avoiding death, cast his riches into the sea, he will none the less remain avaricious; so, also, if a lustful man is downcast, because he cannot follow his bent, he does not, on the ground of abstention, cease to be lustful. (10) in fact, these emotions are not so much concerned with the actual feasting, drinking, &c., as with the appetite and love of such. (e48:11) nothing, therefore, can be opposed to these emotions, but high-mindedness and valour, whereof i will speak presently. (e48:12) the definitions of jealousy and other waverings of the mind i pass over in silence, first, because they arise from the compounding of the emotions already described; secondly, because many of them have no distinctive names, which shows that it is sufficient for practical purposes to have merely a general knowledge of them. (13) however, it is established from the definitions of the emotions, which we have set forth, that they all spring from desire, pleasure, or pain, or, rather, that there is nothing besides these three; wherefore each is wont to be called by a variety of names in accordance with its various relations and extrinsic tokens. (e48:14) if we now direct our attention to these primitive emotions, and to what has been said concerning the nature of the mind, we shall be able thus to define the emotions, in so far as they are referred to the mind only. ____________________________________________________________________________ [general definition of the emotions] (gen:1) emotion, which is called a passivity of the soul, is a confused idea whereby the mind affirms concerning its body, or any part thereof, a force for existence (existendi vis) greater or less than before, and by the presence of which the mind is determined to think of one thing rather than another. explanation.(gen:2) i say, first, that emotion or passion of the soul is a confused idea. (3) for we have shown that the mind is only passive, in so far as it has inadequate or confused ideas. ([iii] ) (4) i say, further, whereby the mind affirms concerning its body or any part thereof a force for existence greater than before. (5) for all the ideas of bodies, which we possess, denote rather the actual disposition of our own body ([xvi] coroll.ii.) than the nature of an external body. (6) but the idea which constitutes the reality of an emotion must denote or express the disposition of the body, or of some part thereof, which is possessed by the body, or some part thereof, because its power of action or force for existence is increased or diminished, helped or hindered. (gen:7) but it must be noted that, when i say a greater or less force for existence than before, i do not mean that the mind compares the present with the past disposition of the body, but that the idea which constitutes the reality of an emotion affirms of the body, which, in fact, involves more or less of reality than before. (gen9:8) and inasmuch as the essence of mind consists in the fact (ii:[xi] , ii:[xiii] ), that it affirms the actual existence of its own body, and inasmuch as we understand by perfection the very essence of a thing, it follows that the mind passes to greater or less perfection, when it happens to affirm concerning its own body, or any part thereof, something involving more or less reality than before. (gen:9) when, therefore, i said above that the power of the mind is increased or diminished, i merely meant that the mind had formed of its own body, or of some part thereof, an idea involving more or less of reality, than it had already affirmed concerning its own body. (gen:10) for the excellence of ideas, and the actual power of thinking are measured by the excellence of the object. (11) lastly, i have added by the presence of which the mind is determined to think of one thing rather than another, so that, besides the nature of pleasure and pain, which the first part of the definition explains, i might also express the nature of desire. ____________________________________________________________________________ end of "the ethics part iii" "joseph b. yesselman" <jyselman@erols.com> october 20, 1997 the ethics part iv of human bondage, or the strength of the emotions circulated 1673 posthumously published 1677 baruch spinoza 1632 1677 ____________________________________________________________________________ jby notes: 1. text was scanned from benedict de spinoza's "on the improvement of the understanding", "the ethics" and "correspondence" as published in dover's isbn 0-486-20250-x. 2. the text is that of the translation of "the ethics" by r. h. m. elwes. this text is "an unabridged and unaltered republication of the bohn library edition originally published by george bell and sons in 1883." 3. jby added sentence numbers and search strings. 4. sentence numbers are shown thus (yy:xx). yy = proposition number when given. xx = sentence number. 5. search strings are enclosed in [square brackets]: a. roman numeral, when given before a search string, indicates part number. if a different part, bring up that part and then search. b. include square brackets in search string. c. do not include part number in search string. d. search down with the same string to facilitate return. 6. please report any errors in the text, search formatting, or sentence numbering to jyselman@erols.com. 7. html version: part iv http://www.erols.com/jyselman/e4elwes.htm ____________________________________________________________________________ [table of contents] [preface] [definitions] [axiom] propositions: [i] . [xi] . [xxi] . [xxxi] . [xli] . [li] . [lxi] . [lxxi] [ii] . [xii] . [xxii] . [xxxii] . [xlii] . [lii] . [lxii] . [lxxii [iii] . [xiii] . [xxiii] . [xxxiii] . [xliii] . [liii] . [lxiii] . [lxxiii] [iv] . [xiv] . [xxiv] . [xxxiv] . [xliv] . [liv] . [lxiv] . [v] . [xv] . [xxv] . [xxxv] . [xlv] . [lv] . [lxv] . [vi] . [xvi] . [xxvi] . [xxxvi] . [xlvi] . [lvi] . [lxvi] . [vii] . [xvii] . [xxvii] . [xxxvii] . [xlvii] . [lvii] . [lxvii] . [viii] .[xviii] .[xxviii] .[xxxviii] .[xlviii] .[lviii] .[lxviii] . [ix] . [xix] . [xxix] . [xxxix] . [xlix] . [lix] . [lxix] . [x] . [xx] . [xxx] . [xl] . [l] . [lx] . [lxx] . [appendix] ____________________________________________________________________________ [preface] (prf:1) human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions i name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse. (2) why this is so, and what is good or evil in the emotions, i propose to show in this part of my treatise. (3) but, before i begin, it would be well to make a few prefatory observations on perfection and imperfection, good and evil. (prf:4) when a man has purposed to make a given thing, and has brought it to perfection, his work will be pronounced perfect, not only by himself, but by everyone who rightly knows, or thinks that he knows, the intention and aim of its author. (5) for instance, suppose anyone sees a work (which i assume to be not yet completed), and knows that the aim of the author of that work is to build a house, he will call the work imperfect; he will, on the other hand, call it perfect, as soon as he sees that it is carried through to the end, which its author had purposed for it. (prf:6) but if a man sees a work, the like whereof he has never seen before, and if he knows not the intention of the artificer, he plainly cannot know, whether that work be perfect or imperfect. (7) such seems to be the primary meaning of these terms. (prf:8) but, after men began to form general ideas, to think out types of houses, buildings, towers, &c., and to prefer certain types to others, it came about, that each man called perfect that which he saw agree with the general idea he had formed of the thing in question, and called imperfect that which he saw agree less with his own preconceived type even though it had evidently been completed in accordance with the idea of its artificer. (prf:9) this seems to be the only reason for calling natural phenomena, which, indeed, are not made with human hands, perfect or imperfect: for men are wont to form general ideas of things natural, no less than of things artificial, and such ideas they hold as types, believing that nature (who they think does nothing without an object) has them in view, and has set them as types before herself. (10) therefore, when they behold something in nature, which does not wholly conform to the preconceived type which they have formed of the thing in question, they say that nature has fallen short or has blundered, and has left her work incomplete. (prf:11) thus we see that men are wont to style natural phenomena perfect or imperfect rather from their own prejudices, than from true knowledge of what they pronounce upon. (prf:12) now we showed in the i:[appendix] , that nature does not work with an end in view. (13) for the eternal and infinite being, which we call god or nature, acts by the same necessity as that whereby it exists. (14) for we have shown, that by the same necessity of its nature, whereby it exists, it likewise works (i:xvi.). (15) the reason or cause why god or nature exists, and the reason why he acts, are one and the same. (prf:16) therefore, as he does not exist for the sake of an end, so neither does he act for the sake of an end; of his existence and of his action there is neither origin nor end. (17) wherefore, a cause which is called final is nothing else but human desire, in so far as it is considered as the origin or cause of anything. (18) for example, when we say that to be inhabited is the final cause of this or that house, we mean nothing more than that a man, conceiving the conveniences of household life, had a desire to build a house. (prf:19) wherefore, the being inhabited, in so far as it is regarded as a final cause, is nothing else but this particular desire, which is really the efficient cause; it is regarded as the primary cause, because men are generally ignorant of the causes of their desires. (prf:20) they are, as i have often said already, conscious of their own actions and appetites, but ignorant of the causes whereby they are determined to any particular desire. (21) therefore, the common saying that nature sometimes falls short, or blunders, and produces things which are imperfect, i set down among the glosses treated of in i:[appendix] . (prf:22) perfection and imperfection, then, are in reality merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from a comparison among one another of individuals of the same species; hence i said above (ii:[d.vi] ), that by reality and perfection i mean the same thing. (23) for we are wont to refer all the individual things in nature to one genus, which is called the highest genus, namely, to the category of being, whereto absolutely all individuals in nature belong. (24) thus, in so far as we refer the individuals in nature to this category, and comparing them one with another, find that some possess more of being or reality than others, we, to this extent, say that some are more perfect than others. (25) again, in so far as we attribute to them anything implying negation as term, end, infirmity, etc., we, to this extent, call them imperfect, because they do not affect our mind so much as the things which we call perfect, not because they have any intrinsic deficiency, or because nature has blundered. (prf:26) for nothing lies within the scope of a thing's nature, save that which follows from the necessity of the nature of its efficient cause, and whatsoever follows from the necessity of the nature of its efficient cause necessarily comes to pass. (prf:27) as for the terms good and bad, they indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from the comparison of things one with another. (28) thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. (29) for instance, music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him that mourns; for him that is deaf, it is neither good nor bad. (prf:30) nevertheless, though this be so, the terms should still be retained. (31) for, inasmuch as we desire to form an idea of man as a type of human nature which we may hold in view, it will be useful for us to retain the terms in question, in the sense i have indicated. (prf:32) in what follows, then, i shall mean by, "good" that, which we certainly know to be a means of approaching more nearly to the type of human nature, which we have set before ourselves; by "bad," that which we certainly know to be a hindrance to us in approaching the said type. (33) again, we shall that men are more perfect, or more imperfect, in proportion as they approach more or less nearly to the said type. (prf:34) for it must be specially remarked that, when i say that a man passes from a lesser to a greater perfection, or vice versg, i do not mean that he is changed from one essence or reality to another; for instance, a horse would be as completely destroyed by being changed into a man, as by being changed into an insect. (prf:35) what i mean is, that we conceive the thing's power of action, in so far as this is understood by its nature, to be increased or diminished. (36) lastly, by perfection in general i shall, as i have said, mean reality in other words, each thing's essence, in so far as it exists, and operates in a particular manner, and without paying any regard to its duration. (prf:37) for no given thing can be said to be more perfect, because it has passed a longer time in existence. (38) the duration of things cannot be determined by their essence, for the essence of things involves no fixed and definite period of existence; but everything, whether it be more perfect or less perfect, will always be able to persist in existence with the same force wherewith it began to exist; wherefore, in this respect, all things are equal. ____________________________________________________________________________ [definitions] [d.i] by good i mean that which we certainly know to be useful to us. [d.ii] by evil i mean that which we certainly know to be a hindrance to us in the attainment of any good. (concerning these terms see the foregoing preface towards the end.) [d.iii] particular things i call contingent in so far as, while regarding nothing therein, which necessarily asserts their existence or excludes it. [d.iv] particular things i call possible in so far as, while regarding the causes whereby they must be produced, we know not, whether such causes be determined for producing them. (in i:[xxxiii] note.i., i drew no distinction between possible that place no need to distinguish them accurately.) [d.v] by conflicting emotions i mean those which draw a man in different directions, though they are of the same kind, such as luxury and avarice, which are both species of love, and are contraries, not by nature, but by accident. [d.vi] what i mean by emotion felt towards a thing, future, present, iii:[xviii] notes.i., & ii., which see. (but i should here also remark, that we can only distinctly conceive distance of space or time up to a certain definite limit; that is, all objects distant from us more than two hundred feet, or whose distance from the place where we are exceeds that which we can distinctly conceive, seem to be an equal distance from us, and all in the same plane; so also objects, whose time of existing is conceived as removed from the present by a longer interval than we can distinctly conceive, seem to be all equally distant from the present, and are set down, as it were, to the same moment of time.) [d.vii] by an end, for the sake of which we do something, i mean a desire. [d.viii] by virtue (virtus) and power i mean the same thing; that is (iii:[vii] ), virtue, in so far as it is referred to man, is nature or essence, in so far as it has the power of effecting what can only be understood by the laws of that nature. ____________________________________________________________________________ [axiom] there is no individual thing in nature, than which there is not another more powerful and strong. whatsoever thing be given, there is something stronger whereby it can be destroyed. ____________________________________________________________________________ propositions. prop. [i] no positive quality possessed by a false idea is removed by the presence of what is true, in virtue of its being true. proof.(1:1) falsity consists solely in the privation of knowledge which inadequate ideas involve (ii:[xxxv] ), nor have they any positive quality on account of which they are called false (ii:[xxxiii] ) ; contrariwise, in so far as they are referred to god, they are true (ii:[xxxii] ). (2) wherefore, if the positive quality possessed by a false idea were removed by the presence of what is true, in virtue of its being true, a true idea would then be removed by itself, which ([iii] ) is absurd. (1:3) therefore, no positive quality possessed by a false idea, &c. q.e.d. note.(1:4) this proposition is more clearly understood from ii:[xvi] coroll. ii. (5) for imagination is an idea, which indicates rather the present disposition of the human body than the nature of the external body; not indeed distinctly, but confusedly; whence it comes to pass, that the mind is said to err. (6) for instance, when we look at the sun, we conceive that it is distant from us about two hundred feet; in this judgment we err, so long as we are in ignorance of its true distance; when its true distance is known, the error is removed, but not the imagination; or, in other words, the idea of the sun, which only explains tho nature of that luminary, in so far as the body is affected thereby: wherefore, though we know the real distance, we shall still nevertheless imagine the sun to be near us. (7) for, as we said in iii:[xxxv] note, we do not imagine the sun to be so near us, because we are ignorant of its true distance, but because the mind conceives the magnitude of the sun to the extent that the body is affected thereby. (1:8) thus, when eyes, we imagine the sun as if it were in the water, though we are aware of its real position; and similarly other imaginations, wherein the mind is deceived whether they indicate the natural disposition of the body, or that its power of activity is increased or diminished, are not contrary to the truth, and do not vanish at its presence. (9) it happens indeed that, when we mistakenly fear an evil, the fear vanishes when we hear the true tidings; but the contrary also happens, namely, that we fear an evil which will certainly come, and our fear vanishes when we hear false tidings; thus imaginations do not vanish at the presence of the truth, in virtue of its being true, but because other imaginations, stronger than the first, supervene and exclude the present existence of that which we imagined, as i have shown in ii:[xvii]. prop. [ii] we are only passive, in so far as we are apart of nature, which cannot be conceived by itself without other parts. proof.(2:1) we are said to be passive, when something arises in us, whereof we are only a partial cause (iii:[de.ii] ), that is (iii:[de.i] ), something which cannot be deduced solely from the laws of our nature. (2) we are passive therefore in so far as we are a part of nature, which cannot be conceived by itself without other parts. q.e.d. prop. [iii] the force whereby a man persists in existing is limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes. proof.(3:1) this is evident from the axiom of this part. (2) for, when man is given, there is something else say a more powerful; when a is given, there is something else say b more powerful than a, and so on to infinity; thus the power of man is limited by the power of some other thing, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes. q.e.d. prop. [iv] it is impossible, that man should not be a part of nature, or that he should be capable of undergoing no changes, save such as can be understood through his nature only as their adequate cause. proof.(4:1) the power, whereby each particular thing, and consequently being, is the power of god or of nature (i:[xxiv] coroll.); not in so far as it is infinite, but in so far as it can be explained by the actual human essence (iii:[vii] ). (2) thus the power of man, in so far as it is explained through his own actual essence, is a part of the infinite power of god or nature, in other words, of the essence thereof (i:[xxxiv] ). (4:3) this was our first point. (4) again, if it were possible, that man should undergo no changes save such as can be understood solely through the nature of man, it would follow that he would not be able to die, but would always necessarily exist; this would be the necessary consequence of a cause whose power was either finite or infinite; namely, either of man's power only, inasmuch as he would be capable of removing from himself all changes which could spring from external causes; or of the infinite power of nature, whereby all individual things would be so ordered, that man should be incapable of undergoing any changes save such as tended towards his own preservation. (5) but the first alternative is absurd (by [iii] , the proof of which is universal, and can be applied to all individual things). (4:6) therefore, if it be possible, that man should not be capable of undergoing any changes, save such as can be explained solely through his own nature, and consequently that he must always (we have shown) necessarily exist; such a result must follow from the infinite power of god, and consequently (i:[xvi] ) from the necessity of the divine nature, in so far as it is regarded as affected by the idea of any given man, the whole order of nature as conceived under the attributes of extension and thought must be deducible. (4:7) it would therefore follow (i:[xxi] ) that man is infinite, which (by the first part of this proof) is absurd. (8) it is, therefore, impossible, that man should not undergo any changes save those whereof he is the adequate cause. q.e.d. corollary.(4:9) hence it follows, that man is necessarily always a prey to his passions, that he follows and obeys the general order of nature, and that he accommodates himself thereto, as much as the nature of things demands. prop. [v] the power and increase of every passion, and its persistence in existing are not defined by the power, whereby we ourselves endeavour to persist in existing, but by the power of an external cause compared with our own. proof.(5:1) the essence of a passion cannot be explained through our essence alone (iii:[de.i] & iii:[de.ii] ), that is (iii:[vii] ), the power of a passion cannot be defined by the power, whereby we ourselves endeavour to persist in existing, but (as is shown in ii:[xvi] ) mus necessarily be defined by the power of an external cause compared with our own. q.e.d. prop. [vi] the force of any passion or emotion can overcome the rest of a man's activities or power, so that the emotion becomes obstinately fixed to him. proof.(6:1) the force and increase of any passion and its persistence in existing are defined by the power of an external cause compared with our own (by the foregoing prop.); therefore ([iii] ) it can overcome a man's power, &e. q.e.d. prop. [vii] an emotion can only be controlled or destroyed by another emotion contrary thereto, and with more power for controlling emotion. proof.(7:1) emotion, in so far as it is referred to the mind, is an idea, whereby the mind affirms of its body a greater or less force of existence than before (cf. iii:[general definition of the emotions] ). (2) when, therefore, the mind is assailed by any emotion, the body is at the same time affected with a modification whereby its power of activity is increased or diminished. (3) now this modification of the body ([v] ) receives from its cause the force for persistence in being; which force can only be checked or destroyed by a bodily cause (ii:[vi] ), in virtue of the body being affected with a modification contrary to (iii:[v] ) and stronger than itself ([axiom] ); wherefore (ii:[xii] ) the mind is affected by the idea of a modification contrary to, and stronger than the former modification, in other words, (by iii:[general definition of the emotions] ) the mind will be affected by an emotion contrary to and stronger than the former emotion, which will exclude or destroy the existence of the former emotion; thus an emotion cannot be destroyed nor controlled except by a contrary and stronger emotion. q.e.d. corollary.(7:4) an emotion, in so far as it is referred to the mind, can only be controlled or destroyed through an idea of a modification of the body contrary to, and stronger than, that which we are undergoing. (7:5) for the emotion which we undergo can only be checked or destroyed by an emotion contrary to, and stronger than, itself, in other words, (by iii:[general definition of the emotions] ) only by an idea of a modification of the body contrary to, and stronger than, the modification which we undergo. prop. [viii] the knowledge of good and evil is nothing else but the emotions of pleasure or pain, in so far as we are conscious thereof. proof.(8:1) we call a thing good or evil, when it is of service or the reverse in preserving our being ([d.i] & [d.ii] ), that is (iii:[vii] ), when it increases or diminishes, helps or hinders, our power of activity. (2) thus, in so far as we perceive that a thing affects us with pleasure or pain, we call it good or evil; wherefore the knowledge of good and evil is nothing else but the idea of the pleasure or pain, which necessarily follows from that pleasurable or painful emotion (ii:[xxii] ). (8:3) but this idea is united to the emotion in the same way as mind is united to body (ii:[xxi] ); that is, there is no real distinction between this idea and the emotion or idea of the modification of the body, save in conception only. (4) therefore the knowledge of good and evil is nothing else but the emotion, in so far as we are conscious thereof. q.e.d. prop. [ix] an emotion, whereof we conceive the cause to be with us at the present time, is stronger than if we did not conceive the cause to be with us. proof.(9:1) imagination or conception is the idea, by which the mind regards a thing as present (ii:[xvii] note), but which indicates the disposition of the mind rather than the nature of the external thing (ii:[xvi] coroll. ii). (2) an emotion is therefore a conception, in so far as it indicates the disposition of the body. (3) but a conception (by ii:[xvii] ) is stronger, so long as we conceive nothing which excludes the present existence of the external object; wherefore an emotion is also stronger or more intense, when we conceive the cause to be with us at the present time, than when we do not conceive the cause to be with us. q.e.d. note.(9:4) when i said above in iii:[xviii] that we are affected by the image of what is past or future with the same emotion as if the thing conceived were present, i expressly stated, that this is only true in so far as we look solely to the image of the thing in question itself ; for the thing's nature is unchanged, whether we have conceived it or not; i did not deny that the image becomes weaker, when we regard as present to us other things which exclude the present existence of the future object: i did not expressly call attention to the fact, because i purposed to treat of the strength of the emotions in this part of my work. corollary.(9:5) the image of something past or future, that is, of a thing which we regard as in relation to time past or time future, to the exclusion of time present, is, when other conditions are equal, weaker than the image of something present; consequently an emotion felt towards what is past or future is less intense, other conditions being equal, than an emotion felt towards something present. prop. [x] towards something future, which we conceive as close at hand, we are affected more intensely, than if we conceive that its time for existence is separated from the present by a longer interval; so too by the remembrance of what we conceive to have not long passed away we are affected more intensely, than if we conceive that it has long passed away. proof.(10:1) in so far as we conceive a thing as close at hand, or not long passed away, we conceive that which excludes the presence of the object less, than if its period of future existence were more distant from the present, or if it had long passed away (this is obvious) therefore (by the foregoing prop.) we are, so far, more intensely affected towards it. q.e.d. corollary.(10:2) from the remarks made in [d.vi] of this part it follows that, if objects are separated from the present by a longer period than we can define in conception, though their dates of occurrence be widely separated one from the other, they all affect us equally faintly. prop. [xi] an emotion towards that which we conceive as necessary is, when other conditions are equal, more intense than an emotion towards that which impossible, or contingent, or non-necessary. proof.(11:1) in so far as we conceive a thing to be necessary, we, to that extent, affirm its existence; on the other hand we deny a thing's existence, in so far as we conceive it not to be necessary (i:[xxxiii] note i.); wherefore ([ix] ) an emotion towards that which is necessary is, other conditions being equal, more intense than an emotion that which is non-necessary. q.e.d. prop. xii. an emotion towards a thing, which we know not to exist at the present time, and which we conceive as possible, is more intense, other conditions being equal, than an emotion towards a thing contingent. proof.(12:1) in so far as we conceive a thing as contingent, we are affected by the conception of some further thing, which would assert the existence of the former ([d.iii] ); but, on the other hand, we (by hypothesis) conceive certain things, which exclude its present existence. (2) but, in so far as we conceive a thing to be possible in the future, we there by conceive things which assert its existence ([iv] ), that is (iii:[xviii] ), things which promote hope or fear: wherefore an emotion towards something possible is more vehement. q.e.d. corollary.(12:3) an emotion towards a thing, which we know not to exist in the present, and which we conceive as contingent, is far fainter, than if we conceive the thing to be present with us. proof.(12:4) emotion towards a thing, which we conceive to exist, is more intense than it would be, if we conceived the thing as future ([ix] coroll.), and is much more vehement, than if the future time be conceived as far distant from the present ([x] ). (5) therefore an emotion towards a thing, whose period of existence we conceive to be far distant from the present, is far fainter, than if we conceive the thing as present; it is, nevertheless, more intense, than if we conceived the thing as contingent, wherefore an emotion towards a thing, which we regard as contingent, will be far fainter, than if we conceived the thing to be present with us. q.e.d. prop. [xiii] emotion towards a thing contingent, which we know not to exist in the present, is, other conditions being equal, fainter than an emotion towards a thing past. proof.(13:1) in so far as we conceive a thing as contingent, we not affected by the image of any other thing, which asserts the existence of the said thing ([d.iii] ), but, on the other hand (by hypothesis), we conceive certain things excluding its present existence. (2) but, in so far as we conceive it in relation to time past, we are assumed to conceive something, which recalls the thing to memory, or excites the image thereof (ii:[xviii] & note), which is so far the same as regarding it as present (ii:[xvii] coroll.). (3) therefore ([ix] ) an emotion towards a thing contingent, which we know does not exist in the present, is fainter, other conditions being equal, than an emotion towards a thing past. q.e.d. prop. [xiv] a true knowledge of good and evil cannot check any emotion by virtue of being true, but only in so far as it is considered as an emotion. proof.(14:1) an emotion is an idea, whereby the mind affirms of its body a greater or less force of existing than before (by [general definition of the emotions]); therefore it has no positive quality, which can be destroyed by the presence of what is true; consequently the knowledge of good and evil cannot, by virtue of being true, restrain any emotion. (2) but, in so far as such knowledge is an emotion ([viii] ) if it have more strength for restraining emotion, it will to that extent be able to restrain the given emotion. q.e.d. prop. [xv] desire arising from the knowledge of good and bad can be quenched or checked by many of the other desires arising from the emotions whereby we are assailed. proof.(15:1) from the true knowledge of good and evil, in so far as it is an emotion, necessarily arises desire (iii:[de.i] ), the strength of which is proportioned to the strength of the emotion wherefrom it arises (iii:xxvii] ). (2) but, inasmuch as this desire arises (by hypothesis) from the fact of our truly understanding anything, it follows that it is also present with us, in so far as we are active (iii:[i] ), and must therefore be understood through our essence only (iii:[d.ii] ); consequently (iii:[vii] ) its force and increase can be defined solely by human power. (3) again, the desires arising from the emotions whereby we are assailed are stronger, in proportion as the said emotions are more vehement; wherefore their force and increase must be defined solely by the power of external causes, which, when compared with our own power, indefinitely surpass it ([iii] ); hence the desires arising from like emotions may be more vehement, than the desire which arises from a true knowledge of good and evil, and may, consequently, control or quench it. q.e.d. prop. [xvi] desire arising from the knowledge of good and evil, in so far as such knowledge regards what is future, may be more easily controlled or quenched, than the desire for what is agreeable at the present moment. proof.(16:1) emotion towards a thing, which we conceive as future, is fainter than emotion towards a thing that is present ([ix] coroll.). (2) but desire, which arises from the true knowledge of good and evil, though it be concerned with things which are good at the moment, can be quenched or controlled by any headstrong desire (by the last prop., the proof whereof is of universal application). (3) wherefore desire arising from such knowledge, when concerned with the future, can be more easily controlled or quenched, &c. q.e.d. prop. [xvii] desire arising from the true knowledge of good and evil, in so far as such knowledge is concerned with what is contingent, can be controlled far more easily still, than desire for things that are present. proof.(17:1) this prop. is proved in the same way as the last prop. from [xii] coroll. note.(17:2) i think i have now shown the reason, why men are moved by opinion more readily than by true reason, why it is that the true knowledge of good and evil stirs up conflicts in the soul, and often yields to every kind of passion. (3) this state of things gave rise to the exclamation of the poet: (ov. met. vii.20, "video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.") the better path i gaze at and approve, the worse i follow." (17:4) ecclesiastes seems to have had the same thought in his mind, when he says, "he who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." (5) i have not written the above with the object of drawing the conclusion, that ignorance is more excellent than knowledge, or that a wise man is on a par with a fool in controlling his emotions, but because it is necessary to know the power and the infirmity of our nature, before we can determine what reason can do in restraining the emotions, and what is beyond her power. (6) i have said, that in the present part i shall merely treat of human infirmity. (17:7) the power of reason over the emotions i have settled to treat separately. prop. [xviii] desire arising from pleasure is, other conditions being equal, stronger than desire arising from pain. proof.(18:1) desire is the essence of a man (iii:[de.i] ), that is, the endeavour whereby a man endeavours to persist in his own being. (2) wherefore desire arising from pleasure is, by the fact of pleasure being felt, increased or helped; on the contrary, desire arising from pain is, by the fact of pain being felt, diminished or hindered; hence the force of desire arising from pleasure must be defined by human power together with the power of an external cause, whereas desire arising from pain must be defined by human power only. (3) thus the former is the stronger of the two. q.e.d. note.(18:4) in these few remarks i have explained the causes of human infirmity and inconstancy, and shown why men do not abide by the precepts of reason. (5) it now remains for me to show what course is marked out for us by reason, which of the emotions are in harmony with the rules of human reason, and which of them are contrary thereto. (18:6) but, before i begin to prove my propositions in detailed geometrical fashion, it is advisable to sketch them briefly in advance, so that everyone may more readily grasp my meaning. (18:7) as reason makes no demands contrary to nature, it demands, that every man should love himself, should seek that which is useful to him i mean, that which is really useful to him, should desire everything which really brings man to greater perfection, and should, each for himself, endeavour as far as he can to preserve his own being. (8) this is as necessarily true, as that a whole is greater than its part. (cf. iii:[iv] ) (18:9) again, as virtue is nothing else but action in accordance with the laws of one's own nature ([d.viii] ), and as no one endeavours to preserve his own being, except in accordance with the laws of his own nature, it follows, first, that the foundation of virtue is the endeavour to preserve one's own being, and that happiness consists in man's power of preserving, his own being; secondly, that virtue is to be desired for its own sake, and that there is nothing more excellent or more useful to us, for the sake of which we should desire it; thirdly and lastly that suicides are weak-minded, and are overcome by external causes repugnant to their nature. (18:10) further, it follows from ii:[po.iv] , that we can never arrive at doing without all external things for the preservation of our being or living, so as to have no relations with things which are outside ourselves. (11) again, if we consider our mind, we see that our intellect would be more imperfect, if mind were alone, and could understand nothing besides itself. (12) there are, then, many things outside ourselves, which are useful to us, and are, therefore, to be desired. (18:13) of such none can be discerned more excellent, than those which are in entire agreement with our nature. (14) for if, for example, two individuals of entirely the same nature are united, they form a combination twice as powerful as either of them singly. (18:15) therefore, to man there is nothing more useful than man nothing, for preserving their being can be wished for by men, than that all should so in all points agree, that the minds and bodies of all should form, as it were, one single mind and one single body, and that all should, with one consent, as far as they are able, endeavour to preserve their being, and all with one consent seek what is useful to them all. (16) hence, men who are governed by reason that is, who seek what is useful to them in accordance with reason, desire for themselves nothing, which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and, consequently, are just, faithful, and honourable in their conduct. (18:17) such are the dictates of reason, which i purposed thus briefly to indicate, before beginning to prove them in greater detail. (18) i have taken this course, in order, if possible, to gain the attention of those who believe, that the principle that every man is bound to seek what is useful for himself is the foundation of impiety, rather than of piety and virtue. (19) therefore, after briefly showing that the contrary is the case, i go on to prove it by, the same method, as that whereby i have hitherto proceeded. prop. [xix] every man, by the laws of his nature, necessarily desires or shrinks from that which he deems to be good or bad. proof.(19:1) the knowledge of good and evil is ([viii] ) the emotion of pleasure or pain, in so far as we are conscious thereof; therefore, every man necessarily desires what he thinks good, and shrinks from what he thinks bad. (2) now this appetite is nothing else but man's nature or essence (cf. the definition of appetite given in iii.[ix] note, and iii:[de.i] ). (3) therefore, every man, solely by the laws of his nature, desires the one, and shrinks from the other, &c. q.e.d. prop. [xx] the more every man endeavours, and is able to seek what is useful to him in other words, to preserve his own being the more is he endowed with virtue; on the contrary, in proportion as a man neglects to seek what is useful to him, that is, to preserve his own being, he is wanting in power. proof.(20:1) virtue is human power, which is defined solely by man's essence ([d.viii] ), that is, which is defined solely by the endeavour made by man to persist in his own being. (2) wherefore, the more a man endeavours, and is able to preserve his own being, the more is he endowed with virtue, and, consequently (iii:[iv] & iii:[vi] ), in so far as a man neglects to preserve his own being, he is wanting in power. q.e.d. note.(20:3) no one, therefore, neglects seeking his own good, or preserving his own being, unless he be overcome by causes external and foreign to his nature. (4) no one, i say, from the necessity of his own nature, or otherwise than under compulsion from external causes, shrinks from food, or kills himself: which latter may be done in a variety of ways. (5) a man, for instance, kills himself under the compulsion of another man, who twists round his right hand, wherewith he happened to have taken up a sword, and forces him to turn the blade against his own heart; or, again, he may be compelled, like seneca, by a tyrant's command, to open his own veins that is, to escape a greater evil by incurring, a lesser; or, lastly, latent external causes may so disorder his imagination, and so affect his body, that it may assume a nature contrary to its former one, and whereof the idea cannot exist in the mind (iii:[x] ) (20:6) but that a man, from the necessity of his own nature, should endeavour to become non-existent, is as impossible as that something should be made out of nothing, as everyone will see for himself, after a little reflection. prop. [xxi] no one can desire to be blessed, to act rightly, and to live rightly, without at the same time wishing to be, act, and to live in other words, to actually exist. proof.(21:1) the proof of this proposition, or rather the propositio itself, is self-evident, and is also plain from the definition of desire. (21:2) for the desire of living, acting, &c., blessedly or rightly, is (iii:[de.i] ) the essence of man that is (iii:[vii] ), the endeavour made by everyone to preserve his own being. (3) therefore, no one can desire, &c. q.e.d. prop. [xxii] no virtue can be conceived as prior to this endeavour to preserve one's own being. proof.(22:1) the effort for self-preservation is the essence of a thing (iii:[vii] ); therefore, if any virtue could be conceived as prior thereto, the essence of a thing would have to be conceived as prior to itself, which is obviously absurd. (2) therefore no virtue, &c. q.e.d. corollary.(22:3) the effort for self-preservation is the first and only foundation of virtue. (4) for prior to this principle nothing can be conceived, and without it no virtue can be conceived. prop. [xxiii] man, in so far as he is determined to a particular action because he has inadequate ideas, cannot be absolutely said to act in obedience to virtue; he can only be so described, in so far as he is determined for the action because he understands. proof.(23:1) in so far as a man is determined to an action through having inadequate ideas, he is passive (iii:[i] ), that is (iii:[d.i] & iii:[d.iii] ), he does something, which cannot be perceived solely through his essence, that is (by [d.viii] ), which does not follow from his virtue. (2) but, in so far as he is determined for an action because he understands, he is active; that is, he does something, which is perceived through his essence alone, or which adequately follows from his virtue. q.e.d. prop. [xxiv] to act absolutely in obedience to virtue is in us the same thing as to act, to live, or to preserve one's being (these three terms are identical in meaning) in accordance with the dictates of reason on the basis of seeking what is useful to one's self. proof.(24:1) to act absolutely in obedience to virtue is nothing else but to act according to the laws of one's own nature. (2) but we only act, in so far as we understand (iii:[iii] ) : therefore to act in obedience to virtue is in us nothing else but to act, to live, or to preserve one's being in obedience to reason, and that on the basis of seeking what is useful for us ([xxii] coroll.). q.e.d. prop. [xxv] no one wishes to preserve his being for the sake of anything else. proof.(25:1) the endeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its being, is defined solely by the essence of the thing itself (iii:[vii] ); from this alone, and not from the essence of anything else, it necessarily follows (iii:[vi] ) that everyone endeavours to preserve his being. (2) moreover, this proposition is plain from [xxii] coroll., for if a man should endeavour to preserve his being for the sake of anything else, the last-named thing would obviously be the basis of virtue, which, by the foregoing corollary, is absurd. (3) therefore no one, &c. q.e.d. prop. [xxvi] whatsoever we endeavour in obedience to reason is nothing further than to understand; neither does the mind, in so far as it makes use of reason, judge anything to be useful to it, save such things as are conducive to understanding. proof.(26:1) the effort for self-preservation is nothing else but the essence of the thing in question (iii:[vii] ), which, in so far as it exists such as it is, is conceived to have force for continuing in existence (iii:[vi] ) and doing such things as necessarily follow from its given nature (see of def. of appetite in iii:[de.i] , ii:[ix] note). (26:2) but the essence of reason is nought else but our mind, in so far as it clearly and distinctly understands (see the definition in ii:[xl] note:ii.) ; therefore (iii:[xl] ) whatsoever we endeavour in obedience to reason is nothing else but to understand. (3) again, since this effort of the mind wherewith the mind endeavours, in so far as it reasons, to preserve its own being is nothing else but understanding; this effort at understanding is ([xxii] coroll.) the first and single basis of virtue, nor shall we endeavour to understand things for the sake of any ulterior object ([xxv] ); on the other hand, the mind, in so far as it reasons, will not be able to conceive any good for itself, save such things as are conducive to understanding. prop. [xxvii] we know nothing to be certainly good or evil, save such things as really conduce to understanding, or such as are able to hinder us from understanding. proof.(27:1) the mind, in so far as it reasons, desires nothing beyond understanding, and judges nothing to be useful to itself, save such things as conduce to understanding (by the foregoing prop.). (2) but the mind (ii:[xli] & note) cannot possess certainty concerning anything, except in so far as it has adequate ideas, or (what by ii:[xl] note, is the same thing) in so far as it reasons. (3) therefore we know nothing to be good or evil save such things as really conduce, &c. q.e.d. prop. [xxviii] the mind's highest good is the knowledge of god, and the mind's highest virtue is to know god. proof.(28:1) the mind is not capable of understanding anything higher than god, that is (i:[d.vi] ), than a being absolutely infinite, and without which (i:[xv] ) nothing can either be or be conceived; therefore ([xxvi] & [xxvii] ), the mind's highest utility or ([d.i] ) good is the knowledge of god. (2) again, the mind is active, only in so far as it understands, and only to the same extent can it be said absolutely to act virtuously. (3) the mind's absolute virtue is therefore to understand. (28:4) now, as we have already shown, the highest that the mind can understand is god; therefore the highest virtue of the mind is to understand or to know god. q.e.d. prop. [xxix] no individual thing, which is entirely different from our own nature, can help or check our power of activity, and absolutely nothing can do us good or harm, unless it has something in common with our nature. proof.(29:1) the power of every individual thing, and consequently the power of man, whereby he exists and operates, can only be determined by an individual thing (i:[xxviii] ), whose nature (ii:[vi] ) must be understood through the same nature as that, through which human nature is conceived. (2) therefore our power of activity, however it be conceived, can be determined and consequently helped or hindered by the power of any other individual thing, which has something in common with us, but not by the power of anything, of which the nature is entirely different from our own; and since we call good or evil that which is the cause of pleasure or pain ([viii] ), that is (iii:[xi] note), which increases or diminishes, helps or hinders, our power of activity; therefore, that which is entirely, different from our nature can neither be to us good nor bad. q.e.d. prop. [xxx] a thing cannot be bad for us through the quality which it has in common with our nature, but it is bad for us in so far as it is contrary to our nature. proof.(30:1) we call a thing bad when it is the cause of pain ([viii] ), that is (by the def., which see in iii:[xi] note), when it diminishes or checks our power of action. (2) therefore, if anything were bad for us through that quality which it has in common with our nature, it would be able itself to diminish or check that which it has in common with our nature, which (iii:[iv] ) is absurd. (30:3) wherefore nothing can be bad for us through that quality which it has in common with us, but, on the other hand, in so far as it is bad for us, that is (as we have just shown), in so far as it can diminish or check our power of action, it is contrary to our nature. q.e.d. prop. [xxxi] in so far as a thing is in harmony with nature, it is necessarily good. proof.(31:1) in so far as a thing is in harmony with our nature, cannot be bad for it. it will therefore necessarily be either good or indifferent. (2) if it be assumed that it be neither good nor bad, nothing will follow from its nature ([d.i] ), which tends to the preservation of our nature, that is (by the hypothesis), which tends to the preservation of the thing itself; but this (iii:[vi] ) is absurd; therefore, in so far as a thing is in harmony with our nature, it is necessarily good. q.e.d. corollary.(31:3) hence it follows, that, in proportion as a thing is in harmony with our nature, so is it more useful or better for us, and vice versg, in proportion as a thing is more useful for us, so is it more in harmony with our nature. (4) for, in so far as it is not in harmony with our nature, it will necessarily be different therefrom or contrary thereto. (5) if different, it can neither be good nor bad ([xxix] ); if contrary, it will be contrary to that which is in harmony with our nature, that is, contrary to what is good in short, bad. (31:6) nothing, therefore, can be good, except in so far as it is in harmony with our nature; and hence a thing is useful, in proportion as it is in harmony with our nature, and vice versa. q.e.d. prop. [xxxii] in so far as men are a prey to passion, they cannot, in that respect, be said to be naturally in harmony. proof. (32:1) things, which are said to be in harmony naturally, are understood to agree in power (iii:[vii] ), not in want of power or negation, and consequently not in passion (iii:[iii] note); wherefore men, in so far as they are a prey to their passions, cannot be said to be naturally in harmony. q.e.d. note.(32:2) this is also self-evident; for, if we say that white and black only agree in the fact that neither is red, we absolutely affirm that the do not agree in any respect. (3) so, if we say that a man and a stone only agree in the fact that both are finite wanting in power, not existing by the necessity of their own nature, or, lastly, indefinitely surpassed by the power of external causes we should certainly affirm that a man and a stone are in no respect alike; therefore, things which agree only in negation, or in qualities which neither possess, really agree in no respect. prop. [xxxiii] men can differ in nature, in so far as they are assailed by those emotions, which are passions, or passive states; and to this extent one and the same man is variable and inconstant. proof.(33:1) the nature or essence of the emotions cannot be explained solely through our essence or nature (iii:[d.i] & iii:[dii] ), but it must be defined by the power, that is (iii:[vii] ), by the nature of external causes in comparison with our own; hence it follows, that there are as many kinds of each emotion as there are external objects whereby we are affected (iii:[lvi] ), and that men may be differently affected by one and the same object (iii:[li] ), and to this extent differ in nature; lastly, that one and the same man may be differently affected towards the same object, and may therefore be variable and inconstant. q.e.d. prop. [xxxiv] in so far as men are assailed by emotions which are passions, they can be contrary one to another. proof.(34:1) a man, for instance peter, can be the cause of paul's feeling pain, because he (peter) possesses something similar to that which paul hates (iii:[xvi] ), or because peter has sole possession of a thing which paul also loves (iii:[xxxii] & note), or for other causes (of which the chief are enumerated in iii:[lv] note) ; it may therefore happen that paul should hate peter (iii:[de.vii] ), consequently it may easily happen also, that peter should hate paul in return, and that each should endeavour to do the other an injury, (iii:[xxxix] ), that is ([xxx] ), that they should be contrary one to another. (34:2) but the emotion of pain is always a passion or passive state (iii:[lix] ); hence men, in so far as they are assailed by emotions which are passions, can be contrary one to another. q.e.d. note.(34:3) i said that paul may hate peter, because he conceives that peter possesses something which he (paul) also loves; from this it seems, at first sight, to follow, that these two men, through both loving the same thing, and, consequently, through agreement of their respective natures, stand in one another's way; if this were so, ii:[xxx] and ii:[xxxi] would be untrue. (4) but if we give the matter our unbiased attention, we shall see that the discrepancy vanishes. (5) for the two men are not in one another's way in virtue of the agreement of their natures, that is, through both loving the same thing, but in virtue of one differing from the other. (6) for, in so far as each loves the same thing, the love of each is fostered thereby (iii:[xxxi] ), that is (iii:[de.vi] ) the pleasure of each is fostered thereby. (7) wherefore it is far from being the case, that they are at variance through both loving the same thing, and through the agreement in their natures. (34:8) the cause for their opposition lies, as i have said, solely in the fact that they are assumed to differ. (9) for we assume that peter has the idea of the loved object as already in his possession, while paul has the idea of the loved object as lost. (10) hence the one man will be affected with pleasure, the other will be affected with pain, and thus they will be at variance one with another. (34:11) we can easily show in like manner, that all other causes of hatred depend solely on differences, and not on the agreement between men's natures. prop. xxxv. in so far only as men live in obedience to reason, do they always necessarily agree in nature. proof.(35:1) in so far as men are assailed by emotions that are passions, they can be different in nature ([xxxiii] ), and at variance one with another. (2) but men are only said to be active, in so far as they act in obedience to reason (iii:[iii] ); therefore, what so ever follows from human nature in so far as it is defined by reason must (iii:[d.ii] ) be understood solely through human nature as its proximate cause. (35:3) but, since every man by the laws of his nature desires that which he deems good, and endeavours to remove that which he deems bad ([xix] ); and further, since that which we, in accordance with reason, deem good or bad, necessarily is good or bad (ii:[xli] ); it follows that men, in so far as they live in obedience to reason, necessarily do only such things as are necessarily good for human nature, and consequently for each individual man ([xxxi] coroll.); in other words, such things as are in harmony with each man's nature. (35:4) therefore, men in so far as they live in obedience to reason, necessarily live always in harmony one with another. q.e.d. corollary i (35:5) there is no individual thing in nature, which is more useful to man, than a man who lives in obedience to reason. (6) for that thing is to man most useful, which is most in harmony with his nature ([xxxi] coroll.); that is, obviously, man. (7) but man acts absolutely according to the laws of his nature, when he lives in obedience to reason (iii:[d.ii] ), and to this extent only is always necessarily in harmony with the nature of another man (by the last prop.); wherefore among individual things nothing is more useful to man, than a man who lives in obedience to reason. q.e.d. corollary ii.(35:8) as every man seeks most that which is useful to him, so are men most useful one to another. (9) for the more a man seeks what is useful to him and endeavours to preserve himself, the more is he endowed with virtue ([xx] ), or, what is the same thing ([d.viii] ), the more is he endowed with power to act according to the laws of his own nature, that is to live in obedience to reason. (35:10) but men are most in natural harmony, when they live in obedience to reason (by [xxxiv] ).); therefore (by the foregoing coroll.) men will be most useful one to another, when each seeks most that which is useful to him. q.e.d. note.(35:11) what we have just shown is attested by experience so conspicuously, that it is in the mouth of nearly everyone: "man is to man a god." (12) yet it rarely happens that men live in obedience to reason, for things are so ordered among them, that they are generally envious and troublesome one to another. (13) nevertheless they are scarcely able to lead a solitary life, so that the definition of man as a social animal has met with general assent; in fact, men do derive from social life much more convenience than injury. (14) let satirists then laugh their fill at human affairs, let theologians rail, and let misanthropes praise to their utmost the life of untutored rusticity, let them heap contempt on men and praises on beasts; when all is said, they will find that men can provide for their wants much more easily by mutual help, and that only by uniting their forces can they escape from the dangers that on every side beset them: not to say how much more excellent and worthy of our knowledge it is, to study the actions of men than the actions of beasts. (35:15) but i will treat of this more at length elsewhere. prop. [xxxvi] the highest good of those who follow virtue is common to all, and therefore all can equally rejoice therein. proof.(36:1) to act virtuously is to act in obedience with reason ([xxiv] ), and whatsoever we endeavour to do in obedience to reason is to understand ([xxvi] ); therefore ([xxviii] ) the highest good for those who follow after virtue is to know god; that is (ii:[xlvii] & note) a good which is common to all and can be possessed. by all men equally, in so far as they are of the same nature. q.e.d. note.(36:2) someone may ask how it would be, if the highest good of those who follow after virtue were not common to all? (3) would it not then follow, as above ([xxxiv] ), that men living in obedience to reason, that is ([xxxv] ), men in so far as they agree in nature, would be at variance one with another? (4) to such an inquiry, i make answer, that it follows not accidentally but from the very nature of reason, that main's highest good is common to all, inasmuch as it is deduced from the very essence of man, in so far as defined by reason; and that a man could neither be, nor be conceived without the power of taking pleasure in this highest good. (36:5) for it belongs to the essence of the human mind (ii:[xlvii] ), to have an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of god. prop. [xxxvii] the good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men, and so much the more, in proportion as he has a greater knowledge of god. proof.(37:1) men, in so far as they live in obedience to reason, are most useful to their fellow men ([xxxv] coroll. i.); therefore ([xix] ), we shall in obedience to reason necessarily endeavour to bring about that men should live in obedience to reason. (2) but the good which every man, in so far as he is guided by reason, or, in other words, follows after virtue, desires for himself, is to understand ([xxvi] ); wherefore the good, which each follower of virtue seeks for himself, he will desire also for others. (3) again, desire, in so far as it is referred to the mind, is the very essence of the mind (iii:[de.i] ); now the essence of the mind consists in knowledge (iii:[xi] ), which involves the knowledge of god (ii:[xlvii] ), and without it (i:[xv] ), can neither be, nor be conceived; therefore, in proportion as the mind's essence involves a greater knowledge of god, so also will be greater the desire of the follower of virtue, that other men should possess that which he seeks as good for himself. q.e.d. another proof.(37:4) the good, which a man desires for himself and loves, he will love more constantly, if he sees that others love it also (iii:[xxxi] ); he will therefore endeavour that others should love it also; and as the good in question is common to all, and therefore all can rejoice therein, he will endeavour, for the same reason, to bring about that all should rejoice therein, and this he will do the more (iii:[xxxvii] ), in proportion as his own enjoyment of the good is greater. note 1(37:5) he who, guided by emotion only, endeavours to cause others to love what he loves himself, and to make the rest of the world live according to his own fancy, acts solely by impulse, and is, therefore, hateful, especially, to those who take delight in something different, and accordingly study and, by similar impulse, endeavour, to make men live in accordance with what pleases themselves. (6) again, as the highest good sought by men under the guidance of emotion is often such, that it can only be possessed by a single individual, it follows that those who love it are not consistent in their intentions, but, while they delight to sing its praises, fear to be believed. (7) but he, who endeavours to lead men by reason, does not act by impulse but courteously and kindly, and his intention is always consistent. (8) again, whatsoever we desire and do, whereof we are the cause in so far as we possess the idea of god, or know god, i set down to religion. (37:9) the desire of well-doing, which is engendered by a life according to reason, i call piety. (10) further, the desire, whereby a man living according to reason is bound to associate others with himself in friendship, i call honour (honestas); by honourable i mean that which is praised by men living according to reason, and by base i mean that which is repugnant to the gaining of friendship. (37:11) i have also shown in addition what are the foundations of a state; and the difference between true ,virtue and infirmity may be readily gathered from what i have said; namely, that true virtue is nothing else but living in accordance with reason; while infirmity is nothing else but man's allowing himself to be led by things which are external to himself, and to be by them determined to act in a manner demanded by the general disposition of things rather than by his own nature considered solely in itself. (37:12) such are the matters which i engaged to prove in [xviii] , whereby it is plain that the law against the slaughtering of animals is founded rather on vain superstition and womanish pity than on sound reason. (13) the rational quest of what is useful to us further teaches us the necessity of associating ourselves with our fellow-men, but not with beasts, or things, whose nature is different from our own; we have the same rights in respect to them as they have in respect to us. (14) nay, as everyone's right is defined by his virtue, or power, men have far greater rights over beasts than beasts have over men. (15) still i do not deny that beasts feel: what i deny is, that we may not consult our own advantage and use them as we please, treating them in the way which best suits us; for their nature is not like ours, and their emotions are naturally different from human emotions (iii:[lvii] note). (16) it remains for me to explain what i mean by, just and unjust, sin and merit. 37:(17) on these points see the following note. note ii.(37:18) in i:[appendix] i undertook to explain praise and blame, merit and sin, justice and injustice. (37:19) concerning praise and blame i have spoken in iii:[xxix] note: the time has now come to treat of the remaining terms. (20) but i must first say a few words concerning man in the state of nature and in society. (37:21) every man exists by sovereign natural right, and, consequently, by sovereign natural right performs those actions which follow from the necessity of his own nature; therefore by sovereign natural right every man judges what is good and what is bad, takes care of his own advantage according to his own disposition ([xix] and [xx] ), avenges the wrongs done to him (iii:[xl] coroll. ii.), and endeavours to preserve that which he loves and to destroy that which he hates (iii:[xxviii] ). (22) now, if men lived under the guidance of reason, everyone would remain in possession of this his right, without any injury being done to his neighbour ([xxxv] coroll. i.). (23) but seeing that they are a prey to their emotions, which far surpass human power or virtue ([vi] ), they are often drawn in different directions, and being at variance one with another ([xxxiii] , [xxxiv] ), stand in need of mutual help ([xxxv] note). (37:24) wherefore, in order that men may live together in harmony, and may aid one another, it is necessary that they should forego their natural right, and, for the sake of security, refrain from all actions which can injure their fellow-men. (25) the way in which this end can be obtained, so that men who are necessarily a prey to their emotions ([iv] coroll.), inconstant, and diverse, should be able to render each other mutually secure, and feel mutual trust, is evident from [vii] and iii:[xxxix] . (37:26) it is there shown, that an emotion can only be restrained by an emotion stronger than, and contrary to itself, and that men avoid inflicting injury through fear of incurring a greater injury themselves. (37:27) on this law society can be established, so long as it keeps in its own hand the right, possessed by everyone, of avenging injury, and pronouncing on good and evil; and provided it also possesses the power to lay down a general rule of conduct, and to pass laws sanctioned, not by reason, which is powerless in restraining emotion, but by threats ([xvii] note). (28) such a society established with laws and the power of preserving itself is called a state, while those who live under its protection are called citizens. (37:29) we may readily understand that there is in the state of nature nothing, which by universal consent is pronounced good or bad; for in the state of nature everyone thinks solely of his own advantage, and according to his disposition, with reference only to his individual advantage, decides what is good or bad, being bound by no law to anyone besides himself. (37:30) in the state of nature, therefore, sin is inconceivable; it can only exist in a state, where good and evil are pronounced on by common consent, and where everyone is bound to obey the state authority. (37:31) sin, then, is nothing else but disobedience, which is therefore punished by the right of the state only. (32) obedience, on the other hand, is set down as merit, inasmuch as a man is thought worthy of merit, if he takes delight in the advantages which a state provides. (37:33) again, in the state of nature, no one is by common consent master of anything, nor is there anything in nature, which can be said to belong to one man rather than another: all things are common to all. (34) hence, in the state of nature, we can conceive no wish to render to every man his own, or to deprive a man of that which belongs to him; in other words, there is nothing in the state of nature answering to justice and injustice. (37:35) such ideas are only possible in a social state, when it is decreed by common consent what belongs to one man and what to another. (37:36) from all these considerations it is evident, that justice and injustice, sin and merit, are extrinsic ideas, and not attributes which display the nature of the mind. (37) but i have said enough. prop. [xxxviii] whatsoever disposes the human body, so as to render it capable of being affected in an increased number of ways, or of affecting ways, is useful to man ; and is so, proportion as the body is thereby rendered more capable of being affected or affecting other bodies in an increased number of ways; contrariwise, whatsoever renders the body less capable in this respect is hurtful to man. proof.(38:1) whatsoever thus increases the capabilities of the body increases also the mind's capability of perception (ii:[xiv] ); therefore, whatsoever thus disposes the body and thus renders it capable, is necessarily good or useful ([xxvi] , [xxvii] ); and is so in proportion to the extent to which it can render the body capable; contrariwise (ii:[xiv] , [xxvi] , [xxvii] ), it is hurtful, if it renders the body in this respect less capable. q.e.d. prop. [xxxix] whatsoever brings about the preservation of the proportion of motion and rest, which the parts of the human body mutually possess, is good; contrariwise, whatsoever causes a change in such proportion is bad. proof.(39:1) the human body needs many other bodies for its preservation (ii:[po.iv] ). (2) but that which constitutes the specific reality (forma) of a human body is, that its parts communicate their several motions one to another in a certain fixed proportion (def. ii:[13:24] ). (3) therefore, whatsoever brings about the preservation of the proportion between motion and rest, which the parts of the human body mutually possess, preserves the specific reality of the human body, and consequently renders the human body capable of being affected in many ways and of affecting external bodies in many ways; consequently it is good (by [xxxviii] ). (39:4) again, whatsoever brings about a change in the aforesaid proportion causes the human body to assume another specific character, in other words (see [preface] to this part towards the end, though the point is indeed self-evident), to be destroyed, and consequently totally incapable of being affected in an increased numbers of ways; therefore it is bad. q.e.d. note.(39:5) the extent to which such causes can injure or be of service to the mind will be explained in the fifth part. (6) but i would here remark that i consider that a body undergoes death, when the proportion of motion and rest which obtained mutually among its several parts is changed. (7) for i do not venture to deny that a human body, while keeping the circulation of the blood and other properties, wherein the life of a body is thought to consist, may none the less be changed into another nature totally different from its own. (8) there is no reason, which compels me to maintain that a body does not die, unless it becomes a corpse; nay, experience would seem to point to the opposite conclusion. (39:9) it sometimes happens, that a man undergoes such changes, that i should hardly call him the same. (10) as i have heard tell of a certain spanish poet, who had been seized with sickness, and though he recovered therefrom yet remained so oblivious of his past life, that he would not believe the plays and tragedies he had written to be his own: indeed, he might have been taken for a grown-up child, if he had also forgotten his native tongue. (11) if this instance seems incredible, what shall we say of infants? (39:12) a man of ripe age deems their nature so unlike his own, that he can only be persuaded that he too has been an infant by the analogy of other men. (13) however, i prefer to leave such questions undiscussed, lest i should give ground to the superstitious for raising new issues. prop. [xl] whatsoever conduces to man's social life, or causes men to live together in harmony, is useful, whereas whatsoever brings discord into a state is bad. proof.(40:1) for whatsoever causes men to live together in harmony also causes them to live according to reason ([xxxv] ), and is therefore ([xxvi] and [xxvii] ) good, and (for the same reason) whatsoever brings about discord is bad. q.e.d. prop. [xli] pleasure in itself is not bad but good: contrariwise, pain in itself is bad. proof.(41:1) pleasure (iii:[xi] & note) is emotion, whereby the body's power of activity is increased or helped; pain is emotion, whereby the body's power of activity is diminished or checked; therefore ([xxxviii] ) pleasure in itself is good, &c. q.e.d. prop. [xlii] mirth cannot be excessive, but is always good; contrariwise, melancholy is always bad. proof.(42:1) mirth (see its def. in iii:[xi] note) is pleasure, which, in so far as it is referred to the body, consists in all parts of the body being affected equally: that is (iii:[xi] ), the body's power of activity is increased or aided in such a manner, that the several parts maintain their former proportion of motion and rest; therefore mirth is always good ([xxxix] ), and cannot be excessive. (42:2) but melancholy (see its def. in the same note to iii:[xi] note) is pain, which, in so far as it is referred to the body, consists in the absolute decrease or hindrance of the body's power of activity; therefore ([xxxviii] ) it is always bad. q.e.d. prop. [xliii] stimulation may be excessive and bad; on the other hand, grief may be good, in so far as stimulation or pleasure is bad. proof.(43:1) localized pleasure or stimulation (titillatio) is pleasure, which, in so far as it is referred to the body, consists in one or some of its parts being affected more than the rest (see its definition, iii:[xi] note); the power of this emotion may be sufficient to overcome other actions of the body ([vi] ), and may remain obstinately fixed therein, thus rendering it incapable of being affected in a variety of other ways: therefore ([xxxviii] .) it may be bad. (2) again, grief, which is pain, cannot as such be good ([xli] ). (43:3) but, as its force and increase is defined by the power of an external cause compared with our own ([v] ), we can conceive infinite degrees and modes of strength in this emotion ([iii] ); we can, therefore, conceive it as capable of restraining stimulation, and preventing its becoming excessive, and hindering the body's capabilities; thus, to this extent, it will be good. q.e.d. prop. [xliv] love and desire may be excessive. proof.(44:1) love is pleasure, accompanied by the idea of an external cause (iii:[de.vi] ); therefore stimulation, accompanied by the idea of an external cause is love (iii:[xi] note); hence love maybe excessive. (2) again, the strength of desire varies in proportion to the emotion from which it arises (iii:[xxxvii] ). (3) now emotion may overcome all the rest of men's actions ([vi] ); so, therefore, can desire, which arises from the same emotion, overcome all other desires, and become excessive, as we showed in the last proposition concerning stimulation. note.(44:4) mirth, which i have stated to be good, can be conceived more easily than it can be observed. (5) for the emotions, whereby we are daily assailed, are generally referred to some part of the body which is affected more than the rest; hence the emotions are generally excessive, and so fix the mind in the contemplation of one object, that it is unable to think of others; and although men, as a rule, are a prey to many emotions and very few are found who are always assailed by one and the same yet there are cases, where one and the same emotion remains obstinately fixed. (6) we sometimes see men so absorbed in one object, that, although it be not present, they think they have it before them; when this is the case with a man who is not asleep, we say he is delirious or mad; nor are those persons who are inflamed with love, and who dream all night and all day about nothing but their mistress, or some woman, considered as less mad, for they are made objects of ridicule. (6) but when a miser thinks of nothing but gain or money, or when an ambitious man thinks of nothing but glory, they are not reckoned to be mad, because they are generally harmful, and are thought worthy of being hated. (44:7) but, in reality, avarice, ambition, lust, &c., are species of madness, though they may not be reckoned among diseases. prop. [xlv] hatred can never be good. proof.(45:1) when we hate a man, we endeavour to destroy him (iii:[xxxix] ), that is ([xxxvii] ), we endeavour to do something that is bad. (2) therefore, &c. q.e.d. n.b. (45:3) here, and in what follows, i mean by hatred only hatred towards men. corollary i.(45:4) envy, derision, contempt, anger, revenge, and other emotions attributable to hatred, or arising therefrom, are bad; this is evident from iii:[xxxix] and [xxxvii] . corollary ii.(45:5) whatsoever we desire from motives of hatred is base, and in a state unjust. (6) this also is evident from iii:[xxxix] , and from the definitions of baseness and injustice in [xxxvii] note. note.(45:7) between derision (which i have in coroll. i. stated to be bad) and laughter i recognize a great difference. (8) for laughter, as also jocularity, is merely pleasure; therefore, so long as it be not excessive, it is in itself good ([xli] ). (9) assuredly nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition. (10) for why is it more lawful to satiate one's hunger and thirst than to drive away one's melancholy? (11) i reason, and have convinced myself as follows: no deity, nor anyone else, save the envious, takes pleasure in my infirmity and discomfort, nor sets down to my virtue the tears, sobs, fear, and the like, which axe signs of infirmity of spirit; on the contrary, the greater the pleasure wherewith we are affected, the greater the perfection whereto we pass; in other words, the more must we necessarily partake of the divine nature. (12) therefore, to make use of what comes in our way, and to enjoy it as much as possible (not to the point of satiety, for that would not be enjoyment) is the part of a wise man. (45:13) i say it is the part of a wise man to refresh and recreate himself with moderate and pleasant food and drink, and also with perfumes, with the soft beauty of growing plants, with dress, with music, with many sports, with theatres, and the like, such as every man may make use of without injury to his neighbour. (14) for the human body is composed of very numerous parts, of diverse nature, which continually stand in need of fresh and varied nourishment, so that the whole body may be equally capable of performing all the actions, which follow from the necessity of its own nature; and, consequently, so that the mind may also be equally capable of understanding many things simultaneously. (45:15) this way of life, then, agrees best with our principles, and also with general practice; therefore, if there be any question of another plan, the plan we have mentioned is the best, and in every way to be commended. (45:16) there is no need for me to set forth the matter more clearly or in more detail. prop. [xlvi] he, who lives under the guidance of reason, endeavours, as far as possible, to render back love, or kindness, for other men's hatred, anger, contempt, &c., towards him. proof.(46:1) all emotions of hatred are bad ([xlv] coroll. i.); therefore he who lives under the guidance of reason will endeavour, as far as possible, to avoid being assailed by, such emotions ([xix] ); consequently, he will also endeavour to prevent others being so aspect ([xxxvii] ). (46:2) but hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can be quenched by love (iii:[xliii] ), so that hatred may pass into love (iii:[xliv] ); therefore he who lives under the guidance of reason will endeavour to repay hatred with love, that is, with kindness. q.e.d. note.(46:3) he who chooses to avenge wrongs with hatred is assuredly, wretched. (4) but he, who strives to conquer hatred with love, fights his battle in joy and confidence; he withstands many as easily as one, and has very little need of fortune's aid. (5) those whom he vanquishes yield joyfully, not through failure, but through increase in their powers; all these consequences follow so plainly from the mere definitions of love and understanding, that i have no need to prove them in detail. prop. [xlvii] emotions of hope and fear cannot be in themselves good. proof.(47:1) emotions of hope and fear cannot exist without pain. (2) for fear is pain (iii:[d.xiii] ), and hope (iii:[de.xii] and iii:[de.xiii] ) cannot exist without fear; therefore ([xli] ) these emotions cannot be good in themselves, but only in so far as they can restrain excessive pleasure ([xliii] ). q.e.d. note.(47:3) we may add, that these emotions show defective knowledge and an absence of power in the mind; for the same reason confidence, despair, joy, and disappointment are signs of a want of mental power. (4) for although confidence and joy are pleasurable emotions, they, nevertheless imply a preceding, pain, namely, hope and (47:5) wherefore the more we endeavour to be guided by reason, the less do we depend on hope; we endeavour to free ourselves from fear, and, as far as we can, to dominate fortune, directing our actions by the sure counsels of wisdom. prop. [xlviii] the emotions of over-esteem and disparagement are always bad. proof.(48:1) these emotions (see iii:[de.xxi] , iii:[de.xxii] ) are repugnant to reason; and are therefore ([xxvi] , [xxvii] ) bad. q.e.d. prop. [xlix] over-esteem is apt to render its object proud. proof.(49:1) if we see that any one rates us too highly, for love's sake, we are apt to become elated (iii:[xli] ), or to be pleasurably affected (iii:[de.xxx] ); the good which we hear of ourselves we readily believe (iii:[xxv] ); and therefore, for love's sake, rate ourselves too highly; in other words, we are apt to become proud. q.e.d. prop. [l] pity, in a man who lives under the guidance of reason, is in itself bad and useless. proof.(50:1) pity (iii:[de.xviii] ) is a pain, and therefore ([xli] ) is in itself bad. (2) the good effect which follows, namely, our endeavour to free the object of our pity from misery, is an action which we desire to do solely at the dictation of reason ([xxxvii] ); only at the dictation of reason are we able to perform any action, which we know for certain to be good ([xxvii] ); thus, in a man who lives under the guidance of reason, pity in itself is useless and bad. q.e.d. note.(50:3) he who rightly realizes, that all things follow from the necessity of the divine nature, and come to pass in accordance with the eternal laws and rules of nature, will not find anything worthy of hatred, derision, or contempt, nor will he bestow pity on anything, but to the utmost extent of human virtue he will endeavour to do well, as the saying is, and to rejoice. (4) we may add, that he, who is easily touched with compassion, and is moved by another's sorrow or tears, often does something which he afterwards regrets; partly because we can never be sure that an action caused by emotion is good, partly because we are easily deceived by false tears. (5) i am in this place expressly speaking of a man living under the guidance of reason. (50:6) he who is moved to help others neither by reason nor by compassion, is rightly styled inhuman, for (iii:[xxvii] ) he seems unlike a man. prop. [li] approval is not repugnant to reason, but can agree therewith and arise therefrom. proof.(51:1) approval is love towards one who has done good to another (iii:[de.xix] ); therefore it may be referred to the mind, in so far as the latter is active (iii:[lix] ), that is (iii:[iii] ), in so far as it understands; therefore, it is in agreement with reason, &c. q.e.d. another proof.(51:2) he, who lives under the guidance of reason, desires for others the good which he seeks for himself ([xxxvii] ); wherefore from seeing someone doing good to his fellow his own endeavour to do good is aided; in other words, he will feel pleasure (iii:[xi] note) accompanied by the idea of the benefactor. (3) therefore he approves of him. q.e.d. note.(51:4) indignation as we defined it (iii:[de.xx] ) is necessarily evil ([xlv] ); we may, however, remark that, when the sovereign power for the sake of preserving peace punishes a citizen who has injured another, it should not be said to be indignant with the criminal, for it is not incited by hatred to ruin him, it is led by a sense of duty to punish him. prop. [lii] self-approval may arise from reason, and that which arises from reason is the highest possible. proof.(52:1) self-approval is pleasure arising from a man's contemplation of himself and his own power of action (iii:de.xxv] ). (2) but a man's true power of action or virtue is reason herself (iii:[iii] ), as the said man clearly and distinctly contemplates her (ii:[xl] , ii:[xliii] ); therefore self-approval arises from reason. (52:3) again, when a man is contemplating himself, he only perceived clearly and distinctly or adequately, such things as follow from his power of action (iii:[d.ii] ), that is (iii:[iii] ), from his power of understanding; therefore in such contemplation alone does the highest possible self-approval arise. q.e.d. note.(52:4) self-approval is in reality the highest object for which we can hope. (5) for (as we showed in [xxv] ) no one endeavours to preserve his being for the sake of any ulterior object, and, as this approval is more and more fostered and strengthened by praise (iii:[liii] coroll.), and on the contrary (iii:[lv] coroll.) is more and more disturbed by blame, fame becomes the most powerful of incitements to action, and life under disgrace is almost unendurable. prop. [liii] humility is not a virtue, or does not arise from reason. proof.(53:1) humility is pain arising from a man's contemplation of his own infirmities (iii:[de.xxvi] ). (2) but, in so far as a man knows himself by true reason, he is assumed to understand his essence, that is, his power (iii:[vii] ). (3) wherefore, if a man in self-contemplation perceives any infirmity in himself, it is not by virtue of his understanding himself, but (iii:[lv] ) by virtue of his power of activity being checked. (4) but, if we assume that a man perceives his own infirmity by virtue of understanding something stronger than himself, by the knowledge of which he determines his own power of activity, this is the same as saying that we conceive that a man understands himself distinctly ([xxvi] ), because (land reads: "quod ipsius agendi potentia juvatur"which i have translated above. he suggests as alternative readings to `quod', 'quo' (= whereby) and 'quodque' (= and that).) his power of activity is aided. (53:5) wherefore humility, or the pain which arises from a man's contemplation of his own infirmity, does not arise from the contemplation or reason, and is not a virtue but a passion. q.e.d. prop. [liv] repentance is not a virtue, or does not arise from reason ; but he who repents of an action is doubly wretched or infirm. proof.(54:1) the first part of this proposition is proved like the foregoing one. (2) the second part is proved from the mere definition of the emotion in question (iii:[de.xxvii] ). (3) for the man himself to be overcome, first, by evil desires; secondly, by pain. note.(54:4) as men seldom live under the guidance of reason, these two emotions, namely, humility and repentance, as also hope and fear, bring more good than harm; hence, as we must sin, we had better sin in that direction. (5) for, if all men who are a prey to emotion were all equally proud, they would shrink from nothing, and would fear nothing; how then could they be joined and linked together in bonds of union? (6) the crowd plays the tyrant, when it is not in fear; hence we need not wonder that the prophets, who consulted the good, not of a few, but of all, so strenuously commended humility, repentance, and reverence. (54:7) indeed those who are a prey to these emotions may be led much more easily than others to live under the guidance of reason, that is, to become free and to enjoy the life of the blessed. prop. [lv] extreme pride or dejection indicates extreme ignorance of self. proof.(55:1) this is evident from iii:[de.xxviii].and iii:[de.xxix] . prop. [lvi] extreme pride or dejection indicates extreme infirmity of spirit. proof.(51:1) the first foundation of virtue is self-preservation ([xxii] coroll.) under the guidance of reason ([xxiv] ). (2) he, therefore, who is ignorant of himself, is ignorant of the foundation of all virtues, and consequently of all virtues. (3) again, to act virtuously is merely to act under the guidance of reason ([xxiv] ): now he, that acts under the guidance of reason, must necessarily know that he so acts (iii:[xliii] ). (4) therefore he who is in extreme ignorance of himself, and consequently of all virtues, acts least in obedience to virtue; in other words ([d.viii] ), is most infirm of spirit. (51:5) thus extreme pride or dejection indicates extreme infirmity of spirit. q.e.d. corollary.(51:6) hence it most clearly follows, that the proud and the dejected specially fall a prey to the emotions. note.(51:7) yet dejection can be more easily corrected than pride; for the latter being a pleasurable emotion, and the former a painful emotion, the pleasurable is stronger than the painful ([xviii] ). prop. [lvii] the proud man delights in the company of flatterers and parasites, but hates the company of the high-minded. proof.(57:1) pride is pleasure arising from a man's over estimation of himself (iii:[de.xxviii] and iii:[de.vi] ); this estimation the proud man will endeavour to foster by all the means in his power (iii:[xiii] note); he will therefore delight in the company of flatterers and parasites (whose character is too well known to need definition here), and will avoid the company of high-minded men, who value him according to his deserts. q.e.d. note.(57:2) it would be too long a task to enumerate here all the evil results of pride, inasmuch as the proud are a, prey to all the emotions, though to none of them less than to love and pity. (3) i cannot, however, pass over in silence the fact, that a man may be called proud from his underestimation of other people; and, therefore, pride in this sense may be defined as pleasure arising from the false opinion, whereby a man may consider himself superior to his fellows. (4) the dejection, which is the opposite quality to this sort of pride, may be defined as pain arising from the false opinion, whereby a man may think himself inferior to his fellows. (57:5) such being the ease, we can easily see that a proud man is necessarily envious (iii:[xli] note), and only takes pleasure in the company, who fool his weak mind to the top of his bent, and make him insane instead of merely foolish. (57:6) though dejection is the emotion contrary to pride, yet is the dejected man very near akin to the proud man. (7) for, inasmuch as his pain arises from a comparison between his own infirmity and other men's power or virtue, it will be removed, or, in other words, he will feel pleasure, if his imagination be occupied in contemplating other men's faults; whence arises the proverb, "the unhappy are comforted by finding fellow-sufferers." (8) contrariwise, he will be the more pained in proportion as he thinks himself inferior to others; hence none are so prone to envy as the dejected, they are specially keen in observing men's actions, with a view to fault-finding rather than correction, in order to reserve their praises for dejection, and to glory therein, though all the time with a dejected air. (9) these effects follow as necessarily from the said emotion, as it follows from the nature of a triangle, that the three angles are equal to two right angles. (57:10) i have already said that i call these and similar emotions bad, solely in respect to what is useful to man. (11) the laws of nature have regard to nature's general order, whereof man is but a part. (57:12) i mention this, in passing, lest any should think that i have wished to set forth the faults and irrational deeds of men rather than the nature and properties of things. (13) for, as i said in the preface to the third part, i regard human emotions and their properties as on the same footing with other natural phenomena. (14) assuredly human emotions indicate the power and ingenuity, of nature, if not of human nature, quite as fully, as other things which we admire, and which we delight to contemplate. (57:15) but i pass on to note those qualities in the emotions, which bring advantage to man, or inflict injury upon him. prop. [lviii] honour (gloria) [love of esteem] is not repugnant to reason, but may arise therefrom. proof.(58:1) this is evident from iii:[de.xxx] , and also from the definition of an honourable man ([xxxvii] note. i.). note.(58:2) empty honour, as it is styled, is self-approval, fostered only by the good opinion of the populace; when this good opinion ceases there ceases also the self-approval, in other words, the highest object of each man's love ([lii] note); consequently, he whose honour is rooted in popular approval must, day by day, anxiously strive, act, and scheme in order to retain his reputation. (3) for the populace is variable and inconstant, so that, if a reputation be not kept up, it quickly withers away. (4) everyone wishes to catch popular applause for himself, and readily represses the fame of others. (5) the object of the strife being estimated as the greatest of all goods, each combatant is seized with a fierce desire to put down his rivals in every possible way, till he who at last comes out victorious is more proud of having done harm to others than of having done good to himself. (58:6) this sort of honour, then, is really empty, being nothing. (58:7) the points to note concerning shame (pudor) may easily be inferred from what was said on the subject of mercy and repentance. (8) i will only add that shame, like compassion, though not a virtue, is yet good, in so far as it shows, that the feeler of shame is really imbued with the desire to live honourably; in the same way as suffering is good, as showing that the injured part is not mortified. (9) therefore, though a man who feels shame is sorrowful, he is yet more perfect than he, who is shameless, and has no desire to live honourably. (58:10) such are the points which i undertook to remark upon concerning the emotions of pleasure and pain; as for the desires, they are good or bad according as they spring from good or evil emotions. (11) but all, in so far as they are engendered in us by, emotions wherein the mind is passive, are blind (as is evident from what was said in [xliv] note), and would be useless, if men could easily, be induced to live by the guidance of reason only, as i will now briefly, show. prop. [lix] to all the actions, whereto we are determined by emotion wherein the mind is passive; we can be determined without emotion by reason. proof.(59:1) to act rationally, is nothing else (iii:[iii] and iii:[d.ii]) but to perform those actions, which follow from the necessity, of our nature {to persist} considered in itself alone. (2) but pain is bad, in so far as it diminishes or checks the power of action ([xli] ); wherefore we cannot by pain be determined to any action, which we should be unable to perform under the guidance of reason. (3) again, pleasure is bad only in so far as it hinders a man's capability for action ([xli] , [xliii] ); therefore to this extent we could not be determined by, it to any action, which we could not perform under the guidance of reason. (59:4) lastly, pleasure, in so far as it is good, is in harmony with reason (for it consists in the fact that a man's capability for action is increased or aided); nor is the mind passive therein, except in so far as a man's power of action is not increased to the extent of affording him an adequate conception of himself and his actions (iii:[iii] & note). (59:5) wherefore, if a man who is pleasurably affected be brought to such a state of perfection, that he gains an adequate conception of himself and his own actions, he will be equally, nay more, capable of those actions, to which he is determined by emotion wherein the mind is passive. (59:6) but all emotions are attributable to pleasure, to pain, or to desire (iii:[de.iv] explanation); and desire (iii:[de.i] ) is nothing else but the attempt to act; therefore, to all actions, &c. q.e.d. another proof.(59:7) a given action is called bad, in so far as it arises from one being affected by hatred or any evil emotion. (8) but no action, considered in itself alone, is either good or bad (as we pointed out in [preface] ), one and the same action being sometimes good, sometimes bad; wherefore to the action which is sometimes bad, or arises from some evil emotion, we may be led by reason ([xix] ). q.e.d. note.(59:9) an example will put this point in a clearer light. (10) the action of striking, in so far as it is considered physically, and in so far as we merely look to the fact that a man raises his arm, clenches his fist, and moves his whole arm violently downwards, is a virtue or excellence which is conceived as proper to the structure of the human body. (11) if, then, a man, moved by anger or hatred, is led to clench his fist or to move his arm, this result takes place (as we showed in pt.ii.), because one and the same action can be associated with various mental images of things; therefore we may be determined to the performance of one and the same action by confused ideas, or by clear and distinct ideas. (12) hence it is evident that every desire which springs from emotion, wherein the mind is passive, would become useless, if men could be guided by reason. (59:13) let us now see why desire which arises from emotion, wherein the mind is passive, is called by us blind. prop. [lx] desire arising from a pleasure or pain, that is not attributable, to the whole body, but only to one or certain parts thereof, is without utility in respect to a man as a whole. proof.(60:1) let it be assumed, for instance, that a, a part of a body, is so strengthened by some external cause, that it prevails over the remaining parts ([vi] ). (2) this part will not endeavour to do away with its own powers, in order that the other parts of the body may perform its office; for this it would be necessary for it to have a force or power of doing away with its own powers, which (iii:[vi] ) is absurd. (3) the said part, and, consequently, the mind also, will endeavour to preserve its condition. (4) wherefore desire arising from a pleasure of the kind aforesaid has no utility in reference to a man as a whole. (60:5) if it be assumed, on the other hand, that the part, a, be checked so that the remaining parts prevail, it may be proved in the same manner that desire arising from pain has no utility in respect to a man as a whole. q.e.d. note.(60:6) as pleasure is generally ([xliv] note) attributed to one part of the body, we generally desire to preserve our being with out taking into consideration our health as a whole: to which it may be added, that the desires which have most hold over us ([ix] ) take account of the present and not of the future. prop. [lxi]. desire which springs from reason cannot be excessive. proof.(61:1) desire (iii:[de.i] ) considered absolutely is the actual essence of man, in so far as it is conceived as in any way determined to a particular activity by some given modification of itself. (2) hence desire, which arises from reason, that is (iii:[iii] ), which is engendered in us in so far as we act, is the actual essence or nature of man, in so far as it is conceived as determined to such activities as are adequately conceived through man's essence only (iii:[d.ii] ). (61:3) now, if such desire could be excessive, human nature considered in itself alone would be able to exceed itself, or would be able to do more than it can, a manifest contradiction. (4) therefore, such desire cannot be excessive. q.e.d. prop. [lxii] in so far as the mind conceives a thing under the dictates of reason, it is affected equally, whether the idea be of a thing future, past, or present. proof.(62:1) whatsoever the mind conceives under the guidance of reason, it conceives under the form of eternity or necessity (ii:[xliv] coroll. ii.), and is therefore affected with the same certitude (ii:[xliii] & note). (2) wherefore, whether the thing be present, past, or future, the mind conceives it under the same necessity and is affected with the same certitude; and whether the idea be of something present, past, or future, it will in all cases be equally true (ii:[xli] ); that is, it will always possess the same properties of an adequate idea (ii:[d.iv] ); therefore, in so far as the mind conceives things under the dictates of reason, it is affected in the same manner, whether the idea be of a thing future, past, or present. q.e.d. note.(62:3) if we could possess an adequate knowledge of the duration of things, and could determine by reason their periods of existence, we should contemplate things future with the same emotion as things present; and the mind would desire as though it were present the good which it conceived as future; consequently it would necessarily neglect a lesser good in the present for the sake of a greater good in the future, and would in no wise desire that which is good in the present but a source of evil in the future, as we shall presently show. (4) however, we can have but a very inadequate knowledge of the duration of things (ii:[xxxi] ) and the periods of their existence (ii:[xliv] note) we can only determine by imagination, which is not so powerfully affected by the future as by the present. (5) hence such true knowledge of good and evil as we possess is merely abstract or general, and the judgment which we pass on the order of things and the connection of causes, with a view to determining what is good or bad for us in the, present, is rather imaginary than real. (62:6) therefore it is nothing wonderful, if the desire arising from such knowledge of good and evil, in so far as it looks on into the future, be more readily checked than the desire of things which are agreeable at the present time. (cf. [xvi] ) prop. [lxiii] he who is led by fear, and does good in order to escape evil, is not led by reason. proof.(63:1) all the emotions which are attributable to the mind as active, or in other words to reason, are emotions of pleasure and desire (iii:[lix] ); therefore, he who is led by fear, and does good in order to escape evil, is not led by reason. note.(63:2) superstitions persons, who know better how to rail at vice than how to teach virtue, and who strive not to guide men by reason, but so to restrain them that they would rather escape evil than love virtue, have no other aim but to make others as wretched as themselves; wherefore it is nothing wonderful, if they be generally troublesome and odious to their fellow-men. corollary.(63:3) under desire which springs from reason, we seek good directly, and shun evil indirectly. proof.(63:4) desire which springs from reason can only spring from a pleasurable emotion, wherein the mind is not passive (iii:[lix] ), in other words, from a pleasure which cannot be excessive ([lxi] ), and not from pain; wherefore this desire springs from the knowledge of good, not of evil ([viii] ); hence under the guidance of reason we seek good directly and only by implication shun evil. q.e.d. note.(63:5) this corollary may be illustrated by the example of a sick and a healthy man. (6) the sick man through fear of death eats what he naturally shrinks from, but the healthy man takes pleasure in his food, and thus gets a better enjoyment out of life, than if he were in fear of death, and desired directly to avoid it. (7) so a judge, who condemns a criminal to death, not from hatred or anger but from love of the public well-being, is guided solely by reason. prop. [lxiv] the knowledge of evil is an inadequate knowledge. proof.(64:1) the knowledge of evil ([viii] ) is pain, in so far as we are conscious thereof. (2) now pain is the transition to a lesser perfection (iii:[de.iii] ) and therefore cannot be understood through man's nature (iii:[vi] & ii:[vii] ); therefore it is a passive state (iii.[d.ii] ) which (ii[iii] ) depends on inadequate ideas; consequently the knowledge thereof (ii:[xxix] ), namely, the knowledge of evil, is inadequate. q.e.d. corollary.(64:3) hence it follows that, if the human mind possessed only adequate ideas, it would form no conception of evil. prop. [lxv] under the guidance of reason we should pursue the greater of two goods and the lesser of two evils. proof.(65:1) a good which prevents our enjoyment of a greater good is in reality an evil; for we apply the terms good and bad to things, in so far as we compare them one with another (see [preface] ); therefore, evil is in reality a lesser good; hence under the guidance of reason we seek or pursue only the greater good and the lesser evil. q.e.d. corollary.(65:1) we may, under the guidance of reason, pursue the lesser evil as though it were the greater good, and we may shun the lesser good, which would be the cause of the greater evil. (2) for the evil, which is here called the lesser, is really good, and the lesser good is really evil, wherefore we may seek the former and shun the latter. q.e.d. prop. [lxvi] we may, under the guidance of reason, seek a greater good in the future in preference to a lesser good in the present, and we may seek a lesser evil in the present in preference to a greater evil in the future. "maltim pr`sens minus pr` majori futuro." (van vloten). bruder reads: "malum pr`sens minus, quod causa est faturi alicujus mali." the last word of the latter is an obvious misprint, and is corrected by the dutch translator into "majoris boni." (pollock, p. 268, note.) proof.(66:1) if the mind could have an adequate knowledge of things future, it would be affected towards what is future in the same way as towards what is present ([lxii] ); wherefore, looking merely to reason, as in this proposition we are assumed to do, there is no difference, whether the greater good or evil be assumed as present, or assumed as future; hence ([lxv] ) we may seek a greater good in the future in preference to a lesser good in the present, &c. q.e.d. corollary.(66:2) we may, under the guidance of reason, seek a lesser evil in the present, because it is the cause of a greater good in the future, and we may shun a lesser good in the present, because it is the cause of a greater evil in the future. (3) this corollary is related to the foregoing proposition as the corollary to [lxv] is related to the said [lxv] . note.(66:4) if these statements be compared with what we pointed out concerning the strength of the emotions in this part up to prop. [xviii], we shall readily see the difference between a man, who is led solely by emotion or opinion, and a man, who is led by reason. (66:5) the former, whether he will or no, performs actions whereof he is utterly ignorant; the latter is his own master and only performs such actions, as he knows are of primary importance in life, and therefore chiefly, desires; wherefore i call the former a slave, and the latter a free man, concerning whose disposition and manner of life it will be well to make a few observations. prop. [lxvii] a free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life. proof.(67:1) a free man is one who lives under the guidance of reason, who is not led by fear ([lxiii] ), but who directly desires that which is good ([lxiii] coroll.), in other words ([xxiv] ), who strives to act, to live, and to preserve his being on the basis of seeking his own true advantage; wherefore such an one thinks of nothing less than of death, but his wisdom is a meditation of life. q.e.d prop. [lxviii] if men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil. proof.(68:1) i call free him who is led solely by reason; he, therefore, who is born free, and who remains free, has only adequate ideas; therefore ([lxiv] coroll.) he has no conception of evil, or consequently (good and evil being correlative) of good. q.e.d. note.(68:2) it is evident, from [iv] , that the hypothesis of this proposition is false and inconceivable, except in so far as we look solely to the nature of man, or rather to god; not in so far as the latter is infinite, but only in so far as he is the cause of man's existence. (68:3) this, and other matters which we have already proved, seem to have been signified by moses in the history of the first man. (4) for in that narrative no other power of god is conceived, save that whereby he created man, that is the power wherewith he provided solely for man's advantage; it is stated that god forbade man, being free, to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that, as soon as man should have eaten of it, he would straightway fear death rather than desire to live. (68:5) further, it is written that when man had found a wife, who was in entire harmony with his nature, he knew that there could be nothing in nature which could be more useful to him; but that after he believed the beasts to be like himself, he straightway began to imitate their emotions (iii:[xxvii] ), and to lose his freedom; this freedom was afterwards recovered by the patriarchs, led by the spirit of christ; that is, by the idea of god, whereon alone it depends, that man may be free, and desire for others the good which he desires for himself, as we have shown above ([xxxii] ). prop. [lxix] the virtue of a free man is seen to be as great, when it declines dangers, as when it overcomes them. proof.(69:1) emotion can only be checked or removed by an emotion contrary to itself, and possessing more power in restraining emotion ([vii] ). (2) but blind daring and fear are emotions, which can be conceived as equally great ([v]. and [iii] ): hence, no less virtue or firmness is required in checking daring than in checking fear (iii:[lix] note); in other words (iii:[de.xl] and iii:[de.xli] ), the free man shows as much virtue, when he declines dangers, as when he strives to overcome them. q.e.d. corollary.(69:3) the free man is as courageous in timely retreat as in combat; or, a free man shows equal courage or presence of mind, whether he elect to give battle or to retreat. note.(69:4) what courage (animositas) is, and what i mean thereby, i explained in iii:[lix] note. (5) by danger i mean everything, which can give rise to any evil, such as pain, hatred, discord, &c. prop. [lxx] the free man, who lives among the ignorant, strives, as far as he can, to avoid receiving favours from them. proof.(70:1) everyone judges what is good according to his disposition (iii:[xxxix] note); wherefore an ignorant man, who has conferred a benefit on another, puts his own estimate upon it, and, if it appears to be estimated less highly by the receiver, will feel pain (iii:[xlii] ). (70:2) but the free man only desires to join other men to him in friendship ([xxxvii] ), not repaying their benefits with others reckoned as of like value, but guiding himself and others by the free decision of reason, and doing only such things as he knows to be of primary importance. (70:3) therefore the free man, lest be should become hateful to the ignorant, or follow their desires rather than reason, will endeavour, as far as he can, to avoid receiving their favours. note.(70:4) i say, as far as he can. (5) for though men be ignorant, yet are they men, and in cases of necessity could afford us human aid, the most excellent of all things: therefore it is often necessary to accept favours from them, and consequently to repay such favours in kind; we must, therefore, exercise caution in declining favours, lest we should have the appearance of despising those who bestow them, or of being, from avaricious motives, unwilling to requite them, and so give ground for offence by the very fact of striving to avoid it. (70:6) thus, in declining favours, we must look to the requirements of utility and courtesy. prop. [lxxi] only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another. proof.(71:1) only free men are thoroughly useful one to another, and associated among themselves by the closest necessity of friendship ([xxxv] & coroll. i.), only such men endeavour, with mutual zeal of love, to confer benefits on each other ([xxxvii] ), and, therefore, only they are thoroughly grateful one to another. q.e.d. note.(71:2) the goodwill, which men who are led by blind desire have for one another, is generally a bargaining or enticement, rather than pure goodwill. (3) moreover, ingratitude is not an emotion. (4) yet it is base, inasmuch as it generally shows, that a man is affected by excessive hatred, anger, pride, avarice, &c. (5) he who, by reason of his folly, knows not how to return benefits, is not ungrateful, much less he who is not gained over by the gifts of a courtesan to serve her lust, or by a thief to conceal his thefts, or by any similar persons. (71:6) contrariwise, such an one shows a constant mind, inasmuch as he cannot by an gifts be corrupted, to his own or the general hurt. prop. [lxxii] the free man never acts fraudulently, but always in good faith. proof.(72:1) if it be asked: what should a man's conduct be in a case where he could by breaking faith free himself from the danger of present death? (2) would not his plan of self-preservation completely persuade him to deceive? (3) this may be answered by pointing out that, if reason persuaded him to act thus, it would persuade all men to act in a similar manner, in which case reason would persuade men not to agree in good faith to unite their forces, or to have laws in common, that is, not to. have any general laws, which is absurd. prop. [lxxiii] the man, who is guided by reason, is more free in a state, where he lives under a general system of law, than in solitude, where he is independent. proof.(73:1) the man, who is guided by reason, does not obey through fear ([lxiii] ): but, in so far as he endeavours to preserve his being according to the dictates of reason, that is ([lxvi] note), in so far as he endeavours to live in freedom, he desires to order his life according to the general good ([xxxvii] ), and, consequently (as we showed in [xxxvii] note. ii.), to live according to the laws of his country. (73:2) therefore the free man, in order to enjoy greater freedom, desires to possess the general rights of citizenship. q.e.d. note.(73:3) these and similar observations, which we have made on man's true freedom, may be referred to strength, that is, to courage and nobility of character (iii:[lix] note). (4) i do not think it worth while to prove separately all the properties of strength; much less need i show, that he that is strong hates no man, is angry with no man, envies no man, is indignant with no man, despises no man, and least of all things is proud. (5) these propositions, and all that relate to the true way of life and religion, are easily proved from [xxxvii] and [xlvi] ; namely, that hatred should be overcome with love, and that every man should desire for others the good which he seeks for himself. (6) we may also repeat what we drew attention to in the note to [i] , and in other places; namely, that the strong man has ever first in his thoughts, that all things follow from the necessity of the divine nature; so that whatsoever he deems to be hurtful and evil, and whatsoever, accordingly, seems to him impious, horrible, unjust, and base, assumes that appearance owing to his own disordered, fragmentary, and confused view of the universe. (73:7) wherefore he strives before all things to conceive things as they really are, and to remove the hindrances to true knowledge, such as are hatred, anger, envy, derision, pride, and similar emotions, which i have mentioned above. (8) thus he endeavours, as we said before, as far as in him lies, to do good, and to go on his way rejoicing. (9) how far human virtue is capable of attaining to such a condition, and what its powers may be, i will prove in the following part. ____________________________________________________________________________ [appendix] what i have said in this part concerning the right way of life has not been arranged, so as to admit of being seen at one view, but has been set forth piece-meal, according as i thought each proposition could most readily be deduced from what preceded it. i propose, therefore, to rearrange my remarks and to bring them under leading heads. [ap.i] (ap1:1) all our endeavours or desires so follow from the necessity of our nature, that they can be understood either through it alone, as their proximate cause, or by virtue of our being a part of nature, which cannot be adequately conceived through itself without other individuals. [ap.ii] (ap2:1) desires, which follow from our nature in such a manner, that they can be understood through it alone, are those which are referred to the mind, in so far as the latter is conceived to consist of adequate ideas: the remaining desires are only referred to the mind, in so far as it conceives things inadequately, and their force and increase are generally defined not by the power of man, but by the power of things external to us: wherefore the former are rightly called actions, the latter passions, for the former always indicate our power, the latter, on the other hand, show our infirmity and fragmentary knowledge. [ap.iii] (ap3:1) our actions, that is, those desires which are defined by man's power or reason, are always good. the rest maybe either good or bad. [ap.iv] (ap4:1) thus in life it is before all things useful to perfect the understanding or reason, as far as we can, and in this alone man's highest happiness or blessedness consists, indeed blessedness is nothing else but the contentment of spirit, which arises from the intuitive knowledge of god: now, to perfect the understanding is nothing else but to understand god, god's attributes, and the actions which follow from the necessity of his nature. (ap4:2) wherefore of a man, who is led by reason, the ultimate aim or highest desire, whereby he seeks to govern all his fellows, is that whereby he is brought to the adequate conception of himself and of all things within the scope of his intelligence. [ap.v] (ap5:1) therefore, without intelligence there is not rational life: and things are only good, in so far as they aid man in his enjoyment of the intellectual life, which is defined by intelligence. (2) contrariwise, whatsoever things hinder man's perfecting of his reason, and capability to enjoy the rational life, are alone called evil. [ap.vi] (ap6:1) as all things whereof man is the efficient cause are necessarily good, no evil can befall man except through external causes; namely, by virtue of man being a part of universal nature, whose laws human nature is compelled to, obey, and to conform to in almost infinite ways. [ap.vii] (ap7:1) it is impossible, that man should not be a part of nature, or that he should not follow her general order; but if he be thrown among individuals whose nature is in harmony with his own, his power of action will thereby be aided and fostered, whereas, if he be thrown among such as are but very little in harmony with his nature, he will hardly be able to accommodate himself to them without undergoing a great change himself. [ap.viii] (ap8:1) whatsoever in nature we deem to be evil, or to be capable of injuring our faculty for existing and enjoying the rational life, we may endeavour to remove in whatever way seems safest to us; on the other hand, whatsoever we deem to be good or useful for preserving our being, and enabling us to enjoy the rational life, we may appropriate to our use and employ as we think best. (ap8:2) everyone without exception may, by sovereign right of nature, do whatsoever he thinks will advance his own interest. [ap.ix] (ap9:1) nothing can be in more harmony with the nature of any given thing than other individuals of the same species; therefore (cf. [vii] ) for man in the preservation of his being and the enjoyment of the rational life there is nothing more useful than his fellow man who is led by reason. (ap9:2) further, as we know not anything among individual things which is more excellent than a man led by reason, no man can better display the power of his skill and disposition, than in so training men, that they come at last to live under the dominion of their own reason. [ap.x] (ap10:1) in so far as men are influenced by envy or any kind of hatred, one towards another, they are at variance, and are therefore to be feared in proportion, as they are more powerful than their fellows. [ap.xi] (ap11:1) yet minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness. [ap.xii] (ap12:1) it is before all things useful to men to associate their ways of life, to bind themselves together with such bonds as they think most fitted to gather them all into unity, and generally to do whatsoever serves to strengthen friendship. [ap.xiii] (ap13:1) but for this there is need of skill and watchfulness. (2) for men are diverse (seeing that those who live under the guidance of reason are few), yet are they generally envious and more prone to revenge than to sympathy. (3) no small force of character is therefore required to take everyone as he is, and to restrain one's self from imitating the emotions of others. (ap13:4) but those who carp at mankind, and are more skilled in railing at vice than in instilling virtue, and who break rather than strengthen men's dispositions, are hurtful both to themselves and others. (5) thus many from too great impatience of spirit, or from misguided religious zeal, have preferred to live among brutes rather than among men; as boys or youths, who cannot peaceably endure the chidings of their parents, will enlist as soldiers and choose the hardships of war and the despotic discipline in preference to the comforts of home and the admonitions of their father: suffering any burden to be put upon them, so long as they may spite their parents. [ap.xiv] (1) therefore, although men are generally governed in everything by their own lusts, yet their association in common brings many more advantages than drawbacks. (2) wherefore it is better to bear patiently the wrongs they may do us, and to strive to promote whatsoever serves to bring about harmony and friendship. [ap.xv] (ap15:1) those things, which beget harmony, are such as are attributable to justice, equity, and honourable living. (2) for men brook ill not only what is unjust or iniquitous, but also what is reckoned disgraceful, or that a man should slight the received customs of their society. (ap15:3) for winning love those qualities are especially necessary which have regard to religion and piety (cf. [xxxvii] notes. i., & [ii] ; [xlvi] note; and [lxxiii] note). [ap.xvi] (ap16:1) further, harmony is often the result of fear: but such harmony is insecure. (2) further, fear arises from infirmity of spirit, and moreover belongs not to the exercise of reason: the same is true of compassion, though this latter seems to bear a certain resemblance to piety. [ap.xvii] (ap17:1) men are also gained over by liberality, especially such as have not the means to buy what is necessary to sustain life. (2) however, to give aid to every poor man is far beyond the power and the advantage of any private person. (3) for the riches of any private person are wholly inadequate to meet such a call. (4) again, an individual man's resources of character are too limited for him to be able to make all men his friends. (ap17:5) hence providing for the poor is a duty, which falls on the state as a whole, and has regard only to the general advantage. [ap.xviii] (1) in accepting favours, and in returning gratitude our duty must be wholly different (cf. [lxx] note; [lxxi] note). [ap.xix] ((ap19:1) again, meretricious love, that is, the lust of generation arising from bodily beauty, and generally every sort of love, which owns anything save freedom of soul as its cause, readily passes into hate; unless indeed, what is worse, it is a species of madness; and then it promotes discord rather than harmony (cf. iii:[xxxi] coroll.). [ap.xx] (ap20:1) as concerning marriage, it is certain that this is in harmony with reason, if the desire for physical union be not engendered solely by bodily beauty, but also by the desire to beget children and to train them up wisely; and moreover, if the love of both, to wit, of the man and of the woman, is not caused by bodily beauty only, but also by freedom of soul. [ap.xxi] (ap21:1) furthermore, flattery begets harmony; but only by means of the vile offence of slavishness or treachery. (2) none are more readily taken with flattery than the proud, who wish to be first, but are not. [ap.xxii] (ap22:1) there is in abasement a spurious appearance of piety an religion. (2) although abasement is the opposite to pride, yet is he that abases himself most akin to the proud ([lvii] note). [ap.xxiii] (ap23:1) shame also brings about harmony, but only in such as cannot be hid. (2) further, as shame is a species of pain, it does not concern the exercise of reason. [ap.xxiv] (ap24:1) the remaining emotions of pain towards men are directly opposed to justice, equity, honour, piety, and religion; and, although indignation seems to bear a certain resemblance to equity, yet is life but lawless, where every man may pass judgment on another's deeds, and vindicate his own or other men's rights. [ap.xxv] (ap25:1) correctness of conduct (modestia), that is, the desire of pleasing men which is determined by reason, is attributable to piety (as we said in [xxxvii] note. i.). (2) but, if it spring from emotion, it is ambition, or the desire whereby, men, under the false cloak of piety, generally stir up discords and seditions. (ap25:3) for he who desires to aid his fellows. either in word or in deed, so that they may together enjoy the highest good, he, i say, will before all things strive to, win them over with love: not to draw them into admiration, so that a system may be called after his name, nor to give any cause for envy. (ap25:4) further, in his conversation he will shrink from talking of men's faults, and will be careful to speak but sparingly of human infirmity: but he will dwell at length on human virtue or power, and the way whereby it may be perfected. (5) thus will men be stirred not by fear, nor by aversion, but only by the emotion of joy, to endeavour, so far as in them lies, to live in obedience to reason. [ap.xxvi] (1) besides men, we know of no particular thing in nature in whose mind we may rejoice, and whom we can associate with ourselves in friendship or any sort of fellowship; therefore, whatsoever there be in nature besides man, a regard for our advantage does not call on us to preserve, but to preserve or destroy according to its various capabilities, and to adapt to our use as best we may. [ap.xxvii] ((ap27:1) the advantage which we derive from things external to us, besides the experience and knowledge which we acquire from observing them, and from recombining their elements in different forms, is principally the preservation of the body; from this point of view, those things are most useful which can so feed and nourish the body, that all its parts may rightly fulfil their functions. (ap27:2) for, in proportion as the body is capable of being affected in a greater variety of ways, and of affecting external bodies in a great number of ways, so much the more is the mind capable of thinking ([xxxviii] , [xxxix] ). (3) but there seem to be very few things of this kind in nature; wherefore for the due nourishment of the body we must use many foods of diverse nature. (ap27:4) for the human body is composed of very many parts of different nature, which stand in continual need of varied nourishment, so that the whole body may be equally capable of doing everything that can follow from its own nature, and consequently that the mind also may be equally capable of forming many perceptions. [ap.xxviii] (1) now for providing these nourishments the strength of each individual would hardly suffice, if men did not lend one another mutual aid. (2) but money has furnished us with a token for everything: hence it is with the notion of money, that the mind of the multitude is chiefly engrossed: nay, it can hardly conceive any kind of pleasure, which is not accompanied with the idea of money as cause. [ap.xxix] ((ap29:1) this result is the fault only of those, who seek money, not from poverty or to supply their necessary, wants, but because they, have learned the arts of gain, wherewith they bring themselves to great splendour. (2) certainly they nourish their bodies, according to custom, but scantily, believing that they lose as much of their wealth as they spend on the preservation of their body. (ap29:3) but they who know the true use of money, and who fix the measure of wealth solely with regard to their actual needs, live content with little. [ap.xxx] (ap30:1) as, therefore, those things are good which assist the various parts of the body, and enable them to perform their functions; and as pleasure consists in an increase of, or aid to, man's power, in so far as he is composed of mind and body; it follows that all those things which bring pleasure are good. (ap30:2) but seeing that things do not work with the object of giving us pleasure, and that their power of action is not tempered to suit our advantage, and, lastly, that pleasure is generally referred to one part of the body more than to the other parts; therefore most emotions of pleasure (unless reason and watchfulness be at hand), and consequently the desires arising therefrom, may become excessive. (ap30:3) moreover we may add that emotion leads us to pay most regard to what is agreeable in the present, nor can we estimate what is future with emotions equally vivid. ([xliv] note, and [lx] note.) [ap.xxxi] (ap31:1) superstition, on the other hand, seems to account as good all that brings pain, and as bad all that brings pleasure. (2) however, as we said above ([xlv] note), none but the envious take delight in my infirmity and trouble. (3) for the greater the pleasure whereby we are affected, the greater is the perfection whereto we pass, and consequently the more do we partake of the divine nature: no pleasure can ever be evil, which is regulated by a true regard for our advantage. (ap31:4) but contrariwise he, who is led by fear and does good only to avoid evil, is not guided by reason. [ap.xxxii] (1) but human power is extremely limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; we have not, therefore, an absolute power of shaping to our use those things which are without us. (2) nevertheless, we shall bear with an equal mind all that happens to us in contravention to the claims of our own advantage, so long as we are conscious, that we have done our duty, and that the power which we possess is not sufficient to enable us to protect ourselves completely; remembering that we are a part of universal nature, and that we follow her order. (ap32:3) if we have a clear and distinct understanding of this, that part of our nature which is defined by intelligence, in other words the better part of ourselves, will assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence will endeavour to persist. (ap32:4) for, in so far as we are intelligent beings, we cannot desire anything save that which is necessary, nor yield absolute acquiescence to anything, save to that which is true: wherefore, in so far as we have a right understanding of these things, the endeavour of the better part of ourselves is in harmony with the order of nature as a whole. ____________________________________________________________________________ end of "the ethics part iv" "joseph b. yesselman" <jyselman@erols.com> august 25, 1997 the ethics part v of the power of the understanding, or of human freedom circulated 1673 posthumously published 1677 baruch spinoza 1632 1677 ____________________________________________________________________________ jby notes: 1. text was scanned from benedict de spinoza's "on the improvement of the understanding", "the ethics" and "correspondence" as published in dover's isbn 0-486-20250-x. 2. the text is that of the translation of "the ethics" by r. h. m. elwes. this text is "an unabridged and unaltered republication of the bohn library edition originally published by george bell and sons in 1883." 3. jby added sentence numbers and search strings. 4. sentence numbers are shown thus (yy:xx). yy = proposition number when given. xx = sentence number. 5. search strings are enclosed in [square brackets]: a. roman numeral, when given before a search string, indicates part number. if a different part, bring up that part and then search. b. include square brackets in search string. c. do not include part number in search string. d. search down with the same string to facilitate return. 6. please report any errors in the text, search formatting, or sentence numbering to jyselman@erols.com. 7. html version: part v http://www.erols.com/jyselman/e5elwes.htm ____________________________________________________________________________ table of contents [preface] [axioms] propositions: [i] . [xi] . [xxi] . [xxxi] . [xli] . [ii] . [xii] . [xxii] . [xxxii] . [xlii] . [iii] . [xiii] . [xxiii] . [xxxiii] . [xliii] . [iv] . [xiv] . [xxiv] . [xxxiv] . [v] . [xv] . [xxv] . [xxxv] . [vi] . [xvi] . [xxvi] . [xxxvi] . [vii] . [xvii] . [xxvii] . [xxxvii] . [viii] .[xviii] .[xxviii] .[xxxviii] . [ix] . [xix] . [xxix] . [xxxix] . [x] . [xx] . [xxx] . [xl] . ____________________________________________________________________________ [preface] (prf:1) at length i pass to the remaining portion of my ethics, which is concerned with the way leading to freedom. (2) i shall therefore treat therein of the power of the reason, showing how far the reason can control the emotions, and what is the nature of mental freedom or blessedness; we shall then be able to see, how much more powerful the wise man is than the ignorant. (3) it is no part of my design to point out the method and means whereby the understanding may be perfected, nor to show the skill whereby the body may be so tended, as to be capable of the due performance of its functions. (4) the latter question lies in the province of medicine, the former in the province of logic. (prf:5) here, therefore, i repeat, i shall treat only of the power of the mind, or of reason; and i shall mainly show the extent and nature of its dominion over the emotions, for their control and moderation. (prf:6) that we do not possess absolute dominion over them, i have already shown. (7) yet the stoics have thought, that the emotions depended absolutely on our will, and that we could absolutely govern them. (prf:8) but these philosophers were compelled, by the protest of experience, not from their own principles, to confess, that no slight practice and zeal is needed to control and moderate them: and this someone endeavoured to illustrate by the example (if i remember rightly) of two dogs, the one a house-dog and the other a hunting-dog. (9) for by long training it could be brought about, that the house-dog should become accustomed to hunt, and the hunting-dog to cease from running after hares. (10) to this opinion descartes not a little inclines. (prf:11) for he maintained, that the soul or mind is specially united to a particular part of the brain, namely, to that part called the pineal gland, by the aid of which the mind is enabled to feel all the movements which are set going in the body, and also external objects, and which the mind by a simple act of volition can put in motion in various ways. (prf:12) he asserted, that this gland is so suspended in the midst of the brain, that it could be moved by the slightest motion of the animal spirits: further, that this gland is suspended in the midst of the brain in as many different manners, as the animal spirits can impinge thereon; and, again, that as many different marks are impressed on the said gland, as there are different external objects which impel the animal spirits towards it; whence it follows, that if the will of the soul suspends the gland in a position, wherein it has already been suspended once before by the animal spirits driven in one way or another, the gland in its turn reacts on the said spirits, driving and determining them to the condition wherein they were, when repulsed before by a similar position of the gland. (prf:13) he further asserted, that every act of mental volition is united in nature to a certain given motion of the gland. (14) for instance, whenever anyone desires to look at a remote object, the act of volition causes the pupil of the eye to dilate, whereas, if the person in question had only thought of the dilatation of the pupil, the mere wish to dilate it would not have brought about the result, inasmuch as the motion of the gland, which serves to impel the animal spirits towards the optic nerve in a way which would dilate or contract the pupil, is not associated in nature with the wish to dilate or contract the pupil, but with the wish to look at remote or very near objects. (15) lastly, he maintained that, although every motion of the aforesaid gland seems to have been united by nature to one particular thought out of the whole number of our thoughts from the very beginning of our life, yet it can nevertheless become through habituation associated with other thoughts; this he endeavours to prove in the passions de l'âme, i. 50. (prf:16) he thence concludes, that there is no soul so weak, that it cannot, under proper direction, acquire absolute power over its passions. (17) for passions as defined by him are "perceptions, or feelings, or disturbances of the soul, which are referred to the soul as species, and which (mark the expression) are produced, preserved, and strengthened through some movement of the spirits." (passion del l'âme,i.27.) (18) but, seeing that we can join any motion of the gland, or consequently of the spirits, to any volition, the determination of the will depends entirely on our own powers; if, therefore, we determine our will with sure and firm decisions in the direction to which we wish our actions to tend, and associate the motions of the passions which we wish to acquire with the said decisions, we shall acquire an absolute dominion over our passions. (19) such is the doctrine of this illustrious philosopher (in so far as i gather it from his own words); it is one which, had it been less ingenious, i could hardly believe to have proceeded from so great a man. (20) indeed, i am lost in wonder, that a philosopher, who had stoutly asserted, that he would draw no conclusions which do not follow from self-evident premisses, and would affirm nothing which he did not clearly and distinctly perceive, and who had so often taken to task the scholastics for wishing to explain obscurities through occult qualities, could maintain a hypothesis, beside which occult qualities are commonplace. (prf:21) what does he understand, i ask, by the union of the mind and the body? (22) what clear and distinct conception has he got of thought in most intimate union with a certain particle of extended matter? (23) truly i should like him to explain this union through its proximate cause. (24) what clear and distinct conception has he got of thought in most intimate union with a certain particle of extended matter? (25) what clear and distinct conception has he got of thought in most intimate union with a certain particle of extended matter? (26) but he had so distinct a conception of mind being distinct from body, that he could not assign any particular cause of the union between the two, or of the mind itself, but was obliged to have recourse to the cause of the whole universe, that is to god. (prf:27) further, i should much like to know, what degree of motion the mind can impart to this pineal gland, and with what force can it hold it suspended? (28) for i am in ignorance, whether this gland can be agitated more slowly or more quickly by the mind than by the animal spirits, and whether the motions of the passions, which we have closely united with firm decisions, cannot be again disjoined therefrom by physical causes; in which case it would follow that, although the mind firmly intended to face a given danger, and had united to this decision the motions of boldness, yet at the sight of the danger the gland might become suspended in a way, which would preclude the mind thinking of anything except running away. (29) in truth, as there is no common standard of volition and motion, so is there no comparison possible between the powers of the mind and the power or strength of the body; consequently the strength of one cannot in any wise be determined by the strength of the other. (prf:30) we may also add, that there is no gland discoverable in the midst of the brain, so placed that it can thus easily be set in motion in so many ways, and also that all the nerves are not prolonged so far as the cavities of the brain. (prf:31) lastly, i omit all the assertions which he makes concerning the will and its freedom, inasmuch as i have abundantly proved that his premisses are false. (32) therefore, since the power of the mind, as i have shown above, is defined by the understanding only, we shall determine solely by the knowledge of the mind the remedies against the emotions, which i believe all have had experience of, but do not accurately observe or distinctly see, and from the same basis we shall deduce all those conclusions, which have regard to the mind's blessedness. ____________________________________________________________________________ [axioms] [a.i] if two contrary actions be started in the same subject, a change must necessarily take place, either in both, or in one of the two, and continue until they cease to be contrary. [a.ii] the power of an effect is defined by the power of its cause, in so far as its essence is explained or defined by the essence of its cause. (this axiom is evident from iii:[vii] ) ____________________________________________________________________________ propositions. prop. [i] even as thoughts and the ideas of things are arranged and associated in the mind, so are the modifications of body or the images of things precisely in the same way arranged and associated in the body. proof.(1:1) the order and connection of ideas is the same (ii[vii] ) as the order and connection of things, and vice versâ the order and connection of things is the same (ii:[vi] coroll. and ii:[vii] ) as the order and connection of ideas. (2) wherefore, even as the order and connection of ideas in the mind takes place according to the order and association of modifications of the body (ii:[xviii] ), so vice versa (iii:[ii] ) the order and connection of modifications of the body takes place in accordance with the manner, in which thoughts and the ideas of things are arranged and associated in the mind. q.e.d. prop. [ii] if we remove a disturbance of the spirit, or emotion, from the thought of an external cause, and unite it to other thoughts then will the love or hatred towards that external cause, and also the vacillations of spirit which arise from these emotions, be destroyed. proof.(2:1) that, which constitutes the reality of love or hatred, is pleasure or pain, accompanied by the idea of an external cause (iii:[de.vi] iii:[de.vii] ); wherefore, when this cause is removed, the reality of love or hatred is removed with it; therefore these emotions and those which arise therefrom are destroyed. q.e.d. prop. [iii] an emotion, which is a passion, ceases to be a passion, as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea thereof. proof.(3:1) an emotion, which is a passion, is a confused idea (by iii:[general definition of the emotions]). (2) if, therefore, we form a clear and distinct idea of a given emotion, that idea will only be distinguished from the emotion, in so far as it is referred to the mind only, by reason (ii:[xxi] & note); therefore (iii:[iii] ), the emotion will cease to be a passion. q.e.d. corollary.(3:3) an emotion therefore becomes more under our control, and the mind is less passive in respect to it, in proportion as it is more known to us. prop. [iv] there is no modification of the body, whereof we cannot form some clear and distinct conception. proof.(4:1) properties which are common to all things can only be conceived adequately (ii:[xxxviii] ); therefore (ii:[xii] and ii:[l.ii] .) there is no modification of the body, whereof we cannot form some clear and distinct conception. q.e.d. corollary.(4:2) hence it follows that there is no emotion, whereof we cannot form some clear and distinct conception. (4:3) for an emotion is the idea of a modification of the body (by iii:[general definition of the emotions]), and must therefore (by [iii] ) involve some clear and distinct conception. note.(4:4) seeing that there is nothing which is not followed by an effect (i:[xxxvi] ), and that we clearly and distinctly understand whatever follows from an idea, which in us is adequate (ii:[xl] ), it follows that everyone has the power of clearly and distinctly understanding himself and his emotions, if not absolutely, at any rate in part, and consequently of bringing it about, that he should become less subject to them. (4:5) to attain this result, therefore, we must chiefly direct our efforts to acquiring, as far as possible, a clear and distinct knowledge of every emotion, in order that the mind may thus, through emotion, be determined to think of those things which it clearly and distinctly perceives, and wherein it fully acquiesces: and thus that the emotion itself may be separated from the thought of an external cause, and may be associated with true thoughts; whence it will come to pass, not only that love, hatred, &c. will be destroyed ([ii] ), but also that the appetites or desires, which are wont to arise from such emotion, will become incapable of being excessive (iv:[lxi] ). (6) for it must be especially remarked, that the appetite through which a man is said to be active, and that through which he is said to be passive is one and the same. (4:7) for instance, we have shown that human nature is so constituted, that everyone desires his fellow-men to live after his own fashion (iii:[xxxi] note); in a man, who is not guided by reason, this appetite is a passion which is called ambition, and does not greatly differ from pride; whereas in a man, who lives by the dictates of reason, it is an activity or virtue which is called piety (iv:[xxxvii] note. i. and second proof). (8) in like manner all appetites or desires are only passions, in so far as they spring from inadequate ideas; the same results are accredited to virtue, when they are aroused or generated by adequate ideas. (4:9) for all desires, whereby we are determined to any given action, may arise as much from adequate as from inadequate ideas (iv:[lix] ). (10) than this remedy for the emotions (to return to the point from which i started), which consists in a true knowledge thereof, nothing more excellent, being within our power, can be devised. (4:11) for the mind has no other power save that of thinking and of forming, adequate ideas, as we have shown above (iii:[iii] ). prop. [v] an emotion towards a thing, which we conceive simply, and not as necessary, or as contingent, or as possible, is, other conditions being equal, greater than any other emotion. proof.(5:1) an emotion towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, is greater than one towards what we conceive to be necessary (iii:[xlix] ), and, consequently, still greater than one towards what we conceive as possible, or contingent (iv:[xi] ). (2) but to conceive a thing as free can be nothing else than to conceive it simply, while we are in ignorance of the causes whereby it has been determined to action (ii:[xxxv] note); therefore, an emotion towards a thing which we conceive simply is, other conditions being equal, greater than one, which we feel towards what is necessary, possible, or contingent, and, consequently, it is the greatest of all. q.e.d. prop. [vi] the mind has greater power over the emotions and is less subject thereto, in so far as it understands all things as necessary. proof.(6:1) the mind understands all things to be necessary (i:[xxix] ) and to be determined to existence and operation by an infinite chain of causes; therefore (by the foregoing proposition), it thus far brings it about, that it is less subject to the emotions arising therefrom, and (iii:[xlviii] ) feels less emotion towards the things themselves. q.e.d. note.(6:2) the more this knowledge, that things are necessary, is applied to particular things, which we conceive more distinctly and vividly, the greater is the power of the mind over the emotions, as experience also testifies. (3) for we see, that the pain arising from the loss of any good is mitigated, as soon as the man who has lost it perceives, that it could not by any means have been preserved. (4) so also we see that no one pities an infant, because it cannot speak, walk, or reason, or lastly, because it passes so many years, as it were, in unconsciousness. (6:5) whereas, if most people were born full-grown and only one here and there as an infant, everyone would pity the infants; because infancy would not then be looked on as a state natural and necessary, but as a fault or delinquency in nature; and we may note several other instances of the same sort. prop. [vii] emotions which are aroused or spring from reason, if we take account of time, are stronger than those, which are attributable to particular objects that we regard as absent. proof.(7:1) we do not regard a thing as absent, by reason of the emotion wherewith we conceive it, but by reason of the body, being affected by another emotion excluding the existence of the said thing (ii:[xvii] ). (2) wherefore, the emotion, which is referred to the thing which we regard as absent, is not of a nature to overcome the rest of a man's activities and power (iv:[vi] ), but is, on the contrary, of a nature to be in some sort controlled by the emotions, which exclude the existence of its external cause (iv:[ix] ). (3) but an emotion which springs from reason is necessarily referred to the common properties of things (see the def. of reason in ii:[xl] note. ii.), which we always regard as present (for there can be nothing to exclude their present existence), and which we always conceive in the same manner (ii:[xxxviii] ). (7:4) wherefore an emotion of this kind always remains the same; and consequently ([a.i] ) emotions, which are contrary thereto and are not kept going by their external causes, will be obliged to adapt themselves to it more and more, until they are no longer contrary to it; to this extent the emotion which springs from reason is more powerful. q.e.d. prop. [viii] an emotion is stronger in proportion to the number of simultaneous concurrent causes whereby it is aroused. proof.(8:1) many simultaneous causes are more powerful than a few (iii:[vii] ): therefore (iv:[v] ), in proportion to the increased number of simultaneous causes whereby it is aroused, an emotion becomes stronger. q.e.d. note.(8:2) this proposition is also evident from [a.ii.] prop. [ix] an emotion, which is attributable to many and diverse causes which the mind regards as simultaneous with the emotion itself, is less hurtful, and we are less subject thereto and less affected towards each of its causes, than if it were a different and equally powerful emotion attributable to fewer causes or to a single cause. proof-. (9:1) an emotion is only bad or hurtful, in so far as it hinders the mind from being able to think (iv:[xxvi] , iv:[xxvii] ); therefore, an emotion, whereby the mind is determined to the contemplation of several things at once, is less hurtful than another equally powerful emotion, which so engrosses the mind in the single contemplation of a few objects or of one, that it is unable to think of anything else; this was our first point. (2) again, as the mind's essence, in other words, its power (iii:[vii] ), consists solely in thought (ii:[xi] ), the mind is less passive in respect to an emotion, which causes it to think of several things at once, than in regard to an equally strong emotion, which keeps it engrossed in the contemplation of a few or of a single object: this was our second point. (3) lastly, this emotion (iii:[xlviii] ), in so far as it is attributable to several causes, is less powerful in regard to each of them. q.e.d. prop. [x] so long as we are not assailed by emotions contrary to our nature, we have the power of arranging and associating the modifications of our body according to the intellectual order. proof.(10:1) the emotions, which are contrary to our nature, that is (iv:[xxx] ), which are bad, are bad in so far as they impede the mind from understanding (iv:[xxvii] ). (2) so long, therefore, as we are not assailed by emotions contrary to our nature, the mind's power, whereby it endeavours to understand things (iv:[xxvi] ), is not impeded, and therefore it is able to form clear and distinct ideas and to deduce them one from another (ii:[xl] note. ii. and ii:[xlvii] note); consequently we have in such cases the power of arranging and associating the modifications of the body according to the intellectual order. q.e.d. note.(10:3) by this power of rightly arranging and associating the bodily modifications we can guard ourselves from being easily affected by evil emotions. (4) for (v:[vii] ) a greater force is needed for controlling the emotions, when they are arranged and associated according to the intellectual order, than when they, are uncertain and unsettled. (10:5) the best we can do, therefore, so long as we do not possess a perfect knowledge of our emotions, is to frame a system of right conduct, or fixed practical precepts, to commit it to memory, and to apply it forthwith to the particular circumstances which now and again meet us in life, so that our imagination may become fully imbued therewith, and that it may be always ready to our hand. (10:6) for instance, we have laid down among the rules of life (iv:[xlvi] , &note), that hatred should be overcome with love or high-mindedness, and not required with hatred in return. (7) now, that this precept of reason may be always ready to our hand in time of need, we should often think over and reflect upon the wrongs generally committed by men, and in what manner and way they may be best warded off by high-mindedness: we shall thus associate the idea of wrong with the idea of this precept, which accordingly will always be ready for use when a wrong is done to us (ii:[xviii] ). (8) if we keep also in readiness the notion of our true advantage, and of the good which follows from mutual friendships, and common fellowships; further, if we remember that complete acquiescence is the result of the right way of life (iv:lii.), and that men, no less than everything else, act by the necessity of their nature: in such case i say the wrong, or the hatred, which commonly arises therefrom, will engross a very small part of our imagination and will be easily overcome; or, if the anger which springs from a grievous wrong be not overcome easily, it will nevertheless be overcome, though not without a spiritual conflict, far sooner than if we had not thus reflected on the subject beforehand. (9) as is indeed evident from [vi] [vii] [viii] . (10:10) we should, in the same way, reflect on courage as a means of overcoming fear; the ordinary dangers of life should frequently be brought to mind and imagined, together with the means whereby through readiness of resource and strength of mind we can avoid and overcome them. (11) but we must note, that in arranging our thoughts and conceptions we should always bear in mind that which is good in every individual thing (iv:[lxiii] coroll. and iii:[lix] ), in order that we may always be determined to action by an emotion of pleasure. (12) for instance, if a man sees that he is too keen in the pursuit of honour, let him think over its right use, the end for which it should be pursued, and the means whereby he may attain it. (10:13) let him not think of its misuse, and its emptiness, and the fickleness of mankind, and the like, whereof no man thinks except through a morbidness of disposition; with thoughts like these do the most ambitious most torment themselves, when they despair of gaining the distinctions they hanker after, and in thus giving vent to their anger would fain appear wise. (14) wherefore it is certain that those, who cry out the loudest against the misuse of honour and the vanity of the world, are those who most greedily covet it. (15) this is not peculiar to the ambitious, but is common to all who are ill-used by fortune, and who are infirm in spirit. (10:16) for a poor man also, who is miserly, will talk incessantly of the misuse of wealth and of the vices of the rich; whereby he merely torments himself, and shows the world that he is intolerant, not only of his own poverty, but also of other people's riches. (17) so, again, those who have been ill received by a woman they love think of nothing but the inconstancy, treachery, and other stock faults of the fair sex; all of which they consign to oblivion, directly they are again taken into favour by their sweetheart. (18) thus he who would govern his emotions and appetite solely by the love of freedom strives, as far as he can, to gain a knowledge of the virtues and their causes, and to fill his spirit with the joy which arises from the true knowledge of them: he will in no wise desire to dwell on men's faults, or to carp at his fellows, or to revel in a false show of freedom. (10:19) whosoever will diligently observe and practise these precepts (which indeed are not difficult) will verily, in a short space of time, be able, for the most part, to direct his actions according to the commandments of reason. prop. [xi] in proportion as a mental image is referred to more objects, so is it more frequent, or more often vivid, and occupies the mind more. proof.(11:1) in proportion as a mental image or an emotion is referred to more objects, so are there more causes whereby it can be aroused and fostered, all of which (by hypothesis) the mind contemplates simultaneously in association with the given emotion; therefore the emotion is more frequent, or is more often in full vigour, and ([viii] ) occupies the mind more. q.e.d. prop. [xii] the mental images of things are more easily associated with the referred to things which we clearly and distinctly understand, than with others. proof.(12:1) things, which we clearly and distinctly understand, are either the common properties of things or deductions therefrom (see definition of reason, ii:[xl] note ii.), and are consequently (by [xi] ) more often aroused in us. (2) wherefore it may more readily happen, that we should contemplate other things in conjunction with these than in conjunction with something else, and consequently (ii:[xviii] ) that the images of the said things should be more often associated with the images of these than with the images of something else. q.e.d. prop. [xiii] a mental image is more often vivid, in proportion as it is associated with a greater number of other images. proof.(13:1) in proportion as an image is associated with a greater number of other images, so (ii:[xviii] ) are there more causes whereby it can be aroused. q.e.d. prop. [xiv] the mind can bring it about, that all bodily modifications or images of things may be referred to the idea of god. proof.(14:1) there is no modification of the body, whereof the mind may not form some clear and distinct conception ([iv] ); wherefore it can bring it about, that they should all be referred to the idea of god (i:[xv] ). q.e.d. prop. [xv] he who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his emotions loves god, and so much the more in proportion as he understands himself and his emotions. proof.(15:1) he who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his emotions feels pleasure (iii:[liii] ), and this pleasure is (by [xiv] ) accompanied by the idea of god; therefore (iii:[de.vi] ) such an one loves god, and (for the same reason) so much the more in proportion as he more understands himself and his emotions. q.e.d. prop. [xvi] this love towards god must hold the chief place in the mind. proof.(16:1) for this love is associated with all the modifications of the body ([xiv] ) and is fostered by them all ([v] ); therefore ([xi] ), it must hold the chief place in the mind. q.e.d. prop. [xvii] god is without passions, neither is he affected by any emotion of pleasure or pain. proof.(17:1) all ideas, in so far as they are referred to god, are true (ii:[xxxii] ), that is (ii:[d.iv] ) adequate; and therefore (by iii:[general definition of the emotions] ) god is without passions. (2) again, god cannot pass either to a greater or to a lesser perfection (i:[xx] coroll. ii.); therefore (by iii:[de.ii] & iii:[de.iii] ) he is not affected by any emotion of pleasure or pain. corollary. (17:3) strictly speaking, god does not love or hate anyone. (4) for god (by [xvi] ) is not affected by any emotion of pleasure or pain, consequently (iii:[de.vi] & iii:[de.vii] ) he does not love or hate anyone. prop. [xviii] no one can hate god. proof.(18:1) the idea of god which is in us is adequate and perfect (ii:[xlvi] , ii:[xlvii] ); wherefore, in so far as we contemplate god, we are active (iii:[iii] ) ; consequently (iii:[lix] ) there can be no pain accompanied by the idea of god, in other words (iii:[de.vii] ), no one can hate god. q.e.d. corollary.(18:2) love towards god cannot be turned into hate. note.(18:3) it may be objected that, as we understand god as the cause of all things, we by that very fact regard god as the cause of pain. (4) but i make answer, that, in so far as we understand the causes of pain, it to that extent ([iii] ) ceases to be a passion, that is, it ceases to be pain (iii:[lix] ); therefore, in so far as we understand god to be the cause of pain, we to that extent feel pleasure. prop. [xix] he, who loves god, cannot endeavour that god should love him in return. proof.(19:1) for, if a man should so endeavour, he would desire ([xvii] coroll.) that god, whom he loves, should not be god, and consequently he would desire to feel pain (iii:[xix] ); which is absurd (iii:[xxviii] ) (2) therefore, he who loves god, &c. q.e.d. prop. [xx] this love towards god cannot be stained by the emotion of envy or jealousy: contrariwise, it is the more fostered, in proportion as we conceive a greater number of men to be joined to god by the same bond of love. proof.(20:1) this love towards god is the highest good which we can seek for under the guidance of reason (iv:[xxviii] ), it is common to all men (iv:[xxxvi] ),and we desire that all should rejoice therein (iv:[xxxvii] ); therefore (iii:[de:xxiii] ), it cannot be stained by the emotion envy nor by, the emotion of jealousy, ([xviii] see definition of jealousy, (iii:[xxxv] note); but, contrariwise, it must needs be the more fostered, in proportion as we conceive a greater number of men to rejoice therein. q.e.d. note.(20:2) we can in the same way, show, that there is no emotion directly contrary to this love, whereby this love can be destroyed; therefore we may conclude, that this love towards god is the most constant of all the emotions, and that, in so far as it is referred to the body, it cannot be destroyed, unless the body be destroyed also. (20:3) as to its nature, in so far as it is referred to the mind only, we shall presently inquire. (20:4) i have through all the remedies against the emotions, or all that the mind, considered in itself alone, can do against them. (5) whence it appears that the mind's power over the emotions consists: i. (20:6) in the actual knowledge of the emotions ([iv] note). ii. (20:7) in the fact that it separates the emotions from the thought of an external cause, which we conceive confusedly ([ii] and [iv] note). iii. (20:8) in the fact, that, in respect to time, the emotions referred to things, which we distinctly understand, surpass those referred to what we conceive in a confused and fragmentary manner ([vii] ). iv. (20:9) in the number of causes whereby those modifications (affectiones. camerer reads affectus emotions), are fostered, which have regard to the common properties of things or to god ([ix] , [xi] ). v. (20:10) lastly, in the order wherein the mind can arrange and associate, one with another, its own emotions ([x] note and [xii] , [xiii] , [xiv] ). (20:11) but, in order that this power of the mind over the emotions may be better understood, it should be specially observed that the emotions are called by us strong, when we compare the emotion of one man with the emotion of another, and see that one man is more troubled than another by the same emotion; or when we are comparing the various emotions of the same man one with another, and find that he is more affected or stirred by one emotion than by another. (12) for the strength of every emotion is defined by a comparison of our own power with the power of an external cause. (13) now the power of the mind is defined by knowledge only, and its infirmity or passion is defined by the privation of knowledge only: it therefore follows, that that mind is most passive, whose greatest part is made up of inadequate ideas, so that it may be characterized more readily by its passive states than by its activities: on the other hand, that mind is most active, whose greatest part is made up of adequate ideas, so that, although it may contain as many inadequate ideas as the former mind, it may yet be more easily characterized by ideas attributable to human virtue, than by ideas which tell of human infirmity. (20:14) again, it must be observed, that spiritual unhealthiness; and misfortunes can generally be traced to excessive love for something which is subject to many variations, and which we can never become masters of. (15) for no one is solicitous or anxious about anything, unless he loves it; neither do wrongs, suspicions, enmities, &c. arise, except in regard to things whereof no one can be really master. (20:16) we may thus readily conceive the power which clear and distinct knowledge, and especially that third kind of knowledge (ii:[xlvii] note), founded on the actual knowledge of god, possesses over the emotions: if it does not absolutely destroy them, in so far as they are passions ([iii] and [iv] note); at any rate, it causes them to occupy a very small part of the mind ([xiv] ). (17) further, it begets a love towards a thing immutable and eternal ([xv] ), whereof we may really enter into possession (ii:[xlv] ); neither can it be defiled with those faults which are inherent in ordinary love; but it may grow from strength to strength, and may engross the greater part of the mind, and deeply penetrate it. (20:18) and now i have finished with all that concerns this present life: for, as i said in the beginning of this note, i have briefly described all the remedies against the emotions. (20:19) and this everyone may readily have seen for himself, if he has attended to what is advanced in the present note, and also to the definitions of the mind and its emotions, and, lastly, to propositions iii:[i] and iii:[iii] . (20) it is now, therefore, time to pass on to those matters, which appertain to the duration of the mind, without relation to the body. prop. [xxi] the mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures. proof.(21:1) the mind does not express the actual existence of its body, nor does it imagine the modifications of the body as actual, except while the body endures (ii:[viii] coroll.); and, consequently (ii:[xxvi] ), it does not imagine any body as actually existing, except while its own body endures. (2) thus it cannot imagine anything (for definition of imagination, see ii:[xvii] note), or remember things past, except while the body endures (see definition of memory, ii:[xviii] note). q.e.d. prop. [xxii] nevertheless in god there is necessarily an idea, which expresses the essence of this or that human body under the form of eternity. proof.(22:1) god is the cause, not only of the existence of this or that human body, but also of its essence (i:[xxv] ). (2) this essence, therefore, must necessarily be conceived through the very essence of god (i:[a.iv] ), and be thus conceived by a certain eternal necessity (i:[xvi] ); and this conception. must necessarily exist in god (ii:[iii] ). q.e.d. prop. [xxiii] the human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but there remains of it something which is eternal. proof.(23:1) there is necessarily in god a concept or idea, which expresses the essence of the human body ([xxii] ), which, therefore, is necessarily something appertaining to the essence of the human mind (ii:[xiii] ). (2) but we have not assigned to the human mind any, duration, definable by time, except in so far as it expresses the actual existence of the body, which is explained through duration, and may be defined by time that is (ii:[viii] coroll.), we do not assign to it duration, except while the body endures. (23:3) yet, as there is something, notwithstanding, which is conceived by a certain eternal necessity through the very essence of god ([xxii] ); this something, which appertains to the essence of the mind, will necessarily be eternal. q.e.d. note.(23:4) this idea, which expresses the essence of the body under the form of eternity, is, as we have said, a certain mode of thinking, which belongs to the essence of the mind, and is necessarily eternal. (5) yet it is not possible that we should remember that we existed before our body, for our body can bear no trace of such existence, neither can eternity be defined in terms of time, or have any relation to time. (6) but, notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal. (23:7) for the mind feels those things that it conceives by understanding, no less than those things that it remembers. (8) for the eyes of the mind, whereby it sees and observes things, are none other than proofs. (9) thus, although we do not remember that we existed before the body, yet we feel that our mind, in so far as it involves the essence of the body, under the form of eternity, is eternal, and that thus its existence cannot be defined in terms of time, or explained through duration. (23:10) thus our mind can only be said to endure, and its existence can only be defined by a fixed time, in so far as it involves the actual existence of the body. (23:11) thus far only has it the power of determining the existence of things by time, and conceiving them under the category of duration. prop. [xxiv] the more we understand particular things, the more do we understand god. proof.(24:1) this is evident from i:[xxv] coroll. prop. [xxv] the highest endeavour of the mind, and the highest virtue is to understand things by the third kind of knowledge. proof.(25:1) the third kind of knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of certain attributes of god to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things (see its definition iii:[xl] note ii.); and, in proportion as we understand things more in this way, we better understand god (by [xxiv] ); therefore (iv:[xxviii] ) the highest virtue of the mind, that is (iv:[d.viii] ) the power, or nature, or (iii:[vii] ) highest endeavour of the mind, is to understand things by the third kind of knowledge. q.e.d. prop. [xxvi] in proportion as the mind is more capable of understanding things by the third kind of knowledge, it desires more to understand things by that kind. proof.(26:1) this is evident. (2) for, in so far as we conceive the mind to be capable of conceiving things by this kind of knowledge, we, to that extent, conceive it as determined thus to conceive things; and consequently (iii:[de.i] ), the mind desires so to do, in proportion as it is more capable thereof. q.e.d. prop. [xxvii] from this third kind of knowledge arises the highest possible mental acquiescence. proof.(27:1) the highest virtue of the mind is to know god (iv:[xxviii] ), or to understand things by the third kind of knowledge ([xxv] ), and this virtue is greater in proportion as the mind knows things more by the said kind of knowledge ([xxiv] ): consequently, he who knows things by this kind of knowledge passes to the summit of human perfection, and is therefore (iii:[de.ii] ) affected by the highest pleasure, such pleasure being accompanied by the idea of himself and his own virtue; thus (iii:[de.xxv] ), from this kind of knowledge arises the highest possible acquiescence. q.e.d. prop. [xxviii] the endeavour or desire to know things by the third kind of knowledge cannot arise from the first, but from the second kind of knowledge. proof.(28:1) this proposition is self-evident. (2) for whatsoever we understand clearly and distinct we understand either through itself, or through that which is conceived through itself; that is, ideas which are clear and distinct in us, or which are referred to the third kind of knowledge (ii:[xl] note ii.) cannot follow from ideas that are fragmentary, and confused, and are referred to knowledge of the first kind, but must follow from adequate ideas, or ideas of the second and third kind of knowledge; therefore (iii:[de.i] ), the desire of knowing things by the third kind of knowledge cannot arise from the first, but from the second kind. q.e.d. prop. [xxix] whatsoever the mind understands under the form of eternity, it does not understand by virtue of conceiving the present actual existence of the body, but by virtue of conceiving the essence of the body under the form of eternity. proof.(29:1) in so far as the mind conceives the present existence of its body, it to that extent conceives duration which can be determined by time, and to that extent only, has it the power of conceiving things in relation to time ([xxi] , ii:[xxvi] ). (2) but eternity cannot be explained in terms of duration (i:[d.viii] and explanation). (29:3) therefore to this extent the mind has not the power of conceiving things under the form of eternity, but it possesses such power, because it is of the nature of reason to conceive things under the form of eternity (ii:[xliv] coroll. ii.), and also because it is of the nature of the mind to conceive the essence of the body under the form of eternity ([xxiii] ), for besides these two there is nothing which belongs to the essence of mind (ii:[xiii] ). (29:4) therefore this power of conceiving things under the form of eternity only belongs to the mind in virtue of the mind's conceiving the essence of the body under the form of eternity. q.e.d. note.(29:5) things are conceived by us as actual in two ways; either as existing in relation to a given time and place, or as contained in god and following from the necessity of the divine nature. (6) whatsoever we conceive in this second way as true or real, we conceive under the form of eternity, and their ideas involve the eternal and infinite essence of god, as we showed in ii:[xlv] & note, which see. prop. [xxx] our mind, in so far as it knows itself and the body under the form of eternity, has to that extent necessarily a knowledge of god, and knows that it is in god, and is conceived through god. proof.(30:1) eternity is the very essence of god, in so far as this involves necessary existence (i:[d.viii] ). (2)therefore to conceive things under the form of eternity, is to conceive things in so far as they are conceived through thp essence of god as real entities, or in so far as they involve existence through the essence of god; wherefore our mind, in so far as it conceives itself and the body under the form of eternity, has to that extent necessarily a knowledge of god, and knows, &c. q.e.d. prop. [xxxi] the third kind of knowledge depends on the mind, as its formal cause, in so far as the mind itself is eternal. proof.(31:1) the mind does not conceive anything under the form of eternity, except in so far as it conceives its own body under the form of eternity ([xxix] ); that is, except in so far as it is eternal ([xxi] , [xxiii] ); therefore (by [xxx] ), in so far as it is eternal, it possesses the knowledge of god, which knowledge is necessarily adequate (ii:[xlvi] ); hence the mind, in so far as it is eternal, is capable of knowing everything which can follow from this given knowledge of god (ii:[xl] ), in other words, of knowing things by the third kind of knowledge (see def. in ii:[xl] note.ii.), whereof accordingly the mind (iii:[d.i] ), in so far as it is eternal, is the adequate or formal cause of such knowledge. q.e.d. note.(31:2) in proportion, therefore, as a man is more potent in this kind of knowledge, he will be more completely conscious of himself and of god; in other words, he will be more perfect and blessed, as will appear more clearly in the sequel. (3) but we must here observe that, although we are already certain that the mind is eternal, in so far as it conceives things under the form of eternity, yet, in order that what we wish to show may be more readily explained and better understood, we will consider the mind itself, as though it had just begun to exist and to understand things under the form of eternity, as indeed we have done hitherto; this we may do without any danger of error, so long as we are careful not to draw any conclusion, unless our premisses are plain. prop. [xxxii] whatsoever we understand by the is accompanied by the idea of god as cause. proof.(32:1) from this kind of knowledge arises the highest possible mental acquiescence, that is (iii:[de.xxv] ), pleasure, and this acquiescence is accompanied by the idea of the mind itself ([xxvii] ), and consequently ([xxx] ) the idea also of god as cause. q.e.d. corollary.(32:2) from the third kind of knowledge necessarily arises the intellectual love of god. (3) from this kind of knowledge arises pleasure accompanied by the idea of god as cause, that is (iii:[de.vi] ), the love of god; not in so far as we imagine him as present ([xxix] ), but in so far as we understand him to be eternal; this is what i call the intellectual love of god. prop. [xxxiii] the intellectual love of god, which arises from the third kind of knowledge, is eternal. proof.(33:1) the third kind of knowledge is eternal ([xxxi] , i:[a.iii] ); therefore (by the same axiom) the love which arises therefrom is also necessarily eternal. q.e.d. note.(33:2) although this love towards god has (by [xxxii] ) no beginning, it yet possesses all the perfections of love, just as though it had arisen as we feigned in the coroll. of [xxxii] . (3) nor is there here any difference, except that the mind possesses as eternal those same perfections which we feigned to accrue to it, and they are accompanied by the idea of god as eternal cause. (33:4) if pleasure consists in the transition to a greater perfection, assuredly blessedness must consist in the mind being endowed with perfection itself. prop. [xxxiv] the mind is, only while the body endures, subject to those emotions which are attributable to passions. proof. (34:1) imagination is the idea wherewith the mind contemplates a thing as present (ii:[xvii] note); yet this idea indicates rather the present disposition of the human body than the nature of the external thing (ii:[xvi] coroll. ii.). (2) therefore emotion (see iii:[general definition of the emotions] ) is imagination, in so far as it indicates the present disposition of the body; therefore ([xxi] ) the mind is, only while the body endures, subject to emotions which are attributable to passions. q.e.d. corollary.(34:3) hence it follows that no love save intellectual love is eternal. note.(34:4) if we look to men's general opinion, we shall see that they are indeed conscious of the eternity of their mind, but that they confuse eternity with duration, and ascribe it to the imagination or the memory which they believe to remain after death. prop. [xxxv] god loves himself with an infinite intellectual love. proof.(35:1) god is absolutely infinite (i:[d.vi] ), that is (ii:[d.vi] ), the nature of god rejoices in infinite perfection; and such rejoicing is (ii:[iii] ) accompanied by the idea of himself, that is (i:[xi] and i:[d.i] ), the idea of his own cause: now this is what we have (in [xxxii] coroll.) described as intellectual love. prop. [xxxvi] the intellectual love of the mind towards god is that very love of god whereby god loves himself, not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he can be explained through the essence of the human mind regarded under the form of eternity; in other words, the intellectual love of the mind towards god is part of the infinite love wherewith god loves himself. proof.(36:1) this love of the mind must be referred to the activities of the mind ([xxxii] coroll. and iii:[iii] ); it is itself, indeed, an activity whereby the mind regards itself accompanied by the idea of god as cause ([xxxii] & coroll.); that is (i:[xv] coroll. and ii:[xi] coroll.), an activity whereby god, in so far as he can be explained through the human mind, regards himself accompanied by the idea of himself; therefore (by [xxxv] ), this love of the mind is part of the infinite love wherewith god loves himself. q.e.d. corollary.(36:2) hence it follows that god, in so far as he loves himself, loves man, and, consequently, that the love of god towards men, and the intellectual love of the mind towards god are identical. note.(36:3) from what has been said we clearly understand, wherein our salvation, or blessedness, or freedom, consists: namely, in the constant and eternal love towards god, or in god's love towards men. (36:4) this love or blessedness is, in the bible, called glory and not undeservedly. (5) for whether this love be referred to god or to the mind, it may rightly be called acquiescence of spirit, which iii:[de.xxv] , and iii:[de.xxx] ) is not really distinguished from glory. (36:6) in so far as it is referred to god, it is ([xxxv] ) pleasure, if we may still use that term, accompanied by the idea of itself, and, in so far as it is referred to the mind, it is the same ([xxvii] ). (36:7) again, since the essence of our mind consists solely in knowledge, whereof the beginning and the foundation is god (i:[xv] & ii:[xlvii] note), it becomes clear to us, in what manner and way our mind, as to its essence and existence, follows from the divine nature and constantly depends on god. (8) i have thought it worth while here to call attention to this, in order to show by this example how the knowledge of particular things, which i have called intuitive or of the third kind (ii:[xl] note. ii.), is potent, and more powerful than the universal knowledge, which i have styled knowledge of the second kind. (36:9) for, although in part i showed in general terms, that all things (and consequently, also, the human mind) depend as to their essence and existence on god, yet that demonstration, though legitimate and placed beyond the chances of doubt, does not affect our mind so much, as when the same conclusion is derived from the actual essence of some particular thing, which we say depends on god. prop. [xxxvii] there is nothing in nature, which is contrary to this intellectual love, or which can take it away. proof.(37:1) this intellectual love follows necessarily from the nature of the mind, in so far as the latter is regarded through the nature of god as an eternal truth ([xxxiii] and [xxix] ). (2) if, therefore, there should be anything which would be contrary to this love, that thing would be contrary to that which is true; consequently, that, which should be able to take away this love, would cause that which is true to be false; an obvious absurdity. (3) therefore there is nothing in nature which, &c. q.e.d. note.(37:4) the iv:[axiom] has reference to particular things, in so far as they are regarded in relation to a given time and place: of this, i think, no one can doubt. prop. [xxxviii] in proportion as the mind understands more things by the second and third kind of knowledge, it is less subject to those emotions which are evil, and stands in less fear of death. proof.(38:1) the mind's essence consists in knowledge (ii:[xi] ); therefore, in proportion as the mind understands more things by the second and third kinds of knowledge, the greater will be the part of it that endures ([xxix] and [xxiii] ), and, consequently (by [xxxvii] ), the greater will be the part that is not touched by the emotions, which are contrary to our nature, or in other words, evil (iv:[xxx] ). (38:2) thus, in proportion as the mind understands more things by the second and third kinds of knowledge, the greater will be the part of it, that remains unimpaired, and, consequently, less subject to emotions, &c. q.e.d. note.(38:3) hence we understand that point which i touched on in iv:[xxxix] note, and which i promised to explain in this part; namely, that death becomes less hurtful, in proportion as the mind's clear and distinct knowledge is greater, and, consequently, in proportion as the mind loves god more. (4) again, since from the third kind of knowledge arises the highest possible acquiescence ([xxvii] ), it follows that the human mind can attain to being of such a nature, that the part thereof which we have shown to perish with the body ([xxi] ) should be of little importance when compared with the part which endures. (38:5) but i will soon treat of the subject at greater length. prop. [xxxix] he, who possesses a body capable of the greatest number of activities, possesses a mind whereof the greatest part is eternal. proof.(39:1) he, who possesses a body capable of the greatest number of activities, is least agitated by those emotions which are evil (iv:[xxxviii] ) that is (iv:[xxx] ), by those emotions which are contrary to our nature; therefore ([x] ), he possesses the power of arranging and associating the modifications of the body according to the intellectual order, and, consequently, of bringing it about, that all the modifications of the body should be referred to the idea of god; whence it will come to pass that ([xv] ) he will be affected with love towards god, which ([xvi] ) must occupy or constitute the chief part of the mind; therefore ([xxxiii] ), such a man will possess a mind whereof the chief part is eternal. q.e.d. note.(39:2) since human bodies are capable of the greatest number of activities, there is no doubt but that they may be of such a nature, that they may be referred to minds possessing a great knowledge of themselves and of god, and whereof the greatest or chief part is eternal, and, therefore, that they should scarcely fear death. (3) but, in order that this may be understood more clearly, we must here call to mind, that we live in a state of perpetual variation, and, according as we are changed for the better or the worse, we are called happy or unhappy. (39:4) for he, who, from being an infant or a child, becomes a corpse, is called unhappy; whereas it is set down to happiness, if we have been able to live through the whole period of life with a sound mind in a sound body. (5) and, in reality, he, who, as in the case of an infant or a child, has a body capable of very few activities, and depending, for the most part, on external causes, has a mind which, considered in itself alone, is scarcely conscious of itself, or of god, or of things; whereas, he, who has a body capable of very many activities, has a mind which, considered in itself alone, is highly conscious of itself, of god, and of things. in this life, therefore, we primarily endeavour to bring it about, that the body of a child, in so far as its nature allows and conduces thereto, may be changed into something else capable of very many activities, and referable to a mind which is highly conscious of itself, of god, and of things; and we desire so to change it, that what is referred to its imagination and memory may become insignificant, in comparison with its intellect, as i have already said in the note to [xxxviii] . prop. [xl] in proportion as each thing possesses more of perfection, so is it more active, and less passive; and, vice versa, in proportion as it is more active, so is it more perfect. proof.(40:1) in proportion as each thing is more perfect, it possesses more of reality (ii:[d.vi] ), and, consequently (iii:[iii] and note), it is to that extent more active and less passive. (2) this demonstration may be reversed, and thus prove that, in proportion as a thing is more active, so is it more perfect. q.e.d. corollary.(40:3) hence it follows that the part of the mind which endures, be it great or small, is more perfect than the rest. (4) for the eternal part of the mind ([xiii] . and [xxix] ) the understanding, through which alone we are said to act (iii:[iii] ); the part which we have shown to perish is the imagination ([xxi] ), through which only we are said to be passive (iii:[iii] and iii:[general definition of the emotions] ); therefore, the former, be it great or small, is more perfect than the latter. q.e.d. note.(40:5) such are the doctrines which i had purposed to set forth concerning the mind, in so far as it is regarded without relation to the body; whence, as also from i:[xxi] and other places, it is plain that our mind, in so far as it understands, is an eternal mode of thinking, which is determined by another eternal mode of thinking, and this other by a third, and so on to infinity; so that all taken together at once constitute the eternal and infinite intellect of god. prop. [xli] even if we did not know that our mind is eternal, we should still consider as of primary importance piety and religion, and generally all things which, in part iv., we showed to be attributable to courage and high-mindedness. proof.(41:1) the first and only, foundation of virtue, or the rule of right living is (iv:[xxii] coroll. and iv:[xxiv] ) seeking one's own true interest. (2) now, while we determined what reason prescribes as useful, we took no account of the mind's eternity, which has only become known to us in this fifth part. (3) although we were ignorant at that time that the mind is eternal, we nevertheless stated that the qualities attributable to courage and high-mindedness are of primary importance. (4) therefore, even if we were still ignorant of this doctrine, we should yet put the aforesaid precepts of reason in the first place. q.e.d. note.(41:5) the general belief of the multitude seems to be different. (6) most people seem to believe that they are free, in so far as they may obey their lusts, and that they cede their rights, in so far as they are bound to live according to the commandments of the divine law. (7) they therefore believe that piety, religion, and, generally, all things attributable to firmness of mind, are burdens, which, after death, they hope to lay aside, and to receive the reward for their bondage, that is, for their piety, and religion; it is not only by this hope, but also, and chiefly, by the fear of being horribly punished after death, that they are induced to live according to the divine commandments, so far as their feeble and infirm spirit will carry them. (41:8) if men had not this hope and this fear, but believed that the mind perishes with the body, and that no hope of prolonged life remains for the wretches who are broken down with the burden of piety, they would return to their own inclinations, controlling everything in accordance with their lusts, and desiring to obey fortune rather than themselves. (41:9) such a course appears to me not less absurd than if a man, because he does not believe that he can by wholesome food sustain his body for ever, should wish to cram himself with poisons and deadly fare; or if, because he sees that the mind is not eternal or immortal, he should prefer to be out of his mind altogether, and to live without the use of reason; these ideas are so absurd as to be scarcely worth refuting. prop. [xlii] blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself ; neither do we rejoice therein, because we control our lusts, but, contrariwise, because we rejoice therein, we are able to control our lusts. proof.(42:1) blessedness consists in love towards god ([xxxvi] and note), which love springs from the third kind of knowledge ([xxxii] coroll.); therefore this love (iii:[iii] and iii:[lix] ) must be referred to the mind, in so far as the latter is active; therefore (iv:[d.viii] ) it is virtue itself. (42:2) this was our first point. (42:3) again, in proportion as the mind rejoices more in this divine love or blessedness, so does it the more understand ([xxxii] ); that is ([iii] coroll.), so much the more power has it over the emotions, and ([xxxviii] ) so much the less is it subject to those emotions which are evil; therefore, in proportion as the mind rejoices in this divine love or blessedness, so has it the power of controlling lusts. (42:4) and, since human power in controlling the emotions consists solely in the understanding, it follows that no one rejoices in blessedness, because he has controlled his lusts, but, contrariwise, his power of controlling his lusts arises from this blessedness itself. q.e.d. note.(42:5) i have thus completed all i wished to set forth touching the mind's power over the emotions and the mind's freedom. (6) whence it appears, how potent is the wise man, and how much he surpasses the ignorant man, who is driven only by his lusts. (7) for the ignorant man is not only distracted in various ways by external causes without ever gaining, the true acquiescence of his spirit, but moreover lives, as it were unwitting of himself, and of god, and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer, ceases also to be. (42:8) whereas the wise man, in so far as he is regarded as such, is scarcely at all disturbed in spirit, but, being conscious of himself, and of god, and of things, by a certain eternal necessity, never ceases to be, but always possesses true acquiescence of his spirit. (42:9) if the way which i have pointed out as leading to this result seems exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. (10) needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. (42:11) how would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? (12) but all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare. ____________________________________________________________________________ end of "the ethics part v of v" "joseph b. yesselman" <jyselman@erols.com> august 25, 1997 bab: a sub-deb, by mary roberts rinehart. digitized by cardinalis etext press, c.e.k. posted to wiretap in july 1993, as subdeb.txt. bold and italics are depicted _thusly_. this book was written by a 16 year old girl, and the spelling is as it appears in the original paper edition (please do not correct it.) this text is in the public domain. bab: a sub-deb mary roberts rinehart author of "k," "the circular staircase," "kings, queens and pawns," etc. --- new york george h. doran company copyright, 1917, by george h. doran company copyright, 1916 and 1917 by the curtis publishing company printed in the united states of america contents chapter i the sub-deb ii theme: the celebrity iii her diary iv bab's burglar v the g.a.c. chapter i the sub-deb: a theme written and submitted in literature class by barbara putnam archibald, 1917. _definition of a theme:_ a theme is a piece of writing, either true or made up by the author, and consisting of introduction, body and conclusion. it should contain unity, coherence, emphasis, perspecuity, vivacity, and presision. it may be ornamented with dialogue, discription and choice quotations. _subject of theme:_ an interesting incident of my christmas holadays. _introduction:_ "a tyrant's power in rigor is exprest."--dryden. i have decided to relate with presision what occurred during my recent christmas holaday. although i was away from this school only four days, returning unexpectedly the day after christmas, a number of incidents occurred which i believe i should narate. it is only just and fair that the upper house, at least, should know of the injustice of my exile, and that it is all the result of circumstances over which i had no controll. for i make this apeal, and with good reason. is it any fault of mine that my sister leila is 20 months older than i am? naturaly, no. is it fair also, i ask, that in the best society, a girl is a sub-deb the year before she comes out, and although mature in mind, and even maturer in many ways than her older sister, the latter is treated as a young lady, enjoying many privileges, while the former is treated as a mere child, in spite, as i have observed, of only 20 months difference? i wish to place myself on record that it is _not_ fair. i shall go back, for a short time, to the way things were at home when i was small. i was very strictly raised. with the exception of tommy gray, who lives next door and only is about my age, i was never permitted to know any of the other sex. looking back, i am sure that the present way society is organized is really to blame for everything. i am being frank, and that is the way i feel. i was too strictly raised. i always had a governess taging along. until i came here to school i had never walked to the corner of the next street unattended. if it wasn't mademoiselle it was mother's maid, and if it wasn't either of them, it was mother herself, telling me to hold my toes out and my shoulder blades in. as i have said, i never knew any of the other sex, except the miserable little beasts at dancing school. i used to make faces at them when mademoiselle was putting on my slippers and pulling out my hair bow. they were totaly uninteresting, and i used to put pins in my sash, so that they would get scratched. their pumps mostly squeaked, and nobody noticed it, although i have known my parents to dismiss a butler who creaked at the table. when i was sent away to school, i expected to learn something of life. but i was disapointed. i do not desire to criticize this institution of learning. it is an excellent one, as is shown by the fact that the best families send their daughters here. but to learn life one must know something of both sides of it, male and female. it was, therefore, a matter of deep regret to me to find that, with the exception of the dancing master, who has three children, and the gardner, there were no members of the sterner sex to be seen. the athletic coach was a girl! as she has left now to be married, i venture to say that she was not what lord chesterfield so uphoniously termed "_suaviter in modo, fortater in re_." when we go out to walk we are taken to the country, and the three matinees a year we see in the city are mostly shakspeare, aranged for the young. we are allowed only certain magazines, the atlantic monthly and one or two others, and barbara armstrong was penalized for having a framed photograph of her brother in running clothes. at the school dances we are compeled to dance with each other, and the result is that when at home at holaday parties i always try to lead, which annoys the boys i dance with. notwithstanding all this it is an excellent school. we learn a great deal, and our dear principle is a most charming and erudite person. but we see very little of life. and if school is a preparation for life, where are we? being here alone since the day after christmas, i have had time to think everything out. i am naturally a thinking person. and now i am no longer indignant. i realize that i was wrong, and that i am only paying the penalty that i deserve although i consider it most unfair to be given french translation to do. i do not object to going to bed at nine o'clock, although ten is the hour in the upper house, because i have time then to look back over things, and to reflect, to think. "_there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so_." shakspeare. _body of theme:_ i now approach the narative of what happened during the first four days of my christmas holiday. for a period before the fifteenth of december, i was rather worried. all the girls in the school were getting new clothes for christmas parties, and their families were sending on invitations in great numbers, to various festivaties that were to occur when they went home. nothing, however, had come for me, and i was worried. but on the 16th mother's visiting secretary sent on four that i was to accept, with tiped acceptances for me to copy and send. she also sent me the good news that i was to have two party dresses, and i was to send on my measurements for them. one of the parties was a dinner and theater party, to be given by carter brooks on new year's day. carter brooks is the well-known yale center, although now no longer such but selling advertizing, etcetera. it is tradgic to think that, after having so long anticapated that party, i am now here in sackcloth and ashes, which is a figure of speech for the peter thompson uniform of the school, with plain white for evenings and no jewellry. it was with anticapatory joy, therefore, that i sent the acceptances and the desired measurements, and sat down to cheerfully while away the time in studies and the various duties of school life, until the holadays. however, i was not long to rest in piece, for in a few days i received a letter from carter brooks, as follows: _dear barbara_: it was sweet of you to write me so promptly, although i confess to being rather astonished as well as delighted at being called "dearest." the signature too was charming, "ever thine." but, dear child, won't you write at once and tell me why the waist, bust and hip measurements? and the request to have them really low in the neck? ever thine, carter. it will be perceived that i had sent him the letter to mother, by mistake. i was very unhappy about it. it was not an auspisious way to begin the holadays, especially the low neck. also i disliked very much having told him my waist measure which is large owing to basket ball. as i have stated before, i have known very few of the other sex, but some of the girls had had more experience, and in the days before we went home, we talked a great deal about things. especially love. i felt that it was rather over-done, particularly in fiction. also i felt and observed at divers times that i would never marry. it was my intention to go upon the stage, although modafied since by what i am about to relate. the other girls say that i look like julia marlowe. some of the girls had boys who wrote to them, and one of them--i refrain from giving her name had--a code. you read every third word. he called her "couzin" and he would write like this: dear couzin: i am well. am just about crazy this week to go home. see notice enclosed you football game. and so on and on. only what it really said was "i am crazy to see you." (in giving this code i am betraying no secrets, as they have quarreled and everything is now over between them.) as i had nobody, at that time, and as i had visions of a career, i was a man-hater. i acknowledge that this was a pose. but after all, what is life but a pose? "stupid things!" i always said. "nothing in their heads but football and tobacco smoke. women," i said, "are only their playthings. and when they do grow up and get a little intellagence they use it in making money." there has been a story in the school--i got it from one of the little girls--that i was disapointed in love in early youth, the object of my atachment having been the tener in our church choir at home. i daresay i should have denied the soft impeachment, but i did not. it was, although not appearing so at the time, my first downward step on the path that leads to destruction. "the way of the transgresser is hard"--bible. i come now to the momentous day of my return to my dear home for christmas. father and my sister leila, who from now on i will term "sis," met me at the station. sis was very elegantly dressed, and she said: "hello, kid," and turned her cheek for me to kiss. she is, as i have stated, but 2o months older than i, and depends altogether on her clothes for her beauty. in the morning she is plain, although having a good skin. she was trimmed up with a bouquet of violets as large as a dishpan, and she covered them with her hands when i kissed her. she was waved and powdered, and she had on a perfectly new outfit. and i was shabby. that is the exact word. shabby. if you have to hang your entire wardrobe in a closet ten inches deep, and put it over you on cold nights, with the steam heat shut off at ten o'clock, it does not make it look any better. my father has always been my favorite member of the family, and he was very glad to see me. he has a great deal of tact, also, and later on he slipped ten dollars in my purse in the motor. i needed it very much, as after i had paid the porter and bought luncheon, i had only three dollars left and an i. o. u. from one of the girls for seventy-five cents, which this may remind her, if it is read in class, she has forgoten. "good heavens, barbara," sis said, while i hugged father, "you certainly need to be pressed." "i daresay i'll be the better for a hot iron," i retorted, "but at least i shan't need it on my hair." my hair is curly while hers is straight. "boarding school wit!" she said, and stocked to the motor. mother was in the car and glad to see me, but as usual she managed to restrain her enthusiasm. she put her hands over some orkids she was wearing when i kissed her. she and sis were on their way to something or other. "trimmed up like easter hats, you two!" i said. "school has not changed you, i fear, barbara," mother observed. "i hope you are studying hard." "exactly as hard as i have to. no more, no less," i regret to confess that i replied. and i saw sis and mother exchange glances of signifacance. we dropped them at the reception and father went to his office and i went on home alone. and all at once i began to be embittered. sis had everything, and what had i? and when i got home, and saw that sis had had her room done over, and ivory toilet things on her dressing table, and two perfectly huge boxes of candy on a stand and a ball gown laid out on the bed, i almost wept. my own room was just as i had left it. it had been the night nursery, and there was still the dent in the mantel where i had thrown a hair brush at sis, and the ink spot on the carpet at the foot of the bed, and everything. mademoiselle had gone, and hannah, mother's maid, came to help me off with my things. i slammed the door in her face, and sat down on the bed and _raged_. they still thought i was a little girl. they _patronized_ me. i would hardly have been surprised if they had sent up a bread and milk supper on a tray. it was then and there that i made up my mind to show them that i was no longer a mere child. that the time was gone when they could shut me up in the nursery and forget me. i was seventeen years and eleven days old, and juliet, in shakspeare, was only sixteen when she had her well-known affair with romeo. i had no plan then. it was not until the next afternoon that the thing sprung (sprang?) full-pannoplied from the head of jove. the evening was rather dreary. the family was going out, but not until nine thirty, and mother and leila went over my clothes. they sat, sis in pink chiffon and mother in black and silver, and hannah took out my things and held them up. i was obliged to silently sit by, while my rags and misery were exposed. "why this open humiliation?" i demanded at last. "i am the family cinderella, i admit it. but it isn't necessary to lay so much emphacis on it, is it?" "don't be sarcastic, barbara," said mother. "you are still only a child, and a very untidy child at that. what do you do with your elbows to rub them through so? it must have taken patience and aplication." "mother" i said, "am i to have the party dresses?" "two. very simple." "low in the neck?" "certainly not. a small v, perhaps." "i've got a good neck." she rose impressively. "you amaze and shock me, barbara," she said coldly. "i shouldn't have to wear tulle around my shoulders to hide the bones!" i retorted. "sis is rather thin." "you are a very sharp-tongued little girl," mother said, looking up at me. i am two inches taller than she is. "unless you learn to curb yourself, there will be no parties for you, and no party dresses." this was the speach that broke the camel's back. i could endure no more. "i think," i said, "that i shall get married and end everything." need i explain that i had no serious intention of taking the fatal step? but it was not deliberate mendasity. it was despair. mother actually went white. she cluched me by the arm and shook me. "what are you saying?" she demanded. "i think you heard me, mother" i said, very politely. i was however thinking hard. "marry whom? barbara, answer me." "i don't know. anybody." "she's trying to frighten you, mother" sis said. "there isn't anybody. don't let her fool you." "oh, isn't there?" i said in a dark and portentious manner. mother gave me a long look, and went out. i heard her go into father's dressing-room. but sis sat on my bed and watched me. "who is it, bab?" she asked. "the dancing teacher? or your riding master? or the school plumber?" "guess again." "you're just enough of a little simpleton to get tied up to some wreched creature and disgrace us all." i wish to state here that until that moment i had no intention of going any further with the miserable business. i am naturaly truthful, and deception is hateful to me. but when my sister uttered the above dispariging remark i saw that, to preserve my own dignaty, which i value above precious stones, i would be compelled to go on. "i'm perfectly mad about him," i said. "and he's crazy about me." "i'd like very much to know," sis said, as she stood up and stared at me, "how much you are making up and how much is true." none the less, i saw that she was terrafied. the family kitten, to speak in allegory, had become a lion and showed its clause. when she had gone out i tried to think of some one to hang a love affair to. but there seemed to be nobody. they knew perfectly well that the dancing master had one eye and three children, and that the clergyman at school was elderly, with two wives. one dead. i searched my past, but it was blameless. it was empty and bare, and as i looked back and saw how little there had been in it but imbibing wisdom and playing basket-ball and tennis, and typhoid fever when i was fourteen and almost having to have my head shaved, a great wave of bitterness agatated me. "never again," i observed to myself with firmness. "never again, if i have to invent a member of the other sex." at that time, however, owing to the appearance of hannah with a mending basket, i got no further than his name. it was harold. i decided to have him dark, with a very small black mustache, and passionate eyes. i felt, too, that he would be jealous. the eyes would be of the smouldering type, showing the green-eyed monster beneath. i was very much cheered up. at least they could not ignore me any more, and i felt that they would see the point. if i was old enough to have a lover--especialy a jealous one with the aformentioned eyes--i was old enough to have the necks of my frocks cut out. while they were getting their wraps on in the lower hall, i counted my money. i had thirteen dollars. it was enough for a plan i was beginning to have in mind. "go to bed early, barbara," mother said when they were ready to go out. "you don't mind if i write a letter, do you?" "to whom?" "oh, just a letter," i said, and she stared at me coldly. "i daresay you will write it, whether i consent or not. leave it on the hall table, and it will go out with the morning mail." "i may run out to the box with it." "i forbid your doing anything of the sort." "oh, very well," i responded meekly. "if there is such haste about it, give it to hannah to mail." "very well," i said. she made an excuse to see hannah before she left, and i knew _that i was being watched_. i was greatly excited, and happier than i had been for weeks. but when i had settled myself in the library, with the paper in front of me, i could not think of anything to say in a letter. so i wrote a poem instead. _"to h----_ _"dear love: you seem so far away,_ _i would that you were near._ _i do so long to hear you say_ _again, `i love you, dear.'_ _"here all is cold and drear and strange_ _with none who with me tarry,_ _i hope that soon we can arrange_ _to run away and marry."_ the last verse did not scan, exactly, but i wished to use the word "marry" if possible. it would show, i felt, that things were really serious and impending. a love affair is only a love affair, but marriage is marriage, and the end of everything. it was at that moment, 10 o'clock, that the strange thing occurred which did not seem strange at all at the time, but which developed into so great a mystery later on. which was to actualy threaten my reason and which, flying on winged feet, was to send me back here to school the day after christmas and put my seed pearl necklace in the safe deposit vault. which was very unfair, for what had my necklace to do with it? and just now, when i need comfort, it--the necklace--would help to releive my exile. hannah brought me in a cup of hot milk, with a valentine's malted milk tablet dissolved in it. as i stirred it around, it occurred to me that valentine would be a good name for harold. on the spot i named him harold valentine, and i wrote the name on the envelope that had the poem inside, and addressed it to the town where this school gets its mail. it looked well written out. "valentine," also, is a word that naturaly connects itself with affairs _de cour_. and i felt that i was safe, for as there was no harold valentine, he could not call for the letter at the post office, and would therefore not be able to cause me any trouble, under any circumstances. and, furthermore. i knew that hannah would not mail the letter anyhow, but would give it to mother. so, even if there was a harold valentine, he would never get it. comforted by these reflections, i drank my malted milk, ignorant of the fact that destiny, "which never swerves, nor yields to men the helm"--emerson, was stocking at my heels. between sips, as the expression goes, i addressed the envelope to harold valentine, and gave it to hannah. she went out the front door with it, as i had expected, but i watched from a window, and she turned right around and went in the area way. so _that_ was all right. it had worked like a charm. i could tear my hair now when i think how well it worked. i ought to have been suspicious for that very reason. when things go very well with me at the start, it is a sure sign that they are going to blow up eventualy. mother and sis slept late the next morning, and i went out stealthily and did some shopping. first i bought myself a bunch of violets, with a white rose in the center, and i printed on the card: "my love is like a white, white rose. h." and sent it to myself. it was deception, i acknowledge, but having put my hand to the plow, i did not intend to steer a crooked course. i would go straight to the end. i am like that in everything i do. but, on delibarating things over, i felt that violets, alone and unsuported, were not enough. i felt that if i had a photograph, it would make everything more real. after all, what is a love affair without a picture of the beloved object? so i bought a photograph. it was hard to find what i wanted, but i got it at last in a stationer's shop, a young man in a checked suit with a small mustache--the young man, of course, not the suit. unluckaly, he was rather blonde, and had a dimple in his chin. but he looked exactly as though his name ought to be harold. i may say here that i chose "harold," not because it is a favorite name of mine, but because it is romantic in sound. also because i had never known any one named harold and it seemed only discrete. i took it home in my muff and put it under my pillow where hannah would find it and probably take it to mother. i wanted to buy a ring too, to hang on a ribbon around my neck. but the violets had made a fearful hole in my thirteen dollars. i borrowed a stub pen at the stationer's and i wrote on the photograph, in large, sprawling letters, "to _you_ from _me_." "there," i said to myself, when i put it under the pillow. "you look like a photograph, but you are really a bomb-shell." as things eventuated, it was. more so, indeed. mother sent for me when i came in. she was sitting in front of her mirror, having the vibrater used on her hair, and her manner was changed. i guessed that there had been a family counsel over the poem, and that they had decided to try kindness. "sit down, barbara," she said. "i hope you were not lonely last night?" "i am never lonely, mother. i always have things to think about." i said this in a very pathetic tone. "what sort of things?" mother asked, rather sharply. "oh--things," i said vaguely. "life is such a mess, isn't it?" "certainly not. unless one makes it so." "but it is so difficult. things come up and--and it's hard to know what to do. the only way, i suppose, is to be true to one's beleif in one's self." "take that thing off my head and go out, hannah," mother snapped. "now then, barbara, what in the world has come over you?" "over me? nothing." "you are being a silly child." "i am no longer a child, mother. i am seventeen. and at seventeen there are problems. after all, one's life is one's own. one must decide----" "now, barbara, i am not going to have any nonsense. you must put that man out of your head." "man? what man?" "you think you are in love with some drivelling young fool. i'm not blind, or an idot. and i won't have it." "i have not said that there is anyone, have i?" i said in a gentle voice. "but if there was, just what would you propose to do, mother?" "if you were three years younger i'd propose to spank you." then i think she saw that she was taking the wrong method, for she changed her tactics. "it's the fault of that silly school," she said. (note: these are my mother's words, not mine.) "they are hotbeds of sickley sentamentality. they----" and just then the violets came, addressed to me. mother opened them herself, her mouth set. "my love is like a white, white rose," she said. "barbara, do you know who sent these?" "yes, mother," i said meekly. this was quite true. i did. i am indeed sorry to record that here my mother lost her temper, and there was no end of a fuss. it ended by mother offering me a string of seed pearls for christmas, and my party dresses cut v front and back, if i would, as she phrazed it, "put him out of my silly head." "i shall have to write one letter, mother," i said, "to--to break things off. i cannot tear myself out of another's life without a word." she sniffed. "very well," she said. "one letter. i trust you to make it only one." i come now to the next day. how true it is, that "man's life is but a jest, a dream, a shadow, bubble, air, a vapour at the best!" i spent the morning with mother at the dressmakers and she chose two perfectly spiffing things, one of white chiffon over silk, made modafied empire, with little bunches of roses here and there on it, and when she and the dressmaker were hagling over the roses, i took the scizzors and cut the neck of the lining two inches lower in front. the effect was posatively impressive. the other was blue over orkid, a perfectly passionate combination. when we got home some of the girls had dropped in, and carter brooks and sis were having tea in the den. i am perfectly sure that sis threw a cigarette in the fire when i went in. when i think of my sitting here alone, when i have done _nothing_, and sis playing around and smoking cigarettes, and nothing said, all for a difference of 2o months, it makes me furious. "let's go in and play with the children, leila," he said. "i'm feeling young today." which was perfectly silly. he is not methuzala. although thinking himself so, or almost. well, they went into the drawing room. elaine adams was there waiting for me, and betty anderson and jane raleigh. and i hadn't been in the room five minutes before i knew that they all knew. it turned out later that hannah was engaged to the adams's butler, and she had told him, and he had told elaine's governess, who is still there and does the ordering, and elaine sends her stockings home for her to darn. sis had told carter, too, i saw that, and among them they had rather a good time. carter sat down at the piano and struck a few chords, chanting "my love is like a white, white rose." "only you know" he said, turning to me, "that's wrong. it ought to be a `red, red rose.'" "certainly not. the word is `white.'" "oh, is it?" he said, with his head on one side. "strange that both you and harold should have got it wrong." i confess to a feeling of uneasiness at that moment. tea came, and carter insisted on pouring. "i do so love to pour!" he said. "really, after a long day's shopping, tea is the only thing that keeps me going until dinner. cream or lemon, leila dear?" "both," sis said in an absent manner, with her eyes on me. "barbara, come into the den a moment. i want to show you mother's xmas gift." she stocked in ahead of me, and lifted a book from the table. under it was the photograph. "you wretched child!" she said. "where did you get that?" "that's not your affair, is it?" "i'm going to make it my affair. did he give it to you?" "have you read what's written on it?" "where did you meet him?" i hesitated because i am by nature truthfull. but at last i said: "at school." "oh," she said slowly. "so you met him at school! what was he doing there? teaching elocution?" "elocution!" "this is harold, is it?" "certainly." well, he _was_ harold, if i chose to call him that, wasn't he? sis gave a little sigh. "you're quite hopeless, bab. and, although i'm perfectly sure you want me to take the thing to mother, i'll do nothing of the sort." _she flung it into the fire_. i was raging. it had cost me a dollar. it was quite brown when i got it out, and a corner was burned off. but i got it. "i'll thank you to burn your own things," i said with dignaty. and i went back to the drawing room. the girls and carter brooks were talking in an undertone when i got there. i knew it was about me. and jane came over to me and put her arm around me. "you poor thing!" she said. "just fight it out. we're all with you." "i'm so helpless, jane." i put all the despair i could into my voice. for after all, if they were going to talk about my private affairs behind my back, i felt that they might as well have something to talk about. as jane's second couzin once removed is in this school and as jane will probably write her all about it, i hope this theme is read aloud in class, so she will get it all straight. jane is imaginative and may have a wrong idea of things. "don't give in. let them bully you. they can't really do anything. and they're scared. leila is positively sick." "i've promised to write and break it off," i said in a tence tone. "if he really loves you," said jane, "the letter won't matter." there was a thrill in her voice. had i not been uneasy at my deciet, i to would have thrilled. some fresh muffins came in just then and i was starveing. but i waved them away, and stood staring at the fire. i am writing all of this as truthfully as i can. i am not defending myself. what i did i was driven to, as any one can see. it takes a real shock to make the average familey wake up to the fact that the youngest daughter is not the familey baby at seventeen. all i was doing was furnishing the shock. if things turned out badly, as they did, it was because i rather overdid the thing. that is all. my motives were perfectly ireproachible. well, they fell on the muffins like pigs, and i could hardly stand it. so i wandered into the den, and it occurred to me to write the letter then. i felt that they all expected me to do something anyhow. if i had never written the wretched letter things would be better now. as i say, i overdid. but everything had gone so smoothly all day that i was decieved. but the real reason was a new set of furs. i had secured the dresses and the promise of the necklace on a poem and a photograph, and i thought that a good love letter might bring a muff. it all shows that it does not do to be grasping. _had i not written the letter, there would have been no tradgedy_. but i wrote it and if i do say it, it was a _letter_. i commenced it "darling," and i said i was mad to see him, and that i would always love him. but i told him that the familey objected to him, and that this was to end everything between us. they had started the phonograph in the library, and were playing "the rosary." so i ended with a verse from that. it was really a most affecting letter. i almost wept over it myself, because, if there had been a harold, it would have broken his heart. of course i meant to give it to hannah to mail, and she would give it to mother. then, after the family had read it and it had got in its work, including the set of furs, they were welcome to mail it. it would go to the dead letter office, since there was no harold. it could not come back to me, for i had only signed it "barbara." i had it all figured out carefully. it looked as if i had everything to gain, including the furs, and nothing to lose. alas, how little i knew! "the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay." burns. carter brooks ambled into the room just as i sealed it and stood gazing down at me. "you're quite a person these days, bab," he said. "i suppose all the customary xmas kisses are being saved this year for what's his name." "i don't understand you." "for harold. you know, bab, i think i could bear up better if his name wasn't harold." "i don't see how it concerns you," i responded. "don't you? with me crazy about you for lo, these many years! first as a baby, then as a sub-sub-deb, and now as a sub-deb. next year, when you are a real debutante----" "you've concealed your infatuation bravely." "it's been eating me inside. a green and yellow melancholly--hello! a letter to him!" "why, so it is," i said in a scornfull tone. he picked it up, and looked at it. then he started and stared at me. "no!" he said. "it isn't possible! it isn't old valentine!" positively, my knees got cold. i never had such a shock. "it--it certainly is harold valentine," i said feebly. "old hal!" he muttered. "well, who would have thought it! and not a word to me about it, the secretive old duffer!" he held out his hand to me. "congratulations, barbara," he said heartily. "since you absolutely refuse me, you couldn't do better. he's the finest chap i know. if it's valentine the familey is kicking up such a row about, you leave it to me. i'll tell them a few things." i was stunned. would anybody have beleived it? to pick a name out of the air, so to speak, and off a malted milk tablet, and then to find that it actualy belonged to some one--was sickning. "it may not be the one you know" i said desperately. "it--it's a common name. there must be plenty of valentines." "sure there are, lace paper and cupids--lots of that sort. but there's only one harold valentine, and now you've got him pinned to the wall! i'll tell you what i'll do, barbara. i'm a real friend of yours. always have been. always will be. the chances are against the familey letting him get this letter. i'll give it to him." "_give _it to him?" "why, he's here. you know that, don't you? he's in town over the holadays." "oh, no!" i said in a gasping voice. "sorry," he said. "probably meant it as a surprize to you. yes, he's here, with bells on." he then put the letter in his pocket before my very eyes, and sat down on the corner of the writing table! "you don't know how all this has releived my mind," he said. "the poor chap's been looking down. not interested in anything. of course this explains it. he' s the sort to take love hard. at college he took everything hard--like to have died once with german meazles." he picked up a book, and the charred picture was underneath. he pounced on it. "pounced" is exactly the right word. "hello!" he said. "familey again, i suppose. yes, it's hal, all right. well, who would have thought it!" my last hope died. then and there i had a nervous chill. i was compelled to prop my chin on my hand to keep my teeth from chattering. "tell you what i'll do," he said, in a perfectly cheerfull tone that made me cold all over. "i'll be the cupid for your valentine. see? far be it from me to see love's young dream wiped out by a hardhearted familey. i'm going to see this thing through. you count on me, barbara. i'll arrange that you get a chance to see each other, familey or no familey. old hal has been looking down his nose long enough. when's your first party?" "tomorrow night," i gasped out. "very well. tomorrow night it is. it's the adams's, isn't it, at the club?" i could only nod. i was beyond speaking. i saw it all clearly. i had been wicked in decieving my dear familey and now i was to pay the penalty. he would know at once that i had made him up, or rather he did not know me and therefore could not possibly be in love with me. and what then? "but look here," he said, "if i take him there as valentine, the familey will be on, you know. we'd better call him something else. got any choice as to a name?" "carter" i said franticaly. "i think i'd better tell you. i----" "how about calling him grosvenor?". he babbled on. "grosvenor's a good name. ted grosvenor--that ought to hit them between the eyes. it's going to be rather a lark, miss bab!" and of course just then mother came in, and the brooks idiot went in and poured her a cup of tea, with his little finger stuck out at a right angel, and every time he had a chance he winked at me. i wanted to die. when they had all gone home it seemed like a bad dream, the whole thing. it could not be true. i went upstairs and manacured my nails, which usually comforts me, and put my hair up like leila's. but nothing could calm me. i had made my own fate, and must lie in it. and just then hannah slipped in with a box in her hands and her eyes frightened. "oh, miss barbara!" she said. "if your mother sees this!" i dropped my manacure scizzors, i was so alarmed. but i opened the box, and clutched the envelope inside. it said "from h----." then carter was right. there was an h after all! hannah was rolling her hands in her apron and her eyes were poping out of her head. "i just happened to see the boy at the door," she said, with her silly teeth chattering. "oh, miss barbara, if patrick had answered the bell! what shall we do with them?" "you take them right down the back stairs," i said. "as if it was an empty box. and put it outside with the waist papers. quick." she gathered the thing up, but of course mother had to come in just then and they met in the doorway. she saw it all in one glance, and she snatched the card out of my hand. "from h----!" she read. "take them out, hannah, and throw them away. no, don't do that. put them on the servant's table." then, when the door had closed, she turned to me. "just one more ridiculous episode of this kind, barbara," she said, "and you go back to school--xmas or no xmas." i will say this. if she had shown the faintest softness, i'd have told her the whole thing. but she did not. she looked exactly as gentle as a macadam pavment. i am one who has to be handled with gentleness. a kind word will do anything with me, but harsh treatment only makes me determined. i then become inflexable as iron. that is what happened then. mother took the wrong course and threatened, which as i have stated is fatal, as far as i am concerned. i refused to yeild an inch, and it ended in my having my dinner in my room, and mother threatening to keep me home from the party the next night. it was not a threat, if she had only known it. but when the next day went by, with no more flowers, and nothing aparently wrong except that mother was very dignafied with me, i began to feel better. sis was out all day, and in the afternoon jane called me up. "how are you?" she said. "oh, i'm all right." "everything smooth?" "well, smooth enough." "oh, bab," she said. "i'm just crazy about it. all the girls are." "i knew they were crazy about something." "you poor thing, no wonder you are bitter," she said. "somebody's coming. i'll have to ring off. but don't you give in, bab. not an inch. marry your heart's desire, no matter who butts in." well, you can see how it was. even then i could have told father and mother, and got out of it somehow. but all the girls knew about it, and there was nothing to do but go on. all that day every time i thought of the party my heart missed a beat. but as i would not lie and say that i was ill--i am naturaly truthful, as far as possible--i was compelled to go, although my heart was breaking. i am not going to write much about the party, except a slight discription, which properly belongs in every theme. all parties for the school set are alike. the boys range from knickerbockers to college men in their freshmen year, and one is likely to dance half the evening with youngsters that one saw last in their perambulaters. it is rather startling to have about six feet of black trouser legs and white shirt front come and ask one to dance and then to get one's eyes raised as far as the top of what looks like a particularly thin pair of tree trunks and see a little boy's face. as this theme is to contain discription i shall discribe the ball room of the club where the eventful party occurred. the ball room is white, with red hangings, and looks like a charlotte russe with maraschino cherries. over the fireplace they had put "merry christmas," in electric lights, and the chandaliers were made into christmas trees and hung with colored balls. one of the balls fell off during the cotillion, and went down the back of one of the girl's dresses, and they were compelled to up-end her and shake her out in the dressing room. the favors were insignifacant, as usual. it is not considered good taste to have elaberate things for the school crowd. but when i think of the silver things sis always brought home, and remember that i took away about six christmas stockings, a toy baloon, four whistles, a wooden canary in a cage and a box of talcum powder, i feel that things are not fair in this world. hannah went with me, and in the motor she said: "oh, miss barbara, do be careful. the familey is that upset." "don't be a silly," i said. "and if the familey is half as upset as i am, it is throwing a fit at this minute." we were early, of course. my mother beleives in being on time, and besides, she and sis wanted the motor later. and while hannah was on her knees taking off my carriage boots, i suddenly decided that i could not go down. hannah turned quite pale when i told her. "what'll your mother say?" she said." and you with your new dress and all! it's as much as my life is worth to take you back home now, miss barbara." well, that was true enough. there would be a riot if i went home, and i knew it. "i'll see the stuard and get you a cup of tea," hannah said. "tea sets me up like anything when i'm nervous. now please be a good girl, miss barbara, and don't run off, or do anything foolish." she wanted me to promise, but i would not, although i could not have run anywhere. my legs were entirely numb. in a half hour at the utmost i knew all would be known, and very likely i would be a homless wanderer on the earth. for i felt that never, never could i return to my dear ones, when my terrable actions became known. jane came in while i was sipping the tea and she stood off and eyed me with sympathy. "i don't wonder, bab!" she said. "the idea of your familey acting so outragously! and look here" she bent over me and whispered it. "don't trust carter too much. he is perfectly in fatuated with leila, and he will play into the hands of the enemy. _be careful_." "loathesome creature!" was my response. "as for trusting him, i trust no one, these days." "i don't wonder your faith is gone," she observed. but she was talking with one eye on a mirror. "pink makes me pale," she said. "i'll bet the maid has a drawer full of rouge. i'm going to see. how about a touch for you? you look gastly." "i don't care how i look," i said, recklessly. "i think i'll sprain my ankle and go home. anyhow i am not allowed to use rouge." "not allowed!" she observed. "what has that got to do with it? i don't understand you, bab; you are totaly changed." "i am suffering," i said. i was to. just then the maid brought me a folded note. hannah was hanging up my wraps, and did not see it. jane's eyes fairly bulged. "i hope you have saved the cotillion for me," it said. and it was signed. h----! "good gracious," jane said breathlessly."don't tell me he is here, and that that's from him!" i had to swallow twice before i could speak. then i said, solemnly: "he is here, jane. he has followed me. i am going to dance the cotillion with him although i shall probably be disinherited and thrown out into the world, as a result." i have no recollection whatever of going down the staircase and into the ballroom. although i am considered rather brave, and once saved one of the smaller girls from drowning, as i need not remind the school, when she was skating on thin ice, i was frightened. i remember that, inside the door, jane said "courage!" in a low tence voice, and that i stepped on somebody's foot and said "certainly" instead of apologizing. the shock of that brought me around somewhat, and i managed to find mrs. adams and elaine, and not disgrace myself. then somebody at my elbow said: "all right, barbara. everything's fixed." it was carter. "he's waiting in the corner over there," he said. "we'd better go through the formalaty of an introduction. he's positively twittering with excitement." "carter" i said desparately. "i want to tell you somthing first. i've got myself in an awful mess. i----" "sure you have," he said. "that's why i'm here, to help you out. now you be calm, and there's no reason why you two can't have the evening of your young lives. i wish _i_ could fall in love. it must be bully." "carter----!" "got his note, didn't you?" "yes, i----" "here we are," said carter. "miss archibald, i would like to present mr. grosvenor." somebody bowed in front of me, and then straightened up and looked down at me. _it was the man of the picture, little mustache and all_. my mouth went perfectly dry. it is all very well to talk about romance and love, and all that sort of thing. but i have concluded that amorus experiences are not always agreeable. and i have discovered something else. the moment anybody is crazy about me i begin to hate him. it is curious, but i am like that. i only care as long as they, or he, is far away. and the moment i touched h's white kid glove, i knew i loathed him. "now go to it, you to," carter said in cautious tone. "don't be conspicuous. that's all." and he left us. "suppose we dance this. shall we?" said h. and the next moment we were gliding off. he danced very well. i will say that. but at the time i was too much occupied with hateing him to care about dancing, or anything. but i was compelled by my pride to see things through. we are a very proud familey and never show our troubles, though our hearts be torn with anguish. "think," he said, when we had got away from the band, "think of our being together like this!" "it's not so surprizing, is it? we've got to be together if we are dancing." "not that. do you know, i never knew so long a day as this has been. the thought of meeting you--er--again, and all that." "you needn't rave for my benefit," i said freesingly. "you know perfectly well that you never saw me before." "barbara! with your dear little letter in my breast pocket at this moment!" "i didn't know men had breast pockets in their evening clothes." "oh well, have it your own way. i'm too happy to quarrel," he said. "how well you dance--only, let me lead, won't you? how strange it is to think that we have never danced together before!" "we must have a talk," i said desparately. "can't we go somwhere, away from the noise?" "that would be conspicuous, wouldn't it, under the circumstances? if we are to overcome the familey objection to me, we'll have to be cautious, barbara." "don't call me barbara," i snapped. "i know perfectly well what you think of me, and i----" "i think you are wonderful," he said. "words fail me when i try to tell you what i am thinking. you've saved the cotillion for me, haven't you? if not, i'm going to claim it anyhow. _it is my right_." he said it in the most determined manner, as if everything was settled. i felt like a rat in a trap, and carter, watching from a corner, looked exactly like a cat. if he had taken his hand in its white glove and washed his face with it, i would hardly have been surprized. the music stopped, and somebody claimed me for the next. jane came up, too, and cluched my arm. "you lucky thing!" she said. "he's perfectly handsome. and oh, bab, he's wild about you. i can see it in his eyes." "don't pinch, jane," i said coldly. "and don't rave. he's an idiot." she looked at me with her mouth open. "well, if you don't want him, pass him on to me," she said, and walked away. it was too silly, after everything that had happened, to dance the next dance with willie graham, who is still in knickerbockers, and a full head shorter than i am. but that's the way with a party for the school crowd, as i've said before. they ask all ages, from perambulaters up, and of course the little boys all want to dance with the older girls. it is deadly stupid. but h seemed to be having a good time. he danced a lot with jane, who is a wreched dancer, with no sense of time whatever. jane is not pretty, but she has nice eyes, and i am not afraid, second couzin once removed or no second couzin once removed, to say she used them. altogether, it was a terrible evening. i danced three dances out of four with knickerbockers, and one with old mr. adams, who is fat and rotates his partner at the corners by swinging her on his waistcoat. carter did not dance at all, and every time i tried to speak to him he was taking a crowd of the little girls to the fruit-punch bowl. i determined to have things out with h during the cotillion, and tell him that i would never marry him, that i would die first. but i was favored a great deal, and when we did have a chance the music was making such a noise that i would have had to shout. our chairs were next to the band. but at last we had a minute, and i went out to the verandah, which was closed in with awnings. he had to follow, of course, and i turned and faced him. "now" i said, "this has got to stop." "i don't understand you, bab." "you do, perfectly well," i stormed. "i can't stand it. i am going crazy. " "oh," he said slowly. "i see. i've been dancing too much with the little girl with the eyes! honestly, bab, i was only doing it to disarm suspicion. _my every thought is of you_." "i mean," i said, as firmly as i could, "that this whole thing has got to stop. i can't stand it." "am i to understand," he said solemnly, "that you intend to end everything?" i felt perfectly wild and helpless. "after that letter!" he went on. "after that sweet letter! you said, you know, that you were mad to see me, and that--it is almost too sacred to repeat, even to _you_--that you would always love me. after that confession i refuse to agree that all is over. it can _never_ be over." "i daresay i am losing my mind," i said. "it all sounds perfectly natural. but it doesn't mean anything. there _can't_ be any harold valentine; because i made him up. but there is, so there must be. and i am going crazy." "look here," he stormed, suddenly quite raving, and throwing out his right hand. it would have been terrably dramatic, only he had a glass of punch in it. "i am not going to be played with. and you are not going to jilt me without a reason. do you mean to deny everything? are you going to say, for instance, that i never sent you any violets? or gave you my photograph, with an--er--touching inscription on it?" then, appealingly, "you can't mean to deny that photograph, bab!" and then that lanky wretch of an eddie perkins brought me a toy baloon, and i had to dance, with my heart crushed. nevertheless, i ate a fair supper. i felt that i needed strength. it was quite a grown-up supper, with boullion and creamed chicken and baked ham and sandwitches, among other things. but of course they had to show it was a `kid' party, after all. for instead of coffee we had milk. milk! when i was going through a tradgedy. for if it is not a tradgedy to be engaged to a man one never saw before, what is it? all through the refreshments i could feel that his eyes were on me. and i hated him. it was all well enough for jane to say he was handsome. she wasn't going to have to marry him. i detest dimples in chins. i always have. and anybody could see that it was his first mustache, and soft, and that he took it round like a mother pushing a new baby in a perambulater. it was sickning. i left just after supper. he did not see me when i went upstairs, but he had missed me, for when hannah and i came down, he was at the door, waiting. hannah was loaded down with silly favors, and lagged behind, which gave him a chance to speak to me. i eyed him coldly and tried to pass him, but i had no chance. "i'll see you tomorrow, _dearest_," he whispered. "not if i can help it," i said, looking straight ahead. hannah had dropped a stocking--not her own. one of the xmas favors--and was fumbling about for it. "you are tired and unerved to-night, bab. when i have seen your father tomorrow, and talked to him----" "don't you dare to see my father." "----and when he has agreed to what i propose," he went on, without paying any atention to what i had said, "you will be calmer. we can plan things." hannah came puffing up then, and he helped us into the motor. he was very careful to see that we were covered with the robes, and he tucked hannah's feet in. she was awfully flattered. old fool! and she babbled about him until i wanted to slap her. "he's a nice young man. miss bab," she said. "that is, if he's the one. and he has nice manners. so considerate. many a party i've taken your sister to, and never before----" "i wish you'd shut up, hannah," i said. "he's a pig, and i hate him." she sulked after that, and helped me out of my things at home without a word. when i was in bed, however, and she was hanging up my clothes, she said: "i don't know what's got into you, miss barbara. you are that cross that there's no living with you." "oh, go away," i said. "and what's more," she added, "i don't know but what your mother ought to know about these goingson. you're only a little girl, with all your high and mightiness, and there's going to be no scandal in this familey if i can help it." i put the bedclothes over my head, and she went out. but of course i could not sleep. sis was not home yet, or mother, and i went into sis's room and got a novel from her table. it was the story of a woman who had married a man in a hurry, and without really loving him, and when she had been married a year, and hated the very way her husband drank his coffee and cut the ends off his cigars, she found some one she really loved with her whole heart. and it was too late. but she wrote him one letter, the other man, you know, and it caused a lot of trouble. so she said--i remember the very words- "half the troubles in the world are caused by letters. emotions are changable things"--this was after she had found that she really loved her husband after all, but he had had to shoot himself before she found it out, although not fataly--"but the written word does not change. it remains always, embodying a dead truth and giving it apparent life. no woman should ever put her thoughts on paper." she got the letter back, but she had to steal it. and it turned out that the other man had really only wanted her money all the time. that story was a real ilumination to me. i shall have a great deal of money when i am of age, from my grandmother. i saw it all. it was a trap sure enough. and if i was to get out i would have to have the letter. _it was the letter that put me in his power_. the next day was xmas. i got a lot of things, including the necklace, and a mending basket from sis, with the hope that it would make me tidey, and father had bought me a set of silver fox, which mother did not approve of, it being too expencive for a young girl to wear, according to her. i must say that for an hour or two i was happy enough. but the afternoon was terrable. we keep open house on xmas afternoon, and father makes a champagne punch, and somebody pours tea, although nobody drinks it, and there are little cakes from the club, and the house is decorated with poin--(memo: not in the dictionery and i cannot spell it, although not usualy troubled as to spelling.) at eleven o'clock the mail came in, and mother sorted it over, while father took a gold piece out to the post-man. there were about a million cards, and mother glanced at the addresses and passed them round. but suddenly she frowned. there was a small parcel, addressed to me. "this looks like a gift, barbara," she said. and proceded to open it. my heart skipped two beats, and then hamered. mother's mouth was set as she tore off the paper and opened the box. there was a card, which she glanced at, and underneath, was a book of poems. "love lyrics," said mother, in a terrable voice. "to barbara, from h----" "mother----" i began, in an ernest tone. "a child of mine recieving such a book from a man!" she went on. "barbara, i am speachless." but she was not speachless. if she was speachless for the next half hour, i would hate to hear her really converse. and all that i could do was to bear it. for i had made a frankenstein--see the book read last term by the literary society--not out of grave-yard fragments, but from malted milk tablets, so to speak, and now it was pursuing me to an early grave. for i felt that i simply could not continue to live. "now--where does he live?" "i--don't know, mother." "you sent him a letter." "i don't know where he lives, anyhow." "leila," mother said, "will you ask hannah to bring my smelling salts?" "aren't you going to give me the book?" i asked. "it--it sounds interesting." "you are shameless," mother said, and threw the thing into the fire. a good many of my things seemed to be going into the fire at that time. i cannot help wondering what they would have done if it had all happened in the summer, and no fires burning. they would have felt quite helpless, i imagine. father came back just then, but he did not see the book, which was then blazing with a very hot red flame. i expected mother to tell him, and i daresay i should not have been surprised to see my furs follow the book. i had got into the way of expecting to see things burning that do not belong in a fireplace. but mother did not tell him. i have thought over this a great deal, and i beleive that now i understand. mother was unjustly putting the blame for everything on this school, and mother had chosen the school. my father had not been much impressed by the catalogue. "too much dancing room and not enough tennis courts," he had said. this, of course, is my father's opinion. not mine. the real reason, then, for mother's silence was that she disliked confessing that she made a mistake in her choice of a school. i ate very little luncheon and my only comfort was my seed pearls. i was wearing them, for fear the door-bell would ring, and a letter or flowers would arrive from h. in that case i felt quite sure that someone, in a frenzy, would burn the pearls also. the afternoon was terrable. it rained solid sheets, and patrick, the butler, gave notice three hours after he had recieved his xmas presents, on account of not being let off for early mass. but my father's punch is famous, and people came, and stood around and buzzed, and told me i had grown and was almost a young lady. and tommy gray got out of his cradle and came to call on me, and coughed all the time, with a whoop. he developed the whooping cough later. he had on his first long trousers, and a pair of lavender socks and a tie to match. he said they were not exactly the same shade, but he did not think it would be noticed. hateful child! at half past five, when the place was jamed, i happened to look up. carter brooks was in the hall, and behind him was h. he had seen me before i saw him, and he had a sort of sickley grin, meant to denote joy. i was talking to our bishop at the time, and he was asking me what sort of services we had in the school chapel. i meant to say "non-sectarian," but in my surprize and horror i regret to say that i said, "vegetarian." carter brooks came over to me like a cat to a saucer of milk, and pulled me off into a corner. "it's all right," he said. "i 'phoned mama, and she said to bring him. he's known as grosvenor here, of course. they'll never suspect a thing. now, do i get a small `thank you'?" "i won't see him." "now look here, bab," he protested, "you two have got to make this thing up you are a pair of idiots, quarreling over nothing. poor old hal is all broken up. he's sensative. you've got to remember how sensative he is." "go, away" i cried, in broken tones. "go away, and take him with you." "not until he had spoken to your father," he observed, setting his jaw. "he's here for that, and you know it. you can't play fast and loose with a man, you know." "don't you dare to let him speak to father!" he shrugged his shoulders. "that's between you to, of course," he said. "it's not up to me. tell him yourself, if you've changed your mind. i don't intend," he went on, impressively, "to have any share in ruining his life." "oh piffle," i said. i am aware that this is slang, and does not belong in a theme. but i was driven to saying it. i got through the crowd by using my elbows. i am afraid i gave the bishop quite a prod, and i caught mr. andrews on his rotateing waistcoat. but i was desparate. alas, i was too late. the caterer's man, who had taken patrick's place in a hurry, was at the punch bowl, and father was gone. i was just in time to see him take h. into his library and close the door. here words fail me. i knew perfectly well that beyond that door h, whom i had invented and who therefore simply did not exist, was asking for my hand. i made up my mind at once to run away and go on the stage, and i had even got part way up the stairs, when i remembered that, with a dollar for the picture and five dollars for the violets and three dollars for the hat pin i had given sis, and two dollars and a quarter for mother's handkercheif case, i had exactly a dollar and seventy-five cents in the world. _i was trapped_. i went up to my room, and sat and waited. would father be violent, and throw h. out and then come upstairs, pale with fury and disinherit me? or would the whole familey conspire together, when the people had gone, and send me to a convent? i made up my mind, if it was the convent, to take the veil and be a nun. i would go to nurse lepers, or something, and then, when it was too late, they would be sorry. the stage or the convent, nun or actress? which? i left the door open, but there was only the sound of revelry below. i felt then that it was to be the convent. i pinned a towel around my face, the way the nuns wear whatever they call them, and from the side it was very becoming. i really did look like julia marlowe, especialy as my face was very sad and tradgic. at something before seven every one had gone, and i heard sis and mother come upstairs to dress for dinner. i sat and waited, and when i heard father i got cold all over. but he went on by, and i heard him go into mother's room and close the door. well, i knew i had to go through with it, although my life was blasted. so i dressed and went downstairs. father was the first down. _he came down whistling_. it is perfectly true. i could not beleive my ears. he approached me with a smileing face. "well, bab," he said, exactly as if nothing had happened, "have you had a nice day?" he had the eyes of a bacilisk, that creature of fable. "i've had a lovely day, father," i replied. i could be bacilisk-ish also. there is a mirror over the drawing room mantle, and he turned me around until we both faced it. "up to my ears," he said, referring to my heighth." and lovers already! well, i daresay we must make up our minds to lose you." "i won't be lost," i declared, almost violently. "of course, if you intend to shove me off your hands, to the first idiot who comes along and pretends a lot of stuff, i----" "my dear child!" said father, looking surprised. "such an outburst! all i was trying to say, before your mother comes down, is that i--well, that i understand and that i shall not make my little girl unhappy by--er--by breaking her heart." "just what do you mean by that, father?" he looked rather uncomfortable, being one who hates to talk sentament. "it's like this, barbara," he said. "if you want to marry this young man--and you have made it very clear that you do--i am going to see that you do it. you are young, of course, but after all your dear mother was not much older than you are when i married her." "father!" i cried, from an over-flowing heart. "i have noticed that you are not happy, barbara," he said. "and i shall not thwart you, or allow you to be thwarted. in affairs of the heart, you are to have your own way." "i want to tell you something!" i cried. "i will _not_ be cast off! i----" "tut, tut," said father. "who is casting you off? i tell you that i like the young man, and give you my blessing, or what is the present-day equivelent for it, and you look like a figure of tradgedy!" but i could endure no more. my own father had turned on me and was rending me, so to speak. with a breaking heart and streaming eyes i flew to my chamber. there, for hours i paced the floor. never, i determined, would i marry h. better death, by far. he was a scheming fortune-hunter, but to tell the family that was to confess all. and i would never confess. i would run away before i gave sis such a chance at me. i would run away, but first i would kill carter brooks. yes, i was driven to thoughts of murder. it shows how the first false step leads down and down, to crime and even to death. oh never, never, gentle reader, take that first false step. who knows to what it may lead! "one false step is never retreived." gray--on a favorite cat. i reflected also on how the woman in the book had ruined her life with a letter. "the written word does not change," she had said. "it remains always, embodying a dead truth and giving it apparent life." "apparent life" was exactly what my letter had given to h. frankenstein. that was what i called him, in my agony. i felt that if only i had never written the letter there would have been no trouble. and another awful thought came to me: was there an h after all? could there be an h? once the french teacher had taken us to the theater in new york, and a woman sitting on a chair and covered with a sheet, had brought a man out of a perfectly empty cabinet, by simply willing to do it. the cabinet was empty, for four respectible looking men went up and examined it, and one even measured it with a tape-measure. she had materialised him, out of nothing. and while i had had no cabinet, there are many things in this world "that we do not dream of in our philosophy." was h. a real person, or a creature of my disordered brain? in plain and simple language, _could there be such a person_? i feared not. and if there was no h, really, and i married him, where would i be? there was a ball at the club that night, and the familey all went. no one came to say good-night to me, and by half past ten i was alone with my misery. i knew carter brooks would be at the ball, and h also, very likely, dancing around as agreably as if he really existed, and i had not made him up. i got the book from sis's room again, and re-read it. the woman in it had been in great trouble, too, with her husband cleaning his revolver and making his will. and at last she had gone to the apartments of the man who had her letters, in a taxicab covered with a heavy veil, and had got them back. he had shot himself when she returned--the husband--but she burned the letters and then called a doctor, and he was saved. not the doctor, of course. the husband. the villain's only hold on her had been the letters, so he went to south africa and was gored by an elephant, thus passing out of her life. then and there i knew that i would have to get my letter back from h. without it he was powerless. the trouble was that i did not know where he was staying. even if he came out of a cabinet, the cabinet would have to be somewhere, would it not? i felt that i would have to meet gile with gile. and to steal one's own letter is not really stealing. of course if he was visiting any one and pretending to be a real person, i had no chance in the world. but if he was stopping at a hotel i thought i could manage. the man in the book had had an apartment, with a japanese servant, who went away and drew plans of american forts in the kitchen and left the woman alone with the desk containing the letter. but i daresay that was unusualy lucky and not the sort of thing to look forward to. with me, to think is to act. hannah was out, it being xmas and her brother-in-law having a wake, being dead, so i was free to do anything i wanted to. first i called the club and got carter brooks on the telephone. "carter," i said, "i--i am writing a letter. where is--where does h. stay?" "who?" "h.--mr. grosvenor." "why, bless your ardent little heart! writing, are you? it's sublime, bab!" "where does he live?" "and is it all alone you are, on xmas night!" he burbled. (this is a word from alice in wonderland, and although not in the dictionery, is quite expressive.) "yes," i replied, bitterly. "i am old enough to be married off without my consent, but i am not old enough for a real ball. it makes me sick." "i can smuggle him here, if you want to talk to him." "smuggle!" i said, with scorn. "there is no need to smuggle him. the familey is crazy about him. they are flinging me at him." "well, that's nice," he said. "who'd have thought it! shall i bring him to the 'phone?" "i don't want to talk to him. i hate him." "look here," he observed, "if you keep that up, he'll begin to beleive you. don't take these little quarrels too hard, barbara. he's so happy to-night in the thought that you----" "does he live in a cabinet, or where?" "in a what? i don't get that word." "don't bother. where shall i send his letter?" well, it seemed he had an apartment at the arcade, and i rang off. it was after eleven by that time, and by the time i had got into my school mackintosh and found a heavy veil of mother's and put it on, it was almost half past. the house was quiet, and as patrick had gone, there was no one around in the lower hall. i slipped out and closed the door behind me, and looked for a taxicab, but the veil was so heavy that i hailed our own limousine, and smith had drawn up at the curb before i knew him. "where to, lady?" he said. "this is a private car, but i'll take you anywhere in the city for a dollar." a flush of just indignation rose to my cheek, at the knowledge that smith was using our car for a taxicab! and just as i was about to speak to him severely, and threaten to tell father, i remembered, and walked away. "make it seventy-five cents," he called after me. but i went on. it was terrable to think that smith could go on renting our car to all sorts of people, covered with germs and everything, and that i could never report it to the familey. i got a real taxi at last, and got out at the arcade, giving the man a quarter, although ten cents would have been plenty as a tip. i looked at him, and i felt that he could be trusted. "this," i said, holding up the money, "is the price of silence." but if he was trustworthy he was not subtile, and he said: "the what, miss?" "if any one asks if you have driven me here, _you have not_" i explained, in an impressive manner. he examined the quarter, even striking a match to look at it. then he replied: "i have not!" and drove away. concealing my nervousness as best i could, i entered the doomed building. there was only a hall boy there, asleep in the elevator, and i looked at the thing with the names on it. "mr. grosvenor" was on the fourth floor. i wakened the boy, and he yawned and took me to the fourth floor. my hands were stiff with nervousness by that time, but the boy was half asleep, and evadently he took me for some one who belonged there, for he said "goodnight" to me, and went on down. there was a square landing with two doors, and "grosvenor" was on one. i tried it gently. it was unlocked. "_facilus descensus in avernu_." i am not defending myself. what i did was the result of desparation. but i cannot even write of my sensations as i stepped through that fatal portal, without a sinking of the heart. i had, however, had suficient forsight to prepare an alabi. in case there was some one present in the apartment i intended to tell a falshood, i regret to confess, and to say that i had got off at the wrong floor. there was a sort of hall, with a clock and a table, and a shaded electric lamp, and beyond that the door was open into a sitting room. there was a small light burning there, and the remains of a wood fire in the fireplace. there was no cabinet however. evervthing was perfectly quiet, and i went over to the fire and warmed my hands. my nails were quite blue, but i was strangly calm. i took off mother's veil, and my mackintosh, so i would be free to work, and i then looked around the room. there were a number of photographs of rather smart looking girls, and i curled my lip scornfully. he might have fooled them but he could not decieve me. and it added to my bitterness to think that at that moment the villain was dancing--and flirting probably--while i was driven to actual theft to secure the letter that placed me in his power. when i had stopped shivering i went to his desk. there were a lot of letters on the top, all addressed to him as grosvenor. it struck me suddenly as strange that if he was only visiting, under an assumed name, in order to see me, that so many people should be writing to him as mr. grosvenor. and it did not look like the room of a man who was visiting, unless he took a freight car with him on his travels. _there was a mystery_. all at once i knew it. my letter was not on the desk, so i opened the top drawer. it seemed to be full of bills, and so was the one below it. i had just started on the third drawer, when a terrable thing happened. "hello!" said some one behind me. i turned my head slowly, and my heart stopped. _the porteres into the passage had opened, and a gentleman in his evening clothes was standing there_. "just sit still, please," he said, in a perfectly cold voice. and he turned and locked the door into the hall. i was absolutely unable to speak. i tried once, but my tongue hit the roof of my mouth like the clapper of a bell. "now," he said, when he had turned around. "i wish you would tell me some good reason why i should not hand you over to the police." "oh, please don't!" i said. "that's eloquent. but not a reason. i'll sit down and give you a little time. i take it, you did not expect to find me here." "i'm in the wrong apartment. that's all," i said. "maybe you'll think that's an excuse and not a reason. i can't help it if you do." "well," he said, "that explains some things. it's pretty well known, i fancy, that i have little worth stealing, except my good name." "i was not stealing," i replied in a sulky manner. "i beg your pardon," he said. "it _is_ an ugly word. we will strike it from the record. would you mind telling me whose apartment you intended to--er--investigate? if this is the wrong one, you know." "i was looking for a letter." "letters, letters!" he said. "when will you women learn not to write letters. although"--he looked at me closely--"you look rather young for that sort of thing." he sighed. "it's born in you, i daresay," he said. well, for all his patronizing ways, he was not very old himself. "of course," he said, "if you are telling the truth--and it sounds fishy, i must say--it's hardly a police matter, is it? it's rather one for diplomasy. but can you prove what you say?" "my word should be suficient," i replied stiffly. "how do i know that _you_ belong here?" "well, you don't, as a matter of fact. suppose you take my word for that, and i agree to beleive what you say about the wrong apartment, even then it's rather unusual. i find a pale and determined looking young lady going through my desk in a business-like manner. she says she has come for a letter. now the question is, is there a letter? if so, what letter?" "it is a love letter," i said. "don't blush over such a confession," he said. "if it is true, be proud of it. love is a wonderful thing. never be ashamed of being in love, my child." "i am not in love," i cried with bitter furey. "ah! then it is not _your_ letter!" "i wrote it." "but to simulate a passion that does not exist--that is sackrilege. it is----" "oh, stop talking," i cried, in a hunted tone. "i can't bear it. if you are going to arrest me, get it over." "i'd rather _not_ arrest you, if we can find a way out. you look so young, so new to crime! even your excuse for being here is so naive, that i--won't you tell me why you wrote a love letter, if you are not in love? and whom you sent it to? that's important, you see, as it bears on the case. i intend," he said, "to be judgdicial, unimpassioned, and quite fair." "i wrote a love letter" i explained, feeling rather cheered, "but it was not intended for any one, do you see? it was just a love letter." "oh," he said. "of course. it is often done. and after that?" "well, it had to go somewhere. at least i felt that way about it. so i made up a name from some malted milk tablets----" "malted milk tablets!" he said, looking bewildered. "just as i was thinking up a name to send it to," i explained, "hannah--that's mother's maid, you know--brought in some hot milk and some malted milk tablets, and i took the name from them." "look here," he said, "i'm unpredjudiced and quite calm, but isn't the `mother's maid' rather piling it on?" "hannah is mother's maid, and she brought in the milk and the tablets, i should think," i said, growing sarcastic, "that so far it is clear to the dullest mind." "go on," he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. "you named the letter for your mother's maid--i mean for the malted milk. although you have not yet stated the name you chose; i never heard of any one named milk, and as to the other, while i have known some rather thoroughly malted people--however, let that go." "valentine's tablets," i said. "of course, you understand," i said, bending forward, "there was no such person. i made him up. the harold was made up too--harold valentine." "i see. not clearly, perhaps, but i have a gleam of intellagence." "but, after all, there was such a person. that's clear, isn't it? and now he considers that we are engaged, and--and he insists on marrying me." "that," he said, "is realy easy to understand. i don't blame him at all. he is clearly a person of diszernment." "of course," i said bitterly, "you would be on _his_ side. every one is." "but the point is this," he went on. "if you made him up out of the whole cloth, as it were, and there was no such person, how can there be such a person? i am merely asking to get it all clear in my head. it sounds so reasonable when you say it, but there seems to be something left out." "i don't know how he can be, but he is," i said, hopelessly. "and he is exactly like his picture." "well, that's not unusual, you know." "it is in this case. because i bought the picture in a shop, and just pretended it was him. (he?) and it _was_." he got up and paced the floor. "it's a very strange case," he said. "do you mind if i light a cigarette? it helps to clear my brain. what was the name you gave him?" "harold valentine. but he is here under another name, because of my familey. they think i am a mere child, you see, and so of course he took a _nom de plume_." "a _nom de plume_? oh i see! what is it?" "grosvenor," i said. "the same as yours." "there's another grosvenor in the building, that's where the trouble came in, i suppose, now let me get this straight. you wrote a letter, and somehow or other he got it, and now you want it back. stripped of the things that baffle my intellagence, that's it, isn't it?" i rose in excitement. "then, if he lives in the building, the letter is probably here. why can't you go and get it for me?" "very neat! and let you slip away while i am gone?" i saw that he was still uncertain that i was telling him the truth. it was maddening. and only the letter itself could convince him. "oh, please try to get it," i cried, almost weeping. "you can lock me in here, if you are afraid i will run away. and he is out. i know he is. he is at the club ball." "naturaly," he said "the fact that you are asking me to compound a felony, commit larceny, and be an accessery after the fact does not trouble you. as i told you before, all i have left is my good name, and now----!" "please!" i said. he stared down at me. "certainly," he said. "asked in that tone, murder would be one of the easiest things i do. but i shall lock you in." "very well," i said meekly. and after i had described it--the letter--to him he went out. i had won, but my triumph was but sackcloth and ashes in my mouth. i had won, but at what a cost! ah, how i wished that i might live again the past few days! that i might never have started on my path of deception! or that, since my intentions at the start had been so inocent, i had taken another photograph at the shop, which i had fancied considerably but had heartlessly rejected because of no mustache. he was gone for a long time, and i sat and palpatated. for what if h. had returned early and found him and called in the police? but the latter had not occurred, for at ten minutes after one he came back, eutering by the window from a fire-escape, and much streaked with dirt. "narrow escape, dear child!" he observed, locking the window and drawing the shade. "just as i got it, your--er--gentleman friend returned and fitted his key in the lock. i am not at all sure," he said, wiping his hands with his handkerchief, "that he will not regard the open window as a suspicious circumstance. he may be of a low turn of mind. however, all's well that ends here in this room. here it is." i took it, and my heart gave a great leap of joy. i was saved. "now," he said, "we'll order a taxicab and get you home. and while it is coming suppose you tell me the thing over again. it's not as clear to me as it ought to be, even now." so then i told him--about not being out yet, and sis having flowers sent her, and her room done over, and never getting to bed until dawn. and that they treated me like a mere child, which was the reason for everything, and about the poem, which he considered quite good. and then about the letter. "i get the whole thing a bit clearer now," he said. "of course, it is still cloudy in places. the making up somebody to write to is understandable, under the circumstances. but it is odd to have had the very person materialise, so to speak. it makes me wonder--well, how about burning the letter, now we've got it? it would be better, i think. the way things have been going with you, if we don't destroy it, it is likely to walk off into somebody else's pocket and cause more trouble." so we burned it, and then the telephone rang and said the taxi was there. "i'll get my coat and be ready in a jiffey," he said, "and maybe we can smuggle you into the house and no one the wiser. we'll try anyhow." he went into the other room and i sat by the fire and thought. you remember that when i was planning harold valentine, i had imagined him with a small, dark mustache, and deep, passionate eyes? well, this mr. grosvenor had both, or rather, all three. and he had the loveliest smile, with no dimple. he was, i felt, exactly the sort of man i could die for. it was too tradgic that, with all the world to choose from, i had not taken him instead of h. we walked downstairs, so as not to give the elevator boy a chance to talk, he said. but he was asleep again, and we got to the street and to the taxicab without being seen. oh, i was very cheerful. when i think of it--but i might have known, all along. nothing went right with me that week. just before we got to the house he said: "goodnight and goodbye, little barbara. i'll never forget you and this evening. and save me a dance at your coming-out party. i'll be there." i held out my hand, and he took it and kissed it. it was all perfectly thrilling. and then we drew up in front of the house and he helped me out, and my entire familey had just got out of the motor and was lined up on the pavment staring at us! "all right, are you?" he said, as coolly as if they had not been anywhere in sight. "well, good night and good luck!" and he got into the taxicab and drove away, leaving me in the hands of the enemy. the next morning i was sent back to school. they never gave me a chance to explain, for mother went into hysterics, after accusing me of having men dangling around waiting at every corner. they had to have a doctor, and things were awful. the only person who said anything was sis. she came to my room that night when i was in bed, and stood looking down at me. she was very angry, but there was a sort of awe in her eyes. "my hat's off to you, barbara," she said. "where in the world do you pick them all up? things must have changed at school since i was there." "i'm sick to death of the other sex," i replied languidley. "it's no punishment to send me away. i need a little piece and quiet." and i did. conclusion: all this holaday week, while the girls are away, i have been writing this theme, for literature class. to-day is new years and i am putting in the finishing touches. i intend to have it tiped in the village and to send a copy to father, who i think will understand, and another copy, but with a few lines cut, to mr. grosvenor. the nice one. there were some things he did not quite understand, and this will explain. i shall also send a copy to carter brooks, who came out handsomly with an apoligy this morning in a letter and a ten pound box of candy. his letter explains everything. h. is a real person and did not come out of a cabinet. carter recognized the photograph as being one of a mr. grosvenor he went to college with, who had gone on the stage and was playing in a stock company at home. only they were not playing xmas week, as business, he says, is rotten then. when he saw me writing the letter he felt that it was all a bluff, especialy as he had seen me sending myself the violets at the florists. so he got mr. grosvenor, the blonde one, to pretend he was harold valentine. only things slipped up. i quote from carter's letter: "he's a bully chap, bab, and he went into it for a lark, roses and poems and all. but when he saw that you took it rather hard, he felt it wasn't square. he went to your father to explain and apologized, but your father seemed to think you needed a lesson. he's a pretty good sport, your father. and he said to let it go on for a day or two. a little worry wouldn't hurt you." however, i do not call it being a good sport to see one's daughter perfectly wreched and do nothing to help. and more than that, to willfully permit one's child to suffer, and enjoy it. but it was father, after all, who got the jolt, i think, when he saw me get out of the taxicab. therefore i will not explain, for a time. a little worry will not hurt him either. i will not send him his copy for a week. perhaps, after all, i will give him somthing to worry about eventually. for i have recieved a box of roses, with no card, but a pen and ink drawing of a gentleman in evening clothes crawling onto a fire-escape through an open window. he has dropped his heart, and it is two floors below. my narative has now come to a conclusion, and i will close with a few reflections drawin from my own sad and tradgic experience. i trust the girls of this school will ponder and reflect. deception is a very sad thing. it starts very easy, and without warning, and everything seems to be going all right, and no rocks ahead. when suddenly the breakers loom up, and your frail vessel sinks, with you on board, and maybe your dear ones, dragged down with you. _oh, what a tangeled web we wieve_, _when first we practice to decieve_. _sir walter scott_. chapter ii theme: the celebrity we have been requested to write, during this vacation, a true and varacious account of a meeting with any celebrity we happened to meet during the summer. if no celebrity, any interesting character would do, excepting one's own familey. but as one's own familey is neither celebrated nor interesting, there is no temptation to write about it. as i met mr. reginald beecher this summer, i have chosen him as my subject. brief history of the subject: he was born in 1890 at woodbury, n. j. attended public and high schools, and in 1910 graduated from princeton university. following year produced first play in new york, called her soul. followed this by the soul mate, and this by the divorce. description of subject. mr. beecher is tall and slender, and wears a very small dark mustache. although but twenty-six years of age, his hair on close inspection reveals here and there a silver thread. his teeth are good, and his eyes amber, with small flecks of brown in them. he has been vacinated twice. it has alwavs been one of my chief ambitions to meet a celebrity. on one or two occasions we have had them at school, but they never sit at the junior's table. also, they are seldom connected with either the drama or the movies (a slang term but aparently taking a place in our literature). it was my intention, on being given this subject for my midsummer theme, to seek out mrs. bainbridge, a lady author who has a cottage across the bay from ours, and to ask the privelege of sitting at her feet for a few hours, basking in the sunshine of her presence, and learning from her own lips her favorite flower, her favorite poem and the favorite child of her brain. _of all those arts in which the wise excel_, _nature's chief masterpiece is writing well_. _duke of buckingham_ i had meant to write my theme on her, but i learned in time that she was forty years of age. her work is therefore done. she has passed her active years, and i consider that it is not the past of american letters which is at stake, but the future. besides, i was more interested in the drama than in literature. posibly it is owing to the fact that the girls think i resemhle julia marlowe, that from my earliest years my mind has been turned toward the stage. i am very determined and fixed in my ways, and with me to decide to do a thing is to decide to do it. i am not of a romantic nature, however, and as i learned of the dangers of the theater, i drew back. even a strong nature, such as mine is, on occassions, can be influenced. i therefore decided to change my plans, and to write plays instead of acting in them. at first i meant to write comedies, but as i realized the graveity of life, and its bitterness and disapointments, i turned naturaly to tradgedy. surely, as dear shakspeare says: _the world is a stage_ _where every man must play a part_, _and mine a sad one_. this explains my sinsere interest in mr. beecher. his works were all realistic and sad. i remember that i saw the first one three years ago, when a mere child, and became violently ill from crying and had to be taken home. the school will recall that last year i wrote a play, patterned on the divorce, and that only a certain narowness of view on the part of the faculty prevented it being the class play. if i may be permited to express an opinion, we of the class of 1917 are not children, and should not be treated as such. encouraged by the aplause of my class-mates, and feeling that i was of a more serious turn of mind than most of them, who seem to think of pleasure only, i decided to write a play during the summer. i would thus be improving my vacation hours, and, i considered, keeping out of mischeif. it was pure idleness which had caused my trouble during the last christmas holidays. how true it is that the devil finds work for idle hands! with a play and this theme i beleived that the devil would give me up as a totle loss, and go elsewhere. how little we can read the future! i now proceed to an account of my meeting and acquaintence with mr. beecher. it is my intention to conceal nothing. i can only comfort myself with the thought that my motives were inocent, and that i was obeying orders and secureing material for a theme. i consider that the atitude of my familey is wrong and cruel, and that my sister leila, being only 2o months older, although out in society, has no need to write me the sort of letters she has been writing. twenty months is twenty months, and not two years, although she seems to think it is. i returned home full of happy plans for my vacation. when i look back it seems strange that the gay and inocent young girl of the train can have heen i. so much that is tradgic has since happened. if i had not had a cinder in my eye things would have been diferent. but why repine? fate frequently hangs thus on a single hair--an eye-lash, as one may say. father met me at the train. i had got the aformentioned cinder in my eye, and a very nice young man had taken it out for me. i still cannot see what harm there was in our chating together after that, especialy as we said nothing to object to. but father looked very disagreeable about it, and the young man went away in a hurry. but it started us off wrong, although i got him--father--to promise not to tell mother. "i do wish you would be more careful, bab," he said with a sort of sigh. "careful!" i said. "then it's not doing things, but being found out, that matters!" "careful in your conduct, bab." "he was a beautiful young man, father," i observed, sliping my arm through his. "barbara, barbara! your poor mother----" "now look here, father" i said. "if it was mother who was interested in him it might be troublesome. but it is only me. and i warn you, here and now, that i expect to be thrilled at the sight of a nice young man right along. it goes up my back and out the roots of my hair." well, my father is a real person, so he told me to talk sense, and gave me twenty dollars, and agreed to say nothing about the young man to mother, if i would root for canada against the adirondacks for the summer, because of the fishing. mother was waiting in the hall for me, but she held me off with both hands. "not until you have bathed and changed your clothing, barbara," she said. "i have never had it." she meant the whooping cough. the school will recall the epademic which ravaged us last june, and changed us from a peaceful institution to what sounded like a dog show. well, i got the same old room, not much fixed up, but they had put up diferent curtains anyhow, thank goodness. i had been hinting all spring for new furnature, but my familey does not take a hint unless it is cloroformed first, and i found the same old stuff there. they beleive in waiting until a girl makes her debut before giving her anything but the necessarys of life. sis was off for a week-end, but hannah was there, and i kissed her. not that i'm so fond of her, but i had to kiss sombody. "well, miss barbara!" she said. "how you've grown!" that made me rather sore, because i am not a child any longer, but they all talk to me as if i were but six years old, and small for my age. "i've stopped growing, hannah," i said, with dignaty." at least, almost. but i see i still draw the nursery." hannah was opening my suitcase, and she looked up and said: "i tried to get you the blue room, miss bab. but miss leila said she needed it for house parties." "never mind," i said. "i don't care anything about furnature. i have other things to think about, hannah; i want the school room desk up here." "desk!" she said, with her jaw drooping. "i am writing now," i said. "i need a lot of ink, and paper, and a good lamp. let them keep the blue room, hannah, for their selfish purposes. i shall be happy in my work. i need nothing more." "writing!" said hannah. "is it a book you're writing?" "a play." "listen to the child! a play!" i sat on the edge of the bed. "listen, hannah," i said. "it is not what is outside of us that matters. it is what is inside. it is what we are, not what we eat, or look like, or wear. i have given up everything, hannah, to my career." "you're young yet," said hannah. "you used to be fond enough of the boys." hannah has been with us for years, so she gets rather talkey at times, and has to be sat upon. "i care nothing whatever for the other sex," i replied hautily. she was opening my suitcase at the time, and i was surveying the chamber which was to be the seen of my literary life, at least for some time. "now and then," i said to hannah, "i shall read you parts of it. only you mustn't run and tell mother." "why not?" said she, pearing into the suitcase. "because i intend to deal with life," i said. "i shall deal with real things, and not the way we think them. i am young, but i have thought a great deal. i shall minse nothing." "look here, miss barbara," hannah said, all at once, "what are you doing with this whiskey flask? and these socks? and--you come right here, and tell me where you got the things in this suitcase." i stocked over to the bed, and my blood frose in my vains. _it was not mine_. words cannot fully express how i felt. while fully convinsed that there had been a mistake, i knew not when or how. hannah was staring at me with cold and accusing eyes. "you're a very young lady, miss barbara," she said, with her eyes full of suspicion, "to be carrying a flask about with you." i was as puzzled as she was, but i remained calm and to all apearances spartan. "i am young in years," i remarked. "but i have seen life, hannah." now i meant nothing by this at the time. but it was getting on my nerves to be put in the infant class all the time. the xmas before they had done it, and i had had my revenge. although it had hurt me more than it hurt them, and if i gave them a fright i gave myself a worse one. as i said at that time: _oh, what a tangeled web we weive_, _when first we practice to decieve_. _sir walter scott_. hannah gave me a horrafied glare, and dipped into the suitcase again. she brought up a tin box of cigarettes, and i thought she was going to have delerium tremens at once. well, at first i thought the girls at school had played a trick on me, and a low down mean trick at that. there are always those who think it is funny to do that sort of thing, but they are the first to squeel when anything is done to them. once i put a small garter snake in a girl's muff, and it went up her sleave, which is nothing to some of the things she had done to me. and you would have thought the school was on fire. anyhow, i said to myself that some smarty was trying to get me into trouble, and hannah would run to the familey, and they'd never beleive me. all at once i saw all my cherished plans for the summer gone, and me in the country somewhere with mademoiselle, and walking through the pasture with a botany in one hand and a folding cup in the other, in case we found a spring a cow had not stepped in. mademoiselle was once my governess, but has retired to private life, except in cases of emergency. i am naturaly very quick in mind. the archibalds are all like that, and when once we decide on a course we stick to it through thick and thin. but we do not lie. it is rediculous for hannah to say i said the cigarettes were mine. all i said was: "i suppose you are going to tell the familey. you'd better run, or you'll burst." "oh, miss barbara, miss barbara!" she said." and you so young to be so wild!" this was unjust, and i am one to resent injustice. i had returned home with my mind fixed on serious things, and now i was being told i was wild. "if i tell your mother she'll have a fit," hannah said, evadently drawn hither and thither by emotion. "now see here, miss bab, you've just come home, and there was trouble at your last vacation that i'm like to remember to my dieing day. you tell me how those things got there, like a good girl, and i'll say nothing about them." i am naturaly sweet in disposition, but to call me a good girl and remind me of last xmas holadays was too much. my natural firmness came to the front. "certainly _not_," i said. "you needn't stick your lip out at me, miss bab, that was only giving you a chance, and forgetting my duty to help you, not to mention probably losing my place when the familey finds out." "finds out what?" "what you've been up to, the stage, and writing plays, and now liquor and tobacco!" now i may be at fault in the narative that follows. but i ask the school if this was fair treatment. i had returned to my home full of high ideals, only to see them crushed beneath the heal of domestic tyranny. _necessity is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves_. _william pitt_. how true are these immortal words. it was with a firm countenance but a sinking heart that i saw hannah leave the room. i had come home inspired with lofty ambition, and it had ended thus. heart-broken, i wandered to the bedside, and let my eyes fall on the suitcase, the container of all my woe. well, i was surprised, all right. it was not and never had been mine. instead of my blue serge sailor suit and my _robe de nuit_ and kimona etc., it contained a checked gentleman's suit, a mussed shirt and a cap. at first i was merely astonished. then a sense of loss overpowered me. i suffered. i was prostrated with grief. not that i cared a rap for the clothes i'd lost, being most of them to small and patched here and there. but i had lost the plot of my play. my career was gone. i was undone. it may be asked what has this recitle to do with the account of meeting a celebrity. i reply that it has a great deal to do with it. a bare recitle of a meeting may be news, but it is not art. a theme consists of introduction, body and conclusion. this is still the introduction. when i was at last revived enough to think i knew what had happened. the young man who took the cinder out of my eye had come to sit beside me, which i consider was merely kindness on his part and nothing like flirting, and he had brought his suitcase over, and they had got mixed up. but i knew the familey would call it flirting, and not listen to a word i said. a madness siezed me. now that everything is over, i realize that it was madness. but "there is a divinity that shapes our ends etc." it was to be. it was karma, or kismet, or whatever the word is. it was written in the book of fate that i was to go ahead, and wreck my life, and generaly ruin everything. i locked the door behind hannah, and stood with tradgic feet, "where the brook and river meet." what was i to do? how hide this evadence of my (presumed) duplicaty? i was inocent, but i looked gilty. this, as everyone knows, is worse than gilt. i unpacked the suitcase as fast as i could, therfore, and being just about destracted, i bundled the things up and put them all together in the toy closet, where all sis's dolls and mine are, mine being mostly pretty badly gone, as i was always hard on dolls. how far removed were those inocent years when i played with dolls! well, i knew hannah pretty well, and therfore was not surprised when, having hidden the trowsers under a doll buggy, i heard mother's voice at the door. "let me in, barbara," she said. i closed the closet door, and said: "what is it, mother?" "let me in." so i let her in, and pretended i expected her to kiss me, which she had not yet, on account of the whooping cough. but she seemed to have forgotten that. also the kiss. "barbara," she said, in the meanest voice, "how long have you been smoking?" now i must pause to explain this. had mother aproached me in a sweet and maternal manner, i would have been softened, and would have told the whole story. but she did not. she was, as you might say, steeming with rage. and seeing that i was misunderstood, i hardened. i can be as hard as adamant when necessary. "what do you mean, mother?" "don't anser one question with another." "how can i anser when i don't understand you?" she simply twiched with fury. "you--a mere child!" she raved. "and i can hardly bring myself to mention it--the idea of your owning a flask, and bringing it into this house--it is--it is----" well, i was growing cold and more hauty every moment, so i said: "i don't see why the mere mention of a flask upsets you so. it isn't because you aren't used to one, especialy when traveling. and since i was a mere baby i have been acustomed to intoxicants." "barbara!" she intergected, in the most dreadful tone. "i mean, in the familey," i said. "i have seen wine on our table ever since i can remember. i knew to put salt on a claret stain before i could talk." well, you know how it is to see an enemy on the run, and although i regret to refer to my dear mother as an enemy, still at that moment she was such and no less. and she was beating it. it was the referance to my youth that had aroused me, and i was like a wounded lion. besides, i knew well enough that if they refused to see that i was practicaly grown up, if not entirely, i would get a lot of sis's clothes, fixed up with new ribbons. faded old things! i'd had them for years. better to be considered a bad woman than an unformed child. "however, mother," i finished, "if it is any comfort to you, i did not buy that flask. and i am not a confirmed alcoholic. by no means." "this settles it," she said, in a melancoly tone. "when i think of the comfort leila has been to me, and the anxiety you have caused, i wonder where you get your--your _deviltry_ from. i am posatively faint." i was alarmed, for she did look queer, with her face all white around the rouge. so i reached for the flask. "i'll give you a swig of this," i said. "it will pull you around in no time." but she held me off feircely. "never!" she said. "never again. i shall emty the wine cellar. there will be nothing to drink in this house from now on. i do not know what we are coming to." she walked into the bathroom, and i heard her emptying the flask down the drain pipe. it was a very handsome flask, silver with gold stripes, and all at once i knew the young man would want it back. so i said: "mother, please leave the flask here anyhow." "certainly not." "it's not mine, mother." "whose is it?" "it--a friend of mine loned it to me." "who?" "i can't tell you." "you can't _tell_ me! barbara, i am utterly bewildered. i sent you away a simple child, and you return to me--what?" well, we had about an hour's fight over it, and we ended in a compromise. i gave up the flask, and promised not to smoke and so forth, and i was to have some new dresses and a silk sweater, and to be allowed to stay up until ten o'clock, and to have a desk in my room for my work. "work!" mother said. "career! what next? why can't you be like leila, and settle down to haveing a good time?" "leila and i are diferent," i said loftily, for i resented her tone. "leila is a child of the moment. life for her is one grand, sweet song. for me it is a serious matter. `life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal,'" i quoted in impasioned tones. (because that is the way i feel. how can the grave be its goal? _there must be something beyond_. i have thought it all out, and i beleive in a world beyond, but not in a hell. hell, i beleive, is the state of mind one gets into in this world as a result of one's wicked acts or one's wicked thoughts, and is in one's self.) as i have said, the other side of the compromise was that i was not to carry flasks with me, or drink any punch at parties if it had a stick in it, and you can generally find out by the taste. for if it is what carter brooks calls "loaded" it stings your tongue. or if it tastes like cider it's probably champane. and i was not to smoke any cigarettes. mother was holding out on the sweater at that time, saying that sis had a perfectly good one from miami, and why not wear that? so i put up a strong protest about the cigarettes, although i have never smoked but once as i think the school knows, and that only half through, owing to getting dizzy. i said that sis smoked now and then, because she thought it looked smart; but that, if i was to have a career, i felt that the sootheing influence of tobaco would help a lot. so i got the new sweater, and everything looked smooth again, and mother kissed me on the way out, and said she had not meant to be harsch, but that my great uncle putnam had been a notorious drunkard, and i looked like him, although of a more refined tipe. there was a dreadful row that night, however, when father came home. we were all dressed for dinner, and waiting in the drawing room, and leila was complaining about me, as usual. "she looks older than i do now, mother," she said. "if she goes to the seashore with us i'll have her always taging at my heals. i don't see why i can't have my first summer in peace." oh, yes, we were going to the shore, after all. sis wanted it, and everybody does what she wants, regardless of what they prefer, even fishing. "first summer!" i exclaimed. "one would think you were a teething baby!" "i was speaking to mother, barbara. everyone knows that a debutante only has one year nowadays, and if she doesn't go off in that year she's swept away by the flood of new girls the next fall. we might as well be frank. and while barbara's not a beauty, as soon as the bones in her neck get a little flesh on them she won't be hopeless, and she has a flipant manner that men like." "i intend to keep barbara under my eyes this summer," mother said firmly. "after last xmas's happenings, and our discovery today, i shall keep her with me. she need not, however, interfere with you, leila. her hours are mostly diferent, and i will see that her friends are the younger boys." i said nothing, but i knew perfectly well she had in mind eddie perkins and willie graham, and a lot of other little kids that hang around the fruit punch at parties, and throw the peas from the croquettes at each other when the footmen are not near, and pretend they are allowed to smoke, but have sworn off for the summer. i was naturaly indignant at sis's words, which were not filial, to my mind, but i replied as sweetly as possable: "i shall not be in your way, leila. i ask nothing but food and shelter, and that perhaps not for long." "why? do you intend to die?" she demanded. "i intend to work," i said. "it's more interesting than dieing, and will be a novelty in this house." father came in just then, and he said: "i'll not wait to dress, clara. hello, children. i'll just change my coller while you ring for the cocktails." mother got up and faced him with magesty. "we are not going to have, any" she said. "any what?" said father from the doorway. "i have had some fruit juice prepared with a dash of bitters. it is quite nice. and i'll ask you, james, not to explode before the servants. i will explain later." father has a very nice disposition but i could see that mother's manner got on his nerves, as it got on mine. anyhow there was a terific fuss, with sis playing the piano so that the servants would not hear, and in the end father had a cocktail. mother waited until he had had it, and was quieter, and then she told him about me, and my having a flask in my suitcase. of course i could have explained, but if they persisted in mis-understanding me, why not let them do so, and be miserable? "it's a very strange thing, bab," he said, looking at me, "that everything in this house is quiet until you come home, and then we get as lively as kittens in a frying pan. we'll have to marry you off pretty soon, to save our piece of mind." "james!" said my mother. "remember last winter, please." there was no claret or anything with dinner, and father ordered mineral water, and criticised the food, and fussed about sis's dressmaker's bill. and the second man gave notice immediately after we left the dining room. when mother reported that, as we were having coffee in the drawing room, father said: "humph! well, what can you expect? those fellows have been getting the best half of a bottle of claret every night since they've been here, and now it's cut off. damed if i wouldn't like to leave myself." from that time on i knew that i was watched. it made little or no diference to me. i had my work, and it filled my life. there were times when my soul was so filled with joy that i could hardly bare it. i had one act done in two days. i wrote out the love seens in full, because i wanted to be sure of what they would say to each other. how i thrilled as each marvelous burst of fantacy flowed from my pen! but the dialogue of less interesting parts i left for the actors to fill in themselves. i consider this the best way, as it gives them a chance to be original, and not to have to say the same thing over and over. jane raleigh came over to see me the day after i came home, and i read her some of the love seens. she posatively wept with excitement. "bab," she said, "if any man, no matter who, ever said those things to me, i'd go straight into his arms. i couldn't help it. whose going to act in it?" "i think i'll have robert edeson, or richard mansfield." "mansfield's dead," said jane. "honestly?" "honest he is. why don't you get some of these moveing picture actors? they never have a chance in the movies, only acting and not talking." well, that sounded logicle. and then i read her the place where the cruel first husband comes back and finds her married again and happy, and takes the children out to drown them, only he can't because they can swim, and they pull him in instead. the curtain goes down on nothing but a few bubbles rising to mark his watery grave. jane was crying. "it is too touching for words, bab!" she said. "it has broken my heart. i can just close my eyes aud see the theater dark, and the stage almost dark, and just those bubbles coming up and breaking. would you have to have a tank?" "i darsay," i replied dreamily. "let the other people worry about that. i can only give them the material, and hope that they have intellagence enough to grasp it." i think sis must have told carter brooks something about the trouble i was in, for he brought me a box of candy one afternoon, and winked at me when mother was not looking. "don't open it here," he whispered. so i was forced to controll my impatience, though passionately fond of candy. and when i got to my room later, the box was full of cigarettes. i could have screamed. it just gave me one more thing to hide, as if a man's suit and shirt and so on was not suficient. but carter paid more attention to me than he ever had before, and at a tea dance sombody had at the country club he took me to one side and gave me a good talking to. "you're being rather a bad child, aren't you?" he said. "certainly not." "well, not bad, but--er--naughty. now see here, bab, i'm fond of you, and you're growing into a mightey pretty girl. but your whole social life is at stake. for heaven's sake, at least until you're married, cut out the cigarettes and booze." that cut me to the heart, but what could i say? well, july came, and we had rented a house at little hampton and everywhere one went one fell over an open trunk or a barrell containing silver or linen. mother went around with her lips moving as if in prayer, but she was realy repeating lists, such as sowing basket, table candles, headache tablets, black silk stockings and tennis rackets. sis got some lovely clothes, mostly imported, but they had a woman come in and sow for me. hannah and she used to interupt my most precious moments at my desk by running a tape measure around me, or pinning a paper pattern to me. the sowing woman always had her mouth full of pins, and once, owing to my remarking that i wished i had been illagitimate, so i could go away and live my own life, she swallowed one. it caused a grate deal of excitement, with hannah blaming me and giving her vinigar to swallow to soften the pin. well, it turned out all right, for she kept on living, but she pretended to have sharp pains all over her here and there, and if the pin had been as lively as a tadpole and wriggled from spot to spot, it could not have hurt in so many places. of course they blamed me, and i shut myself up more and more in my sanctuery. there i lived with the creatures of my dreams, and forgot for a while that i was only a sub-deb, and that leila's last year's tennis clothes were being fixed over for me. but how true what dear shakspeare says: _dreams_, _which are the children of an idle brain_. _begot of nothing but vain fantasy_. i loved my dreams, but alas, they were not enough. after a tortured hour or two at my desk, living in myself the agonies of my characters, suffering the pangs of the wife with two husbands and both living, struggling in the water with the children, fruit of the first union, dying with number two and blowing my last bubbles heavenward--after all these emotions, i was done out. jane came in one day and found me prostrate on my couch, with a light of sufering in my eyes. "dearest!" cried jane, and gliding to my side, fell on her knees. "jane!" "what is it? you are ill?" i could hardly more than whisper. in a low tone i said: "he is dead." "dearest!" "drowned!" at first she thought i meant a member of my familey. but when she understood she looked serious. "you are too intence, bab," she said solemly. "you suffer too much. you are wearing yourself out." "there is no other way," i replied in broken tones. jane went to the mirror and looked at herself. then she turned to me. "others don't do it." "i must work out my own salvation, jane," i observed firmly. but she had roused me from my apathy, and i went into sis's room, returning with a box of candy some one had sent her. "i must feel, jane, or i cannot write." "pooh! loads of writers get fat on it. why don't you try comedy? it pays well." "oh--_money_!" i said, in a disgusted tone. "your _forte_, of course, is love," she said. "probably that's because you've had so much experience." owing to certain reasons it is generaly supposed that i have experienced the gentle passion. but not so, alas! "bab," jane said, suddenly, "i have been your friend for a long time. i have never betrayed you. you can trust me with your life. why don't you tell me?" "tell you what?" "somthing has happened. i see it in your eyes. no girl who is happy and has not a tradgic story stays at home shut up at a messy desk when everyone is out at the club playing tennis. don't talk to me about a career. a girl's career is a man and nothing else. and especialy after last winter, bab. is--is it the same one?" here i made my fatal error. i should have said at once that there was no one, just as there had been no one last winter. but she looked so intence, sitting there, and after all, why should i not have an amorus experience? i am not ugly, and can dance well, although inclined to lead because of dansing with other girls all winter at school. so i lay back on my pillow and stared at the ceiling. "no. it is not the same man." "what is he like? bab, i'm so excited i can't sit still." "it--it hurts to talk about him," i observed faintly. now i intended to let it go at that, and should have, had not jane kept on asking questions. because i had had a good lesson the winter before, and did not intend to decieve again. and this i will say--i realy told jane raleigh nothing. she jumped to her own conclusions. and as for her people saying she cannot chum with me any more, i will only say this: if jane raleigh smokes she did not learn it from me. well, i had gone as far as i meant to. i was not realy in love with anyone, although i liked carter brooks, and would posibly have loved him with all the depth of my nature if sis had not kept an eye on me most of the time. however--- jane seemed to be expecting somthing, and i tried to think of some way to satisfy her and not make any trouble. and then i thought of the suitcase. so i locked the door and made her promise not to tell, and got the whole thing out of the toy closet. "wha--what is it?" asked jane. i said nothing, but opened it all up. the flask was gone, but the rest was there, and carter's box too. jane leaned down and lifted the trowsers. and poked around somewhat. then she straitened and said: "you have run away and got married, bab." "jane!" she looked at me peircingly. "don't lie to me," she said accusingly. "or else what are you doing with a man's whole outfit, including his dirty coller? bab, i just can't bare it." well, i saw that i had gone to far, and was about to tell jane the truth when i heard the sowing woman in the hall. i had all i could do to get the things put away, and with jane looking like death i had to stand there and be fitted for one of sis's chiffon frocks, with the low neck filled in with net. "you must remember, miss bab," said the human pin cushon, "that you are still a very young girl, and not out yet." jane got up off the bed suddenly. "i--i guess i'll go, bab," she said. "i don't feel very well." as she went out she stopped in the doorway and crossed her heart, meaning that she would die before she would tell anything. but i was not comfortable. it is not a pleasant thought that your best friend considers you married and gone beyond recall, when in truth you are not, or even thinking about it, except in idle moments. the seen now changes. life is nothing but such changes. no sooner do we alight on one branch, and begin to sip the honey from it, but we are taken up and carried elsewhere, perhaps to the mountains or to the sea-shore, and there left to make new friends and find new methods of enjoyment. the flight--or journey--was in itself an anxious time. for on my otherwise clear conscience rested the weight of that strange suitcase. fortunately hannah was so busy that i was left to pack my belongings myself, and thus for a time my gilty secret was safe. i put my things in on top of the masculine articles, not daring to leave any of them in the closet, owing to house-cleaning, which is always done before our return in the fall. on the train i had a very unpleasant experience, due to sis opening my suitcase to look for a magazine, and drawing out a soiled gentleman's coller. she gave me a very peircing glance, but said nothing and at the next opportunity i threw it out of a window, concealed in a newspaper. we now approach the catastrofe. my book on playwriting divides plays into introduction, development, crisis, denouement and catastrofe. and so one may devide life. in my case the cinder proved the introduction, as there was none other. i consider that the suitcase was the development, my showing it to jane raleigh was the crisis, and the denouement or catastrofe occured later on. let us then procede to the catastrofe. jane raleigh came to see me off at the train. her familey was coming the next day. and instead of flowers, she put a small bundel into my hands. "keep it hiden, bab," she said, "and tear up the card." i looked when i got a chance, and she had crocheted me a wash cloth, with a pink edge. "for your linen chest," the card said, "and i'm doing a bath towle to match." i tore up the card, but i put the wash cloth with the other things i was trying to hide, because it is bad luck to throw a gift away. but i hoped, as i seemed to be getting more things to conceal all the time, that she would make me a small bath towle, and not the sort as big as a bed spread. father went with us to get us settled, and we had a long talk while mother and sis made out lists for dinners and so forth. "look here, bab," he said, "somthing's wrong with you. i seem to have lost my only boy, and have got instead a sort of tear-y young person i don't recognize." "i'm growing up, father" i said. i did not mean to rebuke him, but ye gods! was i the only one to see that i was no longer a child? "somtimes i think you are not very happy with us." "happy?" i pondered. "well, after all, what is happiness?" he took a spell of coughing then, and when it was over he put his arms around me and was quite afectionate. "what a queer little rat it is!" he said. i only repeat this to show how even my father, with all his afection and good qualities, did not understand and never would understand. my heart was full of a longing to be understood. i wanted to tell him my yearnings for better things, my aspirations to make my life a great and glorious thing. _and he did not understand_. he gave me five dollars instead. think of the tradgedy of it! as we went along, and he pulled my ear and finaly went asleep with a hand on my shoulder, the bareness of my life came to me. i shook with sobs. and outside somewhere sis and mother made dinner lists. then and there i made up my mind to work hard and acheive, to become great and powerful, to write things that would ring the hearts of men--and women, to, of course--and to come back to them some day, famous and beautiful, and when they sued for my love, to be kind and hauty, but cold. i felt that i would always be cold, although gracious. i decided then to be a writer of plays first, and then later on to act in them. i would thus be able to say what came into my head, as it was my own play. also to arrange the seens so as to wear a variety of gowns, including evening things. i spent the rest of the afternoon manacuring my nails in our state room. well, we got there at last. it was a large house, but everything was to thin about it. the school will understand this, the same being the condition of the new freshman dormitory. the walls were to thin, and so were the floors. the doors shivered in the wind, and palpatated if you slamed them. also you could hear every sound everywhere. i looked around me in dispair. where, oh where, was i to find my cherished solatude? where? on account of hannah hating a new place, and considering the house an insult to the servants, especialy only one bathroom for the lot of them, she let me unpack alone, and so far i was safe. but where was i to work? fate settled that for me however. _there is no armour against fate_; _death lays his icy hand on kings_. _j. shirley; dirge_. previously, however, mother and i had had a talk. she sailed into my room one evening, dressed for dinner, and found me in my _robe de nuit_, curled up in the window seat admiring the view of the ocean. "well!" she said. "is this the way you intend going to dinner?" "i do not care for any dinner," i replied. then, seeing she did not understand, i said coldly. "how can i care for food, mother, when the sea looks like a dying ople?" "dying pussycat!" mother said, in a very nasty way. "i don't know what has come over you, barbara. you used to be a normle child, and there was some accounting for what you were going to do. but now! take off that nightgown, and i'll have tanney hold off dinner for half an hour." tanney was the butler who had taken patrick's place. "if you insist," i said coldly. "but i shall not eat." "why not?" "you wouldn't understand, mother." "oh, i wouldn't? well, suppose i try," she said, and sat down. "i am not very intellagent, but if you put it clearly i may grasp it. perhaps you'd better speak slowly, also." so, sitting there in my room, while the sea throbed in tireless beats against the shore, while the light faded and the stars issued, one by one, like a rash on the face of the sky, i told mother of my dreams. i intended, i said, to write life as it realy is, and not as supposed to be. "it may in places be, ugly" i said, "but truth is my banner. the truth is never ugly, because it is real. it is, for instance, not ugly if a man is in love with the wife of another, if it is real love, and not the passing fansy of a moment." mother opened her mouth, but did not say anything. "there was a time," i said, "when i longed for things that now have no value whatever to me. i cared for clothes and even for the attentions of the other sex. but that has passed away, mother. i have now no thought but for my career." i watched her face, and soon the dreadfull understanding came to me. she, to, did not understand. my literary aspirations were as nothing to her! oh, the bitterness of that moment. my mother, who had cared for me as a child, and obeyed my slightest wish, no longer understood me. and sadest of all, there was no way out. none. once, in my youth, i had beleived that i was not the child of my parents at all, but an adopted one--perhaps of rank and kept out of my inheritance by those who had selfish motives. but now i knew that i had no rank or inheritance, save what i should carve out for myself. there was no way out. none. mother rose slowly, stareing at me with perfectly fixed and glassy eyes. "i am absolutely sure," she said, "that you are on the edge of somthing. it may be tiphoid, or it may be an elopement. but one thing is certain. you are not normle." with this she left me to my thoughts. but she did not neglect me. sis came up after dinner, and i saw mother's fine hand in that. although not hungry in the usual sense of the word, i had begun to grow rather empty, and was nibling out of a box of chocolates when sis came. she got very little out of me. to one with softness and tenderness i would have told all, but sis is not that sort. and at last she showed her clause. "don't fool yourself for a minute," she said. "this literary pose has not fooled anybody. either you're doing it to apear interesting, or you've done somthing you're scared about. which is it?" i refused to reply. "because if it's the first, and you're trying to look literary, you are going about it wrong," she said. "real literary people don't go round mooning and talking about the ople sea." i saw mother had been talking, and i drew myself up. "they look and act like other people," said leila, going to the bureau and spilling powder all over the place. "look at beecher." "beecher!" i cried, with a thrill that started inside my elbows. (i have read this to one or two of the girls, and they say there is no such thrill. but not all people act alike under the influence of emotion, and mine is in my arms, as stated.) "the playwright," sis said. "he's staying next door. and if he does any languishing it is not by himself." there may be some who have for a long time had an ideal, but without hoping ever to meet him, and then suddenly learning that he is nearby, with indeed but a wall or two between, can be calm and cool. but i am not like that. although long supression has taught me to disemble at times, where my heart is concerned i am powerless. for it was at last my heart that was touched. i, who had scorned the other sex and felt that i was born cold and always would be cold, that day i discovered the truth. reginald beecher was my ideal. i had never spoken to him, nor indeed seen him, except for his pictures. but the very mention of his name brought a lump to my throat. feeling better imediately, i got sis out of the room and coaxed hannah to bring me some dinner. while she was sneaking it out of the pantrey i was dressing, and soon, as a new being, i was out on the stone bench at the foot of the lawn, gazing with wrapt eyes at the sea. but fate was against me. eddie perkins saw me there and came over. he had but recently been put in long trowsers, and those not his best ones but only white flannels. he was never sure of his garters, and was always looking to see if his socks were coming down. well, he came over just as i was sure i saw reginald beecher next door on the veranda, and made himself a nusance right away, trying all sorts of kid tricks, such as snaping a rubber band at me, and pulling out hairpins. but i felt that i must talk to somone. so i said: "eddie, if you had your choice of love or a career, which would it be?" "why not both," he said, hiching the rubber band onto one of his front teeth and playing on it. "niether ought to take up all a fellow's time. say, listen to this! talk about a eukelele!" "a woman can never have both." he played a while, struming with one finger until the hand sliped off and stung him on the lip. "once," i said, "i dreamed of a career. but i beleive love's the most important." well, i shall pass lightly over what followed. why is it that a girl cannot speak of love without every member of the other sex present, no matter how young, thinking it is he? and as for mother maintaining that i kissed that wreched child, and they saw me from the drawing-room, it is not true and never was true. it was but one more misunderstanding which convinced the familey that i was carrying on all manner of afairs. carter brooks had arrived that day, and was staying at the perkins' cottage. i got rid of the perkins' baby, as his nose was bleeding--but i had not slaped him hard at all, and felt little or no compunction--when i heard carter coming down the walk. he had called to see leila, but she had gone to a beech dance and left him alone. he never paid any attention to me when she was around, and i recieved him cooly. "hello!" he said. "well?" i replied. "is that the way you greet me, bab?" "it's the way i would greet most any left-over," i said. "i eat hash at school, but i don't have to pretend to like it." "i came to see _you_." "how youthfull of you!" i replied, in stinging tones. he sat down on a bench and stared at me. "what's got into you lately?" he said. "just as you're geting to be the prettiest girl around, and i'm strong for you, you--you turn into a regular rattlesnake." the kindness of his tone upset me considerably, to who so few kind words had come recently. i am compeled to confess that i wept, although i had not expected to, and indeed shed few tears, although bitter ones. how could i posibly know that the chaste salute of eddie perkins and my head on carter brooks' shoulder were both plainly visable against the rising moon? but this was the case, especialy from the house next door. but i digress. suddenly carter held me off and shook me somewhat. "sit up here and tell me about it," he said. "i'm geting more scared every minute. you are such an impulsive little beast, and you turn the fellows' heads so--look here, is jane raleigh lying, or did you run away and get married to somone?" i am aware that i should have said, then and there, no. but it seemed a shame to spoil things just as they were geting interesting. so i said, through my tears: "nobody understands me. nobody. and i'm so lonely." "and of course you haven't run away with anyone, have you?" "not--exactly." "bless you, bab!" he said. and i might as well say that he kissed me, because he did, although unexpectedly. sombody just then moved a chair on the porch next door and coughed rather loudly, so carter drew a long breath and got up. "there's somthing about you lately, bab, that i don't understand," he said. "you--you're mysterious. that's the word. in a couple of years you'll be the real thing." "come and see me then," i said in a demure manner. and he went away. so i sat on my bench and looked at the sea and dreamed. it seemed to me that centuries must have passed since i was a light-hearted girl, running up and down that beech, paddling, and so forth, with no thought of the future farther away than my next meal. once i lived to eat. now i merely ate to live, and hardly that. the fires of genius must be fed, but no more. sitting there, i suddenly made a discovery. the boat house was near me, and i realize that upstairs, above the bath-houses, et cetera, there must be a room or two. the very thought intriged me (a new word for interest, but coming into use, and sounding well). solatude--how i craved it for my work. and here it was, or would be when i had got the place fixed up. true, the next door boat-house was close, but a boat-house is a quiet place, generaly, and i knew that nowhere, aside from the dessert, is there perfect silence. i investagated at once, but found the place locked and the boatman gone. however, there was a latice, and i climbed up that and got in. i had a fright there, as it seemed to be full of people, but i soon saw it was only the familey bathing suits hung up to dry. aside from the odor of drying things it was a fine study, and i decided to take a small table there, and the various tools of my profession. climbing down, however, i had a surprise. for a man was just below, and i nearly put my foot on his shoulder in the darkness. "hello!" he said. "so it's _you_." i was quite speachless. it was mr. beecher himself, in his dinner clothes and bareheaded. oh flutering heart, be still. oh pen, move steadily. _oh tempora o mores_! "let me down," i said. i was still hanging to the latice. "in a moment," he said. "i have an idea that the instant i do you'll vanish. and i have somthing to tell you." i could hardly beleive my ears. "you see," he went on, "i think you must move that bench." "bench?" "you seem to be so very popular," he said." and of course i'm only a transient and don't matter. but some evening one of the admirers may be on the patten's porch, while another is with you on the bench. and--the moon rises beyond it." i was silent with horor. so that was what he thought of me. like all the others, he, to, did not understand. he considered me a flirt, when my only thoughts were serious ones, of imortality and so on. "you'd better come down now," he said. "i was afraid to warn you until i saw you climbing the latice. then i knew you were still young enough to take a friendly word of advise." i got down then and stood before him. he was magnifacent. is there anything more beautiful than a tall man with a gleaming expance of dress shirt? i think not. but he was staring at me. "look here," he said. "i'm afraid i've made a mistake after all. i thought you were a little girl." "that needn't worry you. everybody does," i replied. "i'm seventeen, but i shall be a mere child until i come out." "oh!" he said. "one day i am a child in the nursery," i said. "and the next i'm grown up and ready to be sold to the highest bider." "i beg your pardon, i----" "but i am as grown up now as i will ever be," i said. "and indeed more so. i think a great deal now, because i have plenty of time. but my sister never thinks at all. she is to busy." "suppose we sit on the bench. the moon is to high to be a menace, and besides, i am not dangerous. now, what do you think about?" "about life, mostly. but of course there is death, which is beautiful but cold. and--one always thinks of love, doesn't one?" "does one?" he asked. i could see he was much interested. as for me, i dared not consider whom it was who sat beside me, almost touching. that way lay madness. "don't you ever," he said, "reflect on just ordinary things, like clothes and so forth?" i shruged my shoulders. "i don't get enough new clothes to worry about. mostly i think of my work." "work?" "i am a writer" i said in a low, ernest tone. "no! how--how amazing. what do you write?" "i'm on a play now." "a comedy?" "no. a tradgedy. how can i write a comedy when a play must always end in a catastrofe? the book says all plays end in crisis, denouement and catastrofe." "i can't beleive it," he said. "but, to tell you a secret, i never read any books about plays." "we are not all gifted from berth, as you are," i observed, not to merely please him, but because i considered it the simple truth. he pulled out his watch and looked at it in the moonlight. "all this reminds me," he said, "that i have promised to go to work tonight. but this is so--er--thrilling that i guess the work can wait. well--now go on." oh, the joy of that night! how can i describe it? to be at last in the company of one who understood, who--as he himself had said in "her soul"--spoke my own languidge! except for the occasional mosquitoe, there was no sound save the turgescent sea and his voice. often since that time i have sat and listened to conversation. how flat it sounds to listen to father prozing about gold, or sis about clothes, or even to the young men who come to call, and always talk about themselves. we were at last interupted in a strange manner. mr. patten came down their walk and crossed to us, walking very fast. he stopped right in front of us and said: "look here, reg, this is about all i can stand." "oh, go away, and sing, or do somthing," said mr. beecher sharply. "you gave me your word of honor" said the patten man. "i can only remind you of that. also of the expence i'm incuring, and all the rest of it. i've shown all sorts of patience, but this is the limit." he turned on his heal, but came back for a last word or two. "now see here," he said, "we have everything fixed the way you said you wanted it. and i'll give you ten minutes. that's all." he stocked away, and mr. beecher looked at me. "ten minutes of heaven," he said, "and then perdetion with that bunch. look here," he said, "i--i'm awfully interested in what you are telling me. let's cut off up the beech and talk." oh night of nights! oh moon of moons! our talk was strictly business. he asked me my plot, and although i had been warned not to do so, even to david belasco, i gave it to him fully. and even now, when all is over, i am not sorry. let him use it if he will. i can think of plenty of plots. the real tradgedy is that we met father. he had been ordered to give up smoking, and i considered had done so, mother feeling that i should be encouraged in leaving off cigarettes. so when i saw the cigar i was sure it was not father. it proved to be, however, and although he passed with nothing worse than a glare, i knew i was in more trouble. at last we reached the bench again, and i said good night. our relations continued business-like to the last. he said: "good night, little authoress, and let's have some more talks." "i'm afraid i've board you," i said. "board me!" he said. "i haven't spent such an evening for years!" the familey acted perfectly absurd about it. seeing that they were going to make a fuss, i refused to say with whom i had been walking. you'd have thought i had committed a crime. "it has come to this, barbara," mother said, pacing the floor. "you cannot be trusted out of our sight. where do you meet all these men? if this is how things are now, what will it be when given your liberty?" well, it is to painful to record. i was told not to leave the place for three days, although allowed the boat-house. and of course sis had to chime in that she'd heard a roomer i had run away and got married, and although of course she knew it wasn't true, owing to no time to do so, still where there was smoke there was fire. but i felt that their confidence in me was going, and that night, after all were in the land of dreams, i took that wreched suit of clothes and so on to the boathouse, and hid them in the rafters upstairs. i come now to the strange event of the next day, and its sequel. the patten place and ours are close together, and no other house near. mother had been very cool about the pattens, owing to nobody knowing them that we knew. although i must say they had the most interesting people all the time, and sis was crazy to call and meet some of them. jane came that day to visit her aunt, and she ran down to see me first thing. "come and have a ride," she said. "i've got the runabout, and after that we'll bathe and have a real time." but i shook my head. "i'm a prisoner, jane," i said. "honestly! is it the play, or somthing else?" "somthing else, jane," i said. "i can tell you nothing more. i am simply in trouble, as usual." "but why make you a prisoner, unless----" she stopped suddenly and stared at me. "he has claimed you!" she said. "he is here, somwhere about this place, and now, having had time to think it over, you do not want to go to him. don't deny it. i see it in your face. oh, bab, my heart aches for you." it sounded so like a play that i kept it up. alas, with what results! "what else can i do, jane?" i said. "you can refuse, if you do not love him. oh bab, i did not say it before, thinking you loved him. but no man who wears clothes like those could ever win my heart. at least, not permanently." well, she did most of the talking. she had finished the bath towle, which was a large size, after all, and monogramed, and she made me promise never to let my husband use it. when she went away she left it with me, and i carried it out and put it on the rafters, with the other things--i seemed to be getting more to hide every day. things went all wrong the next day. sis was in a bad temper, and as much as said i was flirting with carter brooks, although she never intends to marry him herself, owing to his not having money and never having asked her. i spent the morning in fixing up a studio in the boat-house, and felt better by noon. i took two boards on trestles and made a desk, and brought a dictionery and some pens and ink out. i use a dictionery because now and then i am uncertain how to spell a word. events now moved swiftly and terrably. i did not do much work, being exhausted by my efforts to fix up the studio, and besides, feeling that nothing much was worth while when one's familey did not and never would understand. at eleven o'clock sis and carter and jane and some others went in bathing from our dock. jane called up to me, but i pretended not to hear. they had a good time judging by the noise, although i should think jane would cover her arms and neck in the water, being very thin. legs one can do nothing with, although i should think stripes going around would help. but arms can have sleaves. however--the people next door went in to, and i thrilled to the core when mr. beecher left the bath-house and went down to the beech. what a physic! what shoulders, all brown and muscular! and to think that, strong as they were, they wrote the tender love seens of his plays. strong and tender--what descriptive words they are! it was then that i saw he had been vacinated twice. to resume. all the pattens went in, and a new girl with them, in a one-peace suit. i do not deny that she was pretty. i only say that she was not modest, and that the way she stood on the patten's dock and pozed for mr. beecher's benafit was unecessary and well, not respectable. she was nothing to me, nor i to her. but i watched her closely. i confess that i was interested in mr. beecher. why not? he was a public character, and entitled to respect. nay, even to love. but i maintain and will to my dying day, that such love is diferent from that ordinaraly born to the other sex, and a thing to be proud of. well, i was seeing a drama and did not even know it. after the rest had gone, mr. patten came to the door into mr. beecher's room in the bath-house--they are all in a row, with doors opening on the sand--and he had a box in his hand. he looked around, and no one was looking except me, and he did not see me. he looked very feirce and glum, and shortly after he carried in a chair and a folding card table. i thought this was very strange, but imagine how i felt when he came out carrying mr. beecher's clothes! he brought them all, going on his tiptoes and watching every minute. i felt like screaming. however, i considered that it was a practicle joke, and i am no spoil sport. so i sat still and waited. they staid in the water a long time, and the girl with the figure was always crawling out on the dock and then diving in to show off. leila and the rest got sick of her actions and came in to lunch. they called up to me, but i said i was not hungry. "i don't know what's come over bab," i heard sis say to carter brooks. "she's crazy, i think." "she's seventeen," he said. "that's all. they get over it mostly, but she has it hard." i lothed him. pretty soon the other crowd came up, and i could see every one knew the joke but mr. beecher. they all scuttled into their doorways, and mr. patten waited till mr. beecher was inside and had thrown out the shirt of his bathing suit. then he locked the door from the outside. there was a silence for a minute. then mr. beecher said in a terrable voice. "so that's the game, is it?" "now listen, reg," mr. patten said, in a soothing voice. "i've tried everything but force, and now i'm driven to that. i've got to have that third act. the company's got the first two acts well under way, and i'm getting wires about every hour. i've got to have that script." "you go to hell!" said mr. beecher. you could hear him plainly through the window, high up in the wall. and although i do not approve of an oath, there are times when it eases the tortured soul. "now be reasonable, reg," mr. patten pleaded. "i've put a fortune in this thing, and you're lying down on the job. you could do it in four hours if you'd put your mind to it." there was no anser to this. and he went on: "i'll send out food or anything. but nothing to drink. there's champane on the ice for you when you've finished, however. and you'll find pens and ink and paper on the table." the anser to this was mr. beecher's full weight against the door. but it held, even against the full force of his fine physic. "even if you do break it open," mr. patten said, "you can't go very far the way you are. now be a good fellow, and let's get this thing done. it's for your good as well as mine. you'll make a fortune out of it." then he went into his own door, and soon came out, looking like a gentleman, unless one knew, as i did, that he was a whited sepulcher. how long i sat there, paralized with emotion, i do not know. hannah came out and roused me from my trance of grief. she is a kindly soul, although to afraid of mother to be helpful. "come in like a good girl, miss bab," she said. "there's that fruit salad that cook prides herself on, and i'll ask her to brown a bit of sweetbread for you." "hannah," i said in a low voice, "there is a crime being committed in this neighborhood, and you talk to me of food." "good gracious, miss bab!" "i cannot tell you any more than that, hannah," i said gently, "because it is only being done now, and i cannot make up my mind about it. but of course i do not want any food." as i say, i was perfectly gentle with her, and i do not understand why she burst into tears and went away. i sat and thought it all over. i could not leave, under the circumstances. but yet, what was i to do? it was hardly a police matter, being between friends, as one may say, and yet i simply could not bare to leave my ideal there in that damp bath-house without either food or, as one may say, raiment. about the middle of the afternoon it occurred to me to try to find a key for the lock of the bath-house. i therfore left my studio and proceded to the house. i passed close by the fatal building, but there was no sound from it. i found a number of trunk-keys in a drawer in the library, and was about to escape with them, when father came in. he gave me a long look, and said: "bee still buzzing?" i had hoped for some understanding from him, but my spirits fell at this speach. "i am still working, father," i said, in a firm if nervous tone. "i am not doing as good work as i would if things were diferent, but--i am at least content, if not happy." he stared at me, and then came over to me. "put out your tongue," he said. even against this crowning infamey i was silent. "that's all right," he said. "now see here, chicken, get into your riding togs and we'll order the horses. i don't intend to let this play-acting upset your health." but i refused. "unless, of course, you insist," i finished. he only shook his head, however, and left the room. i felt that i had lost my last friend. i did not try the keys myself, but instead stood off a short distance and through them through the window. i learned later that they struck mr. beecher on the head. not knowing, of course, that i had flung them, and that my reason was pure friendliness and idealizm, he through them out again with a violent exclamation. they fell at my feet, and lay there, useless, regected, tradgic. at last i summoned courage to speak. "can't i do somthing to help?" i said, in a quaking voice, to the window. there was no anser, but i could hear a pen scraching on paper. "i do so want to help you," i said, in a louder tone. "go, away" said his voice, rather abstracted than angry. "may i try the keys?" i asked. be still, my heart! for the scraching had ceased. "who's that?" asked the beloved voice. i say `beloved' because an ideal is always beloved. the voice was beloved, but sharp. "it's me." i heard him mutter somthing, and i think he came to the door. "look here," he said. "go away. do you understand? i want to work. and don't come near here again until seven o'clock." "very well," i said faintly. "and then come without fail," he said. "yes, mr. beecher," i replied. how commanding he was! strong but tender! "and if anyone comes around making a noise, before that, you shoot them for me, will you?" "_shoot_ them?" "drive them off, or use a bean-shooter. anything. but don't yell at them. it distracts me." it was a sacred trust. i, and only i, stood between him and his _magnum opum_. i sat down on the steps of our bath-house, and took up my vigel. it was about five o'clock when i heard jane approaching. i knew it was jane, because she always wears tight shoes, and limps when unobserved. although having the reputation of the smallest foot of any girl in our set in the city, i prefer comfort and ease, unhampered by heals--french or otherwise. no man will ever marry a girl because she wears a small shoe, and catches her heals in holes in the boardwalk, and has to soak her feet at night before she can sleep. however--- jane came on, and found me croutched on the doorstep, in a lowly attatude, and holding my finger to my lips. she stopped and stared at me. "hello," she said. "what do you think you are? a statue?" "hush, jane," i said, in a low tone. "i can only ask you to be quiet and speak in whispers. i cannot give the reason." "good heavens!" she whispered. "what has happened, bab?" "it is happening now, but i cannot explain." "_what_ is happening?" "jane," i whispered, ernestly, "you have known me a long time and i have always been trustworthy, have i not?" she nodded. she is never exactly pretty, and now she had opened her mouth and forgot to close it. "then ask no questions. trust me, as i am trusting you." it seemed to me that mr. beecher through his pen at the door, and began to pace the bath-house. owing of course to his being in his bare feet, i was not certain. jane heard somthing, to, for she clutched my arm. "bab," she said, in intence tones, "if you don't explain i shall lose my mind. i feel now that i am going to shreik." she looked at me searchingly. "sombody is a prisoner. that's all." it was the truth, was it not? and was there any reasons for jane raleigh to jump to conclusions as she did, and even to repeat later in public that i had told her that my lover had come for me, and that father had locked him up to prevent my running away with him, imuring him in the patten's bath-house? certainly not. just then i saw the boatman coming who looks after our motor boat, and i tiptoed to him and asked him to go away, and not to come back unless he had quieter boats and would not whistel. he acted very ugly about it, i must say, but he went. when i came back, jane was sitting thinking, with her forhead all puckered. "what i don't understand, bab," she said, "is, why no noise?" "because he is writing," i explained. "although his clothing has been taken away, he is writing. i don't think i told you, jane, but that is his business. he is a writer. and if i tell you his name you will faint with surprise." she looked at me searchingly. "locked up--and writing, and his clothing gone! what's he writing, bab? his will?" "he is doing his duty to the end, jane," i said softly. "he is writing the last act of a play. the company is rehearsing the first two acts, and he has to get this one ready, though the heavens fall." but to my surprise, she got up and said to me, in a firm voice: "either you are crazy, barbara archibald, or you think i am. you've been stuffing me for about a week, and i don't beleive a word of it. and you'll apologize to me or i'll never speak to you again." she said this loudly, and then went away, and mr. beecher said, through the door. "what the devil's the row about?" perhaps my nerves were going, or possably it was no luncheon and probably no dinner. but i said, just as if he had been an ordinary person: "go on and write and get through. i can't stew on these steps all day." "i thought you were an amiable child." "i'm not amiable and i'm not a child." "don't spoil your pretty face with frowns." "it's _my_ face. and you can't see it anyhow," i replied, venting in femanine fashion, my anger at jane on the nearest object. "look here," he said, through the door, "you've been my good angel. i'm doing more work than i've done in two months, although it was a dirty, low-down way to make me do it. you're not going back on me now, are you?" well, i was mollafied, as who would not be? so i said: "well?" "what did patten do with my clothes?" "he took them with him." he was silent, except for a muttered word. "you might throw those keys back again," he said. "let me know first, however. you're the most acurate thrower i've ever seen." so i through them through the window and i beleive hit the ink bottle. but no matter. and he tried them, but none availed. so he gave up, and went back to work, having saved enough ink to finish with. but a few minutes later he called to me again, and i moved to the doorstep, where i sat listening, while aparently admiring the sea. he explained that having been thus forced, he had almost finished the last act, and it was a corker. and he said if he had his clothes and some money, and a key to get out, he'd go right back to town with it and put it in rehearsle. and at the same time he would give the pattens something to worry about over night. because, play or no play, it was a rotten thing to lock a man in a bath-house and take his clothes away. "but of course i can't get my clothes," he said. "they'll take cussed good care of that. and there's the key too. we're up against it, little sister." although excited by his calling me thus, i retained my faculties, and said: "i have a suit of clothes you can have." "thanks awfully," he said. "but from the slight acquaintance we have had, i don't beleive they would fit me." "gentleman's clothes," i said fridgidly. "you have?" "in my studio," i said. "i can bring them, if you like. they look quite good, although creased." "you know" he said, after a moment's silence, "i can't quite beleive this is realy happening to me! go and bring the suit of clothes, and--you don't happen to have a cigar, i suppose,?" "i have a large box of cigarettes." "it is true," i heard him say through the door. "it is all true. i am here, locked in. the play is almost done. and a very young lady on the doorstep is offering me a suit of clothes and tobaco. i pinch myself. i am awake." alas! mingled with my joy at serving my ideal there was also greif. my idle had feet of clay. he was a slave, like the rest of us, to his body. he required clothes and tobaco. i felt that, before long, he might even ask for an apple, or something to stay the pangs of hunger. this i felt i could not bare. perhaps i would better pass over quickly the events of the next hour. i got the suit and the cigarettes, and even jane's bath towle, and through them in to him. also i beleive he took a shower, as i heard the water running, at about seven o'clock he said he had finished the play. he put on the clothes which he observed almost fitted him, although gayer than he usually wore, and said that if i would give him a hair pin he thought he could pick the lock. but he did not succeed. being now dressed, however, he drew a chair to the window and we talked together. it seemed like a dream that i should be there, on such intimate terms with a great playwright, who had just, even if under compulsion, finished a last act, i bared my very soul to him, such as about resembling julia marlowe, and no one understanding my craveing to acheive a place in the world of art. we were once interupted by hannah looking for me for dinner. but i hid in a bath-house, and she went away. what was food to me compared with such a conversation? when hannah had disappeared, he said suddenly: "it's rather unusual, isn't it, your having a suit of clothes and everything in your--er--studio?" but i did not explain fully, merely saving that it was a painful story. at half past seven i saw mother on the veranda looking for me, and i ducked out of sight, i was by this time very hungry, although i did not like to mention the fact, but mr. beecher made a suggestion, which was this: that the pattens were evadently going to let him starve until he got through work, and that he would see them in perdetion before he would be the butt for their funny remarks when they freed him. he therfore tried to escape out the window, but stuck fast, and finaly gave it up. at last he said: "look here, you're a curious child, but a nervy one. how'd you like to see if you can get the key? if you do we'll go to a hotel and have a real meal, and we can talk about your career." although quivering with terror, i consented. how could i do otherwise, with such a prospect? for now i began to see that all other emotions previously felt were as nothing to this one. i confess, without shame, that i felt the stiring of the tender passion in my breast. ah me, that it should have died ere it had hardly lived! "where is the key?" i asked, in a wrapt but anxious tone. he thought a while. "generaly," he said, "it hangs on a nail at the back entry. but the chances are that patten took it up to his room this time, for safety, you'd know it if you saw it. it has some buttons off sombody's batheing suit tied to it." here it was necessary to hide again, as father came stocking out, calling me in an angry tone. but shortly afterwards i was on my way to the patten's house, on shaking knees. it was by now twilight, that beautiful period of romanse, although the dinner hour also. through the dusk i sped, toward what? i knew not. the pattens and the one-peace lady were at dinner, and having a very good time, in spite of having locked a guest in the bath-house. being used to servants and prowling around, since at one time when younger i had a habit of taking things from the pantrey, i was quickly able to see that the key was not in the entry. i therfore went around to the front door and went in, being prepared, if discovered, to say that somone was in their bath-house and they ought to know it. but i was not heard among their sounds of revelry, and was able to proceed upstairs, which i did. but not having asked which was mr. patten's room, i was at a loss and almost discovered by a maid who was turning down the beds--much to early, also, and not allowed in the best houses until nine-thirty, since otherwise the rooms look undressed and informle. i had but time to duck into another chamber, and from there to a closet. _i remained in that closet all night_. i will explain. no sooner had the maid gone than a woman came into the room and closed the door. i heard her moving around and i suddenly felt that she was going to bed, and might get her _robe de nuit_ out of the closet. i was petrafied. but it seems, while she really _was_ undressing at that early hour, the maid had laid her night clothes out, and i was saved. very soon a knock came to the door, and somhody came in, like mrs. patten's voice and said: "you're not going to bed, surely!" "i'm going to pretend to have a sick headache," said the other person, and i knew it was the one-peace lady. "he's going to come back in a frenzey, and he'll take it out on me, unless i'm prepared." "poor reggie!" said mrs. patten, "to think of him locked in there alone, and no clothes or anything. it's too funny for words." "you're not married to him." my heart stopped beating. was _she_ married to him? she was indeed. my dream was over. and the worst part of it was that for a married man i had done without food or exercise and now stood in a hot closet in danger of a terrable fuss. "no, thank heaven!" said mrs. patten. "but it was the only way to make him work. he is a lazy dog. but don't worry. we'll feed him before he sees you. he's always rather tractible after he's fed." were _all_ my dreams to go? would they leave nothing to my shattered ilusions? alas, no. "jolly him a little, to," said----can i write it?--mrs. beecher. "tell him he's the greatest thing in the world. that will help some. he's vain, you know, awfully vain. i expect he's written a lot of piffle." had they listened they would have heard a low, dry sob, wrung from my tortured heart. but mrs. beecher had started a vibrater, and my anguished cry was lost. "well," said mrs. patten, "will has gone down to let him out, i expect he'll attack him. he's got a vile temper. i'll sit with you till he comes back, if you don't mind. i'm feeling nervous." it was indeed painful to recall the next half hour. i must tell the truth however. they discussed us, especialy mother, who had not called. they said that we thought we were the whole summer colony, although every one was afraid of mother's tongue, and nobody would marry leila, except carter brooks, and he was poor and no prospects. and that i was an incorrigable, and carried on somthing gastly, and was going to be put in a convent. i became justly furious and was about to step out and tell them a few plain facts, when sombody hammered at the door and then came in. it was mr. patten. "he's gone!" he said. "well, he won't go far, in bathing trunks," said mrs. beecher. "that's just it. his bathing trunks are there." "well, he won't go far _without_ them!" "he's gone so far i can't locate him." i heard mrs. beecher get up. "are you in ernest, will?" she said. "do you mean that he has gone without a stich of clothes, and can't be found?" mrs. patten gave a sort of screach. "you don't think--oh will, he's so tempermental. you don't think he's drowned himself?" "no such luck," said mrs. beecher, in a cold tone. i hated her for it. true, he had decieved me. he was not as i had thought him. in our to conversations he had not mentioned his wife, leaveing me to beleive him free to love "where he listed," as the poet says. "there are a few clues," said mr. patten. "he got out by means of a wire hairpin, for one thing. and he took the manuscript with him, which he'd hardly have done if he meant to drown himself. or even if, as we fear, he had no pockets. he has smoked a lot of cigarettes out of a candy box, which i did not supply him, and he left behind a bath towle that does not, i think, belong to us." "i should think he would have worn it," said mrs. beecher, in a scornfull tone. "here's the bath towle," mr. patten went on. "you may recognize the initials. i don't." "b. p. a.," said mrs. beecher. "look here, don't they call that--that fliberty-gibbet next door `barbara'?" "the little devil!" said mr. patten, in a raging tone. "she let him out, and of course he's done no work on the play or anything. i'd like to choke her." nobody spoke then, and my heart beat fast and hard. i leave it to anybody, how they'd like to be shut in a closet and threatened with a violent death from without. would or would they not ever be the same person afterwards? "i'll tell you what i'd do," said the beecher woman. "i'd climb up the back of father, next door, and tell him what his little daughter has done, because i know she's mixed up in it, towle or no towle. reg is always sappy when they're seventeen. and she's been looking moon-eyed at him for days." well, the pattens went away, and mrs. beecher manacured her nails,--i could hear her fileing them--and sang around and was not much concerned, although for all she knew he was in the briney deep, a corpse. how true it is that "the paths of glory lead but to the grave." i got very tired and much hoter, and i sat down on the floor. after what seemed like hours, mrs. patten came back, all breathless, and she said: "the girl's gone to, clare." "what girl?" "next door. if you want excitement, they've got it. the mother is in hysterics and there's a party searching the beech for her body, the truth is, of course, if that towle means anything" "that reg has run away with her, of course," said mrs. beecher, in a resined tone. "i wish he would grow up and learn somthing. he's becoming a nusance. and when there are so many interesting people to run away with, to choose that chit!" yes, she said that, and in my retreat i could but sit and listen, and of course perspire, which i did freely. mrs. patten went away, after talking about the "scandle" for some time. and i sat and thought of the beech being searched for my body, a thought which filled my eyes with tears of pity for what might have been, i still hoped mrs. beecher would go to bed, but she did not. through the key hole i could see her with a book, reading, and not caring at all that mr. beecher's body, and mine to, might be washing about in the cruel sea, or have eloped to new york. i lothed her. at last i must have slept, for a bell rang, and there i was still in the closet, and she was ansering it. "arrested?" she said, "well, i should think he'd better be, if what you say about clothing is true.... well, then--what's he arrested for?... oh, kidnaping! well, if i'm any judge, they ought to arrest the archibald girl for kidnaping _him_. no, don't bother me with it tonight. i'll try to read myself to sleep." so this was marriage! did she flee to her unjustly acused husband's side and comfort him? not she. she went to bed. at daylight, being about smotherd, i opened the closet door and drew a breath of fresh air. also i looked at her, and she was asleep, with her hair in patent wavers. ye gods! the wife of reginald beecher thus to distort her looks at night! i could not bare it. i averted my eyes, and on my tiptoes made for the window. my sufferings were over. in a short time i had slid down and was making my way through the dewey morn toward my home. before the sun was up, or more than starting, i had climbed to my casement by means of a wire trellis, and put on my _robe de nuit_. but before i settled to sleep i went to the pantrey and there satisfied the pangs of nothing since breakfast the day before. all the lights seemed to be on, on the lower floor, which i considered wastful of tanney, the butler. but being sleepy, gave it no further thought. and so to bed, as the great english dairy-keeper, pepys, had said in his dairy. it seemed but a few moments later that i heard a scream, and opening my eyes, saw leila in the doorway. she screamed again, and mother came and stood beside her. although very drowsy, i saw that they still wore their dinner clothes. they stared as if transfixed, and then mother gave a low moan, and said to sis: "that unfortunate man has been in jail all night." and sis said: "jane raleigh is crazy. that's all." then they looked at me, and mother burst into tears. but sis said: "you little imp! don't tell me you've been in that bed all night. _i know better_." i closed my eyes. they were not of the understanding sort, and never would be. "if that's the way you feel i shall tell you nothing," i said wearily. "_where have you been_?" mother said, in a slow and dreadful voice. well, i saw then that a part of the truth must be disclosed, especialy since she has for some time considered sending me to a convent, although without cause, and has not done so for fear of my taking the veil. so i told her this. i said: "i spent the night shut in a clothes closet, but where is not my secret. i cannot tell you." "barbara! you _must_ tell me." "it is not my secret alone, mother." she caught at the foot of the bed. "who was shut with you in that closet?" she demanded in a shaking voice. "barbara, there is another wreched man in all this. it could not have been mr. beecher, because he has been in the station house all night." i sat up, leaning on one elbow, and looked at her ernestly. "mother" i said, "you have done enough damage, interfering with careers--not only mine, but another's imperiled now by not haveing a last act. i can tell you no more, except"--here my voice took on a deep and intence fiber--"that i have done nothing to be ashamed of, although unconventional." mother put her hands to her face, and emited a low, despairing cry. "come," leila said to her, as to a troubled child. "come, and hannah can use the vibrater on your spine." so she went, but before she left she said: "barbara, if you will only promise to be a good girl, and give us a chance to live this scandle down, i will give you anything you ask for." "mother!" sis said, in an angry tone. "what can i do, leila?" mother said. "the girl is atractive, and probably men will always be following her and making trouble. think of last winter. i know it is bribery, but it is better than scandle." "i want nothing, mother," i said, in a low, heartstricken tone, "save to be allowed to live my own life and to have a career." "my heavens," mother said, "if i hear that word again, i'll go crazy." so she went away, and sis came over and looked down at me. "well!" she said. "what's happened anyhow? of course you've been up to some mischeif, but i don't suppose anybody will ever know the truth of it. i was hopeing you'd make it this time and get married, and stop worrying us." "go away, please, and let me sleep," i said. "as to getting married, under no circumstances did i expect to marry him. he has a wife already. personally, i think she's a totle loss. she wears patent wavers at night, and sleeps with her mouth open. but who am i to interfere with the marriage bond? i never have and never will." but sis only gave me a wild look and went away. this, dear readers and schoolmates, is the true story of my meeting with and parting from reginald beecher, the playwright. whatever the papers may say, it is not true, except the fact that he was recognized by jane raleigh, who knew the suit he wore, when in the act of pawning his ring to get money to escape from his captors (_i. e._, the pattens) with. it was the necktie which struck her first, and also his gilty expression. as i was missing by that time, jane put two and two together and made an elopement. sometimes i sit and think things over, my fingers wandering "over the ivory keys" of the typewriter they gave me to promise not to elope with anybody--although such a thing is far from my mind--and the world seems a cruel and unjust place, especialy to those with ambition. for reginald beecher is no longer my ideal, my night of the pen. i will tell about that in a few words. jane raleigh and i went to a matinee late in september before returning to our institutions of learning. jane cluched my arm as we looked at our programs and pointed to something. how my heart beat! for whatever had come between us, i was still loyal to him. this was a new play by him! "ah," my heart seemed to say, "now again you will hear his dear words, although spoken by alien mouths. the love seens----" i could not finish. although married and forever beyond me, i could still hear his manly tones as issueing from the door of the bath-house. i thrilled with excitement. as the curtain rose i closed my eyes in ecstacy. "bab!" jane said, in a quavering tone. i looked. what did i see? the bath-house itself, the very one. and as i stared i saw a girl, wearing her hair as i wear mine, cross the stage with a bunch of keys in her hand, and say to the bath-house door. "can't i do somthing to help? i do so want to help you." _my very words_. and a voice from beyond the bath-house door said: "who's that?" _his words_. i could bare no more. heedless of jane's protests and anguish, i got up and went out, into the light of day. my body was bent with misry. because at last i knew that, like mother and all the rest, _he to did not understand me, and never would_. to him i was but material, the stuff that plays are made of! _and now we know that he never could know_, _and did not understand_. _kipling._ ignoring jane's observation that the tickets had cost two dollars each, i gathered up the scattered skeins of my life together, and fled. chapter iii her diary: being the daily journal of the sub-deb january 1st. i have today recieved this dairy from home, having come back a few days early to make up a french condition. weather, clear and cold. new year's dinner. roast chicken (turkey being very expencive), mashed turnips, sweet potatos and minse pie. it is my intention to record in this book the details of my daily life, my thoughts which are to sacred for utterence, and my ambitions. because who is there to whom i can speak them? i am surounded by those who exist for the mere pleasures of the day, or whose lives are bound up in resitations. for instance, at dinner today, being mostly faculty and a few girls who live in the far west, the conversation was entirely on buying a phonograph for dancing because the music teacher has the meazles and is quarentined in the infirmery. and on miss everett's couzin, who has written a play. when one looks at miss everett, one recognises that no couzin of hers could write a play. new year's resolution--to help some one every day. today helped mademoiselle to put on her rubers. january 2nd. today i wrote my french theme, beginning, "les hommes songent moins a leur _ame qu a_ leur _corps_. mademoiselle sent for me and objected, saying that it was not a theme for a young girl, and that i must write a new one, on the subject of pears. how is one to develope in this atmosphere? some of the girls are coming back. they stragle in, and put the favers they got at cotillions on the dresser, and their holaday gifts, and each one relates some amorus experience while at home. dear dairy, is there somthing wrong with me, that love has passed me by? i have had offers of devotion but none that apealed to me, being mostly either to young or not atracting me by physicle charm. i am not cold, although frequently acused of it, beneath my fridgid exterior beats a warm heart. i intend to be honest in this dairy, and so i admit it. but, except for passing fansies--one being, alas, for a married man--i remain without the divine passion. what must it be to thrill at the aproach of the loved form? to harken to each ring of the telephone bell, in the hope that, if it is not the idolised voice, it is at least a message from it? to waken in the morning and, looking around the familiar room, to muze: "today i may see him--on the way to the post office, or rushing past in his racing car." and to know that at the same moment _he_ to is muzing: "today i may see her, as she exercises herself at basket ball, or mounts her horse for a daily canter!" although i have no horse. the school does not care for them, considering walking the best exercise. have flunked the french again, mademoiselle not feeling well, and marking off for the smallest thing. today's helpfull deed--asisted one of the younger girls with her spelling. january 4th. miss everett's couzin's play is coming here. the school is to have free tickets, as they are "trying it on the dog." which means seeing if it is good enough for the large cities. we have desided, if everett marks us well in english from now on, to aplaud it, but if she is unpleasent, to sit still and show no interest. january 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th. bad weather, which is depressing to one of my temperment. also boil on noze. a few helpfull deeds--nothing worth putting down. january 9th. boil cut. again i can face my image in my mirror, and not shrink. mademoiselle is sick and no french. _misericorde_! helpfull deed--sent mademoiselle some fudge, but this school does not encourage kindness. reprimanded for cooking in room. school sympathises with me. we will go to miss everett's couzin's play, but we will dam it with faint praise. january 10th. i have written this date, and now i sit back and regard it. as it is impressed on this white paper, so, dear dairy, is it written on my soul. to others it may be but the tenth of january. to me it is the day of days. oh, tenth of january! oh, monday. oh, day of my awakning! it is now late at night, and around me my schoolmates are sleeping the sleep of the young and heart free. lights being off, i am writing by the faint luminocity of a candle. propped up in bed, my mackinaw coat over my _robe de nuit_ for warmth, i sit and dream. and as i dream i still hear in my ears his final words: "my darling. my woman!" how wonderfull to have them said to one night after night, the while being in his embrase, his tender arms around one! i refer to the heroine in the play, to whom he says the above raptureous words. coming home from the theater tonight, still dazed with the revelation of what i am capable of, once aroused, i asked miss everett if her couzin had said anything about mr. egleston being in love with the leading character. she observed: "no. but he may be. she is very pretty." "possably," i remarked. "but i should like to see her in the morning, when she gets up." all the girls were perfectly mad about mr. egleston, although pretending merely to admire his art. but i am being honest, as i agreed at the start, and now i know, as i sit here with the soft, although chilly breeses of the night blowing on my hot brow, now i know that this thing that has come to me is love. morover, it is the love of my life. he will never know it, but i am his. he is exactly my ideal, strong and tall and passionate. and clever, to. he said some awfuly clever things. i beleive that he saw me. he looked in my direction. but what does it matter? i am small, insignifacant. he probably thinks me a mere child, although seventeen. what matters, oh dairy, is that i am at last in love. it is hopeless. just now, when i had written that word, i buried my face in my hands. there is no hope. none. i shall never see him again. he passed out of my life on the 11:45 train. but i love him. _mon dieu_, how i love him! january 11th. we are going home. _we are going home_. we are going home. we are going home! mademoiselle has the meazles. january 13th. the familey managed to restrain its ecstacy on seeing me today. the house is full of people, as they are having a dinner-dance tonight. sis had moved into my room, to let one of the visitors have hers, and she acted in a very unfilial manner when she came home and found me in it. "well!" she said. "expelled at last?" "not at all," i replied in a lofty manner. "i am here through no fault of my own. and i'd thank you to have hannah take your clothes off my bed." she gave me a bitter glanse. "i never knew it to fail!" she said. "just as everything is fixed, and we're recovering from you're being here for the holadays, you come back and stir up a lot of trouble. what brought you, anyhow?" "meazles." she snached up her ball gown. "very well," she said. "i'll see that you're quarentined, miss barbara, all right. and if you think you're going to slip downstairs tonight after dinner and _worm_ yourself into this party, i'll show you." she flounsed out, and shortly afterwards mother took a minute from the florest, and came upstairs. "i do hope you are not going to be troublesome, barbara," she said. "you are too young to understand, but i want everything to go well tonight, and leila ought not to be worried." "can't i dance a little?" "you can sit on the stairs and watch." she looked fidgity. "i--i'll send up a nice dinner, and you can put on your dark blue, with a fresh collar, and--it ought to satisfy you, barbara, that you are at home and posibly have brought the meazles with you, without making a lot of fuss. when you come out----" "oh, very well," i murmured, in a resined tone. "i don't care enough about it to want to dance with a lot of souses anyhow." "barbara!" said mother. "i suppose you have some one on the string for her," i said, with the _abandon_ of my thwarted hopes. "well, i hope she gets him. because if not i darsay i shall be kept in the cradle for years to come." "you will come out when vou reach a proper age," she said, "if your impertanence does not kill me off before my time." dear dairy, i am fond of my mother, and i felt repentent and stricken. so i became more agreable, although feeling all the time that she does not and never will understand my temperment. i said: "i don't care about society, and you know it, mother. if you'll keep leila out of this room, which isn't much but is my castle while here, i'll probably go to bed early." "barbara, sometimes i think you have no afection for your sister." i had agreed to honesty january first, so i replied. "i have, of course, mother. but i am fonder of her while at school than at home. and i should be a better sister if not condemed to her old things, including hats which do not suit my tipe." mother moved over magestically to the door and shut it. then she came and stood over me. "i've come to the conclusion, barbara," she said, "to appeal to your better nature. do you wish leila to be married and happy?" "i've just said, mother----" "because a very interesting thing is happening," said mother, trying to look playfull. "i--a chance any girl would jump at." so here i sit, dear dairy, while there are sounds of revelery below, and sis jumps at her chance, which is the honorable page beres ford, who is an englishman visiting here because he has a weak heart and can't fight. and father is away on business, and i am all alone. i have been looking for a rash, but no luck. ah me, how the strains of the orkestra recall that magic night in the theater when adrian egleston looked down into my eyes and although ostensably to an actress, said to my beating heart: "my darling! my woman!" 3 a. m. i wonder if i can controll my hands to write. in mother's room across the hall i can hear furious voices, and i know that leila is begging to have me sent to switzerland. let her beg. switzerland is not far from england, and in england--- here i pause to reflect a moment. how is this thing possible? can i love to members of the other sex? and if such is the case, how can i go on with my life? better far to end it now, than to perchance marry one, and find the other still in my heart. the terrable thought has come to me that i am fickel. fickel or polygamus--which? dear dairy, i have not been a good girl. my new year's resolutions have gone to airey nothing. the way they went was this: i had settled down to a quiet evening, spent with his beloved picture which i had clipped from a newspaper. (adrian's. i had not as yet met the other.) and, as i sat in my chamber, i grew more and more desolate. i love life, although pessamistic at times. and it seemed hard that i should be there, in exile, while my sister, only 2o months older, was jumping at her chance below. at last i decided to try on one of sis's frocks and see how i looked in it. i though, if it looked all right, i might hang over the stairs and see what i then scornfully termed "his nibs." never again shall i so call him. i got an evening gown from sis's closet, and it fitted me quite well, although tight at the waste for me, owing to basket ball. it was also to low, so that when i had got it all hooked about four inches of my _lingerie_ showed. as it had been hard as anything to hook, i was obliged to take the scizzors and cut off the said _lingerie_. the result was good, although very _decollte_. i have no bones in my neck, or practicaly so. and now came my moment of temptation. how easy to put my hair up on my head, and then, by the servant's staircase, make my way to the seen below! i, however, considered that i looked pale, although mature. i looked at least nineteen. so i went into sis's room, which was full of evening wraps but emty, and put on a touch of rouge. with that and my eyebrows blackend, i would not have known myself, had i not been certain it was i and no other. i then made my way down the back stairs. ah me, dear dairy, was that but a few hours ago? is it but a short time since mr. beresford was sitting at my feet, thinking me a _debutante_, and staring soulfully into my very heart? is it but a matter of minutes since leila found us there, and in a manner which revealed the true feeling she has for me, ordered me to go upstairs and take off maidie mackenzie's gown? (yes, it was not leila's after all. i had forgotten that maidie had taken her room. and except for pulling it somewhat at the waste, i am sure i did not hurt the old thing.) i shall now go to bed and dream. of which one i know not. my heart is full. romanse has come at last into my dull and dreary life. below, the revelers have gone. the flowers hang their herbacious heads. the music has flowed away into the river of the past. i am alone with my heart. january 14th. how complacated my life grows, dear dairy! how full and yet how incomplete! how everything begins and nothing ends! _he_ is in town. i discovered it at breakfast. i knew i was in for it, and i got down early, counting on mother breakfasting in bed. i would have felt better if father had been at home, because he understands somwhat the way they keep me down. but he was away about an order for shells (not sea; war), and i was to bear my chiding alone. i had eaten my fruit and serial, and was about to begin on sausage, when mother came in, having risen early from her slumbers to take the decorations to the hospital. "so here you are, wreched child!" she said, giving me one of her coldest looks. "barbara, i wonder if you ever think whither you are tending." i ate a sausage. what, dear dairy, was there to say? "to disobey!" she went on. "to force yourself on the atention of mr. beresford, in a borowed dress, with your eyelashes blackend and your face painted----" "i should think, mother," i observed, "that if he wants to marry into this family, and is not merely being dragged into it, that he ought to see the worst at the start." she glired, without speaking. "you know," i continued, "it would be a dreadfull thing to have the ceramony performed and everything to late to back out, and then have _me_ sprung on him. it wouldn't be honest, would it?" "barbara!" she said in a terrable tone. "first disobedience, and now sarcasm. if your father was only here! i feel so alone and helpless." her tone cut me to the heart. after all she was my own mother, or at least maintained so, in spite of numerous questions enjendered by our lack of resemblence, moral as well as physicle. but i did not offer to embrase her, as she was at that moment poring out her tea. i hid my misery behind the morning paper, and there i beheld the fated vision. had i felt any doubt as to the state of my afections it was settled then. my heart leaped in my bosom. my face sufused. my hands trembled so that a piece of sausage slipped from my fork. _his picture looked out at me with that well remembered gaze from the depths of the morning paper_. oh, adrian, adrian! here in the same city as i, looking out over perchance the same newspaper to perchance the same sun, wondering--ah, what was he wondering? i was not even then, in that first rapture, foolish about him. i knew that to him i was probably but a tender memory. i knew, to, that he was but human and probably very concieted. on the other hand, i pride myself on being a good judge of character, and he carried nobility in every linament. even the obliteration of one eye by the printer could only hamper but not destroy his dear face. "barbara," mother said sharply. "i am speaking. are you being sulkey?" "pardon me, mother," i said in my gentlest tones. "i was but dreaming." and as she made no reply, but rang the bell visciously, i went on, pursuing my line of thought. "mother, were you ever in love?" "love! what sort of love?" i sat up and stared at her. "is there more than one sort?" i demanded. "there is a very silly, schoolgirl love," she said, eyeing me, "that people outgrow and blush to look back on." "do you?" "do i what?" "do you blush to look back on it?" mother rose and made a sweeping gesture with her right arm. "i wash my hands of you!" she said. "you are impertanent and indelacate. at your age i was an inocent child, not troubleing with things that did not concern me. as for love, i had never heard of it until i came out." "life must have burst on you like an explosion," i observed. "i suppose you thought that babies----" "silense!" mother shreiked. and seeing that she persisted in ignoring the real things of life while in my presence, i went out, cluching the precious paper to my heart. january 15th. i am alone in my _boudoir_ (which is realy the old schoolroom, and used now for a sowing room). my very soul is sick, oh dairy. how can i face the truth? how write it out for my eyes to see? but i must. for _something must be done_. the play is failing. the way i discovered it was this. yesterday, being short of money, i sold my amethist pin to jane, one of the housemaids, for two dollars, throwing in a lace coller when she seemed doubtful, as i had a special purpose for useing funds. had father been at home i could have touched him, but mother is diferent. i then went out to buy a frame for his picture, which i had repaired by drawing in the other eye, although licking the fire and passionate look of the originle. at the shop i was compeled to show it, to buy a frame to fit. the clerk was almost overpowered. "do you know him?" she asked, in a low and throbing tone. "not intimitely," i replied. "don't you love the play?" she said. "i'm crazy about it. i've been back three times. parts of it i know off by heart. he's very handsome. that picture don't do him justise." i gave her a searching glanse. was it posible that, without any acquaintance with him whatever, she had fallen in love with him? it was indeed. she showed it in every line of her silly face. i drew myself up hautily. "i should think it would be very expencive, going so often," i said, in a cool tone. "not so very. you see, the play is a failure, and they give us girls tickets to dress the house. fill it up, you know. half the girls in the store are crazy about mr. egleston." my world shuddered about me. what--fail! that beautiful play, ending "my darling, my woman"? it could not be. fate would not be cruel. was there no apreciation of the best in art? was it indeed true, as miss everett has complained, although not in these exact words, that the theater was only supported now by chorus girls' legs, dancing about in uter _abandon_? with an expression of despair on my features, i left the store, carrying the frame under my arm. one thing is certain. i must see the play again, and judge it with a criticle eye. _if it is worth saving, it must be saved_. january 16th. is it only a day since i saw you, dear dairy? can so much have happened in the single lapse of a few hours? i look in my mirror, and i look much as before, only with perhaps a touch of paller. who would not be pale? i have seen _him_ again, and there is no longer any doubt in my heart. page beresford is atractive, and if it were not for circumstances as they are i would not anser for the consequences. but things _are_ as they are. there is no changing that. and i have reid my own heart. i am not fickel. on the contrary, i am true as steal. i have put his picture under my mattress, and have given jane my gold cuff pins to say nothing when she makes my bed. and now, with the house full of people downstairs acting in a flippent and noisy maner, i shall record how it all happened. my finantial condition was not improved this morning, father having not returned. but i knew that i must see the play, as mentioned above, even if it became necesary to borow from hannah. at last, seeing no other way, i tried this, but failed. "what for?" she said, in a suspicous way." "i need it terrably, hannah," i said. "you'd ought to get it from your mother, then, miss barbara. the last time i gave you some you paid it back in postage stamps, and i haven't written a letter since. they're all stuck together now, and a totle loss." "very well," i said, fridgidly. "but the next time you break anything----" "how much do you want?" she asked. i took a quick look at her, and i saw at once that she had desided to lend it to me and then run and tell mother, beginning, "i think you'd ought to know, mrs. archibald----" "nothing doing, hannah," i said, in a most dignafied manner. "but i think you are an old clam, and i don't mind saying so." i was now thrown on my own resourses, and very bitter. i seemed to have no friends, at a time when i needed them most, when i was, as one may say, "standing with reluctent feet, where the brook and river meet." tonight i am no longer sick of life, as i was then. my throws of anguish have departed. but i was then uterly reckless, and even considered running away and going on the stage myself. i have long desired a career for mvself, anyhow. i have a good mind, and learn easily, and i am not a paracite. the idea of being such has always been repugnent to me, while the idea of a few dollars at a time doaled out to one of independant mind is galling. and how is one to remember what one has done with one's allowence, when it is mostly eaten up by small lones, carfare, stamps, church collection, rose water and glicerine, and other mild cosmetics, and the aditional food necesary when one is still growing? to resume, dear dairy; having uterly failed with hannah, and having shortly after met sis on the stairs, i said to her, in a sisterly tone, intimite rather than fond: "i darsay you can lend me five dollars for a day or so." "i darsay i can. but i won't," was her cruel reply. "oh, very well," i said breifly. but i could not refrain from making a grimase at her back, and she saw me in a mirror. "when i think," she said heartlessly, "that that wreched school may be closed for weeks, i could scream." "well, scream!" i replied. "you'll scream harder if i've brought the meazles home on me. and if you're laid up, you can say good-bye to the dishonorable. you've got him tide, maybe," i remarked, "but not thrown as yet." (a remark i had learned from one of the girls, trudie mills, who comes from montana.) i was therfore compeled to dispose of my silver napkin ring from school. jane was bought up, she said, and i sold it to the cook for fifty cents and half a minse pie although baked with our own materials. all my fate, therfore, hung on a paltrey fifty cents. i was torn with anxiety. was it enough? could i, for fifty cents, steel away from the sordid cares of life, and lose myself in obliviousness, gazing only it his dear face, listening to his dear and softly modulited voice, and wondering if, as his eyes swept the audiance, they might perchance light on me and brighten with a momentary gleam in their unfathomable depths? only this and nothing more, was my expectation. how diferent was the reality! having ascertained that there was a matinee, i departed at an early hour after luncheon, wearing my blue velvet with my fox furs. white gloves and white topped shoes completed my outfit, and, my own _chapeau_ showing the effect of a rainstorm on the way home from church while away at school, i took a chance on one of sis's, a perfectly madening one of rose-colored velvet. as the pink made me look pale, i added a touch of rouge. i looked fully out, and indeed almost second season. i have a way of assuming a serious and mature manner, so that i am frequently taken for older than i realy am. then, taking a few roses left from the decorations, and thrusting them carelessly into the belt of my coat, i went out the back door, as sis was getting ready for some girls to bridge, in the front of the house. had i felt any greif at decieving my familey, the bridge party would have knocked them. for, as usual, i had not been asked, although playing a good game myself, and having on more than one occasion won most of the money in the upper house at school. i was early at the theater. no one was there, and women were going around taking covers off the seats. my fifty cents gave me a good seat, from which i opined, alas, that the shop girl had been right and busness was rotten. but at last, after hours of waiting, the faint tuning of musicle instruments was heard. from that time i lived in a daze. i have never before felt so strange. i have known and respected the other sex, and indeed once or twise been kissed by it. but i had remained cold. my pulses had never flutered. i was always conserned only with the fear that others had overseen and would perhaps tell. but now--i did not care who would see, if only adrian would put his arms about me. divine shamlessness! brave rapture! for if one who he could not possably love, being so close to her in her make-up, if one who was indeed employed to be made love to, could submit in public to his embrases, why should not i, who would have died for him? these were my thoughts as the play went on. the hours flew on joyous feet. when adrian came to the footlights and looking aparently square at me, declaimed: "the world owes me a living. i will have it," i almost swooned. his clothes were worn. he looked hungry and ghaunt. but how true that "rags are royal raimant, when worn for virtue's sake." (i shall stop here and go down to the pantrey. i could eat no dinner, being filled with emotion. but i must keep strong if i am to help adrian in his trouble. the minse pie was excelent, but after all pastrey does not take the place of solid food.) later: i shall now go on with my recitle. as the theater was almost emty, at the end of act one i put on the pink hat and left it on as though absent-minded. there was no one behind me. and, although during act one i had thought that he perhaps felt my presense, he had not once looked directly at me. but the hat captured his erant gaze, as one may say. and, after capture, it remained on my face, so much so that i flushed and a woman. sitting near with a very plain girl in a skunk coller, observed: "realy, it is outragous." now came a moment which i thrill even to recolect. for adrian plucked a pink rose from a vase--he was in the milionaire' s house, and was starving in the midst of luxury--and held it to his lips. the rose, not the house, of course. looking over it, he smiled down at me. later: it is midnight. i cannot sleep. perchanse he to is lieing awake. i am sitting at the window in my _robe de nuit_. below, mother and sis have just come in, and smith has slamed the door of the car and gone back to the _garage_. how puney is the life my familey leads! nothing but eating and playing, with no higher thoughts. a man has just gone by. for a moment i thought i recognised the footstep. but no, it was but the night watchman. january 17th. father still away. no money, as mother absolutely refuses on account of maidie mackenzie's gown, which she had to send away to be repaired. january 18th. father still away. the hon. sent sis a huge bunch of orkids today. she refused me even one. she is always tight with flowers and candy. january 19th. the paper says that adrian's play is going to close the end of next week. no busness. how can i endure to know that he is sufering, and that i cannot help, even to the extent of buying one ticket? matinee today, and no money. father still away. i have tried to do a kind deed today, feeling that perhaps it would soften mother's heart and she would advance my allowence. i offered to manacure her nails for her, but she refused, saying that as hannah had done it for many years, she guessed she could manage now. january 2oth. today i did a desparate thing, dear dairy. "the desparatest is the wisest course." butler. it is sunday. i went to church, and thought things over. what a wonderfull thing it would be if i could save the play! why should i feel that my sex is a handycap? the recter preached on "the opportunaties of women." the sermon gave me courage to go on. when he said, "women today step in where men are afraid to tred, and bring success out of failure," i felt that it was meant for me. had no money for the plate, and mother atempted to smugle a half dollar to me. i refused, however, as if i cannot give my own money to the heathen, i will give none. mother turned pale, and the man with the plate gave me a black look. what can he know of my reasons? beresford lunched with us, and as i discouraged him entirely, he was very atentive to sis. mother is planing a big wedding, and i found sis in the store room yesterday looking up mother's wedding veil. no old stuff for me. i guess beresford is trying to forget that he kissed my hand the other night, for he called me "little miss barbara" today, meaning little in the sense of young. i gave him a stern glanse. "i am not any littler than the other night," i observed. "that was merely an afectionate diminutive," he said, looking uncomfortable. "if you don't mind," i said coldly, "you might do as you have hertofore--reserve vour afectionate advances until we are alone." "barbara!" mother said. and began quickly to talk about a lady somthing or other we'd met on a train in switzerland. because--they can talk until they are black in the face, dear dairy, but it is true we do not know any of the british nobilaty, except the aforementioned and the man who comes once a year with flavering extracts, who says he is the third son of a barronet. every one being out this afternoon, i suddenly had an inspiration, and sent for carter brooks. i then put my hair up and put on my blue silk, because while i do not beleive in woman using her femanine charm when talking busness, i do beleive that she should look her best under any and all circumstances. he was rather surprized not to find sis in, as i had used her name in telephoning. "i did it," i explained, "because i knew that you felt no interest in me, and i had to see you." he looked at me, and said: "i'm rather flabergasted, bab. i--what ought i to say, anyhow?" he came very close, dear dairy, and sudenly i saw in his eyes the horible truth. he thought me in love with him, and sending for him while the familey was out. words cannot paint my agony of soul. i stepped back, but he siezed my hand, in a caresing gesture. "bab!" he said. "dear little bab!" had my afections not been otherwise engaged, i should have thriled at his accents. but, although handsome and of good familey, although poor, i could not see it that way. so i drew my hand away, and retreated behind a sofa. "we must have an understanding, carter" i said. "i have sent for you, but not for the reason you seem to think. i am in desparate trouble." he looked dumfounded. "trouble!" he said. "you! why, little bab" "if you don't mind," i put in, rather petishly, because of not being little, "i wish you would treat me like almost a _debutante_, if not entirely. i am not a child in arms." "you are sweet enough to be, if the arms might be mine." i have puzled over this, since, dear dairy. because there must be some reason why men fall in love with me. i am not ugly, but i am not beautifull, my noze being too short. and as for clothes, i get none except leila's old things. but jane raleigh says there are women like that. she has a couzin who has had four husbands and is beginning on a fifth, although not pretty and very slovenly, but with a mass of red hair. are all men to be my lovers? "carter," i said earnestly, "i must tell you now that i do not care for you--in that way." "what made you send for me, then?" "good gracious!" i exclaimed, losing my temper somwhat. "i can send for the ice man without his thinking i'm crazy about him, can't i?" "thanks." "the truth is," i said, sitting down and motioning him to a seat in my maturest manner, "i--i want some money. there are many things, but the money comes first." he just sat and looked at me with his mouth open. "well," he said at last, "of course--i suppose you know you've come to a bank that's gone into the hands of a reciever. but aside from that, bab, it's a pretty mean trick to send for me and let me think--well, no matter about that. how much do you want?" "i can pay it back as soon as father comes home," i said, to releive his mind. it is against my principals to borow money, especialy from one who has little or none. but since i was doing it, i felt i might as well ask for a lot. "could you let me have ten dollars?" i said, in a faint tone. he drew a long breath. "well, i guess yes," he observed. "i thought you were going to touch me for a hundred, anyhow. i--i suppose you wouldn't give me a kiss and call it square." i considered. because after all, a kiss is not much, and ten dollars is a good deal. but at last my better nature won out. "certainly not," i said coldly. "and if there is a string to it i do not want it." so he apologised, and came and sat beside me, without being a nusance, and asked me what my other troubles were. "carter" i said, in a grave voice, "i know that you beleive me young and incapable of afection. but you are wrong. i am of a most loving disposition." "now see here, bab," he said. "be fair. if i am not to hold your hand, or--or be what you call a nusance, don't talk like this. i am but human," he said, "and there is somthing about you lately that--well, go on with your story. only, as i say, don't try me to far." "it's like this," i explained. "girls think they are cold and distant, and indeed, frequently are" "frequently!" "until they meet the right one. then they learn that their hearts are, as you say, but human." "bab," he said, sudenly turning and facing me, "an awfull thought has come to me. you are in love--and not with me!" "i am in love, and not with you," i said in tradgic tones. i had not thought he would feel it deeply--because of having been interested in leila since they went out in their perambulaters together. but i could see it was a shock to him. he got up and stood looking in the fire, and his shoulders shook with greif. "so i have lost you," he said in a smothered voice. and then--"who is the sneaking schoundrel?" i forgave him this, because of his being upset, and in a rapt attatude i told him the whole story. he listened, as one in a daze. "but i gather," he said, when at last the recitle was over, "that you have never met the--met him." "not in the ordinery use of the word," i remarked. "but then it is not an ordinery situation. we have met and we have not. our eyes have spoken, if not our vocal chords." seeing his eyes on me i added, "if you do not beleive that soul can cry unto soul, carter, i shall go no further." "oh!" he exclaimed. "there is more, is there? i trust it is not painfull, because i have stood as much as i can now without breaking down." "nothing of which i am ashamed," i said, rising to my full height. "i have come to you for help, carter. _that play must not fail_." we faced each other over those vitle words--faced, and found no solution. "is it a good play?" he asked, at last. "it is a beautiful play. oh, carter, when at the end he takes his sweetheart in his arms--the leading lady, and not at all atractive. jane raleigh says that the star generaly _hates_ his leading lady--there is not a dry eye in the house." "must be a jolly little thing. well, of course i'm no theatricle manager, but if it's any good there's only one way to save it. advertize. i didn't know the piece was in town, which shows that the publicaty has been rotten." he began to walk the floor. i don't think i have mentioned it, but that is carter's busness. not walking the floor. advertizing. father says he is quite good, although only beginning. "tell me about it," he said. so i told him that adrian was a mill worker, and the villain makes him lose his position, by means of forjery. and adrian goes to jail, and comes out, and no one will give him work. so he prepares to blow up a milionaire's house, and his sweetheart is in it. he has been to the milionaire for work and been refused and thrown out, saying, just before the butler and three footmen push him through a window, in dramatic tones, "the world owes me a living and i will have it." "socialism!" said carter. "hard stuff to handle for the two dollar seats. the world owes him a living. humph! still, that's a good line to work on. look here, bab, give me a little time on this, eh what? i may be able to think of a trick or two. but mind, not a word to any one." he started out, but he came back. "look here," he said. "where do we come in on this anyhow? suppose i do think of somthing--what then? how are we to know that your beloved and his manager will thank us for buting in, or do what we sugest?" again i drew myself to my full heighth. "i am a person of iron will when my mind is made up," i said. "you think of somthing, carter, and i'll see that it is done." he gazed at me in a rapt manner. "dammed if i don't beleive you," he said. it is now late at night. beresford has gone. the house is still. i take the dear picture out from under my mattress and look at it. oh adrien, my thespian, my love. january 21st. i have a bad cold, dear dairy, and feel rotten. but only my physicle condition is such. i am happy beyond words. this morning, while mother and sis were out i called up the theater and inquired the price of a box. the man asked me to hold the line, and then came back and said it would be ten dollars. i told him to reserve it for miss putnam--my middle name. i am both terrafied and happy, dear dairy, as i lie here in bed with a hot water bottle at my feet. i have helped the play by buying a box, and tonight i shall sit in it alone, and he will percieve me there, and consider that i must be at least twenty, or i would not be there at the theater alone. hannah has just come in and offered to lend me three dollars. i refused hautily, but at last rang for her and took two. i might as well have a taxi tonight. 1 a. m. _the familey was there_. i might have known it. never do i have any luck. i am a broken thing, crushed to earth. but "truth crushed to earth will rise again."--whittier? i had my dinner in bed, on account of my cold, and was let severly alone by the familey. at seven i rose and with palpatating fingers dressed myself in my best evening frock, which is a pale yellow. i put my hair up, and was just finished, when mother nocked. it was terrable. i had to duck back into bed and crush everything. but she only looked in and said to try and behave for the next three hours, and went away. at a quarter to eight i left the house in a clandestine manner by means of the cellar and the area steps, and on the pavment drew a long breath. i was free, and i had twelve dollars. act one went well, and no disturbence. although adrian started when he saw me. the yellow looked very well. i had expected to sit back, sheltered by the curtains, and only visable from the stage. i have often read of this method. but there were no curtains. i therfore sat, turning a stoney profile to the audiance, and ignoreing it, as though it were not present, trusting to luck that no one i knew was there. he saw me. more than that, he hardly took his eyes from the box wherein i sat. i am sure to that he had mentioned me to the company, for one and all they stared at me until i think they will know me the next time they see me. i still think i would not have been recognized by the familey had i not, in a very quiet seen, commenced to sneaze. i did this several times, and a lot of people looked anoyed, as though i sneazed because i liked to sneaze. and i looked back at them defiantly, and in so doing, encountered the gaze of my maternal parent. oh, dear dairy, that i could have died at that moment, and thus, when streched out a pathetic figure, with tubroses and other flowers, have compeled their pity. but alas, no. i sneazed again! mother was weged in, and i saw that my only hope was flight. i had not had more than between three and four dollars worth of the evening, but i glansed again and sis was boring holes into me with her eyes. only beresford knew nothing, and was trying to hold sis's hand under her opera cloak. any fool could tell that. but, as i was about to rise and stand poized, as one may say, for departure, i caught adrian's eyes, with a gleam in their deep depths. he was, at the moment, toying with the bowl of roses. he took one out, and while the leading lady was talking, he eged his way toward my box. there, standing very close, aparently by accident, he droped the rose into my lap. oh dairy! dairy! i picked it up, and holding it close to me, i flew. i am now in bed and rather chilley. mother banged at the door some time ago, and at last went away, mutering. i am afraid she is going to be petish. january 22nd. father came home this morning, and things are looking up. mother of course tackeled him first thing, and when he came upstairs i expected an awful time. but my father is a reel person, so he only sat down on the bed, and said: "well, chicken, so you're at it again!" i had to smile, although my chin shook. "you'd better turn me out and forget me," i said. "i was born for trouble. my advice to the familey is to get out from under. that's all." "oh, i don't know," he said. "it's pretty conveniant to have a familey to drop on when the slump comes." he thumped himself on the chest. "a hundred and eighty pounds," he observed, "just intended for little daughters to fall back on when other things fail." "father," i inquired, putting my hand in his, because i had been bearing my burdens alone, and my strength was failing: "do you beleive in love?" "_do_ i!" "but i mean, not the ordinery atachment between two married people. i mean love--the reel thing." "i see! why, of course i do." "did you ever read pope, father?" "pope? why i--probably, chicken. why?" "then you know what he says: `curse on all laws but those which love has made.'" "look here," he said, sudenly laying a hand on my brow. "i beleive you are feverish." "not feverish, but in trouble," i explained. and so i told him the story, not saying much of my deep passion for adrian, but merely that i had formed an atachment for him which would persist during life. although i had never yet exchanged a word with him. father listened and said it was indeed a sad story, and that he knew my deep nature, and that i would be true to the end. but he refused to give me any money, except enough to pay back hannah and carter brooks, saying: "your mother does not wish you to go to the theater again, and who are we to go against her wishes? and anyhow, maybe if you met this fellow and talked to him, you would find him a disapointment. many a pretty girl i have seen in my time, who didn't pan out acording to specifications when i finaly met her." at this revalation of my beloved father's true self, i was almost stuned. it is evadent that i do not inherit my being true as steal from him. nor from my mother, who is like steal in hardness but not in being true to anything but social position. as i record this awfull day, dear dairy, there comes again into my mind the thought that _i do not belong here_. i am not like them. i do not even resemble them in features. and, if i belonged to them, would they not treat me with more consideration and less disipline? who, in the familey, has my noze? it is all well enough for hannah to observe that i was a pretty baby with fat cheaks. may not hannah herself, for some hiden reason, have brought me here, taking away the real i to perhaps languish unseen and "waste my sweetness on the dessert air"? but that way lies madness. life must be made the best of as it is, and not as it might be or indeed ought to be. father promised before he left that i was not to be scolded, as i felt far from well, and was drinking water about every minute. "i just want to lie here and think about things," i said, when he was going. "i seem to have so many thoughts. and father---" "yes, chicken." "if i need any help to carry out a plan i have, will you give it to me, or will i have to go to totle strangers?" "good gracious, bab!" he exclaimed. "come to me, of course." "and you'll do what you're told?" he looked out into the hall to see if mother was near. then, dear dairy, he turned to me and said: "i always have, bab. i guess i'll run true to form." january 23rd. much better today. out and around. familey (mother and sis) very dignafied and nothing much to say. evadently have promised father to restrain themselves. father rushed and not coming home to dinner. beresford on edge of proposeing. sis very jumpy. later: jane raleigh is home for her couzin's wedding! is coming over. we shall take a walk, as i have much to tell her. 6 p. m. what an afternoon! how shall i write it? this is a milestone in my life. i have met him at last. nay, more. i have been in his dressing room, conversing as though acustomed to such things all my life. i have conceled under the mattress a real photograph of him, beneath which he has written yours always, adrian egleston." i am writing in bed, as the room is chilley--or i am--and by putting out my hand i can touch his pictured likeness. jane came around for me this afternoon, and mother consented to a walk. i did not have a chance to take sis's pink hat, as she keeps her door locked now when not in her room. which is rediculous, because i am not her tipe, and her things do not suit me very well anyhow. and i have never borowed anything but gloves and handkercheifs, except maidie's dress and the hat. she had, however, not locked her bathroom, and finding a bunch of violets in the washbowl i put them on. it does not hurt violets to wear them, and anyhow i knew carter brooks had sent them and she ought to wear only beresford's flowers if she means to marry him. jane at once remarked that i looked changed. "naturaly," i said, in a _blase_ maner. "if i didn't know you, bab," she observed, "i would say that you are rouged." i became very stiff and distant at that. for jane, although my best friend, had no right to be suspicous of me. "how do i look changed?" i demanded. "i don't know. you--bab, i beleive you are up to some mischeif!" "mischeif?" "you don't need to pretend to me," she went on, looking into my very soul. "i have eyes. you're not decked out this way for _me_." i had meant to tell her nothing, but spying just then a man ahead who walked like adrian, i was startled. i cluched her arm and closed my eyes. "bab!" she said. the man turned, and i saw it was not he. i breathed again. but jane was watching me, and i spoke out of an overflowing heart. "for a moment i thought--jane, i have met _the one_ at last." "barbara!" she said, and stopped dead. "is it any one i know?" "he is an actor." "ye gods!" said jane, in a tence voice. "what a tradgedy!" "tradgedy indeed," i was compeled to admit. "jane, my heart is breaking. i am not alowed to see him. it is all off, forever." "darling!" said jane. "you are trembling all over. hold on to me. do they disaprove?" "i am never to see him again. never." the bitterness of it all overcame me. my eves sufused with tears. but i told her, in broken accents, of my determination to stick to him, no matter what. i might never be mrs. adrian egleston, but----" "adrian egleston!" she cried, in amazement. "why _barbara_, you lucky thing!" so, finding her fuller of simpathy than usual, i violated my vow of silence and told her all. and, to prove the truth of what i said, i showed her the sachet over my heart containing his rose. "it's perfectly wonderfull," jane said, in an awed tone. "you beat anything i've ever known for adventures. you are the tipe men like, for one thing. but there is one thing i could not stand, in your place--having to know that he is making love to the heroine every evening and twice on wednesdays and--bab, this is _wednesday_!" i glansed at my wrist watch. it was but to o'clock. instantly, dear dairy, i became conscious of a dual going on within me, between love and duty. should i do as instructed and see him no more, thus crushing my inclination under the iron heal of resolution? or should i cast my parents to the winds, and go? which? at last i desided to leave it to jane. i observed: "i'm forbiden to try to see him. but i darsay, if you bought some theater tickets and did not say what the play was, and we went and it happened to be his, it would not be my fault, would it?" i cannot recall her reply, or much more, except that i waited in a pharmasy, and jane went out, and came back and took me by the arm. "we're going to the matinee, bab," she said. "i'll not tell you which one, because it's to be a surprize." she squeazed my arm. "first row," she whispered. i shall draw a veil over my feelings. jane bought some chocolates to take along, but i could eat none. i was thirsty, but not hungry. and my cold was pretty bad, to. so we went in, and the curtain went up. when adrian saw me, in the front row, he smiled although in the midst of a serious speach about the world oweing him a living. and jane was terrably excited. "isn't he the handsomest thing!" she said. "and oh, bab, i can see that he adores you. he is acting for you. all the rest of the people mean nothing to him. he sees but you." well, i had not told her that we had not yet met, and she said i could do nothing less than send him a note. "you ought to tell him that you are true, in spite of everything," she said. if i had not decieved jane things would be better. but she was set on my sending the note. so at last i wrote one on my visiting card, holding it so she could not read it. jane is my best friend and i am devoted to her, but she has no scruples about reading what is not meant for her. i said: "dear mr. egleston: i think the play is perfectly wonderfull. and you are perfectly splendid in it. it is perfectly terrable that it is going to stop. "(signed) the girl of the rose." i know that this seems bold. but i did not feel bold, dear dairy. it was such a letter as any one might read, and contained nothing compromizing. still, i darsay i should not have written it. but "out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh." i was shaking so much that i could not give it to the usher. but jane did. however, i had sealed it up in an envelope. now comes the real surprize, dear dairy. for the usher came down and said mr. egleston hoped i would go back and see him after the act was over. i think a paller must have come over me, and jane said: "bab! do you dare?" i said yes, i dared, but that i would like a glass of water. i seemed to be thirsty all the time. so she got it, and i recovered my _savoir fair_, and stopped shaking. i suppose jane expected to go along, but i refrained from asking her. she then said: "try to remember everything he says, bab. i am just crazy about it." ah, dear dairy, how can i write how i felt when being led to him. the entire seen is engraved on my soul. i, with my very heart in my eyes, in spite of my eforts to seem cool and collected. he, in front of his mirror, drawing in the lines of starvation around his mouth for the next seen, while on his poor feet a valet put the raged shoes of act ii! he rose when i entered, and took me by the hand. "well!" he said. "at last!" he did not seem to mind the _valet_, whom he treated like a chair or table. and he held my hand and looked deep into my eyes. ah, dear dairy, men may come and men may go in my life, but never again will i know such ecstacy as at that moment. "sit down," he said. "little lady of the rose--but it's violets today, isn't it? and so you like the play?" i was by that time somwhat calmer, but glad to sit down, owing to my knees feeling queer. "i think it is magnifacent," i said. "i wish there were more like you," he observed. "just a moment, i have to make a change here. no need to go out. there's a screan for that very purpose." he went behind the screan, and the man handed him a raged shirt over the top of it, while i sat in a chair and dreamed. what i reflected, would the school say if it but knew! i felt no remorce. i was there, and beyond the screan, changing into the garments of penury, was the only member of the other sex i had ever felt i could truly care for. dear dairy, i am tired and my head aches. i cannot write it all. he was perfectly respectfull, and only his eyes showed his true feelings. the woman who is the adventuress in the play came to the door, but he motioned her away with a waive of the hand. and at last it was over, and he was asking me to come again soon, and if i wou1d care to have one of his pictures. i am very sleepy tonight, but i cannot close this record of a w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l d-a-y--- january 24th. cold worse. not hearing from carter brooks i telephoned him just now. he is sore about beresford and said he would not come to the house. so i have asked him to meet me in the park, and said that there were only to more days, this being thursday. later: i have seen carter, and he has a fine plan. if only father will do it. he says the theme is that the world owes adrian a living, and that the way to do is to put that strongly before the people. "suppose," he said, "that this fellow would go to some big factery, and demand work. not ask for it. demand it. he could pretend to be starving and say: `the world owes me a living, and i intend to have it.'" "but supose they were sorry for him and gave it to him?" i observed. "tut, child," he said. "that would have to be all fixed up first. it ought to be aranged that he not only be refused, but what's more, that he'll be thrown out. he'll have to cut up a lot, d'you see, so they'll throw him out. and we'll have reporters there, so the story can get around. you get it, don't you? your friend, in order to prove that the idea of the play is right, goes out for a job, and proves that he cannot demand laber and get it." he stopped and spoke with excitement: "is he a real sport? would he stand being arested? because that would cinch it." but here i drew a line. i would not subject him to such humiliation. i would not have him arested. and at last carter gave in. "but you get the idea," he said. "there'll be the deuce of a row, and it's good for a half collumn on the first page of the evening papers. result, a jamb that night at the performence, and a new lease of life for the play. egleston comes on, bruized and battered, and perhaps with a limp. the labor unions take up the matter--it's a knock out. i'd charge a thousand dollars for that idea if i were selling it." "bruized!" i exclaimed. "realy bruized or painted on?" he glared at me impatiently. "now see here, bab," he said. "i'm doing this for you. you've got to play up. and if your young man won't stand a bang in the eye, for instanse, to earn his bread and butter, he's not worth saving." "who are you going to get to--to throw him out?" i asked, in a faltering tone. he stopped and stared at me. "i like that!" he said. "it's not my play that's failing, is it? go and tell him the skeme, and then let his manager work it out. and tell him who i am, and that i have a lot of ideas, but this is the only one i'm giving away." we had arived at the house by that time and i invited him to come in. but he only glansed bitterly at the windows and observed that they had taken in the mat with welcome on it, as far as he was concerned. and went away. although we have never had a mat with welcome on it. dear dairy, i wonder if father would do it? he is gentle and kind-hearted, and it would be painfull to him. but to who else can i turn in my extremity? i have but one hope. my father is like me. he can be coaxed and if kindly treated will do anything. but if aproached in the wrong way, or asked to do somthing against his principals, he becomes a roaring lion. he would never be bully-ed into giving a man work, even so touching a personallity as adrian's. later: i meant to ask father tonight, but he has just heard of beresford and is in a terrable temper. he says sis can't marry him, because he is sure there are plenty of things he could be doing in england, if not actualy fighting. "he could probably run a bus, and releace some one who can fight," he shouted. "or he could at least do an honest day's work with his hands. don't let me see him, that's all." "do i understand that you forbid him the house?" leila asked, in a cold furey. "just keep him out of my sight," father snaped. "i supose i can't keep him from swilling tea while i am away doing my part to help the allies" "oh, rot!" said sis, in a scornfull maner. "while you help your bank account, you mean. i don't object to that, father, but for heaven's sake don't put it on altruistic grounds." she went upstairs then and banged her door, and mother merely set her lips and said nothing. but when beresford called, later, tanney had to tell him the familey was out. were it not for our afections, and the necessity for getting married, so there would be an increase in the population, how happy we could all be! later: i have seen father. it was a painfull evening, with sis shut away in her room, and father cuting the ends off cigars in a viscious maner. mother was _non est_, and had i not had my memories, it would have been a sickning time. i sat very still and waited until father softened, which he usualy does, like ice cream, all at once and all over. i sat perfectly still in a large chair, and except for an ocasional sneaze, was quiet. only once did my parent adress me in an hour, when he said: "what the devil's making you sneaze so?" "my noze, i think, sir," i said meekly. "humph!" he said. "it's rather a small noze to be making such a racket." i was cut to the heart, dear dairy. one of my dearest dreams has always been a delicate noze, slightly arched and long enough to be truly aristocratic. not realy acqualine but on the verge. i _hate_ my little noze--hate it--hate it--_hate it_. "father" i said, rising and on the point of tears. "how can you! to taunt me with what is not my own fault, but partly heredatary and partly carelessness. for if you had pinched it in infansy it would have been a good noze, and not a pug. and----" "good gracious!" he exclaimed. "why, bab, i never meant to insult your noze. as a matter of fact, it's a good noze. it's exactly the sort of noze you ought to have. why, what in the world would _you_ do with a roman noze?" i have not been feeling very well, dear dairy, and so i sudenly began to weap. "why, chicken!" said my father. and made me sit down on his knee. "don't tell me that my bit of sunshine is behind a cloud!" "behind a noze," i said, feebly. so he said he liked my noze, even although somwhat swolen, and he kissed it, and told me i was a little fool, and at last i saw he was about ready to be tackeled. so i observed: "father, will you do me a faver?" "sure," he said. "how much do you need? busness is pretty good now, and i've about landed the new order for shells for the english war department. i--supose we make it fifty! although, we'd better keep it a secret between the to of us." i drew myself up, although tempted. but what was fifty dollars to doing somthing for adrian? a mere bagatelle. "father," i said, "do you know miss everett, my english teacher?" he remembered the name. "would you be willing to do her a great favor?" i demanded intencely. "what sort of a favor?" "her couzin has written a play. she is very fond of her couzin, and anxious to have him suceed. and it is a lovely play." he held me off and stared at me. "so _that_ is what you were doing in that box alone!" he exclaimed. "you incomprehensable child! why didn't you tell your mother?" "mother does not always understand," i said, in a low voice. "i thought, by buying a box, i would do my part to help miss everett's couzin's play suceed. and as a result i was draged home, and shamefully treated in the most mortafying maner. but i am acustomed to brutalaty." "oh, come now," he said. "i wouldn't go as far as that, chicken. well, i won't finanse the play, but short of that i'll do what i can." however he was not so agreable when i told him carter brooks' plan. he delivered a firm no. "although," he said, "sombody ought to do it, and show the falasy of the play. in the first place, the world doesn't owe the fellow a living, unless he will hustel around and make it. in the second place an employer has a right to turn away a man he doesn't want. no one can force capitle to employ labor." "well," i said, "as long as labor talks and makes a lot of noise, and capitle is to dignafied to say anything, most people are going to side with labor." he gazed at me. "right!" he said. "you've put your finger on it, in true femanine fashion." "then why won't you throw out this man when he comes to you for work? he intends to force you to employ him." "oh, he does, does he?" said father, in a feirce voice. "well, let him come. i can stand up for my principals, to. i'll throw him out, all right." dear dairy, the battle is over and i have won. i am very happy. how true it is that strategy will do more than violance! we have aranged it all. adrian is to go to the mill, dressed like a decayed gentleman, and father will refuse to give him work. i have said nothing about violance, leaving that to arange itself. i must see adrian and his manager. carter has promised to tell some reporters that there may be a story at the mill on saturday morning. i am to excited to sleep. feel horid. forbiden to go out this morning. january 25th. beresford was here to lunch and he and mother and sis had a long talk. he says he has kept it a secret because he did not want his busness known. but he is here to place a shell order for the english war department. "well," leila said, "i can hardly wait to tell father and see him curl up." "no, no," said beresford, hastily. "realy you must allow me i must inform him myself. i am sure you can see why. this is a thing for men to settle. besides, it is a delacate matter. mr. archibald is trying to get the order, and our new york office, if i am willing, is ready to place it with him." "well!" said leila, in a thunderstruck tone. "if you british don't beat anything for keeping your own counsel!" i could see that he had her hand under the table. it was sickning. jane came to see me after lunch. the wedding was that night, and i had to sit through silver vegatable dishes, and after-dinner coffee sets and plates and a grand piano and a set of gold vazes and a cabushon saphire and the bridesmaid's clothes and the wedding supper and heaven knows what. but at last she said: "you dear thing--how weary and wan you look!" i closed my eyes. "but you don't intend to give him up, do you?" "look at me!" i said, in imperious tones. "do i look like one who would give him up, because of familey objections?" "how brave you are!" she observed. "bab, i am green with envy. when i think of the way he looked at you, and the tones of his voice when he made love to that--that creature, i am posatively _shaken_." we sat in somber silence. then she said: "i darsay he detests the heroine, doesn't he?" "he tolarates her," i said, with a shrug. more silense. i rang for hannah to bring some ice water. we were in my _boudoir_. "i saw him yesterday," said jane, when hannah had gone. "jane!" "in the park. he was with the woman that plays the adventuress. ugly old thing." i drew a long breath of relief. for i knew that the adventuress was at least thirty and perhaps more. besides being both wicked and cruel, and not at all femanine. hannah brought the ice-water and then came in the most madening way and put her hand on my forehead. "i've done nothing but bring you ice-water for to days," she said. "your head's hot. i think you need a musterd foot bath and to go to bed." "hannah," jane said, in her loftyest fashion, "miss barbara is woried, not ill. and please close the door when you go out." which was her way of telling hannah to go. hannah glared at her. "if you take my advice, miss jane," she said. "you'll keep away from miss barbara." and she went out, slaming the door. "well!" gasped jane. "such impertanence. old servant or not, she ought to have her mouth slaped." well, i told jane the plan and she was perfectly crazy about it. i had a headache, but she helped me into my street things, and got sis's rose hat for me while sis was at the telephone. then we went out. first we telephoned carter brooks, and he said tomorrow morning would do, and he'd give a couple of reporters the word to hang around father's office at the mill. he said to have adrian there at ten o'clock. "are you sure your father will do it?" he asked. "we don't want a flivver, you know." "he's making a principal of it," i said. "when he makes a principal of a thing, he does it." "good for father!" carter said. "tell him not to be to gentle. and tell your actor-friend to make a lot of fuss. the more the better. i'll see the policeman at the mill, and he'll probably take him up. but we'll get him out for the matinee. and watch the evening papers." it was then that a terrable thought struck me. what if adrian considered it beneath his profession to advertize, even if indirectly? what if he prefered the failure of miss everett's couzin's play to a bruize on the eye? what, in short, if he refused? dear dairy, i was stupafied. i knew not which way to turn. for men are not like women, who are dependible and anxious to get along, and will sacrifise anything for success. no, men are likely to turn on the ones they love best, if the smallest things do not suit them, such as cold soup, or sleaves to long from the shirt-maker, or plans made which they have not been consulted about beforhand. "darling!" said jane, as i turned away, "you look _stricken_!" "my head aches," i said, with a weary gesture toward my forehead. it did ache, for that matter. it is acheing now, dear dairy. however, i had begun my task and must go through with it. abandoning jane at a corner, in spite of her calling me cruel and even sneeking, i went to adrian's hotel, which i had learned of during my _seance_ in his room while he was changing his garments behind a screan, as it was marked on a dressing case. it was then five o'clock. how nervous i felt as i sent up my name to his chamber. oh, dear dairy, to think that it was but five hours ago that i sat and waited, while people who guessed not the inner trepadation of my heart past and repast, and glansed at me and at leila's pink hat above. at last he came. my heart beat thunderously, as he aproached, strideing along in that familiar walk, swinging his strong and tender arms. and i! i beheld him coming and could think of not a word to say. "well!" he said, pausing in front of me. "i knew i was going to be lucky today. friday is my best day." "i was born on friday," i said. i could think of nothing else. "didn't i say it was my lucky day? but you mustn't sit here. what do you say to a cup of tea in the restarant?" how grown up and like a _debutante_ i felt, dear dairy, going to have tea as if i had it every day at school, with a handsome actor across! although somwhat uneasy also, owing to the posibility of the familey coming in. but it did not and i had a truly happy hour, not at all spoiled by looking out the window and seeing jane going by, with her eyes popping out, and walking very slowly so i would invite her to come in. _which i did not_. dear dairy, _he will do it_. at first he did not understand, and looked astounded. but when i told him of carter being in the advertizing busness, and father owning a large mill, and that there would be reporters and so on, he became thoughtfull. "it's realy incredably clever," he said. "and if it's pulled off right it ought to be a stampede. but i'd like to see mr. brooks. we can't have it fail, you know." he leaned over the table. "it's straight goods, is it, miss er--barbara? there's nothing foney about it?" "foney!" i said, drawing back. "certainly not." he kept on leaning over the table. "i wonder," he said, "what makes you so interested in the play?" oh, dairy, dairy! and just then i looked up, and the adventuress was staring in the door at me with the _meanest_ look on her face. i draw a veil over the remainder of our happy hour. suffice it to say that he considers me exactly the tipe he finds most atractive, and that he does not consider my noze to short. we had a long dispute about this. he thinks i am wrong and says i am not an acquiline tipe. he says i am romantic and of a loving disposition. also somwhat reckless, and he gave me good advice about doing what my familey consider for my good, at least until i come out. but our talk was all to short, for a fat man with three rings on came in, and sat down with us, and ordered a whiskey and soda. my blood turned cold, for fear some one i knew would come in and see me sitting there in a drinking party. and my blood was right to turn cold. for, just as he had told the manager about the arangement i had made, and the manager said "bully" and raised his glass to drink to me i looked across and there was mother's aunt, old susan paget, sitting near, with the most awfull face i ever saw! i colapsed in my chair. dear dairy, i only remember saying, "well, remember, ten o'clock. and dress up like a gentleman in hard luck," and his saying: "well, i hope i'm a gentleman, and the hard luck's no joke," and then i went away. and now, dear dairy, i am in bed, and every time the telephone rings i have a chill. and in between times i drink ice-water and sneaze. how terrable a thing is love. later: i can hardly write. switzerland is a settled thing. father is not home tonight and i cannot apeal to him. susan paget said i was drinking to, and mother is having the vibrater used on her spine. if i felt better i would run away. january 26th. how can i write what has happened? it is so terrable. beresford went at ten o'clock to ask for leila, and did not send in his card for fear father would refuse to see him. and father thought, from his saying that he had come to ask for somthing, and so on, that it was adrian, and threw him out. he ordered him out first, and beresford refused to go, and they had words, and then there was a fight. the reporters got it, and it is in all the papers. hannah has just brought one in. it is headed "manufacturer assaults peer." leila is in bed, and the doctor is with her. later: adrian has disapeared. the manager has just called up, and with shaking knees i went to the telephone. adrian went to the mill a little after ten, and has not been seen since. it is in vain i protest that he has not eloped with me. it is almost time now for the matinee and no adrian. what shall i do? saturday, 11 p.m. dear dairy, i have the meazles. i am all broken out, and look horible. but what is a sickness of the body compared to the agony of my mind? oh, dear dairy, to think of what has happened since last i saw your stainless pages! what is a sickness to a broken heart? and to a heart broken while trying to help another who did not deserve to be helped. but if he decieved me, he has paid for it, and did until he was rescued at ten o'clock tonight. i have been given a sleeping medacine, and until it takes affect i shall write out the tradgedy of this day, omiting nothing. the trained nurse is asleep on a cot, and her cap is hanging on the foot of the bed. i have tried it on, dear dairy, and it is very becoming. if they insist on switzerland i think i shall run away and be a trained nurse. it is easy work, although sleeping on a cot is not always comfortible. but at least a trained nurse leads her own life and is not bully-ed by her familey. and more, she does good constantly. i feel tonight that i should like to do good, and help the sick, and perhaps go to the front. i know a lot of college men in the american ambulence. i shall never go on the stage, dear dairy. i know now its decietfullness and visisitudes. my heart has bled until it can bleed no more, as a result of a theatricle adonis. i am through with the theater forever. i shall begin at the beginning. i left off where adrian had disapeared. although feeling very strange, and looking a queer red color in my mirror, i rose and dressed myself. i felt that somthing had slipped, and i must find adrian. (it is strange with what coldness i write that once beloved name.) while dressing i percieved that my chest and arms were covered with small red dots, but i had no time to think of myself. i sliped downstairs and outside the drawing room i heard mother conversing in a loud and angry tone with a visitor. i glansed in, and ye gods! it was the adventuress. drawing somwhat back, i listened. oh, dairy, what a revalation! "but i _must_ see her," she was saying. "time is flying. in a half hour the performance begins, and--he cannot be found." "i can't understand," mother said, in a stiff maner. "what can my daughter barbara know about him?" the adventuress snifed. "humph!" she said. "she knows, all right. and i'd like to see her in a hurry, if she is in the house." "certainly she is in the house," said mother. "_are you sure of that_? because i have every reason to beleive she has run away with him. she has been hanging around him all week, and only yesterday afternoon i found them together. she had some sort of a skeme, he said afterwards, and he wrinkled a coat under his mattress last night. he said it was to look as if he had slept in it. i know nothing further of your daughter's skeme. but i know he went out to meet her. he has not been seen since. his manager has hunted for to hours." "just a moment," said mother, in a fridgid tone. "am i to understand that this--this mr. egleston is----" "he is my husband." ah, dear dairy, that i might then and there have passed away. but i did not. i stood there, with my heart crushed, until i felt strong enough to escape. then i fled, like a gilty soul. it was gastly. on the doorstep i met jane. she gazed at me strangely when she saw my face, and then cluched me by the arm. "bab!" she cried. "what on the earth is the matter with your complexion?" but i was desparate. "let me go!" i said. "only lend me two dollars for a taxi and let me go. somthing horible has happened." she gave me ninety cents, which was all she had, and i rushed down the street, followed by her peircing gaze. although realizing that my life, at least the part of it pertaining to sentament, was over, i knew that, single or married, i must find him. i could not bare to think that i, in my desire to help, had ruined miss everett's couzin's play. luckaly i got a taxi at the corner, and i ordered it to drive to the mill. i sank back, bathed in hot persparation, and on consulting my bracelet watch found i had but twenty five minutes until the curtain went up. i must find him, but where and how! i confess for a moment that i doubted my own father, who can be very feirce on ocasion. what if, madened by his mistake about beresford, he had, on being aproached by adrian, been driven to violance? what if, in my endeaver to help one who was unworthy, i had led my poor paternal parent into crime? _hell is paved with good intentions_. samuel johnston. on driving madly into the mill yard, i sudenly remembered that it was saturday and a half holaday. the mill was going, but the offices were closed. father, then, was imured in the safety of his club, and could not be reached except by pay telephone. and the taxi was now ninty cents. i got out, and paid the man. i felt very dizzy and queer, and was very thirsty, so i went to the hydrent in the yard and got a drink of water. i did not as yet suspect meazles, but laid it all to my agony of mind. haveing thus refreshed myself, i looked about, and saw the yard policeman, a new one who did not know me, as i am away at school most of the time, and the familey is not expected to visit the mill, because of dirt and possable accidents. i aproached him, however, and he stood still and stared at me. "officer" i said, in my most dignafied tones. "i am looking for a--for a gentleman who came here this morning to look for work." "there was about two hundred lined up here this morning, miss," he said. "which one would it be, now?" how my heart sank! "about what time would he be coming?" he said. "things have been kind of mixed-up around here today, owing to a little trouble this morning. but perhaps i'll remember him." but, although adrian is of an unusual tipe, i felt that i could not describe him, besides having a terrable headache. so i asked if he would lend me carfare, which he did with a strange look. "you're not feeling sick, miss, are you?" he said. but i could not stay to converce, as it was then time for the curtain to go up, and still no adrian. i had but one refuge in mind, carter brooks, and to him i fled on the wings of misery in the street car. i burst into his advertizing office like a furey. "where is he?" i demanded. "where have you and your plotting hidden him?" "who? beresford?" he asked in a placid maner. "he is at his hotel, i beleive, putting beefstake on a bad eye. beleive me, bab----" "beresford!" i cried, in scorn and wrechedness. "what is he to me? or his eye either? i refer to mr. egleston. it is time for the curtain to go up now, and unless he has by this time returned, there can be no performence." "look here," carter said sudenly, "you look awfuly queer, bab. your face----" i stamped my foot. "what does my face matter?" i demanded. "i no longer care for him, but i have ruined miss everett's couzin's play unless he turns up. am i to be sent to switzerland with that on my soul?" "switzerland!" he said slowly. "why, bab, they're not going to do that, are they? i--i don't want you so far away." dear dairy, i am unsuspisious by nature, beleiving all mankind to be my friends until proven otherwise. but there was a gloating look in carter brooks' eyes as they turned on me. "carter!" i said, "you know where he is and you will not tell me. you _wish_ to ruin him." i was about to put my hand on his arm, but he drew away. "look here," he said. "i'll tell you somthing, but please keep back. because you look like smallpox to me. i was at the mill this morning. i do not know anything about your actor-friend. he's probably only been run over or somthing. but i saw beresford going in, and i--well, i sugested that he'd better walk in on your father or he wouldn't get in. it worked, bab. _how it did work_! he went in and said he had come to ask your father for somthing, and your father blew up by saying that he knew about it, but that the world only owed a living to the man who would hustle for it, and that he would not be forced to take any one he did not want. "and in to minutes beresford hit him, and got a responce. it was a million dollars worth." so he babbled on. but what were his words to me? dear dairy, i gave no thought to the smallpox he had mentioned, although fatle to the complexion. or to the fight at the mill. i heard only adrian's possable tradgic fate. sudenly i colapsed, and asked for a drink of water, feeling horible, very wobbley and unable to keep my knees from bending. and the next thing i remember is father taking me home, and adrian's fate still a deep mystery, and remaining such, while i had a warm sponge to bring out the rest of the rash, folowed by a sleep--it being meazles and not smallpox. oh, dear dairy, what a story i learned when haveing wakened and feeling better, my father came tonight and talked to me from the doorway, not being allowed in. adrian had gone to the mill, and father, haveing thrown beresford out and asserted his principals, had not thrown him out, _but had given him a job in the mill_. and the policeman had given him no chance to escape, which he atempted. he was dragged to the shell plant and there locked in, because of spies. the plant is under milatary guard. _and there he had been compeled to drag a wheelbarrow back and forth, containing charcoal for a small furnase, for hours_. even when carter found him he could not be releaced, as father was in hiding from reporters, and would not go to the telephone or see callers. _he labored until ten p. m_., while the theater remained dark, and people got their money back. i have ruined him. i have also ruined miss everett's couzin. * * * the nurse is still asleep. i think i will enter a hospitle. my career is ended, my life is blasted. i reach under the mattress and draw out the picture of him who today i have ruined, compeling him to do manual labor for hours, although unacustomed to it. he is a great actor, and i beleive has a future. but my love for him is dead. dear dairy, he decieved me, and that is one thing i cannot forgive. so now i sit here among my pillows, while the nurse sleeps, and i reflect about many things. but one speach rings in my ears over and over. carter brooks, on learning about switzerland, said it in a strange maner, looking at me with inscrutible eyes. "switzerland! why, bab--i don't want you to go so far away." _what did he mean by it_? * * * dear dairy, you will have to be burned, i darsay. perhaps it is as well. i have p o r e d out my h-e-a-r-t---chapter iv bab's burglar money is the root of all evil." i do not know who said the above famous words, but they are true. i know it but to well. for had i never gone on an allowence, and been in debt and always worried about the way silk stockings wear out, et cetera, i would be having a much better time. for who can realy enjoy a dress when it is not paid for or only partialy so? i have decided to write out this story, which is true in every particuler, except here and there the exact words of conversation, and then sell it to a magazine. i intend to do this for to reasons. first, because i am in debt, especialy for to tires, and second, because parents will then read it, and learn that it is not possable to make a good appearence, including furs, theater tickets and underwear, for a thousand dollars a year, even if one wears plain uncouth things beneath. i think this, too. my mother does not know how much clothes and other things, such as manacuring, cost these days. she merely charges things and my father gets the bills. nor do i consider it fair to expect me to atend social functions and present a good appearence on a small allowence, when i would often prefer a simple game of tennis or to lie in a hammick, or to converce with some one i am interested in, of the other sex. it was mother who said a thousand dollars a year and no extras. but i must confess that to me, after ten dollars a month at school, it seemed a large sum. i had but just returned for the summer holadays, and the familey was having a counsel about me. they always have a counsel when i come home, and mother makes a list, begining with the dentist. "i should make it a thousand," she said to father. "the chiid is in shameful condition. she is never still, and she fidgits right through her clothes." "very well," said father, and got his check book. "that is $83.33 1/3 cents a month. make it thirty four cents. but no bills, barbara." "and no extras," my mother observed, in a stern tone. "candy, tennis balls and matinee tickets?" i asked. "all included," said father. "and church collection also, and ice cream and taxicabs and xmas gifts." although pretending to consider it small, i realy felt that it was a large amount, and i was filled with joy when father ordered a check book for me with my name on each check. ah, me! how happy i was! i was two months younger then and possably childish in some ways. for i remember that in my exhiliration i called up jane raleigh the moment she got home. she came over, and i showed her the book. "bab!" she said. "a thousand dollars! why, it is wealth." "it's not princly," i observed. "but it will do, jane." we then went out and took a walk, and i treated her to a facial masage, having one myself at the same time, having never been able to aford it before. "it's heavenley, bab," jane observed to me, through a hot towle. "if i were you i should have one daily. because after all, what are features if the skin is poor?" we also had manacures, and as the young person was very nice, i gave her a dollar. as i remarked to jane, it had taken all the lines out of my face, due to the spring term and examinations. and as i put on my hat, i could see that it had done somthing else. for the first time my face showed character. i looked mature, if not, indeed, even more. i paid by a check, although they did not care about taking it, prefering cash. but on calling up the bank accepted it, and also another check for cold cream, and a fancy comb. i had, as i have stated, just returned from my institution of learning, and now, as jane and i proceded to a tea place i had often viewed with hungry eyes but no money to spend, it being expencive, i suddenly said: "jane, do you ever think how ungrateful we are to those who cherish us through the school year and who, although stern at times, are realy our best friends?" "cherish us!" said jane. "i haven't noticed any cherishing. they tolarate me, and hardly that." "i fear you are pessamistic," i said, reproving her but mildly, for jane's school is well known to be harsh and uncompromizing. "however, my own feelings to my instructers are diferent and quite friendly, especialy at a distance. i shall send them flowers." it was rather awful, however, after i had got inside the shop, to find that violets, which i had set my heart on as being the school flour, were five dollars a hundred. also there were more teachers than i had considered, some of them making but small impression on account of mildness. _there were eight_. "jane!" i said, in desparation. "eight without the housekeeper! and she must be remembered because if not she will be most unpleasant next fall, and swipe my chaffing dish. forty five dollars is a lot of money." "you only have to do it once," said jane, who could aford to be calm, as it was costing her nothing. however, i sent the violets aud paid with a check. i felt better by subtracting the amount from one thousand. i had still $945.00, less the facials and so on, which had been ten. this is not a finantial story, although turning on money. i do not wish to be considered as thinking only of wealth. indeed, i have always considered that where my heart was in question i would always decide for love and penury rather than a castle and greed. in this i differ from my sister leila, who says that under no circumstanses would she ever inspect a refrigerater to see if the cook was wasting anything. i was not worried about the violets, as i consider money spent as but water over a damn, and no use worrying about. but i was no longer hungry, and i observed this to jane. "oh, come on," she said, in an impatient maner. "i'll pay for it." i can read jane's inmost thoughts, and i read them then. she considered that i had cold feet financially, although with almost $945.00 in the bank. therefore i said at once: "don't be silly. it is my party. and we'll take some candy home." however, i need not have worried, for we met tommy gray in the tea shop, and he paid for everything. i pause here to reflect. how strange to look back, and think of all that has since hapened, and that i then considered that tommy gray was interested in jane and never gave me a thought. also that i considered that the look he gave me now and then was but a friendly glanse! is it not strange that romanse comes thus into our lives, through the medium of a tea-cup, or an eclair, unheralded and unsung, yet leaving us never the same again? even when tommy bought us candy and carried mine under his arm while leaving jane to get her own from the counter, i suspected nothing. but when he said to me, "gee, bab, you're geting to be a regular person," and made no such remark to jane, i felt that it was rather pointed. also, on walking up the avenue, he certainly walked nearer me than jane. i beleive she felt it, to, for she made a sharp speach or to about his youth, and what he meant to do when he got big. and he replied by saying that she was big enough allready, which hurt because jane is plump and will eat starches anyhow. tommy gray had improved a great deal since xmas. he had at that time apeared to long for his head. i said this to jane, _soto voce_, while he was looking at some neckties in a window. "well, his head is big enough now," she said in a snapish maner. "it isn't very long, bab, since you considered him a mere child." "he is twenty," i asserted, being one to stand up for my friends under any and all circumstanses. jane snifed. "twenty!" she exclaimed. "he's not eighteen yet. his very noze is imature." our discourse was interupted by the object of it, who requested an opinion on the ties. he ignored jane entirely. we went in, and i purchaced a handsome tie for father, considering it but right thus to show my apreciation of his giving me the allowence. it was seventy five cents, and i made out a check for the amount and took the tie with me. we left jane soon after, as she insisted on adressing tommy as dear child, or "_mon enfant_," and strolled on together, oblivious to the world, by the world forgot. our conversation was largely about ourselves, tommv maintaining that i gave an impression of fridgidity, and that all the college men considered me so. "better fridgidity," i retorted, "than softness. but i am sincere. i stick to my friends through thick and thin." here he observed that my chin was romantic, but that my ears were stingy, being small and close to my head. this irratated me, although glad they are small. so i bought him a gardenia to wear from a flour-seller, but as the flour-seller refused a check, he had to pay for it. in exchange he gave me his frat pin to wear. "you know what that means, don't you, bab?" he said, in a low and thriling tone. "it means, if you wear it, that you are my--well, you're my girl." although thriled, i still retained my practacality. "not exclusively, tom," i said, in a firm tone. "we are both young, and know little of life. some time, but not as yet." he looked at me with a searching glanse. "i'll bet you have a couple of dozen frat pins lying around, bab," he said savigely. "you're that sort. all the fellows are sure to be crasy about you. and i don't intend to be an also-ran." "perhaps," i observed, in my most dignafied maner. "but no one has ever tried to bully me before. i may be young, but the other sex have always treated me with respect." i then walked up the steps and into my home, leaving him on the pavment. it was cruel, but i felt that it was best to start right. but i was troubled and _distrait_ during dinner, which consisted of mutton and custard, which have no appeal for me owing to having them to often at school. for i had, although not telling an untruth, allowed tom to think that i had a dozen or so frat pins, although i had none at all. still, i reflected, why not? is it not the only way a woman can do when in conflict with the other sex, to meet wile with gile? in other words, to use her intellagence against brute force? i fear so. men do not expect truth from us, so why disapoint them? during the salid mother inquired what i had done during the afternoon. "i made a few purchaces," i said. "i hope you bought some stockings and underclothes," she observed. "hannah cannot mend your chemises any more, and as for your----" "mother!" i said, turning scarlet, for george--who was the butler, as tanney had been found kissing jane--was at that moment bringing in the cheeze. "i am not going to interfere with your allowence," she went on. "but i recall very distinctly that during leila's first year she came home with three evening wraps and one nightgown, having to borrow from one of her schoolmates, while that was being washed. i feel that you should at least be warned." how could i then state that instead of bying nightgowns, et cetera, i had been sending violets? i could not. if life to my familey was a matter of petticoats, and to me was a matter of fragrant flours, why cause them to suffer by pointing out the diference? i did not feel superior. only diferent. that evening, while mother and leila were out at a festivaty, i gave father his neck-tie. he was overcome with joy and for a moment could not speak. then he said: "good gracious, bab! what a--what a _diferent_ necktie." i explained my reasons for buying it for him, and also tom gray's objecting to it as to juvenile. "young impudense!" said father, refering to tom. "i darsay i am quite an old fellow to him. tie it for me, bab." "though old of body, you are young in mentalaty," i said. but he only laughed, and then asked about the pin, which i wore over my heart. "where did you get that?" he asked in quite a feirce voice. i told him, but not quite all. it was the first time i had concealed an _amour_ from my parents, having indeed had but few, and i felt wicked and clandestine. but, alas, it is the way of the heart to conceal its deepest feelings, save for blushes, which are beyond bodily control. my father, however, mearly sighed and observed: "so it has come at last!" "what has come at last?" i asked, but feeling that he meant love. for although forty-two and not what he once was, he still remembers his youth. but he refused to anser, and inquired politely if i felt to much grown-up, with the allowence and so on, to be held on knees and occasionaly tickeled, as in other days. which i did not. that night i stood at the window of my chamber and gazed with a heaving heart at the gray residense, which is next door. often before i had gazed at its walls, and considered them but brick and morter, and needing paint. now my emotions were diferent. i realized that a house is but a shell, covering and protecting its precious contents from weather and curious eyes, et cetera. as i stood there, i percieved a light in an upper window, where the nursery had once been in which tom--in those days when a child, tommy--and i had played as children, he frequently pulling my hair and never thinking of what was to be. as i gazed, i saw a figure come to the window and gaze fixedly at me. _it was he_. hannah was in my room, making a list of six of everything which i needed, so i dared not call out. but we exchanged gestures of afection and trust across the void, and with a beating heart i retired to bed. before i slept, however, i put to myself this question, but found no anser to it. how can it be that two people of diferent sexes can know each other well, such as calling by first names and dancing together at dancing school, and going to the same dentist, and so on, and have no interest in each other except to have a partner at parties or make up a set at tennis? and then nothing happens, but there is a diference, and they are always hoping to meet on the street or elsewhere, and although quareling sometimes when together, are not happy when apart! how strange is life! hannah staid in my room that evening, fussing about my not hanging up my garments when undressing. as she has lived with us for a long time, and used to take me for walks when mademoiselle had the toothache, which was often, because she hated to walk, she knows most of the familey affairs, and is sometimes a nusance. so, while i said my prayers, she looked in my check book. i was furious, and snached it from her, but she had allready seen to much. "humph!" she said. "well, all i've got to say is this, miss bab. you'll last just twenty days at the rate you are going, and will have to go stark naked all year." at this indelacate speach i ordered her out of the room, but she only tucked the covers in and asked me if i had brushed my teeth. "you know," she said, "that you'll be coming to me for money when you run out, miss bab, as you've always done, and expecting me to patch and mend and make over your old things, when i've got my hands full anyhow. and you with a fortune fritered away." "i wish to think, hannah," i said in a plaintive tone. "please go away." but she came and stood over me. "now you're going to be a good girl this summer and not give any trouble, aren't you?" she asked. "because we're upset enough as it is, and your poor mother most distracted, without you're cutting loose as usual and driving everybody crazy." i sat up in bed, forgetful that the window was now open for the night, and that i was visable from the gray's in my _robe de nuit_. "whose distracted about what?" i asked. but hannah would say no more, and left me a pray to doubt and fear. alas, hannah was right. there was something wrong in the house. coming home as i had done, full of the joy of no rising bell or french grammar, or meat pie on mondays from sunday's roast, i had noticed nothing. i fear i am one who lives for the day only, and as such i beleive that when people smile they are happy, forgetfull that to often a smile conceals an aching and tempestuous void within. now i was to learn that the demon strife had entered my domacile, there to make his--or her--home. i do not agree with that poet, a. j. ryan, date forgoten, who observed: _better a day of strife_ _than a century of sleep_. although naturaly no one wishes to sleep for a century, or even approxamately. there was strife in the house. the first way i noticed it, aside from hannah's anonamous remark, was by observing that leila was mopeing. she acted very strangely, giving me a pair of pink hoze without more than a hint on my part, and not sending me out of the room when carter brooks came in to tea the next day. i had staid at home, fearing that if i went out i should purchace some _crepe de chene_ combinations i had been craving in a window, and besides thinking it possable that tom would drop in to renew our relations of yesterday, not remembering that there was a ball game. mother having gone out to the country club, i put my hair on top of my head, thus looking as adult as possable. taking a new detective story of jane's under my arm, i descended the staircase to the library. sis was there, curled up in a chair, knitting for the soldiers. having forgoten the ball game, as i have stated, i asked her, in case i had a caller, to go away, which, considering she has the house to herself all winter, i considered not to much. "a caller!" she said. "since when have you been allowed to have callers?" i looked at her steadily. "i am young," i observed, "and still in the school room, leila. i admit it, so don't argue. but as i have not taken the veil, and as this is not a penitentary, i darsav i can see my friends now and anon, especialy when they live next door." "oh!" she said. "it's the gray infant, is it!" this remark being purely spiteful, i ignored it and sat down to my book, which concerned the stealing of some famous emerelds, the heroine being a girl detective who could shoot the cork out of a bottle at a great distance, and whose name was barbara! it was for that reason jane had loaned me the book. i had reached the place where the duchess wore the emerelds to a ball, above white satin and lillies, the girl detective being dressed as a man and driving her there, because the duchess had been warned and hautily refused to wear the paste copies she had--when sis said, peavishly: "why don't you knit or do somthing useful, bab?" i do not mind being picked on by my parents or teachers, knowing it is for my own good. but i draw the line at leila. so i replied: "knit! if that's the scarf you were on at christmas, and it looks like it, because there's the crooked place you wouldn't fix, let me tell you that since then i have made three socks, heals and all, and they are probably now on the feet of the allies." "three!" she said. "why _three_?" "i had no more wool, and there are plenty of one-leged men anyhow." i would fane have returned to my book, dreaming between lines, as it were, of the romanse which had come into my life the day before. it is, i have learned, much more interesting to read a book when one has, or is, experiencing the tender passion at the time. for during the love seens one can then fancy that the impasioned speaches are being made to oneself, by the object of one's afection. in short, one becomes, even if but a time, the heroine. but i was to have no privacy. "bab," sis said, in a more mild and fraternal tone, "i want you to do somthing for me." "why don't you go and get it yourself?" i said. "or ring for george?" "i don't want you to get anything. i want you to go to father and mother for somthing." "i'd stand a fine chance to get it!" i said. "unless it's calomel or advice." although not suspicous by nature, i now looked at her and saw why i had recieved the pink hoze. it was not kindness. it was bribery! "it's this," she explained. "the house we had last year at the seashore is emty and we can have it. but mother won't go. she--well, she won't go. they're going to open the country house and stay there." a few days previously this would have been sad news for me, owing to not being allowed to go to the country club except in the mornings, and no chance to meet any new people, and no bathing save in the usual tub. but now i thriled at the information, because the grays have a place near the club also. for a moment i closed my eyes and saw myself, all in white and decked with flours, wandering through the meadows and on the links with a certain person whose name i need not write, having allready related my feelings toward him. i am older now by some weeks, older and sader and wiser. for tradgedy has crept into my life, so that somtimes i wonder if it is worth while to live on and suffer, especialy without an allowence, and being again obliged to suplicate for the smallest things. but i am being brave. and, as carter brooks wrote me in a recent letter, acompanying a box of candy: "after all, bab, you did your durndest. and if they do not understand, i do, and i'm proud of you. as for being `blited,' as per your note to me, remember that i am, also. why not be blited together?" this latter, of course, is not serious, as he is eight years older than i, and even fills in at middle-aged dinners, being handsome and dressing well, although poor. sis's remarks were interupted by the clamor of the door bell. i placed a shaking hand over the frat pin, beneath which my heart was beating only for _him_. and waited. what was my dispair to find it but carter brooks! now there had been a time when to have carter brooks sit beside me, as now, and treat me as fully out in society, would have thriled me to the core. but that day had gone. i realized that he was not only to old, but to flirtatous. he was one who would not look on a woman's love as precious, but as a plaything. "barbara," he said to me. "i do not beleive that sister is glad to see me." "i don't have to look at you," sis said, "i can knit." "tell me, barbara," he said to me beseachingly, "am i as hard to look at as all that?" "i rather like looking at you," i rejoined with cander. "across the room." he said we were not as agreable as we might be, so he picked up a magazine and looked at the automobile advertizments. "i can't aford a car," he said. "don't listen to me, either of you. i'm only talking to myself. but i like to read the ads. hello, here's a snappy one for five hundred and fifty. let me see. if i gave up a couple of clubs, and smokeing, and flours to _debutantes_--except barbara, because i intend to buy every pozy in town when she comes out--i might----" "carter," i said, "will you let me see that ad?" now the reason i had asked for it was this: in the book the girl detective had a small but powerful car, and she could do anything with it, even going up the court house steps once in it and interupting a trial at the criticle moment. but i did not, at that time, expect to more than wish for such a vehical. how pleasant, my heart said, to have a car holding to, and since there was to be no bathing, et cetera, and i was not allowed a horse in the country, except my old pony and the basket faeton, to ramble through the lanes with a choice spirit, and talk about ourselves mostly, with a sprinkling of other subjects! five hundred and fifty from nine hundred and forty-five leaves three hundred and forty-five. but i need few garments at school, wearing mostly unaforms of blue serge with one party frock for friday nights and receptions to lecturers and members of the board. and besides, to own a machine would mean less carfare and no shoes to speak of, because of not walking. jane raleigh came in about then and i took her upstairs and closed the door. "jane," i said, "i want your advise. and be honest, because it's a serious matter." "if it's tommy gray," she said, in a contemptable manner, "don't." how could i know, as revealed later, that jane had gone on a diet since yesterday, owing to a certain remark, and had had nothing but an apple all day? i could not. i therfore stared at her steadily and observed: "i shall never ask for advise in matters of the heart. there i draw the line." however, she had seen some caromels on my table, and suddenly burst into emotion. i was worried, not knowing the trouble and fearing that jane was in love with tom. it was a terrable thought, for which should i do? hold on to him and let her suffer, or remember our long years of intimacy and give him up to her? should i or should i not remove his frat pin? however, i was not called upon to renunciate anything. in the midst of my dispair jane asked for a sandwitch and thus releived my mind. i got her some cake and a bottle of cream from the pantrey and she became more normle. she swore she had never cared for tom, he being not her style, as she had never loved any one who had not black eyes. "nothing else matters, bab," she said, holding out the sandwitch in a dramatic way. "i see but his eyes. if they are black, they go through me like a knife." "blue eyes are true eyes," i observed. "there is somthing feirce about black eyes," she said, finishing the cream. "i feel this way. one cannot tell what black eyes are thinking. they are a mystery, and as such they atract me. almost all murderers have black eyes." "jane!" i exclaimed. "they mean passion," she muzed. "they are _strong_ eyes. did you ever see a black-eyed man with glasses? never. bab, are you engaged to tom?" "practicaly." i saw that she wished details, but i am not that sort. i am not the kind to repeat what has been said to me in the emotion of love. i am one to bury sentament deep in my heart, and have therfore the reputation of being cold and indiferent. but better that than having the male sex afraid to tell me how i effect them for fear of it being repeated to other girls, as some do. "of course it cannot be soon, if at all," i said. "he has three more years of college, and as you know, here they regard me as a child." "you have your own income." that reminded me of the reason for my having sought the privasy of my chamber. i said: "jane, i am thinking of buying an automobile. not a limousine, but somthing styleish and fast. i must have speed, if nothing else." she stopped eating a caromel and gave me a stunned look. "what for?" "for emergencies." "then they disaprove of him?" she said, in a low, tence voice. "they know but little, although what they suspect--jane," i said, my bitterness bursting out, "what am i now? nothing. a prisoner, or the equivalent of such, forbiden everything because i am to young! my soul hampered by being taken to the country where there is nothing to do, given a pony cart, although but 2o months younger than leila, and not going to come out until she is married, or permanently engaged." "it _is_ hard," said jane. "heart-breaking, bab." we sat, in deep and speachless gloom. at last jane said: "has she anyone in sight?" "how do i know? they keep me away at school all year. i am but a stranger here, although i try hard to be otherwise." "because we might help along, if there is anyone. to get her married is your only hope, bab. they're afraid of you. that's all. you're the tipe to atract men, except your noze, and you could help that by pulling it. my couzin did that, only she did it to much, and made it pointed." i looked in my mirror and sighed. i have always desired an aristocratic noze, but a noze cannot be altered like teeth, unless broken and then generaly not improved. "i have tried a shell hair pin at night, but it falls off when i go to sleep," i said, in a despondant manner. we sat for some time, eating caromels and thinking about leila, because there was nothing to do with my noze, but leila was diferent. "although," jane said, "you will never be able to live your own life until she is gone, bab." "there is carter brooks," i suggested. "but he is poor. and anyhow she is not in love with him." "leila is not one to care about love," said jane. "that makes it eazier." "but whom?" i said. "whom, jane?" we thought and thought, but of course it was hard, for we knew none of those who filled my sister's life, or sent her flours and so on. at last i said: "there must be a way, jane. _there must be_. and if not, i shall make one. for i am desparate. the mere thought of going back to school, when i am as old as at present and engaged also, is madening." but jane held out a warning hand. "go slow, dearie," she said, in a solemn tone. "do nothing rash. remember this, that she is your sister, and should be hapily married if at all. also she needs one with a strong hand to control her. and such are not easy to find. you must not ruin her life." considering the fatal truth of that, is it any wonder that, on contemplateing the events that folowed, i am ready to cry, with the great poet hood: 1835-1874: whose numerous works we studied during the spring term: _alas, i have walked through life_ _to heedless where i trod_; _nay, helping to trampel my fellow worm_, _and fill the burial sod_. ii if i were to write down all the surging thoughts that filled my brain this would have to be a novel instead of a short story. and i am not one who beleives in beginning the life of letters with a long work. i think one should start with breif romanse. for is not romanse itself but breif, the thing of an hour, at least to the other sex? women and girls, having no interest outside their hearts, such as baseball and hockey and earning saleries, are more likely to hug romanse to their breasts, until it is finaly drowned in their tears. i pass over the next few days, therfore, mearly stating that my _affaire de couer_ went on rapidly, and that leila was sulkey _and had no male visitors_. on the day after the ball game tom took me for a walk, and in a corner of the park, he took my hand and held it for quite a while. he said he had never been a hand-holder, but he guessed it was time to begin. also he remarked that my noze need not worry me, as it exactly suited my face and nature. "how does it suit my nature?" i asked. "it's--well, it's cute." "i do not care about being cute, tom," i said ernestly. "it is a word i despize." "cute means kissible, bab!" he said, in an ardent manner. "i don't beleive in kissing." "well," he observed, "there is kissing and kissing." but a nurse with a baby in a perambulater came along just then and nothing happened worth recording. as soon as she had passed, however, i mentioned that kissing was all right if one was engaged, but not otherwise. and he said: "but we are, aren't we?" although understood before, it had now come in full force. i, who had been but barbara archibald before, was now engaged. could it be i who heard my voice saying, in a low tone, the "yes" of destiny? it was! we then went to the corner drug-store and had some soda, although forbiden by my familey because of city water being used. how strange to me to recall that i had once thought the clerk nice-looking, and had even purchaced things there, such as soap and chocolate, in order to speak a few words to him! i was engaged, dear reader, but not yet kissed. tom came into our vestabule with me, and would doubtless have done so when no one was passing, but that george opened the door suddenly. however, what difference, when we had all the rest of our lives to kiss in? or so i then considered. carter brooks came to dinner that night because his people were out of town, and i think he noticed that i looked mature and dignafied, for he stared at me a lot. and father said: "bab, you're not eating. is it possable that that boarding school hollow of yours is filling up?" one's familey is apt to translate one's finest emotions into terms of food and drink. yet could i say that it was my heart and not my stomache that was full? i could not. during dinner i looked at leila and wondered how she could be married off. for until so i would continue to be but a child, and not allowed to be engaged or anything. i thought if she would eat some starches it would help, she being pretty but thin. i therfore urged her to eat potatos and so on, because of evening dress and showing her coller bones, but she was quite nasty. "eat your dinner," she said in an unfraternal maner, "and stop watching me. they're _my_ bones." "i have no intention of being criticle," i said. "and they are vour bones, although not a matter to brag about. but i was only thinking, if you were fater and had a permanant wave put in your hair, because one of the girls did and it hardly broke off at all" she then got up and flung down her napkin. "mother!" she said. "am i to stand this sort of thing indefinately? because if i am i shall go to france and scrub floors in a hospitle." well, i reflected, that would be almost as good as having her get married. besides being a good chance to marry over there, the unaform being becoming to most, especialy of leila's tipe. that night, in the drawing room, while sis sulked and father was out and mother was ofering the cook more money to go to the country, i said to carter brooks: "why don't you stop hanging round, and make her marry you?" "i'd like to know what's running about in that mad head of yours, bab," he said. "of course if you say so i'll try, but don't count to much on it. i don't beleive she'll have me. but why this unseemly haste?" so i told him, and he understood perfectly, although i did not say that i had already plited my troth. "of course," he said. "if that fails there is another method of aranging things, although you may not care to have the funeral baked meats set fourth to grace the marriage table. if she refuses me, we might become engaged. you and i." to proposals in one day. ye gods! i was obliged therfore to tell him i was already engaged, and he looked very queer, especialy when i told him to whom it was. "pup!" he said, in a manner which i excused because of his natural feelings at being preceded. "and of course this is the real thing?" "i am not one to change easily, carter" i said. "when i give i give freely. a thing like this, with me, is to eternaty, and even beyond." he is usualy most polite, but he got up then and said: "well, i'm dammed." he went away soon after, and left sis and me to sit alone, not speaking, because when she is angry she will not speak to me for days at a time. but i found a magazine picture of a duchess in a nurse's dress and wearing a fringe, which is english for bangs, and put it on her dressing table. i felt that this was subtile and would sink in. the next day jane came around early. "there's a sail on down town, bab," she said. "don't you want to begin laying away underclothes for your _trouseau_? you can't begin to soon, because it takes such a lot." i have no wish to reflect on jane in this story. she meant well. but she knew i had decided to buy an automobile, saying nothing to the familey until to late, when i had learned to drive it and it could not be returned. also she knew my income, which was not princly although suficient. but she urged me to take my check book and go to the sail. now, if i have a weakness, it is for fine under things, with ribbon of a pale pink and everything maching. although i spent but fifty-eight dollars and sixty-five cents on the _trouseau_ that day, i felt uneasy, especialy as, just afterwards, i saw in a window a costume for a woman _chauffeur_, belted lether coat and leggings, skirt and lether cap. i gave a check for it also, and on going home hid my check book, as hannah was always snooping around and watching how much i spent. but luckaly we were packing for the country, and she did not find it. during that evening i reflected about marrying leila off, as the familey was having a dinner and i was sent a tray to my chamber, consisting of scrambeled eggs, baked potatos and junket, which considering that i was engaged and even then colecting my _trouseau_, was to juvenile for words. i decided this: that leila was my sister and therfore bound to me by ties of blood and relationship. she must not be married to anyone, therfore, whom she did not love or at least respect. i would not doom her to be unhappy. now i have a qualaty which is well known at school, and frequently used to obtain holadays and so on. it may be magnatism, it may be will. i have a very strong will, having as a child had a way of lying on the floor and kicking my feet if thwarted. in school, by fixing my eyes ridgidly on the teacher, i have been able to make her do as i wish, such as not calling on me when unprepared, et cetera. full well i know the danger of such a power, unless used for good. i now made up my mind to use this will, or magnatism, on leila, she being unsuspicious at the time and thinking that the thought of marriage was her own, and no one else's. being still awake when the familey came upstairs, i went into her room and experamented while she was taking down her hair. "well?" she said at last. "you needn't stare like that. i can't do my hair this way without a swich." "i was merely thinking," i said in a lofty tone. "then go and think in bed." "does it or does it not concern you as to what i was thinking?" i demanded. "it doesn't greatly concern me," she replied, wraping her hair around a kid curler, "but i darsay i know what it was. it's written all over you in letters a foot high. you'd like me to get married and out of the way." i was exultent yet terrafied at this result of my experament. already! i said to my wildly beating heart. and if thus in five minutes what in the entire summer? on returning to my chamber i spent a pleasant hour planing my maid-of-honor gown, which i considered might be blue to mach my eyes, with large pink hat and carrying pink flours. the next morning father and i breakfasted alone, and i said to him: "in case of festivaty in the familey, such as a wedding, is my allowence to cover clothes and so on for it?" he put down his paper and searched me with a peircing glanse. although pleasant after ten a. m. he is not realy paternal in the early morning, and when mademoiselle was still with us was quite hateful to her at times, asking her to be good enough not to jabber french at him untill evening when he felt stronger. "whose wedding?" he said. "well," i said. "you've got to daughters and we might as well look ahead." "i intend to have to daughters," he said, "for some time to come. and while we're on the subject, bab, i've got somthing to say to you. don't let that romantic head of yours get filled up with sweethearts, because you are still a little girl, with all your airs. if i find any boys mooning around here, i'll--i'll shoot them." ye gods! how intracate my life was becoming! i engaged and my masculine parent convercing in this homacidal manner! i withdrew to my room and there, when jane raleigh came later, told her the terrable news. "only one thing is to be done, jane," i said, my voice shaking. "tom must be warned." "call him up," said jane, "and tell him to keep away." but this i dare not do. "who knows, jane," i observed, in a forlorn manner, "but that the telephone is watched? they must suspect. but how? _how_?" jane was indeed a _fidus a chates_. she went out to the drug store and telephoned to tom, being careful not to mention my name, because of the clerk at the soda fountain listening, saying merely to keep away from a certain person for a time as it was dangerous. she then merely mentioned the word "revolver" as meaning nothing to the clerk but a great deal to tom. she also aranged a meeting in the park at 3 p. m. as being the hour when father signed his mail before going to his club to play bridge untill dinner. our meeting was a sad one. how could it be otherwise, when to loving hearts are forbiden to beat as one, or even to meet? and when one or the other is constantly saying: "turn your back. there is some one i know coming!" or: "there's the peters's nurse, and she's the worst talker you ever heard of." and so on. at one time tom would have been allowed to take out their roadster, but unfortunately he had been forbiden to do so, owing to having upset it while taking his grandmother gray for an airing, and was not to drive again until she could walk without cruches. "won't your people let you take out a car?" he asked. "every girl ought to know how to drive, in case of war or the _chauffeur_ leaving----" "----or taking a grandmother for an airing!" i said coldly. because i did not care to be criticized when engaged only a few hours. however, after we had parted with mutual protestations, i felt the desire that every engaged person of the femanine sex always feels, to apear perfect to the one she is engaged to. i therfore considered whether to ask smith to teach me to drive one of our cars or to purchace one of my own, and be responsable to no one if muddy, or arrested for speeding, or any other vicissatude. on the next day jane and i looked at automobiles, starting with ones i could not aford so as to clear the air, as jane said. at last we found one i could aford. also its lining matched my costume, being tan. it was but six hundred dollars, having been more but turned in by a lady after three hundred miles because she was of the kind that never learns to drive but loses its head during an emergency and forgets how to stop, even though a human life be in its path. the salesman said that he could tell at a glanse that i was not that sort, being calm in danger and not likly to chase a chicken into a fense corner and murder it, as some do when excited. jane and i consulted, for buying a car is a serious matter and not to be done lightly, especialy when one has not consulted one's familey and knows not where to keep the car when purchaced. it is not like a dog, which i have once or twice kept in a clandestine manner in the garage, because of flees in the house. "the trouble is," jane said, "that if you don't take it some one will, and you will have to get one that costs more." true indeed, i reflected, with my check book in my hand. ah, would that some power had whispered in my ear "no. by purchacing the above car you are endangering that which lies near to your heart and mind. be warned in time." but no sign came. no warning hand was outstretched to put my check book back in my pocket book. i wrote the check and sealed my doom. how weak is human nature! it is terrable to remember the rapture of that moment, and compare it with my condition now, with no allowence, with my faith gone and my heart in fragments. and with, alas, another year of school. as we were going to the country in but a few days, i aranged to leave my new possesion, merely learning to drive it meanwhile, and having my first lesson the next day. "dearest," jane said as we left. "i am thriled to the depths. the way you do things is wonderfull. you have no fear, none whatever. with your father's revenge hanging over you, and to secrets, you are calm. perfectly calm." "i fear i am reckless, jane," i said, wistfully. "i am not brave. i am reckless, and also desparate." "you poor darling!" she said, in a broken voice. "when i think of all you are suffering, and then see your smile, my heart aches for you." we then went in and had some ice cream soda, which i paid for, jane having nothing but a dollar, which she needed for a manacure. i also bought a key ring for tom, feeling that he should have somthing of mine, a token, in exchange for the frat pin. i shall pass over lightly the following week, during which the familey was packing for the country and all the servants were in a bad humer. in the mornings i took lessons driving the car, which i called the arab, from the well-known song, which we have on the phonograph; _from the dessert i come to thee_, _on my arab shod with fire_. the instructer had not heard the song, but he said it was a good name, because very likly no one else would think of having it. "it sounds like a love song," he observed. "it is," i replied, and gave him a steady glanse. because, if one realy loves, it is silly to deny it. "long ways to a dessert, isn't it?" he inquired. "a dessert may be a place, or it may be a thirsty and emty place in the soul," i replied. "in my case it is soul, not terratory." but i saw that he did not understand. how few there are who realy understand! how many of us, as i, stand thirsty in the market place, holding out a cup for a kind word or for some one who sees below the surface, and recieve nothing but indiference! on tuesday the grays went to their country house, and tom came over to say good-bye. jane had told him he could come, as the familey would be out. the thought of the coming seperation, although but for four days, caused me deep greif. although engaged for only a short time, already i felt how it feels to know that in the vicinaty is some one dearer than life itself. i felt i must speak to some one, so i observed to hannah that i was most unhappy, but not to ask me why. i was dressing at the time, and she was hooking me up. "unhappy!" she said, "with a thousand dollars a year, and naturaly curly hair! you ought to be ashamed, miss bab." "what is money, or even hair?" i asked, "when one's heart aches?" "i guess it's your stomache and not your heart," she said. "with all the candy you eat. if you'd take a dose of magnezia to-night, miss bab, with some orange juice to take the taste away, you'd feel better right off." i fled from my chamber. i have frequently wondered how it would feel to be going down a staircase, dressed in one's best frock, low neck and no sleaves, to some loved one lurking below, preferably in evening clothes, although not necesarily so. to move statuesqly and yet tenderly, apearing indiferent but inwardly seathing, while below pasionate eyes looked up as i floated down. however, tom had not put on evening dress, his clothes being all packed. he was taking one of father's cigars as i entered the library, and he looked very tall and adolesent, although thin. he turned and seeing me, observed: "great scott, bab! why the raiment?" "for you," i said in a low tone. "well, it makes a hit with me all right," he said. and came toward me. when jane raleigh was first kissed by a member of the other sex, while in a hammick, she said she hated to be kissed until he did it, and then she liked it. i at the time had considered jane as flirtatous and as probably not hating it at all. but now i knew she was right, for as i saw tom coming toward me after laying fatther's cigar on the piano, i felt that _i could not bear it_. and this i must say, here and now. i do not like kissing. even then, in that first embrase of to, i was worried because i could smell the varnish burning on the piano. i therfore permited but one salute on the cheek and no more before removing the cigar, which had burned a large spot. "look here," he said, in a stern manner, "are we engaged or aren't we? because i'd like to know." "if you are to demonstrative, no!" i replied, firmly. "if you call that a kiss, i don't." "it sounded like one," i said. "i suppose you know more than i do what is a kiss and what is not. but i'll tell you this--there is no use keeping our amatory affairs to ourselves and then kissing so the butler thinks the fire whistle is blowing." we then sat down, and i gave him the key ring, which he said was a dandy. i then told him about getting sis married and out of the way. he thought it was a good idea. "you'll never have a chance as long as she's around," he observed, smoking father's cigar at intervals. "they're afraid of you, and that's flat. it's your eyes. that's what got me, anyhow." he blue a smoke ring and sat back with his legs crossed. "funny, isn't it?" he said. "here we are, snug as weavils in a cotton thing-un-a-gig, and only a week ago there was nothing between us but to brick walls. hot in here, don't you think?" "only a week!" i said. "tom, i've somthing to tell you. that is the nice part of being engaged--to tell things that one would otherwise bury in one's own bosom. i shall have no secrets from you from henceforward." so i told him about the car and how we could drive together in it, and no one would know it was mine, although i would tell the familey later on, when to late to return it. he said little, but looked at me and kept on smoking, and was not as excited as i had expected, although interested. but in the midst of my narative he rose quickly and observed: "bab, i'm poizoned!" i then perceived that he was pale and hagard. i rose to my feet, and thinking it might be the cigar, i asked him if he would care for a peice of chocolate cake to take the taste away. but to my greif he refused very snappishly and without a farewell slamed out of the house, leaving his hat and so forth in the hall. a bitter night ensued. for i shall admit that terrable thoughts filled my mind, although how perpetrated i knew not. would those who loved me stoop to such depths as to poizon my afianced? and if so, whom? the very thought was sickning. i told jane the next morning, but she pretended to beleive that the cigar had been to strong for him, and that i should remember that, although very good-hearted, he was a mere child. but, if poizon, she suggested hannah. that day, although unerved from anxiety, i took the arab out alone, having only jane with me. except that once i got into reverce instead of low geer, and broke a lamp on a gentleman behind, i had little or no trouble, although having one or to narrow escapes owing to putting my foot on the gas throttle instead of the brake. it was when being backed off the pavment by to policemen and a man from a milk wagon, after one of the aforsaid mistakes, that i first saw he who was to bring such wrechedness to me. jane had got out to see how much milk we had spilt--we had struck the milk wagon--and i was getting out my check book, because the man was very nasty and insisted on having my name, when i first saw him. he had stopped and was looking at the gutter, which was full of milk. then he looked at me. "how much damages does he want?" he said in a respectful tone. "twenty dollars," i replied, not considering it flirting to merely reply in this manner. the stranger then walked over to the milkman and said: "a very little spilt milk goes a long way. five dollars is plenty for that and you know it." "how about me getting a stitch in my chin, and having to pay for that?" i beleive i have not said that the milk man was cut in the chin by a piece of a bottle. "ten, then," said my friend in need. when it was all over, and i had given two dollars to the old woman who had been in the milk wagon and was knocked out although only bruized, i went on, thinking no more about the stranger, and almost running into my father, who did not see me. that afternoon i realized that i must face the state of afairs, and i added up the checks i had made out. ye gods! of all my money there now remaind for the ensuing year but two hundred and twenty nine dollars and forty five cents. i now realized that i had been extravagant, having spent so much in six days. although i did not regard the arab as such, because of saving car fare and half soleing shoes. nor the _trouseau_, as one must have clothing. but facial masage and manacures and candy et cetera i felt had been wastefull. at dinner that night mother said: "bab, you must get yourself some thin frocks. you have absolutely nothing. and hannah says you have bought nothing. after all a thousand dollars is a thousand dollars. you can have what you ought to have. don't be to saving." "i have not the interest in clothes i once had, mother" i replied. "if leila will give me her old things i will use them." "bab!" mother said, with a peircing glanse, "go upstairs and bring down your check book." i turned pale with fright, but father said: "no, my dear. suppose we let this thing work itself out. it is barbara's money, and she must learn." that night, when i was in bed and trying to divide $229.45 by 12 months, father came in and sat down on the bed. "there doesn't happen to be anything you want to say to me, i suppose, bab?" he inquired in a gentle tone. although not a weeping person, shedding but few tears even when punished in early years, his kind tone touched my heart, and made me lachrymoze. such must always be the feelings of those who decieve. but, although bent, i was not yet broken. i therfore wept on in silence while father patted my back. "because," he said, "while i am willing to wait until you are ready, when things begin to get to thick i want you to know that i'm around, the same as usual." he kissed the back of my neck, which was all that was visable, and went to the door. from there he said, in a low tone: "and by the way, bab, i think, since you bought me the tie, it would be rather nice to get your mother somthing also. how about it? violets, you know, or--or somthing." ye gods! violets at five dollars a hundred. but i agreed. i then sat up in bed and said: "father, what would you say if you knew some one was decieving you?" "well," he said, "i am an old bird and hard to decieve. a good many people think they can do it, however, and now and then some one gets away with it." i felt softened and repentent. had he but patted me once more, i would have told all. but he was looking for a match for his cigar, and the opportunaty passed. "well," he said, "close up that active brain of yours for the night, bab, and here are to `don'ts' to sleep on. don't break your neck in--in any way. you're a reckless young lady. and don't elope with the first moony young idiot who wants to hold your hand. there will quite likly be others." others! how heartless! how cynical! were even those i love best to worldly to understand a monogamous nature? when he had gone out, i rose to hide my check book in the crown of an old hat, away from hannah. then i went to the window and glansed out. there was no moon, but the stars were there as usual, over the roof of that emty domacile next door, whence all life had fled to the neighborhood of the country club. but a strange thing caught my eye and transfixed it. there on the street, looking up at our house, now in the first throes of sleep, was the stranger i had seen that afternoon when i had upset the milk wagon against the park fense. iii i shall now remove the familey to the country, which is easier on paper than in the flesh, owing to having to take china, silver, bedding and edables. also porch furnature and so on. sis acted very queer while we were preparing. she sat in her room and knited, and was not at home to callers, although there were not many owing to summer and every one away. when she would let me in, which was not often, as she said i made her head ache, i tried to turn her thoughts to marriage or to nursing at the war, which was for her own good, since she is of the kind who would never be happy leading a simple life, but should be married. but alas for all my hopes. she said, on the day before we left, while packing her jewel box: "you might just as well give up trying to get rid of me, barbara. because i do not intend to marry any one." "very well, leila," i said, in a cold tone. "of course it matters not to me, because i can be kept in school untill i am thirty, and never come out or have a good time, and no one will care. but when you are an old woman and have not employed your natural function of having children to suport you in age, don't say i did not warn you." "oh, you'll come out all right," she said, in a brutal manner. "you'll come out like a sky rocket. you'd be as impossable to supress as a boil." carter brooks came around that afternoon and we played marbels in the drawing room with moth balls, as the rug was up. it was while sitting on the floor eating some candy he had brought that i told him that there was no use hanging around, as leila was not going to marry. he took it bravely, and said that he saw nothing to do but to wait for some of the younger crowd to grow up, as the older ones had all refused him. "by the way," he said. "i thought i saw you running a car the other day. you were chasing a fox terier when i saw you, but i beleive the dog escaped." i looked at him and i saw that, although smiling, he was one who could be trusted, even to the grave. "carter," i said. "it was i, although when you saw me i know not, as dogs are always getting in the way." i then told him about the pony cart, and the allowence, and saving car fare. also that i felt that i should have some pleasure, even if _sub rosa_, as the expression is. but i told him also that i disliked decieving my dear parents, who had raised me from infancy and through meazles, whooping cough and shingles. "do you mean to say," he said in an astounded voice, "that you have _bought_ that car?" "i have. and paid for it." being surprized he put a moth ball into his mouth, instead of a gum drop. "well," he said, "you'll have to tell them. you can't hide it in a closet, you know, or under the bed." "and let them take it away? never." my tone was firm, and he saw that i meant it, especialy when i explained that there would be nothing to do in the country, as mother and sis would play golf all day, and i was not allowed at the club, and that the devil finds work for idle hands. "but where in the name of good sense are you going to keep it?" he inquired, in a wild tone. "i have been thinking about that," i said. "i may have to buy a portible garage and have it set up somwhere." "look here," he said, "you give me a little time on this, will you? i'm not naturaly a quick thinker, and somhow my brain won't take it all in just yet. i suppose there's no use telling you not to worry, because you are not the worrying kind." how little he knew of me, after years of calls and conversation! just before he left he said: "bab, just a word of advise for you. pick your husband, when the time comes, with care. he ought to have the solidaty of an elephant and the mental agilaty of a flee. but no imagination, or he'll die a lunatic." the next day he telephoned and said that he had found a place for the car in the country, a shed on the adams' place, which was emty, as the adams's were at lakewood. so that was fixed. now my plan about the car was this: not to go on indefanitely decieving my parents, but to learn to drive the car as an expert. then, when they were about to say that i could not have one as i would kill myself in the first few hours, to say: "you wrong me. i have bought a car, and driven it for----days, and have killed no one, or injured any one beyond bruizes and one stitch." i would then disapear down the drive, returning shortly in the arab, which, having been used----days, could not be returned. all would have gone as aranged had it not been for the fatal question of money. owing to having run over some broken milk bottles on the ocasion i have spoken of, i was obliged to buy a new tire at thirty-five dollars. i also had a bill of eleven dollars for gasoline, and a fine of ten dollars for speeding, which i paid at once for fear of a notice being sent home. this took fifty-six dollars more, and left me but $183.45 for the rest of the year, $15.28 a month to dress on and pay all expences. to add to my troubles mother suddenly became very fussy about my clothing and insisted that i purchace a new suit, hat and so on, which cost one hundred dollars and left me on the verge of penury. is it surprizing that, becoming desparate, i seized at any straw, however intangable? i paid a man five dollars to take the arab to the country and put it in the aforsaid shed, afterwards hiding the key under a stone outside. but, although needing relaxation and pleasure during those sad days, i did not at first take it out, as i felt that another tire would ruin me. besides, they had the pony cart brought every day, and i had to take it out, pretending enjoyment i could not feel, since acustomed to forty miles an hour and even more at times. i at first invited tom to drive with me in the cart, thinking that merely to be together would be pleasure enough. but at last i was compeled to face the truth. although protesting devotion until death, tom did not care for the cart, considering it juvenile for a college man, and also to small for his legs. but at last he aranged a plan, which was to take the cart as far as the shed, leave it there, and take out the car. this we did frequently, and i taught tom how to drive it. i am not one to cry over spilt milk. but i am one to confess when i have made a mistake. i do not beleive in laying the blame on providence when it belongs to the other sex, either. it was on going down to the shed one morning and finding a lamp gone and another tire hanging in tatters that i learned the truth. he who should have guarded my interests with his very life, including finances, had been taking the arab out in the evenings when i was confined to the bosom of my familey, and using up gasoline et cetera besides riding with whom i knew not. eighty-three dollars and 45 cents less thirty-five dollars for a tire and a bill for gasoline in the village of eight dollars left me, for the balance of the year, but $40.45 or $3.37 a month! and still a lamp missing. it was terrable. i sat on the running board and would have shed tears had i not been to angry. it was while sitting thus, and deciding to return the frat pin as costing to much in gasoline and patients, that i percieved tom coming down the road. his hand was tied up in a bandige, and his whole apearance was of one who wishes to be forgiven. why, oh, why, must women of my sex do all the forgiving? he stood in the doorway so i could see the bandige and would be sorry for him. but i apeared not to notice him. "well?" he said. i was silent. "now look here," he went on, "i'm darned lucky to be here and not dead, young lady. and if you are going to make a fuss, i'm going away and join the ambulance in france." "they'd better not let you drive a car if they care anything about it," i said, coldly. "that's it! go to it! give me the devil, of course. why should you care that i have a broken arm, or almost?" "well," i said, in a cutting manner, "broken bones mend themselves and do not have to be taken to a garage, where they charge by the hour and loaf most of the time. may i ask, if not to much trouble to inform me, whom you took out in my car last night? because i'd like to send her your pin. i'd go on wearing it, but it's to expencive." "oh, very well," he said. he then brought out my key ring, although unable to take the keys off because of having but one hand. "if you're as touchy as all that, and don't care for the real story, i'm through. that's all." i then began to feel remorceful. i am of a forgiving nature naturaly and could not forget that but yesterday he had been tender and loving, and had let me drive almost half the time. i therfore said: "if you can explain i will listen. but be breif. i am in no mood for words." well, the long and short of it was that i was wrong, and should not have jumped to conclusions. because the gray's house had been robbed the night before, taking all the silver and mr. gray's dress suit, as well as shirts and so on, and as their _chauffeur_ had taken one of the maids out _incognito_ and gone over a bank, returning at seven a. m. in a hired hack, there was no way to follow the theif. so tom had taken my car and would have caught him, having found mr. gray's trowsers on a fense, although torn, but that he ran into a tree because of going very fast and skiding. he would have gone through the wind-shield, but that it was down. i was by that time mollafied and sorry i had been so angry, especialy as tom said: "father ofered a hundred dollars reward for his capture, and as you have been adviseing me to save money, i went after the hundred." at this thought, that my _fiancee_ had endangered his hand and the rest of his person in order to acquire money for our ultamate marriage, my anger died. i therfore submitted to an embrase, and washed the car, which was covered with mud. as tom had but one hand and that holding a cigarette. now and then, dear reader, when not to much worried with finances, i look back and recall those halycon days when love had its place in my life, filling it to the exclusion of even suficient food, and rendering me immune to the questions of my familey, who wanted to know how i spent my time. oh, magic eyes of afection, which see the beloved object as containing all the virtues, including strong features and intellagence! oh, dear dead dreams, when i saw myself going down the church isle in white satin and dutchess lace! o tempora o mores! farewell. what would have happened, i wonder, if father had not discharged smith that night for carrying passengers to the club from the railway station in our car, charging them fifty cents each and scraching the varnish with golf clubs? i know not. but it gave me the idea that ultamately ruined my dearest hopes. this was it. if smith could get fifty cents each for carrying passengers, why not i? i was unknown to most, having been expatriated at school for several years. but also there were to stations, one which the summer people used, and one which was used by the so-called locals. i was desparate. money i must have, whether honestly or not, for mother had bought me some more things and sent me the bill. "because you will not do it yourself," she said. "and i cannot have it said that we neglect you, barbara." the bill was ninety dollars! ye gods, were they determined to ruin me? with me to think is to act. i am always like that. i always, alas, feel that the thing i have thought of is right, and there is no use arguing about it. this is well known in my institution of learning, where i am called impetuus and even rash. that night, my familey being sunk in sweet slumber and untroubled by finances, i made a large card which said: "for hire." i had at first made it "for higher," but saw that this was wrong and corected it. although a natural speller, the best of us make mistakes. i did not, the next day, confide in my betrothed, knowing that he would object to my earning money in any way, unless perhaps in large amounts, such as the stock market, or, as at present, in literature. but being one to do as i make up my mind to, i took the car to the station, and in three hours made one dollar and a fifteen cent tip from the gray's butler, who did not know me as i wore large gogles. i was now embarked on a commercial enterprize, and happier than for days. although having one or to narrow escapes, such as father getting off the train at my station instead of the other, but luckily getting a cinder in his eye and unable to see until i drove away quickly. and one day carter brooks got off and found me changing a tire and very dusty and worried, because a new tube cost five dollars and so far i had made but six-fifteen. i did not know he was there until he said: "step back and let me do that, bab." he was all dressed, but very firm. so i let him and he looked terrible when finished. "now" he said at last, "jump in and take me somewhere near the club. and tell me how this happened." "i am a bankrupt, carter," i responded in a broken tone. "i have sold my birthright for a mess of porridge." "good heavens!" he said. "you don't mean you've spent the whole business?" i then got my check book from the tool chest, and held it out to him. also the unpaid bills. i had but $40.45 in the bank and owed $90.00 for the things mother had bought. "everything has gone wrong," i admitted. "i love this car, but it is as much expence as a large familey and does not get better with age, as a familey does, which grows up and works or gets married. and leila is getting to be a man-hater and acts very strange most of the time." here i almost wept, and probably would have, had he not said: "here! stop that, or i----" he stopped and then said: "how about the engagement, bab? is it a failure to?" "we are still plited," i said. "of course we do not agree about some things, but the time to fuss is now, i darsay, and not when to late, with perhaps a large familey and unable to seperate." "what sort of things?" "well," i said, "he thinks that he ought to play around with other girls so no one will suspect, but he does not like it when i so much as sit in a hammick with a member of the other sex." "bab," he said in an ernest tone, "that, in twenty words, is the whole story of all the troubles between what you call the sexes. the only diference between tommy gray and me is that i would not want to play around with any one else if--well, if engaged to anyone like you. and i feel a lot like looking him up and giving him a good thrashing." he paid me fifty cents and a quarter tip, and offered, although poor, to lend me some money. but i refused. "i have made my bed," i said, "and i shall occupy it, carter. i can have no companion in misfortune." it was that night that another house near the club was robed, and everything taken, including groceries and a case of champane. the summer people got together the next day at the club and offered a reward of two hundred dollars, and engaged a night watchman with a motor-cycle, which i considered silly, as one could hear him coming when to miles off, and any how he spent most of the time taking the maids for rides, and broke an arm for one of them. jane spent the night with me, and being unable to sleep, owing to dieting again and having an emty stomache, wakened me at 2 a. m. and we went to the pantrey together. when going back upstairs with some cake and canned pairs, we heard a door close below. we both shreiked, and the familey got up, but found no one except leila, who could not sleep and was out getting some air. they were very unpleasant, but as jane observed, families have little or no gratitude. i come now to the stranger again. on the next afternoon, while engaged in a few words with the station hackman, who said i was taking his trade although not needing the money--which was a thing he could not possably know--while he had a familey and a horse to feed, i saw the stranger of the milk wagon, et cetera, emerge from the one-thirty five. he then looked at a piece of _mauve note paper_, and said: "how much to take me up the greenfield road?" "where to?" i asked in a pre-emptory manner. he then looked at a piece of _mauve note paper_, and said: "to a big pine tree at the foot of oak hill. do you know the place?" did i know the place? had i not, as a child, rolled and even turned summersalts down that hill? was it not on my very ancestrial acres? it was, indeed. although suspicous at once, because of no address but a pine tree, i said nothing, except merely: "fifty cents." "suppose we fix it like this," he suggested. "fifty cents for the trip and another fifty for going away at once and not hanging around, and fifty more for forgetting me the moment you leave?" i had until then worn my gogles, but removing them to wipe my face, he stared, and then said: "and another fifty for not running into anything, including milk wagons." i hesatated. to dollars was to dollars, but i have always been honest, and above reproach. but what if he was the theif, and now about to survey my own home with a view to entering it clandestinely? was i one to assist him under those circumstanses? however, at that moment i remembered the reward. with that amount i could pay everything and start life over again, and even purchace a few things i needed. for i was allready wearing my _trouseau_, having been unable to get any plain every-day garments, and thus frequently obliged to change a tire in a _crepe de chine_ petticoat, et cetera. i yeilded to the temptation. how could i know that i was sewing my own destruction? iv let us, dear reader, pass with brevaty over the next few days. even to write them is a repugnent task, for having set my hand to the plow, i am not one to do things half way and then stop. every day the stranger came and gave me to dollars and i took him to the back road on our place and left him there. and every night, although weary unto death with washing the car, carrying people, changeing tires and picking nails out of the road which the hackman put there to make trouble, i but pretended to slumber, and instead sat up in the library and kept my terrable vigil. for now i knew that he had dishonest designs on the sacred interior of my home, and was but biding his time. the house having been closed for a long time, there were mice everywhere, so that i sat on a table with my feet up. i got so that i fell asleep almost anywhere but particularly at meals, and mother called in a doctor. he said i needed exercise! ye gods! now i think this: if i were going to rob a house, or comit any sort of crime, i should do it and get it over, and not hang around for days making up my mind. besides keeping every one tence with anxiety. it is like diving off a diving board for the first time. the longer you stand there, the more afraid you get, and the farther (further?) it seems to the water. at last, feeling i could stand no more, i said this to the stranger as he was paying me. he was so surprized that he dropped a quarter in the road, and did not pick it up. i went back for it later but some one else had found it. "oh!" he said. "and all this time i've been beleiving that you--well, no matter. so you think it's a mistake to delay to long?" "i think when one has somthing right or wrong to do, and that's for your conscience to decide, it's easier to do it quickly." "i see," he said, in a thoughtfull manner. "well, perhaps you are right. although i'm afraid you've been getting one fifty cents you didn't earn." "i have never hung around," i retorted. "and no archibald is ever a sneak." "archibald!" he said, getting very red. "why, then you are----" "it doesn't matter who i am," i said, and got into the car and went away very fast, because i saw i had made a dreadfull slip and probably spoiled everything. it was not untill i was putting the car up for the night that i saw i had gone off with his overcoat i hung it on a nail and getting my revolver from under a board, i went home, feeling that i had lost two hundred dollars, and all because of familey pride. how true that "pride goeth before a fall"! i have not yet explained about the revolver. i had bought it from the gardner, having promised him ten dollars for it, although not as yet paid for. and i had meant to learn to be an expert, so that i could capture the crimenal in question without assistance, thus securing all the reward. but owing to nervousness the first day i had, while practicing in the chicken yard, hit the gardner in the pocket and would have injured him severely had he not had his garden scizzors in his pocket. he was very angry, and said he had a bruize the exact shape of the scizzors on him, so i had had to give him the ten plus five dollars more, which was all i had and left me stranded. i went to my domacile that evening in low spirits, which were not improved by a conversation i had with tom that night after the familey had gone out to a club dance. he said that he did not like women and girls who did things. "i like femanine girls," he said. "a fellow wants to be the oak and feel the vine clinging to him." "i am afectionate," i said, "but not clinging. i cannot change my nature." "just what do you mean by afectionate?" he asked, in a stern voice. "is it afectionate for you to sit over there and not even let me hold your hand? if that's afection, give me somthing else." alas, it was but to true. when away from me i thought of him tenderly, and of whether he was thinking of me. but when with me i was diferent. i could not account for this, and it troubled me. because i felt this way. romanse had come into my life, but suppose i was incapable of loving, although loved? why should i wish to be embrased, but become cold and fridgid when about to be? "it's come to a show-down, bab," he said, ernestly. "either you love me or you don't. i'm darned if i know which." "alas, i do not know" i said in a low and pitious voice. i then buried my face in my hands, and tried to decide. but when i looked up he was gone, and only the sad breese wailed around me. i had expected that the theif would take my hint and act that night, if not scared off by learning that i belonged to the object of his nefarius designs. but he did not come, and i was wakened on the library table at 8 a. m. by george coming in to open the windows. i was by that time looking pale and thin, and my father said to me that morning, ere departing for the office: "haven't anything you'd like to get off your chest, have you, bab?" i sighed deeply. "father," i said, "do you think me cold? or lacking in afection?" "certainly not." "or one who does not know her own mind?" "well," he observed, "those who have a great deal of mind do not always know it all. just as you think you know it some new corner comes up that you didn't suspect and upsets everything." "am i femanine?" i then demanded, in an anxious manner. "femanine! if you were any more so we couldn't bare it." i then inquired if he prefered the clinging vine or the independant tipe, which follows its head and not its instincts. he said a man liked to be engaged to a clinging vine, but that after marriage a vine got to be a darned nusance and took everything while giving nothing, being the sort to prefer chicken croquets to steak and so on, and wearing a boudoir cap in bed in the mornings. he then kissed me and said: "just a word of advise, bab, from a parent who is, of course, extremely old but has not forgoten his youth entirely. don't try to make yourself over for each new admirer who comes along. be yourself. if you want to do any making over, try it on the boys. most of them could stand it." that morning, after changing another tire and breaking three finger nails, i remembered the overcoat and, putting aside my scruples, went through the pockets. although containing no burglar's tools, i found a _sketch of the lower floor of our house, with a cross outside one of the library windows_! i was for a time greatly excited, but calmed myself, since there was work to do. i felt that, as i was to capture him unaided, i must make a plan, which i did and which i shall tell of later on. alas, while thinking only of securing the reward and of getting sis married, so that i would be able to be engaged and enjoy it without worry as to money, coming out and so on, my ship of love was in the hands of the wicked, and about to be utterly destroyed, or almost, the complete finish not coming untill later. but _'tis better to have loved and lost_ _than never to have loved at all_. this is the tradgic story. tom had gone to the station, feeling repentant probably, or perhaps wishing to drive the arab, and finding me not yet there, had conversed with the hackman. and that person, for whom i have nothing but contempt and scorn, had observed to him that every day i met a young gentleman at the three-thirty train and took him for a ride! could mendasity do more? is it right that such a creature, with his pockets full of nails and scandle, should vote, while intellagent women remain idle? i think not. when, therefore, i waved my hand to my _fiancee_, thus showing a forgiving disposition, i was met but with a cold bow. i was heart-broken, but it is but to true that in our state of society the female must not make advanses, but must remain still, although suffering. i therfore sat still and stared hautily at the water cap of my car, although seathing within, but without knowing the cause of our rupture. the stranger came. i shrink in retrospect from calling him the theif, although correct in one sense. i saw tom stareing at him banefully, but i took no notice, merely getting out and kicking the tires to see if air enough in them. i then got in and drove away. the stranger looked excited, and did not mention the weather as customery. but at last he said: "somehow i gather, little sister, that you know a lot of things you do not talk about." "i do not care to be adressed as `little sister,'" i said in an icy tone. "as for talking, i do not interfere with what is not my concern." "good," he observed." and i take it that, when you find an overcoat or any such garment, you do not exhibit it to the familey, but put it away in some secluded nook. eh, what?" "no one has seen it. it is in the car now, under that rug." he turned and looked at me intently. "do you know," he observed, "my admiration for you is posatively beyond words!" "then don't talk," i said, feeling still anguished by tom's conduct and not caring much just then about the reward or any such mundane matters. "but i _must_ talk," he replied. "i have a little plan, which i darsay you have guest. as a matter of fact, i have reasons to think it will fall in with--er--plans of your own." ye gods! was i thus being asked to compound a felony? or did he not think i belonged to my own familey, but to some other of the same name, and was therfore not suspicous. "here's what i want," he went on in a smooth manner. "and there's twenty-five dollars in it for you. i want this little car of yours tonight." here i almost ran into a cow, but was luckaly saved, as a jersey cow costs seventy-five dollars and even more, depending on how much milk given daily. when back on the road again, having but bent a mud guard against a fense, i was calmer. "how do i know you will bring it back?" i asked, stareing at him fixedly. "oh, now see here," he said, straightening his necktie, "i may be a theif, but i am not that kind of a theif. i play for big stakes or nothing." i then remembered that there was a large dinner that night and that mother would have her jewelery out from the safe deposit, and father's pearl studs et cetera. i turned pale, but he did not notice it, being busy counting out twenty-five dollars in small bills. i am one to think quickly, but with precicion. so i said: "you can't drive, can you?" "i do drive, dear little--i beg your pardon. and i think, with a lesson now, i could get along. now see here, twenty-five dollars while you are asleep and therfore not gilty if i take your car from wherever you keep it. i'll leave it at the station and you'll find it there in the morning." is it surprizing that i agreed and that i took the filthy lucre? no. for i knew then that he would never get to the station, and the reward of two hundred, plus the twenty-five, was already mine mentaly. he learned to drive the arab in but a short time, and i took him to the shed and showed him where i hid the key. he said he had never heard before of a girl owning a motor and her parents not knowing, and while we were talking there tom gray went by in the station hack and droped somthing in the road. when i went out to look _it was the key ring i had given him_. i knew then that all was over and that i was doomed to a single life, growing more and more meloncholy until death releived my sufferings. for i am of a proud nature, to proud to go to him and explain. if he was one to judge me by apearances i was through. but i ached. oh, how i ached! the theif did not go further that day, but returned to the station. and i? i was not idle, beleive me. during the remainder of the day, although a broken thing, i experamented to find exactly how much gas it took to take the car from the station to our house. as i could not go to the house i had to guess partly, but i have a good mind for estimations, and i found that two quarts would do it. so he could come to the house or nearby, but he could not get away with his ill-gotten gains. i therfore returned to my home and ate a nursery supper, and hannah came in and said: "i'm about out of my mind, miss bab. there's trouble coming to this familey, and it keeps on going to dinners and disregarding all hints." "what sort of trouble?". i asked, in a flutering voice. for if she knew and told i would not recieve the reward, or not solely. "i think you know," she rejoined, in a suspicous tone." and that you should assist in such a thing, miss bab, is a great surprize to me. i have considered you flitey, but nothing more." she then slapped a cup custard down in front of me and went away, leaving me very nervous. did she know of the theif, or was she merely refering to the car, which she might have guest from grease on my clothes, which would get there in spite of being carful, especialy when changing a tire? well, i have now come to the horrable events of that night, at writing which my pen almost refuses. to have dreamed and hoped for a certain thing, and then by my own actions to frustrate it was to be my fate. "oh god! that one might read the book of fate!" shakspeare. as i felt that, when everything was over, the people would come in from the club and the other country places to see the captured crimenal, i put on one of the frocks which mother had ordered and charged to me on that allowence which was by that time _non est_. (latin for dissapated. i use dissapated in the sense of spent, and not debauchery.) by that time it was nine o'clock, and tom had not come, nor even telephoned. but i felt this way. if he was going to be jealous it was better to know it now, rather than when to late and perhaps a number of offspring. i sat on the terrace and waited, knowing full well that it was to soon, but nervous anyhow. i had before that locked all the library windows but the one with the x on the sketch, also putting a nail at the top so he could not open them and escape. and i had the key of the library door and my trusty weapon under a cushion, loaded--the weapon, of course, not the key. i then sat down to my lonely vigil. at eleven p. m. i saw a sureptitious figure coming across the lawn, and was for a moment alarmed, as he might be coming while the familey and the jewels, and so on, were still at the club. but it was only carter brooks, who said he had invited himself to stay all night, and the club was sickning, as all the old people were playing cards and the young ones were paired and he was an odd man. he then sat down on the cushion with the revolver under it, and said: "gee whiz! am i on the cat? because if so it is dead. it moves not." "it might be a revolver," i said, in a calm voice. "there was one lying around somwhere." so he got up and observed: "i have conscientous scruples against sitting on a poor, unprotected gun, bab." he then picked it up and it went off, but did no harm except to put a hole in his hat which was on the floor. "now see here, bab," he observed, looking angry, because it was a new one--the hat. "i know you, and i strongly suspect you put that gun there. and no blue eyes and white frock will make me think otherwise. and if so, why?" "i am alone a good deal, carter," i said, in a wistfull manner, "as my natural protecters are usualy enjoying the flesh pots of egypt. so it is natural that i should wish to be at least fortified against trouble." _he then put the revolver in his pocket_, and remarked that he was all the protecter i needed, and that the flesh pots only seemed desirable because i was not yet out. but that once out i would find them full of indigestion, headaches, and heartburn. "this being grown-up is a sort of promised land," he said, "and it is always just over the edge of the world. you'll never be as nice again, bab, as you are just now. and because you are still a little girl, although `plited,' i am going to kiss the tip of your ear, which even the lady who ansers letters in the newspapers could not object to, and send you up to bed." so he bent over and kissed the tip of my ear, which i considered not a sentamental spot and therfore not to be fussy about. and i had to pretend to go up to my chamber. i was in a state of great trepidation as i entered my residense, because how was i to capture my prey unless armed to the teeth? little did carter brooks think that he carried in his pocket, not a revolver or at least not merely, but my entire future. however, i am not one to give up, and beyond a few tears of weakness, i did not give way. in a half hour or so i heard carter brooks asking george for a whisky and soda and a suit of father's pajamas, and i knew that, ere long, he would be would be _in pleasing dreams and slumbers light_. _ scott_. would or would he not bolt his door? on this hung, in the biblical phraze, all the law and the profits. he did not. crouching in my chamber i saw the light over his transom become blackness, and soon after, on opening his door and speaking his name softly, there was no response. i therfore went in and took my revolver from his bureau, but there was somthing wrong with the spring and it went off. it broke nothing, and as for hannah saying it nearly killed her, this is not true. it went into her mattress and wakened her, but nothing more. carter wakened up and yelled, but i went out into the hall and said: "i have taken my revolver, which belongs to me anyhow. and don't dare to come out, because you are not dressed." i then went into my chamber and closed the door firmly, because the servants were coming down screaming and hannah was yelling that she was shot. i explained through the door that nothing was wrong, and that i would give them a dollar each to go back to bed and not alarm my dear parents. which they promised. it was then midnight, and soon after my familey returned and went to bed. i then went downstairs and put on a dark coat because of not wishing to be seen, and a cap of father's, wishing to apear as masculine as possable, and went outside, carrying my weapon, and being careful not to shoot it, as the spring seemed very loose. i felt lonely, but not terrafied, as i would have been had i not known the theif personaly and felt that he was not of a violent tipe. it was a dark night, and i sat down on the verandah outside the fatal window, which is a french one to the floor, and waited. but suddenly my heart almost stopped. some one was moving about _inside_! i had not thought of an acomplice, yet such there must be. for i could hear, on the hill, the noise of my automobile, which is not good on grades and has to climb in a low geer. how terrable, to, to think of us as betrayed by one of our own _menage_! it was indeed a cricis. however, by getting in through a pantrey window, which i had done since a child for cake and so on, i entered the hall and was able, without a sound, to close and lock the library door. in this way, owing to nails in the windows, i thus had the gilty member of our _menage_ so that only the one window remained, and i now returned to the outside and covered it with a steady aim. what was my horror to see a bag thrust out through this window and set down by the unknown within! dear reader, have you ever stood by and seen a home you loved looted, despoiled and deprived of even the egg spoons, silver after-dinner coffee cups, jewels and toilet articals? if not, you cannot comprehand my greif and stern resolve to recover them, at whatever cost. i by now cared little for the reward but everything for honor. the second theif was now aproaching. i sank behind a steamer chair and waited. need i say here that i meant to kill no one? have i not, in every page, shown that i am one for peace and have no desire for bloodshed? i think i have. yet, when the theif apeared on the verandah and turned a pocket flash on the leather bag, which i percieved was one belonging to the familey, i felt indeed like shooting him, although not in a fatal spot. he then entered the room and spoke in a low tone. _the reward was mine_. i but slipped to the window and closed it from the outside, at the same time putting in a nail as mentioned before, so that it could not be raised, and then, raising my revolver in the air, i fired the remaining four bullets, forgeting the roof of the verandah which now has four holes in it. can i go on? have i the strength to finish? can i tell how the theif cursed and tried to raise the window, and how every one came downstairs in their night clothes and broke in the library door, while carrying pokers, and knives, et cetera. and how, when they had met with no violence but only sulkey silence, and turned on the lights, there was leila dressed ready to elope, and the theif had his arms around her, and she was weeping? because he was poor, although of good familey, and lived in another city, where he was a broker, my familey had objected to him. had i but been taken into leila's confidence, which he considered i had, or at least that i understood, how i would have helped, instead of thwarting! if any parents or older sisters read this, let them see how wrong it is to leave any member of the familey in the dark, especialy in _affaires de couer_. having seen from the verandah window that i had comitted an enor, and unable to bear any more, i crawled in the pantrey window again and went up stairs to my chamber. there i undressed and having hid my weapon, pretended to be asleep. some time later i heard my father open the door and look in. "bab!" he said, in a stealthy tone. i then pretended to wake up, and he came in and turned on a light. "i suppose you've been asleep all night," he said, looking at me with a searching glanse. "not lately," i said. "i--wasn't there a noise or somthing?" "there was," he said. "quite a racket. you're a sound sleeper. well, turn over and settle down. i don't want my little girl to lose her beauty sleep." he then went over to the lamp and said: "by the way, bab, i don't mind you're sleeping in my golf cap, but put it back in the morning because i hate to have to hunt my things all over the place." i had forgoten to take off his cap! ah, well, it was all over, although he said nothing more, and went out. but the next morning, after a terrable night, when i realized that leila had been about to get married and i had ruined everything, i found a note from him under my door. _dear bab_: after thinking things over, i think you and i would better say nothing about last night's mystery. but suppose you bring your car to meet me tonight at the station, and we will take a ride, avoiding milk wagons if possible. you might bring your check book, too, and the revolver, which we had better bury in some quiet spot. father. p. s. i have mentioned to your mother that i am thinking of buying you a small car. _verbum sap_. * * * * the next day my mother took me calling, because if the servants were talking it was best to put up a bold front, and pretend that nothing had happened except a burglar alarm and no burglar. we went to gray's and tom's grandmother was there, _without her cruches_. during the evening i dressed in a pink frock, with roses, and listened for a car, because i knew tom was now allowed to drive again. i felt very kind and forgiving, because father had said i was to bring the car to our garage and he would buy gasoline and so on, although paying no old bills, because i would have to work out my own salvation, but buying my revolver at what i paid for it. but tom did not come. this i could not beleive at first, because such conduct is very young and imature, and to much like fighting at dancing school because of not keeping step and so on. at last, dear reader, i heard a machine coming, and i went to the entrance to our drive, sliding in the shrubery to surprize him. i did not tremble as previously, because i had learned that he was but human, though i had once considered otherwise, but i was willing to forget. _how happy is the blameless vestal's lot_! _the world forgeting, by the world forgot_. _pope_. however, the car did not turn into our drive, but went on. and in it were tom, and that one who i had considered until that time my best and most intimite friend, jane raleigh. _sans_ fiancee, _sans_ friend, _sans_ reward and _sans_ allowence, i turned and went back to my father, who was on the verandah and was now, with my mother and sister, all that i had left in the world. and my father said: "well, here i am, around as usual. do you feel to grown-up to sit on my knee?" i did not. chapter v the g.a.c. april 9th. as i am leaving this school to-morrow for the easter holadays, i revert to this dairy, which has not been written in for some months, owing to being a senior now and carrying a heavy schedule. my trunk has now gone, and i have but just returned from chapel, where miss everett made a speach, as the head has quinzy. she raised a large emblem that we have purchaced at fifty cents each, and said in a thrilling voice that our beloved country was now at war, and expected each and all to do his duty. "i shall not," she said, "point out to any the fields of their usefulness. that they must determine for themselves. but i know that the girls of this school will do what they find to do, and return to the school at the end of two weeks, school opening with evening chapel as usual and no tardiness permitted, better off for the use they have made of this precious period." we then sang the star-spangled banner, all standing and facing the piano, but watching to see if fraulein sang, which she did. because there are those who consider that she is a german spy. i am now sitting in the upper house, wondering what i can do. for i am like this and always have been. i am an american through and through, having been told that i look like a tipical american girl. and i do not beleive in allowing patriotism to be a matter of words--words, emty words. no. i am one who beleives in doing things, even though necesarily small. what if i can be but one of the little drops of water or little grains of sand? i am ready to rise like a lioness to my country's call and would, if permitted and not considered imodest by my familey, put on the clothing of the other sex and go into the trenches. what can i do? it is strange to be going home in this manner, thinking of duty and not of boys and young men. usualy when about to return to my familey i think of clothes and _affairs de couer_, because at school there is nothing much of either except on friday evenings. but now all is changed. all my friends of the other sex will have roused to the defense of their country, and will be away. and i to must do my part, or bit, as the english say. but what? oh what? april 10th. i am writing this in the train, which accounts for poor writing, etcetera. but i cannot wait for i now see a way to help my country. the way i thought of it was this: i had been sitting in deep thought, and although returning to my familey was feeling sad at the idea of my country at war and i not helping. because what could i do, alone and unarmed? what was my strength against that of the german army? a trifle light as air! it was at this point in my pain and feeling of being utterly useless, that a young man in the next seat asked if he might close the window, owing to soot and having no other coller with him. i assented. how little did i realize that although resembling any other male of twenty years, he was realy providence? the way it happened was in this manner. although not supposed to talk on trains, owing to once getting the wrong suit-case, etcetera, one cannot very well refuse to anser if one is merely asked about a window. and also i pride myself on knowing human nature, being seldom decieved as to whether a gentleman or not. i gave him a steady glance, and saw that he was one. i then merely said to him that i hoped he intended to enlist, because i felt that i could at least do this much for my native land. "i have already done so," he said, and sat down beside me. he was very interesting and i think will make a good soldier, although not handsome. he said he had been to plattsburg the summer before, drilling, and had not been the same since, feeling now very ernest and only smoking three times a day. and he was two inches smaller in the waste and three inches more in chest. he then said: "if some of you girls with nothing to do would only try it you would have a new outlook on life." "nothing to do!" i retorted, in an angry manner. "i am sick and tired of the way my sex is always reproached as having nothing to do. if you consider french and music and algebra and history and english composition nothing, as well as keeping house and having children and atending to social duties, _i do_ not." "sorry," he said, stiffly. "of course i had no idea--do you mean that you have a familey of your own?" "i was refering to my sex in general," i replied, in a cold tone. he then said that there were camps for girls, like plattsburg only more femanine, and that they were bully. (this was his word. i do not use slang.) "you see," he said, "they take a lot of over-indulged society girls and make them over into real people." ye gods! over-indulged! "why don't you go to one?" he then asked. "evadently," i said, "i am not a real person." "well, i wouldn't go as far as that. but there isn't much left of the way god made a girl, by the time she's been curled and dressed and governessed for years, is there? they can't even walk, but they talk about helping in the war. it makes me sick!" i now saw that i had made a mistake, and began reading a magazine, so he went back to his seat and we were as strangers again. as i was very angry i again opened my window, and he got a cinder in his eye and had to have the porter get it out. he got out soon after, and he had the impertinance to stop beside me and say: "i hate to disapoint you, but i find i have a clean coller in my bag after all." he then smiled at me, although i gave him no encouragment whatever, and said: "you're sitting up much better, you know. and if you would take off those heals i'll venture to say you could _walk_ with any one." i detested him with feirceness at that time. but since then i have pondered over what he said. for it is my nature to be fair and to consider things from every angel. i therfore said this to myself. "if members of the male sex can reduce their wastes and increase their usefulness to their native land by camping, exercising and drilling, why not get up a camp of my own, since i knew that i would not be alowed to go away to train, owing to my familey?" i am always one to decide quickly. so i have now made a sketch of a unaform and written out the names of ten girls who will be home when i am. i here write out the purpose of our organisation: to defend the country and put ourselves into good physical condition.--memo: look up "physical" as it looks odd, as if mispelled. motto: to be voted on later. password: plattsburg. dues: ten dollars each in advance to buy tent, etcetera. unaform: kakhi, with orange-colored necktie. in times of danger the orange color to be changed to something which will not atract the guns of the enemy. name: girls' aviation corps. but to be known generally as the g. a. c. as because of spies and so on we must be as secret as possable. i have done everything thus in advance, because we will have but a short time, and besides i know that if everything is not settled jane will want to run things, and probably insist on a set of by-laws, etcetera, which will take to much time. i have also decided to be captain, as having organised the camp and having a right to be. 10 p. m. i am now in my familiar chamber, and hannah says they intended to get new furnature but feel they should not, as war is here and everything very expencive. but i must not complain. it is war time. i shall now record the events from 5 p. m. to the present. father met me at the station as usual, and asked me if i cared to stop and buy some candy on the way home. ye gods, was i in a mood for candy? "i think not, father," i replied, in a dignafied way. "our dear country is now at war, and it is no time for self-indulgence." "good for you!" he said. "evadently that school of yours is worth something after all. but we might have a bit of candy, anyhow, don't you think? because we want to keep our industries going and money in circulation." i could not refuse under such circumstances, and purchaced five pounds. alas, war has already made changes in my familey. george, the butler, has felt the call of duty and has enlisted, and we now have a william who chips the best china, and looks like a german although he says not, and willing to put out the natioual emblem every morning from a window in father's dressing room. which if he is a spy he would probably not do, or at least without being compeled to. i said nothing about the g. a. c. during dinner, as i was waiting to see if father would give me ten dollars before i organized it. but i am a person of strong feelings, and i was sad and depressed, thinking of my dear country at war and our beginning with soup and going on through as though nothing was happening. i therfore observed that i considered it unpatriotic, with the enemy at our gatez, to have sauterne on the table and a cocktail beforehand, as well as expencive tobacco and so on, even although economising in other ways, such as furnature. "what's that?" my father said to me, in a sharp tone. "let her alone, father," leila said. "she's just dramatising herself as usual. we're probably in for a dose of patriotism." i would perhaps have made a sharp anser, but a street piano outside began to play the star-spangled banner. i then stood up, of course, and mother said: "sit down, for heaven's sake, barbara." "not until our national anthem is finished, mother," i said in a tone of gentle reproof. "i may not vote or pay taxes, but this at least i can do." well, father got up to, and drank his coffee standing. but he gave william a dollar for the man outside, and said to tell him to keep away at meal times as even patriotism requires nourishment. after dinner in the drawing room, mother said that she was going to let me give a luncheon. "there are about a dosen girls coming out when you do, bab," she said. "and you might as well begin to get acquainted. we can have it at the country club, and have some boys, and tennis afterwards, if the courts are ready." "mother!" i cried, stupafied. "how can you think of social pleasures when the enemy is at our gates?" "oh nonsense, barbara," she replied in a cold tone. "we intend to do our part, of course. but what has that to do with a small luncheon?" "i do not feel like festivaty," i said. "and i shall be very busy this holaday, because although young there are some things i can do." now i have always loved my mother, although feeling sometimes that she had forgoten about having been a girl herself once, and also not being much given to familey embrases because of her hair being marceled and so on. i therfore felt that she would probably be angry and send me to bed. but she was not. she got up very sudenly and came around the table while william was breaking a plate in the pantrey, and put her hand on my shoulder. "dear little bab!" she said. "you are right and i am wrong, and we will just turn in and do what we can, all of us. we will give the party money to the red cross." i was greatly agatated, but managed to ask for the ten dollars for my share of the tent, etcetera, although not saying exactly what for, and father passed it over to me. war certainly has changed my familey, for even leila came over a few moments ago with a hat that she had bought and did not like. i must now stop and learn the star-spangled banner by heart, having never known but the first verse, and that not entirely. later: how helpless i feel and how hopeless! i was learning the second verse by singing it, when father came over in his _robe de nuit_, although really pagamas, and said that he enjoyed it very much, and of course i was right to learn it as aforsaid. but that if the familey did not sleep it could not be very usefull to the country the next day such as making shells and other explosives. april 11th: i have had my breakfast and called up jane raleigh. she was greatly excited and said: "i'm just crazy about it. what sort of a unaform will we have?" this is like jane, who puts clothes before everything. but i told her what i had in mind, and she said it sounded perfectly thrilling. "we each of us ought to learn some one thing," she said, "so we can do it right. it's an age of specialties. suppose you take up signaling, or sharp-shooting if you prefer it, and i can learn wireless telegraphy. and maybe betty will take the flying course, because we ought to have an aviator and she is afraid of nothing, besides having an uncle who is thinking of buying an aeroplane." "what else would you sugest?" i said freezingly. because to hear her one would have considered the entire g. a. c. as her own idea. "well," she said, "i don't know, unless we have a secret service and guard your father's mill. because every one thinks he is going to have trouble with spies." i made no reply to this, as william was dusting the drawing room, but said, "come over. we can discuss that privatly." i then rang off. i am terrably worried, because my father is my best friend, having always understood me. i cannot endure to think that he is in danger. alas, how true are the words of dryden: _"war, he sung, is toil and trouble_, _honour but an empty bubble_." noon: jane came over as soon as she had had her breakfast, and it was a good thing i had everything written out, because she started in right away to run things. she wanted a constitution and by-laws as i had expected. but i was ready for her. "we have a constitution, jane," i said, solemnly. "the constitution of the united states, and if it is good enough for a whole country i darsay it is good enough for us. as for by-laws, we can make them as we need them, which is the way laws ought to be made anyhow." we then made a list, jane calling up as i got the numbers in the telephone book. everybody accepted, although betty anderson objected to the orange tie because she has red hair, and one of the robinson twins could not get ten dollars because she was on probation at school and her familey very cold with her. but she had loned a girl at school five dollars and was going to write for it at once, and thought she could sell a last year's sweater for three dollars to their laundress's daughter. we therfore admited her. all is going well, unless our parents refuse, which is not likely, as we intend to purchace the tent and unaforms before consulting them. it is the way of parents not to care to see money wasted. our motto we have decided on. it is but three letters, w. i. h., and is a secret. later: sis has just informed me that carter brooks has not enlisted, but is playing around as usual! i feel dreadfully, as he is a friend of my familey. or rather _was. _ 7 p. m.: the g. a. c. is a fact. it is also ready for duty. how wonderful it is to feel that one is about to be of some use to one's own, one's native land! we held a meeting early this p. m. in our library, all doors being closed and sentries posted. i had made some fudge also, although the cook, who is a new one, was not pleasant about the butter and so on. we had intended to read the constitution of the u. s. out loud, but as it is long we did not, but signed our names to it in my father's copy of the american common wealth. we then went out and bought the tent and ten camp chairs, although not expecting to have much time to sit down. the g. a. c. was then ready for duty. before disbanding for the day i made a short speach in the shop, which was almost emty. i said that it was our intention to show the members of the other sex that we were ready to spring to the country's call, and also to assist in recruiting by visiting the different milatary stations and there encouraging those who looked faint-hearted and not willing to fight. "each day," i said, in conclusion, "one of us will be selected by the captain, myself, to visit these places and as soon as a man has signed up, to pin a flower in his buttonhole. as we have but little money, the tent having cost more than expected, we can use carnations as not expencive." the man who had sold us the tent thought this was a fine idea, and said he thought he would enlist the next day, if we would be around. we then went went to a book shop and bought the plattsburg manual, and i read to the members of the corps these rules, to be strictly observed: 1. carry yourself at all times as though you were proud of yourself, your unaform, and your country. 2. wear your hat so that the brim is parallel to the ground. 3. have all buttons fastened. 4. never have sleeves rolled up. 5. never wear sleeve holders. 6. never leave shirt or coat unbuttoned at the throat. 7. have leggins and trousers properly laced. (only leggins). 8. keep shoes shined. 9. always be clean shaved. (unecessary). 10. keep head up and shoulders square. 11. camp life has a tendency to make one careless as to personal cleanliness. bear this in mind. we then gave the milatary salute and disbanded, as it was time to go home and dress for dinner. on returning to my domacile i discovered that, although the sun had set and the hour of twilight had arived, the emblem of my country still floated in the breese. this made me very angry, and ringing the door-bell i called william to the steps and pointing upward, i said: "william, what does this mean?" he pretended not to understand, although avoiding my eye. "what does what mean, miss barbara?" "the emblem of my country, and i trust of yours, for i understand you are naturalized, although if not you'd better be, floating in the breese _after sunset_." did i or did i not see his face set into the lines of one who had little or no respect for the flag? "i'll take it down when i get time, miss," he said, in a tone of resignation. "but what with making the salid and laying the table for dinner and mixing cocktails, and the cook so ugly that if i as much as ask for the paprika she's likely to throw a stove lid, i haven't much time for flags." i regarded him sternly. "beware, william," i said. "remember that, although probably not a spy or at least not dangerous, as we in this country now have our eyes open and will stand no nonsense, you must at all times show proper respect to the national emblem. go upstairs and take it in." "very well, miss," he said. "but perhaps you will allow me to say this, miss. there are to many houses in this country where the patriotic feeling of the inhabatants are shown only by having a paid employee hang out and take in what you call the emblem." he then turned and went in, leaving me in a stupafied state on the door-step. but i am not one to be angry on hearing the truth, although painfull. i therfore ran in after him and said: "william, you are right and i am wrong. go back to your pantrey, and leave the flag to me. from now on it will be my duty." i therfore went upstairs to my father's dressing room, where he was shaveing for dinner, and opened the window. he was disagreable and observed: "here, shut that! it's as cold as blue blazes." i turned and looked at him in a severe manner. "i am sorry, father," i said. "but as between you and my country i have no choice." "what the dickens has the country got to do with giving me influensa?" he exclaimed, glaring at me. "shut that window." i folded my arms, but remained calm. "father," i said, in a low and gentle tone, "need i remind you that it is at present almost seven p. m. and that the stars and stripes, although supposed to be lowered at sunset, are still hanging out this window?" "oh, that's it, is it?" he said in a releived tone. "you're nothing if you're not thorough, bab! well, as they have hung an hour and fifteen minutes to long as it is, i guess the country won't go to the dogs if you shut that window until i get a shirt on. go away and send williarm up in ten minutes." "father," i demanded, intencely, "do you consider yourself a patriot?" "well," he said, "i'm not the shouting tipe, but i guess i'll be around if i'm needed. unless i die of the chill i'm getting just now, owing to one shouting patriot in the familey." "is this your country or william's?" i insisted, in an inflexable voice. "oh, come now," he said, "we can divide it, william and i. there's enough for both. i'm not selfish." it is always thus in my familey. they joke about the most serious things, and then get terrably serious about nothing at all, such as overshoes on wet days, or not passing in french grammer, or having a friend of the other sex, etcetera. "there are to many houses in this country, father," i said, folding my arms, "where the patriotism of the inhabatants is shown by having a paid employee hang out and take in the emblem between cocktails and salid, so to speak." "oh damm!" said my father, in a feirce voice. "here, get away and let me take it in. and as i'm in my undershirt i only hope the neighbors aren't looking out." he then sneazed twice and drew in the emblem, while i stood at the salute. how far, how very far from the plattsburg manual, which decrees that our flag be lowered to the inspiring music of the star-spangled banner, or to the bugel call, "to the colors." such, indeed, is life. later: carter brooks dropped in this evening. i was very cold to him and said: "please pardon me if i do not talk much, as i am in low spirits." "low spirits on a holaday!" he exclaimed. "well, we'll have to fix that. how about a motor picnic?" it is always like that in our house. they regard a party or a picnic as a cure for everything, even a heartache, or being worried about spies, etcetera. "no, thank you," i said. "i am worried about those of my friends who have enlisted." i then gave him a scornful glance and left the room. he said "bab!" in a strange voice and i heard him coming after me. so i ran as fast as i could to my chamber and locked the door. in camp girls aviation corps, april 12th. we are now in camp, although not in unaform, owing to the delivery waggon not coming yet with our clothes. i am writing on a pad on my knee, while my orderley, betty anderson, holds the ink bottle. what a morning we have had! would one not think that, in these terrable times, it would be a simple matter to obtain a spot wherein to prepare for the defence of the country? should not the young be encouraged to spring to the call, "to arms, to arms, ye braves!" instead of being reproved for buying a tent with no place as yet to put it, and the adams's governess being sent along with elaine because we need a chaperone? ye gods! a chaperone to a milatary camp! she is now sitting on one of the camp stools and embroidering a centerpeice. she brought her own lunch and elaine's, refusing to allow her to eat the regular milatary rations of bacon and boiled potatoes, etcetera, and not ofering a thing to us, although having brought chicken sandwitches, cake and fruit. i shall now put down the events of the day, as although the manual says nothing of keeping a record, i am sure it is always done. have i not read, again and again, of the captain's log, which is not wood, as it sounds, but is a journal or dairy? this morning the man at the tent store called up and asked where to send the tent. i then called a meeting in my chamber, only to meet with bitter disapointment, as one parent after another had refused to allow their grounds to be used. i felt sad--helpless, as our house has no grounds, except for hanging out washing, etcetera. i was very angry and tired to, having had to get up at sunrise to put out the emblem, and father having wakened and been very nasty. so i got up and said: "it is clear that our families are patriots in name only, and not in deed. since they have abandoned us, the g. a. c. must abandon them and do as it thinks best. between familey and country, i am for the country." here they all cheered, and hannah came in and said mother had a headache and to keep quiet. i could but look around, with an eloquent gesture. "you see, members of the corps," i said in a tence voice, "that things at present are intollerable. we must strike out for ourselves. those who are willing please signafy by saying aye." they all said it and i then sugested that we take my car and as many as possable of the officers and go out to find a suitable spot. i then got my car and crowded into it the first and second lieutenants, the sergeant and the quartermaster, which was jane. she had asked to be veterinarian, being fond of dogs, but as we had no animals, i had made her quartermaster, giving her charge of the quarters, or tent, etcetera. the others followed in the adams's limousine, taking also cooking utensils and food, although mademoiselle was very disagreeable about the frying pan and refused to hold it. we went first to the tent store. the man in the shop then instructed me as to how to put up the tent, and was very kind, offering to send some one to do it. but i refused. "one must learn to do things oneself if one is to be usefull," i said. "it is our intention to call on no member of the male sex, but to show that we can get along without them." "quite right," he said. "i'm sure you can get along without us, miss, much better than we could get along without you." mademoiselle considered this a flirtatious speach and walked out of the shop. but i consider that it was a general remark and not personal, and anyhow he was thirty at least, and had a married apearance. as there was not room for the tent and camp chairs in my car, the delivery waggon followed us, making quite a procession. we tried several farm houses, but one and all had no patriotism whatever and refused to let us use their terratory. it was heartrending, for where we not there to help to protect that very terratory from the enemy? but no, they cared not at all, and said they did not want papers all over the place, and so on. one woman observed that she did not object to us, but that we would probably have a lot of boys hanging around and setting fire to things with cigarettes, and anyhow if we were going to shoot it would keep the hens from laying. ye gods! is this our national spirit? i simply stood up in the car and said: "madame, we intend to have no members of the other sex. and if you put eggs above the stars and stripes you are nothing but a traitor and we will keep an eye on you." we then went on, and at last found a place where no one was living, and decided to claim it in the name of the government. we then put up the tent, although not as tight as it should have been, owing to the adams's chauffeur not letting us have his wrench to drive the pins in with, and were ready for the day's work. we have now had luncheon and the quartermaster, jane, is burning the papers and so on. after i have finished this log we will take up the signaling. we have decided in this way: lining up in a row, and counting one to ten, and even numbers will study flag signals, and the odds will take up telagraphy, which is very clearly shown in the manual. after that we will have exercises to make us strong and elastic, and then target practise. we have as yet no guns, but father has one he uses for duck shooting in the fall, and betty's uncle was in africa last year and has three, which she thinks she can secure without being noticed. we have passed this resolution: to have nothing to do with those of the other sex who are not prepared to do their duty. evening, april 12th. i returned to my domacile in time to take in old glory, and also to dress for dinner, being muddy and needing a bath, as we had tried bathing in the creek at the camp while mademoiselle was asleep in the tent, but found that there was an oil well near and the water was full of oil, which stuck to us and was very disagreeable to smell. carter brooks came to dinner, and i played the national anthem on the phonograph as we went in to the dining room. mother did not like it, as the soup was getting cold, but we all stood until it was finished. i then saluted, and we sat down. carter brooks sat beside me, and he gave me a long and piercing glance. "what's the matter with you, bab?" he said. "you were rather rude to me last night and now you've been looking through me and not at me ever since i came, and i'll bet you're feverish." "not at all." i said, in a cold tone. "i may be excited, because of war and my country's peril. but for goodness sake don't act like the familey, which always considers that i am sick when i am merely intence." "intence about what?" he asked. but can one say when one's friends are a disapointment to one? no, or at least not at the table. the others were not listening, as father was fussing about my waking him at daylight to put out the emblem. "just slide your hand this way, under the table cloth," carter brooks said in a low tone. "it may be only intencity, but it looks most awfully like chicken pocks or somthing." so i did, considering that it was only politeness, and he took it and said: "don't jerk! it is nice and warm and soft, but not feverish. what's that lump?" "it's a blister," i said. and as the others were now complaining about the soup, i told him of the corps, etcetera, thinking that perhaps it would rouse him to some patriotic feelings. but no, it did not. "now look here," he said, turning and frowning at me, "aviation corps means flying. just remember this,--if i hear of your trying any of that nonsense i'll make it my business to see that you're locked up, young lady." "i shall do exactly as i like, carter" i said in a, friggid manner. "i shall fly if i so desire, and you have nothing to say about it." however, seeing that he was going to tell my father, i added: "we shall probably not fly, as we have no machine. there are cavalry regiments that have no horses, aren't there? but we are but at the beginning of our milatary existence, and no one can tell what the next day may bring forth." "not with you, anyhow," he said in an angry tone, and was very cold to me the rest of the dinner hour. they talked about the war, but what a disapointment was mine! i had returned from my institution of learning full of ferver, and it was a bitter moment when i heard my father observe that he felt he could be of more use to his native land by making shells than by marching and carrying a gun, as he had once had milk-leg and was never the same since. "of course," said my father, "bab thinks i am a slacker. but a shell is more valuable against the germans than a milk leg, anytime." i at that moment looked up and saw william looking at my father in a strange manner. to those who were not on the alert it might have apeared that he was trying not to smile, my father having a way of indulging in "quips and cranks and wanton wiles" at the table which mother does not like, as our butlers are apt to listen to him and not fill the glasses and so on. but if my familey slept mentaly i did not. _at once_ i suspected william. being still not out, and therfore not listened to with much atention, i kept my piece and said nothing. and i saw this. _william was not what he seemed_. as soon as dinner was over i went into my father's den, where he brings home drawings and estamates, and taking his leather dispach case, i locked it in my closet, tying the key around my neck with a blue ribben. i then decended to the lower floor, and found carter brooks in the hall. "i want to talk to you," he said. "have you young turks--i mean young patriots any guns at this camp of yours?" "not yet." "but you expect to, of course?" i looked at him in a steady manner. "when you have put on the unaform of your country" i said, "or at least of plattsburg, i shall tell you my milatary secrets, and not before." "plattsburg!" he exclaimed. "what do you know of plattsburg?" i then told him, and he listened, but in a very disagreeable way. and at last he said: "the plain truth, bab, is that some good-looking chap has filled you up with a lot of dope which is meant for men, not romantic girls. i'll bet to cents that if a fellow with a broken noze or a squint had told you, you'd have forgotten it the next minute." i was exasparated. because i am tired of being told that the defence of our dear country is a masculine matter. "carter" i said, "i do not beleive in the double, standard, and never did." "the what?" "the double standard," i said with dignaty. "it was all well and good when war meant wearing a kitchin stove and wielding a lance. it is no longer so. and i will show you." i did not mean to be boastfull, such not being my nature. but i did not feel that one who had not yet enlisted, remarking that there was time enough when the enemy came over, etcetera, had any right to criticise me. 12 midnight. how can i set down what i have discovered? and having recorded it, how be sure that hannah will not snoop around and find this record, and so ruin everything? it is midnight. leila is still out, bent on frivolaty. the rest of the familey sleeps quietly, except father, who has taken cold and is breathing through his mouth, and i sit here alone, with my secret. william is a spy. i have the proofs. how my hand trembles as i set down the terrable words. i discovered it thus. feeling somewhat emty at bed time and never sleeping well when hollow inside, i went down to the pantrey at eleven p. m. to see if any of the dinner puding had been left, although not hopeful, owing to the servants mostly finishing the desert. _william was in the pantrey_. he was writing somthing, and he tried to hide it when i entered. being in my _robe de nuit_ i closed the door and said through it: "please go away, william. because i want to come in, unless all the puding is gone." i could hear him moving around, as though concealing somthing. "there is no puding, miss," he said. "and no fruit except for breakfast. your mother is very particuler that no one take the breakfast fruit." "william," i said sternly, "go out by the kitchen door. because i am hungry, and i am coming in for _somthing_." he was opening and closing the pantrey drawers, and although young, and not a housekeeper, i knew that he was not looking in them for edables. "if you'll go up to your room, miss bab," he said, "i'll mix you an eggnogg, without alkohol, of course, and bring it up. an eggnogg is a good thing to stay the stomache with at night. i frequently resort to one myself." i saw that he would not let me in, so i agreed to the eggnogg, but without nutmeg, and went away. my knees tremble to think that into our peacefull home had come "grim-vizaged war," but i felt keen and capable of dealing with anything, even a spy. william brought up the eggnogg, with a dash of sherry in it, and i could hear him going up the stairs to his chamber. i drank the eggnogg, feeling that i would need all my strength for what was to come, and then went down to the pantrey. it was in perfect order, except that one of the tea towles had had a pen wiped on it. i then went through the drawers one by one, although not hopeful, because he probably had the incrimanating document in the heal of his shoe, which spies usually have made hollow for the purpose, or sowed in the lining of his coat. at least, so i feared. but it was not so. under one of the best table cloths i found it. yes. _i found it_. i copy it here in my journal, although knowing nothing of what it means. is it a scheme to blow up my father's mill, where he is making shells for the defence of his native land? i do not know. with shaking hands i put it down as follows: 48 d. k. 48 d. f. 36 s. f. 34 f. f. 36 t. s. 36 s. s. 36 c. s. 24 i. h. k. 36 f. k. but in one way its meaning is clear. treachery is abroad and treason has but just stocked up the stairs to its chamber. april 13th. it is now noon and snowing, although supposed to be spring. i am writing this log in the tent, where we have built a fire. mademoiselle is sitting in the adams's limousine, wrapped in rugs. she is very sulky. there are but nine of us, as i telephoned the quartermaster early this morning and summoned her to come over and discuss important business. her unaform had come and so had mine. what a thrill i felt as she entered headquarters (my chamber) in kakhi and saluted. she was about to sit down, but i reminded her that war knows no intimacies, and that i was her captain. she therfore stood, and i handed her william's code. she read it and said: "what is it?" "that is what the g. a. c. is to find out," i said. "it is a cipher." "it looks like it," said jane in a flutering tone. "oh, bab, what are we to do?" i then explained how i had discovered it and so on. "our first duty," i went on, "is to watch william. he must be followed and his every movement recorded. i need not tell you that our mill is making shells, and that the fate of the country may hang on you today." "on me?" said jane, looking terrafied. "on you. i have selected you for this first day. to-morrow it will be another. i have not yet decided which. you must remain secreted here, but watching. if he goes out, follow him." i was again obliged to remind her of my rank and so on, as she sat down and began to object at once. "the familey," i said, "will be out all day at first aid classes. you will be safe from discovery." here i am sorry to say jane disapointed me, for she observed, bitterly: "no luncheon, i suppose!" "not at all," i said. "it is a part of the plattsburg idea that a good soldier must have nourishment, as his strength is all he has, the officers providing the brains." i then rang for hannah, and ofered her to dollars to bring jane a tray at noon and to sneak it from the kitchin, not the pantrey. "from the kitchin?" she said. "miss bab, it's as much as my life is worth to go to the kitchin. the cook and that new butler are fighting something awfull." jane and i exchanged glances. "hannah," i said, in a low tone, "i can only say this. if you but do your part you may avert a great calamaty." "my god, miss bab!" she cried. "that cook's a german. i said so from the beginning." "not the cook, hannah." we were all silent. it was a terrable moment. i shortly afterwards left the house, leaving jane to study flag signals, or wig-waging as vulgarly called, and _to watch_. camp, 4 p. m. father has just been here. we were trying to load one of betty's uncle's guns when my orderley reported a car coming at a furious gate. on going to the opening of the tent i saw that it was our car with father and jane inside. they did not stop in the road, but turned and came into the field, bumping awfully. father leaped out and exclaimed: "well!" he then folded his arms and looked around. "upon my word, bab!" he said. "you might at least take your familey into your confidence. if jane had not happened to be at the house i'd never have found you. but never mind about that now. have you or have you not seen my leather dispach case?" alas, my face betrayed me, being one that flushes easily and then turns pale. "i thought so," he said, in an angry voice. "do you know that you have kept a board of directors sitting for three hours, and that--bab, you are hopeless! where is it?" how great was my humiliation, although done with the highest motives, to have my corps standing around and listening. also watching while i drew out the rihben and the key. "i hid it in my closet, father," i said. "great thunder!" he said. "and we have called in the secret service!" he then turned on his heal and stocked away, only stopping to stare at mademoiselle in the car, and then driving as fast as possable back to the mill. as he had forgotten jane, she was obliged to stay. it was by now raining, and the corps wanted to go home. but i made a speach, saying that if we weakened now what would we do in times of real danger? "what are a few drops of rain?" i inquired, "to the falling of bullets and perhaps shells? we will now have the class in bandageing." the corps drew lots as to who would be bandaged, there being no volunteers, as it was cold and necesary to remove unaform etcetera. elaine got number seven. the others then practiced on her, having a book to go by. i here add to this log jane's report on william. he had cleaned silver until 1 p. m., when he had gone back to the kitchin and moved off the soup kettle to boil some dish towles. the cook had then set his dish towles out in the yard and upset the pan, pretending that a dog had done so. hannah had told jane about it. at 1:45 william had gone out, remarking that he was going to the drug store to get some poizon for the cook. jane had followed him and _he had really mailed a letter_. april 14th. i have taken a heavy cold and am, alas, _hors de combat_. the familey has issued orders that i am to stay in bed this a. m. and if stopped sneazing by 2 p. m. am to be allowed up but not to go to camp. elaine is in bed to, and her mother called up and asked my parents if they would not send me back to school, as i had upset everything and they could not even get elaine to the dentist's, as she kept talking about teeth being unimportant when the safety of the nation was hanging in the balence. as i lie here and reflect, it seems to me that everywhere around me i see nothing but sloth and indiference. one would beleive that nothing worse could happen than a cook giving notice. will nothing rouze us to our peril? are we to sit here, talking about housecleaning and sowing women and how wide are skirts, when the minions of the german army may at any time turn us into slaves? never! later: carter brooks has sent me a book on first aid. ye gods, what chance have i at a wounded soldier when every person of the femanine sex in this country is learning first aid, and even hoping for small accidents so they can practice on them. no, there are some who can use their hands (i. e. at bandageing and cutting small boils, etcetera. leila has just cut one for henry, the chauffeur, although not yellow on top and therfore not ready) and there are others who do not care for nursing, as they turn sick at the sight of blood, and must therfore use their brains. i am of this class. william brought up my tray this morning. i gave him a peircing glance and said: "is the emblem out?" he avoided my eye. "not yet, miss," he said. "your father left sharp orders as to being disturbed before 8 a. m." "as it is now 9:30," i observed coldly, "there has been time enough lost. i am _hors de combat_, or i would have atended to it long ago." he had drawn a stand beside the bed, and i now sat up and looked at my tray. the orange was cut through the wrong way! had i needed proof, dear log or journal, i had it there. for any _butler_ knows how to cut a breakfast orange. "william," i said, as he was going out, "how long have you been a butler?" perhaps this was a foolish remark as being calculated to put him on his guard. but "out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh." it was said. i could not withdraw my words. he turned suddenly and looked at me. "me, miss?" he said in a far to inocent tone. "why, i don't know exactly. " he then smiled and said: "there are some who think i am not much of a butler now." "just a word of advise, william," i said in a signifacant tone. "a real butler cuts an orange the other way. i am telling you, because although having grape fruit mostly, some morning some one may order an orange, and one should be very careful _these days_." shall i ever forget his face as he went out? no, never. he knew that i knew, and was one to stand no nonsense. but i had put him on his guard. it was to be a battle of intellagence, his brains against mine. although regretful at first of having warned him, i feel now that it is as well. i am one who likes to fight in the open, not as a serpent coiled in the grass and pretending, like the one in the bible, to be a friend. 3 p. m. no new developments. although forbidden to go out nothing was said about the roof. i have therfore been up on it exchanging signals with lucy gray next door by means of flags. as their roof slants and it is still raining, she sliped once and slid to the gutter. she then sat there and screamed like a silly, although they got her back with a clothesline which the policeman asked for. but mrs. gray was very unpleasant from one of their windows and said i was a murderer at heart. has the average parent no soul? noon, april 14 (in camp). this is a fine day, being warm and bright and all here but elaine and mademoiselle--the latter not greatly missed, as although french and an ally she thinks we should be knitting etcetera, and ordered the car to be driven away when ever we tried to load the gun. a quorum being present, it was moved and seconded that we express wherever possable our disaproval in war time of 1. cigarettes 2. drinking 3. low-necked dresses 4. parties 5. fancy deserts 6. golf and other sports--except when necesary for health. 7. candy. we also pleged ourselves to try and make our families rise early, and to insist on members of our families hoisting and taking down the stars and stripes, instead of having it done by those who may not respect it, or only aparently so. passed unanamously. the class in telegraphy reported that it could do little or nothing, as it is easy to rap out a dot but not possable to rap a dash. we therfore gave it up for the study of the rifle and its care. luncheon today: canned salmon, canned beans and vanila wafers. 2 a. m., april 15th. i have seen a spy at his nefarius work! i am still trembling. at one moment i think that i must go again to father and demand consideration, as more mature than he seems to think, and absolutely certain i was not walking in my sleep. but the next moment i think not, but that if i can discover william's plot myself, my familey will no longer ignore me and talk about my studying vocal next winter instead of coming out. to return to william, dear log or journal. i had been asleep for some time, but wakened up to find myself standing in the dining room with a napkin in each hand. i was standing in the flag signal position for a, which is the only one i remember as yet without the manual. i then knew that i had been walking in my sleep, having done so several times at school, and before examinations being usualy tied by my room-mate with a string from my ankle to the door knob, so as in case of getting out of bed to wake up. i was rather scared, as i do not like the dark, feeling when in it that something is behind me and about to cluch at me. i therfore stood still and felt like screaming, when suddenly the door of the butler's pantrey squeaked. could i then have shreiked i would have, but i had no breath for the purpose. somebody came into the room and felt for the table, passing close by me and stepping by accident on the table bell, which is under the rug. it rang and scared me more than ever. we then both stood still, and i hoped if he or it heard my heart thump he or it would think it was the hall clock. after a time the footsteps moved on around the table and out into the hall. i was still standing in position a, being as it were frosen thus. however, seeing that it was something human and not otherwise, as its shoes creaked, i now became angry at the thought that treason was under the roof of my home. i therfore followed the traitor out into the hall and looked in through the door at him. he had a flash light, and was opening the drawers of my father's desk. it was william. i then concealed myself behind my father's overcoat in the hack hall, and considered what to do. should i scream and be probably killed, thus dying a noble death? or should i remain still? i decided on the latter. and now, dear log or journal, i must record what followed, which i shall do as acurately as i can, in case of having later on to call in the secret service and read this to them. there is a safe built in my resadence under the stairs, in which the silver service, plates, etcetera, are stored, as to big for the safe deposit, besides being a nusance to send for every time there is a dinner. this safe only my father can unlock, or rather, this i fondly believed until tonight. but how diferent are the facts! for william walked to it, after listening at the foot of the stairs, and opened it as if he had done so before quite often. he then took from it my father's dispach case, locked the safe again, and went back through the dining room. it is a terrable thing to see a crime thus comitted and to know not what to do. had william repaired again to his chamber, or would he return for the plates, etcetera? at last i crept upstairs to my father's room, which was locked. i could not waken him by gently taping, and i feared that if i made a noise i would warn the lurking criminal in his den. i therfore went to my bathroom and filled my bath sponge with water, and threw it threw the transom in the direction of my father's bed. as it happened it struck on his face, and i heard him getting up and talking dreadfully to himself. also turning on the lights. i put my mouth to the keyhole and said: "father!" had he but been quiet, all would have been well. but he opened the door and began roaring at me in a loud tone, calling me an imp of mischeif and other things, and yelling for a towle. i then went in and closed the door and said: "that's right. bellow and spoil it all." "spoil what?" he said, glareing at me. "there's nothing left to spoil, is there? look at that bed! look at me!" "father," i said, "while you are raging about over such a thing as a wet sponge, which i was driven to in desparation, the house is or rather has been robbed." he then sat down on the bed and said: "you are growing up, bab, although it is early for the burglar obsession. go on, though. who is robbing us and why? because if he finds any money i'll divide with him." such a speach discouraged me, for i can bear anything except to be laughed at. i therfore said: "william has just taken your dispach case out of the safe. i saw him." "william!" "william," i repeated in a tence voice. he was then alarmed and put on his slippers and dressing gown. "you stay here," he observed. "personally i think you've had a bad dream, because william can't possably know the combination of that safe. it's as much as i can do to remember it myself." "it's a spy's business to know everything, father." he gave me a peircing glance. "he's a spy, is he?" he then said. "well, i might have known that all this war preparation of yours would lead to spies. it has turned more substantile intellects than yours." he then swiched on the hall lights from the top of the stairs and desended. i could but wait at the top, fearing at each moment a shot would ring out, as a spy's business is such as not to stop at murder. my father unlocked the safe and looked in it. then he closed it again and disapeared into the back of the house. how agonising were the moments that ensued! he did not return, and at last, feeling that he had met a terrable death, i went down. i went through the fatal dining room to the pantrey and there found him not only alive, but putting on a plate some cold roast beef and two apples. "i thought we'd have a bite to eat," he said. "i need a little nourishment before getting back into that puddle to sleep." "father!" i said. "how can you talk of food when knowing---" "get some salt and pepper," he said, "and see if there is any mustard mixed. you've had a dream, bab. that's all. the case is in the safe, and william is in his bed, and in about two minutes a cold repast is going to be in me." ye gods! he is now asleep, and i am writing this at 2 a. m. i, and i alone, know that there is a criminal in this house, serving our meals and quareling with the cook as if a regular butler, but really a spy. and although i cry aloud in my anguish, those who hear me but maintain that i am having a nightmare. i am a voice crying in the wilderness. april 15th: 9 a. m. william is going about as usual, but looks as though he had not had enough sleep. father has told mother about last night, and i am not to have coffee in the evenings. this is not surprizing, as they have always considered me from a physical and not a mental standpoint. my very soul is in revolt. 6 p. m. this being sunday, camp did not convene until 3 p. m. and then but for a short time. we flag-signaled mostly and are now to the letter e. also got the gun loaded at last and fired it several times, i giving the orders as in the book, page 262, in a loud voice: (1) "hold the rifle on the mark." (2) "aim properly." (3) "squeeze the triger properly." (4) "call the shot." we had but just started, and mademoiselle had taken the car and gone back to the adams's residence to bring out mr. adams, as she considers gun-shooting as dangerous, when a farmer with to dogs came over a fense and objected, saying that it was sunday and that his cows were getting excited anyhow and would probahly not give any milk. "these are war times," i said, in a dignafied manner. "and if you are doing nothing for the country yourself you should at least allow others to do so." he was a not unreasonable tipe and this seemed to effect him. for he sat down on one of our stools and said: "well, i don't know about that, miss. you see----" "captain," i put in. because he might as well know that we meant business. "captain, of course!" he said. "you'll have to excuze me. this thing of women in war is new to me. but now don't you think that you'll be doing the country a service not to interfere with the food supply and so on?" he then looked at me and remarked: "if i was you, miss or captain, i would not come any to clost to my place. my wife was pretty well bruized up that time you upset our milk waggon." _it was indeed he_! but he was not unpleasant about it, although remarking that if he had a daughter and a machine, although he had niether, and expected niether, the one would never be allowed to have the other until carefully taught on an emty road. he then said: "you girls have been wig-wagging, i see." "we are studying flag signals." "humph!" he observed. "i used to know something about that myself, in the spanish war. now let's see what i remember. watch this. and somebody keep an eye on that hill and report if a blue calico dress is charging from the enemies' trenches." it was very strange to see one who apeared to be but an ordinary farmer, or milkman, pick up our flags and wave them faster than we could read them. it was indeed thrilling, although discouraging, because if that was the regular rate of speed we felt that we could never acheive it. i remarked this, and he then said: "work hard at it, and i reckon i can slip over now and then and give you a lesson. any girl that can drive an automobile hell-bent" (these are his words, not mine) "can do most anything she sets her mind on. you leave that gun alone, and work at the signaling, and i guess i can make out to come every afternoon. i start out about 2 a. m. and by noon i'm mostly back." we all thanked him, and saluted as he left. he saluted to, and said: "name's schmidt, but don't worry about that. got some german blood way back, but who hasn't?" he then departed with his to dogs, and we held a meeting, and voted to give up everything but signaling. passed unanamously. 8 p. m. i am now at home. dinner is over, being early on sundays because of servants' days out and so on. leila had a doctor to dinner. she met him at the red cross, and he would, i think, be a good husband. he sat beside me, and i talked mostly about her, as i wished him to know that, although having her faults as all have, she would be a good wife. "she can sow very well," i told him, "and she would probably like to keep house, but of course has no chance here, as mother thinks no one can manage but herself." "indeed!" he said, looking at me. "but of course she will probably have a house of her own before long." "very likely," i said. "although she has had a number of chances and always refuses." "probably the right person has not happened along;" he observed. "perhaps," i said, in a signifacant tone. "or perhaps he does not know he is the right person." william, of whom more anon, was passing the ice cream just then. i refused it, saying: "not in war time." "barbara," mother said, stiffly. "don't be a silly. eat your desert." as i do not like seens i then took a little, but no cake. during dinner leila made an observation which has somewhat changed my opinion of carter brooks. she said his mother did not want him to enlist which was why he had not. she has no other sons and probably never will have, being a widow. i have now come to william. lucy gray had been on secret service that day, but did the observing from the windows of their house, as my familey was at home and liable to poke into my room at any moment. william had made it up with the cook, lucy said, and had showed her a game of solitaire in the morning by the kitchin window. he had then fallen asleep in the pantrey, the window being up. in the afternoon, luncheon being over and the familey out in the car for a ride, he had gone out into the yard behind the house and pretended to look to see if the crocuses were all gone. but soon he went into the garage and was there a half hour. now it is one of the rules of this familey that no house servants go to the garage, owing to taking up the chauffeur's time when he should be oiling up, etcetera. also owing to one butler stealing the chauffeur's fur coat and never being seen again. but alas, what am i to do? for although i reported this being in the garage to mother, she but said: "don't worry me about him, bab. he is hopelessly inefficient. but there are no men servants to be had and we'll have to get along." 1 a. m. i have been on watch all evening, but everything is quiet. i must now go to bed, as the manual says, page 166: "retire early and get a good night's rest." april 16th. in camp. luncheon of sardines, pickels, and eclairs as no one likes to cook, owing to smoke in the eyes, etcetera. camp convened at 12 noon, as we spent the morning helping to get members of the other sex to enlist. we pinned a pink carnation on each enlister, and had to send for more several times. we had quite a crowd there and it was very polite except one, who said he would enlist twice for one kiss. the officer however took him by the ear and said the army did not wish such as he. he then through (threw?) him out. this morning i warned the new chauffeur, feeling that if he had by chance any milatary secrets in the garage he should know about william. "william!" he said, looking up from where he was in the repair pit at the time. "_william_!" "i am sorry, henry," i said, in a quiet voice. "but i fear that william is not what he apears to be." "i think you must be mistaken, miss." he then hamered for some time. when he was through he climbed out and said: "there's to much spy talk going on, to my thinking, miss. and anyhow, what would a spy be after in this house?" "well," i observed, in an indignant manner, for i am sensative and hate to have my word doubted, "as my father is in a business which is now war secrets and nothing else, i can understand, if you can't." he then turned on the engine and made a terrable noise, to see if hitting on all cylinders. when he shut it off i told him about william spending a half hour in the garage the day before. although calm before he now became white with anger and said: "just let me catch him sneaking around here, and i'll--what's he after me for anyhow? i haven't got any milatary secrets." i then sugested that we work together, as i felt sure william was after my father's blue prints and so on, which were in the dispach case in the safe at night. he said he was not a spy-catcher, but if i caught william at any nonsense i might let him know, and if he put a padlock on the outside of his door and mother saw it and raised a fuss, i could stand up for him. i agreed to do so. 10 p. m. doctor connor called this evening, to bring sis a pattern for a surgicle dressing. they spent to hours in the library looking at it. mother is rather upset, as she thinks a doctor makes a poor husband, having to be out at night and never able to go to dinners owing to baby cases and so on. she said this to father, but i heard her and observed: "mother, is a doctor then to have no familey life, and only to bring into the world other people's children?" she would usualy have replied to me, but she merely sighed, as she is not like herself, being worried about father. she beleives that my father's life is in danger, as although usualy making steel, which does not explode and is therfore a safe business, he is now making shells, and every time it has thundered this week she has ohserved: "the mill!" she refuses to be placated, although knowing that only those known to the foremen can enter, as well as having a medal with a number on it, and at night a password which is new every night. i know this, because we have this evening made up a list of passwords for the next week, using a magazine to get them out of, and taking advertisements, such as cocoa, razers, suspenders and so on. not these actualy but others like them. we then learned them off by heart and burned the paper, as one cannot be to carefull with a spy in the house, even if not credited as such by my parents. have forgotten the emblem. must take it in. april 17th. in camp. henry brought me out in the big car, as mine has a broken spring owing to going across the field with it. he says he has decided to help me, and that i need not watch the safe, etcetera, at night. i therfore gave him a key to the side door, and now feel much better. he also said not to have any of the corps detailed to watch william in the daytime, as he can do so, because the familey is now spending all day at the red cross. he thinks the password idea fine, as otherwise almost anybody could steal a medal and get into the mill. william seems to know that i know something, and this morning, while opening the door for me, he said: "i beg pardon, miss bab, but i see henry is driving you today." "it is not hard to see," i replied, in a hauty manner. it is not the butler's business who is driving me, and anyhow i had no intention of any unecessary conversation with a spy. "your own car being out of order, miss?" "it is," i retorted. "as you will probably be going to the garage, although against orders, while henry is out, you can see it yourself." i then went out and sat in front in order to converce with henry, as the back is lonely. i looked up at the door and william was standing there, with a very queer look on his face. 3 p. m. mr. schmidt is late and the corps is practising, having now got to k. luncheon was a great surprize, as at 12:45 a car apeared on the sky line and was reported by our sentry as aproaching rapidly. when it came near it was seen to be driven by carter brooks, and to contain several baskets, etcetera. he then dismounted and saluted and said: "the commiseriat has sent me forward with the day's rations, sir." "very good," i returned, in an official manner. "corps will line up and count. odd numbers to unpack and evens to set the table." this of course was figurative, as we have no table, but eat upon the ground. he then carried over the baskets and a freezer of ice cream. he had brought a fruit salid, cold chicken, potatoe chips, cake and ice-cream. it was a delightful repast, and not soon to be forgotten by the corps. mademoiselle got out of the adams's car and came over, although she had her own lunch as usual. she then had the chauffeur carry over a seat cushion, and to see her one would beleive she was always pleasant. i have no use for those who are only pleasant in the presence of food or strangers. carter brooks sat beside me, and observed: "you see, bab, although a slacker myself, i cannot bear that such brave spirits as those of the girls' aviation corps should go hungry." i then gave him a talking-to, saying that he had been a great disapointment, as i thought one should rise to the country's call and not wait until actualy needed, even when an only son. he made no defence, but said in a serious tone: "you see, it's like this. i am not sure of myself, bab. i don't want to enlist because others of the male sex, as you would say, are enlisting and i'm ashamed not to. and i don't want to enlist just to wear a unaform and get away from business. i don't take it as lightly as all that." "have you no patriotism?" i demanded. "can you repeat unmoved the celabrated lines: "lives there a man with soul so dead, he (or who) never to himself hath said: this is my own, my native land." i then choked up, although being captain i felt that tears were a femanine weakness and a bad example. mademoiselle had at that moment felt an ant somewhere and was not looking. therfore she did not perceive when he reached over and put his hand on my foot, which happened to be nearest to him. he then pated my foot, and said: "what a nice kid you are!" it is strange, now that he and the baskets, etcetera, have gone away, that i continue to think about his pating my foot. because i have known him for years, and he is nothing to me but a good friend and not sentamental in any way. i feel this way. suppose he enlists and goes away to die for his country, as a result of my speach. can i endure to think of it? no. i did not feel this way about tom gray, who has gone to florida to learn to fly, although at one time thinking the sun rose and set on him. it is very queer. the sentry reports mr. schmidt and the dogs coming over the fense. evening. doctor connor is here again. he is taking sis to a meeting where he is to make a speach. i ofered to go along, but they did not apear to hear me, and perhaps it is as well, for i must watch william, as henry is taking them in the car. i am therfore writing on the stairs, as i can then hear him washing silver in the pantrey. mother has been very sweet to me this evening. i cannot record how i feel about the change. i used to feel that she loved me when she had time to do so, but that she had not much time, being busy with bridge, dinners, taking leila out and housekeeping, and so on. but now she has more time. tonight she said: "bab, suppose we have a little talk. i have been thinking all day what i would do if you were a boy, and took it into that patriotic head of yours to enlist. i couldn't bear it, that's all." i was moved to tears by this afection on the part of my dear parent, but i remembered being captain of the corps, and so did not weep. she then said that she would buy us an emblem for the camp, and have a luncheon packed each day. she also ofered me a wrist watch. i cannot but think what changes war can make, bringing people together because of worry and danger, and causing gifts, such as flags and watches, and ofering to come out and see us in a day or so. it is now 9 p. m. and the mention of the flag has reminded me that our own emblem still fluters beneath the starry sky. later: william is now in the garage. i am watching from the window of the sowing room. the terrable thought comes--has he a wireless concealed there, by which he sends out clandestine messages, perhaps to germany? this i know. he cannot get into henry's room, as the padlock is now on. later: he has returned, foiled! april 18th. nothing new. working hard at signaling. mr. schmidt says i am doing well and if he was an officer he would give me a job. april 19th. nothing new. but doctor connor had told leila that my father looks sick or at least not well. when i went to him, being frightened, as he is my only male parent and very dear to me, he only laughed and said: "nonsense! we're rushed at the mill, that's all. you see, bab, war is more than unaforms and saluting. it is a nasty business. and of course, between your forgetting the emblem until midnight, when i am in my first sleep, and putting it out at dawn, i am not getting all the rest i really need." he then took my hand and said: "bab, you haven't by any chance been in my dispach case for anything, have you?" "why? is something missing?" i said in i startled tone. "no. but sometimes i think--however, never mind about that. i think i'll take the case upstairs and lock my door hereafter, and if the emblem is an hour or to late, we will have to stand for it. eight o'clock is early enough for any flag, especialy if it has been out late the night before." "father" i said, in a tence voice. "i have before this warned you, but you would not listen, considering me imature and not knowing a spy when i see one." i then told him what i knew about william, but he only said: "well, the only thing that matters is the password, and that cannot be stolen. as for william, i have had his record looked up by the police, and it is fine. now go to bed, and send in the spy. i want a scotch and soda." april 20th. henry and i have searched the garage, but there is no wireless, unless in a chimney. henry says this is often done, by spies, who raise a mast out of the chimney by night. to night i shall watch the chimney, as there is an ark light near it, so that it is as bright as day. the cook has given notice, as she and william cannot get along, and as he can only make to salids and those not cared for by the other servants. april 27th. after eight days i am at last alowed this log or journal, being supported with pillows while writing as doctor connor says it will not hurt me. he has just gone, and i am sure kissed leila in the hall while hannah and the nurse were getting pen, ink, etcetera. perhaps after all romanse has at last come to my beloved sister, who will now get married. if so, i can come out in november, which is the best time, as december is busy with xmas and so on. how shall i tell the tradgic story of that night? how can i put, by means of a pen, my experiences on paper? there are some things which may not be written, but only felt, and that mostly afterwards, as during the time one is to excited to feel. on april 21st, saturday, i had a bad cold and was not allowed to go to camp. i therfore slept most of the day, being one to sleep easily in daytime, except for hannah coming in to feel if i was feverish. my father did not come home to dinner, and later on telephoned that he was not to be looked for until he arived, owing to somthing very important at the mill and a night shift going on for the first time. we ate dinner without him, and mother was very nervous and kept saying that with foremen and so on she did not see why father should have to kill himself. ye gods! had we but realised the signifacance of that remark! but we did not, but went to living in a fool's paradice, and complaining because william had put to much vinigar in the french dressing. william locked up the house and we retired to our chambers. but as i had slept most of the day i could not compose myself to slumber, but sat up in my robe de nuit and reflected about carter brooks, and that perhaps it would be better for him not to enlist as there is plenty to be done here at home, where one is safe from bullets, machine guns and so on. because, although not sentamental about him or silly in any way, i felt that he should not wish to go into danger if his mother objected. and after all one must consider mothers and other parents. i put a dressing gown over my _robe de nuit_, and having then remembered about the wireless, i put out my light and sat in the window seat. but there was no mast to be seen, and nothing but the ark light swinging. i then saw some one come in the drive and go back to the garage, but as henry has a friend who has been out of work and sleeps with him, although not told to the familey, as probably objecting,--although why i could not see, since he used half of henry's bed and therfore cost nothing--i considered that it was he. it was not, however, as i shall now record in this log or journal. i had perhaps gone to sleep in my place of watching, when i heard a rapping at my chamber door. "only this and nothing more." poe--the raven. i at once opened the door, and it was the cook. she said that henry had returned from the mill with a pain in his ear, and had telephoned to her by the house 'phone to bring over a hot water bottle, as father was driving himself home when ready. she then said that if i would go over with her to the garage and drop some laudinum into his ear, she being to nervous, and also taking my hot water bottle, she would be grateful. although not fond of her, owing to her giving notice and also being very fussy about cake taken from the pantrey, i am one to go always where needed. i also felt that a member of the corps should not shirk duty, even a chauffeur's ear. i therfore got my hot water bottle and some slippers, etcetera, and we went to the garage. i went up the stairs to henry's room, but what was my surprize to find him not there, but only his friend. i then said: "where is henry?" the cook was behind me, and she said: "he is coming. he has to walk around because it aches so." then henry's friend said, in a queer voice: "now, miss bab, there is nothing to be afraid of, unless you make a noise. if you do there will be trouble and that at once. we three are going to have a little talk." ye gods! i tremble even to remember his words, for he said: "what we want is simple enough. we want tonight's password at the mill. _don't scream_." i dropped the hot water bottle, because there is no use pretending one is not scared at such a time. one is. but of course i would not tell them the password, and the cook said: "be careful, miss bab. we are not playing. we are in terrable ernest." she did not sound like a cook at all, and she looked diferent, being very white and with to red spots on her cheeks. "so am i," i responded, although with shaking teeth. "and just wait until the police hear of this and see what happens. you will all be arested. if i scream----" "if you scream," said henry's friend in an awful voice, "you will never scream again." there was now a loud report from below, which the neighbors afterwards said they heard, but considered gas in a muffler, which happens often and sounds like a shot. there was then a sort of low growl and somebody fell with a thump. then the cook said to henry's friend: "jump out of the window. they've got him!" but he did not jump, but listened, and we then heard henry saying: "come down here, quick." henry's friend then went downstairs very rapidly, and i ran to the window thinking to jump out. but it was closed and locked, and anyhow the cook caught me and said, in a hissing manner: "none of that, you little fool." i had never been so spoken to, especially by a cook, and it made me very angry. i then threw the bottle of laudinum at her, and broke a front tooth, also cutting her lip, although i did not know this until later, as i then fainted. when i came to i was on the floor and william, whom i had considered a spy, was on the bed with his hands and feet tied. henry was standing by the door, with a revolver, and he said: "i'm sorry, miss bab, because you are all right and have helped me a lot, especially with that on the bed. if it hadn't been for you our goose would have been cooked." he then picked me up and put me in a chair, and looked at his watch. "now," he said, "we'll have that password, because time is going and there are things to be done, quite a few of them." i could see william then, and i saw his eyes were partly shut, and that he had been shot, because of blood, etcetera. i was about to faint again, as the sight of blood makes me sick at the stomache, but henry held a bottle of amonia under my nose and said in a brutal way: "here, none of that." i then said that i would not tell the password, although killed for it, and he said if i kept up that attitude i would be, because they were desperate and would stop at nothing. "there is no use being stubborn," he said, "because we are going to get that password, and the right one to, because if the wrong one you, to, will be finished off in short order." as i was now desperate myself i decided to shriek, happen what may. but i had merely opened my mouth to when he sprang at me and put his hand over my mouth. he then said he would be obliged to gag me, and that when i made up my mind to tell the password, if i would nod my head he would then remove the gag. as i grew pale at these words he threw up a window, because air prevents fainting. he then tied a towel around my mouth and lips, putting part of it between my teeth, and tied it in a hard knot behind. he also tied my hands behind me, although i kicked as hard as possable, and can do so very well, owing to skating and so on. how awfull were my sensations as i thus sat facing death, and remembering that i had often been excused from chapel when not necesary, and had been confirmed while pretending to know the creed while not doing so. also not always going to sunday school as i should, and being inclined to skip my prayers when very tired. we sat there for a long time, which seemed eternities, henry making dreadful threats, and holding a revolver. but i would not tell the password, and at last he went out, locking the door behind him, to consult with the other spies. i then heard a whisper, and saw that william was not dead. he said: "here, quick. i'll unloose your hands and you can drop out the window." he did so, but just in time, as henry returned, looking fierce and saying that i had but fifteen minutes more. i was again in my chair, and he did not percieve that my hands were now untied. i must stop here, as my hands tremble to much to hold my trusty pen. april 28th. leila has just been in. she kissed me in a fraternal manner, and i then saw that she wore an engagement ring. well, such is life. we only get realy acquainted with our families when they die, or get married. doctor connor came in a moment later and kissed me to, calling me his brave little sister. how pleasant it is to lie thus, having wine jelatine and squab and so on, and wearing a wrist watch with twenty-seven diamonds, and mother using the vibrator on my back to make me sleepy, etcetera. also, to know that when one's father returns he will say: "well, how is the patriot today?" and not smile while saying it. i have recorded in this journal up to where i had got my hands loose, and henry was going to shoot me in fifteen minutes. we have thus come to mr. schmidt. suddenly henry swore in an angry manner. this was because my father had brought the machine home and was but then coming along the drive. had he come alone it would have been the end of him and the mill, for henry and his friend would have caught him, and my father is like me--he would die before giving the password and blowing up all the men and so on in the mill. but he brought the manager with him, as he lives out of town and there is no train after midnight. my father said: "henry!" so henry replied: "coming, sir" and went out, but again locked the door. before he went out he said: "now mind, any noise up here and we will finish you and your father also. _don't you overturn a chair by mistake, young lady_." he then went down, and i could hear my dear parent's voice which i felt i would probably never hear again, discussing new tires and henry's earache, which was not a real one, as i now knew. i looked at william, but he had his eyes shut and i saw he was now realy unconscious. i then however heard a waggon in our alley, and i went to the window. what was my joy to see that it was mr. schmidt's milk waggon which had stopped under the ark light, with he himself on the seat. he was getting some milk bottles out, and i suppose he heard the talking in our garage, for he stopped and then looked up. then he dropped a milk bottle, but he stood still and stared. with what anguished eyes, dear log or journal, did i look down at him, unable to speak or utter a sound. i then tried to untie the towle but could not, owing to feeling weak and sick and the knots being hard. i at one moment thought of jumping out, but it was to far for our garage was once a stable and is high. but i knew that if the criminals who surounded my father and the manager heard such a sound, they would then attack my father and kill him. i was but a moment thinking all this, as my mind is one to work fast when in danger. mr. schmidt was still staring, and the horse was moving on to the next house, as mr. schmidt says it knows all his customers and could go out alone if necesary. it was then that i remembered that, although i could not speak, i could signal him, although having no flags. i therfore signaled, saying: "quiet. spies. bring police." it was as well that he did not wait for the last to letters, as i could not remember c, being excited and worried at the time. but i saw him get into his waggon and drive away very fast, which no one in the garage noticed, as milk waggons were not objects of suspicion. how strange it was to sit down again as if i had not moved, as per orders, and hear my father whistling as he went to the house. i began to feel very sick at my stomache, although glad he was safe, and wondered what they would do without me. because i had now seen that, although insisting that i was still a child, i was as dear to them as leila, though in a different way. i had not cried as yet, but at the thought of henry's friend and the others coming up to kill me before mr. schmidt could get help, i shed a few tears. they all came back as soon as my father had slamed the house door, and if they had been feirce before they were awfull then, the cook with a handkerchief to her mouth, and henry's friend getting out a watch and giving me five minutes. he had counted three minutes and was holding his revolver to just behind my ear, when i heard the milk waggon coming back, with the horse galloping. it stopped in the alley, and the cook said, in a dreadfull voice: "what's that?" she dashed to the window, and looked out, and then turned to the other spies and said: "the police!" i do not know what happened next, as i fainted again, having been under a strain for some time. i must now stop, as mother has brought the vibrater. april 29th. all the people in my father's mill have gone together and brought me a riding horse. i have just been to the window of my chamber to look at it. i have always wanted a horse, but i cannot see that i deserve this one, having but done what any member of the g. a. c. should do. as i now have a horse, perhaps the corps should become cavalry. memo: take this up with jane. later: carter brooks has just gone, and i have a terrable headache owing to weeping, which always makes my head ache. he has gone to the war. i cannot write more. 10 p. m. i can now think better, although still weeping at intervals. i must write down all that has happened, as i do not feel like telling jane, or indeed anybody. always before i have had no secrets from jane, even in matters of the other sex. but i feel very strange about this and like thinking about it rather than putting it into speach. also i feel very kind toward everybody, and wish that i had been a better girl in many ways. i have tried to be good, and have never smoked cigarettes or been decietful except when forced to be by the familey not understanding. but i know i am far from being what carter brooks thinks me to be. i have called hannah and given her my old watch, with money to for a new chrystal. also stood by at salute while my father brought in the emblem. for william can no longer do it, as he was not really a butler at all but a secret service inspector, and also being still in the hospital, although improving. he had not told the familey, as he was afraid they would not then treat him as a real butler. as for the code in the pantrey, it was really not such, but the silver list, beginning with 48 d. k. or dinner knives, etcetera. when taking my father's dispach case from the safe, it was to keep the real spies from getting it. he did it every night, and took the important papers out until morning, when he put them back. to-night my father brought in the emblem and folded it. he then said: "well, i admit that fathers are not real substatutes for young men in unaform, but in times of grief they may be mighty handy to tie to." he then put his arms around me and said: "you see, bab, the real part of war, for a woman--and you are that now, bab, in spite of your years--the real thing she has to do is not the fighting part, although you are about as good a soldier as any i know. the thing she has to do is to send some one she cares about, and then sit back and wait." as he saw that i was agatated, he then kissed me and sugested that we learn something more than the first verse of the national hymn, as he was tired of making his lips move and thus pretending to sing when not actualy doing so. i shall now record about carter brooks coming today. i was in a chair with pilows and so on, when leila came in and kissed me, and then said: "bab, are you able to see a caller?" i said yes, if not the police, as i had seen a great many and was tired of telling about henry and henry's friend, etcetera. "not the police," she said. she then went out in the hall and said: "come up. it's all right." i then saw a soldier in the door, and could not beleive that it was carter brooks, until he saluted and said: "captain, i have come to report. owing to the end of the easter holadays the girls' aviation corps----" i could no longer be silent. i cried: "oh, carter!" so he came into the room and turned round, saying: "some soldier, eh?" leila had gone out, and all at once i knew that my patriotism was not what i had thought it, for i could not bear to see him going to war, especialy as his mother would be lonly without him. although i have never considered myself weak, i now felt that i was going to cry. i therfore said in a low voice to give me a handkercheif, and he gave me one of his. "why, look here," he said, in an astounded manner, "you aren't crying about_ me_, are you?" i said from behind his handkercheif that i was not, except being sorry for his mother and also for him on account of leila. "leila!" he said. "what about leila?" "she is lost to you forever," i replied in a choking tone. "she is betrothed to another." he became very angry at that, and observed: "look here, bab. one minute i think you are the cleverest girl in the world, and the next--you little stuped, do you still insist on thinking that i am in love with leila?" at that time i began to feel very queer, being week and at the same time excited and getting red, the more so as he pulled the handkercheif from my eyes and commanded me: "bab, look at me. do i _look_ as though i care for leila?" i, however, could not look at him just then. because i felt that i could not endure to see the unaform. "don't you know why i hang around this house?" he said, in a very savige manner. "because if you don't everybody else does." dear log or journal, i could but think of one thing, which was that i was not yet out, but still what is called a sub-deb, and so he was probably only joking, or perhaps merely playing with me. i said so, in a low tone, but he only gave a groan and said: "i know you are not out and all the rest of it. don't i lie awake at night knowing it? and that's the reason i----" here he stopped and said: "damm it" in a feirce voice. "very well," he went on. "i came to say good-bye, and to ask you if you will write to me now and then. because i'm going to war half because the country needs me and the other half because i'm not going to disapoint a certain young person who has a way of expecting people to be better than they are." he then very suddenly stood up and said: "i guess i'd better go. and don't you dare to cry, because if you do there will be trouble." but i could not help it, as he was going to war for my native land, and might never come back. i therfore asked for his handkercheif again, but he did not listen. he only said: "you are crying, and i warned you." he then stooped over and put his hand under my chin and said: "good-bye, sweetheart." _and kissed me_. he went out at once, slaming the door, and passed leila in the lower hall without speaking to her. april 30th. i now intend to close this log or journal, and write no more in it. i am not going back to school, but am to get strong and well again, and to help mother at the red cross. i wish to do this, as it makes me feel usefull and keeps me from worrying. after all, i could not realy care for any one who would not rise to the country's call. may 3rd. i have just had a letter from carter. it is mostly about blisters on his feet and so on, and is not exactly a love letter. but he ends with this, which i shall quote, and so end this dairy: "after all, bab, perhaps we all needed this. i know i did. "i want to ask you something. do you remember the time you wrote me that you were _blited_ and i sugested that we be blited together. how about changing that a bit, and being _plited_. because if i am not cheered by something of the sort, my patriotism is going to ooze out of the blisters on my heels." i have thought about this all day, and i have no right to ruin his career. i beleive that the army should be encouraged as much as possible. i have therefore sent him a small drawing, copied from the manual, like this {1" tall figure of a man holding semifore flags -his right arm is to the right and his left arm is up} which means "afirmative" [end.] . 1880 ben-hur: a tale of the christ by lew wallace book first. chapter i. into the desert. the jebel es zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north. standing on its red-and-white cliffs, and looking off under the path of the rising sun, one sees only the desert of arabia, where the east winds, so hateful to the vine-growers of jericho, have kept their playgrounds since the beginning. its feet are well covered by sands tossed from the euphrates, there to lie; for the mountain is a wall to the pasture-lands of moab and ammon on the westlands which else had been of the desert a part. the arab has impressed his language upon everything south and east of judea; so, in his tongue, the old jebel is the parent of numberless wadies which, intersecting the roman roadnow a dim suggestion of what once it was, a dusty path for syrian pilgrims to and from meccarun their furrows, deepening as they go, to pass the torrents of the rainy season into the jordan, or their last receptacle, the dead sea. out of one of these wadiesor, more particularly, out of that one which rises at the extreme end of the jebel, and, extending east of north, becomes at length the bed of the jabbok rivera traveller passed, going to the tablelands of the desert. to this person the attention of the reader is first besought. judged by his appearance, he was quite forty-five years old. his beard, once of the deepest black, flowing broadly over his breast, was streaked with white. his face was brown as a parched coffee-berry, and so hidden by a red kufiyeh (as the kerchief of the head is at this day called by the children of the desert) as to be but in part visible. now and then he raised his eyes, and they were large and dark. he was clad in the flowing garments so universal in the east; but their style may not be described more particularly, for he sat under a miniature tent, and rode a great white dromedary. it may be doubted if the people of the west ever overcome the impression made upon them by the first view of a camel equipped and loaded for the desert. custom, so fatal to other novelties, affects this feeling but little. at the end of long journeys with caravans, after years of residence with the bedawin, the western-born, wherever they may be, will stop and wait the passing of the stately brute. the charm is not in the figure, which not even love can make beautiful; nor in the movement, the noiseless stepping, or the broad careen. as is the kindness of the sea to a ship, so is that of the desert to its creature. it clothes him with all its mysteries; in such manner, too, that while we are looking at him we are thinking of them: therein is the wonder. the animal which now came out of the wady might well have claimed the customary homage. its colour and height; its breadth of foot; its bulk of body, not fat, but overlaid with muscle; its long, slender neck, of swan-like curvature; the head, wide between the eyes, and tapering to a muzzle which a lady's bracelet might have almost clasped; its motion, step long and elastic, tread sure and soundlessall certified its syrian blood, old as the days of cyrus, and absolutely priceless. there was the usual bridle, covering the forehead with scarlet fringe and garnishing the throat with pendent brazen chains, each ending with a tinkling silver bell; but to the bridle there was neither rein for the rider nor strap for a driver. the furniture perched on the back was an invention which with any other people than those of the east would have made the inventor renowned. it consisted of two wooden boxes, scarce four feet in length, balanced so that one hung at each side; the inner space, softly lined and carpeted, was arranged to allow the master to sit or lie half reclined; over it all was stretched a green awning. broad back and breast straps, and girths, secured with countless knots and ties, held the device in place. in such manner the ingenious sons of cush had contrived to make comfortable the sunburnt ways of the wilderness, along which lay their duty as often as their pleasure. when the dromedary lifted itself out of the last break of the wady, the traveller had passed the boundary of el belka, the ancient ammon. it was morning time. before him was the sun, half curtained in fleecy mist; before him also spread the desert; not the realm of drifting sands, which was farther on, but the region where the herbage began to dwarf; where the surface is strewn with boulders of granite, and grey and brown stones, interspersed with languishing acacias and tufts of camel-grass. the oak, bramble and arbutus lay behind as if they had come to a line, looked over into the well-less waste, and crouched with fear. and now there was an end of path or road. more, than ever the camel seemed insensibly driven; it lengthened and quickened its pace, its head pointed straight towards the horizon; through the wide nostrils it drank the wind in great draughts. the litter swayed, and rose and fell like a boat in the waves. dried leaves in occasional beds rustled underfoot. sometimes a perfume like absinthe sweetened all the air. lark, and chat, and rock-swallow leaped to wing, and white partridges ran whistling and clucking out of the way. more rarely a fox or a hyena quickened his gallop, to study the intruders at a safe distance. off to the right rose the hills of the jebel, the pearl-grey veil resting upon them changing momentarily into a purple which the sun would make matchless a little later. over their highest peaks a vulture sailed on broad wings into widening circles. but of all these things the tenant under the green tent saw nothing, or, at least, made no sign of recognition. his eyes were fixed and dreamy. the going of the man, like that of the animal, was as one being led. for two hours the dromedary swung forward, keeping the trot steadily and the line due east. in that time the traveller never changed his position, nor looked to the right or left. on the desert, distance is not measured by miles or leagues, but by the saat, or hour, and the manzil, or halt: three-and-a-half leagues fill the former, fifteen or twenty-five the latter; but they are the rates for the common camel. a carrier of the genuine syrian stock can make three leagues easily. at full speed he overtakes the ordinary winds. as one of the results of the rapid advance, the face of the landscape underwent a change. the jebel stretched along the western horizon, like a pale-blue ribbon. a tell, or hummock of clay and cemented sand, arose here and there. now and then basaltic stones lifted their round crowns, outposts of the mountain against the forces of the plain; all else, however, was sand, sometimes smooth as the beaten beach, then heaped in rolling ridges; here chopped waves, there long swells. so, too, the condition of the atmosphere changed. the sun, high risen, had drunk his fill of dew and mist, and warmed the breeze that kissed the wanderer under the awning; far and near he was tinting the earth with faint milk-whiteness, and shimmering all the sky. two hours more passed without rest or deviation from the course. vegetation entirely ceased. the sand, so crusted on the surface that it broke into rattling flakes at every step, held undisputed sway. the jebel was out of view, and there was no landmark visible. the shadow that before followed had now shifted to the north, and was keeping even race with the objects which cast it; and as there was no sign of halting, the conduct of the traveller became each moment more strange. no one, be it remembered, seeks the desert for a pleasure-ground. life and business traverse it by paths along which the bones of things dead are strewn as so many blazons. such are the roads from well to well, from pasture to pasture. the heart of the most veteran sheik beats quicker when he finds himself alone in the pathless tracts. so the man with whom we are dealing could not have been in search of pleasure; neither was his manner that of a fugitive: not once did he look behind him. in such situations fear and curiosity are the most common sensations; he was not moved by them. when men are lonely, they stoop to any companionship; the dog becomes a comrade, the horse a friend, and it is no shame to shower them with caresses and speeches of love. the camel received no such token, not a touch, not a word. exactly at noon the dromedary, of its own will, stopped, and uttered the cry or moan, peculiarly piteous, by which its kind always protest against an overload, and sometimes crave attention and rest. the master thereupon bestirred himself, waking, as it were, from sleep. he threw the curtains of the houdah up, looked at the sun, surveyed the country on every side long and carefully, as if to identify an appointed place. satisfied with the inspection, he drew a deep breath and nodded, much as to say, "at last, at last!" a moment after, he crossed his hands upon his breast, bowed his head, and prayed silently. the pious duty done, he prepared to dismount. from his throat proceeded the sound heard doubtless by the favourite camels of jobikh! ikh!the signal to kneel. slowly the animal obeyed, grunting the while. the rider then put his foot upon the slender neck, and stepped upon the sand. chapter ii. meeting of the wise men. the man as now revealed was of admirable proportions, not so tall as powerful. loosening the silken rope which held the kufiyeh on his head, he brushed the fringed folds back until his face was barea strong face, almost negro in color; yet the low, broad forehead, aquiline nose, the outer corners of the eyes turned slightly upward, the hair profuse, straight, harsh, of metallic lustre, and falling to the shoulder in many plaits, were signs of origin impossible to disguise. so looked the pharaohs and the later ptolemies; so looked mizraim, father of the egyptian race. he wore the kamis, a white cotton shirt, tight-sleeved, open in front, extending to the ankles and embroidered down the collar and breast, over which was thrown a brown woollen cloak, now, as in all probability it was then, called the aba, an outer garment with long skirt and short sleeves, lined inside with stuff of mixed cotton and silk, edged all round with a margin of clouded yellow. his feet were protected by sandals, attached by thongs of soft leather. a sash held the kamis to his waist. what was very noticeable, considering he was alone and that the desert was the haunt of leopards and lions, and men quite as wild, he carried no arms, not even the crooked stick used for guiding camels; wherefore we may at least infer his errand peaceful, and that he was either uncommonly bold or under extraordinary protection. the traveller's limbs were numb, for the ride had been long and wearisome; so he rubbed his hands and stamped his feet, and walked round the faithful servant, whose lustrous eyes were closing in calm content with the cud he had already found. often, while making the circuit, he paused and, shading his eyes with his hands, examined the desert to the extremest verge of vision; and always, when the survey was ended, his face clouded with disappointment, slight, but enough to advise a shrewd spectator that he was there expecting company, if not by appointment; at the same time, the spectator would have been conscious of a sharpening of the curiosity to learn what the business could be that required transaction in a place so far from civilized abode. however disappointed, there could be little doubt of the stranger's confidence in the coming of the expected company. in token thereof, he went first to the litter, and, from the cot or box opposite the one he had occupied in coming, produced a sponge and a small gurglet of water, with which he washed the eyes, face, and nostrils of the camel; that done, from the same depository he drew a circular cloth, red-and-white-striped, a bundle of rods, and a stout cane. the latter, after some manipulation, proved to be a cunning device of lesser joints, one within another, which, when united together, formed a centre pole higher than his head. when the pole was planted, and the rods set around it, he spread the cloth over them, and was literally at homea home much smaller than the habitations of emir and sheik, yet their counterpart in all other respects. from the litter again he brought a carpet or square rug, and covered the floor of the tent on the side from the sun. that done, he went out, and once more, and with greater care and more eager eyes, swept the encircling country. except a distant jackal galloping across the plain, and an eagle flying towards the gulf of akaba, the waste below, like the blue above it, was lifeless. he turned to the camel, saying low, and in a tongue strange to the desert, "we are far from home, o racer with the swiftest windswe are far from home, but god is with us. let us be patient." then he took some beans from a pocket in the saddle, and put them in a bag made to hang below the animal's nose; and when he saw the relish with which the good servant took to the food, he turned and again scanned the world of sand, dim with the glow of the vertical sun. "they will come," he said, calmly. "he that led me is leading them. i will make ready." from the pouches which lined the interior of the cot, and from a willow basket which was part of its furniture, he brought forth materials for a meal: platters close-woven of the fibres of palms; wine in small gurglets of skin; mutton dried and smoked; stoneless shami, or syrian pomegranates; dates of el shelebi, wondrous rich and grown in the nakhil, or palm orchards, of central arabia; cheese, like david's "slices of milk"; and leavened bread from the city bakeryall which he carried and set upon the carpet under the tent. as the final preparation, about the provisions he laid three pieces of silk cloth, used among refined people of the east to cover the knees of guests while at tablea circumstance significant of the number of persons who were to partake of his entertainmentthe number he was awaiting. all was now ready. he stepped out: lo! in the east a dark speck on the face of the desert. he stood as if rooted to the ground; his eyes dilated; his flesh crept chilly, as if touched by something supernatural. the speck grew; became large as a hand; at length assumed defined proportions. a little later, full into view swung a duplication of his own dromedary, tall and white, and bearing a houdah, the travelling litter of hindostan. then the egyptian crossed his hands upon his breast, and looked to heaven. "god only is great!" he exclaimed, his eyes full of tears, his soul in awe. the stranger drew nighat last stopped. then he, too, seemed just waking. he beheld the kneeling camel, the tent, and the man standing prayerfully at the door. he crossed his hands, bent his head, and prayed silently; after which, in a little while, he stepped from his camel's neck to the sand, and advanced towards the egyptian, as did the egyptian towards him. a moment they looked at each other; then they embracedthat is, each threw his right arm over the other's shoulder, and the left round the side, placing his chin first upon the left, then upon the right breast. "peace be with thee, o servant of the true god!" the stranger said. "and to thee, o brother of the true faith!to thee peace and welcome," the egyptian replied, with fervour. the new-comer was tall and gaunt, with lean face, sunken eyes, white hair and beard, and a complexion between the hue of cinnamon and bronze. he, too, was unarmed. his costume was hindostani; over the skull-cap a shawl was wound in great folds, forming a turban; his body garments were in the style of the egyptian's, except that the aba was shorter, exposing wide flowing breeches gathered at the ankles. in place of sandals, his feet were clad in half-slippers of red leather, pointed at the toes. save the slippers, the costume from head to foot was of white linen. the air of the man was high, stately, severe. visvamitra, the greatest of the ascetic heroes of the iliad of the east, had in him a perfect representative. he might have been called a life drenched with the wisdom of brahmadevotion incarnate. only in his eyes was there proof of humanity; when he lifted his face from the egyptian's breast they were glistening with tears. "god only is great!" he exclaimed, when the embrace was finished. "and blessed are they that serve him!" the egyptian answered, wondering at the paraphrase of his own exclamation. "but let us wait," he added, "let us wait; for see, the other comes yonder!" they looked to the north, where, already plain to view, a third camel, of the whiteness of the others came careening like a ship. they waited, standing togetherwaited until the new-comer arrived, dismounted, and advanced towards them. "peace to you, o my brother!" he said, while embracing the hindoo. and the hindoo answered, "god's will be done!" the last comer was all unlike his friends; his frame was slighter; his complexion white; a mass of waving light hair was a perfect crown for his small but beautiful head; the warmth of his dark-blue eyes certified a delicate mind, and a cordial, brave nature. he was bareheaded and unarmed. under the folds of the tyrian blanket which he wore with unconscious grace appeared a tunic, short-sleeved and low-necked, gathered to the waist by a band, and reaching nearly to the knee; leaving the neck, arms, and legs bare. sandals guarded his feet. fifty years, probably more, had spent themselves upon him, with no other effect, apparently, than to tinge his demeanour with gravity and temper his words with forethought. the physical organization and the brightness of soul were untouched. no need to tell the student from what kindred he was sprung; if he came not himself from the groves of athene, his ancestry did. when his arms fell from the egyptian, the latter said, with a tremulous voice, "the spirit brought me first; wherefore i know myself chosen to be the servant of my brethren. the tent is set, and the bread is ready for the breaking. let me perform my office." taking each by the hand, he led them within, and removed their sandals and washed their feet, and he poured water upon their hands, and dried them with napkins. then, when he had laved his own hands, he said, "let us take care of ourselves, brethren, as our service requires, and eat, that we may be strong for what remains of the day's duty. while we eat, we will each learn who the others are, and whence they come, and how they are called." he took them to the repast, and seated them so that they faced each other. simultaneously their heads bent forward, their hands crossed upon their breasts, and, speaking together, they said aloud this simple grace "father of allgod!what we have here is of thee; take our thanks and bless us, that we may continue to do thy will." with the last word they raised their eyes, and looked at each other in wonder. each had spoken in a language never before heard by the others; yet each understood perfectly what was said. their souls thrilled with divine emotion; for by the miracle they recognized the divine presence. chapter iii. the athenian speaksfaith. to speak in the style of the period, the meeting just described took place in the year of rome 747. the month was december, and winter reigned over all the regions east of the mediterranean. such as ride upon the desert in this season go not far until smitten with a keen appetite. the company under the little tent were not exceptions to the rule. they were hungry, and ate heartily; and, after the wine, they talked. "to a wayfarer in a strange land nothing is so sweet as to hear his name on the tongue of a friend," said the egyptian, who assumed to be president of the repast. "before us lie many days of companionship. it is time we knew each other. so, if it be agreeable, he who came last shall be first to speak." then, slowly at first, like one watchful of himself, the greek began "what i have to tell, my brethren, is so strange that i hardly know where to begin or what i may with propriety speak. i do not yet understand myself. the most i am sure of is that i am doing a master's will, and that the service is a constant ecstasy. when i think of the purpose i am sent to fulfill, there is in me a joy so inexpressible that i know the will is god's." the good man paused, unable to proceed, while the others, in sympathy with his feelings, dropped their gaze. "far to the west of this," he began again, "there is a land which may never be forgotten; if only because the world is too much its debtor, and because the indebtedness is for things that bring to men their purest pleasures. i will say nothing of the arts, nothing of philosophy, of eloquence, of poetry, of war: o my brethren, hers is the glory which must shine forever in perfected letters, by which he we go to find and proclaim will be made known to all the earth. the land i speak of is greece. i am gaspar, son of cleanthes the athenian." "my people," he continued, "were given wholly to study, and from them i derived the same passion. it happens that two of our philosophers, the very greatest of the many teach, one the doctrine of a soul in every man, and its immortality; the other the doctrine of one god, infinitely just. from the multitude of subjects about which the schools were disputing, i separated them, as alone worth the labour of solution; for i thought there was a relation between god and the soul as yet unknown. on this theme the mind can reason to a point, a dead, impassable wall; arrived there, all that remains is to stand and cry aloud for help. so i did; but no voice came to me over the wall. in despair, i tore myself from the cities and the schools." at these words a grave smile of approval lighted the gaunt face of the hindoo. "in the northern part of my countryin thessaly," the greek proceeded to say, "there is a mountain famous as the home of the gods, where theus, whom my countrymen believe supreme, has his abode: olympus is its name. thither i betook myself. i found a cave in a hill where the mountain, coming from the west, bends to the south-east; there i dwelt, giving myself up to meditationno, i gave myself up to waiting for what every breath was a prayerfor revelation. believing in god, invisible yet supreme, i also believed it possible so to yearn for him with all my soul that he would take compassion and give me answer." "and he didhe did!" exclaimed the hindoo, lifting his hands from the silken cloth upon his lap. "hear me, brethren," said the greek, calming himself with an effort. "the door of my hermitage looks over an arm of the sea, over the themaic gulf. one day i saw a man flung overboard from a ship sailing by. he swam ashore. i received and took care of him. he was a jew, learned in the history and laws of his people; and from him i came to know that the god of my prayers did indeed exist, and had been for ages their lawmaker, ruler, and king. what was that but the revelation i dreamed of? my faith had not been fruitless; god answered me!" "as he does all who cry to him with such faith," said the hindoo. "but, alas!" the egyptian added, "how few are there wise enough to know when he answers them!" "that was not all," the greek continued. "the man so sent to me told me more. he said the prophets who, in the ages which followed the first revelation, walked and talked with god, declared he would come again. he gave me the names of the prophets, and from the sacred books quoted their very language. he told me, further, that the second coming was at handwas looked for momentarily in jerusalem." the greek paused, and the brightness of his countenance faded. "it is true," he said after a little"it is true the man told me that as god and the revelation of which he spoke had been for the jews alone, so it would be again. he that was to come should be king of the jews. 'had he nothing for the rest of the world?' i asked. 'no,' was the answer, given in a proud voice'no, we are his chosen people.' the answer did not crush my hope. why should such a god limit his love and benefaction to one land, and, as it were, to one family? i set my heart upon knowing. at last i broke through the man's pride, and found that his fathers had been merely chosen servants to keep the truth alive, that the world might at last know it and be saved. when the jew was gone, and i was alone again, i chastened my soul with a new prayerthat i might be permitted to see the king when he was come, and worship him. one night i sat by the door of my cave trying to get nearer the mysteries of my existence, knowing which is to know god; suddenly, on the sea below me, or rather in the darkness that covered its face, i saw a star begin to burn; slowly it arose and drew nigh, and stood over the hill and above my door, so that its light shone full. upon me. i fell down, and slept, and in my dream i heard a voice say: "'o gaspar! thy faith hath conquered! blessed art thou! with two others, come from the uttermost parts of the earth, thou shalt see him that is promised, and be a witness for him, and the occasion of testimony in his behalf. in the morning arise, and go meet them, and keep trust in the spirit that shall guide thee.' "and in the morning i awoke with the spirit as a light within me surpassing that of the sun. i put off my hermit's garb, and dressed myself as of old. from a hiding-place i took the treasure which i had brought from the city. a ship went sailing past. i hailed it, was taken aboard, and landed at antioch. there i bought the camel and his furniture. through the gardens and orchards that enamel the banks of the orontes, i journeyed to emesa, damascus, bostra, and philadelphia; thence hither. and so, o brethren, you have my story. let me now listen to you." chapter iv. speech of the hindoolove. the egyptian and the hindoo looked at each other; the former waved his hand; the latter bowed, and began "our brother has spoken well. may my words be as wise." he broke off, reflected a moment, then resumed "you may know me, brethren, by the name of melchior. i speak to you in a language which, if not the oldest in the world, was at least the soonest to be reduced to lettersi mean the sanscrit of india. i am a hindoo by birth. my people were the first to walk in the fields of knowledge, first to divide them, first to make them beautiful. whatever may hereafter befall, the four vedas must live, for they are the primal fountains of religion and useful intelligence. from them were derived the upa-vedas, which delivered by brahma, treat of medicine, archery, architecture, music, and the four-and-sixty mechanical arts, the ved-angas, revealed by inspired saints, and devoted to astronomy, grammar, prosody, pronunciation, charms and incantations, religious rites and ceremonies; the up-angas, written by the sage vyasa, and given to cosmogony, chronology, and geography; therein also are the ramayana and the mahabharata, heroic poems designed for the perpetuation of our gods and demi-gods. such, o brethren, are the great shastras, or books of sacred ordinances. they are dead to me now; yet through all time they will serve to illustrate the budding genius of my race. they were promises of quick perfection. ask you why the promises failed? alas! the books themselves closed all the gates of progress. under pretext of care for the creature, their authors imposed the fatal principle that a man must not address himself to discovery or invention, as heaven had provided him all things needful. when that condition became a sacred law, the lamp of hindoo genius was let down a well, where ever since it has lighted narrow walls and bitter waters. "these allusions, brethren, are not from pride, as you will understand when i tell you that the shastras teach a supreme god called brahm; also, that the puranas, or sacred poems of the up-angas, tell us of virtue and good works, and of the soul. so, if my brother will permit the saying"the speaker bowed deferentially to the greek"ages before his people were known, the two great ideas, god and the soul, had absorbed all the forces of the hindoo mind. in further explanation, let me say that brahm is taught, by the same sacred books, as a triadbrahma, vishnu, and shiva. of these, brahma is said to have been the author of our race; which, in course of creation, he divided into four castes. first, he peopled the worlds below and the heavens above; next, he made the earth ready for terrestrial spirits; then from his mouth proceeded the brahman caste, nearest in likeness to himself, highest and noblest, sole teachers of the vedas, which at the same time flowed from his lips in finished state, perfect in all useful knowledge. from his arms next issued the kshatriya, or warriors; from his breast, the seat of life, came the vaisya, or producersshepherds, farmers, merchants; from his foot, in sign of degradation, sprang the sudra, or serviles, doomed to menial duties for the other classesserfs, domestics, labourers, artisans. take notice, further, that the law, so born with them, forbade a man of one caste becoming a member of another; the brahman could not enter a lower order; if he violated the laws of his own grade, he became an outcast, lost to all but outcasts like himself." at this point, the imagination of the greek, flashing forward upon all the consequences of such a degradation, overcame his eager attention, and he exclaimed, "in such a state, o brethren, what mighty need of a loving god!" "yes," added the egyptian, "of a loving god like ours." the brows of the hindoo knit painfully; when the emotion was spent, he proceeded, in a softened voice "i was born a brahman. my life, consequently, was ordered down to its least act, its last hour. my first draught of nourishment; the giving me my compound name; taking me out the first time to see the sun; investing me with the triple thread by which i became one of the twice-born; my induction into the first orderwere all celebrated with sacred texts and rigid ceremonies. i might not walk, eat, drink, or sleep without danger of violating a rule. and the penalty, o brethren, the penalty was to my soul! according to the degrees of omission, my soul went to one of the heavensindra's the lowest, brahma's the highest; or it was driven back to become the life of a worm, a fly, a fish, or a brute. the reward for perfect observance was beatitude, or absorption into the being of brahm, which was not existence as much as absolute rest." the hindoo gave himself a moment's thought; proceeding, he said, "the part of a brahman's life called the first order is his student life. when i was ready to enter the second orderthat is to say, when i was ready to marry and became a householderi questioned everything, even brahm; i was a heretic. from the depths of the well i had discovered a light above, and yearned to go up and see what all it shone upon. at lastah, with what years of toil!i stood in the perfect day, and beheld the principle of life, the element of religion, the link between the soul and godlove!" the shrunken face of the good man kindled visibly, and he clasped his hands with force. a silence ensued, during which the others looked at him, the greek through tears. at length he resumed: "the happiness of love is in action; its test is what one is willing to do for others. i could not rest. brahm had filled the world with so much wretchedness. the sudra appealed to me; so did the countless devotees and victims. the island of ganga lagor lies where the sacred waters of the ganges disappear in the indian ocean. thither i betook myself. in the shade of the temple built there to the sage kapila, in a union of prayers with the disciples whom the sanctified memory of the holy man keeps around his house, i thought to find rest. but twice every year came pilgrimages of hindoos seeking the purification of the waters. their misery strengthened my love. against its impulse to speak, i clenched my jaws; for one word against brahm or the triad or the shastras would doom me; one act of kindness to the outcast brahmans who now and then dragged themselves to die on the burning sandsa blessing said, a cup of water givenand i became one of them, lost to family, country, privileges, caste. the love conquered! i spoke to the disciples in the temple; they drove me out. i spoke to the pilgrims; they stoned me from the island. on the highways i attempted to preach; my hearers fled from me, or sought my life. in all india, finally, there was not a place in which i could find peace or safetynot even among the outcasts; for though fallen, they were still believers in brahm. in my extremity, i looked for a solitude in which to hide from all but god. i followed the ganges to its source, far up in the himalayas. when i entered the pass at hurdwar, where the river, in unstained purity leaps to its course through the muddy lowlands, i prayed for my race, and thought myself lost to them forever. through gorges, over cliffs, across glaciers, by peaks that seemed star-high, i made my way to the lang tso, a lake of marvellous beauty, asleep at the feet of the tise gangri, the gurla, and the kailas parbot, giants which flaunt their crowns of snow everlastingly in the face of the sun. there, in the centre of the earth; where the indus, ganges, and brahma-pootra rise to run their different courses; where mankind took up their first abode, and separated to replete the world, leaving balk, the mother of cities, to attest the great fact; where nature, gone back to its primeval condition, and secure in its immensities, invites the sage and the exile, with promise of safety to the one and solitude to the otherthere i went to abide alone with god, praying, fasting, waiting for death." again the voice fell, and the bony hands met in a fervent clasp. "one night i walked by the shores of the lake, and spoke to the listening silence, 'when will god come and claim his own? is there to be no redemption?' suddenly a light began to glow tremulously out on the water; soon a star arose, and moved towards me, and stood overhead. the brightness stunned me. while i lay upon the ground, i heard a voice of infinite sweetness say, 'thy love hath conquered. blessed art thou, o son of india! the redemption is at hand. with two others, from far quarters of the earth, thou shalt see the redeemer, and be a witness that he hath come. in the morning arise, and go meet them, and put all thy trust in the spirit which shall guide thee.' "and from that time the light has stayed with me; so i knew it was the visible presence of the spirit. in the morning i started to the world by the way i had come. in a cleft of the mountain i found a stone of vast worth, which i sold in hurdwar. by lahore, and cabool, and yezd, i came to ispahan. there i bought the camel, and thence was led to bagdad, not waiting for caravans. alone i travelled, fearless, for the spirit was with me, and is with me yet. what glory is ours, o brethren! we are to see the redeemerto speak to himto worship him! i am done!" chapter v. the egyptian's storygood works. the vivacious greek broke forth in expressions of joy and congratulations; after which the egyptian said, with characteristic gravity "i salute you, my brother. you have suffered much, and i rejoice in your triumph. if you are both pleased to hear me, i will now tell you who i am, and how i came to be called. wait for me a moment." he went out and tended the camels; coming back, he resumed his seat. "your words, brethren, were of the spirit," he said, in commencement; "and the spirit gives me to understand them. you each spoke particularly of your countries; in that there was a great object which i will explain; but to make the interpretation complete, let me first speak of myself and my people. i am balthasar the egyptian." the last words were spoken quietly, but with so much dignity that both listeners bowed to the speaker. "there are many distinctions i might claim for my race," he continued; "but i will content myself with one. history began with us. we were the first to perpetuate events by records kept. so we have no traditions; and instead of poetry, we offer you certainty. on the facades of palaces and temples, on obelisks, on the inner walls of tombs, we wrote the names of our kings, and what they did; and to the delicate papyri we entrusted the wisdom of our philosophers and the secrets of our religionall the secrets but one, whereof i will presently speak. older than the vedas of para-brahm or the up-angas of vyasa, o melchior; older than the songs of homer or the metaphysics of plato, o my gaspar; older than the sacred books or kings of the people of china, or those of siddartha, son of the beautiful maya; older than the genesis of mosche the hebrewoldest of human records are the writings of menes, our first king." pausing an instant, he fixed his large eyes kindly upon the greek, saying, "in the youth of hellas, who, o gaspar, were the teachers of her teachers?" the greek bowed, smiling. "by those records," balthasar continued, "we know that when the fathers came from the far east, from the region of the birth of the three sacred rivers, from the centre of the earththe old iran of which you spoke, o melchiorcame bringing with them the history of the world before the flood, and of the flood itself, as given to the aryans by the sons of noah, they taught god, the creator and the beginning, and the soul, deathless as god. when the duty which calls us now is happily done, if you choose to go with me, i will show you the sacred library of our priesthood; among others, the book of the dead, in which is the ritual to be observed by the soul after death has despatched it on its journey to judgment. the ideasgod and the immortal soulwhere borne to mizraim over the desert, and by him to the banks of the nile. they were then in their purity, easy of understanding, as what god intends for our happiness always is; so, also, was the first worshipa song and a prayer natural to a soul joyous, hopeful, and in love with its maker." here the greek threw up his hands, exclaiming, "oh the light deepens within me!" "and in me!" said the hindoo, with equal fervour. the egyptian regarded them benignantly, then went on, saying, "religion is merely the law which binds man to his creator: in purity it has but these elementsgod, the soul, and their mutual recognition; out of which, when put in practice, spring worship, love, and reward. this law, like all others of divine originlike that, for instance, which binds the earth to the sunwas perfected in the beginning by its author. such, my brothers was the religion of the first family; such was the religion of our father mizraim, who could not have been blind to the formula of creation, nowhere so discernible as in the first faith and the earliest worship. perfection is god; simplicity is perfection. the curse of curses is that men will not let truths like these alone." he stopped, as if considering in what manner to continue. "many nations have loved the sweet waters of the nile," he said next; "the ethiopian, the pali-putra, the hebrew, the assyrian, the persian, the macedonian, the romanof whom all, except the hebrew, have at one time or another been its masters. so much coming and going of peoples corrupted the old mizraimic faith. the valley of palms became a valley of gods. the supreme one was divided into eight, each personating a creative principle in nature, with ammon-re at the head. then isis and osiris, and their circle, representing water, fire, air, and other forces, were invented. still the multiplication went on until we had another order, suggested by human qualities, such as strength, knowledge, love, and the like." "in all which there was the old folly!" cried the greek, impulsively. "only the things out of reach remain as they came to us." the egyptian bowed, and proceeded "yet a little further, o my brethren, a little further, before i come to myself. what we go to will seem all the holier of comparison with what it is and has been. the records show that mizraim found the nile in possession of the ethopians, who were spread thence through the african desert; a people of rich, fantastic genius, wholly given to the worship of nature. the poetic persian sacrificed to the sun, as the completest image of ormuzd, his god; the devout children of the far east carved their deities out of wood and ivory; but the ethiopian, without writing, without books, without mechanical faculty of any kind, quieted his soul by the worship of animals, birds, and insects, holding the cat sacred to re, the bull to isis, the beetle to pthah. a long struggle against their rude, faith ended in its adoption as the religion of the new empire. then rose the mighty monuments that cumber the riverbank and the desertobelisk, labyrinth, pyramid, and tomb of king, blent with tomb of crocodile. into such deep debasement, o brethren, the sons of the aryan fell!" here, for the first time, the calmness of the egyptian forsook him: though his countenance remained impassive, his voice gave way. "do not too much despise my countrymen," he began again. "they did not all forget god. i said awhile ago, you may remember, that to papyri we entrusted all the secrets of our religion except one; of that i will now tell you. we had as king once a certain pharaoh, who lent himself to all manner of changes and additions. to establish the new system, he strove to drive the old entirely out of mind. the hebrews then dwelt with us as slaves. they clung to their god; and when the persecution became intolerable, they were delivered in a manner never to be forgotten. i speak from the records now. mosche, himself a hebrew, came to the palace, and demanded permission for the slaves, then millions in number, to leave the country. the demand was in the name of the lord god of israel. pharaoh refused. hear what followed. first, all the water, that in the lakes and rivers, like that in the wells and vessels, turned to blood. yet the monarch refused. then frogs came up and covered all the land. still he was firm. then mosche threw ashes in the air, and plague attacked the egyptians. next, all the cattle, except of the hebrews, were struck dead. locusts devoured the green things of the valley. at noon the day was turned into a darkness so thick that lamps would not burn. finally, in the night all the first-born of the egyptians died; not even pharaoh's escaped. then he yielded. but when the hebrews were gone he followed them with his army. at the last moment the sea was divided, so that the fugitives passed it dry-shod. when the pursuers drove in after them, the waves rushed back, and drownedhorse, foot, charioteers, and king. you spoke of revelation, my gaspar" the blue eyes of the greek sparkled. "i had the story from the jew," he cried. "you confirm it, o balthasar!" "yes, but through me egypt speaks, not mosche. i interpret the marbles. the priests of that time wrote in their way what they witnessed, and the revelation has lived. so i come to the one unrecorded secret. in my country, brethren, we have, from the day of the unfortunate pharaoh, always had two religionsone private, the other public; one of many gods, practised by the people; the other of one god, cherished only by the priesthood. rejoice with me, o brothers! all the trampling by the many nations, all the harrowing by kings, all the inventions of enemies, all the changes of time, have been in vain. like a seed under the mountains waiting its hour, the glorious truth has lived; and thisthis is its day!" the wasted frame of the hindoo trembled with delight, and the greek cried aloud "it seems to me the very desert is singing." from a gurglet of water near-by the egyptian took a draught, and proceeded "i was born at alexandria, a prince and a priest, and had the education usual to my class. but very early i became discontented. part of the faith imposed was that after death, upon the destruction of my body, the soul at once began its former progression from the lowest up to humanity, the highest and last existence; and that without reference to conduct in the mortal life. when i heard of the persian's realm of light, his paradise across the bridge chinevat, where only the good go, the thought haunted me; insomuch that in the day, as in the night, i brooded over the comparative ideas eternal transmigration and eternal life in heaven. if, as my teacher taught, god was just, why was there no distinction between the good and the bad? at length it became clear to me, a certainty, a corollary of the law to which i reduced pure religion, that death was only the point of separation at which the wicked are left or lost, and the faithful rise to a higher life; not the nirvana of buddha, or the negative rest of brahma, o melchior; nor the better condition in hell, which is all of heaven allowed by the olympic faith, o gaspar; but lifelife active, joyous, everlastinglife with god! the discovery led to another inquiry. why should the truth be longer kept a secret for the selfish solace of the priesthood? the reason for the suppression was gone. philosophy had at least brought us toleration. in egypt we had rome instead of rameses. one day, in the brucheium, the most splendid and crowded quarter of alexandria, i arose and preached. the east and west contributed to my audience. students going to the library, priests from the serapeion, idlers from the museum, patrons of the race-course, countrymen from the rhacotisa multitudestopped to hear me. i preached god, the soul, right and wrong, and heaven, the reward of a virtuous life. you, o melchior, were stoned; my auditors first wondered, then laughed. i tried again; they pelted me with epigrams, covered my god with ridicule, and darkened my heaven with mockery. not to linger needlessly, i fell before them." the hindoo here drew a long sigh, as he said, "the enemy of man is man, my brother." balthasar lapsed into silence. "i gave much thought to finding the cause of my failure, and at last succeeded," he said, upon beginning again. "up the river, a day's journey from the city, there is a village of herdsmen and gardeners. i took a boat and went there. in the evening i called the people together, men and women, the poorest of the poor. i preached to them exactly as i had preached in the brucheium. they did not laugh. next evening i spoke again, and they believed and rejoiced, and carried the news abroad. at the third meeting a society was formed for prayer. i returned to the city then. drifting down the river, under the stars, which never seemed so bright and so near, i evolved this lesson:to begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather to those whose cups of happiness are emptyto the poor and humble. and then i laid a plan and devoted my life. as a first step, i secured my vast property, so that the income would be certain, and always at call for the relief of the suffering. from that day, o brethren, i travelled up and down the nile in the villages, and to all the tribes, preaching one god, a righteous life, and reward in heaven. i have done goodit does not become me to say how much. i also know that part of the world to be ripe for the reception of him we go to find." a flush suffused the swarthy cheek of the speaker; but he overcame the feeling, and continued: "the years so given, o my brothers, were troubled by one thoughtwhen i was gone, what would become of the cause i had started? was it to end with me? i had dreamed many times of organization as a fitting crown for my work. to hide nothing from you, i had tried to effect it, and failed. brethren, the world is now in the condition that, to restore the old mizraimic faith, the reformer must have a more than human sanction; he must not merely come in god's name, he must have the proofs subject to his word; he must demonstrate all he says, even god. so preoccupied is the mind with myths and systems; so much do false deities crowd every placeearth, air, sky; so have they become of everything a part, that return to the first religion can only be along bloody paths, through fields of persecution; that is to say, the converts must be willing to die rather than recant. and who in this age can carry the faith of men to such a point but god himself? to redeem the racei do not mean to destroy itto redeem the race, he must make himself once more manifest: he must come in person." intense emotion seized the three. "are we not going to find him?" exclaimed the greek. "you understand why i failed in the attempt to organize," said the egyptian, when the spell was passed. "i had not the sanction. to know that my work must be lost made me intolerably wretched. i believed in prayer; and to make my appeals pure and strong, like you, my brethren, i went out of the beaten waysi went where man had not been, where only god was. above the fifth cataract, above the meeting of rivers in sennar, up the bahr el abiad, into the far unknown of africa, i went. there, in the morning, a mountain blue as the sky flings a cooling shadow wide over the western desert, and, with its cascades of melted snow, feeds a broad lake nestling at its base on the east. the lake is the mother of the great river. for a year and more the mountain gave me a home. the fruit of the palm fed my body, prayer my spirit. one night i walked in the orchard close by the little sea. 'the world is dying. when wilt thou come? why may i not see the redemption, o god?' so i prayed. the glassy water was sparkling with stars. one of them seemed to leave its place and rise to the surface, where it became a brilliancy burning to the eyes. then it moved towards me, and stood over my head, apparently in hand's reach. i fell down and hid my face. a voice, not of the earth, said, 'thy good works have conquered. blessed art thou, o son of mizraim! the redemption cometh. with two others, from the remoteness of the world, thou shalt see the saviour, and testify for him. in the morning arise, and go meet them. and when ye have all come to the holy city of jerusalem, ask of the people, where is he that is born king of the jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are sent to worship him. put all thy trust in the spirit which will guide thee.' "and the light became an inward illumination not to be doubted, and has stayed with me, a governor and a guide. it led me down the river to memphis, where i made ready for the desert. i bought my camel, and came hither without rest, by way of suez and kufileh, and up through the lands of moab and ammon. god is with us, o my brethren!" he paused, and thereupon, with a prompting not their own, they all arose, and looked at each other. "i said there was a purpose in the particularity with which we described our peoples and their histories," so the egyptian proceeded. "he we go to find was called 'king of the jews;' by that name we are bidden to ask for him. but, now that we have met, and heard from each other, we may know him to be the redeemer, not of the jews alone, but of all the nations of the earth. the patriarch who survived the flood had with him three sons, and their families, by whom the world was repeopled. from the old aryana-vaejo, the well-remembered region of delight in the heart of asia, they parted. india and the far east received the children of the first; the descendants of the youngest, through the north, streamed into europe; those of the second overflowed the deserts about the red sea, passing into africa; and though most of the latter are yet dwellers in shifting tents, some of them became builders along the nile." by a simultaneous impulse the three joined hands. "could anything be more divinely ordered?" balthasar continued. "when we have found the lord, the brothers, and all the generations that have succeeded them, will kneel to him in homage with us. and when we part to go our separate ways, the world will have learned a new lessonthat heaven may be won, not by the sword, not by human wisdom, but by faith, love, and good works." there was silence, broken by sighs and sanctified with tears; for the joy that filled them might not be stayed. it was the unspeakable joy of souls on the shores of the river of life, resting with the redeemed in god's presence. presently their hands fell apart, and together they went out of the tent. the desert was still as the sky. the sun was sinking fast. the camels slept. a little while after, the tent was struck, and, with the remains of the repast, restored to the cot; then the friends mounted, and set out single file, led by the egyptian. their course was due west, into the chilly night. the camels swung forward in steady trot, keeping the line and the intervals so exactly that those following seemed to tread in the tracks of the leader. the riders spoke not once. by-and-by the moon came up. and as the three tall, white figures sped, with soundless tread, through the opalescent light, they appeared like spectres flying from hateful shadows. suddenly, in the air before them, not farther up than a low hill-top, flared a lambent flame; as they looked at it, the apparition contracted into a focus of dazzling lustre. their hearts beat fast; their souls thrilled; and they shouted as with one voice, "the star! the star! god is with us!" chapter vi. the joppa gate. in an aperture of the western wall of jerusalem hang the "oaken valves" called the bethlehem or joppa gate. the area outside of them is one of the notable places of the city. long before david coveted zion, there was a citadel there. when at last the son of jesse ousted the jebusite, and began to build, the site of the citadel became the northwest corner of his new wall, defended by a tower much more imposing than the old one. the location of the gate, however, was not disturbed, for the reasons, most likely, that the roads which met and merged in front of it could not well be transferred to any other point, while the area outside had become a recognized market-place. in solomon's day there was great traffic at the locality, shared in by traders from egypt, and the rich dealers from tyre and sidon. nearly three thousand years have passed, and yet a kind of commerce clings to the spot. a pilgrim wanting a pin or a pistol, a cucumber or a camel, a house or a horse, a loan or a lentil, a date or a dragoman, a melon or a man, a dove or a donkey, has only to inquire for the article at the joppa gate. sometimes the scene is quite animated, and then it suggests, what a place the old market must have been in the days of herod the builder! and to that period and that market the reader is now to be transferred. following the hebrew system, the meeting of the wise men described in the preceding chapters took place in the afternoon of the twenty-fifth day of the third month of the year; that is to say, on the twenty-fifth day of december. the year was the second of the 193rd olympiad, or the 747th of rome; the sixty-seventh of herod the great, and the thirty-fifth of his reign; the fourth before the beginning of the christian era. the hours of the day, by judean custom, begin with the sun, the first hour being the first after sunrise; so, to be precise, the market at the joppa gate during the first hour of the day stated was in full session, and very lively. the massive walls had been wide open since dawn. business, always aggressive, had pushed, through the arched entrance into a narrow lane and court, which, passing by the walls of the great tower, conducted on into the city. as jerusalem is in the hill country, the morning air on this occasion was not a little crisp. the rays of the sun, with their promise of warmth, lingered provokingly far up on the battlements and turrets of the great piles about, down from which fell the crooning of pigeons, and the whir of the flocks coming and going. as a passing acquaintance with the people of the holy city, strangers as well as residents, will be necessary to an understanding of some of the pages which follow, it will be well to stop at the gate and pass the scene in review. better opportunity will not offer to get sight of the populace who will afterwhile go forward in a mood very different from that which now possesses them. the scene is at first one of utter confusionconfusion of action, sounds, colours, and things. it is especially so in the lane and court. the ground there is paved with broad unshaped flags, from which each cry and jar and hoof-stamp arises to swell the medley that rings and roars up between the solid impending walls. a little mixing with the throng; however, a little familiarity with the business going on, will make analysis possible. here stands a donkey, dozing under panniers full of lentils, beans, onions, and cucumbers, brought fresh from the gardens and terraces of galilee. when not engaged in serving customers, the master, in a voice which only the initiated can understand, cries his stock. nothing can be simpler than his costumesandals, and an unbleached, undyed blanket, crossed over one shoulder and girt round the waist. near-by, and far more imposing and grotesque, though scarcely as patient as the donkey, kneels a camel, rawboned, rough, and grey, with long shaggy tufts of fox-coloured hair under its throat, neck, and body, and a load of boxes and baskets curiously arranged upon an enormous saddle. the owner is an egyptian, small, lithe, and of a complexion which has borrowed a good deal from the dust of the roads and the sands of the desert. he wears a faded tarbooshe, a loose gown, sleeveless, unbelted, and dropping from the neck to the knee. his feet are bare. the camel, restless under the load, groans and occasionally shows his teeth; but the man paces indifferently to and fro, holding the driving-strap, and all the time advertising his fruits fresh from the orchards of the kedrongrapes, dates, figs, apples, and pomegranates. at the corner where the lane opens out into the court, some women sit with their backs against the grey stones of the wall. their dress is that common to the humbler class of the countrya linen frock extending the full length of the person, loosely gathered at the waist; and a veil or wimple broad enough, after covering the head, to wrap the shoulders. their merchandise is contained in a number of earthen jars, such as are still used in the east for bringing water from the wells, and some leathern bottles. among the jars and bottles, rolling upon the stony floor, regardless of the crowd and cold, often in danger but never hurt, play half-a-dozen half-naked children; their brown bodies, jetty eyes, and thick blade hair attesting the blood of israel. sometimes, from under the wimples, the mothers look up, and in the vernacular modestly bespeak their trade: in the bottles "honey of grapes," in the jars "strong drink." their entreaties are generally lost in the general uproar, and they fare illy against the many competitors: brawny fellows with bare legs, dirty tunics, and long beards, going about with bottles lashed to their backs, and shouting, "honey of wine! grapes of en-gedi!" when a customer halts one of them, round comes the bottle, and, upon lifting the thumb from the nozzle, out into the ready cup gushes the deep-red blood of the luscious berry. scarcely less blatant are the dealers in birdsdoves, ducks, and frequently the singing bulbul, or nightingale, most frequently pigeons; and buyers, receiving them from the nets, seldom fail to think of the perilous life of the catchers, bold climbers of the cliffs; now hanging with hand and foot to the face of the crag, now swinging in a basket far down the mountain fissure. blent with peddlers of jewellerysharp men cloaked in scarlet and blue, top-heavy under prodigious white turbans, and fully conscious of the power there is in the lustre of a ribbon and the incisive gleam of gold, whether in bracelet or necklace, or in rings for the finger or the noseand with peddlers of household utensils, and with dealers in wearing-apparel, and with retailers of unguents for anointing the person, and with hucksters of all articles, fanciful as well as of need, hither and thither, tugging at halters and ropes, now screaming, now coaxing, toil the vendors of animalsdonkeys, horses, calves, sheep, bleating kids, and awkward camels; animals of every kind except the outlawed swine. all these are there; not singly, as described, but many times repeated; not in one place, but everywhere in the market. turning from this scene in the lane and court, this glance at the sellers and their commodities, the reader has need to give attention, in the next place, to visitors and buyers, for which the best studies will be found outside the gates, where the spectacle is quite as varied and animated; indeed, it may be more so, for there are superadded the effects of tent, booth, and sook, greater space, larger crowd, more unqualified freedom, and the glory of the eastern sunshine. chapter vii. typical characters at the joppa gate. let us take our stand by the gate, just out of the edge of the currentsone flowing in, the other outand use our eyes and ears awhile. in good time! here come two men of a most noteworthy class. "gods! how cold it is!" says one of them, a powerful figure in armour; on his head a brazen helmet, on his body a shining breastplate and skirts of mail. "how cold it is! dost thou remember, my caius, that vault in the comitium at home which the flamens say is the entrance to the lower world? by pluto, i could stand there this morning long enough at least to get warm again!" the party addressed drops the hood of his military cloak, leaving bare his head and face, and replies, with an ironic smile, "the helmets of the legions which conquered mark antony were full of gallic snow; but thouah, my poor friend!thou has just come from egypt, bringing its summer in thy blood." and with the last word they disappear through the entrance. though they had been silent, the armour and the sturdy step would have published them roman soldiers. from the throng a jew comes next, meagre of frame, round-shouldered, and wearing a coarse brown robe; over his eyes and face, and down his back, hangs a mat of long, uncombed hair. he is alone. those who meet him laugh, if they do not worse; for he is a nazarite, one of a despised sect which rejects the books of moses, devotes itself to abhorred vows, and goes unshorn while the vows endure. as we watch his retiring figure, suddenly there is a commotion in the crowd, a parting quickly to the right and left, with exclamations sharp and decisive. then the cause comesa man, hebrew in feature and dress. the mantle of snow-white linen, held to his head by cords of yellow silk, flows free over his shoulders; his robe is richly embroidered; a red sash with fringes of gold wraps his waist several times. his demeanour is calm; he even smiles upon those who, with such rude haste, make room for him. a leper? no; he is only a samaritan. the shrinking crowd, if asked, would say he is a mongrelan assyrianwhose touch of the robe is pollution; from whom, consequently, an israelite, though dying, might not accept life. in fact, the feud is not of blood. when david set his throne here on mount zion, with only judah to support him, the ten tribes betook themselves to shechem, a city much older, and, at that date, infinitely richer in holy memories. the final union of the tribes did not settle the dispute thus begun. the samaritans clung to their tabernacle on gerizim, and, while maintaining its superior sanctity, laughed at the irate doctors in jerusalem. time brought no assuagement of the hate. under herod, conversion to the faith was open to all the world except the samaritans; they alone were absolutely and forever shut out from communion with jews. as the samaritan goes in under the arch of the gate, out come three men so unlike all whom we have yet seen that they fix our gaze, whether we will or not. they are of unusual stature and immense brawn; their eyes are blue, and so fair is their complexion that the blood shines through the skin like blue pencilling; their hair is light and short; their heads, small and round, rest squarely upon necks columnar as the trunks of trees. woollen tunics, open at the breast, sleeveless and loosely girt, drape their bodies, leaving bare arms and legs of such development that they at once suggest the arena; and when thereto we add their careless, confident, insolent manner, we cease to wonder that the people give them way, and stop after they have passed to look at them again. they are gladiatorswrestlers, runners, boxers, swordsmen; professionals unknown in judea before the coming of the roman; fellows who, what time they are not in training, may be seen strolling through the king's gardens or sitting with the guards at the palace gates; or possibly they are visitors from caesarea, sebaste, or jericho; in which herod, more greek than jew, and with all a roman's love of games and bloody spectacles, has built vast theatres, and now keeps schools of fighting-men, drawn, as is the custom, from the gallic provinces, or the slavic tribes on the danube. "by bacchus!" says one of them, drawing his clenched hand to his shoulder, "their skulls are not thicker than egg-shells." the brutal look which goes with the gesture disgusts us, and we turn happily to something more pleasant. opposite us is a fruit-stand. the proprietor has a bald head, a long face, and a nose like the beak of a hawk. he sits upon a carpet spread upon the dust; the wall is at his back; overhead hangs a scant curtain; around him, within hand's reach and arranged upon little stools, lie osier boxes full of almonds, grapes, figs, and pomegranates. to him now comes one at whom we cannot help looking, though for another reason than that which fixed our eyes upon the gladiators: he is really beautifula beautiful greek. around his temples, holding the waving hair, is a crown of myrtle, to which still cling the pale flowers and half-ripe berries. his tunic, scarlet in colour, is of the softest woollen fabric; below the girdle of buff leather, which is clasped in front by a fantastic device of shining gold, the skirt drops to the knee in folds heavy with embroidery of the same royal metal; a scarf, also woollen, and of mixed white and yellow, crosses his throat and falls trailing at his back; his arms and legs, where exposed, are white as ivory, and of the polish impossible except by perfect treatment with bath, oil, brushes, and pincers. the dealer, keeping his seat, bends forward, and throws his hands up until they meet in front of him, palm downwards and fingers extended. "what hast thou, this morning, o son of paphos?" says the young greek, looking at the boxes rather than at the cypriote. "i am hungry. what hast thou for breakfast?" "fruits from the pediusgenuinesuch as the singers of antioch take of mornings to restore the waste of their voices," the dealer answers, in a querulous nasal tone. "a fig, but not one of thy best, for the singers of antioch!" says the greek. "thou art a worshipper of aphrodite, and so am i, as the myrtle i wear proves; therefore i tell thee their voices have the chill of a caspian wind. seest thou this girdle?a gift of the mighty salome" "the king's sister!" exclaims the cypriote, with another salaam. "and of royal taste and divine judgment. and why not? she is more greek than the king. butmy breakfast! here is thy moneyred coppers of cyprus. give me grapes, and" "wilt thou not take the dates also?" "no, i am not an arab." "nor figs?" "that would make me a jew. no, nothing but the grapes. never waters mixed so sweetly as the blood of the greek and the blood of the grape." the singer in the grimed and seething market, with all his airs of the court, is a vision not easily shut out of mind by such as see him; as if for the purpose, however, a person follows him challenging all our wonder. he comes up the road slowly, his face towards the ground; at intervals he stops, crosses his hands upon his breast, lengthens his countenance, and turns his eyes towards heaven, as if about to break into prayer. nowhere, except in jerusalem, can such a character be found. on his forehead, attached to the band which keeps the mantle in place, projects a leathern case, square in form; another similar case is tied by a thong to the left arm; the borders of his robe are decorated with deep fringe; and by such signsthe phylacteries, the enlarged borders of the garment, and the savour of intense holiness pervading the whole manwe know him to be a pharisee, one of an organization (in religion a sect, in politics a party) whose bigotry and power will shortly bring the world to grief. the densest of the throng outside the gate covers the road leading off to joppa. turning from the pharisee, we are attracted by some parties who, as subjects of study, opportunely separate themselves from the motley crowd. first among them a man of very noble appearanceclear, healthful complexion; bright black eyes; beard long and flowing, and rich with unguents; apparel well-fitting, costly, and suitable for the season. he carries a staff, and wears, suspended by a cord from his neck, a large golden seal. several servants attend him, some of them with short swords stuck through their sashes; when they address him, it is with the utmost deference. the rest of the party consists of two arabs of the pure desert stock; thin, wiry men, deeply bronzed, and with hollow cheeks, and eyes of almost evil brightness; on their heads red tarbooshes; over their abas, and wrapping the left shoulder and the body so as to leave the right arm free, brown woollen haicks, or blankets. there is loud chaffering; for the arabs are leading horses and trying to sell them; and, in their eagerness, they speak in high, shrill voices. the courtly person leaves the talking mostly to his servants; occasionally he answers with much dignity; directly, seeing the cypriote, he stops and buys some figs. and when the whole party has passed the portal, close after the pharisee, if we betake ourselves to the dealer in fruits, he will tell, with a wonderful salaam, that the stranger is a jew, one of the princes of the city, who has travelled, and learned the difference between the common grapes of syria and those of cyprus, so surpassingly rich with the dews of the sea. and so, till towards noon, sometimes later, the steady currents of business habitually flow in and out of the joppa gate, carrying with them every variety of character; including representatives of all the tribes of israel, all the sects among whom the ancient faith has been parcelled and refined away, all the religious and social divisions, all the adventurous rabble who, as children of art and ministers of pleasure, riot in the prodigalities of herod, and all the peoples of note at any time compassed by the caesars and their predecessors, especially those dwelling within the circuit of the mediterranean. in other words, jerusalem, rich in sacred history, richer in connection with sacred propheciesthe jerusalem of solomon, in which silver was as stones, and cedars as the sycamores of the valehad come to be but a copy of rome, a centre of unholy practices, a seat of pagan power. a jewish king one day put on priestly garments, and went into the holy of holies of the first temple to offer incense, and he came out a leper; but in the time of which we are reading, pompey entered herod's temple and the same holy of holies, and came out without harm, finding but an empty chamber, and of god not a sign. chapter viii. joseph and mary going to bethlehem. the reader is now besought to return to the court described as part of the market at the joppa gate. it was the third hour of the day, and many of the people had gone away; yet the press continued without apparent abatement. of the new-comers, there was a group over by the south wall, consisting of a man, a woman, and a donkey, which requires extended notice. the man stood by the animal's head, holding a leading-strap, and leaning upon a stick which seemed to have been chosen for the double purpose of goad and staff. his dress was like that of the ordinary jews around him, except that it had an appearance of newness. the mantle dropping from his head, and the robe or frock which clothed his person from neck to heel were probably the garments he was accustomed to wear to the synagogue on sabbath days. his features were exposed and they told of fifty years of life, a surmise confirmed by the grey that streaked his otherwise black beard. he looked around him with the half-curious, half-vacant stare of a stranger and provincial. the donkey ate leisurely from an armful of green grass, of which there was an abundance in the market. in its sleepy content, the brute did not admit of disturbance from the bustle and clamour about; no more was it mindful of the woman sitting upon its back in a cushioned pillion. an outer robe of dull woollen stuff completely covered her person, while a white wimple veiled her head and neck. once in a while, impelled by curiosity to see or hear something passing, she drew the wimple aside, but so slightly that the face remained invisible. at length the man was accosted. "are you not joseph of nazareth?" the speaker was standing close by. "i am so called," answered joseph, turning gravely around. "and youah, peace be unto you! my friend, rabbi samuel!" "the same give i back to you." the rabbi paused, looking at the woman, then added, "to you, and unto your house and all your helpers, be peace." with the last word, he placed one hand upon his breast, and inclined his head to the woman, who, to see him, had by this time withdrawn the wimple enough to show the face of one but a short time out of girlhood. thereupon the acquaintances grasped right hands, as if to carry them to their lips; at the last moment, however, the clasp was let go, and each kissed his own hand, then put its palm upon his forehead. "there is so little dust upon your garments," the rabbi said, familiarly, "that i infer you passed the night in this city of our fathers." "no," joseph replied, "as we could only make bethany before the night came, we stayed in the khan there, and took the road again at daybreak." "the journey before you is long, thennot to joppa, i hope." "only to bethlehem." the countenance of the rabbi, theretofore open and friendly, became lowering and sinister, and he cleared his throat with a growl instead of a cough. "yes, yesi see," he said. "you were born in bethlehem and wend thither now, with your daughter, to be counted for taxation, as ordered by caesar. the children of jacob are as the tribes in egypt wereonly they have neither a moses nor a joshua. how are the mighty fallen!" joseph answered, without change of posture or countenance "the woman is not my daughter." but the rabbi clung to the political idea; and he went on, without noticing the explanation, "what are the zealots doing down in galilee?" "i am a carpenter, and nazareth is a village," said joseph, cautiously. "the street on which my bench stands is not a road leading to any city. hewing wood and sawing plank leave me no time to take part in the disputes of parties." "but you are a jew," said the rabbi earnestly. "you. are a jew, and of the line of david. it is not possible you can find pleasure in the payment of any tax except the shekel given by ancient custom to jehovah." joseph held his peace. "i do not complain," his friend continued, "of the amount of the taxa denarius is a trifle. oh, no! the imposition of the tax is the offence. and, besides, what is paying it but submission to tyranny? tell me, is it true that judas claims to be the messiah? you live in the midst of his followers." "i have heard his followers say he was the messiah," joseph replied. at this point the wimple was drawn aside, and for an instant the whole face of the woman was exposed. the eyes of the rabbi wandered that way, and he had time to see a countenance of rare beauty, kindled by a look of intense interest; then a blush overspread her cheeks and brow, and the veil was returned to its place. the politician forgot his subject. "your daughter is comely," he said, speaking lower. "she is not my daughter," joseph repeated. the curiosity of the rabbi was aroused; seeing which, the nazarene hastened to say further, "she is the child of joachim and anna of bethlehem, of whom you have at least heard; for they were of great repute" "yes," remarked the rabbi, deferentially, "i know them. they were lineally descended from david. i knew them well." "well, they are dead now," the nazarene proceeded. "they died in nazareth. joachim was not rich, yet he left a house and garden to be divided between his daughters marian and mary. this is one of them; and to save her portion of the property, the law required her to marry her next of kin. she is now my wife." "and you were" "her uncle." "yes, yes! and as you were both born in bethlehem, the roman compels you to take her there with you to be also counted." the rabbi clasped his hands, and looked indignantly to heaven, exclaiming, "the god of israel still lives! the vengeance is his!" with that he turned and abruptly departed. a stranger near by, observing joseph's amazement, said quietly, "rabbi samuel is a zealot. judas himself is not more fierce." joseph, not wishing to talk with the man, appeared not to hear, and busied himself gathering in a little heap the grass which the donkey had tossed abroad; after which he leaned upon his staff again, and waited. in another hour the party passed out the gate, and, turning to the left, took the road to bethlehem. the descent into the valley of hinnom was quite broken, garnished here and there with straggling wild olive-trees. carefully, tenderly, the nazarene walked by the woman's side, leading-strap in hand. on their left, reaching to the south and east round mount zion, rose the city wall, and on their right the steep prominences which form the western boundary of the valley. slowly they passed the lower pool of gihon, out of which the sun was fast driving the lessening shadow of the royal hill; slowly they proceeded, keeping parallel with the aqueduct from the pools of solomon, until near the site of the country-house on what is now called the hill of evil counsel; there they began to ascend to the plain of rephaim. the sun streamed garishly over the stony face of the famous locality, and under its influence mary, the daughter of joachim, dropped the wimple entirely, and bared her head. joseph told the story of the philistines surprised in their camp there by david. he was tedious in the narrative, speaking with the solemn countenance and lifeless manner of a dull man. she did not always hear him. wherever on the land men go, and on the sea ships, the face and figure of the jew are familiar. the physical type of the race has always been the same; yet there have been some individual variations. "now he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to." such was the son of jesse when brought before samuel. the fancies of men have been ever since ruled by the description. poetic license has extended the peculiarities of the ancestor to his notable descendants. so all our ideal solomons have fair faces, and hair and beard chestnut in the shade, and of the tint of gold in the sun. such, we are also made believe, were the locks of absolom the beloved. and, in the absence of authentic history, tradition has dealt no less lovingly by her whom we are now following down to the native city of the ruddy king. she was not more than fifteen. her form, voice, and manner belonged to the period of transition from girlhood. her face was perfectly oval, her complexion more pale than fair. the nose was faultless; the lips, slightly parted, were full and ripe, giving to the lines of the mouth warmth, tenderness, and trust; the eyes were blue and large, and shaded by drooping lids and long lashes; and, in harmony with all, a flood of golden hair, in the style permitted to jewish brides, fell unconfined down her back to the pillion on which she sat. the throat and neck had the downy softness sometimes seen which leaves the artist in doubt whether it is an effect of contour or colour. to these charms of feature and person were added others more indefinablean air of purity which only the soul can impart, and of abstraction natural to such as think much of things impalpable. often, with trembling lips, she raised her eyes to heaven, itself not more deeply blue; often she crossed her hands upon her breast, as in adoration and prayer; often she raised her head like one listening eagerly for a calling voice. now and then, midst his slow utterances, joseph turned to look at her, and, catching the expression kindling her face as with light, forgot his theme, and with bowed head, wondering, plodded on. so they skirted the great plain, and at length reached the elevation mar elias; from which, across a valley, they beheld bethlehem, the old, old house of bread, its white walls crowning a ridge, and shining above the brown scumbling of leafless orchards. they paused there and rested, while joseph pointed out the places of sacred renown; then they went down into the valley to the well which was the scene of one of the marvellous exploits of david's strong men. the narrow space was crowded with people and animals. a fear came upon josepha fear lest, if the town were so thronged, there might not be house-room for the gentle mary. without delay, he hurried on, past the pillar of stone, marking the tomb of rachel, up the gardened slope, saluting none of the many persons he met on the way, until he stopped before the portal of the khan that then stood outside the village gates, near a junction of roads. chapter ix. the cave at bethlehem. to understand thoroughly what happened to the nazarene at the khan, the reader must be reminded that eastern inns were different from the inns of the western world. they were called khans, from the persian, and, in simplest form, were fenced enclosures, without house or shed, often without a gate or entrance. their sites were chosen with reference to shade, defence, or water. such were the inns that sheltered jacob when he went to seek a wife in padan-aram. their like may be seen at this day in the stopping-places of the desert. on the other hand, some of them, especially those on the roads between great cities, like jerusalem and alexandria, were princely establishments, monuments to the piety of the kings who built them. in ordinary, however, they were no more than the house or possession of a sheik, in which, as in headquarters, he swayed his tribe. lodging the traveller was the least of their uses; they were markets, factories, forts; places of assemblage and residence for merchants and artisans quite as much as places of shelter for belated and wandering wayfarers. within their walls, all the year round, occurred the multiplied daily transactions of a town. the singular management of these hostelries was the feature likely to strike a western mind with most force. there was no host or hostess; no clerk, cook, or kitchen; a steward at the gate was all the assertion of government or proprietorship anywhere visible. strangers arriving stayed at will without rendering account. a consequence of the system was that whoever came had to bring his food and culinary outfit with him, or buy them of dealers in the khan. the same rule held good as to his bed and bedding, and forage, for his beasts. water, rest, shelter, and protection were all he looked for from the proprietor, and they were gratuities. the peace of synagogues was sometimes broken by brawling disputants, but that of the khans never. the houses and all their appurtenances were sacred: a well was not more so. the khan at bethlehem, before which joseph and his wife stopped, was a good specimen of its class, being neither very primitive nor very princely. the building was purely oriental; that is to say, a quadrangular block of rough stones, one storey high, flat-roofed, externally unbroken by a window, and with but one principal entrancea doorway, which was also a gateway, on the eastern side, or front. the road ran by the door so near that the chalk dust half covered the lintel. a fence of flat rocks, beginning at the northeastern corner of the pile, extended many yards down the slope to a point from whence it swept westwardly to a limestone bluff; making what was in the highest degree essential to a respectable khana safe enclosure for animals. in a village like bethlehem, as there was but one sheik, there could not well be more than one khan; and, though born in the place, the nazarene, from long residence elsewhere, had no claim to hospitality in the town. moreover, the enumeration for which he was coming might be the work of weeks or months; roman deputies in the provinces were proverbially slow; and to impose himself and wife for a period so uncertain upon acquaintances or relations was out of the question. so, before he drew nigh the great house, while he was yet climbing the slope, in the steep places toiling to hasten the donkey, the fear that he might not find accommodations in the khan became a painful anxiety; for he found the road thronged with men and boys who, with great ado, were taking their cattle, horses, and camels to and from the valley, some to water, some to the neighbouring caves. and when he was come close by, his alarm was not allayed by the discovery of a crowd investing the door of the establishment, while the enclosure adjoining, broad as it was, seemed already full. "we cannot reach the door," joseph said, in his slow way. "let us stop here, and learn, if we can, what has happened." the wife, without answering, quietly drew the wimple aside. the look of fatigue at first upon her face changed to one of interest. she found herself at the edge of an assemblage that could not be other than a matter of curiosity to her, although it was common enough at the khans on any of the highways which the great caravans were accustomed to traverse. there were men on foot, running hither and thither, talking shrilly and in all the tongues of syria; men on horseback screaming to men on camels; men struggling doubtfully with fractious cows and frightened sheep; men peddling bread and wine; and among the mass a herd of boys apparently in chase of a herd of dogs. everybody and everything seemed to be in motion at the same time. possibly the fair spectator was too weary to be long attracted by the scene; in a little while she sighed, and settled down on the pillion, and, as if in search of peace and rest, or in expectation of some one, looked off to the south, and up to the tall cliffs of the mount of paradise, then faintly reddening under the setting sun. while she was thus looking, a man pushed his way out of the press, and, stopping close by the donkey, faced about with an angry brow. the nazarene spoke to him. "as i am what i take you to be, good frienda son of judahmay i ask the cause of this multitude?" the stranger turned fiercely; but, seeing the solemn countenance of joseph, so in keeping with his deep, slow voice and speech, he raised his hand in half-salutation, and replied "peace be to you, rabbi! i am a son of judah, and will answer you. i dwell in beth-dagon, which, you know, is in what used to be the land of the tribe of dan." "on the road to joppa from modin," said joseph. "ah, you have been in beth-dagon," the man said, his face softening yet more. "what wanderers we of judah are! i have been away from the ridgeold ephrath, as our father jacob called itfor many years. when the proclamation went abroad requiring all hebrews to be numbered at the cities of their birththat is my business here, rabbi." joseph's face remained stolid as a mask, while he remarked, "i have come for that alsoi and my wife." the stranger glanced at mary and kept silence. she was looking up at the bald top of gedor. the sun touched her upturned face, and filled the violet depths of her eyes; and upon her parted lips trembled an aspiration which could not have been to a mortal. for the moment, all the humanity of her beauty seemed refined away: she was as we fancy they are who sit close by the gate in the transfiguring light of heaven. the beth-dagonite saw the original of what, centuries after, came as a vision of genius to sanzio the divine, and left him immortal. "of what was i speaking? ah! i remember. i was about to say that when i heard of the order to come here, i was angry. then i thought of the old hill, and the town, and the valley falling away into the depths of cedron; of the vines and orchards, and fields of grain, unfailing since the days of boaz and ruth; of the familiar mountainsgedor here, gibeah yonder, mar elias therewhich, when i was a boy, were the walls of the world to me; and i forgave the tyrants and camei, and rachel, my wife, and deborah and michal, our roses of sharon." the man paused again, looking abruptly at mary, who was now looking at him and listening. then he said, "rabbi, will not your wife go to mine? you may see her yonder with the children, under the leaning olive-tree at the bend of the road. i tell you"he turned to joseph and spoke positively"i tell you the khan is full. it is useless to ask at the gate." joseph's will was slow, like his mind; he hesitated, but at length replied, "the offer is kind. whether there be room for us or not in the house, we will go see your people. let me speak to the gatekeeper myself. i will return quickly." and, putting the leading-strap in the stranger's hand, he pushed into the stirring crowd. the keeper sat on a great cedar block outside the gate. against the wall behind him leaned a javelin. a dog squatted on the block by his side. "the peace of jehovah be with you," said joseph, at last confronting the keeper. "what you give, may you find again; and, when found, be it many times multiplied to you and yours," returned the watchman, gravely, though without moving. "i am a bethlehemite," said joseph, in his most deliberate way. "is there not room for" "there is not." "you may have heard of mejoseph of nazareth. this is the house of my fathers. i am of the line of david." these words held the nazarene's hope. if they failed him, further appeal was idle, even that of the offer of many shekels. to be a son of judah was one thingin the tribal opinion a great thing; to be of the house of david was yet another; on the tongue of a hebrew there could be no higher boast. a thousand years and more had passed since the boyish shepherd became the successor of saul and founded a royal family. wars, calamities, other kings, and the countless obscuring processes of time had, as respects fortune, lowered his descendants to the common jewish level; the bread they ate came to them of toil never more humble; yet they had the benefit of history sacredly kept, of which genealogy was the first chapter and the last; they could not become unknown; while, wherever they went in israel, acquaintance drew after it a respect amounting to reverence. if this were so in jerusalem and elsewhere, certainly one of the sacred line might reasonably rely upon it at the door of the khan of bethlehem. to say, as joseph said, "this is the house of my fathers," was to say the truth most simply and literally; for it was the very house ruth ruled as the wife of boaz; the very house in which jesse and his ten sons, david the youngest, were born; the very house in which samuel came seeking a king, and found him; the very house which david gave to the son of barzillai, the friendly gileadite; the very house in which jeremiah, by prayer, rescued the remnant of his race flying before the babylonians. the appeal was not without effect. the keeper of the gate slid down from the cedar block, and, laying his hand upon his beard, said, respectfully, "rabbi, i cannot tell you when this door first opened in welcome to the traveller, but it was more than a thousand years ago; and in all that time there is no known instance of a good man turned away, save when there was no room to rest him in. if it has been so with the stranger, just cause must the steward have who says no to one of the line of david. wherefore, i salute you again; and, if you care to go with me, i will show you that there is not a lodging-place left in the house; neither in the chambers, nor in the lewens, nor in the courtnot even on the roof. may i ask when you came?" "but now." the keeper smiled. "'the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.' is not that the law, rabbi?" joseph was silent. "if it be the law, can i say to one a long time come, 'go thy way; another is here to take thy place'?" yet joseph held his peace. "and, if i said so, to whom would the place belong? see the many that have been waiting, some of them since noon." "who are all these people?" asked joseph, turning to the crowd. "and why are they here at this time?" "that which doubtless brought you, rabbithe decree of the caesar"the keeper threw an interrogative glance at the nazarene, then continued"brought most of those who have lodging in the house. and yesterday the caravan passing from damascus to arabia and lower egypt arrived. these you see here belong to itmen and camels." still joseph persisted. "the court is large," he said. "yes, but it is heaped with cargoeswith bales of silk, and pockets of spices, and goods of every kind." then for a moment the face of the applicant lost its stolidity; the lustreless, staring eyes dropped. with some warmth he next said, "i do not care for myself, but i have with me my wife, and the night is coldcolder on these heights than in nazareth. she cannot live in the open air. is there not room in the town?" "these people"the keeper waved his hand to the throng before the door"have all besought the town, and they report its accommodations all engaged." again joseph studied the ground, saying, half to himself, "she is so young! if i make her bed on the hill, the frosts will kill her." then he spoke to the keeper again. "it may be you knew her parents, joachim and anna, once of bethlehem, and, like myself, of the line of david." "yes, i knew them. they were good people. that was in my youth." this time the keeper's eyes sought the ground in thought. suddenly he raised his head. "if i cannot make room for you," he said, "i cannot turn you away. rabbi, i will do the best i can for you. how many are of your party?" joseph reflected, then replied, "my wife and a friend with his family, from beth-dagon, a little town over by joppa; in all, six of us." "very well. you shall not lie out on the ridge. bring your people and hasten; for, when the sun goes down behind the mountain, you know the night comes quickly, and it is nearly there now." "i give you the blessing of the houseless traveller; that of the sojourner will follow." so saying, the nazarene went back joyfully to mary and the beth-dagonite. in a little while the latter brought up his family, the women mounted on donkeys. the wife was matronly, the daughters were images of what she must have been in youth; and as they drew nigh the door, the keeper knew them to be of the humble class. "this is she of whom i spoke," said the nazarene; "and these are our friends." mary's veil was raised. "blue eyes and hair of gold," muttered the steward to himself, seeing but her. "so looked the young king when he went to sing before saul." then he took the leading-strap from joseph and said to mary, "peace to you, o daughter of david!" then to the others, "peace to you all!" then to joseph, "rabbi, follow me!" the party were conducted into a wide passage paved with stone, from which they entered the court of the khan. to a stranger the scene would have been curious; but they noticed the lewens that yawned darkly upon them from all sides, and the court itself, only to remark how crowded they were. by a lane reserved in the stowage of the cargoes, and thence by a passage similar to the one at the entrance, they emerged into the enclosure adjoining the house, and came upon camels, horses, and donkeys, tethered and dozing in close groups; among them were the keepers, men of many lands; and they, too, slept or kept silent watch. they went down the slope of the crowded yard slowly, for the dull carriers of the women had wills of their own. at length they turned into a path running towards the grey limestone bluff overlooking the khan on the west. "we are going to the cave," said joseph, laconically. the guide lingered till mary came to his side. "the cave to which we are going," he said to her, "must have been a resort of your ancestor david. from the field below us, and from the well down in the valley, he used to drive his flock to it for safety; and afterwards, when he was king, he came back to the old house here for rest and health, bringing great trains of animals. the mangers yet remain as they were in his day. better a bed upon the floor where he has slept than one in the court-yard or out by the roadside. ah, here is the house before the cave!" this speech must not be taken as an apology for the lodging offered. there was no need of apology. the place was the best then at disposal. the guests were simple folks, by habits of life easily satisfied. to the jew of that period, moreover, abode in caverns was a familiar idea, made so by every-day occurrences, and by what he heard of sabbaths in the synagogues. how much of jewish history, how many of the most exciting incidents in that history, had transpired in caves! yet further, these people were jews of bethlehem, with whom the idea was especially commonplace; for their locality abounded with caves great and small, some of which had been dwelling-places from the time of the emim and horites. no more was there offence to them in the fact that the cavern to which they were being taken had been, or was, a stable. they were the descendants of a race of herdsmen, whose flocks habitually shared both their habitations and wanderings. in keeping with a custom derived from abraham, the tent of the bedawin yet shelters his horses and children alike. so they obeyed the keeper cheerfully, and gazed at the house, feeling only a natural curiosity. everything associated with the history of david was interesting to them. the building was low and narrow, projecting but a little from the rock to which it was joined at the rear, and wholly without a window. in its blank front there was a door, swung on enormous hinges, and thickly daubed with ochreous clay. while the wooden bolt of the lock was being pushed back, the women were assisted from their pillions. upon the opening of the door, the keeper called out "come in!" the guests entered, and stared about them. it became apparent immediately that the house was but a mask or covering for the mouth of a natural cave or grotto, probably forty feet long, nine or ten high, and twelve or fifteen in width. the light streamed through the doorway, over an uneven floor, falling upon piles of grain and fodder, and earthenware and household property, occupying the centre of the chamber. along the sides were mangers, low enough for sleep, and built of stones laid in cement. there were no stalls or partitions of any kind. dust and chaff yellowed the floor, filled all the crevices and hollows, and thickened the spider-webs, which dropped from the ceiling like bits of dirty linen; otherwise the place was cleanly, and, to appearance, as comfortable as any of the arched lewens of the khan proper. in fact, a cave was the model and first suggestion of the lewen. "come in!" said the guide. "these piles upon the floor are for travellers like yourselves. take what of them you need." then he spoke to mary. "can you rest here?" "the place is sanctified," she answered. "i leave you then. peace be with you all!" when he was gone, they busied themselves making the cave habitable. chapter x. the light in the sky. at a certain hour in the evening the shouting and stir of the people in and about the khan ceased; at the same time, every israelite, if not already upon his feet, arose, solemnized his face, looked towards jerusalem, crossed his hands upon his breast, and prayed; for it was the sacred ninth hour, when sacrifices were offered in the temple on moriah, and god was supposed to be there. when the hands of the worshippers fell down, the commotion broke forth again; everybody hastened to bread, or to make his pallet. a little later the lights were put out, and there was silence, and then sleep. * * * * * about midnight some one on the roof cried, "what light is that in the sky? awake, brethren, awake and see!" the people, half asleep, sat up and looked; then they became wide-awake, though wonder-struck. and the stir spread to the court below, and into the lewens; soon the entire tenantry of the house and court and enclosure were out gazing at the sky. and this was what they saw. a ray of light, beginning at a height immeasurably beyond the nearest stars, and dropping obliquely to the earth; at its top, a diminishing point; at its base, many furlongs in width; its sides blending softly with the darkness of the night; its core a roseate electrical splendour. the apparition seemed to rest on the nearest mountain south-east of the town, making a pale corona along the line of the summit. the khan was touched luminously, so that those upon the roof saw each other's faces, all filled with wonder. steadily, through minutes, the ray lingered, and then the wonder changed to awe and fear; the timid trembled; the boldest spoke in whispers. "saw you ever the like?" asked one. "it seems just over the mountain there. i cannot tell what it is, nor did i ever see anything like it," was the answer. "can it be that a star has burst and fallen?" asked another, his tongue faltering. "when a star falls, its light goes out." "i have it!" cried one, confidently. "the shepherds have seen a lion, and made fires to keep him from the flocks." the men next the speaker drew a breath of relief, and said, "yes, that is it! the flocks were grazing in the valley over there to-day." a bystander dispelled the comfort. "no, no! though all the wood in all the valleys of judah was brought together in one pile and fired, the blaze would not throw a light so strong and high." after that there was silence on the house-top, broken but once again while the mystery continued. "brethren!" exclaimed a jew of venerable mien, "what we see is the ladder our father jacob saw in his dream. blessed be the lord god of our fathers!" chapter xi. christ is born. a mile and a half, it may be two miles, south-east of bethlehem, there is a plain separated from the town by an intervening swell of the mountain. besides being well sheltered from the north winds, the vale was covered with a growth of sycamore, dwarf-oak, and pine trees, while in the glens and ravines adjoining there were thickets of olive and mulberry; all at this season of the year invaluable for the support of sheep, goats, and cattle, of which the wandering flocks consisted. at the side farthest from the town, close under a bluff, there was an extensive marah, or sheepcot, ages old. in some long-forgotten foray the building had been unroofed and almost demolished. the enclosure attached to it remained intact, however, and that was of more importance to the shepherds who drove their charges thither than the house itself. the stone wall around the lot was high as a man's head, yet not so high but that sometimes a panther or a lion, hungering from the wilderness, leaped boldly in. on the inside of the wall, and as an additional security against the constant danger a hedge of the rhamnus had been planted, an invention so successful that now a sparrow could hardly penetrate the overtopping branches, armed as they were with great clusters of thorns hard as spikes. the day of the occurrences which occupy the preceding chapters, a number of shepherds, seeking fresh walks for their flocks, led them up to this plain; and from early morning the groves had been made ring with calls, and the blows of axes, the bleating of sheep and goats, the tinkling of bells, the lowing of cattle, and the barking of dogs. when the sun went down, they led the way to the marah, and by nightfall had everything safe in the field; then they kindled a fire down by the gate, partook of their humble supper, and sat down to rest and talk, leaving one on watch. there were six of these men, omitting the watchman; and afterwhile they assembled in a group near the fire, some sitting, some lying prone. as they went bareheaded habitually, their hair stood out in thick, coarse, sunburnt shocks; their beard covered their throats, and fell in mats down the breast; mantles of the skin of kids and lambs, with the fleece on, wrapped them from neck to knee, leaving the arms exposed; broad belts girthed the rude garments to their waists; their sandals were of the coarsest quality; from their right shoulders hung scrips containing food and selected stones for slings, with which they were armed; on the ground near each one lay his crook, a symbol of his calling and a weapon of offence. such were the shepherds of judea! in appearance, rough and savage as the gaunt dogs sitting with them around the blaze; in fact, simple-minded, tender-hearted; effects due, in part, to the primitive life they led, but chiefly to their constant care of things lovable and helpless. they rested and talked; and their talk was all about their flocksa dull theme to the world, yet a theme which was all the world to them. if in narrative they dwelt long upon affairs of trifling moment; if one of them omitted nothing of detail in recounting the loss of a lamb, the relation between him and the unfortunate should be remembered: at birth it became his charge, his to keep all its days, to help over the floods, to carry down the hollows, to name and train; it was to be his companion, his object of thought and interest, the subject of his will; it was to enliven and share his wanderings; in its defence he might be called on to face the lion or robberto die. the great events, such as blotted out nations and changed the mastery of the world, were trifles to them, if perchance they came to their knowledge. of what herod was doing in this city or that, building palaces and gymnasia, and indulging forbidden practices, they occasionally heard. as was her habit in those days, rome did not wait for people slow to inquire about her; she came to them. over the hills along which he was leading his lagging herd, or in the fastnesses in which he was hiding them, not unfrequently the shepherd was startled by the blare of trumpets, and, peering out beheld a cohort, sometimes a legion, in march; and when the glittering crests were gone, and the excitement incident to the intrusion over, he bent himself to evolve the meaning of the eagle and gilded globes of the soldiery, and the charm of a life so the opposite of his own. yet these men, rude and simple as they were, had a knowledge and a wisdom of their own. on sabbaths they were accustomed to purify themselves, and go up into the synagogues, and sit on the benches farthest from the ark. when the chazzan bore the torah round, none kissed it with greater zest; when the sheliach read the text, none listened to the interpreter with more absolute faith; and none took away with them more of the elder's sermon, or gave it more thought afterwards. in a verse of the shema they found all the learning and all the law of their simple livesthat their lord was one god, and that they must love him with all their souls. and they loved him, and such was their wisdom, surpassing that of kings. while they talked, and before the first watch was over, one by one the shepherds went to sleep, each lying where he had sat. the night, like most nights of the winter season in the hill country, was clear, crisp, and sparkling with stars. there was no wind. the atmosphere seemed never so pure, and the stillness was more than silence; it was a holy hush, a warning that heaven was stooping low to whisper some good thing to the listening earth. by the gate, hugging his mantle close, the watchman walked; at times he stopped, attracted by a stir among the sleeping herds, or by a jackal's cry off on the mountain-side. the midnight was slow coming to him; but at last it came. his task was done; now for the dreamless sleep with which labour blesses its wearied children! he moved towards the fire, but paused; a light was breaking around him, soft and white, like the moon's. he waited breathlessly. the light, deepened; things before invisible came to view; he saw the whole field, and all it sheltered. a chill sharper than that of the frosty aira chill of fearsmote him. he looked up; the stars were gone; the light was dropping as from a window in the sky; as he looked, it became a splendour; then, in terror he cried "awake, awake!" up sprang the dogs, and, howling, ran away. the herds rushed together bewildered. the men clambered to their feet, weapons in hand. "what is it?" they asked, in one voice. "see!" cried the watchman, "the sky is on fire!" suddenly the light became intolerably bright, and they covered their eyes, and dropped upon their knees; then, as their souls shrank with fear, they fell upon their faces blind and fainting, and would have died had not a voice said to them "fear not!" and they listened. "fear not: for behold, i bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." the voice, in sweetness and soothing more than human, and low and clear, penetrated all their being, and filled them with assurance. they rose upon their knees, and, looking worshipfully, beheld in the centre of a great glory the appearance of a man, clad in a robe intensely white; above its shoulders towered the tops of wings shining and folded; a star over its forehead glowed with steady lustre, brilliant as hesperus; its hands were stretched towards them in blessing; its face was serene and divinely beautiful. they had often heard, and in their simple way talked, of angels; and they doubted not now, but said, in their hearts, the glory of god is about us, and this is he who of old came to the prophet by the river of ulai. directly the angel continued "for unto you is born this day, in the city of david, a saviour which is christ the lord!" again there was a rest, while the words sank into their minds. "and this shall be a sign unto you," the annunciator said next. "ye shall find the babe, wrapped in swaddling-clothes, lying in a manger." the herald spoke not again; his good tidings were told; yet he stayed awhile. suddenly the light, of which he seemed the centre, turned roseate and began to tremble; then up, far as the men could see, there was flashing of white wings, and coming and going of radiant forms, and voices as of a multitude chanting in unison "glory to god in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will towards men!" not once the praise, but many times. then the herald raised his eyes as seeking approval of one far off; his wings stirred, and spread slowly and majestically, on their upper side white as snow, in the shadow vari-tinted, like mother-of-pearl; when they were expanded many cubits beyond his stature, he rose lightly, and, without effort, floated out of view, taking the light up with him. long after he was gone, down from the sky fell the refrain in measure mellowed by distance, "glory to god in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will towards men." when the shepherds came fully to their senses, they stared at each other stupidly, until one of them said, "it was gabriel, the lord's messenger unto men." none answered. "christ the lord is born; said he not so?" then another recovered his voice, and replied, "that is what he said." "and did he not also say, in the city of david, which is our bethlehem yonder. and that we should find him a babe in swaddling clothes?" "and lying in a manger." the first speaker gazed into the fire thoughtfully, but at length said, like one possessed of a sudden resolve, "there is but one place in bethlehem where there are mangers; but one, and that is in the cave near the old khan. brethren, let us go see this thing which has come to pass. the priests and doctors have been a long time looking for the christ. now he is born, and the lord has given us a sign by which to know him. let us go and worship him." "but the flocks!" "the lord will take care of them. let us make haste." then they all arose and left the marah. * * * * * around the mountain and through the town they passed, and came to the gate of the khan, where there was a man on watch. "what would you have?" he asked. "we have seen and heard great things to-night," they replied. "well, we, too, have seen great things, but heard nothing. what did you hear?" "let us go down to the cave in the enclosure, that we may be sure; then we will tell you all. come with us, and see for yourself." "it is a fool's errand." "no, the christ is born." "the christ! how do you know?" "let us go and see first." the man laughed scornfully. "the christ indeed! how are you to know him?" "he was born this night, and is now lying in a manger, so we were told; and there is but one place in bethlehem with mangers." "the cave?" "yes. come with us." they went through the court-yard without notice, although there were some up even then talking about the wonderful light. the door of the cavern was open. a lantern was burning within, and they entered unceremoniously. "i give you peace," the watchman said to joseph and the beth-dagonite. "here are people looking for a child born this night, whom they are to know by finding him in swaddling-clothes and lying in a manger." for a moment the face of the stolid nazarene was moved; turning away, he said, "the child is here." they were led to one of the mangers, and there the child was. the lantern was brought, and the shepherds stood by mute. the little one made no sign; it was as others just born. "where is the mother?" asked the watchman. one of the women took the baby, and went to mary, lying near, and put it in her arms. then the bystanders collected about the two. "it is the christ!" said a shepherd at last. "the christ!" they all repeated, falling upon their knees in worship. one of them repeated several times over "it is the lord, and his glory is above the earth and heaven." and the simple men, never doubting, kissed the hem of the mother's robe, and with joyful faces departed. in the khan, to all the people aroused and pressing about them, they told their story; and through the town, and all the way back to the marah, they chanted the refrain of the angels, "glory to god in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will towards men!" the story went abroad, confirmed by the light so generally seen; and the next day, and for days thereafter, the cave was visited by curious crowds, of whom some believed, though the greater part laughed and mocked. chapter xii. the wise men arrive at jerusalem. the eleventh day after the birth of the child in the cave, about mid-afternoon, the three wise men approached jerusalem by the road from shechem. after crossing brook cedron, they met many people, of whom none failed to stop and look after them curiously. judea was of necessity an international thoroughfare; a narrow ridge, raised, apparently, by the pressure of the desert on the east, and the sea on the west, was all she could claim to be; over the ridge, however, nature had stretched the line of trade between the east and the south; and that was her wealth. in other words, the riches of jerusalem were the tolls she levied on passing commerce. nowhere else, consequently, unless in rome, was there such constant assemblage of so many people of so many different nations; in no other city was a stranger less strange to the residents than within her walls and purlieus. and yet these three men excited the wonder of all whom they met on the way to the gates. a child belonging to some women sitting by the roadside opposite the tombs of the kings saw the party coming; immediately it clapped its hands, and cried, "look, look! what pretty bells! what big camels!" the bells were silver; the camels, as we have seen, were of unusual size and whiteness, and moved with singular stateliness; the trappings told of the desert and of long journeys thereon, and also of ample means in possession of the owners, who sat under the little canopies exactly as they appeared at the rendezvous beyond the jebel. yet it was not the bells or the camels, or their furniture, or the demeanour of the riders, that were so wonderful; it was the question put by the man who rode foremost of the three. the approach to jerusalem from the north is across a plain which dips southward, leaving the damascus gate in a vale or hollow. the road is narrow, but deeply cut by long use, and in places difficult on account of the cobbles left loose and dry by the washing of the rains. on either side, however, there stretched, in the old time, rich fields and handsome olive-groves, which must, in luxurious growth, have been beautiful, especially to travellers fresh from the wastes of the desert. in this road the three stopped before the party in front of the tombs. "good people," said balthasar, stroking his plaited beard and bending from his cot, "is not jerusalem close by?" "yes," answered the woman into whose arms the child had shrunk. "if the trees on yon swell were a little lower, you could see the towers on the market-place." balthasar gave the greek and the hindoo a look, then asked, "where is he that is born king of the jews?" the women gazed at each other without reply. "you have not heard of him?" "no." "well tell everybody that we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him." thereupon the friends rode on. of others they asked the same question, with like result. a large company whom they met going to the grotto of jeremiah were so astonished by the inquiry and the appearance of the travellers that they turned about and followed them into the city. so much were the three occupied with the idea of their mission that they did not care for the view which presently rose before them in the utmost magnificence: for the village first to receive them on bezetha; for mizpah and olivet, over on their left; for the wall behind the village, with its forty tall and solid towers, superadded partly for strength, partly to gratify the critical taste of the kingly builder; for the same towered wall bending off to the right, with many an angle, and here and there an embattled gate, up to the three great white piles, phasaelus, mariamne, and hippicus; for zion, tallest of the hills, crowned with marble palaces, and never so beautiful; for the glittering terraces of the temple on moriah, admittedly one of the wonders of the earth; for the regal mountains rimming the sacred city round about until it seemed in the hollow of a mighty bowl. they came, at length, to a tower of great height and strength, overlooking the gate which, at that time, answered to the present damascus gate, and marked the meeting place of the three roads from shechem, jericho, and gibeon. a roman guard kept the passage-way. by this time the people following the camels formed a train sufficient to draw the idlers hanging about the portal; so that when balthasar stopped to speak to the sentinel, the three became instantly the centre of a close circle eager to hear all that passed. "i give you peace," the egyptian said, in a clear voice. the sentinel made no reply. "we have come great distances in search of one who is born king of the jews. can you tell us where he is?" the soldier raised the visor of his helmet, and called loudly. from an apartment at the right of the passage an officer appeared. "give way," he cried, to the crowd which now pressed closer in; and as they seemed slow to obey, he advanced, twirling his javelin vigorously, now right, now left; and so he gained room. "what would you?" he asked of balthasar, speaking in the idiom of the city. and balthasar answered in the same "where is he that is born king of the jews?" "herod?" asked the officer, confounded. "herod's kingship is from caesar; not herod." "there is no other king of the jews." "but we have seen the star of him we seek, and come to worship him." the roman was perplexed. "go farther," he said, at last. "go farther. i am not a jew. carry the question to the doctors in the temple, or to hannas the priest, or, better still, to herod himself. if there be another king of the jews, he will find him." thereupon he made way for the strangers, and they passed the gate. but, before entering the narrow street, balthasar lingered to say to his friends, "we are sufficiently proclaimed. by midnight the whole city will have heard of us and of our mission, let us to the khan now." chapter xiii. the witnesses before herod. that evening, before sunset, some women were washing clothes on the upper step of the flight that led down into the basin of the pool of siloam. they knelt each before a broad bowl of earthenware. a girl at the foot of the steps kept them supplied with water, and sang while she filled the jar. the song was cheerful, and no doubt lightened their labour. occasionally they would sit upon their heels, and look up the slope of ophel, and round to the summit of what is now the mount of offence, then faintly glorified by the dying sun. while they plied their hands, rubbing and wringing the clothes in the bowls, two other women came to them, each with an empty jar upon her shoulder. "peace to you," one of the new-comers said. the labourers paused, sat up, wrung the water from their hands, and returned the salutation. "it is nearly nighttime to quit." "there is no end to work," was the reply. "but there is a time to rest, and" "to hear what may be passing," interposed another. "what news have you?" "then you have not heard?" "no." "they say the christ is born," said the newsmonger, plunging into her story. it was curious to see the faces of the labourers brighten with interest; on the other side down came the jars, which, in a moment, were turned into seats for their owners. "the christ!" the listeners cried. "so they say." "who?" "everybody; it is common talk." "does anybody believe it?" "this afternoon three men came across brook cedron on the road from shechem," the speaker replied, circumstantially, intending to smother doubt. "each one of them rode a camel spotless white, and larger than any ever before seen in jerusalem." the eyes and mouths of the auditors opened wide. "to prove how great and rich the men were," the narrator continued, "they sat under awnings of silk; the buckles of their saddles were of gold, as was the fringe of their bridles; the bells were of silver, and made real music. nobody knew them; they looked as if they had come from the ends of the world. only one of them spoke, and of everybody on the road, even the women and children, he asked this question'where is he that is born king of the jews?' no one gave them answerno one understood what they meant; so they passed on, leaving behind them this saying: 'for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.' they put the question to the roman at the gate; and he, no wiser than the simple people on the road, sent them up to herod." "where are they now?" "at the khan. hundreds have been to look at them already, and hundreds more are going." "who are they?" "nobody knows. they are said to be persianswise men who talk with the starsprophets, it may be, like elijah and jeremiah." "what do they mean by king of the jews?" "the christ, and that he is just born." one of the women laughed, and resumed her work, saying, "well, when i see him i will believe." another followed her example: "and iwell, when i see him raise the dead, i will believe." a third said, quietly, "he has been a long time promised. it will be enough for me to see him heal one leper." and the party sat talking until the night came, and, with the help of the frosty air, drove them home. * * * * * later in the evening, about the beginning of the first watch, there was an assemblage in the palace on mount zion, of probably fifty persons, who never came together except by order of herod, and then only when he had demanded to know some one or more of the deeper mysteries of the jewish law and history. it was, in short, a meeting of the teachers of the colleges, of the chief priests, and of the doctors most noted in the city for learningthe leaders of opinion, expounders of the different creeds; princes of the sadducees; pharisaic debaters; calm, soft-spoken, stoical philosophers of the essene socialists. the chamber in which the session was held belonged to one of the interior court-yards of the palace, and was quite large and romanesque. the floor was tesselated with marble blocks; the walls, unbroken by a window, were frescoed in panels of saffron yellow; a divan occupied the centre of the apartment, covered with cushions of bright-yellow cloth, and fashioned in form of the letter u, the opening towards the doorway; in the arch of the divan, or as it were, in the bend of the letter, there was an immense bronze tripod, curiously inlaid with gold and silver, over which a chandelier dropped from the ceiling, having seven arms, each holding a lighted lamp. the divan and the lamp were purely jewish. the company sat upon the divan after the style of orientals, in costume singularly uniform, except as to colour. they were mostly men advanced in years; immense beards covered their faces; to their large noses were added the effects of large black eyes deeply shaded by bold brows; their demeanour was grave, dignified, even patriarchal. in brief, their session was that of the sanhedrim. he who sat before the tripod, however, in the place which may be called the head of the divan, having all the rest of his associates on his right and left, and at the same time, before him, evidently president of the meeting, would have instantly absorbed the attention of a spectator. he had been cast in large mould, but was now shrunken and stooped to ghastliness: his white robe dropped from his shoulders in folds that gave no hint of muscle or anything but an angular skeleton. his hands, half concealed by sleeves of silk, white and crimson striped, were clasped upon his knees. when he spoke, sometimes the first finger of the right hand extended tremulously; he seemed incapable of other gesture. but his head was a splendid dome. a few hairs whiter than fine-drawn silver, fringed the base; over a broad, full-sphered skull the skin was drawn close, and shone in the light with positive brilliance; the temples were deep hollows, from which the forehead beetled like a wrinkled crag; the eyes were wan and dim; the nose was pinched; and all the lower face was muffled in a beard flowing and venerable as aaron's. such was hillel the babylonian! the line of prophets, long extinct in israel, was now succeeded by a line of scholars, of whom he was first in learninga prophet in all but the divine inspiration! at the age of one hundred and six he was still rector of the great college. on the table before him lay outspread a roll or volume of parchment inscribed with hebrew characters; behind him, in waiting, stood a page richly habited. there had been discussion, but at this moment of introduction the company had reached a conclusion; each one was in an attitude of rest, and the venerable hillel, without moving, called the page. "hist!" the youth advanced respectfully. "go tell the king we are ready to give him answer." the boy hurried away. after a time two officers entered, and stopped one on each side the door; after them slowly followed a most striking personagean old man clad in a purple robe bordered with scarlet, and girt to his waist by a band of gold linked so fine that it was pliable as leather; the latchets of his shoes sparkled with precious stones; a narrow crown wrought in filigree shone outside a tarbooshe of softest crimson plush, which, encasing his head, fell down the neck and shoulders, leaving the throat and neck exposed. instead of a seal, a dagger dangled from his belt. he walked with a halting step, leaning heavily upon a staff. not until he reached the opening of the divan did he pause or look up from the floor; then, as for the first time conscious of the company, and roused by their presence, he raised himself and looked haughtily round like one startled and searching for an enemyso dark, suspicious, and threatening was the glance. such was herod the greata body broken by diseases, a conscience seared with crimes, a mind magnificently capable, a soul fit for brotherhood with the caesars; now seven-and-sixty years old, but guarding his throne with a jealousy never so vigilant, a power never so despotic, and a cruelty never so inexorable. there was a general movement on the part of the assemblagea bending-forward in salaam by the more aged, a rising-up by the more courtly, followed by low genuflexions, hands upon the beard or breast. his observations taken, herod moved on until at the tripod opposite the venerable hillel, who met his cold glance with an inclination of the head, and a slight lifting of the hands. "the answer!" said the king, with imperious simplicity, addressing hillel, and planting his staff before him with both hands. "the answer!" the eyes of the patriarch glowed mildly, and, raising his head, and looking the inquisitor full in the face, he answered, his associates giving him closest attention "with thee, o king, be the peace of god, of abraham, isaac, and jacob!" his manner was that of invocation; changing it, he resumed "thou hast demanded of us where the christ should be born." the king bowed, though the evil eyes remained fixed upon the sage's face. "that is the question." "then, o king, speaking for myself, and all my brethren here, not one dissenting, i say, in bethlehem of judea." hillel glanced at the parchment on the tripod; and pointing with his tremulous finger, continued, "in bethlehem of judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, 'and thou, bethlehem, in the land of judea, art not the least among the princes of judah; for out of thee shall come a governor that shall rule my people israel.'" herod's face was troubled, and his eyes fell upon the parchment while he thought. those beholding him scarcely breathed; they spoke not, nor did he. at length he turned about and left the chamber. "brethren," said hillel, "we are dismissed." the company then arose, and in groups departed. "simeon," said hillel again. a man, quite fifty years old, but in the hearty prime of life, answered and came to him. "take up the sacred parchment, my son; roll it tenderly." the order was obeyed. "now lend me thy arm; i will to the litter." the strong man stooped; with his withered hands, the old one took the offered support, and, rising, moved feebly to the door. so departed the famous rector and simeon, his son, who was to be his successor in wisdom, learning, and office. * * * * * yet later in the evening the wise men were lying in a lewen of the khan awake. the stones which served them as pillows raised their heads so they could look out of the open arch into the depths of the sky; and as they watched the twinkling of the stars, they thought of the next manifestation. how would it come? what would it be? they were in jerusalem at last; they had asked at the gate for him they sought; they had born witness of his birth; it remained only to find him; and as to that, they placed all trust in the spirit. men listening for the voice of god, or waiting a sign from heaven, cannot sleep. while they were in this condition, a man stepped in under the arch, darkening the lewen. "awake!" he said to them; "i bring you a message which will not be put off." they all sat up. "from whom?" asked the egyptian. "herod the king." each one felt his spirit thrill. "are you not the steward of the khan?" balthasar asked next. "i am." "what would the king with us?" "his messenger is without; let him answer." "tell him, then, to abide our coming." "you were right, o my brother!" said the greek, when the steward was gone. "the question put to the people on the road, and to the guard at the gate, has given us quick notoriety. i am impatient; let us up quickly." they arose, put on their sandals, girt their mantles about them, and went out. "i salute you, and give you peace, and pray your pardon; but my master, the king, has sent me to invite you to the palace, where he would have speech with you privately." thus the messenger discharged his duty. a lamp hung in the entrance, and by its light they looked at each other, and knew the spirit was upon them. then the egyptian stepped to the steward, and said, so as not to be heard by the others, "you know where our goods are stored in the court, and where our camels are resting. while we are gone, make all things ready for our departure, if it should be needful." "go your way assured; trust me," the steward replied. "the king's will is our will," said balthasar to the messenger. "we will follow you." the streets of the holy city were narrow then as now, but not so rough and foul; for the great builder, not content with beauty, enforced cleanliness and convenience also. following their guide, the brethren proceeded without a word. through the dim starlight, made dimmer by the walls on both sides, sometimes almost lost under bridges connecting the house-tops, out of a low ground they ascended a hill. at last they came to a portal reared across the way. in the light of fires blazing before it in two great braziers, they caught a glimpse of the structure, and also of some guards leaning motionlessly upon their arms. they passed into a building unchallenged. then by passages and arched halls; through courts, and under colonnades not always lighted; up long flights of stairs, past innumerable cloisters and chambers, they were conducted into a tower of great height. suddenly the guide halted, and, pointing through an open door, said to them "enter. the king is there." the air of the chamber was heavy with the perfume of sandalwood, and all the appointments within were effeminately rich. upon the floor, covering the central space, a tufted rug was spread, and upon that a throne was set. the visitors had but time, however, to catch a confused idea of the placeof carved and gilt ottomans and couches; of fans, and jars, and musical instruments; of golden candlesticks glittering in their own lights; of walls painted in the style of the voluptuous grecian school, one look at which had made a pharisee hide his head with holy horror. herod, sitting upon the throne to receive them clad as when at the conference with the doctors and lawyers, claimed all their minds. at the edge of the rug, to which they advanced uninvited, they prostrated themselves. the king touched a bell. an attendant came in, and placed three stools before the throne. "seat yourselves," said the monarch, graciously. "from the north gate," he continued, when they were at rest, "i had this afternoon report of the arrival of three strangers, curiously mounted, and appearing as if from far countries. are you the men?" the egyptian took the sign from the greek and the hindoo, and answered, with the profoundest salaam, "were we other than we are, the mighty herod, whose fame is as incense to the whole world, would not have sent for us. we may not doubt that we are the strangers. herod acknowledged the speech with a wave of the hand. "who are you? whence do you come?" he asked, adding, significantly, "let each speak for himself." in turn they gave him account, referring simply to the cities and lands of their birth, and the routes by which they came to jerusalem. somewhat disappointed, herod plied them more directly. "what was the question you put to the officer at the gate?" "we asked him, where is he that is born king of the jews." "i see now why the people were so curious. you excite me no less. is there another king of the jews?" the egyptian did not blanch. "there is one newly born." an expression of pain knit the dark face of the monarch, as if his mind were swept by a harrowing recollection. "not to me, not to me?" he exclaimed. possibly the accusing images of his murdered children flitted before him: recovering from the emotion, whatever it was he asked, steadily, "where is the new king?" "that, o king, is what we would ask." "you bring me a wondera riddle surpassing any of solomon's," the inquisitor said next. "as you see, i am in the time of life when curiosity is as ungovernable as it was in childhood, when to trifle with it is cruelty. tell me further, and i will honour you as kings honour each other. give me all you know about the newly born, and i will join you in the search for him; and when we have found him, i will do what you wish; i will bring him to jerusalem, and train him in kingcraft; i will use my grace with caesar for his promotion and glory. jealousy shall not come between us, so i swear. but tell me first how, so widely separated by seas and deserts, you all came to hear of him." "i will tell you truly, o king." "speak on," said herod. balthasar raised himself erect, and said, solemnly "there is an almighty god." herod was visibly startled. "he bade us come hither, promising that we should find the redeemer of the world; that we should see and worship him, and bear witness that he was come; and, as a sign, we were each given to see a star. his spirit stayed with us. o king, his spirit is with us now!" an overpowering feeling seized the three. the greek with difficulty restrained an outcry. herod's gaze darted quickly from one to the other; he was more suspicious and dissatisfied than before. "you are mocking me," he said. "if not, tell me more. what is to follow the coming of the new king?" "the salvation of men." "from what?" "their wickedness." "how?" "by the divine agenciesfaith, love, and good works." "then"herod paused, and from his look no man could have said with what feeling he continued"you are the heralds of the christ. is that all?" balthasar bowed low. "we are your servants, o king." the monarch touched a bell, and the attendant appeared. "bring the gifts," the master said. the attendant went out, but in a little while returned, and, kneeling before the guests, gave to each one an outer robe or mantle of scarlet and blue, and a girdle of gold. they acknowledged the honours with eastern prostrations. "a word further," said herod, when the ceremony was ended. "to the officer of the gate, and but now to me, you spoke of seeing a star in the east." "yes," said balthasar, "his star, the star of the newly born." "what time did it appear?" "when we were bidden come hither." herod arose, signifying the audience was over. stepping from the throne towards them, he said, with all graciousness "if, as i believe, o illustrious men, you are indeed the heralds of the christ just born, know that i have this night consulted those wisest in things jewish, and they say with one voice he should be born in bethlehem of judea. i say to you, go thither; go and search diligently for the young child; and when you have found him bring me word again, that i may come and worship him. to your going there shall be no let or hindrance. peace be with you!" and folding his robe about him, he left the chamber. directly the guide came, and led them back to the street, and thence to the khan, at the portal of which the greek said, impulsively, "let us to bethlehem, o brethren, as the king has advised." "yes," cried the hindoo. "the spirit burns within me." "be it so," said balthasar, with equal warmth. "the camels are ready." they gave gifts to the steward, mounted into their saddles, received directions to the joppa gate, and departed. at their approach the great valves were unbarred, and they passed out into the open country, taking the road so lately travelled by joseph and mary. as they came up out of hinnom, on the plain of rephaim, a light appeared, at first wide-spread and faint. their pulses fluttered fast the light intensified rapidly; they closed their eyes against its burning brilliance: when they dared look again, lo! the star, perfect as any in the heavens, but low down and moving slowly before them. and they folded their hands, and shouted, and rejoiced with exceeding great joy. "god is with us! god is with us!" they repeated in frequent cheer, all the way, until the star, rising out of the valley beyond mar elias, stood still over a house on the slope of the hill near the town. chapter xiv. the wise find the child. it was now the beginning of the third watch, and at bethlehem the morning was breaking over the mountains in the east, but so feebly that it was yet night in the valley. the watchman on the roof of the old khan, shivering in the chilly air, was listening for the first distinguishable sounds with which life, awakening, greets the dawn, when a light came moving up the hill towards the house. he thought it a torch in some one's hand; next moment he thought it a meteor; the brilliance grew, however, until it became a star. sore afraid, he cried out, and brought everybody within the walls to the roof. the phenomenon, in eccentric motion, continued to approach; the rocks, trees, and roadway under it shone as in a glare of lightning; directly its brightness became blinding. the more timid of the beholders fell upon their knees, and prayed, with their faces hidden; the boldest, covering their eyes, crouched, and now and then snatched glances fearfully. afterwhile the khan and everything thereabout lay under the intolerable radiance. such as dared look beheld the star standing still directly over the house in front of the cave where the child had been born. in the height of this scene the wise men came up, and at the gate dismounted from their camels, and shouted for admission. when the steward so far mastered his terror as to give them heed, he drew the bars and opened to them. the camels looked spectral in the unnatural light, and, besides their outlandishness, there were in the faces and manner of the three visitors an eagerness and exaltation which still further excited the keeper's fears and fancy; he fell back, and for a time could not answer the question they put to him. "is not this bethlehem of judea?" but others came, and by their presence gave him assurance. "no, this is but the khan; the town lies farther on." "is there not here a child newly born?" the bystanders turned to each other marvelling, though some of them answered, "yes, yes." "show us to him!" said the greek, impatiently. "show us to him!" cried balthasar, breaking through his gravity; "for we have seen his star, even that which ye behold over the house, and are come to worship him." the hindoo clasped his hands, exclaiming, "god indeed lives! make haste, make haste! the saviour is found. blessed, blessed are we above men!" the people from the roof came down and followed the strangers as they were taken through the court and out into the enclosure; at sight of the star yet above the cave, though less candescent than before, some turned back afraid; the greater part went on. as the strangers neared the house, the orb arose; when they were at the door, it was high up overhead vanishing; when they entered, it went out, lost to sight. and to the witnesses of what then took place came a conviction that there was a divine relation between the star and the strangers, which extended also to at least some of the occupants of the cave. when the door was opened, they crowded in. the apartment was lighted by a lantern enough to enable the strangers to find the mother, and the child awake in her lap. "is the child thine?" asked balthasar of mary. and she, who had kept all the things in the least affecting the little one, and pondered them in her heart, held it up in the light, saying "he is my son!" and they fell down and worshipped him. they saw the child was as other children: about its head was neither nimbus nor material crown; its lips opened not in speech; if it heard their expressions of joy, their invocations, their prayers, it made no sign whatever, but, baby-like, looked longer at the flame in the lantern than at them. in a little while they arose, and, returning to the camels, brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and laid them before the child, abating nothing of their worshipful speeches; of which no part is given, for the thoughtful know that the pure worship of the pure heart was then what it is now, and has always been, an inspired song. and this was the saviour they had come so far to find! yet they worshipped without a doubt. why? their faith rested upon the signs sent them by him whom we have since come to know as the father: and they were of the kind to whom his promises were so all-sufficient that they asked nothing about his ways. few there were who had seen the signs and heard the promisesthe mother and joseph, the shepherds, and the threeyet they all believed alike; that is to say, in this period of the plan of salvation, god was all and the child nothing. but look forward, o reader! a time will come when the signs will all proceed from the son. happy they who then believe in him! let us wait that period. book second. "there is a fire and motion of the soul which will not dwell in its own narrow being, but aspire beyond the fitting medium of desire; and, but once kindled, quenchless evermore, preys upon high adventure, nor can tire of aught but rest." -childe harold. chapter i. jerusalem under the romans. it is necessary now to carry the reader forward twenty-one years, to the beginning of the administration of valerius gratus, the fourth imperial governor of judeaa period which will be remembered as rent by political agitations in jerusalem, if, indeed, it be not the precise time of the opening of the final quarrel between the jew and the roman. in the interval judea had been subjected to changes affecting her in many ways, but in nothing so much as her political status. herod the great died within one year after the birth of the childdied so miserably, that the christian world had reason to believe him overtaken by the divine wrath. like all great rulers who spend their lives in perfecting the power they create, he dreamed of transmitting his throne and crownof being the founder of a dynasty. with that intent, he left a will dividing his territories between his three sons, antipas, philip, and archelaus, of whom the last was appointed to succeed to the title. the testament was necessarily referred to augustus, the emperor, who ratified all its provisions with one exception: he withheld from archelaus the title of king until he proved his capacity and loyalty; in lieu thereof he created him ethnarch, and as such permitted him to govern nine years, when, for misconduct and inability to stay the turbulent elements that grew and strengthened around him, he was sent into gaul as an exile. caesar was not content with deposing archelaus; he struck the people of jerusalem in a manner that touched their pride, and keenly wounded the sensibilities of the haughty habitues of the temple. he reduced judea to a roman province, and annexed it to the prefecture of syria. so, instead of a king ruling royally from the palace left by herod on mount zion, the city fell into the hands of an officer of the second grade, an appointee called procurator, who communicated with the court in rome through the legate of syria, residing in antioch. to make the hurt more painful, the procurator was not permitted to establish himself in jerusalem; caesarea was his seat of government. most humiliating, however, most exasperating, most studied, samaria, of all the world the most despisedsamaria was joined to judea as a part of the same province! what ineffable misery the bigoted separatists or pharisees endured at finding themselves elbowed and laughed at in the procurator's presence in caesarea by the devotees of gerizim! in this rain of sorrows one consolation, and one only, remained to the fallen people; the high-priest occupied the herodian palace in the market-place, and kept the semblance of a court there. what his authority really was is a matter of easy estimate. judgment of life and death was retained by the procurator. justice was administered in the name and according to the decretals of rome. yet more significant, the royal house was jointly occupied by the imperial exciseman, and all his corps and assistants, registrars, collectors, publicans, informers, and spies. still, to the dreamers of liberty to come, there was a certain satisfaction in the fact that the chief ruler in the palace was a jew. his mere presence there day after day kept them reminded of the covenants and the promises of the prophets, and the ages when jehovah governed the tribes through the sons of aaron; it was to them a certain sign that he had not abandoned them: so their hopes lived and served their patience, and helped them wait grimly the son of judah who was to rule israel. judea had been a roman province eighty years and moreample time for the caesars to study the idiosyncrasies of the peopletime enough, at least, to learn that the jew, with all his pride, could be quietly governed if his religion were respected. proceeding upon that policy, the predecessors of gratus had carefully abstained from interfering with any of the sacred observances of their subjects. but he chose a different course: almost his first official act was to expel hannas from the high-priesthood, and give the place to ishmael, son of fabus. whether the act was directed by augustus, or proceeded from gratus himself, its impolicy became speedily apparent. the reader shall be spared a chapter on jewish politics; a few words upon the subject, however, are essential to such as may follow the succeeding narration critically. at this time, leaving origin out of view, there were in judea the party of the nobles and the separatist, or popular party. upon herod's death the two united against archelaus; from temple to palace, from jerusalem to rome, they fought him; sometimes with intrigue, sometimes with the actual weapons of war. more than once the holy cloisters on moriah resounded with the cries of fighting-men. finally, they drove him into exile. meantime, throughout this struggle the allies had their diverse objects in view. the nobles hated joazar, the high-priest; the separatists, on the other hand, were his zealous adherents. when herod's settlement went down with archelaus, joazar shared the fall. hannas, the son of seth, was selected by the nobles to fill the great office; thereupon the allies divided. the induction of the sethian brought them face to face in fierce hostility. in the course of the struggle with the unfortunate ethnarch, the nobles had found it expedient to attach themselves to rome. discerning that when the existing settlement was broken up some form of government must needs follow, they suggested the conversion of judea into a province. the fact furnished the separatists an additional cause for attack; and, when samaria was made part of the province, the nobles sank into a minority, with nothing to support them but the imperial court and the prestige of their rank and wealth; yet for fifteen yearsdown, indeed, to the coming of valerius gratusthey managed to maintain themselves in both palace and temple. hannas, the idol of his party, had used his power faithfully in the interest of his imperial patron. a roman garrison held the tower of antonia; a roman guard kept the gates of the palace; a roman judge dispensed justice, civil and criminal; a roman system of taxation, mercilessly executed, crushed both city and country; daily, hourly, and in a thousand ways, the people were bruised, and galled, and taught the difference between a life of independence and a life of subjection; yet hannas kept them in comparative quiet. rome had no truer friend; and he made his loss instantly felt. delivering his vestments to ishmael, the new appointee, he walked from the courts of the temple into the councils of the separatists, and became the head of a new combination, bethusian and sethian. gratus, the procurator, left thus without a party, saw the fires which, in the fifteen years, had sunk into sodden smoke, begin to glow with returning life. a month after ishmael took the office, the roman found it necessary to visit him in jerusalem. when from the walls, hooting and hissing him, the jews beheld his guard enter the north gate of the city and march to the tower of antonia, they understood the real purpose of the visita full cohort of legionaries was added to the former garrison, and the keys of their yoke could now be tightened with impunity. if the procurator deemed it important to make an example, alas for the first offender! chapter ii. ben-hur and messala. with the foregoing explanation in mind, the reader is invited to look into one of the gardens of the palace on mount zion. the time was noonday in the middle of july, when the heat of summer was at its highest. the garden was bounded on every side by buildings, which in places arose two stories, with verandahs shading the doors and windows of the lower storey, while retreating galleries, guarded by strong balustrades, adorned and protected the upper. here and there, moreover, the structures fell into what appeared low colonnades, permitting the passage of such winds as chanced to blow, and allowing other parts of the house to be seen, the better to realize its magnitude and beauty. the arrangement of the ground was equally pleasant to the eye. there were walks, and patches of grass and shrubbery, and a few large trees, rare specimens of the palm, grouped with the carob, apricot, and walnut. in all directions the grade sloped gently from the centre, where there was a reservoir, or deep marble basin, broken at intervals by little gates which, when raised, emptied the water into sluices bordering the walksa cunning device for the rescue of the place from the aridity too prevalent elsewhere in the region. not far from the fountain there was a small pool of clear water nourishing a clump of cane and oleander, such as grow on the jordan and down by the dead sea. between the clump and the pool, unmindful of the sun shining full upon them in the breathless air, two boys, one about nineteen, the other seventeen, sat engaged in earnest conversation. they were both handsome, and, at first glance, would have been pronounced brothers. both had hair and eyes black; their faces were deeply browned; and, sitting, they seemed of a size proper for the difference in their ages. the elder was bareheaded. a loose tunic, dropping to the knees, was his attire complete, except sandals and a light-blue mantle spread under him on the seat. the costume left his arms and legs exposed, and they were brown as the face; nevertheless, a certain grace of manner, refinement of features, and culture of voice decided his rank. the tunic, of softest woollen, grey-tinted, at the neck, sleeves, and edge of the skirt bordered with red, and bound to the waist by a tasselled silken cord, certified him the roman he was. and if in speech he now and then gazed haughtily at his companion and addressed him as an inferior, he might almost be excused, for he was of a family noble even in romea circumstance which in that age justified any assumption. in the terrible wars between the first caesar and his great enemies, a messala had been the friend of brutus. after philippi, without sacrifice of his honour, he and the conqueror became reconciled. yet later, when octavius disputed for the empire, messala supported him. octavius, as the emperor augustus, remembered the service, and showered the family with honours. among other things, judea being reduced to a province, he sent the son of his old client or retainer to jerusalem, charged with the receipt and management of the taxes levied in that region; and in that service the son had since remained, sharing the palace with the high-priest. the youth just described was his son, whose habit was to carry about with him all too faithfully a remembrance of the relation between his grandfather and the great romans of his day. the associate of the messala was slighter in form, and his garments were of fine white linen and of the prevalent style in jerusalem; a cloth covered his head, held by a yellow cord, and arranged so as to fall away from the forehead down low over the back of the neck. an observer skilled in the distinctions of race, and studying his features more than his costume, would have soon discovered him to be of jewish descent. the forehead of the roman was high and narrow, his nose sharp and aquiline, while his lips were thin and straight, and his eyes cold and close under the brows. the front of the israelite, on the other hand, was low and broad; his nose long, with expanded nostrils; his upper lip, slightly shading the lower one, short and curving to the dimpled corners, like a cupid's bow; points which, in connection with the round chin, full eyes, and oval cheeks reddened with a wine-like glow, gave his face the softness, strength, and beauty peculiar to his race. the comeliness of the roman was severe and chaste, that of the jew rich and voluptuous. "did you not say the new procurator is to arrive to-morrow?" the question proceeded from the younger of the friends, and was couched in greek, at the time, singularly enough, the language everywhere prevalent in the politer circles of judea; having passed from the palace into the camp and college; thence, nobody knew exactly when or how, into the temple itself, and, for that matter, into precincts of the temple far beyond the gates and cloistersprecincts of a sanctity intolerable for a gentile. "yes, to-morrow," messala answered. "who told you?" "i heard ishmael, the new governor in the palaceyou call him high-priesttell my father so last night. the news had been more credible, i grant you, coming from an egyptian, who is of a race that has forgotten what truth is, or even from an idumaean, whose people never knew what truth was; but, to make quite certain, i saw a centurion from the tower this morning, and he told me preparations were going on for the reception; that the armourers were furbishing the helmets and shields, and regilding the eagles and globes; and that apartments long unused were being cleansed and aired as if for an addition to the garrisonthe body-guard, probably, of the great man." a perfect idea of the manner in which the answer was given cannot be conveyed, as its fine points continually escape the power behind the pen. the reader's fancy must come to his aid; and for that he must be reminded that reverence as a quality of the roman mind was fast breaking down, or, rather, it was becoming unfashionable. the old religion had nearly ceased to be a faith; at most it was a mere habit of thought and expression, cherished principally by the priests who found service in the temple profitable, and the poets who, in the turn of their verses, could not dispense with the familiar deities: there are singers of this age who are similarly given. as philosophy was taking the place of religion, satire was fast substituting reverence; insomuch that in latin opinion it was to every speech, even to the little diatribes of conversation, salt to viands, and aroma to wine. the young messala, educated in rome, but lately returned, had caught the habit and manner; the scarce perceptible movement of the outer corner of the lower eyelid, the decided curl of the corresponding nostril, and a languid utterance affected as the best vehicle to convey the idea of general indifference, but more particularly because of the opportunities it afforded for certain rhetorical pauses thought to be of prime importance to enable the listener to take the happy conceit or receive the virus of the stinging epigram. such a stop occurred in the answer just given, at the end of the allusion to the egyptian and idumaean. the colour in the jewish lad's cheeks deepened, and he may not have heard the rest of the speech, for he remained silent, looking absently into the depths of the pool. "our farewell took place in this garden, 'the peace of the lord go with you!'your last words. 'the gods keep you!' i said. do you remember? how many years have passed since then?" "five," answered the jew, gazing into the water. "well, you have reason to be thankful towhom shall i say? the gods? no matter. you have grown handsome; the greek would call you beautifulhappy achievement of the years! if jupiter would stay content with one ganymede, what a cup-bearer you would make for the emperor! tell me, my judah, how the coming of the procurator is of such interest to you." judah bent his large eyes upon the questioner; the gaze was grave and thoughtful, and caught the roman's, and held it while he replied, "yes, five years. i remember the parting; you went to rome; i saw you start, and cried, for i loved you. the years are gone, and you have come back to me accomplished and princelyi do not jest; and yetyeti wish you were the messala you went away." the fine nostril of the satirist stirred, and he put on a longer drawl as he said, "no, no; not a ganymedean oracle, my judah. a few lessons from my teacher of rhetoric hard by the forumi will give you a letter to him when you become wise enough to accept a suggestion which i am reminded to make youa little practice of the art of mystery, and delphi will receive you as apollo himself. at sound of your solemn voice, the pythia will come down to you with her crown. seriously, o my friend, in what am i not the messala i went away? i once heard the greatest logician in the world. his subject was disputation. one saying i remember'understand your antagonist before you answer him.' let me understand you." the lad reddened under the cynical look to which he was subjected; yet he replied, firmly, "you have availed yourself, i see, of your opportunities; from your teachers you have brought away much knowledge and many graces. you talk with the ease of a master; yet your speech carries a sting. my messala, when he went away, had no poison in his nature; not for the world would he have hurt the feelings of a friend." the roman smiled as if complimented, and raised his patrician head a toss higher. "o my solemn judah, we are not at dodona or pytho. drop the oracular, and be plain. wherein have i hurt you?" the other drew a long breath, and said, pulling at the cord about his waist, "in the five years, i, too, have learned somewhat. hillel may not be the equal of the logician you heard, and simeon and shammai are, no doubt, inferior to your master hard by the forum. their learning goes not out into forbidden paths; those who sit at their feet arise enriched simply with knowledge of god, the law, and israel; and the effect is love and reverence for everything that pertains to them. attendance at the great college, and study of what i heard there, have taught me that judea is not as she used to be. i know the space that lies between an independent kingdom and the petty province judea is. i were meaner, viler than a samaritan not to resent the degradation of my country. ishmael is not lawfully high-priest, and he cannot be while the noble hannas lives; yet he is a levite; one of the devoted who for thousands of years have acceptably served the lord god of our faith and worship. his" messala broke in upon him with a biting laugh. "oh, i understand you now. ishmael, you say, is a usurper, yet to believe an idumaean sooner than ishmael is to sting like an adder. by the drunken son of semele, what it is to be a jew! all men and things, even heaven and earth, change; but a jew never. to him there is no backward, no forward; he is what his ancestor was in the beginning. in this sand i draw you a circlethere! now tell me what more a jew's life is? round and round, abraham here, isaac and jacob yonder, god in the middle. and the circleby the master of all thunders! the circle is too large. i draw it again-." he stopped, put his thumb upon the ground, and swept the fingers about it. "see, the thumb-spot is the temple, the finger-lines judea. outside the little space is there nothing of value? the arts! herod was a builder; therefore he is accursed. painting, sculpture! to look upon them is sin. poetry you make fast to your altars. except in the synagogue, who of you attempts eloquence? in war all you conquer in the six days you lose on the seventh. such your life and limit; who shall say no if i laugh at you? satisfied with the worship of such a people, what is your god to our roman jove, who lends us his eagles that we may compass the universe with our arms? hillel, simeon, shammai, abtalionwhat are they to the masters who teach that everything is worth knowing that can be known?" the jew arose, his face much flushed. "no, no; keep your place, my judah, keep your place," messala cried, extending his hand. "you mock me." "listen a little further. directly"the roman smiled derisively"directly jupiter and his whole family, greek and latin, will come to me, as is their habit, and make an end of serious speech. i am mindful of your goodness in walking from the old house of your fathers to welcome me back and renew the love of our childhoodif we can. 'go,' said my teacher, in his last lecture'go, and, to make your lives great, remember mars reigns and eros has found his eyes.' he meant love is nothing, war everything. it is so in rome. marriage is the first step to divorce. virtue is a tradesman's jewel. cleopatra, dying, bequeathed her arts, and is avenged; she has a successor in every roman's house. the world is going the same way; so, as to our future, down eros, up mars! i am to be a soldier; and you, o my judah, i pity you; what can you be?" the jew moved nearer the pool; messala's drawl deepened. "yes, i pity you, my fine judah. from the college to the synagogue; then to the temple; thenoh, a crowning glory!the seat in the sanhedrim. a life without opportunities; the gods help you. but i" judah looked at him in time to see the flush of pride that kindled in his haughty face as he went on. "but iah, the world is not all conquered. the sea has islands unseen. in the north there are nations yet unvisited. the glory of completing alexander's march to the far east remains to some one. see what possibilities lie before a roman." next instant he resumed his drawl. "a campaign into africa; another after the scythian; thena legion! most careers end there; but not mine. iby jupiter! what a conception!i will give up my legion for a prefecture. think of life in rome with moneymoney, wine, women, gamespoets at the banquet, intrigues in the court, dice all the year round. such a rounding of life may bea fat prefecture, and it is mine. o my judah, here is syria! judea is rich; antioch a capital for the gods. i will succeed cyrenius, and youshall share my fortune." the sophists and rhetoricians who thronged the public resorts of rome, almost monopolizing the business of teaching her patrician youth, might have approved these sayings of messala, for they were all in the popular vein; to the young jew, however, they were new, and unlike the solemn style of discourse and conversation to which he was accustomed. he belonged, moreover, to a race whose laws, modes, and habits of thought forbade satire and humour; very naturally, therefore, he listened to his friend with varying feelings; one moment indignant, then uncertain how to take him. the superior airs assumed had been offensive to him in the beginning; soon they became irritating, and at last an acute smart. anger lies close by this point in all of us; and that the satirist evoked in another way. to the jew of the herodian period patriotism was a savage passion scarcely hidden under his common humour, and so related to his history, religion, and god, that it responded instantly to derision of them. wherefore it is not speaking too strongly to say that messala's progress down to the last pause was exquisite torture to his hearer; at that point the latter said, with a forced smile "there are a few, i have heard, who can afford to make a jest of their future; you convince me, o my messala, that i am not one of them." the roman studied him; then replied, "why not the truth in a jest as well as a parable? the great fulvia went fishing the other day; she caught more than all the company besides. they said it was because the barb of her hook was covered with gold." "then you were not merely jesting?" "my judah, i see i did not offer you enough," the roman answered, quickly, his eyes sparkling. "when i am a prefect, with judea to enrich me, iwill make you high-priest." the jew turned off angrily. "do not leave me," said messala. the other stopped irresolute. "gods, judah, how hot the sun shines!" cried the patrician, observing his perplexity. "let us seek a shade." judah answered, coldly "we had better part. i wish i had not come. i sought a friend and find a" "roman," said messala, quickly. the hands of the jew clenched, but controlling himself again, he started off. messala arose, and, taking the mantle from the bench, flung it over his shoulder, and followed after; when he gained his side, he put his hand upon his shoulder and walked with him. "this is the waymy hand thuswe used to walk when we were children. let us keep it as far as the gate." apparently messala was trying to be serious and kind, though he could not rid his countenance of the habitual satirical expression. judah permitted the familiarity. "you are a boy; i am a man; let me talk like one." the complacency of the roman was superb. mentor lecturing the young telemachus could not have been more at ease. "do you believe in the parcae? ah, i forgot, you are a sadducee: the essenes are your sensible people; they believe in the sisters. so do i. how everlastingly the three are in the way of our doing what we please! i sit down scheming. i run paths here and there. perpol! just when i am reaching to take the world in hand. i hear behind me the grinding of scissors. i look, and there she is, the accursed atropos! but, my judah, why did you get mad when i spoke of succeeding old cyrenius? you thought i meant to enrich myself plundering your judea. suppose so; it is what some roman will do. why not i?" judah shortened his step. "there have been strangers in mastery of judea before the roman," he said, with lifted hand. "where are they, messala? she has outlived them all. what has been will be again." messala put on his drawl. "the parcae have believers outside the essenes. welcome judah, welcome to the faith!" "no, messala, count me not with them. my faith rests on the rock which was the foundation of the faith of my fathers back further than abraham; on the covenants of the lord god of israel." "too much passion, my judah. how my master would have been shocked had i been guilty of so much heat in his presence! there were other things i had to tell you, but i fear to now." when they had gone a few yards the roman spoke again. "i think you can hear me now, especially as what i have to say concerns yourself. i would serve you, o handsome as ganymede; i would serve you with real good-will. i love youall i can. i told you i meant to be a soldier. why not you also? why not you step out of the narrow circle which, as i have shown, is all of noble life your laws and customs allow?" judah made no reply. "who are the wise men of our day?" messala continued. "not they who exhaust their years quarrelling about dead things; about baals, joves, and jehovahs; about philosophies and religions. give me one great name, o judah; i care not where you go to find itto rome, egypt, the east, or here in jerusalempluto take me if it belong not to a man who wrought his fame out of the material furnished him by the present; holding nothing sacred that did not contribute to the end, scorning nothing that did! how was it with herod? how with the maccabees? how with the first and second caesars? imitate them. begin now. at hand seerome, as ready to help you as she was the idumaean antipater." the jewish lad trembled with rage; and, as the garden gate was dose by, he quickened his steps, eager to escape. "o rome, rome!" he muttered. "be wise," continued messala. "give up the follies of moses and the traditions; see the situation as it is. dare look the parcae in the face, and they will tell you, rome is the world. ask them of judea, and they will answer, she is what rome wills." they were now at the gate. judah stopped, and took the hand gently from his shoulder, and confronted messala, tears trembling in his eyes. "i understand you, because you are a roman; you cannot understand mei am an israelite. you have given me suffering to-day by convincing me that we can never be the friends we have beennever! here we part. the peace of the god of my fathers abide with you!" messala offered him his hand; the jew walked on through the gateway. when he was gone, the roman was silent awhile; then he, too, passed through, saying to himself, with a toss of the head "be it so. eros is dead, mars reigns!" chapter iii. a judean home. from the entrance to the holy city, equivalent to what is now called st. stephen's gate, a street extended westwardly, on a line parallel with the northern front of the tower of antonia, though a square from that famous castle. keeping the course as far as the tyropoeon valley, which it followed a little way south, it turned and again ran west until a short distance beyond what tradition tells us was the judgment gate, from whence it broke abruptly south. the traveller or the student familiar with the sacred locality will recognize the thoroughfare described as part of the via dolorosawith christians of more interest, though of a melancholy kind, than any street in the world. as the purpose in view does not at present require dealing with the whole street, it will be sufficient to point out a house standing in the angle last mentioned as marking the change of direction south, and which, as an important centre of interest, needs somewhat particular description. the building fronted north and west, probably four hundred feet each way, and, like most pretentious eastern structures, was two stories in height, and perfectly quadrangular. the street on the west side was about twelve feet wide, that on the north not more than ten; so that one walking close to the walls and looking up at them, would have been struck by the rude, unfinished, uninviting, but strong and imposing appearance they presented; for they were of stone laid in large blocks, undressedon the outer side, in fact, just as they were taken from the quarry. a critic of this age would have pronounced the house fortelesque in style, except for the windows, with which it was unusually garnished, and the ornate finish of the doorways or gates. the western windows were four in number, the northern only two, all set on the line of the second storey in such manner as to overhang the thoroughfares below. the gates were the only breaks of wall externally visible in the first storey; and, besides being so thickly riven with iron bolts as to suggest resistance to battering-rams, they were protected by cornices of marble, handsomely executed, and of such bold projection as to assure visitors well informed of the people that the rich man who resided there was a sadducee in politics and creed. not long after the young jew parted from the roman at the palace up on the market-place, he stopped before the western gate of the house described, and knocked. the wicket (a door hung in one of the valves of the gate) was opened to admit him. he stepped in hastily, and failed to. acknowledge the low salaam of the porter. to get an idea of the interior arrangement of the structure as well as to see what more befell the youth, we will follow him. the passage into which he was admitted appeared not unlike a narrow tunnel with panelled walls and pitted ceiling. there were benches of stone on both sides, stained and polished by long use. twelve or fifteen steps carried him into a court-yard, oblong north and south, and in every quarter, except the east, bounded by what seemed the fronts of two-storey houses; of which the lower floor was divided into lewens, while the upper was terraced and defended by strong balustrading. the servants coming and going along the terraces; the noise of mill-stones grinding; the garments fluttering from ropes stretched from point to point; the chickens and pigeons in full enjoyment of the place; the goats, cows, donkeys, and horses stabled in the lewens; a massive trough of water, apparently for the common use, declared this court appurtenant to the domestic management of the owner. eastwardly there was a division wall broken by another passage-way in all respects like the first one. clearing the second passage, the young man entered a second court, spacious, square, and set with shrubbery and vines, kept fresh and beautiful by water from a basin erected near a porch on the north side. the lewens here were high, airy, and shaded by curtains striped alternate white and red. the arches of the lewens rested on clustered columns. a flight of steps on the south ascended to the terraces of the upper storey, over which great awnings were stretched as a defense against the sun. another stairway reached from the terraces to the roof, the edge of which, all around the square, was defined by a sculptured cornice, and a parapet of burned-clay tiling, sexangular and bright-red. in this quarter, moreover, there was everywhere observable a scrupulous neatness, which, allowing no dust in the angles, not even a yellow leaf upon a shrub, contributed quite as much as anything else to the delightful general effect; insomuch that a visitor, breathing the sweet air, knew, in advance of introduction, the refinement of the family he was about calling upon. a few steps within the second court, the lad turned to the right, and, choosing a walk through the shrubbery, part of which was in flower, passed to the stairway, and ascended to the terracea broad pavement of white and brown flags closely laid, and much worn. making way under the awning to a doorway on the north side, he entered an apartment which the dropping of the screen behind him returned to darkness. nevertheless, he proceeded, moving over a tiled floor to a divan, upon which he flung himself, face downwards, and lay at rest, his forehead upon his crossed arms. about nightfall a woman came to the door and called; he answered and she went in. "supper is over, and it is night. is not my son hungry?" she asked. "no," he replied. "are you sick?" "i am sleepy." "your mother has asked for you." "where is she?" "in the summer-house on the roof." he stirred himself, and sat up. "very well. bring me something to eat." "what do you want?" "what you please, amrah. i am not sick, but indifferent. life does not seem as pleasant as it did this morning. a new ailment, o my amrah; and you who know me so well, who never failed me, may think of the things now that answer for food and medicine. bring me what you choose." amrah's questions, and the voice in which she put themlow, sympathetic, and solicitouswere significant of an endeared relation between the two. she laid her hand upon his forehead; then, as satisfied, went out, saying, "i will see." after a while she returned, bearing on a wooden platter a bowl of milk, some thin cakes of white bread broken, a delicate paste of brayed wheat, a bird broiled, and honey and salt. on one end of the platter there was a silver goblet full of wine, on the other a brazen hand-lamp lighted. the room was then revealed: its walls smoothly plastered; the ceiling broken by great oaken rafters, brown with rain stains and time; the floor of small diamond-shaped white and blue tiles, very firm and enduring; a few stools with legs carved in imitation of the legs of lions; a divan raised a little above the floor, trimmed with blue cloth, and partially covered by an immense striped woollen blanket or shawlin brief, a hebrew bed-room. the same light also gave the woman to view. drawing a stool to the divan, she placed the platter upon it, then knelt close by, ready to serve him. her face was that of a woman of fifty, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and at the moment softened by a look of tenderness almost maternal. a white turban covered her head, leaving the lobes of the ear exposed, and in them the sign that settled her conditionan orifice bored by a thick awl. she was a slave of egyptian origin, to whom not even the sacred fiftieth year could have brought freedom; nor would she have accepted it, for the boy she was attending was her life. she had nursed him through babyhood, tended him as a child, and could not break the service. to her love he could never be a man. he spoke but once during the meal. "you remember, o my amrah," he said, "the messala who used to visit me here days at a time." "i remember him." "he went to rome some years ago, and is now back. i called upon him to-day." a shudder of disgust seized the lad. "i knew something had happened," she said, deeply interested. "i never liked the messala. tell me all." but he fell into musing, and to her repeated inquiries only said, "he is much changed, and i shall have nothing more to do with him." when amrah took the platter away he also went out, and up from the terrace to the roof. the reader is presumed to know somewhat of the uses of the house-top in the east. in the matter of customs, climate is a law-giver everywhere. the syrian summer day drives the seeker of comfort into the darkened lewen; night, however, calls him forth early, and the shadows deepening over the mountain-sides seem veils dimly covering circean singers; but they are far off, while the roof is close by, and raised above the level of the shimmering plain enough for the visitation of cool airs, and sufficiently above the trees to allure the stars down closer, down at least into brighter shining. so the roof became a resortbecame playground, sleeping-chamber, boudoir, rendezvous for the family, place of music, dance, conversation, reverie, and prayer. the motive that prompts the decoration, at whatever cost, of interiors in colder climes suggested to the oriental the embellishment of his house-top. the parapet ordered by moses became a potter's triumph; above that, later, arose towers plain and fantastic; still later, kings and princes crowned their roofs with summer-houses of marble and gold. when the babylonian hung gardens in the air, extravagance could push the idea no further. the lad whom we are following walked slowly across the house-top to a tower built over the north-west corner of the palace. had he been a stranger he might have bestowed a glance upon the structure as he drew nigh it, and seen all the dimness permitteda darkened mass, low, latticed, pillared, and domed. he entered, passing under a half-raised curtain. the interior was all darkness, except that on four sides there were arched openings like doorways, through which the sky, lighted with stars, was visible. in one of the openings, reclining against a cushion from a divan, he saw the figure of a woman, indistinct even in white floating drapery. at the sound of his steps upon the floor, the fan in her hand stopped, glistening where the starlight struck the jewels with which it was sprinkled, and she sat up, and called his name. "judah, my son!" "it is i, mother," he answered, quickening his approach. going to her, he knelt, and she put her arms around him, and with kisses pressed him to her bosom. chapter iv. the strange things ben-hur wants to know. the mother resumed her easy position against the cushion, while the son took place on the divan, his head in her lap. both of them, looking out of the opening, could see a stretch of lower house-tops in the vicinity, a bank of blue-blackness over in the west which they knew to be mountains, and the sky, its shadowy depths brilliant with stars. the city was still. only the winds stirred. "amrah tells me something has happened to you," she said, caressing his cheek. "when my judah was a child, i allowed small things to trouble him, but he is now a man. he must not forget"her voice became very soft"that one day he is to be my hero." she spoke in the language almost lost in the land, but which a fewand they were always as rich in blood as in possessionscherished in its purity, that they might be more certainly distinguished from gentile peoplesthe language in which the loved rebekah and rachel sang to benjamin. the words appeared to set him thinking anew; after a while, however, he caught the hand with which she fanned him, and said, "to-day, o my mother, i have been made to think of many things that never had place in my mind before. tell me, first, what am i to be?" "have i not told you? you are to be my hero." he could not see her face, yet he knew she was in play. he became more serious. "you are very good, very kind, o my mother. no one will ever love me as you do." he kissed the hand over and over again. "i think i understand why you would have me put off the question," he continued. "thus far my life has belonged to you. how gentle, how sweet your control has been! i wish it could last forever. but that may not be. it is the lord's will that i shall one day become owner of myselfa day of separation, and therefore a dreadful day to you. let us be brave and serious. i will be your hero, but you must put me in the way. you know the lawevery son of israel must have some occupation. i am not exempt, and ask now, shall i tend the herds? or till the soil? or drive the saw? or be a clerk or lawyer? what shall i be? dear, good mother, help me to answer." "gamaliel has been lecturing to-day," she said, thoughtfully. "if so, i did not hear him." "then you have been walking with simeon, who, they tell me, inherits the genius of his family." "no, i have not seen him. i have been up on the market-place, not to the temple. i visited the young messala." a certain change in his voice attracted the mother's attention. a presentiment quickened the beating of her heart; the fan became motionless again. "the messala!" she said. "what could he say to so trouble you?" "he is very much changed." "you mean he has come back a roman." "yes." "roman!" she continued, half to herself. "to all the world the word means master. how long has he been away?" "five years." she raised her head, and looked off into the night. "the airs of the via sacra are well enough in the streets of the egyptian and in babylon; but in jerusalemour jerusalemthe covenant abides." and, full of the thought, she settled back into her easy place. he was first to speak. "what messala said, my mother, was sharp enough in itself but, taken with the manner, some of the sayings were intolerable." "i think i understand you. rome, her poets, orators, senators, courtiers, are mad with affectation of what they call satire." "i suppose all great peoples are proud," he went on, scarcely noticing the interruption; "but the pride of that people is unlike all others; in these latter days it is so grown the gods barely escape it." "the gods escape!" said the mother, quickly. "more than one roman has accepted worship as his divine right." "well, messala always had his share of the disagreeable quality. when he was a child i have seen him mock strangers whom even herod condescended to receive with honours; yet he always spared judea. for the first time, in conversation with me to-day, he trifled with our customs and god. as you would have had me to do, i parted with him finally. and now, o my dear mother, i would know with more certainty if there be just ground for the roman's contempt. in what am i his inferior? is ours a lower order of people? why should i, even in caesar's presence, feel the shrinking of a slave? tell me especially why, if i have the soul, and so choose, i may not hunt the honours of the world in all its fields? why may not i take sword and indulge the passion of war! as a poet, why may not i sing of all themes? i can be a worker in metals, a keeper of flocks, a merchant, why not an artist like the greek? tell me, o my motherand this is the sum of my troublewhy may not a son of israel do all a roman may?" the reader will refer these questions back to the conversation in the market-place; the mother, listening with all her faculties awake, from something which would have been lost upon one less interested in himfrom the connections of the subject, the pointing of the questions, possibly his accent and tonewas not less swift in making the same reference. she sat up, and in a voice quick and sharp as his own, replied, "i see, i see! from association messala, in boyhood, was almost a jew; had he remained here he might have become a proselyte, so much do we all borrow from the influences that ripen our lives; but the years in rome have been too much for him. i do not wonder at the change; yet"her voice fell"he might have dealt tenderly at least with you. it is a hard, cruel nature which in youth can forget its first loves." her hand dropped lightly upon his forehead, and the fingers caught in his hair and lingered there lovingly, while her eyes sought the highest stars in view. her pride responded to his, not merely in echo, but in the unison of perfect sympathy. she would answer him; at the same time, not for the world would she have had the answer unsatisfactory; an admission of inferiority might weaken his spirit for life. she faltered with misgivings of her own powers. "what you propose, o my judah, is not a subject for treatment by a woman. let me put its consideration off till to-morrow, and i will have the wise simeon" "do not send me to the rector," he said, abruptly. "i will have him come to us." "no, i seek more than information; while he might give me that better than you, o my mother, you can do better by giving me what he cannotthe resolution which is the soul of a man's soul." she swept the heavens with a rapid glance, trying to compass all the meaning of his questions. "while craving justice for ourselves, it is never wise to be unjust to others. to deny valour in the enemy we have conquered is to underrate our victory; and if the enemy be strong enough to hold us at bay, much more to conquer us"she hesitated"self-respect bids us seek some other explanation of our misfortunes than accusing him of qualities inferior to our own." thus speaking to herself rather than to him, she began "take heart, o my son. the messala is nobly descended; his family has been illustrious through many generations. in the days of republican romehow far back i cannot tellthey were famous, some as soldiers, some as civilians. i can recall but one consul of the name; their rank was senatorial, and their patronage always sought because they were always rich. yet if to-day your friend boasted of his ancestry, you might have shamed him by recounting yours. if he referred to the ages through which the line is traceable, or to deeds, rank, or wealthsuch allusions, except when great occasion demands them, are tokens of small mindsif he mentioned them in proof of his superiority, then without dread, and standing on each particular, you might have challenged him to a comparison of records." taking a moment's thought, the mother proceeded: "one of the ideas of fast hold now is that time has much to do with the nobility of races and families. a roman boasting his superiority on that account over a son of israel will always fail when put to the proof. the founding of rome was his beginning; the very best of them cannot trace their descent beyond that period: few of them pretend to do so; and of such as do, i say not one could make good his claim except by resort to tradition. messala certainly could not. let us look now to ourselves. could we better?" a little more light would have enabled him to see the pride that diffused itself over her face. "let us imagine the roman putting us to the challenge. i would answer him, neither doubting nor boastful." her voice faltered; a tender thought changed the form of the argument. "your father, o, my judah, is at rest with his fathers; yet i remember, as though it were this evening, the day he and i, with many rejoicing friends, went up into the temple to present you to the lord. we sacrificed the doves, and to the priest i gave your name, which he wrote in my presence'judah, son of ithamar, of the house of hur.' the name was then carried away and written in a book of the division of records devoted to the saintly family. "i cannot tell you when the custom of registration in this mode began. we know it prevailed before the flight from egypt. i have heard hillel say abraham caused the record to be first opened with his own name, and the names of his sons, moved by the promises of the lord which separated him and them from all other races, and made them the highest and noblest, the very chosen of the earth. the covenant with jacob was of like effect. 'in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed'so said the angel to abraham in the place of jehovah-jireh. 'and the land whereon thou liest, to thee will i give it, and to thy seed'so the lord himself said to jacob asleep at bethel on the way to haran. afterwards the wise men looked forward to a just division of the land of promise; and, that it might be known in the day of partition who were entitled to portions' the book of generations was begun. but not for that alone. the promise of a blessing to all the earth through the patriarch reached far into the future. one name was mentioned in connection with the blessingthe benefactor might be the humblest of the chosen family, for the lord our god knows no distinction of rank or riches. so, to make the performance clear to men of the generation who were to witness it, and that they might give the glory to whom it belonged, the record was required to be kept with absolute certainty. has it been so kept?" the fan played to and fro, until, becoming impatient, he repeated the question, "is the record absolutely true?" "hillel said it was, and of all who have lived no one was so well-informed upon the subject. our people have at times been heedless of some parts of the law, but never of this part. the good rector himself has followed the books of generations through three periodsfrom the promises to the opening of the temple; thence to the captivity; thence, again, to the present. once only were the records disturbed, and that was at the end of the second period; but when the nation returned from the long exile, as a first duty to god, zerubbabel restored the books, enabling us once more to carry the lines of jewish descent back unbroken fully two thousand years. and now" she paused as if to allow the hearer to measure the time comprehended in the statement. "and now," she continued, "what becomes of the roman boast of blood enriched by ages? by that test the sons of israel watching the herds on old rephaim yonder are nobler than the noblest of the marcii." "and i, motherby the books, who am i?" "what i have said thus far, my son, had reference to your question. i will answer you. if messala were here he might say, as others have said, that the exact trace of your lineage stopped when the assyrian took jerusalem, and razed the temple, with alt its precious stores; but you might plead the pious action of zerubbabel, and retort that all verity in roman genealogy ended when the barbarians from the west took rome, and camped six months upon her desolated site. did the government keep family histories? if so, what became of them in those dreadful days? no, no; there is verity in our books of generations; and following them back to the captivity, back to the foundation of the first temple, back to the march from egypt, we have absolute assurance that you are lineally sprung from hur, the associate of joshua. in the matter of descent sanctified by time, is not the honour perfect? do you care to pursue further? if so, take the torah, and search the book of numbers, and of the seventy-two generations after adam, you can find the very progenitor of your house." there was silence for a time in the chamber on the roof. "i thank you, o my mother," judah next said, clasping both her hands in his; "i thank you with all my heart. i was right in not having the good rector called in; he could not have satisfied me more than you have. yet to make a family truly noble, is time alone sufficient?" "ah, you forget, you forget; our claim rests not merely upon time; the lord's preference is our especial glory." "you are speaking of the race, and i, mother, of the familyour family. in the years since father abraham, what have they achieved? what have they done? what great things to lift them above the level of their fellows?" she hesitated, thinking she might all this time have mistaken his object. the information he sought might have been for more than satisfaction of wounded vanity. youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing, the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others. she trembled under a perception that this might be the supreme moment come to him; that as children at birth reach out their untried hands grasping for shadows, and crying the while, so his spirit might, in temporary blindness, be struggling to take hold of its impalpable future. they to whom a boy comes asking, who am i, and what am i to be? have need of ever so much care. each word in answer may prove to the after-life what each finger-touch of the artist is to the clay he is modelling. "i have a feeling, o my judah," she said, patting his cheek with the hand he had been caressing"i have the feeling that all i have said has been in strife with an antagonist more real than imaginary. if messala is the enemy, do not leave me to fight him in the dark. tell me all he said." chapter v. rome and israela comparison. the young israelite proceeded then, and rehearsed his conversation with messala, dwelling with particularity upon the latter's speeches in contempt of the jews, their customs, and much pent round of life. afraid to speak the while, the mother listened, discerning the matter plainly. judah had gone to the palace on the market-place, allured by love of a playmate whom he thought to find exactly as he had been at the parting years before; a man met him, and, in place of laughter and references to the sports of the past, the man had been full of the future, and talked of glory to be won, and of riches and power. unconscious of the effect, the visitor had come away hurt in pride, yet touched with a natural ambition: but she, the jealous mother, saw it, and, not knowing the turn the aspiration might take, became at once jewish in her fear. what if it lured him away from the patriarchal faith? in her view that consequence was more dreadful than any or all others. she could discover but one way to avert it, and she set about the task, her native power reinforced by love to such degree that her speech took a masculine strength and at times a poet's fervour. "there never has been a people," she began, "who did not think themselves at least equal to any other; never a great nation, my son, that did not believe itself the very superior. when the roman looks down upon israel and laughs, he merely repeats the folly of the egyptian, the assyrian, and the macedonian; and as the laugh is against god, the result will be the same." her voice became firmer. "there is no law by which to determine the superiority of nations; hence the vanity of the claim and the idleness of disputes about it. a people risen, run their race, and die either of themselves or at the hands of another, who, succeeding to their power, take possession of their place, and upon their monuments write new names; such is history. if i were called upon to symbolize god and man in the simplest form, i would draw a straight line and a circle; and of the line i would say, 'this is god, for he alone moves forever straightforward,' and of the circle, 'this is mansuch is his progress.' i do not mean that there is no difference between the careers of nations; no two are alike. the difference, however, is not, as some say, in the extent of the circle they describe or the space of earth they cover, but in the sphere of their movement, the highest being nearest god. "to stop here, my son, would be to leave the subject where we began. let us go on. there are signs by which to measure the height of the circle each nation runs while in its course. by them let us compare the hebrew and the roman. "the simplest of all the signs is the daily life of the people. of this i will only say, israel has at times forgotten god, while the roman never knew him; consequently comparison is not possible. "your friendor your former friendcharged, if i understood you rightly, that we have had no poets, artists, or warriors; by which he meant, i suppose, to deny that we have had great men, the next most certain of the signs. a just consideration of this charge requires a definition at the commencement. a great man, o my boy, is one whose life proves him to have been recognized, if not called, by god. a persian was used to punish our recreant fathers, and he carried them into captivity; another persian was selected to restore their children to the holy land; greater than either of them, however, was the macedonian through whom the desolation of judea and the temple was avenged. the special distinction of the men was that they were chosen by the lord, each for a divine purpose; and that they were gentiles does not lessen their glory. do not lost sight of this definition while i proceed. "there is an idea that war is the most noble occupation of men, and that the most exalted greatness is the growth of battle-fields. because the world has adopted the idea, be not you deceived. that we must worship something is a law which will continue as long as there is anything we cannot understand. the prayer of the barbarian is a wail of fear addressed to strength, the only divine quality he can clearly conceive; hence his faith in heroes. what is jove but a roman hero? the greeks have their great glory because they were the first to set mind above strength. in athens the orator and philosopher were more revered than the warrior. the charioteer and the swiftest runner are still idols of the arena; yet the immortelles are reserved for the sweetest singer. the birthplace of one poet was contested by seven cities. but was the hellene the first to deny the old barbaric faith? no. my son, that glory is ours; against brutalism our fathers erected god; in our worship, the wail of fear gave place to the hosanna and the psalm. so the hebrew and the greek would have carried all humanity forward and upward. but, alas! the government of the world presumes war as an eternal condition; wherefore, over mind and above god, the roman has enthroned his caesar, the absorbent of all attainable power, the prohibition of any other greatness. "the sway of the greek was a flowering time for genius. in return for the liberty it then enjoyed, what a company of thinkers the mind led forth? there was a glory for every excellence, and a perfection so absolute that in everything but war even the roman has stooped to imitation. a greek is now the model of the orators in the forum; listen, and in every roman song you will hear the rhythm of the greek; if a roman opens his mouth speaking wisely of moralities, or abstractions, or of the mysteries of nature, he is either a plagiarist or the disciple of some school which had a greek for its founder. in nothing but war, i say again, has rome a claim to originality. her games and spectacles are greek inventions, dashed with blood to gratify the ferocity of her rabble; her religion, if such it may be called, is made up of contributions from the faiths of all other peoples; her most venerated gods are from olympuseven her mars, and, for that matter, the jove she much magnifies. so it happens, o my son, that of the whole world our israel alone can dispute the superiority of the greek, and with him contest the palm of original genius. "to the excellences of other peoples the egotism of a roman is a blindfold, impenetrable as his breastplate. oh, the ruthless robbers! under their trampling the earth trembles like a floor beaten with flails. along with the rest we are fallenalas, that i should say it to you, my son! they have our highest places, and the holiest, and the end no man can tell; but this i knowthey may reduce judea as an almond broken with hammers, and devour jerusalem, which is the oil and sweetness thereof; yet the glory of the men of israel will remain a light in the heavens overhead out of reach: for their history is the history of god, who wrote with their hands, spake with their tongues, and was himself in all the good they did, even the least; who dwelt with them, a lawgiver on sinai, a guide in the wilderness, in war a captain, in government a king; who once and again pushed back the curtains of the pavilion which is his resting-place, intolerably bright, and, as a man speaking to men, showed them the right, and the way to happiness, and how they should live, and made them promises binding the strength of his almightiness with covenants sworn to everlastingly. o my son, could it be that they with whom jehovah thus dwelt, an awful familiar, derived nothing from him?that in their lives and deeds the common human qualities should not in some degree have been mixed and coloured with the divine?that their genius should not have in it, even after the lapse of ages, some little of heaven?" for a time the rustling of the fan was all the sound heard in the chamber. "in the sense which limits art to sculpture and painting, it is true," she next said, "israel has had no artists." the admission was made regretfully, for it must be remembered she was a sadducee, whose faith, unlike that of the pharisees, permitted a love of the beautiful in every form, and without reference to its origin. "still, he who would do justice," she proceeded, "will not forget that the cunning of our hands was bound by the prohibition, 'thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything;' which the sopherim wickedly extended beyond its purpose and time. nor should it be forgotten that long before daedalus appeared in attica, and with his wooden statues so transformed sculpture as to make possible the schools of corinth and aegina, and their ultimate triumphs, the poecile and capitoliumlong before the age of daedalus, i say, two israelites, bezaleel and aholiab, the master-builders of the first tabernacle, said to have been skilled 'in all manner of workmanship,' wrought the cherubim of the mercy-seat above the ark. of gold beaten, not chiselled, were they; and they were statues in form both human and divine. 'and they shall stretch forth their wings on high,.... and their faces shall look one to another.' who will say they were not beautiful? or that they were not the first statues?" "oh, i see now why the greek outstripped us," said judah, intensely interested. "and the ark; accursed be the babylonians who destroyed it." "nay, judah, be of faith. it was not destroyed, only lost, hidden away too safely in some cavern of the mountains. one dayhellel and shammai both say soone day, in the lord's good time, it will be found and brought forth, and israel dance before it, singing as of old. and they who look upon the faces of the cherubim then, though they have seen the face of the ivory minerva, will be ready to kiss the hand of the jew from love of his genius, asleep through all the thousands of years." the mother, in her eagerness, had risen into something like the rapidity and vehemence of a speech-maker; but now, to recover herself, or to pluck up the thread of her thought, she rested awhile. "you are so good, my mother," he said, in a grateful way. "and i will never be done saying so. shammai could not have talked better, nor hillel. i am a true son of israel again." "flatterer!" she said. "you do not know that i am but repeating what i heard hillel say in an argument he had one day in my presence with a sophist from rome." "well, the hearty words are yours." directly all her earnestness returned. "where was i? oh yes, i was claiming for our hebrew fathers the first statues. the trick of the sculptor, judah, is not all there is of art, any more than art is all there is of greatness. i always think of great men marching down the centuries in groups and goodly companies, separable according to nationalities; here the indian, there the egyptian, yonder the assyrian; above them the music of trumpets and the beauty of banners; and on their right hand and left, as reverent spectators, the generations from the beginning numberless. as they go, i think of the greek saying, 'lo! the hellene leads the way.' then the roman replies, 'silence! what was your place is ours now; we have left you behind as dust trodden on.' and all the time, from the far front back over the line of march, as well as forward into the farthest future, streams a light of which the wranglers know nothing, except that it is forever leading them onthe light of revelation! who are they that carry it? ah, the old judean blood! how it leaps at the thought! by the light we know them. thrice blessed, o our fathers, servants of god, keepers of the covenants! ye are the leaders of men, the living and the dead. the front is thine; and though every roman were a caesar, ye shall not lose it!" judah was deeply stirred. "do not stop, i pray you," he cried. "you give me to hear the sound of timbrels. i wait for miriam and the women who went after her dancing and singing." she caught his feeling, and, with ready wit, wove it into her speech. "very well, my son. if you can hear the timbrel of the prophetess, you can do what i was about to ask you; you can use your fancy, and stand with me, as if by the wayside, while the chosen of israel pass us at the head of the procession. now they comethe patriarchs first; next the fathers of the tribes. i almost hear the bells of their camels and the lowing of their herds. who is he that walks alone between the companies? an old man, yet his eye is not dim, nor his natural force abated. he knew the lord face to face! warrior, poet, orator, lawgiver, prophet, his greatness is as the sun at morning, its flood of splendour quenching all other lights, even that of the first and noblest of the caesars. after him the judges. and then the kingsthe son of jesse, a hero in war, and a singer of songs eternal as that of the sea; and his son, who, passing all other kings in riches and wisdom, and while making the desert habitable, and in its waste places planting cities, forgot not jerusalem which the lord had chosen for his seat on earth. bend lower, my son! these that come next are the first of their kind, and the last. their faces are raised, as if they heard a voice in the sky and were listening. their lives were full of sorrows. their garments smell of tombs and caverns. hearken to a woman among them!'sing ye to the lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously!' nay, put your forehead in the dust before them! they were tongues of god, his servants, who looked through heaven, and, seeing all the future, wrote what they saw, and left the writing to be proven by time. kings turned pale as they approached them and nations trembled at the sound of their voices. the clements waited upon them. in their hands they carried every bounty and every plague. see the tishbite and his servant elisha! see the sad son of hilkiah, and him, the seer of visions, by the river of chebar! and of the three children of judah who refused the image of the babylonian, lo! that one who, in the feast to the thousand lords, so confounded the astrologers. and yondero my son, kiss the dust again!yonder the gentle son of amoz, from whom the world has its promise of the messiah to come!" in this passage the fan had been kept in rapid play; it stopped now, and her voice sank low. "you are tired," she said. "no," he replied, "i was listening to a new song of israel." the mother was still intent upon her purpose, and passed the pleasant speech. "in such light as i could, my judah, i have set our great men before youpatriarchs, legislators, warriors, singers, prophets. turn we to the best of rome. against moses place caesar, and tarquin against david; sylla against either of the maccabees; the best of the consuls against the judges; augustus against solomon, and you are done: comparison ends there. but think then of the prophetsgreatest of the great." she laughed scornfully. "pardon me. i was thinking of the soothsayer who warned caius julius against the ides of march, and fancied him looking for the omens of evil which his master despised in the entrails of a chicken. from that picture turn to elijah sitting on the hill-top on the way to samaria, amid the smoking bodies of the captains and their fifties, warning the son of ahab of the wrath of our god. finally, o my judahif such speech be reverenthow shall we judge jehovah and jupiter unless it be by what their servants have done in their names? and as for what you shall do" she spoke the latter words slowly, and with a tremulous utterance. "as for what you shall do, my boyserve the lord, the lord god of israel, not rome. for a child of abraham there is no glory except in the lord's ways, and in them there is much glory." "i may be a soldier then?" judah asked. "why not? did not moses call god a man of war?" there was then a long silence in the summer chamber. "you have my permission," she said, finally; "if only you serve the lord instead of caesar." he was content with the condition, and by-and-by fell asleep. she arose then, and put the cushion under his head, and, throwing a shawl over him and kissing him tenderly, went away. chapter vi. the accident to gratus. the good man, like the bad, must die; but, remembering the lesson of our faith, we say of him and the event, "no matter, he will open his eyes in heaven." nearest this in life is the waking from healthful sleep to a quick consciousness of happy sights and sounds. when judah awoke, the sun was up over the mountains; the pigeons were abroad in flocks, filling the air with the gleams of their white wings; and off south-east he beheld the temple, an apparition of gold in the blue of the sky. these, however, were familiar objects, and they received but a glance; upon the edge of the divan, close by him, a girl scarcely fifteen sat singing to the accompaniment of a nebel, which she rested upon her knee, and touched gracefully. to her he turned listening; and this was what she sang the song "wake not, but hear me, love! adrift, adrift on slumber's sea, thy spirit call to list to me. wake not, but hear me, love! a gift from sleep, the restful king, all happy, happy dreams i bring. wake not, but hear me, love! of all the world of dreams 'tis thine this once to choose the most divine. so choose, and sleep, my love! but ne'er again in choice be free, unless, unlessyou dream of me." she put the instrument down, and, resting her hands in her lap, waited for him to speak. and as it has become necessary to tell somewhat of her, we will avail ourselves of the chance, and add such particulars of the family into whose privacy we are brought as the reader may wish to know. the favours of herod had left surviving him many persons of vast estate. where this fortune was joined to undoubted lineal descent from some famous son of one of the tribes, especially judah, the happy individual was accounted a prince of jerusalema distinction which sufficed to bring him the homage of his less favoured countrymen, and the respect, if nothing more, of the gentiles with whom business and social circumstance brought him into dealing. of this class none had won in private or public life a higher regard than the father of the lad whom we have been following. with a remembrance of his nationality which never failed him, he had yet been true to the king, and served him faithfully at home and abroad. some offices had taken him to rome, where his conduct attracted the notice of augustus, who strove without reserve to engage his friendship. in his house, accordingly, were many presents, such as had gratified the vanity of kingspurple togas, ivory chairs, golden pateraechiefly valuable on account of the imperial hand which had honourably conferred them. such a man could not fail to be rich; yet his wealth was not altogether the largess of royal patrons. he had welcomed the law that bound him to some pursuit; and, instead of one, he entered into many. of the herdsmen watching flocks on the plains and hill-sides, far as old lebanon, numbers reported to him as their employer; in the cities by the sea, and in those inland, he founded houses of traffic; his ships brought him silver from spain, whose mines were then the richest known; while his caravans came twice a year from the east, laden with silks and spices. in faith he was a hebrew, observant of the law and every essential rite; his place in the synagogue and temple knew him well; he was thoroughly learned in the scriptures; he delighted in the society of the college-masters, and carried his reverence for hillel almost to the point of worship. yet he was in no sense a separatist; his hospitality took in strangers from every land; the carping pharisees even accused him of having more than once entertained samaritans at his table. had he been a gentile, and lived, the world might have heard of him as the rival of herodes atticus: as it was, he perished at sea some ten years before this second period of our story, in the prime of life, and lamented everywhere in judea. we are already acquainted with two members of his familyhis widow and son; the only other was a daughtershe whom we have seen singing to her brother. tirzah was her name, and as the two looked at each other, their resemblance was plain. her features had the regularity of his, and were of the same jewish type; they had also the charm of childish innocency of expression. home-life and its trustful love permitted the negligent attire in which she appeared. a chemise buttoned upon the right shoulder, and passing loosely over the breast and back and under the left arm, but half concealed her person above the waist, while it left the arms entirely nude. a girdle caught the folds of the garment, marking the commencement of the skirt. the coiffure was very simple and becominga silken cap, tyrian-dyed; and over that a striped scarf of the same material, beautifully embroidered, and wound about in thin folds so as to show the shape of the head without enlarging it; the whole finished by a tassel dropping from the crown point of the cap. she had rings, ear and finger; anklets and bracelets, all of gold; and around her neck there was a collar of gold, curiously garnished with a network of delicate chains, to which were pendants of pearl. the edges of her eyelids were painted, and the tips of her fingers stained. her hair fell in two long plaits down her back. a curled lock rested upon each cheek in front of the ear. altogether it would have been impossible to deny her grace, refinement, and beauty. "very pretty, my tirzah, very pretty!" he said with animation. "the song?" she asked. "yesand the singer, too. it has the conceit of a greek. where did you get it?" "you remember the greek who sang in the theatre last month? they said he used to be a singer at the court for herod and his sister salome. he came out just after an exhibition of wrestlers, when the house was full of noise. at his first note everything became so quiet that i heard every word. i got the song from him." "but he sang in greek." "and i in hebrew." "ah, yes. i am proud of my little sister. have you another as good?" "very many. but let them go now. amrah sent me to tell you she will bring you your breakfast, and that you need not come down. she should be here by this time. she thinks you sickthat a dreadful accident happened you yesterday. what was it? tell me, and i will help amrah doctor you. she knows the cures of the egyptians, who were always a stupid set; but i have a great many recipes of the arabs who" "are even more stupid than the egyptians," he said, shaking his head. "do you think so? very well, then," she replied, almost without pause, and putting her hands to her left ear. "we will have nothing to do with any of them. i have here what is much surer and betterthe amulet which was given to some of our peoplei cannot tell when, it was so far backby a persian magician. see, the inscription is almost worn out." she offered him the ear-ring, which he took, looked at, and handed back, laughing. "if i were dying, tirzah, i could not use the charm. it is a relic of idolatry, forbidden every believing son and daughter of abraham. take it, but do not wear it any more." "forbidden! not so," she said. "our father's mother wore it i do not know how many sabbaths in her life. it has cured i do not know how many peoplemore than three anyhow. it is, approvedlook, here is the mark of the rabbis." "i have no faith in amulets." she raised her eyes to his in astonishment. "what would amrah say?" "amrah's father and mother tended sakiyeh for a garden on the nile." "but gamaliel!" "he says they are godless inventions of unbelievers and shechemites." tirzah looked at the ring doubtfully. "what shall i do with it?" "wear it, my little sister. it becomes youit helps make you beautiful, though i think you that without help." satisfied, she returned the amulet to her ear just as amrah entered the summer chamber, bearing a platter, with wash-bowl, water, and napkins. not being a pharisee, the ablution was short and simple with judah. the servant then went out, leaving tirzah to dress his hair. when a lock was disposed to her satisfaction, she would unloose the small metallic mirror which, as was the fashion among her fair country-women, she wore at her girdle, and gave it to him, that he might see the triumph, and how handsome it made him. meanwhile they kept up their conversation. "what do you think, tirzah?i am going away." she dropped her hands with amazement. "going away! when? where? for what?" he laughed. "three questions, all in a breath! what a body you are!" next instant he became serious. "you know the law requires me to follow some occupation. our good father set me an example. even you would despise me if i spent in idleness the results of his industry and knowledge. i am going to rome." "oh, i will go with you." "you must stay with mother. if both of us leave her, she will die." the brightness faded from her face. "ah, yes, yes! butmust you go? here in jerusalem you can learn all that is needed to be a merchantif that is what you are thinking of." "but that is not what i am thinking of. the law does not require the son to be what the father was." "what else can you be?" "a soldier," he replied, with a certain pride of voice. tears came into her eyes. "you will be killed." "if god's will, be it so. but, tirzah, the soldiers are not all killed." she threw her arms around his neck as if to hold him back. "we are so happy! stay at home, my brother." "home cannot always be what it is. you yourself will be going away before long." "never!" he smiled at her earnestness. "a prince of judah, or some other one of the tribes, will come soon and claim my tirzah, and ride away with her, to be the light of another house. what will then become of me?" she answered with sobs. "war is a trade," he continued, more soberly. "to learn it thoroughly, one must go to school, and there is no school like a roman camp." "you would not fight for rome?" she asked, holding her breath. "and youeven you hate her. the whole world hates her. in that, o tirzah, find the reason of the answer i give youyes, i will fight for her, if, in return, she will teach me how one day to fight against her." "when will you go?" amrah's steps were then heard returning. "hist!" he said. "do not let her know of what i am thinking." the faithful slave came in with breakfast, and placed the waiter, holding it upon a stool before them; then, with white napkins upon her arm, she remained to serve them. they dipped their fingers in a bowl of water, and were rinsing them, when a noise arrested their attention. they listened, and distinguished martial music in the street on the north side of the house. "soldiers from the praetorium! i must see them," he cried, springing from the divan, and running out. in a moment more he was leaning over the parapet of tiles which guarded the roof at the extreme north-east corner, so absorbed that he did not notice tirzah by his side, resting one hand upon his shoulder. their positionthe roof being the highest one in the localitycommanded the house-tops eastward as far as the huge irregular tower of antonia, which has been already mentioned as a citadel for the garrison and military head-quarters for the governor. the street, not more than ten feet wide, was spanned here and there by bridges, open and covered, which, like the roofs along the way, were beginning to be occupied by men, women, and children, called out by the music. the word is used, though it is hardly fitting; what the people heard when they came forth was rather an uproar of trumpets and the shriller litui so delightful to the soldiers. the array after a while came into view of the two upon the house of the hurs. first, a vanguard of the light-armedmostly slingers and bowmenmarching with wide intervals between their ranks and files; next a body of heavy-armed infantry, bearing large shields, and hastae longae, or spears identical with those used in the duels between ilium; then the musicians; and then an officer riding alone, but followed closely by a guard of cavalry; after them again, a column of infantry also heavy-armed, which, moving in close order, crowded the street from wall to wall, and appeared to be without end. the brawny limbs of the men; the cadenced motion from right to left of the shields; the sparkle of scales, buckles, and breast-plates and helms, all perfectly burnished; the plumes nodding above the tall crests; the sway of ensigns and iron-shod spears; the bold, confident step, exactly timed and measured; the demeanour, so grave, yet so watchful; the machine-like unity of the whole moving massmade an impression upon judah, but as something felt rather than seen. two objects fixed his attentionthe eagle of the legion firsta gilded effigy perched on a tall shaft, with wings outspread until they met above its head. he knew that, when brought from its chamber in the tower, it had been received with divine honours. the officer riding alone in the midst of the column was the other attraction. his head was bare; otherwise he was in full armour. at his left hip he wore a short sword; in his hand, however, he carried a truncheon, which looked like a roll of white paper. he sat upon a purple cloth instead of a saddle, and that, and a bridle with a forestall of gold and reins of yellow silk broadly fringed at the lower edge, completed the housings of the horse. while the man was yet in the distance, judah observed that his presence was sufficient to throw the people looking at him into angry excitement. they would lean over the parapets or stand boldly out, and shake their fists at him; they followed him with loud cries, and spit at him as he passed under the bridges; the women even flung their sandals, sometimes with such good effect as to hit him. when he was nearer, the yells became distinguishable"robber, tyrant, dog of a roman! away with ishmael! give us back our hannas!" when quite near, judah could see that, as was but natural, the man did not share the indifference so superbly shown by the soldiers; his face was dark and sullen, and the glances he occasionally cast at his persecutors were full of menace; the very timid shrank from them. now the lad had heard of the custom, borrowed from a habit of the first caesar, by which chief commanders, to indicate their rank, appeared in public with only a laurel vine upon their heads. by that sign he knew this officervalerius gratus, the new procurator of judea! to say truth now, the roman under the unprovoked storm had the young jew's sympathy; so that when he reached the corner of the house, the latter leaned yet farther over the parapet to see him go by, and in the act rested a hand upon a tile which had been a long time cracked and allowed to go unnoticed. the pressure was strong enough to displace the outer piece, which started to fall. a thrill of horror shot through the youth. he reached out to catch the missile. in appearance the motion was exactly that of one pitching something from him. the effort failednay, it served to push the descending fragment farther out over the wall. he shouted with all his might. the soldiers of the guard looked up; so did the great man, and that moment the missile struck him, and he fell from his seat as dead. the cohort halted; the guards leaped from their horses, and hastened to cover the chief with their shields. on the other hand, the people who witnessed the affair, never doubting that the blow had been purposely dealt, cheered the lad as he yet stooped in full view over the parapet, transfixed by what he beheld, and by anticipation of the consequences flashed all too plainly upon him. a mischievous spirit flew with incredible speed from roof to roof along the line of march, seizing the people, and urging them all alike. they laid hands upon the parapets and tore up the tiling and the sunburnt mud of which the house-tops were for the most part made, and with blind fury began to fling them upon the legionaries halted below. a battle then ensued. discipline, of course, prevailed. the struggle, the slaughter, the skill of one side, the desperation of the other, are alike unnecessary to our story. let us look rather to the wretched author of it all. he arose from the parapet, his face very pale. "o tirzah, tirzah! what will become of us?" she had not seen the occurrence below, but was listening to the shouting and watching the mad activity of the people in view on the houses. something terrible was going on, she knew; but what it was, or the cause, or that she or any of those dear to her were in danger, she did not know. "what has happened? what does it all mean?" she asked, in sudden alarm. "i have killed the roman governor. the tile fell upon him." an unseen hand appeared to sprinkle her face with the dust of ashesit grew white so instantly. she put her arm around him, and looked wistfully, but without a word, into his eyes. his fears had passed to her, and the sight of them gave him strength. "i did not do it purposely, tirzahit was an accident," he said, more calmly. "what will they do?" she asked. he looked off over the tumult momentarily deepening in the street and on the roofs, and thought of the sullen countenance of gratus. if he were not dead, where would his vengeance stop? and if he were dead, to what height of fury would not the violence of the people lash the legionaries? to evade an answer, he peered over the parapet again, just as the guard were assisting the roman to remount his horse. "he lives, he lives, tirzah! blessed be the lord god of our fathers!" with that outcry, and a brightened countenance, he drew back and replied to her question. "be not afraid, tirzah. i will explain how it happened, and they will remember our father and his services, and not hurt us." he was leading her to the summer-house, when the roof jarred under their feet, and a crash of strong timbers being burst away, followed by a cry of surprise and agony, arose apparently from the court-yard below. he stopped and listened. the cry was repeated; then came a rush of many feet, and voices lifted in rage blent with voices in prayer; and then the screams of women in mortal terror. the soldiers had beaten in the north gate, and were in possession of the house. the terrible sense of being hunted smote him. his first impulse was to fly; but where? nothing but wings would serve him. tirzah, her eyes wild with fear, caught his arm. "o judah, what does it mean?" the servants were being butcheredand his mother! was not one of the voices he heard hers? with all the will left him, he said, "stay here, and wait for me, tirzah. i will go down and see what is the matter, and come back to you." his voice was not steady as he wished. she clung closer to him. clearer, shriller, no longer a fancy, his mother's cry arose. he hesitated no longer. "come, then, let us go." the terrace or gallery at the foot of the steps was crowded with soldiers. other soldiers, with drawn swords, ran in and out of the chambers. at one place a number of women on their knees clung to each other or prayed for mercy. apart from them, one with torn garments, and long hair streaming over her face, struggled to tear lose from a man all whose strength was tasked to keep his hold. her cries were shrillest of all; cutting through the clamour, they had risen distinguishably to the roof. to her judah spranghis steps were long and swift, almost a winged flight"mother, mother!" he shouted. she stretched her hands towards him; but when almost touching them he was seized and forced aside. then he heard someone say, speaking loudly, "that is he!" judah looked, and sawmessala. "what, the assassinthat?" said a tall man, in legionary armour of beautiful finish. "why, he is but a boy." "gods!" replied messala, not forgetting his drawl. "a new philosophy! what would seneca say to the proposition that a man must be old before he can hate enough to kill? you have him; and that is his mother; yonder his sister. you have the whole family." for love of them, judah forgot his quarrel. "help them, o my messala! remember our childhood, and help them. ijudahpray you." messala affected not to hear. "i cannot be of further use to you," he said to the officer. "there is richer entertainment in the street. down eros, up mars!" with the last words he disappeared. judah understood him, and, in the bitterness of his soul, prayed to heaven. "in the hour of thy vengeance, o lord," he said, "be mine the hand to put it upon him!" by great exertion he drew nearer the officer. "o sir, the woman you hear is my mother. spare her, spare my sister yonder. god is just, he will give you mercy for mercy." the man appeared to be moved. "to the tower with the women!" he shouted, "but do them no harm. i will demand them of you." then to those holding judah, he said, "get cords, and bind his hands, and take him to the street. his punishment is reserved." the mother was carried away. the little tirzah, in her home attire, stupefied with fear, went passively with her keepers. judah gave each of them a last look, and covered his face with his hands, as if to possess himself of the scene fadelessly. he may have shed tears, though no one saw them. there took place in him then what may be justly called the wonder of life. the thoughtful reader of these pages has ere this discerned enough to know that the young jew in disposition was gentle even to womanlinessa result that seldom fails the habit of loving and being loved. the circumstances through which he had come had made no call upon the harsher elements of his nature, if such he had. at times he had felt the stir and impulses of ambition, but they had been like the formless dreams of a child walking by the sea and gazing at the coming and going of stately ships. but now, if we can imagine an idol, sensible of the worship it was accustomed to, dashed suddenly from its altar, and lying amidst the wreck of its little world of love, an idea may be had of what had befallen the young ben-hur, and of its effect upon his being. yet there was no sign, nothing to indicate that he had undergone a change, except that when he raised his head, and held his arms out to be bound, the bend of the cupid's, bow had vanished from his lips. in that instant he had put off childhood and become a man. a trumpet sounded in the court-yard. with the cessation of the call, the gallery was cleared of the soldiery; many of whom, as they dared not appear in the ranks with visible plunder in their hands, flung what they had upon the floor, until it was strewn with articles of richest virtu. when judah descended, the formation was complete, and the officer waiting to see his last order executed. the mother, daughter, and entire household were led out of the north gate, the ruins of which choked the passage-way. the cries of the domestics, some of whom had been born in the house, were most pitiable. when, finally, the horses, and all the dumb tenantry of the place, were driven past him, judah began to comprehend. the scope of the procurator's vengeance. the very structure was devoted. far as the order was possible of execution, nothing living was to be left within its walls. if in judea there were others desperate enough to think of assassinating a roman governor, the story of what befell the princely family of hur would be a warning to them, while the ruin of the habitation would keep the story alive. the officer waited outside while a detail of men temporarily restored the gate. in the street the fighting had almost ceased. upon the houses here and there clouds of dust told where the struggle was yet prolonged. the cohort was, for the most part, standing at rest, its splendour, like its ranks, in nowise diminished. borne past the point of care for himself, judah had heart for nothing in view but the prisoners, among whom he looked in vain for his mother and tirzah. suddenly, from the earth where she had been lying, a woman arose and started swiftly back to the gate. some of the guards reached out to seize her, and a great shout followed their failure. she ran to judah, and, dropping down, clasped his knees, the coarse black hair powdered with dust veiling her eyes. "o amrah, good amrah," he said to her, "god help you; i cannot." she could not speak. he bent down, and whispered, "live, amrah, for tirzah and my mother. they will come back, and" a soldier drew her away; whereupon she sprang up and rushed through the gateway and passage into the vacant court-yard. "let her go," the officer shouted. "we will seal the house, and she will starve." the men resumed their work, and when it was finished there, passed round to the west side. that gate was also secured, after which the palace of the hurs was lost to use. the cohort at length marched back to the tower, where the procurator stayed to recover from his hurts and dispose of his prisoners. on the tenth day following he visited the market-place. chapter vii. a galley slave. next day a detachment of legionaries went to the desolated palace, and, closing the gates permanently, plastered the corners with wax, and at the sides nailed a notice in latin: "this is the property of. the emperor." in the haughty roman idea, the sententious announcement was thought sufficient for the purposeand it was. the day after that again, about noon, a decurion with his command of ten horsemen approached nazareth from the souththat is, from the direction of jerusalem. the place was then a straggling village perched on a hill-side, and so insignificant that its one street was little more than a path well beaten by the coming and going of flocks and herds. the great plain of esdraelon crept close to it on the south, and from the height on the west a view could be had of the chores of the mediterranean, the region beyond the jordan, and hermon. the valley below, and the country on every side, were given to gardens, vineyards, orchards, and pasturage. groves of palm-trees orientalized the landscape. the houses, in irregular assemblage, were of the humbler classsquare, one-storey, flat-roofed, and covered with bright-green vines. the drought that had burned the hills of judea to a crisp, brown and lifeless, stopped at the boundary line of galilee. a trumpet, sounded when the cavalcade drew near the village, had a magical effect upon the inhabitants. the gates and front doors cast forth groups eager to be the first to catch the meaning of a visitation so unusual. nazareth, it must be remembered, was not only aside from any great highway, but within the sway of judas of gamala; wherefore it should not be hard to imagine the feelings with which the legionaries were received. but when they were up and traversing the street, the duty that occupied them became apparent, and then fear and hatred were lost in curiosity, under the impulse of which the people, knowing there must be a halt at the well in the north-eastern part of the town, quit their gates and doors, and closed in after the procession. a prisoner whom the horsemen were guarding was the object of curiosity. he was afoot, bareheaded, half-naked, his hands bound behind him. a thong fixed to his wrists was looped over the neck of a horse. the dust went with the party when in movement, wrapping him in yellow fog, sometimes in a dense cloud. he drooped forward, footsore and faint. the villagers could see he was young. at the well the decurion halted, and, with most of the men, dismounted. the prisoner sank down in the dust of the road, stupefied, and asking nothing: apparently he was in the last stage of exhaustion. seeing, when they came near, that he was but a boy, the villagers would have helped him had they dared. in the midst of their perplexity, and while the pitchers were passing among the soldiers, a man was descried coming down the road from sepphoris. at sight of him a woman cried out, "look! yonder comes the carpenter. now we will hear something." the person spoken of was quite venerable in appearance. thin white locks fell below the edge of his full turban, and a mass of still whiter beard flowed down the front of his coarse grey gown. he came slowly, for, in addition to his age, he carried some toolsan axe, a saw, and a drawing-knife, all very rude and heavyand had evidently travelled some distance without rest. he stopped close by to survey the assemblage. "oh, rabbi, good rabbi joseph!" cried a woman, running to him. "here is a prisoner; come, ask the soldiers about him, that we may know who he is, and what he has done, and what they are going to do with him." the rabbi's face remained stolid; he glanced at the prisoner, however, and presently went to the officer. "the peace of the lord be with you!" he said, with unbending gravity. "and that of the gods with you," the decurion replied. "are you from jerusalem?" "yes." "your prisoner is young." "in years, yes." "may i ask what he has done?" "he is an assassin." the people repeated the word in astonishment, but rabbi joseph pursued his inquest. "is he a son of israel?" "he is a jew," said the roman, dryly. the wavering pity of the bystanders came back. "i know nothing of your tribes, but can speak of his family," the speaker continued. "you may have heard of a prince of jerusalem named hurben-hur, they call him. he lived in herod's day." "i have seen him," joseph said. "well, this is his son." exclamations became general, and the decurion hastened to stop them. "in the streets of jerusalem, day before yesterday, he nearly killed the noble gratus by flinging a tile upon his head from the roof of a palacehis father's, i believe." there was a pause in the conversation, during which the nazarenes gazed at the young ben-hur as at a wild beast. "did he kill him?" asked the rabbi. "no." "he is under sentence." "yesthe galleys for life." "the lord help him!" said joseph, for once moved out of his stolidity. thereupon a youth who came up with joseph, but had stood behind him unobserved, laid down an axe he had been carrying, and, going to the great stone standing by the well, took from it a pitcher of water. the action was so quiet that before the guard could interfere, had they been disposed to do so, he was stooping over the prisoner and offering him a drink. the hand laid kindly upon his shoulder awoke the unfortunate judah, and, looking up, he saw a face he never forgotthe face of a boy about his own age, shaded by locks of yellowish bright chestnut hair; a face lighted by dark-blue eyes, at the time so soft, so appealing, so full of love and holy purpose, that they had all the power of command and will. the spirit of the jew, hardened though it was by days and nights of suffering, and so imbittered by wrong that its dreams of revenge took in all the world, melted under the stranger's look, and became as a child's. he put his lips to the pitcher, and drank long and deep. not a word was said to him, nor did he say a word. when the draught was finished, the hand that had been resting upon the sufferer's shoulder was placed upon his head, and stayed there in the dusty locks time enough to say a blessing; the stranger then returned the pitcher to its place on the stone, and, taking his axe again, went back to rabbi joseph. all eyes went with him, the decurion's as well as those of the villagers. this was the end of the scene at the well. when the men had drunk, and the horses, the march was resumed. but the temper of the decurion was not as it had been; he himself raised the prisoner from the dust, and helped him on a horse behind a soldier. the nazarenes went to their housesamong them rabbi joseph and his apprentice. and so, for the first time, judah and the son of mary met and parted. book third. "cleopatra.... our size of sorrow, proportion'd to our cause, must be as great as that which makes it. enter, below, diomedes. how now? is he dead? diomedes. his death's upon him, but not dead." antony and cleopatra (act iv. sc. xiii.). chapter i. quintis arrius goes to sea. the city of misenum gave name to the promontory which it crowned, a few miles south-west of naples. an account of ruins is all that remains of it now; yet in the year of our lord 24to which it is desirable to advance the readerthe place was one of the most important on the western coast of italy.* * the roman government, it will be remembered, had two harbours in which great fleets were constantly keptravenna and misenum. in the year mentioned, a traveller coming to the promontory to regale himself with the view there offered, would have mounted a wall, and, with the city at his back, looked over the bay of neapolis, as charming then as now; and then, as now, he would have seen the matchless shore, the smoking cone, the sky and waves so softly, deeply blue, ischia here and capri yonder; from one to the other and back again, through the purpled air, his gaze would have sported; at lastfor the eyes do weary of the beautiful as the palate with sweetsat last it would have dropped upon a spectacle which the modern tourist cannot seehalf the reserve navy of rome astir or at anchor below him. thus regarded, misenum was a very proper place for three masters to meet, and at leisure parcel the world among them. in the old time, moreover, there was a gateway in the wall at a certain point fronting the seaan empty gateway forming the outlet of a street which, after the exit, stretched itself, in the form of a broad mole, out many stadia into the waves. the watchman on the wall above the gateway was disturbed, one cool september morning, by a party coming down the street in noisy conversation. he gave one look, then settled into his drowse again. there were twenty or thirty persons in the party, of whom the greater number were slaves with torches which flamed little and smoked much, leaving on the air the perfume of the indian nard. the masters walked in advance arm-in-arm. one of them, apparently fifty years old, slightly bald, and wearing over his scant locks a crown of laurel, seemed, from the attentions paid him, the central object of some affectionate ceremony. they all sported ample togas of white wool broadly bordered with purple. a glance had sufficed the watchman. he knew, without question, they were of high rank, and escorting a friend to ship after a night of festivity. further explanation will be found in the conversation they carried on. "no, my quintus," said one, speaking to him with the crown, "it is ill of fortune to take thee from us so soon. only yesterday thou didst return from the seas beyond the pillars. why, thou hast not even got back thy land legs." "by castor! if a man may swear a woman's oath," said another, somewhat worse of wine, "let us not lament. our quintus is but going to find what he lost last night. dice on a rolling ship is not dice on shoreeh, quintus?" "abuse not fortune!" exclaimed a third. "she is not blind or fickle. at antium, where our arrius questions her, she answers him with nods, and at sea she abides with him, holding the rudder. she takes him from us, but does not always give him back with a new victory?" "the greeks are taking him away," another broke in. "let us abuse them, not the gods. in learning to trade, they forgot how to fight." with these words, the party passed the gateway, and came upon the mole, with the bay before them beautiful in the morning light. to the veteran sailor the plash of the waves was like a greeting. he drew a long breath, as if the perfume of the water were sweeter than that of the nard, and held his hand aloft. "my gifts were at praeneste, not antiumand see! wind from the west. thanks, o fortune, my mother!" he said, earnestly. the friends all repeated the exclamation, and the slaves waved their torches. "she comesyonder!" he continued, pointing to a galley outside the mole. "what need has a sailor for other mistress? is your lucrece more grateful, my caius?" he gazed at the coming ship, and justified his pride. a white sail was bent to the low mast, and the oars dipped, arose, poised a moment, then dipped again, with wing-like action, and in perfect time. "yes, spare the gods," he said, soberly, his eyes fixed upon the vessel. "they send us opportunities. ours the fault if we fail. and as for the greeks, you forget, o my lentulus, the pirates i am going to punish are greeks. one victory over them is of more account than a hundred over the africans." "then thy way is to the aegean?" the sailor's eyes were full of his ship. "what grace, what freedom! a bird hath not less care for the fretting of the waves. see!" he said, but almost immediately added, "thy pardon, my lentulus. i am going to the aegean; and as my departure is so near, i will tell the occasiononly keep it under the rose. i would not that you abuse the duumvir when next you meet him. he is my friend. the trade between greece and alexandria, as ye may have heard, is hardly inferior to that between alexandria and rome. the people in that part of the world forgot to celebrate the cerealia, and triptolemus paid them with a harvest not worth the gathering. at all events, the trade is so grown that it will not brook interruption a day. ye may also have heard of the chersonesan pirates, nested up in the euxine; none bolder, by the bacchae! yesterday word came to rome that, with a fleet, they had rowed down the bosphorus, sunk the galleys of byzantium and chalcedon, swept the propontis, and, still unsated, burst through into the aegean. the corn-merchants who have ships in the east mediterranean are frightened. they had audience with the emperor himself, and from ravenna there go to-day a hundred galleys, and from misenum"he paused as if to pique the curiosity of his friends, and ended with an emphatic"one." "happy quintus! we congratulate thee!" "the preferment forerunneth promotion. we salute thee duumvir; nothing less." "quintus arrius, the duumvir, hath a better sound than quintus arrius, the tribune." in such manner they showered him with congratulations. "i am glad with the rest," said the bibulous friend, "very glad; but i must be practical, o my duumvir; and not until i know if promotion will help thee to knowledge of the tesserae will i have an opinion as to whether the gods mean thee ill or good in thisthis business." "thanks, many thanks!" arrius replied, speaking to them collectively. "had ye but lanterns, i would say ye were augurs. perpol! i will go further, and show what master diviners ye are! seeand read." from the folds of his toga he drew a roll of paper, and passed it to them, saying, "received while at table last night fromsejanus." the name was already a great one in the roman world; great, and not so infamous as it afterwards became. "sejanus!" they exclaimed, with one voice, closing in to read what the minister had written. "sejanus to c. caecilius rufus, duumvir. "rome, xix. kal. sept. "caesar hath good report of quintus arrius, the tribune. in particular he hath heard of his valour, manifested in the western seas; insomuch that it is his will that the said quintus be transferred instantly to the east. "it is our caesar's will, further, that you cause a hundred triremes, of the first class, and full appointment, to be despatched without delay against the pirates who appeared in the aegean, and that quintus be sent to command the fleet so despatched. "details are thine, my caecilius. "the necessity is urgent, as thou wilt be advised by the reports enclosed for thy perusal and the information of the said quintus. "sejanus." arrius gave little heed to the reading. as the ship drew more plainly out of the perspective, she became more and more an attraction to him. the look with which he watched her was that of an enthusiast. at length he tossed the loosened folds of his toga in the air; in reply to the signal, over the aplustre, or fan-like fixture at the stern of the vessel, a scarlet flag was displayed; while several sailors appeared upon the bulwarks, and swung themselves hand over hand up the ropes to the antenna, or yard, and furled the sail. the bow was put round, and the time of the oars increased one half; so that at racing speed she bore down directly towards him and his friends. he observed the maneuvering with a perceptible brightening of the eyes. her instant answer to the rudder, and the steadiness with which she kept her course, were especially noticeable as virtues to be relied upon in action. "by the nymphae!" said one of the friends, giving back the roll, "we may not longer say our friend will be great; he is already great. our love will now have famous things to feed upon. what more hast thou for us?" "nothing more," arrius replied. "what ye have of the affair is by this time old news in rome, especially between the palace and the forum. the duumvir is discreet; what i am to do, where go to find my fleet, he will tell on the ship, where a sealed package is waiting me. if, however, ye have offerings for any of the altars to-day, pray the gods for a friend plying oar and sail somewhere in the direction of sicily. but she is here, and will come to," he said, reverting to the vessel. "i have interest in her masters; they will sail and fight with me. it is not an easy thing to lay ship side on a shore like this; so let us judge their training and skill." "what, is she new to thee?" "i never saw her before; and, as yet, i know not if she will bring me one acquaintance." "is that well?" "it matters but little. we of the sea come to know each other quickly; our loves, like our hates, are born of sudden dangers." the vessel was of the class called naves liburnicaelong, narrow, low in the water, and modelled for speed and quick manoeuvre. the bow was beautiful. a jet of water spun from its foot as she came on, sprinkling all the prow, which rose in graceful curvature twice a man's stature above the plane of the deck. upon the bending of the sides were figures of triton blowing shells. below the bow, fixed to the keel, and projecting forward under the water-line was the rostrum, or beak, a device of solid wood, reinforced and armed with iron, in action used as a ram. a stout moulding extended from the bow the full length of the ship's sides, defining the bulwarks, which were tastefully crenelated; below the moulding, in three rows, each covered with a cap or shield of bull-hide, were the holes in which the oars were workedsixty on the right, sixty on the left. in further ornamentation, caducei leaned against the lofty prow. two immense ropes passing across the bow marked the number of anchors stowed on the foredeck. the simplicity of the upper works declared the oars the chief dependence of the crew. a mast, set a little forward of midship, was held by fore and back stays and shrouds fixed to rings on the inner side of the bulwarks. the tackle was that required for the management of one great square sail and the yard to which it was hung. above the bulwark the deck was visible. save the sailors who had reefed the sail, and yet lingered on the yard, but one man was to be seen by the party on the mole, and he stood by the prow helmeted and with a shield. the hundred and twenty oaken blades, kept white and shining by pumice and the constant wash of the waves, rose and fell as if operated by the same hand, and drove the galley forward with a speed rivalling that of a modern steamer. so rapidly, and apparently so rashly, did she come that the landsmen of the tribune's party were alarmed. suddenly the man by the prow raised his hand with a peculiar gesture; whereupon all the oars flew up, poised a moment in air, then fell straight down. the water boiled and bubbled about them; the galley shook in every timber, and stopped as if scared. another gesture of the hand, and again the oars arose, feathered, and fell; but this time those on the right, dropped towards the stern, pushed forward; while those on the left, dropping towards the bow, pulled backward. three times the oars thus pushed and pulled against each other. round to the right the ship swung as upon a pivot; then, caught by the wind, she settled gently broadside to the mole. the movement brought the stern to view, with all its garnituretritons like those at the bow; name in large raised letters; the rudder at the side; the elevated platform upon which the helmsman sat, a stately figure in full armour, his hand upon the rudder-rope; and the aplustre, high, gilt, carved, and bent over the helmsman like a great runcinate leaf. in the midst of the rounding-to, a trumpet was blown brief and shrill, and from the hatchways out poured the marines, all in superb equipment, brazen helms, burnished shields, and javelins. while the fighting-men thus went to quarters as for action, the sailors proper climbed the shrouds and perched themselves along the yard. the officers and musicians took their posts. there was no shouting or needless noise. when the oars touched the mole, a bridge was sent out from the helmsman's deck. then the tribune turned to his party and said, with a gravity he had not before shown: "duty now, o my friends." he took the chaplet from his head and gave it to the dice-player. "take thou the myrtle, o favourite of the tesserae!" he said. "if i return, i will seek my sesterce again; if i am not victor, i will not return. hang the crown in thy atrium." to the company he opened his arms, and they came one by one and received his parting embrace. "the gods go with thee, o quintus!" they said. "farewell," he replied. to the slaves waving their torches he waved his hand; then he turned to the waiting ship, beautiful with ordered ranks and crested helms, and shields and javelins. as he stepped upon the bridge the trumpets sounded, and over the aplustre rose the vexillum purpureum, or pennant of a commander of a fleet. chapter ii. at the oar. the tribune, standing upon the helmsman's deck with the order of the duumvir open in his hand, spoke to the chief of the rowers.* * called hortator. "what force hast thou?" "of oarsmen, two hundred and fifty-two; ten supernumeraries." "making reliefs of" "eighty-four." "and thy habit?" "it has been to take off and put on every two hours." the tribune mused a moment. "the division is hard, and i will reform it, but not now. the oars may not rest day or night." then to the sailing-master he said, "the wind is fair. let the sail help the oars." when the two thus addressed were gone, he turned to the chief pilot.* * called rector. "what service hast thou had?" "two-and-thirty years." "in what seas chiefly?" "between our rome and the east." "thou art the man i would have chosen." the tribune looked at his orders again. "past the camponellan cape, the course will be to messina. beyond that, follow the bend of the calabrian shore till melito is on thy left, thenknowest thou the stars that govern in the ionian sea?" "i know them well." "then from melito course eastward for cythera. the gods willing, i will not anchor until in the bay of antemona. the duty is urgent. i rely upon thee." a prudent man was arriusprudent, and of the class which, while enriching the altars at praeneste and antium, was of opinion, nevertheless, that the favour of the blind goddess depended more upon the votary's care and judgment than upon his gifts and vows. all night as master of the feast he had sat at table drinking and playing; yet the odour of the sea returned him to the mood of the sailor, and he would not rest until he knew his ship. knowledge leaves no room for chances. having begun with the chief of the rowers, the sailing-master, and the pilot, in company with the other officersthe commander of the marines, the keeper of the stores, the master of the machines, the overseer of the kitchen or fireshe passed through the several quarters. nothing escaped his inspection. when he was through, of the community crowded within the narrow walls he alone knew perfectly all there was of material preparation for the voyage and its possible incidents; and, finding the preparation complete, there was left him but one thing furtherthorough knowledge of the personnel of his command. as this was the most delicate and difficult part of his task, requiring much time, he set about it his own way. at noon that day the galley was skimming the sea off paestum. the wind was yet from the west, filling the sail to the master's content. the watches had been established. on the foredeck the altar had been set and sprinkled with salt and barley, and before it the tribune had offered solemn prayers to jove and to neptune and all the oceanidae, and, with vows, poured the wine and burned the incense. and now, the better to study his men, he was seated in the great cabin, a very martial figure. the cabin, it should be stated, was the central compartment of the galley, in extent quite sixty-five by thirty feet, and lighted by three broad hatchways. a row of stanchions ran from end to end, supporting the roof, and near the centre the mast was visible, all bristling with axes and spears and javelins. to each hatchway there were double stairs descending right and left, with a pivotal arrangement at the top to allow the lower ends to be hitched to the ceiling; and, as these were now raised, the compartment had the appearance of a sky-lighted hall. the reader will understand readily that this was the heart of the ship, the home of all aboardeating-room, sleeping-chamber, field of exercise, lounging-place off dutyuses made possible by the laws which reduced life there to minute details and a routine relentless as death. at the after-end of the cabin there was a platform, reached by several steps. upon it the chief of the rowers sat; in front of him a sounding-table, upon which, with a gavel, he beat time for the oarsmen; at his right a clepsydra, or water-clock, to measure the reliefs and watches. above him, on a higher platform, well guarded by gilded railing, the tribune had his quarters, overlooking everything, and furnished with a couch, a table, and a cathedra, or chair, cushioned, and with arms and high backarticles which the imperial dispensation permitted of the utmost elegance. thus at ease, lounging in the great chair, swaying with the motion of the vessel, the military cloak half draping his tunic, sword in belt, arrius kept watchful eye over his command, and was as closely watched by them. he saw critically everything in view, but dwelt longest upon the rowers. the reader would doubtless have done the same; only he would have looked with much sympathy, while, as is the habit with masters, the tribune's mind ran forward of what he saw, inquiring for results. the spectacle was simple enough of itself. along the sides of the cabin, fixed to the ship's timbers, were what at first appeared to be three rows of benches; a closer view, however, showed them a succession of rising banks, in each of which the second bench was behind and above the first one, and the third above and behind the second. to accommodate the sixty rowers on a side, the space devoted to them permitted nineteen banks separated by intervals of one yard, with a twentieth bank divided so that what would have been its upper seat or bench was directly above the lower seat of the first bank. the arrangement gave each rower when at work ample room, if he timed his movements with those of his associates, the principle being that of soldiers marching with cadenced step in close order. the arrangement also allowed a multiplication of banks, limited only by the length of the galley. as to the rowers, those upon the first and second benches sat, while those upon the third, having longer oars to work, were suffered to stand. the oars were loaded with lead in the handles, and near the point of balance hung to pliable thongs, making possible the delicate touch called feathering, but, at the same time, increasing the need of skill, since an eccentric wave might at any moment catch a heedless fellow and hurl him from his seat. each oar-hole was a vent through which the labourer opposite it had his plenty of sweet air. light streamed down upon him from the grating which formed the floor of the passage between the deck and the bulwark over his head. in some respects, therefore, the condition of the men might have been much worse. still, it must not be imagined that there was any pleasantness in their lives. communication between them was not allowed. day after day they filled their places without speech; in hours of labour they could not see each other's faces; their short respites were given to sleep and the snatching of food. they never laughed; no one ever heard one of them sing. what is the use of tongues when a sigh or a groan will tell all men feel while, perforce, they think in silence? existence with the poor wretches was like a stream under ground sweeping slowly, laboriously on to its outlet, wherever that might chance to be. o son of mary! the sword has now a heartand thine the glory! so now; but, in the days of which we are writing, for captivity there was drudgery on walls, and in the streets and mines, and the galleys both of war and commerce were insatiable. when druilius won the first sea-fight for his country, romans plied the oars, and the glory was to the rower not less than the marine. these benches which now we are trying to see as they were testified to the change come with conquest, and illustrated both the policy and the prowess of rome. nearly all the nations had sons there, mostly prisoners of war, chosen for their brawn and endurance. in one place a briton; before him a libyan; behind him a crimean. elsewhere a scythian, a gaul, and a thebasite. roman convicts cast down to consort with goths and longobardi, jews, ethiopians, and barbarians from the shores of maeotis. here an athenian, there a red-haired savage from hibernia, yonder blue-eyed giants of the cimbri. in the labour of the rowers there was not enough art to give occupation to their minds, rude and simple as they were. the reach forward, the pull, the feathering, the blade, the dip, were all there was of it; motions most perfect when most automatic. even the care forced upon them by the sea outside grew in time to be a thing instinctive rather than of thought. so, as the result of long service, the poor wretches became imbrutedpatient, spiritless, obedientcreatures of vast muscle and exhausted intellects, who lived upon recollections generally few but dear, and at last lowered into the semi-conscious alchemic state wherein misery turns to habit, and the soul takes on incredible endurance. from right to left, hour after hour, the tribune, swaying in his easy-chair, turned with thought of everything rather than the wretchedness of the slaves upon the benches. their motions, precise, and exactly the same on both sides of the vessel, after a while became monotonous; and then he amused himself singling out individuals. with his stylus he made note of objections, thinking, if all went well, he would find among the pirates of whom he was in search better men for the places. there was no need of keeping the proper names of the slaves brought to the galleys as to their graves; so, for convenience, they were usually identified by the numerals painted upon the benches to which they were assigned. as the sharp eyes of the great man moved from seat to seat on either hand, they came at last to number sixty, which, as has been said, belonged properly to the last bank on the left-hand side, but, wanting room aft, had been fixed above the first bench of the first bank. there they rested. the bench of number sixty was slightly above the level of the platform, and but a few feet away. the light glinting through the grating over his head gave the rower fairly to the tribune's viewerect, and, like all his fellows, naked, except a cincture about the loins. there were, however, some points in his favour. he was very young, not more than twenty. furthermore, arrius was not merely given to dice; he was a connoisseur of men physically, and when ashore indulged a habit of visiting the gymnasia to see and admire the most famous athletae. from some professor, doubtless, he had caught the idea that strength was as much of the quality as the quantity of the muscle, while superiority in performance required a certain mind as well as strength. having adopted the doctrine, like most men with a hobby, he was always looking for illustrations to support it. the reader may well believe that while the tribune, in the search for the perfect, was often called upon to stop and study, he was seldom perfectly satisfiedin fact, very seldom held as long as on this occasion. in the beginning of each movement of the oar, the rower's body and face were brought into profile view from the platform; the movement ended with the body reversed, and in a pushing posture. the grace and ease of the action at first suggested a doubt of the honesty of the effort put forth; but it was speedily dismissed; the firmness with which the oar was held while in the reach forward, its bending under the push, were proofs of the force applied; not that only, they as certainly proved the rower's art, and put the critic in the great arm-chair in search of the combination of strength and cleverness which was the central idea of his theory. in course of the study, arrius observed the subject's youth; wholly unconscious of tenderness on that account, he also observed that he seemed of good height, and that his limbs, upper and nether, were singularly perfect. the arms, perhaps, were too long, but the objection was well hidden under a mass of muscle which, in some movements, swelled and knotted like kinking cords. every rib in the round body was discernible; yet the leanness was the healthful reduction so strained after in the palaestrae. and altogether there was in the rower's action a certain harmony which, besides addressing itself to the tribune's theory, stimulated both his curiosity and general interest. very soon he found himself waiting to catch a view of the man's face in full. the head was shapely, and balanced upon a neck broad at the base, but of exceeding pliancy and grace. the features in profile were of oriental outline, and of that delicacy of expression which has always been thought a sign of blood and sensitive spirit. with these observations, the tribune's interest in the subject deepened. "by the gods," he said to himself, "the fellow impresses me! he promises well. i will know more of him." directly the tribune caught the view he wishedthe rower turned and looked at him. "a jew! and a boy!" under the gaze then fixed steadily upon him, the large eyes of the slave grew largerthe blood surged to his very browsthe blade lingered in his hands. but instantly, with an angry crash, down fell the gavel of the hortator. the rower started, withdrew his face from the inquisitor, and, as if personally chidden, dropped the oar half feathered. when he glanced again at the tribune, he was vastly more astonishedhe was met with a kindly smile. meantime the galley entered the straits of messina, and, skimming past the city of that name, was after a while turned eastward, leaving the cloud over aetna in the sky astern. often as arrius returned to his platform in the cabin he returned to study the rower, and he kept saying to himself, "the fellow hath a spirit. a jew is not a barbarian. i will know more of him." chapter iii. arrius and ben-hur on deck. the fourth day out, and the astraeaso the galley was namedspeeding through the ionian sea. the sky was clear, and the wind blew as if bearing the good-will of all the gods. as it was possible to overtake the fleet before reaching the bay east of the island of cythera, designated for assemblage, arrius, somewhat impatient, spent much time on deck. he took note diligently of matters pertaining to his ship, and, as a rule, was well pleased. in the cabin, swinging in the great chair, his thought continually reverted to the rower on number sixty. "knowest thou the man just come from yon bench?" he at length asked of the hortator. a relief was going on at the moment. "from number sixty?" returned the chief. "yes." the chief looked sharply at the rower then going forward. "as thou knowest," he replied, "the ship is but a month from the maker's hand, and the men are as new to me as the ship." "he is a jew," arrius remarked, thoughtfully. "the noble quintus is shrewd." "he is very young," arrius continued. "but our best rower," said the other. "i have seen his oar bend almost to breaking." "of what disposition is he?" "he is obedient; further i know not. once he made request of me." "for what?" "he wishes me to change him alternately from the right to the left." "did he give a reason?" "he had observed that the men who are confined to one side become misshapen. he also said that some day of storm or battle there might be sudden need to change him, and he might then be unserviceable." "perpol! the idea is new. what else hast thou observed of him?" "he is cleanly above his companions." "in that he is roman," said arrius, approvingly. "have you nothing of his history?" "not a word." the tribune reflected awhile, and turned to go to his own seat. "if i should be on deck when his time is up," he paused to say, "send him to me. let him come alone." about two hours later arrius stood under the aplustre of the galley; in the mood of one who, seeing himself carried swiftly towards an event of mighty import, has nothing to do but waitthe mood in which philosophy vests an even-minded man with the utmost calm, and is ever so serviceable. the pilot sat with a hand upon the rope by which the rudder paddles, one on each side of the vessel, were managed. in the shade of the sail some sailors lay asleep, and up on the yard there was a look-out. lifting his eyes from the solarium set under the aplustre for reference in keeping the course, arrius beheld the rower approaching. "the chief called thee the noble arrius, and said it was thy will that i should seek thee here. i am come." arrius surveyed the figure, tall, sinewy, glistening in the sun, and tinted by the rich red blood withinsurveyed it admiringly, and with a thought of the arena; yet the manner was not without effect upon him: there was in the voice a suggestion of life at least partly spent under refining influences; the eyes were clear and open, and more curious than defiant. to the shrewd, demanding, masterful glance bent upon it, the face gave back nothing to mar its youthful comelinessnothing of accusation or sullenness or menace, only the signs which a great sorrow long borne imprints, as time mellows the surface of pictures. in tacit acknowledgment of the effect, the roman spoke as an older man to a younger, not as a master to a slave. "the hortator tells me thou art his best rower." "the hortator is very kind," the rower answered. "hast thou seen much service?" "about three years." "at the oars?" "i cannot recall a day of rest from them." "the labour is hard; few men bear it a year without breaking, and thouthou art but a boy." "the noble arrius forgets that the spirit hath much to do with endurance. by its help the weak sometimes thrive, when the strong perish." "from thy speech, thou art a jew." "my ancestors further back than the first roman were hebrews." "the stubborn pride of thy race is not lost in thee," said arrius, observing a flush upon the rower's face. "pride is never so loud as when in chains." "what cause hast thou for pride?" "that i am a jew." arrius smiled. "i have not been to jerusalem," he said; "but i have heard of its princes. i knew one of them. he was a merchant, and sailed the seas. he was fit to have been a king. of what degree art thou?" "i must answer thee from the bench of a galley. i am of the degree of slaves. my father was a prince of jerusalem, and, as a merchant, he sailed the seas. he was known and honoured in the guest-chamber of the great augustus." "his name?" "ithanar, of the house of hur." the tribune raised his hand in astonishment. "a son of hurthou?" after a silence, he asked, "what brought thee here?" judah lowered his head, and his breast laboured hard. when his feelings were sufficiently mastered, he looked the tribune in the face, and answered, "i was accused of attempting to assassinate valerius gratus, the procurator." "thou!" cried arrius, yet more amazed, and retreating a step. "thou that assassin! all rome rang with the story. it came to my ship in the river by lodinum." the two regarded each other silently. "i thought the family of hur blotted from the earth," said arrius, speaking first, a flood of tender recollections carried the young man's pride away; tears shone upon his cheeks. "mothermother! and my little tirzah! where are they? o tribune, noble tribune, if thou knowest anything of them"he clasped his hands in appeal"tell me all thou knowest. tell me if they are livingif living, where are they? and in what condition? oh, i pray thee, tell me!" he drew nearer arrius, so near that his hands touched the cloak where it dropped from the latter's folded arms. "the horrible day is three years gone," he continued"three years, o tribune, and every hour a whole lifetime of miserya lifetime in a bottomless pit with death, and no relief but in labourand in all that time not a word from anyone, not a whisper. oh, if, in being forgotten, we could only forget! if only i could hide from that scenemy sister torn from me, my mother's last look! i have felt the plague's breath, and the shock of ships in battle; i have heard the tempest lashing the sea, and laughed, though others prayed: death would have been a riddance. bend the oaryes, in the strain of mighty effort trying to escape the haunting of what that day occurred, think what little will help me. tell me they are dead, if no more, for happy they cannot be while i am lost. i have heard them call me in the night; i have seen them on the water walking. oh, never anything so true as my mother's love! and tirzahher breath was as the breath of white lilies. she was the youngest branch of the palmso fresh, so tender, so graceful, so beautiful! she made my day all morning. she came and went in music. and mine was the hand that laid them low! i" "dost thou admit thy guilt?" asked arrius, sternly. the change that came upon ben-hur was wonderful to see, it was so instant and extreme. the voice sharpened; the hands arose tight-clenched; every fibre thrilled; his eyes flamed. "thou hast heard of the god of my fathers," he said; "of the infinite jehovah. by his truth and almightiness, and by the love with which he hath followed israel from the beginning, i swear i am innocent!" the tribune was much moved. "o noble roman!" continued ben-hur, "give me a little faith, and, into my darkness, deeper darkening every day, send a light!" arrius turned away, and walked the deck. "didst thou not have a trial?" he asked, stopping suddenly. "no!" the roman raised his head, surprised. "no trialno witnesses! who passed judgment upon thee?" romans, it should be remembered, were at no time such lovers of the law and its forms as in the ages of their decay. "they bound me with cords, and dragged me to a vault in the tower. i saw no one. no one spoke to me. next day soldiers took me to the seaside. i have been a galley-slave ever since." "what couldst thou have proven?" "i was a boy, too young to be a conspirator. gratus was a stranger to me. if i had meant to kill him, that was not the time or the place. he was riding in the midst of a legion, and it was broad day. i could not have escaped. i was of a class most friendly to rome. my father had been distinguished for his services to the emperor. we had a great estate to lose. ruin was certain to myself, my mother, my sister. i had no cause for malice, while every considerationproperty, family, life, conscience, the lawto a son of israel as the breath of his nostrilswould have stayed my hand, though the foul intent had been ever so strong. i was not mad. death was preferable to shame; and, believe me, i pray it is so yet." "who was with thee when the blow was struck?" "i was on the house-topmy father's house. tirzah was with me at my sidethe soul of gentleness. together we leaned over the parapet to see the legion pass. a tile gave way under my hand, and fell upon gratus. i thought i had killed him. ah, what horror i felt!" "where was thy mother?" "in her chamber below." "what became of her?" ben-hur clenched his hands, and drew a breath like a gasp. "i do not know. i saw them drag her awaythat's all i know. out of the house they drove every living thing, even the dumb cattle, and they sealed the gates. the purpose was that she should not return. i, too, ask for her. oh for one word! she, at least, was innocent. i can forgivebut i pray thy pardon, noble tribune! a slave like me should not talk of forgiveness or of revenge. i am bound to an oar for life." arrius listened intently. he brought all his experience with slaves to his aid. if the feeling shown in this instance were assumed, the acting was perfect; on the other hand, if it were real, the jew's innocence might not be doubted; and if he were innocent, with what blind fury the power had been exercised! a whole family blotted out to atone an accident! the thought shocked him. there is no wiser providence than that our occupations, however rude or bloody, cannot wear us out morally; that such qualities as justice and mercy, if they really possess us, continue to live on under them, like flowers under the snow. the tribune could be inexorable, else he had not been fit for the usages of his calling; he could also be just; and to excite his sense of wrong was to put him in the way to right the wrong. the crews of the ships in which he served came after a time to speak of him as the good tribune. shrewd readers will not want a better definition of his character. in this instance there were many circumstances certainly in the young man's favour, and some to be supposed. possibly arrius knew valerius gratus without loving him. possibly he had known the elder hur. in the course of his appeal judah had asked him of that, and, as will be noticed, he had made no reply. for once the tribune was at loss, and hesitated. his power was ample. he was monarch of the ship. his prepossessions all moved him to mercy. his faith was won. yet, he said to himself, there was no hasteor, rather, there was haste to cythera; the best rower could not then be spared; he would wait; he would learn more; he would at least be sure this was the prince ben-hur, and that he was of a right disposition. ordinarily slaves were liars. "it is enough," he said aloud. "go back to thy place." ben-hur bowed, looked once more into the master's face, but saw nothing for hope. he turned away slowly, looked back, and said "if thou dost think of me again, o tribune, let it not be lost in thy mind that i prayed thee only for word of my peoplemother, sister." he moved on. arrius followed him with admiring eyes. "perpol!" he thought. "with teaching, what a man for the arena! what a runner! ye gods! what an arm for the sword or the cestus!stay!" he said aloud. ben-hur stopped, and the tribune went to him. "if thou wert free, what wouldst thou do?" "the noble arrius mocks me!" judah said, with trembling lips. "no; by the gods, no!" "then i will answer gladly. i would give myself to duty the first of life. i would know no other. i would know no rest until my mother and tirzah were restored to home. i would give every day and hour to their happiness. i would wait upon them; never a slave more faithful. they have lost much, but, by the god of my fathers, i would find them more!" the answer was unexpected by the roman. for a moment he lost his purpose. "i spoke to thy ambition," he said, recovering. "if thy mother and sister were dead, or not to be found, what wouldst thou do?" a distinct pallor overspread ben-hur's face, and he looked over the sea. there was a struggle with some strong feeling; when it was conquered, he turned to the tribune. "what pursuit would i follow?" he asked. "yes." "tribune, i will tell thee truly. only the night before the dreadful day of which i have spoken, i obtained permission to be a soldier. i am of the same mind yet; and, as in all the earth there is but one school of war, thither i would go." "the palaestra!" exclaimed arrius. "no; a roman camp." "but thou must first acquaint thyself with the use of arms." now a master may never safely advise a slave. arrius saw his indiscretion, and, in a breath, chilled his voice and manner. "go now," he said, "and do not build upon what has passed between us. perhaps i do but play with thee. or,"he looked away musingly"or, if thou dost think of it with any hope, choose between the renown of a gladiator and the service of a soldier. the former may come of the favour of the emperor; there is no reward for thee in the latter. thou art not a roman. go!" a short while after ben-hur was upon his bench again. a man's task is always light if his heart is light. handling the oar did not seem so toilsome to judah. a hope had come to him, like a singing bird. he could hardly see the visitor or hear its song; that it was there, though, he knew; his feelings told him so. the caution of the tribune"perhaps i do but play with thee"was dismissed often as it recurred to his mind. that he had been called by the great man and asked his story was the bread upon which he fed his hungry spirit. surely something good would come of it. the light about his bench was clear and bright with promises, and he prayed "o god! i am a true son of the israel thou hast so loved! help me, i pray thee!" chapter iv. "no. 60". in the bay of antemona, east of cythera the island, the hundred galleys assembled. there the tribune gave one day to inspection. he sailed then to naxos, the largest of the cyclades, midway the coasts of greece and asia, like a great stone planted in the centre of a highway, from which he could challenge everything that passed; at the same time he would be in position to go after the pirates instantly, whether they were in the aegean or out on the mediterranean. as the fleet, in order, rowed in towards the mountain shores of the island, a galley was descried coming from the north. arrius went to meet it. she proved to be a transport just from byzantium, and from her commander he learned the particulars of which he stood in most need. the pirates were from all the farther shores of the euxine. even tanais, at the mouth of the river which was supposed to feed palus maeotis, was represented among them. their preparations had been with the greatest secrecy. the first known of them was their appearance off the entrance to the thracian bosphorus, followed by the destruction of the fleet in station there. thence to the outlet of the hellespont everything afloat had fallen their prey. there were quite sixty galleys in the squadron, all well manned and supplied. a few were biremes, the rest stout triremes. a greek was in command, and the pilots, said to be familiar with all the eastern seas, were greek. the plunder had been incalculable. the panic, consequently, was not on the sea alone; cities, with closed gates, sent their people nightly to the walls. traffic had almost ceased. where were the pirates now? to this question, of most interest to arrius, he received answer. after sacking hephaestia, on the island of lemnos, the enemy had coursed across to the thessalian group, and, by last account, disappeared in the gulfs between euboea and hellas. such were the tidings. then the people of the island, drawn to the hill-tops by the rare spectacle of a hundred ships careering in united squadron, beheld the advance division suddenly turn to the north, and the others follow, wheeling upon the same point like cavalry in a column. news of the piratical descent had reached them, and now, watching the white sails until they faded from sight up between rhene and syros, the thoughtful among them took comfort, and were grateful. what rome seized with strong hand she always defended: in return for their taxes, she gave them safety. the tribune was more than pleased with the enemy's movements; he was doubly thankful to fortune. she had brought swift and sure intelligence, and had lured his foes into the waters where, of all others, destruction was most assured. he knew the havoc one galley could play in a broad sea like the mediterranean, and the difficulty of finding and overhauling her; he knew, also, how those very circumstances would enhance the service and glory if, at one blow, he could put a finish to the whole piratical array. if the reader will take a map of greece and the aegean, he will notice the island of euboea lying along the classic coast like a rampart against asia, leaving a channel between it and the continent quite a hundred and twenty miles in length, and scarcely an average of eight in width. the inlet on the north had admitted the fleet of xerxes, and now it received the bold raiders from the euxine. the towns along the pelasgic and meliac gulfs were rich and their plunder seductive. all things considered, therefore, arrius judged that the robbers might be found somewhere below thermopylae. welcoming the chance, he resolved to enclose them north and south, to do which not an hour could be lost; even the fruits and wines and women of naxos must be left behind. so he sailed away without stop or tack until, a little before nightfall, mount ocha was seen upreared against the sky, and the pilot reported the euboean coast. at a signal the fleet rested upon its oars. when the movement was resumed, arrius led a division of fifty of the galleys, intending to take them up the channel, while another division, equally strong, turned their prows to the outer or seaward side of the island, with orders to make all haste to the upper inlet, and descend sweeping the waters. to be sure, neither division was equal in number to the pirates; but each had advantages in compensation, among them, by no means least, a discipline impossible to a lawless horde, however brave. besides, it was a shrewd count on the tribune's side, if, peradventure, one should be defeated, the other would find the enemy shattered by his victory, and in condition to be easily overwhelmed. meanwhile ben-hur kept his bench, relieved every six hours. the rest in the bay of antemona had freshened him, so that the oar was not troublesome, and the chief on the platform found no fault. people, generally, are not aware of the ease of mind there is in knowing where they are, and where they are going. the sensation of being lost is a keen distress; still worse is the feeling one has in driving blindly into unknown places. custom had dulled the feeling with ben-hur, but only measurably. pulling away hour after hour, sometimes days and nights together, sensible all the time that the galley was gliding swiftly along some of the many tracks of the broad sea, the longing to know where he was, and whither going, was always present with him; but now it seemed quickened by the hope which had come to new life in his breast since the interview with the tribune. the narrower the abiding-place happens to be, the more intense is the longing; and so he found. he seemed to hear every sound of the ship in labour, and listened to each one as if it were a voice come to tell him something; he looked to the grating overhead, and through it into the light of which so small a portion was his, expecting, he knew not what; and many times he caught himself on the point of yielding to the impulse to speak to the chief on the platform, than which no circumstance of battle would have astonished that dignitary more. in his long service, by watching the shifting of the meagre sunbeams upon the cabin floor when the ship was under way, he had come to know, generally, the quarter into which she was sailing. this, of course, was only of clear days like those good fortune was sending the tribune. the experience had not failed him in the period succeeding the departure from cythera. thinking they were tending towards the old judean country, he was sensitive to every variation from the course. with a pang, he had observed the sudden change northward which, as has been noticed, took place near naxos: the cause, however, he could not even conjecture; for it must be remembered that, in common with his fellow-slaves, he knew nothing of the situation, and had no interest in the voyage. his place was at the oar, and he was held there inexorably, whether at anchor or under sail. once only in three years had he been permitted an outlook from the deck. the occasion we have seen. he had no idea that, following the vessel he was helping drive, there was a great squadron close at hand and in beautiful order; no more did he know the object of which it was in pursuit. when the sun, going down, withdrew his last ray from the cabin, the galley still held northward. night fell, yet ben-hur could discern no change. about that time the smell of incense floated down the gangways from the deck. "the tribune is at the altar," he thought. "can it be we are going into battle?" he became observant. now he had been in many battles without having seen one. from his bench he had heard them above and about him, until he was familiar with all their notes, almost as a singer with a song. so, too, he had become acquainted with many of the preliminaries of an engagement, of which, with a roman as well as a greek, the most invariable was the sacrifice to the gods. the rites were the same as those performed at the beginning of a voyage, and to him, when noticed, they were always an admonition. a battle, it should be observed, possessed for him and his fellow-slaves of the oar an interest unlike that of the sailor and marine; it came, not of the danger encountered, but of the fact that defeat, if survived, might bring an alteration of conditionpossibly freedomat least a change of masters, which might be for the better. in good time the lanterns were lighted and hung by the stairs, and the tribune came down from the deck. at his word the marines put on their armour. at his word again, the machines were looked to, and spears, javelins, and arrows, in great sheaves, brought and laid upon the floor, together with jars of inflammable oil, and baskets of cotton balls wound loose like the wicking of candles. and when, finally, ben-hur saw the tribune mount his platform and don his armour, and get his helmet and shield out, the meaning of the preparations might not be any longer doubted, and he made ready for the last ignominy of his service. to every bench, as a fixture, there was a chain with heavy anklets. these the hortator proceeded to lock upon the oarsmen, going from number to number, leaving no choice but to obey, and, in event of disaster, no possibility of escape. in the cabin, then, a silence fell, broken, at first, only by the sough of the oars turning in the leathern cases. every man upon the benches felt the shame, ben-hur more keenly than his companions. he would have put it away at any price. soon the clanking of the fetters notified him of the progress the chief was making in his round. he would come to him in turn; but would not the tribune interpose for him? the thought may be set down to vanity or selfishness, as the reader pleases; it certainly, at that moment, took possession of ben-hur. he believed the roman would interpose; anyhow, the circumstance would test the man's feelings. if, intent upon the battle, he would but think of him, it would be proof of his opinion formedproof that he had been tacitly promoted above his associates in miserysuch proof as would justify hope. ben-hur waited anxiously. the interval seemed like an age. at every turn of the oar he looked towards the tribune, who, his simple preparations made, lay down upon the couch and composed himself to rest; whereupon number sixty chid himself, and laughed grimly, and resolved not to look that way again. the hortator approached. now he was at number onethe rattle of the iron links sounded horribly. at last number sixty! calm from despair, ben-hur held his oar at poise, and gave his foot to the officer. then the tribune stirredsat upbeckoned to the chief. a strong revulsion seized the jew. from the hortator the great man glanced at him; and when he dropped his oar all the section of the ship on his side seemed aglow. he heard nothing of what was said; enough that the chain hung idly from its staple in the bench, and that the chief, going to his seat, began to beat the sounding-board. the notes of the gavel were never so like music. with his breast against the leaded handle, he pushed with all his mightpushed until the shaft bent as if about to break. the chief went to the tribune, and, smiling, pointed to number sixty. "what strength!" he said. "and what spirit!" the tribune answered. "perpol! he is better without the irons. put them on him no more." so saying, he stretched himself upon the couch again. the ship sailed on hour after hour under the oars in water scarcely rippled by the wind. and the people not on duty slept, arrius in his place, the marines on the floor. oncetwiceben-hur was relieved; but he could not sleep. three years of night, and through the darkness a sunbeam at last! at sea adrift and lost, and now land! dead so long, and, lo! the thrill and stir of resurrection. sleep was not for such an hour. hope deals with the future; now and the past are but servants that wait on her with impulse and suggestive circumstance. starting from the favour of the tribune, she carried him forward indefinitely. the wonder is, not that things so purely imaginative as the results she points us to can make us so happy, but that we can receive them as so real. they must be as gorgeous poppies under the influence of which, under the crimson and purple and gold, reason lies down the while, and is not. sorrows assuaged; home and the fortunes of his house restored; mother and sister in his arms once moresuch were the central ideas which made him happier that moment than he had ever been. that he was rushing, as on wings, into horrible battle had, for the time, nothing to do with his thoughts. the things thus in hope were unmixed with doubtsthey were. hence his joy so full, so perfect, there was no room in his heart for revenge. messala, gratus, rome, and all the bitter, passionate memories connected with them, were as dead plaguesmiasms of the earth above which he floated. far and safe, listening to singing stars. the deeper darkness before the dawn was upon the waters, and all things going well with the astraea, when a man, descending from the deck, walked swiftly to the platform where the tribune slept, and awoke him. arrius arose, put on his helmet, sword, and shield, and went to the commander of the marines. "the pirates are close by. up and ready!" he said, and passed to the stairs, calm, confident, insomuch that one might have thought, "happy fellow! apicius has set a feast for him." chapter v. the sea fight. every soul aboard, even the ship, awoke. officers went to their quarters. the marines took arms, and were led out, looking in all respects like legionaries. sheaves of arrows and armfuls of javelins were carried on deck. by the central stairs the oil-tanks and fireballs were set ready for use. additional lanterns were lighted. buckets were filled with water. the rowers in relief assembled under guard in front of the chief. as providence would have it, ben-hur was one of the latter. overhead he heard the muffled noises of the final preparationsof the sailors furling sail, spreading the nettings, unslinging the machines, and hanging the armour of bull-hide over the sides. presently quiet settled about the galley again; quiet full of vague dread and expectation, which, interpreted, means ready. at a signal passed down from the deck, and communicated to the hortator by a petty officer stationed on the stairs, all at once the oars stopped. what did it mean? of the hundred and twenty slaves chained to the benches, not one but asked himself the question. they were without incentive. patriotism, love of honour, sense of duty, brought them no inspiration. they felt the thrill common to men rushed helpless and blind into danger. it may be supposed the dullest of them, poising his oar, thought of all that might happen, yet could promise himself nothing; for victory would but rivet his chains the firmer, while the chances of the ship were his; sinking or on fire, he was doomed to her fate. of the situation without they might not ask, and who were the enemy? and what if they were friends, brethren, countrymen? the reader, carrying the suggestion forward, will see the necessity which governed the roman when, in such emergencies, he locked the hapless wretches to their seats. there was little time, however, for such thought with them. a sound like the rowing of galleys astern attracted ben-hur, and the astraea rocked as if in the midst of countering waves. the idea of a fleet at hand broke upon hima fleet in manoeuvreforming probably for attack. his blood started with the fancy. another signal came down from the deck. the oars dipped, and the galley started imperceptibly. no sound from without, none from within, yet each man in the cabin instinctively poised himself for a shock; the very ship seemed to catch the sense, and hold its breath, and go crouched tiger-like. in such a situation time is inappreciable; so that ben-hur could form no judgment of distance gone. at last there was a sound of trumpets on deck, full, clear, long blown. the chief beat the sounding-board until it rang; the rowers reached forward full length, and, deepening the dip of their oars, pulled suddenly with all their united force. the galley, quivering in every timber, answered with a leap. other trumpets joined in the clamourall from the rear, none forwardfrom the latter quarter only a rising sound of voices in tumult heard briefly. there was a mighty blow; the rowers in front of the chief's platform reeled, some of them fell; the ship bounded back, recovered, and rushed on more irresistibly than before. shrill and high arose the shrieks of men in terror; over the blare of trumpets, and the grind and crash of the collision, they arose; then under his feet, under the keel, pounding, rumbling, breaking to pieces, drowning, ben-hur felt something overridden. the men about him looked at each other afraid. a shout of triumph from the deckthe beak of the roman had won! but who were they whom the sea had drunk? of what tongue, from what land were they? no pause, no stay! forward rushed the astraea; and, as it went, some sailors ran down, and plunging the cotton balls into the oil-tanks, tossed them dripping to comrades at the head of the stairs: fire was to be added to other horrors of the combat. directly the galley heeled over so far that the oarsmen on the uppermost side with difficulty kept their benches. again the hearty roman cheer, and with it, despairing shrieks. an opposing vessel, caught by the grappling-hooks of the great crane swinging from the prow, was being lifted into the air that it might be dropped and sunk. the shouting increased on the right hand and on the left; before, behind, swelled an indescribable clamour. occasionally there was a crash, followed by sudden peals of fright, telling of other ships ridden down, and their crews drowned in the vortexes. nor was the fight all on one side. now and then a roman in armour was borne down the hatchway, and laid bleeding, sometimes dying, on the floor. sometimes, also, puffs of smoke, blended with steam, and foul with the scent of roasting human flesh, poured into the cabin, turning the dimming light into yellow murk. gasping for breath the while, ben-hur knew they were passing through the cloud of a ship on fire, and burning up with the rowers chained to the benches. the astraea all this time was in motion. suddenly she stopped. the oars forward were dashed from the hands of the rowers, and the rowers from their benches. on deck, then, a furious trampling, and on the sides a grinding of ships afoul of each other. for the first time the beating of the gavel was lost in the uproar. men sank on the floor in fear or looked about seeking a hiding-place. in the midst of the panic a body plunged or was pitched headlong down the hatchway, falling near ben-hur. he beheld the half-naked carcass, a mass of hair blackening the face, and under it a shield of bull-hide and wicker-worka barbarian from the white-skinned nations of the north whom death had robbed of plunder and revenge. how came he there? an iron hand had snatched him from the opposing deckno, the astraea had been boarded! the romans were fighting on their own deck? a chill smote the young jew: arrius was hard pressedhe might be defending his own life. if he should be slain! god of abraham forefend! the hopes and dreams so lately come, were they only hopes and dreams? mother and sisterhousehomeholy landwas he not to see them, after all? the tumult thundered above him; he looked around; in the cabin all was confusionthe rowers on the benches paralyzed; men running blindly hither and thither; only the chief on his seat imperturbable, vainly beating the sounding-board, and waiting the orders of the tribunein the red murk illustrating the matchless discipline which had won the world. the example had a good effect upon ben-hur. he controlled himself enough to think. honour and duty bound the roman to the platform; but what had he to do with such motives then? the bench was a thing to run from; while, if he were to die a slave, who would be the better of the sacrifice? with him living was duty, if not honour. his life belonged to his people. they arose before him never more real: he saw them, their arms outstretched; he heard them imploring him. and he would go to them. he startedstopped. alas! a roman judgment held him in doom. while it endured, escape would be profitless. in the wide, wide earth there was no place in which he would be safe from the imperial demand; upon the land none, nor upon the sea. whereas he required freedom according to the forms of law, so only could he abide in judea and execute the filial purpose to which he would devote himself: in other land he would not live. dear god! how he had waited and watched and prayed for such a release! and how it had been delayed! but at last he had seen it in the promise of the tribune. what else the great man's meaning? and if the benefactor so belated should now be slain! the dead come not back to redeem the pledges of the living. it should not bearrius should not die. at least, better perish with him than survive a galley-slave. once more ben-hur looked around. upon the roof of the cabin the battle yet beat; against the sides the hostile vessels yet crushed and grided. on the benches the slaves struggled to tear loose from their chains, and, finding their efforts vain, howled like madmen; the guards had gone upstairs; discipline was out, panic in. no, the chief kept his chair, unchanged, calm as everexcept the gavel, weaponless. vainly with his clangour he filled the lulls in the din. ben-hur gave him a last look, then broke awaynot in flight, but to seek the tribune. a very short space lay between him and the stairs of the hatchway aft. he took it with a leap, and was half-way up the stepsup far enough to catch a glimpse of the sky blood-red with fire, of the ships alongside, of the sea covered with ships and wrecks, of the fight closed in about the pilot's quarter, the assailants many, the defenders fewwhen suddenly his foothold was knocked away, and he pitched backward. the floor, when he reached it, seemed to be lifting itself and breaking to pieces; then, in a twinkling, the whole after-part of the hull broke asunder, and, as if it had all the time been lying in wait, the sea, hissing and foaming, leaped in, and all became darkness and surging water to ben-hur. it cannot be said that the young jew helped himself in this stress. besides his usual strength, he had the indefinite extra force which nature keeps in reserve for just such perils to life; yet the darkness, and the whirl and roar of water, stupefied him. even the holding of his breath was involuntary. the influx of the flood tossed him like a log forward into the cabin, where he would have drowned but for the refluence of the sinking motion. as it was, fathoms under the surface the hollow mass vomited him forth, and he arose along with the loosed debris. in the act of rising he clutched something, and held to it. the time he was under seemed an age longer than it really was; at last he gained the top; with a great gasp he filled his lungs afresh, and, tossing the water from his hair and eyes, climbed higher upon the plank he held, and looked about him. death had pursued him closely under the waves; he found it waiting for him when he was risenwaiting multiform. smoke lay upon the sea like a semi-transparent fog, through which here and there shone cores of intense brilliance. a quick intelligence told him that they were ships on fire. the battle was yet on; nor could he say who was victor. within the radius of his vision now and then ships passed, shooting shadows athwart lights. out of the dun clouds farther on he caught the crash of other ships colliding. the danger, however, was closer at hand. when the astraea went down, her deck, it will be recollected, held her own crew, and the crews of the two galleys which had attacked her at the same time, all of whom were ingulfed. many of them came to the surface together, and on the same plank or support of whatever kind continued the combat, begun possibly in the vortex fathoms down. writhing and twisting in deadly embrace, sometimes striking with sword or javelin, they kept the sea around them in agitation, at one place inky-black, at another aflame with fiery reflections. with their struggles he had nothing to do; they were all his enemies: not one of them but would kill him for the plank upon which he floated. he made haste to get away. about that time he heard oars in quickest movement, and beheld a galley coming down upon him. the tall prow seemed doubly tall, and the red light playing upon its gilt and carving gave it an appearance of snaky life. under its foot the water churned to flying foam. he struck out, pushing the plank, which was very broad and unmanageable. seconds were precioushalf a second might save or lose him. in the crisis of the effort, up from the sea, within arm's reach, a helmet shot like a gleam of gold. next came two hands with fingers extendedlarge hands were they, and strongtheir hold once fixed, might not be loosed. ben-hur swerved from them appalled. up rose the helmet and the head it encasedthen two arms, which began to beat the water wildlythe head turned back, and gave the face to the light. the mouth gaping wide; the eyes open, but sightless, and the bloodless pallor of a drowning mannever anything more ghastly! yet he gave a cry of joy at the sight, and as the face was going under again, he caught the sufferer by the chain which passed from the helmet beneath the chin, and drew him to the plank. the man was arrius, the tribune. for a while the water foamed and eddied violently about ben-hur, taxing all his strength to hold to the support and at the same time keep the roman's head above the surface. the galley had passed, leaving the two barely outside the stroke of its oars. right through the floating men, over heads helmeted as well as heads bare, she drove, in her wake nothing but the sea sparkling with fire. a muffled crash, succeeded by a great outcry, made the rescuer look again from his charge. a certain savage pleasure touched his heartthe astraea was avenged. after that the battle moved on. resistance turned to flight. but who were the victors? ben-hur was sensible how much his freedom and the life of the tribune depended upon that event. he pushed the plank under the latter until it floated him, after which all his care was to keep him there. the dawn came slowly. he watched its growing hopefully, yet sometimes afraid. would it bring the romans or the pirates? if the pirates, his charge was lost. at last morning broke in full, the air without a breath. off to the left he saw the land, too far to think of attempting to make it. here and there men were adrift like himself. in spots the sea was blackened by charred and sometimes smoking fragments. a galley up a long way was lying to with a torn sail hanging from the tilted yard, and the oars all idle. still farther away he could discern moving specks, which he thought might be ships in flight or pursuit, or they might be white birds awing. an hour passed thus. his anxiety increased. if relief came not speedily, arrius would die. sometimes he seemed already dead, he lay so still. he took the helmet off, and then, with greater difficulty, the cuirass; the heart he found fluttering. he took hope at the sign, and held on. there was nothing to do but wait, and, after the manner of his people, pray. chapter vi. arrius adopts ben-hur. the throes of recovery from drowning are more painful than the drowning. these arrius passed through, and, at length, to ben-hur's delight, reached the point of speech. gradually, from incoherent questions as to where he was, and by whom and how he had been saved, he reverted to the battle. the doubt of the victory stimulated his faculties to full return, a result aided not a little by a long restsuch as could be had on their frail support. after a while he became talkative. "our rescue, i see, depends upon the result of the fight. i see also what thou hast done for me. to speak fairly, thou hast saved my life at the risk of thy own. i make the acknowledgment broadly; and, whatever cometh, thou hast my thanks. more than that, if fortune doth but serve me kindly, and we get well out of this peril, i will do thee such favour as becometh a roman who hath power and opportunity to prove his gratitude. yet, yet it is to be seen if, with thy good intent, thou hast really done me a kindness; or, rather, speaking to thy good-will"he hesitated"i would exact of thee a promise to do me, in a certain event, the greatest favour one man can do anotherand of that let me have thy pledge now." "if the thing be not forbidden, i will do it," ben-hur replied. arrius rested again. "art thou, indeed, a son of hur, the jew?" he next asked. "it is as i have said." "i knew thy father" judah drew himself nearer, for the tribune's voice was weakhe drew nearer, and listened eagerlyat last he thought to hear of home. "i knew him, and loved him," arrius continued. there was another pause, during which something diverted the speaker's thought. "it cannot be," he proceeded, "that thou, a son of his, hast not heard of cato and brutus. they were very great men, and never as great as in death. in their dying, they left this lawa roman may not survive his good fortune. art thou listening?" "i hear." "it is a custom of gentlemen in rome to wear a ring. there is one on my hand. take it now." he held the hand to judah, who did as he asked. "now put it on thine own hand." ben-hur did so. "the trinket hath its uses," said arrius next. "i have property and money. i am accounted rich even in rome. i have no family. show the ring to my freedman who hath control in my absence; you will find him in a villa near misenum. tell him how it came to thee, and ask anything, or all he may have; he will not refuse the demand. if i live, i will do better by thee. i will make thee free, and restore thee to thy home and people; or thou mayst give thyself to the pursuit that pleaseth thee most. dost thou hear?" "i could not choose but hear." "then pledge me. by the gods" "nay, good tribune, i am a jew." "by thy god, then, or in the form most sacred to those of thy faithpledge me to do what i tell thee now, and as i tell thee; i am waiting, let me have thy promise." "noble arrius, i am warned by thy manner to expect something of gravest concern. tell me thy wish first." "wilt thou promise, then?" "that were to give the pledge, andblessed be the god of my fathers! yonder cometh a ship!" "in what direction?""from the north.""canst thou tell her nationality by outward signs?""no. my service hath been at the oars.""hath she a flag?""i cannot see one." arrius remained quiet some time, apparently in deep reflection. "does the ship hold this way yet?" he at length asked."still this way.""look for the flag now.""she hath none.""nor any other sign?" "she hath a sail set, and is of three banks, and cometh swiftlythat is all i can say of her." "a roman in triumph would have out many flags. she must be an enemy. hear, now," said arrius, becoming grave again, "hear, while yet i may speak. if the galley be a pirate, thy life is safe; they may not give thee freedom; they may put thee to the oar again; but they will not kill thee. on the other hand, i" the tribune faltered. "perpol!" he continued, resolutely. "i am too old to submit to dishonour. in rome let them tell how quintus arrius, as became a roman tribune, went down with his ship in the midst of the foe. this is what i would have thee do. if the galley prove a pirate, push me from the plank and drown me. dost thou hear? swear thou wilt do it." "i will not swear," said ben-hur, firmly; "neither will i do the deed. the law, which is to me most binding, o tribune, would make me answerable for thy life. take back the ring"he took the seal from his finger"take it back, and all thy promises of favour in the event of delivery from this peril. the judgment which sent me to the oar for life made me a slave, yet i am not a slave; no more am i thy freedman. i am a son of israel, and this moment, at least, my own master. take back the ring." arrius remained passive. "thou wilt not?" judah continued. "not in anger, then, nor in any despite, but to free myself from a hateful obligation, i will give thy gift to the sea. see, o tribune!" he tossed the ring away. arrius heard the splash where it struck and sank, though he did not look. "thou hast done a foolish thing," he said"foolish for one placed as thou art. i am not dependent upon thee for death. life is a thread i can break without thy help; and, if i do, what will become of thee? men determined on death prefer it at the hands of others, for the reason that the soul which plato giveth us is rebellious at the thought of self-destruction; that is all. if the ship be a pirate, i will escape from the world. my mind is fixed. i am a roman. success and honour are all in all. yet i would have served thee; thou wouldst not. the ring was the only witness of my will available in this situation. we are both lost. i will die regretting the victory and glory wrested from me; thou wilt live to die a little later, mourning the pious duties undone because of this folly. i pity thee." ben-hur saw the consequences of his act more distinctly than before, yet he did not falter. "in the three years of my servitude, o tribune, thou wert the first to look upon me kindly. no, no! there was another." the voice dropped, the eyes became humid, and he saw plainly, as if it were then before him, the face of the boy who helped him to a drink by the old well at nazareth. "at least," he proceeded, "thou wert the first to ask me who i was; and if, when i reached out and caught thee, blind and sinking the last time, i, too, had thought of the many ways in which thou couldst be useful to me in my wretchedness, still the act was not all selfish; this i pray you to believe. moreover, seeing as god giveth me to now, the ends i dream of are to be wrought by fair means alone. as a thing of conscience i would rather die with thee than be thy slayer. my mind is firmly set as thine; though thou wert to offer me all rome, o tribune, and it belonged to thee to make the gift good, i would not kill thee. thy cato and brutus were as little children compared to the hebrew whose law a jew must obey." "but my request. hast" "thy command would be of more weight, and that would not move me. i have said." both became silent, waiting. ben-hur looked often at the coming ship. arrius rested with closed eyes, indifferent. "art thou sure she is an enemy?" ben-hur asked."i think so," was the reply."she stops, and puts a boat over the side.""dost thou see her flag?" "is there no other sign by which she may be known if roman?""if roman, she hath a helmet over the mast's top.""then be of cheer. i see the helmet." still arrius was not assured. "the men in the small boat are taking in the people afloat. pirates are not humane." "they may need rowers," arrius replied, recurring, possibly, to times when he had made rescues for the purpose. ben-hur was very watchful of the actions of the strangers. "the ship moves off," he said. "whither?" "over on our right there is a galley which i take to be deserted. the new-comer heads towards it. now she is alongside. now she is sending men aboard." then arrius opened his eyes and threw off his calm. "thank thou thy god," he said to ben-hur, after a look at the galleys, "thank thou thy god, as i do my many gods. a pirate would sink, not save, yon ship. by the act and the helmet on the mast i know a roman. the victory is mine. fortune hath not deserted me. we are saved. wave thy handcall to thembring them quickly. i shall be duumvir, and thou! i knew thy father, and loved him. he was a prince indeed. he taught me a jew was not a barbarian. i will take thee with me. i will make thee my son. give thy god thanks, and call the sailors. haste! the pursuit must be kept. not a robber shall escape. hasten them!" judah raised himself upon the plank, and waved his hand, and called with all his might; at last he drew the attention of the sailors in the small boat, and they were speedily taken up. arrius was received on the galley with all the honours due a hero so the favourite of fortune. upon a couch on the deck he heard the particulars of the conclusion of the fight. when the survivors afloat upon the water were all saved and the prize secured, he spread his flag of commandant anew, and hurried northward to rejoin the fleet and perfect the victory. in due time the fifty vessels coming down the channel closed in upon the fugitive pirates, and crushed them utterly; not one escaped. to swell the tribune's glory, twenty galleys of the enemy were captured. upon his return from the cruise, arrius had warm welcome on the mole at misenum. the young man attending him very early attracted the attention of his friends there; and to their questions as to who he was the tribune proceeded in the most affectionate manner to tell the story of his rescue and introduce the stranger, omitting carefully all that pertained to the latter's previous history. at the end of the narrative, he called ben-hur to him, and said, with a hand resting affectionately upon his shoulder "good friends, this is my son and heir, who, as he is to take my propertyif it be the will of the gods that i leave anyshall be known to you by my name. i pray you all to love him as you love me." speedily as opportunity permitted, the adoption was formally perfected. and in such manner the brave roman kept his faith with ben-hur, giving him happy introduction into the imperial world. the month succeeding arrius's return the armilustrium was celebrated with the utmost magnificence in the theatre at scaurus. one side of the structure was taken up with military trophies; among which by far the most conspicuous and most admired were twenty prows, complemented by their corresponding aplustra, cut bodily from as many galleys; and over them, so as to be legible to the eighty thousand spectators in the seats, was this inscription: taken from the pirates in the gulf of euripus, by quintus arrius, duumvir. book fourth. "alva. should the monarch prove unjust and, at this time "queen. then i must wait for justice until it come; and they are happiest far whose consciences may calmly wait their right." -schiller, don carlos (act iv. sc. 15). chapter i. ben-hur returns east. the month to which we now come is july, the year that of our lord 23, and the place antioch, then queen of the east, and next to rome the strongest, if not the most populous, city in the world. there is an opinion that the extravagance and dissoluteness of the age had their origin in rome, and spread thence throughout the empire; that the great cities but reflected the manners of their mistress on the tiber. this may be doubted. the reaction of the conquest would seem to have been upon the morals of the conqueror. in greece she found a spring of corruption; so also in egypt; and the student, having exhausted the subject, will close the books assured that the flow of the demoralizing river was from the east westwardly, and that this very city of antioch, one of the oldest seats of assyrian power and splendour, was a principal source of the deadly stream. a transport galley entered the mouth of the river orontes from the blue waters of the sea. it was in the forenoon. the heat was great, yet all on board who could avail themselves of the privilege were on deckben-hur among others. the five years had brought the young jew to perfect manhood. though the robe of white linen in which he was attired somewhat masked his form, his appearance was unusually attractive. for an hour and more he had occupied a seat in the shade of the sail, and in that time several fellow-passengers of his own nationality had tried to engage him in conversation, but without avail. his replies to their questions had been brief, though gravely courteous, and in the latin tongue. the purity of his speech, his cultivated manners, his reticence, served to stimulate their curiosity the more. such as observed him closely were struck by an incongruity between his demeanour, which had the ease and grace of a patrician, and certain points of his person. thus, his arms were disproportionately long; and when, to steady himself against the motion of the vessel, he took hold of anything near by, the size of his hands and their evident power compelled remark; so the wonder who and what he was mixed continually with a wish to know the particulars of his life. in other words, his air cannot be better described than as a noticethis man has a story to tell. the galley, in coming, had stopped at one of the ports of cyprus, and picked up a hebrew of most respectable appearance, quiet, reserved, paternal. ben-hur ventured to ask him some questions; the replies won his confidence, and resulted finally in an extended conversation. it chanced also that as the galley from cyprus entered the receiving bay of the orontes, two other vessels which had been sighted out in the sea met it and passed into the river at the same time; and as they did so both the strangers threw out small flags of brightest yellow. there was much conjecture as to the meaning of the signals. at length a passenger addressed himself to the respectable hebrew for information upon the subject. "yes, i know the meaning of the flags," he replied; "they do not signify nationalitythey are merely marks of ownership." "has the owner many ships?" "he has." "you know him?" "i have dealt with him." the passengers looked at the speaker as if requesting him to go on. ben-hur listened with interest. "he lives in antioch," the hebrew continued, in his quiet way. "that he is vastly rich has brought him into notice, and the talk about him is not always kind. there used to be in jerusalem a prince of a very ancient family named hur." judah strove to be composed, yet his heart beat quicker. "the prince was a merchant with a genius for business. he set on foot many enterprises, some reaching far east, others west. in the great cities he had branch houses. the one in antioch was in charge of a man said by some to have been a family servant called simonides, greek in name, yet an israelite. the master was drowned at sea. his business, however, went on, and was scarcely less prosperous. after a while misfortune overtook the family. the prince's only son, nearly grown, tried to kill the procurator gratus in one of the streets of jerusalem. he failed by a narrow chance, and has not since been heard of. in fact, the roman's rage took in the whole housenot one of the name was left alive. their palace was sealed up, and is now a rookery for pigeons; the estate was confiscated; everything that could be traced to the ownership of the hurs was confiscated. the procurator cured his hurt with a golden salve." the passengers laughed. "you mean he kept the property," said one of them. "they say so," the hebrew replied; "i am only telling a story as i received it. and, to go on, simonides, who had been the prince's agent here in antioch, opened trade in a short time on his own account, and in a space incredibly brief became the master merchant of the city. in imitation of his master, he sent caravans to india; and on the sea at present he has galleys enough to make a royal fleet. they say nothing goes amiss with him. his camels do not die, except of old age; his ships never founder; if he throw a chip into the river, it will come back to him gold." "how long has he been going on thus?" "not ten years." "he must have had a good start." "yes, they say the procurator took only the prince's property ready at handhis horses, cattle, houses, land, vessels, goods. the money could not be found, though there must have been vast sums of it. what became of it has been an unsolved mystery." "not to me," said a passenger, with a sneer. "i understand you," the hebrew answered. "others have had your idea. that it furnished old simonides his start is a common belief. the procurator is of that opinionor he has beenfor twice in five years he has caught the merchant, and put him to torture." judah griped the rope he was holding with crushing force. "it is said," the narrator continued, "that there is not a sound bone in the man's body. the last time i saw him he sat in a chair, a shapeless cripple, propped against cushions." "so tortured!" exclaimed several listeners in a breath. "disease could not have produced such a deformity. still the suffering made no impression upon him. all he had was his lawfully, and he was making lawful use of itthat was the most they wrung from him. now, however, he is past persecution. he has a license to trade signed by tiberius himself." "he paid roundly for it, i warrant." "these ships are his," the hebrew continued, passing the remark. "it is a custom among his sailors to salute each other upon meeting by throwing out yellow flags, sight of which is as much as to say, 'we have had a fortunate voyage.'" the story ended there. when the transport was fairly in the channel of the river, judah spoke to the hebrew. "what was the name of the merchant's master?" "ben-hur, prince of jerusalem." "what became of the prince's family?" "the boy was sent to the galleys. i may say he is dead. one year is the ordinary limit of life under that sentence. the widow and daughter have not been heard of; those who know what became of them will not speak. they died, doubtless, in the cells of one of the castles which spot the waysides of judea." judah walked to the pilot's quarter. so absorbed was he in thought that he scarcely noticed the shores of the river, which from sea to city were surpassingly beautiful with orchards of all the syrian fruits and vines, clustered about villas rich as those of neapolis. no more did he observe the vessels passing in an endless fleet, nor hear the singing and shouting of the sailors, some in labour, some in merriment. the sky was full of sunlight, lying in hazy warmth upon the land and the water; nowhere except over his life was there a shadow. once only he awoke to a momentary interest, and that was when some one pointed out the grove of daphne, discernible from a bend in the river. chapter ii. on the orontes. when the city came into view, the passengers were on deck, eager that nothing of the scene might escape them. the respectable jew already introduced to the reader was the principal spokesman. "the river here runs to the west," he said, in the way of general answer. "i remember when it washed the base of the walls; but as roman subjects we have lived in peace, and, as always happens in such times, trade has had its will; now the whole river front is taken up with wharves and docks. yonder"the speaker pointed southward"is mount casius, or, as these people love to call it, the mountains of orontes, looking across to its brother amnus in the north; and between them lies the plain of antioch. farther on are the black mountains, whence the ducts of the kings bring the purest water to wash the thirsty streets and people; yet they are forests in wilderness state, dense, and full of birds and beasts." "where is the lake?" one asked. "over north there. you can take horse, if you wish to see itor, better, a boat, for a tributary connects it with the river." "the grove of daphne!" he said, to a third inquirer. "nobody can describe it; only beware! it was begun by apollo, and completed by him. he prefers it to olympus. people go there for one lookjust oneand never come away. they have a saying which tells it all'better be a worm and feed on the mulberries of daphne than a king's guest.'" "then you advise me to stay away from it?" "not i! go you will. everybody goes, cynic philosopher, virile boy, women, and priestsall go. so sure am i of what you will do that i assume to advise you. do not take quarters in the citythat will be loss of time; but go at once to the village in the edge of the grove. the way is through a garden, under the spray of fountains. the lovers of the god and his penaean maid built the town; and in its porticos and paths and thousand retreats you will find characters and habits and sweets and kinds elsewhere impossible. but the wall of the city! there it is, the masterpiece of xeraeus, the master of mural architecture." all eyes followed his pointing finger. "this part was raised by order of the first of the seleucidae. three hundred years have made it part of the rock it rests upon." the defence justified the encomium. high, solid, and with many bold angles, it curved southwardly out of view. "on the top there are four hundred towers, each a reservoir of water," the hebrew continued. "look now! over the wall, tall as it is, see in the distance two hills, which you may know as the rival crests of sulpius. the structure on the farthest one is the citadel, garrisoned all the year round by a roman legion. opposite it this way rises the temple of jupiter, and under that the front of the legate's residencea palace full of offices, and yet a fortress against which a mob would dash harmlessly as a south wind." at this point the sailors began taking in sail, whereupon the hebrew exclaimed, heartily, "see! you who hate the sea, and you who have vows, get ready your curses and your prayers. the bridge yonder, over which the road to seleucia is carried, marks the limit of navigation. what the ship unloads for further transit, the camel takes up there. above the bridge begins the island upon which calinicus built his new city, connecting it with five great viaducts so solid time has made no impression upon them, nor floods nor earthquakes. of the main town, my friends, i have only to say you will be happier all your lives for having seen it." as he concluded, the ship turned and made slowly for her wharf under the wall, bringing even more fairly to view the life with which the river at that point was possessed. finally, the lines were thrown, the oars shipped, and the voyage was done. then ben-hur sought the respectable hebrew. "let me trouble you a moment before saying farewell." the man bowed assent. "your story of the merchant has made me curious to see him. you called him simonides?" "yes. he is a jew with a greek name." "where is he to be found?" the acquaintance gave a sharp look before he answered "i may save you mortification. he is not a money-lender." "nor am i a money-borrower," said ben-hur, smiling at the other's shrewdness. the man raised his head and considered an instant. "one would think," he then replied, "that the richest merchant in antioch would have a house for business corresponding to his wealth; but if you would find him in the day, follow the river to yon bridge, under which he quarters in a building that looks like a buttress of the wall. before the door there is an immense landing, always covered with cargoes come and to go. the fleet that lies moored there is his. you cannot fail to find him." "i give you thanks." "the peace of our fathers go with you." "and with you." with that they separated. two street-porters, loaded with his baggage, received ben-hur's orders upon the wharf. "to the citadel," he said; a direction which implied an official military connection. two great streets, cutting each other at right angles, divided the city into quarters. a curious and immense structure, called the nymphaeum, arose at the foot of the one running north and south. when the porters turned south there, the new-comer, though fresh from rome, was amazed at the magnificence of the avenue. on the right and left there were palaces, and between them extended indefinitely double colonnades of marble, leaving separate ways for footmen, beasts, and chariots; the whole under shade, and cooled by fountains of incessant flow. ben-hur was not in mood to enjoy the spectacle. the story of simonides haunted him. arrived at the omphalusa monument of four arches wide as the streets, superbly illustrated, and erected to himself by epiphanes, the eighth of the seleucidaehe suddenly changed his mind. "i will not go to the citadel to-night," he said to the porters. "take me to the khan nearest the bridge on the road to seleucia." the party faced about, and in good time he was deposited in a public house of primitive but ample construction, within stone's-throw of the bridge under which old simonides had his quarters. he lay upon the house-top through the night. in his inner mind lived the thought, "nownow i will hear of homeand motherand the dear little tirzah. if they are on earth, i will find them." chapter iii. the demand on simonides. next day early, to the neglect of the city, ben-hur sought the house of simonides. through an embattled gateway he passed to a continuity of wharves; thence up the river midst a busy press, to the seleucian bridge, under which he paused to take in the scene. there, directly under the bridge, was the merchant's house, a mass of grey stone, unhewn, referrible to no style, looking, as the voyager had described it, like a buttress of the wall against which it leaned. two immense doors in front communicated with the wharf. some holes near the top, heavily barred, served as windows. weeds waved from the crevices, and in places black moss splotched the otherwise bald stones. the doors were open. through one of them business went in; through the other it came out; and there was hurry, hurry in all its movements. on the wharf there were piles of goods in every kind of package, and groups of slaves, stripped to the waist, going about in the abandon of labour. below the bridge lay a fleet of galleys, some loading, others unloading. a yellow flag blew out from each mast-head. from fleet and wharf, and from ship to ship, the bondmen of traffic passed in clamorous counter-currents. above the bridge, across the river, a wall rose from the water's edge, over which towered the fanciful cornices and turrets of an imperial palace, covering every foot of the island spoken of in the hebrew's description. but, with all its suggestions, ben-hur scarcely noticed it. now, at last, he thought to hear of his peoplethis certainly, if simonides had indeed been his father's slave. but would the man acknowledge the relation? that would be to give up his riches and the sovereignty of trade so royally witnessed on the wharf and river. and what was of still greater consequence to the merchant, it would be to forego his career in the midst of amazing success, and yield himself voluntarily once more a slave. simple thought of the demand seemed a monstrous audacity. stripped of diplomatic address, it was to say, you are my slave; give me all you have, andyourself. yet ben-hur derived strength for the interview from faith in his rights and the hope uppermost in his heart. if the story to which he was yielding were true, simonides belonged to him, with all he had. for the wealth, be it said in justice, he cared nothing. when he started to the door determined in mind, it was with a promise to himself"let him tell me of mother and tirzah, and i will give him his freedom without account." he passed boldly into the house. the interior was that of a vast depot where, in ordered spaces, and under careful arrangement, goods of every kind were heaped and pent. though the light was murky and the air stifling, men moved about briskly; and in places he saw workmen with saws and hammers making packages for shipments. down a path between the piles he walked slowly, wondering if the man of whose genius there were here such abounding proofs could have been his father's slave? if so, to what class had he belonged? if a jew, was he the son of a servant? or was he a debtor or a debtor's son? or had he been sentenced and sold for theft? these thoughts, as they passed, in nowise disturbed the growing respect for the merchant of which he was each instant more and more conscious. a peculiarity of our admiration for another is that it is always looking for circumstances to justify itself. at length a man approached and spoke to him. "what would you have?" "i would see simonides, the merchant." "will you come this way?" by a number of paths left in the stowage, they finally came to a flight of steps; ascending which, he found himself on the roof of the depot, and in front of a structure which cannot be better described than as a lesser stone house built upon another, invisible from the landing below, and out west of the bridge under the open sky. the roof, hemmed in by a low wall, seemed like a terrace, which, to his astonishment, was brilliant with flowers; in the rich surrounding, the house sat squata plain square block, unbroken except by a doorway in front. a dustless path led to the door, through a bordering of shrubs of persian rose in perfect bloom. breathing a sweet attar-perfume, he followed the guide. at the end of a darkened passage within, they stopped before a curtain half parted. the man called out, "a stranger to see the master." a clear voice replied, "in god's name, let him enter." a roman might have called the apartment into which the visitor was ushered his atrium. the walls were panelled; each panel was comparted like a modern office-desk, and each compartment crowded with labelled folios all filemot with age and use. between the panels, and above and below them, were borders of wood once white, now tinted like cream, and carved with marvellous intricacy of design. above a cornice of gilded balls, the ceiling rose in pavilion style until it broke into a shallow dome set with hundreds of panes of violet mica, permitting a flood of light deliciously reposeful. the floor was carpeted with grey rugs so thick that an invading foot fell half buried and soundless. in the midlight of the room were two personsa man resting in a chair high-backed, broad-armed, and lined with pliant cushions; and at his left, leaning against the back of the chair, a girl well forward into womanhood. at sight of them ben-hur felt the blood redden his forehead; bowing, as much to recover himself as in respect, he lost the lifting of the hands, and the shiver and shrink with which the sitter caught sight of himan emotion as swift to go as it had been to come. when he raised his eyes the two were in the same position, except the girl's hand had fallen and was resting lightly upon the elder's shoulder; both of them were regarding him fixedly. "if you are simonides, the merchant, and a jew"ben-hur stopped an instant"then the peace of the god of our father abraham upon you andyours." the last word was addressed to the girl. "i am the simonides of whom you speak, by birthright a jew," the man made answer, in a voice singularly clear. "i am simonides, and a jew; and i return you your salutation, with prayer to know who calls upon me." ben-hur looked as he listened, and where the figure of the man should have been in healthful roundness, there was only a formless heap sunk in the depths of the cushions, and covered by a quilted robe of sombre silk. over the heap shone a head royally proportionedthe ideal head of a statesman and conquerora head broad of base and dome-like in front, such as angelo would have modelled for caesar. white hair dropped in thin locks over the white brows, deepening the blackness of the eyes shining through them like sullen lights. the face was bloodless, and much puffed with folds, especially under the chin. in other words, the head and face were those of a man who might move the world more readily than the world could move hima man to be twice twelve times tortured into the shapeless cripple he was, without a groan, much less a confession; a man to yield his life, but never a purpose or a point; a man born in armour, and assailable only through his loves. to him ben-hur stretched his hands, open and palm up, as he would offer peace at the same time he asked it. "i am judah, son of ithamar, late head of the house of hur, and a prince of jerusalem." the merchant's right hand lay outside the robea long, thin hand, articulate to deformity with suffering. it closed tightly; otherwise there was not the slightest expression of feeling of any kind on his part; nothing to warrant an inference of surprise or interest; nothing but this calm answer "the princes of jerusalem, of the pure blood, are always welcome in my house; you are welcome. give the young man a seat, esther." the girl took an ottoman near by, and carried it to ben-hur. as she arose from placing the seat, their eyes met. "the peace of our lord with you," she said, modestly. "be seated and at rest." when she resumed her place by the chair, she had not divined his purpose. the powers of woman go not so far: if the matter is of finer feeling, such as pity, mercy, sympathy, that she detects; and therein is a difference between her and man which will endure as long as she remains, by nature, alive to such feelings. she was simply sure he brought some wound of life for healing. ben-hur did not take the offered seat, but said, deferentially, "i pray the good master simonides that he will not hold me an intruder. coming up the river yesterday, i heard he knew my father." "i knew the prince hur. we were associated in some enterprises lawful to merchants who find profit in lands beyond the sea and the desert. but sit, i pray youand, esther, some wine for the young man. nehemiah speaks of a son of hur who once ruled the half part of jerusalem; an old house; very old, by the faith! in the days of moses and joshua even some of them found favour in the sight of the lord, and divided honours with those princes among men. it can hardly be that their descendant, lineally come to us, will refuse a cup of wine-fat of the genuine vine of sorek, grown on the south hillsides of hebron." by the time of the conclusion of this speech, esther was before ben-hur with a silver cup filled from a vase upon a table a little removed from the chair. she offered the drink with downcast face. he touched her hand gently to put it away. again their eyes met; whereat he noticed that she was small, not nearly to his shoulder in height; but very graceful, and fair and sweet of face, with eyes black and inexpressibly soft. she is kind and pretty, he thought, and looks as tirzah would were she living. poor tirzah! then he said aloud, "no, thy fatherif he is thy father?" he paused. "i am esther, the daughter of simonides," she said, with dignity. "then, fair esther, thy father, when he has heard my further speech, will not think worse of me if yet i am slow to take his wine of famous extract; nor less i hope not to lose grace in thy sight. stand thou here with me a moment!" both of them, as in common cause, turned to the merchant. "simonides!" he said, firmly, "my father, at his death, had a trusted servant of thy name, and it has been told me that thou art the man!" there was a sudden start of the wrenched limbs under the robe, and the thin hand clenched. "esther, esther!" the man called, sternly; "here, not there, as thou art thy mother's child and minehere, not there, i say!" the girl looked once from father to visitor; then she replaced the cup upon the table, and went dutifully to the chair. her countenance sufficiently expressed her wonder and alarm. simonides lifted his left hand, and gave it into hers, lying lovingly upon his shoulder, and said, dispassionately, "i have grown old in dealing with menold before my time. if he who told thee that whereof thou speakest was a friend acquainted with my history, and spoke of it not harshly, he must have persuaded thee that i could not be else than a man distrustful of my kind. the god of israel help him who, at the end of life, is constrained to acknowledge so much! my loves are few, but they are. one of them is a soul which"he carried the hand holding his to his lips, in manner unmistakable"a soul which to this time has been unselfishly mine, and such sweet comfort that, were it taken from me, i would die." esther's head drooped until her cheek touched his. "the other love is but a memory; of which i will say further that, like a benison of the lord, it hath a compass to contain a whole family, if only"his voice lowered and trembled"if only i knew where they were." ben-hur's face suffused, and, advancing a step, he cried, impulsively, "my mother and sister! oh, it is of them you speak!" esther, as if spoken to, raised her head; but simonides returned to his calm, and answered, coldly, "hear me to the end. because i am that i am, and because of the loves of which i have spoken, before i make return to thy demand touching my relations to the prince hur, and as something which of right should come first, do thou show me proofs of who thou art. is thy witness in writing? or cometh it in person?" the demand was plain, and the right of it indisputable. ben-hur blushed, clasped his hands, stammered, and turned away at loss. simonides pressed him. "the proofs, the proofs, i say! set them before melay them in my hands!" yet ben-hur had no answer. he had not anticipated the requirement; and, now that it was made, to him as never before came the awful fact that the three years in the galley had carried away all the proofs of his identity; mother and sister gone, he did not live in the knowledge of any human being. many there were acquainted with him, but that was all. had quintus arrius been present, what could he have said more than where he found him, and that he believed the pretender to be the son of hur? but, as will presently appear in full, the brave roman sailor was dead. judah had felt the loneliness before; to the core of life the sense struck him now. he stood, hands clasped, face averted, in stupefaction. simonides respected his suffering, and waited in silence. "master simonides," he said, at length, "i can only tell my story; and i will not that unless you stay judgment so long, and with good-will deign to hear me." "speak," said simonides, now, indeed, master of the situation"speak, and i will listen the more willingly that i have not denied you to be the very person you claim yourself." ben-hur proceeded then, and told his life hurriedly, yet with the feeling which is the source of all eloquence; but as we are familiar with it down to his landing at misenum, in company with arrius, returned victorious from the aegean, at that point we will take up the words. "my benefactor was loved and trusted by the emperor, who heaped him with honourable rewards. the merchants of the east contributed magnificent presents, and he became doubly rich among the rich of rome. may a jew forget his religion? or his birthplace, if it were the holy land of our fathers? the good man adopted me his son by formal rites of law; and i strove to make him just return: no child was ever more dutiful to father than i to him. he would have had me a scholar; in art, philosophy, rhetoric, oratory, he would have furnished me the most famous teacher, i declined his insistence, because i was a jew, and could not forget the lord god, or the glory of the prophets, or the city set on the hills by david and solomon. oh, ask you why i accepted any of the benefactions of the roman? i loved him; next place, i thought i could, with his help, array influences which would enable me one day to unseal the mystery close-locking the fate of my mother and sister; and to these there was yet another motive of which i shall not speak except to say it controlled me so far that i devoted myself to arms, and the acquisition of everything deemed essential to thorough knowledge of the art of war. in the palaestrae and circuses of the city i toiled, and in the camps no less; and in all of them i have a name, but not that of my fathers. the crowns i wonand on the walls of the villa by misenum there are many of themall came to me as the son of arrius, the duumvir. in that relation only am i known among romans.... in steadfast pursuit of my secret aim, i left rome for antioch, intending to accompany the consul maxentius in the campaign he is organizing against the parthians. master of personal skill in all arms, i seek now the higher knowledge pertaining to the conduct of bodies of men in the field. the consul has admitted me one of his military family. but yesterday, as our ship entered the orontes, two other ships sailed in with us flying yellow flags. a fellow-passenger and countryman from cyprus explained that the vessels belonged to simonides, the master-merchant of antioch; he told us, also, who the merchant was; his marvellous success in commerce; of his fleets and caravans, and their coming and going; and, not knowing i had interest in the theme beyond my associate listeners, he said simonides was a jew, once the servant of the prince hur; nor did he conceal the cruelties of gratus, or the purpose of their infliction." at this allusion simonides bowed his head, and, as if to help him conceal his feelings and her own deep sympathy, the daughter hid her face on his neck. directly he raised his eyes, and said, in a clear voice, "i am listening." "o good simonides!" ben-hur then said, advancing a step, his whole soul seeking expression, "i see thou art not convinced, and that yet i stand in the shadow of thy distrust." the merchant held his features fixed as marble, and his tongue as still. "and not less clearly i see the difficulties of my position," ben-hur continued. "all my roman connection i can prove; i have only to call upon the consul, now the guest of the governor of the city; but i cannot prove the particulars of thy demand upon me. i cannot prove i am my father's son. they who could serve me in thatalas! they are dead or lost." he covered his face with his hands; whereupon esther arose, and, taking the rejected cup to him, said, "the wine is of the country we all so love. drink, i pray thee!" the voice was sweet as that of rebekah offering drink at the well near nahor the city; he saw there were tears in her eyes, and he drank, saying, "daughter of simonides, thy heart is full of goodness; and merciful art thou to let the stranger share it with thy father. be thou blessed of our god! i thank thee." then he addressed himself to the merchant again: "as i have no proof that i am my father's son, i will withdraw that i demanded of thee, o simonides, and go hence to trouble you no more; only let me say i did not seek thy return to servitude nor account of thy fortune; in any event, i would have said, as now i say, that all which is product of thy labour and genius is thine; keep it in welcome. i have no need of any part thereof. when the good quintus, my second father, sailed on the voyage which was his last, he left me his heir, princely rich. if, therefore, thou dost think of me again, be it with remembrance of this question, which, as i do swear by the prophets and jehovah, thy god and mine, was the chief purpose of my coming here: what dost thou knowwhat canst thou tell meof my mother and tirzah, my sistershe who should be in beauty and grace even as this one, thy sweetness of life, if not thy very life? oh! what canst thou tell me of them?" the tears ran down esther's cheeks; but the man was willful: in a clear voice, he replied, "i have said i knew the prince ben-hur. i remember hearing of the misfortune which overtook his family. i remember the bitterness with which i heard it. he who wrought such misery to the widow of my friend is the same who, in the same spirit, hath since wrought upon me. i will go further, and say to you, i have made diligent quest concerning the family, buti have nothing to tell you of them. they are lost." ben-hur uttered a great groan. "thenthen it is another hope broken!" he said, struggling with his feelings. "i am used to disappointments. i pray you pardon my intrusion; and if i have occasioned you annoyance, forgive it because of my sorrow. i have nothing now to live for but vengeance. farewell." at the curtain he turned, and said, simply, "i thank you both." "peace go with you," the merchant said. esther could not speak for sobbing. and so he departed. chapter iv. simonides and esther. scarcely was ben-hur gone, when simonides seemed to wake as from sleep: his countenance flushed; the sullen light of his eyes changed to brightness; and he said, cheerily "esther, ringquick!" she went to the table, and rang a service-bell. one of the panels in the wall swung back, exposing a doorway which gave admittance to a man who passed round to the merchant's front, and saluted him with a half-sa-laam. "malluch, herenearerto the chair," the master said, imperiously. "i have a mission which shall not fail though the sun should. hearken! a young man is now descending to the storeroom tall, comely, and in the garb of israel; follow him, his shadow not more faithful; and every night send me report of where he is, what he does, and the company he keeps; and if, without discovery, you overhear his conversations, report them word for word, together with whatever will serve to expose him, his habits, motives, life. understand you? go quickly! stay, malluch: if he leave the city, go after himand, mark you, malluch, be as a friend. if he bespeak you, tell him what you will to the occasion most suited, except that you are in my service; of that, not a word. hastemake haste!" the man saluted as before, and was gone. then simonides rubbed his wan hands together and laughed. "what is the day, daughter?" he said, in the midst of the mood. "what is the day? i wish to remember it for happiness come. see, and look for it laughing, and laughing tell me, esther." the merriment seemed unnatural to her; and, as if to entreat him from it, she answered, sorrowfully, "woe's me, father, that i should ever forget this day!" his hands fell down the instant, and his chin, dropping upon his breast, lost itself in the muffling folds of flesh composing his lower face. "true, most true, my daughter!" he said, without looking up. "this is the twentieth day of the fourth month. to-day five years ago, my rachel, thy mother, fell down and died. they brought me home broken as thou seest me, and we found her dead of grief. oh, to me she was a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of engedi! i have gathered my myrrh with my spice. i have eaten my honeycomb with my honey. we laid her away in a lonely placein a tomb cut in the mountain; no one near her. yet in the darkness she left me a little light, which the years have increased to a brightness of morning." he raised his hand and rested it upon his daughter's head. "dear lord, i thank thee that now in my esther my lost rachel liveth again!" directly he lifted his head, and said, as with a sudden thought, "is it not clear day outside?" "it was, when the young man came in." "then let abimelech come and take me to the garden, where i can see the river and the ships, and i will tell thee, dear esther, why but now my mouth filled with laughter, and my tongue with singing, and my spirit was like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices." in answer to the bell a servant came, and at her bidding pushed the chair, set on little wheels for the purpose, out of the room to the roof of the lower house, called by him his garden. out through the roses, and by beds of lesser flowers, all triumphs of careful attendance, but now unnoticed, he was rolled to a position from which he could view the palace-tops over against him on the island, the bridge in lessening perspective to the farther shore, and the river below the bridge crowded with vessels, all swimming amidst the dancing splendours of the early sun upon the rippling water. there the servant left him with esther. the much shouting of labourers, and their beating and pounding, did not disturb him any more than the trampling of people on the bridge-floor almost overhead, being as familiar to his ear as the view before him to his eye, and therefore unnoticeable, except as suggestions of profits in promise. esther sat on the arm of the chair nursing his hand, and waiting his speech, which came at length in a calm way, the mighty will having carried him back to himself. "when the young man was speaking, esther, i observed thee, and thought thou wert won by him." her eyes fell as she replied. "speak you of faith, father? i believed him." "in thy eyes, then, he is the lost son of the prince hur?" "if he is not" she hesitated. "and if he is not, esther?" "i have been thy handmaiden, father, since my mother answered the call of the lord god; by thy side i have heard and seen thee deal in wise ways with all manner of men seeking profit, holy and unholy; and now i say, if indeed the young man be not the prince he claims to be, then before me falsehood never played so well the part of righteous truth." "by the glory of solomon, daughter, thou speakest earnestly. dost thou believe thy father his father's servant?" "i understood him to ask of that as something he had but heard." for a time simonides' gaze swam among his swimming ships, though they had no place in his mind. "well, thou art a good child, esther, of genuine jewish shrewdness, and of years and strength to hear a sorrowful tale. wherefore give me heed, and i will tell you of myself, and of thy mother, and of many things pertaining to the past not in thy knowledge or thy dreamsthings withheld from the persecuting roman for a hope's sake, and from thee that thy nature should grow towards the lord straight as the reed to the sun.... i was born in a tomb in the valley of hinnom, on the south side of zion. my father and mother were hebrew bond-servants, tenders of the fig and olive trees growing, with many vines, in the king's garden hard by siloam; and in my boyhood i helped them. they were of the class bound to serve forever. they sold me to the prince hur, then, next to herod the king, the richest man in jerusalem. from the garden he transferred me to his storehouse in alexandria of egypt, where i came of age. i served him six years, and in the seventh, by the law of moses, i went free." esther clapped her hands lightly. "oh, then, thou art not his father's servant?" "nay, daughter, hear. now, in those days there were lawyers in the cloisters of the temple who disputed vehemently, saying the children of servants bound forever took the condition of their parents; but the prince hur was a man righteous in all things, and an interpreter of the law after the straitest sect, though not of them. he said i was a hebrew servant bought, in the true meaning of the great lawgiver, and, by sealed writings, which i yet have, he set me free." "and my mother?" esther asked. "thou shalt hear all, esther; be patient. before i am through thou shalt see it were easier for me to forget myself than thy mother.... at the end of my service i came up to jerusalem to the passover. my master entertained me. i was in love with him already, and i prayed to be continued in his service. he consented, and i served him yet another seven years, but as a hired son of israel. in his behalf i had charge of ventures on the sea by ships, and of ventures on land by caravans eastward to susa and persepolis, and the lands of silk beyond them. perilous passages were they, my daughter; but the lord blessed all i undertook. i brought home vast gains for the prince, and richer knowledge for myself, without which i could not have mastered the charges since fallen to me.... one day i was a guest in his house at jerusalem. a servant entered with some sliced bread on a platter. she came to me first. it was then i saw thy mother, and loved her, and took her away in my secret heart. after a while a time came when i sought the prince to make her my wife. he told me she was bond-servant forever; but if she wished, he would set her free that i might be gratified. she gave me love for love, but was happy where she was, and refused her freedom. i prayed and besought, going again and again after long intervals. she would be my wife, she all the time said, if i would become her fellow in servitude. our father jacob served yet other seven years for his rachel. could i not as much for mine? but thy mother said i must become as she, to serve forever. i came away, but went back. look, esther, look here." he pulled out the lobe of his left ear. "see you not the scar of the awl?" "i see it," she said; "and, oh, i see how thou didst love my mother!" "love her, esther! she was to me more than the shulamite to the singing king, fairer, more spotless; a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from lebanon. the master, even as i required him, took me to the judges, and back to his door, and thrust the awl through my ear into the door, and i was his servant for ever. so i won my rachel. and was ever love like mine?" esther stooped and kissed him, and they were silent, thinking of the dead. "my master was drowned at sea, the first sorrow that ever fell upon me," the merchant continued. "there was mourning in his house, and in mine here in antioch, my abiding-place at the time. now, esther, mark you! when the good prince was lost, i had risen to be his chief steward, with everything of property belonging to him in my management and control. judge you how much he loved and trusted me! i hastened to jerusalem to render account to the widow. she continued me in the stewardship. i applied myself with greater diligence. the business prospered, and grew year by year. ten years passed; then came the blow which you heard the young man tell aboutthe accident, as he called it, to the procurator gratus. the roman gave it out an attempt to assassinate him. under that pretext, by leave from rome, he confiscated to his own use the immense fortune of the widow and children. nor stopped he there. that there might be no reversal of the judgment, he removed all the parties interested. from that dreadful day to this the family of hur have been lost. the son, whom i had seen as a child, was sentenced to the galleys. the widow and daughter are supposed to have been buried in some of the many dungeons of judea, which, once closed upon the doomed, are like sepulchres sealed and locked. they passed from the knowledge of men as utterly as if the sea had swallowed them unseen. we could not hear how they diednay, not even that they were dead." esther's eyes were dewy with tears. "thy heart is good, esther, good as thy mother's was; and i pray it have not the fate of most good heartsto be trampled upon by the unmerciful and blind. but hearken further. i went up to jerusalem to give help to my benefactress, and was seized at the gate of the city and carried to the sunken cells of the tower of antonia; why, i knew not, until gratus himself came and demanded of me the moneys of the house of hur, which he knew, after our jewish custom of exchange, were subject to my draft in the different marts of the world. he required me to sign to his order. i refused. he had the houses, lands, goods, ships, and movable property of those i served; he had not their moneys. i saw, if i kept favour in the sight of the lord, i could rebuild their broken fortunes. i refused the tyrant's demands. he put me to torture; my will held good, and he set me free, nothing gained. i came home and began again, in the name of simonides of antioch, instead of the prince hur of jerusalem. thou knowest, esther, how i have prospered; that the increase of the millions of the prince in my hands was miraculous; thou knowest how, at the end of three years, while going up to caesarea, i was taken and a second time tortured by gratus to compel a confession that my goods and moneys were subject to his order of confiscation; thou knowest he failed as before. broken in body, i came home and found my rachel dead of fear and grief for me. the lord our god reigned, and i lived. from the emperor himself i bought immunity and license to trade throughout the world. to-daypraised be he who maketh the clouds his chariot and walketh upon the winds!to-day, esther, that which was in my hands for stewardship is multiplied into talents sufficient to enrich a caesar." he lifted his head proudly; their eyes met; each read the other's thought. "what shall i with the treasure, esther?" he asked, without lowering his gaze. "my father," she answered, in a low voice, "did not the rightful owner call for it but now?" still his look did not fail. "and thou, my child; shall i leave thee a beggar?" "nay, father, am not i, because i am thy child, his bond-servant? and of whom was it written, 'strength and honour are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come?'" a gleam of ineffable love lighted his face as he said, "the lord hath been good to me in many ways; but thou, esther, art the sovereign excellence of his favour." he drew her to his breast and kissed her many times. "hear now," he said, with clearer voice"hear now why i laughed this morning. the young man faced me the apparition of his father in comely youth. my spirit arose to salute him. i felt my trial-days were over and my labours ended. hardly could i keep from crying out. i longed to take him by the hand and show the balance i had earned, and say, 'lo, 'tis all thine! and i am thy servant, ready now to be called away.' and so i would have done, esther, so i would have done, but that moment three thoughts rushed to restrain me. i will be sure he is my master's sonsuch was the first thought; if he is my master's son, i will learn somewhat of his nature. of those born to riches, bethink you, esther, how many there are in whose hands riches are but breeding curses"he paused, while his hands clutched, and his voice shrilled with passion"esther, consider the pains i endured at the roman's hands; nay, not gratus's alone: the merciless wretches who did his bidding the first time and the last were romans, and they all alike laughed to hear me scream. consider my broken body, and the years i have gone shorn of my stature; consider thy mother yonder in her lonely tomb, crushed of soul as i of body; consider the sorrows of my master's family if they are living, and the cruelty of their taking-off if they are dead; consider all, and, with heaven's love about thee, tell me, daughter, shall not a hair fall or a red drop run in expiation? tell me not, as the preachers sometimes dotell me not that vengeance is the lord's. does he not work his will harmfully as well as in love by agencies? has he not his men of war more numerous than his prophets? is not his the law, eye for eye, hand for hand, foot for foot? oh, in all these years i have dreamed of vengeance, and prayed and provided for it, and gathered patience from the growing of my store, thinking and promising, as the lord liveth, it will one day buy me punishment of the wrongdoers? and when, speaking of his practice with arms, the young man said it was for a nameless purpose, i named the purpose even as he spokevengeance! and that, esther, that it wasthe third thought which held me still and hard while his pleading lasted, and made me laugh when he was gone." esther caressed the faded hands, and said, as if her spirit with his were running forward to results, "he is gone. will he come again?" "ay, malluch, the faithful goes with him, and will bring him back when i am ready." "and when will that be, father?" "not long, not long. he thinks all his witnesses dead. there is one living who will not fail to know him, if he be indeed my master's son. "his mother?" "nay, daughter, i will set the witness before him; till then let us rest the business with the lord. i am tired. call abimelech." esther called the servant, and they returned into the house. chapter v. the grove of daphne. when ben-hur sallied from the great warehouse, it was with the thought that another failure was to be added to the many he had already met in the quest for his people; and the idea was depressing exactly in proportion as the objects of his quest were dear to him; it curtained him round about with a sense of utter loneliness on earth, which, more than anything else, serves to eke from a soul cast down its remaining interest in life. through the people, and the piles of goods, he made way to the edge of the landing, and was tempted by the cool shadows darkening the river's depth. the lazy current seemed to stop and wait for him. in counteraction of the spell, the saying of the voyager flashed into memory"better be a worm, and feed upon the mulberries of daphne, than a king's guest." he turned, and walked rapidly down the landing and back to the khan. "the road to daphne!" the steward said, surprised at the question ben-hur put to him. "you have not been here before? well, count this the happiest day of your life. you cannot mistake the road. the next street to the left, going south, leads straight to mount sulpius, crowned by the altar of jupiter and the amphitheatre; keep it to the third cross street, known as herod's colonnade; turn to your right there, and hold the way through the old city of seleucus to the bronze gates of epiphanes. there the road to daphne beginsand may the gods keep you!" a few directions respecting his baggage, and ben-hur set out. the colonnade of herod was easily found; thence to the brazen gates, under a continuous marble portico, he passed with a multitude mixed of people from all the trading nations of the earth. it was about the fourth hour of the day when he passed out the gate, and found himself one of a procession apparently interminable, moving to the famous grove. the road was divided into separate ways for footmen, for men on horses, and men in chariots; and those again into separate ways for outgoers and incomers. the lines of division were guarded by low balustrading, broken by massive pedestals, many of which were surmounted with statuary. right and left of the road extended margins of sward perfectly kept, relieved at intervals by groups of oak and sycamore trees, and vine-clad summer-houses for the accommodation of the weary, of whom, on the return side, there were always multitudes. the ways of the footmen were paved with red stone, and those of the riders strewn with white sand compactly rolled, but not so solid as to give back an echo to hoof or wheel. the number and variety of fountains at play were amazing, all gifts of visiting kings, and called after them. out southwest to the gates of the grove, the magnificent thoroughfare stretched a little over four miles from the city. in his wretchedness of feeling, ben-hur barely observed the royal liberality which marked the construction of the road. nor more did he at first notice the crowd going with him. he treated the processional displays with like indifference. to say the truth, besides his self-absorption, he had not a little of the complacency of a roman visiting the provinces fresh from the ceremonies which daily eddied round and round the golden pillar set up by augustus as the centre of the world. it was not possible for the provinces to offer anything new or superior. he rather availed himself of every opportunity to push forward through the companies in the way, and too slow-going for his impatience. by the time he reached heracleia, a suburban village intermediate the city and the grove, he was somewhat spent with exercise, and began to be susceptible of entertainment. once a pair of goats led by a beautiful woman, woman and goats alike brilliant with ribbons and flowers, attracted his attention. then he stopped to look at a bull of mighty girth, and snowy-white, covered with vines freshly cut, and bearing on its broad back a naked child in a basket, the image of a young bacchus, squeezing the juice of ripened berries into a goblet, and drinking with libational formulas. as he resumed his walk, he wondered whose altars would be enriched by the offerings. a horse went by with clipped mane, after the fashion of the time, his rider superbly dressed. he smiled to observe the harmony of pride between the man and the brute. often after that he turned his head at hearing the rumble of wheels and the dull thud of hoofs; unconsciously he was becoming interested in the styles of chariots and charioteers, as they rustled past him going and coming. nor was it long until he began to make notes of the people around him. he saw they were of all ages, sexes, and conditions, and all in holiday attire. one company was uniformed in white, another in black; some bore flags, some smoking censers; some went slowly, singing hymns; others stopped to the music of flutes and tabrets. if such were the going to daphne every day in the year, what a wondrous sight daphne must be! at last there was a clapping of hands, and a burst of joyous cries; following the pointing of many fingers, he looked and saw upon the brow of a hill the templed gate of the consecrated grove. the hymns swelled to louder strains; the music quickened time; and, borne along by the impulsive current, and sharing the common eagerness, he passed in, and, romanized in taste as he was, fell to worshipping the place. rearward of the structure which graced the entrance-waya purely grecian pilehe stood upon a broad esplanade paved with polished stone; around him a restless exclamatory multitude, in gayest colours, relieved against the iridescent spray flying crystal-white from fountains; before him, off to the south-west, dustless paths radiated out into a garden, and beyond that into a forest, over which rested a veil of pale blue vapour. ben-hur gazed wistfully, uncertain where to go. a woman that moment exclaimed, "beautiful! but where to now?" her companion, wearing a chaplet of bays, laughed and answered, "go to, thou pretty barbarian! the question implies an earthly fear; and did we not agree to leave all such behind in antioch with the rusty earth? the winds which blow here are respirations of the gods. let us give ourselves to waftage of the winds." "but if we should get lost?" "o thou timid! no one was ever lost in daphne, except those on whom her gates close forever." "and who are they?" she asked, still fearful. "such as have yielded to the charms of the place and chosen it for life and death. hark! stand we here, and i will show you of whom i speak." upon the marble pavement there was a scurry of sandalled feet; the crowd opened, and a party of girls rushed about the speaker and his fair friend, and began singing and dancing to the tabrets they themselves touched. the woman, scared, clung to the man, who put an arm about her, and, with kindled face, kept time to the music with the other hand overhead. the hair of the dancers floated free, and their limbs blushed through the robes of gauze which scarcely draped them. words may not be used to tell of the voluptuousness of the dance. one brief round, and they darted off through the yielding crowd lightly as they had come. "now, what think you?" cried the man to the woman. "who are they?" she asked. "devadasipriestesses devoted to the temple of apollo. there is an army of them. they make the chorus in celebrations. this is their home. sometimes they wander off to other cities, but all they make is brought here to enrich the house of the divine musician. shall we go now?" next minute the two were gone. ben-hur took comfort in the assurance that no one was ever lost in daphne, and he, too, set outwhere, he knew not. a sculpture reared upon a beautiful pedestal in the garden attracted him first. it proved to be the statue of a centaur. an inscription informed the unlearned visitor that it exactly represented chiron, the beloved of apollo and diana, instructed by them in the mysteries of hunting, medicine, music, and prophecy. the inscription also bade the stranger look out at a certain part of the heavens, at a certain hour of the clear night, and he would behold the dead alive among the stars, whither jupiter had transferred the good genius. the wisest of the centaurs continued, nevertheless, in the service of mankind. in his hand he held a scroll, on which, graven in greek, were paragraphs of a notice: "o traveller! "art thou a stranger? "i. hearken to the singing of the brooks, and fear not the rain of the fountains; so will the naiades learn to love thee. "ii. the invited breezes of daphne are zephyrus and auster: gentle ministers of life, they will gather sweets for thee; when eurus blows, diana is elsewhere hunting; when boreas blusters, go hide, for apollo is angry. "iii. the shades of the grove are thine in the day; at night they belong to pan and his dryades. disturb them not. "iv. eat of the lotus by the brooksides sparingly, unless thou wouldst have surcease of memory, which is to become a child of daphne. "v. walk thou round the weaving spider'tis arachne at work for minerva. "vi. wouldst thou behold the tears of daphne, break but a bud from a laurel boughand die. "heed thou! "and stay and be happy." ben-hur left the interpretation of the mystic notice to others fast enclosing him, and turned away as the white bull was led by. the boy sat in the basket, followed by a procession; after them again, the woman with the goats; and behind her, the flute and tabret players, and another procession of gift-bringers. "whither go they?" asked a bystander. another made answer, "the bull to father jove; the goat" "did not apollo once keep the flocks of admetus?" "ay, the goat to apollo!" the goodness of the reader is again besought in favour of an explanation. a certain facility of accommodation in the matter of religion comes to us after much intercourse with people of a different faith; gradually we attain the truth that every creed is illustrated by good men who are entitled to our respect, but whom we cannot respect without courtesy to their creed. to this point ben-hur had arrived. neither the years in rome nor those in the galley had made an impression upon his religious faith: he was yet a jew. in his view, nevertheless, it was not an impiety to look for the beautiful in the grove of daphne. the remark does not interdict the further saying, if his scruples had been ever so extreme, not improbably he would at this time have smothered them. he was angry; not as the irritable, from chafing of a trifle; nor was his anger like the fool's, pumped from the wells of nothing, to be dissipated by a reproach or a curse; it was the wrath peculiar to ardent natures rudely awakened by the sudden annihilation of a hopedream, if you willin which the choicest happinesses were thought to be certainly in reach. in such case nothing intermediate will carry off the passionthe quarrel is with fate. let us follow the philosophy a little further, and say to ourselves, it were well in such quarrels if fate were something tangible, to be despatched with a look or a blow, or a speaking personage with whom high words were possible; then the unhappy mortal would not always end the affair by punishing himself. in ordinary mood, ben-hur would not have come to the grove alone, or, coming alone, he would have availed himself of his position in the consul's family, and made provision against wandering idly about, unknowing and unknown; he would have had all the points of interest in mind, and gone to them under guidance, as in the despatch of business; or, wishing to squander days of leisure in the beautiful place, he would have had in hand a letter to the master of it all, whoever he might be. this would have made him a sight-seer, like the shouting herd he was accompanying; whereas he had no reverence for the deities of the grove, nor curiosity; a man in the blindness of bitter disappointment, he was adrift, not waiting for fate, but seeking it as a desperate challenger. every one has known this condition of mind, though perhaps not all in the same degree; every one will recognize it as the condition in which he has done brave things with apparent serenity; and every one reading will say, fortunate for ben-hur if the folly which now catches him is but a friendly harlequin with whistle and painted cap, and not some violence with a pointed sword pitiless. chapter vi. the mulberries of daphne. ben-hur entered the woods with the processions. he had not interest enough at first to ask where they were going; yet, to relieve him from absolute indifference, he had a vague impression that they were in movement to the temples, which were the central objects of the grove, supreme in attractions. presently, as singers dreamfully play with a flitting chorus, he began repeating to himself, "better be a worm, and feed on the mulberries of daphne, than a king's guest." then of the much repetition arose questions importunate of answer. was life in the grove so very sweet? wherein was the charm? did it lie in some tangled depth of philosophy? or was it something in fact, something on the surface, discernible to every-day wakeful senses! every year thousands, forswearing the world, gave themselves to service here. did they find the charm? and was it sufficient, when found, to induce forgetfulness profound enough to shut out of mind the infinitely diverse things of life? those that sweeten and those that imbitter? hopes hovering in the near future as well as sorrows born of the past? if the grove were so good for them, why should it not be good for him? he was a jew; could it be that the excellences were for all the world but children of abraham? forthwith he bent all his faculties to the task of discovery, unmindful of the singing of the gift-bringers and the quips of his associates. in the quest, the sky yielded him nothing; it was blue, very blue, and full of twittering swallowsso was the sky over the city. further on, out of the woods at his right hand, a breeze poured across the road, splashing him with a wave of sweet smells, blent of roses and consuming spices. he stopped, as did others, looking the way the breeze came. "a garden over there," he said, to a man at his elbow. "rather some priestly ceremony in performancesomething to diana, or pan, or a deity of the woods." the answer was in his mother tongue. ben-hur gave the speaker a surprised look. "a hebrew?" he asked him. the man replied with a deferential smile, "i was born within a stone's-throw of the market-place in jerusalem." ben-hur was proceeding to further speech, when the crowd surged forward, thrusting him out on the side of the walk next the woods, and carrying the stranger away. the customary gown and staff, a brown cloth on the head tied by a yellow rope, and a strong judean face to avouch the garments of honest right, remained in the young man's mind, a kind of summary of the man. this took place at a point where a path into the woods began, offering a happy escape from the noisy processions. ben-hur availed himself of the offer. he walked first into a thicket which, from the road, appeared in a state of nature, close, impenetrable, a nesting-place for wild birds. a few steps, however, gave him to see the master's hand even there. the shrubs were flowering or fruit-bearing; under the bending branches the ground was pranked with brightest blooms; over them the jasmine stretched its delicate bonds. from lilac and rose, and lily and tulip, from oleander and strawberry-tree, all old friends in the gardens of the valleys about the city of david, the air, lingering or in haste, loaded itself with exhalations day and night; and that nothing might be wanting to the happiness of the nymphs and naiads, down through the flower-lighted shadows of the mass a brook went its course gently, and by many winding ways. out of the thicket, as he proceeded, on his right and left, issued the cry of the pigeon and the cooing of turtle-doves; blackbirds waited for him, and bided his coming close; a nightingale kept its place fearless, though he passed in arm's-length; a quail ran before him at his feet, whistling to the brood she was leading, and as he paused for them to get out of his way, a figure crawled from a bed of honeyed musk brilliant with balls of golden blossoms. ben-hur was startled. had he, indeed, been permitted to see a satyr at home? the creature looked up at him, and showed in its teeth a hooked pruning-knife; he smiled at his own scare, and, lo! the charm was evolved! peace without fearpeace a universal conditionthat it was! he sat upon the ground beneath a citron-tree, which spread its grey roots sprawling to receive a branch of the brook. the nest of a titmouse hung close to the bubbling water, and the tiny creature looked out of the door of the nest into his eyes. "verily, the bird is interpreting to me," he thought. "it says, 'i am not afraid of you, for the law of this happy place is love.'" the charm of the grove seemed plain to him; he was glad, and determined to render himself one of the lost in daphne. in charge of the flowers and shrubs, and watching the growth of all the dumb excellences everywhere to be seen, could not he, like the man with the pruning-knife in his mouth, forego the days of his troubled lifeforego them forgetting and forgotten? but by-and-by his jewish nature began to stir within him. the charm might be sufficient for some people. of what kind were they? love is delightfulah! how pleasant as a successor to wretchedness like his. but was it all there was of life? all? there was an unlikeness between him and those who buried themselves contentedly here. they had no dutiesthey could not have had; but he "god of israel!" he cried aloud, springing to his feet, with burning cheeks"mother! tirzah! cursed be the moment, cursed the place, in which i yield myself happy in your loss!" he hurried away through the thicket, and came to a stream flowing with the volume of a river between banks of masonry, broken at intervals by gated sluiceways. a bridge carried the path he was traversing across the stream; and, standing upon it, he saw other bridges, no two of them alike. under him the water was lying in a deep pool, clear as a shadow; down a little way it tumbled with a roar over rocks; then there was another pool, and another cascade; and so on, out of view; and bridges and pools and resounding cascades said, plainly as inarticulate things can tell a story, the river was running by permission of a master, exactly as the master would have it, tractable as became a servant of the gods. forward from the bridge he beheld a landscape of wide valleys and irregular heights, with groves and lakes and fanciful houses linked together by white paths and shining streams. the valleys were spread below, that the river might be poured upon them for refreshment in days of drought, and they were as green carpets figured with beds and fields of flowers, and flecked with flocks of sheep white as balls of snow; and the voices of shepherds following the flocks were heard afar. as if to tell him of the pious inscription of all he beheld, the altars out under the open sky seemed countless, each with a white-gowned figure attending it, while processions in white went slowly hither and thither between them; and the smoke of the altars half-risen hung collected in pale clouds over the devoted places. here, there, happy in flight, intoxicated in pause, from object to object, point to point, now in the meadow, now on the heights, now lingering to penetrate the groves and observe the processions, then lost in efforts to pursue the paths and streams which trended mazily into dim perspectives to end finally inah, what might be a fitting end to scene so beautiful! what adequate mysteries were hidden behind an introduction so marvellous! here and there, the speech was beginning, his gaze wandered, so he could not help the conviction, forced by the view, and as the sum of it all, that there was peace in the air and on the earth, and invitation everywhere to come and lie down here and be at rest. suddenly a revelation dawned upon himthe grove was, in fact, a templeone far-reaching, wall-less temple! never anything like it! the architect had not stopped to pother about columns and porticos, proportions or interiors, or any limitation upon the epic he sought to materialize; he had simply made a servant of natureart can go no further. so the cunning son of jupiter and callisto built the old arcadia; and in this, as in that, the genius was greek. from the bridge ben-hur went forward into the nearest valley. he came to a flock of sheep. the shepherd was a girl, and she beckoned him, "come!" farther on, the path was divided by an altara pedestal of black gneiss, capped with a slab of white marble deftly foliated, and on that a brazier of bronze holding a fire. close by it, a woman, seeing him, waved a wand of willow, and as he passed called him, "stay!" and the temptation in her smile was that of passionate youth. on yet further, he met one of the processions; at its head a troop of little girls, nude except as they were covered with garlands, piped their shrill voices into a song; then a troop of boys, also nude, their bodies deeply sunbrowned, came dancing to the song of the girls; behind them the procession, all women, bearing baskets of spices and sweets to the altarswomen clad in simple robes, careless of exposure. as he went by they held their hands to him, and said, "stay, and go with us." one, a greek, sang a verse from anacreon: "for to-day i take or give; for to-day i drink and live; for to-day i beg or borrow; who knows about the silent morrow?" but he pursued his way indifferent, and came next to a grove luxuriant, in the heart of the vale at the point where it would be most attractive to the observing eye. as it came close to the path he was travelling, there was a seduction in its shade, and through the foliage he caught the shining of what appeared a pretentious statue; so he turned aside, and entered the cool retreat. the grass was fresh and clean. the trees did not crowd each other; and they were of every kind native to the east, blended well with strangers adopted from far quarters; here grouped in exclusive companionship palm-trees plumed like queens; there sycamores, overtopping laurels of darker foliage; and evergreen oaks rising verdantly, with cedars vast enough to be kings on lebanon; and mulberries; and terebinths so beautiful it is not hyperbole to speak of them as blown from the orchards of paradise. the statue proved to be a daphne of wondrous beauty. hardly, however, had he time to more than glance at her face: at the base of the pedestal a girl and a youth were lying upon a tiger's skin asleep in each other's arms; close by them the implements of their servicehis axe and sickle, her basketflung carelessly upon a heap of faded roses. the exposure startled him. back in the hush of the perfumed thicket he discovered, as he thought, that the charm of the great grove was peace without fear, and almost yielded to it; now, in this sleep in the day's broad glarethis sleep at the foot of daphnehe read a further chapter to which only the vaguest allusion is sufferable. the law of the place was love, but love without law. and this was the sweet peace of daphne! this the life's end of her ministers! for this kings and princes gave of their revenues! for this a crafty priesthood subordinated natureher birds and brooks and lilies, the river, the labour of many hands, the sanctity of altars, the fertile power of the sun! it would be pleasant now to record that as ben-hur pursued his walk assailed by such reflections, he yielded somewhat to sorrow for the votaries of the great out-door temple; especially for those who, by personal service, kept it in a state so surpassingly lovely. how they came to the condition was not any longer a mystery; the motive, the influence, the inducement, was before him. some there were, no doubt, caught by the promise held out to their troubled spirits of endless peace in a consecrated abode, to the beauty of which, if they had not money, they could contribute their labour; this class implied intellect peculiarly subject to hope and fear; but the great body of the faithful could not be classed with such. apollo's nets were wide, and their meshes small; and hardly may one tell what all his fishermen landed: this less for that they cannot be described than because they ought not to be. enough that the mass were of the sybarities of the world, and of the herds in number vaster and in degree lowerdevotees of the unmixed sensualism to which the east was almost wholly given. not to any of the exaltationsnot to the singing-god, or his unhappy mistress; not to any philosophy requiring for its enjoyment the calm of retirement, nor to any service for the comfort there is in religion, nor to love in its holier sensewere they abiding their vows. good reader, why shall not the truth be told here? why not learn that, at this age, there were in all earth but two peoples capable of exaltations of the kind referred tothose who lived by the law of moses, and those who lived by the law of brahma. they alone could have cried you, better a law without love than a love without law. besides that, sympathy is in great degree a result of the mood we are in at the moment: anger forbids the emotion. on the other hand, it is easiest taken on when we are in a state of most absolute self-satisfaction. ben-hur walked with a quicker step, holding his head higher; and, while not less sensitive to the delightfulness of all about him, he made his survey with calmer spirit, though sometimes with curling lip; that is to say, he could not so soon forget how nearly he himself had been imposed upon. chapter vii. the stadium in the grove. in front of ben-hur there was a forest of cypress-trees, each a column tall and straight as a mast. venturing into the shady precinct, he heard a trumpet gaily blown, and an instant after saw lying upon the grass close by the countryman whom he had run upon in the road going to the temples. the man arose, and came to him. "i give you peace again," he said, pleasantly. "thank you," ben-hur replied, then asked, "go you my way?" "i am for the stadium, if that is your way." "the stadium!" "yes. the trumpet you heard but now was a call for the competitors." "good friend," said ben-hur, frankly, "i admit my ignorance of the grove; and if you will let me be your follower, i will be glad." "that will delight me. hark! i hear the wheels of the chariots. they are taking the track." ben-hur listened a moment, then completed the introduction by laying his hand upon the man's arm, and saying, "i am the son of arrius, the duumvir, and thou?" "i am malluch, a merchant of antioch." "well, good malluch, the trumpet, and the gride of wheels, and the prospect of diversion excite me. i have some skill in the exercises. in the palaestrae of rome i am not unknown. let us to the course." malluch lingered to say, quickly, "the duumvir was a roman, yet i see his son in the garments of a jew." "the noble arrius was my father by adoption," ben-hur answered. "ah! i see, and beg pardon." passing through the belt of forest, they came to a field with a track laid out upon it, in shape and extent exactly like those of the stadia. the course, or track proper, was of soft earth, rolled and sprinkled, and on both sides defined by ropes, stretched loosely upon upright javelins. for the accommodation of spectators, and such as had interests reaching forward of the mere practice, there were several stands shaded by substantial awnings, and provided with seats in rising rows. in one of the stands the two new-comers found places. ben-hur counted the chariots as they went bynine in all. "i commend the fellows," he said, with good-will. "here in the east i thought they aspired to nothing better than the two; but they are ambitious, and play with royal fours. let us study their performance." eight of the fours passed the stand, some walking, others on the trot, and all unexceptionally handled; then the ninth one came on the gallop. ben-hur burst into exclamation. "i have been in the stables of the emperor, malluch, but, by our father abraham of blessed memory! i never saw the like of these." the last four was then sweeping past. all at once they fell into confusion. someone on the stand uttered a sharp cry. ben-hur turned, and saw an old man half-risen from an upper seat, his hands clenched and raised, his eyes fiercely bright, his long white beard fairly quivering. some of the spectators nearest him began to laugh. "they should respect his beard at least. who is he?" asked ben-hur. "a mighty man from the desert, somewhere beyond moab, and owner of camels in herds, and horses descended, they say, from the racers of the first pharaohsheik ilderim by name and title." thus malluch replied. the driver meanwhile exerted himself to quiet the four, but without avail. each ineffectual effort excited the sheik the more. "abaddon seize him!" yelled the patriarch, shrilly. "run! fly! do you hear, my children?" the question was to his attendants, apparently of the tribe. "do you hear? they are desert-born, like yourselves. catch themquick!" the plunging of the animals increased. "accursed roman!" and the sheik shook his fist at the driver. "did he not swear he could drive themswear it by all his brood of bastard latin gods? nay, hands off meoff, i say! they should run swift as eagles, and with the temper of hand-bred lambs, he swore. cursed be hecursed the mother of liars who calls him son! see them, the priceless! let him touch one of them with a lash, and"the rest of the sentence was lost in a furious grinding of his teeth. "to their heads, some of you, and speak thema word, one is enough, from the tent-song your mothers sang you. oh, fool, fool that i was to put trust in a roman!" some of the shrewder of the old man's friends planted themselves between him and the horses. an opportune failure of breath on his part helped the stratagem. ben-hur, thinking he comprehended the sheik, sympathized with him. far more than mere pride of propertymore than anxiety for the result of the racein his view it was within the possible for the patriarch, according to his habits of thought and his ideas of the inestimable, to love such animals with a tenderness akin to the most sensitive passion. they were all bright bays, unspotted, perfectly matched, and so proportioned as to seem less than they really were. delicate ears pointed small heads; the faces were broad and full between the eyes; the nostrils in expansion disclosed membrane so deeply red as to suggest the flashing of flame; the necks were arches, overlaid with fine mane so abundant as to drape the shoulders and breast, while in happy consonance the forelocks were like ravellings of silken veils; between the knees and the fetlocks the legs were flat as an open hand, but above the knees they were rounded with mighty muscles, needful to upbear the shapely close-knit bodies; the hoofs were like cups of polished agate; and in rearing and plunging they whipped the air, and sometimes the earth, with tails glossy-black and thick and long. the sheik spoke of them as the priceless, and it was a good saying. in this second and closer look at the horses, ben-hur read the story of their relation to their master. they had grown up under his eyes, objects of his special care in the day, his visions of pride in the night, with his family at home in the black tent out on the shadeless bosom of the desert, as his children beloved. that they might win him a triumph over the haughty and hated roman, the old man had brought his loves to the city, never doubting they would win, if only he could find a trusty expert to take them in hand; not merely one with skill, but of a spirit which their spirits would acknowledge. unlike the colder people of the west, he could not protest the driver's inability, and dismiss him civilly; an arab and a sheik, he had to explode, and rive the air about him with clamour. before the patriarch was done with his expletives, a dozen hands were at the bits of the horses, and their quiet assured. about that time, another chariot appeared upon the track; and, unlike the others, driver, vehicle, and racers were precisely as they would be presented in the circus the day of final trial. for a reason which will presently be more apparent, it is desirable now to give this turnout plainly to the reader. there should be no difficulty in understanding the carriage known to us all as the chariot of classical renown. one has but to picture to himself a dray with low wheels and broad axle, surmounted by a box open at the tail-end. such was the primitive pattern. artistic genius came along in time, and, touching the rude machine, raised it into a thing of beautythat, for instance, in which aurora, riding in advance of the dawn, is given to our fancy. the jockeys of the ancients, quite as shrewd and ambitious as their successors of the present, called their humblest turnout a two, and their best in grade a four; in the latter, the contested the olympics and the other festal shows founded in imitation of them. the same sharp gamesters preferred to put their horses to the chariot all abreast; and for distinction they termed the two next the pole yoke-steeds, and those on the right and left outside trace-mates. it was their judgment, also, that, by allowing the fullest freedom of action, the greatest speed was attainable; accordingly, the harness resorted to was peculiarly simple; in fact, there was nothing of it save a collar round the animal's neck, and a trace fixed to the collar, unless the lines and a halter fall within the term. wanting to hitch up, the masters pinned a narrow wooden yoke, or cross-tree, near the end of the pole, and, by straps passed through rings at the end of the yoke, buckled the latter to the collar. the traces of the yoke-steeds they hitched to the axle; those of the trace-mates to the top rim of the chariot-bed. there remained then but the adjustment of the lines, which, judged by the modern devices, was not the least curious part of the method. for this there was a large ring at the forward extremity of the pole; securing the ends to that ring first they parted the lines so as to give one to each horse and proceeded to pass them to the driver, slipping them separately through rings on the inner side of the halters at the mouth. with this plain generalization in mind, all further desirable knowledge upon the subject can be had by following the incidents of the scene occurring. the other contestants had been received in silence; the last comer was more fortunate. while moving towards the stand from which we are viewing the scene, his progress was signalized by loud demonstrations, by clapping of hands and cheers, the effect of which was to centre attention upon him exclusively. his yoke-steeds, it was observed, were black, while the trace-mates were snow-white. in conformity to the exacting canons of roman taste, they had all four been mutilated; that is to say, their tails had been clipped, and, to complete the barbarity, their shorn manes were divided into knots tied with flaring red and yellow ribbons. in advancing, the stranger at length reached a point where the chariot came into view from the stand, and its appearance would of itself have justified the shouting. the wheels were very marvels of construction. stout bands of burnished bronze reinforced the hubs, otherwise very light; the spokes were sections of ivory tusks, set in with the natural curve outward to perfect the dishing, considered important then as now; bronze tires held the fellies, which were of shining ebony. the axle, in keeping with the wheels, was tipped with heads of snarling tigers done in brass, and the bed was woven of willow wands gilded with gold. the coming of the beautiful horses and resplendent chariot drew ben-hur to look at the driver with increased interest. who is he? when ben-hur asked himself the question first, he could not see the man's face or even his full figure; yet the air and manner were familiar and pricked him keenly with a reminder of a period long gone. who could it be? nearer now, and the horses approaching at a trot. from the shouting and the gorgeousness of the turnout, it was thought he might be some official favourite or famous prince. such an appearance was not inconsistent with exalted rank. kings often struggled for the crown of leaves which was the prize of victory. nero and commodus, it will be remembered, devoted themselves to the chariot. ben-hur arose and forced a passage down nearly to the railing in front of the lower seat of the stand. his face was earnest, his manner eager. and directly the whole person of the driver was in view. a companion rode with him, in classic description a myrtilus, permitted men of high estate indulging their passion for the race-course. ben-hur could see only the driver, standing erect in the chariot, with the reins passed several times round his bodya handsome figure, scantily covered by a tunic of light-red doth, in the right hand a whip; in the other, the arm raised and lightly extended, the four lines. the pose was exceedingly graceful and animated. the cheers and clapping of hands were received with statuesque indifference. ben-hur stood transfixedhis instinct and memory had served him faithfullythe driver was messala! by the selection of horses, the magnificence of the chariot, the attitude, and display of personabove all, by the expression of the cold, sharp, eagle features, imperialized in his countrymen by sway of the world through so many generations, ben-hur knew messala unchanged, as haughty, confident, and audacious as ever, the same in ambition, cynicism, and mocking insouciance. chapter viii. the fountain of castalia. as ben-hur descended the steps of the stand, an arab arose upon the last one at the foot, and cried out, "men of the east and westhearken! the good sheik ilderim giveth greeting. with four horses, sons of the favourites of solomon the wise, he hath come up against the best. needs he most a mighty man to drive them. whoso will take them to his satisfaction, to him he promiseth enrichment forever. heretherein the city and in the circuses, and wherever the strong most do congregate, tell ye this his offer. so saith my master, sheik ilderim the generous." the proclamation awakened a great buzz among the people under the awning. by night it would be repeated and discussed in all the sporting circles of antioch. ben-hur, hearing it, stopped and looked hesitatingly from the herald to the sheik. malluch thought he was about to accept the offer, but was relieved when he presently turned to him, and asked, "good malluch, where to now?" the worthy replied, with a laugh, "would you liken yourself to others visiting the grove for the first time, you will straightway to hear your fortune told." "my fortune, said you? though the suggestion has in it a flavour of unbelief, let us to the goddess at once." "nay, son of arrius, these apollonians have a better trick than that. instead of speech with a pythia or a sibyl, they will sell you a plain papyrus leaf, hardly dry from the stalk, and bid you dip it in the water of a certain fountain, when it will show you a verse in which you may hear of your future." the glow of interest departed from ben-hur's face. "there are people who have no need to vex themselves about their future," he said, gloomily. "then you prefer to go to the temples?" "the temples are greek, are they not?" "they call them greek." "the hellenes were masters of the beautiful in art; but in architecture they sacrificed variety to unbending beauty. their temples are all alike. how call you the fountain?" "castalia." "oh! it has repute throughout the world. let us thither." malluch kept watch on his companion as they went, and saw that for the moment at least his good spirits were out. to the people passing he gave no attention; over the wonders they came upon there were no exclamations; silently, even sullenly, he kept a slow pace. the truth was, the sight of messala had set ben-hur to thinking. it seemed scarce an hour ago that the strong hands had torn him from his mother, scarce an hour ago that the roman had put seal upon the gates of his father's house. he recounted how, in the hopeless misery of the lifeif such it might be calledin the galleys, he had had little else to do, aside from labour, than dream dreams of vengeance, in all of which messala was the principal. there might be, he used to say to himself, escape for gratus, but for messalanever! and to strengthen and harden his resolution, he was accustomed to repeat over and over, who pointed us out to the persecutors? and when i begged him for helpnot for myselfwho mocked me, and went away laughing? and always the dream had the same ending. the day i meet him, help me, thou good god of my people!help me to some fitting special vengeance! and now the meeting was at hand. perhaps, if he had found messala poor and suffering, ben-hur's feeling had been different; but it was not so. he found him more than prosperous; in the prosperity there was a dash and glittergleam of sun on gilt of gold. so it happened that what malluch accounted a passing loss of spirit was pondering when the meeting should be, and in what manner he could make it most memorable. they turned after a while into an avenue of oaks, where the people were going and coming in groups; footmen here, and horsemen; there women in litters borne by slaves; and now and then chariots rolled by thunderously. at the end of the avenue the road, by an easy grade, descended into a lowland, where, on the right hand, there was a precipitous facing of grey rock, and on the left an open meadow of vernal freshness. then they came in view of the famous fountain of castalia. edging through a company assembled at the point, ben-hur beheld a jet of sweet water pouring from the crest of a stone into a basin of black marble, where, after much boiling and foaming, it disappeared as through a funnel. by the basin, under a small portico cut in the solid wall, sat a priest, old, bearded, wrinkled, cowlednever being more perfectly eremitish. from the manner of the people present, hardly might one say which was the attraction, the fountain, forever sparkling, or the priest, forever there. he heard, saw, was seen, but never spoke. occasionally a visitor extended a hand to him with a coin in it. with a cunning twinkle of the eyes, he took the money, and gave the party in exchange a leaf of papyrus. the receiver made haste to plunge the papyrus into the basin; then, holding the dripping leaf in the sunlight, he would be rewarded with a versified inscription upon its face; and the fame of the fountain seldom suffered loss by poverty of merit in the poetry. before ben-hur could test the oracle, some other visitors were seen approaching across the meadow, and their appearance piqued the curiosity of the company, his not less than theirs. he saw first a camel, very tall and very white, in leading of a driver on horseback. a houdah on the animal, besides being unusually large, was of crimson and gold. two other horsemen followed the camel with tall spears in hand. "what a wonderful camel!" said one of the company. "a prince from afar," another one suggested. "more likely a king." "if he were on an elephant i would say he was a king." a third man had a very different opinion. "a cameland a white camel!" he said, authoritatively. "by apollo, friends, they who come yonderyou can see there are two of themare neither kings nor princes; they are women!" in the midst of the dispute the strangers arrived. the camel seen at hand did not belie his appearance afar. a taller, statelier brute of his kind no traveller at the fountain, though from the remotest parts, had ever beheld. such great black eyes! such exceedingly fine white hair! feet so contractile when raised, so soundless in planting, so broad when set!nobody had ever seen the peer of this camel. and how well he became his housing of silk, and all its frippery of gold in fringe and gold in tassel! the tinkling of silver bells went before him, and he moved lightly, as if unknowing of his burden. but who were the man and woman under the houdah? every eye saluted them with the inquiry. if the former were a prince or a king, the philosophers of the crowd might not deny the impartiality of time. when they saw the thin shrunken face buried under an immense turban, the skin of the hue of a mummy, making it impossible to form an idea of his nationality, they were pleased to think the limit of life was for the great as well as the small. they saw about his person nothing so enviable as the shawl which draped him. the woman was seated in the manner of the east, amidst veils and laces of surpassing fineness. above her elbows she wore armlets fashioned like coiled asps, and linked to bracelets at the wrists by strands of gold; otherwise the arms were bare and of singular natural grace, complemented with hands modelled daintily as a child's. one of the hands rested upon the side of the carriage, showing tapered fingers glittering with rings, and stained at the tips till they blushed like the pink of mother-of-pearl. she wore an open caul upon her head, sprinkled with beads of coral, and strung with coin-pieces called sunlets, some of which were carried across her forehead, while others fell down her back, half-smothered in the mass of her straight blue-black hair, of itself an incomparable ornament, not needing the veil which covered it, except as a protection against sun and dust. from her elevated seat she looked upon the people calmly, pleasantly, and apparently so intent upon studying them as to be unconscious of the interest she herself was exciting; and, what was unusualnay, in violent contravention of the custom among women of rank in publicshe looked at them with an open face. it was a fair face to see; quite youthful; in form, oval: complexion not white, like the greek; nor brunet, like the roman; nor blond, like the gaul; but rather the tinting of the sun of the upper nile upon a skin of such transparency that the blood shone through it on cheek and brow with nigh the ruddiness of lamplight. the eyes, naturally large, were touched along the lids with the black paint immemorial throughout the east. the lips were slightly parted, disclosing, through their scarlet lake, teeth of glistening whiteness. to all these excellences of countenance the reader is finally besought to superadd the air derived from the pose of a small head, classic in shape, set upon a neck long, drooping, and gracefulthe air, we may fancy, happily described by the word queenly. as if satisfied with the survey of people and locality, the fair creature spoke to the driveran ethiopian of vast brawn, naked to the waistwho led the camel nearer the fountain, and caused it to kneel; after which he received from her hand a cup, and proceeded to fill it at the basin. that instant the sound of wheels and the trampling of horses in rapid motion broke the silence her beauty had imposed, and, with a great outcry, the bystanders parted in every direction, hurrying to get away. "the roman has a mind to ride us down. look out!" malluch shouted to ben-hur, setting him at the same time an example of hasty flight. the latter faced to the direction the sounds came from, and beheld messala in his chariot pushing the four straight at the crowd. this time the view was near and distinct. the parting of the company uncovered the camel, which might have been more agile than his kind generally; yet the hoofs were almost upon him, and he resting with closed eyes, chewing the endless cud with such sense of security as long favouritism may be supposed to have bred in him. the ethiopian wrung his hands afraid. in the houdah, the old man moved to escape; but he was hampered with age, and could not, even in the face of danger, forget the dignity which was plainly his habit. it was too late for the woman to save herself. ben-hur stood nearest them, and he called to messala "hold! look where thou goest! back, back!" the patrician was laughing in hearty good-humour; and, seeing there was but one chance of rescue, ben-hur stepped in, and caught the bits of the left yoke-steed and his mate. "dog of a roman! carest thou so little for life?" he cried, putting forth all his strength. the two horses reared, and drew the others round; the tilting of the pole tilted the chariot; messala barely escaped a fall, while his complacent myrtilus rolled back like a clod to the ground. seeing the peril past, all the bystanders burst into derisive laughter. the matchless audacity of the roman then manifested itself. loosing the lines from his body, he tossed them to one side, dismounted, walked round the camel, looked at ben-hur, and spoke partly to the old man and partly to the woman. "pardon, i pray youi pray you both. i am messala," he said; "and, by the old mother of the earth, i swear i did not see you or your camel! as to these good peopleperhaps i trusted too much to my skill. i sought a laugh at themthe laugh is theirs. good may it do them!" the good-natured, careless look and gesture he threw the bystanders accorded well with the speech. to hear what more he had to say, they became quiet. assured of victory over the body of the offended, he signed his companion to take the chariot to a safer distance, and addressed himself boldly to the woman. "thou hast interest in the good man here, whose pardon, if not granted now, i shall seek with the greater diligence hereafter; his daughter, i should say." she made him no reply. "by pallas, thou art beautiful! beware apollo mistake thee not for his lost love. i wonder what land can boast herself thy mother. turn not away. a truce! a truce! there is the sun of india in thine eyes; in the corners of thy mouth, egypt hath set her love-signs. perpol! turn not to that slave, fair mistress, before proving merciful to this one. tell me at least that i am pardoned." at this point she broke in upon him. "wilt thou come here?" she asked, smiling, and with gracious bend of the head to ben-hur. "take the cup and fill it, i pray thee," she said to the latter. "my father is thirsty." "i am thy most willing servant!" ben-hur turned about to do the favour, and was face to face with messala. their glances met; the jew's defiant; the roman's sparkling with humour. "o stranger, beautiful as cruel!" messala said, waving his hand to her. "if apollo get thee not, thou shalt see me again. not knowing thy country, i cannot name a god to commend thee to; so, by all the gods, i will commend thee tomyself!" seeing the myrtilus had the four composed and ready, he returned to the chariot. the woman looked after him as he moved away, and whatever else there was in her look, there was no displeasure. presently she received the water; her father drank; then she raised the cup to her lips, and, leaning down, gave it to ben-hur; never action more graceful and gracious. "keep it, we pray of thee! it is full of blessingsall thine!" immediately the camel was aroused, and on his feet, and about to go, when the old man called "stand thou here." ben-hur went to him respectfully. "thou hast served the stranger well to-day. there is but one god. in his holy name i thank thee. i am balthasar, the egyptian. in the great orchard of palms, beyond the village of daphne, in the shade of the palms, sheik ilderim the generous abideth in his tents, and we are his guests. seek us there. thou shalt have welcome sweet with the savour of the grateful." ben-hur was left in wonder at the old man's clear voice and reverend manner. as he gazed after the two departing, he caught sight of messala going as he had come, joyous, indifferent, and with a mocking laugh. chapter ix. the chariot race discussed. as a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved badly. in this instance, happily, malluch was an exception to the rule. the affair he had just witnessed raised ben-hur in his estimation, since he could not deny him courage and address; could he now get some insight into the young man's history, the results of the day would not be all unprofitable to good master simonides. on the latter point, referring to what he had as yet learned, two facts comprehended it allthe subject of his investigation was a jew, and the adopted son of a famous roman. another conclusion which might be of importance was beginning to formulate itself in the shrewd mind of the emissary; between messala and the son of the duumvir there was a connection of some kind. but what was it?and how could it be reduced to assurance? with all his sounding, the ways and means of solution were not at call. in the heat of the perplexity, ben-hur himself came to his help. he laid his hand on malluch's arm and drew him out of the crowd, which was already going back to its interest in the grey old priest and the mystic fountain. "good malluch," he said, stopping, "may a man forget his mother?" the question was abrupt and without direction, and therefore of the kind which leaves the person addressed in a state of confusion. malluch looked into ben-hur's face for a hint of meaning, but saw, instead, two bright-red spots, one on each cheek, and in his eyes traces of what might have been repressed tears; then he answered, mechanically, "no!" adding, with fervour, "never;" and a moment after, when he began to recover himself, "if he is an israelite, never!" and when at length he was completely recovered"my first lesson in the synagogue was the shema; my next was the saying of the son of sirach, 'honour thy father with thy whole soul, and forget not the sorrows of thy mother.'" the red spots on ben-hur's face deepened. "the words bring my childhood back again; and, malluch, they prove you a genuine jew. i believe i can trust you." ben-hur let go the arm he was holding, and caught the folds of the gown covering his own breast, and pressed them close, as if to smother a pain, or a feeling there as sharp as a pain. "my father," he said, "bore a good name, and was not without honour in jerusalem, where he dwelt. my mother, at his death, was in the prime of womanhood; and it is not enough to say of her she was good and beautiful: in her tongue was the law of kindness, and her works were the praise of all in the gates, and she smiled at days to come. i had a little sister, and she and i were the family, and we were so happy that i, at least, have never seen harm in the saying of the old rabbi, 'god could not be everywhere, and, therefore, he made mothers.' one day an accident happened to a roman in authority as he was riding past our house at the head of a cohort; the legionaries burst the gate and rushed in and seized us. i have not seen my mother or sister since. i cannot say they are dead or living. i do not know what became of them. but, malluch, the man in the chariot yonder was present at the separation; he gave us over to the captors; he heard my mother's prayer for her children, and he laughed when they dragged her away. hardly may one say which graves deepest in memory, love or hate. to-day i knew him afarand, malluch" he caught the listener's arm again. "and, malluch, he knows and takes with him now the secret i would give my life for: he could tell if she lives, and where she is, and her condition; if sheno, theymuch sorrow has made the two as oneif they are dead, he could tell where they died, and of what, and where their bones await my finding." "and will he not?" "no." "why?" "i am a jew, and he is a roman." "but romans have tongues, and jews, though ever so despised, have methods to beguile them." "for such as he? no; and, besides, the secret is one of state. all my father's property was confiscated and divided." malluch nodded his head slowly, much as to admit the argument; then he asked anew, "did he not recognize you?" "he could not. i was sent to death in life, and have been long since accounted of the dead." "i wonder you did not strike him," said malluch, yielding to a touch of passion. "that would have been to put him past serving me forever. i would have had to kill him, and death, you know, keeps secrets better even than a guilty roman." the man who, with so much to avenge, could so calmly put such an opportunity aside must be confident of his future or have ready some better design, and malluch's interest changed with the thought; it ceased to be that of an emissary in duty bound to another. ben-hur was actually asserting a claim upon him for his own sake. in other words, malluch was preparing to serve him with good heart and from downright admiration. after brief pause, ben-hur resumed speaking. "i would not take his life, good malluch; against that extreme the possession of the secret is for the present, at least, his safeguard; yet i may punish him, and so you give me help, i will try." "he is a roman," said malluch, without hesitation; "and i am of the tribe of judah. i will help you. if you choose, put me under oathunder the most solemn oath." "give me your hand, that will suffice." as their hands fell apart, ben-hur said, with lightened feeling, "that i would charge you with is not difficult, good friend; neither is it dreadful to conscience. let us move on." they took the road which led to the right across the meadow spoken of in the description of the coming to the fountain. ben-hur was first to break the silence. "do you know sheik ilderim the generous?" "yes." "where is his orchard of palms? or, rather, malluch, how far is it beyond the village of daphne?" malluch was touched by a doubt; he recalled the prettiness of the favour shown him by the woman at the fountain, and wondered if he who had the sorrows of a mother in mind was about to forget them for a lure of love; yet he replied, "the orchard of palms lies beyond the village two hours by horse, and one by a swift camel." "thank you; and to your knowledge once more. have the games of which you told me been widely published? and when will they take place?" the questions were suggestive; and if they did not restore malluch his confidence, they at least stimulated his curiosity. "oh yes, they will be of ample splendour. the prefect is rich, and could afford to lose his place; yet, as is the way with successful men, his love of riches is nowise diminished; and to gain a friend at court, if nothing more, he must make ado for the consul maxentius, who is coming hither to make final preparations for a campaign against the parthians. the money there is in the preparations the citizens of antioch know from experience; so they have had permission to join the prefect in the honours intended for the great man. a month ago heralds went to the four quarters to proclaim the opening of the circus for the celebration. the name of the prefect would be of itself good guarantee of variety and magnificence, particularly throughout the east; but when to his promises antioch joins hers, all the islands and the cities by the sea stand assured of the extraordinary, and will be here in person or by their most famous professionals. the fees offered are royal." "and the circusi have heard it is second only to the maximus." "at rome, you mean. well, ours seats two hundred thousand people, yours seats seventy-five thousand more; yours is of marble, so is ours; in arrangement they are exactly the same." "are the rules the same?" malluch smiled. "if antioch dared be original, son of arrius, rome would not be the mistress she is. the laws of the circus maximus govern except in one particular: there but four chariots may start at once, here all start without reference to number." "that is the practice of the greeks," said ben-hur. "yes, antioch is more greek than roman." "so then, malluch, i may choose my own chariot?" "your own chariot and horses. there is no restriction upon either." while replying, malluch observed the thoughtful look on ben-hur's face give place to one of satisfaction. "one thing more now, o malluch. when will the celebration be?" "ah! your pardon," the other answered. "to-morrowand the next day," he said, counting aloud, "then, to speak in the roman style, if the sea-gods be propitious, the consul arrives. yes, the sixth day from this we have the games." "the time is short, malluch, but it is enough." the last words were spoken decisively. "by the prophets of our old israel! i will take to the reins again. stay! a condition; is there assurance that messala will be a competitor?" malluch saw now the plan, and all its opportunities for the humiliation of the roman; and he had not been true descendant of jacob if, with all his interest wakened, he had not rushed to a consideration of the chances. his voice actually trembled as he said, "have you the practice?" "fear not, my friend. the winners in the circus maximus have held their crowns these three years at my will. ask themask the best of them, and they will tell you so. in the last great games the emperor himself offered me his patronage if i would take his horses in hand and run them against the entries of the world." "but you did not?" malluch spoke eagerly. "ii am a jew"ben-hur seemed shrinking within himself as he spoke"and, though i wear a roman name, i dared not do professionally a thing to sully my father's name in the cloisters and courts of the temple. in the palaestrae i could indulge practice which, if followed into the circus, would become an abomination; and if i take to the course here, malluch, i swear it will not be for the prize or the winner's fee." "holdswear not so!" cried malluch. "the fee is ten thousand sestertiia fortune for life!" "not for me, though the prefect trebled it fifty times. better than that, better than all the imperial revenues from the first year of the first caesari will make this race to humble my enemy. vengeance is permitted by the law." malluch smiled and nodded as if saying, "right, righttrust me a jew to understand a jew." "the messala will drive," he said, directly. "he is committed to the race in many waysby publication in the streets, and in the baths and theatres, the palace and barracks; and, to fix him past retreat, his name is on the tablets of every young spendthrift in antioch." "in wager, malluch?" "yes, in wager; and every day he comes ostentatiously to practise, as you saw him." "ah! and that is the chariot, and those the horses, with which he will make the race? thank you, thank you, malluch! you have served me well already. i am satisfied. now be my guide to the orchard of palms, and give me introduction to sheik ilderim the generous." "when?" "to-day. his horses may be engaged to-morrow." "you like them, then?" ben-hur answered with animation "i saw them from the stand an instant only, for messala then drove up, and i might not look at anything else; yet i recognized them as of the blood which is the wonder as well as the glory of the deserts. i never saw the kind before, except in the stables of caesar; but once seen they are always to be known. to-morrow, upon meeting, i will know you, malluch, though you do not so much as salute me; i will know you by your face, by your form, by your manner; and by the same signs i will know them, and with the same certainty. if all that is said of them be true, and i can bring their spirit under control of mine, i can" "win the sestertii!" said malluch, laughing. "no," answered ben-hur, as quickly. "i will do what better becomes a man born to the heritage of jacobi will humble mine enemy in a most public place. but," he added, impatiently, "we are losing time. how can we most quickly reach the tents of the sheik?" malluch took a moment for reflection. "it is best we go straight to the village, which is fortunately near by; if two swift camels are to be had for hire there, we will be on the road but an hour." "let us about it, then." the village was an assemblage of palaces in beautiful gardens, interspersed with khans of princely sort. dromedaries were happily secured, and upon them the journey to the famous orchard of palms was begun. chapter x. ben-hur hears of christ. beyond the village the country was undulating and cultivated; in fact, it was the garden-land of antioch, with not a foot lost to labour. the steep faces of the hills were terraced; even the hedges were brighter of the trailing vines which, besides the lure of shade, offered passers-by sweet promises of wine to come, and grapes in clustered purple ripeness. over melon-patches, and through apricot and fig-tree groves, and groves of oranges and limes, the white-washed houses of the farmers were seen; and everywhere plenty, the smiling daughter of peace, gave notice by her thousand signs that she was at home, making the generous traveller merry at heart, until he was even disposed to give rome her dues. occasionally, also, views were had of taurus and lebanon, between which, a separating line of silver, the orontes placidly pursued its way. in course of their journey the friends came to the river, which they followed with the windings of the road, now over bold bluffs, and then into vales, all alike allotted for country-seats; and if the land was in full foliage of oak and sycamore and myrtle, and bay and arbutus, and perfuming jasmine, the river was bright with slanted sunlight, which would have slept where it fell but for ships in endless procession, gliding with the current, tacking for the wind, or bounding under the impulse of oarssome coming, some going, and all suggestive of the sea, and distant peoples, and famous places, and things coveted on account of their rarity. to the fancy there is nothing so winsome as a white sail seaward blown, unless it be a white sail homeward bound, its voyage happily done. and down the shore the friends went continuously till they came to a lake fed by black-water from the river, clear, deep, and without current. an old palm-tree dominated the angle of the inlet; turning to the left at the foot of the tree, malluch clapped his hands and shouted "look, look! the orchard of palms!" the scene was nowhere else to be found unless in the favoured oases of arabia or the ptolemaean farms along the nile; and to sustain a sensation new as it was delightful, ben-hur was admitted into a tract of land apparently without limit and level as a floor. all under foot was fresh grass, in syria the rarest and most beautiful production of the soil; if he looked up, it was to see the sky palely blue through the groinery of countless date-bearers, very patriarchs of their kind, so numerous and old, and of such mighty girth, so tall, so serried, so wide of branch, each branch so perfect with fronds, plumy and wax-like and brilliant, they seemed enchanters enchanted. here was the grass colouring the very atmosphere; there the lake, cool and clear, rippling but a few feet under the surface, and helping the trees to their long life in old age. did the grove of daphne excel this one? and the palms, as if they knew ben-hur's thought, and would win him after a way of their own, seemed, as he passed under their arches, to stir and sprinkle him with dewy coolness. the road wound in close parallelism with the shore of the lake; and when it carried the travellers down to the water's edge, there was always on that side a shining expanse limited not far off by the opposite shore, on which, as on this one, no tree but the palm was permitted. "see that," said malluch, pointing to a giant of the place. "each ring upon its trunk marks a year of its life. count them from root to branch, and if the sheik tells you the grove was planted before the seleucidae were heard of in antioch, do not doubt him." one may not look at a perfect palm-tree but that, with a subtlety all its own, it assumes a presence for itself, and makes a poet of the beholder. this is the explanation of the honours it has received, beginning with the artists of the first kings, who could find no form in all the earth to serve them so well as a model for the pillars of their palaces and temples; and for the same reason ben-hur was moved to say "as i saw him at the stand to-day, good malluch, sheik ilderim appeared to be a very common man. the rabbis in jerusalem would look down upon him, i fear, as a son of a dog of edom. how came he in possession of the orchard? and how has he been able to hold it against the greed of roman governors?" "if blood derives excellence from time, son of arrius, then is old ilderim a man, though he be an uncircumcised edomite." mulluch spoke warmly. "all his fathers before him were sheiks. one of themi shall not say when he lived or did the good deedonce helped a king who was being hunted with swords. the story says he loaned him a thousand horsemen, who knew the paths of the wilderness and its hiding-places as shepherds know the scant hills they inhabit with their flocks; and they carried him here and there until the opportunity came, and then with their spears they slew the enemy, and set him upon his throne again. and the king, it is said, remembered the service, and brought the son of the desert to this place, and bade him set up his tent and bring his family and his herds, for the lake and trees, and all the land from the river to the nearest mountains, were his and his children's forever. and they have never been disturbed in the possession. the rulers succeeding have found it policy to keep good terms with the tribe, to whom the lord has given increase of men and horses, and camels and riches, making them masters of many highways between cities; so that it is with them any time they please to say to commerce, 'go in peace,' or 'stop,' and what they say shall be done. even the prefect in the citadel overlooking antioch thinks it happy day with him when ilderim, surnamed the generous on account of good deeds done unto all manner of men, with his wives and children, and his trains of camels and horses, and his belongings of sheik, moving as our fathers abraham and jacob moved, comes up to exchange briefly his bitter wells for the pleasantness you see about us." "how is it, then?" said ben-hur, who had been listening unmindful of the slow gait of the dromedaries. "i saw the sheik tear his beard while he cursed himself that he had put trust in a roman. caesar, had he heard him, might have said, 'i like not such a friend as this; put him away.'" "it would be but shrewd judgment," malluch replied, smiling. "ilderim is not a lover of rome; he has a grievance. three years ago the parthians rode across the road from bozra to damascus, and fell upon a caravan laden, among other things, with the incoming tax-returns of a district over that way. they slew every creature taken, which the censors in rome could have forgiven if the imperial treasure had been spared and forwarded. the farmers of the taxes, being chargeable with the loss, complained to caesar, and caesar held herod to payment, and herod, on his part, seized property of ilderim, whom he charged with treasonable neglect of duty. the sheik appealed to caesar, and caesar has made him such answer as might be looked for from the unwinking sphinx. the old man's heart has been aching sore ever since, and he nurses his wrath, and takes pleasure in its daily growth." "he can do nothing, malluch." "well," said malluch, "that involves another explanation, which i will give you, if we can draw nearer. but see!the hospitality of the sheik begins earlythe children are speaking to you." the dromedaries stopped, and ben-hur looked down upon some little girls of the syrian peasant class, who were offering him their baskets filled with dates. the fruit was freshly gathered, and not to be refused; he stooped and took it, and as he did so a man in the tree by which they were halted cried, "peace to you, and welcome!" their thanks said to the children, the friends moved on at such gait as the animals chose. "you must know," malluch continued, pausing now and then to dispose of a date, "that the merchant simonides gives me his confidence, and sometimes flatters me by taking me into council; and as i attend him at his house, i have made acquaintance with many of his friends, who, knowing my footing with the host, talk to him freely in my presence. in that way i became somewhat intimate with sheik ilderim." for a moment ben-hur's attention wandered. before his mind's eye there arose the image, pure, gentle, and appealing, of esther, the merchant's daughter. her dark eyes bright with the peculiar jewish lustre met his in modest gaze; he heard her step as when she approached him with the wine, and her voice as she tendered him the cup; and he acknowledged to himself again all the sympathy she manifested for him, and manifested so plainly that words were unnecessary, and so sweetly that words would have been but a detraction. the vision was exceeding pleasant, but upon his turning to malluch, it flew away. "a few weeks ago," said malluch, continuing, "the old arab called on simonides, and found me present. i observed he seemed much moved about something, and, in deference, offered to withdraw, but he himself forbade me. 'as you are an israelite,' he said, 'stay, for i have a strange story to tell.' the emphasis on the word israelite excited my curiosity. i remained, and this is in substance his storyi cut it short because we are drawing nigh the tent, and i leave the details to the good man himself. a good many years ago, three men called at ilderim's tent out in the wilderness. they were all foreigners, a hindoo, a greek, and an egyptian; and they had come on camels, the largest he had ever seen, and all white. he welcomed them, and gave them rest. next morning they arose and prayed a prayer new to the sheika prayer addressed to god and his sonthis with much mystery besides. after breaking fast with him, the egyptian told who they were, and whence they had come. each had seen a star, out of which a voice had bidden them go to jerusalem and ask, 'where is he that is born king of the jews?' they obeyed. from jerusalem they were led by a star to bethlehem, where, in a cave, they found a child newly born, which they fell down and worshipped; and after worshipping it, and giving it costly presents, and bearing witness of what it was, they took to their camels, and fled without pause to the sheik, because if herodmeaning him surnamed the greatcould lay hands upon them, he would certainly kill them. and, faithful to his habit, the sheik took care of them, and kept them concealed for a year, when they departed, leaving with him gifts of great value, and each going a separate way." "it is, indeed, a most wonderful story," ben-hur exclaimed at its conclusion. "what did you say they were to ask at jerusalem?" "they were to ask, 'where is he that is born king of the jews?'" "was that all?" "there was more to the question, but i cannot recall it." "and they found the child?" "yes, and worshipped him." "it is a miracle, malluch." "ilderim is a grave man, though excitable as all arabs are. a lie on his tongue is impossible." malluch spoke positively. thereupon the dromedaries were forgotten, and, quite as unmindful of their riders, they turned off the road to the growing grass. "has ilderim heard nothing more of the three men?" asked ben-hur. "what became of them?" "ah, yes, that was the cause of his coming to simonides the day of which i was speaking. only the night before that day the egyptian reappeared to him." "where?" "here at the door of the tent to which we are coming." "how knew he the man?" "as you knew the horses to-dayby face and manner." "by nothing else?" "he rode the same great white camel, and gave him the same namebalthasar, the egyptian." "it is a wonder of the lord's!" ben-hur spoke with excitement. and malluch, wondering, asked, "why so?" "balthasar, you said?" "yes, balthasar, the egyptian." "that was the name the old man gave us at the fountain to-day." then, at the reminder, malluch became excited. "it is true," he said; "and the camel was the sameand you saved the man's life." "and the woman," said ben-hur, like one speaking to himself"the woman was his daughter." he fell to thinking; and even the reader will say he was having a vision of the woman, and that it was more welcome than that of esther, if only because it stayed longer with him; but no "tell me again," he said, presently. "were the three to ask, 'where is he that is to be king of the jews?'" "not exactly. the words were born to be king of the jews. those were the words as the old sheik caught them first in the desert, and he has ever since been waiting the coming of the king; nor can any one shake his faith that he will come." "howas king?" "yes, and bringing the doom of romeso says the sheik." ben-hur kept silent awhile, thinking and trying to control his feelings. "the old man is one of many millions," he said, slowly"one of many millions each with a wrong to avenge; and this strange faith, malluch, is bread and wine to his hope; for who but a herod may be king of the jews while rome endures? but, following the story, did you hear what simonides said to him?" "if ilderim is a grave man, simonides is a wise one," malluch replied. "i listened, and he saidbut hark! some one comes overtaking us." the noise grew louder, until presently they heard the rumble of wheels mixed with the beating of horse-hoofsa moment later sheik ilderim himself appeared on horseback, followed by a train, among which were the four wine-red arabs drawing the chariot. the sheik's chin, in its muffling of long white beard, was drooped upon his breast. our friends had out-travelled him; but at sight of them, he raised his head, and spoke kindly. "peace to you!ah, my friend malluch! welcome! and tell me you are not going, but just come; that you have something for me from the good simonidesmay the lord of his fathers keep him in life for many years to come! aye, take up the straps, both of you, and follow me. i have bread and leben, or, if you prefer it, arrack and the flesh of young kid. come!" they followed after him to the door of the tent, in which, when they were dismounted, he stood to receive them, holding a platter with three cups filled with creamy liquor just drawn from a great smoke-stained skin bottle, pendent from the central post. "drink," he said, heartily, "drink, for this is the fear-naught of the tentmen." they each took a cup, and drank till but the foam remained. "enter now, in god's name." and when they were gone in, malluch took the sheik aside, and spoke to him privately; after which he went to ben-hur and excused himself. "i have told the sheik about you, and he will give you the trial of his horses in the morning. he is your friend. having done for you all i can, you must do the rest, and let me return to antioch. there is one there who has my promise to meet him to-night. i have no choice but to go. i will come back to-morrow; prepared, if all goes well in the meantime, to stay with you until the games are over." with blessings given and received, malluch set out in return. chapter xi. the wise servant and his daughter. what time the lower horn of a new moon touched the castellated piles on mount sulpius, and two-thirds of the people of antioch were out on their house-tops comforting themselves with the night breeze when it blew, and with fans when it failed, simonides sat in the chair which had come to be a part of him, and from the terrace looked down over the river, and his ships a-swing at their moorings. the wall at his back cast its shadow broadly over the water to the opposite shore. above him the endless tramp upon the bridge went on. esther was holding a plate for him containing his frugal suppersome wheaten cakes light as wafers, some honey, and a bowl of milk, into which he now and then dipped the wafers after dipping them into the honey. "malluch is a laggard to-night," he said, showing where his thoughts were. "do you believe he will come?" esther asked. "unless he has taken to the sea or the desert, and is yet following on, he will come." simonides spoke with quiet confidence. "he may write," she said. "not so, esther. he would have despatched a letter when he found he could not return, and told me so; because i have not received such a letter, i know he can come, and will." "i hope so," she said, very softly. something in the utterance attracted his attention; it might have been the tone, it might have been the wish. the smallest bird cannot light upon the greatest tree without sending a shock to its most distant fibre; every mind is at times no less sensitive to the most trifling words. "you wish him to come, esther?" he asked. "yes," she said, lifting her eyes to his. "why? can you tell me?" he persisted. "because"she hesitated, then began again"because the young man is" the stop was full. "our master. is that the word?" "yes." "and you still think i should not suffer him to go away without telling him to come, if he chooses, and take usand all we haveall, estherthe goods, the shekels, the ships, the slaves, and the mighty credit, which is a mantle of cloth of gold and finest silver spun for me by the greatest of the angels of mensuccess." she made no answer. "does that move you nothing? no?" he said, with the slightest taint of bitterness. "well, well, i have found, esther, the worst reality is never unendurable when it comes out from behind the clouds through which we at first see it darklynevernot even the rack. i suppose it will be so with death. and by that philosophy the slavery to which we are going must afterwhile become sweet. it pleases me even now to think what a favoured man our master is. the fortune cost him nothingnot an anxiety, not a drop of sweat not so much as a thought; it attaches to him undreamed of, and in his youth. and, esther, let me waste a little vanity with the reflection; he gets what he could not go into the market and buy with all the pelf in a sumthee, my child, my darling; thou blossom from the tomb of my lost rachel!" he drew her to him, and kissed her twiceonce for herself, once for her mother. "say not so," she said, when his hand fell from her neck. "let us think better of him; he knows what sorrow is, and will set us free." "ah, thy instincts are fine, esther; and thou knowest i lean upon them in doubtful cases where good or bad is to be pronounced of a person standing before thee as he stood this morning. butbut"his voice rose and hardened"these limbs upon which i cannot standthis body drawn and beaten out of human shapethey are not all i bring him of myself. oh no, no! i bring him a soul which has triumphed over torture and roman malice keener than any torturei bring him a mind which has eyes to see gold at a distance farther than the ships of solomon sailed, and power to bring it to handaye, esther, into my palm here for the fingers to grip and keep lest it take wings at some other's worda mind skilled at scheming"he stopped and laughed."why, esther, before the new moon, which in the courts of the temple on the holy hill they are this moment celebrating, passes into its next quartering i could ring the world so as to startle even caesar; for know you, child, i have that faculty which is better than any one sense, better than a perfect body, better than courage and will, better than experience, ordinarily the best product of the longest livesthe faculty divinest of men, but which"he stopped, and laughed again, not bitterly, but with real zest"but which even the great do not sufficiently account, while with the herd it is a non-existentthe faculty of drawing men to my purpose and holding them faithfully to its achievement, by which, as against things to be done, i multiply myself into hundreds and thousands. so the captains of my ships plough the seas, and bring me honest returns; so malluch follows the youth, our master, and will"just then a footstep was heard upon the terrace"ha, esther! said i not so?he is hereand we will have tidings. for my sake, sweet childmy lily just buddedi pray the lord god, who has not forgotten his wandering sheep of israel, that they be good and comforting. now we will know if he will let thee go with all thy beauty, and me with all my faculties." malluch came to the chair. "peace to you, good master," he said, with a low obeisance"and to you, esther, most excellent of daughters." he stood before them deferentially, and the attitude and the address left it difficult to define his relation to them; the one was that of a servant, the other indicated the familiar and friend. on the other side, simonides, as was his habit in business, after answering the salutation, went straight to the subject. "what of the young man, malluch?" the events of the day were told quietly and in the simplest words, and until he was through there was no interruption; nor did the listener in the chair so much as move a hand during the narration; but for his eyes, wide open and bright, and an occasional long-drawn breath, he might have been accounted an effigy. "thank you, thank you, malluch," he said, heartily, at the conclusion; "you have done wellno one could have done better. now what say you of the young man's nationality?" "he is an israelite, good master, and of the tribe of judah." "you are positive?" "very positive." "he appears to have told you but little of his life." "he has somewhere learned to be prudent. i might call him distrustful. he baffled all my attempts upon his confidence until we started from the castalian fount going to the village of daphne." "a place of abomination! why went he there?" "i would say from curiosity, the first motive of the many who go; but, very strangely, he took no interest in the things he saw. of the temple, he merely asked if it were grecian. good master, the young man has a trouble of mind from which he would hide, and he went to the grove, i think, as we go to sepulchres with our deadhe went to bury it." "that were well, if so," simonides said, in a low voice; then louder, "malluch, the curse of the time is prodigality. the poor make themselves poorer as apes of the rich, and the merely rich carry themselves like princes. saw you signs of the weakness in the youth? did he display moneyscoin of rome or israel?" "none, none, good master." "surely, malluch, where there are so many inducements to follyso much, i mean, to eat and drinksurely he made you generous offer of some sort. his age, if nothing more, would warrant that much." "he neither ate nor drank in my company." "in what he said or did, malluch, could you in anywise detect his master-idea? you know they peep through cracks close enough to stop the wind." "give me to understand you," said malluch, in doubt. "well, you know we nor speak nor act, much less decide grave questions concerning ourselves, except we be driven by a motive. in that respect, what make you of him?" "as to that, master simonides, i can answer with much assurance. he is devoted to finding his mother and sisterthat first. then he has a grievance against rome; and as the messala of whom i told you had something to do with the wrong, the great present object is to humiliate him. the meeting at the fountain furnished an opportunity, but it was put aside as not sufficiently public." "the messala is influential," said simonides, thoughtfully. "yes; but the next meeting will be in the circus." "welland then?" "the son of arrius will win." "how know you?" malluch smiled. "i am judging by what he says." "is that all?" "no; there is a much better signhis spirit." "aye; but, malluch, his idea of vengeancewhat is its scope? does he limit it to the few who did him the wrong, or does he take in the many? and moreis his feeling but the vagary of a sensitive boy, or has it the seasoning of suffering manhood to give it endurance? you know, malluch, the vengeful thought that has root merely in the mind is but a dream of idlest sort which one clear day will dissipate; while revenge the passion is a disease of the heart which climbs up, up to the brain, and feeds itself on both alike." in this question, simonides for the first time showed signs of feeling; he spoke with rapid utterance, and with clenched hands and the eagerness of a man illustrating the disease he described. "good, my master," malluch replied, "one of my reasons for believing the young man a jew is the intensity of his hate. it was plain to me that he had himself under watch, as was natural, seeing how long he has lived in an atmosphere of roman jealousy; yet i saw it blazeonce when he wanted to know ilderim's feeling towards rome, and again when i told him the story of the sheik and the wise man, and spoke of the question, 'where is he that is born king of the jews?'" simonides leaned forward quickly. "ah, malluch, his wordsgive me his words; let me judge the impression the mystery made upon him." "he wanted to know the exact words. were they to be or born to be? it appeared he was struck by a seeming difference in the effect of the two phrases." simonides settled back into his pose of listening judge. "then," said malluch, "i told him ilderim's view of the mysterythat the king would come with the doom of rome. the young man's blood rose over his cheeks and forehead, and he said earnestly, 'who but a herod can be king while rome endures?'" "meaning what?" "that the empire must be destroyed before there could be another rule." simonides gazed for a time at the ships and their shadows slowly swinging together in the river; when he looked up, it was to end the interview. "enough, malluch," he said. "get you to eat, and make ready to return to the orchard of palms; you must help the young man in his coming trial. come to me in the morning. i will send a letter to ilderim." then in an undertone, as if to himself, he added, "i may attend the circus myself." when malluch, after the customary benediction given and received, was gone, simonides took a deep draught of milk, and seemed refreshed and easy of mind. "put the meal down, esther," he said; "it is over." she obeyed. "here now." she resumed her place upon the arm of the chair close to him. "god is good to me, very good," he said, fervently. "his habit is to move in mystery, yet sometimes he permits us to think we see and understand him. i am old, dear, and must go; but now, in this eleventh hour, when my hope was beginning to die, he sends me this one with a promise, and i am lifted up. i see the way to a great part in a circumstance itself so great that it shall be as a new birth to the whole world. and i see a reason for the gift of my great riches, and the end for which they were designed. verily, my child, i take hold on life anew." esther nestled closer to him, as if to bring his thoughts from their far-flying. "the king has been born," he continued, imagining he was still speaking to her, "and he must be near the half of common life. balthasar says he was a child on his mother's lap when he saw him, and gave him presents and worship; and ilderim holds it was twenty-seven years ago last december when balthasar and his companions came to his tent asking a hiding-place from herod. wherefore the coming cannot now be long delayed. to-nightto-morrow it may be. holy fathers of israel, what happiness in the thought! i seem to hear the crash of the falling of old walls and the clamour of a universal changeaye, and for the uttermost joy of men, the earth opens to take rome in, and they look up and laugh and sing that she is not, while we are;" then he laughed at himself. "why, esther, heard you ever the like? surely, i have on me the passion of a singer, the heat of blood and the thrill of miriam and david. in my thoughts, which should be those of a plain worker in figures and facts, there is a confusion of cymbals clashing and harp-strings loud beaten, and the voices of a multitude standing around a new-risen throne. i will put the thinking by for the present; only, dear, when the king comes he will need money and men, for as he was a child born of woman he will be but a man after all, bound to human ways as you and i are. and for the money he will have need of getters and keepers, and for the men leaders. there, there! see you not a broad road for my walking, and the running of the youth, our master?and at the end of it glory and revenge for us both?andand"he paused, struck with the selfishness of a scheme in which she had no part or good result; then added, kissing her, "and happiness for thy mother's child." she sat still, saying nothing. then he remembered the difference in natures, and the law by which we are not permitted always to take delight in the same cause or be equally afraid of the same thing. he remembered she was but a girl. "of what are you thinking, esther?" he said, in his common, home-like way. "if the thought have the form of a wish, give it me, little one, while the power remains mine. for power, you know, is a fretful thing, and hath its wings always spread for flight." she answered with a simplicity almost childish "send for him, father. send for him to-night, and do not let him go into the circus." "ah!" he said, prolonging the exclamation; and again his eyes fell upon the river, where the shadows were more shadowy than ever, since the moon had sunk far down behind sulpius, leaving the city to the ineffectual stars. shall we say it, reader? he was touched by a twinge of jealousy. if she should really love the young master! oh no! that could not be; she was too young. but the idea had fast grip, and directly held him still and cold. she was sixteen. he knew it well. on the last natal day he had gone with her to the shipyard where there was a launch, and the yellow flag which the galley bore to its bridal with the waves had on it "esther;" so they celebrated the day together. yet the fact struck him now with the force of a surprise. there are realizations which come to us all painfully; mostly, however, such as pertain to ourselves; that we are growing old, for instance, and, more terrible, that we must die. such a one crept into his heart, shadowy as the shadows, yet substantial enough to wring from him a sigh which was almost a groan. it was not sufficient that she should enter upon her young womanhood a servant, but she must carry to her master her affections, the truth and tenderness and delicacy of which he the father so well knew, because to this time they had all been his own undividedly. the fiend whose task it is to torture us with fears and bitter thoughts seldom does his work by halves. in the pang of the moment, the brave old man lost sight of his new scheme, and of the miraculous king its subject. by a mighty effort, however, he controlled himself, and asked, calmly, "not go into the circus, esther? why, child?" "it is not a place for a son of israel, father." "rabbinical, rabbinical, esther! is that all?" the tone of the inquiry was searching, and went to her heart, which began to beat loudlyso loudly she could not answer. a confusion new and strangely pleasant fell upon her. "the young man is to have the fortune," he said, taking her hand, and speaking more tenderly; "he is to have the ships and the shekelsall, esther, all. yet i did not feel poor, for thou wert left me, and thy love so like the dead rachel's. tell me, is he to have that too?" she bent over him, and laid her cheek against his head. "speak, esther. i will be the stronger of the knowledge. in warning there is strength." she sat up then, and spoke as if she were truth's holy self. "comfort thee, father. i will never leave thee; though he take my love, i will be thy handmaid ever as now." and, stooping, she kissed him. "and more," she said, continuing; "he is comely in my sight, and the pleading of his voice drew me to him, and i shudder to think of him in danger. yes, father, i would be more than glad to see him again. still, the love that is unrequited cannot be perfect love, wherefore i will wait a time, remembering i am thy daughter and my mother's." "a very blessing of the lord art thou, esther! a blessing to keep me rich, though all else be lost. and by his holy name and everlasting life, i swear thou shalt not suffer." at his request, a little later, the servant came and rolled the chair into the room, where he sat for a time thinking of the coming of the king, while she went off and slept the sleep of the innocent. chapter xii. a roman orgie. the palace across the river nearly opposite simonides' place is said to have been completed by the famous epiphanes, and was all such a habitation can be imagined; though he was a builder whose taste ran to the immense rather than the classical, now so calledan architectural imitator, in other words, of the persians instead of the greeks. the wall enclosing the whole island to the water's edge, and built for the double purpose of bulwark against the river and defence against the mob, was said to have rendered the palace unfit for constant occupancy, insomuch that the legates abandoned it and moved to another residence erected for them on the western ridge of mount sulpius, under the temple of jupiter. persons were not wanting, however, who flatly denied the bill against the ancient abode. they said, with shrewdness at least, that the real object of the removal of the legates was not a more healthful locality, but the assurance afforded them by the huge barracks, named, according to the prevalent style, citadel, situated just over the way on the eastern ridge of the mount. and the opinion had plausible showing. among other pertinent things, it was remarked that the palace was kept in perpetual readiness for use; and when a consul, general of the army, king, or visiting potentate of any kind arrived at antioch, quarters were at once assigned him on the island. as we have to do with but one apartment in the old pile, the residue of it is left to the reader's fancy; and as pleases him, he may go through its gardens, baths, halls, and labyrinth of rooms to the pavilions on the roof, all furnished as became a house of fame in a city which was more nearly milton's "gorgeous east" than any other in the world. at this age the apartment alluded to would be termed a saloon. it was quite spacious, floored with polished marble slabs, and lighted in the day by skylights in which coloured mica served as glass. the walls were broken by atlantes, no two of which were alike, but all supporting a cornice wrought with arabesques exceedingly intricate in form, and more elegant on account of superadditions of colourblue, green, tyrian purple, and gold. around the room ran a continuous divan of indian silks and wool of cashmere. the furniture consisted of tables and stools of egyptian patterns grotesquely carved. we have left simonides in his chair perfecting his scheme in aid of the miraculous king, whose coming he has decided is so close at hand. esther is asleep; and now, having crossed the river by the bridge, and made way through the lion-guarded gate and a number of babylonian halls and courts, let us enter the gilded saloon. there are five chandeliers hanging by sliding bronze chains from the ceilingone in each corner, and in the centre oneenormous pyramids of lighted lamps, illuminating even the demoniac faces of the atlantes and the complex tracery of the cornice. about the tables, seated or standing, or moving restlessly from one to another, there are probably a hundred persons, whom we must study at least for a moment. they are all young, some of them little more than boys. that they are italians and mostly romans is past doubt. they all speak latin in purity, while each one appears in the indoor dress of the great capital on the tiber; that is, in tunics short of sleeve and skirt, a style of vesture well adapted to the climate of antioch, and especially comfortable in the too close atmosphere of the saloon. on the divan here and there togas and lacernae lie where they have been carelessly tossed, some of them significantly bordered with purple. on the divan also lie sleepers stretched at ease; whether they were overcome by the heat and fatigue of the sultry day or by bacchus we will not pause to inquire. the hum of voices is loud and incessant. sometimes there is an explosion of laughter, sometimes a burst of rage or exultation; but over all prevails a sharp prolonged rattle, at first somewhat confusing to the non-familiar. if we approach the tables, however, the mystery solves itself. the company is at the favourite games, draughts and dice, singly or together, and the rattle is merely of the tesserae, or ivory cubes, loudly shaken, and the moving of the hostes on the checkered boards. who are the company? "good flavius," said a player, holding his piece in suspended movement, "thou seest yon lacerna; that one in front of us on the divan. it is fresh from the shop, and hath a shoulder-buckle of gold broad as a palm." "well," said flavius, intent upon his game, "i have seen such before; wherefore thine may not be old, yet, by the girdle of venus, it is not new! what of it?" "nothing. only i would give it to find a man who knows everything." "ha, ha! for something cheaper, i will find thee here several with purple who will take thy offer. but play." "therecheck!" "so, by all the jupiters! now, what sayest thou? again?" "be it so." "and the wager?" "a sestertium." then each drew his tablets and stilus and made a memorandum; and, while they were resetting the pieces, flavius returned to his friend's remark. "a man who knows everything! hercle! the oracles would die. what would thou with such a monster?" "answer to one question, my flavius; then perpol! i would cut his throat." "and the question?" "i would have him tell me the hourhour, said i?nay, the minutemaxentius will arrive to-morrow." "good play, good play! i have you! and why the minute?" "hast thou ever stood uncovered in the syrian sun on the quay at which he will land? the fires of the vesta are not so hot; and, by the stator of our father romulus, i would die, if die i must, in rome. avernus is here; there, in the square before the forum, i could stand, and, with my hand raised thus, touch the floor of the gods. ha, by venus, my flavius, thou didst beguile me! i have lost. o fortune!" "again?" "i must have back my sestertium." "be it so." and they played again and again; and when day, stealing through the skylights, began to dim the lamps, it found the two in the same places at the same table, still at the game. like most of the company, they were military attaches of the consul, awaiting his arrival and amusing themselves meantime. during this conversation a party entered the room, and, unnoticed at first, proceeded to the central table. the signs were that they had come from a revel just dismissed. some of them kept their feet with difficulty. around the leader's brow was a chaplet which marked him master of the feast, if not the giver. the wine had made no impression upon him unless to heighten his beauty, which was of the most manly roman style; he carried his head high raised; the blood flushed his lips and cheeks brightly; his eyes glittered; though the manner in which, shrouded in a toga spotless white and of ample folds, he walked was too nearly imperial for one sober and not a caesar. in going to the table, he made room for himself and his followers with little ceremony and no apologies; and when at length he stopped, and looked over it and at the players, they all turned to him, with a shout like a cheer. "messala! messala!" they cried. those in distant quarters hearing the cry, re-echoed it where they were. instantly there were dissolution of groups, and breaking-up of games, and a general rush towards the centre. messala took the demonstration indifferently, and proceeded presently to show the ground of his popularity. "a health to thee, drusus, my friend," he said to the player next at his right; "a healthand thy tablets a moment." he raised the waxen boards, glanced at the memoranda of wagers, and tossed them down. "denarii, only denariicoin of cartmen and butchers!" he said, with a scornful laugh. "by the drunken semele, to what is rome coming, when a caesar sits o' nights waiting a turn of fortune to bring him but a beggarly denarius!" the scion of the drusi reddened to his brows, but the bystanders broke in upon his reply by surging closer around the table, and shouting, "the messala! the messala!" "men of the tiber," messala continued, wresting a box with the dice in it from a hand near by, "who is he most favoured of the gods? a roman. who is he lawgiver of the nations? a roman. who is he, by sword right, the universal master?" the company were of the easily inspired, and the thought was one to which they were born; in a twinkling they snatched the answer from him. "a roman, a roman!" they shouted. "yetyet"he lingered to catch their ears"yet there is a better than the best of rome." he tossed his patrician head and paused, as if to sting them with his sneer. "hear ye?" he asked. "there is a better than the best of rome." "ayhercules!" cried one. "bacchus!" yelled a satirist. "jovejove!" thundered the crowd. "no," messala answered, "among men." "name him, name him!" they demanded. "i will," he said, the next lull. "he who to the perfection of rome hath added the perfection of the east; who to the arm of conquest, which is western, hath also the art needful to the enjoyment of dominion, which is eastern." "perpol! his best is a roman, after all," some one shouted; and there was a great laugh, and long clapping of handsan admission that messala had the advantage. "in the east," he continued, "we have no gods, only wine, women, and fortune, and the greatest of them is fortune; wherefore our motto, 'who dareth what i dare?'fit for the senate, fit for battle, fittest for him who, seeking the best, challenges the worst." his voice dropped into an easy, familiar tone, but without relaxing the ascendency he had gained. "in the great chest up in the citadel i have five talents coin current in the markets, and here are the receipts for them." from his tunic he drew a roll of paper, and flinging it on the table, continued, amidst breathless silence, every eye having him in view fixed on his, every ear listening "the sum lies there the measure of what i dare. who of you dares so much? you are silent. is it too great? i will strike off one talent. what! still silent? come, then, throw me once for these three talentsonly three; for two; for oneone at leastone for the honour of the river by which you were bornrome east against rome west!orontes the barbarous against tiber the sacred!" he rattled the dice overhead while waiting. "the orontes against the tiber!" he repeated, with an increase of scornful emphasis. not a man moved; then he flung the box upon the table, and, laughing, took up the receipts. "ha, ha, ha! by the olympian jove, i know now we have fortunes to make or to mend; therefore are ye come to antioch. ho, cecilius!" "here, messala!" cried a man behind him; "here am i, perishing in the mob, and begging a drachma to settle with the ragged ferryman. but, pluto take me! these new ones have not so much as an obolus among them." the sally provoked a burst of laughter, under which the saloon rang and rang again, messala alone kept his gravity. "go, thou," he said to, cecilius, "to the chamber whence we came, and bid the servants bring the amphorae here, and the cups and goblets. if these our countrymen, looking for fortune, have not purses, by the syrian bacchus, i will see if they are not better blessed with stomachs! haste thee!" then he turned to drusus, with a laugh heard throughout the apartment. "ha, ha, my friend! be thou not offended because i levelled the caesar in thee down to the denarii. thou seest i did but use the name to try these fine fledglings of our old rome. come, my drusus, come!" he took up the box again and rattled the dice merrily. "here, for what sum thou wilt, let us measure fortunes." the manner was frank, cordial, winsome. drusus melted in a moment. "by the nymphae, yes!" he said laughing. "i will throw with thee, messalafor a denarius." a very boyish person was looking over the table, watching the scene. suddenly messala turned to him. "who art thou?" he asked. the lad drew back. "nay, by castor i and his brother too! i mean not offence. it is a rule among men, in matters other than dice, to keep the record closest when the deal is least. i have need of a clerk. wilt thou serve me?" the young fellow drew his tablets ready to keep the score; the manner was irresistible. "hold, messala, hold!" cried drusus. "i know not if it be ominous to stay the poised dice with a question; but one occurs to me, and i must ask it though venus slap me with her girdle." "nay, my drusus, venus with her girdle off is venus in love. to thy questioni will make the throw and hold it against mischance. thus" he turned the box upon the table, and held it firmly over the dice. and drusus asked. "did you ever see one quintus arrius?" "the duumvir?" "nohis son?" "i knew not he had a son." "well, it is nothing," drusus added, indifferently; "only, my messala, pollux was not more like castor than arrius is like thee." the remark had the effect of a signal: twenty voices took it up. "true, true! his eyeshis face," they cried. "what!" answered one, disgusted. "messala is a roman; arrius is a jew." "thou sayest right," a third exclaimed. "he is a jew, or momus lent his mother the wrong mask." there was a promise of a dispute; seeing which, messala interposed. "the wine is not come, my drusus; and, as thou seest, i have the freckled pythias as they were dogs in leash. as to arrius, i will accept thy opinion of him, so thou tell me more about him." "well, be he jew or romanand, by the great god pan, i say it not in disrespect of thy feelings, my messala!this arrius is handsome, and brave, and shrewd. the emperor offered him favour and patronage, which he refused. he came up through mystery, and keepeth distance as if he felt himself better or knew himself worse than the rest of us. in the palaestrae he was unmatched; he played with the blue-eyed giants from the rhine and the hornless bulls of sarmatia as they were willow wisps. the duumvir left him vastly rich. he has a passion for arms, and thinks of nothing but war. maxentius admitted him into his family, and he was to have taken ship with us, but we lost him at ravenna. nevertheless he arrived safely. we heard of him this morning. perpol! instead of coming to the palace or going to the citadel, he dropped his baggage at the khan, and hath disappeared again." at the beginning of the speech messala listened with polite indifference; as it proceeded he became more attentive; at the conclusion he took his hand from the dice-box, and called out, "ho, my caius! dost thou hear?" a youth at his elbowhis myrtilus, or comrade, in the day's chariot practiceanswered, much pleased with the attention, "did i not, my messala, i were not thy friend." "dost thou remember the man who gave thee the fall to-day?" "by the love-locks of bacchus, have i not a bruised shoulder to help me keep it in mind?" and he seconded the words with a shrug that submerged his ears. "well, be thou grateful to the fatesi have found thy enemy. listen." thereupon messala turned to drusus. "tell us more of himperpol!of him who is both jew and romanby phoebus, a combination to make a centaur lovely! what garments doth he affect, my drusus?" "those of the jews." "hearest thou, caius?" said messala. "the fellow is youngone; he hath the visage of a romantwo; he loveth best the garb of a jewthree; and in the palaestrae fame and fortune come of arms to throw a horse or tilt a chariot, as the necessity may orderfour. and, drusus, help thou my friend again. doubtless this arrius hath tricks of language, otherwise he could not so confound himselfto-day a jew, to-morrow a roman; but of the rich tongue of athenediscourseth he in that as well?" "with such purity, messala, he might have been a contestant in the isthmia." "art thou listening, caius?" said messala. "the fellow is qualified to salute a womanfor that matter, aristomache herselfin the greek; and as i keep the count, that is five. what sayest thou?" "thou hast found him, my messala," caius answered; "or i am not myself." "thy pardon, drususand pardon of allfor speaking in riddles thus," messala said, in his winsome way. "by all the decent gods, i would not strain thy courtesy to the point of breaking, but now help thou me. see!"he put his hand on the dice-box again, laughing"see how close i hold the pythias and their secret! thou didst speak, i think, of mystery in connection with the coming of the son of arrius. tell me of that." "'tis nothing, messala, nothing," drusus replied, "a child's story. when arrius, the father, sailed in pursuit of the pirates, he was without wife or family; he returned with a boyhim of whom we speakand next day adopted him." "adopted him?" messala repeated. "by the gods, drusus, thou dost, indeed, interest me! where did the duumvir find the boy? and who was he?" "who shall answer thee that, messala? who but the young arrius himself? perpol! in the fight the duumvirthen but a tribunelost his galley. a returning vessel found him and one otherall of the crew who survivedafloat upon the same plank. i give you now the story of the rescuers, which hath this excellence at leastit hath never been contradicted. they say, the duumvir's companion on the plank was a jew" "a jew!" echoed messala. "and a slave." "how, drusus? a slave?" "when the two were lifted to the deck, the duumvir was in his tribune's armour, and the other in the vesture of a rower." messala arose from leaning against the table. "a galley"he checked the debasing word, and looked around, for once in his life at loss. just then a procession of slaves filed into the room, some with great jars of wine, others with baskets of fruit and confections, others again with cups and flagons, mostly silver. there was inspiration in the sight. instantly messala climbed upon a stool. "men of the tiber," he said, in a clear voice, "let us turn this waiting for our chief into a feast of bacchus. whom choose ye for master?" drusus arose. "who shall be master but the giver of the feast?" he said. "answer, romans." they gave their reply in a shout. messala took the chaplet from his head, gave it to drusus, who climbed upon the table, and, in the view of all, solemnly replaced it, making messala master of the night. "there came with me into the room," he said, "some friends just risen from table. that our feast may have the approval of sacred custom, bring hither that one of them most overcome by wine." a din of voices answered, "here he is, here he is!" and from the floor where he had fallen a youth was brought forward, so effeminately beautiful he might have passed for the drinking-god himselfonly the crown would have dropped from his head, and the thyrsus from his hand. "lift him upon the table," the master said. it was found he could not sit. "help him, drusus, as the fair nyone may yet help thee." drusus took the inebriate in his arms. then addressing the limp figure, messala said, amidst profound silence, "o bacchus i greatest of the gods, be thou propitious to-night. and for myself, and these thy votaries, i vow this chaplet"and from his head he raised it reverently"i vow this chaplet to thy altar in the grove of daphne." he bowed, replaced the crown upon his locks, then stooped and uncovered the dice, saying, with a laugh, "see, my drusus, by the ass of silenus, the denarius is mine!" there was a shout that set the floor to quaking, and the grim atlantes to dancing, and the orgies began. chapter xiii. a driver for ilderim's arabs. sheik ilderim was a man of too much importance to go about with a small establishment. he had a reputation to keep with his tribe, such as became a prince and patriarch of the greatest following in all the desert east of syria; with the people of the cities he had another reputation, which was that of one of the richest personages not a king in all the east; and, being rich in factin money as well as in servants, camels, horses, and flocks of all kindshe took pleasure in a certain state, which, besides magnifying his dignity with strangers, contributed to his personal pride and comfort. wherefore the reader must not be misled by the frequent reference to his tent in the orchard of palms. he had there really a respectable dowar; that is to say, he had there three large tentsone for himself, one for visitors, one for his favourite wife and her women; and six or eight lesser ones, occupied by his servants and such tribal retainers as he had chosen to bring with him as a body-guardstrong men of approved courage, and skilful with bow, spear, and horses. to be sure, his property of whatever kind was in no danger at the orchard; yet as the habits of a man go with him to town not less than the country, and as it is never wise to slip the bands of discipline, the interior of the dowar was devoted to his cows, camels, goats, and such property in general as might tempt a lion or a thief. to do him full justice, ilderim kept well all the customs of his people, abating none, not even the smallest; in consequence his life at the orchard was a continuation of his life in the desert; nor that alone, it was a fair reproduction of the old patriarchal modesthe genuine pastoral life of primitive israel. recurring to the morning the caravan arrived at the orchard"here, plant it here," he said, stopping his horse, and thrusting a spear into the ground. "door to the south; the lake before it thus; and these, the children of the desert, to sit under at the going-down of the sun." at the last words he went to a group of three great palm-trees, and patted one of them as he would have patted his horse's neck, or the cheek of the child of his love. who but the sheik could of right say to the caravan, halt! or of the tent, here be it pitched? the spear was wrested from the ground, and over the wound it had riven in the sod the base of the first pillar of the' tent was planted, marking the centre of the front door. then eight others were plantedin all, three rows of pillars, three in a row. then, at call, the women and children came, and unfolded the canvas from its packing on the camels. who might do this but the women? had they not sheared the hair from the brown goats of the flock? and twisted it into thread? and woven the thread into cloth? and stitched the cloth together, making the perfect roof, dark-brown in fact, though in the distance black as the tents of kedar? and, finally, with what jests and laughter, and pulls altogether, the united following of the sheik stretched the canvas from pillar to pillar, driving the stakes and fastening the cords as they went? and when the walls of open reed matting were put in placethe finishing-touch to the building after the style of the desertwith what hush of anxiety they waited the good man's judgment? when he walked in and out, looking at the house in connection with the sun, the trees, and the lake, and said, rubbing his hands with might of heartiness, "well done! make the dowar now as ye well know, and to-night we will sweeten the bread with arrack, and the milk with honey, and at every fire there shall be a kid. god with ye! want of sweet water there shall not be, for the take is our well; neither shall the bearers of burden hunger, or the least of the flock, for here is green pasture also. god with you all, my children! go." and, shouting, the many happy went their ways then to pitch their own habitations. a few remained to arrange the interior for the sheik; and of these the men-servants hung a curtain to the central row of pillars, making two apartments; the one on the right sacred to ilderim himself, the other sacred to his horseshis jewels of solomonwhich they led in, and with kisses and love-taps set at liberty. against the middle pillar they then erected the arms-rack, and filled it with javelins and spears, and bows, arrows, and shields; outside of them hanging the master's sword, modelled after the new moon; and the glitter of its blade rivalled the glitter of the jewels bedded in its grip. upon one end of the rack they hung the housings of the horses, gay some of them as the livery of a king's servant, while on the other end they displayed the great man's wearing-apparelhis robes woollen and robes linen, his tunics and trousers, and many coloured kerchiefs for the head. nor did they give over the work until he pronounced it well. meantime the women drew out and set up the divan, more indispensable to him than the beard down-flowing over his breast, white as aaron's. they put a frame together in shape of three sides of a square, the opening to the door, and covered it with cushions and base curtains, and the cushions with a changeable spread striped brown and yellow; at the corners they placed pillows and bolsters sacked in cloth blue and crimson; then around the divan they laid a margin of carpet, and the inner space they carpeted as well; and when the carpet was carried from the opening of the divan to the door of the tent, their work was done; whereupon they again waited until the master said it was good. nothing remained then but to bring and fill the jars with water, and hang the skin bottles of arrack ready for the handto-morrow the leben. nor might an arab see why ilderim should not be both happy and generousin his tent by the lake of sweet waters, under the palms of the orchard of palms. such was the tent at the door of which we left ben-hur. servants were already waiting the master's direction. one of them took off his sandals; another unlatched ben-hur's roman shoes; then the two exchanged their dusty outer garments for fresh ones of white linen. "enterin god's name, enter, and take thy rest," said the host, heartily, in the dialect of the market-place of jerusalem; forthwith he led the way to the divan. "i will sit here," he said next, pointing; "and there the stranger." a womanin the old time she would have been called a handmaidanswered, and dexterously piled the pillows and bolsters as rests for the back; after which they sat upon the side of the divan, while water was brought fresh from the lake, and their feet bathed and dried with napkins. "we have a saying in the desert," ilderim began, gathering his beard, and combing it with his slender fingers, "that a good appetite is the promise of a long life. hast thou such?" "by that rule, good sheik, i will live a hundred years. i am a hungry wolf at thy door," ben-hur replied. "well, thou shalt not be sent away like a wolf. i will give thee the best of the flocks." ilderim clapped his hands. "seek the stranger in the guest-tent, and say i, ilderim, send him a prayer that his peace may be as incessant as the flowing of waters." the man in waiting bowed. "say, also," ilderim continued, "that i have returned with another for breaking of bread; and, if balthasar the wise careth to share the loaf, three may partake of it, and the portion of the birds be none the less." the second servant went away. "let us take our rest now." thereupon ilderim settled himself upon the divan, as at this day merchants sit on their rugs in the bazaars of damascus; and when fairly at rest, he stopped combing his beard, and said, gravely, "that thou art my guest, and hast drunk my leben, and art about to taste my salt, ought not to forbid a question: who art thou?" "sheik ilderim," said ben-hur, calmly enduring his gaze, "i pray thee not to think me trifling with thy just demand; but was there never a time in thy life when to answer such a question would have been a crime to thyself?" "by the splendour of solomon, yes!" ilderim answered. "betrayal of self is at times as base as the betrayal of a tribe." "thanks, thanks, good sheik!" ben-hur exclaimed. "never answer became thee better. now i know thou dost but seek assurance to justify the trust i have come to ask, and that such assurance is of more interest to thee than the affairs of my poor life." the sheik in his turn bowed, and ben-hur hastened to pursue his advantage. "so it please thee then," he said, "first, i am not a roman, as the name given thee as mine implieth." ilderim clasped the beard overflowing his breast, and gazed at the speaker with eyes faintly twinkling through the shade of the heavy close-drawn brows. "in the next place," ben-hur continued, "i am an israelite of the tribe of judah." the sheik raised his brows a little. "nor that merely. sheik, i am a jew with a grievance against rome compared with which thine is not more than a child's trouble." the old man combed his beard with nervous haste, and let fall his brows until even the twinkle of the eyes went out. "still further: i swear to thee, sheik ilderimi swear by the covenant the lord made with my fathersso thou but give me the revenge i seek, the money and the glory of the race shall be thine." ilderim's brows relaxed; his head arose; his face began to beam; and it was almost possible to see the satisfaction taking possession of him. "enough!" he said. "if at the roots of thy tongue there is a lie in coil, solomon himself had not been safe against thee. that thou art not a romanthat as a jew thou hast a grievance against rome, and revenge to compass, i believe; and on that score enough. but as to thy skill. what experience hast thou in racing with chariots? and the horsescanst thou make them creatures of thy will?to know thee? to come at call? to go, if thou sayest it, to the last extreme of breath and strength? and then, in the perishing moment, out of the depths of thy life thrill them to one exertion the mightiest of all? the gift, my son, is not to every one. ah, by the splendour of god! i knew a king who governed millions of men, their perfect master, but could not win the respect of a horse. mark! i speak not of the dull brutes whose round it is to slave for slavesthe debased in blood and imagethe dead in spirit; but of such as mine herethe kings of their kind; of a lineage reaching back to the broods of the first pharaoh; my comrades and friends, dwellers in tents, whom long association with me has brought up to my plane; who to their instincts have added our wits, and. to their senses joined our souls, until they feel all we know of ambition, love, hate, and contempt; in war, heroes; in trust, faithful as women. ho, there!" a servant came forward. "let my arabs come!" the man drew aside part of the division curtain of the tent, exposing to view a group of horses, who lingered a moment where they were as if to make certain of the invitation. "come!" ilderim said to them. "why stand ye there? what have i that is not yours? come, i say!" they stalked slowly in. "son of israel," the master said, "thy moses was a mighty man, butha, ha, ha!i must laugh when i think of his allowing thy fathers the plodding ox and the dull, slow-natured ass, and forbidding them property in horses. ha, ha, ha! thinkest thou he would have done so had he seen that oneand thatand this?" at the word he laid his hand upon the face of the first to reach him, and patted it with infinite pride and tenderness. "it is a misjudgment, sheik, a misjudgment," ben-hur said, warmly. "moses was a warrior as well as a lawgiver beloved by god; and to follow warah, what is it but to love all its creaturesthese among the rest?" a head of exquisite turnwith large eyes, soft as a deer's, and half hidden by the dense forelock, and small ears, sharp-pointed and sloped well forwardapproached then quite to his breast, the nostrils open, and the upper lip in motion. "who are you?" it asked, plainly as ever man spoke. ben-hur recognized one of the four racers he had seen on the course, and gave his open hand to the beautiful brute. "they will tell you, the blasphemers!may their days shorten as they grow fewer!"the sheik spoke with the feeling of a man repelling a personal defamation"they will tell you, i say, that our horses of the best blood are derived from the nesaean pastures of persia. god gave the first arab a measureless waste of sand, with some treeless mountains, and here and there a well of bitter waters; and said to him, 'behold thy country!' and when the poor man complained, the mighty one pitied him, and said again, 'be of cheer for i will twice bless thee above other men.' the arab heard, and gave thanks, and with faith set out to find the blessings. he travelled all the boundaries first, and failed; then he made a path into the desert, and went on and onand in the heart of the waste there was an island of green very beautiful to see; and in the heart of the island, lo! a herd of camels, and another of horses! he took them joyfully and kept them with care for what they werebest gifts of god. and from that green isle went forth all the horses of the earth; even to the pastures of nesaea they went; and northward to the dreadful vales perpetually threshed by blasts from the sea of chill winds. doubt not the story; or if thou dost, may never amulet have charm for an arab again. nay, i will give thee proof." he clapped his hands. "bring me the records of the tribe," he said to the servant who responded. while waiting, the sheik played with the horses, patting their cheeks, combing their forelocks with his fingers, giving each one a token of remembrance. presently six men appeared with chests of cedar reinforced by bands of brass, and hinged and bolted with brass. "nay," said ilderim, when they were all set down by the divan, "i meant not all of them; only the records of the horsesthat one. open it and take back the others." the chest was opened, disclosing a mass of ivory tablets strung on rings of silver wire; and as the tablets were scarcely thicker than wafers, each ring held several hundreds of them. "i know," said ilderim, taking some of the rings in his hand"i know with what care and zeal, my son, the scribes of the temple in the holy city keep the names of the newly born, that every son of israel may trace his line of ancestry to its beginning, though it antedate the patriarchs. my fathersmay the recollection of them be green forever!did not think it sinful to borrow the idea, and apply it to their dumb servants. see these tablets!" ben-hur took the rings, and separating the tablets saw they bore rude hieroglyphs in arabic, burned on the smooth surface by a sharp point of heated metal. "canst thou read them, o son of israel?" "no. thou must tell me their meaning." "know thou, then, each tablet records the name of a foal of the pure blood born to my fathers through the hundreds of years passed; and also the names of sire and dam. take them, and note their age, that thou mayst the more readily believe." some of the tablets were nearly worn away. all were yellow with age. "in the chest there, i can tell thee now, i have the perfect history; perfect because certified as history seldom isshowing of what stock all these are sprungthis one, and that now supplicating thy notice and caress; and as they come to us here, their sires, even the furthest removed in time, came to my sires, under a tent-roof like this of mine, to eat their measure of barley from the open hand, and be talked to as children; and as children kiss the thanks they have not speech to express. and now, o son of israel, thou mayst believe my declarationif i am a lord of the desert, behold my ministers! take them from me, and i become as a sick man left by the caravan to die. thanks to them, age hath not diminished the terror of me on the highways between cities; and it will not while i have strength to go with them. ha, ha, ha! i could tell thee marvels done by their ancestors. in a favouring time i may do so; for the present, enough that they were never overtaken in retreat; nor, by the sword of solomon, did they ever fail in pursuit! that, mark you, on the sands and under saddle; but nowi do not knowi am afraid, for they are under yoke the first time, and the conditions of success are so many. they have the pride and the speed and the endurance. if i find them a master, they will win. son of israel! so thou art the man, i swear it shall be a happy day that brought thee hither. of thyself now speak." "i know now," said ben-hur, "why it is that in the love of an arab his horse is next to his children; and i know, also, why the arab horses are the best in the world; but, good sheik, i would not have you judge me by words alone; for, as you know, all promises of men sometimes fail. give me the trial first on some plain hereabout, and put the four into my hand to-morrow." ilderim's face beamed again, and he would have spoken. "a moment, good sheik, a moment!" said ben-hur. "let me say further. from the masters in rome i learned many lessons, little thinking they would serve me in a time like this. i tell thee these thy sons of the desert, though they have separately the speed of eagles and the endurance of lions, will fail if they are not trained to run together under the yoke. for bethink thee, sheik, in every four there is one the slowest and one the swiftest; and while the race is always to the slowest, the trouble is always with the swiftest. it was so to-day; the driver could not reduce the best to harmonious action with the poorest. my trial may have no better result; but if so, i will tell thee of it: that i swear. wherefore, in the same spirit i say, can i get them to run together, moved by my will, the four as one, thou shalt have the sistertii and the crown, and i my revenge. what sayest thou?" ilderim listened, combing his beard the while. at the end he said, with a laugh, "i think better of thee, son of israel. we have a saying in the desert, 'if you will cook the meal with words, i will promise an ocean of butter.' thou shalt have the horses in the morning." at that moment there was a stir at the rear entrance to the tent. "the supperit is here! and yonder my friend balthasar, whom thou shalt know. he hath a story to tell which an israelite should never tire of hearing." and to the servants he added, "take the records away, and return my jewels to their apartment." and they did as he ordered. chapter xiv. the dowar in the orchard of palms. if the reader will return now to the repast of the wise men at their meeting in the desert, he will understand the preparations for the supper in ilderim's tent. the differences were chiefly such as were incident to ampler means and better service. three rugs were spread on the carpet within the space so nearly enclosed by the divan; a table not more than a foot in height was brought and set within the same place, and covered with a cloth. off to one side a portable earthenware oven was established under the presidency of a woman whose duty it was to keep the company in bread, or, more precisely, in hot cakes of flour from the hand-mills grinding with constant sound in a neighbouring tent. meanwhile, balthasar was conducted to the divan, where ilderim and ben-hur received him standing. a loose black gown covered his person; his step was feeble, and his whole movement slow and cautious, apparently dependent upon a long staff and the arm of a servant. "peace to you, my friend," said ilderim, respectfully. "peace and welcome." the egyptian raised his head and replied, "and to thee, good sheikto thee and thine, peace and the blessing of the one godgod, the true and loving." the manner was gentle and devout, and impressed ben-hur with a feeling of awe; besides which the blessing included in the answering salutation had been partly addressed to him, and while that part was being spoken, the eyes of the aged guest, hollow yet luminous, rested upon his face long enough to stir an emotion new and mysterious, and so strong that he again and again during the repast scanned the much wrinkled and bloodless face for its meaning; but always there was the expression bland, placid, and trustful as a child's. a little later he found that expression habitual. "this is he, o balthasar," said the sheik, laying his hand on ben-hur's arm, "who will break bread with us this evening." the egyptian glanced at the young man, and looked again, surprised and doubting; seeing which the sheik continued, "i have promised him my horses for trial to-morrow; and if all goes well, he will drive them in the circus." balthasar continued his gaze. "he came well recommended," ilderim pursued, much puzzled. "you may know him as the son of arrius, who was a noble roman sailor, though"the sheik hesitated, then resumed, with a laugh"though he declares himself an israelite of the tribe of judah; and, by the splendour of god, i believe that he tells me!" balthasar could no longer withhold explanation. "to-day, o most generous sheik, my life was in peril, and would have been lost had not a youth, the counterpart of this oneif, indeed, he be not the very sameintervened when all others fled, and saved me." then he addressed ben-hur directly, "art thou not he?" "i cannot answer so far," ben-hur replied, with modest deference. "i am he who stopped the horses of the insolent roman when they were rushing upon thy camel at the fountain of castalia. thy daughter left a cup with me." from the bosom of his tunic he produced the cup, and gave it to balthasar. a glow lighted the faded countenance of the egyptian. "the lord sent thee to me at the fountain to-day," he said, in a tremulous voice, stretching his hand towards ben-hur; "and he sends thee to me now. i give him thanks; and praise him thou, for of his favour i have wherewith to give thee great reward, and i will. the cup is thine; keep it." ben-hur took back the gift, and balthasar, seeing the inquiry upon ilderim's face, related the occurrence at the fountain. "what!" said the sheik to ben-hur. "thou saidst nothing of this to me, when better recommendation thou couldst not have brought. am i not an arab, and sheik of my tribe of tens of thousands? and is not he my guest? and is it not in my guest-bond that the good or evil thou dost him is good or evil done to me? whither shouldst thou go for reward but here? and whose the hand to give it but mine?" his voice at the end of the speech rose to cutting shrillness. "good sheik, spare me, i pray. i came not for reward, great or small; and that i may be acquitted of the thought, i say the help i gave this excellent man would have been given as well to thy humblest servant." "but he is my friend, my guestnot my servant; and seest thou not in the difference the favour of fortune?" then to balthasar the sheik subjoined, "ah, by the splendour of god! i tell thee again he is not a roman." with that he turned away, and gave attention to the servants, whose preparations for the supper were about complete. the reader who recollects the history of balthasar as given by himself at the meeting in the desert, will understand the effect of ben-hur's assertion of disinterestedness upon that worthy. in his devotion to men there had been, it will be remembered, no distinctions; while the redemption which had been promised him in the way of rewardthe redemption for which he was waitingwas universal. to him, therefore, the assertion sounded somewhat like an echo of himself. he took a step nearer ben-hur, and spoke to him in the childlike way. "how did the sheik say i should call you? it was a roman name, i think." "arrius, the son of arrius." "yet thou art not a roman?" "all my people were jews." "were, saidst thou? are they not living?" the question was subtle as well as simple; but ilderim saved ben-hur from reply. "come," he said to them, "the meal is ready." ben-hur gave his arm to balthasar, and conducted him to the table, where shortly they were all seated on their rugs, eastern fashion. the lavers were brought them, and they washed and dried their hands; then the sheik made a sign, the servants stopped, and the voice of the egyptian arose, tremulous with holy feeling "father of allgod! what we have is of thee; take our thanks, and bless us, that we may continue to do thy will." it was the grace the good man had said simultaneously with his brethren gaspar the greek and melchior the hindoo, the utterance in diverse tongues out of which had come the miracle attesting the divine presence at the meal in the desert years before. the table to which they immediately addressed themselves was, as may be thought, rich in the substantials and delicacies favourite in the eastin cakes hot from the oven, vegetables from the gardens, meats singly, compounds of meats and vegetables, milk of kine, and honey and butterall eaten or drunk, it should be remarked, without any of the modern accessoriesknives, forks, spoons, cups, or plates; and in this part of the repast but little was said, for they were hungry. but when the dessert was in course it was otherwise. they laved their hands again, had the lap-cloths shaken out, and with a renewed table and the sharp edge of their appetites gone, they were disposed to talk and listen. with such a companyan arab, a jew, and an egyptian, all believers alike in one godthere could be at that age but one subject of conversation; and of the three, which should be speaker but he to whom the deity had been so nearly a personal appearance, who had seen him in a star, had heard his voice in direction, had been led so far and so miraculously by his spirit? and of what should he talk but that of which he had been called to testify? chapter xv. balthasar impresses ben-hur. the shadows cast over the orchard of palms by the mountains at set of sun left no sweet margin time of violet sky and drowsing earth between the day and night. the latter came early and swift; and against its glooming in the tent this evening the servants brought four candlesticks of brass, and set them by the corners of the table. to each candlestick there were four branches, and on each branch a lighted silver lamp and a supply cup of olive-oil. in light ample, even brilliant, the group at dessert continued their conversation, speaking in the syriac dialect, familiar to all peoples in that part of the world. the egyptian told his story of the meeting of the three in the desert, and agreed with the sheik that it was in december, twenty-seven years before, when he and his companions fleeing from herod arrived at the tent praying shelter. the narrative was heard with intense interest; even the servants lingering when they could to catch its details. ben-hur received it as became a man listening to a revelation of deep concern to all humanity, and to none of more concern than the people of israel. in his mind, as we shall presently see, there was crystalizing an idea which was to change his course of life, if not absorb it absolutely. as the recital proceeded, the impression made by balthasar upon the young jew increased; at its conclusion, his feeling was too profound to permit a doubt of its truth; indeed, there was nothing left him desirable in the connection but assurances, if such were to be had, pertaining exclusively to the consequences of the amazing event. and now there is wanting an explanation which the very discerning may have heretofore demanded; certainly it can be no longer delayed. our tale begins, in point of date not less than fact, to trench close upon the opening of the ministry of the son of mary, whom we have seen but once since this same balthasar left him worshipfully in his mother's lap in the cave by bethlehem. henceforth to the end the mysterious child will be a subject of continual reference; and slowly though surely the current of events with which we are dealing will bring us nearer and nearer to him, until finally we see him a manwe would like, if armed contrariety of opinion would permit it, to adda man whom the world could not do without. of this declaration, apparently so simple, a shrewd mind inspired by faith will make muchand in welcome. before his time, and since, there have been men indispensable to particular people and periods; but his indispensability was to the whole race, and for all timea respect in which it is unique, solitary, divine. to sheik ilderim the story was not new. he had heard it from the three wise men together under circumstances which left no room for doubt; he had acted upon it seriously, for the helping a fugitive escape from the anger of the first herod was dangerous. now one of the three sat at his table again, a welcome guest and revered friend. sheik ilderim certainly believed the story; yet, in the nature of things, its mighty central fact could not come home to him with the force and absorbing effect it came to ben-hur. he was an arab, whose interest in the consequences was but general; on the other hand, ben-hur was an israelite and a jew, with more than a special interest inif the solecism can be pardonedthe truth of the fact. he laid hold of the circumstance with a purely jewish mind. from his cradle, let it be remembered, he had heard of the messiah; at the colleges he had been made familiar with all that was known of that being at once the hope, the fear, and the peculiar glory of the chosen people; the prophets from the first to the last of the heroic line foretold him; and the coming had been, and yet was, the theme of endless exposition with the rabbisin the synagogues, in the schools, in the temple, of fast-days and feast-days, in public and in private, the national teachers expounded and kept expounding until all the children of abraham wherever their lots were cast bore the messiah in expectation, and by it literally, and with iron severity, ruled and moulded their lives. doubtless, it will be understood from this that there was much argument among the jews themselves about the messiah, and so there was; but the disputation was all limited to one point, and one onlywhen would he come? disquisition is for the preacher; whereas the writer is but telling a tale, and that he may not lose his character, the explanation he is making requires notice merely of a point connected with the messiah about which the unanimity among the chosen people was matter of marvellous astonishment: he was to be, when come, the king of the jewstheir political king, their caesar. by their instrumentality he was to make armed conquest of the earth, and then, for their profit and in the name of god, hold it down forever. on this faith, dear reader, the pharisees or separatiststhe latter being rather a political termin the cloisters and around the altars of the temple, built an edifice of hope far overtopping the dream of the macedonian. his but covered the earth; theirs covered the earth and filled the skies; that is to say, in their bold boundless fantasy of blasphemous egotism, god the almighty was in effect to suffer them for their uses to nail him by the ear to a door in sign of eternal servitude. returning directly to ben-hur, it is to be observed now that there were two circumstances in his life the result of which had been to keep him in a state comparatively free from the influence and hard effects of the audacious faith of his separatist countrymen. in the first place, his father followed the faith of the sadducees. who may, in a general way, be termed the liberals of their time. they had some loose opinions in denial of the soul. they were strict constructionists and rigorous observers of the law as found in the books of moses; but they held the vast mass of rabbinical addenda to those books in derisive contempt. they were unquestionably a sect, yet their religion was more a philosophy than a creed; they did not deny themselves the enjoyments of life, and saw many admirable methods and productions among the gentile divisions of the race. in politics they were the active opposition of the separatists. in the natural order of things, these circumstances and conditions, opinions and peculiarities, would have descended to the son as certainly and really as any portion of his father's estate; and, as we have seen, he was actually in course of acquiring them, when the second saving event overtook him. upon a youth of ben-hur's mind and temperament the influence of five years of affluent life in rome can be appreciated best by recalling that the great city was then, in fact, the meeting-place of the nationstheir meeting-place politically and commercially, as well as for the indulgence of pleasure without restraint. round and round the golden mile-stone in front of the forumnow in gloom of eclipse, now in unapproachable splendourflowed all the active currents of humanity. if excellence of manner, refinements of society, attainments of intellect, and glory of achievement made no impression upon him, how could he, as the son of arrius, pass day after day, through a period so long, from the beautiful villa near misenum into the receptions of caesar, and be wholly uninfluenced by what he saw there of kings, princes, ambassadors, hostages, and delegates, suitors all of them from every known land, waiting humbly the yes or no which was to make or unmake them? as mere assemblages, to be sure, there was nothing to compare with the gatherings at jerusalem in celebration of the passover; yet when he sat, under the purple velaria of the circus maximus, one of three hundred and fifty thousand spectators, he must have been visited by the thought that possibly there might be some branches of the family of man worthy divine consideration, if not mercy, though they were of the uncircumcisedsome, by their sorrows, and, yet worse, by their hopelessness in the midst of sorrows, fitted for brotherhood in the promises to his countrymen. that he should have had such a thought under such circumstances was but natural; we think so much, at least, will be admitted: but when the reflection came to him, and he gave himself up to it, he could not have been blind to a certain distinction. the wretchedness of the masses, and their hopeless condition, had no relation whatever to religion; their murmurs and groans were not against their gods or for want of gods. in the oak-woods of britain the druids held their followers; odin and freya maintained their godships in gaul and germany and among the hyperboreans; egypt was satisfied with her crocodiles and anubis; the persians were yet devoted to ormuzd and ahriman, holding them in equal honour; in hope of the nirvana, the hindoos moved on patient as ever in the rayless paths of brahm; the beautiful greek mind, in pauses of philosophy, still sang the heroic gods of homer; while in rome nothing was so common and cheap as gods. according to whim, the masters of the world, because they were masters, carried their worship and offerings indifferently from altar to altar, delighted in the pandemonium they had erected. their discontent, if they were discontented, was with the number of gods; for, after borrowing all the divinities of the earth, they proceeded to deify their caesars, and vote them altars and holy service. no, the unhappy condition was not from religion, but misgovernment and usurpations and countless tyrannies. the avernus men had been tumbled into, and were praying to be relieved from, was terribly but essentially political. the supplicationeverywhere alike, in lodinum, alexandria, athens, jerusalemwas for a king to conquer with, not a god to worship. studying the situation after two thousand years, we can see and say that religiously there was no relief from the universal confusion except some god could prove himself a true god, and a masterful one, and come to the rescue; but the people of the time, even the discerning and philosophical, discovered no hope except in crushing rome; that done, the relief would follow in restorations and reorganizations; therefore they prayed, conspired, rebelled, fought, and died, drenching the soil to-day with blood, to-morrow with tearsand always with the same result. it remains to be said now that ben-hur was in agreement with the mass of men of his time not romans. the five years' residence in the capital served him with opportunity to see and study the miseries of the subjugated world; and in full belief that the evils which afflicted it were political, and to be cured only by the sword, he was going forth to fit himself for a part in the day of resort to the heroic remedy. by practice of arms he was a perfect soldier; but war has its higher fields, and he who would move successfully in them must know more than to defend with shield and thrust with spear. in those fields the general finds his tasks, the greatest of which is the reduction of the many into one, and that one himself; the consummate captain is a fighting man armed with an army. this conception entered into the scheme of life to which he was further swayed by the reflection that the vengeance he dreamed of, in connection with his individual wrongs, would be more surely found in some of the ways of war than in any pursuit of peace. the feelings with which he listened to balthasar can be now understood. the story touched two of the most sensitive points of his being so they rang within him. his heart beat fastand faster still when, searching himself, he found not a doubt either that the recital was true in every particular, or that the child so miraculously found was the messiah. marvelling much that israel rested so dead to the revelation, and that he had never heard of it before that day, two questions presented themselves to him as centring all it was at that moment further desirable to know where was the child then? and what was his mission? with apologies for the interruptions, he proceeded to draw out the opinions of balthasar, who was in nowise loath to speak. chapter xvi. christ is comingbalthasar. "if i could answer you," balthasar said, in his simple, earnest, devout way"oh, if i knew where he is, how quickly i would go to him! the seas should not stay me, nor the mountains." "you have tried to find him, then?" asked ben-hur. a smile flitted across the face of the egyptian. "the first task i charged myself with after leaving the shelter given me in the desert!"balthasar cast a grateful look at ilderim"was to learn what became of the child. but a year had passed, and i dared not go up to judea in person, for herod still held the throne bloody-minded as ever. in egypt, upon my return, there were a few friends to believe the wonderful things i told them of what i had seen and hearda few who rejoiced with me that a redeemer was borna few who never tired of the story. some of them came up for me looking after the child. they went first to bethlehem, and found there the khan and the cave; but the stewardhe who sat at the gate the night of the birth, and the night we came following the starwas gone. the king had taken him away, and he was no more seen." "but they found some proofs, surely," said ben-hur, eagerly. "yes, proofs written in blooda village in mourning; mothers yet crying for their little ones. you must know, when herod heard of our flight, he sent down and slew the youngest-born of the children of bethlehem. not one escaped. the faith of my messengers was confirmed; but they came to me saying the child was dead, slain with the other innocents." "dead!" exclaimed ben-hur, aghast. "dead, sayest thou?" "nay, my son, i did not say so. i said they, my messengers told me the child was dead. i did not believe the report then; i do not believe it now." "i seethou hast some special knowledge." "not so, not so," said balthasar, dropping his gaze. "the spirit was to go with us no farther than to the child. when we came out of the cave, after our presents were given and we had seen the babe, we looked first thing for the star; but it was gone, and we knew we were left to ourselves. the last inspiration of the holy onethe last i can recallwas that which sent us to ilderim for safety." "yes," said the sheik, fingering his beard nervously. "you told me you were sent to me by a spiriti remember it." "i have no special knowledge," balthasar continued, observing the dejection which had fallen upon ben-hur; "but, my son, i have given the matter much thoughtthought continuing through years, inspired by faith, which, i assure you, calling god for witness, is as strong. in me now as in the hour i heard the spirit calling me by the shore of the lake. if you will listen to me, i will tell you why i believe the child is living." both ilderim and ben-hur looked assent, and appeared to summon their faculties that they might understand as well as hear. the interest reached the servants, who drew near to the divan, and stood listening. throughout the tent there was the profoundest silence. "we three believe in god." balthasar bowed his head as he spoke. "and he is the truth," he resumed. "his word is god. the hills may turn to dust, and the seas be drunk dry by south winds, but his word shall stand, because it is the truth." the utterance was in a manner inexpressibly solemn. "the voice, which was his, speaking to me by the lake, said, 'blessed art thou, o son of mizraim! the redemption cometh. with two others from the remoteness of the earth thou shalt see the saviour.' i have seen the saviourblessed be his name!but the redemption, which was the second part of the promise, is yet to come. seest thou now? if the child be dead, there is no agent to bring the redemption about, and the word is naught, and godnay, i dare not say it!" he threw up both hands in horror. "the redemption was the work for which the child was born; and so long as the promise abides, not even death can separate him from his work until it is fulfilled, or at least in the way of fulfillment. take you that now as one reason for my belief; then give me further attention." the good man paused. "wilt thou not taste the wine? it is at thy handsee," said ilderim, respectfully. balthasar drank, and, seeming refreshed, continued "the saviour i saw was born of woman, in nature like us, and subject to all our illseven death. let that stand as the first proposition. consider next the work set apart to him. was it not a performance for which only a man is fitted?a man wise, firm, discreeta man, not a child? to become such he had to grow as we grow. bethink you now of the dangers his life was subject to in the intervalthe long interval between childhood and maturity. the existing powers were his enemies; herod was his enemy; and what would rome have been? and as for israelthat he should not be accepted by israel was the motive for cutting him off. see you now? what better way was there to take care of his life in the helpless growing time than by passing him into obscurity? wherefore i say to myself, and to my listening faith, which is never moved except by yearning of lovei say he is not dead, but lost; and, his work remaining undone, he will come again. there you have the reasons for my belief. are they not good?" ilderim's small arab eyes were bright with understanding, and ben-hur, lifted from his dejection, said heartily, "i, at least, may not gainsay them. what further, pray?" "hast thou not enough, my son? well," he began, in calmer tone, "seeing that the reasons were goodmore plainly, seeing it was god's will that the child should not be foundi settled my faith into the keeping of patience, and took to waiting." he raised his eyes, full of holy trust, and broke off abstractedly"i am waiting now. he lives, keeping well his mighty secret. what though i cannot go to him, or name the hill or the vale of his abiding-place? he livesit may be as the fruit in blossom, it may be as the fruit just ripening; but by the certainty there is in the promise and reason of god, i know he lives." a thrill of awe struck ben-hura thrill which was but the dying of his half-formed doubt. "where thinkest thou he is?" he asked in a low voice, and hesitating, like one who feels upon his lips the pressure of a sacred silence. balthasar looked at him kindly, and replied, his mind not entirely freed from its abstraction "in my house on the nile, so close to the river that the passers-by in boats see it and its reflection in the water at the same timein my house, a few weeks ago, i sat thinking. a man thirty years old, i said to myself, should have his fields of life all ploughed, and his planting well done; for after that it is summer-time, with space scarce enough to ripen his sowing. the child, i said further, is now twenty-sevenhis time to plant must be at hand. i asked myself, as you here asked me, my son, and answered by coming hither, as to a good resting-place close by the land they fathers had from god. where else should he appear, if not in judea? in what city should he begin his work, if not in jerusalem? who should be first to receive the blessings he is to bring, if not the children of abraham, isaac, and jacob; in love, at least, the children of the lord? if i were bidden go seek him, i would search well the hamlets and villages on the slopes of the mountains of judea and galilee falling eastwardly into the valley of the jordan. he is there now. standing in a door or on a hill-top, only this evening he saw the sun set one day nearer the time when he himself shall become the light of the world." balthasar ceased, with his hand raised and finger pointing as if at judea. all the listeners, even the dull servants outside the divan, affected by his fervour, were startled as if by a majestic presence suddenly apparent within the tent. nor did the sensation die away at once: of those at the table, each sat awhile thinking. the spell was finally broken by ben-hur. "i see, good balthasar," he said, "that thou hast been much and strangely favoured. i see, also, that thou art a wise man indeed. it is not in my power to tell how grateful i am for the things thou hast told me. i am warned of the coming of great events, and borrow somewhat from thy faith. complete the obligation, i pray thee, by telling further of the mission of him for whom thou art waiting, and for whom from this night i too shall wait as becomes a believing son of judah. he is to be a saviour, thou saidst; is he not to be king of the jews also?" "my son," said balthasar, in his benignant way, "the mission is yet a purpose in the bosom of god. all i think about it is wrung from the words of the voice in connection with the prayer to which they were in answer. shall we refer to them again?" "thou art the teacher." "the cause of my disquiet," balthasar began, calmly"that which made me a preacher in alexandria and in the villages of the nile; that which drove me at last into the solitude where the spirit found mewas the fallen condition of men, occasioned, as i believed, by loss of the knowledge of god. i sorrowed for the sorrows of my kindnot of one class, but all of them. so utterly were they fallen it seemed to me there could be no redemption unless god himself would make it his work; and i prayed him to come, and that i might see him. 'thy good works have conquered. the redemption cometh; thou shalt see the saviour'thus the voice spake; and with the answer i went up to jerusalem rejoicing. now, to whom is the redemption? to all the world. and how shall it be? strengthen thy faith, my son! men say, i know, that there will be no happiness until rome is razed from her hills. that is to say, the ills of the time are not, as i thought them, from ignorance of god, but from the misgovernment of rulers. do we need to be told that human governments are never for the sake of religion? how many kings have you heard of who were better than their subjects? oh no, no! the redemption cannot be for a political purposeto pull down rulers and powers, and vacate their places merely that others may take and enjoy them. if that were all of it, the wisdom of god would cease to be surpassing. i tell you, though it be but the saying of blind to blind, he that comes is to be a saviour of souls; and the redemption means god once more on earth, and righteousness, that his stay here may be tolerable to himself." disappointment showed plainly on ben-hur's facehis head drooped; and if he was not convinced, he yet felt himself incapable that moment of disputing the opinion of the egyptian. not so ilderim. "by the splendour of god!" he cried, impulsively, "the judgment does away with all custom. the ways of the world are fixed, and cannot be changed. there must be a leader in every community clothed with power, else there is no reform." balthasar received the burst gravely. "thy wisdom, good sheik, is of the world; and thou dost forget that it is from the ways of the world we are to be redeemed. man as a subject is the ambition of a king; the soul of a man for its salvation is the desire of a god." ilderim, though silenced, shook his head, unwilling to believe. ben-hur took up the argument for him. "fatheri call thee such by permission," he said"for whom wert thou required to ask at the gates of jerusalem?" the sheik threw him a grateful look. "i was to ask of the people," said balthasar, quietly, "where is he that is born king of the jews?" "and you saw him in the cave by bethlehem?" "we saw and worshipped him, and gave him presentsmelchoir, gold; gaspar, frankincense; and i, myrrh." "when thou dost speak of fact, o father, to hear thee is to believe," said ben-hur; "but in the matter of opinion, i cannot understand the kind of king thou wouldst make of the childi cannot separate the ruler from his powers and duties." "son," said balthasar, "we have the habit of studying closely the things which chance to lie at our feet, giving but a look at the greater objects in the distance. thou seest now but the titleking of the jews; wilt thou lift thine eyes to the mystery beyond it, the stumbling-block will disappear. of the title, a word. thy israel hath seen better daysdays in which god called they people endearingly his people, and dealt with them through prophets. now, if in those days he promised them the saviour i sawpromised him as king of the jewsthe appearance must be according to the promise, if only for the word's sake. ah, thou seest the reason of my question at the gate!thou seest, and i will no more of it, but pass on. it may be, next, thou art regarding the dignity of the child; if so, bethink theewhat is it to be a successor of herod?by the world's standard of honour, what? could not god better by his beloved? if thou canst think of the almighty father in want of a title, and stooping to borrow the inventions of men, why was i not bidden ask for a caesar at once? oh, for the substance of that whereof we speak, look higher, i pray thee! ask rather of what he whom we await shall be king; for i do tell, my son, that is the key to the mystery, which no man shall understand without the key." balthasar raised his eyes devoutly. "there is a kingdom on the earth, though it is not of ita kingdom of wider bounds than the earthwider than the sea and the earth, though they are rolled together as finest gold and spread by the beating of hammers. its existence is a fact as our hearts are facts, and we journey through it from birth to death without seeing it; nor shall any man see it until he hath first known his own soul; for the kingdom is not for him, but for his soul. and in its dominion there is glory such as hath not entered imaginationoriginal, incomparable, impossible of increase." "what thou sayest, father, is a riddle to me," said ben-hur. "i never heard of such a kingdom." "nor did i," said ilderim. "and i may not tell more of it," balthasar added, humbly dropping his eye's. "what it is, what it is for, how it may be reached, none can know until the child comes to take possession of it as his own. he brings the key of the viewless gate, which he will open for his beloved, among whom will be all who love him, for of such only the redeemed will be." after that there was a long silence, which balthasar accepted as the end of the conversation. "good sheik," he said, in his placid way, "to-morrow or the next day i will go up to the city for a time. my daughter wishes to see the preparations for the games. i will speak further about the time of our going. and, my son, i will see you again. to you both, peace, and good night." they all arose from the table. the sheik and ben-hur remained looking after the egyptian until he was conducted out of the tent. "sheik ilderim," said ben-hur then, "i have heard strange things to-night. i pray to walk by the lake that i may think of them." "go; and i will come after you." they washed their hands again; after which, at a sign from the master, a servant brought ben-hur his shoes, and directly he went out. chapter xvii. the kingdomspiritual or political? up a little way from the dowar there was a cluster of palms, which threw its shades half in the water, half on the land. a bulbul sang from the branches a song of invitation. ben-hur stopped beneath to listen. at any other time the notes of the bird would have driven thought away; but the story of the egyptian was a burden of wonder and he was a labourer carrying it, and like other labourers, there was to him no music in the sweetest music until mind and body were happily attuned at rest. the night was quiet. not a ripple broke upon the shore. the old stars of the old east were all out, each in its accustomed place; and there was summer everywhereon land, on lake, in the sky. ben-hur's imagination was heated, his feelings aroused, his will all unsettled. so the palms, the sky, the air, seemed to him of the far south zone into which balthasar had been driven by despair for men; the lake, with its motionless surface, was a suggestion of the nilotic mother by which the good man stood praying when the spirit made its radiant appearance. had all these accessories of the miracle come to ben-hur? or had he been transferred to them? and what if the miracle should be repeatedand to him? he feared, yet wished, and even waited for the vision. when at last his feverish mood was cooled, permitting him to become himself, he was able to think. his scheme of life has been explained. in all reflection about it heretofore there had been one hiatus which he had not been able to bridge or fill upone so broad he could see but vaguely to the other side of it. when, finally, he was graduated a captain as well as a soldier, to what object should he address his efforts? revolution he contemplated, of course; but the processes of revolution have always been the same, and to lead men into them there have always been required, first, a cause or pretence to enlist adherents; second, an end, or something as a practical achievement. as a rule he fights well who has wrongs to redress; but vastly better fights he who, with wrongs as a spur, has also steadily before him a glorious result in prospecta result in which he can discern balm for wounds, compensation for valour, remembrance and gratitude in the event of death. to determine the sufficiency of either the cause or the end, it was needful that ben-hur should study the adherents to whom he looked when all was ready for action. very naturally, they were his countrymen. the wrongs of israel were to every son of abraham, and each one was a cause vastly holy, vastly inspiring. aye, the cause was there; but the endwhat should it be? the hours and days he had given this branch of his scheme were past calculationall with the same conclusiona dim, uncertain general idea of national liberty. was it sufficient? he could not say no, for that would have been the death of his hope; he shrank from saying yes, because his judgment taught him better. he could not assure himself even that israel was able single-handed to successfully combat rome. he knew the resources of that great enemy; he knew her art was superior to her resources. a universal alliance might suffice, but, alas! that was impossible, exceptand upon the exception how long and earnestly he had dwelt!except a hero would come from one of the suffering nations, and by martial successes accomplish a renown to fill the whole earth. what glory to judea could she prove the macedonia of the new alexander! alas, again! under the rabbis valour was possible, but not discipline. and then the taunt of messala in the garden of herod"all you conquer in the six days, you lose on the seventh." so it happened he never approached the chasm thinking to surmount it, but he was beaten back; and so incessantly had he failed in the object that he had about given it over, except as a thing of chance. the hero might be discovered in his day, or he might not. god only knew. such his state of mind, there need be no lingering upon the effect of malluch's skeleton recital of the story of balthasar. he heard it with a bewildering satisfactiona feeling that here was the solution of the troublehere was the requisite hero found at last; and he a son of the lion tribe, and king of the jews! behind the hero, lo! the world in arms. the king implied a kingdom; he was to be a warrior glorious as david, a ruler wise and magnificent as solomon; the kingdom was to be a power against which rome was to dash itself to pieces. there would be colossal war, and the agonies of death and birththen peace, meaning, of course, judean dominion forever. ben-hur's heart beat hard as for an instant he had a vision of jerusalem the capital of the world, and zion, the site of the throne of the universal master. it seemed to the enthusiast rare fortune that the man who had seen the king was at the tent to which he was going. he could see him there, and hear him, and learn of him what all he knew of the coming change, especially all he knew of the time of its happening. if it were at hand, the campaign with maxentius should be abandoned; and he would go and set about organizing and arming the tribes, that israel might be ready when the great day of the restoration began to break. now, as we have seen, from balthasar himself ben-hur had the marvellous story. was he satisfied? there was a shadow upon him deeper than that of the cluster of palmsthe shadow of a great uncertainty, whichtake note, o reader i which pertained more to the kingdom than the king. "what of this kingdom? and what is it to be?" ben-hur asked himself in thought. thus early arose the questions which were to follow the child to his end, and survive him on earthincomprehensible in his day, a dispute in thisan enigma to all who do not or cannot understand that every man is two in onea deathless soul and a mortal body. "what is it to be?" he asked. for us, o reader, the child himself has answered; but for ben-hur there were only the words of balthasar, "on the earth, yet not of itnot for men, but for their soulsa dominion, nevertheless, of unimaginable glory." what wonder the hapless youth found the phrases but the darkening of a riddle? "the hand of man is not in it," he said, despairingly. "nor has the king of such a kingdom use for men; neither toilers, nor councillors, nor soldiers. the earth must die or be made anew, and for government new principles must be discoveredsomething besides armed handssomething in place of force. but what?" again, o reader! that which we will not see, he could not. the power there is in love had not yet occurred to any man; much less had one come saying directly that for government and its objectspeace and orderlove is better and mightier than force. in the midst of his reverie a hand was laid upon his shoulder. "i have a word to say, o son of arrius," said ilderim, stopping by his side"a word, and then i must return, for the night is going." "i give you welcome, sheik." "as to the things you have heard but now," said ilderim, almost without pause, "take in belief all save that relating to the kind of kingdom the child will set up when he comes; as to so much keep virgin mind until you hear simonides the merchanta good man here in antioch, to whom i will make you known. the egyptian gives you coinage of his dreams which are too good for the earth; simonides is wiser; he will ring you the sayings of your prophets, giving book and page, so you cannot deny that the child will be king of the jews in factaye, by the splendour of god i a king as herod was, only better and far more magnificent. and then, see you, we will taste the sweetness of vengeance. i have said. peace to you!" "staysheik!" if ilderim heard his call, he did not stay. "simonides again!" said ben-hur, bitterly. "simonides here, simonides there; from this one now, then from that! i am like to be well ridden by my father's servant, who knows at least to hold fast that which is mine; wherefore he is richer, if indeed he be not wiser, than the egyptian. by the covenant! it is not to the faithless a man should go to find a faith to keepand i will not. but, hark! singingand the voice a woman'sor an angel's! it comes this way." down the lake towards the dowar came a woman singing. her voice floated along the hushed water melodious as a flute, and louder growing each instant. directly the dipping of oars was heard in slow measure; a little later the words were distinguishablewords in purest greek, best fitted of all the tongues of the day for the expression of passionate grief. the lament. (egyptian.) "i sigh as i sing for the story land across the syrian sea. the odorous winds from the musky sand were breaths of life to me. they play with the plumes of the whispering palm for me, alas! no more; nor more does the nile in the moonlit calm moan past the memphian shore. o nilus! thou god of my fainting soul! in dreams thou comest to me; and, dreaming, i play with the lotus bowl, and sing old songs to thee; and hear from afar the memnonian strain, and calls from dear simbel; and wake to a passion of grief and pain that e'er i saidfarewell!" at the conclusion of the song the singer was past the cluster of palms. the last wordfarewellfloated past ben-hur weighted with all the sweet sorrow of parting. the passing of the boat was as the passing of a deeper shadow into the deeper night. ben-hur drew a long breath hardly distinguishable from a sigh. "i know her by the songthe daughter of balthasar. how beautiful it was! and how beautiful is she!" he recalled her large eyes curtained slightly by the drooping lids, the cheeks oval and rosy rich, the lips full and deep with dimpling in the corners, and all the grace of the tall lithe figure. "how beautiful she is!" he repeated. and his heart made answer by a quickening of its movement. then, almost the same instant, another face, younger and quite as beautifulmore childlike and tender, if not so passionateappeared as if held up to him out of the lake. "esther!" he said, smiling. "as i wished, a star has been sent to me." he turned, and passed slowly back to the tent. his life had been crowded with griefs and with vengeful preparationstoo much crowded for love. was this the beginning of a happy change? and if the influence went with him into the tent, whose was it? esther had given him a cup. so had the egyptian. and both had come to him at the same time under the palms. which? book fifth. "only the actions of the just smell sweet and blossom in the dust." -shirley. "and, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law, in calmness made, and sees what he foresaw." -wordsworth. chapter i. messala doffs his chaplet. the morning after the bacchanalia in the saloon of the palace, the divan was covered with young patricians. maxentius might come, and the city throng to receive him; the legion might descend from mount sulpius in glory of arms and armour; from nymphaeum to omphalus there might be ceremonial splendours to shame the most notable ever before seen or heard of in the gorgeous east; yet would the many continue to sleep ignominiously on the divan where they had fallen or been carelessly tumbled by the indifferent slaves; that they would be able to take part in the reception that day was about as possible as for the lay-figures in the studio of a modern artist to rise and go bonneted and plumed through the one, two, three of a waltz. not all, however, who participated in the orgie were in the shameful condition. when dawn began to peer through the skylights of the saloon, messala arose, and took the chaplet from his head, in sign that the revel was at end; then he gathered his robe about him, gave a last look at the scene, and, without a word, departed for his quarters. cicero could not have retired with more gravity from a night-long senatorial debate. three hours afterwards two couriers entered his room, and from his own hand received each a despatch, sealed and in duplicate, and consisting chiefly of a letter to valerius gratus, the procurator, still resident in caesarea. the importance attached to the speedy and certain delivery of the paper may be inferred. one courier was to proceed overland, the other by sea; both were to make the utmost haste. it is of great concern now that the reader should be fully informed of the contents of the letter thus forwarded, and it is accordingly given: "antioch, xii. kal. jul. "messala to gratus. "o my midas! "i pray thou take no offence at the address, seeing it is one of love and gratitude, and an admission that thou art most fortunate among men; seeing, also, that thy ears are as they were derived from thy mother, only proportionate to thy matured condition. "o my midas! "i have to relate to thee an astonishing event, which, though as yet somewhat in the field of conjecture, will, i doubt not, justify thy instant consideration. "allow me first to revive thy recollection. remember, a good many years ago, a family of a prince of jerusalem, incredibly ancient and vastly richby name ben-hur. if thy memory have a limp or ailment of any kind, there is, if i mistake not, a wound on thy head which may help thee to a revival of the circumstance. "next, to arouse thy interest. in punishment of the attempt upon thy lifefor dear repose of conscience, may all the gods forbid it should ever prove to have been an accident!the family were seized and summarily disposed of, and their property confiscated. and inasmuch, o my midas! as the action had the approval of our caesar, who was as just as he was wisebe there flowers upon his altars forever!there should be no shame in referring to the sums which were realized to us respectively from that source, for which it is not possible i can ever cease to be grateful to thee, certainly not while i continue, as at present, in the uninterrupted enjoyment of the part which fell to me. "in vindication of thy wisdoma quality for which, as i am now advised, the son of gordius, to whom i have boldly likened thee, was never distinguished among men or godsi recall further that thou didst make disposition of the family of hur, both of us at the time supposing the plan hit upon to be the most effective possible for the purposes in view, which were silence and delivery over to inevitable but natural death. thou wilt remember what thou didst with the mother and sister of the malefactor; yet, if now i yield to a desire to learn whether they be living or dead, i know, from knowing the amiability of thy nature, o my gratus, that thou wilt pardon me as one scarcely less amiable than thyself. "as more immediately essential to the present business, however, i take the liberty of inviting to thy remembrance that the actual criminal was sent to the galleys a slave for lifeso the precept ran; and it may serve to make the event which i am about to relate the more astonishing by saying here that i saw and read the receipt for his body delivered in course to the tribune commanding a galley. "thou mayst begin now to give me more especial heed, o my most excellent phrygian! "referring to the limit of life at the oar, the outlaw thus justly disposed of should be dead, or, better speaking, some one of the three thousand oceanides should have. taken him to husband at least five years ago. and if thou wilt excuse a momentary weakness, o most virtuous and tender of men! inasmuch as i loved him in childhood, and also because he was very handsomei used in much admiration to call him my ganymedehe ought in right to have fallen into the arms of the most beautiful daughter of the family. of opinion, however, that he was certainly dead, i have lived quite five years in calm and innocent enjoyment of the fortune for which i am in a degree indebted to him. i make the admission of indebtedness without intending it to diminish my obligation to thee. "now i am at the very point of interest. "last night, while acting as master of the feast for a party just from rometheir extreme youth and inexperience appealed to my compassioni heard a singular story. maxentius, the consul, as you know, comes to-day to conduct a campaign against the parthians. of the ambitious who are to accompany him there is one, a son of the late duumvir quintus arrius. i had occasion to inquire about him particularly. when arrius set out in pursuit of the pirates, whose defeat gained him his final honours, he had no family; when he returned from the expedition, he brought back with him an heir. now be thou composed as becomes the owner of so many talents in ready sestertia! the son and heir of whom i speak is he whom thou didst send to the galleysthe very ben-hur who should have died at his oar five years agoreturned now with fortune and rank, and possibly as a roman citizen, too.well, thou art too firmly seated to be alarmed, but i, o my midas! i am in dangerno need to tell thee of what. who should know, if thou dost not? "sayst thou to all this, tut-tut? "when arrius, the father, by adoption, of this apparition from the arms of the most beautiful of the oceanides (see above my opinion of what she should be), joined battle with the pirates, his vessel was sunk, and but two of all her crew escaped drowningarrius himself, and this one, his heir. "the officers who took them from the plank on which they were floating say the associate of the unfortunate tribune was a young man who, when lifted to the deck, was in the dress of a galley slave. "this should be convincing, to say least; but lest thou say tut-tut again, i tell thee. o my midas! that yesterday, by good chancei have a vow to fortune in consequencei met the mysterious son of arrius face to face; and i declare now that, though i did not then recognize him, he is the very ben-hur who was for years my playmate; the very ben-hur who, if he be a man, though of the commonest grade, must this very moment of my writing be thinking of vengeancefor so would i were i hevengeance not to be satisfied short of life; vengeance for country, mother, sister, self, andi say it last, though thou mayst think it should be firstfor fortune lost. "by this time, o good my benefactor and friend! my gratus! in consideration of thy sesteria in peril, their loss being the worst which could befall one of thy high estatei quit calling thee after the foolish old king of phrygiaby this time, i say (meaning after having read me so far), i have faith to believe thou hast ceased saying tut-tut, and art ready to think what ought to be done in such emergency. "it were vulgar to ask thee now what shall be done. rather let me say i am thy client; or, better yet, thou art my ulysses whose part it is to give me sound direction. "and i please myself thinking i see thee when this letter is put into thy hand. i see thee read it once, thy countenance all gravity, and then again with a smile; then, hesitation ended, and thy judgment formed, it is this, or it is that; wisdom like mercury's, promptitude like caesar's. "the sun is now fairly risen. an hour hence two messengers will depart from my door, each with a sealed copy hereof; one of them will go by land, the other by sea, so important do i regard it that thou shouldst be early and particularly informed of the appearance of our enemy in this part of our roman world. "i will await thy answer here. "ben-hur's going and coming will of course be regulated by his master, the consul, who, though he exert himself without rest day and night, cannot get away under a month. thou knowest what work it is to assemble and provide for an army destined to operate in a desolate, townless country. "i saw the jew yesterday in the grove of daphne; and if he be not there now, he is certainly in the neighbourhood, making it easy for me to keep him in eye. indeed, wert thou to ask me where he is now, i should say, with the most positive assurance, he is to be found at the orchard of palms, under the tent of the traitor sheik ilderim, who cannot long escape our strong hand. be not surprised if maxentius, as his first measure, places the arab on ship for forwarding to rome. "i am so particular about the whereabouts of the jew because it will be important to thee, o illustrious! when thou comest to consider what is to be done; for already i know, and by the knowledge i flatter myself i am growing in wisdom, that in every scheme involving human action there are three elements always to be taken into accounttime, place, and agency. "if thou sayest this is the place, have thou then no hesitancy in trusting the business to thy most loving friend, who would be thy aptest scholar as well. "messala." chapter ii. ilderim's arabs under the yoke. about the time the couriers departed from messala's door with the despatches (it being yet the early morning hour), ben-hur entered ilderim's tent. he had taken a plunge into the lake, and breakfasted, and appeared now in an under-tunic, sleeveless, and with skirt scarcely reaching to the knee. the sheik saluted him from the divan. "i give thee peace, son of arrius," he said, with admiration, for, in truth, he had never seen a more perfect illustration of glowing, powerful, confident manhood. "i give thee peace and good-will. the horses are ready, i am ready. and thou?" "the peace thou givest me, good sheik, i give thee in return. i thank thee for so much good-will. i am ready." ilderim clapped his hands. "i will have the horses brought. be seated." "are they yoked?" "no." "then suffer me to serve myself," said ben-hur. "it is needful that i make the acquaintance of thy arabs. i must know them by name, o sheik, that i may speak to them singly; nor less must i know their temper, for they are like men: if bold, the better of scolding; if timid, the better of praise and flattery. let the servants bring me the harness." "and the chariot?" asked the sheik. "i will let the chariot alone to-day. in its place, let them bring me a fifth horse, if thou hast it; he should be barebacked, and fleet as the others." ilderim's wonder was aroused, and he summoned a servant immediately. "bid them bring the harness for the four," he said; "the harness for the four, and the bridle for sirius." ilderim then arose. "sirius is my love, and i am his, o son of arrius. we have been comrades for twenty yearsin tent, in battle, in all stages of the desert we have been comrades. i will show him to you." going to the division curtain, he held it, while ben-hur passed under. the horses came to him in a body. one with a small head, luminous eyes, neck like the segment of a bended bow, and mighty chest, curtained thickly by a profusion of mane soft and wavy as a damsel's locks, nickered low and gladly at sight of him. "good horse," said the sheik, patting the dark-brown cheek. "good horse, good-morning." turning then to ben-hur, he added, "this is sirius, father of the four here. mira, the mother, awaits our return, being too precious to be hazarded in a region where there is a stronger hand than mine. and much i doubt," he laughed as he spoke"much i doubt, o son of arrius, if the tribe could endure her absence. she is their glory; they worship her; did she gallop over them, they would laugh. ten thousand horsemen, sons of the desert, will ask to-day, 'have you heard of mira?' and to the answer, 'she is well,' they will say, 'god is good! blessed be god!'" "mirasiriusnames of stars, are they not, o sheik?" asked ben-hur, going to each of the four, and to the sire, offering his hand. "and why not?" replied ilderim "wert thou ever abroad on the desert at night?" "no." "then thou canst not know how much we arabs depend upon the stars. we borrow their names in gratitude, and give them in love. my fathers all had their miras, as i have mine; and these children are stars no less. there, see thou, is rigel, and there antares; that one is atair, and he whom thou goest to now is aldebaran, the youngest of the brood, but none the worse of thatno, not he! against the wind he will carry thee till it roar in thy ears like akaba; and he will go where thou sayest, son of arriusaye, by the glory of solomon! he will take thee to the lion's jaws, if thou darest so much." the harness was brought. with his own hands ben-hur equipped the horses; with his own hands he led them out of the tent, and there attached the reins. "bring me sirius," he said. an arab could not have better sprung to seat on the courser's back. "and now the reins." they were given him, and carefully separated. "good sheik," he said, "i am ready. let a guide go before me to the field, and send some of thy men with water." there was no trouble at starting. the horses were not afraid. already there seemed a tacit understanding between them and the new driver, who had performed his part calmly, and with the confidence which always begets confidence. the order of going was precisely that of driving, except that ben-hur sat upon sirius instead of standing in the chariot. ilderim's spirit arose. he combed his beard, and smiled with satisfaction as he muttered, "he is not a roman, no, by the splendour of god!" he followed on foot, the entire tenantry of the dowarmen, women, and childrenpouring after him, participants all in his solicitude, if not in his confidence. the field, when reached, proved ample and well fitted for the training, which ben-hur began immediately by driving the four at first slowly, and in perpendicular lines, and then in wide circles. advancing a step in the course, he put them next into a trot; again progressing, he pushed into a gallop; at length he contracted the circles, and yet later drove eccentrically here and there, right, left, forward, and without a break. an hour was thus occupied. slowing the gait to a walk, he drove up to ilderim. "the work is done, nothing now but practice," he said. "i give you joy, sheik ilderim, than you have such servants as these. see," he continued, dismounting and going to the horses, "see, the gloss of their red coats is without spot; they breathe lightly as when i began. i give thee great joy, and it will go hard if"he turned his flashing eyes upon the old man's face"if we have not the victory and our" he stopped, coloured, bowed. at the sheik's side he observed, for the first time, balthasar, leaning upon his staff, and two women closely veiled. at one of the latter he looked a second time, saying to himself, with a flutter about his heart, "'tis she'tis the egyptian!" ilderim picked up his broken sentence "the victory, and our revenge!" then he said aloud, "i am not afraid; i am glad. son of arrius, thou art the man. be the end like the beginning, and thou shalt see of what stuff is the lining of the hand of an arab who is able to give." "i thank thee, good sheik," ben-hur returned, modestly. "let the servants bring drink for the horses." with his own hands he gave the water. remounting sirius, he renewed the training, going as before from walk to trot, from trot to gallop; finally, he pushed the steady racers into the run, gradually quickening it to full speed. the performance then became exciting; and there were applause for the dainty handling of the reins, and admiration for the four, which were the same, whether they flew forward or wheeled in varying curvature. in their action there were unity, power, grace, pleasure, all without effort or sign of labour. the admiration was unmixed with pity or reproach, which would have been as well bestowed upon swallows in their evening flight. in the midst of the exercises, and the attention they received from all the bystanders, malluch came upon the ground, seeking the sheik. "i have a message for you, o sheik," he said, availing himself of a moment he supposed favourable for the speech"a message from simonides, the merchant." "simonides!" ejaculated the arab. "'ah! 'tis well. may abaddon take all his enemies." "he bade me give thee first the holy peace of god," malluch continued; "and then this despatch, with prayer that thou read it the instant of receipt." ilderim standing in his place, broke the sealing of the package delivered to him, and from a wrapping of fine linen took two letters, which he proceeded to read. [no. 1.] "simonides to sheik ilderim. "o friend! "assure thyself first of a place in my inner heart. "then "there is in thy dowar a youth of fair presence, calling himself the son of arrius; and such he is by adoption. "he is very dear to me. "he hath a wonderful history, which i will tell thee; come thou to-day or to-morrow, that i may tell thee the history, and have thy counsel. "meantime, favour all his requests, so they be not against honour. should there be need of reparation, i am bound to thee for it. "that i have interest in this youth, keep thou private. "remember me to thy other guest. he, his daughter, thyself, and all whom thou mayst choose to be of thy company, must depend upon me at the circus the day of the games. i have seats already engaged. "to thee and all thine. peace. "what should i be, o friend, but thy friend? "simonides." [no. 2.] "simonides to sheik ilderim. "o friend! "out of the abundance of my experience, i send you a word. "there is a sign which all persons not romans, and who have moneys or goods subject to despoilment, accept as warningthat is, the arrival at a seat of power of some high roman official charged with authority. "to-day comes the consul maxentius. "be thou warned! "another word of advice. "a conspiracy, to be of effect against thee, o friend, must include the herods as parties; thou hast great properties in their dominions. "wherefore keep thou watch. "send this morning to thy trusty keepers of the roads leading south from antioch, and bid them search every courier going and coming; if they find private despatches relating to thee or thy affairs, thou shouldst see them. "you should have received this yesterday, though it is not too late, if you act promptly. "if couriers left antioch this morning, your messengers know the byways, and can get before them with your orders. "do not hesitate. "burn this after reading. "o my friend! thy friend. "simonides." ilderim read the letters a second time, and refolded them in the linen wrap, and put the package under his girdle. the exercises in the field continued but a little longerin all about two hours. at their conclusion, ben-hur brought the four to a walk, and drove to ilderim. "with leave, o sheik," he said, "i will return thy arabs to the tent, and bring them out again this afternoon." ilderim walked to him as he sat on sirius, and said, "i give them to you, son of arrius, to do with as you will until after the games. you have done with them in two hours what the romanmay jackals gnaw his bones fleshless!could not in as many weeks. we will winby the splendour of god, we will win." at the tent ben-hur remained with the horses while they were being cared for; then, after a plunge in the lake and a cup of arrack with the sheik, whose flow of spirits was royally exuberant, he dressed himself in his jewish garb again, and walked with malluch on into the orchard. there was much conversation between the two, not all of it important. one part, however, must not be overlooked. ben-hur was speaking. "i will give you," he said, "an order for my property stored in the khan this side the river by the seleucian bridge. bring it to me to-day, if you can. and, good malluchif i do not overtask you" malluch protested heartily his willingness to be of service. "thank you, malluch, thank you," said ben-hur. "i will take you at your word, remembering that we are brethren of the old tribe, and that the enemy is a roman. first, thenas you are a man of business, which i much fear sheik ilderim is not" "arabs seldom are," said malluch, gravely. "nay, i do not impeach their shrewdness, malluch. it is well, however, to look after them. to save all forfeit or hindrance in connection with the race, you would put me perfectly at rest by going to the office of the circus, and seeing that he has complied with every preliminary rule; and if you can get a copy of the rules, the service may be of great avail to me. i would like to know the colours i am to wear, and particularly the number of the crypt i am to occupy at the starting; if it be next messala's on the right or left, it is well; if not, and you can have it changed so as to bring me next the roman, do so. have you good memory, malluch?" "it has failed me but never, son of arrius, where the heart helped it as now." "i will venture, then, to charge you with one further service. i saw yesterday that messala was proud of his chariot, as he might be, for the best of caesar's scarcely surpass it. can you not make its display an excuse which will enable you to find if it be light or heavy? i would like to have its exact weight and measurementsand, malluch, though you fail in all else, bring me exactly the height his axle stands above the ground. you understand, malluch? i do not wish him to have any actual advantage of me. i do not care for his splendour; if i beat him, it will make his fall the harder, and my triumph the more complete. if there are advantages really important, i want them." "i see, i see!" said malluch. "a line dropped from the centre of the axle is what you want." "thou hast it; and be glad, malluchit is the last of my commissions. let us return to the dowar." at the door of the tent they found a servant replenishing the smoke-stained bottles of leben freshly made, and stopped to refresh themselves. shortly afterwards malluch returned to the city. during their absence a messenger well-mounted had been despatched with orders as suggested by simonides. he was an arab, and carried nothing written. chapter iii. the arts of cleopatra. "iras, the daughter of balthasar, sends me with salutation and a message," said a servant to ben-hur, who was taking his ease in the tent. "give me the message." "would it please you to accompany her upon the lake?" "i will carry the answer myself. tell her so." his shoes were brought him, and in a few minutes ben-hur sallied out to find the fair egyptian. the shadow of the mountains was creeping over the orchard of palms in advance of night. afar through the trees came the tinkling of sheep-bells, the lowing of cattle, and the voices of the herdsmen bringing their charges home. life at the orchard, it should be remembered, was in all respects as pastoral as life on the scantier meadows of the desert. sheik ilderim had witnessed the exercises of the afternoon, being a repetition of those of the morning; after which he had gone to the city in answer to the invitation of simonides; he might return in the night; but, considering the immensity of the field to be talked over with his friend, it was hardly possible. ben-hur, thus left alone, had seen his horses cared for; cooled and purified himself in the lake; exchanged the field garb for his customary vestments, all white, as became a sadducean of the pure blood; supped early; and, thanks to the strength of youth, was well recovered from the violent exertion he had undergone. it is neither wise nor honest to detract from beauty as a quality. there cannot be a refined soul insensible to its influence. the story of pygmalion and his statue is as natural as it is poetical. beauty is of itself a power; and it was now drawing ben-hur. the egyptian was to him a wonderfully beautiful womanbeautiful of face, beautiful of form. in his thought she always appeared to him as he saw her at the fountain; and he felt the influence of her voice, sweeter because in tearful expression of gratitude to him, and of her eyesthe large, soft, black, almond-shaped eyes declarative of her raceeyes which looked more than lies in the supremest wealth of words to utter; and recurrences of the thought of her were returns just so frequent of a figure tall, slender, graceful, refined, wrapped in rich and floating drapery, wanting nothing but a fitting mind to make her, like the shulamite, and in the same sense, terrible as an army with banners. in other words, as she returned to his fancy, the whole passionate song of solomon came with her, inspired by her presence. with this sentiment and that feeling, he was going to see if she actually justified them. it was not love that was taking him, but admiration and curiosity, which might be the heralds of love. the landing was a simple affair, consisting of a short stairway, and a platform garnished by some lamp-posts; yet at the top of the steps he paused, arrested by what he beheld. there was a shallop resting upon the clear water lightly as an egg-shell. an ethiopthe camel-driver at the castalian fountoccupied the rower's place, his blackness intensified by a livery of shining white. all the boat aft was cushioned and carpeted with stuffs brilliant with tyrian red. on the rudder seat sat the egyptian herself, sunk in indian shawls and a very vapour of most delicate veils and scarfs. her arms were bare to the shoulders; and, not merely faultless in shape, they had the effect of compelling attention to themtheir pose, their action, their expression; the hands, the fingers even, seemed endowed with graces and meaning; each was an object of beauty. the shoulders and neck were protected from the evening air by an ample scarf, which yet did not hide them. in the glance he gave her, ben-hur paid no attention to these details. there was simply an impression made upon him; and, like strong light, it was a sensation, not a thing of sight or enumeration. thy lips are like a thread of scarlet; thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks. rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away; for, lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the landsuch was the impression she made upon him translated into words. "come," she said, observing him stop, "come, or i shall think you a poor sailor." the red of his cheek deepened. did she know anything of his life upon the sea? he descended to the platform at once. "i was afraid," he said, as he took the vacant seat before her. "of what?" "of sinking the boat," he replied, smiling. "wait until we are in deeper water," she said, giving a signal to the black, who dipped the oars, and they were off. if love and ben-hur were enemies, the latter was never more at mercy. the egyptian sat where he could not but see her; she, whom he had already engrossed in memory as his ideal of the shulamite. with her eyes giving light to his, the stars might come out, and he not see them; and so they did. the night might fall with unrelieved darkness everywhere else; her look would make illumination for him. and then, as everybody knows, given youth and such companionship, there is no situation in which the fancy takes such complete control as upon tranquil waters under a calm night sky, warm with summer. it is so easy at such time to glide imperceptibly out of the commonplace into the ideal. "give me the rudder," he said. "no," she replied, "that were to reverse the relation. did i not ask you to ride with me? i am indebted to you, and would begin payment. you may talk and i will listen, or i will talk and you will listen: that choice is yours; but it shall be mine to choose where we go, and the way thither." "and where may that be?" "you are alarmed again." "o fair egyptian, i but asked you the first question of every captive." "call me egypt." "i would rather call you iras." "you may think of me by that name, but call me egypt." "egypt is a country, and means many people." "yes, yes! and such a country!" "i see; it is to egypt we are going." "would we were! i would be so glad." she sighed as she spoke. "you have no care for me, then," he said. "ah, by that i know you were never there." "i never was." "oh, it is the land where there are no unhappy people, the desired of all the rest of the earth, the mother of all the gods, and therefore supremely blest. there, o son of arrius, there the happy find increase of happiness, and the wretched, going, drink once of the sweet water of the sacred river, and laugh and sing, rejoicing like children." "are not the very poor with you there as elsewhere?" "the very poor in egypt are the very simple in wants and ways," she replied. "they have no wish beyond enough, and how little that is, a greek or a roman cannot know." "but i am neither greek nor roman." she laughed. "i have a garden of roses, and in the midst of it is a tree, and its bloom is the richest of all. whence came it, think you?" "from persia, the home of the rose." "no." "from india, then." "no." "ah! one of the isles of greece." "i will tell you," she said; "a traveller found it perishing by the roadside on the plain of rephaim." "oh, in judea!" "i put it in the earth left bare by the receding nile, and the soft south wind blew over the desert and nursed it, and the sun kissed it in pity; after which it could not else than grow and flourish. i stand in its shade now, and it thanks me with much perfume. as with the roses, so with the men of israel. where shall they reach perfection but in egypt?" "moses was but one of millions." "nay, there was a reader of dreams. will you forget him?" "the friendly pharaohs are dead." "ah, yes! the river by which they dwelt sings to them in their tombs; yet the same sun tempers the same air to the same people." "alexandria is but a roman town." "she has but exchanged sceptres. caesar took from her that of the sword, and in its place left that of learning. go with me to the brucheium, and i will show you the college of nations; to the serapeion, and see the perfection of architecture; to the library, and read the immortals; to the theatre, and hear the heroics of the greeks and hindoos; to the quay, and count the triumphs of commerce; descend with me into the streets, o son of arrius, and, when the philosophers have dispersed, and taken with them the masters of all the arts, and all the gods have home their votaries, and nothing remains of the day but its pleasures, you shall hear the stories that have amused men from the beginning, and the songs which will never, never die." as he listened, ben-hur was carried back to the night when, in the summer-house in jerusalem, his mother, in much the same poetry of patriotism, declaimed the departed glories of israel. "i see now why you wish to be called egypt. will you sing me a song if i call you by that name? i heard you last night." "that was a hymn of the nile," she answered, "a lament which i sing when i would fancy i smell the breath of the desert, and hear the surge of the dear old river; let me rather give you a piece of the indian mind. when we get to alexandria, i will take you to the corner of the street where you can hear it from the daughter of the ganga, who taught it to me. kapila, you should know, was one of the most revered of the hindoo sages." then, as if it were a natural mode of expression, she began the song. kapila. i. "kapila, kapila, so young and true, i yearn for a glory like thine, and hail thee from battle to ask anew can ever thy valour be mine? "kapila sat on his charger dun, a hero never so grave: 'who loveth all things hath fear of none, 'tis love that maketh me brave. a woman gave me her soul one day, the soul of my soul to be alway; thence came my valour to me, go try ittry itand see.' ii. "kapila, kapila, so old and grey, the queen is calling for me; but ere i go hence, i wish thou wouldst say, how wisdom first came to thee. "kapila stood in his temple door, a priest in eremite guise: 'it did not come as men get their lore, 'tis faith that maketh me wise. a woman gave me her heart one day, the heart of my heart to be alway; thence came my wisdom to me, go try ittry itand see.'" ben-hur had not time to express his thanks for the song before the keel of the boat grated upon the underlying sand, and, next moment, the bow ran upon the shore. "a quick voyage, o egypt!" he cried. "and a briefer stay!" she replied, as, with a strong push, the black sent them shooting into the open water again. "you will give me the rudder now." "oh no," said she, laughing. "to you, the chariot; to me, the boat. we are merely at the lake's end, and the lesson is that i must not sing any more. having been to egypt, let us now go to the grove of daphne." "without a song on the way?" he said, in deprecation. "tell me something of the roman from whom you saved us yesterday," she asked. the request struck ben-hur unpleasantly. "i wish this were the nile," he said, evasively. "the kings and queens, having slept so long, might come down from their tombs, and ride with us." "they were of the colossi, and would sink our boat. the pygmies would be preferable. but tell me of the roman. he is very wicked, is he not?" "i cannot say." "is he of noble family, and rich?" "i cannot speak of his riches." "how beautiful his horses were! and the bed of his chariot was gold, and the wheels ivory. and his audacity! the bystanders laughed as he rode away; they, who were so nearly under his wheels!" she laughed at the recollection. "they were rabble," said ben-hur, bitterly. "he must be one of the monsters who are said to be growing up in romeapollos ravenous as cerberus. does he reside in antioch?" "he is of the east somewhere." "egypt would suit him better than syria." "hardly," ben-hur replied. "cleopatra is dead." that instant the lamps burning before the door of the tent came into view. "the dowar!" she cried. "ah, then, we have not been to egypt. i have not seen karnak or philae or abydos. this is not the nile. i have but heard a song of india, and been boating in a dream." "philaekarnak. mourn rather that you have not seen the rameses at aboo simbul, looking at which makes it so easy to think of god, the maker of the heavens and earth. or why should you mourn at all? let us go on to the river; and if i cannot sing"she laughed"because i have said i would not, yet i can tell you stories of egypt." "go on! aye, till morning comes, and the evening, and the next morning!" he said, vehemently. "of what shall my stories be? of the mathematicians?" "oh no." "of the philosophers?" "no, no." "of the magicians and genii?" "if you will." "of war?" "yes." "of love?" "yes." "i will tell you a cure for love. it is the story of a queen. listen reverently. the papyrus from which it was taken by the priests of philae was wrested from the hand of the heroine herself. it is correct in form, and must be true: ne-ne-hofra. i. "there is no parallelism in human lives. "no life runs a straight line. "the most perfect life develops as a circle, and terminates in its beginning, making it impossible to say, this is the commencement, that the end. "perfect lives are the treasures of god; of great days he wears them on the ring-finger of his heart hand." ii. "ne-ne-hofra dwelt in a house close by essouan, yet closer to the first cataractso close, indeed, that the sound of the eternal battle waged there between river and rocks was of the place a part. "she grew in beauty day by day, so that it was said of her, as of the poppies in her father's garden, what will she not be in the time of blooming? "each year of her life was the beginning of a new song more delightful than any of those which went before. "child was she of a marriage between the north, bounded by the sea, and the south, bounded by the desert beyond the luna mountains; and one gave her its passion, the other its genius; so when they beheld her, both laughed, saying, not meanly, 'she is mine,' but generously, 'ha, ha! she is ours.' "all excellences in nature contributed to her perfection and rejoiced in her presence. did she come or go, the birds ruffled their wings in greeting; the unruly winds sank to cooling zephyrs; the white lotus rose from the water's depth to look at her; the solemn river loitered on its way; the palm-trees, nodding, shook all their plumes; and they seemed to say, this one, i gave her of my grace; that, i gave her of my brightness; the other, i gave her of my purity: and so each as it had a virtue to give. "at twelve, ne-ne-hofra was the delight of essouan; at sixteen, the fame of her beauty was universal; at twenty, there was never a day which did not bring to her door princes of the desert on swift camels, and lords of egypt in gilded barges; and, going away disconsolate, they reported everywhere, 'i have seen her, and she is not a woman, but athor herself.'" iii. "now of the three hundred and thirty successors of good king menes, eighteen were ethiopians, of whom oraetes was one hundred and ten years old. he had reigned seventy-six years. under him the people thrived, and the land groaned with fatness of plenty. he practised wisdom because, having seen so much, he knew what it was. he dwelt in memphis, having there his principal palace, his arsenals, and his treasure-house. frequently he went down to butos to talk with latona. "the wife of the good king died. too old was she for perfect embalmment; yet he loved her, and mourned as the inconsolable; seeing which, a colchyte presumed one day to speak to him. "'o oraetes, i am astonished that one so wise and great should not know how to cure a sorrow like this.' "'tell me a cure,' said the king. "three times the colchyte kissed the floor. and then he replied, knowing the dead could not hear him. 'at essouan lives ne-ne-hofra, beautiful as athor the beautiful. send for her. she has refused all the lords and princes, and i know not how many kings; but who can say no to oraetes?'" iv. "ne-ne-hofra descended the nile in a barge richer than any ever before seen, attended by an army in barges each but a little less fine. all nubia and egypt, and a myriad from libya, and a host of troglodytes, and not a few macrobii from beyond the mountains of the moon, lined the tented shores to see the cortege pass, wafted by perfumed winds and golden oars. "through a dromos of sphinxes and couchant double-winged lions she was borne, and set down before oraetes sitting on a throne specially erected at the sculptured pylon of the palace. he raised her up, gave her place by his side, clasped the uraeus upon her arm, kissed her, and ne-ne-hofra was queen of all queens. "that was not enough for the wise oraetes; he wanted love, and a queen happy in his love. so he dealt with her tenderly, showing her his possessions, cities, places, people; his armies, his ships: and with his own hand he led her through his treasure-house, saying, 'o, ne-ne-hofra! but kiss me in love, and they are all thine.' "and, thinking she could be happy, if she was not then, she kissed him once, twice, thricekissed him thrice, his hundred and ten years notwithstanding. "the first year she was happy, and it was very short; the third year she was wretched, and it was very long; then she was enlightened: that which she thought love of oraetes was only daze of his power. well for her had the daze endured! her spirits deserted her; she had long spells of tears, and her women could not remember when they heard her laugh; of the roses on her cheeks only ashes remained; she languished and faded gradually, but certainly. some said she was haunted by the erinnyes for cruelty to a lover; others, that she was stricken, by some god envious of oraetes. whatever the cause of her decline, the charms of the magicians availed not to restore her, and the prescript of the doctor was equally without virtue. ne-ne-hofra was given over to die. "oraetes chose a crypt for her up in the tombs of the queens; and, calling the master-sculptors and painters to memphis, he set them to work upon designs more elaborate than any even in the great galleries of the dead kings. "'o thou beautiful as athor herself, my queen!' said the king, whose hundred and thirteen years did not lessen his ardour as a lover, 'tell me, i pray, the ailment of which, alas! thou art so certainly perishing before my eyes.' "'you will not love me any more if i tell you,' she said, in doubt and fear. "'not love you! i will love you the more. i swear it, by the genii of amente! by the eye of osiris, i swear it! speak!' he cried, passionate as a lover, authoritative as a king. "'hear then,' she said. 'there is an anchorite, the oldest and holiest of his class, in a cave near essouan. his name is menopha. he was my teacher and guardian. send for him, o oraetes, and he will tell you that you seek to know; he will also help you find the cure for my affliction.' "oraetes arose rejoicing. he went away in spirit a hundred years younger than when he came." v. "'speak!' said oraetes to menopha, in the palace at memphis. "and menopha replied, 'most mighty king, if you were young, i should not answer, because i am yet pleased with life; as it is, i will say the queen like any other mortal, is paying the penalty of a crime.' "'a crime!' exclaimed oraetes, angrily. "menopha bowed very low. "'yes; to herself.' "'i am not in mood for riddles,' said the king. "'what i say is not a riddle, as you shall hear. ne-ne-hofra grew up under my eyes, and confided every incident of her life to me; among others, that she loved the son of her father's gardener, barbec by name.' "oraetes' frown, strangely enough, began to dissipate. "'with that love in her heart, o king, she came to you; of that love she is dying.' "'where is the gardener's son now?' asked oraetes. "'in essouan.' "the king went out and gave two orders. to one oeris he said, 'go to essouan and bring hither a youth named barbec. you will find him in the garden of the queen's father;' to another, 'assemble workmen and cattle and tools, and construct for me in lake chemmis an island, which, though laden with a temple, a palace, and a garden, and all manner of trees bearing fruit, and all manner of vines, shall nevertheless float about as the winds may blow it. make the island, and let it be fully furnished by the time the moon begins to wane.' "then to the queen he said, "'be of cheer. i know all, and have sent for barbec.' "ne-ne-hofra kissed his hands. "'you shall have him to yourself, and he you to himself; nor shall any disturb your loves for a year.' "she kissed his feet; he raised her, and kissed her in return; and the rose came back to her cheek, the scarlet to her lips, and the laugh to her heart." vi. "for one year ne-ne-hofra and barbec the gardener floated as the winds blew on the island of chemmis, which became one of the wonders of the world; never a home of love more beautiful; one year, seeing no one and existing for no one but themselves. then she returned in state to the palace in memphis. "'now whom lovest thou best?' asked the king. "she kissed his cheek and said, 'take me back, o good king, for i am cured.' "oraetes laughed, none the worse, that moment, of his hundred and fourteen years. "'then it is true, as menopha said: ha, ha, ha! it is true, the cure of love is love.' "'even so,' she replied. "suddenly his manner changed, and his look became terrible. "'i did not find it so,' he said. "she shrank affrighted. "'thou guilty!' he continued. 'thy offence to oraetes the man he forgives; but thy offence to oraetes the king remains to be punished.' "she cast herself at his feet. "'hush!' he cried. 'thou art dead!' "he clapped his hands, and a terrible procession came ina procession of parachistes, or embalmers, each with some implement or material of his loathsome art. "the king pointed to ne-ne-hofra. "'she is dead. do thy work well.' vii. "ne-ne-hofra the beautiful, after seventy-two days, was carried to the crypt chosen for her the year before, and laid with her queenly predecessors; yet there was no funeral procession in her honour across the sacred lake." at the conclusion of the story, ben-hur was sitting at the egyptian's feet, and her hand upon the tiller was covered by his hand. "menopha was wrong," he said. "how?" "love lives by loving." "then there is no cure for it?" "yes. oraetes found the cure." "what was it?" "death." "you are a good listener, o son of arrius." and so with conversation and stories, they whiled the hours away. as they stepped ashore, she said, "to-morrow we go to the city." "but you will be at the games?" he asked. "oh yes." "i will send you my colours." with that they separated. chapter iv. messala on guard. ilderim returned to the dowar next day about the third hour. as he dismounted, a man whom he recognized as of his own tribe came to him and said, "o sheik, i was bidden give thee this package, with request that thou read it at once. if there be answer, i was to wait thy pleasure." ilderim gave the package immediate attention. the seal was already broken. the address ran, to valerius gratus at caesarea. "abaddon take him!" growled the sheik, at discovering a letter in latin. had the missive been in greek or arabic, he could have read it; as it was, the utmost he could make out was the signature in bold roman lettersmessalawhereat his eyes twinkled. "where is the young jew?" he asked. "in the field with the horses," a servant replied. the sheik replaced the papyrus in its envelopes, and, tucking the package under his girdle, remounted the horse. that moment a stranger made his appearance, coming, apparently, from the city. "i am looking for sheik ilderim, surnamed the generous," the stranger said. his language and attire bespoke him a roman. what he could not read, he yet could speak; so the old arab answered, with dignity, "i am sheik ilderim." the man's eyes fell; he raised them again, and said, with forced composure, "i heard you had need of a driver for the games." ilderim's lip under the white moustache curled contemptuously. "go thy way," he said. "i have a driver." he turned to ride away, but the man, lingering, spoke again. "sheik, i am a lover of horses, and they say you have the most beautiful in the world." the old man was touched; he drew rein, as if on the point of yielding to the flattery, but finally replied, "not to-day, not to-day; some other time i will show them to you. i am too busy just now." he rode to the field, while the stranger betook himself to town again, with a smiling countenance. he had accomplished his mission. and every day thereafter, down to the great day of the games, a mansometimes two or three mencame to the sheik at the orchard, pretending to seek an engagement as driver. in such manner messala kept watch over ben-hur. chapter v. ilderim and ben-hur deliberate. the sheik waited, well satisfied, until ben-hur drew his horses off the field for the forenoonwell satisfied, for he had seen them, after being put through all the other paces, run full speed in such manner that it did not seem there were one the slowest and another the fastestrun, in other words, as the four were one. "this afternoon, o sheik, i will give sirius back to you." ben-hur patted the neck of the old horse as he spoke. "i will give him back, and take to the chariot." "so soon?" ilderim asked. "with such as these, good sheik, one day suffices. they are not afraid; they have a man's intelligence, and they love the exercise. this one," he shook a rein over the back of the youngest of the four"you called him aldebaran, i believeis the swiftest; in once round a stadium he would lead the others thrice his length." ilderim pulled his beard, and said, with twinkling eyes, "aldebaran is the swiftest; but what of the slowest?" "this is he." ben-hur shook the rein over antares. "this is he: but he will win, for, look you, sheik, he will run his utmost all dayall day; and, as the sun goes down, he will reach his swiftest." "right again," said ilderim. "i have but one fear, o sheik." the sheik became doubly serious. "in his greed of triumph, a roman cannot keep honour pure. in the gamesall of them, mark youtheir tricks are infinite; in chariot-racing their knavery extends to everythingfrom horse to driver, from driver to master. wherefore, good sheik, look well to all thou hast; from this till the trial is over, let no stranger so much as see the horses. would you be perfectly safe, do morekeep watch over them with armed hand as well as sleepless eye; then i will have no fear of the end." at the door of the tent they dismounted. "what you say shall be attended to. by the splendour of god, no hand shall come near them except it belong to one of the faithful. to-night i will set watches. but, son of arrius"ilderim drew forth the package, and opened it slowly, while they walked to the divan and seated themselves"son of arrius, see thou here, and help me with thy latin." he passed the despatch to ben-hur. "there; readand read aloud, rendering what thou findest into the tongue of thy fathers. latin is an abomination." ben-hur was in good spirits, and began the reading carelessly. "'messala to gratus!'" he paused. a premonition drove the blood to his heart. ilderim observed his agitation. "well; i am waiting." ben-hur prayed pardon, and recommenced the paper, which, it is sufficient to say, was one of the duplicates of the letter despatched so carefully to gratus by messala the morning after the revel in the palace. the paragraphs in the beginning were remarkable only as proof that the writer had not outgrown his habit of mockery; when they were passed, and the reader came to the parts intended to refresh the memory of gratus, his voice trembled, and twice he stopped to regain his self-control. by a strong effort he continued. "'i recall further'" he read, "'that thou didst make disposition of the family of hur'"there the reader again paused and drew a long breath"'both of us at the time supposing the plan hit upon to be the most effective possible for the purposes in view, which were silence and delivery over to inevitable but natural death.'" here ben-hur broke down utterly. the paper fell from his hands, and he covered his face. "they are deaddead. i alone am left." the sheik had been a silent, but not unsympathetic, witness of the young man's suffering; now he arose and said, "son of arrius, it is for me to beg thy pardon. read the paper by thyself. when thou art strong enough to give the rest of it to me, send word, and i will return." he went out of the tent, and nothing in all his life became him better. ben-hur flung himself on the divan and gave way to his feelings. when somewhat recovered, he recollected that a portion of the letter remained unread, and, taking it up, he resumed the reading. "thou wilt remember," the missive ran, "what thou didst with the mother and sister of the malefactor; yet, if now i yield to a desire to learn if they be living or dead"ben-hur started, and read again, and then again, and at last broke into exclamation. "he does not know they are dead; he does not know it! blessed be the name of the lord! there is yet hope." he finished the sentence, and was strengthened by it, and went on bravely to the end of the letter. "they are not dead," he said, after reflection; "they are not dead, or he would have heard of it." a second reading, more careful than the first, confirmed him in the opinion. then he sent for the sheik. "in coming to your hospitable tent, o sheik," he said, calmly, when the arab was seated and they were alone, "it was not in my mind to speak of myself further than to assure you i had sufficient training to be intrusted with your horses. i declined to tell you my history. but the chances which have sent this paper to my hand and given it to me to be read are so strange that i feel bidden to trust you with everything. and i am the more inclined to do so by knowledge here conveyed that we are both of us threatened by the same enemy, against whom it is needful that we make common cause. i will read the letter and give you explanation; after which you will not wonder i was so moved. if you thought me weak or childish, you will then excuse me." the sheik held his peace, listening closely, until ben-hur came to the paragraph in which he was particularly mentioned"'i saw the jew yesterday in the grove of daphne;'" so ran the part, "'and if he be not there now, he is certainly in the neighbourhood, making it easy for me to keep him in eye. indeed, were thou to ask me where he is now, i should say, with the most positive assurance, he is to be found at the old orchard of palms.'" "ah!" exclaimed ilderim, in such a tone one might hardly say he was more surprised than angry; at the same time, he clutched his beard. "'at the old orchard of palms,'" ben-hur repeated, "'under the tent of the traitor sheik ilderim.'" "traitor!i?" the old man cried, in his shrillest tone, while lip and beard curled with ire, and on his forehead and neck the veins swelled and beat as they would burst. "yet a moment, sheik," said ben-hur, with a deprecatory gesture. "such is messala's opinion of you. hear his threat." and he read on"'under the tent of the traitor sheik ilderim, who cannot long escape our strong hand. be not surprised if maxentius, as his first measure, places the arab on ship for forwarding to rome.'" "to rome! meilderimsheik of ten thousand horsemen with spearsme to rome!" he leaped rather than rose to his feet, his arms outstretched, his fingers spread and curved like claws, his eyes glittering like a serpent's. "o god!nay, by all the gods except of rome!when shall this insolence end? a freeman am i; free are my people. must we die slaves? or, worse, must i live a dog, crawling to a master's feet? must i lick his hand lest he lash me? what is mine is not mine; i am not my own; for breath of body i must be beholden to a roman. oh, if i were young again! oh, could i shake off twenty yearsor tenor five!" he ground his teeth and shook his hands overhead; then, under the impulse of another idea, he walked away and back again to ben-hur swiftly, and caught his shoulder with a strong grasp. "if i were as thou, son of arriusas young, as strong, as practised in arms; if i had a motive hissing me to revengea motive, like thine, great enough to make hate holy.away with disguise on thy part and on mine! son of hur, son of hur, i say" at that name all the currents of ben-hur's blood stopped; surprised, bewildered, he gazed into the arab's eyes, now close to his, and fiercely bright. "son of hur, i say, were i as thou, with half thy wrongs, bearing about with me memories like thine, i would not, i could not, rest." never pausing, his words following each other torrent-like, the old man swept on. "to all my grievances, i would add those of the world, and devote myself to vengeance. from land to land i would go firing all mankind. no war for freedom but should find me engaged; no battle against rome in which i would not bear a part. i would turn parthian, if i could not better. if men failed me, still i would not give over the effortha, ha, ha! by the splendour of god! i would herd with wolves, and make friends of lions and tigers, in hope of marshalling them against the common enemy. i would use every weapon. so my victims were romans, i would rejoice in slaughter. quarter i would not ask; quarter i would not give. to the flames everything roman; to the sword every roman born. of nights i would pray the gods, the good and the bad alike, to lend me their special terrorstempests, drought, heat, cold, and all the nameless poisons they let loose in air, all the thousand things of which men die on sea and on land. oh, i could not sleep. ii" the sheik stopped for want of breath, panting, wringing his hands. and, sooth to say, of all the passionate burst ben-hur retained but a vague impression wrought by fiery eyes, a piercing voice, and a rage too intense for coherent expression. for the first time in years, the desolate youth heard himself addressed by his proper name. one man at least knew him, and acknowledged it without demand of identity; and he an arab fresh from the desert! how came the man by his knowledge? the letter? no. it told the cruelties from which his family had suffered; it told the story of his own misfortunes, but it did not say he was the very victim whose escape from doom was the theme of the heartless narrative. that was the point of explanation he had notified the sheik would follow the reading of the letter. he was pleased, and thrilled with hope restored, yet kept an air of calmness. "good sheik, tell me how you came by this letter." "my people keep the roads between cities," ilderim answered, bluntly. "they took it from a courier." "are they known to be thy people?" "no. to the world they are robbers, whom it is mine to catch and slay." "again, sheik. you call me son of hurmy father's name. i did not think myself known to a person on earth. how came you by the knowledge?" ilderim hesitated; but, rallying, he answered, "i know you, yet i am not free to tell you more." "some one holds you in restraint?" the sheik closed his mouth, and walked away; but, observing ben-hur's disappointment, he came back, and said, "let us say no more about the matter now. i will go to town; when i return, i may talk to you fully. give me the letter." ilderim rolled the papyrus carefully, restored it to its envelope, and became once more all energy. "what sayest thou?" he asked, while waiting for his horse and retinue. "i told what i would do, were i thou, and thou hast made no answer. "i intended to answer, sheik, and i will." ben-hur's countenance and voice changed with the feeling invoked. "all thou hast said, i will doall at least in the power of a man. i devoted myself to vengeance long ago. every hour of the five years passed, i have lived with no other thought. i have taken no respite. i have had no pleasures of youth. the blandishments of rome were not for me. i wanted her to educate me for revenge. i resorted to her most famous masters and professorsnot those of rhetoric or philosophy: alas! i had no time for them. the arts essential to a fighting-man were my desire. i associated with gladiators, and with winners of prizes in the circus; and they were my teachers. the drill-masters in the great camp accepted me as a scholar, and were proud of my attainments in their line. o sheik, i am a soldier; but the things of which i dream require me to be a captain. with that thought, i have taken part in the campaign against the parthians; when it is over, then, if the lord spare my life and strengththen"he raised his clenched hands, and spoke vehemently"then i will be an enemy roman-taught in all things; then rome shall account to me in roman lives for her ills. you have my answer, sheik." ilderim put an arm over his shoulder, and kissed him, saying, passionately, "if thy god favour thee not, son of hur, it is because he is dead. take thou this from mesworn to, if so thy preference run: thou shalt have my hands, and their fulnessmen, horses, camels, and the desert for preparation. i swear it! for the present, enough. thou shalt see or hear from me before night." turning abruptly off, the sheik was speedily on the road to the city. chapter vi. training the four. the intercepted letter was conclusive upon a number of points of great interest to ben-hur. it had all the effect of a confession that the writer was a party to the putting-away of the family with murderous intent; that he had sanctioned the plan adopted for the purpose; that he had received a portion of the proceeds of the confiscation and was yet in enjoyment of his part; that he dreaded the unexpected appearance of what he was pleased to call the chief malefactor, and accepted it as a menace; that he contemplated such further action as would secure him in the future, and was ready to do whatever his accomplice in caesarea might advise. and, now that the letter had reached the hand of him really its subject, it was notice of danger to come, as well as a confession of guilt. so when ilderim left the tent, ben-hur had much to think about, requiring immediate action. his enemies were as adroit and powerful as any in the east. if they were afraid of him, he had greater reason to be afraid of them. he strove earnestly to reflect upon the situation, but could not; his feelings constantly overwhelmed him. there was a certain qualified pleasure in the assurance that his mother and sister were alive; and it mattered little that the foundation of the assurance was a mere inference. that there was one person who could tell him where they were seemed to his hope so long deferred as if discovery were now close at hand. these were mere causes of feeling; underlying them, it must be confessed he had a superstitious fancy that god was about to make ordination in his behalf, in which event faith whispered him to stand still. occasionally, referring to the words of ilderim, he wondered whence the arab derived his information about him; not from malluch certainly; nor from simonides, whose interests, all adverse, would hold him dumb. could messala have been the informant? no, no: disclosure might be dangerous in that quarter. conjecture was vain; at the same time, often as ben-hur was beaten back from the solution, he was consoled with the thought that whoever the person with the knowledge might be, he was a friend, and, being such, would reveal himself in good time. a little more waitinga little more patience. possibly the errand of the sheik was to see the worthy; possibly the letter might precipitate a full disclosure. and patient he would have been if only he could have believed tirzah and his mother were waiting for him under circumstances permitting hope on their part strong as his; if, in other words, conscience had not stung him with accusations respecting them. to escape such accusations, he wandered far through the orchard, pausing now where the date-gatherers were busy, yet not too busy to offer him of their fruit and talk with him; then, under the great trees, to watch the nesting birds, or hear the bees swarming about the berries bursting with honeyed sweetness, and filling all the green and golden spaces with the music of their beating wings. by the lake, however, he lingered longest. he might not look upon the water and its sparkling ripples, so like sensuous life, without thinking of the egyptian and her marvellous beauty, and of floating with her here and there through the night, made brilliant by her songs and stories; he might not forget the charm of her manner, the lightness of her laugh, the flattery of her attention, the warmth of her little hand under his upon the tiller of the boat from her it was for his thought but a short way to balthasar, and the strange things of which he had been witness, unaccountable by any law of nature; and from him, again, to the king of the jews, whom the good man, with such pathos of patience, was holding in holy promise, the distance was even nearer. and there his mind stayed, finding in the mysteries of that personage a satisfaction answering well for the rest he was seeking. because, it may have been, nothing is so easy as denial of an idea not agreeable to our wishes, he rejected the definition given by balthasar of the kingdom the king was coming to establish. a kingdom of souls, if not intolerable to the sadducean faith, seemed to him but an abstraction drawn from the depths of a devotion too fond and dreamy. a kingdom of judea, on the other hand, was more than comprehensible: such had been, and, if only for that reason, might be again. and it suited his pride to think of a new kingdom broader of domain, richer in power, and of a more unapproachable splendour than the old one; of a new king wiser and mightier than solomona new king under whom, especially, he could find both service and revenge. in that mood he returned to the dowar. the mid-day meal disposed of, still further to occupy himself, ben-hur had the chariot rolled out into the sunlight for inspection. the word but poorly conveys the careful study the vehicle underwent. no point or part of it escaped him. with a pleasure which will be better understood hereafter, he saw the pattern was greek, in his judgment preferable to the roman in many respects; it was wider between the wheels, and lower and stronger, and the disadvantage of greater weight would be more than compensated by the greater endurance of his arabs. speaking generally, the carriage-makers of rome built for the games almost solely, sacrificing safety to beauty, and durability to grace; while the chariots of achilles and "the king of men," designed for war and all its extreme tests, still ruled the tastes of those who met and struggled for the crowns isthmian and olympic. next he brought the horses, and, hitching them to the chariot, drove to the field of exercise, where, hour after hour, he practised them in movement under the yoke. when he came away in the evening, it was with restored spirit, and a fixed purpose to defer action in the matter of messala until the race was won or lost. he could not forego the pleasure of meeting his adversary under the eyes of the east; that there might be other competitors seemed not to enter his thought. his confidence in the result was absolute; no doubt of his own skill; and as to the four, they were his full partners in the glorious game. "let him look to it, let him look to it! ha, antaresaldebaran! shall he not, o honest rigel? and thou, atair, king among coursers, shall he not beware of us? ha, ha! good hearts!" so in rests he passed from horse to horse, speaking, not as a master, but the senior of as many brethren. after nightfall, ben-hur sat by the door of the tent waiting for ilderim, not yet returned from the city. he was not impatient, or vexed, or doubtful. the sheik would be heard from, at least. indeed, whether it was from satisfaction with the performance of the four, or the refreshment there is in cold water succeeding bodily exercise, or supper partaken with royal appetite, or the reaction which, as a kindly provision of nature, always follows depression, the young man was in good-humour verging upon elation. he felt himself in the hands of providence no longer his enemy. at last there was a sound of horse's feet coming rapidly, and malluch rode up. "son of arrius," he said, cheerily, after salutation, "i salute you for sheik ilderim, who requests you to mount and go to the city. he is waiting for you." ben-hur asked no questions, but went in where the horses were feeding. aldebaran came to him, as if offering his service. he played with him lovingly, but passed on, and chose another, not of the fourthey were sacred to the race. very shortly the two were on the road, going swiftly and in silence. some distance below the seleucian bridge, they crossed the river by a ferry, and, riding far round on the right bank, and recrossing by another ferry, entered the city from the west. the detour was long, but ben-hur accepted it as a precaution for which there was good reason. down to simonides' landing they rode, and in front of the great warehouse, under the bridge, malluch drew rein. "we are come," he said. "dismount." ben-hur recognised the place. "where is the sheik?" he asked. "come with me. i will show you." a watchman took the horses, and almost before he realised it ben-hur stood once more at the door of the house up on the greater one, listening to the response from within"in god's name, enter." chapter vii. simonides renders account. malluch stopped at the door; ben-hur entered alone. the room was the same in which he had formerly interviewed simonides, and it had been in nowise changed, except now, close by the arm-chair, a polished brazen rod, set on a broad wooden pedestal, arose higher than a tall man, holding lamps of silver on sliding arms, half-a-dozen or more in number, and all burning. the light was clear, bringing into view the panelling on the walls, the cornice with its row of gilded balls, and the dome dully tinted with violet mica. within, a few steps, ben-hur stopped. three persons were present, looking at himsimonides, ilderim, and esther. he glanced hurriedly from one to another, as if to find answer to the question half formed in his mind, what business can these have with me? he became calm, with every sense on the alert, for the question was succeeded by another, are they friends or enemies? at length, his eyes rested upon esther. the men returned his look kindly; in her face there was something more than kindnesssomething too spirituel for definition, which yet went to his inner consciousness without definition. shall it be said, good reader? back of his gaze there was a comparison in which the egyptian arose and set herself over against the gentle jewess; but it lived an instant, and, as is the habit of such comparisons, passed away without a conclusion. "son of hur" the guest turned to the speaker. "son of hur," said simonides, repeating the address slowly, and with distinct emphasis, as if to impress all its meaning upon him most interested in understanding it, "take thou the peace of the lord god of our fatherstake it from me." he paused, then added, "from me and mine." the speaker sat in his chair; there were the royal head, the bloodless face, the masterful air, under the influence of which visitors forgot the broken limbs and distorted body of the man. the full black eyes gazed out under the white brows steadily, but not sternly. a moment thus, then he crossed his hands upon his breast. the action, taken with the salutation, could not be misunderstood, and was not. "simonides," ben-hur answered, much moved, "the holy peace you tender is accepted. as son to father, i return it to you. only let there be perfect understanding between us." thus delicately he sought to put aside the submission of the merchant, and, in place of the relation of master and servant, substitute one higher and holier. simonides let fall his hands, and, turning to esther, said, "a seat for the master, daughter." she hastened, and brought a stool, and stood, with suffused face, looking from one to the otherfrom ben-hur to simonides, from simonides to ben-hur; and they waited, each declining the superiority direction would imply. when at length the pause began to be embarrassing, ben-hur advanced, and gently took the stool from her, and, going to the chair, placed it at the merchant's feet. "i will sit here," he said. his eyes met hersan instant only; but both were better of the look. he recognised her gratitude, she his generosity and forbearance. simonides bowed his acknowledgment. "esther, child, bring me the paper," he said, with a breath of relief. she went to a panel in the wall, opened it, took out a roll of papyri, and brought and gave it to him. "thou saidst well, son of hur," simonides began, while unrolling the sheets. "let us understand each other. in anticipation of the demandwhich i would have made hadst thou waived iti have here a statement covering everything necessary to the understanding required. i could see but two points involvedthe property first, and then our relation. the statement is explicit as to both. will it please thee to read it now?" ben-hur received the papers, but glanced at ilderim. "nay," said simonides, "the sheik shall not deter thee from reading. the accountsuch thou wilt find itis of a nature requiring a witness. in the attesting place at the end thou wilt find, when thou comest to it, the nameilderim, sheik. he knows all. he is thy friend. all he has been to me, that will he be to thee also." simonides looked at the arab, nodding pleasantly, and the latter gravely returned the nod, saying, "thou hast said." ben-hur replied, "i know already the excellence of his friendship, and have yet to prove myself worthy of it." immediately he continued, "later, o simonides, i will read the papers carefully; for the present, do thou take them, and if thou be not too weary, give me their substance." simonides took back the roll. "here, esther, stand by me and receive the sheets, lest they fall into confusion." she took place by his chair, letting her right arm fall lightly across his shoulder, so, when he spoke, the account seemed to have rendition from both of them jointly. "this," said simonides, drawing out the first leaf, "shows the money i had of thy father's, being the amount saved from the romans; there was no property saved, only money, and that the robbers would have secured but for our jewish custom of bills of exchange. the amount saved, being sums i drew from rome, alexandria, damascus, carthage, valentia, and elsewhere within the circle of trade, was one hundred and twenty talents jewish money." he gave the sheet to esther, and took the next one. "with that amountone hundred and twenty talentsi charged myself. hear now my credits. i use the word, as thou wilt see, with reference rather to the proceeds gained from the use of the money." from separate sheets he then read footings, which, fractions omitted, were as follows: cr. by ships................................. 60 talents " goods in store........................ 110 " " cargoes in transit.................... 75 " " camels, horses, etc................... 20 " " warehouses............................ 10 " " bills due............................. 54 " " money on hand and subject to draft.... 224 " total........................ 553 " "to these now, to the five hundred and fifty-three talents gained, add the original capital i had from thy father, and thou hast six hundred and seventy-three talents!and all thinemaking thee, o son of hur, the richest subject in the world." he took the papyri from esther, and, reserving one, rolled them and offered them to ben-hur. the pride perceptible in his manner was not offensive; it might have been from a sense of duty well done; it might have been for ben-hur without reference to himself. "and there is nothing," he added, dropping his voice, but not his eyes"there is nothing now thou mayst not do." the moment was one of absorbing interest to all present. simonides crossed his hands upon his breast again; esther was anxious; ilderim nervous. a man is never so on trial as in the moment of excessive good-fortune. taking the roll, ben-hur arose, struggling with emotion. "all this is to me as a light from heaven, sent to drive away a night which has been so long i feared it would never end, and so dark i had lost the hope of seeing," he said, with a husky voice. "i give first thanks to the lord, who has not abandoned me, and my next to thee, o simonides. thy faithfulness outweighs the cruelty of others, and redeems our human nature. 'there is nothing i cannot do:' be it so. shall any man in this my hour of such mighty privilege be more generous than i? serve me as a witness now, sheik ilderim. hear thou my words as i shall speak themhear and remember. and thou, esther, good angel of this good man! hear thou also." he stretched his hand with the roll to simonides. "the things these papers take into accountall of them: ships, houses, goods, camels, horses, money; the least as well as the greatestgive i back to thee, o simonides, making them all thine, and sealing them to thee and thine forever." esther smiled through her tears; ilderim pulled his beard with rapid motion, his eyes glistening like beads of jet. simonides alone was calm. "sealing them to thee and thine forever," ben-hur continued, with better control of himself, "with one exception, and upon one condition." the breath of the listeners waited upon his words. "the hundred and twenty talents which were my father's thou shalt return to me." ilderim's countenance brightened. "and thou shalt join me in search of my mother and sister, holding all thine subject to the expense of discovery, even as i will hold mine." simonides was much affected. stretching out his hand, he said, "i see thy spirit, son of hur, and i am grateful to the lord that he hath sent thee to me such as thou art. if i served well thy father in life, and his memory afterwards, be not afraid of default to thee; yet must i say the exception cannot stand." exhibiting, then, the reserved sheet, he continued. "thou hast not all the account. take this and readread aloud." ben-hur took the supplement, and read it. "statement of the servants of hur, rendered by simonides, steward of the estate. 1. amrah, egyptian, keeping the palace in jerusalem. 2. simonides, the steward, in antioch. 3. esther, daughter of simonides." now, in all his thoughts of simonides, not once had it entered ben-hur's mind that, by the law, a daughter followed the parent's condition. in all his visions of her, the sweet-faced esther had figured as the rival of the egyptian, and an object of possible love. he shrank from the revelation so suddenly brought him, and looked at her blushing; and, blushing, she dropped her eyes before him. then he said, while the papyrus rolled itself together "a man with six hundred talents is indeed rich, and may do what he pleases; but, rarer than the money, more priceless than the property, is the mind which amassed the wealth, and the heart it could not corrupt when amassed. o simonidesand thoufair estherfear not. sheik ilderim here shall be witness that in the same moment ye were declared my servants, that moment i declared ye free; and what i declare, that will i put in writing. is it not enough? can i do more?" "son of hur," said simonides, "verily thou dost make servitude lightsome. i was wrong; there are some things thou canst not do; thou canst not make us free in law. i am thy servant forever, because i went to the door with thy father one day, and in my ear the awl-marks yet abide." "did my father that?" "judge him not," cried simonides, quickly. "he accepted me a servant of that class because i prayed him to do so. i never repented the step. it was the price i paid for rachel, the mother of my child here; for rachel, who would not be my wife unless i became what she was." "was she a servant forever?" "even so." ben-hur walked the floor in pain of impotent wish. "i was rich before," he said, stopping suddenly. "i was rich with the gifts of the generous arrius; now comes this greater fortune, and the mind which achieved it. is there not a purpose of god in it all? counsel me, o simonides! help me to see the right and do it. help me to be worthy my name, and what thou art in law to me, that will i be to thee in fact and deed. i will be thy servant forever." simonides' face actually glowed. "o son of my dead master! i will do better than help; i will serve thee with all my might of mind and heart. body, i have not; it perished in thy cause; but with mind and heart i will serve thee. i swear it, by the altar of our god, and the gifts upon the altar! only make me formally what i have assumed to be." "name it," said ben-hur, eagerly. "as steward the care of the property will be mine." "count thyself steward now; or wilt thou have it in writing?" "thy word simply is enough; it was so with the father, and i will not more from the son. and now, if the understanding be perfect"simonides paused. "it is with me," said ben-hur. "and thou, daughter of rachel, speak!" said simonides, lifting her arm from his shoulder. esther, left thus alone, stood a moment abashed, her colour coming and going; then she went to ben-hur, and said, with a womanliness singularly sweet, "i am not better than my mother was; and, as she is gone, i pray you, o my master, let me care for my father." ben-hur took her hand, and led her back to the chair, saying, "thou art a good child. have thy will." simonides replaced her arm upon his neck, and there was silence for a time in the room. chapter viii. spiritual or political?simonides argues. simonides looked up, none the less a master. "esther," he said, quietly, "the night is going fast; and, lest we become too weary for that which is before us, let the refreshments be brought." she rang a bell. a servant answered with wine and bread, which she bore round. "the understanding, good my master," continued simonides, when all were served, "is not perfect in my sight. henceforth our lives will run on together like rivers which have met and joined their waters. i think their flowing will be better if every cloud is blown from the sky above them. you left my door the other day with what seemed a denial of the claims which i have just allowed in the broadest terms; but it was not so, indeed it was not. esther is witness that i recognised you; and that i did not abandon you, let malluch say." "malluch!" exclaimed ben-hur. "one bound to a chair, like me, must have many hands far-reaching, if he would move the world from which he is so cruelly barred. i have many such, and malluch is one of the best of them. and, sometimes"he cast a grateful glance at the sheik"sometimes i borrow from others good of heart, like ilderim the generousgood and brave. let him say if i either denied or forgot you." ben-hur looked at the arab. "this is he, good ilderim, this is he who told you of me?" ilderim's eyes twinkled as he nodded his answer. "how, o my master," said simonides, "may we without trial tell what a man is? i knew you; i saw your father in you; but the kind of man you were i did not know. there are people to whom fortune is a curse in disguise. were you of them? i sent malluch to find out for me, and in the service he was my eyes and ears. do not blame him. he brought me report of you which was all good." "i do not," said ben-hur, heartily. "there was wisdom in your goodness." "the words are very pleasant to me," said the merchant, with feeling, "very pleasant. my fear of misunderstanding is laid. let the rivers run on now as god may give them direction." after an interval he continued "i am compelled now by truth. the weaver sits weaving, and, as the shuttle flies, the cloth increases, and the figures grow, and he dreams dreams meanwhile; so to my hands the fortune grew, and i wondered at the increase, and asked myself about it many times. i could see a care not my own went with the enterprises i set going. the simooms which smote others on the desert pumped over the things which were mine. the storms which heaped the seashore with wrecks did but blow my ships the sooner into port. strangest of all, i, so dependent upon others, fixed to a place like a dead thing, had never a loss by an agentnever. the elements stooped to serve me, and all my servants, in fact, were faithful." "it is very strange," said ben-hur. "so i said, and kept saying. finally, o my master, finally i came to be of your opiniongod was in itand, like you, i asked, what can his purpose be? intelligence is never wasted; intelligence like god's never stirs except with design. i have held the question in heart, lo! these many years, watching for an answer. i felt sure, if god were in it, some day, in his own good time, in his own way, he would show me his purpose, making it clear as a whited house upon a hill. and i believe he has done so." ben-hur listened with every faculty intent. "many years ago, with my peoplethy mother was with me, esther, beautiful as morning over old oliveti sat by the wayside out north of jerusalem, near the tombs of the kings, when three men passed by riding great white camels, such as had never been seen in the holy city. the men were strangers, and from far countries. the first one stopped and asked me a question, 'where is he that is born king of the jews?' as if to allay my wonder, he went on to say, 'we have seen his star in the east, and have come to worship him.' i could not understand, but followed them to the damascus gate; and of every person they met on the wayof the guard at the gate, eventhey asked the question. all who heard it were amazed like me. in time i forgot the circumstance, though there was much talk of it as a presage of the messiah. alas, alas! what children we are, even the wisest! when god walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart. you have seen balthasar?" "and heard him tell his story," said ben-hur. "a miracle!a very miracle!" cried simonides. "as he told it to me, good my master, i seemed to hear the answer i had so long waited; god's purpose burst upon me. poor will the king be when he comespoor and friendless; without following, without armies, without cities or castles; a kingdom to be set up, and rome reduced and blotted out. see, see, o my master! thou flushed with strength, thou trained to arms, thou burdened with riches; behold the opportunity the lord hath sent thee! shall not his purpose be thine? could a man be born to a more perfect glory?" simonides put his whole force in the appeal. "but the kingdom, the kingdom!" ben-hur answered, eagerly. "balthasar says it is to be of souls." the pride of the jew was strong in simonides, and therefore the slightly contemptuous curl of the lip with which he began his reply "balthasar has been a witness of wonderful thingsof miracles, o my master; and when he speaks of them, i bow with belief, for they are of sight and sound personal to him. but he is a son of mizraim, and not even a proselyte. hardly may he be supposed to have special knowledge by virtue of which we must bow to him in a matter of god's dealing with our israel. the prophets had their light from heaven directly, even as he had hismany to one, and jehovah the same forever. i must believe the prophets.bring me the torah, esther." he proceeded without waiting for her. "may the testimony of a whole people be slighted, my master? though you travel from tyre, which is by the sea in the north, to the capital of edom, which is in the desert south, you will not find a lisper of the shema, an alms-giver in the temple, or any one who has ever eaten of the lamb of the passover, to tell you the kingdom the king is coming to build for us, the children of the covenant, is other than of this world, like our father david's. now, where got they the faith, ask you? we will see presently." esther here returned, bringing a number of rolls carefully enveloped in dark-brown linen lettered quaintly in gold. "keep them, daughter, to give to me as i call for them," the father said, in the tender voice he always used in speaking to her, and continued his argument "it were long, good my mastertoo long, indeedfor me to repeat to you the names of the holy men who, in the providence of god, succeeded the prophets, only a little less favoured than theythe seers who have written and the preachers who have taught since the captivity; the very wise who borrowed their lights from the lamp of malachi, the last of his line, and whose great names hillel and shammai never tired of repeating in the colleges. will you ask them of the kingdom? thus, the lord of the sheep in the book of enochwho is he? who but the king of whom we are speaking? a throne is set up for him; he smites the earth, and the other kings are shaken from their thrones, and the scourges of israel flung into a cavern of fire flaming with pillars of fire. so also the singer of the psalms of solomon'behold, o lord, and raise up to israel their king, the son of david, at the time thou knowest, o god, to rule israel, thy children.... and he will bring the peoples of the heathen under his yoke to serve him.... and he shall be a righteous king taught of god,.... for he shall rule all the earth by the word of his mouth forever.' and last, though not least, hear ezra, the second moses, in his visions of the night, and ask him who is the lion with human voice that says to the eaglewhich is rome'thou hast loved liars, and overthrown the cities of the industrious, and razed their walls, though they did thee no harm. therefore, begone, that the earth may be refreshed, and recover itself, and hope in the justice and piety of him who made her.' whereat the eagle was seen no more. surely, o my master, the testimony of these should be enough! but the way to the fountain's head is open. let us go up to it at once.some wine, esther, and then the torah." "dost thou believe the prophets, master?" he asked, after drinking. "i know thou dost, for of such was the faith of all thy kindred.give me, esther, the book which hath in it the visions of isaiah." he took one of the rolls which she had unwrapped for him, and read, "'the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.... for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder.... of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of david, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever.'believest thou the prophets, o my master?now, esther, the word of the lord that came to micah." she gave him the roll he asked. "'but thou,'" he began reading"'but thou, bethlehem ephrath, though thou be little among the thousands of judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in israel.'this was he, the very child balthasar saw and worshipped in the cave. believest thou the prophets, o my master?give me, esther, the words of jeremiah." receiving that roll, he read as before, "'behold, the days come, saith the lord, that i will raise unto david a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. in his days judah shall be saved, and israel shall dwell safely.' as a king he shall reignas a king, o my master! believest thou the prophets?now, daughter, the roll of the sayings of that son of judah in whom there was no blemish." she gave him the book of daniel. "hear, my master," he said: "'i saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven.... and there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.'believest thou the prophets, o my master?" "it is enough. i believe," cried ben-hur. "what then?" asked simonides. "if the king come poor, will not my master, of his abundance, give him help?" "help him? to the last shekel and the last breath. but why speak of his coming poor?" "give me, esther, the word of the lord as it came to zechariah," said simonides. she gave him one of the rolls. "hear how the king will enter jerusalem." then he read, "'rejoice greatly, o daughter of zion.... behold, thy king cometh unto thee with justice and salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass.' ben-hur looked away. "what see you, o my master?" "rome!" he answered, gloomily"rome, and her legions. i have dwelt with them in their camps. i know them." "ah!" said simonides. "thou shalt be a master of legions for the king, with millions to choose from." "millions!" cried ben-hur. simonides sat a moment thinking. "the question of power should not trouble you," he next said. ben-hur looked at him inquiringly. "you were seeing the lowly king in the act of coming to his own," simonides answered"seeing him on the right hand, as it were, and on the left the brassy legions of caesar, and you were asking, what can he do?" "it was my very thought." "oh my master!" simonides continued, "you do not know how strong our israel is. you think of him as a sorrowful old man weeping by the rivers of babylon. but go up to jerusalem next passover, and stand on the xystus, or in the street of barter, and see him as he is. the promise of the lord to father jacob coming out of padan-aram was a law under which our people have not ceased multiplyingnot even in captivity; they grew under foot of the egyptian; the clench of the roman has been but wholesome nurture to them; now they are indeed 'a nation, and a company of nations.' nor that only, my master; in fact, to measure the strength of israelwhich is, in fact, measuring what the king can doyou shall not bide solely by the rule of natural increase, but add thereto the otheri mean the spread of the faith, which will carry you to the far and near of the whole known earth. further, the habit is, i know, to think and speak of jerusalem as israel, which may be likened to our finding an embroidered shred, and holding it up as a magisterial robe of caesar's. jerusalem is but a stone of the temple, or the heart in the body. turn from beholding the legions, strong though they be, and count the hosts of the faithful waiting the old alarm, 'to your tents, o israel!count the many in persia, children of those who chose not to return with the returning; count the brethren who swarm the marts of egypt and farther africa; count the hebrew colonists eking profit in the westin lodinum and the trade-courts of spain; count the pure of blood and the proselytes in greece and in the isles of the sea, and over in pontus, and here in antioch, and, for that matter, those of that city lying accursed in the shadow of the unclean walls of rome herself; count the worshippers of the lord dwelling in tents along the deserts next us, as well as in the deserts beyond the nile; and in the regions across the caspian, and up in the old lands of gog and magog even, separate those who annually send gifts to the holy temple in acknowledgment of godseparate them, that they may be counted also. and when you have done counting, lo! my master, a census of the sword hands that await you; lo! a kingdom ready fashioned for him who is to do 'judgment and justice in the whole earth'in rome not less than in zion. have then the answer, what israel can do, that can the king." the picture was fervently given. upon ilderim it operated like the blowing of a trumpet. "oh that i had back my youth!" he cried, starting to his feet. ben-hur sat still. the speech, he saw, was an invitation to devote his life and fortune to the mysterious being who was palpably as much the centre of a great hope with simonides as with the devout egyptian. the idea, as we have seen, was not a new one, but had come to him repeatedlyonce while listening to malluch in the grove of daphne; afterwards more distinctly while balthasar was giving his conception of what the kingdom was to be; still later, in the walk through the old orchard, it had risen almost, if not quite, into a resolve. at such times it had come and gone only an idea, attended with feelings more or less acute. not so now. a master had it in charge, a master was working it up; already he had exalted it into a cause brilliant with possibilities and infinitely holy. the effect was as if a door theretofore unseen had suddenly opened flooding ben-hur with light, and admitting him to a service which had been his one perfect dreama service reaching far into the future, and rich with the rewards of duty done, and prizes to sweeten and soothe his ambition. one touch more was needed. "let us concede all you say, o simonides," said ben-hur"that the king will come, and his kingdom be as solomon's; say also i am ready to give myself and all i have to him and his cause; yet more, say that i should do as was god's purpose in the ordering of my life and in your quick amassment of astonishing fortune; then what? shall we proceed like blind men building? shall we wait till the king comes? or until he sends for me? you have age and experience on your side. answer." simonides answered at once. "we have no choice; none. this letter"he produced messala's despatch as he spoke"this letter is the signal for action. the alliance proposed between messala and gratus we are not strong enough to resist; we have not the influence at rome nor the force here. they will kill you if we wait. how merciful they are, look at me and judge." he shuddered at the terrible recollection. "o good my master," he continued, recovering himself; "how-strong are youin purpose, i mean?" ben-hur did not understand him. "i remember how pleasant the world was to me in my youth," simonides proceeded. "yet," said ben-hur, "you were capable of a great sacrifice." "yes; for love." "has not life other motives as strong?" simonides shook his head. "there is ambition." "ambition is forbidden a son of israel." "what, then, of revenge?" the spark dropped upon the inflammable passion; the man's eyes gleamed; his hands shook; he answered, quickly, "revenge is a jew's of right; it is the law." "a camel, even a dog, will remember a wrong," cried ilderim. directly simonides picked up the broken thread of his thought. "there is a work, a work for the king, which should be done in advance of his coming. we may not doubt that israel is to be his right hand; but, alas! it is a hand of peace, without cunning in war. of the millions, there is not one trained band, not a captain. the mercenaries of the herods i do not count, for they are kept to crush us. the condition is as the roman would have it; his policy has fruited well for his tyranny; but the time of change is at hand, when the shepherd shall put on armour, and take to spear and sword, and the feeding flocks be turned to fighting lions. some one, my son, must have place next the king at his right hand. who shall it be if not he who does this work well?" ben-hur's face flushed at the prospect, though he said, "i see but speak plainly. a deed to be done is one thing; how to do it is another." simonides sipped the wine esther brought him, and replied, "the sheik, and thou, my master, shall be principals, each with a part. i will remain here, carrying on as now, and watchful that the spring go not dry. thou shalt betake thee to jerusalem, and thence to the wilderness, and begin numbering the fighting-men of israel, and telling them into tens and hundreds, and choosing captains and training them, and in secret places hoarding arms, for which i shall keep thee supplied. commencing over in perea, thou shalt go then to galilee, whence it is but a step to jerusalem. in perea, the desert will be at thy back, and ilderim in reach of thy hand. he will keep the roads, so that nothing shall pass without thy knowledge. he will help thee in many ways. until the ripening time no one shall know what is here contracted. mine is but a servant's part. i have spoken to ilderim. what sayest thou?" ben-hur looked at the sheik. "it is as he says, son of hur," the arab responded. "i have given my word, and he is content with it; but thou shalt have my oath, binding me, and the ready hands of my tribe, and whatever serviceable thing i have." the threesimonides, ilderim, esthergazed at ben-hur fixedly. "every man," he answered, at first sadly, "has a cup of pleasure poured for him, and soon or late it comes to his hand, and he tastes and drinksevery man but me. i see, simonides, and thou, o generous sheik!i see whither the proposal tends. if i accept, and enter upon the course, farewell peace, and the hopes which cluster around it. the doors i might enter and the gates of quiet life will shut behind me, never to open again, for rome keeps them all; and her outlawry will follow me, and her hunters; and in the tombs near cities and the dismal caverns of remotest hills, i must eat my crust and take my rest." the speech was broken by a sob. all turned to esther, who hid her face upon her father's shoulder. "i did not think of you, esther," said simonides, gently, for he was himself deeply moved. "it is well enough, simonides," said ben-hur. "a man bears a hard doom better, knowing there is pity for him. let me go on." they gave him ear again. "i was about to say," he continued, "i have no choice, but take the part you assign me; and as remaining here is to met an ignoble death, i will to the work at once." "shall we have writings?" asked simonides, moved by his habit of business. "i rest upon your word," said ben-hur. "and i," ilderim answered. thus simply was effected the treaty which was to alter ben-hur's life. and almost immediately the latter added "it is done, then." "may the god of abraham help us!" simonides exclaimed. "one word now, my friends," ben-hur said, more cheerfully. "by your leave, i will be my own until after the games. it is not probable messala will set peril on foot for me until he has given the procurator time to answer him; and that cannot be in less than seven days from the despatch of his letter. the meeting him in the circus is a pleasure i would buy at whatever risk." ilderim, well pleased, assented readily, and simonides, intent on business, added, "it is well; for look you, my master, the delay will give me time to do you a good part. i understood you to speak of an inheritance derived from arrius. is it in property?" "a villa near misenum, and houses in rome." "i suggest, then, the sale of the property, and safe deposit of the proceeds. give me an account of it, and i will have authorities drawn, and despatch an agent on the mission forthwith. we will forestall the imperial robbers at least this once." "you shall have the account to-morrow." "then, if there be nothing more, the work of the night is done," said simonides. ilderim combed his beard complacently, saying, "and well done." "the bread and wine again, esther. sheik ilderim will make us happy by staying with us till to-morrow, or at his pleasure; and thou, my master" "let the horses be brought," said ben-hur. "i will return to the orchard. the enemy will not discover me if i go now, and"he glanced at ilderim"the four will be glad to see me." as the day dawned, he and malluch dismounted at the door of the tent. chapter ix. esther and ben-hur. next night, about the fourth hour, ben-hur stood on the terrace of the great warehouse with esther. below them, on the landing, there was much running about, and shifting of packages and boxes, and shouting of men, whose figures, stooping, heaving, hauling, looked, in the light of the crackling torches kindled in their aid, like the labouring genii of the fantastic eastern tales. a galley was being laden for instant departure. simonides had not yet come from his office, in which, at the last moment, he would deliver to the captain of the vessel instructions to proceed without stop to ostia, the seaport of rome, and, after landing a passenger there, continue more leisurely to valentia, on the coast of spain. the passenger is the agent going to dispose of the estate derived from arrius the duumvir. when the lines of the vessel are cast off, and she is put about, and her voyage begun, ben-hur will be committed irrevocably to the work undertaken the night before. if he is disposed to repent the agreement with ilderim, a little time is allowed him to give notice and break it off. he is master, and has only to say the word. such may have been the thought at the moment in his mind. he was standing with folded arms, looking upon the scene in the manner of a man debating with himself. young, handsome, rich, but recently from the patrician circles of roman society, it is easy to think of the world besetting him with appeals not to give more to onerous duty or ambition attended with outlawry and danger. we can even imagine the arguments with which he was pressed; the hopelessness of contention with caesar; the uncertainty veiling everything connected with the king and his coming; the ease, honours, state, purchaseable like goods in market; and strongest of all, the sense newly acquired of home, with friends to make it delightful. only those who have been wanderers long desolate can know the power there was in the latter appeal. let us add, now, the worldalways cunning enough of itself; always whispering to the weak, stay, take thine ease; always presenting the sunny side of lifethe world was in this instance helped by ben-hur's companion. "were you ever at rome?" he asked. "no," esther replied. "would you like to go?" "i think not." "why?" "i am afraid of rome," she answered, with a perceptible tremor of the voice. he looked at her thenor rather down upon her, for at his side she appeared little more than a child. in the dim light he could not see her face distinctly; even the form was shadowy. but again he was reminded of tirzah, and a sudden tenderness fell upon himjust so the lost sister stood with him on the house-top the calamitous morning of the accident to gratus. poor tirzah! where was she now? esther had the benefit of the feeling evoked. if not his sister, he could never look upon her as his servant; and that she was his servant in fact would make him always the more considerate and gentle towards her. "i cannot think of rome," she continued, recovering her voice, and speaking in her quiet, womanly way"i cannot think of rome as a city of palaces and temples, and crowded with people; she is to me a monster which has possession of one of the beautiful lands, and lies there luring men to ruin and deatha monster which it is not possible to resista ravenous beast gorging with blood. why" she faltered, looked down, stopped. "go on," said ben-hur, reassuringly. she drew closer to him, looked up again, and said"why trust you make her your enemy? why not rather make peace with her, and be at rest? you have had many ills, and borne them; you have survived the snares laid for you by foes. sorrow has consumed your youth; is it well to give it the remainder of your days?" the girlish face under his eyes seemed to come nearer and get whiter as the pleading went on; he stooped towards it, and asked, softly, "what would you have me do, esther?" she hesitated a moment, then asked, in return, "is the property near rome a residence?" "yes." "and pretty?" "it is beautifula palace in the midst of gardens and shell-strewn walks; fountains without and within; statuary in the shady nooks; hills around covered with vines, and so high that neapolis and vesuvius are in sight, and the sea an expanse of purpling blue dotted with restless sails. caesar has a country-seat near-by, but in rome they say the old arrian villa is the prettiest." "and the life there, is it quiet?" "there was never a summer day, never a moonlit night, more quiet, save when visitors come. now that the old owner is gone, and i am here, there is nothing to break its silencenothing, unless it be the whispering of servants, or the whistling of happy birds, or the noise of fountains at play; it is changeless, except as day by day old flowers fade and fall, and new ones bud and bloom, and the sunlight gives place to the shadow of a passing cloud. the life, esther, was all too quiet for me. it made me restless by keeping always present a feeling that i, who have so much to do, was dropping into idle habits, and tying myself with silken chains, and after a whileand not a long while eitherwould end with nothing done." she looked off over the river. "why did you ask?" he said. "good, my master" "no, no, esthernot that. call me friendbrother, if you will; i am not your master, and will not be. call me brother." he could not see the flush of pleasure which reddened her face, and the glow of the eyes that went out lost in the void above the river. "i cannot understand," she said, "the nature which prefers the life you are going toa life of" "of violence, and it may be of blood," he said, completing the sentence. "yes," she added, "the nature which could prefer that life to such as might be in the beautiful villa." "esther, you mistake. there is no preference. alas! the roman is not so kind. i am going of necessity. to stay here is to die; and if i go there, the end will be the samea poisoned cup, a bravo's blow, or a judge's sentence obtained by perjury. messala and the procurator gratus are rich with plunder of my father's estate, and it is more important to them to keep their gains now than was their getting in the first instance. a peaceable settlement is out of reach, because of the confession it would imply. and thenthenah, esther, if i could buy them, i do not know that i would. i do not believe peace possible to me; no, not even in the sleepy shade and sweet air of the marble porches of the old villano matter who might be there to help me bear the burden of the days nor by what patience of love she made the effort. peace is not possible to me while my people are lost, for i must be watchful to find them. if i find them, and they have suffered wrong, shall not the guilty suffer for it? if they are dead by violence, shall the murderers escape? oh, i could not sleep for dreams! nor could the holiest love, by any stratagem, lull me to a rest which conscience would not strangle." "is it so bad then?" she asked, her voice tremulous with feeling. "can nothing, nothing be done?" ben-hur took her hand. "do you care so much for me?" "yes," she answered, simply. the hand was warm, and in the palm of his it was lost. he felt it tremble. then the egyptian came, so the opposite of this little one; so tall, so audacious, with a flattery so cunning, a wit so ready, a beauty so wonderful, a manner so bewitching. he carried the hand to his lips, and gave it back. "you shall be another tirzah to me, esther." "who is tirzah." "the little sister the roman stole from me, and whom i must find before i can rest or be happy." just then a gleam of light flashed athwart the terrace and fell upon the two; and, looking round, they saw a servant roll simonides in his chair out of the door. they went to the merchant, and in the after-talk he was principal. immediately the lines of the galley were cast off, and she swung round, and, midst the flashing of torches and the shouting of joyous sailors, hurried off to the sealeaving ben-hur committed to the cause of the king who was to come. chapter x. posted for the race. the day before the games, in the afternoon, all ilderim's racing property was taken to the city, and put in quarters adjoining the circus. along with it the good man carried a great deal of property not of that class; so with servants, retainers mounted and armed, horses in leading, cattle driven, camels laden with baggage, his outgoing from the orchard was not unlike a tribal migration. the people along the road failed not to laugh at his motley procession; on the other side, it was observed that, with all his irascibility, he was not in the least offended by their rudeness. if he was under surveillance, as he had reason to believe, the informer would describe the semi-barbarous show with which he came up to the races. the romans would laugh; the city would be amused; but what cared he? next morning the pageant would be far on the road to the desert, and going with it would be every movable thing of value belonging to the orchardeverything save such as were essential to the success of his four. he was, in fact, started home; his tents were all folded; the dowar was no more; in twelve hours all would be out of reach, pursue who might. a man is never safer than when he is under the laugh; and the shrewd old arab knew it. neither he nor ben-hur over-estimated the influence of messala; it was their opinion, however, that he would not begin active measures against them until after the meeting in the circus; if defeated there, especially if defeated by ben-hur, they might instantly look for the worst he could do; he might not even wait for advices from gratus. with this view, they shaped their course, and were prepared to betake themselves out of harm's way. they rode together now in good spirits, calmly confident of success on the morrow. on the way, they came upon malluch in waiting for them. the faithful fellow gave no sign by which it was possible to infer any knowledge on his part of the relationship so recently admitted between ben-hur and simonides, or of the treaty between them and ilderim. he exchanged salutations as usual, and produced a paper, saying to the sheik, "i have here the notice of the editor of the games, just issued, in which you will find your horses published for the race. you will find in it also the order of exercises. without waiting, good sheik, i congratulate you upon your victory." he gave the paper over, and, leaving the worthy to master it, turned to ben-hur. "to you also, son of arrius, my congratulations. there is nothing now to prevent your meeting messala. every condition preliminary to the race is complied with. i have the assurance from the editor himself." "i thank you, malluch," said ben-hur. malluch proceeded "your colour is white, and messala's mixed scarlet and gold. the good effects of the choice are visible already. boys are now hawking white ribbons along the streets; to-morrow every arab and jew in the city will wear them. in the circus you will see the white fairly divide the galleries with the red." "the galleriesbut not the tribunal over the porta pompae." "no; the scarlet and gold will rule there. but if we win"malluch chuckled with the pleasure of the thought"if we win, how the dignitaries will tremble! they will bet, of course, according to their scorn of everything not romantwo, three, five to one on messala, because he is roman." dropping his voice yet lower, he added, "it ill becomes a jew of good standing in the temple to put his money at such a hazard; yet, in confidence, i will have a friend next behind the consul's seat to accept offers of three to one, or five, or tenthe madness may go to such height. i have put to his order six thousand shekels for the purpose." "nay, malluch," said ben-hur, "a roman will wager only in his roman coin. suppose you find your friend to-night, and place to his order sestertii in such amount as you choose. and look you, malluchlet him be instructed to seek wagers with messala and his supporters; ilderim's four against messala's." malluch reflected a moment. "the effect will be to centre interest upon your contest." "the very thing i seek, malluch." "i see, i see." "ay, malluch; would you serve me perfectly, help me to fix the public eye upon our racemessala's and mine." malluch spoke quickly"it can be done." "then let it be done," said ben-hur. "enormous wagers offered will answer; if the offers are accepted, all the better." malluch turned his eyes watchfully upon ben-hur. "shall i not have back the equivalent of his robbery?" said ben-hur, partly to himself. "another opportunity may not come. and if i could break him in fortune as well as in pride! our father jacob could take no offence." a look of determined will knit his handsome face, giving emphasis to his further speech. "yes, it shall be. hark, malluch! stop not in thy offer of sestertii. advance them to talents, if any there be who dare so high. five, ten, twenty talents; ay, fifty, so the wager be with messala himself." "it is a mighty sum," said malluch. "i must have security." "so thou shalt. go to simonides, and tell him i wish the matter arranged. tell him my heart is set on the ruin of my enemy and that the opportunity hath such excellent promise that i choose such hazards. on our side be the god of our fathers! go, good malluch. let this not slip." and malluch, greatly delighted, gave him parting salutation, and started to ride away, but returned presently. "your pardon," he said to ben-hur. "there was another matter. i could not get near messala's chariot myself, but i had another measure it; and, from his report, its hub stands quite a palm higher from the ground than yours." "a palm! so much?" cried ben-hur, joyfully. then he leaned over to malluch. "as thou art a son of judah, malluch, and faithful to thy kin, get thee a seat in the gallery over the gate of triumph, down close to the balcony in front of the pillars, and watch well when we make the turns there; watch well, for if i have favour at all, i willnay, malluch, let it go unsaid! only get thee there, and watch well. at that moment a cry burst from ilderim. "ha! by the splendour of god! what is this?" he drew near ben-hur with a finger pointing on the face of the notice. "read," said ben-hur. "no; better thou." ben-hur took the paper, which, signed by the prefect of the province as editor, performed the office of a modern programme, giving particularly the several divertisements provided for the occasion. it informed the public that there would be first a procession of extraordinary splendour; that the procession would be succeeded by the customary honours to the god consus whereupon the games would begin; running, leaping, wrestling, boxing, each in the order stated. the names of the competitors were given, with their several nationalities and schools of training, the trials in which they had been engaged, the prizes won, and the prizes now offered; under the latter head the sums of money were stated in illuminated letters, telling of the departure of the day when the simple chaplet of pine or laurel was fully enough for the victor, hungering for glory as something better than riches, and content with it. over these parts of the programme ben-hur sped with rapid eyes. at last he came to the announcement of the race. he read it slowly. attending lovers of the heroic sports were assured they would certainly be gratified by an orestean struggle unparalleled in antioch. the city offered the spectacle in honour of the consul. one hundred thousand sestertii and a crown of laurel were the prizes. then followed the particulars. the entries were six in allfours only permitted; and, to further interest in the performance, the competitors would be turned into the course together. each four then received description. "i. a four of lysippus the corinthiantwo greys, a bay, and a black; entered at alexandria last year, and again at corinth, where they were winners. lysippus, driver. colour, yellow. "ii. a four of messala of rometwo white, two black; victors of the circensian as exhibited in the circus maximus last year. messala, driver. colours, scarlet and gold. "iii. a four of cleanthes the athenianthree grey, one bay; winners at the isthmian last year. cleanthes, driver. colour, green. "iv. a four of dicaeus the byzantinetwo black, one grey, one bay; winners this year at byzantium. dicaeus, driver. colour, black. "v. a four of admetus the sidonianall greys. thrice entered at caesarea, and thrice victors. admetus, driver. colour, blue. "vi. a four of ilderim, sheik of the desert. all bays; first race. ben-hur, a jew, driver. colour, white. ben-hur, a jew, driver! why that name instead of arrius? ben-hur raised his eyes to ilderim. he had found the cause of the arab's outcry. both rushed to the same conclusion. the hand was the hand of messala! chapter xi. making the wagers. evening was hardly come upon antioch, when the omphalus, nearly in the centre of the city, became a troubled fountain from which in every direction, but chiefly down to the nymphaeum and east and west along the colonnade of herod, flowed currents of people, for the time given up to bacchus and apollo. for such indulgence anything more fitting cannot be imagined than the great roofed streets, which were literally miles on miles of porticos wrought of marble, polished to the last degree of finish, and all gifts to the voluptuous city by princes careless of expenditure where, as in this instance, they thought they were eternising themselves. darkness was not permitted anywhere; and the singing, the laughter, the shouting, were incessant, and in compound like the roar of waters dashing through hollow grots, confused by a multitude of echoes. the many nationalities represented, though they might have amazed a stranger, were not peculiar to antioch. of the various missions of the great empire, one seems to have been the fusion of men and the introduction of strangers to each other; accordingly, whole peoples rose up and went at pleasure, taking with them their costumes, customs, speech, and gods; and where they chose, they stopped, engaged in business, built houses, erected altars, and were what they had been at home. there was a peculiarity, however, which could not have failed the notice of a looker-on this night in antioch. nearly everybody wore the colours of one or other of the charioteers announced for the morrow's race. sometimes it was in form of a scarf, sometimes a badge; often a ribbon or a feather. whatever the form, it signified merely the wearer's partiality; thus, green published a friend of cleanthes the athenian, and black an adherent of the byzantine. this was according to a custom, old probably as the day of the race of orestesa custom, by-the-way, worthy of study as a marvel of history, illustrative of the absurd yet appalling extremities to which men frequently suffer their follies to drag them. the observer abroad on this occasion, once attracted to the wearing of colours, would have very shortly decided that there were three in predominancegreen, white, and the mixed scarlet and gold. but let us from the streets to the palace on the island. the five great chandeliers in the saloon are freshly lighted. the assemblage is much the same as that already noticed in connection with the place. the divan has its corps of sleepers and burden of garments, and the tables yet resound with the rattle and clash of dice. yet the greater part of the company are not doing anything. they walk about, or yawn tremendously, or pause as they pass each other to exchange idle nothings. will the weather be fair to-morrow? are the preparations for the games complete? do the laws of the circus in antioch differ from the laws of the circus in rome? truth is, the young fellows are suffering ennui. their heavy work is done; that is, we would find their tablets, could we look at them, covered with memoranda of wagerswagers on every contest; on the running, the wrestling, the boxing; on everything but the chariot-race. and why not on that? good reader, they cannot find anybody who will hazard so much as a denarius with them against messala. there are no colours in the saloon but his. no one thinks of his defeat. why, they say, is he not perfect in his training? did he not graduate from an imperial lanista? were not his horses winners at the circensian in the circus maximus? and thenah, yes! he is a roman! in a corner, at ease on the divan, messala himself may be seen. around him, sitting or standing, are his courtierly admirers, plying him with questions. there is, of course, but one topic. enter drusus and cecilius. "ah!" cries the young prince, throwing himself on the divan at messala's feet, "ah, by bacchus, i am tired!" "whither away?" asks messala. "up the street; up to the omphalus, and beyondwho shall say how far? rivers of people; never so many in the city before. they say we will see the whole world at the circus to-morrow." messala laughed scornfully. "the idiots! perpol! they never beheld a circensian with caesar for editor. but, my drusus, what found you?" "nothing." "ohah! you forget," said cecilius. "what?" asked drusus. "the procession of whites." "mirabile!" cried drusus, half rising. "we met a faction of whites, and they had a banner. butha, ha, ha!" he fell back indolently. "cruel drususnot to go on," said messala. "scum of the desert were they, my messala, and garbage-eaters from the jacob's temple in jerusalem. what had i to do with them?" "nay," said cecilius, "drusus is afraid of a laugh, but i am not, my messala." "speak thou, then." "well, we stopped the faction, and" "offered them a wager," said drusus, relenting, and taking the word from the shadow's mouth. "andha, ha, ha!one fellow with not enough skin on his face to make a worm for a carp stepped forth, andha, ha, ha!said yes. i drew my tablets. 'who is your man?' i asked. 'ben-hur, the jew,' said he. then i: 'what shall it be? how much?' he answered, 'aa-' excuse me, messala. by jove's thunder, i cannot go on for laughter! ha, ha, ha!" the listeners leaned forward. messala looked to cecilius. "a shekel," said the latter. "a shekel! a shekel!" a burst of scornful laughter ran fast upon the repetition. "and what did drusus?" asked messala. an outcry over about the door just then occasioned a rush to that quarter; and, as the noise there continued, and grew louder, even cecilius betook himself off, pausing only to say, "the noble drusus, my messala, put up his tablets andlost the shekel." "a white! a white!" "let him come!" "this way, this way!" these and like exclamations filled the saloon, to the stoppage of other speech. the dice-players quit their games; the sleepers awoke, rubbed their eyes, drew their tablets, and hurried to the common centre. "i offer you" "and i" "i" the person so warmly received was the respectable jew, ben-hur's fellow-voyager from cyprus. he entered, grave, quiet, observant. his robe was spotlessly white; so was the cloth of his turban. bowing and smiling at the welcome, he moved slowly towards the central table. arrived there, he drew his robe about him in a stately manner, took seat, and waved his hand. the gleam of a jewel on a finger helped him not a little to the silence which ensued. "romansmost noble romansi salute you!" he said. "easy, by jupiter! who is he?" asked drusus. "a dog of israelsanballat by namepurveyor for the army; residence, rome; vastly rich; grown so as a contractor of furnishments which he never furnishes. he spins mischief, nevertheless, finer than spiders spin their webs. comeby the girdle of venus! let us catch him!" messala arose as he spoke, and, with drusus, joined the mass crowded about the purveyor. "it came to me on the street," said that person, producing his tablets, and opening them on the table with an impressive air of business, "that there was great discomfort in the palace because offers on messala were going without takers. the gods, you know, must have sacrifices; and here i am. you see my colour; let us to the matter. odds first, amounts next. what will you give me?" the audacity seemed to stun his hearers. "haste!" he said. "i have an engagement with the consul." the spur was effective. "two to one," cried half-a-dozen in a voice. "what!" exclaimed the purveyor, astonished. "only two to one, and yours a roman!" "take three, then." "three say youonly threeand mine but a dog of a jew! give me four." "four it is," said a boy, stung by the taunt. "fivegive me five," cried the purveyor, instantly. a profound stillness fell upon the assemblage. "the consulyour master and mineis waiting for me." the inaction became awkward to the many. "give me fivefor the honour of rome, five." "five let it be," said one in answer. there was a sharp cheera commotionand messala himself appeared. "five let it be," he said. and sanballat smiled, and made ready to write. "if caesar die to-morrow," he said, "rome will not be all bereft. there is at least one other with spirit to take his place. give me six." "six be it," answered messala. there was another shout louder than the first. "six be it," repeated messala. "six to onethe difference between a roman and a jew. and, having found it, now, o redemptor of the flesh of swine, let us on. the amountand quickly. the consul may send for thee, and i will then be bereft." sanballat took the laugh against him coolly, and wrote, and offered the writing to messala. "read, read!" everybody demanded. and messala read "memchariot-race. messala of rome, in wager with sanballat, also of rome, says he will beat ben-hur, the jew. amount of wager, twenty talents. odds to sanballat, six to one. "witnesses: "sanballat." there was no noise, no motion. each person seemed held in the pose the reading found him. messala stared at the memorandum, while the eyes which had him in view opened wide, and stared at him. he felt the gaze, and thought rapidly. so lately he stood in the same place, and in the same way hectored the countrymen around him. they would remember it. if he refused to sign, his heroship was lost. and sign he could not; he was not worth one hundred talents, nor the fifth part of the sum. suddenly his mind became a blank; he stood speechless; the colour fled his face. an idea at last came to his relief. "thou jew!" he said, "where hast thou twenty talents? show me." sanballat's provoking smile deepened. "there," he replied, offering messala a paper. "read, read!" arose all round. again messala read "at antioch, tammuz 16th day. "the bearer, sanballat of rome, hath now to his order with me fifty talents, coin of caesar. "simonides." "fifty talents, fifty talents!" echoed the throng, in amazement. then drusus came to the rescue. "by hercules!" he shouted, "the paper lies, and the jew is a liar. who but caesar hath fifty talents at order? down with the insolent white!" the cry was angry, and it was angrily repeated; yet sanballat kept his seat, and his smile grew more exasperating the longer he waited. at length messala spoke. "hush! one to one, my countrymenone to one, for love of our ancient roman name." the timely action recovered him his ascendancy. "o thou circumcised dog!" he continued, to sanballat, "i gave thee six to one, did i not?" "yes," said the jew, quietly. "well, give me now the fixing of the amount." "with reserve, if the amount be trifling, have thy will," answered sanballat. "write, then, five in place of twenty." "hast thou so much?" "by the mother of the gods, i will show you receipts." "nay, the word of so brave a roman must pass. only make the sum evensix make it, and i will write." "write it so." and forthwith they exchanged writings. sanballat immediately arose and looked around him, a sneer in place of his smile. no man better than he knew those with whom he was dealing. "romans," he said, "another wager, if you dare! five talents against five talents that the white will win. i challenge you collectively." they were again surprised. "what!" he cried louder. "shall it be said in the circus to-morrow that a dog of israel went into the saloon of the palace full of roman noblesamong them the scion of a caesarand laid five talents before them in challenge, and they had not the courage to take it up?" the sting was unendurable. "have done, o insolent!" said drusus; "write the challenge, and leave it on the table; and to-morrow, if we find thou hast indeed so much money to put at such hopeless hazard, i, drusus, promise it shall be taken." sanballat wrote again, and, rising, said, unmoved as ever, "see, drusus, i leave the offer with you. when it is signed, send it to me any time before the race begins. i will be found with the consul in a seat over the porta pompae. peace to you; peace to all." he bowed, and departed, careless of the shout of derision with which they pursued him out of the door. in the night the story of the prodigious wager flew along the streets and over the city; and ben-hur, lying with his four, was told of it, and also that messala's whole fortune was on the hazard. and he slept never so soundly. chapter xii. the circus. the circus at antioch stood on the south bank of the river, nearly opposite the island, differing in no respect from the plan of such buildings in general. in the purest sense, the games were a gift to the public; consequently, everybody was free to attend; and, vast as the holding capacity of the structure was, so fearful were the people, on this occasion, lest there should not be room for them, that, early the day before the opening of the exhibition, they took up all the vacant spaces in the vicinity, where their temporary shelter suggested an army in waiting. at midnight the entrances were thrown wide, and the rabble, surging in, occupied the quarters assigned to them, from which nothing less than an earthquake or an army with spears could have dislodged them. they dozed the night away on the benches, and breakfasted there; and there the close of the exercises found them, patient and sight-hungry as in the beginning. the better people, their seats secured, began moving towards the circus about the first hour of the morning, the noble and very rich among them distinguished by litters and retinues of liveried servants. by the second hour, the efflux from the city was a stream unbroken and innumerable. exactly as the gnomon of the official dial up in the citadel pointed the second hour half gone, the legion, in full panoply, and with an its standards on exhibit, descended from mount sulpius; and when the rear of the last cohort disappeared in the bridge, antioch was literally abandonednot that the circus could hold the multitude, but that the multitude was gone out to it, nevertheless. a great concourse on the river shore witnessed the consul come over from the island in a barge of state. as the great man landed, and was received by the legion, the martial show for one brief moment transcended the attraction of the circus. at the third hour, the audience, if such it may be termed, was assembled; at last, a flourish of trumpets called for silence, and instantly the gaze of over a hundred thousand persons was directed towards a pile forming the eastern section of the building. there was a basement first, broken in the middle by a broad arched passage, called the porta pompae, over which, on an elevated tribunal magnificently decorated with insignia and legionary standards, the consul sat in the place of honour. on both sides of the passage the basement was divided into stalls termed carceres, each protected in front by massive gates swung to statuesque pilasters. over the stalls next was a cornice crowned by a low balustrade; back of which the seats arose in theatre arrangement, all occupied by a throng of dignitaries superbly attired. the pile extended the width of the circus, and was flanked on both sides by towers which, besides helping the architects give grace to their work, served the velaria, or purple awnings, stretched between them so as to throw the whole quarter in a shade that became exceedingly grateful as the day advanced. this structure, it is now thought, can be made useful in helping the reader to a sufficient understanding of the arrangement of the rest of the interior of the circus. he has only to fancy himself seated on the tribunal with the consul, facing to the west, where everything is under his eye. on the right and left, if he will look, he will see the main entrances, very ample, and guarded by gates hinged to the towers. directly below him is the arenaa level plane of considerable extent, covered with fine white sand. there all the trials will take place except the running. looking across this sanded arena westwardly still, there is a pedestal of marble supporting three low conical pillars of grey stone, much carven. many an eye will hunt for those pillars before the day is done, for they are the first goal, and mark the beginning and end of the race-course. behind the pedestal, leaving a passage-way and space for an altar, commences a wall ten or twelve feet in breadth and five or six in height, extending thence exactly two hundred yards, or one olympic stadium. at the farther, or westward, extremity of the wall there is another pedestal, surmounted with pillars which mark the second goal. the racers will enter the course on the right of the first goal, and keep the wall all the time to their left. the beginning and ending points of the contest lie, consequently, directly in front of the consul across the arena; and for that reason his seat was admittedly the most desirable in the circus. now if the reader, who is still supposed to be seated on the consular tribunal over the porta pompae, will look up from the ground arrangement of the interior, the first point to attract his notice will be the marking of the outer boundary-line of the coursethat is, a plain-faced, solid wall, fifteen or twenty feet in height, with a balustrade on its cope, like that over the carceres, or stall, in the east. this balcony, if followed round the course, will be found broken in three places to allow passages of exit and entrance, two in the north and one in the west; the latter very ornate, and called the gate of triumph, because, when all is over, the victors will pass out that way, crowned, and with triumphal escort and ceremonies. at the west end the balcony encloses the course in the form of a half-circle, and is made to uphold two great galleries. directly behind the balustrade on the coping of the balcony is the first seat, from which ascend the succeeding benches, each higher than the one in front of it; giving to view a spectacle of surpassing interestthe spectacle of a vast space ruddy and glistening with human faces, and rich with vari-coloured costumes. the commonalty occupy quarters over in the west, beginning at the point of termination of an awning, stretched, it would seem, for the accommodation of the better classes exclusively. having thus the whole interior of the circus under view at the moment of the sounding of the trumpets, let the reader next imagine the multitude seated and sunk to sudden silence, and motionless in its intensity of interest. out of the porta pompae over in the east rises a sound mixed of voices and instruments harmonized. presently, forth issues the chorus of the procession with which the celebration begins; the editor and civic authorities of the city, givers of the games, follow in robes and garlands; then the gods, some on platforms borne by men, others in great four-wheel carriages gorgeously decorated; next them, again, the contestants of the day, each in costume exactly as he will run, wrestle, leap, box, or drive. slowly crossing the arena, the procession proceeds to make circuit of the course. the display is beautiful and imposing. approval runs before it in a shout, as the water rises and swells in front of a boat in motion. if the dumb, figured gods make no sign of appreciation of the welcome, the editor and his associates are not so backward. the reception of the athletes is even more demonstrative, for there is not a man in the assemblage who has not something in wager upon them, though but a mite or farthing. and it is noticeable, as the classes move by, that the favourites among them are speedily singled out: either their names are loudest in the uproar, or they are more profusely showered with wreaths and garlands tossed to them from the balcony. if there is a question as to the popularity with the public of the several games, it is now put to rest. to the splendour of the chariots and the superexcellent beauty of the horses, the charioteers add the personality necessary to perfect the charm of their display. their tunics, short, sleeveless, and of the finest woollen texture, are of the assigned colours. a horseman accompanies each one of them except ben-hur, who, for some reasonpossibly distrusthas chosen to go alone; so, too, they are all helmeted but him. as they approach, the spectators stand upon the benches, and there is a sensible deepening of the clamour, in which a sharp listener may detect the shrill piping of women and children; at the same time, the things roseate flying from the balcony thicken into a storm, and, striking the men, drop into the chariot-beds, which are threatened with filling to the tops. even the horses have a share in the ovation; nor may it be said they are less conscious than their masters of the honours they receive. very soon, as with the other contestants, it is made apparent that some of the drivers are more in favour than others; and then the discovery follows that nearly every individual on the benches, women and children as well as men, wears a colour, most frequently a ribbon upon the breast or in the hair: now it is green, now yellow, now blue; but, searching the great body carefully, it is manifest that there is a preponderance of white, and scarlet and gold. in a modern assemblage called together as this one is, particularly where there are sums at hazard upon the race, a preference would be decided by the qualities or performance of the horses; here, however, nationality was the rule. if the byzantine and sidonian found small support, it was because their cities were scarcely represented on the benches. on their side, the greeks, though very numerous, were divided between the corinthian and the athenian, leaving but a scant showing of green and yellow. messala's scarlet and gold would have been but little better had not the citizens of antioch, proverbially a race of courtiers, joined the romans by adopting the colour of their favourite. there were left then the country people, or syrians, the jews, and the arabs; and they, from faith in the blood of the sheik's four, blent largely with hate of the romans, whom they desired, above all things, to see beaten and humbled, mounted the white, making the most noisy, and probably the most numerous, faction of all. as the charioteers move on in the circuit, the excitement increases; at the second goal, where, especially in the galleries, the white is the ruling colour, the people exhaust their flowers and rive the air with screams. "messala! messala!" "ben-hur! ben-hur!" such are the cries. upon the passage of the procession, the factionists take their seats and resume conversation. "ah, by bacchus! was he not handsome?" exclaims a woman. whose romanism is betrayed by the colours flying in her hair. "and how splendid his chariot!" replies a neighbour, of the same proclivities. "it is all ivory and gold. jupiter grant he wins!" the notes on the bench behind them were entirely different. "a hundred shekels on the jew!" the voice is high and shrill. "nay, be thou not rash," whispers a moderating friend to the speaker. "the children of jacob are not much given to gentile sports, which are too often accursed in the sight of the lord." "true, but saw you ever one more cool and assured? and what an arm he has!" "and what horses!" says a third. "and for that," a fourth one adds, "they say he has all the tricks of the romans." a woman completes the eulogium. "yes, and he is even handsomer than the roman." thus encouraged, the enthusiast shrieks again, "a hundred shekels on the jew!" "thou fool!" answers an antiochian, from a bench well forward on the balcony. "knowest thou not there are fifty talents laid against him, six to one, on messala? put up thy shekels, lest abraham rise and smite thee." "ha, ha! thou ass of antioch! cease thy bray. knowest thou not it was messala betting on himself?" such the reply. and so ran the controversy, not always good-natured. when at length the march was ended and the porta pompae received back the procession, ben-hur knew he had his prayer. the eyes of the east were upon his contest with messala. chapter xiii. the start. about three o'clock, speaking in modern style, the programme was concluded except the chariot-race. the editor, wisely considerate of the comfort of the people, chose that time for a recess. at once the vomitoria were thrown open, and all who could hastened to the portico outside where the restaurateurs had their quarters. those who remained yawned, talked, gossiped, consulted their tablets, and, all distinctions else forgotten, merged into but two classesthe winners, who were happy, and the losers, who were grim and captious. now, however, a third class of spectators, composed of citizens who desired only to witness the chariot-race, availed themselves of the recess to come in and take their reserved seats; by so doing they thought to attract the least attention and give the least offence. among these were simonides and his party, whose places were in the vicinity of the main entrance on the north side, opposite the consul. as the four stout servants carried the merchant in his chair up the aisle, curiosity was much excited. presently some one called his name. those about caught it and passed it on along the benches to the west; and there was hurried climbing on seats to get sight of the man about whom common report had coined and put in circulation a romance so mixed of good fortune and bad that the like had never been known or heard of before. ilderim was also recognized and warmly greeted; but nobody knew balthasar or the two women who followed him closely veiled. the people made way for the party respectfully, and the ushers seated them in easy speaking distance of each other down by the balustrade overlooking the arena. in providence of comfort, they sat upon cushions and had stools for foot-rests. the women were iras and esther. upon being seated, the latter cast a frightened look over the circus, and drew the veil closer about her face; while the egyptian, letting her veil fall upon her shoulders, gave herself to view, and gazed at the scene with the seeming unconsciousness of being stared at, which, in a woman, is usually the result of long social habitude. the new-comers generally were yet making their first examination of the great spectacle, beginning with the consul and his attendants, when some workmen ran in and commenced to stretch a chalked rope across the arena from balcony to balcony in front of the pillars of the first goal. about the same time, also, six men came in through the porta pompae and took post, one in front of each occupied stall; whereat there was a prolonged hum of voices in every quarter. "see, see! the green goes to number four on the right; the athenian is there." "and messalayes, he is number two." "the corinthian" "watch the white! see, he crosses overhe stops; number one it isnumber one on the left." "no, the black stops there, and the white at number two." "so it is." these gate-keepers, it should be understood, were dressed in tunics coloured like those of the competing charioteers; so, when they took their stations, everybody knew the particular stall in which his favourite was that moment waiting. "did you ever see messala?" the egyptian asked esther. the jewess shuddered as she answered no. if not her father's enemy, the roman was ben-hur's. "he is beautiful as apollo." as iras spoke, her large eyes brightened and she shook her jewelled fan. esther looked at her with the thought, "is he, then, so much handsomer than ben-hur?" next moment she heard ilderim say to her father, "yes, his stall is number two on the left of the porta pompae;" and, thinking it was of ben-hur he spoke, her eyes turned that way. taking but the briefest glance at the wattled face of the gate, she drew the veil close and muttered a little prayer. presently sanballat came to the party. "i am just from the stalls, o sheik," he said, bowing gravely to ilderim, who began combing his beard, while his eyes glittered with eager inquiry. "the horses are in perfect condition." ilderim replied simply, "if they are beaten, i pray it be by some other than messala." turning then to simonides, sanballat drew out a tablet, saying, "i bring you also something of interest. i reported, you will remember, the wager concluded with messala last night, and stated that i left another which, if taken, was to be delivered to me in writing to-day before the race began. here it is." simonides took the tablet and read the memorandum carefully. "yes," he said, "their emissary came to ask me if you had so much money with me. keep the tablet close. if you lose, you know where to come; if you win"his face knit hard"if you winah, friend, see to it! see the signers escape not; hold them to the last shekel. that is what they would with us." "trust me," replied the purveyor. "will you not sit with us?" asked simonides. "you are very good," the other returned; "but if i leave the consul, young rome yonder will boil over. peace to you; peace to all." at length the recess came to an end. the trumpeters blew a call at which the absentees rushed back to their places. at the same time, some attendants appeared in the arena, and, climbing upon the division wall, went to an entablature near the second goal at the west end, and placed upon it seven wooden balls; then returning to the first goal, upon an entablature there they set up seven other pieces of wood hewn to represent dolphins. "what shall they do with the balls and fishes, o sheik?" asked balthasar. "hast thou never attended a race?" "never before; and hardly know i why i am here." "well, they are to keep the count. at the end of each round run thou shalt see one ball and one fish taken down." the preparations were now complete, and presently a trumpeter in gaudy uniform arose by the editor, ready to blow the signal of commencement promptly at his order. straightway the stir of the people and the hum of their conversation died away. every face near-by, and every face in the lessening perspective, turned to the east, as all eyes settled upon the gates of the six stalls which shut in the competitors. the unusual flush upon his face gave proof that even simonides had caught the universal excitement. ilderim pulled his beard fast and furious. "look now for the roman," said the fair egyptian to esther, who did not hear her, for, with close-drawn veil and beating heart, she sat watching for ben-hur. the structure containing the stalls, it should be observed, was in form of the segment of a circle, retired on the right so that its central point was projected forward, and midway the course, on the starting side of the first goal. every stall, consequently, was equally distant from the starting-line or chalked rope above mentioned. the trumpet sounded short and sharp; whereupon the starters, one for each chariot, leaped down from behind the pillars of the goal, ready to give assistance if any of the fours proved unmanageable. again the trumpet blew, and simultaneously the gate-keepers threw the stalls open. first appeared the mounted attendants of the charioteers, five in all, ben-hur having rejected the service. the chalked line was lowered to let them pass, then raised again. they were beautifully mounted, yet scarcely observed as they rode forward; for all the time the trampling of eager horses, and the voices of drivers scarcely less eager, were heard behind in the stalls, so that one might not look away an instant from the gaping doors. the chalked line up again, the gate-keepers called their men; instantly the ushers on the balcony waved their hands, and shouted with all their strength, "down! down!" as well have whistled to stay a storm. forth from each stall, like missiles in a volley from so many great guns, rushed the six fours; and up the vast assemblage arose, electrified and irrepressible, and, leaping upon the benches, filled the circus and the air above it with yells and screams. this was the time for which they had so patiently waited!this the moment of supreme interest treasured up in talk and dreams since the proclamation of the games! "he is cometherelook!" cried iras, pointing to messala. "i see him," answered esther, looking at ben-hur. the veil was withdrawn. for an instant the little jewess was brave. an idea of the joy there is in doing an heroic deed under the eyes of a multitude came to her, and she understood ever after how, at such times, the souls of men, in the frenzy of performance, laugh at death or forget it utterly. the competitors were now under view from nearly every part of the circus, yet the race was not begun; they had first to make the chalked line successfully. the line was stretched for the purpose of equalizing the start. if it were dashed upon, discomfiture of man and horses might be apprehended; on the other hand, to approach it timidly was to incur the hazard of being thrown behind in the beginning of the race; and that was certain forfeit of the great advantage always striven forthe position next the division wall on the inner line of the course. this trial, its perils and consequences, the spectators knew thoroughly; and if the opinion of old nestor, uttered what time he handed the reins to his son, were true "it is not strength, but art, obtained the prize, and to be swift is less than to be wise," all on the benches might well look for warning of the winner to be now given, justifying the interest with which they breathlessly watched for the result. the arena swam in a dazzle of light; yet each driver looked first thing for the rope, then for the coveted inner line. so, all six aiming at the same point and speeding furiously, a collision seemed inevitable; nor that merely. what if the editor, at the last moment, dissatisfied with the start, should withhold the signal to drop the rope? or if he should not give it in time? the crossing was about two hundred and fifty feet in width. quick the eye, steady the hand, unerring the judgment required. if now one look away! or his mind wander! or a rein slip! and what attraction in the ensemble of the thousands over the spreading balcony! calculating upon the natural impulse to give one glancejust onein sooth of curiosity or vanity, malice might be there with an artifice; while friendship and love, did they serve the same result, might be as deadly as malice. the divine last touch in perfecting the beautiful is animation. can we accept the saying, then these latter days, so tame in pastime and dull in sports, have scarcely anything to compare to the spectacle offered by the six contestants. let the reader try to fancy it; let him first look down upon the arena, and see it glistening in its frame of dull-grey granite walls; let him then, in this perfect field, see the chariots, light of wheel, very graceful, and ornate as paint and burnishing can make themmessala's rich with ivory and gold; let him see the drivers, erect and statuesque, undisturbed by the motion of the cars, their limbs naked, and fresh and ruddy with the healthful polish of the bathsin their right hands goads, suggestive of torture dreadful to the thoughtin their left hands, held in careful separation, and high, that they may not interfere with view of the steeds, the reins passing taut from the fore ends of the carriage-poles; let him see the fours, chosen for beauty as well as speed; let him see them in magnificent action, their masters not more conscious of the situation and all that is asked and hoped from themtheir heads tossing, nostrils in play, now distent, now contractedlimbs too dainty for the sand which they touch but to spurnlimbs slender, yet with impact crushing as hammersevery muscle of the rounded bodies instinct with glorious life, swelling, diminishing, justifying the world in taking from them its ultimate measure of force; finally, along with chariots, drivers, horses, let the reader see the accompanying shadows fly; and, with such distinctness as the picture comes, he may share the satisfaction and deeper pleasure of those to whom it was a thrilling fact, not a feeble fancy. every age has its plenty of sorrows; heaven help where there are no pleasures! the competitors having started each on the shortest line for the position next the wall, yielding would be like giving up the race; and who dared yield? it is not in common nature to change a purpose in mid-career; and the cries of encouragement from the balcony were indistinguishable and indescribable: a roar which had the same effect upon all the drivers. the fours neared the rope together. then the trumpeter by the editor's side blew a signal vigorously. twenty feet away it was not heard. seeing the action, however, the judges dropped the rope, and not an instant too soon, for the hoof of one of messala's horses struck it as it fell. nothing daunted, the roman shook out his long lash, loosed the reins, leaned forward, and, with a triumphant shout, took the wall. "jove with us! jove with us!" yelled all the roman faction, in a frenzy of delight. as messala turned in, the bronze lion's head at the end of his axle caught the fore-leg of the athenian's right-hand trace-mate, flinging the brute over against its yoke-fellow. both staggered, struggled, and lost their headway. the ushers had their will, at least in part. the thousands held their breath with horror; only up where the consul sat was there shouting. "jove with us!" screamed drusus, frantically. "he wins! jove with us!" answered his associates, seeing messala speed on. tablet in hand, sanballat turned to them; a crash from the course below stopped his speech, and he could not but look that way. messala having passed, the corinthian was the only contestant on the athenian's right, and to that side the latter tried to turn his broken four; and then, as ill-fortune would have it, the wheel of the byzantine, who was next on the left, struck the tail-piece of his chariot, knocking his feet from under him. there was a crash, a scream of rage and fear, and the unfortunate cleanthes fell under the hoofs of his own steeds: a terrible sight, against which esther covered her eyes. on swept the corinthian, on the byzantine, on the sidonian. sanballat looked for ben-hur, and turned again to drusus and his coterie. "a hundred sestertii on the jew!" he cried. "taken!" answered drusus. "another hundred on the jew!" shouted sanballat. nobody appeared to hear him. he called again; the situation below was too absorbing, and they were too busy shouting, "messala! messala! jove with us!" when the jewess ventured to look again, a party of workmen were removing the horses and broken car; another party were taking off the man himself; and every bench upon which there was a greek was vocal with execrations and prayers for vengeance. suddenly she dropped her hands; ben-hur, unhurt, was to the front, coursing freely forward along with the roman! behind them, in a group, followed the sidonian, the corinthian, and the byzantine. the race was on; the souls of the racers were in it; over them bent the myriads. chapter xiv. the race. when the dash for position began, ben-hur, as we have seen, was on the extreme left of the six. for a moment, like the others, he was half-blinded by the light in the arena; yet he managed to catch sight of his antagonists and divine their purpose. at messala, who was more than an antagonist to him, he gave one searching look. the air of passionless hauteur characteristic of the fine patrician face was there as of old, and so was the italian beauty, which the helmet rather increased; but moreit may have been a jealous fancy, or the effect of the brassy shadow in which the features were at the moment cast, still the israelite thought he saw the soul of the man as through a glass, darkly: cruel, cunning, desperate; not so excited as determineda soul in a tension of watchfulness and fierce resolve. in a time not longer than was required to turn to his four again, ben-hur felt his own resolution harden to a like temper. at whatever cost, at all hazards, he would humble this enemy! prize, friends, wagers, honoureverything that can be thought of as a possible interest in the race was lost in the one deliberate purpose. regard for life even should not hold him back. yet there was no passion on his part; no blinding rush of heated blood from heart to brain, and back again; no impulse to fling himself upon fortune: he did not believe in fortune; far otherwise. he had his plan, and, confiding in himself, he settled to the task never more observant, never more capable. the air about him seemed aglow with a renewed and perfect transparency. when not half-way across the arena, he saw that messala's rush would, if there was no collision, and the rope fell, give him the wall; that the rope would fall, he ceased as soon to doubt; and, further, it came to him, a sudden flash-like insight, that messala knew it was to be let drop at the last moment (pre-arrangement with the editor could safely reach that point in the contest); and it suggested, what more roman-like than for the official to lend himself to a countryman who, besides being so popular, had also so much at stake? there could be no other accounting for the confidence with which messala pushed his four forward the instant his competitors were prudentially checking their fours in front of the obstructionno other except madness. it is one thing to see a necessity and another to act upon it. ben-hur yielded the wall for the time. the rope fell, and all the four but his sprang into the course under urgency of voice and lash. he drew head to the right, and, with all the speed of his arabs, darted across the trails of his opponents, the angle of movement being such as to lose the least time and gain the greatest possible advance. so, while the spectators were shivering at the athenian's mishap, and the sidonian, byzantine, and corinthian were striving, with such skill as they possessed, to avoid involvement in the ruin, ben-hur swept around and took the course neck and neck with messala, though on the outside. the marvellous skill shown in making the change thus from the extreme left across to the right without appreciable loss did not fail the sharp eyes upon the benches: the circus seemed to rock and rock again with prolonged applause. then esther clasped her hands in glad surprise; then sanballat, smiling, offered his hundred sestertii a second time without a taker; and then the romans began to doubt, thinking messala might have found an equal, if not a master, and that in an israelite! and now, racing together side by side, a narrow interval between them, the two neared the second goal. the pedestal of the three pillars there, viewed from the west, was a stone wall in the form of a half-circle, around which the course and opposite balcony were bent in exact parallelism. making this turn was considered in all respects the most telling test of a charioteer; it was, in fact, the very feat in which orestes failed. as an involuntary admission of interest on the part of the spectators, a hush fell over all the circus, so that for the first time in the race the rattle and clang of the cars plunging after the tugging steeds were distinctly heard. then, it would seem, messala observed ben-hur, and recognized him; and at once the audacity of the man flamed out in an astonishing manner. "down eros, up mars!" he shouted, whirling his lash with practised hand"down eros, up mars!" he repeated, and caught the well-doing arabs of ben-hur a cut the like of which they had never known. the blow was seen in every quarter, and the amazement was universal. the silence deepened; up on the benches behind the consul the boldest held his breath, waiting for the outcome. only a moment thus: then, involuntarily, down from the balcony, as thunder falls, burst the indignant cry of the people. the four sprang forward affrighted. no hand had ever been laid upon them except in love; they had been nurtured ever so tenderly; and as they grew, their confidence in man became a lesson to men beautiful to see. what should such dainty natures do under such indignity but leap as from death? forward they sprang as with one impulse, and forward leaped the car. past question, every experience is serviceable to us. where got ben-hur the large hand and mighty grip which helped him now so well? where but from the oar with which so long he fought the sea? and what was this spring of the floor under his feet to the dizzy eccentric lurch with which in the old time the trembling ship yielded to the beat of staggering billows, drunk with their power? so he kept his place, and gave the four free rein, and called to them in soothing voice, trying merely to guide them round the dangerous turn; and before the fever of the people began to abate, he had back the mastery. nor that only: on approaching the first goal, he was again side by side with messala, bearing with him the sympathy and admiration of every one not a roman. so clearly was the feeling shown, so vigorous its manifestation, that messala, with all his boldness, felt it unsafe to trifle further. as the cars whirled round the goal, esther caught sight of ben-hur's facea little pale, a little higher raised, otherwise calm, even placid. immediately a man climbed on the entablature at the west end of the division wall, and took down one of the conical wooden balls. a dolphin on the east entablature was taken down at the same time. in like manner, the second ball and second dolphin disappeared. and then the third ball and third dolphin. three rounds concluded: still messala held the inside position; still ben-hur moved with him side by side; still the other competitors followed as before. the contest began to have the appearance of one of the double races which became so popular in rome during the later caesarean periodmessala and ben-hur in the first, the corinthian, sidonian, and byzantine in the second. meantime the ushers succeeded in returning the multitude to their seats, though the clamour continued to run the rounds, keeping, as it were, even pace with the rivals in the course below. in the fifth round the sidonian succeeded in getting a place outside ben-hur, but lost it directly. the sixth round was entered upon without change of relative position. gradually the speed had been quickenedgradually the blood of the competitors warmed with the work. men and beasts seemed to know alike that the final crisis was near, bringing the time for the winner to assert himself. the interest which from the beginning had centred chiefly in the struggle between the roman and the jew, with an intense and general sympathy for the latter, was fast changing to anxiety on his account. on all the benches the spectators bent forward motionless, except as their faces turned following the contestants. ilderim quitted combing his beard, and esther forgot her fears. "a hundred sestertii on the jew!" cried sanballat to the romans under the consul's awning. there was no reply. "a talentor five talents, or ten; choose ye!" he shook his tablets at them defiantly. "i will take thy sestertii," answered a roman youth, preparing to write. "do not so," interposed a friend. "why?" "messala hath reached his utmost speed. see him lean over his chariot-rim, the reins loose as flying-ribbons. look then at the jew." the first one looked. "by hercules!" he replied, his countenance falling. "the dog throws all his weight on the bits. i see, i see! if the gods help not our friend, he will be run away with by the israelite. no, not yet. look! jove with us, jove with us!" the cry, swelled by every latin tongue, shook the velaria over the consul's head. if it were true that messala had attained his utmost speed, the effort was with effect; slowly but certainly he was beginning to forge ahead. his horses were running with their heads low down; from the balcony their bodies appeared actually to skim the earth; their nostrils showed blood-red in expansion; their eyes seemed straining in their sockets. certainly the good steeds were doing their best! how long could they keep the pace? it was but the commencement of the sixth round. on they dashed. as they neared the second goal, ben-hur turned in behind the roman's car. the joy of the messala faction reached its bound: they screamed and howled, and tossed their colours; and sanballat filled his tablets with wagers of their tendering. malluch, in the lower gallery over the gate of triumph, found it hard to keep his cheer. he had cherished the vague hint dropped to him by ben-hur of something to happen in the turning of the western pillars. it was the fifth round, yet the something had not come; and he had said to himself, the sixth will bring it; but, lo! ben-hur was hardly holding a place at the tail of his enemy's car. over in the east end, simonides' party held their peace. the merchant's head was bent low. ilderim tugged at his beard, and dropped his brows till there was nothing of his eyes but an occasional sparkle of light. esther scarcely breathed. iras alone appeared glad. along the home-stretchsixth roundmessala leading, next him ben-hur, and so close, it was the old story "first flew eumelus on pheretian steeds; with those of tros bold diomed succeeds: close on eumelus' back they puff the wind, and seem just mounting on his car behind; full on his neck he feels the sultry breeze, and, hovering o'er, their stretching shadow sees." thus to the first goal, and round it. messala, fearful of losing his place, hugged the stony wall with perilous clasp; a foot to the left, and he had been dashed to pieces; yet, when the turn was finished, no man, looking at the wheel-tracks of the two cars, could have said, here went messala, there the jew. they left but one trace behind them. as they whirled by, esther saw ben-hur's face again, and it was whiter than before. simonides, shrewder than esther, said to ilderim, the moment the rivals turned into the course, "i am no judge, good sheik, if ben-hur be not about to execute some design. his face hath that look." to which ilderim answered, "saw you how clean they were and fresh? by the splendour of god, friend, they have not been running! but now watch!" one ball and one dolphin remained on the entablatures; and all the people drew a long breath, for the beginning of the end was at hand. first, the sidonian gave the scourge to his four, and, smarting with fear and pain, they dashed desperately forward, promising for a brief time to go to the front. the effort ended in promise. next, the byzantine and corinthian each made the trial with like result, after which they were practically out of the race. thereupon, with a readiness perfectly explicable, all the factions except the romans joined hope in ben-hur, and openly indulged their feeling. "ben-hur! ben-hur!" they shouted, and the blent voices of the many rolled overwhelmingly against the consular stand. from the benches above him as he passed the favour descended in fierce injunctions. "speed thee, jew!" "take the wall now!" "on! loose the arabs! give them rein and scourge!" "let them not have the turn on thee again. now or never!" over the balustrade they stooped low, stretching their hands imploringly to him. either he did not hear, or could not do better, for half-way round the course, and he was still following; at the second goal even still no change? and now, to make the turn, messala began to draw in his left-hand steeds, an act which necessarily slackened their speed. his spirit was high; more than one altar was richer of his vows; the roman genius was still president. on the three pillars only six hundred feet away were fame, increase of fortune, promotions, and a triumph, ineffably sweetened by hate, all in store for him! that moment malluch, in the gallery, saw ben-hur lean forward over his arabs, and give them the reins. out flew the many-folded lash in his hand; over the backs of the startled steeds it writhed and hissed, and hissed and writhed again and again; and though it fell not, there were both sting and menace in its quick report; and as the man passed thus from quiet to resistless action, his face suffused, his eyes gleaming, along the reins he seemed to flash his will; and instantly not one, but the four as one, answered with a leap that landed them alongside the roman's car. messala, on the perilous edge of the goal, heard, but dared not look to see what the awakening portended. from the people he received no sign. above the noises of the race there was but one voice, and that was ben-hur's. in the old aramaic, as the sheik himself, he called to the arabs "on, atair! on, rigel! what, antares! dost thou linger now? good horseoho, aldebaran! i hear them singing in the tents. i hear the children singing and the womensinging of the stars, of atair, antares, rigel, aldebaran, victory!and the song will never end. well done! home to-morrow, under the black tenthome!on, antares! the tribe is waiting for us, and the master is waiting! 'tis done! 'tis done! ha, ha! we have overthrown the proud. the hand that smote us in the dust. ours the glory! ha, ha!steady! the work is donesoho! rest!" there had never been anything of the kind more simple; seldom anything so instantaneous. at the moment chosen for the dash, messala was moving in a circle round the goal. to pass him, ben-hur had to cross the track, and good strategy required the movement to be in a forward direction; that is, on a like circle limited to the least possible increase. the thousands on the benches understood it all: they saw the signal giventhe magnificent response; the four close outside messala's outer wheel; ben-hur's inner wheel behind the other's carall this they saw. then they heard a crash loud enough to send a thrill through the circus, and, quicker than thought, out over the course a spray of shining white and yellow flinders flew. down on its right side toppled the bed of the roman's chariot. there was a rebound as of the axle hitting the hard earth; another and another; then the car went to pieces; and messala, entangled in the reins, pitched forward headlong. to increase the horror of the sight by making death certain, the sidonian, who had the wall next behind, could not stop or turn out. into the wreck full speed he drove; then over the roman, and into the latter's four, all mad with fear. presently, out of the turmoil, the fighting of horses, the resound of blows, the murky cloud of dust and sand, he crawled, in time to see the corinthian and byzantine go on down the course after ben-hur, who had not been an instant delayed. the people arose, and leaped upon the benches, and shouted and screamed. those who looked that way caught glimpses of messala, now under the trampling of the fours, now under the abandoned cars. he was still; they thought him dead; but far the greater number followed ben-hur in his career. they had not seen the cunning touch of the reins by which, turning a little to the left, he caught messala's wheel with the iron-shod point of his axle, and crushed it; but they had seen the transformation of the man, and themselves felt the heat and glow of his spirit, the heroic resolution, the maddening energy of action with which, by look, word, and gesture, he so suddenly inspired his arabs. and such running! it was rather the long leaping of lions in harness; but for the lumbering chariot, it seemed the four were flying. when the byzantine and corinthian were half-way down the course, ben-hur turned the first goal. and the race was won! the consul arose; the people shouted themselves hoarse; the editor came down from his seat, and crowned the victors. the fortunate man among the boxers was a low-browed, yellow-haired saxon, of such brutalized face as to attract a second look from ben-hur, who recognized a teacher with whom he himself had been a favourite at rome. from him the young jew looked up and beheld simonides and his party on the balcony. they waved their hands to him. esther kept her seat; but iras arose, and gave him a smile and a wave of her fanfavours not the less intoxicating to him because we know, o reader, they would have fallen to messala had he been the victor. the procession was then formed, and, midst the shouting of the multitude which had had its will, passed out of the gate of triumph. and the day was over. chapter xv. the invitation of iras. ben-hur tarried across the river with ilderim; for at midnight, as previously determined, they would take the road which the caravan, then thirty hours out, had pursued. the sheik was happy; his offers of gifts had been royal; but ben-hur had refused everything, insisting that he was satisfied with the humiliation of his enemy. the generous dispute was long continued. "think," the sheik would say, "what thou hast done for me. in every black tent down to the akaba and to the ocean, and across to the euphrates, and beyond to the sea of the scythians, the renown of my mira and her children will go; and they who sing of them will magnify me, and forget that i am in the wane of life; and all the spears now masterless will come to me, and my sword-hands multiply past counting. thou dost not know what it is to have sway of the desert such as will now be mine. i tell thee it will bring tribute incalculable from commerce, and immunity from kings. ay, by the sword of solomon! doth my messenger seek favour for me of caesar, that will he get. yet nothingnothing?" and ben-hur would answer "nay, sheik, have i not thy hand and heart? let thy increase of power and influence inure to the king who comes. who shall say it was not allowed thee for him? in the work i am going to, i may have great need. saying no now will leave me to ask of thee with better grace hereafter." in the midst of a controversy of the kind, two messengers arrivedmalluch and one unknown. the former was admitted first. the good fellow did not attempt to hide his joy over the event of the day. "but, coming to that with which i am charged," he said, "the master simonides sends me to say that, upon the adjournment of the games, some of the roman faction made haste to protest against payment of the money prize." ilderim started up, crying, in his shrillest tones "by the splendour of god! the east shall decide whether the race was fairly won." "nay, good sheik," said malluch, "the editor has paid the money." "tis well." "when they said ben-hur struck messala's wheel, the editor laughed, and reminded them of the blow the arabs had at the turn of the goal." "and what of the athenian?" "he is dead." "dead!" cried ben-hur. "dead!" echoed ilderim. "what fortune these roman monsters have! messala escaped?" "escapedyes, o sheik, with life; but it shall be a burden to him. the physicians say he will live, but never walk again." ben-hur looked silently up to heaven. he had a vision of messala, chair-bound like simonides, and, like him, going abroad on the shoulders of servants. the good man had abode well; but what would this one with his pride and ambition? "simonides bade me say, further," malluch continued, "sanballat is having trouble. drusus, and those who signed with him, referred the question of paying the five talents they lost to the consul maxentius, and he has referred it to caesar. messala also refused his losses, and sanballat, in imitation of drusus, went to the consul, where the matter is still in advisement. the better romans say the protestants shall not be excused; and all the adverse factions join with them. the city rings with the scandal." "what says simonides?" asked ben-hur. "the master laughs, and is well pleased. if the roman pays, he is ruined; if he refuses to pay, he is dishonoured. the imperial policy will decide the matter. to offend the east would be a bad beginning with the parthians; to offend sheik ilderim would be to antagonize the desert, over which lie all maxentius's lines of operation. wherefore simonides bade me tell you to have no disquiet; messala will pay." ilderim was at once restored to his good-humour. "let us be off now," he said, rubbing his hands. "the business will do well with simonides. the glory is ours. i will order the horses." "stay," said malluch. "i left a messenger outside. will you see him?" "by the splendour of god! i forgot him." malluch retired, and was succeeded by a lad of gentle manners and delicate appearance, who knelt upon one knee, and said, winningly, "iras, the daughter of balthasar, well known to good sheik ilderim, hath intrusted me with a message to the sheik, who, she saith, will do her great favour so he receive her congratulations on account of the victory of his four." "the daughter of my friend is kind," said ilderim, with sparkling eyes. "do thou give her this jewel, in sign of the pleasure i have from her message." he took a ring from his finger as he spoke. "i will as thou sayest, o sheik," the lad replied, and continued, "the daughter of the egyptian charged me further. she prays the good sheik ilderim to send word to the youth ben-hur that her father hath taken residence for a time in the palace of idernee, where she will receive the youth after the fourth hour to-morrow. and if, with her congratulations, sheik ilderim will accept her gratitude for this other favour done, she will be ever so pleased." the sheik looked at ben-hur, whose face was suffused with pleasure. "what will you?" he asked. "by your leave, o sheik, i will see the fair egyptian." ilderim laughed, and said, "shall not a man enjoy his youth?" then ben-hur answered the messenger "say to her who sent you that i, ben-hur, will see her at the palace of idernee, wherever that may be, to-morrow at noon." the lad arose, and, with silent salute, departed. at midnight ilderim took the road, having arranged to leave a horse and a guide for ben-hur, who was to follow him. chapter xvi. in the palace of idernee. going next day to fill his appointment with iras, ben-hur turned from the omphalus, which was in the heart of the city, into the colonnade of herod, and came shortly to the palace of idernee. from the street he passed first into a vestibule, on the sides of which were stairways under cover, leading up to a portico. winged lions sat by the stairs; in the middle there was a gigantic ibis spouting water over the floor; the lions, ibis, walls, and floor were reminders of the egyptians: everything, even the balustrading of the stairs, was of massive grey stone. above the vestibule, and covering the landing of the steps, arose the portico, a pillared grace, so light, so exquisitely proportioned, it was at that period hardly possible of conception except by a greek. of marble snowy white, its effect was that of a lily dropped carelessly upon a great bare rock. ben-hur paused in the shade of the portico to admire its tracery and finish, and the purity of its marble; then he passed on into the palace. ample folding-doors stood open to receive him. the passage into which he first entered was high, but somewhat narrow; red tiling formed the floor, and the walls were tinted to correspond. yet this plainness was a warning of something beautiful to come. he moved on slowly, all his faculties in repose. presently he would be in the presence of iras; she was waiting for him; waiting with song and story and badinage, sparkling, fanciful, capriciouswith smiles which glorified her glance, and glances which lent voluptuous suggestion to her whisper. she had sent for him the evening of the boat-ride on the lake in the orchard of palms; she had sent for him now; and he was going to her in the beautiful palace of idernee. he was happy and dreamful rather than thoughtless. the passage brought him to a closed door, in front of which he paused; and, as he did so, the broad leaves began to open of themselves, without creak or sound of lock or latch, or touch of foot or finger. the singularity was lost in the view that broke upon him. standing in the shade of the dull passage, and looking through the doorway, he beheld the atrium of a roman house, roomy and rich to a fabulous degree of magnificence. how large the chamber was cannot be stated, because of the deceit there is in exact proportions; its depth was vista-like, something never to be said of an equal interior. when he stopped to make survey, and looked down upon the floor, he was standing upon the breast of a leda, represented as caressing a swan; and, looking farther, he saw the whole floor was similarly laid in mosaic pictures of mythological subjects. and there were stools and chairs, each a separate design, and a work of art exquisitely composed, and tables much carven, and here and there couches which were invitations of themselves. the articles of furniture, which stood out from the walls, were duplicated on the floor distinctly as if they floated upon unrippled water; even the panelling of the, walls, the figures upon them in painting and bas-relief, and the fresco of the ceiling were reflected on the floor. the ceiling curved up towards the centre, where there was an opening through which the sunlight poured without hindrance, and the sky, ever so blue, seemed in hand-reach; the impluvium under the opening was guarded by bronzed rails; the gilded pillars supporting the roof at the edges of the opening shone like flame where the sun struck them, and their reflections beneath seemed to stretch to infinite depth. and there were candelabra quaint and curious, and statuary and vases; the whole making an interior that would have befitted well the house on the palatine hill which cicero bought of crassus, or that other, yet more famous for extravagance, the tusculan villa of scaurus. still in his dreamful mood, ben-hur sauntered about, charmed by all he beheld, and waiting. he did not mind a little delay; when iras was ready, she would come or send a servant. in every well-regulated roman house the atrium was the reception chamber for visitors. twice, thrice, he made the round. as often he stood under the opening in the roof, and pondered the sky and its azure depth; then, leaning against a pillar, he studied the distribution of light and shade, and its effects; here a veil diminishing objects, there a brilliance exaggerating others; yet nobody came. time, or rather the passage of time, began at length to impress itself upon him, and he wondered why iras stayed so long. again he traced out the figures upon the floor, but not with the satisfaction that the first inspection gave him. he paused often to listen: directly impatience blew a little fevered breath upon his spirit; next time it blew stronger and hotter; and at last he woke to a consciousness of the silence which held the house in thrall, and the thought of it made him uneasy and distrustful. still he put the feeling off with a smile and a promise. "oh, she is giving the last touch to her eyelids, or she is arranging a chaplet for me; she will come presently, more beautiful of the delay!" he sat down then to admire a candelabruma bronze plinth on rollers, filigree on the sides and edges; the post at one end, and on the end opposite it an altar and a female celebrant; the lamp-rests swinging by delicate chains from the extremities of drooping palm-branches; altogether a wonder in its way. but the silence would obtrude itself: he listened even as he looked at the pretty objecthe listened, but there was not a sound; the palace was still as a tomb. there might be a mistake. no, the messenger had come from the egyptian, and this was the palace of idernee. then he remembered how mysteriously the door had opened, so soundlessly, so of itself. he would see! he went to the same door. though he walked ever so lightly, the sound of his stepping was loud and harsh, and he shrank from it. he was getting nervous. the cumbrous roman lock resisted his first effort to raise it; and the secondthe blood chilled in his cheekhe wrenched with all his might: in vainthe door was not even shaken. a sense of danger seized him, and for a moment he stood irresolute. who in antioch had the motive to do him harm? messala! and this palace of idernee? he had seen egypt in the vestibule, athens in the snowy portico; but here, in the atrium, was rome; everything about him betrayed roman ownership. true, the site was on the great thoroughfare of the city, a very public place in which to do him violence; but for that reason it was more accordant with the audacious genius of his enemy. the atrium underwent a change; with all its elegance and beauty, it was no more than a trap. apprehension always paints in black. the idea irritated ben-hur. there were many doors on the right and left of the atrium, leading, doubtless, to sleeping-chambers; he tried them, but they were all firmly fastened. knocking might bring response. ashamed to make outcry, he betook himself to a couch, and, lying down, tried to reflect. all too plainly he was a prisoner; but for what purpose? and by whom? if the work were messala's! he sat up, looked about, and smiled defiantly. there were weapons in every table. but birds had been starved in golden cages; not so would hethe couches would serve him as battering-rams; and he was strong, and there was such increase of might in rage and despair! messala himself could not come. he would never walk again; he was a cripple like simonides; still he could move others. and where were there not others to be moved by him? ben-hur arose, and tried the doors again. once be called out; the room echoed so that he was startled. with such calmness as he could assume, he made up his mind to wait a time before attempting to break a way out. in such a situation the mind has its ebb and flow of disquiet, with intervals of peace between. at lengthhow long, though, he could not have saidhe came to the conclusion that the affair was an accident or mistake. the palace certainly belonged to somebody; it must have care and keeping; and the keeper would come; the evening or the night would bring him. patience! i so concluding, he waited. half an hour passeda much longer period to ben-hurwhen the door which had admitted him opened and closed noiselessly as before, and without attracting his attention. the moment of the occurrence he was sitting at the farther end of the room. a footstep startled him. "at last she has come!" he thought, with a throb of relief and pleasure, and arose. the step was heavy, and accompanied with the gride and clang of coarse sandals. the gilded pillars were between him and the door; he advanced quietly, and leaned against one of them. presently he heard voicesthe voices of menone of them rough and guttural. what was said he could not understand, as the language was not of the east or south of europe. after a general survey of the room, the strangers crossed to their left, and were brought into ben-hur's viewtwo men, one very stout, both tall, and both in short tunics. they had not the air of masters of the house or domestics. everything they saw appeared wonderful to them; everything they stopped to examine they touched. they were vulgarians. the atrium seemed profaned by their presence. at the same time, their leisurely manner and the assurance with which they proceeded pointed to some right or business; if business, with whom? with much jargon they sauntered this way and that, all the time gradually approaching the pillar by which ben-hur was standing. off a little way, where a slanted gleam of the sun fell with a glare upon the mosaic of the floor, there was a statue which attracted their notice. in examining it, they stopped in the light. the mystery surrounding his own presence in the palace tended, as we have seen, to make ben-hur nervous; so now, when in the tall stout stranger he recognized the northman whom he had known in rome, and seen crowned only the day before in the circus as the winning pugilist; when he saw the man's face, scarred with the wounds of many battles, and imbruted by ferocious passions; when he surveyed the fellow's naked limbs, very marvels of exercise and training, and his shoulders of herculean breadth, a thought of personal danger started a chill along every vein. a sure instinct warned him that the opportunity for murder was too perfect to have come by chance; and here now were the myrmidons, and their business was with him. he turned an anxious eye upon the northman's comradeyoung, black-eyed, black-haired, and altogether jewish in appearance; he observed, also, that both the men were in costume exactly such as professionals of their class were in the habit of wearing in the arena. putting the several circumstances together, ben-hur could not be longer in doubt: he had been lured into the palace with design. out of reach of aid, in this splendid privacy, he was to die! at a loss what to do, he gazed from man to man, while there was enacted within him that miracle of mind by which life is passed before us in awful detail, to be looked at by ourselves as if it were another's; and from the evolvement, from a hidden depth, cast up as it were, by a hidden hand, he was given to see that he had entered upon a new life, different from the old one in this: whereas, in that, he had been the victim of violences done to him, henceforth he was to be the aggressor. only yesterday he had found his first victim! to the purely christian nature the presentation would have brought the weakness of remorse. not so with ben-hur; his spirit had its emotions from the teachings of the first law-giver, not the last and greatest one. he had dealt punishment, not wrong, to messala. by permission of the lord, he had triumphed; and he derived faith from the circumstancefaith, the source of all rational strength, especially strength in peril. nor did the influence stop there. the new life was made appear to him a mission just begun, and holy as the king to come was holy, and certain as the coming of the king was certaina mission in which force was lawful if only because it was unavoidable. should he, on the very threshold of such an errand, be afraid? he undid the sash around his waist, and, baring his head and casting off his white jewish gown, stood forth in an under-tunic not unlike those of the enemy, and was ready, body and mind. folding his arms, he placed his back against the pillar, and calmly waited. the examination of the statue was brief. directly the northman turned, and said something in the unknown tongue; then both looked at ben-hur. a few more words, and they advanced towards him. "who are you?" he asked, in latin. the northman fetched a smile which did not relieve his face of its brutalism, and answered "barbarians." "this is the palace of idernee. whom seek you? stand and answer." the words were spoken with earnestness. the strangers stopped, and in his turn the northman asked, "who are you?" "a roman." the giant laid his head back upon his shoulders. "ha, ha, ha! i have heard how a god once came from a cow licking a salted stone; but not even a god can make a roman of a jew." the laugh over, he spoke to his companion again, and they moved nearer. "hold!" said ben-hur, quitting the pillar. "one word." they stopped again. "a word!" replied the saxon, folding his immense arms across his breast, and relaxing the menace beginning to blacken his face. "a word! speak." "you are thord the northman." the giant opened his blue eyes. "you were lanista in rome." thord nodded. "i was your scholar." "no," said thord, shaking his head. "by the beard of irmin, i had never a jew to make a fighting-man of." "but i will prove my saying." "how?" "you came here to kill me." "that is true." "then let this man fight me singly, and i will make the proof on his body." a gleam of humour shone in the northman's face. he spoke to his companion, who made answer; then he replied with the naivete of a diverted child "wait till i say begin." by repeated touches of his foot, he pushed a couch out on the floor, and proceeded leisurely to stretch his burly form upon it; when perfectly at ease, he said, simply, "now begin." without ado, ben-hur walked to his antagonist. "defend thyself," he said. the man, nothing loath, put up his hands. as the two thus confronted each other in approved position, there was no discernible inequality between them; on the contrary, they were as like as brothers. to the stranger's confident smile ben-hur opposed an earnestness which, had his skill been known, would have been accepted fair warning of danger. both knew the combat was to be mortal. ben-hur feinted with his right hand. the stranger warded, slightly advancing his left arm! ere he could return to guard, ben-hur caught him by the wrist in a grip which years at the oar had made terrible as a vise. the surprise was complete, and no time given. to throw himself forward; to push the arm across the man's throat and over his right shoulder, and turn him left side front; to strike surely with the ready left hand; to strike the bare neck under the earwere but petty divisions of the same act. no need of a second blow. the myrmidon fell heavily, and without a cry, and lay still. ben-hur turned to thord. "ha! what! by the beard of irmin!" the latter cried, in astonishment, rising to a sitting posture. then he laughed. "ha, ha, ha! i could not have done it better myself." he viewed ben-hur coolly from head to foot, and, rising, faced him with undisguised admiration. "it was my trickthe trick i have practised for ten years in the schools of rome. you are not a jew. who are you?" "you knew arrius the duumvir." "quintus arrius? yes, he was my patron." "he had a son." "yes," said thord, his battered features lighting dully, "i knew the boy; he would have made a king gladiator. caesar offered him his patronage. i taught him the very trick you played on this one herea trick impossible except to a hand and arm like mine. it has won me many a crown." "i am that son of arrius." thord drew nearer, and viewed him carefully; then his eyes brightened with genuine pleasure, and, laughing, he held out his hand. "ha, ha, ha! he told me i would find a jew herea jewa dog of a jewkilling whom was serving the gods." "who told you so?" asked ben-hur, taking the hand. "hemessalaha, ha, ha!" "when, thord?" "last night." "i thought he was hurt." "he will never walk again. on his bed he told me between groans." a very vivid portrayal of hate in a few words; and ben-hur saw that the roman, if he lived, would still be capable and dangerous, and follow him unrelentingly. revenge remained to sweeten the ruined life; therefore the clinging to fortune lost in the wager with sanballat. ben-hur ran the ground over, with a distinct foresight of the many ways in which it would be possible for his enemy to interfere with him in the work he had undertaken for the king who was coming. why not he resort to the roman's methods? the man hired to kill him could be hired to strike back. it was in his power to offer higher wages. the temptation was strong; and, half yielding, he chanced to look down at his late antagonist lying still, with white upturned face, so like himself. a light came to him, and he asked, "thord, what was messala to give you for killing me?" "a thousand sestertii." "you shall have them yet; and so you do now what i tell you, i will add three thousand more to the sum." the giant reflected aloud "i won five thousand yesterday; from the roman onesix. give me four, good arriusfour moreand i will stand firm for you, though old thor, my namesake, strike me with his hammer. make it four, and i will kill the lying patrician, if you say so. i have only to cover his mouth with my handthus." he illustrated the process by clapping his hand over his own mouth. "i see," said ben-hur; "ten thousand sestertii is a fortune. it will enable you to return to rome, and open a wine-shop near the great circus, and live as becomes the first of the lanistae." the very scars on the giant's face glowed afresh with the pleasure the picture gave him. "i will make it four thousand," ben-hur continued; "and in what you shall do for the money there will be no blood on your hands, thord. hear me now. did not your friend here look like me?" "i would have said he was an apple from the same tree." "well, if i put on his tunic, and dress him in these clothes of mine, and you and i go away together, leaving him here, can you not get your sestertii from messala all the same? you have only to make him believe it me that is dead." thord laughed till the tears ran into his mouth. "ha, ha, ha! ten thousand sestertii were never won so easily. and a wine-shop by the great circus!all for a lie without blood in it! ha, ha, ha! give me thy hand, o son of arrius. get on now, andha, ha, ha!if ever you come to rome, fail not to ask for the wine-shop of thord the northman. by the beard of irmin, i will give you the best, though i borrow it from caesar!" they shook hands again; after which the exchange of clothes was effected. it was arranged then that a messenger should go at night to thord's lodging-place with the four thousand sestertii. when they were done, the giant knocked at the front door; it opened to him; and, passing out of the atrium, he led ben-hur into a room adjoining, where the latter completed his attire from the coarse garments of the dead pugilist. they separated directly in the omphalus. "fail not, o son of arrius, fail not the wine-shop near the great circus! ha, ha, ha! by the beard of irmin, there never was fortune gained so cheap. the gods keep you." upon leaving the atrium, ben-hur gave a last look at the myrmidon as he lay in the jewish vestments, and was satisfied. the likeness was striking. if thord kept faith, the cheat was a secret to endure forever. * * * * * at night, in the house of simonides, ben-hur told the good man all that had taken place in the palace of idernee; and it was agreed that, after a few days, public inquiry should be set afloat for the discovery of the whereabouts of the son of arrius. eventually the matter was to be carried boldly to maxentius; then, if the mystery came not out, it was concluded that messala and gratus would be at rest and happy, and ben-hur free to betake himself to jerusalem, to make search for his lost people. at the leave-taking, simonides sat in his chair out on the terrace overlooking the river, and gave his farewell and the peace of the lord with the impressment of a father. esther went with the young man to the head of the steps. "if i find my mother, esther, thou shalt go to her at jerusalem, and be a sister to tirzah." and with the words he kissed her. was it only a kiss of peace? he crossed the river next to the late quarters of ilderim, where he found the arab who was to serve him as guide. the horses were brought out. "this one is thine," said the arab. ben-hur looked, and, lo! it was aldebaran, the swiftest and brightest of the sons of mira, and, next to sirius, the beloved of the sheik; and he knew the old man's heart came to him along with the gift. the corpse in the atrium was taken up and buried by night; and, as part of messala's plan, a courier was sent off to gratus to make him at rest by the announcement of ben-hur's deaththis time past question. ere long a wine-shop was opened near the circus maximus, with inscription over the door thord the northman. book sixth. "is that a death? and are there two? is death that woman's mate? her skin was as white as leprosy, the nightmare life-in-death was she, who thicks man's blood with cold." -coleridge. chapter i. the tower of antoniacell no. vi. our story moves forward now thirty days from the night ben-hur left antioch to go out with sheik ilderim into the desert. a great change has befallengreat at least as respects the fortunes of our hero. valerius gratus has been succeeded by pontius pilate! the removal, it may be remarked, cost simonides exactly five talents roman money in hand paid to sejanus, who was then in height of power as imperial favourite; the object being to help ben-hur, by lessening his exposure while in and about jerusalem attempting discovery of his people. to such pious use the faithful servant put the winnings from drusus and his associates; all of whom, having paid their wagers, became at once and naturally the enemies of messala, whose repudiation was yet an unsettled question in rome. brief as the time was, already the jews knew the change of rulers was not for the better. the cohorts sent to relieve the garrison of antonia made their entry into the city by night; next morning the first sight that greeted the people resident in the neighbourhood was the walls of the old tower decorated with military ensigns, which unfortunately consisted of busts of the emperor mixed with eagles and globes. a multitude, in passion, marched to caesarea, where pilate was lingering, and implored him to remove the detested images. five days and nights they beset his palace gates; at last he appointed a meeting with them in the circus. when they were assembled, he encircled them with soldiers; instead of resisting, they offered him their lives, and conquered. he recalled the images and ensigns to caesarea, where gratus, with more consideration, had kept such abominations housed during the eleven years of his reign. the worst of men do once in a while vary their wickednesses by good acts; so with pilate. he ordered an inspection of all the prisons in judea, and a return of the names of the persons in custody, with a statement of the crimes for which they had been committed. doubtless, the motive was the one so common with officials just installeddread of entailed responsibility; the people, however, in thought of the good which might come of the measure, gave him credit, and, for a period, were comforted. the revelations were astonishing. hundreds of persons were released against whom there were no accusations; many others came to light who had long been accounted dead; yet more amazing, there was opening of dungeons not merely unknown at the time by the people, but actually forgotten by the prison authorities. with one instance of the latter kind we have now to deal; and, strange to say, it occurred in jerusalem. the tower of antonia, which will be remembered as occupying two-thirds of the sacred area on mount moriah, was originally a castle built by the macedonians. afterwards, john hyrcanus erected the castle into a fortress for the defence of the temple, and in his day it was considered impregnable to assault; but when herod came with his bolder genius, he strengthened its walls and extended them, leaving a vast pile which included every appurtenance necessary for the stronghold he intended it to be forever; such as offices, barracks, armories, magazines, cisterns, and last, though not least, prisons of all grades. he levelled the solid rock, and tapped it with deep excavations, and built over them; connecting the whole great mass with the temple by a beautiful colonnade, from the roof of which one could look down over the courts of the sacred structure. in such condition the tower fell at last out of his hands into those of the romans, who were quick to see its strength and advantages, and convert it to uses becoming such masters. all through the administration of gratus it had been a garrisoned citadel and underground prison terrible to revolutionists. woe when the cohorts poured from its gates to suppress disorder! woe not less when a jew passed the same gates going in under arrest! with this explanation, we hasten to our story. * * * * * the order of the new procurator requiring a report of the persons in custody was received at the tower of antonia, and promptly executed; and two days have gone since the last unfortunate was brought up for examination. the tabulated statement, ready for forwarding, lies on the table of the tribune in command; in five minutes more it will be on the way to pilate, sojourning in the palace up on mount zion. the tribune's office is spacious and cool, and furnished in a style suitable to the dignity of the commandant of a post in every respect so important. looking in upon him about the seventh hour of the day, the officer appears weary and impatient; when the report is despatched, he will to the roof of the colonnade for air and exercise, and the amusement to be had watching the jews over in the courts of the temple. his subordinates and clerks share his impatience. in the spell of waiting a man appeared in a doorway leading to an adjoining apartment. he rattled a bunch of keys, each heavy as a hammer, and at once attracted the chief's attention. "ah, gesius! come in," the tribune said. as the new-comer approached the table behind which the chief sat in an easy-chair, everybody present looked at him, and, observing a certain expression of alarm and mortification on his face, became silent that they might hear what he had to say. "o tribune!" he began, bending low, "i fear to tell what now i bring you." "another mistakeha, gesius?" "if i could persuade myself it is but a mistake, i would not be afraid." "a crime thenor, worse, a breach of duty. thou mayst laugh at caesar, or curse the gods, and live; but if the offence be to the eaglesah, thou knowest, gesiusgo on!" "it is now about eight years since valerius gratus selected me to be keeper of prisoners here in the tower," said the man, deliberately. "i remember the morning i entered upon the duties of my office. there had been a riot the day before, and fighting in the streets. we slew many jews, and suffered on our side. the affair came, it was said, of an attempt to assassinate gratus, who had been knocked from his horse by a tile thrown from a roof. i found him sitting where you now sit, o tribune, his head swathed in bandages. he told me of my selection, and gave me these keys, numbered to correspond with the numbers of the cells; they were the badges of my office, he said, and not to be parted with. there was a roll of parchment on the table. calling me to him, he opened the roll. 'here are maps of the cells,' said he. there were three of them. 'this one,' he went on, 'shows the arrangement of the upper floor; this second one gives you the second floor; and this last is of the lower floor. i give them to you in trust.' i took them from his hand, and he said, further, 'now you have the keys and the maps; go immediately, and acquaint yourself with the whole arrangement; visit each cell, and see to its condition. when anything is needed for the security of a prisoner, order it according to your judgment, for you are the master under me, and no other." "i saluted him, and turned to go away; he called me back. 'ah, i forgot,' he said. 'give me the map of the third floor.' i gave it to him, and he spread it upon the table. 'here, gesius,' he said, 'see this cell.' he laid his finger on the one numbered v. 'there are three men confined in that cell, desperate characters, who by some means got hold of a state secret, and suffer for their curiosity, which'he looked at me severely'in such matters is worse than a crime. accordingly, they are blind and tongueless, and are placed there for life. they shall have nothing but food and drink, to be given them through a hole, which you will find in the wall covered by a slide. do you hear, gesius?' i made him answer. 'it is well,' he continued. 'one thing more which you shall not forget, or'he looked at me threateningly'the door of their cellcell number v. on the same floorthis one, gesius'he put his finger on the particular cell to impress my memory'shall never be opened for any purpose, neither to let one in nor out, not even yourself.' 'but if they die?' i asked. 'if they die,' he said, 'the cell shall be their tomb. they were put there to die, and be lost. the cell is leprous. do you understand?' with that he let me go." gesius stopped, and from the breast of his tunic drew three parchments, all much yellowed by time and use; selecting one of them, he spread it upon the table before the tribune, saying, simply, "this is the lower floor." the whole company looked at the map | passage | | | |--||----||------||-----||----||--| | | | | | | | v | iv | iii | ii | i | "this is exactly, o tribune, as i had it from gratus. see, there is cell number v.," said gesius. "i see," the tribune replied. "go on now. the cell was leprous, he said." "i would like to ask you a question," remarked the keeper, modestly. the tribune assented. "had i not a right, under the circumstances, to believe the map a true one?" "what else couldst thou?" "well, it is not a true one." the chief looked up surprised. "it is not a true one," the keeper repeated. "it shows but five cells upon that floor, while there are six." "six sayest thou?" "i will show you the floor as it isor as i believe it to be." upon a page of his tablets, gesius drew the following diagram, and gave it to the tribune: | | |--||-----||-----||-----||----||--| | | | | | | | v | iv | iii | ii | i | |--||-----------------------------| | vi | "thou hast done well," said the tribune, examining the drawing, and thinking the narrative at an end. "i will have the map corrected, or, better, i will have a new one made, and given thee. come for it in the morning." so saying, he arose. "but hear me further, o tribune." "to-morrow, gesius, to-morrow." "that which i have yet to tell will not wait." the tribune good-naturedly resumed his chair. "i will hurry," said the keeper, humbly, "only let me ask another question. had i not a right to believe gratus in what he further told me as to the prisoners in cell number v.?" "yes, it was thy duty to believe there were three prisoners in the cellprisoners of stateblind and without tongues." "well," said the keeper, "that was not true either." "no!" said the tribune, with returning interest. "hear, and judge for yourself, o tribune. as required i visited all the cells, beginning with those on the first floor, and ending with those on the lower. the order that the door of number v. should not be opened had been respected; through all the eight years food and drink for three men had been passed through a hole in the wall. i went to the door yesterday, curious to see the wretches who, against all expectation, had lived so long. the locks refused the key. we pulled a little, and the door fell down, rusted from its hinges. going in, i found but one man, old, blind, tongueless, and naked. his hair dropped in stiffen'd mats below his waist. his skin was like the parchment there. he held his hands out, and the finger-nails curled and twisted like the claws of a bird. i asked him where his companions were. he shook his head in denial. thinking to find the others, we searched the cell. the floor was dry; so were the walls. if three men had been shut in there, and two of them had died, at least their bones would have endured." "wherefore thou thinkest" "i think, o tribune, there has been but one prisoner there in the eight years." the chief regarded the keeper sharply, and said, "have a care; thou art more than saying valerius lied." gesius bowed, but said, "he might have been mistaken." "no, he was right," said the tribune, warmly. "by thine own statement he was right. didst thou not say but now that for eight years food and drink had been furnished three men?" the bystanders approved the shrewdness of their chief; yet gesius did not seem discomfited. "you have but half the story, o tribune. when you have it all, you will agree with me. you know what i did with the man: that i sent him to the bath, and had him shorn and clothed, and then took him to the gate of the tower, and bade him go free. i washed my hands of him. to-day he came back, and was brought to me. by signs and tears he at last made me understand he wished to return to his cell, and i so ordered. as they were leading him off, he broke away and kissed my feet, and, by piteous dumb imploration, insisted i should go with him; and i went. the mystery of the three men stayed in my mind. i was not satisfied about it. now i am glad i yielded to his entreaty." the whole company at this point became very still. "when we were in the cell again, and the prisoner knew it, he caught my hand eagerly, and led me to a hole like that through which we were accustomed to pass him his food. though large enough to push your helmet through, it escaped me yesterday. still holding my hand, he put his face to the hole and gave a beastlike cry. a sound came faintly back. i was astonished, and drew him away, and called out, 'ho, here!' at first there was no answer. i called again, and received back these words, 'be thou praised, o lord!' yet more astonishing, o tribune, the voice was a woman's. and i asked 'who are you?' and had reply 'a woman of israel, entombed here with her daughter. help us quickly, or we die.' i told them to be of cheer, and hurried here to know your will." the tribune arose hastily. "thou wert right, gesius," he said, "and i see now. the map was a lie, and so was the tale of the three men. there have been better romans than valerius gratus." "yes," said the keeper. "i gleaned from the prisoner that he had regularly given the women of the food and drink he had received." "it is accounted for," replied the tribune; and observing the countenances of his friends, and reflecting how well it would be to have witnesses, he added, "let us rescue the women. come all." gesius was pleased. "we will have to pierce the wall," he said. "i found where a door had been, but it was filled solidly with stones and mortar." the tribune stayed to say to a clerk, "send workmen after me with tools. make haste; but hold the report, for i see it will have to be corrected." in a short time they were gone. chapter ii. the lepers. "a woman of israel, entombed here with her daughter. help us quickly, or we die." such was the reply gesius, the keeper, had from the cell which appears on his amended map as vi. the reader, when he observed the answer, knew who the unfortunates were, and, doubtless, said to himself, "at last the mother of ben-hur, and tirzah, his sister!" and so it was. the morning of their seizure, eight years before, they had been carried to the tower, where gratus proposed to put them out of the way. he had chosen the tower for the purpose as more immediately in his own keeping, and cell vi. because, first, it could be better lost than any other; and, secondly, it was infected with leprosy; for these prisoners were not merely to be put in a safe place, but in a place to die. they were, accordingly, taken down by slaves in the night-time when there were no witnesses of the deed; then, in completion of the savage task, the same slaves walled up the door, after which they were themselves separated, and sent away never to be heard of more. to save accusation, and, in the event of discovery, to leave himself such justification as might be allowed in a distinction between the infliction of a punishment and the commission of a double murder, gratus preferred sinking his victims where natural death was certain, though slow. that they might linger along, he selected a convict who had been made blind and tongueless, and sank him in the only connecting cell, there to serve them with food and drink. under no circumstances could the poor wretch tell the tale or identify either the prisoners or their doomsman. so, with a cunning partly due to messala, the roman, under colour of punishing a brood of assassins, smoothed a path to confiscation of the estate of the hurs, of which no portion ever reached the imperial coffers. as the last step in the scheme, gratus summarily removed the old keeper of the prisons, not because he knew what had been donefor he did notbut because, knowing the underground floors as he did, it would be next to impossible to keep the transaction from him. then, with masterly ingenuity, the procurator had new maps drawn for delivery to a new keeper, with the omission, as we have seen, of cell vi. the instructions given the latter, taken with the omission on the map, accomplished the designthe cell and its unhappy tenants were all alike lost. what may be thought of the life of the mother and daughter during the eight years must have relation to their culture and previous habits. conditions are pleasant or grievous to us according to our sensibilities. it is not extreme to say, if there was a sudden exit of all men from the world, heaven, as prefigured in the christian idea, would not be a heaven to the majority; on the other hand, neither would all suffer equally in the so-called tophet. cultivation has its balances. as the mind is made intelligent, the capacity of the soul for pure enjoyment is proportionally increased. well, therefore, if it be saved! if lost, however, alas that it ever had cultivation! its capacity for enjoyment in the one case is the measure of its capacity to suffer in the other. wherefore repentance must be something more than mere remorse for sins; it comprehends a change of nature befitting heaven. we repeat, to form an adequate idea of the suffering endured by the mother of ben-hur, the reader must think of her spirit and its sensibilities as much as, if not more than, of the conditions of the immurement; the question being, not what the conditions were, but how she was affected by them. and now we may be permitted to say it was in anticipation of this thought that the scene in the summer-house on the roof of the family palace was given so fully in the beginning of the second book of our story. so, too, to be helpful when the inquiry should come up, we ventured the elaborate description of the palace of the hurs. in other words, let the serene, happy, luxurious life in the princely house be recalled and contrasted with this existence in the lower dungeon of the tower of antonia; then if the reader, in his effort to realize the misery of the woman, persists in mere reference to conditions physical, he cannot go amiss: as he is a lover of his kind, tender of heart, he will be melted with much sympathy. but will he go further; will he more than sympathize with her; will he share her agony of mind and spirit; will he at least try to measure itlet him recall her as she discoursed to her son of god, and nations, and heroes; one moment a philosopher, the next a teacher, and all the time a mother. would you hurt a man keenest, strike at his self-love; would you hurt a woman worst, aim at her affections. with quickened remembrance of these unfortunatesremembrance of them as they werelet us go down and see them as they are. the cell vi. was in form as gesius drew it on his map. of its dimensions but little idea can be had; enough that it was a roomy, roughened interior, with ledged and broken walls and floors. in the beginning, the site of the macedonian castle was separated from the site of the temple by a narrow but deep cliff somewhat in shape of a wedge. the workmen, wishing to hew out a series of chambers, made their entry in the north face of the cleft, and worked in, leaving a ceiling of the natural stone; delving farther, they executed the cells v., iv., iii., ii., i., with no connection with number vi. except through number v. in like manner, they constructed the passage and stairs to the floor above. the process of the work was precisely that resorted to in carving out the tombs of the kings, yet to be seen a short distance north of jerusalem; only when the cutting was done, cell vi. was enclosed on its outer side by a wall of prodigious stones, in which, for ventilation, narrow apertures were left bevelled like modern portholes. herod, when he took hold of the temple and tower, put a facing yet more massive upon this outer wall, and shut up all the apertures but one, which yet admitted a little vitalizing air, and a ray of light not nearly strong enough to redeem the room from darkness. such was cell vi. startle not now! the description of the blind and tongueless wretch just liberated from cell v. may be accepted to break the horror of what is coming. the two women are grouped close by the aperture; one is seated, the other is half reclining against her; there is nothing between them and the bare rock. the light, slanting upwards, strikes them with ghastly effect, and we cannot avoid seeing they are without vesture or covering. at the same time we are helped to the knowledge that love is there yet, for the two are in each other's arms. riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away, but love stays with us. love is god. where the two are thus grouped the stony floor is polished shining-smooth. who shall say how much of the eight years they have spent in that space there in front of the aperture, nursing their hope of rescue by that timid yet friendly ray of light? when the brightness came creeping in, they knew it was dawn; when it began to fade, they knew the world was hushing for the night, which could not be anywhere so long and utterly dark as with them. the world! through that crevice, as if it were broad and high as a king's gate, they went to the world in thought, and passed the weary time going up and down as spirits go, looking and asking, the one for her son, the other for her brother. on the seas they sought him, and on the islands of the seas; to-day he was in this city, to-morrow in that other; and everywhere, and at all times, he was a flitting sojourner; for, as they lived waiting for him, he lived looking for them. how often their thoughts passed each other in the endless search, his coming, theirs going! it was such sweet flattery for them to say to each other, "while he lives, we shall not be forgotten; as long as he remembers us, there is hope!" the strength one can eke from little, who knows till he has been subjected to the trial? our recollections of them in former days enjoin us to be respectful; their sorrows clothe them with sanctity. without going too near, across the dungeon, we see they have undergone a change of appearance not to be accounted for by time or long confinement. the mother was beautiful as a woman, the daughter beautiful as a child; not even love could say so much now. their hair is long, unkempt, and strangely white; they make us shrink and shudder with an indefinable repulsion, though the effect may be from an illusory glozing of the light, glimmering dismally through the unhealthy murk; or they may be enduring the tortures of hunger and thirst, not having had to eat or drink since their servant, the convict, was taken awaythat is, since yesterday. tirzah, reclining against her mother in half-embrace, moans piteously. "be quiet, tirzah. they will come. god is good. we have been mindful of him, and forgotten not to pray at every sounding of the trumpets over in the temple. the light, you see, is still bright; the sun is standing in the south sky yet, and it is hardly more than the seventh hour. somebody will come to us. let us have faith. god is good." thus the mother. the words were simple and effective, although, eight years being now to be added to the thirteen she had attained when last we saw her, tirzah was no longer a child. "i will try and be strong, mother," she said. "your suffering must be great as mine; and i do so want to live for you and my brother! but my tongue burns, my lips scorch. i wonder where he is, and if he will ever, ever find us!" there is something in the voices that strikes us singularlyan unexpected tone, sharp, dry, metallic, unnatural. the mother draws the daughter closer to her breast, and says, "i dreamed about him last night, and saw him as plainly, tirzah, as i see you. we must believe in dreams, you know, because our fathers did. the lord spoke to them so often. in that way. i thought we were in the women's court just before the gate beautiful; there were many women with us; and he came and stood in the shade of the gate, and looked here and there, at this one and that. my heart beat strong. i knew he was looking for us, and stretched my arms to him, and ran, calling him. he heard me and saw me, but he did not know me. in a moment he was gone." "would it not be so, mother, if we were to meet him in fact? we are so changed." "it might be so; but" the mother's head droops, and her face knits as with a wrench of pain; recovering, however, she goes on"but we could make ourselves known to him." tirzah tossed her arms, and moaned again. "water, mother, water, though but a drop." the mother stares around in blank helplessness. she has named god so often, and so often promised in his name, the repetition is beginning to have a mocking effect upon herself. a shadow passes before her dimming the dim light, and she is brought down to think of death as very near, waiting to come in as her faith goes out. hardly knowing what she does, speaking aimlessly, because speak she must, she says again "patience, tirzah; they are comingthey are almost here." she thought she heard a sound over by the little trap in the partition-wall through which they held all their actual communication with the world. and she was not mistaken. a moment, and the cry of the convict rang through the cell. tirzah heard it also; and they both arose, still keeping hold of each other. "praised be the lord forever!" exclaimed the mother, with the fervour of restored faith and hope. "ho, there!" they heard next; and then, "who are you?" the voice was strange. what matter? except from tirzah, they were the first and only words the mother had heard in eight years. the revulsion was mightyfrom death to lifeand so instantly! "a woman of israel, entombed here with her daughter. help us quickly, or we die." "be of cheer. i will return." the women sobbed aloud. they were found; help was coming. from wish to wish hope flew as the twittering swallows fly. they were found; they would be released. and restoration would followrestoration to all they had losthome, society, property, son and brother! the scanty light glozed them with the glory of day, and, forgetful of pain, and thirst, and hunger, and of the menace of death, they sank upon the floor and cried, keeping fast hold of each other the while. and this time they had not long to wait. gesius, the keeper, told his tale methodically, but finished it at last. the tribune was prompt. "within there!" he shouted through the trap. "here!" said the mother, rising. directly she heard another sound in another place, as of blows on the wallblows quick, ringing, and delivered with iron tools. she did not speak, nor did tirzah, but they listened, well knowing the meaning of it allthat a way to liberty was being made for them. so men a long time buried in deep mines hear the coming of rescuers, heralded by thrust of bar and beat of pick, answer gratefully with heart-throbs, their eyes fixed upon the spot whence the sounds proceed; and they cannot look away, lest the work should cease, and they be returned to despair. the arms outside were strong, the hands skilful, the will good. each instant the blows sounded more plainly; now and then a piece fell with a crash; and liberty came nearer and nearer. presently the workmen could be heard speaking. theno happiness! through a crevice flashed a red ray of torches. into the darkness it cut incisive as diamond brilliance, beautiful as if from a spear of the morning. "it is he, mother, it is he! he has found us at last!" cried tirzah, with the quickened fancy of youth. but the mother answered meekly, "god is good!" a block fell inside, and anotherthen a great mass, and the door was open. a man grimed with mortar and stone-dust stepped in, and stopped, holding a torch over his head. two or three others followed with torches, and stood aside for the tribune to enter. respect for women is not all a conventionality, for it is the best proof of their proper nature. the tribune stopped, because they fled from himnot with fear, be it said, but shame; nor yet, o reader, from shame alone! from the obscurity of their partial hiding he heard these words, the saddest, most dreadful, most utterly despairing of the human tongue "come not near usunclean, unclean!" the men flared their torches while they stared at each other. "unclean, unclean!" came from the corner again, a slow tremulous wail, exceedingly sorrowful. with such a cry we can imagine a spirit vanishing from the gates of paradise, looking back the while. so the widow and mother performed her duty, and in the moment realized that the freedom she had prayed for and dreamed of, fruit of scarlet and gold seen afar, was but an apple of sodom in the hand. she and tirzah werelepers! possibly the reader does not know all the word means. let him be told it with reference to the law of that time, only a little modified in this. "these four are accounted as deadthe blind, the leper, the poor, and the childless." thus the talmud. that is, to be a leper was to be treated as deadto be excluded from the city as a corpse; to be spoken to by the best beloved and most loving only at a distance; to dwell with none but lepers; to be utterly unprivileged; to be denied the rites of the temple and the synagogue; to go about in rent garments and with covered mouth, except when crying, "unclean, unclean!" to find home in the wilderness or in abandoned tombs; to become a materialized spectre of hinnom and gehenna; to be at all times less a living offence to others than a breathing torment to self; afraid to die, yet without hope except in death. onceshe might not tell the day or the year, for down in the haunted hell even time was lostonce the mother felt a dry scurf in the palm of her right hand, a trifle which she tried to wash, away. it clung to the member pertinaciously; yet she thought but little of the sign till tirzah complained that she, too, was attacked in the same way. the supply of water was scant, and they denied themselves drink that they might use it as a curative. at length the whole hand was attacked; the skin cracked open, the finger-nails loosened from the flesh. there was not much pain withal, chiefly a steadily increasing discomfort. later their lips began to parch and seam. one day the mother, who was cleanly to godliness, and struggled against the impurities of the dungeon with all ingenuity, thinking the enemy was taking hold on tirzah's face, led her to the light, and, looking with the inspiration of a terrible dread, lo! the young girl's eyebrows were white as snow. oh, the anguish of that assurance! the mother sat awhile speechless, motionless, paralyzed of soul, and capable of but one thoughtleprosy, leprosy! when she began to think, mother-like, it was not of herself, but her child, and, mother-like, her natural tenderness turned to courage, and she made ready for the last sacrifice of perfect heroism. she buried her knowledge in her heart; hopeless herself, she redoubled her devotion to tirzah, and with wonderful ingenuitywonderful chiefly in its very inexhaustibilitycontinued to keep the daughter ignorant of what they were beset with, and even hopeful that it was nothing. she repeated her little games, and retold her stories, and invented new ones, and listened with ever so much pleasure to the songs she would have from tirzah, while on her wasting lips the psalms of the singing king of their race served to bring soothing of forgetfulness, and keep alive in them both the recollection of the god who would seem to have abandoned themthe world not more lightly or utterly. slowly, steadily, with horrible certainty, the disease spread, after a while bleaching their heads white, eating holes in their lips and eyelids, and covering their bodies with scales; then it fell to their throats, shrilling their voices, and to their joints, hardening the tissues and cartilegesslowly, and, as the mother well knew, past remedy, it was affecting their lungs and arteries and bones, at each advance making the sufferers more and more loathsome; and so it would continue till death, which might be years before them. another day of dread at length camethe day the mother, under the impulsion of duty, at last told tirzah the name of their ailment; and the two, in agony of despair, prayed that the end might come quickly. still, as is the force of habit, these so afflicted grew in time not merely to speak composedly of their disease; they beheld the hideous transformation of their persons as of course, and in despite clung to existence. one tie to earth remained to them; unmindful of their own loneliness, they kept up a certain spirit by talking and dreaming of ben-hur. the mother promised reunion with him to the sister, and she to the mother, not doubting, either of them, that he was equally faithful to them, and would be equally happy of the meeting. and with the spinning and respinning of this slender thread they found pleasure, and excused their not dying. in such manner as we have seen, they were solacing themselves the moment gesius called them, at the end of twelve hours' fasting and thirst. the torches flashed redly through the dungeon, and liberty was come. "god is good," the widow criednot for what had been, o reader, but for what was. in thankfulness for present mercy, nothing so becomes us as losing sight of past ills. the tribune came directly; then in the corner to which she had fled, suddenly a sense of duty smote the elder of the women, and straightway the awful warning "unclean, unclean!" ah, the pang the effort to acquit herself of that duty cost the mother! not all the selfishness of joy over the prospect could keep her blind to the consequences of release, now that it was at hand. the old happy life could never be again. if she went near the house called home, it would be to stop at the gate and cry, "unclean, unclean!" she must go about with the yearnings of love alive in her breast strong as ever, and more sensitive even, because return in kind could not be. the boy of whom she had so constantly thought, and with all sweet promises such as mothers find their purest delight in, must, at meeting her, stand afar off. if he held out his hands to her, and called "mother, mother," for very love of him she must answer, "unclean, unclean!" and this other child, before whom, in want of other covering, she was spreading her long tangled locks, bleached unnaturally whiteah! that she was she must continue, sole partner of her blasted remainder of life. yet, o reader, the brave woman accepted the lot, and took up the cry which had been its sign immemorially, and which thenceforward was to be her salutation without change"unclean, unclean!" the tribune heard it with a tremor, but kept his place. "who are you?" he asked. "two women dying of hunger and thirst. yet"the mother did not falter"come not near us, nor touch the floor or the wall. unclean, unclean!" "give me thy story, womanthy name, and when thou wert put here, and by whom, and for what." "there was once in this city of jerusalem a prince ben-hur, the friend of all generous romans, and who had caesar for his friend. i am his widow, and this one with me is his child. how may i tell you for what we were sunk here, when i do not know, unless it was because we were rich? valerius gratus can tell you who our enemy was, and when our imprisonment began. i cannot. see to what we have been reducedoh, see, and have pity!" the air was heavy with the pest and the smoke of the torches, yet the roman called one of the torch-bearers to his side, and wrote the answer nearly word for word. it was terse and comprehensive, containing at once a history, an accusation, and a prayer. no common person could have made it, and he could not but pity and believe. "thou shalt have relief, woman," he said, closing the tablets. "i will send thee food and drink." "and raiment, and purifying water, we pray you, o generous roman!" "as thou wilt," he replied. "god is good," said the widow, sobbing. "may his peace abide with you!" "and, further," he added, "i cannot see thee again. make preparation, and to-night i will have thee taken to the gate of the tower, and set free. thou knowest the law. farewell." he spoke to the men, and went out the door. very shortly some slaves came to the cell with a large gurglet of water, a basin and napkins, a platter with bread and meat, and some garments of women's wear; and, setting them down within reach of the prisoners, they ran away. about the middle of the first watch, the two were conducted to the gate, and turned into the street. so the roman quit himself of them, and in the city of their fathers they were once more free. up to the stars, twinkling merrily as of old, they looked; then they asked themselves "what next? and where to?" chapter iii. jerusalem again. about the hour gesius, the keeper, made his appearance before the tribune in the tower of antonia, a footman was climbing the eastern face of mount olivet. the road was rough and dusty, and vegetation on that side burned brown, for it was the dry season in judea. well for the traveller that he had youth and strength, not to speak of the cool flowing garments with which he was clothed. he proceeded slowly, looking often to his right and left; not with the vexed anxious expression which marks a man going forward uncertain of the way, but rather the air with which one approaches an old acquaintance after a long separationhalf of pleasure, half of inquiry; as if he were saying, "i am glad to be with you again; let me see in what you are changed." as he arose higher, he sometimes paused to look behind him over the gradually widening view terminating in the mountains of moab; but when at length he drew near the summit, he quickened his step, unmindful of fatigue, and hurried on without pause or turning of the face. on the summitto reach which he bent his steps somewhat right of the beaten pathhe came to a dead stop, arrested as if by a strong hand. then one might have seen his eyes dilate, his cheeks flush, his breath quicken, effects all of one bright sweeping glance at what lay before him. the traveller, good reader, was no other than ben-hur; the spectacle, jerusalem. not the holy city of today, but the holy city as left by herodthe holy city of the christ. beautiful yet, as seen from old olivet, what must it have been then? ben-hur betook him to a stone and sat down, and, stripping his head of the close white handkerchief which served it for covering, made the survey at leisure. the same has been done often since by a great variety of persons, under circumstances surpassingly singularby the son of vespasian, by the islamite, by the crusader, conquerors all of them; by many a pilgrim from the great new world, which waited discovery nearly fifteen hundred years after the time of our story; but of the multitude probably not one has taken that view with sensations more keenly poignant, more sadly sweet, more proudly bitter, than ben-hur. he was stirred by recollections of his countrymen, their triumphs and vicissitudes, their history the history of god. the city was of their building, at once a lasting testimony of their crimes and devotion, their weakness and genius, their religion and their irreligion. though he had seen rome to familiarity, he was gratified. the sight filled a measure of pride which would have made him drunk with vain-glory but for the thought, princely as the property was, it did not any longer belong to his countrymen; the worship in the temple was by permission of strangers; the hill where david dwelt was a marbled cheatan office in which the chosen of the lord were wrung and wrung for taxes, and scourged for very deathlessness of faith. these, however, were pleasures and griefs of patriotism common to every jew of the period; in addition, ben-hur brought with him a personal history which would not out of mind for other consideration whatever, which the spectacle served only to freshen and vivify. a country of hills changes but little; where the hills are of rock, it changes not at all. the scene ben-hur beheld is the same now, except as respects the city. the failure is in the handiwork of man alone. the sun dealt more kindly by the west side of olivet than by the east, and men were certainly more loving towards it. the vines with which it was partially dad, and the sprinkling of trees, chiefly figs and old wild olives, were comparatively green. down to the dry bed of the cedron the verdure extended, a refreshment to the vision; there olivet ceased and moriah begana wall of bluff boldness, white as snow, founded by solomon, completed by herod. up, up the wall the eye climbed course by course of the ponderous rocks composing itup to solomon's porch, which was as the pedestal of the monument, the hill being the plinth. lingering there a moment, the eye resumed its climbing, going next to the gentiles' court, then to the israelites' court, then to the women's court, then to the court of the priests, each a pillared tier of white marble, one above the other in terraced retrocession; over them all a crown of crowns infinitely sacred, infinitely beautiful, majestic in proportions, effulgent with beaten goldlo! the tent, the tabernacle, the holy of holies. the ark was not there, but jehovah wasin the faith of every child of israel he was there a personal presence. as a temple, as a monument, there was nowhere anything of man's building to approach that superlative apparition. now, not a stone of it remains above another. who shall rebuild that building? when shall the rebuilding be begun? so asks every pilgrim who has stood where ben-hur washe asks, knowing the answer is in the bosom of god, whose secrets are not least marvellous in their well-keeping. and then the third question, what of him who foretold the ruin which has so certainly befallen? god? or man of god? orenough that the question is for us to answer. and still ben-hur's eyes climbed on and upup over the roof of the temple, to the hill of zion, consecrated to sacred memories, inseparable from the anointed kings. he knew the cheesemonger's valley dipped deep down between moriah and zion; that it was spanned by the xystus; that there were gardens and palaces in its depths; but over them all his thoughts soared with his vision to the great grouping on the royal hillthe house of caiaphas, the central synagogue, the roman praetorium, hippicus the eternal, and the sad but mighty cenotaphs phasaelus and mariamneall relieved against gareb, purpling, in the distance. and when midst them he singled out the palace of herod, what could he but think of the king who was coming, to whom he was himself devoted, whose path he had undertaken to smooth, whose empty hands he dreamed of filling? and forward ran his fancy to the day the new king should come to claim his own and take possession of itof moriah and its temple; of zion and its towers and palaces; of antonia, frowning darkly there just to the right of the temple; of the new unwalled city of bezetha; of the millions of israel to assemble with palm-branches and banners, to sing rejoicing because the lord had conquered and given them the world. men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. they should know better. all results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. dreaming is the relief of labour, the wine that sustains us in act. we learn to love labour, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy' living is dreaming. only in the grave are there no dreams. let no one smile at ben-hur for doing that which he himself would have done at that time and place under the same circumstances. the sun stooped low in its course. awhile the flaring disc seemed to perch itself on the far summit of the mountains in the west, brazening all the sky above the city, and rimming the walls and towers with the brightness of gold. then it disappeared as with a plunge. the quiet turned ben-hur's thought homeward. there was a point in the sky a little north of the peerless front of the holy of holies upon which he fixed his gaze: under it, straight as a lead-line would have dropped, lay his father's house, if yet the house endured. the mellowing influences of the evening mellowed his feelings, and, putting his ambitions aside, he thought of the duty that was bringing him to jerusalem. out in the desert while with ilderim, looking for strong places and acquainting himself with it generally, as a soldier studies a country in which he has projected a campaign, a messenger came one evening with the news that gratus was removed, and pontius pilate sent to take his place. messala was disabled and believed him dead; gratus was powerless and gone; why should ben-hur longer defer the search for his mother and sister? there was nothing to fear now. if he could not himself see into the prisons of judea, he could examine them with the eyes of others. if the lost were found, pilate could have no motive in holding them in custodynone, at least, which could not be overcome by purchase. if found, he would carry them to a place of safety, and then, in calmer mind, his conscience at rest, this one first duty done, he could give himself more entirely to the king who was coming. he resolved at once. that night he counselled with ilderim, and obtained his assent. three arabs came with him to jericho, where he left them and the horses, and proceeded alone and on foot. malluch was to meet him in jerusalem. ben-hur's scheme, be it observed, was as yet a generality. in view of the future, it was advisable to keep himself in hiding from the authorities, particularly the romans. malluch was shrewd and trusty: the very man to charge with the conduct of the investigation. where to begin was the first point. he had no clear idea about it. his wish was to commence with the tower of antonia. tradition not of long standing planted the gloomy pile over a labyrinth of prison-cells, which, more even than the strong garrison, kept it a terror to the jewish fancy. a burial, such as his people had been subjected to, might be possible there. besides, in such a strait, the natural inclination is to start search at the place where the loss occurred and he could not forget that his last sight of the loved ones was as the guard pushed them along the street in the direction to the tower. if they were not there now, but had been, some record of the fact must remain, a clue which had only to be followed faithfully to the end. under this inclination, moreover, there was a hope which he could not forgo. from simonides, he knew amrah, the egyptian nurse, was living. it will be remembered, doubtless, that the faithful creature, the morning the calamity overtook the hurs, broke from the guard and ran back into the palace, where, along with other chattels, she had been sealed up. during the years following, simonides kept her supplied; so she was there now, sole occupant of the great house, which, with all his offers, gratus had not been able to sell. the story of its rightful owners sufficed to secure the property from strangers, whether purchasers or mere occupants. people going to and fro passed it with whispers. its reputation was that of a haunted house, derived probably from the infrequent glimpses of poor old amrah, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in a latticed window. certainly no more constant spirit ever abided than she; nor was there ever a tenement so shunned and fitted for ghostly habitation. now, if he could get to her, ben-hur fancied she could help him to knowledge which, though faint, might yet be serviceable. anyhow, sight of her in that place, so endeared by recollection, would be to him a pleasure next to finding the objects of his solicitude. so, first of all things, he would go to the old house, and look for amrah. thus resolved, he arose shortly after the going-down of the sun, and began descent of the mount by the road which, from the summit, bends a little north of east. down nearly at the foot, close by the bed of the cedron, he came to the intersection with the road leading south to the village of siloam and the pool of that name. there he fell in with a herdsman driving some sheep to market. he spoke to the man, and joined him, and in his company passed by gethsemane on into the city through the fish gate. chapter iv. ben-hur at his father's gate. it was dark when, parting with the drover inside the gate, ben-hur turned into a narrow lane leading to the south. a few of the people whom he met saluted him. the bouldering of the pavement was rough. the houses on both sides were low, dark, and cheerless; the doors all closed: from the roofs, occasionally, he heard women crooning to children. the loneliness of his situation, the night, the uncertainty cloaking the object of his coming, all affected him cheerlessly. with feelings sinking lower and lower, he came directly to the deep reservoir now known as the pool of bethesda, in which the water reflected the overpending sky. looking up, he beheld the northern wall of the tower of antonia, a black frowning heap reared into the dim steel-grey sky. he halted as if challenged by a threatening sentinel. the tower stood up so high, and seemed so vast, resting apparently upon foundations so sure, that he was constrained to acknowledge its strength. if his mother were there in living burial, what could he do for her? by the strong hand, nothing. an army might beat the stony face with ballista and ram, and be laughed at. against him alone, the gigantic south-east turret looked down in the self-containment of a hill. and he thought, cunning is so easily baffled; and god, always the last resort of the helplessgod is sometimes so slow to act! in doubt and misgiving, he turned into the street in front of the tower, and followed it slowly on the west. over in bezetha he knew there was a khan, where it was his intention to seek lodgings while in the city; but just now he could not resist the impulse to go home. his heart drew him that way. the old formal salutation which he received from the few people who passed him had never sounded so pleasantly. presently, all the eastern sky began to silver and shine, and objects before invisible in the westchiefly the tall towers on mount zionemerged as from a shadowy depth, and put on spectral distinctness, floating, as it were, above the yawning blackness of the valley below, very castles in the air. he came, at length, to his father's house. of those who read this page, some there will be to divine his feelings without prompting. they are such as had happy homes in their youth, no matter how far that may have been back in timehomes which are now the starting-points of all recollection; paradises from which they went forth in tears, and which they would now return to, if they could, as little children; places of laughter and singing, and associations dearer than any or all the triumphs of after-life. at the gate on the north side of the old house ben-hur stopped. in the corners the wax used in the sealing-up was still plainly seen, and across the valves was the board with the inscription "this is the property of. the emperor." nobody had gone in or out of the gate since the dreadful day of the separation. should he knock as of old? it was useless, he knew; yet he could not resist the temptation. amrah might hear, and look out of one of the windows on that side. taking a stone, he mounted the broad stone step, and tapped three times. a dull echo replied. he tried again, louder than before; and again, pausing each time to listen. the silence was mocking. retiring into the street, he watched the windows; but they, too, were lifeless. the parapet on the roof was defined sharply against the brightening sky; nothing could have stirred upon it unseen by him, and nothing did stir. from the north side he passed to the west, where there were four windows which he watched long and anxiously, but with little effect. at times his heart swelled with impotent wishes; at others, he trembled at the deceptions of his own fancy. amrah made no signnot even a ghost stirred. silently, then, he stole round to the south. there, too, the gate was sealed and inscribed. the mellow splendour of the august moon, pouring over the crest of olivet, since termed the mount of offence, brought the lettering boldly out; and he read, and was filled with rage. all he could do was to wrench the board from its nailing, and hurl it into the ditch. then he sat upon the step, and prayed for the new king, and that his coming might be hastened. as his blood cooled, insensibly he yielded to the fatigue of long travel in the summer heat, and sank down lower, and, at last, slept. about that time two women came down the street from the direction of the tower of antonia, approaching the palace of the hurs. they advanced stealthily, with timid steps, pausing often to listen. at the corner of the rugged pile, one said to the other, in a low voice "this is it, tirzah!" and tirzah, after a look, caught her mother's hand, and leaned upon her heavily, sobbing, but silent. "let us go on, my child, because"the mother hesitated and trembled; then, with an effort to be calm, continued"because when morning comes they will put us out of the gate of the city toreturn no more." tirzah sank almost to the stones. "ah, yes!" she said, between sobs; "i forgot. i had the feeling of going home. but we are lepers, and have no homes; we belong to the dead!" the mother stooped and raised her tenderly, saying, "we have nothing to fear. let us go on." indeed, lifting their empty hands, they could have run upon a legion and put it to flight. and, creeping in close to the rough wall, they glided on, like two ghosts, till they came to the gate, before which they also paused. seeing the board, they stepped upon the stone in the scarce cold tracks of ben-hur, and read the inscription"this is the property of the emperor." then the mother clasped her hands, and, with upraised eyes, moaned in unutterable anguish. "what now, mother? you scare me!" and the answer was, presently, "oh, tirzah, the poor are dead! he is dead!" "who, mother?" "your brother! they took everything from himeverythingeven this house!" "poor!" said tirzah, vacantly. "he will never be able to help us." "and then, mother?" "to-morrow, to-morrow, my child, we must find a seat by the wayside, and beg alms as the lepers do; beg, or" tirzah leaned upon her again, and said, whispering, "let uslet us die!" "no!" the mother said, firmly. "the lord has appointed our times, and we are believers in the lord. we will wait on him even in this. come away!" she caught tirzah's hand as, she spoke, and hastened to the west corner of the house, keeping close to the wall. no one being in sight there, they kept on to the next corner, and shrank from the moonlight, which lay exceedingly bright over the whole south front, and along a part of the street. the mother's will was strong. casting one look back and up to the windows on the west side, she stepped out into the light, drawing tirzah after her; and the extent of their affliction was then to be seenon their lips and cheeks, in their bleared eyes, in their cracked hands; especially in the long, snaky locks, stiff with loathsome ichor, and, like their eyebrows, ghastly white. nor was it possible to have told which was mother which daughter; both alike seemed witch-like old. "hist!" said the mother. "there is someone lying upon the stepa man. let us go round him." they crossed to the opposite side of the street quickly, and, in the shade there, moved on till before the gate, where they stopped. "he is asleep, tirzah!" the man was very still. the man was very still. "stay here, and i will try the gate." so saying, the mother stole noiselessly across, and ventured to touch the wicket; she never knew if it yielded, for that moment the man sighed, and, turning restlessly, shifted the handkerchief on his head in such a manner that the face was left upturned and fair in the broad moonlight. she looked down at it and started; then looked again, stooping a little, and arose and clasped her hands and raised her eyes to heaven in mute appeal. an instant so, and she ran back to tirzah. "as the lord liveth, the man is my sonthy brother!" she said, in an awe-inspiring whisper. "my brother?judah?" the mother caught her hand eagerly. "come!" she said, in the same enforced whisper, "let us look at him togetheronce moreonly oncethen help thou thy servants, lord!" they crossed the street hand in hand, ghostly-quick, ghostly-still. when their shadows fell upon him, they stopped. one of his hands was lying out upon the step palm up. tirzah fell upon her knees, and would have kissed it; but the mother drew her back. "not for thy life; not for thy life! unclean, unclean!" she whispered. tirzah shrank from him, as if he were the leprous one. ben-hur was handsome as the manly are. his cheeks and forehead were swarthy from exposure to the desert sun and air; yet under the light moustache the lips were red, and the teeth shone white, and the soft beard did not hide the full roundness of chin and throat. how beautiful he appeared to the mother's eyes! how mightily she yearned to put her arms about him, and take his head upon her bosom and kiss him, as had been her wont in his happy childhood! where got she the strength to resist the impulse? from her love, o reader!her mother-love, which, if thou wilt observe well, hath this unlikeness to any other love: tender to the object, it can be infinitely tyrannical to itself, and thence all its power of self-sacrifice. not for restoration to health and fortune, not for any blessing of life, not for life itself, would she have left her leprous kiss upon his cheek! yet touch him she must; in that instant of finding him she must renounce him for ever! how bitter, bitter hard it was, let some other mother say! she knelt down, and, crawling to his feet, touched the sole of one of his sandals with her lips, yellow though it was with the dust of the streetand touched it again and again; and her very soul was in the kisses. he stirred, and tossed his hand. they moved back, but heard him mutter in his dream "mother! amrah! where" he fell off into the deep sleep. tirzah stirred wistfully. the mother put her face in the dust, struggling to suppress a sob so deep and strong it seemed her heart was bursting. almost she wished he might waken. he had asked for her; she was not forgotten; in his sleep he was thinking of her. was it not enough? presently the mother beckoned to tirzah, and they arose, and taking one more look, as if to print his image past fading, hand in hand they recrossed the street. back in the shade of the wall there, they retired and knelt, looking at him, waiting for him to wakewaiting some revelation, they knew not what. nobody has yet given us a measure for the patience of a love like theirs. by-and-by, the sleep being yet upon him, another woman appeared at the corner of the palace. the two in the shade saw her plainly in the light; a small figure, much-bent, dark-skinned, grey-haired, dressed neatly in servant's garb, and carrying a basket full of vegetables. at sight of the man upon the step the new-comer stopped; then, as if decided, she walked onvery lightly as she drew near the sleeper. passing round him, she went to the gate, slid the wicket latch easily to one side, and put her hand in the opening. one of the broad boards in the left valve swung ajar without noise. she put the basket through, and was about to follow, when, yielding to curiosity, she lingered to have one look at the stranger whose face was below her in open view. the spectators across the street heard a low exclamation, and saw the woman rub her eyes as if to renew their power, bend closer down, clasp her hands, gaze wildly around, look at the sleeper, stoop and raise the outlying hand, and kiss it fondlythat which they wished so mightily to do, but dared not. awakened by the action, ben-hur instinctively withdrew the hand; as he did so, his eyes met the woman's. "amrah! o amrah, is it thou?" he said. the good heart made no answer in words, but fell upon his neck, crying for joy. gently he put her arms away, and lifting the dark face wet with tears, kissed it, his joy only a little less than hers. then those across the way heard him say "mothertirzaho amrah, tell me of them! speak, speak, i pray thee!" amrah only cried afresh. "thou hast seen them, amrah. thou knowest where they are; tell me they are at home." tirzah moved, but the mother, divining her purpose, caught her and whispered, "do not gonot for life. unclean, unclean!" her love was in a tyrannical mood. though both their hearts broke, he should not become what they were; and she conquered. meantime amrah, so entreated, only wept the more. "wert thou going in?" he asked, presently, seeing the board swung back. "come, then. i will go with thee." he arose as he spoke. "the romansbe the curse of the lord upon them!the romans lied. the house is mine. rise, amrah, and let us go in." a moment and they were gone, leaving the two in the shade to behold the gate staring blankly at themthe gate which they might not ever enter more. they nestled together in the dust. they had done their duty. their love was proven. next morning they were found, and driven out the city with stones. "begone! ye are of the dead; go to the dead!" with the doom ringing in their ears, they went forth. chapter v. the tomb above the king's garden. nowadays travellers in the holy land looking for the famous place with the beautiful name, the king's garden, descend the bed of the cedron or the curve of gihon and hinnom as far as the old well en-rogel, take a drink of the sweet living water, and stop, having reached the limit of the interesting in that direction. they look at the great stones with which the well is curbed, ask its depth, smile at the primitive mode of drawing the purling treasure, and waste some pity on the ragged wretch who presides over it; then, facing about, they are enraptured with the mounts moriah and zion, both of which slope towards them from the north, one terminating in ophel, the other in what used to be the site of the city of david. in the background, up far in the sky, the garniture of the sacred places is visible: here the haram, with its graceful dome; yonder the stalwart remains of hippicus defiant even in ruins. when that view has been enjoyed, and is sufficiently impressed upon the memory, the travellers glance at the mount of offence standing in rugged stateliness at their right hand, arid then at the hill of evil counsel over on the left, in which, if they be well up in scriptural history and in the traditions rabbinical and monkish, they will find a certain interest not to be overcome by superstitious horror. it were long to tell all the points of interest grouped round that hill; for the present purpose, enough that its feet are planted in the veritable orthodox hell of the modernsthe hell of brimstone and firein the old nomenclature gehenna; and that now, as in the days of christ, its bluff face opposite the city on the south and south-east is seamed and pitted with tombs which have been immemorially the dwelling-places of lepers, not singly, but collectively. there they set up their government and established their society; there they founded a city and dwelt by themselves, avoided as the accursed of god. the second morning after the incidents of the preceding chapter, amrah drew near the well en-rogel, and seated herself upon a stone. one familiar with jerusalem, looking at her, would have said she was the favourite servant of some well-to-do family. she brought with her a water-jar and a basket, the contents of the latter covered with a snow-white napkin. placing them on the ground at her side, she loosened the shawl which fell from her head, knit her fingers together in her lap, and gazed demurely up to where the hill drops steeply down into the aceldama and the potter's field. it was very early, and she was the first to arrive at the well. soon, however, a man came bringing a rope and a leathern bucket. saluting the little dark-faced woman, he undid the rope, fixed it to the bucket, and waited customers. others who chose to do so might draw water for themselves; he was a professional in the business, and would fill the largest jar the stoutest woman could carry for a gerah. amrah sat still, and had nothing to say. seeing the jar, the man asked after a while if she wished it filled; she answered him civilly, "not now;" whereupon he gave her no more attention. when the dawn was fairly defined over olivet, his patrons began to arrive, and he had all he could do to attend to them. all the time she kept her seat, looking intently up at the hill. the sun made its appearance, yet she sat watching and waiting; and while she thus waits, let us see what her purpose is. her custom had been to go to market after nightfall. stealing out unobserved, she would seek the shops in the tyropoeon, or those over by the fish gate in the east, make her purchases of meat and vegetables, and return and shut herself up again. the pleasure she derived from the presence of ben-hur in the old house once more may be imagined. she had nothing to tell him of her mistress or tirzahnothing. he would have had her move to a place not so lonesome; she refused. she would have had him take his own room again, which was just as he had left it; but the danger of discovery was too great, and he wished above all things to avoid inquiry. he would come and see her often as possible. coming in the night, he would also go away in the night. she was compelled to be satisfied, and at once occupied herself contriving ways to make him happy. that he was a man now did not occur to her; nor did it enter her mind that he might have put by or lost his boyish tastes; to please him, she thought to go on her old round of services. he used to be fond of confections; she remembered the things in that line which delighted him most, and resolved to make them, and have a supply always ready when he came. could anything be happier? so next night, earlier than usual, she stole out with her basket, and went over to the fish gate market. wandering about, seeking the best honey, she chanced to hear a man telling a story. what the story was the reader can arrive at with sufficient certainty when told that the narrator was one of the men who had held torches for the commandant of the tower of antonia when, down in cell vi., the hurs were found. the particulars of the finding were all told, and she heard them, with the names of the prisoners, and the widow's account of herself. the feelings with which amrah listened to the recital were such as became the devoted creature she was. she made her purchases, and returned home in a dream. what a happiness she had in store for her boy! she had found his mother! she put the basket away, now laughing, now crying. suddenly she stopped and thought. it would kill him to be told that his mother and tirzah were lepers. he would go through the awful city over on the hill of evil counselinto each infected tomb he would go without rest, asking for them, and the disease would catch him, and their fate would be his. she wrung her hands. what should she do? like many a one before her, and many a once since, she derived inspiration, if not wisdom, from her affection, and came to a singular conclusion. the lepers, she knew, were accustomed of mornings to come down from their sepulchral abodes in the hill, and take a supply of water for the day from the well en-rogel. bringing their jars, they would set them on the ground and wait, standing afar until they were filled. to that the mistress and tirzah must come; for the law was inexorable, and admitted no distinction. a rich leper was no better than a poor one. so amrah decided not to speak to ben-hur of the story she had heard, but go alone to the well and wait. hunger and thirst would drive the unfortunates thither, and she believed she could recognize them at sight; if not, they might recognize her. meantime ben-hur came, and they talked much. to-morrow malluch would arrive; then the search should be immediately begun. he was impatient to be about it. to amuse himself he would visit the sacred places in the vicinity. the secret, we may be sure, weighed heavily on the woman, but she held her peace. when he was gone she busied herself in the preparation of things good to eat, applying her utmost skill to the work. at the approach of day, as signalled by the stars, she filled the basket, selected a jar, and took the road to en-rogel, going out by the fish gate, which was earliest open, and arriving as we have seen. shortly after sunrise, when business at the well was most pressing, and the drawer of water most hurried; when, in fact, half-a-dozen buckets were in use at the same time, everybody making haste to get away before the cool of the morning melted into the heat of the day, the tenantry of the hill began to appear and move about the doors of their tombs. somewhat later they were discernible in groups, of which not a few were children so young that they suggested the holiest relation. numbers came momentarily around the turn of the bluffwomen with jars upon their shoulders, old and very feeble men hobbling along on staffs and crutches. some leaned upon the shoulders of others; a fewthe utterly helplesslay, like heaps of rags, upon litters. even that community of superlative sorrow had its love-light to make life endurable and attractive. distance softened without entirely veiling the misery of the outcasts. from her seat by the well amrah kept watch upon the spectral groups. she scarcely moved. more than once she imagined she saw those she sought. that they were there upon the hill she had no doubt; that they must come down and near she knew; when the people at the well were all served they would come. now, quite at the base of the bluff there was a tomb which had more than once attracted amrah by its wide gaping. a stone of large dimensions stood near its mouth. the sun looked into it through the hottest hours of the day, and altogether it seemed uninhabitable by anything living, unless, perchance by some wild dogs returning from scavenger duty down in gehenna. thence, however, and greatly to her surprise, the patient egyptian beheld two women come, one half-supporting, half-leading the other. they were both white-haired; both looked old; but their garments were not rent, and they gazed about them as if the locality were new. the witness below thought she even saw them shrink terrified at the spectacle offered by the hideous assemblage of which they found themselves part. slight reasons, certainly, to make her heart beat faster, and draw her attention to them exclusively; but so they did. the two remained by the stone awhile; then they moved slowly, painfully, and with much fear towards the well, whereat several voices were raised to stop them; yet they kept on. the drawer of water picked up some pebbles, and made ready to drive them back. the company cursed them. the greater company on the hill shouted shrilly, "unclean, unclean!" "surely," thought amrah of the two, as they kept coming"surely, they are strangers to the usage of lepers." she arose, and went to meet them, taking the basket and jar. the alarm at the well immediately subsided. "what a fool," said one, laughing"what a fool to give good bread to the dead in that way!" "and to think of her coming so far!" said another. "i would at least make them meet me at the gate." amrah, with better impulse, proceeded. if she should be mistaken! her heart arose into her throat. and the farther she went the more doubtful and confused she became. four or five yards from where they stood waiting for her she stopped. that the mistress she loved! whose hand she had so often kissed in gratitude! whose image of matronly loveliness she had treasured in memory so faithfully! and that the tirzah she had nursed through babyhood! whose pains she had soothed, whose sports she had shared! that the smiling, sweet-faced, songful tirzah, the light of the great house, the promised blessing of her old age! her mistress, her darlingthey? the soul of the woman sickened at the sight. "these are old women," she said to herself. "i never saw them before. i will go back." she turned away. "amrah," said one of the lepers. the egyptian dropped the jar, and looked back, trembling. "who called me?" she asked. "amrah." the servant's wondering eyes settled upon the speaker's face. "who are you?" she cried. "we are they you are seeking." amrah fell upon her knees. "o my mistress, my mistress! as i have made your god my god, be he praised that he has led me to you!" and upon her knees the poor overwhelmed creature began moving forward. "stay, amrah! come not nearer. unclean, unclean!" the words sufficed. amrah fell upon her face, sobbing so loud the people at the well heard her. suddenly she arose upon her knees again. "o my mistress, where is tirzah!" "here i am, amrah, here! will you bring me a little water?" the habit of the servant renewed itself. putting back the coarse hair fallen over her face, amrah arose and went to the basket and uncovered it. "see," she said, "here are bread and meat." she would have spread the napkin upon the ground, but the mistress spoke again "do not so, amrah. those yonder may stone you, and refuse us drink. leave the basket with me. take up the jar and fill it, and bring it here. we will carry them to the tomb with us. for this day you will then have rendered all the service that is lawful. haste, amrah." the people under whose eyes all this had passed made way for the servant, and even helped her fill the jar, so piteous was the grief her countenance showed. "who are they?" a woman asked. amrah meekly answered, "they used to be good to me." raising the jar upon her shoulder, she hurried back. in forgetfulness she would have gone to them, but the cry "unclean, unclean! beware!" arrested her. placing the water by the basket, she stepped back, and stood off a little way. "thank you, amrah," said the mistress, taking the articles into possession. "this is very good of you." "is there nothing more i can do?" asked amrah. the mother's hand was upon the jar, and she was fevered with thirst; yet she paused, and, rising, said firmly, "yes, i know that judah has come home. i saw him at the gate the night before last, asleep on the step. i saw you wake him." amrah clasped her hands. "o my mistress! you saw it, and did not come!" "that would have been to kill him. i can never take him in my arms again. i can never kiss him more. o amrah, amrah, you love him, i know!" "yes," said the true heart, bursting into tears again, and kneeling. "i would die for him." "prove to me what you say, amrah." "i am ready." "then you shall not tell him where we are or that you have seen usonly that, amrah." "but he is looking for you. he has come from afar to find you." "he must not find us. he shall become what we are. hear, amrah. you shall serve us as you have this day. you shall bring us the little we neednot long nownot long. you shall come every morning and evening thus, andand"the voice trembled, the strong will almost broke down"and you shall tell us of him, amrah; but to him you shall say nothing of us. hear you?" "oh, it will be so hard to hear him speak of you, and see him going about looking for youto see all his love, and not tell him so much as that you are alive!" "can you tell him we are well, amrah?" the servant bowed her head in her arms. "no," the mistress continued; "wherefore be silent altogether. go now, and come this evening. we will look for you. till then, farewell." "the burden will be heavy, o my mistress, and hard to bear," said amrah, falling upon her face. "how much harder would it be to see him as we are," the mother answered as she gave the basket to tirzah. "come again this evening," she repeated, taking up the water, and starting for the tomb. amrah waited kneeling until they had disappeared; then she took the road sorrowfully home. in the evening she returned and thereafter it became her custom to serve them in the morning and evening, so that they wanted for nothing needful. the tomb, though ever so stony and desolate, was less cheerless than the cell in the tower had been. daylight gilded its door, and it was in the beautiful world. then, one can wait death with so much more faith out under the open sky. chapter vi. a trick of pilate'sthe combat. the morning of the first day of the seventh monthtishri in the hebrew, october in englishben-hur arose from his couch in the khan ill-satisfied with the whole world. little time had been lost in consultation upon the arrival of malluch. the latter began the search at the tower of antonia, and began it boldly, by a direct inquiry of the tribune commanding. he gave the officer a history of the hurs, and all the particulars of the accident to gratus, describing the affair as wholly without criminality. the object of the quest now, he said, was if any of the unhappy family were discovered alive to carry a petition to the feet of caesar, praying restitution of the estate and return to their civil rights. such a petition, he had no doubt, would result in an investigation by the imperial order, a proceeding of which the friends of the family had no fear. in reply the tribune stated circumstantially the discovery of the women in the tower, and permitted a reading of the memorandum he had taken of their account of themselves; when leave to copy it was prayed, he even permitted that. malluch thereupon hurried to ben-hur. it were useless to attempt description of the effect the terrible story had upon the young man. the pain was not relieved by tears or passionate outcries! it was too deep for any expression. he sat still a long time, with pallid face and labouring heart. now and then, as if to show the thoughts which were most poignant, he muttered "lepers, lepers! theymy mother and tirzahthey lepers! how long, how long, o lord!" one moment he was torn by a virtuous rage of sorrow, next by a longing for vengeance, which, it must be admitted, was scarcely less virtuous. at length he arose. "i must look for them. they may be dying." "where will you look?" asked malluch. "there is but one place for them to go." malluch interposed, and finally prevailed so far as to have the management of the further attempt intrusted to him. together they went to the gate over on the side opposite the hill of evil counsel, immemorially the lepers' begging-ground. there they stayed all day, giving alms, asking for the two women, and offering rich rewards for their discovery. so they did in repetition day after day through the remainder of the fifth month, and all the sixth. there was diligent scouring of the dread city on the hill by lepers to whom the rewards offered were mighty incentives, for they were only dead in law. over and over again the gaping tomb down by the well was invaded, and its tenants subjected to inquiry; but they kept their secret fast. the result was failure. and now, the morning of the first day of the seventh month, the extent of the additional information gained was that not long before two leprous women had been stoned from the fish gate by the authorities. a little pressing of the clue, together with some shrewd comparison of dates, led to the sad assurance that the sufferers were the hurs, and left the old questions darker than ever. where were they? and what had become of them? "it was not enough that my people should be made lepers," said the son, over and over again, with what intensity of bitterness the reader may imagine; "that was not enough. oh no! they must be stoned from their native city! my mother is dead! she has wandered to the wilderness! she is dead! tirzah is dead! i alone am left. and for what? how long, o god, thou lord god of my fathers, how long shall this rome endure?" angry, hopeless, vengeful, he entered the court of the khan, and found it crowded with people come in during the night. while he ate his breakfast, he listened to some of them. to one party he was specially attracted. they were mostly young, stout, active, hardy men, in manner and speech provincial. in their look, the certain indefinable air, the pose of the head, glance of the eye, there was a spirit which did not, as a rule, belong to the outward seeming of the lower orders of jerusalem; the spirit thought by some to be a peculiarity of life in mountainous districts, but which may be more surely traced to a life of healthful freedom. in a short time he ascertained they were galileans, in the city for various purposes, but chiefly to take part in the feast of trumpets, set for that day. they became to him at once objects of interest, as hailing from the region in which he hoped to find readiest support in the work he was shortly to set about. while observing them, his mind running ahead in thought of achievements possible to a legion of such spirits disciplined after the severe roman style, a man came into the court, his face much flushed, his eyes bright with excitement. "why are you here?" he said to the galileans. "the rabbis and elders are going from the temple to see pilate. come, make haste, and let us go with them. they surrounded him in a moment. "to see pilate! for what?" "they have discovered a conspiracy. pilate's new aqueduct is to be paid for with money of the temple." "what, with the sacred treasure?" they repeated the question to each other with flashing eyes. "it is corbanmoney of god. let him touch a shekel of it if he dare!" "come," cried the messenger. "the procession is by this time across the bridge. the whole city is pouring after. we may be needed. make haste!" as if the thought and the act were one, there was quick putting-away of useless garments, and the party stood forth bareheaded, and in the short sleeveless under-tunics they were used to wearing as reapers in the field and boatmen on the lakethe garb in which they climbed the hills following the herds, and plucked the ripened vintage, careless of the sun. lingering only to tighten their girdles, they said, "we are ready." then ben-hur spoke to them. "men of galilee," he said, "i am a son of judah. will you take me in your company?" "we may have to fight," they replied. "oh, then, i will not be first to run away!" they took the retort in good-humour, and the messenger said "you seem stout enough. come along." ben-hur put off his outer garments. "you think there may be fighting?" he asked, quietly, as he tightened his girdle. "yes." "with whom?" "the guard." "legionaries?" "whom else can a roman trust?" "what have you to fight with?" they looked at him silently. "well," he continued, "we will have to do the best we can; but had we not better choose a leader? the legionaries always have one, and so are able to act with one mind." the galileans stared more curiously, as if the idea were new to them. "let us at least agree to stay together," he said. "now i am ready, if you are." "yes, let us go." the khan, it should not be forgotten, was in bezetha, the new town; and to get to the praetorium, as the romans resonantly styled the palace of herod on mount zion, the party had to cross the lowlands north and west of the temple. by streetsif they may be so calledtrending north and south, with intersections hardly up to the dignity of alleys, they passed rapidly round the akra district to the tower of mariamne, from which the way was short to the grand gate of the walled heights. in going, they overtook, or were overtaken by, people like themselves stirred to wrath by news of the proposed desecration. when, at length, they reached the gate of the praetorium, the procession of elders and rabbis had passed in with a great following, leaving a greater crowd clamouring outside. a centurion kept the entrance with the guard drawn up full armed under the beautiful marble battlements. the sun struck the soldiers fervidly on helm and shield; but they kept their ranks indifferent alike to its dazzle and to the mouthings of the rabble. through the open bronze gates a current of citizens poured in, while a much lesser one poured out. "what is going on?" one of the galileans asked an outcomer. "nothing," was the reply. "the rabbis are before the door of the palace asking to see pilate. he has refused to come out. they have sent one to tell him they will not go away till he has heard them. they are waiting." "let us go in," said ben-hur, in his quiet way, seeing what his companions probably did not, that there was not only a disagreement between the suitors and the governor, but an issue joined, and a serious question as to who should have his will. inside the gate there was a row of trees in leaf, with seats under them. the people, whether going or coming, carefully avoided the shade cast gratefully upon the white, clean-swept pavement; for, strange as it may seem, a rabbinical ordinance, alleged to have been derived from the law, permitted no green thing to be grown within the walls of jerusalem. even the wise king, it was said, wanting a garden for his egyptian bride, was constrained to found it down in the meeting-place of the valleys above en-rogel. through the tree-tops shone the outer fronts of the palace. turning to the right, the party proceeded a short distance to a spacious square, on the west side of which stood the residence of the governor. an excited multitude filled the square. every face was directed towards a portico built over a broad doorway which was closed. under the portico there was another array of legionaries. the throng was so close the friends could not well have advanced if such had been their desire; they remained therefore in the rear, observers of what was going on. about the portico they could see the high turbans of the rabbis, whose impatience communicated at times to the mass behind them; a cry was frequent to the effect, "pilate, if thou be a governor, come forth, come forth!" once a man coming out pushed through the crowd, his face red with anger. "israel is of no account here," he said, in a loud voice. "on this holy ground we are no better than dogs of rome." "will he not come out, think you?" "come? has he not thrice refused?" "what will the rabbis do?" "as at caesareacamp here till he gives them ear." "he will not dare touch the treasure, will he?" asked one of the galileans. "who can say? did not a roman profane the holy of holies? is there anything sacred from romans?" an hour passed, and though pilate deigned them no answer, the rabbis and crowd remained. noon came, bringing a shower from the west, but no change in the situation, except that the multitude was larger and much noisier, and the feeling more decidedly angry. the shouting was almost continuous, come forth, come forth! the cry was sometimes with disrespectful variations. meanwhile ben-hur held his galilean friends together. he judged the pride of the roman would eventually get the better of his discretion, and that the end could not be far off. pilate was but waiting for the people to furnish him an excuse for resort to violence. and at last the end came. in the midst of the assemblage there was heard the sound of blows, succeeded instantly by yells of pain and rage, and a most furious commotion. the venerable men in front of the portico faced about aghast. the common people in the rear at first pushed forward; in the centre, the effort was to get out; and for a short time the pressure of opposing forces was terrible. a thousand voices made inquiry, raised all at once; as no one had time to answer, the surprise speedily became a panic. ben-hur kept his senses. "you cannot see," he said to one of the galileans. "no." "i will raise you up." he caught the man about the middle, and lifted him bodily. "what is it?" "i see now," said the man. "there are some armed with dubs, and they are beating the people. they are dressed like jews." "who are they?" "romans, as the lord liveth! romans in disguise. their clubs fly like flails! there, i saw a rabbi struck downan old man! they spare nobody!" ben-hur let the man down. "men of galilee," he said, "it is a trick of pilate's. now, will you do what i say, we will get even with the club-men." the galilean spirit arose. "yes, yes!" they answered. "let us go back to the trees by the gate, and we may find the planting of herod, though unlawful, has some good in it after all. come!" they ran back all of them fast as they could; and, by throwing their united weight upon the limbs, tore them from the trunks. in a brief time they, too, were armed. returning, at the corner of the square they met the crowd rushing madly for the gate. behind, the clamour continueda medley of shrieks, groans, and execrations. "to the wall!" ben-hur shouted. "to the wall!and let the herd go by!" so, clinging to the masonry at their right hand, they escaped the might of the rush, and little by little made headway until, at last, the square was reached. "keep together now, and follow me!" by this time ben-hur's leadership was perfect; and as he pushed into the seething mob his party closed after him in a body. and when the romans, clubbing the people and making merry as they struck them down, came hand to hand with the galileans, lithe of limb, eager for the fray, and equally armed, they were in turn surprised. then the shouting was close and fierce; the crash of sticks rapid and deadly; the advance furious as hate could make it. no one performed his part as well as ben-hur, whose training served him admirably; for, not merely he knew to strike and guard; his long arm, perfect action, and incomparable strength helped him, also, to success in every encounter. he was at the same time fighting-man and leader. the club he wielded was of goodly length and weighty, so had need to strike a man but once. he seemed, moreover, to have eyes for each combat of his friends, and the faculty of being at the right moment exactly where he was most needed. in his fighting cry there were inspiration for his party and alarm for his enemies. thus surprised and equally matched, the romans at first retired, but finally turned their backs and fled to the portico. the impetuous galileans would have pursued them to the steps, but ben-hur wisely restrained them. "stay, my men!" he said. "the centurion yonder is coming with the guard. they have swords and shields; we cannot fight them. we have done well; let us get back and out of the gate while we may." they obeyed him, though slowly; for they had frequently to step over their countrymen lying where they had been felled; some writhing and groaning, some praying help, others mute as the dead. but the fallen were not all jews. in that there was consolation. the centurion shouted to them as they went off; ben-hur laughed at him, and replied in his own tongue, "if we are dogs of israel, you are jackals of rome. remain here and we will come again." the galileans cheered, and, laughing, went on. outside the gate there was a multitude the like of which ben-hur had never seen, not even in the circus at antioch. the house-tops, the streets, the slope of the hill, appeared densely covered with people wailing and praying. the air was filled with their cries and imprecations. the party were permitted to pass without challenge by the outer guard. but hardly were they out before the centurion in charge at the portico appeared, and in the gateway called to ben-hur "ho, insolent! art thou a roman or a jew?" ben-hur answered, "i am a son of judah, born here. what wouldst thou with me?" "stay and fight." "singly?" "as thou wilt!" ben-hur laughed derisively. "o brave roman! worthy son of the bastard roman jove! i have no arms." "thou shalt have mine," the centurion answered. "i will borrow of the guard here." the people in hearing of the colloquy became silent; and from them the hush spread afar. but lately ben-hur had beaten a roman under the eyes of antioch and the farther east; now, could he beat another one under the eyes of jerusalem, the honour might be vastly profitable to the cause of the new king. he did not hesitate. going frankly to the centurion, he said, "i am. willing. lend me thy sword and shield." "and the helm and breastplate?" asked the roman. "keep them. they might not fit me." the arms were as frankly delivered, and directly the centurion was ready. all this time the soldiers in rank close by the gate never moved; they simply listened. as to the multitude, only when the combatants advanced to begin the fight the question sped from mouth to mouth, "who is he?" and no one knew. now the roman supremacy in arms lay in three thingssubmission to discipline, the legionary formation of battle, and a peculiar use of the short sword. in combat, they never struck, or cut; from first to last they thrustthey advanced thrusting, they retired thrusting; and generally their aim was at the foeman's face. all this was well known to ben-hur. as they were about to engage he said "i told thee i was a son of judah; but i did not tell that i am lanista-taught. defend thyself!" at the last word ben-hur closed with his antagonist. a moment, standing foot to foot, they glared at each other over the rims of their embossed shields; then the roman pushed forward and feinted an under-thrust. the jew laughed at him. a thrust at the face followed. the jew stepped lightly to the left; quick as the thrust was, the step was quicker. under the lifted arm of the foe he slid his shield, advancing it until the sword and sword-arm were both caught on its upper surface; another step, this time forward and left, and the man's whole right side was offered to the point. the centurion fell heavily on his breast, clanging the pavement, and ben-hur had won. with his foot upon his enemy's back, he raised his shield overhead after a gladiatorial custom, and saluted the imperturbable soldiers by the gate. when the people realized the victory they behaved like mad. on the houses far as the xystus, fast as the word could fly, they waved their shawls and handkerchiefs and shouted; and if he had consented, the galileans would have carried ben-hur off upon their shoulders. to a petty officer who then advanced from the gate he said, "thy comrade died like a soldier. i leave him undespoiled. only his sword and shield are mine." with that he walked away. off a little he spoke to the galileans "brethren, you have behaved well. let us now separate, lest we be pursued. meet me to-night at the khan in bethany. i have something to propose to you of great interest to israel." "who are you?" they asked him. "a son of judah," he answered, simply. a throng eager to see him surged around the party. "will you come to bethany?" he asked. "yes, we will come." "then bring with you this sword and shield, that i may know you." pushing brusquely through the increasing crowd, he speedily disappeared. at the instance of pilate, the people went up from the city and carried off their dead and wounded, and there was much mourning for them; but the grief was greatly lightened by the victory of the unknown champion, who was everywhere sought, and by every one extolled. the fainting spirit of the nation was revived by the brave deed; insomuch that in the streets and up in the temple even, amidst the solemnities of the feast, old tales of the maccabees were told again, and thousands shook their heads, whispering wisely "a little longer, only a little longer, brethren, and israel will come to her own. let there be faith in the lord, and patience." in such manner ben-hur obtained hold on galilee, and paved the way to greater services in the cause of the king who was coming. and with what result we shall see. book seventh. "and, waking, i beheld her there sea-dreaming in the moted air, a siren lithe and debonair, with wristlets woven of scarlet weeds, and oblong lucent amber beads of sea-kelp shining in her hair." -thomas bailey aldrich. chapter i. jerusalem goes out to a prophet. the meeting took place in the khan of bethany as appointed. thence ben-hur went with the galileans into their country, where his exploits up in the old market-place gave him fame and influence. before the winter was gone he raised three legions, and organized them after the roman pattern. he could have had as many more, for the martial spirit of that gallant people never slept. the proceeding, however, required careful guarding as against both rome and herod antipas. contenting himself for the present with the three, he strove to train and educate them for systematic action. for that purpose he carried the officers over into the lava-beds of trachonitis, and taught them the use of arms, particularly the javelin and sword, and the manoeuvring peculiar to the legionary formation; after which he sent them home as teachers. and soon the training became a pastime of the people. as may be thought, the task called for patience, skill, zeal, faith, and devotion on his partqualities into which the power of inspiring others in matters of difficulty is always resolvable; and never man possessed them in greater degree or used them to better effect. how he laboured! and with utter denial of self! yet withal he would have failed but for the support he had from simonides, who furnished him arms and money, and from ilderim, who kept watch and brought him supplies. and still he would have failed but for the genius of the galileans. under that name were comprehended the four tribesasher, zebulon, issachar, and naphthaliand the districts originally set apart to them. the jew born in sight of the temple despised these brethren of the north; but the talmud itself has said, "the galilean loves honour, and the jew money." hating rome fervidly as they loved their own country, in every revolt they were first in the field and last to leave it. one hundred and fifty thousand galilean youths perished in the final war with rome. for the great festal days they went up to jerusalem marching and camping like armies; yet they were liberal in sentiment, and even tolerant to heathenism. in herod's beautiful cities, which were roman in all things, in sepphoris and tiberias especially, they took pride, and in the building them gave loyal support. they had for fellow-citizens men from the outside world everywhere, and lived in peace with them. to the glory of the hebrew name they contributed poets like the singer of the song of songs, and prophets like hosea. upon such a peopleso quick, so proud, so brave, so devoted, so imaginativea tale like that of the coming of the king was all-powerful. that he was coming to put rome down would have been sufficient to enlist them in the scheme proposed by ben-hur; but when, besides, they were assured he was to rule the world, more mighty than caesar, more magnificent than solomon, and that the rule was to last forever, the appeal was irresistible, and they vowed themselves to the cause, body and soul. they asked ben-hur his authority for the sayings, and he quoted the prophets, and told them of balthasar in waiting over in antioch; and they were satisfied, for it was the old much-loved legend of the messiah, familiar to them almost as the name of the lord; the long-cherished dream with a time fixed for its realization. the king was not merely coming now; he was at hand. so with ben-hur the winter months rolled by, and spring came, with gladdening showers blown over from the summering sea in the west; and by that time so earnestly and successfully had he toiled that he could say to himself and his followers, "let the good king come. he has only to tell us where he will have his throne set up. we have the sword-hands to keep it for him." and in all his dealings with the many men they knew him only as a son of judah, and by that name. * * * * * one evening, over in trachonitis, ben-hur was sitting with some of his galileans at the mouth of the cave in which he quartered, when an arab courier rode to him, and delivered a letter. breaking the package, he read "jerusalem, nisan iv. "a prophet has appeared who men say is elias. he has been in the wilderness for years, and to our eyes he is a prophet; and such also is his speech, the burden of which is of one much greater than himself, who, he says, is to come presently, and for whom he is now waiting on the eastern shore of the river jordan. i have been to see and hear him, and the one he is waiting for is certainly the king you are awaiting. come and judge for yourself. "all jerusalem is going out to the prophet, and with many people else the shore on which he abides is like mount olivet in the last days of the passover. "malluch." ben-hur's face flushed with joy. "by this word, o my friends," he said"by this word, our waiting is at end. the herald of the king has appeared and announced him." upon hearing the letter read, they also rejoiced at the promise it held out. "get ready now," he added, "and in the morning set your faces homeward; when arrived there, send word to those under you, and bid them be ready to assemble as i may direct. for myself and you, i will go see if the king be indeed at hand, and send you report. let us, in the meantime, live in the pleasure of the promise." going into the cave, he addressed a letter to ilderim, and another to simonides, giving notice of the news received, and of his purpose to go up immediately to jerusalem. the letters he despatched by swift messengers. when night fell, and the stars of direction came out, he mounted, and with an arab guide set out for the jordan, intending to strike the track of the caravans between rabbath-ammon and damascus. the guide was sure, and aldebaran swift; so by midnight the two were out of the lava fastness speeding southward. chapter ii. nooning by the pooliras. it was ben-hur's purpose to turn aside at the break of day, and find a safe place in which to rest; but the dawn overtook him while out in the desert, and he kept on, the guide promising to bring him afterwhile to a vale shut in by great rocks, where there were a spring, some mulberry-trees, and herbage in plenty for the horses. as he rode, thinking of the wondrous events so soon to happen, and of the changes they were to bring about in the affairs of men and nations, the guide, ever on the alert, called attention to the appearance of strangers behind them. everywhere around the desert stretched away in waves of sand, slowly yellowing in the growing light, and without any green thing visible. over on the left, but still far off, a range of low mountains extended, apparently interminable. in the vacancy of such a waste an object in motion could not long continue a mystery. "it is a camel with riders," the guide said, directly. "are there others behind?" said ben-hur. "it is alone. no, there is a man on horsebackthe driver, probably." a little later ben-hur himself could see the camel was white and unusually large, reminding him of the wonderful animal he had seen bring balthasar and iras to the fountain in the grove of daphne. there could be no other like it. thinking then of the fair egyptian, insensibly his gait became slower, and at length fell into the merest loiter, until finally he could discern a curtained houdah, and two persons seated within it. if they were balthasar and iras! should he make himself known to them? but it could not be: this was the desertand they were alone. but while he debated the question the long swinging stride of the camel brought its riders up to him. he heard the ringing of the tiny bells and beheld the rich housings which had been so attractive to the crowd at the castalian fount. he beheld also the ethiopian, always attendant upon the egyptians. the tall brute stopped close by his horse, and ben-hur, looking up, lo! iras herself under the raised curtain looking down at him, her great swimming eyes bright with astonishment and inquiry! "the blessing of the true god upon you!" said balthasar, in his tremulous voice. "and to thee and thine be the peace of the lord," ben-hur replied. "my eyes are weak with years," said balthasar; "but they approve you that son of hur whom lately i knew an honoured guest in the tent of ilderim the generous." "and thou art that balthasar, the wise egyptian, whose speech concerning certain holy things in expectation is having so much to do with the finding me in this waste place. what dost thou here?" "he is never alone who is where god isand god is everywhere," balthasar answered, gravely; "but in the sense of your asking, there is a caravan a short way behind us going to alexandria; and as it is to pass through jerusalem, i thought best to avail myself of its company as far as the holy city, whither i am journeying. this morning, however, in discontent with its slow movementslower because of a roman cohort in attendance upon itwe rose early, and ventured thus far in advance. as to robbers along the way, we are not afraid, for i have here a signet of sheik ilderim; against beasts of prey, god is our sufficient trust." ben-hur bowed and said, "the good sheik's signet is a safe-guard wherever the wilderness extends, and the lion shall be swift that overtakes this king of his kind." he patted the neck of the camel as he spoke. "yet," said iras, with a smile which was not lost upon the youth, whose eyes, it must be admitted, had several times turned to her during the interchange of speeches with the elder."yet even he would be better if his fast were broken. kings have hunger and headaches. if you be, indeed, the ben-hur of whom my father has spoken, and whom it was my pleasure to have known as well, you will be happy, i am sure, to show us some near path to living water, that with its sparkle we may grace a morning's meal in the desert." ben-hur, nothing loath, hastened to answer. "fair egyptian, i give you sympathy. can you bear suffering a little longer, we will find the spring you ask for, and i promise that its draught shall be as sweet and cooling as that of the more famous castalia. with leave, we will make haste." "i give you the blessing of the thirsty," she replied; "and offer you in return a bit of bread from the city ovens, dipped in fresh butter from the dewy meadows of damascus." "a most rare favour. let us go on." so saying, ben-hur rode forward with his guide, one of the inconveniences of travelling with camels being, that it is necessarily an interdiction of polite conversation. afterwhile the party came to a shallow wady, down which, turning to the right hand, the guide led them. the bed of the cut was somewhat soft from recent rains, and quite bold in its descent. momentarily, however, it widened; and erelong the sides became bluffs ribbed with rocks much scarred by floods rushing to lower depths ahead. finally, from a narrow passage, the travellers entered a spreading vale which was very delightful; but come upon suddenly from the yellow, unrelieved, verdureless plain, it had the effect of a freshly-discovered paradise. the water-channels winding here and there, definable by crisp white shingling, appeared like threads tangled among islands green with grasses and fringed with reeds. up from the final depths of the valley of the jordan some venturous oleanders had crept, and with their large bloom now starred the sunken place. one palm-tree arose in royal assertion. the bases of the boundary-walls were cloaked with clambering vines, and under a leaning cliff over on the left the mulberry grove had planted itself, proclaiming the spring which the party were seeking. and thither the guide conducted them, careless of whistling partridges and lesser birds of brighter hues roused whirring from the reedy coverts. the water started from a crack in the cliff which some loving hand had enlarged into an arched cavity. graven over it in bold hebraic letters was the word god. the graver had no doubt drunk there, and tarried many days, and given thanks in that durable form. from the arch the stream ran merrily over a flag spotted with bright moss, and leaped into a pool glassy clear; thence it stole away between grassy banks, nursing the trees before it vanished in the thirsty sand. a few narrow paths were noticeable about the margin of the pool; otherwise the space around was untrodden turf, at sight of which the guide was assured of rest free from intrusion by men. the horses were presently turned loose, and from the kneeling camel the ethiopian assisted balthasar and iras; whereupon the old man, turning his face to the east, crossed his hands reverently upon his breast and prayed. "bring me a cup," iras said, with some impatience. from the houdah the slave brought her a crystal goblet; then she said to ben-hur "i will be your servant at the fountain." they walked to the pool together. he would have dipped the water for her, but she refused his offer, and kneeling, held the cup to be filled by the stream itself; nor yet content, when it was cooled and overrunning, she tendered him the first draught. "no," he said, putting the graceful hand aside, and seeing only the large eyes half hidden beneath the arches of the upraised brows, "be the service mine, i pray." she persisted in having her way. "in my country, o son of hur, we have a saying, 'better a cupbearer to the fortunate than minister to a king.'" "fortunate!" he said. there were both surprise and inquiry in the tone of his voice and in his look, and she said quickly "the gods give us success as a sign by which we may know them on our side. were you not winner in the circus?" his cheeks began to flush. "that was one sign. there is another. in a combat with swords you slew a roman." the flush deepenednot so much for the triumphs themselves as the flattery there was in the thought that she had followed his career with interest. a moment, and the pleasure was succeeded by a reflection. the combat, he knew, was matter of report throughout the east; but the name of the victor had been committed to a very fewmalluch, ilderim, and simonides. could they have made a confidante of the woman? so with wonder and gratification he was confused; and seeing it, she arose and said, holding the cup over the pool "o gods of egypt! i give thanks for a hero discoveredthanks that the victim in the palace of idernee was not my king of men. and so, o holy gods, i pour and drink." part of the contents of the cup she returned to the stream, the rest she drank. when she took the crystal from her lips, she laughed at him. "o son of hur, is it a fashion of the very brave to be so easily overcome by a woman? take the cup now, and see if you cannot find a happy word in it for me!" he took the cup, and stooped to refill it. "a son of israel has no gods whom he can libate," he said, playing with the water to hide his amazement, now greater than before. what more did the egyptian know about him? had she been told of his relations with simonides? and there was the treaty with ilderimhad she knowledge of that also? he was struck with mistrust. somebody had betrayed his secrets, and they were serious. and, besides, he was going to jerusalem, just then of all the world the place where such intelligence possessed by an enemy might be most dangerous to him, his associates, and the cause. but was she an enemy? it is well for us that, while writing is slow, thought is instantaneous. when the cup was fairly cooled, he filled it and arose, saying, with indifference well affected "most fair, were i an egyptian or a greek or a roman, i would say"he raised the goblet overhead as he spoke"o ye better gods! i give thanks that there are yet left to the world, despite its wrongs and sufferings, the charm of beauty and the solace of love, and i drink to her who best represents themto iras, loveliest of the daughters of the nile!" she laid her hand softly upon his shoulder. "you have offended against the law. the gods you have drunk to are false gods. why shall i not tell the rabbis on you?" "oh!" he replied, laughing, "that is very little to tell for one who knows so much else that is really important." "i will go furtheri will go to the little jewess who makes the roses grow and the shadows flame in the house of the great merchant over in antioch. to the rabbis i will accuse you of impenitence; to her" "well, to her?" "i will repeat what you have said to me under the lifted cup, with the gods for witnesses." he was still a moment, as if waiting for the egyptian to go on. with quickened fancy he saw esther at her father's side listening to the despatches he had forwardedsometimes reading them. in her presence he had told simonides the story of the affair in the palace of idernee. she and iras were acquainted; this one was shrewd and worldly; the other was simple and affectionate, and therefore easily won. simonides could not have broken faithnor ilderimfor if not held by honour, there was no one, unless it might be himself, to whom the consequences of exposure were more serious and certain. could esther have been the egyptian's informant? he did not accuse her; yet a suspicion was sown with the thought, and suspicions, as we all know, are weeds of the mind which grow of themselves, and most rapidly when least wanted. before he could answer the allusion to the little jewess, balthasar came to the pool. "we are greatly indebted to you, son of hur," he said, in his grave manner. "this vale is very beautiful; the grass, the trees, the shade, invite us to stay and rest, and the spring here has the sparkle of diamonds in motion, and sings to me of a loving god. it is not enough to thank you for the enjoyment we find; come sit with us, and taste our bread." "suffer me first to serve you." with that ben-hur filled the goblet, and gave it to balthasar, who lifted his eyes in thanksgiving. immediately the slave brought napkins; and after laving their hands and drying them, the three seated themselves in eastern style under the tent which years before had served the wise men at the meeting in the desert. and they ate heartily of the good things taken from the camel's pack. chapter iii. the life of a soul. the tent was cosily pitched beneath a tree where the gurgle of the stream was constantly in ear. overhead the broad leaves hung motionless on their stems; the delicate reed-stalks off in the pearly haze stood up arrowy-straight; occasionally a home-returning bee shot humming athwart the shade, and a partridge, creeping from the sedge, drank, whistled to his mate, and ran away. the restfulness of the vale, the freshness of the air, the garden beauty, the sabbath stillness, seemed to have affected the spirits of the elder egyptian; his voice, gestures, and whole manner were unusually gentle; and often as he bent his eyes upon ben-hur conversing with iras, they softened with pity. "when we overtook you, son of hur," he said, at the conclusion of the repast, "it seemed your face was also turned towards jerusalem. may i ask, without offence, if you are going so far?" "i am going to the holy city." "for the great need i have to spare myself prolonged toil, i will further ask you, is there a shorter road than that by rabbath-ammon?" "a rougher route, but shorter, lies by geresa and rabbath-gilead. it is the one i design taking." "i am impatient," said balthasar. "latterly my sleep has been visited by dreamsor rather by the same dream in repetition. a voiceit is nothing morecomes and tells me, 'hastearise! he whom thou hast so long awaited is at hand.'" "you mean he that is to be king of the jews?" ben-hur asked, gazing at the egyptian in wonder. "even so." "then you have heard nothing of him?" "nothing, except the words of the voice in the dream." "here, then, are tidings to make you glad as they made me." from his gown ben-hur drew the letter received from malluch. the hand the egyptian held out trembled violently. he read aloud, and as he read his feelings increased; the limp veins in his neck swelled and throbbed. at the conclusion he raised his suffused eyes in thanksgiving and prayer. he asked no questions, yet had no doubts. "thou hast been very good to me, o god," he said. "give me, i pray thee, to see the saviour again, and worship him, and thy servant will be ready to go in peace." the words, the manner, the singular personality of the simple prayer, touched ben-hur with a sensation new and abiding. god never seemed so actual and so near by it was as if he were there bending over them or sitting at their sidea friend whose favours were to be had by the most unceremonious askinga father to whom all his children were alike in lovefather, not more of the jew than of the gentilethe universal father, who needed no intermediates, no rabbis, no priests, no teachers. the idea that such a god might send mankind a saviour instead of a king appeared to ben-hur in a light not merely new, but so plain that he could almost discern both the greater want of such a gift and its greater consistency with the nature of such a deity. so he could not resist asking "now that he has come, o balthasar, you still think he is to be a saviour, and not a king?" balthasar gave him a look thoughtful as it was tender. "how shall i understand you?" he asked, in return. "the spirit, which was the star that was my guide of old, has not appeared to me since i met you in the tent of the good sheik; that is to say, i have not seen or heard it as formerly. i believe the voice that spoke to me in my dreams was it; but other than that i have no revelation." "i will recall the difference between us," said ben-hur, with deference. "you were of opinion that he would be a king, but not as caesar is; you thought his sovereignty would be spiritual, not of the world." "oh yes," the egyptian answered; "and i am of the same opinion now. i see the divergence in our faith. you are going to meet a king of men, i a saviour of souls." he paused with the look often seen when people are struggling, with introverted effort, to disentangle a thought which is either too high for quick discernment or too subtle for simple expression. "let me try, o son of hur," he said, directly, "and help you to a clear understanding of my belief; then it may be, seeing how the spiritual kingdom i expect him to set up can be more excellent in every sense than anything of mere caesarean splendour, you will better understand the reason of the interest i take in the mysterious person we are going to welcome. "i cannot tell you when the idea of a soul in every man had its origin. most likely the first parents brought it with them out of the garden in which they had their first dwelling. we all do know, however, that it has never perished entirely out of mind. by some peoples it was lost, but not by all; in some ages it dulled and faded; in others it was overwhelmed with doubts; but, in great goodness, god kept sending us at intervals mighty intellects to argue it back to faith and hope. "why should there be a soul in every man? look, o son of hurfor one moment look at the necessity of such a device. to lie down and die, and be no moreno more forevertime never was when man wished for such an end; nor has the man ever been who did not in his heart promise himself something better. the monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death; so are statues and inscriptions; so is history. the greatest of our egyptian kings had his effigy cut out of a hill of solid rock. day after day he went with a host in chariots to see the work; at last it was finished, never effigy so grand, so enduring: it looked like himthe features were his, faithful even in expression. now may we not think of him saying in that moment of pride, 'let death come; there is an after-life for me!' he had his wish. the statue is there yet. "but what is the after-life he thus secured? only a recollection by mena glory unsubstantial as moonshine on the brow of the great bust: a story in stonenothing more. meantime, what has become of the king? there is an embalmed body up in the royal tombs which once was hisan effigy not so fair to look at as the other out in the desert. but where, o son of hur, where is the king himself? is he fallen into nothingness? two thousand years have gone since he was a man alive as you and i are. was his last breath the end of him? "to say yes would be to accuse god; let us rather accept his better plan of attaining life after death for usactual life, i meanthe something more than a place in mortal memory; life with going and coming, with sensation, with knowledge, with power, and all appreciation; life eternal in term, though it may be with changes of condition. "ask you what god's plan is? the gift of a soul to each of us at birth, with this simple lawthere shall be no immortality except through the soul. in that law see the necessity of which i spoke. "let us turn from the necessity now. a word as to the pleasure there is in the thought of a soul in each of us. in the first place, it robs death of its terrors by making dying a change for the better, and burial but the planting of a seed from which there will spring a new life. in the next place, behold me as i amweak, weary, old, shrunken in body, and graceless; look at my wrinkled face, think of my failing senses, listen to my shrilled voice. ah! what happiness to me in the promise that when the tomb opens, as soon it will, to receive the worn-out husk i call myself, the now viewless doors of the universe, which is but the palace of god, will swing wide ajar to receive me, a liberated immortal soul! "i would i could tell the ecstasy there must be in that life to come! do not say i know nothing about it. this much i know, and it is enough for methe being a soul implies conditions of divine superiority. in such a being there is no dust, nor any gross thing; it must be finer than air, more impalpable than light, purer than essenceit is life in absolute purity. "what now, o son of hur? knowing so much, shall i dispute with myself or you about the unnecessariesabout the form of my soul? or where it is to abide? or whether it eats or drinks? or is winged, or wears this or that? no. it is more becoming to trust in god. the beautiful in this world is all from his hand, declaring the perfection of taste; he is the author of all form; he clothes the lily, he colours the rose, he distils the dewdrop, he makes the music of nature; in a word, he organized us for this life, and imposed its conditions; and they are such guaranty to me that, trustful as a little child, i leave to him the organization of my soul, and every arrangement for the life after death. i know he loves me." the good man stopped and drank, and the hand carrying the cup to his lips trembled; and both iras and ben-hur shared his emotion and remained silent. upon the latter a light was breaking. he was beginning to see, as never before, that there might be a spiritual kingdom of more import to men than any earthly empire; and that after all a saviour would indeed be a more godly gift than the greatest king. "i might ask you now," said balthasar, continuing, "whether this human life, so troubled and brief, is preferable to the perfect and everlasting life designed for the soul? but take the question, and think of it for yourself, formulating thus: supposing both to be equally happy, is one hour more desirable than one year? from that then advance to the final inquiry, what are threescore and ten years on earth to all eternity with god? by-and-by, son of hur, thinking in such manner, you will be filled with the meaning of the fact i present you next, to me the most amazing of all events, and in its effects the most sorrowful; it is, that the very idea of life as a soul is a light almost gone out in the world. here and there, to be sure, a philosopher may be found who will talk to you of a soul, likening it to a principle; but because philosophers take nothing upon faith, they will not go the length of admitting a soul to be a being, and on that account its purpose is compressed darkness to them. "everything animate has a mind measurable by its wants. is there to you no meaning in the singularity that power in full degree to speculate upon the future was given to man alone? by the sign as i see it, god meant to make us know ourselves created for another and a better life, such being in fact the greatest need of our nature. but, alas! into what a habit the nations have fallen! they live for the day, as if the present were the all in all, and go about saying, 'there is no to-morrow after death; or if there be, since we know nothing about it, be it a care unto itself.' so when death calls them, 'come,' they may not enter into enjoyment of the glorious after-life because of their unfitness. that is to say, the ultimate happiness of man was everlasting life in the society of god. alas, o son of hur, that i should say it! but as well yon sleeping camel constant in such society as the holiest priests this day serving the highest altars in the most renowned temples. so much men are given to this lower earthly life! so nearly have they forgotten that other which is to come! "see now, i pray you, that which is to be saved to us. "for my part, speaking with the holiness of truth, i would not give one hour of life as a soul for a thousand years of life as a man." here the egyptian seemed to become unconscious of companionship and fall away into abstraction. "this life has its problems," he said, "and there are men who spend their days trying to solve them; but what are they to the problems of the hereafter? what is there like knowing god? not a scroll of the mysteries, but the mysteries themselves would for that hour at least lie before me revealed; even the innermost and most awfulthe power which now we shrink from thought ofwhich rimmed the void with shores, and lighted the darkness, and out of nothing appointed the universe. all places would be opened. i would be filled with divine knowledge; i would see all glories, taste all delights; i would revel in being. and, if at the end of the hour, it should please god to tell me, 'i take thee into my service forever,' the furthest limit of desire would be passed; after which the attainable ambitions of this life, and its joys of whatever kind, would not be so much as the tinkling of little bells." balthasar paused as if to recover from very ecstasy of feeling; and to ben-hur it seemed the speech had been the delivery of a soul speaking for itself. "i pray pardon, son of hur," the good man continued, with a bow, the gravity of which was relieved by the tender look that followed it. "i meant to leave the life of a soul, its conditions, pleasures, superiority, to your own reflection and finding out. the joy of the thought has betrayed me into much speech. i set out to show, though ever so faintly, the reason of my faith. it grieves me that words are so weak. but help yourself to truth. consider first the excellence of the existence which was reserved for us after death, and give heed to the feelings and impulses the thought is sure to awaken in youheed them, i say, because they are your own soul astir, doing what it can to urge you in the right way. consider next that the after-life has become so obscured as to justify calling it a lost light. if you find it, rejoice, o son of hurrejoice as i do, though in beggary of words. for then, besides the great gift which is to be saved to us, you will have found the need of a saviour so infinitely greater than the need of a king; and he we are going to meet will not longer hold place in your hope a warrior with a sword or a monarch with a crown. "a practical question presents itselfhow shall we know him at sight? if you continue in your belief as to his characterthat he is to be a king as herod wasof course you will keep on until you meet a man clothed in purple and with a sceptre. on the other hand, he i look for will be one poor, humble, undistinguisheda man in appearance as other men; and the sign by which i will know him will be never so simple. he will offer to slow me and all mankind the way to the eternal life; the beautiful pure life of the soul." the company sat a moment in silence, which was broken by balthasar. "let us arise now," he said"let us arise and set forward again. what i have said has caused a return of impatience to see him who is ever in my thought; and if i seem to hurry you, o son of hurand you, my daughterbe that my excuse." at his signal the slave brought them wine in a skin bottle; and they poured and drank, and shaking the lap-cloths out, arose. while the slave restored the tent and wares to the box under the houdah, and the arab brought up the horses, the three principals laved themselves in the pool. in a little while they were retracing their steps back through the wady, intending to overtake the caravan if it had passed them by. chapter iv. ben-hur keeps watch with iras. the caravan, stretched out upon the desert, was very picturesque; in motion, however, it was like a lazy serpent. by-and-by its stubborn dragging became intolerably irksome to balthasar, patient as he was; so, at his suggestion, the party determined to go on by themselves. if the reader be young, or if he yet has a sympathetic recollection of the romanticisms of his youth, he will relish the pleasure with which ben-hur, riding near the camel of the egyptians, gave a last look at the head of the straggling column almost out of sight on the shimmering plain. to be definite as may be, and perfectly confidential, ben-hur found a certain charm in iras's presence. if she looked down upon him from her high place, he made haste to get near her; if she spoke to him, his heart beat out of its usual time. the desire to be agreeable to her was a constant impulse. objects on the way though ever so common, became interesting the moment she called attention to them; a black swallow in the air pursued by her pointing finger went off in a halo; if a bit of quartz or a flake of mica was seen to sparkle in the drab sand under kissing of the sun, at a word he turned aside and brought it to her; and if she threw it away in disappointment, far from thinking of the trouble he had been put to, he was sorry it proved so worthless, and kept a look-out for something bettera ruby, perchance a diamond. so the purple of the far mountains became intensely deep and rich if she distinguished it with an exclamation of praise; and when, now and then, the curtain of the houdah fell down, it seemed a sudden dullness had dropped from the sky, bedraggling all the landscape. thus disposed, yielding to the sweet influence, what shall save him from the dangers there are in days of the close companionship with the fair egyptian incident to the solitary journey they were entered upon? for that there is no logic in love, nor the least mathematical element, it is simply natural that she shall fashion the result who has the wielding of the influence. to quicken the conclusion, there were signs, too, that she well knew the influence she was exercising over him. from some place under hand she had since morning drawn a caul of golden coins, and adjusted it so the gleaming strings fell over her forehead and upon her cheeks, blending lustrously with the flowing of her blue-black hair. from the same safe deposit she had also produced articles of jewelryrings for finger and ear, bracelets, a necklace of pearlsalso, a shawl embroidered with threads of fine goldthe effect of all which she softened with a scarf of indian lace skilfully folded about her throat and shoulders. and so arrayed, she plied ben-hur with countless coquetries of speech and manner; showering him with smiles; laughing in flute-like tremoloand all the while following him with glances, now melting-tender, now sparkling-bright. by such play antony was weaned from his glory; yet she who wrought his ruin was really not half so beautiful as this her countrywoman. and so to them the nooning came, and the evening. the sun, at his going down behind a spur of the old bashan, left the party halted by a pool of clear water of the rains out in the abilene desert. there the tent was pitched, the supper eaten, and preparations made for the night. the second watch was ben-hur's; and he was standing spear in hand, within arm-reach of the dozing camel, looking awhile at the stars, then over the veiled land. the stillness was intense; only after long spells a warm breath of wind would sough past, but without disturbing him, for yet in thought he entertained the egyptian, recounting her charms, and sometimes debating how she came by his secrets, the uses she might make of them, and the course he should pursue with her. and through all the debate love stood off but a little waya strong temptation, the stronger of a gleam of policy behind. at the very moment he was most inclined to yield to the allurement, a hand very fair even in the moonless gloaming was laid softly upon his shoulder. the touch thrilled him; he started, turnedand she was there. "i thought you asleep," he said, presently. "sleep is for old people and little children, and i came out to look at my friends, the stars of the souththose now holding the curtains of midnight over the nile. but confess yourself surprised!" he took the hand which had fallen from his shoulder, and said, "well, was it by an enemy?" "oh no! to be an enemy is to hate, and hating is a sickness which isis will not suffer to come near me. she kissed me, you should know, on the heart when i was a child." "your speech does not sound in the least like your father's. are you not of his faith?" "i might have been"and she laughed low"i might have been had i seen what he has. i may be when i get old like him. there should be no religion for youth, only poetry and philosophy; and no poetry except such as is the inspiration of wine and mirth and love, and no philosophy that does not nod excuse for follies which cannot outlive a season. my father's god is too awful for me. i failed to find him in the grove of daphne. he was never heard of as present in the atria of rome. but, son of hur, i have a wish." "a wish! where is he who could say it no?" "i will try you." "tell it then." "it is very simple. i wish to help you." she drew closer as she spoke. he laughed, and replied, lightly, "o egypt!i came near saying dear egypt!does not the sphinx abide in your country?" "well?" "you are one of its riddles. be merciful, and give me a little clue to help me understand you. in what do i need help? and how can you help me?" she took her hand from him, and, turning to the camel, spoke to it endearingly, and patted its monstrous head as it were a thing of beauty. "o thou last and swiftest and stateliest of the herds of job! sometimes thou, too, goest stumbling, because the way is rough and stony and the burden grievous. how is it thou knowest the kind intent by a word, and always makest answer gratefully, though the help offered is from a woman? i will kiss thee, thou royal brute!"she stooped and touched its broad forehead with her lips, saying immediately, "because in thy intelligence there is no suspicion!" and ben-hur, restraining himself, said calmly, "the reproach has not failed its mark, o egypt! i seem to say thee no; may it not be because i am under seal of honour, and by my silence cover the lives and fortunes of others?" "may be!" she said, quickly. "it is so." he shrank a step, and asked, his voice sharp with amazement, "what all knowest thou?" she answered, after a laugh "why do men deny that the senses of women are sharper than theirs? your face has been under my eyes all day. i had but to look at it to see you bore some weight in mind; and to find the weight, what had i to do more than recall your debates with my father? son of hur!"she lowered her voice with singular dexterity, and, going nearer, spoke so her breath was warm upon his cheek"son of hur! he thou art going to find is to be king of the jews, is he not?" his heart beat fast and hard. "a king of the jews like herod, only greater," she continued. he looked awayinto the night, up to the stars; then his eyes met hers, and lingered there; and her breath was on his lips, so near was she. "since morning," she said, further, "we have been having visions. now if i tell you mine, will you serve me as well? what! silent still?" she pushed his hand away, and turned as if to go; but he caught her, and said eagerly, "staystay and speak!" she went back, and with her hand upon his shoulder, leaned against him; and he put his arm around her, and drew her close, very close; and in the caress was the promise she asked. "speak, and tell me thy visions, o egypt, dear egypt! a prophetnay, not the tishbite, not even the lawgivercould have refused an asking of thine. i am at thy will. be mercifulmerciful, i pray." the entreaty passed apparently unheard, for looking up and nestling in his embrace, she said, slowly, "the vision which followed me was of magnificent warwar on land and seawith clashing of arms and rush of armies, as if caesar and pompey were come again, and octavius and antony. a cloud of dust and ashes arose and covered the world, and rome was not any more; all dominion returned to the east; out of the cloud issued another race of heroes; and there were vaster satrapies and brighter crowns for giving away than were ever known. and, son of hur, while the vision was passing, and after it was gone, i kept asking myself, 'what shall he not have who served the king earliest and best?'" again ben-hur recoiled. the question was the very question which had been with him all day. presently he fancied he had the clue he wanted. "so," he said, "i have you now. the satrapies and crowns are the things to which you would help me. i see, i see! and there never was such queen as you would be, so shrewd, so beautiful, so royalnever! but, alas, dear egypt! by the vision as you show it me the prizes are all of war, and you are but a woman, though isis did kiss you on the heart. and crowns are starry gifts beyond your power of help, unless, indeed, you have a way to them more certain than that of the sword. if so, o egypt, egypt, show it me, and i will walk in it, if only for your sake." she removed his arm, and said, "spread your cloak upon the sandhere, so i can rest against the camel. i will sit, and tell you a story which came down the nile to alexandria, where i had it." he did as she said, first planting the spear in the ground near by. "and what shall i do?" he said, ruefully, when she was seated. "in alexandria is it customary for the listeners to sit or stand?" from the comfortable place against the old domestic she answered, laughing, "the audiences of story-tellers are willful, and sometimes they do as they please." without more ado he stretched himself upon the sand, and put her arm about his neck. "i am ready," he said. and directly she began how the beautiful came to the earth. "you must know, in the first place, that isis wasand, for that matter, she may yet bethe most beautiful of deities; and, osiris, her husband, though wise and powerful, was sometimes stung with jealousy of her, for only in their loves are the gods like mortals. "the palace of the divine wife was of silver, crowning the tallest mountain in the moon, and thence she passed often to the sun, in the heart of which, a source of eternal light, osiris kept his palace of gold too shining for man to look at. "one timethere are no days with the godswhile she was full pleasantly with him on the roof of the golden palace, she chanced to look, and afar, just on the line of the universe, saw indra passing with an army of simians, all borne upon the backs of flying eagles. he, the friend of living thingsso much love is indra calledwas returning from his final war with the hideous rakshakasreturning victorious; and in his suite were rama, the hero, and sita, his bride, who, next to isis herself, was the very most beautiful. and isis arose, and took off her girdle of stars, and waved it to sitato sita, mind youwaved it in glad salute. and instantly, between the marching host and the two on the golden roof, a something of night fell, and shut out the view; but it was not nightonly the frown of osiris. "it happened the subject of his speech that moment was such as none else than they could think of; and he arose, and said, majestically, 'get thee home. i will do the work myself. to make a perfectly happy being i do not need thy help. get thee gone.' "now isis had eyes large as those of the white cow which in the temple eats sweet grasses from the hands of the faithful even while they say their prayers; and her eyes were the colour of the cow's, and quite as tender. and she too arose and said, smiling as she spoke, so her look was little more than the glow of the moon in the hazy harvest-month, 'farewell, good my lord. you will call me presently, i know; for without me you cannot make the perfectly happy creature of which you were thinking, any more'and she stopped to laugh, knowing well the truth of the saying'any more, my lord, than you yourself can be perfectly happy without me.' "'we will see,' he said. "and she went her way, and took her needles and her chair, and on the roof of the silver palace sat watching and knitting. "and the will of osiris, at labour in his mighty breast, was as the sound of the mills of all the other gods grinding at once, so loud that the near stars rattled like seeds in a parched pod; and some dropped out and were lost. and while the sound kept on she waited and knit; nor lost she ever a stitch the while. "soon a spot appeared in the space over towards the sun; and it grew until it was as great as the moon, and then she knew a world was intended; but when, growing and growing, at last it cast her planet in the shade, all save the little point lighted by her presence, she knew how very angry he was; yet she knit away, assured that the end would be as she had said. and so came the earth, at first but a cold grey mass hanging listless in the hollow void. later she saw it separate into divisions; here a plain, there a mountain, yonder a sea, all as yet without a sparkle. and then, by a river-bank, something moved; and she stopped her knitting for wonder. the something arose, and lifted its hands to the sun in sign of knowledge whence it had its being. and this first man was beautiful to see. and about him were the creations we call naturethe grass, the trees, birds, beasts, even the insects and reptiles. "and for a time the man went about happy in his life: it was easy to see how happy he was. and in the lull of the sound of the labouring will isis heard a scornful laugh, and presently the words, blown across from the sun: "'thy help, indeed! behold a creature perfectly happy!' "and isis fell to knitting again, for she was patient as osiris was strong; and if he could work, she could wait; and wait she did, knowing that mere life is not enough to keep anything content. "and sure enough. not long until the divine wife could see a change in the man. he grew listless, and kept to one place prone by the river, and looked up but seldom, and then always with a moody face. interest was dying in him. and when she made sure of it, even while she was saying to herself, 'the creature is sick of his being,' there was a roar of the creative will at work again, and in a twinkling the earth, theretofore all a thing of coldest grey, flamed with colours; the mountains swam in purple, the plains bearing grass and trees turned green, the sea blue, and the clouds varied infinitely. and the man sprang up and clapped his hands, for he was cured and happy again. "and isis smiled, and knit away, saying to herself, 'it was well thought, and will do a little while; but mere beauty in a world is not enough for such a being. my lord must try again.' "with the last word, the thunder of the will at work shook the moon, and, looking, isis dropped her knitting and clapped her hands; for theretofore everything on the earth but the man bad been fixed to a given place; now all living, and much that was not living, received the gift of motion. the birds took to wing joyously; beasts great and small went about, each in its way; the trees shook their verdurous branches, nodding to the enamoured winds; the rivers ran to the seas, and the seas tossed in their beds and rolled in crested waves, and with surging and ebbing painted the shores with glistening foam; and over all the clouds floated like sailed ships unanchored. "and the man rose up happy as a child; whereat osiris was pleased, so that he shouted, ha, ha! see how well i am doing without thee!' "the good wife took up her work, and answered ever so quietly, 'it was well thought, my lordever so well thoughtand will serve awhile.' "and as before, so again. the sight of things in motion became to the man as of course. the birds in flight, the rivers running, the seas in tumult of action, ceased to amuse him, and he pined again even worse. "and isis waited, saying to herself, 'poor creature! he is more wretched than ever.' "and, as if he heard the thought, osiris stirred, and the noise of his will shook the universe; the sun in its central seat alone stood firm. and isis looked, but saw no change; then, while she was smiling, assured that her lord's last invention was sped, suddenly the creature arose, and seemed to listen; and his face brightened, and he clapped his hands for joy, for sounds were heard the first time on earthsounds dissonant, sounds harmonious. the winds murmured in the trees; the birds sang, each kind a song of its own, or chattered in speech; the rivulets running to the rivers became so many harpers with harps of silver strings all tinkling together; and the rivers running to the seas surged on in solemn accord, while the seas beat the land to a tune of thunder. there was music, music everywhere, and all the time; so the man could not but be happy. "then isis mused, thinking how well, how wondrous well, her lord was doing; but presently she shook her head: colour, motion, soundand she repeated them slowlythere was no element else of beauty except form and light, and to them the earth had been born. now, indeed, osiris was done; and if the creature should again fall off into wretchedness, her help must be asked; and her fingers flewtwo, three, five, even ten stitches she took at once. "and the man was happy a long timelonger than ever before; it seemed, indeed, he would never tire again. but isis knew better; and she waited and waited, nor minded the many laughs flung at her from the sun; she waited and waited, and at last saw signs of the end. sounds became familiar to him, and in their range, from the chirruping of the cricket under the roses to the roar of the seas and the bellow of the clouds in storm, there was not anything unusual. and he pined and sickened, and sought his place of moping by the river, and at last fell down motionless. "then isis in pity spoke. "'my lord,' she said, 'the creature is dying.' "but osiris, though seeing it all, held his peace; he could do no more. "'shall i help him?' she asked. "osiris was too proud to speak. "then isis took the last stitch in her knitting, and gathering her work in a roll of brilliance flung it offflung it so it fell close to the man. and he, hearing the sound of the fall so near by, looked up, and lo! a womanthe first womanwas stooping to help him! she reached a hand to him; he caught it and arose: and nevermore was miserable, but evermore happy." "such, o son of hur! is the genesis of the beautiful, as they tell it on the nile." she paused. "a pretty invention, and cunning," he said, directly; "but it is imperfect. what did osiris afterwards?" "oh yes," she replied. "he called the divine wife back to the sun, and they went on all pleasantly together, each helping the other." "and shall i not do as the first man?" he carried the hand resting upon his neck to his lips. "in lovein love!" he said. his head dropped softly into her lap. "you will find the king," she said, placing her other hand caressingly upon his head. "you will go on and find the king and serve him. with your sword you will earn his richest gifts; and his best soldier will be my hero." he turned his face, and saw hers close above. in all the sky there was that moment nothing so bright to him as her eyes, enshadowed though they were. presently he sat up, and put his arms about her, and kissed her passionately, saying, "o egypt, egypt! if the king has crowns in gift, one shall be mine; and i will bring it and put it here over the place my lips have marked. you shall be a queenmy queenno one more beautiful! and we will be ever, ever so happy!" "and you will tell me everything, and let me help you in all?" she said, kissing him in return. the question chilled his fervour. "is it not enough that i love you?" he asked. "perfect love means perfect faith," she replied. "but never mindyou will know me better." she took her hand from him and arose. "you are cruel," he said. moving away, she stopped by the camel, and touched its front face with her lips. "o thou noblest of thy kind!that, because there is no suspicion in thy love." an instant, and she was gone. chapter v. at bethabara. the third day of the journey the party nooned by the river jabbok, where there were a hundred or more men, mostly of peraea, resting themselves and their beasts. hardly had they dismounted, before a man came to them with a pitcher of water and a bowl, and offered them drink; as they received the attention with much courtesy, he said, looking at the camel, "i am returning from the jordan, where just now there are many people from distant parts, travelling as you are, illustrious friend; but they had none of them the equal of your servant here. a very noble animal. may i ask of what breed he is sprung?" balthasar answered, and sought his rest; but ben-hur, more curious, took up the remark. "at what place on the river are the people?" he asked. "at bethabara." "it used to be a lonesome ford," said ben-hur. "i cannot understand how it can have become of such interest." "i see," the stranger replied; "you, too, are from abroad, and have not heard the good tidings." "what tidings?" "well, a man has appeared out of the wildernessa very holy manwith his mouth full of strange words, which take hold of all who hear them. he calls himself john the nazarite, son of zacharias, and says he is the messenger sent before the messiah." even iras listened closely while the man continued "they say of this john that he has spent his life from childhood in a cave down by en-gedi, praying and living more strictly than the essenes. crowds go to hear him preach. i went to hear him with the rest." "have all these, your friends, been there?" "most of them are going; a few are coming away." "what does he preach?" "a new doctrineone never before taught in israel, as all say. he calls it repentance and baptism. the rabbis do not know what to make of him; nor do we. some have asked him if he is the christ, others if he is elias; but to them all he has the answer, 'i am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the lord!'" at this point the man was called away by his friends; as he was going, balthasar spoke. "good stranger!" he said, tremulously, "tell us if we shall find the preacher at the place you left him." "yes, at bethabara." "who should this nazarite be?" said ben-hur to iras, "if not the herald of our king?" in so short a time he had come to regard the daughter as more interested in the mysterious personage he was looking for than the aged father! nevertheless, the latter with a positive glow in his sunken eyes half arose, and said "let us make haste. i am not tired." they turned away to help the slave. there was little conversation between the three at the stopping-place for the night west of ramoth-gilead. "let us arise early, son of hur," said the old man. "the saviour may come, and we not there." "the king cannot be far behind his herald," iras whispered, as she prepared to take her place on the camel. "to-morrow we will see!" ben-hur replied, kissing her hand. next day about the third hour, out of the pass through which, skirting the base of mount gilead, they had journeyed since leaving ramoth, the party came upon the barren steppe east of the sacred river. opposite them they saw the upper limit of the old palm lands of jericho, stretching off to the hill-country of judea. ben-hur's blood ran quickly, for he knew the ford was close at hand. "content you, good balthasar," he said; "we are almost there." the driver quickened the camel's pace. soon they caught sight of booths and tents and tethered animals; and then of the river, and a multitude collected down close by the bank, and yet another multitude on the western shore. knowing that the preacher was preaching, they made greater haste; yet, as they were drawing near, suddenly there was a commotion in the mass, and it began to break up and disperse. they were too late! "let us stay here," said ben-hur to balthasar, who was wringing his hands. "the nazarite may come this way." the people were too intent upon what they had heard, and too busy in discussion, to notice the new-comers. when some hundreds were gone by, and it seemed the opportunity to so much as see the nazarite was lost to the latter, up the river not far away they beheld a person coming towards them of such singular appearance they forgot all else. outwardly the man was rude and uncouth, even savage. over a thin, gaunt visage of the hue of brown parchment, over his shoulders and down his back below the middle, in witch-like locks, fell a covering of sun-scorched hair. his eyes were burning-bright. all his right side was naked, and of the colour of his face, and quite as meagre; a shirt of the coarsest camel's haircoarse as bedouin tent-clothclothed the rest of his person to the knees, being gathered at the waist by a broad girdle of untanned leather. his feet were bare. a scrip, also of untanned leather, was fastened to the girdle. he used a knotted staff to help him forward. his movement was quick, decided, and strangely watchful. every little while he tossed the unruly hair from his eyes, and peered round as if searching for somebody. the fair egyptian surveyed the son of the desert with surprise, not to say disgust. presently, raising the curtain of the houdah, she spoke to ben-hur, who sat his horse near by. "is that the herald of thy king?" "it is the nazarite," he replied, without looking up. in truth, he was himself more than disappointed. despite his familiarity with the ascetic colonists in en-geditheir dress, their indifference to all worldly opinion, their constancy to vows which gave them over to every imaginable suffering of body, and separated them from others of their kind as absolutely as if they had not been born like themand notwithstanding he had been notified on the way to look for a nazarite whose simple description of himself was a voice from the wildernessstill ben-hur's dream of the king who was to be so great and do so much had coloured all his thought of him, so that he never doubted to find in the forerunner some sign or token of the goodliness and royalty he was announcing. gazing at the savage figure before him, the long trains of courtiers whom he had been used to see in the thermae and imperial corridors at rome arose before him, forcing a comparison. shocked, shamed, bewildered, he could only answer "it is the nazarite." with balthasar it was very different. the ways of god, he knew, were not as men would have them. he had seen the saviour a child in a manger, and was prepared by his faith for the rude and simple in connection with the divine reappearance. so he kept his seat, his hands crossed upon his breast, his lips moving in prayer. he was not expecting a king. in this time of such interest to the new-comers, and in which they were so differently moved, another man had been sitting by himself on a stone at the edge of the river, thinking yet, probably, of the sermon he had been hearing. now, however, he arose, and walked slowly up from the shore, in a course to take him across the line the nazarite was pursuing and bring him near the camel. and the twothe preacher and the strangerkept on until they came, the former within twenty yards of the animal, the latter within ten feet. then the preacher stopped, and flung the hair from his eyes, looked at the stranger, threw his hands up as a signal to all the people in sight; and they also stopped, each in the pose of a listener; and when the hush was perfect, slowly the staff in the nazarite's right hand came down pointed at the stranger. all those who before were but listeners became watchers also. at the same instant, under the same impulse, balthasar and ben-hur fixed their gaze upon the man pointed out, and both took the same impression, only in different degree. he was moving slowly towards them in a clear space a little to their front, a form slightly above the average in stature, and slender, even delicate. his action was calm and deliberate, like that habitual to men much given to serious thought upon grave subjects; and it well became his costume, which was an under-garment full-sleeved and reaching to the ankles, and an outer robe called the talith; on his left arm he carried the usual handkerchief for the head, the red fillet swinging loose down his side. except the fillet and a narrow border of blue at the lower edge of the talith his attire was of linen yellowed with dust and road-stains. possibly the exception should be extended to the tassels, which were blue and white, as prescribed by law for rabbis. his sandals were of the simplest kind. he was without scrip or girdle or staff. these points of appearance, however, the three beholders observed briefly, and rather as accessories to the head and face of the man, whichespecially the latterwere the real sources of the spell they caught in common with all who stood looking at him. the head was open to the cloudless light, except as it was draped with hair long and slightly waved, and parted in the middle, and auburn in tint, with a tendency to reddish golden where most strongly touched by the sun. under a broad, low forehead, under black well-arched brows, beamed eyes dark-blue and large, and softened to exceeding tenderness by lashes of the great length sometimes seen on children, but seldom, if ever, on men. as to the other features, it would have been difficult to decide whether they were greek or jewish. the delicacy of the nostrils and mouth was unusual to the latter type; and when it was taken into account with the gentleness of the eyes, the pallor of the complexion, the fine texture of the hair, and the softness of the beard, which fell in waves over his throat to his breast, never a soldier but would have laughed at him in encounter, never a woman who would not have confided in him at sight, never a child that would not, with quick instinct, have given him its hand and whole artless trust; nor might any one have said it was not beautiful. the features, it should be further said, were ruled by a certain expression which, as the viewer chose, might with equal correctness have been called the effect of intelligence, love, pity, or sorrow; though, in better speech, it was a blending of them alla look easy to fancy as the mark of a sinless soul doomed to the sight and understanding of the utter sinfulness of those among whom it was passing; yet withal no one could have observed the face with a thought of weakness in the man; so, at least, would not they who know that the qualities mentionedlove, sorrow, pityare the results of a consciousness of strength to bear suffering oftener than strength to do: such has been the might of martyrs and devotees and the myriads written down in saintly calendars. and such, indeed, was the air of this one. slowly he drew nearnearer the three. now ben-hur, mounted and spear in hand, was an object to claim the glance of a king; yet the eyes of the man approaching were all the time raised above himand not to iras, whose loveliness has been so often remarked, but to balthasar, the old and unserviceable. the hush was profound. presently the nazarite, still pointing with his staff, cried, in a loud voice "behold the lamb of god, which taketh away the sin of the world!" the many standing still, arrested by the action of the speaker, and listening for what might follow, were struck with awe by words so strange and past their understanding; upon balthasar they were overpowering. he was there to see once more the redeemer of men. the faith which had brought him the singular privileges of the time long gone abode yet in his heart; and if now it gave him a power of vision above that of his fellowsa power to see and know him for whom he was lookingbetter than calling the power a miracle, let it be thought of as the faculty of a soul not yet entirely released from the divine relations to which it had been formerly admitted, or as the fitting reward of a life in that age so without examples of holinessa life itself a miracle. the ideal of his faith was before him, perfect in face, form, dress, action, age; and he was in its view, and the view was recognition. ah, now if something should happen to identify the stranger beyond all doubt! and that was what did happen. exactly at the fitting moment, as if to assure the trembling egyptian, the nazarite repeated the outcry "behold the lamb of god, which taketh away the sin of the world!" balthasar fell upon his knees. for him there was no need of explanation; and as if the nazarite knew it, he turned to those more immediately about him staring in wonder, and continued "this is he of whom i said, after me cometh a man which is preferred before me; for he was before me. and i knew him not: but that he should be manifest to israel, therefore am i come baptizing with water. i saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it, abode upon him. and i knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, upon whom thou shalt see the spirit descending and remaining on him, the same is he which batizeth with the holy ghost. and i saw and bare record, that this"he paused, his staff still pointing at the stranger in the white garments, as if to give a more absolute certainty to both his words and the conclusions intended"i bare record, that this is the son of god!" "it is he, it is he!" balthasar cried, with upraised tearful eyes. next moment he sank down insensible. in this time it should be remembered, ben-hur was studying the face of the stranger, though with an interest entirely different. he was not insensible to its purity of feature, and its thoughtfulness, tenderness, humility, and holiness; but just then there was room in his mind for but one thoughtwho is this man? and what? messiah or king? never was apparition more unroyal. nay, looking at that calm, benignant countenance, the very idea of war and conquest, and lust of dominion, smote him like a profanation. he said, as if speaking to his own heart, balthasar must be right and simonides wrong. this man has not come to rebuild the throne of solomon; he has neither the nature nor the genius of herod; king he may be, but not of another and greater than rome. it should be understood now that this was not a conclusion with ben-hur, but an impression merely; and while it was forming, while yet he gazed at the wonderful countenance, his memory began to throe and struggle. "surely," he said to himself, "i have seen the man; but where and when?" that the look, so calm, so pitiful, so loving, had somewhere in a past time beamed upon him as that moment it was beaming upon balthasar became an assurance. faintly at first, at last a clear light, a burst of sunshine, the scene by the well at nazareth that time the roman guard was dragging him to the galleys returned, and all his being thrilled. those hands had helped him when he was perishing. the face was one of the pictures he had carried in mind ever since. in the effusion of feeling excited, the explanation of the preacher was lost by him, all but the last wordswords so marvellous that the world yet rings with them " -this is the son of god!" ben-hur leaped from his horse to render homage to his benefactor; but iras cried to him, "help, son of hur, help, or my father will die!" he stopped, looked back, then hurried to her assistance. she gave him a cup; and leaving the slave to bring the camel to its knees, he ran to the river for water. the stranger was gone when he came back. at last balthasar was restored to consciousness. stretching forth his hands, he asked, feebly, "where is he?" "who?" asked iras. an intense instant interest shone upon the good man's face, as if a last wish had been gratified, and he answered "hethe redeemerthe son of god, whom i have seen again." "believest thou so?" iras asked, in a low voice, of ben-hur. "the time is full of wonders; let us wait," was all he said. and next day, while the three were listening to him, the nazarite broke off in mid-speech, saying reverently, "behold the lamb of god!" looking to where he pointed, they beheld the stranger again. as ben-hur surveyed the slender figure, and holy, beautiful countenance compassionate to sadness, a new idea broke upon him. "balthasar is rightso is simonides. may not the redeemer be a king also?" and he asked one at his side, "who is the man walking yonder?" the other laughed mockingly, and replied "he is the son of a carpenter over in nazareth." book eighth. "who could resist? who in this universe? she did so breathe ambrosia, so immerse my fine existence in a golden clime. she took me like a child of suckling-time, and cradled me in roses. thus condemn'd, the current of my former life was stemm'd, and to this arbitrary queen of sense i bow'd a tranced vassal." -keats, endymion. "i am the resurrection and the life." chapter i. guests in the house of hur. estheresther! speak to the servant below that he may bring me a cup of water." "would you not rather have wine, father?" "let him bring both." this was in the summer-house upon the roof of the old palace of the hurs in jerusalem. from the parapet overlooking the courtyard esther called to a man in waiting there; at the same moment another man-servant came up the steps and saluted respectfully. "a package for the master," he said, giving her a letter enclosed in linen cloth, tied and sealed. for the satisfaction of the reader, we stop to say that it is the twenty-first day of march, nearly three years after the annunciation of the christ at bethabara. in the meanwhile, malluch, acting for ben-hur, who could not longer endure the emptiness and decay of his father's house, had bought it from pontius pilate; and, in process of repair, gates, courts, lewens, stairways, terraces, rooms, and roof had been cleansed and thoroughly restored; not only was there no reminder left of the tragic circumstances so ruinous to the family, but the refurnishment was in a style richer than before. at every point, indeed, a visitor was met by evidences of the higher tastes acquired by the young proprietor during his years of residence in the villa by misenum and in the roman capital. now it should not be inferred from this explanation that ben-hur had publicly assumed ownership of the property. in his opinion, the hour for that was not yet come. neither had he yet taken his proper name. passing the time in the labours of preparation in galilee, he waited patiently the action of the nazarene, who became daily more and more a mystery to him, and by prodigies done, often before his eyes, kept him in a state of anxious doubt both as to his character and mission. occasionally he came up to the holy city, stopping at the paternal house; always, however, as a stranger and a guest. the visits of ben-hur, it should also be observed, were for more than mere rest from labour. balthasar and iras made their home in the palace; and the charm of the daughter was still upon him with all its original freshness, while the father, though feebler in body, held him an unflagging listener to speeches of astonishing power, urging the divinity of the wandering miracle-worker of whom they were all so expectant. as to simonides and esther, they had arrived from antioch, only a few days before this their reappearancea wearisome journey to the merchant, borne, as he had been, in a palanquin swung between two camels, which, in their careening, did not always keep the same step. but now that he was come, the good man, it seemed, could not see enough of his native land. he delighted in the perch upon the roof, and spent most of his day hours there seated in an arm-chair, the duplicate of that one kept for him in the cabinet over the store-house by the orontes. in the shade of the summer-house he could drink fully of the inspiring air lying lightly upon the familiar hills; he could better watch the sun rise, run its course, and set as it, used to in the far-gone, not a habit lost; and with esther by him it was so much easier, up there close to the sky, to bring back the other esther, his love in youth, his wife, dearer growing with the passage of years. and yet he was not unmindful of business. every day a messenger brought him a despatch from sanballat, in charge of the big commerce behind; and every day a despatch left him for sanballat with directions of such minuteness of detail as to exclude all judgment save his own, and all chances except those the almighty has refused to submit to the most mindful of men. as esther started in return to the summer-house, the sunlight fell softly upon the dustless roof, showing her a woman nowsmall, graceful in form, of regular features, rosy with youth and health, bright with intelligence, beautiful with the outshining of a devoted naturea woman to be loved because loving was a habit of life irrepressible with her. she looked at the package as she turned, paused, looked at it a second time more closely than at first; and the blood rose reddening her cheeksthe seal was ben-hur's. with quickened steps she hastened on. simonides held the package a moment while he also inspected the seal. breaking it open, he gave her the roll it contained. "read," he said. his eyes were upon her as he spoke, and instantly a troubled expression fell upon his own face. "you know who it is from, i see, esther." "yesfromour master." though the manner was halting, she met his gaze with modest sincerity. slowly his chin sank into the roll of flesh puffed out under it like a cushion. "you love him, esther?" he said, quietly. "yes," she answered. "have you thought well of what you do?" "i have tried not to think of him, father, except as the master to whom i am dutifully bound. the effort has not helped me to strength." "a good girl, a good girl, even as thy mother was," he said, dropping into reverie, from which she roused him by unrolling the paper. "the lord forgive me, butbut thy love might not have been vainly given had i kept fast hold of all i had, as i might have donesuch power is there in money!" "it would have been worse for me had you done so, father; for then i had been unworthy a look from him, and without pride in you. shall i not read now?" "in a moment," he said. "let me, for your sake, my child, show you the worst. seeing it with me may make it less terrible to you. his love, esther, is all bestowed." "i know it," she said, calmly. "the egyptian has him in her net," he continued. "she has the cunning of her race, with beauty to help hermuch beauty, great cunning; but, like her race again, no heart. the daughter who despises her father will bring her husband to grief." "does she that?" simonides went on "balthasar is a wise man who has been wonderfully favoured for a gentile, and his faith becomes him; yet she makes a jest of it. i heard her say, speaking of him yesterday, 'the follies of youth are excusable; nothing is admirable in the aged except wisdom, and when that goes from them, they should die.' a cruel speech, fit for a roman. i applied it to myself, knowing a feebleness like her father's will come to me alsonay, it is not far off. but you, esther, will never say of meno, never'it were better he were dead.' no, your mother was a daughter of judah." with half-formed tears she kissed him, and said, "i am my mother's child." "yes, and my daughtermy daughter, who is to me all the temple was to solomon." after a silence, he laid his hand upon her shoulder, and resumed"when he has taken the egyptian to wife, esther, he will think of you with repentance and much calling of the spirit; for at last he will awake to find himself but the minister of her bad ambition. rome is the centre of all her dreams. to her he is the son of arrius the duumvir, not the son of hur, prince of jerusalem." esther made no attempt to conceal the effect of these words. "save him, father! it is not too late!" she said, entreatingly. he answered, with a dubious smile, "a man drowning may be saved; not so a man in love." "but you have influence with him. he is alone in the world. show him his danger. tell him what a woman she is." "that might save him from her. would it give him to you, esther? no," and his brows fell darkly over his eyes. "i am a servant, as my fathers were for generations; yet i could not say to him, 'lo, master, my daughter! she is fairer than the egyptian, and loves thee better.' i have caught too much from years of liberty and direction. the words would blister my tongue. the stones upon the old hills yonder would turn in their beds for shame when i go out to them. no, by the patriarchs, esther, i would rather lay us both with your mother to sleep as she sleeps!" a blush burned esther's whole face. "i did not mean you to tell him so, father. i was concerned for him alonefor his happiness, not mine. because i have dared love him, i shall keep myself worthy his respect; so only can i excuse my folly. let me read his letter now." "yes, read it." she began at once, in haste to conclude the distasteful subject. "nisan 8th day. "on the road from galilee to jerusalem. "the nazarene is on the way also. with him, though without his knowledge, i am bringing a full legion of mine. a second legion follows. the passover will excuse the multitude. he said upon setting out, 'we will go up to jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning me shall be accomplished.' "our waiting draws to an end. "in haste. "peace to thee, simonides. "ben-hur." esther returned the letter to her father, while a choking sensation gathered in her throat. there was not a word in the missive for hernot even in the salutation had she a shareand it would have been so easy to have written "and to thine, peace." for the first time in her life she felt the smart of a jealous sting. "the eighth day," said simonides, "the eighth day; and this, esther, this is the" "the ninth," she replied. "ah, then, they may be in bethany now." "and possibly we may see him to-night," she added, pleased into momentary forgetfulness. "it may be, it may be! to-morrow is the feast of unleavened bread, and he may wish to celebrate it; so may the nazarene; and we may see himwe may see both of them, esther." at this point the servant appeared with the wine and water. esther helped her father, and in the midst of the service iras came upon the roof. to the jewess the egyptian never appeared so very, very beautiful as at that moment. her gauzy garments fluttered about her like a little cloud of mist; her forehead, neck, and arms glittered with the massive jewelry so affected by her people. her countenance was suffused with pleasure. she moved with buoyant steps, and self-conscious, though without affectation. esther at the sight shrank within herself, and nestled closer to her father. "peace to you, simonides, and to the pretty esther peace," said iras, inclining her head to the latter. "you remind me, good masterif i may say it without offenceyou remind me of the priests in persia who climb their temples at the decline of day to send prayers after the departing sun. is there anything in the worship you do not know, let me call my father. he is magian-bred." "fair egyptian," the merchant replied, nodding with grave politeness, "your father is a good man who would not be offended if he knew i told you his persian lore is the least part of his wisdom." iras's lip curled slightly. "to speak like a philosopher, as you invite me," she said, "the least part always implies a greater. let me ask what you esteem the greater part of the rare quality you are pleased to attribute to him." simonides turned upon her somewhat sternly. "pure wisdom always directs itself towards god; the purest wisdom is knowledge of god; and no man of my acquaintance has it in higher degree, or makes it more manifest in speech and act, than the good balthasar." to end the parley, he raised the cup and drank. the egyptian turned to esther a little testily. "a man who has millions in store, and fleets of ships at sea, cannot discern in what simple women like us find amusement. let us leave him. by the wall yonder we can talk." they went to the parapet then, stopping at the place where, years before, ben-hur loosed the broken tile upon the head of gratus. "you have not been to rome?" iras began, toying the while with one of her unclasped bracelets. "no," said esther, demurely. "have you not wished to go?" "no." "ah, how little there has been of your life!" the sigh that succeeded the exclamation could not have been more piteously expressive had the loss been the egyptian's own. next moment her laugh might have been heard in the street below; and she said, "oh, oh, my pretty simpleton! the half-fledged birds nested in the ear of the great bust on the memphian sands know nearly as much as you." then, seeing esther's confusion, she changed her manner, and said, in a confiding tone, "you must not take offence. oh, no! i was playing. let me kiss the hurt, and tell you what i would not to any othernot if simbel himself asked it of me, offering a lotus-cup of the spray of the nile!" another laugh, masking excellently the look she turned sharply upon the jewess, and she said, "the king is coming." esther gazed at her in innocent surprise. "the nazarene," iras continued"he whom our fathers have been talking about so much, whom ben-hur has been serving and toiling for so long"her voice dropped several tones lower"the nazarene will be here to-morrow, and ben-hur to-night." esther struggled to maintain her composure, but failed; her eyes fell, the tale-tell blood surged to her cheek and forehead, and she was saved sight of the triumphant smile that passed, like a gleam, over the face of the egyptian. "see, here is his promise." and from her girdle she took a roll. "rejoice with me, o my friend! he will be here to-night! on the tiber there is a house, a royal property, which he has pledged to me; and to be its mistress is to be" a sound of someone walking swiftly along the street below interrupted the speech, and she leaned over the parapet to see. then she drew back, and cried, with hands-clasped above her head, "now blessed be isis! 'tis heben-hur himself! that he should appear while i had such thought of him! there are no gods if it be not a good omen. put your arms about me, estherand a kiss!" the jewess looked up. upon each cheek there was a glow; her eyes sparkled with a light more nearly of anger than ever her nature emitted before. her gentleness had been too roughly overridden. it was not enough for her to be forbidden more than fugitive dreams of the man she loved; a boastful rival must tell her in confidence of her better success, and of the brilliant promises which were its rewards. of her, the servant of a servant, there had been no hint of remembrance; this other could show his letter, leaving her to imagine all it breathed. so she said "dost thou love him so much then, or rome so much better?" the egyptian drew back a step; then she bent her haughty head quite near her questioner. "what is he to thee, daughter of simonides?" esther, all thrilling, began, "he is my" a thought blasting as lightning stayed the words: she paled, trembled, recovered, and answered "he is my father's friend." her tongue had refused to admit her servile condition. iras laughed more lightly than before. "not more than that?" she said. "ah, by the lover-gods of egypt, thou mayst keep thy kisseskeep them. thou hast taught me but now that there are others vastly more estimable waiting me here in judea; and"she turned away, looking back over her shoulder"i will go get them. peace to thee." esther saw her disappear down the steps, when, putting her hands over her face, she burst into tears so they ran scalding through her fingerstears of shame and choking passion. and, to deepen the paroxysm to her even temper so strange, up with a new meaning of withering force rose her father's words"thy love might not have been vainly given had i kept fast hold of all i had, as i might have done." and all the stars were out, burning low above the city and the dark wall of mountains about it, before she recovered enough to go back to the summer-house, and in silence take her accustomed place at her father's side, humbly waiting his pleasure. to such duty it seemed her youth, if not her life, must be given. and, let the truth be said, now that the pang was spent, she went not unwillingly back to the duty. chapter ii. ben-hur tells of the nazarene. an hour or thereabouts after the scene upon the roof, balthasar and simonides, the latter attended by esther, met in the great chamber of the palace; and while they were talking, ben-hur and iras came in together. the young jew, advancing in front of his companion, walked first to balthasar, and saluted him, and received his reply; then he turned to simonides, but paused at sight of esther. it is not often we have hearts roomy enough for more than one of the absorbing passions at the same time; in its blaze the others may continue to live, but only as lesser lights. so with ben-hur, much study of possibilities, indulgence of hopes and dreams, influences born of the condition of his country, influences more directthat of iras for examplehad made him in the broadest worldly sense ambitious; and as he had given the passion place, allowing it to become a rule, and finally an imperious governor, the resolves and impulses of former days faded imperceptibly out of being, and at last almost out of recollection. it is at best so easy to forget our youth; in his case it was but natural that his own sufferings and the mystery darkening the fate of his family should move him less and less as, in hope at least, he approached nearer and nearer the goals which occupied all his visions. only let us not judge him too harshly. he paused in surprise at seeing esther a woman now, and so beautiful; and as he stood looking at her a still voice reminded him of broken vows and duties undone: almost his old self returned. for an instant he was startled; but recovering, he went to esther, and said, "peace to thee, sweet estherpeace; and thou, simonides"he looked to the merchant as he spoke"the blessing of the lord be thine, if only because thou hast been a good father to the fatherless." esther heard him with downcast face; simonides answered "i repeat the welcome of the good balthasar, son of hurwelcome to thy father's house; and sit, and tell us of thy travels, and of thy work, and of the wonderful nazarenewho he is, and what. if thou art not at ease here, who shall be? sit, i praythere, between us, that we may all hear." esther stepped out quickly and brought a covered stool, and set it for him. "thanks," he said to her, gratefully. when seated, after some other conversation he addressed himself to the men. "i have come to tell you of the nazarene." the two became instantly attentive. "for many days now i have followed him with such watchfulness as one may give another upon whom he is waiting so anxiously. i have seen him under all circumstances said to be trials and tests of men; and while i am certain he is a man as i am, not less certain am i that he is something more." "what more?" asked simonides. "i will tell you" some one coming into the room interrupted him; he turned, and arose with extended hands. "amrah! dear old amrah!" he cried. she came forward; and they, seeing the joy in her face, thought not once how wrinkled and tawny it was. she knelt at his feet, clasped his knees, and kissed his hands over and over; and when he could he put the lank grey hair from her cheeks, and kissed them, saying, "good amrah, have you nothing, nothing of themnot a wordnot one little sign?" then she broke into sobbing which made him answer plainer ever than the spoken word. "god's will has been done," he next said, solemnly, in a tone to make each listener know he had no hope more of finding his people. in his eyes there were tears which he would not have them see, because he was a man. when he could again, he took seat, and said, "come, sit by me, amrahhere. no? then at my feet; for i have much to say to these good friends of a wonderful man come into the world." but she went off, and stooping with her back to the wall, joined her hands before her knees, content, they all thought, with seeing him. then ben-hur, bowing to the old men, began again "i fear to answer the question asked me about the nazarene without first telling you some of the things i have seen him do; and to that i am the more inclined, my friends, because to-morrow he will come to the city, and go up into the temple, which he calls his father's house, where, it is further said, he will proclaim himself. so, whether you are right, o balthasar, or you, simonides, we and israel shall know to-morrow." balthasar rubbed his hands tremulously together, and asked, "where shall i go to see him?" "the pressure of the crowd will be very great. better, i think, that you all go upon the roof above the cloisterssay upon the porch of solomon." "can you be with us?" "no," said ben-hur, "my friends will require me, perhaps, in the procession." "procession!" exclaimed simonides. "does he travel in state?" ben-hur saw the argument in mind. "he brings twelve men with him, fishermen, tillers of the soil, one a publican, all of the humbler class; and he and they make their journeys on foot, careless of wind, cold, rain, or sun. seeing them stop by the wayside at nightfall to break bread or lie down to sleep, i have been reminded of a party of shepherds going back to their flocks from market, not of nobles and kings. only when he lifts the corners of his handkerchief to look at some' one or shake the dust from his head, i am made known he is their teacher as well as their companiontheir superior not less than their friend. "you are shrewd men," ben-hur resumed, after a pause. "you know what creatures of certain master motives we are, and that it has become little less than a law of our nature to spend life in eager pursuit of certain objects; now appealing to that law as something by which we may know ourselves, what would you say of a man who could be rich by making gold of the stones under his feet, yet is poor of choice?" "the greeks would call him a philosopher," said iras. "nay, daughter," said balthasar, "the philosophers had never the power to do such thing." "how know you this man has?" ben-hur answered quickly, "i saw him turn water into wine." "very strange, very strange," said simonides; "but it is not so strange to me as that he should prefer to live poor when he could be so rich. is he poor?" "he owns nothing, and envies nobody his owning. he pities the rich. but passing that, what would you say to see a man multiply seven loaves and two fishes, all his store, into enough to feed five thousand people, and have full baskets over? that i saw the nazarene do." "you saw it?" exclaimed simonides. "ay, and ate of the bread and fish." "more marvellous still," ben-hur continued, "what would you say of a man in whom there is such healing virtue that the sick have but to touch the hem of his garment to be cured, or cry to him afar? that, too, i witnessed, not once, but many times. as we came out of jericho two blind men by the wayside called to the nazarene, and he touched their eyes, and they saw. so they brought a palsied man to him, and he said merely, 'go unto thy house,' and the man went away well. what say you to these things?" the merchant had no answer. "think you now, as i have heard others argue, that what i have told you are tricks of jugglery? let me answer by recalling greater things which i have seen him do. look first to that curse of godcomfortless, as you all know, except by deathleprosy." at these words amrah dropped her hands to the floor, and in her eagerness to hear him half arose. "what would you say," said ben-hur, with increased earnestness"what would you say to have seen that i now tell you? a leper came to the nazarene while i was with him down in galilee, and said, 'lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.' he heard the cry, and touched the outcast with his hand, saying, 'be thou clean;' and forthwith the man was himself again, healthful as any of us who beheld the cure, and we were a multitude." here amrah arose, and with her gaunt fingers held the wiry locks from her eyes. the brain of the poor creature had long since gone to heart, and she was troubled to follow the speech. "then, again," said ben-hur, without stop, "ten lepers came to him one day in a body, and falling at his feet, called outi saw and heard it allcalled out, 'master, master, have mercy upon us!' he told them, 'go, show yourselves to the priest, as the law requires; and before you are come there ye shall be healed.'" "and were they?" "yes. on the road going their infirmity left them, so that there was nothing to remind us of it except their polluted clothes." "such thing was never heard beforenever in all israel!" said simonides, in undertone. and then, while he was speaking, amrah turned away, and walked noiselessly to the door, and went out; and none of the company saw her go. "the thoughts stirred by such things done under my eyes i leave you to imagine," said ben-hur, continuing; "but my doubts, my misgivings, my amazement, were not yet at the full. the people of galilee are, as you know, impetuous and rash; after years of waiting their swords burned their hands; nothing would do them but action. 'he is slow to declare himself; let us force him,' they cried to me. and i too became impatient. if he is to be king, why not now? the legions are ready. so as he was once teaching by the seaside we would have crowned him whether or not; but he disappeared, and was next seen on a ship departing from the shore. good simonides, the desires that make other men madriches, power, even kingships offered out of great love by a great peoplemove this one not at all. what say you?" the merchant's chin was low upon his breast; raising his head, he replied, resolutely, "the lord liveth, and so do the words of the prophets. time is in the green yet; let to-morrow answer." "be it so," said balthasar, smiling. and ben-hur said, "be it so." then he went on"but i have not yet done. from these things, not too great to be above suspicion by such as did not see them in performance as i did, let me carry you now to others infinitely greater, acknowledged since the world began to be past the power of man. tell me, has any one to your knowledge ever reached out and taken from death what death has made his own? who ever gave again the breath of a life lost? who but" "god!" said balthasar, reverently. ben-hur bowed. "o wise egyptian! i may not refuse the name you lend me. what would youor you, simonideswhat would you either or both have said had you seen as i did, a man, with few words and no ceremony, without effort more than a mother's when she speaks to wake her child asleep, undo the work of death? it was down at nain. we were about going into the gate, when a company came out bearing a dead man. the nazarene stopped to let the train pass. there was a woman among them crying. i saw his face soften with pity. he spoke to her, then went and touched the bier, and said to him who lay upon it dressed for burial, 'young man, i say unto thee, arise!' and instantly the dead sat up and talked." "god only is so great," said balthasar to simonides. "mark you," ben-hur proceeded, "i do but tell you things of which i was a witness, together with a cloud of other men. on the way hither i saw another act still more mighty. in bethany there was a man named lazarus, who died and was buried; and after he had lain four days in a tomb, shut in by a great stone, the nazarene was shown to the place. upon rolling the stone away, we beheld the man lying inside bound and rotting. there were many people standing by, and we all heard what the nazarene said, for he spoke in a loud voice, 'lazarus, come forth!' i cannot tell you my feelings when in answer, as it were, the man arose and came out to us with all his cerements about him. 'loose him,' said the nazarene next, 'loose him, and let him go.' and when the napkin was taken from the face of the resurrected, lo, my friends! the blood ran anew through the wasted body, and he was exactly as he had been in life before the sickness that took him off. he lives yet, and is hourly seen and spoken to. you may go see him to-morrow. and now, as nothing more is needed for the purpose, i ask you that which i came to ask, it being but a repetition of what you asked me o simonides, what more than a man is this nazarene?" the question was put solemnly, and long after midnight the company sat and debated it; simonides being yet unwilling to give up his understanding of the sayings of the prophets, and ben-hur contending that the elder disputants were both rightthat the nazarene was the redeemer, as claimed by balthasar, and also the destined king the merchant would have. "to-morrow we will see. peace to you all." so saying, ben-hur took his leave, intending to return to bethany. chapter iii. the lepers leave their tomb. the first person to go out of the city upon the opening of the sheep's gate next morning was amrah, basket on arm. no questions were asked her by the keepers, since the morning itself had not been more regular in coming than she; they knew her somebody's faithful servant, and that was enough for them. down the eastern valley she took her way. the side of olivet, darkly green, was spotted with white tents recently put up by people attending the feasts; the hour, however, was too early for the strangers to be abroad; still, had it not been so, no one would have troubled her. past gethsemane; past the tombs at the meeting of the bethany roads; past the sepuchral village of siloam she went. occasionally the decrepit little body staggered; once she sat down to get her breath; rising shortly, she struggled on with renewed haste. the great rocks on either hand, if they had had ears, might have heard her mutter to herself; could they have seen, it would have been to observe how frequently she looked up over the mount, reproving the dawn for its promptness; if it had been possible for them to gossip, not improbably they would have said to each other, "our friend is in a hurry this morning; the mouths she goes to feed must be very hungry." when at last she reached the king's garden she slackened her gait; for then the grim city of the lepers was in view, extending far round the pitted south hill of hinnom. as the reader must by this time have surmised, she was going to her mistress, whose tomb, it will be remembered, overlooked the well en-rogel. early as it was, the unhappy woman was up and sitting outside, leaving tirzah asleep within. the course of the malady had been terribly swift in the three years. conscious of her appearance, with the refined instincts of her nature, she kept her whole person habitually covered. seldom as possible she permitted even tirzah to see her. this morning she was taking the air with bared head, knowing there was no one to be shocked by the exposure. the light was not full, but enough to show the ravages to which she had been subject. her hair was snow-white and unmanageably coarse, falling over her back and shoulders like so much silver wire. the eyelids, the lips, the nostrils, the flesh of the cheeks, were either gone or reduced to fetid rawness. the neck was a mass of ash-coloured scales. one hand lay outside the folds of her habit rigid as that of a skeleton; the nails had been eaten away; the joints of the fingers, if not bare to the bone, were swollen knots crusted with red secretion. head, face, neck, and hand indicated all too plainly the condition of the whole body. seeing her thus, it was easy to understand how the once fair widow of the princely hur had been able to maintain her incognito so well through such a period of years. when the sun would gild the crest of olivet and the mount of offence with light sharper and more brilliant in that old land than in the west, she knew amrah would come, first to the well, then to a stone midway the well and the foot of the hill on which she had her abode, and that the good servant would there deposit the food she carried in the basket, and fill the water-jar afresh for the day. of her former plentitude of happiness, that brief visit was all that remained to the unfortunate. she could then ask about her son, and be told of his welfare, with such bits of news concerning him as the messenger could glean. usually the information was meagre enough, yet comforting; at times she heard he was at home; then she would issue from her dreary cell at break of day, and sit till noon, and from noon to set of sun, a motionless figure draped in white, looking, statue-like, invariably to one pointover the temple to the spot under the rounded sky where the old house stood, dear in memory, and dearer because he was there. nothing else was left her. tirzah she counted of the dead; and as for herself, she simply waited the end, knowing every hour of life was an hour of dyinghappily, of painless dying. the things of nature about the hill to keep her sensitive to the world's attractions were wretchedly scant; beasts and birds avoided the place as if they knew its history and present use; every green thing perished in its first season; the winds warred upon the shrubs and venturous grasses, leaving to drought such as they could not uproot. look where she would, the view was made depressingly suggestive by tombstombs above her, tombs below, tombs opposite her own tomball now freshly whitened in warning to visiting pilgrims. in the skyclear, fair, invitingone would think she might have found some relief to her ache of mind; but, alas! in making the beautiful elsewhere the sun served her never so unfriendlyit did but disclose her growing hideousness. but for the sun she would not have been the horror she was to herself, nor been waked so cruelly from dreams of tirzah as she used to be. the gift of seeing can be sometimes a dreadful curse. does one ask why she did not make an end to her sufferings? the law forbade her! a gentile may smile at the answer; but so will not a son of israel. while she sat there peopling the dusky solitude with thoughts even more cheerless, suddenly a woman came up the hill staggering and spent with exertion. the widow arose hastily, and covering her head, cried, in a voice unnaturally harsh, "unclean, unclean!" in a moment, heedless of the notice, amrah was at her feet. all the long-pent love of the simple creature burst forth: with tears and passionate exclamations she kissed her mistress's garments, and for a while the latter strove to escape from her; then, seeing she could not, she waited till the violence of the paroxysm was over. "what have you done, amrah?" she said. "is it by such disobedience you prove your love for us? wicked woman! you are lost; and heyour masteryou can never, never go back to him." amrah grovelled sobbing in the dust. "the ban of the law is upon you, too; you cannot return to jerusalem. what will become of us? who will bring us bread? o wicked, wicked amrah! we are all, all undone alike!" "mercy, mercy!" amrah answered from the ground. "you should have been merciful to yourself, and by so doing been most merciful to us. now where can we fly? there is no one to help us. o false servant! the wrath of the lord was already too heavy upon us." here tirzah, awakened by the noise, appeared at the door of the tomb. the pen shrinks from the picture she presented. in the half-clad apparition, patched with scales, lividly seamed, nearly blind, its limbs and extremities swollen to grotesque largeness, familiar eyes however sharpened by love could not have recognized the creature of grace and purity we first beheld her. "is it amrah, mother?" the servant tried to crawl to her also. "stay, amrah!' the widow cried, imperiously. "i forbid you touching her. rise, and get you gone before any at the well see you here. nay, i forgotit is too late! you must remain now and share our doom. rise, i say!" amrah rose to her knees, and said, brokenly and with clasped hands, "o good mistress! i am not falsei am not wicked. i bring you good tidings." "of judah?" and as she spoke, the widow half withdrew the cloth from her head. "there is a wonderful man," amrah continued, "who has power to cure you. he speaks a word, and the sick are made well, and even the dead come to life. i have come to take you to him." "poor amrah!" said tirzah, compassionately. "no," cried amrah, detecting the doubt underlying the expression"no, as the lord lives, even the lord of israel, my god as well as yours, i speak the truth. go with me, i pray, and lose no time. this morning he will pass by on his way to the city. see! the day is at hand. take the food hereeat, and let us go." the mother listened eagerly. not unlikely she had heard of the wonderful man, for by this time his fame had penetrated every nook in the land. "who is he?" she asked. "a nazarene." "who told you about him?" "judah." "judah told you? is he at home?" "he came last night." the widow, trying to still the beating of her heart, was silent awhile. "did judah send you to tell us this?" she next asked. "no. he believes you dead." "there was a prophet once who cured a leper," the mother said thoughtfully to tirzah; "but he had his power from god." then addressing amrah, she asked, "how does my son know this man so possessed?" "he was travelling with him, and heard the lepers call, and saw them go away well. first there was one man; then there were ten; and they were all made whole." the elder listener was silent again. the skeleton hand shook. we may believe she was struggling to give the story the sanction of faith, which is always an absolutist in demand, and that it was with her as with the men of the day, eye-witnesses of what was done by the christ, as well as the myriads who have succeeded them. she did not question the performance, for her own son was the witness testifying through the servant; but she strove to comprehend the power by which work so astonishing could be done by a man. well enough to make inquiry as to the fact; to comprehend the power, on the other hand, it is first necessary to comprehend god; and he who waits for that will die waiting. with her, however, the hesitation was brief. to tirzah she said "this must be the messiah!" she spoke not coldly, like one reasoning a doubt away, but as a woman of israel familiar with the promises of god to her racea woman of understanding, ready to be glad over the least sign of the realization of the promises. "there was a time when jerusalem and all judea were filled with a story that he was born. i remember it. by this time he should be a man. it must beit is he. yes," she said to amrah, "we will go with you. bring the water which you will find in the tomb in a jar, and set the food for us. we will eat and be gone." the breakfast, partaken under excitement, was soon despatched, and the three women set out on their extraordinary journey. as tirzah had caught the confident spirit of the others, there was but one fear that troubled the party. bethany, amrah said, was the town the man was coming from; now from that to jerusalem there were three roads, or rather pathsone over the first summit of olivet, a second at its base, a third between the second summit and the mount of offence. the three were not far apart; far enough, however, to make it possible for the unfortunates to miss the nazarene if they failed the one he chose to come by. a little questioning satisfied the mother that amrah knew nothing of the country beyond the cedron, and even less of the intentions of the man they were going to see, if they could. she discerned, also, that both amrah and tirzahthe one from confirmed habits of servitude, the other from natural dependencelooked to her for guidance; and she accepted the charge. "we will go first to bethphage," she said to them. "there, if the lord favour us, we may learn what else to do." they descended the hill to tophet and the king's garden, and paused in the deep trail furrowed through them by centuries of wayfaring. "i am afraid of the road," the matron said. "better that we keep to the country among the rocks and trees. this is feast-day, and on the hill-sides yonder i see signs of a great multitude in attendance. by going across the mount of offence here we may avoid them." tirzah had been walking with great difficulty; upon hearing this her heart began to fail her. "the mount is steep, mother! i cannot climb it." "remember, we are going to find health and life. see, my child, how the day brightens around us! and yonder are women coming this way to the well. they will stone us if we stay here. come, be strong this once." thus the mother, not less tortured herself, sought to inspire the daughter; and amrah came to her aid. to this time the latter had not touched the persons of the afflicted, nor they her; now, in disregard of consequences as well as of command, the faithful creature went to tirzah, and put her arm over her shoulder, and whispered, "lean on me. i am strong, though i am old; and it is but a little way off. therenow we can go." the face of the hill they essayed to cross was somewhat broken with pits, and ruins of old structures; but when at last they stood upon the top to rest, and looked at the spectacle presented them over in the north-westat the temple and its courtly terraces, at zion, at the enduring towers white beetling into the sky beyondthe mother was strengthened with a love of life for life's sake. "look, tirzah," she said"look at the plates of gold on the gate beautiful. how they give back the flames of the sun, brightness for brightness! do you remember we used to go up there? will it not be pleasant to do so again? and thinkhome is but a little way off. i can almost see it over the roof of the holy of holies; and judah will be there to receive us!" from the side of the middle summit, garnished green with myrtle and olive trees, they saw, upon looking that way next, thin columns of smoke rising lightly and straight up into the pulseless morning, each a warning of restless pilgrims astir, and of the flight of the pitiless hours, and the need of haste. though the good servant toiled faithfully to lighten the labour in descending the hill-side, not sparing herself in the least, the girl moaned at every step; sometimes in extremity of anguish she cried out. upon reaching the roadthat is, the road between the mount of offence and the middle or second summit of olivetshe fell down exhausted. "go on with amrah, mother, and leave me here," she said, faintly. "no, no, tirzah. what would the gain be to me if i were healed and you not? when judah asks for you, as he will, what would i have to say to him were i to leave you?" "tell him i loved him." the elder leper arose from bending over the fainting sufferer, and gazed about her with that sensation of hope perishing which is more nearly like annihilation of the soul than anything else. the supremest joy of the thought of cure was inseparable from tirzah, who was not too old to forget, in the happiness of healthful life to come, the years of misery by which she had been so reduced in body and broken in spirit. even as the brave woman was about leaving the venture they were engaged in to the determination of god, she saw a man on foot coming rapidly up the road from the east. "courage, tirzah! be of cheer," she said. "yonder i know is one to tell us of the nazarene." amrah helped the girl to a sitting posture, and supported her while the man advanced. "in your goodness, mother, you forget what we are. the stranger will go around us; his best gift to us will be a curse, if not a stone." "we will see." there was no other answer to be given, since the mother was too well and sadly acquainted with the treatment outcasts of the class to which she belonged were accustomed to at the hands of her countrymen. as has been said, the road at the edge of which the group was posted was little more than a worn path or trail, winding crookedly through tumuli of limestone. if the stranger kept it, he must meet them face to face; and he did so, until near enough to hear the cry she was bound to give. then, uncovering her head, a further demand of the law, she shouted shrilly "unclean! unclean!" to her surprise, the man came steadily on. "what would you have?" he asked, stopping opposite them not four yards off. "thou seest us. have a care," the mother said, with dignity. "woman, i am the courier of him who speaketh but once to such as thou and they are healed. i am not afraid." "the nazarene?" "the messiah," he said. "is it true that he cometh to the city to-day?" "he is now at bethphage." "on what road, master?" "this one." she clasped her hands, and looked up thankfully. "for whom takest thou him?" the man asked, with pity. "the son of god," she replied. "stay thou here then; or, as there is a multitude with him, take thy stand by the rock yonder, the white one under the tree; and as he goeth by fail not to call to him; call, and fear not. if thy faith but equal thy knowledge, he will hear thee though all the heavens thunder. i go to tell israel, assembled in and about the city, that he is at hand, and to make ready to receive him. peace to thee and thine, woman." the stranger moved on. "did you hear, tirzah? did you hear? the nazarene is on the road, on this one, and he will hear us. once more, my childoh, only once! and let us to the rock. it is but a step." thus encouraged, tirzah took amrah's hand and arose; but as they were going, amrah said, "stay; the man is returning." and they waited for him. "i pray your grace, woman," he said, upon overtaking them. "remembering that the sun will be hot before the nazarene arrives, and that the city is near by to give me refreshment should i need it, i thought this water would do thee better than it will me. take it and be of good cheer. call to him as he passes." he followed the words by offering her a gourd full of water, such as foot-travellers sometimes carried with them in their journeys across the hills; and instead of placing the gift on the ground for her to take up when he was at a safe distance, he gave it into her hand. "art thou a jew?" she asked, surprised. "i am that, and better; i am a disciple of the christ who teacheth daily by word and example this thing which i have done unto you. the world hath long known the word charity without understanding it. again i say, peace and good cheer to thee and thine." he went on, and they went slowly to the rock he had pointed out to them, high as their heads, and scarcely thirty yards from the road on the right. standing in front of it, the mother satisfied herself they could be seen and heard plainly by passers-by whose notice they desired to attract. there they cast themselves under the tree in its shade, and drank of the gourd, and rested refreshed. ere long tirzah slept, and fearing to disturb her, the others held their peace. chapter iv. the miracle. during the third hour the road in front of the resting-place of the lepers became gradually more and more frequented by people going in the direction of bethphage and bethany; now, however, about the commencement of the fourth hour, a great crowd appeared over the crest of olivet, and as it defiled down the road thousands in number, the two watchers noticed with wonder that every one in it carried a palm-branch freshly cut. as they sat absorbed by the novelty, the noise of another multitude approaching from the east drew their eyes that way. then the mother awoke tirzah. "what is the meaning of it all?" the latter asked. "he is coming," answered the mother. "these we see are from the city going to meet him; those we hear in the east are his friends bearing him company; and it will not be strange if the processions meet here before us." "i fear, if they do, we cannot be heard." the same thought was in the elder's mind. "amrah," she asked, "when judah spoke of the healing of the ten, in what words did he say they called to the nazarene?" "either they said, 'lord, have mercy upon us,' or 'master, have mercy.'" "only that" "no more that i heard." "yet it was enough," the mother added, to herself. "yes," said amrah, "judah said he saw them go away well." meantime the people in the east came up slowly. when at length the foremost of them were in sight, the gaze of the lepers fixed upon a man riding in the midst of what seemed a chosen company which sang and danced about him in extravagance of joy. the rider was bareheaded and clad all in white. when he was in distance to be more clearly observed, these, looking anxiously, saw an olive-hued face shaded by long chestnut hair slightly sunburned and parted in the middle. he looked neither to the right nor left. in the noisy abandon of his followers he appeared to have no part; nor did their favour disturb him in the least, or raise him out of the profound melancholy into which, as his countenance showed, he was plunged. the sun beat upon the back of his head, and lighting up the floating hair gave it a delicate likeness to a golden nimbus. behind him the irregular procession, pouring forward with continuous singing and shouting, extended out of view. there was no need of any one to tell the lepers that this was hethe wonderful nazarene! "he is here, tirzah," the mother said; "he is here. come, my child." as she spoke she glided in front of the white rock and fell upon her knees. directly the daughter and servant were by her side. then at sight of the procession in the east, the thousands from the city halted, and began to wave their green branches, shouting, or rather chanting (for it was all in one voice) "blessed is the king of israel that cometh in the name of the lord!" and all the thousands who were of the rider's company, both those near and those afar, replied so the air shook with the sound, which was as a great wind threshing the side of the hill. amidst the din, the cries of the poor lepers were not more than the twittering of dazed sparrows. the moment of the meeting of the hosts was come, and with it the opportunity the sufferers were seeking; if not taken, it would be lost for ever, and they would be lost as well. "nearer, my childlet us get nearer. he cannot hear us," said the mother. she arose, and staggered forward. her ghastly hands were up, and she screamed with horrible shrillness. the people saw hersaw her hideous face, and stopped awe-struckan effect for which extreme human misery, visible as in this instance, is as potent as majesty in purple and gold. tirzah, behind her a little way, fell down too faint and frightened to follow farther. "the lepers! the lepers!" "stone them!" "the accursed of god! kill them!" these, with other yells of like import, broke in upon the hosannas of the part of the multitude too far removed to see and understand the cause of the interruption. some there were, however, near by familiar with the nature of the man to whom the unfortunates were appealingsome who, by long intercourse with him, had caught somewhat of his divine compassion: they gazed at him, and were silent while, in fair view, he rode up and stopped in front of the woman. she also beheld his facecalm, pitiful, and of exceeding beauty, the large eyes tender with benignant purpose. and this was the colloquy that ensued "o master, master! thou seest our need; thou canst make us clean. have mercy upon usmercy!" "believest thou i am able to do this?" he asked. "thou art he of whom the prophets spakethou art the messiah!" she replied. his eyes grew radiant, his manner confident. "woman," he said, "great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt." he lingered an instant after, apparently unconscious of the presence of the throngan instantthen he rode away. to the heart divinely original, yet so human in all the better elements of humanity, going with sure prevision to a death of all the inventions of men the foulest and most cruel, breathing even then in the forecast shadow of the awful event, and still as hungry and thirsty for love and faith as in the beginning, how precious and ineffably soothing the farewell exclamation of the grateful woman "to god in the highest, glory! blessed, thrice blessed, the son whom he hath given us!" immediately both the hosts, that from the city and that from bethphage, closed around him with their joyous demonstrations, with hosannas and waving of palms, and so he passed from the lepers forever. covering her head, the elder hastened to tirzah, and folded her in her arms, crying, "daughter, look up! i have his promise; he is indeed the messiah. we are savedsaved!" and the two remained kneeling while the procession, slowly going, disappeared over the mount. when the noise of its singing afar was a sound scarcely heard the miracle began. there was first in the hearts of the lepers a freshening of the blood; then it flowed faster and stronger, thrilling their wasted bodies with an infinitely sweet sense of painless healing. each felt the scourge going from her; their strength revived; they were returning to be themselves. directly, as if to make the purification complete, from body to spirit the quickening ran, exalting them to a very fervour of ecstasy. the power possessing them to this good end was most nearly that of a draught of swift and happy effect; yet it was unlike and superior in that its healing and cleansing were absolute, and not merely a delicious consciousness while in progress, but the planting, growing, and maturing all at once of a recollection so singular and so holy that the simple thought of it should be of itself ever after a formless yet perfect thanksgiving. to this transformationfor such it may be called quite as properly as a curethere was a witness other than amrah. the reader will remember the constancy with which ben-hur had followed the nazarene throughout his wanderings; and now, recalling the conversation of the night before, there will be little surprise at learning that the young jew was present when the leprous woman appeared in the path of the pilgrims. he heard her prayer, and saw her disfigured face; he heard the answer also, and was not so accustomed to incidents of the kind, frequent as they had been, as to have lost interest in them. had such thing been possible with him, still the bitter disputation always excited by the simplest display of the master's curative gift would have sufficed to keep his curiosity alive. besides that, if not above it as an incentive, his hope to satisfy himself upon the vexed question of the mission of the mysterious man was still upon him strong as in the beginning; we might indeed say even stronger, because of a belief that now quickly, before the sun went down, the man himself would make all known by public proclamation. at the close of the scene, consequently, ben-hur had withdrawn from the procession, and seated himself upon a stone to wait its passage. from his place he nodded recognition to many of the peoplegalileans in his league, carrying short swords under their long abbas. after a little a swarthy arab came up leading two horses; at a sign from ben-hur he also drew out. "stay here," the young master said, when all were gone by, even the laggards. "i wish to be at the city early, and aldebaran must do me service." he stroked the broad forehead of the horse, now in his prime of strength and beauty, then crossed the road towards the two women. they were to him, it should be borne in mind, strangers in whom he felt interest only as they were subjects of a superhuman experiment, the result of which might possibly help him to solution of the mystery that had so long engaged him. as he proceeded, he glanced casually at the figure of the little woman over by the white rock, standing there, her face hidden in her hands. "as the lord liveth, it is amrah!" he said to himself. he hurried on, and passing by the mother and daughter, still without recognizing them, he stopped before the servant. "amrah," he said to her, "amrah, what do you here?" she rushed forward, and fell upon her knees before him, blinded by her tears, nigh speechless with contending joy and fear. "o master, master! thy god and mine, how good he is!" the knowledge we gain from much sympathy with others passing through trials is but vaguely understood; strangely enough, it enables us, among other things, to merge our identity into theirs often so completely that their sorrows and their delights become our own. so poor amrah, aloof and hiding her face, knew the transformation the lepers were undergoing without a word spoken to herknew it, and shared all their feeling to the full. her countenance, her words, her whole manner, betrayed her condition; and with swift presentiment he connected it with the women he had just passed: he felt her presence there at that time was in some way associated with them, and turned hastily as they arose to their feet. his heart stood still; he became rooted in his tracksdumb past outcryawe-struck. the woman he had seen before the nazarene was standing with her hands clasped and eyes streaming, looking towards heaven. the mere transformation would have been a sufficient surprise; but it was the least of the causes of his emotion. could he be mistaken? never was there in life a stranger so like his mother; and like her as she was the day the roman snatched her from him. there was but one difference to mar the identitythe hair of this person was a little streaked with grey; yet that was not impossible of reconcilement, since the intelligence which had directed the miracle might have taken into consideration the natural effects of the passage of years. and who was it by her side, if not tirzah?fair, beautiful, perfect, more mature, but in all other respects exactly the same in appearance as when she looked with him over the parapet the morning of the accident to gratus. he had given them over as dead, and time had accustomed him to the bereavement; he had not ceased mourning for them, yet, as something distinguishable, they had simply dropped out of his plans and dreams. scarcely believing his senses, he laid his hand upon the servant's head, and asked, tremulously "amrah, amrahmy mother! tirzah! tell me if i see aright." "speak to them, o master, speak to them!" she said. he waited no longer, but ran, with outstretched arms, crying, "mother! mother! tirzah! here i am!" they heard his call, and with a cry as loving started to meet him. suddenly the mother stopped, drew back, and uttered the old alarm "stay, judah, my son; come not nearer. unclean, unclean!" the utterance was not from habit, grown since the dread disease struck her, as much as fear; and the fear was but another form of the ever-thoughtful maternal love. though they were healed in person, the taint of the scourge might be in their garments ready for communication. he had no such thought. they were before him; he had called them, they had answered. who or what should keep them from him now? next moment the three, so long separated, were mingling their tears in each other's arms. the first ecstasy over, the mother said, "in this happiness, o my children, let us not be ungrateful. let us begin life anew by acknowledgment of him to whom we are all so indebted." they fell upon their knees, amrah with the rest; and the prayer of the elder outspoken was as a psalm. tirzah repeated it word for word; so did ben-hur, but not with the same clear mind and questionless faith; for when they were risen, he asked "in nazareth, where the man was born, mother, they call him the son of a carpenter. what is he?" her eyes rested upon him with all their old tenderness, and she answered as she had answered the nazarene himself "he is the messiah." "and whence has he his power?" "we may know by the use he makes of it. can you tell me any he has done?" "no." "by that sign then i answer. he has his power from god." it is not an easy thing to shake off in a moment the expectations nurtured through years until they have become essentially a part of us; and though ben-hur asked himself what the vanities of the world were to such a one, his ambition was obdurate and would not down. he persisted as men do yet every day in measuring the christ by himself. how much better if we measured ourselves by the christ! naturally, the mother was the first to think of the cares of life. "what shall we do now, my son? where shall we go?" then ben-hur, recalled to duty, observed how completely every trace of the scourge had disappeared from his restored people; that each had back her perfection of person; that, as with naaman when he came up out of the water, their flesh had come again like unto the flesh of a little child; and he took off his cloak, and threw it over tirzah. "take it," he said, smiling; "the eye of the stranger would have shunned you before; now it shall not offend you." the act exposed a sword belted to his side. "is it a time of war?" asked the mother, anxiously. "no." "why, then, are you armed?" "it may be necessary to defend the nazarene." thus ben-hur evaded the whole truth. "has he enemies? who are they?" "alas, mother, they are not all romans!" "is he not of israel, and a man of peace?" "there was never one more so; but in the opinion of the rabbis and teachers he is guilty of a great crime." "what crime?" "in his eyes the uncircumcised gentile is as worthy favour as a jew of the strictest habit. he preaches a new dispensation." the mother was silent, and they moved to the shade of the tree by the rock. calming his impatience to have them home again and hear their story, he showed them the necessity of obedience to the law governing in cases like theirs, and in conclusion called the arab, bidding him take the horses to the gate by bethesda and await him there; whereupon they set out by the way of the mount of offence. the return was very different from the coming; they walked rapidly and with ease, and in good time reached a tomb newly made near that of absalom, overlooking the depths of cedron. finding it unoccupied, the women took possession, while he went on hastily to make the preparations required for their new condition. chapter v. pilgrims to the passover. ben-hur pitched two tents out on the upper cedron east a short space of the tombs of the kings, and furnished them with every comfort at his command; and thither, without loss of time, he conducted his mother and sister, to remain until the examining priest could certify their perfect cleansing. in course of the duty, the young man had subjected himself to such serious defilement as to debar him from participation in the ceremonies of the great feast, then near at hand. he could not enter the least sacred of the courts of the temple. of necessity, not less than choice, therefore, he stayed at the tents with his beloved people. there was a great deal to hear from them, and a great deal to tell them of himself. stories such as theirssad experiences extending through a lapse of years, sufferings of body, acuter sufferings of mindare usually long in the telling, the incidents seldom following each other in threaded connection. he listened to the narrative and all they told him, with outward patience masking inward feelings. in fact, his hatred of rome and romans reached a higher mark than ever; his desire for vengeance became a thirst which attempts at reflection only intensified. in the almost savage bitterness of his humour many mad impulses took hold of him. the opportunities of the highways presented themselves with singular force of temptation; he thought seriously of insurrection in galilee; even the sea, ordinarily a retrospective horror to him, stretched itself map-like before his fancy, laced and interlaced with lines of passage crowded with imperial plunder and imperial travellers; but the better judgment matured in calmer hours was happily too firmly fixed to be supplanted by present passion however strong. each mental venture in reach of new expedients brought him back to the old conclusionthat there could be no sound success except in a war involving all israel in solid union; and all musing upon the subject, all inquiry, all hope, ended where they beganin the nazarene and his purposes. at odd moments the excited schemer found a pleasure in fashioning a speech for that person "hear, o israel! i am he, the promised of god, born king of the jewscome to you with the dominion spoken of by the prophets. rise now, and lay hold on the world!" would the nazarene but speak these few words, what a tumult would follow! how many mouths performing the office of trumpets would take them up and blow them abroad for the massing of armies! would he speak them? and eager to begin the work, and answering in the worldly way, ben-hur lost sight of the double nature of the man, and of the other possibility, that the divine in him might transcend the human. in the miracle of which tirzah and his mother were the witnesses even more nearly than himself, he saw and set apart and dwelt upon a power ample enough to raise and support a jewish crown over the wrecks of the italian, and more than ample to remodel society, and convert mankind into one purified happy family; and when that work was done, could any one say the peace which might then be ordered without hindrance was not a mission worthy a son of god? could any one then deny the redeemership of the christ? and discarding all consideration of political consequences, what unspeakable personal glory there would then be to him as a man? it was not in the nature of any mere mortal to refuse such a career. meantime down the cedron, and in towards bezetha, especially on the roadsides quite up to the damascus gate, the country filled rapidly with all kinds of temporary shelters for pilgrims to the passover. ben-hur visited the strangers and talked with them; and returning to his tents, he was each time more and more astonished at the vastness of their numbers. and when he further discovered that every part of the world was represented among themcities upon both shores of the mediterranean far off as the pillars of the west, river-towns in distant india, provinces in northernmost europe; and that, though they frequently saluted him with tongues unacquainted with a syllable of the old hebrew of the fathers, these representatives had all the same objectcelebration of the notable feastan idea tinged mistily with superstitious fancy forced itself upon him. might he not after all have misunderstood the nazarene? might not that person by patient waiting be covering silent preparation, and proving his fitness for the glorious task before him? how much better this time for the movement than that other when, by gennesaret, the galileans would have forced assumption of the crown? then the support would have been limited to a few thousands; now his proclamation would be responded to by millionswho could say how many? pursuing this theory to its conclusions, ben-hur moved amidst brilliant promises, and glowed with the thought that the melancholy man, under gentle seeming and wondrous self-denial, was in fact carrying in disguise the subtlety of a politician and the genius of a soldier. several times also, in the meanwhile, low-set, brawny men, bare-headed and black-bearded, came and asked for ben-hur at the tent: his interviews with them were always apart; and to his mother's questions who they were he answered "some good friends of mine from galilee." through them he kept informed of the movements of the nazarene, and of the schemes of the nazarene's enemies, rabbinical and roman. that the good man's life was in danger he knew; but that there were any bold enough to attempt to take it at that time he could not believe. it seemed too securely intrenched in a great fame and an assured popularity. the very vastness of the attendance in and about the city brought with it a seeming guaranty of safety. and yet, to say truth, ben-hur's confidence rested most certainly upon the miraculous power of the christ. pondering the subject in the purely human view, that the master of such authority over life and death, used so frequently for the good of others, would not exert it in care of himself, was simply as much past belief as it was past understanding. nor should it be forgotten that all these were incidents of occurrence between the twenty-first day of marchcounting by the modern calendarand the twenty-fifth. the evening of the latter day ben-hur yielded to his impatience, and rode to the city, leaving behind him a promise to return in the night. the horse was fresh, and choosing his own gait, sped swiftly. the eyes of the clambering vines winked at the rider from the garden fences on the way; there was nothing else to see him, nor child nor woman nor man. through the rocky float in the hollows of the road the agate hoofs drummed, ringing like cups of steel; but without notice from any stranger. in the houses passed there were no tenants; the fires by the tent-doors were out; the road was deserted; for this was the first passover eve, and the hour "between the evenings" when the visiting millions crowded the city, and the slaughter of lambs in offering reeked the fore-courts of the temple, and the priests in ordered lines caught the flowing blood and carried it swiftly to the dripping altarswhen all was haste and hurry, racing with the stars fast coming with the signal after which the roasting and the eating and the singing might go on, but not the preparation more. through the great northern gate the rider rode, and lo! jerusalem before the fall, in ripeness of glory, illuminated for the lord. chapter vi. a serpent of the nile. ben-hur alighted at the gate of the khan from which the three wise men more than thirty years before departed, going down to bethlehem. there, in keeping of his arab followers, he left the horse, and shortly after was at the wicket of his father's house, and in a yet briefer space in the great chamber. he called for malluch first; that worthy being out, he sent a salutation to his friends, the merchant and the egyptian. they were being carried abroad to see the celebration. the latter, he was informed, was very feeble, and in a state of deep dejection. young people of that time who were supposed hardly to know their own hearts indulged the habit of politic indirection quite as much as young people in the same condition indulge it in this time; so when ben-hur inquired for the good balthasar, and with grave courtesy desired to know if he would be pleased to see him, he really addressed the daughter a notice of his arrival. while the servant was answering for the elder, the curtain of the doorway was drawn aside, and the younger egyptian came in, and walkedor floated, upborne in a white cloud of the gauzy raiment she so loved and lived into the centre of the chamber, where the light cast by lamps from the seven-armed brazen stick planted upon the floor was the strongest. with her there was no fear of light. the servant left the two alone. in the excitement occasioned by the events of the few days past ben-hur had scarcely given a thought to the fair egyptian. if she came to his mind at all, it was merely as a briefest pleasure, a suggestion of a delight which could wait for him, and was waiting. but now the influence of the woman revived with all its force the instant ben-hur beheld her. he advanced to her eagerly, but stopped and gazed. such a change he had never seen! theretofore she had been a lover studious to win himin manner all warmth, each glance an admission, each action an avowal. she had showered him with incense of flattery. while he was present, she had impressed him with her admiration; going away, he carried the impression with him to remain a delicious expectancy hastening his return. it was for him the painted eyelids drooped lowest over the lustrous almond eyes; for him the love-stories caught from the professionals abounding in the streets of alexandria were repeated with emphasis and lavishment of poetry; for him endless exclamations of sympathy, and smiles, and little privileges with hand and hair and cheek and lips, and songs of the nile, and displays of jewelry, and subtleties of lace in veils and scarfs, and other subtleties not less exquisite in flosses of indian silk. the idea, old as the oldest of peoples, that beauty is the reward of the hero had never such realism as she contrived for his pleasure; insomuch that he could not doubt he was her hero; she avouched it in a thousand artful ways as natural with her as her beautywinsome ways reserved, it would seem, by the passionate genius of old egypt for its daughters. such the egyptian had been to ben-hur from the night of the boat-ride on the lake in the orchard of palms. but now! elsewhere in this volume the reader may have observed a term of somewhat indefinite meaning used reverently in a sacred connection; we repeat it now with a general application. there are few persons who have not a double nature, the real and the acquired, the latter a kind of addendum resulting from education, which in time often perfects it into a part of the being as unquestionable as the first. leaving the thought to the thoughtful, we proceed to say that now the real nature of the egyptian made itself manifest. it was not possible for her to have received a stranger with repulsion more incisive; yet she was apparently as passionless as a statue, only the small head was a little tilted, the nostrils a little drawn, and the sensuous lower lip pushed the upper the least bit out of its natural curvature. she was the first to speak. "your coming is timely, o son of hur," she said, in a voice sharply distinct. "i wish to thank you for hospitality; after to-morrow i may not have the opportunity to do so." ben-hur bowed slightly without taking his eyes from her. "i have heard of a custom which the dice-players observe with good result among themselves," she continued. "when the game is over, they refer to their tablets and cast up their accounts; then they libate the gods and put a crown upon the happy winner. we have had a gameit has lasted through many days and nights. why, now that it is at an end, shall not we see to which the chaplet belongs?" yet very watchful, ben-hur answered, lightly, "a man may not balk a woman bent on having her way." "tell me," she continued, inclining her head, and permitting the sneer to become positive"tell me, o prince of jerusalem, where is he, that son of the carpenter of nazareth, and son not less of god, from whom so lately such mighty things were expected?" he waved his hand impatiently, and replied, "i am not his keeper." the beautiful head sank forward yet lower. "has he broken rome to pieces?" again, but with anger, ben-hur raised his hand in deprecation. "where has he seated his capital?" she proceeded. "cannot i go see his throne and its lions of bronze? and his palacehe raised the dead; and to such a one, what is it to raise a golden house? he has but to stamp his foot and say the word, and the house is, pillared like karnak, and wanting nothing." there was by this time slight ground left to believe her playing; the questions were offensive, and her manner pointed with unfriendliness; seeing which, he on his side became more wary, and said, with good-humour, "o egypt, let us wait another day, even another week, for him, the lions, and the palace." she went on without noticing the suggestion. "and how is it i see you in that garb? such is not the habit of governors in india or vice-kings elsewhere. i saw the satrap of teheran once, and he wore a turban of silk and a cloak of cloth of gold, and the hilt and scabbard of his sword made me dizzy with their splendour of precious stones. i thought osiris had lent him a glory from the sun. i fear you have not entered upon your kingdomthe kingdom i was to share with you." "the daughter of my wise guest is kinder than she imagines herself; she is teaching me that isis may kiss a heart without making it better." ben-hur spoke with cold courtesy, and iras, after playing with the pendent solitaire of her necklace of coins, rejoined, "for a jew, the son of hur is clever. i saw your dreaming caesar make his entry into jerusalem. you told us he would that day proclaim himself king of the jews from the steps of the temple. i beheld the procession descend the mountain bringing him. i heard their singing. they were beautiful with palms in motion. i looked everywhere among them for a figure with a promise of royaltya horseman in purple, a chariot with a driver in shining brass, a stately warrior behind an orbed shield, rivalling his spear in stature. i looked for his guard. it would have been pleasant to have seen a prince of jerusalem and a cohort of the legions of galilee." she flung her listener a glance of provoking disdain, then laughed heartily, as if the ludicrousness of the picture in her mind were too strong for contempt. "instead of a sesostris returning in triumph or a caesar helmed and swordedha, ha, ha!i saw a man with a woman's face and hair, riding an ass's colt, and in tears. the king! the son of god! the redeemer of the world! ha, ha, ha!" in spite of himself, ben-hur winced. "i did not quit my place, o prince of jerusalem," she said, before he could recover. "i did not laugh. i said to myself, 'wait. in the temple he will glorify himself as becomes a hero about to take possession of the world.' i saw him enter the gate of shushan and the court of the women. i saw him stop and stand before the gate beautiful. there were people with me on the porch and in the courts, and on the cloisters and on the steps of the three sides of the temple there were other peoplei will say a million of people, all waiting breathlessly to hear his proclamation. the pillars were not more still than we. ha, ha, ha! i fancied i heard the axles of the mighty roman machine begin to crack. ha, ha, ha! o prince, by the soul of solomon, your king of the world drew his gown about him and walked away, and out by the farthest gate, nor opened his mouth to say a word; andthe roman machine is running yet!" in simple homage to a hope that instant losta hope which, as it began to fall and while it was falling, he unconsciously followed with a parting look down to its disappearanceben-hur lowered his eyes. at no previous time, whether when balthasar was plying him with arguments, or when miracles were being done before his face, had the disputed nature of the nazarene been so plainly set before him. the best way, after all, to reach an understanding of the divine is by study of the human. in the things superior to men we may always look to find god. so with the picture given by the egyptian of the scene when the nazarene turned from the gate beautiful; its central theme was an act utterly beyond performance by a man under control of merely human inspirations. a parable to a parable-loving people, it taught what the christ had so often assertedthat his mission was not political. there was not much more time for thought of all this than that allowed for a common respiration; yet the idea took fast hold of ben-hur, and in the same instant he followed his hope of vengeance out of sight, and the man with the woman's face and hair, and in tears, came near to himnear enough to leave something of his spirit behind. "daughter of balthasar," he said, with dignity, "if this be the game of which you spoke to me, take the chapleti accord it yours. only let us make an end of words. that you have a purpose i am sure. to it, i pray, and i will answer you; then let us go our several ways, and forget we ever met. say on; i will listen, but not to more of that which you have given me." she regarded him intently a moment, as if determining what to dopossibly she might have been measuring his willthen she said, coldly, "you have my leavego." "peace to you," he responded, and walked away. as he was about passing out of the door, she called to him. "a word." he stopped where he was, and looked back. "consider all i know about you." "o most fair egyptian," he said, returning, "what all do you know about me?" she looked at him absently. "you are more of a roman, son of hur, than any of your hebrew brethren." "am i so unlike my countrymen?" he asked, indifferently. "the demi-gods are all roman now," she rejoined. "and therefore you will tell me what more you know about me?" "the likeness is not lost upon me. it might induce me to save you." "save me!" the pink-stained fingers toyed daintily with the lustrous pendent at the throat, and her voice was exceeding low and soft; only a tapping on the floor with her silken sandal admonished him to have a care. "there was a jew, an escaped galley-slave, who killed a man in the palace of idernee," she began, slowly. ben-hur was startled. "the same jew slew a roman soldier before the market-place here in jerusalem; the same jew has three trained legions from galilee to seize the roman governor to-night; the same jew has alliances perfected for war upon rome, and ilderim the sheik is one of his partners." drawing nearer him, she almost whispered "you have lived in rome. suppose these things repeated in ears we know of. ah! you change colour." he drew back from her with somewhat of the look which may be imagined upon the face of a man who, thinking to play with a kitten, has run upon a tiger; and she proceeded "you are acquainted in the antechamber, and know the lord sejanus. suppose it were told him with the proofs in handor without the proofsthat the same jew is the richest man in the eastnay, in all the empire. the fishes of the tiber would have fattening other than that they dig out of its ooze, would they not? and while they were feedingha! son of hur!what splendour there would be on exhibition in the circus! amusing the roman people is a fine art; getting the money to keep them amused is another art even finer; and was there ever an artist the equal of the lord sejanus?" ben-hur was not too much stirred by the evident baseness of the woman for recollection. not infrequently, when all the other faculties are numb and failing, memory does its offices with the greatest fidelity. the scene at the spring on the way to the jordan reproduced itself; and he remembered thinking then that esther had betrayed him, and thinking so now, he said, calmly as he could "to give you pleasure, daughter of egypt, i acknowledge your cunning, and that i am at your mercy. it may also please you to hear me acknowledge i have no hope of your favour. i could kill you, but you are a woman. the desert is open to receive me; and though rome is a good hunter of men, there she would follow long and far before she caught me, for in its heart there are wildernesses of spears as well as wildernesses of sand, and it is not unlovely to the unconquered parthian. in the toils as i amdupe that i have beenyet there is one thing my due: who told you all you know about me? in flight or captivity, dying even, there will be consolation in leaving the traitor the curse of a man who has lived knowing nothing but wretchedness. who told you all you know about me?" it might have been a touch of art, or might have been sincerethat as it maythe expression of the egyptian's face became sympathetic. "there are in my country, o son of hur," she said, presently, "workmen who make pictures by gathering vari-coloured shells here and there on the sea-shore after storms, and cutting them up, and patching the pieces as inlaying on marble slabs. can you not see the hint there is in the practice to such as go gathering for secrets? enough that from this person i gathered a handful of little circumstances, and from that other yet another handful, and that afterwhile i put them together, and was happy as a woman can be who has at disposal the fortune and life of a man whom"she stopped and beat the floor with her foot, and looked away as if to hide a sudden emotion from him; with an air of even painful resolution she presently finished the sentence"whom she is at loss what to do with." "no, it is not enough," ben-hur said, unmoved by the play"it is not enough. to-morrow you will determine what to do with me. i may die." "true," she rejoined quickly and with emphasis, "i had something from sheik ilderim as he lay with my father in a grove out in the desert. the night was still, very still, and the walls of the tent, sooth to say, were poor ward against ears outside listening tobirds and beetles flying through the air." she smiled at the conceit, but proceeded: "some other thingsbits of shell for the picturei had from" "whom?" "the son of hur himself." "was there no other who contributed?" "no, not one." hur drew a breath of relief, and said, lightly, "thanks. it were not well to keep the lord sejanus waiting for you. the desert is not so sensitive. again, o egypt, peace!" to this time he had been standing uncovered; now he took the handkerchief from his arm where it had been hanging, and adjusting it upon his head, turned to depart. but she arrested him; in her eagerness, she even reached a hand to him. "stay," she said. he looked back at her, but without taking the hand, though it was very noticeable for its sparkling of jewels; and he knew by her manner that the reserved point of the scene which was so surprising to him was now to come. "stay, and do not distrust me, o son of hur, if i declare i know why the noble arrius took you for his heir. and, by iris! by all the gods of egypt! i swear i tremble to think of you, so brave and generous, under the hand of the remorseless minister. you have left a portion of your youth in the atria of the great capital; consider, as i do, what the desert will be to you in contrast of life. oh, i give you pitypity! and if you but do what i say, i will save you. that, also, i swear, by our holy isis!" words of entreaty and prayer these, poured forth volubly and with earnestness and the mighty sanction of beauty. "almostalmost i believe you," ben-hur said, yet hesitatingly, and in a voice low and indistinct; for a doubt remained with him grumbling against the yielding tendency of the mana good sturdy doubt, such a one as has saved many a life and fortune. "the perfect life for a woman is to live in love; the greatest happiness for a man is the conquest of himself; and that, o prince, is what i have to ask of you." she spoke rapidly, and with animation; indeed, she had never appeared to him so fascinating. "you had once a friend," she continued. "it was in your boyhood. there was a quarrel, and you and he became enemies. he did you wrong. after many years you met him again in the circus at antioch." "messala!" "yes, messala. you are his creditor. forgive the past; admit him to friendship again; restore the fortune he lost in the great wager; rescue him. the six talents are as nothing to you; not so much as a bud lost upon a tree already in full leaf; but to himah, he must go about with a broken body; wherever you meet him he must look up to you from the ground. o ben-hur, noble prince! to a roman descended as he is beggary is the other most odious name for death. save him from beggary!" if the rapidity with which she spoke was a cunning invention to keep him from thinking, either she never knew or else had forgotten that there are convictions which derive nothing from thought, but drop into place without leave or notice. it seemed to him, when at last she paused to have his answer, that he could see messala himself peering at him over her shoulder; and in its expression the countenance of the roman was not that of a mendicant or a friend; the sneer was as patrician as ever, and the fine edge of the hauteur as flawless and irritating. "the appeal has been decided then, and for once a messala takes nothing. i must go and write it in my book of great occurrencesa judgment by a roman against a roman! but did hedid messala send you to me with this request, o egypt?" "he has a noble nature, and judged you by it." ben-hur took the hand upon his arm. "as you know him in such friendly way, fair egyptian, tell me, would he do for me, there being a reversal of the conditions, that he asks of me? answer, by isis! answer, for the truth's sake!" there was insistence in the touch of his hand, and in his look also. "oh!" she began, "he is" "a roman, you were about to say; meaning that i, a jew, must not determine dues from me to him by any measure of dues from him to me; being a jew, i must forgive him my winnings because he is a roman. if you have more to tell me, daughter of balthasar, speak quickly, quickly; for by the lord god of israel, when this heat of blood, hotter waxing, attains its highest, i may not be able longer to see that you are a woman, and beautiful! i may see but the spy of a master the more hateful because the master is a roman. say on, and quickly." she threw his hand off and stepped back into the full light, with all the evil of her nature collected in her eyes and voice. "thou drinker of lees, feeder upon husks! to think i could love thee, having seen messala! such as thou were born to serve him. he would have been satisfied with release of the six talents; but i say to the six thou shalt add twentytwenty, dost thou hear? the kissings of my little finger which thou hast taken from him, though with my consent, shall be paid for; and that i have followed thee with affectation of sympathy, and endured thee so long, enter into the account not less because i was serving him. the merchant here is thy keeper of moneys. if by to-morrow at noon he has not thy order acted upon in favour of my messala for six-and-twenty talentsmark the sum!thou shalt settle with the lord sejanus. be wise andfarewell." as she was going to the door, he put himself in her way. "the old egypt lives in you," he said. "whether you see messala to-morrow or the next day, here or in rome, give him this message. tell him i have back the money, even the six talents, he robbed me of by robbing my father's estate; tell him i survived the galleys to which he had me sent, and in my strength rejoice in his beggary and dishonour; tell him i think the affliction of body which he has from my hand is the curse of our lord god of israel upon him, more fit than death for his crimes against the helpless; tell him my mother and sister whom he had sent to a cell in antonia that they might die of leprosy, are alive and well, thanks to the power of the nazarene whom you so despise; tell him that, to fill my measure of happiness, they are restored to me, and that i will go hence to their love, and find in it more than compensation for the impure passions which you leave me to take to him; tell himthis for your comfort, o cunning incarnate, as much as histell him that when the lord sejanus comes to despoil me he will find nothing; for the inheritance i had from the duumvir, including the villa by misenum, has been sold, and the money from the sale is out of reach, afloat in the marts of the world as bills of exchange; and that this house and the goods and merchandise, and the ships and caravans with which simonides plies his commerces with such princely profits, are covered by imperial safeguardsa wise head having found the price of the favour, and the lord sejanus preferring a reasonable gain in the way of gift to much gain fished from pools of blood and wrong; tell him if all this were not so, if the money and property were all mine, yet should he not have the least part of it, for when he finds our jewish bills, and forces them to give up their values, there is yet another resort left mea deed of gift to caesarso much, o egypt, i found out in the atria of the great capital; tell him that along with my defiance i do not send him a curse in words, but, as a better expression of my undying hate, i send him one who will prove to him the sum of all curses; and when he looks at you repeating this my message, daughter of balthasar, his roman shrewdness will tell him all i mean. go nowand i will go." he conducted her to the door, and, with ceremonious politeness, held back the curtain while she passed out. "peace to you," he said, as she disappeared. chapter vii. ben-hur returns to esther. when ben-hur left the guest-chamber, there was not nearly so much life in his action as when he entered it; his steps were slower, and he went along with his head quite upon his breast. having made discovery that a man with a broken back may yet have a sound brain, he was reflecting upon the discovery. forasmuch as it is easy after a calamity has befallen to look back and see the proofs of its coming strewn along the way, the thought that he had not even suspected the egyptian as in messala's interest, but had gone blindly on through whole years putting himself and his friends more and more at her mercy, was a sore wound to the young man's vanity. "i remember," he said to himself, "she had no word of indignation for the perfidious roman at the fountain of castalia! i remember she extolled him at the boat-ride on the lake in the orchard of palms! and, ah!"he stopped, and beat his left hand violently with his right"ah! that mystery about the appointment she made with me at the palace of idernee is no mystery now!" the wound, it should be observed, was to his vanity; and fortunately it is not often that people die of such hurts, or even continue a long time sick. in ben-hur's case, moreover, there was a compensation; for presently he exclaimed aloud, "praised be the lord god that the woman took not a more lasting hold of me! i see i did not love her." then, as if he had already parted with not a little of the weight on his mind, he stepped forward more lightly; and, coming to the place on the terrace where one stairway led down to the court-yard below, and another ascended to the roof, he took the latter and began to climb. as he made the last step in the flight he stopped again. "can balthasar have been her partner in the long mask she has been playing? no, no. hypocrisy seldom goes with wrinkled age like that. balthasar is a good man." with this decided opinion he stepped upon the roof. there was a full moon overhead, yet the vault of the sky at the moment was lurid with light cast up from the fires burning in the streets and open places of the city, and the chanting and chorusing of the old psalmody of israel filled it with plaintive harmonies to which he could not but listen. the countless voices bearing the burden seemed to say, "thus, o son of judah, we prove our worshipfulness of the lord god, and our loyalty to the land he gave us. let a gideon appear, or a david, or a maccabaeus, and we are ready." that seemed an introduction; for next he saw the man of nazareth. in certain moods the mind is disposed to mock itself with inapposite fancies. the tearful woman-like face of the christ stayed with him while he crossed the roof to the parapet above the street on the north side of the house, and there was in it no sign of war; but rather as the heavens of the calm evenings look peace upon everything, so it looked, provoking the old question, what manner of man is he? ben-hur permitted himself one glance over the parapet, then turned and walked mechanically towards the summer-house. "let them do their worst," he said, as he went slowly on. "i will not forgive the roman. i will not divide my fortune with him, nor will i fly from this city of my fathers; i will call on galilee first, and here make the fight. by brave deeds i will bring the tribes to our side. he who raised up moses will find us a leader, if i fail. if not the nazarene, then some one of the many ready to die for freedom." the interior of the summer-house, when ben-hur, slow sauntering, came to it, was murkily lighted. the faintest of shadows lay along the floor from the pillars on the north and west sides. looking in, he saw the arm-chair usually occupied by simonides drawn to a spot from which a view of the city over towards the market-place could be best had. "the good man is returned. i will speak with him, unless he be asleep." he walked in, and with a quiet step approached the chair. peering over the high back, he beheld esther nestled in the seat asleepa small figure snugged away under her father's lap-robe. the hair dishevelled fell over her face. her breathing was low and irregular. once it was broken by a long sigh, ending in a sob. somethingit might have been the sigh or the loneliness in which he found herimparted to him the idea that the sleep was a rest from sorrow rather than fatigue. nature kindly sends such relief to children, and he was used to thinking esther scarcely more than a child. he put his arms upon the back of the chair, and thought. "i will not wake her. i have nothing to tell hernothing unlessunless it be my love.... she is a daughter of judah, and beautiful, and so unlike the egyptian; for there it is all vanity, here all truth; there ambition, here duty; there selfishness, here self-sacrifice.... nay, the question is not do i love her, but does she love me? she was my friend from the beginning. the night on the terrace at antioch, how childlike she begged me not to make rome my enemy, and had me tell her of the villa by misenum, and of the life there! that she should not see i saw her cunning drift i kissed her. can she have forgotten the kiss? i have not. i love her.... they do not know in the city that i have back my people. i shrank from telling it to the egyptian; but this little one will rejoice with me over their restoration, and welcome them with love and sweet services of hand and heart. she will be to my mother another daughter; in tirzah she will find her other self. i would wake her and tell her these things, butout on the sorceress of egypt! of that folly i could not command myself to speak. i will go away, and wait another and a better time. i will wait. fair esther, dutiful child, daughter of judah!" he retired silently as he came. chapter viii. gethsemane"whom seek ye?" the streets were full of people going and coming, or grouped about the fires roasting meat, and feasting and singing, and happy. the odour of scorching flesh mixed with the odour of cedar-wood aflame and smoking loaded the air; and as this was the occasion when every son of israel was full brother to every other son of israel, and hospitality was without bounds, ben-hur was saluted at every step, while the groups by the fires insisted, "stay and partake with us. we are brethren in the love of the lord." but with thanks to them he hurried on, intending to take horse at the khan and return to the tents on the cedron. to make the place, it was necessary for him to cross the thoroughfare so soon to receive sorrowful christian perpetuation. there also the pious celebration was at its height. looking up the street, he noticed the flames of torches in motion streaming out like pennons; then he observed that the singing ceased where the torches came. his wonder rose to its highest, however, when he became certain that amidst the smoke and dancing sparks he saw the keener sparkling of burnished spear-tips, arguing the presence of roman soldiers. what were they, the scoffing legionaries, doing in a jewish religious procession? the circumstance was unheard of, and he stayed to see the meaning of it. the moon was shining its best; yet, as if the moon and the torches, and the fires in the street, and the rays streaming from windows and open doors were not enough to make the way clear, some of the processionists carried lighted lanterns; and fancying he discovered a special purpose in the use of such equipments, ben-hur stepped into the street, so close to the line of march as to bring every one of the company under view while passing. the torches and the lanterns were being borne by servants, each of whom was armed with a bludgeon or a sharpened stave. their present duty seemed to be to pick out the smoothest paths among the rocks in the street for certain dignitaries among themelders and priests; rabbis with long beards, heavy brows, and beaked noses; men of the class potential in the councils of caiaphas and hannas. where could they be going? not to the temple, certainly, for the route to the sacred house from zion, whence these appeared to be coming, was by the xystus. and their businessif peaceful, why the soldiers? as the procession began to go by ben-hur, his attention was particularly called to three persons walking together. they were well towards the front, and the servants who went before them with lanterns appeared unusually careful in the service. in the person moving on the left of this group he recognized a chief policeman of the temple; the one on the right was a priest; the middle man was not at first so easily placed, as he walked leaning heavily upon the arms of the others, and carried his head so low upon his breast as to hide his face. his appearance was that of a prisoner not yet recovered from the fright of arrest, or being taken to something dreadfulto torture or death. the dignitaries helping him on the right and left, and the attention they gave him, made it clear that if he were not himself the object moving the party, he was at least in some way connected with the objecta witness or a guide, possibly an informer. so if it could be found who he was the business in hand might be shrewdly guessed. with great assurance, ben-hur fell in on the right of the priest, and walked along with him. now if the man would lift his head! and presently he did so, letting the light of the lanterns strike full in his facepale, dazed, pinched with dread; the beard roughed; the eyes filmy, sunken, and despairing. in much going about following the nazarene, ben-hur had come to know his disciples as well as the master; and now, at sight of the dismal countenance, he cried out"the 'scariot!" slowly the head of the man turned until his eyes settled upon ben-hur, and his lips moved as if he were about to speak; but the priest interfered. "who art thou? begone!" he said to ben-hur, pushing him away. the young man took the push good-naturedly, and, waiting an opportunity, fell into the procession again. thus he was carried passively along down the street, through the crowded lowlands between the hill bezetha and the castle of antonia, and on by the bethesda reservoir to the sheep gate. there were people everywhere, and everywhere the people were engaged in sacred observances. it being passover night, the valves of the gate stood open. the keepers were off somewhere feasting. in front of the procession as it passed out unchallenged was the deep gorge of the cedron, with olivet beyond, its dressing of cedar and olive trees darker of the moonlight silvering all the heavens. two roads met and merged into the street at the gateone from the north-east, the other from bethany. ere ben-hur could finish wondering whether he were to go farther, and if so, which road was to be taken, he was led off down into the gorge. and still no hint of the purpose of the midnight march. down the gorge and over the bridge at the bottom of it. there was a great clatter on the floor as the crowd, now a struggling rabble, passed over, beating and pounding with their clubs and staves. a little farther, and they turned off to the left in the direction of an olive orchard enclosed by a stone wall in view from the road. ben-hur knew there was nothing in the place but old gnarled trees, the grass, and a trough hewn out of a rock for the treading of oil after the fashion of the country. while, yet more wonder-struck, he was thinking what could bring such a company at such an hour to a quarter so lonesome, they were all brought to a stand-still. voices called out excitedly in front; a chill sensation ran from man to man; there was a rapid falling-back, and a blind stumbling over each other. the soldiers alone kept their order. it took ben-hur but a moment to disengage himself from the mob and run forward. there he found a gateway without a gate admitting to the orchard, and he halted to take in the scene. a man in white clothes, and bareheaded, was standing outside the entrance, his hands crossed before hima slender, stooping figure, with long hair and thin facein an attitude of resignation and waiting. it was the nazarene! behind him, next the gateway, were the disciples in a group; they were excited, but no man was ever calmer than he. the torch-light beat redly upon him, giving his hair a tint ruddier than was natural to it; yet the expression of the countenance was as usual, all gentleness and pity. opposite this most unmartial figure stood the rabble, gaping, silent, awed, coweringready at a sign of anger from him to break and run. and from him to themthen at judas, conspicuous in their midstben-hur lookedone quick glance, and the object of the visit lay open to his understanding. here was the betrayer, there the betrayed; and these with clubs and staves, and the legionaries, were brought to take him. a man may not always tell what he will do until the trial is upon him. this was the emergency for which ben-hur had been for years preparing. the man to whose security he had devoted himself, and upon whose life he had been building so largely, was in personal peril; yet he stood still. such contradictions are there in human nature! to say truth, o reader, he was not entirely recovered from the picture of the christ before the gate beautiful as it had been given by the egyptian; and, besides that, the very calmness with which the mysterious person confronted the mob held him in restraint by suggesting the possession of a power in reserve more than sufficient for the peril. peace and good-will, and love and nonresistance, had been the burden of the nazarene's teaching; would he put his preaching into practice? he was master of life; he could restore it when lost; he could take it at pleasure. what use would he make of the power now? defend himself? and how? a worda breatha thought were sufficient. that there would be some signal exhibition of astonishing force beyond the natural ben-hur believed, and in that faith waited. and in all this he was still measuring the nazarene by himselfby the human standard. presently the clear voice of the christ arose. "whom seek ye?" "jesus of nazareth," the priest replied. "i am he." at these simplest of words, spoken without passion or alarm, the assailants fell back several steps, the timid among them cowering to the ground; and they might have let him alone and gone away had not judas walked over to him. "hail, master!" with this friendly speech he kissed him. "judas," said the nazarene, mildly, "betrayest thou the son of man with a kiss? wherefore art thou come?" receiving no reply, the master spoke to the crowd again. "whom seek ye?" "jesus of nazareth." "i have told you that i am he. if, therefore, you seek me, let these go their way." at these words of entreaty the rabbis advanced upon him; and, seeing their intent, some of the disciples for whom he interceded drew nearer; one of them cut off a man's ear, but without saving the master from being taken. and yet ben-hur stood still! nay, while the officers were making ready with their ropes the nazarene was doing his greatest charitynot the greatest in deed, but the very greatest in illustration of his forbearance, so far surpassing that of men. "suffer ye thus far," he said to the wounded man, and healed him with a touch. both friends and enemies were confoundedone side that he could do such a thing, the other that he would do it under the circumstances. "surely he will not allow them to bind him!" thus thought ben-hur. "put up thy sword into the sheath; the cup which my father hath given me, shall i not drink it?" from the offending follower, the nazarene turned to his captors. "are you come out as against a thief, with swords and staves to take me? i was daily with you in the temple, and you took me not; but this is your hour, and the power of darkness." the posse plucked up courage and closed about him; and when ben-hur looked for the faithful they were gonenot one of them remained. the crowd about the deserted man seemed very busy with tongue, hand, and foot. over their heads, between the torch-sticks, through the smoke, sometimes in openings between the restless men, ben-hur caught momentary glimpses of the prisoner. never had anything struck him as so piteous, so unfriended, so forsaken! yet, he thought, the man could have defended himselfhe could have slain his enemies with a breath, but he would not. what was the cup his father had given him to drink? and who was the father to be so obeyed? mystery upon mysterynot one, but many. directly the mob started in return to the city, the soldiers in the lead. ben-hur became anxious; he was not satisfied with himself. where the torches were in the midst of the rabble he knew the nazarene was to be found. suddenly he resolved to see him again. he would ask him one question. taking off his long outer garment and the handkerchief from his head, he threw them upon the orchard wall, and started after the posse, which he boldly joined. through the stragglers he made way, and by littles at length reached the man who carried the ends of the rope with which the prisoner was bound. the nazarene was walking slowly, his head down, his hands bound behind him; the hair fell thickly over his face, and he stooped more than usual; apparently he was oblivious to all going on around him. in advance a few steps were priests and elders talking and occasionally looking back. when, at length, they were all near the bridge in the gorge, ben-hur took the rope from the servant who had it, and stepped past him. "master, master!" he said, hurriedly, speaking close to the nazarene's ear. "dost thou hear, master? a wordone word. tell me" the fellow from whom he had taken the rope now claimed it. "tell me," ben-hur continued, "goest thou with these of thine own accord?" the people were come up now, and in his own ears asking angrily, "who art thou, man?" "o master," ben-hur made haste to say, his voice sharp with anxiety, "i am thy friend and lover. tell me, i pray thee, if i bring rescue, wilt thou accept it?" the nazarene never so much as looked up or allowed the slightest sign of recognition; yet the something which when we are suffering is always telling it to such as look at us, though they be strangers, failed not now. "let him alone," it seemed to say; "he has been abandoned by his friends; the world has denied him; in bitterness of spirit he has taken farewell of men; he is going he knows not where, and he cares not. let him alone." and to that ben-hur was now driven. a dozen hands were upon him, and from all sides there was shouting, "he is one of them. bring him along; club himkill him!" with a gust of passion which gave him many times his ordinary force, ben-hur raised himself, turned once about with his arms outstretched, shook the hands off, and rushed through the circle which was fast hemming him in. the hands snatching at him as he passed tore his garments from his back, so he ran off the road naked; and the gorge, in keeping of the friendly darkness, darker there than elsewhere, received him safe. reclaiming his handkerchief and outer garments from the orchard wall, he followed back to the city gate; thence he went to the khan, and on the good horse rode to the tents of his people out by the tombs of the kings. as he rode, he promised himself to see the nazarene on the morrowpromised it, not knowing that the unfriended man was taken straightway to the house of hannas to be tried that night. the heart the young man carried to his couch beat so heavily he could not sleep; for now clearly his renewed judean kingdom resolved itself into what it wasonly a dream. it is bad enough to see our castles overthrown one after another with an interval between in which to recover from the shock, or at least let the echoes of the fall die away; but when they go altogethergo as ships sink, as houses tumble in earthquakesthe spirits which endure it calmly are made of stuffs sterner than common, and ben-hur's was not of them. through vistas in the future he began to catch glimpses of a life serenely beautiful, with a home instead of a palace of state, and esther its mistress. again and again through the leaden-footed hours of the night he saw the villa by misenum, and with his little countrywoman strolled through the garden, and rested in the panelled atrium; overhead the neapolitan sky, at their feet the sunniest of sun-lands and the bluest of bays. in plainest speech, he was entering upon a crisis with which to-morrow and the nazarene will have everything to do. chapter ix. the going to calvary. next morning, about the second hour, two men rode full speed to the doors of ben-hur's tents, and dismounting, asked to see him. he was not yet risen, but gave directions for their admission. "peace to you, brethren," he said, for they were of his galileans, and trusted officers. "will you be seated?" "nay," the senior replied, bluntly, "to sit and be at ease is to let the nazarene die. rise, son of judah, and go with us. the judgment has been given. the tree of the cross is already at golgotha." ben-hur stared at them. "the cross!" was all he could for the moment say. "they took him last night, and tried him," the man continued. "at dawn they led him before pilate. twice the roman denied his guilt; twice he refused to give him over. at last he washed his hands, and said, 'be it upon you then;' and they answered" "who answered?" "theythe priests and people'his blood be upon us and our children.'" "holy father abraham!" cried ben-hur; "a roman kinder to an israelite than his own kin! and ifah, if he should indeed be the son of god, what shall ever wash his blood from their children? it must not be'tis time to fight!" his face brightened with resolution, and he clapped his hands. "the horsesand quickly!" he said to the arab who answered the signal. "and bid amrah send me fresh garments, and bring my sword! it is time to die for israel, my friends. tarry without till i come." he ate a crust, drank a cup of wine, and was soon upon the road. "whither would you go first?" asked the galilean. "to collect the legions." "alas!" the man replied, throwing up his hands. "why alas?" "master"the man spoke with shame"master, i and my friend here are all that are faithful. the rest do follow the priests." "seeking what?" and ben-hur drew rein. "to kill him." "not the nazarene?" "you have said it." ben-hur looked slowly from one man to the other. he was hearing again the question of the night before"the cup my father hath given me, shall i not drink it?" in the ear of the nazarene he was putting his own question, "if i bring thee rescue, wilt thou accept it?" he was saying to himself, "this death may not be averted. the man has been travelling towards it with full knowledge from the day he began his mission: it is imposed by a will higher than his; whose but the lord's! if he is consenting, if he goes to it voluntarily, what shall another do?" nor less did ben-hur see the failure of the scheme he had built upon the fidelity of the galileans; their desertion, in fact, left nothing more of it. but how singular it should happen that morning of all others! a dread seized him. it was possible his scheming, and labour, and expenditure of treasure might have been but blasphemous contention with god. when he picked up the reins and said, "let us go, brethren," all before him was uncertainty. the faculty of resolving quickly, without which one cannot be a hero in the midst of stirring scenes, was numb within him. "let us go, brethren; let us to golgotha." they passed through excited crowds of people going south, like themselves. all the country north of the city seemed aroused and in motion. hearing that the procession with the condemned might be met with somewhere near the great white towers left by herod, the three friends rode thither, passing round south-east of akra. in the valley below the pool of hezekiah, passage-way against the multitude became impossible, and they were compelled to dismount, and take shelter behind the corner of a house and wait. the waiting was as if they were on a river bank, watching a flood go by, for such the people seemed. there are certain chapters in the first book of this story which were written to give the reader an idea of the composition of the jewish nationality as it was in the time of christ. they were also written in anticipation of this hour and scene; so that he who has read them with attention can now see all ben-hur saw of the going to the crucifixiona rare and wonderful sight! half-an-houran hourthe flood surged by ben-hur and his companions, within arm's reach, incessant, undiminished. at the end of that time he could have said, "i have seen all the castes of jerusalem, all the sects of judea, all the tribes of israel, and all the nationalities of earth represented by them." the libyan jew went by, and the jew of egypt, and the jew from the rhine; in short, jews from all east countries and all west countries, and all islands within commercial connection; they went by on foot, on horseback, on camels, in litters and chariots, and with an infinite variety of costumes, yet with the same marvellous similitude of features which to-day particularizes the children of israel, tried as they have been by climates and modes of life; they went by speaking all known tongues, for by that means only were they distinguishable group for group; they went by in hasteeager, anxious, crowdingall to behold one poor nazarene die, a felon between felons. these were the many, but they were not all. borne along with the stream were thousands not jewsthousands hating and despising themgreeks, romans, arabs, syrians, africans, egyptians, easterns. so that, studying the mass, it seemed the whole world was to be represented, and, in that sense, present at the crucifixion. the going was singularly quiet. a hoof-stroke upon a rock, the glide and rattle of revolving wheels, voices in conversation, and now and then a calling voice, were all the sounds heard above the rustle of the mighty movement. yet was there upon every countenance the look with which men make haste to see some dreadful sight, some sudden wreck, or ruin, or calamity of war. and by such signs ben-hur judged that these were the strangers in the city come up to the passover, who had had no part in the trial of the nazarene, and might be his friends. at length, from the direction of the great towers, ben-hur heard, at first faint in the distance, a shouting of many men. "hark! they are coming now," said one of his friends. the people in the street halted to hear; but as the cry rang on over their heads, they looked at each other, and in shuddering silence moved along. the shouting drew nearer each moment; and the air was already full of it and trembling, when ben-hur saw the servants of simonides coming with their master in his chair, and esther walking by his side; a covered litter was next behind them. "peace to you, o simonidesand to you, esther," said ben-hur, meeting them. "if you are for golgotha, stay until the procession passes; i will then go with you. there is room to turn in by the house here." the merchant's large head rested heavily upon his breast; rousing himself, he answered, "speak to balthasar; his pleasure will be mine. he is in the litter." ben-hur hastened to draw aside the curtain. the egyptian was lying within, his wan face so pinched as to appear like a dead man's. the proposal was submitted to him. "can we see him?" he inquired, faintly. "the nazarene? yes; he must pass within a few feet of us." "dear lord!" the old man cried, fervently. "once more, once more! oh, it is a dreadful day for the world!" shortly the whole party were in waiting under shelter of the house. they said but little, afraid, probably, to trust their thoughts to each other; everything was uncertain, and nothing so much so as opinions. balthasar drew himself feebly from the litter, and stood supported by a servant; esther and ben-hur kept simonides company. meantime the flood poured along, if anything, more densely than before; and the shouting came nearer, shrill up in the air, hoarse along the earth, and cruel. at last the procession was up. "see!" said ben-hur, bitterly; "that which cometh now is jerusalem." the advance was in possession of an army of boys, hooting and screaming, "the king of the jews! room, room for the king of the jews!" simonides watched them as they whirled and danced along, like a cloud of summer insects, and said, gravely, "when these come to their inheritance, son of hur, alas for the city of solomon!" a band of legionaries fully armed followed next, marching in sturdy indifference, the glory of burnished brass about them the while. then came the nazarene. he was nearly dead. every few steps he staggered as if he would fall. a stained gown badly torn hung from his shoulders over a seamless under-tunic. his bare feet left red splotches upon the stones. an inscription on a board was tied to his neck. a crown of thorns had been crushed hard down upon his head, making cruel wounds from which streams of blood, now dry and blackened, had run over his face and neck. the long hair, tangled in the thorns, was clotted thick. the skin, where it could be seen, was ghastly white. his hands were tied before him. back somewhere in the city he had fallen exhausted under the transverse beam of his cross, which, as a condemned person, custom required him to bear to the place of execution; now a countryman carried the burden in his stead. four soldiers went with him as a guard against the mob, who sometimes, nevertheless, broke through, and struck him with sticks, and spit upon him. yet no sound escaped him, neither remonstrance nor groan; nor did he look up until he was nearly in front of the house sheltering ben-hur and his friends, all of whom were moved with quick compassion. esther clung to her father; and he, strong of will as he was, trembled. balthasar fell down speechless. even ben-hur cried out, "o my god! my god!" then, as if he divined their feelings or heard the exclamation, the nazarene turned his wan face towards the party, and looked at them each one, so they carried the look in memory through life. they could see he was thinking of them, not himself, and the dying eyes gave them the blessing he was not permitted to speak. "where are thy legions, son of hur?" asked simonides, aroused. "hannas can tell thee better than i." "what, faithless?" "all but these two." "then all is lost, and this good man must die!" the face of the merchant knit convulsively as he spoke, and his head sank upon his breast. he had borne his part in ben-hur's labours well, and he had been inspired by the same hopes, now blown out never to be rekindled. two other men succeeded the nazarene, bearing cross-beams. "who are these?" ben-hur asked of the galileans. "thieves appointed to die with the nazarene," they replied. next in the procession stalked a mitred figure clad all in the golden vestments of the high-priest. policemen from the temple curtained him round about; and after him, in order, strode the sanhedrim, and a long array of priests, the latter in their plain white garments overwrapped by abnets of many folds and gorgeous colours. "the son-in-law of hannas," said ben-hur, in a low voice. "caiaphas! i have seen him," simonides replied, adding, after a pause during which he thoughtfully watched the haughty pontiff, "and now am i convinced. with such assurance as proceeds from clear enlightenment of the spiritwith absolute assurancenow know i that he who first goes yonder with the inscription about his neck is what the inscription proclaims himking of the jews. a common man, an impostor, a felon was never thus waited upon. for look! here are the nationsjerusalem, israel. here is the ephod, here the blue robe with its fringe, and purple pomegranates, and golden bells, not seen in the street since the day jaddua went out to meet the macedonianproofs all that this nazarene is king. would i could rise and go after him!" ben-hur listened surprised; and directly, as if himself awakening to his unusual display of feeling, simonides said, impatiently "speak to balthasar, i pray you, and let us begone. the vomit of jerusalem is coming." then esther spoke. "i see some women there, and they are weeping. who are they?" following the pointing of her hand, the party beheld four women in tears; one of them leaned upon the arm of a man of aspect not unlike the nazarene's. presently ben-hur answered "the man is the disciple whom the nazarene loves the best of all; she who leans upon his arm is mary, the master's mother; the others are friendly women of galilee." esther pursued the mourners with glistening eyes, until the multitude received them out of sight. it may be the reader will fancy the foregoing snatches of conversation were had in quiet; but it was not so. the talking was, for the most part, like that indulged by people at the seaside under the sound of the surf; for to nothing else can the clamour of this division of the mob be so well likened. the demonstration was the forerunner of those in which, scarce thirty years later, under rule of the factions, the holy city was torn to pieces; it was quite as great in numbers, as fanatical and bloodthirsty; boiled and raved, and had in it exactly the same elementsservants, camel-drivers, marketmen, gate-keepers, gardeners, dealers in fruits and wines, proselytes, and foreigners not proselytes, watchmen and menials from the temple, thieves, robbers, and the myriad not assignable to any class, but who, on such occasions as this, appeared no one could say whence, hungry and smelling of caves and old tombsbareheaded wretches with naked arms and legs, hair and beard in uncombed mats, and each with one garment the colour of clay; beasts with abysmal mouths, in outcry effective as lions calling each other across desert spaces. some of them had swords; a greater number flourished spears and javelins; though the weapons of the many were staves and knotted clubs, and slings, for which latter selected stones were stored in scrips, and sometimes in sacks improvised from the foreskirt of their dirty tunics. among the mass here and there appeared persons of high degreescribes, elders, rabbis, pharisees with broad fringing, sadducees in fine cloaksserving for the time as prompters and directors. if a throat tired of one cry, they invented another for it; if brassy lungs showed signs of collapse, they set them going again; and yet the clamour, loud and continuous as it was, could have been reduced to a few syllablesking of the jews!room for the king of the jews!defiler of the temple!blasphemer of god!crucify him, crucify him! and of these cries the last one seemed in greatest favour, because, doubtless, it was more directly expressive of the wish of the mob, and helped to better articulate its hatred of the nazarene. "come," said simonides, when balthasar was ready to proceed"come, let us forward." ben-hur did not hear the call. the appearance of the part of the procession then passing, its brutality and hunger for life, were reminding him of the nazarenehis gentleness, and the many charities he had seen him do for suffering men. suggestions beget suggestions, so he remembered suddenly his own great indebtedness to the man; the time he himself was in the hands of a roman guard going, as was supposed, to a death as certain and almost as terrible as this one of the cross; the cooling drink he had at the well by nazareth, and the divine expression of the face of him who gave it; the later goodness, the miracle of palm-sunday; and with these recollections, the thought of his present powerlessness to give back help for help or make return in kind stung him keenly, and he accused himself. he had not done all he might; he could have watched with the galileans, and kept them true and ready; and thisah! this was the moment to strike! a blow well given now would not merely disperse the mob and set the nazarene free; it would be a trumpet-call to israel, and precipitate the long-dreamt-of war for freedom. the opportunity was going; the minutes were bearing it away; and if lost! god of abraham! was there nothing to be donenothing? that instant a party of galileans caught his eye. he rushed through the press and overtook them. "follow me," he said. "i would have speech with you." the men obeyed him, and when they were under shelter of the house, he spoke again "you are of those who took my swords, and agreed with me to strike for freedom and the king who was coming. you have the swords now, and now is the time to strike with them. go, look everywhere, and find our brethren, and tell them to meet me at the tree of the cross making ready for the nazarene. haste all of you! nay, stand not so! the nazarene is the king, and freedom dies with him." they looked at him respectfully, but did not move. "hear you?" he asked. then one of them replied "son of judah"by that name they knew him"son of judah, it is you who are deceived, not we or our brethren who have your swords. the nazarene is not the king; neither has he the spirit of a king. we were with him when he came into jerusalem; we saw him in the temple; he failed himself, and us, and israel; at the gate beautiful he turned his back upon god and refused the throne of david. he is not king, and galilee is not with him. he shall die the death. but hear you, son of judah. we have your swords, and we are ready now to draw them and strike for freedom; and so is galilee. be it for freedom, o son of judah, for freedom! and we will meet you at the tree of the cross." the sovereign moment of his life was upon ben-hur. could he have taken the offer and said the word, history might have been other than it is; but then it would have been history ordered by men, not godsomething that never was, and never will be. a confusion fell upon him; he knew not how, though afterwards he attributed it to the nazarene; for when the nazarene was risen, he understood the death was necessary to faith in the resurrection, without which christianity would be an empty husk. the confusion, as has been said, left him without the faculty of decision; he stood, helplesswordless even. covering his face with his hand, he shook with the conflict between his wish, which was what he would have ordered, and the power that was upon him. "come; we are waiting for you," said simonides, the fourth time. thereupon he walked mechanically after the chair and the litter. esther walked with him. like balthasar and his friends, the wise men, the day they went to the meeting in the desert, he was being led along the way. chapter x. the crucifixion. when the partybalthasar, simonides, ben-hur, esther, and the two faithful galileansreached the place of crucifixion, ben-hur was in advance leading them. how they had been able to make way through the great press of excited people, he never knew; no more did he know the road by which they came or the time it took them to come. he had walked in total unconsciousness, neither hearing nor seeing anybody or anything, and without a thought of where he was going, or the ghostliest semblance of a purpose in his mind. in such condition a little child could have done as much as he to prevent the awful crime he was about to witness. the intentions of god are always strange to us; but not more so than the means by which they are wrought out, and at last made plain to our belief. ben-hur came to a stop; those following him also stopped. as a curtain rises before an audience, the spell holding him in its sleepawake rose, and he saw with a clear understanding. there was a space upon the top of a low knoll rounded like a skull, and dry, dusty, and without vegetation, except some scrubby hyssop. the boundary of the space was a living wall of men, with men behind struggling, some to look over, others to look through it. an inner wall of roman soldiery held the dense outer wall rigidly to its place. a centurion kept eye upon the soldiers. up to the very line so vigilantly guarded ben-hur had been led; at the line he now stood, his face to the north-west. the knoll was the old aramaic golgothain latin, calvaria; anglicized, calvary; translated, the skull. on its slopes, in the low places, on the swells and higher hills, the earth sparkled with a strange enamelling. look where he would outside the walled space, he saw no patch of brown soil, no rock, no green thing; he saw only thousands of eyes in ruddy faces; off a little way in the perspective only ruddy faced without eyes; off a little farther only a broad, broad circle, which the nearer view instructed him was also of faces. and this was the ensemble of three millions of people; under it three millions of hearts throbbing with passionate interest in what was taking place upon the knoll; indifferent as to the thieves, caring only for the nazarene, and for him only as he was an object of hate or fear or curiosityhe who loved them all, and was about to die for them. in the spectacle of a great assemblage of people there are always the bewilderment and fascination one feels while looking over a stretch of sea in agitation, and never had this one been exceeded; yet ben-hur gave it but a passing glance, for that which was going on in the space described would permit no division of his interest. up on the knoll so high as to be above the living wall, and visible over the heads of an attending company of notables, conspicuous because of his mitre and vestments and his haughty air, stood the high-priest. up the knoll still higher, up quite to the round summit, so as to be seen far and near, was the nazarene, stooped and suffering, but silent. the wit among the guard had complemented the crown upon his head by putting a reed in his hand for a sceptre. clamours blew upon him like blastslaughterexecrationssometimes both together indistinguishably. a manonly a man, o reader, would have charged the blasts with the remainder of his love for the race, and let it go forever. all the eyes then looking were fixed upon the nazarene. it may have been pity with which he was moved; whatever the cause, ben-hur was conscious of a change in his feelings. a conception of something better than the best of this lifesomething so much better that it could serve a weak man with strength to endure agonies of spirit as well as of body; something to make death welcomeperhaps another life purer than this oneperhaps the spirit-life which balthasar held to so fast, began to dawn upon his mind clearer and clearer, bringing to him a certain sense that, after all, the mission of the nazarene was that of guide across the boundary for such as loved him; across the boundary to where his kingdom was set up and waiting for him. then, as something borne through the air out of the almost forgotten, he heard again, or seemed to hear, the saying of the nazarene "i am the resurrection and the life." and the words repeated themselves over and over, and took form, and the dawn touched them with its light, and filled them with a new meaning. and as men repeat a question to grasp and fix the meaning, he asked, gazing at the figure on the hill fainting under its crown, who the resurrection? and who the life? "i am," the figure seemed to sayand say it for him; for instantly he was sensible of a peace such as he had never knownthe peace which is the end of doubt and mystery, and the beginning of faith and love and clear understanding. from this dreamy state ben-hur was aroused by the sound of hammering. on the summit of the knoll he observed then what had escaped him beforesome soldiers and workmen preparing the crosses. the holes for planting the trees were ready, and now the transverse beams were being fitted to their places. "bid the men make haste," said the high-priest to the centurion. "these"and he pointed to the nazarene"must be dead by the going-down of the sun, and buried, that the land may not be defiled. such is the law." with a better mind, a soldier went to the nazarene and offered him something to drink, but he refused the cup. then another went to him and took from his neck the board with the inscription upon it, which he nailed to the tree of the crossand the preparation was complete. "the crosses are ready," said the centurion to the pontiff, who received the report with a wave of the hand and the reply "let the blasphemer go first. the son of god should be able to save himself. we will see." the people to whom the preparation in its several stages was visible, and who to this time had assailed the hill with incessant cries of impatience, permitted a lull which directly became a universal hush. the part of the infliction most shocking, at least to the thought, was reachedthe men were to be nailed to their crosses. when for that purpose the soldiers laid their hands upon the nazarene first, a shudder passed through the great concourse; the most brutalized shrank with dread. afterwards there were those who said the air suddenly chilled and made them shiver. "how very still it is!" esther said, as she put her arm about her father's neck. and remembering the torture he himself had suffered, he drew her face down upon his breast, and sat trembling. "avoid it, esther, avoid it!" he said, "i know not but all who stand and see itthe innocent as well as the guiltymay be cursed from this hour." balthasar sank upon his knees. "son of hur," said simonides, with increasing excitement"son of hur, if jehovah stretch not forth his hand, and quickly, israel is lostand we are lost." ben-hur answered, calmly, "i have been in a dream, simonides, and heard in it why all this should be, and why it should go on. it is the will of the nazareneit is god's will. let us do as the egyptian herelet us hold our peace and pray." as he looked up on the knoll again, the words were wafted to him through the awful stillness "i am the resurrection and the life." he bowed reverently as to a person speaking. up on the summit meantime the work went on. the guard took the nazarene's clothes from him; so that he stood before the millions naked. the stripes of the scourging he had received in the early morning were still bloody upon his back; yet he was laid pitilessly down, and stretched upon the crossfirst, the arms upon the transverse beam; the spikes were sharpa few blows, and they were driven through the tender palms; next, they drew his knees up until the soles of the feet rested flat upon the tree; then they placed one foot upon the other, and one spike fixed both of them fast. the dulled sound of the hammering was heard outside the guarded space; and such as could not hear, yet saw the hammer as it fell, shivered with fear. and withal not a groan, or cry, or word of remonstrance from the sufferer: nothing at which an enemy could laugh; nothing a lover could regret. "which way wilt thou have him faced?" asked a soldier, bluntly. "towards the temple," the pontiff replied. "in dying i would have him see the holy house hath not suffered by him." the workmen put their hands to the cross, and carried it, burden and all, to the place of planting. at a word they dropped the tree, into the hole; and the body of the nazarene also dropped heavily and hung by the bleeding hands. still no cry of painonly the exclamation divinest of all recorded exclamations "father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." the cross, reared now above all other objects, and standing singly out against the sky, was greeted with a burst of delight; and all who could see and read the writing upon the board over the nazarene's head made haste to decipher it. soon as read, the legend was adopted by them and communicated, and presently the whole mighty concourse was ringing the salutation from side to side, and repeating it with laughter and groans "king of the jews! hail, king of the jews!" the pontiff, with a clearer idea of the import of the inscription, protested against it, but in vain; so the titled king, looking from the knoll with dying eyes, must have had the city of his fathers at rest below himshe who had so ignominiously cast him out. the sun was rising rapidly to noon; the hills bared their brown breasts lovingly to it; the more distant mountains rejoiced in the purple with which it so regally dressed them. in the city, the temples, palaces, towers, pinnacles, and all points of beauty and prominence, seemed to lift themselves into the unrivalled brilliance, as if they knew the pride they were giving the many who from time to time turned to look at them. suddenly a dimness began to fill the sky and cover the earthat first no more than a scarce perceptible fading of the day; a twilight out of time; an evening gliding in upon the splendours of noon. but it deepened, and directly drew attention; whereat the noise of the shouting and laughter fell off, and men, doubting their senses, gazed at each other curiously: then they looked to the sun again; then at the mountains, getting farther away; at the sky and the near landscape, sinking in shadow; at the hill upon which the tragedy was enacting; and from all these they gazed at each other again, and turned pale, and held their peace. "it is only a mist or passing cloud," simonides said soothingly to esther, who was alarmed. "it will brighten presently." ben-hur did not think so. "it is not a mist or a cloud," he said. "the spirits who live in the airthe prophets and saintsare at work in mercy to themselves and nature. i say to you, o simonides, truly as god lives, he who hangs yonder is the son of god." and leaving simonides lost in wonder at such a speech from him, he went where balthasar was kneeling near by, and laid his hand upon the good man's shoulder. "o wise egyptian, hearken! thou alone wert rightthe nazarene is indeed the son of god." balthasar drew him down to him, and replied, feebly "i saw him a child in the manger where he was first laid; it is not strange that i knew him sooner than thou; but oh that i should live to see this day! would i had died with my brethren! happy melchior! happy, happy gaspar!" "comfort thee!" said ben-hur. "doubtless they too are here." the dimness went on deepening into obscurity, and that into positive darkness, but without deterring the bolder spirits upon the knoll. one after the other the thieves were raised on their crosses, and the crosses planted. the guard was then withdrawn, and the people set free closed in upon the height, and surged up it, like a converging wave. a man might take a look, when a new-comer would push him on, and take his place, to be in turn pushed onand there were laughter and ribaldry and revilements, all for the nazarene. "ha, ha! if thou be king of the jews, save thyself," a soldier shouted. "ay," said a priest, "if he will come down to us now, we will believe in him." others wagged their heads wisely saying, "he would destroy the temple, and rebuild it in three days, but cannot save himself." others still"he called himself the son of god; let us see if god will have him." what all there is in prejudice no one has ever said. the nazarene had never harmed the people; far the greater part of them had never seen him except in this his hour of calamity; yetsingular contrariety!they loaded him with their curses, and gave their sympathy to the thieves. the supernatural night, dropped thus from the heavens, affected esther as it began to affect thousands of others braver and stronger. "let us go home," she prayedtwice, three timessaying, "it is the frown of god, father. what other dreadful things may happen, who can tell? i am afraid." simonides was obstinate. he said little, but was plainly under great excitement. observing, about the end of the first hour, that the violence of the crowding up on the knoll was somewhat abated, at his suggestion the party advanced to take position nearer the crosses. ben-hur gave his arm to balthasar; yet the egyptian made the ascent with difficulty. from their new stand the nazarene was imperfectly visible, appearing to them not more than a dark suspended figure. they could hear him, howeverhear his sighing, which showed an endurance or exhaustion greater than that of his fellow-sufferers; for they filled every lull in the noises with their groans and entreaties. the second hour after the suspension passed like the first one. to the nazarene they were hours of insult, provocation, and slow dying. he spoke but once in the time. some women came and knelt at the foot of his cross. among them he recognized his mother with the beloved disciple. "woman," he said, raising his voice, "behold thy son!" and to the disciple, "behold thy mother!" the third hour came, and still the people surged round the hill, held to it by some strange attraction, with which, in probability, the night in midday had much to do. they were quieter than in the preceding hour; yet at intervals they could be heard off in the darkness shouting to each other, multitude calling unto multitude. it was noticeable, also, that coming now to the nazarene, they approached his cross in silence, took the look in silence, and so departed. this change extended even to the guard, who so shortly before had cast lots for the clothes of the crucified; they stood with their officers a little apart, more watchful of the one convict than of the throngs coming and going. if he but breathed heavily, or tossed his head in a paroxysm of pain, they were instantly on the alert. most marvellous of all, however, was the altered behaviour of the high-priest and his following, the wise men who had assisted him in the trial in the night, and, in the victim's face, kept place by him with zealous approval. when the darkness began to fall, they began to lose their confidence. there were among them many learned in astronomy, and familiar with the apparitions so terrible in those days to the masses; much of the knowledge was descended to them from their fathers far back; some of it had been brought away at the end of the captivity; and the necessities of the temple service kept it all bright. these closed together when the sun commenced to fade before their eyes, and the mountains and hills to recede; they drew together in a group around their pontiff, and debated what they saw. "the moon is at its full," they said, with truth, "and this cannot be an eclipse." then, as no one could answer the question common with them allas no one could account for the darkness, or for its occurrence at that particular timein their secret hearts they associated it with the nazarene, and yielded to an alarm which the long continuance of the phenomenon steadily increased. in their place behind the soldiers they noted every word and motion of the nazarene, and hung with fear upon his sighs, and talked in whispers. the man might be the messiah, and thenbut they would wait and see! in the meantime ben-hur was not once visited by the old spirit. the perfect peace abode with him. he prayed simply that the end might be hastened. he knew the condition of simonides' mindthat he was hesitating on the verge of belief. he could see the massive face weighed down by solemn reflection. he noticed him casting inquiring glances at the sun, as seeking the cause of the darkness. nor did he fail to notice the solicitude with which esther clung to him, smothering her fears to accommodate his wishes. "be not afraid," he heard him say to her; "but stay and watch with me. thou mayst live twice the span of my life, and see nothing of human interest equal to this; and there may be revelations more. let us stay to the close." when the third hour was about half gone, some men of the rudest classwretches from the tombs about the citycame and stopped in front of the centre cross. "this is he, the new king of the jews," said one of them. the others cried, with laughter, "hail, all hail, king of the jews!" receiving no reply, they went closer. "if thou be king of the jews, or son of god, come down," they said, loudly. at this, one of the thieves quit groaning, and called to the nazarene, "yes, if thou be christ, save thyself and us." the people laughed and applauded; then, while they were listening for a reply, the other felon was heard to say to the first one, "dost thou not fear god? we receive the due rewards of our deeds; but this man hath done nothing amiss." the bystanders were astonished; in the midst of the hush which ensued, the second felon spoke again, but this time to the nazarene "lord," he said, "remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." simonides gave a great start. "when thou comest into thy kingdom!" it was the very point of doubt in his mind; the point he had so often debated with balthasar. "didst thou hear?" said ben-hur to him. "the kingdom cannot be of this world. yon witness saith the king is but going to his kingdom; and, in effect, i heard the same in my dream." "hush!" said simonides, more imperiously than ever before in speech to ben-hur. "hush, i pray thee. if the nazarene should answer" and as he spoke the nazarene did answer, in a clear voice, full of confidence "verily i say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in paradise!" simonides waited to hear if that were all; then he folded his hands and said, "no more, no more, lord! the darkness is gone; i see with other eyeseven as balthasar, i see with eyes of perfect faith." the faithful servant had at last his fitting reward. his broken body might never be restored; nor was there riddance of the recollection of his sufferings, or recall of the years imbittered by them; but suddenly a new life was shown him, with assurance that it was for hima new life lying just beyond this oneand its name was paradise. there he would find the kingdom of which he had been dreaming, and the king. a perfect peace fell upon him. over the way, in front of the cross, however, there were surprise and consternation. the cunning casuists there put the assumption underlying the question and the admission underlying the answer together. for saying through the land that he was the messiah, they had brought the nazarene to the cross; and, lo! on the cross, more confidently than ever, he had not only reasserted himself, but promised enjoyment of his paradise to a malefactor. they trembled at what they were doing. the pontiff, with all his pride, was afraid. where got the man his confidence except from truth? and what should the truth be but god? a very little now would put them all to flight. the breathing of the nazarene grew harder; his sighs became great gasps. only three hours upon the cross, and he was dying! the intelligence was carried from man to man, until every one knew it; and then everything hushed; the breeze faltered and died; a stifling vapour loaded the air; heat was superadded to darkness; nor might any one unknowing the fact have thought that off the hill, out under the overhanging pall, there were three millions of people waiting awe-struck what should happen nextthey were so still! then there went out through the gloom, over the heads of such as were on the hill within hearing of the dying man, a cry of despair, if not reproach "my god! my god! why hast thou forsaken me?" the voice startled all who heard it. one it touched uncontrollably. the soldiers in coming had brought with them a vessel of wine and water, and set it down a little way from ben-hur. with a sponge dipped into the liquor, and put on the end of a stick, they could moisten the tongue of a sufferer at their pleasure. ben-hur thought of the draught he had had at the well near nazareth; an impulse seized him; catching up the sponge, he dipped it into the vessel, and started for the cross. "let him be!" the people in the way shouted, angrily. "let him be!" without minding them, he ran on, and put the sponge to the nazarene's lips. too late, too late! the face then plainly seen by ben-hur, bruised and black with blood and dust as it was, lighted nevertheless with a sudden glow; the eyes opened wide, and fixed upon some one visible to them alone in the far heavens; and there were content and relief, even triumph, in the shout the victim gave "it is finished! it is finished!" so a hero, dying in the doing a great deed, celebrates his success with a last cheer. the light in the eyes went out; slowly the crowned head sank upon the labouring breast. ben-hur thought the struggle over; but the fainting soul recollected itself, so that he and those around him caught the other and last words, spoken in a low voice, as if to one listening close by "father, into thy hands i commend my spirit." a tremor shook the tortured body; there was a scream of fiercest anguish, and the mission and the earthly life were over at once. the heart, with all its love, was broken; for of that, o reader, the man died! ben-hur went back to his friends, saying, simply, "it is over; he is dead." in a space incredibly short the multitude was informed of the circumstance. no one repeated it aloud; there was a murmur which spread from the knoll in every direction; a murmur that was little more than a whispering, "he is dead! he is dead!" and that was all. the people had their wish; the nazarene was dead; yet they stared at each other aghast. his blood was upon them! and while they stood staring at each other, the ground commenced to shake; each man took hold of his neighbour to support himself; in a twinkling the darkness disappeared, and the sun came out; and everybody, as with the same glance, beheld the crosses upon the hill all reeling drunken-like in the earthquake. they beheld all three of them; but the one in the centre was arbitrary; it alone would be seen; and for that it seemed to extend itself upwards, and lift its burden, and swing it to and fro higher and higher in the blue of the sky. and every man among them who had jeered at the nazarene; every one who had struck him; every one who had voted to crucify him; every one who had marched in the procession from the city; every one who had in his heart wished him dead, and they were as ten to one, felt that he was in some way individually singled out from the many, and that if he would live he must get away quickly as possible from that menace in the sky. they started to run; they ran with all their might; on horseback, and camels, and in chariots they ran, as well as on foot; but then, as if it were mad at them for what they had done, and had taken up the cause of the unoffending and friendless dead, the earthquake pursued them, and tossed them about, and flung them down, and terrified them yet more by the horrible noise of great rocks grinding and rending beneath them. they beat their breasts and shrieked with fear. his blood was upon them! the home-bred and the foreign, priest and layman, beggar, sadducee, pharisee, were overtaken in the race, and tumbled about indiscriminately. if they called on the lord, the outraged earth answered for him in fury, and dealt them all alike. it did not even know wherein the high-priest was better than his guilty brethren; overtaking him, it tripped him up also, and smirched the fringing of his robe, and filled the golden bells with sand, and his mouth with dust. he and his people were alike in the one thing at leastthe blood of the nazarene was upon them all! when the sunlight broke upon the crucifixion, the mother of the nazarene, the disciple, and the faithful women of galilee, the centurion and his soldiers, and ben-hur and his party, were all who remained upon the hill. these had not time to observe the flight of the multitude; they were too loudly called upon to take care of themselves. "seat thyself here," said ben-hur to esther, making a place for her at her father's feet. "now cover thine eyes, and look not up; but put thy trust in god, and the spirit of yon just man so foully slain." "nay," said simonides, reverently, "let us henceforth speak of him as the christ." "be it so," said ben-hur. presently a wave of the earthquake struck the hill. the shrieks of the thieves upon the reeling crosses were terrible to hear. though giddy with the movements of the ground, ben-hur had time to look at balthasar, and beheld him prostrate and still. he ran to him and calledthere was no reply. the good man was dead! then ben-hur remembered to have heard a cry in answer, as it were, to the scream of the nazarene in his last moment; but he had not looked to see from whom it had proceeded; and ever after he believed the spirit of the egyptian accompanied that of his master over the boundary into the kingdom of paradise. the idea rested not only upon the cry heard, but upon the exceeding fitness of the distinction. if faith were worthy reward in the person of gaspar, and love in that of melchior, surely he should have some special meed who through a long life had so excellently illustrated the three virtues in combinationfaith, love, and good works. the servants of balthasar had deserted their master; but when all was over, the two galileans bore the old man in his litter back to the city. it was a sorrowful procession that entered the south gate of the palace of the hurs about the set of sun that memorable day. about the same hour the body of the christ was taken down from the cross. the remains of balthasar were carried to the guest-chamber. all the servants hastened weeping to see him; for he had the love of every living thing with which he had in anywise to do; but when they beheld his face, and the smile upon it, they dried their tears, saying, "it is well. he is happier this evening than when he went out in the morning." ben-hur would not trust a servant to inform iras what had befallen her father. he went himself to see her and bring her to the body. he imagined her grief; she would now be alone in the world; it was a time to forgive and pity her. he remembered he had not asked why she was not of the party in the morning, or where she was; he remembered he had not thought of her; and, from shame, he was ready to make any amends, the more so as he was about to plunge her into such acute grief. he shook the curtains of her door; and though he heard the ringing of the little bells echoing within, he had no response; he called her name, and again he calledstill no answer. he drew the curtain aside and went into the room; she was not there. he ascended hastily to the roof in search of her; nor was she there. he questioned the servants; none of them had seen her during the day. after a long quest everywhere through the house, ben-hur returned to the guest-chamber, and took the place by the dead which should have been hers; and he bethought him there how merciful the christ had been to his aged servant. at the gate of the kingdom of paradise happily the afflictions of this life, even its desertions, are left behind and forgotten by those who go in and rest. when the gloom of the burial was nigh gone, on the ninth day after the healing, the law being fulfilled, ben-hur brought his mother and tirzah home; and from that day, in that house the most sacred names possible of utterance by men were always coupled worshipfully together god the father and christ the son. about five years after the crucifixion, esther, the wife of ben-hur, sat in her room in the beautiful villa by misenum. it was noon, with a warm italian sun making summer for the roses and vines outside. everything in the apartment was roman, except that esther wore the garments of a jewish matron. tirzah and two children at play upon a lion's skin on the floor were her companions; and one had only to observe how carefully she watched them to know that the little ones were hers. time had treated her generously. she was more than ever beautiful, and in becoming mistress of the villa, she had realized one of her cherished dreams. in the midst of this simple, home-like scene, a servant appeared in the doorway, and spoke to her. "a woman in the atrium to speak with the mistress." "let her come. i will receive her here." presently the stranger entered. at sight of her the jewess arose, and was about to speak; then she hesitated, changed colour, and finally drew back, saying, "i have known you, good woman. you are" "i was iras, the daughter of balthasar." esther conquered her surprise, and bade the servant bring the egyptian a seat. "no," said iras, coldly. "i will retire directly." the two gazed at each other. we know what esther presenteda beautiful woman, a happy mother, a contented wife. on the other side, it was very plain that fortune had not dealt so gently with her former rival. the tall figure remained, with some of its grace; but an evil life had tainted the whole person. the face was coarse; the large eyes were red and pursed beneath the lower lids; there was no colour in her cheeks. the lips were cynical and hard, and general neglect was leading rapidly to premature old age. her attire was ill chosen and draggled. the mud of the road clung to her sandals. iras broke the painful silence. "these are thy children?" esther looked at them, and smiled. "yes. will you not speak to them?" "i would scare them," iras replied. then she drew closer to esther, and seeing her shrink, said, "be not afraid. give thy husband a message for me. tell him his enemy is dead, and that for the much misery he brought me i slew him." "his enemy!" "the messala. further, tell thy husband that for the harm i sought to do him i have been punished until even he would pity me." tears arose in esther's eyes, and she was about to speak. "nay," said iras, "i do not want pity or tears. tell him, finally, i have found that to be a roman is to be a brute. farewell." she moved to go. esther followed her. "stay, and see my husband. he has no feeling against you. he sought for you everywhere. he will be your friend. i will be your friend. we are christians." the other was firm. "no; i am what i am of choice. it will be over shortly." "but"esther hesitated"have we nothing you would wish; nothing toto" the countenance of the egyptian softened; something like a smile played about her lips. she looked at the children upon the floor. "there is something," she said. esther followed her eyes, and with quick perception answered, "it is yours." iras went to them, and knelt on the lion's skin, and kissed them both. rising slowly, she looked at them; then passed to the door and out of it without a parting word. she walked rapidly, and was gone before esther could decide what to do. ben-hur, when he was told of the visit, knew certainly what he had long surmisedthat on the day of the crucifixion iras had deserted her father for messala. nevertheless, he set out immediately and hunted for her vainly; they never saw her more, or heard of her. the blue bay, with all its laughing under the sun, has yet its dark secrets. had it a tongue, it might tell us of the egyptian. simonides lived to be a very old man. in the tenth year of nero's reign he gave up the business so long centred in the warehouse at antioch. to the last he kept a clear head and a good heart, and was successful. one evening, in the year named, he sat in his arm-chair on the terrace of the warehouse. ben-hur and esther, and their three children, were with him. the last of the ships swung at mooring in the current of the river; all the rest had been sold. in the long interval between this and the day of the crucifixion but one sorrow had befallen them; that was when the mother of ben-hur died; and then and now their grief would have been greater but for their christian faith. the ship spoken of had arrived only the day before, bringing intelligence of the persecution of christians begun by nero in rome, and the party on the terrace were talking of the news when malluch, who was still in their service, approached and delivered a package to ben-hur. "who brings this?" the latter asked, after reading. "an arab." "where is he?" "he left immediately." "listen," said ben-hur to simonides. he read then the following letter: "i, ilderim the generous, and sheik of the tribe of ilderim, to judah, son of hur. "know, o friend of my father's, how my father loved you. read what is herewith sent, and you will know. his will is my will; therefore what he gave is thine. "all the parthians took from him in the great battle in which they slew him i have retakenthis writing, with other things, and vengeance, and all the brood of that mira who in his time was mother of so many stars. "peace be to you and all yours." "this voice out of the desert is the voice of "ilderim, sheik." ben-hur next unrolled a scrap of papyrus yellow as the withered mulberry leaf. it required the daintiest handling. proceeding, he read "ilderim, surnamed the generous, sheik of the tribe of ilderim, to the son who succeeds me. "all i have, o son, shall be thine in the day of thy succession, except that property by antioch known as the orchard of palms; and it shall be to the son of hur who brought us such glory in the circusto him and his forever. "dishonour not thy father. "ilderim the generous, sheik." "what say you?" asked ben-hur, of simonides. esther took the papers pleased, and read them to herself. simonides remained silent. his eyes were upon the ship; but he was thinking. at length he spoke. "son of hur," he said, gravely, "the lord has been good to you in these later years. you have much to be thankful for. is it not time to decide finally the meaning of the gift of the great fortune now all in your hand, and growing?" "i decided that long ago. the fortune was meant for the service of the giver; not a part, simonides, but all of it. the question with me has been, how can i make it most useful in his cause? and of that tell me, i pray you." simonides answered "the great sums you have given to the church here in antioch, i am witness to. now, instantly almost with this gift of the generous sheik's, comes the news of the persecution of the brethren in rome. it is the opening of a new field. the light must not go out in the capital." "tell me how i can keep it alive." "i will tell you. the romans, even this nero, hold two things sacredi know of no others they so holdthey are the ashes of the dead and all places of burial. if you cannot build temples for the worship of the lord above ground, then build them below the ground; and to keep them from profanation, carry to them the bodies of all who die in the faith." ben-hur arose excitedly. "it is a great idea," he said. "i will not wait to begin it. time forbids waiting. the ship that brought the news of the suffering of our brethren shall take me to rome. i will sail to-morrow." he turned to malluch. "get the ship ready, malluch, and be thou ready to go with me." "it is well," said simonides. "and thou, esther, what sayest thou?" asked ben-hur. esther came to his side, and put her hand on his arm, and answered "so wilt thou best serve the christ. o my husband, let me not hinder, but go with thee and help." * * * * * if any of my readers visiting rome, will make the short journey to the catacomb of san calixto, which is more ancient than that of san sebastiano, he will see what became of the fortune of ben-hur, and give him thanks. out of that vast tomb christianity issued to supersede the caesars. the end . 1850 criticism by edgar allan poe it has been said that a good critique on a poem may be written by one who is no poet himself. this, according to your idea and mine of poetry, i feel to be falsethe less poetical the critic, the less just the critique, and the converse. on this account, and because the world's good opinion as proud of your own. another than yourself might here observe, "shakespeare is in possession of the world's good opinion, and yet shakespeare is the greatest of poets. it appears then that as the world judges correctly, why should you be ashamed of their favourable judgment?" the difficulty lies in the interpretation of the word "judgment" or "opinion." the opinion is the world's, truly, but it may be called theirs as a man would call a book his, having bought it; he did not write the book, but it is his; they did not originate the opinion, but it is theirs. a fool, for example, thinks shakespeare a great poetyet the fool has never read shakespeare. but the fool's neighbor, who is a step higher on the andes of the mind, whose head (that is to say, his more exalted thought) is too far above the fool to be seen or understood, but whose feet (by which i mean his every-day actions) are sufficiently near to be discerned, and by means of which that superiority is ascertained, which but for them would never have been discoveredthis neighbor asserts that shakespeare is a great poetthe fool believes him, and it is henceforward his opinion. this neighbor's own opinion has, in like manner, been adopted from one above him, and so, ascendingly, to a few gifted individuals who kneel around the summit, beholding, face to face, the master spirit who stands upon the pinnacle.... you are aware of the great barrier in the path of an american writer. he is read, if at all, in preference to the combined and established wit of the world. i say established; for it is with literature as with law or empirean established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession. besides, one might suppose that books, like their authors, improve by traveltheir having crossed the sea is, with us, so great a distinction. our antiquaries abandon time for distance; our very fops glance from the binding to the bottom of the title-page, where the mystic characters which spell london, paris, or genoa, are precisely so many letters of recommendation. i mentioned just now a vulgar error as regards criticism. i think the notion that no poet can form a correct estimate of his own writings is another. i remarked before that in proportion to the poetical talent would be the justice of a critique upon poetry. therefore a bad poet would, i grant, make a false critique, and his self-love would infallibly bias his little judgment in his favour; but a poet, who is indeed a poet, could not, i think, fail of making a just critique; whatever should be deducted on the score of self-love might be replaced on account of his intimate acquaintance with the subject; in short, we have more instances of false criticism than of just where one's own writings are the test, simply because we have more bad poets than good. there are, of course, many objections to what i say: milton is a great example of the contrary, but his opinion with respect to the paradise regained is by no means fairly ascertained. by what trivial circumstances men are often led to assert what they do not really believe! perhaps an inadvertent world has descended to posterity. but, in fact, the paradise regained is little, if at all inferior to the paradise lost and is only supposed so to be because men do not like epics, whatever they may say to the contrary, and reading those of milton in their natural order, are too much wearied with the first to derive any pleasure from the second. i dare say milton preferred comos to eitherif sojustly.... as i am speaking of poetry, it will not be amiss to touch slightly upon the most singular heresy in its modern historythe heresy of what is called, very foolishly, the lake school. some years ago i might have been induced, by an occasion like the present, to attempt a formal refutation of their doctrine; at present it would be a work of supererogation. the wise must bow to the wisdom of such men as coleridge and southey, but being wise, have laughed at poetical theories so prosaically exemplified. aristotle, with singular assurance, has declared poetry the most philosophical of all writingsbut it required a wordsworth to pronounce it the most metaphysical. he seems to think that the end of poetry is, or should be, instruction; yet it is a truism that the end of our existence is happiness; if so, the end of every separate part of our existence, everything connected with our existence, should be happiness. therefore the end of instruction should be happiness; and happiness is another name for pleasure,therefore the end of instruction should be pleasure; yet we see the above-mentioned opinion implies precisely the reverse. to proceed: ceteris paribus, he who pleases is of more importance to his fellow-men than he who instructs, since utility is happiness, and pleasure is the end already obtained while instruction is merely the means of obtaining. i see no reason, then, why our metaphysical poets should plume themselves so much on the utility of their works, unless indeed they refer to instruction with eternity in view; in which case, sincere respect for their piety would not allow me to express my contempt for their judgement; contempt which it would be difficult to conceal, since their writings are professedly to be understood by the few, and it is the many who stand in need of salvation. in such case i should no doubt be tempted to think of the devil in "melmoth," who labours indefatigably, through three octavo volumes, to accomplish the destruction of one or two souls, while any common devil would have demolished one or two thousand. against the subtleties which would make poetry a studynot a passionit becomes the metaphysician to reasonbut the poet to protest. yet wordsworth and coleridge are men in years; the one imbued in contemplating from his childhood, the other a giant in intellect and learning. the diffidence, then, with which i venture to dispute their authority would be overwhelming did i not feel, from the bottom of my heart, that learning has little to do with the imaginationintellect with the passionsor age with poetry. trifles, like straws, upon the surface flow; he who would search for pearls must dive below, are lines which have done much mischief. as regards the greater truths, men oftener err by seeking them at the bottom than at the top; truth lies in the huge abysses where wisdom is soughtnot in the palpable palaces where she is found. the ancients were not always right in hiding the goddess in a well; witness the light which bacon has thrown upon philosophy; witness the principles of our divine faiththat moral mechanism by which the simplicity of a child may overbalance the wisdom of a man. we see an instance of coleridge's liability to err, in his biographia literariaprofessedly his literary life and opinions, but, in fact, a treatise de omni scibili et quibusdam aliis. he goes wrong by reason of his very profundity, and of his error we have a natural type in the contemplation of a star. he who regards it directly and intensely sees, it is true, the star, but it is the star without a raywhile he who surveys it less inquisitively is conscious of all for which the star is useful to us belowits brilliancy and its beauty. as to wordsworth, i have no faith in him. that he had in youth the feelings of a poet i believefor there are glimpses of extreme delicacy in his writings(and delicacy is the poet's own kingdomhis el dorado)but they have the appearance of a better day recollected; and glimpses, at best, are little evidence of present poetic firewe know that a few straggling flowers spring up daily in the crevices of the glacier. he was to blame in wearing away his youth in contemplation with the end of poetizing in his manhood. with the increase of his judgment the light which should make it apparent has faded away. his judgment consequently is too correct. this may not be understood,but the old goths of germany would have understood it, who used to debate matters of importance to their state twice, once when drunk, and once when sobersober that they might not be deficient in formalitydrunk lest they should be destitute of vigour. the long wordy discussions by which he tries to reason us into admiration of his poetry, speak very little in his favour: they are full of such assertions as this (i have opened one of his volumes at random)"of genius the only proof is the act of doing well what is worthy to be done, and what was never done before"; indeed? then it follows that in doing what is unworthy to be done, or what has been done before, no genius can be evinced; yet the picking of pockets is an unworthy act, pockets have been picked time immemorial and barrington, the pickpocket, in point of genius, would have thought hard of a comparison with william wordsworth, the poet. againin estimating the merit of certain poems, whether they be ossian's or m'pherson's, can surely be of little consequence, yet, in order to prove their worthlessness, mr. w. has expended many pages in the controversy. tantaene animis? can great minds descend to such absurdity? but worse still: that he may bear down every argument in favour of these poems, he triumphantly drags forward a passage in his abomination with which he expects the reader to sympathise. it is the beginning of the epic poem "temora." "the blue waves of ullin roll in light; the green hills are covered with day, trees shake their dusty heads in the breeze." and thisthis gorgeous, yet simple imagery, where all is alive and panting with immortalitythis, william wordsworth, the author of "peter bell," has selected for his contempt. we shall see what better he, in his own person, has to offer. imprimis: and now she's at the pony's tail, and now she's at the pony's head, on that side now, and now on this; and, almost stified with her bliss, a few sad tears does betty shed.... she pats the pony, where or when she knows not... happy betty foy! oh, johnny, never mind the doctor! secondly: the dew was falling fast, thestars began to blink; i heard a voice: it said"drink, pretty creature, drink!" and, looking o'er the hedge, before me i espied a snow-white mountain lamb, with amaiden at its side. no other sheep was near,the lamb was all alone, and by a slender cord wastether'd to a stone. now, we have no doubt this is all true; we will believe it, indeed we will, mr. w. is it sympathy for the sheep you wish to excite? i love a sheep from the bottom of my heart. wordsworth is reasonable. even stamboul, it is said, shall have an end, and the most unlucky blunders must come to a conclusion. here is an extract from his preface: "those who have been accustomed to the phraseology of modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to a conclusion (impossible!) will, no doubt, have to struggle with feelings of awkwardness; (ha! ha! ha!) they will look round for poetry (ha! ha! ha! ha!), and will be induced to inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts have been permitted to assume that title." ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! yet, let not mr. w. despair; he has given immortality to a wagon, and the bee sophocles has transmitted to eternity a sore toe, and dignified a tragedy with a chorus of turkeys. of coleridge, i cannot speak but with reverence. his towering intellect! his gigantic power! he is one more evidence of the fact "que la plupart des sectes ont raison dans une bonne partie de ce qu'elles avancent, mais non pas en ce qu'elles nient." he has imprisoned his own conceptions by the barrier he has erected against those of others. it is lamentable to think that such a mind should be buried in metaphysics, and, like the nyctanthes, waste its perfume upon the night alone. in reading that man's poetry, i tremble like one who stands upon a volcano, conscious from the very darkness bursting from the crater, of the fire and the light that are weltering below. what is poetry?poetry! that proteuslike idea, with as many appellations as the ninetitled corcyra! give me, i demanded of a scholar some time ago, give me a definition of poetry. "tres-volontiers"; and he proceeded to his library, brought me a dr. johnson, and overwhelmed me with a definition. shade of the immortal shakespeare! i imagine to myself the scowl of your spiritual eye upon the profanity of the scurrilous ursa major. think of poetry, dear of all that is airy and fairy-like, and then of all that is hideous and unwieldy, think of his huge bulk, the elephant! and thenand then think of the tempestthe midsummer night's dreamprosperooberonand titania! a poem, in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having, for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having for its object, an indefinite instead of a definite pleasure, being a poem only so far as this object is attained; romance presenting perceptible images with definite poetry with indefinite sensations, to which end music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetrymusic, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness. what was meant by the invective against him who had no music in his soul? doubt, perceive, for the metaphysical poets as poets, the most sovereign contempt. that they have followers proves nothing no indian prince has to his palace more followers than a thief to the gallows. the culprit fay, and other poems joseph rodman drake alnwick castle, and other poems fitz-greene halleck before entering upon the detailed notice which we propose of the volumes before us, we wish to speak a few words in regard to the present state of american criticism. it must be visible to all who meddle with literary matters, that of late years a thorough revolution has been effected in the censorship of our press. that this revolution is infinitely for the worse we believe. there was a time, it is true, when we cringed to foreign opinionlet us even say when we paid most servile deference to british critical dicta. that an american book could, by any possibility, be worthy perusal, was an idea by no means extensively prevalent in the land; and if we were induced to read at all the productions of our native writers, it was only after repeated assurances from england that such productions were not altogether contemptible. but there was, at all events, a shadow of excuse, and a slight basis of reason for a subserviency so grotesque. even now, perhaps, it would not be far wrong to assert that such basis of reason may still exist. let us grant that in many of the abstract sciencesthat even in theology, in medicine, in law, in oratory, in the mechanical arts, we have no competitors whatever, still nothing but the most egregious national vanity would assign us a place, in the matter of polite literature, upon a level with the elder and riper climes of europe, the earliest steps of whose children are among the groves of magnificently endowed academies, and whose innumerable men of leisure, and of consequent learning, drink daily from those august fountains of inspiration which burst around them everywhere from out the tombs of their immortal dead, and from out their hoary and trophied monuments of chivalry and song. in paying then, as a nation, a respectful and not undue deference to a supremacy rarely questioned but by prejudice or ignorance, we should, of course, be doing nothing more than acting in a rational manner. the excess of our subserviency was blamablebut, as we have before said, this very excess might have found a shadow of excuse in the strict justice, if properly regulated, of the principle from which it issued. not so, however, with our present follies. we are becoming boisterous and arrogant in the pride of a too speedily assumed literary freedom. we throw off, with the most presumptuous and unmeaning hauteur, all deference whatever to foreign opinionwe forget, in the puerile inflation of vanity, that the world is the true theatre of the biblical histriowe get up a hue and cry about the necessity of encouraging native writers of meritwe blindly fancy that we can accomplish this by indiscriminate puffing of good, bad, and indifferent, without taking the trouble to consider that what we choose to denominate encouragement is thus, by its general application, rendered precisely the reverse. in a word, so far from being ashamed of the many disgraceful literary failures to which our own inordinate vanities and misapplied patriotism have lately given birth, and so far from deeply lamenting that these daily puerilities are of home manufacture, we adhere pertinaciously to our original blindly conceived idea, and thus often find ourselves involved in the gross paradox of liking a stupid book the better, because, sure enough, its stupidity is american.* * this charge of indiscriminant puffing will, of course, only apply to the general character of our criticismthere are some noble exceptions. we wish also especially to discriminate between those notices of new works which are intended merely to call public attention to them, and deliberate criticism on the works themselves. deeply lamenting this unjustifiable state of public feeling, it has been our constant endeavor, since assuming the editorial duties of this journal, to stem, with what little abilities we possess, a current so disastrously undermining the health and prosperity of our literature. we have seen our efforts applauded by men whose applauses we value. from all quarters we have received abundant private as well as public testimonials in favor of our critical notices, and, until very lately, have heard from no respectable source one word impugning their integrity or candor. in looking over, however, a number of the new york commercial advertiser, we meet with the following paragraph. "'the last number of the southern literary messenger is very readable and respectable. the contributions to the messenger are much better than the original matter. the critical department of this workmuch as it would seem to boast itself of impartiality and discernment,is in our opinion decidedly quacky. there is in it a great assumption of acumen, which is completely unsustained. many a work has been slashingly condemned therein, of which the critic himself could not write a page, were he to die for it. this affectation of eccentric sternness in criticism, without the power to back one's suit withal, so far from deserving praise, as some suppose, merits the strongest reprehension. philadelphia gazette.' "we are entirely of opinion with the philadelphia gazette in relation to the southern literary messenger, and take this occasion to express our total dissent from the numerous and lavish encomiums we have seen bestowed upon its critical notices. some few of them have been judicious, fair and candid; bestowing praise and censure with judgement and impartiality; but by far the greater number of those we have read, have been flippant, unjust, untenable and uncritical. the duty of the critic is to act as judge, not as enemy, of the writer whom he reviews; a distinction of which the zoilus of the messenger seems not to be aware. it is possible to review a book sincerely, without bestowing opprobrious epithets upon the writer, to condemn with courtesy, if not with kindness. the critic of the messenger has been eulogized for his scorching and scarifying abilities, and he thinks it incumbent upon him to keep up his reputation in that line, by sneers, sarcasm and downright abuse; by straining his vision with microscopic intensity in search of faults, and shutting his eyes, with all his might to beauties. moreover, we have detected him, more than once, in blunders quite as gross as those on which it was his pleasure to descant."* * in addition to these things we observe, in the new york mirror, what follows: "those who have read the notices of american books in a certain southern monthly, which is striving to gain notoriety by the loudness of its abuse, may find amusement in the sketch on another page, entitled "the successful novel." the southern literary messenger knows by experience what it is to write a successless novel." we have, in this case, only to deny, flatly, the assertion of the mirror. the editor of the messenger never in his life wrote or published, or attempted to publish, a novel either successful or successless. in the paragraph from the philadelphia gazette, (which is edited by mr. willis gaylord clark, one of the editors of the knickerbocker) we find nothing at which we have any desire to take exception. mr. c. has a right to think us quacky if he pleases, and we do not remember having assumed for a moment that we could write a single line of the works we have reviewed. but there is something equivocal, to say the least, in the remarks of col. stone. he acknowledges that "some of our notices have been judicious, fair, and candid bestowing praise and censure with judgment and impartiality." this being the case, how can he reconcile his total dissent from the public verdict in our favor, with the dictates of justice? we are accused too of bestowing "opprobrious epithets" upon writers whom we review and in the paragraphs so accusing us are called nothing less than "flippant, unjust and uncritical." but there is another point of which we disapprove. while in our reviews we have at all times been particularly careful not to deal in generalities, and have never, if we remember aright, advanced in any single instance an unsupported assertion, our accuser has forgotten to give us any better evidence of our flippancy, injustice, personality, and gross blundering, than the solitary dictum of col. stone. we call upon the colonel for assistance in this dilemma. we wish to be shown our blunders that we may correct themto be made aware of our flippancy that we may avoid it hereafterand above all to have our personalities pointed out that we may proceed forthwith with a repentant spirit, to make the amende honorable. in default of this aid from the editor of the commercial we shall take it for granted that we are neither blunderers, flippant, personal, nor unjust. who will deny that in regard to individual poems no definitive opinions can exist, so long as to poetry in the abstract we attach no definitive idea? yet it is a common thing to hear our critics, day after day, pronounce, with a positive air, laudatory or condemnatory sentences, en masse, upon material works of whose merits or demerits they have, in the first place, virtually confessed an utter ignorance, in confessing it ignorance of all determinate principles by which to regulate a decision. poetry has never been defined to the satisfaction of all parties. perhaps, in the present condition of language it never will be. words cannot hem it in. its intangible and purely spiritual nature refuses to be bound down within the widest horizon of mere sounds. but it is not, therefore, misunderstoodat least, not by all men is it misunderstood. very far from it, if indeed, there be any one circle of thought distinctly and palpably marked out from amid the jarring and tumultuous chaos of human intelligence, it is that evergreen and radiant paradise which the true poet knows, and knows alone, as the limited realm of his authorityas the circumscribed eden of his dreams. but a definition is a thing of wordsa conception of ideas. and thus while we readily believe that poesy, the term, it will be troublesome, if not impossible to definestill, with its image vividly existing in the world, we apprehend no difficulty in so describing poesy, the sentiment, as to imbue even the most obtuse intellect with a comprehension of it sufficiently distinct for all the purposes of practical analysis. to look upwards from any existence, material or immaterial to its design, is, perhaps, the most direct, and the most unerring method of attaining a just notion of the nature of the existence itself. nor is the principle at fault when we turn our eyes from nature even to natures god. we find certain faculties, implanted within us, and arrive at a more plausible conception of the character and attributes of those faculties, by considering, with what finite judgment we possess, the intention of the deity in so implanting them within us, than by any actual investigation of their powers, or any speculative deductions from their visible and material effects. thus, for example, we discover in all men a disposition to look with reverence upon superiority, whether real or supposititious. in some, this disposition is to be recognized with difficulty, and, in very peculiar cases, we are occasionally even led to doubt its existence altogether, until circumstances beyond the common routine bring it accidentally into development. in others again it forms a prominent and distinctive feature of character, and is rendered palpably evident in its excesses. but in all human beings it is, in a greater or less degree, finally perceptible. it has been, therefore, justly considered a primitive sentiment. phrenologists call it veneration. it is, indeed, the instinct given to man by god as security for his own worship. and although, preserving its nature, it becomes perverted from its principal purpose, and although swerving from that purpose, it serves to modify the relations of human societythe relations of father and child, of master and slave, of the ruler and the ruledits primitive essence is nevertheless the same, and by a reference to primal causes, may at any moment be determined. very nearly akin to this feeling, and liable to the same analysis, is the faculty of idealitywhich is the sentiment of poesy. this sentiment is the sense of the beautiful, of the sublime, and of the mystical.* thence spring immediately admiration of the fair flowers, the fairer forests, the bright valleys and rivers and mountains of the earthand love of the gleaming stars and other burning glories of heavenand, mingled up inextricably with this love and this admiration of heaven and of earth, the unconquerable desireto know. poesy is the sentiment of intellectual happiness here, and the hope of a higher intellectual happiness hereafter.*(2) * we separate the sublime and the mysticalfor, despite of high authorities, we are firmly convinced that the latter may exist, in the most vivid degree, without giving rise to the sense of the former. *(2) the consciousness of this truth was by no mortal more fully than by shelley, although he has only once especially alluded to it. in his hymn to intellectual beauty we find these lines. while yet a boy i sought for ghosts, and sped through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, and starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing hopes of high talk with the departed dead: i called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed: i was not heard: i saw them not. when musing deeply on the lot of life at that sweet time when birds are wooing all vital things that wake to bring news of buds and blossoming, sudden thy shadow fell on me i shrieked and clasped my hands in ecstasy! i vow'd that i would dedicate my powers to thee and thine: have i not kept the vow? with beating heart and streaming eyes, even now i call the phantoms of a thousand hours each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers of studious zeal or love's delight outwatch'd with me the envious night: they know that never joy illum'd my brow, unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free, this world from its dark slavery, that thou, o awful loveliness, wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. imagination is its soul.* with the passions of mankindalthough it may modify them greatlyalthough it may exalt, or inflame, or purify, or control themit would require little ingenuity to prove that it has no inevitable, and indeed no necessary co-existence. we have hitherto spoken of poetry in the abstract: we come now to speak of it in its everyday acceptationthat is to say, of the practical result arising from the sentiment we have considered. * imagination is, possibly in man, a lesser degree of the creative power in god. what the deity imagines, is, but was not before. what man imagines, is, but was also. the mind of man cannot imagine what is not. this latter point may be demonstrated.see les premiers traits de l'erudition universelle, par m. le baron de biefield, 1767. and now it appears evident, that since poetry, in this new sense, is the practical result, expressed in language, of this poetic sentiment in certain individuals, the only proper method of testing the merits of a poem is by measuring its capabilities of exciting the poetic sentiments in others. and to this end we have many aidsin observation, in experience, in ethical analysis, and in the dictates of common sense. hence the poeta nascitur, which is indisputably true if we consider the poetic sentiment, becomes the merest of absurdities when we regard it in reference to the practical result. we do not hesitate to say that a man highly endowed with the powers of causalitythat is to say, a man of metaphysical acumenwill, even with a very deficient share of ideality, compose a finer poem (if we test it, as we should, by its measure of exciting the poetic sentiment) than one who, without such metaphysical acumen, shall be gifted, in the most extraordinary degree, with the faculty of ideality. for a poem is not the poetic faculty, but the means of exciting it in mankind. now these means the metaphysician may discover by analysis of their effects in other cases than his own, without even conceiving the nature of these effectsthus arriving at a result which the unaided ideality of his competitor would be utterly unable, except by accident, to attain. it is more than possible that the man who, of all writers, living or dead, has been most successful in writing the purest of all poemsthat is to say, poems which excite more purely, most exclusively, and most powerfully the imaginative faculties in menowed his extraordinary and almost magical preeminence rather to metaphysical than poetical powers. we allude to the author of christabel, of the rime of the ancient mariner, and of loveto coleridgewhose head, if we mistake not its character, gave no great phrenological tokens of ideality, while the organs of causality and comparison were most singularly developed. perhaps at this particular moment there are no american poems held in so high estimation by our countrymen, as the poems of drake, and of halleck. the exertions of mr. george dearborn have no doubt a far greater share in creating this feeling than the lovers of literature for its own sake and spiritual uses would be willing to admit. we have indeed seldom seen more beautiful volumes than the volumes now before us. but an adventitious interest of a loftier naturethe interest of the living in the memory of the beloved deadattaches itself to the few literary remains of drake. the poems which are now given to us with his name are nineteen in number; and whether all, or whether even the best of his writings, it is our present purpose to speak of these alone, since upon this edition his poetical reputation to all time will most probably depend. it is only lately that we have read the culprit fay. this is a poem of six hundred and forty irregular lines, generally iambic, and divided into thirty-six stanzas, of unequal length. the scene of the narrative, as we ascertain from the single line, the moon looks down on old cronest, is principally in the vicinity of west point on the hudson. the plot is as follows. an ouphe, one of the race of fairies, has "broken his vestal vow," he has loved an earthly maid and left for her his woodland shade; he has lain upon her lip of dew, and sunned him in her eye of blue, fann'd her cheek with his wing of air, play'd with the ringlets of her hair, and, nestling on her snowy breast, forgot the lily-kings behestin short, he has broken fairy-law in becoming enamored of a mortal. the result of this misdemeanor we could not express so well as the poet, and will therefore make use of the language put into the mouth of the fairy-king who reprimands the criminal. fairy! fairy! list and mark, thou hast broke thine elfin chain, thy flame-wood lamp is quench'd and dark and thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain. the ouphe being in this predicament, it has become necessary that his case and crime should be investigated by a jury of his fellows, and to this end the "shadowy tribes of air" are summoned by the "sentry elve" who has been awakened by the "wood-tick"are summoned we say to the "elfin-court" at midnight to hear the doom of the culprit fay. "had a stain been found on the earthly fair," whose blandishments so bewildered the little ouphe, his punishment would have been severe indeed. in such case he would have been (as we learn from the fairy judge's exposition of the criminal code,) tied to the hornet's shardy wings; tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings; or seven long ages doomed to dwell with the lazy worm in the walnut shell; or every night to writhe and bleed beneath the tread of the centipede, or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim his jailer a spider huge and grim, amid the carrion bodies to lie of the worm and the bug and the murdered fly fortunately, however, for the culprit, his mistress is proved to be of "sinless mind" and under such redeeming circumstances the sentence is, mildly, as follows thou shalt seek the beach of sand where the water bounds the elfin land, thou shalt watch the oozy brine till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine, then dart the glistening arch below, and catch a drop from his silver bow. if the spray-bead be won the stain of thy wing is washed away, but another errand must be done ere thy crime be lost for aye; thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, thou must re-illume its spark. mount thy steed and spur him high to the heaven's blue canopy, and when thou seest a shooting star follow it fast and follow it far the last faint spark of its burning train shall light the elfin lamp again. upon this sin, and upon this sentence, depends the web of the narrative, which is now occupied with the elfin difficulties overcome by the ouphe in washing away the stain of his wing, and re-illuming his flame-wood lamp. his soiled pinion having lost its power, he is under the necessity of wending his way on foot from the elfin court upon cronest to the river beach at its base. his path is encumbered at every step with "bog and briar," with "brook and mire," with "beds of tangled fern," with "groves of night-shade," and with the minor evils of ant and snake. happily, however, a spotted toad coming in sight, our adventurer jumps upon her back, and "bridling her mouth with a silk-weed twist" bounds merrily along till the mountain's magic verge is past and the beach of sand is reached at last. alighting now from his "courser-toad" the ouphe folds his wings around his bosom, springs on a rock, breathes a prayer, throws his arms above his head, then tosses a tiny curve in air and plunges in the waters blue. here, however, a host of difficulties await him by far too multitudinous to enumerate. we will content ourselves with simply stating the names of his most respectable assailants. these are the "spirits of the wave" dressed in "snail-plate armor" and aided by the "mailed shrimp," the "prickly prong," the "blood-red leech," the "stony star-fish," the "jellied quarl," the "soldier-crab," and the "lancing squab." but the hopes of our hero are high, and his limbs are strong, so he spreads his arms like the swallow's wing, and throws his feet with a frog-like fling. all however, is to no purpose. on his thigh the leech has fixed his hold, the quarl's long arms are round him roll'd, the prickly prong has pierced his skin, and the squab has thrown his javelin, the gritty star has rubb'd him raw, and the crab has struck with his giant claw; he bawls with rage, and he shrieks with pain he strikes around but his blows are vain so then, he turns him round and flies amain with hurry and dash to the beach again. arrived safely on land our fairy friend now gathers the dew from the "sorrel-leaf and henbane-bud" and bathing therewith his wounds, finally ties them up with cobweb. thus recruited, he -treads the fatal shore as fresh and vigorous as before. at length espying a "purple-muscle shell" upon the beach, he determines to use it as a boat and thus evade the animosity of the water spirits whose powers extend not above the wave. making a "sculler's notch" in the stern, and providing himself with an oar of the bootle-blade, the ouphe a second time ventures upon the deep. his perils are now diminished, but still great. the imps of the river heave the billows up before the prow of the boat, dash the surges against her side, and strike against her keel. the quarl uprears "his island-back" in her path, and the scallop, floating in the rear of the vessel, spatters it all over with water. our adventurer, however, bails it out with the colen bell (which he has luckily provided for the purpose of catching the drop from the silver bow of the sturgeon,) and keeping his little bark warily trimmed, holds on his course undiscomfited. the object of his first adventure is at length discovered in a "brownbacked sturgeon," who like the heaven-shot javelin springs above the waters blue, and, instant as the star-fall light plunges him in the deep again, but leaves an arch of silver bright, the rainbow of the moony main. from this rainbow our ouphe succeeds in catching, by means of his colen bell cup, a "droplet of the sparkling dew." one half of his task is accordingly done his wings are pure, for the gem is won. on his return to land, the ripples divide before him, while the water-spirits, so rancorous before, are obsequiously attentive to his comfort. having tarried a moment on the beach to breathe a prayer, he "spreads his wings of gilded blue" and takes his way to the elfin courtthere resting until the cricket, at two in the morning, rouses him up for the second portion of his penance. his equipments are now an "acorn-helmet," a "thistle-down plume," a corslet of the "wild-bee's" skin, a cloak of the "wings of butterflies," a shield of the "shell of the lady-bug," for lance "the sting of a wasp," for sword a "blade of grass," for horse "a fire-fly," and for spurs a couple of "cockle seed." thus accoutred, away like a glance of thought he flies to skim the heavens and follow far the fiery trail of the rocket-star. in the heavens he has new dangers to encounter. the "shapes of air" have begun their worka "drizzly mist" is cast around him"storm, darkness, sleet and shade" assail him"shadowy hands" twitch at his bridle-rein"flame-shot tongues" play around him"fiendish eyes" glare upon himand yells of rage and shrieks of fear come screaming on his startled ear. still our adventurer is nothing daunted. he thrusts before, and he strikes behind, till he pierces the cloudy bodies through and gashes the shadowy limbs of mind. and the elfin makes no stop, until he reaches the "bank of the milky way." he there checks his courser, and watches "for the glimpse of the planet shoot." while thus engaged, however, an unexpected adventure befalls him. he is approached by a company of the "sylphs of heaven attired in sunset's crimson pall." they dance around him, and "skip before him on the plain." one receiving his "wasp-sting lance," and another taking his bridle-rein, with warblings wild they lead him on, to where, through clouds of amber seen, studded with stars resplendent shone the palace of the sylphid queen. a glowing description of the queen's beauty follows: and as the form of an earthly fay had never been seen before in the bowers of light, she is represented as falling desperately in love at first sight with our adventurous ouphe. he returns the compliment in some measure, of course; but, although "his heart bent fitfully," the "earthly form imprinted there" was a security against a too vivid impression. he declines, consequently, the invitation of the queen to remain with her and amuse himself by "lying within the fleecy drift," "hanging upon the rainbow's rim," having his "brow adorned with all the jewels of the sky," "sitting within the pleiad ring," "resting upon orion's belt" "riding upon the lightning's gleam," "dancing upon the orbed moon," and "swimming within the milky way." lady, he cries, i have sworn to-night on the word of a fairy knight to do my sentence task aright the queen, therefore, contents herself with bidding the fay an affectionate farewellhaving first directed him carefully to that particular portion of the sky where a star is about to fall. he reaches this point in safety, and in despite of the "fiends of the cloud," who "bellow very loud," succeeds finally in catching a "glimmering spark" with which he returns triumphantly to fairy-land. the poem closes with an io paean chaunted by the elves in honor of these glorious adventures. it is more than probable that from ten readers of the culprit fay, nine would immediately pronounce it a poem betokening the most extraordinary powers of imagination, and of these nine, perhaps five or six, poets themselves, and fully impressed with the truth of what we have already assumed, that ideality is indeed the soul of the poetic sentiment, would feel embarrassed between a half-consciousness that they ought to admire the production, and a wonder that they do not. this embarrassment would then arise from an indistinct conception of the results in which ideality is rendered manifest. of these results some few are seen in the culprit fay, but the greater part of it is utterly destitute of any evidence of imagination whatever. the general character of the poem will, we think, be sufficiently understood by any one who may have taken the trouble to read our foregoing compendium of the narrative. it will be there seen that what is so frequently termed the imaginative power of this story, lies especiallywe should have rather said is thought to liein the passages we have quoted, or in others of a precisely similar nature. these passages embody, principally, mere specifications of qualities, of habiliments, of punishments, of occupations, of circumstances, &c., which the poet has believed in unison with the size, firstly, and secondly with the nature of his fairies. to all which may be added specifications of other animal existences (such as the toad, the beetle, the lance-fly, the fire-fly and the like) supposed also to be in accordance. an example will best illustrate our meaning upon this point he put his acorn helmet on; it was plumed of the silk of the thistle down: the corslet plate that guarded his breast was once the wild bee's golden vest; his cloak of a thousand mingled dyes, was formed of the wings of butterflies; his shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen, studs of gold on a ground of green;* and the quivering lance which he brandished bright was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight. * chestnut color, or more slack, gold upon a ground of black. ben jonson. we shall now be understood. were any of the admirers of the culprit fay asked their opinion of these lines, they would most probably speak in high terms of the imagination they display. yet let the most stolid and the most confessedly unpoetical of these admirers only try the experiment, and he will find, possibly to his extreme surprise, that he himself will have no difficulty whatever in substituting for the equipments of the fairy, as assigned by the poet, other equipments equally comfortable, no doubt, and equally in unison with the preconceived size, character, and other qualities of the equipped. why we could accoutre him as well ourselveslet us see. his blue-bell helmet, we have heard was plumed with the down of the hummingbird, the corslet on his bosom bold was once the locust's coat of gold, his cloak, of a thousand mingled hues, was the velvet violet, wet with dews, his target was, the crescent shell of the small sea sidrophel, and a glittering beam from a maiden's eye was the lance which he proudly wav'd on high. the truth is, that the only requisite for writing verses of this nature, ad libitum is a tolerable acquaintance with the qualities of the objects to be detailed, and a very moderate endowment of the faculty of comparisonwhich is the chief constituent of fancy or the powers of combination. a thousand such lines may be composed without exercising in the least degree the poetic sentiment, which is ideality, imagination, or the creative ability. and, as we have before said, the greater portion of the culprit fay is occupied with these, or similiar things, and upon such, depends very nearly, if not altogether, its reputation. we select another example but oh! how fair the shape that lay beneath a rainbow bending bright, she seem'd to the entranced fay the loveliest of the forms of light, her mantle was the purple rolled at twilight in the west afar; t'was tied with threads of dawning gold, and button'd with a sparkling star. her face was like the lily roon that veils the vestal planet's hue, her eyes, two beamlets from the moon set floating in the welkin blue. her hair is like the sunny beam, and the diamond gems which round it gleam are the pure drops of dewy even, that neer have left their native heaven. here again the faculty of comparison is alone exercised, and no mind possessing the faculty in any ordinary degree would find a difficulty in substituting for the materials employed by the poet other materials equally as good. but viewed as mere efforts of the fancy and without reference to ideality, the lines just quoted are much worse than those which were taken earlier. a congruity was observable in the accoutrements of the ouphe, and we had no trouble in forming a distinct conception of his appearance when so accoutred. but the most vivid powers of comparison can attach no definitive idea to even "the loveliest form of light," when habited in a mantle of "rolled purple tied with threads of dawn and buttoned with a star," and sitting at the same time under a rainbow with "beamlet" eyes and a visage of "lily roon." but if these things evince no ideality in their author, do they not excite it in others?if so, we must conclude, that without being himself imbued with the poetic sentiment, he has still succeeded in writing a fine poema supposition as we have before endeavored to show, not altogether paradoxical. most assuredly we think not. in the case of a great majority of readers the only sentiment aroused by compositions of this order is a species of vague wonder at the writer's ingenuity, and it is this indeterminate sense of wonder which passes but too frequently current for the proper influence of the poetic power. for our own part we plead guilty to a predominant sense of the ludicrous while occupied in the perusal of the poem before usa sense whose promptings we sincerely and honestly endeavored to quell, perhaps not altogether successfully, while penning our compend of the narrative. that a feeling of this nature is utterly at war with the poetic sentiment will not be disputed by those who comprehend the character of the sentiment itself. this character is finely shadowed out in that popular although vague idea so prevalent throughout all time, that a species of melancholy is inseparably connected with the higher manifestations of the beautiful. but with the numerous and seriouslyadduced incongruities of the culprit fay, we find it generally impossible to connect other ideas than those of the ridiculous. we are bidden, in the first place, and in a tone of sentiment and language adapted to the loftiest breathings of the muse, to imagine a race of fairies in the vicinity of west point. we are told, with a grave air, of their camp, of their king, and especially of their sentry, who is a wood-tick. we are informed that an ouphe of about an inch in height has committed a deadly sin in falling in love with a mortal maiden, who may, very possibly, be six feet in her stockings. the consequence to the ouphe iswhat? why, that he has "dyed his wings," "broken his elfin chain," and "quenched his flame-wood lamp." and he is therefore sentenced to what? to catch a spark from the tail of a falling star, and a drop of water from the belly of a sturgeon. what are his equipments for the first adventure? an acorn-helmet, a thistle-down plume, a butterfly cloak, a lady-bug shield, cockle-seed spurs, and a fire-fly horse. how does he ride to the second? on the back of a bullfrog. what are his opponents in the one? "drizzle-mists," "sulphur and smoke," "shadowy hands and flame-shot tongues." what in the other? "mailed shrimps," "prickly prongs," "blood-red leeches," "jellied quarls," "stony star fishes," "lancing squabs" and "soldier crabs." is that all? noalthough only an inch high he is in imminent danger of seduction from a "sylphid queen," dressed in a mantle of "rolled purple," "tied with threads of dawning gold," "buttoned with a sparkling star," and sitting under a rainbow with "beamlet eyes" and a countenance of "lily roon." in our account of all this matter we have had reference to the bookand to the book alone. it will be difficult to prove us guilty in any degree of distortion or exaggeration. yet such are the puerilities we daily find ourselves called upon to admire, as among the loftiest efforts of the human mind, and which not to assign a rank with the proud trophies of the matured and vigorous genius of england, is to prove ourselves at once a fool; a maligner, and no patriot.* * a review of drake's poems, emanating from one of our proudest universities, does not scruple to make use of the following language in relation to the culprit fay. "it is, to say the least, an elegant production, the purest specimen of ideality we have ever met with, sustaining in each incident a most bewitching interest. its very title is enough," &c. &c. we quote these expressions as a fair specimen of the general unphilosophical and adulatory tenor of our criticism. as an instance of what may be termed the sublimely ridiculous we quote the following lines with sweeping tail and quivering fin, through the wave the sturgeon flew, and like the heaven-shot javelin, he sprung above the waters blue. instant as the star-fall light, he plunged into the deep again, but left an arch of silver bright the rainbow of the moony main. it was a strange and lovely sight to see the puny goblin there, he seemed an angel form of light with azure wing and sunny hair, throned on a cloud of purple fair circled with blue and edged with white and sitting at the fall of even beneath the bow of summer heaven. the [lines of the last verse], if considered without their context, have a certain air of dignity, elegance, and chastity of thought. if however we apply the context, we are immediately overwhelmed with the grotesque. it is impossible to read without laughing, such expressions as "it was a strange and lovely sight""he seemed an angel form of light""and sitting at the fall of even, beneath the bow of summer heaven" to a fairya goblinan ouphehalf an inch high, dressed in an acorn helmet and butterfly-cloak, and sitting on the water in a muscleshell, with a "brown-backed sturgeon" turning somersets over his head. in a world where evil is a mere consequence of good, and good a mere consequence of evilin short where all of which we have any conception is good or bad only by comparisonwe have never yet been fully able to appreciate the validity of that decision which would debar the critic from enforcing upon his readers the merits or demerits of a work with another. it seems to us that an adage has had more to do with this popular feeling than any just reason founded upon common sense. thinking thus, we shall have no scruple in illustrating our opinion in regard to what is not ideality or the poetic power, by an example of what is.* * as examples of entire poems of the purest ideality, we would cite the prometheus vinctus of aeschylus, the inferno of dante, cervantes' destruction of numantia, the comus of milton, pope's rape of the lock, burns' tam o'shanter, the auncient mariner, the christabel, and the kubla khan of coleridge, and most especially the sensitive plant of shelley, and the nightingale of keats. we have seen american poems evincing the faculty in the highest degree. we have already given the description of the sylphid queen in the culprit fay. in the queen mab of shelley a fairy is thus introduced those who had looked upon the sight passing all human glory, saw not the yellow moon, saw not the mortal scene, heard not the night wind's rush, heard not an earthly sound, saw but the fairy pageant, heard but the heavenly strains that filled the lonely dwellingand thus described the fairy's frame was slight, yon fibrous cloud that catches but the faintest tinge of even, and which the straining eye can hardly seize when melting into eastern twilight's shadow, were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star that gems the glittering coronet of morn, sheds not a light so mild, so powerful, as that which, bursting from the fairy's form, spread a purpureal halo round the scene, yet with an undulating motion, swayed to her outline gracefully. in these exquisite lines the faculty of mere comparison is but little exercisedthat of ideality in a wonderful degree. it is probable that in a similar case the poet we are now reviewing would have formed the face of the fairy of the "fibrous cloud," her arms of the "pale tinge of even," her eyes of the "fair stars," and her body of the "twilight shadow." having so done, his admirers would have congratulated him upon his imagination, not, taking the trouble to think that they themselves could at any moment imagine a fairy of materials equally as good, and conveying an equally distinct idea. their mistake would be precisely analogous to that of many a schoolboy who admires the imagination displayed in jack the giant-killer, and is finally rejoiced at; discovering his own imagination to surpass that of the author, since the monsters destroyed by jack are only about forty feet in height, and he himself has no trouble in imagining some of one hundred and forty. it will, be seen that the fairy of shelley is not a mere compound of incongruous natural objects, inartificially put together, and unaccompanied by any moral sentimentbut a being, in the illustration of whose nature some physical elements are used collaterally as adjuncts, while the main conception springs immediately or thus apparently springs, from the brain of the poet, enveloped in the moral sentiments of grace, of color, of motionof the beautiful, of the mystical, of the augustin short of the ideal.* * among things, which not only in our opinion, but in the opinion of far wiser and better men, are to be ranked with the mere prettinesses of the muse, are the positive similes so abundant in the writing of antiquity, and so much insisted upon by the critics of the reign of queen anne. it is by no means our intention to deny that in the culprit fay are passages of a different order from those to which we have objectedpassages evincing a degree of imagination not to be discovered in the plot, conception, or general execution of the poem. the opening stanza will afford us a tolerable example. tis the middle watch of a summer's night the earth is dark but the heavens are bright naught is seen in the vault on high but the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, and the flood which rolls its milky hue a river of light on the welkin blue. the moon looks down on old cronest, she mellows the shades of his shaggy breast, and seems his huge gray form to throw in a silver cone on the wave below, his sides are broken by spots of shade, by the walnut bow and the cedar made, and through their clustering branches dark glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark like starry twinkles that momently break through the rifts of the gathering tempest rack. there is ideality in these linesbut except in the case of the [second and the fourteenth lines]it is ideality not of a high order. we have, it is true, a collection of natural objects, each individually of great beauty, and, if actually seen as in nature, capable of exciting in any mind, through the means of the poetic sentiment more or less inherent in all, a certain sense of the beautiful. but to view such natural objects as they exist, and to behold them through the medium of words, are different things. let us pursue the idea that such a collection as we have here will produce, of necessity, the poetic sentiment, and we may as well make up our minds to believe that a catalogue of such expressions as moon, sky, trees, rivers, mountains, &c., shall be capable of exciting it,it is merely an extension of the principle. but in the line "the earth is dark, but the heavens are bright" besides the simple mention of the "dark earth" "and the bright heaven," we have, directly, the moral sentiment of the brightness of the sky compensating for the darkness of the earthand thus, indirectly, of the happiness of a future state compensating for the miseries of the present. all this is effected by the simple introduction of the word but between the "dark earth" and the "bright heaven"this introduction, however, was prompted by the poetic sentiment, and by the poetic sentiment alone. the case is analogous in the expression "glimmers and dies," where the imagination is exalted by the moral sentiment of beauty heightened in dissolution. in one or two shorter passages of the culprit fay the poet will recognize the purely ideal, and be able at a glance to distinguish it from that baser alloy upon which we have descanted. we give them without farther comment. the winds are whist, and the owl is still, the bat in the shelvy rock is hid and naught is heard on the lonely hill but the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill of the gauze-winged katydid; and the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings ever a note of wail and wo up to the vaulted firmament his path the fire-fly courser bent, and at every gallop on the wind he flung a glittering spark behind. he blessed the force of the charmed line and he banned the water-goblins' spite, for he saw around in the sweet moonshine, their little wee faces above the brine, grinning and laughing with all their might at the piteous hap of the fairy wight. the poem "to a friend" consists of fourteen spenserian stanzas. they are fine spirited verses, and probably were not supposed by their author to be more. stanza the fourth, although beginning nobly, concludes with that very common exemplification of the bathos, the illustrating natural objects of beauty or grandeur by references to the tinsel of artificiality. oh! for a seat on appalachia's brow, that i might scan the glorious prospects round, wild waving woods, and rolling floods below, smooth level glades and fields with grain embrowned, high heaving hills, with tufted forests crowned, rearing their tall tops to the heaven's blue dome, and emerald isles, like banners green un-wound, floating along the take, while round them roam bright helms of billowy blue, and plumes of dancing foam. in the extracts from leon are passages not often surpassed in vigor of passionate thought and expressionand which induce us to believe not only that their author would have succeeded better in prose romance than in poetry, but that his attention would have naturally fallen into the former direction, had the destroyer only spared him a little longer. this poem contains also lines of far greater poetic power than any to be found in the culprit fay. for example the stars have lit in heaven their lamps of gold, the viewless dew falls lightly on the world; the gentle air that softly sweeps the leaves a strain of faint unearthly music weaves: as when the harp of heaven remotely plays, or sygnets wailor song of sorrowing fays that float amid the moonshine glimmerings pale, on wings of woven air in some enchanted vale.* * the expression "woven air," much insisted upon by the friends of drake, seems to be accredited to him as original. it is to be found in many english writersand can be traced back to apuleius, who calls fine drapery ventum textilem. niagara is objectionable in many respects, and in none more so than in its frequent inversions of language, and the artificial character of its versification. the invocation, roar, raging torrent! and thou, mighty river, pour thy white foam on the valley below! frown ye dark mountains, &c. is ludicrousand nothing more. in general, all such invocations have an air of the burlesque. in the present instance we may fancy the majestic niagara replying, "most assuredly i will roar, whether, worm! thou tellest me or not." the american flag commences with a collection of those bald conceits, which we have already shown to have no dependence whatever upon the poetic powerspringing altogether from comparison. when freedom from her mountain height unfurled her standard to the air, she tore the azure robe of night and set the stars of glory there. she mingled with its gorgeous dyes the milky baldric of the skies, and striped its pure celestrial white with streakings of the morning light; then from his mansion in the sun she called her eagle bearer down and gave into his mighty hand the symbol of her chosen land. let us reduce all this to plain english, and we havewhat? why, a flag, consisting of the "azure robe of night," "set with stars of glory," interspersed with "streaks of morning light," relieved with a few pieces of "milky way," and the whole carried by an "eagle bearer," that is to say, an eagle ensign, who bears aloft this "symbol of our chosen land" in his "mighty hand," by which we are to understand his claw. in the second stanza, "the thunder-drum of heaven" is bathetic and grotesque in the highest degreea commingling of the most sublime music of heaven with the most utterly contemptible and common-place of earth. the two concluding verses are in a better spirit, and might almost be supposed to be from a different hand. the images contained in the lines when death careering on the gale sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, and frighted waves rush wildly back, before the broadsides reeling rack, are of the highest order of ideality. the deficiencies of the whole poem may be best estimated by reading it in connection with "scots wha hae," with the "mariners of england," or with "hohenlinden." it is indebted for its high and most undeserved reputation to our patriotismnot to our judgment. the remaining poems in mr. dearborn's edition of drake, are three songs; lines in an album; lines to a lady; lines on leaving new rochelle; hope; a fragment; to-; to eva; to a lady; to sarah; and bronx. these are all poems of little compass, and with the exception of bronx and a portion of the fragment, they have no character distinctive from the mass of our current poetical literature. bronx, however, is in our opinion, not only the best of the writings of drake, but altogether a lofty and beautiful poem, upon which his admirers would do better to found a hope of the writer's ultimate reputation than upon the niaiseries of the culprit fay. in the fragment is to be found the finest individual passage in the volume before us, and we quote it as a proper finale to our review. yes! thou art lovelier now than ever, how sweet't would be when all the air in moonlight swims, along thy river to couch upon the grass, and hear niagra's everlasting voice far in the deep blue west away, that dreamy and poetic noise we mark not in the glare of day, oh! how unlike its torrent-cry, when o'er the brink the tide is driven, as if the vast and sheeted sky in thunder fell from heaven. halleck's poetical powers appear to us essentially inferior, upon the whole, to those of his friend drake. he has written nothing at all comparable to bronx. by the hackneyed phrase, sportive elegance, we might possibly designate at once the general character of his writings and the very loftiest praise to which he is justly entitled. alnwick castle is an irregular poem of one hundred and twenty-eight lineswas written, as we are informed, in october 1822and is descriptive of a seat of the duke of northumberland, in northumberlandshire, england. the effect of the first stanza is materially impaired by a defect in its grammatical arrangement. the fine lines, home of the percy's high-born race, home of their beautiful and brave, alike their birth and burial place, their cradle and their grave! are of the nature of an invocation, and thus require a continuation of the address to the "home, &c." we are consequently disappointed when the stanza proceeds with still sternly o'er the castle gate their house's lion stands in state as in his proud departed hours; and warriors frown in stone on high, and feudal banners "flout the sky" above his princely towers. the objects of allusion here vary, in an awkward manner, from the castle to the lion, and from the lion to the towers. by writing the verses thus the difficulty would be remedied. still sternly o'er the castle gate thy house's lion stands in state, as in his proud departed hours; and warriors frown in stone on high, and feudal banners "flout the sky" above thy princely towers. the second stanza, without evincing in any measure the loftier powers of a poet, has that quiet air of grace, both in thought and expression, which seems to be the prevailing feature of the muse of halleck. a gentle hill its side inclines, lovely in england's fadeless green, to meet the quiet stream which winds through this romantic scene as silently and sweetly still, as when, at evening, on that hill, while summer's wind blew soft and low, seated by gallant hotspur's side his katherine was a happy bride a thousand years ago. there are one or two brief passages in the poem evincing a degree of rich imagination not elsewhere perceptible throughout the book. for example gaze on the abbey's ruined pile: does not the succoring ivy keeping, her watch around it seem to smile as o'er a lov'd one sleeping? and, one solitary turret gray still tells in melancholy glory the legend of the cheviot day. the commencement of the fourth stanza is of the highest order of poetry, and partakes, in a happy manner, of that quaintness of expression so effective an adjunct to ideality, when employed by the shelleys, the coleridges and the tennysons, but so frequently debased, and rendered ridiculous, by the herd of brainless imitators. wild roses by the abbey towers are gay in their young bud and bloom: they were born of a race of funeral flowers, that garlanded in long-gone hours, a templar's knightly tomb. the tone employed in the concluding portions of alnwick castle, is, we sincerely think, reprehensible, and unworthy of halleck. no true poet can unite in any manner the low burlesque with the ideal, and not be conscious of incongruity and of a profanation. such verses as men in the coal and cattle line from tevoit's bard and hero land, from royal berwick's beach of sand, from wooler, morpeth, hexham, and newcastle upon tyne. may lay claim to odditybut no more. these things are the defects and not the beauties of don juan. they are totally out of keeping with the graceful and delicate manner of the initial portions of alnwick castle, and serve no better purpose than to deprive the entire poem of all unity of effect. if a poet must be farcical, let him be just that, and nothing else. to be drolly sentimental is bad enough, as we have just seen in certain passages of the culprit fay, but to be sentimentally droll is a thing intolerable to men, and gods, and columns. marco bozzaris appears to have much lyrical without any high order of ideal beauty. force is its prevailing charactera force, however, consisting more in a well ordered and sonorous arrangement of this metre, and a judicious disposal of what may be called the circumstances of the poem, than in the true material of lyric vigor. we are introduced, first, to the turk who dreams, at midnight, in his guarded tent, of the hour when greece her knee in suppliance bent, should tremble at his power he is represented as revelling in the visions of ambition. in dreams through camp and court he bore the trophies of a conqueror; in dreams his song of triumph heard; then wore his monarch's signet ring; then pressed that monarch's thronea king; as wild his thoughts and gay of wing as eden's garden bird. in direct contrast to this we have bozzaris watchful in the forest, and ranging his band of suliotes on the ground, and amid the memories of plataea. an hour elapses, and the turk awakes from his visions of false gloryto die. but bozzaris diesto awake. he dies in the flush of victory to awake, in death, to an ultimate certainty of freedom. then follows an invocation to death. his terrors under ordinary circumstances are contrasted with the glories of the dissolution of bozzaris, in which the approach of the destroyer is welcome as the cry that told the indian isles were nigh to the world-seeking genoese, when the land-wind from woods of palm, and orange groves and fields of balm, blew o'er the haytian seas. the poem closes with the poetical apotheosis of marco bozzaris as one of the few, the immortal names that are not born to die. it will be seen that these arrangements of the subject are skillfully contrivedperhaps they are a little too evident, and we are enabled too readily by the perusal of one passage, to anticipate the succeeding. the rhythm is highly artificial. the stanzas are well adapted for vigorous expressionthe fifth will afford a just specimen of the versification of the whole poem. come to the bridal chamber, death! come to the mother's when she feels for the first time her first born's breath; come when the blessed seals that close the pestilence are broke, and crowded cities wail its stroke, come in consumption's ghastly form, the earthquake shock, the ocean storm; come when the heart beats high and warm, with banquet song and dance, and wine; and thou art terriblethe tear, the groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, and all we know, or dream, or fear of agony, are thine. granting, however, to marco bozzaris, the minor excellences we have pointed out we should be doing our conscience great wrong in calling it, upon the whole, any more than a very ordinary matter. it is surpassed, even as a lyric, by a multitude of foreign and by many american compositions of a similar character. to ideality it has few pretensions, and the finest portion of the poem is probably to be found in the verses we have quoted elsewhere thy grasp is welcome as the hand of brother in a foreign land, thy summons welcome as the cry that told the indian isles were nigh to the world-seeking genoese, when the land-wind from woods of palm and orange groves, and fields of balm blew o'er the haytian seas. the verses entitled burns consist of thirty-eight quatrainsthe three first lines of each quatrain being of four feet, the fourth of three. this poem has many of the traits of alnwick castle, and bears also a strong resemblance to some of the writings of wordsworth. its chief merits, and indeed the chief merit, so we think, of all the poems of halleck is the merit of expression. in the brief extracts from burns which follow, our readers will recognize the peculiar character of which we speak. wild rose of alloway! my thanks: thou mind'st me of that autumn noon when first we met upon "the banks and braes o'bonny doon" like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's bough, my sunny hour was glad and brief we've crossed the winter sea, and thou art withered-flower and leaf, there have been loftier themes than his, and longer scrolls and louder lyres and lays lit up with poesy's purer and holier fires. and when he breathes his master-lay of alloways witch-haunted wall all passions in our frames of clay come thronging at his call. such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines, shrines to no code or creed confined the delphian vales, the palastines, the meccas of the mind. they linger by the doon's low trees, and pastoral nith, and wooded ayr, and round thy sepulchres, dumfries! the poet's tomb is there. wyoming is composed of nine spenserian stanzas. with some unusual excellences, it has some of the worst faults of halleck. the lines which follow are of great beauty. i then but dreamed: thou art before me now, in lifea vision of the brain no more, i've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow, that beetles high thy love! valley o'er; and now, where winds thy river's greenest shore, within a bower of sycamores am laid; and winds as soft and sweet as ever bore the fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head. the poem, however, is disfigured with the mere burlesque of some portions of alnwick castlewith such things as he would look particularly droll in his iberian boot and spanish plume; and a girl of sweet sixteen love-darting eyes and tresses like the morn without a shoe or stockinghoeing corn, mingled up in a pitiable manner with images of real beauty. the field of the grounded arms contains twenty-four quatrains, without rhyme, and, we think, of a disagreeable versification. in this poem are to be observed some of the finest passages of halleck. for example strangers! your eyes are on that valley fixed intently, as we gaze on vacancy, when the mind's wings o'erspread the spirit world of dreams. and again o'er sleepless seas of grass whose waves are flowers. red-jacket has much power of expression with little evidence of poetical ability. its humor is very fine, and does not interfere, in any great degree, with the general tone of the poem. a sketch should have been omitted from the edition as altogether unworthy of its author. the remaining pieces in the volume are twilight, psalm cxxxvii; to...; love; domestic happiness; magdalen, from the italian; woman; connecticut; music; on the death of lieut. william howard allen; a poet's daughter; and on the death of joseph rodman drake. of the majority of these we deem it unnecessary to say more than that they partake, in a more or less degree, of the general character observable in the poems of halleck. the poet's daughter appears to us a particularly happy specimen of that general character, and we doubt whether it be not the favorite of its author. we are glad to see the vulgarity of i'm busy in the cotton trade and sugar line, omitted in the present edition. the eleventh stanza is certainly not english as it standsand besides it is altogether unintelligible. what is the meaning of this? but her who asks, though first among the good, the beautiful, the young the birthright of a spell more strong than these have brought her. the lines on the death of joseph rodman drake, we prefer to any of the writings of halleck. it has that rare merit in composition of this kindthe union of tender sentiment and simplicity. this poem consists merely of six quatrains, and we quote them in full. green be the turf above thee, friend of my better days! none knew thee but to love thee, nor named thee but to praise. tears fell when thou wert dying from eyes unused to weep, and long, where thou art lying, will tears the cold turf steep. when hearts whose truth was proven, like thine are laid in earth, there should a wreath be woven to tell the world their worth. and i, who woke each morrow to clasp thy hand in mine, who shared thy joy and sorrow, whose weal and woe were thine it should be mine to braid it around thy faded brow, but i've in vain essayed it, and feel i cannot now. while memory bids me weep thee, nor thoughts nor words are free, the grief is fixed too deeply, that mourns a man like thee. if we are to judge from the subject of these verses, they are a work of some care and reflection. yet they abound in faults. in the line, tears fell when thou wert dying; wert is not english. will tears the cold turf steep, is an exceedingly rough verse. the metonymy involved in there should a wreath be woven to tell the world their worth, is unjust. the quatrain beginning, and i who woke each morrow, is ungrammatical in its construction when viewed in connection with the quatrain which immediately follows. "weep thee" and "deeply" are inaccurate rhymesand the whole of the first quatrain, green be the turf, &c. although beautiful, bears too close a resemblance to the still more beautiful lines of william wordsworth, she dwelt among the untrodden ways beside the springs of dove, a maid whom there were none to praise and very few to love. as a versifier halleck is by no means equal to his friend, all of whose poems evince an ear finely attuned to the delicacies of melody. we seldom meet with more inharmonious lines than those, generally, of the author of alnwick castle. at every step such verses occur as, and the monk's hymn and minstrel's song true as the steel of their tried blades for him the joy of her young years where the bard-peasant first drew breath and withered my life's leaf like thinein which the proper course of the rhythm would demand an accent upon syllables too unimportant to sustain it. not infrequently, too, we meet with lines such as this, like torn branch from death's leafless tree, in which the multiplicity of consonants renders the pronunciation of the words at all, a matter of no inconsiderable difficulty. but we must bring our notice to a close. it will be seen that while we are willing to admire in many respects the poems before us, we feel obliged to dissent materially from that public opinion (perhaps not fairly ascertained) which would assign them a very brilliant rank in the empire of poesy. that we have among us poets of the loftiest order we believebut we do not believe that these poets are drake and halleck. bryant's poems mr. bryant's poetical reputation, both at home and abroad, is greater, we presume, than that of any other american. british critics have frequently awarded him high praise, and here, the public press have been unanimous in approbation. we can call to mind no dissenting voice. yet the nature, and, most especially the manner, of the expressed opinions in this case, should be considered as somewhat equivocal, and but too frequently must have borne to the mind of the poet doubts and dissatisfaction. the edition now before us may be supposed to embrace all such of his poems as he deems not unworthy his name. these (amounting to about one hundred) have been "carefully revised." with the exception of some few, about which nothing could well be said, we will speak briefly of them one by one, but in such order as we may find convenient. the ages, a didactic piece of thirty-five spenserian stanzas, is the first and longest in the volume. it was originally printed in 1821, with about half a dozen others now included in this collection. the design of the author in this poem is "from a survey of the past ages of the world, and of the successive advances of mankind in knowledge and virtue, to justify and confirm the hopes of the philanthropist for the future destinies of the human race." it is, indeed, an essay on the perfectability of man, wherein, among other better arguments some in the very teeth of analogy, are deduced from the eternal cycle of physical nature, to sustain a hope of progression in happiness. but it is only as a poem that we wish to examine the ages. its commencement is impressive. the four initial lines arrest the attention at once by a quiet dignity of manner, an air of placid contemplation, and a versification combining the extremes of melody and force when to the common rest that crowns our days, called in the noon of life, the good man goes, or full of years, and ripe in wisdom, lays his silver temples in their last reposethe five concluding lines of the stanza, however, are not equally effective when, o'er the buds of youth, the death-wind blows, and brights the fairest; when our bitterest tears stream, as the eyes of those that love us close, we think on what they were, with many fears lest goodness die with them, and leave the coming years. the defects, here, are all of a metrical and of course minor nature, but are still defects. the line when o'er the buds of youth the death-wind blows, is impeded in its flow by the final th in youth, and especially in death where w follows. the word tears cannot readily be pronounced after the final st in bitterest; and its own final consonants, rs, in like manner render an effort necessary in the utterance of stream which commences the next line. in the verse we think on what they were, with many fears the word many is, from its nature, too rapidly pronounced for the fulfilment of the time necessary to give weight to the foot of two syllables. all words of two syllables do not necessarily constitute a foot (we speak now of the pentameter here employed) even although the syllables be entirely distinct, as in many, very, often, and the like. such as, without effort, cannot employ in their pronunciation the time demanded by each of the preceding and succeeding feet of the verse, and occasionally of a preceding verse, will never fail to offend. it is the perception of this fact which so frequently forces the versifier of delicate ear to employ feet exceeding what are unjustly called legitimate dimensions. for example. we have the following lines lo! to the smiling arno's classic side, the emulous nations of the west repair! these verses are exceedingly forcible, yet, upon scanning the latter we find a syllable too many. we shall be told possibly that there should be an elision of the e in the at the commencement. but nothis was not intended. both the and emulous demand a perfect accentuation. the verse commencing lo! lo! to the smiling arno's classic side, has, it will be observed, a trochee in its first foot. as is usually the case, the whole line partakes, in consequence, of a stately and emphatic enunciation, and to equalize the time in the verse succeeding, something more is necessary than the succession of iambuses which constitute the ordinary english pentameter. the equalization is therefore judiciously effected by the introduction of an additional syllable. but in the lines stream, as the eyes of those that love us close, we think on what they were with many fears, lines to which the preceding observations will equally apply, this additional syllable is wanting. did the rhyme admit of the alteration, everything necessary could be accomplished by writing we think on what they were with many a fear, lest goodness die with them and leave the coming year. these remarks may be considered hypercriticalyet it is undeniable that upon a rigid attention to minutiae such as we have pointed out, any great degree of metrical success must altogether depend. we are more disposed, too, to dwell upon the particular point mentioned above, since, with regard to it, the american monthly, in a late critique upon the poems of mr. willis, has evidently done that gentleman injustice. the reviewer has fallen into what we conceive the error of citing, by themselves, (that is to say insulated from the context) such verses as the night-wind with a desolate moan swept by. with difficult energy and when the rod. fell through, and with the tremulous hand of age. with supernatural whiteness loosely fell. for the purpose of animadversion. "the license" he says "of turning such words as 'passionate' and 'desolate' into two syllables could only have been taken by a pupil of the fantastic school." we are quite sure that mr. willis had no purpose of turning them into words of two syllablesnor even, as may be supposed upon a careless examination, of pronouncing them in the same time which would be required for two ordinary, syllables. the excesses of measure are here employed (perhaps without any definite design on the part of the writer, who may have been guided solely by ear) with reference to the proper equalization, of balancing, if we may so term it, of time, throughout an entire sentence. this, we confess, is a novel idea, but, we think, perfectly tenable. any musician will understand us. efforts for the relief of monotone will necessarily produce fluctuations in the time of any metre, which fluctuations, if not subsequently counterbalanced, affect the ear like unresolved discords in music. the deviations then of which we have been speaking, from the strict rules of prosodial art, are but improvements upon the rigor of those rules, and are a merit, not a fault. it is the nicety of this species of equalization more than any other metrical merit which elevates pope as a versifier above the mere couplet-maker of his day, and, on the other hand, it is the extension of the principle to sentences of greater length which elevates milton above pope. knowing this, it was, of course, with some surprise that we found the american monthly (for whose opinions we still have the highest respect,) citing pope in opposition to mr. willis upon the very point to which we allude. a few examples will be sufficient to show that pope not only made free use of the license referred to, but that he used it for the reasons, and under the circumstances which we have suggested. oh thou! whatever title please thine ear, dean, drapier, bickerstaff, or gulliver! whether thou choose cervantes' serious air, or laugh and shake in rabelais easy chair. any person will here readily perceive that the third line whether thou choose cervantes' serious air, differs in time from the usual course of the rhythm, and requires some counterbalance in the line which succeeds. it is indeed precisely such a verse as that of mr. bryant's upon which we have commented, stream, as the eyes of those that love us close, and commences in the same manner with a trochee. but again, from pope we have hence hymning tyburn's elegiac lines hence journals, medleys, mercuries, magazines. else all my prose and verse were much the same, this prose on stilts, that poetry fallen lame. and thrice he lifted high the birth-day brand and thrice he dropped it from his quivering hand. here stood her opium, here she nursed her owls, and here she planned the imperial seat of fools. here to her chosen all her works she shows; prose swell'd to verse, verse loitering into prose. rome in her capitol saw querno sit throned on seven hills, the antichrist of wit. and his this drum whose hoarse heroic bass drowns the loud clarion of the braying ass. but such a bulk as no twelve bards could raise twelve starveling bards of these degenerate days. these are all taken at random from the first book of the dunciad. in the last example it will be seen that the two additional syllables are employed with a view of equalizing the time with that of the verse, but such a bulk as no twelve bards could raise, a verse which will be perceived to labor in its progressand which pope, in accordance with his favorite theory of making sound accord with sense, evidently intended so to labor. it is useless to say that the words should be written with elision-starv'ling and degen'rate. their pronunciation is not thereby materially affectedand, besides, granting it to be so, it may be as well to make the elision also in the case of mr. willis. but pope had no such intention, nor, we presume, had mr. w. it is somewhat singular, we may remark, en passant, that the american monthly, in a subsequent portion of the critique alluded to, quotes from pope as a line of "sonorous grandeur" and one beyond the ability of our american poet, the well known luke's iron crown and damien's bed of steel. now this is indeed a line of "sonorous grandeur"but it is rendered so principally if not altogether by that very excess of metre (in the word damien) which the reviewer has condemned in mr. willis. the lines which we quote below from mr. bryant's poem of the ages will suffice to show that the author we are now reviewing fully appreciates the force of such occasional excess, and that he has only neglected it through oversight in the verse which suggested these observations. peace to the just man's memorylet it grow greener with years, and blossom through the flight of ageslet the mimic canvass show his calm benevolent features. does prodigal autumn to our age deny the plenty that once swelled beneath his sober eye? look on this beautiful world and read the truth in her fair page. will then the merciful one who stamped our race with his own image, and who gave them sway o'er earth and the glad dwellers on her face, now that our flourishing nations far away are spread, where'er the moist earth drinks the day, forget the ancient care that taught and nursed his latest offspring? he who has tamed the elements shall not live the slave of his own passions. when liberty awoke new-born, amid those beautiful vales. oh greece, thy flourishing cities were a spoil unto each other. and thou didst drive from thy unnatural breast thy just and brave. yet her degenerate children sold the crown. instead of the pure heart and innocent hands among thy gallant sons that guard thee well thou laugh'st at enemies. who shall then declare far like the comet's way thro' infinite space. the full region leads new colonies forth. full many a horrible worship that, of old, held o'er the shuddering realms unquestioned sway. all these instances, and some others, occur in a poem of but thirty-five stanzasyet in only a very few cases is the license improperly used. before quitting this subject it may be as well to cite a striking example from wordsworth there was a youth whom i had loved so long, that when i loved him not i cannot say. mid the green mountains many and many a song we two had sung like gladsome birds in may. another specimen, and one still more to the purpose may be given from milton whose accurate ear (although he cannot justly be called the best of versifiers) included and balanced without difficulty the rhythm of the longest passages. but say, if our deliverer up to heaven must re-ascend, what will betide the few his faithful, left among the unfaithful herd, the enemies of truth? who then shall guide his people, who defend? will they not deal more with his fo than with him they dealt? be sure they will, said the angel. the other metrical faults in the ages are few. mr. bryant is not always successful in his alexandrines. too great care cannot be taken, we think, in so regulating this species of verse as to admit of the necessary pause at the end of the third footor at least as not to render a pause necessary elsewhere. we object, therefore, to such lines as a palm like his, and catch from him the hallowed flame. the truth of heaven, and kneel to gods that heard them not. that which concludes stanza x, although correctly cadenced in the above respect, requires an accent on the monosyllable the, which is too unimportant to sustain it. the defect is rendered the more perceptible by the introduction of a trochee in the first foot. the sick untended then languished in the damp shade, and died afar from men. we are not sure that such lines as a boundless sea of blood and the wild air. the smile of heaven, till a new age expands. are in any case justifiable, and they can be easily avoided. as in the alexandrine mentioned above, the course of the rhythm demands an accent on monosyllables too unimportant to sustain it. for this prevalent heresy in metre we are mainly indebted to byron, who introduced it freely, with the view of imparting an abrupt energy to his verse. there are, however, many better ways of relieving a monotone. stanza vi is, throughout, an exquisite specimen of versification, besides embracing many beauties both of thought and expression. look on this beautiful world and read the truth in her fair page; see every season brings new change, to her, of everlasting youth; still the green soil with joyous living things swarms; the wide air is full of joyous wings; and myriads, still, are happy in the sleep of ocean's azure gulfs, and where he flings the restless surge. eternal love doth keep in his complacent arms the earth, the air, the deep. the cadences, here, at the words page, swarms, and surge respectively, cannot be surpassed. we shall find, upon examination, comparatively few consonants in the stanza, and by their arrangement no impediment is offered to the flow of the verse. liquids and the most melodious vowels abound. world, eternal, season, wide, change, full, air, everlasting, wings, flings, complacent, surge, gulfs, myriads, azure, ocean, sail, and joyous, are among the softest and most sonorous sounds in the language, and the partial line after the pause at surge, together with the stately march of the alexandrine which succeeds, is one of the finest imaginable of finales eternal love doth keep in his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep. the higher beauties of the poem are not, we think, of the highest. it has unity, completeness,a beginning, middle and end. the tone, too, of calm, hopeful, and elevated reflection, is well sustained throughout. there is an occasional quaint grace of expression, as in nurse of full streams, and lifter up of proud sky-mingling mountains that o'erlook the cloudor of antithetical and rhythmical force combined, as in the shock that burled to dust in many fragments dashed and strewn the throne whose roots were in another world and whose far-stretching shadow awed our own. but we look in vain for something more worthy commendation. at the same time the piece is especially free from errors. once only we meet with an unjust metonymy, where a sheet of water is said to cradle, in his soft embrace, a gay young group of grassy islands. we find little originality of thought, and less imagination. but in a poem essentially didactic, of course we cannot hope for the loftiest breathings of the muse. to the past is a poem of fourteen quatrainsthree feet and four alternately. in the second quatrain, the lines and glorious ages gone lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. are, to us, disagreeable. such things are common, but at best, repulsive. in the present case there is not even the merit of illustration. the womb, in any just imagery, should be spoken of with a view to things future; here it is employed, in the sense of the tomb, and with a view to things past. in stanza xi the idea is even worse. the allegorical meaning throughout the poem, although generally well sustained, is not always so. in the quatrain thine for a space are they yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last; thy gates shall yet give way thy bolts shall fall inexorable past! it seems that the past, as an allegorical personification, is confounded with death. the old man's funeral is of seven stanzas, each of six linesfour pentameters and alexandrine rhyming. at the funeral of an old man who has lived out his full quota of years, another, as aged, reproves the company for weeping. the poem is nearly perfect in its waythe thoughts striking and naturalthe versification singularly sweet. the third stanza embodies a fine idea, beautifully expressed. ye sigh not when the sun, his course fulfilled, his glorious course rejoicing earth and sky, in the soft evening when the winds are stilled, sings where his islands of refreshment lie, and leaves the smile of his departure spread o'er the warm-colored heaven, and ruddy mountain head. the technical word chronic should have been avoided in the fifth line of stanza vi no chronic tortures racked his aged limb. the rivulet has about ninety octo-syllabic verses. they contrast the changing and perishable nature of our human frame, with the greater durability of the rivulet. the chief merit is simplicity. we should imagine the poem to be one of the earliest pieces of mr. bryant, and to have undergone much correction. in the first paragraph are, however, some awkward constructions. in the verses, for example this little rill that from the springs of yonder grove its current brings, plays on the slope awhile, and then goes prattling into groves again. the reader is apt to suppose that rill is the nominative to plays, whereas it is the nominative only to drew in the subsequent lines, oft to its warbling waters drew my little feet when life was new. the proper verb is, of course, immediately seen upon reading these latter linesbut the ambiguity has occurred. the praries. this is a poem, in blank pentameter, of about one hundred and twenty-five lines, and possesses features which do not appear in any of the pieces above mentioned. its descriptive beauty is of a high order. the peculiar points of interest in the prairie are vividly shown forth, and as a local painting, the work is, altogether, excellent. here are moreover, evidences of fine imagination. for example the great heavens seem to stoop down upon the scene in love a nearer vault and of a tenderer blue than that which bends above the eastern hills. till twilight blushed, and lovers walked and wooed in a forgotten language, and old tunes from instruments of unremembered form gave the soft winds a voice. the bee within the hollow oak. i listen long to his domestic hum and think i hear the sound of the advancing multitude which soon shall fill these deserts. breezes of the south! who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers, and pass the prairie-hawk that poised on high, flaps his broad wing yet moves not! there is an objectionable ellipsis in the expression "i behold them from the first," meaning "first time;" and either a grammatical or typographical error of moment in the fine sentence commencing fitting floor for this magnificent temple of the sky with flowers whose glory and whose multitude rival the constellations! earth, a poem of similar length and construction to the prairies, embodies a noble conception. the poet represents himself as lying on the earth in a "midnight black with clouds," and giving ideal voices to the varied sounds of the coming tempest. the following passages remind us of some of the more beautiful portions of young. on the breast of earth i lie and listen to her mighty voice; a voice of many tones-sent up from streams that wander through the gloom, from woods unseen swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air, from rocky chasm where darkness dwells all day, and hollows of the great invisible hills, and sands that edge the ocean stretching far into the nighta melancholy sound! ha! how the murmur deepens! i perceive and tremble at its dreadful import. earth uplifts a general cry for guilt and wrong and heaven is listening. the forgotten graves of the heart broken utter forth their plaint. the dust of her who loved and was betrayed, and him who died neglected in his age, the sepulchres of those who for mankind labored, and earned the recompense of scorn, ashes of martyrs for the truth, and bones of those who in the strife for liberty were beaten down, their corses given to dogs, their names to infamy, all find a voice! in this poem and elsewhere occasionally throughout the volume, we meet with a species of grammatical construction, which, although it is to be found in writing of high merit, is a mere affectation, and, of course, objectionable. we mean the abrupt employment of a direct pronoun in place of the customary relative. for example or haply dost thou grieve for those that die for living things that trod awhile thy face, the love of thee and heaven, and how they sleep, mixed with the shapeless dust on which thy herds trample and graze? the note of interrogation here, renders the affectation more perceptible. the poem to the apenines resembles, in meter, that entitled the old man's funeral, except that the former has a pentameter in place of the alexandrine. this piece is chiefly remarkable for the force, metrical and moral, of its concluding stanza. in you the heart that sighs for freedom seeks her image; there the winds no barrier know, clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks; while even the immaterial mind, below, and thought, her winged offspring, chained by power, pine silently for the redeeming hour. the knight's epitaph consists of about fifty lines of blank pentameter. this poem is well conceived and executed. entering the church of st. catherine at pisa, the poet is arrested by the image of an armed knight graven upon the lid of a sepulchre. the epitaph consists of an imaginative portraiture of the knight, in which he is made the impersonation of the ancient italian chivalry. seventy-six has seven stanzas of a common, but musical versification, of which these lines will afford an excellent specimen. that death-stain on the vernal sword, hallowed to freedom all the shore in fragments fell the yoke abhorred the footsteps of a foreign lord profaned the soil no more. the living lost has four stanzas of somewhat peculiar construction, but admirably adapted to the tone of contemplative melancholy which pervades the poem. we can call to mind few things more singularly impressive than the eight concluding verses. they combine ease with severity, and have antithetical force without effort or flippancy. the final thought has also a high ideal beauty. but ye who for the living lost that agony in secret bear who shall with soothing words accost the strength of your despair? grief for your sake is scorn for them whom ye lament, and all condemn, and o'er the world of spirit lies a gloom from which ye turn your eyes. the first stanza commences with one of those affectations which we noticed in the poem "earth." matron, the children of whose love, each to his grave in youth have passed, and now the mould is heaped above the dearest and the last. the strange lady is of the fourteen syllable metre, answering to two lines, one of eight syllables, the other six. this rhythm is unmanageable, and requires great care in the rejection of harsh consonants. little, however, has been taken, apparently, in the construction of the verses as if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky. and thou shoudst chase the nobler game, and i bring down the bird. or that strange dame so gay and fair were some mysterious foe, which are not to be pronounced without labor. the story is oldof a young gentleman who going out to hunt, is inveigled into the woods and destroyed by a fiend in the guise of a fair lady. the ballad character is nevertheless well preserved, and this, we presume, is nearly every thing intended. the hunter's vision is skilfully and sweetly told. it is a tale of a young hunter who, overcome with toil, dozes on the brink of a precipice. in this state between waking and sleeping, he fancies a spirit-land in the fogs of the valley beneath him, and sees approaching him the deceased lady of his love. arising to meet her, he falls, with the effort, from the crag, and perishes. the state of reverie is admirably pictured in the following stanzas. the poem consists of nine such. all dim in haze the mountains lay with dimmer vales between; and rivers glimmered on their way by forests faintly seen; while ever rose a murmuring sound from brooks below and bees around. he listened till he seemed to hear a strain so soft and low that whether in the mind or ear the listener scarce might know. with such a tone, so sweet and mild the watching mother lulls her child. catterskill falls is a narrative somewhat similar. here the hero is also a hunterbut of delicate frame. he is overcome with the cold at the foot of the falls, sleeps, and is near perishingbut being found by some woodmen, is taken care of, and recovers. as in the hunters vision, the dream of the youth is the main subject of the poem. he fancies a goblin palace in the icy network of the cascade, and peoples it in his vision with ghosts. his entry into this palace is, with rich imagination on the part of the poet, made to correspond with the time of the transition from the state of reverie to that of nearly total insensibility. they eye him not as they pass along, but his hair stands up with dread, when he feels that he moves with that phantom throng till those icy turrets are over his head, and the torrent's roar as they enter seems like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams. the glittering threshold is scarcely passed when there gathers and wraps him round a thick white twilight sullen and vast in which there is neither form nor sound; the phantoms, the glory, vanish all within the dying voice of the waterfall. there are nineteen similar stanzas. the metre is formed of iambuses and anapests. the hunter of the prairies (fifty-six octosyllabic verses with alternate rhymes) is a vivid picture of the life of a hunter in the desert. the poet, however, is here greatly indebted to his subject. the damsel of peru is in the fourteen syllable metre, and has a most spirited, imaginative and musical commencement where olive leaves were twinkling in every wind that blew, there sat beneath the pleasant shade a damsel of peru. this is also a ballad, and a very fine one-full of action, chivalry, energy and rhythm. some passages have even a loftier merit-that of a glowing ideality. for example for the noon is coming on, and the sunbeams fiercely beat, and the silent hills and forest-tops seem reeling in the heat. the song of pitcairn's island is a sweet, quiet and simple poem, of a versification differing from that of any preceding piece. we subjoin a specimen. the tahetian maiden addresses her lover. come talk of europe's maids with me whose necks and cheeks they tell outshine the beauty of the sea, white foam and crimson shell. i'll shape like theirs my simple dress and bind like them each jetty tress, a sight to please thee well and for my dusky brow will braid a bonnet like an english maid. there are seven similar stanzas. rispah is a scriptural theme from 2 samuel, and we like it less than any poem yet mentioned. the subject, we think, derives no additional interest from its poetical dress. the metre resembling, except in the matter of rhyme, that of "catterskill falls," and consisting of mingled iambuses and anapaests, is the most positively disagreeable of any which our language admits, and, having a frisky or fidgetty rhythm, is singularly ill-adapted to the lamentations of the bereaved mother. we cannot conceive how the fine ear of mr. bryant could admit such verses as, and rispah once the loveliest of all that bloomed and smiled in the court of saul, &c. the indian girl's lament and the arctic lover have nearly all the peculiarities of the "song of pitcairn's island." the massacre at scio is only remarkable for inaccuracy of expression in the two concluding lines till the last link of slavery's chain is shivered to be worn no more. what shall be worn no more? the chainbut the link is implied. monument mountain is a poem of about a hundred and forty blank pentameters and relates the tale of an indian maiden who loved her cousin. such a love being deemed incestuous by the morality of her tribe, she threw herself from a precipice and perished. there is little peculiar in the story or its narration. we quote a rough verse the mighty columns with which earth props heaven. the use of the epithet old preceded by some other adjective, is found so frequently in this poem and elsewhere in the writings of mr. bryant, as to excite a smile upon each recurrence of the expression. in all that proud old world beyond the deep there is a tale about these gray old rocks the wide old woods resounded with her song and the gray old men that passed and from the gray old trunks that high in heaven. we dislike too the antique use of the word affect in such sentences as they deemed like worshippers of the elder time that god doth walk in the high places and affect the eartho'erlooking mountains. milton, it is true, uses itwe remember it especially in comus 't is most true that musing meditation most affects the pensive secrecy of desert cellbut then milton would not use it were he writing comus today. in the summer wind, our author has several successful attempts at making "the sound an echo to the sense." for example for me, i lie languidly in the shade, where the thick turf yet virgin from the kisses of the sun retains some freshness. all is silent, save the faint and interrupted murmur of the bee settling on the sick flowers, and then again instantly on the wing. all the green herbs are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers by the road side, and the borders of the brook nod, gaily to each other. autumn woods. this is a poem of much sweetness and simplicity of expression, and including one or two fine thoughts, viz: the sweet south-west at play flies, rustling where the painted leaves are strown along the winding way. but 'neath yon crimson tree lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, nor mark within its roseate canopy her flush of maiden shame. the mountains that unfold in their wide sweep the colored landscape round, seem groups of giant kings in purple and gold that guard the enchanted ground. all this is beautifulhappily to endow inanimate nature with sentience and a capability of moral action is one of the severest tests of the poet. even the most unmusical ear will not fail to appreciate the rare beauty and strength of the extra syllable in the line seem groups of giant kings in purple and gold. the distinterred warrior has a passage we do not clearly understand. speaking of the indian our author says for he was fresher from the hand that formed of earth the human face, and to the elements did stand in nearer kindred than our race. there are ten similar quatrains in the poem. the greek boy consists of four spirited stanzas, nearly resembling, in metre, the living lost. the two concluding lines are highly ideal. a shoot of that old vine that made the nations silent in its shade. when the firmament quivers with daylight's young beam, belongs to a species of poetry which we cannot be brought to admire. some natural phenomenon is observed, and the poet taxes his ingenuity to find a parallel in the moral world. in general, we may assume, that the more successful he is in sustaining a parallel, the farther he departs from the true province of the muse. the title, here, is a specimen of the metre. this is a kind which we have before designated as exceedingly difficult to manage. to a musquito, is droll, and has at least the merit of making, at the same time, no efforts at being sentimental. we are not inclined, however, to rank as poems, either this production or the article on new england coal. the conjunction of jupiter and venus has ninety pentameters. one of them kind influence. lo! their orbs burn more bright, can only be read, metrically, by drawing out influence into three marked syllables, shortening the long monosyllable, lo! and lengthening the short one, their. june is sweet and soft in its rhythm, and inexpressibly pathetic. there is an illy subdued sorrow and intense awe coming up, per force as it were to the surface of the poet's gay sayings about his grave, which we find thrilling us to the soul. and what if cheerful shouts, at noon, come, from the village sent, or songs of maids, beneath the moon with fairy laughter blent? and what if, in the evening light, betrothed lovers walk in sight of my low monument? i would the lovely scene around might know no sadder sight nor sound. i know, i know i should not see the season's glorious show, nor would its brightness shine for me nor its wild music flow, but if, around my place of sleep, the friends i love should come to weep, they might not haste to go soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom should keep them lingering by my tomb. innocent child and snow-white flower, is remarkable only for the deficiency of a foot in one of its verses. white as those leaves just blown apart are the folds of thy own young heart. and for the graceful repetition in its concluding quatrain throw it aside in thy weary hour, throw to the ground the fair white flower, yet as thy tender years depart keep that white and innocent heart. of the seven original sonnets in the volume before us, it is somewhat difficult to speak. the sonnet demands, in a great degree, point, strength, unity, compression, and a species of completeness. generally, mr. bryant has evinced more of the first and the last, than of the three mediate qualities. william tell is feeble. no forcible line ever ended with liberty, and the best of the rhymesthee, he, free, and the like, are destitute of the necessary vigor. but for this rhythmical defect the thought in the concluding couplet the bitter cup they mingled strengthened thee for the great work to set thy country free would have well ended the sonnet. midsummer is objectionable for the variety of its objects of allusion. its final lines embrace a fine thought as if the day of fire had dawned and sent its deadly breath into the firmamentbut the vigor of the whole is impaired by the necessity of placing an unwonted accent on the last syllable of firmament. october has little to recommend it, but the slight epigrammatism of its conclusion and when my last sand twinkled in the glass, pass silently from menas thou dost pass. the sonnet to cole, is feeble in its final lines, and is worthy of praise only in the verses paths, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen to where life shrinks from the fierce alpine air. mutation, a didactic sonnet, has few either of faults or beauties. november is far better. the lines and the blue gentian flower that, in the breeze, nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last, are very happy. a single thought pervades and gives unity to the piece. we are glad, too, to see an alexandrine in the close. in the whole metrical construction of his sonnets, however, mr. bryant has very wisely declined confining himself to the laws of the italian poem, or even to the dicta of capel lofft. the alexandrine is beyond comparison the most effective finale, and we are astonished that the common pentameter should ever be employed. the best sonnet of the seven is, we think, that to-. with the exception of a harshness in the last line but one it is perfect. the finale is inimitable. ay, thou art for the grave; thy glances shine too brightly to shine long; another spring shall deck her for men's eyes, but not for thine sealed in a sleep which knows no wakening. the fields for thee have no medicinal leaf, and the vexed ore no mineral of power; and they who love thee wait in anxious grief till the slow plague shall bring the fatal hour. glide softly to thy rest, then; death should come gently to one of gentle mould like thee, as light winds wandering through groves of bloom detach the delicate blossom from the tree. close thy sweet eyes, calmly, and without pain, and we will trust in god to see thee yet again. to a cloud, has another instance of the affectation to which we alluded in our notice of earth, and the living lost. whose sons at length have heard the call that comes from the old battle fields and tombs, and risen, and drawn the sword, and on the foe have dealt the swift and desperate blow, and the othman power is cloven, and the stroke has touched its chains, and they are broke. of the translations in the volume it is not our intention to speak in detail. mary magdelen, from the spanish of bartoleme leonardo de argensola, is the finest specimen of versification in the book. alexis, from the spanish of iglesias, is delightful in its exceeding delicacy, and general beauty. we cannot refrain from quoting it entire. alexis calls me cruel the rifted crags that hold the gathered ice of winter, he says, are not more cold. when even the very blossoms around the fountain's brim, and forest walks, can witness the love i bear to him. i would that i could utter my feelings without shame and tell him how i love him nor wrong my virgin fame. alas! to seize the moment when heart inclines to heart, and press a suit with passion is not a woman's part. if man come not to gather the roses where they stand, they fade among their foliage, they cannot seek his hand. the waterfowl is very beautiful, but still not entitled to the admiration which it has occasionally elicited. there is a fidelity and force in the picture of the fowl as brought before the eve of the mind, and a fine sense of effect in throwing its figure on the background of the "crimson sky," amid "falling dew," "while glow the heavens with the last steps of day." but the merits which possibly have had most weight in the public estimation of the poem, are the melody and strength of its versification, (which is indeed excellent) and more particularly its completeness. its rounded and didactic termination has done wonders: on my heart, deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given and shall not soon depart. he, who, from zone to zone, guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight in the long way that i must tread alone will lead my steps aright. there are, however, points of more sterling merit. we fully recognize the poet in thou art gonethe abyss of heaven hath swallowed up thy form. there is a power whose care teaches thy way along that pathless coast the desert, and illimitable air lone, wandering, but not lost. the forest hymn consists of about a hundred and twenty blank pentameters of whose great rhythmical beauty it is scarcely possible to speak too highly. with the exception of the line the solitude. thou art in the soft winds, no fault, in this respect, can be found, while excellencies are frequent of a rare order, and evincing the greatest delicacy of ear. we might, perhaps, suggest, that the two concluding verses, beautiful as they stand, would be slightly improved by transferring to the last the metrical excess of the one immediately preceding. for the appreciation of this, it is necessary to quote six or seven lines in succession oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face spare me and mine, nor let us need the warmth of the mad unchained elements, to teach who rules them. be it ours to meditate in these calm shades thy milder majesty, and to the beautiful order of thy works learn to conform the order of our lives. there is an excess of one syllable in the [sixth line]. if we discard this syllable here, and adopt it in the final line, the close will acquire strength, we think, in acquiring a fuller volume. be it ours to meditate in these calm shades thy milder majesty, and to the perfect order of thy works conform, if we can, the order of our lives. directness, boldness, and simplicity of expression, are main features in the poem. oh god! when thou dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire the heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill with all the waters of the firmament the swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods, and drowns the villages. here an ordinary writer would have preferred the word fright to scare, and omitted the definite article before woods and villages. to the evening wind has been justly admired. it is the best specimen of that completeness which we have before spoken of as a characteristic feature in the poems of mr. bryant. it has a beginning, middle, and end, each depending upon the other, and each beautiful. here are three lines breathing all the spirit of shelley. pleasant shall be thy way, where meekly bows the shutting flower, and darkling waters pass, and 'twixt the o'ershadowing branches and the grass. the conclusion is admirable gobut the circle of eternal change, which is the life of nature, shall restore, with sounds and scents from all thy mighty range, thee to thy birth-place of the deep once more; sweet odors in the sea air, sweet and strange, shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore, and, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem he hears the rustling leaf and running stream. thanatopsis is somewhat more than half the length of the forest hymn, and of a character precisely similar. it is, however, the finer poem. like the waterfowl, it owes much to the point, force, and general beauty of its didactic conclusion. in the commencement, the lines to him who, in the love of nature, holds communion with her visible forms, &c. belong to a class of vague phrases, which, since the days of byron, have obtained too universal a currency. the verse go forth under the open sky and listis sadly out of place amid the forcible and even miltonic rhythm of such lines as take the wings of morning, and the barcan desert pierce, or lose thyself in the continuous woods where rolls the oregon but these are trivial faults indeed and the poem embodies a great degree of the most elevated beauty. two of its passages, passages of the purest ideality, would alone render it worthy of the general commendation it has received. so live, that when thy summons comes to join the innumerable caravan that moves to that mysterious realm where each shall take his chamber in the silent halls of death, thou go not, like the quarry slave at night, scourged to his dungeon; but sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dream. the hills rock-ribbed and ancient as the sunthe vales stretching in pensive quietude between the venerable woodsrivers that move in majesty, and the complaining brooks that make the meadows greenand, pured round all, old ocean's gray and melancholy waste are but the solemn decorations all of the great tomb of man. oh, fairest of the rural maids! is a gem, of which we cannot sufficiently express our admiration. we quote in full. oh, fairest of the rural maids! thy birth was in the forest shades; green boughs and glimpses of the sky were all that met thine infant eye. thy sports, thy wanderings when a child were ever in the sylvan wild; and all the beauty of the place is in thy heart and on thy face. the twilight of the trees and rocks is in the light shade of thy locks, thy step is as the wind that weaves its playful way among the leaves. thine eyes are springs, in whose serene and silent waters heaven is seen; their lashes are the herbs that look on their young figures in the brook. the forest depths by foot impressed are not more sinless than thy breast; the holy peace that fills the air of those calm solitudes, is there. a rich simplicity is a main feature in this poemsimplicity of design and execution. this is strikingly perceptible in the opening and concluding lines, and in expression throughout. but there is a far higher and more strictly ideal beauty, which it is less easy to analyze. the original conception is of the very loftiest order of true poesy. a maiden is born in the forest green boughs and glimpses of the sky are all which meet her infant eyeshe is not merely modelled in character by the associations of her childhoodthis were the thought of an ordinary poetan idea that we meet with every day in rhymebut she imbibes, in her physical as well as moral being, the traits, the very features of the delicious scenery around herits loveliness becomes a portion of her own the twilight of the trees and rocks is in the light shade of her locks, and all the beauty of the place is in her heart and on her face. it would have been a highly poetical idea to imagine the tints in the locks of the maiden deducing a resemblance to the "twilight of the trees and rocks," from the constancy of her associationsbut the spirit of ideality is immeasurably more apparent when the "twilight" is represented as becoming identified with the shadows of her hair. the twilight of the trees and rocks is in the light shade of her locks, and all the beauty of the place is in her heart and on her face. feeling thus, we did not, in copying the poem, [comment on] the lines, although beautiful, thy step is as the wind that weaves its playful way among the leaves, nor those which immediately follow. the two concluding verses however, are again of the most elevated species of poetical merit. the forest depths by foot impressed are not more sinless than thy breast the holy peace that fills the air of those calm solitudes, is there. the image contained in the lines thine eyes are springs in whose serene and silent waters heaven is seenis one which, we think, for appropriateness, completeness, and every perfect beauty of which imagery is susceptible, has never been surpassedbut imagery is susceptible of no beauty like that we have designated in the sentences above. the latter idea, moreover, is not original with our poet. in all the rhapsodies of mr. bryant, which have reference to the beauty or the majesty of nature, is a most audible and thrilling tone of love and exultation. as far as he appreciates her loveliness or her augustness, no appreciation can be more ardent, more full of heart, more replete with the glowing soul of adoration. nor, either in the moral or physical universe coming within the periphery of his vision, does he at any time fail to perceive and designate, at once, the legitimate items of the beautiful. therefore, could we consider (as some have considered) the mere enjoyment of the beautiful when perceived, or even this enjoyment when combined with the readiest and truest perception and discrimination in regard to beauty presented, as a sufficient test of the poetical sentiment we could have no hesitation in according to mr. bryant the very highest poetical rank. but something more, we have elsewhere presumed to say, is demanded. just above, we spoke of "objects in the moral or physical universe coming within the periphery of his vision." we now mean to say, that the relative extent of these peripheries of poetical vision must ever be a primary consideration in our classification of poets. judging mr. b. in this manner, and by a general estimate of the volume before us, we should, of course, pause long before assigning him a place with the spiritual shelleys, or coleridges, or wordsworths, or with keats, or even tennyson, or wilson, or with some other burning lights of our own day, to be valued in a day to come. yet if his poems, as a whole, will not warrant us in assigning him this grade, one such poem as the last upon which we have commented, is enough to assure us that he may attain it. the writings of our author, as we find them here, are characterized by an air of calm and elevated contemplation more than by any other individual feature. in their mere didactics, however, they err essentially and primitively, inasmuch as such things are the province rather of minerva than of the camenae. of imagination, we discover muchbut more of its rich and certain evidences, than of its ripened fruit. in all the minor merits mr. bryant is pre-eminent. his ars celare artem is most efficient. of his "completeness," unity, and finish of style we have already spoken. as a versifier, we know of no writer, living or dead, who can be said greatly to surpass him. a frenchman would assuredly call him "un poete des plus correctes." between cowper and young, perhaps, (with both of whom he has many points of analogy,) would be the post assigned him by an examination at once general and superficial. even in this view, however, he has a juster appreciation of the beautiful than the one, of the sublime than the othera finer taste than cowperan equally vigorous, and far more delicate imagination than young. in regard to his proper rank among american poets there should be no question whatever. fewat least few who are fairly before the public, have more than very shallow claims to a rivalry with the author of thanatopsis. the old curiosity shop, and other tales by charles dickens, with numerous illustrations by cattermole and browne. philadelphia: lea & blanchard. master humpherey's clock by charles dickens. (boz.) with ninty-one illustrations by george cattermole and hablot browne. philadelphia: lea & blanchard. what we here give [the above titles] is the duplicate title, on two separate title-pages, of an octavo volume of three hundred and sixty-two pages. why this method of nomenclature should have been adopted is more than we can understandalthough it arises, perhaps, from a certain confusion and hesitation observable in the whole structure of the book itself. publishers have an idea, however, (and no doubt they are the best judges in such matters) that a complete work obtains a readier sale than one "to be continued;" and we see plainly that it is with the design of intimating the entireness of the volume now before us, that "the old curiosity shop and other tales," has been made not only the primary and main title, but the name of the whole publication as indicated by the back. this may be quite fair in trade, but is morally wrong not the less. the volume is only one of a seriesonly part of a whole; and the title has no right to insinuate otherwise. so obvious is this intention to misguide, that it has led to the absurdity of putting the inclusive, or general, title of the series, as a secondary instead of a primary one. anybody may see that if the wish had been fairly to represent the plan and extent of the volume, something like this would have been given on a single page master humphrey's clock by charles dickens. part i. containing the old curiosity shop, and other tales, with numerous illustrations, &c. &c. this would have been better for all parties, a good deal more honest, and a vast deal more easily understood. in fact, there is sufficient uncertainty of purpose in the book itself, without resort to mystification in the matter of title. we do not think it altogether impossible that the rumors in respect to the sanity of mr. dickens which were so prevalent during the publication of the first numbers of the work, had some slightsome very slight foundation in truth. by this, we mean merely to say that the mind of the author, at the time, might possibly have been struggling with some of those manifold and multiform aberrations by which the nobler order of genius is so frequently besetbut which are still so very far removed from disease. there are some facts in the physical world which have a really wonderful analogy with others in the world of thought, and seem thus to give some color of truth to the (false) rhetorical dogma, that metaphor or simile may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description. the principle of the vis inertiae, for example, with the amount of momentum proportionate with it and consequent upon it, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. it is not more true, in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent impetus is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more extensive in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and are more embarrassed and more full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress. while, therefore, it is not impossible, as we have just said, that some slight mental aberration might have given rise to the hesitancy and indefinitiveness of purpose which are so very perceptible in the first pages of the volume before us, we are still the more willing to believe these defects the result of the moral fact just stated, since we find the work itself of an unusual order of excellence, even when regarded as the production of the author of "nicholas nickleby." that the evils we complain of are not, and were not, fully perceived by mr. dickens himself, cannot be supposed for a moment. had his book been published in the old way, we should have seen no traces of them whatever. the design of the general work, "humphrey's clock," is simply the common-place one of putting various tales into the mouths of a social party. the meetings are held at the house of master humphreyan antique building in london, where an old-fashioned clock case is the place of deposit for the m.s.s. why such designs have become common is obvious. one half the pleasure experienced at a theatre arises from the spectator's sympathy with the rest of the audience, and, especially, from his belief in their sympathy with him. the eccentric gentleman who not long ago, at the park, found himself the solitary occupant of box, pit, and gallery, would have derived but little enjoyment from his visit, had he been suffered to remain. it was an act of mercy to turn him out. the present absurd rage for lecturing is founded in the feeling in question. essays which we would not be hired to readso trite is their subjectso feeble is their executionso much easier is it to get better information on similar themes out of any encyclopaedia in christendomwe are brought to tolerate, and alas, even to applaud in their tenth and twentieth repetition, through the sole force of our sympathy with the throng. in the same way we listen to a story with greater zest when there are others present at its narration besides ourselves. aware of this, authors without due reflection have repeatedly attempted, by supposing a circle of listeners, to imbue their narratives with the interest of sympathy. at a cursory glance the idea seems plausible enough. but, in the one case, there is an actual, personal, and palpable sympathy, conveyed in looks, gestures and brief commentsa sympathy of real individuals, all with the matters discussed to be sure, but then especially, each with each. in the other instance, we, alone in our closet, are required to sympathise with the sympathy of fictitious listeners, who, so far from being present in body, are often studiously kept out of sight and out of mind for two or three hundred pages at a time. this is sympathy double-dilutedthe shadow of a shade. it is unnecesary to say that the design invariably fails of its effect. in his preface to the present volume, mr. dickens seems to feel the necessity for an apology in regard to certain portions of his commencement, without seeing clearly what apology he should make, or for what precise thing he should apologize. he makes an effort to get over the difficulty, by saying something about its never being "his intention to have the members of 'master humphrey's clock' active agents in the stories they relate," and about his "picturing to himself the various sensations of his hearers-thinking how jack redburn might incline to poor kithow the deaf gentleman would have his favorite and mr. miles his," &c. &c.but we are quite sure that all this is as pure a fiction as "the curiosity shop?" itself. our author is deceived. occupied with little nell and her grandfather, he had forgotten the very existence of his interlocutors until he found himself, at the end of his book, under the disagreeable necessity of saying a word or two concerning them, by way of winding them up. the simple truth is that, either for one of the two reasons at which we have already hinted, or else because the work was begun in a hurry, mr. dickens did not precisely know his own plans when he penned the five or six first chapters of the "clock." the wish to preserve a certain degree of unity between various narratives naturally unconnected, is a more obvious and a better reason for employing interlocutors. but such unity as may be thus had is scarcely worth having. it may, in some feeble measure, satisfy the judgment by a sense of completeness; but it seldom produces a pleasant effect; and if the speakers are made to take part in their own stories (as has been the case here) they become injurious by creating confusion. thus, in "the curiosity shop," we feel displeased to find master humphrey commencing the tale in the first person, dropping this for the third, and concluding by introducing himself as the "single gentleman" who figures in the story. in spite of all the subsequent explanation we are forced to look upon him as two. all is confusion, and what makes it worse, is that master humphrey is painted as a lean and sober personage, while his second self is a fat, bluff and boisterous old bachelor. yet the species of connexion in question, besides preserving the unity desired, may be made, if well managed, a source of consistent and agreeable interest. it has been so made by thomas moorethe most skilful literary artist of his dayperhaps of any daya man who stands in the singular and really wonderful predicament of being undervalued on account of the profusion with which he has scattered about him his good things. the brilliancies on any one page of lalla roohk would have sufficed to establish that very reputation which has been in a great measure self-dimmed by the galazied lustre of the entire book. it seems that the horrid laws of political economy cannot be evaded even by the inspired, and that a perfect versification, a vigorous style, and a never-tiring fancy, may, like the water we drink and die without, yet despise, be so plentifully set forth as to be absolutely of no value at all. by far the greater portion of the volume now published, is occupied with the tale of "the old curiosity shop," narrated by master humphrey himself. the other stories are brief. the "giant chronicles" is the title of what appears to be meant for a series within a series, and we think this design doubly objectionable. the narrative of "the bowyer," as well as of "john podgers," is not altogether worthy of mr. dickens. they were probably sent to press to supply a demand for copy, while he was occupied with the "curiosity shop." but the "confession found in a prison in the time of charles the second" is a paper of remarkable power, truly original in conception, and worked out with great ability. the story of "the curiosity shop" is very simple. two brothers of england, warmly attached to each other, love the same lady, without each other's knowledge. the younger at length discovers the elder's secret, and, sacrificing himself to fraternal affection, quits the country and resides for many years in a foreign land, where he amasses great wealth. meantime his brother marries the lady, who soon dies, leaving an infant daughterher perfect resemblance. in the widower's heart the mother lives again through the child. this latter grows up, marries unhappily, has a son and a daughter, loses her husband, and dies herself shortly afterward. the grandfather takes the orphans to his home. the boy spurns his protection, falls into bad courses, and becomes an outcast. the girlin whom a third time lives the object of the old man's early choicedwells with him alone, and is loved by him with a most doting affection. he has now become poor, and at length is reduced to keeping a shop for antiquities and curiosities. finally, through his dread of involving the child in want, his mind becomes weakened. he thinks to redeem his fortune by gambling, borrows money for this purpose of a dwarf, who, at length, discovering the true state of the old man's affairs, seizes his furniture and turns him out of doors. the girl and himself set out, without farther object than to relieve themselves of the sight of the hated city, upon a weary pilgrimage, whose events form the basis or body of the tale. in fine, just as a peaceful retirement is secured for them, the child, wasted with fatigue and anxiety, dies. the grandfather, through grief, immediately follows her to the tomb. the younger brother, meantime, has received information of the old man's poverty, hastens to england, and arrives only in time to be at the closing scene of the tragedy. this plot is the best which could have been constructed for the main object of the narrative. this object is the depicting of a fervent and dreamy love for the child on the part of the grandfathersuch a love as would induce devotion to himself on the part of the orphan. we have thus the conception of a childhood, educated in utter ignorance of the world, filled with an affection which has been, through its brief existence, the sole source of its pleasures, and which has no part in the passion of a more mature youth for an object of its own agewe have the idea of this childhood, full of ardent hopes, leading by the hand, forth from the heated and wearying city, into the green fields, to seek for bread, the decrepid imbecility of a doting and confiding old age, whose stern knowledge of man, and of the world it leaves behind, is now merged in the sole consciousness of receiving love and protection from that weakness it has loved and protected. this conception is indeed most beautiful. it is simply and severely grand. the more fully we survey it the more thoroughly we are convinced of the lofty character of that genius which gave it birth. that in its present simplicity of form, however, it was first entertained by mr. dickens, may well be doubted. that it was not, we are assured by the title which the tale bears. when in its commencement he called it "the old curiosity shop," his design was far different from what we see it in its completion. it is evident that had he now to name the story he would not so term it; for the shop itself is a thing of an altogether collateral interest, and is spoken of merely in the beginning. this is only one among a hundred instances of the disadvantage under which the periodical novelist labors. when his work is done, he never fails to observe a thousand defects which he might have remedied, and a thousand alterations, in regard to the book as a whole, which might be made to its manifest improvement. but of the conception of this story deserves praise, its execution is beyond alland here the subject naturally leads us from the generalization which is the proper province of the critic, into details among which it is scarcely fitting that he should venture. the art of mr. dickens, although elaborate and great, seems only a happy modification of nature. in this respect he differs remarkably from the author of "night and morning." the latter, by excessive care and by patient reflection, aided by much rhetorical knowledge, and general information, has arrived at the capability of producing books which be mistaken by ninety-nine readers out of a hundred for the genuine inspirations of genius. the former, by the promptings of the truest genius itself, has been brought to compose, and evidently without effort, works which have effected a long-sought consummationwhich have rendered him the idol of the people, while defying and enchanting the critics. mr. bulwer, through art, has almost created a genius. mr. dickens, through genius, has perfected a standard from which art itself will derive its essence, in rules. when we speak in this manner of the "old curiosity shop," we speak with entire deliberation, and know quite well what it is we assert. we do not mean to say that it is perfect, as a wholethis could not well have been the case under the circumstances of its composition. but we know that, in all the higher elements which go to make up literary greatness, it is supremely excellent. we think, for instance, that the introduction of nelly's brother (and here we address those who have read the work) is supererogatorythat the character of quilp would have been more in keeping had he been confined to petty and grotesque acts of malicethat his death should have been made the immediate consequence of his attempt at revenge upon kit; and that after matters had been put fairly in train for this poetical justice, he should not have perished by an accident inconsequential upon his villany. we think, too, that there is an air of ultra-accident in the finally discovered relationship between kit's master and the bachelor of the old churchthat the sneering politeness put into the mouth of quilp, with his manner of commencing a question which he wishes answered in the affirmative, with an affirmative interrogatory, instead of the ordinary negative oneare fashions borrowed from the authors own faginthat he has repeated himself in many other instancesthat the practical tricks and love of mischief of the dwarf's boy are too nearly consonant with the traits of the masterthat so much of the propensities of swiveller as relate to his inapposite appropriation of odds and ends of verse, is stolen from the generic loafer of our fellow-townsman, nealand that the writer has suffered the overflowing kindness of his own bosom to mislead him in a very important point of art, when he endows so many of his dramatis personae with a warmth of feeling so very rare in reality. above all, we acknowledge that the death of nelly is excessively painfulthat it leaves a most distressing oppression of spirit upon the readerand should, therefore, have been avoided. but when we come to speak of the excellences of the tale these defects appear really insignificant. it embodies more originality in every point, but in character especially, than any single work within our knowledge. there is the grandfathera truly profound conception; the gentle and lovely nellywe have discoursed of her before; quilp, with mouth like that of the panting dog(a bold idea which the engraver has neglected to embody) with his hilarious antics, his cowardice, and his very petty and spoilt-childlike malevolence, dick swiveller, that prince of goodhearted, good-for-nothing, lazy, luxurious, poetical, brave, romantically generous, gallant, affectionate, and not over-and-above honest, "glorious apollos;" the marchioness, his bride; tom codlin and his partner; miss sally brass, that "fine fellow;" the pony that had an opinion of its own; the boy that stood upon his head; the sexton; the man at the forge; not forgetting the dancing dogs and baby nubbles. there are other admirably drawn charactersbut we note these for their remarkable originality, as well as for their wonderful keeping, and the glowing colors in which they are painted. we have heard some of them called caricaturesbut the charge is grossly ill-founded. no critical principle is more firmly based in reason than that a certain amount of exaggeration is essential to the proper depicting of truth itself. we do not paint an object to be true, but to appear true to the beholder. were we to copy nature with accuracy the object copied would seem unnatural. the columns of the greek temples, which convey the idea of absolute proportion, are very considerably thicker just beneath the capital than at the base. we regret that we have not left ourselves space in which to examine this whole question as it deserves. we must content ourselves with saying that caricature seldom exists (unless in so gross a form as to disgust at once) where the component parts are in keeping; and that the laugh excited by it, in any case, is radically distinct from that induced by a properly artistical incongruitythe source of all mirth. were these creations of mr. dickens' really caricatures they would not live in public estimation beyond the hour of their first survey. we regard them as creations(that is to say as original combinations of character) only not all of the highest order, because the elements employed are not always of the highest. in the instances of nelly, the grandfather, the sexton, and the man of the furnace, the force of the creative intellect could scarcely have been engaged with nobler material, and the result is that these personages belong to the most august regions of the ideal. in truth, the great feature of the "curiosity shop" is its chaste, vigorous, and glorious imagination. this is the one charm, all potent, which alone would suffice to compensate for a world more of error than mr. dickens ever committed. it is not only seen in the conception, and general handling of the story, or in the invention of character; but it pervades every sentence of the book. we recognise its prodigious influence in every inspired word. it is this which induces the reader who is at all ideal, to pause frequently, to reread the occasionally quaint phrases, to muse in uncontrollable delight over thoughts which, while he wonders he has never hit upon them before, he yet admits that he never has encountered. in fact it is the wand of the enchanter. had we room to particularize, we would mention as points evincing most distinctly the ideality of the "curiosity shop"the picture of the shop itselfthe newly-born desire of the worldly old man for the peace of green fieldshis whole character and conduct, in shortthe schoolmaster, with his desolate fortunes, seeking affection in little childrenthe haunts of quilp among the wharf-ratsthe tinkering of the punchmen among the tombsthe glorious scene where the man of the forge sits poring, at deep midnight, into that dread fireagain the whole conception of this character, and, last and greatest, the stealthy approach of nell to her deathher gradual sinking away on the journey to the village, so skilfully indicated rather than describedher pensive and prescient meditationthe fit of strange musing which came over her when the house in which she was to die first broke upon her sightthe description of this house, of the old church, and of the churchyardeverything in rigid consonance with the one impression to be conveyedthat deep meaningless wellthe comments of the sexton upon death, and upon his own secure lifethis whole world of mournful yet peaceful idea merging, at length, into the decease of the child nelly, and the uncomprehending despair of the grandfather. these concluding scenes are so drawn that human language, urged by human thought, could go no farther in the excitement of human feelings. and the pathos is of that best order which is relieved, in great measure, by ideality. here the book has never been equalled,never approached except in one instance, and that is in the case of the "undine" by de la motte fouque. the imagination is perhaps as great in this latter work, but the pathos, although truly beautiful and deep, fails of much of its effect through the material from which it is wrought. the chief character, being endowed with purely fanciful attributes, cannot command our full sympathies, as can a simple denizen of earth. in saying above, that the death of the child left too painful an impression, and should therefore have been avoided, we must, of course, be understood as referring to the work as a whole, and in respect to its general appreciation and popularity. the death, as recorded, is, we repeat, of the highest order of literary excellenceyet while none can deny this fact, there are few who will be willing to read the concluding passages a second time. upon the whole we think the "curiosity shop" very much the best of the works of mr. dickens. it is scarcely possible to speak of it too well. it is in all respects a tale which will secure for its author the enthusiastic admiration of every man of genius. the edition before us is handsomely printed, on excellent paper. the designs by cattermole and browne are many of them excellentsome of them outrageously bad. of course, it is difficult for us to say how far the american engraver is in fault. in conclusion, we must enter our solemn protest against the final page full of little angels in smock frocks, or dimity chemises. the quacks of helicon a satire. by l. a. wilmer a satire, professedly such, at the present day, and especially by an american writer, is a welcome novelty indeed. we have really done very little in the line upon this side of the atlanticnothing certainly of importancetrumbull's clumsy poem and halleck's "croakers" to the contrary notwithstanding. some things we have produced, to be sure, which were excellent in the way of burlesque, without intending a syllable that was not utterly solemn and serious. odes, ballads, songs, sonnets, epics, and epigrams, possessed of this unintentional excellence, we could have no difficulty in designating by the dozen; but in the matter of directly meant and genuine satire, it cannot be denied that we are sadly deficient. although, as a literary people, however, we are not exactly archilochusesalthough we have no pretensions to the echeenpes iamboialthough in short, we are no satirists ourselves, there can be no question that we answer sufficiently well as subjects for satire. we repeat that we are glad to see this book of mr. wilmer's; first, because it is something new under the sun; secondly, because, in many respects, it is well executed; and thirdly, because, in the universal corruption and rigmarole, amid which we gasp for breath, it is really a pleasant thing to get even one accidental whiff of the unadulterated air of truth. "the quacks of helicon," as a poem and otherwise, has many defects, and these we shall have no scruple in pointing outalthough mr. wilmer is a personal friend of our own, and we are happy and proud to say sobut it has also many remarkable meritsmerits which it will be quite useless for those aggrieved by the satirequite useless for any clique, or set of cliques, to attempt to frown down, or to affect not to see, or to feel, or to understand. its prevalent blemishes are referable chiefly to the leading sin of imitation. had the work been composed professedly in paraphrase of the whole manner of the sarcastic epistles of the times of dryden and pope, we should have pronounced it the most ingenious and truthful thing of the kind upon record. so close is the copy that it extends to the most trivial pointsfor example, to the old forms of punctuation. the turns of phraseology, the tricks of rhythm, the arrangement of the paragraphs, the general conduct of the satireeverythingallare dryden's. we cannot deny, it is true, that the satiric model of the days in question is insusceptible of improvement, and that the modern author who deviates therefrom must necessarily sacrifice something of merit at the shrine of originality. neither can we shut our eyes to the fact that the imitation in the present case has conveyed, in full spirit, the high qualities, as well as in rigid letter, the minor elegancies and general peculiarities of the author of "absalom and achitophel." we have here the bold, vigorous, and sonorous verse, the biting sarcasm, the pungent epigrammatism, the unscrupulous directness, as of old. yet it will not do to forget that mr. wilmer has been shown how to accomplish these things. he is thus only entitled to the praise of a close observer, and of a thoughtful and skilful copyist. the images are, to be sure, his own. they are neither popes, nor dryden's, nor rochester's, nor churchill'sbut they are moulded in the identical mould used by these satirists. this servility of imitation has seduced our author into errors, which his better sense should have avoided. he sometimes mistakes intentions; at other times, he copies faults, confounding them with beauties. in the opening of the poem, for example, we find the lines against usurpers, olney, i declare a righteous, just and patriotic war. the rhymes war and declare are here adopted from pope, who employs them frequently; but it should have been remembered that the modern relative pronunciation of the two words differs materially from the relative pronunciation of the era of the "dunciad." we are also sure that the gross obscenity, the filthwe can use no gentler namewhich disgraces "the quacks of helicon," cannot be the result of innate impurity in the mind of the writer. it is but a part of the slavish and indiscriminating imitation of the swift and rochester school. it has done the book an irreparable injury, both in a moral and pecuniary view, without affecting anything whatever on the score of sarcasm, vigour or wit. "let what is to be said, he said plainly." true, but let nothing vulgar be ever said or conceived. in asserting that this satire, even in its mannerism, has imbued itself with the full spirit of the polish and of the pungency of dryden, we have already awarded it high praise. but there remains to be mentioned the far loftier merit of speaking fearlessly the truth, at an epoch when truth is out of fashion, and under circumstances of social position which would have deterred almost any man in our community from a similar quixotism. for the publication of "the quacks of helicon"a poem which brings under review, by name, most of our prominent literati and treats them, generally, as they deserve (what treatment could be more bitter?)for the publication of this attack, mr. wilmer, whose subsistence lies in his pen, has little to look forapart from the silent respect of those at once honest and timidbut the most malignant open or covert persecution. for this reason, and because it is the truth which he has spoken, do we say to him, from the bottom of our hearts, "god speed!" we repeat it: it is the truth which he has spoken; and who shall contradict us? he has said unscrupulously what every reasonable man among us has long known to be "as true as the pentateuch"that, as a literary people, we are one vast perambulating humbug. he has asserted that we are clique-ridden; and who does not smile at the obvious truism of that assertion? he maintains that chicanery is, with us, a far surer road than talent to distinction in letters. who gainsays this? the corrupt nature of our ordinary criticism has become notorious. its powers have been prostrated by its own arm. the intercourse between critic and publisher, as it now almost universally stands, is comprised either in the paying and pocketing of blackmail, as the price of a simple forebearance, or in a direct system of petty and contemptible bribery, properly so-calleda system even more injurious than the former to the true interests of the public, and more degrading to the buyers and sellers of good opinion, on account of the more positive character of the service here rendered for the consideration received. we laugh at the idea of any denial of our assertions upon this topic; they are infamously true. in the charge of general corruption, there are undoubtedly many noble exceptions to be made. there are, indeed, some very few editors, who, maintaining an entire independence, will receive no books from publishers at all, or who receive them with a perfect understanding, on the part of these latter, that an unbiassed critique will be given. but these cases are insufficient to have much effect on the popular mistrust; a mistrust heightened by late exposure of the machinations of coteries in new york-coteries which, at the bidding of leading booksellers, manufacture, as required from time to time, a pseudo-public opinion by wholesale, for the benefit of any little hanger-on of the party, or pettifogging protector of the firm. we speak of these things in the bitterness of scorn. it is unnecessary to cite instances, where one is found in almost every issue of a book. it is needless to call to mind the desperate case of faya case where the pertinacity of the effort to gullwhere the obviousness of the attempt at forestalling a judgmentwhere the wofully overdone bemirrorment of that man-of-straw, together with the pitiable platitude of his production, proved a dose somewhat too potent for even the well-prepared stomach of the mob. we say it is supererogatory to dwell upon "norman leslie," or other by-gone follies, when we have before our eyes hourly instances of the machinations in question. to so great an extent of methodical assurance has the system of puffery arrived, that publishers, of late, have made no scruple of keeping on hand an assortment of commendatory notices, prepared by their men of all work, and of sending these notices around to the multitudinous papers within their influence, done up within the fly leaves of the book. the grossness of these base attempts, however, has not escaped indignant rebuke from the more honourable portion of the press; and we hail these symptoms of restiveness under the yoke of unprincipled ignorance and quackery (strong only in combination) as the harbinger of a better era for the interests of real merit, and of the national literature as a whole. it has become, indeed, the plain duty of each individual connected with our periodicals heartily to give whatever influence he possesses to the good cause of integrity and the truth. the results thus attainable will be found worthy his closest attention and best efforts. we shall thus frown down all conspiracies to foist inanity upon the public consideration at the obvious expense of every man of talent who is not a member of a clique in power. we may even arrive in time at that desirable point from which a distinct view of our men of letters may be obtained, and their respective pretensions adjusted by the standard of a rigorous and self-sustaining criticism alone. that their several positions are as yet properly settled; that the posts which a vast number of them now hold are maintained by any better tenure than that of the chicanery upon which we have commented, will be asserted by none but the ignorant, or the parties who have best right to feel an interest in the "good old condition of things." no two matters can be more radically different than the reputation of some of our prominent litterateurs as gathered from the mouths of the people (who glean it from the paragraphs of the papers), and the same reputation as deduced from the private estimate of intelligent and educated men. we do not advance this fact as a new discovery. its truth, on the contrary, is the subject, and has long been so, of every-day witticism and mirth. why not? surely there can be few things more ridiculous than the general character and assumptions of the ordinary critical notices of new books! an editor, sometimes without the shadow of the commonest attainmentoften without brains, always without timedoes not scruple to give the world to understand that he is in the daily habit of critically reading and deciding upon a flood of publications, one-tenth of whose title pages he may possibly have turned over, three-fourths of whose contents would be hebrew to his most desperate efforts at comprehension, and whose entire mass and amount, as might be mathematically demonstrated, would be sufficient to occupy, in the most cursory perusal, the attention of some ten or twenty readers for a month! what he wants in plausibility, however, he makes up in obsequiousness; what he lacks in time he supplies in temper. he is the most easily pleased man in the world. he admires everything, from the big dictionary of noah webster to the last diamond edition of tom thumb. indeed, his sole difficulty is in finding tongue to express his delight. every pamphlet is a miracleevery book in boards is an epoch in letters. his phrases, therefore, get bigger and bigger every day, and, if it were not for talking cockney, we might call him a "regular swell." yet, in the attempt at getting definite information in regard to any one portion of our literature, the merely general reader, or the foreigner, will turn in vain from the lighter to the heavier journals. but it is not our intention here to dwell upon the radical, antique, and systematized rigmarole of our quarterlies. the articles here are anonymous. who writes?who causes to be written? who but an ass will put faith in tirades which may be the result of personal hostility, or in panegyrics which nine times out of ten may be laid, directly or indirectly, to the charge of the author himself? it is in the favour of these saturnine pamphlets that they contain, now and then, a good essay de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, which may be looked into, without decided somnolent consequences, at any period, not immediately subsequent to dinner. but it is useless to expect criticism from periodicals called "reviews" from never reviewing. besides, all men know, or should know, that these books are sadly given to verbiage. it is a part of their nature, a condition of their being, a point of their faith. a veteran reviewer loves the safety of generalities and is therefore rarely particular. "words, words, words," are the secret of his strength. he has one or two ideas of his own and is both wary and fussy in giving them out. his wit lies, with his truth, in a well, and there is always a world of trouble in getting it up. he is a sworn enemy to all things simple and direct. he gives no ear to the advice of the giant moulineau-"belier, mon ami commencez au commencement." he either jumps at once into the middle of his subject, or breaks in at a back door, or sidles up to it with the gait of a crab. no other mode of approach has an air of sufficient profundity. when fairly into it, however, he becomes dazzled with the scintillations of his own wisdom, and is seldom able to see his way out. tired of laughing at his antics, or frightened at seeing him flounder, the reader, at length, shuts him up, with the book. "what song the syrens sang," says sir thomas browne, "or what name achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture";but it would puzzle sir thomas, backed by achilles and all the syrens in heathendom, to say, in nine cases out of ten, what is the object of a thoroughgoing quarterly reviewer. should the opinions promulgated by our press at large be taken, in their wonderful aggregate, as an evidence of what american literature absolutely is (and it may be said that, in general, they are really so taken), we shall find ourselves the most enviable set of people upon the face of the earth. our fine writers are legion. our very atmosphere is redolent of genius; and we, the nation, are a huge, well-contented chameleon, grown pursy by inhaling it. we are teretes et rotundienwrapped in excellence. all our poets are milton neither mute nor inglorious; all our poetesses are "american hemanses"; nor will it do to deny that all our novelists are great knowns or great unknowns, and that everybody who writes, in every possible and impossible department, is the admirable crichton, or, at least, the admirable crichton's ghost. we are thus in a glorious condition, and will remain so until forced to disgorge our ethereal honours. in truth there is some danger that the jealousy of the old world will interfere. it cannot long submit to that outrageous monopoly of "all the decency and all the talent," of which the gentlemen of the press give such undoubted assurance of our being the possessors. but we feel angry with ourselves for the jesting tone of our observations upon this topic. the prevalence of the spirit of puffery is a subject far less for merriment than for disgust. its truckling, yet dogmatical characterits bold, unsustained, yet self-sufficient and wholesale laudationis becoming, more and more, an insult to the common sense of the community. trivial as it essentially is, it has yet been made the instrument of the grossest abuse in the elevation of imbecility, to the manifest injury, to the utter ruin, of true merit. is there any man of good feeling and of ordinary understandingis there one single individual among all our readerswho does not feel a thrill of bitter indignation, apart from any sentiment of mirth, as he calls to mind instance after instance of the purest, of the most unadulterated quackery in letters, which has risen to a high post in the apparent popular estimation, and which still maintains it, by the sole means of a blustering arrogance, or of a busy wriggling conceit, or of the most barefaced plagiarism, or even through the simple immensity of its assumptionsassumptions not only unopposed by the press at large, but absolutely supported in proportion to the vociferous clamour with which they are madein exact accordance with their utter baselessness and untenability? we should have no trouble in pointing out to-day some twenty or thirty so-called literary personages, who, if not idiots, as we half think them, or if not hardened to all sense of shame by a long course of disingenuousness, will now blush in the perusal of these words, through consciousness of the shadowy nature of that purchased pedestal upon which they stand-will now tremble in thinking of the feebleness of the breath which will be adequate to the blowing it from beneath their feet. with the help of a hearty good will, even we may yet tumble them down. so firm, through a long endurance, has been the hold taken upon the popular mind (at least so far as we may consider the popular mind reflected in ephemeral letters) by the laudatory system which we have deprecated, that what is, in its own essence, a vice, has become endowed with the appearance, and met with the reception of a virtue. antiquity, as usual, has lent a certain degree of speciousness even to the absurd. so continuously have we puffed, that we have, at length, come to think puffing the duty, and plain speaking the dereliction. what we began in gross error, we persist in through habit. having adopted, in the earlier days of our literature, the untenable idea that this literature, as a whole, could be advanced by an indiscriminate approbation bestowed on its every efforthaving adopted this idea, we say, without attention to the obvious fact that praise of all was bitter although negative censure to the few alone deserving, and that the only result of the system, in the fostering way, would be the fostering of follywe now continue our vile practice through the supineness of custom, even while, in our national self-conceit, we repudiate that necessity for patronage and protection in which originated our conduct. in a word, the press throughout the country has not been ashamed to make head against the very few bold attempts at independence which have from time to time been made in the face of the reigning order of things. and if in one, or perhaps two, insulated cases, the spirit of severe truth, sustained by an unconquerable will, was not to be so put down, then, forthwith, were private chicaneries set in motion; then was had resort, on the part of those who considered themselves injured by the severity of criticism (and who were so, if the just contempt of every ingenuous man is injury), resort to arts of the most virulent indignity, to untraceable slanders, to ruthless assassination in the dark. we say these things were done while the press in general looked on, and, with a full understanding of the wrong perpetrated, spoke not against the wrong. the idea had absolutely gone abroadhad grown up little by little into tolerationthat attacks, however just, upon a literary reputation, however obtained, however untenable, were well retaliated by the basest and most unfounded traduction of personal fame. but is this an ageis this a dayin which it can be necessary even to advert to such considerations as that the book of the author is the property of the public, and that the issue of the book is the throwing down of the gauntlet to the reviewerto the reviewer whose duty is the plainest; the duty not even of approbation, or of censure, or of silence, at his own, will but at the sway of those sentiments and of those opinions which are derived from the author himself, through the medium of his written and published words? true criticism is the reflection of the thing criticized upon the spirit of the critic. but a nos moutonsto "the quacks of helicon." this satire has many faults besides those upon which we have commented. the title, for example, is not sufficiently distinctive, although otherwise good. it does not confine the subject to american quacks, while the work does. the two concluding lines enfeeble instead of strengthening the finale, which would have been exceedingly pungent without them. the individual portions of the thesis are strung together too much at randoma natural sequence is not always preservedso that, although the lights of the picture are often forcible, the whole has what, in artistical parlance, is termed an accidental and spotty appearance. in truth, the parts of the poem have evidently been composed each by each, as separate themes, and afterwards fitted into the general satire in the best manner possible. but a more reprehensible sin than an or than all of these is yet to be mentionedthe sin of indiscriminate censure. even here mr. wilmer has erred through imitation. he has held in view the sweeping denunciations of the dunciad, and of the later (abortive) satire of byron. no one in his senses can deny the justice of the general charges of corruption in regard to which we have just spoken from the text of our author. but are there no exceptions? we should, indeed, blush if there were not. and is there no hope? time will show. we cannot do everything in a daynon se gano zonora en un ora. again, it cannot be gainsaid that the greater number of those who hold high places in our poetical literature are absolute nincompoopsfellows alike innocent of reason and of rhyme. but neither are we all brainless, nor is the devil himself so black as he is painted. mr. wilmer must read the chapter in rabelais's "gargantua," "de ce qu'est signifie par les couleurs blanc et bleu,"for there is some difference after all. it will not do in a civilized land to run a-muck like a malay. mr. morris has written good songs. mr. bryant is not all a fool. mr. willis is not quite an ass. mr. longfellow will steal, but, perhaps, he cannot help it (for we have heard of such things), and then it must not be denied that nil tetigit quod non ornavit. the fact is that our author, in the rank exuberance of his zeal, seems to think as little of discrimination as the bishop of autun* did of the bible. poetical "things in general" are the windmills at which he spurs his rozinante. he as often tilts at what is true as at what is false; and thus his lines are like the mirrors of the temples of smyrna, which represent the fairest images as deformed. but the talent, the fearlessness, and especially the design of this book, will suffice to preserve it from that dreadful damnation of "silent contempt," to which editors throughout the country, if we are not much mistaken, will endeavour, one and all to consign it. * talleyrand. exordium exordium [graham's magazine, january, 1842] in commencing, with the new year, a new volume, we shall be permitted to say a very few words by way of exordium to our usual chapter of reviews, or, as we should prefer calling them, of critical notices. yet we speak not for the sake of the exordium, but because we have really something to say, and know not when or where better to say it. that the public attention, in america, has, of late days, been more than usually directed to the matter of literary criticism, is plainly apparent. our periodicals are beginning to acknowledge the importance of the science (shall we so term it?) and to disdain the flippant opinion which so long has been made its substitute. time was when we imported our critical decisions from the mother country. for many years we enacted a perfect farce of subserviency to the dicta of great britain. at last a revulsion of feeling, with self-disgust, necessarily ensued. urged by these, we plunged into the opposite extreme. in throwing totally off that "authority," whose voice had so long been so sacred, we even surpassed, and by much, our original folly. but the watchword now was, "a national literature!"as, if any true literature could be "national"as if the world at large were not the only proper stage for the literary histrio. we became, suddenly, the merest and maddest partizans in letters. our papers spoke of "tariffs" and "protection." our magazines had habitual passages about that "truly native novelist, mr. cooper," or that "staunch american genius, mr. paulding." unmindful of the spirit of the axioms that "a prophet has no honor in his own land" and that "a hero is never a hero to his valet-de-chambre"axioms founded in reason and in truthour reviews urged the proprietyour booksellers the necessity, of strictly "american" themes. a foreign subject, at this epoch, was a weight more than enough to drag down into the very depths of critical damnation the finest writer owning nativity in the states; while, on the reverse, we found ourselves daily in the paradoxical dilemma of liking, or pretending to like, a stupid book the better because (sure enough) its stupidity was of our own growth, and discussed our own affairs. it is, in fact, but very lately that this anomalous state of feeling has shown any signs of subsidence. still it is subsiding. our views of literature in general having expanded, we begin to demand the useto inquire into the offices and provinces of criticismto regard it more as an art based immovably in nature, less as a mere system of fluctuating and conventional dogmas. and, with the prevalence of these ideas, has arrived a distaste even to the home-dictation of the bookseller-coteries. if our editors are not as yet all independent of the will of a publisher, a majority of them scruple, at least, to confess a subservience, and enter into no positive combinations against the minority who despise and discard it. and this is a very great improvement of exceedingly late date. escaping these quicksands, our criticism is nevertheless in some dangersome very little dangerof falling into the pit of a most detestable species of cantthe cant of generality. this tendency has been given it, in the first instance, by the onward and tumultuous spirit of the age. with the increase of the thinking-material comes the desire, if not the necessity, of abandoning particulars for masses. yet in our individual case, as a nation, we seem merely to have adopted this bias from the british quarterly reviews, upon which our own quarterlies have been slavishly and pertinaciously modelled. in the foreign journal, the review or criticism properly so termed, has gradually yet steadily degenerated into what we see it at presentthat is to say, into anything but criticism. originally a "review" was not so called as lucus a non lucendo. its name conveyed a just idea of its design. it reviewed, or surveyed the book whose title formed its text, and, giving an analysis of its contents, passed judgment upon its merits or defects. but, through the system of anonymous contribution, this natural process lost ground from day to day. the name of a writer being known only to a few, it became to him an object not so much to write well, as to write fluently, at so many guineas per sheet. the analysis of a book is a matter of time and of mental exertion. for many classes of composition there is required a deliberate perusal, with notes, and subsequent generalization. an easy substitute for this labor was found in a digest or compendium of the work noticed, with copious extractsor a still easier, in random comments upon such passages as accidentally met the eye of the critic, with the passages themselves copied at full length. the mode of reviewing most in favor, however, because carrying with it the greatest semblance of care, was that of diffuse essay upon the subject matter of the publication, the reviewer(?) using the facts alone which the publication supplied, and using them as material for some theory, the sole concern, bearing, and intention of which, was mere difference of opinion with the author. these came at length to be understood and habitually practised as the customary or conventional fashions of review; and although the nobler order of intellects did not fall into the full heresy of these fashionswe may still assert that even macaulay's nearest approach to criticism in its legitimate sense, is to be found in his article upon ranke's "history of the popes"an article in which the whole strength of the reviewer is put forth to account for a single factthe progress of romanismwhich the book under discussion has established. now, while we do not mean to deny that a good essay is a good thing, we yet assert that these papers on general topics have nothing whatever to do with that criticism which their evil example has nevertheless infected in se. because these dogmatizing pamphlets, which were once "reviews," have lapsed from their original faith, it does not follow that the faith itself is extinctthat "there shall be no more cakes and ale"that criticism, in its old acceptation, does not exist. but we complain of a growing inclination on the part of our lighter journals to believe, on such grounds, that such is the factthat because the british quarterlies, through supineness, and our own, through a degrading imitation, have come to merge all varieties of vague generalization in the one title of "review," it therefore results that criticism, being everything in the universe, is, consequently, nothing whatever in fact. for to this end, and to none other conceivable, is the tendency of such propositions, for example, as we find in a late number of that very clever monthly magazine, arcturus. "but now" (the emphasis on the now is our own)"but now," says mr. mathews, in the preface to the first volume of his journal, "criticism has a wider scope and a universal interest. it dismisses errors of grammer, and hands over an imperfect rhyme or a false quantity to the proofreader; it looks now to the heart of the subject and the author's design. it is a test of opinion. its acuteness is not pedantic, but philosophical; it unravels the web of the author's mystery to interpret his meaning to others; it detects his sophistry, because sophistry is injurious to the heart and life; it promulgates his beauties with liberal, generous praise, because this is his true duty as the servant of truth. good criticism may be well asked for, since it is the type of the literature of the day. it gives method to the universal inquisitiveness on every topic relating to life or action. a criticism, now, includes every form of literature, except perhaps the imaginative and the strictly dramatic. it is an essay, a sermon, an oration, a chapter in history, a philosophical speculation, a prose-poem, an art-novel, a dialogue, it admits of humor, pathos, the personal feelings of autobiography, the broadest views of statesmanship. as the ballad and the epic were the productions of the days of homer, the review is the native characteristic growth of the nineteenth century." we respect the talents of mr. mathews, but must dissent from nearly all that he here says. the species of "review" which he designates as the "characteristic growth of the nineteenth century" is only the growth of the last twenty or thirty years in great britain. the french reviews, for example, which are not anonymous, are very different things, and preserve the unique spirit of true criticism. and what need we say of the germans?what of winckelmann, of novalis, of schelling, of goethe, of augustus william, and of frederick schlegel?that their magnificent critiques raisonnees differ from those of kames, of johnson, and of blair, in principle not at all, (for the principles of these artists will not fail until nature herself expires,) but solely in their more careful elaboration, their greater thoroughness, their more profound analysis and application of the principles themselves. that a criticism "now" should be different in spirit, as mr. mathews supposes, from a criticism at any previous period, is to insinuate a charge of variability in laws that cannot varythe laws of man's heart and intellectfor these are the sole basis, upon which the true critical art is established. and this art "now" no more than in the days of the "dunciad," can, without neglect of its duty, "dismiss errors of grammar," or "hand over an imperfect rhyme or a false quantity to the proof-reader." what is meant by a "test of opinion" in the connection here given the words by mr. m., we do not comprehend as clearly as we could desire. by this phrase we are as completely enveloped in doubt as was mirabeau in the castle of if. to our imperfect appreciation it seems to form a portion of that general vagueness which is the tone of the whole philosophy at this point:but all that which our journalist describes a criticism to be, is all that which we sturdily maintain it is not. criticism is not, we think, an essay, nor a sermon, nor an oration, nor a chapter in history, nor a philosophical speculation, nor a prose-poem, nor an art-novel, nor a dialogue. in fact, it can be nothing in the world buta criticism. but if it were all that arcturus imagines, it is not very clear why it might not be equally "imaginative, or "dramatic"a romance or a melodrama, or both. that it would be a farce cannot be doubted. it is against this frantic spirit of generalization that we protest. we have a word, "criticism," whose import is sufficiently distinct, through long usage, at least, and we have an art of high importance and clearly ascertained limit, which this word is quite well enough understood to represent. of that conglomerate science to which mr. mathews so eloquently alludes, and of which we are instructed that it is anything and everything at onceof this science we know nothing, and really wish to know less; but we object to our contemporary's appropriation in its behalf, of a term to which we, in common with a large majority of mankind, have been accustomed to attach a certain and very definitive idea. is there no word but "criticism" which may be made to serve the purposes of "arcturus"? has it any objection to orphicism, or dialism, or emersonism, or any other pregnant compound indicative of confusion worse confounded? still, we must not pretend a total misapprehension of the idea of mr. mathews, and we should be sorry that he misunderstood us. it may be granted that we differ only in termsalthough the difference will yet be found not unimportant in effect. following the highest authority, we would wish, in a word, to limit literary criticism to comment upon art. a book is writtenand it is only as the book that we subject it to review. with the opinions of the work, considered otherwise than in their relation to the work itself, the critic has really nothing to do. it is his part simply to decide upon the mode in which these opinions are brought to bear. criticism is thus no "test of opinion." for this test, the work, divested of its pretensions as an art-product, is turned over for discussion to the world at largeand first, to that class which it especially addressesif a history, to the historianif a metaphysical treatise, to the moralist. in this, the only true and intelligible sense, it will be seen that criticism, the test or analysis of art, (not of opinion,) is only properly employed upon productions which have their basis in art itself, and although the journalist (whose duties and objects are multiform) may turn aside, at pleasure, from the mode or vehicle of opinion to discussion of the opinion conveyedit is still clear that he is "critical" only in so much as he deviates from his true province not at all. and of the critic himself what shall we say?for as yet we have spoken only the proem to the true epopea. what can we better say of him than, with bulwer, that "he must have courage to blame boldly, magnanimity to eschew envy, genius to appreciate, learning to compare, an eye for beauty, an ear for music, and a heart for feeling." let us add, a talent for analysis and a solemn indifference to abuse. ballads and other poems by henry wadsworth longfellow, author of "voices of the night," "hyperion," &c. second edition. john owen, cambridge. "il y a a parier," says chamfort, "que toute idee publique, toute convention recue, est une sottise, car elle a convenu au plus grand notore."one would be safe in wagering that any given public idea is erroneous, for it has been yielded to the clamor of the majority,and this strictly philosophical, although somewhat french assertion has especial bearing upon the whole race of what are termed maxims and popular proverbs; nine-tenths of which are the quintessence of folly. one of the most deplorably false of them is the antique adage, de gustibus non est disputandumthere should be no disputing about taste. here the idea designed to be conveyed is that any one person has as just right to consider his own taste the true, as has any one otherthat taste itself, in short, is an arbitrary something, amenable to no law, and measurable by no definite rules. it must be confessed, however, that the exceedingly vague and impotent treatises which are alone extant, have much to answer for as regards confirming the general error. not the least important service which, hereafter, mankind will owe to phrenology, may, perhaps, be recognized in an analysis of the real principles, and a digest of the resulting laws of taste. these principles, in fact, are as clearly traceable, and these laws as really susceptible of system as are any whatever. in the meantime, the inane adage above mentioned is in no respect more generally, more stupidly, and more pertinaciously quoted than by the admirers of what is termed the "good old pope," or the "good old goldsmith school" of poetry, in reference to the bolder, more natural and more ideal compositions of such authors as coetlogon and lamartine* in france; herder, korner, and uhland, in germany; brun and baggesen in denmark; bellman, tegner, nyberg*(2) in sweden; keats, shelley, coleridge, and tennyson in england; lowell and longfellow in america. "de gustibus non," say these "good-old school" fellows; and we have no doubt that their mental translation of the phrase is"we pity your tastewe pity every body's taste but our own." * we allude here chiefly to the "david" of coetlogon and only to the "chute d'un ange" of lamartine. *(2) julia nyberg, author of the "dikter von euphrosyne." it is our purpose hereafter, when occasion shall be afforded us, to controvert in an article of some length, the popular idea that the poets, just mentioned owe to novelty, to trickeries of expression, and to other meretricious effects, their appreciation by certain readers:to demonstrate (for the matter is susceptible of demonstration) that such poetry and such alone has fulfilled the legitimate office of the muse; has thoroughly satisfied an earnest and unquenchable desire existing in the heart of man. in the present number of our magazine we have left ourselves barely room to say a few random words of welcome to these "ballads," by longfellow, and to tender him, and all such as he, the homage of our most earnest love and admiration. the volume before us (in whose outward appearance the keen "taste" of genius is evinced with nearly as much precision as in its internal soul) includes, with several brief original pieces, a translation from the swedish of tegner. in attempting (what never should be attempted) a literal version of both the words and the metre of this poem, professor longfellow has failed to do justice either to his author or himself. he has striven to do what no man ever did well and what, from the nature of the language itself, never can be well done. unless, for example, we shall come to have an influx of spondees in our english tongue, it will always be impossible to construct an english hexameter. our spondees, or, we should say, our spondiac words, are rare. in the swedish they are nearly as abundant as in the latin and greek. we have only "compound," "context," "footfall," and a few other similar ones. this is the difficulty; and that it is so will become evident upon reading "the children of the lord's supper," where the sole readable verses are those in which we meet with the rare spondaic dissyllables. we mean to say readable as hexameters; for many of them will read very well as mere english dactylics, with certain irregularities. but within the narrow compass now left us we must not indulge in anything like critical comment. our readers will be better satisfied perhaps with a few brief extracts from the original poems of the volumewhich we give for their rare excellence, without pausing now to say in what particulars this excellence exists. and, like the water's flow under december's snow came a dull voice of woe, from the heart's chamber. so the loud laugh of scorn, out of those lips unshorn from the deep drinking-horn blew the foam lightly. as with his wings aslant sails the fierce cormorant seeking some rocky haunt, with his prey laden, so toward the open main, beating to sea again, through the wild hurricane, bore i the maiden. down came the storm and smote amain the vessel in its strength; she shuddered and paused like a frighted steed then leaped her cable's length. she drifted a dreary wreck, and a whooping billow swept the crew like icicles from her deck. he hears the parson pray and preach he hears his daughter's voice, singing in the village choir, and it makes his heart rejoice; it sounds to him like her mother's voice singing in paradise! he needs must think of her once more how in the grave she lies; and with his hard rough hand he wipes a tear out of his eyes. thus the flaming forge of life our fortunes must be wrought; thus on its sounding anvil shaped each burning deed and thought. the rising moon has hid the stars her level rays like golden bars lie on the landscape green with shadows brown between. love lifts the boughs whose shadows deep are life's oblivion, the soul's sleep, and kisses the closed eyes of him who slumbering lies. friends my soul with joy remembers! how like quivering flames they start, when i fan the living embers on the hearth-stone of my heart. hearest thou voices on the shore, that our ears perceive no more deafened by the cataract's roar? and from the sky, serene and far a voice fell like a falling star. some of these passages cannot be fully appreciated apart from the contextbut we address those who have read the book. of the translations we have not spoken. it is but right to say, however, that "the luck of edenhall" is a far finer poem, in every respect than any of the original pieces. nor would we have our previous observations misunderstood. much as we admire the genius of mr. longfellow, we are fully sensible of his many errors of affectation and imitation. his artistical skill is great and his ideality high. but his conception of the aims of poesy is all wrong, and this we shall prove at some future dayto our own satisfaction, at least. his didactics are all out of place. he has written brilliant poemsby accident; that is to say when permitting his genius to get the better of his conventional habit of thinkinga habit deduced from german study. we do not mean to say that a didactic moral may not be well made the under-current of a poetical thesis; but that it can never be well put so obtrusively forth, as in the majority of his compositions. there is a young american who, with ideality not richer than that of longfellow, and with less artistical knowledge, has yet composed far truer poems, merely through the greater propriety of his themes. we allude to james russell lowell; and in the number of this magazine for last month, will be found a ballad entitled "rosaline," affording an excellent exemplification of our meaning. this composition has unquestionably its defects, and the very defects which are not perceptible in mr. longfellowbut we sincerely think that no american poem equals it in the higher elements of song. in our last number we had some hasty observations on these "ballads"observations which we propose, in some measure, to amplify and explain. it may be remembered that, among other points, we demurred to mr. longfellow's themes, or rather to their general character. we found fault with the too obtrusive nature of their didacticism. some years ago, we urged a similar objection to one or two of the longer pieces of bryant, and neither time nor reflection has sufficed to modify, in the slightest particular, our conviction upon this topic. we have said that mr. longfellow's conception of the aims of poesy is erroneous; and that thus, labouring at a disadvantage, he does violent wrong to his own high powers; and now the question is, what are his ideas of the aims of the muse, as we gather these ideas from the general tendency of his poems? it will be at once evident that, imbued with the peculiar spirit of german song (a pure conventionality), he regards the inculcation of a moral as essential. here we find it necessary to repeat that we have reference only to the general tendency of his compositions; for there are some magnificent exceptions, where, as if by accident, he has permitted his genius to get the better of his conventional prejudice. but didacticism is the prevalent tone of his song. his invention, his imagery, his all, is made subservient to the elucidation of some one or more points (but rarely of more than one) which he looks upon as truth. and that this mode of procedure will find stern defenders should never excite surprise, so long as the world is full to overflowing with cant and conventicles. there are men who will scramble on all fours through the muddiest sloughs of vice to pick up a single apple of virtue. there are things called men who, so long as the sun rolls, will greet with snuffling huzzas every figure that takes upon itself the semblance of truth, even although the figure, in itself only a "stuffed paddy," be as much out of place as a toga on the statue of washington, or out of season as rabbits in the days of the dog-star. now, with as deep a reverence for "the true" as ever inspired the bosom of mortal man, we would limit, in many respects, its modes of inculcation. we would limit, to enforce them. we would not render them impotent by dissipation. the demands of truth are severe. she has no sympathy with the myrtles. all that is indispensable in song is all with which she has nothing to do. to deck her in gay robes is to render her a harlot. it is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. even in stating this our present proposition, we verify our own wordswe feel the necessity, in enforcing this truth, of descending from metaphor. let us then be simple and distinct. to convey "the true" we are required to dismiss from the attention all inessentials. we must be perspicuous, precise, terse. we need concentration rather than expansion of mind. we must be calm, unimpassioned, unexcitedin a word, we must be in that peculiar mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. he must be blind indeed who cannot perceive the radical and chasmal difference between the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation. he must be grossly wedded to conventionalisms who, in spite of this difference, shall still attempt to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of poetry and truth. dividing the world of mind into its most obvious and immediately recognisable distinctions, we have the pure intellect, taste and the moral sense. we place taste between the intellect and the moral sense, because it is just this intermediate space which, in the mind, it occupies. it is the connecting link in the triple chain. it serves to sustain a mutual intelligence between the extremes. it appertains, in strict appreciation, to the former, but is distinguished from the latter by so faint a difference that aristotle has not hesitated to class some of its operations among the virtues themselves. but the offices of the trio are broadly marked. just as conscience, or the moral sense, recognises duty; just as the intellect deals with truth; so is it the part of taste alone to inform us beauty. and poesy is the handmaiden but of taste. yet we would not be misunderstood. this handmaiden is not forbidden to moralisein her own fashion. she is not forbidden to depictbut to reason and preach of virtue. as of this latter. conscience recognises the obligation, so intellect teaches the expediency, while taste contents herself with displaying the beauty; waging war with vice merely on the ground of its inconsistency with fitness, harmony, proportionin a word with'to kalon.' an important condition of man's immortal nature is thus, plainly, the sense of the beautiful. this it is which ministers to his delight in the manifold forms and colours and sounds and sentiments amid which he exists. and, just as the eyes of amaryllis are repeated in the mirror, or the living lily in the lake, so is the mere record of these forms and colours and sounds and sentimentsso is their mere oral or written repetition a duplicate source of delight. but this repetition is not poesy. he who shall merely sing with whatever rapture, in however harmonious strains, or with however vivid a truth of imitation, of the sights and sounds which greet him in common with all mankindhe, we say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. there is still a longing unsatisfied, which he has been impotent to fulfil. there is still a thirst unquenchable, which to allay he has shown us no crystal springs. this burning thirst belongs to the immortal essence of man's nature. it is equally a consequence and an indication of his perennial life. it is the desire of the moth for the star. it is not the mere appreciation of the beauty before us. it is a wild effort to reach the beauty above. it is a forethought of the loveliness to come. it is a passion to be satiated by no sublunary sights, or sounds, or sentiments, and the soul thus athirst strives to allay its fever in futile efforts at creation. inspired with a prescient ecstasy of the beauty beyond the grave, it struggles by multiform novelty of combination among the things and thoughts of time, to anticipate some portion of that loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain solely to eternity, and the result of such effort, on the part of souls fittingly constituted, is alone what mankind have agreed to denominate poetry. we say this with little fear of contradiction. yet the spirit of our assertion must be more heeded than the letter. mankind have seemed to define poesy in a thousand, and in a thousand conflicting, definitions. but the war is one only of words. induction is as well applicable to this subject as to the most palpable and utilitarian; and by its sober processes we find that, in respect to compositions which have been really received as poems, the imaginative, or, more popularly, the creative portions alone have ensured them to be so received. yet these works, on account of these portions, having once been so received and so named, it has happened naturally and inevitably, that other portions totally unpoetic have not only come to be regarded by the popular voice as poetic, but have been made to serve as false standards of perfection in the adjustment of other poetical claims. whatever has been found in whatever has been received as a poem, has been blindly regarded as ex statu poetic. and this is a species of gross error which scarcely could have made its way into any less intangible topic. in fact that license which appertains to the muse herself, it has been thought decorous, if not sagacious, to indulge in all examination of her character. poesy is thus seen to be a responseunsatisfactory it is truebut still in some measure a response, to a natural and irrepressible demand. man being what he is, the time could never have been in which poesy was not. its first element is the thirst for supernal beautya beauty which is not afforded the soul by any existing collocation of earth's formsa beauty which, perhaps, no possible combination of these forms would fully produce. its second element is the attempt to satisfy this thirst by novel combinations among those forms of beauty which already existor by novel combinations of those combinations which our predecessors, toiling in chase of the same phantom have already set in order. we thus clearly deduce the novelty, the originality, the invention, the imagination, or lastly the creation of beauty (for the terms as here employed are synonymous), as the essence of all poesy. nor is this idea so much at variance with ordinary opinion as, at first sight, it may appear. a multitude of antique dogmas on this topic will be found when divested of extrinsic speculation, to be easily resoluble into the definition now proposed. we do nothing more than present tangibly the vague clouds of the world's idea. we recognize the idea itself floating, unsettled, indefinite, in every attempt which has yet been made to circumscribe the conception of "poesy" in words. a striking instance of this is observable in the fact that no definition exists in which either the "beautiful," or some one of those qualities which we have mentioned above designated synonymously with "creation," has not been pointed out as the chief attribute of the muse. "invention," however, or "imagination," is by far more commonly insisted upon. the word poiesis itself (creation) speaks volumes upon this point. neither will it be amiss here to mention count bielfeld's definition of poetry as "l'art d'exprimer les pensees par la fiction." with this definition (of which the philosophy is profound to a certain extent) the german terms dichtkunst, the art of fiction, and dichten, to feign, which are used for "poetry" and "to make verses," are in full and remarkable accordance. it is, nevertheless, in the combination of the two omniprevalent ideas that the novelty and, we believe, the force of our own proposition is to be found. so far we have spoken of poesy as of an abstraction alone. as such, it is obvious that it may be applicable in various moods. the sentiment may develop itself in sculpture, in painting, in music, or otherwise. but our present business is with its development in wordsthat development to which, in practical acceptation, the world has agreed to limit the term. and at this point there is one consideration which induces us to pause. we cannot make up our minds to admit (as some have admitted) the inessentiality of rhythm. on the contrary, the universality of its use in the earliest poetical efforts of all mankind would be sufficient to assure us, not merely of its congeniality with the muse, or of its adaptation to her purposes, but of its elementary and indispensable importance. but here we must, perforce, content ourselves with mere suggestion; for this topic is of a character which would lead us too far. we have already spoken of music as one of the moods of poetical development. it is in music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains that end upon which we have commentedthe creation of supernal beauty. it may be, indeed, that this august aim is here even partially or imperfectly attained, in fact. the elements of that beauty which is felt in sound, may be the mutual or common heritage of earth and heaven. in the soul's struggles at combination it is thus not impossible that a harp may strike notes not unfamiliar to the angels. and in this view the wonder may well be less that all attempts at defining the character or sentiment of the deeper musical impressions have been found absolutely futile. contenting ourselves, therefore, with the firm conviction that music (in its modifications of rhythm and rhyme) is of so vast a moment in poesy as never to be neglected by him who is truly poeticalis of so mighty a force in furthering the great aim intended that he is mad who rejects its assistancecontent with this idea we shall not pause to maintain its absolute essentiality, for the mere sake of rounding a definition. we will but add, at this point, that the highest possible development of the poetical sentiment is to be found in the union of song with music, in its popular sense. the old bards and minnesingers possessed, in the fullest perfection, the finest and truest elements of poesy; and thomas moore, singing his own ballads, is but putting the final touch to their completion as poems. to recapitulate, then, we would define in brief the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty. beyond the limits of beauty its province does not extend. its sole arbiter is taste. with the intellect or with the conscience it has only collateral relations. it has no dependence, unless incidentally, upon either duty or truth. that our definition will necessarily exclude much of what, through a supine toleration, has been hitherto ranked as poetical, is a matter which affords us not even momentary concern. we address but the thoughtful, and heed only their approvalwith our own. if our suggestions are truthful, then "after many days" shall they be understood as truth, even though found in contradiction of all that has been hitherto so understood. if false, shall we not be the first to bid them die? we would reject, of course, all such matters as "armstrong on health," a revolting production; pope's "essay on man," which may well be content with the title of an "essay in rhyme"; "hudibras," and other merely humorous pieces. we do not gainsay the peculiar merits of either of these latter compositionsbut deny them the position they have held. in a notice of brainard's poems, we took occasion to show that the common use of a certain instrument (rhythm) had tended, more than aught else, to confound humorous verse with poetry. the observation is now recalled to corroborate what we have just said in respect to the vast effect or force of melody in itselfan effect which could elevate into even momentary confusion with the highest efforts of mind, compositions such as are the greater number of satires or burlesques. of the poets who have appeared most fully instinct with the principles now developed, we may mention keats as the most remarkable. he is the sole british poet who has never erred in his themes. beauty is always his aim. we have thus shown our ground of objection to the general themes of professor longfellow. in common with all who claim the sacred title of poet, he should limit his endeavours to the creation of novel moods of beauty, in form, in colour, in sound, in sentiment; for over all this wide range has the poetry of words dominion. to what the world terms prose may be safely and properly left all else. the artist who doubts of his thesis, may always resolve his doubt by the single question"might not this matter be as well or better handled in prose?" if it may, then is it no subject for the muse. in the general acceptation of the term beauty we are content to rest, being careful only to suggest that, in our peculiar views, it must be understood as inclusive of the sublime. of the pieces which constitute the present volume there are not more than one or two thoroughly fulfilling the idea above proposed; although the volume as a whole is by no means so chargeable with didacticism as mr. longfellow's previous book. we would mention as poems nearly true, "the village blacksmith," "the wreck of the hesperus," and especially "the skeleton in armor." in the firstmentioned we have the beauty of simple-mindedness as a genuine thesis; and this thesis is inimitably handled until the concluding stanza, where the spirit of legitimate poesy is aggrieved in the pointed antithetical deduction of a moral from what has gone before. in "the wreck of the hesperus" we have the beauty of childlike confidence and innocence, with that of the father's courage and affection. but, with slight exception, those particulars of the storm here detailed are not poetic subjects. their thrilling horror belongs to prose, in which it could be far more effectively discussed, as professor longfellow may assure himself at any moment by experiment. there are points of a tempest which afford the loftiest and truest poetical themespoints in which pure beauty is found, or, better still, beauty heightened into the sublime, by terror. but when we read, among other similar things, that the salt sea was frozen on her breast, the salt tears in her eyes. we feel, if not positive disgust, at least a chilling sense of the inappropriate. in "the skeleton in armor" we find a pure and perfect thesis artistically treated. we find the beauty of bold courage and self-confidence, of love and maiden devotion, of reckless adventure, and finally the life-contemning grief. combined with all this, we have numerous points of beauty apparently insulated, but all aiding the main effect or impression. the heart is stirred, and the mind does not lament its malinstruction. the metre is simple, sonorous, well-balanced, and fully adapted to the subject. upon the whole, there are few truer poems than this. it has not one defectan important one. the prose remarks prefacing the narrative are really necessary. but every work of art should contain within itself all that is requisite for its own comprehension. and this remark is especially true of the ballad. in poems of magnitude the mind of the reader is not, at all times, enabled to include, in one comprehensive survey, the proportions and proper adjustment of the whole. he is pleased, if at all with particular passages; and the sum of his pleasure is compounded of the sums of the pleasurable sentiments inspired by these individual passages in the progress of perusal. but, in pieces of less extent, the pleasure is unique, in the proper acceptation of this termthe understanding is employed, without difficulty, in the contemplation of the picture as a whole; and thus its effect will depend, in great measure, upon the perfection of its finish, upon the nice adaptation of its constituent parts, and especially, upon what is rightly termed by schlegel the unity or totality of interest. but the practice of prefixing explanatory passages is utterly at variance with such unity. by the prefix, we are either put in possession of the subject of the poem, or some hint, historic fact, or suggestion, is thereby afforded, not included in the body of the piece, which, without the hint, is incomprehensible. in the latter case, while perusing the poem, the reader must revert, in mind at, least, to the prefix, for the necessary explanation. in the former, the poem being a mere paraphrase of the prefix, the interest is divided between the prefix and the paraphrase. in either instance the totality of effect is destroyed. of the other original poems in the volume before us there is none in which the aim of instruction, or truth, has not been too obviously substituted for the legitimate aim, beauty. we have heretofore taken occasion to say that a didactic moral might be happily made the under-current of a poetical theme, and we have treated this point at length in a review of moore's "alciphron"; but the moral thus conveyed is invariably an ill effect when obtruding beyond the upper-current of the thesis itself. perhaps the worst specimen of this obtrusion is given us by our poet in "blind bartimeus" and the "goblet of life," where it will be observed that the sole interest of the upper-current of meaning depends upon its relation or reference to the under. what we read upon the surface would be vox et praeterea nihil in default of the moral beneath. the greek finales of "blind bartimeus" are an affectation altogether inexcusable. what the small, second-hand, gibbonish pedantry of byron introduced, is unworthy the imitation of longfellow. of the translations we scarcely think it necessary to speak at all. we regret that our poet will persist in busying himself about such matters. his time might be better employed in original conception. most of these versions are marked with the error upon which we have commented. this error is, in fact, essentially germanic. "the luck of edenhall," however, is a truly beautiful poem; and we say this with all that deference which the opinion of the "democratic review" demands. this composition appears to us one of the very finest. it has all the free, hearty, obvious movement of the true ballad-legend. the greatest force of language is combined in it with the richest imagination, acting in its most legitimate province. upon the whole, we prefer it even to the "sword-song" of korner. the pointed moral with which it terminates is so exceedingly naturalso perfectly fluent from the incidentsthat we have hardly heart to pronounce it in ill-taste. we may observe of this ballad, in conclusion, that its subject is more physical than is usual in germany. its images are rich rather in physical than in moral beauty. and this tendency in song is the true one. it is chiefly, if we are not mistakenit is chiefly amid forms of physical loveliness (we use the word forms in its widest sense as embracing modifications of sound and colour) that the soul seeks the realisation of its dreams of beauty. it is to her demand in this sense especially, that the poet, who is wise, will most frequently and most earnestly respond. "the children of the lord's supper" is, beyond doubt, a true and most beautiful poem in great part, while, in some particulars, it is too metaphysical to have any pretension to the name. we have already objected, briefly, to its metrethe ordinary latin or greek hexameter-dactyls and spondees at random, with a spondee in conclusion. we maintain that the hexameter can never be introduced into our language, from the nature of that language itself. this rhythm demands, for english ears, a preponderance of natural spondees. our tongue has few. not only does the latin and greek, with the swedish, and some others, abound in them; but the greek and roman ear had become reconciled (why or how is unknown) to the reception of artificial spondeesthat is to say, spondaic words formed partly of one word and partly of another, or from an excised part of one word. in short, the ancients were content to read as they scanned, or nearly so. it may be safely prophesied that we shall never do this; and thus we shall never admit english hexameters. the attempt to introduce them, after the repeated failures of sir philip sidney and others, is perhaps somewhat discreditable to the scholarship of professor longfellow. the "democratic review," in saying that he has triumphed over difficulties in this rhythm, has been deceived, it is evident, by the facility with which some of these verses may be read. in glancing over the poem, we do not observe a single verse which can be read, to english ears, as a greek hexameter. there are many, however, which can be well read as mere english dactylic verses; such, for example, as the well-known lines of byron, commencing know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle. these lines (although full of irregularities) are, in their perfection, formed of three dactyls and a caesurajust as if we should cut short the initial verse of the bucolics thus tityre / tu patu / lae recu / bansthe "myrtal," at the close of byron's line, is a double rhyme, and must be understood as one syllable. now a great number, of professor longfellow's hexameters are merely these dactylic lines, continued for two feet. for example whispered the / race of the / flowers and / merry on / balancing / branches. in this example, also, "branches," which is a double ending, must be regarded as the caesura, or one syllable, of which alone it has the force. as we have already alluded, in one or two regards, to a notice of these poems which appeared in the "democratic review," we may as well here proceed with some few further comments upon the article in questionwith whose general tenor we are happy to agree. the review speaks of "maidenhood" as a poem, "not to be understood but at the expense of more time and trouble than a song can justly claim." we are scarcely less surprised at this opinion from mr. langtree than we were at the condemnation of "the luck of edenhall." "maidenhood" is faulty, it appears to us, only on the score of its theme, which is somewhat didactic. its meaning seems simplicity itself. a maiden on the verge of womanhood hesitating to enjoy life (for which she has a strong appetite) through a false idea of duty, is bidden to fear nothing, having purity of heart as her lion of una. what mr. langtree styles "an unfortunate peculiarity" in mr. longfellow, resulting from "adherence to a false system," has really been always regarded by us as one of his idiosyncratic merits. "in each poem," says the critic, "he has but one idea, which, in the progress of his song, is gradually unfolded, and at last reaches its full development in the concluding lines: this singleness of thought might lead a harsh critic to suspect intellectual barrenness." it leads us, individually, only to a full sense of the artistical power and knowledge of the poet. we confess that now, for the first time, we hear unity of conception objected to as a defect. but mr. langtree seems to have fallen into the singular error of supposing the poet to have absolutely but one idea in each of his ballads. yet how "one idea" can be "gradually unfolded" without other ideas is, to us, a mystery of mysteries. mr. longfellow, very properly, has but one leading idea which forms the basis of his poem; but to the aid and development of this one there are innumerable others, of which the rare excellence is that all are in keeping, that none could be well omitted, that each tends to the one general effect. it is unnecessary to say another word upon this topic. in speaking of "excelsior," mr. langtree (are we wrong in attributing the notice to his very forcible pen?) seems to labour under some similar misconception. "it carries along with it," says he, "a false moral which greatly diminishes its merit in our eyes. the great merit of a picture, whether made with the pencil or pen, is its truth; and this merit does not belong to mr. longfellow's sketch. men of genius may, and probably do, meet with greater difficulties in their struggles with the world than their fellow men who are less highly gifted; but their power of overcoming obstacles is proportionately greater, and the result of their laborious suffering is not death but immortality." that the chief merit of a picture is its truth, is an assertion deplorably erroneous. even in painting, which is, more essentially than poetry, a mimetic art, the proposition cannot be sustained. truth is not even the aim. indeed it is curious to observe how very slight a degree of truth is sufficient to satisfy the mind, which acquiesces in the absence of numerous essentials in the thing depicted. an outline frequently stirs the spirit more pleasantly than the most elaborate picture. we need only refer to the compositions of flaxman and of retzsch. here all details are omittednothing can be farther from truth. without even colour the most thrilling effects are produced. in statues we are rather pleased than disgusted with the want of the eyeball. the hair of the venus de medicis was gilded. truth indeed! the grapes of zeuxis as well as the curtain of parrhasius were received as indisputable evidence of the truthful ability of these artistsbut they were not even classed among their pictures. if truth is the highest aim of either painting or poesy, then jan steen was a greater artist than angelo, and crabbe is a nobler poet than milton. but we have not quoted the observation of mr. langtree to deny its philosophy; our design was simply to show that he has misunderstood the poet. "excelsior" has not even a remote tendency to the interpretation assigned it by the critic. it depicts the earnest upward impulse of the soulan impulse not to be subdued even in death. despising danger, resisting pleasure, the youth, bearing the banner inscribed "excelsior!" (higher stilll) struggles through all difficulties to an alpine summit. warned to be content with the elevation attained, his cry is still "excelsior!" and even in falling dead on the highest pinnacle, his cry is still "excelsior!" there is yet an immortal height to be surmountedan ascent in eternity. the poet holds in view the idea of never-ending progress. that he is misunderstood is rather the misfortune of mr. langtree tree the fault of mr. longfellow. there is an old adage about the difficulty of one's furnishing an auditor both with matter to be comprehended and brains for its comprehension. hawthorne's twice-told tales by nathaniel hawthorne. james munroe & co.: boston we have always regarded the tale (using this word in its popular acceptation) as affording the best prose opportunity for display of the highest talent. it has peculiar advantages which the novel does not admit. it is, of course, a far finer field than the essay. it has even points of superiority over the poem. an accident has deprived us, this month, of our customary space for review, and thus nipped in the bud a design long cherished of treating this subject in detail; taking mr. hawthorne's volumes as a text. in may we shall endeavor to carry out our intention. at present we are forced to be brief. with rare exceptionin the case of mr. irving's "tales of a traveller" and a few other works of a like castwe have had no american tales of high merit. we have had no skilful compositionsnothing which could bear examination as works of art. of twaddle called talewriting we have had, perhaps more than enough. we have had a superabundance of the rosa-matilda effusionsgilt-edged paper all couleur de rose: a full allowance of cut-and-thrust blue-blazing melodramaticisms; a nauseating surfeit of low miniature copying of low life, much in the manner, and with about half the merit, of the dutch herrings and decayed cheeses of van tuysselof all this, eheu jam satis! mr. hawthorne's volumes appear misnamed to us in two respects. in the first place they should not have been called "twice-told tales"for this is a title which will not bear repetition. if in the first collected edition they were twice-told, of course now they are thrice-told.may we live to hear them told a hundred times. in the second place, these compositions are by no means all "tales." the most of them are essays properly so called. it would have been wise in their author to have modified his title, so as to have had reference to all included. this point could have been easily arranged. but under whatever titular blunders we receive this book, it is most cordially welcome. we have seen no prose composition by any american which can compare with some of these articles in the higher merits, or indeed in the lower; while there is not single piece which would do dishonor to the best of the british essayists. "the rill from the town pump" which, through the ad captandum nature of its title, has attracted more of the public notice than any other of mr. hawthorne's compositions, is perhaps, the least meritorious. among his best we may briefly mention "the hollow of the three hills" "the minister's black veil"; "wakefield"; "mr. higginbotham's catastrophe"; "fancy's show-box"; "dr. heidegger's experiment"; "david swan"; "the wedding knell"; and "the white old maid." it is remarkable that all of these, with one exception, are from the first volume. the style of mr. hawthorne is purity itself. his tone is singularly effectivewild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes. we have only to object that there is insufficient diversity in these themes themselves, or rather in their character. his originality both of incident and reflection is very remarkable; and this trait alone would insure him at least our warmest regard and commendation. we speak here chiefly of the tales; the essays are not so markedly novel. upon the whole we look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth. as such, it will be our delight to do him honor; and lest, in these undigested and cursory remarks, without proof and without explanation, we should appear to do him more honor than is his due, we postpone all farther comment until a more favorable opportunity. we said a few hurried words about mr. hawthorne in our last number, with the design of speaking more fully in the present. we are still, however, pressed for room, and must necessarily discuss his volumes more briefly and more at random than their high merits deserve. the book professes to be a collection of tales, yet is, in two respects, misnamed. these pieces are now in their third republication, and, of course, are thrice-told. moreover, they are by no means all tales, either in the ordinary or in the legitimate understanding of the term. many of them are pure essays; for example, "sights from a steeple," "sunday at home," "little annies ramble," "a rill from the town pump," "the toll-gatherer's day," "the haunted mind," "the sister sister years," "snow-flakes," "night sketches," and "foot-prints on the sea-shore." we mention these matters chiefly on account of their discrepancy with that marked precision and finish by which the body of the work is distinguished. of the essays just named, we must be content to speak in brief. they are each and all beautiful, without being characterized by the polish and adaptation so visible in the tales proper. a painter would at once note their leading or predominant feature, and style it repose. there is no attempt at effect. all is quiet, thoughtful, subdued. yet this respose may exist simultaneously with high originality of thought; and mr. hawthorne has demonstrated the fact. at every turn we meet with novel combinations; yet these combinations never surpass the limits of the quiet. we are soothed as we read; and withal is a calm astonishment that ideas so apparently obvious have never occurred or been presented to us before. herein our author differs materially from lamb or hunt or hazlittwho, with vivid originality of manner and expression, have less of the true novelty of thought than is generally supposed, and whose originality, at best, has an uneasy and meretricious quaintness, replete with startling effects unfounded in nature, and inducing trains of reflection which lead to no satisfactory result. the essays of hawthorne have much of the character of irving, with more of originality, and less of finish; while, compared with the spectator, they have a vast superiority at all points. the spectator, mr. irving, and mr. hawthorne have in common that tranquil and subdued manner which we have chosen to denominate repose; but in the case of the two former, this repose is attained rather by the absence of novel combination, or of originality, than otherwise, and consists chiefly in the calm, quiet, unostentatious expression of commonplace thoughts, in an unambitious unadulterated saxon. in them, by strong effort, we are made to conceive the absence of all. in the essays before us the absence of effort is too obvious to be mistaken, and a strong under-current of suggestion runs continuously beneath the upper stream of the tranquil thesis. in short, these effusions of mr. hawthorne are the product of a truly imaginative intellect, restrained, and in some measure repressed, by fastidiousness of taste, by constitutional melancholy and by indolence. but it is of his tales that we desire principally to speak. the tale proper, in our opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest field for the exercise of the loftiest talent, which can be afforded by the wide domains of mere prose. were we bidden to say how the highest genius could be most advantageously employed for the best display of its own powers, we should answer, without hesitationin the composition of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in an hour. within this limit alone can the highest order of true poetry exist. we need only here say, upon this topic, that, in almost all classes of composition, the unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance. it is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be completed at one sitting. we may continue the reading of a prose composition, from the very nature of prose itself, much longer than we can persevere, to any good purpose, in the perusal of a poem. this latter, if truly fulfilling the demands of the poetic sentiment, induces an exaltation of the soul which cannot be long sustained. all high excitements are necessarily transient. thus a long poem is a paradox and, without unity of impression, the deepest effects cannot be brought about. epics were the offspring of an imperfect sense of art, and their reign is no more. a poem too brief may produce a vivid, but never an intense or enduring impression. without a certain continuity of effortwithout a certain duration or repetition of purposethe soul is never deeply moved. there must be the dropping of the water upon the rock. de beranger has wrought brilliant thingspungent and spirit-stirringbut, like all immassive bodies, they lack momentum, and thus fail to satisfy the poetic sentiment. they sparkle and excite, but, from want of continuity, fail deeply to impress. extreme brevity will degenerate into epigrammatism; but the sin of extreme length is even more unpardonable. in medio tutissimus ibis. were we called upon, however, to designate that class of composition which, next to such a poem as we have suggested, should best fulfil the demands of high geniusshould offer it the most advantageous field of exertionwe should unhesitatingly speak of the prose tale, as mr. hawthorne has here exemplified it. we allude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal. the ordinary novel is objectionable, from its length, for reasons already stated in substance. as it cannot be read at one sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of the immense force derivable from totality. worldly interests intervening during the pauses of perusal, modify, annul, or counteract, in a greater or less degree, the impressions of the book. but simple cessation in reading, would, of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true unity. in the brief tale, however, the author is enabled to carry out the fulness of his intention, be it what it may. during the hour of perusal the soul of the reader is at the writer's control. there are no external or extrinsic influencesresulting from weariness or interruption. a skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. if wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidentshe then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. if his very initial sentence tend not to the out-bringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. in the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. and by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. the idea of the tale has been presented unblemished, because undisturbed; and this is an end unattainable by the novel. undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided. we have said that the tale has a point of superiority even over the poem. in fact, while the rhythm of this latter is an essential aid in the development of the poem's highest ideathe idea of the beautifulthe artificialities of this rhythm are an inseparable bar to the development of all points of thought or expression which have their basis in truth. but truth is often, and in very great degree, the aim of the tale. some of the finest tales are tales of ratiocination. thus the field of this species of composition, if not in so elevated a region on the mountain of mind, is a tableland of far vaster extent than the domain of the mere poem. its products are never so rich, but infinitely more numerous, and more appreciable by the mass of mankind. the writer of the prose tale, in short, may bring to his theme a vast variety of modes or inflections of thought and expression(the ratiocinative, for example, the sarcastic or the humorous) which are not only antagonistical to the nature of the poem, but absolutely forbidden by one of its most peculiar and indispensable adjuncts; we allude, of course, to rhythm. it may be added, here, par parenthese, that the author who aims at the purely beautiful in a prose tale is laboring at great disadvantage. for beauty can be better treated in the poem. not so with terror, or passion, or horror, or a multitude of such other points. and here it will be seen how full of prejudice are the usual animadversions against those tales of effect, many fine examples of which were found in the earlier numbers of blackwood. the impressions produced were wrought in a legitimate sphere of action, and constituted a legitimate although sometimes an exaggerated interest. they were relished by every man of genius: although there were found many men of genius who condemned them without just ground. the true critic will but demand that that the design intended be accomplished, to the fullest extent, by the means most advantageously applicable. we have very few american tales of real meritwe may say, indeed, none, with the exception of "the tales of a traveller" of washington irving, and these "twice-told tales" of mr. hawthorne. some of the pieces of mr. john neal abound in vigor and originality; but in general his compositions of this class are excessively diffuse, extravagant, and indicative of an imperfect sentiment of art. articles at random are, now and then, met with in our periodicals which might be advantageously compared with the best effusions of the british magazines; but, upon the whole, we are far behind our progenitors in this department of literature. of mr. hawthorne's tales we would say, emphatically, that they belong to the highest region of artand art subservient to genius of a very lofty order. we had supposed, with good reason for so supposing, that he had been thrust into his present position by one of the impudent cliques which beset our literature, and whose pretensions it is our full purpose to expose at the earliest opportunity, but we have been most agreeably mistaken. we know of few compositions which the critic can more honestly commend than these "twice-told tales." as americans, we feel proud of the book. mr. hawthornes distinctive trait is invention, creation, imagination, originalitya trait which, in the literature of fiction, is positively worth all the rest. but the nature of originality, so far as regards its manifestation in letters, is but imperfectly understood. the inventive or original mind as frequently displays itself in novelty of tone as in novelty of matter. mr. hawthorne is original at all points. it would be a matter of some difficulty to designate the best of these tales; we repeat that, without exception, they are beautiful. "wakefield" is remarkable for the skill with which an old ideaa well-known incidentis worked up or discussed. a man of whims conceives the purpose of quitting his wife and residing incognito, for twenty years, in her immediate neighborhood. something of this kind actually happened in london. the force of mr. hawthornes tale lies in the analysis of the motives which must or might have impelled the husband to such folly, in the first instance, with the possible causes of his perseverance. upon this thesis a sketch of singular power has been constructed. "the wedding knell" is full of the boldest imaginationan imagination fully controlled by taste. the most captious critic could find no flaw in this production. "the minister's black veil" is a masterly composition of which the sole defect is that to the rabble its exquisite skill will be caviare. the obvious meaning of this article will be found to smother its insinuated one. the moral put into the mouth of the dying minister will be supposed to convey the true import of the narrative, and that a crime of dark dye, (having reference to the "young lady") has been committed, is a point which only minds congenial with that of the author will perceive. "mr. higginbotham's catastrophe" is vividly original and managed most dexterously. "dr. heidegger's experiment" is exceedingly well imagined, and executed, with surpassing ability. the artist breathes in every line of it. "the white old maid" is objectionable, even more than the "minister's black veil," on the score of its mysticism. even with the thoughtful and analytic, there will be much trouble in penetrating its entire import. "the hollow of the three hills" we would quote in full, had we space;not as evincing higher talent than any of the other pieces, but as affording an excellent example of the author's peculiar ability. the subject is commonplace. a witch, subjects the distant and the past to the view of a mourner. it has been the fashion to describe, in such cases, a mirror in which the images of the absent appear, or a cloud of smoke is made to arise, and thence the figures are gradually unfolded. mr. hawthorne has wonderfully heightened his effect by making the ear, in place of the eye, the medium by which the fantasy is conveyed. the head of the mourner is enveloped in the cloak of the witch, and within its magic, folds there arise sounds which have an all-sufficient intelligence. throughout this article also, the artist is conspicuousnot more in positive than in negative merits. not only is all done that should be done, but (what perhaps is an end with more difficulty attained) there is nothing done which should not be. every word tells, and there is not a word which does not tell. in "howes masquerade" we observe something which resembles a plagiarismbut which may be a very flattering coincidence of thought. we quote the passage in question. "with a dark flush of wrath upon his brow they saw the general draw his sword and advance to meet the figure in the cloak before the latter had stepped one pace upon the floor. "'villain, unmuffle yourself,' cried he, 'you pass no further!" "the figure without blanching a hair's breadth from the sword which was pointed at his breast, made a solemn pause, and lowered the cape of the cloak from his face, yet not sufficiently for the spectators to catch a glimpse of it. but sir william howe had evidently seen enough. the sternness of his countenance gave place to a look of wild amazement, if not horror, while he recoiled several steps from the figure, and let fall his sword upon the floor." the idea here is, that the figure in the cloak is the phantom or reduplication of sir william howe, but in an article called "william wilson," one of the "tales of the grotesque and arabesque," we have not only the same idea, but the same idea similarly presented in several respects. we quote two paragraphs, which our readers may compare with what has been already given. "the brief moment in which i averted my eyes had been sufficient to produce, apparently, a material change in the arrangement at the upper or farther end of the room. a large mirror, it appeared to me, now stood where none had been perceptible before: and as i stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced with a feeble and tottering gait to meet me. "thus it appeared i say, but was not. it was wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of dissolution. not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of that face which was not even identically mine own. his mask and cloak lay where he had thrown them, upon the floor." here it will be observed, not only are the two general conceptions identical but there are various points of similarity. in each case the figure seen is the wraith or duplication of the beholder. in each case the scene is a masquerade. in each case the figure is cloaked. in each, there is a quarrelthat is to say, angry words pass between the parties. in each the beholder is enraged. in each the cloak and sword fall upon the floor. the "villain, unmuffle yourself," of mr. h. is precisely paralleled by a passage of "william wilson." in the way of objection we have scarcely a word to say of these tales. there is, perhaps, a somewhat too general or prevalent tonea tone of melancholy and mysticism. the subjects are insufficiently varied. there is not so much of versatility evinced as we might well be warranted in expecting from the high powers of mr. hawthorne. but beyond these trivial exceptions we have really none to make. the style is purity itself. force abounds. high imagination gleams from every page. mr. hawthorne is a man of the truest genius. we only regret that the limits of our magazine will not permit us to pay him that full tribute of commendation, which, under other circumstances, we should be so eager to pay. the american drama a biographist of berryer calls him "l'homme qui, dans ses description, demande le plus grande quantite possible d' antithese,"but that ever-recurring topic, the decline of the drama, seems to have consumed of late more of the material in question than would have sufficed for a dozen prime ministerseven admitting them to be french. every trick of thought and every harlequinade of phrase have been put in operation for the purpose "de nier ce qui est, et d'expliquer ce qui n'est pas." ce qui n'est pas:for the drama has not declined. the facts and the philosophy of the case seem to be these. the great opponent to progress is conservatism. in other wordsthe great adversary of invention is imitation: the propositions are in spirit identical. just as an art is imitative, is it stationary. the most imitative arts are the most prone to repose and the converse. upon the utilitarianupon the business arts, where necessity impels, invention, necessity's well-understood offspring, is ever in attendance. and the less we see of the mother the less we behold of the child. no one complains of the decline of the art of engineering. here the reason, which never retrogrades or reposes, is called into play. but let us glance at sculpture. we are not worse here, than the ancients, let pedantry say what it may (the venus of canova is worth, at any time, two of that of cleomenes), but it is equally certain that we have made, in general, no advances; and sculpture, properly considered, is perhaps the most imitative of all arts which have a right to the title of art at all. looking next at painting, we find that we have to boast of progress only in the ratio of the inferior imitativeness of painting, when compared with sculpture. as far indeed as we have any means of judging, our improvement has been exceedingly little, and did we know anything of ancient art in this department, we might be astonished at discovering that we had advanced even far less than we suppose. as regards architecture, whatever progress we have made has been precisely in those particulars which have no reference to imitation:that is to say, we have improved the utilitarian and not the ornamental provinces of the art. where reason predominated, we advanced; where mere feeling or taste was the guide, we remained as we were. coming to the drama, we shall see that in its mechanisms we have made progress, while in its spirituality we have done little or nothing for centuries certainlyand, perhaps, little or nothing for thousands of years. and this is because what we term the spirituality of the drama is precisely its imitative portionis exactly that portion which distinguishes it as one of the principal of the imitative arts. sculptors, painters, dramatists, are, from the very nature of their materialtheir spiritual material-imitators-conservatists-prone to repose in old feeling and in antique taste. for this reasonand for this reason onlythe arts of sculpture, painting, and the drama have not advancedor have advanced feebly, and inversely in the ratio of their imitativeness. but it by no means follows that either has declined. all seem to have declined, because they have remained stationary while the multitudinous other arts (of reason) have flitted so rapidly by them. in the same manner the traveller by railroad can imagine that the trees by the wayside are retrograding. the trees in this case are absolutely stationary but the drama has not been altogether so, although its progress has been so slight as not to interfere with the general effectthat of seeming retrogradation or decline. this seeming retrogradation, however, is to all practical intents an absolute one. whether the drama has declined, or whether it has merely remained stationary, is a point of no importance, so far as concerns the public encouragement of the drama. it is unsupported, in either case, because it does not deserve support. but if this stagnation, or deterioration, grows out of the very idiosyncracy of the drama itself, as one of the principal of the imitative arts, how is it possible that a remedy shall be appliedsince it is clearly impossible to alter the nature of the art, and yet leave it the art which it now is? we have already spoken of the improvements effected in architecture, in all its utilitarian departments, and in the drama, at all the points of its mechanism. "wherever reason predominates, we advance; where mere feeling or taste is the guide, we remain as we are." we wish now to suggest that, by the engrafting of reason upon feeling and taste, we shall be able, and thus alone shall be able, to force the modern drama into the production of any profitable fruit. at present, what is it we do? we are content if, with feeling and taste, a dramatist does as other dramatists have done. the most successful of the more immediately modern playwrights has been sheridan knowles, and to play sheridan knowles seems to be the highest ambition of our writers for the stage. now the author of "the hunchback" possesses what we are weak enough to term the true "dramatic feeling," and this true dramatic feeling he has manifested in the most preposterous series of imitations of the elizabethan drama by which ever mankind were insulted and begulled. not only did he adhere to the old plots, the old characters, the old stage conventionalities throughout; but he went even so far as to persist in the obsolete phraseologies of the elizabethan periodand, just in proportion to his obstinacy and absurdity at all points, did we pretend to like him the better, and pretend to consider him a great dramatist. pretendfor every particle of it was pretence. never was enthusiasm more utterly false than that which so many "respectable audiences" endeavoured to get up for these playsendeavoured to get up, first, because there was a general desire to see the drama revive, and secondly, because we had been all along entertaining the fancy that "the decline of the drama" meant little, if anything, else than its deviation from the elizabethan routineand that, consequently, the return to the elizabethan routine was, and of necessity must be, the revival of the drama. but if the principles we have been at some trouble in explaining are trueand most profoundly do we feel them to be soif the spirit of imitation is, in fact, the real source, of the drama's stagnationand if it is so because of the tendency in in all imitation to render reason subservient to feeling and to taste it is clear that only by deliberate counteracting of the spirit, and of the tendency of the spirit, we can hope to succeed in the drama's revival. the first thing necessary is to burn or bury the "old models," and to forget, as quickly as possible, that ever a play has been penned. the second thing is to consider de novo what are the capabilities of the dramanot merely what hitherto have been its conventional purposes. the third and last point has reference to the composition of a play (showing to the fullest extent these capabilities) conceived and constructed with feeling and with taste, but with feeling and taste guided and controlled in every particular by the details of reasonof common sensein a word, of a natural art. it is obvious, in the meantime, that towards the good end in view much may be effected by discriminative criticism on what has already been done. the field, thus stated, is, of course, practically illimitableand to americans the american drama is the special point of interest. we propose, therefore, in a series of papers, to take a somewhat deliberate survey of some few of the most noticeable american plays. we shall do this without reference either to the date of the composition or its adaptation for the closet or the stage. we shall speak with absolute frankness both of merits and defectsour principal object being understood not as that of mere commentary on the individual playbut on the drama in general, and on the american drama in especial, of which each individual play is a constituent part. we will commence at once with tortesa, the usurer this is the third dramatic attempt of mr. willis, and may be regarded as particularly successful, since it has received, both on the stage and in the closet, no stinted measure of commendation. this success, as well as the high reputation of the author, will justify us in a more extended notice of the play than might, under other circumstances, be desirable. the story runs thus:tortesa, a usurer of florence, and whose character is a mingled web of good and evil feelings, gets into his possession the palace and lands of a certain count falcone. the usurer would wed the daughter (isabella) of valcone, not through love, but in his own words, "to please a devil that inhabits him-" in fact, to mortify the pride of the nobility, and avenge himself of their scorn. he therefore bargains with falcone [a narrow-souled villain] for the hand of isabella. the deed of the falcone property is restored to the count upon an agreement that the lady shall marry the usurerthis contract being invalid should falcone change his mind in regard to the marriage, or should the maiden demurbut valid should the wedding be prevented through any fault of tortesa, or through any accident not springing from the will of the father or child. the first scene makes us aware of this bargain, and introduces us to zippa, a glover's daughter, who resolves, with a view of befriending isabella, to feign a love for tortesa [which, in fact she partially feels], hoping thus to break off the match. the second scene makes us acquainted with a young painter (angelo), poor, but of high talents and ambition, and with his servant (tomaso), an old bottle-loving rascal, entertaining no very exalted opinion of his master's abilities. tomaso does some injury to a picture, and angelo is about to run him through the body when he is interrupted by a sudden visit from the duke of florence, attended by falcone. the duke is enraged at the murderous attempt, but admires the paintings in the studio. finding that the rage of the great man will prevent his patronage if he knows the aggressor as the artist, angelo passes off tomaso as himself (angelo), making an exchange of names. this is a point of some importance, as it introduces the true angelo to a job which he has long covetedthe painting of the portrait of isabella, of whose beauty he had become enamoured through report. the duke wishes the portrait painted. falcone, however, on account of a promise to tortesa, would have objected to admit to his daughter's presence the handsome angelo, but in regard to tomaso has no scruple. supposing tomaso to be angelo and the artist, the count writes a note to isabella, requiring her "to admit the painter angelo." the real angelo is thus admitted. he and the lady love at first sight (much in the manner of romeo and juliet), each ignorant of the other's attachment. the third scene of the second act is occupied with a conversation between falcone and tortesa, during which a letter arrives from the duke, who, having heard of the intended sacrifice of isabella, offers to redeem the count's lands and palace, and desires him to preserve his daughter for a certain count julian. but isabella,who, before seeing angelo, had been willing to sacrifice herself for her father's sake, and who, since seeing him, had entertained hopes of escaping the hateful match through means of a plot entered into by herself and zippa-isabella, we say, is now in despair. to gain time, she at once feigns a love for the usurer, and indignantly rejects the proposal of the duke. the hour for the wedding draws near. the lady has prepared a sleeping potion, whose effects resemble those of death. (romeo and juliet.) she swallows itknowing that her supposed corpse would lie at night, pursuant to an old custom, in the sanctuary of the cathedral; and believing that angelowhose love for herself she has elicited, by a stratagem, from his own lipswill watch by the body, in the strength of his devotion. her ultimate design (we may suppose, for it is not told) is to confess all to her lover on her revival, and throw herself upon his protectiontheir marriage being concealed, and herself regarded as dead by the world. zippa, who really loves angelo(her love for tortesa, it must be understood, is a very equivocal feeling, for the fact cannot be denied that mr. willis makes her love both at the same time)zippa, who really loves angelowho has discovered his passion for isabellaand who, as well as that lady, believes that the painter will watch the corpse in the cathedral,determines, through jealousy, to prevent his so doing, and with this view informs tortesa that she has learned it to be angelo's design to steal the body for purposes,in short, as a model to be used in his studio. the usurer, in consequence, sets a guard at the doors of the cathedral. this guard does, in fact, prevent the lover from watching the corpse, but, it appears, does not prevent the lady, on her revival and disappointment in not seeing the one she sought, from passing unperceived from the church. weakened by her long sleep, she wanders aimlessly through the streets, and at length finds herself, when just sinking with exhaustion, at the door of her father. she has no resource but to knock. the count, who here, we must say, acts very much as thimble of oldthe knight, we mean, of the "scolding wife"maintains that she is dead, and shuts the door in her face. in other words, he supposes it to be the ghost of his daughter who speaks; and so the lady is left to perish on the steps. meantime angelo is absent from home, attempting to get access to the cathedral; and his servant tomaso takes the opportunity of absenting himself also, and of indulging his bibulous propensities while perambulating the town. he finds isabella as we left her, and through motives which we will leave mr. willis to explain, conducts her unresistingly to angelo's residence, anddeposits her in angelo's bed. the artist now returnstomaso is kicked out of doorsand we are not told, but left to presume, that a fun explanation and perfect understanding are brought about between the lady and her lover. we find them, next morning, in the studio, where stands, leaning against an easel the portrait (a full length) of isabella, with curtains adjusted before it. the stage-directions, moreover, inform us that "the black wall of the room is such as to form a natural ground for the picture." while angelo is occupied in retouching it, he is interrupted by the arrival of tortesa with a guard, and is accused of having stolen the corpse from the sanctuarythe lady, meanwhile, having stepped behind the curtain. the usurer insists upon seeing the painting, with a view of ascertaining whether any new touches had been put upon it, which would argue an examination, post mortem, of those charms of neck and bosom which the living isabella would not have unveiled. resistance in vainthe curtain is torn down; but, to the surprise of angelo, the lady herself is discovered, "with her hands crossed on her breast, and her eyes fixed on the ground, standing motionless in the frame which had contained the picture." the tableau we are to believe, deceives tortesa, who steps back to contemplate what he supposes to be the portrait of his betrothed. in the meantime, the guards, having searched the house, find the veil which had been thrown over the imagined corpse in the sanctuary, and upon this evidence the artist is carried before the duke. here he is accused, not only of sacrilege, but of the murder of isabella, and is about to be condemned to death, when his mistress comes forward in person; thus resigning herself to the usurer to save the life of her lover. but the noble nature of tortesa now breaks forth; and, smitten with admiration of the lady's conduct, as well as convinced that her love for himself was feigned, he resigns her to angeloalthough now feeling and acknowledging for the first time that a fervent love has, in his own bosom, assumed the place of the misanthropic ambition which, hitherto, had alone actuated him in seeking her hand. moreover, he endows isabella with the lands of her father falcone. the lovers are thus made happy. the usurer weds zippa; and the curtain drops upon the promise of the duke to honour the double nuptials with his presence. this story, as we have given it, hangs better together (mr. willis will pardon our modesty), and is altogether more easily comprehended, than in the words of the play itself. we have really put the best face upon the matter, and presented the whole in the simplest and clearest light in our power. we mean to say that "tortesa" (partaking largely, in this respect, of the drama of cervantes and calderon) is over-cloudedrendered mistyby a world of unnecessary and impertinent intrigue. this folly was adopted by the spanish comedy, and is imitated by us, with the idea of imparting "action," "business," "vivacity." but vivacity, however desirable, can be attained in many other ways, and is dearly purchased, indeed, when the price is intelligibility. the truth is that cant has never attained a more owllike dignity than in the discussion of dramatic principle. a modern stage critic is nothing, if not a lofty contemner of all things simple and direct. he delights in mysteryrevels in mystificationhas transcendental notions concerning p. s. and o. p, and talks about "stage business and stage effect" as if he were discussing the differential calculus. for much of all this we are indebted to the somewhat overprofound criticisms of augustus william schlegel. but the dicta of common sense are of universal application, and, touching this matter of intrigue, if, from its superabundance, we are compelled, even in the quiet and critical perusal of a play, to pause frequently and reflect longto re-read passages over and over again, for the purpose of gathering their bearing upon the wholeof maintaining in our mind a general connectionwhat but fatigue can result from the exertion? how, then, when we come to the representation?when these passagestrifling, perhaps, in themselves, but important when considered in relation to the plotare hurried and blurred over in the stuttering enunciation of some miserable rantipole, or omitted altogether through the constitutional lapse of memory so peculiar to those lights of the age and stage, bedight (from being of no conceivable use) supernumeraries? for it must be borne in mind that these bits of intrigue (we use the term in the sense of the german critics) appertain generally, indeed altogether, to the after thoughts of the dramato the underplotsare met with consequently, in the mouth of the lackeys and chambermaidsand are thus consigned to the tender mercies of the stellae minores. of course we get but an imperfect idea of what is going on before our eyes. action after action ensues whose mystery we can not unlock without the little key which these barbarians have thrown away and lost. our weariness increases in proportion to the number of these embarrassments, and if the play escape damnation at all it escapes in spite of that intrigue to which, in nine cases out of ten, the author attributes his success, and which he will persist in valuing exactly in proportion to the misapplied labour it has cost him. but dramas of this kind are said, in our customary parlance, to "abound in plot." we have never yet met any one, however, who could tell us what precise ideas he connected with the phrase. a mere succession of incidents, even the most spirited, will no more constitute a plot than a multiplication of zeros, even the most infinite, will result in the production of a unit. this all will admitbut few trouble themselves to think further. the common notion seems be in favour of mere complexity; but a plot, properly understood, is perfect only inasmuch as we shall find ourselves unable to detach from it or disarrange any single incident involved, without destruction to the mass. this we say is the point of perfectiona point never yet attained, but not on that account unattainable. practically, we may consider a plot as of high excellence, when no one of its component parts shall be susceptible of removal without detriment to the whole. here, indeed, is a vast lowering of the demandand with less than this no writer of refined taste should content himself. as this subject is not only in itself of great importance, but will have at all points a bearing upon what we shall say hereafter, in the examination of various plays, we shall be pardoned for quoting from the "democratic review" some passages (of our own which enter more particularly into the rationale of the subject: "all the bridgewater treatises have failed in noticing the great idiosyncrasy in the divine system of adaptation:that idiosyncrasy which stamps the adaptation as divine, in distinction from that which is the work of merely human constructiveness. i speak of the complete mutuality of adaptation. for example:in human constructions, a particular cause has a particular effecta particular purpose brings about a particular object; but we see no reciprocity. the effect does not react upon the causethe object does not change relations with the purpose. in divine constructions, the object is either object or purpose as we choose to regard it, while the purpose is either purpose or object; so that we can never (abstractlywithout concretionwithout reference to facts of the moment) decide which is which. "for secondary example:in polar climates, the human frame, to maintain its animal heat, requires, for combustion in the capillary system, an abundant supply of highly azotized food, such as train oil. again:in polar climates nearly the sole food afforded man is the oil of abundant seals and whales. now whether is oil at hand because imperatively demanded? or whether is it the only thing demanded because the only thing fo be obtained? it is impossible to say:there is an absolute reciprocity of adaptation for which we seek in vain among the works of man. "the bridgewater tractists may have avoided this point, on account of its apparent tendency to overthrow the idea of cause in generalconsequently of a first cause-of god. but it is more probable that they have failed to perceive what no one preceding them has, to my knowledge, perceived. "the pleasure which we derive from any exertion of human ingenuity, is in the direct ratio of the approach to this species of reciprocity between cause and effect. in the construction of plot, for example, in fictitious literature, we should aim at so arranging the points, or incidents, that we cannot distinctly see, in respect to any one of them, whether that one depends from any one other or upholds it. in this sense, of course, perfection of plot is unattainable in factbecause man is the constructor. the plots of god are perfect. the universe is a plot of god." the pleasure derived from the contemplation of the unity resulting from plot is far more intense than is ordinarily supposed, and, as in nature we meet with no such combination of incident, appertains to a very lofty region of the ideal. in speaking thus we have not said that plot is more than an adjunct to the dramamore than a perfectly distinct and separable source of pleasure. it is not an essential. in its intense artificiality it may even be conceived injurious in a certain degree (unless constructed with consummate skill) to that real lifelikeness which is the soul of the drama of character. good dramas have been written with very little plotcapital dramas might be written with none at all. some plays of high merit, having plot, abound in irrelevant incidentin incident, we mean, which could be displaced or removed altogether without effect upon the plot itself, and yet are by no means objectionable as dramas; and for this reasonthat the incidents are evidently irrelevantobviously episodical. of their disgressive nature the spectator is so immediately aware that he views them, as they arise, in the simple light of interlude, and does not fatigue his attention by attempting to establish for them a connection, or more than an illustrative connection, with the great interests of the subject. such are the plays of shakespeare. but all this is very different from that irrelevancy of intrigue which disfigures and very usually damns the work of the unskilful artist. with him the great error lies in inconsequence. underplot is piled upon underplot (the very word is a paradox), and all to no purposeto no end. the interposed incidents have no ultimate effect upon the main ones. they may hang upon the massthey may even coalesce with it, or, as in some intricate cases, they may be so intimately blended as to be lost amid the chaos which they have been instrumental in bringing aboutbut still they have no portion in the plot, which exists, if at all, independently of their influence. yet the attempt is made by the author to establish and demonstrate a dependencean identity, and it is the obviousness of this attempt which is the cause of weariness in the spectator, who, of course, cannot at once see that his attention is challenged to no purposethat intrigues so obtrusively forced upon it are to be found, in the end, without effect upon the leading interests of the day. "tortesa" will afford us plentiful examples of this irrelevancy of intrigueof this misconception of the nature and of the capacities of plot. we have said that our digest of the story is more easy of comprehension than the detail of mr. willis. if so, it is because we have forborne to give such portions as had no influence upon the whole. these served but to embarrass the narrative and fatigue the attention. how much was irrelevant is shown by the brevity of the space in which we have recorded, somewhat at length, all the influential incidents of a drama of five acts. there is scarcely a scene in which is not to be found the germ of an underplota germ, however, which seldom proceeds beyond the condition of a bud, or, if so fortunate as to swell into a flower, arrives, in no single instance, at the dignity of fruit. zippa, a lady altogether without character (dramatic), is the most pertinacious of all conceivable concoctors of plans never to be maturedof vast designs that terminate in nothingof cul-de-sac machinations. she plots in one page and counter-plots in the next. she schemes her way from p. s. to o. p., and intrigues perseveringly from the footlights to the slips. a very singular instance of the inconsequence of her manoeuvres is found towards the conclusion of the play. the whole of the second scene (occupying five pages), in the fifth act, is obviously introduced for the purpose of giving her information, through tomaso's means, of angelo's arrest for the murder of isabella. upon learning his danger she rushes from the stage, to be present at the trial, exclaiming that her evidence can save his life. we, the audience, of course applaud, and now look with interest to her movements in the scene of the judgment-hall. she, zippa, we think, is somebody after all; she will be the means of angelo's salvation; she will thus be the chief unraveller of the plot. all eyes are bent, therefore, upon zippabut alas! upon the point at issue, zippa does not so much as open her mouth. it is scarcely too much to say that not a single action of this impertinent little busybody has any real influence upon the play;yet she appears upon every occasionappearing only to perplex. similar things abound; we should not have space even to allude to them all. the whole conclusion of the play is supererogatory. the immensity of pure fuss with which it is overloaded forces us to the reflection that all of it might have been avoided by one word of explanation to the duke an amiable man who admires the talents of angelo, and who, to prevent isabella's marrying against her will, had previously offered to free falcone of his bonds to the usurer. that he would free him now, and thus set all matters straight, the spectator cannot doubt for an instant, and he can conceive no better reason why explanations are not made than that mr. willis does not think proper they should be. in fact, the whole drama is exceedingly ill motivirt. we have already mentioned an inadvertence, in the fourth act, where isabella is made to escape from the sanctuary through the midst of guards who prevented the ingress of angelo. another occurs where falcone's conscience is made to reprove him, upon the appearance of his daughter's supposed ghost, for having occasioned her death by forcing her to marry against her will. the author had forgotten that falcone submitted to the wedding, after the dukes interposition, only upon isabella's assurance that she really loved the usurer. in the third scene, too, of the first act, the imagination of the spectator is no doubt a little taxed when he finds angelo, in the first moment of his introduction to the palace of isabella, commencing her portrait by laying on colour after colour, before he has made any attempt at an outline. in the last act, moreover, tortesa gives to isabella a deed "of the falcone palaces and lands, and all the money forfeit by falcone." this is a terrible blunder, and the more important as upon this act of the usurer depends the development of his newborn sentiments of honour and virtuedepends, in fact, the most salient point of the play. tortesa, we say, gives to isabella the lands forfeited by falcone; but tortesa was surely not very generous in giving what, clearly, was not his own to give. falcone had not forfeited the deed, which had been restored to him by the usurer, and which was then in his (falcone's) possession. here tortesa: he put it in the bond, that if, by any humour of my own, or accident that came not from himself, or from his daughter's will, the match were marred, his tenure stood intact." now falcone is still resolute for the match; but this new generous "humour" of tortesa induces him (tortesa) to decline it. falcone's tenure is then intact; he retains the deed, the usurer is giving away property not his own. as a drama of character, "tortesa" is by no means open to so many objections as when we view it in the light of its plot; but it is still faulty. the merits are so exceedingly negative, that it is difficult to say anything about them. the duke is nobody, falcone, nothing; zippa, less than nothing. angelo may be regarded simply as the medium through which mr. willis conveys to the reader his own glowing feelingshis own refined and delicate fancy(delicate, yet bold)his own rich voluptuousness of sentimenta voluptuousness which would offend in almost any other language than that in which it is so skilfully apparelled. isabella isthe heroine of the hunchback. the revolution in the character of tortesaor rather the final triumph of his innate virtueis a dramatic point far older than the hills. it may be observed, too, that although the representation of no human character should be quarrelled with for its inconsistency, we yet require that the inconsistencies be not absolute antagonisms to the extent of neutralization: they may be permitted to be oils and waters, but they must not be alkalis and acids. when, in the course of the denouement, the usurer bursts forth into an eloquence virtueinspired, we cannot sympathize very heartily in his fine speeches, since they proceed from the mouth of the self-same egotist who, urged by a disgusting vanity, uttered so many sotticisms (about his fine legs, etc.) in the earlier passages of the play. tomaso is, upon the whole, the best personage. we recognize some originality in his conception, and conception was seldom more admirably carried out. one or two observations at random. in the third scene of the fifth act, tomaso, the buffoon, is made to assume paternal authority over isabella (as usual, without sufficient purpose), by virtue of a law which tortesa thus expounds: "my gracious liege, there is a law in florence that if a father, for no guilt or shame, disown and shut his door upon his daughter, she is the child of him who succours her, who by the shelter of a single night, becomes endowed with the authority lost by the other." no one, of course, can be made to believe that any such stupid law as this ever existed either in florence or timbuctoo; but, on the ground que le vrai n'est pas toujours le vraisemblable, we say that even its real existence would be no justification of mr. willis. it has an air of the far-fetchedof the desperatewhich a fine taste will avoid as a pestilence. very much of the same nature is the attempt of tortesa to extort a second bond from falcone. the evidence which convicts angelo of murder is ridiculously frail. the idea of isabella's assuming the place of the portrait, and so deceiving the usurer, is not only glaringly improbable, but seems adopted from the "winter's tale." but in this latter-play, the deception is at least possible, for the human figure but imitates a statue. what, however, are we to make of mr. w.'s stage direction about the back wall's being "so arranged as to form a natural ground for the picture"? of course, the very slightest movement of tortesa (and he makes many) would have annihilated the illusion by disarranging the perspective, and in no manner could this latter have been arranged at all for more than one particular point of viewin other words, for more than one particular person in the whole audience. the "asides," moreover, are unjustifiably frequent. the prevalence of this folly (of speaking aside) detracts as much from the acting merit of our drama generally as any other inartisticality. it utterly destroys verisimilitude. people are not in the habit of soliloquising aloudat least, not to any positive extent; and why should an author have to be told, what the slightest reflection would teach him, that an audience, by dint of no imagination, can or will conceive that what is sonorous in their own ears at the distance of fifty feet cannot be heard by an actor at the distance of one or two? having spoken thus of "tortesa" in terms of nearly unmitigated censureour readers may be surprised to hear us say that we think highly of the drama as a wholeand have little hesitation in ranking it before most of the dramas of sheridan knowles. its leading faults are those of the modern drama generallythey are not peculiar to itselfwhile its great merits are. if in support of our opinion we do not cite points of commendation, it is because those form the mass of the work. and were we to speak of fine passages, we should speak of the entire play. nor by "fine passages" do we mean passages of merely fine language, embodying fine sentiment, but such as are replete with truthfulness, and teem with the loftiest qualities of the dramatic art. pointscapital points abound; and these have far more to do with the general excellence of a play than a too speculative criticism has been willing to admit. upon the whole, we are proud of "tortesa"and her again, for the fiftieth time at least, record our warm admiration of the abilities of mr. willis. we proceed now to mr. longfellow's spanish student the reputation of its author as a poet, and as a graceful writer of prose, is, of course, long and deservedly establishedbut as a dramatist he was unknown before the publication of this play. upon its original appearance, in graham's magazine, the general opinion was greatly in favourif not exactly of "the spanish student"at all events of the writer of "outre-mer." but this general opinion is the most equivocal thing in the world. it is never self-formed. it has very seldom indeed an original development. in regard to the work of an already famous or infamous author it decides, to be sure, with a laudable promptitude; making up all the mind that it has, by reference to the reception of the author's immediately previous publicationmaking up thus the ghost of a mind pro tem.a species of critical shadow that fully answers, nevertheless, all the purposes of a substance itself until the substance itself shall be forthcoming. but beyond this point the general opinion can only be considered that of the public, as a man may call a book his, having bought it. when a new writer arises, the shop of the true, thoughtful or critical opinion is not simultaneously thrown awayis not immediately set up. some weeks elapse; and, during this interval, the public, at a loss where to procure an opinion of the debutante, have necessarily no opinion of him at all for the nonce. the popular voice, then, which ran so much in favour of "the spanish student," upon its original issue, should be looked upon as merely the ghost pro tem.as based upon critical decisions respecting the previous works of the authoras having reference in no manner to "the spanish student" itselfand thus as utterly meaningless and valueless per se. the few, by which we mean those who think, in contradistinction from the many who think they thinkthe few who think at first hand, and thus twice before speaking at allthese received the play with a commendation somewhat less pronouncedsomewhat more guardedly qualifiedthan professor longfellow might have desired, or may have been taught to expect. still the composition was approved upon the whole. the few words of censure were very far indeed from amounting to condemnation. the chief defect insisted upon was the feebleness of the denouement, and, generally, of the concluding scenes, as compared with the opening passages. we are not sure, however, that anything like detailed criticism has been attempted in the casenor do we propose now to attempt it. nevertheless, the work has interest, not only within itself, but as the first dramatic effort of an author who has remarkably succeeded in almost every other department of light literature than that of the drama. it may be as well, therefore, to speak of it, if not analytically, at least somewhat in detail; and we cannot, perhaps, more suitably commence than by a quotation, without comment of some of the finer passages: "and, though she is a virgin outwardly, within she is a sinner, like those panels of doors and altar-pieces the old monks painted in convents, with the virgin mary on the outside, and on the inside venus." "i believe that woman, in her deepest degradation, holds something sacred, something undefiled, some pledge and keepsake of her higher nature, and, like the diamond in the dark, retains some quenchless gleam of the celestial light." "and we shall sit together unmolested, and words of true love pass from tongue to tongue as singing birds from one bough to another." "our feelings and our thoughts tend ever on and rest not in the present, as drops of rain fall into some dark well, and from below comes a scarce audible sound, so fall our thoughts into the dark hereafter, and their mysterious echo reaches us." "her tender limbs are still, and, on her breast, the cross she prayed to, ere she fell asleep, rises or falls with the soft tide of dreams, like a light barge safe moored." "hark! how the large and ponderous mace of time knocks at the golden portals of the day!" "the lady violante bathed in tears of love and anger, like the maid of colchis, whom thou, another faithless argonaut, having won that golden fleece, a woman's love, desertest for this glauce." "i read, or sit in reverie and watch the changing colour of the waves that break upon the idle sea-shore of the mind." "i will forget her. all dear recollections pressed in my heart, like flowers within a book, shall be tom out and scattered to the winds." "oh yes! i see it now yet rather with my heart than with mine eyes, so faint it is. and all my thoughts sail thither, freighted with prayers and hopes, and forward urged, against all stress of accident, as, in the eastern tale, against the wind and tide great ships were drawn to the magnetic mountains." "but there are brighter dreams than those of fame, which are the dreams of love! out of the heart rises the bright ideal of these dreams, as from some woodland fount a spirit rises and sinks again into its silent deeps, ere the enamoured knight can touch her robe! 'tis this ideal that the soul of man, like the enamoured knight beside the fountain, waits for upon the margin of life's stream; waits to behold her rise from the dark waters, clad in a mortal shape! alas, how many must wait in vain! the stream flows evermore, but from its silent deeps no spirit rises! yet i, born under a propitious star, have found the bright ideal of my dreams." "yes; by the darro's side my childhood passed. i can remember still the river, and the mountains capped with snow; the villages where, yet a little child, i told the traveller's fortune in the street; the smugglers horse; the brigand and the shepherd; the march across the moor; the halt at noon; the red fire of the evening camp, that lighted the forest where we slept; and, farther back, as in a dream, or in some former life, gardens and palace walls." "this path will lead us to it, over the wheatfields, where the shadows sail across the running sea, now green, now blue, and, like an idle mariner on the ocean, whistles the quail." these extracts will be universally admired. they are graceful, well expressed, imaginative, and altogether replete with the true poetic feeling. we quote them now, at the beginning of our review, by way of justice to the poet, and because, in what follows, we are not sure that we have more than a very few words of what may be termed commendation to bestow. "the spanish student" has an unfortunate beginning, in a most unpardonable, and yet to render the matter worse, in a most indispensable "preface: "the subject of the following play," says mr. l., "is taken in part from the beautiful play of cervantes, la gitanilla. to this source, however, i am indebted for the main incident only, the love of a spanish student for a gipsy girl, and the name of the heroine, preciosa. i have not followed the story in any of its details. in spain this subject has been twice handled dramatically, first by juan perez de montalvan in la gitanilla, and afterwards by antonio de solis y rivadeneira in la gitanilla de madrid. the same subject has also been made use of by thomas middleton, an english dramatist of the seventeenth century. his play is called the spanish gipsy. the main plot is the same as in the spanish pieces; but there runs through it a tragic underplot of the loves of rodrigo and dona clara, which is taken from another tale of cervantes, la fuerza de la sangre. the reader who is acquainted with la gitanilla of cervantes, and the plays of montalvan, solis, and middleton, will perceive that my treatment of the subject differs entirely from theirs." now the autorial originality, properly considered, is threefold. there is, first, the originality of the general thesis, secondly, that of the several incidents or thoughts by which the thesis is developed, and thirdly, that of manner or tone, by which means alone an old subject, even when developed through hackneyed incidents or thoughts, may be made to produce a fully original effectwhich, after all, is the end truly in view. but originality, as it is one of the highest, is also one of the rarest of merits. in america it is especially and very remarkably rare:this through causes sufficiently well understood. we are content perforce, therefore, as a general thing, with either of the lower branches of originality mentioned above, and would regard with high favour indeed any author who should supply the great desideratum in combining the three. still the three should be combined; and from whom, if not from such men as professor longfellowif not from those who occupy the chief niches in our literary templeshall we expect the combination? but in the present instance, what has professor longfellow accomplished? is he original at any one point? is he original in respect to the first and most important of our three divisions? "the [subject] of the following play," he says himself, "is taken [in part] from the beautiful play of cervantes, 'la gitanilla.' to this source, however, i am indebted for [the main incident only,] the love of the spanish student for a gipsy girl, and the name of the heroine, preciosa." the [brackets] are our own, and the [bracketed words] involve an obvious contradiction. we cannot understand how "the love of the spanish student for the gipsy girl" can be called an "incident," or even a "main incident," at all. in fact, this lovethis discordant and therefore eventful or incidental love is the true thesis of the drama of cervantes. it is this anomalous "love," which originates the incidents by means of which itself, this "love," the thesis, is developed. having based his play, then, upon this "love," we cannot admit his claim to originality upon our first count; nor has he any right to say that he has adopted his "subject" "in part." it is clear that he has adopted it altogether. nor would he have been entitled to claim originality of subject, even had he based his story upon any variety of love arising between parties naturally separated by prejudices of castesuch, for example, as those which divide the brahmin from the pariah, the ammonite from the african, or even the christian from the jew. for here in its ultimate analysis, is the real thesis of the spaniard. but when the drama is founded, not merely upon this general thesis, but upon this general thesis in the identical application given it by cervantesthat is to say, upon the prejudice of caste exemplified in the case of a catholic, and this catholic a spaniard, and this spaniard a student, and this student loving a gipsy, and this gipsy a dancing-girl, and this dancing-girl bearing the name preciosawe are not altogether prepared to be informed by professor longfellow that he is indebted for an "incident only" to the "beautiful 'gitanilla' of cervantes." whether our author is original upon our second and third pointsin the true incidents of his story, or in the manner and tone of their handlingwill be more distinctly seen as we proceed. it is to be regretted that "the spanish student" was not subentitled "a dramatic poem," rather than "a play." the former title would have more fully conveyed the intention of the poet; for, of course, we shall not do mr. longfellow the injustice to suppose that his design has been, in any respect, a play, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. whatever may be its merits in a merely poetical view, "the spanish student" could not be endured upon the stage. its plot runs thus:preciosa, the daughter of a spanish gentleman, is stolen, while an infant, by gipsies, brought up as his own daughter, and as a dancing-girl, by a gipsy leader, cruzado; and by him betrothed to a young gipsy, bartolome. at madrid, preciosa loves and is beloved by victorian, a student of alcala, who resolves to marry her, notwithstanding her caste, rumours involving her purity, the dissuasions of his friends, and his betrothal to an heiress of madrid. preciosa is also sought by the count of lara, a roue. she rejects him. he forces his way into her chamber, and is there seen by victorian, who, misinterpreting some words overheard, doubts the fidelity of his mistress, and leaves her in anger, after challenging the count of lara. in the duel, the count receives his life at the hands of victorian: declares his ignorance of the understanding between victorian and preciosa; boasts of favours received from the latter, and, to make good his words, produces a ring which she gave him, he asserts, as a pledge of her love. this ring is a duplicate of one previously given the girl by victorian, and known to have been so given by the count. victorian mistakes it for his own, believes all that has been said, and abandons the field to his rival, who, immediately afterwards, while attempting to procure access to the gipsy, is assassinated by bartolome. meantime, victorian, wandering through the country, reaches guadarrama. here he receives a letter from madrid, disclosing the treachery practiced by lara, and telling that preciosa, rejecting his addresses, had been through his instrumentality hissed from the stage, and now again roamed with the gipsies. he goes in search of her, finds her in a wood near guadarrama; approaches her, disguising his voice; she recognizes him, pretending she does not, and unaware that he knows her innocence; a conversation of equivoque ensues; he sees his ring upon her finger; offers to purchase it; she refuses to part with it, a full eclairissement takes place; at this juncture a servant of victorian's arrives with "news from court," giving the first intimation of the true parentage of preciosa. the lovers set out, forthwith, for madrid, to see the newly discovered father. on the route, bartolome dogs their steps; fires at preciosa; misses her; the shot is returned; he falls; and "the spanish student" is concluded. this plot, however, like that of "tortesa," looks better in our naked digest than amidst the details which develop only to disfigure it. the reader of the play itself will be astonished, when he remembers the name of the author, at the inconsequence of the incidentsat the utter want of skillof art-manifested in their conception and introduction. in dramatic writing, no principle is more clear than that nothing should be said or done which has not a tendency to develop the catastrophe, or the characters. but mr. longfellow's play abounds in events and conversations that have no ostensible purpose, and certainly answer no end. in what light, for example, since we cannot suppose this drama intended for the stage, are we to regard the second scene of the second act, where a long dialogue between an archbishop and a cardinal is wound up by a dance from preciosa? the pope thinks of abolishing public dances in spain, and the priests in question have been delegated to examine, personally, the proprieties or improprieties of such exhibitions. with this view, preciosa is summoned and required to give a specimen of her skill. now this, in a mere spectacle, would do very well; for here all that is demanded is an occasion or an excuse for a dance; but what business has it in a pure drama? or in what regard does it further the end of a dramatic poem, intended only to be read? in the same manner, the whole of scene the eighth, in the same act, is occupied with six lines of stage directions, as follows: the theatre: the orchestra plays the cachuca. sound of castinets behind the scenes. the curtain rises and discovers preciosa in the attitude of commencing the dance. the cachuca. tumult. hisses. cries of brava! and aguera! she falters and pauses. the music stops. general confusion. preciosa faints. but the inconsequence of which we complain will be best exemplified by an entire scene. we take scene the fourth, act the first: "an inn on the road to alcala. baltasar asleep on a bench. enter chispa." chispa. and here we are, half way to alcala, between cocks and midnight. body o' me! what an inn this is! the light out and the landlord asleep! hola! ancient baltasar! baltasar. [waking]. here i am. chispa. yes, there you are, like a one-eyed alcalde in a town without inhabitants. bring a light, and let me have supper. baltasar. where is your master? chispa. do not trouble yourself about him. we have stopped a moment to breathe our horses; and if he chooses to walk up and down in the open air, looking into the sky as one who hears it rain, that does not satisfy my hunger, you know. but be quick, for i am in a hurry, and every one stretches his legs according to the length of his coverlet. what have we here? baltasar. [setting a light on the table]. stewed rabbit. chispa. [eating]. conscience of portalegre! stewed kitten you mean! baltasar. and a pitcher of pedro ximenes, with a roasted pear in it. chispa [drinking]. ancient baltasar, amigo! you know how to cry wine and sell vinegar. i tell you this is nothing but vino tinto of la mancha, with a tang of the swine-skin. baltasar. i swear to you by saint simon and judas, it is all as i say. chispa. and i swear to you by saint peter and saint paul that it is no such thing. moreover, your supper is like the hidalgo's dinnervery little meat and a great deal of tablecloth. baltasar. ha! ha! ha! chispa. and more noise than nuts. baltasar. ha! ha! ha! you must have your joke, master chispa. but shall i not ask don victorian in to take a draught of the pedro ximenes? chispa. no; you might as well say, "don't you want some?" to a dead man. baltasar. why does he go so often to madrid? chispa. for the same reason that he eats no supper. he is in love. were you ever in love, baltasar? baltasar. i was never out of it, good chispa. it has been the torment of my life. chispa. what! are you on fire, too, old hay-stack? why, we shall never be able to put you out. victorian [without] chispa! chispa. go to bed, pero grullo, for the cocks are crowing. victorian. ea! chispa! chispa! chispa. ea! senor. come with me, ancient baltasar, and bring water for the horses. i will pay for the supper tomorrow. [exeunt.] now here the question occurswhat is accomplished? how has the subject been forwarded? we did not need to learn that victorian was in lovethat was known before; and all that we glean is that a stupid imitation of sancho panza drinks in the course of two minutes (the time occupied in the perusal of the scene) a bottle of vino tinto, by way of pedro ximenes, and devours a stewed kitten in place of a rabbit. in the beginning of the play this chispa is the valet of victorian; subsequently we find him the servant of another; and near the denouement he returns to his original master. no cause is assigned, and not even the shadow of an object is attained; the whole tergiversation being but another instance of the gross inconsequence which abounds in the play. the authors deficiency of skill is especially evinced in the scene of the eclaircissement between victorian and preciosa. the former having been enlightened respecting the true character of the latter by means of a letter received at guadarrama, from a friend at madrid (how wofully inartistical is this!), resolves to go in search of her forthwith, and forthwith, also, discovers her in a wood close at hand. whereupon he approaches, disguising his voice:yes, we are required to believe that a lover may so disguise his voice from his mistress as even to render his person in full view irrecognizable! he approaches, and each knowing the other, a conversation ensues under the hypothesis that each to the other is unknowna very unoriginal, and, of course, a very silly source of equivoque, fit only for the gumelastic imagination of an infant. but what we especially complain of here is that our poet should have taken so many and so obvious pains to bring about this position of equivoque, when it was impossible that it could have served any other purpose than that of injuring his intended effect! read, for example, this passage: victorian. i never loved a maid; for she i loved was then a maid no more. preciosa. how know you that? victoria. a little bird in the air whispered the secret. preciosa. there, take back your gold! your hand is cold like a deceiver's hand! there is no blessing in its charity! make her your wife, for you have been abused; and you shall mend your fortunes mending hers. victorian. how like an angel's speaks the tongue of woman, when pleading in another's cause her own! now here it is clear that if we understood preciosa to be really ignorant of victorian's identity, the "pleading in another's cause her own" would create a favourable impression upon the reader or spectator. but the advice"make her your wife, etc.," takes an interested and selfish turn when we remember that she knows to whom she speaks. again, when victorian says: that is a pretty ring upon your finger, pray give it me! and when she replies: no, never from my hand shall that be taken, we are inclined to think her only an artful coquette, knowing, as we do, the extent of her knowledge, on the hand we should have applauded her constancy (as the author intended) had she been represented ignorant of victorian's presence. the effect upon the audience, in a word, would be pleasant in place of disagreeable were the case altered as we suggest, while the effect upon victorian would remain altogether untouched. a still more remarkable instance of deficiency in the dramatic tact is to be found in the mode of bringing about the discovery of preciosa's parentage. in the very moment of the eclaircissement between the lovers, chispa arrives almost as a matter of course, and settles the point in a sentence: good news from the court; good news! beltran cruzado, the count of the cales, is not your father, but your true father has returned to spain laden with wealth. you are no more a gipsy. now here are three points:first, the extreme baldness, platitude, and independence of the incident narrated by chispa. the opportune return of the father (we are tempted to say the excessively opportune) stands by itselfhas no relation to any other event in the playdoes not appear to arise, in the way of result, from any incident or incidents that have arisen before. it has the air of a happy chance, of a god-send, of an ultra-accident, invented by the play-wright by way of compromise for his lack of invention. nec deus intersit, etc.but here the god has interposed, and the knot is laughably unworthy of the god. the second point concerns the return of the father "laden with wealth." the lover has abandoned his mistress in her poverty, and, while yet the words of his proffered reconciliation hang upon his lips, comes his own servant with the news that the mistress' father has returned "laden with wealth." now, so far as regards the audience, who are behind the scenes and know the fidelity of the loverso far as regards the audience, all is right; but the poet had no business to place his heroine in the sad predicament of being forced, provided she is not a fool, to suspect both the ignorance and the disinterestedness of the hero. the third point has reference to the words"you are now no more a gipsy." the thesis of this drama, as we have already said, is love disregarding the prejudices of caste, and in the development of this thesis, the powers of the dramatist have been engaged, or should have been engaged, during the whole of the three acts of the play. the interest excited lies in our admiration of the sacrifice, and of the love that could make it; but this interest immediately and disagreeably subsides when we find that the sacrifice has been made to no purpose. "you are no more a gipsy" dissolves the charm, and obliterates the whole impression which the author has been at so much labour to convey. our romantic sense of the hero's chivalry declines into a complacent satisfaction with his fate. we drop our enthusiasm, with the enthusiast, and jovially shake by the hand the mere man of good luck. but is not the latter feeling the more comfortable of the two? perhaps so; but "comfortable" is not exactly the word mr. longfellow might wish applied to the end of his drama, and then why be at the trouble of building up an effect through a hundred and eighty pages, merely to knock it down at the end of the hundred and eighty-first? we have already given, at some length, our conceptions of the nature of plotand of that of "the spanish student", it seems almost superfluous to speak at all. it has nothing of construction about it. indeed there is scarcely a single incident which has any necessary dependence upon any one other. not only might we take away two-thirds of the whole without ruinbut without detrimentindeed with a positive benefit to the mass. and, even as regards the mere order of arrangement, we might with a very decided chance of improvement, put the scenes in a bag, give them a shake or two by way of shuffle, and tumble them out. the whole mode of collocationnot to speak of the feebleness of the incidents in themselvesevinces, on the part of the author, an utter and radical want of the adapting or constructive power which the drama so imperatively demands. of the unoriginality of the thesis we have already spoken; and now, to the unoriginality of the events by which the thesis is developed, we need do little more than alude. what, indeed, could we say of such incidents as the child stolen by gipsiesas her education as a danseuseas her betrothal to a gipsyas her preference for a gentlemanas the rumours against her purityas her persecution by a roueas the irruption of the roue into her chamberas the consequent misunderstanding between her and her loveras the duelas the defeat of the roueas the receipt of his life from the heroas his boasts of success with the girlas the ruse of the duplicate ringas the field, in consequence, abandoned by the loveras the assassination of lara while scaling the girl's bed-chamberas the disconsolate peregrination of victorianas the equivoque scene with preciosaas the offering to purchase the ring and the refusal to part with itas the "news from court," telling of the gipsy's true parentagewhat could we say of all these ridiculous things, except that we have met them, each and all, some two or three hundred times before, and that they have formed, in a great or less degree, the staple material of every hop-o'my-thumb tragedy since the flood? there is not an incident, from the first page of "the spanish student" to the last and most satisfactory, which we would not undertake to find bodily, at ten minutes' notice, in some one of the thousand and one comedies of intrigue attributed to calderon and lope de vega. but if our poet is grossly unoriginal in his subject, and in the events which evolve it, may he not be original in his handling or tone? we really grieve to say that he is not, unless, indeed, we grant him the need of originality for the peculiar manner in which he has jumbled together the quaint and stilted tone of the old english dramatists with the degagee air of cervantes. but this is a point upon which, through want of space, we must necessarily permit the reader to judge altogether for himself. we quote, however, a passage from the second scene of the first act, by way of showing how very easy a matter it is to make a man discourse sancho panza: chispa. abernuncio satanas! and a plague upon all lovers who ramble about at night, drinking the elements, instead of sleeping quietly in their beds. every dead man to his cemetery, say i; and every friar to his monastery. now, here's my master victorian, yesterday a cow-keeper and to-day a gentleman; yesterday a student and to-day a lover; and i must be up later than the nightingale, for as the abbot sings so must the sacristan respond. god grant he may soon be married, for then shall all this serenading cease. ay, marry, marry, marry! mother, what does marry mean? it means to spin, to bear children, and to weep, my daughter! and, of a truth, there is something more in matrimony than the wedding-ring. and now, gentlemen, pax vobiscum! as the ass said to the cabbages! and we might add, as an ass only should say. in fact, throughout "the spanish student," as well as throughout other compositions of its author, there runs a very obvious vein of imitation. we are perpetually reminded of something we have seen beforesome old acquaintance in manner or matter, and even where the similarity cannot be said to amount to plagiarism, it is still injurious to the poet in the good opinion of him who reads. among the minor defects of the play, we may mention the frequent allusion to book incidents not generally known, and requiring each a note by way of explanation. the drama demands that everything be so instantaneously evident that he who runs may read; and the only impression effected by these notes to a play is, that the author is desirous of showing his reading. we may mention, also, occasional tautologies, such as: never did i behold thee so attired and garmented in beauty as to-night! or what we need is the celestial fire to change the fruit into transparent crystal, bright and clear! we may speak, too, of more than occasional errors of grammar. for example: "did no one see thee? none, my love, but thou." here "but" is not a conjunction, but a preposition, and governs thee in the objective. "none but thee" would be right; meaning none except thee, saving thee. earlier, "mayest" is somewhat incorrectly written "may'st." and we have: i have no other saint than thou to pray to. here authority and analogy are both against mr. longfellow. "than" also is here a preposition governing the objective, and meaning save or except. "i have none other god than thee, etc" see horne tooke. the latin "quam te" is exactly equivalent. [later] we read: like thee i am a captive, and, like thee, i have a gentle gaoler. here "like thee" (although grammatical of course) does not convey the idea. mr. l. does not mean that the speaker is like the bird itself, but that his condition resembles it. the true reading would thus be: as thou i am a captive, and, as thou, i have a gentle poler. that is to say, as thou art and as thou hast. upon the whole, we regret that professor longfellow has written this work, and feel especially vexed that he has committed himself by its republication. only when regarded as a mere poem can it be said to have merit of any kind. for in fact it is only when we separate the poem from the drama that the passages we have commended as beautiful can be understood to have beauty. we are not too sure, indeed, that a "dramatic poem" is not a flat contradiction in terms. at all events a man of true genius (and such mr. l. unquestionably is) has no business with these hybrid and paradoxical compositions. let a poem be a poem only, let a play be a play and nothing more. as for "the spanish student," its thesis is unoriginal; its incidents are antique; its plot is no plot; its characters have no character, in short, it is a little better than a play upon words to style it "a play" at all. preface to the raven and other poems these trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected while "going the rounds of the press." i am naturally anxious that if what i have written is to circulate at all, it should circulate as i wrote it. in defence of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent on me to say that i think nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or very creditable to myself. events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances would have been the field of my choice. with me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence; they must notthey cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind e. a. p. the philosophy of composition charles dickens, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an examination i once made of the mechanism of "barnaby rudge," says"by the way, are you aware that godwin wrote his 'caleb williams' backwards? he first involved his hero in a web of difficulties, forming the second volume, and then, for the first, cast about him for some mode of accounting for what had been done." i cannot think this the precise mode of procedure on the part of godwinand indeed what he himself acknowledges, is not altogether in accordance with mr. dickens' ideabut the author of "caleb williams" was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage derivable from at least a somewhat similar process. nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its denouement before anything be attempted with the pen. it is only with the denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention. there is a radical error, i think, in the usual mode of constructing a story. either history affords a thesisor one is suggested by an incident of the dayor, at best, the author sets himself to work in the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his narrative-designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue, or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from page to page, render themselves apparent. i prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. keeping originality always in viewfor he is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interesti say to myself, in the first place, "of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall i, on the present occasion, select?" having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid effect, i consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tonewhether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and toneafterward looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect. i have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written by any author who wouldthat is to say, who coulddetail, step by step, the processes by which any one of his compositions attained its ultimate point of completion. why such a paper has never been given to the world, i am much at a loss to saybut, perhaps, the autorial vanity has had more to do with the omission than any one other cause. most writerspoets in especialprefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzyan ecstatic intuitionand would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thoughtat the true purposes seized only at the last momentat the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full viewat the fully-matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageableat the cautious selections and rejectionsat the painful erasures and interpolationsin a word, at the wheels and pinionsthe tackle for scene-shiftingthe step-ladders, and demon-trapsthe cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio. i am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means common, in which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps by which his conclusions have been attained. in general, suggestions, having arisen pell-mell are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner. for my own part, i have neither sympathy with the repugnance alluded to, nor, at any time, the least difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps of any of my compositions, and, since the interest of an analysis or reconstruction, such as i have considered a desideratum, is quite independent of any real or fancied interest in the thing analysed, it will not be regarded as a breach of decorum on my part to show the modus operandi by which some one of my own works was put together. i select 'the raven' as most generally known. it is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either to accident or intuitionthat the work proceeded step by step, to its completion, with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem. let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, per se, the circumstanceor say the necessitywhich, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste. we commence, then, with this intention. the initial consideration was that of extent. if any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impressionfor, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and everything like totality is at once destroyed. but since, ceteris paribus, no poet can afford to dispense with anything that may advance his design, it but remains to be seen whether there is, in extent, any advantage to counterbalance the loss of unity which attends it. here i say no, at once. what we term a long poem is, in fact, merely a succession of brief onesthat is to say, of brief poetical effects. it is needless to demonstrate that a poem is such only inasmuch as it intensely excites, by elevating the soul; and all intense excitements are, through a psychal necessity, brief. for this reason, at least, one-half of the "paradise lost" is essentially prosea succession of poetical excitements interspersed, inevitably, with corresponding depressionsthe whole being deprived, through the extremeness of its length, of the vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity of effect. it appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as regards length, to all works of literary artthe limit of a single sittingand that, although in certain classes of prose composition, such as "robinson crusoe" (demanding no unity), this limit may be advantageously overpassed, it can never properly be overpassed in a poem. within this limit, the extent of a poem may be made to bear mathematical relation to its meritin other words, to the excitement or elevation-again, in other words, to the degree of the true poetical effect which it is capable of inducing; for it is clear that the brevity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the intended effectthis, with one provisothat a certain degree of duration is absolutely requisite for the production of any effect at all. holding in view these considerations, as well as that degree of excitement which i deemed not above the popular, while not below the critical taste, i reached at once what i conceived the proper length for my intended poema length of about one hundred lines. it is, in fact, a hundred and eight. my next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed: and here i may as well observe that throughout the construction, i kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work universally appreciable. i should be carried too far out of my immediate topic were i to demonstrate a point upon which i have repeatedly insisted, and which, with the poetical, stands not in the slightest need of demonstrationthe point, i mean, that beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem. a few words, however, in elucidation of my real meaning, which some of my friends have evinced a disposition to misrepresent. that pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most elevating, and the most pure is, i believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful. when, indeed, men speak of beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effectthey refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soulnot of intellect, or of heartupon which i have commented, and which is experienced in consequence of contemplating the "beautiful." now i designate beauty as the province of the poem, merely because it is an obvious rule of art that effects should be made to spring from direct causesthat objects should be attained through means best adapted for their attainmentno one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation alluded to is most readily attained in the poem. now the object truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable to a certain extent in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. truth, in fact, demands a precision, and passion, a homeliness (the truly passionate will comprehend me), which are absolutely antagonistic to that beauty which, i maintain, is the excitement or pleasurable elevation of the soul. it by no means follows, from anything here said, that passion, or even truth, may not be introduced, and even profitably introduced, into a poem for they may serve in elucidation, or aid the general effect, as do discords in music, by contrastbut the true artist will always contrive, first, to tone them into proper subservience to the predominant aim, and, secondly, to enveil them, as far as possible, in that beauty which is the atmosphere and the essence of the poem. regarding, then, beauty as my province, my next question referred to the tone of its highest manifestationand all experience has shown that this tone is one of sadness. beauty of whatever kind in its supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones. the length, the province, and the tone, being thus determined, i betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy which might serve me as a key-note in the construction of the poemsome pivot upon which the whole structure might turn. in carefully thinking over all the usual artistic effectsor more properly points, in the theatrical sensei did not fail to perceive immediately that no one had been so universally employed as that of the refrain. the universality of its employment sufficed to assure me of its intrinsic value, and spared me the necessity of submitting it to analysis. i considered it, however, with regard to its susceptibility of improvement, and soon saw it to be in a primitive condition. as commonly used, the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon the force of monotoneboth in sound and thought. the pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identityof repetition. i resolved to diversify, and so heighten the effect, by adhering in general to the monotone of sound, while i continually varied that of thought: that is to say, i determined to produce continuously novel effects, by the variation of the application of the refrainthe refrain itself remaining for the most part, unvaried. these points being settled, i next bethought me of the nature of my refrain. since its application was to be repeatedly varied it was clear that the refrain itself must be brief, for there would have been an insurmountable difficulty in frequent variations of application in any sentence of length. in proportion to the brevity of the sentence would, of course, be the facility of the variation. this led me at once to a single word as the best refrain. the question now arose as to the character of the word. having made up my mind to a refrain, the division of the poem into stanzas was of course a corollary, the refrain forming the close to each stanza. that such a close, to have force, must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt, and these considerations inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous vowel in connection with r as the most producible consonant. the sound of the refrain being thus determined, it became necessary to select a word embodying this sound, and at the same time in the fullest possible keeping with that melancholy which i had pre-determined as the tone of the poem. in such a search it would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the word "nevermore." in fact it was the very first which presented itself. the next desideratum was a pretext for the continuous use of the one word "nevermore." in observing the difficulty which i had at once found in inventing a sufficiently plausible reason for its continuous repetition, i did not fail to perceive that this difficulty arose solely from the preassumption that the word was to be so continuously or monotonously spoken by a human beingi did not fail to perceive, in short, that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part of the creature repeating the word. here, then, immediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech, and very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a raven as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone. i had now gone so far as the conception of a raven, the bird of ill-omen, monotonously repeating the one word "nevermore" at the conclusion of each stanza in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length about one hundred lines. now, never losing sight of the objectsupremeness or perfection at all points, i asked myself"of all melancholy topics what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?" death, was the obvious reply. "and when," i said, "is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?" from what i have already explained at some length the answer here also is obvious"when it most closely allies itself to beauty: the death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover." i had now to combine the two ideas of a lover lamenting his deceased mistress and a raven continuously repeating the word "nevermore." i had to combine these, bearing in mind my design of varying at every turn the application of the word repeated, but the only intelligible mode of such combination is that of imagining the raven employing the word in answer to the queries of the lover. and here it was that i saw at once the opportunity afforded for the effect on which i had been depending, that is to say, the effect of the variation of application. i saw that i could make the first query propounded by the loverthe first query to which the raven should reply "nevermore"that i could make this first query a commonplace one, the second less so, the third still less, and so on, until at length the lover, startled from his original nonchalance by the melancholy character of the word itself, by its frequent repetition, and by a consideration of the ominous reputation of the fowl that uttered it, is at length excited to superstition, and wildly propounds queries of a far different characterqueries whose solution he has passionately at heartpropounds them half in superstition and half in that species of despair which delights in self-torturepropounds them not altogether because he believes in the prophetic or demoniac character of the bird (which reason assures him is merely repeating a lesson learned by rote), but because he experiences a frenzied pleasure in so modelling his questions as to receive from the expected "nevermore" the most delicious because the most intolerable of sorrows. perceiving the opportunity thus afforded me, or, more strictly, thus forced upon me in the progress of the construction, i first established in my mind the climax or concluding querythat query to which "nevermore" should be in the last place an answerthat query in reply to which this word "nevermore" should involve the utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and despair. here then the poem may be said to have had its beginningat the end where all works of art should beginfor it was here at this point of my preconsiderations that i first put pen to paper in the composition of the stanza: "prophet!" said i, "thing of evil! prophet still if bird or devil! by that heaven that bends above usby that god we both adore, tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant aidenn, it shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name lenore clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name lenore." quoth the raven"nevermore." i composed this stanza, at this point, first that, by establishing the climax, i might the better vary and graduate, as regards seriousness and importance, the preceding queries of the lover, and secondly, that i might definitely settle the rhythm, the metre, and the length and general arrangement of the stanza, as well as graduate the stanzas which were to precede, so that none of them might surpass this in rhythmical effect. had i been able in the subsequent composition to construct more vigorous stanzas i should without scruple have purposely enfeebled them so as not to interfere with the climacteric effect. and here i may as well say a few words of the versification. my first object (as usual) was originality. the extent to which this has been neglected in versification is one of the most unaccountable things in the world. admitting that there is little possibility of variety in mere rhythm, it is still clear that the possible varieties of metre and stanza are absolutely infinite, and yet, for centuries, no man, in verse, has ever done, or ever seemed to think of doing, an original thing. the fact is that originality (unless in minds of very unusual force) is by no means a matter, as some suppose, of impulse or intuition. in general, to be found, it must be elaborately sought, and although a positive merit of the highest class, demands in its attainment less of invention than negation. of course i pretend to no originality in either the rhythm or metre of the "raven." the former is trochaicthe latter is octametre acatalectic, alternating with heptametre catalectic repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrametre catalectic. less pedantically the feet employed throughout (trochees) consist of a long syllable followed by a short, the first line of the stanza consists of eight of these feet, the second of seven and a half (in effect two-thirds), the third of eight, the fourth of seven and a half, the fifth the same, the sixth three and a half. now, each of these lines taken individually has been employed before, and what originality the "raven" has, is in their combination into stanza; nothing even remotely approaching this has ever been attempted. the effect of this originality of combination is aided by other unusual and some altogether novel effects, arising from an extension of the application of the principles of rhyme and alliteration. the next point to be considered was the mode of bringing together the lover and the ravenand the first branch of this consideration was the locale. for this the most natural suggestion might seem to be a forest, or the fieldsbut it has always appeared to me that a close circumscription of space is absolutely necessary to the effect of insulated incidentit has the force of a frame to a picture. it has an indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated the attention, and, of course, must not be confounded with mere unity of place. i determined, then, to place the lover in his chamberin a chamber rendered sacred to him by memories of her who had frequented it. the room is represented as richly furnishedthis in mere pursuance of the ideas i have already explained on the subject of beauty, as the sole true poetical thesis. the locale being thus determined, i had now to introduce the birdand the thought of introducing him through the window was inevitable. the idea of making the lover suppose, in the first instance, that the flapping of the wings of the bird against the shutter, is a "tapping" at the door, originated in a wish to increase, by prolonging, the reader's curiosity, and in a desire to admit the incidental effect arising from the lover's throwing open the door, finding all dark, and thence adopting the half-fancy that it was the spirit of his mistress that knocked. i made the night tempestuous, first to account for the raven's seeking admission, and secondly, for the effect of contrast with the (physical) serenity within the chamber. i made the bird alight on the bust of pallas, also for the effect of contrast between the marble and the plumageit being understood that the bust was absolutely suggested by the birdthe bust of pallas being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the scholarship of the lover, and secondly, for the sonorousness of the word, pallas, itself. about the middle of the poem, also, i have availed myself of the force of contrast, with a view of deepening the ultimate impression. for example, an air of the fantasticapproaching as nearly to the ludicrous as was admissibleis given to the raven's entrance. he comes in "with many a flirt and flutter." not the least obeisance made henot a moment stopped or stayed he, but with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door. in the two stanzas which follow, the design is more obviously carried out: then this ebony bird, beguiling my sad fancy into smiling by the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," i said, "art sure no craven, ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's plutonian shore?" quoth the raven"nevermore." much i marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, though its answer little meaninglittle relevancy bore; for we cannot help agreeing that no living human being ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, with such name as "nevermore." the effect of the denouement being thus provided for, i immediately drop the fantastic for a tone of the most profound seriousnessthis tone commencing in the stanza directly following the one last quoted, with the line, but the raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only, etc. from this epoch the lover no longer jestsno longer sees anything even of the fantastic in the raven's demeanour. he speaks of him as a "grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," and feels the "fiery eyes" burning into his "bosom's core." this revolution of thought, or fancy, on the lover's part, is intended to induce a similar one on the part of the readerto bring the mind into a proper frame for the denouementwhich is now brought about as rapidly and as directly as possible. with the denouement properwith the raven's reply, "nevermore," to the lover's final demand if he shall meet his mistress in another worldthe poem, in its obvious phase, that of a simple narrative, may be said to have its completion. so far, everything is within the limits of the accountableof the real. a raven, having learned by rote the single word "nevermore," and having escaped from the custody of its owner, is driven at midnight, through the violence of a storm, to seek admission at a window from which a light still gleamsthe chamber-window of a student, occupied half in poring over a volume, half in dreaming of a beloved mistress deceased. the casement being thrown open at the fluttering of the bird's wings, the bird itself perches on the most convenient seat out of the immediate reach of the student, who amused by the incident and the oddity of the visitor's demeanour, demands of it, in jest and without looking for a reply, its name. the raven addressed, answers with its customary word, "nevermore"a word which finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart of the student, who, giving utterance aloud to certain thoughts suggested by the occasion, is again startled by the fowl's repetition of "nevermore." the student now guesses the state of the case, but is impelled, as i have before explained, by the human thirst for self-torture, and in part by superstition, to propound such queries to the bird as will bring him, the lover, the most of the luxury of sorrow, through the anticipated answer, "nevermore." with the indulgence, to the extreme, of this self-torture, the narration, in what i have termed its first or obvious phase, has a natural termination, and so far there has been no overstepping of the limits of the real. but in subjects so handled, however skillfully, or with however vivid an array of incident, there is always a certain hardness or nakedness which repels the artistical eye. two things are invariably requiredfirst, some amount of complexity, or more properly, adaptation; and, secondly, some amount of suggestivenesssome under-current, however indefinite, of meaning. it is this latter, in especial, which imparts to a work of art so much of that richness (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term), which we are too fond of confounding with the ideal. it is the excess of the suggested meaningit is the rendering this the upper instead of the under-current of the themewhich turns into prose (and that of the very flattest kind), the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists. holding these opinions, i added the two concluding stanzas of the poemtheir suggestiveness being thus made to pervade all the narrative which has preceded them. the under-current of meaning is rendered first apparent in the line "take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" quoth the raven "nevermore!" it will be observed that the words, "from out my heart," involve the first metaphorical expression in the poem. they, with the answer, "nevermore," dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been previously narrated. the reader begins now to regard the raven as emblematicalbut it is not until the very last line of the very last stanza that the intention of making him emblematical of mournful and never ending remembrance is permitted distinctly to be seen: and the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, on the pallid bust of pallas just above my chamber door; and his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming, and the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; and my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be liftednevermore. the rationale of verse the word "verse" is here used not in its strict or primitive sense, but as the term most convenient for expressing generally and without pedantry all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, metre, and versification. there is, perhaps, no topic in polite literature which has been more pertinaciously discussed, and there is certainly not one about which so much inaccuracy, confusion, misconception, misrepresentation, mystification, and downright ignorance on all sides, can be fairly said to exist. were the topic really difficult, or did it lie, even, in the cloudland of metaphysics, where the doubtvapors may be made to assume any and every shape at the will or at the fancy of the gazer, we should have less reason to wonder at all this contradiction and perplexity; but in fact the subject is exceedingly simple; one-tenth of it, possibly, may be called ethical; nine-tenths, however, appertain to mathematics; and the whole is included within the limits of the commonest common sense. "but, if this is the case, how," it will be asked, "can so much misunderstanding have arisen? is it conceivable that a thousand profound scholars, investigating so very simple a matter for centuries, have not been able to place it in the fullest light, at least, of which it is susceptible?" these queries, i confess, are not easily answered: at all events, a satisfactory reply to them might cost more trouble than would, if properly considered, the whole vexata quaestio to which they have reference. nevertheless, there is little difficulty or danger in suggesting that the "thousand profound scholars" may have failed first, because they were scholars; secondly, because they were profound; and thirdly, because they were a thousand-the impotency of the scholarship and profundity having been thus multiplied a thousand fold. i am serious in these suggestions; for, first again, there is something in "scholarship" which seduces us into blind worship of bacon's idol of the theatreinto irrational deference to antiquity, secondly, the proper "profundity" is rarely profoundit is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial; thirdly, the clearest subject may be over-clouded by mere superabundance of talk. in chemistry, the best way of separating two bodies is to add a third; in speculation, fact often agrees with fact and argument with argument until an additional well-meaning fact or argument sets everything by the ears. in one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because excessively discussed. when a topic is thus circumstanced, the readiest mode of investigating it is to forget that any previous investigation has been attempted. but, in fact, while much has been written on the greek and latin rhythms, and even on the hebrew, little effort has been made at examining that of any of the modern tongues. as regards the english, comparatively nothing has been done. it may be said, indeed, that we are without a treatise on our own verse. in our ordinary grammars and in our works on rhetoric or prosody in general, may be found occasional chapters, it is true, which have the heading, "versification," but these are, in all instances, exceedingly meagre. they pretend to no analysis; they propose nothing like system; they make no attempts at even rule; everything depends upon "authority." they are confined, in fact, to mere exemplification of the supposed varieties of english feet and english linesalthough in no work with which i am acquainted are these feet correctly given or these lines detailed in anything like their full extent. yet what has been mentioned is allif we except the occasional introduction of some pedagogue-ism, such as this borrowed from the greek prosodies: "when a syllable is wanting the verse is said to be catalectic; when the measure is exact, the line is acatalectic; when there is a redundant syllable, it forms hypermeter." now, whether a line be termed catalectic or acatalectic is, perhaps, a point of no vital importanceit is even possible that the student may be able to decide, promptly, when the a should be employed and when omitted, yet be incognizant, at the same time, of all that is worth knowing in regard to the structure of verse. a leading defect in each of our treatises (if treatises they can be called) is the confining the subject to mere versification, while verse in general, with the understanding given to the term in the heading of this paper, is the real question at issue. nor am i aware of even one of our grammars which so much as properly defines the word versification itself. "versification," says a work now before me, of which the accuracy is far more than usualthe "english grammar" of goold brown"versification is the art of arranging words into lines of correspondent length, so as to produce harmony by the regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity." the commencement of this definition might apply, indeed, to the art of versification, but not to versification itself. versification is not the art of arranging, etc, but the actual arranginga distinction too obvious to need comment. the error here is identical with one which has been too long permitted to disgrace the initial page of every one of our school grammars. i allude to the definitions of english grammar itself. "english grammar," it is said, "is the art of speaking and writing the english language correctly." this phraseology, or something essentially similar, is employed, i believe, by bacon, miller, fisk, greenleaf, ingersoll, kirkland, cooper, flint, pue, comly, and many others. these gentlemen, it is presumed, adopted it without examination from murray, who derived it from lily (whose work was "quam solam regia majestas in omnibus scholis docendam praecipit"), and who appropriated it without acknowledgment, but with some unimportant modification, from the latin grammar of leonicenus. it may be shown, however, that this definition, so complacently received, is not, and cannot be, a proper definition of english grammar. a definition is that which so describes its object as to distinguish it from all othersit is no definition of any one thing if its terms are applicable to any one other. but if it be asked"what is the designthe endthe aim of english grammar?" our obvious answer is, "the art of speaking and writing the english language correctly"that is to say, we must use the precise words employed as the definition of english grammar itself. but the object to be obtained by any means is, assuredly, not the means. english grammar and the end contemplated by english grammar are two matters sufficiently distinct; nor can the one be more reasonably regarded as the other than a fishinghook as a fish. the definition, therefore, which is applicable in the latter instance, cannot, in the former, be true. grammar in general is the analysis of language; english grammar of the english. but to return to versification as defined in our extract above. "it is the art," says the extract "of arranging words into lines of correspondent length." not so:a correspondence in the length of lines is by no means essential. pindaric odes are, surely, instances of versification, yet these compositions are noted for extreme diversity in the length of their lines. the arrangement is moreover said to be for the purpose of producing "harmony by the regular alternation," etc. but harmony is not the sole aimnot even the principal one. in the construction of verse, melody should never be left out of view; yet this is a point which all our prosodies have most unaccountably forborne to touch. reasoned rules on this topic should form a portion of all systems of rhythm. "so as to produce harmony," says the definition, "by the regular alternation," etc. a regular alternation, as described, forms no part of any principle of versification. the arrangement of spondees and dactyls, for example, in the greek hexameter, is an arrangement which may be termed at random. at least it is arbitrary. without interference with the line as a whole, a dactyl may be substituted for a spondee, or the converse, at any point other than the ultimate and penultimate feet, of which the former is always a spondee, the latter nearly always a dactyl. here, it is clear, we have no "regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity." "so as to produce harmony," proceeds the definition "by the regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity,"in other words by the alternation of long and short syllables; for in rhythm all syllables are necessarily either short or long. but not only do i deny the necessity of any regularity in the succession of feet and, by consequence, of syllables, but dispute the essentiality of any alternation regular or irregular, of syllables long and short. our author, observe, is now engaged in a definition of versification in general, not of english versification in particular. but the greek and latin metres abound in the spondee and pyrrhicthe former consisting of two long syllables, the latter of two short; and there are innumerable instances of the immediate succession of many spondees and many pyrrhics. here is a passage from silius italicus: fallit te mensas inter quod credis inermem tot bellis quaesita viro, tot caedibus armat majestas aeterna ducem: si admoveris ora cannas et trebium ante oculos trasymenaque busta et pauli stare ingentem miraberis umbram. making the elisions demanded by the classic prosodies, we should scan these hexameters thus: fallit / te men / sas in / ter quod / credis in / ermem / tot bel / lis quae / sita tot / caedibus / armat / majes / tas ae / terna du / cem s'ad / moveris / ora / cannas / et trebi / ant ocu / los trasy / menaque / busta / et pau / li sta / r' ingen / tem mi / raberis / umbram / it will be seen that, in the first and last of these lines, we have only two short syllables in thirteen, with an uninterrupted succession of no less than nine long syllables. but how are we to reconcile all this with a definition of versification which describes it as "the art of arranging words into lines of correspondent length so as to produce harmony by the regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity"? it may be urged, however, that our prosodist's intention was to speak of the english metres alone, and that, by omitting all mention of the spondee and pyrrhic, he has virtually avowed their exclusion from our rhythms. a grammarian is never excusable on the ground of good intentions. we demand from him, if from any one, rigorous precision of style. but grant the design. let us admit that our author, following the example of all authors on english prosody, has, in defining versification at large, intended a definition merely of the english. all these prosodists, we will say, reject the spondee and pyrrhic. still all admit the iambus, which consists of a short syllable followed by a long; the trochee, which is the converse of the iambus; the dactyl, formed of one long syllable followed by two short; and the anapaesttwo short succeeded by a long. the spondee is improperly rejected, as i shall presently show. the pyrrhic is rightfully dismissed. its existence in either ancient or modern rhythm is purely chimerical, and the insisting on so perplexing a nonentity as a foot of two short syllables, affords, perhaps, the best evidence of the gross irrationality and subservience to authority which characterise our prosody. in the meantime the acknowledged dactyl and anapaest are enough to sustain my proposition about the "alternation," etc, without reference to feet which are assumed to exist in the greek and latin metres alonefor an anapaest and a dactyl may meet in the same line, when, of course, we shall have an uninterrupted succession of four short syllables. the meeting of these two feet, to be sure, is an accident not contemplated in the definition now discussed; for this definition, in demanding a "regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity," insists on a regular succession of similar feet. but here is an example: sing to me / isabelle. this is the opening line of a little ballad now before me which proceeds in the same rhythma peculiarly beautiful one. more than all this:english lines are often well composed, entirely, of a regular succession of syllables all of the same quantity:the first line, for instance, of the following quatrain by arthur c. coxe: march! march! march! making sounds as they tread, ho! ho! how they step, going down to the dead! the [first line] is formed of three caesuras. the caesura, of which i have much to say hereafter, is rejected by the english prosodies, and grossly misrepresented in the classic. it is a perfect footthe most important in all verseand consists of a single long syllable; but the length of this syllable varies. it has thus been made evident that there is not one point of the definition in question which does not involve an error, and for anything more satisfactory or more intelligible we shall look in vain to any published treatise on the topic. so general and so total a failure can be referred only to radical misconception. in fact the english prosodists have blindly followed the pedants. these latter, like les moutons de panurge, have been occupied in incessant tumbling into ditches, for the excellent reason that their leaders have so tumbled before. the iliad, being taken as a starting point, was made to stand instead of nature and common sense. upon this poem, in place of facts and deduction from fact, or from natural law, were built systems of feet, metres, rhythms, rules,rules that contradict each other every five minutes, and for nearly all of which there may be found twice as many exceptions as examples. if any one has a fancy to be thoroughly confoundedto see how far the infatuation of what is termed "classical scholarship," can lead a bookworm in the manufacture of darkness out of sunshine, let him turn over for a few moments any of the german greek prosodies. the only thing clearly made out in them is a very magnificent contempt for leibnitzs principle of "a sufficient reason." to divert attention from the real matter in hand by any further reference to these works is unnecessary, and would be weak. i cannot call to mind at this moment one essential particular of information that is to be gleaned from them, and i will drop them here with merely this one observation,that employing from among the numerous "ancient" feet the spondee, the trochee, the iambus, the anapaest, the dactyl, and the caesura alone, i will engage to scan correctly any of the horatian rhythms, or any true rhythm that human ingenuity can conceive. and this excess of chimerical feet is perhaps the very least of the scholastic supererogations. ex uno disce omnia. the fact is that quantity is a point in whose investigation the lumber of mere learning may be dispensed with, if ever in any. its appreciation is universal. it appertains to no region, nor race, nor era in special. to melody and to harmony the greeks hearkened with ears precisely similar to those which we employ for similar purposes at present, and i should not be condemned for heresy in asserting that a pendulum at athens would have vibrated much after the same fashion as does a pendulum in the city of penn. verse originates in the human enjoyment of equality, fitness. to this enjoyment, also, all the moods of verse, rhythm, metre, stanza, rhyme, alliteration, the refrain, and other analagous effects, are to be referred. as there are some readers who habitually confound rhythm and metre, it may be as well here to say that the former concerns the character of feet (that is arrangements of syllables) while the latter has to do with the number of these feet. thus by "a dactylic rhythm" we express a sequence of dactyls. by "a dactylic hexameter" we imply a line or measure consisting of six of these dactyls. to return to equality. its idea embraces those of similarity, proportion, identity, repetition, and adaptation or fitness. it might not be very difficult to go even behind the idea of equality, and show both how and why it is that the human nature takes pleasure in it, but such an investigation would, for any purpose now in view, be supererogatory. it is sufficient that the fact is undeniablethe fact that man derives enjoyment from his perception of equality. let us examine a crystal. we are at once interested by the equality between the sides and between the angles of one of its faces; the equality of the sides pleases us, that of the angles doubles the pleasure. on bringing to view a second face in all respects similar to the first, this pleasure seems to be squared; on bringing to view a third it appears to be cubed, and so on. i have no doubt, indeed, that the delight experienced, if measurable, would be found to have exact mathematical relation such as i suggest, that is to say, as far as a certain point, beyond which there would be a decrease in similar relations. the perception of pleasure in the equality of sounds is the principle of music. unpractised ears can appreciate only simple equalities, such as are found in ballad airs. while comparing one simple sound with another they are too much occupied to be capable of comparing the equality subsisting between these two simple sounds taken conjointly, and two other similar simple sounds taken conjointly. practised ears, on the other hand, appreciate both equalities at the same instant, although it is absurd to suppose that both are heard at the same instant. one is heard and appreciated from itself, the other is heard by the memory, and the instant glides into and is confounded with the secondary appreciation. highly cultivated musical taste in this manner enjoys not only these double equalities, all appreciated at once, but takes pleasurable cognizance, through memory, of equalities the members of which occur at intervals so great that the uncultivated taste loses them altogether. that this latter can properly estimate or decide on the merits of what is called scientific music is of course impossible. but scientific music has no claim to intrinsic excellence; it is fit for scientific ears alone. in its excess it is the triumph of the physique over the morale of music. the sentiment is overwhelmed by the sense. on the whole, the advocates of the simpler melody and harmony have infinitely the best of the argument, although there has been very little of real argument on the subject. in verse, which cannot be better designated than as an inferior or less capable music, there is, happily, little chance for complexity. its rigidly simple character not even sciencenot even pedantry can greatly pervert. the rudiment of verse may possibly be found in the spondee. the very germ of a thought seeking satisfaction in equality of sound would result in the construction of words of two syllables, equally accented. in corroboration of this idea we find that spondees most abound in the most ancient tongues. the second step we can easily suppose to be the comparison, that is to say, the collocation of two spondeesor two words composed each of a spondee. the third step would be the juxtaposition of three of these words. by this time the perception of monotone would induce further consideration; and thus arises what leigh hunt so flounders in discussing under the title of "the principle of variety in uniformity." of course there is no principle in the casenor in maintaining it. the "uniformity" is the principlethe "variety" is but the principle's natural safeguard from self-destruction by excess of self. "uniformity," besides, is the very worst word that could have been chosen for the expression of the general idea at which it aims. the perception of monotone having given rise to an attempt at its relief, the first thought in this new direction would be that of collating two or more words formed each of two syllables differently accented (that is to say, short and long) but having the same order in each wordin other terms, of collating two or more iambuses, or two or more trochees. and here let me pause to assert that more pitiable nonsense has been written on the topic of long and short syllables than on any other subject under the sun. in general, a syllable is long or short, just as it is difficult or easy of enunciation. the natural long syllables are those encumberedthe natural short syllables are those unencumbered with consonants; all the rest is mere artificiality and jargon. the latin prosodies have a rule that a "vowel before two consonants is long." this rule is deduced from "authority"that is, from the observation that vowels so circumstanced, in the ancient poems, are always in syllables long by the laws of scansion. the philosophy of the rule is untouched, and lies simply in the physical difficulty of giving voice to such syllablesof performing the lingual evolutions necessary for their utterance. of course, it is not the vowel that is long (although the rule says so), but the syllable of which the vowel is a part. it will be seen that the length of a syllable, depending on the facility or difficulty of its enunciation, must have great variation in various syllables; but for the purposes of verse we suppose a long syllable equal to two short ones, and the natural deviation from this relativeness we correct in perusal. the more closely our long syllables approach this relation with our short ones, the better, ceteris paribus, will be our verse: but if the relation does not exist of itself we force it by emphasis, which can, of course, make any syllable as long as desired;or, by an effort we can pronounce with unnatural brevity a syllable that is naturally too long. accented syllables are, of course, always long, but where unencumbered with consonants, must be classed among the unnaturally long. mere custom has declared that we shall accent themthat is to say, dwell upon them; but no inevitable lingual difficulty forces us to do so. in fine, every long syllable must of its own accord occupy in its utterance, or must be made to occupy, precisely the time demanded for two short ones. the only exception to this rule is found in the caesuraof which more anon. the success of the experiment with the trochees or iambuses (the one would have suggested the other) must have led to a trial of dactyls or anapaestsnatural dactyls or anapaestsdactylic or anapaestic words. and now some degree of complexity has been attained. there is an appreciation, first, of the equality between the several dactyls or anapaests, and secondly, of that between the long syllable and the two short conjointly. but here it may be said, that step after step would have been taken, in continuation of this routine, until all the feet of the greek prosodies became exhausted. not so; these remaining feet have no existence except in the brains of the scholiasts. it is needless to imagine men inventing these things, and folly to explain how and why they invented them, until it shall be first shown that they are actually invented. all other "feet" than those which i have specified are, if not impossible at first view, merely combinations of the specified; and, although this assertion is rigidly true, i will, to avoid misunderstanding, put it in a somewhat different shape. i will say, then, that at present i am aware of no rhythmnor do i believe that any one can be constructedwhich, in its last analysis, will not be found to consist altogether of the feet i have mentioned, either existing in their individual and obvious condition, or interwoven with each other in accordance with simple natural laws which i will endeavour to point out hereafter. we have now gone so far as to suppose men constructing indefinite sequences of spondaic, iambic, trochaic, dactylic, or anapaestic words. in extending these sequences, they would be again arrested by the sense of monotone. a succession of spondees would immediately have displeased; one of iambuses or of trochees, on account of the variety included within the foot itself, would have taken longer to displease, one of dactyls or anapaests, still longer; but even the last, if extended very far, must have become wearisome. the idea first of curtailing, and secondly of defining, the length of a sequence would thus at once have arisen. here then is the line of verse proper.* the principle of equality being constantly at the bottom of the whole process, lines would naturally be made, in the first instance, equal in the number of their feet; in the second instance, there would be variation in the mere number; one line would be twice as long as another, then one would be some less obvious multiple of another; then still less obvious proportions would be adoptednevertheless there would be proportion, that is to say, a phase of equality, still. * verse, from the latin vertere, to turn, is so called on account of the turning or re-commencement of the series of feet. thus a verse strictly speaking is a line. in this sense, however, i have preferred using the latter word alone; employing the former in the general acceptation given it in the heading of this paper. lines being once introduced, the necessity of distinctly defining these lines to the ear (as yet written verse does not exist), would lead to a scrutiny of their capabilities at their terminationsand now would spring up the idea of equality in sound between the final syllablesin other words, of rhyme. first, it would be used only in the iambic, anapaestic, and spondaic rhythms (granting that the latter had not been thrown aside long since, on account of its tameness), because in these rhythms the concluding syllable being long, could best sustain the necessary protraction of the voice. no great while could elapse, however, before the effect, found pleasant as well as useful, would be applied to the two remaining rhythms. but as the chief force of rhyme must lie in the accented syllable, the attempt to create rhyme at all in these two remaining rhythms, the trochaic and dactylic, would necessarily result in double and triple rhymes, such as beauty with duty (trochaic), and beautiful with dutiful (dactylic). it must be observed that in suggesting these processes i assign them no date; nor do i even insist upon their order. rhyme is supposed to be of modern origin, and were this proved my positions remain untouched. i may say, however, in passing, that several instances of rhyme occur in the "clouds" of aristophanes, and that the roman poets occasionally employed it. there is an effective species of ancient rhyming which has never descended to the moderns: that in which the ultimate and penultimate syllables rhyme with each other. for example: parturiunt montes; nascetur ridiculus mus. and again: litoreis ingens inventa sub ilicibus sus. the terminations of hebrew verse (as far as understood) show no signs of rhyme; but what thinking person can doubt that it did actually exist? that men have so obstinately and blindly insisted, in general, even up to the present day, in confining rhyme to the ends of lines, when its effect is even better applicable elsewhere, intimates in my opinion the sense of some necessity in the connection of the ends with the rhymehints that the origin of rhyme lay in a necessity which connected it with the endshows that neither mere accident nor mere fancy gave rise to the connection-points, in a word, at the very necessity which i have suggested (that of some mode of defining lines to the ear), as the true origin of rhyme. admit this and we throw the origin far back in the night of timebeyond the origin of written verse. but to resume. the amount of complexity i have now supposed to be attained is very considerable. various systems of equalization are appreciated at once (or nearly so) in their respective values and in the value of each system with reference to all the others. as our present ultimatum of complexity, we have arrived at triple-rhymed, natural-dactylic lines, existing proportionally as well as equally with regard to other triple-rhymed, natural-dactylic lines. for example: virginal lilian, rigidly, humblily dutiful; saintlily, lowlily, thrillingly, holily beautiful! here we appreciate, first, the absolute equality between the long syllable of each dactyl and the two short conjointly; secondly, the absolute equality between each dactyl and any other dactyl, in other words, among all the dactyls; thirdly, the absolute equality between the two middle lines; fourthly, the absolute equality between the first line and the three others taken conjointly, fifthly, the absolute equality between the last two syllables of the respective words "dutiful" and "beautiful"; sixthly, the absolute equality between the two last syllables of the respective words "lowlily" and "holily"; seventhly, the proximate equality between the first syllable of "dutiful" and the first syllable of "beautiful"; eighthly, the proximate equality between the first syllable of "lowlily" and that of "holily"; ninthly, the proportional equality (that of five to one) between the first line and each of its members, the dactyls; tenthly, the proportional equality (that of two to one) between each of the middle lines and its members, the dactyls, eleventhly, the proportional equality between the first line and each of the two middle, that of five to two; twelfthly, the proportional equality between the first line and the last, that of five to one; thirteenthly, the proportional equality between each of the middle lines and the last, that of two to one, lastly, the proportional equality, as concerns number, between all the lines taken collectively, and any individual line, that of four to one. the consideration of this last equality would give birth immediately to the idea of stanza,* that is to say, the insulation of lines into equal or obviously proportional masses. in its primitive (which was also its best) form the stanza would most probably have had absolute unity. in other words, the removal of any one of its lines would have rendered it imperfect, as in the case above, where if the last line, for example, be taken away there is left no rhyme to the "dutiful" of the first. modern stanza is excessively loose, and where so, ineffective as a matter of course. * a stanza is often vulgarly, and with gross impropriety, called a verse. now, although in the deliberate written statement which i have here given of these various systems of equalities, there seems to be an infinity of complexity so much that it is hard to conceive the mind taking cognisance of them all in the brief period occupied by the perusal or recital of the stanza, yet the difficulty is in fact apparent only when we will it to become so. any one fond of mental experiment may satisfy himself, by trial, that in listening to the lines he does actually (although with a seeming unconsciousness, on account of the rapid evolutions of sensation) recognise and instantaneously appreciate (more or less intensely as his is cultivated) each and all of the equalizations detailed. the pleasure received or receivable has very much such progressive increase, and in very nearly such mathematical relations as those which i have suggested in the case of the crystal. it will be observed that i speak of merely a proximate equality between the first syllable of "dutiful" and that of "beautiful," and it may be asked why we cannot imagine the earliest rhymes to have had absolute instead of proximate equality of sound. but absolute equality would have involved the use of identical words, and it is the duplicate sameness or monotony, that of sense as well as that of sound, which would have caused these rhymes to be rejected in the very first instance. the narrowness of the limits within which verse composed of natural feet alone must necessarily have been confined would have led, after a very brief interval, to the trial and immediate adoption of artificial feet, that is to say, of feet not constituted each of a single word but two, or even three words, or of parts of words. these feet would be intermingled with natural ones. for example: a breath / can make / them as / a breath / his made. this is an iambic line in which each iambus is formed of two words. again: the un / ima / gina / ble might / of jove. this is an iambic line in which the first foot is formed of a word and a part of a word; the second and third of parts taken from the body or interior of a word; the fourth of a part and a whole; the fifth of two complete words. there are no natural feet in either line. again: can it be / fancied that / deity / ever vin / dictively made in his / image a / mannikin / merely to / madden it? these are two dactylic lines in which we find natural feet ("deity," "mannikin"); feet composed of two words ("fancied that," "image a," "merely to," "madden it"); feet composed of three words, ("can it be," "made in his"); a foot composed of a part of a word ("dictively"); and a foot composed of a word and a part of a word ("ever vin"). and now, in our suppositional progress, we have gone so far as to exhaust all the essentialities of verse. what follows may, strictly speaking, be regarded as embellishment merely, but even in this embellishment the rudimental sense of equality would have been the never-ceasing impulse. it would, for example, be simply in seeking further administration to this sense that men would come in time to think of the refrain or burden, where, at the closes of the several stanzas of a poem, one word or phrase is repeated; and of alliteration, in whose simplest form a consonant is repeated in the commencements of various words. this effect would be extended so as to embrace repetitions both of vowels and of consonants in the bodies as well as in the beginnings of words, and at a later period would be made to infringe on the province of rhyme by the introduction of general similarity of sound between whole feet occurring in the body of a lineall of which modifications i have exemplified in the line above. made in his image a mannikin merely to madden it. further cultivation would improve also the refrain by relieving its monotone in slightly varying the phrase at each repetition, or (as i have attempted to do in "the raven") in retaining the phrase and varying its application, although this latter point is not strictly a rhythmical effect alone. finally, poets when fairly wearied with following precedent, following it the more closely the less they perceived it in company with reason, would adventure so far as to indulge in positive rhyme at other points than the ends of lines. first, they would put it in the middle of the line, then at some point where the multiple would be less obvious, then, alarmed at their own audacity, they would undo all their work by cutting these lines in two. and here is the fruitful source of the infinity of "short metre" by which modern poetry, if not distinguished, is at least disgraced. it would require a high degree, indeed, both of cultivation and of courage on the part of any versifier to enable him to place his rhymes, and let them remain at unquestionably their best position, that of unusual and unanticipated intervals. on account of the stupidity of some people, or (if talent be a more respectable word), on account of their talent for misconceptioni think it necessary to add here, first, that i believe the "processes" above detailed to be nearly, if not accurately, those which did occur in the gradual creation of what we now can verse; secondly, that, although i so believe, i yet urge neither the assumed fact nor my belief in it as a part of the true propositions of this paper, thirdly, that in regard to the aim of this paper, it is of no consequence whether these processes did occur either in the order i have assigned them, or at all; my design being simply, in presenting a general type of what such processes might have been and must have resembled, to help them, the "some people," to an easy understanding of what i have further to say on the topic of verse. there is one point, which, in my summary of the processes, i have purposely forborne to touch; because this point, being the most important of all on account of the immensity of error usually involved in its consideration, would have led me into a series of detail inconsistent with the object of a summary. every reader of verse must have observed how seldom it happens that even any one line proceeds uniformly with a succession, such as i have supposed, of absolutely equal feet; that is to say, with a succession of iambuses only, or of trochees only, or of dactyls only, or of anapaests only, or of spondees only. even in the most musical lines we find the succession interrupted. the iambic pentameters of pope, for example, will be found on examination, frequently varied by trochees in the beginning, or by (what seem to be) anapaests in the body of the line. oh thou / whate / ver ti / tle please / thine ear / dean dra / pier bick / erstaff / or gull / iver / whether / thou choose / cervan / tes' / se / rious air / or laugh / and shake / in rab / elais' ea / sy chair / were any one weak enough to refer to the prosodies for the solution of the difficulty here, he would find it solved as usual by a rule, stating the fact (or what it, the rule, supposes to be the fact), but without the slightest attempt at the rationale. "by a synaeresis of the two short syllables," say the books, "an anapaest may sometimes be employed for an iambus, or dactyl for a trochee.... in the beginning of a line a trochee is often used for an iambus." blending is the plain english for synaeresisbut there should be no blending; neither is an anapaest ever employed for an iambus, or a dactyl for a trochee. these feet differ in time, and no feet so differing can ever be legitimately used in the same line. an anapaest is equal to four short syllablesan iambus only to three. dactyls and trochees hold the same relation. the principle of equality, in verse, admits, it is true, of variation at certain points, for the relief of monotone, as i have already shown, but the point of time is that point which, being the rudimental one, must never be tampered with at all. to explain:in further efforts for the relief of monotone than those to which i have alluded in the summary, men soon came to see that there was no absolute necessity for adhering to the precise number of syllables, provided the time required for the whole foot was preserved inviolate. they saw, for instance, that in such a line as or laugh / and shake / in rab / elais ea / sy chair / the equalisation of the three syllables elais ea with the two syllables composing any of the other feet could be readily effected by pronouncing the two syllables elais in double quick time. by pronouncing each of the syllables e and lais twice as rapidly as the syllable sy, or the syllable in, or any other short syllable, they could bring the two of them, taken together, to the length, that is to say to the time, of any one short syllable. this consideration enabled them to effect the agreeable variation of three syllables in place of the uniform two. and variation was the object-variation to the ear. what sense is there, then, in supposing this object rendered null by the blending of the two syllables so as to render them, in absolute effect, one? of course, there must be no blending. each syllable must be pronounced as distinctly as possible (or the variation is lost), but with twice the rapidity in which the ordinary short syllable is enunciated. that the syllables elais ea do not compose an anapaest is evident, and the signs of their accentuation are erroneous. the foot might be written with inverted crescents expressing double quick time; and might be called a bastard iambus. here is a trochaic line: see the / delicate-footed / rain-deer. the prosodiesthat is to say the most considerate of themwould here decide that "delicate" is a dactyl used in place of a trochee, and would refer to what they call their "rule, for justification. others, varying the stupidity, would insist upon a procrustean adjustment thus (del'cate) an adjustment recommended to all such words as silvery, murmuring. etc., which, it is said, should be not only pronounced but written silv'ry, murm'ring, and so on, whenever they find themselves in trochaic predicament. i have only to say that "delicate," when circumstanced as above, is neither a dactyl nor a dactyl's equivalent; that i think it as well to call it a bastard trochee; and that all words, at all events, should be written and pronounced in full, and as nearly as possible as nature intended them. about eleven years ago, there appeared in "the american monthly magazine" (then edited, i believe, by messrs hoffman and benjamin,) a review of mr. willis's poems; the critic putting forth his strength, or his weakness, in an endeavor to show that the poet was either absurdly affected, or grossly ignorant of the laws of verse; the accusation being based altogether on the fact that mr. w. made occasional use of this very word "delicate," and other similar words, in "the heroic measure, which every one knew consisted of feet of two syllables." mr. w. has often, for example, such lines as that binds him to a woman's delicate love in the gay sunshine, reverent in the storm with its invisible fingers my loose hair. here of course, the feet licate love, verent in and sible fin, are bastard iambuses; are not anapaests and are not improperly used. their employment, on the contrary, by mr. willis, is but one of the innumerable instances he has given of keen sensibility in all those matters of taste which may be classed under the general head of fanciful embellishment. it is also about eleven years ago, if i am not mistaken, since mr. horne (of england,) the author of "orion," one of the noblest epics in any language, thought it necessary to preface his "chaucer modernized" by a very long and evidently a very elaborate essay, of which the greater portion was occupied in a discussion of the seemingly anomalous foot of which we have been speaking. mr. horne upholds chaucer in its frequent use; maintains his superiority, on account of his so frequently using it, over all english versifiers; and indignantly repelling the common idea of those who make verse on their fingersthat the superfluous syllable is a roughness and an errorvery chivalrously makes battle for it as a "grace." that a grace it is, there can be no doubt; and what i complain of is, that the author of the most happily versified long poem in existence, should have been under the necessity of discussing this grace merely as a grace, through forty or fifty vague pages, solely because of his inability to show how and why it is a graceby which showing the question would have been settled in an instant. about the trochee used for an iambus, as we see in the beginning of the line, whether thou choose cervantes' serious air, there is little that need be said. it brings me to the general proposition that, in all rhythms, the prevalent or distinctive feet may be varied at will and nearly at random, by the occasional introduction of feetthat is to say, feet the sum of whose syllabic times is equal to the sum of the syllabic times of the distinctive feet. thus, the trochee, whether is equal, in the sum of the times of its syllables, to the iambus, thou choose, in the sum of the times of its syllables; each foot being in time equal to three short syllables. good versifiers who happen to be also good poets, contrive to relieve the monotony of a series of feet by the use of equivalent feet only at rare intervals, and at such points of their subject as seem in accordance with the startling character of the variation. nothing of this care is seen in the line quoted abovealthough pope has some fine instances of the duplicate effect. where vehemence is to be strongly expressed, i am not sure that we should be wrong in venturing on two consecutive equivalent feetalthough i cannot say that i have ever known the adventure made, except in the following passage, which occurs in "al aaraaf," a boyish poem written by myself when a boy. i am referring to the sudden and rapid advent of a star: dim was its little disk, and angel eyes alone could see the phantom in the skies, when first the phantoms course was found to be headlong hithirward o'er the starry sea. in the "general proposition" above, i speak of the occasional introduction of equivalent feet. it sometimes happens that unskilful versifiers, without knowing what they do, or why they do it, introduce so many "variations" as to exceed in number the "distinctive" feet, when the ear becomes at once balked by the bouleversement of the rhythm. too many trochees, for example, inserted in an iambic rhythm would convert the latter to a trochaic. i may note here that in all cases the rhythm designed should be commenced and continued, without variation, until the ear has had full time to comprehend what is the rhythm. in violation of a rule so obviously founded in common sense, many even of our best poets do not scruple to begin an iambic rhythm with a trochee, or the converse; or a dactylic with an anapaest or the converse; and so on. a somewhat less objectionable error, although still a decided one, is that of commencing a rhythm not with a different equivalent foot but with a "bastard" foot of the rhythm intended. for example: many a / thought will / come to / memory. / here 'many a' is what i have explained to be a bastard trochee, and to be understood should be accented with inverted crescents. it is objectionable solely on account of its position as the opening foot of a trochaic rhythm. memory, similarly accented is also a bastard trochee, but unobjectionable, although by no means demanded. the further illustration of this point will enable me to take an important step. one of our finest poets, mr. christopher pearse cranch, begins a very beautiful poem thus: many are the thoughts that come to me in my lonely musing; and they drift so strange and swift there's no time for choosing which to follow; for to leave any, seems a losing. "a losing" to mr. cranch, of coursebut this en passant. it will be seen here that the intention is trochaic;although we do not see this intention by the opening foot as we should do, or even by the opening line. reading the whole stanza, however, we perceive the trochaic rhythm as the general design, and so after some reflection, we divide the first line thus: many are the / thoughts that / come to / me. thus scanned, the line will seem musical. it is highly so. and it is because there is no end to instances of just such lines of apparently incomprehensible music, that coleridge thought proper to invent his nonsensical system of what he calls "scanning by accents"as if "scanning by accents" were anything more than a phrase. whenever "christabel" is really not rough, it can be as readily scanned by the true i laws (not the supposititious rules) of verse, as can the simplest pentameter of pope; and where it is rough (passim) these same laws will enable any one of common sense to show why it is rough and to point out instantaneously the remedy for the roughness. a reads and re-reads a certain line, and pronounces it false in rhythm-unmusical. b, however, reads it to a, and a is at once struck with the perfection of the rhythm, and wonders at his dulness in not "catching" it before. henceforward he admits the line to be musical. b, triumphant, asserts that, to be sure the line is musicalfor it is the work of coleridgeand that it is a who is not; the fault being in a's false reading. now here a is right and b wrong. that rhythm is erroneous (at some point or other more or less obvious), which any ordinary reader can, without design, read improperly. it is the business of the poet so to construct his line that the intention must be caught at once. even when these men have precisely the same understanding of a sentence, they differ, and often widely, in their modes of enunciating it. any one who has taken the trouble to examine the topic of emphasis (by which i here mean not accent of particular syllables, but the dwelling on entire words), must have seen that men emphasize in the most singularly arbitrary manner. there are certain large classes of people, for example, who persist in emphasizing their monosyllables. little uniformity of emphasis prevails; because the thing itselfthe idea, emphasisis referabie to no naturalat least to no well comprehended and therefore uniform-law. beyond a very narrow and vague limit, the whole matter is conventionality. and if we differ in emphasis even when we agree in comprehension, how much more so in the former when in the latter too! apart, however, from the consideration of natural disagreement, is it not clear that, by tripping here and mouthing there, any sequence of words may be twisted into any species of rhythm? but are we thence to deduce that all sequences of words are rhythmical in a rational understanding of the term?for this is the deduction precisely to which the reductio ad absurdum will, in the end, bring all the propositions of coleridge. out of a hundred readers of "christabel," fifty will be able to make nothing of its rhythm, while forty-nine of the remaining fifty with some ado, fancy they comprehend it, after the fourth or fifth perusal. the one out of the whole hundred who shall both comprehend and admire it at first sightmust be an unaccountably clever personand i am by far too modest to assume, for a moment, that that very clever person is myself. in illustration of what is here advanced i cannot do better than quote a poem: pease porridge hot pease porridge cold pease porridge in the potnine days old. now those of my readers who have never heard this poem pronounced according to the nursery conventionality, will find its rhythm as obscure as an explanatory note; while those who have heard it will divide it thus, declare it musical, and wonder how there can be any doubt about it. pease / porridge / hot / pease / porridge / cold / pease / porridge / in the / pot / nine / days / old. / the chief thing in the way of this species of rhythm, is the necessity which it imposes upon the poet of travelling in constant company with his compositions, so as to be ready at a moment's notice, to avail himself of a well-understood poetical licensethat of reading aloud one's own doggerel. in mr. cranch's line, many are the / thoughts that / come to / me, the general error of which i speak is, of course, very partially exemplified, and the purpose for which, chiefly, i cite it, lies yet further on in our topic. the two divisions (thoughts that) and (come to) are ordinary trochees. the first division (many are the) would be thus accented by the greek prosodies (many are the), and would be called by them astrologos. the latin books would style the foot paeon primus, and both greek and latin would swear that it was compoded of a trochee and what they term a pyrrhicthat is to say, a foot of two short syllablesa thing that cannot be, as i shall presently show large but now, there is an obvious difficulty. the astrologos, according to the prosodies' own showing, is equal to five short syllables, and the trochee to threeyet, in the line quoted, these two feet are equal. they occupy, precisely, the same time. in fact, the whole music of the line depends upon their being made to occupy the same time. the prosodies then, have demonstrated what all mathematicians have stupidly failed in demonstratingthat three and five are one and the same thing. after what i have already said, however, about the bastard trochee and the bastard iambus, no one can have any trouble in understanding that many are the is of similar character. it is merely a bolder variation than usual from the routine of trochees, and introduces to the bastard trochee one additional syllable. but this syllable is not short. that is, it is not short in the sense of "short" as applied to the final syllable of the ordinary trochee, where the word means merely the half of long. in this case (that of the additional syllable) "short," if used at all, must be used in the sense of the sixth of long. and all the three final syllables can be called short only with the same understanding of the term. the three together are equal only to the one short syllable (whose place they supply) of the ordinary trochee. it follows that there is no sense in accenting these syllables with [a crescent placed with the curve to the bottom]. we must devise for them some new character which shall denote the sixth of long. let it be the crescent placed with the curve to the left. the whole foot (many are the) might be called a quick trochee. we now come to the final division (me) of mr. cranch's line. it is clear that this foot, short as it appears, is fully equal in time to each of the preceding. it is, in fact, the caesurathe foot which, in the beginning of this paper, i called the most important in all verse. its chief office is that of pause or termination; and hereat the end of a lineits use is easy, because there is no danger of misapprehending its value. we pause on it, by a seeming necessity, just so long as it has taken us to pronounce the preceding feet, whether iambuses, trochees, dactyls, or anapaests. it is thus a variable foot, and, with some care, may be well introduced into the body of a line, as in a little poem of great beauty by mrs. welby: i have / a lit / tle step / son / of on / ly three / years old. / here we dwell on the caesura, son just as long as it requires us to pronounce either of the preceding or succeeding iambuses. its value, therefore, in this line, is that of three short syllables. in the following dactylic line its value is that of four short syllables. pale as a / lily was / emily / [gray]. / i have accented the caesura with brackets by way of expressing this variability of value. i observed just now that there could be no such foot as one of two short syllables. what we start from in the very beginning of all idea on the topic of verse, is quantity, length. thus when we enunciate an independent syllable it is long, as a matter of course. if we enunciate two, dwelling on both we express equality in the enunciation, or length, and have a right to call them two long syllables. if we dwell on one more than the other, we have also a right to call one short, because it is short in relation to the other. but if we dwell on both equally, and with a tripping voice, saying to ourselves here are two short syllables, the query might well be asked of us"in relation to what are they short?" shortness is but the negation of length. to say, then, that two syllables, placed independently of any other syllable, are short, is merely to say that they have no positive length, or enunciationin other words, that they are no syllablesthat they do not exist at all. and if, persisting, we add anything about their equality, we are merely floundering in the idea of an identical equation, where, x being equal to x, nothing is shown to be equal to zero. in a word, we can form no conception of a pyrrhic as of an independent foot. it is a mere chimera bred in the mad fancy of a pedant. from what i have said about the equalization of the several feet of a line, it must not be deduced that any necessity for equality in time exists between the rhythm of several lines. a poem, or even a stanza, may begin with iambuses in the first line, and proceed with anapaests in the second, or even with the less accordant dactyls, as in the opening of quite a pretty specimen of verse by miss mary a. s. aldrich: the wa / ter li / ly sleeps / in pride / down in the / depths of the / azure / [lake.] / here azure is a spondee, equivalent to a dactyl; lake a caesura. i shall now best proceed in quoting the initial lines of byron's "bride of abydos": know ye the land where, the cypress and myrtle are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime, where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle now melt into softness, now madden to crime? know ye the land of the cedar and vine, where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine, and the light wings of zephyr, oppressed with perfume. wax faint o'er the gardens of gul in their bloom? where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit and the voice of the nightingale never is mute where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine, and all save the spirit of man is divine? 'tis the land of the east'tis the clime of the sun can he smile on such deeds as his children have done? oh, wild as the accents of lovers' farewell are the hearts that they bear and the tales that they tell. now the flow of these lines (as times go) is very sweet and musical. they have been often admired, and justlyas times gothat is to say, it is a rare thing to find better versification of its kind. and where verse is pleasant to the ear, it is silly to find fault with it because it refuses to be scanned. yet i have heard men, professing to be scholars, who made no scruple of abusing these lines of byron's on the ground that they were musical in spite of all law. other gentlemen, not scholars, abused "all law" for the same reasonand it occurred neither to the one party nor to the other that the law about which they were disputing might possibly be no law at allan ass of a law in the skin of a lion. the grammars said nothing about dactylic lines, and it was easily seen that these lines were at least meant for dactylic. the first one was, therefore, thus divided: know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle. / the concluding foot was a mystery; but the prosodies said something about the dactylic "measure" calling now and then for a double rhyme; and the court of inquiry were content to rest in the double rhyme, without exactly perceiving what a double rhyme had to do with the question of an irregular foot. quitting the first line, the second was thus scanned: are emblems / of deeds that / are done in / their clime. / it was immediately seen, however, that this would not doit was at war with the whole emphasis of the reading. it could not be supposed that byron, or any one in his senses, intended to place stress upon such monosyllables as "are," "of," and "their," nor could "their clime," collated with "to crime," in the corresponding line below, be fairly twisted into anything like a "double rhyme," so as to bring everything within the category of the grammars. but farther these grammars spoke not. the inquirers, therefore, in spite of their sense of harmony in the lines, when considered without reference to scansion, fell upon the idea that the "are" was a blunderan excess for which the poet should be sent to coventryand, striking it out, they scanned the remainder of the line as follows: -emblems of / deeds that are / done in their / clime. this answered pretty well; but the grammars admitted no such foot as a foot of one syllable; and besides the rhythm was dactylic. in despair, the books are well searched, however, and at last the investigators are gratified by a full solution of the riddle in the profound "observation" quoted in the beginning of this article:"when a syllable is wanting, the verse is said to be catalectic, when the measure is exact, the line is acatalectic; when there is a redundant syllable it forms hypermeter" this is enough. the anomalous line is pronounced to be catalectic at the head and to form hypermeter at the tailand so on, and so on; it being soon discovered that nearly all the remaining lines are in a similar predicament, and that what flows so smoothly to the ear, although so roughly to the eye, is, after all, a mere jumble of catalecticism, acatalecticism, and hypermeternot to say worse. now, had this court of inquiry been in possession of even the shadow of the philosophy of verse, they would have had no trouble in reconciling this oil and water of the eye and ear, by merely scanning the passage without reference to lines, and, continuously, thus: know ye the / land where the / cypress and myrtle are / emblems of deeds that are / done in their / clime where the rage of the / vulture the / love of the / turtle now / melt into / softness now / madden to / know ye the / land of the / cedar and / vine where the flowers ever / blossom the / beams ever / shine and the / light wings of / zephyr op / pressed by per / fume wax / faint o'er the / gardens of / gul in their / bloom where the / citron and / olive are / fairest of / fruit and the / voice of the / nightingale / never is / mute where the / virgins are / soft as the / roses they / twine and / all save the / spirit of / man is di / vine. 'tis the / land of the / east 'tis the / clime of the / sum can he / smile on such / deeds as his / children have / done oh / wild as the / accents of / lovers' fare / well are the / hearts that they / bear and the / tales that they / tell. here "crime" and "tell" are caesuras, each having the value of a dactyl, four short syllables, while "fume wax," "twine and," and "done oh," are spondees which, of course, being composed of two long syllables are also equal to four short, and are the dactyl's natural equivalent. the nicety of byron's ear has led him into a succession of feet which, with two trivial exceptions as regards melody, are absolutely accurate, a very rare occurrence this in dactylic or anapaestic rhythms. the exceptions are found in the spondee "twine and," and the dactyl "smile on such." both feet are false in point of melody. in "twine and" to make out the rhyme we must force "and" into a length which it will not naturally bear. we are called on to sacrifice either the proper length of the syllable as demanded by its position as a member of a spondee, or the customary accentuation of the word in conversation. there is no hesitation, and should be none. we at once give up the sound for the sense, and the rhythm is imperfect. in this instance it is very slightly so, not one person in ten thousand could by ear detect the inaccuracy. but the perfection of verse as regards melody, consists in its never demanding any such sacrifice as is here demanded. the rhythmical must agree thoroughly with the reading flow. this perfection has in no instance been attained, but is unquestionably attainable. "smile on such," a dactyl, is incorrect, because "such," from the character of the two consonants ch cannot easily be enunciated in the ordinary time of a short syllable, which its position declares that it is. almost every reader will be able to appreciate the slight difficulty here, and yet the error is by no means so important as that of the "and" in the spondee. by dexterity we may pronounce "such" in the true time, but the attempt to remedy the rhythmical deficiency of the and by drawing it out, merely aggrevates the offence against natural enunciation by directing attention to the offence. my main object, however, in quoting these lines is to show that in spite of the prosodies, the length of a line is entirely an arbitrary matter. we might divide the commencement of byron's poem thus: know ye the / land where the / or thus: know ye the / land where the / cypress and / or thus: know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle are / or thus: know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle are / emblems of in short, we may give it any division we please, and the lines will be good, provided we have at least two feet in a line. as in mathematics two units are required to form number, so rhythm (from the greek arithmos, number) demands for its formation at least two feet. beyond doubt, we often see such lines as know ye the land where thelines of one foot, and our prosodies admit such, but with impropriety, for common sense would dictate that every so obvious division of a poem as is made by a line, should include within itself all that is necessary for its own comprehension, but in a line of one foot we can have no appreciation of rhythm, which depends upon the equality between two or more pulsations. the false lines, consisting sometimes of a single caesura, which are seen in mock pindaric odes, are, of course, "rhythmical" only in connection with some other line, and it is this want of independent rhythm, which adapts them to the purposes of burlesque alone. their effect is that of incongruity (the principle of mirth), for they include the blankness of prose amid the harmony of verse. my second object in quoting byron's lines was that of showing how absurd it often is to cite a single line from amid the body of a poem for the purpose of instancing the perfection or imperfection of the lines rhythm. were we to see by itself know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle, we might justly condemn it as defective in the final foot, which is equal to only three, instead of being equal to four short syllables. in the foot "flowers ever" we shall find a further exemplification of the principle of the bastard iambus, bastard trochee, and quick trochee, as i have been at some pains in describing these feet above. all the prosodies on english verse would insist upon making elision in "flowers," thus (flow'rs), but this is nonsense. in the quick trochee (many are the) occurring in mr. cranch's trochaic line, we had to equalize the time of the three syllables (ny, are, the) to that of the one short syllable whose position they usurp. accordingly each of these syllables is equal to the third of a short syllable, that is to say, the sixth of a long. but in byron's dactylic rhythm, we have to equalize the time of the three syllables (ers, ev, er) to that of the one long syllable whose position they usurp, or (which is the same thing) of the two short. therefore the value of each of the syllables (ers, ev, and er) is the third of a long. we enunciate them with only half the rapidity we employ in enunciating the three final syllables of the quick trocheewhich latter is a rare foot. the "flowers ever," on the contrary, is as common in the dactylic rhythm as is the bastard trochee in the trochaic, or the bastard iambus in the iambic. we may as well accent it with the curve of the crescent to the right and call it a bastard dactyl. a bastard anapaest, whose nature i now need be at no trouble in explaining, will of course occur now and then in an anapaestic rhythm. [a brief discussion of diacritical marks has been eliminated. ed.] i began the "processes" by a suggestion of the spondee as the first step towards verse. but the innate monotony of the spondee has caused its disappearance as the basis of rhythm from all modern poetry. we may say, indeed, that the french heroicthe most wretchedly monotonous verse in existenceis to all intents and purposes spondaic. but it is not designedly spondaic, and if the french were ever to examine it at all, they would no doubt pronounce it iambic. it must be observed that the french language is strangely peculiar in this pointthat it is without accentuation and consequently without verse. the genius of the people, rather than the structure of the tongue, declares that their words are for the most part enunciated with a uniform dwelling on each syllable. for example we say "syllabification." a frenchman would say syl-la-bi-fi-ca-ti-on, dwelling on no one of the syllables with any noticeable particularity. here again i put an extreme case in order to be well understood, but the general fact is as i give itthat, comparatively, the french have no accentuation; and there can be nothing worth the name of verse without. therefore, the french have no verse worth the namewhich is the fact put in sufficiently plain terms. their iambic rhythm so superabounds in absolute spondees as to warrant me in calling its basis spondaic; but french is the only modern tongue which has any rhythm with such basis, and even in the french it is, as i have said, unintentional. admitting, however, the validity of my suggestion, that the spondee was the first approach to verse, we should expect to find, first, natural spondees (words each forming just a spondee) most abundant in the most ancient languages; and, secondly, we should expect to find spondees forming the basis of the most ancient rhythms. these expectations are in both cases confirmed. of the greek hexameter the intentional basis is spondaic. the dactyls are the variation of the theme. it will be observed that there is no absolute certainty about their points of interposition. the penultimate foot, it is true, is usually a dactyl but not uniformly so, while the ultimate, on which the ear lingers, is always a spondee. even that the penultimate is usually a dactyl may be clearly referred to the necessity of winding up with the distinctive spondee. in corroboration of this idea, again, we should look to find the penultimate spondee most usual in the most ancient verse, and, accordingly, we find it more frequent in the greek than in the latin hexameter. but besides all this, spondees are not only more prevalent in the heroic hexameter than dactyls, but occur to such an extent as is even unpleasant to modern ears, on account of monotony. what the modern chiefly appreciates and admires in the greek hexameter is the melody of the abundant vowel sounds. the latin hexameters really please very few modernsalthough so many pretend to fall into ecstasies about them. in the hexameters quoted several pages ago, from silius italicus, the preponderance of the spondee is strikingly manifest. besides the natural spondees of the greek and latin, numerous artificial ones arise in the verse of these tongues, on account of the tendency which inflection has to throw full accentuation on terminal syllables, and the preponderance of the spondee is further ensured by the comparative infrequency of the small prepositions which we have to serve us instead of case, and also the absence of the diminutive auxiliary verbs with which we have to eke out the expression of our primary ones. these are the monosyllables whose abundance serves to stamp the poetic genius of a language as tripping or dactylic. now paying no attention to these facts, sir philip sidney, professor longfellow, and innumerable other persons, more or less modern, have busied themselves in constructing what they supposed to be "english hexameters on the model of the greek." the only difficulty was that (even leaving out of question the melodious masses of vowel) these gentlemen never could get their english hexameters to sound greek. did they look greek?that should have been the query, and the reply might have led to a solution of the riddle. in placing a copy of ancient hexameters side by side with a copy (in similar type) of such hexameters as professor longfellow, or professor felton or the frogpondian professors collectively, are in the shameful practice of composing "on the model of the greek," it will be seen that the latter (hexameters, not professors) are about one-third longer to the eye, on an average, than the former. the more abundant dactyls make the difference. and it is the greater number of spondees in the greek than in the english, in the ancient than in the modern tongue, which has caused it to fall out that while these eminent scholars were groping about in the dark for a greek hexameter, which is a spondaic rhythm varied now and then by dactyls, they merely stumbled, to the lasting scandal of scholarship, over something which, on account of its long-leggedness, we may as well term a feltonian hexameter, and which is a dactylic rhythm interrupted rarely by artificial spondees which are no spondees at all, and which are curiously thrown in by the heels at all kinds of improper and impertinent points. here is a specimen of the longfellow hexameter: also the / church with / in was a / dorned for / this was the / season / in which the / young their / parent's / hope and the / loved ones of / heaven / should at the / foot of the / altar re / new the / vows of their / baptism / therefore each / nook and / corner was / swept and / cleaned and the / dust was / blown from the / walls and / ceiling and / from the / oil-painted / benches. / mr. longfellow is a man of imagination, but can he imagine that any individual, with a proper understanding of the danger of lockjaw, would make the attempt of twisting his mouth into the shape necessary for the emission of such spondees as "parents," and "from the," or such dactyls as "cleaned and the," and "loved ones of"? "baptism" is by no means a bad spondeeperhaps because it happens to be a dactylof all the rest, however, i am dreadfully ashamed. but these feet, dactyls and spondees, all together, should thus be put at once into their proper position: "also the church within was adorned; for this was the season in which the young, their parents' hope, and the loved ones of heaven, should, at the foot of the altar, renew the vows of their baptism. therefore, each nook and corner was swept and cleaned; and the dust was blown from the walls and ceiling, and from the oil-painted benches? there!that is respectable prose, and it will incur no danger of ever getting its character ruined by anybody's mistaking it for verse. but even when we let these modern hexameters go as greek, and merely hold them fast in their proper character of longfellowine, or feltonian, or frogpondian, we must still condemn them as having been committed in a radical misconception of the philosophy of verse. the spondee, as i observed, is the theme of the greek line. most of the ancient hexameters begin with spondees, for the reason that the spondee is the theme, and the ear is filled with it as with a burden. now the feltonian dactylics have, in the same way, dactyl for the theme, and most of them begin with dactylswhich is all very proper if not very greekbut unhappily, the one point at which they are very greek is that point, precisely, at which they should be nothing but feltonian. they always close with what is meant for a spondee. to be consistently silly they should die off in a dactyl. that a truly greek hexameter cannot, however, be readily composed in english, is a proposition which i am by no means inclined to admit. i think i could manage the point myself. for example: do tell! / when may we / hope to make / men of sense / out of the pundits born and brought / up with their / snouts deep / down in the / mud of the / frog-pond? why ask? / who ever / yet saw / money made / out of a / fat old jew, or / downright / upright / nutmegs / out of a / pine-knot? the proper spondee predominance is here preserved. some of the dactyls are not so good as i could wish, but, upon the whole the rhythm is very decentto say nothing of its excellent sense. the poetic principle in speaking of the poetic principle, i have no design to be either thorough or profound. while discussing, very much at random, the essentiality of what we call poetry, my principal purpose will be to cite for consideration, some few of those minor english or american poems which best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy, have left the most definite impression. by "minor poems" i mean, of course, poems of little length. and here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully, has always had its influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. i hold that a long poem does not exist. i maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms. i need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. the value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. but all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. that degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. after the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flagsfailsa revulsion ensuesand then the poem is, in effect and in fact, no longer such. there are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the critical dictum that the "paradise lost" is to be devoutly admired throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, during perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand. this great work, in fact, is to be regarded as poetical, only when, losing sight of that vital requisite in all works of art, unity, we view it merely as a series of minor poems. if, to preserve its unityits totality of effect or impressionwe read it (as would be necessary) at a single sitting, the result is but a constant alteration of excitement and depression. after a passage of what we feel to be true poetry, there follows, inevitably, a passage of platitude which no critical prejudgment can force us to admire; but if, upon completing the work, we read it again, omitting the first bookthat is to say, commencing with the secondwe shall be surprised at now finding that admirable which we before condemnedthat damnable which we had previously so much admired. it follows from all this that the ultimate, aggregate, or absolute effect of even the best epic under the sun, is a nullity:and this is precisely the fact. in regard to the iliad, we have, if not positive proof, at least very good reason for believing it intended as a series of lyrics; but, granting the epic intention, i can say only that the work is based in an imperfect sense of art. the modern epic is, of the supposititious ancient model, but an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. but the day of these artistic anomalies is over. if, at any time, any very long poem were popular in reality, which i doubt, it is at least clear that no very long poem will ever be popular again. that the extent of a poetical work is, ceteris paribus, the measure of its merit, seems undoubtedly, when we thus state it a proposition sufficiently absurdyet we are indebted for it to the quarterly reviews. surely there can be nothing in mere size, abstractly consideredthere can be nothing in mere bulk, so far as a volume is concerned, which has so continuously elicited admiration from these saturnine pamphlets! a mountain, to be sure, by the mere sentiment of physical magnitude which it conveys, does impress us with a sense of the sublimebut no man is impressed after this fashion by the material grandeur of even "the columbiad." even the quarterlies have not instructed us to be so impressed by it. as yet, they have not insisted on our estimating lamartine by the cubic foot, or pollock by the poundbut what else are we to infer from their continual prating about "sustained effort"? if, by "sustained effort," any little gentleman has accomplished an epic, let us frankly commend him for the effortif this indeed be a thing commendablebut let us forbear praising the epic on the effort's account. it is to be hoped that common sense, in the time to come, will prefer deciding upon a work of art rather by the impression it makesby the effect it producesthan by the time it took to impress the effect, or by the amount of "sustained effort" which had been found necessary in effecting the impression. the fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius quite anothernor can all the quarterlies in christendom confound them. by and by, this proposition, with many which i have been just urging, will be received as self-evident. in the meantime, by being generally condemned as falsities, they will not be essentially damaged as truths. on the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. a very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring effect. there must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax. de beranger has wrought innumerable things, pungent and spirit-stirring, but in general they have been too imponderous to stamp themselves deeply into the public attention, and thus, as so many feathers of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be whistled down the wind. a remarkable instance of the effect of undue brevity in depressing a poem, in keeping it out of the popular view, is afforded by the following exquisite little serenade i arise from dreams of thee in the first sweet sleep of night, when the winds are breathing low, and the stars are shining bright. i arise from dreams of thee, and a spirit in my feet has led mewho knows how? to thy chamber-window, sweet! the wandering airs they faint on the dark the silent stream the champak odors fail like sweet thoughts in a dream; the nightingale's complaint, it dies upon her heart, as i must die on thine, o, beloved as thou art! o, lift me from the grass! i die, i faint, i fail! let thy love in kisses rain on my lips and eyelids pale. my cheek is cold and white, alas! my heart beats loud and fast: o, press it close to thine again, where it will break at last. very few perhaps are familiar with these linesyet no less a poet than shelley is their author. their warm, yet delicate and ethereal imagination will be appreciated by all, but by none so thoroughly as by him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved to bathe in the aromatic air of a southern midsummer night. one of the finest poems by willisthe very best in my opinion which he has ever writtenhas no doubt, through this same defect of undue brevity, been kept back from its proper position, not less in the critical than in the popular view: the shadows lay along broadway, 'twas near the twilight-tide and slowly there a lady fair was walking in her pride. alone walk'd she; but, viewlessly, walk'd spirits at her side. peace charm'd the street beneath her feet, and honour charm'd the air, and all astir looked kind on her, and called her good as fair for all god ever gave to her she kept with chary care. she kept with care her beauties rare from lovers warm and true for heart was cold to all but gold, and the rich came not to woo but honour'd well her charms to sell if priests the selling do. now walking there was one more fair a slight girl lily-pale; and she had unseen company to make the spirit quail 'twixt want and scorn she walk'd forlorn, and nothing could avail. no mercy now can clear her brow from this world's peace to pray, for as loves wild prayer dissolved in air, her woman's heart gave way! but the sin forgiven by christ in heaven, by man is cursed alway! in this composition we find it difficult to recognise the willis who has written so many mere "verses of society." the lines are not only richly ideal, but full of energy, while they breathe an earnestness, an evident sincerity of sentiment, for which we look in vain throughout all the other works of this author. while the epic mania, while the idea that to merit in poetry prolixity is indispensable, has for some years past been gradually dying out of the public mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity, we find it succeeded by a heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which, in the brief period it has already endured, may be said to have accomplished more in the corruption of our poetical literature than all its other enemies combined. i allude to the heresies of the didactic. it has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all poetry is truth. every poem, it is said, should inculcate a moral, and by this moral is the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. we americans especially have patronized this happy idea, and we bostonians very especially have developed it in full. we have taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem's sake, and to acknowledge such to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and force:but the simple fact is that would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem, this poem per se, this poem which is a poem and nothing more, this poem written solely for the poem's sake. with as deep a reverence for the true as ever inspired the bosom of man, i would nevertheless limit, in some measure, its modes of inculcation. i would limit to enforce them. i would not enfeeble them by dissipation. the demands of truth are severe. she has no sympathy with the myrtles. all that which is so indispensable in song is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do. it is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. in enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. we must be simple, precise, terse. we must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. in a word, we must be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. he must be blind indeed who does not perceive the radical and chasmal difference between the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation. he must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of poetry and truth. dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious distinctions, we have the pure intellect, taste, and the moral sense. i place taste in the middle, because it is just this position which in the mind it occupies. it holds intimate relations with either extreme; but from the moral sense is separated by so faint a difference that aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the virtues themselves. nevertheless we find the offices of the trio marked with a sufficient distinction. just as the intellect concerns itself with truth, so taste informs us of the beautiful, while the moral sense is regardful of duty. of this latter, while conscience teaches the obligation, and reason the expediency, taste contents herself with displaying the charms:waging war upon vice solely on the ground of her deformityher disproportionher animosity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the harmoniousin a word, to beauty. an immortal instinct deep within the spirit of man is thus plainly a sense of the beautiful. this it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors and sentiments amid which he exists. and just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments a duplicate source of delight. but this mere repetition is not poetry. he who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of description, of the sights, and sounds, and odors, and colors, and sentiments which greet him in common with all mankindhe, i say, has yet faded to prove his divine title. there is still a something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. we have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. this thirst belongs to the immortality of man. it is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. it is the desire of the moth for the star. it is no mere appreciation of the beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the beauty above. inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of time to attain a portion of that loveliness whose very elements perhaps appertain to eternity alone. and thus when by poetry, or when by music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not as the abbate gravina supposes, through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses. the struggle to apprehend the supernal lovelinessthis struggle, on the part of souls fittingly constitutedhas given to the world all that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as poetic. the poetic sentiment, of course, may develop itself in various modesin painting, in sculpture, in architecture, in the dancevery especially in musicand very peculiarly, and with a wide field, in the composition of the landscape garden. our present theme, however, has regard only to its manifestation in words. and here let me speak briefly on the topic of rhythm. contenting myself with the certainty that music, in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in poetry as never to be wisely rejectedis so vitally important an adjunct that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, i will not now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. it is in music perhaps that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the poetic sentiment it strugglesthe creation of supernal beauty. it may be, indeed, that here this sublime end is, now and then, attained in fact. we are often made to feel, with a shivering delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken notes which cannot have been unfamiliar to the angels. and thus there can be little doubt that in the union of poetry with music in its popular sense, we shall find the widest field for the poetic development. the old bards and minnesingers had advantages which we do not possessand thomas moore, singing his own songs, was, in the most legitimate manner, perfecting them as poems. to recapitulate then:i would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty. its sole arbiter is taste. with the intellect or with the conscience it has only collateral relations. unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with duty or with truth. a few words, however, in explanation. that pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, i maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. in the contemplation of beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or excitement of the soul, which we recognise as the poetic sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from truth, which is the satisfaction of the reason, or from passion, which is the excitement of the heart. i make beauty, thereforeusing the word as inclusive of the sublimei make beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of art that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes:no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at least most readily attainable in the poem. it by no means follows, however, that the incitements of passion, or the precepts of duty, or even the lessons of truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage, for they may subserve incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the work: but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection to that beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence of the poem. i cannot better introduce the few poems which i shall present for your consideration, than by the citation of the proem to longfellow's "waif": the day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of night, as a feather is wafted downward from an eagle in his flight. i see the lights of the village gleam through the rain and the mist, and a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, that my soul cannot resist; a feeling of sadness and longing, that is not akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain. come, read to me some poem, some simple and heartfelt lay, that shall soothe this restless feeling, and banish the thoughts of day. not from the grand old masters, not from the bards sublime, whose distant footsteps echo through the corridors of time. for, like strains of martial music, their mighty thoughts suggest life's endless toil and endeavour; and to-night i long for rest. read from some humbler poet, whose songs gushed from his heart, as showers from the clouds of summer, or tears from the eyelids start; who through long days of labor, and nights devoid of ease, still heard in his soul the music of wonderful melodies. such songs have power to quiet the restless pulse of care, and come like the benediction that follows after prayer. then read from the treasured volume the poem of thy choice, and lend to the rhyme of the poet the beauty of thy voice. and the night shall be filled with music, and the cares that infest the day shall fold their tents like the arabs, and as silently steal away. with no great range of imagination, these lines have been justly admired for their delicacy of expression. some of the images are very effective. nothing can be better than -the bards sublime, whose distant footsteps echo down the corridors of time. the idea of the last quatrain is also very effective. the poem on the whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful insouciance of its metre, so well in accordance with the character of the sentiments, and especially for the ease of the general manner. this "ease" or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long been the fashion to regard as ease in appearance aloneas a point of really difficult attainment. but not so:a natural manner is difficult only to him who should never meddle with itto the unnatural. it is but the result of writing with the understanding, or with the instinct, that the tone, in composition, should always be that which the mass of mankind would adoptand must perpetually vary, of course, with the occasion. the author who, after the fashion of "the north american review," should be upon all occasions merely "quiet," must necessarily upon many occasions be simply silly, or stupid; and has no more right to be considered "easy" or "natural" than a cockney exquisite, or than the sleeping beauty in the waxworks. among the minor poems of bryant, none has so much impressed me as the one which he entitles "june." i quote only a portion of it: there, through the long, long summer hours, the golden light should lie, and thick young herbs and groups of flowers stand in their beauty by. the oriole should build and tell his love-tale, close beside my cell; the idle butterfly should rest him there, and there be heard the housewife-bee and humming bird. and what if cheerful shouts at noon, come, from the village sent, or songs of maids, beneath the moon, with fairy laughter blent? and what if, in the evening light, betrothed lovers walk in sight of my low monument? i would the lovely scene around might know no sadder sight nor sound. i know, i know i should not see the season's glorious show, nor would its brightness shine for me; nor its wild music flow; but if, around my place of sleep, the friends i love should come to weep, they might not haste to go. soft airs and song, and the light and bloom, should keep them lingering by my tomb. these to their soften'd hearts should bear the thoughts of what has been, and speak of one who cannot share the gladness of the scene; whose part in all the pomp that fills the circuit of the summer hills, isthat his grave is green; and deeply would their hearts rejoice to hear again his living voice. the rhythmical flow here is even voluptuousnothing could be more melodious. the poem has always affected me in a remarkable manner. the intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet's cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soulwhile there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. the impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. and if, in the remaining compositions which i shall introduce to you, there be more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of true beauty. it is, nevertheless, a feeling of sadness and longing that is not akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain. the taint of which i speak is clearly perceptible even in a poem so full of brilliancy and spirit as "the health" of edward coate pinckney: i fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone, a woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon; to whom the better elements and kindly stars have given a form so fair that, like the air, 'tis less of earth than heaven. her every tone is musies own, like those of morning birds, and something more than melody dwells ever in her words; the coinage of her heart are they, and from her lips each flows as one may see the burden'd be forth issue from the rose. affections are as thoughts to her, the measures of her hours; her feelings have the fragrancy, the freshness of young flowers; and lovely passions, changing oft, so fill her, she appears the image of themselves by turns, the idol of past years! of her bright face one glance will trace a picture on the brain, and of her voice in echoing hearts a sound must long remain; but memory, such as mine of her, so very much endears when death is nigh my latest sigh will not be life's, but hers. i fill'd this cup to one made up of loveliness alone, a woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon her health! and would on earth there stood, some more of such a frame, that life might be all poetry, and weariness a name. it was the misfortune of mr. pinckney to have been born too far south. had he been a new englander, it is probable that he would have been ranked as the first of american lyrists by that magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled the destinies of american letters, in conducting the thing called "the north american review." the poem just cited is especially beautiful; but the poetic elevation which it induces we must refer chiefly to our sympathy in the poet's enthusiasm. we pardon his hyperboles for the evident earnestness with which they are uttered. it was by no means my design, however, to expatiate upon the merits of what i should read you. these will necessarily speak for themselves. boccalini, in his "advertisements from parnassus," tells us that zoilus once presented apollo a very caustic criticism upon a very admirable book:whereupon the god asked him for the beauties of the work. he replied that he only busied himself about the errors. on hearing this, apollo, handing him a sack of unwinnowed wheat, bade him pick out all the chaff for his reward. now this fable answers very well as a hit at the criticsbut i am by no means sure that the god was in the right. i am by no means certain that the true limits of the critical duty are not grossly misunderstood. excellence, in a poem especially, may be considered in the light of an axiom, which need only be properly put, to become self-evident. it is not excellence if it require to be demonstrated as such:and thus to point out too particularly the merits of a work of art, is to admit that they are not merits altogether. among the "melodies" of thomas moore is one whose distinguished character as a poem proper seems to have been singularly left out of view. i allude to his lines beginning"come, rest in this bosom." the intense energy of their expression is not surpassed by anything in byron. there are two of the lines in which a sentiment is conveyed that embodies the all in all of the divine passion of lovea sentiment which, perhaps, has found its echo in more, and in more passionate, human hearts than any other single sentiment ever embodied in words: come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still here; here still is the smile, that no cloud can o'ercast, and a heart and a hand all thy own to the last. oh! what was love made for, if 'tis not the same through joy and through torment, through glory and shame? i know not, i ask not, if guilt's in that heart, i but know that i love thee, whatever thou art. thou hast call'd me thy angel in moments of bliss, and thy angel i'll be, 'mid the horrors of this, through the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to pursue, and shield thee, and save thee,or perish there tool it has been the fashion of late days to deny moore imagination, while granting him fancya distinction originating with coleridgethan whom no man more fully comprehended the great powers of moore. the fact is, that the fancy of this poet so far predominates over all his other faculties, and over the fancy of all other men, as to have induced, very naturally, the idea that he is fanciful only. but never was there a greater mistake. never was a grosser wrong done the fame of a true poet. in the compass of the english language i can call to mind no poem more profoundlymore weirdly imaginative, in the best sense, than the lines commencing"i would i were by that dim lake"which are the composition of thomas moore. i regret that i am unable to remember them. one of the noblestand, speaking of fancyone of the most singularly fanciful of modern poets, was thomas hood. his "fair ines" had always for me an inexpressible charm: o saw ye not fair ines? she's gone into the west, to dazzle when the sun is down, and rob the world of rest; she took our daylight with her, the smiles that we love best, with morning blushes on her cheek, and pearls upon her breast. o turn again, fair ines, before the fall of night, for fear the moon should shine alone, and stars unrivall'd bright; and blessed will the lover be that walks beneath their light, and breathes the love against thy cheek i dare not even write! would i had been, fair ines, that gallant cavalier, who rode so gaily by thy side, and whisper'd thee so near! were there no bonny dames at home or no true lovers here, that he should cross the seas to win the dearest of the dear? i saw thee, lovely ines, descend along the shore, with bands of noble gentlemen, and banners waved before, and gentle youth and maidens gay, and snowy plumes they wore; it would have been a beauteous dream, if it had been no more! alas, alas, fair ines, she went away with song, with music waiting on her steps, and shoutings of the throng; but some were sad and felt no mirth, but only music's wrong, in sounds that sang farewell, farewell, to her you've loved so long. farewell, farewell, fair ines, that vessel never bore so fair a lady on its deck, nor danced so light before, alas for pleasure on the sea, and sorrow on the shore! the smile that blest one lover's heart has broken many more! "the haunted house," by the same author, is one of the truest poems ever written,one of the truest, one of the most unexceptionable, one of the most thoroughly artistic, both in its theme and in its execution. it is, moreover, powerfully idealimaginative. i regret that its length renders it unsuitable for the purposes of this lecture. in place of it permit me to offer the universally appreciated "bridge of sighs": one more unfortunate, weary of breath, gone to her death! take her up tenderly, lift her with care, fashion'd so slenderly, young and so fair! look at her garments clinging like cerements; whilst the wave constantly drips from her clothing; take her up instantly, loving, not loathing. touch her not scornfully, think of her mournfully, gently and humanly, not of the stains of her, all that remains of her now is pure womanly. make no deep scrutiny into her mutiny rash and undutiful; past all dishonor, death has left on her only the beautiful. where the lamps quiver so far in the river, with many a light from window and casement from garret to basement, she stood, with amazement, houseless by night the bleak wind of march made her tremble and shiver, but not the dark arch, or the black flowing river: mad from life's history, glad to death's mystery, swift to be hurl'd anywhere, anywhere out of the world! in she plunged boldly, no matter how coldly the rough river ran, over the brink of it, picture it,think of it, dissolute man! lave in it, drink of it then, if you can! still, for all slips of her one of eves family wipe those poor lips of hers oozing so clammily, loop up her tresses escaped from the comb, her fair auburn tresses; whilst wonderment guesses where was her home? who was her father? who was her mother? had she a sister? had she a brother? or was there a dearer one still, and a nearer one yet, than all other? alas! for the rarity of christian charity under the sun! oh! it was pitiful near a whole city full, home she had none. sisterly, brotherly, fatherly, motherly, feelings had changed: love, by harsh evidence, thrown from its eminence, seeming estranged. take her up tenderly, lift her with care; fashion'd so slenderly, young, and so fair! ere her limbs frigidly stiffen too rigidly, decently,kindly, smooth and compose them; and her eyes, close them, staring so blindly! dreadfully staring through muddy impurity, as when with the daring last look of despairing fixed on futurity. perishing gloomily, spurred by contumely, cold inhumanity, burning insanity, into her rest, cross her hands humbly, as if praying dumbly, over her breast! owning her weakness, her evil behaviour, and leaving, with meekness, her sins to her saviour! the vigour of this poem is no less remarkable than its pathos. the versification although carrying the fanciful to the very verge of the fantastic, is nevertheless admirably adapted to the wild insanity which is the thesis of the poem. among the minor poems of lord byron is one which has never received from the critics the praise which it undoubtedly deserves: though the day of my destiny's over, and the star of my fate hath declined thy soft heart refused to discover the faults which so many could find; though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, it shrunk not to share it with me, and the love which my spirit hath painted it never hath found but in thee. then when nature around me is smiling, the last smile which answers to mine, i do not believe it beguiling, because it reminds me of thine, and when winds are at war with the ocean, as the breasts i believed in with me, if their billows excite an emotion, it is that they bear me from thee. though the rock of my last hope is shivered, and its fragments are sunk in the wave, though i feel that my soul is delivered to painit shall not be its slave. there is many a pang to pursue me: they may crush, but they shall not contemn they may torture, but shall not subdue me 'tis of thee that i thinknot of them. though human, thou didst not deceive me, though woman, thou didst not forsake, though loved, thou forborest to grieve me, though slandered, thou never couldst shake, though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, though parted, it was not to fly, though watchful, 'twas not to defame me, nor mute, that the world might belie. yet i blame not the world, nor despise it, nor the war of the many with one if my soul was not fitted to prize it, 'twas folly not sooner to shun: and if dearly that error hath cost me, and more than i once could foresee, i have found that whatever it lost me, it could not deprive me of thee. from the wreck of the past, which hath perished, thus much i at least may recall, it hath taught me that which i most cherished deserved to be dearest of all: in the desert a fountain is springing, in the wide waste there still is a tree, and a bird in the solitude singing, which speaks to my spirit of thee. although the rhythm here is one of the most difficult, the versification could scarcely be improved. no nobler theme ever engaged the pen of poet. it is the soul-elevating idea that no man can consider himself entitled to complain of fate while in his adversity he still retains the unwavering love of woman. from alfred tennyson, although in perfect sincerity i regard him as the noblest poet that ever lived, i have left myself time to cite only a very brief specimen. i call him, and think him the noblest of poets, not because the impressions he produces are at all times the most profoundnot because the poetical excitement which be induces is at all times the most intensebut because it is at all times the most etherealin other words, the most elevating and most pure. no poet is so little of the earth, earthy. what i am about to read is from his last long poem, "the princess": tears, idle tears, i know not what they mean, tears from the depth of some divine despair rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, in looking on the happy autumn fields, and thinking of the days that are no more. fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, that brings our friends up from the underworld, sad as the last which reddens over one that sinks with all we love below the verge; so sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns the earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds to dying ears, when unto dying eyes the casement slowly grows a glimmering square; so sad, so strange, the days that are no more. dear as remember'd kisses after death, and sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd on lips that are for others; deep as love, deep as first love, and wild with all regret, o death in life, the days that are no more. thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect manner, i have endeavoured to convey to you my conception of the poetic principle. it has been my purpose to suggest that, while this principle itself is strictly and simply the human aspiration for supernal beauty, the manifestation of the principle is always found in an elevating excitement of the soul, quite independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the heart, or of that truth which is the satisfaction of the reason. for in regard to passion, alas! its tendency is to degrade rather than to elevate the soul. love, on the contrarylovethe true, the divine erosthe uranian as distinguished from the dionnan venusis unquestionably the purest and truest of all poetical themes. and in regard to truth, if, to be sure, through the attainment of a truth we are led to perceive a harmony where none was apparent before, we experience at once the true poetical effect; but this effect is referable to the harmony alone, and not in the least degree to the truth which merely served to render the harmony manifest. we shall reach, however, more immediately a distinct conception of what the true poetry is, by mere reference to a few of the simple elements which induce in the poet himself the true poetical effect. he recognises the ambrosia which nourishes his soul in the bright orbs that shine in heavenin the volutes of the flowerin the clustering of low shrubberiesin the waving of the grain-fieldsin the slanting of tall eastern treesin the blue distance of mountainsin the grouping of cloudsin the twinkling of half-hidden brooksin the gleaming of silver riversin the repose of sequestered lakesin the star-mirroring depths of lonely wells. he perceives it in the songs of birdsin the harp of aeolusin the sighing of the night-windin the repining voice of the forestin the surf that complains to the shorein the fresh breath of the woodsin the scent of the violetin the voluptuous perfume of the hyacinthin the suggestive odour that comes to him at eventide from far-distant undiscovered islands, over dim oceans, illimitable and unexplored. he owns it in all noble thoughtsin all unworldly motivesin all holy impulsesin all chivalrous, generous, and self-sacrificing deeds. he feels it in the beauty of womanin the grace of her stepin the lustre of her eyein the melody of her voicein her soft laughter, in her sighin the harmony of the rustling of her robes. he deeply feels it in her winning endearmentsin her burning enthusiasmsin her gentle charitiesin her meek and devotional endurancesbut above allah, far above all he kneels to ithe worships it in the faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the altogether divine majestyof her love. let me conclude bythe recitation of yet another brief poemone very different in character from any that i have before quoted. it is by motherwell, and is called "the song of the cavalier." with our modern and altogether rational ideas of the absurdity and impiety of warfare, we are not precisely in that frame of mind best adapted to sympathize with the sentiments, and thus to appreciate the real excellence of the poem. to do this fully we must identify ourselves in fancy with the soul of the old cavalier: then mounte! then mounte, brave gallants all, and don your helmes amaine: deathe's couriers, fame and honour call us to the field againe. no shrewish teares shall fill your eye when the sword-hilt's in our hand, heart-whole we'll part, and no whit sighe for the fayrest of the land; let piping swaine, and craven wight, thus weepe and puling crye, our business is like men to fight, and hero-like to die! the end . walter scott: chronicles of the canongate ========================================= a machine-readable transcription [for archival on the internet wiretap, the portions have been concatenated. no other changes have been made.] version 1.0: 1993-03-25 this machine-readable transcription of the chronicles of the canongate is based on the text published as volumes 41 and 48 of the waverley novels by archibald constable and company in 1896. volume 41 also included the keepsake stories, which have been separated from the chronicles. the tale `the surgeon's daughter' originally appeared in volume 48, for reasons only printers and publishers will understand. the order of the files in this distribution are as follows: introduction the author's introduction introduction.appendix account of the first public announcement of scott's authorship of the waverley novels introductory chrystal croftangry account of himself introductory.notes the.highland.widow the highland.widow.notes the.two.drovers.introduction the.two.drovers the two.drovers.notes the.surgeons.daughter.introduction the.surgeons.daughter.preface the.surgeons.daughter the.surgeons.daughter.conclusion changes to the text ------------------ page-breaks have been removed end-of-line hyphenations have been removed, and the previously hyphenated word placed at the end of the first text line. the text itself has been the main guide for keeping or removing the hyphen; in some cases the centenary edition has been consulted. small capitals in names have been replaced by lower-case letters, otherwise by capitals. appendix.to.introduction p. lxvi: genius (genuis) introductory: p. 11: waistcoat (waistcoast) p. 17: position (postion) p. 44: magnificent (magnificient) p. 83: don't (dont) p. 87: postscript (postcript) the.highland.widow p. xxx: corrie dhu (corri dhu) odd, that 'dhu' is so spelled here, while previusly it is spelled 'dhu'. same in c.e. p. 223 pedestrians (pedes|| trains) p. 223 termed (term-) p. 287 missing '?' (hast thou at lest become sick) surgeons daughter: p. 153: taken by an eminent artist (arilst) p. 174: but faith, this schiller (``but faith) p. 216: of whose loss she had (lose) p. 304: adding fuel to fire (feul) p. 337: use, he apprehended, to enable (apprehended to missing comma) p. 339: all these feelings (``all) p. 382: force on her inclinations.'' (inclinations,'') p. 383: ``villain---double-dyed (missing dash) p. 385: thou art governor (go-||venor) p. 387: garment. in the (garment in) p. 395: former adventures, the plundering (missing comma) p. 403: brandished (bran-||nished) p. 404: we have formerly described (formesly) p. ???: he presumed him to be entirely ignorant (persumed) markup conventions -----------------_ _ is placed around words that are italicized in the text = = is placed around words with extra emphasis - small caps in the text. --is used to represent an em dash. longer sequences of hyphens indicates correspondingly longer dashes <oe> signifies the oe ligature <ae> signifies the ae ligature <ae> signifies the <ae> ligature <a`> signifies the a grave <e'> signifies the e acute <e`> signifies the e grave <e^> signifies an e circumflex <c,> signifies a c with cedilla footnotes footnotes in the text were placed at the foot of the page; in this edition they have been placed immediately after the line in which they are referenced. the footnote callout is always an asterisk,* * like this and the text of the footnote has been placed, slightly indented, between two empty lines, as illustrated above. if the footnote comes at the end of a paragraph, the first line of the following paragraph is indented two spaces, as usual. most footnotes are just references to end-notes. in the original text, these appeared at the end of each chapter -in this electronic edition, they have been placed in a file of their own, following the model used in the centenary edition. the page numbers of the original footnotes have been replaced by letters a, b, etc, again on the pattern used in the centenary edition. notes ---- in the surgeon's daughter, the various amounts of money are printed as l.100, l.200 and l.2000 etc. these are so printed in the original, although the centenary edition uses a pound sterling sign instead of "l.". the surgeon's daughter seems rather unevenly edited. here are some of the unevennesses i've found: hindostan, hindustan hindoo, hindhu jackall, jackals town-clerk, town-clerk there also seems to be some occasional inconsistence in the use of the following words. governor, governor government, government the differences appear in both the original source and the cententary edition the transcription and proof-reading was done by anders thulin, rydsvagen 288, s-582 50 linkoping, sweden. email address: ath@linkoping.trab.se i'd be glad to learn of any errors that you may find in the text. [1. introduction] introduction to chronicles of the canongate. the preceding volume of this collection concluded the last of the pieces originally published under the _nominis umbra_ of the author of waverley; and the circumstances which rendered it impossible for the writer to continue longer in the possession of his incognito, were communicated in 1827, in the introduction to the first series of chronicles of the canongate,---consisting (besides a biographical sketch of the imaginary chronicler) of three tales, entitled ``the highland widow,'' ``the two drovers,'' and ``the surgeon's daughter.'' in the present volume the two first named of these pieces are included, together with three detached stories, which appeared the year after in the elegant compilation called ``the keepsake.'' the ``surgeon's daughter'' it is thought better to defer until a succeeding volume, than to ``begin and break off in the middle.'' i have, perhaps, said enough on former occasions of the misfortunes which led to the dropping of that mask under which i had, for a long series of years, enjoyed so large a portion of public favour. through the success of those literary efforts, i had been enabled to indulge most of the tastes, which a retired person of my station might be supposed to entertain. in the pen of this nameless romancer, i seemed to possess something like the secret fountain of coined gold and pearls vouchsafed to the traveller of the eastern tale; and no doubt believed that i might venture, without silly imprudence, to extend my personal expenditure considerably beyond what i should have thought of, had my means been limited to the competence which i derived from inheritance, with the moderate income of a professional situation. i bought, and built, and planted, and was considered by myself, as by the rest of the world, in the safe possession of an easy fortune. my riches, however, like the other riches of this world, were liable to accidents, under which they were ultimately destined to make unto themselves wings and fly away. the year 1825, so disastrous to many branches of industry and commerce, did not spare the market of literature; and the sudden ruin that fell on so many of the booksellers, could scarcely gave been expected to leave unscathed one, whose career had of necessity connected him deeply and extensively with the pecuniary transactions of that profession. in a word, almost without one note of premonition, i found myself involved in the sweeping catastrophe of the unhappy time, and called on to meet the demands of creditors upon commercial establishments with which my fortunes had long been bound up, to the extent of no less a sum than one hundred and twenty thousand pounds. the author having, however rashly, committed his pledges thus largely to the hazards of trading companies, it behoved him, of course, to abide the consequences of his conduct, and, with whatever feelings, he surrendered on the instant every shred of property which he had been accustomed to call his own. it became vested in the hands of gentlemen, whose integrity, prudence, and intelligence, were combined with all possible liberality and kindness of disposition, and who readily afforded every assistance towards the execution of plans, in the success of which the author contemplated the possibility of his ultimate extrication, and which were of such a nature, that, had assistance of this sort been withheld, he could have had little prospect of carrying them into effect. among other resources which occurred, was the project of that complete and corrected edition of his novels and romances, (whose real parentage had of necessity been disclosed at the moment of the commercial convulsions alluded to,) which has now advanced with unprecedented favour nearly to its close; but as he purposed also to continue, for the behoof of those to whom he was indebted, the exercise of his pen in the same path of literature, so long as the state of his countrymen should seem to approve of his efforts, it appeared to him that it would have been an idle piece of affectation to attempt getting up a new _incognito_, after his original visor had been thus dashed from his brow. hence the personal narrative prefixed to the first work of fiction which he put forth after the paternity of the ``waverley novels'' had come to be publicly ascertained: and though many of the particulars originally avowed in that notice have been unavoidably adverted to in the prefaces and notes to some of the preceding volumes of the present collection, it is now reprinted as it stood at the time, because some interest is generally attached to a coin or medal struck on a special occasion, as expressing, perhaps, more faithfully than the same artist could have afterwards conveyed, the feelings of the moment that gave it birth. the introduction to the first series of chronicles of the canongate ran, then, in these words: introduction. all who are acquainted with the early history of the italian stage are aware, that arlechino is not, in his original conception, a mere worker of marvels with his wooden sword, a jumper in and out of windows, as upon our theatre, but, as his party-coloured jacket implies, a buffoon or clown, whose mouth, far from being eternally closed, as amongst us, is filled, like that of touchstone, with quips, and cranks, and witty devices, very often delivered extempore. it is not easy to trace how he became possessed of his black vizard which was anciently made in the resemblance of the face of a cat; but it seems that the mask was essential to the performance of the character, as will appear from the following theatrical anecdote:-- an actor on the italian stage permitted at the foire du st germain, in paris, was renowned for the wild, venturous, and extravagant wit, the brilliant sallies and fortunate repartees, with which he prodigally seasoned the character of the party-coloured jester. some critics, whose good-will towards a favourite performer was stronger than their judgment, took occasion to remonstrate with the successful actor on the subject of the grotesque vizard. they went wilily to their purpose, observing that his classical and attic wit, his delicate vein of humour, his happy turn for dialogue, were rendered burlesque and ludicrous by this unmeaning and bizzare disguise, and that those attributes would become far more impressive, if aided by the spirit of his eye and the expression of his natural features. the actor's vanity was easily so far engaged as to induce him to make the experiment. he played harlequin barefaced, but was considered on all hands as having made a total failure. he had lost the audacity which a sense of incognito bestowed, and with it all the reckless play of raillery which gave vivacity to his original acting. he cursed his advisers, and resumed his grotesque vizard; but, it is said, without ever being able to regain the careless and successful levity which the consciousness of the disguise had formerly bestowed. perhaps the author of waverley is now about to incur a risk of the same kind, and endanger his popularity by having laid aside his incognito. it is certainly not a voluntary experiment, like that of harlequin; for it was my original intention never to have avowed these works during my lifetime, and the original manuscripts were carefully preserved, (though by the care of others rather than mine,) with the purpose of supplying the necessary evidence of the truth when the period of announcing it should arrive.* but the * these manuscripts are at present (august 1831) advertised for public sale, which is an addition, though a small one, to other annoyances. affairs of my publishers having unfortunately passed into a management different from their own, i had no right any longer to rely upon secrecy in that quarter; and thus my mask, like my aunt dinah's in ``tristram shandy,'' having begun to wax a little threadbare about the chin, it became time to lay it aside with a good grace, unless i desired it should fall in pieces from my face, which was now become likely. yet i had not the slightest intention of selecting the time and place in which the disclosure was finally made; nor was there any concert betwixt my learned and respected friend lord meadowbank and myself upon that occasion. it was, as the reader is probably aware, upon the 23d february last, at a public meeting, called for establishing a professional theatrical fund in edinburgh, that the communication took place. just before we sat down to table, lord meadowbank* * one of the supreme judges of scotland, termed lords of council and session. asked me privately, whether i was still anxious to preserve my incognito on the subject of what were called the waverley novels? i did not immediately see the purpose of his lordship's question, although i certainly might have been led to infer it, and replied, that the secret had now of necessity become known to so many people that i was indifferent on the subject. lord meadowbank was thus induced, while doing me the great honour of proposing my health to the meeting, to say something on the subject of these novels, so strongly connecting them with me as the author, that by remaining silent, i must have stood convicted, either of the actual paternity, or of the still greater crime of being supposed willing to receive indirectly praise to which i had no just title. i thus found myself suddenly and unexpectedly placed in the confessional, and had only time to recollect that i had been guided thither by a most friendly hand, and could not, perhaps, find a better public opportunity to lay down a disguise, which began to resemble that of a detected masquerader. i had therefore the task of avowing myself, to the numerous and respectable company assembled, as the sole and unaided author of these novels of waverley, the paternity of which was likely at one time to have formed a controversy of some celebrity, for the ingenuity with which some instructors of the public gave their assurance on the subject, was extremely persevering. i now think it further necessary to say, that while i take on myself all the merits and demerits attending these compositions, i am bound to acknowledge with gratitude, hints of subjects and legends which i have received from various quarters, and have occasionally used as a foundation of my fictitious compositions, or woven up with them in the shape of episodes. i am bound, in particular, to acknowledge the unremitting kindness of mr joseph train, supervisor of excise at dumfries, to whose unwearied industry i have been indebted for many curious traditions, and points of antiquarian interest. it was mr train who brought to my recollection the history of old mortality, although i myself had had a personal interview with that celebrated wanderer so far back as about 1792, when i found him on his usual task. he was then engaged in repairing the gravestones of the covenanters who had died while imprisoned in the castle of dunnottar, to which many of them were committed prisoners at the period of argyle's rising; their place of confinement is still called the whigs' vault. mr train, however, procured for me far more extensive information concerning this singular person, whose name was patterson, than i had been able to acquire during my own short conversation with him.* he was (as i think i have * see, for some further particulars, the notes to old mortality, in the present collective edition. somewhere already stated) a native of the parish of closeburn, in dumfries-shire, and it is believed that domestic affliction, as well as devotional feeling, induced him to commence the wandering mode of life, which he pursued for a very long period. it is more than twenty years since robert patterson's death, which took place on the high-road near lockerby, where he was found exhausted and expiring. the white pony, the companion of his pilgrimage, was standing by the side of its dying master; the whole furnishing a scene not unfitted for the pencil. these particulars i had from mr train. another debt, which i pay most willingly, i owe to an unknown correspondent (a lady),* * the late mrs goldie. who favoured me with the history of the upright and high-principled female, whom, in the heart of mid-lothian, i have termed jeanie deans. the circumstance of her refusing to save her sister's life by an act of perjury, and undertaking a pilgrimage to london to obtain her pardon, are both represented as true by my fair and obliging correspondent; and they led me to consider the possibility of rendering a fictitious personage interesting by mere dignity of mind and rectitude of principle, assisted by unpretending good sense and temper, without any of the beauty, grace, talent, accomplishment, and wit, to which a heroine of romance is supposed to have a prescriptive right. if the portrait was received with interest by the public, i am conscious how much it was owing to the truth and force of the original sketch, which i regret that i am unable to present to the public, as it was written with much feeling and spirit. old and odd books, and a considerable collection of family legends, formed another quarry, so ample, that it was much more likely that the strength of the labourer should be exhausted than that materials should fail. i may mention, for example's sake, that the terrible catastrophe of the bride of lammermoor actually occurred in a scottish family of rank. the female relative, by whom the melancholy tale was communicated to me many years since, was a near connexion of the family in which the event happened and always told it with an appearance of melancholy mystery, which enhanced the interest, she had known, in her youth, the brother who rode before the unhappy victim to the fatal altar, who, though then a mere boy, and occupied almost entirely with the gaiety of his own appearance in the bridal procession, could not but remark that the hand of his sister was moist, and cold as that of a statue. it is unnecessary further to withdraw the veil from this scene of family distress, nor, although it occurred more than a hundred years since, might it be altogether agreeable to the representatives of the families concerned in the narrative. it may be proper to say, that the events alone are imitated; but i had neither the means nor intention of copying the manners, or tracing the characters, of the persons concerned in the real story. indeed, i may here state generally, that although i have deemed historical personages free subjects of delineation, i have never on any occasion violated the respect due to private life. it was indeed impossible that traits proper to persons, both living and dead, with whom i have had intercourse in society, should not have risen to my pen in such works as waverley, and those which followed it. but i have always studied to generalize the portraits, so that they should still seem, on the whole, the productions of fancy though possessing some resemblance to real individuals. yet i must own my attempts have not in this last particular been uniformly successful. there are men whose characters are so peculiarly marked, and the delineation of some leading and principal feature, inevitably places the whole person before you in his individuality. thus, the character of jonathan oldbuck, in the antiquary, was partly founded on that of an old friend of my youth, to whom i am indebted for introducing me to shakspeare, and other invaluable favours; but i thought i had so completely disguised the likeness, that his features could not be recognised by any one now alive. i was mistaken, however, and indeed had endangered what i desired should be considered as a secret; for i afterwards learned that a highly respectable gentleman, one of the few surviving friends of my father,* and an * james chalmers, esq. solicitor at law, london, who died during the publication of the present edition of these novels. (aug. 1831.) acute critic, had said, upon the appearance of the work, that he was now convinced who was the author of it, as he recognised, in the antiquary of monkbarns, traces of the character of a very intimate friend of my father's family. i may here also notice, that the sort of exchange of gallantry, which is represented as taking place betwixt the baron of bradwardine and colonel talbot, is a literal fact. the real circumstances of the anecdote, alike honourable to whig and tory, are these:-- alexander stewart of invernahyle,---a name which i cannot write without the warmest recollections of gratitude to the friend of my childhood, who first introduced me to the highlands, their traditions, and their manners,--had been engaged actively in the troubles of 1745. as be charged at the battle of preston with his clan, the stewarts of appine, he saw an officer of the opposite army standing alone by a battery of four cannon, of which he discharged three on the advancing highlanders, and then drew his sword. invernahyle rushed on him, and required him to surrender, ``never to rebels!'' was the undaunted reply, accompanied with a lounge, which the highlander received on his target; but instead of using his sword in cutting down his now defenceless antagonist, he employed it in parrying the blow of a lochaber axe, aimed at the officer by the miller, one of his own followers, a grim-looking old highlander, whom i remember to have seen. thus overpowered, lieutenant colonel allan whitefoord, a gentleman of rank and consequence, as well as a brave officer, gave up his sword, and with it his purse and watch, which invernahyle accepted, to save them from his followers. after the affair was over, mr stewart sought out his prisoner, and they were introduced to each other by the celebrated john roy stewart, who acquainted colonel whitefoord with the quality of his captor, and made him aware of the necessity of receiving back his property, which he was inclined to leave in the hands into which it had fallen. so great became the confidence established betwixt them, that invernahyle obtained from the chevalier his prisoner's freedom upon parole; and soon afterwards, having been sent back to the highlands to raise men he visited colonel whitefoord at his own house, and spent two happy days with him and his whig friends, without thinking, on either side, of the civil war which was then raging. when the battle of culloden put an end to the hopes of charles edward, invernahyle, wounded and unable to move, was home from the field by the faithful zeal of his retainers. but, as he had been a distinguished jacobite, his family and property were exposed to the system of vindictive destruction, too generally carried into execution through the country of the insurgents. it was now colonel whitefoord's turn to exert himself, and he wearied all the authorities, civil and military, with his solicitations for pardon to the saver of his life, or at least for a protection for his wife and family. his applications were for a long time unsuccessful: ``i was found with the mark of the beast upon me in every list,'' was invernahyle's expression. at length colonel whitefoord applied to the duke of cumberland, and urged his suit with every argument which he could think of. being still repulsed, he took his commission from his bosom, and, having said something of his own and his family's exertions in the cause of the house of hanover, begged to resign his situation in their service, since he could not be permitted to show his gratitude to the person to whom he owed his life. the duke, struck with his earnestness, desired him to take up his commission, and granted the protection required for the family of invernahyle. the chieftain himself lay concealed in a cave near his own house, before which a small body of regular soldiers, were encamped. he could hear their muster-roll called every morning, and their drums beat to quarters at night, and not a change of the sentinels escaped him. as it was suspected that he was lurking somewhere on the property, his family were closely watched, and compelled to use the utmost precaution in supplying him with food. one of his daughters, a child of eight or ten years old, was employed as the agent least likely to be suspected. she was an instance among others, that a time of danger and difficulty creates a premature sharpness of intellect. she made herself acquainted among the soldiers, till she became so familiar to them, that her motions escaped their notice; and her practice was, to stroll away into the neighbourhood of the cave, and leave what slender supply of food she carried for that purpose under some remarkable stone, or the root of some tree, where her father might find it as he crept by night from his lurking-place. times became milder, and my excellent friend was relieved from proscription by the act of indemnity. such is the interesting story which i have rather injured than improved, by the manner in which it is told in waverley. this incident, with several other circumstances illustrating the tales in question, was communicated by me to my late lamented friend, william erskine, (a scottish judge, by the title of lord kinedder,) who afterwards reviewed with far too much partiality the tales of my landlord, for the quarterly review of january 1817.* in the same article, * lord kinedder died in august 1822. eheu! (aug. 1831) are contained other illustrations of the novels, with which i supplied my accomplished friend, who took the trouble to write the review. the reader who is desirous of such information, will find the original of meg merrilees, and i believe of one or two other personages of the same cast of character, in the article referred to. i may also mention, that the tragic and savage circumstances which are represented as preceding the birth of allan macaulay, in the legend of montrose, really happened in the family of stewart of ardvoirlich. the wager about the candlesticks, whose place was supplied by highland torch-bearers, was laid and won by one of the macdonalds of keppoch. there can be but little amusement in winnowing out the few grains of truth which are contained in this mass of empty fiction. may, however, before dismissing the subject, allude to the various localities which have been affixed to some of the scenery introduced into these novels, by which, for example, wolf's-hope is identified with past-castle in berwickshire,---tillietudlem with draphane in clydesdale,---and the valley in the monastery, called glendearg, with the dale of the river allan, above lord somerville's villa, near melrose. i can only say, that, in these and other instances, i had no purpose of describing any particular local spot; and the resemblance must therefore be of that general kind which necessarily exists between scenes of the same character. the iron-bound coast of scotland affords upon its headlands and promontories fifty such castles as wolf's-hope; every county has a valley more or less resembling glendearg; and if castles like tillietudlem, or mansions like the baron of bradwardine's, are now less frequently to be met with, it is owing to the rage of indiscriminate destruction, which has removed or ruined so many monuments of antiquity, when they were not protected by their inaccessible situation.* * i would particularly intimate the kaim of uric, on the eastern coast of scotland, as having suggested an idea for the tower called wolf's-crag, which the public more generally identified with the ancient tower of fast-castle. the scraps of poetry which have been in most cases tacked to the beginning of chapters in these novels, are sometimes quoted either from reading or from memory, but, in the general case, are pure invention. i found it too troublesome to turn to the collection of the british poets to discover apposite mottos, and, in the situation of the theatrical mechanist, who, when the white paper which represented his shower of snow was exhausted, continued the storm by snowing brown, i drew on my memory as long as i could, and, when that failed, eked it out with invention. i believe that, in some cases, where actual names are affixed to the supposed quotations, it would be to little purpose to seek them in the works of the authors referred to. in some cases, i have been entertained when dr watts and other graver authors, have been ransacked in vain for stanzas for which the novelist alone was responsible. and now the reader may expect me, while in the confessional, to explain the motives why i have so long persisted iii disclaiming the works of which i am now writing. to this it would be difficult to give any other reply, save that of corporal nym---it was the authors humour or caprice for the time. i hope it will not be construed into ingratitude to the public, to whose indulgence i have owed my _sang froid_ much more than to any merit of my own, if i confess that i am, and have been, more indifferent to success, or to failure, as an author, than may be the case with others, who feel more strongly the passion for literary fame, probably because they are justly conscious of a better title to it. it was not until i had attained the age of thirty years that i made any serious attempt at distinguishing myself as an author; and at that period, men's hopes, desires, and wishes, have usually acquired something of a decisive character, and are not eagerly and easily diverted into a new channel. when i made the discovery,---for to me it was one, ---that by amusing myself with composition, which i felt a delightful occupation, i could also give pleasure to others, and became aware that literary pursuits were likely to engage in future a considerable portion of my time, i felt some alarm that i might acquire those habits of jealousy and fretfulness which have lessened, and even degraded, the character even of great authors, and rendered them, by their petty squabbles and mutual irritability, the laughing-stock of the people of the world. i resolved, therefore, in this respect to guard my breast, perhaps an unfriendly critic may add, my brow, with triple brass,* and as much as * not altogether impossible, when it is considered that i have been at the bar since 1792. (aug. 1831.) possible to avoid resting my thoughts and wishes upon literary success, lest i should endanger my own peace of mind and tranquillity by literary failure. it would argue either stupid apathy, or ridiculous affectation, to say that i have been insensible to the public applause, when i have been honoured with its testimonies; and still more highly do i prize the invaluable friendships which some temporary popularity has enabled me to form among those of my contemporaries most distinguished by talents and genius, and which i venture to hope now rest upon a basis more firm than the circumstances which gave rise to them. yet feeling all these advantages as a man ought to do, and must do, i may say, with truth and confidence, that i have, i think, tasted of the intoxicating cup with moderation, and that i have never, either in conversation or correspondence, encouraged discussions respecting my own literary pursuits. on the contrary, i have usually found such topics, even when introduced from motives most flattering to myself, rather embarrassing and disagreeable. i have now frankly told my motives for concealment, so far as i am conscious of having any, and the public will forgive the egotism of the detail, as what is necessarily connected with it. the author, so long and loudly called for, has appeared on the stage, and made his obeisance to the audience. thus far his conduct is a mark of respect. to linger in their presence would be intrusion. i have only to repeat, that i avow myself in print, as formerly in words, the sole and unassisted author of all the novels published as works of the ``author of waverley.'' i do this without shame, for i am unconscious that there is any thing in their composition which deserves reproach, either on the score of religion or morality; and without any feeling of exultation, because, whatever may have been their temporary success, i am well aware how much their reputation depends upon the caprice of fashion; and i have already mentioned the precarious tenure by which it is held, as a reason for displaying no great avidity in grasping at the possession. i ought to mention, before concluding, that twenty persons, at least, were, either from intimacy, or from the confidence which circumstances rendered necessary, participant of this secret; and as there was no instance, to my knowledge, of any one of the number breaking faith, i am the more obliged to them, because the slight and trivial character of the mystery was not qualified to inspire much respect in those intrusted with it. nevertheless, like jack the giant-killer, i was fully confident in the advantage of my ``coat of darkness,'' and had it not been from compulsory circumstances, i would have indeed been very cautious how i parted with it. as for the work which follows, it was meditated, and in part printed, long before the avowal of the novels took place, and originally commenced with a declaration that it was neither to have introduction nor preface of any kind. this long proem, prefixed to a work intended not to have any, may, however, serve to show how human purposes, in the most trifling, as well as the most important affairs, are liable to be controlled by the course of events. thus, we begin to cross a strong river with our eyes and our resolution fixed on that point of the opposite shore, on which we purpose to land; but, gradually giving way to the torrent, are glad, by the aid perhaps of branch or bush, to extricate ourselves at some distant and perhaps dangerous landing-place, much farther down the stream than that on which we had fixed our intentions. hoping that the courteous reader will afford to a known and familiar acquaintance some portion of the favour which he extended to a disguised candidate for his applause, i beg leave to subscribe myself his obliged humble servant, walter scott. abbotsford, _october_ 1, 1827. -------- such was the little narrative which i thought proper to put forth in october 1827: nor have i much to add to it now. about to appear for the first time in my own name in this department of letters, it occurred to me that something in the shape of a periodical publication might carry with it a certain air of novelty, and i was willing to break, if i may so express it, the abruptness of my personal forthcoming, by investing an imaginary coadjutor with at least as much distinctness of individual existence as i had ever previously thought it worth while to bestow on shadows of the same convenient tribe. of course, it had never been in my contemplation to invite the assistance of any real person in the sustaining of my quasi-editorial character and labours. it had long been my opinion, that any thing like a literary _picnic_ is likely to end in suggesting comparisons, justly termed odious, and therefore to be avoided: and, indeed, i had also had some occasion to know, that promises of assistance, in efforts of that order, are apt to be more magnificent than the subsequent performance. i therefore planned a miscellany, to be dependent, after the old fashion, on my own resources alone, and although conscious enough that the moment which assigned to the author of waverley ``a local habitation and a name,'' had seriously endangered his spell, i felt inclined to adopt the sentiment of my old hero montrose, and to say to myself, that in literature, as in war, ``he either fears his fate too much, or his deserts are small, who dares not put it to the touch, to win or lose it all.'' to the particulars explanatory of the plan of these chronicles, which the reader is presented with in chapter ii. by the imaginary editor, mr croftangry, i have now to add, that the lady, termed in his narrative, mrs bethune balliol, was designed to shadow out in its leading points the interesting character of a dear friend of mine, mrs murray keith,* whose * the keiths of craig, in kincardineshire, descended from john keith, fourth son of william, second earl marischal, who got from his father, about 1480, the lands of craig, and part of garvock, in that county. in douglas's baronage, 443 to 445, is a pedigree of that family. colonel robert keith of craig (the seventh in descent from john) by his wife, agnes, daughter of robert murray of murrayshall, of the family of blackbarony, widow of colonel stirling, of the family of keir, had one son; viz. robert keith of craig, ambassador to the court of vienna, afterwards to st petersburgh, which latter situation he held at the accession of king george iii.,---who died at edinburgh in 1774. he married margaret, second daughter of sir william cunningham of caprington, by janet, only child and heiress of sir james dick of prestonfield; and, among other children of this marriage, were, the late well-known diplomatist, sir robert murray keith, k. b., a general in the army, and for some time ambassador at vienna; sir basil keith, knight, captain in the navy, who died governor of jamaica; and my excellent friend, anne murray keith, who ultimately came into possession of the family estates, and died not long before the date of this introduction, (1831.) death occurring shortly before had saddened a wide circle, much attached to her, as well for her genuine virtue and amiable qualities of disposition, as for the extent of information which she possessed, and the delightful manner in which she was used to communicate it. in truth, the author had, on many occasions, been indebted to her vivid memory for the _substratum_ of his scottish fictions---and she accordingly had been, from an early period, at no loss to fix the waverley novels on the right culprit. in the sketch of chrystal croftangry's own history, the author has been accused of introducing some not polite allusions to respectable living individuals: but he may safely, he presumes, pass over such an insinuation. the first of the narratives which mr croftangry proceeds to lay before the public, ``the highland widow,'' was derived from mrs murray keith, and is given, with the exception of a few additional circumstances---the introduction of which i am rather inclined to regret---very much as the excellent old lady used to tell the story. neither the highland cicerone macturk, nor the demure washingwoman, were drawn from imagination: and on re-reading my tale, after the lapse of a few years, and comparing its effect with my remembrance of my worthy friend's oral narration, which was certainly extremely affecting, i cannot but suspect myself of having marred its simplicity by some of those interpolations, which, at the time when i penned them, no doubt passed with myself for embellishments. the next tale, entitled ``the two drovers,'' i learned from another old friend, the late george constable, esq. of wallace-craigie, near dundee, whom i have already introduced to my reader as the original antiquary of monkbarns. he had been present, i think, at the trial at carlisle, and seldom mentioned the venerable judges charge to the jury, without shedding tears,---which had peculiar pathos, as flowing down features, carrying rather a sarcastic or almost a cynical expression. this worthy gentleman's reputation for shrewd scottish sense---knowledge of our national antiquities---and a racy humour, peculiar to himself, must be still remembered. for myself, i have pride in recording that for many years we were, in wordsworth's language, ``------a pair of friends, though i was young, and `george was seventy-two.'' w. s. abbotsford, _aug_. 15,1831. [2. introduction appendix] appendix to introduction. [it has been suggested to the author, that it might be well to reprint here a detailed account of the public dinner alluded to in the foregoing introduction, as given in the newspapers of the time; and the reader is accordingly presented with the following extract from the edinburgh weekly journal for wednesday, 28th february, 1827.] ----- theatrical fund dinner. before proceeding with our account of this very interesting festival---for so it may be termed ---it is our duty to present to our readers the following letter, which we have received from the president. to the editor of the edinburgh weekly journal. sir,---i am extremely sorry i have not leisure to correct the copy you sent me of what i am stated to have said at the dinner for the theatrical fund. i am no orator; and upon such occasions as are alluded to, i say as well as i can what the time requires. however, i hope your reporter has been more accurate in other instances than in mine. i have corrected one passage, in which i am made to speak with great impropriety and petulance, respecting the opinions of those who do not approve of dramatic entertainments. i have restored what i said, which was meant to be respectful, as every objection founded in conscience is, in my opinion, entitled to be so treated. other errors i left as i found them, it being of little consequence whether i spoke sense or nonsense, in what was merely intended for the purpose of the hour. i am, sir, your obedient servant, walter scott. _edinburgh, monday_. ----- the theatrical fund dinner, which took place on friday, in the assembly rooms, was conducted with admirable spirit. the chairman, sir walter scott, among his other great qualifications, is well fitted to enliven such an entertainment. his manners are extremely easy, and his style of speaking simple and natural, yet full of vivacity and point; and he has the art, if it be art, of relaxing into a certain homeliness of manner, without losing one particle of his dignity. he thus takes off some of that solemn formality which belongs to such meetings, and, by his easy and graceful familiarity, imparts to them somewhat of the pleasing character of a private entertainment. near sir w. scott sat the earl of fife, lord meadowbank, sir john hope of pinkie, bart., admiral adam, baron clerk rattray, gilbert innes, esq., james walker, esq., robert dundas, esq., alexander smith, esq., &c. the cloth being removed, ``non nobis domine'' was sung by messrs thorne, swift, collier, and hartley, after which the following toasts were given from the chair:-- ``the king''---all the honours. ``the duke of clarence and the royal family.'' the chairman, in proposing the next toast, which he wished to be drunk in solemn silence, said it was to the memory of a regretted prince, whom we had lately lost. every individual would at once conjecture to whom he alluded. he had no intention to dwell on his military merits. they had been told in the senate; they had been repeated in the cottage; and whenever a soldier was the theme, his name was never far distant. but it was chiefly in connexion with the business of this meeting, which his late royal highness had condescended in a particular manner to patronise, that they were called on to drink his health. to that charity he had often sacrificed his time, and had given up the little leisure which he had from important business. he was always ready to attend on every occasion of this kind, and it was in that view that he proposed to drink to the memory of his late royal highness the duke of york.--drunk in solemn silence. the chairman then requested that gentlemen would fill a bumper as full as it would hold, while he would say only a few words. he was in the habit of hearing speeches, and he knew the feeling with which long ones were regarded. he was sure that it was perfectly unnecessary for him to enter into any vindication of the dramatic art, which they had come here to support. this, however, be considered to be the proper time and proper occasion for him to say a few words on that love of representation which was an innate feeling in human nature. it was the first amusement that the child had---it grew greater as he grow up; and, even in the decline of life, nothing amused so much as when a common tale is told with appropriate personification. the first thing a child does is to ape his schoolmaster, by flogging a chair. the assuming a character ourselves, or the seeing others assume an imaginary character, is an enjoyment natural to humanity. it was implanted in our very nature, to take pleasure from such representations, at proper times and on proper occasions. in all ages the theatrical art had kept pace with the improvement of mankind, and with the progress of letters and the fine arts. as man has advanced from the ruder stages of society, the love of dramatic representations has increased, and all works of this nature have been improved, in character and in structure. they had only to turn their eyes to the history of ancient greece, although he did not pretend to be very deeply versed in its ancient drama. its first tragic poet commanded a body of troops at the battle of marathon. sophocles and euripides were men of rank in athens, when athens was in its highest renown. they shook athens with their discourses, as their theatrical works shook the theatre itself. if they turned to france in the time of louis the fourteenth, that era which is the classical history of that country, they would find that it was referred to by all frenchmen as the golden age of the drama there. and also in england, in the time of queen elizabeth, the drama was at its highest pitch, when the nation began to mingle deeply and wisely in the general politics of europe, not only not receiving laws from others, but giving laws to the world, and vindicating the rights of mankind. (cheers.) there have been various times when the dramatic art subsequently fell into disrepute. its professors have been stigmatized; and laws have been passed against them, less dishonourable to them than to the statesmen by whom they were proposed, and to the legislators by whom they were adopted. what were the times in which these laws were passed? was it not when virtue was seldom inculcated as a moral duty, that we were required to relinquish the most rational of all our amusements, when the clergy were enjoined celibacy, and when the laity were denied the right to read their bibles? he thought that it must have been from a notion of penance that they erected the drama into an ideal place of profaneness, and spoke of the theatre as of the tents of sin. he did not mean to dispute, that there were many excellent persons who thought differently from him, and he disclaimed the slightest idea of charging them with bigotry or hypocrisy on that account. he gave them full credit for their tender consciences, in making these objections, although they did not appear relevant to him. but to these persons, being, as he believed them, men of worth and piety, he was sure the purpose of this meeting would furnish some apology for an error, if there be any, in the opinions of those who attend. they would approve the gift, although they might differ in other points. such might not approve of going to the theatre, but at least could not deny that they might give away from their superfluity, what was required for the relief of the sick, the support of the aged, and the comfort of the afflicted. these were duties enjoined by our religion itself. (loud cheers.) the performers are in a particular manner entitled to the support or regard, when in old age or distress, of those who had partaken of the amusements of those places which they render an ornament to society. their art was of a peculiarly delicate and precarious nature. they had to serve a long apprenticeship. it was very long before even the first-rate geniuses could acquire the mechanical knowledge of the stage business. they must languish long in obscurity before they can avail themselves of their natural talents; and after that, they have but a short space of time, during which they are fortunate if they can provide the means of comfort in the decline of life. that comes late, and lasts but a short time; after which they are left dependent. their limbs fail---their teeth are loosened---their voice is lost---and they are left, after giving happiness to others, in a most disconsolate state. the public were liberal and generous to those deserving their protection. it was a sad thing to be dependent on the favour, or, be might say, in plain terms, on the caprice, of the public; and this more particularly for a class of persons of whom extreme prudence is not the character. there might be instances of opportunities being neglected; but let each gentleman tax himself, and consider the opportunities they had neglected, and the sums of money they had wasted; let every gentleman look into his own bosom, and say whether these were circumstances which would soften his own feelings, were he to be plunged into distress. he put it to every generous bosom--to every better feeling---to say what consolation was it to old age to be told that you might have made provision at a time which had been neglected ---(loud cheers),---and to find it objected, that if you had pleased you might have been wealthy. he had hitherto been speaking of what, in theatrical language, was called _stars_, but they were sometimes falling ones. there were another class of sufferers naturally and necessarily connected with the theatre, without whom it was impossible to go on. the sailors have a saying, every man cannot be a boatswain. if there must be a great actor to act hamlet, there must also be people to act laertes, the king, rosencrantz, and guildenstern, otherwise a drama cannot go on. if even garrick himself were to rise from the dead, he could not act hamlet alone. there must be generals, colonels, commanding-officers, subalterns. but what are the private soldiers to do? many have mistaken their own talents, and have been driven in early youth to try the stage, to which they are not competent. he would know what to say to the indifferent poet and to the bad artist. he would say that it was foolish, and he would recommend to the poet to become a scribe, and the artist to paint sign-posts---(loud laughter).---but you could not send the player adrift, for if he cannot play hamlet, he must play guildenstern. where there are many labourers, wages must be low, and no man in such a situation can decently support a wife and family, and save something off his income for old age. what is this man to do in latter life? are you to cast him off like an old hinge, or a piece of useless machinery, which has done its work? to a person who had contributed to our amusement, this would be unkind, ungrateful, and unchristian. his wants are not of his own making, but arise from the natural sources of sickness and old age. it cannot be denied that there is one class of sufferers to whom no imprudence can be ascribed, except on first entering on the profession. after putting his band to the dramatic plough, be cannot draw back; but must continue at it, and toil, till death release him from want, or charity, by its milder influence, steps in to render that want more tolerable. he had little more to say, except that he sincerely hoped that the collection to-day, from the number of respectable gentlemen present, would meet the views entertained by the patrons. he hoped it would do so. they should not be disheartened. though they could not do a great deal, they might do something. they had this consolation, that every thing they parted with from their superfluity would do some good. they would sleep the better themselves when they have been the means of giving sleep to others. it was ungrateful and unkind, that those who had sacrificed their youth to our amusement should not receive the reward due to them, but should be reduced to hard fare in their old age. we cannot think of poor falstaff going to bed without his cup of sack, or macbeth fed on bones as marrowless as those of banquo.---(loud cheers and laughter.)---as he believed that they were all as fond of the dramatic art as he was in his younger days, he would propose that they should drink ``the theatrical fund,'' with three times three. mr mackay rose, on behalf of his brethren, to return their thanks for the toast just drunk. many of the gentlemen present, he said, were perhaps not fully acquainted with the nature and intention of the institution, and it might not be amiss to enter into some explanation on the subject. with whomsoever the idea of a theatrical fund might have originated, (and it had been disputed by the surviving relatives of two or three individuals,) certain it was, that the first legally constituted theatrical fund owed its origin to one of the brightest ornaments of the profession, the late david garrick. that eminent actor conceived that, by a weekly subscription in the theatre, a fund might be raised among its members, from which a portion might be given to those of his less fortunate brethren, and thus an opportunity would be offered for prudence to provide what fortune had denied---a comfortable provision for the winter of life. with the welfare of his profession constantly at heart, the zeal with which he laboured to uphold its respectability, and to impress upon the minds of his brethren, not only the necessity, but the blessing of independence, the fund became his peculiar care. he drew up a form of laws for its government, procured, at his own expense, the passing of an act of parliament for its confirmation, bequeathed to it a handsome legacy, and thus became the father of the drury-lane fund. so constant was his attachment to this infant establishment, that be chose to grace the close of the brightest theatrical life on record, by the last display of his transcendent talent, on the occasion of a benefit for this child of his adoption, which ever since has gone by the name of the garrick fund. in imitation of his. noble example, funds had been established in several provincial theatres in england; but it remained for mrs henry siddons and mr william murray to become the founders of the first theatrical fund in scotland. (cheers.) this fund commenced under the most favourable auspices; it was liberally supported by the management, and highly patronised by the public. notwithstanding, it fell short in the accomplishment of its intentions. what those intentions were, he (mr mackay) need not recapitulate, but they failed; and he did not hesitate to confess that a want of energy on the part of the performers was the probable cause. a new set of rules and regulations were lately drawn up, submitted to and approved of at a general meeting of the members of the theatre; and accordingly the fund was re-modelled on the 1st of january last. and here he thought he did but echo the feelings of his brethren, by publicly acknowledging the obligations they were under to the management, for the aid given, and the warm interest they had all along taken in the welfare of the fund. (cheers.) the nature and object of the profession had been so well treated of by the president, that he would say nothing; but of the numerous offspring of science and genius that court precarious fame, the actor boasts the slenderest claim of all; the sport of fortune, the creatures of fashion, and the victims of caprice---they are seen, beard, and admired, but to be forgot---they leave no trace, no memorial of their existence---they ``come like shadows, so depart.'' (cheers.) yet humble though their pretensions be, there was no profession, trade, or calling, where such a combination of requisites, mental and bodily) were indispensable. in all others the principal may practise after he has been visited by the afflicting hand of providence---some by the loss of limb---some of voice---and many, when the faculty of the mind is on the wane, may be assisted by dutiful children, or devoted servants. not so the actor---he must retain all he ever did possess, or sink dejected to a mournful home. (applause.) yet while they are toiling for ephemeral theatric fame, how very few ever possess the means of hoarding in their youth that which would give bread in old age! but now a brighter prospect dawned upon them, and to the success of this their infant establishment they looked with hope, as to a comfortable and peaceful home in their declining years. he concluded by tendering to the meeting, in the name of his brethren and sisters, their unfeigned thanks for their liberal support, and begged to propose the health of the patrons of the edinburgh theatrical fund. (cheers.) lord meadowbank said, that by desire of his hon. friend in the chair, and of his noble friend at his right hand, he begged leave to return thanks for the honour which had been conferred on the patrons of this excellent institution. he could answer for himself---he could answer for them all ---that they were deeply impressed with the meritorious objects which it has in view, and of their anxious wish to promote its interests. for himself, he hoped he might be permitted to say, that he was rather surprised at finding his own name as one of the patrons, associated with so many individuals of high rank and powerful influence. but it was an excuse for those who had placed him in a situation so honourable and so distinguished, that when this charity was instituted, he happened to hold a high and responsible station under the crown, when he might have been of use in assisting and promoting its objects. his lordship much feared that he could have little expectation, situated as he now was, of doing either; but he could confidently assert, that few things would give him greater gratification than being able to contribute to its prosperity and support; and, indeed when one recollects the pleasure which at all periods of life he has received from the exhibitions of the stage, and the exertions of the meritorious individuals for whose aid this fund has been established, he must be divested both of gratitude and feeling who would not give his best endeavours to promote its welfare. and now that he might in some measure repay the gratification which had been afforded himself, he would beg leave to propose a toast, the health of one of the patrons, a great and distinguished individual, whose name must always stand by itself, and which, in an assembly such as this, or in any other assembly of scotsmen, can never be received, (not he would say with ordinary feelings of pleasure or of delight,) but with those of rapture and enthusiasm. in doing so he felt that he stood in a somewhat new situation. whoever had been called upon to propose the health of his hon. friend to whom he alluded, some time ago, would have found himself enabled, from the mystery in which certain matters were involved, to gratify himself and his auditors by allusions which found a responding chord in their own feelings, and to deal in the language, the sincere language, of panegyric, without intruding on the modesty of the great individual to whom be referred. but it was no longer possible, consistently with the respect to one's auditors, to use upon this subject terms either of mystification, or of obscure or indirect allusion. the clouds have been dispelled---the _darkness visible_ has been cleared away---and the great unknown ---the minstrel of our native land---the mighty magician who has rolled back the current of time, and conjured up before our living senses the men and the manners of days which have long passed away, stands revealed to the hearts and the eyes of his affectionate and admiring countrymen. if he himself were capable of imagining all that belonged to this mighty subject---were he even able to give utterance to all that as a friend, as a man, and as a scotsman, he must feel regarding it, yet knowing, as he well did, that this illustrious individual was not more distinguished for his towering talents, than for those feelings which rendered such allusions ungrateful to himself, however sparingly introduced, he would, on that account, still refrain from doing that which would otherwise be no less pleasing to him than to his audience. but this his lordship hoped he would be allowed to say, (his auditors would not pardon him were be to say less,) we owe to him, as a people, a large and heavy debt of gratitude. he it is who has opened to foreigners the grand and characteristic beauties of our country. it is to him that we owe that our gallant ancestors and the struggles of our illustrious patriots---who fought and bled in order to obtain and secure that independence and that liberty we now enjoy---have obtained a fame no longer confined to the boundaries of a remote and comparatively obscure nation, and who has called down upon their struggles for glory and freedom the admiration of foreign countries. he it is who has conferred a new reputation on our national character, and bestowed on scotland an imperishable name, were it only by her having given birth to himself. (loud and rapturous applause.) sir walter scott certainly did not think that, in coming here to-day, he would have the task of acknowledging, before 300 gentlemen, a secret which, considering that it was communicated to more than twenty people, had been remarkably well kept. he was now before the bar of his country, and might be understood to be on trial before lord meadowbank as an offender; yet he was sure that every impartial jury would bring in a verdict of not proven. he did not now think it necessary to enter into the reasons of his long silence. perhaps caprice might have a considerable share in it. he had now to say, however, that the merits of these works, if they had any, and their faults, were entirely imputable to himself. (long and loud cheering.) he was afraid to think on what he had done. ``look on't again i dare not.'' he had thus far unbosomed himself, and he knew that it would be reported to the public. he meant, then, seriously to state, that when he said he was the author, he was the total and undivided author. with the exception of quotations, there was not a single word that was not derived from himself, or suggested in the course of his reading. the wand was now broken, and the book buried. you will allow me further to say, with prospero, it is your breath that has filled my sails, and to crave one single toast in the capacity of the author of these novels; and he would dedicate a bumper to the health of one who has represented some of those characters, of which he had endeavoured to give the skeleton, with a degree of liveliness which rendered him grateful. he would propose the health of his friend bailie nicol jarvie, (loud applause)---and he was sure, that when the author of waverley and rob roy drinks to nicol jarvie, it would be received with that degree of applause to which that gentleman has always been accustomed, and that they would take care that on the present occasion it should be =prodigious=! (long and vehement applause.) mr mackay, who here spoke with great humour in the character of bailie jarvie.---my conscience! my worthy father the deacon could not have believed that his son could hae had sic a compliment paid to him by the great unknown! sir walter scott.---the small known now, mr bailie. mr mackay.---he had been long identified with the bailie, and he was vain of the cognomen which he had now worn for eight years; and he questioned if any of his brethren in the council had given such universal satisfaction. (loud laughter and applause.) before he sat down, he begged to propose ``the lord provost and the city of edinburgh.'' sir walter scott apologized for the absence of the lord provost, who had gone to london on public business. tune---``within a mile of edinburgh town.'' sir walter scott gave, ``the duke of wellington and the army.'' glee---``how merrily we live.'' ``lord melville and the navy, that fought till they left nobody to fight with, like an arch sportsman who clears all and goes after the game.'' mr pat. robertson---they had heard this evening a toast, which had been received with intense delight, which will be published in every newspaper, and will be hailed with joy by all europe. he had one toast assigned him which he had great pleasure in giving. he was sure that the stage had in all ages a great effect on the morals and manners of the people. it was very desirable that the stage should be well regulated; and there was no criterion by which its regulation could be better determined than by the moral character and personal respectability of the performers. he was not one of those stern moralists who objected to the theatre. the most fastidious moralist could not possibly apprehend any injury from the stage of edinburgh, as it was presently managed, and so long as it was adorned by that illustrious individual, mrs henry siddons, whose public exhibitions were not more remarkable for feminine grace and delicacy, than was her private character for every virtue which could be admired in domestic life. he would conclude with reciting a few words from shakspeare, in a spirit not of contradiction to those stern moralists who disliked the theatre, but of meekness:---``good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? do you hear, let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time.'' he then gave ``mrs henry siddons, and success to the theatre-royal of edinburgh.'' mr murray.---gentlemen, i rise to return thanks for the honour you have done mrs siddons, in doing which i am somewhat difficulted, from the extreme delicacy which attends a brother's expatiating upon a sister's claims to honours publicly paid---(hear, hear)---yet, gentlemen, your kindness emboldens me to say, that were i to give utterance to all a brother's feelings, i should not exaggerate those claims. (loud applause.) i therefore, gentlemen, thank you most cordially for the honour you have done her, and shall now request permission to make an observation on the establishment of the edinburgh theatrical fund. mr mackay has done mrs henry siddons and myself the honour to ascribe the establishment to us; but no, gentlemen, it owes its origin to a higher source---the publication of the novel of rob roy ---the unprecedented success of the opera adapted from that popular production. (hear, hear.) it was that success which relieved the edinburgh theatre from its difficulties, and enabled mrs siddons to carry into effect the establishment of a fund she had long desired, but was prevented from effecting, from the unsettled state of her theatrical concerns. i therefore hope that, in future years, when the aged and infirm actor derives relief from this fund, he will, in the language of the gallant highlander, ``cast his eye to good old scotland, and not forget rob roy.'' (loud applause.) sir walter scott here stated, that mrs siddons wanted the means but not the will of beginning the theatrical fund. he here alluded to the great merits of mr murray's management, and to his merits as an actor, which were of the first order, and of which every person who attends the theatre must be sensible; and after alluding to the embarrassments with which the theatre had been at one period threatened, be concluded by giving the health of mr murray, which was drunk with three times three. mr murray.---gentlemen, i wish i could believe, that, in any degree, i merited the compliments with which it has pleased sir walter scott to preface the proposal of my health, or the very flattering manner in which you have done me the honour to receive it. the approbation of such an assembly is most gratifying to me, and might encourage feelings of vanity, were not such feelings crushed by my conviction, that no man holding the situation i have so long held in edinburgh, could have failed, placed in the peculiar circumstances in which i have been placed. gentlemen, i shall not insult your good taste by eulogiums upon your judgment or kindly feeling; though to the first i owe any improvement i may have made as an actor, and certainly my success as a manager to the second. (applause.) when, upon the death of my dear brother the late mr siddons, it was proposed that i should undertake the management of the edinburgh theatre, i confess i drew back, doubting my capability to free it from the load of debt and difficulty with which it was surrounded. in this state of anxiety, i solicited the advice of one who had ever honoured me with his kindest regard, and whose name no member of my profession can pronounce without feelings of the deepest respect and gratitude---i allude to the late mr john kemble. (great applause.) to him i applied; and with the repetition of his advice i shall cease to trespass upon your time-(hear, hear.)-``my dear william, fear not; integrity and assiduity must prove an overmatch for all difficulty; and though i approve your not indulging a vain confidence in your ownability, and viewing with respectful apprehension the judgment of the audience you have to act before, yet be assured that judgment will ever be tempered by the feeling that you are acting for the widow and the fatherless.'' (loud applause.) gentlemen, those words have never passed from my mind; and i feel convinced that you have pardoned my many errors, from the feeling that i was striving for the widow and the fatherless. (long and enthusiastic applause followed mr murray's address.) sir walter scott gave the health of the stewards. mr vandenhoff.---mr president and gentlemen, the honour conferred upon the stewards, in the very flattering compliment you have just paid us, calls forth our warmest acknowledgments. in tendering you our thanks for the approbation you have been pleased to express of our humble exertions, i would beg leave to advert to the cause in which we have been engaged. yet, surrounded as i am by the genius---the eloquence of this enlightened city, i cannot but feel the presumption which ventures to address you on so interesting a subject. accustomed to speak in the language of others, i feel quite at a loss for terms wherein to clothe the sentiments excited by the present occasion. (applause.) the nature of the institution which has sought your fostering patronage, and the objects which it contemplates, have been fully explained to you. but, gentlemen, the relief which it proposes is not a gratuitous relief---but to be purchased by the individual contribution of its members towards the general good. this fund lends no encouragement to idleness or improvidence; but it offers an opportunity to prudence, in vigour and youth, to make provision against the evening of life and its attendant infirmity. a period is fixed, at which we admit the plea of age as an exemption from professional labour. it is painful to behold the veteran on the stage (compelled by necessity) contending against physical decay, mocking the joyousness of mirth with the feebleness of age, when the energies decline, when the memory fails, and ``the big manly voice, turning again towards childish treble, pipes and whistles in the sound.'' we would remove him from the mimic scene, where fiction constitutes the charm; we would not view old age caricaturing itself. (applause.) but as our means may be found, in time of need, inadequate to the fulfilment of our wishes ---fearful of raising expectations, which we may be unable to gratify-desirous not ``to keep the word of promise to the ear, and break it to the hope''--we have presumed to court the assistance of the friends of the drama to strengthen our infant institution. our appeal has been successful, beyond oar most sanguine expectations. the distinguished patronage conferred on us by your presence on this occasion, and the substantial support which your benevolence has so liberally afforded to our institution, must impress every member of the fund with the most grateful sentiments---sentiments which no language can express, no time obliterate. (applause.) i will not trespass longer on your attention. i would the task of acknowledging our obligation had fallen into abler hands. (hear, hear.) in the name of the stewards, i most respectfully and cordially thank you for the honour you have done us, which greatly overpays our poor endeavours. (applause.) [this speech, though rather inadequately reported, was one of the best delivered on this occasion. that it was creditable to mr vandenhoff's taste and feelings, the preceding sketch will show; but how much it was so, it does not show.] mr j. cay gave professor wilson and the university of edinburgh, of which he was one of the brightest ornaments. lord meadowbank, after a suitable eulogium, gave the earl of fife, which was drunk with three times three. earl fife expressed his high gratification at the honour conferred on him. he intimated his approbation of the institution, and his readiness to promote its success by every means in his power. he concluded with giving the health of the company of edinburgh. mr jones, on rising to return thanks, being received with considerable applause, said he was truly grateful for the kind encouragement he had experienced, but the novelty of the situation in which he now was, renewed all the feelings he experienced when he first saw himself announced in the bills as a young gentleman, being his first appearance on any stage. (laughter and applause.) although in the presence of those whose indulgence had, in another sphere, so often shielded him from the penalties of inability, be was unable to execute the task which had so unexpectedly devolved upon him in behalf of his brethren and himself. he therefore begged the company to imagine all that grateful hearts could prompt the most eloquent to utter, and that would be a copy of their feelings. (applause.) he begged to trespass another moment on their attentions, for the purpose of expressing the thanks of the members of the fund to the gentlemen of the edinburgh professional society of musicians, who, finding that this meeting was appointed to take place on the same evening with their concert, had in the handsomest manner agreed to postpone it. although it was his duty thus to preface the toast he had to propose, he was certain the meeting required no farther inducement than the recollection of the pleasure the exertions of those gentlemen had often afforded them within those walls, to join heartily in drinking ``health and prosperity to the edinburgh professional society of musicians.'' (applause.) mr pat. robertson proposed ``the health of mr jeffrey,'' whose absence was owing to indisposition. the public was well aware that he was the most distinguished advocate at the bar; he was likewise distinguished for the kindness, frankness, and cordial manner in which he communicated with the junior members of the profession, to the esteem of whom his splendid talents would always entitle him. mr j. maconochie gave ``the health of mrs siddons, senior---the most distinguished ornament of the stage.'' sir w. scott said, that if any thing could reconcile him to old age, it was the reflection that he had seen the rising as well as the setting sun of mrs siddons. he remembered well their breakfasting near to the theatre---waiting the whole day ---the crushing at the doors at six o'clock---and their going in and counting their fingers till seven o'clock. but the very first step---the very first word which she uttered, was sufficient to overpay him for all his labours. the house was literally electrified; and it was only from witnessing the effects of her genius, that he could guess to what a pitch theatrical excellence could be carried. those young gentlemen who have only seen the setting sun of this distinguished performer, beautiful and serene as that was, must give us old fellows, who have seen its rise and its meridian, leave to hold our heads a little higher. mr dundas gave ``the memory of home, the author of douglas.'' mr mackay here announced that the subscription for the night amounted to l.280; and he expressed gratitude for this substantial proof of their kindness. [we are happy to state that subscriptions have since flowed in very liberally.] mr mackay here entertained the company with a pathetic song. sir walter scott apologized for having so long forgotten their native land. he would now give scotland, the land of cakes. he would give every river, every loch, every hill, from tweed to johnnie groat's house--every lass in her cottage and countess in her castle; and may her sons stand by her, as their fathers did before them, and he who would not drink a bumper to his toast, may he never drink whisky more! sir walter scott here gave lord meadowbank, who returned thanks. mr h. g. bell said, that he should not have ventured to intrude himself upon the attention of the assembly, did be not feel confident, that the toast he begged to have the honour to propose, would retake amends for the very imperfect manner in which be might express his sentiments regarding it. it had been said, that notwithstanding the mental supremacy of the present age, notwithstanding that the page of our history was studded with names destined also for the page of immortality, ---that the genius of shakspeare was extinct, and the fountain of his inspiration dried up. it might be that these observations were unfortunately correct, or it might be that we were bewildered with a name, not disappointed of the reality, ---for though shakspeare had brought a hamlet, an othello, and a macbeth, an ariel, a juliet, and a rosalind, upon the stage, were there not authors living who had brought as varied, as exquisitely painted, and as undying a range of characters into our hearts? the shape of the mere mould into which genius poured its golden treasures was surely a matter of little moment,---let it be called a tragedy, a comedy, or a waverley novel. but even among the dramatic authors of the present day, he was unwilling to allow that there was a great and palpable decline from the glory of preceding ages, and his toast alone would bear him out in denying the truth of the proposition. after eulogizing the names of baillie, byron, coleridge, maturin, and others, he begged to have the honour of proposing the health of james sheridan knowles. sir walter scott.---gentlemen, i crave a bumper all over. the last toast reminds me of a neglect of duty. unaccustomed to a public duty of this kind, errors in conducting the ceremonial of it may be excused, and omissions pardoned. perhaps i have made one or two omissions in the course of the evening, for which i trust you will grant me your pardon and indulgence. one thing in particular i have omitted, and i would now wish to make amends for it, by a libation of reverence and respect to the memory of shakspeare. he was a man of universal genius, and from a period soon after his own era to the present day, he has been universally idolized. when i come to his honoured name, i am like the sick man who hung up his crutches at the shrine, and was obliged to confess that he did not walk better than before. it is indeed difficult, gentlemen, to compare him to any other individual. the only one to whom i can at all compare him, is the wonderful arabian dervish, who dived into the body of each, and in this way became familiar with the thoughts and secrets of their hearts. he was a man of obscure origin, and, as a player, limited in his acquirements, but he was born evidently with a universal genius. his eyes glanced at all the varied aspects of life, and his fancy portrayed with equal talents the king on the throne, and the clown who crackles his chestnuts at a christmas fire. whatever note he takes, he strikes it just and true, and awakens a corresponding chord in our own bosoms. gentlemen, i propose ``the memory of william shakspeare.'' glee,---``lightly tread, 'tis hallowed ground.'' after the glee, sir walter rose, and begged to propose as a toast the health of a lady, whose living merit is not a little honourable to scotland. the toast (said he) is also flattering to the national vanity of a scotchman, as the lady whom i intend to propose is a native of this country. from the public her works have met with the most favourable reception. one piece of hers, in particular, was often acted here of late years, and gave pleasure of no mean kind to many brilliant and fashionable audiences. in her private character she (he begged leave to say) is as remarkable, as in a public sense she is for her genius. in short, he would in one word name-``joanna baillie.'' this health being drunk, mr thorne was called on for a song, and sung, with great taste and feeling, ``the anchor's weighed.'' w. menzies, esq., advocate, rose to propose the health of a gentleman for many years connected at intervals with the dramatic art in scotland. whether we look at the range of characters he performs, or at the capacity which he evinces in executing those which he undertakes, he is equally to be admired. in all his parts he is unrivalled. the individual to whom he alluded is, (said he) well known to the gentlemen present, in the characters of malvolio, lord ogleby, and the green man; and, in addition to his other qualities, he merits, for his perfection in these characters, the grateful sense of this meeting. he would wish, in the first place, to drink his health as an actor; but he was not less estimable in domestic life, and as a private gentleman; and when be announced him as one whom the chairman had honoured with his friendship, he was sure that all present would cordially join him in drinking ``the health of mr terry.'' mr william allan, banker, said, that he did not rise with the intention of making a speech. he merely wished to contribute in a few words to the mirth of the evening---an evening which certainly had not passed off without some blunders. it had been understood---at least be had learnt or supposed, from the expressions of mr pritchard---that it would be sufficient to put a paper, with the name of the contributor, into the box, and that the gentleman thus contributing would be called on for the money next morning. he, for his part, had committed a blunder, but it might serve as a caution to those who may be present at the dinner of next year. he had merely put in his name, written on a slip of paper, without the money. but he would recommend that, as some of the gentlemen might be in the same situation, the box should be again sent round, and he was confident that they, as well as he, would redeem their error. sir walter scott said, that the meeting was somewhat in the situation of mrs anne page, who had l.300 and possibilities. we have already got, said he, l.280, but i should like, i confess, to have the l.300. he would gratify himself by proposing the health of ail honourable person, the lord chief baron, whom england has sent to us, and connecting with it that of his ``yokefellow on the bench,'' as shakspeare says, mr baron clerk--the court of exchequer. mr baron clerk regretted the absence of his learned brother. none, he was sure, could be more generous in his nature, or more ready to help a scottish purpose. sir walter scott.---there is one who ought to be remembered on this occasion. he is, indeed, well entitled to our grateful recollection---one, in short, to whom the drama in this city owes much. he succeeded, not without trouble, and perhaps at some considerable sacrifice, in establishing a theatre. the younger part of the company may not recollect the theatre to which i allude; but there are some who with me may remember by name a place called carrubber's close. there allan ramsay established his little theatre. his own pastoral was not fit for the stage, but it has its admirers in those who love the doric language in which it is written; and it is not without merits of a very peculiar kind. but, laying aside all considerations of his literary merit, allan was a good jovial honest fellow, who could crack a bottle with the best.--the memory of allan ramsay. mr murray, on being requested, sung, ``'twas merry in the hall,'' and at the conclusion was greeted with repeated rounds of applause. mr jones.---one omission i conceive has been made. the cause of the fund has been ably advocated, but it is still susceptible, in my opinion, of an additional charm-- without the smile from partial beauty won, oh, what were man?---a world without a sun and there would not be a darker spot in poetry than would be the corner in shakspeare square, if, like its fellow, the register office, the theatre were deserted by the ladies. they are, in fact, our most attractive stars.---``the patronesses of the theatre---the ladies of the city of edinburgh.'' this toast i ask leave to drink with all the honours which conviviality can confer. mr patrick robertson would be the last man willingly to introduce any topic calculated to interrupt the harmony of the evening; yet he felt himself treading upon ticklish ground when be approached the region of the nor' loch. he assured the company, however, that he was not about to enter on the subject of the improvement bill. they all knew, that if the public were unanimous---if the consent of all parties were obtained---if the rights and interests of every body were therein attended to, saved, reserved, respected, and excepted ---if every body agreed to it---and finally, a most essential point---if nobody opposed it---then, and in that case, and provided also, that due intimation were given---the bill in question might pass ---would pass---or might, could, would, or should pass---all expenses being defrayed.---(laughter.)--he was the advocate of neither champion,and would neither avail himself of the absence of the right hon. the lord provost, nor take advantage of the non-appearance of his friend, mr cockburn.--(laughter.)---but in the midst of these civic broils, there had been elicited a ray of hope, that, at some future period, in bereford park, or some other place, if all parties were consulted and satisfied, and if intimation were duly made at the kirk doors of all the parishes in scotland, in terms of the statute in that behalf provided---the people of edinburgh might by possibility get a new theatre.---(cheers and laughter.)---but wherever the belligerent powers might be pleased to set down this new theatre, he was sure they all hoped to meet the old company in it. he should therefore propose ---``better accommodation to the old company in the new theatre, site unknown.''---mr robertson's speech was most humorously given, and he sat down amidst loud cheers and laughter. sir walter scott.---wherever the new theatre is built, i hope it will not be large. there are two errors which we commonly commit ---the one arising from our pride, the other from our poverty. if there are twelve plans, it is odds but the largest, without any regard to comfort, or an eye to the probable expense, is adopted. there was the college projected on this scale, and undertaken in the same manner, and who shall see the end of it? it has been building all my life, and may probably last during the lives of my children, and my children's children. let not the same prophetic hymn be sung, when we commence a new theatre, which was performed on the occasion of laying the foundation stone of a certain edifice, ``behold the endless work begun.'' play-going folks should attend somewhat to convenience. the new theatre should, in the first place, be such as may be finished in eighteen months or two years; and, in the second place, it should be one in which we can hear our old friends with comfort. it is better that a moderate-sized house should be crowded now and then, than to have a large theatre with benches continually empty, to the discouragement of the actors, and the discomfort of the spectators. ---(applause.)---he then commented in flattering terms on the genius of mackenzie and his private worth, and concluded by proposing ``the health of henry mackenzie, esq.'' immediately afterwards he said: gentlemen,--it is now wearing late, and i shall request permission to retire. like partridge i may say, ``non sum qualis eram.'' at my time of day, i can agree with lord ogilvie as to his rheumatism, and say, ``there's a twinge.'' i hope, therefore, you will excuse me for leaving the chair.---(the worthy baronet then retired amidst long, loud, and rapturous cheering.) mr patrick robertson was then called to the chair by common acclamation. gentlemen, said mr robertson, i take the liberty of asking you to fill a bumper to the very brim. there is not one of us who will not remember, while he lives, being present at this day's festival, and the declaration made this night by the gentleman who has just left the chair. that declaration has rent the veil from the features of the great unknown---a name which must now merge in the name of the great known. it will be henceforth coupled with the name of scott, which will become familiar like a household word. we have heard the confession from his own immortal lips---(cheering)---and we cannot dwell with too much, or too fervent praise, on the merits of the greatest man whom scotland has produced. after which, several other toasts were given, and mr robertson left the room about half-past eleven. a few choice spirits, however, rallied round captain broadhead of the 7th hussars, who was called to the chair, and the festivity was prolonged till an early hour on saturday morning. the band of the theatre occupied the gallery, and that of the 7th hussars the end of the room, opposite the chair, whose performances were greatly admired. it is but justice to mr gibb to state that the dinner was very handsome (though slowly served in) and the wines good. the attention of the stewards was exemplary. mr murray and mr vandenhoff, with great good taste, attended on sir walter scott's right and left, and we know that he has expressed himself much gratified by their anxious politeness and sedulity. [3. introductory] chronicles of the canongate. chapter i. mr chrystal croftangry's account of himself. sic itur ad astra. ``this is the path to heaven.'' such is the ancient motto attached to the armorial bearings of the canongate, and which is inscribed, with greater or less propriety, upon all the public buildings, from the church to the pillory, in the ancient quarter of edinburgh, which bears, or rather once bore, the same relation to the good town that westminster does to london, being still possessed of the palace of the sovereign, as it formerly was dignified by the residence of the principal nobility and gentry. i may, therefore, with some propriety, put the same motto at the bead of the literary undertaking by which i hope to illustrate the hitherto undistinguished name of chrystal croftangry. the public may desire to know something of an author who pitches at such height his ambitious expectations. the gentle reader, therefore---for i am much of captain bobadil's humour, and could to no other extend myself so far---the _gentle_ reader, then, will be pleased to understand, that i am a scottish gentleman of the old school, with a fortune, temper, and person, rather the worse for wear. i have known the world for these forty years, having written myself man nearly since that period---and i do not think it is much mended. but this is an opinion which i keep to myself when i am among younger folk, for i recollect, in my youth, quizzing the sexagenarians who carried back their ideas of a perfect state of society to the days of laced coats and triple ruffles, and some of them to the blood and blows of the forty-five: therefore i am cautious in exercising the right of censorship, which is supposed to be acquired by men arrived at, or approaching, the mysterious period of life, when the numbers of seven and nine multiplied into each other, form what sages have termed the grand climacteric. of the earlier part of my life it is only necessary to say, that i swept the boards of the parliament-house with the skirts of my gown for the usual number of years during which young lairds were in my time expected to keep term---got no fees---laughed, and made others laugh---drank claret at bayle's, fortune's, and walker's---and eat oysters in the covenant close. becoming my own master, i flung my gown at the bar-keeper, and commenced gay man on my own account. in edinburgh, i ran into all the expensive society which the place then afforded. when i went to my house in the shire of lanark, i emulated to the utmost the expenses of men of large fortune, and had my hunters, my first-rate pointers, my game-cocks, and feeders. i can more easily forgive myself for these follies, than for others of a still more blamable kind, so indifferently cloaked over, that my poor mother thought herself obliged to leave my habitation, and betake herself to a small inconvenient jointure-house, which she occupied till her death. i think, however, i was not exclusively to blame in this separation, and i believe my mother afterwards condemned herself for being too hasty. thank god, the adversity which destroyed the means of continuing my dissipation, restored me to the affections of my surviving parent. my course of life could not last. i ran too fast to run long; and when i would have checked my career, i was perhaps too near the brink of the precipice. some mishaps i prepared by my own folly, others came upon me unawares. i put my estate out to nurse to a fat man of business, who smothered the babe he should have brought back to me in health and strength, and, in dispute with this honest gentleman, i found, like a skilful general, that my position would be most judiciously assumed by taking it up near the abbey of holyrood.* * note a. holyrood. it was then i first became acquainted with the quarter, which my little work will, i hope, render immortal, and grew familiar with those magnificent wilds, through which the kings of scotland once chased the dark-brown deer, but which were chiefly recommended to me in those days, by their being inaccessible to those metaphysical persons, whom the law of the neighbouring country terms john doe and richard roe. in short, the precincts of the palace are now best known as being a place of refuge at any time from all pursuit for civil debt. dire was the strife betwixt my quondam doer and myself; during which my motions were circumscribed, like those of some conjured demon, within a circle, which, ``beginning at the northern gate of the king's park, thence running northways, is bounded on the left by the king's garden-wall, and the gutter, or kennel, in a line wherewith it crosses the high street to the watergate, and passing through the sewer, is bounded by the walls of the tennis-court and physic-garden, &c. it then follows the wall of the churchyard, joins the north west wall of st ann's yards, and going east to the clack mill-house, turns southward to the turnstile in the king's park-wall, and includes the whole king's park within the sanctuary.'' these limits, which i abridge from the accurate maitland, once marked the girth, or asylum, belonging to the abbey of holyrood, and which, being still an appendage to the royal palace, has retained the privilege of an asylum for civil debt. one would think the space sufficiently extensive for a man to stretch his limbs in, as, besides a reasonable proportion of level ground, (considering that the scene lies in scotland,) it includes within its precincts the mountain of arthur's seat, and the rocks and pasture land called salisbury crags. but yet it is inexpressible how, after a certain time had elapsed, i used to long for sunday' which permitted me to extend my walk without limitation. during the other six days of the week i felt a sickness of heart, which, but for the speedy approach of the hebdomadal day of liberty, i could hardly have endured. i experienced the impatience of a mastiff, who tugs in vain to extend the limits which his chain permits. day after day i walked by the side of the kennel which divides the sanctuary from the unprivileged part of the canongate; and though the month was july, and the scene the old town of edinburgh, i preferred it to the fresh air and verdant turf which i might have enjoyed in the king's park, or to the cool and solemn gloom of the portico which surrounds the palace. to an indifferent person either side of the gutter would have seemed much the same---the houses equally mean, the children as ragged and dirty, the carmen as brutal, the whole forming the same picture of low life in a deserted and impoverished quarter of a large city. but to me, the gutter, or kennel, was what the brook kedron was to shimei; death was denounced against him should he cross it, doubtless because it was known to his wisdom who pronounced the doom, that from the time the crossing the stream was debarred, the devoted man's desire to transgress the precept would become irresistible, and he would be sure to draw down on his head the penalty which he had already justly incurred by cursing the anointed of god. for my part, all elysium seemed opening on the other side of the kennel, and i envied the little blackguards, who, stopping the current with their little dam-dikes of mud, had a right to stand on either side of the nasty puddle which best pleased them. i was so childish as even to make an occasional excursion across, were it only for a few yards, and felt the triumph of a schoolboy, who, trespassing in an orchard, hurries back again with a fluttering sensation of joy and terror, betwixt the pleasure of having executed his purpose, and the fear of being taken or discovered. i have sometimes asked myself, what i should have done in case of actual imprisonment, since i could not bear without impatience a restriction which is comparatively a mere trifle; but i really could never answer the question to my own satisfaction. i have all my life hated those treacherous expedients called _mezzo-termini_, and it is possible with this disposition i might have endured more patiently an absolute privation of liberty, than the more modified restrictions to which my residence in the sanctuary at this period subjected me. if, however, the feelings i then experienced were to increase in intensity according to the difference between a jail and my actual condition, i must have hanged myself, or pined to death; there could have been no other alternative. amongst many companions who forgot and neglected me of course, when my difficulties seemed to be inextricable, i had one true friend; and that friend was a barrister, who knew the laws of his country well, and, tracing them up to the spirit of equity and justice in which they originate, had repeatedly prevented, by his benevolent and manly exertions, the triumphs of selfish cunning over simplicity and folly. he undertook my cause, with the assistance of a solicitor of a character similar to his own. my quondam doer had ensconced himself chin-deep among legal trenches, hornworks, and, covered ways; but my two protectors shelled him out of his defences, and i was at length a free man, at liberty to go or stay wheresoever my mind listed. i left my lodgings as hastily as if it had been a pest-house; i did not even stop to receive some change that was due to me on settling with my landlady, and i saw the poor woman stand at her door looking after my precipitate flight, and shaking her head as she wrapped the silver which she was counting for me in a separate piece of paper, apart from the store in her own moleskin purse. an honest highlandwoman was janet macevoy, and deserved a greater remuneration, had i possessed the power of bestowing it. but my eagerness of delight was too extreme to pause for explanation with janet. on i pushed through the groups of children, of whose sports i had been so often a lazy lounging spectator. i sprung over the gutter as if it had been the fatal styx, and i a ghost, which, eluding pluto's authority, was making its escape from limbo lake. my friend had difficulty to restrain me from running like a madman up the street; and in spite of his kindness and hospitality, which soothed me for a day or two, i was not quite happy until i found myself aboard of a leith smack, and, standing down the frith with a fair wind, might snap my fingers at the retreating outline of arthur's seat, to the vicinity of which i had been so long confined. it is not my purpose to trace my future progress through life. i had extricated myself, or rather had been freed by my friends, from the brambles and thickets of the law, but, as befell the sheep in the fable, a great part of my fleece was left behind me. something remained, however; i was in the season for exertion, and, as my good mother used to say, there was always life for living folk. stern necessity gave my manhood that prudence which my youth was a stranger to. i faced danger, i endured fatigue, i sought foreign climates, and proved that i belonged to the nation which is proverbially patient of labour and prodigal of life. independence, like liberty to virgil's shepherd, came late, but came at last, with no great affluence in its train, but bringing enough to support a decent appearance for the rest of my life, and to induce cousins to be civil, and gossips to say, ``i wonder who old croft will make his heir? he must have picked up something, and i should not be surprised if it prove more than folk think of.'' my first impulse when i returned home was to rush to the house of my benefactor, the only man who had in my distress interested himself in my behalf. he was a snuff-taker, and it had been the pride of my heart to save the _ipsa corpora_ of the first score of guineas i could hoard, and to have them converted into as tasteful a snuff-box as rundell and bridge could devise. this i had thrust for security into the breast of my waistcoat, while, impatient to transfer it to the person for whom it was destined, i hastened to his house in brown's square. when the front of the house became visible, a feeling of alarm checked me. i had been long absent from scotland, my friend was some years older than i; he might have been called to the congregation of the just. i paused, and gazed on the house, as if i had hoped to form some conjecture from the outward appearance concerning the state of the family within. i know not how it was, but the lower windows being all closed and no one stirring, my sinister forebodings were rather strengthened. i regretted now that i had not made enquiry before i left the inn where i alighted from the mail-coach. but it was too late; so i hurried on, cager to know the best or the worst which i could learn. the brass-plate bearing my friend's name and designation was still on the door, and when it was opened, the old domestic appeared a good deal older i thought than he ought naturally to have looked, considering the period of my absence. ``is mr sommerville at home?'' said i, pressing forward. ``yes, sir,'' said john, placing himself in opposition to my entrance, ``he is at home, but------'' ``but he is not in,'' said i. ``i remember your phrase of old, john. come, i will step into his room, and leave a line for him.'' john was obviously embarrassed by my familiarity. i was some one, lie saw, whom he ought to recollect, at the same time it was evident he remembered nothing about me. ``ay, sir, my master is in, and in his own room, but------'' i would not hear him out, but passed before him towards the well-known apartment. a young lady came out of the room a little disturbed, as it seemed, and said, ``john, what is the matter?'' ``a gentleman, miss nelly, that insists on seeing my master.'' ``a very old and deeply indebted friend,'' said i, ``that ventures to press myself on my much-respected benefactor on my return from abroad.'' ``alas, sir,'' replied she, ``my uncle would be happy to see you, but------'' at this moment, something was heard within the apartment like the falling of a plate, or glass, and immediately after my friend's voice called angrily and eagerly for his niece. she entered the room hastily, and so did i. but it was to see a spectacle, compared with which that of my benefactor stretched on his bier would have been a happy one. the easy-chair filled with cushions, the extended limbs swathed in flannel, the wide wrapping-gown and nightcap, showed illness; but the dimmed eye, once so replete with living fire, the blabber lip, whose dilation and compression used to give such character to his animated countenance,---the stammering tongue, that once poured forth such floods of masculine eloquence, and had often swayed the opinion of the sages whom he addressed,---all these sad symptoms evinced that my friend was in the melancholy condition of those, in whom the principle of animal life has unfortunately survived that of mental intelligence. he gazed a moment at me, but then seemed insensible of my presence, and went on---he, once the most courteous and well-bred! ---to babble unintelligible but violent reproaches against his niece and servant, because he himself had dropped a teacup in attempting to place it on a table at his elbow. his eyes caught a momentary fire from his irritation; but he struggled in vain for words to express himself adequately, as, looking from his servant to his niece and then to the table, he laboured to explain that they had placed it (though it touched his chair) at too great a distance from him. the young person, who had naturally a resigned madonna-like expression of countenance, listened to his impatient chiding with the most humble submission, checked the servant, whose less delicate feelings would have entered on his justification, and gradually, by the sweet and soft tone of her voice, soothed to rest the spirit of causeless irritation. she then cast a look towards me, which expressed, ``you see all that remains of him whom you call friend.'' it seemed also to say, ``your longer presence here can only be distressing to us all.'' ``forgive me young lady,'' i said, as well as tears would permit; ``i am a person deeply obliged to your uncle. my name is croftangry.'' ``lord! and that i should not hae minded ye, maister croftangry,'' said the servant. ``ay, i mind my master had muckle fash about your job. i hae heard him order in fresh candles as midnight chappit, and till't again. indeed, ye had aye his gude word, mr croftangry, for a' that folks said about you.'' ``hold your tongue, john,'' said the lady, somewhat angrily; and then continued, addressing herself to me, ``i am sure, sir, you must be sorry to see my uncle in this state. i know you are his friend. i have heard him mention your name, and wonder he never heard from you.'' a new cut this, and it went to my heart. but she continued, ``i really do not know if it is right that any should--if my uncle should know you, which i scarce think possible, he would be much affected, and the doctor says that any agitation------but here comes dr-----to give his own opinion.'' dr -----entered. i had left him a middle-aged man; he was now an elderly one; but still the same benevolent samaritan, who went about doing good, and thought the blessings of the poor as good a recompense of his professional skill as the gold of the rich. he looked at me with surprise, but the young lady said a word of introduction, and i, who was known to the doctor formerly, hastened to complete it. he recollected me perfectly, and intimated that he was well acquainted with the reasons i had for being deeply interested in the fate of his patient. he gave me a very melancholy account of my poor friend, drawing me for that purpose a little apart from the lady. ``the light of life,'' he said, ``was trembling in the socket; he scarcely expected it would ever leap up even into a momentary flash, but more was impossible.'' he then stepped towards his patient, and put some questions, to which the poor invalid, though he seemed to recognise the friendly and familiar voice, answered only in a faltering and uncertain manner. the young lady, in her turn, had drawn back when the doctor approached his patient. ``you see how it is with him,'' said the doctor, addressing me; ``i have heard our poor friend, in one of the most eloquent of his pleadings, give a description of this very disease, which he compared to the tortures inflicted by mezentius, when he chained the dead to the living. the soul, he said, is imprisoned in its dungeon of flesh, and though retaining its natural and unalienable properties, can no more exert them than the captive enclosed within a prison-house can act as a free agent. alas! to see him, who could so well describe what this malady was in others, a prey himself to its infirmities! i shall never forget the solemn tone of expression with which he summed up the incapacities of the paralytic,---the deafened ear, the dimmed eye, the crippled limbs,---in the noble words of juvenal-- ------` omni membrorum damno major, dementia, qu<ae> nec nomina servorum, nec vultum agnoscit amici.' '' as the physician repeated these lines, a flash of intelligence seemed to revive in the invalid's eye--sunk again---again struggled, and he spoke more intelligibly than before, and in the tone of one eager to say something which he felt would escape him unless said instantly. ``a question of death-bed, a question of death-bed, doctor---a reduction _ex capite lecti_---withering against wilibus---about the _morbus sonticus_. i pleaded the cause for the pursuer---i, and---and---why, i shall forget my own name---i,and---he that was the wittiest and the best-humoured man living---'' the description enabled the doctor to fill up the blank, and the patient joyfully repeated the name suggested. ``ay, ay,'' he said, ``just he---harry ---poor harry---'' the light in his eye died away, and he sunk back in his easy-chair. ``you have now seen more of our poor friend, mr croftangry,'' said the physician, ``than i dared venture to promise you; and now i must take my professional authority on me, and ask you to retire. miss sommerville will, i am sure, let you know if a moment should by any chance occur when her uncle can see you.'' what could i do? i gave my card to the young lady, and, taking my offering from my bosom--``if my poor friend,'' i said, with accents as broken almost as his own, ``should ask where this came from, name me; and say from the most obliged and most grateful man alive. say, the gold of which it is composed was saved by grains at a time, and was hoarded with as much avarice as ever was a miser's:---to bring it here i have come a thousand miles, and now, alas, i find him thus!'' i laid the box on the table, and was retiring with a lingering step. the eye of the invalid was caught by it, as that of a child by a glittering toy, and with infantine impatience he faltered out enquiries of dis niece. with gentle mildness she repeated again and again who i was, and why i came, &c. i was about to turn, and hasten from a scene so painful, when the physician laid his hand on my sleeve--``stop,'' he said, ``there is a change.'' there was indeed, and a marked one. a faint glow spread over his pallid features---they seemed to gain the look of intelligence which belongs to vitality---his eye once more kindled---his lip coloured--and drawing himself up out of the listless posture he had hitherto maintained, he rose without assistance. the doctor and the servant ran to give him their support. he waved them aside, and they were contented to place themselves in such a postion behind as might ensure against accident, should his newly-acquired strength decay as suddenly as it had revived. ``my dear croftangry,'' he said, in the tone of kindness of other days, ``i am glad to see you returned--you find me but poorly---but my little niece here and dr -----are very kind---god bless you, my dear friend! we shall not meet again till we meet in a better world.'' i pressed his extended hand to my lips---i pressed it to my bosom---i would fain have flung myself on my knees; but the doctor, leaving the patient to the young lady and the servant, who wheeled forward his chair, and were replacing him in it, hurried me out of the room. ``my dear sir,'' he said, ``you ought to be satisfied; you have seen our poor invalid more like his former self than he has been for months, or than he may be perhaps again until all is over. the whole faculty could not have assured such an interval---i must see whether any thing can be derived from it to improve the general health---pray, begone.'' the last argument hurried me from the spot, agitated by a crowd of feelings, all of them painful. when i had overcome the shock of this great disappointment, i renewed gradually my acquaintance with one or two old companions, who, though of infinitely less interest to my feelings than my unfortunate friend, served to relieve the pressure of actual solitude, and who were not perhaps the less open to my advances, that i was a bachelor somewhat stricken in years, newly arrived from foreign parts, and certainly independent, if not wealthy. i was considered as a tolerable subject of speculation by some, and i could not be burdensome to any: i was therefore, according to the ordinary rule of edinburgh hospitality, a welcome guest in several respectable families; but i found no one who could replace the loss i had sustained in my best friend and benefactor. i wanted something more than mere companionship could give me, and where was i to look for it?---among the scattered remnants of those that had been my gay friends of yore?---alas; many a lad i loved was dead, and many a lass grown old. besides, all community of ties between us had ceased to exist, and such of former friends as were still in the world, held their life in a different tenor from what i did. some had become misers, and were as eager in saving sixpence as ever they had been in spending a guinea. some had turned agriculturists---their talk was of oxen, and they were only fit companions for graziers. some stuck to cards, and though no longer deep gamblers, rather played small game than sat out. this i particularly despised. the strong impulse of gaming, alas! i had felt in my time---it is as intense as it is criminal; but it produces excitation and interest, and i can conceive how it should become a passion with strong and powerful minds. but to dribble away life in exchanging bits of painted pasteboard round a green table, for the piddling concern of a few shillings, can only be excused in folly or superannuation. it is like riding on a rocking-horse, where your utmost exertion never carries you a foot forward; it is a kind of mental tread-mill, where you are perpetually climbing, but can never rise an inch. from these hints, my readers will perceive i am incapacitated for one of the pleasures of old age, which, though not mentioned by cicero, is not the least frequent resource in the present day ---the club-room, and the snug hand at whist. to return to my old companions: some frequented public assemblies, like the ghost of beau nash, or any other beau of half a century back, thrust aside by tittering youth, and pitied by those of their own age. in fine, some went into devotion, as the french term it, and others, i fear, went to the devil; a few found resources in science and letters; one or two turned philosophers in a small way, peeped into microscopes, and became familiar with the fashionable experiments of the day. some took to reading, and i was one of them. some grains of repulsion towards the society around me---some painful recollections of early faults and follies---some touch of displeasure with living mankind, inclined me rather to a study of antiquities, and particularly those of my own country. the reader, if i can prevail on myself to continue the present work, will probably be able to judge, in the course of it, whether i have made any useful progress in the study of the olden times. i owed this turn of study, in part, to the conversation of my kind man of business, mr fairscribe, whom i mentioned as having seconded the efforts of my invaluable friend, in bringing the cause on which my liberty and the remnant of my property depended, to a favourable decision. he had given me a most kind reception on my return. he was too much engaged in his profession for me to intrude on him often, and perhaps his mind was too much trammelled with its details to permit his being willingly withdrawn from them. in short, he was not a person of my poor friend somerville's expanded spirit, and rather a lawyer of the ordinary class of formalists, but a most able and excellent man. when my estate was sold, he retained some of the older title-deeds, arguing, from his own feelings, that they would be of more consequence to the heir of the old family than to the new purchaser. and when i returned to edinburgh, and found him still in the exercise of the profession to which he was an honour, he sent to my lodgings the old family-bible, which lay always on my father's table, two or three other mouldy volumes, and a couple of sheep-skin bags, full of parchments and papers, whose appearance was by no means inviting. the next time i shared mr fairscribe's hospitable dinner, i failed not to return him due thanks for his kindness, which acknowledgment, indeed, i proportioned rather to the idea which i knew he entertained of the value of such things, than to the interest with which i myself regarded them. but the conversation turning on my family, who were old proprietors in the upper ward of clydesdale, gradually excited some interest in my mind; and when i retired to my solitary parlour, the first thing i did was to look for a pedigree, or sort of history of the family, or house of croftangry, once of that ilk, latterly of glentanner. the discoveries which i made shall enrich the next chapter. chapter ii. in which mr croftangry continues his story. ``what's property, dear swift? i see it alter from you to me, from me to peter walter.'' pope. ``croftangry---croftandrew---croftanridge--croftandgrey---for sa mony wise hath the name been spellit---is weel known to be ane house of grit antiquity; and it is said, that king milcolumb, or malcolm, being the first of our scottish princes quha removit across the firth of forth, did reside and occupy ane palace at edinburgh, and had there ane valziant man, who did him man-service, by keeping the croft, or corn-land, which was tilled for the convenience of the king's household, and was thence callit croft-an-ri, that is to say, the king his croft; quhilk place, though now coverit with biggings, is to this day called croftangry, and lyeth near to the royal palace. and whereas that some of those who bear this auld and honourable name may take scorn that it ariseth from the tilling of the ground, quhilk men account a slavish occupation, yet we ought to honour the pleugh and spade, seeing we all derive our being from our father adam, whose lot it became to cultivate the earth, in respect of his fall and transgression. ``also we have witness, as weel in holy writt as in profane history, of the honour in quhilk husbandrie was held of old, and how prophets have been taken from the pleugh, and great captains raised up to defend their ain countries, sic as cincinnatus, and the like, who fought not the common enemy with the less valiancy that their arms had been exercised in halding the stilts of the pleugh, and their bellicose skill in driving of yauds and owsen. ``likewise there are sindry honorable families, quhilk are now of our native scottish nobility, and have clombe higher up the brae of preferment than what this house of croftangry hath done, quhilk shame not to carry in their warlike shield and insignia of dignity, tile tools and implements the quhilk their first forefathers exercised in labouring the croft-rig, or, as the poet virgilius calleth it eloquently, in subduing the soil. and no doubt this ancient house of croftangry, while it continued to be called of that ilk, produced many worshipful and famous patriots, of quhom i now pr<ae>termit the names; it being my purpose, if god shall spare me life for sic ane pious officium, or duty, to resume the first part of my narrative touching the house of croftangry, when i can set down at length the evidents, and historical witness anent the facts which i shall allege, seeing that words, when they are unsupported by proofs, are like seed sown on the naked rocks, or like an house biggit on the flitting and faithless sands.'' here i stopped to draw breath; for the style of my grandsire, the inditer of this goodly matter, was rather lengthy, as our american friends say. indeed, i reserve the rest of the piece until i can obtain admission to the bannatyne club,* when i * this club, of which the author of waverley has the honour to be president, was instituted in february 1823, for the purpose of printing and publishing works illustrative of the history, literature, and antiquities of scotland. it continues to prosper, and has already rescued from oblivion many curious materials of scottish history. propose to throw off an edition, limited according to the rules of that erudite society, with a facsimile of the manuscript, emblazonry of the family arms, surrounded by their quartering, and a handsome disclamation of family pride, with _h<ae>c nos novinus esse nihil_, or _vix ea nostra voco_. in the meantime, to speak truth, i cannot but suspect, that though my worthy ancestor puffed vigorously to swell up the dignity of his family, we had never, in fact, risen above the rank of middling proprietors. the estate of glentanner came to us by the intermarriage of my ancestor with tib sommeril, termed by the southrons sommerville,* a * the ancient norman family of the sommervilles came into this island with william the conqueror, and established one branch in gloucestershire, another in scotland. after the lapse of 700 years, the remaining possessions of these two branches were united in the person of the late lord sommerville, on the death of his english kinsman, the well-known author of ``the chase.'' daughter of that noble house, but i fear on what my great-grandsire calls ``the wrong side of the blanket.'' her husband, gilbert, was killed fighting, as the _inquisitio post mortem_ has it, ``_sub vexillo regis, apud pr<ae>lium juxta branxton_, lie _floddenfield_.'' we had our share in other national misfortunes ---were forfeited, like sir john colville of the dale, for following our betters to the field of langside; and, in the contentious times of the last stewarts, we were severely fined for harbouring and resetting intercommuned ministers; and narrowly escaped giving a martyr to the calendar of the covenant, in the person of the father of our family historian. he ``took the sheaf from the mare,'' however, as the ms. expresses it, and agreed to accept of the terms of pardon offered by government, and sign the bond, in evidence he would give no farther ground of offence. my grandsire glosses over his father's backsliding as smoothly as he can, and comforts himself with ascribing his want of resolution to his unwillingness to wreck the ancient name and family, and to permit his lands and lineage to fall under a doom of forfeiture. ``and indeed,'' said the venerable compiler, ``as, praised be god, we seldom meet in scotland with these belly-gods and voluptuaries, whilk are unnatural enough to devour their patrimony bequeathed to them by their forbears in chambering and wantonness, so that they come, with the prodigal son, to the husks and the swine-trough; and as i have the less to dreid the existence of such unnatural neroes in mine own family to devour the substance of their own house like brute beasts out of mere gluttonie and epicurishnesse, so i need only warn mine descendants against over hastily meddling with the mutations in state and in religion, which have been near-hand to the bringing this poor house of croftangry to perdition, as we have shown more than once. and albeit i would not that my successors sat still altogether when called on by their duty to kirk and king; yet i would have them wait till stronger and walthier men than themselves were up, so that either they may have the better chance of getting through the day; or, failing of that, the conquering party having some fatter quarry to live upon, may, like gorged hawks, spare the smaller game.'' there was something in this conclusion which at first reading piqued me extremely, and i was so unnatural as to curse the whole concern, as poor, bald, pitiful trash, in which a silly old man was saying a great deal about nothing at all. nay, my first impression was to thrust it into the fire, the rather that it reminded me, in no very flattering manner, of the loss of the family property, to which the compiler of the history was so much attached, in the very manner which he most severely reprobated. it even seemed to my aggrieved feelings, that his unprescient gaze on futurity, in which he could not anticipate the folly of one of his descendants, who should throw away the whole inheritance in a few years of idle expense and folly, was meant as a personal incivility to myself, though written fifty or sixty years before i was born. a little reflection made me ashamed of this feeling of impatience, and as i looked at the even, concise, yet tremulous hand in which the manuscript was written, i could not help thinking, according to an opinion i have heard seriously maintained, that something of a man's character may be conjectured from his handwriting. that neat, but crowded and constrained small hand, argued a man of a good conscience, well regulated passions, and, to use his own phrase, an upright walk in life; but it also indicated narrowness of spirit, inveterate prejudice, and hinted at some degree of intolerance, which, though not natural to the disposition, had arisen out of a limited education. the passages from scripture and the classics, rather profusely than happily introduced, and written in a half-text character to mark their importance, illustrated that peculiar sort of pedantry which always considers the argument as gained, if secured by a quotation. then the flourished capital letters, which ornamented the commencement of each paragraph, and the name of his family and of his ancestors, whenever these occurred in the page, do they not express forcibly the pride and sense of importance with which the author undertook and accomplished his task? i persuaded myself, the whole was so complete a portrait of the man, that it would not have been a more undutiful act to have defaced his picture, or even to have disturbed his bones in his coffin, than to destroy his manuscript. i thought, for a moment, of presenting it to mr fairscribe; but that confounded passage about the prodigal and swine-trough--i settled at last it was as well to lock it up in my own bureau, with the intention to look at it no more. but i do no know how it was, that the subject began to sit nearer my heart than i was aware of, and i found myself repeatedly engaged in reading descriptions of farms which were no longer mine, and boundaries which marked the property of others. a love of the _natale solum_, if swift be right in translating these words, ``family estate,'' began to awaken in my bosom; the recollections of my own youth adding little to it, save what was connected with field-sports. a career of pleasure is unfavourable for acquiring a taste for natural beauty, and still more so for forming associations of a sentimental kind, connecting us with the inanimate objects around us. i had thought little about my estate, while i possessed and was wasting it, unless as affording the rude materials out of which a certain inferior race of creatures, called tenants, were bound to produce (in a greater quantity than they actually did) a certain return called rent, which was destined to supply my expenses. this was my general view of the matter. of particular places, i recollected that garval-hill was a famous piece of rough upland pasture, for rearing young colts, and teaching them to throw their feet,---that minion-burn had the finest yellow trout in the country,---that seggycleugh was unequalled for woodcocks,---that bengibbert-moors afforded excellent moorfowl-shooting, and that the clear bubbling fountain called the harper's well, was the best recipe in the world on the morning after a _hard-go_ with my neighbour fox-hunters. still these ideas recalled, by degrees, pictures, of which i had since learned to appreciate the merit---scenes of silent loneliness, where extensive moors, undulating into wild hills, were only disturbed by the whistle of the plover, or the crow of the heath-cock; wild ravines creeping up into mountains, filled with natural wood, and which, when traced downwards along the path formed by shepherds and nutters, were found gradually to enlarge and deepen, as each formed a channel to its own brook, sometimes bordered by steep banks of earth, often with the more romantic boundary of naked rocks or cliffs, crested with oak, mountain-ash, and hazel,---all gratifying the eye the more that the scenery was, from the bare nature of the country around, totally unexpected. i had recollections, too, of fair and fertile holms, or level plains, extending between the wooded banks and the bold stream of the clyde, which, coloured like pure amber, or rather having the hue of the pebbles called cairngorm, rushes over sheets of rock and beds of gravel, inspiring a species of awe from the few and faithless fords which it presents, and the frequency of fatal accidents, now diminished by the number of bridges. these alluvial holms were frequently bordered by triple and quadruple rows of large trees, which gracefully marked their boundary, and dipped their long arms into the foaming stream of the river. other places i remembered, which had been described by the old huntsman as the lodge of tremendous wild-cats, or the spot where tradition stated the mighty stag to have been brought to bay, or where heroes, whose might was now as much forgotten, were said to have been slain by surprise, or in battle. it is not to be supposed that these finished landscapes became visible before the eyes of my imagination, as the scenery of the stage is disclosed by the rising of the curtain. i have said, that i had looked upon the country around me, during the hurried and dissipated period of my life, with the eyes indeed of my body, but without those of my understanding. it was piece by piece, as a child picks out its lesson, that i began to recollect the beauties of nature which had once surrounded me in the home of my forefathers. a natural taste for them must have lurked at the bottom of my heart, which awakened when i was in foreign countries, and becoming by degrees a favourite passion, gradually turned its eyes inwards, and ransacked the neglected stores which my memory had involuntarily recorded, and when excited, exerted herself to collect and to complete. i began now to regret more bitterly than ever the having fooled away my family property, the care and improvement of which i saw might have afforded an agreeable employment for my leisure, which only went to brood on past misfortunes, and increase useless repining. ``had but a single farm been reserved, however small,'' said i one day to mr fairscribe, ``i should have had a place 1 could call my home, and something that i could call business.'' ``it might have been managed,'' answered fairscribe; ``and for my part, i inclined to keep the mansion-house, mains, and some of the old family acres together; but both mr -----and you were of opinion that the money would be more useful.'' ``true, true, my good friend,'' said i, ``i was a fool then, and did not think i could incline to be glentanner with l.200 or l.300 a-year, instead of glentanner with as many thousands. i was then a haughty, pettish, ignorant, dissipated, broken down scottish laird; and thinking my imaginary consequence altogether ruined, i cared not bow soon, or how absolutely, i was rid of every thing that recalled it to my own memory, or that of others.'' ``and now it is like you have changed your mind?'' said fairscribe. ``well, fortune is apt to circumduce the term upon us; but i think she may allow you to revise your condescendence.'' ``how do you mean, my good friend?'' ``nay,'' said fairscribe, ```there is ill luck in averring till one is sure of his facts. i will look back on a file of newspapers, and to-morrow you shall hear from me; come, help yourself---i have seen you fill your glass higher.'' ``and shall see it again,'' said i, pouring out what remained of our bottle of claret; ``the wine is capital, and so shall our toast be---to your fireside, my good friend. and now we shall go beg a scots song without foreign graces, from my little siren miss katie.'' the next day accordingly i received a parcel from mr fairscribe with a newspaper enclosed, among the advertisements of which, one was marked with a cross as requiring my attention. i read to my surprise-- ``desirable estate for sale:. ``by order of the lords of council and session, will be exposed to sale in the new sessions house of edinburgh, on wednesday the 25th november, 18---, all and whole the lands and barony of glentanner, now called castle-treddles, lying in the middle ward of clydesdale, and shire of lanark, with the teinds, parsonage and vicarage, fishings in the clyde, woods, mosses, moors, and pasturages,'' &c, &c. the advertisement went on to set forth the advantages of the soil, situation, natural beauties and capabilities of improvement, not forgetting its being a freehold estate, with the particular polypus capacity of being sliced up into two, three, or, with a little assistance, four freehold qualifications, and a hint that the county was likely to be eagerly contested between two great families. the upset price at which ``the said lands and barony and others'' were to be exposed, was thirty years' purchase of the proven rental, which was about a fourth more than the property had fetched at the last sale. this, which was mentioned, i suppose, to show the improvable character of the land, would have given another some pain; but let me speak truth of myself in good as in evil---it pained not me. i was only angry that fairscribe who knew something generally of the extent of my funds, should have tantalized me by sending me information that my family property was in the market, since he must have known that the price was far out of my reach. but a letter dropped from the parcel on the floor, which attracted my eye, and explained the riddle. a client of mr fairscribe's, a monied man, thought of buying glentanner, merely as an investment of money---it was even unlikely he would ever see it; and so the price of the whole being some thousand pounds beyond what cash he had on hand, this accommodating dives would gladly take a partner in the sale for any detached farm, and would make no objection to its including the most desirable part of the estate in point of beauty, provided the price was made adequate. mr fairscribe would take care l was not imposed on in the matter, and said in his card, he believed, if i really wished to make such a purchase, i had better go out and look at the premises, advising me, at the same time, to keep a strict incognito; an advice somewhat superfluous, since i am naturally of a retired and reserved disposition. chapter iii. mr croftangry, inter alia, revisits glentanner. then sing of stage-coaches, and fear no reproaches for riding in one; but daily be jogging, whilst, whistling and flogging, whilst, whistling and flogging, the coachman drives on. farquhar. disguised in a grey surtout which had seen service, a white castor on my head, and a stout indian cane in my hand, the next week saw me on the top of a mail-coach driving to the westward. i like mail-coaches, and i hate them. i like them for my convenience, but i detest them for setting the whole world a-gadding, instead of sitting quietly still minding their own business, and preserving the stamp of originality of character which nature or education may have impressed on them. off they go, jingling against each other in the rattling vehicle till they have no more variety of stamp in them than so many smooth shillings--the same even in their welsh wigs and great coats, each without more individuality than belongs to a partner of the company, as the waiter calls them, of the north coach. worthy mr piper, best of contractors who ever furnished four frampal jades for public use, i bless you when i set out on a journey myself; the neat coaches under your contract render the intercourse, from johnnie groat's house to ladykirk and cornhill bridge, safe, pleasant, and cheap. but, mr piper, you, who are a shrewd arithmetician, did it never occur to you to calculate how many fools' heads, which might have produced an idea or two in the year, if suffered to remain in quiet, get effectually addled by jolting to and fro in these flying chariots of yours; how many decent countrymen become conceited bumpkins after a cattle-show dinner in the capital, which they could not have attended save for your means; how many decent country parsons return critics and spouters, by way of importing the newest taste from edinburgh? and how will your conscience answer one day for carrying so many bonny lasses to barter modesty for conceit and levity at the metropolitan vanity fair? consider, too, the low rate to which you reduce human intellect. i do not believe your habitual customers have their ideas more enlarged than one of your coach-horses. they _knows the_ road, like the english postilion, and they know nothing beside. they date, like the carriers at gadshill, from the death of john ostler;* the succession of * see the opening scene of the first part of shakspeare's henry iv. guards forms a dynasty in their eyes; coachmen are their ministers of state, and an upset is to them a greater incident than a change of administration. their only point of interest on the road is to save the time, and see whether the coach keeps the hour. this is surely a miserable degradation of human intellect. take my advice, my good sir, and disinterestedly contrive that once or twice a quarter, your most dexterous whip shall overturn a coachful of those superfluous travellers, _in terrorem_ to those who, as horace says, ``delight in the dust raised by your chariots.'' your current and customary mail-coach passenger, too, gets abominably selfish, schemes successfully for the best seat, the freshest egg, the right cut of the sirloin. the mode of travelling is death to all the courtesies and kindnesses of life, and goes a great way to demoralize the character, and cause it to retrograde to barbarism. you allow us excellent dinners, but only twenty minutes to eat them; and what is the consequence? bashful beauty sits on the one side of us, timid childhood on the other; respectable, yet somewhat feeble old age is placed on our front; and all require those acts of politeness which ought to put every degree upon a level at the convivial board. but have we time---we the strong and active of the party---to perform the duties of the table to the more retired and bashful, to whom these little attentions are due? the lady should be pressed to her chicken ---the old man helped to his favourite and tender slice---the child to his tart. but not a fraction of a minute have we to bestow on any other person than ourselves; and the _prut-prut---tut-tut_ of the guard's discordant note, summons us to the coach, the weaker party having gone without their dinner, and the able-bodied and active threatened with indigestion, from having swallowed victuals like a lei'stershire clown bolting bacon. on the memorable occasion i am speaking of i lost my breakfast, sheerly from obeying the commands of a respectable-looking old lady, who once required me to ring the bell, and another time to help the tea-kettle. i have some reason to think she was literally an _old stager_, who laughed in her sleeve at my complaisance; so that i have sworn in my secret soul revenge upon her sex, and all such errant damsels of whatever age and degree, whom i may encounter in my travels. i mean all this without the least ill-will to my friend the contractor, who, i think, has approached as near as any one is like to do towards accomplishing the modest wish of the amatus and amata of the peri bathous, ye gods, annihilate but time and space, and make two lovers happy. i intend to give mr p. his full revenge when i come to discuss the more recent enormity of steamboats; meanwhile, i shall only say of both these modes of conveyance, that there is no living with them or without them. i am perhaps more critical on the -----mail-coach on this particular occasion, that i did not meet all the respect from the worshipful company in his majesty's carriage that i think i was entitled to. i must say it for myself, that i bear, in my own opinion at least, not a vulgar point about me. my face has seen service, but there is still a good set of teeth, an aquiline nose, and a quick grey eye, set a little too deep under the eyebrow; and a cue of the kind once called military, may serve to show that my civil occupations have been sometimes mixed with those of war. nevertheless, two idle young fellows in the vehicle, or rather on the top of it, were so much amused with the deliberation which i used in ascending to the same place of eminence, that i thought i should have been obliged to pull them up a little. and i was in no good-humour, at an unsuppressed laugh following my descent, when set down at the angle, where a cross road, striking off from the main one, led me towards glentanner, from which i was still nearly five miles distant. it was an old-fashioned road, which, preferring ascents to sloughs, was led in a straight line over height and hollow, through moor and dale. every object around me, as i passed them in succession, reminded me of old days, and at the same time formed the strongest contrast with them possible. unattended, on foot, with a small bundle in my hand, deemed scarce sufficient good company for the two shabby genteels with whom i had been lately perched on the top of a mail-coach, i did not seem to be the same person with the young prodigal, who lived with the noblest and gayest in the land, and who, thirty years before, would, in the same country, have been on the back of a horse that had been victor for a plate, or smoking along in his travelling chaise-and-four. my sentiments were not less changed than my condition. i could quite well remember, that my ruling sensation in the days of heady youth, was a mere schoolboy's eagerness to get farthest forward in the race in which i had engaged; to drink as many bottles as ------; to be thought as good a judge of a horse as ------; to have the knowing cut of ------'s jacket. these were thy gods, 0 israel! now i was a mere looker-on; seldom an unmoved, and sometimes an angry spectator, but still a spectator only, of the pursuits of mankind. i felt how little my opinion was valued by those engaged in the busy turmoil, yet i exercised it with the profusion of an old lawyer retired from his profession, who thrusts himself into his neighbour's affairs, and gives advice where it is not wanted, merely under pretence of loving the crack of the whip. i came amid these reflections to the brow of a hill, from which i expected to see glentanner; a modest-looking yet comfortable house, its walls covered with the most productive fruit-trees in that part of the country, and screened from the most stormy quarters of the horizon by a deep and ancient wood, which overhung the neighbouring hill. the house was gone; a great part of the wood was felled; and instead of the gentlemanlike mansion, shrouded and embosomed among its old hereditary trees, stood castle-treddles, a huge lumping four-square pile of freestone, as bare as my nail, except for a paltry edging of decayed and lingering exotics, with an impoverished lawn stretched before it, which, instead of boasting deep green tapestry, enamelled with daisies, and with crowsfoot and cowslips, showed an extent of nakedness, raked, indeed, and levelled, but where the sown grasses had failed with drought, and the earth, retaining its natural complexion, seemed nearly as brown and bare as when it was newly dug up. the house was a large fabric, which pretended to its name of castle only from the front windows being finished in acute gothic arches (being, by the way, the very reverse of the castellated style), and each angle graced with a turret about the size of a pepper-box. in every other respect it resembled a large town-house, which, like a fat burgess, had taken a walk to the country on a holiday, and climbed to the top of an eminence to look around it. the bright red colour of the freestone, the size of the building, the formality of its shape, and awkwardness of its position, harmonized as ill with the sweeping clyde in front, and the bubbling brook which danced down on the right, as the fat civic form, with bushy wig, gold-beaded cane, maroon-coloured coat, and mottled silk stockings, would have accorded with tile wild and magnificient scenery of corehouse linn. i went up to the house. it was in that state of desertion which is perhaps the most unpleasant to look on, for the place was going to decay, without having been inhabited. there were about the mansion, though deserted, none of the slow mouldering touches of time, which communicate to buildings, as to the human frame, a sort of reverence, while depriving them of beauty and of strength. the disconcerted schemes of the laird of castle-treddles, had resembled fruit that becomes decayed without ever having ripened. some windows broken, others patched, others blocked up with deals, gave a disconsolate air to all around, and seemed to say, ``there vanity had purposed to fix her seat, but was anticipated by poverty.'' to the inside, after many a vain summons, i was at length admitted by an old labourer. the house contained every contrivance for luxury and accommodation;---the kitchens were a model, and there were hot closets on the office stair-case, that dishes might not cool, as our scottish phrase goes, between the kitchen and the hall. but instead of the genial smell of good cheer, these temples of comus emitted the damp odour of sepulchral vaults, and the large cabinets of cast-iron looked like the cages of some feudal bastille. the eating-room and drawing-room, with an interior boudoir, were magnificent apartments, the ceilings fretted and adorned with stucco-work, which already was broken in many places, and looked in others damp and mouldering; the wood panelling was shrunk and warped, and cracked; the doors, which had not been hung for more than two years, were, nevertheless, already swinging loose from their hinges. desolation, in short, was where enjoyment had never been; and the want of all the usual means to preserve, was fast performing the work of decay. the story was a common one, and told in a few words. mr treddles, senior, who bought the estate, was a cautious money-making person; his son, still embarked in commercial speculations, desired at the same time to enjoy his opulence and to increase it. he incurred great expenses, amongst which this edifice was to be numbered. to support these he speculated boldly, and unfortunately; and thus the whole history is told, which may serve for more places than glentanner. strange and various feelings ran through my bosom, as i loitered in these deserted apartments, scarce bearing what my guide said to me about the size and destination of each room. the first sentiment, i am ashamed to say, was one of gratified spite. my patrician pride was pleased, that the mechanic, who had not thought the house of the croftangrys sufficiently good for him, had now experienced a fall in his turn. my next thought was as mean, though not so malicious. ``i have had the better of this fellow,'' thought i; ``if i lost the estate, i at least spent the price; and mr treddles has lost his among paltry commercial engagements.'' ``wretch!'' said the secret voice within, ``darest thou exult in thy shame? recollect how thy youth and fortune were wasted in those years, and triumph not in the enjoyment of an existence which levelled thee with the beasts that perish. bethink thee, how this poor man's vanity gave at least bread to the labourer, peasant, and citizen; and his profuse expenditure, like water spilt on the ground, refreshed the lowly herbs and plants where it fell. but thou! whom hast thou enriched, during thy career of extravagance, save those brokers of the devil, vintners, panders, gamblers, and horse-jockeys?'' the anguish produced by this self-reproof was so strong, that i put my hand suddenly to my forehead, and was obliged to allege a sudden megrim to my attendant, in apology for the action, and a slight groan with which it was accompanied. i then made an effort to turn my thoughts into a more philosophical current, and muttered half aloud, as a charm to lull any more painful thoughts to rest-- _nunc ager umbrieni sub nomine, nuper ofelli dictus, erit nulli proprius; sed cedit in usum nunc mihi, nunc alii. quocirca vivite fortes fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus._* * horace, sat. ii, lib. 2. the meaning will be best conveyed to the english reader in pope's imitation:-- what's property, dear swift? you see it alter from you to me, from me to peter walter; or in a mortgage prove a lawyer's share; or in a jointure vanish from the heir. * * * * * * * shades, that to bacon could retreat afford, become the portion of a booby lord; and helmsley, once proud buckingham's delight, slides to a scrivener and city knight. let lands and houses have what lords they will, let us be fix'd, and our own masters still. in my anxiety to fix the philosophical precept in my mind, i recited the last line aloud, which, joined to my previous agitation, i afterwards found became the cause of a report, that a mad schoolmaster had come from edinburgh, with the idea in his head of buying castle-treddles. as i saw my companion was desirous of getting rid of me, i asked where i was to find the person in whose bands were left the map of the estate, and other particulars connected with the sale. the agent who had this in possession, i was told, lived at the town of------; which i was informed, and indeed knew well, was distant five miles and a bittock, which may pass in a country where they are less lavish of their land, for two or three more. being somewhat afraid of the fatigue of walking so far, i enquired if a horse, or any sort of carriage was to be had, and was answered in the negative. ``but,'' said my cicerone, ``you may halt a blink till next morning at the treddles arms, a very decent house, scarce a mile off.'' ``a new house, i suppose?'' replied i. ``na, it's a new public, but it's an auld house: it was aye the leddy's jointure-house in the croftangry-folk's time; but mr treddles has fitted it up for the convenience of the country. poor man, he was a public-spirited man, when he had the means.'' ``duntarkin a public house!'' i exclaimed. ``ay?'' said the fellow, surprised at my naming the place by its former title, ``ye'll hae been in this country before, i'm thinking?'' ``long since,'' i replied---``and there is good accommodation at the what-d'ye-call-'em arms, and a civil landlord?'' this i said by way of saying something, for the man stared very hard at me. ``very decent accommodation. ye'll no be for fashing wi' wine, i'm thinking, and there's walth o' porter, ale, and a drap gude whisky''---(in an under tone) ``fairntosh, if you can get on the lee-side of the gudewife---for there is nae gudeman--they ca' her christie steel.'' i almost started at the sound. christie steele! christie steele was my mother's body servant, her very right hand, and, between ourselves, something like a viceroy over her. i recollected her perfectly; and though she had, in former times, been no favourite of mine, her name now sounded in my ear like that of a friend, and was the first word i had heard somewhat in unison with the associations around me. i sallied from castle-treddles, determined to make the best of my way to duntarkin, and my cicerone hung by me for a little way, giving loose to his love of talking; an opportunity which, situated as he was, the seneschal of a deserted castle, was not likely to occur frequently. ``some folk think,'' said my companion, ``that mr treddles might as weel have put my wife as christie steele into the treddles arms, for christie had been aye in service, and never in the public line, and so it's like she is ganging back in the world, as i hear---now, my wife had keepit a victualling office.'' ``that would have been an advantage, certainly,'' i replied. ``but i am no sure that i wad ha' looten eppie take it, if they had put it in her offer.'' ``that's a different consideration.'' ``ony way, i wadna ha' liked to have offended mr treddles; he was a wee toustie when you rubbed him again the hair---but a kind, weel-meaning man.'' i wanted to get rid of this species of chat, and finding myself near the entrance of a footpath which made a short cut to duntarkin, i put half-a-crown into my guide's band, bade him good-evening, and plunged into the woods. ``hout, sir---fie, sir---no from the like of you--stay, sir, ye wunna find the way that gate---odd's mercy, he maun ken the gate as weel as i do mysell---weel, i wad like to ken wha the chield is.'' such were the last words of my guide's drowsy, uninteresting tone of voice; and glad to be rid of him, i strode out stoutly, in despite of large stones, briers, and _bad steps_, which abounded in the road i had chosen. in the interim, i tried as much as i could, with verses from horace and prior, and all who have lauded the mixture of literary with rural life, to call back the visions of last night and this morning, imagining myself settled in some detached farm of the estate of glentanner, which sloping hills around enclose-- where many a birch and brown oak grows; when i should have a cottage with a small library, a small cellar, a spare bed for a friend, and live more happy and more honoured than when i had the whole barony. but the sight of castle-treddles had disturbed all my own castles in the air. the realities of the matter, like a stone plashed into a limpid fountain, had destroyed the reflection of the objects around, which, till this act of violence, lay slumbering on the crystal surface, and i tried in vain to re-establish the picture which had been so rudely broken. well, then, i would try it another way; i would try to get christie steele out of her _public_, since she was not thriving in it, and she who had been my mother's governante should be mine. i knew all her faults, and i told her history over to myself. she was a grand-daughter, i believe, at least some relative, of the famous covenanter of the name whom dean swift's friend, captain creichton, shot on his own staircase in the times of the persecutions,* and had perhaps derived from her * note b. steele, a covenanter, shot by captain creichton. native stock much both of its good and evil properties. no one could say of her that she was the life and spirit of the family, though, in my mother's time, she directed all family affairs; her look was austere and gloomy, and when she was not displeased with you, you could only find it out by her silence. if there was cause for complaint, real or imaginary, christie was loud enough. she loved my mother with the devoted attachment of a younger sister, but she was as jealous of her favour to any one else as if she had been the aged husband of a coquettish wife, and as severe in her reprehensions as an abbess over her nuns. the command which she exercised over her, was that, i fear, of a strong and determined over a feeble and more nervous disposition; and though it was used with rigour, yet, to the best of christie steele's belief, she was urging her mistress to her best and most becoming course, and would have died rather than have recommended any other. the attachment of this woman was limited to the family of croftangry, for she had few relations; and a dissolute cousin, whom late in life she had taken as a husband, had long left her a widow. to me she had ever a strong dislike. even from my early childhood, she was jealous, strange as it may seem, of my interest in my mother's affections; she saw my foibles and vices with abhorrence, and without a grain of allowance; nor did she pardon the weakness of maternal affection, even when, by the death of two brothers, i came to be the only child of a widowed parent. at the time my disorderly conduct induced my mother to leave glentanner, and retreat to her jointure-house, i always blamed christie steele for having influenced her resentment, and prevented her from listening to my vows of amendment, which at times were real and serious, and might perhaps, have accelerated that change of disposition which has since, i trust taken place. but christie regarded me as altogether a doomed and predestinated child of perdition, who was sure to hold on my course, and drag downwards whosoever might attempt to afford me support. still, though i knew such had been christie's prejudices against me in other days, yet i thought enough of time had since passed away to destroy all of them. i knew, that when, through the disorder of my affairs, my mother underwent some temporary inconvenience about money matters, christie, as a thing of course, stood in the gap, and having sold a small inheritance which had descended to her, brought the purchase-money to her mistress, with a sense of devotion as deep as that which inspired the christians of the first age, when they sold all they had, and followed the apostles of the church. i therefore thought that we might, in old scottish phrase, ``let byganes be byganes,'' and upon a new account. yet i resolved, like a skilful general, to reconnoitre a little before laying down any precise scheme of proceeding, and in the interim i determined to preserve my incognito. chapter iv. mr croftangry bids adieu to clydesdale. alas, how changed from what it once had been! 'twas now degraded to a common inn. gay. an hour's brisk walking, or thereabouts, placed me in front of duntarkin, which had also, i found, undergone considerable alterations, though it had not been altogether demolished like the principal mansion. an inn-yard extended before the door of the decent little jointure-house, even amidst the remnants of the holly hedges which had screened the lady's garden. then a broad, raw-looking, new-made road intruded itself up the little glen, instead of the old horseway, so seldom used that it was almost entirely covered with grass. it is a great enormity of which gentlemen trustees on the highways are sometimes guilty, in adopting the breadth necessary for an avenue to the metropolis, where all that is required is an access to some sequestered and unpopulous district. i do not say any thing of the expense; that the trustees and their constituents may settle as they please. but the destruction of silvan beauty is great, when the breadth of the road is more than proportioned to the vale through which it runs, and lowers of course the consequence of any objects of wood or water, or broken and varied ground, which might otherwise attract notice, and give pleasure. a bubbling runnel by the side of one of those modern appian or flaminian highways, is but like a kennel,---the little hill is diminished to a hillock,---the romantic hillock to a molehill, almost too small for sight. such an enormity, however, had destroyed the quiet loneliness of duntarkin, and intruded its breadth of dust and gravel, and its associations of pochays and mail-coaches, upon one of the most sequestered spots in the middle ward of clydesdale. the house was old and dilapidated, and looked sorry for itself, as if sensible of a derogation; but the sign was strong and new, and brightly painted, displaying a heraldic shield three shuttles in a field diapr<e'>, a web partly unfolded for crest, and two stout giants for supporters, each one holding a weaver's beam proper. to have displayed this monstrous emblem on the front of the house might have hazarded bringing down the wall, but for certain would have blocked up one or two windows. it was therefore established independent of the mansion, being displayed in an iron framework, and suspended upon two posts, with as much wood and iron about it as would have builded a brig; and there it hung, creaking, groaning and screaming in every blast of wind, and frightening for five miles' distance, for aught i know, the nests of thrushes and linnets, the ancient denizens of the little glen. when i entered the place, i was received by christie steele herself, who seemed uncertain whether to drop me in the kitchen, or usher me into a separate apartment. as i called for tea, with something rather more substantial than bread and butter, and spoke of supping and sleeping, christie at last inducted me into the room where she herself had been sitting, probably the only one which had a fire, though the month was october. this answered my plan; and, as she was about to remove her spinning-wheel, i begged she would have the goodness to remain and make my tea, adding, that i liked the sound of the wheel, and desired not to disturb her housewife-thrift in the least. ``i dinna ken, sir,''---she replied in a dry _rev<e^>che_ tone, which carried me back twenty years, ``i am nane of thae heartsome landleddies that can tell country cracks, and make themsells agreeable; and i was ganging to put on a fire for you in the red room; but if it is your will to stay here, he that pays the lawing maun choose the lodging.'' i endeavoured to engage her in conversation; but though she answered with a kind of stiff civility, i could get her into no freedom of discourse and she began to look at her wheel and at the door more than once, as if she meditated a retreat. i was obliged, therefore, to proceed to some special questions that might have interest for a person, whose ideas were probably of a very bounded description. i looked round the apartment, being the same in which i had last seen my poor mother. the author of the family history, formerly mentioned, had taken great credit to himself for the improvements he had made in this same jointure-house of duntarkin, and how, upon his marriage, when his mother took possession of the same as her jointure-house, ``to his great charges and expenses he caused box the walls of the great parlour,'' (in which i was now sitting,) ``empanel the same, and plaster the roof, finishing the apartment with ane concave chimney, and decorating the same with pictures, and a barometer and thermometer.'' and in particular, which his good mother used to say she prized above all the rest, he had caused his own portraiture be limned over the mantlepiece by a skilful hand. and, in good faith, there he remained still, having much the visage which i was disposed to ascribe to him on the evidence of his handwriting,---grim and austere, yet not without a cast of shrewdness and determination; in armour, though he never wore it, i fancy; one hand on an open book, and one resting on the hilt of his sword, though i dare say his head never ached with reading, nor his limbs with fencing. ``that picture is painted on the wood, madam,'' said i. ``ay, sir, or it's like it would not have been left there,---they took a' they could.'' ``mr treddles's creditors, you mean?'' said i. ``na,'' replied she, dryly, ``the creditors of another family, that sweepit cleaner than this poor man's, because i fancy there was less to gather.'' ``an older family, perhaps, and probably more remembered and regretted than later possessors?'' christie here settled herself in her seat, and pulled her wheel towards her. i had given her something interesting for her thoughts to dwell upon, and her wheel was a mechanical accompaniment on such occasions, the revolutions of which assisted her in the explanation of her ideas. ``mair regretted---mair missed?---i liked ane of the auld family very weel, but i winna say that for them a'. how should they be mair missed than the treddleses? the cotton mill was such a thing for the country! the mair bairns a cottar body had the better; they would make their awn keep frae the time they were five years auld; and a widow wi' three or four bairns was a wealthy woman in the time of the treddleses.'' ``but the health of these poor children, my good friend---their education and religious instruction------'' ``for health,'' said christie, looking gloomily at me, ``ye maun ken little of the warld, sir, if ye dinna ken that the health of the poor man's body, as weel as his youth and his strength, are all at the command of the rich man's purse. there never was a trade so unhealthy yet, but men would fight to get wark at it for twa pennies a day aboon the common wage. but the bairns were reasonably weel cared for in the way of air and exercise, and a very responsible youth heard them their carritch, and gied them lessons in reediemadeasy.* now, * ``reading made easy,'' usually so pronounced in scotland. what did they ever get before? maybe on a winter day they wad be called out to beat the wood for cocks or sicklike, and then the starving weans would maybe get a bite of broken bread, and maybe no, just as the butler was in humour---that was a' they got.'' ``they were not, then, a very kind family to the poor, these old possessors?'' said i, somewhat bitterly; for i had expected to hear my ancestors' praises recorded, though i certainly despaired of being regaled with my own. ``they werena ill to them, sir, and that is aye something. they were just decent bien bodies; ---ony poor creature that had face to beg got an awmous and welcome; they that were shamefaced gaed by, and twice as welcome. but they keepit an honest walk before god and man, the croftangrys, and, as i said before, if they did little good, they did as little ill. they lifted their rents and spent them, called in their kain and eat them; gaed to the kirk of a sunday, bowed civilly if folk took aff their bannets as they gaed by, and lookit as black as sin at them that keepit them on.'' ``these are their arms that you have on the sign?'' ``what! on the painted board that is skirting and groaning at the door?---na, these are mr treddles's arms---though they look as like legs as arms---ill pleased i was at the fule thing, that cost as muckle as would hae repaired the house from the wa' stane to the rigging-tree. but if i am to bide here, i'll hae a decent board wi' a punch bowl on it.'' ``is there a doubt of your staying here, mrs steele?'' ``dinna mistress me,'' said the cross old woman, whose fingers were now playing their thrift in a manner which indicated nervous irritation---``there was nae luck in the land since luckie turned mistress, and mistress my leddy; and as for staying here, if it concerns you to ken, i may stay if i can pay a hundred pund sterling for the lease, and i may flit if i canna; and so gude-e'en to you, christie,''-and round went the wheel with much activity. ``and you like the trade of keeping a public house?'' ``i can scarce say that,'' she replied. ``but worthy mr prendergast is clear of its lawfulness, and i hae gotten used to it, and made a decent living, though i never make out a fause reckoning, or give ony ane the means to disorder reason in my house.'' ``indeed?'' said i; ``in that case, there is no wonder you have not made up the hundred pounds to purchase the lease.'' ``how do you ken,'' said she sharply, ``that i might not have had a hundred punds of my ain fee? if i have it not, i am sure it is my ain faut; and i wunna ca' it faut neither, for it gaed to her wha was weel entitled to a' my service.'' again she pulled stoutly at the flax, and the wheel went smartly round. ``this old gentleman,'' said i, fixing my eye on the painted panel, ``seems to have had his arms painted as well as mr treddles---that is, if that painting in the corner be a scutcheon.'' ``ay, ay---cushion, just sae, they maun a' hae their cushions; there's sma' gentry without that; and so the arms, as they ca' them, of the house of glentanner, may be seen on an auld stane in the west end of the house. but to do them justice, they didna propale sac muckle about them as poor mr treddles did;---it's like they were better used to them.'' ``very likely.---are there any of the old family in life, goodwife?'' ``no,'' she replied; then added, after a moment's hesitation---``not that i know of,''---and the wheel, which had intermitted, began again to revolve. ``gone abroad, perhaps?'' i suggested. she now looked up, and faced me---``no, sir. there were three sons of the last laird of glentanner, as he was then called; john and william were hopeful young gentlemen, but they died early ---one of a decline, brought on by the mizzles, the other lost his life in a fever. it would hae been lucky for mony ane that chrystal had gane the same gate.'' ``oh---he must have been the young spendthrift that sold the property? well, but you should not have such an ill-will against him: remember necessity has no law; and then, goodwife, be was not more culpable than mr treddles, whom you are so sorry for.'' ``i wish i could think sae, sir, for his mother's sake; but mr treddles was in trade, and though be had no preceese right to do so, yet there was some warrant for a man being expensive that imagined be was making a mint of money. but this unhappy lad devoured his patrimony, when he kenned that he was living like a ratten in a dunlap cheese, and diminishing his means at a' hands ---i canna bide to think on't.'' with this she broke out into a snatch of a ballad; but little of mirth was there either in the tone or the expression:-- ``for he did spend, and make an end of gear that his forefathers wan; of land and ware he made him bare, so speak nae mair of the auld gudeman.'' ``come, dame,'' said i, ``it is a long lane that has no turning. i will not keep from you that i have heard something of this poor fellow, chrystal croftangry. he has sown his wild oats, as they say, and has settled into a steady respectable man.'' ``and wha tell'd ye that tidings?'' said she, looking sharply at me. ``not perhaps the best judge in the world of his character, for it was himself, dame.'' ``and if he tell'd you truth, it was a virtue he did not aye use to practise,'' said christie. ``the devil!'' said i, considerably nettled; ``all the world held him to be a man of honour.'' ``ay, ay! he would hae shot onybody wi' his pistols and his guns, that had evened him to be a liar. but if he promised to pay an honest tradesman the next term-day, did he keep his word then? and if he promised a puir silly lass to make gude her shame, did he speak truth then? and what is that, but being a liar, and a black-hearted deceitful liar to boot?'' my indignation was rising, but i strove to suppress it; indeed, i should only have afforded my tormentor a triumph by an angry reply. i partly suspected she began to recognise me; yet she testified so little emotion, that i could not think my suspicion well founded. i went on, therefore, to say, in a tone as indifferent as i could command, ``well, goodwife, i see you will believe no good of this chrystal of yours, till he comes back and buys a good farm on the estate, and makes you his housekeeper.'' the old woman dropped her thread, folded her hands, as she looked up to heaven with a face of apprehension. ``the lord,'' she exclaimed, ``forbid! the lord in his mercy forbid! oh, sir! if you really know this unlucky man, persuade him to settle where folk ken the good that you say he has come to, and dinna ken the evil of his former days. he used to be proud enough---o dinna let him come here, even for his own sake.---he used ance to have some pride.'' here she once more drew the wheel close to her, and began to pull at the flax with both hands--``dinna let him come here, to be looked down upon by ony that may be left of his auld reiving companions, and to see the decent folk that he looked over his nose at look over their noses at him, baith at kirk and market. dinna let him come to his ain country to be made a tale about when ony neighbour points him out to another, and tells what he is, and what he was, and how he wrecked a dainty estate, and brought harlots to the door-cheek of his father's house, till he made it nae residence for his mother; and how it had been foretauld by a servant of his ain house, that he was a ne'er-do-weel, and a child of perdition, and how her words were made good, and---'' ``stop there, goodwife, if you please,'' said i: ``you have said as much as i can well remember, and more than it may be safe to repeat. i can use a great deal of freedom with the gentleman we speak of; but i think were any other person to carry him half of your message, i would scarce insure his personal safety. and now, as i see the night is settled to be a fine one, i will walk on to ------, where i must meet a coach to-morrow, as it passes to edinburgh.'' so saying, i paid my moderate reckoning, and took my leave, without being able to discover whether the prejudiced and hard-hearted old woman did, or did not, suspect the identity of her guest with the chrystal croftangry against whom she harboured so much dislike. the night was fine and frosty, though, when i pretended to see what its character was, it might have rained like the deluge. i only made the excuse to escape from old christie steele. the horses which run races in the corso at rome without any riders, in order to stimulate their exertion, carry each his own spurs, namely, small balls of steel, with sharp projecting spikes, which are attached to loose straps of leather, and, flying about in the violence of the agitation, keep the horse to his speed by pricking him as they strike against his flanks. the old woman's reproaches had the same effect on me, and urged me to a rapid pace, as if it had been possible to escape from my own recollections. in the best days of my life, when i won one or two hard walking matches, i doubt if i ever walked so fast as i did betwixt the treddles arms and the borough town for which i was bound. though the night was cold, i was warm enough by the, time i got to my inn; and it required a refreshing draught of porter, with half an hour's repose, ere i could determine to give no farther thought to christie and her opinions, than those of any other vulgar prejudiced old woman. i resolved at last to treat the thing _en bagatelle_, and, calling for writing materials, i folded up a cheque for l.100, with these lines on the envelope chrystal, the ne'er-do-weel, child destined to the deil, sends this to christie steele. and i was so much pleased with this new mode of viewing the subject, that i regretted the lateness of the hour prevented my finding a person to carry the letter express to its destination. but with the morning cool reflection came. i considered that the money, and probably more, was actually due by me on my mother's account to christie, who had lent it in a moment of great necessity, and that the returning it in a light or ludicrous manner was not unlikely to prevent so touchy arid punctilious a person from accepting a debt which was most justly her due, and which it became me particularly to see satisfied. sacrificing then my triad with little regret, (for it looked better by candlelight, and through the medium of a pot of porter, than it did by daylight, and with bohea for a menstruum,) i determined to employ mr fairscribe's mediation in buying up the lease of the little inn, and conferring it upon christie in the way which should make it most acceptable to her feelings. it is only necessary to add, that my plan succeeded, and that widow steele even yet keeps the treddles arms. do not say, therefore, that i have been disingenuous with you, reader; since, if i have not told all the ill of myself i might have done, i have indicated to you a person able and willing to supply the blank, by relating all my delinquencies, as well as my misfortunes. in the meantime, i totally abandoned the idea of redeeming any part of my paternal property, and resolved to take christie steele's advice, as young norval does glenalvon's, ``although it sounded harshly.'' chapter v. mr croftangry settles in the canongate. ------if you will know my house, 'tis at the tuft of olives here hard by. _as you like it._ by a revolution of humour which i am unable to account for, i changed my mind entirely on my plans of life, in consequence of the disappointment, the history of which fills the last chapter. i began to discover that the country would not at all suit me; for i had relinquished field-sports, and felt no inclination whatever to farming, the ordinary vocation of country gentlemen; besides that, i had no talent for assisting either candidate in case of an expected election, and saw no amusement in the duties of a road trustee, a commissioner of supply, or even in the magisterial functions of the bench. i had begun to take some taste for reading; and a domiciliation in the country must remove me from the use of books, excepting the small subscription library, in which the very book which you want is uniformly sure to be engaged. i resolved, therefore, to make the scottish metropolis my regular resting-place, reserving to myself to take occasionally those excursions, which, spite of all i have said against mail-coaches, mr piper has rendered so easy. friend of our life and of our leisure, he secures by dispatch against loss of time, and by the best of coaches, cattle, and steadiest of drivers, against hazard of limb, and wafts us, as well as our letters, from edinburgh to cape wrath, in the penning of a paragraph. when my mind was quite made up to make auld reekie my head-quarters, reserving the privilege of _exploring_ in all directions, i began to explore in good earnest for the purpose of discovering a suitable habitation. ``and whare trew ye i gaed?'' as sir pertinax says. not to george's square--nor to charlotte square---nor to the old new town---nor to the new new town---nor to the calton hill; i went to the canongate, and to the very portion of the canongate in which i had formerly been immured, like the errant knight, prisoner in some enchanted castle, where spells have made the ambient air impervious to the unhappy captive, although the organs of sight encountered no obstacle to his free passage. why i should have thought of pitching my tent here i cannot tell. perhaps it was to enjoy the pleasures of freedom, where i had so long endured the bitterness of restraint; on the principle of the officer, who, after he had retired from the army, ordered his servant to continue to call him at the hour of parade, simply that he might have the pleasure of saying---``d-n the parade!'' and turning to the other side to enjoy his slumbers. or perhaps i expected to find in the vicinity some little oldfashioned house, having somewhat of the _rus in urbe_, which i was ambitious of enjoying. enough, i went, as aforesaid, to the canongate. i stood by the kennel, of which i have formerly spoken, and, my mind being at case, my bodily organs were more delicate. i was more sensible than heretofore, that, like the trade of pompey in measure for measure---it did in some sort---pah ---an ounce of civet, good apothecary!---turning from thence, my steps naturally directed themselves to my own humble apartment, where my little highland landlady, as dapper and as tight as ever, (for old women wear a hundred times better than the hard-wrought seniors of the masculine sex,) stood at the door, _teedling_, to herself a highland song as she shook a table napkin over the forestair, and then proceeded to fold it up neatly for future service. ``how do you, janet?'' ``thank ye, good sir,'' answered my old friend, without looking at me; ``but ye might as weel say mrs macevoy, for she is na a'body's shanet--umph.'' ``you must be my janet, though, for all that--have you forgot me?---do you not remember chrystal croftangry?'' the light, kind-hearted creature threw her napkin into the open door, skipped down the stair like a fairy, three steps at once, seized me by the hands, ---both hands,---jumped up, and actually kissed me. i was a little ashamed; but what swain, of somewhere inclining to sixty, could resist the advances of a fair contemporary? so we allowed the full degree of kindness to the meeting,---_honi soit qui mal y pense_,---and then janet entered instantly upon business. ``an' yell gae in, man, and see your auld lodgings, nae doubt, and shanet will pay ye the fifteen shillings of change that ye ran away without, and without bidding shanet good day. but never mind,'' (nodding good-humouredly,) ``shanet saw you were carried for the time.'' by this time we were in my old quarters, and janet, with her bottle of cordial in one hand and the glass in the other, had forced on me a dram of usquebaugh, distilled with saffron and other herbs, after some old-fashioned highland receipt. then was unfolded, out of many a little scrap of paper, the reserved sum of fifteen shillings, which janet had treasured for twenty years and upwards. ``here they are,'' she said, in honest triumph, ``just the same i was holding out to ye when ye ran as if ye had been fey. shanet has had siller, and shanet has wanted siller, mony a time since that---and the gauger has come, and the factor has come, and the butcher and baker---cot bless us--just like to tear poor auld shanet to pieces; but she took good care of mr croftangry's fifteen shillings.'' ``but what if i had never come back, janet?'' ``och, if shanet had heard you were dead, she would hae gien it to the poor of the chapel, to pray for mr croftangry,'' said janet, crossing herself, for she was a catholic;---``you maybe do not think it would do you cood, but the blessing of the poor can never do no harm.'' i agreed heartily in janet's conclusion; and, as to have desired her to consider the hoard as her own property, would have been an indelicate return to her for the uprightness of her conduct, i requested her to dispose of it as she had proposed to do in the event of my death, that is, if she knew any poor people of merit to whom it might be useful. ``ower mony of them,'' raising the corner of her checked apron to her eyes, ``e'en ower mony of them, mr croftangry.---och, ay---there is the puir highland creatures frae glensbee, that cam down for the harvest, and are lying wi' the fever---five shillings to them, and half-a-crown to bessie macevoy, whose coodman, puir creature, died of the frost, being a shairman, for a' the whisky he could drink to keep it out o' his stamoch---and------'' but she suddenly interrupted the bead-roll of her proposed charities, and assuming a very sage look, and primming up her little chattering mouth, she went on in a different tone---``but, och, mr croftangry, bethink ye whether ye will not need a' this siller yoursell, and maybe look back and think lang for ha'en kiven it away, whilk is a creat sin to forthink a wark o' charity, and also is unlucky, and moreover is not the thought of a shentleman's son like yoursell, dear. and i say this, that ye may think a bit, for your mother's son kens that ye are no so careful as you should be of the gear, and i hae tauld ye of it before, jewel.'' i assured her i could easily spare the money, without risk of future repentance; and she went on to infer, that, in such a case, ``mr croftangry had grown a rich man in foreign parts, and was free of his troubles with messengers and sheriff-officers, and siclike scum of the earth, and shanet macevoy's mother's daughter be a blithe woman to hear it. but if mr croftangry was in trouble, there was his room, and his ped, and shanet to wait on him, and tak payment when it was quite convenient.'' i explained to janet my situation, in which she expressed unqualified delight. i then proceeded to enquire into her own circumstances, and, though she spoke cheerfully and contentedly, i could see they were precarious. i had paid more than was due; other lodgers fell into an opposite error, and forgot to pay janet at all. then, janet being ignorant of all indirect modes of screwing money out of her lodgers, others in the same line of life, who were sharper than the poor simple highland woman, were enabled to let their apartments cheaper in appearance, though the inmates usually found them twice as dear in the long-run. as i had already destined my old landlady to be my housekeeper and governante, knowing her honesty, good-nature, and, although a scotchwoman, her cleanliness and excellent temper, (saving the short and hasty expressions of anger which highlanders call a _fuff_,) now proposed the plan to her in such a way as was likely to make it most acceptable. very acceptable as the proposal was, as i could plainly see, janet, however, took a day to consider upon it; and her reflections against our next meeting had suggested only one objection, which was singular enough. ``my honour,'' so she now termed me, ``would pe for biding in some fine street apout the town; now shanet wad ill like to live in a place where polish, and sheriffs, and bailiffs, and sic thieves and trash of the world, could tak puir shentlemen by the throat, just because they wanted a wheen dollars in the sporran. she had lived in the bonny glen of tomanthoulick---cot, an ony of the vermint had come there, her father wad hae wared a shot on them, and he could hit a buck within as mony measured yards as e'er a man of his clan. and the place here was so quiet frae them, they durst na put their nose ower the gutter. shanet owed nobody a bodle, but she couldna pide to see honest folk and pretty shentlemen forced away to prison whether they would or no; and then if shanet was to lay her tangs ower ane of the ragamuffin's heads, it would be, maybe, that the law would gi'ed a hard name.'' one thing i have learned in life,---never to speak sense when nonsense will answer the purpose as well. i should have had great difficulty to convince this practical and disinterested admirer and vindicator of liberty, that arrests seldom or never were to be seen in the streets of edinburgh, and to satisfy her of their justice and necessity, would have been as difficult as to convert her to the protestant faith. i therefore assured her my intention, if i could get a suitable habitation, was to remain in the quarter where she at present dwelt. janet gave three skips on the floor, and uttered as many short shrill yells of joy; yet doubt almost instantly returned, and she insisted on knowing what possible reason i could have for making my residence where few lived, save those whose misfortunes drove them thither. it occurred to me to answer her by recounting the legend of the rise of my family, and of our deriving our name from a particular place near holyrood palace. this, which would have appeared to most people a very absurd reason for choosing a residence, was entirely satisfactory to janet macevoy. ``och, nae doubt i if it was the land of her fathers, there was nae mair to be said. put it was queer that her family estate should just lie at the town tail, and covered with houses, where the king's cows, cot bless them hide and horn, used to craze upon. it was strange changes.'' she mused a little, and then added, ``put it is something better wi' croftangry when the changes is frae the field to the habited place, and not from the place of habitation to the desert; for shanet, her nainsell, kent a glen where there were men as weel as there maybe in croftangry, and if there werena altogether sae mony of them, they were as good men in their tartan as the others in their broadcloth. and there were houses too, and if they were not biggit with stane and lime, and lofted like the houses at croftangry, yet they served the purpose of them that lived there; and mony a braw bonnet, and mony a silk snood, and comely white curch, would come out to gang to kirk or chapel on the lord's day, and little bairns toddling after; and now,---och, och, ohellany, ohonari! the glen is desolate, and the braw snoods and bonnets are gane, and the saxon's house stands dull and lonely, like the single bare-breasted rock that the falcon builds on---the falcon that drives the heathbird frae the glen.'' janet, like many highlanders, was full of imagination; and, when melancholy themes came upon her, expressed herself almost poetically, owing to the genius of the celtic language in which she thought, and in which, doubtless, she would have spoken, had i understood gaelic. in two minutes the shade of gloom and regret had passed from her good-humoured features, and she was again the little busy, prating, important old woman, undisputed owner of one flat of a small tenement in the abbey-yard, and about to be promoted to be housekeeper to an elderly bachelor gentleman, chrystal croftangry, esq. it was not long before janet's local researches found out exactly the sort of place i wanted, and there we settled. janet was afraid i would not be satisfied because it is not exactly part of croftangry; but i stopped her doubts, by assuring her it had been part and pendicle thereof in my forefathers' time, which passed very well. i do not intend to possess any one with an exact knowledge of my lodging; though, as bobadil says, ``i care not who knows it, since the cabin is convenient.'' but i may state in general, that it is a house ``within itself,'' or, according to a newer phraseology in advertisements, self-contained, has a garden of near half an acre, and a patch of ground with trees in front. it boasts five rooms and servants' apartments---looks in front upon the palace, and from behind towards the hill and crags of the king's park. fortunately the place had a name, which, with a little improvement, served to countenance the legend which i had imposed on janet, and would not perhaps have been sorry if i had been able to impose on myself. it was called littlecroft; we have dubbed it little croftangry, and the men of letters belonging to the post office have sanctioned the change, and deliver letters so addressed. thus i am to all intents and purposes chrystal croftangry of that ilk. my establishment consists of janet, an under maid-servant, and a highland wench for janet to exercise her gaelic upon, with a handy lad who can lay the cloth, and take care besides of a pony, on which i find my way to portobello sands, especially when the cavalry have a drill; for, like an old fool as i am, i have not altogether become indifferent to the tramp of horses and the flash of weapons, of which, though no professional soldier, it has been my fate to see something in my youth. for wet mornings, i have my book---is it fine weather, i visit, or i wander on the crags, as the humour dictates. my dinner is indeed solitary, yet not quite so neither; for though andrew waits, janet, or,---as she is to all the world but her master, and certain old highland gossips,---mrs macevoy, attends, bustles about, and desires to see every thing is in first-rate order, and to tell me, cot pless us, the wonderful news of the palace for the day. when the cloth is removed, and i light my cigar, and begin to husband a pint of port, or a glass of old whisky and water, it is the rule of the house that janet takes a chair at some distance, and nods or works her stocking, as she may be disposed; ready to speak, if i am in the talking humour, and sitting quiet as a mouse if i am rather inclined to study a book or the newspaper. at six precisely she makes my tea, and leaves me to drink it; and then occurs an interval of time which most old bachelors find heavy on their hands. the theatre is a good occasional resource, especially if will murray acts, or a bright star of eminence shines forth; but it is distant, and so are one or two public societies to which i belong; besides, these evening walks are all incompatible with the elbow-chair feeling, which desires some employment that may divert the mind without fatiguing the body. under the influence of these impressions, i have sometimes thought of this literary undertaking. i must have been the bonassus himself to have mistaken myself for a genius, yet i have leisure and reflections like my neighbours. i am a borderer also between two generations, and can point out more perhaps than others of those fading traces of antiquity which are daily vanishing; and i know many a modern instance and many an old tradition, and therefore i ask-- what ails me, i may not, as well as they, rake up some threadbare tales, that mouldering lay in chimney corners, wont by christmas fires to read and rock to sleep our ancient sires? no man his threshold better knows, than i brute's first arrival and first victory, saint george's sorrel and his cross of blood, arthur's round board and caledonian wood. no shop is so easily set up as an antiquary's. like those of the lowest order of pawnbrokers, a commodity of rusty iron, a bag or two of hobnails, a few odd shoebuckles, cashiered kail-pots, and fire-irons declared incapable of service, are quite sufficient to set him up. if he add a sheaf or two of penny ballads and broadsides, he is a great man ---an extensive trader. and then---like the pawnbrokers aforesaid, if the author understands a little legerdemain, he may, by dint of a little picking and stealing, make the inside of his shop a great deal richer than the out, and be able to show you things which cause those who do not understand the antiquarian trick of clean conveyance, to wonder how the devil he came by them. it may be said, that antiquarian articles interest but few customers, and that we may bawl ourselves as rusty as the wares we deal in without any one asking the price of our merchandise. but i do not rest my hopes upon this department of my labours only. i propose also to have a corresponding shop for sentiment, and dialogues, and disquisition, which may captivate the fancy of those who have no relish, as the established phrase goes, for pure antiquity;---a sort of green-grocer's stall erected in front of my ironmongery wares, garlanding the rusty memorials of ancient times with cresses, cabbages, leeks, and water purpy. as i have some idea that i am writing too well to be understood, i humble myself to ordinary language, and aver, with becoming modesty, that i do think myself capable of sustaining a publication of a miscellaneous nature, as like to the spectator, or the guardian, the mirror, or the lounger, as my poor abilities may be able to accomplish. not that i have any purpose of imitating johnson, whose general learning and power of expression i do not deny, but many of whose ramblers are little better than a sort of pageant, where trite and obvious maxims are made to swagger in lofty and mystic language, and get some credit only because they are not easily understood. there are some of the great moralist's papers which i cannot peruse without thinking on a second-rate masquerade, where the best-known and least-esteemed characters in town march in as heroes, and sultans, and so forth, and, by dint of tawdry dresses, get some consideration until they are found out.---it is not, however, prudent to commence with throwing stones, just when i am striking out windows of my own. i think even the local situation of little croftangry may be considered as favourable to my undertaking. a nobler contrast there can hardly exist than that of the huge city, dark with the smoke of ages, and groaning with the various sounds of active industry or idle revel, and the lofty and craggy hill, silent and solitary as the grave; one exhibiting the full tide of existence, pressing and precipitating itself forward with the force of an inundation; the other resembling some time-worn anchorite, whose life passes as silent and unobserved as the slender rill which escapes unheard, and scarce seen, from the fountain of his patron saint. the city resembles the busy temple, where the modern comus and mammon hold their court, and thousands sacrifice ease, independence, and virtue itself, at their shrine; the misty and lonely mountain seems as a throne to the majestic but terrible genius of feudal times, when the same divinities dispensed coronets and domains to those who had heads to devise, and arms to execute, bold enterprises. i have, as it were, the two extremities of the moral world at my threshold. from the front door, a few minutes' walk brings me into the heart of a wealthy and populous city; as many paces from my opposite entrance, places me in a solitude as complete as zimmerman could have desired. surely with such aids to my imagination, i may write better than if i were in a lodging in the new town, or a garret in the old. as the spaniard says, ``_viamos---caracco!_'' i have not chosen to publish periodically, my reason for which was twofold. in the first place, i don't like to be hurried, and have had enough of duns in an early part of my life, to make me reluctant to hear of, or see one, even in the less awful shape of a printer's devil. but, secondly, a periodical paper is not easily extended in circulation beyond the quarter in which it is published. this work, if published in fugitive numbers, would scarce, without a high pressure on the part of the bookseller, be raised above the netherbow, and never could be expected to ascend to the level of prince's street. now i am ambitious that my compositions, though having their origin in this valley of holyrood, should not only be extended into those exalted regions i have mentioned, but also that they should cross the forth, astonish the long town of kirkaldy, enchant the skippers and colliers of the east of fife, venture even into the classic arcades of st andrews, and travel as much farther to the north as the breath of applause will carry their sails. as for a southward direction, it is not to be hoped for in my fondest dreams. i am informed that scottish literature, like scottish whisky, will be presently laid under a prohibitory duty. but enough of this. if any reader is dull enough not to comprehend the advantages which, in point of circulation, a compact book has over a collection of fugitive numbers, let him try the range of a gun loaded with hail-shot, against that of the same piece charged with an equal weight of lead consolidated in a single bullet. besides, it was of less consequence that i should have published periodically, since i did not mean to solicit or accept of the contributions of friends, or the criticisms of those who may be less kindly disposed. notwithstanding the excellent examples which might be quoted, i will establish no begging-box, either under the name of a lion's-head or an ass's. what is good or ill shall be mine own, or the contribution of friends to whom i may have private access. many of my voluntary assistants might be cleverer than myself, and then i should have a brilliant article appear among my chiller effusions, like a patch of lace on a scottish cloak of galashiels grey. some might be worse, and then i must reject them, to the injury of the feelings of the writer, or else insert them, to make my own darkness yet more opaque and palpable. ``let every herring,'' says our old-fashioned proverb, ``hang by his own head.'' one person, however, i may distinguish, as she is now no more, who, living to the utmost term of human life, honoured me with a great share of her friendship, as indeed we were blood-relatives in the scottish sense---heaven knows how many degrees removed---and friends in the sense of old england. i mean the late excellent and regretted mrs bethune baliol. but as i design this admirable picture of the olden time for a principal character in my work, i will only say here, that she knew and approved of my present purpose; and though she declined to contribute to it while she lived, from a sense of dignified retirement, which she thought became her age, sex, and condition in life, she left me some materials for carrying on my proposed work, which i coveted when i heard her detail them in conversation, and which now, when i have their substance in her own handwriting, i account far more valuable than anything i have myself to offer. i hope the mentioning her name in conjunction with my own, will give no offence to any of her numerous friends, as it was her own express pleasure that i should employ the manuscripts, which she did me the honour to bequeath me, in the manner in which i have now used them. it must be added, however, that in most cases i have disguised names, and in some have added shading and colouring to bring out the narrative. much of my materials, besides these, are derived from friends, living or dead. the accuracy of some of these may be doubtful, in which case i shall be happy to receive, from sufficient authority, the correction of the errors which must creep into traditional documents. the object of the whole publication is, to throw some light on the manners of scotland as they were, and to contrast them, occasionally, with those of the present day. my own opinions are in favour of our own times in many respects, but not in so far as affords means for exercising the imagination, or exciting the interest which attaches to other times. i am glad to be a writer or a reader in 1826, but i would be most interested in reading or relating what happened from half a century to a century before. we have the best of it. scenes in which our ancestors thought deeply, acted fiercely, and died desperately, are to us tales to divert the tedium of a winter's evening, when we are engaged to no party, or beguile a summer's morning, when it is too scorching to ride or walk. yet i do not mean that my essays and narratives should be limited to scotland. i pledge myself to no particular line of subjects; but, on the contrary, say with burns, perhaps it may turn out a sang, perhaps turn out a sermon. i have only to add, by way of postcript to these preliminary chapters, that i have had recourse to moliere's recipe, and read my manuscript over to my old woman, janet macevoy. the dignity of being consulted delighted janet; and wilkie, or allan, would have made a capital sketch of her, as she sat upright in her chair, instead of her ordinary lounging posture, knitting her stocking systematically, as if she meant every twist of her thread, and inclination of the wires, to bear burden to the cadence of my voice. i am afraid, too, that i myself felt more delight than i ought to have done in my own composition, and read a little more oratorically than i should have ventured to do before an auditor, of whose applause i was not so secure. and the result did not entirely encourage my plan of censorship. janet did indeed seriously incline to the account of my previous life, and bestowed some highland maledictions more emphatic than courteous on christie steele's reception of a ``shentlemans in distress,'' and of her own mistress's house too. i omitted for certain reasons, or greatly abridged, what related to herself but when i came to treat of my general views in publication, i saw poor janet was entirely thrown out, though, like a jaded hunter, panting, puffing, and short of wind, she endeavoured at least to keep up with the chase. or rather her perplexity made her look all the while like a deaf person ashamed of his infirmity, who does not understand a word you are saying, yet desires you to believe that he does understand you, and who is extremely jealous that you suspect this incapacity. when she saw that some remark was necessary, she resembled exactly in her criticism the devotee who pitched on the ``sweet word mesopotamia,'' as the most edifying note which she could bring away from a sermon. she indeed hastened to bestow general praise on what she said was all ``very fine;'' but chiefly dwelt on what i had said about mr timmerman, as she was pleased to call the german philosopher, and supposed he must be of the same descent with the highland clan of m`intyre, which signifies son of the carpenter. ``and a fery honourable name too ---shanet's own mither was a m`intyre.'' in short, it was plain the latter part of my introduction was altogether lost on poor janet; and so, to have acted up to moliere's system, i should have cancelled the whole, and written it anew. but i do not know how it is; i retained, i suppose, some tolerable opinion of my own composition, though janet did not comprehend it, and felt loath to retrench those delilahs of the imagination, as dryden calls them, the tropes and figures of which are caviar to the multitude. besides, i hate re-writing, as much as falstaff did paying back---it is a double labour. so i determined with myself to consult janet, in future, only on such things as were within the limits of her comprehension, and hazard my arguments and my rhetoric on the public without her imprimatur. i am pretty sure she will ``applaud it done.'' and in such narratives as come within her range of thought and feeling, i shall, as i first intended, take the benefit of her unsophisticated judgment, and attend to it deferentially ---that is, when it happens not to be in peculiar opposition to my own; for, after all, i say with almanzor-- know that i alone am king of me. the reader has now my who and my whereabout, the purpose of the work, and the circumstances under which it is undertaken. he has also a specimen of the author's talents, and may judge for himself, and proceed, or send back the volume to the bookseller, as his own taste shall determine. chapter vi. mr croftangry's account of mrs bethune baliol. the moon, were she earthly, no nobler. coriolanus. when we set out on the jolly voyage of life, what a brave fleet there is around us, as stretching our fresh canvass to the breeze, all ``shipshape and bristol fashion,'' pennons flying, music playing, cheering each other as we pass, we are rather amused than alarmed when some awkward comrade goes right ashore for want of pilotage!---alas! when the voyage is well spent, and we look about us, toil-worn mariners, how few of our ancient consorts still remain in sight, and they, how torn and wasted, and, like ourselves, struggling to keep as long as possible of the fatal shore, against which we are all finally drifting! i felt this very trite but melancholy truth in all its force the other day, when a packet with a black seal arrived, containing a letter addressed to me by my late excellent friend mrs martha bethune baliol, and marked with the fatal indorsation, ``to be delivered according to address, after i shall be no more.'' a letter from her executors accompanied the packet, mentioning that they had found in her will a bequest to me of a painting of some value, which she stated would just fit the space above my cupboard, and fifty guineas to buy a ring. and thus i separated, with all the kindness which we had maintained for many years, from a friend, who, though old enough to have been the companion of my mother, was yet, in gaiety of spirits, and admirable sweetness of temper, capable of being agreeable, and even animating society, for those who write themselves in the vaward of youth; an advantage which i have lost for these five-and-thirty years. the contents of the packet i had no difficulty in guessing, and have partly hinted at them in the last chapter. but to instruct the reader in the particulars, and at the same time to indulge myself with recalling the virtues and agreeable qualities of my late friend, i will give a short sketch of her manners and habits. mrs martha bethune baliol was a person of quality and fortune, as these are esteemed in scotland. her family was ancient, and her connexions honourable. she was not fond of specially indicating her exact age, but her juvenile recollections stretched backwards till before the eventful year 1745; and she remembered the highland clans being in possession of the scottish capital, though probably only as an indistinct vision. her fortune, independent by her father's bequest, was rendered opulent by the death of more than one brave brother, who fell successively in the service of their @@@ 92 beside the gate, and acted as porter. to this office he had been promoted by my friend's charitable feelings for an old soldier, and partly by an idea, that his bead, which was a very fine one, bore some resemblance to that of garrick in the character of lusignan. he was a man saturnine, silent, and slow in his proceedings, and would never open the _porte coch<e`>re_ to a hackney coach; indicating the wicket with his finger, as the proper passage for all who came in that obscure vehicle, which was not permitted to degrade with its ticketed presence the dignity of baliol's lodging. i do not think this peculiarity would have met with his lady's approbation, any more than the occasional partiality of lusignan, or, as mortals called him, archy macready, to a dram. but mrs martha bethune baliol, conscious that, in case of conviction, she could never have prevailed upon, herself to dethrone the king of palestine from the stone bench on which he sat for hours, knitting his stocking, refused, by accrediting the intelligence, even to put him upon his trial; well judging that he would observe more wholesome caution if he conceived his character unsuspected, than if be were detected, and suffered to pass unpunished. for after all, she said, it would be cruel to dismiss an old highland soldier for a peccadillo so appropriate to his country and profession. the stately gate for carriages, or the humble accommodation for foot-passengers, admitted into a narrow and short passage, running between two rows of lime-trees, whose green foliage, during the spring, contrasted strangely with the swart complexion of the two walls by the side of which they grew. this access led to the front of the house, which was formed by two gable ends, notched, and having their windows adorned with heavy architectural ornaments; they joined each other at right angles; and a half circular tower, which contained the entrance and the staircase, occupied the point of junction, and rounded the acute angle. one of other two sides of the little court, in which there was just sufficient room to turn a carriage, was occupied by some low buildings answering the purpose of offices; the other, by a parapet surrounded by a highly-ornamented iron railing, twined round with honeysuckle and other parasitical shrubs, which permitted the eye to peep into a pretty suburban garden, extending down to the road called the south back of the canongate, and boasting a number of old trees, many flowers, and even some fruit. we must not forget to state, that the extreme cleanliness of the court-yard was such as intimated that mop and pail had done their utmost in that favoured spot, to atone for the general dirt and dinginess of the quarter where the premises were situated. over the doorway were the arms of bethune and baliol, with various other devices carved in stone; the door itself was studded with iron nails, and formed of black oak; an iron rasp,* as it was * note c. iron rasp. called, was placed on it, instead of a knocker, for the purpose of summoning the attendants. he who usually appeared at the summons was a smart lad, in a handsome livery, the son of mrs martha's gardener at mount baliol. now and then a servant girl, nicely but plainly dressed, and fully accoutred with stockings and shoes, would perform this duty; and twice or thrice i remember being admitted by beauffet himself, whose exterior looked as much like that of a clergyman of rank as the butler of a gentleman's family. he had been valet-de-chambre to the last sir richard bethune baliol, and was a person highly trusted by the present lady. a full stand, as it is called in scotland, of garments of a dark colour, gold buckles in his shoes, and at the knees of his breeches, with his hair regularly dressed and powdered, announced him to be a domestic of trust and importance. his mistress used to say of him, he's sad and civil, and suits well for a servant with my fortunes. as no one can escape scandal, some said that beauffet made a rather better thing of the place than the modesty of his old-fashioned wages would, unassisted, have amounted to. but the man was always very civil to me. he had been long in the family; had enjoyed legacies, and laid by a something of his own, upon which he now enjoys ease with dignity, in as far as his newly-married wife, tibbie shortacres, will permit him. the lodging---dearest reader, if you are tired, pray pass over the next four or five pages---was not by any means so large as its external appearance led people to conjecture. the interior accommodation was much cut up by cross walls and long passages, and that neglect of economizing space which characterises old scottish architecture. but there was far more room than my old friend required, even when she had, as was often the case, four or five young cousins under her protection; and i believe much of the house was unoccupied. mrs bethune baliol never, in my presence, showed herself so much offended, as once with a meddling person who advised her to have the windows of these supernumerary apartments built up, to save the tax. she said in ire, that, while she lived, the light of god should visit the house of her fathers; and while she had a penny, king and country should have their due. indeed, she was punctiliously loyal, even in that most staggering test of loyalty, the payment of imposts. mr beauffet told me he was ordered to offer a glass of wine to the person who collected the income tax, and that the poor man was so overcome by a reception so unwontedly generous, that he had wellnigh fainted on the spot. you entered by a matted anteroom into the eating parlour, filled with old-fashioned furniture, and hung with family portraits, which, excepting one of sir bernard bethune, in james the sixth's time, said to be by jameson, were exceedingly frightful. a saloon, as it was called, a long narrow chamber, led out of the dining-parlour, and served for a drawing-room. it was a pleasant apartment, looking out upon the south flank of holyrood-house, the gigantic slope of arthur's seat, and the girdle of lofty rocks, called salisbury crags;* objects so rudely wild, that the mind can * the rev. mr bowles derives the name of these crags, as of the episcopal city in the west of england, from the same root; both, in his opinion, which he very ably defends and illustrates, having been the sites of druidical temples. hardly conceive them to exist in the vicinage of a populous metropolis. the paintings of the saloon came from abroad, and had some of them much merit. to see the best of them, however, you must be admitted into the very penetralia of the temple, and allowed to draw the tapestry at the upper end of the saloon, and enter mrs martha's own special dressing-room. this was a charming apartment, of which it would be difficult to describe the form, it had so many recesses which were filled up with shelves of ebony, and cabinets of japan and _or molu_; some for holding books, of which mrs martha had an admirable collection, some for a display of ornamental china, others for shells and similar curiosities. in a little niche, half screened by a curtain of crimson silk, was disposed a suit of tilting armour of bright steel, inlaid with silver, which had been worn on some memorable occasion by sir bernard bethune, already mentioned; while over the canopy of the niche, hung the broadsword with which her father had attempted to change the fortunes of britain in 1715, and the spontoon which her elder brother bore when he was leading on a company of the black watch* at fontenoy. * the well-known original designation of the gallant 42d regiment. being the first corps raised for the royal service in the highlands, and allowed to retain their national garb, they were thus named from the contrast which their dark tartans furnished to the scarlet and white of the other regiments. there were some italian and flemish pictures of admitted authenticity, a few genuine bronzes and other objects of curiosity, which her brothers or herself had picked up while abroad. in short, it was a place where the idle were tempted to become studious, the studious to grow idle---where the grave might find matter to make them gay, and the gay subjects for gravity. that it might maintain some title to its name, i must not forget to say, that the lady's dressing-room exhibited a superb mirror, framed in silver filigree work; a beautiful toilette, the cover of which was of flanders lace; and a set of boxes corresponding in materials and work to the frame of the mirror. this dressing apparatus, however, was mere matter of parade: mrs martha bethune baliol always went through the actual duties of the toilette in an inner apartment, which corresponded with her sleeping-room by a small detached staircase. there were, i believe, more than one of those _turnpike stairs_, as they were called, about the house, by which the public rooms, all of which entered through each other, were accommodated with separate and independent modes of access. in the little boudoir we have described, mrs martha baliol had her choicest meetings. she kept early hours; and if you went in the morning, you must not reckon that space of day as extending beyond three o'clock, or four at the utmost. these vigilant habits were attended with some restraint on her visitors, but they were indemnified by your always finding the best society, and the best information, which was to be had for the (lay in the scottish capital. without at all affecting the blue stocking, she liked books---they amused her---and if the authors were persons of character, she thought she owed them a debt of civility, which she loved to discharge by personal kindness. when she gave a dinner to a small party, which she did now and then, she had the good nature to look for, and the good luck to discover, what sort of people suited each other best, and chose her company as duke theseus did his hounds, matched in mouth like bells, each under each,* * shakspeare's midsummer night's dream, act iv. sc. i. so that every guest could take his part in the cry; instead of one mighty tom of a fellow, like dr johnson, silencing all besides by the tremendous depth of his diapason. on such occasions she afforded _ch<e`>re exquise_; and every now and then there was some dish of french, or even scottish derivation, which, as well as the numerous assortment of _vins extraordinaires_ produced by mr beauffet, gave a sort of antique and foreign air to the entertainment, which rendered it more interesting. it was a great thing to be asked to such parties, and not less so to be invited to the early _conversazione_, which, in spite of fashion, by dint of the best coffee, the finest tea, and _chasse caf<e'>_ that would have called the dead to life, she contrived now and then to assemble in her saloon already mentioned, at the unnatural hour of eight in the evening. at such times, the cheerful old lady seemed to enjoy herself so much in the happiness of her guests, that they exerted themselves in turn to prolong her amusement and their own; and a certain charm was excited around, seldom to be met with in parties of pleasure, and which was founded on the general desire of every one present to contribute something to the common amusement. but although it was a great privilege to be admitted to wait on my excellent friend in the morning, or be invited to her dinner or evening parties, i prized still higher the right which i had acquired, by old acquaintance, of visiting baliol's lodging, upon the chance of finding its venerable inhabitant preparing for tea, just about six o'clock in the evening. it was only to two or three old friends that she permitted this freedom, nor was this sort of chance-party ever allowed to extend itself beyond five in number. the answer to those who came later, announced that the company was filled up for the evening; which had the double effect, of making those who waited on mrs bethune baliol in this unceremonious manner punctual in observing her hour, and of adding the zest of a little difficulty to the enjoyment of the party. it more frequently happened that only one or two persons partook of this refreshment on the same evening; or, supposing the case of a single gentleman, mrs martha, though she did not hesitate to admit him to her boudoir, after the privilege of the french and the old scottish school, took care, as she used to say, to preserve all possible propriety, by commanding the attendance of her principal female attendant, mrs alice lambskin, who might, from the gravity and dignity of her appearance, have sufficed to matronize a whole boarding-school, instead of one maiden lady or eighty and upwards. as the weather permitted, mrs alice sat duly remote from the company in a fauteuil behind the projecting chimney-piece, or in the embrasure of a window, and prosecuted in carthusian silence, with indefatigable zeal, a piece of embroidery, which seemed no bad emblem of eternity. but i have neglected all this while to introduce my friend herself to the reader, at least so far as words can convey the peculiarities by which her appearance and conversation were distinguished. a little woman, with ordinary features, and an ordinary form, and hair, which in youth had no decided colour, we may believe mrs martha, when she said of herself that she was never remarkable for personal charms; a modest admission, which was readily confirmed by certain old ladies, her contemporaries, who, whatever might have been the youthful advantages which they more than hinted had been formerly their own share, were now, in personal appearance, as well as in every thing else, far inferior to my accomplished friend. mrs marthas features had been of a kind which might be said to wear well; their irregularity was now of little consequence, animated as they were by the vivacity of her conversation; her teeth were excellent, and her eyes, although inclining to grey, were lively, laughing, and undimmed by time. a slight shade of complexion, more brilliant than her years promised, subjected my friend amongst strangers to the suspicion of having stretched her foreign habits as far as the prudent touch of the rouge. but it was a calumny; for when telling or listening to an interesting and affecting story, i have seen her colour come and go as if it played on the cheek of eighteen. her hair, whatever its former deficiencies, was now the most beautiful white that time could bleach, and was disposed with some degree of pretension, though in the simplest manner possible, so as to appear neatly smoothed under a cap of flanders lace, of an old-fashioned, but, as i thought, of a very handsome form, which undoubtedly has a name, and i would endeavour to recur to it, if i thought it would make my description a bit more intelligible. i think i have heard her say these favourite caps had been her mother's, and had come in fashion with a peculiar kind of wig used by the gentlemen about the time of the battle of ramillies. the rest of her dress was always rather costly and distinguished, especially in the evening. a silk or satin gown of some colour becoming her age, and of a form, which, though complying to a certain degree with the present fashion, had always a reference to some more distant period, was garnished with triple ruffles; her shoes had diamond buckles, and were raised a little at heel, an advantage which, possessed in her youth, she alleged her size would not permit her to forego in her old age. she always wore rings, bracelets, and other ornaments of value, either for the materials or the workmanship; nay, perhaps she was a little profuse in this species of display. but she wore them as subordinate matters, to which the habits of being constantly in high life rendered her indifferent; the wore them because her rank required it, and thought no more of them as articles of finery, than a gentleman dressed for dinner thinks of his clean linen and well-brushed coat, the consciousness of which embarrasses the rustic beau on a sunday. now and then, however, if a gem or ornament chanced to be noticed for its beauty or singularity, the observation usually led the way to an entertaining account of the manner in which it had been acquired, or the person from whom it had descended to its present possessor. on such and similar occasions my old friend spoke willingly, which is not uncommon, but she also, which is more rare, spoke remarkably well, and had in her little narratives concerning foreign parts, or former days, which formed an interesting part of her conversation, the singular art of dismissing all the usual protracted tautology respecting time, place, and circumstances, which is apt to settle like a mist upon the cold and languid tales of age, and at the same time of bringing forward, dwelling upon, and illustrating, those incidents and characters which give point and interest to the story. she had, as we have hinted travelled a good deal in foreign countries; for a brother, to whom she was much attached, had been sent upon various missions of national importance to the continent, and she had more than once embraced the opportunity of accompanying him. this furnished a great addition to the information which she could supply, especially during the last war, when the continent was for so many years hermetically scaled against the english nation. but, besides, mrs bethune baliol visited different countries, not in the modern fashion, when english travel in caravans together, and see in france and italy little besides the same society which they might have enjoyed at home. on the contrary, she mingled when abroad with the natives of those countries she visited, and enjoyed at once the advantage of their society, and the pleasure of comparing it with that of britain. in the course of her becoming habituated with foreign manners, mrs bethune baliol had, perhaps, acquired some slight tincture of them herself. yet i was always persuaded, that the peculiar vivacity of look and manner---the pointed and appropriate action with which she accompanied what she said---the use of the gold and gemmed _tabati<e`>re_, or rather i should say _bonbonni<e`>re_, (for she took no snuff, and the little box contained only a few pieces of candied angelica, or some such lady-like sweetmeat,) were of real old-fashioned scottish growth, and such as might have graced the tea-table of susannah, countess of eglinton,* the * note d, countess of eglinton. patroness of allan ramsay, or of the hon. mrs colonel ogilvy, who was another mirror by whom the maidens of auld reekie were required to dress themselves. although well acquainted with the customs of other countries, her manners had been chiefly formed in her own, at a time when great folk lived within little space, and when the distinguished names of the highest society gave to edinburgh the _eclat_, which we now endeavour to derive from the unbounded expense and extended circle of our pleasures. l was more confirmed in this opinion, by the peculiarity of the dialect which mrs baliol used. it was scottish, decidedly scottish, often containing phrases and words little used in the present day. but then her tone and mode of pronunciation were as different from the usual accent of the ordinary scotch patois, as the accent of st james's is from that of billingsgate. the vowels were not pronounced much broader than in the italian language, and there was none of the disagreeable drawl which is so offensive to southern ears. in short, it seemed to be the scottish as spoken by the ancient court of scotland, to which no idea of vulgarity could be attached; and the lively manners and gestures with which it was accompanied, were so completely in accord with the sound of the voice and the style of talking, that i cannot assign them a different origin. in long derivation, perhaps the manner of the scottish court might have been originally formed on that of france, to which it had certainly some affinity; but i will live and die in the belief, that those of mrs baliol, as pleasing as they were peculiar, came to her by direct descent from the high dames who anciently adorned with their presence the royal halls of holyrood. chapter vii. mrs baliol assists mr croftangry in his literary speculations. such as i have described mrs bethune baliol, the reader will easily believe that when i thought of the miscellaneous nature of my work, i rested upon the information she possessed, and her communicative disposition, as one of the principal supports of my enterprise. indeed, she by no means disapproved of my proposed publication, though expressing herself very doubtful how far she could personally assist it---a doubt which might be perhaps set down to a little lady-like coquetry, which required to be sued for the boon she was not unwilling to grant. or, perhaps, the good old lady, conscious that her unusual term of years must soon draw to a close, preferred bequeathing the materials in the shape of a legacy, to subjecting them to the judgment of a critical public during her lifetime. many a time i used, in our conversations of the canongate, to resume my request of assistance, from a sense that my friend was the most valuable depository of scottish traditions that was probably now to be found. this was a subject on which my mind was so much made up, that when i heard her carry her description of manners so far back beyond her own time, and describe how fletcher of salton spoke, how graham of claverhouse danced, what were the jewels worn by the famous duchess of lauderdale, and how she came by them, i could not help telling her i thought her some fairy, who cheated us by retaining the appearance of a mortal of our own day, when, in fact, she had witnessed the revolutions of centuries. she was much diverted when i required her to take some solemn oath that she had not danced at the balls given by mary of este, when her unhappy husband* occupied * the duke of york, afterwards james ii., frequently resided in holyrood-house, when his religion rendered him an object of suspicion to the english parliament. holyrood in a species of honourable banishment; ---or asked, whether she could not recollect charles the second, when he came to scotland in 1650, and did not possess some slight recollections of the bold usurper, who drove him beyond the forth. ``_beau cousin_,'' she said, laughing, ``none of these do i remember personally; but you must know there has been wonderfully little change on my natural temper from youth to age. from which it follows, cousin, that being even now something too young in spirit for the years which time has marked me in his calendar, i was, when a girl, a little too old for those of my own standing, and as much inclined at that period to keep the society of elder persons, as i am now disposed to admit the company of gay young fellows of fifty or sixty like yourself, rather than collect about me all the octogenarians. now, although i do not actually come from elfland, and therefore cannot boast any personal knowledge of the great personages you enquire about, yet i have seen and heard those who knew them well, and who have given me as distinct an account of them as i could give you myself of the empress queen, or frederick of prussia; and i will frankly add,'' said she, laughing and offering her _bonbonni<e`>re_, ``that i have heard so much of the years which immediately succeeded the revolution, that i sometimes am apt to confuse the vivid descriptions fixed on my memory by the frequent and animated recitation of others, for things which i myself have actually witnessed. i caught myself but yesterday describing to lord m-----the riding of the last scottish parliament, with as much minuteness as if i had seen it, as my mother did, from the balcony in front of lord moray's lodging in the canongate.'' ``i am sure you must have given lord m-----a high treat.'' ``i treated him to a hearty laugh, i believe,'' she replied; ``but it is you, you vile seducer of youth, who lead me into such follies. but i will be on my guard against my own weakness. i do not well know if the wandering jew is supposed to have a wife, but i should be sorry a decent middle-aged scottish gentlewoman should be suspected of identity with such a supernatural person.'' ``for all that, i must torture you a little more, _ma belle cousine_, with my interrogatories; for how shall i ever turn author unless on the strength of the information which you have so often procured me on the ancient state of manners?'' ``stay, i cannot allow you to give your points of enquiry a name so very venerable, if i am expected to answer them. ancient is a term for antediluvians. you may catechise me about the battle of flodden, or ask particulars about bruce and wallace, under pretext of curiosity after ancient manners; and that last subject would wake my baliol blood, you know.'' ``well, but, mrs baliol, suppose we settle our era:---you do not call the accession of james the sixth to the kingdom of britain very ancient?'' ``umph! no, cousin---i think i could tell you more of that than folk now-a-days remember,---for instance, that as james was trooping towards england, bag and baggage, his journey was stopped near cockenzie by meeting the funeral of the earl of winton, the old and faithful servant and follower of his ill-fated mother, poor mary! it was an ill omen for the _infare_, and so was seen of it, cousin.'' * * note e. earl of winton. i did not choose to prosecute this subject, well knowing mrs bethune baliol did not like to be much pressed on the subject of the stewarts, whose misfortunes she pitied, the rather that her father had espoused their cause. and yet her attachment to the present dynasty being very sincere, and even ardent, more especially as her family had served his late majesty both in peace and war, she experienced a little embarrassment in reconciling her opinions respecting the exiled family, with those she entertained for the present. in fact, like many an old jacobite, she was contented to be somewhat inconsistent on the subject, comforting herself, that _now_ every thing stood as it ought to do, and that there was no use in looking back narrowly on the right or wrong of the matter half a century ago. ``the highlands,'' i suggested, ``should furnish you with ample subjects of recollection. you have witnessed the complete change of that primeval country, and have seen a race not far removed from the earliest period of society, melted down into the great mass of civilisation; and that could not happen without incidents striking in themselves, and curious as chapters in the history of the human race.'' ``it is very true,'' said mrs baliol; ``one would think it should have struck the observers greatly, and yet it scarcely did so. for me, i was no highlander myself, and the highland chiefs of old, of whom i certainly knew several, had little in their manners to distinguish them from the lowland gentry, when they mixed in society in edinburgh, and assumed the lowland dress. their peculiar character was for the clansmen at home; and you must not imagine that they swaggered about in plaids and broadswords at the cross, or came to the assembly-rooms in bonnets and kilts.'' ``i remember,'' said i, ``that swift, in his journal, tells stella he had dined in the house of a scots nobleman, with two highland chiefs, whom he had found as well-bred men as he had ever met with.''* * extract of journal to stella.---``i dined to-day (12th march, 1712,) with lord treasurer and two gentlemen of the highlands of scotland, yet very polite men.'' swift's _works_, _vol. iii. p._ 7. _edin._ 1824. ``very likely,'' said my friend. ``the extremes of society approach much more closely to each other than perhaps the dean of saint patrick's expected. the savage is always to a certain degree polite. besides, going always armed, and having a very punctilious idea of their own gentility and consequence, they usually behaved to each other and to the lowlanders, with a good deal of formal politeness, which sometimes even procured them the character of insincerity.'' ``falsehood belongs to an early period of society, as well as the deferential forms which we style politeness,'' i replied. ``a child does not see the least moral beauty in truth, until he has been flogged half-a-dozen times. it is so easy, and apparently so natural, to deny what you cannot be easily convicted of, that a savage as well as a child lies to excuse himself, almost as instinctively as he raises his band to protect his head. the old saying, `confess and be hanged,' carries much argument in it. i observed a remark the other day in old birrel. he mentions that m`gregor of glenstrae and some of his people had surrendered themselves to one of the earls of argyle, upon the express condition that they should be conveyed safe into england. the maccallan mhor of the day kept the word of promise, but it was only to the ear. he indeed sent his captives to berwick, where they had an airing on the other side of the tweed, but it was under the custody of a strong guard, by whom they were brought back to edinburgh, and delivered to the executioner. this, birrel calls keeping a highlandman's promise.''* * note f. m`gregor of glenstrae. ``well,'' replied mrs baliol, ``i might add, that many of the highland chiefs whom i knew in former days had been brought up in france, which might unprove their politeness, though perhaps it did not amend their sincerity. but considering, that, belonging to the depressed and defeated faction in the state, they were compelled sometimes to use dissimulation, you must set their uniform fidelity to their friends against their occasional falsehood to their enemies, and then you will not judge poor john highlandman too severely. they were in a state of society where bright lights are strongly contrasted with deep shadows.'' ``it is to that point i would bring you, _ma belle cousine_,---and therefore they are most proper subjects for composition.'' ``and you want to turn composer, my good friend, and set my old tales to some popular tune? but there have been too many composers, if that be the word, in the field before. the highlands _were_ indeed a rich mine; but they have, i think, been fairly wrought out, as a good tune is grinded into vulgarity when it descends to the hurdy-gurdy and the barrel-organ.'' ``if it be really tune,'' i replied, ``it will recover its better qualities when it gets into the hands of better artists.'' ``umph!'' said mrs baliol, tapping her box, ``we are happy in our own good opinion this evening, mr croftangry. and so you think you can restore the gloss to the tartan, which it has lost by being dragged through so many fingers?'' ``with your assistance to procure materials, my dear lady, much, i think, may be done.'' ``well---i must do my best, i suppose; though all i know about the gael is but of little consequence--indeed, i gathered it chiefly from donald macleish.'' ``and who might donald macleish be?'' ``neither bard nor sennachie, i assure you, nor monk nor hermit, the approved authorities for old traditions. donald was as good a postilion as ever drove a chaise and pair between glencroe and inverary. i assure you, when i give you my highland anecdotes, you will hear much of donald macleish. he was alice lambskin's beau and mine through a long highland tour.'' ``but when am i to possess these anecdotes?--you answer me as harley did poor prior-- let that be done which mat doth say. `yea,' quoth the earl, `but not to-day.' '' ``well, _mon beau cousin_, if you begin to remind me of my cruelty, i must remind you it has struck nine on the abbey clock, and it is time you were going home to little croftangry. for my promise to assist your antiquarian researches, be assured, i will one day keep it to the utmost extent. it shall not be a highlandman's promise, as your old citizen calls it.'' i by this time suspected the purpose of my friend's procrastination; and it saddened my heart to reflect that i was not to get the information which i desired, excepting in the shape of a legacy. i found accordingly, in the packet transmitted to me after the excellent lady's death, several anecdotes respecting the highlands, from which i have selected that which follows, chiefly on account of its possessing great power over the feelings of my critical housekeeper, janet m`evoy, who wept most bitterly when i read it to her. it is, however, but a very simple tale, and may have no interest for persons beyond janet's rank of life or understanding. [4. introductory notes] note to chapter i. note a. holyrood. the reader may be gratified with hector boece's narrative of the original foundation of the famous abbey of holyrood, or the holy cross, as given in bellenden's translation: ``eftir death of alexander the first, his brothir david come out of ingland, and wes crownit at scone, the yeir of god mcxxiv yeiris, and did gret justice, eftir his coronation, in all partis of his realme. he had na weris during the time of king hary; and wes so pietuous, that he sat daylie in judgement, to caus his pure commonis to have justice; and causit the actionis of his noblis to be decidit be his othir jugis. he gart ilk juge redres the skaithis that come to the party be his wrang sentence; throw quhilk, he decorit his realm with mony nobil actis, and ejeckit the vennomus custome of riotus cheir, quhilk wes inducit afore be inglismen, quhen thay com with quene margaret; for the samin wes noisum to al gud maneris, makand his pepil tender and effeminat. ``in the fourt yeir of his regne, this nobill prince come to visie the madin castell of edinburgh. at this time, all the boundis of scotland were ful of woddis, lesouris, and medois; for the countre wes more gevin to store of bestiall, than ony productioun of cornis; and about this castell was ane gret forest, full of haris, hindis, toddis, and sicklike maner of beistis. now was the rude day cumin, called the exaltation of the croce; and, becaus the samin wes ane hie solempne day, the king past to his contemplation. eftir the messis wer done with maist solempnitie and reverence, comperit afore him mony young and insolent baronis of scotland, richt desirus to haif sum plesur and solace, be chace of hundis in the said forest. at this time wes with the king ane man of singulare and devoit life, namit alkwine, channon eftir the ordour of sanct augustine, quhilk well lang time confessoure, afore, to king david in ingland, the time that he wes erle of huntingtoun and northumbirland. this religious man dissuadit the king, be mony reasonis, to pas to this huntis; and allegit the day wes so solempne, be reverence of the haly croce, that he suld gif him erar, for that day, to contemplation, than ony othir exersition. nochtheles, his dissuasion is litill avalit; for the king wes finallie so provokit, be inoportune solicitatioun of his baronis, that he past, nochtwithstanding the solempnite of this day, to his hountis. at last, quhen he wes cumin throw the vail that lyis to the gret eist fra the said castell, quhare now lyis the canongait, the stalk past throw the wod with sic noyis and din of rachis and bugillis, that all the bestis were rasit fra thair dennis. now wes the king cumin to the fute of the crag, and an his nobilis severit, heir and thair, fra him, at thair game and solace; quhen suddenlie apperit to his sicht, the fairist hart that evir wes sene afore with levand creature. the noyis and din of this hart rinnand, as apperit, with awful and braid tindis, maid the kingis hors so effrayit, that na renzeis micht hald him; bot ran, perforce, ouir mire and mossis, away with the king. nochtheles, the hart followit so fast, that he dang baith the king and his hors to the ground. than the king kest abak his handis betwix the tindis of this hart, to haif savit him fra the strak thairof; and the haly croce slaid, incontinent, in his handis. the hart fled away with gret violence, and evanist in the same place quhare now springis the rude well. the pepil richt affrayitly, returnit to him out of all partis of the wod, to comfort him efter his trubill; and fell on kneis, devotly adoring the haly croce; for it was not cumin but sum hevinly providence, as weill apperis; for thair is na man can schaw of quhat mater it is of, metal or tre. sone eftir, the king returnit to his castell; and in the nicht following, he was admonist, be ane vision in his sleip, to big ane abbay of channonis regular in the same place quhare he gat the croce. als sone as he was awalkinnet, he schew his visions to alkwine, his confessoure; and he na thing suspended his gud mind, bot erar inflammit him with maist fervent devotion thairto. the king, incontinent, send his traist servandis in france and flanderis, and brocht richt crafty masonis to big this abbay; syne dedicat it in the honour of this haly croce. the croce remanit continewally in the said abbay, to tlie time of king david bruce; quhilk was unhappily tane with it at durame, quhare it is haldin yit in gret veneration.''---boece, _book_ 12, _ch._ 16. it is by no means clear what scottish prince first built a palace, properly so called, in the precincts of this renowned seat of sanctity. the abbey, endowed by successive sovereigns and many powerful nobles with munificent gifts of lands and tithes, came, in process of time, to be one of the most important of the ecclesiastical corporations of scotland; and as early as the days of robert bruce, parliaments were held occasionally within its buildings. we have evidence that james iv. had a royal lodging adjoining to the cloister; but it is generally agreed that the first considerable edifice for the accommodation of the royal family erected here was that of james v., anno 1525, great part of which still remains, and forms the north-western side of the existing palace. the more modern buildings which complete the quadrangle were erected by king charles ii. the name of the old conventual church was used as the parish church of the canongate from the period of the reformation, until james ii. claimed it for his chapel royal, and had it fitted up accordingly in a style of splendour which grievously outraged the feelings of his presbyterian subjects. the roof of this fragment of a once magnificent church fell in in the year 1768, and it has remained ever since in a state of desolation.---for fuller particulars, see the _provincial antiquities of scotland,_ or the _history of holyrood_, by mr charles mackie. the greater part of this ancient palace is now again occupied by his majesty charles the tenth of france, and the rest of that illustrious family, which, in former ages so closely connected by marriage and alliance with the house of stuart, seems to have been destined to run a similar career of misfortune. _requiescant in pace!_ note to chapter iii. note, b.---steele, a covenanter, shot by captain creichton. the following extract from swift's life of creichton gives the particulars of the bloody scene alluded to in the text:--``having drank hard one night, i (creichton) dreamed that i had found captain david steele, a notorious rebel in one of the five farmers' houses on a mountain in the shire of clydesdale, and parish of lismahago, within eight miles of hamilton, a place that i was well acquainted with. this man was head of the rebels, since the affair of airs-moss; having succeeded to hackston, who had been there taken, and afterward hanged, as the reader has already heard; for, as to robert hamilton, who was then commander-in-chief at bothwell bridge, he appeared no more among them, but fled, as it was believed, to holland. ``steele, and his father before him, held a farm in the estate of hamilton, within two or three miles of that town. when he betook himself to arms, the farm lay waste, and the duke could find no other person who would venture to take it; whereupon his grace sent several messages to steele, to know the reason why he kept the farm waste. the duke received no other answer, than that he would keep it waste, in spite of him and the king too; whereupon his grace, at whose table i had always the honour to be a welcome guest, desired i would use my endeavours to destroy that rogue, and i would oblige him for ever. * * * * * * ``i return to my story. when i awaked out of my dream, as i had done before in the affair of wilson, (and i desire the same apology i made in the introduction to these memoirs may serve for both,) i presently rose, and ordered thirty-six dragoons to be at the place appointed by break of day. when we arrived thither, i sent a party to each of the five farmers' houses. this villain steele had murdered above forty of the king's subjects in cold blood; and, as i was informed, had often laid snares to entrap me; but it happened, that although he usually kept a gang to attend him, yet at this time he had none, when he stood in the greatest need, one of the party found him in one of the farmers' houses, just as i happened to dream. the dragoons first searched all the rooms below without success, till two of them bearing somebody stirring over their heads, went up a pair of turnpike stairs. steele had put on his clothes, while the search was making below; the chamber where he lay was called the chamber of deese,* * or chamber of state; so called from the _dais_, or canopy and elevation of floor, which distinguished the part of old halls which was occupied by those of high rank. hence the phrase was obliquely used to signify state in general. which is the name given to a room where the laird lies, when he comes to a tenant's house. steele suddenly opening the door, fired a blunderbuss down at the two dragoons, as they were coming up the stairs; but the bullets grazing against the side of the turnpike, only wounded, and did not kill them. then steele violently threw himself down the stairs among them, and made towards the door to save his life, but lost it upon the spot; for the dragoons who guarded the house dispatched him with their broadswords. i was not with the party when he was killed, being at that time employed in searching one of the other houses, but i soon found what had happened, by hearing the noise of the shot made with the blunderbuss; from which i returned straight to lanark, and immediately sent one of the dragoons express to general drummond at edinburgh.''---_swift's works, vol. xii. (memoirs of captain john creichton_,) pages 57-59, edit. edinb. 1824. woodrow gives a different account of this exploit---``in december this year, (1686,) david steil, in the parish of lismahagow, was surprised in the fields by lieutenant creichton, and after his surrender of himself on quarters, he was in a very little time most barbarously shot, and lies buried in the churchyard there.'' notes to chapter vi. note c.---iron rasp. the ingenious mr r. chambers's traditions of edinburgh give the following account of the forgotten rasp or risp. ``this house had a _pin_ or _risp_ at the door, instead of the more modern convenience, a knocker. the pin, rendered interesting by the figure which it makes in scottish song, was formed of a small rod of iron, twisted or notched, which was placed perpendicularly, starting out a little from the door, and bore a small ring of the same metal, which an applicant for admittance drew rapidly up and down the _nicks_, so as to produce a grating sound. sometimes the rod was simply stretched across the _vizzying_ hole, a convenient aperture through which the porter could take cognisance of the person applying; in which case it acted also as a stanchion. these were almost all disused about sixty years ago, when knockers were generally substituted as more genteel. but knockers at that time did not long remain in repute, though they have never been altogether superseded, even by bells, in the old town. the comparative merit of knockers and pins was for a long time a subject of doubt, and many knockers got their heads twisted off in the course of the dispute.'' chamber's _traditions of edinburgh_. note d.---countess of eglinton. susannah kennedy, daughter of sir archibald kennedy of cullean, bart. by elizabeth lesly, daughter of david lord newark, third wife of alexander 9th earl of eglinton, and mother of the 10th and 11th earls. she survived her husband, who died 1729, no less than fifty-seven years, and died march 1780, in her 91st year. allan ramsay's gentle shepherd, published 1726, is dedicated to her, in verse, by hamilton of bangour. the following account of this distinguished lady is taken from boswell's life of johnson by mr croker. ``lady margaret dalrymple, only daughter of john earl of stair, married in 1700, to hugh, third earl of loudoun. she died in 1777, aged _one hundred_. of this venerable lady, and of the countess of eglintoune, whom johnson visited next day, he thus speaks in his _journey_.---`length of life is distributed impartially to very different modes of life, in very different climates; and the mountains have no greater examples of age than the lowlands, where i was introduced to two ladies of high quality, one of whom (lady loudoun) in her ninety-fourth year, presided at her table with the full exercise of all her powers; and the other, (lady eglintoun,) had attained her eighty-fourth year, without any diminution of her vivacity, and little reason to accuse time of depredations on her beauty.'' * * * * * * ``lady eglintoune, though she was now in her eighty-fifth year, and had lived in the retirement of the country for almost half a century, was still a very agreeable woman. she was of the noble house of kennedy, and had all the elevation which the consciousness of such birth inspires. her figure was majestic, her manners high-bred, her reading extensive, and her conversation elegant. she had been the admiration of the gay circles of life, and the patroness of poets. dr johnson was delighted with his reception here. her principles in church and state were congenial with his. she knew all his merit, and had heard much of him from her son, earl alexander, who loved to cultivate the acquaintance of men of talents in every department.'' * * * * * * ``in the course of our conversation this day, it came out that lady eglintoune was married the year before dr johnson was born; upon which she graciously said to him, that she might have been his mother, and that she now adopted him; and when we were going away, she embraced him, saying, `my dear son, farewell!' my friend was much pleased with this day's entertainment, and owned that i had done well to force him out.'' * * * * * * ``at sir alexander dick's, from that absence of mind to which every man is at times subject, i told, in a blundering manner, lady, eglintoune's complimentary adoption of dr johnson as her son; for i unfortunately stated that her ladyship adopted him as her son, in consequence of her having been married the year _after_ he was born. dr johnson instantly corrected me. `sir, don't you perceive that you are defaming the countess? for, supposing me to be her son, and that she was not married till the year after my birth, i must have been her _natural_ son.' a young lady of quality who was present, very handsomely said, `might not the son have justified the fault?' my friend was much flattered by this compliment, which he never forgot. when in more than ordinary spirits, and talking of his journey in scotland, he has called to me, `boswell, what was it that the young lady of quality said of me at sir alexander dick's?' nobody will doubt that i was happy in repeating it.'' notes to chapter vii. note e.---earl of winton. the incident here alluded to is thus narrated in nichols' progresses of james i., vol. iii. p. 306. ``the family'' (of winton) ``owed its first elevation to the union of sir christopher seton with a sister of king robert bruce. with king james vi. they acquired great favour, who, having created his brother earl of dunfermline in 1599, made robert, seventh lord seton, earl of winton in 1600. before the king's accession to the english throne, his majesty and the queen were frequently at seton, where the earl kept a very hospitable table, at which all foreigners of quality were entertained on their visits to scotland. his lordship died in 1603, and was buried on the 5th of april, on the very day the king left edinburgh for england. his majesty, we are told, was pleased to rest himself at the south-west round of the orchard of seton, on the high-way, tin the funeral was over, that he might not withdraw the noble company; and he said that he had lost a good, faithful, and loyal subject.'' nichols' _progresses of k. james i. vol. iii. p._ 306. note f.---macgregor of glenstrae. the 2 of octr: (1603) allester macgregor of glenstrae tane be the laird arkynles, bot escapit againe; bot after taken be the earle of argyll the 4 of januarii, and brought to edr: the 9 of januar: 1604, wt: 18 mae of hes friendes macgregors. he wes convoyit to berwick be the gaird, conform to the earle's promes; for he promesit to put him out of scottis grund: sua, he keipit an hielandman's promes, in respect he sent the gaird to convoy him out of scottis grund; bot yai wer not directit to pairt wt: him, bot to fetchs him bak againe. the 18 of januar, he came at evin againe to edinburghe; and upone the 20 day, he was hangit at the crosse, and ij of his freindes and name, upon ane gallows: himself being chieff, he was hangit his awin hight above the rest of hes freindis.--birrel's _diary_, (in dalzell's _fragments of scottish history_,) p. 60-1. [5. the highland widow] the highland widow. chapter 1. it wound as near as near could be, but what it is she cannot tell; on the other side it seemed to be, of the huge broad-breasted old oak-tree. coleridge. mrs bethune baliol's memorandum begins thus:-- it is five-and-thirty, or perhaps nearer forty years ago, since, to relieve the dejection of spirits occasioned by a great family loss sustained two or three months before, i undertook what was called the short highland tour. this had become in some degree fashionable; but though the military roads were excellent, yet the accommodation was so indifferent that it was reckoned a little adventure to accomplish it. besides, the highlands, though now as peaceable as any part of king george's dominions, was a sound which still carried terror, while so many survived who had witnessed the insurrection of 1745; and a vague idea of fear was impressed on many, as they looked from the towers of stirling northward to the huge chain of mountains, which rises like a dusky rampart to conceal in its recesses a people, whose dress, manners, and language, differed still very much from those of their lowland countrymen. for my part, i come of a race not greatly subject to apprehensions arising from imagination only. i had some highland relatives, knew several of their families of distinction; and, though only having the company of my bower-maiden, mrs alice lambskin, i went on my journey fearless. but then i had a guide and cicerone, almost equal to greatheart in the pilgrim's progress, in no less a person than donald macleish, the postilion whom i hired at stirling, with a pair of able-bodied horses, as steady as donald himself, to drag my carriage, my duenna, and myself, wheresoever it was my pleasure to go. donald macleish was one of a race of post-boys, whom, i suppose, mail-coaches and steam-boats have put out of fashion. they were to be found chiefly at perth, stirling, or glasgow, where they and their horses were usually hired by travellers, or tourists, to accomplish such journeys of business or pleasure as they might have to perform in the land of the gael. this class of persons approached to the character of what is called abroad a _conducteur_; or might be compared to the sailing-master on board a british ship of war, who follows out after his own manner the course which the captain commands him to observe. you explained to your postilion the length of your tour, and the objects you were desirous it should embrace; and you found him perfectly competent to fix the places of rest or refreshment, with due attention that those should be chosen with reference to your convenience, and to any points of interest which you might desire to visit. the qualifications of such a person were necessarily much superior to those of the ``first ready,'' who gallops thrice-a-day over the same ten miles. donald macleish, besides being quite alert at repairing all ordinary accidents to his horses and carriage, and in making shift to support them, where forage was scarce, with such substitutes as bannocks and cakes, was likewise a man of intellectual resources. he had acquired a general knowledge of the traditional stories of the country which he had traversed so often; and, if encouraged, (for donald was a man of the most decorous reserve,) he would willingly point out to you the site of the principal clan-battles, and recount the most remarkable legends by which the road, and the objects which occurred in travelling it, had been distinguished. there was some originality in the man's habits of thinking and expressing himself, his turn for legendary lore strangely contrasting with a portion of the knowing shrewdness belonging to his actual occupation, which made his conversation amuse the way well enough. add to this, donald knew all his peculiar duties in the country which he traversed so frequently. he could tell, to a day, when they would ``be killing'' lamb at tyndrum or glenuilt; so that the stranger would have some chance of being fed like a christian; and knew to a mile the last village where it was possible to procure a wheaten loaf, for the guidance of those who were little familiar with the land of cakes. he was acquainted with the road every mile, and could tell to an inch which side of a highland bridge was passable, which decidedly dangerous.* in short, donald * this is, or was at least, a necessary accomplishment. in one of the most beautiful districts of the highlands was, not many years since, a bridge bearing this startling caution, ``keep to the right side, the left being dangerous.'' macleish was not only our faithful attendant and steady servant, but our humble and obliging friend; and though i have known the half-classical cicerone of italy, the talkative french valet-de-place, and even the muleteer of spain, who piques himself on being a maize-eater, and whose honour is not to be questioned without danger, i do not think i have ever had so sensible and intelligent a guide. our motions were of course under donald's direction; and it frequently happened, when the weather was serene, that we preferred halting to rest his horses even where there was no established stage, and taking our refreshment under a crag, from which leaped a waterfall, or beside the verge of a fountain, enamelled with verdant turf and wild-flowers. donald had an eye for such spots, and though he had, i dare say, never read gil blas or don quixote, yet be chose such halting-places as le sage or cervantes would have described. very often, as he observed the pleasure i took in conversing with the country people, he would manage to fix our place of rest near a cottage where there was some old gael, whose broadsword had blazed at falkirk or preston, and who seemed the frail yet faithful record of times which had passed away. or he would contrive to quarter us, as far as a cup of tea went, upon the hospitality of some parish minister of worth and intelligence, or some country family of the better class, who mingled with the wild simplicity of their original manners, and their ready and hospitable welcome, a sort of courtesy belonging to a people, the lowest of whom are accustomed to consider themselves as being, according to the spanish phrase, ``as good gentlemen as the king, only not quite so rich.'' to all such persons donald macleish was well known, and his introduction passed as current as if we had brought letters from some high chief of the country. sometimes it happened that the highland hospitality, which welcomed us with all the variety of mountain fare, preparations of milk and eggs, and girdle-cakes of various kinds, as well as more substantial dainties, according to the inhabitant's means of regaling the passenger, descended rather too exuberantly on donald macleish in the shape of mountain dew. poor donald! he was on such occasions like gideon's fleece, moist with the noble element, which, of course, fell not on us. but it was his only fault, and when pressed to drink _doch-an-dorroch_ to my ladyship's good health, it would have been ill taken to have refused the pledge, nor was he willing to do such discourtesy. it was, i repeat, his only fault, nor had we any great right to complain; for if it rendered him a little more talkative, it augmented his ordinary share of punctilious civility, and he only drove slower, and talked longer and more pompously than when he had not come by a drop of usquebaugh. it was, we remarked, only on such occasions that donald talked with an air of importance of the family of macleish; and we had no title to be scrupulous in censuring a foible, the consequences of which were confined within such innocent limits. we became so much accustomed to donald's mode of managing us, that we observed with some interest the art which he used to produce a little agreeable surprise, by concealing from us the spot where he proposed our halt to be made, when it was of an unusual and interesting character. this was so much his wont, that when he made apologies at setting off, for being obliged to stop in some strange solitary place, till the horses should eat the corn which be brought on with them for that purpose, our imagination used to be on the stretch to guess what romantic retreat he had secretly fixed upon for our noontide baiting-place. we had spent the greater part of the morning at the delightful village of dalmally, and had gone upon the lake under the guidance of the excellent clergyman who was then incumbent at glenorquhy,* * this venerable and hospitable gentleman's name was macintyre. and had heard an hundred legends of the stern chiefs of loch awe, duncan with the thrum bonnet, and the other lords of the now mouldering towers of kilchurn.* thus it was later than usual * note a. loch awe. when we set out on our journey, after a hint or two from donald concerning the length of the way to the next stage, as there was no good halting-place between dalmally and oban. having bid adieu to our venerable and kind cicerone, we proceeded on our tour, winding round the tremendous mountain called cruachan ben, which rushes down in all its majesty of rocks and wilderness on the lake, leaving only a pass, in which, notwithstanding its extreme strength, the warlike clan of macdougal of lorn were almost destroyed by the sagacious robert bruce. that king, the wellington of his day, had accomplished, by a forced march, the unexpected man<oe>uvre of forcing a body of troops round the other side of the mountain, and thus placed them in the flank and in the rear of the men of lorn, whom at the same time he attacked in front. the great number of cairns yet visible, as you descend the pass on the westward side, shows the extent of the vengeance which bruce exhausted on his inveterate and personal enemies. i am, you know, the sister of soldiers, and it has since struck me forcibly that the man<oe>uvre which donald described, resembled those of wellington or of bonaparte. he was a great man robert bruce, even a baliol must admit that; although it begins now to be allowed that his title to the crown was scarce so good as that of the unfortunate family with whom he contended--but let that pass.---the slaughter had been the greater, as the deep and rapid river awe is disgorged from the lake, just in the rear of the fugitives, and encircles the base of the tremendous mountain; so that the retreat of the unfortunate fliers was intercepted on all sides by the inaccessible character of the country, which had seemed to promise them defence and protection.* * note b. battle betwixt the armies of the bruce and macdougal of lorn. musing, like the irish lady in the song, ``upon things which are long enough a-gone,''* we felt no * this is a line from a very pathetic ballad which i heard sung by one of the young ladies of edgeworthstown in 1825. i do not know that it has been printed. impatience at the slow, and almost creeping pace, with which our conductor proceeded along general wade's military road, which never or rarely condescends to turn aside from the steepest ascent, but proceeds right up and down bill, with the indifference to height and hollow, steep or level, indicated by the old roman engineers. still, however, the substantial excellence of these great works ---for such are the military highways in the highlands--deserved the compliment of the poet, who, whether he came from our sister kingdom, and spoke in his own dialect, or whether he supposed those whom he addressed might have some national pretension to the second sight, produced the celebrated couplet-- had you but seen these roads _before_ they were made, you would hold up your hands, and bless general wade. nothing indeed can be more wonderful than to see these wildernesses penetrated and pervious in every quarter by broad accesses of the best possible construction, and so superior to what the country could have demanded for many centuries for any pacific purpose of commercial intercourse. thus the traces of war are sometimes happily accommodated to the purposes of peace. the victories of bonaparte have been without results; but his road over the simplon will long be the communication betwixt peaceful countries, who will apply to the ends of commerce and friendly intercourse that gigantic work, which was formed for the ambitious purpose of warlike invasion. while we were thus stealing along, we gradually turned round the shoulder of ben cruachan, and descending the course of the foaming and rapid awe, left behind us the expanse of the majestic lake which gives birth to that impetuous river. the rocks and precipices which stooped down perpendicularly on our path on the right hand, exhibited a few remains of the wood which once clothed them, but which had, in latter times, been felled to supply, donald macleish informed us, the iron-founderies at the bunawe. this made us fix our eyes with interest on one large oak, which grew on the left hand towards the river. it seemed a tree of extraordinary magnitude and picturesque beauty, and stood just where there appeared to be a few roods of open ground lying among huge stones, which had rolled down from the mountain. to add to the romance of the situation, the spot of clear ground extended round the foot of a proud-browed rock, from the summit of which leaped a mountain stream in a fall of sixty feet, in which it was dissolved into foam and dew. at the bottom of the fall the rivulet with difficulty collected, like a routed general, its dispersed forces, and, as if tamed by its descent, found a noiseless passage through the heath to join the awe. i was much struck with the tree and waterfall, and wished myself nearer them; not that i thought of sketch-book or portfolio,---for, in my younger days, misses were not accustomed to black-lead pencils, unless they could use them to some good purpose, ---but merely to indulge myself with a closer view. donald immediately opened the chaise door, but observed it was rough walking down the brae and that i would see the tree better by keeping the road for a hundred yards farther, when it passed closer to the spot, for which he seemed, however, to have no predilection. ``he knew,'' he said, ``a far bigger tree than that nearer bunawe, and it was a place where there was flat ground for the carriage to stand, which it could jimply do on these braes;---but just as my leddyship liked.'' my ladyship did choose rather to look at the fine tree before me, than to pass it by in hopes of a finer; so we walked beside the carriage till we should come to a point, from which, donald assured us, we might, without scrambling, go as near the tree as we chose, ``though he wadna advise us to go nearer than the high-road.'' there was something grave and mysterious in donald's sun-browned countenance when he gave us this intimation, and his manner was so different from his usual frankness, that my female curiosity was set in motion. we walked on the whilst, and i found the tree, of which we had now lost sight by the intervention of some rising ground, was really more distant than i had at first supposed. ``i could have sworn now,'' said i to my cicerone, ``that yon tree and waterfall was the very place where you intended to make a stop to-day.'' ``the lord forbid!'' said donald, hastily. ``and for what, donald? why should you be willing to pass so pleasant a spot?'' ``it's ower near dalmally, my leddy, to corn the beasts---it would bring their dinner ower near their breakfast, poor things:---an', besides, the place is not canny.'' ``oh! then the mystery is out. there is a bogle or a brownie, a witch or a gyre-carlin, a bodach or a fairy, in the case?'' ``the ne'er a bit, my leddy---ye are clean aff the road, as i may say. but if your leddyship will just hae patience, and wait till we are by the place and out of the glen, i'll tell ye all about it. there is no much luck in speaking of such things in the place they chanced in.'' i was obliged to suspend my curiosity, observing, that if i persisted in twisting the discourse one way while donald was twining it another, i should make his objection, like a hempen cord, just so much the tougher. at length the promised turn of the road brought us within fifty paces of the tree which i desired to admire, and i now saw to my surprise, that there was a human habitation among the cliffs which surrounded it. it was a hut of the least dimensions, and most miserable description, that i ever saw even in the highlands. the walls of sod, or _divot_, as the scotch call it, were not four feet high---the roof was of turf, repaired with reeds and sedges---the chimney was composed of clay, bound round by straw ropes---and the whole walls, roof and chimney, were alike covered with the vegetation of house-leek, rye-grass, and moss, common to decayed cottages formed of such materials. there was not the slightest vestige of a kale-yard, the usual accompaniment of the very worst huts; and of living things we saw nothing, save a kid which was browsing on the roof of the hut, and a goat, its mother, at some distance, feeding betwixt the oak and the river awe. ``what man,'' i could not help exclaiming, ``can have committed sin deep enough to deserve such a miserable dwelling!'' ``sin enough,'' said donald macleish, with a half-suppressed groan; ``and god he knoweth, misery enough too;---and it is no man's dwelling neither, but a woman's.'' ``a woman's!'' i repeated, ``and in so lonely a place---what sort of a woman can she be?'' ``come this way, my leddy, and you may judge that for yourself,'' said donald. and by advancing a few steps, and making a sharp turn to the left, we gained a sight of the side of the great broad-breasted oak, in the direction opposed to that in which we had hitherto seen it. ``if she keeps her old wont, she will be there at this hour of the day,'' said donald; but immediately became silent, and pointed with his finger, as one afraid of being overheard. i looked, and beheld, not without some sense of awe, a female form seated by the stem of the oak, with her head drooping, her hands clasped, and a dark-coloured mantle drawn over her head, exactly as judah is represented in the syrian medals as seated under her palm-tree. i was infected with the fear and reverence which my guide seemed to entertain towards this solitary being, nor did i think of advancing towards her to obtain a nearer view until i had cast an enquiring look on donald; to which be replied in a half whisper---``she has been a fearfu' bad woman, my leddy.'' ``mad woman, said you,'' replied i, hearing him imperfectly; ``then she is perhaps dangerous?'' ``no---she is not mad,'' replied donald; ``for then it may be she would be happier than she is; though when she thinks on what she has done, and caused to be done, rather than yield up a hair-breadth of her ain wicked will, it is not likely she can be very well settled. but she neither is mad nor mischievous; and yet, my leddy, i think you had best not go nearer to her.'' and then, in a few hurried words, he made me acquainted with the story which i am now to tell more in detail. i heard the narrative with a mixture of horror and sympathy, which at once impelled me to approach the sufferer, and speak to her the words of comfort, or rather of pity, and at the same time made me afraid to do so. this indeed was the feeling with which she was regarded by the highlanders in the neighbourhood, who looked upon elspat mactavish, or the woman of the tree, as they called her, as the greeks considered those who were pursued by the furies, and endured the mental torment consequent on great criminal actions. they regarded such unhappy beings as orestes and <oe>dipus, as being less the voluntary perpetrators of their crimes than as the passive instruments by which the terrible decrees of destiny had been accomplished; and the fear with which they beheld them was not unmingled with veneration. i also learned farther from donald macleish, that there was some apprehension of ill luck attending those who had the boldness to approach too near, or disturb the awful solitude of a being so unutterably miserable; that it was supposed that whosoever approached her must experience in some respect the contagion of her wretchedness. it was therefore with some reluctance that donald saw me prepare to obtain a nearer view of the sufferer, and that he himself followed to assist me in the descent down a very rough path. i believe his regard for me conquered some ominous feelings in his own breast, which connected his duty on this occasion with the presaging fear of lame horses, lost linch-pins, overturns, and other perilous chances of the postilion's life. i am not sure if my own courage would have carried me so close to elspat, had he not followed. there was in her countenance the stern abstraction of hopeless and overpowering sorrow, mixed with the contending feelings of remorse, and of the pride which struggled to conceal it. she guessed, perhaps, that it was curiosity, arising out of her uncommon story, which induced me to intrude on her solitude---and she could not be pleased that a fate like hers had been the theme of a traveller's amusement. yet the look with which she regarded me was one of scorn instead of embarrassment. the opinion of the world and all its children could not add or take an iota from her load of misery; and, save from the half smile that seemed to intimate the contempt of a being rapt by the very intensity of her affliction above the sphere of ordinary humanities, she seemed as indifferent to my gaze, as if she had been a dead corpse or a marble statue. elspat was above the middle stature; her hair, now grizzled, was still profuse, and it had been of the most decided black. so were her eyes, in which, contradicting the stern and rigid features of her countenance, there shone the wild and troubled light that indicates an unsettled mind. her hair was wrapt round a silver bodkin with some attention to neatness, and her dark mantle was disposed around her with a degree of taste, though the materials were of the most ordinary sort. after gazing on this victim of guilt and calamity till i was ashamed to remain silent, though uncertain how i ought to address her, i began to express my surprise at her choosing such a desert and deplorable dwelling. she cut short these expressions of sympathy, by answering in a stern voice, without the least change of countenance or posture--``daughter of the stranger, he has told you my story.'' i was silenced at once, and felt how little all earthly accommodation must seem to the mind which had such subjects as hers for rumination. without again attempting to open the conversation, i took a piece of gold from my purse, (for donald had intimated she lived on alms,) expecting she would at least stretch her hand to receive it. but she neither accepted nor rejected the gift ---she did not even seem to notice it, though twenty times as valuable, probably, as was usually offered. i was obliged to place it on her knee, saying involuntarily, as i did so, ``may god pardon you, and relieve you!'' i shall never forget the look which she cast up to heaven, nor the tone in which she exclaimed, in the very words of my old friend, john home-- ``my beautiful---my brave!'' it was the language of nature, and arose from the heart of the deprived mother, as it did from that gifted imaginative poet, while furnishing with appropriate expressions the ideal grief of lady randolph. chapter ii. o, i'm come to the low country, och, och, ohonochie, without a penny in my pouch to buy a meal for me. i was the proudest of my clan, long, long may i repine; and donald was the bravest man, and donald he was mine. _old song_. elspat had enjoyed happy days, though her age had sunk into hopeless and inconsolable sorrow and distress. she was once the beautiful and happy wife of hamish mactavish, for whom his strength and feats of prowess had gained the title of mactavish mhor. his life was turbulent and dangerous, his habits being of the old highland stamp, which esteemed it shame to want any thing that could be had for the taking. those in the lowland line who lay near him, and desired to enjoy their lives and property in quiet, were contented to pay him a small composition, in name of protection money, and comforted themselves with the old proverb, that it was better to ``fleech the deil than fight him.'' others, who accounted such composition dishonourable, were often surprised by mactavish mhor, and his associates and followers, who usually inflicted an adequate penalty, either in person or property, or both. the creagh is yet remembered, in which he swept one hundred and fifty cows from monteith in one drove; and how be placed the laird of ballybught naked in a slough, for having threatened to send for a party of the highland watch to protect his property. whatever were occasionally the triumphs of this daring cateran, they were often exchanged for reverses; and his narrow escapes, rapid flights, and the ingenious stratagems with which he extricated himself from imminent danger, were no less remembered and admired than the exploits in which he had been successful. in weal or woe, through every species of fatigue, difficulty, and danger, elspat was his faithful companion. she enjoyed with him the fits of occasional prosperity; and when adversity pressed them hard, her strength of mind, readiness of wit, and courageous endurance of danger and toil, are said often to have stimulated the exertions of her husband. their morality was of the old highland cast, faithful friends and fierce enemies: the lowland herds and harvests they accounted their own, whenever they had the means of driving off the one, or of seizing upon the other; nor did the least scruple on the right of property interfere on such occasions. hamish mhor argued like the old cretan warrior: my sword, my spear, my shaggy shield, they make me lord of all below; for he who dreads the lance to wield, before my shaggy shield must bow. his lands, his vineyards, must resign, and all that cowards have is mine. but those days of perilous, though frequently successful depredation, began to be abridged, after the failure of the expedition of prince charles edward. mactavish mhor had not sat still on that occasion, and he was outlawed, both as a traitor to the state, and as a robber and cateran. garrisons were now settled in many places where a red-coat had never before been seen, and the saxon war-drum resounded among the most hidden recesses of the highland mountains. the fate of mactavish became every day more inevitable; and it was the more difficult for him to make his exertions for defence or escape, that elspat, amid his evil days, had increased his family with an infant child, which was a considerable encumbrance upon the necessary rapidity of their motions. at length the fatal day arrived. in a strong pass on the skirts of ben cruachan, the celebrated mactavish mhor was surprised by a detachment of the sidier roy.* his wife assisted him heroically, * the red soldier. charging his piece from time to time; and as they were in possession of a post that was nearly unassailable, he might have perhaps escaped if his ammunition had lasted. but at length his balls were expended, although it was not until he had fired off most of the silver buttons from his waistcoat, and the soldiers, no longer deterred by fear of the unerring marksman, who had slain three, and wounded more of their number, approached his stronghold, and, unable to take him alive, slew him, after a most desperate resistance. all this elspat witnessed and survived, for she had, in the child which relied on her for support, a motive for strength and exertion. in what manner she maintained herself it is not easy to say. her only ostensible means of support were a flock of three or four goats, which she fed wherever she pleased on the mountain pastures, no one challenging the intrusion. in the general distress of the country, her ancient acquaintances had little to bestow; but what they could part with from their own necessities, they willingly devoted to the relief of others. from lowlanders she sometimes demanded tribute, rather than requested alms. she had not forgotten she was the widow of mactavish mhor, or that the child who trotted by her knee might, such were her imaginations, emulate one day the fame of his father, and command the same influence which he had once exerted without control. she associated so little with others, went so seldom and so unwillingly from the wildest recesses of the mountains, where she usually dwelt with her goats, that she was quite unconscious of the great change which had taken place in the country around her, the substitution of civil order for military violence, and the strength gained by the law and its adherents over those who were called in gaelic song, ``the stormy sons of the sword.'' her own diminished consequence and straitened circumstances she indeed felt, but for this the death of mactavish mhor was, in her apprehension, a sufficing reason; and she doubted not that she should rise to her former state of importance, when hamish bean (or fair-haired james) should be able to wield the arms of his father. if, then, elspat was repelled rudely when she demanded any thing necessary for her wants, or the accommodation of her little flock, by a churlish farmer, her threats of vengeance, obscurely expressed, yet terrible in their tenor, used frequently to extort, through fear of her maledictions, the relief which was denied to her necessities; and the trembling goodwife, who gave meal or money to the widow of mactavish mhor, wished in her heart that the stern old carlin had been burnt on the day her husband had his due. years thus ran on, and hamish bean grew up, not indeed to be of his father's size or strength, but to become an active, high-spirited, fair-haired youth, with a ruddy cheek, an eye like an eagle, and all the agility, if not all the strength, of his formidable father, upon whose history and achievements his mother dwelt, in order to form her son's mind to a similar course of adventures. but the young see the present state of this changeful world more keenly than the old. much attached to his mother, and disposed to do all in his power for her support, hamish yet perceived, when he mixed with the world, that the trade of the cateran was now alike dangerous and discreditable, and that if he were to emulate his father's prowess, it must be in some other line of warfare, more consonant to the opinions of the present day. as the faculties of mind and body began to expand, he became more sensible of the precarious nature of his situation, of the erroneous views of his mother, and her ignorance respecting the changes of the society with which she mingled so little. in visiting friends and neighbours, he became aware of the extremely reduced scale to which his parent was limited, and learned that she possessed little or nothing more than the absolute necessaries of life, and that these were sometimes on the point of failing. at times his success in fishing and the chase was able to add something to her subsistence; but he saw no regular means of contributing to her support, unless by stooping to servile labour, which, if he himself could have endured it, would, he knew, have been like a death's-wound to the pride of his mother. elspat, meanwhile, saw with surprise, that hamish bean, although now tall and fit for the field, showed no disposition to enter on his father's scene of action. there was something of the mother at her heart, which prevented her from urging him in plain terms to take the field as a cateran, for the fear occurred of the perils into which the trade must conduct him; and when she would have spoken to him on the subject, it seemed to her heated imagination as if the ghost of her husband arose between them in his bloody tartans, and laying his finger on his lips, appeared to prohibit the topic. yet she wondered at what seemed his want of spirit, sighed as she saw him from day to day lounging about in the long-skirted lowland coat, which the legislature had imposed upon the gael instead of their own romantic garb, and thought how much nearer he would have resembled her husband, had he been clad in the belted plaid and short hose with his polished arms gleaming at his side. besides these subjects for anxiety, elspat had others arising from the engrossing impetuosity of her temper. her love of mactavish mhor had been qualified by respect and sometimes even by fear; for the cateran was not the species of man who submits to female government; but over his son she had exerted, at first during childhood, and afterwards in early youth, an imperious authority, which gave her maternal love a character of jealousy. she could not bear, when hamish, with advancing life, made repeated steps towards independence, absented himself from her cottage at such season, and for such length of time as he chose, and seemed to consider, although maintaining towards her every possible degree of respect and kindness, that the control and responsibility of his actions rested on himself alone. this would have been of little consequence, could she have concealed her feelings within her own bosom; but the ardour and impatience of her passions made her frequently show her son that she conceived herself neglected and ill used. when he was absent for any length of time from her cottage, without giving intimation of his purpose, her resentment on his return used to be so unreasonable, that it naturally suggested to a young man fond of independence, and desirous to amend his situation in the world, to leave her, even for the very purpose of enabling him to provide for the parent whose egotistical demands on his filial attention tended to confine him to a desert, in which both were starving in hopeless and helpless indigence. upon one occasion, the son having been guilty of some independent excursion, by which the mother felt herself affronted and disobliged, she had been more than usually violent on his return, and awakened in hamish a sense of displeasure, which clouded his brow and cheek. at length, as she persevered in her unreasonable resentment, his patience became exhausted, and taking his gun from the chimney corner, and muttering to himself the reply which his respect for his mother prevented him from speaking aloud, he was about to leave the hut which he had but barely entered. ``hamish,'' said his mother, ``are you again about to leave me?'' but hamish only replied by looking at, and rubbing the lock of his gun. ``ay, rub the lock of your gun,'' said his parent, bitterly; ``i am glad you have courage enough to fire it, though it be but at a roe-deer.'' hamish started at this undeserved taunt, and cast a look of anger at her in reply. she saw that she had found the means of giving him pain. ``yes,'' she said, ``look fierce as you will at an old woman, and your mother; it would be long ere you bent your brow on the angry countenance of a bearded man.'' ``be silent, mother, or speak of what you understand,'' said hamish, much irritated, ``and that is of the distaff and the spindle.'' ``and was it of spindle and distaff that i was thinking when i bore you away on my back, through the fire of six of the saxon soldiers, and you a wailing child? i tell you, hamish, l know a hundred-fold more of swords and guns than ever you will; and you will never learn so much of noble war by yourself, as you have seen when you were wrapped up in my plaid.'' ``you are determined at least to allow me no peace at home, mother; but this shall have an end,'' said hamish, as, resuming his purpose of leaving the hut, he rose and went towards the door. ``stay, i command you,'' said his mother; ``stay! or may the gun you carry be the means of your ruin---may the road you are going be the track of your funeral!'' ``what makes you use such words, mother?'' said the young man, turning a little back---``they are not good, and good cannot come of them. farewell just now, we are too angry to speak together--farewell; it will be long ere you see me again.'' and he departed, his mother, in the first burst of her impatience, showering after him her maledictions, and in the next invoking them on her own head, so that they might spare her son's. she passed that day and the next in all the vehemence of impotent and yet unrestrained passion, now entreating heaven, and such powers as were familiar to her by rude tradition, to restore her dear son, ``the calf of her heart;'' now in impatient resentment, meditating with what bitter terms she should rebuke his filial disobedience upon his return, and now studying the most tender language to attach him to the cottage, which, when her boy was present, she would not, in the rapture of her affection, have exchanged for the apartments of taymouth castle. two days passed, during which, neglecting even the slender means of supporting nature which her situation afforded, nothing but the strength of a frame accustomed to hardships and privations of every kind, could have kept her in existence, notwithstanding the anguish of her mind prevented her being sensible of her personal weakness. her dwelling, at this period, was the same cottage near which i had found her but then more habitable by the exertions of hamish, by whom it had been in a great measure built and repaired. it was on the third day after her son had disappeared, as she sat at the door rocking herself, after the fashion of her countrywomen when in distress or in pain, that the then unwonted circumstance occurred of a passenger being seen on the high-road above the cottage. she cast but one glance at him ---he was on horseback, so that it could not be hamish, and elspat cared not enough for any other being on earth, to make her turn her eyes towards him a second time. the stranger, however, paused opposite to her cottage, and dismounting from his pony, led it down the steep and broken path which conducted to her door. ``god bless you, elspat mactavish!''---she looked at the man as he addressed her in her native language, with the displeased air of one whose reverie is interrupted; but the traveller went on to say, ``i bring you tidings of your son hamish.'' at once, from being the most uninteresting object, in respect to elspat, that could exist, the form of the stranger became awful in her eyes, as that of a messenger descended from heaven, expressly to pronounce upon her death or life. she started from her seat, and with hands convulsively clasped together, and held up to heaven, eyes fixed on the stranger's countenance, and person stooping forward to him, she looked those enquiries, which her faltering tongue could not articulate. ``your son sends you his dutiful remembrance and this,'' said the messenger, putting into elspat's hand a small purse containing four or five dollars. ``he is gone, he is gone!'' exclaimed elspat; he has sold himself to be the servant of the saxons, and i shall never more behold him! tell me, miles macphadraick, for now i know you, is it the price of the son's blood that you have put into the mother's hand?'' ``now, god forbid!'' answered macphadraick, who was a tacksman, and had possession of a considerable tract of ground under his chief, a proprietor who lived about twenty miles off---``god forbid i should do wrong, or say wrong, to you, or to the son of mactavish mhor! i swear to you by the hand of my chief, that your son is well, and will soon see you; and the rest he will tell you himself.'' so saying, macphadraick hastened back up the pathway-gained the road, mounted his pony, and rode upon his way. chapter iii. elspat mactavish remained gazing on the money, as if the impress of the coin could have conveyed information how it was procured. ``i love not this macphadraick,'' she said to herself; ``it was his race of whom the bard hath spoken, saying, fear them not when their words are loud as the winter's wind, but fear them when they fall on you like the sound of the thrush's song. and yet this riddle can be read but one way: my son hath taken the sword, to win that with strength like a man, which churls would keep him from with the words that frighten children.'' this idea, when once it occurred to her, seemed the more reasonable, that macphadraick, as she well knew, himself a cautious man, had so far encouraged her husband's practices, as occasionally to buy cattle of mactavish, although he must have well known how they were come by, taking care, however, that the transaction was so made, as to be accompanied with great profit and absolute safety. who so likely as macphadraick to indicate to a young cateran the glen in which he could commence his perilous trade with most prospect of success, who so likely to convert his booty into money? the feelings which another might have experienced on believing that an only son had rushed forward on the same path in which his father had perished, were scarce known to the highland mothers of that day. she thought of the death of mactavish mhor as that of a hero who had fallen in his proper trade of war, and who had not fallen unavenged. she feared less for her son's life than for his dishonour. she dreaded on his account the subjection to strangers, and the death-sleep of the soul which is brought on by what she regarded as slavery. the moral principle which so naturally and so justly occurs to the mind of those who have been educated under a settled government of laws that protect the property of the weak against the incursions of the strong, was to poor elspat a book sealed and a fountain closed. she had been taught to consider those whom they call saxons, as a race with whom the gael were constantly at war, and she regarded every settlement of theirs within the reach of highland incursion, as affording a legitimate object of attack and plunder. her feelings on this point had been strengthened and confirmed, not only by the desire of revenge for the death of her husband, but by the sense of general indignation entertained, not unjustly, through the highlands of scotland, on account of the barbarous and violent conduct of the victors after the battle of culloden. other highland clans, too, she regarded as the fair objects of plunder when that was possible, upon the score of ancient enmities and deadly feuds. the prudence that might have weighed the slender means which the times afforded for resisting the efforts of a combined government, which had, in its less compact and established authority, been unable to put down the ravages of such lawless caterans as mactavish mhor, was unknown to a solitary woman, whose ideas still dwelt upon her own early times. she imagined that her son had only to proclaim himself his father's successor in adventure and enterprise, and that a force of men as gallant as those who had followed his father's banner, would crowd around to support it when again displayed. to her, hamish was the eagle who had only to soar aloft and resume his native place in the skies, without her being able to comprehend how many additional eyes would have watched his flight, how many additional bullets would have been directed at his bosom. to be brief, elspat was one who viewed the present state of society with the same feelings with which she regarded the times that had passed away. she had been indigent, neglected, oppressed, since the days that her husband had no longer been feared and powerful, and she thought that the term of her ascendence would return when her son had determined to play the part of his father. if she permitted her eye to glance farther into futurity, it was but to anticipate that she must be for many a day cold in the grave, with the coronach of her tribe cried duly over her, before her fair-haired hamish could, according to her calculation, die with his hand on the basket-hilt of the red claymore. his father's hair was grey, ere, after a hundred dangers, he had fallen with his arms in his hands---that she should have seen and survived the sight, was a natural consequence of the manners of that age. and better it was---such was her proud thought---that she had seen him so die, than to have witnessed his departure from life in a smoky hovel---on a bed of rotten straw, like an over-worn hound, or a bullock which died of disease. but the hour of her young, her brave hamish, was yet far distant. he must succeed---he must conquer, like his father. and when he fell at length,---for she anticipated for him no bloodless death,---elspat would ere then have lain long in the grave, and could neither see his death-struggle, nor mourn over his grave-sod. with such wild notions working in her brain, the spirit of elspat rose to its usual pitch, or rather to one which seemed higher. in the emphatic language of scripture, which in that idiom does not greatly differ from her own, she arose, she washed and changed her apparel, and ate bread, and was refreshed. she longed eagerly for the return of her son, but she now longed not with the bitter anxiety of doubt and apprehension. she said to herself, that much must be done ere he could in these times arise to be an eminent and dreaded leader. yet when she saw him again, she almost expected him at the head of a daring band, with pipes playing, and banners flying, the noble tartans fluttering free in the wind, in despite of the laws which had suppressed, under severe penalties, the use of the national garb, and all the appurtenances of highland chivalry. for all this, her eager imagination was content only to allow the interval of some days. from the moment this opinion had taken deep and serious possession of her mind, her thoughts were bent upon receiving her son at the head of his adherents in the manner in which she used to adorn her hut for the return of his father. the substantial means of subsistence she had not the power of providing, nor did she consider that of importance. the successful caterans would bring with them herds and flocks. but the interior of her hut was arranged for their reception---the usquebaugh was brewed or distilled in a larger quantity than it could have been supposed one lone woman could have made ready. her hut was put into such order as might, in some degree, give it the appearance of a day of rejoicing. it was swept and decorated with boughs of various kinds, like the house of a jewess, upon what is termed the feast of the tabernacles. the produce of the milk of her little flock was prepared in as great variety of forms as her skill admitted, to entertain her son and his associates whom she expected to receive along with him. but the principal decoration, which she sought with the greatest toil, was the cloud-berry, a scarlet fruit, which is only found on very high hills, and there only in small quantities. her husband, or perhaps one of his forefathers, had chosen this as the emblem of his family, because it seemed at once to imply by its scarcity the smallness of their clan, and by the places in which it was found, the ambitious height of their pretensions. for the time that these simple preparations of welcome endured, elspat was in a state of troubled happiness. in fact, her only anxiety was that she might be able to complete all that she could do to welcome hamish and the friends who she supposed must have attached themselves to his band, before they should arrive, and find her unprovided for their reception. but when such efforts as she could make had been accomplished, she once more had nothing left to engage her save the trifling care of her goats; and when these had been attended to, she had only to review her little preparations, renew such as were of a transitory nature, replace decayed branches and fading boughs, and then to sit down at her cottage door and watch the road, as it ascended on the one side from the banks of the awe, and on the other wound round the heights of the mountain, with such a degree of accommodation to hill and level as the plan of the military engineer permitted. while so occupied, her imagination, anticipating the future from recollections of the past, formed out of the morning mist or the evening cloud the wild forms of an advancing band, which were then called ``sidier dhu,''---dark soldiers---dressed in their native tartan, and so named to distinguish them from the scarlet ranks of the british army. in this occupation she spent many hours of each morning and evening. chapter iv. it was in vain that elspat's eyes surveyed the distant path, by the earliest light of the dawn and the latest glimmer of the twilight. no rising dust awakened the expectation of nodding plumes or flashing arms---the solitary traveller trudged listlessly along in his brown lowland great-coat, his tartans dyed black or purple, to comply with or evade the law which prohibited their being worn in their variegated hues. the spirit of the gael, sunk and broken by the severe though perhaps necessary laws, that proscribed the dress and arms which he considered as his birthright, was intimated by his drooping head and dejected appearance. not in such depressed wanderers did elspat recognise the light and free step of her son, now, as she concluded, regenerated from every sign of saxon thraldom. night by night, as darkness came, she removed from her unclosed door to throw herself on her restless pallet, not to sleep, but to watch. the brave and the terrible, she said, walk by night ---their steps are heard in darkness, when all is silent save the whirlwind and the cataract---the timid deer comes only forth when the sun is upon the mountain's peak; but the bold wolf walks in the red light of the harvest-moon. she reasoned in vain---her son's expected summons did not call her from the lowly couch, where she lay dreaming of his approach. hamish came not. ``hope deferred,'' saith the royal sage, ``maketh the heart sick;'' and strong as was elspat's constitution, she began to experience that it was unequal to the toils to which her anxious and immoderate affection subjected her, when early one morning the appearance of a traveller on the lonely mountain-road, revived hopes which had begun to sink into listless despair. there was no sign of saxon subjugation about the stranger. at a distance she could see the flutter of the belted-plaid, that drooped in graceful folds behind him, and the plume that, placed in the bonnet, showed rank and gentle birth. he carried a gun over his shoulder, the claymore was swinging by his side, with its usual appendages, the dirk, the pistol, and the _sporran mollach_.* ere yet her eye had scanned all * the goat-skin pouch, worn by the highlanders round their waist. these particulars, the light step of the traveller was hastened, his arm was waved in token of recognition--a moment more, and elspat held in her arms her darling son, dressed in the garb of his ancestors, and looking, in her maternal eyes, the fairest among ten thousand! the first outpouring of affection it would be impossible to describe. blessings mingled with the most endearing epithets which her energetic language affords, in striving to express the wild rapture of elspat's joy. her board was heaped hastily with all she had to offer; and the mother watched the young soldier, as he partook of the refreshment, with feelings how similar to, yet how different from, those with which she had seen him draw his first sustenance from her bosom! when the tumult of joy was appeased, elspat became anxious to know her son's adventures since they parted, and could not help greatly censuring his rashness for traversing the hills in the highland dress in the broad sunshine,when the penalty was so heavy, and so many red soldiers were abroad in the country. ``fear not for me, mother,'' said hamish, in a tone designed to relieve her anxiety, and yet somewhat embarrassed; ``i may wear the _breacan_* at * that which is variegated, _i.e._ the tartan. the gate of fort-augustus, if i like it.'' ``oh, be not too daring, my beloved hamish, though it be the fault which best becomes thy father's son---yet be not too daring! alas, they fight not now as in former days, with fair weapons, and on equal terms, but take odds of numbers and of arms, so that the feeble and the strong are alike levelled by the shot of a boy. and do not think me unworthy to be called your father's widow, and your mother, because i speak thus; for god knoweth, that, man to man, i would peril thee against the best in breadalbane, and broad lorn besides.'' ``i assure you, my dearest mother,'' replied hamish, ``that i am in no danger. but have you seen macphadraick, mother, and what has he said to you on my account?'' ``silver he left me in plenty, hamish; but the best of his comfort was, that you were well, and would see me soon. but beware of macphadraick, my son; for when he called himself the friend of your father, he better loved the most worthless stirk in his herd, than he did the life-blood of mactavish mhor. use his services, therefore, and pay him for them---for it is thus we should deal with the unworthy; but take my counsel, and trust him not.'' hamish could not suppress a sigh, which seemed to elspat to intimate that the caution came too late. ``what have you done with him?'' she continued, eager and alarmed. ``i had money of him, and he gives not that without value---he is none of those who exchange barley for chaff. oh, if you repent you of your bargain, and if it be one which you may break off without disgrace to your truth or your manhood, take back his silver, and trust not to his fair words.'' ``it may not be, mother,'' said hamish; ``i do not repent my engagement, unless that it must make me leave you soon.'' ``leave me! how leave me? silly boy, think you i know not what duty belongs to the wife or mother of a daring man? thou art but a boy yet; and when thy father had been the dread of the country for twenty years, he did not despise my company and assistance, but often said my help was worth that of two strong gillies.'' ``it is not on that score, mother; but since i must leave the country---'' ``leave the country!'' replied his mother, interrupting him; ``and think you that i am like a bush, that is rooted to the soil where it grows, and must die if carried elsewhere? i have breathed other winds than these of ben cruachan---i have followed your father to the wilds of ross, and the impenetrable deserts of y mac y mhor---tush, man, my limbs, old as they are, will bear me as far as your young feet can trace the way.'' ``alas, mother,'' said the young man, with a faltering accent, ``but to cross the sea---'' ``the sea! who am i that i should fear the sea? have i never been in a birling in my life ---never known the sound of mull, the isles of treshornish, and the rough rocks of harris?'' ``alas, mother, i go far, far from all of these--i am enlisted in one of the new regiments, and we go against the french in america.'' ``enlisted!'' uttered the astonished mother--``against _my_ will---without _my_ consent---you could not---you would not,''---then rising up, and assuming a posture of almost imperial command, ``hamish, you =dared= not!'' ``despair, mother, dares every thing,'' answered hamish, in a tone of melancholy resolution. ``what should i do here, where i can scarce get bread for myself and you, and when the times are growing daily worse? would you but sit down and listen, i would convince you i have acted for the best.'' with a bitter smile elspat sat down, and the same severe ironical expression was on her features, as, with her lips firmly closed, she listened to his vindication. hamish went on, without being disconcerted by her expected displeasure. ``when i left you, dearest mother, it was to go to macphadraick's house; for although i knew he is crafty and worldly, after the fashion of the sassenach, yet he is wise, and i thought how he would teach me, as it would cost him nothing, in which way i could mend our estate in the world.'' ``our estate in the world!'' said elspat, losing patience at the word; ``and went you to a base fellow with a soul no better than that of a cowherd, to ask counsel about your conduct? your father asked none, save of his courage and his sword.'' ``dearest mother,'' answered hamish, ``how shall i convince you that you live in this land of our fathers, as if our fathers were yet living? you walk as it were in a dream, surrounded by the phantoms of those who have been long with the dead. when my father lived and fought, the great respected the man of the strong right hand, and the rich feared him. he had protection from macallan mhor, and from caberfae,* and tribute from * caberfae---_anglice_, the stag's-head, the celtic designation for the arms of the family of the high chief of seaforth. meaner men. that is ended, and his son would only earn a disgraceful and unpitied death, by the practices which gave his father credit and power among those who wear the breacan. the land is conquered---its lights are quenched,---glengary, lochiel, perth, lord lewis, all the high chiefs are dead or in exile---we may mourn for it, but we cannot help it. bonnet, broadsword, and sporran ---power, strength, and wealth, were all lost on drummossie-muir.'' ``it is false!'' said elspat, fiercely; ``you, and such like dastardly spirits, are quelled by your own faint hearts, not by the strength of the enemy; you are like the fearful waterfowl, to whom the least cloud in the sky seems the shadow of the eagle.'' ``mother,'' said hamish, proudly, ``lay not faint heart to my charge. i go where men are wanted who have strong arms and bold hearts too. i leave a desert, for a land where i may gather fame.'' ``and you leave your mother to perish in want, age, and solitude,'' said elspat, essaying successively every means of moving a resolution, which she began to see was more deeply rooted than she had at first thought. ``not so, neither,'' he answered; ``i leave you to comfort and certainty, which you have yet never known. barcaldine's son is made a leader, and with him i have enrolled myself; macphadraick acts for him, and raises men, and finds his own in doing it.'' ``that is the truest word of the tale, were all the rest as false as hell,'' said the old woman, bitterly. ``but we are to find our good in it also,'' continued hamish; ``for barcaldine is to give you a shieling in his wood of letter-findreight, with grass for your goats, and a cow, when you please to have one, on the common; and my own pay, dearest mother, though i am far away, will do more than provide you with meal, and with all else you can want. do not fear for me. i enter a private gentleman; but i will return, if hard fighting and regular duty can deserve it, an officer, and with half a dollar a-day.'' ``poor child!''---replied elspat, in a tone of pity mingled with contempt, ``and you trust macphadraick?'' ``i might mother''---said hamish, the dark red colour of his race crossing his forehead and cheeks, ``for macphadraick knows the blood which flows in my veins, and is aware, that should he break trust with you, he might count the days which could bring hamish back to breadalbane, and number those of his life within three suns more. i would kill him at his own hearth, did he break his word with me---i would, by the great being who made us both!'' the look and attitude of the young soldier for a moment overawed elspat; she was unused to see him express a deep and bitter mood, which reminded her so strongly of his father, but she resumed her remonstrances in the same taunting manner in which she had commenced them. ``poor boy!'' she said; ``and you think that at the distance of half the world your threats will be heard or thought of! but, go---go---place your neck under him of hanover's yoke, against whom every true gael fought to the death---go, disown the royal stewart, for whom your father, and his fathers, and your mother's fathers, have crimsoned many a field with their blood.---go, put your head under the belt of one of the race of dermid, whose children murdered---yes,'' she added, with a wild shriek, ``murdered your mother's fathers in their peaceful dwellings in glencoe!---yes,'' she again exclaimed, with a wilder and shriller scream, ``i was then unborn, but my mother has told me---and i attended to the voice of _my_ mother---well i remember her words!---they came in peace, and were received in friendship, and blood and fire arose, and screams and murder!''* * note c. massacre of glencoe. ``mother,'' answered hamish, mournfully, but with a decided tone, ``all that i have thought over ---there is not a drop of the blood of glencoe on the noble band of barcaldine---with the unhappy house of glenlyon the curse remains, and on them god hath avenged it.'' ``you speak like the saxon priest already,'' replied his mother; ``will you not better stay, and ask a kirk from macallan mhor, that you may preach forgiveness to the race of dermid?'' ``yesterday was yesterday,'' answered hamish, ``and to-day is to-day. when the clans are crushed and confounded together, it is well and wise that their hatreds and their feuds should not survive their independence and their power. he that cannot execute vengeance like a man, should not harbour useless enmity like a craven. mother, young barcaldine is true and brave; i know that macphadraick counselled him, that he should not let me take leave of you, lest you dissuaded me from my purpose; but he said, `hamish mactavish is the son of a brave man, and he will not break his word.' mother, barcaldine leads an hundred of the bravest of the sons of the gael in their native dress, and with their fathers' arms---heart to heart ---shoulder to shoulder. i have sworn to go with him---he has trusted me, and i will trust him.'' at this reply, so firmly and resolvedly pronounced, elspat remained like one thunderstruck, and sunk in despair. the arguments which she had considered so irresistibly conclusive, had recoiled like a wave from a rock. after a long pause, she filled her son's quaigh, and presented it to him with an air of dejected deference and submission. ``drink,'' she said, ``to thy father's roof-tree, ere you leave it for ever; and tell me,---since the chains of a new king, and of a new chief, whom your fathers knew not save as mortal enemies, are fastened upon the limbs of your father's son,---tell me how many links you count upon them?'' hamish took the cup, but looked at her as if uncertain of her meaning. she proceeded in a raised voice. ``tell me,'' she said, ``for i have a right to know, for how many days the will of those you have made your masters permits me to look upon you? ---in other words, how many are the days of my life---for when you leave me, the earth has nought besides worth living for!'' ``mother,'' replied hamish mactavish, ``for six days i may remain with you, and if you will set out with me on the fifth, i will conduct you in safety to your new dwelling. but if you remain here, then i will depart on the seventh by daybreak--then, as at the last moment, i =must= set out for dunbarton, for if i appear not on the eighth day, i am subject to punishment as a deserter, and am dishonoured as a soldier and a gentleman.'' ``your father's foot,'' she answered, ``was free as the wind on the heath---it were as vain to say to him where goest thou, as to ask that viewless driver of the clouds, wherefore blowest thou. tell me under what penalty thou must---since go thou must, and go thou wilt---return to thy thraldom?'' ``call it not thraldom, mother, it is the service of an honourable soldier---the only service which is now open to the son of mactavish mhor.'' ``yet say what is the penalty if thou shouldst not return?'' replied elspat. ``military punishment as a deserter,'' answered hamish; writhing, however, as his mother failed not to observe, under some internal feelings, which she resolved to probe to the uttermost. ``and that,'' she said, with assumed calmness, which her glancing eye disowned, ``is the punishment of a disobedient hound, is it not?'' ``ask me no more, mother,'' said hamish; ``the punishment is nothing to one who will never deserve it.'' ``to me it is something,'' replied elspat, ``since i know better than thou, that where there is power to inflict, there is often the will to do so without cause. i would pray for thee, hamish, and i must know against what evils i should beseech him who leaves none unguarded, to protect thy youth and simplicity.'' ``mother,'' said hamish, ``it signifies little to what a criminal may be exposed, if a man is determined not to be such. our highland chiefs used also to punish their vassals, and, as i have heard, severely---was it not lachlan maclan, whom we remember of old, whose head was struck off by order of his chieftain for shooting at the stag before him?'' ``ay,'' said elspat, ``and right he had to lose it, since he dishonoured the father of the people even in the face of the assembled clan. but the chiefs were noble in their ire---they punished with the sharp blade, and not with the baton. their punishments drew blood, but they did not infer dishonour. canst thou say, the same for the laws under whose yoke thou hast placed thy freeborn neck?'' ``i cannot---mother---i cannot,'' said hamish, mournfully. ``i saw them punish a sassenach for deserting as they called it, his banner. he was scourged---i own it---scourged like a hound who has offended an imperious master. i was sick at the sight---i confess it. but the punishment of dogs is only for those worse than dogs, who know not how to keep their faith.'' ``to this infamy, however, thou hast subjected thyself, hamish,'' replied elspat, ``if thou shouldst give, or thy officers take, measure of offence against thee.---i speak no more to thee on thy purpose.--were the sixth day from this morning's sun my dying day, and thou wert to stay to close mine eyes, thou wouldst run the risk of being lashed like a dog at a post---yes! unless thou hadst the gallant heart to leave me to die alone, and upon my desolate hearth, the last spark of thy father's fire, and of thy forsaken mother's life, to be extinguished together!''---hamish traversed the hut with an impatient and angry pace. ``mother,'' he said at length, ``concern not yourself about such things. i cannot be subjected to such infamy, for never will i deserve it; and were i threatened with it, i should know how to die before i was so far dishonoured.'' ``there spoke the son of the husband of my heart!'' replied elspat; and she changed the discourse, and seemed to listen in melancholy acquiescence, when her son reminded her how short the time was which they were permitted to pass in each other's society, and entreated that it might be spent without useless and unpleasant recollections respecting the circumstances under which they must soon be separated. elspat was now satisfied that her son, with some of his father's other properties, preserved the haughty masculine spirit which rendered it impossible to divert him from a resolution which he had deliberately adopted. she assumed, therefore, an exterior of apparent submission to their inevitable separation; and if she now and then broke out into complaints and murmurs, it was either that she could not altogether suppress the natural impetuosity of her temper, or because she had the wit to consider, that a total and unreserved acquiescence might have seemed to her son constrained and suspicious, and induced him to watch and defeat the means by which she still hoped to prevent his leaving her. her ardent, though selfish affection for her son, incapable of being qualified by a regard for the true interests of the unfortunate object of her attachment, resembled the instinctive fondness of the animal race for their offspring; and diving little farther into futurity than one of the inferior creatures, she only felt, that to be separated from hamish was to die. in the brief interval permitted them, elspat exhausted every art which affection could devise, to render agreeable to him the space which they were apparently to spend with each other. her memory carried her far back into former days, and her stores of legendary history, which furnish at all times a principal amusement of the highlander in his moments of repose, were augmented by an unusual acquaintance with the songs of ancient bards, and traditions of the most approved seannachies and tellers of tales. her officious attentions to her son's accommodation, indeed, were so unremitted as almost to give him pain; and be endeavoured quietly to prevent her from taking so much personal toil in selecting the blooming heath for his bed, or preparing the meal for his refreshment. ``let me alone, hamish,'' she would reply on such occasions; ``you follow your own will in departing from your mother, let your mother have hers in doing what gives her pleasure while you remain.'' so much she seemed to be reconciled to the arrangements which he had made in her behalf, that she could hear him speak to her of her removing to the lands of green colin, as the gentleman was called, on whose estate he had provided her an asylum. in truth, however, nothing could be farther from her thoughts. from what he had said during their first violent dispute, elspat had gathered, that if hamish returned not by the appointed time permitted by his furlough, he would incur the hazard of corporal punishment. were he placed within the risk of being thus dishonoured, she was well aware that be would never submit to the disgrace, by a return to the regiment where it might be inflicted. whether she looked to any farther probable consequences of her unhappy scheme, cannot be known; but the partner of mactavish mhor, in all his perils and wanderings, was familiar with an hundred instances of resistance or escape, by which one brave man, amidst a land of rocks, lakes, and mountains, dangerous passes, and dark forests, might baffle the pursuit of hundreds. for the future, therefore, she feared nothing; her sole engrossing object was to prevent her son from keeping his word with his commanding officer. with this secret purpose, she evaded the proposal which hamish repeatedly made, that they should set out together to take possession of her new abode; and she resisted it upon grounds apparently so natural to her character, that her son was neither alarmed nor displeased. ``let me not,'' she said, ``in the same short week, bid farewell to my only son, and to the glen in which i have so long dwelt. let my eye, when dimmed with weeping for thee, still look around, for a while at least, upon loch awe and on ben cruachan.'' hamish yielded the more willingly to his mother's humour in this particular, that one or two persons who resided in a neighbouring glen, and had given their sons to barcaldine's levy, were also to be provided for on the estate of the chieftain, and it was apparently settled that elspat was to take her journey along with them when they should remove to their new residence. thus, hamish believed that he had at once indulged his mother's humour, and insured her safety and accommodation. but she nourished in her mind very different thoughts and projects! the period of hamish's leave of absence was fast approaching, and more than once he proposed to depart, in such time as to insure his gaining easily and early dunbarton, the town where were the head-quarters of his regiment. but still his mother's entreaties, his own natural disposition to linger among scenes long dear to him, and, above all, his firm reliance in his speed and activity, induced him to protract his departure till the sixth day, being the very last which he could possibly afford to spend with his mother, if indeed he meant to comply with the conditions of his furlough. chapter v. but for your son, believe it---oh, believe it-- most dangerously you have with him prevailed, if not most mortal to him.-- _coriolanus._ on the evening which preceded his proposed departure, hamish walked down to the river with his fishing-rod, to practise in the awe, for the last time, a sport in which be excelled, and to find, at the same time, the means for making one social meal with his mother on something better than their ordinary cheer. he was as successful as usual, and soon killed a fine salmon. on his return homeward an incident befell him, which he afterwards related as ominous, though probably his heated imagination, joined to the universal turn of his countrymen for the marvellous, exaggerated into superstitious importance some very ordinary and accidental circumstance. in the path which he pursued homeward, he was surprised to observe a person, who, like himself, was dressed and armed after the old highland fashion. the first idea that struck him was, that the passenger belonged to his own corps, who, levied by government, and bearing arms under royal authority, were not amenable for breach of the statutes against the use of the highland garb or weapons. but he was struck on perceiving, as he mended his pace to make up to his supposed comrade, meaning to request his company for the next day's journey, that the stranger wore a white cockade, the fatal badge which was proscribed in the highlands. the stature of the man was tall, and there was something shadowy in the outline, which added to his size; and his mode of motion, which rather resembled gliding than walking, impressed hamish with superstitious fears concerning the character of the being which thus passed before him in the twilight. he no longer strove to make up to the stranger, but contented himself with keeping him in view, under the superstition common to the highlanders, that you ought neither to intrude yourself on such supernatural apparitions as you may witness, nor avoid their presence, but leave it to themselves to withhold or extend their communication, as their power may permit, or the purpose of their commission require. upon an elevated knoll by the side of the road, just where the pathway turned down to elspat's hut, the stranger made a pause, and seemed to await hamish's coming up. hamish, on his part, seeing it was necessary be should pass the object of his suspicion, mustered up his courage, and approached the spot where the stranger had placed himself; who first pointed to elspat's hut, and made, with arm and head, a gesture prohibiting hamish to approach it, then stretched his hand to the road which led to the southward, with a motion which seemed to enjoin his instant departure in that direction. in a moment afterwards the plaided form was gone---hamish did not exactly say vanished, because there were rocks and stunted trees enough to have concealed him; but it was his own opinion that be had seen the spirit of mactavish mhor, warning him to commence his instant journey to dunbarton, without waiting till morning, or again visiting his mother's hut. in fact, so many accidents might arise to delay his journey, especially where there were many ferries, that it became his settled purpose, though he could not depart without bidding his mother adieu, that he neither could nor would abide longer than for that object; and that the first glimpse of next day's sun should see him many miles advanced towards dunbarton. he descended the path, therefore, and entering the cottage, he communicated, in a hasty and troubled voice, which indicated mental agitation, his determination to take his instant departure. somewhat to his surprise, elspat appeared not to combat his purpose, but she urged him to take some refreshment ere he left her for ever. he did so hastily, and in silence, thinking on the approaching separation, and scarce yet believing it would take place without a final struggle with his mother's fondness. to his surprise, she filled the quaigh with liquor for his parting cup. ``go,'' she said, ``my son, since such is thy settled purpose; but first stand once more on thy mother's hearth, the flame on which will be extinguished long ere thy foot shall again be placed there.'' ``to your health, mother!'' said hamish, ``and may we meet again in happiness, in spite of your ominous words.'' ``it were better not to part,'' said his mother, watching him as he quaffed the liquor, of which he would have held it ominous to have left a drop. ``and now,'' she said, muttering the words to herself, ``go---if thou canst go.'' ``mother,'' said hamish, as he replaced on the table the empty quaigh, ``thy drink is pleasant to the taste, but it takes away the strength which it ought to give.'' ``such is its first effect, my son,'' replied elspat; ``but lie down upon that soft heather couch, shut your eyes but for a moment, and, in the sleep of an hour, you shall have more refreshment than in the ordinary repose of three whole nights, could they be blended into one.'' ``mother,'' said hamish, upon whose brain the potion was now taking rapid effect, ``give me my bonnet---i must kiss you and begone---yet it seems as if my feet were nailed to the floor.'' ``indeed,'' said his mother, ``you will be instantly well, if you will sit down for half an hour---but half an hour: it is eight hours to dawn, and dawn were time enough for your father's son to begin such a journey.'' ``i must obey you, mother---i feel i must,'' said hamish, inarticulately; ``but call me when the moon rises.'' he sat down on the bed--reclined back, and almost instantly was fast asleep. with the throbbing glee of one who has brought to an end a difficult and troublesome enterprise, elspat proceeded tenderly to arrange the plaid of the unconscious slumberer, to whom her extravagant affection was doomed to be so fatal, expressing, while busied in her office, her delight, in tones of mingled tenderness and triumph. ``yes,'' she said, ``calf of my heart, the moon shall arise and set to thee, and so shall the sun; but not to light thee from the land of thy fathers, or tempt thee to serve the foreign prince or the feudal enemy! to no son of dermid shall i be delivered, to be fed like a bondswoman; but he who is my pleasure and my pride shall be my guard and my protector. they say the highlands are changed; but i see ben cruachan rear his crest as high as ever into the evening sky---no one hath yet herded his kine on the depths of loch awe---and yonder oak does not yet bend like a willow. the children of the mountains will be such as their fathers, until the mountains themselves shall be levelled with the strath. in these wild forests, which used to support thousands of the brave, there is still surely subsistence and refuge left for one aged woman, and one gallant youth, of the ancient race and the ancient manners.'' while the misjudging mother thus exulted in the success of her stratagem, we may mention to the reader, that it was founded on the acquaintance with drugs and simples, which elspat, accomplished in all things belonging to the wild life which she had led, possessed in an uncommon degree, and which she exercised for various purposes. with the herbs, which she knew how to select as well as how to distil, she could relieve more diseases than a regular medical person could easily believe. she applied some to dye the bright colours of the tartan ---from others she compounded draughts of various powers, and unhappily possessed the secret of one which was strongly soporific. upon the effects of this last concoction, as the reader doubtless has anticipated, she reckoned with security on delaying hamish beyond the period for which his return was appointed; and she trusted to his horror for the apprehended punishment to which he was thus rendered liable, to prevent him from returning at all. sound and deep, beyond natural rest, was the sleep of hamish mactavish on that eventful evening, but not such the repose of his mother. scarce did she close her eyes from time to time, but she awakened again with a start, in the terror that her son had arisen and departed; and it was only on approaching his couch, and hearing his deep-drawn and regular breathing, that she reassured herself of the security of the repose in which he was plunged. still, dawning, she feared, might awaken him, notwithstanding the unusual strength of the potion with which she had drugged his cup. if there remained a hope of mortal man accomplishing the journey, she was aware that hamish would attempt it, though he were to die from fatigue upon the road. animated by this new fear, she studied to exclude the light, by stopping all the crannies and crevices through which, rather than through any regular entrance, the morning beams might find access to her miserable dwelling; and this in order to detain amid its wants and wretchedness the being, on whom, if the world itself had been at her disposal, she would have joyfully conferred it. her pains were bestowed unnecessarily. the sun rose high above the heavens, and not the fleetest stag in breadalbane, were the hounds at his heels, could have sped, to save his life, so fast as would have been necessary to keep hamish's appointment. her purpose was fully attained---her son's return within the period assigned was impossible. she deemed it equally impossible, that he would ever dream of returning, standing, as he must now do, in the danger of an infamous punishment. by degrees, and at different times, she had gained from him a full acquaintance with the predicament in which he would be placed by failing to appear on the day appointed, and the very small hope he could entertain of being treated with lenity. it is well known, that the great and wise earl of chatham prided himself on the scheme, by which he drew together for the defence of the colonies those hardy highlanders, who, until his time, had been the objects of doubt, fear, and suspicion, on the part of each successive administration. but some obstacles occurred, from the peculiar habits and temper of this people, to the execution of his patriotic project. by nature and habit, every highlander was accustomed to the use of arms, but at the same time totally unaccustomed to, and impatient of, the restraints imposed by discipline upon regular troops. they were a species of militia, who had no conception of a camp as their only home. if a battle was lost, they dispersed to save themselves, and look out for the safety of their families; if won, they went back to their glens to hoard up their booty, and attend to their cattle and their farms. this privilege of going and coming at pleasure, they would not be deprived of even by their chiefs, whose authority was in most other respects so despotic. it followed as a matter of course, that the new-levied highland recruits could scarce be made to comprehend the nature of a military engagement, which compelled a man to serve in the army longer than he pleased; and perhaps, in many instances, sufficient care was not taken at enlisting to explain to them the permanency of the engagement which they came under, lest such a disclosure should induce them to change their mind. desertions were therefore become numerous from the newly-raised regiment, and the veteran general who commanded at dunbarton, saw no better way of checking them than by causing an unusually severe example to be made of a deserter from an english corps. the young highland regiment was obliged to attend upon the punishment, which struck a people, peculiarly jealous of personal honour, with equal horror and disgust, and not unnaturally indisposed some of them to the service. the old general, however, who had been regularly bred in the german wars, stuck to his own opinion, and gave out in orders that the first highlander who might either desert, or fail to appear at the expiry of his furlough, should be brought to the halberds, and punished like the culprit whom they had seen in that condition. no man doubted that general --------would keep his word rigorously whenever severity was required, and elspat, therefore, knew that her son, when he perceived that due compliance with his orders was impossible, must at the same time consider the degrading punishment denounced against his defection as inevitable, should be place himself within the general's power.* * note d. fidelity of the highlanders. when noon was well passed, new apprehensions came on the mind of the lonely woman. her son still slept under the influence of the draught; but what if, being stronger than she had ever known it administered, his health or his reason should be affected by its potency? for the first time, likewise, notwithstanding her high ideas on the subject of parental authority, she began to dread the resentment of her son, whom her heart told her she had wronged. of late, she had observed that his temper was less docile, and his determinations, especially upon this late occasion of his enlistment, independently formed, and then boldly carried through. she remembered the stern wilfulness of his father when he accounted himself ill-used, and began to dread that hamish, upon finding the deceit she had put upon him, might resent it even to the extent of cutting her off, and pursuing his own course through the world alone. such were the alarming and yet the reasonable apprehensions which began to crowd upon the unfortunate woman, after the apparent success of her ill-advised stratagem. it was near evening when hamish first awoke, and then he was far from being in the full possession either of his mental or bodily powers. from his vague expressions and disordered pulse, elspat at first experienced much apprehension; but she used such expedients as her medical knowledge suggested; and in the course of the night, she had the satisfaction to see him sink once more into a deep sleep, which probably carried off the greater part of the effects of the drug, for about sunrising she heard him arise, and call to her for his bonnet. this she had purposely removed, from a fear that he might awaken and depart in the night-time,without her knowledge. ``my bonnet---my bonnet,'' cried hamish, ``it is time to take farewell. mother, your drink was too strong---the sun is up---but with the next morning i will still see the double summit of the ancient dun. my bonnet---my bonnet! mother, i must be instant in my departure.'' these expressions made it plain that poor hamish was unconscious that two nights and a day had passed since he had drained the fatal quaigh, and elspat had now to venture on what she felt as the almost perilous, as well as painful task, of explaining her machinations. ``forgive me, my son,'' she said, approaching hamish, and taking him by the hand with an air of deferential awe, which perhaps she had not always used to his father, even when in his moody fits. ``forgive you, mother---for what?'' said hamish, laughing; ``for giving me a dram that was too strong, and which my head still feels this morning, or for hiding my bonnet to keep me an instant longer? nay, do _you_ forgive _me_. give me the bonnet, and let that be done which now must be done. give me my bonnet, or i go without it; surely i am not to be delayed by so trifling a want as that---i, who have gone for years with only a strap of deer's hide to tie back my hair. trifle not, but give it me, or i must go bareheaded, since to stay is impossible.'' ``my son,'' said elspat, keeping fast hold of his hand, ``what is done cannot be recalled; could you borrow the wings of yonder eagle, you would arrive at the dun too late for what you purpose,--too soon for what awaits you there. you believe you see the sun rising for the first time since you have seen him set, but yesterday beheld him climb ben cruachan, though your eyes were closed to his light.'' hamish cast upon his mother a wild glance of extreme terror, then instantly recovering himself, said---``i am no child to be cheated out of my purpose by such tricks as these---farewell, mother, each moment is worth a lifetime.'' ``stay,'' she said, ``my dear---my deceived son! run not on infamy and ruin---yonder i see the priest upon the high-road on his white horse---ask him the day of the month and week---let him decide between us.'' with the speed of an eagle, hamish darted up the acclivity, and stood by the minister of glenorquhy, who was pacing out thus early to administer consolation to a distressed family near bunawe. the good man was somewhat startled to behold an armed highlander, then so unusual a sight, and apparently much agitated, stop his horse by the bridle, and ask him with a faltering voice the day of the week and month. ``had you been where you should have been yesterday, young man,'' replied the clergyman, ``you would have known that it was god's sabbath; and that this is monday, the second day of the week, and twenty-first of the month.'' ``and this is true?'' said hamish. ``as true,'' answered the surprised minister, ``as that i yesterday preached the word of god to this parish.---what ails you, young man?---are you sick?---are you in your right mind?'' hamish made no answer, only repeated to himself the first expression of the clergyman---``had you been where you should have been yesterday;'' and so saying, he let go the bridle, turned from the road, and descended the path towards the hut, with the look and pace of one who was going to execution. the minister looked after him with surprise; but although he knew the inhabitant of the hovel, the character of elspat had not invited him to open any communication with her, because she was generally reputed a papist, or rather one indifferent to all religion, except some superstitious observances which had been handed down from her parents. on hamish the reverend mr tyrie had bestowed instructions when he was occasionally thrown in his way, and if the seed fell among the brambles and thorns of a wild and uncultivated disposition, it had not yet been entirely checked or destroyed. there was something so ghastly in the present expression of the youth's features, that the good man was tempted to go down to the hovel, and enquire whether any distress had befallen the inhabitants, in which his presence might be consoling, and his ministry useful. unhappily he did not persevere in this resolution, which might have saved a great misfortune, as he would have probably become a mediator for the unfortunate young man; but a recollection of the wild moods of such highlanders as had been educated after the old fashion of the country, prevented his interesting himself in the widow and son of the far-dreaded robber mactavish mhor; and he thus missed an opportunity, which he afterwards sorely repented, of doing much good. when hamish mactavish entered his mother's hut, it was only to throw himself on the bed he had left, and, exclaiming, ``undone, undone!'' to give vent, in cries of grief and anger, to his deep sense of the deceit which had been practised on him, and of the cruel predicament to which he was reduced. elspat was prepared for the first explosion of her son's passion, and said to herself, ``it is but the mountain torrent, swelled by the thunder shower. let us sit and rest us by the bank; for all its present tumult, the time will soon come when we may pass it dryshod.'' she suffered his complaints and his reproaches, which were, even in the midst of his agony, respectful and affectionate, to die away without returning any answer; and when, at length, having exhausted all the exclamations of sorrow which his language, copious in expressing the feelings of the heart, affords to the sufferer, he sunk into a gloomy silence, she suffered the interval to continue near an hour ere she approached her son's couch. ``and now,'' she said at length, with a voice in which the authority of the mother was qualified by her tenderness, ``have you exhausted your idle sorrows, and are you able to place what you have gained against what you have lost? is the false son of dermid your brother, or the father of your tribe, that you weep because you cannot bind yourself to his belt, and become one of those who must do his bidding? could you find in yonder distant country the lakes and the mountains that you leave behind you here? can you hunt the deer of breadalbane in the forests of america, or will the ocean afford you the silver-scaled salmon of the awe? consider, then, what is your loss, and, like a wise man, set it against what you have won.'' ``i have lost all, mother,'' replied hamish, ``since i have broken my word, and lost my honour. i might tell my tale, but who, oh, who would believe me?'' the unfortunate young man again clasped his hands together, and, pressing them to his forehead, hid his face upon the bed. elspat was now really alarmed, and perhaps wished the fatal deceit had been left unattempted. she had no hope or refuge saving in the eloquence of persuasion, of which she possessed no small share, though her total ignorance of the world as it actually existed, rendered its energy unavailing. she urged her son, by every tender epithet which a parent could bestow, to take care for his own safety. ``leave me,'' she said, ``to baffle your pursuers. i will save your life---i will save your honour---i will tell them that my fair-haired hamish fell from the corrie dhu (black precipice) into the gulf, of which human eye never beheld the bottom. i will tell them this, and i will fling your plaid on the thorns which grow on the brink of the precipice, that they may believe my words. they will believe, and they will return to the dun of the double-crest; for though the saxon drum can call the living to die, it cannot recall the dead to their slavish standard. then will we travel together far northward to the salt lakes of kintail, and place glens and mountains betwixt us and the sons of dermid. we will visit the shores of the dark lake, and my kinsmen---(for was not my mother of the children of kenneth, and will they not remember us with the affection of the olden time, which lives in those distant glens, where the gael still dwell in their nobleness, unmingled with the churl saxons, or with the base brood that are their tools and their slaves.'' the energy of the language, somewhat allied to hyperbole, even in its most ordinary expressions, now seemed almost too weak to afford elspat the means of bringing out the splendid picture which she presented to her son of the land in which she proposed to him to take refuge. yet the colours were few with which she could paint her highland paradise. ``the hills,'' she said, ``were higher and more magnificent than those of breadalbane---ben cruachan was but a dwarf to skooroora. the lakes were broader and larger, and abounded not only with fish, but with the enchanted and amphibious animal which gives oil to the lamp.* the deer * the seals are considered by the highlanders as enchanted princes. were larger and more numerous---the white-tusked boar, the chase of which the brave loved best, was yet to be roused in those western solitudes---the men were nobler, wiser, and stronger, than the degenerate brood who lived under the saxon banner. the daughters of the land were beautiful, with blue eyes and fair hair, and bosoms of snow, and out of these she would choose a wife for hamish, of blameless descent, spotless fame, fixed and true affection, who should be in their summer bothy as a beam of the sun, and in their winter abode as the warmth of the needful fire.'' such were the topics with which elspat strove to soothe the despair of her son, and to determine him, if possible, to leave the fatal spot, on which he seemed resolved to linger. the style of her rhetoric was poetical, but in other respects resembled that which, like other fond mothers, she had lavished on hamish, while a child or a boy, in order to gain his consent to do something he had no mind to; and she spoke louder, quicker, and more earnestly, in proportion as she began to despair of her words carrying conviction. on the mind of hamish her eloquence made no impression. he knew far better than she did the actual situation of the country, and was sensible, that, though it might be possible to hide himself as a fugitive among more distant mountains, there was now no corner in the highlands in which his father's profession could be practised, even if he, had not adopted, from the improved ideas of the time when he lived, the opinion that the trade of the cateran was no longer the road to honour and distinction. her words were therefore poured into regardless ears, and she exhausted herself in vain in the attempt to paint the regions of her mother's kinsmen in such terms as might tempt hamish to accompany her thither. she spoke for hours, but she spoke in vain. she could extort no answer, save groans and sighs, and ejaculations, expressing the extremity of despair. at length, starting on her feet, and changing the monotonous tone in which she had chanted, as it were, the praises of the province of refuge, into the short, stern language of eager passion---``i am a fool,'' she said, ``to spend my words upon an idle, poor-spirited, unintelligent boy, who crouches like a hound to the lash. wait here, and receive your taskmasters, and abide your chastisement at their hands; but do not think your mother's eyes will behold it. i could not see it and live. my eyes have looked often upon death, but never upon dishonour. farewell, hamish!---we never meet again.'' she dashed from the hut like a lapwing, and perhaps for the moment actually entertained the purpose which she expressed, of parting with her son for ever. a fearful sight she would have been that evening to any who might have met her wandering through the wilderness like a restless spirit, and speaking to herself in language which will endure no translation. she rambled for hours, seeking rather than shunning the most dangerous paths. the precarious track through the morass, the dizzy path along the edge of the precipice, or by the banks of the gulfing river, were the roads which, far from avoiding, she sought with eagerness, and traversed with reckless haste. but the courage arising from despair was the means of saving the life, which, (though deliberate suicide was rarely practised in the highlands,) she was perhaps desirous of terminating. her step on the verge of the precipice was firm as that of the wild goat. her eye, in that state of excitation, was so keen as to discern, even amid darkness, the perils which noon would not have enabled a stranger to avoid. elspat's course was not directly forward, else she had soon been far from the bothy in which she had left her son. it was circuitous, for that hut was the centre to which her heartstrings were chained, and though she wandered around it, she felt it impossible to leave the vicinity. with the first beams of morning, she returned to the hut. awhile she paused at the wattled door, as if ashamed that lingering fondness should have brought her back to the spot which she had left with the purpose of never returning; but there was yet more of fear and anxiety in her hesitation---of anxiety, lest her fair-haired son had suffered from the effects of her potion---of fear, lest his enemies had come upon him in the night. she opened the door of the hut gently, and entered with noiseless step. exhausted with his sorrow and anxiety, and not entirely relieved perhaps from the influence of the powerful opiate, hamish bean again slept the stern sound sleep, by which the indians are said to be overcome during the interval of their torments. his mother was scarcely sure that she actually discerned his form on the bed, scarce certain that her ear caught the sound of his breathing. with a throbbing heart, elspat went to the fire-place in the centre of the hut, where slumbered, covered with a piece of turf, the glimmering embers of the fire, never extinguished on a scottish hearth until the indwellers leave the mansion for ever. ``feeble greishogh,''* she said, as she lighted, * greishogh, a glowing ember. by the help of a match, a splinter of bog pine which was to serve the place of a candle; ``weak greishogh, soon shalt thou be put out for ever, and may heaven grant that the life of elspat mactavish have no longer duration than thine!'' while she spoke she raised the blazing light towards the bed, on which still lay the prostrate limbs of her son, in a posture that left it doubtful whether he slept or swooned. as she advanced towards him, the light flashed upon his eyes---he started up in an instant, made a stride forward with his naked dirk in his hand, like a man armed to meet a mortal enemy, and exclaimed, ``stand off!---on thy life, stand off!'' ``it is the word and the action of my husband,'' answered elspat; ``and i know by his speech and his step the son of mactavish mhor.'' ``mother,'' said hamish, relapsing from his tone of desperate firmness into one of melancholy expostulation; ``oh, dearest mother, wherefore have you returned hither?'' ``ask why the hind comes back to the fawn,'' said elspat; ``why the cat of the mountain returns to her lodge and her young. know you, hamish, that the heart of the mother only lives in the bosom of the child.'' ``then will it soon cease to throb,'' said hamish, ``unless it can beat within a bosom that lies beneath the turf.---mother, do not blame me; if i weep, it is not for myself but for you, for my sufferings will soon be over; but yours ------o who but heaven shall set a boundary to them!'' elspat shuddered and stepped backward, but almost instantly resumed her firm and upright position, and her dauntless bearing. ``i thought thou wert a man but even now,'' she said, ``and thou art again a child. hearken to me yet, and let us leave this place together. have i done thee wrong or injury? if so, yet do not avenge it so cruelly---see, elspat mactavish, who never kneeled before even to a priest, falls prostrate before her own son, and craves his forgiveness.'' and at once she threw herself on her knees before the young man, seized on his hand, and kissing it an hundred times, repeated as often, in heart-breaking accents, the most earnest entreaties for forgiveness. ``pardon,'' she exclaimed, ``pardon, for the sake of your father's ashes--pardon, for the sake of the pain with which i bore thee, the care with which i nurtured thee!---hear it, heaven, and behold it, earth---the mother asks pardon of her child, and she is refused!'' it was in vain that hamish endeavoured to stem this tide of passion, by assuring his mother, with the most solemn asseverations, that he forgave entirely the fatal deceit which she had practised upon him. ``empty words,'' she said; ``idle protestations, which are but used to hide the obduracy of your resentment. would you have me believe you, then leave the but this instant, and retire from a country which every hour renders more dangerous.--do this, and i may think you have forgiven me--refuse it, and again i call on moon and stars, heaven and earth, to witness the unrelenting resentment with which you prosecute your mother for a fault, which, if it be one, arose out of love to you. ``mother,'' said hamish, ``on this subject you move me not. i will fly before no man. if barcaldine should send every gael that is under his banner, here, and in this place, will i abide them; and when you bid me fly, you may as well command yonder mountain to be loosened from its foundations. had i been sure of the road by which they are coming hither, i had spared them the pains of seeking me; but i might go by the mountain, while they perchance came by the lake. here i will abide my fate; nor is there in scotland a voice of power enough to bid me stir from hence, and be obeyed.'' ``here, then, i also stay,'' said elspat, rising up and speaking with assumed composure. ``i have seen my husband's death---my eyelids shall not grieve to look on the fall of my son. but mactavish mhor died as became the brave, with his good sword in his right hand; my son will perish like the bullock that is driven to the shambles by the saxon owner who had bought him for a price.'' ``mother,'' said the unhappy young man, ``you have taken my life; to that you have a right, for you gave it; but touch not my honour! it came to me from a brave train of ancestors, and should be sullied neither by man's deed nor woman's speech. what i shall do, perhaps i myself yet know not; but tempt me no farther by reproachful words; you have already made wounds more than you can ever heal.'' ``it is well, my son,'' said elspat, in reply. ``expect neither farther complaint nor remonstrance from me; but let us be silent, and wait the chance which heaven shall send us.'' the sun arose on the next morning, and found the bothy silent as the grave. the mother and son had arisen, and were engaged each in their separate task---hamish in preparing and cleaning his arms with the greatest accuracy, but with an air of deep dejection. elspat, more restless in her agony of spirit, employed herself in making ready the food which the distress of yesterday had induced them both to dispense with for an unusual number of hours. she placed it on the board before her son so soon as it was prepared, with the words of a gaelic poet, ``without daily food, the husbandman's ploughshare stands still in the furrow; without daily food, the sword of the warrior is too heavy for his hand. our bodies are our slaves, yet they must be fed if we would have their service. so spake in ancient days the blind bard to the warriors of fion.'' the young man made no reply, but he fed on what was placed. before him, as if to gather strength for the scene which he was to undergo. when his mother saw that be had eaten what sufficed him, she again filled the fatal quaigh, and proffered it as the conclusion of the repast. but he started aside with a convulsive gesture, expressive at once of fear and abhorrence. ``nay, my son,'' she said, ``this time surely, thou hast no cause of fear.'' ``urge me not, mother,'' answered hamish; ``or put the leprous toad into a flagon, and i will drink but from that accursed cup, and of that mind-destroying potion, never will i taste more!'' ``at your pleasure, my son,'' said elspat, haughtily, and began, with much apparent assiduity, the various domestic tasks which had been interrupted during the preceding day. whatever was at her heart, all anxiety seemed banished from her looks and demeanour. it was but from an over activity of bustling exertion that it might have been perceived, by a close observer, that her actions were spurred by some internal cause of painful excitement; and such a spectator, too, might also have observed bow often she broke off the snatches of songs or tunes which she hummed, apparently without knowing what she was doing, in order to cast a hasty glance from the door of the hut. whatever might be in the mind of hamish, his demeanour was directly the reverse of that adopted by his mother. having finished the task of cleaning and preparing his arms, which he arranged within the hut, he sat himself down before the door of the bothy, and watched the opposite hill, like the fixed sentinel who expects the approach of an enemy. noon found him in the same unchanged posture, and it was an hour after that period, when his mother, standing beside him, laid her hand on his shoulder, and said, in a tone indifferent, as if she had been talking of some friendly visit, ``when dost thou expect them?'' ``they cannot be here till the shadows fall long to the eastward,'' replied hamish; ``that is, even supposing the nearest party, commanded by sergeant allan breack cameron, has been commanded hither by express from dunbarton, as it is most likely they will.'' ``then enter beneath your mother's roof once more; partake the last time of the food which she has prepared; after this, let them come, and thou shalt see if thy mother is an useless encumbrance in the day of strife. thy hand, practised as it is, cannot fire these arms so fast as i can load them; nay, if it is necessary, i do not myself fear the flash or the report, and my aim has been held fatal.'' ``in the name of heaven, mother, meddle not with this matter!'' said hamish. ``allan breack is a wise man and a kind one, and comes of a good stem. it may be, he can promise for our officers, that they will touch me with no infamous punishment; and if they offer me confinement in the dungeon, or death by the musket, to that i may not object.'' ``alas, and wilt thou trust to their word, my foolish child? remember the race of dermid were ever fair and false, and no sooner shall they have gyves on thy hands, than they will strip thy shoulders for the scourge.'' ``save your advice, mother,'' said hamish, sternly; ``for me, my mind is made up.'' but though he spoke thus, to escape the almost persecuting urgency of his mother, hamish would have found it, at that moment, impossible to say upon what course of conduct he had thus fixed. on one point alone he was determined, namely, to abide his destiny, be what it might, and not to add to the breach of his word, of which he had been involuntarily rendered guilty, by attempting to escape from punishment. this act of self-devotion he conceived to be due to his own honour, and that of his countrymen. which of his comrades would in future be trusted, if he should be considered as having broken his word, and betrayed the confidence of his officers? and whom but hamish bean mactavish would the gael accuse, for having verified and confirmed the suspicions which the saxon general was well known to entertain against the good faith of the highlanders? he was, therefore, bent firmly to abide his fate. but whether his intention was to yield himself peaceably into the bands of the party who should come to apprehend him, or whether he purposed, by a show of resistance, to provoke them to kill him on the spot, was a question which he could not himself have answered. his desire to see barcaldine, and explain the cause of his absence at the appointed time, urged him to the one course; his fear of the degrading punishment, and of his mother's bitter upbraidings, strongly instigated the latter and the more dangerous purpose. he left it to chance to decide when the crisis should arrive; nor did he tarry long in expectation of the catastrophe. evening approached, the gigantic shadows of the mountains streamed in darkness towards the east while their western peaks were still glowing with crimson and gold. the road which winds round ben cruachan was fully visible from the door of the bothy, when a party of five highland soldiers, whose arms glanced in the sun, wheeled suddenly into sight from the most distant extremity, where the highway is hidden behind the mountain. one of the party walked a little before the other four, who marched regularly and in files, according to the rules of military discipline. there was no dispute, from the firelocks which they carried, and the plaids and bonnets which they wore, that they were a party of hamish's regiment, under a non-commissioned officer; and there could be as little doubt of the purpose of their appearance on the banks of loch awe. ``they come briskly forward''---said the widow of mactavish mhor,---``i wonder how fast or how slow some of them will return again! but they are five, and it is too much odds for a fair field. step back within the hut, my son, and shoot from the loophole beside the door. two you may bring down ere they quit the high-road for the footpath ---there will remain but three; and your father, with my aid, has often stood against that number.'' hamish bean took the gun which his mother offered, but did not stir from the door of the hut. he was soon visible to the party on the high-road, as was evident from their increasing their pace to a run the files, however, still keeping together like coupled greyhounds, and advancing with great rapidity. in far less time than would have been accomplished by men less accustomed to the mountains, they had left the high-road, traversed the narrow path, and approached within pistol-shot of the bothy, at the door of which stood hamish, fixed like a statue of stone, with his firelock in his band, while his mother, placed behind him, and almost driven to frenzy by the violence of her passions, reproached him in the strongest terms which despair could invent, for his want of resolution and faintness of heart. her words increased the bitter gall which was arising in the young man's own spirit, as be observed the unfriendly speed with which his late comrades were eagerly making towards him, like hounds towards the stag when he is at bay. the untamed and angry passions which he inherited from father and mother, were awakened by the supposed hostility of those who pursued him; and the restraint under which these passions had been hitherto held by his sober judgment, began gradually to give way. the sergeant now called to him, ``hamish bean mactavish, lay down your arms and surrender.'' ``do _you_ stand, allan breack cameron, and command your men to stand, or it will be the worse for us all.'' ``halt, men''---said the sergeant, but continuing himself to advance. ``hamish, think what you do, and give up your gun; you may spill blood, but you cannot escape punishment.'' ``the scourge---the scourge---my son, beware the scourge!'' whispered his mother. ``take heed, allan breack,'' said hamish. ``i would not hurt you willingly,---but i will not be taken unless you can assure me against the saxon lash.'' ``fool!'' answered cameron, ``you know i cannot. yet i will do all i can. i will say i met you on your return, and the punishment will be light--but give up your musket---come on, men.'' instantly he rushed forward, extending his arm as if to push aside the young man's levelled firelock. elspat exclaimed, ``now, spare not your father's blood to defend your father's hearth!'' hamish fired his piece, and cameron dropped dead. ---all these things happened, it might be said, in the same moment of time. the soldiers rushed forward and seized hamish, who, seeming petrified with what he had done, offered not the least resistance. not so his mother, who, seeing the men about to put handcuffs on her son, threw herself on the soldiers with such fury, that it required two of them to hold her, while the rest secured the prisoner. ``are you not an accursed creature,'' said one of the men to hamish, ``to have slain your best friend, who was contriving, during the whole march, bow he could find some way of getting you off without punishment for your desertion?'' ``do you hear _that_, mother?'' said hamish, turning himself as much towards her as his bonds would permit-but the mother heard nothing, and saw nothing. she had fainted on the floor of her hut. without waiting for her recovery, the party almost immediately began their homeward march towards dunbarton, leading along with them their prisoner. they thought it necessary, however, to stay for a little space at the village of dalmally, from which they despatched a party of the inhabitants to bring away the body of their unfortunate leader, while they themselves repaired to a magistrate to state what had happened, and require his instructions as to the farther course to be pursued. the crime being of a military character, they were instructed to march the prisoner to dunbarton without delay. the swoon of the mother of hamish lasted for a length of time; the longer perhaps that her constitution, strong as it was, must have been much exhausted by her previous agitation of three days' endurance. she was roused from her stupor at length by female voices, which cried the coronach, or lament for the dead, with clapping of hands and loud exclamations; while the melancholy note of a lament, appropriate to the clan cameron, played on the bagpipe, was heard from time to time. elspat started up like one awakened from the dead, and without any accurate recollection of the scene which had passed before her eyes. there were females in the hut who were swathing the corpse in its bloody plaid before carrying it from the fatal spot. ``women,'' she said, starting up and interrupting their chant at once and their labour--``tell me, women, why sing you the dirge of macdhonuil dhu in the house of mactavish mhor?'' ``she-wolf, be silent with thine ill-omened yell,'' answered one of the females, a relation of the deceased, ``and let us do our duty to our beloved kinsman! there shall never be coronach cried, or dirge played, for thee or thy bloody wolf-burd.* * wolf-brood, _i. e_. wolf-cub. the ravens shall eat him from the gibbet, and the foxes and wild-cats shall tear thy corpse upon the hill. cursed be he that would sain your bones, or add a stone to your cairn!'' ``daughter of a foolish mother,'' answered the widow of mactavish mhor, ``know that the gibbet with which you threaten us, is no portion of our inheritance. for thirty years the black tree of the law, whose apples are dead men's bodies, hungered after the beloved husband of my heart; but be died like a brave man, with the sword in his hand, and defrauded it of its hopes and its fruit.'' ``so shall it not be with thy child, bloody sorceress,'' replied the female mourner, whose passions were as violent as those of elspat herself. ``the ravens shall tear his fair hair to line their nests, before the sun sinks beneath the treshornish islands.'' these words recalled to elspat's mind the whole history of the last three dreadful days. at first, she stood fixed as if the extremity of distress had converted her into stone; but in a minute, the pride and violence of her temper, outbraved as she thought herself on her own threshold, enabled her to reply---``yes, insulting bag, my fair-haired boy may die, but it will not be with a white hand---it has been dyed in the blood of his enemy, in the best blood of a cameron---remember that; and when you lay your dead in his grave, let it be his best epitaph, that he was killed by hamish bean for essaying to lay hands on the son of mactavish mhor on his own threshold. farewell---the shame of defeat, loss, and slaughter, remain with the clan that has endured it!'' the relative of the slaughtered cameron raised her voice in reply; but elspat, disdaining to continue the objurgation, or perhaps feeling her grief likely to overmaster her power of expressing her resentment, had left the hut, and was walking forth in the bright moonshine. the females who were arranging the corpse of the slaughtered man, hurried from their melancholy labour to look after her tall figure as it glided away among the cliffs. ``i am glad she is gone,'' said one of the younger persons who assisted. ``i would as soon dress a corpse when the great fiend himself---god sain us---stood visibly before us, as when elspat of the tree is amongst us.---ay---ay, even overmuch intercourse hath she had with the enemy in her day.'' ``silly woman,'' answered the female who had maintained the dialogue with the departed elspat, ``thinkest thou that there is a worse fiend on earth, or beneath it, than the pride and fury of an offended woman, like yonder bloody-minded hag? know that blood has been as familiar to her as the dew to the mountain-daisy. many and many a brave man has she caused to breathe their last for little wrong they had done to her or theirs. but her hough-sinews are cut, now that her wolf-burd must, like a murderer as he is, make a murderer's end.'' whilst the women thus discoursed together, as they watched the corpse of allan breack cameron, the unhappy cause of his death pursued her lonely way across the mountain. while she remained within sight of the bothy, she put a strong constraint on herself, that by no alteration of pace or gesture, she might afford to her enemies the triumph of calculating the excess of her mental agitation, nay, despair. she stalked, therefore, with a slow rather than a swift step, and, holding herself upright, seemed at once to endure with firmness that woe which was passed, and bid defiance to that which was about to come. but when she was beyond the sight of those who remained in the hut, she could no longer suppress the extremity of her agitation. drawing her mantle wildly round her, she stopped at the first knoll, and climbing to its summit, extended her arms up to the bright moon, as if accusing heaven and earth for her misfortunes, and uttered scream on scream, like those of an eagle whose nest has been plundered of her brood. awhile she vented her grief in these inarticulate cries, then rushed on her way with a hasty and unequal step, in the vain hope of overtaking the party which was conveying her son a prisoner to dunbarton. but her strength, superhuman as it seemed, failed her in the trial, nor was it possible for her, with her utmost efforts, to accomplish her purpose. yet she pressed onward, with all the speed which her exhausted frame could exert. when food became indispensable, she entered the first cottage; ``give me to eat,'' she said; ``i am the widow of mactavish mhor---i am the mother of hamish mactavish bean,---give me to eat, that i may once more see my fair-haired son.'' her demand was never refused, though granted in many cases with a kind of struggle between compassion and aversion in some of those to whom she applied, which was in others qualified by fear. the share she had had in occasioning the death of allan breack cameron, which must probably involve that of her own son, was not accurately known; but, from a knowledge of her violent passions and former habits of life, no one doubted that in one way or other she had been the cause of the catastrophe; and hamish bean was considered, in the slaughter which he had committed, rather as the instrument than as the accomplice of his mother. this general opinion of his countrymen was of little service to the unfortunate hamish. as his captain, green colin, understood the manners and habits of his country, he had no difficulty in collecting from hamish the particulars accompanying his supposed desertion, and the subsequent death of the non-commissioned officer. he felt the utmost compassion for a youth, who had thus fallen a victim to the extravagant and fatal fondness of a parent. but he had no excuse to plead which could rescue his unhappy recruit from the doom, which military discipline and the award of a court-martial denounced against him for the crime he had committed. no time had been lost in their proceedings, and as little was interposed betwixt sentence and execution. general --------had determined to make a severe example of the first deserter who should fall into his power, and here was one who had defended himself by main force, and slain in the affray the officer sent to take him into custody. a fitter subject for punishment could not have occurred and hamish was sentenced to immediate execution. all which the interference of his captain in his favour could procure, was that he should die a soldier's death; for there had been a purpose of executing him upon the gibbet. the worthy clergyman of glenorquhy chanced to be at dunbarton, in attendance upon some church courts, at the time of this catastrophe. he visited his unfortunate parishioner in his dungeon, found him ignorant indeed, but not obstinate, and the answers which he received from him, when conversing on religious topics, were such as induced him doubly to regret, that a mind naturally pure and noble should have remained unhappily so wild and uncultivated. when he ascertained the real character and disposition of the young man, the worthy pastor made deep and painful reflections on his own shyness and timidity, which, arising out of the evil fame that attached to the lineage of hamish, had restrained him from charitably endeavouring to bring this strayed sheep within the great fold. while the good minister blamed his cowardice in times past, which had deterred him from risking his person, to save, perhaps, an immortal soul, he resolved no longer to be governed by such timid counsels, but to endeavour, by application to his officers, to obtain a reprieve, at least, if not a pardon, for the criminal, in whom he felt so unusually interested, at once from his docility of temper and his generosity of disposition. accordingly the divine sought out captain campbell at the barracks within the garrison. there was a gloomy melancholy on the brow of green colin, which was not lessened, but increased, when the clergyman stated his name, quality, and errand. ``you cannot tell me better of the young man than i am disposed to believe,'' answered the highland officer; ``you cannot ask me to do more in his behalf than i am of myself inclined, and have already endeavoured to do. but it is all in vain. general --------is half a lowlander half an englishman. he has no idea of the high and enthusiastic character which in these mountains often brings exalted virtues in contact with great crimes, which, however, are less offences of the heart than errors of the understanding. i have gone so far as to tell him, that in this young man he was putting to death the best and the bravest of my company, where all, or almost all, are good and brave. i explained to him by what strange delusion the culprit's apparent desertion was occasioned, and how little his heart was accessary to the crime which his hand unhappily committed. his answer was, `these are highland visions, captain campbell, as unsatisfactory and vain as those of the second sight. an act of gross desertion may, in any case, be palliated under the plea of intoxication; the murder of an officer may be as easily coloured over with that of temporary insanity. the example must be made, and if it has fallen on a man otherwise a good recruit, it will have the greater effect.'---such being the general's unalterable purpose,'' continued captain campbell, with a sigh, ``be it your care, reverend sir, that your penitent prepare by break of day tomorrow for that great change which we shall all one day be subjected to.'' ``and for which,'' said the clergyman, ``may god prepare us all, as i in my duty will not be wanting to this poor youth.'' next morning, as the very earliest beams of sunrise saluted the grey towers which crown the summit of that singular and tremendous rock, the soldiers of the new highland regiment appeared on the parade, within the castle of dunbarton, and having fallen into order, began to move downward by steep staircases, and narrow passages towards the external barrier-gate, which is at the very bottom of the rock. the wild wailings of the pibroch were heard at times, interchanged with the drums and fifes, which beat the dead march. the unhappy criminal's fate did not, at first, excite that general sympathy in the regiment which would probably have arisen had he been executed for desertion alone. the slaughter of the unfortunate allan breack had given a different colour to hamish's offence; for the deceased was much beloved, and besides belonged to a numerous and powerful clan, of whom there were many in the ranks. the unfortunate criminal, on the contrary, was little known to, and scarcely connected with, any of his regimental companions. his father had been, indeed, distinguished for his strength and manhood; but he was of a broken clan, as those names were called who had no chief to lead them to battle. it would have been almost impossible in another case, to have turned out of the ranks of the regiment the party necessary for execution of the sentence; but the six individuals selected for that purpose, were friends of the deceased, descended, like him, from the race of macdhonuil dhu; and while they prepared for the dismal task which their duty imposed, it was not without a stern feeling of gratified revenge. the leading company of the regiment began now to defile from the barrier-gate, and was followed by the others, each successively moving and halting according to the orders of the adjutant, so as to form three sides of an oblong square, with the ranks faced inwards. the fourth, or blank side of the square, was closed up by the huge and lofty precipice on which the castle rises. about the centre of the procession, bare-headed, disarmed, and with his hands bound, came the unfortunate victim of military law. he was deadly pale, but his step was firm and his eye as bright as ever. the clergyman walked by his side---the coffin, which was to receive his mortal remains, was borne before him. the looks of his comrades were still, composed, and solemn. they felt for the youth, whose handsome form, and manly yet submissive deportment had, as soon as he was distinctly visible to them, softened the hearts of many, even of some who had been actuated by vindictive feelings. the coffin destined for the yet living body of hamish bean was placed at the bottom of the hollow square, about two yards distant from the foot of the precipice, which rises in that place as steep as a stone wall to the height of three or four hundred feet. thither the prisoner was also led, the clergyman still continuing by his side, pouring forth exhortations of courage and consolation, to which the youth appeared to listen with respectful devotion. with slow, and, it seemed, almost unwilling steps, the firing party entered the square, and were drawn up facing the prisoner, about ten yards distant. the clergyman was now about to retire---``think, my son,'' he said, ``on what i have told you, and let your hope be rested on the anchor which i have given. you will then exchange a short and miserable existence here, for a life in which you will experience neither sorrow nor pain. ---is there aught else which you can intrust to me to execute for you?'' the youth looked at his sleeve buttons. they were of gold, booty perhaps which his father had taken from some english officer during the civil wars. the clergyman disengaged them from his sleeves. ``my mother!'' he said with some effort, ``give them to my poor mother!---see her, good father, and teach her what she should think of all this. tell her hamish bean is more glad to die than ever he was to rest after the longest day's hunting. farewell, sir---farewell!'' the good man could scarce retire from the fatal spot. an officer afforded him the support of his arm. at his last look towards hamish, be beheld him alive and kneeling on the coffin; the few that were around him had all withdrawn. the fatal word was given, the rock rung sharp to the sound of the discharge, and hamish, falling forward with a groan, died, it may be supposed, without almost a sense of the passing agony. ten or twelve of his own company then came forward, and laid with solemn reverence the remains of their comrade in the coffin, while the dead march was again struck up, and the several companies, marching in single files, passed the coffin one by one, in order that all might receive from the awful spectacle the warning which it was peculiarly intended to afford. the regiment was then marched off the ground, and reascended the ancient cliff, their music, as usual on such occasions, striking lively strains, as if sorrow, or even deep thought, should as short a while as possible be the tenant of the soldier's bosom. at the same time the small party, which we before mentioned, bore the bier of the ill-fated hamish to his humble grave, in a corner of the churchyard of dunbarton, usually assigned to criminals. here, among the dust of the guilty, lies a youth, whose name, had he survived the ruin of the fatal events by which he was hurried into crime, might have adorned the annals of the brave. the minister of glenorquhy left dunbarton immediately after he had witnessed the last scene of this melancholy catastrophe. his reason acquiesced in the justice of the sentence, which required blood for blood, and he acknowledged that the vindictive character of his countrymen required to be powerfully restrained by the strong curb of social law. but still he mourned over the individual victim. who may arraign the bolt of heaven when it bursts among the sons of the forest; yet who can refrain from mourning, when it selects for the object of its blighting aim the fair stem of a young oak, that promised to be the pride of the dell in which it flourished? musing on these melancholy events, noon found him engaged in the mountain passes, by which he was to return to his still distant home. confident in his knowledge of the country, the clergyman had left the main road, to seek one of those shorter paths, which are only used by pedestrians, or by men, like the minister, mounted on the small, but sure-footed, hardy, and sagacious horses of the country. the place which he now traversed, was in itself gloomy and desolate, and tradition had added to it the terror of superstition, by affirming it was haunted by an evil spirit, termed _cloght-dearg_, that is, redmantle, who at all times, but especially at noon and at midnight, traversed the glen, in enmity both to man and the inferior creation, did such evil as her power was permitted to extend to, and afflicted with ghastly terrors those whom she had not license otherwise to hurt. the minister of glenorquhy had set his face in opposition to many of these superstitions, which he justly thought were derived from the dark ages of popery, perhaps even from those of paganism, and unfit to be entertained or believed by the christians of an enlightened age. some of his more attached parishioners considered him as too rash in opposing the ancient faith of their fathers; and though they honoured the moral intrepidity of their pastor, they could not avoid entertaining and expressing fears, that he would one day fall a victim to his temerity, and be torn to pieces in the glen of the cloght-dearg, or some of those other haunted wilds, which he appeared rather to have a pride and pleasure in traversing alone, on the days and hours when the wicked spirits were supposed to have especial power over man and beast. these legends came across the mind of the clergyman; and, solitary as he was, a melancholy smile shaded his cheek, as he thought of the inconsistency of human nature, and reflected how many brave men, whom the yell of the pibroch would have sent headlong against fixed bayonets, as the wild bull rushes on his enemy, might have yet feared to encounter those visionary terrors, which he himself, a man of peace, and in ordinary perils no way remarkable for the firmness of his nerves, was now risking without hesitation. as he looked around the scene of desolation, he could not but acknowledge, in his own mind, that it was not ill chosen for the haunt of those spirits, which are said to delight in solitude and desolation. the glen was so steep and narrow, that there was but just room for the meridian sun to dart a few scattered rays upon the gloomy and precarious stream which stole through its recesses, for the most part in silence, but occasionally murmuring sullenly against the rocks and large stones, which seemed determined to bar its further progress. in winter, or in the rainy season, this small stream was a foaming torrent of the most formidable magnitude, and it was at such periods that it had torn open and laid bare the broad-faced and huge fragments of rock, which, at the season of which we speak, hid its course from the eye, and seemed disposed totally to interrupt its course. ``undoubtedly,'' thought the clergyman, ``this mountain rivulet, suddenly swelled by a water-spout, or thunder-storm, has often been the cause of those accidents, which, happening in the glen called by her name, have been ascribed to the agency of the cloght-dearg.'' just as this idea crossed his mind, he heard a female voice exclaim, in a wild and thrilling accent, ``michael tyrie---michael tyrie!'' he looked round in astonishment, and not without some fear. it seemed for an instant, as if the evil being, whose existence he had disowned, was about to appear for the punishment of his incredulity. this alarm did not hold him more than an instant, nor did it prevent his replying in a firm voice, ``who calls--and where are you?'' ``one who journeys in wretchedness, between life and death,'' answered the voice; and the speaker, a tall female, appeared from among the fragments of rocks which had concealed her from view. as she approached more closely, her mantle of bright tartan, in which the red colour much predominated, her stature, the long stride with which she advanced, and the writhen features and wild eyes which were visible from under her curch, would have made her no inadequate representative of the spirit which gave name to the valley. but mr tyrie instantly knew her as the woman of the tree, the widow of mactavish mhor, the now childless mother of hamish bean. i am not sure whether the minister would not have endured the visitation of the cloght-dearg herself, rather than the shock of elspat's presence, considering her crime and her misery. he drew up his horse instinctively, and stood endeavouring to collect his ideas, while a few paces brought her up to his horse's head. ``michael tyrie,'' said she, ``the foolish women of the clachan* hold thee as a god---be one to me, * _i. e_. the village, literally the stones. and say that my son lives. say this, and i too will be of thy worship-i will bend my knees on the seventh day in thy house of worship, and thy god shall be my god.'' ``unhappy woman,'' replied the clergyman, ``man forms not pactions with his maker as with a creature of clay like himself. thinkest thou to chaffer with him, who formed the earth, and spread out the heavens, or that thou canst offer aught of homage or devotion that can be worth acceptance in his eyes? he hath asked obedience, not sacrifice; patience under the trials with which he afflicts us, instead of vain bribes, such as man offers to his changeful brother of clay, that he may be moved from his purpose.'' ``be silent, priest!'' answered the desperate woman; ``speak not to me the words of thy white book. elspat's kindred were of those who crossed themselves and knelt when the sacring bell was rung; and she knows that atonement can be made on the altar for deeds done in the field. elspat had once flocks and herds, goats upon the cliffs, and cattle in the strath. she wore gold around her neck and on her hair---thick twists as those worn by the heroes of old. all these would she have resigned to the priest---all these; and if he wished for the ornaments of a gentle lady, or the sporran of a high chief, though they had been great as macallanmore himself, mactavish mhor would have procured them if elspat had promised them. elspat is now poor, and has nothing to give. but the black abbot of inchaffray would have bidden her scourge her shoulders, and macerate her feet by pilgrimage, and he would have granted his pardon to her when he saw that her blood had flowed, and that her flesh had been torn. these were the priests who had indeed power even with the most powerful---they threatened the great men of the earth with the word of their mouth, the sentence of their book, the blaze of their torch, the sound of their sacring bell. the mighty bent to their will, and unloosed at the word of the priests those whom they had bound in their wrath, and set at liberty, unharmed, him whom they had sentenced to death, and for whose blood they had thirsted. these were a powerful race, and might well ask the poor to kneel, since their power could humble the proud. but you!---against whom are ye strong, but against women who have been guilty of folly, and men who never wore sword? the priests of old were like the winter torrent which fills this hollow valley, and rolls these massive rocks against each other as easily as the boy plays with the ball which he casts before him---but you! you do but resemble the summer-stricken stream, which is turned aside by the rushes, and stemmed by a bush of sedges---woe worth you, for there is no help in you!'' the clergyman was at no loss to conceive that elspat had lost the roman catholic faith without gaining any other, and that she still retained a vague and confused idea of the composition with the priesthood, by confession, alms, and penance, and of their extensive power, which, according to her notion, was adequate, if duly propitiated, even to effecting her son's safety. compassionating her situation, and allowing for her errors and ignorance, he answered her with mildness. ``alas, unhappy woman! would to god i could convince thee as easily where thou oughtest to seek, and art sure to find consolation, as i can assure you with a single word, that were rome and all her priesthood once more in the plenitude of their power, they could not, for largesse or penance, afford to thy misery an atom of aid or comfort. ---elspat mactavish, i grieve to tell you the news.'' ``i know them without thy speech,'' said the unhappy woman---``my son is doomed to die.'' ``elspat,'' resumed the clergyman, ``he _was_ doomed, and the sentence has been executed.'' the hapless mother threw her eyes up to heaven, and uttered a shriek so unlike the voice of a human being, that the eagle which soared in middle air answered it as she would have done the call of her mate. ``it is impossible!'' she exclaimed, ``it is impossible! men do not condemn and kill on the same day! thou art deceiving me. the people call thee holy---hast thou the heart to tell a mother she has murdered her only child?'' ``god knows,'' said the priest, the tears falling fast from his eyes, ``that were it in my power, i would gladly tell better tidings---but these which i bear are as certain as they are fatal---my own ears heard the death-shot, my own eyes beheld thy son's death---thy son's funeral.---my tongue bears witness to what my ears heard and my eyes saw.'' the wretched female clasped her bands close together, and held them up towards heaven like a sibyl announcing war and desolation, while, in impotent yet frightful rage, she poured forth a tide of the deepest imprecations.---``base saxon churl!'' she exclaimed, ``vile hypocritical juggler! may the eyes that looked tamely on the death of my fair-haired boy be melted in their sockets with ceaseless tears, shed for those that are nearest and most dear to thee! may the ears that heard his death-knell be dead hereafter to all other sounds save the screech of the raven, and the hissing of the adder! may the tongue that tells me of his death and of my own crime, be withered in thy mouth---or better, when thou wouldst pray with thy people, may the evil one guide it, and give voice to blasphemies instead of blessings, until men shall fly in terror from thy presence, and the thunder of heaven be launched against thy head, and stop for ever thy cursing and accursed voice! begone, with this malison!---elspat will never, never again bestow so many words upon living man.'' she kept her word---from that day the world was to her a wilderness, in which she remained without thought, care, or interest, absorbed in her own grief, indifferent to every thing else. with her mode of life, or rather of existence, the reader is already as far acquainted as i have the power of making him. of her death, i can tell him nothing. it is supposed to have happened several years after she had attracted the attention of my excellent friend mrs bethune baliol. her benevolence, which was never satisfied with dropping a sentimental tear, when there was room for the operation of effective charity, induced her to make various attempts to alleviate the condition of this most wretched woman. but all her exertions could only render elspat's means of subsistence less precarious, a circumstance which, though generally interesting even to the most wretched outcasts seemed to her a matter of total indifference. every attempt to place any person in her hut to take charge of her miscarried, through the extreme resentment with which she regarded all intrusion on her solitude, or by the timidity of those who had been pitched upon to be inmates with the terrible woman of the tree. at length, when elspat became totally unable (in appearance at least) to turn herself on the wretched settle which served her for a couch, the humanity of mr tyrie's successor sent two women to attend upon the last moments of the solitary, which could not, it was judged, be far distant, and to avert the possibility that she might perish for want of assistance or food, before she sunk under the effects of extreme age, or mortal malady. it was on a november evening, that the two women appointed for this melancholy purpose, arrived at the miserable cottage which we have already described. its wretched inmate lay stretched upon the bed, and seemed almost already a lifeless corpse, save for the wandering of the fierce dark eyes, which rolled in their sockets in a manner terrible to look upon, and seemed to watch with surprise and indignation the motions of the strangers, as persons whose presence was alike unexpected and unwelcome. they were frightened at her looks; but, assured in each other's company, they kindled a fire, lighted a candle, prepared food, and made other arrangements for the discharge of the duty assigned them. the assistants agreed they should watch the bedside of the sick person by turns; but, about midnight, overcome by fatigue, (for they had walked far that morning,) both of them fell fast asleep. when they awoke, which was not till after the interval of some hours, the hut was empty, and the patient gone. they rose in terror, and went to the door of the cottage, which was latched as it had been at night. they looked out into the darkness, and called upon their charge by her name. the night-raven screamed from the old oak-tree, the fox howled on the bill, the hoarse waterfall replied with its echoes, but there was no human answer. the terrified women did not dare to make further search till morning should appear; for the sudden disappearance of a creature so frail as elspat, together with the wild tenor of her history, intimidated them from stirring from the hut. they remained, therefore, in dreadful terror, sometimes thinking they heard her voice without, and at other times, that sounds of a different description were mingled with the mournful sigh of the night-breeze, or the dash of the cascade. sometimes, too, the latch rattled, as if some frail and impotent hand were in vain attempting to lift it, and ever and anon they expected the entrance of their terrible patient animated by supernatural strength, and in the company, perhaps, of some being more dreadful than herself. morning came at length. they sought brake, rock, and thicket in vain. two hours after daylight, the minister himself appeared, and, on the report of the watchers, caused the country to be alarmed, and a general and exact search to be made through the whole neighbourhood of the cottage and the oak-tree. but it was all in vain. elspat mactavish was never found, whether dead or alive; nor could there ever be traced the slightest circumstance to indicate her fate. the neighbourhood was divided concerning the cause of her disappearance. the credulous thought that the evil spirit, under whose influence she seemed to have acted, had carried her away in the body; and there are many who are still unwilling, at untimely hours, to pass the oak-tree, beneath which, as they allege. she may still be seen seated according to her wont. others less superstitious supposed, that had it been possible to search the gulf of the corri dhu, the profound deeps of the lake, or the whelming eddies of the river, the remains of elspat mactavish might have been discovered; as nothing was more natural, considering her state of body and mind, than that she should have fallen in by accident, or precipitated herself intentionally into one or other of those places of sure destruction. the clergyman entertained an opinion of his own. he thought that, impatient of the watch which was placed over her, this unhappy woman's instinct had taught her, as it directs various domestic animals, to withdraw herself from the sight of her own race, that the death-struggle might take place in some secret den, where, in all probability, her mortal relics would never meet the eyes of mortals. this species of instinctive feeling seemed to him of a tenor with the whole course of her unhappy life, and most likely to influence her, when it drew to a conclusion. [6. the highland widow notes] notes to chapter 1. note a.---loch awe. ``loch awe, upon the banks of which the scene of action took place, is thirty-four miles in length. the north side is bounded by wide muirs and inconsiderable hills, which occupy an extent of country from twelve to twenty miles in breadth, and the whole of this space is enclosed as by circumvallation. upon the north it is barred by loch eitive, on the south by loch awe, and on the east by the dreadful pass of brandir, through which an arm of the latter lake opens, at about four miles from its eastern extremity, and discharges the river awe into the former. the pass is about three miles in length; its east side is bounded by the almost inaccessible steeps which form the base of the vast and rugged mountain of cruachan. the crags rise in some places almost perpendicularly from the water, and for their chief extent show no space nor level at their feet, but a rough and narrow edge of stony beach. upon the whole of these cliffs grows a thick and interwoven wood of all kinds of trees, both timber, dwarf, and coppice; no track existed through the wilderness, but a winding path, which sometimes crept along the precipitous height, and sometimes descended in a straight pass along the margin of the water. near the extremity of the defile, a narrow level opened between the water and the crag; but a great part of this, as well as of the preceding steeps, was formerly enveloped in a thicket, which showed little facility to the feet of any but the martins and wild cats. along the west side of the pass lies a wall of sheer and barren crags. from behind they rise in rough, uneven, and heathy declivities, out of the wide muir before mentioned, between loch eitive and loch awe; but in front they terminate abruptly in the most frightful precipices, which form the whole side of the pass, and descend at one fan into the water which fills its trough. at the north end of the barrier, and at the termination of the pass, lies that part of the cliff which is called craiganuni; at its foot the arm of the lake gradually contracts its water to a very narrow space, and at length terminates at two rooks (called the rocks of brandir), which form a strait channel, something resembling the lock of a canal. from this outlet there is a continual descent towards loch eitive, and from hence the river awe pours out its current in a furious stream, foaming over a bed broken with holes, and cumbered with masses of granite and whinstone. ``if ever there was a bridge near craiganuni in ancient times, it must have been at the rocks of brandir. from the days of wallace to those of general wade, there were never passages of this kind but in places of great necessity, too narrow for a boat, and too wide for a leap; even then they were but an unsafe footway formed of the trunks of trees placed transversely from rock to rock, unstripped of their bark, and destitute of either plank or rail. for such a structure, there is no place in the neighbourhood of craiganuni, but at the rocks above mentioned. in the lake and on the river, the water is far too wide; but at the strait, the space is not greater than might be crossed by a tall mountain pine, and the rocks on either side are formed by nature like a pier. that this point was always a place of passage, is rendered probable by its facility, and the use of recent times. it is not long since it was the common gate of the country on either side the river and the pass: the mode of crossing is yet in the memory of people living, and was performed by a little currach moored on either side the water, and a stout cable fixed across the stream from bank to bank, by which the passengers drew themselves across in the manner still practised in places of the same nature. it is no argument against the existence of a bridge in former times, that the above method only existed in ours, rather than a passage of that kind, which would seem the more improved expedient. the contradiction is sufficiently accounted for by the decay of timber in the neighbourhood. of old, both oaks and firs of an immense size abounded within a very inconsiderable distance; but it is now many years since the destruction of the forests of glen eitive and glen urcha has deprived the country of all the trees of sufficient size to cross the strait of brandir; and it is probable, that the currach was not introduced till the want of timber had disenabled the inhabitants of the country from maintaining a bridge. it only further remains to be noticed, that at some distance below the rocks of brandir, there was formerly a ford, which was used for cattle in the memory of people living; from the narrowness of the passage, the force of the stream, and the broken bed of the river, it was, however, a dangerous pass, and could only be attempted with safety at leisure and by experience.''---_notes to the bridal of caolchairn_. note b.---battle betwixt the armies of the bruce and macdougal of lorn. ``but the king, whose dear-bought experience in war had taught him extreme caution, remained in the braes of balquhidder till he had acquired by his spies and outskirries a perfect knowledge of the disposition of the army of lorn, and the intention of its leader. he then divided his force into two columns, intrusting the command of the first, in which he placed his archers and lightest armed troops, to sir james douglas, whilst he himself took the leading of the other, which consisted principally of his knights and barons. on approaching the defile, bruce dispatched sir james douglas by a pathway which the enemy had neglected to occupy, with directions to advance silently, and gain the heights above and in front of the hilly ground where the men of lorn were concealed; and, having ascertained that this movement had been executed with success, he put himself at the head of his own division, and fearlessly led his men into the defile. here, prepared as he was for what was to take place, it was difficult to prevent a temporary panic, when the yell which, to this day, invariably precedes the assault of the mountaineer, burst from the rugged bosom of ben cruachan; and the woods which, the moment before, had waved in silence and solitude, gave forth their birth of steel-clad warriors, and, in an instant, became instinct with the dreadful vitality of war. but although appalled and checked for a brief space by the suddenness of the assault, and the masses of rock which the enemy rolled down from the precipices, bruce, at the head of his division, pressed up the side of the mountain. whilst this party assaulted the men of lorn with the utmost fury, sir james douglas and his party shouted suddenly upon the heights in their front, showering down their arrows upon them; and, when these missiles were exhausted, attacking them with their swords and battle-axes. the consequence of such an attack, both in front and rear, was the total discomfiture of the army of lorn; and the circumstances to which this chief had so confidently looked forward, as rendering the destruction of bruce almost inevitable, were now turned with fatal effect against himself. his great superiority of numbers cumbered and impeded his movements. thrust, by the double assault, and by the peculiar nature of the ground, into such narrow room as the pass afforded, and driven to fury by finding themselves cut to pieces in detail, without power of resistance, the men of lorn fled towards loch eitive, where a bridge thrown over the awe, and supported upon two immense rocks, known by the name of the rocks of brandir, formed the solitary communication between the side of the river where the battle took place, and the country of lorn. their object was to gain the bridge, which was composed entirely of wood, and having availed themselves of it in their retreat, to destroy it, and thus throw the impassable torrent of the awe between them and their enemies. but their intention was instantly detected by douglas, who, rushing down from the high grounds at the head of his archers and light-armed foresters, attacked the body of the mountaineers, which had occupied the bridge, and drove them from it with great slaughter, so that bruce and his division, on coming up, passed it without molestation; and, this last resource being taken from them, the army of lorn were, in a few hours, literally cut to pieces, whilst their chief, who occupied loch eitive with his fleet, saw, from his ships, the discomfiture of his men, and found it impossible to give them the least assistance.''---tytler's _life of bruce_. note to chapter iv. note c.--massacre of glencoe. the following succinct account of this too celebrated event, may be sufficient for this place:--``in the beginning of the year 1692, an action of unexampled barbarity disgraced the government of king william ill. in scotland. in the august preceding, a proclamation had been issued, offering an indemnity to such insurgents as should take the oaths to the king and queen, on or before the last day of december; and the chiefs of such tribes, as had been in arms for james, soon after took advantage of the proclamation. but macdonald of glencoe was prevented by accident, rather than design, from tendering his submission within the limited time. in the end of december he went to colonel hill, who commanded the garrison in fort william, to take the oaths of allegiance to the government ; and the latter having furnished him with a letter to sir colin campbell, sheriff of the county of argyll, directed him to repair immediately to inverary, to make his submission in a legal manner before that magistrate. but the way to inverary lay through almost impassable mountains, the season was extremely rigorous, and the whole country was covered with a deep snow. so eager, however, was macdonald to take the oaths before the limited time should expire, that, though the road lay within half a mile of his own house, he stopped not to visit his family, and, after various obstructions, arrived at inverary. the time had elapsed, and the sheriff hesitated to receive his submission ; but macdonald prevailed by his importunities, and even tears, in inducing that functionary to administer to him the oath of allegiance, and to certify the cause of his delay. at this time sir john dalrymple, afterwards earl of stair, being in attendance upon william as secretary of state for scotland, took advantage of macdonald's neglecting to take the oath within the time prescribed, and procured from the king a warrant of military execution against that chief and his whole clan. this was done at the instigation of the earl of breadalbane, whose lands the glencoe men had plundered, and whose treachery to government in negotiating with the highland clans, macdonald himself had exposed. the king was accordingly persuaded that glencoe was the main obstacle to the pacification of the highlands ; and the fact of the unfortunate chief's submission having been concealed, the sanguinary orders for proceeding to military execution against his clan were in consequence obtained. the warrant was both signed and countersigned by the king's own hand, and the secretary urged the officers who commanded in the highlands to execute their orders with the utmost rigour. campbell of glenlyon, a captain in argyll's regiment, and two subalterns, were ordered to repair to glencoe on the first of february with a hundred and twenty men. campbell being uncle to young macdonald's wife, was received by the father with all manner of friendship and hospitality. the men were lodged at free quarters in the houses of his tenants, and received the kindest entertainment. till the 13th of the month the troops lived in the utmost harmony and familiarity with the people ; and on the very night of the massacre, the officers passed the evening at cards in macdonald's house. in the night lieutenant lindsay, with a party of soldiers, called in a friendly manner at his door, and was instantly admitted. macdonald, while in the act of rising to receive his guest, was shot dead through the back with two bullets. his wife had already dressed ; but she was stripped naked by the soldiers, who tore the rings off her fingers with their teeth. the slaughter now became general, and neither age nor infirmity was spared. some women, in defending their children, were killed; boys, imploring mercy, were shot dead by officers on whose knees they hung. in one place nine persons, as they sat enjoying themselves at table, were butchered by the soldiers. in inverriggon, campbell's own quarters, nine men were first bound by the soldiers, and then shot at intervals, one by one. nearly forty persons were massacred by the troops; and several who fled to the mountains perished by famine and the inclemency of the season. those who escaped owed their lives to a tempestuous night. lieutenant-colonel hamilton, who had received the charge of the execution from dalrymple, was on his march with four hundred men, to guard all the passes from the valley of glencoe; but he was obliged to stop by the severity of the weather, which proved the safety of the unfortunate clan. next day he entered the valley, laid the houses in ashes, and carried away the cattle and spoil, which were divided among the officers and soldiers.'' ---_article_ ``britain;'' _encyc. britannica---new edition_. note to chapter v. note d.---fidelity of the highlanders. of the strong, undeviating attachment of the highlanders to the person, and their deference to the will or commands of their chiefs and superiors---their rigid adherence to duty and principle---and their chivalrous acts of self-devotion to these in the face of danger and death, there are many instances recorded in general stewart of garth's interesting sketches of the highlanders and highland regiments, which might not inaptly supply parallels to the deeds of the romans themselves, at the era when rome was in her glory. the following instances of such are worthy of being here quoted:-- ``in the year 1795, a serious disturbance broke out in glasgow, among the breadalbane fencibles. several men having been confined and threatened with corporal punishment, considerable discontent and irritation were excited among their comrades, which increased to such violence, that, when some men were confined in the guard-house, a great proportion of the regiment rushed out and forcibly released the prisoners. this violation of military discipline was not to be passed over, and accordingly measures were immediately taken to secure the ringleaders. but so many were equally concerned, that it was difficult, if not impossible, to fix the crime on any, as being more prominently guilty. and here was shown a trait of character worthy of a better cause, and which originated from a feeling alive to the disgrace of a degrading punishment. the soldiers being made sensible of the nature of their misconduct, and the consequent necessity of public example, _several men voluntarily offered themselves to stand trial_, and suffer the sentence of the law as an atonement for the whole. these men were accordingly marched to edinburgh castle, tried, and four condemned to be shot. three of them were afterwards reprieved, and the fourth, alexander sutherland, was shot on musselburgh sands. ``the following demi-official account of this unfortunate misunderstanding was published at the time:-- `` `during the afternoon of monday, when a private of the light company of the breadalbane fencibles, who had been confined for a military offence, was released by that company, and some other companies, who had assembled in a tumultuous manner before the guard-house, no person whatever was hurt, and no violence offered; and however unjustifiable the proceedings, it originated not from any disrespect or ill-will to their officers, but from a mistaken point of honour, in a particular set of men in the battalion, who thought themselves disgraced by the impending punishment of one of their number. the men have, in every respect, since that period conducted themselves with the greatest regularity, and strict subordination. the whole of the battalion seemed extremely sensible of the improper conduct of such as were concerned, whatever regret they might feel for the fate of the few individuals who had so readily given themselves up as prisoners, to be tried for their own and others' misconduct.' ``on the march to edinburgh, a circumstance occurred, the more worthy of notice, as it shows a strong principle of honour and fidelity to his word and to his officer in a common highland soldier. one of the men stated to the officer commanding the party, that he knew what his fate would be, but that he had left business of the utmost importance to a friend in glasgow, which he wished to transact before his death ; that, as to himself, he was fully prepared to meet his fate; but with regard to his friend, he could not die in peace unless the business was settled, and that, if the officer would suffer him to return to glasgow, a few hours there would be sufficient, and he would join him before he reached edinburgh, and march as a prisoner with the party. the soldier added, `you have known me since i was a child; you know my country and kindred, and you may believe i shall never bring you to any blame by a breach of the promise i now make, to be with you in full time to be delivered up in the castle.' this was a startling proposal to the officer, who was a judicious, humane man, and knew perfectly his risk and responsibility in yielding to such an extraordinary application. however, his confidence was such, that he complied with the request of the prisoner, who returned to glasgow at night, settled his business, and left the town before daylight to redeem his pledge. he took a long circuit to avoid being seen, apprehended as a deserter, and sent back to glasgow, as probably his account of his officer's indulgence would not have been credited. in consequence of this caution, and the lengthened march through woods and over hills by an unfrequented route, there was no appearance of him at the hour appointed. the perplexity of the officer when he reached the neighbourhood of edinburgh may be easily imagined. he moved forward slowly indeed, but no soldier appeared; and unable to delay any longer, he marched up to the castle, and as he was delivering over the prisoners, but before any report was given in, macmartin, the absent soldier, rushed in among his fellow prisoners, all pale with anxiety and fatigue, and breathless with apprehension of the consequences in which his delay might have involved his benefactor. ``in whatever light the conduct of the officer (my respectable friend, major colin campbell) may be considered, either by military men or others, in this memorable exemplification of the characteristic principle of his countrymen, fidelity to their word, it cannot but be wished that the soldier's magnanimous self-devotion had been taken as an atonement for his own misconduct and that of the whole, who also had made a high sacrifice, in the voluntary offer of their lives for the conduct of their brother soldiers. are these a people to be treated as malefactors, without regard to their feelings and principles? and might not a discipline, somewhat different from the usual mode, be, with advantage, applied to them?''-vol. ii. p. 413-15. 3d edit. ``a soldier of this regiment, (the argyllshire highlanders,) deserted, and emigrated to america, where he settled. several years after his desertion, a letter was received from him, with a sum of money, for the purpose of procuring one or two men to supply his place in the regiment, as the only recompense he could make for `breaking his oath to his god and his allegiance to his king, which preyed on his conscience in such a manner, that he had no rest night nor day.' ``this man had had good principles early instilled into his mind, and the disgrace which be had been originally taught to believe would attach to a breach of faith now operated with full effect. the soldier who deserted from the 42d regiment at gibraltar, in 1797, exhibited the same remorse of conscience after he had violated his allegiance. in countries where such principles prevail, and regulate the character of a people, the mass of the population may, on occasions of trial, be reckoned on as sound and trustworthy.''-vol. ii. p. 218. 3d edit. ``the late james menzies of culdares, having engaged in the rebellion of 1715, and been taken at preston, in lancashire, was carried to london, where he was tried and condemned, but afterwards reprieved. grateful for this clemency, he remained at home in 1745, but, retaining a predilection for the old cause, he sent a handsome charger as a present to prince charles, when advancing through england. the servant who led and delivered the horse was taken prisoner, and carried to carlisle, where he was tried and condemned. to extort a discovery of the person who sent the horse, threats of immediate execution in case of refusal, and offers of pardon on his giving information, were held out ineffectually to the faithful messenger. he knew, he said, what the consequence of a disclosure would be to his master, and his own life was nothing in the comparison; when brought out for execution, he was again pressed to inform on his master. he asked if they were serious in supposing him such a villain. if he did what they desired, and forgot his master and his trust, he could not return to his native country, for glenlyon would be no home or country for him, as he would be despised and hunted out of the glen. accordingly he kept steady to his trust, and was executed. this trusty servant's name was john macnaughton, from glenlyon, in perthshire; he deserves to be mentioned, both on account of his incorruptible fidelity, and of his testimony to the honourable principles of the people, and to their detestation of a breach of trust to a kind and honourable master, however great might be the risk, or however fatal the consequences, to the individual himself.''-vol. 1. pp. 52, 53. 3d edit. [7. the two drovers introduction] mr croftangry introduces another tale. together both on the high lawns appeared. under the opening eyelids of the morn they drove afield. _elegy on lycidas_. i have sometimes wondered why all the favourite occupations and pastimes of mankind go to the disturbance of that happy state of tranquillity, that _otium_, as horace terms it, which he says is the object of all men's prayers, whether preferred from sea or land; and that the undisturbed repose, of which we are so tenacious, when duty or necessity compels us to abandon it, is precisely what we long to exchange for a state of excitation, as soon as we may prolong it at our own pleasure. briefly, you have only to say to a man, ``remain at rest,'' and you instantly inspire the love of labour. the sportsman toils like his gamekeeper, the master of the pack takes as severe exercise as his whipper-in, the statesman or politician drudges more than the professional lawyer; and, to come to my own case, the volunteer author subjects himself to the risk of painful criticism, and the assured certainty of mental and manual labour, just as completely as his needy brother, whose necessities compel him to assume the pen. these reflections have been suggested by an annunciation on the part of janet, ``that the little gillie-whitefoot was come from the printing-office.'' ``gillie-blackfoot you should call him, janet,'' was my response, ``for he is neither more nor less than an imp of the devil, come to torment me for _copy_, for so the printers call a supply of manuscript for the press.'' ``now, cot forgie your honour,'' said janet; ``for it is no like your ainsell to give such names to a faitherless bairn.'' ``i have got nothing else to give him, janet--he must wait a little.'' ``then i have got some breakfast to give the bit gillie,'' said janet; ``and he can wait by the fireside in the kitchen, till your honour's ready; and cood enough for the like of him, if he was to wait your honour's pleasure all day.'' ``but, janet,'' said i to my little active superintendent, on her return to the parlour, after having made her hospitable arrangements, ``i begin to find this writing our chronicles is rather more tiresome than i expected, for here comes this little fellow to ask for manuscript---that is, for something to print---and i have got none to give him.'' ``your honour can be at nae loss; i have seen you write fast and fast enough; and for subjects, you have the whole highlands to write about, and i am sure you know a hundred tales better than that about hamish mactavish, for it was but about a young cateran and an auld carline, when all's done; and if they had burned the rudas queen for a witch, i am thinking, may be, they would not have tyned their coals---and her to gar her neer-do-weel son shoot a gentleman cameron! i am third cousin to the camerons mysell---my blood warms to them---and if you want to write about deserters, i am sure there were deserters enough on the top of arthur's seat, when the macraas broke out, and on that woful day beside leith pier---ohonari!''-- here janet began to weep, and to wipe her eyes with her apron. for my part, the idea i wanted was supplied, but i hesitated to make use of it. topics, like times, are apt to become common by frequent use. it is only an ass like justice shallow, who would pitch upon the overscutched tunes, which the carmen whistled, and try to pass them off as his _fancies_ and his _good-nights_. now, the highlands, though formerly a rich mine for original matter, are, as my friend mrs bethune baliol warned me, in some degree worn out by the incessant labour of modern romancers and novelists, who, finding in those remote regions primitive habits and manners, have vainly imagined that the public can never tire of them; and so kilted highlanders are to be found as frequently, and nearly of as genuine descent, on the shelves of a circulating library, as at a caledonian ball. much might have been made at an earlier time out of the history of a highland regiment, and the singular revolution of ideas which must have taken place in the minds of those who composed it, when exchanging their native bills for the battle-fields of the continent, and their simple, and sometimes indolent domestic habits for the regular exertions demanded by modern discipline. but the market is forestalled. there is mrs grant of laggan, has drawn the manners, customs, and superstitions of the mountains in their natural unsophisticated state;* and my friend, general stewart of garth,* * letters from the mountains, 3 vols.---essays on the superstitions of the highlanders---the highlanders, and other poems, &c. * the gallant and amiable author of the history of the highland regiments, in whose glorious services his own share had been great, went out governor of st lucie in 1828, and died in that island on the i8th of december 1829,---no man more regretted, or perhaps by a wider circle of friends and acquaintance. in giving the real history of the highland regiments, has rendered any attempt to fill up the sketch with fancy-colouring extremely rash and precarious. yet i, too, have still a lingering fancy to add a stone to the cairn; and without calling in imagination to aid the impressions of juvenile recollection, i may just attempt to embody one or two scenes illustrative of the highland character, and which belong peculiarly to the chronicles of the canongate, to the greyheaded eld of whom they are as familiar as to chrystal croftangry. yet i will not go back to the days of clanship and claymores. have at you, gentle reader, with a tale of two drovers. an oyster may be crossed in love, says the gentle tilburina---and a drover may be touched on a point of honour, says the chronicler of the canongate. [8. the two drovers] the two drovers. chapter 1. it was the day after doune fair when my story commences. it had been a brisk market, several dealers had attended from the northern and midland counties in england, and english money had flown so merrily about as to gladden the hearts of the highland farmers. many large droves were about to set off for england, under the protection of their owners, or of the topsmen whom they employed in the tedious, laborious, and responsible office of driving the cattle for many hundred miles, from the market where they had been purchased, to the fields or farm-yards where they were to be fattened for the shambles. the highlanders in particular are masters of this difficult trade of driving, which seems to suit them as well as the trade of war. it affords exercise for all their habits of patient endurance and active exertion. they are required to know perfectly the drove-roads, which lie over the wildest tracts of the country, and to avoid as much as possible the highways, which distress the feet of the bullocks, and the turnpikes, which annoy the spirit of the drover; whereas on the broad green or grey track, which leads across the pathless moor, the herd not only move at ease and without taxation, but, if they mind their business, may pick up a mouthful of food by the way. at night, the drovers usually sleep along with their cattle, let the weather be what it will; and many of these hardy men do not once rest under a roof during a journey on foot from lochaber to lincolnshire. they are paid very highly, for the trust reposed is of the last importance, as it depends on their prudence, vigilance and honesty, whether the cattle reach the final market in good order, and afford a profit to the grazier. but as they maintain themselves at their own expense, they are especially economical in that particular. at the period we speak of, a highland drover was victualled for his long and toilsome journey with a few handfulls of oatmeal and two or three onions, renewed from time to time, and a ram's horn filled with whisky, which he used regularly, but sparingly, every night and morning. his dirk, or _skene-dhu_, (_i.e_. black-knife,) so worn as to be concealed beneath the arm, or by the folds of the plaid, was his only weapon, excepting the cudgel with which he directed the movements of the cattle. a highlander was never so happy as on these occasions. there was a variety in the whole journey, which exercised the celt's curiosity and natural love of motion; there were the constant change of place and scene, the petty adventures incidental to the traffic, and the intercourse with the various farmers, graziers, and traders, intermingled with occasional merry-makings, not the less acceptable to donald that they were void of expense;---and there was the consciousness of superior skill; for the highlander, a child amongst flocks, is a prince amongst herds, and his natural habits induce him to disdain the shepherd's slothful life, so that he feels himself nowhere more at home than when following a gallant drove of his country cattle in the character of their guardian. of the number who left doune in the morning, and with the purpose we have described, not a _glunamie_ of them all cocked his bonnet more briskly, or gartered his tartan hose under knee over a pair of more promising _spiogs_, (legs,) than did robin oig m`combich, called familiarly robin oig, that is young, or the lesser, robin. though small of stature, as the epithet oig implies, and not very strongly limbed, he was as light and alert as one of the deer of his mountains. he had an elasticity of step, which, in the course of a long march, made many a stout fellow envy him; and the manner in which he busked his plaid and adjusted his bonnet, argued a consciousness that so smart a john highlandman as himself would not pass unnoticed among the lowland lasses. the ruddy cheek, red lips, and white teeth, set off a countenance, which had gained by exposure to the weather a healthful and hardy rather than a rugged hue. if robin oig did not laugh, or even smile frequently, as indeed is not the practice among his countrymen, his bright eyes usually gleamed from under his bonnet with an expression of cheerfulness ready to be turned into mirth. the departure of robin oig was an incident in the little town, in and near which he had many friends, male and female. he was a topping person in his way, transacted considerable business on his own behalf, and was intrusted by the best farmers in the highlands, in preference to any other drover in that district. he might have increased his business to any extent had he condescended to manage it by deputy; but except a lad or two, sister's sons of his own, robin rejected the idea of assistance, conscious, perhaps, how much his reputation depended upon his attending in person to the practical discharge of his duty in every instance. he remained, therefore, contented with the highest premium given to persons of his description, and comforted himself with the hopes that few journeys to england might enable him to conduct business on his own account, in a manner becoming his birth. for robin oig's father, lachlan m`combich, (or _son of my friend_, his actual clan-surname being m`gregor,) had been so called by the celebrated rob roy, because of the particular friendship which had subsisted between the grandsire of robin and that renowned cateran. some people even say, that robin oig derived his christian name from one as renowned in the wilds of lochlomond as ever was his namesake robin hood, in the precincts of merry sherwood. ``of such ancestry,'' as james boswell says, ``who would not be proud?'' robin oig was proud accordingly; but his frequent visits to england and to the lowlands had given him tact enough to know that pretensions, which still gave him a little right to distinction in his own lonely glen, might be both obnoxious and ridiculous if preferred elsewhere. the pride of birth, therefore, was like the miser's treasure, the secret subject of his contemplation, but never exhibited to strangers as a subject of boasting. many were the words of gratulation and good-luck which were bestowed on robin oig. the judges commended his drove, especially robin's own property, which were the best of them. some thrust out their snuff-mulls for the parting pinch--others tendered the _doch-an-dorrach_, or parting cup. all cried---``good-luck travel out with you and come home with you.---give you luck in the saxon market---brave notes in the _leabhar-dhu_,'' (black pocketbook,) ``and plenty of english gold in the _sporran_,'' (pouch of goat-skin.) the bonny lasses made their adieus more modestly, and more than one, it was said, would have given her best brooch to be certain that it was upon her that his eye last rested as he turned towards the road. robin oig had just given the preliminary ``hoo-hoo!'' to urge forward the loiterers of the drove, when there was a cry behind him. ``stay, robin---bide a blink. here is janet of tomahourich---auld janet, your father's sister.'' ``plague on her, for an auld highland witch and spaewife,'' said a farmer from the carse of stirling; ``she'll cast some of her cantrips on the cattle.'' ``she canna do that,'' said another sapient of the same profession---``robin oig is no the lad to leave any of them, without tying saint mungo's knot on their tails, and that will put to her speed the best witch that ever flew over dimayet upon a broomstick.'' it may not be indifferent to the reader to know that the highland cattle are peculiarly liable to be taken, or infected, by spells and witchcraft, which judicious people guard against by knitting knots of peculiar complexity on the tuft of hair which terminates the animal's tail. but the old woman who was the object of the farmer's suspicion seemed only busied about the drover, without paying any attention to the drove. robin, on the contrary, appeared rather impatient of her presence. ``what auld-world fancy,'' he said, ``has brought you so carly from the ingle-side this morning, muhme? l am sure i bid you good-even, and had your god-speed, last night.'' ``and left me more siller than the useless old woman will use till you come back again, bird of my bosom,'' said the sibyl. ``but it is little i would care for the food that nourishes me, or the fire that warms me, or for god's blessed sun itself, if aught but weal should happen to the grandson of my father. so let me walk the _deasil_ round you, that you may go safe out into the far foreign land, and come safe home.'' robin oig stopped, half embarrassed, half laughing, and signing to those around that he only complied with the old woman to soothe her humour. in the meantime, she traced around him, with wavering steps, the propitiation, which some have thought has been derived from the druidical mythology. it consists, as is well known, in the person who makes the _deasil_ walking three times round the person who is the object of the ceremony, taking care to move according to the course of the sun. at once, however, she stopped short, and exclaimed, in a voice of alarm and horror, ``grandson of my father, there is blood on your hand.'' ``hush, for god's sake, aunt,'' said robin oig; ``you will bring more trouble on yourself with this taishataragh'' (second sight) ``than you will be able to get out of for many a day.'' the old woman only repeated, with a ghastly look, ``there is blood on your hand, and it is english blood. the blood of the gael is richer and redder. let us see---let us------'' ere robin oig could prevent her, which, indeed, could only have been by positive violence, so hasty and peremptory were her proceedings, she had drawn from his side the dirk which lodged in the folds of his plaid, and held it up, exclaiming, although the weapon gleamed clear and bright in the sun, ``blood, blood---saxon blood again. robin oig m`combich, go not this day to england!'' ``prutt, trutt,'' answered robin oig, ``that will never do neither---it would be next thing to running the country. for shame, muhme---give me the dirk. you cannot tell by the colour the difference betwixt the blood of a black bullock and a white one, and you speak of knowing saxon from gaelic blood. all men have their blood from adam, muhme. give me my skene-dhu, and let me go on my road. i should have been half way to stirling brig by this time---give me my dirk, and let me go.'' ``never will i give it to you,'' said the old woman--``never will i quit my hold on your plaid, unless you promise me not to wear that unhappy weapon.'' the women around him urged him also, saying few of his aunt's words fell to the ground; and as the lowland farmers continued to look moodily on the scene, robin oig determined to close it at any sacrifice. ``well, then,'' said the young drover, giving the scabbard of the weapon to hugh morrison, ``you lowlanders care nothing for these treats. keep my dirk for me. i cannot give it you, because it was my father's; but your drove follows ours, and i am content it should be in your keeping, not in mine.---will this do, muhme?'' ``it must,'' said the old woman---``that is, if the lowlander is mad enough to carry the knife.'' the strong westlandman laughed aloud. ``goodwife,'' said he, ``i am hugh morrison from glenae, come of the manly morrisons of auld langsyne, that never took short weapon against a man in their lives. and neither needed they: they had their broadswords, and i have this bit supple,'' showing a formidable cudgel---``for dirking ower the board, i leave that to john highlandman.--ye needna snort, none of you highlanders, and you in especial, robin. i'll keep the bit knife, if you are feared for the auld spaewife's tale, and give it back to you whenever you want it.'' robin was not particularly pleased with some part of hugh morrison's speech; but he had learned in his travels more patience than belonged to his highland constitution originally, and he accepted the service of the descendant of the manly morrisons, without finding fault with the rather depreciating manner in which it was offered. ``if he had not had his morning in his bead, and been but a dumfries-shire hog into the boot, he would have spoken more like a gentleman. but you cannot have more of a sow than a grumph. it's shame my father's knife should ever slash a haggis for the like of him,'' thus saying, (but saying it in gaelic,) robin drove on his cattle, and waved farewell to all behind him. he was in the greater haste, because he expected to join at falkirk a comrade and brother in profession, with whom he proposed to travel in company. robin oig's chosen friend was a young englishman, harry wakefield by name, well known at every northern market, and in his way as much famed and honoured as our highland driver of bullocks. he was nearly six feet high, gallantly formed to keep the rounds at smithfield, or maintain the ring at a wrestling match; and although he might have been overmatched, perhaps, among the regular professors of the fancy, yet, as a yokel or rustic, or a chance customer, he was able to give a bellyful to any amateur of the pugilistic art. doncaster races saw him in his glory, betting his guinea, and generally successfully; nor was there a main fought in yorkshire, the feeders being persons of celebrity, at which he was not to be seen if business permitted. but though a _sprack_ lad, and fond of pleasure and its haunts, harry wakefield was steady, and not the cautious robin oig m`combich himself was more attentive to the main chance. his holidays were holidays indeed; but his days of work were dedicated to steady and persevering labour. in countenance and temper, wakefield was the model of old england's merry yeomen, whose clothyard shafts, in so many hundred battles, asserted her superiority over the nations, and whose good sabres, in our own time, are her cheapest and most assured defence. his mirth was readily excited; for, strong in limb and constitution, and fortunate in circumstances, he was disposed to be pleased with every thing about him; and such difficulties as he might occasionally encounter, were, to a man of his energy, rather matter of amusement than serious annoyance. with all the merits of a sanguine temper, our young english drover was not without his defects. he was irascible, sometimes to the verge of being quarrelsome; and perhaps not the less inclined to bring his disputes to a pugilistic decision, because he found few antagonists able to stand up to him in the boxing ring. it is difficult to say how harry wakefield and robin oig first became intimates; but it is certain a close acquaintance had taken place betwixt them, although they had apparently few common subjects of conversation or of interest, so soon as their talk ceased to be of bullocks. robin oig, indeed, spoke the english language rather imperfectly upon any other topics but stots and kyloes, and harry wakefield could never bring his broad yorkshire tongue to utter a single word of gaelic. it was in vain robin spent a whole morning, during a walk over minch moor, in attempting to teach his companion to utter, with true precision, the shibboleth _llhu_, which is the gaelic for a calf. from traquair to murder-cairn, the hill rung with the discordant attempts of the saxon upon the unmanageable monosyllable, and the heartfelt laugh which followed every failure. they had, however, better modes of awakening the echoes; for wakefield could sing many a ditty to the praise of moll, susan, and cicely, and robin oig had a particular gift at whistling interminable pibrochs through all their involutions, and what was more agreeable to his companion's southern ear, knew many of the northern airs, both lively and pathetic, to which wakefield learned to pipe a bass. thus, though robin could hardly have comprehended his companion's stories about horse-racing, and cock-fighting, or fox-hunting, and although his own legends of clan-fights and _creaghs_, varied with talk of highland goblins and fairy folk, would have been caviare to his companion, they contrived nevertheless to find a degree of pleasure in each other's company, which had for three years back induced them to join company and travel together, when the direction of their journey permitted. each, indeed, found his advantage in this companionship; for where could the englishman have found a guide through the western highlands like robin oig m`combich? and when they were on what harry called the _right_ side of the border, his patronage, which was extensive, and his purse, which was heavy, were at all times at the service of his highland friend, and on many occasions his liberality did him genuine yeoman's service. chapter ii. were ever two such loving friends how could they disagree? o thus it was, he loved him dear, and thought how to requite him, and having no friend left but he, he did resolve to fight him. _duke upon duke_. the pair of friends had traversed with their usual cordiality the grassy wilds of liddesdale, and crossed the opposite part of cumberland, emphatically called the waste. in these solitary regions, the cattle under the charge of our drovers derived their subsistence chiefly by picking their food as they went along the drove-road, or sometimes by the tempting opportunity of a _start and owerloup_, or invasion of the neighbouring pasture, where an occasion presented itself. but now the scene changed before them; they were descending towards a fertile and enclosed country, where no such liberties could be taken with impunity, or without a previous arrangement and bargain with the possessors of the ground. this was more especially the case, as a great northern fair was upon the eve of taking place, where both the scotch and english drover expected to dispose of a part of their cattle, which it was desirable to produce in the market, rested and in good order. fields were therefore difficult to be obtained, and only upon high terms. this necessity occasioned a temporary separation betwixt the two friends, who went to bargain, each as he could, for the separate accommodation of his herd. unhappily it chanced that both of them, unknown to each other, thought of bargaining for the ground they wanted on the property of a country gentleman of some fortune, whose estate lay in the neighbourhood. the english drover applied to the bailiff on the property, who was known to him. it chanced that the cumbrian squire, who had entertained some suspicions of his manager's honesty, was taking occasional measures to ascertain how far they were well founded, and had desired that any enquiries about his enclosures, with a view to occupy them for a temporary purpose, should be referred to himself. as however, mr ireby had gone the day before upon a journey of some miles distance to the northward, the bailiff chose to consider the check upon his full powers as for the time removed, and concluded that be should best consult his master's interest, and perhaps his own, in making an agreement with harry wakefield. meanwhile, ignorant of what his comrade was doing, robin oig, on his side, chanced to be overtaken by a good-looking smart little man upon a pony, most knowingly bogged and cropped, as was then the fashion, the rider wearing tight leather breeches, and long-necked bright spurs. this cavalier asked one or two pertinent questions about markets and the price of stock. so robin, seeing him a well-judging civil gentleman, took the freedom to ask him whether he could let him know if there was any grass-land to be let in that neighbourhood, for the temporary accommodation of his drove. he could not have put the question to more willing ears. the gentleman of the buckskins was the proprietor, with whose bailiff harry wakefield had dealt, or was in the act of dealing. ``thou art in good luck, my canny scot,'' said mr ireby, ``to have spoken to me, for i see thy cattle have done their day's work, and i have at my disposal the only field within three miles that is to be let in these parts.'' ``the drove can pe gang two, three, four miles very pratty weel indeed''---said the cautious highlander; ``put what would his honour pe axing for the peasts pe the head, if she was to tak the park for twa or three days?'' ``we won't differ, sawney, if you let me have six stots for winterers, in the way of reason.'' ``and which peasts wad your honour pe for having?'' ``why---let me see---the two black---the dun one---yon doddy---him with the twisted horn---the brockit---how much by the head?'' ``ah,'' said robin, ``your honour is a shudge--a real shudge---i couldna have set off the pest six peasts petter mysell, me that ken them as if they were my pairns, puir things.'' ``well, how much per head, sawney,'' continued mr ireby. ``it was high markets at doune and falkirk,'' answered robin. and thus the conversation proceeded, until they had agreed on the _prix juste_ for the bullocks, the squire throwing in the temporary accommodation of the enclosure for the cattle into the boot, and robin making, as he thought, a very good bargain, provided the grass was but tolerable. the squire walked his pony alongside of the drove, partly to show him the way, and see him put into possession of the field, and partly to learn the latest news of the northern markets. they arrived at the field, and the pasture seemed excellent. but what was their surprise when they saw the bailiff quietly inducting the cattle of harry wakefield into the grassy goshen which had just been assigned to those of robin oig m`combich by the proprietor himself! squire ireby set spurs to his horse, dashed up to his servant, and learning what had passed between the parties, briefly informed the english drover that his bailiff had let the ground without his authority, and that he might seek grass for his cattle wherever he would, since he was to get none there. at the same time he rebuked his servant severely for having transgressed his commands, and ordered him instantly to assist in ejecting the hungry and weary cattle of harry wakefield, which were just beginning to enjoy a meal of unusual plenty, and to introduce those of his comrade, whom the english drover now began to consider as a rival. the feelings which arose in wakefield's mind would have induced him to resist mr ireby's decision; but every englishman has a tolerably accurate sense of law and justice, and john fleecebumpkin, the bailiff, having acknowledged that he had exceeded his commission, wakefield saw nothing else for it than to collect his hungry and disappointed charge, and drive them on to seek quarters elsewhere. robin oig saw what had happened with regret, and hastened to offer to his english friend to share with him the disputed possession. but wakefield's pride was severely hurt, and he answered disdainfully, ``take it all, man ---take it all---never make two bites of a cherry--thou canst talk over the gentry, and blear a plain man's eye---out upon you, man---i would not kiss any man's dirty latchets for leave to bake in his oven.'' robin oig, sorry but not surprised at his comrade's displeasure, hastened to entreat his friend to wait but an hour till he had gone to the squire's house to receive payment for the cattle he had sold, and he would come back and help him to drive the cattle into some convenient place of rest, and explain to him the whole mistake they had both of them fallen into. but the englishman continued indignant: ``thou hast been selling, hast thou? ay, ay---thou is a cunning lad for kenning the hours of bargaining. go to the devil with thyself, for i will neer see thy fause loon's visage again--thou should be ashamed to look me in the face.'' ``i am ashamed to look no man in the face,'' said robin oig, something moved; ``and, moreover, i will look you in the face this blessed day, if you will bide at the clachan down yonder.'' ``mayhap you had as well keep away,'' said his comrade; and turning his back on his former friend, he collected his unwilling associates, assisted by the bailiff, who took some real and some affected interest in seeing wakefield accommodated. after spending some time in negotiating with more than one of the neighbouring farmers, who could not, or would not, afford the accommodation desired, henry wakefield at last, and in his necessity, accomplished his point by means of the landlord of the alehouse at which robin oig and he had agreed to pass the night, when they first separated from each other. mine host was content to let him turn his cattle on a piece of barren moor, at a price little less than the bailiff had asked for the disputed enclosure; and the wretchedness of the pasture, as well as the price paid for it, were set down as exaggerations of the breach of faith and friendship of his scottish crony. this turn of wakefield's passions was encouraged by the bailiff, (who had his own reasons for being offended against poor robin, as having been the unwitting cause of his falling into disgrace with his master,) as well as by the innkeeper, and two or three chance guests, who stimulated the drover in his resentment against his quondam associate,---some from the ancient grudge against the scots, which, when it exists anywhere, is to be found lurking in the border counties, and some from the general love of mischief, which characterises mankind in all ranks of life, to the honour of adam's children be it spoken. good john barleycorn also, who always heightens and exaggerates the prevailing passions, be they angry or kindly, was not wanting in his offices on this occasion; and confusion to false friends and hard masters, was pledged in more than one tankard. in the meanwhile mr ireby found some amusement in detaining the northern drover at his ancient hall. he caused a cold round of beef to be placed before the scot in the butler's pantry, together with a foaming tankard of home-brewed, and took pleasure in seeing the hearty appetite with which these unwonted edibles were discussed by robin oig m`combich. the squire himself lighting his pipe, compounded between his patrician dignity and his love of agricultural gossip, by walking up and down while he conversed with his guest. ``i passed another drove,'' said the squire, with one of your countrymen behind them---they were something less beasts than your drove, doddies most of them---a big man was with them--none of your kilts though, but a decent pair of breeches---d'ye know who he may be?'' ``hout aye---that might, could, and would be hughie morrison---i didna think he could hae peen sae weel up. he has made a day on us; but his argyleshires will have wearied shanks. how far was he pehind?'' ``i think about six or seven miles,'' answered the squire, ``for i passed them at the christenbury crag, and i overtook you at the hollan bush. if his beasts be leg-weary, he will be maybe selling bargains.'' ``na, na, hughie morrison is no the man for pargains---ye maun come to some highland body like robin oig hersell for the like of these---put i maun pe wishing you goot night, and twenty of them let alane ane, and i maun down to the clachan to see if the lad harry waakfelt is out of his humdudgeons yet.'' the party at the alehouse were still in full talk, and the treachery of robin oig still the theme of conversation, when the supposed culprit entered the apartment. his arrival, as usually happens in such a case, put an instant stop to the discussion of which he had furnished the subject, and he was received by the company assembled with that chilling silence, which, more than a thousand exclamations, tells an intruder that he is unwelcome. surprised and offended, but not appalled by the reception which he experienced, robin entered with an undaunted and even a haughty air, attempted no greeting, as he saw he was received with none, and placed himself by the side of the fire, a little apart from a table, at which harry wakefield, the bailiff, and two or three other persons, were seated. the ample cumbrian kitchen would have afforded plenty of room, even for a larger separation. robin thus seated, proceeded to light his pipe, and call for a pint of twopenny. ``we have no twopence ale,'' answered ralph heskett the landlord; ``but as thou find'st thy own tobacco, it's like thou mayst find thy own liquor too---it's the wont of thy country, i wot.'' ``shame, goodman,'' said the landlady, a blithe bustling housewife, hastening herself to supply the guest with liquor---``thou knowest well enow what the strange man wants, and it's thy trade to be civil, man. thou shouldst know, that if the scot likes a small pot, he pays a sure penny.'' without taking any notice of this nuptial dialogue, the highlander took the flagon in his hand, and addressing the company generally, drank the interesting toast of ``good markets,'' to the party assembled. ``the better that the wind blew fewer dealers from the north,'' said one of the farmers, ``and fewer highland runts to cat up the english meadows.'' ``saul of my pody, put you are wrang there, my friend,'' answered robin, with composure; ``it is your fat englishmen that eat up our scots cattle, puir things.'' ``i wish there was a summat to eat up their drovers,'' said another; ``a plain englishman canna make bread within a kenning of them.'' ``or an honest servant keep his master's favour but they will come sliding in between him and the sunshine,'' said the bailiff. ``if these pe jokes,'' said robin oig, with the same composure, ``there is ower mony jokes upon one man.'' ``it is no joke, but downright earnest,'' said the bailiff. ``harkye, mr robin ogg, or whatever is your name, it's right we should tell you that we are all of one opinion, and that is, that you, mr robin ogg, have behaved to our friend mr harry wakefield here, like a raff and a blackguard.'' ``nae doubt, nae doubt,'' answered robin, with great composure; ``and you are a set of very pretty judges, for whose prains or pehaviour i wad not gie a pinch of sneeshing. if mr harry waakfelt kens where he is wronged, he kens where he may be righted.'' ``he speaks truth,'' said wakefield, who had listened to what passed, divided between the offence which he had taken at robin's late behaviour, and the revival of his habitual feelings of regard. he now rose, and went towards robin, who got up from his seat as he approached, and held out his hand. ``that's right, harry---go it---serve him out,'' resounded on all sides---``tip him the nailer---show him the mill.'' ``hold your peace all of you, and be ------,'' said wakefield; and then addressing his comrade, he took him by the extended band, with something alike of respect and defiance. ``robin,'' he said, ``thou hast used me ill enough this day; but if you mean, like a frank fellow, to shake hands, and take a tussle for love on the sod, why i'll forgie thee, man, and we shall be better friends than ever.'' ``and would it not pe petter to pe cood friends without more of the matter?'' said robin; ``we will be much petter friendships with our panes hale than proken.'' harry wakefield dropped the band of his friend, or rather threw it from him. ``i did not think i had been keeping company for three years with a coward.'' ``coward pelongs to none of my name,'' said robin, whose eyes began to kindle, but keeping the command of his temper. ``it was no coward's legs or hands, harry waakfelt, that drew you out of the fords of frew, when you was drifting ower the plack rock, and every eel in the river expected his share of you.'' ``and that is true enough, too,'' said the englishman, struck by the appeal. ``adzooks!'' exclaimed the bailiff---``sure harry wakefield, the nattiest lad at whitson tryste, wooler fair, carlisle sands, or stagshaw bank, is not going to show white feather? ah, this comes of living so long with kilts and bonnets---men forget the use of their daddies.'' ``i may teach you, master fleecebumpkin, that i have not lost the use of mine,'' said wakefield and then went on. ``this will never do, robin. we must have a turn-up, or we shall be the talk of the country-side. i'll be d------d if i hurt thee ---i'll put on the gloves gin thou like. come, stand forward like a man.'' ``to be peaten like a dog,'' said robin; ``is there any reason in that? if you think i have done you wrong, i'll go before your shudge, though i neither know his law nor his language.'' a general cry of ``no, no---no law, no lawyer! a bellyful and be friends,'' was echoed by the bystanders. ``but,'' continued robin, ``if i am to fight, i have no skill to fight like a jackanapes, with hands and nails.'' ``how would you fight then?'' said his antagonist; ``though i am thinking it would be hard to bring you to the scratch anyhow.'' ``i would fight with proadswords, and sink point on the first plood drawn---like a gentlemans.'' a loud shout of laughter followed the proposal, which indeed had rather escaped from poor robin's swelling heart, than been the dictate of his sober judgment. ``gentleman, quotha!'' was echoed on all sides, with a shout of unextinguishable laughter; ``a very pretty gentleman, god wot---canst get two swords for the gentleman to fight with, ralph heskett?'' ``no, but i can send to the armoury at carlisle, and lend them two forks, to be making shift with in the meantime.'' ``tush, man,'' said another, ``the bonny scots come into the world with the blue bonnet on their heads, and dirk and pistol at their belt.'' ``best send post,'' said mr fleecebumpkin, ``to the squire of corby castle, to come and stand second to the gentleman.'' in the midst of this torrent of general ridicule, the highlander instinctively griped beneath the folds of his plaid, ``but it's better not,'' he said in his own language. ``a hundred curses on the swilie-eaters, who know neither decency nor civility!'' ``make room, the pack of you,'' he said advancing to the door. but his former friend interposed his sturdy bulk, and opposed his leaving the house; and when robin oig attempted to make his way by force, he hit him down on the floor, with as much ease as a boy bowls down a nine-pin. ``a ring, a ring!'' was now shouted, until the dark rafters, and the hams that hung on them, trembled again, and the very platters on the _bink_ clattered against each other. ``well done, harry'' ---``give it him home harry''---``take care of him now-he sees his own blood!'' such were the exclamations, while the highlander, starting from the ground, all his coldness and caution lost in frantic rage, sprung at his antagonist with the fury, the activity, and the vindictive purpose of an incensed tiger-cat. but when could rage encounter science and temper? robin oig again went down in the unequal contest; and as the blow was necessarily a severe one, he lay motionless on the floor of the kitchen. the landlady ran to ofter some aid, but mr fleecebumpkin would not permit her to approach. ``let him alone,'' he said, ``he will come to within time, and come up to the scratch again. he has not got half his broth vet.'' ``he has got all i mean to give him, though,'' said his antagonist, whose heart began to relent towards his old associate; ``and i would rather by half give the rest to yourself, mr fleecebumpkin, for you pretend to know a thing or two, and robin had not art enough even to peel before setting to, but fought with his plaid dangling about him.--stand up, robin, my man! all friends now; and let me hear the man that will speak a word against you, or your country, for your sake.'' robin oig was still under the dominion of his passion, and eager to renew the onset; but being withheld on the one side by the peace-making dame heskett, and on the other, aware that wakefield no loner meant to renew the combat, his fury sunk into gloomy sullenness. ``come, come, never grudge so much at it, man,'' said the brave-spirited englishman, with the placability of his country, ``shake hands, and we will be better friends than ever.'' ``friends!'' exclaimed robin oig with strong emphasis---``friends!---never. look to yourself, harry waakfelt.'' ``then the curse of cromwell on your proud scots stomach, as the man says in the play, and you may do your worst, and be d---; for one man can say nothing more to another after a tussle, than that he is sorry for it.'' on these terms the friends parted; robin oig drew out, in silence, a piece of money, threw it on the table, and then left the alehouse. but turning at the door, he shook his hand at wakefield, pointing with his forefinger upwards, in a manner which might imply either a threat or a caution. he then disappeared in the moonlight. some words passed after his departure, between the bailiff, who piqued himself on being a little of a bully, and harry wakefield, who, with generous inconsistency, was now not indisposed to begin a new combat in defence of robin oig's reputation, ``although he could not use his daddles like an englishman, as it did not come natural to him.'' but dame heskett prevented this second quarrel from coming to a head by her peremptory interference. ``there should be no more fighting in her house,'' she said; ``there had been too much already. ---and you, mr wakefield, may live to learn,'' she added, ``what it is to make a deadly enemy out of a good friend.'' ``pshaw, dame! robin oig is an honest fellow, and will never keep malice.'' ``do not trust to that---you do not know the dour temper of the scots, though you have dealt with them so often. i have a right to know them, my mother being a scot.'' ``and so is well seen on her daughter,'' said ralph heskett. this nuptial sarcasm gave the discourse another turn; fresh customers entered the tap-room or kitchen, and others left it. the conversation turned on the expected markets, and the report of prices from different parts both of scotland and england---treaties were commenced, and harry wakefield was lucky enough to find a chap for a part of his drove, and at a very considerable profit; an event of consequence more than sufficient to blot out all remembrances of the unpleasant scuffle in the earlier part of the day. but there remained one party from whose mind that recollection could not have been wiped away by the possession of every head of cattle betwixt esk and eden. this was robin oig m`combich.---``that i should have had no weapon,'' he said, ``and for the first time in my life!---blighted be the tongue that bids the highlander part with the dirk---the dirk ---ha! the english blood!---my muhme's word--when did her word fall to the ground?'' the recollection of the fatal prophecy confirmed the deadly intention which instantly sprang up in his mind. ``ha! morrison cannot be many miles behind; and if it were an hundred, what then!'' his impetuous spirit had now a fixed purpose and motive of action, and he turned the light foot of his country towards the wilds, through which be knew, by mr ireby's report, that morrison was advancing. his mind was wholly engrossed by the sense of injury---injury sustained from a friend; and by the desire of vengeance on one whom be now accounted his most bitter enemy. the treasured ideas of self-importance and self-opinion---of ideal birth and quality, had become more precious to him, (like the hoard to the miser,) because he could only enjoy them in secret. but that hoard was pillaged, the idols which he had secretly worshipped had been desecrated and profaned. insulted, abused, and beaten, he was no longer worthy, in his own opinion, of the name he bore, or the lineage which he belonged to---nothing was left to him---nothing but revenge; and as the reflection added a galling spur to every step, he determined it should be as sudden and signal as the offence. when robin oig left the door of the alehouse, seven or eight english miles at least lay betwixt morrison and him. the advance of the former was slow, limited by the sluggish pace of his cattle; the last left behind him stubble-field and hedge-row, crag and dark heath, all glittering with frost-rime in the broad november moonlight, at the rate of six miles an hour. and now the distant lowing of morrison's cattle is heard; and now they are seen creeping like moles in size and slowness of motion on the broad face of the moor; and now he meets them---passes them, and stops their conductor. ``may good betide us,'' said the southlander--``is this you, robin m`combich, or your wraith?'' ``it is robin oig m`combich,'' answered the highlander, ``and it is not.---but never mind that, put pe giving me the skene-dhu.'' ``what! you are for back to the highlands--the devil!---have you selt all off before the fair? this beats all for quick markets!'' ``i have not sold---i am not going north---may pe i will never go north again.---give me pack my dirk, hugh morrison, or there will pe words petween us.'' ``indeed, robin, i'll be better advised before i gie it back to you---it is a wanchancy weapon in a highlandman's hand, and i am thinking you will be about some barns-breaking.'' ``prutt, trutt! let me have my weapon,'' said robin oig impatiently. ``hooly and fairly,'' said his well-meaning friend. ``i'll tell you what will do better than these dirking doings---ye ken highlander, and lowlander, and border-men, are a' ae man's bairns when you are over the scots dyke. see, the eskdale callants, and fighting charlie of liddesdale, and the lockerby lads, and the four dandies of lustruther, and a wheen mair grey plaids, are coming up behind; and if you are wronged, there is the hand of a manly morrison, we'll see you righted, if carlisle and stanwix baith took up the feud. '' ``to tell you the truth,'' said robin oig, desirous of eluding the suspicions of his friend, ``i have enlisted with a party of the black watch, and must march off to-morrow morning.'' ``enlisted! were you mad or drunk?---you must buy yourself off---i can lend you twenty notes, and twenty to that, if the drove sell.'' ``i thank you---thank ye, hughie; but i go with good will the gate that i am going,---so the dirk--the dirk!'' ``there it is for you then, since less wunna serve. but think on what i was saying.---waes me, it will be sair news in the braes of balquidder, that robin oig m`combich should have run an ill gate, and ta'en on.'' ``ill news in balquidder, indeed!'' echoed poor robin: ``but cot speed you, hughie, and send you good marcats. ye winna meet with robin oig again, either at tryste or fair.'' so saying, he shook hastily the hand of his acquaintance, and set out in the direction from which he had advanced, with the spirit of his former pace. ``there is something wrang with the lad,'' muttered the morrison to himself; ``but we will maybe see better into it the morn's morning.'' but long ere the morning dawned, the catastrophe of our tale had taken place. it was two hours after the affray had happened, and it was totally forgotten by almost every one, when robin oig returned to heskett's inn. the place was filled at once by various sorts of men, and with noises corresponding to their character. there were the grave low sounds of men engaged in busy traffic, with the laugh, the song, and the riotous jest of those who had nothing to do but to enjoy themselves. among the last was harry wakefield, who, amidst a grinning group of smock-frocks, hobnailed shoes, and jolly english physiognomies, was trolling forth the old ditty, ``what though my name be roger, who drives the slough and cart---'' when he was interrupted by a well-known voice saying in a high and stern voice, marked by the sharp highland accent, ``harry waakfelt---if you be a man stand up!'' ``what is the matter?---what is it?'' the guests demanded of each other. ``it is only a d---d scotsman,'' said fleecebumpkin, who was by this time very drunk, ``whom harry wakefield helped to his broth to-day, who is now come to have his cauld kail het again.'' ``harry waakfelt,'' repeated the same ominous summons, ``stand up, if you be a man!'' there is something in the tone of deep and concentrated passion, which attracts attention and imposes awe, even by the very sound. the guests shrunk back on every side, and gazed at the highlander as he stood in the middle of them, his brows bent, and his features rigid with resolution. ``i will stand up with all my heart, robin, my boy, but it shall be to shake hands with you, and drink down all unkindness. it is not the fault of your heart, man, that you don't know how to clench your hands.'' by this time he stood opposite to his antagonist; his open and unsuspecting look strangely contrasted with the stern purpose, which gleamed wild, dark, and vindictive in the eyes of the highlander. ``'tis not thy fault, man, that, not having the luck to be an englishman, thou canst not fight more than a school-girl.'' ``i can fight,'' answered robin oig sternly, but calmly, ``and you shall know it. you, harry waakfelt, showed me to-day how the saxon churls fight ---i show you now how the highland dunni<e`>-wassel fights.'' he seconded the word with the action, and plunged the dagger, which he suddenly displayed, into the broad breast of the english yeoman, with such fatal certainty and force, that the hilt made a hollow sound against the breast-bone, and the double-edged point split the very heart of his victim. harry wakefield fell and expired with a single groan. his assassin next seized the bailiff by the collar, and offered the bloody poniard to his throat, whilst dread and surprise rendered the man incapable of defence. ``it were very just to lay you beside him,'' he said, ``but the blood of a base pick-thank shall never mix on my father's dirk, with that of a brave man.'' as he spoke, he cast the man from him with so much force that he fell on the floor, while robin, with his other hand, threw the fatal weapon into the blazing turf-fire. ``there,'' he said, ``take me who likes---and let fire cleanse blood if it can.'' the pause of astonishment still continuing, robin oig asked for a peace-officer, and a constable having stepped out, he surrendered himself to his custody. ``a bloody night's work you have made of it,'' said the constable. ``your own fault,'' said the highlander. ``had you kept his hands off me twa hours since, he would have been now as well and merry as he was twa minutes since.'' ``it must be sorely answered,'' said the peace-officer. ``never you mind that---death pays all debts; it will pay that too.'' the horror of the bystanders began now to give way to indignation; and the sight of a favourite companion murdered in the midst of them, the provocation being, in their opinion, so utterly inadequate to the excess of vengeance, might have induced them to kill the perpetrator of the deed even upon the very spot. the constable, however, did his duty on this occasion, and with the assistance of some of the more reasonable persons present, procured horses to guard the prisoner to carlisle, to abide his doom at the next assizes. while the escort was preparing, the prisoner neither expressed the least interest, nor attempted the slightest reply. only, before he was carried from the fatal apartment, he desired to look at the dead body, which, raised from the floor, had been deposited upon the large table, (at the head of which harry wakefield had presided but a few minutes before, full of life, vigour, and animation,) until the surgeons should examine the mortal wound. the face of the corpse was decently covered with a napkin. to the surprise and horror of the bystanders, which displayed itself in a general _ah!_ drawn through clenched teeth and half-shut lips, robin oig removed the cloth, and gazed with a mournful but steady eye on the lifeless visage, which had been so lately animated, that the smile of good-humoured confidence in his own strength, of conciliation at once, and contempt towards his enemy, still curled his lip. while those present expected that the wound, which had so lately flooded the apartment with gore, would send forth fresh streams at the touch of the homicide, robin oig replaced the covering with the brief exclamation ---``he was a pretty man!'' my story is nearly ended. the unfortunate highlander stood his trial at carlisle. i was myself present, and as a young scottish lawyer, or barrister at least, and reputed a man of some quality, the politeness of the sheriff of cumberland offered me a place on the bench. the facts of the case were proved in the manner i have related them; and whatever might be at first the prejudice of the audience against a crime so un-english as that of assassination from revenge, yet when the rooted national prejudices of the prisoner had been explained, which made him consider himself as stained with indelible dishonour, when subjected to personal violence; when his previous patience, moderation, and endurance, were considered, the generosity of the english audience was inclined to regard his crime as the wayward aberration of a false idea of honour rather than as flowing from a heart naturally savage, or perverted by habitual vice. i shall never forget the charge of the venerable judge to the jury, although not at that time liable to be much affected either by that which was eloquent or pathetic. ``we have had,'' he said, ``in the previous part of our duty,'' (alluding to some former trials,) ``to discuss crimes which infer disgust and abhorrence, while they call down the well-merited vengeance of the law. it is now our still more melancholy task to apply its salutary though severe enactments to a case of a very singular character, in which the crime (for a crime it is, and a deep one) arose less out of the malevolence of the heart, than the error of the understanding---less from any idea of committing wrong, than from an unhappily perverted notion of that which is right. here we have two men, highly esteemed, it has been stated, in their rank of life, and attached, it seems, to each other as friends, one of whose lives has been already sacrificed to a punctilio, and the other is about to prove the vengeance of the offended laws; and yet both may claim our commiseration at least, as men acting in ignorance of each other's national prejudices, and unhappily misguided rather than voluntarily erring from the path of right conduct. ``in the original cause of the misunderstanding, we must in justice give the right to the prisoner at the bar. he had acquired possession of the enclosure, which was the object of competition, by a legal contract with the proprietor mr ireby; and yet, when accosted with reproaches undeserved in themselves, and galling doubtless to a temper at least sufficiently susceptible of passion, he offered notwithstanding to yield up half his acquisition, for the sake of peace and good neighbourhood, and his amicable proposal was rejected with scorn. then follows the scene at mr heskett the publican's, and you will observe how the stranger was treated by the deceased, and, i am sorry to observe, by those around, who seem to have urged him in a manner which was aggravating in the highest degree. while he asked for peace and for composition, and offered submission to a magistrate, or to a mutual arbiter, the prisoner was insulted by a whole company, who seem on this occasion to have forgotten the national maxim of `fair play;' and while attempting to escape from the place in peace, he was intercepted, struck down, and beaten to the effusion of his blood. ``gentlemen of the jury, it was with some impatience that i heard my learned brother, who opened the case for the crown, give an unfavourable turn to the prisoner's conduct on this occasion. he said the prisoner was afraid to encounter his antagonist in fair fight, or to submit to the laws of the ring; and that therefore, like a cowardly italian, he had recourse to his fatal stiletto, to murder the man whom he dared not meet in manly encounter. i observed the prisoner shrink from this part of the accusation with the abhorrence natural to a brave man; and as i would wish to make my words impressive, when i point his real crime, i must secure his opinion of my impartiality, by rebutting every thing that seems to me a false accusation. there can be no doubt that the prisoner is a man of resolution---too much resolution---i wish to heaven that he had less, or rather that he had had a better education to regulate it. ``gentlemen, as to the laws my brother talks of, they may be known in the bull-ring, or the bear-garden, or the cockpit, but they are not known here. or, if they should be so far admitted as furnishing a species of proof that no malice was intended in this sort of combat, from which fatal accidents do sometimes arise, it can only be so admitted when both parties are _in pari casu_, equally acquainted with, and equally willing to refer themselves to, that species of arbitrement. but will it be contended that a man of superior rank and education is to be subjected, or is obliged to subject himself, to this coarse and brutal strife, perhaps in opposition to a younger, stronger, or more skilful opponent? certainly even the pugilistic code, if founded upon the fair play of merry old england, as my brother alleges it to be, can contain nothing so preposterous. and, gentlemen of the jury, if the laws would support an english gentleman, wearing, we will suppose, his sword, in defending himself by force against a violent personal aggression of the nature offered to this prisoner, they will not less protect a foreigner and a stranger, involved in the same unpleasing circumstances. if, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, when thus pressed by a _vis major_, the object of obloquy to a whole company, and of direct violence from one at least, and, as he might reasonably apprehend, from more, the panel had produced the weapon which his countrymen, as we are informed, generally carry about their persons, and the same unhappy circumstance had ensued which you have heard detailed in evidence, i could not in my conscience have asked from you a verdict of murder. the prisoner's personal defence might indeed, even in that case, have gone more or less beyond the _moderamen inculpat<ae> tutel<ae>_, spoken of by lawyers, but the punishment incurred would have been that of manslaughter, not of murder. i beg leave to add, that i should have thought this milder species of charge was demanded in the case supposed, notwithstanding the statute of james i. cap. 8, which takes the case of slaughter by stabbing with a short weapon, even without malice prepense, out of the benefit of clergy. for this statute of stabbing, as it is termed, arose out of a temporary cause; and as the real guilt is the same, whether the slaughter be committed by the dagger, or by sword or pistol, the benignity of the modern law places them all on the same, or nearly the same footing. ``but, gentlemen of the jury, the pinch of the case lies in the interval of two hours interposed betwixt the reception of the injury and the fatal retaliation. in the heat of affray and _chaude mel<e'>e_, law, compassionating the infirmities of humanity, makes allowance for the passions which rule such a stormy moment---for the sense of present pain, for the apprehension of further injury, for the difficulty of ascertaining with due accuracy the precise degree of violence which is necessary to protect the person of the individual, without annoying or injuring the assailant more than is absolutely necessary. but the time necessary to walk twelve miles, however speedily performed, was an interval sufficient for the prisoner to have recollected himself; and the violence with which he carried his purpose into effect, with so many circumstances of deliberate determination, could neither be induced by the passion of anger, nor that of fear. it was the purpose and the act of predetermined revenge, for which law neither can, will, nor ought to have sympathy or allowance. ``it is true, we may repeat to ourselves, in alleviation of this poor man's unhappy action, that his case is a very peculiar one. the country which he inhabits was, in the days of many now alive, inaccessible to the laws, not only of england, which have not even yet penetrated thither, but to those to which our neighbours of scotland are subjected, and which must be supposed to be, and no doubt actually are, founded upon the general principles of justice and equity which pervade every civilized country. amongst their mountains, as among the north american indians, the various tribes were wont to make war upon each other, so that each man was obliged to go armed for his own protection. these men, from the ideas which they entertained of their own descent and of their own consequence, regarded themselves as so many cavaliers or men-at-arms, rather than as the peasantry of a peaceful country. those laws of the ring, as my brother terms them, were unknown to the race of warlike mountaineers; that decision of quarrels by no other weapons than those which nature has given every man, must to them have seemed as vulgar and as preposterous as to the noblesse of france. revenge, on the other hand, must have been as familiar to their habits of society as to those of the cherokees or mohawks. it is indeed, as described by bacon, at bottom a kind of wild untutored justice; for the fear of retaliation must withhold the hands of the oppressor where there is no regular law to check daring violence. but though all this may be granted, and though we may allow that, such having been the case of the highlands in the days of the prisoner's fathers, many of the opinions and sentiments must still continue to influence the present generation, it cannot, and ought not, even in this most painful case, to alter the administration of the law, either in your hands, gentlemen of the jury, or in mine. the first object of civilisation is to place the general protection of the law, equally administered, in the room of that wild justice, which every man cut and carved for himself, according to the length of his sword and the strength of his arm. the law says to the subjects, with a voice only inferior to that of the deity, `vengeance is mine.' the instant that there is time for passion to cool, and reason to interpose, an injured party must become aware that the law assumes the exclusive cognisance of the right and wrong betwixt the parties, and opposes her inviolable buckler to every attempt of the private party to right himself. i repeat, that this unhappy man ought personally to be the object rather of our pity than our abhorrence, for he failed in his ignorance, and from mistaken notions of honour. but his crime is not the less that of murder, gentlemen, and, in your high and important office, it is your duty so to find. englishmen have their angry passions as well as scots; and should this man's action remain unpunished, you may unsheath, under various pretences, a thousand daggers betwixt the land's-end and the orkneys.'' the venerable judge thus ended what, to judge by his apparent emotion, and by the tears which filled his eyes, was really a painful task. the jury, according to his instructions, brought in a verdict of guilty; and robin oig m`combich, _alias_ mcgregor, was sentenced to death, and left for execution, which took place accordingly. he met his fate with great firmness, and acknowledged the justice of his sentence. but he repelled indignantly the observations of those who accused him of attacking an unarmed man. ``i give a life for the life i took,'' he said, ``and what can i do more?''* * note a. robert donn's poems [9. the two drovers notes] note to chapter ii. note a.---robert donn's poems. i cannot dismiss this story without resting attention for a moment on the light which has been thrown on the character of the highland drover since the time of its first appearance, by the account of a drover poet, by name robert mackay, or, as he was commonly called, rob donn, i.e. brown robert, and certain specimens of his talents, published in the 90th number of the quarterly review. the picture which that paper gives of the habits and feelings of a class of persons with which the general reader would be apt to associate no ideas but those of wild superstition and rude manners, is in the highest degree interesting; and i cannot resist the temptation of quoting two of the songs of this hitherto unheard of poet of humble life. they are thus introduced by the reviewer:-- ``upon one occasion, it seems, rob's attendance upon his master's cattle business detained him a whole year from home, and at his return he found that a fair maiden, to whom his troth had been plighted of yore, had lost sight of her vows, and was on the eve of being married to a rival, (a carpenter by trade,) who had profited by the young drover's absence. the following song was composed during a sleepless night, in the neighbourhood of creiff, in perthshire, and the home sickness which it expresses appears to be almost as much that of the deer-hunter as of the loving swain. `_easy in my bed, it is easy, but it is not to sleep that i incline: the wind whistles northwards, northwards, and my thoughts move with it_. more pleasant were it to be with thee in the little glen of calves, than to be counting of droves in the enclosures of creiff. _easy is my bed, &c_ 'great is my esteem of the maiden, towards whose dwelling the north wind blows; she is ever cheerful, sportive, kindly, without folly, without vanity, without pride. true is her heart---were i under hiding, and fifty men in pursuit of my footsteps, i should find protection, when they surrounded me most closely, in the secret recess of that shieling. _easy is my bed, &c_ 'oh for the day for turning my face homeward, that i may see the maiden of beauty:-- joyful will it be to me to be with thee,-- fair girl with the long heavy locks! choice of all places for deer-hunting are the brindled rock and the ridge! how sweat at evening to be dragging the slain deer downwards along the piper's cairn! _easy is my bed, &c_ 'great is my esteem for the maiden! who parted from me by the west side of the enclosed field; late yet again will she linger in that fold, long after the kine are assembled. it is i myself who have taken no dislike to thee, though far away from thee am i now. it is for the thought of thee that sleep flies from me; great is the profit to me of thy parting kiss! _easy is my bed, &c_ `dear to me are the boundaries of the forest; far from creiff is my heart; my remembrance is of the hillocks of sheep, and the hath of many knolls. oh for the red-streaked fissures of the rock, where in spring time, the fawns leap; oh for the crags towards which the wind is blowing-- cheap would be my bed to be there! _easy is my bed, &c_ ``the following describes rob's feelings on the first discovery of his damsel's infidelity. the airs of both these pieces are his own, and, the highland ladies say, very beautiful. `heavy to me is the shieling, and the hum that is in it, since the ear that was wont to listen is now no more on the watch. where is isabel, the courteous, the conversable, a sister in kindness? where is anne, the slender-browed, the turret-breasted, whose glossy hair pleased me when yet a boy? _heich! what an hour was my returning! pain such as that sunset brought, what availeth me to tell it?_ `i traversed the fold, and upward among the trees-- each place, far and near, wherein i was wont to salute my love. when i looked down from the crag, and beheld the fair-haired stranger dallying with his bride, i wished i had never revisited the glen of my dreams. _such things came into my heart as that sun was going down. a pain of which i shall never be rid, what availeth me to tell it?_ `since it has been heard that the carpenter had persuaded thee, my sleep is disturbed---busy is foolishness within me at midnight. the kindness that has been between us,---i cannot shake off that memory in visions; thou callest me not to thy side; but love is to me for a messenger. _there is strife within me, and i toss to be at liberty; and ever closer it clings, and the delusion is growing to me as a tree._ `anne, yellow-haired daughter of donald, surely thou knowest not how it is with me-- that it is old love, unrepaid, which has worn down from me my strength; that when far from thee, beyond many mountains, the wound in my heart was throbbing, stirring, and searching for ever, as when i sat beside thee on the turf. _now, then, hear me this once, if for ever i am to be without thee, my spirit is broken--give me one kiss ere i leave this land!_ `haughtily and scornfully the maid looked upon me; never will it be work for thy fingers to unloose the band from my curls; thou hast been absent a twelwemonth, and six were seeking me diligently; was thy superiority so high, that there should be no end of abiding for thee? _ha! ha! ha!---hast thou at last become sick? is it love that is give death to thee? surely the enemy has been in no haste._ `but how shall i hate thee, even though towards me thou hast become cold? when my discourse is most angry concerning thy name in thine absence, of sudden thine image, with its old dearness, comes visibly into my mind; and a secret voice whispers that love will yet prevail! _and i become surety for it anew, darling, and it springs up at that hour lofty as a tower._' ``rude and bald as these things appear in a verbal translation, and rough as they might possibly appear, even were the originals intelligible, we confess we are disposed to think they would of themselves justify dr mackay (their editor) in placing this herdsman-lover among the true sons of song.''--_quarterly review, no. xc. july 1831_. [10. the surgeon's daughter introduction] introduction to the surgeon's daughter. the tale of the surgeon's daughter formed part of the second series of chronicles of the canongate, published in 1827; but has been separated from the stories of the highland widow, &c., which it originally accompanied, and deferred to the close of this collection, for reasons which printers and publishers will understand, and which would hardly interest the general reader. the author has nothing to say now in reference to this little novel, but that the principal incident on which it turns, was narrated to him one morning at breakfast by his worthy friend, mr train, of castle douglas, in galloway, whose kind assistance he has so often had occasion to acknowledge in the course of these prefaces; and that the military friend who is alluded to as having furnished him with some information as to eastern matters, was colonel james ferguson of huntly burn, one of the sons of the venerable historian and philosopher of that name---which name he took the liberty of concealing under its gaelic form of macerries. w. s. abbotsford, _sept_. 1831. appendix to introduction. [mr train was requested by sir walter scott to give him in writing the story as nearly as possible in the shape in which he had told it; but the following narrative, which he drew up accordingly, did not reach abbotsford until july 1832.] in the old stock of fife, there was not perhaps an individual whose exertions were followed by consequences of such a remarkable nature as those of davie duff, popularly called ``the thane of fife,'' who, from a very humble parentage, rose to fill one of the chairs of the magistracy of his native burgh. by industry and economy in early life, he obtained the means of erecting, solely on his own account, one of those ingenious manufactories for which fifeshire is justly celebrated. from the day on which the industrious artisan first took his seat at the council board, he attended so much to the interests of the little privileged community that civic honours were conferred on him as rapidly as the set of the royalty* could legally admit. * the constitution of the borough. to have the right of walking to church on holyday, preceded by a phalanx of halberdiers, in habiliments fashioned as in former times, seems, in the eyes of many a guild brother, to be a very enviable pitch of worldly grandeur. few persons were ever more proud of civic honours than the thane of fife, but he knew well how to turn his political influence to the best account. the council, court, and other business of the burgh, occupied much of his time, which caused him to intrust the management of his manufactory to a near relation whose name was d*******, a young man of dissolute habits; but the thane, seeing at last, that by continuing that extravagant person in that charge, his affairs would, in all probability, fall into a state of bankruptcy, applied to the member of parliament for that district to obtain a situation for his relation in the civil department of the state. the knight, whom it is here unnecessary to name, knowing how effectually the thane ruled the little burgh, applied in the proper quarter, and actually obtained an appointment for d******* in the civil service of the east india company. a respectable surgeon, whose residence was in a neighbouring village, had a beautiful daughter named emma, who had long been courted by d*******. immediately before his departure to india, as a mark of mutual affection, they exchanged miniatures, taken by an eminent artist in fife, and each set in a locket, for the purpose of having the object of affection always in view. the eyes of the old thane were now turned towards hindostan with much anxiety; but his relation had not long arrived in that distant quarter of the globe before he had the satisfaction of receiving a letter, conveying the welcome intelligence of his having taken possession of his new station in a large frontier town of the company's dominions, and that great emoluments were attached to the situation; which was confirmed by several subsequent communications of the most gratifying description to the old thane, who took great pleasure in spreading the news of the reformed habits and singular good fortune of his intended heir. none of all his former acquaintances heard with such joy the favourable report of the successful adventurer in the east, as did the fair and accomplished daughter of the village surgeon; but his previous character caused her to keep her own correspondence with him secret from her parents, to whom even the circumstance of her being acquainted with d******* was wholly unknown, till her father received a letter from him, in which he assured him of his attachment to emma long before his departure from fife; that having been so happy as to gain her affections, he would have made her his wife before leaving his. native country, had he then had the means of supporting her in a suitable rank through life; and that, having it now in his power to do so, he only waited the consent of her parents to fulfil the vow he had formerly made. the doctor, having a large family, with a very limited income to support them, and understanding that d******* had at last become a person of sober and industrious habits, he gave his consent, in which emma's mother fully concurred. aware of the straitened circumstances of the doctor, d******* remitted a sum of money to complete at edinburgh emma's oriental education, and fit her out in her journey to india; she was to embark at sheerness, on board one of the company's ships, for a port in india, at which place, he said, he would wait her arrival, with a retinue suited to a person of his rank in society. emma set out from her father's house just in time to secure a passage, as proposed by her intended husband, accompanied by her only brother, who, on their arrival at sheerness, met one c******, an old schoolfellow, captain of the ship by which emma was to proceed to india. it was the particular desire of the doctor that his daughter should be committed to the care of that gentleman, from the time of her leaving the shores of britain, till the intended marriage ceremony was duly performed on her arrival in india; a charge that was frankly undertaken by the generous sea-captain. on the arrival of the fleet at the appointed port, d*******, with a large cavalcade of mounted pindarees, was, as expected, in attendance, ready to salute emma on landing, and to carry her direct into the interior of the country. c******, who had made several voyages to the shores of hindostan, knowing something of hindoo manners and customs, was surprised to see a private individual in the company's service with so many attendants; and when d******* declined having the marriage ceremony performed, according to the rites of the church, till he returned to the place of his abode, c******, more and more confirmed in his suspicion that all was not right, resolved not to part with emma, till he had fulfilled, in the most satisfactory manner, the promise he had made before leaving england, of giving her duly away in marriage. not being able by her entreaties to alter the resolution of d*******, emma solicited her protector c****** to accompany her to the place of her intended destination, to which he most readily agreed, taking with him as many of his crew as he deemed sufficient to ensure the safe custody of his innocent proteg<e'>e, should any attempt be made to carry her away by force. both parties journeyed onwards till they arrived at a frontier town, where a native rajah was waiting the arrival of the fair maid of fife, with whom he had fallen deeply in love, from seeing her miniature likeness in the possession of d*******, to whom he had paid a large sum of money for the original, and had only intrusted him to convey her in state to the seat of his government. no sooner was this villainous action of d******* known to c******, than he communicated the whole particulars to the commanding officer of a regiment of scotch highlanders that happened to be quartered in that part of india, begging at the same time, for the honour of caledonia, and protection of injured innocence, that he would use the means in his power, of resisting any attempt that might be made by the native chief to wrest from their hands the virtuous female who had been so shamefully decoyed from her native country by the worst of mankind. honour occupies too large a space in the heart of the gael to resist such a call of humanity. the rajah, finding his claim was not to be acceded to, and resolving to enforce the same, assembled his troops, and attacked with great fury the place where the affrighted emma was for a time secured by her countrymen, who fought in her defence with all their native valour, which at length so overpowered their assailants, that they were forced to retire in every direction, leaving behind many of their slain, among whom was found the mangled corpse of the perfidious d*******. c******* was immediately afterwards married to emma, and my informant assured me he saw them many years afterwards, living happily together in the county of kent, on the fortune bequeathed by the ``thane of fife.'' j. t. castle douglas _ july_, 1832. [11. the surgeon's daughter preface] the surgeon's daughter. mr croftangry's preface. indite, my muse, indite, subp<oe>na'd is thy lyre, the praises to requite which rules of court require. _probationary odes_. the concluding a literary undertaking, in whole or in part, is, to the inexperienced at least, attended with an irritating titillation, like that which attends on the healing of a wound---a prurient impatience, in short, to know what the world in general, and friends in particular, will say to our labours. some authors, i am told, profess an oyster-like indifference upon this subject; for my own part, i hardly believe in their sincerity. others may acquire it from habit; but in my poor opinion, a neophyte like myself must be for a long time incapable of such _sang froid_. frankly i was ashamed to feel how childishly i felt on the occasion. no person could have said prettier things than myself upon the importance of stoicism concerning the opinion of others, when their applause or censure refers to literary character only; and i had determined to lay my work before the public, with the same unconcern with which the ostrich lays her eggs in the sand, giving herself no farther trouble concerning the incubation, but leaving to the atmosphere to bring forth the young, or otherwise, as the climate shall serve. but though an ostrich in theory, i became in practice a poor hen, who has no sooner made her deposit, but she runs cackling about, to call the attention of every one to the wonderful work which she has performed. as soon as i became possessed of my first volume, neatly stitched up and boarded, my sense of the necessity of communicating with some one became ungovernable. janet was inexorable, and seemed already to have tired of my literary confidence; for whenever i drew near the subject, after evading it as long as she could, she made, under some pretext or other, a bodily retreat to the kitchen or the cockloft, her own peculiar and inviolate domains. my publisher would have been a natural resource; but he understands his business too well, and follows it too closely, to desire to enter into literary discussions, wisely considering, that he who has to sell books has seldom leisure to read them. then my acquaintance, now that i have lost mrs bethune baliol, are of that distant and accidental kind, to whom i had not face enough to communicate the nature of my uneasiness, and who probably would only have laughed at me had i made any attempt to interest them in my labours. reduced thus to a sort of despair, i thought of my friend and man of business mr fairscribe. his habits, it was true, were not likely to render him indulgent to light literature, and, indeed, i had more than once noticed his daughters, and especially my little songstress, whip into her reticule what looked very like a circulating library volume, as soon as her father entered the room. still he was not only my assured, but almost my only friend, and i had little doubt that he would take ail interest in the volume for the sake of the author, which the work itself might fail to inspire. i sent him, therefore, the book, carefully scaled up, with an intimation that i requested the favour of his opinion upon the contents, of which i affected to talk in the depreciatory style, which calls for point-blank contradiction, if your correspondent possess a grain of civility. this communication took place on a monday, and i daily expected (what i was ashamed to anticipate by volunteering my presence, however sure of a welcome) an invitation to eat an egg, as was my friend's favourite phrase, or a card to drink tea with misses fairscribe, or a provocation to breakfast, at least, with my hospitable friend and benefactor, and to talk over the contents of my enclosure. but the hours and days passed on from monday till saturday, and i had no acknowledgment whatever that my packet had reached its destination. ``this is very unlike my good friend's punctuality,'' thought i; and having again and again vexed james, my male attendant, by a close examination concerning the time, place, and delivery, i had only to strain my imagination to conceive reasons for my friend's silence. sometimes i thought that his opinion of the work had proved so unfavourable, that he was averse to hurt my feelings by communicating it---sometimes, that, escaping his hands to whom it was destined, it had found its way into his writing-chamber, and was become the subject of criticism to his smart clerks and conceited apprentices. ``'sdeath!'' thought i, ``if i were sure of this, i would------'' ``and what would you do?'' said reason, after a few moments' reflection. ``you are ambitious of introducing your book into every writing and reading chamber in edinburgh, and yet you take fire at the thoughts of its being criticised by mr fairscribe's young people? be a little consistent, for shame.'' ``i will be consistent,'' said i doggedly; ``but for all that, i will call on mr fairscribe this evening.'' i hastened my dinner, donn'd my great-coat, (for the evening threatened rain,) and went to mr fairscribe's house. the old domestic opened the door cautiously, and before i asked the question, said, ``mr fairscribe is at home, sir; but it is sunday night.'' recognising, however, my face and voice, he opened the door wider, admitted me, and conducted me to the parlour, where i found mr fairscribe and the rest of his family engaged in listening to a sermon by the late mr walker of edinburgh,* which was read by miss catherine * [robert walker, the colleague and rival of dr hugh blair, in st giles's church, edinburgh.] with unusual distinctness, simplicity, and judgment. welcomed as a friend of the house, i had nothing for it but to take my seat quietly, and making a virtue of necessity, endeavour to derive my share of the benefit arising from an excellent sermon. but i am afraid mr walker's force of logic and precision of expression were somewhat lost upon me. i was sensible i had chosen an improper time to disturb mr fairscribe, and when the discourse was ended, i rose to take my leave, somewhat hastily, i believe. ``a cup of tea, mr croftangry?'' said the young lady. ``you will wait and take part of a presbyterian supper?'' said mr fairscribe.---``nine o'clock---i make it a point of keeping my father's hours on sunday at e'en. perhaps dr -----[naming an excellent clergyman] may look in.'' i made my apology for declining his invitation; and i fancy my unexpected appearance, and hasty retreat, had rather surprised my friend, since, instead of accompanying me to the door, he conducted me into his own apartment. ``what is the matter,'' he said, ``mr croftangry? this is not a night for secular business, but if any thing sudden or extraordinary has happened------'' ``nothing in the world,'' said i, forcing myself upon confession, as the best way of clearing myself out of the scrape,---``only---only i sent you a little parcel, and as you are so regular in acknowledging letters and communications, i---i thought it might have miscarried---that's all.'' my friend laughed heartily, as if he saw into and enjoyed my motives and my confusion. ``safe? ---it came safe enough,'' he said. ``the wind of the world always blows its vanities into haven. but this is the end of the session, when i have little time to read any thing printed except inner-house papers; yet if you will take your kail with us next saturday, i will glance over your work, though i am sure i am no competent judge of such matters.'' with this promise i was fain to take my leave, not without half persuading myself that if once the phlegmatic lawyer began my lucubrations, he would not be able to rise from them till he had finished the perusal, nor to endure an interval betwixt his reading the last page, and requesting an interview with the author. no such marks of impatience displayed themselves. time, blunt or keen, as my friend joanna says, swift or leisurely, held his course; and on the appointed saturday, i was at the door precisely as it struck four. the dinner hour, indeed, was five punctually; but what did i know but my friend might want half an hour's conversation with me before that time? i was ushered into an empty drawing-room, and, from a needle-book and work-basket, hastily abandoned, i had some reason to think i interrupted my little friend, miss katie, in some domestic labour more praiseworthy than elegant. in this critical age, filial piety must hide herself in a closet, if she has a mind to darn her father's linen. shortly after, i was the more fully convinced that i had been too early an intruder, when a wench came to fetch away the basket, and recommend to my courtesies a red and green gentleman in a cage, who answered all my advances by croaking out, ``you're a fool---you're a fool, i tell you!'' until, upon my word, i began to think the creature was in the right. at last my friend arrived, a little overheated. he had been taking a turn at golf, to prepare him for ``colloquy sublime.'' and wherefore not? since the game, with its variety of odds, lengths, bunkers, teed balls, and so on may be no inadequate representation of the hazards attending literary pursuits. in particular, those formidable buffets, which make one ball spin through the air like a rifle-shot, and strike another down into the very earth it is placed upon, by the maladroitness or the malicious purpose of the player--what are they but parallels to the favourable or depreciating notices of the reviewers, who play at golf with the publications of the season, even as altisidora, in her approach to the gates of the infernal regions, saw the devils playing at racket with the new books of cervantes' days. well, every hour has its end. five o'clock came, and my friend, with his daughters, and his handsome young son, who, though fairly buckled to the desk, is every now and then looking over his shoulder at a smart uniform, set seriously about satisfying the corporeal wants of nature; while i, stimulated by a nobler appetite after fame, wished that the touch of a magic wand could, without all the ceremony of picking and choosing, carving and slicing, masticating and swallowing, have transported a _quantum sufficit_ of the good things on my friend's hospitable board, into the stomachs of those who surrounded it, to be there at leisure converted into chyle, while their thoughts were turned on higher matters. at length all was over. but the young ladies sat still, and talked of the music of the freischutz, for nothing else was then thought of; so we discussed the wild hunters' song, and the tame hunters' song, &c. &c. in all which my young friends were quite at home. luckily for me, all this horning and hooping drew on some allusion to the seventh hussars, which gallant regiment, i observe, is a more favourite theme with both miss catherine and her brother than with my old friend, who presently looked at his watch, and said something significantly to mr james about office hours. the youth got up with the ease of a youngster that would be thought a man of fashion rather than of business, and endeavoured, with some success, to walk out of the room, as if the locomotion was entirely voluntary; miss catherine and her sisters left us at the same time, and now, thought i, my trial comes on. reader, did you ever, in the course of your life, cheat the courts of justice and lawyers, by agreeing to refer a dubious and important question to the decision of a mutual friend? if so, you may have remarked the relative change which the arbiter undergoes in your estimation, when raised, though by your own free choice, from an ordinary acquaintance, whose opinions were of as little consequence to you as yours to him, into a superior personage, on whose decision your fate must depend _pro tanto_, as my friend mr fairscribe would say. his looks assume a mysterious if not a minatory expression; his hat has a loftier air, and his wig, if he wears one, a more formidable buckle. i felt, accordingly, that my good friend fairscribe, on the present occasion, had acquired something of a similar increase of consequence. but a week since, he had, in my opinion, been indeed an excellent-meaning man, perfectly competent to every thing within his own profession, but immured at the same time among its forms and technicalities, and as incapable of judging of matters of taste as any mighty goth whatsoever, of or belonging to the ancient senate house of scotland. but what of that? i had made him my judge by my own election; and i have often observed that an idea of declining such a reference, on account of his own consciousness of incompetency, is, as it perhaps ought to be, the last which occurs to the referee himself. he that has a literary work subjected to his judgment by the author, immediately throws his mind into a critical attitude, though the subject be one which he never before thought of. no doubt the author is well qualified to select his own judge, and why should the arbiter whom he has chosen doubt his own talents for condemnation or acquittal, since he has been doubtless picked out by his friend, from his indubitable reliance on their competence? surely the man who wrote the production is likely to know the person best qualified to judge of it. whilst these thoughts crossed my brain, i kept my eyes fixed on my good friend, whose motions appeared unusually tardy to me, while he ordered a bottle of particular claret, decanted it with scrupulous accuracy with his own hand, caused his old domestic to bring a saucer of olives, and chips of toasted bread, and thus, on hospitable thoughts intent, seemed to me to adjourn the discussion which i longed to bring on, yet feared to precipitate. ``he is dissatisfied,'' thought i, ``and is ashamed to show it, afraid doubtless of hurting my feelings. what had i to do to talk to him about any thing save charters and sasines?---stay, he is going to begin.'' ``we are old fellows now, mr croftangry,'' said my landlord; ``scarcely so fit to take a poor quart of claret between us, as we would have been in better days to take a pint, in the old scottish liberal acceptation of the phrase. maybe you would have liked me to have kept james to help us. but if it is not on a holyday or so, i think it is best he should observe office hours.'' here the discourse was about to fall. i relieved it by saying, mr james was at the happy time of life, when he had better things to do than to sit over the bottle. ``i suppose,'' said i, ``your son is a reader.'' ``um---yes---james may be called a reader in a sense; but i doubt there is little solid in his studies ---poetry and plays, mr croftangry, all nonsense--they set his head a-gadding after the army, when he should be minding his business.'' ``i suppose, then, that romances do not find much more grace in your eyes than dramatic and poetical compositions?'' ``deil a bit, deil a bit, mr croftangry, nor historical productions either. there is too much fighting in history, as if men only were brought into this world to send one another out of it. it nourishes false notions of our being, and chief and proper end, mr croftangry.'' still all this was general, and i became determined to bring our discourse to a focus. ``i am afraid, then, i have done very ill to trouble you with my idle manuscripts, mr fairscribe; but you must do me the justice to remember, that i had nothing better to do than to amuse myself by writing the sheets i put into your hands the other day. i may truly plead-- `i left no calling for this idle trade.' '' ``i cry your mercy, mr croftangry,'' said my old friend, suddenly recollecting---``yes, yes, i have been very rude; but i had forgotten entirely that you had taken a spell yourself at that idle man's trade.'' ``i suppose,'' replied i, ``you, on your side, have been too _busy_ a man to look at my poor chronicles?'' ``no, no,'' said my friend, ``i am not so bad as that neither. i have read them bit by bit, just as i could get a moment's time, and i believe i shall very soon get through them.'' ``well, my good friend?'' said 1, interrogatively. and ``_well_, mr croftangry,'' cried he, ``i really think you have got over the ground very tolerably well. i have noted down here two or three bits of things, which i presume to be errors of the press, otherwise it might be alleged, perhaps, that you did not fully pay that attention to the grammatical rules which one would desire to see rigidly observed.'' i looked at my friend's notes, which, in fact, showed, that in one or two grossly obvious passages, i had left uncorrected such solecisms in grammar. ``well, well, i own my fault; but, setting apart these casual errors, how do you like the matter and the manner of what i have been writing, mr fairscribe?'' ``why,'' said my friend, pausing, with more grave and important hesitation than i thanked him for, ``there is not much to be said against the manner. the style is terse and intelligible, mr croftangry, very intelligible; and that i consider as the first point in every thing that is intended to be understood. there are, indeed, here and there some flights and fancies, which i comprehended with difficulty; but i got to your meaning at last. there are people that are like ponies; their judgments cannot go fast, but they go sure.'' ``that is a pretty clear proposition, my friend; but then how did you like the meaning when you did get at it? or was that, like some ponies, too difficult to catch, and, when catched, not worth the trouble?'' ``i am far from saying that, my dear sir, in respect it would be downright uncivil; but since you ask my opinion, i wish you could have thought about something more appertaining to civil policy, than all this bloody work about shooting and dirking, and downright hanging. i am told it was the germans who first brought in such a practice of choosing their heroes out of the porteous roll;* * list of criminal indictments, so termed in scotland. but, by my faith, we are like to be upsides with them. the first was, as i am credibly informed, mr scolar, as they call him; a scholar-like piece of work he has made of it, with his robbers and thieves.'' ``schiller,'' said i, ``my dear sir, let it be schiller.'' ``shiller, or what you like,'' said mr fairscribe; ``i found the book where i wish i had found a better one, and that is, in kate's work-basket. i sat down, and, like an old fool, began to read; but there, i grant, you have the better of schiller, mr croftangry.'' ``i should be glad, my dear sir, that you really think i have _approached_ that admirable author; even your friendly partiality ought not to talk of my having _excelled_ him.'' ``but i do say you have excelled him, mr croftangry, in a most material particular. for surely a book of amusement should be something that one can take up and lay down at pleasure; and i can say justly, i was never at the least loss to put aside these sheets of yours when business came in the way. but, faith, this shiller, sir, does not let you off so easily, i forgot one appointment on particular business, and i wilfully broke through another, that i might stay at home and finish his confounded book, which, after all, is about two brothers, the greatest rascals i ever heard of. the one, sir, goes near to murder his own father, and the other (which you would think still stranger) sets about to debauch his own wife.'' ``i find, then, mr fairscribe, that you have no taste for the romance of real life, no pleasure in contemplating those spirit-rousing impulses, which force men of fiery passions upon great crimes and great virtues?'' ``why, as to that, i am not just so sure. but then, to mend the matter,'' continued the critic, ``you have brought in highlanders into every story, as if you were going back again, _velis et remis_, into the old days of jacobitism. i must speak my plain mind, mr croftangry. i cannot tell what innovations in kirk and state may be now proposed, but our fathers were friends to both, as they were settled at the glorious revolution, and liked a tartan plaid as little as they did a white surplice. i wish to heaven, all this tartan fever bode well to the protestant succession and the kirk of scotland.'' ``both too well settled, i hope, in the minds of the subject,'' said i, ``to be affected by old remembrances, on which we look back as on the portraits of our ancestors, without recollecting, while we gaze on them, any of the feuds by which the originals were animated while alive. but most happy should i be to light upon any topic to supply the place of the highlands, mr fairscribe. i have been just reflecting that the theme is becoming a little exhausted, and your experience may perhaps supply---'' ``ha, ha, ha---my experience supply!'' interrupted mr fairscribe, with a laugh of derision. ``why, you might as well ask my son james's experience to supply a case about thirlage. no, no, my good friend, i have lived by the law, and in the law, all my life, and when you seek the impulses that make soldiers desert and shoot their sergeants and corporals, and highland drovers dirk english graziers, to prove themselves men of fiery passions, it is not to a man like me you should come. i could tell you some tricks of my own trade, perhaps, and a queer story or two of estates that have been lost and recovered. but, to tell you the truth, i think you might do with your muse of fiction, as you call her, as many an honest man does with his own sons in flesh and blood.'' ``and how is that, my dear sir?'' ``send her to india, to be sure. that is the true place for a scot to thrive in; and if you carry your story fifty years back, as there is nothing to hinder you, you will find as much shooting and stabbing there as ever was in the wild highlands. if you want rogues, as they are so much in fashion with you, you have that gallant caste of adventurers, who laid down their consciences at the cape of good hope as they went out to india, and forgot to take them up again when they returned. then for great exploits, you have in the old history of india, before europeans were numerous there, the most wonderful deeds, done by the least possible means, that perhaps the annals of the world can afford.'' ``i know it,'' said i, kindling at the ideas his speech inspired. ``i remember in the delightful pages of orme, the interest which mingles in his narratives, from the very small number of english which are engaged. each officer of a regiment becomes known to you by name, nay, the non-commissioned officers and privates acquire an individual share of interest. they are distinguished among the natives like the spaniards among the mexicans. what do i say? they are like homer's demigods among the warring mortals. men, like clive and caillaud, influenced great events, like jove himself. inferior officers are like mars or neptune, and the sergeants and corporals might well pass for demigods. then the various religious costumes, habits, and manners of the people of hindustan,---the patient hindhu, the warlike rajahpoot, the haughty moslemah, the savage and vindictive malay---glorious and unbounded subjects! the only objection is, that i have never been there, and know nothing at all about them.'' ``nonsense, my good friend. you will tell us about them all the better that you know nothing of what you are saying; and come, we'll finish the bottle, and when katie (her sisters go to the assembly) has given us tea, she will tell you the outline of the story of poor menie gray, whose picture you will see in the drawing-room, a distant relation of my father's, who had, however, a handsome part of cousin menie's succession. there are none living that can be hurt by the story now, though it was thought best to smother it up at the time, as indeed even the whispers about it led poor cousin menie to live very retired. i mind her well when a child. there was something very gentle, but rather tiresome, about poor cousin menie.'' when we came into the drawing-room, my friend pointed to a picture which i had before noticed, without, however, its having attracted more than a passing look; now i regarded it with more attention. it was one of those portraits of the middle of the eighteenth century, in which artists endeavoured to conquer the stiffness of hoops and brocades, by throwing a fancy drapery around the figure, with loose folds like a mantle or dressing gown, the stays, however, being retained, and the bosom displayed in a manner which shows that our mothers, like their daughters, were as liberal of their charms as the nature of their dress might permit. to this, the well-known style of the period, the features and form of the individual added, at first sight, little interest. it represented a handsome woman of about thirty, her hair wound simply about her head, her features regular, and her complexion fair. but on looking more closely, especially after having had a hint that the original had been the heroine of a tale, i could observe a melancholy sweetness in the countenance, that seemed to speak of woes endured, and injuries sustained, with that resignation which women can and do sometimes display under the insults and ingratitude of those on whom they have bestowed their affections. ``yes, she was an excellent and an ill-used woman,'' said mr fairscribe, his eye fixed like mine on the picture---``she left our family not less, i dare say, than five thousand pounds, and i believe she died worth four times that sum; but it was divided among the nearest of kin, which was all fair.'' ``but her history, mr fairscribe,'' said i---``to judge from her look, it must have been a melancholy one.'' ``you may say that, mr croftangry. melancholy enough, and extraordinary enough too--but,'' added he, swallowing in haste a cup of the tea which was presented to him, ``i must away to my business---we cannot be gowffing all the morning, and telling old stories all the afternoon. katie knows all the outs and the ins of cousin menie's adventures as well as i do, and when she has given you the particulars, then i am at your service, to condescend more articulately upon dates or particulars.'' well, here was i, a gay old bachelor, left to hear a love tale from my young friend katie fairscribe, who, when she is not surrounded by a bevy of gallants, at which time, to my thinking, she shows less to advantage, is as pretty, well behaved, and unaffected a girl as you see tripping the new walks of prince's street or heriot row. old bachelorship so decided as mine has its privileges in such a t<e^>te-<a`>-t<e^>te, providing you are, or can seem for the time, perfectly good-humoured and attentive, and do not ape the manners of your younger years, in attempting which you will only make yourself ridiculous. i don't pretend to be so indifferent to the company of a pretty young woman as was desired by the poet, who wished to sit beside his mistress ------``as unconcern'd, as when her infant beauty could beget nor happiness nor pain.'' on the contrary, i can look on beauty and innocence, as something of which i know and esteem the value, without the desire or hope to make them my own. a young lady can afford to talk with an old stager like me without either artifice or affectation; and we may maintain a species of friendship, the more tender, perhaps, because we are of different sexes, yet with which that distinction has very little to do. now, i hear my wisest and most critical neighbour remark, ``mr croftangry is in the way of doing a foolish thing. he is well to pass---old fairscribe knows to a penny what he is worth, and miss katie, with all her airs, may like the old brass that buys the new pan. i thought mr croftangry was looking very cadgy when he came in to play a rubber with us last night. poor gentleman, i am sure i should be sorry to see him make a fool of himself.'' spare your compassion, dear madam, there is not the least danger. the _beaux yeux de ma cassette_ are not brilliant enough to make amends for the spectacles which must supply the dimness of my own. i am a little deaf too, as you know to your sorrow when we are partners; and if i could get a nymph to marry me with all these imperfections, who the deuce would marry janet m`evoy? and from janet m`evoy chrystal croftangry will not part. miss katie fairscribe gave me the tale of menie gray with much taste and simplicity, not attempting to suppress the feelings, whether of grief or resentment, which justly and naturally arose from the circumstances of the tale. her father afterwards confirmed the principal outlines of the story, and furnished me with some additional circumstances which miss katie had suppressed or forgotten. indeed, i have learned on this occasion, what old lintot meant when he told pope, that he used to propitiate the critics of importance, when he had a work in the press, by now and then letting them see a sheet of the blotted proof, or a few leaves of the original manuscript. our mystery of authorship hath something about it so fascinating, that if you admit any one, however little he may previously have been disposed to such studies, into your confidence, you will find that he considers himself as a party interested, and, if success follows, will think himself entitled to no inconsiderable share of the praise. the reader has seen that no one could have been naturally less interested than was my excellent friend fairscribe in my lucubrations, which i first consulted him on the subject; but since he bas contributed a subject to the work, be has become a most zealous coadjutor; and half-ashamed, i believe, yet half-proud of the literary stock-company, in which he has got a share, he never meets me without jogging my elbow, and dropping some mysterious hints, as, ``i am saying---when will you give us any more of yon?''---or, ``yon's not a bad narrative---i like yon.'' pray heaven the reader may be of his opinion. [12. the surgeon's daughter] the surgeon's daughter. chapter 1. when fainting nature call'd for aid, and hovering death prepared the blow, his vigorous remedy display'd the power of art without the show; in misery's darkest caverns known, his useful care was ever nigh, where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan, and lonely want retired to die; no summons mock'd by cold delay, no petty gains disclaim'd by pride the modest wants of every day the toil of every day supplied. samuel johnson. the exquisitely beautiful portrait which the rambler has painted of his friend levett, well describes gideon gray, and many other village doctors, from whom scotland reaps more benefit and to whom she is perhaps more ungrateful, than to any other class of men, excepting her schoolmasters. such a rural man of medicine is usually the inhabitant of some petty borough or village, which forms the central point of his practice. but, besides attending to such cases as the village may afford, he is day and night at the service of every one who may command his assistance within a circle of forty miles in diameter, untraversed by roads in many directions, and including moors, mountains, rivers, and lakes. for late and dangerous journeys through an inaccessible country for services of the most essential kind, rendered at the expense, or risk at least, of his own health and life, the scottish village doctor receives at best a very moderate recompense, often one which is totally inadequate' and very frequently none whatsoever. he has none of the ample resources proper to the brothers of the profession in an english town. the burgesses of a scottish borough are rendered, by their limited means of luxury, inaccessible to gout, surfeits, and all the comfortable chronic diseases, which are attendant on wealth and indolence. four years, or so, of abstemiousness, enable them to stand an election dinner; and there is no hope of broken heads among a score or two of quiet electors, who settle the business over a table. there the mothers of the state never make a point of pouring, in the course of every revolving year, a certain quantity of doctor's stuff through the bowels of their beloved children. every old woman from the townhead to the townfit, can prescribe a dose of salts, or spread a plaster; and it is only when a fever or a palsy renders matters serious, that the assistance of the doctor is invoked by his neighbours in the borough. but still the man of science cannot complain of inactivity or want of practice. if he does not find patients at his door, he seeks them through a wide circle. like the ghostly lover of barger's leonora, he mounts at midnight, and traverses in darkness paths which, to those less accustomed to them, seem formidable in daylight, through straits where the slightest aberration would plunge him into a morass, or throw him over a precipice, on to cabins which his horse might ride over without knowing they lay in his way, unless he happened to fall through the roofs. when he arrives at such a stately termination of his journey, where his services are required, either to bring a wretch into the world, or prevent one from leaving it, the scene of misery is often such, that far from touching the hard-saved shillings which are gratefully offered to him, he bestows his medicines as well as his attendance--for charity. i have heard the celebrated traveller mungo park, who had experienced both courses of life, rather give the preference to travelling as a discoverer in africa, than to wandering by night and day the wilds of his native land in the capacity of a country medical practitioner. he mentioned having once upon a time rode forty miles, sat up all night, and successfully assisted a woman under influence of the primitive curse, for which his sole remuneration was a roasted potato and a drought of buttermilk. but his was not the heart which grudged the labour that relieved human misery. in short, there is no creature in scotland that works harder and is more poorly requited than the country doctor, unless perhaps it may be his horse. yet the horse is, and indeed must be, hardy, active, and indefatigable, in spite of a rough coat and indifferent condition; and so you will often find in his master, and an unpromising and blunt exterior, professional skill and enthusiasm, intelligence, humanity, courage, and science. mr gideon gray, surgeon in the village of middlemas, situated in one of the midland counties of scotland, led the rough, active, and ill-rewarded course of life which we have endeavoured to describe. he was a man between forty and fifty, devoted to his profession, and of such reputation in the medical world, that he had been more than once, as opportunities occurred, advised to exchange middlemas and its meagre circle of practice, for some of the larger towns in scotland, or for edinburgh itself. this advice he had always declined. he was a plain blunt man, who did not love restraint, and was unwilling to subject himself to that which was exacted in polite society. he had not himself found out, nor had any friend hinted to him, that a slight touch of the cynic, in manner and habits, gives the physician, to the common eye, an air of authority which greatly tends to enlarge his reputation. mr gray, or, as the country people called him, doctor gray, (he might hold the title by diploma for what i know, though he only claimed the rank of master of arts,) had few wants, and these were amply supplied by a professional income which generally approached two hundred pounds a-year, for which, upon an average, he travelled about five thousand miles on horseback in the course of the twelve months. nay, so liberally did this revenue support himself and his ponies, called pestle and mortar, which he exercised alternately, that he took a damsel to share it, jean watson, namely, the cherry-cheeked daughter of an honest farmer, who being herself one of twelve children, who had been brought up on an income of fourscore pounds a-year, never thought there could be poverty in more than double the sum; and looked on gray, though now termed by irreverent youth the old doctor, as a very advantageous match. for several years they had no children, and it seemed as if doctor gray, who had so often assisted the efforts of the goddess lucina, was never to invoke her in his own behalf. yet his domestic roof was, on a remarkable occasion, decreed to be the scene where the goddess's art was required. late of an autumn evening three old women might be observed plying their aged limbs through the single street of the village at middlemas towards the honoured door, which, fenced off from the vulgar causeway, was defended by a broken paling, enclosing two slips of ground, half arable, half overrun with an abortive attempt at shrubbery. the door itself was blazoned with the name of gideon gray, m.a. surgeon, &c. &c. some of the idle young fellows, who had been a minute or two before loitering at the other end of the street before the door of the alehouse, (for the pretended inn deserved no better name,) now accompanied the old dames with shouts of laughter, excited by their unwonted agility; and with bets on the winner, as loudly expressed as if they had been laid at the starting-post of middlemas races. ``half-a-mutchkin on luckie simson!''---``auld peg tamson against the field!''---``mair speed, alison jaup, ye'll take the wind out of them yet!''--``canny against the hill, lasses, or we may have a brusten auld carline amang ye!'' these, and a thousand such gibes, rent the air, without being noticed, or even heard, by the anxious racers, ---whose object of contention seemed to be, which should first reach the doctor's door. ``guide us, doctor, what can be the matter now?'' said mrs gray, whose character was that of a good-natured simpleton; ``here's peg tamson, jean simson, and alison jaup, running a race on the hie street of the burgh!'' the doctor, who had but the moment before hung his wet great-coat before the fire, (for he was just dismounted from a long journey,) hastened down stairs, auguring some new occasion for his services, and happy, that, from the character of the messengers, it was likely to be within burgh, and not landward. he had just reached the door as luckie simson, one of the racers, arrived in the little area before it. she had got the start, and kept it, but at the expense, for the time, of her power of utterance; for when she came in presence of the doctor, she stood blowing like a grampus, her loose toy flying back from her face, making the most violent efforts to speak, but without the power of uttering a single intelligible word. peg thomson whipped in before her. ``the leddy, sir, the leddy---'' ``instant help, instant help''---screeched, rather than uttered, alison jaup; while luckie simson, who had certainly won the race, found words to claim the prize which had set them all in motion. ``and i hope, sir, you will recommend me to be the sick-nurse; i was here to bring you the tidings lang before ony o' thae lazy queans.'' loud were the counter protestations of the two competitors, and loud the laugh of the idle loons who listened at a little distance. ``hold your tongue, ye flyting fools,'' said the doctor; ``and you, ye idle rascals, if i come out among you---``so saying he smacked his long-lashed whip with great emphasis, producing much the effect of the celebrated _quos ego_ of neptune, in the first <ae>neid. ``and now,'' said the doctor, ``where, or who, is this lady?'' the question was scarce necessary; for a plain carriage, with four horses, came at a foot's-pace towards the door of the doctor's house, and the old women, now more at their case, gave the doctor to understand that the gentleman thought the accommodation of the swan inn totally unfit for his lady's rank and condition, and had, by their advice, (each claiming the merit of the suggestion,) brought her here, to experience the hospitality of the _west-room_;--a spare apartment, in which dr gray occasionally accommodated such patients, as he desired to keep for a space of time under his own eye. there were two persons only in the vehicle. the one a gentleman in a riding dress, sprung out, and having received from the doctor an assurance that the lady would receive tolerable accommodation in his house, he lent assistance to his companion to leave the carriage, and with great apparent satisfaction, saw her safely deposited in a decent sleeping apartment, and under the respectable charge of the doctor and his lady, who assured him once more of every species of attention. to bind their promise more firmly, the stranger slipped a purse of twenty guineas (for this story chanced in the golden age) into the hand of the doctor, as an earnest of the most liberal recompense, and requested he would spare no expense in providing all that was necessary or desirable for a person in the lady's condition, and for the helpless being to, whom she might immediately be expected to give birth. he then said he would retire to the inn, where he begged a message might instantly acquaint him with the expected change in the lady's situation. ``she is of rank,'' he said, ``and a foreigner; let no expense be spared. we designed to have reached edinburgh, but were forced to turn off the road by an accident.'' once more he said, ``let no expense be spared, and manage that she may travel as soon as possible.'' ``that,'' said the doctor, ``is past my control. nature must not be hurried, and she avenges herself of every attempt to do so.'' ``but art,'' said the stranger, ``can do much,'' and he proffered a second purse, which seemed as heavy as the first. ``art,'' said the doctor, ``may be recompensed, but cannot be purchased. you have already paid me more than enough to take the utmost care i can of your lady; should i accept more money, it could only be for promising, by implication at least, what is beyond my power to perform. every possible care shall be taken of your lady, and that affords the best chance of her being speedily able to travel. ---now, go you to the inn, sir, for i may be instantly wanted, and we have not yet provided either an attendant for the lady, or a nurse for the child; but both shall be presently done.'' ``yet a moment, doctor---what languages do you understand?'' ``latin and french i can speak indifferently, and so as to be understood; and i read a little italian.'' ``but no portuguese or spanish?'' continued the stranger. ``no, sir.'' ``that is unlucky. but you may make her understand you by means of french. take notice, you are to comply with her request in every thing ---if you want means to do so, you may apply to me.'' ``may i ask, sir, by what name the lady is to be------'' ``it is totally indifferent,'' said the stranger, interrupting the question; `` you shall know it at more leisure.'' so saying, he threw his ample cloak about him, turning himself half round to assist the operation, with an air which the doctor would have found it difficult to imitate, and walked down the street to the little inn. here he paid and dismissed the postilions, and shut himself up in an apartment, ordering no one to be admitted till the doctor should call. the doctor, when he returned to his patient's apartment, found his wife in great surprise, which, as is usual with persons of her character, was not unmixed with fear and anxiety. ``she cannot speak a word like a christian being,'' said mrs gray. ``i know it,'' said the doctor. ``but she threeps to keep on a black fause-face, and skirls if we offer to take it away.'' ``well then, let her wear it---what harm will it do?'' ``harm, doctor! was ever honest woman brought to bed with a fause-face on?'' ``seldom, perhaps. but, jean, my dear, those who are not quite honest must be brought to bed all the same as those who are, and we are not to endanger the poor thing's life by contradicting her whims at present.'' approaching the sick woman's bed, he observed that she indeed wore a thin silk mask, of the kind which do such uncommon service in the elder comedy; such as women of rank still wore in travelling, but certainly never in the situation of this poor lady. it would seem she had sustained importunity on the subject, for when she saw the doctor, she put her hand to her face, as if she was afraid he would insist on pulling off the vizard. he hastened to say, in tolerable french, that her will should be a law to them in every respect, and that she was at perfect liberty to wear the mask till it was her pleasure to lay it aside. she understood him; for she replied, by a very imperfect attempt in the same language, to express her gratitude for the permission, as she seemed to regard it, of retaining her disguise. the doctor proceeded to other arrangements; and, for the satisfaction of those readers who may love minute information, we record that luckie simson, the first in the race, carried as a prize the situation of sick-nurse beside the delicate patient; that peg thomson was permitted the privilege of recommending her good-daughter, bet jamieson, to be wet-nurse; and an _oe_, or grandchild of luckie jaup was hired to assist in the increased drudgery of the family; the doctor thus, like a practised minister, dividing among his trusty adherents such good things as fortune placed at his disposal. about one in the morning the doctor made his appearance at the swan inn, and acquainted the stranger gentleman, that he wished him joy of being the father of a healthy boy, and that the mother was, in the usual phrase, as well as could be expected. the stranger heard the news with seeming satisfaction, and then exclaimed, ``he must be christened, doctor! he must be christened instantly!'' ``there can be no hurry for that,'' said the doctor. ``_we_ think otherwise,'' said the stranger, cutting his argument short. ``i am a catholic, doctor, and as i may be obliged to leave this place before the lady is able to travel, i desire to see my child received into the pale of the church. there is, i understand, a catholic priest in this wretched place?'' ``there is a catholic gentleman, sir, mr goodriche, who is reported to be in orders.'' ``i commend your caution, doctor,'' said the stranger; ``it is dangerous to be too positive on any subject. i will bring that same mr goodriche to your house to-morrow.'' gray hesitated for a moment. ``i am a presbyterian protestant, sir,'' he said, ``a friend to the constitution as established in church and state, as i have a good right, having drawn his majesty's pay, god bless him, for four years, as surgeon's mate in the cameronian regiment, as my regimental bible and commission can testify. but although i be bound especially to abhor all trafficking or trinketing with papists, yet i will not stand in the way of a tender conscience. sir, you may call with mr goodriche, when you please, at my house; and undoubtedly, you being, as i suppose, the father of the child, you will arrange matters as you please; only, i do not desire to be thought an abettor or countenancer of any part of the popish ritual.'' ``enough, sir,'' said the stranger haughtily, ``we understand each other.'' the next day he appeared at the doctor's house with mr goodriche, and two persons understood to belong to that reverend gentleman's communion. the party were shut up in an apartment with the infant, and it may be presumed that the solemnity of baptism was administered to the unconscious being, thus strangely launched upon the world. when the priest and witnesses had retired, the strange gentleman informed mr gray, that, as the lady had been pronounced unfit for travelling for several days, he was himself about to leave the neighbourhood, but would return thither in the space of ten days, when he hoped to find his companion able to leave it. ``and by what name are we to call the child and mother?'' ``the infant's name is richard.'' ``but it must have some sirname---so must the lady---she cannot reside in my house, yet be without a name.'' ``call them by the name of your town here--middlemas, i think it is?'' ``yes, sir.'' ``well mrs middlemas is the name of the mother, and richard middlemas of the child---and i am matthew middlemas, at your service. this,'' he continued, ``will provide mrs middlemas in everything she may wish to possess---or assist her in case of accidents.'' with that he placed l.100 in mr gray's hand, who rather scrupled receiving it, saying, ``he supposed the lady was qualified to be her own purse-bearer.'' ``the worst in the world, i assure you, doctor,'' replied the stranger. ``if she wished to change that piece of paper, she would scarce know how many guineas she should receive for it. no, mr gray, i assure you you will find mrs middleton--middlemas---what did i call her---as ignorant of the affairs of this world as any one you have met with in your practice: so you will please to be her treasurer and administrator for the time, as for a patient that is incapable to look after her own affairs.'' this was spoke, as it struck dr gray, in rather a haughty and supercilious manner. the words intimated nothing in themselves, more than the same desire of preserving incognito, which might be gathered from all the rest of the stranger's conduct; but the manner seemed to say, ``i am not a person to be questioned by any one---what i say must be received without comment, how little soever you may believe or understand it.'' it strengthened gray in his opinion, that he had before him a case either of seduction, or of private marriage, betwixt persons of the very highest rank; and the whole bearing, both of the lady and the gentleman, confirmed his suspicions. it was not in his nature to be troublesome or inquisitive, but he could not fail to see that the lady wore no marriage-ring; and her deep sorrow, and perpetual tremor, seemed to indicate an unhappy creature, who had lost the protection of parents, without acquiring a legitimate right to that of a husband. he was therefore somewhat anxious when mr middlemas, after a private conference of some length with the lady, bade him farewell. it is true, he assured him of his return within ten days, being the very shortest space which gray could be prevailed upon to assign for any prospect of the lady being moved with safety. ``i trust in heaven that he will return,'' said gray to himself, ``but there is too much mystery about all this, for the matter being a plain and well-meaning transaction. if he intends to treat this poor thing, as many a poor girl has been used before, i hope that my house will not be the scene in which he chooses to desert her. the leaving the money has somewhat a suspicious aspect, and looks as if my friend were in the act of making some compromise with his conscience. well---i must hope the best. meantime my path plainly is to do what i can for the poor lady's benefit.'' mr gray visited his patient shortly after mr middlemas's departure---as soon, indeed, as he could be admitted. he found her in violent agitation. gray's experience dictated the best mode of relief and tranquillity. he caused her infant to be brought to her. she wept over it for a long time, and the violence of her agitation subsided under the influence of parental feelings, which, from her appearance of extreme youth, she must have experienced for the first time. the observant physician could, after this paroxysm, remark that his patient's mind was chiefly occupied in computing the passage of the time, and anticipating the period when the return of her husband--if husband he was---might be expected. she consulted almanacks, enquired concerning distances, though so cautiously as to make it evident she desired to give no indication of the direction of her companion's journey, and repeatedly compared her watch with those of others; exercising, it was evident, all that delusive species of mental arithmetic by which mortals attempt to accelerate the passage of time while they calculate his progress. at other times she wept anew over her child, which was by all judges pronounced as goodly an infant as needed to be seen; and gray sometimes observed that she murmured sentences to the unconscious infant, not only the words, but the very sound and accents of which were strange to him, and which, in particular, he knew not to be portuguese. mr goodriche, the catholic priest, demanded access to her upon one occasion. she at first declined his visit, but afterwards received it, under the idea, perhaps, that he might have news from mr middlemas, as he called himself. the interview was a very short one, and the priest left the lady's apartment in displeasure, which his prudence could scarce disguise from mr gray. he never returned, although the lady's condition would have made his attentions and consolations necessary, had she been a member of the catholic church. our doctor began at length to suspect his fair guest was a jewess, who had yielded up her person and affections to one of a different religion; and the peculiar style of her beautiful countenance went to enforce this opinion. the circumstance made no difference to gray, who saw only her distress and desolation, and endeavoured to remedy both to the utmost of his power. he was, however, desirous to conceal it from his wife, and the others around the sick person, whose prudence and liberality of thinking might be more justly doubted. he therefore so regulated her diet, that she could not be either offended, or brought under suspicion, by any of the articles forbidden by the mosaic law being presented to her. in other respects than what concerned her health or convenience, he had but little intercourse with her. the space passed within which the stranger's return to the borough had been so anxiously expected by his female companion. the disappointment occasioned by his non-arrival was manifested in the convalescent by inquietude, which was at first mingled with peevishness, and afterwards with doubt and fear. when two or three days had passed without message or letter of any kind, gray himself became anxious, both on his own account and the poor lady's, lest the stranger should have actually entertained the idea of deserting this defenceless and probably injured woman. he longed to have some communication with her, which might enable him to judge what enquiries could be made, or what else was most fitting to be done. but so imperfect was the poor young woman's knowledge of the french language, and perhaps so unwilling she herself to throw any light on her situation, that every attempt of this kind proved abortive. when gray asked questions concerning any subject which appeared to approach to explanation, he observed she usually answered him by shaking her head, in token of not understanding what he said; at other times by silence and with tears, and sometimes referring him to _monsieur_. for _monsieur's_ arrival, then, gray began to become very impatient, as that which alone could put an end to a disagreeable species of mystery, which the good company of the borough began now to make the principal subject of their gossip; some blaming gray for bringing foreign _landloupers_* into * strollers. his house, on the subject of whose morals the most serious doubts might be entertained; others envying the ``bonny hand'' the doctor was like to make of it, by having disposal of the wealthy stranger's travelling funds; a circumstance which could not be well concealed from the public, when the honest man's expenditure for trifling articles of luxury came far to exceed its ordinary bounds. the conscious probity of the honest doctor enabled him to despise this sort of tittle-tattle, though the secret knowledge of its existence could not be agreeable to him. he went his usual rounds with his usual perseverance, and waited with patience until time should throw light on the subject and history of his lodger. it was now the fourth week after her confinement, and the recovery of the stranger might be considered as perfect, when gray, returning from one of his ten-mile visits, saw a post-chaise and four horses at the door. ``this man has returned,'' he said, ``and my suspicions have done him less than justice.'' with that he spurred his horse, a signal which the trusty steed obeyed the more readily, as its progress was in the direction of the stable door. but when, dismounting, the doctor hurried into his own house, it seemed to him, that the departure as well as the arrival of this distressed lady was destined to bring confusion to his peaceful dwelling. several idlers had assembled about his door, and two or three had impudently thrust themselves forward almost into the passage, to listen to a confused altercation which was heard from within. the doctor hastened forward, the foremost of the intruders retreating in confusion on his approach, while he caught the tones of his wife's voice, raised to a pitch which he knew, by experience, boded no good; for mrs gray, good-humoured and tractable in general, could sometimes perform the high part in a matrimonial duet. having much more confidence in his wife's good intentions than her prudence, he lost no time in pushing into the parlour, to take the matter into his own hands. here he found his helpmate at the head of the whole militia of the sick lady's apartment, that is, wet nurse, and sick nurse, and girl of all work, engaged in violent dispute with two strangers. the one was a dark-featured elderly man, with an eye of much sharpness and severity of expression, which now seemed partly quenched by a mixture of grief and mortification. the other, who appeared actively sustaining the dispute with mrs gray, was a stout, bold-looking, hard-faced person, armed with pistols, of which he made rather an unnecessary and ostentatious display. ``here is my husband, sir,'' said mrs gray in a tone of triumph, for she had the grace to believe the doctor one of the greatest men living,---``here is the doctor---let us see what you will say now.'' ``why just what i said before, ma'am,'' answered the man, ``which is, that my warrant must be obeyed. it is regular, ma'am, regular.'' so saying, he struck the forefinger of his right hand against a paper which he held towards mrs gray with his left. ``address yourself to me, if you please, sir,'' said the doctor, seeing that he ought to lose no time in removing the cause into the proper court. ``i am the master of this house, sir, and i wish to know the cause of this visit.'' ``my business is soon told,'' said the man. ``i am a king's messenger, and this lady has treated me, as if i was a baron-bailies officer.'' ``that is not the question, sir,'' replied the doctor. ``if you are a king's messenger, where is your warrant, and what do you propose to do here?'' at the same time he whispered the little wench to call mr lawford, the town-clerk, to come thither as fast as he possibly could. the good-daughter of peg thomson started off with all activity worthy of her mother-in-law. ``there is my warrant,'' said the official, ``and you may satisfy yourself.'' ``the shameless loon dare not tell the doctor his errand,'' said mrs gray exultingly. ``a bonny errand it is,'' said old lucky simson, ``to carry away a lying-in woman, as a gled* * or kite. would do a clocking-hen.'' ``a woman no a month delivered''---echoed the nurse jamieson. ``twenty-four days eight hours and seven minutes to a second,'' said mrs gray. the doctor having looked over the warrant, which was regular, began to be afraid that the females of his family, in their zeal for defending the character of their sex, might be stirred up into some sudden fit of mutiny, and therefore commanded them to be silent. ``this,'' he said, ``is a warrant for arresting the bodies of richard tresham, and of zilia de mon<c,>ada, on account of high treason. sir, i have served his majesty, and this is not a house in which traitors are harboured. i know nothing of any of these two persons, nor have i ever heard even their names.'' ``but the lady whom you have received into your family,'' said the messenger, ``is zilia de mon<c,>ada, and here stands her father, matthias de mon<c,>ada, who will make oath to it.'' ``if this be true,'' said mr gray, looking towards the alleged officer, ``you have taken a singular duty on you. it is neither my habit to deny my own actions, nor to oppose the laws of the land. there is a lady in this house slowly recovering from confinement, having become under this roof the mother of a healthy child. if she be the person described in this warrant, and this gentleman's daughter, i must surrender her to the laws of the country.'' here the esculapian militia were once more in motion. ``surrender, doctor gray! it's a shame to hear you speak, and you that lives by women and weans, abune your other means!'' so exclaimed his fair better part. ``i wonder to hear the doctor!''---said the younger nurse; ``there's no a wife in the town would believe it o' him.'' ``i aye thought the doctor was a man till this moment,'' said luckie simson; ``but i believe him now to be an auld wife, little baulder than mysell; and i dinna wonder now that poor mrs gray------'' ``hold your peace, you foolish women,'' said the doctor. ``do you think this business is not bad enough already, that you are making it worse with your senseless claver?*---gentlemen, this is a * tattling. very sad case. here is a warrant for a high crime against a poor creature, who is little fit to be moved from one house to another, much more dragged to a prison. i tell you plainly, that i think the execution of this arrest may cause her death. it is your business, sir, if you be really her father, to consider what you can do to soften this matter, rather than drive it on.'' ``better death than dishonour,'' replied the stern-looking old man, with a voice as harsh as his aspect; ``and you, messenger,'' he continued, ``look what you do, and execute the warrant at your peril.'' ``you hear,'' said the man, appealing to the doctor himself, ``i must have immediate access to the lady.'' ``in a lucky time,'' said mr gray, ``here comes the town-clerk.---you are very welcome, mr lawford. your opinion here is much wanted as a man of law, as well as of sense and humanity. i was never more glad to see you in all my life.'' he then rapidly stated the case; and the messenger, understanding the new-comer to be a man of some authority, again exhibited his warrant. ``this is a very sufficient and valid warrant, dr gray,'' replied the man of law. ``nevertheless, if you are disposed to make oath, that instant removal would be unfavourable to the lady's health, unquestionably she must remain here, suitably guarded.'' ``it is not so much the mere act of locomotion which i am afraid of,'' said the surgeon; ``but i am free to depone, on soul and conscience, that the shame and fear of her father's anger, and the sense of the affront of such an arrest, with terror for its consequences, may occasion violent and dangerous illness---even death itself.'' ``the father must see the daughter, though they may have quarrelled,'' said mr lawford; ``the officer of justice must execute his warrant, though it should frighten the criminal to death; these evils are only contingent, not direct and immediate consequences. you must give up the lady, mr gray, though your hesitation is very natural.'' ``at least, mr lawford, i ought to be certain that the person in my house is the party they search for.'' ``admit me to her apartment,'' replied the man whom the messenger termed mon<c,>ada. the messenger, whom the presence of lawford had made something more placid, began to become impudent once more. he hoped, he said, by means of his female prisoner, to acquire the information necessary to apprehend the more guilty person. if more delays were thrown in his way, that information might come too late, and he would make all who were accessary to such delay responsible for the consequences. ``and l,'' said mr gray, ``though i were to be brought to the gallows for it, protest, that this course may be the murder of my patient.---can bail not be taken, mr lawford?'' ``not in cases of high treason.'' said the official person; and then continued in a confidential tone, ``come, mr gray, we all know you to be a person well affected to our royal sovereign king george and the government; but you must not push this too far, lest you bring yourself into trouble, which every body in middlemas would be sorry for. the forty-five has not been so far gone by, but we can remember enough of warrants of high treason--ay, and ladies of quality committed upon such charges. but they were all favourably dealt with ---lady ogilvy, lady macintosh, flora macdonald, and all. no doubt this gentleman knows what he is doing, and has assurances of the young lady's safety---so you must just jouk and let the jaw gae by, as we say.'' ``follow me, then, gentlemen,'' said gideon, ``and you shall see the young lady;'' and then, his strong features working with emotion at anticipation of the distress which he was about to inflict, he led the way up the small staircase, and opening the door, said to mon<c,>ada who had followed him, ``this is your daughter's only place of refuge, in which i am, alas! too weak to be her protector. enter, sir, if your conscience will permit you.'' the stranger turned on him a scowl, into which it seemed as if he would willingly have thrown the power of the fabled basilisk. then stepping proudly forward, he stalked into the room. he was followed by lawford and gray at a little distance. the messenger remained in the doorway. the unhappy young woman had heard the disturbance, and guessed the cause too truly. it is possible she might even have seen the strangers on their descent from the carriage. when they entered the room, she was on her knees, beside an easy chair, her face in a silk wrapper that was hung over it. the man called mon<c,>ada uttered a single word; by the accent it might have been something equivalent to _wretch_; but none knew its import. the female gave a convulsive shudder, such as that by which a half-dying soldier is affected on receiving a second wound. but without minding her emotion, mon<c,>ada seized her by the arm, and with little gentleness raised her to her feet, on which she seemed to stand only because she was supported by his strong grasp. he then pulled from her face the mask which she had hitherto worn. the poor creature still endeavoured to shroud her face, by covering it with her left hand, as the manner in which she was held prevented her from using the aid of the right. with little effort her father secured that hand also, which, indeed, was of itself far too little to serve the purpose of concealment, and showed her beautiful face, burning with blushes and covered with tears. ``you, alcalde, and you, surgeon,'' he said to lawford and gray, with a foreign action and accent, ``this woman is my daughter, the same zilia mon<c,>ada who is signal'd in that protocol. make way, and let me carry her where her crimes may be atoned for.'' ``are you that person's daughter?'' said lawford to the lady. ``she understands no english,'' said gray; and addressing his patient in french, conjured her to let him know whether she was that man's daughter or not, assuring her of protection if the fact were otherwise. the answer was murmured faintly, but was too distinctly intelligible---`` he was her father.'' all farther title of interference seemed now ended. the messenger arrested his prisoner, and, with some delicacy, required the assistance of the females to get her conveyed to the carriage in waiting. gray again interfered.---``you will not,'' he said, ``separate the mother and the infant?'' zilia de mon<c,>ada heard the question, (which, being addressed to the father, gray had inconsiderately uttered in french,) and it seemed as if it recalled to her recollection the existence of the helpless creature to which she had given birth, forgotten for a moment amongst the accumulated horrors of her father's presence. she uttered a shriek, expressing poignant grief, and turned her eyes on her father with the most intense supplication. ``to the parish with the bastard!''---said mon<c,>ada; while the helpless mother sunk lifeless into the arms of the females, who had now gathered round her. ``that will not pass, sir,'' said gideon.---``if you are father to that lady, you must be grandfather to the helpless child; and you must settle in some manner for its future provision, or refer us to some responsible person.'' mon<c,>ada looked towards lawford, who expressed himself satisfied of the propriety of what gray said. ``i object not to pay for whatever the wretched child may require,'' said he; ``and if you, sir,'' addressing gray, ``choose to take charge of him, and breed him up, you shall have what will better your living.'' the doctor was about to refuse a charge so uncivilly offered; but after a moment's reflection, he replied, ``i think so indifferently of the proceedings i have witnessed, and of those concerned in them, that if the mother desires that i should retain the charge of this child, i will not refuse to do so.'' mon<c,>ada spoke to his daughter, who was just beginning to recover from her swoon, in the same language in which he had first addressed her. the propositions which he made seemed highly acceptable, as she started from the arms of the females, and, advancing to gray, seized his hand, kissed it, bathed it in her tears, and seemed reconciled, even in parting with her child, by the consideration, that the infant was to remain under his guardianship. ``good, kind man,'' she said in her indifferent french, ``you have saved both mother and child.'' the father, meanwhile, with mercantile deliberation, placed in mr lawford's hands notes and bills to the amount of a thousand pounds, which he stated was to be vested for the child's use, and advanced in such portions as his board and education might require. in the event of any correspondence on his account being necessary, as in case of death or the like, he directed that communication should be made to signior matthias mon<c,>ada, under cover to a certain banking-house in london. ``but beware,'' he said to gray, ``how you trouble me about these concerns, unless in case of absolute necessity.'' ``you need not fear, sir,'' replied gray; ``i have seen nothing to-day which can induce me to desire a more intimate correspondence with you than may be indispensable.'' while lawford drew up a proper minute of this transaction, by which he himself and gray were named trustees for the child, mr gray attempted to restore to the lady the balance of the considerable sum of money which tresham (if such was his real name) had formerly deposited with him. with every species of gesture, by which hands, eyes, and even feet, could express rejection, as well as in her own broken french, she repelled the proposal of reimbursement, while she entreated that gray would consider the money as his own property; and at the same time forced upon him a ring set with brilliants, which seemed of considerable value. the father then spoke to her a few stern words, which she heard with an air of mingled agony and submission. ``i have given her a few minutes to see and weep over the miserable being which has been the seal of her dishonour,'' said the stern father. ``let us retire and leave her alone.---you,'' to the messenger, ``watch the door of the room on the outside.'' gray, lawford, and mon<c,>ada, retired to the parlour accordingly, where they waited in silence, each busied with his own reflections, till, within the space of half an hour, they received information that the lady was ready to depart. ``it is well,'' replied mon<c,>ada; ``i am glad she has yet sense enough left to submit to that which needs must be.'' so saying, he ascended the stair, and returned, leading down his daughter, now again masked and veiled. as she passed gray, she uttered the words---``my child, my child!'' in a tone of unutterable anguish; then entered the carriage, which was drawn up as close to the door of the doctor's house as the little enclosure would permit. the messenger, mounted on a led horse, and accompanied by a servant and assistant, followed the carriage, which drove rapidly off, taking the road which leads to edinburgh. all who had witnessed this strange scene, now departed to make their conjectures, and some to count their gains; for money had been distributed among the females who had attended on the lady, with so much liberality, as considerably to reconcile them to the breach of the rights of womanhood inflicted by the precipitate removal of the patient. chapter ii. the last cloud of dust which the wheels of the carriage had raised was dissipated, when dinner, which claims a share of human thoughts even in the midst of the most marvellous and affecting incidents, recurred to those of mrs gray. ``indeed, doctor, you will stand glowering out of the window till some other patient calls for you, and then have to set off without your dinner;--and i hope mr lawford will take pot-luck with us, for it is just his own hour; and indeed we had something rather better than ordinary for this poor lady---lamb and spinage, and a veal florentine.'' the surgeon started as from a dream, and joined in his wife's hospitable request, to which lawford willingly assented. we will suppose the meal finished, a bottle of old and generous antigua upon the table, and a modest little punch-bowl, judiciously replenished for the accommodation of the doctor and his guest. their conversation naturally turned on the strange scene which they had witnessed, and the town-clerk took considerable merit for his presence of mind. ``i am thinking, doctor,'' said he, ``you might have brewed a bitter browst to yourself if i had not come in as i did.'' ``troth, and it might very well so be,'' answered gray; ``for, to tell you the truth, when i saw yonder fellow vapouring with his pistols among the women folk in my own house, the old cameronian spirit began to rise in me, and little thing would have made me cleek to the poker.'' ``hoot! hoot! that would never have done. na, na,'' said the man of law, ``this was a case where a little prudence was worth all the pistols and pokers in the world.'' ``and that was just what i thought when i sent to you, clerk lawford,'' said the doctor. ``a wiser man he could not have called on to a difficult case,'' added mrs gray, as she sat with her work at a little distance from the table. ``thanks t'ye, and here's t'ye, my good neighbour,'' answered the scribe; ``will you not let me help you to another glass of punch, mrs gray?'' this being declined, he proceeded. ``i am jalousing that the messenger and his warrant were just brought in to prevent any opposition. ye saw how quietly he behaved after i had laid down the law--i'll never believe the lady is in any risk from him. but the father is a dour chield; depend upon it, he has bred up the young filly on the curb-rein, and that has made the poor thing start off the course. i should not be surprised that he took her abroad and shut her up in a convent.'' ``hardly,'' replied doctor gray, ``if it be true, as i suspect, that both the father and daughter are of the jewish persuasion.'' ``a jew!'' said mrs gray; ``and have i been taking a' this fyke about a jew?---l thought she seemed to gie a scunner at the eggs and bacon that nurse simson spoke about to her, but i thought jews had aye had lang beards, and yon man's face is just like one of our ain folks---i have seen the doctor with a langer beard himsell, when he has not had leisure to shave.'' ``that might have been mr mon<c,>ada's case,'' said lawford, ``for he seemed to have had a hard journey. but the jews are often very respectable people, mrs gray---they have no territorial property, because the law is against them there, but they have a good bank in the money market--plenty of stock in the funds, mrs gray, and, indeed, i think this poor young woman is better with her ain father, though he be a jew and a dour chield into the bargain, than she would have been with the loon that wronged her, who is, by your account, dr gray, baith a papist and a rebel. the jews are well attached to government; they hate the pope, the devil, and the pretender, as much as any honest man among ourselves.'' ``i cannot admire either of the gentleman,'' said gideon. ``but it is but fair to say, that i saw mr mon<c,>ada when he was highly incensed, and to all appearance not without reason. now, this other man tresham, if that be his name, was haughty to me, and i think something careless of the poor young woman, just at the time when he owed her most kindness, and me some thankfulness. i am, therefore, of your opinion, clerk lawford, that the christian is the worst bargain of the two.'' ``and you think of taking care of this wean yourself, doctor? that is what i call the good samaritan.'' ``at cheap cost, clerk; the child, if it lives, has enough to bring it up decently, and set it out in life, and i can teach it an honourable and useful profession. it will be rather an amusement than a trouble to me, and i want to make some remarks on the childish diseases, which, with god's blessing, the child must come through under my charge; and since heaven has sent us no children------'' ``hoot, hoot!'' said the town-clerk, ``you are in ower great a hurry now---you have na been sae lang married yet.---mrs gray, dinna let my daffing chase you away---we will be for a dish of tea belive, for the doctor and i are nae glass-breakers.'' four years after this conversation took place, the event happened, at the possibility of which the town-clerk had hinted; and mrs gray presented her husband with an infant daughter. but good and evil are strangely mingled in this sublunary world. the fulfilment of his anxious longing for posterity was attended with the loss of his simple and kind-hearted wife; one of the most heavy blows which fate could inflict on poor gideon, and his house was made desolate even by the event which had promised for months before to add new comforts to its humble roof. gray felt the shock as men of sense and firmness feel a decided blow, from the effects of which they never hope again fully to raise themselves. he discharged the duties of his profession with the same punctuality as ever, was easy, and even, to appearance, cheerful in his intercourse with society; but the sunshine of existence was gone. every morning he missed the affectionate charges which recommended to him to pay attention to his own health while he was labouring to restore that blessing to his patients. every evening, as he returned from his weary round, it was without the consciousness of a kind and affectionate reception from one eager to tell, and interested to hear, all the little events of the day. his whistle, which used to arise clear and strong so soon as middlemas steeple was in view, was now for ever silenced, and the rider's head drooped, while the tired horse, lacking the stimulus of his master's hand and voice, seemed to shuffle along as if it experienced a share of his despondency. there were times when he was so much dejected as to be unable to endure even the presence of his little menie, in whose infant countenance he could trace the lineaments of the mother, of whose loss she had been the innocent and unconscious cause. ``had it not been for this poor child''---he would think; but, instantly aware that the sentiment was sinful, he would snatch the infant to his breast, and load it with caresses---then hastily desire it to be removed from the parlour. the mahometans have a fanciful idea, that the true believer, in his passage to paradise, is under the necessity of passing barefooted over a bridge composed of red-hot iron. but on this occasion, all the pieces of paper which the moslem has preserved during his life, lest some holy thing being written upon them might be profaned, arrange themselves between his feet and the burning metal, and so save him from injury. in the same manner, the effects of kind and benevolent actions are sometimes found, even in this world, to assuage the pangs of subsequent afflictions. thus, the greatest consolation which poor gideon could find after his heavy deprivation, was in the frolic fondness of richard middlemas, the child who was in so singular a manner thrown upon his charge. even at this early age he was eminently handsome. when silent or out of humour, his dark eyes and striking countenance presented some recollections of the stern character imprinted on the features of his supposed father; but when he was gay and happy, which was much more frequently the case, these clouds were exchanged for the most frolicsome, mirthful expression, that ever dwelt on the laughing and thoughtless aspect of a child. he seemed to have a tact beyond his years in discovering and conforming to the peculiarities of human character. his nurse, one prime object of richard's observance, was nurse jamieson, or, as she was more commonly called for brevity, and _par excellence_, nurse. this was the person who had brought him up from infancy. she had lost her own child, and soon after her husband, and being thus a lone woman, had, as used to be common in scotland, remained a member of dr gray's family. after the death of his wife, she gradually obtained the principal superintendence of the whole household; and being an honest and capable manager, was a person of very great importance in the family. she was bold in her temper, violent in her feelings, and, as often happens with those in her condition, was as much attached to richard middlemas, whom she had once nursed at her bosom, as if he had been her own son. this affection the child repaid by all the tender attentions of which his age was capable. little dick was also distinguished by the fondest and kindest attachment to his guardian and benefactor, dr gray. he was officious in the right time and place, quiet as a lamb when his patron seemed inclined to study or to muse, active and assiduous to assist or divert him whenever it seemed to be wished, and, in choosing his opportunities, he seemed to display an address far beyond his childish years. as time passed on, this pleasing character seemed to be still more refined. in every thing like exercise or amusement, he was the pride and the leader of the boys of the place, over the most of whom his strength and activity gave him a decided superiority. at school his abilities were less distinguished, yet he was a favourite with the master, a sensible and useful teacher. ``richard is not swift,'' he used to say to his patron, dr gray, ``but then he is sure; and it is impossible not to be pleased with a child who is so very desirous to give satisfaction.'' young middlemas's grateful affection to his patron seemed to increase with the expanding of his faculties, and found a natural and pleasing mode of displaying itself in his attentions to little menie* * marion. gray. her slightest wish was richard's law, and it was in vain that he was summoned forth by a hundred shrill voices to take the lead in hye-spye, or at foot-ball, if it was little menie's pleasure that he should remain within, and build card-houses for her amusement. at other times he would take the charge of the little damsel entirely under his own care, and be seen wandering with her on the borough common, collecting wild flowers, or knitting caps made of bulrushes. menie was attached to dick middlemas, in proportion to his affectionate assiduities; and the father saw with pleasure every new mark of attention to the child on the part of his proteg<e'>. during the time that richard was silently advancing from a beautiful child into a fine boy, and approaching from a fine boy to the time when he must be termed a handsome youth, mr gray wrote twice a-year with much regularity to mr mon<c,>ada, through the channel that gentleman had pointed out. the benevolent man thought, that if the wealthy grandfather could only see his relative, of whom any family might be proud, he would be unable to persevere in his resolution of treating as an outcast one so nearly connected with him in blood, and so interesting in person and disposition. he thought it his duty, therefore, to keep open the slender and oblique communication with the boy's maternal grandfather, as that which might, at some future period, lead to a closer connexion. yet the correspondence could not, in other respects, be agreeable to a man of spirit like mr gray. his own letters were as short as possible, merely rendering an account of his ward's expenses, including a moderate board to himself, attested by mr lawford, his co-trustee; and intimating richard's state of health, and his progress in education, with a few words of brief but warm eulogy upon his goodness of head and heart. but the answers he received were still shorter. ``mr mon<c,>ada,'' such was their usual tenor, ``acknowledges mr gray's letter of such a date, notices the contents, and requests mr gray to persist in the plan which he has hitherto prosecuted on the subject of their correspondence.'' on occasions where extraordinary expenses seemed likely to be incurred, the remittances were made with readiness. that day fortnight after mrs gray's death, fifty pounds were received, with a note, intimating that it was designed to put the child r. m. into proper mourning. the writer had added two or three words, desiring that the surplus should be at mr gray's disposal, to meet the additional expenses of this period of calamity; but mr mon<c,>ada had left the phrase unfinished, apparently in despair of turning it suitably into english. gideon, without farther investigation, quietly added the sum to the account of his ward's little fortune, contrary to the opinion of mr lawford, who, aware that he was rather a loser than a gainer by the boy's residence in his house, was desirous that his friend should not omit an opportunity of recovering some part of his expenses on that score. but gray was proof against all remonstrance. as the boy advanced towards his fourteenth year, dr gray wrote a more elaborate account of his ward's character, acquirements, and capacity. he added, that he did this for the purpose of enabling mr mon<c,>ada to judge how the young man's future education should be directed. richard, he observed, was arrived at the point where education, losing its original and general character, branches off into different paths of knowledge, suitable to particular professions, and when it was therefore become necessary to determine which of them it was his pleasure that young richard should be trained for; and he would, on his part, do all he could to carry mr mon<c,>ada's wishes into execution, since the amiable qualities of the boy made him as dear to him, though but a guardian, as he could have been to his own father. the answer, which arrived in the course of a week or ten days, was fuller than usual, and written in the first person.---``mr gray,'' such was the tenor, ``our meeting has been under such circumstances as could not make us favourably known to each other at the time. but i have the advantage of you, since, knowing your motives for entertaining an indifferent opinion of me, i could respect them, and you at the same time; whereas you, unable to comprehend the motives---i say, you, being unacquainted with the infamous treatment i had received, could not understand the reasons that i have for acting as i have done. deprived, sir, by the act of a villain, of my child, and she despoiled of honour, i cannot bring myself to think of beholding the creature, however innocent, whose look must always remind me of hatred and of shame. keep the poor child by you---educate him to your own profession, but take heed that he looks no higher than to fill such a situation in life as you yourself worthily occupy, or some other line of like importance. for the condition of a farmer, a country lawyer, a medical practitioner, or some such retired course of life, the means of outfit and education shall be amply supplied. but i must warn him and you, that any attempt to intrude himself on me further than i may especially permit, will be attended with the total forfeiture of my favour and protection. so, having made known my mind to you, i expect you will act accordingly.'' the receipt of this letter determined gideon to have some explanation with the boy himself, in order to learn if he had any choice among the professions thus opened to him; convinced, at the same time, from his docility of temper, that he would refer the selection to his (dr gray's) better judgment. he had previously, however, the unpleasing task of acquainting richard middlemas with the mysterious circumstances attending his birth, of which he presumed him to be entirely ignorant, simply because he himself had never communicated them, but had let the boy consider himself as the orphan child of a distant relation. but though the doctor himself was silent, he might have remembered that nurse jamieson had the handsome enjoyment of her tongue, and was disposed to use it liberally. from a very early period, nurse jamieson, amongst the variety of legendary lore which she instilled into her foster son, had not forgotten what she called the awful season of his coming into the world---the personable appearance of his father, a grand gentleman, who looked as if the whole world lay at his feet---the beauty of his mother, and the terrible blackness of the mask which she wore, her een that glanced like diamonds, and the diamonds she wore on her fingers, that could be compared to nothing but her own een, the fairness of her skin, and the colour of her silk rokelay, with much proper stuff to the same purpose. then she expatiated on the arrival of his grandfather, and the awful man, armed with pistol, dirk, and claymore, (the last weapons existed only in nurse's imagination,) the very ogre of a fairy tale---then all the circumstances of the carrying off his mother, while bank-notes were flying about the house like screeds of brown paper, and gold guineas were as plenty as chuckie-stanes. all this, partly to please and interest the boy, partly to indulge her own talent for amplification, nurse told with so many additional circumstances, and gratuitous commentaries, that the real transaction, mysterious and odd as it certainly was, sunk into tameness before the nurse's edition, like humble prose contrasted with the boldest flights of poetry. to hear all this did richard seriously incline, and still more was he interested with the idea of his valiant father coming for him unexpectedly at the head of a gallant regiment, with music playing and colours flying, and carrying his son away on the most beautiful pony eyes ever beheld: or his mother, bright as the day, might suddenly appear in her coach-and-six, to reclaim her beloved child; or his repentant grandfather, with his pockets stuffed out with bank-notes, would come to atone for his past cruelty, by heaping his neglected grandchild with unexpected wealth. sure was nurse jamieson, ``that it wanted but a blink of her bairns bonny ee to turn their hearts, as scripture sayeth; and as strange things had been, as they should come a'thegither to the town at the same time, and make such a day as had never been seen in middlemas; and then her bairn would never be called by that lowland name of middlemas any more, which sounded as if it had been gathered out of the town gutter; but would be called galatian,* * galatian is a name of a person famous in christmas gambols. or sir william wallace, or robin hood, or after some other of the great princes named in storybooks.'' nurse jamieson's history of the past, and prospects of the future, were too flattering not to excite the most ambitious visions in the mind of a boy, who naturally felt a strong desire of rising in the world, and was conscious of possessing the powers necessary to his advancement. the incidents of his birth resembled those he found commemorated in the tales which he read or listened to; and there seemed no reason why his own adventures should not have a termination corresponding to those of such veracious histories. in a word, while good doctor gray imagined that his pupil was dwelling in utter ignorance of his origin, richard was meditating upon nothing else than the time and means by which he anticipated his being extricated from the obscurity of his present condition, and enabled to assume the rank to which, in his own opinion, he was entitled by birth. so stood the feelings of the young man, when, one day after dinner, the doctor snuffing the candle, and taking from his pouch the great leathern pocketbook in which be deposited particular papers, with a small supply of the most necessary and active medicines, he took from it mr mon<c,>ada's letter, and requested richard middlemas's serious attention, while he told him some circumstances concerning himself, which it greatly imported him to know. richard's dark eyes flashed fire---the blood flushed his broad and well-formed forehead---the hour of explanation was at length come. he listened to the narrative of gideon gray, which, the reader may believe, being altogether divested of the gilding which nurse jamieson's imagination had bestowed upon it, and reduced to what mercantile men termed the _needful_, exhibited little more than the tale of a child of shame, deserted by its father and mother, and brought up on the reluctant charity of a more distant relation, who regarded him as the living though unconscious evidence of the disgrace of his family, and would more willingly have paid for the expenses of his funeral, than that of the food which was grudgingly provided for him. ``temple and tower,'' a hundred flattering edifices of richard's childish imagination, went to the ground at once, and the pain which attended their demolition was rendered the more acute, by a sense of shame that he should have nursed such reveries. he remained, while gideon continued his explanation, in a dejected posture, his eyes fixed on the ground, and the veins of his forehead swoln with contending passions. ``and now, my dear richard,'' said the good surgeon, ``you must think what you can do for yourself, since your grandfather leaves you the choice of three honourable professions, by any of which, well and wisely prosecuted, you may become independent if not wealthy, and respectable if not great. you will naturally desire a little time for consideration.'' ``not a minute,'' said the boy, raising his head, and looking boldly at his guardian. ``i am a free-born englishman, and will return to england if i think fit.'' ``a free-born fool you are''---said gray; ``you were born, as i think, and no one can know better than i do, in the blue room of stevenlaw's land, in the town-head of middlemas, if you call that being a free-born englishman.'' ``but tom hillary,''---this was an apprentice of clerk lawford, who had of late been a great friend and adviser of young middlemas---``tom hillary says that i am a free-born englishman, notwithstanding, in right of my parents.'' ``pooh, child! what do we know of your parents?--but what has your being an englishman to do with the present question?'' ``oh doctor!'' answered the boy, bitterly, ``you know we from the south side of tweed cannot scramble so hard as you do. the scots are too moral, and too prudent, and too robust, for a poor pudding-eater to live amongst them, whether as a parson, or as a lawyer, or as a doctor---with your pardon, sir.'' ``upon my life, dick,'' said gray, ``this tom hillary will turn your brain. what is the meaning of all this trash?'' ``tom hillary says that the parson lives by the sins of the people, the lawyer by their distresses, and the doctor by their diseases---always asking your pardon, sir.'' ``tom hillary,'' replied the doctor, ``should be drummed out of the borough. a whipper-snapper of an attorney's apprentice, run away from newcastle! if i hear him talking so, i'll teach him to speak with more reverence of the learned professions. let me bear no more of tom hillary, whom you have seen far too much of lately. think a little, like a lad of sense, and tell me what answer i am to give mr mon<c,>ada.'' ``tell him,'' said the boy, the tone of affected sarcasm laid aside, and that of injured pride substituted in its room, ``tell him, that my soul revolts at the obscure lot he recommends to me. i am determined to enter my father's profession, the army, unless my grandfather chooses to receive me into his house, and place me in his own line of business.'' ``yes, and make you his partner, i suppose, and acknowledge you for his heir?'' said dr gray; ``a thing extremely likely to happen, no doubt, considering the way in which he has brought you up all along, and the terms in which he now writes concerning you.'' ``then, sir, there is one thing which i can demand of you,'' replied the boy. ``there is a large sum of money in your hands belonging to me; and since it is consigned to you for my use, i demand you should make the necessary advances to procure a commission in the army---account to me for the balance---and so, with thanks for past favours, i will give you no trouble in future.'' ``young man,'' said the doctor, gravely, ``i am very sorry to see that your usual prudence and good humour are not proof against the disappointment of some idle expectations which you had not the slightest reason to entertain. it is very true that there is a sum, which, in spite of various expenses, may still approach to a thousand pounds or better, which remains. in my hands for your behoof. but i am bound to dispose of it according to the will of the donor; and at any rate, you are not entitled to call for it until you come to years of discretion; a period from which you are six years distant, according to law, and which, in one sense, you will never reach at all, unless you alter your present unreasonable crotchets. but come, dick, this is the first time i have seen you in so absurd a humour, and you have many things, i own, in your situation to apologise for impatience even greater than you have displayed. but you should not turn your resentment on me, that am no way in fault. you should remember, that i was your earliest and only friend, and took charge of you when every other person forsook you.'' ``i do not thank you for it,'' said richard, giving way to a burst of uncontrolled passion. ``you might have done better for me had you pleased.'' ``and in what manner, you ungrateful boy?'' said gray, whose composure was a little ruffled. ``you might have flung me under the wheels of their carriages as they drove off, and have let them trample on the body of their child, as they have done on his feelings.'' so saying, he rushed out of the room, and shut the door behind him with great violence, leaving his guardian astonished at his sudden and violent change of temper and manner. ``what the deuce can have possessed him? ah, well. high-spirited, and disappointed in some follies which that tom hillary has put into his head. but his is a case for anodynes, and shall be treated accordingly.'' while the doctor formed this good-natured resolution, young middlemas rushed to nurse jamiesons apartment, where poor menie, to whom his presence always gave holyday feelings, hastened to exhibit, for his admiration, a new doll, of which she had made the acquisition. no one, generally, was more interested in menie's amusements than richard; but at present richard, like his celebrated namesake, was not i'the vein. he threw of the little damsel so carelessly, almost so rudely that the doll flew out of menie's hand, fell on the hearth-stone, and broke its waxen face. the rudeness drew from nurse jamieson a rebuke, even although the culprit was her darling. ``hout awa,' richard---that wasna like yoursell, to guide miss menie that gate.---haud your tongue, miss menie, and i'll soon mend the baby's face.'' but if menie cried, she did not cry for the doll; and while the tears flowed silently down her cheeks, she sat looking at dick middlemas with a childish face of fear, sorrow, and wonder. nurse jamieson was soon diverted from her attention to menie gray's distresses, especially as she did not weep aloud, and her attention became fixed on the altered countenance, red eyes, and swoln features of her darling foster-child. she instantly commenced an investigation into the cause of his distress, after the usual inquisitorial manner of matrons of her class. ``what is the matter wi' my bairn?'' and ``wha has been vexing my bairn?'' with similar questions, at last extorted this reply: ``i am not your bairn---i am no one's bairn--no one's son. i am an outcast from my family, and belong to no one. dr gray bas told me so himself.'' ``and did he cast up to my bairn that he was a bastard?---troth he was na blate---my certie, your father was a better man than ever stood on the doctor's shanks---a handsome grand gentleman, with an ee like a gled's, and a step like a highland piper.'' nurse jamieson had got on a favourite topic, and would have expatiated long enough, for she was a professed admirer of masculine beauty, but there was something which displeased the boy in her last simile; so he cut the conversation short, by asking whether she knew exactly how much money his grandfather had left with dr gray for his maintenance. ``she could not say---didna ken ---an awfu' sum it was to pass out of ae man's hand---she was sure it wasna less than ae hundred pounds, and it might weel be twa.'' in short, she knew nothing about the matter; ``but she was sure dr gray would count to him to the last farthing; for everbody kend that he was a just man where siller was concerned. however, if her bairn wanted to ken mair about it, to be sure the town-clerk could tell him all about it.'' richard middlemas arose and left the apartment, without saying more. he went immediately to visit the old town-clerk, to whom he had made himself acceptable, as, indeed, he had done to most of the dignitaries about the burgh. he introduced the conversation by the proposal which had been made to him for choosing a profession, and after speaking of the mysterious circumstances of his birth, and the doubtful prospects which lay before him, he easily led the town-clerk into conversation as to the amount of the funds, and heard the exact state of the money in his guardian's hands, which corresponded with the information he had already received. he next sounded the worthy scribe on the possibility of his going into the army; but received a second confirmation of the intelligence mr gray had given him; being informed that no part of the money could be placed at his disposal till he was of age: and then not without the especial consent of both his guardians, and particularly that of his master. he therefore took leave of the town-clerk, who, much approving the cautious manner in which he spoke, and his prudent selection of an adviser at this important crisis of his life, intimated to him, that should he choose the law, he would himself receive him into his office, upon a very moderate apprentice-fee, and would part with tom hillary to make room for him, as the lad was ``rather pragmatical, and plagued him with speaking about his english practice, which they had nothing to do with on this side of the border---the lord be thanked!'' middlemas thanked him for his kindness, and promised to consider his kind offer, in case he should determine upon following the profession of the law. from tom hillary's master richard went to tom hillary himself, who chanced then to be in the office. he was a lad about twenty, as smart as small, but distinguished for the accuracy with which he dressed his hair, and the splendour of a laced hat and embroidered waistcoat, with which he graced the church of middlemas on sunday. tom hillary had been bred an attorney's clerk in newcastle-upon-tyne, but, for some reason or other, had found it more convenient of late years to reside in scotland, and was recommended to the town-clerk of middlemas, by the accuracy and beauty with which he transcribed the records of the burgh. it is not improbable that the reports concerning the singular circumstances of richard middlemas's birth, and the knowledge that he was actually possessed of a considerable sum of money, induced hillary, though so much his senior, to admit the lad to his company, and enrich his youthful mind with some branches of information, which, in that retired corner, his pupil might otherwise have been some time in attaining. amongst these were certain games at cards and dice, in which the pupil paid, as was reasonable, the price of initiation by his losses to his instructor. after a long walk with this youngster, whose advice, like the unwise son of the wisest of men, he probably valued more than that of his more aged counsellors, richard middlemas returned to his lodgings in stevenlaw's land, and went to bed sad and supperless. the next morning richard arose with the sun, and his night's rest appeared to have had its frequent effect, in cooling the passions and correcting the understanding. little menie was the first person to whom he made the _amende honorable_; and a much smaller propitiation than the new doll with which he presented her would have been accepted as an atonement for a much greater offence. menie was one of those pure spirits, to whom a state of unkindness, if the estranged person has been a friend, is a state of pain, and the slightest advance of her friend and protector was sufficient to regain all her childish confidence and affection. the father did not prove more inexorable than menie had done. mr gray, indeed, thought he had good reason to look cold upon richard at their next meeting, being not a little hurt at the ungrateful treatment which he had received on the preceding evening. but middlemas disarmed him at once, by frankly pleading that he had suffered his mind to be carried away by the supposed rank and importance of his parents, into a idle conviction that he was one day to share them. the letter of his grandfather, which condemned him to banishment and obscurity for life, was, he acknowledged, a very severe blow; and it was with deep sorrow that he reflected, that the irritation of his disappointment had led him to express himself in a manner far short of the respect and reverence of one who owed mr gray the duty and affection of a son, and ought to refer to his decision every action of his life. gideon, propitiated by an admission so candid, and made with so much humility, readily dismissed his resentment, and kindly enquired of richard, whether he had bestowed any reflection upon the choice of profession which had been subjected to him; offering, at the same time, to allow him all reasonable time to make up his mind. on this subject, richard middlemas answered with the same promptitude and candour.---``he had,'' he said, ``in order to forming his opinion more safely, consulted with his friend, the town-clerk.'' the doctor nodded approbation. ``mr lawford had, indeed, been most friendly, and had even offered to take him into his own office. but if his father and benefactor would permit him to study, under his instructions, the noble art in which he himself enjoyed such a deserved reputation, the mere hope that he might by-and-by be of some use to mr gray in his business, would greatly overbalance every other consideration. such a course of education, and such a use of professional knowledge when he had acquired it, would be a greater spur to his industry, than the prospect even of becoming town-clerk of middlemas in his proper person.'' as the young man expressed it to be his firm and unalterable choice, to study medicine under his guardian, and to remain a member of his family, dr gray informed mr mon<c,>ada of the lad's determination; who, to testify his approbation, remitted to the doctor the sum of l.100 as apprentice fee, a sum nearly three times as much as gray's modesty had hinted at as necessary. shortly after, when dr gray and the town-clerk met at the small club of the burgh, their joint theme was the sense and steadiness of richard middlemas. ``indeed,'' said the town-clerk, ``he is such a friendly and disinterested boy, that i could not get him to accept a place in my office, for fear he should be thought to be pushing himself forward at the expense of tam hillary.'' ``and indeed, clerk,'' said gray, ``i have sometimes been afraid that he kept too much company with that tam hillary of yours; but twenty tam hillarys would not corrupt dick middlemas.'' chapter iii. dick was come to high renown since he commenced physician; tom was held by all the town the better politician. _tom and dick._ at the same period when dr gray took under his charge his youthful lodger richard middlemas, he received proposals from the friends of one adam hartley, to receive him also as an apprentice. the lad was the son of a respectable farmer on the english side of the border, who, educating his eldest son to his own occupation, desired to make his second a medical man, in order to avail himself of the friendship of a great man, his landlord, who had offered to assist his views in life, and represented a doctor or surgeon as the sort of person to whose advantage his interest could be most readily applied. middlemas and hartley were therefore associated in their studies. in winter they were boarded in edinburgh, for attending the medical classes which were necessary for taking their degree. three or four years thus passed on, and, from being mere boys, the two medical aspirants shot up into young men, who, being both very good-looking, well dressed, well bred, and having money in their pockets, became personages of some importance in the little town of middlemas, where there was scarce any thing that could be termed an aristocracy, and in which beaux were scarce and belles were plenty. each of the two had his especial partisans; for though the young men themselves lived in tolerable harmony together, yet, as usual in such cases, no one could approve of one of them, without at the same time comparing him with, and asserting his superiority over his companion. both were gay, fond of dancing, and sedulous attendants on the _practeezings_ as he called them, of mr m`fittoch, a dancing-master, who, itinerant during the summer, became stationary in the winter season, and afforded the youth of middlemas the benefit of his instructions at the rate of twenty lessons for five shillings sterling. on these occasions, each of dr gray's pupils had his appropriate praise. hartley danced with most spirit---middlemas with a better grace. mr m`fittoch would have turned out richard against the country-side in the minuet, and wagered the thing dearest to him in the world, (and that was his kit,) upon his assured superiority; but he admitted hartley was superior to him in hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels. in dress, hartley was most expensive, perhaps because his father afforded him better means of being so; but his clothes were neither so tasteful when new, nor so well preserved when they began to grow old, as those of richard middlemas. adam hartley was sometimes fine, at other times rather slovenly, and on the former occasions looked rather too conscious of his splendour. his chum was at all times regularly neat and well dressed; while at the same time he had an air of good-breeding, which made him appear always at ease; so that his dress, whatever it was, seemed to be just what he ought to have worn at the time. in their persons there was a still more strongly marked distinction. adam hartley was full middle size, stout, and well limbed; and an open english countenance, of the genuine saxon mould, showed, itself among chestnut locks, until the hair-dresser destroyed them. he loved the rough exercises of wrestling, boxing, leaping, and quarterstaff, and frequented, when he could obtain leisure, the bull-baitings and foot-ball matches, by which the burgh was sometimes enlivened. richard, on the contrary, was dark, like his father and mother, with high features, beautifully formed, but exhibiting something of a foreign character; and his person was tall and slim, though muscular and active. his address and manners must have been natural to him, for they were, in elegance and case, far beyond any example which he could have found in his native burgh. he learned the use of the small-sword while in edinburgh, and took lessons from a performer at the theatre, with the purpose of refining his mode of speaking. he became also an amateur of the drama, regularly attending the playhouse, and assuming the tone of a critic in that and other lighter departments of literature. to fill up the contrast, so far as taste was concerned, richard was a dexterous and successful angler---adam, a bold and unerring shot. their efforts to surpass each other in supplying dr gray's table, rendered his housekeeping much preferable to what it had been on former occasions; and, besides, small presents of fish and game are always agreeable amongst the inhabitants of a country town, and contributed to increase the popularity of the young sportsmen. while the burgh was divided, for lack of better subject of disputation, concerning the comparative merits of dr gray's two apprentices, he himself was sometimes chosen the referee. but in this, as on other matters, the doctor was cautious. he said the lads were both good lads, and would be useful men in the profession, if their heads were not carried with the notice which the foolish people of the burgh took of them, and the parties of pleasure that were so often taking them away from their business. no doubt it was natural for him to feel more confidence in hartley, who came of ken'd folk, and was very near its good as a born scotsman. but if he did feel such a partiality, he blamed himself for it, since the stranger child, so oddly cast upon his hands, had peculiar good right to such patronage and affection as he had to bestow; and truly the young man himself seemed so grateful, that it was impossible for him to hint the slightest wish, that dick middlemas did not hasten to execute. there were persons in the burgh of middlemas who were indiscreet enough to suppose that miss menie must be a better judge than any other person of the comparative merits of these accomplished personages, respecting which the public opinion was generally divided. no one even of her greatest intimates ventured to put the question to her in precise terms; but her conduct was narrowly observed, and the critics remarked, that to adam hartley her attentions were given more freely and frankly. she laughed with him, chatted with him, and danced with him; while to dick middlemas her conduct was more shy and distant. the premises seemed certain, but the public were divided in the conclusions which were to.be drawn from them. it was not possible for the young men to be the subject of such discussions without being sensible that they existed; and thus contrasted together by the little society in which they moved, they must have been made of better than ordinary clay, if they had not themselves entered by degrees into the spirit of the controversy, and considered themselves as rivals for public applause. nor is it to be forgotten, that menie gray was by this time shot up into one of the prettiest young women, not of middlemas only, but of the whole county, in which the little burgh is situated. this, indeed, had been settled by evidence, which could not be esteemed short of decisive. at the time of the races, there were usually assembled in the burgh some company of the higher classes from the country around, and many of the sober burghers mended their incomes, by letting their apartments, or taking in lodgers of quality for the busy week. all the rural thanes and thanesses attended on these occasions; and such was the number of cocked hats and silken trains, that the little town seemed for a time totally to have changed its inhabitants. on this occasion, persons of a certain quality only were permitted to attend upon the nightly balls which were given in the old townhouse, and the line of distinction excluded mr gray's family. the aristocracy, however, used their privileges with some feelings of deference to the native beaux and belles of the burgh, who were thus doomed to hear the fiddles nightly, without being permitted to dance to them. one evening in the race-week, termed the hunters' ball, was dedicated to general amusement, and liberated from the usual restrictions of etiquette. on this occasion all the respectable families in the town were invited to share the amusement of the evening, and to wonder at the finery, and be grateful for the condescension, of their betters. this was especially the case with the females, for the number of invitations to the gentlemen of the town was much more limited. now, at this general muster, the beauty of miss gray's face and person had placed her, in the opinion of all competent judges, decidedly at the head of all the belles present, saving those with whom, according to the ideas of the place, it would hardly have been decent to compare her. the laird of the ancient and distinguished house of louponheight did not hesitate to engage her hand during the greater part of the evening; and his mother, renowned for her stern assertion of the distinctions of rank, placed the little plebeian beside her at supper, and was heard to say, that the surgeon's daughter behaved very prettily indeed, and seemed to know perfectly well where and what she was. as for the young laird himself, he capered so high, and laughed so uproariously, as to give rise to a rumour, that he was minded to ``shoot madly from his sphere,'' and to convert the village doctor's daughter into a lady of his own ancient name. during this memorable evening, middlemas, and hartley, who had found room in the music gallery, witnessed the scene, and, as it would seem, with very different feelings. hartley was evidently annoyed by the excess of attention which the gallant laird of louponheight, stimulated by the influence of a couple of bottles of claret, and by the presence of a partner who danced remarkably well, paid to miss menie gray. he saw from his lofty stand all the dumb show of gallantry, with the comfortable feelings of a famishing creature looking upon a feast which he is not permitted to share, and regarded every extraordinary frisk of the jovial laird, as the same might have been looked upon by a gouty person, who apprehended that the dignitary was about to descend on his toes. at length, unable to restrain his emotion, he left the gallery and returned no more. far different was the demeanour of middlemas. he seemed gratified and elevated by the attention which was generally paid to miss gray, and by the admiration she excited. on the valiant laird of louponheight he looked with indescribable contempt, and amused himself with pointing out to the burgh dancing-master, who acted _pro tempore_ as one of the band, the frolicsome bounds and pirouettes, in which that worthy displayed a great deal more of vigour than of grace. ``but ye shouldna laugh sae loud, master dick,'' said the master of capers; ``he hasna had the advantage of a real gracefu' teacher, as ye have had; and troth, if he listed to tak some lessons, i think i could make some hand of his feet, for he is a souple chield, and has a gallant instep of his ain; and sic a laced hat hasna been seen on the causeway of middlemas this mony a day.---ye are standing laughing there, dick middlemas; i would have you be sure he does not cut you out with your bonny partner yonder.'' ``he be ------!'' middlemas was beginning a sentence which could not have concluded with strict attention to propriety, when the master of the band summoned m`fittoch to his post, by the following ireful expostulation:---``what are ye about sir? mind your bow-band. how the deil d'ye think three fiddles is to keep down a bass, if yin o' them stands girning and gabbling as ye're doing? play up, sir!'' dick middlemas, thus reduced to silence, continued, from his lofty station, like one of the gods of the epicureans, to survey what passed below, without the gaieties which he witnessed being able to excite more than a smile, which seemed, however, rather to indicate a good-humoured contempt for what was passing, than a benevolent sympathy with the pleasures of others. chapter iv. now hold thy, tongue, billy berwick, he said, of peaceful talking let me be; but if thou art a man, as i think thou art, come ower the dike and fight with me. _border minstrelsy._ on the morning after this gay evening, the two young men were labouring together in a plot of ground behind stevenlaw's land, which the doctor had converted into a garden, where he raised, with a view to pharmacy as well as botany, some rare plants, which obtained the place from the vulgar the sounding name of the physic garden.* * the botanic garden is so termed by the vulgar of edinburgh. mr gray's pupils readily complied with his wishes, that they would take some care of this favourite spot, to which both contributed their labours, after which hartley used to devote himself to the cultivation of the kitchen garden, which he had raised, into this respectability from a spot not excelling a common kail-yard, while richard middlemas did his utmost to decorate with flowers and shrubs a sort of arbour, usually called miss menie's bower. at present, they were both in the botanic patch of the garden, when dick middlemas asked hartley why he had left the ball so soon the evening before? ``i should rather ask you,'' said hartley, ``what pleasure you felt in staying there?---l tell you, dick, it is a shabby low place this middlemas of ours. in the smallest burgh in england, every decent freeholder would have been asked if the member gave a ball.'' ``what, hartley!'' said his companion, ``are you, of all men, a candidate for the, honour of mixing with the first born of the earth? mercy on us! how will canny northumberland (throwing a truer northern accent on the letter r,) acquit himself? methinks i see thee in thy pea-green suit, dancing a jig with the honourable miss maddie macfudgeon while chiefs and thanes around laugh as they would do at a hog in armour!'' ``you don't, or perhaps you won't, understand me,'' said hartley. ``i am not such a fool as to desire to be hail-fellow-well-met with these fine folks---i care as little for them as they do for me. but as they do not choose to ask us to dance, i don't see what business they have with our partners.'' ``partners, said you!'' answered middlemas; ``i don't think menie is very often yours.'' ``as often as i ask her,'' answered hartley, rather haughtily. ``ay? indeed?---i did not think that.---and hang me, if i think so yet,'' said middlemas, with the same sarcastic tone. ``i tell thee, adam, i will bet you a bowl of punch, that miss gray will not dance with you the next time you ask her. all i stipulate, is to know the day.'' ``i will lay no bets about miss gray,'' said hartley;--``her father is my master, and i am obliged to him---i think i should act very scurvily, if i were to make her the subject of any idle debate betwixt you and me.'' ``very right,'' replied middlemas; ``you should finish one quarrel before you begin another. pray, saddle your pony, ride up to the gate of louponheight castle, and defy the baron to mortal combat, for having presumed to touch the fair hand of menie gray.'' ``i wish you would leave miss gray's name out of the question, and take your defiances to your fine folks in your own name, and see what they will say to the surgeon's apprentice.'' ``speak for yourself, if you please, mr adam hartley. i was not born a clown, like some folks, and should care little, if i saw it fit, to talk to the best of them at the ordinary, and make myself understood too.'' ``very likely,'' answered hartley, losing patience; ``you are one of themselves, you know--middlemas of that ilk.'' ``you scoundrel!'' said richard, advancing on him in fury, his taunting humour entirely changed into rage. ``stand back,'' said hartley, ``or you will come by the worst; if you will break rude jests, you must put up with rough answers.'' ``i will have satisfaction for this insult, by heaven!'' ``why, so you shall, if you insist on it,'' said hartley; ``but better, i think, to say no more about the matter. we have both spoken what would have been better left unsaid. i was in the wrong to say what i said to you, although you did provoke me.---and now i have given you as much satisfaction as a reasonable man can ask.'' ``sir,'' repeated middlemas, ``the satisfaction which i demand, is that of a gentleman---the doctor has a pair of pistols.'' ``and a pair of mortars also, which are heartily at your service, gentlemen,'' said mr gray, coming forward from behind a yew hedge, where he had listened to the whole or greater part of this dispute. ``a fine story it would be of my apprentices shooting each other with my own pistols! let me see either of you fit to treat a gunshot wound, before you think of inflicting one. go, you are both very foolish boys, and i cannot take it kind of either of you to bring the name of my daughter into such disputes as these. hark ye, lads, ye both owe me, i think, some portion of respect, and even of gratitude--it will be a poor return, if, instead of living quietly with this poor motherless girl, like brothers with a sister, you should oblige me to increase my expense, and abridge my comfort, by sending my child from me, for the few months that you are to remain here. let me see you shake hands, and let us have no more of this nonsense.'' while their master spoke in this manner, both the young men stood before him in the attitude of self-convicted criminals. at the conclusion of his rebuke, hartley turned frankly round, and offered his hand to his companion, who accepted it, but after a moment's hesitation. there was nothing further passed on the subject, but the lads, never resumed the same sort of intimacy which had existed betwixt them, in their earlier acquaintance. on the contrary, avoiding every connexion not absolutely required by their situation, and abridging as much as possible even their indispensable intercourse in professional matters, they seemed as much estranged from each other as two persons, residing in the same small house had the means of being. as for menie gray, her father did not appear to entertain the least anxiety upon her account, although from his frequent and almost daily absence from home, she was exposed to constant intercourse with two handsome young men, both, it might be supposed, ambitious of pleasing her more than most parents would have deemed entirely prudent. nor was nurse jamieson,---her menial situation, and her excessive partiality for her foster-son, considered,---altogether such a matron as could afford her protection. gideon, however, knew that his daughter possessed, in its fullest extent, the upright and pure integrity of his own character, and that never father had less reason to apprehend that a daughter should deceive his confidence; and, justly secure of her principles, he overlooked the danger to which he exposed her feelings and affections. the intercourse betwixt menie and the young men seemed now of a guarded kind on all sides. their meeting was only at meals, and miss gray was at pains, perhaps by her father's recommendation, to treat them with the same degree of attention. this, however, was no easy matter; for hartley became so retiring, cold, and formal, that it was impossible for her to sustain any prolonged intercourse with him; whereas middlemas, perfectly at his ease, sustained his part as formerly upon all occasions that occurred, and without appearing to press his intimacy assiduously, seemed nevertheless to retain the complete possession of it. the time drew nigh at length when the young men, freed from the engagements of their indentures, must look to play their own independent part in the world. mr gray informed richard middlemas that he had written pressingly upon the subject to mon<c,>ada, and that more than once, but had not yet received an answer; nor did he presume to offer his own advice, until the pleasure of his grandfather should be known. richard seemed to endure this suspense with more patience than the doctor thought belonged naturally to his character. he asked no questions---stated no conjectures--showed no anxiety, but seemed to await with patience the tum which events should take. ``my young gentleman,'' thought mr gray, ``has either fixed on some course in his own mind, or he is about to be more tractable than some points of his character have led me to expect.'' in fact, richard had made an experiment on this inflexible relative, by sending mr mon<c,>ada a letter full of duty, and affection, and gratitude, desiring to be permitted to correspond with him in person, and promising to be guided in every particular by his will. the answer to this appeal was his own letter returned, with a note from the bankers whose cover had been used, saying, that any future attempt to intrude on mr mon<c,>ada, would put a final period to their remittances. while things were in this situation in stevenlaw's land, adam hartley one evening, contrary to his custom for several months, sought a private interview with his fellow-apprentice. he found him in the little arbour, and could not omit observing, that dick middlemas, on his appearance, shoved into his bosom a small packet, as if afraid of its being seen, and snatching up a hoe, began to work with great devotion, like one who wished to have it thought that his whole soul was in his occupation. ``i wished to speak with you, mr middlemas,'' said hartley; ``but i fear i interrupt you.'' ``not in the least,'' said the other, laying down his hoe; ``i was only scratching up the weeds which the late showers have made rush up so numerously. i am at your service.'' hartley proceeded to the arbour, and seated himself. richard imitated his example, and seemed to wait for the proposed communication. ``i have had an interesting communication with mr gray''---said hartley, and there stopped, like one who finds himself entering upon a difficult task. ``i hope the explanation has been satisfactory?'' said middlemas. ``you shall judge.---doctor gray was pleased to say something to me very civil about my proficiency in the duties of our profession; and, to my great astonishment, asked me, whether, as he was now becoming old, i had any particular objection to continue in my present situation, but with some pecuniary advantages, for two years longer; at the end of which he promised to me that i should enter into partnership with him.'' ``mr gray is an undoubted judge,'' said middlemas, ``what person will best suit him as a professional assistant. the business may be worth l.200 a-year, and an active assistant might go nigh to double it, by riding strath-devan and the carse. no great subject for division after all, mr hartley.'' ``but,'' continued hartley, ``that is not all. the doctor says---he proposes---in short, if i can render myself agreeable, in the course of these two years, to miss menie gray, he proposes, that when they terminate, i should become his son as well as his partner.'' as he spoke, he kept his eye fixed on richard's face, which was for a moment strongly agitated; but instantly recovering, he answered, in a tone where pique and offended pride vainly endeavoured to disguise themselves under an affectation of indifference, `` well, master adam, i cannot but wish you joy of the patriarchal arrangement. you have served five years for a professional diploma--a sort of leah, that privilege of killing and curing. now you begin a new course of servitude for a lovely rachel. undoubtedly---perhaps it is rude in me to ask---but undoubtedly you have accepted so flattering an arrangement?'' ``you cannot but recollect there was a condition annexed,'' said hartley, gravely. ``that of rendering yourself acceptable to a girl you have known for so many years?'' said middlemas, with a half-suppressed sneer. ``no great difficulty in that, i should think, for such a person as mr hartley, with doctor gray's favour to back him. no, no---there could be no great obstacle there.'' ``both you and i know the contrary, mr middlemas,'' said hartley, very seriously. ``i know?---how should i know any thing more than yourself about the state of miss gray's inclinations?'' said middlemas. ``i am sure we have had equal access to know them.'' ``perhaps so; but some know better how to avail themselves of opportunities. mr middlemas, i have long suspected that you have had the inestimable advantage of possessing miss gray's affections, and------'' ``i?''---interrupted middlemas; ``you are jesting, or you are jealous. you do yourself less, and me more, than justice; but the compliment is so great, that i am obliged to you for the mistake.'' ``that you may know,'' answered hartley, ``i do not speak either by guess, or from what you call jealousy, i tell you frankly, that menie gray herself told me the state of her affections. i naturally communicated to her the discourse i had with her father. i told her i was but too well convinced that at the present moment i did not possess that interest in her heart, which alone might entitle me to request her acquiescence in the views which her father's goodness held out to me; but i entreated her not at once. to decide against me, but give me an opportunity to make way in her affections, if possible, trusting that time, and the services which i should render to her father, might have an ultimate effect in my favour.'' ``a most natural and modest request. but what did the young lady say in reply?'' ``she is a noble-hearted girl, richard middlemas; and for her frankness alone, even without her beauty and her good sense, deserves an emperor. i cannot express the graceful modesty with which she told me, that she knew too well the kindliness, as she was pleased to call it, of my heart, to expose me to the protracted pain of an unrequited passion. she candidly informed me that she had been long engaged to you in secret ---that you had exchanged portraits;---and though without her father's consent she would never become yours, yet she felt it impossible that she should ever so far change her sentiments as to afford the most distant prospect of success to another.'' ``upon my word,'' said middlemas, ``she has been extremely candid indeed, and i am very much obliged to her!'' ``and upon _my_ honest word, mr middlemas,'' returned hartley, `` you do miss gray the greatest injustice---nay, you are ungrateful to her, if you are displeased at her making this declaration. she loves you as a woman loves the first object of her affection---she loves you better''---he stopped, and middlemas completed the sentence. ``better than i deserve, perhaps?---faith, it may well be so, and i love her dearly in return but after all, you know, the secret was mine as well as hers, and it would have been better that she had consulted me before making it public.'' ``mr middlemas,'' said hartley earnestly, ``if the least of this feeling, on your part, arises from the apprehension that your secret is less safe because it is in my keeping, i can assure you that such is my grateful sense of miss gray's goodness, in communicating, to save me pain, an affair of such delicacy to herself and you, that wild horses should tear me limb from limb before they forced a word of it from my lips.'' ``nay, nay, my dear friend,'' said middlemas, with a frankness of manner indicating a cordiality that had not existed between them for some time, ``you must allow me to be a little jealous in my turn. your true lover cannot have a title to the name, unless he be sometimes unreasonable; and somehow, it seems odd she should have chosen for a confidant one whom i have often thought a formidable rival; and yet i am so far from being displeased, that i do not know that the dear sensible girl could after all have made a better choice. it is time that the foolish coldness between us should be ended, as you must be sensible that its real cause lay in our rivalry. i have much need of good advice, and who can give it to me better than the old companion, whose soundness of judgment i have always envied, even when some injudicious friends have given me credit for quicker parts?'' hartley accepted richard's proffered hand, but without any of the buoyancy of spirit with which it was offered. ``i do not intend,'' he said, ``to remain many days in this place, perhaps not very many hours. but if, in the meanwhile, i can benefit you, by advice or otherwise, you may fully command me. it is the only mode in which i can be of service to menie gray.'' ``love my mistress, love me; a happy _pendant_ to the old proverb, love me, love my dog. well, then, for menie gray's sake, if not for dick middlemas's, (plague on that vulgar tell-tale name,) will you, that are a stander-by, tell us who are the unlucky players, what you think of this game of ours?'' ``how can you ask such a question, when the fields lies so fair before you? i am sure that dr gray would retain you as his assistant upon the same terms which he proposed to me. you are the better match, in all worldly respects, for his daughter, having some capital to begin the world with.'' ``all true---but methinks mr gray has showed no great predilection for me in this matter.'' ``if he has done injustice to your indisputable merit,'' said hartley drily, ``the preference of his daughter has more than atoned for it.'' ``unquestionably; and dearly, therefore, do i love her; otherwise, adam, i am not a person to grasp at the leavings of other people.'' ``richard,'' replied hartley, `` that pride of yours, if you do not check it, will render you both ungrateful and miserable. mr gray's ideas are most friendly. he told me plainly, that his choice of me as an assistant, and as a member of his family, had been a long time balanced by his early affection for you, until he thought he had remarked in you a decisive discontent with such limited prospects as his offer contained, and a desire to go abroad into the world, and push, as it is called, your fortune. he said, that although it was very probable that you might love his daughter well enough to relinquish these ambitious ideas for her sake, yet the demons of ambition and avarice would return after the exorciser love had exhausted the force of his spells, and then he thought he would have just reason to be anxious for his daughter's happiness.'' ``by my faith, the worthy senior speaks scholarly and wisely,'' answered richard---``i did not think he had been so clear-sighted. to say the truth, but for the beautiful menie gray, i should feel like a mill horse, walking my daily round in this dull country, while other gay rovers are trying how the world will receive them. for instance, where do you yourself go?'' ``a cousin of my mother's commands a ship in the company's service. i intend to go with him as surgeon's mate. if i like the service, i will continue in it; if not, i will enter some other line.'' this hartley said with a sigh. ``to india!'' answered richard; ``happy dog--to india! yon may well bear with equanimity all disappointments sustained on this side of the globe. oh, delhi! oh, golconda! have your names no power to conjure down idle recollections?---india, where gold is won by steel; where a brave man cannot pitch his desire of fame and wealth so high, but that he may realize it, if he have fortune to his friend? is it possible that the bold adventurer can fix his thoughts on you, and still be dejected at the thoughts that a bonny blue-eyed lass looked favourably on a 1less lucky fellow than himself? can this be?'' ``less lucky?'' said hartley. ``can you, the accepted lover of menie gray, speak in that tone, even though it be in jest!'' ``nay, adam,'' said richard, ``don't be angry with me, because, being thus far successful, i rate my good fortune not quite so rapturously as perhaps you do, who have missed the luck of it. your philosophy should tell you, that the object which we attain, or are sure of attaining, loses, perhaps, even by that very certainty, a little of the extravagant and ideal value, which attached to it while the object of feverish hopes and aguish fears. but for all that i cannot live without my sweet menie. i would wed her to-morrow with all my soul, without thinking a minute on the clog which so early a marriage would fasten on our heels. but to spend two additional years in this infernal wilderness, cruizing after crowns and half-crowns, when worse men are making lacs and crores of rupees---it is a sad falling of, adam. counsel me, my friend,--can you not suggest some mode of getting off from these two years of destined dulness?'' ``not i,'' replied hartley, scarce repressing his displeasure; ``and if i could induce dr gray to dispense with so reasonable a condition, i should be very sorry to do so. you are but twenty-one, and if such a period of probation was, in the doctor's prudence, judged necessary for me, who am fall two years older, i have no idea that he will dispense with it in yours.'' ``perhaps not,'' replied middlemas; ``but do you not think that these two, or call them three, years of probation, had better be spent in india, where much may be done in a little while, than here, where nothing can be done save just enough to get salt to our broth, or broth to our salt? methinks i have a natural turn for india, and so i ought. my father was a soldier, by the conjecture of all who saw him, and gave me a love of the sword, and an arm to use one. my mother's father was a rich trafficker, who loved wealth, i warrant me, and knew how to get it. this petty two hundred a-year, with its miserable and precarious possibilities, to be shared with the old gentleman, sounds in the ears of one like me, who have the world for the winning, and a sword to cut my way through it, like something little better than a decent kind of beggary. menie is in herself a gem---a diamond---i admit it. but then, one would not set such a precious jewel in lead or copper, but in pure gold; ay, and add a circlet of brilliants to set it off with. be a good fellow, adam, and undertake the setting my project in proper colours before the doctor. i am sure, the wisest thing for him and menie both, is to permit me to spend this short time of probation in the land of cowries. i am sure my heart will be there at any rate, and while i am bleeding some bumpkin for an inflammation, i shall be in fancy relieving some nabob, or rajahpoot, of his plethora of wealth. come --will you assist, will you be auxiliary? ten chances but you plead your own cause, man, for i may be brought up by a sabre, or a bow-string, before i make my pack up; then your road to menie will be free and open, and as you will be possessed of the situation of comforter _ex officio_, you may take her with the tear in her ee,' as old saws advise.'' ``mr richard middlemas,'' said hartley, ``i wish it were possible for me to tell you, in the few words which i intend to bestow on you, whether i pity or despise you the most. heaven has placed happiness, competence, and content within your power, and you are willing to cast them away, to gratify ambition and avarice. were i to give an advice on this subject, either to dr gray or his daughter, it would be to break off all connexion with a man, who, however clever by nature, may soon show himself a fool, and however honestly brought up, may also, upon temptation, prove himself a villain.---you may lay aside the sneer, which is designed to be a sarcastic smile. i will not attempt to do this, because i am convinced that my advice would be of no use, unless it could come unattended with suspicion of my motives. i will hasten my departure from this house, that we may not meet again; and i will leave it to god almighty to protect honesty and innocence against the dangers which must attend vanity and folly.'' so saying, he turned contemptuously from the youthful votary of ambition, and left the garden. ``stop,'' said middlemas, struck with the picture which had been held up to his conscience---``stop, adam hartley, and i will confess to you------'' but his words were uttered in a faint and hesitating manner, and either never reached hartley's ear, or failed in changing his purpose of departure. when he was out of the garden, middlemas began to recall his usual boldness of disposition--``had he stayed a moment longer,'' he said, ``i would have turned papist, and made him my ghostly confessor. the yeomanly churl!---i would give something to know how he has got such a hank over me. what are menie gray's engagements to him? she has given him his answer, and what right has he to come betwixt her and me? if old mon<c,>ada had done a grandfather's duty, and made suitable settlements on me, this plan of marrying the sweet girl, and settling here in her native place, might have done well enough. but to live the life of the poor drudge her father ---to be at the command and call of every boor for twenty miles round!---why, the labours of a higgler, who travels scores of miles to barter pins, ribands, snuff and tobacco, against the housewife's private stock of eggs, mort-skins, and tallow, is more profitable, less laborious, and faith, i think, equally respectable. no, no,---unless i can find wealth nearer home, i will seek it where every one can have it for the gathering; and so i will down to the swan inn, and hold a final consultation with my friend.'' chapter v. the friend whom middlemas expected to meet at the swan, was a person already mentioned in this history by the name of tom hillary, bred an attorney's clerk in the ancient town of novum castrum---_doctus utriusque juris_, as far as a few months in the service of mr lawford, town-clerk of middlemas, could render him so. the last mention that we made of this gentleman, was when his gold-laced hat veiled its splendour before the fresher mounted beavers of the 'prentices of dr gray. that was now about five years since, and it was within six months that he had made his appearance in middlemas, a very different sort of personage from that which he seemed at his departure. he was now called captain; his dress was regimental, and his language martial. he seemed to have plenty of cash, for he not only, to the great surprise of the parties, paid certain old debts, which he had left unsettled behind him, and that notwithstanding his having, as his old practice told him, a good defence of proscription, but even sent the minister a guinea, to the assistance of the parish poor. these acts of justice and benevolence were bruited abroad greatly to the honour of one, who, so long absent, had neither forgotten his just debts, nor hardened his heart against the cries of the needy. his merits were thought the higher, when it was understood he had served the honourable east india company---that wonderful company of merchants, who may indeed, with the strictest propriety, be termed princes. it was about the middle of the eighteenth century, and the directors in leadenhall street were silently laying the foundation of that immense empire, which afterwards rose like an exhalation, and now astonishes europe, as well as asia, with its formidable extent, and stupendous strength. britain had now begun to lend a wondering ear to the account of battles fought, and cities won, in the east; and was surprised by the return of individuals who had left their native country as adventurers, but now reappeared there surrounded by oriental wealth and oriental luxury, which dimmed even the splendour of the most wealthy of the british nobility. in this new-found el dorado, hillary had, it seems, been a labourer, and, if he told truth, to some purpose, though he was far from having completed the harvest which he meditated. he spoke, indeed, of making investments, and, as a mere matter of fancy, he consulted his old master, clerk lawford, concerning the purchase of a moorland farm, of three thousand acres, for which he would be content to give three or four thousand guineas, providing the game was plenty, and the trouting in the brook such as had been represented by advertisement. but he did not wish to make any extensive landed purchase at present. it was necessary to keep up his interest in leadenhall street; and in that view, it would be impolitic to part with his india stock and india bonds. in short, it was folly to think of settling on a poor thousand or twelve hundred a-year, when one was in the prime of life, and had no liver complaint; and so he was determined to double the cape once again, ere he retired to the chimney corner of life. all he wished was, to pick up a few clever fellows for his regiment, or rather for his own company; and as in all his travels he had never seen finer fellows than about middlemas, he was willing to give them the preference in completing his levy. in fact, it was making men of them at once, for a few white faces never failed to strike terror into these black rascals; and then, not to mention the good things that were going at the storming of a pettah, or the plundering of a pagoda, most of these tawny dogs carried so much treasure about their persons, that a won battle was equal to a mine of gold to the victors. the natives of middlemas listened to the noble captain's marvels with different feelings, as their temperaments were saturnine or sanguine. but none could deny that such things had been; and as the narrator was known to be a bold dashing fellow, possessed of some abilities, and, according to the general opinion, not likely to be withheld by any peculiar scruples of conscience, there was no giving any good reason why hillary should not have been as successful as others in the field, which india, agitated as it was by war and intestine disorders, seemed to offer to every enterprising adventurer. he was accordingly received by his old acquaintances at middlemas rather with the respect due to his supposed wealth, than in a manner corresponding with his former humble pretensions. some of the notables of the village did indeed keep aloof. among these, the chief was dr gray, who was an enemy to every thing that approached to fanfaronade, and knew enough of the world to lay it down as a sort of general rule, that he who talks a great deal of fighting is seldom a brave soldier, and he who always speaks about wealth is seldom a rich man at bottom. clerk lawford was also shy, notwithstanding his _communings_ with hillary upon the subject of his intended purchase. the coolness of the captain's old employer towards him was by some supposed to arise out of certain circumstances attending their former connexion; but as the clerk himself never explained what these were, it is unnecessary to make any conjectures upon the subject. richard middlemas very naturally renewed his intimacy with his former comrade, and it was from hillary's conversation, that he had adopted the enthusiasm respecting india, which we have heard him express. it was indeed impossible for a youth, at once inexperienced in the world, and possessed of a most sanguine disposition, to listen without sympathy to the glowing descriptions of hillary, who, though only a recruiting captain, had all the eloquence of a recruiting sergeant. palaces rose like mushrooms in his descriptions; groves of lofty trees, and aromatic shrubs unknown to the chilly soils of europe, were tenanted by every object of the chase, from the royal tiger down to the jackall. the luxuries of a natch, and the peculiar oriental beauty of the enchantresses who perfumed their voluptuous eastern domes, for the pleasure of the haughty english conquerors, were no less attractive than the battles and sieges on which the captain at other times expatiated. not a stream did he mention but flowed over sands of gold, and not a palace that was inferior to those of the celebrated fata morgana. his descriptions seemed steeped in odours, and his every phrase perfumed in ottar of roses. the interviews at which these descriptions took place, often ended in a bottle of choicer wine than the swan inn afforded, with some other appendages of the table, which the captain, who, was a _bon-vivant_, had procured from edinburgh. from this good cheer middlemas was doomed to retire to the homely evening meal of his master, where not all the simple beauties of menie were able to overcome his disgust at the coarseness of the provisions, or his unwillingness to answer questions concerning the diseases of the wretched peasants who were subjected to his inspection. richard's hopes of being acknowledged by his father had long since vanished, and the rough repulse and subsequent neglect on the part of mon<c,>ada, had satisfied him that his grandfather was inexorable, and that neither then, nor at any future time, did he mean to realize the visions which nurse jamieson's splendid figments had encouraged him to entertain. ambition, however, was not lulled to sleep, though it was no longer nourished by the same hopes which had at first awakened it. the indian captain's lavish oratory supplied the themes which had been at first derived from the legends of the nursery; the exploits of a lawrence and a clive, as well as the magnificent opportunities of acquiring wealth to which these exploits opened the road, disturbed the slumbers of the young adventurer. there was nothing to counteract these except his love for menie gray, and the engagements into which it had led him. but his addresses had been paid to menie as much for the gratification of his vanity, as from any decided passion for that innocent and guileless being. he was desirous of carrying of the prize, for which hartley, whom he never loved, had the courage to contend with him. then menie gray had been beheld with admiration by men his superiors in rank and fortune, but with whom his ambition incited him to dispute the prize. no doubt, though urged to play the gallant at first rather from vanity than any other cause, the frankness and modesty with which his suit was admitted, made their natural impression on his heart. he was grateful to the beautiful creature, who acknowledged the superiority of his person and accomplishments, and fancied himself as devotedly attached to her, as her personal charms and mental merits would have rendered any one who was less vain or selfish than her lover. still his passion for the surgeon's daughter ought not, he prudentially determined, to bear more than its due weight in a case so very important as the determining his line of life; and this he smoothed over to his conscience, by repeating to himself, that menie's interest was as essentially concerned as his own, in postponing their marriage to the establishment of his fortune. how many young couples had been ruined by a premature union! the contemptuous conduct of hartley in their last interview, had done something to shake his comrade's confidence in the truth of this reasoning, and to lead him to suspect that he was playing a very sordid and unmanly part, in trifling with the happiness of this amiable and unfortunate young woman. it was in this doubtful humour that he repaired to the swan inn, where he was anxiously expected by his friend the captain. when they were comfortably seated over a bottle of paxarete, middlemas began, with characteristical caution, to sound his friend about the ease or difficulty with which a individual, desirous of entering the company's service, might have an opportunity of getting a commission. if hillary had answered truly, he would have replied, that it was extremely easy; for, at that time, the east india service presented no charms to that superior class of people who have since struggled for admittance under its banners. but the worthy captain replied, that though, in the general case, it might be difficult for a young man to obtain a commission, without serving for some years as a cadet, yet, under his own protection, a young man entering his regiment, and fitted for such a situation, might be sure of an ensigncy if not a lieutenancy, as soon as ever they set foot in india. ``if you, my dear fellow,'' continued he, extending his hand to middlemas, ``would think of changing sheep-head broth and haggis for mulagatawny and curry, i can only say, that though it is indispensable that you should enter the service at first simply as a cadet, yet, by------, you should live like a brother on the passage with me; and no sooner were we through the surf at madras, than i would put you in the way of acquiring both wealth and glory. you have, i think, some trifle of money---a couple of thousands or so?'' ``about a thousand or twelve hundred,'' said richard, affecting the indifference of his companion, but feeling privately humbled by the scantiness of his resources. ``it is quite as much as you will find necessary for the outfit and passage,'' said his adviser; ``and, indeed, if you had not a farthing, it would be the same thing; for if i once say to a friend, i'll help you, tom hillary is not the man to start for fear of the cowries. however, it is as well you have something of a capital of your own to begin upon.'' ``yes,'' replied the proselyte. ``i should not like to be a burden on any one. i have some thoughts, to tell you the truth, to marry before i leave britain; and in that case, you know, cash' will be necessary, whether my wife goes out with us, or remains behind, till she hear how luck goes with me. so, after all, i may have to borrow a few hundreds of you.'' ``what the devil is that you say, dick, about marrying and giving in marriage?'' replied his friend. ``what can put it into the head of a gallant young fellow like you, just rising twenty-one, and six feet high on your stocking-soles, to make a slave of yourself for life? no, no, dick, that will never do. remember the old song 'bachelor bluff, bachelor bluff, hey for a heart that's rugged and tough!' '' ``ay, ay, that sounds very well,'' replied middlemas; ``but then one must shake off a number of old recollections.'' ``the sooner the better, dick; old recollections are like old clothes, and should be sent off by wholesale; they only take up room in one's wardrobe, and it would be old-fashioned to wear them. but you look grave upon it. who the devil is it has made such a hole in your heart?'' ``pshaw!'' answered middlemas, ``i'm sure you must remember---menie---my master's daughter.'' ``what, miss green, the old pottercarrier's daughter?---a likely girl enough, i think.'' ``my master is a surgeon,'' said richard, ``not an apothecary, and his name is gray.'' ``ay, ay, green or grey---what does it signify? he sells his own drugs, i think, which we in the south call being a pottercarrier. the girl is a likely girl enough for a scottish ball-room. but is she up to any thing? has she any _nouz?_'' ``why, she is a sensible girl, save in loving me,'' answered richard; ``and that, as benedict says, is no proof of her wisdom, and no great argument of her folly.'' ``but has she spirit---spunk---dash---a spice of the devil about her?'' ``not a penny-weight---the kindest, simplest, and most manageable of human beings,'' answered the lover. ``she won't do then,'' said the monitor, in a decisive tone. ``i am sorry for it, dick; but she will never do. there are some women in the world that can bear their share in the bustling life we live in india---ay, and i have known some of them drag forward husbands that would otherwise have stuck fast in the mud till the day of judgment. heaven knows how they paid the turnpikes they pushed them through! but these were none of your simple susans, that think their eyes are good for nothing but to look at their husbands, or their fingers but to sew baby-clothes. depend on it, you must give up your matrimony, or your views of preferment. if you wilfully tie a clog round your throat, never think of running a race; but do not suppose that your breaking off with the lass will make any very terrible catastrophe. a scene there may be at parting; but you will soon forget her among the native girls, and she will fall in love with mr tapeitout, the minister's assistant and successor. she is not goods for the indian market, i assure you.'' among the capricious weaknesses of humanity, that one is particularly remarkable which inclines us to esteem persons and things not by their real value, or even by our own judgment, so much as by the opinion of others, who are often very incompetent judges. dick middlemas had been urged forward, in his suit to menie gray, by his observing how much her partner, a booby laird, had been captivated by her; and she was now lowered in his esteem, because an impudent low-lived coxcomb had presumed to talk of her with disparagement. either of these worthy gentlemen would have been as capable of enjoying the beauties of homer, as judging of the merits of menie gray. indeed the ascendency which this bold-talking, promise-making soldier had acquired over dick middlemas, wilful as he was in general, was of a despotic nature; because the captain, though greatly inferior in information and talent to the youth whose opinions be swayed, had skill in suggesting those tempting views of rank and wealth, to which richard's imagination had been from childhood most accessible. one promise he exacted from middlemas, as a condition of the services which he was to render him---it was absolute silence on the subject of his destination for india, and the views upon which it took place. ``my recruits,'' said the captain, ``have been all marched off for the depot at the isle of wight; and i want to leave scotland, and particularly this little burgh, without being worried to death, of which i must despair, should it come to be known that i can provide young griffins, as we call them, with commissions. gad, i should carry off all the first-born of middlemas as cadets, and none are so scrupulous as i am about making promises. i am as trusty as a trojan for that; and you know i cannot do that for every one which i would for an old friend like dick middlemas.'' dick promised secrecy, and it was agreed that the two friends should not even leave the burgh in company, but that the captain should set off first, and his recruit should join him at edinburgh, where his enlistment might be attested; and then they were to travel together to town, and arrange matters for their indian voyage. notwithstanding the definitive arrangement which was thus made for his departure, middlemas thought from time to time with anxiety and regret about quitting menie grey, after the engagement which had passed between them. the resolution was taken, however; the blow was necessarily to be struck; and her ungrateful lover, long since determined against the life of domestic happiness, which he might have enjoyed had his views been better regulated, was now occupied with the means, not indeed of breaking off with her entirely, but of postponing all thoughts of their union until the success of his expedition to india. he might have spared himself all anxiety on this last subject. the wealth of that india to which he was bound would not have bribed menie gray to have left her father's roof against her father's commands; still less when, deprived of his two assistants, he must be reduced to the necessity of continued exertion in his declining life, and therefore might have accounted himself altogether deserted, had his daughter departed from him at the same time. but though it would have been her unalterable determination not to accept any proposal of an immediate union of their fortunes, menie could not, with all a lover's power of self-deception, succeed in persuading herself to be satisfied with richard's conduct towards her. modesty, and a becoming pride, prevented her from seeming to notice, but could not prevent her from bitterly feeling, that her lover was preferring the pursuits of ambition to the humble lot which he might have shared with her, and which promised content at least, if not wealth. ``if he had loved me as he pretended,'' such was the unwilling conviction that rose on her mind, ``my father would surely not have ultimately refused him the same terms which he held out to hartley. his objections would have given way to my happiness, nay, to richard's importunities, which would have removed his suspicions of the unsettled cast of his disposition. but i fear---i fear richard hardly thought the terms proposed were worthy of his acceptance. would it not have been natural too, that he should have asked me, engaged as we stand to each other, to have united our fate before his quitting europe, when i might either have remained here with my father, or accompanied him to india, in quest of that fortune which he is so eagerly pushing for? it would have been wrong ---very wrong---in me to have consented to such a proposal, unless my father had authorized it; but surely it would have been natural that richard should have offered it? alas! men do not know how to love like women. their attachment is only one of a thousand other passions and predilections, ---they are daily engaged in pleasures which blunt their feelings, and in business which distracts them. we---we sit at home to weep, and to think bow coldly our affections are repaid!'' the time was now arrived at which richard middlemas had a right to demand the property vested in the hands of the town-clerk and doctor gray. he did so, and received it accordingly. his late guardian naturally enquired what views he had formed in entering on life? the imagination of the ambitious aspirant saw in this simple question a desire, on the part of the worthy man, to offer, and perhaps press upon him, the same proposal which he had made to hartley. he hastened, therefore, to answer drily, that he had some hopes held out to him which he was not at liberty to communicate; but that the instant he reached london, he would write to the guardian of his youth, and acquaint him with the nature of his prospects, which he was happy to say were rather of a pleasing character. gideon, who supposed that at this critical period of his life, the father or grandfather of the young man might perhaps have intimated a disposition to open some intercourse with him, only replied,--``you have been the child of mystery, richard; and as you came to me, so you leave me. then, i was ignorant from whence you came, and now, i know not whither you are going. it is not, perhaps, a very favourable point in your horoscope, that every thing connected with you is a secret. but as i shall always think with kindness on him whom i have known so long, so when you remember the old man, you ought not to forget that he has done his duty to you, to the extent of his means and power, and taught you that noble profession, by means of which, wherever your lot casts you, you may always gain your bread, and alleviate, at the same time, the distresses of your fellow-creatures.'' middlemas was excited by the simple kindness of his master, and poured forth his thanks with the greater profusion, that he was free from the terror of the emblematical collar and chain, which a moment before seemed to, glisten in the hand of his guardian, and gape to enclose his neck. ``one word more,'' said mr gray, producing a small ring-case. ``this valuable ring was forced upon me by your unfortunate mother. i have no right to it, having been amply paid for my services; and i only accepted it with the purpose of keeping it for you till this moment should arrive. it may be useful, perhaps, should there occur any question about your identity.'' ``thanks, once more, my more than father, for this precious relic, which may indeed be useful. you shall be repaid, if india has diamonds left.'' ``india, and diamonds!''---said gray. ``is your head turned, child?'' ``i mean,'' stammered middlemas, ``if london has any indian diamonds.'' ``pooh! you foolish lad,'' answered gray, ``how should you buy diamonds, or what should i do with them, if you gave me ever so many? get you gone with you while i am angry.''---the tears were glistening in the old man's eyes.---``if i get pleased with you again, i shall not know how to part with you.'' the parting of middlemas with poor menie was yet more affecting. her sorrow revived in his mind all the liveliness of a first love, and he redeemed his character for sincere attachment, by not only imploring an instant union, but even going so far as to propose renouncing his more splendid prospects, and sharing mr gray's humble toil, if by doing so he could secure his daughter's hand. but though there was consolation in this testimony of her lover's faith, menie gray was not so unwise as to accept of sacrifices which might afterwards have been repented of. ``no, richard,'' she said, ``it seldom ends happily when people alter, in a moment of agitated feelings, plans which have been adopted under mature deliberation. i have long seen that your views were extended far beyond so humble a station as this place affords promise of. it is natural they should do so, considering that the circumstances of your birth seem connected with riches and with rank. go, then, seek that riches and rank. it is possible your mind may be changed in the pursuit, and if so think no more about menie gray. but if it should be otherwise, we may meet again, and do not believe for a moment that there can be a change in menie gray's feelings towards you.'' at this interview, much more was said than it is necessary to repeat, much more thought than was actually said. nurse jamieson, in whose chamber it took place, folded her _bairns_, as she called them, in her arms, and declared that heaven had made them for each other, and that she would not ask of heaven to live beyond the day when she should see them bridegroom and bride. at length, it became necessary that the parting scene should end; and richard middlemas, mounting a horse which he had hired for the journey, set off for edinburgh, to which metropolis he had already forwarded his heavy baggage. upon the road the idea more than once occurred to him, that even yet he had better return to middlemas, and secure his happiness by uniting himself at once to menie gray, and to humble competence. but from the moment that he rejoined his friend hillary at their appointed place of rendezvous, he became ashamed even to hint at any change of purpose; and his late excited feelings were forgotten, unless in so far as they confirmed his resolution, that as soon as he had attained a certain portion of wealth and consequence, he would haste to share them with menie gray. yet his gratitude to her father did not appear to have slumbered, if we may judge from the gift of a very handsome cornelian seal, set in gold, and bearing engraved upon it gules, a lion rampant within a bordure or, which was carefully dispatched to stevenlaw's land, middlemas, with a suitable letter. menie knew the handwriting, and watched her father's looks as he read it, thinking, perhaps, that it had turned on a different topic. her father pshawed and poohed a good deal when he had finished the billet, and examined the seal. ``dick middlemas,'' he said, ``is but a fool after all, menie. i am sure i am not like to forget him, that he should send me a token of remembrance; and if he would be so absurd, could he not have sent me the improved lithotomical apparatus? and what have i, gideon gray, to do with the arms of my lord gray?---no, no---my old silver stamp, with the double g upon it, will serve my turn--but put the bonnie dye* away, menie, my dear--* ``pretty toy.'' it was kindly meant, at any rate.'' the reader cannot doubt that the seal was safely and carefully preserved. chapter vi. a lazar-house it seemed, wherein were laid numbers of all diseased. milton. after the captain had finished his business, amongst which he did not forget to have his recruit regularly attested, as a candidate for glory in the service of the honourable east india company, the friends left edinburgh. from thence they got a passage by sea to newcastle, where hillary had also some regimental affairs to transact, before he joined his regiment. at newcastle the captain had the good luck to find a small brig, commanded by an old acquaintance and schoolfellow, which was just about to sail for the isle of wight. ``i have arranged for our passage with him,'' he said to middlemas---``for when you are at the dep<o^>t, you can learn a little of your duty, which cannot be so well taught on board of ship, and then i will find it easier to have you promoted.'' ``do you mean,'' said richard, ``that i am to stay at the isle of wight all the time that you are jigging it away in london?'' ``ay, indeed do i!,'' said his comrade, ``and it's best for you too; whatever business you have in london, i can do it for you as well, or something better than yourself.'' ``but i choose to transact my own business myself, captain hillary,'' said richard. ``then you ought to have remained your own master, mr cadet middlemas. at present you are an enlisted recruit of the honourable east india company; i am your officer, and should you hesitate to follow me aboard, why, you foolish fellow i could have you sent on board in handcuffs.'' this was jestingly spoken; but yet there was something in the tone which hurt middlemas's pride, and alarmed his fears. he had observed of late, that his friend, especially when in company of others, talked to him with an air of command or superiority, difficult to be endured, and yet so closely allied to the freedom often exercised betwixt two intimates, that he could not find any proper mode of rebuffing, or resenting it. such manifestations of authority were usually followed by an instant renewal of their intimacy; but in the present case that did not so speedily ensue. middlemas, indeed, consented to go with his companion to the isle of wight, perhaps because if he should quarrel with him, the whole plan of his indian voyage, and all the hopes built upon it, must fall to the ground. but he altered his purpose of entrusting his comrade with his little fortune, to lay out as his occasions might require, and resolved himself to overlook the expenditure of his money, which, in the form of bank of england notes, was safely deposited in his travelling trunk. captain hillary, finding that some hint he had thrown out on this subject was disregarded, appeared to think no more about it. the voyage was performed with safety and celerity; and having coasted the shores of that beautiful island, which he who once sees never forgets, through whatever part of the world his future path may lead him, the vessel was soon anchored off the little town of ryde; and, as the waves were uncommonly still, richard felt the sickness diminish, which, for a considerable part of the passage, had occupied his attention more than any thing else. the master of the brig in honour to his passengers, and affection to his old schoolfellow, had formed an awning upon deck, and proposed to have the pleasure of giving them a little treat before they left his vessel. lobscous, sea-pie, and other delicacies of a naval description, had been provided in a quantity far disproportionate to the number of the guests. but the punch which succeeded was of excellent quality, and portentously strong. captain hillary pushed it round, and insisted upon his companion taking his full share in the merry bout, the rather that, as he facetiously said, there had been some dryness between them, which good liquor would be sovereign in removing. he renewed, with additional splendours, the various panoramic scenes of india and indian adventures, which had first excited the ambition of middlemas, and assured him, that even if he should not be able to get him a commission instantly, yet a short delay would only give him time to become better acquainted with his military duties; and middlemas was too much elevated by the liquor he had drank to see any difficulty which could oppose itself to his fortunes. whether those who shared in the compotation were more seasoned topers---whether middlemas drank more than they---or whether, as he himself afterwards suspected, his cup had been drugged, like those of king duncan's body-guard, it is certain that on this occasion he passed, with unusual rapidity, through all the different phases of the respectable state of drunkenness,---laughed, sung, whooped, and hallooed, was maudlin in his fondness, and frantic in his wrath, and at length fell into a fast and imperturbable sleep. the effect of the liquor displayed itself, as usual, in a hundred wild dreams of parched deserts, and of serpents whose bite inflicted the most intolerable thirst---of the suffering of the indian on the death-stake---and the torments of the infernal regions themselves; when at length he awakened, and it appeared that the latter vision was in fact realized. the sounds which had at first influenced his dreams, and at length broken his slumbers, were of the most horrible, as well as the most melancholy description. they came from the ranges of pallet-beds, which were closely packed together in a species of military hospital, where a burning fever was the prevalent complaint. many of the patients were under the influence of a high delirium, during which they shouted, shrieked, laughed, blasphemed, and uttered the most horrible imprecations. others, sensible of their condition, bewailed it with low groans, and some attempts at devotion, which showed their ignorance of the principles, and even the forms of religion. those who were convalescent talked ribaldry in a loud tone, or whispered to each other in cant language, upon schemes which, as far as a passing phrase could be understood by a novice, had relation to violent and criminal exploits. richard middlemas's astonishment was equal to his horror. he had but one advantage over the poor wretches with whom he was classed, and it was in enjoying the luxury of a pallet to himself ---most of the others being occupied by two unhappy beings. he saw no one who appeared to attend to the wants, or to heed the complaints, of the wretches around him, or to whom he could offer any appeal against his present situation. he looked for his clothes, that he might arise and extricate himself from this den of horrors; but his clothes were nowhere to be seen, nor did he see his portmanteau, or sea-chest. it was much to be apprehended he would never see them more. then, but too late, he remembered the insinuations which had passed current respecting his friend the captain, who was supposed to have been discharged by mr lawford, on account of some breach of trust in the town-clerk's service. but that he should have trepanned the friend who had reposed his whole confidence in him---that he should have plundered him of his fortune, and placed him in this house of pestilence, with the hope that death might stifle his tongue, were iniquities not to have been anticipated, even if the worst of these reports were true. but middlemas resolved not to be awanting to himself. this place must be visited by some officer, military or medical, to whom he would make an appeal, and alarm his fears at least, if he could not awaken his conscience. while he revolved these distracting thoughts, tormented at the same time by a burning thirst which he had no means of satisfying, he endeavoured to discover if, among those stretched upon the pallets nearest him, he could not discern some one likely to enter into conversation with him, and give him some information about the nature and customs of this horrid place. but the bed nearest him was occupied by two fellows, who, although to judge from their gaunt cheeks, hollow eyes, and ghastly looks, they were apparently recovering from the disease, and just rescued from the jaws of death, were deeply engaged in endeavouring to cheat each other of a few half-pence at a game of cribbage, mixing the terms of the game with oaths not loud but deep; each turn of luck being hailed by the winner as well as the loser with execrations, which seemed designed to blight both body and soul, now used as the language of triumph, and now as reproaches against fortune. next to the gamblers was a pallet, occupied indeed by two bodies, but only one of which was living---the other sufferer had been recently relieved from his agony. ``he is dead---he is dead!'' said the wretched survivor. ``then do you die too, and be d---d,'' answered one of the players, ``and then there will be a pair of you, as pugg says.'' ``i tell you he is growing stiff and cold,'' said the poor wretch---``the dead is no bed-fellow for the living. for god's sake, help to rid me of th e corpse.'' ``ay, and get the credit of having _done_ him--as may be the case with yourself, friend---for he has some two or three hoggs about him---'' ``you know you took the last rap from his breeches-pocket not an hour ago,'' expostulated the poor convalescent---``but help me to take the body out of the bed, and i will not tell the _jigger-dubber_ that you have been before-hand with him.'' ``you tell the _jigger-dubber_!'' answered the cribbage player. `` such another word, and i will twist your head round till your eyes look at the drummer's handwriting on your back. hold your peace, and don't bother our game with your gammon, or i will make you as mute as your bedfellow.'' the unhappy wretch, exhausted, sunk back beside his hideous companion, and the usual jargon of the game, interlarded with execrations, went on as before. from this specimen of the most obdurate indifference, contrasted with the last excess of misery, middlemas became satisfied how little could be made of an appeal to the humanity of his fellow-sufferers. his heart sunk within him, and the thoughts of the happy and peaceful home, which he might have called his own, arose before his over-heated fancy, with a vividness of perception that bordered upon insanity. he saw before him the rivulet which wanders through the burgh-muir of middlemas, where he had so often set little mills for the amusement of menie while she was a child. one drought of it would have been worth all the diamonds of the east, which of late he had worshipped with such devotion; but that drought was denied to him as to tantalus. rallying his senses from this passing illusion, and knowing enough of the practice of the medical art, to be aware of the necessity of preventing his ideas from wandering if possible, he endeavoured to recollect that he was a surgeon, and, after all, should not have the extreme fear for the interior of a military hospital, which its horrors might inspire into strangers to the profession. but though he strove, by such recollections, to rally his spirits, he was not the less aware of the difference betwixt the condition of a surgeon, who might have attended such a place in the course of his duty, and a poor inhabitant, who was at once a patient and a prisoner. a footstep was now heard in the apartment, which seemed to silence all the varied sounds of woe that filled it. the cribbage party hid their cards, and ceased their oaths; other wretches, whose complaints had arisen to frenzy, left off their wild exclamations and entreaties for assistance. agony softened her shriek, insanity hushed its senseless clamours, and even death seemed desirous to stifle his parting groan in the presence of captain seelencooper. this official was the superintendent, or, as the miserable inhabitants termed him, the governor of the hospital. he had all the air of having been originally a turnkey in some ill-regulated jail---a stout, short, bandy-legged man, with one eye, and a double portion of ferocity in that which remained. he wore an old-fashioned tarnished uniform, which did not seem to have been made for him; and the voice in which this minister of humanity addressed the sick, was that of a boatswain, shouting in the midst of a storm. he had pistols and a cutlass in his belt; for his mode of administration being such as provoked, even hospital patients to revolt, his life had been more than once in danger amongst them. he was followed by two assistants, who carried handcuffs and strait-jackets. as seelencooper made his rounds, complaint and pain were hushed, and the flourish of the bamboo, which he bore in his hand, seemed powerful as the wand of a magician to silence all complaint and remonstrance. ``i tell you the meat is as sweet as a nosegay--and for the bread, it's good enough, and too good, for a set of tubbers, that lie shamming abraham, and consuming the right honourable company's victuals---i don't speak to them that are really sick, for god knows i am always for humanity.'' ``if that be the case, sir,'' said richard middlemas, whose lair the captain had approached, while he was thus answering the low and humble complaints of those by whose bed-side he passed---``if that be the case, sir, i hope your humanity will make you attend to what i say.'' ``and who the devil are you?'' said the governor, turning on him his single eye of fire, while a sneer gathered on his harsh features, which were so well qualified to express it. ``my name is middlemas---i come from scotland, and have been sent here by some strange mistake. i am neither a private soldier, nor am i indisposed, more than by the heat of this cursed place.'' ``why then, friend, all i have to ask you is, whether you are an attested recruit or not?'' ``i was attested at edinburgh,'' said middlemas, but------'' ``but what the devil would you have, then you are enlisted---the captain and the doctor sent you here---surely they know best whether you are private or officer, sick or well.'' ``but i was promised,'' said middlemas, ``promised by tom hillary------" ``promised, were you? why, there is not a man here that has not been promised something by somebody or another, or perhaps has promised something to himself. this is the land of promise, my smart fellow, but you know it is india that must be the land of performance. so good morning to you. the doctor will come his rounds presently, and put you all to rights.'' ``stay but one moment---one moment only---i have been robbed.'' ``robbed! look you there now,'' said the governor--``everybody that comes here has been robbed.---egad, i am the luckiest fellow in europe ---other people in my line have only thieves and blackguards upon their hands; but none come to my ken but honest decent, unfortunate gentlemen, that have been robbed!'' ``take care how you treat this so lightly, sir,'' said middlemas; ``i have been robbed of a thousand pounds.'' here governor seelencooper's gravity was totally overcome, and his laugh was echoed by several of the patients, either because they wished to curry favour with the superintendent, or from the feeling which influences evil spirits to rejoice in the tortures of those who are sent to share their agony. ``a thousand pounds!'' exclaimed captain seelencooper, as he recovered his breath,---``come, that's a good one---i like a fellow that does not make two bites of a cherry---why, there is not a cull in the ken that pretends to have lost more than a few hoggs, and here is a servant to the honourable company that has been robbed of a thousand pounds! well done, mr tom of ten thousand--you're a credit to the house, and to the service, and so good morning to you.'' he passed on, and richard, starting up in a storm of anger and despair, found, as he would have called after him, that his voice, betwixt thirst and agitation, refused its office. ``water, water!'' he said, laying hold, at the same time, of one of the assistants who followed seelencooper by the sleeve. the fellow looked carelessly round; there was a jug stood by the side of the cribbage players, which he reached to middlemas, bidding him, ``drink and be d------d.'' the man's back was no sooner turned, than the gamester threw himself from his own bed into that of middlemas, and grasping firm hold of the arm of richard, ere he could carry the vessel to his head, swore he should not have his booze. it may be readily conjectured, that the pitcher thus anxiously and desperately reclaimed, contained something better than the pure element. in fact, a large proportion of it was gin. the jug was broken in the struggle, and the liquor spilt. middlemas dealt a blow to the assailant, which was amply and heartily repaid, and a combat would have ensued, but for the interference of the superintendent and his assistants, who, with a dexterity that showed them well acquainted with such emergencies, clapped a strait-waistcoat upon each of the antagonists. richard's efforts at remonstrance only, procured him a blow from captain seelencooper's rattan, and a tender admonition to hold his tongue, if he valued a whole skin. irritated at once by sufferings of the mind and of the body, tormented by raging thirst, and by the sense of his own dreadful situation, the mind of richard middlemas seemed to be on the point of becoming unsettled. he felt an insane desire to imitate and reply to the groans, oaths, and ribaldry, which, as soon as the superintendent quitted the hospital, echoed around him. he longed, though he struggled against the impulse, to vie in curses with the reprobate, and in screams with the maniac. but his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, his mouth itself seemed choked with ashes; there came upon him a dimness of sight, a rushing sound in his ears, and the powers of life were for a time suspended. chapter vii. a wise physician, skill'd our wounds to heal, is more than armies to the common weal. pope's _homer_. as middlemas returned to his senses, he was sensible that his blood felt more cool; that the feverish throb of his pulsation was diminished; that the ligatures on his person were removed, and his lungs performed their functions more freely. one assistant was binding up a vein, from which a considerable quantity of blood had been taken; another, who had just washed the face of the patient, was holding aromatic vinegar to his nostrils. as he began to open his eyes, the person who had just completed the bandage, said in latin, but in a very low tone, and without raising his head, ``annon sis ricardus ille middlemas, excivitate middlemassiense? responde in lingua latina.'' ``sum ille miserrimus,'' replied richard, again shutting his eyes; for strange as it may seem, the voice of his comrade adam hartley, though his presence might be of so much consequence in this emergency, conveyed a pang to his wounded pride. he was conscious of unkindly, if not hostile, feelings towards his old companion; he remembered the tone of superiority which he used to assume over him, and thus to lie stretched at his feet, and in a manner at his mercy, aggravated his distress, by the feelings of the dying chieftain, ``earl percy sees my fall.'' this was, however, too unreasonable an emotion to subsist above a minute. in the next, he availed himself of the latin language, with which both were familiar, (for in that time the medical studies at the celebrated university of edinburgh were, in a great measure, conducted in latin,) to tell in a few words his own folly, and the villainy of hillary. ``i must be gone instantly,'' said hartley--``take courage---i trust to be able to assist you. in the meantime, take food and physic from none but my servant, who you see holds the sponge in his hand. you are in a place where a man's life has been taken for the sake of his gold sleeve-buttons.'' ``stay yet a moment,'' said middlemas---``let me remove this temptation from my dangerous neighbours.'' he drew a small packet from his under waistcoat, and put it into hartley's hands. ``if i die,'' he said, ``be my heir. you deserve her better than l.'' all answer was prevented by the hoarse voice of seelencooper. ``well, doctor, will you carry through your patient?'' ``symptoms are dubious yet,'' said the doctor ---``that wag an alarming swoon. you must have him carried into the private ward, and my young man shall attend him.'' ``why, if you command it, doctor, needs must; ---but i can tell you there is a man we both know, that has a thousand reasons at least for keeping him in the public ward.'' ``i know nothing of your thousand reasons,'' said hartley; ``i can only tell you that this young fellow is as well-limbed and likely a lad as the company have among their recruits. it is my business to save him for their service, and if he dies by your neglecting what i direct, depend upon it i will not allow the blame to lie at my door. i will tell the general the charge i have given you.'' ``the general!'' said seelencooper, much embarrassed--``tell the general?---ay, about his health. but you will not say any thing about what he may have said in his light-headed fits? my eyes! if you listen to what feverish patients say when the tantivy is in their brain, your back will soon break with tale-bearing, for i will warrant you plenty of them to carry.'' ``captain seelencooper,'' said the doctor, ``i do not meddle with your department in the hospital: my advice to you is, not to trouble yourself with mine. i suppose, as i have a commission in the service, and have besides a regular diploma as a physician, i know when my patient is light-headed or otherwise. so do you let the man be carefully looked after, at your peril.'' thus saying, he left the hospital, but not till, under pretext of again consulting the pulse, he pressed the patient's hand, as if to assure him once more of his exertions for his liberation. ``my eyes!'' muttered seelencooper, ``this cockerel crows gallant, to come from a scotch roost; but i would know well enough how to fetch the youngster off the perch, if it were not for the cure he has done on the general's pickaninies.'' enough of this fell on richard's ear to suggest hopes of deliverance, which were increased when he was shortly afterwards removed to a separate ward, a place much more decent in appearance, and inhabited only by two patients, who seemed petty officers. although sensible that he had no illness, save that weakness which succeeds violent agitation, he deemed it wisest to suffer himself still to be treated as a patient, in consideration that he should thus remain under his comrade's superintendence. yet while preparing to avail himself of hartley's good offices, the prevailing, reflection of his secret bosom was the ungrateful sentiment, ``had heaven no other means of saving me than by the hands of him i like least on the face of the earth?'' meanwhile, ignorant of the ungrateful sentiments of his comrade, and indeed wholly indifferent how he felt towards him, hartley proceeded in doing him such service as was in his power, without any other object than the discharge of his own duty as a man and as a christian. the manner in which he became qualified to render his comrade assistance, requires some short explanation. our story took place at a period, when the directors of the east india company, with that hardy and persevering policy which has raised to such a height the british empire in the east, had determined to send a large reinforcement of european troops to the support of their power in india, then threatened by the kingdom of mysore, of which the celebrated hyder ally had usurped the government, after dethroning his master. considerable difficulty was found in obtaining recruits for that service. those who might have been otherwise disposed to be soldiers, were afraid of the climate, and of the species of banishment which the engagement implied; and doubted also how far the engagements of the company might be faithfully observed towards them, when they were removed from the protection of the british laws. for these and other reasons, the military service of the king was preferred, and that of the company could only procure the worst recruits, although their zealous agents scrupled not to employ the worst means. indeed the practice of kidnapping, or crimping, as it is technically called, was at that time general, whether for the colonies, or even for the king's troops; and as the agents employed in such transactions must be of course entirely unscrupulous, there was not only much villainy committed in the direct prosecution of the trade, but it gave rise incidentally to remarkable cases of robbery, and even murder. such atrocities were of course concealed from the authorities for whom the levies were made, and the necessity of obtaining soldiers made men, whose conduct was otherwise unexceptionable, cold in looking closely into the mode in which their recruiting service was conducted. the principal depot of the troops which were by these means assembled, was in the isle of wight, where the season proving unhealthy, and the men themselves being many of them of a bad habit of body, a fever of a malignant character broke out amongst them, and speedily crowded with patients the military hospital, of which mr seelencooper, himself an old and experienced crimp and kidnapper, had obtained the superintendence. irregularities began to take place also among the soldiers who remained healthy, and the necessity of subjecting them to some discipline before they sailed was so evident, that several officers of the company's naval service expressed their belief that otherwise there would be dangerous mutinies on the passage. to remedy the first of these evils, the court of directors sent down to the island several of their medical servants, amongst whom was hartley, whose qualifications had been amply certified by a medical board, before which he had passed an examination, besides his possessing a diploma from the university of edinburgh as m.d. to enforce the discipline of their soldiers, the court committed full power to one of their own body, general witherington. the general was an officer who had distinguished himself highly in their service. he had returned from india five or six years before, with a large fortune, which he had rendered much greater by an advantageous marriage with a rich heiress. the general and his lady went little into society, but seemed to live entirely for their infant family, those in number being three, two boys and a girl. although he had retired from the service, he willingly undertook the temporary charge committed to him, and taking a house at a considerable distance from the town of ryde, he proceeded to enrol the troops into separate bodies, appoint officers of capacity to each, and by regular training and discipline, gradually to bring them into something resembling good order. he heard their complaints of ill usage in the articles of provisions and appointments, and did them upon all occasions the strictest justice, save that he was never known to restore one recruit to his freedom from the service, however unfairly or even illegally his attestation might have been obtained. ``it is none of my business,'' said general witherington, ``how you became soldiers,---soldiers i found you, and soldiers i will leave you. but i will take especial care, that as soldiers you shall have every thing, to a penny or a pin's head, that you are justly entitled to.'' he went to work without fear or favour, reported many abuses to the board of directors, had several officers, commissaries, &c. removed from the service, and made his name as great a terror to the peculators at home, as it had been to the enemies of britain in hindostan. captain seelencooper, and his associates in the hospital department, heard and trembled, fearing that their turn should come next; but the general, who elsewhere examined all with his own eyes, showed a reluctance to visit the hospital in person. public report industriously imputed this to fear of infection. such was certainly the motive; though it was not fear for his own safety that influenced general witherington, but he dreaded lest he should carry the infection home to the nursery, on which he doated. the alarm of his lady was yet more unreasonably sensitive; she would scarcely suffer the children to walk abroad, if the wind but blew from the quartet where the hospital was situated. but providence baffles the precautions of mortals. in a walk across the fields, chosen as the most sheltered and sequestered, the children, with their train of eastern and european attendants, met a woman who carried a child that was recovering from the smallpox. the anxiety of the father, joined to some religious scruples on the mother's part, had postponed inoculation, which was then scarcely come into general use. the infection caught like a quick-match, and ran like wildfire through all those in the family who had not previously had the disease. one of the general's children, the second boy, died, and two of the ayas, or black female servants, had the same fate. the hearts of the father and mother would have been broken for the child they had lost, had not their grief been suspended by anxiety for the fate of those who lived, and who were confessed to be in imminent danger. they were like persons distracted, as the symptoms of the poor patients seemed gradually to resemble more nearly that of the child already lost. while the parents were in this agony of apprehension, the general's principal servant, a native of northumberland like himself, informed him one morning that there was a young man from the same county among the hospital doctors, who had publicly blamed the mode of treatment observed towards the patients, and spoken of another which he had seen practised with eminent success. ``some impudent quack,'' said the general, ``who would force himself into business by bold assertions. doctor tourniquet and doctor lancelot are men of high reputation.'' ``do not mention their reputation,'' said the mother, with a mother's impatience; ``did they not let my sweet rueben die? what avails the reputation of the physician, when the patient perisheth?'' ``if his honour would but see doctor hartley,'' said winter, turning half towards the lady, and then turning back again to his master. ``he is a very decent young man, who, i am sure, never expected what he said to reach your honour's ears; ---and he is a native of northumberland.'' ``send a servant with a led horse,'' said the general: ``let the young man come hither instantly.'' it is well known, that the ancient mode of treating the smallpox was to refuse to the patient every thing which nature urged him to desire; and, in particular, to confine him to heated rooms, beds loaded with blankets, and spiced wine, when nature called for cold water and fresh air. a different mode of treatment had of late been adventured upon by some practitioners, who preferred reason to authority, and gideon gray had followed it for several years with extraordinary success. when general witherington saw hartley, he was startled at his youth; but when he heard him modestly, but with confidence, state the difference of the two modes of treatment, and the rationale of his practice, he listened with the most serious attention. so did his lady, her streaming eyes turning from hartley to her husband, as if to watch what impression the arguments of the former were making upon the latter. general witherington was silent for a few minutes after hartley had finished his exposition, and seem buried in profound reflection. ``to treat a fever,'' he said, ``in a manner which tends to produce one, seems indeed to be adding fuel to fire.'' ``it is---it is,'' said the lady. ``let us trust this young man, general witherington. we shall at least give our darling the comforts of the fresh air and cold water, for which they are pining.'' but the general remained undecided. ``your reasoning,'' he said to hartley, ``seems plausible; but still it is only hypothesis. what can you show to support your theory, in opposition to the general practice?'' ``my own observation,'' replied the young man. ``here is a memorandum-book of medical cases which i have witnessed. it contains twenty cases of smallpox, of which eighteen were recoveries.'' ``and the two others?'' said the general. ``terminated fatally,'' replied hartley; ``we can as yet but partially disarm this scourge of the human race.'' ``young man,'' continued the general, ``were i to say that a thousand gold mohrs were yours in case my children live under your treatment, what have you to peril in exchange?'' ``my reputation,'' answered hartley, firmly. ``and you could warrant on your reputation the recovery of your patients?'' ``god forbid i should be so presumptuous! but i think i could warrant my using those means, which with god's blessing, afford the fairest chance of a favourable result.'' ``enough---you are modest and sensible, as well as bold, and i will trust you.'' the lady, on whom hartley's words and manner had made a great impression, and who was eager to discontinue a mode of treatment which subjected the patients to the greatest pain and privation, and had already proved unfortunate, eagerly acquiesced, and hartley was placed in full authority in the sick room. windows were thrown open, fires reduced or discontinued, loads of bed-clothes removed, cooling drinks superseded mulled wine and spices. the sick-nurses cried out murder. doctors tourniquet and lancelot retired in disgust, menacing something like a general pestilence, in vengeance of what they termed rebellion against the neglect of the aphorisms of hippocrates. hartley proceeded quietly and steadily, and the patients got into a fair road of recovery. the young northumbrian was neither conceited nor artful; yet, with all his plainness of character, he could not but know the influence which a successful physician obtains over the parents of the children whom he has saved from the grave, and especially before the cure is actually completed. he resolved to use this influence in behalf of his old companion, trusting that the military tenacity of general witherington would give way on consideration of the obligation so lately conferred upon him. on his way to the general's house, which was at present his constant place of residence, he examined the packet which middlemas had put into his hand. it contained the picture of menie gray, plainly set, and the ring, with brilliants, which doctor gray had given to richard, as his mother's last gift. the first of these tokens extracted from honest hartley a sigh, perhaps a tear of sad remembrance. ``i fear,'' he said, ``she has not chosen worthily; but she shall be happy, if i can make her so.'' arrived it the residence of general witherington, our doctor went first to the sick apartment, and then carried to their parents the delightful account that the recovery of the children might be considered as certain. ``may the god of israel bless thee, young man!'' said the lady, trembling with emotion; ``thou hast wiped the tear from the eye of the despairing mother. and yet-alas! alas! still it must flow when i think of my cherub reuben. oh! mr hartley, why did we not know you a week sooner?---my darling had not then died.'' ``god gives and takes away, my lady,'' answered hartley; ``and you must remember, that two are restored to you out of three. it is far from certain, that the treatment i have used towards the convalescents would have brought through their brother; for the case, as reported to me, was of a very inveterate description.'' ``doctor,'' said witherington, his voice testifying more emotion than he usually or willingly gave way to, ``you can comfort the sick in spirit as well as the sick in body. but it is time we settle our wager. you betted your reputation, which remains with you, increased by all the credit due to your eminent success, against a thousand gold mohrs, the value of which you will find in that pocketbook.'' ``general witherington,'' said hartley, ``you are wealthy, and entitled to be generous---i am poor, and not entitled to decline whatever may be, even in a liberal sense, a compensation for my professional attendance. but there is a bound to extravagance, both in giving and accepting; and i must not hazard the newly acquired reputation with which you flatter me, by giving room to have it said, that i fleeced the parents, when their feelings were all afloat with anxiety for their children. allow me to divide this large sum; one half i will thankfully retain, as a most liberal recompense for my labour; and if you still think you owe me any thing, let me have in the advantage of your good opinion and countenance.'' ``if i acquiesce in your proposal, doctor hartley,'' said the general, reluctantly receiving back a part of the contents of the pocketbook, ``it is because i hope to serve you with my interest, even better than with my purse.'' ``and indeed, sir,'' replied hartley, ``it was upon your interest that i am just about to make a small claim.'' the general and his lady spoke both in the same breath, to assure him his boon was granted before asked. ``i am not so sure of that,'' said hartley; ``for it respects a point on which i have heard say, that your excellency is rather inflexible---the discharge of a recruit.'' ``my duty makes me so,'' replied the general--``you know the sort of fellows that we are obliged to content ourselves with---they get drunk---grow pot-valiant---enlist over-night, and repent next morning. if i am to dismiss all those who pretend to have been trepanned, we should have few volunteers remain behind. every one has some idle story of the promises of a swaggering sergeant kite---it is impossible to attend to them. but let me hear yours, however.'' ``mine is a very singular case. the party has been robbed of a thousand pounds.'' ``a recruit for this service possessing a thousand pounds! my dear doctor, depend upon it, the fellow has gulled you. bless my heart, would a man who had a thousand pounds think of enlisting as a private sentinel?'' ``he had no such thoughts,'' answered hartley. ``he was persuaded by the rogue whom he trusted, that he was to have a commission.'' ``then his friend must have been tom hillary, or the devil; for no other could possess so much cunning and impudence. he will certainly find his way to the gallows at last. still this story of the thousand pounds seems a touch even beyond tom hillary. what reason have you to think that this fellow ever had such a sum of money?'' ``i have the best reason to know it for certain,'' answered hartley; ``he and i served our time together, under the same excellent master; and when he came of age, not liking the profession which he had studied, and obtaining possession of his little fortune, he was deceived by the promises of this same hillary.'' ``who has had him locked up in our well-ordered hospital yonder?'' said the general. ``even so, please your excellency,'' replied hartley; ``not, i think, to cure him of any complaint, but to give him the opportunity of catching one, which would silence all enquiries.'' ``the matter shall be closely looked into. but how miserably careless the young man's friends must have been to let a raw lad go into the world with such a companion and guide as tom hillarys and such a sum as a thousand pounds in his pocket. his parents had better have knocked him on the head. it certainly was not done like canny northumberland, as my servant winter calls it.'' ``the youth must indeed have had strangely hard-hearted, or careless parents,'' said mrs witherington, in accents of pity. ``he never knew them, madam,'' said hartley; ``there was a mystery on the score of his birth. a cold, unwilling, and almost unknown hand, dealt him out his portion when he came of lawful age, and he was pushed into the world like a bark forced from shore, without rudder, compass, or pilot.'' here general witherington involuntarily looked to his lady, while, guided by a similar impulse, her looks were turned upon him. they exchanged a momentary glance of deep and peculiar meaning, and then the eyes of both were fixed on the ground. ``were you brought up in scotland?'' said the lady, addressing herself, in a faltering voice, to hartley---``and what was your master's name?'' ``i served my apprenticeship with mr gideon gray of the town of middlemas,'' said hartley. ``middlemas! gray!'' repeated the lady, and fainted away. hartley offered the succours of his profession; the husband flew to support her head, and the instant that mrs witherington began to recover, he whispered to her, in a tone betwixt entreaty and warning, ``zilia, beware---beware!'' some imperfect sounds which she had begun to frame, died away upon her tongue. ``let me assist you to your dressing-room, my love,'' said her obviously anxious husband. she arose with the action of an automaton, which moves at the touch of a spring, and half hanging upon her husband, half dragging herself on by her own efforts, had nearly reached the door of the room, when hartley following, asked if he could be of any service. ``no, sir,'' said the general sternly; ``this is no case for a stranger's interference; when you are wanted i will send for you.'' hartley stepped back on receiving a rebuff in a tone so different from that which general witherington had used toward him in their previous intercourse, and disposed, for the first time, to give credit to public report, which assigned to that gentleman, with several good qualities, the character of a very proud and haughty man. hitherto, he thought, i have seen him tamed by sorrow and anxiety, now the mind is regaining its natural tension. but he must in decency interest himself for the unhappy middlemas. the general returned into the apartment a minute or two afterwards, and addressed hartley in his usual tone of politeness, though apparently still under great embarrassment, which he in vain endeavoured to conceal. ``mrs witherington is better,'' he said, ``and will be glad to see you before dinner. you dine with us, i hope?'' hartley bowed. ``mrs witherington is rather subject to this sort of nervous fits, and she has been much harassed of late by grief and apprehension. when she recovers from them, it is a few minutes before she can collect her ideas, and during such intervals--to speak very confidentially to you, my dear doctor hartley---she speaks sometimes about imaginary events which have never happened, and sometimes about distressing occurrences in an early period of life. i am not, therefore, willing that any one but myself, or her old attendant mrs lopez, should be with her on such occasions.'' hartley admitted that a certain degree of light-headedness was often the consequence of nervous fits. the general proceeded. ``as to this young man---this friend of yours---this richard middlemas--did you not call him so?'' ``not that i recollect,'' answered hartley; ``but your excellency has hit upon his name.'' ``that is odd enough---certainly you said something about middlemas?'' replied general witherington. ``i mentioned the name of the town,'' said hartley. ``ay, and i caught it up as the name of the recruit---i was indeed occupied at the moment by my anxiety about my wife. but this middlemas, since such is his name, is a wild young fellow, i suppose?'' ``i should do him wrong to say so, your excellency. he may have had his follies like other young men; but his conduct has, so far as. i know, been respectable; but, considering we lived in the same house, we were not very intimate.'' ``that is bad---i should have liked him---that is---it would have been happy for him to have had a friend like you. but i suppose you studied too hard for him. he would be a soldier, ha?---is he good-looking?'' ``remarkably so,'' replied hartley; ``and has a very prepossessing manner.'' ``is his complexion dark or fair?'' asked the general. ``rather uncommonly dark,'' said hartley,--darker, if i may use the freedom, than your excellency's.'' ``nay, then, he must be a black ouzel indeed!--does he understand languages?'' ``latin and french tolerably well.'' ``of course he cannot fence or dance?'' ``pardon me, sir, i am no great judge; but richard is reckoned to do both with uncommon skill.'' ``indeed!---sum this up, and it sounds well. handsome, accomplished in exercises, moderately learned, perfectly well-bred, not unreasonably wild. all this comes too high for the situation of a private sentinel. he must have a commission, doctor--entirely for your sake.'' ``your excellency is generous.'' ``it shall be so; and i will find means to make tom hillary disgorge his plunder, unless he prefers being hanged, a fate he has long deserved. you cannot go back to the hospital to-day. you dine with us, and you know mrs witherington's fears of infection; but to-morrow find out your friend. winter shall see him equipped with every thing needful. tom hillary shall repay advances, you know; and he must be off with the first detachment of the recruits, in the middlesex indiaman, which sails from the downs on monday fortnight; that is, if you think him fit for the voyage. i dare say the poor fellow is sick of the isle of wight.'' ``your excellency will permit the young man to pay his respects to you before his departure?'' ``to what purpose, sir?'' said the general, hastily and peremptorily; but instantly added, ``you are right---i should like to see him. winter shall let him know the time, and take horses to fetch him hither. but he must have been out of the hospital for a day or two; so the sooner you can set him at liberty the better. in the meantime, take him to your own lodgings, doctor; and do not let him form any intimacies with the officers, or any others, in this place, where he may light on another hillary.'' had hartley been as well acquainted as the reader with the circumstances of young middlemas's birth, he might have drawn decisive conclusions from the behaviour of general witherington, while his comrade is the topic of conversation. but as mr gray and middlemas himself were both silent on the subject, he knew little of it but from general report, which his curiosity had never induced him to scrutinize minutely. nevertheless, what he did apprehend interested him so much, that he resolved upon trying a little experiment, in which he thought there could be no great harm. he placed on his finger the remarkable ring intrusted to his care by richard middlemas, and endeavoured to make it conspicuous in approaching mrs witherington; taking care, however, that this occurred during her husband's absence. her eyes had no sooner caught a sight of the gem, than they became riveted to it, and she begged a nearer sight of it, as strongly resembling one which she had given to a friend. taking the ring from his finger, and placing it in her emaciated band, hartley informed her it was the property of the friend in whom he had just been endeavouring to interest the general. mrs witherington retired in great emotion, but next day summoned hartley to a private interview, the particulars of which, so far as are necessary to be known, shall be afterwards related. on the succeeding day after these important discoveries, middlemas, to his great delight, was rescued from his seclusion in the hospital, and transferred to his comrade's lodgings in the town of ryde, of which hartley himself was a rare inmate; the anxiety of mrs witherington detaining him at the general's house, long after his medical attendance might have been dispensed with. within two or three days a commission arrived for richard middlemas, as a lieutenant in the service of the east india company. winter, by his master's orders, put the wardrobe of the young officer on a suitable footing; while middlemas, enchanted at finding himself at once emancipated from his late dreadful difficulties, and placed under the protection of a man of such importance as the general, obeyed implicitly the hints transmitted to him by hartley, and enforced by winter, and abstained from going into public, or forming acquaintances with any one. even hartley himself he saw seldom; and, deep as were his obligations, he did not perhaps greatly regret the absence of one, whose presence always affected him with a sense of humiliation and abasement. chapter viii. the evening before he was to sail for the downs, where the middlesex lay ready to weigh anchor, the new lieutenant was summoned by winter to attend him to the general's residence, for the purpose of being introduced to his patron, to thank him at once, and to bid him farewell. on the road, the old man took the liberty of schooling his companion concerning the respect which he ought to pay to his master, ``who was, though a kind and generous man as ever came from northumberland, extremely rigid in punctiliously exacting the degree of honour which was his due.'' while they were advancing towards the house, the general and his wife expected their arrival with breathless anxiety. they were seated in a superb drawing-room, the general behind a large chandelier, which shaded opposite to his face, threw all the light to the other side of the table, so that he could observe any person placed there, without becoming the subject of observation in turn. on a heap of cushions, wrapped in a glittering drapery of gold and silver muslins, mingled with shawls, a luxury which was then a novelty in europe, sate, or rather reclined, his lady, who, past the full meridian of beauty, retained charms enough to distinguish her as one who had been formerly a very fine woman, though her mind seemed occupied by the deepest emotion. ``zilia,'' said her husband, ``you are unable for what you have undertaken---take my advice---retire--you shall know all and every thing that passes---but retire. to what purpose should you cling to the idle wish of beholding for a moment a being whom you can never again look upon?'' ``alas!'' answered the lady, ``and is not your declaration, that i shall never see him more, a sufficient reason that i should wish to see him now---should wish to imprint on my memory the features and the form which i am never again to behold while we are in the body? do not, my richard, be more cruel than was my poor father, even when his wrath was in its bitterness. he let me look upon my infant, and its cherub face dwelt with me, and was my comfort, among the years of unutterable sorrow in which my youth wore away.'' ``it is enough, zilia---you have desired this boon ---i have granted it---and, at whatever risk, my promise shall be kept. but think how much depends on this fatal secret---your rank and estimation in society---my honour interested that that estimation should remain uninjured. zilia, the moment that the promulgation of such a secret gives prudes and scandal-mongers a right to treat you with scorn, will be fraught with unutterable misery, perhaps with bloodshed and death, should a man dare to take up the rumour.'' ``you shall be obeyed, my husband,'' answered zilia, ``in all that the frailness of nature will permit. but oh, god of my fathers, of what clay hast thou fashioned us, poor mortals, who dread so much the shame which follows sin, yet repent so little for the sin itself!'' in a minute afterwards steps were heard---the door opened---winter announced lieutenant middlemas, and the unconscious son stood before his parents. witherington started involuntarily up, but immediately constrained himself to assume the easy deportment with which, a superior receives a dependent, and which, in his own case, was usually mingled with a certain degree of hauteur. the mother had less command of herself. she too sprung up, as if with the intention of throwing herself on the neck of her son, for whom she had travailed and sorrowed. but the warning glance of her husband arrested her, as if by magic, and she remained standing, with her beautiful head and neck somewhat advanced, her hands clasped together, and extended forward in the attitude of motion, but motionless, nevertheless, as a marble statue, to which the sculptor has given all the appearance of life, but cannot impart its powers. so strange a gesture and posture might have excited the young officer's surprise; but the lady stood in the shade, and he was so intent in looking upon his patron that he was scarce even conscious of mrs witherington's presence. ``i am happy in this opportunity,'' said middlemas, observing that the general did not speak, ``to return my thanks to general witherington, to whom they never can be sufficiently paid.'' the sound of his voice, though uttering words so indifferent, seemed to dissolve the charm which kept his mother motionless. she sighed deeply, relaxed the rigidity of her posture, and sunk back on the cushions from which she had started up. middlemas turned a look towards her at the sound of the sigh, and the rustling of her drapery. the general hastened to speak. ``my wife, mr middlemas has been unwell of late---your friend, mr hartley, might mention it to you---an affection of the nerves.'' mr middlemas was, of course, sorry and concerned. ``we have had distress in our family, mr middlemas, from the ultimate and heart-breaking consequences of which we have escaped by the skill of your friend, mr hartley. we will be happy if it is in our power to repay a part of our obligations in services to his friend and proteg<e'>, mr middlemas.'' ``i am only acknowledged as his proteg<e'>, then,'' thought richard; but he said, ``every one must envy his friend, in having had the distinguished good fortune to be of use to general witherington and his family.'' ``you have received your commission, i presume. have you any particular wish or desire respecting your destination?'' ``no, may it please your excellency,'' answered middlemas. ``i suppose hartley would tell your excellency my unhappy state---that i am an orphan, deserted by the parents who cast me on the wide world, an outcast about whom nobody knows or cares, except to desire that i should wander far enough, and live obscurely enough, not to disgrace them by their connexion with me.'' zilia wrung her hands as he spoke, and drew her muslin veil closely around her head, as if to exclude the sounds which excited her mental agony. ``mr hartley was not particularly communicative about your affairs,'' said the general; ``nor do i wish to give you the pain of entering into them. what i desire to know is, if you are pleased with your destination to madras?'' ``perfectly, please your excellency---anywhere, so that there is no chance of meeting the villain hillary.'' ``oh! hillary's services are too necessary in the purlieus of saint giles's, the lowlights of newcastle, and such like places, where human carrion can be picked up, to be permitted to go to india. however, to show you the knave has some grace, there are the notes of which you were robbed. you will find them the very same paper which you lost, except a small sum which the rogue had spent, but which a friend has made up, in compassion for your sufferings.'' richard middlemas sunk on one knee, and kissed the band which restored him to independence. ``pshaw!'' said the general, ``you are a silly young man;'' but he withdrew not his hand from his caresses. this was one of the occasions on which dick middlemas could be oratorical. ``o, my more than father,'' he said, ``how much greater a debt do i owe to you than to the unnatural parents, who brought me into this world by their sin, and deserted me through their cruelty!'' zilia, as she heard these cutting words, flung back her veil, raising it on both hands till it floated behind her like a mist, and then giving a faint groan, sunk down in a swoon. pushing middlemas from him with a hasty movement, general witherington flew to his lady's assistance, and carried her in his arms, as if she had been a child, into the anteroom, where an old servant waited with the means of restoring suspended animation, which the unhappy husband too truly anticipated might be useful. these were hastily employed, and succeeded in calling the sufferer to life, but in a state of mental emotion that was terrible. her mind was obviously impressed by the last words which her son had uttered.---``did you hear him, richard!'' she exclaimed, in accents terribly loud, considering the exhausted state of her strength ---``did you hear the words? it was heaven speaking our condemnation by the voice of our own child. but do not fear, my richard, do not weep! i will answer the thunder of heaven with its own music.'' she flew to a harpsichord which stood in the room, and, while the servant and master gazed on each other, as if doubting whether her senses were about to leave her entirely, she wandered over the keys, producing a wilderness of harmony, composed of passages recalled by memory, or combined by her own musical talent, until at length her voice and instrument united in one of those magnificent hymns in which her youth had praised her maker, with voice and harp, like the royal hebrew who composed it. the tear ebbed insensibly from the eyes which she turned upwards--her vocal tones, combining with those of the instrument, rose to a pitch of brilliancy seldom attained by the most distinguished performers, and then sunk into a dying cadence, which fell, never again to rise,---for the songstress had died with her strain. the horror of the distracted husband may be conceived, when all efforts to restore life proved totally ineffectual. servants were despatched for medical men---hartley, and every other who could be found. the general precipitated himself into the apartment they had so lately left, and in his haste ran against middlemas, who, at the sound of the music from the adjoining apartment, had naturally approached nearer to the door, and, surprised and startled by the sort of clamour, hasty steps, and confused voices which ensued, had remained standing there, endeavouring to ascertain the cause of so much disorder. the sight of the unfortunate young man wakened the general's stormy passions to frenzy. he seemed to recognise his son only as the cause of his wife's death. he seized him by the collar, and shook him violently as he dragged him into the chamber of mortality. ``come hither,'' he said, ``thou for whom a life of lowest obscurity was too mean a fate---come hither, and look on the parents whom thou hast so much envied---whom thou hast so often cursed. look at that pale emaciated form, a figure of wax, rather than flesh and blood---that is thy mother--that is the unhappy zilia mon<c,>ada, to whom thy birth was the source of shame and misery, and to whom thy ill-omened presence has now brought death itself. and behold me''---he pushed the lad from him, and stood up erect, looking wellnigh in gesture and figure the apostate spirit be described ---``behold me''---he said; ``see you not my hair streaming with sulphur, my brow scathed with lightning?---l am the arch-fiend---i am the father whom you seek---i am the accursed richard tresham, the seducer of zilia, and the father of her murderer!'' hartley entered while this horrid scene was passing. all attention to the deceased, he instantly saw, would be thrown away; and understanding, partly from winter, partly from the tenor of the general's frantic discourse, the nature of the disclosure which had occurred, he hastened to put an end, if possible, to the frightful and scandalous scene which had taken place. aware how delicately the general felt on the subject of reputation, he assailed him with remonstrances on such conduct, in presence of so many witnesses. but the mind had ceased to answer to that once powerful key-note. ``i care not if the whole world hear my sin and my punishment,'' said witherington. ``it shall not be again said of me, that i fear shame more than i repent sin. i feared shame only for zilia, and zilia is dead!'' ``but her memory, general---spare the memory of your wife, in which the character of your children is involved.'' ``i have no children!'' said the desperate and violent man. ``my reuben is gone to heaven, to prepare a lodging for the angel who has now escaped from earth in a flood of harmony, which can only be equalled where she is gone. the other two cherubs will not survive their mother. i shall be, nay, i already feel myself, a childless man.'' ``yet i am your son,'' replied middlemas, in a tone sorrowful, but at the same time tinged with sullen resentment---``your son by your wedded wife. pale as she lies there, i call upon you both to acknowledge my rights, and all who are present to bear witness to them.'' ``wretch!'' exclaimed the maniac father, ``canst thou think of thine own sordid rights in the midst of death and frenzy? my son!---thou art the fiend who hast occasioned my wretchedness in this world, and who will share my eternal misery in the next. hence from my sight, and my curse go with thee!'' his eyes fixed on the ground, his arms folded on his breast, the haughty and dogged spirit of middlemas yet seemed to meditate reply. but hartley, winter, and others bystanders interfered, and forced him from the apartment. as they endeavoured to remonstrate with him, he twisted himself out of their grasp, ran to the stables, and seizing the first saddled horse that he found, out of many that had been in haste got ready to seek for assistance, he threw himself on its back, and rode furiously off. hartley was about to mount and follow him; but winter and the other domestics threw themselves around him, and implored him not to desert their unfortunate master, at a time when the influence which he had acquired over him might be the only restraint on the violence of his passions. ``he had a _coup de soleil_ in india,'' whispered winter, ``and is capable of any thing in his fits. these cowards cannot control him, and i am old and feeble.'' satisfied that general witherington was a greater object of compassion than middlemas, whom besides he had no hope of overtaking, and who he believed was safe in his own keeping, however violent might be his present emotions, hartley returned where the greater emergency demanded his immediate care. he found the unfortunate general contending with the domestics, who endeavoured to prevent his making his way to the apartment where his children slept, and exclaiming furiously---``rejoice, my treasures---rejoice!---he has fled who would proclaim your father's crime, and your mother's dishonour!---he has fled, never to return, whose life has been the death of one parent, and the ruin of another!---courage, my children, your father is with you---he will make his way to you through a hundred obstacles!'' the domestics, intimidated and undecided, were giving way to him, when adam hartley approached, and placing himself before the unhappy man, fixed his eye firmly on the general's while he said in a low but stern voice---``madman, would you kill your children?'' the general seemed staggered in his resolution, but still attempted to rush past him. but hartley, seizing him by the collar of his coat on each side, ``you are my prisoner,'' he said; ``i command you to follow me.'' ``ha! prisoner, and for high treason? dog, thou hast met thy death!'' the distracted man drew a poniard from his bosom, and hartley's strength and resolution might not perhaps have saved his life, had not winter mastered the general's right hand, and contrived to disarm him. ``i am your prisoner, then,'' he said; ``use me civilly---and let me see my wife and children.'' ``you shall see them to-morrow,'' said hartley; ``follow us instantly, and without the least resistance.'' general witherington followed like a child, with the air of one who is suffering for a cause in which he glories. ``i am not ashamed of my principles,'' he said ---``i am willing to die for my king.'' without exciting his frenzy, by contradicting the fantastic idea which occupied his imagination, hartley continued to maintain over his patient the ascendency he had acquired. he caused him to be led to his apartment, and beheld him suffer himself to be put to bed. administering then a strong composing drought, and causing a servant to sleep in the room, he watched the unfortunate man till dawn of morning. general witherington awoke in his full senses, and apparently conscious of his real situation, which he testified by low groans, sobs, and tears. when hartley drew near his bedside, he knew him perfectly, and said, ``do not fear me---the fit is over ---leave me now, and see after yonder unfortunate. let him leave britain as soon as possible, and go where his fate calls him, and where we can never meet more. winter knows my ways, and will take care of me.'' winter gave the same advice. ``i can answer,'' he said, ``for my master's security at present; but in heaven's name, prevent his ever meeting again with that obdurate young man!'' chapter ix. well, then, the world's mine oyster, which i with sword will open. _merry wives of windsor_. when adam hartley arrived at his lodgings in the sweet little town of ryde, his first enquiries were after his comrade. he had arrived last night late, man and horse all in a foam. he made no reply to any questions about supper or the like, but snatching a candle, ran up stairs into his apartment, and shut and double-locked the door. the servants only supposed, that, being something intoxicated, he had ridden hard, and was unwilling to expose himself. hartley went to the door of his chamber, not without some apprehensions; and after knocking and calling more than once, received at length the welcome return, ``who is there?'' on hartley announcing himself, the door opened, and middlemas appeared, well dressed, and with his hair arranged and powdered; although, from the appearance of the bed, it had not been slept in on the preceding night, and richard's countenance, haggard and ghastly, seemed to bear witness to the same fact. it was, however, with an affectation of indifference that he spoke. ``i congratulate you on your improvement in wordly knowledge, adam. it is just the time to desert the poor heir, and stick by him that is in immediate possession of the wealth.'' ``i staid last night at general witherington's,'' answered hartley, ``because he is extremely ill.'' ``tell him to repent of his sins, then,'' said richard. ``old gray used to say, a doctor had as good a title to give ghostly advice as a parson. do you remember doctor dulberry, the minister, calling him an interloper? ha! ha! ha!'' ``i am surprised at this style of language from one in your circumstances.'' ``why, ay,'' said middlemas, with a bitter smile, it would be difficult to most men to keep up their spirits, after gaining and losing father, mother, and a good inheritance, all in the same day. but i had always a turn for philosophy.'' ``i really do not understand you, mr middlemas.'' ``why, i found my parents yesterday, did i not?'' answered the young man. ``my mother, as you know, had waited but that moment to die, and my father to become distracted; and i conclude both were contrived purposely to cheat me of my inheritance, as he has taken up such a prejudice against me.'' ``inheritance?'' repeated hartley, bewildered by richard's calmness, and half suspecting that the insanity of the father was hereditary in the family. ``in heaven's name, recollect yourself, and get rid of these hallucinations. what inheritance are you dreaming of?'' ``that of my mother, to be sure, who must have inherited old mon<c,>ada's wealth---and to whom should it descend, save to her children?---i am the eldest of them---that fact cannot be denied.'' ``but consider, richard---recollect yourself.'' ``i do,'' said richard; ``and what then?'' ``then you cannot but remember,'' said hartley, ``that unless there was a will in your favour, your birth prevents you from inheriting.'' ``you are mistaken, sir, i am legitimate.---yonder sickly brats, whom you rescued from the grave, are not more legitimate than i am.---yes! our parents could not allow the air of heaven to breathe on them---me they committed to the winds and the waves---i am nevertheless their lawful child, as well as their puling offspring of advanced age and decayed health. i saw them, adam---winter showed the nursery to me while they were gathering courage to receive me in the drawing-room. there they lay, the children of predilection, the riches of the east expended that they might sleep soft, and wake in magnificence. i, the eldest brother--the heir---i stood beside their bed in the borrowed dress which i had so lately exchanged for the rags of an hospital. their couches breathed the richest perfumes, while i was reeking from a pest-house; and i---i repeat it---the heir, the produce of their earliest and best love, was thus treated. no wonder that my look was that of a basilisk.'' ``you speak as if you were possessed with an evil spirit,'' said hartley; ``or else you labour under a strange delusion.'' ``you think those only are legally married over whom a drowsy parson has read the ceremony from a dog's-eared prayer-book? it may be so in your english law---but scotland makes love himself the priest. a vow betwixt a fond couple, the blue heaven alone witnessing, will protect a confiding girl against the perjury of a fickle swain, as much as if a dean had performed the rites in the loftiest cathedral in england. nay, more; if the child of love be acknowledged by the father at the time when he is baptized---if he present the mother to strangers of respectability as his wife, the laws of scotland will not allow him to retract the justice which has, in these actions, been done to the female whom he has wronged, or the offspring of their mutual love. this general tresham, or witherington, treated my unhappy mother as his wife before gray and others, quartered her as such in the family of a respectable man, gave her the same name by which he himself chose to pass for the time. he presented me to the priest as his lawful offspring; and the law of scotland, benevolent to the helpless child, will not allow him now to disown what he so formally admitted. i know my rights, and am determined to claim them.'' ``you do not then intend to go on board the middlesex? think a little---you will lose your voyage and your commission.'' ``i will save my birth-right,'' answered middlemas. ``when i thought of going to india, i knew not my parents, or how to make good the rights which i had through them. that riddle is solved. i am entitled to at least a third of mon<c,>ada's estate, which, by winter's account, is considerable. but for you, and your mode of treating the smallpox, i should have had the whole. little did i think, when old gray was likely to have his wig pulled off, for putting out fires, throwing open windows, and exploding whisky and water, that the new system of treating the smallpox was to cost me so many thousand pounds.'' ``you are determined, then,'' said hartley, ``on this wild course?'' ``i know my rights, and am determined to make them available,'' answered the obstinate youth. ``mr richard middlemas, i am sorry for you.'' ``mr adam hartley, i beg to know why i am honoured by your sorrow.'' ``i pity you,'' answered hartley, ``both for the obstinacy of selfishness, which can think of wealth after the scene you saw last night, and for the idle vision which leads you to believe that you can obtain possession of it.'' ``selfish!'' cried middlemas; ``why, i am a dutiful son, labouring to clear the memory of a calumniated mother---and am i a visionary?--why, it was to this hope that i awakened, when old mon<c,>ada's letter to gray, devoting me to perpetual obscurity, first roused me to a sense of my situation, and dispelled the dreams of my childhood. do you think that i would ever have submitted to the drudgery which i shared with you, but that, by doing so, i kept in view the only traces of these unnatural parents, by means of which i proposed to introduce myself to their notice, and, if necessary, enforce the rights of a legitimate child? the silence and death of mon<c,>ada broke my plans, and it was then only i reconciled myself to the thoughts of india.'' ``you were very young to have known so much of the scottish law, at the time when we were first acquainted,'' said hartley. ``but i can guess your instructor.'' ``no less authority than tom hillary's,'' replied middlemas. ``his good counsel on that head is a reason why i do not now prosecute him to the gallows.'' ``i judged as much,'' replied hartley; ``for i heard him, before i left middlemas, debating the point with mr lawford; and i recollect perfectly, that he stated the law to be such as you now lay down.'' ``and what said lawford in answer?'' demanded middlemas. ``he admitted,'' replied hartley, ``that in circumstances where the case was doubtful, such presumptions of legitimacy might be admitted. but he said they were liable to be controlled by positive and precise testimony, as, for instance, the evidence of the mother declaring the illegitimacy of the child.'' ``but there can exist none such in my case,'' said middlemas hastily, and with marks of alarm. ``i will not deceive you, mr middlemas, though i fear i cannot help giving you pain. i had yesterday a long conference with your mother, mrs witherington, in which she acknowledged you as her son, but a son born before marriage. this express declaration will, therefore, put an end to the suppositions on which you ground your hopes. if you please, you may hear the contents of her declaration, which i have in her own handwriting.'' ``confusion! is the cup to be for ever dashed from my lips?'' muttered richard; but recovering his composure, by exertion of the self-command of which he possessed so large a portion, he desired hartley to proceed with his communication. hartley accordingly proceeded to inform him of the particulars preceding his birth, and those which followed after it; while middlemas, seated on a sea-chest, listened with inimitable composure to a tale which went to root up the flourishing hopes of wealth which he had lately so fondly entertained. zilia mon<c,>ada was the only child of a portuguese jew of great wealth, who had come to london, in prosecution of his commerce. among the few christians who frequented his house, and occasionally his table, was richard tresham, a gentleman of a high northumbrian family, deeply engaged in the service of charles edward during his short invasion, and though holding a commission in the portuguese service, still an object of suspicion to the british government, on account of his well-known courage and jacobitical principles. the high-bred elegance of this gentleman, together with his complete acquaintance with the portuguese language and manners, had won the intimacy of old mon<c,>ada, and, alas! the heart of the inexperienced zilia, who, beautiful as an angel, had as little knowledge of the world and its wickedness as the lamb that is but a week old. tresham made his proposals to mon<c,>ada, perhaps in a manner which too evidently showed that he conceived the high-born christian was degrading himself in asking an alliance with the wealthy jew. mon<c,>ada rejected his proposals, forbade him his house, but could not prevent the lovers from meeting in private. tresham made a dishonourable use of the opportunities which the poor zilia so incautiously afforded, and the consequence was her ruin. the lover, however, had every purpose of righting the injury which he had inflicted, and, after various plans of secret marriage, which were rendered abortive by the difference of religion, and other circumstances, flight for scotland was determined on. the hurry of the journey, the fear and anxiety to which zilia was subject, brought on her confinement several weeks before the usual time, so that they were compelled to accept of the assistance and accommodation offered by mr gray. they had not been there many hours ere tresham heard, by the medium of some sharp-sighted or keen-eared friend, that there were warrants out against him for treasonable practices. his correspondence with charles edward had become known to mon<c,>ada during the period of their friendship; he betrayed it in vengeance to the british cabinet, and warrants were issued, in which, at mon<c,>ada's request, his daughter's name was included. this might be of use, he apprehended, to enable him to separate his daughter from tresham, should he find the fugitives actually married. how far he succeeded, the reader already knows, as well as the precautions which he took to prevent the living evidence of his child's frailty from being known to exist. his daughter he carried with him, and subjected her to severe restraint, which her own reflections rendered doubly bitter. it would have completed his revenge, had the author of zilia's misfortunes been brought to the scaffold for his political offences. but tresham skulked among friends in the highlands, and escaped until the affair blew over. he afterwards entered into the east india company's service, under his mother's name of witherington, which concealed the jacobite and rebel, until these terms were forgotten. his skill in military affairs soon raised him to riches and eminence. when he returned to britain, his first enquiries were after the family of mon<c,>ada. his fame, his wealth, and the late conviction that his daughter never would marry any but him who had her first love, induced the old man to give that encouragement to general witherington, which he had always denied to the poor and outlawed major tresham; and the lovers, after having been fourteen years separated, were at length united in wedlock. general witherington eagerly concurred in the earnest wish of his father-in-law, that every remembrance of former events should be buried, by leaving the fruit of the early and unhappy intrigue suitably provided for, but in a distant and obscure situation. zilia thought far otherwise. her heart longed, with a mother's longing, towards the object of her first maternal tenderness, but she dared not place herself in opposition at once to the will of her father, and the decision of her husband. the former, his religious prejudices much effaced by his long residence in england, had given consent that she should conform to the established religion of her husband and her country,---the latter, haughty as we have described him, made it his pride to introduce the beautiful convert among his high-born kindred. the discovery of her former frailty would have proved a blow to her respectability, which he dreaded like death; and it could not long remain a secret from his wife, that in consequence of a severe illness in india, even his reason became occasionally shaken by any thing which violently agitated his feelings. she had, therefore, acquiesced in patience and silence in the course of policy which mon<c,>ada had devised, and which her husband anxiously and warmly approved. yet her thoughts, even when their marriage was blessed with other offspring, anxiously reverted to the banished and outcast child, who had first been clasped to the maternal bosom. all these feelings, ``subdued and cherished long,'' were set afloat in full tide by the unexpected discovery of this son, redeemed from a lot of extreme misery, and placed before his mother's imagination in circumstances so disastrous. it was in vain that her husband had assured her that he would secure the young man's prosperity, by his purse and his interest. she could not be satisfied, until she had herself done something to alleviate the doom of banishment to which her eldest-born was thus condemned. she was the more eager to do so, as she felt the extreme delicacy of her health, which was undermined by so many years of secret suffering. mrs witherington was, in conferring her maternal bounty, naturally led to employ the agency of hartley, the companion of her son, and to whom, since the recovery of her younger children, she almost looked up as to a tutelar deity. she placed in his hands a sum of l.2000, which she had at her own unchallenged disposal, with a request, uttered in the fondest and most affectionate terms, that it might be applied to the service of richard middlemas in the way hartley should think most useful to him. she assured him of further support, as it should be needed; and a note to the following purport was also intrusted to him, to be delivered when and where the prudence of hartley should judge it proper to confide to him the secret of his birth. ``oh, benoni! oh, child of my sorrow!'' said this interesting document, ``why should the eyes of thy unhappy mother be about to obtain permission to look on thee, since her arms were denied the right to fold thee to her bosom? may the god of jews and of gentiles watch over thee, and guard thee! may he remove, in his good time, the darkness which rolls between me and the beloved of my heart---the first fruit of my unhappy, nay, unhallowed affection. do not---do not, my beloved!--think thyself a lonely exile, while thy mother's prayers arise for thee at sunrise and at sunset, to call down every blessing on thy head---to invoke every power in thy protection and defence. seek not to see me---oh, why must i say so!---but let me humble myself in the dust, since it is my own sin, my own folly, which i must blame;---but seek not to see or speak with me---it might be the death of both. confide thy thoughts to the excellent hartley, who hath been the guardian angel of us all---even as the tribes of israel had each their guardian angel. what thou shalt wish, and be shall advise in thy behalf, shall be done, if in the power of a mother---and the love of a mother! is it bounded by seas, or can deserts and distance measure its limits? oh, child of my sorrow! oh, benoni! let thy spirit be with mine, as mine is with thee. `` z. m.'' all these arrangements being completed, the unfortunate lady next insisted with her husband that the should be permitted to see her son in that parting interview which terminated so fatally. hartley, therefore, now discharged as her executor, the duty intrusted to him as her confidential agent. ``surely,'' he thought, as, having finished his communication, he was about to leave the apartment, ``surely the demons of ambition and avarice will unclose the talons which they have fixed upon this man, at a charm like this.'' and indeed richard's heart had been formed of the nether millstone, had he not been duly affected by these first and last tokens of his mother's affection. he leant his head upon a table, and his tears flowed painfully. hartley left him undisturbed for more than an hour, and on his return found him in nearly the same attitude in which he had left him. ``i regret to disturb you at this moment,'' he said, ``but i have still a part of my duty to discharge. i must place in your possession the deposit which your mother made in my hands---and i must also remind you that time flies fast, and that you have scarce an hour or two to determine whether you will prosecute your indian voyage, under the new view of circumstances which i have opened to you.'' middlemas took the bills which his mother had bequeathed him. as he raised his head, hartley could observe that his face was stained with tears. yet he i counted over the money with mercantile accuracy; and though he assumed the pen for the purpose of writing a discharge with an air of inconsolable dejection, yet he drew it up in good set terms, like one who had his senses much at his command. ``and now,'' he said, in a mournful voice, ``give me my mother's narrative.'' hartley almost started, and answered hastily, ``you have the poor lady's letter, which was addressed to yourself---the narrative is addressed to me. it is my warrant for disposing of a large sum of money---it concerns the rights of third parties, and i cannot part with it.'' ``surely, surely it were better to deliver it into my hands, were it but to weep over it,'' answered middlemas. ``my fortune, hartley, has been very cruel. you see that my parents purposed to have made me their undoubted heir; yet their purpose was disappointed by accident. and now my mother comes with well-intended fondness, and while she means to advance my fortune, furnishes evidence to destroy it.---come, come, hartley---you must be conscious that my mother wrote those details entirely for my information. i am the rightful owner, and insist on having them.'' ``i am sorry i must insist on refusing your demand,'' answered hartley, putting the papers in his pocket. ``you ought to consider, that if this communication has destroyed the idle and groundless hopes which you have indulged in, it has, at the same time, more than trebled your capital; and that if there are some hundreds or thousands in the world richer than yourself, there are many millions not half so well provided. set a brave spirit, then, against your fortune, and do not doubt your success in life.'' his words seemed to sink into the gloomy mind of middlemas. he stood silent for a moment, and then answered with a reluctant and insinuating voice,-- ``my dear hartley, we have long been companions--you can have neither pleasure nor interest in ruining my hopes---you may find some in forwarding them. mon<c,>ada's fortune will enable me to allow five thousand pounds to the friend who should aid me in my difficulties.'' ``good morning to you, mr middlemas,'' said hartley, endeavouring to withdraw. ``one moment---one moment,'' said middlemas, holding his friend by the button at the same time, ``i meant to say ten thousand---and---and---marry whomsoever you like---i will not be your hinderance.'' ``you are a villain!'' said hartley, breaking from him, ``and i always thought you so.'' ``and you,'' answered middlemas, ``are a fool, and i never thought you better. off he goes--let him---the game has been played and lost---i must hedge my bets: india must be my back-play.'' all was in readiness for his departure. a small vessel and a favouring gale conveyed him and several other military gentlemen to the downs, where the indiaman which was to transport them from europe, lay ready for their reception. his first feelings were sufficiently disconsolate. but accustomed from his infancy to conceal his internal thoughts, he appeared in the course of a week the gayest and best bred passenger who ever dared the long and weary space betwixt old england and her indian possessions. at madras, where the sociable feelings of the resident inhabitants give ready way to enthusiasm in behalf of any stranger of agreeable qualities, he experienced that warm hospitality which distinguishes the british character in the east. middlemas was well received in company, and in the way of becoming an indispensable guest at every entertainment in the place, when the vessel, on board of which hartley acted as surgeon's mate, arrived at the same settlement. the latter would not, from his situation, have been entitled to expect much civility and attention; but this disadvantage was made up by his possessing the most powerful introductions from general witherington, and from other persons of weight in leadenhall street, the general's friends, to the principal inhabitants in the settlement. he found himself once more, therefore, moving in the same sphere with middlemas, and under the alternative of living with him on decent and distant terms, or of breaking of with him altogether. the first of these courses might perhaps have been the wisest; but the other was most congenial to the blunt and plain character of hartley, who saw neither propriety nor comfort in maintaining a show of friendly intercourse, to conceal hate, contempt, and mutual dislike. the circle at fort saint george was much more restricted at that time than it has been since. the coldness of the young men did not escape notice; it transpired that they had been once intimates and fellow-students; yet it was now found that they hesitated at accepting invitations to the same parties. rumour assigned many different and incompatible reasons for this deadly breach, to which hartley gave no attention whatever, while lieutenant middlemas took care to countenance those which represented the cause of the quarrel most favourably to himself. ``a little bit of rivalry had taken place,'' he said, when pressed by gentlemen for an explanation; ``he had only had the good luck to get further in the good graces of a fair lady than his friend hartley, who had made a quarrel of it, as they saw. he thought it very silly to keep up spleen, at such a distance of time and space. he was sorry, more for the sake of the strangeness of the appearance of the thing than any thing else, although his friend had really some very good points about him.'' while these whispers were working their effect in society, they did not prevent hartley from receiving the most flattering assurances of encouragement and official promotion from the madras government as opportunity should arise. soon after, it was intimated to him that a medical appointment of a lucrative nature in a remote settlement was conferred on him, which removed him for some time from madras and its neighbourhood. hartley accordingly sailed on his distant expedition; and it was observed, that after his departure, the character of middlemas, as if some check had been removed, began to display itself in disagreeable colours. it was noticed that this young man, whose manners were so agreeable and so courteous during the first months after his arrival in india, began now to show symptoms of a haughty and overbearing spirit. he had adopted, for reasons which the reader may conjecture, but which appeared to be mere whim at fort st george, the name of tresham, in addition to that by which he had hitherto been distinguished, and in this be persisted with an obstinacy, which belonged more to the pride than the craft of his character. the lieutenant-colonel of the regiment, an old cross-tempered martinet, did not choose to indulge the captain (such was now the rank of middlemas) in this humour. ``he knew no officer,'' he said, ``by any name save that which he bore in his commission,'' and he middlemass'd the captain on all occasions. one fatal evening, the captain was so much provoked, as to intimate peremptorily, ``that he knew his own name best.'' ``why, captain middlemas,'' replied the colonel, ``it is not every child that knows its own father, so how can every man be so sure of his own name?'' the bow was drawn at a venture, but the shaft found the rent in the armour, and stung deeply. in spite of all the interposition which could be attempted, middlemas insisted on challenging the colonel, who could be persuaded to no apology. ``if captain middlemas,'' he said, ``thought the cap fitted, he was welcome to wear it.'' the result was a meeting, in which, after the parties had exchanged shots, the seconds tendered their mediation. it was rejected by middlemas, who, at the second fire, had the misfortune to kill his commanding officer. in consequence, he was obliged to fly from the british settlements; for, being universally blamed for having pushed the quarrel to extremity, there was little doubt that the whole severity of military discipline would be exercised upon the delinquent. middlemas, therefore, vanished from fort st george, and, though the affair had made much noise at the time, was soon no longer talked of. it was understood, in general, that he had gone to seek that fortune at the court of some native prince, which he could no longer hope for in the british settlements. chapter x. three years passed away after the fatal rencounter mentioned in the last chapter, and doctor hartley returned from his appointed mission, which was only temporary, received encouragement to settle in madras in a medical capacity; and, upon having done so, soon had reason to think he had chosen a line in which he might rise to wealth and reputation. his practice was not confined to his countrymen, but much sought after among the natives, who, whatever may be their prejudices against the europeans in other respects, universally esteem their superior powers in the medical profession. this lucrative branch of practice rendered it necessary that hartley should make the oriental languages his study, in order to hold communication with his patients without the intervention of an interpreter. he had enough of opportunities to practise as a linguist, for, in acknowledgment, as he used jocularly to say, of the large fees of the wealthy moslemah and hindoos, he attended the poor of all nations gratis, whenever he was called upon. it so chanced, that one evening he was hastily summoned by a message from the secretary of the government, to attend a patient of consequence. ``yet he is, after all, only a fakir,'' said the message. ``you will find him at the tomb of cara razi, the mahomedan saint and doctor, about one coss from the fort. enquire for him by the name of barak el hadgi. such a patient promises no fees; but we know how little you care about the pagodas; and, besides, the government is your paymaster on this occasion.'' ``that is the last matter to be thought on,'' said hartley, and instantly repaired in his palanquin to the place pointed out to him. the tomb of the owliah, or mahomedan saint, cara razi, was a place held in much reverence by every good mussulman. it was situated in the centre of a grove of manges and tamarind-trees, and was built of red stone, having three domes, and minarets at every corner. there was a court in front, as usual, around which were cells constructed for the accommodation of the fakirs who visited the tomb from motives of devotion, and made a longer or shorter residence there as they thought proper, subsisting upon the alms which the faithful never fail to bestow on them in exchange for the benefit of their prayers. these devotees were engaged day and night in reading verses of the koran before the tomb, which was constructed of white marble, inscribed with sentences from the book of the prophet, and with the various titles conferred by the koran upon the supreme being. such a sepulchre, of which there are many, is, with its appendages and attendants, respected during wars and revolutions, and no less by feringis, (franks, that is,) and hindoos, than by mahomedans themselves. the fakirs, in return act as spies for all parties, and are often employed in secret missions of importance. complying with the mahomedan custom, our friend hartley laid aside his shoes at the gates of the holy precincts, and avoiding to give offence by approaching near to the tomb, he went up to the principal moullah, or priest, who was distinguishable by the length of his beard, and the size of the large wooden beads, with which the mahomedans, like the catholics, keep register of their prayers. such a person, venerable by his age, sanctity of character, and his real or supposed contempt of worldly pursuits and enjoyments, is regarded as the head of an establishment of this kind. the moullah is permitted by his situation to be more communicative with strangers than his younger brethren, who in the present instance remained with their eyes fixed on the koran, muttering their recitations without noticing the european, or attending to what he said, as he enquired at their superior for barak el hadgi. the moullah was seated on the earth, from which he did not arise, or show any mark of reverence; nor did he interrupt the tale of his beads, which he continued to count assiduously while hartley was speaking. when he finished, the old man raised his eyes, and looking at him with an air of distraction, as if he was endeavouring to recollect what he had been saying, he at length pointed to one of the cells, and resumed his devotions like one who felt impatient of whatever withdrew his attention from his sacred duties, were it but for an instant. hartley entered the cell indicated, with the usual salutation of salam alaikum. his patient lay on a little carpet in a corner of the small white-washed cell. he was a man of about forty, dressed in the black robe of his order, very much torn and patched. he wore a high conical cap of tartarian felt, and had round his neck the string of black beads belonging to his order. his eyes and posture indicated suffering, which he was enduring with stoical patience. ``salam alaikum,'' said hartley; ``you are in pain, my father?''---a title which he gave rather to the profession than to the years of the person be addressed. ``_salam alaikum bema sebastem_,'' answered the fakir; ``well is it for you that you have suffered patiently. the book saith, such shall be the greeting of the angels to those who enter paradise.'' the conversation being thus opened, the physician proceeded to enquire into the complaints of the patient, and to prescribe what he thought advisable. having done this, he was about to retire, when, to his great surprise, the fakir tendered him a ring of some value. ``the wise,'' said hartley, declining the present, and at the same time paying a suitable compliment to the fakir's cap and robe,---``the wise of every country are brethren. my left hand takes no guerdon of my right.'' ``a feringi can then refuse gold!'' said the fakir. ``i thought they took it from every hand, whether pure as that of an houri, or leprous like gehazi's---even as the hungry dog recketh not whether the flesh he eateth be of the camel of the prophet saleth, or of the ass of degial---on whose head be curses!'' ``the book says,'' replied hartley, ``that it is allah who closes and who enlarges the heart. frank and mussulman are all alike moulded by his pleasure.'' ``my brother hath spoken wisely,'' answered the patient. ``welcome the disease, if it bring thee acquainted with a wise physician. for what saith the poet---`it is well to have fallen to the earth, if while grovelling there thou shalt discover a diamond.' '' the physician made repeated visits to his patient, and continued to do so even after the health of el hadgi was entirely restored. he had no difficulty in discerning in him one of those secret agents frequently employed by asiatic sovereigns. his intelligence, his learning, above all, his versatility and freedom from prejudices of every kind, left no doubt of barak's possessing the necessary qualifications for conducting such delicate negotiations; while his gravity of habit and profession could not prevent his features from expressing occasionally a perception of humour, not usually seen in devotees of his class. barak el hadgi talked often, amidst their private conversations, of the power and dignity of the nawaub of mysore; and hartley had little doubt that he came from the court of hyder ali, on some secret mission, perhaps for achieving a more solid peace betwixt that able and sagacious prince and the east india company's government,---that which existed for the time being regarded on both parts as little more than a hollow and insincere truce. he told many stories to the advantage of this prince, who certainly was one of the wisest that hindostan could boast; and amidst great crimes, perpetrated to gratify his ambition, displayed many instances of princely generosity, and, what was a little more surprising, of even-handed justice. on one occasion, shortly before barak el hadgi left madras, he visited the doctor, and partook of his sherbet, which he preferred to his own, perhaps because a few glasses of rum or brandy were usually added to enrich the compound. it might be owing to repeated applications to the jar which contained this generous fluid, that the pilgrim became more than usually frank in his communications, and not contented with praising his nawaub with the most hyperbolic eloquence, he began to insinuate the influence which he himself enjoyed with the invincible, the lord and shield of the faith of the prophet. ``brother of my soul,'' he said, ``do but think if thou needest aught that the all-powerful hyder ali khan bahauder can give; and then use not the intercession of those who dwell in palaces, and wear jewels in their turbans, but seek the cell of thy brother at the great city, which is seringapatam. and the poor fakir, in his torn cloak, shall better advance thy suit with the nawaub [for hyder did not assume the title of sultaun] than they who sit upon seats of honour in the divan.'' with these and sundry other expressions of regard, he exhorted hartley to come into the mysore, and look upon the face of the great prince, whose glance inspired wisdom, and whose nod conferred wealth, so that folly or poverty could not appear before him. he offered at the same time to requite the kindness which hartley had evinced to him, by showing him whatever was worth the attention of a sage in the land of mysore. hartley was not reluctant to promise to undertake the proposed journey, if the continuance of good understanding betwixt their governments should render it practicable, and in reality looked forward to the possibility of such an event with a good deal of interest. the friends parted with mutual good wishes, after exchanging, in the oriental fashion, such gifts as became sages, to whom knowledge was to be supposed dearer than wealth. barak el hadgi presented hartley with a small quantity of the balsam of mecca, very hard to be procured in an unadulterated form, and gave him at the same time a passport in a peculiar character, which he assured him would be respected by every officer of the nawaub, should his friend be disposed to accomplish his visit to the mysore. ``the head of him who should disrespect this safe-conduct,'' he said, ``shall not be more safe than that of the barley-stalk which the reaper has grasped in his hand.'' hartley requited these civilities by the present of a few medicines little used in the east, but such as he thought might, with suitable directions, be safely intrusted to a man so intelligent as his moslem friend. it was several months after barak had returned to the interior of india, that hartley was astonished by an unexpected rencounter. the ships from europe had but lately arrived, and had brought over their usual cargo of boys longing to be commanders, and young women without any purpose of being married, but whom a pious duty to some brother, or some uncle, or other male relative, brought to india to keep his house, until they should find themselves unexpectedly in one of their own. doctor hartley happened to attend a public breakfast given on this occasion by a gentleman high in the service. the roof of his friend had been recently enriched by a consignment of three nieces, whom the old gentleman, justly attached to his quiet hookah, and, it was said, to a pretty girl of colour, desired to offer to the public, that he might have the fairest chance to get rid of his new guests as soon as possible. hartley who was thought a fish worth casting a fly for, was contemplating this fair investment with very little interest, when he heard one of the company say to another in a low voice,-- ``angels and ministers! there is our old acquaintance, the queen of sheba, returned upon our hands like unsaleable goods.'' hartley looked in the same direction with the two who were speaking, and his eye was caught by a semiramis-looking person, of unusual stature and amplitude, arrayed in a sort of riding habit, but so formed, and so looped and gallooned with lace, as made it resemble the upper tunic of a native chief. her robe was composed of crimson silk, rich with flowers of gold. she wore wide trowsers of light blue silk, a fine scarlet shawl around her waist, in which was stuck a creeze, with a richly ornamented handle. her throat and arms were loaded with chains and bracelets, and her turban, formed of a shawl similar to that worn around her waist, was decorated by a magnificent aigrette, from which a blue ostrich plume flowed in one direction, and a red one in another. the brow, of european complexion, on which this tiara rested, was too lofty for beauty, but seemed made for command; the aquiline nose retained its form, but the cheeks were a little sunken, and the complexion so very brilliant, as to give strong evidence that the whole countenance had undergone a thorough repair since the lady had left her couch. a black female slave, richly dressed, stood behind her with a chowry, or cow's tail, having a silver handle, which she used to keep off the flies. from the mode in which she was addressed by those who spoke to her, this lady appeared a person of too much importance to be affronted or neglected, and yet one with whom none desired further communication than the occasion seemed in propriety to demand. she did not, however, stand in need of attention. the well-known captain of an east indian vessel lately arrived from britain was sedulously polite to her; and two or three gentlemen, whom hartley knew to be engaged in trade, tended upon her as they would have done upon the safety of a rich argosy. ``for heaven's sake, what is that for a zenobia?'' said hartley, to the gentleman whose whisper had first attracted his attention to this lofty dame. ``is it possible you do not know the queen of sheba?'' said the person of whom he enquired, no way loath to communicate the information demanded. ``you must know, then, that she is the daughter of a scotch emigrant, who lived and died at pondicherry, a sergeant in lally's regiment. she managed to marry a partisan officer named montreville, a swiss or frenchman, i cannot tell which. after the surrender of pondicherry, this hero and heroine---but hey---what the devil are you thinking of?---if you stare at her that way, you will make a scene; for she will think nothing of scolding you across the table.'' but without attending to his friend's remonstrances, hartley bolted from the table at which he sat, and made his way, with something less than the decorum which the rules of society enjoin, towards the place where the lady in question was seated. ``the doctor is surely mad this morning---'' said his friend major mercer to old quartermaster calder. indeed hartley was not perhaps strictly in his senses; for looking at the queen of sheba as he listened to major mercer, his eye fell on a light female form beside her, so placed as if she desired to be eclipsed by the bulky form and flowing robes we have described, and to his extreme astonishment, he recognised the friend of his childhood, the love of his youth---menie gray herself! to see her in india was in itself astonishing. to see her apparently under such strange patronage, greatly increased his surprise. to make his way to her, and address her, seemed the natural and direct mode of satisfying the feelings which her appearance excited. his impetuosity was however checked, when, advancing close upon miss gray and her companion, he observed that the former, though she looked at him, exhibited not the slightest token of recognition, unless he could interpret as such, that she slightly touched her upper-lip with her forefinger, which, if it happened otherwise than by mere accident, might be construed to mean, ``do not speak to me just now.'' hartley, adopting such an interpretation, stood stock still, blushing deeply; for he was aware that he made for the moment but a silly figure. he was the rather convinced of this, when, with a voice which in the force of its accents corresponded with her commanding air, mrs montreville addressed him in english, which savoured slightly of a swiss patois,---``you have come to us very fast, sir, to say nothing at all. are you sure you did not get your tongue stolen by de way?'' ``i thought i had seen an old friend in that lady, madam,'' stammered hartley, ``but it seems i am mistaken.'' ``the good people do tell me that you are one doctors hartley, sir. now, my friend and i do not know doctors hartley at all.'' ``i have not the presumption to pretend to your acquaintance, madam, but him------'' here menie repeated the sign in such a manner, that though it was only momentary, hartley could not misunderstand its purpose; he therefore changed the end of his sentence, and added, ``but i have only to make my bow, and ask pardon for my mistake.'' he retired back accordingly among the company, unable to quit the room, and enquiring at those whom he considered as the best newsmongers for such information as---``who is that stately-looking woman, mr butler?'' ``oh, the queen of sheba, to be sure.'' ``and who is that pretty girl, who sits beside her?'' ``or rather behind her,'' answered butler, a military chaplain; ``faith, i cannot say---pretty did you call her?'' turning his opera-glass that way--``yes, faith, she is pretty---very pretty---gad, she shoots her glances as smartly from behind the old pile yonder, as teucer from behind ajax telamon's shield.'' ``but who is she, can you tell me?'' ``some fair-skinned speculation of old montreville's, i suppose, that she has got either to toady herself, or take in some of her black friends with. ---is it possible you have never heard of old mother montreville?'' ``you know i have been so long absent from madras''-- ``well,'' continued butler, ``this lady is the widow of a swiss officer in the french service, who, after the surrender of pondicherry, went off into the interior, and commenced soldier on his own account. he got possession of a fort, under pretence of keeping it for some simple rajah or other; assembled around him a parcel of desperate vagabonds, of every colour in the rainbow; occupied a considerable territory, of which he raised the duties in his own name, and declared for independence. but hyder naig understood no such interloping proceedings, and down he came, besieged the fort and took it, though some pretend it was betrayed to him by this very woman. be that as it may, the poor swiss was found dead on the ramparts. certain it is, she received large sums of money, under pretence of paying of her troops, surrendering of hill-forts, and heaven knows what besides. she was permitted also to retain some insignia of royalty; and, as she was wont to talk of hyder as the eastern solomon, she generally became known by the title of queen of sheba. she leaves her court when she pleases, and has been as far as fort st george before now. in a word, she does pretty much as she likes. the great folks here are civil to her, though they look on her as little better than a spy. as to hyder, it is supposed he has ensured her fidelity by borrowing the greater part of her treasures, which prevents her from daring to break with him,---besides other causes that smack of scandal of another sort.'' ``a singular story,'' replied hartley to his companion, while his heart dwelt on the question, how it was possible that the gentle and simple menie grey should be in the train of such a character as this adventuress? ``but butler has not told you the best of it,'' said major mercer, who by this time came round to finish his own story. ``your old acquaintance, mr tresham, or mr middlemas, or whatever else he chooses to be called, has been complimented by a report, that he stood very high in the good graces of this same boadicea. he certainly commanded some troops which she still keeps on foot, and acted at their head in the nawaub's service, who craftily employed him in whatever could render him odious to his countrymen. the british prisoners were intrusted to his charge, and, to judge by what i felt myself, the devil might take a lesson from him in severity.'' ``and was he attached to, or connected with, this woman?'' ``so mrs rumour told us in our dungeon. poor jack ward had the bastinado for celebrating their merits in a parody on the playhouse song, `sure such a pair were never seen, so aptly formed to meet by nature.' '' hartley could listen no longer. the fate of menie gray, connected with such a man and such a woman, rushed on his fancy in the most horrid colours, and he was struggling through the throng to get to some place where he might collect his ideas, and consider what could be done for her protection, when a black attendant touched his arm, and at the same time slipt a card into his hand. it bore, ``miss gray, mrs montreville's, at the house of ram sing cottah, in the black town.'' on the reverse was written with a pencil, ``eight in the morning.'' this intimation of her residence implied, of course, a permission, nay, an invitation, to wait upon her at the hour specified. hartley's heart beat at the idea of seeing her once more, and still more highly at the thought of being able to serve her. at least, he thought, if there is danger near her, as is much to be suspected, she shall not want a counsellor, or, if necessary, a protecter. yet, at the same time, he felt the necessity of making himself better acquainted with the circumstances of her case, and the persons with whom she seemed connected. butler and mercer had both spoke to their disparagement; but butler was a little of a coxcomb, and mercer a great deal of a gossip. while he was considering what credit was due to their testimony, he was unexpectedly encountered by a gentleman of his own profession, a military surgeon, who had had the misfortune to have been in hyder's prison, till set at freedom by the late pacification. mr esdale, for so he was called, was generally esteemed a rising man, calm, steady, and deliberate in forming his opinions. hartley found it easy to turn the subject on the queen of sheba, by asking whether her majesty was not somewhat of an adventuress. ``on my word, i cannot say,'' answered esdale, smiling; ``we are all upon the adventure in india, more or less; but i do not see that the begum montreville is more so than the rest.'' ``why, that amazonian dress and manner,'' said hartley, ``savour a little of the _picaresca_.'' ``you must not,'' said esdale, ``expect a woman who has commanded soldiers, and may again, to dress and look entirely like an ordinary person; but i assure you, that even at this time of day, if she wished to marry, she might easily find a respectable match.'' ``why, i heard that she had betrayed her husband's fort to hyder.'' ``ay, that is a specimen of madras gossip. the fact is, that she defended the place long after her husband fell, and afterwards surrendered it by capitulation. hyder who piques himself on observing the rules of justice, would not otherwise have admitted her to such intimacy.'' ``yes, i have heard,'' replied hartley, ``that their intimacy was rather of the closest.'' ``another calumny, if you mean any scandal,'' answered esdale. ``hyder is too zealous a mahomedan to entertain a christian mistress: and besides, to enjoy the sort of rank which is yielded to a woman in her condition, she must refrain, in appearance at least, from all correspondence in the way of gallantry. just so they said that the poor woman had a connexion with poor middlemas of the ------regiment.'' ``and was that also a false report?'' said hartley, in breathless anxiety. ``on my soul, i believe it was,'' answered mr esdale. ``they were friends, europeans in an indian court, and therefore intimate; but i believe nothing more. by the by, though, i believe there was some quarrel between middlemas, poor fellow, and you; yet i am sure that you will be glad to bear there is a chance of his affair being made up?'' ``indeed!'' was again, the only word which hartley could utter. ``ay, indeed,'' answered esdale. ``the duel is an old story now; and it must be allowed that poor middlemas, though he was rash in that business, had provocation.'' ``but his desertion---his accepting of command under hyder---his treatment of our prisoners--how can all these be passed over?'' replied hartley. ``why, it is possible---i speak to you as a cautious man, and in confidence---that he may do us better service in hyder's capital, or tippoo's camp, than he could have done if serving with his own regiment. and then, for his treatment of prisoners, i am sure i can speak nothing but good of him, in that particular. he was obliged to take the office, because those that serve hyder naig, must do or die. but he told me himself---and i believe him--that he accepted the office chiefly because, while he made a great bullying at us before the black fellows, he could privately be of assistance to us. some fools could not understand this, and answered him with abuse and lampoons; and he was obliged to punish them, to avoid suspicion. yes, yes, i and others can prove he was willing to be kind, if men would give him leave. i hope to thank him at madras one day soon.---all this in confidence--good morrow to you.' distracted by the contradictory intelligence he had received, hartley went next to question old captain capstern, the captain of the indiaman, whom he had observed in attendance upon the begum montreville. on enquiring after that commander's female passengers, he heard a pretty long catalogue of names, in which that he was so much interested in did not occur. on closer enquiry, capstern recollected that menie gray, a young scotchwoman, had come out under charge of mrs duffer, the master's wife. ``a good decent girl,'' capstern said, ``and kept the mates and guinea-pigs at a respectable distance. she came out,'' he believed, ``to be a sort of female companion, or upper-servant, in madame montreville's family. snug birth enough,'' he concluded, ``if she can find the length of the old girl's foot.'' this was all that could be made of capstern; so hartley was compelled to remain in a state of uncertainty until the next morning, when an explanation might be expected with menie gray in person. chapter xi. the exact hour assigned found hartley at the door of the rich native merchant, who, having some reasons for wishing to oblige the begum montreville, had relinquished, for her accommodation and that of her numerous retinue, almost the whole of his large and sumptuous residence in the black town of madras, as that district of the city is called which the natives occupy. a domestic, at the first summons, ushered the visitor into an apartment, where he expected to be joined by miss gray. the room opened on one side into a small garden or parterre, filled with the brilliant-coloured flowers of eastern climates; in the midst of which the waters of a fountain rose upwards in a sparkling jet, and fell back again into a white marble cistern. a thousand dizzy recollections thronged on the mind of hartley, whose early feelings towards the companion of his youth, if they had slumbered during distance and the various casualties of a busy life, were revived when he found himself placed so near her, and in circumstances which interested from their unexpected occurrence and mysterious character. a step was heard---the door opened--a female appeared-but it was the portly form of madame de montreville. ``what you do please to want, sir?'' said the lady; ``that is, if you have found your tongue this morning, which you had lost yesterday.'' ``i proposed myself the honour of waiting upon the young person, whom i saw in your excellency's company yesterday morning,'' answered hartley, with assumed respect. ``i have had long the honour of being known to her in europe, and i desire to offer my services to her in india.'' ``much obliged---much obliged; but miss gray is gone out, and does not return for one or two days. you may leave your commands with me.'' ``pardon me, madam,'' replied hartley; ``but have some reason to hope you may be mistaken in this matter---and here comes the lady herself.'' ``how is this, my dear?'' said mrs montreville, with unruffled front, to menie, as she entered; ``are you not gone out for two or three days, as i tell this gentleman?---_mais c'est <e'>gal_---it is all one thing. you will say, how d'ye do, and good-by, to monsieur, who is so polite as to come to ask after our healths, and as he sees us both very well, he will go away home again.'' ``i believe, madam,'' said miss gray, with appearance of effort, ``that i must speak with this gentleman for a few minutes in private, if you will permit us.'' ``that is to say, get you gone? but i do not allow that---i do not like private conversation between young man and pretty young woman; _cela n'est pas honne<e^>te_. it cannot be in my house.'' ``it may be out of it, then, madam,'' answered miss gray, not pettishly nor pertly, but with the utmost simplicity.---``mr hartley, will you step into that garden?---and you, madam, may observe us from the window, if it be the fashion of the country to watch so closely.'' as she spoke this she stepped through a lattice-door into the garden, and with an air so simple, that she seemed as if she wished to comply with her patroness's ideas of decorum, though they appeared strange to her. the queen of sheba, notwithstanding her natural assurance, was disconcerted by the composure of miss gray's manner, and left the room, apparently in displeasure. menie turned back to the door which opened into the garden, and said, in the same manner as before, but with less nonchalance,-- ``i am sure i would not willingly break through the rules of a foreign country; but i cannot refuse myself the pleasure of speaking to so old a friend,---if, indeed,'' she added, pausing and looking at hartley, who was much embarrassed, ``it be as much pleasure to mr hartley as it is to me.'' ``it would have been,'' said hartley, scarce knowing what he said---``it must be, a pleasure to me, in every circumstance---but, this extraordinary meeting---but your father------'' menie gray's handkerchief was at her eyes.--``he is gone, mr hartley. after he was left unassisted, his toilsome business became too much for him---he caught a cold, which hung about him, as you know he was the last to attend to his own complaints, till it assumed a dangerous, and, finally, a fatal character. i distress you, mr hartley, but it becomes you well to be affected. my father loved you dearly.'' ``oh, miss gray!'' said hartley, ``it should not have been thus with my excellent friend at the close of his useful and virtuous life---alas, wherefore---the question bursts from me involuntarily--wherefore could you not have complied with his wishes? wherefore------'' ``do not ask me,'' said she, stopping the question which was on his lips; ``we are not the formers of our own destiny. it is painful to talk on such a subject; but for once, and for ever, let me tell you that i should have done mr hartley wrong, if, even to secure his assistance to my father, i had accepted his hand, while my wayward affecations did not accompany the act.'' ``but wherefore do i see you here, menie? ---forgive me, miss gray, my tongue as well as my heart turns back to long-forgotten scenes--but why here?---why with this woman?'' ``she is not, indeed, every thing that i expected,'' answered menie; ``but i must not be prejudiced by foreign manners, after the step i have taken---she is, besides, attentive, and generous in her way, and i shall soon''---she paused a moment, and then added, ``be under better protection.'' ``that of richard middlemas?'' said hartley, with a faltering voice. ``i ought not, perhaps, to answer the question,'' said menie; ``but i am a bad dissembler, and those whom i trust, i trust entirely. you have guessed right, mr hartley,'' she added, colouring a good deal, ``i have come hither to unite my fate to that of your old comrade.'' ``it is, then, just as i feared!'' exclaimed hartley. ``and why should mr hartley fear?'' said menie gray. ``i used to think you too generous ---surely the quarrel which occurred long since ought not to perpetuate suspicion and resentment.'' ``at least, if the feeling of resentment remained in my own bosom, it would be the last i should intrude upon you, miss gray,'' answered hartley. ``but it is for you, and for you alone, that i am watchful.---this person---this gentleman whom you mean to intrust with your happiness---do you know where he is---and in what service?'' ``i know both, more distinctly perhaps than mr hartley can do. mr middlemas has erred greatly, and has been severely punished. but it was not in the time of his exile and sorrow, that she who has plighted her faith to him should, with the flattering world, turn her back upon him. besides, you have, doubtless, not heard of his hopes of being restored to his country and his rank?'' ``i have,'' answered hartley, thrown off his guard; ``but i see not how he can deserve it, otherwise than by becoming a traitor to his new master, and thus rendering himself even more unworthy of confidence than i hold him to be at this moment.'' ``it is well that he hears you not,'' answered menie gray, resenting, with natural feeling, the imputation on her lover. then instantly softening her tone, she added, ``my voice ought not to aggravate, but to soothe your quarrel . mr hartley, i plight my word to you that you do richard wrong.'' she said these words with affecting calmness, suppressing all appearance of that displeasure, of which she was evidently sensible, upon this depreciation of a beloved object. hartley compelled himself to answer in the same strain. ``miss gray,'' he said, ``your actions and motives will always be those of an angel; but let me entreat you to view this most important matter with the eyes of worldly wisdom and prudence. have you well weighed the risks attending the course which you are taking in favour of a man, who,---nay, i will not again offend you--who may, i hope, deserve your favour?'' ``when i wished to see you in this manner, mr hartley, and declined a communication in public, where we could have had less freedom of conversation, it was with the view of telling you every thing. some pain i thought old recollections might give, but i trusted it would be momentary; and, as i desire to retain your friendship, it is proper i should show that i still deserve it. i must then first tell you my situation after my father's death. in the world's opinion, we were always poor, you know; but in the proper sense i had not known what real poverty was, until i was placed in dependence upon a distant relation of my poor father, who made our relationship a reason for casting upon me all the drudgery of her household, while she would not allow that it gave me a claim to countenance, kindness, or any thing but the relief of my most pressing wants. in these circumstances i received from mr middlemas a letter, in which he related his fatal duel, and its consequence. he had not dared to write to me to share his misery---now, when he was in a lucrative situation, under the patronage of a powerful prince, whose wisdom knew how to prize and protect such europeans as entered his service---now, when he had every prospect of rendering our government such essential service by his interest with hyder ali, and might eventually nourish hopes of being permitted to return and stand his trial for the death of his commanding officer---now he pressed me to come to india, and share his reviving fortunes, by accomplishing the engagement into which we had long ago entered. a considerable sum of money accompanied this letter. mrs duffer was pointed out as a respectable woman, who would protect me during the passage. mrs montreville, a lady of rank, having large possessions and high interest in the mysore, would receive me on my arrival at fort st george, and conduct me safely to the dominions of hyder. it was further recommended, that, considering the peculiar situation of mr middlemas, his name should be concealed in the transaction, and that the ostensible cause of my voyage should be to fill an office in that lady's family. ---what was i to do?---my duty to my poor father was ended, and my other friends considered the proposal as too advantageous to be rejected. the references given, the sum of money lodged, were considered as putting all scruples out of the question, and my immediate protectress and kinswoman was so earnest that i should accept of the offer made me, as to intimate that she would not encourage me to stand in my own light, by continuing to give me shelter and food, (she gave me little more,) if i was foolish enough to refuse compliance. ``sordid wretch!'' said hartley, ``how little did she deserve such a charge!'' ``let me speak a proud word, mr hartley, and then you will not perhaps blame my relations so much. all their persuasions, and even their threats, would have failed in inducing me to take a step, which has an appearance, at least, to which i found it difficult to reconcile myself. but i had loved middlemas---i love him still---why should i deny it?---and i have not hesitated to trust him. had it not been for the small still voice which reminded me of my engagements, i had maintained more stubbornly the pride of womanhood, and, as you would perhaps have recommended, i might have expected, at least, that my lover should have come to britain in person, and might have had the vanity to think,'' she added, smiling faintly, ``that if i were worth having, i was worth fetching.'' ``yet now---even now,'' answered hartley, ``be just to yourself while you are generous to your, lover.---nay, do not look angrily, but hear me. i doubt the propriety of your being under the charge of this unsexed woman, who can no longer be termed a european. i have interest enough with females of the highest rank in the settlement---this climate is that of generosity and hospitality---there is not one of them, who, knowing your character and history, will not desire to have you in her society, and under her protection, until your lover shall be able to vindicate his title to your hand in the face of the world.---i myself will be no cause of suspicion to him, or of inconvenience to you, menie. let me but have your consent to the arrangement i propose, and the same moment that sees you under honourable and unsuspected protection, i will leave madras, not to return till your destiny is in one way or other permanently fixed.'' ``no, hartley,'' said miss gray. ``it may, it must be, friendly in you thus to advise me; but it would be most base in me to advance my own affairs at the expense of your prospects. besides, what would this be but taking the chance of contingencies, with the view of sharing poor middlemas's fortunes should they prove prosperous, and casting him off, should they be otherwise? tell me only, do you, of your own positive knowledge, aver that you consider this woman as an unworthy and unfit protectress for so young a person as i am?'' ``of my own knowledge i can say nothing; nay, i must own, that reports differ even concerning mrs montreville's character. but surely the mere suspicion------'' ``the mere suspicion; mr hartley, can have no weight with me, considering that i can oppose to it the testimony of the man with whom i am willing to share my future fortunes. you acknowledge the question is but doubtful, and should not the assertion of him of whom i think so highly decide my belief in a doubtful matter? what, indeed, must he be, should this madam montreville be other than he represented her?'' ``what must he be, indeed!'' thought hartley internally, but his lips uttered not the words. he looked down in a deep reverie, and at length started from it at the words of miss gray. ``it is time to remind you, mr hartley, that we must needs part. god bless and preserve you.'' ``and you, dearest menie,'' exclaimed hartley, as he sunk on one knee, and pressed to his lips the hand which she held out to him, ``god bless you! ---you must deserve blessing. god protect you! ---you must need protection.---oh, should things prove different from what you hope, send for me instantly, and if man can aid you, adam hartley will!'' he placed in her band a card containing his address. he then rushed from the apartment. in the hall he met the lady of the mansion, who made him a haughty reverence in token of adieu, while a native servant of the upper class, by whom she was attended, made a low and reverential salam. hartley hastened from the black town, more satisfied than before that some deceit was about to be practised towards menie gray---more determined than ever to exert himself for her preservation; yet more completely perplexed, when he began to consider the doubtful character of the danger to which she might be exposed, and the scanty means of protection which he had to oppose to it. chapter xii. as hartley left the apartment in the house of ram sing cottah by one mode of exit, miss gray retired by another, to an apartment destined for her private use. she, too, had reason for secret and anxious reflection, since all her love for middlemas, and her full confidence in his honour, could not entirely conquer her doubts concerning the character of the person whom he had chosen for her temporary protectress. and yet she could not rest these doubts upon any thing distinctly conclusive; it was rather a dislike of her patroness's general manners, and a disgust at her masculine notions and expressions, that displeased her, than any thing else. meantime, madam montreville, followed by her black domestic, entered the apartment where hartley and menie had just parted. it appeared from the conversation which follows, that they had from some place of concealment overheard the dialogue we have narrated in the former chapter. ``it is good luck, sadoc,'' said the lady, ``that there is in this world the great fool.'' ``and the great villain,'' answered sadoc, in good english, but in a most sullen tone. ``this woman, now,'' continued the lady, ``is what in frangistan you call an angel.'' ``ay, and i have seen those in hindostan you may well call devil.'' ``i am sure that this---how you call him---hartley, is a meddling devil. for what has he to do? she will not have any of him. what is his business who has her? i wish we were well up the ghauts again, my dear sadoc.'' ``for my part,'' answered the slave, ``i am half determined never to ascend the ghauts more. hark you, adela, i begin to sicken of the plan we have laid. this creature's confiding purity---call her angel or woman, as you will---makes my practices appear too vile, even in my own eyes. i feel myself unfit to be your companion farther in the daring paths which you pursue. let us part, and part friends.'' ``amen, coward. but the woman remains with me,'' answered the queen of sheba.* * in order to maintain uninjured the tone of passion throughout this dialogue, it has been judged expedient to discard, in the language of the begum, the patois of madame montreville. ``with thee!'' replied the seeming black--``never. no, adela. she is under the shadow of the british flag, and she shall experience its protection.'' ``yes---and what protection will it afford to you yourself?'' retorted the amazon. ``what if i should clap my hands, and command a score of my black servants to bind you like a sheep, and then send word to the governor of the presidency that one richard middlemas, who had been guilty of mutiny, murder, desertion, and serving of the enemy against his countrymen, is here, at ram sing cottah's house, in the disguise of a black servant?'' middlemas covered his face with his hands, while madam montreville proceeded to load him with reproaches.---``yes''; she said, ``slave, and son of a slave! since you wear the dress of my household, you shall obey me as fully as the rest of them, otherwise,---whips, fetters---the scaffold, renegade, ---the gallows, murderer! dost thou dare to reflect on the abyss of misery from which i raised thee, to share my wealth and my affections? dost thou not remember that the picture of this pale, cold, unimpassioned girl was then so indifferent to thee, that thou didst sacrifice it as a tribute due to the benevolence of her who relieved thee, to the affection of her who, wretch as thou art, condescended to love thee?'' ``yes, fell woman,'' answered middlemas, ``but was it i who encouraged the young tyrant's outrageous passion for a portrait, or who formed the abominable plan of placing the original within his power?'' ``no---for to do so required brain and wit. but it was thine, flimsy villain, to execute the device which a bolder genius planned; it was thine to entice the woman to this foreign shore, under pretence of a love, which, on thy part, cold-blooded miscreant, never had existed." ``peace, screech-owl!'' answered middlemas, ``nor drive me to such madness as may lead me to forget thou art a woman.'' ``a woman, dastard! is this thy pretext for sparing me?---what, then, art thou, who tremblest at a woman's looks, a woman's words?---i am a woman, renegade, but one who wears a dagger, and despises alike thy strength and thy courage. i am a woman who has looked on more dying men than thou hast killed deer and antelopes. thou must traffic for greatness?---thou hast thrust thyself like a five-years' child, into the rough sports of men, and wilt only be borne down and crushed for thy pains. thou wilt be a double traitor, forsooth ---betray thy betrothed to the prince, in order to obtain the means of betraying the prince to the english, and thus gain thy pardon from thy countrymen. but me thou shalt not betray. i will not be made the tool of thy ambition---i will not give thee the aid of my treasures and my soldiers, to be sacrificed at last to this northern icicle. no, i will watch thee as the fiend watches the wizard. show but a symptom of betraying me while we are here, and i denounce thee to the english, who might pardon the successful villain, but not him who can only offer prayers for his life, in place of useful services. let me see thee flinch when we are beyond the ghauts, and the nawaub shall know thy intrigues with the nizam and the mahrattas, and thy resolution to deliver up bangalore to the english, when the imprudence of tippoo shall have made thee killedar. go where thou wilt, slave, thou shalt find me thy mistress.'' ``and a fair, though an unkind one,'' said the counterfeit sadoc, suddenly changing his tone to an affectation of tenderness. ``it is true i pity this unhappy woman; true i would save her if i could ---but most unjust to suppose i would in any circumstances prefer her to my nourjehan, my light of the world, my mootee mahul, my pearl of the palace---'' ``all false coin and empty compliment,'' said the begum. ``let me hear, in two brief words, that you leave this woman to my disposal.'' ``but not to be interred alive under your seat, like the circassian of whom you were jealous,'' said middlemas, shuddering. ``no, fool; her lot shall not be worse than that of being the favourite of a prince. hast thou, fugitive and criminal as thou art, a better fate to offer her?'' ``but,'' replied middlemas, blushing even through his base disguise at the consciousness of his abject conduct, ``i will have no force on her inclinations.'' ``such truce she shall have as the laws of the zenana allow,'' replied the female tyrant. ``a week is long enough for her to determine whether she will be the willing mistress of a princely and generous lover.'' ``ay,'' said richard, ``and before that week expires------'' he stopped short. ``what will happen before the week expires?'' said the begum montreville. ``no matter---nothing of consequence. i leave the woman's fate with you.'' ``'tis well---we march to-night on our return, so soon as the moon rises. give orders to our retinue.'' ``to hear is to obey,'' replied the seeming slave, and left the apartment. the eyes of the begum remained fixed on the door through which he had passed. ``villain--double-dyed villain!'' she said, ``i see thy drift; thou wouldst betray tippoo, in policy alike and in love. but me thou canst not betray.---ho, there, who waits? let a trusty messenger be ready to set off instantly with letters, which i will presently make ready. his departure must be a secret to every one.---and now shall this pale phantom soon know her destiny, and learn what it is to have rivalled adela montreville.'' while the amazonian princess meditated plans of vengeance against her innocent rival and the guilty lover, the latter plotted as deeply for his own purposes. he had waited until such brief twilight as india enjoys rendered his disguise complete, then set out in haste for the part of madras inhabited by the europeans, or, as it is termed, fort st george. ``i will save her yet,'' he said; ``ere tippoo can seize his prize, we will raise around his ears a storm which would drive the god of war from the arms of the goddess of beauty. the trap shall close its fangs upon this indian tiger, ere he has time to devour the bait which enticed him into the snare.'' while middlemas cherished these hopes, he approached the residency. the sentinel on duty stopped him, as of course, but he was in possession of the counter-sign, and entered without opposition. he rounded the building in which the president of the council resided, an able and active, but unconscientious man, who, neither in his own affairs, nor in those of the company, was supposed to embarrass himself much about the means which he used to attain his object. a tap at a small postern-gate was answered by a black slave, who admitted middlemas to that necessary appurtenance of every government, a back stair, which, in its turn, conducted him to the office of the brahmin paupiah, the dubash, or steward of the great man, and by whose means chiefly he communicated with the native courts, and carried on many mysterious intrigues, which he did not communicate to his brethren at the council-board. it is perhaps justice to the guilty and unhappy middlemas to suppose, that if the agency of a british officer had been employed, he might have been induced to throw himself on his mercy, might have explained the whole of his nefarious bargain with tippoo, and, renouncing his guilty projects of ambition, might have turned his whole thoughts upon saving menie gray, ere she was transported beyond the reach of british protection. but the thin dusky form which stood before him, wrapped in robes of muslin embroidered with gold, was that of paupiah, known as a master-counsellor of dark projects, an oriental machiavel, whose premature wrinkles were the result of many an intrigue, in which the existence of the poor, the happiness of the rich, the honour of men, and the chastity of women, had been sacrificed without scruple, to attain some private or political advantage. he did not even enquire by what means the renegade briton proposed to acquire that influence with tippoo which might enable him to betray him--he only desired to be assured that the fact was real. ``you speak at the risk of your head, if you deceive paupiah, or make paupiah the means of deceiving his master. i know, so does all madras, that the nawaub has placed his young son, tippoo, as vice-regent of his newly-conquered territory of bangalore, which hyder hath lately added to his dominions. but that tippoo should bestow the government of that important place on an apostate feringi, seems more doubtful.'' ``tippoo is young,'' answered middlemas, ``and to youth the temptation of the passions is what a lily on the surface of the lake is to childhood---they will risk life to reach it though, when obtained, it is of little value. tippoo has the cunning of his father and his military talents, but he lacks his cautious wisdom.'' ``thou speakest truth---but when thou art governor of bangalore, hast thou forces to hold the place till thou art relieved by the mahrattas, or by the british?'' ``doubt it not---the soldiers of the begum mootee mahul, whom the europeans call montreville, are less hers than mine. i am myself her bukshee, [general,] and her sirdars are at my devotion. with these i could keep bangalore for two months, and the british army may be before it in a week. what do you risk by advancing general smith's army nearer to the frontier?'' ``we risk a settled peace with hyder,'' answered paupiah, ``for which he has made advantageous offers. yet i say not but thy plan may be most advantageous. thou sayest tippoo's treasures are in the fort?'' ``his treasures and his zenana; i may even be able to secure his person.'' ``that were a goodly pledge---'' answered the hindoo minister. ``and you consent that the treasures shall be divided to the last rupee, as in this scroll?'' ``the share of paupiah's master is too small,'' said the bramin; ``and the name of paupiah is unnoticed.'' ``the share of the begum may be divided between paupiah and his master.'' answered middlemas. ``but the begum will expect her proportion,'' replied paupiah. ``let me alone to deal with her,'' said middlemas. ``before the blow is struck, she shall not know of our private treaty, and afterwards her disappointment will be of little consequence. and now, remember my stipulations---my rank to be restored---my full pardon to be granted.'' ``ay,'' replied paupiah, cautiously, ``should you succeed. but were you to betray what has here passed, i will find the dagger of a lootie which shall reach thee, wert thou sheltered under the folds of the nawaub's garment. in the meantime, take this missive, and when you are in possession of bangalore, dispatch it to general smith, whose division shall have orders to approach as near the frontiers of mysore as may be, without causing suspicion.'' thus parted this worthy pair; paupiah to report to his principal the progress of these dark machinations, middlemas to join the begum on her return to the mysore. the gold and diamonds of tippoo, the importance which he was about to acquire, the ridding himself at once of the capricious authority of the irritable tippoo, and the troublesome claims of the begum, were such agreeable subjects of contemplation, that he scarcely thought of the fate of his european victim unless to salve his conscience with the hope that the sole injury she could sustain might be the alarm of a few days, during the course of which he would acquire the means of delivering her from the tyrant, in whose zenana she was to remain a temporary prisoner. he resolved, at the same time, to abstain from seeing her till the moment he could afford her protection, justly considering the danger which his whole plan might incur, if he again awakened the jealousy of the begum. this he trusted was now asleep; and, in the course of their return to tippoo's camp, near bangalore, it was his study to sooth this ambitious and crafty female by blandishments, intermingled with the more splendid prospects of wealth and power to be opened to them both, as he pretended, by the success of his present enterprise.* * it is scarce necessary to say, that such things could only be acted in the earlier period of our indian settlements, when the cheek of the directors was imperfect, and that of the crown did not exist. my friend mr fairscribe is of opinion, that there is an anachronism in the introduction of paupiah, the bramin dubash of the english governor.---c. c. chapter xiii. it appears that the jealous and tyrannical begum did not long suspend her purpose of agonizing her rival by acquainting her with her intended fate. by prayers or rewards, menie gray prevailed on a servant of ram sing cottah, to deliver to hartley the following distracted note:-- ``all is true your fears foretold---he has delivered me up to a cruel woman, who threatens to sell me to the tyrant tippoo.---save me if you can ---if you have not pity, or cannot give me aid, there is none left upon earth.---m. g.'' the haste with which dr hartley sped to the fort, and demanded an audience of the governor, was defeated by the delays interposed by paupiah. it did not suit the plans of this artful hindhu, that any interruption should be opposed to the departure of the begum and her favourite, considering how much the plans of the last corresponded with his own. he affected incredulity on the charge, when hartley complained of an englishwoman being detained in the train of the begum against her consent, treated the complaint of miss gray as the result of some female quarrel unworthy of particular attention, and when at length he took some steps for examining further into the matter, he contrived they should be so tardy, that the begum and her retinue were far beyond the reach of interruption. hartley let his indignation betray him into reproaches against paupiah, in which his principal was not spared. this only served to give the impassible bramin a pretext for excluding him from the residency, with a hint, that if his language continued to be of such an imprudent character, he might expect to be removed from madras, and stationed at some hill-fort or village among the mountains, where his medical knowledge would find full exercise in protecting himself and others from the unhealthiness of the climate. as he retired, bursting with ineffectual indignation, esdale was the first person whom hartley chanced to meet with, and to him, stung with impatience he communicated what he termed the infamous conduct of the governor's dubash, connived at, as he had but too much reason to suppose, by the governor himself; exclaiming against the want of spirit which they betrayed, in abandoning a british subject to the fraud of renegades, and the force of a tyrant. esdale listened with that sort of anxiety which prudent men betray when they feel themselves like to be drawn into trouble by the discourse of an imprudent friend. ``if you desire to be personally righted in this matter,'' said he at length, ``you must apply to leadenhall street, where, i suspect---betwixt ourselves--complaints are accumulating fast, both against paupiah and his master.'' ``i care for neither of them,'' said hartley; ``i need no personal redress---i desire none---l only want succour for menie gray.'' ``in that case,'' said esdale, ``you have only one resource---you must apply to hyder himself------'' ``to hyder---to the usurper---the tyrant?'' ``yes, to this usurper and tyrant,'' answered esdale, `` you must be contented to apply. his pride is, to be thought a strict administrator of justice; and perhaps he may on this, as on other occasions, choose to display himself in the light of an impartial magistrate.'' ``then i go to demand justice at his footstool.'' said hartley. ``not so fast, my dear hartley,'' answered his friend; ``first consider the risk. hyder is just by reflection, and perhaps from political consideration; but by temperament, his blood is as unruly as ever beat under a black skin, and if you do not find him in the vein of judging, he is likely enough to be in that of killing. stakes and bowstrings are as frequently in his head as the adjustment of the scales of justice.'' ``no matter---i will instantly present myself at his durbar. the governor cannot for very shame refuse me letters of credence.'' ``never think of asking them,;; said his more experienced friend; ``it would cost paupiah little to have them so worded as to induce hyder to rid our sable dubash at once and for ever, of the sturdy free-spoken dr adam hartley. a vakeel, or messenger of government, sets out to-morrow for seringapatam; contrive to join him on the road, his passport will protect you both. do you know none of the chiefs about hyder's person?'' ``none, excepting his late emissary to this place, barak el hadgi,'' answered hartley. ``his support,'' said esdale, ``although only a fakir, may be as effectual as that of persons of more essential consequence. and, to say the truth, where the caprice of a despot is the question in debate, there is no knowing upon what it is best to reckon.---take my advice, my dear hartley, leave this poor girl to her fate. after all, by placing yourself in an attitude of endeavouring to save her, it is a hundred to one that you only ensure your own destruction.'' hartley shook his head, and bade esdale hastily farewell; leaving him in the happy and self-applauding state of mind proper to one who has given the best advice possible to a friend, and may conscientiously wash his hands of all consequences. having furnished himself with money, and with the attendance of three trusty native servants, mounted like himself on arab horses, and carrying with them no tent, and very little baggage, the anxious hartley lost not a moment in taking the road to mysore, endeavouring, in the meantime, by recollecting every story he had ever heard of hyder's justice and forbearance, to assure himself that he should find the nawaub disposed to protect a helpless female, even against the future heir of his empire. before he crossed the madras territory, he overtook the vakeel, or messenger of the british government, of whom esdale had spoken. this man, accustomed for a sum of money to permit adventurous european traders who desired to visit hyder's capital, to share his protection, passport, and escort, was not disposed to refuse the same good office to a gentleman of credit at madras; and, propitiated by an additional gratuity, undertook to travel as speedily as possible. it was a journey which was not prosecuted without much fatigue and considerable danger, as they had to traverse a country frequently exposed to all the evils of war, more especially when they approached the ghauts, those tremendous mountain-passes which descend from the table-land of mysore, and through which the mighty streams that arise in the centre of the indian peninsula, find their way to the ocean. the sun had set ere the party reached the foot of one of these perilous passes, up which lay the road to seringapatam. a narrow path, which in summer resembled an empty water-course, winding upwards among immense rocks and precipices, was at one time completely overshadowed by dark groves of teak-trees, and at another, found its way beside impenetrable jungles, the habitation of jackals and tigers. by means of this unsocial path the travellers threaded their way in silence,---hartley, whose impatience kept him before the vakeel, eagerly enquiring when the moon would enlighten the darkness, which, after the sun's disappearance, closed fast around them. he was answered by the natives according to their usual mode of expression, that the moon was in her dark side, and that he was not to hope to behold her bursting through a cloud to illuminate the thickets and strata of black and slaty rocks, amongst which they were winding. hartley had therefore no resource, save to keep his eye steadily fixed on the lighted match of the sowar, or horseman, who rode before him, which, for sufficient reasons, was always kept in readiness to be applied to the priming of the matchlock. the vidette, on his part, kept a watchful eye on the dowrah, a guide supplied at the last village, who, having got more than half way from his own house, was much to be suspected of meditating how to escape the trouble of going further.* the dowrah, * in every village the dowrah, or guide, is an official person, upon the public establishment, and receives a portion of the harvest or other revenue, along with the smith, the sweeper, and the barber. as he gets nothing from the travellers whom it is his office to conduct, he never scruples to shorten his own journey and prolong theirs by taking them to the nearest village, without reference to the most direct line of route, and sometimes deserts them entirely. if the regular dowrah is sick or absent, no wealth can procure a substitute. on the other hand, conscious of the lighted match and loaded gun behind him, hollowed from time to time to show that he was on his duty, and to accelerate the march of the travellers. his cries were answered by an occasional ejaculation of ulla from the black soldiers, who closed the rear, and who were meditating on former adventures, the plundering of a _kaffila_, (party of travelling merchants,) or some such exploit, or perhaps reflecting that a tiger, in the neighbouring jungle, might be watching patiently for the last of the party, in order to spring upon him, according to his usual practice. the sun, which appeared almost as suddenly as it had left them, served to light the travellers in the remainder of the ascent, and called forth from the mahomedans belonging to the party the morning prayer of alla akber, which resounded in long notes among the rocks and ravines, and they continued with better advantage their forced march until the pass opened upon a boundless extent of jungle, with a single high mud fort rising through the midst of it. upon this plain rapine and war had suspended the labours of industry, and the rich vegetation of the soil had in a few years converted a fertile champaign country into an almost impenetrable thicket. accordingly, the banks of a small nullah, or brook, were covered with the footmarks of tigers and other animals of prey. here the travellers stopped to drink, and to refresh themselves and their horses; and it was near this spot that hartley saw a sight which forced him to compare the subject which engrossed his own thoughts, with the distress that had afflicted another. at a spot not far distant from the brook, the guide called their attention to a most wretched-looking man, overgrown with hair, who was seated on the skin of a tiger. his body was covered with mud and ashes, his skin sun-burnt, his dress a few wretched tatters. he appeared not to observe the approach of the strangers, neither moving nor speaking a word, but remaining with his eyes fixed on a small and rude tomb, formed of the black slate-stones which lay around, and exhibiting a small recess for a lamp. as they approached the man, and placed before him a rupee or two, and some rice, they observed that a tiger's skull and bones lay beside him, with a sabre almost consumed by rust. while they gazed on this miserable object, the guide acquainted them with his tragical history. sadhu sing had been a sipahee, or soldier, and freebooter of course, the native and the pride of a half-ruined village which they had passed on the preceding day. he was betrothed to the daughter of a sipahee, who served in the mud fort which they saw at a distance rising above the jungle. in due time, sadhu, with his friends, came for the purpose of the marriage, and to bring home the bride. she was mounted on a tatoo, a small horse belonging to the country, and sadhu and his friends preceded her on foot, in all their joy and pride. as they approached the mullah near which the travellers were resting, there was heard a dreadful roar, accompanied by a shriek of agony. sadhu sing, who instantly turned, saw no trace of his bride, save that her horse ran wild in one direction, whilst in the other the long grass and reeds of the jungle were moving like the ripple of the ocean, when distorted by the course of a shark holding its way near the surface. sadhu drew his sabre and rushed forward in that direction; the rest of the party remained motionless until roused by a short roar of agony. they then plunged into the jungle with their drawn weapons, where they speedily found sadhu sing holding in his arms the lifeless corpse of his bride, where a little farther lay the body of the tiger, slain by such a blow over the neck as desperation itself could alone have discharged.---the brideless bridegroom would permit none to interfere with his sorrow. he dug a grave for his mora, and erected over it the rude tomb they saw, and never afterwards left the spot. the beasts of prey themselves seemed to respect or dread the extremity of his sorrow. his friends brought him food and water from the nullah, but he neither smiled nor showed any mark of acknowledgment unless when they brought him flowers to deck the grave of mora. four or five years, according to the guide, had passed away, and there sadhu sing still remained among the trophies of his grief and his vengeance, exhibiting all the symptoms of advanced age, though still in the prime of youth. the tale hastened the travellers from their resting-place; the vakeel because it reminded him of the dangers of the jungle, and hartley because it coincided too well with the probable fate of his beloved, almost within the grasp of a more formidable tiger than that whose skeleton lay beside sadhu sing. it was at the mud fort already mentioned that the travellers received the first accounts of the progress of the begum and her party, by a peon (or foot-soldier) who had been in their company, but was now on his return to the coast. they had travelled, he said, with great speed, until they ascended the ghauts, where they were joined by a party of the begum's own forces; and he and others, who had been brought from madras as a temporary escort, were paid and dismissed to their homes. after this, he understood it was the purpose of the begum mootee mahul, to proceed by slow marches and frequent halts, to bangalore, the vicinity of which place she did not desire to reach until prince tippoo, with whom she desired an interview, should have returned from an expedition towards vandicotta, in which he had lately been engaged. from the result of his anxious enquiries, hartley had reason to hope, that though seringapatam was seventy-five miles more to the eastward than bangalore, yet by using diligence, he might have time to throw himself at the feet of hyder, and beseech his interposition, before the meeting betwixt tippoo and the begum should decide the fate of menie gray. on the other hand, he trembled as the peon told him that the begum's bukshee, or general, who had travelled to madras with her in disguise, had now assumed the dress and character belonging to his rank, and it was expected he was to be honoured by the mahomedan prince with some high office of dignity. with still deeper anxiety, he learned that a palanquin, watched with sedulous care by the slaves of oriental jealousy, contained, it was whispered, a feringi, or frankish woman, beautiful as a houri, who had been brought from england by the begum, as a present to tippoo. the deed of villainy was therefore in full train to be accomplished; it remained to see whether, by diligence on hartley's side, its course could be interrupted. when this eager vindicator of betrayed innocence arrived in the capital of hyder, it may be believed that he consumed no time in viewing the temple of the celebrated vishnoo, or in surveying the splendid gardens called loll-baug, which were the monument of hyder's magnificence, and now hold his mortal remains. on the contrary, he was no sooner arrived in the city, than he hastened to the principal mosque, having no doubt that he was there most likely to learn some tidings of barak el hadgi. he approached accordingly the sacred spot, and as to enter it would have cost a feringi his life, he employed the agency of a devout mussulman to obtain information concerning the person whom he sought. he was not long in learning that the fakir barak was within the mosque, as he had anticipated, busied with his holy office of reading passages from the koran, and its most approved commentators. to interrupt him in his devout task was impossible, and it was only by a high bribe that he could prevail on the same moslem whom he had before employed, to slip into the sleeve of the holy man's robe a paper containing his name, and that of the khan in which the vakeel had taken up his residence. the agent brought back for answer, that the fakir, immersed, as was to be expected, in the holy service which he was in the act of discharging, had paid no visible attention to the symbol of intimation which the feringi sahib (european gentleman) had sent to him. distracted with the loss of time, of which each moment was precious, hartley next endeavoured to prevail on the mussulman to interrupt the fakir's devotions with a verbal message; but the man was indignant at the very proposal. ``dog of a christian!'' he said, ``what art thou and thy whole generation, that barak el hadgi should lose a divine thought for the sake of an infidel like thee?'' exasperated beyond self-possession, the unfortunate hartley was now about to intrude upon the precincts of the mosque in person, in hopes of interrupting the formal prolonged recitation which issued from its recesses, when an old man laid his hand on his shoulder, and prevented him from a rashness which might have cost him his life, saying, at the same time, ``you are a sahib angrezie, [english gentleman;] i have been a telinga, [a private soldier,] in the company's service, and have eaten their salt. i will do your errand for you to the fakir barak el hadgi.'' so saying, he entered the mosque, and presently returned with the fakir's answer, in these enigmatical words:---``he who would see the sun rise must watch till the dawn.'' with this poor subject of consolation, hartley retired to his inn, to meditate on the futility of the professions of the natives, and to devise some other mode of finding access to hyder than that which he had hitherto trusted to. on this point, however, he lost all hope, being informed by his late fellow-traveller, whom he found at the khan, that the nawaub wass absent from the city on a secret expedition, which might detain him for two or three days. this was the answer which the vakeel himself had received from the dewan, with a farther intimation, that he must hold himself ready, when he was required, to deliver his credentials to prince tippoo, instead of the nawaub; his business being referred to the former, in a way not very promising for the success of his mission. hartley was now nearly thrown into despair. he applied to more than one officer supposed to have credit with the nawaub, but the slightest hint of the nature of his business seemed to strike all with terror. not one of the persons he applied to would engage in the affair, or even consent to give it a hearing; and the dewan plainly told him, that to engage in opposition to prince tippoo's wishes, was the ready way to destruction, and exhorted him to return to the coast. driven almost to distraction by his various failures, hartley betook himself in the evening to the khan. the call of the muezzins thundering from the minarets, had invited the faithful to prayers, when a black servant, about fifteen years old, stood before hartley, and pronounced these words, deliberately, and twice over,---``thus says barak el hadgi, the watcher in the mosque. he that would see the sunrise, let him turn towards the east.'' he then left the caravanserai; and it maybe well supposed that hartley, starting from the carpet on which he had lain down to repose him self, followed his youthful guide with renewed vigour and palpitating hope. chapter xiv. 'twas the hour when rites unholy call'd each paynim voice to prayer. and the star that faded slowly, left to dews the freshen'd air. day his sultry fires had wasted, calm and cool the moonbeams shone; to the vizier's lofty palace one bold christian came alone. thomas campbell. _quoted from memory_. the twilight darkened into night so fast, that it was only by his white dress that hartley could discern his guide, as he tripped along the splendid bazaar of the city. but the obscurity was so far favourable, that it prevented the inconvenient attention which the natives might otherwise have bestowed upon the european in his native dress, a sight at that time very rare in seringapatam. the various turnings and windings through which he was conducted, ended at a small door in a wall, which, from the branches that hung over it, seemed to surround a garden or grove. the postern opened on a tap from his guide, and the slave having entered, hartley prepared to follow, but stepped back as a gigantic african brandished at his head a scimitar three fingers broad. the young slave touched his countryman with a rod which he held in his hand, and it seemed as if the touch disabled the giant, whose arm and weapon sunk instantly. hartley entered without farther opposition, and was now in a grove of mango-trees, through which an infant moon was twinkling faintly amid the murmur of waters, the sweet song of the nightingale, and the odours of the rose, yellow jasmine, orange and citron flowers, and persian narcissus. huge domes and arches, which were seen imperfectly in the quivering light, seemed to intimate the neighbourhood of some sacred edifice, where the fakir had doubtless taken up his residence. hartley pressed on with as much haste as he could, and entered a side-door and narrow vaulted passage, at the end of which was another door. here his guide stopped, but pointed and made indications that the european should enter. hartley did so, and found himself in a small cell, such as we have formerly described, wherein sate barak el hadgi, with another fakir, who, to judge from the extreme dignity of a white beard, which ascended up to his eyes on each side, must be a man of great sanctity, as well as importance. hartley pronounced the usual salutation of salam alaikum in the most modest and deferential tone; but his former friend was so far from responding in their former strain of intimacy, that having consulted the eye of his older companion, he barely pointed to a third carpet, upon which the stranger seated himself cross-legged after the country fashion, and a profound silence prevailed for the space of several minutes. hartley knew the oriental customs too well to endanger the success of his suit by precipitation. he waited an intimation to speak. at length it came, and from barak. ``when the pilgrim barak,'' he said, ``dwelt at madras, he had eyes and a tongue; but now he is guided by those of his father, the holy scheik hali ben khaledoun, the superior of his convent.'' this extreme humility hartley thought inconsistent with the affectation of possessing superior influence, which barak had shown while at the presidency; but exaggeration of their own consequence is a foible common to all who find themselves in a land of strangers. addressing the senior fakir, therefore, he told him in as few words as possible the villainous plot which was laid to betray menie gray into the hands of the prince tippoo. he made his suit for the reverend father's intercession with the prince himself, and with his father the nawaub, in the most persuasive terms. the fakir listened to him with an inflexible and immovable aspect, similar to that with which a wooden saint regards his eager supplicants. there was a second pause, when, after resuming his pleading more than once, hartley was at length compelled to end it for want of matter. the silence was broken by the elder fakir, who, after shooting a glance at his younger companion by a turn of the eye, without the least alteration of the position of the bead and body, said, ``the unbeliever has spoken like a poet. but does be think that the nawaub khan hyder ali behauder will contest with his son tippoo the victorious, the possession of an infidel slave?'' hartley received at the same time a side glance from barak, as if encouraging him to plead his own cause. he suffered a minute to elapse, and then replied,-- ``the nawaub is in the place of the prophet, a judge over the low as well as high. it is written, that when the prophet decided a controversy between the two sparrows concerning a grain of rice, his wife fatima said to him, `doth the missionary of allah well to bestow his time in distributing justice on a matter so slight, and between such despicable litigants?'---`know, woman,' answered the prophet, ` that the sparrows and the grain of rice are the creation of allah. they are not worth more than thou hast spoken; but justice is a treasure of inestimable price, and it must be imparted by him who holdeth power to all to require it at his hand. the prince doth the will of allah, who gives it alike in small matters as in great, and to the poor as well as the powerful. to the hungry bird, a grain of rice is as a chaplet of pearls to a sovereign.'---l have spoken.'' ``bismallah!---praised be god! he hath spoken like a moullah,'' said the elder fakir, with a little more emotion, and some inclination of his head towards barak, for on hartley he scarcely deigned even to look. ``the lips have spoken it which cannot lie,'' replied barak, and there was again a pause. it was once more broken by scheik hali, who, addressing himself directly to hartley, demanded of him, ``hast thou heard, feringi, of aught of treason meditated by this kafr [infidel] against the nawaub behauder?'' ``out of a traitor cometh treason,'' said hartley, ``but, to speak after my knowledge, i am not conscious of such design.'' ``there is truth in the words of him,'' said the fakir, ``who accuseth not his enemy save on his knowledge. the things thou hast spoken shall be laid before the nawaub; and as allah and he will, so shall the issue be. meantime, return to thy khan, and prepare to attend the vakeel of thy government, who is to travel with dawn to bangalore, the strong, the happy, the holy city. peace be with thee!---is it not so, my son?'' barak, to whom this appeal was made, replied, ``even as my father hath spoken.'' hartley had no alternative but to arise and take his leave with the usual phrase, ``salam---god's peace be with you!'' his youthful guide, who waited his return without conducted him once more to his khan, through by-paths which he could not have found out without pilotage. his thoughts were in the meantime strongly engaged on his late interview. he knew the moslem men of religion were not implicitly to be trusted. the whole scene might be a scheme of barak, to get rid of the trouble of patronising a european in a delicate affair; and he determined to be guided by what should seem to confirm or discredit the intimation which he had received. on his arrival at the khan, be found the vakeel of the british government in a great bustle, preparing to obey directions transmitted to him by the nawaub's dewan, or treasurer, directing him to depart the next morning with break of day for bangalore. he expressed great discontent at the order, and when hartley intimated his purpose of accompanying him, seemed to think him a fool for his pains, hinting the probability that hyder meant to get rid of them both by means of the freebooters, through whose countries they were to pass with such a feeble escort. this fear gave way to another, when the time of departure came, at which moment there rode up about two hundred of the nawaub's native cavalry. the sirdar who commanded these troops behaved with civility, and stated that he was directed to attend upon the travellers, and to provide for their safety and convenience on the journey; but his manner was reserved and distant, and the vakeel insisted that the force was intended to prevent their escape, rather than for their protection. under such unpleasant auspices, the journey between seringapatam and bangalore was accomplished in two days and part of a third, the distance being nearly eighty miles. on arriving in view of this fine and populous city, they found an encampment already established within a mile of its walls. it occupied a tope or knoll, covered with trees, and looked full on the gardens which tippoo had created in one quarter of the city. the rich pavilions of the principal persons flamed with silk and gold; and spears with gilded points, or poles supporting gold knobs, displayed numerous little banners, inscribed with the name of the prophet. this was the camp of the begum mootee mahul, who, with a small body of her troops, about two hundred men, was waiting the return of tippoo under the walls of bangalore. their private motives for desiring a meeting the reader is acquainted with; to the public the visit of the begum had only the appearance of an act of deference, frequently paid by inferior and subordinate princes to the patrons whom they depend upon. these facts ascertained, the sirdar of the nawaub took up his own encampment within sight of that of the begum, but at about half a mile's distance, dispatching to the city a messenger to announce to the prince tippoo, so soon as he should arrive, that he had come hither with the english vakeel. the bustle of pitching a few tents was soon over, and hartley, solitary and sad, was left to walk under the shade of two or three mango-trees, and looking to the displayed streamers of the begum's encampment, to reflect that amid these insignia of mahomedanism menie gray remained, destined by a profligate and treacherous lover to the fate of slavery to a heathen tyrant. the consciousness of being in her vicinity added to the bitter pangs with which hartley contemplated her situation, and reflected how little chance there appeared of his being able to rescue her from it by the mere force of reason and justice, which was all he could oppose to the selfish passions of a voluptuous tyrant. a lover of romance might have meditated some means of effecting her release by force or address; but hartley, though a man of courage, had no spirit of adventure, and would have regarded as desperate any attempt of the kind. his sole gleam of comfort arose from the impression which he had apparently made upon the elder fakir, which he could not help hoping might be of some avail to him. but on one thing he was firmly resolved, and that was, not to relinquish the cause he had engaged in whilst a grain of hope remained. he had seen in his own profession a quickening and a revival of life in the patient's eye, even when glazed apparently by the hand of death; and he was taught confidence amidst moral evil by his success in relieving that which was physical only. while hartley was thus meditating, he was roused to attention by a heavy firing of artillery from the high bastions of the town; and turning his eyes in that direction, he could see advancing on the northern side of bangalore, a tide of cavalry, riding tumultuously forward, brandishing their spears in all different attitudes, and pressing their horses to a gallop. the clouds of dust which attended this vanguard, for such it was, combined with the smoke of the guns, did not permit hartley to see distinctly the main body which followed; but the appearance of howdahed elephants and royal banners dimly seen through the haze, plainly intimated the return of tippoo to bangalore; while shouts, and irregular discharges of musketry, announced the real or pretended rejoicing of the inhabitants. the city gates received the living torrent, which rolled towards them; the clouds of smoke and dust were soon dispersed, and the horizon was restored to serenity and silence. the meeting between persons of importance, more especially of royal rank, is a matter of very great consequence in india, and generally much address is employed to induce the person receiving the visit, to come as far as possible to meet the visitor. from merely rising up, or going to the edge of the carpet, to advancing to the gate of the palace, to that of the city, or, finally, to a mile or two on the road, is all subject to negotiation. but tippoo's impatience to possess the fair european induced him to grant on this occasion a much greater degree of courtesy than the begum had dared to expect, and he appointed his garden, adjacent to the city walls, and indeed included within the precincts of the fortifications, as the place of their meeting; the hour noon, on the day succeeding his arrival; for the natives seldom move early in the morning, or before having broken their fast. this was intimated to the begum's messenger by the prince in person, as, kneeling before him, he presented the _nuzzur_, (a tribute consisting of three, five, or seven gold mohurs, always an odd number,) and received in exchange a khelaut, or dress of honour. the messenger, in return, was eloquent in describing the importance of his mistress, her devoted veneration for the prince, the pleasure which she experienced on the prospect of their motakul, or meeting, and concluded with a more modest compliment to his own extraordinary talents, and the confidence which the begum reposed in him. he then departed; and orders were given that on the next day all should be in readiness for the _sowarree_, a grand procession, when the prince was to receive the begum as his honoured guest at his pleasure-house in the gardens. long before the appointed hour, the rendezvous of fakirs, beggars, and idlers, before the gate of the palace, intimated the excited expectations of those who usually attend processions; while a more urgent set of mendicants, the courtiers, were hastening thither, on horses or elephants, as their means afforded, always in a hurry to show their zeal, and with a speed proportioned to what they hoped or feared. at noon precisely, a discharge of cannon, placed in the outer courts, as also of matchlocks and of small swivels, carried by camels, (the poor animals shaking their long ears at every discharge,) announced that tippoo had mounted his elephant. the solemn and deep sound of the naggra, or state drum, borne upon an elephant, was then heard like the distant discharge of artillery, followed by a long roll of musketry, and was instantly answered by that of numerous trumpets and tom-toms, (or common drums,) making a discordant, but yet a martial din. the noise increased as the procession traversed the outer courts of the palace in succession, and at length issued from the gates, having at their head the chobdars, bearing silver sticks and clubs, and shouting, at the pitch of their voices, the titles and the virtues of tippoo, the great, the generous, the invincible---strong as rustan, just as noushirvan---with a short prayer for his continued health. after these came a confused body of men on foot, bearing spears, matchlocks, and banners, and intermixed with horsemen, some in complete shirts of mail, with caps of steel under their turbans, some in a sort of defensive armour, consisting of rich silk dresses, rendered sabre-proof by being stuffed with cotton. these champions preceded the prince, as whose body-guards they acted. it was not till after this time that tippoo raised his celebrated tiger-regiment, disciplined and armed according to the european fashion. immediately before the prince came, on a small elephant, a hard-faced, severe-looking man, by office the distributor of alms, which be flung in showers of small copper money among the fakirs and beggars, whose scrambles to collect them seemed to augment their amount; while the grim-looking agent of mahomedan charity, together with his elephant, which marched with half angry eyes, and its trunk curled upwards, seemed both alike ready to chastise those whom poverty should render too importunate. tippoo himself next appeared, richly apparelled, and seated on an elephant, which, carrying its head above all the others in the procession, seemed proudly conscious of superior dignity. the howdah, or seat, which the prince occupied, was of silver, embossed and gilt, having behind a place for a confidential servant, who waved the great chowry, or cow-tail, to keep off the flies; but who could also occasionally perform the task of spokesman, being well versed in all terms of flattery and compliment. the caparisons of the royal elephant were of scarlet cloth, richly embroidered with gold. behind tippoo came the various courtiers and officers of the household, mounted chiefly on elephants, all arrayed in their most splendid attire, and exhibiting the greatest pomp. in this manner the procession advanced down the principal street of the town, to the gate of the royal gardens. the houses were ornamented by broad-cloth, silk shawls, and embroidered carpets of the richest colours, displayed from the verandahs and windows; even the meanest hut was adorned with some piece of cloth, so that the whole street had a singularly rich and gorgeous appearance. this splendid procession having entered the royal gardens, approached, through a long avenue of lofty trees, a chabootra, or platform of white marble, canopied by arches of the same material, which occupied the centre. it was raised four or five feet from the ground, covered with white cloth and persian carpets. in the centre of the platform was the musnud, or state cushion of the prince, six feet square, composed of crimson velvet, richly embroidered. by especial grace, a small low cushion was placed on the right of the prince, for the occupation of the begum. in front of this platform was a square tank, or pond of marble, four feet deep, and filled to the brim with water as clear as crystal, having a large jet or fountain in the middle, which threw up a column of it to the height of twenty feet. the prince tippoo had scarcely dismounted from his elephant, and occupied the musnud, or throne of cushions, when the stately form of the begum was seen advancing to the place of rendezvous. the elephant being left at the gate of the gardens opening into the country, opposite to that by which the procession of tippoo had entered, she was carried in an open litter, richly ornamented with silver, and borne on the shoulders of six black slaves. her person was as richly attired as silks and gems could accomplish. richard middlemas, as the begum's general or bukshee, walked nearest to her litter, in a dress as magnificent in itself as it was remote from all european costume, being that of a banka, or indian courtier. his turban was of rich silk and gold, twisted very hard, and placed on one side of his head, its ends hanging down on the shoulder. his mustaches were turned and curled, and his eyelids stained with antimony. the vest was of gold brocade, with a cummerband or sash, around his waist, corresponding to his turban. he carried in his hand a large sword, sheathed in a scabbard of crimson velvet, and wore around his middle a broad embroidered sword-belt. what thoughts he had under this gay attire, and the bold bearing which corresponded to it, it would be fearful to unfold. his least detestable hopes were perhaps those which tended to save menie gray, by betraying the prince who was about to confide in him, and the begum, at whose intercession tippoo's confidence was to be reposed. the litter stopped as it approached the tank, on the opposite side of which the prince was seated on his musnud. middlemas assisted the begum to descend, and led her, deeply veiled with silver muslin, towards the platform of marble. the rest of the retinue of the begum followed in their richest and most gaudy attire, all males, however; nor was there a symptom of woman being in her train, expect that a close litter, guarded by twenty black slaves, having their sabres drawn, remained at some distance in a thicket of flowering shrubs. when tippoo saib, through the dim haze which hung over the waterfall, discerned the splendid train of the begum advancing, he arose from his musnud, so as to receive her near the foot of his throne, and exchanged greetings with her upon the pleasure of meeting, and enquiries after their mutual health. he then conducted her to the cushion placed near to his own, while his courtiers anxiously showed their politeness in accommodating those of the begum with places upon the carpets around, where they all sat down cross-legged ---richard middlemas occupying a conspicuous situation. the people of inferior note stood behind, and amongst them was the sirdar of hyder ali, with hartley and the madras vakeel. it would be impossible to describe the feelings with which hartley recognised the apostate middlemas, and the amazonian mrs montreville. the sight of them worked up his resolution to make an appeal against them in full durbar, to the justice which tippoo was obliged to render to all who should complain of injuries. in the meanwhile, the prince, who had hitherto spoken in a low voice, while acknowledging, it is to be supposed, the services and the fidelity of the begum, now gave the sign to his attendant, who said, in an elevated tone, ``wherefore, and to requite these services, the mighty prince, at the request of the mighty begum, mootee mahul, beautiful as the moon, and wise as the daughter of giamschid, had decreed to take into his service the bukshee of her armies, and to invest him, as one worthy of all confidence, with the keeping of his beloved capital of bangalore.'' the voice of the crier had scarce ceased, when it was answered by one as loud, which sounded from the crowd of bystanders, ``cursed is he who maketh the robber leik his treasurer, or trusteth the lives of moslemah to the command of an apostate!'' with unutterable satisfaction, yet with trembling doubt and anxiety, hartley traced the speech to the elder fakir, the companion of barak. tippoo seemed not to notice the interruption, which passed for that of some mad devotee, to whom the moslem princes permit great freedoms. the durbar, therefore, recovered from their surprise; and, in answer to the proclamation, united in the shout of applause which is expected to attend every annunciation of the royal pleasure. their acclamation had no sooner ceased than middlemas arose, bent himself before the musnud, and, in a set speech, declared his unworthiness of such high honour as had now been conferred, and his zeal for the prince's service. something remained to be added, but his speech faltered, his limbs shook, and his tongue seemed to refuse its office. the begum started from her seat, though contrary to etiquette, and said, as if to supply the deficiency in the speech of her officer, ``my slave would say, that in acknowledgment of so great an honour conferred on my bukshee, i am so void of means, that i can only pray your highness will deign to accept a lily from frangistan, to plant within the recesses of the secret garden of thy pleasures. let my lord's guards carry yonder litter to the zenana.'' a female scream was heard, as, at a signal from tippoo, the guards of his seraglio advanced to receive the closed litter from the attendants of the begum. the voice of the old fakir was heard louder and sterner than before.---``cursed is the prince who barters justice for lust! he shall die in the gate by the sword of the stranger.'' ``this is too insolent!'' said tippoo. `drag forward that fakir, and cut his robe into tatters on his back with your chabouks.''* * long whips. but a scene ensued like that in the hall of seyd. all who attempted to obey the command of the, incensed despot fell back from the fakir, as they would from the angel of death. he flung his cap and fictitious beard on the ground, and the incensed countenance of tippoo was subdued in an instant, when he encountered the stern and awful eye of his father. a sign dismissed him from the throne, which hyder himself ascended, while the officious menials hastily disrobed him of his tattered cloak, and flung on him a robe of regal splendour, and placed on his head a jewelled turban. the durbar rung with acclamations to hyder ali khan behauder, ``the good, the wise, the discoverer of hidden things, who cometh into the divan like the sun bursting from the clouds.'' the nawaub at length signed for silence, and was promptly obeyed. he looked majestically around him, and at length bent his look upon tippoo, whose downcast eyes, as he stood before the throne with his arms folded on his bosom, were strongly contrasted with the haughty air of authority which he had worn but a moment before. ``thou hast been willing,'' said the nawaub, ``to barter the safety of thy capital for the possession of a white slave. but the beauty of a fair woman caused solomon ben david to stumble in his path; how much more, then, should the son. of hyder naig remain firm under temptation!---that men may see clearly, we must remove the light which dazzles them. yonder feringi woman must be placed at my disposal.'' ``to hear is to obey,'' replied tippoo, while the deep gloom on his brow showed what his forced submission cost his proud and passionate spirit. in the hearts of the courtiers present reigned the most eager curiosity to see the _d<e'>nouement_ of the scene, but not a trace of that wish was suffered to manifest itself on features accustomed to conceal all internal sensations. the feelings of the begum were hidden under her veil; while, in spite of a bold attempt to conceal his alarm, the perspiration stood in large drops on the brow of richard middlemas. the next words of the nawaub sounded like music in the ear of hartley. ``carry the feringi woman to the tent of the sirdar belash cassim, [the chief to whom hartley had been committed.] let her be tended in all honour, and let him prepare to escort her, with the vakeel and the hakim hartley, to the payeen-ghaut, [the country beneath the passes,] answering for their safety with his head.'' the litter was on its road to the sirdar's tents ere the nawaub had done speaking. ``for thee, tippoo,'' continued hyder, ``i am not come hither to deprive thee of authority, or to disgrace thee before the durbar. such things as thou hast promised to this feringi, proceed to make them good. the sun calleth not back the splendour which he lends to the moon; and the father obscures not the dignity which he has conferred on the son. what thou hast promised, that do thou proceed to make good.'' the ceremony of investiture was therefore recommenced, by which the prince tippoo conferred on middlemas the important government of the city of bangalore, probably with the internal resolution, that since he was himself deprived of the fair european, he would take an early opportunity to remove the new killedar from his charge; while middlemas accepted it with the throbbing hope that he might yet outwit both father and son. the deed of investiture was read aloud---the robe of honour was put upon the newly-created killedar, and a hundred voices, while they blessed the prudent choice of tippoo, wished the governor good fortune, and victory over his enemies. a horse was led forward, as the prince's gift. it was a fine steed of the cuttyawar breed, high-crested, with broad hind-quarters; he was of a white colour, but had the extremity of his tail and mane stained red. his saddle was red velvet, the bridle and crupper studded with gilded knobs. two attendants on lesser horses led this prancing animal, one holding the lance, and the other the long spear of their patron. the horse was shown to the applauding courtiers, and withdrawn, in order to be led in state through the streets, while the new killedar should follow on the elephant, another present usual on such an occasion, which was next made to advance, that the world might admire the munificence of the prince. the huge animal approached the platform, shaking his large wrinkled head, which be raised and sunk, as if impatient, and curling upwards his trunk from time to time, as if to show the gulf of his tongueless mouth. gracefully retiring with the deepest obeisance, the killedar, well pleased the audience was finished, stood by the neck of the elephant, expecting the conductor of the animal would make him kneel down, that he might ascend the gilded howdah, which awaited his occupancy. ``hold, feringi,'' said hyder. ``thou hast received all that was promised thee by the bounty of tippoo. accept now what is the fruit of the justice of hyder.'' as he spoke, he signed with his finger, and the driver of the elephant instantly conveyed to the animal the pleasure of the nawaub. curling his long trunk around the neck of the ill-fated european, the monster suddenly threw the wretch prostrate before him, and stamping his huge shapeless foot upon his breast, put an end at once to his life and to his crimes. the cry which the victim uttered was mimicked by the roar of the monster, and a sound like an hysterical laugh mingling with a scream, which rung from under the veil of the begum. the elephant once more raised his trunk aloft, and gaped fearfully. the courtiers preserved a profound silence; but tippoo, upon whose muslin robe a part of the victim's blood had spirted, held it up to the nawaub, exclaiming, in a sorrowful, yet resentful tone,--``father---father---was it thus my promise should have been kept?'' ``know, foolish boy,'' said hyder ali, ``that the carrion which lies there was in a plot to deliver bangalore to the feringis and the mahrattas. this begum [she started when she heard herself named] has given us warning of the plot, and has so merited her pardon for having originally concurred in it,--whether altogether out of love to us we will not too curiously enquire.---hence with that lump of bloody clay, and let the hakim hartley and the english vakeel come before me.'' they were brought forward, while some of the attendants flung sand upon the bloody traces, and others removed the crushed corpse. ``hakim,'' said hyder, ``thou shalt return with the feringi woman, and with gold to compensate her injuries, wherein the begum, as is fitting, shall contribute a share. do thou say to thy nation, hyder ali acts justly.'' the nawaub then inclined himself graciously to hartley, and then turning to the vakeel, who appeared much discomposed, ``you have brought to me,'' he said, ``words of peace, while your masters meditated a treacherous war. it is not upon such as you that my vengeance ought to alight. but tell the kafr [or infidel] paupiah and his unworthy master, that hyder ali sees too clearly to suffer to be lost by treason the advantages he has gained by war. hitherto i have been in the carnatic as a mild prince---in future i will be a destroying tempest! hitherto i have made inroads as a compassionate and merciful conqueror---hereafter i will be the messenger whom allah sends to the kingdoms which he visits in judgment! '' it is well known how dreadfully the nawaub kept this promise, and how he and his son afterwards sunk before the discipline and bravery of the europeans. the scene of just punishment which he so faithfully exhibited might be owing to his policy, his internal sense of right, and to the ostentation of displaying it before an englishman of sense and intelligence, or to all of these motives mingled together---but in what proportions it is not for us to distinguish. hartley reached the coast in safety with his precious charge, rescued from a dreadful fate when she was almost beyond hope. but the nerves and constitution of menie gray had received a shock from which she long suffered severely, and never entirely recovered. the principal ladies of the settlement, moved by the singular tale of her distress, received her with the utmost kindness, and exercised towards her the most attentive and affectionate hospitality. the nawaub, faithful to his promise, remitted to her a sum of no less than ten thousand gold mohurs, extorted, as was surmised, almost entirely from the hoards of the begum mootee mahul, or montreville. of the fate of that adventuress nothing was known for certainty; but her forts and government were taken into hyder's custody, and report said, that, her power being abolished and her consequence lost, she died by poison, either taken by herself, or administered by some other person. it might be thought a natural conclusion of the history of menie gray, that she should have married hartley, to whom she stood much indebted for his heroic interference in her behalf. but her feelings were too much and too painfully agitated, her health too much shattered, to permit her to entertain thoughts of a matrimonial connexion, even with the acquaintance of her youth, and the champion of her freedom. time might have removed these obstacles, but not two years after their adventures in mysore, the gallant and disinterested hartley fell a victim to his professional courage, in withstanding the progress of a contagious distemper, which he at length caught, and under which he sunk. he left a considerable part of the moderate fortune which he had acquired to menie gray, who, of course, did not want many advantageous offers of a matrimonial character. but she respected the memory of hartley too much, to subdue in behalf of another the reasons which induced her to refuse the hand which he had so well deserved ---nay, it may be thought, had so fairly won. she returned to britain---what seldom occurs--unmarried though wealthy; and, settling in her native village, appeared to find her only pleasure in acts of benevolence which seemed to exceed the extent of her fortune, had not her very retired life been taken into consideration. two or three persons with whom she was intimate, could trace in her character that generous and disinterested simplicity and affection, which were the groundwork of her character. to the world at large her habits seemed those of the ancient roman matron, which is recorded on her tomb in these four words, domum mansit---lanam fecit. [13. the surgeon's daughter conclusion] mr croftangry's conclusion. if you tell a good jest, and please all the rest, comes dingley, and asks you, ``what was it?'' and before she can know, away she will go to seek an old rag in the closet. dean swift. while i was inditing the goodly matter which my readers have just perused, i might be said to go through a course of breaking-in to stand criticism, like a shooting-pony to stand fire. by some of those venial breaches of confidence, which always take place on the like occasions, my private flirtations with the muse of fiction became a matter whispered in miss fairscribe's circle, some ornaments, of which were, i suppose, highly interested in the progress of the affair, while others ``really thought mr chrystal croftangry might have had more wit at his time of day.'' then came the sly intimation, the oblique remark, all that sugar-lipped raillery which is fitted for the situation of a man about to do a foolish thing, whether it be to publish or to marry, and that accompanied with the discreet nods and winks of such friends as are in the secret, and the obliging eagerness of others to know all about it. at length the affair became so far public, that i was induced to face a tea-party with my manuscript in my pocket, looking as simple and modest as any gentleman of a certain age need to do upon such an occasion. when tea had been carried round, handkerchiefs and smelling bottles prepared, i had the honour of reading the surgeon's daughter, for the entertainment of the evening. it went off excellently; my friend mr fairscribe, who had been seduced from his desk to join the literary circle, only fell asleep twice, and readily recovered his attention by help of his snuff-box. the ladies were politely attentive, and when the cat, or the dog, or a next neighbour, tempted an individual to relax, katie fairscribe was on the alert, like an active whipper-in, with look, touch, or whisper to recall them to a sense of what was going on. whether miss katie was thus active merely to enforce the literary discipline of her coterie, or whether she was really interested by the beauties of the piece, and desirous to enforce them on others, i will not venture to ask, in case i should end in liking the girl---and she is really a pretty one--better than wisdom would warrant, either for my sake or hers. i must own, my story here and there flagged a good deal; perhaps there were faults in my reading, for while i should have been attending to nothing but how to give the words effect as they existed, i was feeling the chilling consciousness, that they might have been, and ought to have been, a great deal better. however, we kindled up at last when we got, to the east indies, although on the mention of tigers, an old lady, whose tongue had been impatient for an hour, broke in with, ``i wonder if mr croftangry ever heard the story of tiger tullideph?'' and had nearly inserted the whole narrative as an episode in my tale. she was, however, brought to reason, and the subsequent mention of shawls, diamonds, turbans, and cummerbands, had their usual effect in awakening the imaginations of the fair auditors. at the extinction of the faithless lover in a way so horribly new, i had, as indeed i expected, the good fortune to excite that expression of painful interest, which is produced by drawing in the breath through the compressed lips; nay, one miss of fourteen actually screamed. at length my task was ended, and the fair circle rained odours upon me, as they pelt beaux at the carnival with sugar-plums, and drench them with scented spices. there was ``beautiful,'' and ``sweetly interesting,'' and ``o mr croftangry,'' and ``how much obliged,'' and ``what a delightful evening,'' and ``o miss katie, how could you keep such a secret so long!'' while the dear souls were thus smothering me with rose-leaves, the merciless old lady carried them all off by a disquisition upon shawls, which she had the impudence to say, arose entirely out of my story. miss katie endeavoured to stop the flow of her eloquence in vain; she threw all other topics out of the field, and from the genuine indian, she made a digression to the imitation shawls now made at paisley, out of real thibet wool, not to be known from the actual country shawl, except by some inimitable cross-stitch in the border. ``it is well,'' said the old lady, wrapping herself up in a rich kashmire, ``that there is some way of knowing a thing that cost fifty guineas from an article that is sold for five; but i venture to say there are not one out of ten thousand that would understand the difference.'' the politeness of some of the fair ladies would now have brought back the conversation to the forgotten subject of our meeting. ``how could you, mr croftangry, collect all these hard words about india?---you were never there?''---``no, madam, i have not had that advantage; but, like the imitative operatives of paisley, i have composed my shawl by incorporating into the woof a little thibet wool, which my excellent friend and neighbour, colonel mackerris, one of the best fellows who ever trode a highland moor, or dived into an indian jungle, had the goodness to supply me with.'' my rehearsal, however, though not absolutely and altogether to my taste, has prepared me in some measure for the less tempered and guarded sentence of the world. so a man must learn to encounter a foil before he confronts a sword; and to take up my original simile, a horse must be accustomed to a _feu de joie_ before you can ride him against a volley of balls. well, corporal nym's philosophy is not the worst that has been preached, ``things must be as they may.'' if my lucubrations give pleasure, i may again require the attention of the courteous reader; if not, here end the chronicles of the canongate. [end of the chroncicles of the canongate] . 1829 to the river - by edgar allan poe fair river! in thy bright, clear flow of crystal, wandering water, thou art an emblem of the glow of beautythe unhidden heart the playful maziness of art in old alberto's daughter; but when within thy wave she looks which glistens then, and trembles why, then, the prettiest of brooks her worshipper resembles; for in his heart, as in thy stream, her image deeply lies his heart which trembles at the beam of her soul-searching eyes. -the end. 1827 tamerlane by edgar allan poe tamerlane kind solace in a dying hour! such, father, is not (now) my theme i will not madly deem that power of earth may shrive me of the sin unearthly pride hath revell'd in i have no time to dote or dream: you call it hopethat fire of fire! it is but agony of desire: if i can hopeoh god! i can its fount is holiermore divine i would not call thee fool, old man, but such is not a gift of thine. know thou the secret of a spirit bow'd from its wild pride into shame. o yearning heart! i did inherit thy withering portion with the fame, the searing glory which hath shone amid the jewels of my throne, halo of hell! and with a pain not hell shall make me fear again o craving heart, for the lost flowers and sunshine of my summer hours! the undying voice of that dead time, with its interminable chime, rings, in the spirit of a spell, upon thy emptinessa knell. i have not always been as now: the fever'd diadem on my brow i claim'd and won usurpingly hath not the same fierce heirdom given rome to the caesarthis to me? the heritage of a kingly mind, and a proud spirit which hath striven triumphantly with human kind. on mountain soil i first drew life: the mists of the taglay have shed nightly their dews upon my head, and, i believe, the winged strife and tumult of the headlong air have nestled in my very hair. so late from heaventhat dewit fell (mid dreams of an unholy night) upon me with the touch of hell, while the red flashing of the light from clouds that hung, like banners, o'er, appeared to my half-closing eye the pageantry of monarchy, and the deep trumpet-thunder's roar came hurriedly upon me, telling of human battle, where my voice, my own voice, silly child!was swelling (o! how my spirit would rejoice, and leap within me at the cry) the battle-cry of victory! the rain came down upon my head unshelter'dand the heavy wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind. it was but man, i thought, who shed laurels upon me: and the rush the torrent of the chilly air gurgled within my ear the crush of empireswith the captive's prayer the hum of suitorsand the tone of flattery 'round a sovereign's throne. my passions, from that hapless hour, usurp'd a tyranny which men have deem'd, since i have reach'd to power, my innate naturebe it so: but father, there liv'd one who, then, thenin my boyhoodwhen their fire burn'd with a still intenser glow, (for passion must, with youth, expire) e'en then who knew this iron heart in woman's weakness had a part. i have no wordsalas!to tell the loveliness of loving well! nor would i now attempt to trace the more than beauty of a face whose lineaments, upon my mind, areshadows on th' unstable wind: thus i remember having dwelt some page of early lore upon, with loitering eye, till i have felt the letterswith their meaningmelt to fantasieswith none. o, she was worthy of all love! loveas in infancy was mine 'twas such as angel minds above might envy; her young heart the shrine on which my every hope and thought were incensethen a goodly gift, for they were childish and upright pureas her young example taught: why did i leave it, and, adrift, trust to the fire within, for light? we grew in ageand lovetogether, roaming the forest, and the wild; my breast her shield in wintry weather and when the friendly sunshine smil'd, and she would mark the opening skies, i saw no heavenbut in her eyes. young love's first lesson isthe heart: for 'mid that sunshine, and those smiles, when, from our little cares apart, and laughing at her girlish wiles, i'd throw me on her throbbing breast, and pour my spirit out in tears there was no need to speak the rest no need to quiet any fears of herwho ask'd no reason why, but turn'd on me her quiet eye! yet more than worthy of the love my spirit struggled with, and strove, when, on the mountain peak, alone, ambition lent it a new tone i had no beingbut in thee: the world, and all it did contain in the earththe airthe sea its joyits little lot of pain that was new pleasurethe ideal, dim vanities of dreams by night and dimmer nothings which were real (shadowsand a more shadowy light!) parted upon their misty wings, and, so, confusedly, became thine image, anda namea name! two separateyet most intimate things. i was ambitioushave you known the passion, father? you have not: a cottager, i mark'd a throne of half the world as all my own, and murmur'd at such lowly lot but, just like any other dream, upon the vapour of the dew my own had past, did not the beam of beauty which did while it thro' the minutethe hourthe dayoppress my mind with double loveliness. we walk'd together on the crown of a high mountain which look'd down afar from its proud natural towers of rock and forest, on the hills the dwindled hills! begirt with bowers, and shouting with a thousand rills. i spoke to her of power and pride, but mysticallyin such guise that she might deem it nought beside the moment's converse; in her eyes i read, perhaps too carelessly a mingled feeling with my own the flush on her bright cheek, to me seem'd to become a queenly throne too well that i should let it be light in the wilderness alone. i wrapp'd myself in grandeur then, and donn'd a visionary crown yet it was not that fantasy had thrown her mantle over me but that, among the rabblemen, lion ambition is chained down and crouches to a keeper's hand not so in deserts where the grand the wildthe terrible conspire with their own breath to fan his fire. look 'round thee now on samarcand! is not she queen of earth? her pride above all cities? in her hand their destinies? in all beside of glory which the world hath known stands she not nobly and alone? fallingher veriest stepping-stone shall form the pedestal of a throne and who her sovereign? timourhe whom the astonished people saw striding o'er empires haughtily a diadem'd outlaw! o, human love! thou spirit given on earth, of all we hope in heaven! which fall'st into the soul like rain upon the siroc-wither'd plain, and, failing in thy power to bless, but leav'st the heart a wilderness! idea! which bindest life around with music of so strange a sound, and beauty of so wild a birth farewell! for i have won the earth. when hope, the eagle that tower'd, could see no cliff beyond him in the sky, his pinions were bent droopingly and homeward turn'd his soften'd eye. 'twas sunset: when the sun will part there comes a sullenness of heart to him who still would look upon the glory of the summer sun. that soul will hate the ev'ning mist, so often lovely, and will list to the sound of the coming darkness (known to those whose spirits hearken) as one who, in a dream of night, would fly but cannot from a danger nigh. what tho' the moonthe white moon shed all the splendour of her noon, her smile is chilly, and her beam, in that time of dreariness, will seem (so like you gather in your breath) a portrait taken after death. and boyhood is a summer sun whose waning is the dreariest one for all we live to know is known, and all we seek to keep hath flown let life, then, as the day-flower, fall with the noon-day beautywhich is all. i reach'd my homemy home no more for all had flown who made it so. i pass'd from out its mossy door, and, tho' my tread was soft and low, a voice came from the threshold stone of one whom i had earlier known o, i defy thee, hell, to show on beds of fire that burn below, a humbler hearta deeper woe. father, i firmly do believe i knowfor death, who comes for me from regions of the blest afar, where there is nothing to deceive, hath left his iron gate ajar, and rays of truth you cannot see are flashing thro' eternity i do believe that eblis hath a snare in every human path else how, when in the holy grove i wandered of the idol, love, who daily scents his snowy wings with incense of burnt offerings from the most unpolluted things, whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven above with trellis'd rays from heaven, no mote may shunno tiniest fly the lightning of his eagle eye how was it that ambition crept, unseen, amid the revels there, till growing bold, he laughed and leapt in the tangles of love's very hair? -the end. 1850 morning on the wissahiccon by edgar allen poe morning on the wissahiccon the natural scenery of america has often been contrasted, in its general features as well as in detail, with the landscape of the old worldmore especially of europeand not deeper has been the enthusiasm, than wide the dissension, of the supporters of each region. the discussion is one not likely to be soon closed, for, although much has been said on both sides, a word more yet remains to be said. the most conspicuous of the british tourists who have attempted a comparison, seem to regard our northern and eastern seaboard, comparatively speaking, as all of america, at least, as all of the united states, worthy consideration. they say little, because they have seen less, of the gorgeous interior scenery of some of our western and southern districtsof the vast valley of louisiana, for example,a realization of the wildest dreams of paradise. for the most part, these travellers content themselves with a hasty inspection of the natural lions of the landthe hudson, niagara, the catskills, harper's ferry, the lakes of new york, the ohio, the prairies, and the mississippi. these, indeed, are objects well worthy the contemplation even of him who has just clambered by the castellated rhine, or roamed by the blue rushing of the arrowy rhone; but these are not all of which we can boast; and, indeed, i will be so hardy as to assert that there are innumerable quiet, obscure, and scarcely explored nooks, within the limits of the united states, that, by the true artist, or cultivated lover of the grand and beautiful amid the works of god, will be preferred to each and to all of the chronicled and better accredited scenes to which i have referred. in fact, the real edens of the land lie far away from the track of our own most deliberate touristshow very far, then, beyond the reach of the foreigner, who, having made with his publisher at home arrangements for a certain amount of comment upon america, to be furnished in a stipulated period, can hope to fulfil his agreement in no other manner than by steaming it, memorandumbook in hand, through only the most beaten thoroughfares of the country! i mentioned, just above, the valley of louisiana. of all extensive areas of natural loveliness, this is perhaps the most lovely. no fiction has approached it. the most gorgeous imagination might derive suggestions from its exuberant beauty. and beauty is, indeed, its sole character. it has little, or rather nothing, of the sublime. gentle undulations of soil, interwreathed with fantastic crystallic streams, banked by flowery slopes, and backed by a forest vegetation, gigantic, glossy, multicoloured, sparkling with gay birds and burthened with perfumethese features make up, in the vale of louisiana, the most voluptuous natural scenery upon earth. but, even of this delicious region, the sweeter portions are reached only by the bypaths. indeed, in america generally, the traveller who would behold the finest landscapes, must seek them not by the railroad, nor by the steamboat, not by the stage-coach, nor in his private carriage, not yet even on horsebackbut on foot. he must walk, he must leap ravines, he must risk his neck among precipices, or he must leave unseen the truest, the richest, and most unspeakable glories of the land. now in the greater portion of europe no such necessity exists. in england it exists not at all. the merest dandy of a tourist may there visit every nook worth visiting without detriment to his silk stockings; so thoroughly known are all points of interest, and so well-arranged are the means of attaining them. this consideration has never been allowed its due weight, in comparisons of the natural scenery of the old and new worlds. the entire loveliness of the former is collated with only the most noted, and with by no means the most eminent items in the general loveliness of the latter. river scenery has, unquestionably, within itself, all the main elements of beauty, and, time out of mind, has been the favourite theme of the poet. but much of this fame is attributable to the predominance of travel in fluvial over that in mountainous districts. in the same way, large rivers, because usually highways, have, in all countries, absorbed an undue share of admiration. they are more observed, and, consequently, made more the subject of discourse, than less important, but often more interesting streams. a singular exemplification of my remarks upon this head may be found in the wissahiccon, a brook, (for more it can scarcely be called,) which empties itself into the schuylkill, about six miles westward of philadelphia. now the wissahiccon is of so remarkable a loveliness that, were it flowing in england, it would be the theme of every bard, and the common topic of every tongue, if, indeed, its banks were not parcelled off in lots, at an exorbitant price, as building-sites for the villas of the opulent. yet it is only within a very few years that any one has more than heard of the wissahiccon, while the broader and more navigable water into which it flows, has been long celebrated as one of the finest specimens of american river scenery. the schuylkill, whose beauties have been much exaggerated, and whose banks, at least in the neighborhood of philadelphia, are marshy like those of the delaware, is not at all comparable, as an object of picturesque interest, with the more humble and less notorious rivulet of which we speak. it was not until fanny kemble, in her droll book about the united states, pointed out to the philadelphians the rare loveliness of a stream which lay at their own doors, that this loveliness was more than suspected by a few adventurous pedestrians of the vicinity. but, the "journal" having opened all eyes, the wissahiccon, to a certain extent, rolled at once into notoriety. i say "to a certain extent," for, in fact, the true beauty of the stream lies far above the route of the philadelphian picturesque-hunters, who rarely proceed farther than a mile or two above the mouth of the rivuletfor the very excellent reason that here the carriage-road stops. i would advise the adventurer who would behold its finest points to take the ridge road, running westwardly from the city, and, having reached the second lane beyond the sixth mile-stone, to follow this lane to its termination. he will thus strike the wissahiccon, at one of its best reaches, and, in a skiff, or by clambering along its banks, he can go up or down the stream, as best suits his fancy, and in either direction will meet his reward. i have already said, or should have said, that the brook is narrow. its banks are generally, indeed almost universally, precipitous, and consist of high hills, clothed with noble shrubbery near the water, and crowned at a greater elevation, with some of the most magnificent forest trees of america, among which stands conspicuous the liriodendron tulipiferum. the immediate shores, however, are of granite, sharply defined or moss-covered, against which the pellucid water lolls in its gentle flow, as the blue waves of the mediterranean upon the steps of her palaces of marble. occasionally in front of the cliffs, extends a small definite plateau of richly herbaged land, affording the most picturesque position for a cottage and garden which the richest imagination could conceive. the windings of the stream are many and abrupt, as is usually the case where banks are precipitous, and thus the impression conveyed to the voyager's eye, as he proceeds, is that of an endless succession of infinitely varied small lakes, or, more properly speaking, tarns. the wissahiccon, however, should be visited, not like "fair melrose," by moonlight, or even in cloudy weather, but amid the brightest glare of a noonday sun; for the narrowness of the gorge through which it flows, the height of the hills on either hand, and the density of the foliage, conspire to produce a gloominess, if not an absolute dreariness of effect, which, unless relieved by a bright general light, detracts from the mere beauty of the scene. not long ago i visited the stream by the route described, and spent the better part of a sultry day in floating in a skiff upon its bosom. the heat gradually overcame me, and, resigning myself to the influence of the scenes and of the weather, and of the gentle moving current, i sank into a half slumber, during which my imagination revelled in visions of the wissahiccon of ancient daysof the "good old days" when the demon of the engine was not, when picnics were undreamed of, when "water privileges" were neither bought nor sold, and when the red man trod alone, with the elk, upon the ridges that now towered above. and, while gradually these conceits took possession of my mind, the lazy brook had borne me, inch by inch, around one promontory and within full view of another that bounded the prospect at the distance of forty or fifty yards. it was a steep rocky cliff, abutting far into the stream, and presenting much more of the salvator character than any portion of the shore hitherto passed. what i saw upon this cliff, although surely an object of very extraordinary nature, the place and season considered, at first neither startled nor amazed meso thoroughly and appropriately did it chime in with the half-slumberous fancies that enwrapped me. i saw, or dreamed that i saw, standing upon the extreme verge of the precipice, with neck outstretched, with ears erect, and the whole attitude indicative of profound and melancholy inquisitiveness, one of the oldest and boldest of those identical elks which had been coupled with the red men of my vision. i say that, for a few moments, this apparition neither startled nor amazed me. during this interval my whole soul was bound up in intense sympathy alone. i fancied the elk repining, not less than wondering, at the manifest alterations for the worse, wrought upon the brook and its vicinage, even within the last few years, by the stern hand of the utilitarian. but a slight movement of the animal's head at once dispelled the dreaminess which invested me, and aroused me to a full sense of novelty of the adventure. i arose upon one knee within the skiff, and, while i hesitated whether to stop my career, or let myself float nearer to the object of my wonder, i heard the words "hist!" "hist!" ejaculated quickly but cautiously, from the shrubbery overhead. in an instant afterwards, a negro emerged from the thicket, putting aside the bushes with care, and treading stealthily. he bore in one hand a quantity of salt, and, holding it towards the elk, gently yet steadily approached. the noble animal, although a little fluttered, made no attempt at escape. the negro advanced; offered the salt; and spoke a few words of encouragement or conciliation. presently, the elk bowed and stamped, and then lay quietly down and was secured with a halter. thus ended my romance of the elk. it was a pet of great age and very domestic habits, and belonged to an english family occupying a villa in the vicinity. the end . pudd'nhead wilson a tale by mark twain <a whisper to the reader> there is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. observe the ass, for instance; his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> a person who is ignorant of legal matters is always liable to make mistakes when he tries to photograph a court scene with his pen; and so i was not willing to let the law chapters in this book go to press without first subjecting them to rigid and exhausting revision and correction by a trained barrister -if that is what they are called. these chapters are right, now, in every detail, for they were rewritten under the immediate eye of william hicks, who studied law part of a while in southwest missouri thirty-five years ago and then came over here to florence for his health and is still helping for exercise and board in macaroni vermicelli's horse-feed shed which is up the back alley as you turn around the corner out of the piazza del duomo just beyond the house where that stone that dante used to sit on six hundred years ago is let into the wall when he let on to be watching them build giotto's campanile and yet always got tired looking as soon as beatrice passed along on her way to get a chunk of chestnut cake to defend herself with in case of a ghibelline outbreak before she got to school, at the same old stand where they sell the same old cake to this day and it is just as light and good as it was then, too, and this is not flattery, far from it. he was a little rusty on his law, but he rubbed up for this book, and those two or three legal chapters are right and straight, now. he told me so himself. given under my hand this second day of january, 1893, at the villa viviani, village of settignano, three miles back of florence, on the hills -the same certainly affording the most charming view to be found on this planet, and with it the most dream-like and enchanting sunsets to be found in any planet or even in any solar system -and given, too, in the swell room of the house, with the busts of cerretani senators and other grandees of this line looking approvingly down upon me as they used to look down upon dante and mutely asking me to adopt them into my family, which i do with pleasure, for my remotest ancestors are but spring chickens compared with these robed and stately antiques, and it will be a great and satisfying lift for me, that six hundred years will. i tell the truth or trump -but get the trick. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the scene of this chronicle is the town of dawson's landing, on the missouri side of the mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat, below st. louis. in 1830 it was a snug little collection of modest oneand two-story frame dwellings whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles and morning-glories. each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, prince's-feathers and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the window-sills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss-rose plants and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad house-front like an explosion of flame. when there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there -in sunny weather -stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. a home without a cat -and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat -may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title? all along the streets, on both sides, at the outer edge of the brick sidewalks, stood locust-trees with trunks protected by wooden boxing, and these furnished shade for summer and a sweet fragrance in spring when the clusters of buds came forth. the main street, one block back from the river, and running parallel with it, was the sole business street. it was six blocks long, and in each block two or three brick stores three stories high towered above interjected bunches of little frame shops. swinging signs creaked in the wind, the street's whole length. the candy-striped pole which indicates nobility proud and ancient along the palace-bordered canals of venice, indicated merely the humble barber-shop along the main street of dawson's landing. on a chief corner stood a lofty unpainted pole wreathed from top to bottom with tin pots and pans and cups, the chief tinmonger's noisy notice to the world (when the wind blew) that his shop was on hand for business at that corner. the hamlet's front was washed by the clear waters of the great river; its body stretched itself rearward up a gentle incline; its most rearward border fringed itself out and scattered its houses about the base-line of the hills; the hills rose high, inclosing the town in a half-moon curve, clothed with forests from foot to summit. steamboats passed up and down every hour or so. those belonging to the little cairo line and the little memphis line always stopped; the big orleans liners stopped for hails only, or to land passengers or freight; and this was the case also with the great flotilla of "transients." these latter came out of a dozen rivers -the illinois, the missouri, the upper mississippi, the ohio, the monongahela, the tennessee, the red river, the white river, and so on; and were bound every whither and stocked with every imaginable comfort or necessity which the mississippi's communities could want, from the frosty falls of st. anthony down through nine climates to torrid new orleans. dawson's landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich slave-worked grain and pork country back of it. the town was sleepy and comfortable and contented. it was fifty years old, and was growing slowly -very slowly, in fact, but still it was growing. the chief citizen was york leicester driscoll, about forty years old, judge of the county court. he was very proud of his old virginian ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately manners he kept up its traditions. he was fine and just and generous. to be a gentleman -a gentleman without stain or blemish -was his only religion, and to it he was always faithful. he was respected, esteemed and beloved by all the community. he was well off, and was gradually adding to his store. he and his wife were very nearly happy, but not quite, for they had no children. the longing for the treasure of a child had grown stronger and stronger as the years slipped away, but the blessing never came -and was never to come. with this pair lived the judge's widowed sister, mrs. rachel pratt, and she also was childless -childless, and sorrowful for that reason, and not to be comforted. the women were good and commonplace people, and did their duty and had their reward in clear consciences and the community's approbation. they were presbyterians, the judge was a free-thinker. pembroke howard, lawyer and bachelor, aged about forty, was another old virginian grandee with proved descent from the first families. he was a fine, brave, majestic creature, a gentleman according to the nicest requirements of the virginian rule, a devoted presbyterian, an authority on the "code," and a man always courteously ready to stand up before you in the field if any act or word of his had seemed doubtful or suspicious to you, and explain it with any weapon you might prefer from brad-awls to artillery. he was very popular with the people, and was the judge's dearest friend. then there was colonel cecil burleigh essex, another f. f. v. of formidable caliber -however, with him we have no concern. percy northumberland driscoll, brother to the judge, and younger than he by five years, was a married man, and had had children around his hearthstone; but they were attacked in detail by measles, croup and scarlet fever, and this had given the doctor a chance with his effective antediluvian methods; so the cradles were empty. he was a prosperous man, with a good head for speculations, and his fortune was growing. on the 1st of february, 1830, two boy babes were born in his house: one to him, the other to one of his slave girls, roxana by name. roxana was twenty years old. she was up and around the same day, with her hands full, for she was tending both babies. mrs. percy driscoll died within the week. roxy remained in charge of the children. she had her own way, for mr. driscoll soon absorbed himself in his speculations and left her to her own devices. in that same month of february, dawson's landing gained a new citizen. this was mr. david wilson, a young fellow of scotch parentage. he had wandered to this remote region from his birthplace in the interior of the state of new york, to seek his fortune. he was twenty-five years old, college-bred, and had finished a post-college course in an eastern law school a couple of years before. he was a homely, freckled, sandy-haired young fellow, with an intelligent blue eye that had frankness and comradeship in it and a covert twinkle of a pleasant sort. but for an unfortunate remark of his, he would no doubt have entered at once upon a successful career at dawson's landing. but he made his fatal remark the first day he spent in the village, and it "gaged" him. he had just made the acquaintance of a group of citizens when an invisible dog began to yelp and snarl and howl and make himself very comprehensively disagreeable, whereupon young wilson said, much as one who is thinking aloud - "i wished i owned half of that dog." "why?" somebody asked. "because i would kill my half." the group searched his face with curiosity, with anxiety even, but found no light there, no expression that they could read. they fell away from him as from something uncanny, and went into privacy to discuss him. one said: "'pears to be a fool." "'pears?" said another. "<is>, i reckon you better say." "said he wished he owned <half> of the dog, the idiot," said a third. "what did he reckon would become of the other half if he killed his half? do you reckon he thought it would live?" "why, he must have thought it, unless he <is> the downrightest fool in the world; because if he had n't thought it, he would have wanted to own the whole dog, knowing that if he killed his half and the other half died, he would be responsible for that half just the same as if he had killed that half instead of his own. don't it look that way to you, gents?" "yes, it does. if he owned one half of the general dog, it would be so; if he owned one end of the dog and another person owned the other end, it would be so, just the same; particularly in the first case, because if you kill one half of a general dog, there ain't any man that can tell whose half it was, but if he owned one end of the dog, maybe he could kill his end of it and -" "no, he could n't, either: he could n't and not be responsible if the other end died, which it would. in my opinion the man ain't in his right mind." "in my opinion he hain't <got> any mind." no. 3 said: "well, he 's a lummox, anyway." "that 's what he is," said no. 4, "he 's a labrick -just a simon-pure labrick, if ever there was one." "yes, sir, he 's a dam fool, that 's the way i put him up," said no. 5. "anybody can think different that wants to, but those are my sentiments." "i 'm with you, gentlemen," said no. 6. "perfect jackass -yes, and it ain't going too far to say he is a pudd'nhead. if he ain't a pudd'nhead, i ain't no judge, that 's all." mr. wilson stood elected. the incident was told all over the town, and gravely discussed by everybody. within a week he had lost his first name; pudd'nhead took its place. in time he came to be liked, and well liked too; but by that time the nickname had got well stuck on, and it stayed. that first day's verdict made him a fool, and he was not able to get it set aside, or even modified. the nickname soon ceased to carry any harsh or unfriendly feeling with it, but it held its place, and was to continue to hold its place for twenty long years. ii adam was but human -this explains it all. he did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. the mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> pudd'nhead wilson had a trifle of money when he arrived, and he bought a small house on the extreme western verge of the town. between it and judge driscoll's house there was only a grassy yard, with a paling fence dividing the properties in the middle. he hired a small office down in the town and hung out a tin sign with these words on it: david wilson. attorney and counselor-at-law. surveying, conveyancing, etc. but his deadly remark had ruined his chance -at least in the law. no clients came. he took down his sign, after a while, and put it up on his own house with the law features knocked out of it. it offered his services now in the humble capacities of land-surveyor and expert accountant. now and then he got a job of surveying to do, and now and then a merchant got him to straighten out his books. with scotch patience and pluck he resolved to live down his reputation and work his way into the legal field yet. poor fellow, he could not foresee that it was going to take him such a weary long time to do it. he had a rich abundance of idle time, but it never hung heavy on his hands, for he interested himself in every new thing that was born into the universe of ideas, and studied it and experimented upon it at his house. one of his pet fads was palmistry. to another one he gave no name, neither would he explain to anybody what its purpose was, but merely said it was an amusement. in fact he had found that his fads added to his reputation as a pudd'nhead; therefore he was growing chary of being too communicative about them. the fad without a name was one which dealt with people's finger-marks. he carried in his coat pocket a shallow box with grooves in it, and in the grooves strips of glass five inches long and three inches wide. along the lower edge of each strip was pasted a slip of white paper. he asked people to pass their hands through their hair (thus collecting upon them a thin coating of the natural oil) and then make a thumb-mark on a glass strip, following it with the mark of the ball of each finger in succession. under this row of faint grease-prints he would write a record on the strip of white paper -thus: john smith, <right hand> - and add the day of the month and the year, then take smith's left hand on another glass strip, and add name and date and the words "left hand." the strips were now returned to the grooved box, and took their place among what wilson called his "records." he often studied his records, examining and poring over them with absorbing interest until far into the night; but what he found there -if he found anything -he revealed to no one. sometimes he copied on paper the involved and delicate pattern left by the ball of a finger, and then vastly enlarged it with a pantograph so that he could examine its web of curving lines with ease and convenience. one sweltering afternoon -it was the first day of july, 1830 -he was at work over a set of tangled account-books in his workroom, which looked westward over a stretch of vacant lots, when a conversation outside disturbed him. it was carried on in yells, which showed that the people engaged in it were not close together: "say, roxy, how does yo' baby come on?" this from the distant voice. "fust-rate; how does <you> come on, jasper?" this yell was from close by. "oh. i 's middlin'; hain't got noth'n' to complain of. i 's gwine to come a-court'n' you bimeby, roxy." "<you> is, you black mud-cat! yah -yah -yah! i got somep'n' better to do den 'sociat'n' wid niggers as black as you is. is ole miss cooper's nancy done give you de mitten?" roxy followed this sally with another discharge of care-free laughter. "you 's jealous, roxy, dat 's what 's de matter wid <you>, you hussy -yah -yah -yah! dat 's de time i got you!" "oh, yes, <you> got me, hain't you. 'clah to goodness if dat conceit o' yo'n strikes in, jasper, it gwine to kill you sho'. if you b'longed to me i 'd sell you down de river 'fo' you git too fur gone. fust time i runs acrost yo' marster, i 's gwine to tell him so." this idle and aimless jabber went on and on, both parties enjoying the friendly duel and each well satisfied with his own share of the wit exchanged -for wit they considered it. wilson stepped to the window to observe the combatants; he could not work while their chatter continued. over in the vacant lots was jasper, young, coal-black and of magnificent build, sitting on a wheelbarrow in the pelting sun -at work, supposably, whereas he was in fact only preparing for it by taking an hour's rest before beginning. in front of wilson's porch stood roxy, with a local hand-made baby-wagon, in which sat her two charges -one at each end and facing each other. from roxy's manner of speech, a stranger would have expected her to be black, but she was not. only one sixteenth of her was black, and that sixteenth did not show. she was of majestic form and stature, her attitudes were imposing and statuesque, and her gestures and movements distinguished by a noble and stately grace. her complexion was very fair, with the rosy glow of vigorous health in the cheeks, her face was full of character and expression, her eyes were brown and liquid, and she had a heavy suit of fine soft hair which was also brown, but the fact was not apparent because her head was bound about with a checkered handkerchief and the hair was concealed under it. her face was shapely, intelligent and comely -even beautiful. she had an easy, independent carriage -when she was among her own caste -and a high and "sassy" way, withal; but of course she was meek and humble enough where white people were. to all intents and purposes roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro. she was a slave, and salable as such. her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law and custom a negro. he had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white comrade, but even the father of the white child was able to tell the children apart -little as he had commerce with them -by their clothes: for the white babe wore ruffled soft muslin and a coral necklace, while the other wore merely a coarse tow-linen shirt which barely reached to its knees, and no jewelry. the white child's name was thomas ;aga becket driscoll, the other's name was valet de chambre: no surname -slaves had n't the privilege. roxana had heard that phrase somewhere, the fine sound of it had pleased her ear, and as she had supposed it was a name, she loaded it on to her darling. it soon got shortened to "chambers," of course. wilson knew roxy by sight, and when the duel of wit began to play out, he stepped outside to gather in a record or two. jasper went to work energetically, at once, perceiving that his leisure was observed. wilson inspected the children and asked - "how old are they, roxy?" "bofe de same age, sir -five months. bawn de fust o' feb'uary." "they 're handsome little chaps. one 's just as handsome as the other, too." a delighted smile exposed the girl's white teeth, and she said: "bless yo' soul, misto wilson, it 's pow'ful nice o' you to say dat, 'ca'se one of 'em ain't on'y a nigger. mighty prime little nigger, <i> al'ays says, but dat 's 'ca'se it 's mine, o' course." "how do you tell them apart, roxy, when they have n't any clothes on?" roxy laughed a laugh proportioned to her size, and said: "oh, <i> kin tell 'em 'part, misto wilson, but i bet marse percy could n't, not to save his life." wilson chatted along for a while, and presently got roxy's finger-prints for his collection -right hand and left -on a couple of his glass strips; then labeled and dated them, and took the "records" of both children, and labeled and dated them also. two months later, on the 3d of september, he took this trio of finger-marks again. he liked to have a "series," two or three "takings" at intervals during the period of childhood, these to be followed by others at intervals of several years. the next day -that is to say, on the 4th of september -something occurred which profoundly impressed roxana. mr. driscoll missed another small sum of money -which is a way of saying that this was not a new thing, but had happened before. in truth it had happened three times before. driscoll's patience was exhausted. he was a fairly humane man toward slaves and other animals; he was an exceedingly humane man toward the erring of his own race. theft he could not abide, and plainly there was a thief in his house. necessarily the thief must be one of his negroes. sharp measures must be taken. he called his servants before him. there were three of these, besides roxy: a man, a woman, and a boy twelve years old. they were not related. mr. driscoll said: "you have all been warned before. it has done no good. this time i will teach you a lesson. i will sell the thief. which of you is the guilty one?" they all shuddered at the threat, for here they had a good home, and a new one was likely to be a change for the worse. the denial was general. none had stolen anything -not money, anyway -a little sugar, or cake, or honey, or something like that, that "marse percy would n't mind or miss," but not money -never a cent of money. they were eloquent in their protestations, but mr. driscoll was not moved by them. he answered each in turn with a stern "name the thief!" the truth was, all were guilty but roxana; she suspected that the others were guilty, but she did not know them to be so. she was horrified to think how near she had come to being guilty herself; she had been saved in the nick of time by a revival in the colored methodist church, a fortnight before, at which time and place she "got religion." the very next day after that gracious experience, while her change of style was fresh upon her and she was vain of her purified condition, her master left a couple of dollars lying unprotected on his desk, and she happened upon that temptation when she was polishing around with a dust-rag. she looked at the money a while with a steadily rising resentment, then she burst out with - "dad blame dat revival, i wisht it had 'a' be'n put off till to-morrow!" then she covered the tempter with a book, and another member of the kitchen cabinet got it. she made this sacrifice as a matter of religious etiquette; as a thing necessary just now, but by no means to be wrested into a precedent; no, a week or two would limber up her piety, then she would be rational again, and the next two dollars that got left out in the cold would find a comforter -and she could name the comforter. was she bad? was she worse than the general run of her race? no. they had an unfair show in the battle of life, and they held it no sin to take military advantage of the enemy -in a small way; in a small way, but not in a large one. they would smouch provisions from the pantry whenever they got a chance; or a brass thimble, or a cake of wax, or an emery bag, or a paper of needles, or a silver spoon, or a dollar bill, or small articles of clothing, or any other property of light value; and so far were they from considering such reprisals sinful, that they would go to church and shout and pray their loudest and sincerest with their plunder in their pockets. a farm smoke-house had to be kept heavily padlocked, for even the colored deacon himself could not resist a ham when providence showed him in a dream, or otherwise, where such a thing hung lonesome and longed for some one to love. but with a hundred hanging before him the deacon would not take two -that is, on the same night. on frosty nights the humane negro prowler would warm the end of a plank and put it up under the cold claws of chickens roosting in a tree; a drowsy hen would step on to the comfortable board, softly clucking her gratitude, and the prowler would dump her into his bag, and later into his stomach, perfectly sure that in taking this trifle from the man who daily robbed him of an inestimable treasure -his liberty -he was not committing any sin that god would remember against him in the last great day. "name the thief!" for the fourth time mr. driscoll had said it, and always in the same hard tone. and now he added these words of awful import: "i give you one minute" -he took out his watch. "if at the end of that time you have not confessed, i will not only sell all four of you, <but> -i will sell you down the river!" it was equivalent to condemning them to hell! no missouri negro doubted this. roxy reeled in her tracks and the color vanished out of her face; the others dropped to their knees as if they had been shot; tears gushed from their eyes, their supplicating hands went up, and three answers came in the one instant: "i done it!" "i done it!" "i done it! -have mercy, marster -lord have mercy on us po' niggers!" "very good," said the master, putting up his watch, "i will sell you <here>, though you don't deserve it. you ought to be sold down the river." the culprits flung themselves prone, in an ecstasy of gratitude, and kissed his feet, declaring that they would never forget his goodness and never cease to pray for him as long as they lived. they were sincere, for like a god he had stretched forth his mighty hand and closed the gates of hell against them. he knew, himself, that he had done a noble and gracious thing, and was privately well pleased with his magnanimity; and that night he set the incident down in his diary, so that his son might read it in after years, and be thereby moved to deeds of gentleness and humanity himself. iii whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to adam, the first great benefactor of our race. he brought death into the world. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> percy driscoll slept well the night he saved his house-minions from going down the river, but no wink of sleep visited roxy's eyes. a profound terror had taken possession of her. her child could grow up and be sold down the river! the thought crazed her with horror. if she dozed and lost herself for a moment, the next moment she was on her feet and flying to her child's cradle to see if it was still there. then she would gather it to her heart and pour out her love upon it in a frenzy of kisses, moaning, crying, and saying "dey sha'n't, oh, dey <sha'n't>! -yo' po' mammy will kill you fust!" once, when she was tucking it back in its cradle again, the other child nestled in its sleep and attracted her attention. she went and stood over it a long time, communing with herself: "what has my po' baby done, dat he could n't have yo' luck? he hain't done noth'n'. god was good to you; why war n't he good to him? dey can't sell <you> down de river. i hates yo' pappy; he ain't got no heart -for niggers he hain't, anyways. i hates him, en i could kill him!" she paused a while, thinking; then she burst into wild sobbings again, and turned away, saying, "oh, i got to kill my chile, dey ain't no yuther way, -killin' <him> would n't save de chile fum goin' down de river. oh, i got to do it, yo' po' mammy's got to kill you to save you, honey" -she gathered her baby to her bosom, now, and began to smother it with caresses -"mammy 's got to kill you -how <kin> i do it! but yo' mammy ain't gwine to desert you, -no, no; <dah>, don't cry -she gwine <wid> you, she gwine to kill herself too. come along, honey, come along wid mammy; we gwine to jump in de river, den de troubles o' dis worl' is all over -dey don't sell po' niggers down the river over <yonder>." she started toward the door, crooning to the child and hushing it; midway she stopped, suddenly. she had caught sight of her new sunday gown -a cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy colors and fantastic figures. she surveyed it wistfully, longingly. "hain't ever wore it yet," she said, "en it 's jist lovely." then she nodded her head in response to a pleasant idea, and added, "no, i ain't gwine to be fished out, wid everybody lookin' at me, in dis mis'able ole linsey-woolsey." she put down the child and made the change. she looked in the glass and was astonished at her beauty. she resolved to make her death-toilet perfect. she took off her handkerchief-turban and dressed her glossy wealth of hair "like white folks"; she added some odds and ends of rather lurid ribbon and a spray of atrocious artificial flowers; finally she threw over her shoulders a fluffy thing called a "cloud" in that day, which was of a blazing red complexion. then she was ready for the tomb. she gathered up her baby once more; but when her eye fell upon its miserably short little gray tow-linen shirt and noted the contrast between its pauper shabbiness and her own volcanic irruption of infernal splendors, her mother-heart was touched, and she was ashamed. "no, dolling, mammy ain't gwine to treat you so. de angels is gwine to 'mire you jist as much as dey does yo' mammy. ain't gwine to have 'em putt'n' dey han's up 'fo' dey eyes en sayin' to david en goliah en dem yuther prophets, `dat chile is dress' too indelicate fo' dis place.'" by this time she had stripped off the shirt. now she clothed the naked little creature in one of thomas a becket's snowy long baby-gowns, with its bright blue bows and dainty flummery of ruffles. "dah -now you 's fixed." she propped the child in a chair and stood off to inspect it. straightway her eyes began to widen with astonishment and admiration, and she clapped her hands and cried out, "why, it do beat all! -i <never> knowed you was so lovely. marse tommy ain't a bit puttier -not a single bit." she stepped over and glanced at the other infant; she flung a glance back at her own; then one more at the heir of the house. now a strange light dawned in her eyes, and in a moment she was lost in thought. she seemed in a trance; when she came out of it she muttered, "when i 'uz a-washin' 'em in de tub, yistiddy, his own pappy asked me which of 'em was his'n." she began to move about like one in a dream. she undressed thomas a becket, stripping him of everything, and put the tow-linen shirt on him. she put his coral necklace on her own child's neck. then she placed the children side by side, and after earnest inspection she muttered - "now who would b'lieve clo'es could do de like o' dat? dog my cats if it ain't all <i> kin do to tell t' other fum which, let alone his pappy." she put her cub in tommy's elegant cradle and said - "you 's young marse <tom> fum dis out, en i got to practise and git used to 'memberin' to call you dat, honey, or i 's gwine to make a mistake some time en git us bofe into trouble. dah -now you lay still en don't fret no mo', marse tom -oh, thank de good lord in heaven, you 's saved, you 's saved! -dey ain't no man kin ever sell mammy's po' little honey down de river now!" she put the heir of the house in her own child's unpainted pine cradle, and said, contemplating its slumbering form uneasily - "i 's sorry for you, honey; i 's sorry, god knows i is, -but what <kin> i do, what <could> i do? yo' pappy would sell him to somebody, some time, en den he' d go down de river, sho', en i could n't, could n't, <could n't> stan' it." she flung herself on her bed and began to think and toss, toss and think. by and by she sat suddenly upright, for a comforting thought had flown through her worried mind - "'t ain't no sin -<white> folks has done it! it ain't no sin, glory to goodness it ain't no sin! <dey 's> done it -yes, en dey was de biggest quality in de whole bilin', too -<kings!> --" she began to muse; she was trying to gather out of her memory the dim particulars of some tale she had heard some time or other. at last she said - "now i 's got it; now i 'member. it was dat ole nigger preacher dat tole it, de time he come over here fum illinois en preached in de nigger church. he said dey ain't nobody kin save his own self -can't do it by faith, can't do it by works, can't do it no way at all. free grace is de <on'y> way, en dat don't come fum nobody but jis' de lord; en <he> kin give it to anybody he please, saint or sinner -<he> don't kyer. he do jis' as he 's a mineter. he s'lect out anybody dat suit him, en put another one in his place, en make de fust one happy forever en leave t' other one to burn wid satan. de preacher said it was jist like dey done in englan' one time, long time ago. de queen she lef' her baby layin' aroun' one day, en went out callin'; en one o' de niggers roun' 'bout de place dat was 'mos' white, she come in en see de chile layin' aroun', en tuck en put her own chile's clo'es on de queen's chile, en put de queen's chile's clo'es on her own chile, en den lef' her own chile layin' aroun' en tuck en toted de queen's chile home to de nigger-quarter, en nobody ever foun' it out, en her chile was de king bimeby, en sole de queen's chile down de river one time when dey had to settle up de estate. dah, now -de preacher said it his own self, en it ain't no sin, 'ca'se white folks done it. <dey> done it -yes, <dey> done it; en not on'y jis' common white folks nuther, but de biggest quality dey is in de whole bilin'. oh, i 's <so> glad i 'member 'bout dat!" she got up light-hearted and happy, and went to the cradles and spent what was left of the night "practising." she would give her own child a light pat and say humbly, "lay still, marse tom," then give the real tom a pat and say with severity, "lay <still>, chambers! -does you want me to take somep'n' <to> you?" as she progressed with her practice, she was surprised to see how steadily and surely the awe which had kept her tongue reverent and her manner humble toward her young master was transferring itself to her speech and manner toward the usurper, and how similarly handy she was becoming in transferring her motherly curtness of speech and peremptoriness of manner to the unlucky heir of the ancient house of driscoll. she took occasional rests from practising, and absorbed herself in calculating her chances. "dey 'll sell dese niggers to-day fo' stealin' de money, den dey 'll buy some mo' dat don't know de chillen -so <dat 's> all right. when i takes de chillen out to git de air, de minute i 's roun' de corner i 's gwine to gaum dey mouths all roun' wid jam, den dey can't <nobody> notice dey 's changed. yes, i gwineter do dat till i 's safe, if it 's a year. "dey ain't but one man dat i 's afeard of, en dat 's dat pudd'nhead wilson. dey calls him a pudd'nhead, en says he 's a fool. my lan', dat man ain't no mo' fool den i is! he 's de smartes' man in dis town, less 'n it 's jedge driscroll or maybe pem howard. blame dat man, he worries me wid dem ornery glasses o' hisn; <i> b'lieve he's a witch. but nemmine, i 's gwine to happen aroun' dah one o' dese days en let on dat i reckon he wants to print de chillen's fingers ag'in; en if <he> don't notice dey 's changed, i bound dey ain't nobody gwine to notice it, en den i 's safe, sho'. but i reckon i 'll tote along a hoss-shoe to keep off de witch-work." the new negroes gave roxy no trouble, of course. the master gave her none, for one of his speculations was in jeopardy, and his mind was so occupied that he hardly saw the children when he looked at them, and all roxy had to do was to get them both into a gale of laughter when he came about; then their faces were mainly cavities exposing gums, and he was gone again before the spasm passed and the little creatures resumed a human aspect. within a few days the fate of the speculation became so dubious that mr. percy went away with his brother the judge, to see what could be done with it. it was a land speculation as usual, and it had gotten complicated with a lawsuit. the men were gone seven weeks. before they got back roxy had paid her visit to wilson, and was satisfied. wilson took the finger-prints, labeled them with the names and with the date -october the first -put them carefully away and continued his chat with roxy, who seemed very anxious that he should admire the great advance in flesh and beauty which the babies had made since he took their finger-prints a month before. he complimented their improvement to her contentment; and as they were without any disguise of jam or other stain, she trembled all the while and was miserably frightened lest at any moment he - but he did n't. he discovered nothing; and she went home jubilant, and dropped all concern about the matter permanently out of her mind. iv adam and eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they escaped teething. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> there is this trouble about special providences -namely, there is so often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. in the case of the children, the bears and the prophet, the bears got more real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they got the children. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> this history must henceforth accommodate itself to the change which roxana has consummated, and call the real heir "chambers" and the usurping little slave "thomas a becket" -shortening this latter name to "tom," for daily use, as the people about him did. "tom" was a bad baby, from the very beginning of his usurpation. he would cry for nothing; he would burst into storms of devilish temper without notice, and let go scream after scream and squall after squall, then climax the thing with "holding his breath" -that frightful specialty of the teething nursling, in the throes of which the creature exhausts its lungs, then is convulsed with noiseless squirmings and twistings and kickings in the effort to get its breath, while the lips turn blue and the mouth stands wide and rigid, offering for inspection one wee tooth set in the lower rim of a hoop of red gums; and when the appalling stillness has endured until one is sure the lost breath will never return, a nurse comes flying, and dashes water in the child's face, and -presto! the lungs fill, and instantly discharge a shriek, or a yell, or a howl which bursts the listening ear and surprises the owner of it into saying words which would not go well with a halo if he had one. the baby tom would claw anybody who came within reach of his nails, and pound anybody he could reach with his rattle. he would scream for water until he got it, and then throw cup and all on the floor and scream for more. he was indulged in all his caprices, howsoever troublesome and exasperating they might be; he was allowed to eat anything he wanted, particularly things that would give him the stomach-ache. when he got to be old enough to begin to toddle about and say broken words and get an idea of what his hands were for, he was a more consummate pest than ever. roxy got no rest while he was awake. he would call for anything and everything he saw, simply saying "awnt it!" (want it), which was a command. when it was brought, he said in a frenzy, and motioning it away with his hands, "don't awnt it! don't awnt it!" and the moment it was gone he set up frantic yells of "awnt it! awnt it! awnt it!" and roxy had to give wings to her heels to get that thing back to him again before he could get time to carry out his intention of going into convulsions about it. what he preferred above all other things was the tongs. this was because his "father" had forbidden him to have them lest he break windows and furniture with them. the moment roxy's back was turned he would toddle to the presence of the tongs and say "like it!" and cock his eye to one side to see if roxy was observing; then, "awnt it!" and cock his eye again; then, "hab it!" with another furtive glance; and finally, "take it!" -and the prize was his. the next moment the heavy implement was raised aloft; the next, there was a crash and a squall, and the cat was off on three legs to meet an engagement; roxy would arrive just as the lamp or a window went to irremediable smash. tom got all the petting, chambers got none. tom got all the delicacies, chambers got mush and milk, and clabber without sugar. in consequence tom was a sickly child and chambers was n't. tom was "fractious," as roxy called it, and overbearing; chambers was meek and docile. with all her splendid common sense and practical every-day ability, roxy was a doting fool of a mother. she was this toward her child -and she was also more than this: by the fiction created by herself, he was become her master; the necessity of recognizing this relation outwardly and of perfecting herself in the forms required to express the recognition, had moved her to such diligence and faithfulness in practising these forms that this exercise soon concreted itself into habit; it became automatic and unconscious; then a natural result followed: deceptions intended solely for others gradually grew practically into self-deceptions as well; the mock reverence became real reverence, the mock obsequiousness real obsequiousness, the mock homage real homage; the little counterfeit rift of separation between imitation-slave and imitation-master widened and widened, and became an abyss, and a very real one -and on one side of it stood roxy, the dupe of her own deceptions, and on the other stood her child, no longer a usurper to her, but her accepted and recognized master. he was her darling, her master, and her deity all in one, and in her worship of him she forgot who she was and what he had been. in babyhood tom cuffed and banged and scratched chambers unrebuked, and chambers early learned that between meekly bearing it and resenting it, the advantage all lay with the former policy. the few times that his persecutions had moved him beyond control and made him fight back had cost him very dear at headquarters; not at the hands of roxy, for if she ever went beyond scolding him sharply for "forgitt'n' who his young master was," she at least never extended her punishment beyond a box on the ear. no, percy driscoll was the person. he told chambers that under no provocation whatever was he privileged to lift his hand against his little master. chambers overstepped the line three times, and got three such convincing canings from the man who was his father and did n't know it, that he took tom's cruelties in all humility after that, and made no more experiments. outside of the house the two boys were together all through their boyhood. chambers was strong beyond his years, and a good fighter; strong because he was coarsely fed and hard worked about the house, and a good fighter because tom furnished him plenty of practice -on white boys whom he hated and was afraid of. chambers was his constant body-guard, to and from school; he was present on the playground at recess to protect his charge. he fought himself into such a formidable reputation, by and by, that tom could have changed clothes with him, and "ridden in peace," like sir kay in launcelot's armor. he was good at games of skill, too. tom staked him with marbles to play "keeps" with, and then took all the winnings away from him. in the winter season chambers was on hand, in tom's worn-out clothes, with "holy" red mittens, and "holy" shoes, and pants "holy" at the knees and seat, to drag a sled up the hill for tom, warmly clad, to ride down on; but he never got a ride himself. he built snow men and snow fortifications under tom's directions. he was tom's patient target when tom wanted to do some snowballing, but the target could n't fire back. chambers carried tom's skates to the river and strapped them on him, then trotted around after him on the ice, so as to be on hand when wanted; but he was n't ever asked to try the skates himself. in summer the pet pastime of the boys of dawson's landing was to steal apples, peaches, and melons from the farmers' fruit-wagons, -mainly on account of the risk they ran of getting their head laid open with the butt of the farmer's whip. tom was a distinguished adept at these thefts -by proxy. chambers did his stealing, and got the peach-stones, apple-cores, and melon-rinds for his share. tom always made chambers go in swimming with him, and stay by him as a protection. when tom had had enough, he would slip out and tie knots in chambers's shirt, dip the knots in the water to make them hard to undo, then dress himself and sit by and laugh while the naked shiverer tugged at the stubborn knots with his teeth. tom did his humble comrade these various ill turns partly out of native viciousness, and partly because he hated him for his superiorities of physique and pluck, and for his manifold clevernesses. tom could n't dive, for it gave him splitting headaches. chambers could dive without inconvenience, and was fond of doing it. he excited so much admiration, one day, among a crowd of white boys, by throwing back somersaults from the stern of a canoe, that it wearied tom's spirit, and at last he shoved the canoe underneath chambers while he was in the air -so he came down on his head in the canoe-bottom; and while he lay unconscious, several of tom's ancient adversaries saw that their long-desired opportunity was come, and they gave the false heir such a drubbing that with chambers's best help he was hardly able to drag himself home afterward. when the boys were fifteen and upward, tom was "showing off" in the river one day, when he was taken with a cramp, and shouted for help. it was a common trick with the boys -particularly if a stranger was present -to pretend a cramp and howl for help; then when the stranger came tearing hand over hand to the rescue, the howler would go on struggling and howling till he was close at hand, then replace the howl with a sarcastic smile and swim blandly away, while the town boys assailed the dupe with a volley of jeers and laughter. tom had never tried this joke as yet, but was supposed to be trying it now, so the boys held warily back; but chambers believed his master was in earnest, therefore he swam out, and arrived in time, unfortunately, and saved his life. this was the last feather. tom had managed to endure everything else, but to have to remain publicly and permanently under such an obligation as this to a nigger, and to this nigger of all niggers -this was too much. he heaped insults upon chambers for "pretending" to think he was in earnest in calling for help, and said that anybody but a blockheaded nigger would have known he was funning and left him alone. tom's enemies were in strong force here, so they came out with their opinions quite freely. they laughed at him, and called him coward, liar, sneak, and other sorts of pet names, and told him they meant to call chambers by a new name after this, and make it common in the town -"tom driscoll's niggerpappy," -to signify that he had had a second birth into this life, and that chambers was the author of his new being. tom grew frantic under these taunts, and shouted - "knock their heads off, chambers! knock their heads off! what do you stand there with your hands in your pockets for?" chambers expostulated, and said, "but, marse tom, dey 's too many of 'em -dey 's -" "do you hear me?" "please, marse tom, don't make me! dey 's so many of 'em dat -" tom sprang at him and drove his pocket-knife into him two or three times before the boys could snatch him away and give the wounded lad a chance to escape. he was considerably hurt, but not seriously. if the blade had been a little longer his career would have ended there. tom had long ago taught roxy "her place." it had been many a day now since she had ventured a caress or a fondling epithet in his quarter. such things, from a "nigger," were repulsive to him, and she had been warned to keep her distance and remember who she was. she saw her darling gradually cease from being her son, she saw <that> detail perish utterly; all that was left was master -master, pure and simple, and it was not a gentle mastership, either. she saw herself sink from the sublime height of motherhood to the somber deeps of unmodified slavery. the abyss of separation between her and her boy was complete. she was merely his chattel, now, his convenience, his dog, his cringing and helpless slave, the humble and unresisting victim of his capricious temper and vicious nature. sometimes she could not go to sleep, even when worn out with fatigue, because her rage boiled so high over the day's experiences with her boy. she would mumble and mutter to herself - "he struck me, en i war n't no way to blame -struck me in de face, right before folks. en he 's al'ays callin' me nigger-wench, en hussy, en all dem mean names, when i 's doin' de very bes' i kin. oh, lord, i done so much for him -i lift' him away up to what he is -en dis is what i git for it." sometimes when some outrage of peculiar offensiveness stung her to the heart, she would plan schemes of vengeance and revel in the fancied spectacle of his exposure to the world as an impostor and a slave; but in the midst of these joys fear would strike her: she had made him too strong; she could prove nothing, and -heavens, she might get sold down the river for her pains! so her schemes always went for nothing, and she laid them aside in impotent rage against the fates, and against herself for playing the fool on that fatal september day in not providing herself with a witness for use in the day when such a thing might be needed for the appeasing of her vengeance-hungry heart. and yet the moment tom happened to be good to her, and kind, -and this occurred every now and then, -all her sore places were healed, and she was happy; happy and proud, for this was her son, her nigger son, lording it among the whites and securely avenging their crimes against her race. there were two grand funerals in dawson's landing that fall -the fall of 1845. one was that of colonel cecil burleigh essex, the other that of percy driscoll. on his death-bed driscoll set roxy free and delivered his idolized ostensible son solemnly into the keeping of his brother the judge and his wife. those childless people were glad to get him. childless people are not difficult to please. judge driscoll had gone privately to his brother, a month before, and bought chambers. he had heard that tom had been trying to get his father to sell the boy down the river, and he wanted to prevent the scandal -for public sentiment did not approve of that way of treating family servants for light cause or for no cause. percy driscoll had worn himself out in trying to save his great speculative landed estate, and had died without succeeding. he was hardly in his grave before the boom collapsed and left his hitherto envied young devil of an heir a pauper. but that was nothing; his uncle told him he should be his heir and have all his fortune when he died; so tom was comforted. roxy had no home, now; so she resolved to go around and say good-by to her friends and then clear out and see the world -that is to say, she would go chambermaiding on a steamboat, the darling ambition of her race and sex. her last call was on the black giant, jasper. she found him chopping pudd'nhead wilson's winter provision of wood. wilson was chatting with him when roxy arrived. he asked her how she could bear to go off chambermaiding and leave her boys; and chaffingly offered to copy off a series of their finger-prints, reaching up to their twelfth year, for her to remember them by; but she sobered in a moment, wondering if he suspected anything; then she said she believed she did n't want them. wilson said to himself, "the drop of black blood in her is superstitious; she thinks there 's some devilry, some witch-business about my glass mystery somewhere; she used to come here with an old horseshoe in her hand; it could have been an accident, but i doubt it." v training is everything. the peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> remark of dr. baldwin's, concerning up-starts: we don't care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> mrs. york driscoll enjoyed two years of bliss with that prize, tom -bliss that was troubled a little at times, it is true, but bliss nevertheless; then she died, and her husband and his childless sister, mrs. pratt, continued the bliss-business at the old stand. tom was petted and indulged and spoiled to his entire content -or nearly that. this went on till he was nineteen, then he was sent to yale. he went handsomely equipped with "conditions," but otherwise he was not an object of distinction there. he remained at yale two years, and then threw up the struggle. he came home with his manners a good deal improved; he had lost his surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and smooth, now; he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech, and given to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a good-natured semiconscious air that carried it off safely, and kept him from getting into trouble. he was as indolent as ever and showed no very strenuous desire to hunt up an occupation. people argued from this that he preferred to be supported by his uncle until his uncle's shoes should become vacant. he brought back one or two new habits with him, one of which he rather openly practised -tippling -but concealed another, which was gambling. it would not do to gamble where his uncle could hear of it; he knew that quite well. tom's eastern polish was not popular among the young people. they could have endured it, perhaps, if tom had stopped there; but he wore gloves, and that they could n't stand, and would n't; so he was mainly without society. he brought home with him a suit of clothes of such exquisite style and cut and fashion, -eastern fashion, city fashion, -that it filled everybody with anguish and was regarded as a peculiarly wanton affront. he enjoyed the feeling which he was exciting, and paraded the town serene and happy all day; but the young fellows set a tailor to work that night, and when tom started out on his parade next morning he found the old deformed negro bell-ringer straddling along in his wake tricked out in a flamboyant curtain-calico exaggeration of his finery, and imitating his fancy eastern graces as well as he could. tom surrendered, and after that clothed himself in the local fashion. but the dull country town was tiresome to him, since his acquaintanceship with livelier regions, and it grew daily more and more so. he began to make little trips to st. louis for refreshment. there he found companionship to suit him, and pleasures to his taste, along with more freedom, in some particulars, than he could have at home. so, during the next two years his visits to the city grew in frequency and his tarryings there grew steadily longer in duration. he was getting into deep waters. he was taking chances, privately, which might get him into trouble some day -in fact, <did>. judge driscoll had retired from the bench and from all business activities in 1850, and had now been comfortably idle three years. he was president of the free-thinkers' society, and pudd'nhead wilson was the other member. the society's weekly discussions were now the old lawyer's main interest in life. pudd'nhead was still toiling in obscurity at the bottom of the ladder, under the blight of that unlucky remark which he had let fall twenty-three years before about the dog. judge driscoll was his friend, and claimed that he had a mind above the average, but that was regarded as one of the judge's whims, and it failed to modify the public opinion. or rather, that was one of the reasons why it failed, but there was another and better one. if the judge had stopped with bare assertion, it would have had a good deal of effect; but he made the mistake of trying to prove his position. for some years wilson had been privately at work on a whimsical almanac, for his amusement -a calendar, with a little dab of ostensible philosophy, usually in ironical form, appended to each date; and the judge thought that these quips and fancies of wilson's were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful of them around, one day, and read them to some of the chief citizens. but irony was not for those people; their mental vision was not focussed for it. they read those playful trifles in the solidest earnest, and decided without hesitancy that if there had ever been any doubt that dave wilson was a pudd'nhead -which there had n't -this revelation removed that doubt for good and all. that is just the way in this world; an enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect. after this the judge felt tenderer than ever toward wilson, and surer than ever that his calendar had merit. judge driscoll could be a free-thinker and still hold his place in society because he was the person of most consequence in the community, and therefore could venture to go his own way and follow out his own notions. the other member of his pet organization was allowed the like liberty because he was a cipher in the estimation of the public, and nobody attached any importance to what he thought or did. he was liked, he was welcome enough all around, but he simply did n't count for anything. the widow cooper -affectionately called "aunt patsy" by everybody -lived in a snug and comely cottage with her daughter rowena, who was nineteen, romantic, amiable, and very pretty, but otherwise of no consequence. rowena had a couple of young brothers -also of no consequence. the widow had a large spare room which she let to a lodger, with board, when she could find one, but this room had been empty for a year now, to her sorrow. her income was only sufficient for the family support, and she needed the lodging-money for trifling luxuries. but now, at last, on a flaming june day, she found herself happy; her tedious wait was ended; her year-worn advertisement had been answered; and not by a village applicant, oh, no! -this letter was from away off yonder in the dim great world to the north; it was from st. louis. she sat on her porch gazing out with unseeing eyes upon the shining reaches of the mighty mississippi, her thoughts steeped in her good fortune. indeed it was specially good fortune, for she was to have two lodgers instead of one. she had read the letter to the family, and rowena had danced away to see to the cleaning and airing of the room by the slave woman nancy, and the boys had rushed abroad in the town to spread the great news, for it was matter of public interest, and the public would wonder and not be pleased if not informed. presently rowena returned, all ablush with joyous excitement, and begged for a re-reading of the letter. it was framed thus: honored madam: my brother and i have seen your advertisement, by chance, and beg leave to take the room you offer. we are twenty-four years of age and twins. we are italians by birth, but have lived long in the various countries of europe, and several years in the united states. our names are luigi and angelo capello. you desire but one guest; but dear madam, if you will allow us to pay for two, we will not incommode you. we shall be down thursday. "italians! how romantic! just think, ma -there 's never been one in this town, and everybody will be dying to see them, and they 're all <ours>! think of that!" "yes, i reckon they 'll make a grand stir." "oh, indeed they will. the whole town will be on its head! think -they 've been in europe and everywhere! there 's never been a traveler in this town before. ma, i should n't wonder if they 've seen kings!" "well, a body can't tell; but they 'll make stir enough, without that." "yes, that 's of course. luigi -angelo. they 're lovely names; and so grand and foreign -not like jones and robinson and such. thursday they are coming, and this is only tuesday; it 's a cruel long time to wait. here comes judge driscoll in at the gate. he 's heard about it. i 'll go and open the door." the judge was full of congratulations and curiosity. the letter was read and discussed. soon justice robinson arrived with more congratulations, and there was a new reading and a new discussion. this was the beginning. neighbor after neighbor, of both sexes, followed, and the procession drifted in and out all day and evening and all wednesday and thursday. the letter was read and re-read until it was nearly worn out; everybody admired its courtly and gracious tone, and smooth and practised style, everybody was sympathetic and excited, and the coopers were steeped in happiness all the while. the boats were very uncertain in low water, in these primitive times. this time the thursday boat had not arrived at ten at night -so the people had waited at the landing all day for nothing; they were driven to their homes by a heavy storm without having had a view of the illustrious foreigners. eleven o'clock came; and the cooper house was the only one in the town that still had lights burning. the rain and thunder were booming yet, and the anxious family were still waiting, still hoping. at last there was a knock at the door and the family jumped to open it. two negro men entered, each carrying a trunk, and proceeded up-stairs toward the guest-room. then entered the twins -the handsomest, the best dressed, the most distinguished-looking pair of young fellows the west had ever seen. one was a little fairer than the other, but otherwise they were exact duplicates. vi let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> at breakfast in the morning the twins' charm of manner and easy and polished bearing made speedy conquest of the family's good graces. all constraint and formality quickly disappeared, and the friendliest feeling succeeded. aunt patsy called them by their christian names almost from the beginning. she was full of the keenest curiosity about them, and showed it; they responded by talking about themselves, which pleased her greatly. it presently appeared that in their early youth they had known poverty and hardship. as the talk wandered along the old lady watched for the right place to drop in a question or two concerning that matter, and when she found it she said to the blond twin, who was now doing the biographies in his turn while the brunette one rested - "if it ain't asking what i ought not to ask, mr. angelo, how did you come to be so friendless and in such trouble when you were little? do you mind telling? but don't if you do." "oh, we don't mind it at all, madam; in our case it was merely misfortune, and nobody's fault. our parents were well to do, there in italy, and we were their only child. we were of the old florentine nobility" -rowena's heart gave a great bound, her nostrils expanded, and a fine light played in her eyes -"and when the war broke out my father was on the losing side and had to fly for his life. his estates were confiscated, his personal property seized, and there we were, in germany, strangers, friendless, and in fact paupers. my brother and i were ten years old, and well educated for that age, very studious, very fond of our books, and well grounded in the german, french, spanish, and english languages. also, we were marvelous musical prodigies -if you will allow me to say it, it being only the truth. "our father survived his misfortunes only a month, our mother soon followed him, and we were alone in the world. our parents could have made themselves comfortable by exhibiting us as a show, and they had many and large offers; but the thought revolted their pride, and they said they would starve and die first. but what they would n't consent to do we had to do without the formality of consent. we were seized for the debts occasioned by their illness and their funerals, and placed among the attractions of a cheap museum in berlin to earn the liquidation money. it took us two years to get out of that slavery. we traveled all about germany, receiving no wages, and not even our keep. we had to be exhibited for nothing, and beg our bread. "well, madam, the rest is not of much consequence. when we escaped from that slavery at twelve years of age, we were in some respects men. experience had taught us some valuable things; among others, how to take care of ourselves, how to avoid and defeat sharks and sharpers, and how to conduct our own business for our own profit and without other people's help. we traveled everywhere -years and years -picking up smatterings of strange tongues, familiarizing ourselves with strange sights and strange customs, accumulating an education of a wide and varied and curious sort. it was a pleasant life. we went to venice -to london, paris, russia, india, china, japan -" at this point nancy the slave woman thrust her head in at the door and exclaimed: "ole missus, de house is plum' jam full o' people, en dey 's jes a-spi'lin' to see de gen'lmen!" she indicated the twins with a nod of her head, and tucked it back out of sight again. it was a proud occasion for the widow, and she promised herself high satisfaction in showing off her fine foreign birds before her neighbors and friends -simple folk who had hardly ever seen a foreigner of any kind, and never one of any distinction or style. yet her feeling was moderate indeed when contrasted with rowena's. rowena was in the clouds, she walked on air; this was to be the greatest day, the most romantic episode, in the colorless history of that dull country town. she was to be familiarly near the source of its glory and feel the full flood of it pour over her and about her; the other girls could only gaze and envy, not partake. the widow was ready, rowena was ready, so also were the foreigners. the party moved along the hall, the twins in advance, and entered the open parlor door, whence issued a low hum of conversation. the twins took a position near the door, the widow stood at luigi's side, rowena stood beside angelo, and the march-past and the introductions began. the widow was all smiles and contentment. she received the procession and passed it on to rowena. "good mornin', sister cooper" -hand-shake. "good morning, brother higgins -count luigi capello, mr. higgins" -hand-shake, followed by a devouring stare and "i 'm glad to see ye," on the part of higgins, and a courteous inclination of the head and a pleasant "most happy!" on the part of count luigi. "good mornin', roweny" -hand-shake. "good morning, mr. higgins -present you to count angelo capello." hand-shake, admiring stare, "glad to see ye," -courteous nod, smily "most happy!" and higgins passes on. none of these visitors was at ease, but, being honest people, they did n't pretend to be. none of them had ever seen a person bearing a title of nobility before, and none had been expecting to see one now, consequently the title came upon them as a kind of pile-driving surprise and caught them unprepared. a few tried to rise to the emergency, and got out an awkward "my lord," or "your lordship," or something of that sort, but the great majority were overwhelmed by the unaccustomed word and its dim and awful associations with gilded courts and stately ceremony and anointed kingship, so they only fumbled through the hand-shake and passed on, speechless. now and then, as happens at all receptions everywhere, a more than ordinarily friendly soul blocked the procession and kept it waiting while he inquired how the brothers liked the village, and how long they were going to stay, and if their families were well, and dragged in the weather, and hoped it would get cooler soon, and all that sort of thing, so as to be able to say, when they got home, "i had quite a long talk with them"; but nobody did or said anything of a regrettable kind, and so the great affair went through to the end in a creditable and satisfactory fashion. general conversation followed, and the twins drifted about from group to group, talking easily and fluently and winning approval, compelling admiration and achieving favor from all. the widow followed their conquering march with a proud eye, and every now and then rowena said to herself with deep satisfaction, "and to think they are ours -all ours!" there were no idle moments for mother or daughter. eager inquiries concerning the twins were pouring into their enchanted ears all the time; each was the constant center of a group of breathless listeners; each recognized that she knew now for the first time the real meaning of that great word glory, and perceived the stupendous value of it, and understood why men in all ages had been willing to throw away meaner happinesses, treasure, life itself, to get a taste of its sublime and supreme joy. napoleon and all his kind stood accounted for -and justified. when rowena had at last done all her duty by the people in the parlor, she went up-stairs to satisfy the longings of an overflow-meeting there, for the parlor was not big enough to hold all the comers. again she was besieged by eager questioners and again she swam in sunset seas of glory. when the forenoon was nearly gone, she recognized with a pang that this most splendid episode of her life was almost over, that nothing could prolong it, that nothing quite its equal could ever fall to her fortune again. but never mind, it was sufficient unto itself, the grand occasion had moved on an ascending scale from the start, and was a noble and memorable success. if the twins could but do some crowning act, now, to climax it, something unusual, something startling, something to concentrate upon themselves the company's loftiest admiration, something in the nature of an electric surprise - here a prodigious slam-banging broke out below, and everybody rushed down to see. it was the twins knocking out a classic four-handed piece on the piano, in great style. rowena was satisfied -satisfied down to the bottom of her heart. the young strangers were kept long at the piano. the villagers were astonished and enchanted with the magnificence of their performance, and could not bear to have them stop. all the music that they had ever heard before seemed spiritless prentice-work and barren of grace or charm when compared with these intoxicating floods of melodious sound. they realized that for once in their lives they were hearing masters. vii one of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the company broke up reluctantly, and drifted toward their several homes, chatting with vivacity, and all agreeing that it would be many a long day before dawson's landing would see the equal of this one again. the twins had accepted several invitations while the reception was in progress, and had also volunteered to play some duets at an amateur entertainment for the benefit of a local charity. society was eager to receive them to its bosom. judge driscoll had the good fortune to secure them for an immediate drive, and to be the first to display them in public. they entered his buggy with him, and were paraded down the main street, everybody flocking to the windows and sidewalks to see. the judge showed the strangers the new graveyard, and the jail, and where the richest man lived, and the freemasons' hall, and the methodist church, and the presbyterian church, and where the baptist church was going to be when they got some money to build it with, and showed them the town hall and the slaughter-house, and got out the independent fire company in uniform and had them put out an imaginary fire; then he let them inspect the muskets of the militia company, and poured out an exhaustless stream of enthusiasm over all these splendors, and seemed very well satisfied with the responses he got, for the twins admired his admiration, and paid him back the best they could, though they could have done better if some fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand previous experiences of this sort in various countries had not already rubbed off a considerable part of the novelty of it. the judge laid himself out hospitably to make them have a good time, and if there was a defect anywhere it was not his fault. he told them a good many humorous anecdotes, and always forgot the nub, but they were always able to furnish it, for these yarns were of a pretty early vintage, and they had had many a rejuvenating pull at them before. and he told them all about his several dignities, and how he had held this and that and the other place of honor or profit, and had once been to the legislature, and was now president of the society of free-thinkers. he said the society had been in existence four years, and already had two members, and was firmly established. he would call for the brothers in the evening if they would like to attend a meeting of it. accordingly he called for them, and on the way he told them all about pudd'nhead wilson, in order that they might get a favorable impression of him in advance and be prepared to like him. this scheme succeeded -the favorable impression was achieved. later it was confirmed and solidified when wilson proposed that out of courtesy to the strangers the usual topics be put aside and the hour be devoted to conversation upon ordinary subjects and the cultivation of friendly relations and good-fellowship, -a proposition which was put to vote and carried. the hour passed quickly away in lively talk, and when it was ended the lonesome and neglected wilson was richer by two friends than he had been when it began. he invited the twins to look in at his lodgings, presently, after disposing of an intervening engagement, and they accepted with pleasure. toward the middle of the evening they found themselves on the road to his house. pudd'nhead was at home waiting for them and putting in his time puzzling over a thing which had come under his notice that morning. the matter was this: he happened to be up very early -at dawn, in fact, and he crossed the hall which divided his cottage through the center, and entered a room to get something there. the window of the room had no curtains, for that side of the house had long been unoccupied, and through this window he caught sight of something which surprised and interested him. it was a young woman -a young woman where properly no young woman belonged; for she was in judge driscoll's house, and in the bedroom over the judge's private study or sitting-room. this was young tom driscoll's bedroom. he and the judge, the judge's widowed sister mrs. pratt and three negro servants were the only people who belonged in the house. who, then, might this young lady be? the two houses were separated by an ordinary yard, with a low fence running back through its middle from the street in front to the lane in the rear. the distance was not great, and wilson was able to see the girl very well, the window-shades of the room she was in being up and the window also. the girl had on a neat and trim summer dress, patterned in broad stripes of pink and white, and her bonnet was equipped with a pink veil. she was practising steps, gaits and attitudes, apparently; she was doing the thing gracefully, and was very much absorbed in her work. who could she be, and how came she to be in young tom driscoll's room? wilson had quickly chosen a position from which he could watch the girl without running much risk of being seen by her, and he remained there hoping she would raise her veil and betray her face. but she disappointed him. after a matter of twenty minutes she disappeared, and although he stayed at his post half an hour longer, she came no more. toward noon he dropped in at the judge's and talked with mrs. pratt about the great event of the day, the levee of the distinguished foreigners at aunt patsy cooper's. he asked after her nephew tom, and she said he was on his way home, and that she was expecting him to arrive a little before night; and added that she and the judge were gratified to gather from his letters that he was conducting himself very nicely and creditably -at which wilson winked to himself privately. wilson did not ask if there was a newcomer in the house, but he asked questions that would have brought light-throwing answers as to that matter if mrs. pratt had had any light to throw; so he went away satisfied that he knew of things that were going on in her house of which she herself was not aware. he was now waiting for the twins, and still puzzling over the problem of who that girl might be, and how she happened to be in that young fellow's room at daybreak in the morning. viii the holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> consider well the proportions of things. it is better to be a young june-bug than an old bird of paradise. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> it is necessary now, to hunt up roxy. at the time she was set free and went away chambermaiding, she was thirty-five. she got a berth as second chambermaid on a cincinnati boat in the new orleans trade, the <grand mogul>. a couple of trips made her wonted and easy-going at the work, and infatuated her with the stir and adventure and independence of steamboat life. then she was promoted and became head chambermaid. she was a favorite with the officers, and exceedingly proud of their joking and friendly ways with her. during eight years she served three parts of the year on that boat, and the winters on a vicksburg packet. but now for two months she had had rheumatism in her arms, and was obliged to let the wash-tub alone. so she resigned. but she was well fixed -rich, as she would have described it; for she had lived a steady life, and had banked four dollars every month in new orleans as a provision for her old age. she said in the start that she had "put shoes on one bar'footed nigger to tromple on her with," and that one mistake like that was enough; she would be independent of the human race thenceforth forevermore if hard work and economy could accomplish it. when the boat touched the levee at new orleans she bade good-by to her comrades on the <grand mogul> and moved her kit ashore. but she was back in an hour. the bank had gone to smash and carried her four hundred dollars with it. she was a pauper, and homeless. also disabled bodily, at least for the present. the officers were full of sympathy for her in her trouble, and made up a little purse for her. she resolved to go to her birthplace; she had friends there among the negroes, and the unfortunate always help the unfortunate, she was well aware of that; those lowly comrades of her youth would not let her starve. she took the little local packet at cairo, and now she was on the home-stretch. time had worn away her bitterness against her son, and she was able to think of him with serenity. she put the vile side of him out of her mind, and dwelt only on recollections of his occasional acts of kindness to her. she gilded and otherwise decorated these, and made them very pleasant to contemplate. she began to long to see him. she would go and fawn upon him, slave-like -for this would have to be her attitude, of course -and maybe she would find that time had modified him, and that he would be glad to see his long-forgotten old nurse and treat her gently. that would be lovely; that would make her forget her woes and her poverty. her poverty! that thought inspired her to add another castle to her dream: maybe he would give her a trifle now and then -maybe a dollar, once a month, say; any little thing like that would help, oh, ever so much. by the time she reached dawson's landing she was her old self again; her blues were gone, she was in high feather. she would get along, surely; there were many kitchens where the servants would share their meals with her, and also steal sugar and apples and other dainties for her to carry home -or give her a chance to pilfer them herself, which would answer just as well. and there was the church. she was a more rabid and devoted methodist than ever, and her piety was no sham, but was strong and sincere. yes, with plenty of creature comforts and her old place in the amen-corner in her possession again, she would be perfectly happy and at peace thenceforward to the end. she went to judge driscoll's kitchen first of all. she was received there in great form and with vast enthusiasm. her wonderful travels, and the strange countries she had seen and the adventures she had had, made her a marvel, and a heroine of romance. the negroes hung enchanted upon the great story of her experiences, interrupting her all along with eager questions, with laughter, exclamations of delight and expressions of applause; and she was obliged to confess to herself that if there was anything better in this world than steamboating, it was the glory to be got by telling about it. the audience loaded her stomach with their dinners and then stole the pantry bare to load up her basket. tom was in st. louis. the servants said he had spent the best part of his time there during the previous two years. roxy came every day, and had many talks about the family and its affairs. once she asked why tom was away so much. the ostensible "chambers" said: "de fac' is, ole marster kin git along better when young marster 's away den he kin when he 's in de town; yes, en he love him better, too; so he gives him fifty dollahs a month -" "no, is dat so? chambers, you 's a-jokin', ain't you?" "'clah to goodness i ain't, mammy; marse tom tole me so his own self. but nemmine, 't ain't enough." "my lan', what de reason 't ain't enough?" "well, i 's gwine to tell you, if you gimme a chanst, mammy. de reason it ain't enough is 'ca'se marse tom gambles." roxy threw up her hands in astonishment and chambers went on - "ole marster found it out, 'ca'se he had to pay two hunderd dollahs for marse tom's gamblin' debts, en dat 's true, mammy, jes as dead certain as you 's bawn." "two -hund'd -dollahs! why, what is you talkin' 'bout? two -hund'd -dollahs. sakes alive, it 's 'mos' enough to buy a tol'able good second-hand nigger wid. en you ain't lyin', honey? -you would n't lie to yo' ole mammy?" "it 's god's own truth, jes as i tell you -two hund'd dollahs -i wisht i may never stir outen my tracks if it ain't so. en, oh, my lan', ole marse was jes a-hoppin'! he was b'ilin' mad, i tell you! he tuck 'n' dissenhurrit him." he licked his chops with relish after that stately word. roxy struggled with it a moment, then gave it up and said - "dissen<whiched> him?" "dissenhurrit him." "what 's dat? what do it mean?" "means he bu'sted de will." "bu's -ted de will! he would n't <ever> treat him so! take it back, you mis'able imitation nigger dat i bore in sorrow en tribbilation." roxy's pet castle -an occasional dollar from tom's pocket -was tumbling to ruin before her eyes. she could not abide such a disaster as that; she could n't endure the thought of it. her remark amused chambers: "yah-yah-yah! jes listen to dat! if i 's imitation, what is you? bofe of us is imitation <white> -dat 's what we is -en pow'ful good imitation, too -yah-yah-yah! -we don't 'mount to noth'n' as imitation <niggers>; en as for -" "shet up yo' foolin', 'fo' i knock you side de head, en tell me 'bout de will. tell me 't ain't bu'sted -do, honey, en i 'll never forgit you." "well, <'tain't> -'ca'se dey 's a new one made, en marse tom 's all right ag'in. but what is you in sich a sweat 'bout it for, mammy? 't ain't none o' your business i don't reckon." "'t ain't none o' my business? whose business is it den, i 'd like to know? wuz i his mother tell he was fifteen years old, or wus n't i? -you answer me dat. en you speck i could see him turned out po' en ornery on de worl' en never care noth'n' 'bout it? i reckon if you 'd ever be'n a mother yo'self, valet de chambers, you would n't talk sich foolishness as dat." "well, den, ole marse forgive him en fixed up de will ag'in -do dat satisfy you?" yes, she was satisfied now, and quite happy and sentimental over it. she kept coming daily, and at last she was told that tom had come home. she began to tremble with emotion, and straightway sent to beg him to let his "po' ole nigger mammy have jes one sight of him en die for joy." tom was stretched at his lazy ease on a sofa when chambers brought the petition. time had not modified his ancient detestation of the humble drudge and protector of his boyhood; it was still bitter and uncompromising. he sat up and bent a severe gaze upon the fair face of the young fellow whose name he was unconsciously using and whose family rights he was enjoying. he maintained the gaze until the victim of it had become satisfactorily pallid with terror, then he said - "what does the old rip want with me?" the petition was meekly repeated. "who gave you permission to come and disturb me with the social attentions of niggers?" tom had risen. the other young man was trembling now, visibly. he saw what was coming, and bent his head sideways, and put up his left arm to shield it. tom rained cuffs upon the head and its shield, saying no word; the victim received each blow with a beseeching "please, marse tom! -oh, please, marse tom!" seven blows -then tom said, "face the door -march!" he followed behind with one, two, three solid kicks. the last one helped the pure-white slave over the door-sill, and he limped away mopping his eyes with his old ragged sleeve. tom shouted after him, "send her in!" then he flung himself panting on the sofa again, and rasped out the remark, "he arrived just at the right moment; i was full to the brim with bitter thinkings, and nobody to take it out of. how refreshing it was! i feel better." tom's mother entered now, closing the door behind her, and approached her son with all the wheedling and supplicating servilities that fear and interest can impart to the words and attitudes of the born slave. she stopped a yard from her boy and made two or three admiring exclamations over his manly stature and general handsomeness, and tom put an arm under his head and hoisted a leg over the sofa-back in order to look properly indifferent. "my lan', how you is growed, honey! 'clah to goodness, i would n't a-knowed you, marse tom! 'deed i would n't! look at me good; does you 'member old roxy? -does you know yo' old nigger mammy, honey? well now, i kin lay down en die in peace, 'ca'se i 's seed -" "cut it short, -----it, cut it short! what is it you want?" "you heah dat? jes de same old marse tom, al'ays so gay and funnin' wid de ole mammy. i 'uz jes as shore -" "cut it short, i tell you, and get along! what do you want?" this was a bitter disappointment. roxy had for so many days nourished and fondled and petted her notion that tom would be glad to see his old nurse, and would make her proud and happy to the marrow with a cordial word or two, that it took two rebuffs to convince her that he was not funning, and that her beautiful dream was a fond and foolish vanity, a shabby and pitiful mistake. she was hurt to the heart, and so ashamed that for a moment she did not quite know what to do or how to act. then her breast began to heave, the tears came, and in her forlornness she was moved to try that other dream of hers -an appeal to her boy's charity; and so, upon the impulse, and without reflection, she offered her supplication: "oh, marse tom, de po' ole mammy is in sich hard luck dese days; en she 's kinder crippled in de arms en can't work, en if you could gimme a dollah -on'y jes one little dol -" tom was on his feet so suddenly that the supplicant was startled into a jump herself. "a dollar! -give you a dollar! i've a notion to strangle you! is <that> your errand here? clear out! and be quick about it!" roxy backed slowly toward the door. when she was half-way she stopped, and said mournfully: "marse tom, i nussed you when you was a little baby, en i raised you all by myself tell you was 'most a young man; en now you is young en rich, en i is po' en gitt'n' ole, en i come heah b'lievin' dat you would he'p de ole mammy 'long down de little road dat 's lef' 'twix' her en de grave, en -" tom relished this tune less than any that had preceded it, for it began to wake up a sort of echo in his conscience; so he interrupted and said with decision, though without asperity, that he was not in a situation to help her, and was n't going to do it. "ain't you ever gwine to he'p me, marse tom?" "no! now go away and don't bother me any more." roxy's head was down, in an attitude of humility. but now the fires of her old wrongs flamed up in her breast and began to burn fiercely. she raised her head slowly, till it was well up, and at the same time her great frame unconsciously assumed an erect and masterful attitude, with all the majesty and grace of her vanished youth in it. she raised her finger and punctuated with it: "you has said de word. you has had yo' chance, en you has trompled it under yo' foot. when you git another one, you 'll git down on yo' knees en <beg> for it!" a cold chill went to tom's heart, he did n't know why; for he did not reflect that such words, from such an incongruous source, and so solemnly delivered, could not easily fail of that effect. however, he did the natural thing: he replied with bluster and mockery: "<you 'll> give me a chance -<you!> perhaps i 'd better get down on my knees now! but in case i don't -just for argument's sake -what 's going to happen, pray?" "dis is what is gwine to happen. i 's gwine as straight to yo' uncle as i kin walk, en tell him every las' thing i knows 'bout you." tom's cheek blenched, and she saw it. disturbing thoughts began to chase each other through his head. "how can she know? and yet she must have found out -she looks it. i 've had the will back only three months, and am already deep in debt again, and moving heaven and earth to save myself from exposure and destruction, with a reasonably fair show of getting the thing covered up if i 'm let alone, and now this fiend has gone and found me out somehow or other. i wonder how much she knows? oh, oh, oh, it 's enough to break a body's heart! but i 've got to humor her -there 's no other way." then he worked up a rather sickly sample of a gay laugh and a hollow chipperness of manner, and said: "well, well, roxy dear, old friends like you and me must n't quarrel. here 's your dollar -now tell me what you know." he held out the wild-cat bill; she stood as she was, and made no movement. it was her turn to scorn persuasive foolery, now, and she did not waste it. she said, with a grim implacability in voice and manner which made tom almost realize that even a former slave can remember for ten minutes insults and injuries returned for compliments and flatteries received, and can also enjoy taking revenge for them when the opportunity offers: "what does i know? i 'll tell you what i knows. i knows enough to bu'st dat will to flinders -en more, mind you, <more!>" tom was aghast. "more?" he said. "what do you call more? where 's there any room for more?" roxy laughed a mocking laugh, and said scoffingly, with a toss of her head, and her hands on her hips - "yes! -oh, i reckon! <co'se> you 'd like to know -wid yo' po' little ole rag dollah. what you reckon i 's gwine to tell <you> for? -you ain't got no money. i 's gwine to tell yo' uncle -en i 'll do it dis minute, too -he 'll gimme <five> dollahs for de news, en mighty glad, too." she swung herself around disdainfully, and started away. tom was in a panic. he seized her skirts, and implored her to wait. she turned and said, loftily - "look-a-heah, what 'uz it i tole you?" "you -you -i don't remember anything. what was it you told me?" "i tole you dat de next time i give you a chance you 'd git down on yo' knees en beg for it." tom was stupefied for a moment. he was panting with excitement. then he said: "oh, roxy, you would n't require your young master to do such a horrible thing. you can't mean it." "i 'll let you know mighty quick whether i means it or not! you call me names, en as good as spit on me when i comes here po' en ornery en 'umble, to praise you for bein' growed up so fine en handsome, en tell you how i used to nuss you en tend you en watch you when you 'uz sick en had n't no mother but me in de whole worl', en beg you to give de po' ole nigger a dollah for to git her sum'n' to eat, en you call me names -<names>, dad blame you! yassir, i gives you jes one chance mo', and dat's <now>, en it las' on'y a half a second -you hear?" tom slumped to his knees and began to beg, saying - "you see i 'm begging, and it 's honest begging, too! now tell me, roxy, tell me." the heir of two centuries of unatoned insult and outrage looked down on him and seemed to drink in deep draughts of satisfaction. then she said - "fine nice young white gen'l'man kneelin' down to a nigger-wench! i 's wanted to see dat jes once befo' i 's called. now, gabr'el, blow de hawn, i 's ready ... git up!" tom did it. he said, humbly - "now, roxy, don't punish me any more. i deserved what i 've got, but be good and let me off with that. don't go to uncle. tell me -i 'll give you the five dollars." "yes, i bet you will; en you won't stop dah, nuther. but i ain't gwine to tell you heah -" "good gracious, no!" "is you 'feared o' de ha'nted house?" "n-no." "well, den, you come to de ha'nted house 'bout ten or 'leven to-night, en climb up de ladder, 'ca'se de sta'r-steps is broke down, en you 'll fine me. i 's a-roostin' in de ha'nted house 'ca'se i can't 'ford to roos' nowher's else." she started toward the door, but stopped and said, "gimme de dollah bill!" he gave it to her. she examined it and said, "h'm -like enough de bank 's bu'sted." she started again, but halted again. "has you got any whisky?" "yes, a little." "fetch it!" he ran to his room overhead and brought down a bottle which was two thirds full. she tilted it up and took a drink. her eyes sparkled with satisfaction, and she tucked the bottle under her shawl, saying, "it 's prime. i 'll take it along." tom humbly held the door for her, and she marched out as grim and erect as a grenadier. ix why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? it is because we are not the person involved. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> it is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. there was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> tom flung himself on the sofa, and put his throbbing head in his hands, and rested his elbows on his knees. he rocked himself back and forth and moaned. "i 've knelt to a nigger-wench!" he muttered. "i thought i had struck the deepest depths of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to this. ... well, there is one consolation, such as it is -i 've struck bottom this time; there 's nothing lower." but that was a hasty conclusion. at ten that night he climbed the ladder in the haunted house, pale, weak, and wretched. roxy was standing in the door of one of the rooms, waiting, for she had heard him. this was a two-story log house which had acquired the reputation a few years before of being haunted, and that was the end of its usefulness. nobody would live in it afterward, or go near it by night, and most people even gave it a wide berth in the daytime. as it had no competition, it was called <the> haunted house. it was getting crazy and ruinous, now, from long neglect. it stood three hundred yards beyond pudd'nhead wilson's house, with nothing between but vacancy. it was the last house in the town at that end. tom followed roxy into the room. she had a pile of clean straw in the corner for a bed, some cheap but well-kept clothing was hanging on the wall, there was a tin lantern freckling the floor with little spots of light, and there were various soapand candle-boxes scattered about, which served for chairs. the two sat down. roxy said - "now den, i 'll tell you straight off, en i 'll begin to k'leck de money later on; i ain't in no hurry. what does you reckon i 's gwine to tell you?" "well, you -you -oh, roxy, don't make it too hard for me! come right out and tell me you 've found out somehow what a shape i 'm in on account of dissipation and foolishness." "disposition en foolishness! <no> sir, dat ain't it. dat jist ain't nothin' at all, 'longside o' what <i> knows." tom stared at her, and said - "why, roxy, what do you mean?" she rose, and gloomed above him like a fate. "i means dis -en it 's de lord's truth. you ain't no more kin to ole marse driscoll den i is! -<dat 's> what i means!" and her eyes flamed with triumph. "what!" "yassir, en <dat> ain't all! you 's a <nigger>! -<bawn> a nigger en a <slave>! -en you 's a nigger en a slave dis minute; en if i opens my mouf ole marse driscoll 'll sell you down de river befo' you is two days older den what you is now!" "it 's a thundering lie, you miserable old blatherskite!" "it ain't no lie, nuther. it 's jes de truth, en nothin' <but> de truth, so he'p me. yassir -you 's my <son> -" "you devil!" "en dat po' boy dat you 's be'n a-kickin' en a-cuffin' to-day is percy driscoll's son en yo' <marster> -" "you beast!" "en <his> name 's tom driscoll, en <yo'> name 's valet de chambers, en you ain't <got> no fambly name, beca'se niggers don't <have> 'em!" tom sprang up and seized a billet of wood and raised it; but his mother only laughed at him, and said - "set down, you pup! does you think you kin skyer me? it ain't in you, nor de likes of you. i reckon you 'd shoot me in de back, maybe, if you got a chance, for dat 's jist yo' style -<i> knows you, thoo en thoo -but i don't mind gitt'n' killed, beca'se all dis is down in writin', en it 's in safe hands, too, en de man dat 's got it knows whah to look for de right man when i gits killed. oh, bless yo' soul, if you puts yo' mother up for as big a fool as <you> is, you 's pow'ful mistaken, i kin tell you! now den, you set still en behave yo'self; en don't you git up ag'in till i tell you!" tom fretted and chafed awhile in a whirlwind of disorganizing sensations and emotions, and finally said, with something like settled conviction - "the whole thing is moonshine; now then, go ahead and do your worst; i 'm done with you." roxy made no answer. she took the lantern and started toward the door. tom was in a cold panic in a moment. "come back, come back!" he wailed. "i did n't mean it, roxy; i take it all back, and i 'll never say it again! please come back, roxy!" the woman stood a moment, then she said gravely: "dah 's one thing you 's got to stop, valet de chambers. you can't call me <roxy>, same as if you was my equal. chillen don't speak to dey mammies like dat. you 'll call me ma or mammy, dat 's what you 'll call me -leastways when dey ain't nobody aroun'. <say> it!" it cost tom a struggle, but he got it out. "dat 's all right. don't you ever forgit it ag'in, if you knows what 's good for you. now den, you has said you would n't ever call it lies en moonshine ag'in. i 'll tell you dis, for a warnin': if you ever does say it ag'in, it 's de <las'> time you 'll ever say it to me; i 'll tramp as straight to de judge as i kin walk, en tell him who you is, en <prove> it. does you b'lieve me when i says dat?" "oh," groaned tom, "i more than believe it; i <know> it." roxy knew her conquest was complete. she could have proved nothing to anybody, and her threat about the writings was a lie; but she knew the person she was dealing with, and had made both statements without any doubt as to the effect they would produce. she went and sat down on her candle-box, and the pride and pomp of her victorious attitude made it a throne. she said - "now den, chambers, we 's gwine to talk business, en dey ain't gwine to be no mo' foolishness. in de fust place, you gits fifty dollahs a month; you 's gwine to han' over half of it to yo' ma. plank it out!" but tom had only six dollars in the world. he gave her that, and promised to start fair on next month's pension. "chambers, how much is you in debt?" tom shuddered, and said - "nearly three hundred dollars." "how is you gwine to pay it?" tom groaned out - "oh, i don't know; don't ask me such awful questions." but she stuck to her point until she wearied a confession out of him: he had been prowling about in disguise, stealing small valuables from private houses; in fact, had made a good deal of a raid on his fellow-villagers a fortnight before, when he was supposed to be in st. louis; but he doubted if he had sent away enough stuff to realize the required amount, and was afraid to make a further venture in the present excited state of the town. his mother approved of his conduct, and offered to help, but this frightened him. he tremblingly ventured to say that if she would retire from the town he should feel better and safer, and could hold his head higher -and was going on to make an argument, but she interrupted and surprised him pleasantly by saying she was ready; it did n't make any difference to her where she stayed, so that she got her share of the pension regularly. she said she would not go far, and would call at the haunted house once a month for her money. then she said - "i don't hate you so much now, but i 've hated you a many a year -and anybody would. did n't i change you off, en give you a good fambly en a good name, en made you a white gen'l'man en rich, wid store clothes on -en what did i git for it? you despised me all de time, en was al'ays sayin' mean hard things to me befo' folks, en would n't ever let me forgit i 's a nigger -en -en -" she fell to sobbing, and broke down. tom said - "but you know i did n't know you were my mother; and besides -" "well, nemmine 'bout dat, now; let it go. i 's gwine to fo'git it." then she added fiercely, "en don't you ever make me remember it ag'in, or you 'll be sorry, <i> tell you." when they were parting, tom said, in the most persuasive way he could command - "ma, would you mind telling me who was my father?" he had supposed he was asking an embarrassing question. he was mistaken. roxy drew herself up with a proud toss of her head, and said - "does i mine tellin' you? no, dat i don't! you ain't got no 'casion to be shame' o' yo' father, <i> kin tell you. he wuz de highest quality in dis whole town -ole virginny stock. fust famblies, he wuz. jes as good stock as de driscolls en de howards, de bes' day dey ever seed." she put on a little prouder air, if possible, and added impressively: "does you 'member cunnel cecil burleigh essex, dat died de same year yo' young marse tom driscoll's pappy died, en all de masons en odd fellers en churches turned out en give him de bigges' funeral dis town ever seed? dat 's de man." under the inspiration of her soaring complacency the departed graces of her earlier days returned to her, and her bearing took to itself a dignity and state that might have passed for queenly if her surroundings had been a little more in keeping with it. "dey ain't another nigger in dis town dat 's as high-bawn as you is. now den, go 'long! en jes you hold yo' head up as high as you want to -you has de right, en dat i kin swah." x all say, "how hard it is that we have to die" -a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> when angry, count four; when very angry, swear. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> every now and then, after tom went to bed, he had sudden wakings out of his sleep, and his first thought was, "oh, joy, it was all a dream!" then he laid himself heavily down again, with a groan and the muttered words, "a nigger! i am a nigger! oh, i wish i was dead!" he woke at dawn with one more repetition of this horror, and then he resolved to meddle no more with that treacherous sleep. he began to think. sufficiently bitter thinkings they were. they wandered along something after this fashion: "why were niggers <and> whites made? what crime did the uncreated first nigger commit that the curse of birth was decreed for him? and why is this awful difference made between white and black? .... how hard the nigger's fate seems, this morning! -yet until last night such a thought never entered my head." he sighed and groaned an hour or more away. then "chambers" came humbly in to say that breakfast was nearly ready. "tom" blushed scarlet to see this aristocratic white youth cringe to him, a nigger, and call him "young marster." he said roughly - "get out of my sight!" and when the youth was gone, he muttered, "he has done me no harm, poor wretch, but he is an eyesore to me now, for he is driscoll the young gentleman, and i am a -oh, i wish i was dead!" a gigantic irruption, like that of krakatoa a few years ago, with the accompanying earthquakes, tidal waves, and clouds of volcanic dust, changes the face of the surrounding landscape beyond recognition, bringing down the high lands, elevating the low, making fair lakes where deserts had been, and deserts where green prairies had smiled before. the tremendous catastrophe which had befallen tom had changed his moral landscape in much the same way. some of his low places he found lifted to ideals, some of his ideals had sunk to the valleys, and lay there with the sackcloth and ashes of pumice-stone and sulphur on their ruined heads. for days he wandered in lonely places, thinking, thinking, thinking -trying to get his bearings. it was new work. if he met a friend, he found that the habit of a lifetime had in some mysterious way vanished -his arm hung limp, instead of involuntarily extending the hand for a shake. it was the "nigger" in him asserting its humility, and he blushed and was abashed. and the "nigger" in him was surprised when the white friend put out his hand for a shake with him. he found the "nigger" in him involuntarily giving the road, on the sidewalk, to the white rowdy and loafer. when rowena, the dearest thing his heart knew, the idol of his secret worship, invited him in, the "nigger" in him made an embarrassed excuse and was afraid to enter and sit with the dread white folks on equal terms. the "nigger" in him went shrinking and skulking here and there and yonder, and fancying it saw suspicion and maybe detection in all faces, tones, and gestures. so strange and uncharacteristic was tom's conduct that people noticed it, and turned to look after him when he passed on; and when he glanced back -as he could not help doing, in spite of his best resistance -and caught that puzzled expression in a person's face, it gave him a sick feeling, and he took himself out of view as quickly as he could. he presently came to have a hunted sense and a hunted look, and then he fled away to the hilltops and the solitudes. he said to himself that the curse of ham was upon him. he dreaded his meals; the "nigger" in him was ashamed to sit at the white folks' table, and feared discovery all the time; and once when judge driscoll said, "what 's the matter with you? you look as meek as a nigger," he felt as secret murderers are said to feel when the accuser says, "thou art the man!" tom said he was not well, and left the table. his ostensible "aunt's" solicitudes and endearments were become a terror to him, and he avoided them. and all the time, hatred of his ostensible "uncle" was steadily growing in his heart; for he said to himself, "he is white; and i am his chattel, his property, his goods, and he can sell me, just as he could his dog." for as much as a week after this, tom imagined that his character had undergone a pretty radical change. but that was because he did not know himself. in several ways his opinions were totally changed, and would never go back to what they were before, but the main structure of his character was not changed, and could not be changed. one or two very important features of it were altered, and in time effects would result from this, if opportunity offered -effects of a quite serious nature, too. under the influence of a great mental and moral upheaval his character and habits had taken on the appearance of complete change, but after a while with the subsidence of the storm both began to settle toward their former places. he dropped gradually back into his old frivolous and easy-going ways and conditions of feeling and manner of speech, and no familiar of his could have detected anything in him that differentiated him from the weak and careless tom of other days. the theft-raid which he had made upon the village turned out better than he had ventured to hope. it produced the sum necessary to pay his gaming-debts, and saved him from exposure to his uncle and another smashing of the will. he and his mother learned to like each other fairly well. she could n't love him, as yet, because there "war n't nothing <to> him," as she expressed it, but her nature needed something or somebody to rule over, and he was better than nothing. her strong character and aggressive and commanding ways compelled tom's admiration in spite of the fact that he got more illustrations of them than he needed for his comfort. however, as a rule her conversation was made up of racy tattle about the privacies of the chief families of the town (for she went harvesting among their kitchens every time she came to the village), and tom enjoyed this. it was just in his line. she always collected her half of his pension punctually, and he was always at the haunted house to have a chat with her on these occasions. every now and then she paid him a visit there on between-days also. occasionally he would run up to st. louis for a few weeks, and at last temptation caught him again. he won a lot of money, but lost it, and with it a deal more besides, which he promised to raise as soon as possible. for this purpose he projected a new raid on his town. he never meddled with any other town, for he was afraid to venture into houses whose ins and outs he did not know and the habits of whose households he was not acquainted with. he arrived at the haunted house in disguise on the wednesday before the advent of the twins -after writing his aunt pratt that he would not arrive until two days after -and lay in hiding there with his mother until toward daylight friday morning, when he went to his uncle's house and entered by the back way with his own key, and slipped up to his room, where he could have the use of mirror and toilet articles. he had a suit of girl's clothes with him in a bundle as a disguise for his raid, and was wearing a suit of his mother's clothing, with black gloves and veil. by dawn he was tricked out for his raid, but he caught a glimpse of pudd'nhead wilson through the window over the way, and knew that pudd'n-head had caught a glimpse of him. so he entertained wilson with some airs and graces and attitudes for a while, then stepped out of sight and resumed the other disguise, and by and by went down and out the back way and started down town to reconnoiter the scene of his intended labors. but he was ill at ease. he had changed back to roxy's dress, with the stoop of age added to the disguise, so that wilson would not bother himself about a humble old woman leaving a neighbor's house by the back way in the early morning, in case he was still spying. but supposing wilson had seen him leave, and had thought it suspicious, and had also followed him? the thought made tom cold. he gave up the raid for the day, and hurried back to the haunted house by the obscurest route he knew. his mother was gone; but she came back, by and by, with the news of the grand reception at patsy cooper's, and soon persuaded him that the opportunity was like a special providence, it was so inviting and perfect. so he went raiding, after all, and made a nice success of it while everybody was gone to patsy cooper's. success gave him nerve and even actual intrepidity; insomuch, indeed, that after he had conveyed his harvest to his mother in a back alley, he went to the reception himself, and added several of the valuables of that house to his takings. after this long digression we have now arrived once more at the point where pudd'nhead wilson, while waiting for the arrival of the twins on that same friday evening, sat puzzling over the strange apparition of that morning -a girl in young tom driscoll's bedroom; fretting, and guessing, and puzzling over it, and wondering who the shameless creature might be. xi there are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. no. 1 admits you to his respect; no. 2 admits you to his admiration; no. 3 carries you clear into his heart. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> as to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the twins arrived presently, and talk began. it flowed along chattily and sociably, and under its influence the new friendship gathered ease and strength. wilson got out his calendar, by request, and read a passage or two from it, which the twins praised quite cordially. this pleased the author so much that he complied gladly when they asked him to lend them a batch of the work to read at home. in the course of their wide travels they had found out that there are three sure ways of pleasing an author; they were now working the best of the three. there was an interruption, now. young tom driscoll appeared, and joined the party. he pretended to be seeing the distinguished strangers for the first time when they rose to shake hands; but this was only a blind, as he had already had a glimpse of them at the reception, while robbing the house. the twins made mental note that he was smooth-faced and rather handsome, and smooth and undulatory in his movements -graceful, in fact. angelo thought he had a good eye; luigi thought there was something veiled and sly about it. angelo thought he had a pleasant free-and-easy way of talking; luigi thought it was more so than was agreeable. angelo thought he was a sufficiently nice young man; luigi reserved his decision. tom's first contribution to the conversation was a question which he had put to wilson a hundred times before. it was always cheerily and good-naturedly put, and always inflicted a little pang, for it touched a secret sore; but this time the pang was sharp, since strangers were present. "well, how does the law come on? had a case yet?" wilson bit his lip, but answered, "no -not yet," with as much indifference as he could assume. judge driscoll had generously left the law feature out of the wilson biography which he had furnished to the twins. young tom laughed pleasantly, and said: "wilson 's a lawyer, gentlemen, but he does n't practise now." the sarcasm bit, but wilson kept himself under control, and said without passion: "i don't practise, it is true. it is true that i have never had a case, and have had to earn a poor living for twenty years as an expert accountant in a town where i can't get hold of a set of books to untangle as often as i should like. but it is also true that i did fit myself well for the practice of the law. by the time i was your age, tom, i had chosen a profession, and was soon competent to enter upon it." tom winced. "i never got a chance to try my hand at it, and i may never get a chance; and yet if i ever do get it i shall be found ready, for i have kept up my law-studies all these years." "that 's it; that 's good grit! i like to see it. i 've a notion to throw all my business your way. my business and your law-practice ought to make a pretty gay team, dave," and the young fellow laughed again. "if you will throw -" wilson had thought of the girl in tom's bedroom, and was going to say, "if you will throw the surreptitious and disreputable part of your business my way, it may amount to something"; but thought better of it and said, "however, this matter does n't fit well in a general conversation." "all right, we 'll change the subject; i guess you were about to give me another dig, anyway, so i'm willing to change. how 's the awful mystery flourishing these days? wilson 's got a scheme for driving plain window-glass out of the market by decorating it with greasy finger-marks, and getting rich by selling it at famine prices to the crowned heads over in europe to outfit their palaces with. fetch it out, dave." wilson brought three of his glass strips, and said - "i get the subject to pass the fingers of his right hand through his hair, so as to get a little coating of the natural oil on them, and then press the balls of them on the glass. a fine and delicate print of the lines in the skin results, and is permanent, if it does n't come in contact with something able to rub it off. you begin, tom." "why, i think you took my finger-marks once or twice before." "yes; but you were a little boy the last time, only about twelve years old." "that 's so. of course i 've changed entirely since then, and variety is what the crowned heads want, i guess." he passed his fingers through his crop of short hair, and pressed them one at a time on the glass. angelo made a print of his fingers on another glass, and luigi followed with the third. wilson marked the glasses with names and date, and put them away. tom gave one of his little laughs, and said - "i thought i would n't say anything, but if variety is what you are after, you have wasted a piece of glass. the hand-print of one twin is the same as the hand-print of the fellow-twin." "well, it 's done now, and i like to have them both, anyway," said wilson, returning to his place. "but look here, dave," said tom, "you used to tell people's fortunes, too, when you took their finger-marks. dave 's just an all-round genius -a genius of the first water, gentlemen; a great scientist running to seed here in this village, a prophet with the kind of honor that prophets generally get at home -for here they don't give shucks for his scientifics, and they call his skull a notion-factory -hey, dave, ain't it so? but never mind; he 'll make his mark some day -finger-mark, you know, he-he! but really, you want to let him take a shy at your palms once; it 's worth twice the price of admission or your money 's returned at the door. why, he 'll read your wrinkles as easy as a book, and not only tell you fifty or sixty things that 's going to happen to you, but fifty or sixty thousand that ain't. come, dave, show the gentlemen what an inspired jack-at-all-science we 've got in this town, and don't know it." wilson winced under this nagging and not very courteous chaff, and the twins suffered with him and for him. they rightly judged, now, that the best way to relieve him would be to take the thing in earnest and treat it with respect, ignoring tom's rather overdone raillery; so luigi said - "we have seen something of palmistry in our wanderings, and know very well what astonishing things it can do. if it is n't a science, and one of the greatest of them, too, i don't know what its other name ought to be. in the orient -" tom looked surprised and incredulous. he said - "that juggling a science? but really, you ain't serious, are you?" "yes, entirely so. four years ago we had our hands read out to us as if our palms had been covered with print." "well, do you mean to say there was actually anything in it?" asked tom, his incredulity beginning to weaken a little. "there was this much in it," said angelo; "what was told us of our characters was minutely exact -we could not have bettered it ourselves. next, two or three memorable things that had happened to us were laid bare -things which no one present but ourselves could have known about." "why, it 's rank sorcery!" exclaimed tom, who was now becoming very much interested. "and how did they make out with what was going to happen to you in the future?" "on the whole, quite fairly," said luigi. "two or three of the most striking things foretold have happened since; much the most striking one of all happened within that same year. some of the minor prophecies have come true; some of the minor and some of the major ones have not been fulfilled yet, and of course may never be: still, i should be more surprised if they failed to arrive than if they did n't." tom was entirely sobered, and profoundly impressed. he said, apologetically - "dave, i was n't meaning to belittle that science; i was only chaffing -chattering, i reckon i 'd better say. i wish you would look at their palms. come, won't you?" "why, certainly, if you want me to; but you know i 've had no chance to become an expert, and don't claim to be one. when a past event is somewhat prominently recorded in the palm i can generally detect that, but minor ones often escape me, -not always, of course, but often, -but i have n't much confidence in myself when it comes to reading the future. i am talking as if palmistry was a daily study with me, but that is not so. i have n't examined half a dozen hands in the last half dozen years; you see, the people got to joking about it, and i stopped to let the talk die down. i 'll tell you what we 'll do, count luigi: i 'll make a try at your past, and if i have any success there -no, on the whole, i 'll let the future alone; that 's really the affair of an expert." he took luigi's hand. tom said - "wait -don't look yet, dave! count luigi, here 's paper and pencil. set down that thing that you said was the most striking one that was foretold to you, and happened less than a year afterward, and give it to me so i can see if dave finds it in your hand." luigi wrote a line privately, and folded up the piece of paper, and handed it to tom, saying - "i 'll tell you when to look at it, if he finds it." wilson began to study luigi's palm, tracing life lines, heart lines, head lines, and so on, and noting carefully their relations with the cobweb of finer and more delicate marks and lines that enmeshed them on all sides; he felt of the fleshy cushion at the base of the thumb, and noted its shape; he felt of the fleshy side of the hand between the wrist and the base of the little finger, and noted its shape also; he painstakingly examined the fingers, observing their form, proportions, and natural manner of disposing themselves when in repose. all this process was watched by the three spectators with absorbing interest, their heads bent together over luigi's palm, and nobody disturbing the stillness with a word. wilson now entered upon a close survey of the palm again, and his revelations began. he mapped out luigi's character and disposition, his tastes, aversions, proclivities, ambitions, and eccentricities in a way which sometimes made luigi wince and the others laugh, but both twins declared that the chart was artistically drawn and was correct. next, wilson took up luigi's history. he proceeded cautiously and with hesitation, now, moving his finger slowly along the great lines of the palm, and now and then halting it at a "star" or some such landmark, and examining that neighborhood minutely. he proclaimed one or two past events, luigi confirmed his correctness, and the search went on. presently wilson glanced up suddenly with a surprised expression - "here is record of an incident which you would perhaps not wish me to -" "bring it out," said luigi, good-naturedly; "i promise you it sha'n't embarrass me." but wilson still hesitated, and did not seem quite to know what to do. then he said - "i think it is too delicate a matter to -to -i believe i would rather write it or whisper it to you, and let you decide for yourself whether you want it talked out or not." "that will answer," said luigi; "write it." wilson wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to luigi, who read it to himself and said to tom - "unfold your slip and read it, mr. driscoll." tom read: <"it was prophesied that i would kill a man. it came true before the year was out."> tom added, "great scott!" luigi handed wilson's paper to tom, and said - "now read this one." tom read: <"you have killed some one, but whether man, woman or child, i do not make out."> "caesar's ghost!" commented tom, with astonishment. "it beats anything that was ever heard of! why, a man's own hand is his deadliest enemy! just think of that -a man's own hand keeps a record of the deepest and fatalest secrets of his life, and is treacherously ready to expose him to any black-magic stranger that comes along. but what do you let a person look at your hand for, with that awful thing printed in it?" "oh," said luigi, reposefully, "i don't mind it. i killed the man for good reasons, and i don't regret it." "what were the reasons?" "well, he needed killing." "i 'll tell you why he did it, since he won't say himself," said angelo, warmly. "he did it to save my life, that 's what he did it for. so it was a noble act, and not a thing to be hid in the dark." "so it was, so it was," said wilson; "to do such a thing to save a brother's life is a great and fine action." "now come," said luigi, "it is very pleasant to hear you say these things, but for unselfishness, or heroism, or magnanimity, the circumstances won't stand scrutiny. you overlook one detail: suppose i had n't saved angelo's life, what would have become of mine? if i had let the man kill him, would n't he have killed me, too? i saved my own life, you see." "yes; that is your way of talking," said angelo, "but i know you -i don't believe you thought of yourself at all. i keep that weapon yet that luigi killed the man with, and i 'll show it to you some time. that incident makes it interesting, and it had a history before it came into luigi's hands which adds to its interest. it was given to luigi by a great indian prince, the gaikowar of baroda, and it had been in his family two or three centuries. it killed a good many disagreeable people who troubled that hearthstone at one time and another. it is n't much to look at, except that it is n't shaped like other knives, or dirks, or whatever it may be called -here, i 'll draw it for you." he took a sheet of paper and made a rapid sketch. "there it is -a broad and murderous blade, with edges like a razor for sharpness. the devices engraved on it are the ciphers or names of its long line of possessors -i had luigi's name added in roman letters myself with our coat of arms, as you see. you notice what a curious handle the thing has. it is solid ivory, polished like a mirror, and is four or five inches long -round, and as thick as a large man's wrist, with the end squared off flat, for your thumb to rest on; for you grasp it, with your thumb resting on the blunt end -so -and lift it aloft and strike downward. the gaikowar showed us how the thing was done when he gave it to luigi, and before that night was ended luigi had used the knife, and the gaikowar was a man short by reason of it. the sheath is magnificently ornamented with gems of great value. you will find the sheath more worth looking at than the knife itself, of course." tom said to himself - "it's lucky i came here. i would have sold that knife for a song; i supposed the jewels were glass." "but go on; don't stop," said wilson. "our curiosity is up now, to hear about the homicide. tell us about that." "well, briefly, the knife was to blame for that, all around. a native servant slipped into our room in the palace in the night, to kill us and steal the knife on account of the fortune incrusted on its sheath, without a doubt. luigi had it under his pillow; we were in bed together. there was a dim night-light burning. i was asleep, but luigi was awake, and he thought he detected a vague form nearing the bed. he slipped the knife out of the sheath and was ready, and unembarrassed by hampering bed-clothes, for the weather was hot and we had n't any. suddenly that native rose at the bedside, and bent over me with his right hand lifted and a dirk in it aimed at my throat; but luigi grabbed his wrist, pulled him downward, and drove his own knife into the man's neck. that is the whole story." wilson and tom drew deep breaths, and after some general chat about the tragedy, pudd'nhead said, taking tom's hand - "now, tom, i 've never had a look at your palms, as it happens; perhaps you 've got some little questionable privacies that need -hel-lo!" tom had snatched away his hand, and was looking a good deal confused. "why, he 's blushing!" said luigi. tom darted an ugly look at him, and said sharply - "well, if i am, it ain't because i 'm a murderer!" luigi's dark face flushed, but before he could speak or move, tom added with anxious haste: "oh, i beg a thousand pardons. i did n't mean that; it was out before i thought, and i 'm very, very sorry -you must forgive me!" wilson came to the rescue, and smoothed things down as well as he could; and in fact was entirely successful as far as the twins were concerned, for they felt sorrier for the affront put upon him by his guest's outburst of ill manners than for the insult offered to luigi. but the success was not so pronounced with the offender. tom tried to seem at his ease, and he went through the motions fairly well, but at bottom he felt resentful toward all the three witnesses of his exhibition; in fact, he felt so annoyed at them for having witnessed it and noticed it that he almost forgot to feel annoyed at himself for placing it before them. however, something presently happened which made him almost comfortable, and brought him nearly back to a state of charity and friendliness. this was a little spat between the twins; not much of a spat, but still a spat; and before they got far with it they were in a decided condition of irritation with each other. tom was charmed; so pleased, indeed, that he cautiously did what he could to increase the irritation while pretending to be actuated by more respectable motives. by his help the fire got warmed up to the blazing-point, and he might have had the happiness of seeing the flames show up, in another moment, but for the interruption of a knock on the door -an interruption which fretted him as much as it gratified wilson. wilson opened the door. the visitor was a good-natured, ignorant, energetic, middle-aged irishman named john buckstone, who was a great politician in a small way, and always took a large share in public matters of every sort. one of the town's chief excitements, just now, was over the matter of rum. there was a strong rum party and a strong anti-rum party. buckstone was training with the rum party, and he had been sent to hunt up the twins and invite them to attend a mass-meeting of that faction. he delivered his errand, and said the clans were already gathering in the big hall over the market-house. luigi accepted the invitation cordially, angelo less cordially, since he disliked crowds, and did not drink the powerful intoxicants of america. in fact, he was even a teetotaler sometimes -when it was judicious to be one. the twins left with buckstone, and tom driscoll joined company with them uninvited. in the distance one could see a long wavering line of torches drifting down the main street, and could hear the throbbing of the bass drum, the clash of cymbals, the squeaking of a fife or two, and the faint roar of remote hurrahs. the tail-end of this procession was climbing the market-house stairs when the twins arrived in its neighborhood; when they reached the hall it was full of people, torches, smoke, noise, and enthusiasm. they were conducted to the platform by buckstone -tom driscoll still following -and were delivered to the chairman in the midst of a prodigious explosion of welcome. when the noise had moderated a little, the chair proposed that "our illustrious guests be at once elected, by complimentary acclamation, to membership in our ever-glorious organization, the paradise of the free and the perdition of the slave." this eloquent discharge opened the flood-gates of enthusiasm again, and the election was carried with thundering unanimity. then arose a storm of cries: "wet them down! wet them down! give them a drink!" glasses of whisky were handed to the twins. luigi waved his aloft, then brought it to his lips; but angelo set his down. there was another storm of cries: "what 's the matter with the other one?" "what is the blond one going back on us for?" "explain! explain!" the chairman inquired, and then reported - "we have made an unfortunate mistake, gentlemen. i find that the count angelo cappello is opposed to our creed -is a teetotaler, in fact, and was not intending to apply for membership with us. he desires that we reconsider the vote by which he was elected. what is the pleasure of the house?" there was a general burst of laughter, plentifully accented with whistlings and cat-calls, but the energetic use of the gavel presently restored something like order. then a man spoke from the crowd, and said that while he was very sorry that the mistake had been made, it would not be possible to rectify it at the present meeting. according to the by-laws it must go over to the next regular meeting for action. he would not offer a motion, as none was required. he desired to apologize to the gentleman in the name of the house, and begged to assure him that as far as it might lie in the power of the sons of liberty, his temporary membership in the order would be made pleasant to him. this speech was received with great applause, mixed with cries of - "that 's the talk!" "he 's a good fellow, any way, if he <is> a teetotaler!" "drink his health!" "give him a rouser, and no heel-taps!" glasses were handed around, and everybody on the platform drank angelo's health, while the house bellowed forth in song: for he 's a jolly good fel-low, for he 's a jolly good fel-low, for he 's a jolly good fe-el-low, - which nobody can deny. tom driscoll drank. it was his second glass, for he had drunk angelo's the moment that angelo had set it down. the two drinks made him very merry -almost idiotically so -and he began to take a most lively and prominent part in the proceedings, particularly in the music and cat-call and side-remarks. the chairman was still standing at the front, the twins at his side. the extraordinarily close resemblance of the brothers to each other suggested a witticism to tom driscoll, and just as the chairman began a speech he skipped forward and said with an air of tipsy confidence to the audience - "boys, i move that he keeps still and lets this human philopena snip you out a speech." the descriptive aptness of the phrase caught the house, and a mighty burst of laughter followed. luigi's southern blood leaped to the boiling-point in a moment under the sharp humiliation of this insult delivered in the presence of four hundred strangers. it was not in the young man's nature to let the matter pass, or to delay the squaring of the account. he took a couple of strides and halted behind the unsuspecting joker. then he drew back and delivered a kick of such titanic vigor that it lifted tom clear over the footlights and landed him on the heads of the front row of the sons of liberty. even a sober person does not like to have a human being emptied on him when he is not doing any harm; a person who is not sober cannot endure such an attention at all. the nest of sons of liberty that driscoll landed in had not a sober bird in it; in fact there was probably not an entirely sober one in the auditorium. driscoll was promptly and indignantly flung on to the heads of sons in the next row, and these sons passed him on toward the rear, and then immediately began to pummel the front-row sons who had passed him to them. this course was strictly followed by bench after bench as driscoll traveled in his tumultuous and airy flight toward the door; so he left behind him an ever lengthening wake of raging and plunging and fighting and swearing humanity. down went group after group of torches, and presently above the deafening clatter of the gavel, roar of angry voices, and crash of succumbing benches, rose the paralyzing cry of "fire!" the fighting ceased instantly; the cursing ceased; for one distinctly defined moment there was a dead hush, a motionless calm, where the tempest had been; then with one impulse the multitude awoke to life and energy again, and went surging and struggling and swaying, this way and that, its outer edges melting away through windows and doors and gradually lessening the pressure and relieving the mass. the fire-boys were never on hand so suddenly before; for there was no distance to go, this time, their quarters being in the rear end of the market-house. there was an engine company and a hook-and-ladder company. half of each was composed of rummies and the other half of anti-rummies, after the moral and political share-and-share-alike fashion of the frontier town of the period. enough anti-rummies were loafing in quarters to man the engine and the ladders. in two minutes they had their red shirts and helmets on -they never stirred officially in unofficial costume -and as the mass meeting overhead smashed through the long row of windows and poured out upon the roof of the arcade, the deliverers were ready for them with a powerful stream of water which washed some of them off the roof and nearly drowned the rest. but water was preferable to fire, and still the stampede from the windows continued, and still the pitiless drenchings assailed it until the building was empty; then the fire-boys mounted to the hall and flooded it with water enough to annihilate forty times as much fire as there was there; for a village fire-company does not often get a chance to show off, and so when it does get a chance it makes the most of it. such citizens of that village as were of a thoughtful and judicious temperament did not insure against fire; they insured against the fire-company. xii courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -not absence of fear. except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. consider the flea! -incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of god, if ignorance of fear were courage. whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. when we speak of clive, nelson, and putnam as men who "did n't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea -and put him at the head of the procession. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> judge driscoll was in bed and asleep by ten o'clock on friday night, and he was up and gone a-fishing before daylight in the morning with his friend pembroke howard. these two had been boys together in virginia when that state still ranked as the chief and most imposing member of the union, and they still coupled the proud and affectionate adjective "old" with her name when they spoke of her. in missouri a recognized superiority attached to any person who hailed from old virginia; and this superiority was exalted to supremacy when a person of such nativity could also prove descent from the first families of that great commonwealth. the howards and driscolls were of this aristocracy. in their eyes it was a nobility. it had its unwritten laws, and they were as clearly defined and as strict as any that could be found among the printed statutes of the land. the f. f. v. was born a gentleman; his highest duty in life was to watch over that great inheritance and keep it unsmirched. he must keep his honor spotless. those laws were his chart; his course was marked out on it; if he swerved from it by so much as half a point of the compass it meant shipwreck to his honor; that is to say, degradation from his rank as a gentleman. these laws required certain things of him which his religion might forbid: then his religion must yield -the laws could not be relaxed to accommodate religions or anything else. honor stood first; and the laws defined what it was and wherein it differed in certain details from honor as defined by church creeds and by the social laws and customs of some of the minor divisions of the globe that had got crowded out when the sacred boundaries of virginia were staked out. if judge driscoll was the recognized first citizen of dawson's landing, pembroke howard was easily its recognized second citizen. he was called "the great lawyer" -an earned title. he and driscoll were of the same age -a year or two past sixty. although driscoll was a free-thinker and howard a strong and determined presbyterian, their warm intimacy suffered no impairment in consequence. they were men whose opinions were their own property and not subject to revision and amendment, suggestion or criticism, by anybody, even their friends. the day's fishing finished, they came floating down stream in their skiff, talking national politics and other high matters, and presently met a skiff coming up from town, with a man in it who said: "i reckon you know one of the new twins gave your nephew a kicking last night, judge?" "did <what>?" "gave him a kicking." the old judge's lips paled, and his eyes began to flame. he choked with anger for a moment, then he got out what he was trying to say - "well -well -go on! give me the details." the man did it. at the finish the judge was silent a minute, turning over in his mind the shameful picture of tom's flight over the footlights; then he said, as if musing aloud - "h'm -i don't understand it. i was asleep at home. he did n't wake me. thought he was competent to manage his affair without my help, i reckon." his face lit up with pride and pleasure at that thought, and he said with a cheery complacency, "i like that -it 's the true old blood -hey, pembroke?" howard smiled an iron smile, and nodded his head approvingly. then the news-bringer spoke again - "but tom beat the twin on the trial." the judge looked at the man wonderingly, and said - "the trial? what trial?" "why, tom had him up before judge robinson for assault and battery." the old man shrank suddenly together like one who has received a death-stroke. howard sprang for him as he sank forward in a swoon, and took him in his arms, and bedded him on his back in the boat. he sprinkled water in his face, and said to the startled visitor - "go, now -don't let him come to and find you here. you see what an effect your heedless speech has had; you ought to have been more considerate than to blurt out such a cruel piece of slander as that." "i 'm right down sorry i did it now, mr. howard, and i would n't have done it if i had thought: but it ain't a slander; it 's perfectly true, just as i told him." he rowed away. presently the old judge came out of his faint and looked up piteously into the sympathetic face that was bent over him. "say it ain't true, pembroke; tell me it ain't true!" he said in a weak voice. there was nothing weak in the deep organ-tones that responded - "you know it 's a lie as well as i do, old friend. he is of the best blood of the old dominion." "god bless you for saying it!" said the old gentleman, fervently. "ah, pembroke, it was such a blow!" howard stayed by his friend, and saw him home, and entered the house with him. it was dark, and past supper-time, but the judge was not thinking of supper; he was eager to hear the slander refuted from headquarters, and as eager to have howard hear it, too. tom was sent for, and he came immediately. he was bruised and lame, and was not a happy-looking object. his uncle made him sit down, and said - "we have been hearing about your adventure, tom, with a handsome lie added to it for embellishment. now pulverize that lie to dust! what measures have you taken? how does the thing stand?" tom answered guilelessly: "it don't stand at all; it 's all over. i had him up in court and beat him. pudd'nhead wilson defended him -first case he ever had, and lost it. the judge fined the miserable hound five dollars for the assault." howard and the judge sprang to their feet with the opening sentence -why, neither knew; then they stood gazing vacantly at each other. howard stood a moment, then sat mournfully down without saying anything. the judge's wrath began to kindle, and he burst out - "you cur! you scum! you vermin! do you mean to tell me that blood of my race has suffered a blow and crawled to a court of law about it? answer me!" tom's head drooped, and he answered with an eloquent silence. his uncle stared at him with a mixed expression of amazement and shame and incredulity that was sorrowful to see. at last he said - "which of the twins was it?" "count luigi." "you have challenged him?" "n -no," hesitated tom, turning pale. "you will challenge him to-night. howard will carry it." tom began to turn sick, and to show it. he turned his hat round and round in his hand, his uncle glowering blacker and blacker upon him as the heavy seconds drifted by; then at last he began to stammer, and said piteously - "oh, please don't ask me to do it, uncle! he is a murderous devil -i never could -i -i 'm afraid of him!" old driscoll's mouth opened and closed three times before he could get it to perform its office; then he stormed out - "a coward in my family! a driscoll a coward! oh, what have i done to deserve this infamy!" he tottered to his secretary in the corner repeating that lament again and again in heartbreaking tones, and got out of a drawer a paper, which he slowly tore to bits scattering the bits absently in his track as he walked up and down the room, still grieving and lamenting. at last he said - "there it is, shreds and fragments once more -my will. once more you have forced me to disinherit you, you base son of a most noble father! leave my sight! go -before i spit on you!" the young man did not tarry. then the judge turned to howard: "you will be my second, old friend?" "of course." "there is pen and paper. draft the cartel, and lose no time." "the count shall have it in his hands in fifteen minutes," said howard. tom was very heavy-hearted. his appetite was gone with his property and his self-respect. he went out the back way and wandered down the obscure lane grieving, and wondering if any course of future conduct, however discreet and carefully perfected and watched over, could win back his uncle's favor and persuade him to reconstruct once more that generous will which had just gone to ruin before his eyes. he finally concluded that it could. he said to himself that he had accomplished this sort of triumph once already, and that what had been done once could be done again. he would set about it. he would bend every energy to the task, and he would score that triumph once more, cost what it might to his convenience, limit as it might his frivolous and liberty-loving life. "to begin," he said to himself, "i 'll square up with the proceeds of my raid, and then gambling has got to be stopped -and stopped short off. it 's the worst vice i 've got -from my standpoint, anyway, because it 's the one he can most easily find out, through the impatience of my creditors. he thought it expensive to have to pay two hundred dollars to them for me once. expensive -<that!> why, it cost me the whole of his fortune -but of course he never thought of that; some people can't think of any but their own side of a case. if he had known how deep i am in, now, the will would have gone to pot without waiting for a duel to help. three hundred dollars! it 's a pile! but he 'll never hear of it, i 'm thankful to say. the minute i 've cleared it off, i 'm safe; and i 'll never touch a card again. anyway, i won't while he lives, i make oath to that. i 'm entering on my last reform -i know it -yes, and i 'll win; but after that, if i ever slip again i 'm gone." xiii when i reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who i know have gone to a better world, i am moved to lead a different life. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> october. this is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. the others are july, january, september, april, november, may, march, june, december, august, and february. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> thus mournfully communing with himself tom moped along the lane past pudd'nhead wilson's house, and still on and on between fences inclosing vacant country on each hand till he neared the haunted house, then he came moping back again, with many sighs and heavy with trouble. he sorely wanted cheerful company. rowena! his heart gave a bound at the thought, but the next thought quieted it -the detested twins would be there. he was on the inhabited side of wilson's house, and now as he approached it he noticed that the sitting-room was lighted. this would do; others made him feel unwelcome sometimes, but wilson never failed in courtesy toward him, and a kindly courtesy does at least save one's feelings, even if it is not professing to stand for a welcome. wilson heard footsteps at his threshold, then the clearing of a throat. "it's that fickle-tempered, dissipated young goose -poor devil, he finds friends pretty scarce to-day, likely, after the disgrace of carrying a personal-assault case into a law-court." a dejected knock. "come in!" tom entered, and drooped into a chair, without saying anything. wilson said kindly - "why, my boy, you look desolate. don't take it so hard. try and forget you have been kicked." "oh, dear," said tom, wretchedly, "it 's not that, pudd'n-head -it 's not that. it's a thousand times worse than that -oh, yes, a million times worse." "why, tom, what do you mean? has rowena -" "flung me? no, but the old man has." wilson said to himself, "aha!" and thought of the mysterious girl in the bedroom. "the driscolls have been making discoveries!" then he said aloud, gravely: "tom, there are some kinds of dissipation which -" "oh, shucks, this has n't got anything to do with dissipation. he wanted me to challenge that derned italian savage, and i would n't do it." "yes, of course he would do that," said wilson in a meditative matter-of-course way; "but the thing that puzzled me was, why he did n't look to that last night, for one thing, and why he let you carry such a matter into a court of law at all, either before the duel or after it. it 's no place for it. it was not like him. i could n't understand it. how did it happen?" "it happened because he did n't know anything about it. he was asleep when i got home last night." "and you did n't wake him? tom, is that possible?" tom was not getting much comfort here. he fidgeted a moment, then said: "i did n't choose to tell him -that 's all. he was going a-fishing before dawn, with pembroke howard, and if i got the twins into the common calaboose -and i thought sure i could -i never dreamed of their slipping out on a paltry fine for such an outrageous offense -well, once in the calaboose they would be disgraced, and uncle would n't want any duels with that sort of characters, and would n't allow any." "tom, i am ashamed of you! i don't see how you could treat your good old uncle so. i am a better friend of his than you are; for if i had known the circumstances i would have kept that case out of court until i got word to him and let him have a gentleman's chance." "you would?" exclaimed tom, with lively surprise. "and it your first case! and you know perfectly well there never would have <been> any case if he had got that chance, don't you? and you 'd have finished your days a pauper nobody, instead of being an actually launched and recognized lawyer to-day. and you would really have done that, would you?" "certainly." tom looked at him a moment or two, then shook his head sorrowfully and said - "i believe you -upon my word i do. i don't know why i do, but i do. pudd'nhead wilson, i think you 're the biggest fool i ever saw." "thank you." "don't mention it." "well, he has been requiring you to fight the italian and you have refused. you degenerate remnant of an honorable line! i 'm thoroughly ashamed of you, tom!" "oh, that 's nothing! i don't care for anything, now that the will 's torn up again." "tom, tell me squarely -did n't he find any fault with you for anything but those two things -carrying the case into court and refusing to fight?" he watched the young fellow's face narrowly, but it was entirely reposeful, and so also was the voice that answered: "no, he did n't find any other fault with me. if he had had any to find, he would have begun yesterday, for he was just in the humor for it. he drove that jack-pair around town and showed them the sights, and when he came home he could n't find his father's old silver watch that don't keep time and he thinks so much of, and could n't remember what he did with it three or four days ago when he saw it last; and so when i arrived he was all in a sweat about it, and when i suggested that it probably was n't lost but stolen, it put him in a regular passion and he said i was a fool -which convinced me, without any trouble, that that was just what he was afraid <had> happened, himself, but did not want to believe it, because lost things stand a better chance of being found again than stolen ones." "whe-ew!" whistled wilson; "score another on the list." "another what?" "another theft!" "theft?" "yes, theft. that watch is n't lost, it 's stolen. there 's been another raid on the town -and just the same old mysterious sort of thing that has happened once before, as you remember." "you don't mean it!" "it 's as sure as you are born! have you missed anything yourself?" "no. that is, i did miss a silver pencil-case that aunt mary pratt gave me last birthday -" "you 'll find it 's stolen -that 's what you 'll find." "no, i sha'n't; for when i suggested theft about the watch and got such a rap, i went and examined my room, and the pencil-case was missing, but it was only mislaid, and i found it again." "you are sure you missed nothing else?" "well, nothing of consequence. i missed a small plain gold ring worth two or three dollars, but that will turn up. i 'll look again." "in my opinion you 'll not find it. there 's been a raid, i tell you. come <in>!" mr. justice robinson entered, followed by buckstone and the town-constable, jim blake. they sat down, and after some wandering and aimless weather-conversation wilson said - "by the way, we 've just added another to the list of thefts, maybe two. judge driscoll's old silver watch is gone, and tom here has missed a gold ring." "well, it is a bad business," said the justice, "and gets worse the further it goes. the hankses, the dobsons, the pilligrews, the ortons, the grangers, the hales, the fullers, the holcombs, in fact everybody that lives around about patsy cooper's has been robbed of little things like trinkets and teaspoons and such-like small valuables that are easily carried off. it 's perfectly plain that the thief took advantage of the reception at patsy cooper's, when all the neighbors were in her house and all their niggers hanging around her fence for a look at the show, to raid the vacant houses undisturbed. patsy is miserable about it; miserable on account of the neighbors, and particularly miserable on account of her foreigners, of course; so miserable on their account that she has n't any room to worry about her own little losses." "it 's the same old raider," said wilson. "i suppose there is n't any doubt about that." "constable blake does n't think so." "no, you 're wrong there," said blake; "the other times it was a man; there was plenty of signs of that, as we know, in the profession, though we never got hands on him; but this time it 's a woman." wilson thought of the mysterious girl straight off. she was always in his mind now. but she failed him again. blake continued: "she 's a stoop-shouldered old woman with a covered basket on her arm, in a black veil, dressed in mourning. i saw her going aboard the ferry-boat yesterday. lives in illinois, i reckon; but i don't care where she lives, i 'm going to get her -she can make herself sure of that." "what makes you think she 's the thief?" "well, there ain't any other, for one thing; and for another, some of the nigger draymen that happened to be driving along saw her coming out of or going into houses, and told me so -and it just happens that they was <robbed> houses, every time." it was granted that this was plenty good enough circumstantial evidence. a pensive silence followed, which lasted some moments, then wilson said - "there 's one good thing, anyway. she can't either pawn or sell count luigi's costly indian dagger." "my!" said tom, "is <that> gone?" "yes." "well, that was a haul! but why can't she pawn it or sell it?" "because when the twins went home from the sons of liberty meeting last night, news of the raid was sifting in from everywhere, and aunt patsy was in distress to know if they had lost anything. they found that the dagger was gone, and they notified the police and pawnbrokers everywhere. it was a great haul, yes, but the old woman won't get anything out of it, because she 'll get caught." "did they offer a reward?" asked buckstone. "yes; five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred more for the thief." "what a leather-headed idea!" exclaimed the constable. "the thief da's n't go near them, nor send anybody. whoever goes is going to get himself nabbed, for there ain't any pawnbroker that 's going to lose the chance to -" if anybody had noticed tom's face at that time, the gray-green color of it might have provoked curiosity; but nobody did. he said to himself: "i 'm gone! i never can square up; the rest of the plunder won't pawn or sell for half of the bill. oh, i know it -i 'm gone, i 'm gone -and this time it 's for good. oh, this is awful -i don't know what to do, nor which way to turn!" "softly, softly," said wilson to blake. "i planned their scheme for them at midnight last night, and it was all finished up shipshape by two this morning. they 'll get their dagger back, and then i 'll explain to you how the thing was done." there were strong signs of a general curiosity, and buckstone said - "well, you have whetted us up pretty sharp, wilson, and i 'm free to say that if you don't mind telling us in confidence -" "oh, i 'd as soon tell as not, buckstone, but as long as the twins and i agreed to say nothing about it, we must let it stand so. but you can take my word for it you won't be kept waiting three days. somebody will apply for that reward pretty promptly, and i 'll show you the thief and the dagger both very soon afterward." the constable was disappointed, and also perplexed. he said - "it may all be -yes, and i hope it will, but i 'm blamed if i can see my way through it. it 's too many for yours truly." the subject seemed about talked out. nobody seemed to have anything further to offer. after a silence the justice of the peace informed wilson that he and buckstone and the constable had come as a committee, on the part of the democratic party, to ask him to run for mayor -for the little town was about to become a city and the first charter election was approaching. it was the first attention which wilson had ever received at the hands of any party; it was a sufficiently humble one, but it was a recognition of his debut into the town's life and activities at last; it was a step upward, and he was deeply gratified. he accepted, and the committee departed, followed by young tom. xiv the true southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. it is chief of this world's luxuries, king by the grace of god over all the fruits of the earth. when one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. it was not a southern watermelon that eve took: we know it because she repented. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> about the time that wilson was bowing the committee out, pembroke howard was entering the next house to report. he found the old judge sitting grim and straight in his chair, waiting. "well, howard -the news?" "the best in the world." "accepts, does he?" and the light of battle gleamed joyously in the judge's eye. "accepts? why, he jumped at it." "did, did he? now that 's fine -that 's very fine. i like that. when is it to be?" "now! straight off! to-night! an admirable fellow -admirable!" "admirable? he 's a darling! why, it 's an honor as well as a pleasure to stand up before such a man. come -off with you! go and arrange everything -and give him my heartiest compliments. a rare fellow, indeed; an admirable fellow, as you have said!" howard hurried away, saying - "i 'll have him in the vacant stretch between wilson's and the haunted house within the hour, and i 'll bring my own pistols." judge driscoll began to walk the floor in a state of pleased excitement; but presently he stopped, and began to think -began to think of tom. twice he moved toward the secretary, and twice he turned away again; but finally he said - "this may be my last night in the world -i must not take the chance. he is worthless and unworthy, but it is largely my fault. he was intrusted to me by my brother on his dying bed, and i have indulged him to his hurt, instead of training him up severely, and making a man of him. i have violated my trust, and i must not add the sin of desertion to that. i have forgiven him once already, and would subject him to a long and hard trial before forgiving him again, if i could live; but i must not run that risk. no, i must restore the will. but if i survive the duel, i will hide it away, and he will not know, and i will not tell him until he reforms and i see that his reformation is going to be permanent." he re-drew the will, and his ostensible nephew was heir to a fortune again. as he was finishing his task, tom, wearied with another brooding tramp, entered the house and went tiptoeing past the sitting-room door. he glanced in, and hurried on, for the sight of his uncle had nothing but terrors for him to-night. but his uncle was writing! that was unusual at this late hour. what could he be writing? a chill of anxiety settled down upon tom's heart. did that writing concern him? he was afraid so. he reflected that when ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers. he said he would get a glimpse of that document or know the reason why. he heard some one coming, and stepped out of sight and hearing. it was pembroke howard. what could be hatching? howard said, with great satisfaction: "everything 's right and ready. he's gone to the battle-ground with his second and the surgeon -also with his brother. i 've arranged it all with wilson -wilson 's his second. we are to have three shots apiece." "good! how is the moon?" "bright as day, nearly. perfect, for the distance -fifteen yards. no wind -not a breath; hot and still." "all good; all first-rate. here, pembroke, read this, and witness it." pembroke read and witnessed the will, then gave the old man's hand a hearty shake and said: "now that 's right, york -but i knew you would do it. you could n't leave that poor chap to fight along without means or profession, with certain defeat before him, and i knew you would n't, for his father's sake if not for his own." "for his dead father's sake i could n't, i know; for poor percy -but you know what percy was to me. but mind -tom is not to know of this unless i fall to-night." "i understand. i 'll keep the secret." the judge put the will away, and the two started for the battle-ground. in another minute the will was in tom's hands. his misery vanished, his feelings underwent a tremendous revulsion. he put the will carefully back in its place, and spread his mouth and swung his hat once, twice, three times around his head, in imitation of three rousing huzzas, no sound issuing from his lips. he fell to communing with himself excitedly and joyously, but every now and then he let off another volley of dumb hurrahs. he said to himself: "i 've got the fortune again, but i 'll not let on that i know about it. and this time i 'm going to hang on to it. i take no more risks. i 'll gamble no more, i 'll drink no more, because -well, because i 'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on, again. it 's the sure way, and the only sure way; i might have thought of that sooner -well, yes, if i had wanted to. but now -dear me, i 've had a bad scare this time, and i 'll take no more chances. not a single chance more. land! i persuaded myself this evening that i could fetch him around without any great amount of effort, but i 've been getting more and more heavy-hearted and doubtful straight along, ever since. if he tells me about this thing, all right; but if he does n't, i sha'n't let on. i -well, i 'd like to tell pudd'nhead wilson, but -no, i 'll think about that; perhaps i won't." he whirled off another dead huzza, and said, "i 'm reformed, and this time i 'll stay so, sure!" he was about to close with a final grand silent demonstration, when he suddenly recollected that wilson had put it out of his power to pawn or sell the indian knife, and that he was once more in awful peril of exposure by his creditors for that reason. his joy collapsed utterly, and he turned away and moped toward the door moaning and lamenting over the bitterness of his luck. he dragged himself upstairs, and brooded in his room a long time disconsolate and forlorn, with luigi's indian knife for a text. at last he sighed and said: "when i supposed these stones were glass and this ivory bone, the thing had n't any interest for me because it had n't any value, and could n't help me out of my trouble. but now -why, now it is full of interest; yes, and of a sort to break a body's heart. it 's a bag of gold that has turned to dirt and ashes in my hands. it could save me, and save me so easily, and yet i 've got to go to ruin. it 's like drowning with a life-preserver in my reach. all the hard luck comes to me, and all the good luck goes to other people -pudd'nhead wilson, for instance; even his career has got a sort of a little start at last, and what has he done to deserve it, i should like to know? yes, he has opened his own road, but he is n't content with that, but must block mine. it 's a sordid, selfish world, and i wish i was out of it." he allowed the light of the candle to play upon the jewels of the sheath, but the flashings and sparklings had no charm for his eye; they were only just so many pangs to his heart. "i must not say anything to roxy about this thing," he said, "she is too daring. she would be for digging these stones out and selling them, and then -why, she would be arrested and the stones traced, and then -" the thought made him quake, and he hid the knife away, trembling all over and glancing furtively about, like a criminal who fancies that the accuser is already at hand. should he try to sleep? oh, no, sleep was not for him; his trouble was too haunting, too afflicting for that. he must have somebody to mourn with. he would carry his despair to roxy. he had heard several distant gunshots, but that sort of thing was not uncommon, and they had made no impression upon him. he went out at the back door, and turned westward. he passed wilson's house and proceeded along the lane, and presently saw several figures approaching wilson's place through the vacant lots. these were the duelists returning from the fight; he thought he recognized them, but as he had no desire for white people's company, he stooped down behind the fence until they were out of his way. roxy was feeling fine. she said: "whah was you, child? warn't you in it?" "in what?" "in de duel." "duel? has there been a duel?" "'co'se dey has. de ole jedge has be'n havin' a duel wid one o' dem twins." "great scott!" then he added to himself: "that 's what made him re-make the will; he thought he might get killed, and it softened him toward me. and that 's what he and howard were so busy about ... oh dear, if the twin had only killed him, i should be out of my -" "what is you mumblin' 'bout, chambers? whah was you? did n't you know dey was gwyne to be a duel?" "no. i did n't. the old man tried to get me to fight one with count luigi, but he did n't succeed, so i reckon he concluded to patch up the family honor himself." he laughed at the idea, and went rambling on with a detailed account of his talk with the judge, and how shocked and ashamed the judge was to find that he had a coward in his family. he glanced up at last, and got a shock himself. roxana's bosom was heaving with suppressed passion, and she was glowering down upon him with measureless contempt written in her face. "en you refuse' to fight a man dat kicked you, 'stid o' jumpin' at de chance! en you ain't got no mo' feelin' den to come en tell me, dat fetched sich a po' low-down ornery rabbit into de worl'! pah! it make me sick! it 's de nigger in you, dat 's what it is. thirty-one parts o' you is white, en on'y one part nigger, en dat po' little one part is yo' <soul>. tain't wuth savin'; tain't wuth totin' out on a shovel en thowin in de gutter. you has disgraced yo' birth. what would yo' pa think o' you? it 's enough to make him turn in his grave." the last three sentences stung tom into a fury, and he said to himself that if his father were only alive and in reach of assassination his mother would soon find that he had a very clear notion of the size of his indebtedness to that man, and was willing to pay it up in full, and would do it too, even at risk of his life; but he kept his thought to himself; that was safest in his mother's present state. "whatever has come o' yo' essex blood? dat 's what i can't understand. en it ain't on'y jist essex blood dat 's in you, not by a long sight -'deed it ain't. my great-great-great-gran'father en yo' great-great-great-great-gran'father was ole cap'n john smith, de highest blood dat ole virginny ever turned out, en <his> great-great-gran'mother or somers along back dah, was pocahontas de injun queen, en her husbun' was a nigger king outen africa -en yit here you is, a slinkin' outen a duel en disgracin' our whole line like a ornery low-down hound! yes, it 's de nigger in you!" she sat down on her candle-box and fell into a reverie. tom did not disturb her; he sometimes lacked prudence, but it was not in circumstances of this kind. roxana's storm went gradually down, but it died hard, and even when it seemed to be quite gone, it would now and then break out in a distant rumble, so to speak, in the form of muttered ejaculations. one of these was, "ain't nigger enough in him to show in his finger-nails, en dat takes mighty little -yit dey 's enough to paint his soul." presently she muttered, "yassir, enough to paint a whole thimbleful of 'em." at last her ramblings ceased altogether, and her countenance began to clear -a welcome sign to tom, who had learned her moods, and knew she was on the threshold of good-humor, now. he noticed that from time to time she unconsciously carried her finger to the end of her nose. he looked closer and said: "why, mammy, the end of your nose is skinned. how did that come?" she sent out the sort of whole-hearted peal of laughter which god has vouchsafed in its perfection to none but the happy angels in heaven and the bruised and broken black slave on the earth, and said: "dad fetch dat duel, i be'n in it myself." "gracious! did a bullet do that?" "yassir, you bet it did!" "well, i declare! why, how did that happen?" "happen dis-away. i 'uz a-sett'n' here kinder dozin' in de dark, en <che-bang!> goes a gun, right out dah. i skips along out towards t' other end o' de house to see what 's gwyne on, en stops by de ole winder on de side towards pudd'nhead wilson's house dat ain't got no sash in it, -but dey ain't none of 'em got any sashes, fur as dat 's concerned, -en i stood dah in de dark en look out, en dar in de moonlight, right down under me 'uz one o' de twins a-cussin' -not much, but jist a-cussin' soft -it 'uz de brown one dat 'uz cussin', 'ca'se he 'uz hit in de shoulder. en doctor claypool he 'uz a-workin' at him, en pudd'nhead wilson he 'uz a-he'pin', en ole jedge driscoll en pem howard 'uz a-standin' out yonder a little piece waitin' for 'em to git ready agin. en treckly dey squared off en give de word, en <bang-bang> went de pistols, en de twin he say, `ouch!' -hit him on de han' dis time, -en i hear dat same bullet go <spat!> ag'in' de logs under de winder; en de nex' time dey shoot, de twin say, `ouch!' ag'in, en i done it too, 'ca'se de bullet glance' on his cheek-bone en skip up here en glance on de side o' de winder en whiz right acrost my face en tuck de hide off'n my nose -why, if i 'd 'a' be'n jist a inch or a inch en a half furder 't would 'a' tuck de whole nose en disfigger me. here 's de bullet; i hunted her up." "did you stand there all the time?" "dat 's a question to ask, ain't it! what else would i do? does i git a chance to see a duel every day?" "why, you were right in range! were n't you afraid?" the woman gave a sniff of scorn. "'fraid! de smith-pocahontases ain't 'fraid o' nothin', let alone bullets." "they 've got pluck enough, i suppose; what they lack is judgment. <i> would n't have stood there." "nobody 's accusin' you!" "did anybody else get hurt?" "yes, we all got hit 'cep' de blon' twin en de doctor en de seconds. de jedge did n't git hurt, but i hear pudd'nhead say de bullet snip some o' his ha'r off." "'george!" said tom to himself, "to come so near being out of my trouble, and miss it by an inch. oh dear, dear, he will live to find me out and sell me to some nigger-trader yet -yes, and he would do it in a minute." then he said aloud, in a grave tone - "mother, we are in an awful fix." roxana caught her breath with a spasm, and said - "chile! what you hit a body so sudden for, like dat? what 's be'n en gone en happen'?" "well, there 's one thing i did n't tell you. when i would n't fight, he tore up the will again, and -" roxana's face turned a dead white, and she said - "now you 's <done>! -done forever! dat 's de end. bofe un us is gwyne to starve to -" "wait and hear me through, can't you! i reckon that when he resolved to fight, himself, he thought he might get killed and not have a chance to forgive me any more in this life, so he made the will again, and i 've seen it, and it 's all right. but -" "oh, thank goodness, den we 's safe agin! -safe! en so what did you want to come here en talk sich dreadful -" "hold <on>, i tell you, and let me finish. the swag i gathered won't half square me up, and the first thing we know, my creditors -well, you know what 'll happen." roxana dropped her chin, and told her son to leave her alone -she must think this matter out. presently she said impressively: "you got to go mighty keerful now, i tell you! en here 's what you got to do. he did n't git killed, en if you gives him de least reason, he 'll bust de will ag'in, en dat 's de <las>' time, now you hear me! so -you 's got to show him what you kin do in de nex' few days. you 's got to be pison good, en let him see it; you got to do everything dat 'll make him b'lieve in you, en you got to sweeten aroun' ole aunt pratt, too, -she 's pow'ful strong wid de jedge, en de bes' frien' you got. nex', you 'll go 'long away to sent louis, en dat 'll <keep> him in yo' favor. den you go en make a bargain wid dem people. you tell 'em he ain't gwyne to live long -en dat 's de fac', too, -en tell 'em you 'll pay 'em intrust, en big intrust, too, -ten per -what you call it?" "ten per cent. a month?" "dat 's it. den you take and sell yo' truck aroun', a little at a time, en pay de intrust. how long will it las'?" "i think there 's enough to pay the interest five or six months." "den you 's all right. if he don't die in six months, dat don't make no diff'rence -providence 'll provide. you 's gwyne to be safe -if you behaves." she bent an austere eye on him and added, "en you <is> gwyne to behave -does you know dat?" he laughed and said he was going to try, anyway. she did not unbend. she said gravely: "tryin' ain't de thing. you 's gwyne to <do> it. you ain't gwyne to steal a pin -'ca'se it ain't safe no mo'; en you ain't gwyne into no bad comp'ny -not even once, you understand; en you ain't gwyne to drink a drop -nary single drop; en you ain't gwyne to gamble one single gamble -not one! dis ain't what you 's gwyne to <try> to do, it 's what you 's gwyne to <do>. en i 'll tell you how i knows it. dis is how. i 's gwyne to foller along to sent louis my own self; en you 's gwyne to come to me every day o' yo' life, en i 'll look you over; en if you fails in one single one o' dem things -jist <one> -i take my oath i 'll come straight down to dis town en tell de jedge you 's a nigger en a slave -en <prove> it!" she paused to let her words sink home. then she added, "chambers, does you b'lieve me when i says dat?" tom was sober enough now. there was no levity in his voice when he answered: "yes, mother. i know, now, that i am reformed -and permanently. permanently -and beyond the reach of any human temptation." "den g' long home en begin!" xv nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> behold, the fool saith, "put not all thine eggs in the one basket" -which is but a manner of saying, "scatter your money and your attention"; but the wise man saith, "put all your eggs in the one basket and -watch that basket." -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> what a time of it dawson's landing was having! all its life it had been asleep, but now it hardly got a chance for a nod, so swiftly did big events and crashing surprises come along in one another's wake: friday morning, first glimpse of real nobility, also grand reception at aunt patsy cooper's, also great robber-raid; friday evening, dramatic kicking of the heir of the chief citizen in presence of four hundred people; saturday morning, emergence as practising lawyer of the long-submerged pudd'nhead wilson; saturday night, duel between chief citizen and titled stranger. the people took more pride in the duel than in all the other events put together, perhaps. it was a glory to their town to have such a thing happen there. in their eyes the principals had reached the summit of human honor. everybody paid homage to their names; their praises were in all mouths. even the duelists' subordinates came in for a handsome share of the public approbation: wherefore pudd'nhead wilson was suddenly become a man of consequence. when asked to run for the mayoralty saturday night he was risking defeat, but sunday morning found him a made man and his success assured. the twins were prodigiously great, now; the town took them to its bosom with enthusiasm. day after day, and night after night, they went dining and visiting from house to house, making friends, enlarging and solidifying their popularity, and charming and surprising all with their musical prodigies, and now and then heightening the effects with samples of what they could do in other directions, out of their stock of rare and curious accomplishments. they were so pleased that they gave the regulation thirty days' notice, the required preparation for citizenship, and resolved to finish their days in this pleasant place. that was the climax. the delighted community rose as one man and applauded; and when the twins were asked to stand for seats in the forthcoming aldermanic board, and consented, the public contentment was rounded and complete. tom driscoll was not happy over these things; they sunk deep, and hurt all the way down. he hated the one twin for kicking him, and the other one for being the kicker's brother. now and then the people wondered why nothing was heard of the raider, or of the stolen knife or the other plunder, but nobody was able to throw any light on that matter. nearly a week had drifted by, and still the thing remained a vexed mystery. on saturday constable blake and pudd'nhead wilson met on the street, and tom driscoll joined them in time to open their conversation for them. he said to blake - "you are not looking well, blake; you seem to be annoyed about something. has anything gone wrong in the detective business? i believe you fairly and justifiably claim to have a pretty good reputation in that line, is n't it so?" -which made blake feel good, and look it; but tom added, "for a country detective" -which made blake feel the other way, and not only look it, but betray it in his voice - "yes, sir, i <have> got a reputation; and it 's as good as anybody's in the profession, too, country or no country." "oh, i beg pardon; i did n't mean any offense. what i started out to ask was only about the old woman that raided the town -the stoop-shouldered old woman, you know, that you said you were going to catch; and i knew you would, too, because you have the reputation of never boasting, and -well, you -you 've caught the old woman?" "d -----the old woman!" "why, sho! you don't mean to say you have n't caught her?" "no; i have n't caught her. if anybody could have caught her, i could; but nobody could n't, i don't care who he is." "i am sorry, real sorry -for your sake; because, when it gets around that a detective has expressed himself so confidently, and then -" "don't you worry, that 's all -don't you worry; and as for the town, the town need n't worry, either. she 's my meat -make yourself easy about that. i 'm on her track; i 've got clues that -" "that 's good! now if you could get an old veteran detective down from st. louis to help you find out what the clues mean, and where they lead to, and then -" "i 'm plenty veteran enough myself, and i don't need anybody's help. i 'll have her inside of a we -inside of a month. that i 'll swear to!" tom said carelessly - "i suppose that will answer -yes, that will answer. but i reckon she is pretty old, and old people don't often outlive the cautious pace of the professional detective when he has got his clues together and is out on his still-hunt." blake's dull face flushed under this gibe, but before he could set his retort in order tom had turned to wilson, and was saying, with placid indifference of manner and voice - "who got the reward, pudd'nhead?" wilson winced slightly, and saw that his own turn was come. "what reward?" "why, the reward for the thief, and the other one for the knife." wilson answered -and rather uncomfortably, to judge by his hesitating fashion of delivering himself - "well, the -well, in fact, nobody has claimed it yet." tom seemed surprised. "why, is that so?" wilson showed a trifle of irritation when he replied - "yes, it 's so. and what of it?" "oh, nothing. only i thought you had struck out a new idea, and invented a scheme that was going to revolution-ize the time-worn and ineffectual methods of the -" he stopped, and turned to blake, who was happy now that another had taken his place on the gridiron: "blake, did n't you understand him to intimate that it would n't be necessary for you to hunt the old woman down?" "b'george, he said he 'd have thief and swag both inside of three days -he did, by hokey! and that 's just about a week ago. why, i said at the time that no thief and no thief's pal was going to try to pawn or sell a thing where he knowed the pawnbroker could get both rewards by taking <him> into camp <with> the swag. it was the blessedest idea that ever <i> struck!" "you 'd change your mind," said wilson, with irritated bluntness, "if you knew the entire scheme instead of only part of it." "well," said the constable, pensively, "i had the idea that it would n't work, and up to now i 'm right, anyway." "very well, then, let it stand at that, and give it a further show. it has worked at least as well as your own methods, you perceive." the constable had n't anything handy to hit back with, so he discharged a discontented sniff, and said nothing. after the night that wilson had partly revealed his scheme at his house, tom had tried for several days to guess out the secret of the rest of it, but had failed. then it occurred to him to give roxana's smarter head a chance at it. he made up a supposititious case, and laid it before her. she thought it over, and delivered her verdict upon it. tom said to himself, "she 's hit it, sure!" he thought he would test that verdict, now, and watch wilson's face; so he said reflectively - "wilson, you 're not a fool -a fact of recent discovery. whatever your scheme was, it had sense in it, blake's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. i don't ask you to reveal it, but i will suppose a case -a case which will answer as a starting-point for the real thing i am going to come at, and that 's all i want. you offered five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred for the thief. we will suppose, for argument's sake, that the first reward is <advertised>, and the second offered by <private letter> to pawnbrokers and -" blake slapped his thigh, and cried out - "by jackson, he 's got you, pudd'nhead! now why could n't i or <any> fool have thought of that?" wilson said to himself, "anybody with a reasonably good head would have thought of it. i am not surprised that blake did n't detect it; i am only surprised that tom did. there is more to him than i supposed." he said nothing aloud, and tom went on: "very well. the thief would not suspect that there was a trap, and he would bring or send the knife, and say he bought it for a song, or found it in the road, or something like that, and try to collect the reward, and be arrested -would n't he?" "yes," said wilson. "i think so," said tom. "there can't be any doubt of it. have you ever seen that knife?" "no." "has any friend of yours?" "not that i know of." "well, i begin to think i understand why your scheme failed." "what do you mean, tom? what are you driving at?" asked wilson, with a dawning sense of discomfort. "why, that there <is n't> any such knife." "look here, wilson," said blake, "tom driscoll 's right, for a thousand dollars -if i had it." wilson's blood warmed a little, and he wondered if he had been played upon by those strangers; it certainly had something of that look. but what could they gain by it? he threw out that suggestion. tom replied: "gain? oh, nothing that you would value, maybe. but they are strangers making their way in a new community. is it nothing to them to appear as pets of an oriental prince -at no expense? is it nothing to them to be able to dazzle this poor little town with thousand-dollar rewards -at no expense? wilson, there is n't any such knife, or your scheme would have fetched it to light. or if there is any such knife, they 've got it yet. i believe, myself, that they 've seen such a knife, for angelo pictured it out with his pencil too swiftly and handily for him to have been inventing it, and of course i can't swear that they 've never had it; but this i 'll go bail for -if they had it when they came to this town, they 've got it yet." blake said - "it looks mighty reasonable, the way tom puts it; it most certainly does." tom responded, turning to leave - "you find the old woman, blake, and if she can't furnish the knife, go and search the twins!" tom sauntered away. wilson felt a good deal depressed. he hardly knew what to think. he was loth to withdraw his faith from the twins, and was resolved not to do it on the present indecisive evidence; but -well, he would think, and then decide how to act. "blake, what do you think of this matter?" "well, pudd'nhead, i 'm bound to say i put it up the way tom does. they had n't the knife; or if they had it, they 've got it yet." the men parted. wilson said to himself: "i believe they had it; if it had been stolen, the scheme would have restored it, that is certain. and so i believe they 've got it yet." tom had no purpose in his mind when he encountered those two men. when he began his talk he hoped to be able to gall them a little and get a trifle of malicious entertainment out of it. but when he left, he left in great spirits, for he perceived that just by pure luck and no troublesome labor he had accomplished several delightful things: he had touched both men on a raw spot and seen them squirm; he had modified wilson's sweetness for the twins with one small bitter taste that he would n't be able to get out of his mouth right away; and, best of all, he had taken the hated twins down a peg with the community; for blake would gossip around freely, after the manner of detectives, and within a week the town would be laughing at them in its sleeve for offering a gaudy reward for a bauble which they either never possessed or had n't lost. tom was very well satisfied with himself. tom's behavior at home had been perfect during the entire week. his uncle and aunt had seen nothing like it before. they could find no fault with him anywhere. saturday evening he said to the judge - "i 've had something preying on my mind, uncle, and as i am going away, and might never see you again, i can't bear it any longer. i made you believe i was afraid to fight that italian adventurer. i had to get out of it on some pretext or other, and maybe i chose badly, being taken unawares, but no honorable person could consent to meet him in the field, knowing what i knew about him." "indeed? what was that?" "count luigi is a confessed assassin." "incredible!" "it is perfectly true. wilson detected it in his hand, by palmistry, and charged him with it, and cornered him up so close that he had to confess; but both twins begged us on their knees to keep the secret, and swore they would lead straight lives here; and it was all so pitiful that we gave our word of honor never to expose them while they kept that promise. you would have done it yourself, uncle." "you are right, my boy; i would. a man's secret is still his own property, and sacred, when it has been surprised out of him like that. you did well, and i am proud of you." then he added mournfully, "but i wish i could have been saved the shame of meeting an assassin on the field of honor." "it could n't be helped, uncle. if i had known you were going to challenge him i should have felt obliged to sacrifice my pledged word in order to stop it, but wilson could n't be expected to do otherwise than keep silent." "oh no; wilson did right, and is in no way to blame. tom, tom, you have lifted a heavy load from my heart; i was stung to the very soul when i seemed to have discovered that i had a coward in my family." "you may imagine what it cost <me> to assume such a part, uncle." "oh, i know it, poor boy, i know it. and i can understand how much it has cost you to remain under that unjust stigma to this time. but it is all right now, and no harm is done. you have restored my comfort of mind, and with it your own; and both of us had suffered enough." the old man sat a while plunged in thought; then he looked up with a satisfied light in his eye, and said: "that this assassin should have put the affront upon me of letting me meet him on the field of honor as if he were a gentleman is a matter which i will presently settle -but not now. i will not shoot him until after election. i see a way to ruin them both before; i will attend to that first. neither of them shall be elected, that i promise. you are sure that the fact that he is an assassin has not got abroad?" "perfectly certain of it, sir." "it will be a good card. i will fling a hint at it from the stump on the polling-day. it will sweep the ground from under both of them." "there 's not a doubt of it. it will finish them." "that and outside work among the voters will, to a certainty. i want you to come down here by and by and work privately among the rag-tag and bobtail. you shall spend money among them; i will furnish it." another point scored against the detested twins! really it was a great day for tom. he was encouraged to chance a parting shot, now, at the same target, and did it. "you know that wonderful indian knife that the twins have been making such a to-do about? well, there 's no track or trace of it yet; so the town is beginning to sneer and gossip and laugh. half the people believe they never had any such knife, the other half believe they had it and have got it still. i 've heard twenty people talking like that to-day." yes, tom's blemishless week had restored him to the favor of his aunt and uncle. his mother was satisfied with him, too. privately, she believed she was coming to love him, but she did not say so. she told him to go along to st. louis, now, and she would get ready and follow. then she smashed her whisky bottle and said - "dah now! i 's a-gwyne to make you walk as straight as a string, chambers, en so i 's bown' you ain't gwyne to git no bad example out o' yo' mammy. i tole you you could n't go into no bad comp'ny. well, you 's gwyne into my comp'ny, en i 's gwyne to fill de bill. now, den, trot along, trot along!" tom went aboard one of the big transient boats that night with his heavy satchel of miscellaneous plunder, and slept the sleep of the unjust, which is serener and sounder than the other kind, as we know by the hanging-eve history of a million rascals. but when he got up in the morning, luck was against him again: a brother-thief had robbed him while he slept, and gone ashore at some intermediate landing. xvi if you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. this is the principal difference between a dog and a man. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> we know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. it seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> when roxana arrived, she found her son in such despair and misery that her heart was touched and her motherhood rose up strong in her. he was ruined past hope, now; his destruction would be immediate and sure, and he would be an outcast and friendless. that was reason enough for a mother to love a child; so she loved him, and told him so. it made him wince, secretly -for she was a "nigger." that he was one himself was far from reconciling him to that despised race. roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he responded uncomfortably, but as well as he could. and she tried to comfort him, but that was not possible. these intimacies quickly became horrible to him, and within the hour he began to try to get up courage enough to tell her so, and require that they be discontinued or very considerably modified. but he was afraid of her; and besides, there came a lull, now, for she had begun to think. she was trying to invent a saving plan. finally she started up, and said she had found a way out. tom was almost suffocated by the joy of this sudden good news. roxana said: "here is de plan, en she 'll win, sure. i 's a nigger, en nobody ain't gwyne to doubt it dat hears me talk. i 's wuth six hund'd dollahs. take en sell me, en pay off dese gamblers." tom was dazed. he was not sure he had heard aright. he was dumb for a moment; then he said: "do you mean that you would be sold into slavery to save me?" "ain't you my chile? en does you know anything dat a mother won't do for her chile? dey ain't nothin' a white mother won't do for her chile. who made 'em so? de lord done it. en who made de niggers? de lord made 'em. in de inside, mothers is all de same. de good lord he made 'em so. i 's gwyne to be sole into slavery, en in a year you 's gwyne to buy yo' ole mammy free ag'in. i 'll show you how. dat 's de plan." tom's hopes began to rise, and his spirits along with them. he said - "it 's lovely of you, mammy -it 's just -" "say it ag'in! en keep on sayin' it! it 's all de pay a body kin want in dis worl', en it 's mo' den enough. laws bless you, honey, when i 's slavin' aroun', en dey 'buses me, if i knows you 's a-sayin' dat, 'way off yonder somers, it 'll heal up all de sore places, en i kin stan' 'em." "i <do> say it again, mammy, and i 'll keep on saying it, too. but how am i going to sell you? you 're free, you know." "much diff'rence dat make! white folks ain't partic'lar. de law kin sell me now if dey tell me to leave de state in six months en i don't go. you draw up a paper -bill o' sale -en put it 'way off yonder, down in de middle 'o kaintuck somers, en sign some names to it, en say you 'll sell me cheap 'ca'se you 's hard up; you 'll fine you ain't gwyne to have no trouble. you take me up de country a piece, en sell me on a farm; dem people ain't gwyne to ask no questions if i 's a bargain." tom forged a bill of sale and sold his mother to an arkansas cotton-planter for a trifle over six hundred dollars. he did not want to commit this treachery, but luck threw the man in his way, and this saved him the necessity of going up country to hunt up a purchaser, with the added risk of having to answer a lot of questions, whereas this planter was so pleased with roxy that he asked next to none at all. besides, the planter insisted that roxy would n't know where she was, at first, and that by the time she found out she would already have become contented. and tom argued with himself that it was an immense advantage for roxy to have a master who was so pleased with her, as this planter manifestly was. in almost no time his flowing reasonings carried him to the point of even half believing he was doing roxy a splendid surreptitious service in selling her "down the river." and then he kept diligently saying to himself all the time: "it 's for only a year. in a year i buy her free again; she 'll keep that in mind, and it 'll reconcile her." yes; the little deception could do no harm, and everything would come out right and pleasant in the end, any way. by agreement, the conversation in roxy's presence was all about the man's "up-country" farm, and how pleasant a place it was, and how happy the slaves were there; so poor roxy was entirely deceived; and easily, for she was not dreaming that her own son could be guilty of treason to a mother who, in voluntarily going into slavery -slavery of any kind, mild or severe, or of any duration, brief or long -was making a sacrifice for him compared with which death would have been a poor and commonplace one. she lavished tears and loving caresses upon him privately, and then went away with her owner -went away broken-hearted, and yet proud of what she was doing, and glad that it was in her power to do it. tom squared his accounts, and resolved to keep to the very letter of his reform, and never to put that will in jeopardy again. he had three hundred dollars left. according to his mother's plan, he was to put that safely away, and add her half of his pension to it monthly. in one year this fund would buy her free again. for a whole week he was not able to sleep well, so much the villainy which he had played upon his trusting mother preyed upon his rag of a conscience; but after that he began to get comfortable again, and was presently able to sleep like any other miscreant. the boat bore roxy away from st. louis at four in the afternoon, and she stood on the lower guard abaft the paddle-box and watched tom through a blur of tears until he melted into the throng of people and disappeared; then she looked no more, but sat there on a coil of cable crying till far into the night. when she went to her foul steerage-bunk at last, between the clashing engines, it was not to sleep, but only to wait for the morning, and, waiting, grieve. it had been imagined that she "would not know," and would think she was traveling up stream. she! why, she had been steamboating for years. at dawn she got up and went listlessly and sat down on the cable-coil again. she passed many a snag whose "break" could have told her a thing to break her heart, for it showed a current moving in the same direction that the boat was going; but her thoughts were elsewhere, and she did not notice. but at last the roar of a bigger and nearer break than usual brought her out of her torpor, and she looked up, and her practised eye fell upon that tell-tale rush of water. for one moment her petrified gaze fixed itself there. then her head dropped upon her breast, and she said - "oh, de good lord god have mercy on po' sinful me -<i 's sole down de river!>" xvii even popularity can be overdone. in rome, along at first, you are full of regrets that michelangelo died; but by and by you only regret that you did n't see him do it. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> <july 4.> statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. this proves, by the number left in stock, that one fourth of july per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so. <pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the summer weeks dragged by, and then the political campaign opened -opened in pretty warm fashion, and waxed hotter and hotter daily. the twins threw themselves into it with their whole heart, for their self-love was engaged. their popularity, so general at first, had suffered afterward; mainly because they had been <too> popular, and so a natural reaction had followed. besides, it had been diligently whispered around that it was curious -indeed, <very> curious -that that wonderful knife of theirs did not turn up -<if> it was so valuable, or <if> it had ever existed. and with the whisperings went chucklings and nudgings and winks, and such things have an effect. the twins considered that success in the election would reinstate them, and that defeat would work them irreparable damage. therefore they worked hard, but not harder than judge driscoll and tom worked against them in the closing days of the canvass. tom's conduct had remained so letter-perfect during two whole months, now, that his uncle not only trusted him with money with which to persuade voters, but trusted him to go and get it himself out of the safe in the private sitting-room. the closing speech of the campaign was made by judge driscoll, and he made it against both of the foreigners. it was disastrously effective. he poured out rivers of ridicule upon them, and forced the big mass-meeting to laugh and applaud. he scoffed at them as adventurers, mountebanks, side-show riff-raff, dime-museum freaks; he assailed their showy titles with measureless derision; he said they were back-alley barbers disguised as nobilities, peanut pedlers masquerading as gentlemen, organ-grinders bereft of their brother-monkey. at last he stopped and stood still. he waited until the place had become absolutely silent and expectant, then he delivered his deadliest shot; delivered it with ice-cold seriousness and deliberation, with a significant emphasis upon the closing words: he said he believed that the reward offered for the lost knife was humbug and buncombe, and that its owner would know where to find it whenever he should have occasion <to assassinate somebody>. then he stepped from the stand, leaving a startled and impressive hush behind him instead of the customary explosion of cheers and party cries. the strange remark flew far and wide over the town and made an extraordinary sensation. everybody was asking, "what could he mean by that?" and everybody went on asking that question, but in vain; for the judge only said he knew what he was talking about, and stopped there; tom said he had n't any idea what his uncle meant, and wilson, whenever he was asked what he thought it meant, parried the question by asking the questioner what <he> thought it meant. wilson was elected, the twins were defeated -crushed, in fact, and left forlorn and substantially friendless. tom went back to st. louis happy. dawson's landing had a week of repose, now, and it needed it. but it was in an expectant state, for the air was full of rumors of a new duel. judge driscoll's election labors had prostrated him, but it was said that as soon as he was well enough to entertain a challenge he would get one from count luigi. the brothers withdrew entirely from society, and nursed their humiliation in privacy. they avoided the people, and went out for exercise only late at night, when the streets were deserted. xviii gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. you have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> thanksgiving day. let all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks, now, but the turkeys. in the island of fiji they do not use turkeys; they use plumbers. it does not become you and me to sneer at fiji. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the friday after the election was a rainy one in st. louis. it rained all day long, and rained hard, apparently trying its best to wash that soot-blackened town white, but of course not succeeding. toward midnight tom driscoll arrived at his lodgings from the theater in the heavy downpour, and closed his umbrella and let himself in; but when he would have shut the door, he found that there was another person entering -doubtless another lodger; this person closed the door and tramped up-stairs behind tom. tom found his door in the dark, and entered it and turned up the gas. when he faced about, lightly whistling, he saw the back of a man. the man was closing and locking his door for him. his whistle faded out and he felt uneasy. the man turned around, a wreck of shabby old clothes sodden with rain and all a-drip, and showed a black face under an old slouch hat. tom was frightened. he tried to order the man out, but the words refused to come, and the other man got the start. he said, in a low voice - "keep still -i 's yo' mother!" tom sunk in a heap on a chair, and gasped out - "it was mean of me, and base -i know it; but i meant it for the best, i did indeed -i can swear it." roxana stood awhile looking mutely down on him while he writhed in shame and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations mixed with pitiful attempts at explanation and palliation of his crime; then she seated herself and took off her hat, and her unkempt masses of long brown hair tumbled down about her shoulders. "it ain't no fault o' yo'n dat dat ain't gray," she said sadly, noticing the hair. "i know it, i know it! i 'm a scoundrel. but i swear i meant for the best. it was a mistake, of course, but i thought it was for the best, i truly did." roxy began to cry softly, and presently words began to find their way out between her sobs. they were uttered lamentingly, rather than angrily - "sell a pusson down de river -<down de river!> -for de bes'! i would n't treat a dog so! i is all broke down en wore out, now, en so i reckon it ain't in me to storm aroun' no mo', like i used to when i 'uz trompled on en 'bused. i don't know -but maybe it 's so. leastways, i 's suffered so much dat mournin' seem to come mo' handy to me now den stormin'." these words should have touched tom driscoll, but if they did, that effect was obliterated by a stronger one -one which removed the heavy weight of fear which lay upon him, and gave his crushed spirit a most grateful rebound, and filled all his small soul with a deep sense of relief. but he kept prudently still, and ventured no comment. there was a voiceless interval of some duration, now, in which no sounds were heard but the beating of the rain upon the panes, the sighing and complaining of the winds, and now and then a muffled sob from roxana. the sobs became more and more infrequent, and at last ceased. then the refugee began to talk again: "shet down dat light a little. more. more yit. a pusson dat is hunted don't like de light. dah -dat 'll do. i kin see whah you is, en dat 's enough. i 's gwine to tell you de tale, en cut it jes as short as i kin, en den i 'll tell you what you 's got to do. dat man dat bought me ain't a bad man; he 's good enough, as planters goes; en if he could 'a' had his way i 'd 'a' be'n a house servant in his fambly en be'n comfortable: but his wife she was a yank, en not right down good lookin', en she riz up agin me straight off; so den dey sent me out to de quarter 'mongst de common fiel' han's. dat woman war n't satisfied even wid dat, but she worked up de overseer ag'in' me, she 'uz dat jealous en hateful; so de overseer he had me out befo' day in de mawnin's en worked me de whole long day as long as dey 'uz any light to see by; en many 's de lashin's i got 'ca'se i could n't come up to de work o' de stronges'. dat overseer wuz a yank, too, outen new englan', en anybody down south kin tell you what dat mean. <dey> knows how to work a nigger to death, en dey knows how to whale 'em, too -whale 'em till dey backs is welted like a washboard. 'long at fust my marster say de good word for me to de overseer, but dat 'uz bad for me; for de mistis she fine it out, en arter dat i jist ketched it at every turn -dey war n't no mercy for me no mo'." tom's heart was fired -with fury against the planter's wife; and he said to himself, "but for that meddlesome fool, everything would have gone all right." he added a deep and bitter curse against her. the expression of this sentiment was fiercely written in his face, and stood thus revealed to roxana by a white glare of lightning which turned the somber dusk of the room into dazzling day at that moment. she was pleased -pleased and grateful; for did not that expression show that her child was capable of grieving for his mother's wrongs and of feeling resentment toward her persecutors? -a thing which she had been doubting. but her flash of happiness was only a flash, and went out again and left her spirit dark; for she said to herself, "he sole me down de river -he can't feel for a body long; dis 'll pass en go." then she took up her tale again. "'bout ten days ago i 'uz sayin' to myself dat i could n't las' many mo' weeks i 'uz so wore out wid de awful work en de lashin's, en so downhearted en misable. en i did n't care no mo', nuther -life war n't wuth noth'n' to me if i got to go on like dat. well, when a body is in a frame o' mine like dat, what do a body care what a body do? dey was a little sickly nigger wench 'bout ten year ole dat 'uz good to me, en had n't no mammy, po' thing, en i loved her en she loved me; en she come out whah i 'uz workin' en she had a roasted tater, en tried to slip it to me, -robbin' herself, you see, 'ca'se she knowed de overseer did n't gimme enough to eat, -en he ketched her at it, en give her a lick acrost de back wid his stick, which 'uz as thick as a broom-handle, en she drop' screamin' on de groun', en squirmin' en wallerin' aroun' in de dust like a spider dat 's got crippled. i could n't stan' it. all de hell-fire dat 'uz ever in my heart flame' up, en i snatch de stick outen his han' en laid him flat. he laid dah moanin' en cussin', en all out of his head, you know, en de niggers 'uz plumb sk'yerd to death. dey gathered roun' him to he'p him, en i jumped on his hoss en took out for de river as tight as i could go. i knowed what dey would do wid me. soon as he got well he would start in en work me to death if marster let him; en if dey did n't do dat, they 'd sell me furder down de river, en dat 's de same thing. so i 'lowed to drown myself en git out o' my troubles. it 'uz gitt'n' towards dark. i 'uz at de river in two minutes. den i see a canoe, en i says dey ain't no use to drown myself tell i got to; so i ties de hoss in de edge o' de timber en shove out down de river, keepin' in under de shelter o' de bluff bank en prayin' for de dark to shet down quick. i had a pow'ful good start, 'ca'se de big house 'uz three mile back f'om de river en on'y de work-mules to ride dah on, en on'y niggers to ride 'em, en <dey> war n't gwine to hurry -dey 'd gimme all de chance dey could. befo' a body could go to de house en back it would be long pas' dark, en dey could n't track de hoss en fine out which way i went tell mawnin', en de niggers would tell 'em all de lies dey could 'bout it. "well, de dark come, en i went on a-spinnin' down de river. i paddled mo'n two hours, den i war n't worried no mo', so i quit paddlin', en floated down de current, considerin' what i 'uz gwine to do if i did n't have to drown myself. i made up some plans, en floated along, turnin' 'em over in my mine. well, when it 'uz a little pas' midnight, as i reckoned, en i had come fifteen or twenty mile, i see de lights o' a steamboat layin' at de bank, whah dey war n't no town en no woodyard, en putty soon i ketched de shape o' de chimbly-tops ag'in' de stars, en de good gracious me, i 'most jumped out o' my skin for joy! it 'uz de <gran' mogul> -i 'uz chambermaid on her for eight seasons in de cincinnati en orleans trade. i slid 'long pas' -don't see nobody stirrin' nowhah -hear 'em a-hammerin' away in de engine-room, den i knowed what de matter was -some o' de machinery 's broke. i got asho' below de boat and turn' de canoe loose, den i goes 'long up, en dey 'uz jes one plank out, en i step' 'board de boat. it 'uz pow'ful hot, deckhan's en roustabouts 'uz sprawled aroun' asleep on de fo'cas'l', de second mate, jim bangs, he sot dah on de bitts wid his head down, asleep -'ca'se dat 's de way de second mate stan' de cap'n's watch! -en de ole watchman, billy hatch, he 'uz a-noddin' on de companionway; -en i knowed 'em all; 'en, lan', but dey did look good! i says to myself, i wished old marster 'd come along <now> en try to take me -bless yo' heart, i 's 'mong frien's, i is. so i tromped right along 'mongst 'em, en went up on de b'iler deck en 'way back aft to de ladies' cabin guard, en sot down dah in de same cheer dat i 'd sot in 'mos' a hund'd million times, i reckon; en it 'uz jist home ag'in, i tell you! "in 'bout an hour i heard de ready-bell jingle, en den de racket begin. putty soon i hear de gong strike. `set her back on de outside,' i says to myself -`i reckon i knows dat music!' i hear de gong ag'in. `come ahead on de inside,' i says. gong ag'in. `stop de outside.' gong ag'in. `come ahead on de outside -now we 's pinted for sent louis, en i 's outer de woods en ain't got to drown myself at all.' i knowed de <mogul> 'uz in de sent louis trade now, you see. it 'uz jes fair daylight when we passed our plantation, en i seed a gang o' niggers en white folks huntin' up en down de sho', en trou-blin' deyselves a good deal 'bout me; but i war n't troublin' myself none 'bout dem. "'bout dat time sally jackson, dat used to be my second chambermaid en 'uz head chambermaid now, she come out on de guard, en 'uz pow'ful glad to see me, en so 'uz all de officers; en i tole 'em i 'd got kidnapped en sole down de river, en dey made me up twenty dollahs en give it to me, en sally she rigged me out wid good clo'es, en when i got here i went straight to whah you used to wuz, en den i come to dis house, en dey say you 's away but 'spected back every day; so i did n't dast to go down de river to dawson's, 'ca'se i might miss you. "well, las' monday i 'uz pass'n' by one o' dem places in fourth street whah dey sticks up runaway-nigger bills, en he'ps to ketch 'em, en i seed my marster! i 'mos' flopped down on de groun', i felt so gone. he had his back to me, en 'uz talkin' to de man en givin' him some bills -nigger-bills, i reckon, en i 's de nigger. he 's offerin' a reward -dat 's it. ain't i right, don't you reckon?" tom had been gradually sinking into a state of ghastly terror, and he said to himself, now: "i 'm lost, no matter what turn things take! this man has said to me that he thinks there was something suspicious about that sale. he said he had a letter from a passenger on the <grand mogul> saying that roxy came here on that boat and that everybody on board knew all about the case; so he says that her coming here instead of flying to a free state looks bad for me, and that if i don't find her for him, and that pretty soon, he will make trouble for me. i never believed that story; i could n't believe she would be so dead to all motherly instincts as to come here, knowing the risk she would run of getting me into irremediable trouble. and after all, here she is! and i stupidly swore i would help him find her, thinking it was a perfectly safe thing to promise. if i venture to deliver her up, she -she -but how can i help myself? i 've got to do that or pay the money, and where 's the money to come from? i -i -well, i should think that if he would swear to treat her kindly hereafter -and she says, herself, that he is a good man -and if he would swear to never allow her to be overworked, or ill fed, or -" a flash of lightning exposed tom's pallid face, drawn and rigid with these worrying thoughts. roxana spoke up sharply now, and there was apprehension in her voice - "turn up dat light! i want to see yo' face better. dah now -lemme look at you. chambers, you 's as white as yo' shirt! has you seen dat man? has he be'n to see you?" "ye-s." "when?" "monday noon." "monday noon! was he on my track?" "he -well, he thought he was. that is, he hoped he was. this is the bill you saw." he took it out of his pocket. "read it to me!" she was panting with excitement, and there was a dusky glow in her eyes that tom could not translate with certainty, but there seemed to be something threatening about it. the handbill had the usual rude woodcut of a turbaned negro woman running, with the customary bundle on a stick over her shoulder, and the heading in bold type, "$100 reward." tom read the bill aloud -at least the part that described roxana and named the master and his st. louis address and the address of the fourth-street agency; but he left out the item that applicants for the reward might also apply to mr. thomas driscoll. "gimme de bill!" tom had folded it and was putting it in his pocket. he felt a chilly streak creeping down his back, but said as carelessly as he could - "the bill? why, it is n't any use to you; you can't read it. what do you want with it?" "gimme de bill!" tom gave it to her, but with a reluctance which he could not entirely disguise. "did you read it <all> to me?" "certainly i did." "hole up yo' han' en swah to it." tom did it. roxana put the bill carefully away in her pocket, with her eyes fixed upon tom's face all the while; then she said - "you 's lyin'!" "what would i want to lie about it for?" "i don't know -but you is. dat 's my opinion, anyways. but nemmine 'bout dat. when i seed dat man i 'uz dat sk'yerd dat i could sca'cely wobble home. den i give a nigger man a dollar for dese clo'es, en i ain't be'n in a house sence, night ner day, till now. i blacked my face en laid hid in de cellar of a ole house dat 's burnt down, daytimes, en robbed de sugar hogsheads en grain sacks on de wharf, nights, to git somethin' to eat, en never dast to try to buy noth'n', en i 's 'mos' starved. en i never dast to come near dis place till dis rainy night, when dey ain't no people roun' sca'cely. but to-night i be'n a-stannin' in de dark alley ever sence night come, waitin' for you to go by. en here i is." she fell to thinking. presently she said - "you seed dat man at noon, las' monday?" "yes." "i seed him de middle o' dat arternoon. he hunted you up, did n't he?" "yes." "did he give you de bill dat time?" "no, he had n't got it printed yet." roxana darted a suspicious glance at him. "did you he'p him fix up de bill?" tom cursed himself for making that stupid blunder, and tried to rectify it by saying he remembered, now, that it <was> at noon monday that the man gave him the bill. roxana said - "you 's lyin' ag'in, sho." then she straightened up and raised her finger: "now den! i 's gwine to ast you a question, en i wants to know how you 's gwine to git aroun' it. you knowed he 'uz arter me; en if you run off, 'stid o' stayin' here to he'p him, he 'd know dey 'uz somethin' wrong 'bout dis business, en den he would inquire 'bout you, en dat would take him to yo' uncle, en yo' uncle would read de bill en see dat you be'n sellin' a free nigger down de river, en you know <him>, i reckon! he 'd t'ar up de will en kick you outen de house. now, den, you answer me dis question: hain't you tole dat man dat i would be sho' to come here, en den you would fix it so he could set a trap en ketch me?" tom recognized that neither lies nor arguments could help him any longer -he was in a vise, with the screw turned on, and out of it there was no budging. his face began to take on an ugly look, and presently he said, with a snarl - "well, what could i do? you see, yourself, that i was in his grip and could n't get out." roxy scorched him with a scornful gaze awhile, then she said - "what could you do? you could be judas to yo' own mother to save yo' wuthless hide! would anybody b'lieve it? no -a dog could n't! you is de low-downest orneriest hound dat was ever pup'd into dis worl' -en i 's 'sponsible for it!" -and she spat on him. he made no effort to resent this. roxy reflected a moment, then she said - "now i 'll tell you what you 's gwine to do. you 's gwine to give dat man de money dat you 's got laid up, en make him wait till you kin go to de jedge en git de res' en buy me free agin." "thunder! what are you thinking of? go and ask him for three hundred dollars and odd? what would i tell him i want with it, pray?" roxy's answer was delivered in a serene and level voice - "you 'll tell him you 's sole me to pay yo' gamblin' debts en dat you lied to me en was a villain, en dat i 'quires you to git dat money en buy me back ag'in." "why, you 've gone stark mad! he would tear the will to shreds in a minute -don't you know that?" "yes, i does." "then you don't believe i 'm idiot enough to go to him, do you?" "i don't b'lieve nothin' 'bout it -i <knows> you 's a-goin', i knows it 'ca'se you knows dat if you don't raise dat money i 'll go to him myself, en den he 'll sell <you> down de river, en you kin see how you like it!" tom rose, trembling and excited, and there was an evil light in his eye. he strode to the door and said he must get out of this suffocating place for a moment and clear his brain in the fresh air so that he could determine what to do. the door would n't open. roxy smiled grimly, and said - "i 's got de key, honey -set down. you need n't cle'r up yo' brain none to fine out what you gwine to do -<i> knows what you 's gwine to do." tom sat down and began to pass his hands through his hair with a helpless and desperate air. roxy said, "is dat man in dis house?" tom glanced up with a surprised expression, and asked - "what gave you such an idea?" "you done it. gwine out to cle'r yo' brain! in de fust place you ain't got none to cle'r, en in de second place yo' ornery eye tole on you. you 's de low-downest hound dat ever -but i done tole you dat befo'. now den, dis is friday. you kin fix it up wid dat man, en tell him you 's gwine away to git de res' o' de money, en dat you 'll be back wid it nex' tuesday, or maybe wednesday. you understan'?" tom answered sullenly - "yes." "en when you gits de new bill o' sale dat sells me to my own self, take en send it in de mail to mr. pudd'nhead wilson, en write on de back dat he 's to keep it tell i come. you understan'?" "yes." "dat 's all, den. take yo' umbreller, en put on yo' hat." "why?" "beca'se you 's gwine to see me home to de wharf. you see dis knife? i 's toted it aroun' sence de day i seed dat man en bought dese clo'es en it. if he ketched me, i 'uz gwine to kill myself wid it. now start along, en go sof', en lead de way; en if you gives a sign in dis house, or if anybody comes up to you in de street, i 's gwine to jam it into you. chambers, does you b'lieve me when i says dat?" "it 's no use to bother me with that question. i know your word 's good." "yes, it 's diff'rent from yo'n! shet de light out en move along -here 's de key." they were not followed. tom trembled every time a late straggler brushed by them on the street, and half expected to feel the cold steel in his back. roxy was right at his heels and always in reach. after tramping a mile they reached a wide vacancy on the deserted wharves, and in this dark and rainy desert they parted. as tom trudged home his mind was full of dreary thoughts and wild plans; but at last he said to himself, wearily - "there is but the one way out. i must follow her plan. but with a variation -i will not ask for the money and ruin myself; i will <rob> the old skinflint." xix few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> it were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> dawson's landing was comfortably finishing its season of dull repose and waiting patiently for the duel. count luigi was waiting, too; but not patiently, rumor said. sunday came, and luigi insisted on having his challenge conveyed. wilson carried it. judge driscoll declined to fight with an assassin -"that is," he added significantly, "in the field of honor." elsewhere, of course, he would be ready. wilson tried to convince him that if he had been present himself when angelo told about the homicide committed by luigi, he would not have considered the act discreditable to luigi; but the obstinate old man was not to be moved. wilson went back to his principal and reported the failure of his mission. luigi was incensed, and asked how it could be that the old gentleman, who was by no means dull-witted, held his trifling nephew's evidence and inferences to be of more value than wilson's. but wilson laughed, and said - "that is quite simple; that is easily explicable. i am not his doll -his baby -his infatuation: his nephew is. the judge and his late wife never had any children. the judge and his wife were past middle age when this treasure fell into their lap. one must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. it is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can't tell mud-cat from shad. a devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through thick and thin. tom is this old man's angel; he is infatuated with him. tom can persuade him into things which other people can 't -not all things; i don't mean that, but a good many -particularly one class of things: the things that create or abolish personal partialities or prejudices in the old man's mind. the old man liked both of you. tom conceived a hatred for you. that was enough; it turned the old man around at once. the oldest and strongest friendship must go to the ground when one of these late-adopted darlings throws a brick at it." "it 's a curious philosophy," said luigi. "it ain't a philosophy at all -it 's a fact. and there is something pathetic and beautiful about it, too. i think there is nothing more pathetic than to see one of these poor old childless couples taking a menagerie of yelping little worthless dogs to their hearts; and then adding some cursing and squawking parrots and a jackass-voiced macaw; and next a couple of hundred screeching song-birds, and presently some fetid guinea-pigs and rabbits, and a howling colony of cats. it is all a groping and ignorant effort to construct out of base metal and brass filings, so to speak, something to take the place of that golden treasure denied them by nature, a child. but this is a digression. the unwritten law of this region requires you to kill judge driscoll on sight, and he and the community will expect that attention at your hands -though of course your own death by his bullet will answer every purpose. look out for him! are you heeled -that is, fixed?" "yes; he shall have his opportunity. if he attacks me i will respond." as wilson was leaving, he said - "the judge is still a little used up by his campaign work, and will not get out for a day or so; but when he does get out, you want to be on the alert." about eleven at night the twins went out for exercise, and started on a long stroll in the veiled moonlight. tom driscoll had landed at hackett's store, two miles below dawson's, just about half an hour earlier, the only passenger for that lonely spot, and had walked up the shore road and entered judge driscoll's house without having encountered any one either on the road or under the roof. he pulled down his window-blinds and lighted his candle. he laid off his coat and hat and began his preparations. he unlocked his trunk and got his suit of girl's clothes out from under the male attire in it, and laid it by. then he blacked his face with burnt cork and put the cork in his pocket. his plan was, to slip down to his uncle's private sitting-room below, pass into the bed-room, steal the safe-key from the old gentleman's clothes, and then go back and rob the safe. he took up his candle to start. his courage and confidence were high, up to this point, but both began to waver a little, now. suppose he should make a noise, by some accident, and get caught -say, in the act of opening the safe? perhaps it would be well to go armed. he took the indian knife from its hiding-place, and felt a pleasant return of his waning courage. he slipped stealthily down the narrow stair, his hair rising and his pulses halting at the slightest creak. when he was half-way down, he was disturbed to perceive that the landing below was touched by a faint glow of light. what could that mean? was his uncle still up? no, that was not likely; he must have left his night-taper there when he went to bed. tom crept on down, pausing at every step to listen. he found the door standing open, and glanced in. what he saw pleased him beyond measure. his uncle was asleep on the sofa; on a small table at the head of the sofa a lamp was burning low, and by it stood the old man's small tin cash-box, closed. near the box was a pile of bank-notes and a piece of paper covered with figures in pencil. the safe-door was not open. evidently the sleeper had wearied himself with work upon his finances, and was taking a rest. tom set his candle on the stairs, and began to make his way toward the pile of notes, stooping low as he went. when he was passing his uncle, the old man stirred in his sleep, and tom stopped instantly -stopped, and softly drew the knife from its sheath, with his heart thumping, and his eyes fastened upon his benefactor's face. after a moment or two he ventured forward again -one step -reached for his prize and seized it, dropping the knife-sheath. then he felt the old man's strong grip upon him, and a wild cry of "help! help!" rang in his ear. without hesitation he drove the knife home -and was free. some of the notes escaped from his left hand and fell in the blood on the floor. he dropped the knife and snatched them up and started to fly; transferred them to his left hand, and seized the knife again, in his fright and confusion, but remembered himself and flung it from him, as being a dangerous witness to carry away with him. he jumped for the stair-foot, and closed the door behind him; and as he snatched his candle and fled upward, the stillness of the night was broken by the sound of urgent footsteps approaching the house. in another moment he was in his room and the twins were standing aghast over the body of the murdered man! tom put on his coat, buttoned his hat under it, threw on his suit of girl's clothes, dropped the veil, blew out his light, locked the room door by which he had just entered, taking the key, passed through his other door into the back hall, locked that door and kept the key, then worked his way along in the dark and descended the back stairs. he was not expecting to meet anybody, for all interest was centered in the other part of the house, now; his calculation proved correct. by the time he was passing through the back yard, mrs. pratt, her servants, and a dozen half-dressed neighbors had joined the twins and the dead, and accessions were still arriving at the front door. as tom, quaking as with a palsy, passed out at the gate, three women came flying from the house on the opposite side of the lane. they rushed by him and in at the gate, asking him what the trouble was there, but not waiting for an answer. tom said to himself, "those old maids waited to dress -they did the same thing the night stevens's house burned down next door." in a few minutes he was in the haunted house. he lighted a candle and took off his girl-clothes. there was blood on him all down his left side, and his right hand was red with the stains of the blood-soaked notes which he had crushed in it; but otherwise he was free from this sort of evidence. he cleansed his hand on the straw, and cleaned most of the smut from his face. then he burned his male and female attire to ashes, scattered the ashes, and put on a disguise proper for a tramp. he blew out his light, went below, and was soon loafing down the river road with the intent to borrow and use one of roxy's devices. he found a canoe and paddled off down-stream, setting the canoe adrift as dawn approached, and making his way by land to the next village, where he kept out of sight till a transient steamer came along, and then took deck passage for st. louis. he was ill at ease until dawson's landing was behind him; then he said to himself, "all the detectives on earth could n't trace me now; there 's not a vestige of a clue left in the world; that homicide will take its place with the permanent mysteries, and people won't get done trying to guess out the secret of it for fifty years." in st. louis, next morning, he read this brief telegram in the papers -dated at dawson's landing: judge driscoll, an old and respected citizen, was assassinated here about midnight by a profligate italian nobleman or barber on account of a quarrel growing out of the recent election. the assassin will probably be lynched. "one of the twins!" soliloquized tom; "how lucky! it is the knife that has done him this grace. we never know when fortune is trying to favor us. i actually cursed pudd'nhead wilson in my heart for putting it out of my power to sell that knife. i take it back, now." tom was now rich and independent. he arranged with the planter, and mailed to wilson the new bill of sale which sold roxana to herself; then he telegraphed his aunt pratt: have seen the awful news in the papers and am almost prostrated with grief. shall start by packet to-day. try to bear up till i come. when wilson reached the house of mourning and had gathered such details as mrs. pratt and the rest of the crowd could tell him, he took command as mayor, and gave orders that nothing should be touched, but everything left as it was until justice robinson should arrive and take the proper measures as coroner. he cleared everybody out of the room but the twins and himself. the sheriff soon arrived and took the twins away to jail. wilson told them to keep heart, and promised to do his best in their defense when the case should come to trial. justice robinson came presently, and with him constable blake. they examined the room thoroughly. they found the knife and the sheath. wilson noticed that there were finger-prints on the knife-handle. that pleased him, for the twins had required the earliest comers to make a scrutiny of their hands and clothes, and neither these people nor wilson himself had found any blood-stains upon them. could there be a possibility that the twins had spoken the truth when they said they found the man dead when they ran into the house in answer to the cry for help? he thought of that mysterious girl at once. but this was not the sort of work for a girl to be engaged in. no matter; tom driscoll's room must be examined. after the coroner's jury had viewed the body and its surroundings, wilson suggested a search up-stairs, and he went along. the jury forced an entrance to tom's room, but found nothing, of course. the coroner's jury found that the homicide was committed by luigi, and that angelo was accessory to it. the town was bitter against the unfortunates, and for the first few days after the murder they were in constant danger of being lynched. the grand jury presently indicted luigi for murder in the first degree, and angelo as accessory before the fact. the twins were transferred from the city jail to the county prison to await trial. wilson examined the finger-marks on the knife-handle and said to himself, "neither of the twins made those marks." then manifestly there was another person concerned, either in his own interest or as hired assassin. but who could it be? that, he must try to find out. the safe was not open, the cash-box was closed, and had three thousand dollars in it. then robbery was not the motive, and revenge was. where had the murdered man an enemy except luigi? there was but that one person in the world with a deep grudge against him. the mysterious girl! the girl was a great trial to wilson. if the motive had been robbery, the girl might answer; but there was n't any girl that would want to take this old man's life for revenge. he had no quarrels with girls; he was a gentleman. wilson had perfect tracings of the finger-marks of the knife-handle; and among his glass-records he had a great array of the finger-prints of women and girls, collected during the last fifteen or eighteen years, but he scanned them in vain, they successfully withstood every test; among them were no duplicates of the prints on the knife. the presence of the knife on the stage of the murder was a worrying circumstance for wilson. a week previously he had as good as admitted to himself that he believed luigi had possessed such a knife, and that he still possessed it notwithstanding his pretense that it had been stolen. and now here was the knife, and with it the twins. half the town had said the twins were humbugging when they claimed that they had lost their knife, and now these people were joyful, and said, "i told you so!" if their finger-prints had been on the handle -but it was useless to bother any further about that; the finger-prints on the handle were <not> theirs -that he knew perfectly. wilson refused to suspect tom; for first, tom could n't murder anybody -he had n't character enough; secondly, if he could murder a person he would n't select his doting benefactor and nearest relative; thirdly, self-interest was in the way; for while the uncle lived, tom was sure of a free support and a chance to get the destroyed will revived again, but with the uncle gone, that chance was gone, too. it was true the will had really been revived, as was now discovered, but tom could not have been aware of it, or he would have spoken of it, in his native talky, unsecretive way. finally, tom was in st. louis when the murder was done, and got the news out of the morning journals, as was shown by his telegram to his aunt. these speculations were unemphasized sensations rather than articulated thoughts, for wilson would have laughed at the idea of seriously connecting tom with the murder. wilson regarded the case of the twins as desperate -in fact, about hopeless. for he argued that if a confederate was not found, an enlightened missouri jury would hang them, sure; if a confederate was found, that would not improve the matter, but simply furnish one more person for the sheriff to hang. nothing could save the twins but the discovery of a person who did the murder on his sole personal account -an undertaking which had all the aspect of the impossible. still, the person who made the finger-prints must be sought. the twins might have no case <with> him, but they certainly would have none without him. so wilson mooned around, thinking, thinking, guessing, guessing, day and night, and arriving nowhere. whenever he ran across a girl or a woman he was not acquainted with, he got her finger-prints, on one pretext or another; and they always cost him a sigh when he got home, for they never tallied with the finger-marks on the knife-handle. as to the mysterious girl, tom swore he knew no such girl, and did not remember ever seeing a girl wearing a dress like the one described by wilson. he admitted that he did not always lock his room, and that sometimes the servants forgot to lock the house doors; still, in his opinion the girl must have made but few visits or she would have been discovered. when wilson tried to connect her with the stealing-raid, and thought she might have been the old woman's confederate, if not the very thief herself disguised as an old woman, tom seemed struck, and also much interested, and said he would keep a sharp eye out for this person or persons, although he was afraid that she or they would be too smart to venture again into a town where everybody would now be on the watch for a good while to come. everybody was pitying tom, he looked so quiet and sorrowful, and seemed to feel his great loss so deeply. he was playing a part, but it was not all a part. the picture of his alleged uncle, as he had last seen him, was before him in the dark pretty frequently, when he was awake, and called again in his dreams, when he was asleep. he would n't go into the room where the tragedy had happened. this charmed the doting mrs. pratt, who realized now, "as she had never done before," she said, what a sensitive and delicate nature her darling had, and how he adored his poor uncle. xx even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman: if you have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the weeks dragged along, no friend visiting the jailed twins but their counsel and aunt patsy cooper, and the day of trial came at last -the heaviest day in wilson's life; for with all his tireless diligence he had discovered no sign or trace of the missing confederate. "confederate" was the term he had long ago privately accepted for that person -not as being unquestionably the right term, but as being at least possibly the right one, though he was never able to understand why the twins did not vanish and escape, as the confederate had done, instead of remaining by the murdered man and getting caught there. the court-house was crowded, of course, and would remain so to the finish, for not only in the town itself, but in the country for miles around, the trial was the one topic of conversation among the people. mrs. pratt, in deep mourning, and tom with a weed on his hat, had seats near pembroke howard, the public prosecutor, and back of them sat a great array of friends of the family. the twins had but one friend present to keep their counsel in countenance, their poor old sorrowing landlady. she sat near wilson, and looked her friendliest. in the "nigger corner" sat chambers; also roxy, with good clothes on, and her bill of sale in her pocket. it was her most precious possession, and she never parted with it, day or night. tom had allowed her thirty-five dollars a month ever since he came into his property, and had said that he and she ought to be grateful to the twins for making them rich; but had roused such a temper in her by this speech that he did not repeat the argument afterward. she said the old judge had treated her child a thousand times better than he deserved, and had never done her an unkindness in his life; so she hated these outlandish devils for killing him, and should n't ever sleep satisfied till she saw them hanged for it. she was here to watch the trial, now, and was going to lift up just one "hooraw" over it if the county judge put her in jail a year for it. she gave her turbaned head a toss and said, "when dat verdic' comes, i 's gwine to lif' dat <roof>, now, i <tell> you." pembroke howard briefly sketched the state's case. he said he would show by a chain of circumstantial evidence without break or fault in it anywhere, that the principal prisoner at the bar committed the murder; that the motive was partly revenge, and partly a desire to take his own life out of jeopardy, and that his brother, by his presence, was a consenting accessory to the crime; a crime which was the basest known to the calendar of human misdeeds -assassination; that it was conceived by the blackest of hearts and consummated by the cowardliest of hands; a crime which had broken a loving sister's heart, blighted the happiness of a young nephew who was as dear as a son, brought inconsolable grief to many friends, and sorrow and loss to the whole community. the utmost penalty of the outraged law would be exacted, and upon the accused, now present at the bar, that penalty would unquestionably be executed. he would reserve further remark until his closing speech. he was strongly moved, and so also was the whole house; mrs. pratt and several other women were weeping when he sat down, and many an eye that was full of hate was riveted upon the unhappy prisoners. witness after witness was called by the state, and questioned at length; but the cross-questioning was brief. wilson knew they could furnish nothing valuable for his side. people were sorry for pudd'nhead; his budding career would get hurt by this trial. several witnesses swore they heard judge driscoll say in his public speech that the twins would be able to find their lost knife again when they needed it to assassinate somebody with. this was not news, but now it was seen to have been sorrowfully prophetic, and a profound sensation quivered through the hushed court-room when those dismal words were repeated. the public prosecutor rose and said that it was within his knowledge, through a conversation held with judge driscoll on the last day of his life, that counsel for the defense had brought him a challenge from the person charged at this bar with murder; that he had refused to fight with a confessed assassin -"that is, on the field of honor," but had added significantly, that he would be ready for him elsewhere. presumably the person here charged with murder was warned that he must kill or be killed the first time he should meet judge driscoll. if counsel for the defense chose to let the statement stand so, he would not call him to the witness stand. mr. wilson said he would offer no denial. [murmurs in the house -"it is getting worse and worse for wilson's case."] mrs. pratt testified that she heard no outcry, and did not know what woke her up, unless it was the sound of rapid footsteps approaching the front door. she jumped up and ran out in the hall just as she was, and heard the footsteps flying up the front steps and then following behind her as she ran to the sitting-room. there she found the accused standing over her murdered brother. [here she broke down and sobbed. sensation in the court.] resuming, she said the persons entering behind her were mr. rogers and mr. buckstone. cross-examined by wilson, she said the twins proclaimed their innocence; declared that they had been taking a walk, and had hurried to the house in response to a cry for help which was so loud and strong that they had heard it at a considerable distance; that they begged her and the gentlemen just mentioned to examine their hands and clothes -which was done, and no blood-stains found. confirmatory evidence followed from rogers and buckstone. the finding of the knife was verified, the advertisement minutely describing it and offering a reward for it was put in evidence, and its exact correspondence with that description proved. then followed a few minor details, and the case for the state was closed. wilson said that he had three witnesses, the misses clarkson, who would testify that they met a veiled young woman leaving judge driscoll's premises by the back gate a few minutes after the cries for help were heard, and that their evidence, taken with certain circumstantial evidence which he would call the court's attention to, would in his opinion convince the court that there was still one person concerned in this crime who had not yet been found, and also that a stay of proceedings ought to be granted, in justice to his clients, until that person should be discovered. as it was late, he would ask leave to defer the examination of his three witnesses until the next morning. the crowd poured out of the place and went flocking away in excited groups and couples, talking the events of the session over with vivacity and consuming interest, and everybody seemed to have had a satisfactory and enjoyable day except the accused, their counsel, and their old-lady friend. there was no cheer among these, and no substantial hope. in parting with the twins aunt patsy did attempt a good-night with a gay pretense of hope and cheer in it, but broke down without finishing. absolutely secure as tom considered himself to be, the opening solemnities of the trial had nevertheless oppressed him with a vague uneasiness, his being a nature sensitive to even the smallest alarms; but from the moment that the poverty and weakness of wilson's case lay exposed to the court, he was comfortable once more, even jubilant. he left the court-room sarcastically sorry for wilson. "the clarksons met an unknown woman in the back lane," he said to himself -"<that> is his case! i 'll give him a century to find her in -a couple of them if he likes. a woman who does n't exist any longer, and the clothes that gave her her sex burnt up and the ashes thrown away -oh, certainly, he 'll find <her> easy enough!" this reflection set him to admiring, for the hundredth time, the shrewd ingenuities by which he had insured himself against detection -more, against even suspicion. "nearly always in cases like this there is some little detail or other overlooked, some wee little track or trace left behind, and detection follows; but here there 's not even the faintest suggestion of a trace left. no more than a bird leaves when it flies through the air -yes, through the night, you may say. the man that can track a bird through the air in the dark and find that bird is the man to track me out and find the judge's assassin -no other need apply. and that is the job that has been laid out for poor pudd'nhead wilson, of all people in the world! lord, it will be pathetically funny to see him grubbing and groping after that woman that don't exist, and the right person sitting under his very nose all the time!" the more he thought the situation over, the more the humor of it struck him. finally he said, "i'll never let him hear the last of that woman. every time i catch him in company, to his dying day, i 'll ask him in the guileless affectionate way that used to gravel him so when i inquired how his unborn law-business was coming along, `got on her track yet -hey, pudd'nhead?'" he wanted to laugh, but that would not have answered; there were people about, and he was mourning for his uncle. he made up his mind that it would be good entertainment to look in on wilson that night and watch him worry over his barren law-case and goad him with an exasperating word or two of sympathy and commiseration now and then. wilson wanted no supper, he had no appetite. he got out all the finger-prints of girls and women in his collection of records and pored gloomily over them an hour or more, trying to convince himself that that troublesome girl's marks were there somewhere and had been overlooked. but it was not so. he drew back his chair, clasped his hands over his head, and gave himself up to dull and arid musings. tom driscoll dropped in, an hour after dark, and said with a pleasant laugh as he took a seat - "hello, we 've gone back to the amusements of our days of neglect and obscurity for consolation, have we?" and he took up one of the glass strips and held it against the light to inspect it. "come, cheer up, old man; there 's no use in losing your grip and going back to this child's-play merely because this big sun-spot is drifting across your shiny new disk. it 'll pass, and you 'll be all right again" -and he laid the glass down. "did you think you could win always?" "oh, no," said wilson, with a sigh, "i did n't expect that, but i can't believe luigi killed your uncle, and i feel very sorry for him. it makes me blue. and you would feel as i do, tom, if you were not prejudiced against those young fellows." "i don't know about that," and tom's countenance darkened, for his memory reverted to his kicking; "i owe them no good will, considering the brunette one's treatment of me that night. prejudice or no prejudice, pudd'nhead, i don't like them, and when they get their deserts you 're not going to find me sitting on the mourner's bench." he took up another strip of glass, and exclaimed - "why, here 's old roxy's label! are you going to ornament the royal palaces with nigger paw-marks, too? by the date here, i was seven months old when this was done, and she was nursing me and her little nigger cub. there 's a line straight across her thumb-print. how comes that?" and tom held out the piece of glass to wilson. "that is common," said the bored man, wearily. "scar of a cut or a scratch, usually" -and he took the strip of glass indifferently, and raised it toward the lamp. all the blood sunk suddenly out of his face; his hand quaked, and he gazed at the polished surface before him with the glassy stare of a corpse. "great heavens, what 's the matter with you, wilson? are you going to faint?" tom sprang for a glass of water and offered it, but wilson shrank shuddering from him and said - "no, no! -take it away!" his breast was rising and falling, and he moved his head about in a dull and wandering way, like a person who has been stunned. presently he said, "i shall feel better when i get to bed; i have been overwrought to-day; yes, and overworked for many days." "then i 'll leave you and let you get to your rest. good-night, old man." but as tom went out he could n't deny himself a small parting gibe: "don't take it so hard; a body can't win every time; you 'll hang somebody yet." wilson muttered to himself, "it is no lie to say i am sorry i have to begin with you, miserable dog though you are!" he braced himself up with a glass of cold whisky, and went to work again. he did not compare the new finger-marks unintentionally left by tom a few minutes before on roxy's glass with the tracings of the marks left on the knife-handle, there being no need of that (for his trained eye), but busied himself with another matter, muttering from time to time, "idiot that i was! -nothing but a <girl> would do me -a man in girl's clothes never occurred to me." first, he hunted out the plate containing the finger-prints made by tom when he was twelve years old, and laid it by itself; then he brought forth the marks made by tom's baby fingers when he was a suckling of seven months, and placed these two plates with the one containing this subject's newly (and unconsciously) made record. "now the series is complete," he said with satisfaction, and sat down to inspect these things and enjoy them. but his enjoyment was brief. he stared a considerable time at the three strips, and seemed stupefied with astonishment. at last he put them down and said, "i can't make it out at all -hang it, the baby's don't tally with the others!" he walked the floor for half an hour puzzling over his enigma, then he hunted out two other glass plates. he sat down and puzzled over these things a good while, but kept muttering, "it 's no use; i can't understand it. they don't tally right, and yet i 'll swear the names and dates are right, and so of course they <ought> to tally. i never labeled one of these things carelessly in my life. there is a most extraordinary mystery here." he was tired out, now, and his brains were beginning to clog. he said he would sleep himself fresh, and then see what he could do with this riddle. he slept through a troubled and unrestful hour, then unconsciousness began to shred away, and presently he rose drowsily to a sitting posture. "now what was that dream?" he said, trying to recall it; "what was that dream? -it seemed to unravel that puz -" he landed in the middle of the floor at a bound, without finishing the sentence, and ran and turned up his light and seized his "records." he took a single swift glance at them and cried out - "it 's so! heavens, what a revelation! and for twenty-three years no man has ever suspected it!" xxi he is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> <april i.> this is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> wilson put on enough clothes for business purposes and went to work under a high pressure of steam. he was awake all over. all sense of weariness had been swept away by the invigorating refreshment of the great and hopeful discovery which he had made. he made fine and accurate reproductions of a number of his "records," and then enlarged them on a scale of ten to one with his pantograph. he did these pantograph enlargements on sheets of white cardboard, and made each individual line of the bewildering maze of whorls or curves or loops which constituted the "pattern" of a "record" stand out bold and black by reinforcing it with ink. to the untrained eye the collection of delicate originals made by the human finger on the glass plates looked about alike; but when enlarged ten times they resembled the markings of a block of wood that has been sawed across the grain, and the dullest eye could detect at a glance, and at a distance of many feet, that no two of the patterns were alike. when wilson had at last finished his tedious and difficult work, he arranged its results according to a plan in which a progressive order and sequence was a principal feature; then he added to the batch several pantograph enlargements which he had made from time to time in bygone years. the night was spent and the day well advanced, now. by the time he had snatched a trifle of breakfast it was nine o'clock, and the court was ready to begin its sitting. he was in his place twelve minutes later with his "records." tom driscoll caught a slight glimpse of the records, and nudged his nearest friend and said, with a wink, "pudd'n-head's got a rare eye to business -thinks that as long as he can't win his case it 's at least a noble good chance to advertise his palace-window decorations without any expense." wilson was informed that his witnesses had been delayed, but would arrive presently; but he rose and said he should probably not have occasion to make use of their testimony. [an amused murmur ran through the room -"it 's a clean back-down! he gives up without hitting a lick!"] wilson continued -"i have other testimony -and better. [this compelled interest, and evoked murmurs of surprise that had a detectible ingredient of disappointment in them.] if i seem to be springing this evidence upon the court, i offer as my justification for this, that i did not discover its existence until late last night, and have been engaged in examining and classifying it ever since, until half an hour ago. i shall offer it presently; but first i wish to say a few preliminary words. "may it please the court, the claim given the front place, the claim most persistently urged, the claim most strenuously and i may even say aggressively and defiantly insisted upon by the prosecution, is this -that the person whose hand left the blood-stained finger-prints upon the handle of the indian knife is the person who committed the murder." wilson paused, during several moments, to give impressiveness to what he was about to say, and then added tranquilly, <"we grant that claim."> it was an electrical surprise. no one was prepared for such an admission. a buzz of astonishment rose on all sides, and people were heard to intimate that the overworked lawyer had lost his mind. even the veteran judge, accustomed as he was to legal ambushes and masked batteries in criminal procedure, was not sure that his ears were not deceiving him, and asked counsel what it was he had said. howard's impassive face betrayed no sign, but his attitude and bearing lost something of their careless confidence for a moment. wilson resumed: "we not only grant that claim, but we welcome it and strongly endorse it. leaving that matter for the present, we will now proceed to consider other points in the case which we propose to establish by evidence, and shall include that one in the chain in its proper place." he had made up his mind to try a few hardy guesses, in mapping out his theory of the origin and motive of the murder -guesses designed to fill up gaps in it -guesses which could help if they hit, and would probably do no harm if they did n't. "to my mind, certain circumstances of the case before the court seem to suggest a motive for the homicide quite different from the one insisted on by the state. it is my conviction that the motive was not revenge, but robbery. it has been urged that the presence of the accused brothers in that fatal room, just after notification that one of them must take the life of judge driscoll or lose his own the moment the parties should meet, clearly signifies that the natural instinct of self-preservation moved my clients to go there secretly and save count luigi by destroying his adversary. "then why did they stay there, after the deed was done? mrs. pratt had time, although she did not hear the cry for help, but woke up some moments later, to run to that room -and there she found these men standing, and making no effort to escape. if they were guilty, they ought to have been running out of the house at the same time that she was running to that room. if they had had such a strong instinct toward self-preservation as to move them to kill that unarmed man, what had become of it now, when it should have been more alert than ever? would any of us have remained there? let us not slander our intelligence to that degree. "much stress has been laid upon the fact that the accused offered a very large reward for the knife with which this murder was done; that no thief came forward to claim that extraordinary reward; that the latter fact was good circumstantial evidence that the claim that the knife had been stolen was a vanity and a fraud; that these details taken in connection with the memorable and apparently prophetic speech of the deceased concerning that knife, and the final discovery of that very knife in the fatal room where no living person was found present with the slaughtered man but the owner of the knife and his brother, form an indestructible chain of evidence which fixes the crime upon those unfortunate strangers. "but i shall presently ask to be sworn, and shall testify that there was a large reward offered for the <thief>, also; that it was offered secretly and not advertised; that this fact was indiscreetly mentioned -or at least tacitly admitted -in what was supposed to be safe circumstances, but may <not> have been. the thief may have been present himself. [tom driscoll had been looking at the speaker, but dropped his eyes at this point.] in that case he would retain the knife in his possession, not daring to offer it for sale, or for pledge in a pawn-shop. [there was a nodding of heads among the audience by way of admission that this was not a bad stroke.] i shall prove to the satisfaction of the jury that there <was> a person in judge driscoll's room several minutes before the accused entered it. [this produced a strong sensation; the last drowsy-head in the court-room roused up, now, and made preparation to listen.] if it shall seem necessary, i will prove by the misses clarkson that they met a veiled person -ostensibly a woman -coming out of the back gate a few minutes after the cry for help was heard. this person was not a woman, but a man dressed in woman's clothes." another sensation. wilson had his eye on tom when he hazarded this guess, to see what effect it would produce. he was satisfied with the result, and said to himself, "it was a success -he 's hit!" "the object of that person in that house was robbery, not murder. it is true that the safe was not open, but there was an ordinary tin cash-box on the table, with three thousand dollars in it. it is easily supposable that the thief was concealed in the house; that he knew of this box, and of its owner's habit of counting its contents and arranging his accounts at night -if he had that habit, which i do not assert, of course; -that he tried to take the box while its owner slept, but made a noise and was seized, and had to use the knife to save himself from capture; and that he fled without his booty because he heard help coming. "i have now done with my theory, and will proceed to the evidences by which i propose to try to prove its soundness." wilson took up several of his strips of glass. when the audience recognized these familiar mementos of pudd'nhead's old-time childish "puttering" and folly, the tense and funereal interest vanished out of their faces, and the house burst into volleys of relieving and refreshing laughter, and tom chirked up and joined in the fun himself; but wilson was apparently not disturbed. he arranged his records on the table before him, and said - "i beg the indulgence of the court while i make a few remarks in explanation of some evidence which i am about to introduce, and which i shall presently ask to be allowed to verify under oath on the witness stand. every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave certain physical marks which do not change their character, and by which he can always be identified -and that without shade of doubt or question. these marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak, and this autograph cannot be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or hide it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and the mutations of time. this signature is not his face -age can change that beyond recognition; it is not his hair, for that can fall out; it is not his height, for duplicates of that exist; it is not his form, for duplicates of that exist also, whereas this signature is each man's very own -there is no duplicate of it among the swarming populations of the globe! [the audience were interested once more.] "this autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations with which nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the feet. if you will look at the balls of your fingers, -you that have very sharp eyesight, -you will observe that these dainty curving lines lie close together, like those that indicate the borders of oceans in maps, and that they form various clearly defined patterns, such as arches, circles, long curves, whorls, etc., and that these patterns differ on the different fingers. [every man in the room had his hand up to the light, now, and his head canted to one side, and was minutely scrutinizing the balls of his fingers; there were whispered ejaculations of "why, it 's so -i never noticed that before!"] the patterns on the right hand are not the same as those on the left. [ejaculations of "why, that 's so, too!"] taken finger for finger, your patterns differ from your neighbor's. [comparisons were made all over the house -even the judge and jury were absorbed in this curious work.] the patterns of a twin's right hand are not the same as those on his left. one twin's patterns are never the same as his fellow-twin's patterns -the jury will find that the patterns upon the finger-balls of the accused follow this rule. [an examination of the twins' hands was begun at once.] you have often heard of twins who were so exactly alike that when dressed alike their own parents could not tell them apart. yet there was never a twin born into this world that did not carry from birth to death a sure identifier in this mysterious and marvelous natal autograph. that once known to you, his fellow-twin could never personate him and deceive you." wilson stopped and stood silent. inattention dies a quick and sure death when a speaker does that. the stillness gives warning that something is coming. all palms and finger-balls went down, now, all slouching forms straightened, all heads came up, all eyes were fastened upon wilson's face. he waited yet one, two, three moments, to let his pause complete and perfect its spell upon the house; then, when through the profound hush he could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, he put out his hand and took the indian knife by the blade and held it aloft where all could see the sinister spots upon its ivory handle; then he said, in a level and passionless voice - "upon this haft stands the assassin's natal autograph, written in the blood of that helpless and unoffending old man who loved you and whom you all loved. there is but one man in the whole earth whose hand can duplicate that crimson sign," -he paused and raised his eyes to the pendulum swinging back and forth, -"and please god we will produce that man in this room before the clock strikes noon!" stunned, distraught, unconscious of its own movement, the house half rose, as if expecting to see the murderer appear at the door, and a breeze of muttered ejaculations swept the place. "order in the court! -sit down!" this from the sheriff. he was obeyed, and quiet reigned again. wilson stole a glance at tom, and said to himself, "he is flying signals of distress, now; even people who despise him are pitying him; they think this is a hard ordeal for a young fellow who has lost his benefactor by so cruel a stroke -and they are right." he resumed his speech: "for more than twenty years i have amused my compulsory leisure with collecting these curious physical signatures in this town. at my house i have hundreds upon hundreds of them. each and every one is labeled with name and date; not labeled the next day or even the next hour, but in the very minute that the impression was taken. when i go upon the witness stand i will repeat under oath the things which i am now saying. i have the finger-prints of the court, the sheriff, and every member of the jury. there is hardly a person in this room, white or black, whose natal signature i cannot produce, and not one of them can so disguise himself that i cannot pick him out from a multitude of his fellow-creatures and unerringly identify him by his hands. and if he and i should live to be a hundred i could still do it! [the interest of the audience was steadily deepening, now.] "i have studied some of these signatures so much that i know them as well as the bank cashier knows the autograph of his oldest customer. while i turn my back now, i beg that several persons will be so good as to pass their fingers through their hair, and then press them upon one of the panes of the window near the jury, and that among them the accused may set <their> finger-marks. also, i beg that these experimenters, or others, will set their finger-marks upon another pane, and add again the marks of the accused, but not placing them in the same order or relation to the other signatures as before -for, by one chance in a million, a person might happen upon the right marks by pure guess-work <once>, therefore i wish to be tested twice." he turned his back, and the two panes were quickly covered with delicately-lined oval spots, but visible only to such persons as could get a dark background for them -the foliage of a tree, outside, for instance. then, upon call, wilson went to the window, made his examination, and said - "this is count luigi's right hand; this one, three signatures below, is his left. here is count angelo's right; down here is his left. now for the other pane: here and here are count luigi's, here and here are his brother's." he faced about. "am i right?" a deafening explosion of applause was the answer. the bench said - "this certainly approaches the miraculous!" wilson turned to the window again and remarked, pointing with his finger - "this is the signature of mr. justice robinson. [applause.] this, of constable blake. [applause.] this, of john mason, juryman. [applause.] this, of the sheriff. [applause.] i cannot name the others, but i have them all at home, named and dated, and could identify them all by my finger-print records." he moved to his place through a storm of applause -which the sheriff stopped, and also made the people sit down, for they were all standing and struggling to see, of course. court, jury, sheriff, and everybody had been too absorbed in observing wilson's performance to attend to the audience earlier. "now, then," said wilson, "i have here the natal autographs of two children -thrown up to ten times the natural size by the pantograph, so that any one who can see at all can tell the markings apart at a glance. we will call the children <a> and <b>. here are <a's> finger-marks, taken at the age of five months. here they are again, taken at seven months. [tom started.] they are alike, you see. here are <b's> at five months, and also at seven months. they, too, exactly copy each other, but the patterns are quite different from <a's>, you observe. i shall refer to these again presently, but we will turn them face down, now. "here, thrown up ten sizes, are the natal autographs of the two persons who are here before you accused of murdering judge driscoll. i made these pantograph copies last night, and will so swear when i go upon the witness stand. i ask the jury to compare them with the finger-marks of the accused upon the window-panes, and tell the court if they are the same." he passed a powerful magnifying-glass to the foreman. one juryman after another took the cardboard and the glass and made the comparison. then the foreman said to the judge - "your honor, we are all agreed that they are identical." wilson said to the foreman - "please turn that cardboard face down, and take this one, and compare it searchingly, by the magnifier, with the fatal signature upon the knife-handle, and report your findings to the court." again the jury made minute examination, and again reported - "we find them to be exactly identical, your honor." wilson turned toward the counsel for the prosecution, and there was a clearly recognizable note of warning in his voice when he said - "may it please the court, the state has claimed, strenuously and persistently, that the blood-stained finger-prints upon that knife-handle were left there by the assassin of judge driscoll. you have heard us grant that claim, and welcome it." he turned to the jury: "compare the finger-prints of the accused with the finger-prints left by the assassin -and report." the comparison began. as it proceeded, all movement and all sound ceased, and the deep silence of an absorbed and waiting suspense settled upon the house; and when at last the words came - <"they do not even resemble,"> a thunder-crash of applause followed and the house sprang to its feet, but was quickly repressed by official force and brought to order again. tom was altering his position every few minutes, now, but none of his changes brought repose nor any small trifle of comfort. when the house's attention was become fixed once more, wilson said gravely, indicating the twins with a gesture - "these men are innocent -i have no further concern with them. [another outbreak of applause began, but was promptly checked.] we will now proceed to find the guilty. [tom's eyes were starting from their sockets -yes, it was a cruel day for the bereaved youth, everybody thought.] we will return to the infant autographs of <a> and <b>. i will ask the jury to take these large pantograph facsimiles of <a's>, marked five months and seven months. do they tally? the foreman responded - "perfectly." "now examine this pantograph, taken at eight months, and also marked <a>. does it tally with the other two?" the surprised response was - <"no> -<they differ widely!"> "you are quite right. now take these two pantographs of <b's> autograph, marked five months and seven months. do they tally with each other?" "yes -perfectly." "take this third pantograph marked <b>, eight months. does it tally with <b's> other two?" <"by no means!"> "do you know how to account for those strange discrepancies? i will tell you. for a purpose unknown to us, but probably a selfish one, somebody changed those children in the cradle." this produced a vast sensation, naturally; roxana was astonished at this admirable guess, but not disturbed by it. to guess the exchange was one thing, to guess who did it quite another. pudd'nhead wilson could do wonderful things, no doubt, but he could n't do impossible ones. safe? she was perfectly safe. she smiled privately. "between the ages of seven months and eight months those children were changed in the cradle" -he made one of his effect-collecting pauses, and added -"and the person who did it is in this house!" roxy's pulses stood still! the house was thrilled as with an electric shock, and the people half rose as if to seek a glimpse of the person who had made that exchange. tom was growing limp; the life seemed oozing out of him. wilson resumed: "<a> was put into <b's> cradle in the nursery; <b> was transferred to the kitchen and became a negro and a slave [sensation -confusion of angry ejaculations] -but within a quarter of an hour he will stand before you white and free! [burst of applause, checked by the officers.] from seven months onward until now, <a> has still been a usurper, and in my finger-records he bears <b's> name. here is his pantograph at the age of twelve. compare it with the assassin's signature upon the knife-handle. do they tally?" the foreman answered - <"to the minutest detail!"> wilson said, solemnly - "the murderer of your friend and mine -york driscoll of the generous hand and the kindly spirit -sits in among you. valet de chambre, negro and slave, -falsely called thomas a becket driscoll, -make upon the window the finger-prints that will hang you!" tom turned his ashen face imploringly toward the speaker, made some impotent movements with his white lips, then slid limp and lifeless to the floor. wilson broke the awed silence with the words - "there is no need. he has confessed." roxy flung herself upon her knees, covered her face with her hands, and out through her sobs the words struggled - "de lord have mercy on me, po' misable sinner dat i is!" the clock struck twelve. the court rose; the new prisoner, hand-cuffed, was removed. conclusion it is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> <october> 12, <the discovery.> it was wonderful to find america, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it. -<pudd'nhead wilson's calendar.> the town sat up all night to discuss the amazing events of the day and swap guesses as to when tom's trial would begin. troop after troop of citizens came to serenade wilson, and require a speech, and shout themselves hoarse over every sentence that fell from his lips -for all his sentences were golden, now, all were marvelous. his long fight against hard luck and prejudice was ended; he was a made man for good. and as each of these roaring gangs of enthusiasts marched away, some remorseful member of it was quite sure to raise his voice and say - "and this is the man the likes of us have called a pudd'nhead for more than twenty years. he has resigned from that position, friends." "yes, but it is n't vacant -we 're elected." the twins were heroes of romance, now, and with rehabilitated reputations. but they were weary of western adventure, and straightway retired to europe. roxy's heart was broken. the young fellow upon whom she had inflicted twenty-three years of slavery continued the false heir's pension of thirty-five dollars a month to her, but her hurts were too deep for money to heal; the spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land. in her church and its affairs she found her only solace. the real heir suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a most embarrassing situation. he could neither read nor write, and his speech was the basest dialect of the negro quarter. his gait, his attitudes, his gestures, his bearing, his laugh -all were vulgar and uncouth; his manners were the manners of a slave. money and fine clothes could not mend these defects or cover them up; they only made them the more glaring and the more pathetic. the poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the white man's parlor, and felt at home and at peace nowhere but in the kitchen. the family pew was a misery to him, yet he could nevermore enter into the solacing refuge of the "nigger gallery" -that was closed to him for good and all. but we cannot follow his curious fate further -that would be a long story. the false heir made a full confession and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. but now a complication came up. the percy driscoll estate was in such a crippled shape when its owner died that it could pay only sixty per cent. of its great indebtedness, and was settled at that rate. but the creditors came forward, now, and complained that inasmuch as through an error for which <they> were in no way to blame the false heir was not inventoried at that time with the rest of the property, great wrong and loss had thereby been inflicted upon them. they rightly claimed that "tom" was lawfully their property and had been so for eight years; that they had already lost sufficiently in being deprived of his services during that long period, and ought not to be required to add anything to that loss; that if he had been delivered up to them in the first place, they would have sold him and he could not have murdered judge driscoll; therefore it was not he that had really committed the murder, the guilt lay with the erroneous inventory. everybody saw that there was reason in this. everybody granted that if "tom" were white and free it would be unquestionably right to punish him -it would be no loss to anybody; but to shut up a valuable slave for life -that was quite another matter. as soon as the governor understood the case, he pardoned tom at once, and the creditors sold him down the river. . a history of the warfare of science with theology in christendom, by andrew dickson white. digitized by cardinalis etext press, c.e.k. posted to wiretap in july 1993, as wartheo.txt. the table of contents may still contain some errors, thought the body should be relatively free of them. footnotes and index are not included, but their markings have been retained with page # references: [#] for volume i, and [[#]] for those in volume ii. this text is in the public domain. a history of the warfare of science with theology in christendom by andrew dickson white ll.d. (yale), l.h.d. (columbia), ph.dr. (jena) late president and professor of history at cornell university two volumes combined new york d. appleton and company 1898 copyright, 1896 by d. appleton and company. to the memory of ezra cornell i dedicate this book. thoughts that great hearts once broke for, we breathe cheaply in the common air.--lowell dicipulus est prioris posterior dies.--publius syrus truth is the daughter of time.--bacon the truth shall make you free.--st. john, viii, 32. introduction my book is ready for the printer, and as i begin this preface my eye lights upon the crowd of russian peasants at work on the neva under my windows. with pick and shovel they are letting the rays of the april sun into the great ice barrier which binds together the modern quays and the old granite fortress where lie the bones of the romanoff czars. this barrier is already weakened; it is widely decayed, in many places thin, and everywhere treacherous; but it is, as a whole, so broad, so crystallized about old boulders, so imbedded in shallows, so wedged into crannies on either shore, that it is a great danger. the waters from thousands of swollen streamlets above are pressing behind it; wreckage and refuse are piling up against it; every one knows that it must yield. but there is danger that it may resist the pressure too long and break suddenly, wrenching even the granite quays from their foundations, bringing desolation to a vast population, and leaving, after the subsidence of the flood, a widespread residue of slime, a fertile breeding-bed for the germs of disease. but the patient _mujiks_ are doing the right thing. the barrier, exposed more and more to the warmth of spring by the scores of channels they are making, will break away gradually, and the river will flow on beneficent and beautiful. my work in this book is like that of the russian _mujik_ on the neva. i simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to mediaeval conceptions of christianity, and which still lingers among us--a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole normal evolution of society. for behind this barrier also the flood is rapidly rising --the flood of increased knowledge and new thought; and this barrier also, though honeycombed and in many places thin, creates a danger--danger of a sudden breaking away, distressing and calamitous, sweeping before it not only out worn creeds and noxious dogmas, but cherished principles and ideals, and even wrenching out most precious religious and moral foundations of the whole social and political fabric. my hope is to aid--even if it be but a little--in the gradual and healthful dissolving away of this mass of unreason, that the stream of "religion pure and undefiled" may flow on broad and clear, a blessing to humanity. and now a few words regarding the evolution of this book. it is something over a quarter of a century since i labored with ezra cornell in founding the university which bears his honored name. our purpose was to establish in the state of new york an institution for advanced instruction and research, in which science, pure and applied, should have an equal place with literature; in which the study of literature, ancient and modern, should be emancipated as much as possible from pedantry; and which should be free from various useless trammels and vicious methods which at that period hampered many, if not most, of the american universities and colleges. we had especially determined that the institution should be under the control of no political party and of no single religious sect, and with mr. cornell's approval i embodied stringent provisions to this effect in the charter. it had certainly never entered into the mind of either of us that in all this we were doing anything irreligious or unchristian. mr. cornell was reared a member of the society of friends; he had from his fortune liberally aided every form of christian effort which he found going on about him, and among the permanent trustees of the public library which he had already founded, he had named all the clergymen of the town--catholic and protestant. as for myself, i had been bred a churchman, had recently been elected a trustee of one church college, and a professor in another; those nearest and dearest to me were devoutly religious; and, if i may be allowed to speak of a matter so personal to my self, my most cherished friendships were among deeply religious men and women, and my greatest sources of enjoyment were ecclesiastical architecture, religious music, and the more devout forms of poetry. so, far from wishing to injure christianity, we both hoped to promote it; but we did not confound religion with sectarianism, and we saw in the sectarian character of american colleges and universities as a whole, a reason for the poverty of the advanced instruction then given in so many of them. it required no great acuteness to see that a system of control which, in selecting a professor of mathematics or language or rhetoric or physics or chemistry, asked first and above all to what sect or even to what wing or branch of a sect he belonged, could hardly do much to advance the moral, religious, or intellectual development of mankind. the reasons for the new foundation seemed to us, then, so cogent that we expected the co-operation of all good citizens, and anticipated no opposition from any source. as i look back across the intervening years, i know not whether to be more astonished or amused at our simplicity. opposition began at once. in the state legislature it confronted us at every turn, and it was soon in full blaze throughout the state--from the good protestant bishop who proclaimed that all professors should be in holy orders, since to the church alone was given the command, "go, teach all nations," to the zealous priest who published a charge that goldwin smith--a profoundly christian scholar --had come to cornell in order to inculcate the "infidelity of the _westminster review_"; and from the eminent divine who went from city to city, denouncing the "atheistic and pantheistic tendencies" of the proposed education, to the perfervid minister who informed a denominational synod that agassiz, the last great opponent of darwin, and a devout theist, was "preaching darwinism and atheism" in the new institution. as the struggle deepened, as hostile resolutions were introduced into various ecclesiastical bodies, as honored clergymen solemnly warned their flocks first against the "atheism," then against the "infidelity," and finally against the "indifferentism" of the university, as devoted pastors endeavoured to dissuade young men from matriculation, i took the defensive, and, in answer to various attacks from pulpits and religious newspapers, attempted to allay the fears of the public. "sweet reasonableness" was fully tried. there was established and endowed in the university perhaps the most effective christian pulpit, and one of the most vigorous branches of the christian association, then in the united states; but all this did nothing to ward off the attack. the clause in the charter of the university forbidding it to give predominance to the doctrines of any sect, and above all the fact that much prominence was given to instruction in various branches of science, seemed to prevent all compromise, and it soon became clear that to stand on the defensive only made matters worse. then it was that there was borne in upon me a sense of the real difficulty-the antagonism between the theological and scientific view of the universe and of education in relation to it; therefore it was that, having been invited to deliver a lecture in the great hall of the cooper institute at new york, i took as my subject _the battlefields of science_, maintaining this thesis which follows: _in all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and science, and invariably; and, on the other hand, all untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed for the time to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good both of religion and science._ the lecture was next day published in the _new york tribune_ at the request of horace greeley, its editor, who was also one of the cornell university trustees. as a result of this widespread publication and of sundry attacks which it elicited, i was asked to maintain my thesis before various university associations and literary clubs; and i shall always remember with gratitude that among those who stood by me and presented me on the lecture platform with words of approval and cheer was my revered instructor, the rev. dr. theodore dwight woolsey, at that time president of yale college. my lecture grew--first into a couple of magazine articles, and then into a little book called _the warfare of science_, for which, when republished in england, prof. john tyndall wrote a preface. sundry translations of this little book were published, but the most curious thing in its history is the fact that a very friendly introduction to the swedish translation was written by a lutheran bishop. meanwhile prof. john w. draper published his book on _the conflict between science and religion_, a work of great ability, which, as i then thought, ended the matter, so far as my giving it further attention was concerned. but two things led me to keep on developing my own work in this field: first, i had become deeply interested in it, and could not refrain from directing my observation and study to it; secondly, much as i admired draper's treatment of the questions involved, his point of view and mode of looking at history were different from mine. he regarded the struggle as one between science and religion. i believed then, and am convinced now, that it was a struggle between science and dogmatic theology. more and more i saw that it was the conflict between two epochs in the evolution of human thought--the theological and the scientific. so i kept on, and from time to time published _new chapters in the warfare of science_ as magazine articles in _the popular science monthly_. this was done under many difficulties. for twenty years, as president of cornell university and professor of history in that institution, i was immersed in the work of its early development. besides this, i could not hold myself entirely aloof from public affairs, and was three times sent by the government of the united states to do public duty abroad: first as a commissioner to santo domingo, in 1870; afterward as minister to germany, in 1879; finally, as minister to russia, in 1892; and was also called upon by the state of new york to do considerable labor in connection with international exhibitions at philadelphia and at paris. i was also obliged from time to time to throw off by travel the effects of overwork. the variety of residence and occupation arising from these causes may perhaps explain some peculiarities in this book which might otherwise puzzle my reader. while these journeyings have enabled me to collect materials over a very wide range--in the new world, from quebec to santo domingo and from boston to mexico, san francisco, and seattle, and in the old world from trondhjem to cairo and from st. petersburg to palermo-they have often obliged me to write under circumstances not very favorable: sometimes on an atlantic steamer, sometimes on a nile boat, and not only in my own library at cornell, but in those of berlin, helsingfors, munich, florence, and the british museum. this fact will explain to the benevolent reader not only the citation of different editions of the same authority in different chapters, but some iterations which in the steady quiet of my own library would not have been made. it has been my constant endeavour to write for the general reader, avoiding scholastic and technical terms as much as possible and stating the truth simply as it presents itself to me. that errors of omission and commission will be found here and there is probable--nay, certain; but the substance of the book will, i believe, be found fully true. i am encouraged in this belief by the fact that, of the three bitter attacks which this work in its earlier form has already encountered, one was purely declamatory, objurgatory, and hortatory, and the others based upon ignorance of facts easily pointed out. and here i must express my thanks to those who have aided me. first and above all to my former student and dear friend, prof. george lincoln burr, of cornell university, to whose contributions, suggestions, criticisms, and cautions i am most deeply indebted; also to my friends u. g. weatherly, formerly travelling fellow of cornell, and now assistant professor in the university of indiana,--prof. and mrs. earl barnes and prof. william h. hudson, of stanford university,--and prof. e. p. evans, formerly of the university of michigan, but now of munich, for extensive aid in researches upon the lines i have indicated to them, but which i could never have prosecuted without their co-operation. in libraries at home and abroad they have all worked for me most effectively, and i am deeply grateful to them. this book is presented as a sort of _festschrift_--a tribute to cornell university as it enters the second quarter-century of its existence, and probably my last tribute. the ideas for which so bitter a struggle was made at its foundation have triumphed. its faculty, numbering over one hundred and, fifty; its students, numbering but little short of two thousand; its noble buildings and equipment; the munificent gifts, now amounting to millions of dollars, which it has received from public-spirited men and women; the evidences of public confidence on all sides; and, above all, the adoption of its cardinal principles and main features by various institutions of learning in other states, show this abundantly. but there has been a triumph far greater and wider. everywhere among the leading modern nations the same general tendency is seen. during the quarter-century just past the control of public instruction, not only in america but in the leading nations of europe, has passed more and more from the clergy to the laity. not only are the presidents of the larger universities in the united states, with but one or two exceptions, laymen, but the same thing is seen in the old european strongholds of metaphysical theology. at my first visit to oxford and cambridge, forty years ago, they were entirely under ecclesiastical control. now, all this is changed. an eminent member of the present british government has recently said, "a candidate for high university position is handicapped by holy orders." i refer to this with not the slightest feeling of hostility toward the clergy, for i have none; among them are many of my dearest friends; no one honours their proper work more than i; but the above fact is simply noted as proving the continuance of that evolution which i have endeavoured to describe in this series of monographs--an evolution, indeed, in which the warfare of theology against science has been one of the most active and powerful agents. my belief is that in the field left to them--their proper field--the clergy will more and more, as they cease to struggle against scientific methods and conclusions, do work even nobler and more beautiful than anything they have heretofore done. and this is saying much. my conviction is that science, though it has evidently conquered dogmatic theology based on biblical texts and ancient modes of thought, will go hand in hand with religion; and that, although theological control will continue to diminish, religion, as seen in the recognition of "a power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," and in the love of god and of our neighbor, will steadily grow stronger and stronger, not only in the american institutions of learning but in the world at large. thus may the declaration of micah as to the requirements of jehovah, the definition by st. james of "pure religion and undefiled," and, above all, the precepts and ideals of the blessed founder of christianity himself, be brought to bear more and more effectively on mankind. i close this preface some days after its first lines were written. the sun of spring has done its work on the neva; the great river flows tranquilly on, a blessing and a joy; the _mujiks_ are forgotten. a. d. w. legation of the united states, st. petersburg, april 14,1894. p. s.--owing to a wish to give more thorough revision to some parts of my work, it has been withheld from the press until the present date. a. d. w. cornell university, ithaca, n. y., august 15, 1895. contents of the first volume. chapter i. from creation to evolution. i. the visible universe. ancient and medieval views regarding the manner of creation regarding the matter of creation regarding the time of creation regarding the date of creation regarding the creator regarding light and darkness rise of the conception of an evolution: among the chaldeans, the hebrews, the greeks, the romans its survival through the middle ages, despite the disfavour of the church its development in modern times.--the nebular hypothesis and its struggle with theology the idea of evolution at last victorious our sacred books themselves an illustration of its truth the true reconciliation of science and theology ii. theological teachings regarding the animals and man. ancient and medieval representations of the creation of man literal acceptance of the book of genesis by the christian fathers by the reformers by modern theologians, catholic and protestant theological reasoning as to the divisions of the animal kingdom the physiologus, the bestiaries, the exempila beginnings of sceptical observation development of a scientific method in the study of nature breaking down of the theological theory of creation iii. theological and scientific theories of an evolution in animated nature. ideas of evolution among the ancients in the early church in the medieval church development of these ideas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries the work of de maillet of linneus of buffon contributions to the theory of evolution at the close of the eighteenth century the work of treviranus and lamarck geoffroy saint-hilaire and cuvier development of the theory up to the middle of the nineteenth century the contributions of darwin and wallace the opposition of agassiz iv. the final effort of theology. attacks on darwin and his theories in england in america formation of sacro-scientific organizations to combat the theory of evolution the attack in france in germany conversion of lyell to the theory of evolution the attack on darwin's descent of man difference between this and the former attack hostility to darwinism in america change in the tone of the controversy.--attempts at compromise dying-out of opposition to evolution last outbursts of theological hostility final victory of evolution chapter ii. geography i. the form of the earth. primitive conception of the earth as flat in chaldea and egypt in persia among the hebrews evolution, among the greeks, of the idea of its sphericity opposition of the early church evolution of a sacred theory, drawn from the bible its completion by cosmas indicopleustes its influence on christian thought survival of the idea of the earth's sphericity--its acceptance by isidore and bede its struggle and final victory ii. the delineation of the earth. belief of every ancient people that its own central place was the centre of the earth hebrew conviction that the earth's centre was at jerusalem acceptance of this view by christianity influence of other hebrew conceptions--gog and magog, the "four winds," the waters "on an heap" iii. the inhabitants of the earth. the idea of antipodes its opposition by the christian church--gregory nazianzen, lactantius, basil, ambrose, augustine, procopius of gaza, cosmas, isidore virgil of salzburg's assertion of it in the eighth century its revival by william of conches and albert the great in the thirteenth surrender of it by nicolas d'oresme fate of peter of abano and cecco d' ascoli timidity of pierre d'ailly and tostatus theological hindrance of columbus pope alexander vi's demarcation line cautious conservatism.of gregory reysch magellan and the victory of science iv. the size of the earth. scientific attempts at measuring the earth the sacred solution of the problem fortunate influence of the blunder upon columbus v. the character of the earth's surface. servetus and the charge of denying the fertility of judea contrast between the theological and the religious spirit in their effects on science chapter iii. astronomy. i. the old sacred theory of the universe. the early church's conviction of the uselessness of astronomy the growth of a sacred theory--origen, the gnostics, philastrius, cosmas, isidore the geocentric, or ptolemaic, theory its origin, and its acceptance by the christian world development of the new sacred system of astronomy--the pseudo-dionysius, peter lombard. thomas aquinas its popularization by dante its details its persistence to modern times ii. the heliocentric theory. its rise among the greeks--pythagoras, philolaus, aristarchus its suppression by the charge of blasphemy its loss from sight for six hundred years, then for a thousand its revival by nicholas de cusa and nicholas copernicus its toleration as a hypothesis its prohibition as soon as galileo teaches it as a truth consequent timidity of scholars--acosta, apian protestantism not less zealous in opposition than catholicism--luther melanchthon, calvin, turretin this opposition especially persistent in england--hutchinson, pike, horne, horsley, forbes, owen, wesley resulting interferences with freedom of teaching giordano bruno's boldness and his fate the truth demonstrated by the telescope of galileo iii. the war upon galileo. concentration of the war on this new champion the first attack fresh attacks--elci, busaeus, caccini, lorini, bellarmin use of epithets attempts to entrap galileo his summons before the inquisition at rome the injunction to silence, and the condemnation of the theory of the earth's motion, the work of copernicus placed on the index galileo's seclusion renewed attacks upon galileo--inchofer, fromundus iv. victory of the church over galileo publication of his dialogo, hostility of pope urban viii galileo's second trial by the inquisition his abjuration later persecution of him measures to complete the destruction of the copernican theory persecution of galileo's memory protestant hostility to the new astronomy and its champions v. results of the victory over galileo. rejoicings of churchmen over the victory the silencing of descartes persecution of campanella and of kepler persistence and victory of science dilemma of the theologians vain attempts to postpone the surrender vi. the retreat of the church after its victory over galileo. the easy path for the protestant theologians the difficulties of the older church.--the papal infallibility fully committed against the copernican theory attempts at evasion--first plea: that galileo was condemned not for affirming the earth's motion, but for supporting it from scripture its easy refutation second plea: that he was condemned not for heresy, but for contumacy folly of this assertion third plea: that it was all a quarrel between aristotelian professors and those favouring the experimental method fourth plea: that the condemnation of galileo was "provisory" fifth plea: that he was no more a victim of catholics than of protestants efforts to blacken galileo's character efforts to suppress the documents of his trial their fruitlessness sixth plea: that the popes as popes had never condemned his theory its confutation from their own mouths abandonment of the contention by honest catholics two efforts at compromise--newman, de bonald effect of all this on thinking men the fault not in catholicism more than in protestantism--not in religion, but in theology chapter iv. from "signs and wonders" to law in the heavens. i. the theological view. early beliefs as to comets, meteors, and eclipses their inheritance by jews and christians the belief regarding comets especially harmful as a source of superstitious terror its transmission through the middle ages its culmination under pope calixtus iii beginnings of scepticism--coperuicus, paracelsus, scaliger firmness of theologians, catholicand protestant, in its support ii. theological efforts to crush the scientific view. the effort through the universities.--the effort through the pulpits heerbrand at tubingen and dieterich at marburg maestlin at heidelberg buttner, vossius, torreblanca, fromundus father augustin de angelis at rome reinzer at linz celichius at magdeburg conrad dieterich's sermon at ulm erni and others in switzerland comet doggerel echoes from new england--danforth, morton, increase mather iii. the invasion of scepticism. rationalism of cotton mather, and its cause blaise de vigenere erastus bekker, lubienitzky, pierre petit bayle fontenelle the scientific movement beneath all this iv. theological efforts at compromise.--the final victory of science. the admission that some comets are supralunar difference between scientific and theological reasoning development of the reasoning of tycho and kepler--cassini, hevel, doerfel, bernouilli, newton completion of the victory by halley and clairaut survivals of the superstition--joseph de maistre, forster arago'sstatistics the theories of whiston and burnet, and their influence in germany the superstition ended in america by the lectures of winthrop helpful influence of john wesley effects of the victory chapter v. from genesis to geology. i. growth of theological explanations germs of geological truth among the greeks and romans attitude of the church toward science geological theories of the early theologians attitude of the schoolmen contributions of the arabian schools theories of the earlier protestants influence of the revival of learning ii. efforts to suppress the scientific view. revival of scientific methods buffon and the sorbonne beringer's treatise on fossils protestant opposition to the new geology---the works of burnet, whiston, wesley, clark, watson, arnold, cockburn, and others iii. the first great effort of compromise, based on the flood of noah. the theory that fossils were produced by the deluge its acceptance by both catholics and protestants--luther, calmet burnet, whiston, woodward, mazurier, torrubia, increase mather scheuchzer voltaire's theory of fossils vain efforts of enlightened churchmen in behalf of the scientific view steady progress of science--the work of cuvier and brongniart granvile penn's opposition the defection of buckland and lyell to the scientific side surrender of the theologians remnants of the old belief death-blow given to the traditional theory of the deluge by the discovery of the chaldean accounts results of the theological opposition to science iv. final efforts at compromise--the victory of scienee complete. efforts of carl von raumer, wagner, and others the new testimony of the caves and beds of drift as to the antiquity of man gosse's effort to save the literal interpretation of genesis efforts of continental theologians gladstone's attempt at a compromise its demolition by huxley by canon driver dean stanley on the reconciliation of science and scripture chapter vi. the antiquity of man, egyptology, and assyriology. i. the sacred chronology. two fields in which science has gained a definite victory over theology opinious of the church fathers on the antiquity of man the chronology of isidore of bede of the medieval jewish scholars the views of the reformers on the antiquity of man of the roman church of archbishop usher influence of egyptology on the belief in man's antiquity la peyrere's theory of the pre-adamites opposition in england to the new chronology ii. the new chronology. influence of the new science of egyptology on biblical chronology manetho's history of egypt and the new chronology derived from it evidence of the antiquity of man furnished by the monuments of egypt by her art by her science by other elements of civilization by the remains found in the bed of the nile evidence furnished by the study of assyriology chapter vii. the antiquity of man and prehistoric archaeology. i. the thunder-stones. early beliefs regarding "thunder-stones" theories of mercati and tollius regarding them their identification with the implements of prehistoric man remains of man found in caverns unfavourable influence on scientific activity of the political conditions of the early part of the nineteenth century change effected by the french revolution of to rallying of the reactionary clerical influence against science ii. the flint weapons and implements. boucher de perthes's contributions to the knowledge of prehistoric man his conclusions confirmed by lyell and others cave explorations of lartet and christy evidence of man's existence furnished by rude carvings cave explorations in the british islands evidence of man's existence in the drift period in the early quaternary and in the tertiary periods chapter viii. the "fall of man" and anthropology. the two antagonistic views regarding the life of man on the earth the theory of "the fall" among ancient peoples inheritance of this view by the christian church appearance among the greeks and romans of the theory of a rise of man its disappearance during the middle ages its development since the seventeenth century the first blow at the doctrine of "the fall" comes from geology influence of anthropology on the belief in this doctrine the finding of human skulls in quaternary deposits their significance results obtained from the comparative study of the remains of human handiwork discovery of human remains in shell-heaps on the shores of the baltic sea in peat-beds the lake-dwellers indications of the upward direction of man's development mr. southall's attack on the theory of man's antiquity an answer to it discovery of prehistoric human remains in egypt hamard's attack on the new scientific conclusions the survival of prehistoric implements in religious rites strength of the argument against the theory of "the fall of man" chapter ix. the "fall of man" and ethnology. the beginnings of the science of comparative ethnology its testimony to the upward tendency of man from low beginning theological efforts to break its force--de maistre and de bonald whately's attempt the attempt of the duke of argyll evidence of man's upward tendency derived from comparative philology from comparative literature and folklore from comparative ethnography from biology chapter x. the "fall of man" and history. proof of progress given by the history of art proofs from general history development of civilization even under unfavourable circumstances to, advancement even through catastrophes and the decay of civilizations progress not confined to man's material condition theological struggle against the new scientific view persecution of prof. winchell of dr. woodrow other interferences with freedom of teaching the great harm thus done to religion rise of a better spirit the service rendered to religion by anthropology chapter xi. from "the prince of the power of the air" to meteorology. i. growth of a theological theory. the beliefs of classical antiquity regarding storms, thunder, and lightning development of a sacred science of meteorology by the fathers of the church theories of cosmas indicopleustes of isidore of seville of bede of rabanus maurus rational views of honorius of autun orthodox theories of john of san geminiano attempt of albert the great to reconcile the speculations of aristotle with the theological views the monkish encyclopedists theories regarding the rainbow and the causes of storms meteorological phenomena attributed to the almighty ii. diabolical agency in storms. meteorological phenomena attributed to the devil--"the prince of the power of the air" propagation of this belief by the medieval theologians its transmission to both catholics and protestants--eck, luther the great work of delrio guacci's compendium the employment of prayer against "the powers of the air" of exoreisms of fetiches and processions of consecrated church bells iii. the agency of witches. the fearful results of the witch superstition its growth out of the doctrine of evil agency in atmospheric phenomena archbishop agobard's futile attempt to dispel it its sanction by the popes its support by confessions extracted by torture part taken in the persecution by dominicans and jesuits opponents of the witch theory--pomponatius, paracelsus, agrippa of nettesheim jean bodin's defence of the superstition fate of cornelius loos of dietrich flade efforts of spee to stem the persecution his posthumous influence upholders of the orthodox view--bishop binsfeld, remigius vain protests of wier persecution of bekker for opposing the popular belief effect of the reformation in deepening the superstition the persecution in great britain and america development of a scientific view of the heavens final efforts to revive the old belief iv. franklin's lightning-rod. franklin's experiments witlh the kite their effect on the old belief efforts at compromise between the scientific and theological theories successful use of the lightning-rod religious scruples against it in america in england in austria in italy victory of the scientific theory this victory exemplified in the case of the church of the monastery of lerins in the case of dr. moorhouse in the case of the missouri droughts chapter xii. from magic to chemistry and physics. i. the supremacy of magic. primitive tendency to belief in magic the greek conception of natura laws influence of plato and aristotle on the growth of science effect of the establishment of christianity on the development of the physical sciences the revival of thought in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries albert the great vincent of beauvais thomas aquinas roger bacon's beginning of the experimental method brought to nought the belief that science is futile gives place to the belief that it is dangerous the two kinds of magic rarity of persecution for magic before the christian era the christian theory of devils constantine's laws against magic increasing terror of magic and witchcraft papal enactments against them persistence of the belief in magic its effect on the development of science roger bacon opposition of secular rulers to science john baptist porta the opposition to scientific societies in italy in england the effort to turn all thought from science to religion the development of mystic theology its harmful influence on science mixture of theological with scientific speculation this shown in the case of melanchthon in that of francis bacon theological theory of gases growth of a scientific theory basil valentine and his contributions to chemistry triumph of the scientific theory ii. the triumph of chemistry and physics. new epoch in chemistry begun by boyle attitude of the mob toward science effect on science of the reaction following the french revolution: development of chemistry since the middle of the nineteenth century development of physics modern opposition to science in catholic countries attack on scientific education in france in england in prussia revolt against the subordination of education to science effect of the international exhibition of ii at london of the endowment of state colleges in america by the morrill act of 1862 the results to religion chapter xiii. from miracles to medicine. i. the early and sacred theories of disease. naturalness of the idea of supernatural intervention in causing and curing disease prevalence of this idea in ancient civilizations beginnings of a scientific theory of medicine the twofold influence of christianity on the healing art ii. growth of legends of healing.--the life of xavier as a typical example. growth of legends of miracles about the lives of great benefactors of humanity sketch of xavier's career absence of miraculous accounts in his writings and those of his contemporaries direct evidence that xavier wrought no miracles growth of legends of miracles as shown in the early biographies of him as shown in the canonization proceedings naturalness of these legends iii. the mediaeval miracles of healing check medical science. character of the testimony regarding miracles connection of mediaeval with pagan miracles their basis of fact various kinds of miraculous cures atmosphere of supernaturalism thrown about all cures influence of this atmosphere on medical science iv. the attribution of disease to satanic influence.-"pastoral medicine" checks scientific effort. theological theory as to the cause of disease influence of self-interest on "pastoral medicine" development of fetichism at cologne and elsewhere other developments of fetich cure v. theological opposition to anatomical studies. medieval belief in the unlawfulness of meddling with the bodies of the dead dissection objected to on the ground that "the church abhors the shedding of blood" the decree of boniface viii and its results vi. new beginnings of medical science. galen scanty development of medical science in the church among jews and mohammedans promotion of medical science by various christian laymen of the middle ages by rare men of science by various ecclesiastics vii. theological discouragement of medicine. opposition to seeking cure from disease by natural means requirement of ecclesiastical advice before undertaking medical treatment charge of magic and mohammedanism against men of science effect of ecclesiastical opposition to medicine the doctrine of signatures the doctrine of exorcism theological opposition to surgery development of miracle and fetich cures fashion in pious cures medicinal properties of sacred places theological argument in favour of miraculous cures prejudice against jewish physicians viii. fetich cures under protestantism.--the royal touch. luther's theory of disease the royal touch cures wrought by charles ii by james ii by william iii by queen anne by louis xiv universal acceptance of these miracles ix. the scientific struggle for anatomy. occasional encouragement of medical science in the middle ages new impulse given by the revival of learning and the age of discovery paracelsus and mundinus vesalius, the founder of the modem science of anatomy.--his career and fate x. theological opposition to inoculation, vaccination, and the use of anaesthetics. theological opposition to inoculation in europe in america theological opposition to vaccination recent hostility to vaccination in england in canada, during the smallpox epidemic theological opposition to the use of cocaine to the use of quinine theological opposition to the use of anesthetics xi. final breaking away of the theological theory in medicine. changes incorporated in the american book of common prayer effect on the theological view of the growing knowledge of the relation between imagination and medicine effect of the discoveries in hypnotism in bacteriology relation between ascertained truth and the "ages of faith" chapter xiv. from fetich to hygiene. i. the theological view of epidemics and sanitation. the recurrence of great pestilences their early ascription to the wrath or malice of unseen powers their real cause want of hygienic precaution theological apotheosis of filth sanction given to the sacred theory of pestilence by pope gregory the great modes of propitiating the higher powers modes of thwarting the powers of evil persecution of the jews as satan's emissaries persecution of witches as satan's emissaries case of the untori at milan new developments of fetichism.--the blood of st. januarius at naples appearance of better methods in italy.--in spain ii. gradual decay of theological views regarding sanitation. comparative freedom of england from persecutions for plague-bringing, in spite of her wretched sanitary condition aid sought mainly through church services effects of the great fire in london the jail fever the work of john howard plagues in the american colonies in france.--the great plague at marseilles persistence of the old methods in austria in scotland iii. the triumph of sanitary science. difficulty of reconciling the theological theory of pestilences with accumulating facts curious approaches to a right theory the law governing the relation of theology to disease recent victories of hygiene in all countries in england.---chadwick and his fellows in france iv. the relation of sanitary science to religion. the process of sanitary science not at the cost of religion illustration from the policy of napoleon iii in france effect of proper sanitation on epidemics in the united states change in the attitude of the church toward the cause and cure of pestilence chapter xv. from "demoniacal possession" to insanity. i. theological ideas of lunacy and its treatment. the struggle for the scientific treatment of the insane the primitive ascription of insanity to evil spirits better greek and roman theories--madness a disease the christian church accepts the demoniacal theory of insanity yet for a time uses mild methods for the insane growth of the practice of punishing the indwelling demon two sources whence better things might have been hoped.--the reasons of their futility the growth of exorcism use of whipping and torture the part of art and literature in making vivid to the common mind the idea of diabolic activity the effects of religious processions as a cure for mental disease exorcism of animals possessed of demons belief in the transformation of human beings into animals the doctrine of demoniacal possession in the reformed church ii. beginnings of a healthful scepticism. rivalry between catholics and protestants in the casting out of devils increased belief in witchcraft during the period following the reformation increase of insanity during the witch persecutions attitude of physicians toward witchcraft religious hallucinations of the insane theories as to the modes of diabolic entrance into the possessed influence of monastic life on the development of insanity protests against the theological view of insanity--wier, montaigue bekker last struggles of the old superstition iii. the final struggle and victory of science.--pinel and tuke. influence of french philosophy on the belief in demoniacal possession reactionary influence of john wesley progress of scientific ideas in prussia in austria in america in south germany general indifference toward the sufferings of madmen the beginnings of a more humane treatment jean baptiste pinel improvement in the treatment of the insane in england.--william tuke the place of pinel and tuke in history chapter xvi. from diabolism to hysteria. i. the epidemics of "possession." survival of the belief in diabolic activity as the cause of such epidemics epidemics of hysteria in classical times in the middle ages the dancing mania inability of science during the fifteenth century to cope with such diseases cases of possession brought within the scope of medical research during the sixteenth century dying-out of this form of mental disease in northern europe in italy epidemics of hysteria in the convents the case of martha brossier revival in france of belief in diabolic influence the ursulines of loudun and urbain grandier possession among the huguenots in new england.--the salem witch persecution at paris.--alleged miracles at the grave of archdeacon paris in germany.--case of maria renata sanger more recent outbreaks ii. beginnings of helpful scepticism. outbreaks of hysteria in factories and hospitals in places of religious excitement the case at morzine similar cases among protestants and in africa iii. theological "restatements."--final triumph of the scientific view and methods. successful dealings of medical science with mental diseases attempts to give a scientific turn to the theory of diabolic agency in disease last great demonstration of the old belief in england final triumph of science in the latter half of the present century last echoes of the old belief chapter xvii. from babel to comparative philology. i. the sacred theory in its first form. difference of the history of comparative philology from that of other sciences as regards the attitude of theologians curiosity of early man regarding the origin, the primitive form, and the diversity of language the hebrew answer to these questions the legend of the tower of babel the real reason for the building of towers by the chaldeans and the causes of their ruin other legends of a confusion of tongues influence upon christendom of the hebrew legends lucretius's theory of the origin of language the teachings of the church fathers on this subject the controversy as to the divine origin of the hebrew vowel points attitude of the reformers toward this question of catholic scholars.--marini capellus and his adversaries the treatise of danzius ii. the sacred theory of language in its second form. theological theory that hebrew was the primitive tongue, divinely revealed this theory supported by all christian scholars until the beginning of the eighteenth century diasent of prideaux and cotton mather apparent strength of the sacred theory of language iii. breaking down of the theological view. reason for the church's ready acceptance of the conclusions of comparative philology beginnings of a scientific theory of language hottinger leibnitz the collections of catharine the great, of hervas, and of adelung chaotic period in philology between leibnitz and the beginning of the study of sanskrit illustration from the successive editions of the encyclopaedia britannica iv. triumph of the new science. effect of the discovery of sanskrit on the old theory attempts to discredit the new learning general acceptance of the new theory destruction of the belief that all created things were first named by adam of the belief in the divine origin of letters attempts in england to support the old theory of language progress of philological science in france in germany in great britain recent absurd attempts to prove hebrew the primitive tongue v. summary. gradual disappearance of the old theories regarding the origin of speech and writing full acceptance of the new theories by all christian scholars the result to religion, and to the bible chapter xviii. from the dead sea legends to comparative mythology, i. the growth of explanatory transformation myths. growth of myths to account for remarkable appearances in nature--mountains. rocks, curiously marked stones, fossils, products of volcanicaction myths of the transformation of living beings into natural objects development of the science of comparative mythology ii. mediaeval growth of the dead sea legends. description of the dead sea impression made by its peculiar features on the early dwellers in palestine reasons for selecting the dead sea myths for study naturalness of the growth of legend regarding the salt region of usdum universal belief in these legends concurrent testimony of early and mediaeval writers, jewish and christian, respecting the existence of lot's wife as a "pillar of salt," and of the other wonders of the dead sea discrepancies in the various accounts and theological explanations of them theological arguments respecting the statue of lot's wife growth of the legend in the sixteenth century iii. post-reformation culmination of the dead sea legends.--beginnings of a healthful scepticism. popularization of the older legends at the reformation growth of new myths among scholars signs of scepticism among travellers near the end of the sixteenth century effort of quaresmio to check this tendency of eugene roger of wedelius influence of these teachings renewed scepticism--the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries efforts of briemle and masius in support of the old myths their influence the travels of mariti and of volney influence of scientific thought on the dead sea legends during the eighteenth century reactionary efforts of chateaubriand investigations of the naturalist seetzen of dr. robinson the expedition of lieutenant lynch the investigations of de saulcy of the duc de luynes.--lartet's report summary of the investigations of the nineteenth century.--ritter's verdict iv. theological efforts at compromise.-triumph of the scientific view. attempts to reconcile scientific facts with the dead sea legends van de velde's investigations of the dead sea region canon tristram's mgr. mislin's protests against the growing rationalism the work of schaff and osborn acceptance of the scientific view by leaders in the church dr. geikie's ascription of the myths to the arabs mgr. haussmann de wandelburg and.his rejection of the scientific view service of theologians to religion in accepting the conclusions of silence in this field chapter xix. from leviticus to political economy i. origin and progress of hostility to loans at interest. universal belief in the sin of loaning money at interest the taking of interest among the greeks and romans opposition of leaders of thought, especially aristotle condemnation of the practice by the old and new testaments by the church fathers in ecclesiastical and secular legislation exception sometimes made in behalf of the jews hostility of the pulpit of the canon law evil results of the prohibition of loans at interest efforts to induce the church to change her position theological evasions of the rule attitude of the reformers toward the taking of interest struggle in england for recognition of the right to accept interest invention of a distinction between usury and interest ii. retreat of the church, protestant and catholic. sir robert filmer's attack on the old doctrine retreat of the protestant church in holland in germany and america difficulties in the way of compromise in the catholic church failure of such attempts in france theoretical condemnation of usury in italy disregard of all restrictions in practice attempts of escobar and liguori to reconcile the taking of interest with the teachings of the church montesquieu's attack on the old theory encyclical of benedict xiv permitting the taking of interest similar decision of the inquisition at rome final retreat of the catholic church curious dealings of theology with public economy in other fields chapter xx. from the divine oracles to the higher criticism. i. the older interpretation. character of the great sacred books of the world general laws governing the development and influence of sacred literature.--the law of its origin legends concerning the septuagint the law of wills and causes the law of inerrancy hostility to the revision of king james's translation of the bible the law of unity working of these laws seen in the great rabbinical schools the law of allegorical interpretation philo judaeus justin martyr and clement of alexandria occult significance of numbers origen hilary of poitiers and jerome augustine gregory the great vain attempts to check the flood of allegorical interpretations bede.--savonarola methods of modern criticism for the first time employed by lorenzo valla erasmus influence of the reformation on the belief in the infallibility of the sacred books.--luther and melanchthon development of scholasticism in the reformed church catholic belief in the inspiration of the vulgate opposition in russia to the revision of the slavonic scriptures sir isaac newton as a commentator scriptural interpretation at the beginning of the eighteenth century ii. beginnings of scientific interpretation. theological beliefs regarding the pentateuch the book of genesis doubt thrown on the sacred theory by aben ezra by carlstadt and maes influence of the discovery that the isidorian decretals were forgeries that the writings ascribed to dionysius the areopagite were serious hobbes and la peyrere spinoza progress of biblical criticism in france.--richard simon leclerc bishop lowth astruc eichhorn's application of the "higher criticism" to biblical research isenbiehl herder alexander geddes opposition to the higher criticism in germany hupfeld vatke and reuss kuenen wellhausen iii. the continued growth of scientific interpretation. progress of the higher criticism in germany and holland opposition to it in england at the university of oxford pusey bentley wolf niebuhr and arnold milman thirlwall and grote the publication of essays and reviews, and the storm raised by book iv. the closing struggle. colenso's work on the pentateuch the persecution of him bishop wilberforce's part in it dean stanley's bishop thirlwall's results of colenso's work sanday's bampton lectures keble college and lux mundi progress of biblical criticism among the dissenters in france.--renan in the roman catholic church the encyclical letter of pope leo xiii in america.--theodore parker apparent strength of the old theory of inspiration real strength of the new movement v. victory of the scientific and literary methods. confirmation of the conclusions of the higher criticism by assyriology and egyptology light thrown upon hebrew religion by the translation of the sacred books of the east the influence of persian thought.--the work of the rev. dr. mills the influence of indian thought.--light thrown by the study of brahmanism and buddhism the work of fathers huc and gabet discovery that buddha himself had been canonized as a christian saint similarity between the ideas and legends of buddhism and those of christianity the application of the higher criticism to the new testament the english "revised version" of studies on the formation of the canon of scripture recognition of the laws governing its development change in the spirit of the controversy over the higher criticism vi. reconstructive force of scientific criticism. development of a scientific atmosphere during the last three centuries action of modern science in reconstruction of religious truth change wrought by it in the conception of a sacred literature of the divine power.--of man.---of the world at large of our bible i. the visible universe. among those masses of cathedral sculpture which preserve so much of medieval theology, one frequently recurring group is noteworthy for its presentment of a time-honoured doctrine regarding the origin of the universe. the almighty, in human form, sits benignly, making the sun, moon, and stars, and hanging them from the solid firmament which supports the "heaven above" and overarches the "earth beneath." the furrows of thought on the creator's brow show that in this work he is obliged to contrive; the knotted muscles upon his arms show that he is obliged to toil; naturally, then, the sculptors and painters of the medieval and early modern period frequently represented him as the writers whose conceptions they embodied had done--as, on the seventh day, weary after thought and toil, enjoying well-earned repose and the plaudits of the hosts of heaven. in these thought-fossils of the cathedrals, and in other revelations of the same idea through sculpture, painting, glass-staining, mosaic work, and engraving, during the middle ages and the two centuries following, culminated a belief which had been developed through thousands of years, and which has determined the world's thought until our own time. its beginnings lie far back in human history; we find them among the early records of nearly all the great civilizations, and they hold a most prominent place in the various sacred books of the world. in nearly all of them is revealed the conception of a creator of whom man is an imperfect image, and who literally and directly created the visible universe with his hands and fingers. among these theories, of especial interest to us are those which controlled theological thought in chaldea. the assyrian inscriptions which have been recently recovered and given to the english-speaking peoples by layard, george smith, sayce, and others, show that in the ancient religions of chaldea and babylonia there was elaborated a narrative of the creation which, in its most important features, must have been the source of that in our own sacred books. it has now become perfectly clear that from the same sources which inspired the accounts of the creation of the universe among the chaldeo-babylonian, the assyrian, the phoenician, and other ancient civilizations came the ideas which hold so prominent a place in the sacred books of the hebrews. in the two accounts imperfectly fused together in genesis, and also in the account of which we have indications in the book of job and in the proverbs, there, is presented, often with the greatest sublimity, the same early conception of the creator and of the creation--the conception, so natural in the childhood of civilization, of a creator who is an enlarged human being working literally with his own hands, and of a creation which is "the work of his fingers." to supplement this view there was developed the belief in this creator as one who, having . . . "from his ample palm launched forth the rolling planets into space." sits on high, enthroned "upon the circle of the heavens," perpetually controlling and directing them. from this idea of creation was evolved in time a somewhat nobler view. ancient thinkers, and especially, as is now found, in egypt, suggested that the main agency in creation was not the hands and fingers of the creator, but his _voice_. hence was mingled with the earlier, cruder belief regarding the origin of the earth and heavenly bodies by the almighty the more impressive idea that "he spake and they were made"--that they were brought into existence by his _word_.[3] among the early fathers of the church this general view of creation became fundamental; they impressed upon christendom more and more strongly the belief that the universe was created in a perfectly literal sense by the hands or voice of god. here and there sundry theologians of larger mind attempted to give a more spiritual view regarding some parts of the creative work, and of these were st. gregory of nyssa and st. augustine. ready as they were to accept the literal text of scripture, they revolted against the conception of an actual creation of the universe by the hands and fingers of a supreme being, and in this they were followed by bede and a few others; but the more material conceptions prevailed, and we find these taking shape not only in the sculptures and mosaics and stained glass of cathedrals, and in the illuminations of missals and psalters, but later, at the close of the middle ages, in the pictured bibles and in general literature. into the anglo-saxon mind this ancient material conception of the creation was riveted by two poets whose works appealed especially to the deeper religious feelings. in the seventh century caedmon paraphrased the account given in genesis, bringing out this material conception in the most literal form; and a thousand years later milton developed out of the various statements in the old testament, mingled with a theology regarding "the creative word" which had been drawn from the new, his description of the creation by the second person in the trinity, than which nothing could be more literal and material: "he took the golden compasses, prepared in god's eternal store, to circumscribe this universe and all created things. one foot he centred, and the other turned round through the vast profundity obscure, and said, `thus far extend, thus far thy bounds: this be thy just circumference, o world!'"[4] so much for the orthodox view of the _manner_ of creation. the next point developed in this theologic evolution had reference to the _matter_ of which the universe was made, and it was decided by an overwhelming majority that no material substance existed before the creation of the material universe--that "god created everything out of nothing." some venturesome thinkers, basing their reasoning upon the first verses of genesis, hinted at a different view--namely, that the mass, "without form and void," existed before the universe; but this doctrine was soon swept out of sight. the vast majority of the fathers were explicit on this point. tertullian especially was very severe against those who took any other view than that generally accepted as orthodox: he declared that, if there had been any pre-existing matter out of which the world was formed, scripture would have mentioned it; that by not mentioning it god has given us a clear proof that there was no such thing; and, after a manner not unknown in other theological controversies, he threatens hermogenes, who takes the opposite view, with the woe which impends on all who add to or take away from the written word." st. augustine, who showed signs of a belief in a pre-existence of matter, made his peace with the prevailing belief by the simple reasoning that, "although the world has been made of some material, that very same material must have been made out of nothing." in the wake of these great men the universal church steadily followed. the fourth lateran council declared that god created everything out of nothing; and at the present hour the vast majority of the faithful--whether catholic or protestant--are taught the same doctrine; on this point the syllabus of pius ix and the westminster catechism fully agree.[5] having thus disposed of the manner and matter of creation, the next subject taken up by theologians was the _time_ required for the great work. here came a difficulty. the first of the two accounts given in genesis extended the creative operation through six days, each of an evening and a morning, with much explicit detail regarding the progress made in each. but the second account spoke of "_the day_" in which "the lord god made the earth and the heavens." the explicitness of the first account and its naturalness to the minds of the great mass of early theologians gave it at first a decided advantage; but jewish thinkers, like philo, and christian thinkers, like origen, forming higher conceptions of the creator and his work, were not content with this, and by them was launched upon the troubled sea of christian theology the idea that the creation was instantaneous, this idea being strengthened not only by the second of the genesis legends, but by the great text, "he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast"--or, as it appears in the vulgate and in most translations, "he spake, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created." as a result, it began to be held that the safe and proper course was to believe literally _both_ statements; that in some mysterious manner god created the universe in six days, and yet brought it all into existence in a moment. in spite of the outcries of sundry great theologians, like ephrem syrus, that the universe was created in exactly six days of twenty-four hours each, this compromise was promoted by st. athanasius and st. basil in the east, and by st. augustine and st. hilary in the west. serious difficulties were found in reconciling these two views, which to the natural mind seem absolutely contradictory; but by ingenious manipulation of texts, by dexterous play upon phrases, and by the abundant use of metaphysics to dissolve away facts, a reconciliation was effected, and men came at least to believe that they believed in a creation of the universe instantaneous and at the same time extended through six days.[6] some of the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were so fruitful as to deserve especial record. the fathers, eastern and western, developed out of the double account in genesis, and the indications in the psalms, the proverbs, and the book of job, a vast mass of sacred science bearing upon this point. as regards the whole work of creation, stress was laid upon certain occult powers in numerals. philo judaeus, while believing in an instantaneous creation, had also declared that the world was created in six days because "of all numbers six is the most productive"; he had explained the creation of the heavenly bodies on the fourth day by "the harmony of the number four"; of the animals on the fifth day by the five senses; of man on the sixth day by the same virtues in the number six which had caused it to be set as a limit to the creative work; and, greatest of all, the rest on the seventh day by the vast mass of mysterious virtues in the number seven. st. jerome held that the reason why god did not pronounce the work of the second day "good" is to be found in the fact that there is something essentially evil in the number two, and this was echoed centuries afterward, afar off in britain, by bede. st. augustine brought this view to bear upon the church in the following statement: "there are three classes of numbers--the more than perfect, the perfect, and the less than perfect, according as the sum of them is greater than, equal to, or less than the original number. six is the first perfect number: wherefore we must not say that six is a perfect number because god finished all his works in six days, but that god finished all his works in six days because six is a perfect number." reasoning of this sort echoed along through the mediaeval church until a year after the discovery of america, when the _nuremberg chronicle_ re-echoed it as follows: "the creation of things is explained by the number six, the parts of which, one, two, and three, assume the form of a triangle." this view of the creation of the universe as instantaneous and also as in six days, each made up of an evening and a morning, became virtually universal. peter lombard and hugo of st. victor, authorities of vast weight, gave it their sanction in the twelfth century, and impressed it for ages upon the mind of the church. both these lines of speculation--as to the creation of everything out of nothing, and the reconciling of the instantaneous creation of the universe with its creation in six days--were still further developed by other great thinkers of the middle ages. st. hilary of poictiers reconciled the two conceptions as follows: "for, although according to moses there is an appearance of regular order in the fixing of the firmament, the laying bare of the dry land, the gathering together of the waters, the formation of the heavenly bodies, and the arising of living things from land and water, yet the creation of the heavens, earth, and other elements is seen to be the work of a single moment." st. thomas aquinas drew from st. augustine a subtle distinction which for ages eased the difficulties in the case: he taught in effect that god created the substance of things in a moment, but gave to the work of separating, shaping, and adorning this creation, six days.[8] the early reformers accepted and developed the same view, and luther especially showed himself equal to the occasion. with his usual boldness he declared, first, that moses "spoke properly and plainly, and neither allegorically nor figuratively," and that therefore "the world with all creatures was created in six days." and he then goes on to show how, by a great miracle, the whole creation was also instantaneous. melanchthon also insisted that the universe was created out of nothing and in a mysterious way, both in an instant and in six days, citing the text: "he spake, and they were made." calvin opposed the idea of an instantaneous creation, and laid especial stress on the creation in six days: having called attention to the fact that the biblical chronology shows the world to be not quite six thousand years old and that it is now near its end, he says that "creation was extended through six days that it might not be tedious for us to occupy the whole of life in the consideration of it." peter martyr clinched the matter by declaring: "so important is it to comprehend the work of creation that we see the creed of the church take this as its starting point. were this article taken away there would be no original sin, the promise of christ would become void, and all the vital force of our religion would be destroyed." the westminster divines in drawing up their confession of faith specially laid it down as necessary to believe that all things visible and invisible were created not only out of nothing but in exactly six days. nor were the roman divines less strenuous than the protestant reformers regarding the necessity of holding closely to the so-called mosaic account of creation. as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, when buffon attempted to state simple geological truths, the theological faculty of the sorbonne forced him to make and to publish a most ignominious recantation which ended with these words: "i abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of moses." theologians, having thus settled the manner of the creation, the matter used in it, and the time required for it, now exerted themselves to fix its _date_. the long series of efforts by the greatest minds in the church, from eusebius to archbishop usher, to settle this point are presented in another chapter. suffice it here that the general conclusion arrived at by an overwhelming majority of the most competent students of the biblical accounts was that the date of creation was, in round numbers, four thousand years before our era; and in the seventeenth century, in his great work, dr. john lightfoot, vice-chancellor of the university of cambridge, and one of the most eminent hebrew scholars of his time, declared, as the result of his most profound and exhaustive study of the scriptures, that "heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water," and that "this work took place and man was created by the trinity on october 23, 4004 b. c., at nine o'clock in the morning." here was, indeed, a triumph of lactantius's method, the result of hundreds of years of biblical study and theological thought since bede in the eighth century, and vincent of beauvais in the thirteenth, had declared that creation must have taken place in the spring. yet, alas! within two centuries after lightfoot's great biblical demonstration as to the exact hour of creation, it was discovered that at that hour an exceedingly cultivated people, enjoying all the fruits of a highly developed civilization, had long been swarming in the great cities of egypt, and that other nations hardly less advanced had at that time reached a high development in asia.[10] but, strange as it may seem, even after theologians had thus settled the manner of creation, the matter employed in it, the time required for it, and the exact date of it, there remained virtually unsettled the first and greatest question of all; and this was nothing less than the question, who actually created the universe? various theories more or less nebulous, but all centred in texts of scripture, had swept through the mind of the church. by some theologians it was held virtually that the actual creative agent was the third person of the trinity, who, in the opening words of our sublime creation poem, "moved upon the face of the waters." by others it was held that the actual creator was the second person of the trinity, in behalf of whose agency many texts were cited from the new testament. others held that the actual creator was the first person, and this view was embodied in the two great formulas known as the apostles' and nicene creeds, which explicitly assigned the work to "god the father almighty" maker of heaven and earth." others, finding a deep meaning in the words "let _us_ make," ascribed in genesis to the creator, held that the entire trinity directly created all things; and still others, by curious metaphysical processes, seemed to arrive at the idea that peculiar combinations of two persons of the trinity achieved the creation. in all this there would seem to be considerable courage in view of the fearful condemnations launched in the athanasian creed against all who should "confound the persons" or "divide the substance of the trinity." these various stages in the evolution of scholastic theology were also embodied in sacred art, and especially in cathedral sculpture, in glass-staining, in mosaic working, and in missal painting. the creative being is thus represented sometimes as the third person of the trinity, in the form of a dove brooding over chaos; sometimes as the second person, and therefore a youth; sometimes as the first person, and therefore fatherly and venerable; sometimes as the first and second persons, one being venerable and the other youthful; and sometimes as three persons, one venerable and one youthful, both wearing papal crowns, and each holding in his lips a tip of the wing of the dove, which thus seems to proceed from both and to be suspended between them. nor was this the most complete development of the medieval idea. the creator was sometimes represented with a single body, but with three faces, thus showing that christian belief had in some pious minds gone through substantially the same cycle which an earlier form of belief had made ages before in india, when the supreme being was represented with one body but with the three faces of brahma, vishnu, and siva. but at the beginning of the modern period the older view in its primitive jewish form was impressed upon christians by the most mighty genius in art the world has known; for in 1512, after four years of titanic labour, michael angelo uncovered his frescoes within the vault of the sistine chapel. they had been executed by the command and under the sanction of the ruling pope, julius ii, to represent the conception of christian theology then dominant, and they remain to-day in all their majesty to show the highest point ever attained by the older thought upon the origin of the visible universe. in the midst of the expanse of heaven the almighty father--the first person of the trinity--in human form, august and venerable, attended by angels and upborne by mighty winds, sweeps over the abyss, and, moving through successive compartments of the great vault, accomplishes the work of the creative days. with a simple gesture he divides the light from the darkness, rears on high the solid firmament, gathers together beneath it the seas, or summons into existence the sun, moon, and planets, and sets them circling about the earth. in this sublime work culminated the thought of thousands of years; the strongest minds accepted it or pretended to accept it, and nearly two centuries later this conception, in accordance with the first of the two accounts given in genesis, was especially enforced by bossuet, and received a new lease of life in the church, both catholic and protestant.[12] but to these discussions was added yet another, which, beginning in the early days of the church, was handed down the ages until it had died out among the theologians of our own time. in the first of the biblical accounts light is created and the distinction between day and night thereby made on the first day, while the sun and moon are not created until the fourth day. masses of profound theological and pseudo-scientific reasoning have been developed to account for this--masses so great that for ages they have obscured the simple fact that the original text is a precious revelation to us of one of the most ancient of recorded beliefs--the belief that light and darkness are entities independent of the heavenly bodies, and that the sun, moon, and stars exist not merely to increase light but to "divide the day from the night, to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years," and "to rule the day and the night." of this belief we find survivals among the early fathers, and especially in st. ambrose. in his work on creation he tells us: "we must remember that the light of day is one thing and the light of the sun, moon, and stars another--the sun by his rays appearing to add lustre to the daylight. for before sunrise the day dawns, but is not in full refulgence, for the sun adds still further to its splendour." this idea became one of the "treasures of sacred knowledge committed to the church," and was faithfully received by the middle ages. the medieval mysteries and miracle plays give curious evidences of this: in a performance of the creation, when god separates light from darkness, the stage direction is, "now a painted cloth is to be exhibited, one half black and the other half white." it was also given more permanent form. in the mosaics of san marco at venice, in the frescoes of the baptistery at florence and of the church of st. francis at assisi, and in the altar carving at salerno, we find a striking realization of it--the creator placing in the heavens two disks or living figures of equal size, each suitably coloured or inscribed to show that one represents light and the other darkness. this conception was without doubt that of the person or persons who compiled from the chaldean and other earlier statements the accounts of the creation in the first of our sacred books.[13] thus, down to a period almost within living memory, it was held, virtually "always, everywhere, and by all," that the universe, as we now see it, was created literally and directly by the voice or hands of the almighty, or by both--out of nothing--in an instant or in six days, or in both--about four thousand years before the christian era--and for the convenience of the dwellers upon the earth, which was at the base and foundation of the whole structure. but there had been implanted along through the ages germs of another growth in human thinking, some of them even as early as the babylonian period. in the assyrian inscriptions we find recorded the chaldeo-babylonian idea of _an evolution_ of the universe out of the primeval flood or "great deep," and of the animal creation out of the earth and sea. this idea, recast, partially at least, into monotheistic form, passed naturally into the sacred books of the neighbours and pupils of the chaldeans--the hebrews; but its growth in christendom afterward was checked, as we shall hereafter find, by the more powerful influence of other inherited statements which appealed more intelligibly to the mind of the church. striking, also, was the effect of this idea as rewrought by the early ionian philosophers, to whom it was probably transmitted from the chaldeans through the phoenicians. in the minds of ionians like anaximander and anaximenes it was most clearly developed: the first of these conceiving of the visible universe as the result of processes of evolution, and the latter pressing further the same mode of reasoning, and dwelling on agencies in cosmic development recognised in modern science. this general idea of evolution in nature thus took strong hold upon greek thought and was developed in many ways, some ingenious, some perverse. plato, indeed, withstood it; but aristotle sometimes developed it in a manner which reminds us of modern views. among the romans lucretius caught much from it, extending the evolutionary process virtually to all things. in the early church, as we have seen, the idea of a creation direct, material, and by means like those used by man, was all-powerful for the exclusion of conceptions based on evolution. from the more simple and crude of the views of creation given in the babylonian legends, and thence incorporated into genesis, rose the stream of orthodox thought on the subject, which grew into a flood and swept on through the middle ages and into modern times. yet here and there in the midst of this flood were high grounds of thought held by strong men. scotus erigena and duns scotus, among the schoolmen, bewildered though they were, had caught some rays of this ancient light, and passed on to their successors, in modified form, doctrines of an evolutionary process in the universe. in the latter half of the sixteenth century these evolutionary theories seemed to take more definite form in the mind of giordano bruno, who evidently divined the fundamental idea of what is now known as the "nebular hypothesis"; but with his murder by the inquisition at rome this idea seemed utterly to disappear--dissipated by the flames which in 1600 consumed his body on the campo dei fiori. yet within the two centuries divided by bruno's death the world was led into a new realm of thought in which an evolution theory of the visible universe was sure to be rapidly developed. for there came, one after the other, five of the greatest men our race has produced--copernicus, kepler, galileo, descartes, and newton--and when their work was done the old theological conception of the universe was gone. "the spacious firmament on high"--"the crystalline spheres"--the almighty enthroned upon "the circle of the heavens," and with his own lands, or with angels as his agents, keeping sun, moon, and planets in motion for the benefit of the earth, opening and closing the "windows of heaven," letting down upon the earth the "waters above the firmament," "setting his bow in the cloud," hanging out "signs and wonders," hurling comets, "casting forth lightnings" to scare the wicked, and "shaking the earth" in his wrath: all this had disappeared. these five men had given a new divine revelation to the world; and through the last, newton, had come a vast new conception, destined to be fatal to the old theory of creation, for he had shown throughout the universe, in place of almighty caprice, all-pervading law. the bitter opposition of theology to the first four of these men is well known; but the fact is not so widely known that newton, in spite of his deeply religious spirit, was also strongly opposed. it was vigorously urged against him that by his statement of the law of gravitation he "took from god that direct action on his works so constantly ascribed to him in scripture and transferred it to material mechanism," and that he "substituted gravitation for providence." but, more than this, these men gave a new basis for the theory of evolution as distinguished from the theory of creation. especially worthy of note is it that the great work of descartes, erroneous as many of its deductions were, and, in view of the lack of physical knowledge in his time, must be, had done much to weaken the old conception. his theory of a universe brought out of all-pervading matter, wrought into orderly arrangement by movements in accordance with physical laws--though it was but a provisional hypothesis--had done much to draw men's minds from the old theological view of creation; it was an example of intellectual honesty arriving at errors, but thereby aiding the advent of truths. crippled though descartes was by his almost morbid fear of the church, this part of his work was no small factor in bringing in that attitude of mind which led to a reception of the thoughts of more unfettered thinkers. thirty years later came, in england, an effort of a different sort, but with a similar result. in 1678 ralph cudworth published his _intellectual system of the universe_. to this day he remains, in breadth of scholarship, in strength of thought, in tolerance, and in honesty, one of the greatest glories of the english church, and his work was worthy of him. he purposed to build a fortress which should protect christianity against all dangerous theories of the universe, ancient or modern. the foundations of the structure were laid with old thoughts thrown often into new and striking forms; but, as the superstructure arose more and more into view, while genius marked every part of it, features appeared which gave the rigidly orthodox serious misgivings. from the old theories of direct personal action on the universe by the almighty he broke utterly. he dwelt on the action of law, rejected the continuous exercise of miraculous intervention, pointed out the fact that in the natural world there are "errors" and "bungles," and argued vigorously in favour of the origin and maintenance of the universe as a slow and gradual development of nature in obedience to an inward principle. the balaks of seventeenth-century orthodoxy might well condemn this honest balaam. toward the end of the next century a still more profound genius, immanuel kant, presented the nebular theory, giving it, in the light of newton's great utterances, a consistency which it never before had; and about the same time laplace gave it yet greater strength by mathematical reasonings of wonderful power and extent, thus implanting firmly in modern thought the idea that our own solar system and others--suns, planets, satellites, and their various movements, distances, and magnitudes--necessarily result from the obedience of nebulous masses to natural laws. throughout the theological world there was an outcry at once against "atheism," and war raged fiercely. herschel and others pointed out many nebulous patches apparently gaseous. they showed by physical and mathematical demonstrations that the hypothesis accounted for the great body of facts, and, despite clamour, were gaining ground, when the improved telescopes resolved some of the patches of nebulous matter into multitudes of stars. the opponents of the nebular hypothesis were overjoyed; they now sang paans to astronomy, because, as they said, it had proved the truth of scripture. they had jumped to the conclusion that all nebula must be alike; that, if _some_ are made up of systems of stars, _all_ must be so made up; that none can be masses of attenuated gaseous matter, because some are not. science halted for a time. the accepted doctrine became this: that the only reason why all the nebula are not resolved into distinct stars is that our telescopes are not sufficiently powerful. but in time came the discovery of the spectroscope and spectrum analysis, and thence fraunhofer's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited gaseous body is non-continuous, with interrupting lines; and draper's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited solid is continuous, with no interrupting lines. and now the spectroscope was turned upon the nebula, and many of them were found to be gaseous. here, then, was ground for the inference that in these nebulous masses at different stages of condensation--some apparently mere pitches of mist, some with luminous centres--we have the process of development actually going on, and observations like those of lord rosse and arrest gave yet further confirmation to this view. then came the great contribution of the nineteenth century to physics, aiding to explain important parts of the vast process by the mechanical theory of heat. again the nebular hypothesis came forth stronger than ever, and about 1850 the beautiful experiment of plateau on the rotation of a fluid globe came in apparently to illustrate if not to confirm it. even so determined a defender of orthodoxy as mr. gladstone at last acknowledged some form of a nebular hypothesis as probably true. here, too, was exhibited that form of surrendering theological views to science under the claim that science concurs with theology, which we have seen in so many other fields; and, as typical, an example may be given, which, however restricted in its scope, throws light on the process by which such surrenders are obtained. a few years since one of the most noted professors of chemistry in the city of new york, under the auspices of one of its most fashionable churches, gave a lecture which, as was claimed in the public prints and in placards posted in the streets, was to show that science supports the theory of creation given in the sacred books ascribed to moses. a large audience assembled, and a brilliant series of elementary experiments with oxygen, hydrogen, and carbonic acid was concluded by the plateau demonstration. it was beautifully made. as the coloured globule of oil, representing the earth, was revolved in a transparent medium of equal density, as it became flattened at the poles, as rings then broke forth from it and revolved about it, and, finally, as some of these rings broke into satellites, which for a moment continued to circle about the central mass, the audience, as well they might, rose and burst into rapturous applause. thereupon a well-to-do citizen arose and moved the thanks of the audience to the eminent professor for "this perfect demonstration of the exact and literal conformity of the statements given in holy scripture with the latest results of science." the motion was carried unanimously and with applause, and the audience dispersed, feeling that a great service had been rendered to orthodoxy. _sancta simplicitas!_ what this incident exhibited on a small scale has been seen elsewhere with more distinguished actors and on a broader stage. scores of theologians, chief among whom of late, in zeal if not in knowledge, has been mr. gladstone, have endeavoured to "reconcile" the two accounts in genesis with each other and with the truths regarding the origin of the universe gained by astronomy, geology, geography, physics, and chemistry. the result has been recently stated by an eminent theologian, the hulsean professor of divinity at the university of cambridge. he declares, "no attempt at reconciling genesis with the exacting requirements of modern sciences has ever been known to succeed without entailing a degree of special pleading or forced interpretation to which, in such a question, we should be wise to have no recourse."[19] the revelations of another group of sciences, though sometimes bitterly opposed and sometimes "reconciled" by theologians, have finally set the whole question at rest. first, there have come the biblical critics--earnest christian scholars, working for the sake of truth--and these have revealed beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt the existence of at least two distinct accounts of creation in our book of genesis, which can sometimes be forced to agree, but which are generally absolutely at variance with each other. these scholars have further shown the two accounts to be not the cunningly devised fables of priestcraft, but evidently fragments of earlier legends, myths, and theologies, accepted in good faith and brought together for the noblest of purposes by those who put in order the first of our sacred books. next have come the archaeologists and philologists, the devoted students of ancient monuments and records; of these are such as rawlinson, george smith, sayce, oppert, jensen, schrader, delitzsch, and a phalanx of similarly devoted scholars, who have deciphered a multitude of ancient texts, especially the inscriptions found in the great library of assurbanipal at nineveh, and have discovered therein an account of the origin of the world identical in its most important features with the later accounts in our own book of genesis. these men have had the courage to point out these facts and to connect them with the truth that these chaldean and babylonian myths, legends, and theories were far earlier than those of the hebrews, which so strikingly resemble them, and which we have in our sacred books; and they have also shown us how natural it was that the jewish accounts of the creation should have been obtained at that remote period when the earliest hebrews were among the chaldeans, and how the great hebrew poetic accounts of creation were drawn either from the sacred traditions of these earlier peoples or from antecedent sources common to various ancient nations. in a summary which for profound thought and fearless integrity does honour not only to himself but to the great position which he holds, the rev. dr. driver, professor of hebrew and canon of christ church at oxford, has recently stated the case fully and fairly. having pointed out the fact that the hebrews were one people out of many who thought upon the origin of the universe, he says that they "framed theories to account for the beginnings of the earth and man"; that "they either did this for themselves or borrowed those of their neighbours"; that "of the theories current in assyria and phoenicia fragments have been preserved, and these exhibit points of resemblance with the biblical narrative sufficient to warrant the inference that both are derived from the same cycle of tradition." after giving some extracts from the chaldean creation tablets he says: "in the light of these facts it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the biblical narrative is drawn from the same source as these other records. the biblical historians, it is plain, derived their materials from the best human sources available.... the materials which with other nations were combined into the crudest physical theories or associated with a grotesque polytheism were vivified and transformed by the inspired genius of the hebrew historians, and adapted to become the vehicle of profound religious truth." not less honourable to the sister university and to himself is the statement recently made by the rev. dr. ryle, hulsean professor of divinity at cambridge. he says that to suppose that a christian "must either renounce his confidence in the achievements of scientific research or abandon his faith in scripture is a monstrous perversion of christian freedom." he declares: "the old position is no longer tenable; a new position has to be taken up at once, prayerfully chosen, and hopefully held." he then goes on to compare the hebrew story of creation with the earlier stories developed among kindred peoples, and especially with the pre-existing assyro-babylonian cosmogony, and shows that they are from the same source. he points out that any attempt to explain particular features of the story into harmony with the modern scientific ideas necessitates "a non-natural" interpretation; but he says that, if we adopt a natural interpretation, "we shall consider that the hebrew description of the visible universe is unscientific as judged by modern standards, and that it shares the limitations of the imperfect knowledge of the age at which it was committed to writing." regarding the account in genesis of man's physical origin, he says that it "is expressed in the simple terms of prehistoric legend, of unscientific pictorial description." in these statements and in a multitude of others made by eminent christian investigators in other countries is indicated what the victory is which has now been fully won over the older theology. thus, from the assyrian researches as well as from other sources, it has come to be acknowledged by the most eminent scholars at the leading seats of christian learning that the accounts of creation with which for nearly two thousand years all scientific discoveries have had to be "reconciled"--the accounts which blocked the way of copernicus, and galileo, and newton, and laplace--were simply transcribed or evolved from a mass of myths and legends largely derived by the hebrews from their ancient relations with chaldea, rewrought in a monotheistic sense, imperfectly welded together, and then thrown into poetic forms in the sacred books which we have inherited. on one hand, then, we have the various groups of men devoted to the physical sciences all converging toward the proofs that the universe, as we at present know it, is the result of an evolutionary process--that is, of the gradual working of physical laws upon an early condition of matter; on the other hand, we have other great groups of men devoted to historical, philological, and archaeological science whose researches all converge toward the conclusion that our sacred accounts of creation were the result of an evolution from an early chaos of rude opinion. the great body of theologians who have so long resisted the conclusions of the men of science have claimed to be fighting especially for "the truth of scripture," and their final answer to the simple conclusions of science regarding the evolution of the material universe has been the cry, "the bible is true." and they are right--though in a sense nobler than they have dreamed. science, while conquering them, has found in our scriptures a far nobler truth than that literal historical exactness for which theologians have so long and so vainly contended. more and more as we consider the results of the long struggle in this field we are brought to the conclusion that the inestimable value of the great sacred books of the world is found in their revelation of the steady striving of our race after higher conceptions, beliefs, and aspirations, both in morals and religion. unfolding and exhibiting this long-continued effort, each of the great sacred books of the world is precious, and all, in the highest sense, are true. not one of them, indeed, conforms to the measure of what mankind has now reached in historical and scientific truth; to make a claim to such conformity is folly, for it simply exposes those who make it and the books for which it is made to loss of their just influence. that to which the great sacred books of the world conform, and our own most of all, is the evolution of the highest conceptions, beliefs, and aspirations of our race from its childhood through the great turning-points in its history. herein lies the truth of all bibles, and especially of our own. of vast value they indeed often are as a record of historical outward fact; recent researches in the east are constantly increasing this value; but it is not for this that we prize them most: they are eminently precious, not as a record of outward fact, but as a mirror of the evolving heart, mind, and soul of man. they are true because they have been developed in accordance with the laws governing the evolution of truth in human history, and because in poem, chronicle, code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development of what is best in the onward march of humanity. to say that they are not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a planet is not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the universe. in welding together into noble form, whether in the book of genesis, or in the psalms, or in the book of job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration, whether in egypt, or chaldea, or india, or persia, the compilers of our sacred books have given to humanity a possession ever becoming more and more precious; and modern science, in substituting a new heaven and a new earth for the old--the reign of law for the reign of caprice, and the idea of evolution for that of creation--has added and is steadily adding a new revelation divinely inspired. in the light of these two evolutions, then--one of the visible universe, the other of a sacred creation-legend--science and theology, if the master minds in both are wise, may at last be reconciled. a great step in this reconciliation was recently seen at the main centre of theological thought among english-speaking people, when, in the collection of essays entitled _lux mundi_, emanating from the college established in these latter days as a fortress of orthodoxy at oxford, the legendary character of the creation accounts in our sacred books was acknowledged, and when the archbishop of canterbury asked, "may not the holy spirit at times have made use of myth and legend?"[24] ii. theological teachings regarding the animals and man. in one of the windows of the cathedral at ulm a mediaeval glass-stainer has represented the almighty as busily engaged in creating the animals, and there has just left the divine hands an elephant fully accoutred, with armour, harness, and housings, ready-for war. similar representations appear in illuminated manuscripts and even in early printed books, and, as the culmination of the whole, the almighty is shown as fashioning the first man from a hillock of clay and extracting from his side, with evident effort, the first woman. this view of the general process of creation had come from far, appearing under varying forms in various ancient cosmogonies. in the egyptian temples at philae and denderah may still be seen representations of the nile gods modelling lumps of clay into men, and a similar work is ascribed in the assyrian tablets to the gods of babylonia. passing into our own sacred books, these ideas became the starting point of a vast new development of theology[25] the fathers of the church generally received each of the two conflicting creation legends in genesis literally, and then, having done their best to reconcile them with each other and to mould them together, made them the final test of thought upon the universe and all things therein. at the beginning of the fourth century lactantius struck the key-note of this mode of subordinating all other things in the study of creation to the literal text of scripture, and he enforces his view of the creation of man by a bit of philology, saying the final being created "is called man because he is made from the ground--_homo ex humo_." in the second half of the same century this view as to the literal acceptance of the sacred text was reasserted by st. ambrose, who, in his work on the creation, declared that "moses opened his mouth and poured forth what god had said to him." but a greater than either of them fastened this idea into the christian theologies. st. augustine, preparing his _commentary on the book of genesis_, laid down in one famous sentence the law which has lasted in the church until our own time: "nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind." the vigour of the sentence in its original latin carried it ringing down the centuries: "_major est scripturae auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii capacitas_." through the mediaeval period, in spite of a revolt led by no other than st. augustine himself, and followed by a series of influential churchmen, contending, as we shall hereafter see, for a modification of the accepted view of creation, this phrase held the minds of men firmly. the great dominican encyclopaedist, vincent of beauvais, in his _mirror of nature_, while mixing ideas brought from aristotle with a theory drawn from the bible, stood firmly by the first of the accounts given in genesis, and assigned the special virtue of the number six as a reason why all things were created in six days; and in the later middle ages that eminent authority, cardinal d' ailly, accepted everything regarding creation in the sacred books literally. only a faint dissent is seen in gregory reisch, another authority of this later period, who, while giving, in his book on the beginning of things, a full length woodcut showing the almighty in the act of extracting eve from adam's side, with all the rest of new-formed nature in the background, leans in his writings, like st. augustine, toward a belief in the pre-existence of matter. at the reformation the vast authority of luther was thrown in favour of the literal acceptance of scripture as the main source of natural science. the allegorical and mystical interpretations of earlier theologians he utterly rejected. "why," he asks, "should moses use allegory when he is not speaking of allegorical creatures or of an allegorical world, but of real creatures and of a visible world, which can be seen, felt, and grasped? moses calls things by their right names, as we ought to do.... i hold that the animals took their being at once upon the word of god, as did also the fishes in the sea." not less explicit in his adherence to the literal account of creation given in genesis was calvin. he warns those who, by taking another view than his own, "basely insult the creator, to expect a judge who will annihilate them." he insists that all species of animals were created in six days, each made up of an evening and a morning, and that no new species has ever appeared since. he dwells on the production of birds from the water as resting upon certain warrant of scripture, but adds, "if the question is to be argued on physical grounds, we know that water is more akin to air than the earth is." as to difficulties in the scriptural account of creation, he tells us that god "wished by these to give proofs of his power which should fill us with astonishment." the controlling minds in the roman church steadfastly held this view. in the seventeenth century bossuet threw his vast authority in its favour, and in his _discourse on universal history_, which has remained the foundation not only of theological but of general historical teaching in france down to the present republic, we find him calling attention to what he regards as the culminating act of creation, and asserting that, literally, for the creation of man earth was used, and "the finger of god applied to corruptible matter." the protestant world held this idea no less persistently. in the seventeenth century dr. john lightfoot, vice-chancellor of the university of cambridge, the great rabbinical scholar of his time, attempted to reconcile the two main legends in genesis by saying that of the "clean sort of beasts there were seven of every kind created, three couples for breeding and the odd one for adam's sacrifice on his fall, which god foresaw"; and that of unclean beasts only one couple was created. so literal was this whole conception of the work of creation that in these days it can scarcely be imagined. the almighty was represented in theological literature, in the pictured bibles, and in works of art generally, as a sort of enlarged and venerable nuremberg toymaker. at times the accounts in genesis were illustrated with even more literal exactness; thus, in connection with a well-known passage in the sacred text, the creator was shown as a tailor, seated, needle in hand, diligently sewing together skins of beasts into coats for adam and eve. such representations presented no difficulties to the docile minds of the middle ages and the reformation period; and in the same spirit, when the discovery of fossils began to provoke thought, these were declared to be "models of his works approved or rejected by the great artificer," "outlines of future creations," "sports of nature," or "objects placed in the strata to bring to naught human curiosity"; and this kind of explanation lingered on until in our own time an eminent naturalist, in his anxiety to save the literal account in genesis, has urged that jehovah tilted and twisted the strata, scattered the fossils through them, scratched the glacial furrows upon them, spread over them the marks of erosion by water, and set niagara pouring--all in an instant--thus mystifying the world "for some inscrutable purpose, but for his own glory."[28] the next important development of theological reasoning had regard to the _divisions_ of the animal kingdom. naturally, one of the first divisions which struck the inquiring mind was that between useful and noxious creatures, and the question therefore occurred, how could a good god create tigers and serpents, thorns and thistles? the answer was found in theological considerations upon _sin_. to man's first disobedience all woes were due. great men for eighteen hundred years developed the theory that before adam's disobedience there was no death, and therefore neither ferocity nor venom. some typical utterances in the evolution of this doctrine are worthy of a passing glance. st. augustine expressly confirmed and emphasized the view that the vegetable as well as the animal kingdom was cursed on account of man's sin. two hundred years later this utterance had been echoed on from father to father of the church until it was caught by bede; he declared that before man's fall animals were harmless, but were made poisonous or hurtful by adam's sin, and he said, "thus fierce and poisonous animals were created for terrifying man (because god foresaw that he would sin), in order that he might be made aware of the final punishment of hell." in the twelfth century this view was incorporated by peter lombard into his great theological work, the _sentences_, which became a text-book of theology through the middle ages. he affirmed that "no created things would have been hurtful to man had he not sinned; they became hurtful for the sake of terrifying and punishing vice or of proving and perfecting virtue; they were created harmless, and on account of sin became hurtful." this theological theory regarding animals was brought out in the eighteenth century with great force by john wesley. he declared that before adam's sin "none of these attempted to devour or in any wise hurt one another"; "the spider was as harmless as the fly, and did not lie in wait for blood." not only wesley, but the eminent dr. adam clarke and dr. richard watson, whose ideas had the very greatest weight among the english dissenters, and even among leading thinkers in the established church, held firmly to this theory; so that not until, in our own time, geology revealed the remains of vast multitudes of carnivorous creatures, many of them with half-digested remains of other animals in their stomachs, all extinct long ages before the appearance of man upon earth, was a victory won by science over theology in this field. a curious development of this doctrine was seen in the belief drawn by sundry old commentators from the condemnation of the serpent in genesis--a belief, indeed, perfectly natural, since it was evidently that of the original writers of the account preserved in the first of our sacred books. this belief was that, until the tempting serpent was cursed by the almighty, all serpents stood erect, walked, and talked. this belief was handed down the ages as part of "the sacred deposit of the faith" until watson, the most prolific writer of the evangelical reform in the eighteenth century and the standard theologian of the evangelical party, declared: "we have no reason at all to believe that the animal had a serpentine form in any mode or degree until its transformation; that he was then degraded to a reptile to go upon his belly imports, on the contrary, an entire loss and alteration of the original form." here, again, was a ripe result of the theologic method diligently pursued by the strongest thinkers in the church during nearly two thousand years; but this "sacred deposit" also faded away when the geologists found abundant remains of fossil serpents dating from periods long before the appearance of man. troublesome questions also arose among theologians regarding animals classed as "superfluous." st. augustine was especially exercised thereby. he says: "i confess i am ignorant why mice and frogs were created, or flies and worms.... all creatures are either useful, hurtful, or superfluous to us.... as for the hurtful creatures, we are either punished, or disciplined, or terrified by them, so that we may not cherish and love this life." as to the "superfluous animals," he says, "although they are not necessary for our service, yet the whole design of the universe is thereby completed and finished." luther, who followed st. augustine in so many other matters, declined to follow him fully in this. to him a fly was not merely superfluous, it was noxious--sent by the devil to vex him when reading. another subject which gave rise to much searching of scripture and long trains of theological reasoning was the difference between the creation of man and that of other living beings. great stress was laid by theologians, from st. basil and st. augustine to st. thomas aquinas and bossuet, and from luther to wesley, on the radical distinction indicated in genesis, god having created man "in his own image." what this statement meant was seen in the light of the later biblical statement that "adam begat seth in his own likeness, after his image." in view of this and of well-known texts incorporated from older creation legends into the hebrew sacred books it came to be widely held that, while man was directly moulded and fashioned separately by the creator's hand, the animals generally were evoked in numbers from the earth and sea by the creator's voice. a question now arose naturally as to the _distinctions of species_ among animals. the vast majority of theologians agreed in representing all animals as created "in the beginning," and named by adam, preserved in the ark, and continued ever afterward under exactly the same species. this belief ripened into a dogma. like so many other dogmas in the church, catholic and protestant, its real origins are to be found rather in pagan philosophy than in the christian scriptures; it came far more from plato and aristotle than from moses and st. paul. but this was not considered: more and more it became necessary to believe that each and every difference of species was impressed by the creator "in the beginning," and that no change had taken place or could have taken place since. some difficulties arose here and there as zoology progressed and revealed ever-increasing numbers of species; but through the middle ages, and indeed long after the reformation, these difficulties were easily surmounted by making the ark of noah larger and larger, and especially by holding that there had been a human error in regard to its measurement.[31] but naturally there was developed among both ecclesiastics and laymen a human desire to go beyond these special points in the history of animated beings--a desire to know what the creation really _is_. current legends, stories, and travellers' observations, poor as they were, tended powerfully to stimulate curiosity in this field. three centuries before the christian era aristotle had made the first really great attempt to satisfy this curiosity, and had begun a development of studies in natural history which remains one of the leading achievements in the story of our race. but the feeling which we have already seen so strong in the early church--that all study of nature was futile in view of the approaching end of the world--indicated so clearly in the new testament and voiced so powerfully by lactantius and st. augustine--held back this current of thought for many centuries. still, the better tendency in humanity continued to assert itself. there was, indeed, an influence coming from the hebrew scriptures themselves which wrought powerfully to this end; for, in spite of all that lactantius or st. augustine might say as to the futility of any study of nature, the grand utterances in the psalms regarding the beauties and wonders of creation, in all the glow of the truest poetry, ennobled the study even among those whom logic drew away from it. but, as a matter of course, in the early church and throughout the middle ages all such studies were cast in a theologic mould. without some purpose of biblical illustration or spiritual edification they were considered futile too much prying into the secrets of nature was very generally held to be dangerous both to body and soul; only for showing forth god's glory and his purposes in the creation were such studies praiseworthy. the great work of aristotle was under eclipse. the early christian thinkers gave little attention to it, and that little was devoted to transforming it into something absolutely opposed to his whole spirit and method; in place of it they developed the _physiologus_ and the bestiaries, mingling scriptural statements, legends of the saints, and fanciful inventions with pious intent and childlike simplicity. in place of research came authority--the authority of the scriptures as interpreted by the _physio cogus_ and the bestiaries--and these remained the principal source of thought on animated nature for over a thousand years. occasionally, indeed, fear was shown among the rulers in the church, even at such poor prying into the creation as this, and in the fifth century a synod under pope gelasius administered a rebuke to the _physiologus_; but the interest in nature was too strong: the great work on _creation_ by st. basil had drawn from the _physiologus_ precious illustrations of holy writ, and the strongest of the early popes, gregory the great, virtually sanctioned it. thus was developed a sacred science of creation and of the divine purpose in nature, which went on developing from the fourth century to the nineteenth--from st. basil to st. isidore of seville, from isidore to vincent of beauvais, and from vincent to archdeacon paley and the bridgewater treatises. like all else in the middle ages, this sacred science was developed purely by theological methods. neglecting the wonders which the dissection of the commonest animals would have afforded them, these naturalists attempted to throw light into nature by ingenious use of scriptural texts, by research among the lives of the saints, and by the plentiful application of metaphysics. hence even such strong men as st. isidore of seville treasured up accounts of the unicorn and dragons mentioned in the scriptures and of the phoenix and basilisk in profane writings. hence such contributions to knowledge as that the basilisk kills serpents by his breath and men by his glance, that the lion when pursued effaces his tracks with the end of his tail, that the pelican nourishes her young with her own blood, that serpents lay aside their venom before drinking, that the salamander quenches fire, that the hyena can talk with shepherds, that certain birds are born of the fruit of a certain tree when it happens to fall into the water, with other masses of science equally valuable. as to the method of bringing science to bear on scripture, the _physiologus_ gives an example, illustrating the passage in the book of job which speaks of the old lion perishing for lack of prey. out of the attempt to explain an unusual hebrew word in the text there came a curious development of error, until we find fully evolved an account of the "ant-lion," which, it gives us to understand, was the lion mentioned by job, and it says: "as to the ant-lion, his father hath the shape of a lion, his mother that of an ant; the father liveth upon flesh and the mother upon herbs; these bring forth the ant-lion, a compound of both and in part like to either; for his fore part is like that of a lion and his hind part like that of an ant. being thus composed, he is neither able to eat flesh like his father nor herbs like his mother, and so he perisheth." in the middle of the thirteenth century we have a triumph of this theological method in the great work of the english franciscan bartholomew on _the properties of things_. the theological method as applied to science consists largely in accepting tradition and in spinning arguments to fit it. in this field bartholomew was a master. having begun with the intent mainly to explain the allusions in scripture to natural objects, he soon rises logically into a survey of all nature. discussing the "cockatrice" of scripture, he tells us: "he drieth and burneth leaves with his touch, and he is of so great venom and perilous that he slayeth and wasteth him that nigheth him without tarrying; and yet the weasel overcometh him, for the biting of the weasel is death to the cockatrice. nevertheless the biting of the cockatrice is death to the weasel if the weasel eat not rue before. and though the cockatrice be venomous without remedy while he is alive, yet he looseth all the malice when he is burnt to ashes. his ashes be accounted profitable in working of alchemy, and namely in turning and changing of metals." bartholomew also enlightens us on the animals of egypt, and says, "if the crocodile findeth a man by the water's brim he slayeth him, and then he weepeth over him and swalloweth him." naturally this good franciscan naturalist devotes much thought to the "dragons" mentioned in scripture. he says: "the dragon is most greatest of all serpents, and oft he is drawn out of his den and riseth up into the air, and the air is moved by him, and also the sea swelleth against his venom, and he hath a crest, and reareth his tongue, and hath teeth like a saw, and hath strength, and not only in teeth but in tail, and grieveth with biting and with stinging. whom he findeth he slayeth. oft four or five of them fasten their tails together and rear up their heads, and sail over the sea to get good meat. between elephants and dragons is everlasting fighting; for the dragon with his tail spanneth the elephant, and the elephant with his nose throweth down the dragon.... the cause why the dragon desireth his blood is the coldness thereof, by the which the dragon desireth to cool himself. jerome saith that the dragon is a full thirsty beast, insomuch that he openeth his mouth against the wind to quench the burning of his thirst in that wise. therefore, when he seeth ships in great wind he flieth against the sail to take the cold wind, and overthroweth the ship." these ideas of friar bartholomew spread far and struck deep into the popular mind. his book was translated into the principal languages of europe, and was one of those most generally read during the ages of faith. it maintained its position nearly three hundred years; even after the invention of printing it held its own, and in the fifteenth century there were issued no less than ten editions of it in latin, four in french, and various versions of it in dutch, spanish, and english. preachers found it especially useful in illustrating the ways of god to man. it was only when the great voyages of discovery substituted ascertained fact for theological reasoning in this province that its authority was broken. the same sort of science flourished in the _bestiaries_, which were used everywhere, and especially in the pulpits, for the edification of the faithful. in all of these, as in that compiled early in the thirteenth century by an ecclesiastic, william of normandy, we have this lesson, borrowed from the _physiologus_: "the lioness giveth birth to cubs which remain three days without life. then cometh the lion, breatheth upon them, and bringeth them to life.... thus it is that jesus christ during three days was deprived of life, but god the father raised him gloriously." pious use was constantly made of this science, especially by monkish preachers. the phoenix rising from his ashes proves the doctrine of the resurrection; the structure and mischief of monkeys proves the existence of demons; the fact that certain monkeys have no tails proves that satan has been shorn of his glory; the weasel, which "constantly changes its place, is a type of the man estranged from the word of god, who findeth no rest." the moral treatises of the time often took the form of works on natural history, in order the more fully to exploit these religious teachings of nature. thus from the book _on bees_, the dominican thomas of cantimpre, we learn that "wasps persecute bees and make war on them out of natural hatred"; and these, he tells us, typify the demons who dwell in the air and with lightning and tempest assail and vex mankind--whereupon he fills a long chapter with anecdotes of such demonic warfare on mortals. in like manner his fellow-dominican, the inquisitor nider, in his book _the ant hill_, teaches us that the ants in ethiopia, which are said to have horns and to grow so large as to look like dogs, are emblems of atrocious heretics, like wyclif and the hussites, who bark and bite against the truth; while the ants of india, which dig up gold out of the sand with their feet and hoard it, though they make no use of it, symbolize the fruitless toil with which the heretics dig out the gold of holy scripture and hoard it in their books to no purpose. this pious spirit not only pervaded science; it bloomed out in art, and especially in the cathedrals. in the gargoyles overhanging the walls, in the grotesques clambering about the towers or perched upon pinnacles, in the dragons prowling under archways or lurking in bosses of foliage, in the apocalyptic beasts carved upon the stalls of the choir, stained into the windows, wrought into the tapestries, illuminated in the letters and borders of psalters and missals, these marvels of creation suggested everywhere morals from the physiologus, the bestiaries, and the exempla.[36] here and there among men who were free from church control we have work of a better sort. in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries abd allatif made observations upon the natural history of egypt which showed a truly scientific spirit, and the emperor frederick ii attempted to promote a more fruitful study of nature; but one of these men was abhorred as a mussulman and the other as an infidel. far more in accordance with the spirit of the time was the ecclesiastic giraldus cambrensis, whose book on the topography of ireland bestows much attention upon the animals of the island, and rarely fails to make each contribute an appropriate moral. for example, he says that in ireland "eagles live for so many ages that they seem to contend with eternity itself; so also the saints, having put off the old man and put on the new, obtain the blessed fruit of everlasting life." again, he tells us: "eagles often fly so high that their wings are scorched by the sun; so those who in the holy scriptures strive to unravel the deep and hidden secrets of the heavenly mysteries, beyond what is allowed, fall below, as if the wings of the presumptuous imaginations on which they are borne were scorched." in one of the great men of the following century appeared a gleam of healthful criticism: albert the great, in his work on the animals, dissents from the widespread belief that certain birds spring from trees and are nourished by the sap, and also from the theory that some are generated in the sea from decaying wood. but it required many generations for such scepticism to produce much effect, and we find among the illustrations in an edition of mandeville published just before the reformation not only careful accounts but pictured representations both of birds and of beasts produced in the fruit of trees.[37] this general employment of natural science for pious purposes went on after the reformation. luther frequently made this use of it, and his example controlled his followers. in 1612, wolfgang franz, professor of theology at luther's university, gave to the world his sacred history of animals, which went through many editions. it contained a very ingenious classification, describing "natural dragons," which have three rows of teeth to each jaw, and he piously adds, "the principal dragon is the devil." near the end of the same century, father kircher, the great jesuit professor at rome, holds back the sceptical current, insists upon the orthodox view, and represents among the animals entering the ark sirens and griffins. yet even among theologians we note here and there a sceptical spirit in natural science. early in the same seventeenth century eugene roger published his _travels in palestine_. as regards the utterances of scripture he is soundly orthodox: he prefaces his work with a map showing, among other important points referred to in biblical history, the place where samson slew a thousand philistines with the jawbone of an ass, the cavern which adam and eve inhabited after their expulsion from paradise, the spot where balaam's ass spoke, the place where jacob wrestled with the angel, the steep place down which the swine possessed of devils plunged into the sea, the position of the salt statue which was once lot's wife, the place at sea where jonah was swallowed by the whale, and "the exact spot where st. peter caught one hundred and fifty-three fishes." as to natural history, he describes and discusses with great theological acuteness the basilisk. he tells us that the animal is about a foot and a half long, is shaped like a crocodile, and kills people with a single glance. the one which he saw was dead, fortunately for him, since in the time of pope leo iv--as he tells us--one appeared in rome and killed many people by merely looking at them; but the pope destroyed it with his prayers and the sign of the cross. he informs us that providence has wisely and mercifully protected man by requiring the monster to cry aloud two or three times whenever it leaves its den, and that the divine wisdom in creation is also shown by the fact that the monster is obliged to look its victim in the eye, and at a certain fixed distance, before its glance can penetrate the victim's brain and so pass to his heart. he also gives a reason for supposing that the same divine mercy has provided that the crowing of a cock will kill the basilisk. yet even in this good and credulous missionary we see the influence of bacon and the dawn of experimental science; for, having been told many stories regarding the salamander, he secured one, placed it alive upon the burning coals, and reports to us that the legends concerning its power to live in the fire are untrue. he also tried experiments with the chameleon, and found that the stories told of it were to be received with much allowance: while, then, he locks up his judgment whenever he discusses the letter of scripture, he uses his mind in other things much after the modern method. in the second half of the same century hottinger, in his _theological examination of the history of creation_, breaks from the belief in the phoenix; but his scepticism is carefully kept within the limits imposed by scripture. he avows his doubts, first, "because god created the animals in couples, while the phoenix is represented as a single, unmated creature"; secondly, "because noah, when he entered the ark, brought the animals in by sevens, while there were never so many individuals of the phoenix species" thirdly, because "no man is known who dares assert that he has ever seen this bird"; fourthly, because "those who assert there is a phoenix differ among themselves." in view of these attacks on the salamander and the phoenix, we are not surprised to find, before the end of the century, scepticism regarding the basilisk: the eminent prof. kirchmaier, at the university of wittenberg, treats phoenix and basilisk alike as old wives' fables. as to the phoenix, he denies its existence, not only because noah took no such bird into the ark, but also because, as he pithily remarks, "birds come from eggs, not from ashes." but the unicorn he can not resign, nor will he even concede that the unicorn is a rhinoceros; he appeals to job and to marco polo to prove that this animal, as usually conceived, really exists, and says, "who would not fear to deny the existence of the unicorn, since holy scripture names him with distinct praises?" as to the other great animals mentioned in scripture, he is so rationalistic as to admit that behemoth was an elephant and leviathan a whale. but these germs of a fruitful scepticism grew, and we soon find dannhauer going a step further and declaring his disbelief even in the unicorn, insisting that it was a rhinoceros--only that and nothing more. still, the main current continued strongly theological. in 1712 samuel bochart published his great work upon the animals of holy scripture. as showing its spirit we may take the titles of the chapters on the horse: "chapter vi. of the hebrew name of the horse." "chapter vii. of the colours of the six horses in zechariah." "chapter viii. of the horses in job." "chapter ix. of solomon's horses, and of the texts wherein the writers praise the excellence of horses." "chapter x. of the consecrated horses of the sun." among the other titles of chapters are such as: of balaam's ass; of the thousand philistines slain by samson with the jawbone of an ass; of the golden calves of aaron and jeroboam; of the bleating, milk, wool, external and internal parts of sheep mentioned in scripture; of notable things told regarding lions in scripture; of noah's dove and of the dove which appeared at christ's baptism. mixed up in the book, with the principal mass drawn from scripture, were many facts and reasonings taken from investigations by naturalists; but all were permeated by the theological spirit.[40] the inquiry into nature having thus been pursued nearly two thousand years theologically, we find by the middle of the sixteenth century some promising beginnings of a different method--the method of inquiry into nature scientifically--the method which seeks not plausibilities but facts. at that time edward wotton led the way in england and conrad gesner on the continent, by observations widely extended, carefully noted, and thoughtfully classified. this better method of interrogating nature soon led to the formation of societies for the same purpose. in 1560 was founded an academy for the study of nature at naples, but theologians, becoming alarmed, suppressed it, and for nearly one hundred years there was no new combined effort of that sort, until in 1645 began the meetings in london of what was afterward the royal society. then came the academy of sciences in france, and the accademia del cimento in italy; others followed in all parts of the world, and a great new movement was begun. theologians soon saw a danger in this movement. in italy, prince leopold de' medici, a protector of the florentine academy, was bribed with a cardinal's hat to neglect it, and from the days of urban viii to pius ix a similar spirit was there shown. in france, there were frequent ecclesiastical interferences, of which buffon's humiliation for stating a simple scientific truth was a noted example. in england, protestantism was at first hardly more favourable toward the royal society, and the great dr. south denounced it in his sermons as irreligious. fortunately, one thing prevented an open breach between theology and science: while new investigators had mainly given up the medieval method so dear to the church, they had very generally retained the conception of direct creation and of design throughout creation--a design having as its main purpose the profit, instruction, enjoyment, and amusement of man. on this the naturally opposing tendencies of theology and science were compromised. science, while somewhat freed from its old limitations, became the handmaid of theology in illustrating the doctrine of creative design, and always with apparent deference to the chaldean and other ancient myths and legends embodied in the hebrew sacred books. about the middle of the seventeenth century came a great victory of the scientific over the theologic method. at that time francesco redi published the results of his inquiries into the doctrine of spontaneous generation. for ages a widely accepted doctrine had been that water, filth, and carrion had received power from the creator to generate worms, insects, and a multitude of the smaller animals; and this doctrine had been especially welcomed by st. augustine and many of the fathers, since it relieved the almighty of making, adam of naming, and noah of living in the ark with these innumerable despised species. but to this fallacy redi put an end. by researches which could not be gainsaid, he showed that every one of these animals came from an egg; each, therefore, must be the lineal descendant of an animal created, named, and preserved from "the beginning." similar work went on in england, but under more distinctly theological limitations. in the same seventeenth century a very famous and popular english book was published by the naturalist john ray, a fellow of the royal society, who produced a number of works on plants, fishes, and birds; but the most widely read of all was entitled _the wisdom of god manifested in the works of creation_. between the years 1691 and 1827 it passed through nearly twenty editions. ray argued the goodness and wisdom of god from the adaptation of the animals not only to man's uses but to their own lives and surroundings. in the first years of the eighteenth century dr. nehemiah grew, of the royal society, published his _cosmologia sacra_ to refute anti-scriptural opinions by producing evidences of creative design. discussing "the ends of providence," he says, "a crane, which is scurvy meat, lays but two eggs in the year, but a pheasant and partridge, both excellent meat, lay and hatch fifteen or twenty." he points to the fact that "those of value which lay few at a time sit the oftener, as the woodcock and the dove." he breaks decidedly from the doctrine that noxious things in nature are caused by sin, and shows that they, too, are useful; that, "if nettles sting, it is to secure an excellent medicine for children and cattle"; that, "if the bramble hurts man, it makes all the better hedge"; and that, "if it chances to prick the owner, it tears the thief." "weasels, kites, and other hurtful animals induce us to watchfulness; thistles and moles, to good husbandry; lice oblige us to cleanliness in our bodies, spiders in our houses, and the moth in our clothes." this very optimistic view, triumphing over the theological theory of noxious animals and plants as effects of sin, which prevailed with so much force from st. augustine to wesley, was developed into nobler form during the century by various thinkers, and especially by archdeacon paley, whose _natural theology_ exercised a powerful influence down to recent times. the same tendency appeared in other countries, though various philosophers showed weak points in the argument, and goethe made sport of it in a noted verse, praising the forethought of the creator in foreordaining the cork tree to furnish stoppers for wine-bottles. shortly before the middle of the nineteenth century the main movement culminated in the _bridgewater treatises_. pursuant to the will of the eighth earl of bridgewater, the president of the royal society selected eight persons, each to receive a thousand pounds sterling for writing and publishing a treatise on the "power, wisdom, and goodness of god, as manifested in the creation." of these, the leading essays in regard to animated nature were those of thomas chalmers, on _the adaptation of external nature to the moral and intellectual condition of man_; of sir charles bell, on _the hand as evincing design_; of roget, on _animal and vegetable physiology with reference to natural theology_; and of kirby, on _the habits and instincts of animals with reference to natural theology_. besides these there were treatises by whewell, buckland, kidd, and prout. the work was well done. it was a marked advance on all that had appeared before, in matter, method, and spirit. looking back upon it now we can see that it was provisional, but that it was none the less fruitful in truth, and we may well remember darwin's remark on the stimulating effect of mistaken _theories_, as compared with the sterilizing effect of mistaken _observations_: mistaken observations lead men astray, mistaken theories suggest true theories. an effort made in so noble a spirit certainly does not deserve the ridicule that, in our own day, has sometimes been lavished upon it. curiously, indeed, one of the most contemptuous of these criticisms has been recently made by one of the most strenuous defenders of orthodoxy. no less eminent a standard-bearer of the faith than the rev. prof. zoeckler says of this movement to demonstrate creative purpose and design, and of the men who took part in it, "the earth appeared in their representation of it like a great clothing shop and soup kitchen, and god as a glorified rationalistic professor." such a statement as this is far from just to the conceptions of such men as butler, paley, and chalmers, no matter how fully the thinking world has now outlived them.[44] but, noble as the work of these men was, the foundation of fact on which they reared it became evidently more and more insecure. for as far back as the seventeenth century acute theologians had begun to discern difficulties more serious than any that had before confronted them. more and more it was seen that the number of different species was far greater than the world had hitherto imagined. greater and greater had become the old difficulty in conceiving that, of these innumerable species, each had been specially created by the almighty hand; that each had been brought before adam by the almighty to be named; and that each, in couples or in sevens, had been gathered by noah into the ark. but the difficulties thus suggested were as nothing compared to those raised by the _distribution_ of animals. even in the first days of the church this had aroused serious thought, and above all in the great mind of st. augustine. in his _city of god_ he had stated the difficulty as follows: "but there is a question about all these kinds of beasts, which are neither tamed by man, nor spring from the earth like frogs, such as wolves and others of that sort,... as to how they could find their way to the islands after that flood which destroyed every living thing not preserved in the ark.... some, indeed, might be thought to reach islands by swimming, in case these were very near; but some islands are so remote from continental lands that it does not seem possible that any creature could reach them by swimming. it is not an incredible thing, either, that some animals may have been captured by men and taken with them to those lands which they intended to inhabit, in order that they might have the pleasure of hunting; and it can not be denied that the transfer may have been accomplished through the agency of angels, commanded or allowed to perform this labour by god." but this difficulty had now assumed a magnitude of which st. augustine never dreamed. most powerful of all agencies to increase it were the voyages of columbus, vasco da gama, magellan, amerigo vespucci, and other navigators of the period of discovery. still more serious did it become as the great islands of the southern seas were explored. every navigator brought home tidings of new species of animals and of races of men living in parts of the world where the theologians, relying on the statement of st. paul that the gospel had gone into all lands, had for ages declared there could be none; until finally it overtaxed even the theological imagination to conceive of angels, in obedience to the divine command, distributing the various animals over the earth, dropping the megatherium in south america, the archeopteryx in europe, the ornithorhynchus in australia, and the opossum in north america. the first striking evidence of this new difficulty was shown by the eminent jesuit missionary, joseph acosta. in his _natural and moral history of the indies_, published in 1590, he proved himself honest and lucid. though entangled in most of the older scriptural views, he broke away from many; but the distribution of animals gave him great trouble. having shown the futility of st. augustine's other explanations, he quaintly asks: "who can imagine that in so long a voyage men woulde take the paines to carrie foxes to peru, especially that kinde they call `acias,' which is the filthiest i have seene? who woulde likewise say that they have carried tygers and lyons? truly it were a thing worthy the laughing at to thinke so. it was sufficient, yea, very much, for men driven against their willes by tempest, in so long and unknowne a voyage, to escape with their owne lives, without busying themselves to carrie woolves and foxes, and to nourish them at sea." it was under the impression made by this new array of facts that in 1667 abraham milius published at geneva his book on _the origin of animals and the migration of peoples_. this book shows, like that of acosta, the shock and strain to which the discovery of america subjected the received theological scheme of things. it was issued with the special approbation of the bishop of salzburg, and it indicates the possibility that a solution of the whole trouble may be found in the text, "let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind." milius goes on to show that the ancient philosophers agree with moses, and that "the earth and the waters, and especially the heat of the sun and of the genial sky, together with that slimy and putrid quality which seems to be inherent in the soil, may furnish the origin for fishes, terrestrial animals, and birds." on the other hand, he is very severe against those who imagine that man can have had the same origin with animals. but the subject with which milius especially grapples is the _distribution_ of animals. he is greatly exercised by the many species found in america and in remote islands of the ocean--species entirely unknown in the other continents--and of course he is especially troubled by the fact that these species existing in those exceedingly remote parts of the earth do not exist in the neighbourhood of mount ararat. he confesses that to explain the distribution of animals is the most difficult part of the problem. if it be urged that birds could reach america by flying and fishes by swimming, he asks, "what of the beasts which neither fly nor swim?" yet even as to the birds he asks, "is there not an infinite variety of winged creatures who fly so slowly and heavily, and have such a horror of the water, that they would not even dare trust themselves to fly over a wide river?" as to fishes, he says, "they are very averse to wandering from their native waters," and he shows that there are now reported many species of american and east indian fishes entirely unknown on the other continents, whose presence, therefore, can not be explained by any theory of natural dispersion. of those who suggest that land animals may have been dispersed over the earth by the direct agency of man for his use or pleasure he asks: "who would like to get different sorts of lions, bears, tigers, and other ferocious and noxious creatures on board ship? who would trust himself with them? and who would wish to plant colonies of such creatures in new, desirable lands?" his conclusion is that plants and animals take their origin in the lands wherein they are found; an opinion which he supports by quoting from the two narrations in genesis passages which imply generative force in earth and water. but in the eighteenth century matters had become even worse for the theological view. to meet the difficulty the eminent benedictine, dom calmet, in his _commentary_, expressed the belief that all the species of a genus had; originally formed one species, and he dwelt on this view as one which enabled him to explain the possibility of gathering all animals into the ark. this idea, dangerous as it was to the fabric of orthodoxy, and involving a profound separation from the general doctrine of the church, seems to have been abroad among thinking men, for we find in the latter half of the same century even linnaeus inclining to consider it. it was time, indeed, that some new theological theory be evolved; the great linnaeus himself, in spite of his famous declaration favouring the fixity of species, had dealt a death-blow to the old theory. in his _systema naturae_, published in the middle of the eighteenth century, he had enumerated four thousand species of animals, and the difficulties involved in the naming of each of them by adam and in bringing them together in the ark appeared to all thinking men more and more insurmountable. what was more embarrassing, the number of distinct species went on increasing rapidly, indeed enormously, until, as an eminent zoological authority of our own time has declared, "for every one of the species enumerated by linnaeus, more than fifty kinds are known to the naturalist of to-day, and the number of species still unknown doubtless far exceeds the list of those recorded." already there were premonitions of the strain made upon scripture by requiring a hundred and sixty distinct miraculous interventions of the creator to produce the hundred and sixty species of land shells found in the little island of madeira alone, and fourteen hundred distinct interventions to produce the actual number of distinct species of a single well-known shell. ever more and more difficult, too, became the question of the geographical distribution of animals. as new explorations were made in various parts of the world, this danger to the theological view went on increasing. the sloths in south america suggested painful questions: how could animals so sluggish have got away from the neighbourhood of mount ararat so completely and have travelled so far? the explorations in australia and neighbouring islands made matters still worse, for there was found in those regions a whole realm of animals differing widely from those of other parts of the earth. the problem before the strict theologians became, for example, how to explain the fact that the kangaroo can have been in the ark and be now only found in australia: his saltatory powers are indeed great, but how could he by any series of leaps have sprung across the intervening mountains, plains, and oceans to that remote continent? and, if the theory were adopted that at some period a causeway extended across the vast chasm separating australia from the nearest mainland, why did not lions, tigers, camels, and camelopards force or find their way across it? the theological theory, therefore, had by the end of the eighteenth century gone to pieces. the wiser theologians waited; the unwise indulged in exhortations to "root out the wicked heart of unbelief," in denunciation of "science falsely so called," and in frantic declarations that "the bible is true"--by which they meant that the limited understanding of it which they had happened to inherit is true. by the middle of the nineteenth century the whole theological theory of creation--though still preached everywhere as a matter of form--was clearly seen by all thinking men to be hopelessly lost: such strong men as cardinal wiseman in the roman church, dean buckland in the anglican, and hugh miller in the scottish church, made heroic efforts to save something from it, but all to no purpose. that sturdy teutonic and anglo-saxon honesty, which is the best legacy of the middle ages to christendom, asserted itself in the old strongholds of theological thought, the universities. neither the powerful logic of bishop butler nor the nimble reasoning of archdeacon paley availed. just as the line of astronomical thinkers from copernicus to newton had destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the centre, and the almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed the old idea of a creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man. they had developed a system of a very different sort, and this we shall next consider.[49] iii. theological and scientific theories, of an evolution in animated nature. we have seen, thus far, how there came into the thinking of mankind upon the visible universe and its inhabitants the idea of a creation virtually instantaneous and complete, and of a creator in human form with human attributes, who spoke matter into existence literally by the exercise of his throat and lips, or shaped and placed it with his hands and fingers. we have seen that this view came from far; that it existed in the chaldaeo-babylonian and egyptian civilizations, and probably in others of the earliest date known to us; that its main features passed thence into the sacred books of the hebrews and then into the early christian church, by whose theologians it was developed through the middle ages and maintained during the modern period. but, while this idea was thus developed by a succession of noble and thoughtful men through thousands of years, another conception, to all appearance equally ancient, was developed, sometimes in antagonism to it, sometimes mingled with it--the conception of all living beings as wholly or in part the result of a growth process--of an evolution. this idea, in various forms, became a powerful factor in nearly all the greater ancient theologies and philosophies. for very widespread among the early peoples who attained to much thinking power was a conception that, in obedience to the divine fiat, a watery chaos produced the earth, and that the sea and land gave birth to their inhabitants. this is clearly seen in those records of chaldaeo-babylonian thought deciphered in these latter years, to which reference has already been made. in these we have a watery chaos which, under divine action, brings forth the earth and its inhabitants; first the sea animals and then the land animals--the latter being separated into three kinds, substantially as recorded afterward in the hebrew accounts. at the various stages in the work the chaldean creator pronounces it "beautiful," just as the hebrew creator in our own later account pronounces it "good." in both accounts there is placed over the whole creation a solid, concave firmament; in both, light is created first, and the heavenly bodies are afterward placed "for signs and for seasons"; in both, the number seven is especially sacred, giving rise to a sacred division of time and to much else. it may be added that, with many other features in the hebrew legends evidently drawn from the chaldean, the account of the creation in each is followed by a legend regarding "the fall of man" and a deluge, many details of which clearly passed in slightly modified form from the chaldean into the hebrew accounts. it would have been a miracle indeed if these primitive conceptions, wrought out with so much poetic vigour in that earlier civilization on the tigris and euphrates, had failed to influence the hebrews, who during the most plastic periods of their development were under the tutelage of their chaldean neighbours. since the researches of layard, george smith, oppert, schrader, jensen, sayce, and their compeers, there is no longer a reasonable doubt that this ancient view of the world, elaborated if not originated in that earlier civilization, came thence as a legacy to the hebrews, who wrought it in a somewhat disjointed but mainly monotheistic form into the poetic whole which forms one of the most precious treasures of ancient thought preserved in the book of genesis. thus it was that, while the idea of a simple material creation literally by the hands and fingers or voice of the creator became, as we have seen, the starting-point of a powerful stream of theological thought, and while this stream was swollen from age to age by contributions from the fathers, doctors, and learned divines of the church, catholic and protestant, there was poured into it this lesser current, always discernible and at times clearly separated from it--a current of belief in a process of evolution. the rev. prof. sayce, of oxford, than whom no english-speaking scholar carries more weight in a matter of this kind, has recently declared his belief that the chaldaeo-babylonian theory was the undoubted source of the similar theory propounded by the ionic philosopher anaximander--the greek thinkers deriving this view from the babylonians through the phoenicians; he also allows that from the same source its main features were adopted into both the accounts given in the first of our sacred books, and in this general view the most eminent christian assyriologists concur. it is true that these sacred accounts of ours contradict each other. in that part of the first or elohistic account given in the first chapter of genesis the _waters_ bring forth fishes, marine animals, and birds (genesis, i, 20); but in that part of the second or jehovistic account given in the second chapter of genesis both the land animals and birds are declared to have been created not out of the water, but "_out of the ground_" (genesis, ii, 19). the dialectic skill of the fathers was easily equal to explaining away this contradiction; but the old current of thought, strengthened by both these legends, arrested their attention, and, passing through the minds of a succession of the greatest men of the church, influenced theological opinion deeply, if not widely, for ages, in favour of an evolution theory. but there was still another ancient source of evolution ideas. thoughtful men of the early civilizations which were developed along the great rivers in the warmer regions of the earth noted how the sun-god as he rose in his fullest might caused the water and the rich soil to teem with the lesser forms of life. in egypt, especially, men saw how under this divine power the nile slime brought forth "creeping things innumerable." hence mainly this ancient belief that the animals and man were produced by lifeless matter at the divine command, "in the beginning," was supplemented by the idea that some of the lesser animals, especially the insects, were produced by a later evolution, being evoked after the original creation from various sources, but chiefly from matter in a state of decay. this crude, early view aided doubtless in giving germs of a better evolution theory to the early greeks. anaximander, empedocles, anaxagoras, and, greatest of all, aristotle, as we have seen, developed them, making their way at times by guesses toward truths since established by observation. aristotle especially, both by speculation and observation, arrived at some results which, had greek freedom of thought continued, might have brought the world long since to its present plane of biological knowledge; for he reached something like the modern idea of a succession of higher organizations from lower, and made the fruitful suggestion of "a perfecting principle" in nature. with the coming in of christian theology this tendency toward a yet truer theory of evolution was mainly stopped, but the old crude view remained, and as a typical example of it we may note the opinion of st. basil the great in the fourth century. discussing the work of creation, he declares that, at the command of god, "the waters were gifted with productive power"; "from slime and muddy places frogs, flies, and gnats came into being"; and he finally declares that the same voice which gave this energy and quality of productiveness to earth and water shall be similarly efficacious until the end of the world. st. gregory of nyssa held a similar view. this idea of these great fathers of the eastern church took even stronger hold on the great father of the western church. for st. augustine, so fettered usually by the letter of the sacred text, broke from his own famous doctrine as to the acceptance of scripture and spurned the generally received belief of a creative process like that by which a toymaker brings into existence a box of playthings. in his great treatise on _genesis_ he says: "to suppose that god formed man from the dust with bodily hands is very childish.... god neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he breathe upon him with throat and lips." st. augustine then suggests the adoption of the old emanation or evolution theory, shows that "certain very small animals may not have been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may have originated later from putrefying matter." argues that, even if this be so, god is still their creator, dwells upon such a potential creation as involved in the actual creation, and speaks of animals "whose numbers the after-time unfolded." in his great treatise on the _trinity_--the work to which he devoted the best thirty years of his life--we find the full growth of this opinion. he develops at length the view that in the creation of living beings there was something like a growth--that god is the ultimate author, but works through secondary causes; and finally argues that certain substances are endowed by god with the power of producing certain classes of plants and animals.[53] this idea of a development by secondary causes apart from the original creation was helped in its growth by a theological exigency. more and more, as the organic world was observed, the vast multitude of petty animals, winged creatures, and "creeping things" was felt to be a strain upon the sacred narrative. more and more it became difficult to reconcile the dignity of the almighty with his work in bringing each of these creatures before adam to be named; or to reconcile the human limitations of adam with his work in naming "every living creature"; or to reconcile the dimensions of noah's ark with the space required for preserving all of them, and the food of all sorts necessary for their sustenance, whether they were admitted by twos, as stated in one scriptural account, or by sevens, as stated in the other. the inadequate size of the ark gave especial trouble. origen had dealt with it by suggesting that the cubit was six times greater than had been supposed. bede explained noah's ability to complete so large a vessel by supposing that he worked upon it during a hundred years; and, as to the provision of food taken into it, he declared that there was no need of a supply for more than one day, since god could throw the animals into a deep sleep or otherwise miraculously make one day's supply sufficient; he also lessened the strain on faith still more by diminishing the number of animals taken into the ark--supporting his view upon augustine's theory of the later development of insects out of carrion. doubtless this theological necessity was among the main reasons which led st. isidore of seville, in the seventh century, to incorporate this theory, supported by st. basil and st. augustine, into his great encyclopedic work which gave materials for thought on god and nature to so many generations. he familiarized the theological world still further with the doctrine of secondary creation, giving such examples of it as that "bees are generated from decomposed veal, beetles from horseflesh, grasshoppers from mules, scorpions from crabs," and, in order to give still stronger force to the idea of such transformations, he dwells on the biblical account of nebuchadnezzar, which appears to have taken strong hold upon medieval thought in science, and he declares that other human beings had been changed into animals, especially into swine, wolves, and owls. this doctrine of after-creations went on gathering strength until, in the twelfth century, peter lombard, in his theological summary, _the sentences_, so powerful in moulding the thought of the church, emphasized the distinction between animals which spring from carrion and those which are created from earth and water; the former he holds to have been created "potentially" the latter "actually." in the century following, this idea was taken up by st. thomas aquinas and virtually received from him its final form. in the _summa_, which remains the greatest work of medieval thought, he accepts the idea that certain animals spring from the decaying bodies of plants and animals, and declares that they are produced by the creative word of god either actually or virtually. he develops this view by saying, "nothing was made by god, after the six days of creation, absolutely new, but it was in some sense included in the work of the six days"; and that "even new species, if any appear, have existed before in certain native properties, just as animals are produced from putrefaction." the distinction thus developed between creation "causally" or "potentially," and "materially" or "formally," was made much of by commentators afterward. cornelius a lapide spread it by saying that certain animals were created not "absolutely," but only "derivatively," and this thought was still further developed three centuries later by augustinus eugubinus, who tells us that, after the first creative energy had called forth land and water, light was made by the almighty, the instrument of all future creation, and that the light called everything into existence. all this "science falsely so called," so sedulously developed by the master minds of the church, and yet so futile that we might almost suppose that the great apostle, in a glow of prophetic vision, had foreseen it in his famous condemnation, seems at this distance very harmless indeed; yet, to many guardians of the "sacred deposit of doctrine " in the church, even so slight a departure from the main current of thought seemed dangerous. it appeared to them like pressing the doctrine of secondary causes to a perilous extent; and about the beginning of the seventeenth century we have the eminent spanish jesuit and theologian suarez denouncing it, and declaring st. augustine a heretic for his share in it. but there was little danger to the older idea just then; the main theological tendency was so strong that the world kept on as of old. biblical theology continued to spin its own webs out of its own bowels, and all the lesser theological flies continued to be entangled in them; yet here and there stronger thinkers broke loose from this entanglement and helped somewhat to disentangle others.[56] at the close of the middle ages, in spite of the devotion of the reformed church to the letter of scripture, the revival of learning and the great voyages gave an atmosphere in which better thinking on the problems of nature began to gain strength. on all sides, in every field, men were making discoveries which caused the general theological view to appear more and more inadequate. first of those who should be mentioned with reverence as beginning to develop again that current of greek thought which the system drawn from our sacred books by the fathers and doctors of the church had interrupted for more than a thousand years, was giordano bruno. his utterances were indeed vague and enigmatical, but this fault may well be forgiven him, for he saw but too clearly what must be his reward for any more open statements. his reward indeed came--even for his faulty utterances--when, toward the end of the nineteenth century, thoughtful men from all parts of the world united in erecting his statue on the spot where he had been burned by the roman inquisition nearly three hundred years before. after bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth century, descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human thought: his theories, however superseded now, gave a great impulse to investigation then. his genius in promoting an evolution doctrine as regards the mechanical formation of the solar system was great, and his mode of thought strengthened the current of evolutionary doctrine generally; but his constant dread of persecution, both from catholics and protestants, led him steadily to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them. the execution of bruno had occurred in his childhood, and in the midst of his career he had watched the galileo struggle in all its stages. he had seen his own works condemned by university after university under the direction of theologians, and placed upon the roman _index_. although he gave new and striking arguments to prove the existence of god, and humbled himself before the jesuits, he was condemned by catholics and protestants alike. since roger bacon, perhaps, no great thinker had been so completely abased and thwarted by theological oppression. near the close of the same century another great thinker, leibnitz, though not propounding any full doctrine on evolution, gave it an impulse by suggesting a view contrary to the sacrosanct belief in the immutability of species--that is, to the pious doctrine that every species in the animal kingdom now exists as it left the hands of the creator, the naming process by adam, and the door of noah's ark. his punishment at the hands of the church came a few years later, when, in 1712, the jesuits defeated his attempt to found an academy of science at vienna. the imperial authorities covered him with honours, but the priests--ruling in the confessionals and pulpits--would not allow him the privilege of aiding his fellow-men to ascertain god's truths revealed in nature. spinoza, hume, and kant may also be mentioned as among those whose thinking, even when mistaken, might have done much to aid in the development of a truer theory had not the theologic atmosphere of their times been so unpropitious; but a few years after leibnitz's death came in france a thinker in natural science of much less influence than any of these, who made a decided step forward. early in the eighteenth century benoist de maillet, a man of the world, but a wide observer and close thinker upon nature, began meditating especially upon the origin of animal forms, and was led into the idea of the transformation of species and so into a theory of evolution, which in some important respects anticipated modern ideas. he definitely, though at times absurdly, conceived the production of existing species by the modification of their predecessors, and he plainly accepted one of the fundamental maxims of modern geology--that the structure of the globe must be studied in the light of the present course of nature. but he fell between two ranks of adversaries. on one side, the church authorities denounced him as a freethinker; on the other, voltaire ridiculed him as a devotee. feeling that his greatest danger was from the orthodox theologians, de maillet endeavoured to protect himself by disguising his name in the title of his book, and by so wording its preface and dedication that, if persecuted, he could declare it a mere sport of fancy; he therefore announced it as the reverie of a hindu sage imparted to a christian missionary. but this strategy availed nothing: he had allowed his hindu sage to suggest that the days of creation named in genesis might be long periods of time; and this, with other ideas of equally fearful import, was fatal. though the book was in type in 1735, it was not published till 1748--three years after his death. on the other hand, the heterodox theology of voltaire was also aroused; and, as de maillet had seen in the presence of fossils on high mountains a proof that these mountains were once below the sea, voltaire, recognising in this an argument for the deluge of noah, ridiculed the new thinker without mercy. unfortunately, some of de maillet's vagaries lent themselves admirably to voltaire's sarcasm; better material for it could hardly be conceived than the theory, seriously proposed, that the first human being was born of a mermaid. hence it was that, between these two extremes of theology, de maillet received no recognition until, very recently, the greatest men of science in england and france have united in giving him his due. but his work was not lost, even in his own day; robinet and bonnet pushed forward victoriously on helpful lines. in the second half of the eighteenth century a great barrier was thrown across this current--the authority of linnaeus. he was the most eminent naturalist of his time, a wide observer, a close thinker; but the atmosphere in which he lived and moved and had his being was saturated with biblical theology, and this permeated all his thinking. he who visits the tomb of linnaeus to-day, entering the beautiful cathedral of upsala by its southern porch, sees above it, wrought in stone, the hebrew legend of creation. in a series of medallions, the almighty--in human form--accomplishes the work of each creative day. in due order he puts in place the solid firmament with the waters above it, the sun, moon, and stars within it, the beasts, birds, and plants below it, and finishes his task by taking man out of a little hillock of "the earth beneath," and woman out of man's side. doubtless linnaeus, as he went to his devotions, often smiled at this childlike portrayal. yet he was never able to break away from the idea it embodied. at times, in face of the difficulties which beset the orthodox theory, he ventured to favour some slight concessions. toward the end of his life he timidly advanced the hypothesis that all the species of one genus constituted at the creation one species; and from the last edition of his _systema naturae_ he quietly left out the strongly orthodox statement of the fixity of each species, which he had insisted upon in his earlier works. but he made no adequate declaration. what he might expect if he openly and decidedly sanctioned a newer view he learned to his cost; warnings came speedily both from the catholic and protestant sides. at a time when eminent prelates of the older church were eulogizing debauched princes like louis xv, and using the unspeakably obscene casuistry of the jesuit sanchez in the education of the priesthood as to the relations of men to women, the modesty of the church authorities was so shocked by linnaeus's proofs of a sexual system in plants that for many years his writings were prohibited in the papal states and in various other parts of europe where clerical authority was strong enough to resist the new scientific current. not until 1773 did one of the more broad-minded cardinals --zelanda--succeed in gaining permission that prof. minasi should discuss the linnaean system at rome. and protestantism was quite as oppressive. in a letter to eloius, linnaeus tells of the rebuke given to science by one of the great lutheran prelates of sweden, bishop svedberg. from various parts of europe detailed statements had been sent to the royal academy of science that water had been turned into blood, and well-meaning ecclesiastics had seen in this an indication of the wrath of god, certainly against the regions in which these miracles had occurred and possibly against the whole world. a miracle of this sort appearing in sweden, linnaeus looked into it carefully and found that the reddening of the water was caused by dense masses of minute insects. news of this explanation having reached the bishop, he took the field against it; he denounced this scientific discovery as "a satanic abyss" (_abyssum satanae_), and declared "the reddening of the water is _not_ natural," and "when god allows such a miracle to take place satan endeavours, and so do his ungodly, self-reliant, self-sufficient, and worldly tools, to make it signify nothing." in face of this onslaught linnaeus retreated; he tells his correspondent that "it is difficult to say anything in this matter," and shields himself under the statement "it is certainly a miracle that so many millions of creatures can be so suddenly propagated," and "it shows undoubtedly the all-wise power of the infinite." the great naturalist, grown old and worn with labours for science, could no longer resist the contemporary theology; he settled into obedience to it, and while the modification of his early orthodox view was, as we have seen, quietly imbedded in the final edition of his great work, he made no special effort to impress it upon the world. to all appearance he continued to adhere to the doctrine that all existing species had been created by the almighty "in the beginning," and that since "the beginning" no new species had appeared. yet even his great authority could not arrest the swelling tide; more and more vast became the number of species, more and more incomprehensible under the old theory became the newly ascertained facts in geographical distribution, more and more it was felt that the universe and animated beings had come into existence by some process other than a special creation "in the beginning," and the question was constantly pressing, "by _what_ process?" throughout the whole of the eighteenth century one man was at work on natural history who might have contributed much toward an answer to this question: this man was buffon. his powers of research and thought were remarkable, and his gift in presenting results of research and thought showed genius. he had caught the idea of an evolution in nature by the variation of species, and was likely to make a great advance with it; but he, too, was made to feel the power of theology. as long as he gave pleasing descriptions of animals the church petted him, but when he began to deduce truths of philosophical import the batteries of the sorbonne were opened upon him; he was made to know that "the sacred deposit of truth committed to the church" was, that "in the beginning god made the heavens and the earth" and that "all things were made at the beginning of the world." for his simple statement of truths in natural science which are to-day truisms, he was, as we have seen, dragged forth by the theological faculty, forced to recant publicly, and to print his recantation. in this he announced, "i abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of moses."[62] but all this triumph of the chaldeo-babylonian creation legends which the church had inherited availed but little. for about the end of the eighteenth century fruitful suggestions and even clear presentations of this or that part of a large evolutionary doctrine came thick and fast, and from the most divergent quarters. especially remarkable were those which came from erasmus darwin in england, from maupertuis in france, from oken in switzerland, and from herder, and, most brilliantly of all, from goethe in germany. two men among these thinkers must be especially mentioned--treviranus in germany and lamarck in france; each independently of the other drew the world more completely than ever before in this direction. from treviranus came, in 1802, his work on biology, and in this he gave forth the idea that from forms of life originally simple had arisen all higher organizations by gradual development; that every living feature has a capacity for receiving modifications of its structure from external influences; and that no species had become really extinct, but that each had passed into some other species. from lamarck came about the same time his _researches_, and a little later his _zoological philosophy_, which introduced a new factor into the process of evolution--the action of the animal itself in its efforts toward a development to suit new needs--and he gave as his principal conclusions the following: 1. life tends to increase the volume of each living body and of all its parts up to a limit determined by its own necessities. 2. new wants in animals give rise to new organs. 3. the development of these organs is in proportion to their employment. 4. new developments may be transmitted to offspring. his well-known examples to illustrate these views, such as that of successive generations of giraffes lengthening their necks by stretching them to gather high-growing foliage, and of successive generations of kangaroos lengthening and strengthening their hind legs by the necessity of keeping themselves erect while jumping, provoked laughter, but the very comicality of these illustrations aided to fasten his main conclusion in men's memories. in both these statements, imperfect as they were, great truths were embodied--truths which were sure to grow. lamarck's declaration, especially, that the development of organs is in ratio to their employment, and his indications of the reproduction in progeny of what is gained or lost in parents by the influence of circumstances, entered as a most effective force into the development of the evolution theory. the next great successor in the apostolate of this idea of the universe was geoffroy saint-hilaire. as early as 1795 he had begun to form a theory that species are various modifications of the same type, and this theory he developed, testing it at various stages as nature was more and more displayed to him. it fell to his lot to bear the brunt in a struggle against heavy odds which lasted many years. for the man who now took up the warfare, avowedly for science but unconsciously for theology, was the foremost naturalist then living--cuvier. his scientific eminence was deserved; the highest honours of his own and other countries were given him, and he bore them worthily. an imperial councillor under napoleon; president of the council of public instruction and chancellor of the university under the restored bourbons; grand officer of the legion of honour, a peer of france, minister of the interior, and president of the council of state under louis philippe; he was eminent in all these capacities, and yet the dignity given by such high administrative positions was as nothing compared to his leadership in natural science. science throughout the world acknowledged in him its chief contemporary ornament, and to this hour his fame rightly continues. but there was in him, as in linnaeus, a survival of certain theological ways of looking at the universe and certain theological conceptions of a plan of creation; it must be said, too, that while his temperament made him distrust new hypotheses, of which he had seen so many born and die, his environment as a great functionary of state, honoured, admired, almost adored by the greatest, not only in the state but in the church, his solicitude lest science should receive some detriment by openly resisting the church, which had recaptured europe after the french revolution, and had made of its enemies its footstool--all these considerations led him to oppose the new theory. amid the plaudits, then, of the foremost church-men he threw across the path of the evolution doctrines the whole mass of his authority in favour of the old theory of catastrophic changes and special creations. geoffroy saint-hilaire stoutly withstood him, braving non-recognition, ill-treatment, and ridicule. treviranus, afar off in his mathematical lecture-room at bremen, seemed simply forgotten. but the current of evolutionary thought could not thus be checked: dammed up for a time, it broke out in new channels and in ways and places least expected; turned away from france, it appeared especially in england, where great paleontologists and geologists arose whose work culminated in that of lyell. specialists throughout all the world now became more vigorous than ever, gathering facts and thinking upon them in a way which caused the special creation theory to shrink more and more. broader and more full became these various rivulets, soon to unite in one great stream of thought. in 1813 dr. wells developed a theory of evolution by natural selection to account for varieties in the human race. about 182o dean herbert, eminent as an authority in horticulture, avowed his conviction that species are but fixed varieties. in 1831 patrick matthews stumbled upon and stated the main doctrine of natural selection in evolution; and others here and there, in europe and america, caught an inkling of it. but no one outside of a circle apparently uninfluential cared for these things: the church was serene: on the continent it had obtained reactionary control of courts, cabinets, and universities; in england, dean cockburn was denouncing mary somerville and the geologists to the delight of churchmen; and the rev. mellor brown was doing the same thing for the edification of dissenters. in america the mild suggestions of silliman and his compeers were met by the protestations of the andover theologians headed by moses stuart. neither of the great english universities, as a rule, took any notice of the innovators save by sneers. to this current of thought there was joined a new element when, in 1844, robert chambers published his _vestiges of creation_. the book was attractive and was widely read. in chambers's view the several series of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent, were the result of two distinct impulses, each given once and for all time by the creator. the first of these was an impulse imparted to forms of life, lifting them gradually through higher grades; the second was an impulse tending to modify organic substances in accordance with external circumstances; in fact, the doctrine of the book was evolution tempered by miracle--a stretching out of the creative act through all time--a pious version of lamarck. two results followed, one mirth-provoking, the other leading to serious thought. the amusing result was that the theologians were greatly alarmed by the book: it was loudly insisted that it promoted atheism. looking back along the line of thought which has since been developed, one feels that the older theologians ought to have put up thanksgivings for chambers's theory, and prayers that it might prove true. the more serious result was that it accustomed men's minds to a belief in evolution as in some form possible or even probable. in this way it was provisionally of service. eight years later herbert spencer published an essay contrasting the theories of creation and evolution--reasoning with great force in favour of the latter, showing that species had undoubtedly been modified by circumstances; but still only few and chosen men saw the significance of all these lines of reasoning which had been converging during so many years toward one conclusion. on july 1, 1858, there were read before the linnaean society at london two papers--one presented by charles darwin, the other by alfred russel wallace--and with the reading of these papers the doctrine of evolution by natural selection was born. then and there a fatal breach was made in the great theological barrier of the continued fixity of species since the creation. the story of these papers the scientific world knows by heart: how charles darwin, having been sent to the university of cambridge to fit him for the anglican priesthood, left it in 1831 to go upon the scientific expedition of the beagle; how for five years he studied with wonderful vigour and acuteness the problems of life as revealed on land and at sea--among volcanoes and coral reefs, in forests and on the sands, from the tropics to the arctic regions; how, in the cape verde and the galapagos islands, and in brazil, patagonia, and australia he interrogated nature with matchless persistency and skill; how he returned unheralded, quietly settled down to his work, and soon set the world thinking over its first published results, such as his book on _coral reefs,_ and the monograph on the _cirripedia_; and, finally, how he presented his paper, and followed it up with treatises which made him one of the great leaders in the history of human thought. the scientific world realizes, too, more and more, the power of character shown by darwin in all this great career; the faculty of silence, the reserve of strength seen in keeping his great thought--his idea of evolution by natural selection--under silent study and meditation for nearly twenty years, giving no hint of it to the world at large, but working in every field to secure proofs or disproofs, and accumulating masses of precious material for the solution of the questions involved. to one man only did he reveal his thought--to dr. joseph hooker, to whom in 1844, under the seal of secrecy, he gave a summary of his conclusions. not until fourteen years later occurred the event which showed him that the fulness of time had come--the letter from alfred russel wallace, to whom, in brilliant researches during the decade from 1848 to 1858, in brazil and in the malay archipelago, the same truth of evolution by natural selection had been revealed. among the proofs that scientific study does no injury to the more delicate shades of sentiment is the well-known story of this letter. with it wallace sent darwin a memoir, asking him to present it to the linnaean society: on examining it, darwin found that wallace had independently arrived at conclusions similar to his own--possibly had deprived him of fame; but darwin was loyal to his friend, and his friend remained ever loyal to him. he publicly presented the paper from wallace, with his own conclusions; and the date of this presentation--july 1, 1858--separates two epochs in the history, not merely of natural science, but of human thought. in the following year, 1859, came the first instalment of his work in its fuller development--his book on _the origin of species_. in this book one at least of the main secrets at the heart of the evolutionary process, which had baffled the long line of investigators and philosophers from the days of aristotle, was more broadly revealed. the effective mechanism of evolution was shown at work in three ascertained facts: in the struggle for existence among organized beings; in the survival of the fittest; and in heredity. these facts were presented with such minute research, wide observation, patient collation, transparent honesty, and judicial fairness, that they at once commanded the world's attention. it was the outcome of thirty years' work and thought by a worker and thinker of genius, but it was yet more than that--it was the outcome, also, of the work and thought of another man of genius fifty years before. the book of malthus on the _principle of population_, mainly founded on the fact that animals increase in a geometrical ratio, and therefore, if unchecked, must encumber the earth, had been generally forgotten, and was only recalled with a sneer. but the genius of darwin recognised in it a deeper meaning, and now the thought of malthus was joined to the new current. meditating upon it in connection with his own observations of the luxuriance of nature, darwin had arrived at his doctrine of natural selection and survival of the fittest. as the great dogmatic barrier between the old and new views of the universe was broken down, the flood of new thought pouring over the world stimulated and nourished strong growths in every field of research and reasoning: edition after edition of the book was called for; it was translated even into japanese and hindustani; the stagnation of scientific thought, which buckle, only a few years before, had so deeply lamented, gave place to a widespread and fruitful activity; masses of accumulated observations, which had seemed stale and unprofitable, were made alive; facts formerly without meaning now found their interpretation. under this new influence an army of young men took up every promising line of scientific investigation in every land. epoch-making books appeared in all the great nations. spencer, wallace, huxley, galton, tyndall, tylor, lubbock, bagehot, lewes, in england, and a phalanx of strong men in germany, italy, france, and america gave forth works which became authoritative in every department of biology. if some of the older men in france held back, overawed perhaps by the authority of cuvier, the younger and more vigorous pressed on. one source of opposition deserves to be especially mentioned--louis agassiz. a great investigator, an inspired and inspiring teacher, a noble man, he had received and elaborated a theory of animated creation which he could not readily change. in his heart and mind still prevailed the atmosphere of the little swiss parsonage in which he was born, and his religious and moral nature, so beautiful to all who knew him, was especially repelled by sundry evolutionists, who, in their zeal as neophytes, made proclamations seeming to have a decidedly irreligious if not immoral bearing. in addition to this was the direction his thinking had received from cuvier. both these influences combined to prevent his acceptance of the new view. he was the third great man who had thrown his influence as a barrier across the current of evolutionary thought. linnaeus in the second half of the eighteenth century, cuvier in the first half, and agassiz in the second half of the nineteenth--all made the same effort. each remains great; but not all of them together could arrest the current. agassiz's strong efforts throughout the united states, and indeed throughout europe, to check it, really promoted it. from the great museum he had founded at cambridge, from his summer school at penikese, from his lecture rooms at harvard and cornell, his disciples went forth full of love and admiration for him, full of enthusiasm which he had stirred and into fields which he had indicated; but their powers, which he had aroused and strengthened, were devoted to developing the truth he failed to recognise; shaler, verrill, packard, hartt, wilder, jordan, with a multitude of others, and especially the son who bore his honoured name, did justice to his memory by applying what they had received from him to research under inspiration of the new revelation. still another man deserves especial gratitude and honour in this progress--edward livingston youmans. he was perhaps the first in america to recognise the vast bearings of the truths presented by darwin, wallace, and spencer. he became the apostle of these truths, sacrificing the brilliant career on which he had entered as a public lecturer, subordinating himself to the three leaders, and giving himself to editorial drudgery in the stimulation of research and the announcement of results. in support of the new doctrine came a world of new proofs; those which darwin himself added in regard to the cross-fertilization of plants, and which he had adopted from embryology, led the way, and these were followed by the discoveries of wallace, bates, huxley, marsh, cope, leidy, haeckel, muller, gaudry, and a multitude of others in all lands.[70] iv. the final effort of theology. darwin's _origin of species_ had come into the theological world like a plough into an ant-hill. everywhere those thus rudely awakened from their old comfort and repose had swarmed forth angry and confused. reviews, sermons, books light and heavy, came flying at the new thinker from all sides. the keynote was struck at once in the _quarterly review_ by wilberforce, bishop of oxford. he declared that darwin was guilty of "a tendency to limit god's glory in creation"; that "the principle of natural selection is absolutely incompatible with the word of god"; that it "contradicts the revealed relations of creation to its creator"; that it is "inconsistent with the fulness of his glory"; that it is "a dishonouring view of nature"; and that there is "a simpler explanation of the presence of these strange forms among the works of god": that explanation being--"the fall of adam." nor did the bishop's efforts end here; at the meeting of the british association for the advancement of science he again disported himself in the tide of popular applause. referring to the ideas of darwin, who was absent on account of illness, he congratulated himself in a public speech that he was not descended from a monkey. the reply came from huxley, who said in substance: "if i had to choose, i would prefer to be a descendant of a humble monkey rather than of a man who employs his knowledge and eloquence in misrepresenting those who are wearing out their lives in the search for truth." this shot reverberated through england, and indeed through other countries. the utterances of this the most brilliant prelate of the anglican church received a sort of antiphonal response from the leaders of the english catholics. in an address before the "academia," which had been organized to combat "science falsely so called," cardinal manning declared his abhorrence of the new view of nature, and described it as "a brutal philosophy--to wit, there is no god, and the ape is our adam." these attacks from such eminent sources set the clerical fashion for several years. one distinguished clerical reviewer, in spite of darwin's thirty years of quiet labour, and in spite of the powerful summing up of his book, prefaced a diatribe by saying that darwin "might have been more modest had he given some slight reason for dissenting from the views generally entertained." another distinguished clergyman, vice-president of a protestant institute to combat "dangerous" science, declared darwinism "an attempt to dethrone god." another critic spoke of persons accepting the darwinian views as "under the frenzied inspiration of the inhaler of mephitic gas," and of darwin's argument as "a jungle of fanciful assumption." another spoke of darwin's views as suggesting that "god is dead," and declared that darwin's work "does open violence to everything which the creator himself has told us in the scriptures of the methods and results of his work." still another theological authority asserted: "if the darwinian theory is true, genesis is a lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the revelation of god to man, as we christians know it, is a delusion and a snare." another, who had shown excellent qualities as an observing naturalist, declared the darwinian view "a huge imposture from the beginning." echoes came from america. one review, the organ of the most widespread of american religious sects, declared that darwin was "attempting to befog and to pettifog the whole question"; another denounced darwin's views as "infidelity"; another, representing the american branch of the anglican church, poured contempt over darwin as "sophistical and illogical," and then plunged into an exceedingly dangerous line of argument in the following words: "if this hypothesis be true, then is the bible an unbearable fiction;... then have christians for nearly two thousand years been duped by a monstrous lie.... darwin requires us to disbelieve the authoritative word of the creator" a leading journal representing the same church took pains to show the evolution theory to be as contrary to the explicit declarations of the new testament as to those of the old, and said: "if we have all, men and monkeys, oysters and eagles, developed from an original germ, then is st. paul's grand deliverance--`all flesh is not the same flesh; there is one kind of flesh of men, another of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds'--untrue." another echo came from australia, where dr. perry, lord bishop of melbourne, in a most bitter book on _science and the bible_, declared that the obvious object of chambers, darwin, and huxley is "to produce in their readers a disbelief of the bible." nor was the older branch of the church to be left behind in this chorus. bayma, in the _catholic world_, declared, "mr. darwin is, we have reason to believe, the mouthpiece or chief trumpeter of that infidel clique whose well-known object is to do away with all idea of a god." worthy of especial note as showing the determination of the theological side at that period was the foundation of sacro-scientific organizations to combat the new ideas. first to be noted is the "academia," planned by cardinal wiseman. in a circular letter the cardinal, usually so moderate and just, sounded an alarm and summed up by saying, "now it is for the church, which alone possesses divine certainty and divine discernment, to place itself at once in the front of a movement which threatens even the fragmentary remains of christian belief in england." the necessary permission was obtained from rome, the academia was founded, and the "divine discernment" of the church was seen in the utterances which came from it, such as those of cardinal manning, which every thoughtful catholic would now desire to recall, and in the diatribes of dr. laing, which only aroused laughter on all sides. a similar effort was seen in protestant quarters; the "victoria institute" was created, and perhaps the most noted utterance which ever came from it was the declaration of its vice-president, the rev. walter mitchell, that "darwinism endeavours to dethrone god."[73] in france the attack was even more violent. fabre d'envieu brought out the heavy artillery of theology, and in a long series of elaborate propositions demonstrated that any other doctrine than that of the fixity and persistence of species is absolutely contrary to scripture. the abbe desorges, a former professor of theology, stigmatized darwin as a "pedant," and evolution as "gloomy". monseigneur segur, referring to darwin and his followers, went into hysterics and shrieked: "these infamous doctrines have for their only support the most abject passions. their father is pride, their mother impurity, their offspring revolutions. they come from hell and return thither, taking with them the gross creatures who blush not to proclaim and accept them." in germany the attack, if less declamatory, was no less severe. catholic theologians vied with protestants in bitterness. prof. michelis declared darwin's theory "a caricature of creation." dr. hagermann asserted that it "turned the creator out of doors." dr. schund insisted that "every idea of the holy scriptures, from the first to the last page, stands in diametrical opposition to the darwinian theory"; and, "if darwin be right in his view of the development of man out of a brutal condition, then the bible teaching in regard to man is utterly annihilated." rougemont in switzerland called for a crusade against the obnoxious doctrine. luthardt, professor of theology at leipsic, declared: "the idea of creation belongs to religion and not to natural science; the whole superstructure of personal religion is built upon the doctrine of creation"; and he showed the evolution theory to be in direct contradiction to holy writ. but in 1863 came an event which brought serious confusion to the theological camp: sir charles lyell, the most eminent of living geologists, a man of deeply christian feeling and of exceedingly cautious temper, who had opposed the evolution theory of lamarck and declared his adherence to the idea of successive creations, then published his work on the _antiquity of man_, and in this and other utterances showed himself a complete though unwilling convert to the fundamental ideas of darwin. the blow was serious in many ways, and especially so in two--first, as withdrawing all foundation in fact from the scriptural chronology, and secondly, as discrediting the creation theory. the blow was not unexpected; in various review articles against the darwinian theory there had been appeals to lyell, at times almost piteous, "not to flinch from the truths he had formerly proclaimed." but lyell, like the honest man he was, yielded unreservedly to the mass of new proofs arrayed on the side of evolution against that of creation. at the same time came huxley's _man's place in nature_, giving new and most cogent arguments in favour of evolution by natural selection. in 1871 was published darwin's _descent of man_. its doctrine had been anticipated by critics of his previous books, but it made, none the less, a great stir; again the opposing army trooped forth, though evidently with much less heart than before. a few were very violent. _the dublin university magazine_, after the traditional hibernian fashion, charged mr. darwin with seeking "to displace god by the unerring action of vagary," and with being "resolved to hunt god out of the world." but most notable from the side of the older church was the elaborate answer to darwin's book by the eminent french catholic physician, dr. constantin james. in his work, _on darwinism, or the man-ape_, published at paris in 1877, dr. james not only refuted darwin scientifically but poured contempt on his book, calling it "a fairy tale," and insisted that a work "so fantastic and so burlesque" was, doubtless, only a huge joke, like erasmus's _praise of folly_, or montesquieu's _persian letters_. the princes of the church were delighted. the cardinal archbishop of paris assured the author that the book had become his "spiritual reading," and begged him to send a copy to the pope himself. his holiness, pope pius ix, acknowledged the gift in a remarkable letter. he thanked his dear son, the writer, for the book in which he "refutes so well the aberrations of darwinism." "a system," his holiness adds, "which is repugnant at once to history, to the tradition of all peoples, to exact science, to observed facts, and even to reason herself, would seem to need no refutation, did not alienation from god and the leaning toward materialism, due to depravity, eagerly seek a support in all this tissue of fables.... and, in fact, pride, after rejecting the creator of all things and proclaiming man independent, wishing him to be his own king, his own priest, and his own god--pride goes so far as to degrade man himself to the level of the unreasoning brutes, perhaps even of lifeless matter, thus unconsciously confirming the divine declaration, _when pride cometh, then cometh shame_. but the corruption of this age, the machinations of the perverse, the danger of the simple, demand that such fancies, altogether absurd though they are, should--since they borrow the mask of science--be refuted by true science." wherefore the pope thanked dr. james for his book, "so opportune and so perfectly appropriate to the exigencies of our time," and bestowed on him the apostolic benediction. nor was this brief all. with it there came a second, creating the author an officer of the papal order of st. sylvester. the cardinal archbishop assured the delighted physician that such a double honour of brief and brevet was perhaps unprecedented, and suggested only that in a new edition of his book he should "insist a little more on the relation existing between the narratives of genesis and the discoveries of modern science, in such fashion as to convince the most incredulous of their perfect agreement." the prelate urged also a more dignified title. the proofs of this new edition were accordingly all submitted to his eminence, and in 1882 it appeared as _moses and darwin: the man of genesis compared with the man-ape, or religious education opposed to atheistic_. no wonder the cardinal embraced the author, thanking him in the name of science and religion. " we have at last," he declared, "a handbook which we can safely put into the hands of youth." scarcely less vigorous were the champions of english protestant orthodoxy. in an address at liverpool, mr. gladstone remarked: "upon the grounds of what is termed evolution god is relieved of the labour of creation; in the name of unchangeable laws he is discharged from governing the world"; and, when herbert spencer called his attention to the fact that newton with the doctrine of gravitation and with the science of physical astronomy is open to the same charge, mr. gladstone retreated in the _contemporary review_ under one of his characteristic clouds of words. the rev. dr. coles, in the _british and foreign evangelical review_, declared that the god of evolution is not the christian's god. burgon, dean of chichester, in a sermon preached before the university of oxford, pathetically warned the students that "those who refuse to accept the history of the creation of our first parents according to its obvious literal intention, and are for substituting the modern dream of evolution in its place, cause the entire scheme of man's salvation to collapse." dr. pusey also came into the fray with most earnest appeals against the new doctrine, and the rev. gavin carlyle was perfervid on the same side. the society for promoting christian knowledge published a book by the rev. mr. birks, in which the evolution doctrine was declared to be "flatly opposed to the fundamental doctrine of creation." even the _london times_ admitted a review stigmatizing darwin's _descent of man_ as an "utterly unsupported hypothesis," full of "unsubstantiated premises, cursory investigations, and disintegrating speculations," and darwin himself as "reckless and unscientific."[77] but it was noted that this second series of attacks, on the _descent of man_, differed in one remarkable respect--so far as england was concerned--from those which had been made over ten years before on the _origin of species_. while everything was done to discredit darwin, to pour contempt upon him, and even, of all things in the world, to make him--the gentlest of mankind, only occupied with the scientific side of the problem--"a persecutor of christianity," while his followers were represented more and more as charlatans or dupes, there began to be in the most influential quarters careful avoidance of the old argument that evolution--even by natural selection--contradicts scripture. it began to be felt that this was dangerous ground. the defection of lyell had, perhaps, more than anything else, started the question among theologians who had preserved some equanimity, "_what if, after all, the darwinian theory should prove to be true?_" recollections of the position in which the roman church found itself after the establishment of the doctrines of copernicus and galileo naturally came into the minds of the more thoughtful. in germany this consideration does not seem to have occurred at quite so early a day. one eminent lutheran clergyman at magdeburg called on his hearers to choose between darwin and religion; delitszch, in his new commentary on genesis, attempted to bring science back to recognise human sin as an important factor in creation; prof. heinrich ewald, while carefully avoiding any sharp conflict between the scriptural doctrine and evolution, comforted himself by covering darwin and his followers with contempt; christlieb, in his address before the evangelical alliance at new york in 1873, simply took the view that the tendencies of the darwinian theory were "toward infidelity," but declined to make any serious battle on biblical grounds; the jesuit, father pesch, in holland, drew up in latin, after the old scholastic manner, a sort of general indictment of evolution, of which one may say that it was interesting--as interesting as the display of a troop in chain armour and with cross-bows on a nineteenth-century battlefield. from america there came new echoes. among the myriad attacks on the darwinian theory by protestants and catholics two should be especially mentioned. the first of these was by dr. noah porter, president of yale college, an excellent scholar, an interesting writer, a noble man, broadly tolerant, combining in his thinking a curious mixture of radicalism and conservatism. while giving great latitude to the evolutionary teaching in the university under his care, he felt it his duty upon one occasion to avow his disbelief in it; but he was too wise a man to suggest any necessary antagonism between it and the scriptures. he confined himself mainly to pointing out the tendency of the evolution doctrine in this form toward agnosticism and pantheism. to those who knew and loved him, and had noted the genial way in which by wise neglect he had allowed scientific studies to flourish at yale, there was an amusing side to all this. within a stone's throw of his college rooms was the museum of paleontology, in which prof. marsh had laid side by side, among other evidences of the new truth, that wonderful series of specimens showing the evolution of the horse from the earliest form of the animal, "not larger than a fox, with five toes," through the whole series up to his present form and size--that series which huxley declared an absolute proof of the existence of natural selection as an agent in evolution. in spite of the veneration and love which all yale men felt for president porter, it was hardly to be expected that these particular arguments of his would have much permanent effect upon them when there was constantly before their eyes so convincing a refutation. but a far more determined opponent was the rev. dr. hodge, of princeton; his anger toward the evolution doctrine was bitter: he denounced it as thoroughly "atheistic"; he insisted that christians "have a right to protest against the arraying of probabilities against the clear evidence of the scriptures"; he even censured so orthodox a writer as the duke of argyll, and declared that the darwinian theory of natural selection is "utterly inconsistent with the scriptures," and that "an absent god, who does nothing, is to us no god"; that "to ignore design as manifested in god's creation is to dethrone god"; that "a denial of design in nature is virtually a denial of god"; and that "no teleologist can be a darwinian." even more uncompromising was another of the leading authorities at the same university--the rev. dr. duffield. he declared war not only against darwin but even against men like asa gray, le conte, and others, who had attempted to reconcile the new theory with the bible: he insisted that "evolutionism and the scriptural account of the origin of man are irreconcilable"--that the darwinian theory is "in direct conflict with the teaching of the apostle, `all scripture is given by inspiration of god'"; he pointed out, in his opposition to darwin's _descent of man_ and lyell's _antiquity of man_, that in the bible "the genealogical links which connect the israelites in egypt with adam and eve in eden are explicitly given." these utterances of prof. duffield culminated in a declaration which deserves to be cited as showing that a presbyterian minister can "deal damnation round the land" _ex cathedra_ in a fashion quite equal to that of popes and bishops. it is as follows: "if the development theory of the origin of man," wrote dr. duffield in the _princeton review_, "shall in a little while take its place--as doubtless it will--with other exploded scientific speculations, then they who accept it with its proper logical consequences will in the life to come have their portion with those who in this life `know not god and obey not the gospel of his son.'" fortunately, at about the time when darwin's _descent of man_ was published, there had come into princeton university "_deus ex machina_" in the person of dr. james mccosh. called to the presidency, he at once took his stand against teachings so dangerous to christianity as those of drs. hodge, duffield, and their associates. in one of his personal confidences he has let us into the secret of this matter. with that hard scotch sense which thackeray had applauded in his well-known verses, he saw that the most dangerous thing which could be done to christianity at princeton was to reiterate in the university pulpit, week after week, solemn declarations that if evolution by natural selection, or indeed evolution at all, be true, the scriptures are false. he tells us that he saw that this was the certain way to make the students unbelievers; he therefore not only checked this dangerous preaching but preached an opposite doctrine. with him began the inevitable compromise, and, in spite of mutterings against him as a darwinian, he carried the day. whatever may be thought of his general system of philosophy, no one can deny his great service in neutralizing the teachings of his predecessors and colleagues--so dangerous to all that is essential in christianity. other divines of strong sense in other parts of the country began to take similar ground--namely, that men could be christians and at the same time darwinians. there appeared, indeed, here and there, curious discrepancies: thus in 1873 the _monthly religious magazine_ of boston congratulated its readers that the rev. mr. burr had "demolished the evolution theory, knocking the breath of life out of it and throwing it to the dogs." this amazing performance by the rev. mr. burr was repeated in a very striking way by bishop keener before the oecumenical council of methodism at washington in 1891. in what the newspapers described as an "admirable speech," he refuted evolution doctrines by saying that evolutionists had "only to make a journey of twelve hours from the place where he was then standing to find together the bones of the muskrat, the opossum, the coprolite, and the ichthyosaurus." he asserted that agassiz--whom the good bishop, like so many others, seemed to think an evolutionist--when he visited these beds near charleston, declared: "these old beds have set me crazy; they have destroyed the work of a lifetime." and the methodist prelate ended by saying: "now, gentlemen, brethren, take these facts home with you; get down and look at them. this is the watch that was under the steam hammer--the doctrine of evolution; and this steam hammer is the wonderful deposit of the ashley beds." exhibitions like these availed little. while the good bishop amid vociferous applause thus made comically evident his belief that agassiz was a darwinian and a coprolite an animal, scientific men were recording in all parts of the world facts confirming the dreaded theory of an evolution by natural selection. while the rev. mr. burr was so loudly praised for "throwing darwinism to the dogs," marsh was completing his series leading from the five-toed ungulates to the horse. while dr. tayler lewis at union, and drs. hodge and duffield at princeton, were showing that if evolution be true the biblical accounts must be false, the indefatigable yale professor was showing his cretaceous birds, and among them _hesperornis_ and _ichthyornis_ with teeth. while in germany luthardt, schund, and their compeers were demonstrating that scripture requires a belief in special and separate creations, the archaepteryx, showing a most remarkable connection between birds and reptiles, was discovered. while in france monseigneur segur and others were indulging in diatribes against "a certain darwin," gaudry and filhol were discovering a striking series of "missing links" among the carnivora. in view of the proofs accumulating in favour of the new evolutionary hypothesis, the change in the tone of controlling theologians was now rapid. from all sides came evidences of desire to compromise with the theory. strict adherents of the biblical text pointed significantly to the verses in genesis in which the earth and sea were made to bring forth birds and fishes, and man was created out of the dust of the ground. men of larger mind like kingsley and farrar, with english and american broad churchmen generally, took ground directly in darwin's favour. even whewell took pains to show that there might be such a thing as a darwinian argument for design in nature; and the rev. samuel houghton, of the royal society, gave interesting suggestions of a divine design in evolution. both the great english universities received the new teaching as a leaven: at oxford, in the very front of the high church party at keble college, was elaborated a statement that the evolution doctrine is "an advance in our theological thinking." and temple, bishop of london, perhaps the most influential thinker then in the anglican episcopate, accepted the new revelation in the following words: "it seems something more majestic, more befitting him to whom a thousand years are as one day, thus to impress his will once for all on his creation, and provide for all the countless varieties by this one original impress, than by special acts of creation to be perpetually modifying what he had previously made." in scotland the duke of argyll, head and front of the orthodox party, dissenting in many respects from darwin's full conclusions, made concessions which badly shook the old position. curiously enough, from the roman catholic church, bitter as some of its writers had been, now came argument to prove that the catholic faith does not prevent any one from holding the darwinian theory, and especially a declaration from an authority eminent among american catholics--a declaration which has a very curious sound, but which it would be ungracious to find fault with--that "the doctrine of evolution is no more in opposition to the doctrine of the catholic church than is the copernican theory or that of galileo." here and there, indeed, men of science like dawson, mivart, and wigand, in view of theological considerations, sought to make conditions; but the current was too strong, and eminent theologians in every country accepted natural selection as at least a very important part in the mechanism of evolution. at the death of darwin it was felt that there was but one place in england where his body should be laid, and that this place was next the grave of sir isaac newton in westminster abbey. the noble address of canon farrar at his funeral was echoed from many pulpits in europe and america, and theological opposition as such was ended. occasionally appeared, it is true, a survival of the old feeling: the rev. dr. laing referred to the burial of darwin in westminster abbey as "a proof that england is no longer a christian country," and added that this burial was a desecration--that this honour was given him because he had been "the chief promoter of the mock doctrrne of evolution of the species and the ape descent of man." still another of these belated prophets was, of all men, thomas carlyle. soured and embittered, in the same spirit which led him to find more heroism in a marauding viking or in one of frederick the great's generals than in washington, or lincoln, or grant, and which caused him to see in the american civil war only the burning out of a foul chimney, he, with the petulance natural to a dyspeptic eunuch, railed at darwin as an "apostle of dirt worship." the last echoes of these utterances reverberated between scotland and america. in the former country, in 1885, the rev. dr. lee issued a volume declaring that, if the darwinian view be true, "there is no place for god"; that "by no method of interpretation can the language of holy scripture be made wide enough to re-echo the orang-outang theory of man's natural history"; that "darwinism reverses the revelation of god" and "implies utter blasphemy against the divine and human character of our incarnate lord"; and he was pleased to call darwin and his followers "gospellers of the gutter." in one of the intellectual centres of america the editor of a periodical called _the christian_ urged frantically that "the battle be set in array, and that men find out who is on the lord's side and who is on the side of the devil and the monkeys." to the honour of the church of england it should be recorded that a considerable number of her truest men opposed such utterances as these, and that one of them--farrar, archdeacon of westminster--made a protest worthy to be held in perpetual remembrance. while confessing his own inability to accept fully the new scientific belief, he said: "we should consider it disgraceful and humiliating to try to shake it by an _ad captandum_ argument, or by a clap-trap platform appeal to the unfathomable ignorance and unlimited arrogance of a prejudiced assembly. we should blush to meet it with an anathema or a sneer." all opposition had availed nothing; darwin's work and fame were secure. as men looked back over his beautiful life--simple, honest, tolerant, kindly--and thought upon his great labours in the search for truth, all the attacks faded into nothingness. there were indeed some dark spots, which as time goes on appear darker. at trinity college, cambridge, whewell, the "omniscient," author of the _history of the inductive sciences_, refused to allow a copy of the _origin of species_ to be placed in the library. at multitudes of institutions under theological control--protestant as well as catholic--attempts were made to stamp out or to stifle evolutionary teaching. especially was this true for a time in america, and the case of the american college at beyrout, where nearly all the younger professors were dismissed for adhering to darwin's views, is worthy of remembrance. the treatment of dr. winchell at the vanderbilt university in tennessee showed the same spirit; one of the truest of men, devoted to science but of deeply christian feeling, he was driven forth for views which centred in the darwinian theory. still more striking was the case of dr. woodrow. he had, about 1857, been appointed to a professorship of natural science as connected with revealed religion, in the presbyterian seminary at columbia, south carolina. he was a devoted christian man, and his training had led him to accept the presbyterian standards of faith. with great gifts for scientific study he visited europe, made a most conscientious examination of the main questions under discussion, and adopted the chief points in the doctrine of evolution by natural selection. a struggle soon began. a movement hostile to him grew more and more determined, and at last, in spite of the efforts made in his behalf by the directors of the seminary and by a large and broad-minded minority in the representative bodies controlling it, an orthodox storm, raised by the delegates from various presbyterian bodies, drove him from his post. fortunately, he was received into a professorship at the university of south carolina, where he has since taught with more power than ever before. this testimony to the faith by american provincial protestantism was very properly echoed from spanish provincial catholicism. in the year 1878 a spanish colonial man of science, dr. chil y marango, published a work on the canary islands. but dr. chil had the imprudence to sketch, in his introduction, the modern hypothesis of evolution, and to exhibit some proofs, found in the canary islands, of the barbarism of primitive man. the ecclesiastical authorities, under the lead of bishop urquinaona y bidot, at once grappled with this new idea. by a solemn act they declared it "_falsa, impia, scandalosa_"; all persons possessing copies of the work were ordered to surrender them at once to the proper ecclesiastics, and the author was placed under the major excommunication. but all this opposition may be reckoned among the last expiring convulsions of the old theologic theory. even from the new catholic university at washington has come an utterance in favour of the new doctrine, and in other universities in the old world and in the new the doctrine of evolution by natural selection has asserted its right to full and honest consideration. more than this, it is clearly evident that the stronger men in the church have, in these latter days, not only relinquished the struggle against science in this field, but have determined frankly and manfully to make an alliance with it. in two very remarkable lectures given in 1892 at the parish church of rochdale, wilson, archdeacon of manchester, not only accepted darwinism as true, but wrought it with great argumentative power into a higher view of christianity; and what is of great significance, these sermons were published by the same society for the promotion of christian knowledge which only a few years before had published the most bitter attacks against the darwinian theory. so, too, during the year 1893, prof. henry drummond, whose praise is in all the dissenting churches, developed a similar view most brilliantly in a series of lectures delivered before the american chautauqua schools, and published in one of the most widespread of english orthodox newspapers. whatever additional factors may be added to natural selection--and darwin himself fully admitted that there might be others--the theory of an evolution process in the formation of the universe and of animated nature is established, and the old theory of direct creation is gone forever. in place of it science has given us conceptions far more noble, and opened the way to an argument for design infinitely more beautiful than any ever developed by theology.[86] chapter ii. geography. i. the form of the earth. among various rude tribes we find survivals of a primitive idea that the earth is a flat table or disk, ceiled, domed, or canopied by the sky, and that the sky rests upon the mountains as pillars. such a belief is entirely natural; it conforms to the appearance of things, and hence at a very early period entered into various theologies. in the civilizations of chaldea and egypt it was very fully developed. the assyrian inscriptions deciphered in these latter years represent the god marduk as in the beginning creating the heavens and the earth: the earth rests upon the waters; within it is the realm of the dead; above it is spread "the firmament"--a solid dome coming down to the horizon on all sides and resting upon foundations laid in the "great waters" which extend around the earth. on the east and west sides of this domed firmament are doors, through which the sun enters in the morning and departs at night; above it extends another ocean, which goes down to the ocean surrounding the earth at the horizon on all sides, and which is supported and kept away from the earth by the firmament. above the firmament and the upper ocean which it supports is the interior of heaven. the egyptians considered the earth as a table, flat and oblong, the sky being its ceiling--a huge "firmament" of metal. at the four corners of the earth were the pillars supporting this firmament, and on this solid sky were the "waters above the heavens." they believed that, when chaos was taking form, one of the gods by main force raised the waters on high and spread them out over the firmament; that on the under side of this solid vault, or ceiling, or firmament, the stars were suspended to light the earth, and that the rains were caused by the letting down of the waters through its windows. this idea and others connected with it seem to have taken strong hold of the egyptian priestly caste, entering into their theology and sacred science: ceilings of great temples, with stars, constellations, planets, and signs of the zodiac figured upon them, remain to-day as striking evidences of this. in persia we have theories of geography based upon similar conceptions and embalmed in sacred texts. from these and doubtless from earlier sources common to them all came geographical legacies to the hebrews. various passages in their sacred books, many of them noble in conception and beautiful in form, regarding "the foundation of the earth upon the waters," "the fountains of the great deep," "the compass upon the face of the depth," the "firmament," the "corners of the earth," the "pillars of heaven," the "waters above the firmament," the "windows of heaven," and "doors of heaven," point us back to both these ancient springs of thought.[90] but, as civilization was developed, there were evolved, especially among the greeks, ideas of the earth's sphericity. the pythagoreans, plato, and aristotle especially cherished them. these ideas were vague, they were mixed with absurdities, but they were germ ideas, and even amid the luxuriant growth of theology in the early christian church these germs began struggling into life in the minds of a few thinking men, and these men renewed the suggestion that the earth is a globe.[91] a few of the larger-minded fathers of the church, influenced possibly by pythagorean traditions, but certainly by aristotle and plato, were willing to accept this view, but the majority of them took fright at once. to them it seemed fraught with dangers to scripture, by which, of course, they meant their interpretation of scripture. among the first who took up arms against it was eusebius. in view of the new testament texts indicating the immediately approaching, end of the world, he endeavoured to turn off this idea by bringing scientific studies into contempt. speaking of investigators, he said, "it is not through ignorance of the things admired by them, but through contempt of their useless labour, that we think little of these matters, turning our souls to better things." basil of caesarea declared it "a matter of no interest to us whether the earth is a sphere or a cylinder or a disk, or concave in the middle like a fan." lactantius referred to the ideas of those studying astronomy as "bad and senseless," and opposed the doctrine of the earth's sphericity both from scripture and reason. st. john chrysostom also exerted his influence against this scientific belief; and ephraem syrus, the greatest man of the old syrian church, widely known as the "lute of the holy ghost," opposed it no less earnestly. but the strictly biblical men of science, such eminent fathers and bishops as theophilus of antioch in the second century, and clement of alexandria in the third, with others in centuries following, were not content with merely opposing what they stigmatized as an old heathen theory; they drew from their bibles a new christian theory, to which one church authority added one idea and another another, until it was fully developed. taking the survival of various early traditions, given in the seventh verse of the first chapter of genesis, they insisted on the clear declarations of scripture that the earth was, at creation, arched over with a solid vault, "a firmament," and to this they added the passages from isaiah and the psalms, in which it declared that the heavens are stretched out "like a curtain," and again "like a tent to dwell in." the universe, then, is like a house: the earth is its ground floor, the firmament its ceiling, under which the almighty hangs out the sun to rule the day and the moon and stars to rule the night. this ceiling is also the floor of the apartment above, and in this is a cistern, shaped, as one of the authorities says, "like a bathing-tank," and containing "the waters which are above the firmament." these waters are let down upon the earth by the almighty and his angels through the "windows of heaven." as to the movement of the sun, there was a citation of various passages in genesis, mixed with metaphysics in various proportions, and this was thought to give ample proofs from the bible that the earth could not be a sphere.[92] in the sixth century this development culminated in what was nothing less than a complete and detailed system of the universe, claiming to be based upon scripture, its author being the egyptian monk cosmas indicopleustes. egypt was a great treasure-house of theologic thought to various religions of antiquity, and cosmas appears to have urged upon the early church this egyptian idea of the construction of the world, just as another egyptian ecclesiastic, athanasius, urged upon the church the egyptian idea of a triune deity ruling the world. according to cosmas, the earth is a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas. it is four hundred days' journey long and two hundred broad. at the outer edges of these four seas arise massive walls closing in the whole structure and supporting the firmament or vault of the heavens, whose edges are cemented to the walls. these walls inclose the earth and all the heavenly bodies. the whole of this theologico-scientific structure was built most carefully and, as was then thought, most scripturally. starting with the expression applied in the ninth chapter of hebrews to the tabernacle in the desert, cosmas insists, with other interpreters of his time, that it gives the key to the whole construction of the world. the universe is, therefore, made on the plan of the jewish tabernacle--boxlike and oblong. going into details, he quotes the sublime words of isaiah: "it is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth;... that stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain, and spreadeth them out like a tent to dwell in"; and the passage in job which speaks of the "pillars of heaven." he works all this into his system, and reveals, as he thinks, treasures of science. this vast box is divided into two compartments, one above the other. in the first of these, men live and stars move; and it extends up to the first solid vault, or firmament, above which live the angels, a main part of whose business it is to push and pull the sun and planets to and fro. next, he takes the text, "let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters," and other texts from genesis; to these he adds the text from the psalms, "praise him, ye heaven of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens" then casts all, and these growths of thought into his crucible together, finally brings out the theory that over this first vault is a vast cistern containing "the waters." he then takes the expression in genesis regarding the "windows of heaven" and establishes a doctrine regarding the regulation of the rain, to the effect that the angels not only push and pull the heavenly bodies to light the earth, but also open and close the heavenly windows to water it. to understand the surface of the earth, cosmas, following the methods of interpretation which origen and other early fathers of the church had established, studies the table of shew-bread in the jewish tabernacle. the surface of this table proves to him that the earth is flat, and its dimensions prove that the earth is twice as long as broad; its four corners symbolize the four seasons; the twelve loaves of bread, the twelve months; the hollow about the table proves that the ocean surrounds the earth. to account for the movement of the sun, cosmas suggests that at the north of the earth is a great mountain, and that at night the sun is carried behind this; but some of the commentators ventured to express a doubt here: they thought that the sun was pushed into a pit at night and pulled out in the morning. nothing can be more touching in its simplicity than cosmas's summing up of his great argument, he declares, "we say therefore with isaiah that the heaven embracing the universe is a vault, with job that it is joined to the earth, and with moses that the length of the earth is greater than its breadth." the treatise closes with rapturous assertions that not only moses and the prophets, but also angels and apostles, agree to the truth of his doctrine, and that at the last day god will condemn all who do not accept it. although this theory was drawn from scripture, it was also, as we have seen, the result of an evolution of theological thought begun long before the scriptural texts on which it rested were written. it was not at all strange that cosmas, egyptian as he was, should have received this old nile-born doctrine, as we see it indicated to-day in the structure of egyptian temples, and that he should have developed it by the aid of the jewish scriptures; but the theological world knew nothing of this more remote evolution from pagan germs; it was received as virtually inspired, and was soon regarded as a fortress of scriptural truth. some of the foremost men in the church devoted themselves to buttressing it with new texts and throwing about it new outworks of theological reasoning; the great body of the faithful considered it a direct gift from the almighty. even in the later centuries of the middle ages john of san geminiano made a desperate attempt to save it. like cosmas, he takes the jewish tabernacle as his starting-point, and shows how all the newer ideas can be reconciled with the biblical accounts of its shape, dimensions, and furniture.[95] from this old conception of the universe as a sort of house, with heaven as its upper story and the earth as its ground floor, flowed important theological ideas into heathen, jewish, and christian mythologies. common to them all are legends regarding attempts of mortals to invade the upper apartment from the lower. of such are the greek legends of the aloidae, who sought to reach heaven by piling up mountains, and were cast down; the chaldean and hebrew legends of the wicked who at babel sought to build "a tower whose top may reach heaven," which jehovah went down from heaven to see, and which he brought to naught by the "confusion of tongues"; the hindu legend of the tree which sought to grow into heaven and which brahma blasted; and the mexican legend of the giants who sought to reach heaven by building the pyramid of cholula, and who were overthrown by fire from above. myths having this geographical idea as their germ developed in luxuriance through thousands of years. ascensions to heaven and descents from it, "translations," "assumptions," "annunciations," mortals "caught up" into it and returning, angels flying between it and the earth, thunderbolts hurled down from it, mighty winds issuing from its corners, voices speaking from the upper floor to men on the lower, temporary openings of the floor of heaven to reveal the blessedness of the good, "signs and wonders" hung out from it to warn the wicked, interventions of every kind--from the heathen gods coming down on every sort of errand, and jehovah coming down to walk in eden in the cool of the day, to st. mark swooping down into the market-place of venice to break the shackles of a slave--all these are but features in a vast evolution of myths arising largely from this geographical germ. nor did this evolution end here. naturally, in this view of things, if heaven was a loft, hell was a cellar; and if there were ascensions into one, there were descents into the other. hell being so near, interferences by its occupants with the dwellers of the earth just above were constant, and form a vast chapter in medieval literature. dante made this conception of the location of hell still more vivid, and we find some forms of it serious barriers to geographical investigation. many a bold navigator, who was quite ready to brave pirates and tempests, trembled at the thought of tumbling with his ship into one of the openings into hell which a widespread belief placed in the atlantic at some unknown distance from europe. this terror among sailors was one of the main obstacles in the great voyage of columbus. in a medieval text-book, giving science the form of a dialogue, occur the following question and answer: "why is the sun so red in the evening?" "because he looketh down upon hell." but the ancient germ of scientific truth in geography--the idea of the earth's sphericity--still lived. although the great majority of the early fathers of the church, and especially lactantius, had sought to crush it beneath the utterances attributed to isaiah, david, and st. paul, the better opinion of eudoxus and aristotle could not be forgotten. clement of alexandria and origen had even supported it. ambrose and augustine had tolerated it, and, after cosmas had held sway a hundred years, it received new life from a great churchman of southern europe, isidore of seville, who, however fettered by the dominant theology in many other things, braved it in this. in the eighth century a similar declaration was made in the north of europe by another great church authority, bede. against the new life thus given to the old truth, the sacred theory struggled long and vigorously but in vain. eminent authorities in later ages, like albert the great, st. thomas aquinas, dante, and vincent of beauvais, felt obliged to accept the doctrine of the earth's sphericity, and as we approach the modern period we find its truth acknowledged by the vast majority of thinking men. the reformation did not at first yield fully to this better theory. luther, melanchthon, and calvin were very strict in their adherence to the exact letter of scripture. even zwingli, broad as his views generally were, was closely bound down in this matter, and held to the opinion of the fathers that a great firmament, or floor, separated the heavens from the earth; that above it were the waters and angels, and below it the earth and man. the main scope given to independent thought on this general subject among the reformers was in a few minor speculations regarding the universe which encompassed eden, the exact character of the conversation of the serpent with eve, and the like. in the times immediately following the reformation matters were even worse. the interpretations of scripture by luther and calvin became as sacred to their followers as the scripture itself. when calixt ventured, in interpreting the psalms, to question the accepted belief that "the waters above the heavens" were contained in a vast receptacle upheld by a solid vault, he was bitterly denounced as heretical. in the latter part of the sixteenth century musaeus interpreted the accounts in genesis to mean that first god made the heavens for the roof or vault, and left it there on high swinging until three days later he put the earth under it. but the new scientific thought as to the earth's form had gained the day. the most sturdy believers were obliged to adjust their, biblical theories to it as best they could.[98] ii. the delineation of the earth. every great people of antiquity, as a rule, regarded its own central city or most holy place as necessarily the centre of the earth. the chaldeans held that their "holy house of the gods" was the centre. the egyptians sketched the world under the form of a human figure, in which egypt was the heart, and the centre of it thebes. for the assyrians, it was babylon; for the hindus, it was mount meru; for the greeks, so far as the civilized world was concerned, olympus or the temple at delphi; for the modern mohammedans, it is mecca and its sacred stone; the chinese, to this day, speak of their empire as the "middle kingdom." it was in accordance, then, with a simple tendency of human thought that the jews believed the centre of the world to be jerusalem. the book of ezekiel speaks of jerusalem as in the middle of the earth, and all other parts of the world as set around the holy city. throughout the "ages of faith" this was very generally accepted as a direct revelation from the almighty regarding the earth's form. st. jerome, the greatest authority of the early church upon the bible, declared, on the strength of this utterance of the prophet, that jerusalem could be nowhere but at the earth's centre; in the ninth century archbishop rabanus maurus reiterated the same argument; in the eleventh century hugh of st. victor gave to the doctrine another scriptural demonstration; and pope urban, in his great sermon at clermont urging the franks to the crusade, declared, "jerusalem is the middle point of the earth"; in the thirteenth century an ecclesiastical writer much in vogue, the monk caesarius of heisterbach, declared, "as the heart in the midst of the body, so is jerusalem situated in the midst of our inhabited earth,"--"so it was that christ was crucified at the centre of the earth." dante accepted this view of jerusalem as a certainty, wedding it to immortal verse; and in the pious book of travels ascribed to sir john mandeville, so widely read in the middle ages, it is declared that jerusalem is at the centre of the world, and that a spear standing erect at the holy sepulchre casts no shadow at the equinox. ezekiel's statement thus became the standard of orthodoxy to early map-makers. the map of the world at hereford cathedral, the maps of andrea bianco, marino sanuto, and a multitude of others fixed this view in men's minds, and doubtless discouraged during many generations any scientific statements tending to unbalance this geographical centre revealed in scripture.[99] nor did medieval thinkers rest with this conception. in accordance with the dominant view that physical truth must be sought by theological reasoning, the doctrine was evolved that not only the site of the cross on calvary marked the geographical centre of the world, but that on this very spot had stood the tree which bore the forbidden fruit in eden. thus was geography made to reconcile all parts of the great theologic plan. this doctrine was hailed with joy by multitudes; and we find in the works of medieval pilgrims to palestine, again and again, evidence that this had become precious truth to them, both in theology and geography. even as late as 1664 the eminent french priest eugene roger, in his published travels in palestine, dwelt upon the thirty-eighth chapter of ezekiel, coupled with a text from isaiah, to prove that the exact centre of the earth is a spot marked on the pavement of the church of the holy sepulchre, and that on this spot once stood the tree which bore the forbidden fruit and the cross of christ.[100] nor was this the only misconception which forced its way from our sacred writings into medieval map-making: two others were almost as marked. first of these was the vague terror inspired by gog and magog. few passages in the old testament are more sublime than the denunciation of these great enemies by ezekiel; and the well-known statement in the apocalypse fastened the hebrew feeling regarding them with a new meaning into the mind of the early church: hence it was that the medieval map-makers took great pains to delineate these monsters and their habitations on the maps. for centuries no map was considered orthodox which did not show them. the second conception was derived from the mention in our sacred books of the "four winds." hence came a vivid belief in their real existence, and their delineation on the maps, generally as colossal heads with distended cheeks, blowing vigorously toward jerusalem. after these conceptions had mainly disappeared we find here and there evidences of the difficulty men found in giving up the scriptural idea of direct personal interference by agents of heaven in the ordinary phenomena of nature: thus, in a noted map of the sixteenth century representing the earth as a sphere, there is at each pole a crank, with an angel laboriously turning the earth by means of it; and, in another map, the hand of the almighty, thrust forth from the clouds, holds the earth suspended by a rope and spins it with his thumb and fingers. even as late as the middle of the seventeenth century heylin, the most authoritative english geographer of the time, shows a like tendency to mix science and theology. he warps each to help the other, as follows: "water, making but one globe with the earth, is yet higher than it. this appears, first, because it is a body not so heavy; secondly, it is observed by sailors that their ships move faster to the shore than from it, whereof no reason can be given but the height of the water above the land; thirdly, to such as stand on the shore the sea seems to swell into the form of a round hill till it puts a bound upon our sight. now that the sea, hovering thus over and above the earth, doth not overwhelm it, can be ascribed only to his providence who `hath made the waters to stand on an heap that they turn not again to cover the earth.'"[102] iii. the inhabitants of the earth. even while the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth was undecided, another question had been suggested which theologians finally came to consider of far greater importance. the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth naturally led to thought regarding its inhabitants, and another ancient germ was warmed into life--the idea of antipodes: of human beings on the earth's opposite sides. in the greek and roman world this idea had found supporters and opponents, cicero and pliny being among the former, and epicurus, lucretius, and plutarch among the latter. thus the problem came into the early church unsolved. among the first churchmen to take it up was, in the east, st. gregory nazianzen, who showed that to sail beyond gibraltar was impossible; and, in the west, lactantius, who asked: "is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads?. . . that the crops and trees grow downward?. . . that the rains and snow and hail fall upward toward the earth?. . . i am at a loss what to say of those who, when they have once erred, steadily persevere in their folly and defend one vain thing by another." in all this contention by gregory and lactantius there was nothing to be especially regretted, for, whatever their motive, they simply supported their inherited belief on grounds of natural law and probability. unfortunately, the discussion was not long allowed to rest on these scientific and philosophical grounds; other christian thinkers followed, who in their ardour adduced texts of scripture, and soon the question had become theological; hostility to the belief in antipodes became dogmatic. the universal church was arrayed against it, and in front of the vast phalanx stood, to a man, the fathers. to all of them this idea seemed dangerous; to most of them it seemed damnable. st. basil and st. ambrose were tolerant enough to allow that a man might be saved who thought the earth inhabited on its opposite sides; but the great majority of the fathers doubted the possibility of salvation to such misbelievers. the great champion of the orthodox view was st. augustine. though he seemed inclined to yield a little in regard to the sphericity of the earth, he fought the idea that men exist on the other side of it, saying that "scripture speaks of no such descendants of adam." he insists that men could not be allowed by the almighty to live there, since if they did they could not see christ at his second coming descending through the air. but his most cogent appeal, one which we find echoed from theologian to theologian during a thousand years afterward, is to the nineteenth psalm, and to its confirmation in the epistle to the romans; to the words, "their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." he dwells with great force on the fact that st. paul based one of his most powerful arguments upon this declaration regarding the preachers of the gospel, and that he declared even more explicitly that "verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." thenceforth we find it constantly declared that, as those preachers did not go to the antipodes, no antipodes can exist; and hence that the supporters of this geographical doctrine "give the lie direct to king david and to st. paul, and therefore to the holy ghost." thus the great bishop of hippo taught the whole world for over a thousand years that, as there was no preaching of the gospel on the opposite side of the earth, there could be no human beings there. the great authority of augustine, and the cogency of his scriptural argument, held the church firmly against the doctrine of the antipodes; all schools of interpretation were now agreed--the followers of the allegorical tendencies of alexandria, the strictly literal exegetes of syria, the more eclectic theologians of the west. for over a thousand years it was held in the church, "always, everywhere, and by all," that there could not be human beings on the opposite sides of the earth, even if the earth had opposite sides; and, when attacked by gainsayers, the great mass of true believers, from the fourth century to the fifteenth, simply used that opiate which had so soothing an effect on john henry newman in the nineteenth century--_securus judicat orbis terrarum_. yet gainsayers still appeared. that the doctrine of the antipodes continued to have life, is shown by the fact that in the sixth century procopius of gaza attacks it with a tremendous argument. he declares that, if there be men on the other side of the earth, christ must have gone there and suffered a second time to save them; and, therefore, that there must have been there, as necessary preliminaries to his coming, a duplicate eden, adam, serpent, and deluge. cosmas indicopleustes also attacked the doctrine with especial bitterness, citing a passage from st. luke to prove that antipodes are theologically impossible. at the end of the sixth century came a man from whom much might be expected--st. isidore of seville. he had pondered over ancient thought in science, and, as we have seen, had dared proclaim his belief in the sphericity of the earth; but with that he stopped. as to the antipodes, the authority of the psalmist, st. paul, and st. augustine silences him; he shuns the whole question as unlawful, subjects reason to faith, and declares that men can not and ought not to exist on opposite sides of the earth.[105] under such pressure this scientific truth seems to have disappeared for nearly two hundred years; but by the eighth century the sphericity of the earth had come to be generally accepted among the leaders of thought, and now the doctrine of the antipodes was again asserted by a bishop, virgil of salzburg. there then stood in germany, in those first years of the eighth century, one of the greatest and noblest of men--st. boniface. his learning was of the best then known. in labours he was a worthy successor of the apostles; his genius for christian work made him unwillingly primate of germany; his devotion to duty led him willingly to martyrdom. there sat, too, at that time, on the papal throne a great christian statesman--pope zachary. boniface immediately declared against the revival of such a heresy as the doctrine of the antipodes; he stigmatized it as an assertion that there are men beyond the reach of the appointed means of salvation; he attacked virgil, and called on pope zachary for aid. the pope, as the infallible teacher of christendom, made a strong response. he cited passages from the book of job and the wisdom of solomon against the doctrine of the antipodes; he declared it "perverse, iniquitous, and against virgil's own soul," and indicated a purpose of driving him from his bishopric. whether this purpose was carried out or not, the old theological view, by virtue of the pope's divinely ordered and protected "inerrancy," was re-established, and the doctrine that the earth has inhabitants on but one of its sides became more than ever orthodox, and precious in the mind of the church.[106] this decision seems to have been regarded as final, and five centuries later the great encyclopedist of the middle ages, vincent of beauvais, though he accepts the sphericity of the earth, treats the doctrine of the antipodes as disproved, because contrary to scripture. yet the doctrine still lived. just as it had been previously revived by william of conches and then laid to rest, so now it is somewhat timidly brought out in the thirteenth century by no less a personage than albert the great, the most noted man of science in that time. but his utterances are perhaps purposely obscure. again it disappears beneath the theological wave, and a hundred years later nicolas d'oresme, geographer of the king of france, a light of science, is forced to yield to the clear teaching of the scripture as cited by st. augustine. nor was this the worst. in italy, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the church thought it necessary to deal with questions of this sort by rack and fagot. in 1316 peter of abano, famous as a physician, having promulgated this with other obnoxious doctrines in science, only escaped the inquisition by death; and in 1327 cecco d'ascoli, noted as an astronomer, was for this and other results of thought, which brought him under suspicion of sorcery, driven from his professorship at bologna and burned alive at florence. nor was this all his punishment: orcagna, whose terrible frescoes still exist on the walls of the campo santo at pisa, immortalized cecco by representing him in the flames of hell.[107] years rolled on, and there came in the fifteenth century one from whom the world had a right to expect much. pierre d'ailly, by force of thought and study, had risen to be provost of the college of st. die in lorraine; his ability had made that little village a centre of scientific thought for all europe, and finally made him archbishop of cambray and a cardinal. toward the end of the fifteenth century was printed what cardinal d'ailly had written long before as a summing up of his best thought and research--the collection of essays known as the _ymago mundi_. it gives us one of the most striking examples in history of a great man in theological fetters. as he approaches this question he states it with such clearness that we expect to hear him assert the truth; but there stands the argument of st. augustine; there, too, stand the biblical texts on which it is founded--the text from the psalms and the explicit declaration of st. paul to the romans, "their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." d'ailly attempts to reason, but he is overawed, and gives to the world virtually nothing. still, the doctrine of the antipodes lived and moved: so much so that the eminent spanish theologian tostatus, even as late as the age of columbus, felt called upon to protest against it as "unsafe." he had shaped the old missile of st. augustine into the following syllogism: "the apostles were commanded to go into all the world and to preach the gospel to every creature; they did not go to any such part of the world as the antipodes; they did not preach to any creatures there: _ergo_, no antipodes exist." the warfare of columbus the world knows well: how the bishop of ceuta worsted him in portugal; how sundry wise men of spain confronted him with the usual quotations from the psalms, from st. paul, and from st. augustine; how, even after he was triumphant, and after his voyage had greatly strengthened the theory of the earth's sphericity, with which the theory of the antipodes was so closely connected, the church by its highest authority solemnly stumbled and persisted in going astray. in 1493 pope alexander vi, having been appealed to as an umpire between the claims of spain and portugal to the newly discovered parts of the earth, issued a bull laying down upon the earth's surface a line of demarcation between the two powers. this line was drawn from north to south a hundred leagues west of the azores; and the pope in the plenitude of his knowledge declared that all lands discovered east of this line should belong to the portuguese, and all west of it should belong to the spaniards. this was hailed as an exercise of divinely illuminated power by the church; but difficulties arose, and in 1506 another attempt was made by pope julius ii to draw the line three hundred and seventy leagues west of the cape verde islands. this, again, was supposed to bring divine wisdom to settle the question; but, shortly, overwhelming difficulties arose; for the portuguese claimed brazil, and, of course, had no difficulty in showing that they could reach it by sailing to the east of the line, provided they sailed long enough. the lines laid down by popes alexander and julius may still be found upon the maps of the period, but their bulls have quietly passed into the catalogue of ludicrous errors. yet the theological barriers to this geographical truth yielded but slowly. plain as it had become to scholars, they hesitated to declare it to the world at large. eleven hundred years had passed since st. augustine had proved its antagonism to scripture, when gregory reysch gave forth his famous encyclopaedia, the _margarita philosophica_. edition after edition was issued, and everywhere appeared in it the orthodox statements; but they were evidently strained to the breaking point; for while, in treating of the antipodes, reysch refers respectfully to st. augustine as objecting to the scientific doctrine, he is careful not to cite scripture against it, and not less careful to suggest geographical reasoning in favour of it. but in 1519 science gains a crushing victory. magellan makes his famous voyage. he proves the earth to be round, for his expedition circumnavigates it; he proves the doctrine of the antipodes, for his shipmates see the peoples of the antipodes. yet even this does not end the war. many conscientious men oppose the doctrine for two hundred years longer. then the french astronomers make their measurements of degrees in equatorial and polar regions, and add to their proofs that of the lengthened pendulum. when this was done, when the deductions of science were seen to be established by the simple test of measurement, beautifully and perfectly, and when a long line of trustworthy explorers, including devoted missionaries, had sent home accounts of the antipodes, then, and then only, this war of twelve centuries ended. such was the main result of this long war; but there were other results not so fortunate. the efforts of eusebius, basil, and lactantius to deaden scientific thought; the efforts of augustine to combat it; the efforts of cosmas to crush it by dogmatism; the efforts of boniface and zachary to crush it by force, conscientious as they all were, had resulted simply in impressing upon many leading minds the conviction that science and religion are enemies. on the other hand, what was gained by the warriors of science for religion? certainly a far more worthy conception of the world, and a far more ennobling conception of that power which pervades and directs it. which is more consistent with a great religion, the cosmography of cosmas or that of isaac newton? which presents a nobler field for religious thought, the diatribes of lactantius or the calm statements of humboldt?[110] iv. the size of the earth. but at an early period another subject in geography had stirred the minds of thinking men--_the earth's size_. various ancient investigators had by different methods reached measurements more or less near the truth; these methods were continued into the middle ages, supplemented by new thought, and among the more striking results were those obtained by roger bacon and gerbert, afterward pope sylvester ii. they handed down to after-time the torch of knowledge, but, as their reward among their contemporaries, they fell under the charge of sorcery. far more consonant with the theological spirit of the middle ages was a solution of the problem from scripture, and this solution deserves to be given as an example of a very curious theological error, chancing to result in the establishment of a great truth. the second book of esdras, which among protestants is placed in the apocrypha, was held by many of the foremost men of the ancient church as fully inspired: though jerome looked with suspicion on this book, it was regarded as prophetic by clement of alexandria, tertullian, and ambrose, and the church acquiesced in that view. in the eastern church it held an especially high place, and in the western church, before the reformation, was generally considered by the most eminent authorities to be part of the sacred canon. in the sixth chapter of this book there is a summary of the works of creation, and in it occur the following verses: "upon the third day thou didst command that the waters should be gathered in the seventh part of the earth; six parts hast thou dried up and kept them to the intent that of these some, being planted of god and tilled, might serve thee." "upon the fifth day thou saidst unto the seventh part where the waters were gathered, that it should bring forth living creatures, fowls and fishes, and so it came to pass." these statements were reiterated in other verses, and were naturally considered as of controlling authority. among the scholars who pondered on this as on all things likely to increase knowledge was cardinal pierre d'ailly. as we have seen, this great man, while he denied the existence of the antipodes, as st. augustine had done, believed firmly in the sphericity of the earth, and, interpreting these statements of the book of esdras in connection with this belief, he held that, as only one seventh of the earth's surface was covered by water, the ocean between the west coast of europe and the east coast of asia could not be very wide. knowing, as he thought, the extent of the land upon the globe, he felt that in view of this divinely authorized statement the globe must be much smaller, and the land of "zipango," reached by marco polo, on the extreme east coast of asia, much nearer than had been generally believed. on this point he laid stress in his great work, the _ymago mundi_, and an edition of it having been published in the days when columbus was thinking most closely upon the problem of a westward voyage, it naturally exercised much influence upon his reasonings. among the treasures of the library at seville, there is nothing more interesting than a copy of this work annotated by columbus himself: from this very copy it was that columbus obtained confirmation of his belief that the passage across the ocean to marco polo's land of zipango in asia was short. but for this error, based upon a text supposed to be inspired, it is unlikely that columbus could have secured the necessary support for his voyage. it is a curious fact that this single theological error thus promoted a series of voyages which completely destroyed not only this but every other conception of geography based upon the sacred writings.[112] v. the character of the earth's surface. it would be hardly just to dismiss the struggle for geographical truth without referring to one passage more in the history of the protestant church, for it shows clearly the difficulties in the way of the simplest statement of geographical truth which conflicted with the words of the sacred books. in the year 1553 michael servetus was on trial for his life at geneva on the charge of arianism. servetus had rendered many services to scientific truth, and one of these was an edition of ptolemy's _geography_, in which judea was spoken of, not as "a land flowing with milk and honey," but, in strict accordance with the truth, as, in the main, meagre, barren, and inhospitable. in his trial this simple statement of geographical fact was used against him by his arch-enemy john calvin with fearful power. in vain did servetus plead that he had simply drawn the words from a previous edition of ptolemy; in vain did he declare that this statement was a simple geographical truth of which there were ample proofs: it was answered that such language "necessarily inculpated moses, and grievously outraged the holy ghost."[113] in summing up the action of the church upon geography, we must say, then, that the dogmas developed in strict adherence to scripture and the conceptions held in the church during many centuries "always, every where, and by all," were, on the whole, steadily hostile to truth; but it is only just to make a distinction here between the religious and the theological spirit. to the religious spirit are largely due several of the noblest among the great voyages of discovery. a deep longing to extend the realms of christianity influenced the minds of prince john of portugal, in his great series of efforts along the african coast; of vasco da gama, in his circumnavigation of the cape of good hope; of magellan, in his voyage around the world; and doubtless found a place among the more worldly motives of columbus.[113b] thus, in this field, from the supremacy accorded to theology, we find resulting that tendency to dogmatism which has shown itself in all ages the deadly foe not only of scientific inquiry but of the higher religious spirit itself, while from the love of truth for truth's sake, which has been the inspiration of all fruitful work in science, nothing but advantage has ever resulted to religion. chapter iii. astronomy. i. the old sacred theory of the universe. the next great series of battles was fought over the relations of the visible heavens to the earth. in the early church, in view of the doctrine so prominent in the new testament, that the earth was soon to be destroyed, and that there were to be "new heavens and a new earth," astronomy, like other branches of science, was generally looked upon as futile. why study the old heavens and the old earth, when they were so soon to be replaced with something infinitely better? this feeling appears in st. augustine's famous utterance, "what concern is it to me whether the heavens as a sphere inclose the earth in the middle of the world or overhang it on either side?" as to the heavenly bodies, theologians looked on them as at best only objects of pious speculation. regarding their nature the fathers of the church were divided. origen, and others with him, thought them living beings possessed of souls, and this belief was mainly based upon the scriptural vision of the morning stars. singing together, and upon the beautiful appeal to the "stars and light" in the song of the three children--the _benedicite_--which the anglican communion has so wisely retained in its liturgy. other fathers thought the stars abiding-places of the angels, and that stars were moved by angels. the gnostics thought the stars spiritual beings governed by angels, and appointed not to cause earthly events but to indicate them. as to the heavens in general, the prevailing view in the church was based upon the scriptural declarations that a solid vault--a "firmament"--was extended above the earth, and that the heavenly bodies were simply lights hung within it. this was for a time held very tenaciously. st. philastrius, in his famous treatise on heresies, pronounced it a heresy to deny that the stars are brought out by god from his treasure-house and hung in the sky every evening; any other view he declared "false to the catholic faith." this view also survived in the sacred theory established so firmly by cosmas in the sixth century. having established his plan of the universe upon various texts in the old and new testaments, and having made it a vast oblong box, covered by the solid "firmament," he brought in additional texts from scripture to account for the planetary movements, and developed at length the theory that the sun and planets are moved and the "windows of heaven" opened and shut by angels appointed for that purpose. how intensely real this way of looking at the universe was, we find in the writings of st. isidore, the greatest leader of orthodox thought in the seventh century. he affirms that since the fall of man, and on account of it, the sun and moon shine with a feebler light; but he proves from a text in isaiah that when the world shall be fully redeemed these "great lights" will shine again in all their early splendour. but, despite these authorities and their theological finalities, the evolution of scientific thought continued, its main germ being the geocentric doctrine--the doctrine that the earth is the centre, and that the sun and planets revolve about it.[115] this doctrine was of the highest respectability: it had been developed at a very early period, and had been elaborated until it accounted well for the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies; its final name, "ptolemaic theory," carried weight; and, having thus come from antiquity into the christian world, st. clement of alexandria demonstrated that the altar in the jewish tabernacle was "a symbol of the earth placed in the middle of the universe": nothing more was needed; the geocentric theory was fully adopted by the church and universally held to agree with the letter and spirit of scripture.[116] wrought into this foundation, and based upon it, there was developed in the middle ages, mainly out of fragments of chaldean and other early theories preserved in the hebrew scriptures, a new sacred system of astronomy, which became one of the great treasures of the universal church--the last word of revelation. three great men mainly reared this structure. first was the unknown who gave to the world the treatises ascribed to dionysius the areopagite. it was unhesitatingly believed that these were the work of st. paul's athenian convert, and therefore virtually of st. paul himself. though now known to be spurious, they were then considered a treasure of inspiration, and an emperor of the east sent them to an emperor of the west as the most worthy of gifts. in the ninth century they were widely circulated in western europe, and became a fruitful source of thought, especially on the whole celestial hierarchy. thus the old ideas of astronomy were vastly developed, and the heavenly hosts were classed and named in accordance with indications scattered through the sacred scriptures. the next of these three great theologians was peter lombard, professor at the university of paris. about the middle of the twelfth century he gave forth his collection of _sentences_, or statements by the fathers, and this remained until the end of the middle ages the universal manual of theology. in it was especially developed the theological view of man's relation to the universe. the author tells the world: "just as man is made for the sake of god--that is, that he may serve him,--so the universe is made for the sake of man--that is, that it may serve _him_; therefore is man placed at the middle point of the universe, that he may both serve and be served." the vast significance of this view, and its power in resisting any real astronomical science, we shall see, especially in the time of galileo. the great triad of thinkers culminated in st. thomas aquinas--the sainted theologian, the glory of the mediaeval church, the "angelic doctor," the most marvellous intellect between aristotle and newton; he to whom it was believed that an image of the crucified had spoken words praising his writings. large of mind, strong, acute, yet just--even more than just--to his opponents, he gave forth, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, his cyclopaedia of theology, the _summa theologica_. in this he carried the sacred theory of the universe to its full development. with great power and clearness he brought the whole vast system, material and spiritual, into its relations to god and man.[117] thus was the vast system developed by these three leaders of mediaeval thought; and now came the man who wrought it yet more deeply into european belief, the poet divinely inspired who made the system part of the world's _life_. pictured by dante, the empyrean and the concentric heavens, paradise, purgatory, and hell, were seen of all men; the god triune, seated on his throne upon the circle of the heavens, as real as the pope seated in the chair of st. peter; the seraphim, cherubim, and thrones, surrounding the almighty, as real as the cardinals surrounding the pope; the three great orders of angels in heaven, as real as the three great orders, bishops, priests, and deacons, on earth; and the whole system of spheres, each revolving within the one above it, and all moving about the earth, subject to the _primum mobile_, as real as the feudal system of western europe, subject to the emperor.[118] let us look into this vast creation--the highest achievement of theology--somewhat more closely. its first feature shows a development out of earlier theological ideas. the earth is no longer a flat plain inclosed by four walls and solidly vaulted above, as theologians of previous centuries had believed it, under the inspiration of cosmas; it is no longer a mere flat disk, with sun, moon, and stars hung up to give it light, as the earlier cathedral sculptors had figured it; it has become a globe at the centre of the universe. encompassing it are successive transparent spheres, rotated by angels about the earth, and each carrying one or more of the heavenly bodies with it: that nearest the earth carrying the moon; the next, mercury; the next, venus; the next, the sun; the next three, mars, jupiter, and saturn; the eighth carrying the fixed stars. the ninth was the _primum mobile_, and inclosing all was the tenth heaven--the empyrean. this was immovable--the boundarv between creation and the great outer void; and here, in a light which no one can enter, the triune god sat enthroned, the "music of the spheres" rising to him as they moved. thus was the old heathen doctrine of the spheres made christian. in attendance upon the divine majesty, thus enthroned, are vast hosts of angels, who are divided into three hierarchies, one serving in the empyrean, one in the heavens, between the empyrean and the earth, and one on the earth. each of these hierarchies is divided into three choirs, or orders; the first, into the orders of seraphim, cherubim, and thrones; and the main occupation of these is to chant incessantly--to "continually cry" the divine praises. the order of thrones conveys god's will to the second hierarchy, which serves in the movable heavens. this second hierarchy is also made up of three orders. the first of these, the order of dominions, receives the divine commands; the second, the order of powers, moves the heavens, sun, moon, planets, and stars, opens and shuts the "windows of heaven," and brings to pass all other celestial phenomena; the third, the order of empire, guards the others. the third and lowest hierarchy is also made up of three orders. first of these are the principalities, the guardian spirits of nations and kingdoms. next come archangels; these protect religion, and bear the prayers of the saints to the foot of god's throne. finally come angels; these care for earthly affairs in general, one being appointed to each mortal, and others taking charge of the qualities of plants, metals, stones, and the like. throughout the whole system, from the great triune god to the lowest group of angels, we see at work the mystic power attached to the triangle and sacred number three--the same which gave the triune idea to ancient hindu theology, which developed the triune deities in egypt, and which transmitted this theological gift to the christian world, especially through the egyptian athanasius. below the earth is hell. this is tenanted by the angels who rebelled under the lead of lucifer, prince of the seraphim--the former favourite of the trinity; but, of these rebellious angels, some still rove among the planetary spheres, and give trouble to the good angels; others pervade the atmosphere about the earth, carrying lightning, storm, drought, and hail; others infest earthly society, tempting men to sin; but peter lombard and st. thomas aquinas take pains to show that the work of these devils is, after all, but to discipline man or to mete out deserved punishment. all this vast scheme had been so riveted into the ptolemaic view by the use of biblical texts and theological reasonings that the resultant system of the universe was considered impregnable and final. to attack it was blasphemy. it stood for centuries. great theological men of science, like vincent of beauvais and cardinal d'ailly, devoted themselves to showing not only that it was supported by scripture, but that it supported scripture. thus was the geocentric theory embedded in the beliefs and aspirations, in the hopes and fears, of christendom down to the middle of the sixteenth century.[120] ii. the heliocentric theory. but, on the other hand, there had been planted, long before, the germs of a heliocentric theory. in the sixth century before our era, pythagoras, and after him philolaus, had suggested the movement of the earth and planets about a central fire; and, three centuries later, aristarchus had restated the main truth with striking precision. here comes in a proof that the antagonisin between theological and scientific methods is not confined to christianity; for this statement brought upon aristarchus the charge of blasphemy, and drew after it a cloud of prejudice which hid the truth for six hundred years. not until the fifth century of our era did it timidly appear in the thoughts of martianus capella: then it was again lost to sight for a thousand years, until in the fifteenth century, distorted and imperfect, it appeared in the writings of cardinal nicholas de cusa. but in the shade cast by the vast system which had grown from the minds of the great theologians and from the heart of the great poet there had come to this truth neither bloom nor fruitage. quietly, however, the soil was receiving enrichment and the air warmth. the processes of mathematics were constantly improved, the heavenly bodies were steadily observed, and at length appeared, far from the centres of thought, on the borders of poland, a plain, simple-minded scholar, who first fairly uttered to the modern world the truth--now so commonplace, then so astounding--that the sun and planets do not revolve about the earth, but that the earth and planets revolve about the sun: this man was nicholas copernicus. copernicus had been a professor at rome, and even as early as 1500 had announced his doctrine there, but more in the way of a scientific curiosity or paradox, as it had been previously held by cardinal de cusa, than as the statement of a system representing a great fact in nature. about thirty years later one of his disciples, widmanstadt, had explained it to clement vii; but it still remained a mere hypothesis, and soon, like so many others, disappeared from the public view. but to copernicus, steadily studying the subject, it became more and more a reality, and as this truth grew within him he seemed to feel that at rome he was no longer safe. to announce his discovery there as a theory or a paradox might amuse the papal court, but to announce it as a truth--as _the_ truth--was a far different matter. he therefore returned to his little town in poland. to publish his thought as it had now developed was evidently dangerous even there, and for more than thirty years it lay slumbering in the mind of copernicus and of the friends to whom he had privately intrusted it. at last he prepared his great work on the _revolutions of the heavenly bodies_, and dedicated it to the pope himself. he next sought a place of publication. he dared not send it to rome, for there were the rulers of the older church ready to seize it; he dared not send it to wittenberg, for there were the leaders of protestantism no less hostile; he therefore intrusted it to osiander, at nuremberg.[122] but osiander's courage failed him: he dared not launch the new thought boldly. he wrote a grovelling preface, endeavouring to excuse copernicus for his novel idea, and in this he inserted the apologetic lie that copernicus had propounded the doctrine of the earth's movement not as a fact, but as a hypothesis. he declared that it was lawful for an astronomer to indulge his imagination, and that this was what copernicus had done. thus was the greatest and most ennobling, perhaps, of scientific truths--a truth not less ennobling to religion than to science--forced, in coming before the world, to sneak and crawl.[123] on the 24th of may, 1543, the newly printed book arrived at the house of copernicus. it was put into his hands; but he was on his deathbed. a few hours later he was beyond the reach of the conscientious men who would have blotted his reputation and perhaps have destroyed his life. yet not wholly beyond their reach. even death could not be trusted to shield him. there seems to have been fear of vengeance upon his corpse, for on his tombstone was placed no record of his lifelong labours, no mention of his great discovery; but there was graven upon it simply a prayer: "i ask not the grace accorded to paul; not that given to peter; give me only the favour which thou didst show to the thief on the cross." not till thirty years after did a friend dare write on his tombstone a memorial of his discovery.[124] the preface of osiander, pretending that the book of copernicus suggested a hypothesis instead of announcing a truth, served its purpose well. during nearly seventy years the church authorities evidently thought it best not to stir the matter, and in some cases professors like calganini were allowed to present the new view purely as a hypothesis. there were, indeed, mutterings from time to time on the theological side, but there was no great demonstration against the system until 1616. then, when the copernican doctrine was upheld by galileo as a _truth_, and proved to be a truth by his telescope, the book was taken in hand by the roman curia. the statements of copernicus were condemnned, "until they should be corrected"; and the corrections required were simply such as would substitute for his conclusions the old ptolemaic theory. that this was their purpose was seen in that year when galileo was forbidden to teach or discuss the copernican theory, and when were forbidden "all books which affirm the motion of the earth." henceforth to read the work of copernicus was to risk damnation, and the world accepted the decree.[124b] the strongest minds were thus held fast. if they could not believe the old system, they must _pretend_ that they believed it;--and this, even after the great circumnavigation of the globe had done so much to open the eyes of the world! very striking is the case of the eminent jesuit missionary joseph acosta, whose great work on the _natural and moral history of the indies_, published in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, exploded so many astronomical and geographical errors. though at times curiously credulous, he told the truth as far as he dared; but as to the movement of the heavenly bodies he remained orthodox--declaring, "i have seen the two poles, whereon the heavens turn as upon their axletrees." there was, indeed, in europe one man who might have done much to check this current of unreason which was to sweep away so many thoughtful men on the one hand from scientific knowledge, and so many on the other from christianity. this was peter apian. he was one of the great mathematical and astronomical scholars of the time. his brilliant abilities had made him the astronomical teacher of the emperor charles v. his work on geography had brought him a world-wide reputation; his work on astronomy brought him a patent of nobility; his improvements in mathematical processes and astronomical instruments brought him the praise of kepler and a place in the history of science: never had a true man better opportunity to do a great deed. when copernicus's work appeared, apian was at the height of his reputation and power: a quiet, earnest plea from him, even if it had been only for ordinary fairness and a suspension of judgment, must have carried much weight. his devoted pupil, charles v, who sat on the thrones of germany and spain, must at least have given a hearing to such a plea. but, unfortunately, apian was a professor in an institution of learning under the strictest church control--the university of ingolstadt. his foremost duty was to teach _safe_ science--to keep science within the line of scriptural truth as interpreted by theological professors. his great opportunity was lost. apian continued to maunder over the ptolemaic theory and astrology in his lecture-room. the attack on the copernican theory he neither supported nor opposed; he was silent; and the cause of his silence should never be forgotten so long as any church asserts its title to control university instruction.[126] doubtless many will exclaim against the roman catholic church for this; but the simple truth is that protestantism was no less zealous against the new scientific doctrine. all branches of the protestant church--lutheran, calvinist, anglican--vied with each other in denouncing the copernican doctrine as contrary to scripture; and, at a later period, the puritans showed the same tendency. said martin luther: "people gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. this fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." melanchthon, mild as he was, was not behind luther in condemning copernicus. in his treatise on the _elements of physics_, published six years after copernicus's death, he says: "the eyes are witnesses that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty-four hours. but certain men, either from the love of novelty, or to make a display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth moves; and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves.... now, it is a want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. it is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by god and to acquiesce in it." melanchthon then cites the passages in the psalms and ecclesiastes, which he declares assert positively and clearly that the earth stands fast and that the sun moves around it, and adds eight other proofs of his proposition that "the earth can be nowhere if not in the centre of the universe." so earnest does this mildest of the reformers become, that he suggests severe measures to restrain such impious teachings as those of copernicus.[127] while lutheranism was thus condemning the theory of the earth's movement, other branches of the protestant church did not remain behind. calvin took the lead, in his _commentary on genesis_, by condemning all who asserted that the earth is not at the centre of the universe. he clinched the matter by the usual reference to the first verse of the ninety-third psalm, and asked, "who will venture to place the authority of copernicus above that of the holy spirit?" turretin, calvin's famous successor, even after kepler and newton had virtually completed the theory of copernicus and galileo, put forth his compendium of theology, in which he proved, from a multitude of scriptural texts, that the heavens, sun, and moon move about the earth, which stands still in the centre. in england we see similar theological efforts, even after they had become evidently futile. hutchinson's _moses's principia_, dr. samuel pike's _sacred philosophy_, the writings of horne, bishop horsley, and president forbes contain most earnest attacks upon the ideas of newton, such attacks being based upon scripture. dr. john owen, so famous in the annals of puritanism, declared the copernican system a "delusive and arbitrary hypothesis, contrary to scripture"; and even john wesley declared the new ideas to "tend toward infidelity."[128] and protestant peoples were not a whit behind catholic in following out such teachings. the people of elbing made themselves merry over a farce in which copernicus was the main object of ridicule. the people of nuremberg, a protestant stronghold, caused a medal to be struck with inscriptions ridiculing the philosopher and his theory. why the people at large took this view is easily understood when we note the attitude of the guardians of learning, both catholic and protestant, in that age. it throws great light upon sundry claims by modern theologians to take charge of public instruction and of the evolution of science. so important was it thought to have "sound learning" guarded and "safe science" taught, that in many of the universities, as late as the end of the seventeenth century, professors were forced to take an oath not to hold the "pythagorean"--that is, the copernican--idea as to the movement of the heavenly bodies. as the contest went on, professors were forbidden to make known to students the facts revealed by the telescope. special orders to this effect were issued by the ecclesiastical authorities to the universities and colleges of pisa, innspruck, louvain, douay, salamanca, and others. during generations we find the authorities of these universities boasting that these godless doctrines were kept away from their students. it is touching to hear such boasts made then, just as it is touching now to hear sundry excellent university authorities boast that they discourage the reading of mill, spencer, and darwin. nor were such attempts to keep the truth from students confined to the roman catholic institutions of learning. strange as it may seem, nowhere were the facts confirming the copernican theory more carefully kept out of sight than at wittenberg--the university of luther and melanchthon. about the middle of the sixteenth century there were at that centre of protestant instruction two astronomers of a very high order, rheticus and reinhold; both of these, after thorough study, had convinced themselves that the copernican system was true, but neither of them was allowed to tell this truth to his students. neither in his lecture announcements nor in his published works did rheticus venture to make the new system known, and he at last gave up his professorship and left wittenberg, that he might have freedom to seek and tell the truth. reinhold was even more wretchedly humiliated. convinced of the truth of the new theory, he was obliged to advocate the old; if he mentioned the copernican ideas, he was compelled to overlay them with the ptolemaic. even this was not thought safe enough, and in 1571 the subject was intrusted to peucer. he was eminently "sound," and denounced the copernican theory in his lectures as "absurd, and unfit to be introduced into the schools." to clinch anti-scientific ideas more firmly into german protestant teaching, rector hensel wrote a text-book for schools entitled _the restored mosaic system of the world_, which showed the copernican astronomy to be unscriptural. doubtless this has a far-off sound; yet its echo comes very near modern protestantism in the expulsion of dr. woodrow by the presbyterian authorities in south carolina; the expulsion of prof. winchell by the methodist episcopal authorities in tennessee; the expulsion of prof. toy by baptist authorities in kentucky; the expulsion of the professors at beyrout under authority of american protestant divines--all for holding the doctrines of modern science, and in the last years of the nineteenth century.[129] but the new truth could not be concealed; it could neither be laughed down nor frowned down. many minds had received it, but within the hearing of the papacy only one tongue appears to have dared to utter it clearly. this new warrior was that strange mortal, giordano bruno. he was hunted from land to land, until at last he turned on his pursuers with fearful invectives. for this he was entrapped at venice, imprisoned during six years in the dungeons of the inquisition at rome, then burned alive, and his ashes scattered to the winds. still, the new truth lived on. ten years after the martyrdom of bruno the truth of copernicus's doctrine was established by the telescope of galileo.[130] herein was fulfilled one of the most touching of prophecies. years before, the opponents of copernicus had said to him, "if your doctrines were true, venus would show phases like the moon." copernicus answered: "you are right; i know not what to say; but god is good, and will in time find an answer to this objection." the god-given answer came when, in 1611, the rude telescope of galileo showed the phases of venus.[130b] iii. the war upon galileo. on this new champion, galileo, the whole war was at last concentrated. his discoveries had clearly taken the copernican theory out of the list of hypotheses, and had placed it before the world as a truth. against him, then, the war was long and bitter. the supporters of what was called "sound learning" declared his discoveries deceptions and his announcements blasphemy. semi-scientific professors, endeavouring to curry favour with the church, attacked him with sham science; earnest preachers attacked him with perverted scripture; theologians, inquisitors, congregations of cardinals, and at last two popes dealt with him, and, as was supposed, silenced his impious doctrine forever.[131] i shall present this warfare at some length because, so far as i can find, no careful summary of it has been given in our language, since the whole history was placed in a new light by the revelations of the trial documents in the vatican library, honestly published for the first time by l'epinois in 1867, and since that by gebler, berti, favaro, and others. the first important attack on galileo began in 1610, when he announced that his telescope had revealed the moons of the planet jupiter. the enemy saw that this took the copernican theory out of the realm of hypothesis, and they gave battle immediately. they denounced both his method and its results as absurd and impious. as to his method, professors bred in the "safe science" favoured by the church argued that the divinely appointed way of arriving at the truth in astronomy was by theological reasoning on texts of scripture; and, as to his results, they insisted, first, that aristotle knew nothing of these new revelations; and, next, that the bible showed by all applicable types that there could be only seven planets; that this was proved by the seven golden candlesticks of the apocalypse, by the seven-branched candlestick of the tabernacle, and by the seven churches of asia; that from galileo's doctrine consequences must logically result destructive to christian truth. bishops and priests therefore warned their flocks, and multitudes of the faithful besought the inquisition to deal speedily and sharply with the heretic.[131b] in vain did galileo try to prove the existence of satellites by showing them to the doubters through his telescope: they either declared it impious to look, or, if they did look, denounced the satellites as illusions from the devil. good father clavius declared that "to see satellites of jupiter, men had to make an instrument which would create them." in vain did galileo try to save the great truths he had discovered by his letters to the benedictine castelli and the grand-duchess christine, in which he argued that literal biblical interpretation should not be applied to science; it was answered that such an argument only made his heresy more detestable; that he was "worse than luther or calvin." the war on the copernican theory, which up to that time had been carried on quietly, now flamed forth. it was declared that the doctrine was proved false by the standing still of the sun for joshua, by the declarations that "the foundations of the earth are fixed so firm that they can not be moved," and that the sun "runneth about from one end of the heavens to the other."[132] but the little telescope of galileo still swept the heavens, and another revelation was announced--the mountains and valleys in the moon. this brought on another attack. it was declared that this, and the statement that the moon shines by light reflected from the sun, directly contradict the statement in genesis that the moon is "a great light." to make the matter worse, a painter, placing the moon in a religious picture in its usual position beneath the feet of the blessed virgin, outlined on its surface mountains and valleys; this was denounced as a sacrilege logically resulting from the astronomer's heresy. still another struggle was aroused when the hated telescope revealed spots upon the sun, and their motion indicating the sun's rotation. monsignor elci, head of the university of pisa, forbade the astronomer castelli to mention these spots to his students. father busaeus, at the university of innspruck, forbade the astronomer scheiner, who had also discovered the spots and proposed a _safe_ explanation of them, to allow the new discovery to be known there. at the college of douay and the university of louvain this discovery was expressly placed under the ban, and this became the general rule among the catholic universities and colleges of europe. the spanish universities were especially intolerant of this and similar ideas, and up to a recent period their presentation was strictly forbidden in the most important university of all--that of salamanca.[133] such are the consequences of placing the instruction of men's minds in the hands of those mainly absorbed in saving men's souls. nothing could be more in accordance with the idea recently put forth by sundry ecclesiastics, catholic and protestant, that the church alone is empowered to promulgate scientific truth or direct university instruction. but science gained a victory here also. observations of the solar spots were reported not only from galileo in italy, but from fabricius in holland. father scheiner then endeavoured to make the usual compromise between theology and science. he promulgated a pseudo-scientific theory, which only provoked derision. the war became more and more bitter. the dominican father caccini preached a sermon from the text, "ye men of galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" and this wretched pun upon the great astronomer's name ushered in sharper weapons; for, before caccini ended, he insisted that "geometry is of the devil," and that "mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies." the church authorities gave caccini promotion. father lorini proved that galileo's doctrine was not only heretical but "atheistic," and besought the inquisition to intervene. the bishop of fiesole screamed in rage against the copernican system, publicly insulted galileo, and denounced him to the grand-duke. the archbishop of pisa secretly sought to entrap galileo and deliver him to the inquisition at rome. the archbishop of florence solenmnly condemned the new doctrines as unscriptural; and paul v, while petting galileo, and inviting him as the greatest astronomer of the world to visit rome, was secretly moving the archbishop of pisa to pick up evidence against the astronomer. but by far the most terrible champion who now appeared was cardinal bellarmin, one of the greatest theologians the world has known. he was earnest, sincere, and learned, but insisted on making science conform to scripture. the weapons which men of bellarmin's stamp used were purely theological. they held up before the world the dreadful consequences which must result to christian theology were the heavenly bodies proved to revolve about the sun and not about the earth. their most tremendous dogmatic engine was the statement that "his pretended discovery vitiates the whole christian plan of salvation." father lecazre declared "it casts suspicion on the doctrine of the incarnation." others declared, "it upsets the whole basis of theology. if the earth is a planet, and only one among several planets, it can not be that any such great things have been done specially for it as the christian doctrine teaches. if there are other planets, since god makes nothing in vain, they must be inhabited; but how can their inhabitants be descended from adam? how can they trace back their origin to noah's ark? how can they have been redeemed by the saviour?" nor was this argument confined to the theologians of the roman church; melanchthon, protestant as he was, had already used it in his attacks on copernicus and his school. in addition to this prodigious theological engine of war there was kept up a fire of smaller artillery in the shape of texts and scriptural extracts. but the war grew still more bitter, and some weapons used in it are worth examining. they are very easily examined, for they are to be found on all the battlefields of science; but on that field they were used with more effect than on almost any other. these weapons are the epithets "infidel" and "atheist." they have been used against almost every man who has ever done anything new for his fellow-men. the list of those who have been denounced as "infidel" and "atheist" includes almost all great men of science, general scholars, inventors, and philanthropists. the purest christian life, the noblest christian character, have not availed to shield combatants. christians like isaac newton, pascal, locke, milton, and even fenelon and howard, have had this weapon hurled against them. of all proofs of the existence of a god, those of descartes have been wrought most thoroughly into the minds of modern men; yet the protestant theologians of holland sought to bring him to torture and to death by the charge of atheism, and the roman catholic theologians of france thwarted him during his life and prevented any due honours to him after his death.[135] these epithets can hardly be classed with civilized weapons. they are burning arrows; they set fire to masses of popular prejudice, always obscuring the real question, sometimes destroying the attacking party. they are poisoned weapons. they pierce the hearts of loving women; they alienate dear children; they injure a man after life is ended, for they leave poisoned wounds in the hearts of those who loved him best--fears for his eternal salvation, dread of the divine wrath upon him. of course, in these days these weapons, though often effective in vexing good men and in scaring good women, are somewhat blunted; indeed, they not infrequently injure the assailants more than the assailed. so it was not in the days of galileo; they were then in all their sharpness and venom.[135b] yet a baser warfare was waged by the archbishop of pisa. this man, whose cathedral derives its most enduring fame from galileo's deduction of a great natural law from the swinging lamp before its altar, was not an archbishop after the noble mould of borromeo and fenelon and cheverus. sadly enough for the church and humanity, he was simply a zealot and intriguer: he perfected the plan for entrapping the great astronomer. galileo, after his discoveries had been denounced, had written to his friend castelli and to the grand-duchess christine two letters to show that his discoveries might be reconciled with scripture. on a hint from the inquisition at rome, the archbishop sought to get hold of these letters and exhibit them as proofs that galileo had uttered heretical views of theology and of scripture, and thus to bring him into the clutch of the inquisition. the archbishop begs castelli, therefore, to let him see the original letter in the handwriting of galileo. castelli declines. the archbishop then, while, as is now revealed, writing constantly and bitterly to the inquisition against galileo, professes to castelli the greatest admiration of galileo's genius and a sincere desire to know more of his discoveries. this not succeeding, the archbishop at last throws off the mask and resorts to open attack. the whole struggle to crush galileo and to save him would be amusing were it not so fraught with evil. there were intrigues and counter-intrigues, plots and counter-plots, lying and spying; and in the thickest of this seething, squabbling, screaming mass of priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, appear two popes, paul v and urban viii. it is most suggestive to see in this crisis of the church, at the tomb of the prince of the apostles, on the eve of the greatest errors in church policy the world has known, in all the intrigues and deliberations of these consecrated leaders of the church, no more evidence of the guidance or presence of the holy spirit than in a caucus of new york politicians at tammany hall. but the opposing powers were too strong. in 1615 galileo was summoned before the inquisition at rome, and the mine which had been so long preparing was sprung. sundry theologians of the inquisition having been ordered to examine two propositions which had been extracted from galileo's letters on the solar spots, solemnly considered these points during ahout a month and rendered their unanimous decision as follows: "_the first proposition, that the sun is the centre and does not revolve about the earth, is foolish, absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because expressly contrary to holy scripture"; and "the second proposition, that the earth is not the centre but revolves about the sun, is absurd, false in philosophy, and, from a theological point of view at least, opposed to the true faith_." the pope himself, paul v, now intervened again: he ordered that galileo be brought before the inquisition. then the greatest man of science in that age was brought face to face with the greatest theologian--galileo was confronted by bellarmin. bellarmin shows galileo the error of his opinion and orders him to renounce it. de lauda, fortified by a letter from the pope, gives orders that the astronomer be placed in the dungeons of the inquisition should he refuse to yield. bellarmin now commands galileo, "in the name of his holiness the pope and the whole congregation of the holy office, to relinquish altogether the opinion that the sun is the centre of the world and immovable, and that the earth moves, nor henceforth to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing." this injunction galileo acquiesces in and promises to obey.[137] this was on the 26th of february, 1616. about a fortnight later the congregation of the index, moved thereto, as the letters and documents now brought to light show, by pope paul, v solemnly rendered a decree that "_the doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and entirely contrary to holy scripture_"; and that this opinion must neither be taught nor advocated. the same decree condemned all writings of copernicus and "_all writings which affirm the motion of the earth_." the great work of copernicus was interdicted until corrected in accordance with the views of the inquisition; and the works of galileo and kepler, though not mentioned by name at that time, were included among those implicitly condemned as "affirming the motion of the earth." the condemnations were inscribed upon the _index_; and, finally, the papacy committed itself as an infallible judge and teacher to the world by prefixing to the _index_ the usual papal bull giving its monitions the most solemn papal sanction. to teach or even read the works denounced or passages condemned was to risk persecution in this world and damnation in the next. science had apparently lost the decisive battle. for a time after this judgment galileo remained in rome, apparently hoping to find some way out of this difficulty; but he soon discovered the hollowness of the protestations made to him by ecclesiastics, and, being recalled to florence, remained in his hermitage near the city in silence, working steadily, indeed, but not publishing anything save by private letters to friends in various parts of europe. but at last a better vista seemed to open for him. cardinal barberini, who had seemed liberal and friendly, became pope under the name of urban viii. galileo at this conceived new hopes, and allowed his continued allegiance to the copernican system to be known. new troubles ensued. galileo was induced to visit rome again, and pope urban tried to cajole him into silence, personally taking the trouble to show him his errors by argument. other opponents were less considerate, for works appeared attacking his ideas--works all the more unmanly, since their authors knew that galileo was restrained by force from defending himself. then, too, as if to accumulate proofs of the unfitness of the church to take charge of advanced instruction, his salary as a professor at the university of pisa was taken from him, and sapping and mining began. just as the archbishop of pisa some years before had tried to betray him with honeyed words to the inquisition, so now father grassi tried it, and, after various attempts to draw him out by flattery, suddenly denounced his scientific ideas as "leading to a denial of the real presence in the eucharist." for the final assault upon him a park of heavy artillery was at last wheeled into place. it may be seen on all the scientific battlefields. it consists of general denunciation; and in 1631 father melchior inchofer, of the jesuits, brought his artillery to bear upon galileo with this declaration: "the opinion of the earth's motion is of all heresies the most abominable, the most pernicious, the most scandalous; the immovability of the earth is thrice sacred; argument against the immortality of the soul, the existence of god, and the incarnation, should be tolerated sooner than an argument to prove that the earth moves." from the other end of europe came a powerful echo. from the shadow of the cathedral of antwerp, the noted theologian fromundus gave forth his famous treatise, the _ant-aristarclius_. its very title-page was a contemptuous insult to the memory of copernicus, since it paraded the assumption that the new truth was only an exploded theory of a pagan astronomer. fromundus declares that "sacred scripture fights against the copernicans." to prove that the sun revolves about the earth, he cites the passage in the psalms which speaks of the sun "which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber." to prove that the earth stands still, he quotes a passage from ecclesiastes, "the earth standeth fast forever." to show the utter futility of the copernican theory, he declares that, if it were true, "the wind would constantly blow from the east"; and that "buildings and the earth itself would fly off with such a rapid motion that men would have to be provided with claws like cats to enable them to hold fast to the earth's surface." greatest weapon of all, he works up, by the use of aristotle and st. thomas aquinas, a demonstration from theology and science combined, that the earth _must_ stand in the centre, and that the sun _must_ revolve about it.[140] nor was it merely fanatics who opposed the truth revealed by copernicus; such strong men as jean bodin, in france, and sir thomas browne, in england, declared against it as evidently contrary to holy scripture. iv. victory of the church over galileo. while news of triumphant attacks upon him and upon the truth he had established were coming in from all parts of europe, galileo prepared a careful treatise in the form of a dialogue, exhibiting the arguments for and against the copernican and ptolemaic systems, and offered to submit to any conditions that the church tribunals might impose, if they would allow it to be printed. at last, after discussions which extended through eight years, they consented, imposing a humiliating condition--a preface written in accordance with the ideas of father ricciardi, master of the sacred palace, and signed by galileo, in which the copernican theory was virtually exhibited as a play of the imagination, and not at all as opposed to the ptolemaic doctrine reasserted in 1616 by the inquisition under the direction of pope paul v. this new work of galileo--the _dialogo_--appeared in 1632, and met with prodigious success. it put new weapons into the hands of the supporters of the copernican theory. the pious preface was laughed at from one end of europe to the other. this roused the enemy; the jesuits, dominicans, and the great majority of the clergy returned to the attack more violent than ever, and in the midst of them stood pope urban viii, most bitter of all. his whole power was now thrown against galileo. he was touched in two points: first, in his personal vanity, for galileo had put the pope's arguments into the mouth of one of the persons in the dialogue and their refutation into the mouth of another; but, above all, he was touched in his religious feelings. again and again his holiness insisted to all comers on the absolute and specific declarations of holy scripture, which prove that the sun and heavenly bodies revolve about the earth, and declared that to gainsay them is simply to dispute revelation. certainly, if one ecclesiastic more than another ever seemed _not_ under the care of the spirit of truth, it was urban viii in all this matter. herein was one of the greatest pieces of ill fortune that has ever befallen the older church. had pope urban been broad-minded and tolerant like benedict xiv, or had he been taught moderation by adversity like pius vii, or had he possessed the large scholarly qualities of leo xiii, now reigning, the vast scandal of the galileo case would never have burdened the church: instead of devising endless quibbles and special pleadings to escape responsibility for this colossal blunder, its defenders could have claimed forever for the church the glory of fearlessly initiating a great epoch in human thought. but it was not so to be. urban was not merely pope; he was also a prince of the house of barberini, and therefore doubly angry that his arguments had been publicly controverted. the opening strategy of galileo's enemies was to forbid the sale of his work; but this was soon seen to be unavailing, for the first edition had already been spread throughout europe. urban now became more angry than ever, and both galileo and his works were placed in the hands of the inquisition. in vain did the good benedictine castelli urge that galileo was entirely respectful to the church; in vain did he insist that "nothing that can be done can now hinder the earth from revolving." he was dismissed in disgrace, and galileo was forced to appear in the presence of the dread tribunal without defender or adviser. there, as was so long concealed, but as is now fully revealed, he was menaced with torture again and again by express order of pope urban, and, as is also thoroughly established from the trial documents themselves, forced to abjure under threats, and subjected to imprisonment by command of the pope; the inquisition deferring in this whole matter to the papal authority. all the long series of attempts made in the supposed interest of the church to mystify these transactions have at last failed. the world knows now that galileo was subjected certainly to indignity, to imprisonment, and to threats equivalent to torture, and was at last forced to pronounce publicly and on his knees his recantation, as follows: "i, galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my knees, and before your eminences, having before my eyes the holy gospel, which i touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the error and the heresy of the movement of the earth."[142] he was vanquished indeed, for he had been forced, in the face of all coming ages, to perjure himself. to complete his dishonour, he was obliged to swear that he would denounce to the inquisition any other man of science whom he should discover to be supporting the "heresy of the motion of the earth." many have wondered at this abjuration, and on account of it have denied to galileo the title of martyr. but let such gainsayers consider the circumstances. here was an old man--one who had reached the allotted threescore years and ten--broken with disappointments, worn out with labours and cares, dragged from florence to rome, with the threat from the pope himself that if he delayed he should be "brought in chains"; sick in body and mind, given over to his oppressors by the grand-duke who ought to have protected him, and on his arrival in rome threatened with torture. what the inquisition was he knew well. he could remember as but of yesterday the burning of giordano bruno in that same city for scientific and philosophic heresy; he could remember, too, that only eight years before this very time de dominis, archbishop of spalatro, having been seized by the inquisition for scientific and other heresies, had died in a dungeon, and that his body and his writings had been publicly burned. to the end of his life--nay, after his life was ended--the persecution of galileo was continued. he was kept in exile from his family, from his friends, from his noble employments, and was held rigidly to his promise not to speak of his theory. when, in the midst of intense bodily sufferings from disease, and mental sufferings from calamities in his family, he besought some little liberty, he was met with threats of committal to a dungeon. when, at last, a special commission had reported to the ecclesiastical authorities that he had become blind and wasted with disease and sorrow, he was allowed a little more liberty, but that little was hampered by close surveillance. he was forced to bear contemptible attacks on himself and on his works in silence; to see the men who had befriended him severely punished; father castelli banished; ricciardi, the master of the sacred palace, and ciampoli, the papal secretary, thrown out of their positions by pope urban, and the inquisitor at florence reprimanded for having given permission to print galileo's work. he lived to see the truths he had established carefully weeded out from all the church colleges and universities in europe; and, when in a scientific work he happened to be spoken of as "renowned," the inquisition ordered the substitution of the word "notorious."[143] and now measures were taken to complete the destruction of the copernican theory, with galileo's proofs of it. on the 16th of june, 1633, the holy congregation, with the permission of the reigning pope, ordered the sentence upon galileo, and his recantation, to be sent to all the papal nuncios throughout europe, as well as to all archbishops, bishops, and inquisitors in italy and this document gave orders that the sentence and abjuration be made known "to your vicars, that you and all professors of philosophy and mathematics may have knowledge of it, that they may know why we proceeded against the said galileo, and recognise the gravity of his error, in order that they may avoid it, and thus not incur the penalties which they would have to suffer in case they fell into the same."[144] as a consequence, the processors of mathematics and astronomy in various universities of europe were assembled and these documents were read to them. to the theological authorities this gave great satisfaction. the rector of the university of douay, referring to the opinion of galileo, wrote to the papal nuncio at brussels: "the professors of our university are so opposed to this fanatical opinion that they have always held that it must be banished from the schools. in our english college at douay this paradox has never been approved and never will be." still another step was taken: the inquisitors were ordered, especially in italy, not to permit the publication of a new edition of any of galileo's works, or of any similar writings. on the other hand, theologians were urged, now that copernicus and galileo and kepler were silenced, to reply to them with tongue and pen. europe was flooded with these theological refutations of the copernican system. to make all complete, there was prefixed to the _index_ of the church, forbidding "all writings which affirm the motion of the earth," a bull signed by the reigning pope, which, by virtue of his infallibility as a divinely guided teacher in matters of faith and morals, clinched this condemnation into the consciences of the whole christian world. from the mass of books which appeared under the auspices of the church immediately after the condemnation of galileo, for the purpose of rooting out every vestige of the hated copernican theory from the mind of the world, two may be taken as typical. the first of these was a work by scipio chiaramonti, dedicated to cardinal barberini. among his arguments against the double motion of the earth may be cited the following: "animals, which move, have limbs and muscles; the earth has no limbs or muscles, therefore it does not move. it is angels who make saturn, jupiter, the sun, etc., turn round. if the earth revolves, it must also have an angel in the centre to set it in motion; but only devils live there; it would therefore be a devil who would impart motion to the earth.... "the planets, the sun, the fixed stars, all belong to one species--namely, that of stars. it seems, therefore, to be a grievous wrong to place the earth, which is a sink of impurity, among these heavenly bodies, which are pure and divine things." the next, which i select from the mass of similar works, is the _anticopernicus catholicus_ of polacco. it was intended to deal a finishing stroke at galileo's heresy. in this it is declared: "the scripture always represents the earth as at rest, and the sun and moon as in motion; or, if these latter bodies are ever represented as at rest, scripture represents this as the result of a great miracle.... "these writings must be prohibited, because they teach certain principles about the position and motion of the terrestrial globe repugnant to holy scripture and to the catholic interpretation of it, not as hypotheses but as established facts...." speaking of galileo's book, polacco says that it "smacked of copernicanism," and that, "when this was shown to the inquisition, galileo was thrown into prison and was compelled to utterly abjure the baseness of this erroneous dogma." as to the authority of the cardinals in their decree, polacco asserts that, since they are the "pope's council" and his "brothers," their work is one, except that the pope is favoured with special divine enlightenment. having shown that the authority of the scriptures, of popes, and of cardinals is against the new astronomy, he gives a refutation based on physics. he asks: "if we concede the motion of the earth, why is it that an arrow shot into the air falls back to the same spot, while the earth and all things on it have in the meantime moved very rapidly toward the east? who does not see that great confusion would result from this motion?" next he argues from metaphysics, as follows: "the copernican theory of the earth's motion is against the nature of the earth itself, because the earth is not only cold but contains in itself the principle of cold; but cold is opposed to motion, and even destroys it--as is evident in animals, which become motionless when they become cold." finally, he clinches all with a piece of theological reasoning, as follows: "since it can certainly be gathered from scripture that the heavens move above the earth, and since a circular motion requires something immovable around which to move,... the earth is at the centre of the universe."[146] but any sketch of the warfare between theology and science in this field would be incomplete without some reference to the treatment of galileo after his death. he had begged to be buried in his family tomb in santa croce; this request was denied. his friends wished to erect a monument over him; this, too, was refused. pope urban said to the ambassador niccolini that "it would be an evil example for the world if such honours were rendered to a man who had been brought before the roman inquisition for an opinion so false and erroneous; who had communicated it to many others, and who had given so great a scandal to christendom." in accordance, therefore, with the wish of the pope and the orders of the inquisition, galileo was buried ignobly, apart from his family, without fitting ceremony, without monument, without epitaph. not until forty years after did pierrozzi dare write an inscription to be placed above his bones; not until a hundred years after did nelli dare transfer his remains to a suitable position in santa croce, and erect a monument above them. even then the old conscientious hostility burst forth: the inquisition was besought to prevent such honours to "a man condemned for notorious errors"; and that tribunal refused to allow any epitaph to be placed above him which had not been submitted to its censorship. nor has that old conscientious consistency in hatred yet fully relented: hardly a generation since has not seen some ecclesiastic, like marini or de bonald or rallaye or de gabriac, suppressing evidence, or torturing expressions, or inventing theories to blacken the memory of galileo and save the reputation of the church. nay, more: there are school histories, widely used, which, in the supposed interest of the church, misrepresent in the grossest manner all these transactions in which galileo was concerned. _sancta simplicitas_! the church has no worse enemies than those who devise and teach these perversions. they are simply rooting out, in the long run, from the minds of the more thoughtful scholars, respect for the great organization which such writings are supposed to serve.[147] the protestant church was hardly less energetic against this new astronomy than the mother church. the sacred science of the first lutheran reformers was transmitted as a precious legacy, and in the next century was made much of by calovius. his great learning and determined orthodoxy gave him the lutheran leadership. utterly refusing to look at ascertained facts, he cited the turning back of the shadow upon king hezekiah's dial and the standing still of the sun for joshua, denied the movement of the earth, and denounced the whole new view as clearly opposed to scripture. to this day his arguments are repeated by sundry orthodox leaders of american lutheranism. as to the other branches of the reformed church, we have already seen how calvinists, anglicans, and, indeed, protestant sectarians generally, opposed the new truth.[148] in england, among the strict churchmen, the great dr. south denounced the royal society as "irreligious," and among the puritans the eminent john owen declared that newton's discoveries were "built on fallible phenomena and advanced by many arbitrary presumptions against evident testimonies of scripture." even milton seems to have hesitated between the two systems. at the beginning of the eighth book of _paradise lost_ he makes adam state the difficulties of the ptolemaic system, and then brings forward an angel to make the usual orthodox answers. later, milton seems to lean toward the copernican theory, for, referring to the earth, he says: "or she from west her silent course advance with inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps on her soft axle, while she faces even and bears thee soft with the smooth air along." english orthodoxy continued to assert itself. in 1724 john hutchinson, professor at cambridge, published his _moses' principia_, a system of philosophy in which he sought to build up a complete physical system of the universe from the bible. in this he assaulted the newtonian theory as "atheistic," and led the way for similar attacks by such church teachers as horne, duncan forbes, and jones of nayland. but one far greater than these involved himself in this view. that same limitation of his reason by the simple statements of scripture which led john wesley to declare that, "unless witchcraft is true, nothing in the bible is true," led him, while giving up the ptolemaic theory and accepting in a general way the copernican, to suspect the demonstrations of newton. happily, his inborn nobility of character lifted him above any bitterness or persecuting spirit, or any imposition of doctrinal tests which could prevent those who came after him from finding their way to the truth. but in the midst of this vast expanse of theologic error signs of right reason began to appear, both in england and america. noteworthy is it that cotton mather, bitter as was his orthodoxy regarding witchcraft, accepted, in 1721, the modern astronomy fully, with all its consequences. in the following year came an even more striking evidence that the new scientific ideas were making their way in england. in 1722 thomas burnet published the sixth edition of his _sacred theory of the earth_. in this he argues, as usual, to establish the scriptural doctrine of the earth's stability; but in his preface he sounds a remarkable warning. he mentions the great mistake into which st. augustine led the church regarding the doctrine of the antipodes, and says, "if within a few years or in the next generation it should prove as certain and demonstrable that the earth is moved, as it is now that there are antipodes, those that have been zealous against it, and engaged the scripture in the controversy, would have the same reason to repent of their forwardness that st. augustine would now, if he were still alive." fortunately, too, protestantism had no such power to oppose the development of the copernican ideas as the older church had enjoyed. yet there were some things in its warfare against science even more indefensible. in 1772 the famous english expedition for scientific discovery sailed from england under captain cook. greatest by far of all the scientific authorities chosen to accompany it was dr. priestley. sir joseph banks had especially invited him. but the clergy of oxford and cambridge interfered. priestley was considered unsound in his views of the trinity; it was evidently suspected that this might vitiate his astronomical observations; he was rejected, and the expedition crippled. the orthodox view of astronomy lingered on in other branches of the protestant church. in germany even leibnitz attacked the newtonian theory of gravitation on theological grounds, though he found some little consolation in thinking that it might be used to support the lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation. in holland the calvinistic church was at first strenuous against the whole new system, but we possess a comical proof that calvinism even in its strongholds was powerless against it; for in 1642 blaer published at amsterdam his book on the use of globes, and, in order to be on the safe side, devoted one part of his work to the ptolemaic and the other to the copernican scheme, leaving the benevolent reader to take his choice.[150] nor have efforts to renew the battle in the protestant church been wanting in these latter days. the attempt in the church of england, in 1864, to fetter science, which was brought to ridicule by herschel, bowring, and de morgan; the assemblage of lutheran clergy at berlin, in 1868, to protest against "science falsely so called," are examples of these. fortunately, to the latter came pastor knak, and his denunciations of the copernican theory as absolutely incompatible with a belief in the bible, dissolved the whole assemblage in ridicule. in its recent dealings with modern astronomy the wisdom of the catholic church in the more civilized countries has prevented its yielding to some astounding errors into which one part of the protestant church has fallen heedlessly. though various leaders in the older church have committed the absurd error of allowing a text-book and sundry review articles to appear which grossly misstate the galileo episode, with the certainty of ultimately undermining confidence in her teachings among her more thoughtful young men, she has kept clear of the folly of continuing to tie her instruction, and the acceptance of our sacred books, to an adoption of the ptolemaic theory. not so with american lutheranism. in 1873 was published in st. louis, at the publishing house of the lutheran synod of missouri, a work entitled _astromomische unterredung_, the author being well known as a late president of a lutheran teachers' seminary. no attack on the whole modern system of astronomy could be more bitter. on the first page of the introduction the author, after stating the two theories, asks, "which is right?" and says: "it would be very simple to me which is right, if it were only a question of human import. but the wise and truthful god has expressed himself on this matter in the bible. the entire holy scripture settles the question that the earth is the principal body (_hauptkorper_) of the universe, that it stands fixed, and that sun and moon only serve to light it." the author then goes on to show from scripture the folly, not only of copernicus and newton, but of a long line of great astronomers in more recent times. he declares: "let no one understand me as inquiring first where truth is to be found--in the bible or with the astronomers. no; i know that beforehand--that my god never lies, never makes a mistake; out of his mouth comes only truth, when he speaks of the structure of the universe, of the earth, sun, moon, and stars.... "because the truth of the holy scripture is involved in this, therefore the above question is of the highest importance to me.... scientists and others lean upon the miserable reed (_rohrstab_) that god teaches only the order of salvation, but not the order of the universe." very noteworthy is the fact that this late survival of an ancient belief based upon text-worship is found, not in the teachings of any zealous priest of the mother church, but in those of an eminent professor in that branch of protestantism which claims special enlightenment.[151] nor has the warfare against the dead champions of science been carried on by the older church alone. on the 10th of may, 1859, alexander von humboldt was buried. his labours had been among the glories of the century, and his funeral was one of the most imposing that berlin had ever seen. among those who honoured themselves by their presence was the prince regent, afterward the emperor william i; but of the clergy it was observed that none were present save the officiating clergyman and a few regarded as unorthodox.[152] v. results of the victory over galileo. we return now to the sequel of the galileo case. having gained their victory over galileo, living and dead, having used it to scare into submission the professors of astronomy throughout europe, conscientious churchmen exulted. loud was their rejoicing that the "heresy," the "infidelity" the "atheism" involved in believing that the earth revolves about its axis and moves around the sun had been crushed by the great tribunal of the church, acting in strict obedience to the expressed will of one pope and the written order of another. as we have seen, all books teaching this hated belief were put upon the _index_ of books forbidden to christians, and that _index_ was prefaced by a bull enforcing this condemnation upon the consciences of the faithful throughout the world, and signed by the reigning pope. the losses to the world during this complete triumph of theology were even more serious than at first appears: one must especially be mentioned. there was then in europe one of the greatest thinkers ever given to mankind--rene descartes. mistaken though many of his reasonings were, they bore a rich fruitage of truth. he had already done a vast work. his theory of vortices--assuming a uniform material regulated by physical laws--as the beginning of the visible universe, though it was but a provisional hypothesis, had ended the whole old theory of the heavens with the vaulted firmament and the direction of the planetary movements by angels, which even kepler had allowed. the scientific warriors had stirred new life in him, and he was working over and summing up in his mighty mind all the researches of his time. the result would have made an epoch in history. his aim was to combine all knowledge and thought into a _treatise on the world_, and in view of this he gave eleven years to the study of anatomy alone. but the fate of galileo robbed him of all hope, of all courage; the battle seemed lost; he gave up his great plan forever.[153] but ere long it was seen that this triumph of the church was in reality a prodigious defeat. from all sides came proofs that copernicus and galileo were right; and although pope urban and the inquisition held galileo in strict seclusion, forbidding him even to _speak_ regarding the double motion of the earth; and although this condemnation of "all books which affirm the motion of the earth" was kept on the _index_; and although the papal bull still bound the _index_ and the condemnations in it on the consciences of the faithful; and although colleges and universities under church control were compelled to teach the old doctrine--it was seen by clear-sighted men everywhere that this victory of the church was a disaster to the victors. new champions pressed on. campanella, full of vagaries as he was, wrote his _apology for galileo_, though for that and other heresies, religious, and political, he seven times underwent torture. and kepler comes: he leads science on to greater victories. copernicus, great as he was, could not disentangle scientific reasoning entirely from the theological bias: the doctrines of aristotle and thomas aquinas as to the necessary superiority of the circle had vitiated the minor features of his system, and left breaches in it through which the enemy was not slow to enter; but kepler sees these errors, and by wonderful genius and vigour he gives to the world the three laws which bear his name, and this fortress of science is complete. he thinks and speaks as one inspired. his battle is severe. he is solemnly warned by the protestant consistory of stuttgart "not to throw christ's kingdom into confusion with his silly fancies," and as solemnly ordered to "bring his theory of the world into harmony with scripture": he is sometimes abused, sometimes ridiculed, sometimes imprisoned. protestants in styria and wurtemberg, catholics in austria and bohemia, press upon him but newton, halley, bradley, and other great astronomers follow, and to science remains the victory.[154] yet this did not end the war. during the seventeenth century, in france, after all the splendid proofs added by kepler, no one dared openly teach the copernican theory, and cassini, the great astronomer, never declared for it. in 1672 the jesuit father riccioli declared that there were precisely forty-nine arguments for the copernican theory and seventy-seven against it. even after the beginning of the eighteenth century--long after the demonstrations of sir isaac newton--bossuet, the great bishop of meaux, the foremost theologian that france has ever produced, declared it contrary to scripture. nor did matters seem to improve rapidly during that century. in england, john hutchinson, as we have seen, published in 1724 his _moses' principia_ maintaining that the hebrew scriptures are a perfect system of natural philosophy, and are opposed to the newtonian system of gravitation; and, as we have also seen, he was followed by a long list of noted men in the church. in france, two eminent mathematicians published in 1748 an edition of newton's _principia_; but, in order to avert ecclesiastical censure, they felt obliged to prefix to it a statement absolutely false. three years later, boscovich, the great mathematician of the jesuits, used these words: "as for me, full of respect for the holy scriptures and the decree of the holy inquisition, i regard the earth as immovable; nevertheless, for simplicity in explanation i will argue as if the earth moves; for it is proved that of the two hypotheses the appearances favour this idea." in germany, especially in the protestant part of it, the war was even more bitter, and it lasted through the first half of the eighteenth century. eminent lutheran doctors of divinity flooded the country with treatises to prove that the copernican theory could not be reconciled with scripture. in the theological seminaries and in many of the universities where clerical influence was strong they seemed to sweep all before them; and yet at the middle of the century we find some of the clearest-headed of them aware of the fact that their cause was lost.[155] in 1757 the most enlightened perhaps in the whole line of the popes, benedict xiv, took up the matter, and the congregation of the _index_ secretly allowed the ideas of copernicus to be tolerated. yet in 1765 lalande, the great french astronomer, tried in vain at rome to induce the authorities to remove galileo's works from the _index_. even at a date far within our own nineteenth century the authorities of many universities in catholic europe, and especially those in spain, excluded the newtonian system. in 1771 the greatest of them all, the university of salamanca, being urged to teach physical science, refused, making answer as follows: "newton teaches nothing that would make a good logician or metaphysician; and gassendi and descartes do not agree so well with revealed truth as aristotle does." vengeance upon the dead also has continued far into our own century. on the 5th of may, 1829, a great multitude assembled at warsaw to honour the memory of copernicus and to unveil thorwaldsen's statue of him. copernicus had lived a pious, christian life; he had been beloved for unostentatious christian charity; with his religious belief no fault had ever been found; he was a canon of the church at frauenberg, and over his grave had been written the most touching of christian epitaphs. naturally, then, the people expected a religious service; all was understood to be arranged for it; the procession marched to the church and waited. the hour passed, and no priest appeared; none could be induced to appear. copernicus, gentle, charitable, pious, one of the noblest gifts of god to religion as well as to science, was evidently still under the ban. five years after that, his book was still standing on the _index_ of books prohibited to christians. the edition of the _index_ published in 1819 was as inexorable toward the works of copernicus and galileo as its predecessors had been; but in the year 182o came a crisis. canon settele, professor of astronomy at rome, had written an elementary book in which the copernican system was taken for granted. the master of the sacred palace, anfossi, as censor of the press, refused to allow the book to be printed unless settele revised his work and treated the copernican theory as merely a hypothesis. on this settele appealed to pope pius vii, and the pope referred the matter to the congregation of the holy office. at last, on the 16th of august, 182o, it was decided that settele might teach the copernican system as established, and this decision was approved by the pope. this aroused considerable discussion, but finally, on the 11th of september, 1822, the cardinals of the holy inquisition graciously agreed that "the printing and publication of works treating of the motion of the earth and the stability of the sun, in accordance with the general opinion of modern astronomers, is permitted at rome." this decree was ratified by pius vii, but it was not until thirteen years later, in 1835, that there was issued an edition of the _index_ from which the condemnation of works defending the double motion of the earth was left out. this was not a moment too soon, for, as if the previous proofs had not been sufficient, each of the motions of the earth was now absolutely demonstrated anew, so as to be recognised by the ordinary observer. the parallax of fixed stars, shown by bessel as well as other noted astronomers in 1838, clinched forever the doctrine of the revolution of the earth around the sun, and in 1851 the great experiment of foucault with the pendulum showed to the human eye the earth in motion around its own axis. to make the matter complete, this experiment was publicly made in one of the churches at rome by the eminent astronomer, father secchi, of the jesuits, in 1852--just two hundred and twenty years after the jesuits had done so much to secure galileo's condemnation.[157] vi. the retreat of the church after its victory over galileo. any history of the victory of astronomical science over dogmatic theology would be incomplete without some account of the retreat made by the church from all its former positions in the galileo case. the retreat of the protestant theologians was not difficult. a little skilful warping of scripture, a little skilful use of that time-honoured phrase, attributed to cardinal baronius, that the bible is given to teach us, not how the heavens go, but how men go to heaven, and a free use of explosive rhetoric against the pursuing army of scientists, sufficed. but in the older church it was far less easy. the retreat of the sacro-scientific army of church apologists lasted through two centuries. in spite of all that has been said by these apologists, there no longer remains the shadow of a doubt that the papal infallibility was committed fully and irrevocably against the double revolution of the earth. as the documents of galileo's trial now published show, paul v, in 1616, pushed on with all his might the condemnation of galileo and of the works of copernicus and of all others teaching the motion of the earth around its own axis and around the sun. so, too, in the condemnation of galileo in 1633, and in all the proceedings which led up to it and which followed it, urban viii was the central figure. without his sanction no action could have been taken. true, the pope did not formally sign the decree against the copernican theory _then_; but this came later, in 1664 alexander vii prefixed to the _index_ containing the condemnations of the works of copernicus and galileo and "all books which affirm the motion of the earth" a papal bull signed by himself, binding the contents of the _index_ upon the consciences of the faithful. this bull confirmed and approved in express terms, finally, decisively, and infallibly, the condemnation of "all books teaching the movement of the earth and the stability of the sun."[158] the position of the mother church had been thus made especially difficult; and the first important move in retreat by the apologists was the statement that galileo was condemned, not because he affirmed the motion of the earth, but because he supported it from scripture. there was a slight appearance of truth in this. undoubtedly, galileo's letters to castelli and the grand. duchess, in which he attempted to show that his astronomical doctrines were not opposed to scripture, gave a new stir to religious bigotry. for a considerable time, then, this quibble served its purpose; even a hundred and fifty years after galileo's condemnation it was renewed by the protestant mallet du pan, in his wish to gain favour from the older church. but nothing can be more absurd, in the light of the original documents recently brought out of the vatican archives, than to make this contention now. the letters of galileo to castelli and the grand-duchess were not published until after the condemnation; and, although the archbishop of pisa had endeavoured to use them against him, they were but casually mentioned in 1616, and entirely left out of view in 1633. what was condemned in 1616 by the sacred congregation held in the presence of pope paul v, as "_absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because absolutely contrary to holy scripture_, "was the proposition that "_the sun is the centre about which the earth revolves_"; and what was condemned as "_absurd, false in philosophy, and from a theologic point of view, at least, opposed to the true faith_," was the proposition that "_the earth is not the centre of the universe and immovable, but has a diurnal motion_." and again, what galileo was made, by express order of pope urban, and by the action of the inquisition under threat of torture, to abjure in 1633, was "_the error and heresy of the movement of the earth_." what the _index_ condemned under sanction of the bull issued by alexander vii in 1664 was, "_all books teaching the movement of the earth and the stability of the sun_." what the _index_, prefaced by papal bulls, infallibly binding its contents upon the consciences of the faithful, for nearly two hundred years steadily condemned was, "_all books which affirm the motion of the earth_." not one of these condemnations was directed against galileo "for reconciling his ideas with scripture."[160] having been dislodged from this point, the church apologists sought cover under the statement that galileo was condemned not for heresy, but for contumacy and want of respect toward the pope. there was a slight chance, also, for this quibble: no doubt urban viii, one of the haughtiest of pontiffs, was induced by galileo's enemies to think that he had been treated with some lack of proper etiquette: first, by galileo's adhesion to his own doctrines after his condemnation in 1616; and, next, by his supposed reference in the _dialogue_ of 1632 to the arguments which the pope had used against him. but it would seem to be a very poor service rendered to the doctrine of papal infallibility to claim that a decision so immense in its consequences could be influenced by the personal resentment of the reigning pontiff. again, as to the first point, the very language of the various sentences shows the folly of this assertion; for these sentences speak always of "heresy" and never of "contumacy." as to the last point, the display of the original documents settled that forever. they show galileo from first to last as most submissive toward the pope, and patient under the papal arguments and exactions. he had, indeed, expressed his anger at times against his traducers; but to hold this the cause of the judgment against him is to degrade the whole proceedings, and to convict paul v, urban viii, bellarmin, the other theologians, and the inquisition, of direct falsehood, since they assigned entirely different reasons for their conduct. from this position, therefore, the assailants retreated.[161] the next rally was made about the statement that the persecution of galileo was the result of a quarrel between aristotelian professors on one side and professors favouring the experimental method on the other. but this position was attacked and carried by a very simple statement. if the divine guidance of the church is such that it can be dragged into a professorial squabble, and made the tool of a faction in bringing about a most disastrous condemnation of a proved truth, how did the church at that time differ from any human organization sunk into decrepitude, managed nominally by simpletons, but really by schemers? if that argument be true, the condition of the church was even worse than its enemies have declared it; and amid the jeers of an unfeeling world the apologists sought new shelter. the next point at which a stand was made was the assertion that the condemnation of galileo was "provisory"; but this proved a more treacherous shelter than the others. the wording of the decree of condemnation itself is a sufficient answer to this claim. when doctrines have been solemnly declared, as those of galileo were solemnly declared under sanction of the highest authority in the church, "contrary to the sacred scriptures," "opposed to the true faith," and "false and absurd in theology and philosophy"--to say that such declarations are "provisory" is to say that the truth held by the church is not immutable; from this, then, the apologists retreated.[161b] still another contention was made, in some respects more curious than any other: it was, mainly, that galileo "was no more a victim of catholics than of protestants; for they more than the catholic theologians impelled the pope to the action taken."[162] but if protestantism could force the papal hand in a matter of this magnitude, involving vast questions of belief and far-reaching questions of policy, what becomes of "inerrancy"--of special protection and guidance of the papal authority in matters of faith? while this retreat from position to position was going on, there was a constant discharge of small-arms, in the shape of innuendoes, hints, and sophistries: every effort was made to blacken galileo's private character: the irregularities of his early life were dragged forth, and stress was even laid upon breaches of etiquette; but this succeeded so poorly that even as far back as 1850 it was thought necessary to cover the retreat by some more careful strategy. this new strategy is instructive. the original documents of the galileo trial had been brought during the napoleonic conquests to paris; but in 1846 they were returned to rome by the french government, on the express pledge by the papal authorities that they should be published. in 1850, after many delays on various pretexts, the long-expected publication appeared. the personage charged with presenting them to the world was monsignor marini. this ecclesiastic was of a kind which has too often afflicted both the church and the world at large. despite the solemn promise of the papal court, the wily marini became the instrument of the roman authorities in evading the promise. by suppressing a document here, and interpolating a statement there, he managed to give plausible standing-ground for nearly every important sophistry ever broached to save the infallibility of the church and destroy the reputation of galileo. he it was who supported the idea that galileo was "condemned not for heresy, but for contumacy." the first effect of monsignor marini's book seemed useful in covering the retreat of the church apologists. aided by him, such vigorous writers as ward were able to throw up temporary intrenchments between the roman authorities and the indignation of the world. but some time later came an investigator very different from monsignor marini. this was a frenchman, m. l'epinois. like marini, l'epinois was devoted to the church; but, unlike marini, he could not lie. having obtained access in 1867 to the galileo documents at the vatican, he published several of the most important, without suppression or pious-fraudulent manipulation. this made all the intrenchments based upon marini's statements untenable. another retreat had to be made. and now came the most desperate effort of all. the apologetic army, reviving an idea which the popes and the church had spurned for centuries, declared that the popes _as popes_ had never condemned the doctrines of copernicus and galileo; that they had condemned them as men simply; that therefore the church had never been committed to them; that the condemnation was made by the cardinals of the inquisition and index; and that the pope had evidently been restrained by interposition of providence from signing their condemnation. nothing could show the desperation of the retreating party better than jugglery like this. the fact is, that in the official account of the condemnation by bellarmin, in 1616, he declares distinctly that he makes this condemnation "in the name of his holiness the pope."[163] again, from pope urban downward, among the church authorities of the seventeenth century the decision was always acknowledged to be made by the pope and the church. urban viii spoke of that of 1616 as made by pope paul v and the church, and of that of 1633 as made by himself and the church. pope alexander vii in 1664, in his bull _speculatores_, solemnly sanctioned the condemnation of all books affirming the earth's movement.[163b] when gassendi attempted to raise the point that the decision against copernicus and galileo was not sanctioned by the church as such, an eminent theological authority, father lecazre, rector of the college of dijon, publicly contradicted him, and declared that it "was not certain cardinals, but the supreme authority of the church," that had condemned galileo; and to this statement the pope and other church authorities gave consent either openly or by silence. when descartes and others attempted to raise the same point, they were treated with contempt. father castelli, who had devoted himself to galileo, and knew to his cost just what the condemnation meant and who made it, takes it for granted, in his letter to the papal authorities, that it was made by the church. cardinal querenghi, in his letters; the ambassador guicciardini, in his dispatches; polacco, in his refutation; the historian viviani, in his biography of galileo--all writing under church inspection and approval at the time, took the view that the pope and the church condemned galileo, and this was never denied at rome. the inquisition itself, backed by the greatest theologian of the time (bellarmin), took the same view. not only does he declare that he makes the condemnation "in the name of his holiness the pope," but we have the roman _index_, containing the condemnation for nearly two hundred years, prefaced by a solemn bull of the reigning pope binding this condemnation on the consciences of the whole church, and declaring year after year that "all books which affirm the motion of the earth" are damnable. to attempt to face all this, added to the fact that galileo was required to abjure "the heresy of the movement of the earth" by written order of the pope, was soon seen to be impossible. against the assertion that the pope was not responsible we have all this mass of testimony, and the bull of alexander vii in 1664.[164] this contention, then, was at last utterly given up by honest catholics themselves. in 1870 a roman catholic clergy man in england, the rev. mr. roberts, evidently thinking that the time had come to tell the truth, published a book entitled _the pontifical decrees against the earth's movement_, and in this exhibited the incontrovertible evidences that the papacy had committed itself and its infallibility fully against the movement of the earth. this catholic clergyman showed from the original record that pope paul v, in 1616, had presided over the tribunal condemning the doctrine of the earth's movement, and ordering galileo to give up the opinion. he showed that pope urban viii, in 1633, pressed on, directed, and promulgated the final condemnation, making himself in all these ways responsible for it. and, finally, he showed that pope alexander vii, in 1664, by his bull--_speculatores domus israel_--attached to the _index_, condemning "all books which affirm the motion of the earth," had absolutely pledged the papal infallibility against the earth's movement. he also confessed that under the rules laid down by the highest authorities in the church, and especially by sixtus v and pius ix, there was no escape from this conclusion. various theologians attempted to evade the force of the argument. some, like dr. ward and bouix, took refuge in verbal niceties; some, like dr. jeremiah murphy, comforted themselves with declamation. the only result was, that in 1885 came another edition of the rev. mr. roberts's work, even more cogent than the first; and, besides this, an essay by that eminent catholic, st. george mivart, acknowledging the rev. mr. roberts's position to be impregnable, and declaring virtually that the almighty allowed pope and church to fall into complete error regarding the copernican theory, in order to teach them that science lies outside their province, and that the true priesthood of scientific truth rests with scientific investigators alone.[166] in spite, then, of all casuistry and special pleading, this sturdy honesty ended the controversy among catholics themselves, so far as fair-minded men are concerned. in recalling it at this day there stand out from its later phases two efforts at compromise especially instructive, as showing the embarrassment of militant theology in the nineteenth century. the first of these was made by john henry newman in the days when he was hovering between the anglican and roman churches. in one of his sermons before the university of oxford he spoke as follows: "scripture says that the sun moves and the earth is stationary, and science that the earth moves and the sun is comparatively at rest. how can we determine which of these opposite statements is the very truth till we know what motion is? if our idea of motion is but an accidental result of our present senses, neither proposition is true and both are true: neither true philosophically; both true for certain practical purposes in the system in which they are respectively found." in all anti-theological literature there is no utterance more hopelessly skeptical. and for what were the youth of oxford led into such bottomless depths of disbelief as to any real existence of truth or any real foundation for it? simply to save an outworn system of interpretation into which the gifted preacher happened to be born. the other utterance was suggested by de bonald and developed in the _dublin review_, as is understood, by one of newman's associates. this argument was nothing less than an attempt to retreat under the charge of deception against the almighty himself. it is as follows: "but it may well be doubted whether the church did retard the progress of scientific truth. what retarded it was the circumstance that god has thought fit to express many texts of scripture in words which have every appearance of denying the earth's motion. but it is god who did this, not the church; and, moreover, since he saw fit so to act as to retard the progress of scientific truth, it would be little to her discredit, even if it were true, that she had followed his example." this argument, like mr. gosse's famous attempt to reconcile geology to genesis--by supposing that for some inscrutable purpose god deliberately deceived the thinking world by giving to the earth all the appearances of development through long periods of time, while really creating it in six days, each of an evening and a morning--seems only to have awakened the amazed pity of thinking men. this, like the argument of newman, was a last desperate effort of anglican and roman divines to save something from the wreckage of dogmatic theology.[167] all these well-meaning defenders of the faith but wrought into the hearts of great numbers of thinking men the idea that there is a necessary antagonism between science and religion. like the landsman who lashes himself to the anchor of the sinking ship, they simply attached christianity by the strongest cords of logic which they could spin to these mistaken ideas in science, and, could they have had their way, the advance of knowledge would have ingulfed both together. on the other hand, what had science done for religion? simply this: copernicus, escaping persecution only by death; giordano bruno, burned alive as a monster of impiety; galileo, imprisoned and humiliated as the worst of misbelievers; kepler, accused of "throwing christ's kingdom into confusion with his silly fancies"; newton, bitterly attacked for "dethroning providence," gave to religion stronger foundations and more ennobling conceptions. under the old system, that princely astronomer, alphonso of castile, seeing the inadequacy of the ptolemaic theory, yet knowing no other, startled europe with the blasphemy that, if he had been present at creation, he could have suggested a better order of the heavenly bodies. under the new system, kepler, filled with a religious spirit, exclaimed, "i do think the thoughts of god." the difference in religious spirit between these two men marks the conquest made in this long struggle by science for religion.[168] nothing is more unjust than to cast especial blame for all this resistance to science upon the roman church. the protestant church, though rarely able to be so severe, has been more blameworthy. the persecution of galileo and his compeers by the older church was mainly at the beginning of the seventeenth century; the persecution of robertson smith, and winchell, and woodrow, and toy, and the young professors at beyrout, by various protestant authorities, was near the end of the nineteenth century. those earlier persecutions by catholicism were strictly in accordance with principles held at that time by all religionists, catholic and protestant, throughout the world; these later persecutions by protestants were in defiance of principles which all protestants to-day hold or pretend to hold, and none make louder claim to hold them than the very sects which persecuted these eminent christian men of our day, men whose crime was that they were intelligent enough to accept the science of their time, and honest enough to acknowledge it. most unjustly, then, would protestantism taunt catholicism for excluding knowledge of astronomical truths from european catholic universities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while real knowledge of geological and biological and anthropological truth is denied or pitifully diluted in so many american protestant colleges and universities in the nineteenth century. nor has protestantism the right to point with scorn to the catholic _index_, and to lay stress on the fact that nearly every really important book in the last three centuries has been forbidden by it, so long as young men in so many american protestant universities and colleges are nursed with "ecclesiastical pap" rather than with real thought, and directed to the works of "solemnly constituted impostors," or to sundry "approved courses of reading," while they are studiously kept aloof from such leaders in modern thought as darwin, spencer, huxley, draper, and lecky. it may indeed be justly claimed by protestantism that some of the former strongholds of her bigotry have become liberalized; but, on the other hand, catholicism can point to the fact that pope leo xiii, now happily reigning, has made a noble change as regards open dealing with documents. the days of monsignor marini, it may be hoped, are gone. the vatican library, with its masses of historical material, has been thrown open to protestant and catholic scholars alike, and this privilege has been freely used by men representing all shades of religious thought. as to the older errors, the whole civilized world was at fault, protestant as well as catholic. it was not the fault of religion; it was the fault of that short-sighted linking of theological dogmas to scriptural texts which, in utter defiance of the words and works of the blessed founder of christianity, narrow-minded, loud-voiced men are ever prone to substitute for religion. justly is it said by one of the most eminent among contemporary anglican divines, that "it is because they have mistaken the dawn for a conflagration that theologians have so often been foes of light."[170] chapter iv. from "signs and wonders" to law in the heavens. i. the theological view. few things in the evolution of astronomy are more suggestive than the struggle between the theological and the scientific doctrine regarding comets--the passage from the conception of them as fire-balls flung by an angry god for the purpose of scaring a wicked world, to a recognition of them as natural in origin and obedient to law in movement. hardly anything throws a more vivid light upon the danger of wresting texts of scripture to preserve ideas which observation and thought have superseded, and upon the folly of arraying ecclesiastical power against scientific discovery.[171] out of the ancient world had come a mass of beliefs regarding comets, meteors, and eclipses; all these were held to be signs displayed from heaven for the warning of mankind. stars and meteors were generally thought to presage happy events, especially the births of gods, heroes, and great men. so firmly rooted was this idea that we constantly find among the ancient nations traditions of lights in the heavens preceding the birth of persons of note. the sacred books of india show that the births of crishna and of buddha were announced by such heavenly lights.[171b] the sacred books of china tell of similar appearances at the births of yu, the founder of the first dynasty, and of the inspired sage, lao-tse. according to the jewish legends, a star appeared at the birth of moses, and was seen by the magi of egpyt, who informed the king; and when abraham was born an unusual star appeared in the east. the greeks and romans cherished similar traditions. a heavenly light accompanied the birth of aesculapius, and the births of various caesars were heralded in like manner.[172] the same conception entered into our christian sacred books. of all the legends which grew in such luxuriance and beauty about the cradle of jesus of nazareth, none appeals more directly to the highest poetic feeling than that given by one of the evangelists, in which a star, rising in the east, conducted the wise men to the manger where the galilean peasant-child--the hope of mankind, the light of the world--was lying in poverty and helplessness. among the mohammedans we have a curious example of the same tendency toward a kindly interpretation of stars and meteors, in the belief of certain mohammedan teachers that meteoric showers are caused by good angels hurling missiles to drive evil angels out of the sky. eclipses were regarded in a very different light, being supposed to express the distress of nature at earthly calamities. the greeks believed that darkness overshadowed the earth at the deaths of prometheus, atreus, hercules, aesculapius, and alexander the great. the roman legends held that at the death of romulus there was darkness for six hours. in the history of the caesars occur portents of all three kinds; for at the death of julius the earth was shrouded in darkness, the birth of augustus was heralded by a star, and the downfall of nero by a comet. so, too, in one of the christian legends clustering about the crucifixion, darkness overspread the earth from the sixth to the ninth hour. neither the silence regarding it of the only evangelist who claims to have been present, nor the fact that observers like seneca and pliny, who, though they carefully described much less striking occurrences of the same sort and in more remote regions, failed to note any such darkness even in judea, have availed to shake faith in an account so true to the highest poetic instincts of humanity. this view of the relations between nature and man continued among both jews and christians. according to jewish tradition, darkness overspread the earth for three days when the books of the law were profaned by translation into greek. tertullian thought an eclipse an evidence of god's wrath against unbelievers. nor has this mode of thinking ceased in modern times. a similar claim was made at the execution of charles i; and increase mather thought an eclipse in massachusetts an evidence of the grief of nature at the death of president chauncey, of harvard college. archbishop sandys expected eclipses to be the final tokens of woe at the destruction of the world, and traces of this feeling have come down to our own time. the quaint story of the connecticut statesman who, when his associates in the general assembly were alarmed by an eclipse of the sun, and thought it the beginning of the day of judgment, quietly ordered in candles, that he might in any case be found doing his duty, marks probably the last noteworthy appearance of the old belief in any civilized nation.[173] in these beliefs regarding meteors and eclipses there was little calculated to do harm by arousing that superstitious terror which is the worst breeding-bed of cruelty. far otherwise was it with the belief regarding comets. during many centuries it gave rise to the direst superstition and fanaticism. the chaldeans alone among the ancient peoples generally regarded comets without fear, and thought them bodies wandering as harmless as fishes in the sea; the pythagoreans alone among philosophers seem to have had a vague idea of them as bodies returning at fixed periods of time; and in all antiquity, so far as is known, one man alone, seneca, had the scientific instinct and prophetic inspiration to give this idea definite shape, and to declare that the time would come when comets would be found to move in accordance with natural law. here and there a few strong men rose above the prevailing superstition. the emperor vespasian tried to laugh it down, and insisted that a certain comet in his time could not betoken his death, because it was hairy, and he bald; but such scoffing produced little permanent effect, and the prophecy of seneca was soon forgotten. these and similar isolated utterances could not stand against the mass of opinion which upheld the doctrine that comets are "signs and wonders."[174] the belief that every comet is a ball of fire flung from the right hand of an angry god to warn the grovelling dwellers of earth was received into the early church, transmitted through the middle ages to the reformation period, and in its transmission was made all the more precious by supposed textual proofs from scripture. the great fathers of the church committed themselves unreservedly to it. in the third century origen, perhaps the most influential of the earlier fathers of the universal church in all questions between science and faith, insisted that comets indicate catastrophes and the downfall of empires and worlds. bede, so justly revered by the english church, declared in the eighth century. that "comets portend revolutions of kingdoms, pestilence, war, winds, or heat"; and john of damascus, his eminent contemporary in the eastern church, took the same view. rabanus maurus, the great teacher of europe in the ninth century, an authority throughout the middle ages, adopted bede's opinion fully. st. thomas aquinas, the great light of the universal church in the thirteenth century, whose works the pope now reigning commends as the centre and source of all university instruction, accepted and handed down the same opinion. the sainted albert the great, the most noted genius of the medieval church in natural science, received and developed this theory. these men and those who followed them founded upon scriptural texts and theological reasonings a system that for seventeen centuries defied every advance of thought.[175] the main evils thence arising were three: the paralysis of self-help, the arousing of fanaticism, and the strengthening of ecclesiastical and political tyranny. the first two of these evils--the paralysis of self-help and the arousing of fanaticism--are evident throughout all these ages. at the appearance of a comet we constantly see all christendom, from pope to peasant, instead of striving to avert war by wise statesmanship, instead of striving to avert pestilence by observation and reason, instead of striving to avert famine by skilful economy, whining before fetiches, trying to bribe them to remove these signs of god's wrath, and planning to wreak this supposed wrath of god upon misbelievers. as to the third of these evils--the strengthening of ecclesiastical and civil despotism--examples appear on every side. it was natural that hierarchs and monarchs whose births were announced by stars, or whose deaths were announced by comets, should regard themselves as far above the common herd, and should be so regarded by mankind; passive obedience was thus strengthened, and the most monstrous assumptions of authority were considered simply as manifestations of the divine will. shakespeare makes calphurnia say to caesar: "when beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes." galeazzo, the tyrant of milan, expressing satisfaction on his deathbed that his approaching end was of such importance as to be heralded by a comet, is but a type of many thus encouraged to prey upon mankind; and charles v, one of the most powerful monarchs the world has known, abdicating under fear of the comet of 1556, taking refuge in the monastery of san yuste, and giving up the best of his vast realms to such a scribbling bigot as philip ii, furnishes an example even more striking.[176] but for the retention of this belief there was a moral cause. myriads of good men in the christian church down to a recent period saw in the appearance of comets not merely an exhibition of "signs in the heavens" foretold in scripture, but also divine warnings of vast value to humanity as incentives to repentance and improvement of life-warnings, indeed, so precious that they could not be spared without danger to the moral government of the world. and this belief in the portentous character of comets as an essential part of the divine government, being, as it was thought, in full accord with scripture, was made for centuries a source of terror to humanity. to say nothing of examples in the earlier periods, comets in the tenth century especially increased the distress of all europe. in the middle of the eleventh century a comet was thought to accompany the death of edward the confessor and to presage the norman conquest; the traveller in france to-day may see this belief as it was then wrought into the bayeux tapestry.[177] nearly every decade of years throughout the middle ages saw europe plunged into alarm by appearances of this sort, but the culmination seems to have been reached in 1456. at that time the turks, after a long effort, had made good their footing in europe. a large statesmanship or generalship might have kept them out; but, while different religious factions were disputing over petty shades of dogma, they had advanced, had taken constantinople, and were evidently securing their foothold. now came the full bloom of this superstition. a comet appeared. the pope of that period, calixtus iii, though a man of more than ordinary ability, was saturated with the ideas of his time. alarmed at this monster, if we are to believe the contemporary historian, this infallible head of the church solemnly "decreed several days of prayer for the averting of the wrath of god, that whatever calamity impended might be turned from the christians and against the turks." and, that all might join daily in this petition, there was then established that midday angelus which has ever since called good catholics to prayer against the powers of evil. then, too, was incorporated into a litany the plea, "from the turk and the comet, good lord, deliver us." never was papal intercession less effective; for the turk has held constantinople from that day to this, while the obstinate comet, being that now known under the name of halley, has returned imperturbably at short periods ever since.[177b] but the superstition went still further. it became more and more incorporated into what was considered "scriptural science" and "sound learning." the encyclopedic summaries, in which the science of the middle ages and the reformation period took form, furnish abundant proofs of this. yet scientific observation was slowly undermining this structure. the inspired prophecy of seneca had not been forgotten. even as far back as the ninth century, in the midst of the sacred learning so abundant at the court of charlemagne and his successors, we find a scholar protesting against the accepted doctrine. in the thirteenth century we have a mild question by albert the great as to the supposed influence of comets upon individuals; but the prevailing theological current was too strong, and he finally yielded to it in this as in so many other things. so, too, in the sixteenth century, we have copernicus refusing to accept the usual theory, paracelsus writing to zwingli against it, and julius caesar scaliger denouncing it as "ridiculous folly."[178] at first this scepticism only aroused the horror of theologians and increased the vigour of ecclesiastics; both asserted the theological theory of comets all the more strenuously as based on scriptural truth. during the sixteenth century france felt the influence of one of her greatest men on the side of this superstition. jean bodin, so far before his time in political theories, was only thoroughly abreast of it in religious theories: the same reverence for the mere letter of scripture which made him so fatally powerful in supporting the witchcraft delusion, led him to support this theological theory of comets--but with a difference: he thought them the souls of men, wandering in space, bringing famine, pestilence, and war. not less strong was the same superstition in england. based upon mediaeval theology, it outlived the revival of learning. from a multitude of examples a few may be selected as typical. early in the sixteenth century polydore virgil, an ecclesiastic of the unreformed church, alludes, in his _english history_, to the presage of the death of the emperor constantine by a comet as to a simple matter of fact; and in his work on prodigies he pushes this superstition to its most extreme point, exhibiting comets as preceding almost every form of calamity. in 1532, just at the transition period from the old church to the new, cranmer, paving the way to his archbishopric, writes from germany to henry viii, and says of the comet then visible: "what strange things these tokens do signify to come hereafter, god knoweth; for they do not lightly appear but against some great matter." twenty years later bishop latimer, in an advent sermon, speaks of eclipses, rings about the sun, and the like, as signs of the approaching end of the world.[179] in 1580, under queen elizabeth, there was set forth an "order of prayer to avert god's wrath from us, threatened by the late terrible earthquake, to be used in all parish churches." in connection with this there was also commended to the faithful "a godly admonition for the time present"; and among the things referred to as evidence of god's wrath are comets, eclipses, and falls of snow. this view held sway in the church of england during elizabeth's whole reign and far into the stuart period: strype, the ecclesiastical annalist, gives ample evidence of this, and among the more curious examples is the surmise that the comet of 1572 was a token of divine wrath provoked by the st. bartholomew massacre. as to the stuart period, archbishop spottiswoode seems to have been active in carrying the superstition from the sixteenth century to the seventeenth, and archbishop bramhall cites scripture in support of it. rather curiously, while the diary of archbishop laud shows so much superstition regarding dreams as portents, it shows little or none regarding comets; but bishop jeremy taylor, strong as he was, evidently favoured the usual view. john howe, the eminent nonconformist divine in the latter part of the century, seems to have regarded the comet superstition as almost a fundamental article of belief; he laments the total neglect of comets and portents generally, declaring that this neglect betokens want of reverence for the ruler of the world; he expresses contempt for scientific inquiry regarding comets, insists that they may be natural bodies and yet supernatural portents, and ends by saying, "i conceive it very safe to suppose that some very considerable thing, either in the way of judgment or mercy, may ensue, according as the cry of persevering wickedness or of penitential prayer is more or less loud at that time."[180] the reformed church of scotland supported the superstition just as strongly. john knox saw in comets tokens of the wrath of heaven; other authorities considered them "a warning to the king to extirpate the papists"; and as late as 1680, after halley had won his victory, comets were announced on high authority in the scottish church to be "prodigies of great judgment on these lands for our sins, for never was the lord more provoked by a people." while such was the view of the clergy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the laity generally accepted it as a matter of course, among the great leaders in literature there was at least general acquiescence in it. both shakespeare and milton recognise it, whether they fully accept it or not. shakespeare makes the duke of bedford, lamenting at the bier of henry v, say: "comets, importing change of time and states, brandish your crystal tresses in the sky; and with them scourge the bad revolting stars, that have consented unto henry's death." milton, speaking of satan preparing for combat, says: "on the other side, incensed with indignation, satan stood. unterrified, and like a comet burned, that fires the length of ophiuchus huge in the arctic sky, and from its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war." we do indeed find that in some minds the discoveries of tycho brahe and kepler begin to take effect, for, in 1621, burton in his _anatomy of melancholy_ alludes to them as changing public opinion somewhat regarding comets; and, just hefore the middle of the century, sir thomas browne expresses a doubt whether comets produce such terrible effects, "since it is found that many of them are above the moon."[181] yet even as late as the last years of the seventeenth century we have english authors of much power battling for this supposed scriptural view and among the natural and typical results we find, in 1682, ralph thoresby, a fellow of the royal society, terrified at the comet of that year, and writing in his diary the following passage: "lord, fit us for whatever changes it may portend; for, though i am not ignorant that such meteors proceed from natural causes, yet are they frequently also the presages of imminent calamities." interesting is it to note here that this was halley's comet, and that halley was at this very moment making those scientific studies upon it which were to free the civilized world forever from such terrors as distressed thoresby. the belief in comets as warnings against sin was especially one of those held "always, everywhere, and by all," and by eastern christians as well as by western. one of the most striking scenes in the history of the eastern church is that which took place at the condemnation of nikon, the great patriarch of moscow. turning toward his judges, he pointed to a comet then blazing in the sky, and said, "god's besom shall sweep you all away!" of all countries in western europe, it was in germany and german switzerland that this superstition took strongest hold. that same depth of religious feeling which produced in those countries the most terrible growth of witchcraft persecution, brought superstition to its highest development regarding comets. no country suffered more from it in the middle ages. at the reformation luther declared strongly in favour of it. in one of his advent sermons he said, "the heathen write that the comet may arise from natural causes, but god creates not one that does not foretoken a sure calamity." again he said, "whatever moves in the heaven in an unusual way is certainly a sign of god's wrath." and sometimes, yielding to another phase of his belief, he declared them works of the devil, and declaimed against them as "harlot stars."[182] melanchthon, too, in various letters refers to comets as heralds of heaven's wrath, classing them, with evil conjunctions of the planets and abortive births, among the "signs" referred to in scripture. zwingli, boldest of the greater reformers in shaking off traditional beliefs, could not shake off this, and insisted that the comet of 1531 betokened calamity. arietus, a leading protestant theologian, declared, "the heavens are given us not merely for our pleasure, but also as a warning of the wrath of god for the correction of our lives." lavater insisted that comets are signs of death or calamity, and cited proofs from scripture. catholic and protestant strove together for the glory of this doctrine. it was maintained with especial vigour by fromundus, the eminent professor and doctor of theology at the catholic university of louvain, who so strongly opposed the copernican system; at the beginning of the seventeenth century, even so gifted an astronomer as kepler yielded somewhat to the belief; and near the end of that century voigt declared that the comet of 1618 clearly presaged the downfall of the turkish empire, and he stigmatized as "atheists and epicureans" all who did not believe comets to be god's warnings.[183] ii. theological efforts to crush the scientific view. out of this belief was developed a great series of efforts to maintain the theological view of comets, and to put down forever the scientific view. these efforts may be divided into two classes: those directed toward learned men and scholars, through the universities, and those directed toward the people at large, through the pulpits. as to the first of these, that learned men and scholars might be kept in the paths of "sacred science" and "sound learning," especial pains was taken to keep all knowledge of the scientific view of comets as far as possible from students in the universities. even to the end of the seventeenth century the oath generally required of professors of astronomy over a large part of europe prevented their teaching that comets are heavenly bodies obedient to law. efforts just as earnest were made to fasten into students' minds the theological theory. two or three examples out of many may serve as types. first of these may be named the teaching of jacob heerbrand, professor at the university of tubingen, who in 1577 illustrated the moral value of comets by comparing the almighty sending a comet, to the judge laying the executioner's sword on the table between himself and the criminal in a court of justice; and, again, to the father or schoolmaster displaying the rod before naughty children. a little later we have another churchman of great importance in that region, schickhart, head pastor and superintendent at goppingen, preaching and publishing a comet sermon, in which he denounces those who stare at such warnings of god without heeding them, and compares them to "calves gaping at a new barn door." still later, at the end of the seventeenth century, we find conrad dieterich, director of studies at the university of marburg, denouncing all scientific investigation of comets as impious, and insisting that they are only to be regarded as "signs and wonders."[184] the results of this ecclesiastical pressure upon science in the universities were painfully shown during generation after generation, as regards both professors and students; and examples may be given typical of its effects upon each of these two classes. the first of these is the case of michael maestlin. he was by birth a swabian protestant, was educated at tubingen as a pupil of apian, and, after a period of travel, was settled as deacon in the little parish of backnang, when the comet of 1577 gave him an occasion to apply his astronomical studies. his minute and accurate observation of it is to this day one of the wonders of science. it seems almost impossible that so much could be accomplished by the naked eye. his observations agreed with those of tycho brahe, and won for maestlin the professorship of astronomy in the university of heidelberg. no man had so clearly proved the supralunar position of a comet, or shown so conclusively that its motion was not erratic, but regular. the young astronomer, though apian's pupil, was an avowed copernican and the destined master and friend of kepler. yet, in the treatise embodying his observations, he felt it necessary to save his reputation for orthodoxy by calling the comet a "new and horrible prodigy," and by giving a chapter of "conjectures on the signification of the present comet," in which he proves from history that this variety of comet betokens peace, but peace purchased by a bloody victory. that he really believed in this theological theory seems impossible; the very fact that his observations had settled the supralunar character and regular motion of comets proves this. it was a humiliation only to be compared to that of osiander when he wrote his grovelling preface to the great book of copernicus. maestlin had his reward: when, a few years, later his old teacher, apian, was driven from his chair at tubingen for refusing to sign the _lutheran concord-book_, maestlin was elected to his place. not less striking was the effect of this theological pressure upon the minds of students. noteworthy as an example of this is the book of the leipsic lawyer, buttner. from no less than eighty-six biblical texts he proves the almighty's purpose of using the heavenly bodies for the instruction of men as to future events, and then proceeds to frame exhaustive tables, from which, the time and place of the comet's first appearance being known, its signification can be deduced. this manual he gave forth as a triumph of religious science, under the name of the _comet hour-book_.[185] the same devotion to the portent theory is found in the universities of protestant holland. striking is it to see in the sixteenth century, after tycho brahe's discovery, the dutch theologian, gerard vossius, professor of theology and eloquence at leyden, lending his great weight to the superstition. "the history of all times," he says, "shows comets to be the messengers of misfortune. it does not follow that they are endowed with intelligence, but that there is a deity who makes use of them to call the human race to repentance." though familiar with the works of tycho brahe, he finds it "hard to believe" that all comets are ethereal, and adduces several historical examples of sublunary ones. nor was this attempt to hold back university teaching to the old view of comets confined to protestants. the roman church was, if possible, more strenuous in the same effort. a few examples will serve as types, representing the orthodox teaching at the great centres of catholic theology. one of these is seen in spain. the eminent jurist torreblanca was recognised as a controlling authority in all the universities of spain, and from these he swayed in the seventeenth century the thought of catholic europe, especially as to witchcraft and the occult powers in nature. he lays down the old cometary superstition as one of the foundations of orthodox teaching: begging the question, after the fashion of his time, he argues that comets can not be stars, because new stars always betoken good, while comets betoken evil. the same teaching was given in the catholic universities of the netherlands. fromundus, at louvain, the enemy of galileo, steadily continued his crusade against all cometary heresy.[186] but a still more striking case is seen in italy. the reverend father augustin de angelis, rector of the clementine college at rome, as late as 1673, after the new cometary theory had been placed beyond reasonable doubt, and even while newton was working out its final demonstration, published a third edition of his _lectures on meteorology_. it was dedicated to the cardinal of hesse, and bore the express sanction of the master of the sacred palace at rome and of the head of the religious order to which de angelis belonged. this work deserves careful analysis, not only as representing the highest and most approved university teaching of the time at the centre of roman catholic christendom, but still more because it represents that attempt to make a compromise between theology and science, or rather the attempt to confiscate science to the uses of theology, which we so constantly find whenever the triumph of science in any field has become inevitable. as to the scientific element in this compromise, de angelis holds, in his general introduction regarding meteorology, that the main material cause of comets is "exhalation," and says, "if this exhalation is thick and sticky, it blazes into a comet." and again he returns to the same view, saying that "one form of exhalation is dense, hence easily inflammable and long retentive of fire, from which sort are especially generated comets." but it is in his third lecture that he takes up comets specially, and his discussion of them is extended through the fourth, fifth, and sixth lectures. having given in detail the opinions of various theologians and philosophers, he declares his own in the form of two conclusions. the first of these is that "comets are not heavenly bodies, but originate in the earth's atmosphere below the moon; for everything heavenly is eternal and incorruptible, but comets have a beginning and ending--_ergo_, comets can not be heavenly bodies." this, we may observe, is levelled at the observations and reasonings of tycho brahe and kepler, and is a very good illustration of the scholastic and mediaeval method--the method which blots out an ascertained fact by means of a metaphysical formula. his second conclusion is that "comets are of elemental and sublunary nature; for they are an exhalation hot and dry, fatty and well condensed, inflammable and kindled in the uppermost regions of the air." he then goes on to answer sundry objections to this mixture of metaphysics and science, and among other things declares that "the fatty, sticky material of a comet may be kindled from sparks falling from fiery heavenly bodies or from a thunderholt"; and, again, that the thick, fatty, sticky quality of the comet holds its tail in shape, and that, so far are comets from having their paths beyond the, moon's orbit, as tycho brahe and kepler thought, he himself in 1618 saw "a bearded comet so near the summit of vesuvius that it almost seemed to touch it." as to sorts and qualities of comets, he accepts aristotle's view, and divides them into bearded and tailed.[187] he goes on into long disquisitions upon their colours, forms, and motions. under this latter head he again plunges deep into a sea of metaphysical considerations, and does not reappear until he brings up his compromise in the opinion that their movement is as yet uncertain and not understood, but that, if we must account definitely for it, we must say that it is effected by angels especially assigned to this service by divine providence. but, while proposing this compromise between science and theology as to the origin and movement of comets, he will hear to none as regards their mission as "signs and wonders" and presages of evil. he draws up a careful table of these evils, arranging them in the following order. drought, wind, earthquake, tempest, famine, pestilence, war, and, to clinch the matter, declares that the comet observed by him in 1618 brought not only war, famine, pestilence, and earthquake, but also a general volcanic eruption, "which would have destroyed naples, had not the blood of the invincible martyr januarius withstood it." it will be observed, even from this sketch, that, while the learned father augustin thus comes infallibly to the mediaeval conclusion, he does so very largely by scientific and essentially modern processes, giving unwonted prominence to observation, and at times twisting scientific observation into the strand with his metaphysics. the observations and methods of his science are sometimes shrewd, sometimes comical. good examples of the latter sort are such as his observing that the comet stood very near the summit of vesuvius, and his reasoning that its tail was kept in place by its stickiness. but observations and reasonings of this sort are always the first homage paid by theology to science as the end of their struggle approaches.[188] equally striking is an example seen a little later in another part of europe; and it is the more noteworthy because halley and newton had already fully established the modern scientific theory. just at the close of the seventeenth century the jesuit reinzer, professor at linz, put forth his _meteorologia philosophico-politica_, in which all natural phenomena received both a physical and a moral interpretation. it was profusely and elaborately illustrated, and on account of its instructive contents was in 1712 translated into german for the unlearned reader. the comet receives, of course, great attention. "it appears," says reinzer, "only then in the heavens when the latter punish the earth, and through it [the comet] not only predict but bring to pass all sorts of calamity.... and, to that end, its tail serves for a rod, its hair for weapons and arrows, its light for a threat, and its heat for a sign of anger and vengeance." its warnings are threefold: (1) "comets, generated in the air, betoken _naturally_ drought, wind, earthquake, famine, and pestilence." (2) "comets can indirectly, in view of their material, betoken wars, tumults, and the death of princes; for, being hot and dry, they bring the moistnesses [_feuchtigkeiten_] in the human body to an extraordinary heat and dryness, increasing the gall; and, since the emotions depend on the temperament and condition of the body, men are through this change driven to violent deeds, quarrels, disputes, and finally to arms: especially is this the result with princes, who are more delicate and also more arrogant than other men, and whose moistnesses are more liable to inflammation of this sort, inasmuch as they live in luxury and seldom restrain themselves from those things which in such a dry state of the heavens are especially injurious." (3) "all comets, whatever prophetic significance they may have naturally in and of themselves, are yet principally, according to the divine pleasure, heralds of the death of great princes, of war, and of other such great calamities; and this is known and proved, first of all, from the words of christ himself: `nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.'"[189] while such pains was taken to keep the more highly educated classes in the "paths of scriptural science and sound learning; at the universities, equal efforts were made to preserve the cometary orthodoxy of the people at large by means of the pulpits. out of the mass of sermons for this purpose which were widely circulated i will select just two as typical, and they are worthy of careful study as showing some special dangers of applying theological methods to scientific facts. in the second half of the sixteenth century the recognised capital of orthodox lutheranism was magdeburg, and in the region tributary to this metropolis no church official held a more prominent station than the "superintendent," or lutheran bishop, of the neighbouring altmark. it was this dignitary, andreas celichius by name, who at magdeburg, in 1578, gave to the press his _theological reminder of the new comet_. after deprecating as blasphemous the attempt of aristotle to explain the phenomenon otherwise than as a supernatural warning from god to sinful man, he assures his hearers that "whoever would know the comet's real source and nature must not merely gape and stare at the scientific theory that it is an earthy, greasy, tough, and sticky vapour and mist, rising into the upper air and set ablaze by the celestial heat." far more important for them is it to know what this vaponr is. it is really, in the opinion of celichius, nothing more or less than "the thick smoke of human sins, rising every day, every hour, every moment, full of stench and horror, before the face of god, and becoming gradually so thick as to form a comet, with curled and plaited tresses, which at last is kindled by the hot and fiery anger of the supreme heavenly judge." he adds that it is probably only through the prayers and tears of christ that this blazing monument of human depravity becomes visible to mortals. in support of this theory, he urges the "coming up before god" of the wickedness of sodom and gomorrah and of nineveh, and especially the words of the prophet regarding babylon, "her stench and rottenness is come up before me." that the anger of god can produce the conflagration without any intervention of nature is proved from the psalms, "he sendeth out his word and melteth them." from the position of the comet, its course, and the direction of its tail he augurs especially the near approach of the judgment day, though it may also betoken, as usual, famine, pestilence, and war. "yet even in these days," he mourns, "there are people reckless and giddy enough to pay no heed to such celestial warnings, and these even cite in their own defence the injunction of jeremiah not to fear signs in the heavens." this idea he explodes, and shows that good and orthodox christians, while not superstitious like the heathen, know well "that god is not bound to his creation and the ordinary course of nature, but must often, especially in these last dregs of the world, resort to irregular means to display his anger at human guilt."[191] the other typical case occurred in the following century and in another part of germany. conrad dieterich was, during the first half of the seventeenth century, a lutheran ecclesiastic of the highest authority. his ability as a theologian had made him archdeacon of marburg, professor of philosophy and director of studies at the university of giessen, and "superintendent," or lutheran bishop, in southwestern germany. in the year 162o, on the second sunday in advent, in the great cathedral of ulm, he developed the orthodox doctrine of comets in a sermon, taking up the questions: 1. what are comets? 2. what do they indicate? 3. what have we to do with their significance? this sermon marks an epoch. delivered in that stronghold of german protestantism and by a prelate of the highest standing, it was immediately printed, prefaced by three laudatory poems from different men of note, and sent forth to drive back the scientific, or, as it was called, the "godless," view of comets. the preface shows that dieterich was sincerely alarmed by the tendency to regard comets as natural appearances. his text was taken from the twenty-fifth verse of the twenty-first chapter of st. luke: "and there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring." as to what comets are, he cites a multitude of philosophers, and, finding that they differ among themselves, he uses a form of argument not uncommon from that day to this, declaring that this difference of opinion proves that there is no solution of the problem save in revelation, and insisting that comets are "signs especially sent by the almighty to warn the earth." an additional proof of this he finds in the forms of comets. one, he says, took the form of a trumpet; another, of a spear; another of a goat; another, of a torch; another, of a sword; another, of an arrow; another, of a sabre; still another, of a bare arm. from these forms of comets he infers that we may divine their purpose. as to their creation, he quotes john of damascus and other early church authorities in behalf of the idea that each comet is a star newly created at the divine command, out of nothing, and that it indicates the wrath of god. as to their purpose, having quoted largely from the bible and from luther, he winds up by insisting that, as god can make nothing in vain, comets must have some distinct object; then, from isaiah and joel among the prophets, from matthew, mark, and luke among the evangelists, from origen and john chrysostom among the fathers, from luther and melanchthon among the reformers, he draws various texts more or less conclusive to prove that comets indicate evil and only evil; and he cites luther's advent sermon to the effect that, though comets may arise in the course of nature, they are still signs of evil to mankind. in answer to the theory of sundry naturalists that comets are made up of "a certain fiery, warm, sulphurous, saltpetery, sticky fog," he declaims: "our sins, our sins: they are the fiery heated vapours, the thick, sticky, sulphurous clouds which rise from the earth toward heaven before god." throughout the sermon dieterich pours contempt over all men who simply investigate comets as natural objects, calls special attention to a comet then in the heavens resembling a long broom or bundle of rods, and declares that he and his hearers can only consider it rightly "when we see standing before us our lord god in heaven as an angry father with a rod for his children." in answer to the question what comets signify, he commits himself entirely to the idea that they indicate the wrath of god, and therefore calamities of every sort. page after page is filled with the records of evils following comets. beginning with the creation of the world, he insists that the first comet brought on the deluge of noah, and cites a mass of authorities, ranging from moses and isaiah to albert the great and melanchthon, in support of the view that comets precede earthquakes, famines, wars, pestilences, and every form of evil. he makes some parade of astronomical knowledge as to the greatness of the sun and moon, but relapses soon into his old line of argument. imploring his audience not to be led away from the well-established belief of christendom and the principles of their fathers, he comes back to his old assertion, insists that "our sins are the inflammable material of which comets are made," and winds up with a most earnest appeal to the almighty to spare his people.[193] similar efforts from the pulpit were provoked by the great comet of 1680. typical among these was the effort in switzerland of pastor heinrich erni, who, from the cathedral of zurich, sent a circular letter to the clergy of that region showing the connection of the eleventh and twelfth verses of the first chapter of jeremiah with the comet, giving notice that at his suggestion the authorities had proclaimed a solemn fast, and exhorting the clergy to preach earnestly on the subject of this warning. nor were the interpreters of the comet's message content with simple prose. at the appearance of the comet of 1618, grasser and gross, pastors and doctors of theology at basle, put forth a collection of doggerel rhymes to fasten the orthodox theory into the minds of school-children and peasants. one of these may be translated: "i am a rod in god's right hand threatening the german and foreign land." others for a similar purpose taught: "eight things there be a comet brings, when it on high doth horrid range: wind, famine, plague, and death to kings, war, earthquakes, floods, and direful change." great ingenuity was shown in meeting the advance of science, in the universities and schools, with new texts of scripture; and stephen spleiss, rector of the gymnasium at schaffhausen, got great credit by teaching that in the vision of jeremiah the "almond rod" was a tailed comet, and the "seething pot" a bearded one.[194] it can be easily understood that such authoritative utterances as that of dieterich must have produced a great effect throughout protestant christendom; and in due time we see their working in new england. that same tendency to provincialism, which, save at rare intervals, has been the bane of massachusetts thought from that day to this, appeared; and in 1664 we find samuel danforth arguing from the bible that "comets are portentous signals of great and notable changes," and arguing from history that they "have been many times heralds of wrath to a secure and impenitent world." he cites especially the comet of 1652, which appeared just before mr. cotton's sickness and disappeared after his death. morton also, in his _memorial_ recording the death of john putnam, alludes to the comet of 1662 as "a very signal testimony that god had then removed a bright star and a shining light out of the heaven of his church here into celestial glory above." again he speaks of another comet, insisting that "it was no fiery meteor caused by exhalation, but it was sent immediately by god to awaken the secure world," and goes on to show how in that year "it pleased god to smite the fruits of the earth--namely, the wheat in special--with blasting and mildew, whereby much of it was spoiled and became profitable for nothing, and much of it worth little, being light and empty. this was looked upon by the judicious and conscientious of the land as a speaking providence against the unthankfulness of many,... as also against voluptuousness and abuse of the good creatures of god by licentiousness in drinking and fashions in apparel, for the obtaining whereof a great part of the principal grain was oftentimes unnecessarily expended." but in 1680 a stronger than either of these seized upon the doctrine and wielded it with power. increase mather, so open always to ideas from europe, and always so powerful for good or evil in the colonies, preached his sermon on "heaven's alarm to the world,... wherein is shown that fearful sights and signs in the heavens are the presages of great calamities at hand." the texts were taken from the book of revelation: "and the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning, as it were a lamp," and "behold, the third woe cometh quickly." in this, as in various other sermons, he supports the theological cometary theory fully. he insists that "we are fallen into the dregs of time," and that the day of judgment is evidently approaching. he explains away the words of jeremiah--"be not dismayed at signs in the heavens"--and shows that comets have been forerunners of nearly every form of evil. having done full justice to evils thus presaged in scriptural times, he begins a similar display in modern history by citing blazing stars which foretold the invasions of goths, huns, saracens, and turks, and warns gainsayers by citing the example of vespasian, who, after ridiculing a comet, soon died. the general shape and appearance of comets, he thinks, betoken their purpose, and he cites tertullian to prove them "god's sharp razors on mankind, whereby he doth poll, and his scythe whereby he doth shear down multitudes of sinful creatures." at last, rising to a fearful height, he declares: "for the lord hath fired his beacon in the heavens among the stars of god there; the fearful sight is not yet out of sight. the warning piece of heaven is going off. now, then, if the lord discharge his murdering pieces from on high, and men be found in their sins unfit for death, their blood shall be upon them." and again, in an agony of supplication, he cries out: "do we see the sword blazing over us? let it put us upon crying to god, that the judgment be diverted and not return upon us again so speedily.... doth god threaten our very heavens? o pray unto him, that he would not take away stars and send comets to succeed them."[195] two years later, in august, 1682, he followed this with another sermon on "the latter sign," "wherein is showed that the voice of god in signal providences, especially when repeated and iterated, ought to be hearkened unto." here, too, of course, the comet comes in for a large share of attention. but his tone is less sure: even in the midst of all his arguments appears an evident misgiving. the thoughts of newton in science and bayle in philosophy were evidently tending to accomplish the prophecy of seneca. mather's alarm at this is clear. his natural tendency is to uphold the idea that a comet is simply a fire-ball flung from the hand of an avenging god at a guilty world, but he evidently feels obliged to yield something to the scientific spirit; hence, in the _discourse concerning comets_, published in 1683, he declares: "there are those who think that, inasmuch as comets may be supposed to proceed from natural causes, there is no speaking voice of heaven in them beyond what is to be said of all other works of god. but certain it is that many things which may happen according to the course of nature are portentous signs of divine anger and prognostics of great evils hastening upon the world." he then notices the eclipse of august, 1672, and adds: "that year the college was eclipsed by the death of the learned president there, worthy mr. chauncey and two colonies--namely, massachusetts and plymouth--by the death of two governors, who died within a twelvemonth after.... shall, then, such mighty works of god as comets are be insignificant things?"[196] iii. the invasion of scepticism. vigorous as mather's argument is, we see scepticism regarding "signs" continuing to invade the public mind; and, in spite of his threatenings, about twenty years after we find a remarkable evidence of this progress in the fact that this scepticism has seized upon no less a personage than that colossus of orthodoxy, his thrice illustrious son, cotton mather himself; and him we find, in 1726, despite the arguments of his father, declaring in his _manuductio_: "perhaps there may be some need for me to caution you against being dismayed at the signs of the heavens, or having any superstitious fancies upon eclipses and the like.... i am willing that you be apprehensive of nothing portentous in blazing stars. for my part, i know not whether all our worlds, and even the sun itself, may not fare the better for them."[197] curiously enough, for this scientific scepticism in cotton mather there was a cause identical with that which had developed superstition in the mind of his father. the same provincial tendency to receive implicitly any new european fashion in thinking or speech wrought upon both, plunging one into superstition and drawing the other out of it. european thought, which new england followed, had at last broken away in great measure from the theological view of comets as signs and wonders. the germ of this emancipating influence was mainly in the great utterance of seneca; and we find in nearly every century some evidence that this germ was still alive. this life became more and more evident after the reformation period, even though theologians in every church did their best to destroy it. the first series of attacks on the old theological doctrine were mainly founded in philosophic reasoning. as early as the first half of the sixteenth century we hear julius caesar scaliger protesting against the cometary superstition as "ridiculous folly."[197b] of more real importance was the treatise of blaise de vigenere, published at paris in 1578. in this little book various statements regarding comets as signs of wrath or causes of evils are given, and then followed by a very gentle and quiet discussion, usually tending to develop that healthful scepticism which is the parent of investigation. a fair example of his mode of treating the subject is seen in his dealing with a bit of "sacred science." this was simply that "comets menace princes and kings with death because they live more delicately than other people; and, therefore, the air thickened and corrupted by a comet would be naturally more injurious to them than to common folk who live on coarser food." to this de vigenere answers that there are very many persons who live on food as delicate as that enjoyed by princes and kings, and yet receive no harm from comets. he then goes on to show that many of the greatest monarchs in history have met death without any comet to herald it. in the same year thoughtful scepticism of a similar sort found an advocate in another part of europe. thomas erastus, the learned and devout professor of medicine at heidelberg, put forth a letter dealing in the plainest terms with the superstition. he argued especially that there could be no natural connection between the comet and pestilence, since the burning of an exhalation must tend to purify rather than to infect the air. in the following year the eloquent hungarian divine dudith published a letter in which the theological theory was handled even more shrewdly. for he argued that, if comets were caused by the sins of mortals, they would never be absent from the sky. but these utterances were for the time brushed aside by the theological leaders of thought as shallow or impious. in the seventeenth century able arguments against the superstition, on general grounds, began to be multiplied. in holland, balthasar bekker opposed this, as he opposed the witchcraft delusion, on general philosophic grounds; and lubienitzky wrote in a compromising spirit to prove that comets were as often followed by good as by evil events. in france, pierre petit, formerly geographer of louis xiii, and an intimate friend of descartes, addressed to the young louis xiv a vehement protest against the superstition, basing his arguments not on astronomy, but on common sense. a very effective part of the little treatise was devoted to answering the authority of the fathers of the early church. to do this, he simplv reminded his readers that st. augustine and st. john damascenus had also opposed the doctrine of the antipodes. the book did good service in france, and was translated in germany a few years later.[199] all these were denounced as infidels and heretics, yet none the less did they set men at thinking, and prepare the way for a far greater genius; for toward the end of the same century the philosophic attack was taken up by pierre bayle, and in the whole series of philosophic champions he is chief. while professor at the university of sedan he had observed the alarm caused by the comet of 1680, and he now brought all his reasoning powers to bear upon it. thoughts deep and witty he poured out in volume after volume. catholics and protestants were alike scandalized. catholic france spurned him, and jurieu, the great reformed divine, called his cometary views "atheism," and tried hard to have protestant holland condemn him. though bayle did not touch immediately the mass of mankind, he wrought with power upon men who gave themselves the trouble of thinking. it was indeed unfortunate for the church that theologians, instead of taking the initiative in this matter, left it to bayle; for, in tearing down the pretended scriptural doctrine of comets, he tore down much else: of all men in his time, no one so thoroughly prepared the way for voltaire. bayle's whole argument is rooted in the prophecy of seneca. he declares: "comets are bodies subject to the ordinary law of nature, and not prodigies amenable to no law." he shows historically that there is no reason to regard comets as portents of earthly evils. as to the fact that such evils occur after the passage of comets across the sky, he compares the person believing that comets cause these evils to a woman looking out of a window into a paris street and believing that the carriages pass because she looks out. as to the accomplishment of some predictions, he cites the shrewd saying of henry iv, to the effect that "the public will remember one prediction that comes true better than all the rest that have proved false." finally, he sums up by saying: "the more we study man, the more does it appear that pride is his ruling passion, and that he affects grandeur even in his misery. mean and perishable creature that he is, he has been able to persuade men that he can not die without disturbing the whole course of nature and obliging the heavens to put themselves to fresh expense. in order to light his funeral pomp. foolish and ridiculous vanity! if we had a just idea of the universe, we should soon comprehend that the death or birth of a prince is too insignificant a matter to stir the heavens."[200] this great philosophic champion of right reason was followed by a literary champion hardly less famous; for fontenelle now gave to the french theatre his play of _the comet_, and a point of capital importance in france was made by rendering the army of ignorance ridiculous.[200b] such was the line of philosophic and literary attack, as developed from scaliger to fontenelle. but beneath and in the midst of all of it, from first to last, giving firmness, strength, and new sources of vitality to it, was the steady development of scientific effort; and to the series of great men who patiently wrought and thought out the truth by scientific methods through all these centuries belong the honours of the victory. for generations men in various parts of the world had been making careful observations on these strange bodies. as far back as the time when luther and melanchthon and zwingli were plunged into alarm by various comets from 1531 to 1539, peter apian kept his head sufficiently cool to make scientific notes of their paths through the heavens. a little later, when the great comet of 1556 scared popes, emperors, and reformers alike, such men as fabricius at vienna and heller at nuremberg quietly observed its path. in vain did men like dieterich and heerbrand and celich from various parts of germany denounce such observations and investigations as impious; they were steadily continued, and in 1577 came the first which led to the distinct foundation of the modern doctrine. in that year appeared a comet which again plunged europe into alarm. in every european country this alarm was strong, but in germany strongest of all. the churches were filled with terror-stricken multitudes. celich preaching at magdeburg was echoed by heerbrand preaching at tubingen, and both these from thousands of other pulpits, catholic and protestant, throughout europe. in the midst of all this din and outcry a few men quietly but steadily observed the monster; and tycho brahe announced, as the result, that its path lay farther from the earth than the orbit of the moon. another great astronomical genius, kepler, confirmed this. this distinct beginning of the new doctrine was bitterly opposed by theologians; they denounced it as one of the evil results of that scientific meddling with the designs of providence against which they had so long declaimed in pulpits and professors' chairs; they even brought forward some astronomers ambitious or wrong-headed enough to testify that tycho and kepler were in error[201] nothing could be more natural than such opposition; for this simple announcement by tycho brahe began a new era. it shook the very foundation of cometary superstition. the aristotelian view, developed by the theologians, was that what lies within the moon's orbit appertains to the earth and is essentially transitory and evil, while what lies beyond it belongs to the heavens and is permanent, regular, and pure. tycho brahe and kepler, therefore, having by means of scientific observation and thought taken comets out of the category of meteors and appearances in the neighbourhood of the earth, and placed them among the heavenly bodies, dealt a blow at the very foundations of the theological argument, and gave a great impulse to the idea that comets are themselves heavenly bodies moving regularly and in obedience to law. iv. theological efforts at compromise.--the final victory of science. attempts were now made to compromise. it was declared that, while some comets were doubtless supralunar, some must be sublunar. but this admission was no less fatal on another account. during many centuries the theory favoured by the church had been, as we have seen, that the earth was surrounded by hollow spheres, concentric and transparent, forming a number of glassy strata incasing one another "like the different coatings of an onion," and that each of these in its movement about the earth carries one or more of the heavenly bodies. some maintained that these spheres were crystal; but lactantius, and with him various fathers of the church, spoke of the heavenly vault as made of ice. now, the admission that comets could move beyond the moon was fatal to this theory, for it sent them crashing through these spheres of ice or crystal, and therefore through the whole sacred fabric of the ptolemaic theory.[202] here we may pause for a moment to note one of the chief differences between scientific and theological reasoning considered in themselves. kepler's main reasoning as to the existence of a law for cometary movement was right; but his secondary reasoning, that comets move nearly in straight lines, was wrong. his right reasoning was developed by gassendi in france, by borelli in italy, by hevel and doerfel in germany, by eysat and bernouilli in switzerland, by percy and--most important of all, as regards mathematical demonstration--by newton in england. the general theory, which was true, they accepted and developed; the secondary theory, which was found untrue, they rejected; and, as a result, both of what they thus accepted and of what they rejected, was evolved the basis of the whole modern cometary theory. very different was this from the theological method. as a rule, when there arises a thinker as great in theology as kepler in science, the whole mass of his conclusions ripens into a dogma. his disciples labour not to test it, but to establish it; and while, in the catholic church, it becomes a dogma to be believed or disbelieved under the penalty of damnation, it becomes in the protestant church the basis for one more sect. various astronomers laboured to develop the truth discovered by tycho and strengthened by kepler. cassini seemed likely to win for italy the glory of completing the great structure; but he was sadly fettered by church influences, and was obliged to leave most of the work to others. early among these was hevel. he gave reasons for believing that comets move in parabolic curves toward the sun. then came a man who developed this truth further--samuel doerfel; and it is a pleasure to note that he was a clergyman. the comet of 1680, which set erni in switzerland, mather in new england, and so many others in all parts of the world at declaiming, set doerfel at thinking. undismayed by the authority of origen and st. john chrysostom, the arguments of luther, melanchthon, and zwingli, the outcries of celich, heerbrand, and dieterich, he pondered over the problem in his little saxon parsonage, until in 1681 he set forth his proofs that comets are heavenly bodies moving in parabolas of which the sun is the focus. bernouilli arrived at the same conclusion; and, finally, this great series of men and works was closed by the greatest of all, when newton, in 1686, having taken the data furnished by the comet of 1680, demonstrated that comets are guided in their movements by the same principle that controls the planets in their orbits. thus was completed the evolution of this new truth in science. yet we are not to suppose that these two great series of philosophical and scientific victories cleared the field of all opponents. declamation and pretended demonstration of the old theologic view were still heard; but the day of complete victory dawned when halley, after most thorough observation and calculation, recognised the comet of 1682 as one which had already appeared at stated periods, and foretold its return in about seventy-five years; and the battle was fully won when clairaut, seconded by lalande and mme. lepaute, predicted distinctly the time when the comet would arrive at its perihelion, and this prediction was verified.[204] then it was that a roman heathen philosopher was proved more infallible and more directly under divine inspiration than a roman christian pontiff; for the very comet which the traveller finds to-day depicted on the bay eux tapestry as portending destruction to harold and the saxons at the norman invasion of england, and which was regarded by pope calixtus as portending evil to christendom, was found six centuries later to be, as seneca had prophesied, a heavenly body obeying the great laws of the universe, and coming at regular periods. thenceforth the whole ponderous enginery of this superstition, with its proof-texts regarding "signs in the heavens," its theological reasoning to show the moral necessity of cometary warnings, and its ecclesiastical fulminations against the "atheism, godlessness, and infidelity" of scientific investigation, was seen by all thinking men to be as weak against the scientific method as indian arrows against needle guns. copernicus, galileo, cassini, doerfel, newton, halley, and clairaut had gained the victory.[204b] it is instructive to note, even after the main battle was lost, a renewal of the attempt, always seen under like circumstances, to effect a compromise, to establish a "safe science" on grounds pseudo-scientific and pseudo-theologic. luther, with his strong common sense, had foreshadowed this; kepler had expressed a willingness to accept it. it was insisted that comets might be heavenly bodies moving in regular orbits, and even obedient to law, and yet be sent as "signs in the heavens." many good men clung longingly to this phase of the old belief, and in 1770 semler, professor at halle, tried to satisfy both sides. he insisted that, while from a scientific point of view comets could not exercise any physical influence upon the world, yet from a religious point of view they could exercise a moral influence as reminders of the just judge of the universe. so hard was it for good men to give up the doctrine of "signs in the heavens," seemingly based upon scripture and exercising such a healthful moral tendency! as is always the case after such a defeat, these votaries of "sacred science" exerted the greatest ingenuity in devising statements and arguments to avert the new doctrine. within our own century the great catholic champion, joseph de maistre, echoed these in declaring his belief that comets are special warnings of evil. so, too, in protestant england, in 1818, the _gentleman's magazine_ stated that under the malign influence of a recent comet "flies became blind and died early in the season," and "the wife of a london shoemaker had four children at a birth." and even as late as 1829 mr. forster, an english physician, published a work to prove that comets produce hot summers, cold winters, epidemics, earthquakes, clouds of midges and locusts, and nearly every calamity conceivable. he bore especially upon the fact that the comet of 1665 was coincident with the plague in london, apparently forgetting that the other great cities of england and the continent were not thus visited; and, in a climax, announces the fact that the comet of 1663 "made all the cats in westphalia sick." there still lingered one little cloud-patch of superstition, arising mainly from the supposed fact that comets had really been followed by a marked rise in temperature. even this poor basis for the belief that they might, after all, affect earthly affairs was swept away, and science won here another victory; for arago, by thermometric records carefully kept at paris from 1735 to 1781, proved that comets had produced no effect upon temperature. among multitudes of similar examples he showed that, in some years when several comets appeared, the temperature was lower than in other years when few or none appeared. in 1737 there were two comets, and the weather was cool; in 1785 there was no comet, and the weather was hot; through the whole fifty years it was shown that comets were sometimes followed by hot weather, sometimes by cool, and that no rule was deducible. the victory of science was complete at every point.[206] but in this history there was one little exhibition so curious as to be worthy of notice, though its permanent effect upon thought was small. whiston and burnet, so devoted to what they considered sacred science, had determined that in some way comets must be instruments of divine wrath. one of them maintained that the deluge was caused by the tail of a comet striking the earth; the other put forth the theory that comets are places of punishment for the damned--in fact, "flying hells." the theories of whiston and burnet found wide acceptance also in germany, mainly through the all-powerful mediation of gottsched, so long, from his professor's chair at leipsic, the dictator of orthodox thought, who not only wrote a brief tractate of his own upon the subject, but furnished a voluminous historical introduction to the more elaborate treatise of heyn. in this book, which appeared at leipsic in 1742, the agency of comets in the creation, the flood, and the final destruction of the world is fully proved. both these theories were, however, soon discredited. perhaps the more interesting of them can best be met by another, which, if not fully established, appears much better based--namely, that in 1868 the earth passed directly through the tail of a comet, with no deluge, no sound of any wailings of the damned, with but slight appearances here and there, only to be detected by the keen sight of the meteorological or astronomical observer. in our own country superstitious ideas regarding comets continued to have some little currency; but their life was short. the tendency shown by cotton mather, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, toward acknowledging the victory of science, was completed by the utterances of winthrop, professor at harvard, who in 1759 published two lectures on comets, in which he simply and clearly revealed the truth, never scoffing, but reasoning quietly and reverently. in one passage he says: "to be thrown into a panic whenever a comet appears, on account of the ill effects which some few of them might possibly produce, if they were not under proper direction, betrays a weakness unbecoming a reasonable being." a happy influence in this respect was exercised on both continents by john wesley. tenaciously as he had held to the supposed scriptural view in so many other matters of science, in this he allowed his reason to prevail, accepted the demonstrations of halley, and gloried in them.[207] the victory was indeed complete. happily, none of the fears expressed by conrad dieterich and increase mather were realized. no catastrophe has ensued either to religion or to morals. in the realm of religion the psalms of david remain no less beautiful, the great utterances of the hebrew prophets no less powerful; the sermon on the mount, "the first commandment, and the second, which is like unto it," the definition of "pure religion and undefiled" by st. james, appeal no less to the deepest things in the human heart. in the realm of morals, too, serviceable as the idea of firebrands thrown by the right hand of an avenging god to scare a naughty world might seem, any competent historian must find that the destruction of the old theological cometary theory was followed by moral improvement rather than by deterioration. we have but to compare the general moral tone of society to-day, wretchedly imperfect as it is, with that existing in the time when this superstition had its strongest hold. we have only to compare the court of henry viii with the court of victoria, the reign of the later valois and earlier bourbon princes with the present french republic, the period of the medici and sforzas and borgias with the period of leo xiii and humbert, the monstrous wickedness of the thirty years' war with the ennobling patriotism of the franco-prussian struggle, and the despotism of the miserable german princelings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the reign of the emperor william. the gain is not simply that mankind has arrived at a clearer conception of law in the universe; not merely that thinking men see more clearly that we are part of a system not requiring constant patching and arbitrary interference; but perhaps best of all is the fact that science has cleared away one more series of those dogmas which tend to debase rather than to develop man's whole moral and religious nature. in this emancipation from terror and fanaticism, as in so many other results of scientific thinking, we have a proof of the inspiration of those great words, "the truth shall make you free." chapter v. from genesis to geology. i. growth of theological explanations. among the philosophers of greece we find, even at an early period, germs of geological truth, and, what is of vast importance, an atmosphere in which such germs could grow. these germs were transmitted to roman thought; an atmosphere of tolerance continued; there was nothing which forbade unfettered reasoning regarding either the earth's strata or the remains of former life found in them, and under the roman empire a period of fruitful observation seemed sure to begin. but, as christianity took control of the world, there came a great change. the earliest attitude of the church toward geology and its kindred sciences was indifferent, and even contemptuous. according to the prevailing belief, the earth was a "fallen world," and was soon to be destroyed. why, then, should it be studied? why, indeed, give a thought to it? the scorn which lactantius and st. augustine had cast upon the study of astronomy was extended largely to other sciences.[209] but the germs of scientific knowledge and thought developed in the ancient world could be entirely smothered neither by eloquence nor by logic; some little scientific observation must be allowed, though all close reasoning upon it was fettered by theology. thus it was that st. jerome insisted that the broken and twisted crust of the earth exhibits the wrath of god against sin, and tertullian asserted that fossils resulted from the flood of noah. to keep all such observation and reasoning within orthodox limits, st. augustine, about the beginning of the fifth century, began an effort to develop from these germs a growth in science which should be sacred and safe. with this intent he prepared his great commentary on the work of creation, as depicted in genesis, besides dwelling upon the subject in other writings. once engaged in this work, he gave himself to it more earnestly than any other of the earlier fathers ever did; but his vast powers of research and thought were not directed to actual observation or reasoning upon observation. the keynote of his whole method is seen in his famous phrase, "nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind." all his thought was given to studying the letter of the sacred text, and to making it explain natural phenomena by methods purely theological.[210] among the many questions he then raised and discussed may be mentioned such as these: "what caused the creation of the stars on the fourth day?" "were beasts of prey and venomous animals created before, or after, the fall of adam? if before, how can their creation be reconciled with god's goodness; if afterward, how can their creation be reconciled to the letter of god's word?" "why were only beasts and birds brought before adam to be named, and not fishes and marine animals?" "why did the creator not say, `be fruitful and multiply,' to plants as well as to animals?"[210b] sundry answers to these and similar questions formed the main contributions of the greatest of the latin fathers to the scientific knowledge of the world, after a most thorough study of the biblical text and a most profound application of theological reasoning. the results of these contributions were most important. in this, as in so many other fields, augustine gave direction to the main current of thought in western europe, catholic and protestant, for nearly thirteen centuries. in the ages that succeeded, the vast majority of prominent scholars followed him implicitly. even so strong a man as pope gregory the great yielded to his influence, and such leaders of thought as st. isidore, in the seventh century, and the venerable bede, in the eighth, planting themselves upon augustine's premises, only ventured timidly to extend their conclusions upon lines he had laid down. in his great work on _etymologies_, isidore took up augustine's attempt to bring the creation into satisfactory relations with the book of genesis, and, as to fossil remains, he, like tertullian, thought that they resulted from the flood of noah. in the following century bede developed the same orthodox traditions.[211] the best guess, in a geological sense, among the followers of st. augustine was made by an irish monkish scholar, who, in order to diminish the difficulty arising from the distribution of animals, especially in view of the fact that the same animals are found in ireland as in england, held that various lands now separated were once connected. but, alas! the exigencies of theology forced him to place their separation later than the flood. happily for him, such facts were not yet known as that the kangaroo is found only on an island in the south pacific, and must therefore, according to his theory, have migrated thither with all his progeny, and along a causeway so curiously constructed that none of the beasts of prey, who were his fellow-voyagers in the ark, could follow him. these general lines of thought upon geology and its kindred science of zoology were followed by st. thomas aquinas and by the whole body of medieval theologians, so far as they gave any attention to such subjects. the next development of geology, mainly under church guidance, was by means of the scholastic theology. phrase-making was substituted for investigation. without the church and within it wonderful contributions were thus made. in the eleventh century avicenna accounted for the fossils by suggesting a "stone-making force";[212] in the thirteenth, albert the great attributed them to a "formative quality;"[212b] in the following centuries some philosophers ventured the idea that they grew from seed; and the aristotelian doctrine of spontaneous generation was constantly used to prove that these stony fossils possessed powers of reproduction like plants and animals.[212c] still, at various times and places, germs implanted by greek and roman thought were warmed into life. the arabian schools seem to have been less fettered by the letter of the koran than the contemporary christian scholars by the letter of the bible; and to avicenna belongs the credit of first announcing substantially the modern geological theory of changes in the earth's surface.[212d] the direct influence of the reformation was at first unfavourable to scientific progress, for nothing could be more at variance with any scientific theory of the development of the universe than the ideas of the protestant leaders. that strict adherence to the text of scripture which made luther and melanchthon denounce the idea that the planets revolve about the sun, was naturally extended to every other scientific statement at variance with the sacred text. there is much reason to believe that the fetters upon scientific thought were closer under the strict interpretation of scripture by the early protestants than they had been under the older church. the dominant spirit among the reformers is shown by the declaration of peter martyr to the effect that, if a wrong opinion should obtain regarding the creation as described in genesis, "all the promises of christ fall into nothing, and all the life of our religion would be lost."[213] in the times immediately succeeding the reformation matters went from bad to worse. under luther and melanchthon there was some little freedom of speculation, but under their successors there was none; to question any interpretation of luther came to be thought almost as wicked as to question the literal interpretation of the scriptures themselves. examples of this are seen in the struggles between those who held that birds were created entirely from water and those who held that they were created out of water and mud. in the city of lubeck, the ancient centre of the hanseatic league, close at the beginning of the seventeenth century, pfeiffer, "general superintendent" or bishop in those parts, published his _pansophia mosaica_, calculated, as he believed, to beat back science forever. in a long series of declamations he insisted that in the strict text of genesis alone is safety, that it contains all wisdom and knowledge, human and divine. this being the case, who could care to waste time on the study of material things and give thought to the structure of the world? above all, who, after such a proclamation by such a ruler in the lutheran israel, would dare to talk of the "days" mentioned in genesis as "periods of time"; or of the "firmament" as not meaning a solid vault over the universe; or of the "waters above the heavens" as not contained in a vast cistern supported by the heavenly vault; or of the "windows of heaven" as a figure of speech?[213b] in england the same spirit was shown even as late as the time of sir matthew hale. we find in his book on the _origination of mankind_, published in 1685, the strictest devotion to a theory of creation based upon the mere letter of scripture, and a complete inability to draw knowledge regarding the earth's origin and structure from any other source. while the lutheran, calvinistic, and anglican reformers clung to literal interpretations of the sacred books, and turned their faces away from scientific investigation, it was among their contemporaries at the revival of learning that there began to arise fruitful thought in this field. then it was, about the beginning of the sixteenth century, that leonardo da vinci, as great a genius in science as in art, broached the true idea as to the origin of fossil remains; and his compatriot, fracastoro, developed this on the modern lines of thought. others in other parts of europe took up the idea, and, while mixing with it many crudities, drew from it more and more truth. toward the end of the sixteenth century bernard palissy, in france, took hold of it with the same genius which he showed in artistic creation; but, remarkable as were his assertions of scientific realities, they could gain little hearing. theologians, philosophers, and even some scientific men of value, under the sway of scholastic phrases, continued to insist upon such explanations as that fossils were the product of "fatty matter set into a fermentation by heat"; or of a "lapidific juice";[214] or of a "seminal air";[214b] or of a "tumultuous movement of terrestrial exhalations"; and there was a prevailing belief that fossil remains, in general, might be brought under the head of "sports of nature," a pious turn being given to this phrase by the suggestion that these "sports" indicated some inscrutable purpose of the almighty. this remained a leading orthodox mode of explanation in the church, catholic and protestant, for centuries. ii. efforts to suppress the scientific view. but the scientific method could not be entirely hidden; and, near the beginning of the seventeenth century, de clave, bitaud, and de villon revived it in france. straightway the theological faculty of paris protested against the scientific doctrine as unscriptural, destroyed the offending treatises, banished their authors from paris, and forbade them to live in towns or enter places of public resort.[214c] the champions of science, though depressed for a time, quietly laboured on, especially in italy. half a century later, steno, a dane, and scilla, an italian, went still further in the right direction; and, though they and their disciples took great pains to throw a tub to the whale, in the shape of sundry vague concessions to the genesis legends, they developed geological truth more and more. in france, the old theological spirit remained exceedingly powerful. about the middle of the eighteenth century buffon made another attempt to state simple geological truths; but the theological faculty of the sorbonne dragged him at once from his high position, forced him to recant ignominiously, and to print his recantation. it runs as follows: "i declare that i had no intention to contradict the text of scripture; that i believe most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to order of time and matter of fact. i abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of moses." this humiliating document reminds us painfully of that forced upon galileo a hundred years before. it has been well observed by one of the greatest of modern authorities that the doctrine which buffon thus "abandoned" is as firmly established as that of the earth's rotation upon its axis.[215] yet one hundred and fifty years were required to secure for it even a fair hearing; the prevailing doctrine of the church continued to be that "all things were made at the beginning of the world," and that to say that stones and fossils were made before or since "the beginning" is contrary to scripture. again we find theological substitutes for scientific explanation ripening into phrases more and more hollow--making fossils "sports of nature," or "mineral concretions," or "creations of plastic force," or "models" made by the creator before he had fully decided upon the best manner of creating various beings. of this period, when theological substitutes for science were carrying all before them, there still exists a monument commemorating at the same time a farce and a tragedy. this is the work of johann beringer, professor in the university of wurzburg and private physician to the prince-bishop--the treatise bearing the title _lithographiae wirceburgensis specimen primum_, "illustrated with the marvellous likenesses of two hundred figured or rather insectiform stones." beringer, for the greater glory of god, had previously committed himself so completely to the theory that fossils are simply "stones of a peculiar sort, hidden by the author of nature for his own pleasure,"[216] that some of his students determined to give his faith in that pious doctrine a thorough trial. they therefore prepared a collection of sham fossils in baked clay, imitating not only plants, reptiles, and fishes of every sort that their knowledge or imagination could suggest, but even hebrew and syriac inscriptions, one of them the name of the almighty; and these they buried in a place where the professor was wont to search for specimens. the joy of beringer on unearthing these proofs of the immediate agency of the finger of god in creating fossils knew no bounds. at great cost he prepared this book, whose twenty-two elaborate plates of facsimiles were forever to settle the question in favour of theology and against science, and prefixed to the work an allegorical title page, wherein not only the glory of his own sovereign, but that of heaven itself, was pictured as based upon a pyramid of these miraculous fossils. so robust was his faith that not even a premature exposure of the fraud could dissuade him from the publication of his book. dismissing in one contemptuous chapter this exposure as a slander by his rivals, he appealed to the learned world. but the shout of laughter that welcomed the work soon convinced even its author. in vain did he try to suppress it; and, according to tradition, having wasted his fortune in vain attempts to buy up all the copies of it, and being taunted by the rivals whom he had thought to overwhelm, he died of chagrin. even death did not end his misfortunes. the copies of the first edition having been sold by a graceless descendant to a leipsic bookseller, a second edition was brought out under a new title, and this, too, is now much sought as a precious memorial of human credulity.[217] but even this discomfiture did not end the idea which had caused it, for, although some latitude was allowed among the various theologico-scientific explanations, it was still held meritorious to believe that all fossils were placed in the strata on one of the creative days by the hand of the almighty, and that this was done for some mysterious purpose, probably for the trial of human faith. strange as it may at first seem, the theological war against a scientific method in geology was waged more fiercely in protestant countries than in catholic. the older church had learned by her costly mistakes, especially in the cases of copernicus and galileo, what dangers to her claim of infallibility lay in meddling with a growing science. in italy, therefore, comparatively little opposition was made, while england furnished the most bitter opponents to geology so long as the controversy could be maintained, and the most active negotiators in patching up a truce on the basis of a sham science afterward. the church of england did, indeed, produce some noble men, like bishop clayton and john mitchell, who stood firmly by the scientific method; but these appear generally to have been overwhelmed by a chorus of churchmen and dissenters, whose mixtures of theology and science, sometimes tragic in their results and sometimes comic, are among the most instructive things in modern history.[217b] we have already noted that there are generally three periods or phases in a theological attack upon any science. the first of these is marked by the general use of scriptural texts and statements against the new scientific doctrine; the third by attempts at compromise by means of far-fetched reconciliations of textual statements with ascertained fact; but the second or intermediate period between these two is frequently marked by the pitting against science of some great doctrine in theology. we saw this in astronomy, when bellarmin and his followers insisted that the scientific doctrine of the earth revolving about the sun is contrary to the theological doctrine of the incarnation. so now against geology it was urged that the scientific doctrine that fossils represent animals which died before adam contradicts the theological doctrine of adam's fall and the statement that "death entered the world by sin." in this second stage of the theological struggle with geology, england was especially fruitful in champions of orthodoxy, first among whom may be named thomas burnet. in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, just at the time when newton's great discovery was given to the world, burnet issued his _sacred theory of the earth_. his position was commanding; he was a royal chaplain and a cabinet officer. planting himself upon the famous text in the second epistle of peter,[218] he declares that the flood had destroyed the old and created a new world. the newtonian theory he refuses to accept. in his theory of the deluge he lays less stress upon the "opening of the windows of heaven" than upon the "breaking up of the fountains of the great deep." on this latter point he comes forth with great strength. his theory is that the earth is hollow, and filled with fluid like an egg. mixing together sundry texts from genesis and from the second epistle of peter, the theological doctrine of the "fall," an astronomical theory regarding the ecliptic, and various notions adapted from descartes, he insisted that, before sin brought on the deluge, the earth was of perfect mathematical form, smooth and beautiful, "like an egg," with neither seas nor islands nor valleys nor rocks, "with not a wrinkle, scar, or fracture," and that all creation was equally perfect. in the second book of his great work burnet went still further. as in his first book he had mixed his texts of genesis and st. peter with descartes, he now mixed the account of the garden of eden in genesis with heathen legends of the golden age, and concluded that before the flood there was over the whole earth perpetual spring, disturbed by no rain more severe than the falling of the dew. in addition to his other grounds for denying the earlier existence of the sea, he assigned the reason that, if there had been a sea before the deluge, sinners would have learned to build ships, and so, when the deluge set in, could have saved themselves. the work was written with much power, and attracted universal attention. it was translated into various languages, and called forth a multitude of supporters and opponents in all parts of europe. strong men rose against it, especially in england, and among them a few dignitaries of the church; but the church generally hailed the work with joy. addison praised it in a latin ode, and for nearly a century it exercised a strong influence upon european feeling, and aided to plant more deeply than ever the theological opinion that the earth as now existing is merely a ruin; whereas, before sin brought on the flood, it was beautiful in its "egg-shaped form," and free from every imperfection. a few years later came another writer of the highest standing--william whiston, professor at cambridge, who in 1696 published his _new theory of the earth_. unlike burnet, he endeavoured to avail himself of the newtonian idea, and brought in, to aid the geological catastrophe caused by human sin, a comet, which broke open "the fountains of the great deep." but, far more important than either of these champions, there arose in the eighteenth century, to aid in the subjection of science to theology, three men of extraordinary power--john wesley, adam clarke, and richard watson. all three were men of striking intellectual gifts, lofty character, and noble purpose, and the first-named one of the greatest men in english history; yet we find them in geology hopelessly fettered by the mere letter of scripture, and by a temporary phase in theology. as in regard to witchcraft and the doctrine of comets, so in regard to geology, this theological view drew wesley into enormous error.[220] the great doctrine which wesley, watson, clarke, and their compeers, following st. augustine, bede, peter lombard, and a long line of the greatest minds in the universal church, thought it especially necessary to uphold against geologists was, that death entered the world by sin--by the first transgression of adam and eve. the extent to which the supposed necessity of upholding this doctrine carried wesley seems now almost beyond belief. basing his theology on the declaration that the almighty after creation found the earth and all created things "very good," he declares, in his sermon on the _cause and cure of earthquakes_, that no one who believes the scriptures can deny that "sin is the moral cause of earthquakes, whatever their natural cause may be." again, he declares that earthquakes are the "effect of that curse which was brought upon the earth by the original transgression." bringing into connection with genesis the declaration of st. paul that "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now," he finds additional scriptural proof that the earthquakes were the result of adam's fall. he declares, in his sermon on _god's approbation of his works_, that "before the sin of adam there were no agitations within the bowels of the earth, no violent convulsions, no concussions of the earth, no earthquakes, but all was unmoved as the pillars of heaven. there were then no such things as eruptions of fires; no volcanoes or burning mountains." of course, a science which showed that earthquakes had been in operation for ages before the appearance of man on the planet, and which showed, also, that those very earthquakes which he considered as curses resultant upon the fall were really blessings, producing the fissures in which we find today those mineral veins so essential to modern civilization, was entirely beyond his comprehension. he insists that earthquakes are "god's strange works of judgment, the proper effect and punishment of sin." so, too, as to death and pain. in his sermon on the _fall of man_ he took the ground that death and pain entered the world by adam's transgression, insisting that the carnage now going on among animals is the result of adam's sin. speaking of the birds, beasts, and insects, he says that, before sin entered the world by adam's fall, "none of these attempted to devour or in any way hurt one another"; that "the spider was then as harmless as the fly and did not then lie in wait for blood." here, again, wesley arrayed his early followers against geology, which reveals, in the fossil remains of carnivorous animals, pain and death countless ages before the appearance of man. the half-digested fragments of weaker animals within the fossilized bodies of the stronger have destroyed all wesley's arguments in behalf of his great theory.[221] dr. adam clarke held similar views. he insisted that thorns and thistles were given as a curse to human labour, on account of adam's sin, and appeared upon the earth for the first time after adam's fall. so, too, richard watson, the most prolific writer of the great evangelical reform period, and the author of the _institutes_, the standard theological treatise on the evangelical side, says, in a chapter treating of the fall, and especially of the serpent which tempted eve: "we have no reason at all to believe that the animal had a serpentine form in any mode or degree until his transformation. that he was then degraded to a reptile, to go upon his belly, imports, on the contrary, an entire alteration and loss of the original form." all that admirable adjustment of the serpent to its environment which delights naturalists was to the wesleyan divine simply an evil result of the sin of adam and eve. yet here again geology was obliged to confront theology in revealing the _python_ in the eocene, ages before man appeared.[222] the immediate results of such teaching by such men was to throw many who would otherwise have resorted to observation and investigation back upon scholastic methods. again reappears the old system of solving the riddle by phrases. in 1733, dr. theodore arnold urged the theory of "models," and insisted that fossils result from "infinitesimal particles brought together in the creation to form the outline of all the creatures and objects upon and within the earth"; and arnold's work gained wide acceptance.[222] such was the influence of this succession of great men that toward the close of the last century the english opponents of geology on biblical grounds seemed likely to sweep all before them. cramping our whole inheritance of sacred literature within the rules of a historical compend, they showed the terrible dangers arising from the revelations of geology, which make the earth older than the six thousand years required by archbishop usher's interpretation of the old testament. nor was this feeling confined to ecclesiastics. williams, a thoughtful layman, declared that such researches led to infidelity and atheism, and are "nothing less than to depose the almighty creator of the universe from his office." the poet cowper, one of the mildest of men, was also roused by these dangers, and in his most elaborate poem wrote: "some drill and bore the solid earth, and from the strata there extract a register, by which we learn that he who made it, and revealed its date to moses, was mistaken in its age!" john howard summoned england to oppose "those scientific systems which are calculated to tear up in the public mind every remaining attachment to christianity." with this special attack upon geological science by means of the dogma of adam's fall, the more general attack by the literal interpretation of the text was continued. the legendary husks and rinds of our sacred books were insisted upon as equally precious and nutritious with the great moral and religious truths which they envelop. especially precious were the six days--each "the evening and the morning"--and the exact statements as to the time when each part of creation came into being. to save these, the struggle became more and more desperate. difficult as it is to realize it now, within the memory of many now living the battle was still raging most fiercely in england, and both kinds of artillery usually brought against a new science were in full play, and filling the civilized world with their roar. about half a century since, the rev. j. mellor brown, the rev. henry cole, and others were hurling at all geologists alike, and especially at such christian scholars as dr. buckland and dean conybeare and pye smith and prof. sedgwick, the epithets of "infidel," "impugner of the sacred record," and "assailant of the volume of god."[223] the favourite weapon of the orthodox party was the charge that the geologists were "attacking the truth of god." they declared geology "not a subject of lawful inquiry," denouncing it as "a dark art," as "dangerous and disreputable," as "a forbidden province," as "infernal artillery," and as "an awful evasion of the testimony of revelation."[223b] this attempt to scare men from the science having failed, various other means were taken. to say nothing about england, it is humiliating to human nature to remember the annoyances, and even trials, to which the pettiest and narrowest of men subjected such christian scholars in our own country as benjamin silliman and edward hitchcock and louis agassiz. but it is a duty and a pleasure to state here that one great christian scholar did honour to religion and to himself by quietly accepting the claims of science and making the best of them, despite all these clamours. this man was nicholas wiseman, better known afterward as cardinal wiseman. the conduct of this pillar of the roman catholic church contrasts admirably with that of timid protestants, who were filling england with shrieks and denunciations.[224] and here let it be noted that one of the most interesting skirmishes in this war occurred in new england. prof. stuart, of andover, justly honoured as a hebrew scholar, declared that to speak of six periods of time for the creation was flying in the face of scripture; that genesis expressly speaks of six days, each made up of "the evening and the morning," and not six periods of time. to him replied a professor in yale college, james kingsley. in an article admirable for keen wit and kindly temper, he showed that genesis speaks just as clearly of a solid firmament as of six ordinary days, and that, if prof. stuart had surmounted one difficulty and accepted the copernican theory, he might as well get over another and accept the revelations of geology. the encounter was quick and decisive, and the victory was with science and the broader scholarship of yale.[224b] perhaps the most singular attempt against geology was made by a fine survival of the eighteenth century don-dean cockburn, of york--to _scold_ its champions off the field. having no adequate knowledge of the new science, he opened a battery of abuse, giving it to the world at large from the pulpit and through the press, and even through private letters. from his pulpit in york minster he denounced mary somerville by name for those studies in physical geography which have made her name honoured throughout the world. but the special object of his antipathy was the british association for the advancement of science. he issued a pamphlet against it which went through five editions in two years, sent solemn warnings to its president, and in various ways made life a burden to sedgwick, buckland, and other eminent investigators who ventured to state geological facts as they found them. these weapons were soon seen to be ineffective; they were like chinese gongs and dragon lanterns against rifled cannon; the work of science went steadily on.[225] iii. the first great effort at compromise, based on the flood of noah. long before the end of the struggle already described, even at a very early period, the futility of the usual scholastic weapons had been seen by the more keen-sighted champions of orthodoxy; and, as the difficulties of the ordinary attack upon science became more and more evident, many of these champions endeavoured to patch up a truce. so began the third stage in the war--the period of attempts at compromise. the position which the compromise party took was that the fossils were produced by the deluge of noah. this position was strong, for it was apparently based upon scripture. moreover, it had high ecclesiastical sanction, some of the fathers having held that fossil remains, even on the highest mountains, represented animals destroyed at the deluge. tertullian was especially firm on this point, and st. augustine thought that a fossil tooth discovered in north africa must have belonged to one of the giants mentioned in scripture.[225b] in the sixteenth century especially, weight began to be attached to this idea by those who felt the worthlessness of various scholastic explanations. strong men in both the catholic and the protestant camps accepted it; but the man who did most to give it an impulse into modern theology was martin luther. he easily saw that scholastic phrase-making could not meet the difficulties raised by fossils, and he naturally urged the doctrine of their origin at noah's flood.[226] with such support, it soon became the dominant theory in christendom: nothing seemed able to stand against it; but before the end of the same sixteenth century it met some serious obstacles. bernard palissy, one of the most keen-sighted of scientific thinkers in france, as well as one of the most devoted of christians, showed that it was utterly untenable. conscientious investigators in other parts of europe, and especially in italy, showed the same thing; all in vain.[226b] in vain did good men protest against the injury sure to be brought upon religion by tying it to a scientific theory sure to be exploded; the doctrine that fossils are the remains of animals drowned at the flood continued to be upheld by the great majority of theological leaders for nearly three centuries as "sound doctrine," and as a blessed means of reconciling science with scripture. to sustain this scriptural view, efforts energetic and persistent were put forth both by catholics and protestants. in france, the learned benedictine, calmet, in his great works on the bible, accepted it as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century, believing the mastodon's bones exhibited by mazurier to be those of king teutobocus, and holding them valuable testimony to the existence of the giants mentioned in scripture and of the early inhabitants of the earth overwhelmed by the flood.[226c] but the greatest champion appeared in england. we have already seen how, near the close of the seventeenth century, thomas burnet prepared the way in his _sacred theory of the earth_ by rejecting the discoveries of newton, and showing how sin led to the breaking up of the "foundations of the great deep" "and we have also seen how whiston, in his _new theory of the earth_, while yielding a little and accepting the discoveries of newton, brought in a comet to aid in producing the deluge; but far more important than these in permanent influence was john woodward, professor at gresham college, a leader in scientific thought at the university of cambridge, and, as a patient collector of fossils and an earnest investigator of their meaning, deserving of the highest respect. in 1695 he published his _natural history of the earth_, and rendered one great service to science, for he yielded another point, and thus destroyed the foundations for the old theory of fossils. he showed that they were not "sports of nature," or "models inserted by the creator in the strata for some inscrutable purpose," but that they were really remains of living beings, as xenophanes had asserted two thousand years before him. so far, he rendered a great service both to science and religion; but, this done, the text of the old testament narrative and the famous passage in st. peter's epistle were too strong for him, and he, too, insisted that the fossils were produced by the deluge. aided by his great authority, the assault on the true scientific position was vigorous: mazurier exhibited certain fossil remains of a mammoth discovered in france as bones of the giants mentioned in scripture; father torrubia did the same thing in spain; increase mather sent to england similar remains discovered in america, with a like statement. for the edification of the faithful, such "bones of the giants mentioned in scripture" were hung up in public places. jurieu saw some of them thus suspended in one of the churches of valence; and henrion, apparently under the stimulus thus given, drew up tables showing the size of our antediluvian ancestors, giving the height of adam as 123 feet 9 inches and that of eve as 118 feet 9 inches and 9 lines.[228] but the most brilliant service rendered to the theological theory came from another quarter for, in 1726, scheuchzer, having discovered a large fossil lizard, exhibited it to the world as the "human witness of the deluge":[228b] this great discovery was hailed everywhere with joy, for it seemed to prove not only that human beings were drowned at the deluge, but that "there were giants in those days." cheered by the applause thus gained, he determined to make the theological position impregnable. mixing together various texts of scripture with notions derived from the philosophy of descartes and the speculations of whiston, he developed the theory that "the fountains of the great deep" were broken up by the direct physical action of the hand of god, which, being literally applied to the axis of the earth, suddenly stopped the earth's rotation, broke up "the fountains of the great deep," spilled the water therein contained, and produced the deluge. but his service to sacred science did not end here, for he prepared an edition of the bible, in which magnificent engravings in great number illustrated his view and enforced it upon all readers. of these engravings no less than thirty-four were devoted to the deluge alone.[228c] in the midst all this came an episode very comical but very instructive; for it shows that the attempt to shape the deductions of science to meet the exigencies of dogma may mislead heterodoxy as absurdly as orthodoxy. about the year 1760 news of the discovery of marine fossils in various elevated districts of europe reached voltaire. he, too, had a theologic system to support, though his system was opposed to that of the sacred books of the hebrews; and, fearing that these new discoveries might be used to support the mosaic accounts of the deluge, all his wisdom and wit were compacted into arguments to prove that the fossil fishes were remains of fishes intended for food, but spoiled and thrown away by travellers; that the fossil shells were accidentally dropped by crusaders and pilgrims returning from the holy land; and that the fossil bones found between paris and etampes were parts of a skeleton belonging to the cabinet of some ancient philosopher. through chapter after chapter, voltaire, obeying the supposed necessities of his theology, fought desperately the growing results of the geologic investigations of his time.[229] but far more prejudicial to christianity was the continued effort on the other side to show that the fossils were caused by the deluge of noah. no supposition was too violent to support this theory, which was considered vital to the bible. by taking the mere husks and rinds of biblical truth for truth itself, by taking sacred poetry as prose, and by giving a literal interpretation of it, the followers of burnet, whiston, and woodward built up systems which bear to real geology much the same relation that the _christian topography_ of cosmas bears to real geography. in vain were exhibited the absolute geological, zoological, astronomical proofs that no universal deluge, or deluge covering any large part of the earth, had taken place within the last six thousand or sixty thousand years; in vain did so enlightened a churchman as bishop clayton declare that the deluge could not have extended beyond that district where noah lived before the flood; in vain did others, like bishop croft and bishop stillingfleet, and the nonconformist matthew poole, show that the deluge might not have been and probably was not universal; in vain was it shown that, even if there had been a universal deluge, the fossils were not produced by it: the only answers were the citation of the text, "and all the high mountains which were under the whole heaven were covered," and, to clinch the matter, worthington and men like him insisted that any argument to show that fossils were not remains of animals drowned at the deluge of noah was "infidelity." in england, france, and germany, belief that the fossils were produced by the deluge of noah was widely insisted upon as part of that faith essential to salvation.[230] but the steady work of science went on: not all the force of the church--not even the splendid engravings in scheuchzer's bible--could stop it, and the foundations of this theological theory began to crumble away. the process was, indeed, slow; it required a hundred and twenty years for the searchers of god's truth, as revealed in nature--such men as hooke, linnaeus, whitehurst, daubenton, cuvier, and william smith--to push their works under this fabric of error, and, by statements which could not be resisted, to undermine it. as we arrive at the beginning of the nineteenth century, science is becoming irresistible in this field. blumenbach, von buch, and schlotheim led the way, but most important on the continent was the work of cuvier. in the early years of the present century his researches among fossils began to throw new light into the whole subject of geology. he was, indeed, very conservative, and even more wary and diplomatic; seeming, like voltaire, to feel that "among wolves one must howl a little." it was a time of reaction. napoleon had made peace with the church, and to disturb that peace was akin to treason. by large but vague concessions cuvier kept the theologians satisfied, while he undermined their strongest fortress. the danger was instinctively felt by some of the champions of the church, and typical among these was chateaubriand, who in his best-known work, once so great, now so little--the _genius of christianity_--grappled with the questions of creation by insisting upon a sort of general deception "in the beginning," under which everything was created by a sudden fiat, but with appearances of pre-existence. his words are as follows: "it was part of the perfection and harmony of the nature which was displayed before men's eyes that the deserted nests of last year's birds should be seen on the trees, and that the seashore should be covered with shells which had been the abode of fish, and yet the world was quite new, and nests and shells had never been inhabited."[231] but the real victory was with brongniart, who, about 1820, gave forth his work on fossil plants, and thus built a barrier against which the enemies of science raged in vain.[231b] still the struggle was not ended, and, a few years later, a forlorn hope was led in england by granville penn. his fundamental thesis was that "our globe has undergone only two revolutions, the creation and the deluge, and both by the immediate fiat of the almighty"; he insisted that the creation took place in exactly six days of ordinary time, each made up of "the evening and the morning"; and he ended with a piece of that peculiar presumption so familiar to the world, by calling on cuvier and all other geologists to "ask for the old paths and walk therein until they shall simplify their system and reduce their numerous revolutions to the two events or epochs only--the six days of creation and the deluge."[232c] the geologists showed no disposition to yield to this peremptory summons; on the contrary, the president of the british geological society, and even so eminent a churchman and geologist as dean buckland, soon acknowledged that facts obliged them to give up the theory that the fossils of the coal measures were deposited at the deluge of noah, and to deny that the deluge was universal. the defection of buckland was especially felt by the orthodox party. his ability, honesty, and loyalty to his profession, as well as his position as canon of christ church and professor of geology at oxford, gave him great authority, which he exerted to the utmost in soothing his brother ecclesiastics. in his inaugural lecture he had laboured to show that geology confirmed the accounts of creation and the flood as given in genesis, and in 1823, after his cave explorations had revealed overwhelming evidences of the vast antiquity of the earth, he had still clung to the flood theory in his _reliquiae diluvianae_. this had not, indeed, fully satisfied the anti-scientific party, but as a rule their attacks upon him took the form not so much of abuse as of humorous disparagement. an epigram by shuttleworth, afterward bishop of chichester, in imitation of pope's famous lines upon newton, ran as follows: "some doubts were once expressed about the flood: buckland arose, and all was clear as mud." on his leaving oxford for a journey to southern europe, dean gaisford was heard to exclaim: "well, buckland is gone to italy; so, thank god, we shall have no more of this geology!" still there was some comfort as long as buckland held to the deluge theory; but, on his surrender, the combat deepened: instead of epigrams and caricatures came bitter attacks, and from the pulpit and press came showers of missiles. the worst of these were hurled at lyell. as we have seen, he had published in 1830 his _principles of geology_. nothing could have been more cautious. it simply gave an account of the main discoveries up to that time, drawing the necessary inferences with plain yet convincing logic, and it remains to this day one of those works in which the anglo-saxon race may most justly take pride,--one of the land-marks in the advance of human thought. but its tendency was inevitably at variance with the chaldean and other ancient myths and legends regarding the creation and deluge which the hebrews had received from the older civilizations among their neighbours, and had incorporated into the sacred books which they transmitted to the modern world; it was therefore extensively "refuted." theologians and men of science influenced by them insisted that his minimizing of geological changes, and his laying stress on the gradual action of natural causes still in force, endangered the sacred record of creation and left no place for miraculous intervention; and when it was found that he had entirely cast aside their cherished idea that the great geological changes of the earth's surface and the multitude of fossil remains were due to the deluge of noah, and had shown that a far longer time was demanded for creation than any which could possibly be deduced from the old testament genealogies and chronicles, orthodox indignation burst forth violently; eminent dignitaries of the church attacked him without mercy and for a time he was under social ostracism. as this availed little, an effort was made on the scientific side to crush him beneath the weighty authority of cuvier; but the futility of this effort was evident when it was found that thinking men would no longer listen to cuvier and persisted in listening to lyell. the great orthodox text-book, cuvier's _theory of the earth_, became at once so discredited in the estimation of men of science that no new edition of it was called for, while lyell's work speedily ran through twelve editions and remained a firm basis of modern thought.[233] as typical of his more moderate opponents we may take fairholme, who in 1837 published his _mosaic deluge_, and argued that no early convulsions of the earth, such as those supposed by geologists, could have taken place, because there could have been no deluge "before moral guilt could possibly have been incurred"--that is to say, before the creation of mankind. in touching terms he bewailed the defection of the president of the geological society and dean buckland--protesting against geologists who "persist in closing their eyes upon the solemn declarations of the almighty" still the geologists continued to seek truth: the germs planted especially by william smith, "the father of english geology" were developed by a noble succession of investigators, and the victory was sure. meanwhile those theologians who felt that denunciation of science as "godless" could accomplish little, laboured upon schemes for reconciling geology with genesis. some of these show amazing ingenuity, but an eminent religious authority, going over them with great thoroughness, has well characterized them as "daring and fanciful." such attempts have been variously classified, but the fact regarding them all is that each mixes up more or less of science with more or less of scripture, and produces a result more or less absurd. though a few men here and there have continued these exercises, the capitulation of the party which set the literal account of the deluge of noah against the facts revealed by geology was at last clearly made.[234] one of the first evidences of the completeness of this surrender has been so well related by the eminent physiologist, dr. w. b. carpenter, that it may best be given in his own words: "you are familiar with a book of considerable value, dr. w. smith's _dictionary of the bible_. i happened to know the influences under which that dictionary was framed. the idea of the publisher and of the editor was to give as much scholarship and such results of modern criticism as should be compatible with a very judicious conservatism. there was to be no objection to geology, but the universality of the deluge was to be strictly maintained. the editor committed the article _deluge_ to a man of very considerable ability, but when the article came to him he found that it was so excessively heretical that he could not venture to put it in. there was not time for a second article under that head, and if you look in that dictionary you will find under the word _deluge_ a reference to _flood_. before _flood_ came, a second article had been commissioned from a source that was believed safely conservative; but when the article came in it was found to be worse than the first. a third article was then commissioned, and care was taken to secure its `safety.' if you look for the word _flood_ in the dictionary, you will find a reference to _noah_. under that name you will find an article written by a distinguished professor of cambridge, of which i remember that bishop colenso said to me at the time, `in a very guarded way the writer concedes the whole thing.' you will see by this under what trammels scientific thought has laboured in this department of inquiry."[235] a similar surrender was seen when from a new edition of horne's _introduction to the scriptures_, the standard textbook of orthodoxy, its accustomed use of fossils to prove the universality of the deluge was quietly dropped.[235b] a like capitulation in the united states was foreshadowed in 1841, when an eminent professor of biblical literature and interpretation in the most important theological seminary of the protestant episcopal church, dr. samuel turner, showed his christian faith and courage by virtually accepting the new view; and the old contention was utterly cast away by the thinking men of another great religious body when, at a later period, two divines among the most eminent for piety and learning in the methodist episcopal church inserted in the _biblical cyclopaedia_, published under their supervision, a candid summary of the proofs from geology, astronomy, and zoology that the deluge of noah was not universal, or even widely extended, and this without protest from any man of note in any branch of the american church.[235c] the time when the struggle was relinquished by enlightened theologians of the roman catholic church may be fixed at about 1862, when reusch, professor of theology at bonn, in his work on _the bible and nature_, cast off the old diluvial theory and all its supporters, accepting the conclusions of science.[236] but, though the sacred theory with the deluge of noah as a universal solvent for geological difficulties was evidently dying, there still remained in various quarters a touching fidelity to it. in roman catholic countries the old theory was widely though quietly cherished, and taught from the religious press, the pulpit, and the theological professor's chair. pope pius ix was doubtless in sympathy with this feeling when, about 1850, he forbade the scientific congress of italy to meet at bologna.[236b] in 1856 father debreyne congratulated the theologians of france on their admirable attitude: "instinctively," he says, "they still insist upon deriving the fossils from noah's flood."[236c] in 1875 the abbe choyer published at paris and angers a text-book widely approved by church authorities, in which he took similar ground; and in 1877 the jesuit father bosizio published at mayence a treatise on _geology and the deluge_, endeavouring to hold the world to the old solution of the problem, allowing, indeed, that the "days" of creation were long periods, but making atonement for this concession by sneers at darwin.[236d] in the russo-greek church, in 1869, archbishop macarius, of lithuania, urged the necessity of believing that creation in six days of ordinary time and the deluge of noah are the only causes of all that geology seeks to explain; and, as late as 1876, another eminent theologian of the same church went even farther, and refused to allow the faithful to believe that any change had taken place since "the beginning" mentioned in genesis, when the strata of the earth were laid, tilted, and twisted, and the fossils scattered among them by the hand of the almighty during six ordinary days.[237] in the lutheran branch of the protestant church we also find echoes of the old belief. keil, eminent in scriptural interpretation at the university of dorpat, gave forth in 1860 a treatise insisting that geology is rendered futile and its explanations vain by two great facts: the curse which drove adam and eve out of eden, and the flood that destroyed all living things save noah, his family, and the animals in the ark. in 1867, phillippi, and in 1869, dieterich, both theologians of eminence, took virtually the same ground in germany, the latter attempting to beat back the scientific hosts with a phrase apparently pithy, but really hollow--the declaration that "modern geology observes what is, but has no right to judge concerning the beginning of things." as late as 1876, zugler took a similar view, and a multitude of lesser lights, through pulpit and press, brought these antiscientific doctrines to bear upon the people at large--the only effect being to arouse grave doubts regarding christianity among thoughtful men, and especially among young men, who naturally distrusted a cause using such weapons. for just at this time the traditional view of the deluge received its death-blow, and in a manner entirely unexpected. by the investigations of george smith among the assyrian tablets of the british museum, in 1872, and by his discoveries just afterward in assyria, it was put beyond a reasonable doubt that a great mass of accounts in genesis are simply adaptations of earlier and especially of chaldean myths and legends. while this proved to be the fact as regards the accounts of creation and the fall of man, it was seen to be most strikingly so as regards the deluge. the eleventh of the twelve tablets, on which the most important of these inscriptions was found, was almost wholly preserved, and it revealed in this legend, dating from a time far earlier than that of moses, such features peculiar to the childhood of the world as the building of the great ship or ark to escape the flood, the careful caulking of its seams, the saving of a man beloved of heaven, his selecting and taking with him into the vessel animals of all sorts in couples, the impressive final closing of the door, the sending forth different birds as the flood abated, the offering of sacrifices when the flood had subsided, the joy of the divine being who had caused the flood as the odour of the sacrifice reached his nostrils; while throughout all was shown that partiality for the chaldean sacred number seven which appears so constantly in the genesis legends and throughout the hebrew sacred books. other devoted scholars followed in the paths thus opened--sayce in england, lenormant in france, schrader in germany--with the result that the hebrew account of the deluge, to which for ages theologians had obliged all geological research to conform, was quietly relegated, even by most eminent christian scholars, to the realm of myth and legend.[238] sundry feeble attempts to break the force of this discovery, and an evidently widespread fear to have it known, have certainly impaired not a little the legitimate influence of the christian clergy. and yet this adoption of chaldean myths into the hebrew scriptures furnishes one of the strongest arguments for the value of our bible as a record of the upward growth of man; for, while the chaldean legend primarily ascribes the deluge to the mere arbitrary caprice of one among many gods (bel), the hebrew development of the legend ascribes it to the justice, the righteousness, of the supreme god; thus showing the evolution of a higher and nobler sentiment which demanded a moral cause adequate to justify such a catastrophe. unfortunately, thus far, save in a few of the broader and nobler minds among the clergy, the policy of ignoring such new revelations has prevailed, and the results of this policy, both in roman catholic and in protestant countries, are not far to seek. what the condition of thought is among the middle classes of france and italy needs not to be stated here. in germany, as a typical fact, it may be mentioned that there was in the year 1881 church accommodation in the city of berlin for but two per cent of the population, and that even this accommodation was more than was needed. this fact is not due to the want of a deep religious spirit among the north germans: no one who has lived among them can doubt the existence of such a spirit; but it is due mainly to the fact that, while the simple results of scientific investigation have filtered down among the people at large, the dominant party in the lutheran church has steadily refused to recognise this fact, and has persisted in imposing on scripture the fetters of literal and dogmatic interpretation which germany has largely outgrown. a similar danger threatens every other country in which the clergy pursue a similar policy. no thinking man, whatever may be his religious views, can fail to regret this. a thoughtful, reverent, enlightened clergy is a great blessing to any country. and anything which undermines their legitimate work of leading men out of the worship of material things to the consideration of that which is highest is a vast misfortune.[239] iv. final efforts at compromise.--the victory of science complete. before concluding, it may be instructive to note a few especially desperate attempts at truces or compromises, such as always appear when the victory of any science has become absolutely sure. typical among the earliest of these may be mentioned the effort of carl von raumer in 1819. with much pretension to scientific knowledge, but with aspirations bounded by the limits of prussian orthodoxy, he made a laboured attempt to produce a statement which, by its vagueness, haziness, and "depth," should obscure the real questions at issue. this statement appeared in the shape of an argument, used by bertrand and others in the previous century, to prove that fossil remains of plants in the coal measures had never existed as living plants, but had been simply a "result of the development of imperfect plant embryos"; and the same misty theory was suggested to explain the existence of fossil animals without supposing the epochs and changes required by geological science. in 1837 wagner sought to uphold this explanation; but it was so clearly a mere hollow phrase, unable to bear the weight of the facts to be accounted for, that it was soon given up. similar attempts were made throughout europe, the most noteworthy appearing in england. in 1853 was issued an anonymous work having as its title _a brief and complete refutation of the anti-scriptural theory of geologists_: the author having revived an old idea, and put a spark of life into it--this idea being that "all the organisms found in the depths of the earth were made on the first of the six creative days, as models for the plants and animals to be created on the third, fifth, and sixth days."[240] but while these attempts to preserve the old theory as to fossil remains of lower animals were thus pressed, there appeared upon the geological field a new scientific column far more terrible to the old doctrines than any which had been seen previously. for, just at the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, geologists began to examine the caves and beds of drift in various parts of the world; and within a few years from that time a series of discoveries began in france, in belgium, in england, in brazil, in sicily, in india, in egypt, and in america, which established the fact that a period of time much greater than any which had before been thought of had elapsed since the first human occupation of the earth. the chronologies of archbishop usher, petavius, bossuet, and the other great authorities on which theology had securely leaned, were found worthless. it was clearly seen that, no matter how well based upon the old testament genealogies and lives of the patriarchs, all these systems must go for nothing. the most conservative geologists were gradually obliged to admit that man had been upon the earth not merely six thousand, or sixty thousand, or one hundred and sixty thousand years. and when, in 1863, sir charles lyell, in his book on _the antiquity of man_, retracted solemnly his earlier view--yielding with a reluctance almost pathetic, but with a thoroughness absolutely convincing--the last stronghold of orthodoxy in this field fell.[241] the supporters of a theory based upon the letter of scripture, who had so long taken the offensive, were now obliged to fight upon the defensive and at fearful odds. various lines of defence were taken; but perhaps the most pathetic effort was that made in the year 1857, in england, by gosse. as a naturalist he had rendered great services to zoological science, but he now concentrated his energies upon one last effort to save the literal interpretation of genesis and the theological structure built upon it. in his work entitled _omphalos_ he developed the theory previously urged by granville penn, and asserted a new principle called "prochronism." in accordance with this, all things were created by the almighty hand literally within the six days, each made up of "the evening and the morning," and each great branch of creation was brought into existence in an instant. accepting a declaration of dr. ure, that "neither reason nor revelation will justify us in extending the origin of the material system beyond six thousand years from our own days," gosse held that all the evidences of convulsive changes and long epochs in strata, rocks, minerals, and fossils are simply "_appearances_"--only that and nothing more. among these mere "appearances," all created simultaneously, were the glacial furrows and scratches on rocks, the marks of retreat on rocky masses, as at niagara, the tilted and twisted strata, the piles of lava from extinct volcanoes, the fossils of every sort in every part of the earth, the foot-tracks of birds and reptiles, the half-digested remains of weaker animals found in the fossilized bodies of the stronger, the marks of hyenas, teeth on fossilized bones found in various caves, and even the skeleton of the siberian mammoth at st. petersburg with lumps of flesh bearing the marks of wolves' teeth--all these, with all gaps and imperfections, he urged mankind to believe came into being in an instant. the preface of the work is especially touching, and it ends with the prayer that science and scripture may be reconciled by his theory, and "that the god of truth will deign so to use it, and if he do, to him be all the glory."[242] at the close of the whole book gosse declared: "the field is left clear and undisputed for the one witness on the opposite side, whose testimony is as follows: `in six days jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.'" this quotation he placed in capital letters, as the final refutation of all that the science of geology had built. in other parts of europe desperate attempts were made even later to save the letter of our sacred books by the revival of a theory in some respects more striking. to shape this theory to recent needs, vague reminiscences of a text in job regarding fire beneath the earth, and vague conceptions of speculations made by humboldt and laplace, were mingled with jewish tradition. out of the mixture thus obtained schubert developed the idea that the satanic "principalities and powers" formerly inhabiting our universe plunged it into the chaos from which it was newly created by a process accurately described in genesis. rougemont made the earth one of the "morning stars" of job, reduced to chaos by lucifer and his followers, and thence developed in accordance with the nebular hypothesis. kurtz evolved from this theory an opinion that the geological disturbances were caused by the opposition of the devil to the rescue of our universe from chaos by the almighty. delitzsch put a similar idea into a more scholastic jargon; but most desperate of all were the statements of dr. anton westermeyer, of munich, in _the old testament vindicated from modern infidel objections_. the following passage will serve to show his ideas: "by the fructifying brooding of the divine spirit on the waters of the deep, creative forces began to stir; the devils who inhabited the primeval darkness and considered it their own abode saw that they were to be driven from their possessions, or at least that their place of habitation was to be contracted, and they therefore tried to frustrate god's plan of creation and exert all that remained to them of might and power to hinder or at least to mar the new creation." so came into being "the horrible and destructive monsters, these caricatures and distortions of creation," of which we have fossil remains. dr. westermeyer goes on to insist that "whole generations called into existence by god succumbed to the corruption of the devil, and for that reason had to be destroyed"; and that "in the work of the six days god caused the devil to feel his power in all earnest, and made satan's enterprise appear miserable and vain."[243] such was the last important assault upon the strongholds of geological science in germany; and, in view of this and others of the same kind, it is little to be wondered at that when, in 1870, johann silberschlag made an attempt to again base geology upon the deluge of noah, he found such difficulties that, in a touching passage, he expressed a desire to get back to the theory that fossils were "sports of nature."[243b] but the most noted among efforts to keep geology well within the letter of scripture is of still more recent date. in the year 1885 mr. gladstone found time, amid all his labours and cares as the greatest parliamentary leader in england, to take the field in the struggle for the letter of genesis against geology. on the face of it his effort seemed quixotic, for he confessed at the outset that in science he was "utterly destitute of that kind of knowledge which carries authority," and his argument soon showed that this confession was entirely true. but he had some other qualities of which much might be expected: great skill in phrase-making, great shrewdness in adapting the meanings of single words to conflicting necessities in discussion, wonderful power in erecting showy structures of argument upon the smallest basis of fact, and a facility almost preternatural in "explaining away" troublesome realities. so striking was his power in this last respect, that a humorous london chronicler once advised a bigamist, as his only hope, to induce mr. gladstone to explain away one of his wives. at the basis of this theologico-geological structure mr. gladstone placed what he found in the text of genesis: "a grand fourfold division" of animated nature "set forth in an orderly succession of times." and he arranged this order and succession of creation as follows: "first, the water population; secondly, the air population; thirdly, the land population of animals; fourthly, the land population consummated in man." his next step was to slide in upon this basis the apparently harmless proposition that this division and sequence "is understood to have been so affirmed in our time by natural science that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact." finally, upon these foundations he proceeded to build an argument out of the coincidences thus secured between the record in the hebrew sacred books and the truths revealed by science as regards this order and sequence, and he easily arrived at the desired conclusion with which he crowned the whole structure, namely, as regards the writer of genesis, that "his knowledge was divine."[244] such was the skeleton of the structure; it was abundantly decorated with the rhetoric in which mr. gladstone is so skilful an artificer, and it towered above "the average man" as a structure beautiful and invincible--like some chinese fortress in the nineteenth century, faced with porcelain and defended with crossbows. its strength was soon seen to be unreal. in an essay admirable in its temper, overwhelming in its facts, and absolutely convincing in its argument, prof. huxley, late president of the royal society, and doubtless the most eminent contemporary authority on the scientific questions concerned, took up the matter. mr. gladstone's first proposition, that the sacred writings give us a great "fourfold division" created "in an orderly succession of times," prof. huxley did not presume to gainsay. as to mr. gladstone's second proposition, that "this great fourfold division... created in an orderly succession of times... has been so affirmed in our own time by natural science that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact," prof. huxley showed that, as a matter of fact, no such "fourfold division" and "orderly succession" exist; that, so far from establishing mr. gladstone's assumption that the population of water, air, and land followed each other in the order given, "all the evidence we possess goes to prove that they did not"; that the distribution of fossils through the various strata proves that some land animals originated before sea animals; that there has been a mixing of sea, land, and air "population" utterly destructive to the "great fourfold division" and to the creation "in an orderly succession of times"; that, so far is the view presented in the sacred text, as stated by mr. gladstone, from having been "so affirmed in our own time by natural science, that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact" that mr. gladstone's assertion is "directly contradictory to facts known to every one who is acquainted with the elements of natural science"; that mr. gladstone's only geological authority, cuvier, had died more than fifty years before, when geological science was in its infancy [and he might have added, when it was necessary to make every possible concession to the church]; and, finally, he challenged mr. gladstone to produce any contemporary authority in geological science who would support his so-called scriptural view. and when, in a rejoinder, mr. gladstone attempted to support his view on the authority of prof. dana, prof. huxley had no difficulty in showing from prof. dana's works that mr. gladstone's inference was utterly unfounded. but, while the fabric reared by mr. gladstone had been thus undermined by huxley on the scientific side, another opponent began an attack from the biblical side. the rev. canon driver, professor at mr. gladstone's own university of oxford, took up the question in the light of scriptural interpretation. in regard to the comparative table drawn up by sir j. w. dawson, showing the supposed correspondence between the scriptural and the geological order of creation, canon driver said: "the two series are evidently at variance. the geological record contains no evidence of clearly defined periods corresponding to the `days' of genesis. in genesis, vegetation is complete two days before animal life appears. geology shows that they appear simultaneously--even if animal life does not appear first. in genesis, birds appear together with aquatic creatures, and precede all land animals; according to the evidence of geology, birds are unknown till a period much later than that at which aquatic creatures (including fishes and amphibia) abound, and they are preceded by numerous species of land animals--in particular, by insects and other `creeping things.'" of the mosaic account of the existence of vegetation before the creation of the sun, canon driver said, " no reconciliation of this representation with the data of science has yet been found"; and again: "from all that has been said, however reluctant we may be to make the admission, only one conclusion seems possible. read without prejudice or bias, the narrative of genesis i, creates an impression at variance with the facts revealed by science." the eminent professor ends by saying that the efforts at reconciliation are "different modes of obliterating the characteristic features of genesis, and of reading into it a view which it does not express." thus fell mr. gladstone's fabric of coincidences between the "great fourfold division" in genesis and the facts ascertained by geology. prof. huxley had shattered the scientific parts of the structure, prof. driver had removed its biblical foundations, and the last great fortress of the opponents of unfettered scientific investigation was in ruins. in opposition to all such attempts we may put a noble utterance by a clergyman who has probably done more to save what is essential in christianity among english-speaking people than any other ecclesiastic of his time. the late dean of westminster, dr. arthur stanley, was widely known and beloved on both continents. in his memorial sermon after the funeral of sir charles lyell he said: "it is now clear to diligent students of the bible that the first and second chapters of genesis contain two narratives of the creation side by side, differing from each other in almost every particular of time and place and order. it is well known that, when the science of geology first arose, it was involved in endless schemes of attempted reconciliation with the letter of scripture. there were, there are perhaps still, two modes of reconciliation of scripture and science, which have been each in their day attempted, _and each has totally and deservedly failed_. one is the endeavour to wrest the words of the bible from their natural meaning and _force it to speak the language of science_." and again, speaking of the earliest known example, which was the interpolation of the word "not" in leviticus xi, 6, he continues: "this is the earliest instance of _the falsification of scripture to meet the demands of science_; and it has been followed in later times by the various efforts which have been made to twist the earlier chapters of the book of genesis into _apparent_ agreement with the last results of geology--representing days not to be days, morning and evening not to be morning and evening, the deluge not to be the deluge, and the ark not to be the ark." after a statement like this we may fitly ask, which is the more likely to strengthen christianity for its work in the twentieth century which we are now about to enter--a large, manly, honest, fearless utterance like this of arthur stanley, or hair-splitting sophistries, bearing in their every line the germs of failure, like those attempted by mr. gladstone? the world is finding that the scientific revelation of creation is ever more and more in accordance with worthy conceptions of that great power working in and through the universe. more and more it is seen that inspiration has never ceased, and that its prophets and priests are not those who work to fit the letter of its older literature to the needs of dogmas and sects, but those, above all others, who patiently, fearlessly, and reverently devote themselves to the search for truth as truth, in the faith that there is a power in the universe wise enough to make truth-seeking safe and good enough to make truth-telling useful.[248] chapter vi. the antiquity of man egyptology, and assyriology. i. the sacred chronology. in the great ranges of investigation which bear most directly upon the origin of man, there are two in which science within the last few years has gained final victories. the significance of these in changing, and ultimately in reversing, one of the greatest currents of theological thought, can hardly be overestimated; not even the tide set in motion by cusa, copernicus, and galileo was more powerful to bring in a new epoch of belief. the first of these conquests relates to the antiquity of man on the earth. the fathers of the early christian church, receiving all parts of our sacred books as equally inspired, laid little, if any, less stress on the myths, legends, genealogies, and tribal, family, and personal traditions contained in the old and the new testaments, than upon the most powerful appeals, the most instructive apologues, and the most lofty poems of prophets, psalmists, and apostles. as to the age of our planet and the life of man upon it, they found in the bible a carefully recorded series of periods, extending from adam to the building of the temple at jerusalem, the length of each period being explicitly given. thus they had a biblical chronology--full, consecutive, and definite--extending from the first man created to an event of known date well within ascertained profane history; as a result, the early christian commentators arrived at conclusions varying somewhat, but in the main agreeing. some, like origen, eusebius, lactantius, clement of alexandria, and the great fathers generally of the first three centuries, dwelling especially upon the septuagint version of the scriptures, thought that man's creation took place about six thousand years before the christian era. strong confirmation of this view was found in a simple piece of purely theological reasoning: for, just as the seven candlesticks of the apocalypse were long held to prove the existence of seven heavenly bodies revolving about the earth, so it was felt that the six days of creation prefigured six thousand years during which the earth in its first form was to endure; and that, as the first adam came on the sixth day, christ, the second adam, had come at the sixth millennial period. theophilus, bishop of antioch, in the second century clinched this argument with the text, "one day is with the lord as a thousand years." on the other hand, eusebius and st. jerome, dwelling more especially upon the hebrew text, which we are brought up to revere, thought that man's origin took place at a somewhat shorter period before the christian era; and st. jerome's overwhelming authority made this the dominant view throughout western europe during fifteen centuries. the simplicity of these great fathers as regards chronology is especially reflected from the tables of eusebius. in these, moses, joshua, and bacchus,--deborah, orpheus, and the amazons,--abimelech, the sphinx, and oedipus, appear together as personages equally real, and their positions in chronology equally ascertained. at times great bitterness was aroused between those holding the longer and those holding the shorter chronology, but after all the difference between them, as we now see, was trivial; and it may be broadly stated that in the early church, "always, everywhere, and by all," it was held as certain, upon the absolute warrant of scripture, that man was created from four to six thousand years before the christian era. to doubt this, and even much less than this, was to risk damnation. st. augustine insisted that belief in the antipodes and in the longer duration of the earth than six thousand years were deadly heresies, equally hostile to scripture. philastrius, the friend of st. ambrose and st. augustine, whose fearful catalogue of heresies served as a guide to intolerance throughout the middle ages, condemned with the same holy horror those who expressed doubt as to the orthodox number of years since the beginning of the world, and those who doubted an earthquake to be the literal voice of an angry god, or who questioned the plurality of the heavens, or who gainsaid the statement that god brings out the stars from his treasures and hangs them up in the solid firmament above the earth every night. about the beginning of the seventh century isidore of seville, the great theologian of his time, took up the subject. he accepted the dominant view not only of hebrew but of all other chronologies, without anything like real criticism. the childlike faith of his system may be imagined from his summaries which follow. he tells us: "joseph lived one hundred and five years. greece began to cultivate grain." "the jews were in slavery in egypt one hundred and forty-four years. atlas discovered astrology." "joshua ruled for twenty-seven years. ericthonius yoked horses together." "othniel, forty years. cadmus introduced letters into greece." "deborah, forty years. apollo discovered the art of medicine and invented the cithara." "gideon, forty years. mercury invented the lyre and gave it to orpheus." reasoning in this general way, isidore kept well under the longer date; and, the great theological authority of southern europe having thus spoken, the question was virtually at rest throughout christendom for nearly a hundred years. early in the eighth century the venerable bede took up the problem. dwelling especially upon the received hebrew text of the old testament, he soon entangled himself in very serious difficulties; but, in spite of the great fathers of the first three centuries, he reduced the antiquity of man on the earth by nearly a thousand years, and, in spite of mutterings against him as coming dangerously near a limit which made the theological argument from the six days of creation to the six ages of the world look doubtful, his authority had great weight, and did much to fix western europe in its allegiance to the general system laid down by eusebius and jerome. in the twelfth century this belief was re-enforced by a tide of thought from a very different quarter. rabbi moses maimonides and other jewish scholars, by careful study of the hebrew text, arrived at conclusions diminishing the antiquity of man still further, and thus gave strength throughout the middle ages to the shorter chronology: it was incorporated into the sacred science of christianity; and vincent of beauvais, in his great _speculum historiale_, forming part of that still more enormous work intended to sum up all the knowledge possessed by the ages of faith, placed the creation of man at about four thousand years before our era.[252] at the reformation this view was not disturbed. the same manner of accepting the sacred text which led luther, melanchthon, and the great protestant leaders generally, to oppose the copernican theory, fixed them firmly in this biblical chronology; the keynote was sounded for them by luther when he said, "we know, on the authority of moses, that longer ago than six thousand years the world did not exist." melanchthon, more exact, fixed the creation of man at 3963 b. c. but the great christian scholars continued the old endeavour to make the time of man's origin more precise: there seems to have been a sort of fascination in the subject which developed a long array of chronologists, all weighing the minutest indications in our sacred books, until the protestant divine de vignolles, who had given forty years to the study of biblical chronology, declared in 1738 that he had gathered no less than two hundred computations based upon scripture, and no two alike. as to the roman church, about 1580 there was published, by authority of pope gregory xiii, the roman martyrology, and this, both as originally published and as revised in 1640 under pope urban viii, declared that the creation of man took place 5199 years before christ. but of all who gave themselves up to these chronological studies, the man who exerted the most powerful influence upon the dominant nations of christendom was archbishop usher. in 1650 he published his _annals of the ancient and new testaments_, and it at once became the greatest authority for all english-speaking peoples. usher was a man of deep and wide theological learning, powerful in controversy; and his careful conclusion, after years of the most profound study of the hebrew scriptures, was that man was created 4004 years before the christian era. his verdict was widely received as final; his dates were inserted in the margins of the authorized version of the english bible, and were soon practically regarded as equally inspired with the sacred text itself: to question them seriously was to risk preferment in the church and reputation in the world at large. the same adhesion to the hebrew scriptures which had influenced usher brought leading men of the older church to the same view: men who would have burned each other at the stake for their differences on other points, agreed on this: melanchthon and tostatus, lightfoot and jansen, salmeron and scaliger, petavius and kepler, inquisitors and reformers, jesuits and jansenists, priests and rabbis, stood together in the belief that the creation of man was proved by scripture to have taken place between 3900 and 4004 years before christ. in spite of the severe pressure of this line of authorities, extending from st. jerome and eusebius to usher and petavius, in favour of this scriptural chronology, even devoted christian scholars had sometimes felt obliged to revolt. the first great source of difficulty was increased knowledge regarding the egyptian monuments. as far back as the last years of the sixteenth century joseph scaliger had done what he could to lay the foundations of a more scientific treatment of chronology, insisting especially that the historical indications in persia, in babylon, and above all in egypt, should be brought to bear on the question. more than that, he had the boldness to urge that the chronological indications of the hebrew scriptures should be fully and critically discussed in the light of egyptian and other records, without any undue bias from theological considerations. his idea may well be called inspired; yet it had little effect as regards a true view of the antiquity of man, even upon himself, for the theological bias prevailed above all his reasonings, even in his own mind. well does a brilliant modern writer declare that, "among the multitude of strong men in modern times abdicating their reason at the command of their prejudices, joseph scaliger is perhaps the most striking example." early in the following century sir walter raleigh, in his _history of the world_ (1603-1616), pointed out the danger of adhering to the old system. he, too, foresaw one of the results of modern investigation, stating it in these words, which have the ring of prophetic inspiration: "for in abraham's time all the then known parts of the world were developed.... egypt had many magnificent cities,... and these not built with sticks, but of hewn stone,... which magnificence needed a parent of more antiquity than these other men have supposed." in view of these considerations raleigh followed the chronology of the septuagint version, which enabled him to give to the human race a few more years than were usually allowed. about the middle of the seventeenth century isaac vossius, one of the most eminent scholars of christendom, attempted to bring the prevailing belief into closer accordance with ascertained facts, but, save by a chosen few, his efforts were rejected. in some parts of europe a man holding new views on chronology was by no means safe from bodily harm. as an example of the extreme pressure exerted by the old theological system at times upon honest scholars, we may take the case of la peyrere, who about the middle of the seventeenth century put forth his book on the pre-adamites--an attempt to reconcile sundry well-known difficulties in scripture by claiming that man existed on earth before the time of adam. he was taken in hand at once; great theologians rushed forward to attack him from all parts of europe; within fifty years thirty-six different refutations of his arguments had appeared; the parliament of paris burned the book, and the grand vicar of the archdiocese of mechlin threw him into prison and kept him there until he was forced, not only to retract his statements, but to abjure his protestantism. in england, opposition to the growing truth was hardly less earnest. especially strong was pearson, afterward master of trinity and bishop of chester. in his treatise on the creed, published in 1659, which has remained a theologic classic, he condemned those who held the earth to be more than fifty-six hundred years old, insisted that the first man was created just six days later, declared that the egyptian records were forged, and called all christians to turn from them to "the infallible annals of the spirit of god." but, in spite of warnings like these, we see the new idea cropping out in various parts of europe. in 1672, sir john marsham published a work in which he showed himself bold and honest. after describing the heathen sources of oriental history, he turns to the christian writers, and, having used the history of egypt to show that the great church authorities were not exact, he ends one important argument with the following words: "thus the most interesting antiquities of egypt have been involved in the deepest obscurity by the very interpreters of her chronology, who have jumbled everything up (_qui omnia susque deque permiscuerunt_), so as to make them match with their own reckonings of hebrew chronology. truly a very bad example, and quite unworthy of religious writers." this sturdy protest of sir john against the dominant system and against the "jumbling" by which eusebius had endeavoured to cut down ancient chronology within safe and sound orthodox limits, had little effect. though eminent chronologists of the eighteenth century, like jackson, hales, and drummond, gave forth multitudes of ponderous volumes pleading for a period somewhat longer than that generally allowed, and insisting that the received hebrew text was grossly vitiated as regards chronology, even this poor favour was refused them; the mass of believers found it more comfortable to hold fast the faith committed to them by usher, and it remained settled that man was created about four thousand years before our era. to those who wished even greater precision, dr. john lightfoot, vice-chancellor of the university of cambridge, the great rabbinical scholar of his time, gave his famous demonstration from our sacred books that "heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water," and that "this work took place and man was created by the trinity on the twenty-third of october, 4004 b. c., at nine o'clock in the morning." this tide of theological reasoning rolled on through the eighteenth century, swollen by the biblical researches of leading commentators, catholic and protestant, until it came in much majesty and force into our own nineteenth century. at the very beginning of the century it gained new strength from various great men in the church, among whom may be especially named dr. adam clarke, who declared that, "to preclude the possibility of a mistake, the unerring spirit of god directed moses in the selection of his facts and the ascertaining of his dates." all opposition to the received view seemed broken down, and as late as 1835--indeed, as late as 1850--came an announcement in the work of one of the most eminent egyptologists, sir j. g. wilkinson, to the effect that he had modified the results he had obtained from egyptian monuments, in order that his chronology might not interfere with the received date of the deluge of noah.[256] ii. the new chronology. but all investigators were not so docile as wilkinson, and there soon came a new train of scientific thought which rapidly undermined all this theological chronology. not to speak of other noted men, we have early in the present century young, champollion, and rosellini, beginning a new epoch in the study of the egyptian monuments. nothing could be more cautious than their procedure, but the evidence was soon overwhelming in favour of a vastly longer existence of man in the nile valley than could be made to agree with even the longest duration then allowed by theologians. for, in spite of all the suppleness of men like wilkinson, it became evident that, whatever system of scriptural chronology was adopted, egypt was the seat of a flourishing civilization at a period before the "flood of noah," and that no such flood had ever interrupted it. this was bad, but worse remained behind: it was soon clear that the civilization of egypt began earlier than the time assigned for the creation of man, even according to the most liberal of the sacred chronologists. as time went on, this became more and more evident. the long duration assigned to human civilization in the fragments of manetho, the egyptian scribe at thebes in the third century b. c., was discovered to be more accordant with truth than the chronologies of the great theologians; and, as the present century has gone on, scientific results have been reached absolutely fatal to the chronological view based by the universal church upon scripture for nearly two thousand years. as is well known, the first of the egyptian kings of whom mention is made upon the monuments of the nile valley is mena, or menes. manetho had given a statement, according to which mena must have lived nearly six thousand years before the christian era. this was looked upon for a long time as utterly inadmissible, as it was so clearly at variance with the chronology of our own sacred books; but, as time went on, large fragments of the original work of manetho were more carefully studied and distinguished from corrupt transcriptions, the lists of kings at karnak, sacquarah, and the two temples at abydos were brought to light, and the lists of court architects were discovered. among all these monuments the scholar who visits egypt is most impressed by the sculptured tablets giving the lists of kings. each shows the monarch of the period doing homage to the long line of his ancestors. each of these sculptured monarchs has near him a tablet bearing his name. that great care was always taken to keep these imposing records correct is certain; the loyalty of subjects, the devotion of priests, and the family pride of kings were all combined in this; and how effective this care was, is seen in the fact that kings now known to be usurpers are carefully omitted. the lists of court architects, extending over the period from seti to darius, throw a flood of light over the other records. comparing, then, all these sources, and applying an average from the lengths of the long series of well-known reigns to the reigns preceding, the most careful and cautious scholars have satisfied themselves that the original fragments of manetho represent the work of a man honest and well informed, and, after making all allowances for discrepancies and the overlapping of reigns, it has become clear that the period known as the reign of mena must be fixed at more than three thousand years b. c. in this the great egyptologists of our time concur. mariette, the eminent french authority, puts the date at 5004 b. c.; brugsch, the leading german authority, puts it at about 4500 b. c.; and meyer, the latest and most cautious of the historians of antiquity, declares 3180 b. c. the latest possible date that can be assigned it. with these dates the foremost english authorities, sayce and flinders petrie, substantially agree. this view is also confirmed on astronomical grounds by mr. lockyer, the astronomer royal. we have it, then, as the result of a century of work by the most acute and trained egyptologists, and with the inscriptions upon the temples and papyri before them, both of which are now read with as much facility as many medieval manuscripts, that the reign of mena must be placed more than five thousand years ago. but the significance of this conclusion can not be fully understood until we bring into connection with it some other facts revealed by the egyptian monuments. the first of these is that which struck sir walter raleigh, that, even in the time of the first dynasties in the nile valley, a high civilization had already been developed. take, first, man himself: we find sculptured upon the early monuments types of the various races--egyptians, israelites, negroes, and libyans--as clearly distinguishable in these paintings and sculptures of from four to six thousand years ago as the same types are at the present day. no one can look at these sculptures upon the egyptian monuments, or even the drawings of them, as given by lepsius or prisse d' avennes, without being convinced that they indicate, even at that remote period, a difference of races so marked that long previous ages must have been required to produce it. the social condition of egypt revealed in these early monuments of art forces us to the same conclusion. those earliest monuments show that a very complex society had even then been developed. we not only have a separation between the priestly and military orders, but agriculturists, manufacturers, and traders, with a whole series of subdivisions in each of these classes. the early tombs show us sculptured and painted representations of a daily life which even then had been developed into a vast wealth and variety of grades, forms, and usages. take, next, the political and military condition. one fact out of many reveals a policy which must have been the result of long experience. just as now, at the end of the nineteenth century, the british government, having found that they can not rely upon the native egyptians for the protection of the country, are drilling the negroes from the interior of africa as soldiers, so the celebrated inscription of prince una, as far back as the sixth dynasty, speaks of the maksi or negroes levied and drilled by tens of thousands for the egyptian army. take, next, engineering. here we find very early operations in the way of canals, dikes, and great public edifices, so bold in conception and thorough in execution as to fill our greatest engineers of these days with astonishment. the quarrying, conveyance, cutting, jointing, and polishing of the enormous blocks in the interior of the great pyramid alone are the marvel of the foremost stone-workers of our century. as regards architecture, we find not only the pyramids, which date from the very earliest period of egyptian history, and which are to this hour the wonder of the world for size, for boldness, for exactness, and for skilful contrivance, but also the temples, with long ranges of colossal columns wrought in polished granite, with wonderful beauty of ornamentation, with architraves and roofs vast in size and exquisite in adjustment, which by their proportions tax the imagination, and lead the beholder to ask whether all this can be real. as to sculpture, we have not only the great sphinx of gizeh, so marvellous in its boldness and dignity, dating from the very first period of egyptian history, but we have ranges of sphinxes, heroic statues, and bas-reliefs, showing that even in the early ages this branch of art had reached an amazing development. as regards the perfection of these, lubke, the most eminent german authority on plastic art, referring to the early works in the tombs about memphis, declares that, "as monuments of the period of the fourth dynasty, they are an evidence of the high perfection to which the sculpture of the egyptians had attained." brugsch declares that "every artistic production of those early days, whether picture, writing, or sculpture, bears the stamp of the highest perfection in art." maspero, the most eminent french authority in this field, while expressing his belief that the sphinx was sculptured even before the time of mena, declares that "the art which conceived and carved this prodigious statue was a finished art--an art which had attained self-mastery and was sure of its effects"; while, among the more eminent english authorities, sayce tells us that "art is at its best in the age of the pyramid-builders," and sir james fergusson declares, "we are startled to find egyptian art nearly as perfect in the oldest periods as in any of the later." the evidence as to the high development of egyptian sculpture in the earlier dynasties becomes every day more overwhelming. what exquisite genius the early egyptian sculptors showed in their lesser statues is known to all who have seen those most precious specimens in the museum at cairo, which were wrought before the conventional type was adopted in obedience to religious considerations. in decorative and especially in ceramic art, as early as the fourth and fifth dynasties, we have vases, cups, and other vessels showing exquisite beauty of outline and a general sense of form almost if not quite equal to etruscan and grecian work of the best periods. take, next, astronomy. going back to the very earliest period of egyptian civilization, we find that the four sides of the great pyramid are adjusted to the cardinal points with the utmost precision. "the day of the equinox can be taken by observing the sun set across the face of the pyramid, and the neighbouring arabs adjust their astronomical dates by its shadow." yet this is but one out of many facts which prove that the egyptians, at the earliest period of which their monuments exist, had arrived at knowledge and skill only acquired by long ages of observation and thought. mr. lockyer, astronomer royal of great britain, has recently convinced himself, after careful examination of various ruined temples at thebes and elsewhere, that they were placed with reference to observations of stars. to state his conclusion in his own words: "there seems a very high probability that three thousand, and possibly four thousand, years before christ the egyptians had among them men with some knowledge of astronomy, and that six thousand years ago the course of the sun through the year was practically very well known, and methods had been invented by means of which in time it might be better known; and that, not very long after that, they not only considered questions relating to the sun, but began to take up other questions relating to the position and movement of the stars." the same view of the antiquity of man in the nile valley is confirmed by philologists. to use the words of max duncker: "the oldest monuments of egypt--and they are the oldest monuments in the world--exhibit the egyptian in possession of the art of writing." it is found also, by the inscriptions of the early dynasties, that the egyptian language had even at that early time been developed in all essential particulars to the highest point it ever attained. what long periods it must have required for such a development every scholar in philology can imagine. as regards medical science, we have the berlin papyrus, which, although of a later period, refers with careful specification to a medical literature of the first dynasty. as regards archaeology, the earliest known inscriptions point to still earlier events and buildings, indicating a long sequence in previous history. as to all that pertains to the history of civilization, no man of fair and open mind can go into the museums of cairo or the louvre or the british museum and look at the monuments of those earlier dynasties without seeing in them the results of a development in art, science, laws, customs, and language, which must have required a vast period before the time of mena. and this conclusion is forced upon us all the more invincibly when we consider the slow growth of ideas in the earlier stages of civilization as compared with the later--a slowness of growth which has kept the natives of many parts of the world in that earliest civilization to this hour. to this we must add the fact that egyptian civilization was especially immobile: its development into castes is but one among many evidences that it was the very opposite of a civilization developed rapidly. as to the length of the period before the time of mena, there is, of course, nothing exact. manetho gives lists of great personages before that first dynasty, and these extend over twenty-four thousand years. bunsen, one of the most learned of christian scholars, declares that not less than ten thousand years were necessary for the development of civilization up to the point where we find it in mena's time. no one can claim precision for either of these statements, but they are valuable as showing the impression of vast antiquity made upon the most competent judges by the careful study of those remains: no unbiased judge can doubt that an immensely long period of years must have been required for the development of civilization up to the state in which we there find it. the investigations in the bed of the nile confirm these views. that some unwarranted conclusions have at times been announced is true; but the fact remains that again and again rude pottery and other evidences of early stages of civilization have been found in borings at places so distant from each other, and at depths so great, that for such a range of concurring facts, considered in connection with the rate of earthy deposit by the nile, there is no adequate explanation save the existence of man in that valley thousands on thousands of years before the longest time admitted by our sacred chronologists. nor have these investigations been of a careless character. between the years 1851 and 1854, mr. horner, an extremely cautious english geologist, sank ninety-six shafts in four rows at intervals of eight english miles, at right angles to the nile, in the neighbourhood of memphis. in these pottery was brought up from various depths, and beneath the statue of rameses ii at memphis from a depth of thirty-nine feet. at the rate of the nile deposit a careful estimate has declared this to indicate a period of over eleven thousand years. so eminent a german authority, in geography as peschel characterizes objections to such deductions as groundless. however this may be, the general results of these investigations, taken in connection with the other results of research, are convincing. and, finally, as if to make assurance doubly sure, a series of archaeologists of the highest standing, french, german, english, and american, have within the past twenty years discovered relics of a savage period, of vastly earlier date than the time of mena, prevailing throughout egypt. these relics have been discovered in various parts of the country, from cairo to luxor, in great numbers. they are the same sort of prehistoric implements which prove to us the early existence of man in so many other parts of the world at a geological period so remote that the figures given by our sacred chronologists are but trivial. the last and most convincing of these discoveries, that of flint implements in the drift, far down below the tombs of early kings at thebes, and upon high terraces far above the present bed of the nile, will be referred to later. but it is not in egypt alone that proofs are found of the utter inadequacy of the entire chronological system derived from our sacred books. these results of research in egypt are strikingly confirmed by research in assyria and babylonia. prof. sayce exhibits various proofs of this. to use his own words regarding one of these proofs: "on the shelves of the british museum you may see huge sun-dried bricks, on which are stamped the names and titles of kings who erected or repaired the temples where they have been found.... they must... have reigned before the time when, according to the margins of our bibles, the flood of noah was covering the earth and reducing such bricks as these to their primeval slime." this conclusion was soon placed beyond a doubt. the lists of king's and collateral inscriptions recovered from the temples of the great valley between the tigris and euphrates, and the records of astronomical observations in that region, showed that there, too, a powerful civilization had grown up at a period far earlier than could be made consistent with our sacred chronology. the science of assyriology was thus combined with egyptology to furnish one more convincing proof that, precious as are the moral and religious truths in our sacred books and the historical indications which they give us, these truths and indications are necessarily inclosed in a setting of myth and legend.[264] chapter vii. the antiquity of man and prehistoric archaeology i. the thunder-stones. while the view of chronology based upon the literal acceptance of scripture texts was thus shaken by researches in egypt, another line of observation and thought was slowly developed, even more fatal to the theological view. from a very early period there had been dug from the earth, in various parts of the world, strangely shaped masses of stone, some rudely chipped, some polished: in ancient times the larger of these were very often considered as thunderbolts, the smaller as arrows, and all of them as weapons which had been hurled by the gods and other supernatural personages. hence a sort of sacredness attached to them. in chaldea, they were built into the wall of temples; in egypt, they were strung about the necks of the dead. in india, fine specimens are to this day seen upon altars, receiving prayers and sacrifices. naturally these beliefs were brought into the christian mythology and adapted to it. during the middle ages many of these well-wrought stones were venerated as weapons, which during the "war in heaven" had been used in driving forth satan and his hosts; hence in the eleventh century an emperor of the east sent to the emperor of the west a "heaven axe"; and in the twelfth century a bishop of rennes asserted the value of thunder-stones as a divinelyappointed means of securing success in battle, safety on the sea, security against thunder, and immunity from unpleasant dreams. even as late as the seventeenth century a french ambassador brought a stone hatchet, which still exists in the museum at nancy, as a present to the prince-bishop of verdun, and claimed for it health-giving virtues. in the last years of the sixteenth century michael mercati tried to prove that the "thunder-stones" were weapons or implements of early races of men; but from some cause his book was not published until the following century, when other thinkers had begun to take up the same idea, and then it had to contend with a theory far more accordant with theologic modes of reasoning in science. this was the theory of the learned tollius, who in 1649 told the world that these chipped or smoothed stones were "generated in the sky by a fulgurous exhalation conglobed in a cloud by the circumposed humour." but about the beginning of the eighteenth century a fact of great importance was quietly established. in the year 1715 a large pointed weapon of black flint was found in contact with the bones of an elephant, in a gravel bed near gray's inn lane, in london. the world in general paid no heed to this: if the attention of theologians was called to it, they dismissed it summarily with a reference to the deluge of noah; but the specimen was labelled, the circumstances regarding it were recorded, and both specimen and record carefully preserved. in 1723 jussieu addressed the french academy on _the origin and uses of thunder-stones_. he showed that recent travellers from various parts of the world had brought a number of weapons and other implements of stone to france, and that they were essentially similar to what in europe had been known as "thunder-stones." a year later this fact was clinched into the scientific mind of france by the jesuit lafitau, who published a work showing the similarity between the customs of aborigines then existing in other lands and those of the early inhabitants of europe. so began, in these works of jussieu and lafitau, the science of comparative ethnography. but it was at their own risk and peril that thinkers drew from these discoveries any conclusions as to the antiquity of man. montesquieu, having ventured to hint, in an early edition of his _persian letters_, that the world might be much older than had been generally supposed, was soon made to feel danger both to his book and to himself, so that in succeeding editions he suppressed the passage. in 1730 mahudel presented a paper to the french academy of inscriptions on the so-called "thunder-stones," and also presented a series of plates which showed that these were stone implements, which must have been used at an early period in human history. in 1778 buffon, in his _epoques de la nature_, intimated his belief that "thunder-stones" were made by early races of men; but he did not press this view, and the reason for his reserve was obvious enough: he had already one quarrel with the theologians on his hands, which had cost him dear--public retraction and humiliation. his declaration, therefore, attracted little notice. in the year 1800 another fact came into the minds of thinking men in england. in that year john frere presented to the london society of antiquaries sundry flint implements found in the clay beds near hoxne: that they were of human make was certain, and, in view of the undisturbed depths in which they were found, the theory was suggested that the men who made them must have lived at a very ancient geological epoch; yet even this discovery and theory passed like a troublesome dream, and soon seemed to be forgotten. about twenty years later dr. buckland published a discussion of the subject, in the light of various discoveries in the drift and in caves. it received wide attention, but theology was soothed by his temporary concession that these striking relics of human handiwork, associated with the remains of various extinct animals, were proofs of the deluge of noah. in 1823 boue, of the vienna academy of sciences, showed to cuvier sundry human bones found deep in the alluvial deposits of the upper rhine, and suggested that they were of an early geological period; this cuvier virtually, if not explicitly, denied. great as he was in his own field, he was not a great geologist; he, in fact, led geology astray for many years. moreover, he lived in a time of reaction; it was the period of the restored bourbons, of the voltairean king louis xviii, governing to please orthodoxy. boue's discovery was, therefore, at first opposed, then enveloped in studied silence. cuvier evidently thought, as voltaire had felt under similar circumstances, that "among wolves one must howl a little"; and his leading disciple, elie de beaumont, who succeeded, him in the sway over geological science in france, was even more opposed to the new view than his great master had been. boue's discoveries were, therefore, apparently laid to rest forever.[269] in 1825 kent's cavern, near torquay, was explored by the rev. mr. mcenery, a roman catholic clergyman, who seems to have been completely overawed by orthodox opinion in england and elsewhere; for, though he found human bones and implements mingled with remains of extinct animals, he kept his notes in manuscript, and they were only brought to light more than thirty years later by mr. vivian. the coming of charles x, the last of the french bourbons, to the throne, made the orthodox pressure even greater. it was the culmination of the reactionary period--the time in france when a clerical committee, sitting at the tuileries, took such measures as were necessary to hold in check all science that was not perfectly "safe"; the time in austria when kaiser franz made his famous declaration to sundry professors, that what he wanted of them was simply to train obedient subjects, and that those who did not make this their purpose would be dismissed; the time in germany when nicholas of russia and the princelings and ministers under his control, from the king of prussia downward, put forth all their might in behalf of "scriptural science"; the time in italy when a scientific investigator, arriving at any conclusion distrusted by the church, was sure of losing his place and in danger of losing his liberty; the time in england when what little science was taught was held in due submission to archdeacon paley; the time in the united states when the first thing essential in science was, that it be adjusted to the ideas of revival exhorters. yet men devoted to scientific truth laboured on; and in 1828 tournal, of narbonne, discovered in the cavern of bize specimens of human industry, with a fragment of a human skeleton, among bones of extinct animals. in the following year christol published accounts of his excavations in the caverns of gard; he had found in position, and under conditions which forbade the idea of after-disturbance, human remains mixed with bones of the extinct hyena of the early quaternary period. little general notice was taken of this, for the reactionary orthodox atmosphere involved such discoveries in darkness. but in the french revolution of 1830 the old politico-theological system collapsed: charles x and his advisers fled for their lives; the other continental monarchs got glimpses of new light; the priesthood in charge of education were put on their good behaviour for a time, and a better era began. under the constitutional monarchy of the house of orleans in france and belgium less attention was therefore paid by government to the saving of souls; and we have in rapid succession new discoveries of remains of human industry, and even of human skeletons so mingled with bones of extinct animals as to give additional proofs that the origin of man was at a period vastly earlier than any which theologians had dreamed of. a few years later the reactionary clerical influence against science in this field rallied again. schmerling in 1833 had explored a multitude of caverns in belgium, especially at engis and engihoul, and had found human skulls and bones closely associated with bones of extinct animals, such as the cave bear, hyena, elephant, and rhinoceros, while mingled with these were evidences of human workmanship in the shape of chipped flint implements; discoveries of a similar sort had been made by de serres in france and by lund in brazil; but, at least as far as continental europe was concerned, these discoveries were received with much coolness both by catholic leaders of opinion in france and belgium and by protestant leaders in england and holland. schmerling himself appears to have been overawed, and gave forth a sort of apologetic theory, half scientific, half theologic, vainly hoping to satisfy the clerical side. nor was it much better in england. sir charles lyell, so devoted a servant of prehistoric research thirty years later, was still holding out against it on the scientific side; and, as to the theological side, it was the period when that great churchman, dean cockburn, was insulting geologists from the pulpit of york minster, and the rev. mellor brown denouncing geology as "a black art," "a forbidden province" and when, in america, prof. moses stuart and others like him were belittling the work of benjamin silliman and edward hitchcock. in 1840 godwin austin presented to the royal geological society an account of his discoveries in kent's cavern, near torquay, and especially of human bones and implements mingled with bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, cave bear, hyena, and other extinct animals; yet this memoir, like that of mcenery fifteen years before, found an atmosphere so unfavourable that it was not published. ii. the flint weapons and implements. at the middle of the nineteenth century came the beginning of a new epoch in science--an epoch when all these earlier discoveries were to be interpreted by means of investigations in a different field: for, in 1847, a man previously unknown to the world at large, boucher de perthes, published at paris the first volume of his work on _celtic and antediluvian antiquities_, and in this he showed engravings of typical flint implements and weapons, of which he had discovered thousands upon thousands in the high drift beds near abbeville, in northern france. the significance of this discovery was great indeed--far greater than boucher himself at first supposed. the very title of his book showed that he at first regarded these implements and weapons as having belonged to men overwhelmed at the deluge of noah; but it was soon seen that they were something very different from proofs of the literal exactness of genesis: for they were found in terraces at great heights above the river somme, and, under any possible theory having regard to fact, must have been deposited there at a time when the river system of northern france was vastly different from anything known within the historic period. the whole discovery indicated a series of great geological changes since the time when these implements were made, requiring cycles of time compared to which the space allowed by the orthodox chronologists was as nothing. his work was the result of over ten years of research and thought. year after year a force of men under his direction had dug into these high-terraced gravel deposits of the river somme, and in his book he now gave, in the first full form, the results of his labour. so far as france was concerned, he was met at first by what he calls "a conspiracy of silence," and then by a contemptuous opposition among orthodox scientists, at the head of whom stood elie de beaumont. this heavy, sluggish opposition seemed immovable: nothing that boucher could do or say appeared to lighten the pressure of the orthodox theological opinion behind it; not even his belief that these fossils were remains of men drowned at the deluge of noah, and that they were proofs of the literal exactness of genesis seemed to help the matter. his opponents felt instinctively that such discoveries boded danger to the accepted view, and they were right: boucher himself soon saw the folly of trying to account for them by the orthodox theory. and it must be confessed that not a little force was added to the opposition by certain characteristics of boucher de perthes himself. gifted, far-sighted, and vigorous as he was, he was his own worst enemy. carried away by his own discoveries, he jumped to the most astounding conclusions. the engravings in the later volume of his great work, showing what he thought to be human features and inscriptions upon some of the flint implements, are worthy of a comic almanac; and at the national museum of archaeology at st. germain, beneath the shelves bearing the remains which he discovered, which mark the beginning of a new epoch in science, are drawers containing specimens hardly worthy of a penny museum, but from which he drew the most unwarranted inferences as to the language, religion, and usages of prehistoric man. boucher triumphed none the less. among his bitter opponents at first was dr. rigollot, who in 1855, searching earnestly for materials to refute the innovator, dug into the deposits of st. acheul--and was converted: for he found implements similar to those of abbeville, making still more certain the existence of man during the drift period. so, too, gaudry a year later made similar discoveries. but most important was the evidence of the truth which now came from other parts of france and from other countries. the french leaders in geological science had been held back not only by awe of cuvier but by recollections of scheuchzer. ridicule has always been a serious weapon in france, and the ridicule which finally overtook the supporters of the attempt of scheuchzer, mazurier, and others, to square geology with genesis, was still remembered. from the great body of french geologists, therefore, boucher secured at first no aid. his support came from the other side of the channel. the most eminent english geologists, such as falconer, prestwich, and lyell, visited the beds at abbeville and st. acheul, convinced themselves that the discoveries of boucher, rigollot, and their colleagues were real, and then quietly but firmly told england the truth. and now there appeared a most effective ally in france. the arguments used against boucher de perthes and some of the other early investigators of bone caves had been that the implements found might have been washed about and turned over by great floods, and therefore that they might be of a recent period; but in 1861 edward lartet published an account of his own excavations at the grotto of aurignac, and the proof that man had existed in the time of the quaternary animals was complete. this grotto had been carefully sealed in prehistoric times by a stone at its entrance; no interference from disturbing currents of water had been possible; and lartet found, in place, bones of eight out of nine of the main species of animals which characterize the quaternary period in europe; and upon them marks of cutting implements, and in the midst of them coals and ashes. close upon these came the excavations at eyzies by lartet and his english colleague, christy. in both these men there was a carefulness in making researches and a sobriety in stating results which converted many of those who had been repelled by the enthusiasm of boucher de perthes. the two colleagues found in the stony deposits made by the water dropping from the roof of the cave at eyzies the bones of numerous animals extinct or departed to arctic regions--one of these a vertebra of a reindeer with a flint lance-head still fast in it, and with these were found evidences of fire. discoveries like these were thoroughly convincing; yet there still remained here and there gainsayers in the supposed interest of scripture, and these, in spite of the convincing array of facts, insisted that in some way, by some combination of circumstances, these bones of extinct animals of vastly remote periods might have been brought into connection with all these human bones and implements of human make in all these different places, refusing to admit that these ancient relics of men and animals were of the same period. such gainsayers virtually adopted the reasoning of quaint old persons, who, having maintained that god created the world "about five thousand sixe hundred and odde yeares agoe," added, "and if they aske what god was doing before this short number of yeares, we answere with st. augustine replying to such curious questioners, that he was framing hell for them." but a new class of discoveries came to silence this opposition. at la madeleine in france, at the kessler cave in switzerland, and at various other places, were found rude but striking carvings and engravings on bone and stone representing sundry specimens of those long-vanished species; and these specimens, or casts of them, were soon to be seen in all the principal museums. they showed the hairy mammoth, the cave bear, and various other animals of the quaternary period, carved rudely but vigorously by contemporary men; and, to complete the significance of these discoveries, travellers returning from the icy regions of north america brought similar carvings of animals now existing in those regions, made by the eskimos during their long arctic winters to-day.[275] as a result of these discoveries and others like them, showing that man was not only contemporary with long-extinct animals of past geological epochs, but that he had already developed into a stage of culture above pure savagery, the tide of thought began to turn. especially was this seen in 1863, when lyell published the first edition of his _geological evidence of the antiquity of man_; and the fact that he had so long opposed the new ideas gave force to the clear and conclusive argument which led him to renounce his early scientific beliefs. research among the evidences of man's existence in the early quaternary, and possibly in the tertiary period, was now pressed forward along the whole line. in 1864 gabriel mortillet founded his review devoted to this subject; and in 1865 the first of a series of scientific congresses devoted to such researches was held in italy. these investigations went on vigorously in all parts of france and spread rapidly to other countries. the explorations which dupont began in 1864, in the caves of belgium, gave to the museum at brussels eighty thousand flint implements, forty thousand bones of animals of the quaternary period, and a number of human skulls and bones found mingled with these remains. from germany, italy, spain, america, india, and egypt similar results were reported. especially noteworthy were the further explorations of the caves and drift throughout the british islands. the discovery by colonel wood, in 1861, of flint tools in the same strata with bones of the earlier forms of the rhinoceros, was but typical of many. a thorough examination of the caverns of brixham and torquay, by pengelly and others, made it still more evident that man had existed in the early quaternary period. the existence of a period before the glacial epoch or between different glacial epochs in england, when the englishman was a savage, using rude stone tools, was then fully ascertained, and, what was more significant, there were clearly shown a gradation and evolution even in the history of that period. it was found that this ancient stone epoch showed progress and development. in the upper layers of the caves, with remains of the reindeer, who, although he has migrated from these regions, still exists in more northern climates, were found stone implements revealing some little advance in civilization; next below these, sealed up in the stalagmite, came, as a rule, another layer, in which the remains of reindeer were rare and those of the mammoth more frequent, the implements found in this stratum being less skilfully made than those in the upper and more recent layers; and, finally, in the lowest levels, near the floors of these ancient caverns, with remains of the cave bear and others of the most ancient extinct animals, were found stone implements evidently of a yet ruder and earlier stage of human progress. no fairly unprejudiced man can visit the cave and museum at torquay without being convinced that there were a gradation and an evolution in these beginnings of human civilization. the evidence is complete; the masses of breccia taken from the cave, with the various soils, implements, and bones carefully kept in place, put this progress beyond a doubt. all this indicated a great antiquity for the human race, but in it lay the germs of still another great truth, even more important and more serious in its consequences to the older theologic view, which will be discussed in the following chapter. but new evidences came in, showing a yet greater antiquity of man. remains of animals were found in connection with human remains, which showed not only that man was living in times more remote than the earlier of the new investigators had dared dream, but that some of these early periods of his existence must have been of immense length, embracing climatic changes betokening different geological periods; for with remains of fire and human implements and human bones were found not only bones of the hairy mammoth and cave bear, woolly rhinoceros, and reindeer, which could only have been deposited there in a time of arctic cold, but bones of the hyena, hippopotamus, sabre-toothed tiger, and the like, which could only have been deposited when there was in these regions a torrid climate. the conjunction of these remains clearly showed that man had lived in england early enough and long enough to pass through times when there was arctic cold and times when there was torrid heat; times when great glaciers stretched far down into england and indeed into the continent, and times whe england had a land connection with the european continent, and the european continent with africa, allowing tropical animals to migrate freely from africa to the middle regions of england. the question of the origin of man at a period vastly earlier than the sacred chronologists permitted was thus absolutely settled, but among the questions regarding the existence of man at a period yet more remote, the drift period, there was one which for a time seemed to give the champions of science some difficulty. the orthodox leaders in the time of boucher de perthes, and for a considerable time afterward, had a weapon of which they made vigorous use: the statement that no human bones had yet been discovered in the drift. the supporters of science naturally answered that few if any other bones as small as those of man had been found, and that this fact was an additional proof of the great length of the period since man had lived with the extinct animals; for, since specimens of human workmanship proved man's existence as fully as remains of his bones could do, the absence or even rarity of human and other small bones simply indicated the long periods of time required for dissolving them away. yet boucher, inspired by the genius he had already shown, and filled with the spirit of prophecy, declared that human bones would yet be found in the midst of the flint implements, and in 1863 he claimed that this prophecy had been fulfilled by the discovery at moulin quignon of a portion of a human jaw deep in the early quaternary deposits. but his triumph was short-lived: the opposition ridiculed his discovery; they showed that he had offered a premium to his workmen for the discovery of human remains, and they naturally drew the inference that some tricky labourer had deceived him. the result of this was that the men of science felt obliged to acknowledge that the moulin quignon discovery was not proven. but ere long human bones were found in the deposits of the early quaternary period, or indeed of an earlier period, in various other parts of the world, and the question regarding the moulin quignon relic was of little importance. we have seen that researches regarding the existence of prehistoric man in england and on the continent were at first mainly made in the caverns; but the existence of man in the earliest quaternary period was confirmed on both sides of the english channel, in a way even more striking, by the close examination of the drift and early gravel deposits. the results arrived at by boucher de perthes were amply confirmed in england. rude stone implements were found in terraces a hundred feet and more above the levels at which various rivers of great britain now flow, and under circumstances which show that, at the time when they were deposited, the rivers of great britain in many cases were entirely different from those of the present period, and formed parts of the river system of the european continent. researches in the high terraces above the thames and the ouse, as well as at other points in great britain, placed beyond a doubt the fact that man existed on the british islands at a time when they were connected by solid land with the continent, and made it clear that, within the period of the existence of man in northern europe, a large portion of the british islands had been sunk to depths between fifteen hundred and twenty-five hundred feet beneath the northern ocean,--had risen again from the water,--had formed part of the continent of europe, and had been in unbroken connection with africa, so that elephants, bears, tigers, lions, the rhinoceros and hippopotamus, of species now mainly extinct, had left their bones in the same deposits with human implements as far north as yorkshire. moreover, connected with this fact came in the new conviction, forced upon geologists by the more careful examination of the earth and its changes, that such elevations and depressions of great britain and other parts of the world were not necessarily the results of sudden cataclysms, but generally of slow processes extending through vast cycles of years--processes such as are now known to be going on in various parts of the world. thus it was that the six or seven thousand years allowed by the most liberal theologians of former times were seen more and more clearly to be but a mere nothing in the long succession of ages since the appearance of man. confirmation of these results was received from various other parts of the world. in africa came the discovery of flint implements deep in the hard gravel of the nile valley at luxor and on the high hills behind esneh. in america the discoveries at trenton, n. j., and at various places in delaware, ohio, minnesota, and elsewhere, along the southern edge of the drift of the glacial epochs, clinched the new scientific truth yet more firmly; and the statement made by an eminent american authority is, that "man was on this continent when the climate and ice of greenland extended to the mouth of new york harbour." the discoveries of prehistoric remains on the pacific coast, and especially in british columbia, finished completely the last chance at a reasonable contention by the adherents of the older view. as to these investigations on the pacific slope of the united states, the discoveries of whitney and others in california had been so made and announced that the judgment of scientific men regarding them was suspended until the visit of perhaps the greatest living authority in his department, alfred russel wallace, in 1887. he confirmed the view of prof. whitney and others with the statement that "both the actual remains and works of man found deep under the lava-flows of pliocene age show that he existed in the new world at least as early as in the old." to this may be added the discoveries in british columbia, which prove that, since man existed in these regions, "valleys have been filled up by drift from the waste of mountains to a depth in some cases of fifteen hundred feet; this covered by a succession of tuffs, ashes, and lava-streams from volcanoes long since extinct, and finally cut down by the present rivers through beds of solid basalt, and through this accumulation of lavas and gravels." the immense antiquity of the human remains in the gravels of the pacific coast is summed up by a most eminent english authority and declared to be proved, "first, by the present river systems being of subsequent date, sometimes cutting through them and their superincumbent lava-cap to a depth of two thousand feet; secondly, by the great denudation that has taken place since they were deposited, for they sometimes lie on the summits of mountains six thousand feet high; thirdly, by the fact that the sierra nevada has been partly elevated since their formation."[280] as an important supplement to these discoveries of ancient implements came sundry comparisons made by eminent physiologists between human skulls and bones found in different places and under circumstances showing vast antiquity. human bones had been found under such circumstances as early as 1835 at cannstadt near stuttgart, and in 1856 in the neanderthal near dusseldorf; but in more recent searches they had been discovered in a multitude of places, especially in germany, france, belgium, england, the caucasus, africa, and north and south america. comparison of these bones showed that even in that remote quaternary period there were great differences of race, and here again came in an argument for the yet earlier existence of man on the earth; for long previous periods must have been required to develop such racial differences. considerations of this kind gave a new impulse to the belief that man's existence might even date back into the tertiary period. the evidence for this earlier origin of man was ably summed up, not only by its brilliant advocate, mortillet, but by a former opponent, one of the most conservative of modern anthropologists, quatrefages; and the conclusion arrived at by both was, that man did really exist in the tertiary period. the acceptance of this conclusion was also seen in the more recent work of alfred russel wallace, who, though very cautious and conservative, placed the origin of man not only in the tertiary period, but in an earlier stage of it than most had dared assign--even in the miocene. the first thing raising a strong presumption, if not giving proof, that man existed in the tertiary, was the fact that from all explored parts of the world came in more and more evidence that in the earlier quaternary man existed in different, strongly marked races and in great numbers. from all regions which geologists had explored, even from those the most distant and different from each other, came this same evidence--from northern europe to southern africa; from france to china; from new jersey to british columbia; from british columbia to peru. the development of man in such numbers and in so many different regions, with such differences of race and at so early a period, must have required a long previous time. this argument was strengthened by discoveries of bones bearing marks apparently made by cutting instruments, in the tertiary formations of france and italy, and by the discoveries of what were claimed to be flint implements by the abbe bourgeois in france, and of implements and human bones by prof. capellini in italy. on the other hand, some of the more cautious men of science are still content to say that the existence of man in the tertiary period is not yet proven. as to his existence throughout the quaternary epoch, no new proofs are needed; even so determined a supporter of the theological side as the duke of argyll has been forced to yield to the evidence. of attempts to make an exact chronological statement throwing light on the length of the various prehistoric periods, the most notable have been those by m. morlot, on the accumulated strata of the lake of geneva; by gillieron, on the silt of lake neufchatel; by horner, in the delta deposits of egypt; and by riddle, in the delta of the mississippi. but while these have failed to give anything like an exact result, all these investigations together point to the central truth, so amply established, of the vast antiquity of man, and the utter inadequacy of the chronology given in our sacred books. the period of man's past life upon our planet, which has been fixed by the universal church, "always, everywhere, and by all," is thus perfectly proved to be insignificant compared with those vast geological epochs during which man is now known to have existed.[283] chapter viii. the "fall of man" and anthropology in the previous chapters we have seen how science, especially within the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has thoroughly changed the intelligent thought of the world in regard to the antiquity of man upon our planet; and how the fabric built upon the chronological indications in our sacred books--first, by the early fathers of the church, afterward by the medieval doctors, and finally by the reformers and modern orthodox chronologists--has virtually disappeared before an entirely different view forced upon us, especially by egyptian and assyrian studies, as well as by geology and archeology. in this chapter i purpose to present some outlines of the work of anthropology, especially as assisted by ethnology, in showing what the evolution of human civilization has been. here, too, the change from the old theological view based upon the letter of our sacred books to the modern scientific view based upon evidence absolutely irrefragable is complete. here, too, we are at the beginning of a vast change in the basis and modes of thought upon man--a change even more striking than that accomplished by copernicus and galileo, when they substituted for a universe in which sun and planets revolved about the earth a universe in which the earth is but the merest grain or atom revolving with other worlds, larger and smaller, about the sun; and all these forming but one among innumerable systems. ever since the beginning of man's effective thinking upon the great problems around him, two antagonistic views have existed regarding the life of the human race upon earth. the first of these is the belief that man was created "in the beginning" a perfect being, endowed with the highest moral and intellectual powers, but that there came a "fall," and, as its result, the entrance into the world of evil, toil, sorrow, and death. nothing could be more natural than such an explanation of the existence of evil, in times when men saw everywhere miracle and nowhere law. it is, under such circumstances, by far the most easy of explanations, for it is in accordance with the appearances of things: men adopted it just as naturally as they adopted the theory that the almighty hangs up the stars as lights in the solid firmament above the earth, or hides the sun behind a mountain at night, or wheels the planets around the earth, or flings comets as "signs and wonders" to scare a wicked world, or allows evil spirits to control thunder, lightning, and storm, and to cause diseases of body and mind, or opens the "windows of heaven" to let down "the waters that be above the heavens," and thus to give rain upon the earth. a belief, then, in a primeval period of innocence and perfection--moral, intellectual, and physical--from which men for some fault fell, is perfectly in accordance with what we should expect. among the earliest known records of our race we find this view taking shape in the chaldean legends of war between the gods, and of a fall of man; both of which seemed necessary to explain the existence of evil. in greek mythology perhaps the best-known statement was made by hesiod: to him it was revealed, regarding the men of the most ancient times, that they were at first "a golden race," that "as gods they were wont to live, with a life void of care, without labour and trouble; nor was wretched old age at all impending; but ever did they delight themselves out of the reach of all ills, and they died as if overcome by sleep; all blessings were theirs: of its own will the fruitful field would bear them fruit, much and ample, and they gladly used to reap the labours of their hands in quietness along with many good things, being rich in flocks and true to the blessed gods." but there came a "fall," caused by human curiosity. pandora, the first woman created, received a vase which, by divine command, was to remain closed; but she was tempted to open it, and troubles, sorrow, and disease escaped into the world, hope alone remaining. so, too, in roman mythological poetry the well-known picture by ovid is but one among the many exhibitions of this same belief in a primeval golden age--a saturnian cycle; one of the constantly recurring attempts, so universal and so natural in the early history of man, to account for the existence of evil, care, and toil on earth by explanatory myths and legends. this view, growing out of the myths, legends, and theologies of earlier peoples, we also find embodied in the sacred tradition of the jews, and especially in one of the documents which form the impressive poem beginning the books attributed to moses. as to the christian church, no word of its blessed founder indicates that it was committed by him to this theory, or that he even thought it worthy of his attention. how, like so many other dogmas never dreamed of by jesus of nazareth and those who knew him best, it was developed, it does not lie within the province of this chapter to point out; nor is it worth our while to dwell upon its evolution in the early church, in the middle ages, at the reformation, and in various branches of the protestant church: suffice it that, though among english-speaking nations by far the most important influence in its favour has come from milton's inspiration rather than from that of older sacred books, no doctrine has been more universally accepted, "always, everywhere, and by all," from the earliest fathers of the church down to the present hour. on the other hand appeared at an early period the opposite view--that mankind, instead of having fallen from a high intellectual, moral, and religious condition, has slowly risen from low and brutal beginnings. in greece, among the philosophers contemporary with socrates, we find critias depicting a rise of man, from a time when he was beastlike and lawless, through a period when laws were developed, to a time when morality received enforcement from religion; but among all the statements of this theory the most noteworthy is that given by lucretius in his great poem on _the nature of things_. despite its errors, it remains among the most remarkable examples of prophetic insight in the history of our race. the inspiration of lucretius gave him almost miraculous glimpses of truth; his view of the development of civilization from the rudest beginnings to the height of its achievements is a wonderful growth, rooted in observation and thought, branching forth into a multitude of striking facts and fancies; and among these is the statement regarding the sequence of inventions: "man's earliest arms were fingers, teeth, and nails, and stones and fragments from the branching woods; then copper next; and last, as latest traced, the tyrant, iron." thus did the poet prophesy one of the most fruitful achievements of modern science: the discovery of that series of epochs which has been so carefully studied in our century. very striking, also, is the statement of horace, though his idea is evidently derived from lucretius. he dwells upon man's first condition on earth as low and bestial, and pictures him lurking in caves, progressing from the use of his fists and nails, first to clubs, then to arms which he had learned to forge, and, finally, to the invention of the names of things, to literature, and to laws.[287] during the mediaeval ages of faith this view was almost entirely obscured, and at the reformation it seemed likely to remain so. typical of the simplicity of belief in "the fall" cherished among the reformers is luther's declaration regarding adam and eve. he tells us, "they entered into the garden about noon, and having a desire to eat, she took the apple; then came the fall--according to our account at about two o'clock." but in the revival of learning the old eclipsed truth reappeared, and in the first part of the seventeenth century we find that, among the crimes for which vanini was sentenced at toulouse to have his tongue torn out and to be burned alive, was his belief that there is a gradation extending upward from the lowest to the highest form of created beings. yet, in the same century, the writings of bodin, bacon, descartes, and pascal were evidently undermining the old idea of "the fall." bodin especially, brilliant as were his services to orthodoxy, argued lucidly against the doctrine of general human deterioration. early in the eighteenth century vico presented the philosophy of history as an upward movement of man out of animalism and barbarism. this idea took firm hold upon human thought, and in the following centuries such men as lessing and turgot gave new force to it. the investigations of the last forty years have shown that lucretius and horace were inspired prophets: what they saw by the exercise of reason illumined by poetic genius, has been now thoroughly based upon facts carefully ascertained and arranged--until thomsen and nilsson, the northern archaeologists, have brought these prophecies to evident fulfilment, by presenting a scientific classification dividing the age of prehistoric man in various parts of the world between an old stone period, a new stone period, a period of beaten copper, a period of bronze, and a period of iron, and arraying vast masses of facts from all parts of the world, fitting thoroughly into each other, strengthening each other, and showing beyond a doubt that, instead of a _fall_, there has been a _rise_ of man, from the earliest indications in the quaternary, or even, possibly, in the tertiary period.[288] the first blow at the fully developed doctrine of "the fall" came, as we have seen, from geology. according to that doctrine, as held quite generally from its beginnings among the fathers and doctors of the primitive church down to its culmination in the minds of great protestants like john wesley, the statement in our sacred books that "death entered the world by sin" was taken as a historic fact, necessitating the conclusion that, before the serpent persuaded eve to eat of the forbidden fruit, death on our planet was unknown. naturally, when geology revealed, in the strata of a period long before the coming of man on earth, a vast multitude of carnivorous tribes fitted to destroy their fellow-creatures on land and sea, and within the fossilized skeletons of many of these the partially digested remains of animals, this doctrine was too heavy to be carried, and it was quietly dropped. but about the middle of the nineteenth century the doctrine of the rise of man as opposed to the doctrine of his "fall" received a great accession of strength from a source most unexpected. as we saw in the last chapter, the facts proving the great antiquity of man foreshadowed a new and even more remarkable idea regarding him. we saw, it is true, that the opponents of boucher de perthes, while they could not deny his discovery of human implements in the drift, were successful in securing a verdict of "not prove " as regarded his discovery of human bones; but their triumph was short-lived. many previous discoveries, little thought of up to that time, began to be studied, and others were added which resulted not merely in confirming the truth regarding the antiquity of man, but in establishing another doctrine which the opponents of science regarded with vastly greater dislike--the doctrine that man has not fallen from an original high estate in which he was created about six thousand years ago, but that, from a period vastly earlier than any warranted by the sacred chronologists, he has been, in spite of lapses and deteriorations, rising. a brief review of this new growth of truth may be useful. as early as 1835 prof. jaeger had brought out from a quantity of quaternary remains dug up long before at cannstadt, near stuttgart, a portion of a human skull, apparently of very low type. a battle raged about it for a time, but this finally subsided, owing to uncertainties arising from the circumstances of the discovery. in 1856, in the neanderthal, near dusseldorf, among quaternary remains gathered on the floor of a grotto, another skull was found bearing the same evidence of a low human type. as in the case of the cannstadt skull, this again was fiercely debated, and finally the questions regarding it were allowed to remain in suspense. but new discoveries were made: at eguisheim, at brux, at spy, and elsewhere, human skulis were found of a similarly low type; and, while each of the earlier discoveries was open to debate, and either, had no other been discovered, might have been considered an abnormal specimen, the combination of all these showed conclusively that not only had a race of men existed at that remote period, but that it was of a type as low as the lowest, perhaps below the lowest, now known. research was now redoubled, and, as a result, human skulls and complete skeletons of various types began to be discovered in the ancient deposits of many other parts of the world, and especially in france, belgium, germany, the caucasus, africa, and north and south america. but soon began to emerge from all these discoveries a fact of enormous importance. the skulls and bones found at cro magnon, solutre, furfooz, grenelle, and elsewhere, were compared, and it was thus made certain that various races had already appeared and lived in various grades of civilization, even in those exceedingly remote epochs; that even then there were various strata of humanity ranging from races of a very low to those of a very high type; and that upon any theory--certainly upon the theory of the origin of mankind from a single pair--two things were evident: first, that long, slow processes during vast periods of time must have been required for the differentiation of these races, and for the evolution of man up to the point where the better specimens show him, certainly in the early quaternary and perhaps in the tertiary period; and, secondly, that there had been from the first appearance of man, of which we have any traces, an _upward_ tendency[291] this second conclusion, the upward tendency of man from low beginnings, was made more and more clear by bringing into relations with these remains of human bodies and of extinct animals the remains of human handiwork. as stated in the last chapter, the river drift and bone caves in great britain, france, and other parts of the world, revealed a progression, even in the various divisions of the earliest stone period; for, beginning at the very lowest strata of these remains, on the floors of the caverns, associated mainly with the bones of extinct animals, such as the cave bear, the hairy elephant, and the like, were the rudest implements then, in strata above these, sealed in the stalagmite of the cavern floors, lying with the bones of animals extinct but more recent, stone implements were found, still rude, but, as a rule, of an improved type; and, finally, in a still higher stratum, associated with bones of animals like the reindeer and bison, which, though not extinct, have departed to other climates, were rude stone implements, on the whole of a still better workmanship. such was the foreshadowing, even at that early rude stone period, of the proofs that the tendency of man has been from his earliest epoch and in all parts of the world, as a rule, upward. but this rule was to be much further exemplified. about 1850, while the french and english geologists were working more especially among the relics of the drift and cave periods, noted archaeologists of the north--forchammer, steenstrup, and worsaae--were devoting themselves to the investigation of certain remains upon the danish peninsula. these remains were of two kinds: first, there were vast shell-heaps or accumulations of shells and other refuse cast aside by rude tribes which at some unknown age in the past lived on the shores of the baltic, principally on shellfish. that these shell-heaps were very ancient was evident: the shells of oysters and the like found in them were far larger than any now found on those coasts; their size, so far from being like that of the corresponding varieties which now exist in the brackish waters of the baltic, was in every case like that of those varieties which only thrive in the waters of the open salt sea. here was a clear indication that at the time when man formed these shell-heaps those coasts were in far more direct communication with the salt sea than at present, and that sufficient time must have elapsed since that period to have wrought enormous changes in sea and land throughout those regions. scattered through these heaps were found indications of a grade of civilization when man still used implements of stone, but implements and weapons which, though still rude, showed a progress from those of the drift and early cave period, some of them being of polished stone. with these were other evidences that civilization had progressed. with implements rude enough to have survived from early periods, other implements never known in the drift and bone caves began to appear, and, though there were few if any bones of other domestic animals, the remains of dogs were found; everything showed that there had been a progress in civilization between the former stone epoch and this. the second series of discoveries in scandinavia was made in the peat-beds: these were generally formed in hollows or bowls varying in depth from ten to thirty feet, and a section of them, like a section of the deposits in the bone caverns, showed a gradual evolution of human culture. the lower strata in these great bowls were found to be made up chiefly of mosses and various plants matted together with the trunks of fallen trees, sometimes of very large diameter; and the botanical examination of the lowest layer of these trees and plants in the various bowls revealed a most important fact: for this layer, the first in point of time, was always of the scotch fir--which now grows nowhere in the danish islands, and can not be made to grow anywhere in them--and of plants which are now extinct in these regions, but have retreated within the arctic circle. coming up from the bottom of these great bowls there was found above the first layer a second, in which were matted together masses of oak trees of different varieties; these, too, were relics of a bygone epoch, since the oak has almost entirely disappeared from denmark. above these came a third stratum made up of fallen beech trees; and the beech is now, and has been since the beginning of recorded history, the most common tree of the danish peninsula. now came a second fact of the utmost importance as connected with the first. scattered, as a rule, through the lower of these deposits, that of the extinct fir trees and plants, were found implements and weapons of smooth stone; in the layer of oak trees were found implements of bronze; and among the layer of beeches were found implements and weapons of iron. the general result of these investigations in these two sources, the shell mounds and the peat deposits, was the same: the first civilization evidenced in them was marked by the use of stone implements more or less smooth, showing a progress from the earlier rude stone period made known by the bone caves; then came a later progress to a higher civilization, marked by the use of bronze implements; and, finally, a still higher development when iron began to be used. the labours of the danish archaeologists have resulted in the formation of a great museum at copenhagen, and on the specimens they have found, coupled with those of the drift and bone caves, is based the classification between the main periods or divisions in the evolution of the human race above referred to. it was not merely in scandinavian lands that these results were reached; substantially the same discoveries were made in ireland and france, in sardinia and portugal, in japan and in brazil, in cuba and in the united states; in fact, as a rule, in nearly every part of the world which was thoroughly examined.[294] but from another quarter came a yet more striking indication of this same evolution. as far back as the year 1829 there were discovered, in the lake of zurich, piles and other antiquities indicating a former existence of human dwellings, standing in the water at some distance from the shore; but the usual mixture of thoughtlessness and dread of new ideas seems to have prevailed, and nothing was done until about 1853, when new discoveries of the same kind were followed up vigorously, and rutimeyer, keller, troyon, and others showed not only in the lake of zurich, but in many other lakes in switzerland, remains of former habitations, and, in the midst of these, great numbers of relics, exhibiting the grade of civilization which those lakedwellers had attained. here, too, were accumulated proofs of the upward tendency of the human race. implements of polished stone, bone, leather, pottery of various grades, woven cloth, bones of several kinds of domestic animals, various sorts of grain, bread which had been preserved by charring, and a multitude of evidences of progress never found among the earlier, ruder relics of civilization, showed yet more strongly that man had arrived here at a still higher stage than his predecessor of the drift, cave, and shell-heap periods, and had gone on from better to better. very striking evidences of this upward tendency were found in each class of implements. as by comparing the chipped flint implements of the lower and earlier strata in the cave period with those of the later and upper strata we saw progress, so, in each of the periods of polished stone, bronze, and iron, we see, by similar comparisons, a steady progress from rude to perfected implements; and especially is this true in the remains of the various lake-dwellings, for among these can be traced out constant increase in the variety of animals domesticated, and gradual improvements in means of subsistence and in ways of living. incidentally, too, a fact, at first sight of small account, but on reflection exceedingly important, was revealed. the earlier bronze implements were frequently found to imitate in various minor respects implements of stone; in other words, forms were at first given to bronze implements natural in working stone, but not natural in working bronze. this showed the _direction_ of the development--that it was upward from stone to bronze, not downward from bronze to stone; that it was progress rather than decline. these investigations were supplemented by similar researches elsewhere. in many other parts of the world it was found that lake-dwellers had existed in different grades of civilization, but all within a certain range, intermediate between the cave-dwellers and the historic period. to explain this epoch of the lake-dwellers history came in with the account given by herodotus of the lake-dwellings on lake prasias, which gave protection from the armies of persia. still more important, comparative ethnography showed that to-day, in various parts of the world, especially in new guinea and west africa, races of men are living in lake-dwellings built upon piles, and with a range of implements and weapons strikingly like many of those discovered in these ancient lake deposits of switzerland. in great britain, france, germany, italy, ireland, scotland, and other countries, remains of a different sort were also found, throwing light on this progress. the cromlechs, cranogs, mounds, and the like, though some of them indicate the work of weaker tribes pressed upon by stronger, show, as a rule, the same upward tendency. at a very early period in the history of these discoveries, various attempts were made--nominally in the interest of religion, but really in the interest of sundry creeds and catechisms framed when men knew little or nothing of natural laws--to break the force of such evidences of the progress and development of the human race from lower to higher. out of all the earlier efforts two may be taken as fairly typical, for they exhibit the opposition to science as developed under two different schools of theology, each working in its own way. the first of these shows great ingenuity and learning, and is presented by mr. southall in his book, published in 1875, entitled _the recent origin of the world_. in this he grapples first of all with the difficulties presented by the early date of egyptian civilization, and the keynote of his argument is the statement made by an eminent egyptologist, at a period before modern archaeological discoveries were well understood, that "egypt laughs the idea of a rude stone age, a polished stone age, a bronze age, an iron age, to scorn." mr. southall's method was substantially that of the late excellent mr. gosse in geology. mr. gosse, as the readers of this work may remember, felt obliged, in the supposed interest of genesis, to urge that safety to men's souls might be found in believing that, six thousand years ago, the almighty, for some inscrutable purpose, suddenly set niagara pouring very near the spot where it is pouring now; laid the various strata, and sprinkled the fossils through them like plums through a pudding; scratched the glacial grooves upon the rocks, and did a vast multitude of things, subtle and cunning, little and great, in all parts of the world, required to delude geologists of modern times into the conviction that all these things were the result of a steady progress through long epochs. on a similar plan, mr. southall proposed, at the very beginning of his book, as a final solution of the problem, the declaration that egypt, with its high civilization in the time of mena, with its races, classes, institutions, arrangements, language, monuments--all indicating an evolution through a vast previous history--was a sudden creation which came fully made from the hands of the creator. to use his own words, "the egyptians had no stone age, and were born civilized." there is an old story that once on a time a certain jovial king of france, making a progress through his kingdom, was received at the gates of a provincial town by the mayor's deputy, who began his speech on this wise: "may it please your majesty, there are just thirteen reasons why his honour the mayor can not be present to welcome you this morning. the first of these reasons is that he is dead." on this the king graciously declared that this first reason was sufficient, and that he would not trouble the mayor's deputy for the twelve others. so with mr. southall's argument: one simple result of scientific research out of many is all that it is needful to state, and this is, that in these later years we have a new and convincing evidence of the existence of prehistoric man in egypt in his earliest, rudest beginnings; the very same evidence which we find in all other parts of the world which have been carefully examined. this evidence consists of stone implements and weapons which have been found in egypt in such forms, at such points, and in such positions that when studied in connection with those found in all other parts of the world, from new jersey to california, from france to india, and from england to the andaman islands, they force upon us the conviction that civilization in egypt, as in all other parts of the world, was developed by the same slow process of evolution from the rudest beginnings. it is true that men learned in egyptology had discouraged the idea of an earlier stone age in egypt, and that among these were lepsius and brugsch; but these men were not trained in prehistoric archaeology; their devotion to the study of the monuments of egyptian civilization had evidently drawn them away from sympathy, and indeed from acquaintance, with the work of men like boucher de perthes, lartet, nilsson, troyon, and dawkins. but a new era was beginning. in 1867 worsaae called attention to the prehistoric implements found on the borders of egypt; two years later arcelin discussed such stone implements found beneath the soil of sakkara and gizeh, the very focus of the earliest egyptian civilization; in the same year hamy and lenormant found such implements washed out from the depths higher up the nile at thebes, near the tombs of the kings; and in the following year they exhibited more flint implements found at various other places. coupled with these discoveries was the fact that horner and linant found a copper knife at twenty-four feet, and pottery at sixty feet, below the surface. in 1872 dr. reil, director of the baths at helouan, near cairo, discovered implements of chipped flint; and in 1877. dr jukes brown made similar discoveries in that region. in 1878 oscar fraas, summing up the question, showed that the stone implements were mainly such as are found in the prehistoric deposits of other countries, and that, zittel having found them in the libyan desert, far from the oases, there was reason to suppose that these implements were used before the region became a desert and before egypt was civilized. two years later dr. mook, of wurzburg, published a work giving the results of his investigations, with careful drawings of the rude stone implements discovered by him in the upper nile valley, and it was evident that, while some of these implements differed slightly from those before known, the great mass of them were of the character so common in the prehistoric deposits of other parts of the world. a yet more important contribution to this mass of facts was made by prof. henry haynes, of boston, who in the winter of 1877 and 1878 began a very thorough investigation of the subject, and discovered, a few miles east of cairo, many flint implements. the significance of haynes's discoveries was twofold: first, there were, among these, stone axes like those found in the french drift beds of st. acheul, showing that the men who made or taught men how to make these in egypt were passing through the same phase of savagery as that of quaternary france; secondly, he found a workshop for making these implements, proving that these flint implements were not brought into egypt by invaders, but were made to meet the necessities of the country. from this first field prof. haynes went to helouan, north of cairo, and there found, as dr. reil had done, various worked flints, some of them like those discovered by m. riviere in the caves of southern france; thence he went up the nile to luxor, the site of ancient thebes, began a thorough search in the tertiary limestone hills, and found multitudes of chipped stone implements, some of them, indeed, of original forms, but most of forms common in other parts of the world under similar circumstances, some of the chipped stone axes corresponding closely to those found in the drift beds of northern france. all this seemed to show conclusively that, long ages before the earliest period of egyptian civilization of which the monuments of the first dynasties give us any trace, mankind in the nile valley was going through the same slow progress from the period when, standing just above the brutes, he defended himself with implements of rudely chipped stone. but in 1881 came discoveries which settled the question entirely. in that year general pitt-rivers, a fellow of the royal society and president of the anthropological institute, and j. f. campbell, fellow of the royal geographical society of england, found implements not only in alluvial deposits, associated with the bones of the zebra, hyena, and other animals which have since retreated farther south, but, at djebel assas, near thebes, they found implements of chipped flint in the hard, stratified gravel, from six and a half to ten feet below the surface; relics evidently, as mr. campbell says, "beyond calculation older than the oldest egyptian temples and tombs." they certainly proved that egyptian civilization had not issued in its completeness, and all at once, from the hand of the creator in the time of mena. nor was this all. investigators of the highest character and ability--men like hull and flinders petrie--revealed geological changes in egypt requiring enormous periods of time, and traces of man's handiwork dating from a period when the waters in the nile valley extended hundreds of feet above the present level. thus was ended the contention of mr. southall. still another attack upon the new scientific conclusions came from france, when in 1883 the abbe hamard, priest of the oratory, published his _age of stone and primitive man_. he had been especially vexed at the arrangement of prehistoric implements by periods at the paris exposition of 1878; he bitterly complains of this as having an anti-christian tendency, and rails at science as "the idol of the day." he attacks mortillet, one of the leaders in french archaeology, with a great display of contempt; speaks of the "venom" in books on prehistoric man generally; complains that the church is too mild and gentle with such monstrous doctrines; bewails the concessions made to science by some eminent preachers; and foretells his own martyrdom at the hands of men of science. efforts like this accomplished little, and a more legitimate attempt was made to resist the conclusions of archaeology by showing that knives of stone were used in obedience to a sacred ritual in egypt for embalming, and in judea for circumcision, and that these flint knives might have had this later origin. but the argument against the conclusions drawn from this view was triple: first, as we have seen, not only stone knives, but axes and other implements of stone similar to those of a prehistoric period in western europe were discovered; secondly, these implements were discovered in the hard gravel drift of a period evidently far earlier than that of mena; and, thirdly, the use of stone implements in egyptian and jewish sacred functions within the historic period, so far from weakening the force of the arguments for the long and slow development of egyptian civilization from the men who used rude flint implements to the men who built and adorned the great temples of the early dynasties, is really an argument in favour of that long evolution. a study of comparative ethnology has made it clear that the sacred stone knives and implements of the egyptian and jewish priestly ritual were natural survivals of that previous period. for sacrificial or ritual purposes, the knife of stone was considered more sacred than the knife of bronze or iron, simply because it was ancient; just as to-day, in india, brahman priests kindle the sacred fire not with matches or flint and steel, but by a process found in the earliest, lowest stages of human culture--by violently boring a pointed stick into another piece of wood until a spark comes; and just as to-day, in europe and america, the architecture of the middle ages survives as a special religious form in the erection of our most recent churches, and to such an extent that thousands on thousands of us feel that we can not worship fitly unless in the midst of windows, decorations, vessels, implements, vestments, and ornaments, no longer used for other purposes, but which have survived in sundry branches of the christian church, and derived a special sanctity from the fact that they are of ancient origin. taking, then, the whole mass of testimony together, even though a plausible or very strong argument against single evidences may be made here and there, the force of its combined mass remains, and leaves both the vast antiquity of man and the evolution of civilization from its lowest to its highest forms, as proved by the prehistoric remains of egypt and so many other countries in all parts of the world, beyond a reasonable doubt. most important of all, the recent discoveries in assyria have thrown a new light upon the evolution of the dogma of "the fall of man." reverent scholars like george smith, sayce, delitzsch, jensen, schrader, and their compeers have found in the ninevite records the undoubted source of that form of the fall legend which was adopted by the hebrews and by them transmitted to christianity.[301] chapter ix. the "fall of man" and ethnology. we have seen that, closely connected with the main lines of investigation in archaeology and anthropology, there were other researches throwing much light on the entire subject. in a previous chapter we saw especially that lafitau and jussieu were among the first to collect and compare facts bearing on the natural history of man, gathered by travellers in various parts of the earth, thus laying foundations for the science of comparative ethnology. it was soon seen that ethnology had most important bearings upon the question of the material, intellectual, moral, and religious evolution of the human race; in every civilized nation, therefore, appeared scholars who began to study the characteristics of various groups of men as ascertained from travellers, and to compare the results thus gained with each other and with those obtained by archaeology. thus, more and more clear became the evidences that the tendency of the race has been upward from low beginnings. it was found that groups of men still existed possessing characteristics of those in the early periods of development to whom the drift and caves and shell-heaps and pile-dwellings bear witness; groups of men using many of the same implements and weapons, building their houses in the same way, seeking their food by the same means, enjoying the same amusements, and going through the same general stages of culture; some being in a condition corresponding to the earlier, some to the later, of those early periods. from all sides thus came evidence that we have still upon the earth examples of all the main stages in the development of human civilization; that from the period when man appears little above the brutes, and with little if any religion in any accepted sense of the word, these examples can be arranged in an ascending series leading to the highest planes which humanity has reached; that philosophic observers may among these examples study existing beliefs, usages, and institutions back through earlier and earlier forms, until, as a rule, the whole evolution can be easily divined if not fully seen. moreover, the basis of the whole structure became more and more clear: the fact that "the lines of intelligence have always been what they are, and have always operated as they do now; that man has progressed from the simple to the complex, from the particular to the general." as this evidence from ethnology became more and more strong, its significance to theology aroused attention, and naturally most determined efforts were made to break its force. on the continent the two great champions of the church in this field were de maistre and de bonald; but the two attempts which may be especially recalled as the most influential among english-speaking peoples were those of whately, archbishop of dublin, and the duke of argyll. first in the combat against these new deductions of science was whately. he was a strong man, whose breadth of thought and liberality in practice deserve all honour; but these very qualities drew upon him the distrust of his orthodox brethren; and, while his writings were powerful in the first half of the present century to break down many bulwarks of unreason, he seems to have been constantly in fear of losing touch with the church, and therefore to have promptly attacked some scientific reasonings, which, had he been a layman, not holding a brief for the church, he would probably have studied with more care and less prejudice. he was not slow to see the deeper significance of archaeology and ethnology in their relations to the theological conception of "the fall," and he set the battle in array against them. his contention was, to use his own words, that "no community ever did or ever can emerge unassisted by external helps from a state of utter barbarism into anything that can be called civilization"; and that, in short, all imperfectly civilized, barbarous, and savage races are but fallen descendants of races more fully civilized. this view was urged with his usual ingenuity and vigour, but the facts proved too strong for him: they made it clear, first, that many races were without simple possessions, instruments, and arts which never, probably, could have been lost if once acquired--as, for example, pottery, the bow for shooting, various domesticated animals, spinning, the simplest principles of agriculture, household economy, and the like; and, secondly, it was shown as a simple matter of fact that various savage and barbarous tribes _had_ raised themselves by a development of means which no one from outside could have taught them; as in the cultivation and improvement of various indigenous plants, such as the potato and indian corn among the indians of north america; in the domestication of various animals peculiar to their own regions, such as the llama among the indians of south america; in the making of sundry fabrics out of materials and by processes not found among other nations, such as the bark cloth of the polynesians; and in the development of weapons peculiar to sundry localities, but known in no others, such as the boomerang in australia. most effective in bringing out the truth were such works as those of sir john lubbock and tylor; and so conclusive were they that the arguments of whately were given up as untenable by the other of the two great champions above referred to, and an attempt was made by him to form the diminishing number of thinking men supporting the old theological view on a new line of defence. this second champion, the duke of argyll, was a man of wide knowledge and strong powers in debate, whose high moral sense was amply shown in his adhesion to the side of the american union in the struggle against disunion and slavery, despite the overwhelming majority against him in the high aristocracy to which he belonged. as an honest man and close thinker, the duke was obliged to give up completely the theological view of the antiquity of man. the whole biblical chronology as held by the universal church, "always, everywhere, and by all," he sacrificed, and gave all his powers in this field to support the theory of "the fall." _noblesse oblige_: the duke and his ancestors had been for centuries the chief pillars of the church of scotland, and it was too much to expect that he could break away from a tenet which forms really its "chief cornerstone." acknowledging the insufficiency of archbishop whately's argument, the duke took the ground that the lower, barbarous, savage, brutal races were the remains of civilized races which, in the struggle for existence, had been pushed and driven off to remote and inclement parts of the earth, where the conditions necessary to a continuance in their early civilization were absent; that, therefore, the descendants of primeval, civilized men degenerated and sank in the scale of culture. to use his own words, the weaker races were "driven by the stronger to the woods and rocks," so that they became "mere outcasts of the human race." in answer to this, while it was conceded, first, that there have been examples of weaker tribes sinking in the scale of culture after escaping from the stronger into regions unfavourable to civilization, and, secondly, that many powerful nations have declined and decayed, it was shown that the men in the most remote and unfavourable regions have not always been the lowest in the scale; that men have been frequently found "among the woods and rocks" in a higher state of civilization than on the fertile plains, such examples being cited as mexico, peru, and even scotland; and that, while there were many examples of special and local decline, overwhelming masses of facts point to progress as a rule. the improbability, not to say impossibility, of many of the conclusions arrived at by the duke appeared more and more strongly as more became known of the lower tribes of mankind. it was necessary on his theory to suppose many things which our knowledge of the human race absolutely forbids us to believe: for example, it was necessary to suppose that the australians or new zealanders, having once possessed so simple and convenient an art as that of the potter, had lost every trace of it; and that the same tribes, having once had so simple a means of saving labour as the spindle or small stick weighted at one end for spinning, had given it up and gone back to twisting threads with the hand. in fact, it was necessary to suppose that one of the main occupations of man from "the beginning" had been the forgetting of simple methods, processes, and implements which all experience in the actual world teaches us are never entirely forgotten by peoples who have once acquired them. some leading arguments of the duke were overthrown by simple statements of fact. thus, his instance of the eskimo as pushed to the verge of habitable america, and therefore living in the lowest depths of savagery, which, even if it were true, by no means proved a general rule, was deprived of its force by the simple fact that the eskimos are by no means the lowest race on the american continent, and that various tribes far more centrally and advantageously placed, as, for instance, those in brazil, are really inferior to them in the scale of culture. again, his statement that "in africa there appear to be no traces of any time when the natives were not acquainted with the use of iron," is met by the fact that from the nile valley to the cape of good hope we find, wherever examination has been made, the same early stone implements which in all other parts of the world precede the use of iron, some of which would not have been made had their makers possessed iron. the duke also tried to show that there were no distinctive epochs of stone, bronze, and iron, by adducing the fact that some stone implements are found even in some high civilizations. this is indeed a fact. we find some few european peasants to-day using stone mallet-heads; but this proves simply that the old stone mallet-heads have survived as implements cheap and effective. the argument from comparative ethnology in support of the view that the tendency of mankind is upward has received strength from many sources. comparative philology shows that in the less civilized, barbarous, and savage races childish forms of speech prevail--frequent reduplications and the like, of which we have survivals in the later and even in the most highly developed languages. in various languages, too, we find relics of ancient modes of thought in the simplest words and expressions used for arithmetical calculations. words and phrases for this purpose are frequently found to be derived from the words for hands, feet, fingers, and toes, just as clearly as in our own language some of our simplest measures of length are shown by their names to have been measures of parts of the human body, as the cubit, the foot, and the like, and therefore to date from a time when exactness was not required. to add another out of many examples, it is found to-day that various rude nations go through the simplest arithmetical processes by means of pebbles. into our own language, through the latin, has come a word showing that our distant progenitors reckoned in this way: the word _calculate_ gives us an absolute proof of this. according to the theory of the duke of argyll, men ages ago used pebbles (_calculi_) in performing the simplest arithmetical calculations because we to-day "_calculate_." no reduction to absurdity could be more thorough. the simple fact must be that we "calculate" because our remote ancestors used pebbles in their arithmetic. comparative literature and folklore also show among peoples of a low culture to-day childish modes of viewing nature, and childish ways of expressing the relations of man to nature, such as clearly survive from a remote ancestry; noteworthy among these are the beliefs in witches and fairies, and multitudes of popular and poetic expressions in the most civilized nations. so,too, comparative ethnography, the basis of ethnology, shows in contemporary barbarians and savages a childish love of playthings and games, of which we have many survivals. all these facts, which were at first unobserved or observed as matters of no significance, have been brought into connection with a fact in biology acknowledged alike by all important schools; by agassiz on one hand and by darwin on the other--namely, as stated by agassiz, that "the young states of each species and group resemble older forms of the same group," or, as stated by darwin, that "in two or more groups of animals, however much they may at first differ from each other in structure and habits, if they pass through closely similar embryonic stages, we may feel almost assured that they have descended from the same parent form, and are therefore closely related."[308] chapter x. the "fall of man" and history. the history of art, especially as shown by architecture, in the noblest monuments of the most enlightened nations of antiquity; gives abundant proofs of the upward tendency of man from the rudest and simplest beginnings. many columns of early egyptian temples or tombs are but bundles of nile reeds slightly conventionalized in stone; the temples of greece, including not only the earliest forms, but the parthenon itself, while in parts showing an evolution out of egyptian and assyrian architecture, exhibit frequent reminiscences and even imitations of earlier constructions in wood; the medieval cathedrals, while evolved out of roman and byzantine structures, constantly show unmistakable survivals of prehistoric construction.[310] so, too, general history has come in, illustrating the unknown from the known: the development of man in the prehistoric period from his development within historic times. nothing is more evident from history than the fact that weaker bodies of men driven out by stronger do not necessarily relapse into barbarism, but frequently rise, even under the most unfavourable circumstances, to a civilization equal or superior to that from which they have been banished. out of very many examples showing this law of upward development, a few may be taken as typical. the slavs, who sank so low under the pressure of stronger races that they gave the modern world a new word to express the most hopeless servitude, have developed powerful civilizations peculiar to themselves; the, barbarian tribes who ages ago took refuge amid the sand-banks and morasses of holland, have developed one of the world's leading centres of civilization; the wretched peasants who about the fifth century took refuge from invading hordes among the lagoons and mud banks of venetia, developed a power in art, arms, and politics which is among the wonders of human history; the puritans, driven from the civilization of great britain to the unfavourable climate, soil, and circumstances of early new england,--the huguenots, driven from france, a country admirably fitted for the highest growth of civilization, to various countries far less fitted for such growth,--the irish peasantry, driven in vast numbers from their own island to other parts of the world on the whole less fitted to them--all are proofs that, as a rule, bodies of men once enlightened, when driven to unfavourable climates and brought under the most depressing circumstances, not only retain what enlightenment they have, but go on increasing it. besides these, we have such cases as those of criminals banished to various penal colonies, from whose descendants has been developed a better morality; and of pirates, like those of the bounty, whose descendants, in a remote pacific island, became sober, steady citizens. thousands of examples show the prevalence of this same rule--that men in masses do not forget the main gains of their civilization, and that, in spite of deteriorations, their tendency is upward. another class of historic facts also testifies in the most striking manner to this same upward tendency: the decline and destruction of various civilizations brilliant but hopelessly vitiated. these catastrophes are seen more and more to be but steps in, this development. the crumbling away of the great ancient civilizations based upon despotism, whether the despotism of monarch, priest, or mob--the decline and fall of roman civilization, for example, which, in his most remarkable generalization, guizot has shown to have been necessary to the development of the richer civilization of modern europe; the terrible struggle and loss of the crusades, which once appeared to be a mere catastrophe, but are now seen to have brought in, with the downfall of feudalism, the beginnings of the centralizing, civilizing monarchical period; the french revolution, once thought a mere outburst of diabolic passion, but now seen to be an unduly delayed transition from the monarchical to the constitutional epoch: all show that even widespread deterioration and decline--often, indeed, the greatest political and moral catastrophes--so far from leading to a fall of mankind, tend in the long run to raise humanity to higher planes. thus, then, anthropology and its handmaids, ethnology, philology, and history, have wrought out, beyond a doubt, proofs of the upward evolution of humanity since the appearance of man upon our planet. nor have these researches been confined to progress in man's material condition. far more important evidences have been found of upward evolution in his family, social, moral, intellectual, and religious relations. the light thrown on this subject by such men as lubbock, tylor, herbert spencer, buckle, draper, max muller, and a multitude of others, despite mistakes, haltings, stumblings, and occasional following of delusive paths, is among the greatest glories of the century now ending. from all these investigators in their various fields, holding no brief for any system sacred or secular, but seeking truth as truth, comes the same general testimony of the evolution of higher out of lower. the process has been indeed slow and painful, but this does not prove that it may not become more rapid and less fruitful in sorrow as humanity goes on.[312] while, then, it is not denied that many instances of retrogression can be found, the consenting voice of unbiased investigators in all lands has declared more and more that the beginnings of our race must have been low and brutal, and that the tendency has been upward. to combat this conclusion by examples of decline and deterioration here and there has become impossible: as well try to prove that, because in the mississippi there are eddies in which the currents flow northward, there is no main stream flowing southward; or that, because trees decay and fall, there is no law of upward growth from germ to trunk, branches, foliage, and fruit. a very striking evidence that the theological theory had become untenable was seen when its main supporter in the scientific field, von martius, in the full ripeness of his powers, publicly declared his conversion to the scientific view. yet, while the tendency of enlightened human thought in recent times is unmistakable, the struggle against the older view is not yet ended. the bitterness of the abbe hamard in france has been carried to similar and even greater extremes among sundry protestant bodies in europe and america. the simple truth of history mates it a necessity, unpleasant though it be, to chronicle two typical examples in the united states. in the year 1875 a leader in american industrial enterprise endowed at the capital of a southern state a university which bore his name. it was given into the hands of one of the religious sects most powerful in that region, and a bishop of that sect became its president. to its chair of geology was called alexander winchell, a scholar who had already won eminence as a teacher and writer in that field, a professor greatly beloved and respected in the two universities with which he had been connected, and a member of the sect which the institution of learning above referred to represented. but his relations to this southern institution were destined to be brief. that his lectures at the vanderbilt university were learned, attractive, and stimulating, even his enemies were forced to admit; but he was soon found to believe that there had been men earlier than the period as signed to adam, and even that all the human race are not descended from adam. his desire was to reconcile science and scripture, and he was now treated by a methodist episcopal bishop in tennessee just as, two centuries before, la peyrere had been treated, for a similar effort, by a roman catholic vicar-general in belgium. the publication of a series of articles on the subject, contributed by the professor to a northern religious newspaper at its own request, brought matters to a climax; for, the articles having fallen under the notice of a leading southwestern organ of the denomination controlling the vanderbilt university, the result was a most bitter denunciation of prof. winchell and of his views. shortly afterward the professor was told by bishop mctyeire that "our people are of the opinion that such views are contrary to the plan of redemption," and was requested by the bishop to quietly resign his chair, to this the professor made the fitting reply: "if the board of trustees have the manliness to dismiss me for cause, and declare the cause, i prefer that they should do it. no power on earth could persuade me to resign." "we do not propose," said the bishop, with quite gratuitous suggestiveness, "to treat you as the inquisition treated galileo." "but what you propose is the same thing," rejoined dr. winchell. "it is ecclesiastical proscription for an opinion which must be settled by scientific evidence." twenty-four hours later dr. winchell was informed that his chair had been abolished, and its duties, with its salary, added to those of a colleague; the public were given to understand that the reasons were purely economic; the banished scholar was heaped with official compliments, evidently in hope that he would keep silence. such was not dr. winchell's view. in a frank letter to the leading journal of the university town he stated the whole matter. the intolerance-hating press of the country, religious and secular, did not hold its peace. in vain the authorities of the university waited for the storm to blow over. it was evident, at last, that a defence must be made, and a local organ of the sect, which under the editorship of a fellow-professor had always treated dr. winchell's views with the luminous inaccuracy which usually characterizes a professor's ideas of a rival's teachings, assumed the task. in the articles which followed, the usual scientific hypotheses as to the creation were declared to be "absurd," "vague and unintelligible," "preposterous and gratuitous." this new champion stated that "the objections drawn from the fossiliferous strata and the like are met by reference to the analogy of adam and eve, who presented the phenomena of adults when they were but a day old, and by the flood of noah and other cataclysms, which, with the constant change of nature, are sufficient to account for the phenomena in question"! under inspiration of this sort the tennessee conference of the religious body in control of the university had already, in october, 1878, given utterance to its opinion of unsanctified science as follows: "this is an age in which scientific atheism, having divested itself of the habiliments that most adorn and dignify humanity, walks abroad in shameless denudation. the arrogant and impertinent claims of this `science, falsely so called,' have been so boisterous and persistent, that the unthinking mass have been sadly deluded; but our university alone has had the courage to lay its young but vigorous hand upon the mane of untamed speculation and say, `we will have no more of this.'" it is a consolation to know how the result, thus devoutly sought, has been achieved; for in the "ode" sung at the laying of the corner-stone of a new theological building of the same university, in may, 1880, we read: "science and revelation here in perfect harmony appear, guiding young feet along the road through grace and nature up to god." it is also pleasing to know that, while an institution calling itself a university thus violated the fundamental principles on which any institution worthy of the name must be based, another institution which has the glory of being the first in the entire north to begin something like a university organization--the state university of michigan--recalled dr. winchell at once to his former professorship, and honoured itself by maintaining him in that position, where, unhampered, he was thereafter able to utter his views in the midst of the largest body of students on the american continent. disgraceful as this history was to the men who drove out dr. winchell, they but succeeded, as various similar bodies of men making similar efforts have done, in advancing their supposed victim to higher position and more commanding influence.[316] a few years after this suppression of earnest christian thought at an institution of learning in the western part of our southern states, there appeared a similar attempt in sundry seaboard states of the south. as far back as the year 1857 the presbyterian synod of mississippi passed the following resolution: "_whereas_, we live in an age in which the most insidious attacks are made on revealed religion through the natural sciences, and as it behooves the church at all times to have men capable of defending the faith once delivered to the saints; "_resolved_, that this presbytery recommend the endowment of a professorship of natural science as connected with revealed religion in one or more of our theological seminaries." pursuant to this resolution such a chair was established in the theological seminary at columbia, s. c., and james woodrow was appointed professor. dr. woodrow seems to have been admirably fitted for the position--a devoted christian man, accepting the presbyterian standards of faith in which he had been brought up, and at the same time giving every effort to acquaint himself with the methods and conclusions of science. to great natural endowments he added constant labours to arrive at the truth in this field. visiting europe, he made the acquaintance of many of the foremost scientific investigators, became a student in university lecture rooms and laboratories, an interested hearer in scientific conventions, and a correspondent of leading men of science at home and abroad. as a result, he came to the conclusion that the hypothesis of evolution is the only one which explains various leading facts in natural science. this he taught, and he also taught that such a view is not incompatible with a true view of the sacred scriptures. in 1882 and 1883 the board of directors of the theological seminary, in fear that "scepticism in the world is using alleged discoveries in science to impugn the word of god," requested prof. woodrow to state his views in regard to evolution. the professor complied with this request in a very powerful address, which was published and widely circulated, to such effect that the board of directors shortly afterward passed resolutions declaring the theory of evolution as defined by prof. woodrow not inconsistent with perfect soundness in the faith. in the year 1884 alarm regarding dr. woodrow's teachings began to show itself in larger proportions, and a minority report was introduced into the synod of south carolina declaring that "the synod is called upon to decide not upon the question whether the said views of dr. woodrow contradict the bible in its highest and absolute sense, but upon the question whether they contradict the interpretation of the bible by the presbyterian church in the united states." perhaps a more self-condemnatory statement was never presented, for it clearly recognized, as a basis for intolerance, at least a possible difference between "the interpretation of the bible by the presbyterian church" and the teachings of "the bible in its highest and absolute sense." this hostile movement became so strong that, in spite of the favourable action of the directors of the seminary, and against the efforts of a broad-minded minority in the representative bodies having ultimate charge of the institution, the delegates from the various synods raised a storm of orthodoxy and drove dr. woodrow from his post. happily, he was at the same time professor in the university of south carolina in the same city of columbia, and from his chair in that institution he continued to teach natural science with the approval of the great majority of thinking men in that region; hence, the only effect of the attempt to crush him was, that his position was made higher, respect for him deeper, and his reputation wider. in spite of attempts by the more orthodox to prevent students of the theological seminary from attending his lectures at the university, they persisted in hearing him; indeed, the reputation of heresy seemed to enhance his influence. it should be borne in mind that the professor thus treated had been one of the most respected and beloved university instructors in the south during more than a quarter of a century, and that he was turned out of his position with no opportunity for careful defence, and, indeed, without even the formality of a trial. well did an eminent but thoughtful divine of the southern presbyterian church declare that "the method of procedure to destroy evolution by the majority in the church is vicious and suicidal," and that "logical dynamite has been used to put out a supposed fire in the upper stories of our house, and all the family in the house at that." wisely, too, did he refer to the majority as "sowing in the fields of the church the thorns of its errors, and cumbering its path with the _debris_ and ruin of its own folly." to these recent cases may be added the expulsion of prof. toy from teaching under ecclesiastical control at louisville, and his election to a far more influential chair at harvard university; the driving out from the american college at beyrout of the young professors who accepted evolution as probable, and the rise of one of them, mr. nimr, to a far more commanding position than that which he left--the control of three leading journals at cairo; the driving out of robertson smith from his position at edinburgh, and his reception into the far more important and influential professorship at the english university of cambridge; and multitudes of similar cases. from the days when henry dunster, the first president of harvard college, was driven from his presidency, as cotton mather said, for "falling into the briers of antipedobaptism" until now, the same spirit is shown in all such attempts. in each we have generally, on one side, a body of older theologians, who since their youth have learned nothing and forgotten nothing, sundry professors who do not wish to rewrite their lectures, and a mass of unthinking ecclesiastical persons of little or no importance save in making up a retrograde majority in an ecclesiastical tribunal; on the other side we have as generally the thinking, open-minded, devoted men who have listened to the revelation of their own time as well as of times past, and who are evidently thinking the future thought of the world. here we have survivals of that same oppression of thought by theology which has cost the modern world so dear; the system which forced great numbers of professors, under penalty of deprivation, to teach that the sun and planets revolve about the earth; that comets are fire-balls flung by an angry god at a wicked world; that insanity is diabolic possession; that anatomical investigation of the human frame is sin against the holy ghost; that chemistry leads to sorcery; that taking interest for money is forbidden by scripture; that geology must conform to ancient hebrew poetry. from the same source came in austria the rule of the "immaculate oath," under which university professors, long before the dogma of the immaculate conception was defined by the church, were obliged to swear to their belief in that dogma before they were permitted to teach even arithmetic or geometry; in england, the denunciation of inoculation against smallpox; in scotland, the protests against using chloroform in childbirth as "vitiating the primal curse against woman"; in france, the use in clerical schools of a historical text-book from which napoleon was left out; and, in america, the use of catholic manuals in which the inquisition is declared to have been a purely civil tribunal, or protestant manuals in which the puritans are shown to have been all that we could now wish they had been. so, too, among multitudes of similar efforts abroad, we have during centuries the fettering of professors at english and scotch universities by test oaths, subscriptions to articles, and catechisms without number. in our own country we have had in a vast multitude of denominational colleges, as the first qualification for a professorship, not ability in the subject to be taught, but fidelity to the particular shibboleth of the denomination controlling the college or university. happily, in these days such attempts generally defeat themselves. the supposed victim is generally made a man of mark by persecution, and advanced to a higher and wider sphere of usefulness. in withstanding the march of scientific truth, any conference, synod, board of commissioners, board of trustees, or faculty, is but as a nest of field-mice in the path of a steam plough. the harm done to religion in these attempts is far greater than that done to science; for thereby suspicions are widely spread, especially among open-minded young men, that the accepted christian system demands a concealment of truth, with the persecution of honest investigators, and therefore must be false. well was it said in substance by president mccosh, of princeton, that no more sure way of making unbelievers in christianity among young men could be devised than preaching to them that the doctrines arrived at by the great scientific thinkers of this period are opposed to religion. yet it is but justice here to say that more and more there is evolving out of this past history of oppression a better spirit, which is making itself manifest with power in the leading religious bodies of the world. in the church of rome we have to-day such utterances as those of st. george mivart, declaring that the church must not attempt to interfere with science; that the almighty in the galileo case gave her a distinct warning that the priesthood of science must remain with the men of science. in the anglican church and its american daughter we have the acts and utterances of such men as archbishop tait, bishop temple, dean stanley, dean farrar, and many others, proving that the deepest religious thought is more and more tending to peace rather than warfare with science; and in the other churches, especially in america, while there is yet much to be desired, the welcome extended in many of them to alexander winchell, and the freedom given to views like his, augur well for a better state of things in the future. from the science of anthropology, when rightly viewed as a whole, has come the greatest aid to those who work to advance religion rather than to promote any particular system of theology; for anthropology and its subsidiary sciences show more and more that man, since coming upon the earth, has risen, from the period when he had little, if any, idea of a great power above him, through successive stages of fetichism, shamanism, and idolatry, toward better forms of belief, making him more and more accessible to nobler forms of religion. the same sciences show, too, within the historic period, the same tendency, and especially within the events covered by our sacred books, a progress from fetichism, of which so many evidences crop out in the early jewish worship as shown in the old testament scriptures, through polytheism, when jehovah was but "a god above all gods," through the period when he was "a jealous god," capricious and cruel, until he is revealed in such inspired utterances as those of the nobler psalms, the great passages in isaiah, the sublime preaching of micah, and, above all, through the ideal given to the world by jesus of nazareth. well indeed has an eminent divine of the church of england in our own time called on christians to rejoice over this evolution, "between the god of samuel, who ordered infants to be slaughtered, and the god of the psalmist, whose tender mercies are over all his works; between the god of the patriarchs, who was always repenting, and the god of the apostles, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, with whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning, between the god of the old testament, who walked in the garden in the cool of the day, and the god of the new testament, whom no man hath seen nor can see; between the god of leviticus, who was so particular about the sacrificial furniture and utensils, and the god of the acts, who dwelleth not in temples made with hands; between the god who hardened pharaoh's heart, and the god who will have all men to be saved; between the god of exodus, who is merciful only to those who love him, and the god of christ--the heavenly father--who is kind unto the unthankful and the evil." however overwhelming, then, the facts may be which anthropology, history, and their kindred sciences may, in the interest of simple truth, establish against the theological doctrine of "the fall"; however completely they may fossilize various dogmas, catechisms, creeds, confessions, "plans of salvation" and "schemes of redemption," which have been evolved from the great minds of the theological period: science, so far from making inroads on religion, or even upon our christian development of it, will strengthen all that is essential in it, giving new and nobler paths to man's highest aspirations. for the one great, legitimate, scientific conclusion of anthropology is, that, more and more, a better civilization of the world, despite all its survivals of savagery and barbarism, is developing men and women on whom the declarations of the nobler psalms, of isaiah, of micah, the sermon on the mount, the first great commandment, and the second, which is like unto it, st. paul's praise of charity and st. james's definition of "pure religion and undefiled," can take stronger hold for the more effective and more rapid uplifting of our race.[322] chapter xi. from "the prince of the power of the air" to meteorology i. growth of a theological theory. the popular beliefs of classic antiquity regarding storms, thunder, and lightning, took shape in myths representing vulcan as forging thunderbolts, jupiter as flinging them at his enemies, aeolus intrusting the winds in a bag to aeneas, and the like. an attempt at their further theological development is seen in the pythagorean statement that lightnings are intended to terrify the damned in tartarus. but at a very early period we see the beginning of a scientific view. in greece, the ionic philosophers held that such phenomena are obedient to law. plato, aristotle, and many lesser lights, attempted to account for them on natural grounds; and their explanations, though crude, were based upon observation and thought. in rome, lucretius, seneca, pliny, and others, inadequate as their statements were, implanted at least the germs of a science. but, as the christian church rose to power, this evolution was checked; the new leaders of thought found, in the scriptures recognized by them as sacred, the basis for a new view, or rather for a modification of the old view. this ending of a scientific evolution based upon observation and reason, and this beginning of a sacred science based upon the letter of scripture and on theology, are seen in the utterances of various fathers in the early church. as to the general features of this new development, tertullian held that sundry passages of scripture prove lightning identical with hell-fire; and this idea was transmitted from generation to generation of later churchmen, who found an especial support of tertullian's view in the sulphurous smell experienced during thunderstorms. st. hilary thought the firmament very much lower than the heavens, and that it was created not only for the support of the upper waters, but also for the tempering of our atmosphere.[324] st. ambrose held that thunder is caused by the winds breaking through the solid firmament, and cited from the prophet amos the sublime passage regarding "him that establisheth the thunders."[324b] he shows, indeed, some conception of the true source of rain; but his whole reasoning is limited by various scriptural texts. he lays great stress upon the firmament as a solid outer shell of the universe: the heavens he holds to be not far outside this outer shell, and argues regarding their character from st. paul's epistle to the corinthians and from the one hundred and forty-eighth psalm. as to "the waters which are above the firmament," he takes up the objection of those who hold that, this outside of the universe being spherical, the waters must slide off it, especially if the firmament revolves; and he points out that it is by no means certain that the _outside_ of the firmament _is_ spherical, and insists that, if it does revolve, the water is just what is needed to lubricate and cool its axis. st. jerome held that god at the creation, having spread out the firmament between heaven and earth, and having separated the upper waters from the lower, caused the upper waters to be frozen into ice, in order to keep all in place. a proof of this view jerome found in the words of ezekiel regarding "the crystal stretched above the cherubim."[324c] the germinal principle in accordance with which all these theories were evolved was most clearly proclaimed to the world by st. augustine in his famous utterance: "nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind."[325] no treatise was safe thereafter which did not breathe the spirit and conform to the letter of this maxim. unfortunately, what was generally understood by the "authority of scripture" was the tyranny of sacred books imperfectly transcribed, viewed through distorting superstitions, and frequently interpreted by party spirit. following this precept of st. augustine there were developed, in every field, theological views of science which have never led to a single truth--which, without exception, have forced mankind away from the truth, and have caused christendom to stumble for centuries into abysses of error and sorrow. in meteorology, as in every other science with which he dealt, augustine based everything upon the letter of the sacred text; and it is characteristic of the result that this man, so great when untrammelled, thought it his duty to guard especially the whole theory of the "waters above the heavens." in the sixth century this theological reasoning was still further developed, as we have seen, by cosmas indicopleustes. finding a sanction for the old egyptian theory of the universe in the ninth chapter of hebrews, he insisted that the earth is a flat parallelogram, and that from its outer edges rise immense walls supporting the firmament; then, throwing together the reference to the firmament in genesis and the outburst of poetry in the psalms regarding the "waters that be above the heavens," he insisted that over the terrestrial universe are solid arches bearing a vault supporting a vast cistern "containing the waters"; finally, taking from genesis the expression regarding the "windows of heaven," he insisted that these windows are opened and closed by the angels whenever the almighty wishes to send rain upon the earth or to withhold it. this was accepted by the universal church as a vast contribution to thought; for several centuries it was the orthodox doctrine, and various leaders in theology devoted themselves to developing and supplementing it. about the beginning of the seventh century, isidore, bishop of seville, was the ablest prelate in christendom, and was showing those great qualities which led to his enrolment among the saints of the church. his theological view of science marks an epoch. as to the "waters above the firmament," isidore contends that they must be lower than, the uppermost heaven, though higher than the lower heaven, because in the one hundred and forty-eighth psalm they are mentioned _after_ the heavenly bodies and the "heaven of heavens," but _before_ the terrestrial elements. as to their purpose, he hesitates between those who held that they were stored up there by the prescience of god for the destruction of the world at the flood, as the words of scripture that "the windows of heaven were opened" seemed to indicate, and those who held that they were kept there to moderate the heat of the heavenly bodies. as to the firmament, he is in doubt whether it envelops the earth "like an eggshell," or is merely spread over it "like a curtain"; for he holds that the passage in the one hundred and fourth psalm may be used to support either view. having laid these scriptural foundations, isidore shows considerable power of thought; indeed, at times, when he discusses the rainbow, rain, hail, snow, and frost, his theories are rational, and give evidence that, if he could have broken away from his adhesion to the letter of scripture, he might have given a strong impulse to the evolution of a true science.[326] about a century later appeared, at the other extremity of europe, the second in the trio of theological men of science in the early middle ages--bede the venerable. the nucleus of his theory also is to be found in the accepted view of the "firmament" and of the "waters above the heavens," derived from genesis. the firmament he holds to be spherical, and of a nature subtile and fiery; the upper heavens, he says, which contain the angels, god has tempered with ice, lest they inflame the lower elements. as to the waters placed above the firmament, lower than the spiritual heavens, but higher than all corporeal creatures, he says, "some declare that they were stored there for the deluge, but others, more correctly, that they are intended to temper the fire of the stars." he goes on with long discussions as to various elements and forces in nature, and dwells at length upon the air, of which he says that the upper, serene air is over the heavens; while the lower, which is coarse, with humid exhalations, is sent off from the earth, and that in this are lightning, hail, snow, ice, and tempests, finding proof of this in the one hundred and forty-eighth psalm, where these are commanded to "praise the lord from the earth."[327] so great was bede's authority, that nearly all the anonymous speculations of the next following centuries upon these subjects were eventually ascribed to him. in one of these spurious treatises an attempt is made to get new light upon the sources of the waters above the heavens, the main reliance being the sheet containing the animals let down from heaven, in the vision of st. peter. another of these treatises is still more curious, for it endeavours to account for earthquakes and tides by means of the leviathan mentioned in scripture. this characteristic passage runs as follows: "some say that the earth contains the animal leviathan, and that he holds his tail after a fashion of his own, so that it is sometimes scorched by the sun, whereupon he strives to get hold of the sun, and so the earth is shaken by the motion of his indignation; he drinks in also, at times, such huge masses of the waves that when he belches them forth all the seas feel their effect." and this theological theory of the tides, as caused by the alternate suction and belching of leviathan, went far and wide.[327] in the writings thus covered with the name of bede there is much showing a scientific spirit, which might have come to something of permanent value had it not been hampered by the supposed necessity of conforming to the letter of scripture. it is as startling as it is refreshing to hear one of these medieval theorists burst out as follows against those who are content to explain everything by the power of god: "what is more pitiable than to say that a thing _is_, because god is able to do it, and not to show any reason why it is so, nor any purpose for which it is so; just as if god did everything that he is able to do! you talk like one who says that god is able to make a calf out of a log. but _did_ he ever do it? either, then, show a reason why a thing is so, or a purpose wherefore it is so, or else cease to declare it so."[328] the most permanent contribution of bede to scientific thought in this field was his revival of the view that the firmament is made of ice; and he supported this from the words in the twenty-sixth chapter of job, "he bindeth up the waters in his thick cloud, and the cloud is not rent under them." about the beginning of the ninth century appeared the third in that triumvirate of churchmen who were the oracles of sacred science throughout the early middle ages--rabanus maurus, abbot of fulda and archbishop of mayence. starting, like all his predecessors, from the first chapter of genesis, borrowing here and there from the ancient philosophers, and excluding everything that could conflict with the letter of scripture, he follows, in his work upon the universe, his two predecessors, isidore and bede, developing especially st. jerome's theory, drawn from ezekiel, that the firmament is strong enough to hold up the "waters above the heavens," because it is made of ice. for centuries the authority of these three great teachers was unquestioned, and in countless manuals and catechisms their doctrine was translated and diluted for the common mind. but about the second quarter of the twelfth century a priest, honorius of autun, produced several treatises which show that thought on this subject had made some little progress. he explained the rain rationally, and mainly in the modern manner; with the thunder he is less successful, but insists that the thunderbolt "is not stone, as some assert." his thinking is vigorous and independent. had theorists such as he been many, a new science could have been rapidly evolved, but the theological current was too strong.[329] the strength of this current which overwhelmed the thought of honorius is seen again in the work of the dominican monk, john of san geminiano, who in the thirteenth century gave forth his _summa de exemplis_ for the use of preachers in his order. of its thousand pages, over two hundred are devoted to illustrations drawn from the heavens and the elements. a characteristic specimen is his explanation of the psalmist's phrase, "the arrows of the thunder." these, he tells us, are forged out of a dry vapour rising from the earth and kindled by the heat of the upper air, which then, coming into contact with a cloud just turning into rain, "is conglutinated like flour into dough," but, being too hot to be extinguished, its particles become merely sharpened at the lower end, and so blazing arrows, cleaving and burning everything they touch.[329b] but far more important, in the thirteenth century, was the fact that the most eminent scientific authority of that age, albert the great, bishop of ratisbon, attempted to reconcile the speculations of aristotle with theological views derived from the fathers. in one very important respect he improved upon the meteorological views of his great master. the thunderbolt, he says, is no mere fire, but the product of black clouds containing much mud, which, when it is baked by the intense heat, forms a fiery black or red stone that falls from the sky, tearing beams and crushing walls in its course: such he has seen with his own eyes.[330] the monkish encyclopedists of the later middle ages added little to these theories. as we glance over the pages of vincent of beauvais, the monk bartholomew, and william of conches, we note only a growing deference to the authority of aristotle as supplementing that of isidore and bede and explaining sacred scripture. aristotle is treated like a church father, but extreme care is taken not to go beyond the great maxim of st. augustine; then, little by little, bede and isidore fall into the background, aristotle fills the whole horizon, and his utterances are second in sacredness only to the text of holy writ. a curious illustration of the difficulties these medieval scholars had to meet in reconciling the scientific theories of aristotle with the letter of the bible is seen in the case of the rainbow. it is to the honour of aristotle that his conclusions regarding the rainbow, though slightly erroneous, were based upon careful observation and evolved by reasoning alone; but his christian commentators, while anxious to follow him, had to bear in mind the scriptural statement that god had created the rainbow as a sign to noah that there should never again be a flood on the earth. even so bold a thinker as cardinal d'ailly, whose speculations as to the geography of the earth did so much afterward in stimulating columbus, faltered before this statement, acknowledging that god alone could explain it; but suggested that possibly never before the deluge had a cloud been suffered to take such a position toward the sun as to cause a rainbow. the learned cardinal was also constrained to believe that certain stars and constellations have something to do in causing the rain, since these would best explain noah's foreknowledge of the deluge. in connection with this scriptural doctrine of winds came a scriptural doctrine of earthquakes: they were believed to be caused by winds issuing from the earth, and this view was based upon the passage in the one hundred and thirty-fifth psalm, "he bringeth the wind out of his treasuries."[331] such were the main typical attempts during nearly fourteen centuries to build up under theological guidance and within scriptural limitations a sacred science of meteorology. but these theories were mainly evolved in the effort to establish a basis and general theory of phenomena: it still remained to account for special manifestations, and here came a twofold development of theological thought. on one hand, these phenomena were attributed to the almighty, and, on the other, to satan. as to the first of these theories, we constantly find the divine wrath mentioned by the earlier fathers as the cause of lightning, hailstorms, hurricanes, and the like. in the early days of christianity we see a curious struggle between pagan and christian belief upon this point. near the close of the second century the emperor marcus aurelius, in his effort to save the empire, fought a hotly contested battle with the quadi, in what is now hungary. while the issue of this great battle was yet doubtful there came suddenly a blinding storm beating into the faces of the quadi, and this gave the roman troops the advantage, enabling marcus aurelius to win a decisive victory. votaries of each of the great religions claimed that this storm was caused by the object of their own adoration. the pagans insisted that jupiter had sent the storm in obedience to their prayers, and on the antonine column at rome we may still see the figure of olympian jove casting his thunderbolts and pouring a storm of rain from the open heavens against the quadi. on the other hand, the christians insisted that the storm had been sent by jehovah in obedience to _their_ prayers; and tertullian, eusebius, st. gregory of nyssa, and st. jerome were among those who insisted upon this meteorological miracle; the first two, indeed, in the fervour of their arguments for its reality, allowing themselves to be carried considerably beyond exact historical truth.[332] as time went on, the fathers developed this view more and more from various texts in the jewish and christian sacred books, substituting for jupiter flinging his thunderbolts the almighty wrapped in thunder and sending forth his lightnings. through the middle ages this was fostered until it came to be accepted as a mere truism, entering into all medieval thinking, and was still further developed by an attempt to specify the particular sins which were thus punished. thus even the rational florentine historian villani ascribed floods and fires to the "too great pride of the city of florence and the ingratitude of the citizens toward god," which, "of course," says a recent historian, "meant their insufficient attention to the ceremonies of religion."[332b] in the thirteenth century the cistercian monk, cesarius of heisterbach, popularized the doctrine in central europe. his rich collection of anecdotes for the illustration of religious truths was the favourite recreative reading in the convents for three centuries, and exercised great influence over the thought of the later middle ages. in this work he relates several instances of the divine use of lightning, both for rescue and for punishment. thus he tells us how the steward (_cellerarius_) of his own monastery was saved from the clutch of a robber by a clap of thunder which, in answer to his prayer, burst suddenly from the sky and frightened the bandit from his purpose: how, in a saxon theatre, twenty men were struck down, while a priest escaped, not because he was not a greater sinner than the rest, but because the thunderbolt had respect for his profession! it is cesarius, too, who tells us the story of the priest of treves, struck by lightning in his own church, whither he had gone to ring the bell against the storm, and whose sins were revealed by the course of the lightning, for it tore his clothes from him and consumed certain parts of his body, showing that the sins for which he was punished were vanity and unchastity.[333] this mode of explaining the divine interference more minutely is developed century after century, and we find both catholics and protestants assigning as causes of unpleasant meteorological phenomena whatever appears to them wicked or even unorthodox. among the english reformers, tyndale quotes in this kind of argument the thirteenth chapter of i. samuel, showing that, when god gave israel a king, it thundered and rained. archbishop whitgift, bishop bale, and bishop pilkington insisted on the same view. in protestant germany, about the same period, plieninger took a dislike to the new gregorian calendar and published a volume of _brief reflections_, in which he insisted that the elements had given utterance to god's anger against it, calling attention to the fact that violent storms raged over almost all germany during the very ten days which the pope had taken out for the correction of the year, and that great floods began with the first days of the corrected year.[333b] early in the seventeenth century, majoli, bishop of voltoraria, in southern italy, produced his huge work _dies canicularii_, or dog days, which remained a favourite encyclopedia in catholic lands for over a hundred years. treating of thunder and lightning, he compares them to bombs against the wicked, and says that the thunderbolt is "an exhalation condensed and cooked into stone," and that "it is not to be doubted that, of all instruments of god's vengeance, the thunderbolt is the chief"; that by means of it sennacherib and his army were consumed; that luther was struck by lightning in his youth as a caution against departing from the catholic faith; that blasphemy and sabbath-breaking are the sins to which this punishment is especially assigned, and he cites the case of dathan and abiram. fifty years later the jesuit stengel developed this line of thought still further in four thick quarto volumes on the judgments of god, adding an elaborate schedule for the use of preachers in the sermons of an entire year. three chapters were devoted to thunder, lightning, and storms. that the author teaches the agency in these of diabolical powers goes without saying; but this can only act, he declares, by divine permission, and the thunderbolt is always the finger of god, which rarely strikes a man save for his sins, and the nature of the special sin thus punished may be inferred from the bodily organs smitten. a few years later, in protestant swabia, pastor georg nuber issued a volume of "weather-sermons," in which he discusses nearly every sort of elemental disturbances--storms, floods, droughts, lightning, and hail. these, he says, come direct from god for human sins, yet no doubt with discrimination, for there are five sins which god especially punishes with lightning and hail--namely, impenitence, incredulity, neglect of the repair of churches, fraud in the payment of tithes to the clergy, and oppression of subordinates, each of which points he supports with a mass of scriptural texts.[334] this doctrine having become especially precious both to catholics and to protestants, there were issued handbooks of prayers against bad weather: among these was the _spiritual thunder and storm booklet_, produced in 1731 by a protestant scholar, stoltzlin, whose three or four hundred pages of prayer and song, "sighs for use when it lightens fearfully," and "cries of anguish when the hailstorm is drawing on," show a wonderful adaptability to all possible meteorological emergencies. the preface of this volume is contributed by prof. dilherr, pastor of the great church of st. sebald at nuremberg, who, in discussing the divine purposes of storms, adds to the three usually assigned--namely, god's wish to manifest his power, to display his anger, and to drive sinners to repentance--a fourth, which, he says, is that god may show us "with what sort of a stormbell he will one day ring in the last judgment." about the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century we find, in switzerland, even the eminent and rational professor of mathematics, scheuchzer, publishing his _physica sacra_, with the bible as a basis, and forced to admit that the elements, in the most literal sense, utter the voice of god. the same pressure was felt in new england. typical are the sermons of increase mather on _the voice of god in stormy winds_. he especially lays stress on the voice of god speaking to job out of the whirlwind, and upon the text, "stormy wind fulfilling his word." he declares, "when there are great tempests, the angels oftentimes have a hand therein,... yea, and sometimes evil angels." he gives several cases of blasphemers struck by lightning, and says, "nothing can be more dangerous for mortals than to contemn dreadful providences, and, in particular, dreadful tempests." his distinguished son, cotton mather, disentangled himself somewhat from the old view, as he had done in the interpretation of comets. in his _christian philosopher_, his _thoughts for the day of rain_, and his _sermon preached at the time of the late storm_ (in 1723), he is evidently tending toward the modern view. yet, from time to time, the older view has reasserted itself, and in france, as recently as the year 1870, we find the bishop of verdun ascribing the drought afflicting his diocese to the sin of sabbath-breaking.[335] this theory, which attributed injurious meteorological phenomnena mainly to the purposes of god, was a natural development, and comparatively harmless; but at a very early period there was evolved another theory, which, having been ripened into a doctrine, cost the earth dear indeed. never, perhaps, in the modern world has there been a dogma more prolific of physical, mental, and moral agony throughout whole nations and during whole centuries. this theory, its development by theology, its fearful results to mankind, and its destruction by scientific observation and thought, will next be considered. ii. diabolic agency in storms. while the fathers and schoolmen were labouring to deduce a science of meteorology from our sacred books, there oozed up in european society a mass of traditions and observances which had been lurking since the days of paganism; and, although here and there appeared a churchman to oppose them, the theologians and ecclesiastics ere long began to adopt them and to clothe them with the authority of religion. both among the pagans of the roman empire and among the barbarians of the north the christian missionaries had found it easier to prove the new god supreme than to prove the old gods powerless. faith in the miracles of the new religion seemed to increase rather than to diminish faith in the miracles of the old; and the church at last began admitting the latter as facts, but ascribing them to the devil. jupiter and odin sank into the category of ministers of satan, and transferred to that master all their former powers. a renewed study of scripture by theologians elicited overwhelming proofs of the truth of this doctrine. stress was especially laid on the declaration of scripture, "the gods of the heathen are devils."[336] supported by this and other texts, it soon became a dogma. so strong was the hold it took, under the influence of the church, that not until late in the seventeenth century did its substantial truth begin to be questioned. with no field of action had the sway of the ancient deities been more identified than with that of atmospheric phenomena. the roman heard jupiter, and the teuton heard thor, in the thunder. could it be doubted that these powerful beings would now take occasion, unless hindered by the command of the almighty, to vent their spite against those who had deserted their altars? might not the almighty himself be willing to employ the malice of these powers of the air against those who had offended him? it was, indeed, no great step, for those whose simple faith accepted rain or sunshine as an answer to their prayers, to suspect that the untimely storms or droughts, which baffled their most earnest petitions, were the work of the archenemy, "the prince of the power of the air." the great fathers of the church had easily found warrant for this doctrine in scripture. st. jerome declared the air to be full of devils, basing this belief upon various statements in the prophecies of isaiah and in the epistle to the ephesians. st. augustine held the same view as beyond controversy.[337] during the middle ages this doctrine of the diabolical origin of storms went on gathering strength. bede had full faith in it, and narrates various anecdotes in support of it. st. thomas aquinas gave it his sanction, saying in his all authoritative _summa_, "rains and winds, and whatsoever occurs by local impulse alone, can be caused by demons." "it is," he says, "a dogma of faith that the demons can produce wind, storms, and rain of fire from heaven." albert the great taught the same doctrine, and showed how a certain salve thrown into a spring produced whirlwinds. the great franciscan--the "seraphic doctor"--st. bonaventura, whose services to theology earned him one of the highest places in the church, and to whom dante gave special honour in paradise, set upon this belief his high authority. the lives of the saints, and the chronicles of the middle ages, were filled with it. poetry and painting accepted the idea and developed it. dante wedded it to verse, and at venice this thought may still be seen embodied in one of the grand pictures of bordone: a shipload of demons is seen approaching venice in a storm, threatening destruction to the city, but st. mark, st. george, and st. nicholas attack the vessel, and disperse the hellish crew.[338] the popes again and again sanctioned this doctrine, and it was amalgamated with various local superstitions, pious imaginations, and interesting arguments, to strike the fancy of the people at large. a strong argument in favour of a diabolical origin of the thunderbolt was afforded by the eccentricities of its operation. these attracted especial attention in the middle ages, and the popular love of marvel generalized isolated phenomena into rules. thus it was said that the lightning strikes the sword in the sheath, gold in the purse, the foot in the shoe, leaving sheath and purse and shoe unharmed; that it consumes a human being internally without injuring the skin; that it destroys nets in the water, but not on the land; that it kills one man, and leaves untouched another standing beside him; that it can tear through a house and enter the earth without moving a stone from its place; that it injures the heart of a tree, but not the bark; that wine is poisoned by it, while poisons struck by it lose their venom; that a man's hair may be consumed by it and the man be unhurt.[338b] these peculiar phenomena, made much of by the allegorizing sermonizers of the day, were used in moral lessons from every pulpit. thus the carmelite, matthias farinator, of vienna, who at the pope's own instance compiled early in the fifteenth century that curious handbook of illustrative examples for preachers, the _lumen animae_, finds a spiritual analogue for each of these anomalies.[338c] this doctrine grew, robust and noxious, until, in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, we find its bloom in a multitude of treatises by the most learned of the catholic and protestant divines, and its fruitage in the torture chambers and on the scaffolds throughout christendom. at the reformation period, and for nearly two hundred years afterward, catholics and protestants vied with each other in promoting this growth. john eck, the great opponent of luther, gave to the world an annotated edition of aristotle's _physics_, which was long authoritative in the german universities; and, though the text is free from this doctrine, the woodcut illustrating the earth's atmosphere shows most vividly, among the clouds of mid-air, the devils who there reign supreme.[339] luther, in the other religious camp, supported the superstition even more zealously, asserting at times his belief that the winds themselves are only good or evil spirits, and declaring that a stone thrown into a certain pond in his native region would cause a dreadful storm because of the devils, kept prisoners there.[339b] just at the close of the same century, catholics and protestants welcomed alike the great work of delrio. in this, the power of devils over the elements is proved first from the holy scriptures, since, he declares, "they show that satan brought fire down from heaven to consume the servants and flocks of job, and that he stirred up a violent wind, which overwhelmed in ruin the sons and daughters of job at their feasting." next, delrio insists on the agreement of all the orthodox fathers, that it was the devil himself who did this, and attention is called to the fact that the hail with which the egyptians were punished is expressly declared in holy scripture to have been brought by the evil angels. citing from the apocalypse, he points to the four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the winds and preventing their doing great damage to mortals; and he dwells especially upon the fact that the devil is called by the apostle a "prince of the power of the air." he then goes on to cite the great fathers of the church--clement, jerome, augustine, and thomas aquinas.[340] this doctrine was spread not only in ponderous treatises, but in light literature and by popular illustrations. in the _compendium maleficarum_ of the italian monk guacci, perhaps the most amusing book in the whole literature of witchcraft, we may see the witch, _in propria persona_, riding the diabolic goat through the clouds while the storm rages around and beneath her; and we may read a rich collection of anecdotes, largely contemporary, which establish the required doctrine beyond question. the first and most natural means taken against this work of satan in the air was prayer; and various petitions are to be found scattered through the christian liturgies--some very beautiful and touching. this means of escape has been relied upon, with greater or less faith, from those days to these. various medieval saints and reformers, and devoted men in all centuries, from st. giles to john wesley, have used it with results claimed to be miraculous. whatever theory any thinking man may hold in the matter, he will certainly not venture a reproachful word: such prayers have been in all ages a natural outcome of the mind of man in trouble.[340b] but against the "power of the air" were used other means of a very different character and tendency, and foremost among these was exorcism. in an exorcism widely used and ascribed to pope gregory xiii, the formula is given: "i, a priest of christ,... do command ye, most foul spirits, who do stir up these clouds,... that ye depart from them, and disperse yourselves into wild and untilled places, that ye may be no longer able to harm men or animals or fruits or herbs, or whatsoever is designed for human use." but this is mild, indeed, compared to some later exorcisms, as when the ritual runs: "all the people shall rise, and the priest, turning toward the clouds, shall pronounce these words: `i exorcise ye, accursed demons, who have dared to use, for the accomplishment of your iniquity, those powers of nature by which god in divers ways worketh good to mortals; who stir up winds, gather vapours, form clouds, and condense them into hail.... i exorcise ye,... that ye relinquish the work ye have begun, dissolve the hail, scatter the clouds, disperse the vapours, and restrain the winds.'" the rubric goes on to order that then there shall be a great fire kindled in an open place, and that over it the sign of the cross shall be made, and the one hundred and fourteenth psalm chanted, while malodorous substances, among them sulphur and asafoetida, shall be cast into the flames. the purpose seems to have been literally to "smoke out" satan.[341] manuals of exorcisms became important--some bulky quartos, others handbooks. noteworthy among the latter is one by the italian priest locatelli, entitled _exorcisms most powerful and efficacious for the dispelling of aerial tempests, whether raised by demons at their own instance or at the beck of some servant of the devil_.[341b] the jesuit gretser, in his famous book on _benedictions and maledictions_, devotes a chapter to this subject, dismissing summarily the scepticism that questions the power of devils over the elements, and adducing the story of job as conclusive.[341c] nor was this theory of exorcism by any means confined to the elder church. luther vehemently upheld it, and prescribed especially the first chapter of st. john's gospel as of unfailing efficacy against thunder and lightning, declaring that he had often found the mere sign of the cross, with the text, "the word was made flesh," sufficient to put storms to flight.[342] from the beginning of the middle ages until long after the reformation the chronicles give ample illustration of the successful use of such exorcisms. so strong was the belief in them that it forced itself into minds comparatively rational, and found utterance in treatises of much importance. but, since exorcisms were found at times ineffectual, other means were sought, and especially fetiches of various sorts. one of the earliest of these appeared when pope alexander i, according to tradition, ordained that holy water should be kept in churches and bedchambers to drive away devils.[342b] another safeguard was found in relics, and of similar efficacy were the so-called "conception billets" sold by the carmelite monks. they contained a formula upon consecrated paper, at which the devil might well turn pale. buried in the corner of a field, one of these was thought to give protection against bad weather and destructive insects.[342c] but highest in repute during centuries was the _agnus dei_--a piece of wax blessed by the pope's own hand, and stamped with the well-known device representing the "lamb of god." its powers were so marvellous that pope urban v thought three of these cakes a fitting gift from himself to the greek emperor. in the latin doggerel recounting their virtues, their meteorological efficacy stands first, for especial stress is laid on their power of dispelling the thunder. the stress thus laid by pope urban, as the infallible guide of christendom, on the efficacy of this fetich, gave it great value throughout europe, and the doggerel verses reciting its virtues sank deep into the popular mind. it was considered a most potent means of dispelling hail, pestilence, storms, conflagrations, and enchantments; and this feeling was deepened by the rules and rites for its consecration. so solemn was the matter, that the manufacture and sale of this particular fetich was, by a papal bull of 1471, reserved for the pope himself, and he only performed the required ceremony in the first and seventh years of his pontificate. standing unmitred, he prayed: "o god,... we humbly beseech thee that thou wilt bless these waxen forms, figured with the image of an innocent lamb,... that, at the touch and sight of them, the faithful may break forth into praises, and that the crash of hailstorms, the blast of hurricanes, the violence of tempests, the fury of winds, and the malice of thunderbolts may be tempered, and evil spirits flee and tremble before the standard of thy holy cross, which is graven upon them."[343] another favourite means with the clergy of the older church for bringing to naught the "power of the air," was found in great processions bearing statues, relics, and holy emblems through the streets. yet even these were not always immediately effective. one at liege, in the thirteenth century, thrice proved unsuccessful in bringing rain, when at last it was found that the image of the virgin had been forgotten! a new procession was at once formed, the _salve regina_ sung, and the rain came down in such torrents as to drive the devotees to shelter.[344] in catholic lands this custom remains to this day, and very important features in these processions are the statues and the reliquaries of patron saints. some of these excel in bringing sunshine, others in bringing rain. the cathedral of chartres is so fortunate as to possess sundry relics of st. taurin, especially potent against dry weather, and some of st. piat, very nearly as infallible against wet weather. in certain regions a single saint gives protection alternately against wet and dry weather--as, for example, st. godeberte at noyon. against storms st. barbara is very generally considered the most powerful protectress; but, in the french diocese of limoges, notre dame de crocq has proved a most powerful rival, for when, a few years since, all the neighbouring parishes were ravaged by storms, not a hailstone fell in the canton which she protected. in the diocese of tarbes, st. exupere is especially invoked against hail, peasants flocking from all the surrounding country to his shrine.[344b] but the means of baffling the powers of the air which came to be most widely used was the ringing of consecrated church bells. this usage had begun in the time of charlemagne, and there is extant a prohibition of his against the custom of baptizing bells and of hanging certain tags[344c] on their tongues as a protection against hailstorms; but even charlemagne was powerless against this current of medieval superstition. theological reasons were soon poured into it, and in the year 968 pope john xiii gave it the highest ecclesiastical sanction by himself baptizing the great bell of his cathedral church, the lateran, and christening it with his own name.[345] this idea was rapidly developed, and we soon find it supported in ponderous treatises, spread widely in sermons, and popularized in multitudes of inscriptions cast upon the bells themselves. this branch of theological literature may still be studied in multitudes of church towers throughout europe. a bell at basel bears the inscription, "ad fugandos demones." another, in lugano, declares "the sound of this bell vanquishes tempests, repels demons, and summons men." another, at the cathedral of erfurt, declares that it can "ward off lightning and malignant demons." a peal in the jesuit church at the university town of pont-a-mousson bore the words, "they praise god, put to flight the clouds, affright the demons, and call the people." this is dated 1634. another bell in that part of france declares, "it is i who dissipate the thunders"(_ego sum qui dissipo tonitrua_).[345b] another, in one of the forest cantons of switzerland, bears a doggerel couplet, which may be thus translated: "on the devil my spite i'll vent, and, god helping, bad weather prevent."[345c] very common were inscriptions embodying this doctrine in sonorous latin. naturally, then, there grew up a ritual for the consecration of bells. knollys, in his quaint translation of the old chronicler sleidan, gives us the usage in the simple english of the middle of the sixteenth century: "in lyke sorte [as churches] are the belles used. and first, forsouth, they must hange so, as the byshop may goe round about them. whiche after he hath sayde certen psalmes, he consecrateth water and salte, and mingleth them together, wherwith he washeth the belle diligently both within and without, after wypeth it drie, and with holy oyle draweth in it the signe of the crosse, and prayeth god, that whan they shall rynge or sounde that bell, all the disceiptes of the devyll may vanyshe away, hayle, thondryng, lightening, wyndes, and tempestes, and all untemperate weathers may be aswaged. whan he hath wipte out the crosse of oyle wyth a linen cloth, he maketh seven other crosses in the same, and within one only. after saying certen psalmes, he taketh a payre of sensours and senseth the bel within, and prayeth god to sende it good lucke. in many places they make a great dyner, and kepe a feast as it were at a solemne wedding."[346] these bell baptisms became matters of great importance. popes, kings, and prelates were proud to stand as sponsors. four of the bells at the cathedral of versailles having been destroyed during the french revolution, four new ones were baptized, on the 6th of january, 1824, the voltairean king, louis xviii, and the pious duchess d'angouleme standing as sponsors. in some of these ceremonies zeal appears to have outrun knowledge, and one of luther's stories, at the expense of the older church, was that certain authorities thus christened a bell "hosanna," supposing that to be the name of a woman. to add to the efficacy of such baptisms, water was sometimes brought from the river jordan.[346b] the prayers used at bell baptisms fully recognise this doctrine. the ritual of paris embraces the petition that, "whensoever this bell shall sound, it shall drive away the malign influences of the assailing spirits, the horror of their apparitions, the rush of whirlwinds, the stroke of lightning, the harm of thunder, the disasters of storms, and all the spirits of the tempest." another prayer begs that "the sound of this bell may put to flight the fiery darts of the enemy of men"; and others vary the form but not the substance of this petition. the great jesuit theologian, bellarmin, did indeed try to deny the reality of this baptism; but this can only be regarded as a piece of casuistry suited to protestant hardness of heart, or as strategy in the warfare against heretics.[347] forms of baptism were laid down in various manuals sanctioned directly by papal authority, and sacramental efficacy was everywhere taken for granted.[347b] the development of this idea in the older church was too strong to be resisted;[347c] but, as a rule, the protestant theologians of the reformation, while admitting that storms were caused by satan and his legions, opposed the baptism of bells, and denied the theory of their influence in dispersing storms. luther, while never doubting that troublesome meteorological phenomena were caused by devils, regarded with contempt the idea that the demons were so childish as to be scared by the clang of bells; his theory made them altogether too powerful to be affected by means so trivial. the great english reformers, while also accepting very generally the theory of diabolic interference in storms, reproved strongly the baptizing of bells, as the perversion of a sacrament and involving blasphemy. bishop hooper declared reliance upon bells to drive away tempests, futile. bishop pilkington, while arguing that tempests are direct instruments of god's wrath, is very severe against using "unlawful means," and among these he names "the hallowed bell"; and these opinions were very generally shared by the leading english clergy.[348] toward the end of the sixteenth century the elector of saxony strictly forbade the ringing of bells against storms, urging penance and prayer instead; but the custom was not so easily driven out of the protestant church, and in some quarters was developed a protestant theory of a rationalistic sort, ascribing the good effects of bell-ringing in storms to the calling together of the devout for prayer or to the suggestion of prayers during storms at night. as late as the end of the seventeenth century we find the bells of protestant churches in northern germany rung for the dispelling of tempests. in catholic austria this bell-ringing seems to have become a nuisance in the last century, for the emperor joseph ii found it necessary to issue an edict against it; but this doctrine had gained too large headway to be arrested by argument or edict, and the bells may be heard ringing during storms to this day in various remote districts in europe.[348b] for this was no mere superficial view. it was really part of a deep theological current steadily developed through the middle ages, the fundamental idea of the whole being the direct influence of the bells upon the "power of the air"; and it is perhaps worth our while to go back a little and glance over the coming of this current into the modern world. having grown steadily through the middle ages, it appeared in full strength at the reformation period; and in the sixteenth century olaus magnus, archbishop of upsala and primate of sweden, in his great work on the northern nations, declares it a well-established fact that cities and harvests may be saved from lightning by the ringing of bells and the burning of consecrated incense, accompanied by prayers; and he cautions his readers that the workings of the thunderbolt are rather to be marvelled at than inquired into. even as late as 1673 the franciscan professor lealus, in italy, in a schoolbook which was received with great applause in his region, taught unhesitatingly the agency of demons in storms, and the power of bells over them, as well as the portentousness of comets and the movement of the heavens by angels. he dwells especially, too, upon the perfect protection afforded by the waxen _agnus dei_. how strong this current was, and how difficult even for philosophical minds to oppose, is shown by the fact that both descartes and francis bacon speak of it with respect, admitting the fact, and suggesting very mildly that the bells may accomplish this purpose by the concussion of the air.[349] but no such moderate doctrine sufficed, and the renowned bishop binsfeld, of treves, in his noted treatise on the credibility of the confessions of witches, gave an entire chapter to the effect of bells in calming atmospheric disturbances. basing his general doctrine upon the first chapter of job and the second chapter of ephesians, he insisted on the reality of diabolic agency in storms; and then, by theological reasoning, corroborated by the statements extorted in the torture chamber, he showed the efficacy of bells in putting the hellish legions to flight.[350] this continued, therefore, an accepted tenet, developed in every nation, and coming to its climax near the end of the seventeenth century. at that period--the period of isaac newton--father augustine de angelis, rector of the clementine college at rome, published under the highest church authority his lectures upon meteorology. coming from the centre of catholic christendom, at so late a period, they are very important as indicating what had been developed under the influence of theology during nearly seventeen hundred years. this learned head of a great college at the heart of christendom taught that "the surest remedy against thunder is that which our holy mother the church practises, namely, the ringing of bells when a thunderbolt impends: thence follows a twofold effect, physical and moral--a physical, because the sound variously disturbs and agitates the air, and by agitation disperses the hot exhalations and dispels the thunder; but the moral effect is the more certain, because by the sound the faithful are stirred to pour forth their prayers, by which they win from god the turning away of the thunderbolt." here we see in this branch of thought, as in so many others, at the close of the seventeenth century, the dawn of rationalism. father de angelis now keeps demoniacal influence in the background. little, indeed, is said of the efficiency of bells in putting to flight the legions of satan: the wise professor is evidently preparing for that inevitable compromise which we see in the history of every science when it is clear that it can no longer be suppressed by ecclesiastical fulminations.[350b] iii. the agency of witches. but, while this comparatively harmless doctrine of thwarting the powers of the air by fetiches and bell-ringing was developed, there were evolved another theory, and a series of practices sanctioned by the church, which must forever be considered as among the most fearful calamities in human history. indeed, few errors have ever cost so much shedding of innocent blood over such wide territory and during so many generations. out of the old doctrine--pagan and christian--of evil agency in atmospheric phenomena was evolved the belief that certain men, women, and children may secure infernal aid to produce whirlwinds, hail, frosts, floods, and the like. as early as the ninth century one great churchman, agobard, archbishop of lyons, struck a heavy blow at this superstition. his work, _against the absurd opinion of the vulgar touching hail and thunder_, shows him to have been one of the most devoted apostles of right reason whom human history has known. by argument and ridicule, and at times by a lofty eloquence, he attempted to breast this tide. one passage is of historical significance. he declares: "the wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe."[351] all in vain; the tide of superstition continued to roll on; great theologians developed it and ecclesiastics favoured it; until as we near the end of the medieval period the infallible voice of rome is heard accepting it, and clinching this belief into the mind of christianity. for, in 1437, pope eugene iv, by virtue of the teaching power conferred on him by the almighty, and under the divine guarantee against any possible error in the exercise of it, issued a bull exhorting the inquisitors of heresy and witchcraft to use greater diligence against the human agents of the prince of darkness, and especially against those who have the power to produce bad weather. in 1445 pope eugene returned again to the charge, and again issued instructions and commands infallibly committing the church to the doctrine. but a greater than eugene followed, and stamped the idea yet more deeply into the mind of the church. on the 7th of december, 1484, pope innocent viii sent forth his bull _summis desiderantes_. of all documents ever issued from rome, imperial or papal, this has doubtless, first and last, cost the greatest shedding of innocent blood. yet no document was ever more clearly dictated by conscience. inspired by the scriptural command, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," pope innocent exhorted the clergy of germany to leave no means untried to detect sorcerers, and especially those who by evil weather destroy vineyards, gardens, meadows, and growing crops. these precepts were based upon various texts of scripture, especially upon the famous statement in the book of job; and, to carry them out, witch-finding inquisitors were authorized by the pope to scour europe, especially germany, and a manual was prepared for their use--the witch-hammer, _malleus maleficarum_. in this manual, which was revered for centuries, both in catholic and protestant countries, as almost divinely inspired, the doctrine of satanic agency in atmospheric phenomena was further developed, and various means of detecting and punishing it were dwelt upon.[352] with the application of torture to thousands of women, in accordance with the precepts laid down in the _malleus_, it was not difficult to extract masses of proof for this sacred theory of meteorology. the poor creatures, writhing on the rack, held in horror by those who had been nearest and dearest to them, anxious only for death to relieve their sufferings, confessed to anything and everything that would satisfy the inquisitors and judges. all that was needed was that the inquisitors should ask leading questions[352b] and suggest satisfactory answers: the prisoners, to shorten the torture, were sure sooner or later to give the answer required, even though they knew that this would send them to the stake or scaffold. under the doctrine of "excepted cases," there was no limit to torture for persons accused of heresy or witchcraft; even the safeguards which the old pagan world had imposed upon torture were thus thrown down, and the prisoner _must_ confess. the theological literature of the middle ages was thus enriched with numberless statements regarding modes of satanic influence on the weather. pathetic, indeed, are the records; and none more so than the confessions of these poor creatures, chiefly women and children, during hundreds of years, as to their manner of raising hailstorms and tempests. such confessions, by tens of thousands, are still to be found in the judicial records of germany, and indeed of all europe. typical among these is one on which great stress was laid during ages, and for which the world was first indebted to one of these poor women. crazed by the agony of torture, she declared that, returning with a demon through the air from the witches' sabbath, she was dropped upon the earth in the confusion which resulted among the hellish legions when they heard the bells sounding the _ave maria_. it is sad to note that, after a contribution so valuable to sacred science, the poor woman was condemned to the flames. this revelation speedily ripened the belief that, whatever might be going on at the witches' sabbath--no matter how triumphant satan might be--at the moment of sounding the consecrated bells the satanic power was paralyzed. this theory once started, proofs came in to support it, during a hundred years, from the torture chambers in all parts of europe. throughout the later middle ages the dominicans had been the main agents in extorting and promulgating these revelations, but in the centuries following the reformation the jesuits devoted themselves with even more keenness and vigour to the same task. some curious questions incidentally arose. it was mooted among the orthodox authorities whether the damage done by storms should or should not be assessed upon the property of convicted witches. the theologians inclined decidedly to the affirmative; the jurists, on the whole, to the negative.[354] in spite of these tortures, lightning and tempests continued, and great men arose in the church throughout europe in every generation to point out new cruelties for the discovery of "weather-makers," and new methods for bringing their machinations to naught. but here and there, as early as the sixteenth century, we begin to see thinkers endeavouring to modify or oppose these methods. at that time paracelsus called attention to the reverberation of cannon as explaining the rolling of thunder, but he was confronted by one of his greatest contemporaries. jean bodin, as superstitious in natural as he was rational in political science, made sport of the scientific theory, and declared thunder to be "a flaming exhalation set in motion by evil spirits, and hurled downward with a great crash and a horrible smell of sulphur." in support of this view, he dwelt upon the confessions of tortured witches, upon the acknowledged agency of demons in the will-o'-the-wisp, and specially upon the passage in the one hundred and fourth psalm, "who maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flaming fire." to resist such powerful arguments by such powerful men was dangerous indeed. in 1513, pomponatius, professor at padua, published a volume of _doubts as to the fourth book of aristotle's meteorologica_, and also dared to question this power of devils; but he soon found it advisable to explain that, while as a _philosopher_ he might doubt, yet as a _christian_ he of course believed everything taught by mother church--devils and all--and so escaped the fate of several others who dared to question the agency of witches in atmospheric and other disturbances. a few years later agrippa of nettesheim made a somewhat similar effort to breast this theological tide in northern europe. he had won a great reputation in various fields, but especially in natural science, as science was then understood. seeing the folly and cruelty of the prevailing theory, he attempted to modify it, and in 1518, as syndic of metz, endeavoured to save a poor woman on trial for witchcraft. but the chief inquisitor, backed by the sacred scriptures, the papal bulls, the theological faculties, and the monks, was too strong for him; he was not only forced to give up his office, but for this and other offences of a similar sort was imprisoned, driven from city to city and from country to country, and after his death his clerical enemies, especially the dominicans, pursued his memory with calumny, and placed over his grave probably the most malignant epitaph ever written. as to argument, these efforts were met especially by jean bodin in his famous book, the _demonomanie des sorciers_, published in 1580. it was a work of great power by a man justly considered the leading thinker in france, and perhaps in europe. all the learning of the time, divine and human, he marshalled in support of the prevailing theory. with inexorable logic he showed that both the veracity of sacred scripture and the infallibility of a long line of popes and councils of the church were pledged to it, and in an eloquent passage this great publicist warned rulers and judges against any mercy to witches--citing the example of king ahab condemned by the prophet to die for having pardoned a man worthy of death, and pointing significantly to king charles ix of france, who, having pardoned a sorcerer, died soon afterward.[355] in the last years of the sixteenth century the persecutions for witchcraft and magic were therefore especially cruel; and in the western districts of germany the main instrument in them was binsfeld, suffragan bishop of treves. at that time cornelius loos was a professor at the university of that city. he was a devoted churchman, and one of the most brilliant opponents of protestantism, but he finally saw through the prevailing belief regarding occult powers, and in an evil hour for himself embodied his idea in a book entitled _true and false magic_. the book, though earnest, was temperate, but this helped him and his cause not at all. the texts of scripture clearly sanctioning belief in sorcery and magic stood against him, and these had been confirmed by the infallible teachings of the church and the popes from time immemorial; the book was stopped in the press, the manuscript confiscated, and loos thrown into a dungeon. the inquisitors having wrought their will upon him, in the spring of 1593 he was brought out of prison, forced to recant on his knees before the assembled dignitaries of the church, and thenceforward kept constantly under surveillance and at times in prison. even this was considered too light a punishment, and his arch-enemy, the jesuit delrio, declared that, but for his death by the plague, he would have been finally sent to the stake.[356] that this threat was not unmeaning had been seen a few years earlier in a case even more noted, and in the same city. during the last decades of the sixteenth century, dietrich flade, an eminent jurist, was rector of the university of treves, and chief judge of the electoral court, and in the latter capacity he had to pass judgment upon persons tried on the capital charge of magic and witchcraft. for a time he yielded to the long line of authorities, ecclesiastical and judicial, supporting the reality of this crime; but he at last seems to have realized that it was unreal, and that the confessions in his torture chamber, of compacts with satan, riding on broomsticks to the witch-sabbath, raising tempests, producing diseases, and the like, were either the results of madness or of willingness to confess anything and everything, and even to die, in order to shorten the fearful tortures to which the accused were in all cases subjected until a satisfactory confession was obtained. on this conviction of the unreality of many at least of the charges flade seems to have acted, and he at once received his reward. he was arrested by the authority of the archbishop and charged with having sold himself to satan--the fact of his hesitation in the persecution being perhaps what suggested his guilt. he was now, in his turn, brought into the torture chamber over which he had once presided, was racked until he confessed everything which his torturers suggested, and finally, in 1589, was strangled and burnt. of that trial a record exists in the library of cornell university in the shape of the original minutes of the case, and among them the depositions of flade when under torture, taken down from his own lips in the torture chamber. in these depositions this revered and venerable scholar and jurist acknowledged the truth of every absurd charge brought against him--anything, everything, which would end the fearful torture: compared with that, death was nothing.[357] nor was even a priest secure who ventured to reveal the unreality of magic. when friedrich spee, the jesuit poet of western germany, found, in taking the confessions of those about to be executed for magic, that without exception, just when about to enter eternity and utterly beyond hope of pardon, they all retracted their confessions made under torture, his sympathies as a man rose above his loyalty to his order, and he published his _cautio criminalis_ as a warning, stating with entire moderation the facts he had observed and the necessity of care. but he did not dare publish it under his own name, nor did he even dare publish it in a catholic town; he gave it to the world anonymously, and, in order to prevent any tracing of the work to him through the confessional, he secretly caused it to be published in the protestant town of rinteln. nor was this all. nothing shows so thoroughly the hold that this belief in magic had obtained as the conduct of spee's powerful friend and contemporary, john philip von schonborn, later the elector and prince archbishop of mayence. as a youth, schonborn had loved and admired spee, and had especially noted his persistent melancholy and his hair whitened even in his young manhood. on schonborn's pressing him for the cause, spee at last confessed that his sadness, whitened hair, and premature old age were due to his recollections of the scores of men and women and children whom he had been obliged to see tortured and sent to the scaffold and stake for magic and witchcraft, when he as their father confessor positively knew them to be innocent. the result was that, when schonborn became elector and archbishop of mayence, he stopped the witch persecutions in that province, and prevented them as long as he lived. but here was shown the strength of theological and ecclesiastical traditions and precedents. even a man so strong by family connections, and enjoying such great temporal and spiritual power as schonhorn, dared not openly give his reasons for this change of policy. so far as is known, he never uttered a word publicly against the reality of magic, and under his successor in the electorate witch trials were resumed. the great upholders of the orthodox view retained full possession of the field. the victorious bishop binsfeld, of treves, wrote a book to prove that everything confessed by the witches under torture, especially the raising of storms and the general controlling of the weather, was worthy of belief; and this book became throughout europe a standard authority, both among catholics and protestants. even more inflexible was remigius, criminal judge in lorraine. on the title-page of his manual he boasts that within fifteen years he had sent nine hundred persons to death for this imaginary crime.[358] protestantism fell into the superstition as fully as catholicism. in the same century john wier, a disciple of agrippa, tried to frame a pious theory which, while satisfying orthodoxy, should do something to check the frightful cruelties around him. in his book _de praestigiis daemnonum_, published in 1563, he proclaimed his belief in witchcraft, but suggested that the compacts with satan, journeys through the air on broomsticks, bearing children to satan, raising storms and producing diseases--to which so many women and children confessed under torture--were delusions suggested and propagated by satan himself, and that the persons charged with witchcraft were therefore to be considered "as possessed"--that is, rather as sinned against than sinning.[359] but neither catholics nor protestants would listen for a moment to any such suggestion. wier was bitterly denounced and persecuted. nor did bekker, a protestant divine in holland, fare any better in the following century. for his _world bewitched_, in which he ventured not only to question the devil's power over the weather, but to deny his bodily existence altogether, he was solemnly tried by the synod of his church and expelled from his pulpit, while his views were condemned as heresy, and overwhelmed with a flood of refutations whose mere catalogue would fill pages; and these cases were typical of many. the reformation had, indeed, at first deepened the superstition; the new church being anxious to show itself equally orthodox and zealous with the old. during the century following the first great movement, the eminent lutheran jurist and theologian benedict carpzov, whose boast was that he had read the bible fifty-three times, especially distinguished himself by his skill in demonstrating the reality of witchcraft, and by his cruelty in detecting and punishing it. the torture chambers were set at work more vigorously than ever, and a long line of theological jurists followed to maintain the system and to extend it. to argue against it, or even doubt it, was exceedingly dangerous. even as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century, when christian thomasius, the greatest and bravest german between luther and lessing, began the efforts which put an end to it in protestant germany, he did not dare at first, bold as he was, to attack it in his own name, but presented his views as the university thesis of an irresponsible student.[360] the same stubborn resistance to the gradual encroachment of the scientific spirit upon the orthodox doctrine of witchcraft was seen in great britain. typical as to the attitude both of scotch and english protestants were the theory and practice of king james i, himself the author of a book on _demonology_, and nothing if not a theologian. as to theory, his treatise on _demonology_ supported the worst features of the superstition; as to practice, he ordered the learned and acute work of reginald scot, _the discoverie of witchcraft_, one of the best treatises ever written on the subject, to be burned by the hangman, and he applied his own knowledge to investigating the causes of the tempests which beset his bride on her voyage from denmark. skilful use of unlimited torture soon brought these causes to light. a dr. fian, while his legs were crushed in the "boots" and wedges were driven under his finger nails, confessed that several hundred witches had gone to sea in a sieve from the port of leith, and had raised storms and tempests to drive back the princess. with the coming in of the puritans the persecution was even more largely, systematically, and cruelly developed. the great witch-finder, matthew hopkins, having gone through the county of suffolk and tested multitudes of poor old women by piercing them with pins and needles, declared that county to be infested with witches. thereupon parliament issued a commission, and sent two eminent presbyterian divines to accompany it, with the result that in that county alone sixty persons were hanged for witchcraft in a single year. in scotland matters were even worse. the _auto da fe_ of spain was celebrated in scotland under another name, and with presbyterian ministers instead of roman catholic priests as the main attendants. at leith, in 1664, nine women were burned together. condemnations and punishments of women in batches were not uncommon. torture was used far more freely than in england, both in detecting witches and in punishing them. the natural argument developed in hundreds of pulpits was this: if the allwise god punishes his creatures with tortures infinite in cruelty and duration, why should not his ministers, as far as they can, imitate him? the strongest minds in both branches of the protestant church in great britain devoted themselves to maintaining the superstition. the newer scientific modes of thought, and especially the new ideas regarding the heavens, revealed first by copernicus and galileo and later by newton, huygens, and halley, were gradually dissipating the whole domain of the prince of the power of the air; but from first to last a long line of eminent divines, anglican and calvinistic, strove to resist the new thought. on the anglican side, in the seventeenth century, meric casaubon, doctor of divinity and a high dignitary of canterbury,--henry more, in many respects the most eminent scholar in the church,--cudworth, by far the most eminent philosopher, and dr. joseph glanvil, the most cogent of all writers in favour of witchcraft, supported the orthodox superstition in treatises of great power; and sir matthew hale, the greatest jurist of the period, condemning two women to be burned for witchcraft, declared that he based his judgment on the direct testimony of holy scripture. on the calvinistic side were the great names of richard baxter, who applauded some of the worst cruelties in england, and of increase and cotton mather, who stimulated the worst in america; and these marshalled in behalf of this cruel superstition a long line of eminent divines, the most earnest of all, perhaps, being john wesley. nor was the lutheran church in sweden and the other scandinavian countries behind its sister churches, either in persecuting witchcraft or in repressing doubts regarding the doctrine which supported it. but in spite of all these great authorities in every land, in spite of such summary punishments as those of flade, loos, and bekker, and in spite of the virtual exclusion from church preferment of all who doubted the old doctrine, the new scientific view of the heavens was developed more and more; the physical sciences were more and more cultivated; the new scientific atmosphere in general more and more prevailed; and at the end of the seventeenth century this vast growth of superstition began to wither and droop. montaigne, bayle, and voltaire in france, thomasius in germany, calef in new england, and beccaria in italy, did much also to create an intellectual and moral atmosphere fatal to it. and here it should be stated, to the honour of the church of england, that several of her divines showed great courage in opposing the dominant doctrine. such men as harsnet, archbishop of york, and morton, bishop of lichfield, who threw all their influence against witch-finding cruelties even early in the seventeenth century, deserve lasting gratitude. but especially should honour be paid to the younger men in the church, who wrote at length against the whole system: such men as wagstaffe and webster and hutchinson, who in the humbler ranks of the clergy stood manfully for truth, with the certainty that by so doing they were making their own promotion impossible. by the beginning of the eighteenth century the doctrine was evidently dying out. where torture had been abolished, or even made milder, "weather-makers" no longer confessed, and the fundamental proofs in which the system was rooted were evidently slipping away. even the great theologian fromundus, at the university of louvain, the oracle of his age, who had demonstrated the futility of the copernican theory, had foreseen this and made the inevitable attempt at compromise, declaring that devils, though _often_, are not _always_ or even for the most part the causes of thunder. the learned jesuit caspar schott, whose _physica curiosa_ was one of the most popular books of the seventeenth century, also ventured to make the same mild statement. but even such concessions by such great champions of orthodoxy did not prevent frantic efforts in various quarters to bring the world back under the old dogma: as late as 1743 there was published in catholic germany a manual by father vincent of berg, in which the superstition was taught to its fullest extent, with the declaration that it was issued for the use of priests under the express sanction of the theological professors of the university of cologne; and twenty-five years later, in 1768, we find in protestant england john wesley standing firmly for witchcraft, and uttering his famous declaration, "the giving up of witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the bible." the latest notable demonstration in scotland was made as late as 1773, when "the divines of the associated presbytery" passed a resolution declaring their belief in witchcraft, and deploring the general scepticism regarding it.[363] iv. franklin's lightning-rod. but in the midst of these efforts by catholics like father vincent and by protestants like john wesley to save the old sacred theory, it received its death-blow. in 1752 franklin made his experiments with the kite on the banks of the schuylkill; and, at the moment when he drew the electric spark from the cloud, the whole tremendous fabric of theological meteorology reared by the fathers, the popes, the medieval doctors, and the long line of great theologians, catholic and protestant, collapsed; the "prince of the power of the air" tumbled from his seat; the great doctrine which had so long afflicted the earth was prostrated forever. the experiment of franklin was repeated in various parts of europe, but, at first, the church seemed careful to take no notice of it. the old church formulas against the prince of the power of the air were still used, but the theological theory, especially in the protestant church, began to grow milder. four years after franklin's discovery pastor karl koken, member of the consistory and official preacher to the city council of hildesheim, was moved by a great hailstorm to preach and publish a sermon on _the revelation of god in weather_. of "the prince of the power of the air" he says nothing; the theory of diabolical agency he throws overboard altogether; his whole attempt is to save the older and more harmless theory, that the storm is the voice of god. he insists that, since christ told nicodemus that men "know not whence the wind cometh," it can not be of mere natural origin, but is sent directly by god himself, as david intimates in the psalm, "out of his secret places." as to the hailstorm, he lays great stress upon the plague of hail sent by the almighty upon egypt, and clinches all by insisting that god showed at mount sinai his purpose to startle the body before impressing the conscience. while the theory of diabolical agency in storms was thus drooping and dying, very shrewd efforts were made at compromise. the first of these attempts we have already noted, in the effort to explain the efficacy of bells in storms by their simple use in stirring the faithful to prayer, and in the concession made by sundry theologians, and even by the great lord bacon himself, that church bells might, under the sanction of providence, disperse storms by agitating the air. this gained ground somewhat, though it was resisted by one eminent church authority, who answered shrewdly that, in that case, cannon would be even more pious instruments. still another argument used in trying to save this part of the theological theory was that the bells were consecrated instruments for this purpose, "like the horns at whose blowing the walls of jericho fell."[365] but these compromises were of little avail. in 1766 father sterzinger attacked the very groundwork of the whole diabolic theory. he was, of course, bitterly assailed, insulted, and hated; but the church thought it best not to condemn him. more and more the "prince of the power of the air" retreated before the lightning-rod of franklin. the older church, while clinging to the old theory, was finally obliged to confess the supremacy of franklin's theory practically; for his lightning-rod did what exorcisms, and holy water, and processions, and the _agnus dei_, and the ringing of church bells, and the rack, and the burning of witches, had failed to do. this was clearly seen, even by the poorest peasants in eastern france, when they observed that the grand spire of strasburg cathedral, which neither the sacredness of the place, nor the bells within it, nor the holy water and relics beneath it, could protect from frequent injuries by lightning, was once and for all protected by franklin's rod. then came into the minds of multitudes the answer to the question which had so long exercised the leading theologians of europe and america, namely, "why should the almighty strike his own consecrated temples, or suffer satan to strike them?" yet even this practical solution of the question was not received without opposition. in america the earthquake of 1755 was widely ascribed, especially in massachusetts, to franklin's rod. the rev. thomas prince, pastor of the old south church, published a sermon on the subject, and in the appendix expressed the opinion that the frequency of earthquakes may be due to the erection of "iron points invented by the sagacious mr. franklin." he goes on to argue that "in boston are more erected than anywhere else in new england, and boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. oh! there is no getting out of the mighty hand of god." three years later, john adams, speaking of a conversation with arbuthnot, a boston physician, says: "he began to prate upon the presumption of philosophy in erecting iron rods to draw the lightning from the clouds. he railed and foamed against the points and the presumption that erected them. he talked of presuming upon god, as peter attempted to walk upon the water, and of attempting to control the artillery of heaven." as late as 1770 religious scruples regarding lightning-rods were still felt, the theory being that, as thunder and lightning were tokens of the divine displeasure, it was impiety to prevent their doing their full work. fortunately, prof. john winthrop, of harvard, showed himself wise in this, as in so many other things: in a lecture on earthquakes he opposed the dominant theology; and as to arguments against franklin's rods, he declared, "it is as much our duty to secure ourselves against the effects of lightning as against those of rain, snow, and wind by the means god has put into our hands." still, for some years theological sentiment had to be regarded carefully. in philadelphia, a popular lecturer on science for some time after franklin's discovery thought it best in advertising his lectures to explain that "the erection of lightning-rods is not chargeable with presumption nor inconsistent with any of the principles either of natural or revealed religion."[366] in england, the first lightning conductor upon a church was not put up until 1762, ten years after franklin's discovery. the spire of st. bride's church in london was greatly injured by lightning in 1750, and in 1764 a storm so wrecked its masonry that it had to be mainly rebuilt; yet for years after this the authorities refused to attach a lightning-rod. the protestant cathedral of st. paul's, in london, was not protected until sixteen years after franklin's discovery, and the tower of the great protestant church at hamburg not until a year later still. as late as 1783 it was declared in germany, on excellent authority, that within a space of thirty-three years nearly four hundred towers had been damaged and one hundred and twenty bell-ringers killed. in roman catholic countries a similar prejudice was shown, and its cost at times was heavy. in austria, the church of rosenberg, in the mountains of carinthia, was struck so frequently and with such loss of life that the peasants feared at last to attend service. three times was the spire rebuilt, and it was not until 1778--twenty-six years after franklin's discovery--that the authorities permitted a rod to be attached. then all trouble ceased. a typical case in italy was that of the tower of st. mark's, at venice. in spite of the angel at its summit and the bells consecrated to ward off the powers of the air, and the relics in the cathedral hard by, and the processions in the adjacent square, the tower was frequently injured and even ruined by lightning. in 1388 it was badly shattered; in 1417, and again in 1489, the wooden spire surmounting it was utterly consumed; it was again greatly injured in 1548, 1565, 1653, and in 1745 was struck so powerfully that the whole tower, which had been rebuilt of stone and brick, was shattered in thirty-seven places. although the invention of franklin had been introduced into italy by the physicist beccaria, the tower of st. mark's still went unprotected, and was again badly struck in 1761 and 1762; and not until 1766--fourteen years after franklin's discovery--was a lightning-rod placed upon it; and it has never been struck since.[368] so, too, though the beautiful tower of the cathedral of siena, protected by all possible theological means, had been struck again and again, much opposition was shown to placing upon it what was generally known as "the heretical rod" "but the tower was at last protected by franklin's invention, and in 1777, though a very heavy bolt passed down the rod, the church received not the slightest injury. this served to reconcile theology and science, so far as that city was concerned; but the case which did most to convert the italian theologians to the scientific view was that of the church of san nazaro, at brescia. the republic of venice had stored in the vaults of this church over two hundred thousand pounds of powder. in 1767, seventeen years after franklin's discovery, no rod having been placed upon it, it was struck by lightning, the powder in the vaults was exploded, one sixth of the entire city destroyed, and over three thousand lives were lost.[368b] such examples as these, in all parts of europe, had their effect. the formulas for conjuring off storms, for consecrating bells to ward off lightning and tempests, and for putting to flight the powers of the air, were still allowed to stand in the liturgies; but the lightning-rod, the barometer, and the thermometer, carried the day. a vigorous line of investigators succeeding franklin completed his victory, the traveller in remote districts of europe still hears the church bells ringing during tempests; the polish or italian peasant is still persuaded to pay fees for sounding bells to keep off hailstorms; but the universal tendency favours more and more the use of the lightning-rod, and of the insurance offices where men can be relieved of the ruinous results of meteorological disturbances in accordance with the scientific laws of average, based upon the ascertained recurrence of storms. so, too, though many a poor seaman trusts to his charm that has been bathed in holy water, or that has touched some relic, the tendency among mariners is to value more and more those warnings which are sent far and wide each day over the earth and under the sea by the electric wires in accordance with laws ascertained by observation. yet, even in our own time, attempts to revive the old theological doctrine of meteorology have not been wanting. two of these, one in a roman catholic and another in a protestant country, will serve as types of many, to show how completely scientific truth has saturated and permeated minds supposed to be entirely surrendered to the theological view. the island of st. honorat, just off the southern coast of france, is deservedly one of the places most venerated in christendom. the monastery of lerins, founded there in the fourth century, became a mother of similar institutions in western europe, and a centre of religious teaching for the christian world. in its atmosphere, legends and myths grew in beauty and luxuriance. here, as the chroniclers tell us, at the touch of st. honorat, burst forth a stream of living water, which a recent historian of the monastery declares a greater miracle than that of moses; here he destroyed, with a touch of his staff, the reptiles which infested the island, and then forced the sea to wash away their foul remains. here, to please his sister, sainte-marguerite, a cherry tree burst into full bloom every month; here he threw his cloak upon the waters and it became a raft, which bore him safely to visit the neighbouring island; here st. patrick received from st. just the staff with which he imitated st. honorat by driving all reptiles from ireland. pillaged by saracens and pirates, the island was made all the more precious by the blood of christian martyrs. popes and kings made pilgrimages to it; saints, confessors, and bishops went forth from it into all europe; in one of its cells st. vincent of lerins wrote that famous definition of pure religion which, for nearly fifteen hundred years, has virtually superseded that of st. james. naturally the monastery became most illustrious, and its seat "the mediterranean isle of saints." but toward the close of the last century, its inmates having become slothful and corrupt, it was dismantled, all save a small portion torn down, and the island became the property first of impiety, embodied in a french actress, and finally of heresy, embodied in an english clergyman. bought back for the church by the bishop of frejus in 1859, there was little revival of life for twelve years. then came the reaction, religious and political, after the humiliation of france and the vatican by germany; and of this reaction the monastery of st. honorat was made one of the most striking outward and visible signs. pius ix interested himself directly in it, called into it a body of cistercian monks, and it became the chief seat of their order in france. to restore its sacredness the strict system of la trappe was established--labour, silence, meditation on death. the word thus given from rome was seconded in france by cardinals, archbishops, and all churchmen especially anxious for promotion in this world or salvation in the next. worn-out dukes and duchesses of the faubourg saint-germain united in this enterprise of pious reaction with the frivolous youngsters, the _petits creves_, who haunt the purlieus of notre dame de lorette. the great church of the monastery was handsomely rebuilt and a multitude of altars erected; and beautiful frescoes and stained windows came from the leaders of the reaction. the whole effect was, perhaps, somewhat theatrical and thin, but it showed none the less earnestness in making the old "isle of saints" a protest against the hated modern world. as if to bid defiance still further to modern liberalism, great store of relics was sent in; among these, pieces of the true cross, of the white and purple robes, of the crown of thorns, sponge, lance, and winding-sheet of christ,--the hair, robe, veil, and girdle of the blessed virgin; relics of st. john the baptist, st. joseph, st. mary magdalene, st. paul, st. barnabas, the four evangelists, and a multitude of other saints: so many that the bare mention of these treasures requires twenty-four distinct heads in the official catalogue recently published at the monastery. besides all this--what was considered even more powerful in warding off harm from the revived monastery--the bones of christian martyrs were brought from the roman catacombs and laid beneath the altars.[371] all was thus conformed to the medieval view; nothing was to be left which could remind one of the nineteenth century; the "ages of faith" were to be restored in their simplicity. pope leo xiii commended to the brethren the writings of st. thomas aquinas as their one great object of study, and works published at the monastery dwelt upon the miracles of st. honorat as the most precious refutation of modern science. high in the cupola, above the altars and relics, were placed the bells. sent by pious donors, they were solemnly baptized and consecrated in 1871, four bishops officiating, a multitude of the faithful being present from all parts of europe, and the sponsors of the great tenor bell being the bourbon claimant to the ducal throne of parma and his duchess. the good bishop who baptized the bells consecrated them with a formula announcing their efficacy in driving away the "prince of the power of the air" and the lightning and tempests he provokes. and then, above all, at the summit of the central spire, high above relics, altars, and bells, was placed--_a lightning-rod_![371b] the account of the monastery, published under the direction of the present worthy abbot, more than hints at the saving, by its bells, of a ship which was wrecked a few years since on that coast; and yet, to protect the bells and church and monks and relics from the very foe whom, in the medieval faith, all these were thought most powerful to drive away, recourse was had to the scientific discovery of that "arch-infidel," benjamin franklin! perhaps the most striking recent example in protestant lands of this change from the old to the new occurred not long since in one of the great pacific dependencies of the british crown. at a time of severe drought an appeal was made to the bishop, dr. moorhouse, to order public prayers for rain. the bishop refused, advising the petitioners for the future to take better care of their water supply, virtually telling them, "heaven helps those who help themselves." but most noteworthy in this matter was it that the english government, not long after, scanning the horizon to find some man to take up the good work laid down by the lamented bishop fraser, of manchester, chose dr. moorhouse; and his utterance upon meteorology, which a few generations since would have been regarded by the whole church as blasphemy, was universally alluded to as an example of strong good sense, proving him especially fit for one of the most important bishoprics in england. throughout christendom, the prevalence of the conviction that meteorology is obedient to laws is more and more evident. in cities especially, where men are accustomed each day to see posted in public places charts which show the storms moving over various parts of the country, and to read in the morning papers scientific prophecies as to the weather, the old view can hardly be very influential. significant of this was the feeling of the american people during the fearful droughts a few years since in the states west of the missouri. no days were appointed for fasting and prayer to bring rain; there was no attribution of the calamity to the wrath of god or the malice of satan; but much was said regarding the folly of our people in allowing the upper regions of their vast rivers to be denuded of forests, thus subjecting the states below to alternations of drought and deluge. partly as a result of this, a beginning has been made of teaching forest culture in many schools, tree-planting societies have been formed, and "arbor day" is recognised in several of the states. a true and noble theology can hardly fail to recognise, in the love of nature and care for our fellow-men thus promoted, something far better, both from a religious and a moral point of view, than any efforts to win the divine favour by flattery, or to avert satanic malice by fetichism. chapter xii. from magic to chemistry and physics. i. in all the earliest developments of human thought we find a strong tendency to ascribe mysterious powers over nature to men and women especially gifted or skilled. survivals of this view are found to this day among savages and barbarians left behind in the evolution of civilization, and especially is this the case among the tribes of australia, africa, and the pacific coast of america. even in the most enlightened nations still appear popular beliefs, observances, or sayings, drawn from this earlier phase of thought. between the prehistoric savage developing this theory, and therefore endeavouring to deal with the powers of nature by magic, and the modern man who has outgrown it, appears a long line of nations struggling upward through it. as the hieroglyphs, cuneiform inscriptions, and various other records of antiquity are read, the development of this belief can be studied in egypt, india, babylonia, assyria, persia, and phoenicia. from these civilizations it came into the early thought of greece and rome, but especially into the jewish and christian sacred books. both in the old testament and in the new we find magic, witchcraft, and soothsaying constantly referred to as realities.[373] the first distinct impulse toward a higher view of research into natural laws was given by the philosophers of greece. it is true that philosophical opposition to physical research was at times strong, and that even a great thinker like socrates considered certain physical investigations as an impious intrusion into the work of the gods. it is also true that plato and aristotle, while bringing their thoughts to bear upon the world with great beauty and force, did much to draw mankind away from those methods which in modern times have produced the best results. plato developed a world in which the physical sciences had little if any real reason for existing; aristotle, a world in which the same sciences were developed largely indeed by observation of what is, but still more by speculation on what ought to be. from the former of these two great men came into christian theology many germs of medieval magic, and from the latter sundry modes of reasoning which aided in the evolution of these; yet the impulse to human thought given by these great masters was of inestimable value to our race, and one legacy from them was especially precious--the idea that a science of nature is possible, and that the highest occupation of man is the discovery of its laws. still another gift from them was greatest of all, for they gave scientific freedom. they laid no interdict upon new paths; they interposed no barriers to the extension of knowledge; they threatened no doom in this life or in the next against investigators on new lines; they left the world free to seek any new methods and to follow any new paths which thinking men could find. this legacy of belief in science, of respect for scientific pursuits, and of freedom in scientific research, was especially received by the school of alexandria, and above all by archimedes, who began, just before the christian era, to open new paths through the great field of the inductive sciences by observation, comparison, and experiment.[375] the establishment of christianity, beginning a new evolution of theology, arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for over fifteen hundred years. the cause of this arrest was twofold: first, there was created an atmosphere in which the germs of physical science could hardly grow--an atmosphere in which all seeking in nature for truth as truth was regarded as futile. the general belief derived from the new testament scriptures was, that the end of the world was at hand; that the last judgment was approaching; that all existing physical nature was soon to be destroyed: hence, the greatest thinkers in the church generally poured contempt upon all investigators into a science of nature, and insisted that everything except the saving of souls was folly. this belief appears frequently through the entire period of the middle ages; but during the first thousand years it is clearly dominant. from lactantius and eusebius, in the third century, pouring contempt, as we have seen, over studies in astronomy, to peter damian, the noted chancellor of pope gregory vii, in the eleventh century, declaring all worldly sciences to be "absurdities" and "fooleries," it becomes a very important element in the atmosphere of thought.[376] then, too, there was established a standard to which all science which did struggle up through this atmosphere must be made to conform--a standard which favoured magic rather than science, for it was a standard of rigid dogmatism obtained from literal readings in the jewish and christian scriptures. the most careful inductions from ascertained facts were regarded as wretchedly fallible when compared with any view of nature whatever given or even hinted at in any poem, chronicle, code, apologue, myth, legend, allegory, letter, or discourse of any sort which had happened to be preserved in the literature which had come to be held as sacred. for twelve centuries, then, the physical sciences were thus discouraged or perverted by the dominant orthodoxy. whoever studied nature studied it either openly to find illustrations of the sacred text, useful in the "saving of souls," or secretly to gain the aid of occult powers, useful in securing personal advantage. great men like bede, isidore of seville, and rabanus maurus, accepted the scriptural standard of science and used it as a means of christian edification. the views of bede and isidore on kindred subjects have been shown in former chapters; and typical of the view taken by rabanus is the fact that in his great work on the _universe_ there are only two chapters which seem directly or indirectly to recognise even the beginnings of a real philosophy of nature. a multitude of less-known men found warrant in scripture for magic applied to less worthy purposes.[376b] but after the thousand years had passed to which various thinkers in the church, upon supposed scriptural warrant, had lengthened out the term of the earth's existence, "the end of all things" seemed further off than ever; and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, owing to causes which need not be dwelt upon here, came a great revival of thought, so that the forces of theology and of science seemed arrayed for a contest. on one side came a revival of religious fervour, and to this day the works of the cathedral builders mark its depth and strength; on the other side came a new spirit of inquiry incarnate in a line of powerful thinkers. first among these was albert of bollstadt, better known as albert the great, the most renowned scholar of his time. fettered though he was by the methods sanctioned in the church, dark as was all about him, he had conceived better methods and aims; his eye pierced the mists of scholasticism. he saw the light, and sought to draw the world toward it. he stands among the great pioneers of physical and natural science; he aided in giving foundations to botany and chemistry; he rose above his time, and struck a heavy blow at those who opposed the possibility of human life on opposite sides of the earth; he noted the influence of mountains, seas, and forests upon races and products, so that humboldt justly finds in his works the germs of physical geography as a comprehensive science. but the old system of deducing scientific truth from scriptural texts was renewed in the development of scholastic theology, and ecclesiastical power, acting through thousands of subtle channels, was made to aid this development. the old idea of the futility of physical science and of the vast superiority of theology was revived. though albert's main effort was to christianize science, he was dealt with by the authorities of the dominican order, subjected to suspicion and indignity, and only escaped persecution for sorcery by yielding to the ecclesiastical spirit of the time, and working finally in theological channels by, scholastic methods. it was a vast loss to the earth; and certainly, of all organizations that have reason to lament the pressure of ecclesiasticism which turned albert the great from natural philosophy to theology, foremost of all in regret should be the christian church, and especially the roman branch of it. had there been evolved in the church during the thirteenth century a faith strong enough to accept the truths in natural science which albert and his compeers could have given, and to have encouraged their growth, this faith and this encouragement would to this day have formed the greatest argument for proving the church directly under divine guidance; they would have been among the brightest jewels in her crown. the loss to the church by this want of faith and courage has proved in the long run even greater than the loss to science.[378] the next great man of that age whom the theological and ecclesiastical forces of the time turned from the right path was vincent of beauvais. during the first half of the twelfth century he devoted himself to the study of nature in several of her most interesting fields. to astronomy, botany, and zoology he gave special attention, but in a larger way he made a general study of the universe, and in a series of treatises undertook to reveal the whole field of science. but his work simply became a vast commentary on the account of creation given in the book of genesis. beginning with the work of the trinity at the creation, he goes on to detail the work of angels in all their fields, and makes excursions into every part of creation, visible and invisible, but always with the most complete subordination of his thought to the literal statements of scripture. could he have taken the path of experimental research, the world would have been enriched with most precious discoveries; but the force which had given wrong direction to albert of bollstadt, backed as it was by the whole ecclesiastical power of his time, was too strong, and in all the life labour of vincent nothing appears of any permanent value. he reared a structure which the adaptation of facts to literal interpretations of scripture and the application of theological subtleties to nature combine to make one of the most striking monuments of human error.[379] but the theological spirit of the thirteenth century gained its greatest victory in the work of st. thomas aquinas. in him was the theological spirit of his age incarnate. although he yielded somewhat at one period to love of natural science, it was he who finally made that great treaty or compromise which for ages subjected science entirely to theology. he it was who reared the most enduring barrier against those who in that age and in succeeding ages laboured to open for science the path by its own methods toward its own ends. he had been the pupil of albert the great, and had gained much from him. through the earlier systems of philosophy, as they were then known, and through the earlier theologic thought, he had gone with great labour and vigour; and all his mighty powers, thus disciplined and cultured, he brought to bear in making a truce which was to give theology permanent supremacy over science. the experimental method had already been practically initiated: albert of bollstadt and roger bacon had begun their work in accordance with its methods; but st. thomas gave all his thoughts to bringing science again under the sway of theological methods and ecclesiastical control. in his commentary on aristotle's treatise upon _heaven and earth_ he gave to the world a striking example of what his method could produce, illustrating all the evils which arise in combining theological reasoning and literal interpretation of scripture with scientific facts; and this work remains to this day a monument of scientific genius perverted by theology.[380] the ecclesiastical power of the time hailed him as a deliverer, it was claimed that miracles were vouchsafed, proving that the blessing of heaven rested upon his labours, and among the legends embodying this claim is that given by the bollandists and immortalized by a renowned painter. the great philosopher and saint is represented in the habit of his order, with book and pen in hand, kneeling before the image of christ crucified, and as he kneels the image thus addresses him: "thomas, thou hast written well concerning me; what price wilt thou receive for thy labour?" the myth-making faculty of the people at large was also brought into play. according to a widespread and circumstantial legend, albert, by magical means, created an android--an artificial man, living, speaking, and answering all questions with such subtlety that st. thomas, unable to answer its reasoning, broke it to pieces with his staff. historians of the roman church like rohrbacher, and historians of science like pouchet, have found it convenient to propitiate the church by dilating upon the glories of st. thomas aquinas in thus making an alliance between religious and scientific thought, and laying the foundations for a "sanctified science"; but the unprejudiced historian can not indulge in this enthusiastic view: the results both for the church and for science have been most unfortunate. it was a wretched delay in the evolution of fruitful thought, for the first result of this great man's great compromise was to close for ages that path in science which above all others leads to discoveries of value--the experimental method--and to reopen that old path of mixed theology and science which, as hallam declares, "after three or four hundred years had not untied a single knot or added one unequivocal truth to the domain of philosophy"--the path which, as all modern history proves, has ever since led only to delusion and evil.[380b] the theological path thus opened by these strong men became the main path for science during ages, and it led the world ever further and further from any fruitful fact or useful method. roger bacon's investigations already begun were discredited: worthless mixtures of scriptural legends with imperfectly authenticated physical facts took their place. thus it was that for twelve hundred years the minds in control of europe regarded all real science as _futile_, and diverted the great current of earnest thought into theology. the next stage in this evolution was the development of an idea which acted with great force throughout the middle ages--the idea that science is _dangerous_. this belief was also of very ancient origin. from the time when the egyptian magicians made their tremendous threat that unless their demands were granted they would reach out to the four corners of the earth, pull down the pillars of heaven, wreck the abodes of the gods above and crush those of men below, fear of these representatives of science is evident in the ancient world. but differences in the character of magic were recognised, some sorts being considered useful and some baleful. of the former was magic used in curing diseases, in determining times auspicious for enterprises, and even in contributing to amusement; of the latter was magic used to bring disease and death on men and animals or tempests upon the growing crops. hence gradually arose a general distinction between white magic, which dealt openly with the more beneficent means of nature, and black magic, which dealt secretly with occult, malignant powers. down to the christian era the fear of magic rarely led to any persecution very systematic or very cruel. while in greece and rome laws were at times enacted against magicians, they were only occasionally enforced with rigour, and finally, toward the end of the pagan empire, the feeling against them seemed dying out altogether. as to its more kindly phases, men like marcus aurelius and julian did not hesitate to consult those who claimed to foretell the future. as to black magic, it seemed hardly worth while to enact severe laws, when charms, amulets, and even gestures could thwart its worst machinations. moreover, under the old empire a real science was coming in, and thought was progressing. both the theory and practice of magic were more and more held up to ridicule. even as early a writer as ennius ridiculed the idea that magicians, who were generally poor and hungry themselves, could bestow wealth on others; pliny, in his _natural philosophy_, showed at great length their absurdities and cheatery; others followed in the same line of thought, and the whole theory, except among the very lowest classes, seemed dying out. but with the development of christian theology came a change. the idea of the active interference of satan in magic, which had come into the hebrew mind with especial force from persia during the captivity of israel, had passed from the hebrew scriptures into christianity, and had been made still stronger by various statements in the new testament. theologians laid stress especially upon the famous utterances of the psalmist that "all the gods of the heathen are devils," and of st. paul that "the things which the gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils"; and it was widely held that these devils were naturally indignant at their dethronement and anxious to wreak vengeance upon christianity. magicians were held to be active agents of these dethroned gods, and this persuasion was strengthened by sundry old practitioners in the art of magic--impostors who pretended to supernatural powers, and who made use of old rites and phrases inherited from paganism. hence it was that as soon as christianity came into power it more than renewed the old severities against the forbidden art, and one of the first acts of the emperor constantine after his conversion was to enact a most severe law against magic and magicians, under which the main offender might be burned alive. but here, too, it should be noted that a distinction between the two sorts of magic was recognised, for constantine shortly afterward found it necessary to issue a proclamation stating that his intention was only to prohibit deadly and malignant magic; that he had no intention of prohibiting magic used to cure diseases and to protect the crops from hail and tempests. but as new emperors came to the throne who had not in them that old leaven of paganism which to the last influenced constantine, and as theology obtained a firmer hold, severity against magic increased. toleration of it, even in its milder forms, was more and more denied. black magic and white were classed together. this severity went on increasing and threatened the simplest efforts in physics and chemistry; even the science of mathematics was looked upon with dread. by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the older theology having arrived at the climax of its development in europe, terror of magic and witchcraft took complete possession of the popular mind. in sculpture, painting, and literature it appeared in forms ever more and more striking. the lives of saints were filled with it. the cathedral sculpture embodied it in every part. the storied windows made it all the more impressive. the missal painters wrought it not only into prayer books, but, despite the fact that hardly a trace of the belief appears in the psalms, they illustrated it in the great illuminated psalters from which the noblest part of the service was sung before the high altar. the service books showed every form of agonizing petition for delivery from this dire influence, and every form of exorcism for thwarting it. all the great theologians of the church entered into this belief and aided to develop it. the fathers of the early church were full and explicit, and the medieval doctors became more and more minute in describing the operations of the black art and in denouncing them. it was argued that, as the devil afflicted job, so he and his minions continue to cause diseases; that, as satan is the prince of the power of the air, he and his minions cause tempests; that the cases of nebuchadnezzar and lot's wife prove that sorcerers can transform human beings into animals or even lifeless matter; that, as the devils of gadara were cast into swine, all animals could be afflicted in the same manner; and that, as christ himself had been transported through the air by the power of satan, so any human being might be thus transported to "an exceeding high mountain." thus the horror of magic and witchcraft increased on every hand, and in 1317 pope john xxii issued his bull _spondent pariter_, levelled at the alchemists, but really dealing a terrible blow at the beginnings of chemical science. that many alchemists were knavish is no doubt true, but no infallibility in separating the evil from the good was shown by the papacy in this matter. in this and in sundry other bulls and briefs we find pope john, by virtue of his infallibility as the world's instructor in all that pertains to faith and morals, condemning real science and pseudo-science alike. in two of these documents, supposed to be inspired by wisdom from on high, he complains that both he and his flock are in danger of their lives by the arts of the sorcerers; he declares that such sorcerers can send devils into mirrors and finger rings, and kill men and women by a magic word; that they had tried to kill him by piercing a waxen image of him with needles in the name of the devil. he therefore called on all rulers, secular and ecclesiastical, to hunt down the miscreants who thus afflicted the faithful, and he especially increased the powers of inquisitors in various parts of europe for this purpose. the impulse thus given to childish fear and hatred against the investigation of nature was felt for centuries; more and more chemistry came to be known as one of the "seven devilish arts." thus began a long series of demonstrations against magic from the centre of christendom. in 1437, and again in 1445, pope eugene iv issued bulls exhorting inquisitors to be more diligent in searching out and delivering over to punishment magicians and witches who produced bad weather, the result being that persecution received a fearful impulse. but the worst came forty years later still, when, in 1484, there came the yet more terrible bull of pope innocent viii, known as _summis desiderantes_, which let inquisitors loose upon germany, with sprenger at their head, armed with the _witch-hammer_, the fearful manual _malleus maleficarum_, to torture and destroy men and women by tens of thousands for sorcery and magic. similar bulls were issued in 1504 by julius ii, and in 1523 by adrian vi. the system of repression thus begun lasted for hundreds of years. the reformation did little to change it, and in germany, where catholics and protestants vied with each other in proving their orthodoxy, it was at its worst. on german soil more than one hundred thousand victims are believed to have been sacrificed to it between the middle of the fifteenth and the middle of the sixteenth centuries. thus it was that from st. augustine to st. thomas aquinas, from aquinas to luther, and from luther to wesley, theologians of both branches of the church, with hardly an exception, enforced the belief in magic and witchcraft, and, as far as they had power, carried out the injunction, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." how this was ended by the progress of scientific modes of thought i shall endeavour to show elsewhere: here we are only concerned with the effect of this widespread terrorism on the germs and early growth of the physical sciences. of course, the atmosphere created by this persecution of magicians was deadly to any open beginnings of experimental science. the conscience of the time, acting in obedience to the highest authorities of the church, and, as was supposed, in defence of religion, now brought out a missile which it hurled against scientific investigators with deadly effect. the medieval battlefields of thought were strewn with various forms of it. this missile was the charge of unlawful compact with satan, and it was most effective. we find it used against every great investigator of nature in those times and for ages after. the list of great men in those centuries charged with magic, as given by naude, is astounding; it includes every man of real mark, and in the midst of them stands one of the most thoughtful popes, sylvester ii (gerbert), and the foremost of mediaeval thinkers on natural science, albert the great. it came to be the accepted idea that, as soon as a man conceived a wish to study the works of god, his first step must be a league with the devil. it was entirely natural, then, that in 1163 pope alexander iii, in connection with the council of tours, forbade the study of physics to all ecclesiastics, which, of course, in that age meant prohibition of all such scientific studies to the only persons likely to make them. what the pope then expressly forbade was, in the words of the papal bull, "the study of physics or the laws of the world," and it was added that any person violating this rule "shall be avoided by all and excommunicated."[386] the first great thinker who, in spite of some stumbling into theologic pitfalls, persevered in a truly scientific path, was roger bacon. his life and works seem until recently to have been generally misunderstood: he was formerly ranked as a superstitious alchemist who happened upon some inventions, but more recent investigation has shown him to be one of the great masters in the evolution of human thought. the advance of sound historical judgment seems likely to bring the fame of the two who bear the name of bacon nearly to equality. bacon of the chancellorship and of the _novum organum_ may not wane, but bacon of the prison cell and the _opus majus_ steadily approaches him in brightness. more than three centuries before francis bacon advocated the experimental method, roger bacon practised it, and the results as now revealed are wonderful. he wrought with power in many sciences, and his knowledge was sound and exact. by him, more than by any other man of the middle ages, was the world brought into the more fruitful paths of scientific thought--the paths which have led to the most precious inventions; and among these are clocks, lenses, and burning specula, which were given by him to the world, directly or indirectly. in his writings are found formulae for extracting phosphorus, manganese, and bismuth. it is even claimed, with much appearance of justice, that he investigated the power of steam, and he seems to have very nearly reached some of the principal doctrines of modern chemistry. but it should be borne in mind that his _method_ of investigation was even greater than its _results_. in an age when theological subtilizing was alone thought to give the title of scholar, he insisted on _real_ reasoning and the aid of natural science by mathematics; in an age when experimenting was sure to cost a man his reputation, and was likely to cost him his life, he insisted on experimenting, and braved all its risks. few greater men have lived. as we follow bacon's process of reasoning regarding the refraction of light, we see that he was divinely inspired. on this man came the brunt of the battle. the most conscientious men of his time thought it their duty to fight him, and they fought him steadily and bitterly. his sin was not disbelief in christianity, not want of fidelity to the church, not even dissent from the main lines of orthodoxy; on the contrary, he showed in all his writings a desire to strengthen christianity, to build up the church, and to develop orthodoxy. he was attacked and condemned mainly because he did not believe that philosophy had become complete, and that nothing more was to be learned; he was condemned, as his opponents expressly declared, "on account of certain suspicious novelties"--"_propter quasdam novitates suspectas_." upon his return to oxford, about 1250, the forces of unreason beset him on all sides. greatest of all his enemies was bonaventura. this enemy was the theologic idol of the period: the learned world knew him as the "seraphic doctor"; dante gave him an honoured place in the great poem of the middle ages; the church finally enrolled him among the saints. by force of great ability in theology he had become, in the middle of the thirteenth century, general of the franciscan order: thus, as bacon's master, his hands were laid heavily on the new teaching, so that in 1257 the troublesome monk was forbidden to lecture; all men were solemnly warned not to listen to his teaching, and he was ordered to paris, to be kept under surveillance by the monastic authorities. herein was exhibited another of the myriad examples showing the care exercised over scientific teaching by the church. the reasons for thus dealing with bacon were evident: first, he had dared attempt scientific explanations of natural phenomena, which under the mystic theology of the middle ages had been referred simply to supernatural causes. typical was his explanation of the causes and character of the rainbow. it was clear, cogent, a great step in the right direction as regards physical science: but there, in the book of genesis, stood the legend regarding the origin of the rainbow, supposed to have been dictated immediately by the holy spirit; and, according to that, the "bow in the cloud" was not the result of natural laws, but a "sign" arbitrarily placed in the heavens for the simple purpose of assuring mankind that there was not to be another universal deluge. but this was not the worst: another theological idea was arrayed against him--the idea of satanic intervention in science; hence he was attacked with that goodly missile which with the epithets "infidel" and "atheist" has decided the fate of so many battles--the charge of magic and compact with satan. he defended himself with a most unfortunate weapon--a weapon which exploded in his hands and injured him more than the enemy; for he argued against the idea of compacts with satan, and showed that much which is ascribed to demons results from natural means. this added fuel to the flame. to limit the power of satan was deemed hardly less impious than to limit the power of god. the most powerful protectors availed him little. his friend guy of foulques, having in 1265 been made pope under the name of clement iv, shielded him for a time; but the fury of the enemy was too strong, and when he made ready to perform a few experiments before a small audience, we are told that all oxford was in an uproar. it was believed that satan was about to be let loose. everywhere priests, monks, fellows, and students rushed about, their garments streaming in the wind, and everywhere rose the cry, "down with the magician!" and this cry, "down with the magician!" resounded from cell to cell and from hall to hall. another weapon was also used upon the battlefields of science in that time with much effect. the arabs had made many noble discoveries in science, and averroes had, in the opinion of many, divided the honours with st. thomas aquinas; these facts gave the new missile--it was the epithet "mohammedan"; this, too, was flung with effect at bacon. the attack now began to take its final shape. the two great religious orders, franciscan and dominican, then in all the vigour of their youth, vied with each other in fighting the new thought in chemistry and physics. st. dominic solemnly condemned research by experiment and observation; the general of the franciscan order took similar ground. in 1243 the dominicans interdicted every member of their order from the study of medicine and natural philosophy, and in 1287 this interdiction was extended to the study of chemistry. in 1278 the authorities of the franciscan order assembled at paris, solemnly condemned bacon's teaching, and the general of the franciscans, jerome of ascoli, afterward pope, threw him into prison, where he remained for fourteen years, though pope clement iv had protected him, popes nicholas iii and iv, by virtue of their infallibility, decided that he was too dangerous to be at large, and he was only released at the age of eighty--but a year or two before death placed him beyond the reach of his enemies. how deeply the struggle had racked his mind may be gathered from that last affecting declaration of his, "would that i had not given myself so much trouble for the love of science!" the attempt has been made by sundry champions of the church to show that some of bacon's utterances against ecclesiastical and other corruptions in his time were the main cause of the severity which the church authorities exercised against him. this helps the church but little, even if it be well based; but it is not well based. that some of his utterances of this sort made him enemies is doubtless true, but the charges on which st. bonaventura silenced him, and jerome of ascoli imprisoned him, and successive popes kept him in prison for fourteen years, were "dangerous novelties" and suspected sorcery. sad is it to think of what this great man might have given to the world had ecclesiasticism allowed the gift. he held the key of treasures which would have freed mankind from ages of error and misery. with his discoveries as a basis, with his method as a guide, what might not the world have gained! nor was the wrong done to that age alone; it was done to this age also. the nineteenth century was robbed at the same time with the thirteenth. but for that interference with science the nineteenth century would be enjoying discoveries which will not be reached before the twentieth century, and even later. thousands of precious lives shall be lost, tens of thousands shall suffer discomfort, privation, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of discoveries and methods which, but for this mistaken dealing with roger bacon and his compeers, would now be blessing the earth. in two recent years sixty thousand children died in england and in wales of scarlet fever; probably quite as many died in the united states. had not bacon been hindered, we should have had in our hands, by this time, the means to save two thirds of these victims; and the same is true of typhoid, typhus, cholera, and that great class of diseases of whose physical causes science is just beginning to get an inkling. put together all the efforts of all the atheists who have ever lived, and they have not done so much harm to christianity and the world as has been done by the narrow-minded, conscientious men who persecuted roger bacon, and closed the path which he gave his life to open. but despite the persecution of bacon and the defection of those who ought to have followed him, champions of the experimental method rose from time to time during the succeeding centuries. we know little of them personally; our main knowledge of their efforts is derived from the endeavours of their persecutors. under such guidance the secular rulers were naturally vigorous. in france charles v forbade, in 1380, the possession of furnaces and apparatus necessary for chemical processes; under this law the chemist john barrillon was thrown into prison, and it was only by the greatest effort that his life was saved. in england henry iv, in 1404, issued a similar decree. in italy the republic of venice, in 1418, followed these examples. the judicial torture and murder of antonio de dominis were not simply for heresy his investigations in the phenomena of light were an additional crime. in spain everything like scientific research was crushed out among christians. some earnest efforts were afterward made by jews and moors, but these were finally ended by persecution; and to this hour the spanish race, in some respects the most gifted in europe, which began its career with everything in its favour and with every form of noble achievement, remains in intellectual development behind every other in christendom. to question the theological view of physical science was, even long after the close of the middle ages, exceedingly perilous. we have seen how one of roger bacon's unpardonable offences was his argument against the efficacy of magic, and how, centuries afterward, cornelius agrippa, weyer, flade, loos, bekker, and a multitude of other investigators and thinkers, suffered confiscation of property, loss of position, and even torture and death, for similar views.[391] the theological atmosphere, which in consequence settled down about the great universities and colleges, seemed likely to stifle all scientific effort in every part of europe, and it is one of the great wonders in human history that in spite of this deadly atmosphere a considerable body of thinking men, under such protection as they could secure, still persisted in devoting themselves to the physical sciences. in italy, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, came a striking example of the difficulties which science still encountered even after the renaissance had undermined the old beliefs. at that time john baptist porta was conducting his investigations, and, despite a considerable mixture of pseudo-science, they were fruitful. his was not "black magic," claiming the aid of satan, but "white magic," bringing into service the laws of nature--the precursor of applied science. his book on meteorology was the first in which sound ideas were broached on this subject; his researches in optics gave the world the camera obscura, and possibly the telescope; in chemistry he seems to have been the first to show how to reduce the metallic oxides, and thus to have laid the foundation of several important industries. he did much to change natural philosophy from a black art to a vigorous open science. he encountered the old ecclesiastical policy. the society founded by him for physical research, "i secreti," was broken up, and he was summoned to rome by pope paul iii and forbidden to continue his investigations. so, too, in france. in 1624, some young chemists at paris having taught the experimental method and cut loose from aristotle, the faculty of theology beset the parliament of paris, and the parliament prohibited these new chemical researches under the severest penalties. the same war continued in italy. even after the belief in magic had been seriously weakened, the old theological fear and dislike of physical science continued. in 1657 occurred the first sitting of the accademia del cimento at florence, under the presidency of prince leopold de' medici this academy promised great things for science; it was open to all talent; its only fundamental law was "the repudiation of any favourite system or sect of philosophy, and the obligation to investigate nature by the pure light of experiment"; it entered into scientific investigations with energy. borelli in mathematics, redi in natural history, and many others, enlarged the boundaries of knowledge. heat, light, magnetism, electricity, projectiles, digestion, and the incompressibility of water were studied by the right method and with results that enriched the world. the academy was a fortress of science, and siege was soon laid to it. the votaries of scholastic learning denounced it as irreligious, quarrels were fomented, leopold was bribed with a cardinal's hat and drawn away to rome, and, after ten years of beleaguering, the fortress fell: borelli was left a beggar; oliva killed himself in despair. so, too, the noted academy of the lincei at times incurred the ill will of the papacy by the very fact that it included thoughtful investigators. it was "patronized" by pope urban viii in such manner as to paralyze it, and it was afterward vexed by pope gregory xvi. even in our own time sessions of scientific associations were discouraged and thwarted by as kindly a pontiff as pius ix.[394] a hostility similar in kind, though less in degree, was shown in protestant countries. even after thomasius in germany and voltaire in france and beccaria in italy had given final blows to the belief in magic and witchcraft throughout christendom, the traditional orthodox distrust of the physical sciences continued for a long time. in england a marked dislike was shown among various leading ecclesiastics and theologians towards the royal society, and later toward the association for the advancement of science; and this dislike, as will hereafter be seen, sometimes took shape in serious opposition. as a rule, both in protestant and catholic countries instruction in chemistry and physics was for a long time discouraged by church authorities; and, when its suppression was no longer possible, great pains were taken to subordinate it to instruction supposed to be more fully in accordance with the older methods of theological reasoning. i have now presented in outline the more direct and open struggle of the physical sciences with theology, mainly as an exterior foe. we will next consider their warfare with the same foe in its more subtle form, mainly as a vitiating and sterilizing principle in science itself. we have seen thus far, first, how such men as eusebius, lactantius, and their compeers, opposed scientific investigation as futile; next, how such men as albert the great, st. thomas aquinas, and the multitude who followed them, turned the main current of medieval thought from science to theology; and, finally, how a long line of church authorities from popes john xxii and innocent viii, and the heads of the great religious orders, down to various theologians and ecclesiastics, catholic and protestant, of a very recent period, endeavoured first to crush and afterward to discourage scientific research as dangerous. yet, injurious as all this was to the evolution of science, there was developed something in many respects more destructive; and this was the influence of mystic theology, penetrating, permeating, vitiating, sterilizing nearly every branch of science for hundreds of years. among the forms taken by this development in the earlier middle ages we find a mixture of physical science with a pseudo-science obtained from texts of scripture. in compounding this mixture, jews and christians vied with each other. in this process the sacred books were used as a fetich; every word, every letter, being considered to have a divine and hidden meaning. by combining various scriptural letters in various abstruse ways, new words of prodigious significance in magic were obtained, and among them the great word embracing the seventy-two mystical names of god--the mighty word "_schemhamphoras._" why should men seek knowledge by observation and experiment in the book of nature, when the book of revelation, interpreted by the kabbalah, opened such treasures to the ingenious believer? so, too, we have ancient mystical theories of number which the theological spirit had made christian, usurping an enormous place in medieval science. the sacred power of the number three was seen in the trinity; in the three main divisions of the universe--the empyrean, the heavens, and the earth; in the three angelic hierarchies; in the three choirs of seraphim, cherubim, and thrones; in the three of dominions, virtues, and powers; in the three of principalities, archangels, and angels; in the three orders in the church--bishops, priests, and deacons; in the three classes--the baptized, the communicants, and the monks; in the three degrees of attainment--light, purity, and knowledge; in the three theological virtues--faith, hope, and charity--and in much else. all this was brought into a theologico-scientific relation, then and afterward, with the three dimensions of space; with the three divisions of time--past, present, and future; with the three realms of the visible world--sky, earth, and sea; with the three constituents of man--body, soul, and spirit; with the threefold enemies of man--the world, the flesh, and the devil; with the three kingdoms in nature--mineral, vegetable, and animal; with "the three colours"--red, yellow, and blue; with "the three eyes of the honey-bee"--and with a multitude of other analogues equally precious. the sacred power of the number seven was seen in the seven golden candlesticks and the seven churches in the apocalypse; in the seven cardinal virtues and the seven deadly sins; in the seven liberal arts and the seven devilish arts, and, above all, in the seven sacraments. and as this proved in astrology that there could be only seven planets, so it proved in alchemy that there must be exactly seven metals. the twelve apostles were connected with the twelve signs in the zodiac, and with much in physical science. the seventy-two disciples, the seventy-two interpreters of the old testament, the seventy-two mystical names of god, were connected with the alleged fact in anatomy that there were seventy-two joints in the human frame. then, also, there were revived such theologic and metaphysical substitutes for scientific thought as the declaration that the perfect line is a circle, and hence that the planets must move in absolute circles--a statement which led astronomy astray even when the great truths of the copernican theory were well in sight; also, the declaration that nature abhors a vacuum--a statement which led physics astray until torricelli made his experiments; also, the declaration that we see the lightning before we hear the thunder because "sight is nobler than hearing." in chemistry we have the same theologic tendency to magic, and, as a result, a muddle of science and theology, which from one point of view seems blasphemous and from another idiotic, but which none the less sterilized physical investigation for ages. that debased platonism which had been such an important factor in the evolution of christian theology from the earliest days of the church continued its work. as everything in inorganic nature was supposed to have spiritual significance, the doctrines of the trinity and incarnation were turned into an argument in behalf of the philosopher's stone; arguments for the scheme of redemption and for transubstantiation suggested others of similar construction to prove the transmutation of metals; the doctrine of the resurrection of the human body was by similar mystic jugglery connected with the processes of distillation and sublimation. even after the middle ages were past, strong men seemed unable to break away from such reasoning as this--among them such leaders as basil valentine in the fifteenth century, agricola in the sixteenth, and van helmont in the seventeenth. the greatest theologians contributed to the welter of unreason from which this pseudo-science was developed. one question largely discussed was, whether at the redemption it was necessary for god to take the human form. thomas aquinas answered that it was necessary, but william occam and duns scotus answered that it was not; that god might have taken the form of a stone, or of a log, or of a beast. the possibilities opened to wild substitutes for science by this sort of reasoning were infinite. men have often asked how it was that the arabians accomplished so much in scientific discovery as compared with christian investigators; but the answer is easy: the arabians were comparatively free from these theologic allurements which in christian europe flickered in the air on all sides, luring men into paths which led no-whither. strong investigators, like arnold of villanova, raymond lully, basil valentine, paracelsus, and their compeers, were thus drawn far out of the only paths which led to fruitful truths. in a work generally ascribed to the first of these, the student is told that in mixing his chemicals he must repeat the psalm _exsurge domine_, and that on certain chemical vessels must be placed the last words of jesus on the cross. vincent of beauvais insisted that, as the bible declares that noah, when five hundred years old, had children born to him, he must have possessed alchemical means of preserving life; and much later dickinson insisted that the patriarchs generally must have owed their long lives to such means. it was loudly declared that the reality of the philosopher's stone was proved by the words of st. john in the revelation. "to him that overcometh i will give a white stone." the reasonableness of seeking to develop gold out of the baser metals was for many generations based upon the doctrine of the resurrection of the physical body, which, though explicitly denied by st. paul, had become a part of the creed of the church. martin luther was especially drawn to believe in the alchemistic doctrine of transmutation by this analogy. the bible was everywhere used, both among protestants and catholics, in support of these mystic adulterations of science, and one writer, as late as 1751, based his alchemistic arguments on more than a hundred passages of scripture. as an example of this sort of reasoning, we have a proof that the elect will preserve the philosopher's stone until the last judgment, drawn from a passage in st. paul's epistle to the corinthians, "we have this treasure in earthen vessels." the greatest thinkers devoted themselves to adding new ingredients to this strange mixture of scientific and theologic thought. the catholic philosophy of thomas aquinas, the protestant mysticism of jacob boehme, and the alchemistic reveries of basil valentine were all cast into this seething mass. and when alchemy in its old form had been discredited, we find scriptural arguments no less perverse, and even comical, used on the other side. as an example of this, just before the great discoveries by stahl, we find the valuable scientific efforts of becher opposed with the following syllogism: "king solomon, according to the scriptures, possessed the united wisdom of heaven and earth; but king solomon knew nothing about alchemy [or chemistry in the form it then took], and sent his vessels to ophir to seek gold, and levied taxes upon his subjects; _ergo_ alchemy [or chemistry] has no reality or truth." and we find that becher is absolutely turned away from his labours, and obliged to devote himself to proving that solomon used more money than he possibly could have obtained from ophir or his subjects, and therefore that he must have possessed a knowledge of chemical methods and the philosopher's stone as the result of them.[399] of the general reasoning enforced by theology regarding physical science, every age has shown examples; yet out of them all i will select but two, and these are given because they show how this mixture of theological with scientific ideas took hold upon the strongest supporters of better reasoning even after the power of medieval theology seemed broken. the first of these examples is melanchthon. he was the scholar of the reformation, and justly won the title "preceptor of germany." his mind was singularly open, his sympathies broad, and his usual freedom from bigotry drew down upon him that wrath of protestant heresy-hunters which embittered the last years of his life and tortured him upon his deathbed. during his career at the university of wittenberg he gave a course of lectures on physics, and in these he dwelt upon scriptural texts as affording scientific proofs, accepted the interference of the devil in physical phenomena as in other things, and applied the medieval method throughout his whole work.[400] yet far more remarkable was the example, a century later, of the man who more than any other led the world out of the path opened by aquinas, and into that through which modern thought has advanced to its greatest conquests. strange as it may at first seem, francis bacon, whose keenness of sight revealed the delusions of the old path and the promises of the new, and whose boldness did so much to turn the world from the old path into the new, presents in his own writings one of the most striking examples of the evil he did so much to destroy. the _novum organon_, considering the time when it came from his pen, is doubtless one of the greatest exhibitions of genius in the history of human thought. it showed the modern world the way out of the scholastic method and reverence for dogma into the experimental method and reverence for fact. in it occur many passages which show that the great philosopher was fully alive to the danger both to religion and to science arising from their mixture. he declares that the "corruption of philosophy from superstition and theology introduced the greatest amount of evil both into whole systems of philosophy and into their parts." he denounces those who "have endeavoured to found a natural philosophy on the books of genesis and job and other sacred scriptures, so `seeking the dead among the living.'" he speaks of the result as "an unwholesome mixture of things human and divine; not merely fantastic philosophy, but heretical religion." he refers to the opposition of the fathers to the doctrine of the rotundity of the earth, and says that, "thanks to some of them, you may find the approach to any kind of philosophy, however improved, entirely closed up." he charges that some of these divines are "afraid lest perhaps a deeper inquiry into nature should, penetrate beyond the allowed limits of sobriety"; and finally speaks of theologians as sometimes craftily conjecturing that, if science be little understood, "each single thing can be referred more easily to the hand and rod of god," and says, "_this is nothing more or less than wishing to please god by a lie_." no man who has reflected much upon the annals of his race can, without a feeling of awe, come into the presence of such clearness of insight and boldness of utterance, and the first thought of the reader is that, of all men, francis bacon is the most free from the unfortunate bias he condemns; that he, certainly, can not be deluded into the old path. but as we go on through his main work we are surprised to find that the strong arm of aquinas has been stretched over the intervening ages, and has laid hold upon this master-thinker of the seventeenth century; for only a few chapters beyond those containing the citations already made we find bacon alluding to the recent voyage of columbus, and speaking of the prophecy of daniel regarding the latter days, that "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge be increased," as clearly signifying "that... the circumnavigation of the world and the increase of science should happen in the same age."[401] in his great work on the _advancement of learning_ the firm grasp which the methods he condemned held upon him is shown yet more clearly. in the first book of it he asserts that "that excellent book of job, if it be revolved with diligence, will be found pregnant and swelling with natural philosophy," and he endeavours to show that in it the "roundness of the earth," the "fixing of the stars, ever standing at equal distances," the "depression of the southern pole," the "matter of generation," and "matter of minerals" are "with great elegancy noted." but, curiously enough, he uses to support some of these truths the very texts which the fathers of the church used to destroy them, and those for which he finds scripture warrant most clearly are such as science has since disproved. so, too, he says that solomon was enabled in his proverbs, "by donation of god, to compile a natural history of all verdure."[402] such was the struggle of the physical sciences in general. let us now look briefly at one special example out of many, which reveals, as well as any, one of the main theories which prompted theological interference with them. it will doubtless seem amazing to many that for ages the weight of theological thought in christendom was thrown against the idea of the suffocating properties of certain gases, and especially of carbonic acid. although in antiquity we see men forming a right theory of gases in mines, we find that, early in the history of the church, st. clement of alexandria put forth the theory that these gases are manifestations of diabolic action, and that, throughout christendom, suffocation in caverns, wells, and cellars was attributed to the direct action of evil spirits. evidences of this view abound through the medieval period, and during the reformation period a great authority, agricola, one of the most earnest and truthful of investigators, still adhered to the belief that these gases in mines were manifestations of devils, and he specified two classes--one of malignant imps, who blow out the miners' lamps, and the other of friendly imps, who simply tease the workmen in various ways. he went so far as to say that one of these spirits in the saxon mine of annaberg destroyed twelve workmen at once by the power of his breath. at the end of the sixteenth century we find a writer on mineralogy complaining that the mines in france and germany had been in large part abandoned on account of the "evil spirits of metals which had taken possession of them." even as late as the seventeenth century, van helmont, after he had broken away from alchemy and opened one of the great paths to chemistry--even after he had announced to the world the existence of various gases and the mode of their generation--was not strong enough to free himself from theologic bias; he still inclined to believe that the gases he had discovered, were in some sense living spirits, beneficent or diabolical. but at various. periods glimpses of the truth had been gained. the ancient view had not been entirely forgotten; and as far back as the first part of the thirteenth century albert the great suggested a natural cause in the possibility of exhalations from minerals causing a "corruption of the air"; but he, as we have seen, was driven or dragged off into, theological studies, and the world relapsed into the theological view. toward the end of the fifteenth century there had come a great genius laden with important truths in chemistry, but for whom the world was not ready--basil valentine. his discoveries anticipated much that has brought fame and fortune to chemists since, yet so fearful of danger was he that his work was carefully concealed. not until after his death was his treatise on alchemy found, and even then it was for a long time not known where and when he lived. the papal bull, _spondent pariter_, and the various prohibitions it bred, forcing other alchemists to conceal their laboratories, led him to let himself be known during his life at erfurt simply as an apothecary, and to wait until after his death to make a revelation of truth which during his lifetime might have cost him dear. among the legacies of this greatest of the alchemists was the doctrine that the air which asphyxiates workers in mines is similar to that which is produced by fermentation of malt, and a recommendation that, in order to drive away the evil and to prevent serious accidents, fires be lighted and jets of steam used to ventilate the mines--stress being especially laid upon the idea that the danger in the mines is produced by "exhalations of metals." thanks to men like valentine, this idea of the interference of satan and his minions with the mining industry was gradually weakened, and the working of the deserted mines was resumed; yet even at a comparatively recent period we find it still lingering, and among leading divines in the very heart of protestant germany. in 1715 a cellar-digger having been stifled at jena, the medical faculty of the university decided that the cause was not the direct action of the devil, but a deadly gas. thereupon prof. loescher, of the university of wittenberg, entered a solemn protest, declaring that the decision of the medical faculty was "only a proof of the lamentable license which has so taken possession of us, and which, if we are not earnestly on our guard, will finally turn away from us the blessing of god."[404] but denunciations of this kind could not hold back the little army of science; in spite of adverse influences, the evolution of physics and chemistry went on. more and more there rose men bold enough to break away from theological methods and strong enough to resist ecclesiastical bribes and threats. as alchemy in its first form, seeking for the philosopher's stone and the transmutation of metals, had given way to alchemy in its second form, seeking for the elixir of life and remedies more or less magical for disease, so now the latter yielded to the search for truth as truth. more and more the "solemnly constituted impostors" were resisted in every field. a great line of physicists and chemists began to appear.[404b] ii. just at the middle of the seventeenth century, and at the very centre of opposition to physical science, robert boyle began the new epoch in chemistry. strongly influenced by the writings of bacon and the discoveries of galileo, he devoted himself to scientific research, establishing at oxford a laboratory and putting into it a chemist from strasburg. for this he was at once bitterly attacked. in spite of his high position, his blameless life, his liberal gifts to charity and learning, the oxford pulpit was especially severe against him, declaring that his researches were destroying religion and his experiments undermining the university. public orators denounced him, the wits ridiculed him, and his associates in the peerage were indignant that he should condescend to pursuits so unworthy. but boyle pressed on. his discoveries opened new paths in various directions and gave an impulse to a succession of vigorous investigators. thus began the long series of discoveries culminating those of black, bergmann, cavendish, priestley, and lavoisier, who ushered in the chemical science of the nineteenth century. yet not even then without a sore struggle against unreason. and it must here be noticed that this unreason was not all theological. the unreasoning heterodox when intrusted with irresponsible power can be as short-sighted and cruel as the unreasoning orthodox. lavoisier, one of the best of our race, not only a great chemist but a true man, was sent to the scaffold by the parisian mob, led by bigoted "liberals" and atheists, with the sneer that the republic had no need of _savants_. as to priestley, who had devoted his life to science and to every good work among his fellow-men, the birmingham mob, favoured by the anglican clergymen who harangued them as "fellow-churchmen," wrecked his house, destroyed his library, philosophical instruments, and papers containing the results of long years of scientific research, drove him into exile, and would have murdered him if they could have laid their hands upon him. nor was it entirely his devotion to rational liberty, nor even his disbelief in the doctrine of the trinity, which brought on this catastrophe. that there was a deep distrust of his scientific pursuits, was evident when the leaders of the mob took pains to use his electrical apparatus to set fire to his papers. still, though theological modes of thought continued to sterilize much effort in chemistry, the old influence was more and more thrown off, and truth sought more and more for truth's sake. "black magic" with its satanic machinery vanished, only reappearing occasionally among marvel-mongers and belated theologians. "white magic" became legerdemain. in the early years of the nineteenth century, physical research, though it went on with ever-increasing vigour, felt in various ways the reaction which followed the french revolution. it was not merely under the bourbons and hapsburgs that resistance was offered; even in england the old spirit lingered long. as late as 1832, when the british association for the advancement of science first visited oxford, no less amiable a man than john keble--at that time a power in the university--condemned indignantly the conferring of honorary degrees upon the leading men thus brought together. in a letter of that date to dr. pusey he complained bitterly, to use his own words, that "the oxford doctors have truckled sadly to the spirit of the times in receiving the hotchpotch of philosophers as they did." it is interesting to know that among the men thus contemptuously characterized were brewster, faraday, and dalton. nor was this a mere isolated exhibition of feeling; it lasted many years, and was especially shown on both sides of the atlantic in all higher institutions of learning where theology was dominant. down to a period within the memory of men still in active life, students in the sciences, not only at oxford and cambridge but at harvard and yale, were considered a doubtful if not a distinctly inferior class, intellectually and socially--to be relegated to different instructors and buildings, and to receive their degrees on a different occasion and with different ceremonies from those appointed for students in literature. to the state university of michigan, among the greater american institutions of learning which have never possessed or been possessed by a theological seminary, belongs the honour of first breaking down this wall of separation. but from the middle years of the century chemical science progressed with ever-accelerating force, and the work of bunsen, kirchhoff, dalton, and faraday has, in the last years of the century, led up to the establishment of mendeleef's law, by which chemistry has become predictive, as astronomy had become predictive by the calculations of newton, and biology by the discoveries of darwin. while one succession of strong men were thus developing chemistry out of one form of magic, another succession were developing physics out of another form. first in this latter succession may be mentioned that line of thinkers who divined and reasoned out great physical laws--a line extending from galileo and kepler and newton to ohm and faraday and joule and helmholtz. these, by revealing more and more clearly the reign of law, steadily undermined the older theological view of arbitrary influence in nature. next should be mentioned the line of profound observers, from galileo and torricelli to kelvin. these have as thoroughly undermined the old theologic substitution of phrases for facts. when galileo dropped the differing weights from the leaning tower of pisa, he began the end of aristotelian authority in physics. when torricelli balanced a column of mercury against a column of water and each of these against a column of air, he ended the theologic phrase that "nature abhors a vacuum." when newton approximately determined the velocity of sound, he ended the theologic argument that we see the flash before we hear the roar because "sight is nobler than hearing." when franklin showed that lightning is caused by electricity, and ohm and faraday proved that electricity obeys ascertained laws, they ended the theological idea of a divinity seated above the clouds and casting thunderbolts. resulting from the labour of both these branches of physical science, we have the establishment of the great laws of the indestructibility of matter, the correlation of forces, and chemical affinity. thereby is ended, with various other sacred traditions, the theological theory of a visible universe created out of nothing, so firmly imbedded in the theological thought of the middle ages and in the westminster catechism.[408] in our own time some attempt has been made to renew this war against the physical sciences. joseph de maistre, uttering his hatred of them, declaring that mankind has paid too dearly for them, asserting that they must be subjected to theology, likening them to fire--good when confined and dangerous when scattered about--has been one of the main leaders among those who can not relinquish the idea that our body of sacred literature should be kept a controlling text-book of science. the only effect of such teachings has been to weaken the legitimate hold of religion upon men. in catholic countries exertion has of late years been mainly confined to excluding science or diluting it in university teachings. early in the present century a great effort was made by ferdinand vii of spain. he simply dismissed the scientific professors from the university of salamanca, and until a recent period there has been general exclusion from spanish universities of professors holding to the newtonian physics. so, too, the contemporary emperor of austria attempted indirectly something of the same sort; and at a still later period popes gregory xvi and pius ix discouraged, if they did not forbid, the meetings of scientific associations in italy. in france, war between theology and science, which had long been smouldering, came in the years 1867 and 1868 to an outbreak. toward the end of the last century, after the church had held possession of advanced instruction for more than a thousand years, and had, so far as it was able, kept experimental science in servitude--after it had humiliated buffon in natural science, thrown its weight against newton in the physical sciences, and wrecked turgot's noble plans for a system of public instruction--the french nation decreed the establishment of the most thorough and complete system of higher instruction in science ever known. it was kept under lay control and became one of the glories of france; but, emboldened by the restoration of the bourbons in 1815, the church began to undermine this hated system, and in 1868 had made such progress that all was ready for the final assault. foremost among the leaders of the besieging party was the bishop of orleans, dupanloup, a man of many winning characteristics and of great oratorical power. in various ways, and especially in an open letter, he had fought the "materialism" of science at paris, and especially were his attacks levelled at profs. vulpian and see and the minister of public instruction, duruy, a man of great merit, whose only crime was devotion to the improvement of education and to the promotion of the highest research in science.[409] the main attack was made rather upon biological science than upon physics and chemistry, yet it was clear that all were involved together. the first onslaught was made in the french senate, and the storming party in that body was led by a venerable and conscientious prelate, cardinal de bonnechose, archbishop of rouen. it was charged by him and his party that the tendencies of the higher scientific teaching at paris were fatal to religion and morality. heavy missiles were hurled--such phrases as "sapping the foundations," "breaking down the bulwarks," and the like; and, withal, a new missile was used with much effect--the epithet "materialist." the results can be easily guessed: crowds came to the lecture-rooms of the attacked professors, and the lecture-room of prof. see, the chief offender, was crowded to suffocation. a siege was begun in due form. a young physician was sent by the cardinal's party into the heterodox camp as a spy. having heard one lecture of prof. see, he returned with information that seemed to promise easy victory to the besieging party: he brought a terrible statement--one that seemed enough to overwhelm see, vulpian, duruy, and the whole hated system of public instruction in france--the statement that see had denied the existence of the human soul. cardinal bonnechose seized the tremendous weapon at once. rising in his place in the senate, he launched a most eloquent invective against the minister of state who could protect such a fortress of impiety as the college of medicine; and, as a climax, he asserted, on the evidence of his spy fresh from prof. see's lecture-room, that the professor had declared, in his lecture of the day before, that so long as he had the honour to hold his professorship he would combat the false idea of the existence of the soul. the weapon seemed resistless and the wound fatal, but m. duruy rose and asked to be heard. his statement was simply that he held in his hand documentary proofs that prof. see never made such a declaration. he held the notes used by prof. see in his lecture. prof. see, it appeared, belonged to a school in medical science which combated certain ideas regarding medicine as an _art_. the inflamed imagination of the cardinal's heresy-hunting emissary had, as the lecture-notes proved, led him to mistake the word "_art_" for "ame," and to exhibit prof. see as treating a theological when he was discussing a purely scientific question. of the existence of the soul the professor had said nothing. the forces of the enemy were immediately turned; they retreated in confusion, amid the laughter of all france; and a quiet, dignified statement as to the rights of scientific instructors by wurtz, dean of the faculty, completed their discomfiture. thus a well-meant attempt to check science simply ended in bringing ridicule on religion, and in thrusting still deeper into the minds of thousands of men that most mistaken of all mistaken ideas: the conviction that religion and science are enemies.[410] but justice forbids raising an outcry against roman catholicism for this. in 1864 a number of excellent men in england drew up a declaration to be signed by students in the natural sciences, expressing "sincere regret that researches into scientific truth are perverted by some in our time into occasion for casting doubt upon the truth and authenticity of the holy scriptures." nine tenths of the leading scientific men of england refused to sign it; nor was this all: sir john herschel, sir john bowring, and sir w. r. hamilton administered, through the press, castigations which roused general indignation against the proposers of the circular, and prof. de morgan, by a parody, covered memorial and memorialists with ridicule. it was the old mistake, and the old result followed in the minds of multitudes of thoughtful young men.[411] and in yet another protestant country this same mistake was made. in 1868 several excellent churchmen in prussia thought it their duty to meet for the denunciation of "science falsely so called." two results followed: upon the great majority of these really self-sacrificing men--whose first utterances showed complete ignorance of the theories they attacked--there came quiet and widespread contempt; upon pastor knak, who stood forth and proclaimed views of the universe which he thought scriptural, but which most schoolboys knew to be childish, came a burst of good-natured derision from every quarter of the german nation.[411b] but in all the greater modern nations warfare of this kind, after the first quarter of the nineteenth century, became more and more futile. while conscientious roman bishops, and no less conscientious protestant clergymen in europe and america continued to insist that advanced education, not only in literature but in science, should be kept under careful control in their own sectarian universities and colleges, wretchedly one-sided in organization and inadequate in equipment; while catholic clerical authorities in spain were rejecting all professors holding the newtonian theory, and in austria and italy all holding unsafe views regarding the immaculate conception, and while protestant clerical authorities in great britain and america were keeping out of professorships men holding unsatisfactory views regarding the incarnation, or infant baptism, or the apostolic succession, or ordination by elders, or the perseverance of the saints; and while both catholic and protestant ecclesiastics were openly or secretly weeding out of university faculties all who showed willingness to consider fairly the ideas of darwin, a movement was quietly in progress destined to take instruction, and especially instruction in the physical and natural sciences, out of its old subordination to theology and ecclesiasticism.[412] the most striking beginnings of this movement had been seen when, in the darkest period of the french revolution, there was founded at paris the great conservatory of arts and trades, and when, in the early years of the nineteenth century, scientific and technical education spread quietly upon the continent. by the middle of the century france and germany were dotted with well-equipped technical and scientific schools, each having chemical and physical laboratories. the english-speaking lands lagged behind. in england, oxford and cambridge showed few if any signs of this movement, and in the united states, down to 1850, evidences of it were few and feeble. very significant is it that, at that period, while yale college had in its faculty silliman and olmsted--the professor of chemistry and the professor of physics most widely known in the united states--it had no physical or chemical laboratory in the modern sense, and confined its instruction in these subjects to examinations upon a text-book and the presentation of a few lectures. at the state university of michigan, which had even then taken a foremost place in the higher education west of the great lakes, there was very meagre instruction in chemistry and virtually none in physics. this being the state of things in the middle of the century in institutions remarkably free from clerical control, it can be imagined what was the position of scientific instruction in smaller colleges and universities where theological considerations were entirely dominant. but in 1851, with the international exhibition at london, began in great britain and america a movement in favour of scientific education; men of wealth and public spirit began making contributions to them, and thus came the growth of a new system of instruction in which chemistry and physics took just rank. by far the most marked feature in this movement was seen in america, when, in 1857, justin s. morrill, a young member of congress from vermont, presented the project of a law endowing from the public lands a broad national system of colleges in which scientific and technical studies should be placed on an equality with studies in classical literature, one such college to be established in every state of the union. the bill, though opposed mainly by representatives from the southern states, where doctrinaire politics and orthodox theology were in strong alliance with negro slavery, was passed by both houses of congress, but vetoed by president buchanan, in whom the doctrinaire and orthodox spirit was incarnate. but morrill persisted and again presented his bill, which was again carried in spite of the opposition of the southern members, and again vetoed in 1859 by president buchanan. then came the civil war; but morrill and his associates did not despair of the republic. in the midst of all the measures for putting vast armies into the field and for saving the union from foreign interference as well as from domestic anarchy, they again passed the bill, and in 1862, in the darkest hour of the struggle for national existence, it became a law by the signature of president lincoln. and here it should not be unrecorded, that, while the vast majority of the supporters of the measure were laymen, most efficient service was rendered by a clergyman, the rev. dr. amos brown, born in new hampshire, but at that time an instructor in a little village of new york. his ideas were embodied in the bill, and his efforts did much for its passage. thus was established, in every state of the american union, at least one institution in which scientific and technical studies were given equal rank with classical, and promoted by laboratories for research in physical and natural science. of these institutions there are now nearly fifty: all have proved valuable, and some of them, by the addition of splendid gifts from individuals and from the states in which they are situated, have been developed into great universities. nor was this all. many of the older universities and colleges thus received a powerful stimulus in the new direction. the great physical and chemical laboratories founded by gifts from public-spirited individuals, as at harvard, yale, and chicago, or by enlightened state legislators, as in michigan, wisconsin, minnesota, california, kansas, and nebraska, have also become centres from which radiate influences favouring the unfettered search for truth as truth. this system has been long enough in operation to enable us to note in some degree its effects on religion, and these are certainly such as to relieve those who have feared that religion was necessarily bound up with the older instruction controlled by theology. while in europe, by a natural reaction, the colleges under strict ecclesiastical control have sent forth the most powerful foes the christian church has ever known, of whom voltaire and diderot and volney and sainte-beuve and renan are types, no such effects have been noted in these newer institutions. while the theological way of looking at the universe has steadily yielded, there has been no sign of any tendency toward irreligion. on the contrary, it is the testimony of those best acquainted with the american colleges and universities during the last forty-five years that there has been in them a great gain, not only as regards morals, but as regards religion in its highest and best sense. the reason is not far to seek. under the old american system the whole body of students at a university were confined to a single course, for which the majority cared little and very many cared nothing, and, as a result, widespread idleness and dissipation were inevitable. under the new system, presenting various courses, and especially courses in various sciences, appealing to different tastes and aims, the great majority of students are interested, and consequently indolence and dissipation have steadily diminished. moreover, in the majority of american institutions of learning down to the middle of the century, the main reliance for the religious culture of students was in the perfunctory presentation of sectarian theology, and the occasional stirring up of what were called "revivals," which, after a period of unhealthy stimulus, inevitably left the main body of students in a state of religious and moral reaction and collapse. this method is now discredited, and in the more important american universities it has become impossible. religious truth, to secure the attention of the modern race of students in the better american institutions, is presented, not by "sensation preachers," but by thoughtful, sober-minded scholars. less and less avail sectarian arguments; more and more impressive becomes the presentation of fundamental religious truths. the result is, that while young men care less and less for the great mass of petty, cut-and-dried sectarian formulas, they approach the deeper questions of religion with increasing reverence. while striking differences exist between the european universities and those of the united states, this at least may be said, that on both sides of the atlantic the great majority of the leading institutions of learning are under the sway of enlightened public opinion as voiced mainly by laymen, and that, this being the case, the physical and natural sciences are henceforth likely to be developed normally, and without fear of being sterilized by theology or oppressed by ecclesiasticism. chapter xiii. from miracles to medicine. i. the early and sacred theories of disease. nothing in the evolution of human thought appears more inevitable than the idea of supernatural intervention in producing and curing disease. the causes of disease are so intricate that they are reached only after ages of scientific labour. in those periods when man sees everywhere miracle and nowhere law,--when he attributes all things which he can not understand to a will like his own,--he naturally ascribes his diseases either to the wrath of a good being or to the malice of an evil being. this idea underlies the connection of the priestly class with the healing art: a connection of which we have survivals among rude tribes in all parts of the world, and which is seen in nearly every ancient civilization--especially in the powers over disease claimed in egypt by the priests of osiris and isis, in assyria by the priests of gibil, in greece by the priests of aesculapius, and in judea by the priests and prophets of jahveh. in egypt there is evidence, reaching back to a very early period, that the sick were often regarded as afflicted or possessed by demons; the same belief comes constantly before us in the great religions of india and china; and, as regards chaldea, the assyrian tablets recovered in recent years, while revealing the source of so many myths and legends transmitted to the modern world through the book of genesis, show especially this idea of the healing of diseases by the casting out of devils. a similar theory was elaborated in persia. naturally, then, the old testament, so precious in showing the evolution of religious and moral truth among men, attributes such diseases as the leprosy of miriam and uzziah, the boils of job, the dysentery of jehoram, the withered hand of jeroboam, the fatal illness of asa, and many other ills, to the wrath of god or the malice of satan; while, in the new testament, such examples as the woman "bound by satan," the rebuke of the fever, the casting out of the devil which was dumb, the healing of the person whom "the devil ofttimes casteth into the fire"--of which case one of the greatest modern physicians remarks that never was there a truer description of epilepsy--and various other episodes, show this same inevitable mode of thought as a refracting medium through which the teachings and doings of the great physician were revealed to future generations. in greece, though this idea of an occult evil agency in producing bodily ills appeared at an early period, there also came the first beginnings, so far as we know, of a really scientific theory of medicine. five hundred years before christ, in the bloom period of thought--the period of aeschylus, phidias, pericles, socrates, and plato--appeared hippocrates, one of the greatest names in history. quietly but thoroughly he broke away from the old tradition, developed scientific thought, and laid the foundations of medical science upon experience, observation, and reason so deeply and broadly that his teaching remains to this hour among the most precious possessions of our race. his thought was passed on to the school of alexandria, and there medical science was developed yet further, especially by such men as herophilus and erasistratus. under their lead studies in human anatomy began by dissection; the old prejudice which had weighed so long upon science, preventing that method of anatomical investigation without which there can be no real results, was cast aside apparently forever.[[2]] but with the coming in of christianity a great new chain of events was set in motion which modified this development most profoundly. the influence of christianity on the healing art was twofold: there was first a blessed impulse--the thought, aspiration, example, ideals, and spirit of jesus of nazareth. this spirit, then poured into the world, flowed down through the ages, promoting self-sacrifice for the sick and wretched. through all those succeeding centuries, even through the rudest, hospitals and infirmaries sprang up along this blessed stream. of these were the eastern establishments for the cure of the sick at the earliest christian periods, the infirmary of monte cassino and the hotel-dieu at lyons in the sixth century, the hotel-dieu at paris in the seventh, and the myriad refuges for the sick and suffering which sprang up in every part of europe during the following centuries. vitalized by this stream, all medieval growths of mercy bloomed luxuriantly. to say nothing of those at an earlier period, we have in the time of the crusades great charitable organizations like the order of st. john of jerusalem, and thenceforward every means of bringing the spirit of jesus to help afflicted humanity. so, too, through all those ages we have a succession of men and women devoting themselves to works of mercy, culminating during modern times in saints like vincent de paul, francke, howard, elizabeth fry, florence nightingale, and muhlenberg. but while this vast influence, poured forth from the heart of the founder of christianity, streamed through century after century, inspiring every development of mercy, there came from those who organized the church which bears his name, and from those who afterward developed and directed it, another stream of influence--a theology drawn partly from prehistoric conceptions of unseen powers, partly from ideas developed in the earliest historic nations, but especially from the letter of the hebrew and christian sacred books. the theology developed out of our sacred literature in relation to the cure of disease was mainly twofold: first, there was a new and strong evolution of the old idea that physical disease is produced by the wrath of god or the malice of satan, or by a combination of both, which theology was especially called in to explain; secondly, there were evolved theories of miraculous methods of cure, based upon modes of appeasing the divine anger, or of thwarting satanic malice. along both these streams of influence, one arising in the life of jesus, and the other in the reasonings of theologians, legends of miracles grew luxuriantly. it would be utterly unphilosophical to attribute these as a whole to conscious fraud. whatever part priestcraft may have taken afterward in sundry discreditable developments of them, the mass of miraculous legends, century after century, grew up mainly in good faith, and as naturally as elms along water-courses or flowers upon the prairie. ii. growth of legends of healing.- the life of xavier as a typical example. legends of miracles have thus grown about the lives of all great benefactors of humanity in early ages, and about saints and devotees. throughout human history the lives of such personages, almost without exception, have been accompanied or followed by a literature in which legends of miraculous powers form a very important part--a part constantly increasing until a different mode of looking at nature and of weighing testimony causes miracles to disappear. while modern thought holds the testimony to the vast mass of such legends in all ages as worthless, it is very widely acknowledged that great and gifted beings who endow the earth with higher religious ideas, gaining the deepest hold upon the hearts and minds of multitudes, may at times exercise such influence upon those about them that the sick in mind or body are helped or healed. we have within the modern period very many examples which enable us to study the evolution of legendary miracles. out of these i will select but one, which is chosen because it is the life of one of the most noble and devoted men in the history of humanity, one whose biography is before the world with its most minute details--in his own letters, in the letters of his associates, in contemporary histories, and in a multitude of biographies: this man is st. francis xavier. from these sources i draw the facts now to be given, but none of them are of protestant origin; every source from which i shall draw is catholic and roman, and published under the sanction of the church. born a spanish noble, xavier at an early age cast aside all ordinary aims, devoted himself to study, was rapidly advanced to a professorship at paris, and in this position was rapidly winning a commanding influence, when he came under the sway of another spaniard even greater, though less brilliantly endowed, than himself--ignatius loyola, founder of the society of jesus. the result was that the young professor sacrificed the brilliant career on which he had entered at the french capital, went to the far east as a simple missionary, and there devoted his remaining years to redeeming the lowest and most wretched of our race. among the various tribes, first in lower india and afterward in japan, he wrought untiringly--toiling through village after village, collecting the natives by the sound of a hand-bell, trying to teach them the simplest christian formulas; and thus he brought myriads of them to a nominal confession of the christian faith. after twelve years of such efforts, seeking new conquests for religion, he sacrificed his life on the desert island of san chan. during his career as a missionary he wrote great numbers of letters, which were preserved and have since been published; and these, with the letters of his contemporaries, exhibit clearly all the features of his life. his own writings are very minute, and enable us to follow him fully. no account of a miracle wrought by him appears either in his own letters or in any contemporary document.[[6]] at the outside, but two or three things occurred in his whole life, as exhibited so fully by himself and his contemporaries, for which the most earnest devotee could claim anything like divine interposition; and these are such as may be read in the letters of very many fervent missionaries, protestant as well as catholic. for example, in the beginning of his career, during a journey in europe with an ambassador, one of the servants in fording a stream got into deep water and was in danger of drowning. xavier tells us that the ambassador prayed very earnestly, and that the man finally struggled out of the stream. but within sixty years after his death, at his canonization, and by various biographers, this had been magnified into a miracle, and appears in the various histories dressed out in glowing colours. xavier tells us that the ambassador prayed for the safety of the young man; but his biographers tell us that it was xavier who prayed, and finally, by the later writers, xavier is represented as lifting horse and rider out of the stream by a clearly supernatural act. still another claim to miracle is based upon his arriving at lisbon and finding his great colleague, simon rodriguez, ill of fever. xavier informs us in a very simple way that rodriguez was so overjoyed to see him that the fever did not return. this is entirely similar to the cure which martin luther wrought upon melanchthon. melanchthon had broken down and was supposed to be dying, when his joy at the long-delayed visit of luther brought him to his feet again, after which he lived for many years. again, it is related that xavier, finding a poor native woman very ill, baptized her, saying over her the prayers of the church, and she recovered. two or three occurrences like these form the whole basis for the miraculous account, so far as xavier's own writings are concerned. of miracles in the ordinary sense of the word there is in these letters of his no mention. though he writes of his doings with especial detail, taking evident pains to note everything which he thought a sign of divine encouragement, he says nothing of his performing miracles, and evidently knows nothing of them. this is clearly not due to his unwillingness to make known any token of divine favour. as we have seen, he is very prompt to report anything which may be considered an answer to prayer or an evidence of the power of religious means to improve the bodily or spiritual health of those to whom he was sent. nor do the letters of his associates show knowledge of any miracles wrought by him. his brother missionaries, who were in constant and loyal fellowship with him, make no allusions to them in their communications with each other or with their brethren in europe. of this fact we have many striking evidences. various collections of letters from the jesuit missionaries in india and the east generally, during the years of xavier's activity, were published, and in not one of these letters written during xavier's lifetime appears any account of a miracle wrought by him. as typical of these collections we may take perhaps the most noted of all, that which was published about twenty years after xavier's death by a jesuit father, emanuel acosta. the letters given in it were written by xavier and his associates not only from goa, which was the focus of all missionary effort and the centre of all knowledge regarding their work in the east, but from all other important points in the great field. the first of them were written during the saint's lifetime, but, though filled with every sort of detail regarding missionary life and work, they say nothing regarding any miracles by xavier. the same is true of various other similar collections published during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. in not one of them does any mention of a miracle by xavier appear in a letter from india or the east contemporary with him. this silence regarding his miracles was clearly not due to any "evil heart of unbelief." on the contrary, these good missionary fathers were prompt to record the slightest occurrence which they thought evidence of the divine favour: it is indeed touching to see how eagerly they grasp at the most trivial things which could be thus construed. their ample faith was fully shown. one of them, in acosta's collection, sends a report that an illuminated cross had been recently seen in the heavens; another, that devils had been cast out of the natives by the use of holy water; another, that various cases of disease had been helped and even healed by baptism; and sundry others sent reports that the blind and dumb had been restored, and that even lepers had been cleansed by the proper use of the rites of the church; but to xavier no miracles are imputed by his associates during his life or during several years after his death. on the contrary, we find his own statements as to his personal limitations, and the difficulties arising from them, fully confirmed by his brother workers. it is interesting, for example, in view of the claim afterward made that the saint was divinely endowed for his mission with the "gift of tongues," to note in these letters confirmation of xavier's own statement utterly disproving the existence of any such divine gift, and detailing the difficulties which he encountered from his want of knowing various languages, and the hard labour which he underwent in learning the elements of the japanese tongue. until about ten years after xavier's death, then, as emanuel acosta's publication shows, the letters of the missionaries continued without any indication of miracles performed by the saint. though, as we shall see presently, abundant legends had already begun to grow elsewhere, not one word regarding these miracles came as yet from the country which, according to later accounts accepted and sanctioned by the church, was at this very period filled with miracles; not the slightest indication of them from the men who were supposed to be in the very thick of these miraculous manifestations. but this negative evidence is by no means all. there is also positive evidence--direct testimony from the jesuit order itself--that xavier wrought no miracles. for not only did neither xavier nor his co-workers know anything of the mighty works afterward attributed to him, but the highest contemporary authority on the whole subject, a man in the closest correspondence with those who knew most about the saint, a member of the society of jesus in the highest standing and one of its accepted historians, not only expressly tells us that xavier wrought no miracles, but gives the reasons why he wrought none. this man was joseph acosta, a provincial of the jesuit order, its visitor in aragon, superior at valladolid, and finally rector of the university of salamanca. in 1571, nineteen years after xavier's death, acosta devoted himself to writing a work mainly concerning the conversion of the indies, and in this he refers especially and with the greatest reverence to xavier, holding him up as an ideal and his work as an example. but on the same page with this tribute to the great missionary acosta goes on to discuss the reasons why progress in the world's conversion is not so rapid as in the early apostolic times, and says that an especial cause why apostolic preaching could no longer produce apostolic results "lies in the missionaries themselves, because there is now no power of working miracles." he then asks, "why should our age be so completely destitute of them?" this question he answers at great length, and one of his main contentions is that in early apostolic times illiterate men had to convert the learned of the world, whereas in modern times the case is reversed, learned men being sent to convert the illiterate; and hence that "in the early times miracles were necessary, but in our time they are not." this statement and argument refer, as we have seen, directly to xavier by name, and to the period covered by his activity and that of the other great missionaries of his time. that the jesuit order and the church at large thought this work of acosta trustworthy is proved by the fact that it was published at salamanca a few years after it was written, and republished afterward with ecclesiastical sanction in france.[[10]] nothing shows better than the sequel how completely the evolution of miraculous accounts depends upon the intellectual atmosphere of any land and time, and how independent it is of fact. for, shortly after xavier's heroic and beautiful death in 1552, stories of miracles wrought by him began to appear. at first they were few and feeble; and two years later melchior nunez, provincial of the jesuits in the portuguese dominions, with all the means at his command, and a correspondence extending throughout eastern asia, had been able to hear of but three. these were entirely from hearsay. first, john deyro said he knew that xavier had the gift of prophecy; but, unfortunately, xavier himself had reprimanded and cast off deyro for untruthfulness and cheatery. secondly, it was reported vaguely that at cape comorin many persons affirmed that xavier had raised a man from the dead. thirdly, father pablo de santa fe had heard that in japan xavier had restored sight to a blind man. this seems a feeble beginning, but little by little the stories grew, and in 1555 de quadros, provincial of the jesuits in ethiopia, had heard of nine miracles, and asserted that xavier had healed the sick and cast out devils. the next year, being four years after xavier's death, king john iii of portugal, a very devout man, directed his viceroy barreto to draw up and transmit to him an authentic account of xavier's miracles, urging him especially to do the work "with zeal and speedily." we can well imagine what treasures of grace an obsequious viceroy, only too anxious to please a devout king, could bring together by means of the hearsay of ignorant, compliant natives through all the little towns of portuguese india. but the letters of the missionaries who had been co-workers or immediate successors of xavier in his eastern field were still silent as regards any miracles by him, and they remained silent for nearly ten years. in the collection of letters published by emanuel acosta and others no hint at any miracles by him is given, until at last, in 1562, fully ten years after xavier's death, the first faint beginnings of these legends appear in them. at that time the jesuit almeida, writing at great length to the brethren, stated that he had found a pious woman who believed that a book left behind by xavier had healed sick folk when it was laid upon them, and that he had met an old man who preserved a whip left by the saint which, when properly applied to the sick, had been found good both for their bodies and their souls. from these and other small beginnings grew, always luxuriant and sometimes beautiful, the vast mass of legends which we shall see hereafter. this growth was affectionately garnered by the more zealous and less critical brethren in europe until it had become enormous; but it appears to have been thought of little value by those best able to judge. for when, in 1562, julius gabriel eugubinus delivered a solemn oration on the condition and glory of the church, before the papal legates and other fathers assembled at the council of trent, while he alluded to a multitude of things showing the divine favour, there was not the remotest allusion to the vast multitude of miracles which, according to the legends, had been so profusely lavished on the faithful during many years, and which, if they had actually occurred, formed an argument of prodigious value in behalf of the special claims of the church. the same complete absence of knowledge of any such favours vouchsafed to the church, or at least of any belief in them, appears in that great council of trent among the fathers themselves. certainly there, if anywhere, one might on the roman theory expect divine illumination in a matter of this kind. the presence of the holy spirit in the midst of it was especially claimed, and yet its members, with all their spiritual as well as material advantages for knowing what had been going on in the church during the previous thirty years, and with xavier's own friend and colleague, laynez, present to inform them, show not the slightest sign of any suspicion of xavier's miracles. we have the letters of julius gabriel to the foremost of these fathers assembled at trent, from 1557 onward for a considerable time, and we have also a multitude of letters written from the council by bishops, cardinals, and even by the pope himself, discussing all sorts of church affairs, and in not one of these is there evidence of the remotest suspicion that any of these reports, which they must have heard, regarding xavier's miracles, were worthy of mention. here, too, comes additional supplementary testimony of much significance. with these orations and letters, eugubinus gives a latin translation of a letter, "on religious affairs in the indies," written by a jesuit father twenty years after xavier's death. though the letter came from a field very distant from that in which xavier laboured, it was sure, among the general tokens of divine favour to the church and to the order, on which it dwelt, to have alluded to miracles wrought by xavier had there been the slightest ground for believing in them; but no such allusion appears.[[14]] so, too, when in 1588, thirty-six years after xavier's death, the jesuit father maffei, who had been especially conversant with xavier's career in the east, published his _history of india_, though he gave a biography of xavier which shows fervent admiration for his subject, he dwelt very lightly on the alleged miracles. but the evolution of miraculous legends still went on. six years later, in 1594, father tursellinus published his _life of xavier_, and in this appears to have made the first large use of the information collected by the portuguese viceroy and the more zealous brethren. this work shows a vast increase in the number of miracles over those given by all sources together up to that time. xavier is represented as not only curing the sick, but casting out devils, stilling the tempest, raising the dead, and performing miracles of every sort. in 1622 came the canonization proceedings at rome. among the speeches made in the presence of pope gregory xv, supporting the claims of xavier to saintship, the most important was by cardinal monte. in this the orator selects out ten great miracles from those performed by xavier during his lifetime and describes them minutely. he insists that on a certain occasion xavier, by the sign of the cross, made sea-water fresh, so that his fellow-passengers and the crew could drink it; that he healed the sick and raised the dead in various places; brought back a lost boat to his ship; was on one occasion lifted from the earth bodily and transfigured before the bystanders; and that, to punish a blaspheming town, he caused an earthquake and buried the offenders in cinders from a volcano: this was afterward still more highly developed, and the saint was represented in engravings as calling down fire from heaven and thus destroying the town. the most curious miracle of all is the eighth on the cardinal's list. regarding this he states that, xavier having during one of his voyages lost overboard a crucifix, it was restored to him after he had reached the shore by a crab. the cardinal also dwelt on miracles performed by xavier's relics after his death, the most original being that sundry lamps placed before the image of the saint and filled with holy water burned as if filled with oil. this latter account appears to have deeply impressed the pope, for in the bull of canonization issued by virtue of his power of teaching the universal church infallibly in all matters pertaining to faith and morals, his holiness dwells especially upon the miracle of the lamp filled with holy water and burning before xavier's image. xavier having been made a saint, many other _lives_ of him appeared, and, as a rule, each surpassed its predecessor in the multitude of miracles. in 1622 appeared that compiled and published under the sanction of father vitelleschi, and in it not only are new miracles increased, but some old ones are greatly improved. one example will suffice to show the process. in his edition of 1596, tursellinus had told how, xavier one day needing money, and having asked vellio, one of his friends, to let him have some, vellio gave him the key of a safe containing thirty thousand gold pieces. xavier took three hundred and returned the key to vellio; whereupon vellio, finding only three hundred pieces gone, reproached xavier for not taking more, saying that he had expected to give him half of all that the strong box contained. xavier, touched by this generosity, told vellio that the time of his death should be made known to him, that he might have opportunity to repent of his sins and prepare for eternity. but twenty-six years later the _life of xavier_ published under the sanction of vitelleschi, giving the story, says that vellio on opening the safe found that _all his money_ remained as he had left it, and that _none at all_ had disappeared; in fact, that there had been a miraculous restitution. on his blaming xavier for not taking the money, xavier declares to vellio that not only shall he be apprised of the moment of his death, but that the box shall always be full of money. still later biographers improved the account further, declaring that xavier promised vellio that the strong box should always contain money sufficient for all his needs. in that warm and uncritical atmosphere this and other legends grew rapidly, obedient to much the same laws which govern the evolution of fairy tales.[[16]] in 1682, one hundred and thirty years after xavier's death, appeared his biography by father bouhours; and this became a classic. in it the old miracles of all kinds were enormously multiplied, and many new ones given. miracles few and small in tursellinus became many and great in bouhours. in tursellinus, xavier during his life saves one person from drowning, in bouhours he saves during his life three; in tursellinus, xavier during his life raises four persons from the dead, in bouhours fourteen; in tursellinus there is one miraculous supply of water, in bouhours three; in tursellinus there is no miraculous draught of fishes, in bouhours there is one; in tursellinus, xavier is transfigured twice, in bouhours five times: and so through a long series of miracles which, in the earlier lives appearing either not at all or in very moderate form, are greatly increased and enlarged by tursellinus, and finally enormously amplified and multiplied by father bouhours. and here it must be borne in mind that bouhours, writing ninety years after tursellinus, could not have had access to any new sources. xavier had been dead one hundred and thirty years, and of course all the natives upon whom he had wrought his miracles, and their children and grandchildren, were gone. it can not then be claimed that bouhours had the advantage of any new witnesses, nor could he have had anything new in the way of contemporary writings; for, as we have seen, the missionaries of xavier's time wrote nothing regarding his miracles, and certainly the ignorant natives of india and japan did not commit any account of his miracles to writing. nevertheless, the miracles of healing given in bouhours were more numerous and brilliant than ever. but there was far more than this. although during the lifetime of xavier there is neither in his own writings nor in any contemporary account any assertion of a resurrection from the dead wrought by him, we find that shortly after his death stories of such resurrections began to appear. a simple statement of the growth of these may throw some light on the evolution of miraculous accounts generally. at first it was affirmed that some people at cape comorin said that he had raised one person; then it was said that there were two persons; then in various authors--emanuel acosta, in his commentaries written as an afterthought nearly twenty years after xavier's death, de quadros, and others--the story wavers between one and two cases; finally, in the time of tursellinus, four cases had been developed. in 1622, at the canonization proceedings, three were mentioned; but by the time of father bouhours there were fourteen--all raised from the dead by xavier himself during his lifetime--and the name, place, and circumstances are given with much detail in each case.[[17]] it seems to have been felt as somewhat strange at first that xavier had never alluded to any of these wonderful miracles; but ere long a subsidiary legend was developed, to the effect that one of the brethren asked him one day if he had raised the dead, whereat he blushed deeply and cried out against the idea, saying: "and so i am said to have raised the dead! what a misleading man i am! some men brought a youth to me just as if he were dead, who, when i commanded him to arise in the name of christ, straightway arose." noteworthy is the evolution of other miracles. tursellinus, writing in 1594, tells us that on the voyage from goa to malacca, xavier having left the ship and gone upon an island, was afterward found by the persons sent in search of him so deeply absorbed in prayer as to be unmindful of all things about him. but in the next century father bouhours develops the story as follows: "the servants found the man of god raised from the ground into the air, his eyes fixed upon heaven, and rays of light about his countenance." instructive, also, is a comparison between the successive accounts of his noted miracle among the badages at travancore, in 1544 xavier in his letters makes no reference to anything extraordinary; and emanuel acosta, in 1571, declares simply that "xavier threw himself into the midst of the christians, that reverencing him they might spare the rest." the inevitable evolution of the miraculous goes on; and twenty years later tursellinus tells us that, at the onslaught of the badages, "they could not endure the majesty of his countenance and the splendour and rays which issued from his eyes, and out of reverence for him they spared the others." the process of incubation still goes on during ninety years more, and then comes father bouhours's account. having given xavier's prayer on the battlefield, bouhours goes on to say that the saint, crucifix in hand, rushed at the head of the people toward the plain where the enemy was marching, and "said to them in a threatening voice, `i forbid you in the name of the living god to advance farther, and on his part command you to return in the way you came.' these few words cast a terror into the minds of those soldiers who were at the head of the army; they remained confounded and without motion. they who marched afterward, seeing that the foremost did not advance, asked the reason of it. the answer was returned from the front ranks that they had before their eyes an unknown person habited in black, of more than human stature, of terrible aspect, and darting fire from his eyes.... they were seized with amazement at the sight, and all of them fled in precipitate confusion." curious, too, is the after-growth of the miracle of the crab restoring the crucifix. in its first form xavier lost the crucifix in the sea, and the earlier biographers dwell on the sorrow which he showed in consequence; but the later historians declare that the saint threw the crucifix into the sea in order to still a tempest, and that, after his safe getting to land, a crab brought it to him on the shore. in this form we find it among illustrations of books of devotion in the next century. but perhaps the best illustration of this evolution of xavier's miracles is to be found in the growth of another legend; and it is especially instructive because it grew luxuriantly despite the fact that it was utterly contradicted in all parts of xavier's writings as well as in the letters of his associates and in the work of the jesuit father, joseph acosta. throughout his letters, from first to last, xavier constantly dwells upon his difficulties with the various languages of the different tribes among whom he went. he tells us how he surmounted these difficulties: sometimes by learning just enough of a language to translate into it some of the main church formulas; sometimes by getting the help of others to patch together some pious teachings to be learned by rote; sometimes by employing interpreters; and sometimes by a mixture of various dialects, and even by signs. on one occasion he tells us that a very serious difficulty arose, and that his voyage to china was delayed because, among other things, the interpreter he had engaged had failed to meet him. in various _lives_ which appeared between the time of his death and his canonization this difficulty is much dwelt upon; but during the canonization proceedings at rome, in the speeches then made, and finally in the papal bull, great stress was laid upon the fact that xavier possessed _the gift of tongues_. it was declared that he spoke to the various tribes with ease in their own languages. this legend of xavier's miraculous gift of tongues was especially mentioned in the papal bull, and was solemnly given forth by the pontiff as an infallible statement to be believed by the universal church. gregory xv having been prevented by death from issuing the _bull of canonization_, it was finally issued by urban viii; and there is much food for reflection in the fact that the same pope who punished galileo, and was determined that the inquisition should not allow the world to believe that the earth revolves about the sun, thus solemnly ordered the world, under pain of damnation, to believe in xavier's miracles, including his "gift of tongues," and the return of the crucifix by the pious crab. but the legend was developed still further: father bouhours tells us, "the holy man spoke very well the language of those barbarians without having learned it, and had no need of an interpreter when he instructed." and, finally, in our own time, the rev. father coleridge, speaking of the saint among the natives, says, "he could speak the language excellently, though he had never learned it." in the early biography, tursellinus writes. "nothing was a greater impediment to him than his ignorance of the japanese tongues; for, ever and anon, when some uncouth expression offended their fastidious and delicate ears, the awkward speech of francis was a cause of laughter." but father bouhours, a century later, writing of xavier at the same period, says, "he preached in the afternoon to the japanese in their language, but so naturally and with so much ease that he could not be taken for a foreigner." and finally, in 1872, father coleridge, of the society of jesus, speaking of xavier at this time, says, "he spoke freely, flowingly, elegantly, as if he had lived in japan all his life." nor was even this sufficient: to make the legend complete, it was finally declared that, when xavier addressed the natives of various tribes, each heard the sermon in his own language in which he was born. all this, as we have seen, directly contradicts not only the plain statements of xavier himself, and various incidental testimonies in the letters of his associates, but the explicit declaration of father joseph acosta. the latter historian dwells especially on the labour which xavier was obliged to bestow on the study of the japanese and other languages, and says, "even if he had been endowed with the apostolic gift of tongues, he could not have spread more widely the glory of christ."[[21]] it is hardly necessary to attribute to the orators and biographers generally a conscious attempt to deceive. the simple fact is, that as a rule they thought, spoke, and wrote in obedience to the natural laws which govern the luxuriant growth of myth and legend in the warm atmosphere of love and devotion which constantly arises about great religious leaders in times when men have little or no knowledge of natural law, when there is little care for scientific evidence, and when he who believes most is thought most meritorious.[[21b]] these examples will serve to illustrate the process which in thousands of cases has gone on from the earliest days of the church until a very recent period. everywhere miraculous cures became the rule rather than the exception throughout christendom. iii. the mediaeval miracles of healing check medical science. so it was that, throughout antiquity, during the early history of the church, throughout the middle ages, and indeed down to a comparatively recent period, testimony to miraculous interpositions which would now be laughed at by a schoolboy was accepted by the leaders of thought. st. augustine was certainly one of the strongest minds in the early church, and yet we find him mentioning, with much seriousness, a story that sundry innkeepers of his time put a drug into cheese which metamorphosed travellers into domestic animals, and asserting that the peacock is so favoured by the almighty that its flesh will not decay, and that he has tested it and knows this to be a fact. with such a disposition regarding the wildest stories, it is not surprising that the assertion of st. gregory of nazianzen, during the second century, as to the cures wrought by the martyrs cosmo and damian, was echoed from all parts of europe until every hamlet had its miracle-working saint or relic. the literature of these miracles is simply endless. to take our own ancestors alone, no one can read the _ecclesiastical history_ of bede, or abbot samson's _miracles of st. edmund_, or the accounts given by eadmer and osbern of the miracles of st. dunstan, or the long lists of those wrought by thomas a becket, or by any other in the army of english saints, without seeing the perfect naturalness of this growth. this evolution of miracle in all parts of europe came out of a vast preceding series of beliefs, extending not merely through the early church but far back into paganism. just as formerly patients were cured in the temples of aesculapius, so they were cured in the middle ages, and so they are cured now at the shrines of saints. just as the ancient miracles were solemnly attested by votive tablets, giving names, dates, and details, and these tablets hung before the images of the gods, so the medieval miracles were attested by similar tablets hung before the images of the saints; and so they are attested to-day by similar tablets hung before the images of our lady of la salette or of lourdes. just as faith in such miracles persisted, in spite of the small percentage of cures at those ancient places of healing, so faith persists to-day, despite the fact that in at least ninety per cent of the cases at lourdes prayers prove unavailing. as a rule, the miracles of the sacred books were taken as models, and each of those given by the sacred chroniclers was repeated during the early ages of the church and through the medieval period with endless variations of circumstance, but still with curious fidelity to the original type. it should be especially kept in mind that, while the vast majority of these were doubtless due to the myth-making faculty and to that development of legends which always goes on in ages ignorant of the relation between physical causes and effects, some of the miracles of healing had undoubtedly some basis in fact. we in modern times have seen too many cures performed through influences exercised upon the imagination, such as those of the jansenists at the cemetery of st. medard, of the ultramontanes at la salette and lourdes, of the russian father ivan at st. petersburg, and of various protestant sects at old orchard and elsewhere, as well as at sundry camp meetings, to doubt that some cures, more or less permanent, were wrought by sainted personages in the early church and throughout the middle ages.[[24]] there are undoubtedly serious lesions which yield to profound emotion and vigorous exertion born of persuasion, confidence, or excitement. the wonderful power of the mind over the body is known to every observant student. mr. herbert spencer dwells upon the fact that intense feeling or passion may bring out great muscular force. dr. berdoe reminds us that "a gouty man who has long hobbled about on his crutch, finds his legs and power to run with them if pursued by a wild bull"; and that "the feeblest invalid, under the influence of delirium or other strong excitement, will astonish her nurse by the sudden accession of strength."[[25]] but miraculous cures were not ascribed to persons merely. another growth, developed by the early church mainly from germs in our sacred books, took shape in miracles wrought by streams, by pools of water, and especially by relics. here, too, the old types persisted, and just as we find holy and healing wells, pools, and streams in all other ancient religions, so we find in the evolution of our own such examples as naaman the syrian cured of leprosy by bathing in the river jordan, the blind man restored to sight by washing in the pool of siloam, and the healing of those who touched the bones of elisha, the shadow of st. peter, or the handkerchief of st. paul. st. cyril, st. ambrose, st. augustine, and other great fathers of the early church, sanctioned the belief that similar efficacy was to be found in the relics of the saints of their time; hence, st. ambrose declared that "the precepts of medicine are contrary to celestial science, watching, and prayer," and we find this statement reiterated from time to time throughout the middle ages. from this idea was evolved that fetichism which we shall see for ages standing in the way of medical science. theology, developed in accordance with this idea, threw about all cures, even those which resulted from scientific effort, an atmosphere of supernaturalism. the vividness with which the accounts of miracles in the sacred books were realized in the early church continued the idea of miraculous intervention throughout the middle ages. the testimony of the great fathers of the church to the continuance of miracles is overwhelming; but everything shows that they so fully expected miracles on the slightest occasion as to require nothing which in these days would be regarded as adequate evidence. in this atmosphere of theologic thought medical science was at once checked. the school of alexandria, under the influence first of jews and later of christians, both permeated with oriental ideas, and taking into their theory of medicine demons and miracles, soon enveloped everything in mysticism. in the byzantine empire of the east the same cause produced the same effect; the evolution of ascertained truth in medicine, begun by hippocrates and continued by herophilus, seemed lost forever. medical science, trying to advance, was like a ship becalmed in the sargasso sea: both the atmosphere about it and the medium through which it must move resisted all progress. instead of reliance upon observation, experience, experiment, and thought, attention was turned toward supernatural agencies.[[27]] iv. the attribution of disease to satanic influence.- "pastoral medicine" checks scientific effort. especially prejudicial to a true development of medical science among the first christians was their attribution of disease to diabolic influence. as we have seen, this idea had come from far, and, having prevailed in chaldea, egypt, and persia, had naturally entered into the sacred books of the hebrews. moreover, st. paul had distinctly declared that the gods of the heathen were devils; and everywhere the early christians saw in disease the malignant work of these dethroned powers of evil. the gnostic and manichaean struggles had ripened the theologic idea that, although at times diseases are punishments by the almighty, the main agency in them is satanic. the great fathers and renowned leaders of the early church accepted and strengthened this idea. origen said: "it is demons which produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions of the air, pestilences; they hover concealed in clouds in the lower atmosphere, and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen offer to them as gods." st. augustine said: "all diseases of christians are to be ascribed to these demons; chiefly do they torment fresh-baptized christians, yea, even the guiltless, newborn infants." tertullian insisted that a malevolent angel is in constant attendance upon every person. gregory of nazianzus declared that bodily pains are provoked by demons, and that medicines are useless, but that they are often cured by the laying on of consecrated hands. st. nilus and st. gregory of tours, echoing st. ambrose, gave examples to show the sinfulness of resorting to medicine instead of trusting to the intercession of saints. st. bernard, in a letter to certain monks, warned them that to seek relief from disease in medicine was in harmony neither with their religion nor with the honour and purity of their order. this view even found its way into the canon law, which declared the precepts of medicine contrary to divine knowledge. as a rule, the leaders of the church discouraged the theory that diseases are due to natural causes, and most of them deprecated a resort to surgeons and physicians rather than to supernatural means.[[28]] out of these and similar considerations was developed the vast system of "pastoral medicine," so powerful not only through the middle ages, but even in modern times, both among catholics and protestants. as to its results, we must bear in mind that, while there is no need to attribute the mass of stories regarding miraculous cures to conscious fraud, there was without doubt, at a later period, no small admixture of belief biased by self-interest, with much pious invention and suppression of facts. enormous revenues flowed into various monasteries and churches in all parts of europe from relics noted for their healing powers. every cathedral, every great abbey, and nearly every parish church claimed possession of healing relics. while, undoubtedly, a childlike faith was at the bottom of this belief, there came out of it unquestionably a great development of the mercantile spirit. the commercial value of sundry relics was often very high. in the year 1056 a french ruler pledged securities to the amount of ten thousand solidi for the production of the relics of st. just and st. pastor, pending a legal decision regarding the ownership between him and the archbishop of narbonne. the emperor of germany on one occasion demanded, as a sufficient pledge for the establishment of a city market, the arm of st. george. the body of st. sebastian brought enormous wealth to the abbey of soissons; rome, canterbury, treves, marburg, every great city, drew large revenues from similar sources, and the venetian republic ventured very considerable sums in the purchase of relics. naturally, then, corporations, whether lay or ecclesiastical, which drew large revenue from relics looked with little favour on a science which tended to discredit their investments. nowhere, perhaps, in europe can the philosophy of this development of fetichism be better studied to-day than at cologne. at the cathedral, preserved in a magnificent shrine since about the twelfth century, are the skulls of the three kings, or wise men of the east, who, guided by the star of bethlehem, brought gifts to the saviour. these relics were an enormous source of wealth to the cathedral chapter during many centuries. but other ecclesiastical bodies in that city were both pious and shrewd, and so we find that not far off, at the church of st. gereon, a cemetery has been dug up, and the bones distributed over the walls as the relics of st. gereon and his theban band of martyrs! again, at the neighbouring church of st. ursula, we have the later spoils of another cemetery, covering the interior walls of the church as the bones of st. ursula and her eleven thousand virgin martyrs: the fact that many of them, as anatomists now declare, are the bones of _men_ does not appear in the middle ages to have diminished their power of competing with the relics at the other shrines in healing efficiency. no error in the choice of these healing means seems to have diminished their efficacy. when prof. buckland, the eminent osteologist and geologist, discovered that the relics of st. rosalia at palermo, which had for ages cured diseases and warded off epidemics, were the bones of a goat, this fact caused not the slightest diminution in their miraculous power. other developments of fetich cure were no less discouraging to the evolution of medical science. very important among these was the agnus dei, or piece of wax from the paschal candles, stamped with the figure of a lamb and consecrated by the pope. in 1471 pope paul ii expatiated to the church on the efficacy of this fetich in preserving men from fire, shipwreck, tempest, lightning, and hail, as well as in assisting women in childbirth; and he reserved to himself and his successors the manufacture of it. even as late as 1517 pope leo x issued, for a consideration, tickets bearing a cross and the following inscription: "this cross measured forty times makes the height of christ in his humanity. he who kisses it is preserved for seven days from fallingsickness, apoplexy, and sudden death." naturally, the belief thus sanctioned by successive heads of the church, infallible in all teaching regarding faith and morals, created a demand for amulets and charms of all kinds; and under this influence we find a reversion to old pagan fetiches. nothing, on the whole, stood more constantly in the way of any proper development of medical science than these fetich cures, whose efficacy was based on theological reasoning and sanctioned by ecclesiastical policy. it would be expecting too much from human nature to imagine that pontiffs who derived large revenues from the sale of the agnus dei, or priests who derived both wealth and honours from cures wrought at shrines under their care, or lay dignitaries who had invested heavily in relics, should favour the development of any science which undermined their interests.[[30]] v. theological opposition to anatomical studies. yet a more serious stumbling-block, hindering the beginnings of modern medicine and surgery, was a theory regarding the unlawfulness of meddling with the bodies of the dead. this theory, like so many others which the church cherished as peculiarly its own, had really been inherited from the old pagan civilizations. so strong was it in egypt that the embalmer was regarded as accursed; traces of it appear in greco-roman life, and hence it came into the early church, where it was greatly strengthened by the addition of perhaps the most noble of mystic ideas--the recognition of the human body as the temple of the holy spirit. hence tertullian denounced the anatomist herophilus as a butcher, and st. augustine spoke of anatomists generally in similar terms. but this nobler conception was alloyed with a medieval superstition even more effective, when the formula known as the apostles' creed had, in its teachings regarding the resurrection of the body, supplanted the doctrine laid down by st. paul. thence came a dread of mutilating the body in such a way that some injury might result to its final resurrection at the last day, and additional reasons for hindering dissections in the study of anatomy. to these arguments against dissection was now added another--one which may well fill us with amazement. it is the remark of the foremost of recent english philosophical historians, that of all organizations in human history the church of rome has caused the greatest spilling of innocent blood. no one conversant with history, even though he admit all possible extenuating circumstances, and honour the older church for the great services which can undoubtedly be claimed for her, can deny this statement. strange is it, then, to note that one of the main objections developed in the middle ages against anatomical studies was the maxim that "the church abhors the shedding of blood." on this ground, in 1248, the council of le mans forbade surgery to monks. many other councils did the same, and at the end of the thirteenth century came the most serious blow of all; for then it was that pope boniface viii, without any of that foresight of consequences which might well have been expected in an infallible teacher, issued a decretal forbidding a practice which had come into use during the crusades, namely, the separation of the flesh from the bones of the dead whose remains it was desired to carry back to their own country. the idea lying at the bottom of this interdiction was in all probability that which had inspired tertullian to make his bitter utterance against herophilus; but, be that as it may, it soon came to be considered as extending to all dissection, and thereby surgery and medicine were crippled for more than two centuries; it was the worst blow they ever received, for it impressed upon the mind of the church the belief that all dissection is sacrilege, and led to ecclesiastical mandates withdrawing from the healing art the most thoughtful and cultivated men of the middle ages and giving up surgery to the lowest class of nomadic charlatans. so deeply was this idea rooted in the mind of the universal church that for over a thousand years surgery was considered dishonourable: the greatest monarchs were often unable to secure an ordinary surgical operation; and it was only in 1406 that a better beginning was made, when the emperor wenzel of germany ordered that dishonour should no longer attach to the surgical profession.[[32]] vi. new beginnings of medical science. in spite of all these opposing forces, the evolution of medical science continued, though but slowly. in the second century of the christian era galen had made himself a great authority at rome, and from rome had swayed the medical science of the world: his genius triumphed over the defects of his method; but, though he gave a powerful impulse to medicine, his dogmatism stood in its way long afterward. the places where medicine, such as it thus became, could be applied, were at first mainly the infirmaries of various monasteries, especially the larger ones of the benedictine order: these were frequently developed into hospitals. many monks devoted themselves to such medical studies as were permitted, and sundry churchmen and laymen did much to secure and preserve copies of ancient medical treatises. so, too, in the cathedral schools established by charlemagne and others, provision was generally made for medical teaching; but all this instruction, whether in convents or schools, was wretchedly poor. it consisted not in developing by individual thought and experiment the gifts of hippocrates, aristotle, and galen, but almost entirely in the parrot-like repetition of their writings. but, while the inherited ideas of church leaders were thus unfavourable to any proper development of medical science, there were two bodies of men outside the church who, though largely fettered by superstition, were far less so than the monks and students of ecclesiastical schools: these were the jews and mohammedans. the first of these especially had inherited many useful sanitary and hygienic ideas, which had probably been first evolved by the egyptians, and from them transmitted to the modern world mainly through the sacred books attributed to moses. the jewish scholars became especially devoted to medical science. to them is largely due the building up of the school of salerno, which we find flourishing in the tenth century. judged by our present standards its work was poor indeed, but compared with other medical instruction of the time it was vastly superior: it developed hygienic principles especially, and brought medicine upon a higher plane. still more important is the rise of the school of montpellier; this was due almost entirely to jewish physicians, and it developed medical studies to a yet higher point, doing much to create a medical profession worthy of the name throughout southern europe. as to the arabians, we find them from the tenth to the fourteenth century, especially in spain, giving much thought to medicine, and to chemistry as subsidiary to it. about the beginning of the ninth century, when the greater christian writers were supporting fetich by theology, almamon, the moslem, declared, "they are the elect of god, his best and most useful servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties." the influence of avicenna, the translator of the works of aristotle, extended throughout all europe during the eleventh century. the arabians were indeed much fettered by tradition in medical science, but their translations of hippocrates and galen preserved to the world the best thus far developed in medicine, and still better were their contributions to pharmacy: these remain of value to the present hour.[[34]] various christian laymen also rose above the prevailing theologic atmosphere far enough to see the importance of promoting scientific development. first among these we may name the emperor charlemagne; he and his great minister, alcuin, not only promoted medical studies in the schools they founded, but also made provision for the establishment of botanic gardens in which those herbs were especially cultivated which were supposed to have healing virtues. so, too, in the thirteenth century, the emperor frederick ii, though under the ban of the pope, brought together in his various journeys, and especially in his crusading expeditions, many greek and arabic manuscripts, and took special pains to have those which concerned medicine preserved and studied; he also promoted better ideas of medicine and embodied them in laws. men of science also rose, in the stricter sense of the word, even in the centuries under the most complete sway of theological thought and ecclesiastical power; a science, indeed, alloyed with theology, but still infolding precious germs. of these were men like arnold of villanova, bertrand de gordon, albert of bollstadt, basil valentine, raymond lully, and, above all, roger bacon; all of whom cultivated sciences subsidiary to medicine, and in spite of charges of sorcery, with possibilities of imprisonment and death, kept the torch of knowledge burning, and passed it on to future generations.[[35]] from the church itself, even when the theological atmosphere was most dense, rose here and there men who persisted in something like scientific effort. as early as the ninth century, bertharius, a monk of monte cassino, prepared two manuscript volumes of prescriptions selected from ancient writers; other monks studied them somewhat, and, during succeeding ages, scholars like hugo, abbot of st. denis,--notker, monk of st. gall,--hildegard, abbess of rupertsberg,--milo, archbishop of beneventum,--and john of st. amand, canon of tournay, did something for medicine as they understood it. unfortunately, they generally understood its theory as a mixture of deductions from scripture with dogmas from galen, and its practice as a mixture of incantations with fetiches. even pope honorius iii did something for the establishment of medical schools; but he did so much more to place ecclesiastical and theological fetters upon teachers and taught, that the value of his gifts may well be doubted. all germs of a higher evolution of medicine were for ages well kept under by the theological spirit. as far back as the sixth century so great a man as pope gregory i showed himself hostile to the development of this science. in the beginning of the twelfth century the council of rheims interdicted the study of law and physic to monks, and a multitude of other councils enforced this decree. about the middle of the same century st. bernard still complained that monks had too much to do with medicine; and a few years later we have decretals like those of pope alexander iii forbidding monks to study or practise it. for many generations there appear evidences of a desire among the more broad-minded churchmen to allow the cultivation of medical science among ecclesiastics: popes like clement iii and sylvester ii seem to have favoured this, and we even hear of an archbishop of canterbury skilled in medicine; but in the beginning of the thirteenth century the fourth council of the lateran forbade surgical operations to be practised by priests, deacons, and subdeacons; and some years later honorius iii reiterated this decree and extended it. in 1243 the dominican order forbade medical treatises to be brought into their monasteries, and finally all participation of ecclesiastics in the science and art of medicine was effectually prevented.[[36]] vii. theological discouragement of medicine. while various churchmen, building better than they knew, thus did something to lay foundations for medical study, the church authorities, as a rule, did even more to thwart it among the very men who, had they been allowed liberty, would have cultivated it to the highest advantage. then, too, we find cropping out every where the feeling that, since supernatural means are so abundant, there is something irreligious in seeking cure by natural means: ever and anon we have appeals to scripture, and especially to the case of king asa, who trusted to physicians rather than to the priests of jahveh, and so died. hence it was that st. bernard declared that monks who took medicine were guilty of conduct unbecoming to religion. even the school of salerno was held in aversion by multitudes of strict churchmen, since it prescribed rules for diet, thereby indicating a belief that diseases arise from natural causes and not from the malice of the devil: moreover, in the medical schools hippocrates was studied, and he had especially declared that demoniacal possession is "nowise more divine, nowise more infernal, than any other disease." hence it was, doubtless, that the lateran council, about the beginning of the thirteenth century, forbade physicians, under pain of exclusion from the church, to undertake medical treatment without calling in ecclesiastical advice. this view was long cherished in the church, and nearly two hundred and fifty years later pope pius v revived it by renewing the command of pope innocent and enforcing it with penalties. not only did pope pius order that all physicians before admninistering treatment should call in "a physician of the soul," on the ground, as he declares, that "bodily infirmity frequently arises from sin," but he ordered that, if at the end of three days the patient had not made confession to a priest, the medical man should cease his treatment, under pain of being deprived of his right to practise, and of expulsion from the faculty if he were a professor, and that every physician and professor of medicine should make oath that he was strictly fulfilling these conditions. out of this feeling had grown up another practice, which made the development of medicine still more difficult--the classing of scientific men generally with sorcerers and magic-mongers: from this largely rose the charge of atheism against physicians, which ripened into a proverb, "where there are three physicians there are two atheists."[[37]] magic was so common a charge that many physicians seemed to believe it themselves. in the tenth century gerbert, afterward known as pope sylvester ii, was at once suspected of sorcery when he showed a disposition to adopt scientific methods; in the eleventh century this charge nearly cost the life of constantine africanus when he broke from the beaten path of medicine; in the thirteenth, it gave roger bacon, one of the greatest benefactors of mankind, many years of imprisonment, and nearly brought him to the stake: these cases are typical of very many. still another charge against physicians who showed a talent for investigation was that of mohammedanism and averroism; and petrarch stigmatized averroists as "men who deny genesis and bark at christ."[[38]] the effect of this widespread ecclesiastical opposition was, that for many centuries the study of medicine was relegated mainly to the lowest order of practitioners. there was, indeed, one orthodox line of medical evolution during the later middle ages: st. thomas aquinas insisted that the forces of the body are independent of its physical organization, and that therefore these forces are to be studied by the scholastic philosophy and the theological method, instead of by researches into the structure of the body; as a result of this, mingled with survivals of various pagan superstitions, we have in anatomy and physiology such doctrines as the increase and decrease of the brain with the phases of the moon, the ebb and flow of human vitality with the tides of the ocean, the use of the lungs to fan the heart, the function of the liver as the seat of love, and that of the spleen as the centre of wit. closely connected with these methods of thought was the doctrine of _signatures_. it was reasoned that the almighty must have set his sign upon the various means of curing disease which he has provided: hence it was held that bloodroot, on account of its red juice, is good for the blood; liverwort, having a leaf like the liver, cures diseases of the liver; eyebright, being marked with a spot like an eye, cures diseases of the eyes; celandine, having a yellow juice, cures jaundice; bugloss, resembling a snake's head, cures snakebite; red flannel, looking like blood, cures blood-taints, and therefore rheumatism; bear's grease, being taken from an animal thickly covered with hair, is recommended to persons fearing baldness.[[39]] still another method evolved by this theological pseudoscience was that of disgusting the demon with the body which he tormented--hence the patient was made to swallow or apply to himself various unspeakable ordures, with such medicines as the livers of toads, the blood of frogs and rats, fibres of the hangman's rope, and ointment made from the body of gibbeted criminals. many of these were survivals of heathen superstitions, but theologic reasoning wrought into them an orthodox significance. as an example of this mixture of heathen with christian magic, we may cite the following from a medieval medical book as a salve against "nocturnal goblin visitors": "take hop plant, wormwood, bishopwort, lupine, ash-throat, henbane, harewort, viper's bugloss, heathberry plant, cropleek, garlic, grains of hedgerife, githrife, and fennel. put these worts into a vessel, set them under the altar, sing over them nine masses, boil them in butter and sheep's grease, add much holy salt, strain through a cloth, throw the worts into running water. if any ill tempting occur to a man, or an elf or goblin night visitors come, smear his body with this salve, and put it on his eyes, and cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with the sign of the cross. his condition will soon be better"[[39b]] as to surgery, this same amalgamation of theology with survivals of pagan beliefs continued to check the evolution of medical science down to the modern epoch. the nominal hostility of the church to the shedding of blood withdrew, as we have seen, from surgical practice the great body of her educated men; hence surgery remained down to the fifteenth century a despised profession, its practice continued largely in the hands of charlatans, and down to a very recent period the name "barber-surgeon" was a survival of this. in such surgery, the application of various ordures relieved fractures; the touch of the hangman cured sprains; the breath of a donkey expelled poison; friction with a dead man's tooth cured toothache.[[40]] the enormous development of miracle and fetich cures in the church continued during century after century, and here probably lay the main causes of hostility between the church on the one hand and the better sort of physicians on the other; namely, in the fact that the church supposed herself in possession of something far better than scientific methods in medicine. under the sway of this belief a natural and laudable veneration for the relics of christian martyrs was developed more and more into pure fetichism. thus the water in which a single hair of a saint had been, dipped was used as a purgative; water in which st. remy's ring had been dipped cured fevers; wine in which the bones of a saint had been dipped cured lunacy; oil from a lamp burning before the tomb of st. gall cured tumours; st. valentine cured epilepsy; st. christopher, throat diseases; st. eutropius, dropsy; st. ovid, deafness; st. gervase, rheumatism; st. apollonia, toothache; st. vitus, st. anthony, and a multitude of other saints, the maladies which bear their names. even as late as 1784 we find certain authorities in bavaria ordering that any one bitten by a mad dog shall at once put up prayers at the shrine of st. hubert, and not waste his time in any attempts at medical or surgical cure.[[40]] in the twelfth century we find a noted cure attempted by causing the invalid to drink water in which st. bernard had washed his hands. flowers which had rested on the tomb of a saint, when steeped in water, were supposed to be especially effiacious in various diseases. the pulpit everywhere dwelt with unction on the reality of fetich cures, and among the choice stories collected by archbishop jacques de vitry for the use of preachers was one which, judging from its frequent recurrence in monkish literature, must have sunk deep into the popular mind: "two lazy beggars, one blind, the other lame, try to avoid the relics of st. martin, borne about in procession, so that they may not be healed and lose their claim to alms. the blind man takes the lame man on his shoulders to guide him, but they are caught in the crowd and healed against their will."[[41]] very important also throughout the middle ages were the medical virtues attributed to saliva. the use of this remedy had early oriental sanction. it is clearly found in egypt. pliny devotes a considerable part of one of his chapters to it; galen approved it; vespasian, when he visited alexandria, is said to have cured a blind man by applying saliva to his eves; but the great example impressed most forcibly upon the medieval mind was the use of it ascribed in the fourth gospel to jesus himself: thence it came not only into church ceremonial, but largely into medical practice.[[41b]] as the theological atmosphere thickened, nearly every country had its long list of saints, each with a special power over some one organ or disease. the clergy, having great influence over the medical schools, conscientiously mixed this fetich medicine with the beginnings of science. in the tenth century, even at the school of salerno, we find that the sick were cured not only by medicine, but by the relics of st. matthew and others. human nature, too, asserted itself, then as now, by making various pious cures fashionable for a time and then allowing them to become unfashionable. just as we see the relics of st. cosmo and st. damian in great vogue during the early middle ages, but out of fashion and without efficacy afterward, so we find in the thirteenth century that the bones of st. louis, having come into fashion, wrought multitudes of cures, while in the fourteenth, having become unfashionable, they ceased to act, and gave place for a time to the relics of st. roch of montpellier and st. catherine of sienna, which in their turn wrought many cures until they too became out of date and yielded to other saints. just so in modern times the healing miracles of la salette have lost prestige in some measure, and those of lourdes have come into fashion.[[42]] even such serious matters as fractures, calculi, and difficult parturition, in which modern science has achieved some of its greatest triumphs, were then dealt with by relics; and to this hour the _ex votos_ hanging at such shrines as those of st. genevieve at paris, of st. antony at padua, of the druid image at chartres, of the virgin at einsiedeln and lourdes, of the fountain at la salette, are survivals of this same conception of disease and its cure. so, too, with a multitude of sacred pools, streams, and spots of earth. in ireland, hardly a parish has not had one such sacred centre; in england and scotland there have been many; and as late as 1805 the eminent dr. milner, of the roman catholic church, gave a careful and earnest account of a miraculous cure wrought at a sacred well in flintshire. in all parts of europe the pious resort to wells and springs continued long after the close of the middle ages, and has not entirely ceased to-day. it is not at all necessary to suppose intentional deception in the origin and maintenance of all fetich cures. although two different judicial investigations of the modern miracles at la salette have shown their origin tainted with fraud, and though the recent restoration of the cathedral of trondhjem has revealed the fact that the healing powers of the sacred spring which once brought such great revenues to that shrine were assisted by angelic voices spoken through a tube in the walls, not unlike the pious machinery discovered in the temple of isis at pompeii, there is little doubt that the great majority of fountain and even shrine cures, such as they have been, have resulted from a natural law, and that belief in them was based on honest argument from scripture. for the theological argument which thus stood in the way of science was simply this: if the almighty saw fit to raise the dead man who touched the bones of elisha, why should he not restore to life the patient who touches at cologne the bones of the wise men of the east who followed the star of the nativity? if naaman was cured by dipping himself in the waters of the jordan, and so many others by going down into the pool of siloam, why should not men still be cured by bathing in pools which men equally holy with elisha have consecrated? if one sick man was restored by touching the garments of st. paul, why should not another sick man be restored by touching the seamless coat of christ at treves, or the winding-sheet of christ at besancon? and out of all these inquiries came inevitably that question whose logical answer was especially injurious to the development of medical science: why should men seek to build up scientific medicine and surgery, when relics, pilgrimages, and sacred observances, according to an overwhelming mass of concurrent testimony, have cured and are curing hosts of sick folk in all parts of europe?[[43]] still another development of the theological spirit, mixed with professional exclusiveness and mob prejudice, wrought untold injury. even to those who had become so far emancipated from allegiance to fetich cures as to consult physicians, it was forbidden to consult those who, as a rule, were the best. from a very early period of european history the jews had taken the lead in medicine; their share in founding the great schools of salerno and montpellier we have already noted, and in all parts of europe we find them acknowledged leaders in the healing art. the church authorities, enforcing the spirit of the time, were especially severe against these benefactors: that men who openly rejected the means of salvation, and whose souls were undeniably lost, should heal the elect seemed an insult to providence; preaching friars denounced them from the pulpit, and the rulers in state and church, while frequently secretly consulting them, openly proscribed them. gregory of tours tells us of an archdeacon who, having been partially cured of disease of the eyes by st. martin, sought further aid from a jewish physician, with the result that neither the saint nor the jew could help him afterward. popes eugene iv, nicholas v, and calixtus iii especially forbade christians to employ them. the trullanean council in the eighth century, the councils of beziers and alby in the thirteenth, the councils of avignon and salamanca in the fourteenth, the synod of bamberg and the bishop of passau in the fifteenth, the council of avignon in the sixteenth, with many others, expressly forbade the faithful to call jewish physicians or surgeons; such great preachers as john geiler and john herolt thundered from the pulpit against them and all who consulted them. as late as the middle of the seventeenth century, when the city council of hall, in wurtemberg, gave some privileges to a jewish physician "on account of his admirable experience and skill," the clergy of the city joined in a protest, declaring that "it were better to die with christ than to be cured by a jew doctor aided by the devil." still, in their extremity, bishops, cardinals, kings, and even popes, insisted on calling in physicians of the hated race.[[45]] viii. fetich cures under protestantism.--the royal touch. the reformation made no sudden change in the sacred theory of medicine. luther, as is well known, again and again ascribed his own diseases to "devils' spells," declaring that "satan produces all the maladies which afflict mankind, for he is the prince of death," and that "he poisons the air"; but that "no malady comes from god." from that day down to the faith cures of boston, old orchard, and among the sect of "peculiar people" in our own time, we see the results among protestants of seeking the cause of disease in satanic influence and its cure in fetichism. yet luther, with his sturdy common sense, broke away from one belief which has interfered with the evolution of medicine from the dawn of christianity until now. when that troublesome declaimer, carlstadt, declared that "whoso falls sick shall use no physic, but commit his case to god, praying that his will be done," luther asked, "do you eat when you are hungry?" and the answer being in the affirmative, he continued, "even so you may use physic, which is god's gift just as meat and drink is, or whatever else we use for the preservation of life." hence it was, doubtless, that the protestant cities of germany were more ready than others to admit anatomical investigation by proper dissections.[[46]] perhaps the best-known development of a theological view in the protestant church was that mainly evolved in england out of a french germ of theological thought--a belief in the efficacy of the royal touch in sundry diseases, especially epilepsy and scrofula, the latter being consequently known as the king's evil. this mode of cure began, so far as history throws light upon it, with edward the confessor in the eleventh century, and came down from reign to reign, passing from the catholic saint to protestant debauchees upon the english throne, with ever-increasing miraculous efficacy. testimony to the reality of these cures is overwhelming. as a simple matter of fact, there are no miracles of healing in the history of the human race more thoroughly attested than those wrought by the touch of henry viii, elizabeth, the stuarts, and especially of that chosen vessel, charles ii. though elizabeth could not bring herself fully to believe in the reality of these cures, dr. tooker, the queen's chaplain, afterward dean of lichfield, testifies fully of his own knowledge to the cures wrought by her, as also does william clowes, the queen's surgeon. fuller, in his _church history_, gives an account of a roman catholic who was thus cured by the queen's touch and converted to protestantism. similar testimony exists as to cures wrought by james i. charles i also enjoyed the same power, in spite of the public declaration against its reality by parliament. in one case the king saw a patient in the crowd, too far off to be touched, and simply said, "god bless thee and grant thee thy desire"; whereupon, it is asserted, the blotches and humours disappeared from the patient's body and appeared in the bottle of medicine which he held in his hand; at least so says dr. john nicholas, warden of winchester college, who declares this of his own knowledge to be every word of it true. but the most incontrovertible evidence of this miraculous gift is found in the case of charles ii, the most thoroughly cynical debauchee who ever sat on the english throne before the advent of george iv. he touched nearly one hundred thousand persons, and the outlay for gold medals issued to the afflicted on these occasions rose in some years as high as ten thousand pounds. john brown, surgeon in ordinary to his majesty and to st. thomas's hospital, and author of many learned works on surgery and anatomy, published accounts of sixty cures due to the touch of this monarch; and sergeant-surgeon wiseman devotes an entire book to proving the reality of these cures, saying, "i myself have been frequent witness to many hundreds of cures performed by his majesty's touch alone without any assistance of chirurgery, and these many of them had tyred out the endeavours of able chirurgeons before they came thither." yet it is especially instructive to note that, while in no other reign were so many people touched for scrofula, and in none were so many cures vouched for, in no other reign did so many people die of that disease: the bills of mortality show this clearly, and the reason doubtless is the general substitution of supernatural for scientific means of cure. this is but one out of many examples showing the havoc which a scientific test always makes among miracles if men allow it to be applied. to james ii the same power continued; and if it be said, in the words of lord bacon, that "imagination is next of kin to miracle--a working faith," something else seems required to account for the testimony of dr. heylin to cures wrought by the royal touch upon babes in their mothers' arms. myth-making and marvel-mongering were evidently at work here as in so many other places, and so great was the fame of these cures that we find, in the year before james was dethroned, a pauper at portsmouth, new hampshire, petitioning the general assembly to enable him to make the voyage to england in order that he may be healed by the royal touch. the change in the royal succession does not seem to have interfered with the miracle; for, though william iii evidently regarded the whole thing as a superstition, and on one occasion is said to have touched a patient, saying to him, "god give you better health and more sense," whiston assures us that this person was healed, notwithstanding william's incredulity. as to queen anne, dr. daniel turner, in his _art of surgery_, relates that several cases of scrofula which had been unsuccessfully treated by himself and dr. charles bernard, sergeant-surgeon to her majesty, yielded afterward to the efficacy of the queen's touch. naturally does collier, in his _ecclesiastical history_, say regarding these cases that to dispute them "is to come to the extreme of scepticism, to deny our senses and be incredulous even to ridiculousness." testimony to the reality of these cures is indeed overwhelming, and a multitude of most sober scholars, divines, and doctors of medicine declared the evidence absolutely convincing. that the church of england accepted the doctrine of the royal touch is witnessed by the special service provided in the _prayer-book_ of that period for occasions when the king exercised this gift. the ceremony was conducted with great solemnity and pomp: during the reading of the service and the laying on of the king's hands, the attendant bishop or priest recited the words, "they shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover"; afterward came special prayers, the epistle and gospel, with the blessing, and finally his majesty washed his royal hands in golden vessels which high noblemen held for him. in france, too, the royal touch continued, with similar testimony to its efficacy. on a certain easter sunday, that pious king, louis xiv, touched about sixteen hundred persons at versailles. this curative power was, then, acknowledged far and wide, by catholics and protestants alike, upon the continent, in great britain, and in america; and it descended not only in spite of the transition of the english kings from catholicism to protestantism, but in spite of the transition from the legitimate sovereignty of the stuarts to the illegitimate succession of the house of orange. and yet, within a few years after the whole world held this belief, it was dead; it had shrivelled away in the growing scientific light at the dawn of the eighteenth century.[[49]] ix. the scientific struggle for anatomy. we may now take up the evolution of medical science out of the medieval view and its modern survivals. all through the middle ages, as we have seen, some few laymen and ecclesiastics here and there, braving the edicts of the church and popular superstition, persisted in medical study and practice: this was especially seen at the greater universities, which had become somewhat emancipated from ecclesiastical control. in the thirteenth century the university of paris gave a strong impulse to the teaching of medicine, and in that and the following century we begin to find the first intelligible reports of medical cases since the coming in of christianity. in the thirteenth century also the arch-enemy of the papacy, the emperor frederick ii, showed his free-thinking tendencies by granting, from time to time, permissions to dissect the human subject. in the centuries following, sundry other monarchs timidly followed his example: thus john of aragon, in 1391, gave to the university of lerida the privilege of dissecting one dead criminal every three years.[[50]] during the fifteenth century and the earlier years of the sixteenth the revival of learning, the invention of printing, and the great voyages of discovery gave a new impulse to thought, and in this medical science shared: the old theological way of thinking was greatly questioned, and gave place in many quarters to a different way of looking at the universe. in the sixteenth century paracelsus appears--a great genius, doing much to develop medicine beyond the reach of sacred and scholastic tradition, though still fettered by many superstitions. more and more, in spite of theological dogmas, came a renewal of anatomical studies by dissection of the human subject. the practice of the old alexandrian school was thus resumed. mundinus, professor of medicine at bologna early in the fourteenth century, dared use the human subject occasionally in his lectures; but finally came a far greater champion of scientific truth, andreas vesalius, founder of the modern science of anatomy. the battle waged by this man is one of the glories of our race. from the outset vesalius proved himself a master. in the search for real knowledge he risked the most terrible dangers, and especially the charge of sacrilege, founded upon the teachings of the church for ages. as we have seen, even such men in the early church as tertullian and st. augustine held anatomy in abhorrence, and the decretal of pope boniface viii was universally construed as forbidding all dissection, and as threatening excommunication against those practising it. through this sacred conventionalism vesalius broke without fear; despite ecclesiastical censure, great opposition in his own profession, and popular fury, he studied his science by the only method that could give useful results. no peril daunted him. to secure material for his investigations, he haunted gibbets and charnel-houses, braving the fires of the inquisition and the virus of the plague. first of all men he began to place the science of human anatomy on its solid modern foundations--on careful examination and observation of the human body: this was his first great sin, and it was soon aggravated by one considered even greater. perhaps the most unfortunate thing that has ever been done for christianity is the tying it to forms of science which are doomed and gradually sinking. just as, in the time of roger bacon, excellent men devoted all their energies to binding christianity to aristotle; just as, in the time of reuchlin and erasmus, they insisted on binding christianity to thomas aquinas; so, in the time of vesalius, such men made every effort to link christianity to galen. the cry has been the same in all ages; it is the same which we hear in this age for curbing scientific studies: the cry for what is called "sound learning." whether standing for aristotle against bacon, or for aquinas against erasmus, or for galen against vesalius, the cry is always for "sound learning": the idea always has been that the older studies are" _safe_." at twenty-eight years of age vesalius gave to the world his great work on human anatomy. with it ended the old and began the new; its researches, by their thoroughness, were a triumph of science; its illustrations, by their fidelity, were a triumph of art. to shield himself, as far as possible, in the battle which he foresaw must come, vesalius dedicated the work to the emperor charles v, and in his preface he argues for his method, and against the parrot repetitions of the mediaeval text-books; he also condemns the wretched anatomical preparations and specimens made by physicians who utterly refused to advance beyond the ancient master. the parrot-like repeaters of galen gave battle at once. after the manner of their time their first missiles were epithets; and, the vast arsenal of these having been exhausted, they began to use sharper weapons--weapons theologic. in this case there were especial reasons why the theological authorities felt called upon to intervene. first, there was the old idea prevailing in the church that the dissection of the human body is forbidden to christians: this was used with great force against vesalius, but he at first gained a temporary victory; for, a conference of divines having been asked to decide whether dissection of the human body is sacrilege, gave a decision in the negative. the reason was simple: the great emperor charles v had made vesalius his physician and could not spare him; but, on the accession of philip ii to the throne of spain and the netherlands, the whole scene changed. vesalius now complained that in spain he could not obtain even a human skull for his anatomical investigations: the medical and theological reactionists had their way, and to all appearance they have, as a rule, had it in spain ever since. as late as the last years of the eighteenth century an observant english traveller found that there were no dissections before medical classes in the spanish universities, and that the doctrine of the circulation of the blood was still denied, more than a century and a half after sarpi and harvey had proved it. another theological idea barred the path of vesalius. throughout the middle ages it was believed that there exists in man a bone imponderable, incorruptible, incombustible--the necessary nucleus of the resurrection body. belief in a resurrection of the physical body, despite st. paul's epistle to the corinthians, had been incorporated into the formula evolved during the early christian centuries and known as the apostles' creed, and was held throughout christendom, "always, everywhere, and by all." this hypothetical bone was therefore held in great veneration, and many anatomists sought to discover it; but vesalius, revealing so much else, did not find it. he contented himself with saying that he left the question regarding the existence of such a bone to the theologians. he could not lie; he did not wish to fight the inquisition; and thus he fell under suspicion. the strength of this theological point may be judged from the fact that no less eminent a surgeon than riolan consulted the executioner to find out whether, when he burned a criminal, all the parts were consumed; and only then was the answer received which fatally undermined this superstition. yet, in 1689 we find it still lingering in france, stimulating opposition in the church to dissection. even as late as the eighteenth century, bernouilli having shown that the living human body constantly undergoes a series of changes, so that all its particles are renewed in a given number of years, so much ill feeling was drawn upon him, from theologians, who saw in this statement danger to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, that for the sake of peace he struck out his argument on this subject from his collected works.[[53]] still other enroachments upon the theological view were made by the new school of anatomists, and especially by vesalius. during the middle ages there had been developed various theological doctrines regarding the human body; these were based upon arguments showing what the body, _ought to be_, and naturally, when anatomical science showed what it _is_, these doctrines fell. an example of such popular theological reasoning is seen in a widespread belief of the twelfth century, that, during the year in which the cross of christ was captured by saladin, children, instead of having thirty or thirty-two teeth as before, had twenty or twenty-two. so, too, in vesalius's time another doctrine of this sort was dominant: it had long been held that eve, having been made by the almighty from a rib taken out of adam's side, there must be one rib fewer on one side of every man than on the other. this creation of eve was a favourite subject with sculptors and painters, from giotto, who carved it upon his beautiful campanile at florence, to the illuminators of missals, and even to those who illustrated bibles and religious books in the first years after the invention of printing; but vesalius and the anatomists who followed him put an end among thoughtful men to this belief in the missing rib, and in doing this dealt a blow at much else in the sacred theory. naturally, all these considerations brought the forces of ecclesiasticism against the innovators in anatomy.[[54]] a new weapon was now forged: vesalius was charged with dissecting a living man, and, either from direct persecution, as the great majority of authors assert, or from indirect influences, as the recent apologists for philip ii admit, he became a wanderer: on a pilgrimage to the holy land, apparently undertaken to atone for his sin, he was shipwrecked, and in the prime of his life and strength he was lost to the world. and yet not lost. in this century a great painter has again given him to us. by the magic of hamann's pencil vesalius again stands on earth, and we look once more into his cell. its windows and doors, bolted and barred within, betoken the storm of bigotry which rages without; the crucifix, toward which he turns his eyes, symbolizes the spirit in which he labours; the corpse of the plague-stricken beneath his hand ceases to be repulsive; his very soul seems to send forth rays from the canvas, which strengthen us for the good fight in this age.[[54b]] his death was hastened, if not caused, by men who conscientiously supposed that he was injuring religion: his poor, blind foes aided in destroying one of religion's greatest apostles. what was his influence on religion? he substituted, for the repetition of worn-out theories, a conscientious and reverent search into the works of the great power giving life to the universe; he substituted, for representations of the human structure pitiful and unreal, representations revealing truths most helpful to the whole human race. the death of this champion seems to have virtually ended the contest. licenses to dissect soon began to be given by sundry popes to universities, and were renewed at intervals of from three to four years, until the reformation set in motion trains of thought which did much to release science from this yoke.[[55]] x. theological opposition to inoculation, vaccination, and the use of anaesthetics. i hasten now to one of the most singular struggles of medical science during modern times. early in the last century boyer presented inoculation as a preventive of smallpox in france, and thoughtful physicians in england, inspired by lady montagu and maitland, followed his example. ultra-conservatives in medicine took fright at once on both sides of the channel, and theology was soon finding profound reasons against the new practice. the french theologians of the sorbonne solemnly condemned it; the english theologians were most loudly represented by the rev. edward massey, who in 1772 preached and published a sermon entitled _the dangerous and sinful practice of inoculation_. in this he declared that job's distemper was probably confluent smallpox; that he had been inoculated doubtless by the devil; that diseases are sent by providence for the punishment of sin; and that the proposed attempt to prevent them is "a diabolical operation." not less vigorous was the sermon of the rev. mr. delafaye, entitled _inoculation an indefensible practice_. this struggle went on for thirty years. it is a pleasure to note some churchmen--and among them madox, bishop of worcester--giving battle on the side of right reason; but as late as 1753 we have a noted rector at canterbury denouncing inoculation from his pulpit in the primatial city, and many of his brethren following his example. the same opposition was vigorous in protestant scotland. a large body of ministers joined in denouncing the new practice as "flying in the face of providence," and "endeavouring to baffle a divine judgment." on our own side of the ocean, also, this question had to be fought out. about the year 1721 dr. zabdiel boylston, a physician in boston, made an experiment in inoculation, one of his first subjects being his own son. he at once encountered bitter hostility, so that the selectmen of the city forbade him to repeat the experiment. foremost among his opponents was dr. douglas, a scotch physician, supported by the medical professton and the newspapers. the violence of the opposing party knew no bounds; they insisted that inoculation was "poisoning," and they urged the authorities to try dr. boylston for murder. having thus settled his case for this world, they proceeded to settle it for the next, insisting that "for a man to infect a family in the morning with smallpox and to pray to god in the evening against the disease is blasphemy"; that the smallpox is "a judgment of god on the sins of the people," and that "to avert it is but to provoke him more"; that inoculation is "an encroachment on the prerogatives of jehovah, whose right it is to wound and smite." among the mass of scriptural texts most remote from any possible bearing on the subject one was employed which was equally cogent against any use of healing means in any disease--the words of hosea: "he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up." so bitter was this opposition that dr. boylston's life was in danger; it was considered unsafe for him to be out of his house in the evening; a lighted grenade was even thrown into the house of cotton mather, who had favoured the new practice, and had sheltered another clergyman who had submitted himself to it. to the honour of the puritan clergy of new england, it should be said that many of them were boylston's strongest supporters. increase and cotton mather had been among the first to move in favour of inoculation, the latter having called boylston's attention to it; and at the very crisis of affairs six of the leading clergymen of boston threw their influence on boylston's side and shared the obloquy brought upon him. although the gainsayers were not slow to fling into the faces of the mathers their action regarding witchcraft, urging that their credulity in that matter argued credulity in this, they persevered, and among the many services rendered by the clergymen of new england to their country this ought certainly to be remembered; for these men had to withstand, shoulder to shoulder with boylston and benjamin franklin, the same weapons which were hurled at the supporters of inoculation in europe--charges of "unfaithfulness to the revealed law of god." the facts were soon very strong against the gainsayers: within a year or two after the first experiment nearly three hundred persons had been inoculated by boylston in boston and neighbouring towns, and out of these only six had died; whereas, during the same period, out of nearly six thousand persons who had taken smallpox naturally, and had received only the usual medical treatment, nearly one thousand had died. yet even here the gainsayers did not despair, and, when obliged to confess the success of inoculation, they simply fell back upon a new argument, and answered: "it was good that satan should be dispossessed of his habitation which he had taken up in men in our lord's day, but it was not lawful that the children of the pharisees should cast him out by the help of beelzebub. we must always have an eye to the matter of what we do as well as the result, if we intend to keep a good conscience toward god." but the facts were too strong; the new practice made its way in the new world as in the old, though bitter opposition continued, and in no small degree on vague scriptural grounds, for more than twenty years longer.[[57]] the steady evolution of scientific medicine brings us next to jenner's discovery of vaccination. here, too, sundry vague survivals of theological ideas caused many of the clergy to side with retrograde physicians. perhaps the most virulent of jenner's enemies was one of his professional brethren, dr. moseley, who placed on the title-page of his book, _lues bovilla_, the motto, referring to jenner and his followers, "father, forgive them, for they know not what they do": this book of dr. moseley was especially indorsed by the bishop of dromore. in 1798 an anti-vaccination society was formed by physicians and clergymen, who called on the people of boston to suppress vaccination, as "bidding defiance to heaven itself, even to the will of god," and declared that "the law of god prohibits the practice." as late as 1803 the rev. dr. ramsden thundered against vaccination in a sermon before the university of cambridge, mingling texts of scripture with calumnies against jenner; but plumptre and the rev. rowland hill in england, waterhouse in america, thouret in france, sacco in italy, and a host of other good men and true, pressed forward, and at last science, humanity, and right reason gained the victory. most striking results quickly followed. the diminution in the number of deaths from the terrible scourge was amazing. in berlin, during the eight years following 1783, over four thousand children died of the smallpox; while during the eight years following 1814, after vaccination had been largely adopted, out of a larger number of deaths there were but five hundred and thirty-five from this disease. in wurtemberg, during the twenty-four years following 1772, one in thirteen of all the children died of smallpox, while during the eleven years after 1822 there died of it only one in sixteen hundred. in copenhagen, during twelve years before the introduction of vaccination, fifty-five hundred persons died of smallpox, and during the sixteen years after its introduction only one hundred and fifty-eight persons died of it throughout all denmark. in vienna, where the average yearly mortality from this disease had been over eight hundred, it was steadily and rapidly reduced, until in 1803 it had fallen to less than thirty; and in london, formerly so afflicted by this scourge, out of all her inhabitants there died of it in 1890 but one. as to the world at large, the result is summed up by one of the most honoured english physicians of our time, in the declaration that "jenner has saved, is now saving, and will continue to save in all coming ages, more lives in one generation than were destroyed in all the wars of napoleon." it will have been noticed by those who have read this history thus far that the record of the church generally was far more honourable in this struggle than in many which preceded it: the reason is not difficult to find; the decline of theology enured to the advantage of religion, and religion gave powerful aid to science. yet there have remained some survivals both in protestantism and in catholicism which may be regarded with curiosity. a small body of perversely ingenious minds in the medical profession in england have found a few ardent allies among the less intellectual clergy. the rev. mr. rothery and the rev. mr. allen, of the primitive methodists, have for sundry vague theological reasons especially distinguished themselves by opposition to compulsory vaccination; but it is only just to say that the great body of the english clergy have for a long time taken the better view. far more painful has been the recent history of the other great branch of the christian church--a history developed where it might have been least expected: the recent annals of the world hardly present a more striking antithesis between religion and theology. on the religious side few things in the history of the roman church have been more beautiful than the conduct of its clergy in canada during the great outbreak of ship-fever among immigrants at montreal about the middle of the present century. day and night the catholic priesthood of that city ministered fearlessly to those victims of sanitary ignorance; fear of suffering and death could not drive these ministers from their work; they laid down their lives cheerfully while carrying comfort to the poorest and most ignorant of our kind: such was the record of their religion. but in 1885 a record was made by their theology. in that year the smallpox broke out with great virulence in montreal. the protestant population escaped almost entirely by vaccination; but multitudes of their catholic fellow-citizens, under some vague survival of the old orthodox ideas, refused vaccination; and suffered fearfully. when at last the plague became so serious that travel and trade fell off greatly and quarantine began to be established in neighbouring cities, an effort was made to enforce compulsory vaccination. the result was, that large numbers of the catholic working population resisted and even threatened bloodshed. the clergy at first tolerated and even encouraged this conduct: the abbe filiatrault, priest of st. james's church, declared in a sermon that, "if we are afflicted with smallpox, it is because we had a carnival last winter, feasting the flesh, which has offended the lord; it is to punish our pride that god has sent us smallpox." the clerical press went further: the _etendard_ exhorted the faithful to take up arms rather than submit to vaccination, and at least one of the secular papers was forced to pander to the same sentiment. the board of health struggled against this superstition, and addressed a circular to the catholic clergy, imploring them to recommend vaccination; but, though two or three complied with this request, the great majority were either silent or openly hostile. the oblate fathers, whose church was situated in the very heart of the infected district, continued to denounce vaccination; the faithful were exhorted to rely on devotional exercises of various sorts; under the sanction of the hierarchy a great procession was ordered with a solemn appeal to the virgin, and the use of the rosary was carefully specified. meantime, the disease, which had nearly died out among the protestants, raged with ever-increasing virulence among the catholics; and, the truth becoming more and more clear, even to the most devout, proper measures were at last enforced and the plague was stayed, though not until there had been a fearful waste of life among these simple-hearted believers, and germs of scepticism planted in the hearts of their children which will bear fruit for generations to come.[[61]] another class of cases in which the theologic spirit has allied itself with the retrograde party in medical science is found in the history of certain remedial agents; and first may be named cocaine. as early as the middle of the sixteenth century the value of coca had been discovered in south america; the natives of peru prized it highly, and two eminent jesuits, joseph acosta and antonio julian, were converted to this view. but the conservative spirit in the church was too strong; in 1567 the second council of lima, consisting of bishops from all parts of south america, condemned it, and two years later came a royal decree declaring that "the notions entertained by the natives regarding it are an illusion of the devil." as a pendant to this singular mistake on the part of the older church came another committed by many protestants. in the early years of the seventeenth century the jesuit missionaries in south america learned from the natives the value of the so-called peruvian bark in the treatment of ague; and in 1638, the countess of cinchon, regent of peru, having derived great benefit from the new remedy, it was introduced into europe. although its alkaloid, quinine, is perhaps the nearest approach to a medical specific, and has diminished the death rate in certain regions to an amazing extent, its introduction was bitterly opposed by many conservative members of the medical profession, and in this opposition large numbers of ultra-protestants joined, out of hostility to the roman church. in the heat of sectarian feeling the new remedy was stigmatized as "an invention of the devil"; and so strong was this opposition that it was not introduced into england until 1653, and even then its use was long held back, owing mainly to anti-catholic feeling. what the theological method on the ultra-protestant side could do to help the world at this very time is seen in the fact that, while this struggle was going on, hoffmann was attempting to give a scientific theory of the action of the devil in causing job's boils. this effort at a _quasi_-scientific explanation which should satisfy the theological spirit, comical as it at first seems, is really worthy of serious notice, because it must be considered as the beginning of that inevitable effort at compromise which we see in the history of every science when it begins to appear triumphant.[[62]] but i pass to a typical conflict in our days, and in a protestant country. in 1847, james young simpson, a scotch physician, who afterward rose to the highest eminence in his profession, having advocated the use of anaesthetics in obstetrical cases, was immediately met by a storm of opposition. this hostility flowed from an ancient and time-honoured belief in scotland. as far back as the year 1591, eufame macalyane, a lady of rank, being charged with seeking the aid of agnes sampson for the relief of pain at the time of the birth of her two sons, was burned alive on the castle hill of edinburgh; and this old theological view persisted even to the middle of the nineteenth century. from pulpit after pulpit simpson's use of chloroform was denounced as impious and contrary to holy writ; texts were cited abundantly, the ordinary declaration being that to use chloroform was "to avoid one part of the primeval curse on woman." simpson wrote pamphlet after pamphlet to defend the blessing which he brought into use; but he seemed about to be overcome, when he seized a new weapon, probably the most absurd by which a great cause was ever won: "my opponents forget," he said, "the twenty-first verse of the second chapter of genesis; it is the record of the first surgical operation ever performed, and that text proves that the maker of the universe, before he took the rib from adam's side for the creation of eve, caused a deep sleep to fall upon adam." this was a stunning blow, but it did not entirely kill the opposition; they had strength left to maintain that the "deep sleep of adam took place before the introduction of pain into the world--in a state of innocence." but now a new champion intervened--thomas chalmers: with a few pungent arguments from his pulpit he scattered the enemy forever, and the greatest battle of science against suffering was won. this victory was won not less for religion. wisely did those who raised the monument at boston to one of the discoverers of anaesthetics inscribe upon its pedestal the words from our sacred text, "this also cometh forth from the lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working."[[63]] xi. final breaking away of the theological theory in medicine. while this development of history was going on, the central idea on which the whole theologic view rested--the idea of diseases as resulting from the wrath of god or malice of satan--was steadily weakened; and, out of the many things which show this, one may be selected as indicating the drift of thought among theologians themselves. toward the end of the eighteenth century the most eminent divines of the american branch of the anglican church framed their _book of common prayer_. abounding as it does in evidences of their wisdom and piety, few things are more noteworthy than a change made in the exhortation to the faithful to present themselves at the communion. while, in the old form laid down in the english _prayer book_, the minister was required to warn his flock not "to kindle god's wrath" or "provoke him to plague us with divers diseases and sundry kinds of death," from the american form all this and more of similar import in various services was left out. since that day progress in medical science has been rapid indeed, and at no period more so than during the last half of the nineteenth century. the theological view of disease has steadily faded, and the theological hold upon medical education has been almost entirely relaxed. in three great fields, especially, discoveries have been made which have done much to disperse the atmosphere of miracle. first, there has come knowledge regarding the relation between imagination and medicine, which, though still defective, is of great importance. this relation has been noted during the whole history of the science. when the soldiers of the prince of orange, at the siege of breda in 1625, were dying of scurvy by scores, he sent to the physicians "two or three small vials filled with a decoction of camomile, wormwood, and camphor, gave out that it was a very rare and precious medicine--a medicine of such virtue that two or three drops sufficed to impregnate a gallon of water, and that it had been obtained from the east with great difficulty and danger." this statement, made with much solemnity, deeply impressed the soldiers; they took the medicine eagerly, and great numbers recovered rapidly. again, two centuries later, young humphry davy, being employed to apply the bulb of the thermometer to the tongues of certain patients at bristol after they had inhaled various gases as remedies for disease, and finding that the patients supposed this application of the thermometer-bulb was the cure, finally wrought cures by this application alone, without any use of the gases whatever. innumerable cases of this sort have thrown a flood of light upon such cures as those wrought by prince hohenlohe, by the "metallic tractors," and by a multitude of other agencies temporarily in vogue, but, above all, upon the miraculous cures which in past ages have been so frequent and of which a few survive. the second department is that of hypnotism. within the last half-century many scattered indications have been collected and supplemented by thoughtful, patient investigators of genius, and especially by braid in england and charcot in france. here, too, great inroads have been made upon the province hitherto sacred to miracle, and in 1888 the cathedral preacher, steigenberger, of augsburg, sounded an alarm. he declared his fears "lest accredited church miracles lose their hold upon the public," denounced hypnotism as a doctrine of demons, and ended with the singular argument that, inasmuch as hypnotism is avowedly incapable of explaining all the wonders of history, it is idle to consider it at all. but investigations in hypnotism still go on, and may do much in the twentieth century to carry the world yet further from the realm of the miraculous. in a third field science has won a striking series of victories. bacteriology, beginning in the researches of leeuwenhoek in the seventeenth century, continued by o. f. muller in the eighteenth, and developed or applied with wonderful skill by ehrenberg, cohn, lister, pasteur, koch, billings, bering, and their compeers in the nineteenth, has explained the origin and proposed the prevention or cure of various diseases widely prevailing, which until recently have been generally held to be "inscrutable providences." finally, the closer study of psychology, especially in its relations to folklore, has revealed processes involved in the development of myths and legends: the phenomena of "expectant attention," the tendency to marvel-mongering, and the feeling of "joy in believing." in summing up the history of this long struggle between science and theology, two main facts are to be noted: first, that in proportion as the world approached the "ages of faith" it receded from ascertained truth, and in proportion as the world has receded from the "ages of faith" it has approached ascertained truth; secondly, that, in proportion as the grasp of theology upon education tightened, medicine declined, and in proportion as that grasp has relaxed, medicine has been developed. the world is hardly beyond the beginning of medical discoveries, yet they have already taken from theology what was formerly its strongest province--sweeping away from this vast field of human effort that belief in miracles which for more than twenty centuries has been the main stumblingblock in the path of medicine; and in doing this they have cleared higher paths not only for science, but for religion.[[66]] chapter xiv. from fetich to hygiene. i. the theological view of epidemics and sanitation. a very striking feature in recorded history has been the recurrence of great pestilences. various indications in ancient times show their frequency, while the famous description of the plague of athens given by thucydides, and the discussion of it by lucretius, exemplify their severity. in the middle ages they raged from time to time throughout europe: such plagues as the black death and the sweating sickness swept off vast multitudes, the best authorities estimating that of the former, at the middle of the fourteenth century, more than half the population of england died, and that twenty-five millions of people perished in various parts of europe. in 1552 sixty-seven thousand patients died of the plague at paris alone, and in 1580 more than twenty thousand. the great plague in england and other parts of europe in the seventeenth century was also fearful, and that which swept the south of europe in the early part of the eighteenth century, as well as the invasions by the cholera at various times during the nineteenth, while less terrible than those of former years, have left a deep impress upon the imaginations of men. from the earliest records we find such pestilences attributed to the wrath or malice of unseen powers. this had been the prevailing view even in the most cultured ages before the establishment of christianity: in greece and rome especially, plagues of various sorts were attributed to the wrath of the gods; in judea, the scriptural records of various plagues sent upon the earth by the divine fiat as a punishment for sin show the continuance of this mode of thought. among many examples and intimations of this in our sacred literature, we have the epidemic which carried off fourteen thousand seven hundred of the children of israel, and which was only stayed by the prayers and offerings of aaron, the high priest; the destruction of seventy thousand men in the pestilence by which king david was punished for the numbering of israel, and which was only stopped when the wrath of jahveh was averted by burnt-offerings; the plague threatened by the prophet zechariah, and that delineated in the apocalypse. from these sources this current of ideas was poured into the early christian church, and hence it has been that during nearly twenty centuries since the rise of christianity, and down to a period within living memory, at the appearance of any pestilence the church authorities, instead of devising sanitary measures, have very generally preached the necessity of immediate atonement for offences against the almighty. this view of the early church was enriched greatly by a new development of theological thought regarding the powers of satan and evil angels, the declaration of st. paul that the gods of antiquity were devils being cited as its sufficient warrant.[[68]] moreover, comets, falling stars, and earthquakes were thought, upon scriptural authority, to be "signs and wonders"-evidences of the divine wrath, heralds of fearful visitations; and this belief, acting powerfully upon the minds of millions, did much to create a panic-terror sure to increase epidemic disease wherever it broke forth. the main cause of this immense sacrifice of life is now known to have been the want of hygienic precaution, both in the eastern centres, where various plagues were developed, and in the european towns through which they spread. and here certain theological reasonings came in to resist the evolution of a proper sanitary theory. out of the orient had been poured into the thinking of western europe the theological idea that the abasement of man adds to the glory of god; that indignity to the body may secure salvation to the soul; hence, that cleanliness betokens pride and filthiness humility. living in filth was regarded by great numbers of holy men, who set an example to the church and to society, as an evidence of sanctity. st. jerome and the breviary of the roman church dwell with unction on the fact that st. hilarion lived his whole life long in utter physical uncleanliness; st. athanasius glorifies st. anthony because he had never washed his feet; st. abraham's most striking evidence of holiness was that for fifty years he washed neither his hands nor his feet; st. sylvia never washed any part of her body save her fingers; st. euphraxia belonged to a convent in which the nuns religiously abstained from bathing. st. mary of egypt was emninent for filthiness; st. simnon stylites was in this respect unspeakable--the least that can be said is, that he lived in ordure and stench intolerable to his visitors. the _lives of the saints_ dwell with complacency on the statement that, when sundry eastern monks showed a disposition to wash themselves, the almighty manifested his displeasure by drying up a neighbouring stream until the bath which it had supplied was destroyed. the religious world was far indeed from the inspired utterance attributed to john wesley, that "cleanliness is near akin to godliness." for century after century the idea prevailed that filthiness was akin to holiness; and, while we may well believe that the devotion of the clergy to the sick was one cause why, during the greater plagues, they lost so large a proportion of their numbers, we can not escape the conclusion that their want of cleanliness had much to do with it. in france, during the fourteenth century, guy de chauliac, the great physician of his time, noted particularly that certain carmelite monks suffered especially from pestilence, and that they were especially filthy. during the black death no less than nine hundred carthusian monks fell victims in one group of buildings. naturally, such an example set by the venerated leaders of thought exercised great influence throughout society, and all the more because it justified the carelessness and sloth to which ordinary humanity is prone. in the principal towns of europe, as well as in the country at large, down to a recent period, the most ordinary sanitary precautions were neglected, and pestilences continued to be attributed to the wrath of god or the malice of satan. as to the wrath of god, a new and powerful impulse was given to this belief in the church toward the end of the sixth century by st. gregory the great. in 590, when he was elected pope, the city of rome was suffering from a dreadful pestilence: the people were dying by thousands; out of one procession imploring the mercy of heaven no less than eighty persons died within an hour: what the heathen in an earlier epoch had attributed to apollo was now attributed to jehovah, and chroniclers tell us that fiery darts were seen flung from heaven into the devoted city. but finally, in the midst of all this horror, gregory, at the head of a penitential procession, saw hovering over the mausoleum of hadrian the figure of the archangel michael, who was just sheathing a flaming sword, while three angels were heard chanting the regina coeli. the legend continues that the pope immediately broke forth into hallelujahs for this sign that the plague was stayed, and, as it shortly afterward became less severe, a chapel was built at the summit of the mausoleum and dedicated to st. michael; still later, above the whole was erected the colossal statue of the archangel sheathing his sword, which still stands to perpetuate the legend. thus the greatest of rome's ancient funeral monuments was made to bear testimony to this medieval belief; the mausoleum of hadrian became the castle of st. angelo. a legend like this, claiming to date from the greatest of the early popes, and vouched for by such an imposing monument, had undoubtedly a marked effect upon the dominant theology throughout europe, which was constantly developing a great body of thought regarding the agencies by which the divine wrath might be averted. first among these agencies, naturally, were evidences of devotion, especially gifts of land, money, or privileges to churches, monasteries, and shrines--the seats of fetiches which it was supposed had wrought cures or might work them. the whole evolution of modern history, not only ecclesiastical but civil, has been largely affected by the wealth transferred to the clergy at such periods. it was noted that in the fourteenth century, after the great plague, the black death, had passed, an immensely increased proportion of the landed and personal property of every european country was in the hands of the church. well did a great ecclesiastic remark that "pestilences are the harvests of the ministers of god."[[71]] other modes of propitiating the higher powers were penitential processions, the parading of images of the virgin or of saints through plague-stricken towns, and fetiches innumerable. very noted in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were the processions of the flagellants, trooping through various parts of europe, scourging their naked bodies, shrieking the penitential psalms, and often running from wild excesses of devotion to the maddest orgies. sometimes, too, plagues were attributed to the wrath of lesser heavenly powers. just as, in former times, the fury of "far-darting apollo" was felt when his name was not respectfully treated by mortals, so, in 1680, the church authorities at rome discovered that the plague then raging resulted from the anger of st. sebastian because no monument had been erected to him. such a monument was therefore placed in the church of st. peter ad vincula, and the plague ceased. so much for the endeavour to avert the wrath of the heavenly powers. on the other hand, theological reasoning no less subtle was used in thwarting the malice of satan. this idea, too, came from far. in the sacred books of india and persia, as well as in our own, we find the same theory of disease, leading to similar means of cure. perhaps the most astounding among christian survivals of this theory and its resultant practices was seen during the plague at rome in 1522. in that year, at that centre of divine illumination, certain people, having reasoned upon the matter, came to the conclusion that this great scourge was the result of satanic malice; and, in view of st. paul's declaration that the ancient gods were devils, and of the theory that the ancient gods of rome were the devils who had the most reason to punish that city for their dethronement, and that the great amphitheatre was the chosen haunt of these demon gods, an ox decorated with garlands, after the ancient heathen manner, was taken in procession to the colosseum and solemnly sacrificed. even this proved vain, and the church authorities then ordered expiatory processions and ceremonies to propitiate the almighty, the virgin, and the saints, who had been offended by this temporary effort to bribe their enemies. but this sort of theological reasoning developed an idea far more disastrous, and this was that satan, in causing pestilences, used as his emissaries especially jews and witches. the proof of this belief in the case of the jews was seen in the fact that they escaped with a less percentage of disease than did the christians in the great plague periods. this was doubtless due in some measure to their remarkable sanitary system, which had probably originated thousands of years before in egypt, and had been handed down through jewish lawgivers and statesmen. certainly they observed more careful sanitary rules and more constant abstinence from dangerous foods than was usual among christians; but the public at large could not understand so simple a cause, and jumped to the conclusion that their immunity resulted from protection by satan, and that this protection was repaid and the pestilence caused by their wholesale poisoning of christians. as a result of this mode of thought, attempts were made in all parts of europe to propitiate the almighty, to thwart satan, and to stop the plague by torturing and murdering the jews. throughout europe during great pestilences we hear of extensive burnings of this devoted people. in bavaria, at the time of the black death, it is computed that twelve thousand jews thus perished; in the small town of erfurt the number is said to have been three thousand; in strasburg, the rue brulee remains as a monument to the two thousand jews burned there for poisoning the wells and causing the plague of 1348; at the royal castle of chinon, near tours, an immense trench was dug, filled with blazing wood, and in a single day one hundred and sixty jews were burned. everywhere in continental europe this mad persecution went on; but it is a pleasure to say that one great churchman, pope clement vi, stood against this popular unreason, and, so far as he could bring his influence to bear on the maddened populace, exercised it in favour of mercy to these supposed enemies of the almighty.[[73]] yet, as late as 1527, the people of pavia, being threatened with plague, appealed to st. bernardino of feltro, who during his life had been a fierce enemy of the jews, and they passed a decree promising that if the saint would avert the pestilence they would expel the jews from the city. the saint apparently accepted the bargain, and in due time the jews were expelled. as to witches, the reasons for believing them the cause of pestilence also came from far. this belief, too, had been poured mainly from oriental sources into our sacred books and thence into the early church, and was strengthened by a whole line of church authorities, fathers, doctors, and saints; but, above all, by the great bull, _summis desiderantes_, issued by pope innocent viii, in 1484. this utterance from the seat of st. peter infallibly committed the church to the idea that witches are a great cause of disease, storms, and various ills which afflict humanity; and the scripture on which the action recommended against witches in this papal bull, as well as in so many sermons and treatises for centuries afterward, was based, was the famous text, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." this idea persisted long, and the evolution of it is among the most fearful things in human history.[[74]] in germany its development was especially terrible. from the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth, catholic and protestant theologians and ecclesiastics vied with each other in detecting witches guilty of producing sickness or bad weather; women were sent to torture and death by thousands, and with them, from time to time, men and children. on the catholic side sufficient warrant for this work was found in the bull of pope innocent viii, and the bishops' palaces of south germany became shambles,--the lordly prelates of salzburg, wurzburg, and bamberg taking the lead in this butchery. in north germany protestantism was just as conscientiously cruel. it based its theory and practice toward witches directly upon the bible, and above all on the great text which has cost the lives of so many myriads of innocent men, women, and children, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." naturally the protestant authorities strove to show that protestantism was no less orthodox in this respect than catholicism; and such theological jurists as carpzov, damhouder, and calov did their work thoroughly. an eminent authority on this subject estimates the number of victims thus sacrificed during that century in germany alone at over a hundred thousand. among the methods of this witch activity especially credited in central and southern europe was the anointing of city walls and pavements with a diabolical unguent causing pestilence. in 1530 michael caddo was executed with fearful tortures for thus besmearing the pavements of geneva. but far more dreadful was the torturing to death of a large body of people at milan, in the following century, for producing the plague by anointing the walls; and a little later similar punishments for the same crime were administered in toulouse and other cities. the case in milan may be briefly summarized as showing the ideas on sanitary science of all classes, from highest to lowest, in the seventeenth century. that city was then under the control of spain; and, its authorities having received notice from the spanish government that certain persons suspected of witchcraft had recently left madrid, and had perhaps gone to milan to anoint the walls, this communication was dwelt upon in the pulpits as another evidence of that satanic malice which the church alone had the means of resisting, and the people were thus excited and put upon the alert. one morning, in the year 1630, an old woman, looking out of her window, saw a man walking along the street and wiping his fingers upon the walls; she immediately called the attention of another old woman, and they agreed that this man must be one of the diabolical anointers. it was perfectly evident to a person under ordinary conditions that this unfortunate man was simply trying to remove from his fingers the ink gathered while writing from the ink-horn which he carried in his girdle; but this explanation was too simple to satisfy those who first observed him or those who afterward tried him: a mob was raised and he was thrown into prison. being tortured, he at first did not know what to confess; but, on inquiring from the jailer and others, he learned what the charge was, and, on being again subjected to torture utterly beyond endurance, he confessed everything which was suggested to him; and, on being tortured again and again to give the names of his accomplices, he accused, at hazard, the first people in the city whom he thought of. these, being arrested and tortured beyond endurance, confessed and implicated a still greater number, until members of the foremost families were included in the charge. again and again all these unfortunates were tortured beyond endurance. under paganism, the rule regarding torture had been that it should not be carried beyond human endurance; and we therefore find cicero ridiculing it as a means of detecting crime, because a stalwart criminal of strong nerves might resist it and go free, while a physically delicate man, though innocent, would be forced to confess. hence it was that under paganism a limit was imposed to the torture which could be administered; but, when christianity had become predominant throughout europe, torture was developed with a cruelty never before known. there had been evolved a doctrine of "excepted cases"--these "excepted cases" being especially heresy and witchcraft; for by a very simple and logical process of theological reasoning it was held that satan would give supernatural strength to his special devotees--that is, to heretics and witches--and therefore that, in dealing with them, there should be no limit to the torture. the result was in this particular case, as in tens of thousands besides, that the accused confessed everything which could be suggested to them, and often in the delirium of their agony confessed far more than all that the zeal of the prosecutors could suggest. finally, a great number of worthy people were sentenced to the most cruel death which could be invented. the records of their trials and deaths are frightful. the treatise which in recent years has first brought to light in connected form an authentic account of the proceedings in this affair, and which gives at the end engravings of the accused subjected to horrible tortures on their way to the stake and at the place of execution itself, is one of the most fearful monuments of theological reasoning and human folly. to cap the climax, after a poor apothecary had been tortured into a confession that he had made the magic ointment, and when he had been put to death with the most exquisite refinements of torture, his family were obliged to take another name, and were driven out from the city; his house was torn down, and on its site was erected "the column of infamy," which remained on this spot until, toward the end of the eighteenth century, a party of young radicals, probably influenced by the reading of beccaria, sallied forth one night and leveled this pious monument to the ground. herein was seen the culmination and decline of the bull _summis desiderantes_. it had been issued by him whom a majority of the christian world believes to be infallible in his teachings to the church as regards faith and morals; yet here was a deliberate utterance in a matter of faith and morals which even children now know to be utterly untrue. though beccaria's book on _crimes and punishments_, with its declarations against torture, was placed by the church authorities upon the _index_, and though the faithful throughout the christian world were forbidden to read it, even this could not prevent the victory of truth over this infallible utterance of innocent viii.[[78]] as the seventeenth century went on, ingenuity in all parts of europe seemed devoted to new developments of fetichism. a very curious monument of this evolution in italy exists in the royal gallery of paintings at naples, where may be seen several pictures representing the measures taken to save the city from the plague during the seventeenth century, but especially from the plague of 1656. one enormous canvas gives a curious example of the theological doctrine of intercession between man and his maker, spun out to its logical length. in the background is the plague-stricken city: in the foreground the people are praying to the city authorities to avert the plague; the city authorities are praying to the carthusian monks; the monks are praying to st. martin, st. bruno, and st. januarius; these three saints in their turn are praying to the virgin; the virgin prays to christ; and christ prays to the almighty. still another picture represents the people, led by the priests, executing with horrible tortures the jews, heretics, and witches who were supposed to cause the pestilence of 1656, while in the heavens the virgin and st. januarius are interceding with christ to sheathe his sword and stop the plague. in such an atmosphere of thought it is no wonder that the death statistics were appalling. we hear of districts in which not more than one in ten escaped, and some were entirely depopulated. such appeals to fetich against pestilence have continued in naples down to our own time, the great saving power being the liquefaction of the blood of st. januarius. in 1856 the present writer saw this miracle performed in the gorgeous chapel of the saint forming part of the cathedral of naples. the chapel was filled with devout worshippers of every class, from the officials in court dress, representing the bourbon king, down to the lowest lazzaroni. the reliquary of silver-gilt, shaped like a large human head, and supposed to contain the skull of the saint, was first placed upon the altar; next, two vials containing a dark substance said to be his blood, having been taken from the wall, were also placed upon the altar near the head. as the priests said masses, they turned the vials from time to time, and the liquefaction being somewhat delayed, the great crowd of people burst out into more and more impassioned expostulation and petitions to the saint. just in front of the altar were the lazzaroni who claimed to be descendants of the saint's family, and these were especially importunate: at such times they beg, they scold, they even threaten; they have been known to abuse the saint roundly, and to tell him that, if he did not care to show his favour to the city by liquefying his blood, st. cosmo and st. damian were just as good saints as he, and would no doubt be very glad to have the city devote itself to them. at last, on the occasion above referred to, the priest, turning the vials suddenly, announced that the saint had performed the miracle, and instantly priests, people, choir, and organ burst forth into a great _te deum_; bells rang, and cannon roared; a procession was formed, and the shrine containing the saint's relics was carried through the streets, the people prostrating themselves on both sides of the way and throwing showers of rose leaves upon the shrine and upon the path before it. the contents of these precious vials are an interesting relic indeed, for they represent to us vividly that period when men who were willing to go to the stake for their religious opinions thought it not wrong to save the souls of their fellowmen by pious mendacity and consecrated fraud. to the scientific eye this miracle is very simple: the vials contain, no doubt, one of those mixtures fusing at low-temperature, which, while kept in its place within the cold stone walls of the church, remains solid, but upon being brought out into the hot, crowded chapel, and fondled by the warm hands of the priests, gradually softens and becomes liquid. it was curious to note, at the time above mentioned, that even the high functionaries representing the king looked at the miracle with awe: they evidently found "joy in believing," and one of them assured the present writer that the only thing which _could_ cause it was the direct exercise of miraculous power. it may be reassuring to persons contemplating a visit to that beautiful capital in these days, that, while this miracle still goes on, it is no longer the only thing relied upon to preserve the public health. an unbelieving generation, especially taught by the recent horrors of the cholera, has thought it wise to supplement the power of st. januarius by the "risanamento," begun mainly in 1885 and still going on. the drainage of the city has thus been greatly improved, the old wells closed, and pure water introduced from the mountains. moreover, at the last outburst of cholera a few years since, a noble deed was done which by its moral effect exercised a widespread healing power. upon hearing of this terrific outbreak of pestilence, king humbert, though under the ban of the church, broke from all the entreaties of his friends and family, went directly into the plague-stricken city, and there, in the streets, public places, and hospitals, encouraged the living, comforted the sick and dying, and took means to prevent a further spread of the pestilence. to the credit of the church it should also be said that the cardinal archbishop san felice joined him in this. miracle for miracle, the effect of this visit of the king seems to have surpassed anything that st. januarius could do, for it gave confidence and courage which very soon showed their effects in diminishing the number of deaths. it would certainly appear that in this matter the king was more directly under divine inspiration and guidance than was the pope; for the fact that king humbert went to naples at the risk of his life, while leo xiii remained in safety at the vatican, impressed the italian people in favour of the new _regime_ and against the old as nothing else could have done. in other parts of italy the same progress is seen under the new italian government. venice, genoa, leghorn, and especially rome, which under the sway of the popes was scandalously filthy, are now among the cleanest cities in europe. what the relics of st. januarius, st. anthony, and a multitude of local fetiches throughout italy were for ages utterly unable to do, has been accomplished by the development of the simplest sanitary principles. spain shows much the same characteristics of a country where theological considerations have been all-controlling for centuries. down to the interference of napoleon with that kingdom, all sanitary efforts were looked upon as absurd if not impious. the most sober accounts of travellers in the spanish peninsula until a recent period are sometimes irresistibly comic in their pictures of peoples insisting on maintaining arrangements more filthy than any which would be permitted in an american backwoods camp, while taking enormous pains to stop pestilence by bell-ringings, processions, and new dresses bestowed upon the local madonnas; yet here, too, a healthful scepticism has begun to work for good. the outbreaks of cholera in recent years have done some little to bring in better sanitary measures.[[81]] ii. gradual decay of theological views regarding sanitation. we have seen how powerful in various nations especially obedient to theology were the forces working in opposition to the evolution of hygiene, and we shall find this same opposition, less effective, it is true, but still acting with great power, in countries which had become somewhat emancipated from theological control. in england, during the medieval period, persecutions of jews were occasionally resorted to, and here and there we hear of persecutions of witches; but, as torture was rarely used in england, there were, from those charged with producing plague, few of those torture-born confessions which in other countries gave rise to widespread cruelties. down to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the filthiness in the ordinary mode of life in england was such as we can now hardly conceive: fermenting organic material was allowed to accumulate and become a part of the earthen floors of rural dwellings; and this undoubtedly developed the germs of many diseases. in his noted letter to the physician of cardinal wolsey, erasmus describes the filth thus incorporated into the floors of english houses, and, what is of far more importance, he shows an inkling of the true cause of the wasting diseases of the period. he says, "if i entered into a chamber which had been uninhabited for months, i was immediately seized with a fever." he ascribed the fearful plague of the sweating sickness to this cause. so, too, the noted dr. caius advised sanitary precautions against the plague, and in after-generations, mead, pringle, and others urged them; but the prevailing thought was too strong, and little was done. even the floor of the presence chamber of queen elizabeth in greenwich palace was "covered with hay, after the english fashion," as one of the chroniclers tells us. in the seventeenth century, aid in these great scourges was mainly sought in special church services. the foremost english churchmen during that century being greatly given to study of the early fathers of the church; the theological theory of disease, so dear to the fathers, still held sway, and this was the case when the various visitations reached their climax in the great plague of london in 1665, which swept off more than a hundred thousand people from that city. the attempts at meeting it by sanitary measures were few and poor; the medical system of the time was still largely tinctured by superstitions resulting from medieval modes of thought; hence that plague was generally attributed to the divine wrath caused by "the prophaning of the sabbath." texts from numbers, the psalms, zechariah, and the apocalypse were dwelt upon in the pulpits to show that plagues are sent by the almighty to punish sin; and perhaps the most ghastly figure among all those fearful scenes described by de foe is that of the naked fanatic walking up and down the streets with a pan of fiery coals upon his head, and, after the manner of jonah at nineveh, proclaiming woe to the city, and its destruction in forty days. that sin caused this plague is certain, but it was sanitary sin. both before and after this culmination of the disease cases of plague were constantly occurring in london throughout the seventeenth century; but about the beginning of the eighteenth century it began to disappear. the great fire had done a good work by sweeping off many causes and centres of infection, and there had come wider streets, better pavements, and improved water supply; so that, with the disappearance of the plague, other diseases, especially dysenteries, which had formerly raged in the city, became much less frequent. but, while these epidemics were thus checked in london, others developed by sanitary ignorance raged fearfully both there and elsewhere, and of these perhaps the most fearful was the jail fever. the prisons of that period were vile beyond belief. men were confined in dungeons rarely if ever disinfected after the death of previous occupants, and on corridors connecting directly with the foulest sewers: there was no proper disinfection, ventilation, or drainage; hence in most of the large prisons for criminals or debtors the jail fever was supreme, and from these centres it frequently spread through the adjacent towns. this was especially the case during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. in the black assize at oxford, in 1577, the chief baron, the sheriff, and about three hundred men died within forty hours. lord bacon declared the jail fever "the most pernicious infection next to the plague." in 1730, at the dorsetshire assize, the chief baron and many lawyers were killed by it. the high sheriff of somerset also took the disease and died. a single scotch regiment, being infected from some prisoners, lost no less than two hundred. in 1750 the disease was so virulent at newgate, in the heart of london, that two judges, the lord mayor, sundry aldermen, and many others, died of it. it is worth noting that, while efforts at sanitary dealing with this state of things were few, the theological spirit developed a new and special form of prayer for the sufferers and placed it in the irish _prayer book_. these forms of prayer seem to have been the main reliance through the first half of the eighteenth century. but about 1750 began the work of john howard, who visited the prisons of england, made known their condition to the world, and never rested until they were greatly improved. then he applied the same benevolent activity to prisons in other countries, in the far east, and in southern europe, and finally laid down his life, a victim to disease contracted on one of his missions of mercy; but the hygienic reforms he began were developed more and more until this fearful blot upon modern civilization was removed.[[84]] the same thing was seen in the protestant colonies of america; but here, while plagues were steadily attributed to divine wrath or satanic malice, there was one case in which it was claimed that such a visitation was due to the divine mercy. the pestilence among the _indians_, before the arrival of the plymouth colony, was attributed in a notable work of that period to the divine purpose of clearing new england for the heralds of the gospel; on the other hand, the plagues which destroyed the _white_ population were attributed by the same authority to devils and witches. in cotton mather's _wonder of the invisible world_, published at boston in 1693, we have striking examples of this. the great puritan divine tells us: "plagues are some of those woes, with which the divil troubles us. it is said of the israelites, in 1 cor. 10. 10. _they were destroyed of the destroyer_. that is, they had the plague among them. 'tis the destroyer, or the divil, that scatters plagues about the world: pestilential and contagious diseases, 'tis the divel, who do's oftentimes invade us with them. 'tis no uneasy thing, for the divel, to impregnate the air about us, with such malignant salts, as meeting with the salt of our microcosm, shall immediately cast us into that fermentation and putrefaction, which will utterly dissolve all the vital tyes within us; ev'n as an aqua fortis, made with a conjuuction of nitre and vitriol, corrodes what it siezes upon. and when the divel has raised those arsenical fumes, which become venomous. quivers full of terrible arrows, how easily can he shoot the deleterious miasms into those juices or bowels of men's bodies, which will soon enflame them with a mortal fire! hence come such plagues, as that beesome of destruction which within our memory swept away such a throng of people from one english city in one visitation: and hence those infectious feavers, which are but so many disguised plagues among us, causing epidemical desolations." mather gives several instances of witches causing diseases, and speaks of "some long bow'd down under such a spirit of infirmity" being "marvelously recovered upon the death of the witches," of which he gives an instance. he also cites a case where a patient "was brought unto death's door and so remained until the witch was taken and carried away by the constable, when he began at once to recover and was soon well."[[86]] in france we see, during generation after generation, a similar history evolved; pestilence after pestilence came, and was met by various fetiches. noteworthy is the plague at marseilles near the beginning of the last century. the chronicles of its sway are ghastly. they speak of great heaps of the unburied dead in the public places, "forming pestilential volcanoes"; of plague-stricken men and women in delirium wandering naked through the streets; of churches and shrines thronged with great crowds shrieking for mercy; of other crowds flinging themselves into the wildest debauchery; of robber bands assassinating the dying and plundering the dead; of three thousand neglected children collected in one hospital and then left to die; and of the death-roll numbering at last fifty thousand out of a population of less than ninety thousand. in the midst of these fearful scenes stood a body of men and women worthy to be held in eternal honour--the physicians from paris and montpellier; the mayor of the city, and one or two of his associates; but, above all, the chevalier roze and bishop belzunce. the history of these men may well make us glory in human nature; but in all this noble group the figure of belzunce is the most striking. nobly and firmly, when so many others even among the regular and secular ecclesiastics fled, he stood by his flock: day and night he was at work in the hospitals, cheering the living, comforting the dying, and doing what was possible for the decent disposal of the dead. in him were united the, two great antagonistic currents of religion and of theology. as a theologian he organized processions and expiatory services, which, it must be confessed, rather increased the disease than diminished it; moreover, he accepted that wild dream of a hysterical nun--the worship of the material, physical sacred heart of jesus--and was one of the first to consecrate his diocese to it; but, on the other hand, the religious spirit gave in him one of its most beautiful manifestations in that or any other century; justly have the people of marseilles placed his statue in the midst of their city in an attitude of prayer and blessing. in every part of europe and america, down to a recent period, we find pestilences resulting from carelessness or superstition still called "inscrutable providences." as late as the end of the eighteenth century, when great epidemics made fearful havoc in austria, the main means against them seem to have been grovelling before the image of st. sebastian and calling in special "witch-doctors"--that is, monks who cast out devils. to seek the aid of physicians was, in the neighbourhood of these monastic centres, very generally considered impious, and the enormous death rate in such neighbourhoods was only diminished in the present century, when scientific hygiene began to make its way. the old view of pestilence had also its full course in calvinistic scotland; the only difference being that, while in roman catholic countries relief was sought by fetiches, gifts, processions, exorcisms, burnings of witches, and other works of expiation, promoted by priests; in scotland, after the reformation, it was sought in fast-days and executions of witches promoted by protestant elders. accounts of the filthiness of scotch cities and villages, down to a period well within this century, seem monstrous. all that in these days is swept into the sewers was in those allowed to remain around the houses or thrown into the streets. the old theological theory, that "vain is the help of man," checked scientific thought and paralyzed sanitary endeavour. the result was natural: between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries thirty notable epidemics swept the country, and some of them carried off multitudes; but as a rule these never suggested sanitary improvement; they were called "visitations," attributed to divine wrath against human sin, and the work of the authorities was to announce the particular sin concerned and to declaim against it. amazing theories were thus propounded--theories which led to spasms of severity; and, in some of these, offences generally punished much less severely were visited with death. every pulpit interpreted the ways of god to man in such seasons so as rather to increase than to diminish the pestilence. the effect of thus seeking supernatural causes rather than natural may be seen in such facts as the death by plague of one fourth of the whole population of the city of perth in a single year of the fifteenth century, other towns suffering similarly both then and afterward. here and there, physicians more wisely inspired endeavoured to push sanitary measures, and in 1585 attempts were made to clean the streets of edinburgh; but the chroniclers tell us that "the magistrates and ministers gave no heed." one sort of calamity, indeed, came in as a mercy--the great fires which swept through the cities, clearing and cleaning them. though the town council of edinburgh declared the noted fire of 1700 "a fearful rebuke of god," it was observed that, after it had done its work, disease and death were greatly diminished.[[88]] iii. the triumph of sanitary science. but by those standing in the higher places of thought some glimpses of scientific truth had already been obtained, and attempts at compromise between theology and science in this field began to be made, not only by ecclesiastics, but first of all, as far back as the seventeenth century, by a man of science eminent both for attainments and character--robert boyle. inspired by the discoveries in other fields, which had swept away so much of theological thought, he could no longer resist the conviction that some epidemics are due--in his own words--"to a tragical concourse of natural causes"; but he argued that some of these may be the result of divine interpositions provoked by human sins. as time went on, great difficulties showed themselves in the way of this compromise--difficulties theological not less than difficulties scientific. to a catholic it was more and more hard to explain the theological grounds why so many orthodox cities, firm in the faith, were punished, and so many heretical cities spared; and why, in regions devoted to the church, the poorer people, whose faith in theological fetiches was unquestioning, died in times of pestilence like flies, while sceptics so frequently escaped. difficulties of the same sort beset devoted protestants; they, too, might well ask why it was that the devout peasantry in their humble cottages perished, while so much larger a proportion of the more sceptical upper classes were untouched. gradually it dawned both upon catholic and protestant countries that, if any sin be punished by pestilence, it is the sin of filthiness; more and more it began to be seen by thinking men of both religions that wesley's great dictum stated even less than the truth; that not only was "cleanliness akin to godliness," but that, as a means of keeping off pestilence, it was far superior to godliness as godliness was then generally understood.[[89]] the recent history of sanitation in all civilized countries shows triumphs which might well fill us with wonder, did there not rise within us a far greater wonder that they were so long delayed. amazing is it to see how near the world has come again and again to discovering the key to the cause and cure of pestilence. it is now a matter of the simplest elementary knowledge that some of the worst epidemics are conveyed in water. but this fact seems to have been discovered many times in human history. in the peloponnesian war the athenians asserted that their enemies had poisoned their cisterns; in the middle ages the people generally declared that the jews had poisoned their wells; and as late as the cholera of 1832 the parisian mob insisted that the water-carriers who distributed water for drinking purposes from the seine, polluted as it was by sewage, had poisoned it, and in some cases murdered them on this charge: so far did this feeling go that locked covers were sometimes placed upon the water-buckets. had not such men as roger bacon and his long line of successors been thwarted by theological authority,--had not such men as thomas aquinas, vincent of beauvais, and albert the great been drawn or driven from the paths of science into the dark, tortuous paths of theology, leading no whither,--the world to-day, at the end of the nineteenth century, would have arrived at the solution of great problems and the enjoyment of great results which will only be reached at the end of the twentieth century, and even in generations more remote. diseases like typhoid fever, influenza and pulmonary consumption, scarlet fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, and _la grippe_, which now carry off so many most precious lives, would have long since ceased to scourge the world. still, there is one cause for satisfaction: the law governing the relation of theology to disease is now well before the world, and it is seen in the fact that, just in proportion as the world progressed from the sway of hippocrates to that of the ages of faith, so it progressed in the frequency and severity of great pestilences; and that, on the other hand, just in proportion as the world has receded from that period when theology was all-pervading and all-controlling, plague after plague has disappeared, and those remaining have become less and less frequent and virulent.[[90]] the recent history of hygiene in all countries shows a long series of victories, and these may well be studied in great britain and the united states. in the former, though there had been many warnings from eminent physicians, and above all in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from men like caius, mead, and pringle, the result was far short of what might have been gained; and it was only in the year 1838 that a systematic sanitary effort was begun in england by the public authorities. the state of things at that time, though by comparison with the middle ages happy, was, by comparison with what has since been gained, fearful: the death rate among all classes was high, but among the poor it was ghastly. out of seventy-seven thousand paupers in london during the years 1837 and 1838, fourteen thousand were suffering from fever, and of these nearly six thousand from typhus. in many other parts of the british islands the sanitary condition was no better. a noble body of men grappled with the problem, and in a few years one of these rose above his fellows--the late edwin chadwick. the opposition to his work was bitter, and, though many churchmen aided him, the support given by theologians and ecclesiastics as a whole was very far short of what it should have been. too many of them were occupied in that most costly and most worthless of all processes, "the saving of souls" by the inculcation of dogma. yet some of the higher ecclesiastics and many of the lesser clergy did much, sometimes risking their lives, and one of them, sidney godolphin osborne, deserves lasting memory for his struggle to make known the sanitary wants of the peasantry. chadwick began to be widely known in 1848 as a member of the board of health, and was driven out for a time for overzeal; but from one point or another, during forty years, he fought the opposition, developed the new work, and one of the best exhibits of its results is shown in his address before the sanitary conference at brighton in 1888. from this and other perfectly trustworthy sources some idea may be gained of the triumph of the scientific over the theological method of dealing with disease, whether epidemic or sporadic. in the latter half of the seventeenth century the annual mortality of london is estimated at not less than eighty in a thousand; about the middle of this century it stood at twenty-four in a thousand; in 1889 it stood at less than eighteen in a thousand; and in many parts the most recent statistics show that it has been brought down to fourteen or fifteen in a thousand. a quarter of a century ago the death rate from disease in the royal guards at london was twenty in a thousand; in 1888 it had been reduced to six in a thousand. in the army generally it had been seventeen in a thousand, but it has been reduced until it now stands at eight. in the old indian army it had been sixty-nine in a thousand, but of late it has been brought down first to twenty, and finally to fourteen. mr. chadwick in his speech proved that much more might be done, for he called attention to the german army, where the death rate from disease has been reduced to between five and six in a thousand. the public health act having been passed in 1875, the death rate in england among men fell, between 1871 and 1880, more than four in a thousand, and among women more than six in a thousand. in the decade between 1851 and 1860 there died of diseases attributable to defective drainage and impure water over four thousand persons in every million throughout england: these numbers have declined until in 1888 there died less than two thousand in every million. the most striking diminution of the deaths from such causes was found in 1891, in the case of typhoid fever, that diminution being fifty per cent. as to the scourge which, next to plagues like the black death, was formerly the most dreaded--smallpox--there died of it in london during the year 1890 just one person. drainage in bristol reduced the death rate by consumption from 4.4 to 2.3; at cardiff, from 3.47 to 2.31; and in all england and wales, from 2.68 in 1851 to 1.55 in 1888. what can be accomplished by better sanitation is also seen to-day by a comparison between the death rate among the children outside and inside the charity schools. the death rate among those outside in 1881 was twelve in a thousand; while inside, where the children were under sanitary regulations maintained by competent authorities, it has been brought down first to eight, then to four, and finally to less than three in a thousand. in view of statistics like these, it becomes clear that edwin chadwick and his compeers among the sanitary authorities have in half a century done far more to reduce the rate of disease and death than has been done in fifteen hundred years by all the fetiches which theological reasoning could devise or ecclesiastical power enforce. not less striking has been the history of hygiene in france: thanks to the decline of theological control over the universities, to the abolition of monasteries, and to such labours in hygienic research and improvement as those of tardieu, levy, and bouchardat, a wondrous change has been wrought in public health. statistics carefully kept show that the mean length of human life has been remarkably increased. in the eighteenth century it was but twenty-three years; from 1825 to 1830 it was thirty-two years and eight months; and since 1864, thirty-seven years and six months. iv. the relation of sanitary science to religion. the question may now arise whether this progress in sanitary science has been purchased at any real sacrifice of religion in its highest sense. one piece of recent history indicates an answer to this question. the second empire in france had its head in napoleon iii, a noted voltairean. at the climax of his power he determined to erect an academy of music which should be the noblest building of its kind. it was projected on a scale never before known, at least in modern times, and carried on for years, millions being lavished upon it. at the same time the emperor determined to rebuild the hotel-dieu, the great paris hospital; this, too, was projected on a greater scale than anything of the kind ever before known, and also required millions. but in the erection of these two buildings the emperor's determination was distinctly made known, that with the highest provision for aesthetic enjoyment there should be a similar provision, moving on parallel lines, for the relief of human suffering. this plan was carried out to the letter: the palace of the opera and the hotel-dieu went on with equal steps, and the former was not allowed to be finished before the latter. among all the "most christian kings" of the house of bourbon who had preceded him for five hundred years, history shows no such obedience to the religious and moral sense of the nation. catharine de' medici and her sons, plunging the nation into the great wars of religion, never showed any such feeling; louis xiv, revoking the edict of nantes for the glory of god, and bringing the nation to sorrow during many generations, never dreamed of making the construction of his palaces and public buildings wait upon the demands of charity. louis xv, so subservient to the church in all things, never betrayed the slightest consciousness that, while making enormous expenditures to gratify his own and the national vanity, he ought to carry on works, _pari passu_, for charity. nor did the french nation, at those periods when it was most largely under the control of theological considerations, seem to have any inkling of the idea that nation or monarch should make provision for relief from human suffering, to justify provision for the sumptuous enjoyment of art: it was reserved for the second half of the nineteenth century to develop this feeling so strongly, though quietly, that napoleon iii, notoriously an unbeliever in all orthodoxy, was obliged to recognise it and to set this great example. nor has the recent history of the united states been less fruitful in lessons. yellow fever, which formerly swept not only southern cities but even new york and philadelphia, has now been almost entirely warded off. such epidemics as that in memphis a few years since, and the immunity of the city from such visitations since its sanitary condition was changed by mr. waring, are a most striking object lesson to the whole country. cholera, which again and again swept the country, has ceased to be feared by the public at large. typhus fever, once so deadly, is now rarely heard of. curious is it to find that some of the diseases which in the olden time swept off myriads on myriads in every country, now cause fewer deaths than some diseases thought of little account, and for the cure of which people therefore rely, to their cost, on quackery instead of medical science. this development of sanitary science and hygiene in the united states has also been coincident with a marked change in the attitude of the american pulpit as regards the theory of disease. in this country, as in others, down to a period within living memory, deaths due to want of sanitary precautions were constantly dwelt upon in funeral sermons as "results of national sin," or as "inscrutable providences." that view has mainly passed away among the clergy of the more enlightened parts of the country, and we now find them, as a rule, active in spreading useful ideas as to the prevention of disease. the religious press has been especially faithful in this respect, carrying to every household more just ideas of sanitary precautions and hygienic living. the attitude even of many among the most orthodox rulers in church and state has been changed by facts like these. lord palmerston refusing the request of the scotch clergy that a fast day be appointed to ward off cholera, and advising them to go home and clean their streets,--the devout emperor william ii forbidding prayer-meetings in a similar emergency, on the ground that they led to neglect of practical human means of help,--all this is in striking contrast to the older methods. well worthy of note is the ground taken in 1893, at philadelphia, by an eminent divine of the protestant episcopal church. the bishop of pennsylvania having issued a special call to prayer in order to ward off the cholera, this clergyman refused to respond to the call, declaring that to do so, in the filthy condition of the streets then prevailing in philadelphia, would be blasphemous. in summing up the whole subject, we see that in this field, as in so many others, the triumph of scientific thought has gradually done much to evolve in the world not only a theology but also a religious spirit more and more worthy of the goodness of god and of the destiny of man.[[95]] chapter xv. from "demoniacal possession" to insanity. i. theological ideas of lunacy and its treatment. of all the triumphs won by science for humanity, few have been farther-reaching in good effects than the modern treatment of the insane. but this is the result of a struggle long and severe between two great forces. on one side have stood the survivals of various superstitions, the metaphysics of various philosophies, the dogmatism of various theologies, the literal interpretation of various sacred books, and especially of our own--all compacted into a creed that insanity is mainly or largely demoniacal possession; on the other side has stood science, gradually accumulating proofs that insanity is always the result of physical disease. i purpose in this chapter to sketch, as briefly as i may, the history of this warfare, or rather of this evolution of truth out of error. nothing is more simple and natural, in the early stages of civilization, than belief in occult, self-conscious powers of evil. troubles and calamities come upon man; his ignorance of physical laws forbids him to attribute them to physical causes; he therefore attributes them sometimes to the wrath of a good being, but more frequently to the malice of an evil being. especially is this the case with diseases. the real causes of disease are so intricate that they are reached only after ages of scientific labour; hence they, above all, have been attributed to the influence of evil spirits.[[97]] but, if ordinary diseases were likely to be attributed to diabolical agency, how much more diseases of the brain, and especially the more obscure of these! these, indeed, seemed to the vast majority of mankind possible only on the theory of satanic intervention: any approach to a true theory of the connection between physical causes and mental results is one of the highest acquisitions of science. here and there, during the whole historic period, keen men had obtained an inkling of the truth; but to the vast multitude, down to the end of the seventeenth century, nothing was more clear than that insanity is, in many if not in most cases, demoniacal possession. yet at a very early date, in greece and rome, science had asserted itself, and a beginning had been made which seemed destined to bring a large fruitage of blessings.[[98]] in the fifth century before the christian era, hippocrates of cos asserted the great truth that all madness is simply disease of the brain, thereby beginning a development of truth and mercy which lasted nearly a thousand years. in the first century after christ, aretaeus carried these ideas yet further, observed the phenomena of insanity with great acuteness, and reached yet more valuable results. near the beginning of the following century, soranus went still further in the same path, giving new results of research, and strengthening scientific truth. toward the end of the same century a new epoch was ushered in by galen, under whom the same truth was developed yet further, and the path toward merciful treatment of the insane made yet more clear. in the third century celius aurelianus received this deposit of precious truth, elaborated it, and brought forth the great idea which, had theology, citing biblical texts, not banished it, would have saved fifteen centuries of cruelty--an idea not fully recognised again till near the beginning of the present century--the idea that insanity is brain disease, and that the treatment of it must be gentle and kind. in the sixth century alexander of tralles presented still more fruitful researches, and taught the world how to deal with _melancholia_; and, finally, in the seventh century, this great line of scientific men, working mainly under pagan auspices, was closed by paul of aegina, who under the protection of caliph omar made still further observations, but, above all, laid stress on the cure of madness as a disease, and on the absolute necessity of mild treatment. such was this great succession in the apostolate of science: evidently no other has ever shown itself more directly under divine grace, illumination, and guidance. it had given to the world what might have been one of its greatest blessings.[[99]] this evolution of divine truth was interrupted by theology. there set into the early church a current of belief which was destined to bring all these noble acquisitions of science and religion to naught, and, during centuries, to inflict tortures, physical and mental, upon hundreds of thousands of innocent men and women--a belief which held its cruel sway for nearly eighteen centuries; and this belief was that madness was mainly or largely possession by the devil. this idea of diabolic agency in mental disease had grown luxuriantly in all the oriental sacred literatures. in the series of assyrian mythological tablets in which we find those legends of the creation, the fall, the flood, and other early conceptions from which the hebrews so largely drew the accounts wrought into the book of genesis, have been discovered the formulas for driving out the evil spirits which cause disease. in the persian theology regarding the struggle of the great powers of good and evil this idea was developed to its highest point. from these and other ancient sources the jews naturally received this addition to their earlier view: the mocker of the garden of eden became satan, with legions of evil angels at his command; and the theory of diabolic causes of mental disease took a firm place in our sacred books. such cases in the old testament as the evil spirit in saul, which we now see to have been simply melancholy--and, in the new testament, the various accounts of the casting out of devils, through which is refracted the beautiful and simple story of that power by which jesus of nazareth soothed perturbed minds by his presence or quelled outbursts of madness by his words, give examples of this. in greece, too, an idea akin to this found lodgment both in the popular belief and in the philosophy of plato and socrates; and though, as we have seen, the great leaders in medical science had taught with more or less distinctness that insanity is the result of physical disease, there was a strong popular tendency to attribute the more troublesome cases of it to hostile spiritual influence.[[100]] from all these sources, but especially from our sacred books and the writings of plato, this theory that mental disease is caused largely or mainly by satanic influence passed on into the early church. in the apostolic times no belief seems to have been more firmly settled. the early fathers and doctors in the following age universally accepted it, and the apologists generally spoke of the power of casting out devils as a leading proof of the divine origin of the christian religion. this belief took firm hold upon the strongest men. the case of st. gregory the great is typical. he was a pope of exceedingly broad mind for his time, and no one will think him unjustly reckoned one of the four doctors of the western church. yet he solemnly relates that a nun, having eaten some lettuce without making the sign of the cross, swallowed a devil, and that, when commanded by a holy man to come forth, the devil replied: "how am i to blame? i was sitting on the lettuce, and this woman, not having made the sign of the cross, ate me along with it."[[101]] as a result of this idea, the christian church at an early period in its existence virtually gave up the noble conquests of greek and roman science in this field, and originated, for persons supposed to be possessed, a regular discipline, developed out of dogmatic theology. but during the centuries before theology and ecclesiasticism had become fully dominant this discipline was, as a rule, gentle and useful. the afflicted, when not too violent, were generally admitted to the exercises of public worship, and a kindly system of cure was attempted, in which prominence was given to holy water, sanctified ointments, the breath or spittle of the priest, the touching of relics, visits to holy places, and submission to mild forms of exorcism. there can be no doubt that many of these things, when judiciously used in that spirit of love and gentleness and devotion inherited by the earlier disciples from "the master," produced good effects in soothing disturbed minds and in aiding their cure. among the thousands of fetiches of various sorts then resorted to may be named, as typical, the holy handkerchief of besancon. during many centuries multitudes came from far and near to touch it; for, it was argued, if touching the garments of st. paul at ephesus had cured the diseased, how much more might be expected of a handkerchief of the lord himself! with ideas of this sort was mingled a vague belief in medical treatment, and out of this mixture were evolved such prescriptions as the following: "if an elf or a goblin come, smear his forehead with this salve, put it on his eyes, cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with the sign of the cross." "for a fiend-sick man: when a devil possesses a man, or controls him from within with disease, a spew-drink of lupin, bishopswort, henbane, garlic. pound these together, add ale and holy water." and again: "a drink for a fiend-sick man, to be drunk out of a church bell: githrife, cynoglossum, yarrow, lupin, flower-de-luce, fennel, lichen, lovage. work up to a drink with clear ale, sing seven masses over it, add garlic and holy water, and let the possessed sing the _beati immaculati_; then let him drink the dose out of a church bell, and let the priest sing over him the _domine sancte pater omnipotens_."[[102]] had this been the worst treatment of lunatics developed in the theological atmosphere of the middle ages, the world would have been spared some of the most terrible chapters in its history; but, unfortunately, the idea of the satanic possession of lunatics led to attempts to punish the indwelling demon. as this theological theory and practice became more fully developed, and ecclesiasticism more powerful to enforce it, all mildness began to disappear; the admonitions to gentle treatment by the great pagan and moslem physicians were forgotten, and the treatment of lunatics tended more and more toward severity: more and more generally it was felt that cruelty to madmen was punishment of the devil residing within or acting upon them. a few strong churchmen and laymen made efforts to resist this tendency. as far back as the fourth century, nemesius, bishop of emesa, accepted the truth as developed by pagan physicians, and aided them in strengthening it. in the seventh century, a lombard code embodied a similar effort. in the eighth century, one of charlemagne's capitularies seems to have had a like purpose. in the ninth century, that great churchman and statesman, agobard, archbishop of lyons, superior to his time in this as in so many other things, tried to make right reason prevail in this field; and, near the beginning of the tenth century, regino, abbot of prum, in the diocese of treves, insisted on treating possession as disease. but all in vain; the current streaming most directly from sundry texts in the christian sacred books, and swollen by theology, had become overwhelming.[[103]] the first great tributary poured into this stream, as we approach the bloom of the middle ages, appears to have come from the brain of michael psellus. mingling scriptural texts, platonic philosophy, and theological statements by great doctors of the church, with wild utterances obtained from lunatics, he gave forth, about the beginning of the twelfth century, a treatise on _the work of demons_. sacred science was vastly enriched thereby in various ways; but two of his conclusions, the results of his most profound thought, enforced by theologians and popularized by preachers, soon took special hold upon the thinking portion of the people at large. the first of these, which he easily based upon scripture and st. basil, was that, since all demons suffer by material fire and brimstone, they must have material bodies; the second was that, since all demons are by nature cold, they gladly seek a genial warmth by entering the bodies of men and beasts.[[104]] fed by this stream of thought, and developed in the warm atmosphere of medieval devotion, the idea of demoniacal possession as the main source of lunacy grew and blossomed and bore fruit in noxious luxuriance. there had, indeed, come into the middle ages an inheritance of scientific thought. the ideas of hippocrates, celius aurelianus, galen, and their followers, were from time to time revived; the arabian physicians, the school of salerno, such writers as salicetus and guy de chauliac, and even some of the religious orders, did something to keep scientific doctrines alive; but the tide of theological thought was too strong; it became dangerous even to seem to name possible limits to diabolical power. to deny satan was atheism; and perhaps nothing did so much to fasten the epithet "atheist" upon the medical profession as the suspicion that it did not fully acknowledge diabolical interference in mental disease. following in the lines of the earlier fathers, st. anselm, abelard, st. thomas aquinas, vincent of beauvais, all the great doctors in the medieval church, some of them in spite of occasional misgivings, upheld the idea that insanity is largely or mainly demoniacal possession, basing their belief steadily on the sacred scriptures; and this belief was followed up in every quarter by more and more constant citation of the text "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." no other text of scripture--save perhaps one--has caused the shedding of so much innocent blood. as we look over the history of the middle ages, we do, indeed, see another growth from which one might hope much; for there were two great streams of influence in the church, and never were two powers more unlike each other. on one side was the spirit of christianity, as it proceeded from the heart and mind of its blessed founder, immensely powerful in aiding the evolution of religious thought and effort, and especially of provision for the relief of suffering by religious asylums and tender care. nothing better expresses this than the touching words inscribed upon a great medieval hospital, "_christo in pauperibus suis_." but on the other side was the theological theory--proceeding, as we have seen, from the survival of ancient superstitions, and sustained by constant reference to the texts in our sacred books--that many, and probably most, of the insane were possessed by the devil or in league with him, and that the cruel treatment of lunatics was simply punishment of the devil and his minions. by this current of thought was gradually developed one of the greatest masses of superstitious cruelty that has ever afflicted humanity. at the same time the stream of christian endeavour, so far as the insane were concerned, was almost entirely cut off. in all the beautiful provision during the middle ages for the alleviation of human suffering, there was for the insane almost no care. some monasteries, indeed, gave them refuge. we hear of a charitable work done for them at the london bethlehem hospital in the thirteenth century, at geneva in the fifteenth, at marseilles in the sixteenth, by the black penitents in the south of france, by certain franciscans in northern france, by the alexian brothers on the rhine, and by various agencies in other parts of europe; but, curiously enough, the only really important effort in the christian church was stimulated by the mohammedans. certain monks, who had much to do with them in redeeming christian slaves, found in the fifteenth century what john howard found in the eighteenth, that the arabs and turks made a large and merciful provision for lunatics, such as was not seen in christian lands; and this example led to better establishments in spain and italy. all honour to this work and to the men who engaged in it; but, as a rule, these establishments were few and poor, compared with those for other diseases, and they usually degenerated into "mad-houses," where devils were cast out mainly by cruelty.[[106]] the first main weapon against the indwelling satan continued to be the exorcism; but under the influence of inferences from scripture farther and farther fetched, and of theological reasoning more and more subtle, it became something very different from the gentle procedure of earlier times, and some description of this great weapon at the time of its highest development will throw light on the laws which govern the growth of theological reasoning, as well as upon the main subject in hand. a fundamental premise in the fully developed exorcism was that, according to sacred scripture, a main characteristic of satan is pride. pride led him to rebel; for pride he was cast down; therefore the first thing to do, in driving him out of a lunatic, was to strike a fatal blow at his pride,--to disgust him. this theory was carried out logically, to the letter. the treatises on the subject simply astound one by their wealth of blasphemous and obscene epithets which it was allowable for the exorcist to use in casting out devils. the _treasury of exorcisms_ contains hundreds of pages packed with the vilest epithets which the worst imagination could invent for the purpose of overwhelming the indwelling satan.[[106b]] some of those decent enough to be printed in these degenerate days ran as follows: "thou lustful and stupid one,... thou lean sow, famine-stricken and most impure,... thou wrinkled beast, thou mangy beast, thou beast of all beasts the most beastly,... thou mad spirit,... thou bestial and foolish drunkard,... most greedy wolf,... most abominable whisperer,... thou sooty spirit from tartarus!... i cast thee down, o tartarean boor, into the infernal kitchen!... loathsome cobbler,... dingy collier,... filthy sow (_scrofa stercorata_),... perfidious boar,... envious crocodile,... malodorous drudge,... wounded basilisk,... rust-coloured asp,... swollen toad,... entangled spider,... lousy swine-herd (_porcarie pedicose_),... lowest of the low,... cudgelled ass," etc. but, in addition to this attempt to disgust satan's pride with blackguardism, there was another to scare him with tremendous words. for this purpose, thunderous names, from hebrew and greek, were imported, such as acharon, eheye, schemhamphora, tetragrammaton, homoousion, athanatos, ischiros, aecodes, and the like.[[107]] efforts were also made to drive him out with filthy and rank-smelling drugs; and, among those which can be mentioned in a printed article, we may name asafoetida, sulphur, squills, etc., which were to be burned under his nose. still further to plague him, pictures of the devil were to be spat upon, trampled under foot by people of low condition, and sprinkled with foul compounds. but these were merely preliminaries to the exorcism proper. in this the most profound theological thought and sacred science of the period culminated. most of its forms were childish, but some rise to almost miltonic grandeur. as an example of the latter, we may take the following: "by the apocalypse of jesus christ, which god hath given to make known unto his servants those things which are shortly to be; and hath signified, sending by his angel,... i exorcise you, ye angels of untold perversity! "by the seven golden candlesticks,... and by one like unto the son of man, standing in the midst of the candlesticks; by his voice, as the voice of many waters;... by his words, `i am living, who was dead; and behold, i live forever and ever; and i have the keys of death and of hell,' i say unto you, depart, o angels that show the way to eternal perdition!" besides these, were long litanies of billingsgate, cursing, and threatening. one of these "scourging" exorcisms runs partly as follows: "may agyos strike thee, as he did egypt, with frogs!... may all the devils that are thy foes rush forth upon thee, and drag thee down to hell!... may... tetragrammaton... drive thee forth and stone thee, as israel did to achan!... may the holy one trample on thee and hang thee up in an infernal fork, as was done to the five kings of the amorites!... may god set a nail to your skull, and pound it in with a hammer, as jael did unto sisera!... may... sother... break thy head and cut off thy hands, as was done to the cursed dagon!... may god hang thee in a hellish yoke, as seven men were hanged by the sons of saul!" and so on, through five pages of close-printed latin curses.[[108]] occasionally the demon is reasoned with, as follows: "o obstinate, accursed, fly!... why do you stop and hold back, when you know that your strength is lost on christ? for it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks; and, verily, the longer it takes you to go, the worse it will go with you. begone, then: take flight, thou venomous hisser, thou lying worm, thou begetter of vipers!"[[108b]] this procedure and its results were recognised as among the glories of the church. as typical, we may mention an exorcism directed by a certain bishop of beauvais, which was so effective that five devils gave up possession of a sufferer and signed their names, each for himself and his subordinate imps, to an agreement that the possessed should be molested no more. so, too, the jesuit fathers at vienna, in 1583, gloried in the fact that in such a contest they had cast out twelve thousand six hundred and fifty-two living devils. the ecclesiastical annals of the middle ages, and, indeed, of a later period, abound in boasts of such "mighty works."[[109]] such was the result of a thousand years of theological reasoning, by the strongest minds in europe, upon data partly given in scripture and partly inherited from paganism, regarding satan and his work among men. under the guidance of theology, always so severe against "science falsely so called," the world had come a long way indeed from the soothing treatment of the possessed by him who bore among the noblest of his titles that of "the great physician." the result was natural: the treatment of the insane fell more and more into the hands of the jailer, the torturer, and the executioner. to go back for a moment to the beginnings of this unfortunate development. in spite of the earlier and more kindly tendency in the church, the synod of ancyra, as early as 314 a. d., commanded the expulsion of possessed persons from the church; the visigothic christians whipped them; and charlemagne, in spite of some good enactments, imprisoned them. men and women, whose distempered minds might have been restored to health by gentleness and skill, were driven into hopeless madness by noxious medicines and brutality. some few were saved as mere lunatics--they were surrendered to general carelessness, and became simply a prey to ridicule and aimless brutality; but vast numbers were punished as tabernacles of satan. one of the least terrible of these punishments, and perhaps the most common of all, was that of scourging demons out of the body of a lunatic. this method commended itself even to the judgment of so thoughtful and kindly a personage as sir thomas more, and as late as the sixteenth century. but if the disease continued, as it naturally would after such treatment, the authorities frequently felt justified in driving out the demons by torture.[[110]] interesting monuments of this idea, so fruitful in evil, still exist. in the great cities of central europe, "witch towers," where witches and demoniacs were tortured, and "fool towers," where the more gentle lunatics were imprisoned, may still be seen. in the cathedrals we still see this idea fossilized. devils and imps, struck into stone, clamber upon towers, prowl under cornices, peer out from bosses of foliage, perch upon capitals, nestle under benches, flame in windows. above the great main entrance, the most common of all representations still shows satan and his imps scowling, jeering, grinning, while taking possession of the souls of men and scourging them with serpents, or driving them with tridents, or dragging them with chains into the flaming mouth of hell. even in the most hidden and sacred places of the medieval cathedral we still find representations of satanic power in which profanity and obscenity run riot. in these representations the painter and the glass-stainer vied with the sculptor. among the early paintings on canvas a well-known example represents the devil in the shape of a dragon, perched near the head of a dying man, eager to seize his soul as it issues from his mouth, and only kept off by the efforts of the attendant priest. typical are the colossal portrait of satan, and the vivid picture of the devils cast out of the possessed and entering into the swine, as shown in the cathedral-windows of strasburg. so, too, in the windows of chartres cathedral we see a saint healing a lunatic: the saint, with a long devil-scaring formula in latin issuing from his mouth; and the lunatic, with a little detestable hobgoblin, horned, hoofed, and tailed, issuing from _his_ mouth. these examples are but typical of myriads in cathedrals and abbeys and parish churches throughout europe; and all served to impress upon the popular mind a horror of everything called diabolic, and a hatred of those charged with it. these sermons in stones preceded the printed book; they were a sculptured bible, which preceded luther's pictorial bible.[[111]] satan and his imps were among the principal personages in every popular drama, and "hell's mouth" was a piece of stage scenery constantly brought into requisition. a miracle-play without a full display of the diabolic element in it would have stood a fair chance of being pelted from the stage.[[111b]] not only the popular art but the popular legends embodied these ideas. the chroniclers delighted in them; the _lives of the saints_ abounded in them; sermons enforced them from every pulpit. what wonder, then, that men and women had vivid dreams of satanic influence, that dread of it was like dread of the plague, and that this terror spread the disease enormously, until we hear of convents, villages, and even large districts, ravaged by epidemics of diabolical possession![[112]] and this terror naturally bred not only active cruelty toward those supposed to be possessed, but indifference to the sufferings of those acknowledged to be lunatics. as we have already seen, while ample and beautiful provision was made for every other form of human suffering, for this there was comparatively little; and, indeed, even this little was generally worse than none. of this indifference and cruelty we have a striking monument in a single english word--a word originally significant of gentleness and mercy, but which became significant of wild riot, brutality, and confusion-bethlehem hospital became "bedlam." modern art has also dwelt upon this theme, and perhaps the most touching of all its exhibitions is the picture by a great french master, representing a tender woman bound to a column and exposed to the jeers, insults, and missiles of street ruffians.[[112b]] here and there, even in the worst of times, men arose who attempted to promote a more humane view, but with little effect. one expositor of st. matthew, having ventured to recall the fact that some of the insane were spoken of in the new testament as lunatics and to suggest that their madness might be caused by the moon, was answered that their madness was not caused by the moon, but by the devil, who avails himself of the moonlight for his work.[[112c]] one result of this idea was a mode of cure which especially aggravated and spread mental disease: the promotion of great religious processions. troops of men and women, crying, howling, imploring saints, and beating themselves with whips, visited various sacred shrines, images, and places in the hope of driving off the powers of evil. the only result was an increase in the numbers of the diseased. for hundreds of years this idea of diabolic possession was steadily developed. it was believed that devils entered into animals, and animals were accordingly exorcised, tried, tortured, convicted, and executed. the great st. ambrose tells us that a priest, while saying mass, was troubled by the croaking of frogs in a neighbouring marsh; that he exorcised them, and so stopped their noise. st. bernard, as the monkish chroniclers tell us, mounting the pulpit to preach in his abbey, was interrupted by a cloud of flies; straightway the saint uttered the sacred formula of excommunication, when the flies fell dead upon the pavement in heaps, and were cast out with shovels! a formula of exorcism attributed to a saint of the ninth century, which remained in use down to a recent period, especially declares insects injurious to crops to be possessed of evil spirits, and names, among the animals to be excommunicated or exorcised, mice, moles, and serpents. the use of exorcism against caterpillars and grasshoppers was also common. in the thirteenth century a bishop of lausanne, finding that the eels in lake leman troubled the fishermen, attempted to remove the difficulty by exorcism, and two centuries later one of his successors excommunicated all the may-bugs in the diocese. as late as 1731 there appears an entry on the municipal register of thonon as follows: "_resolved_, that this town join with other parishes of this province in obtaining from rome an excommunication against the insects, and that it will contribute _pro rata_ to the expenses of the same." did any one venture to deny that animals could be possessed by satan, he was at once silenced by reference to the entrance of satan into the serpent in the garden of eden, and to the casting of devils into swine by the founder of christianity himself.[[113]] one part of this superstition most tenaciously held was the belief that a human being could be transformed into one of the lower animals. this became a fundamental point. the most dreaded of predatory animals in the middle ages were the wolves. driven from the hills and forests in the winter by hunger, they not only devoured the flocks, but sometimes came into the villages and seized children. from time to time men and women whose brains were disordered dreamed that they had been changed into various animals, and especially into wolves. on their confessing this, and often implicating others, many executions of lunatics resulted; moreover, countless sane victims, suspected of the same impossible crime, were forced by torture to confess it, and sent unpitied to the stake. the belief in such a transformation pervaded all europe, and lasted long even in protestant countries. probably no article in the witch creed had more adherents in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries than this. nearly every parish in europe had its resultant horrors. the reformed church in all its branches fully accepted the doctrines of witchcraft and diabolic possession, and developed them still further. no one urged their fundamental ideas more fully than luther. he did, indeed, reject portions of the witchcraft folly; but to the influence of devils he not only attributed his maladies, but his dreams, and nearly everything that thwarted or disturbed him. the flies which lighted upon his book, the rats which kept him awake at night, he believed to be devils; the resistance of the archbishop of mayence to his ideas, he attributed to satan literally working in that prelate's heart; to his disciples he told stories of men who had been killed by rashly resisting the devil. insanity, he was quite sure, was caused by satan, and he exorcised sufferers. against some he appears to have advised stronger remedies; and his horror of idiocy, as resulting from satanic influence, was so great, that on one occasion he appears to have advised the killing of an idiot child, as being the direct offspring of satan. yet luther was one of the most tender and loving of men; in the whole range of literature there is hardly anything more touching than his words and tributes to children. in enforcing his ideas regarding insanity, he laid stress especially upon the question of st. paul as to the bewitching of the galatians, and, regarding idiocy, on the account in genesis of the birth of children whose fathers were "sons of god" and whose mothers were "daughters of men." one idea of his was especially characteristic. the descent of christ into hell was a frequent topic of discussion in the reformed church. melanchthon, with his love of greek studies, held that the purpose of the saviour in making such a descent was to make himself known to the great and noble men of antiquity--plato, socrates, and the rest; but luther insisted that his purpose was to conquer satan in a hand-to-hand struggle. this idea of diabolic influence pervaded his conversation, his preaching, his writings, and spread thence to the lutheran church in general. calvin also held to the same theory, and, having more power with less kindness of heart than luther, carried it out with yet greater harshness. beza was especially severe against those who believed insanity to be a natural malady, and declared, "such persons are refuted both by sacred and profane history." under the influence, then, of such infallible teachings, in the older church and in the new, this superstition was developed more and more into cruelty; and as the biblical texts, popularized in the sculptures and windows and mural decorations of the great medieval cathedrals, had done much to develop it among the people, so luther's translation of the bible, especially in the numerous editions of it illustrated with engravings, wrought with enormous power to spread and deepen it. in every peasant's cottage some one could spell out the story of the devil bearing christ through the air and placing him upon the pinnacle of the temple--of the woman with seven devils--of the devils cast into the swine. every peasant's child could be made to understand the quaint pictures in the family bible or the catechism which illustrated vividly all those texts. in the ideas thus deeply implanted, the men who in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries struggled against this mass of folly and cruelty found the worst barrier to right reason.[[115]] such was the treatment of demoniacs developed by theology, and such the practice enforced by ecclesiasticism for more than a thousand years. how an atmosphere was spread in which this belief began to dissolve away, how its main foundations were undermined by science, and how there came in gradually a reign of humanity, will now be related. ii. beginnings of a healthful scepticism. we have now seen the culmination of the old procedure regarding insanity, as it was developed under theology and enforced by ecclesiasticism; and we have noted how, under the influence of luther and calvin, the reformation rather deepened than weakened the faith in the malice and power of a personal devil. nor was this, in the reformed churches any more than in the old, mere matter of theory. as in the early ages of christianity, its priests especially appealed, in proof of the divine mission, to their power over the enemy of mankind in the bodies of men, so now the clergy of the rival creeds eagerly sought opportunities to establish the truth of their own and the falsehood of their opponents' doctrines by the visible casting out of devils. true, their methods differed somewhat: where the catholic used holy water and consecrated wax, the protestant was content with texts of scripture and importunate prayer; but the supplementary physical annoyance of the indwelling demon did not greatly vary. sharp was the competition for the unhappy objects of treatment. each side, of course, stoutly denied all efficacy to its adversaries' efforts, urging that any seeming victory over satan was due not to the defeat but to the collusion of the fiend. as, according to the master himself, "no man can by beelzebub cast out devils," the patient was now in greater need of relief than before; and more than one poor victim had to bear alternately lutheran, roman, and perhaps calvinistic exorcism.[[117]] but far more serious in its consequences was another rivalry to which in the sixteenth century the clergy of all creeds found themselves subject. the revival of the science of medicine, under the impulse of the new study of antiquity, suddenly bade fair to take out of the hands of the church the profession of which she had enjoyed so long and so profitable a monopoly. only one class of diseases remained unquestionably hers--those which were still admitted to be due to the direct personal interference of satan--and foremost among these was insanity.[[117b]] it was surely no wonder that an age of religious controversy and excitement should be exceptionally prolific in ailments of the mind; and, to men who mutually taught the utter futility of that baptismal exorcism by which the babes of their misguided neighbours were made to renounce the devil and his works, it ought not to have seemed strange that his victims now became more numerous.[[117c]] but so simple an explanation did not satisfy these physicians of souls; they therefore devised a simpler one: their patients, they alleged, were bewitched, and their increase was due to the growing numbers of those human allies of satan known as witches. already, before the close of the fifteenth century, pope innocent viii had issued the startling bull by which he called on the archbishops, bishops, and other clergy of germany to join hands with his inquisitors in rooting out these willing bond-servants of satan, who were said to swarm throughout all that country and to revel in the blackest crimes. other popes had since reiterated the appeal; and, though none of these documents touched on the blame of witchcraft for diabolic possession, the inquisitors charged with their execution pointed it out most clearly in their fearful handbook, the _witch-hammer_, and prescribed the special means by which possession thus caused should be met. these teachings took firm root in religious minds everywhere; and during the great age of witch-burning that followed the reformation it may well be doubted whether any single cause so often gave rise to an outbreak of the persecution as the alleged bewitchment of some poor mad or foolish or hysterical creature. the persecution, thus once under way, fed itself; for, under the terrible doctrine of "excepted cases," by which in the religious crimes of heresy and witchcraft there was no limit to the use of torture, the witch was forced to confess to accomplices, who in turn accused others, and so on to the end of the chapter.[[118]] the horrors of such a persecution, with the consciousness of an ever-present devil it breathed and the panic terror of him it inspired, could not but aggravate the insanity it claimed to cure. well-authenticated, though rarer than is often believed, were the cases where crazed women voluntarily accused themselves of this impossible crime. one of the most eminent authorities on diseases of the mind declares that among the unfortunate beings who were put to death for witchcraft he recognises well-marked victims of cerebral disorders; while an equally eminent authority in germany tells us that, in a most careful study of the original records of their trials by torture, he has often found their answers and recorded conversations exactly like those familiar to him in our modern lunatic asylums, and names some forms of insanity which constantly and un mistakably appear among those who suffered for criminal dealings with the devil.[[119]] the result of this widespread terror was naturally, therefore, a steady increase in mental disorders. a great modern authority tells us that, although modern civilization tends to increase insanity, the number of lunatics at present is far less than in the ages of faith and in the reformation period. the treatment of the "possessed," as we find it laid down in standard treatises, sanctioned by orthodox churchmen and jurists, accounts for this abundantly. one sort of treatment used for those accused of witchcraft will also serve to show this--the "_tortura insomniae_." of all things in brain-disease, calm and regular sleep is most certainly beneficial; yet, under this practice, these half-crazed creatures were prevented, night after night and day after day, from sleeping or even resting. in this way temporary delusion became chronic insanity, mild cases became violent, torture and death ensued, and the "ways of god to man" were justified.[[119b]] but the most contemptible creatures in all those centuries were the physicians who took sides with religious orthodoxy. while we have, on the side of truth, flade sacrificing his life, cornelius agrippa his liberty, wier and loos their hopes of preferment, bekker his position, and thomasius his ease, reputation, and friends, we find, as allies of the other side, a troop of eminently respectable doctors mixing scripture, metaphysics, and pretended observations to support the "safe side" and to deprecate interference with the existing superstition, which seemed to them "a very safe belief to be held by the common people."[[119c]] against one form of insanity both catholics and protestants were especially cruel. nothing is more common in all times of religious excitement than strange personal hallucinations, involving the belief, by the insane patient, that he is a divine person. in the most striking representation of insanity that has ever been made, kaulbach shows, at the centre of his wonderful group, a patient drawing attention to himself as the saviour of the world. sometimes, when this form of disease took a milder hysterical character, the subject of it was treated with reverence, and even elevated to sainthood: such examples as st. francis of assisi and st. catherine of siena in italy, st. bridget in sweden, st. theresa in spain, st. mary alacoque in france, and louise lateau in belgium, are typical. but more frequently such cases shocked public feeling, and were treated with especial rigour: typical of this is the case of simon marin, who in his insanity believed himself to be the son of god, and was on that account burned alive at paris and his ashes scattered to the winds.[[120]] the profundity of theologians and jurists constantly developed new theories as to the modes of diabolic entrance into the "possessed." one such theory was that satan could be taken into the mouth with one's food--perhaps in the form of an insect swallowed on a leaf of salad, and this was sanctioned, as we have seen, by no less infallible an authority than gregory the great, pope and saint--another theory was that satan entered the body when the mouth was opened to breathe, and there are well-authenticated cases of doctors and divines who, when casting out evil spirits, took especial care lest the imp might jump into their own mouths from the mouth of the patient. another theory was that the devil entered human beings during sleep; and at a comparatively recent period a king of spain was wont to sleep between two monks, to keep off the devil.[[121]] the monasteries were frequent sources of that form of mental disease which was supposed to be caused by bewitchment. from the earliest period it is evident that monastic life tended to develop insanity. such cases as that of st. anthony are typical of its effects upon the strongest minds; but it was especially the convents for women that became the great breeding-beds of this disease. among the large numbers of women and girls thus assembled--many of them forced into monastic seclusion against their will, for the reason that their families could give them no dower--subjected to the unsatisfied longings, suspicions, bickerings, petty jealousies, envies, and hatreds, so inevitable in convent life--mental disease was not unlikely to be developed at any moment. hysterical excitement in nunneries took shapes sometimes comical, but more generally tragical. noteworthy is it that the last places where executions for witchcraft took place were mainly in the neighbourhood of great nunneries; and the last famous victim, of the myriads executed in germany for this imaginary crime, was sister anna renata singer, sub-prioress of a nunnery near wurzburg.[[121b]] the same thing was seen among young women exposed to sundry fanatical protestant preachers. insanity, both temporary and permanent, was thus frequently developed among the huguenots of france, and has been thus produced in america, from the days of the salem persecution down to the "camp meetings" of the present time.[[121c]] at various times, from the days of st. agobard of lyons in the ninth century to pomponatius in the sixteenth, protests or suggestions, more or less timid, had been made by thoughtful men against this system. medicine had made some advance toward a better view, but the theological torrent had generally overwhelmed all who supported a scientific treatment. at last, toward the end of the sixteenth century, two men made a beginning of a much more serious attack upon this venerable superstition. the revival of learning, and the impulse to thought on material matters given during the "age of discovery," undoubtedly produced an atmosphere which made the work of these men possible. in the year 1563, in the midst of demonstrations of demoniacal possession by the most eminent theologians and judges, who sat in their robes and looked wise, while women, shrieking, praying, and blaspheming, were put to the torture, a man arose who dared to protest effectively that some of the persons thus charged might be simply insane; and this man was john wier, of cleves. his protest does not at this day strike us as particularly bold. in his books, _de praestigiis daemonum_ and _de lamiis_, he did his best not to offend religious or theological susceptibilities; but he felt obliged to call attention to the mingled fraud and delusion of those who claimed to be bewitched, and to point out that it was often not their accusers, but the alleged witches themselves, who were really ailing, and to urge that these be brought first of all to a physician. his book was at once attacked by the most eminent theologians. one of the greatest laymen of his time, jean bodin, also wrote with especial power against it, and by a plentiful use of scriptural texts gained to all appearance a complete victory: this superstition seemed thus fastened upon europe for a thousand years more. but doubt was in the air, and, about a quarter of a century after the publication of wier's book there were published in france the essays of a man by no means so noble, but of far greater genius--michel de montaigne. the general scepticism which his work promoted among the french people did much to produce an atmosphere in which the belief in witchcraft and demoniacal possession must inevitably wither. but this process, though real, was hidden, and the victory still seemed on the theological side. the development of the new truth and its struggle against the old error still went on. in holland, balthazar bekker wrote his book against the worst forms of the superstition, and attempted to help the scientific side by a text from the second epistle of st. peter, showing that the devils had been confined by the almighty, and therefore could not be doing on earth the work which was imputed to them. but bekker's protestant brethren drove him from his pulpit, and he narrowly escaped with his life. the last struggles of a great superstition are very frequently the worst. so it proved in this case. in the first half of the seventeenth century the cruelties arising from the old doctrine were more numerous and severe than ever before. in spain, sweden, italy, and, above all, in germany, we see constant efforts to suppress the evolution of the new truth. but in the midst of all this reactionary rage glimpses of right reason began to appear. it is significant that at this very time, when the old superstition was apparently everywhere triumphant, the declaration by poulet that he and his brother and his cousin had, by smearing themselves with ointment, changed themselves into wolves and devoured children, brought no severe punishment upon them. the judges sent him to a mad-house. more and more, in spite of frantic efforts from the pulpit to save the superstition, great writers and jurists, especially in france, began to have glimpses of the truth and courage to uphold it. malebranche spoke against the delusion; seguier led the french courts to annul several decrees condemning sorcerers; the great chancellor, d'aguesseau, declared to the parliament of paris that, if they wished to stop sorcery, they must stop talking about it--that sorcerers are more to be pitied than blamed.[[123]] but just at this time, as the eighteenth century was approaching, the theological current was strengthened by a great ecclesiastic--the greatest theologian that france has produced, whose influence upon religion and upon the mind of louis xiv was enormous--bossuet, bishop of meaux. there had been reason to expect that bossuet would at least do something to mitigate the superstition; for his writings show that, in much which before his day had been ascribed to diabolic possession, he saw simple lunacy. unfortunately, the same adherence to the literal interpretation of scripture which led him to oppose every other scientific truth developed in his time, led him also to attack this: he delivered and published two great sermons, which, while showing some progress in the form of his belief, showed none the less that the fundamental idea of diabolic possession was still to be tenaciously held. what this idea was may be seen in one typical statement: he declared that "a single devil could turn the earth round as easily as we turn a marble."[[124]] iii. the final struggle and victory of science.- pinel and tuke. the theological current, thus re-enforced, seemed to become again irresistible; but it was only so in appearance. in spite of it, french scepticism continued to develop; signs of quiet change among the mass of thinking men were appearing more and more; and in 1672 came one of great significance, for, the parliament of rouen having doomed fourteen sorcerers to be burned, their execution was delayed for two years, evidently on account of scepticism among officials; and at length the great minister of louis xiv, colbert, issued an edict checking such trials, and ordering the convicted to be treated for madness. victory seemed now to incline to the standard of science, and in 1725 no less a personage than st. andre, a court physician, dared to publish a work virtually showing "demoniacal possession" to be lunacy. the french philosophy, from the time of its early development in the eighteenth century under montesquieu and voltaire, naturally strengthened the movement; the results of _post-mortem_ examinations of the brains of the "possessed" confirmed it; and in 1768 we see it take form in a declaration by the parliament of paris, that possessed persons were to be considered as simply diseased. still, the old belief lingered on, its life flickering up from time to time in those parts of france most under ecclesiastical control, until in these last years of the nineteenth century a blow has been given it by the researches of charcot and his compeers which will probably soon extinguish it. one evidence of satanic intercourse with mankind especially, on which for many generations theologians had laid peculiar stress, and for which they had condemned scores of little girls and hundreds of old women to a most cruel death, was found to be nothing more than one of the many results of hysteria.[[125]] in england the same warfare went on. john locke had asserted the truth, but the theological view continued to control public opinion. most prominent among those who exercised great power in its behalf was john wesley, and the strength and beauty of his character made his influence in this respect all the more unfortunate. the same servitude to the mere letter of scripture which led him to declare that "to give up witchcraft is to give up the bible," controlled him in regard to insanity. he insisted, on the authority of the old testament, that bodily diseases are sometimes caused by devils, and, upon the authority of the new testament, that the gods of the heathen are demons; he believed that dreams, while in some cases caused by bodily conditions and passions, are shown by scripture to be also caused by occult powers of evil; he cites a physician to prove that "most lunatics are really demoniacs." in his great sermon on _evil angels_, he dwells upon this point especially; resists the idea that "possession" may be epilepsy, even though ordinary symptoms of epilepsy be present; protests against "giving up to infidels such proofs of an invisible world as are to be found in diabolic possession"; and evidently believes that some who have been made hysterical by his own preaching are "possessed of satan." on all this, and much more to the same effect, he insisted with all the power given to him by his deep religious nature, his wonderful familiarity with the scriptures, his natural acumen, and his eloquence. but here, too, science continued its work. the old belief was steadily undermined, an atmosphere favourable to the truth was more and more developed, and the act of parliament, in 1735, which banished the crime of witchcraft from the statute book, was the beginning of the end. in germany we see the beginnings of a similar triumph for science. in prussia, that sturdy old monarch, frederick william i, nullified the efforts of the more zealous clergy and orthodox jurists to keep up the old doctrine in his dominions; throughout protestant germany, where it had raged most severely, it was, as a rule, cast out of the church formulas, catechisms, and hymns, and became more and more a subject for jocose allusion. from force of habit, and for the sake of consistency, some of the more conservative theologians continued to repeat the old arguments, and there were many who insisted upon the belief as absolutely necessary to ordinary orthodoxy; but it is evident that it had become a mere conventionality, that men only believed that they believed it, and now a reform seemed possible in the treatment of the insane.[[126]] in austria, the government set dr. antonio haen at making careful researches into the causes of diabolic possession. he did not think it best, in view of the power of the church, to dispute the possibility or probability of such cases, but simply decided, after thorough investigation, that out of the many cases which had been brought to him, not one supported the belief in demoniacal influence. an attempt was made to follow up this examination, and much was done by men like francke and van swieten, and especially by the reforming emperor, joseph ii, to rescue men and women who would otherwise have fallen victims to the prevalent superstition. unfortunately, joseph had arrayed against himself the whole power of the church, and most of his good efforts seemed brought to naught. but what the noblest of the old race of german emperors could not do suddenly, the german men of science did gradually. quietly and thoroughly, by proofs that could not be gainsaid, they recovered the old scientific fact established in pagan greece and rome, that madness is simply physical disease. but they now established it on a basis that can never again be shaken; for, in _post-mortem_ examinations of large numbers of "possessed" persons, they found evidence of brain-disease. typical is a case at hamburg in 1729. an afflicted woman showed in a high degree all the recognised characteristics of diabolic possession: exorcisms, preachings, and sanctified remedies of every sort were tried in vain; milder medical means were then tried, and she so far recovered that she was allowed to take the communion before she died: the autopsy, held in the presence of fifteen physicians and a public notary, showed it to be simply a case of chronic meningitis. the work of german men of science in this field is noble indeed; a great succession, from wier to virchow, have erected a barrier against which all the efforts of reactionists beat in vain.[[127]] in america, the belief in diabolic influence had, in the early colonial period, full control. the mathers, so superior to their time in many things, were children of their time in this: they supported the belief fully, and the salem witchcraft horrors were among its results; but the discussion of that folly by calef struck it a severe blow, and a better influence spread rapidly throughout the colonies. by the middle of the eighteenth century belief in diabolic possession had practically disappeared from all enlightened countries, and during the nineteenth century it has lost its hold even in regions where the medieval spirit continues strongest. throughout the middle ages, as we have seen, satan was a leading personage in the miracle-plays, but in 1810 the bavarian government refused to allow the passion play at ober-ammergau if satan was permitted to take any part in it; in spite of heroic efforts to maintain the old belief, even the childlike faith of the tyrolese had arrived at a point which made a representation of satan simply a thing to provoke laughter. very significant also was the trial which took place at wemding, in southern germany, in 1892. a boy had become hysterical, and the capuchin father aurelian tried to exorcise him, and charged a peasant's wife, frau herz, with bewitching him, on evidence that would have cost the woman her life at any time during the seventeenth century. thereupon the woman's husband brought suit against father aurelian for slander. the latter urged in his defence that the boy was possessed of an evil spirit, if anybody ever was; that what had been said and done was in accordance with the rules and regulations of the church, as laid down in decrees, formulas, and rituals sanctioned by popes, councils, and innumerable bishops during ages. all in vain. the court condemned the good father to fine and imprisonment. as in a famous english case, "hell was dismissed, with costs." even more significant is the fact that recently a boy declared by two bavarian priests to be possessed by the devil, was taken, after all church exorcisms had failed, to father kneipp's hydropathic establishment and was there speedily cured.[[128]] but, although the old superstition had been discarded, the inevitable conservatism in theology and medicine caused many old abuses to be continued for years after the theological basis for them had really disappeared. there still lingered also a feeling of dislike toward madmen, engendered by the early feeling of hostility toward them, which sufficed to prevent for many years any practical reforms. what that old theory had been, even under the most favourable circumstances and among the best of men, we have seen in the fact that sir thomas more ordered acknowledged lunatics to be publicly flogged; and it will be remembered that shakespeare makes one of his characters refer to madmen as deserving "a dark house and a whip." what the old practice was and continued to be we know but too well. taking protestant england as an example--and it was probably the most humane--we have a chain of testimony. toward the end of the sixteenth century, bethlehem hospital was reported too loathsome for any man to enter; in the seventeenth century, john evelyn found it no better; in the eighteenth, hogarth's pictures and contemporary reports show it to be essentially what it had been in those previous centuries.[[129]] the first humane impulse of any considerable importance in this field seems to have been aroused in america. in the year 1751 certain members of the society of friends founded a small hospital for the insane, on better principles, in pennsylvania. to use the language of its founders, it was intended "as a good work, acceptable to god." twenty years later virginia established a similar asylum, and gradually others appeared in other colonies. but it was in france that mercy was to be put upon a scientific basis, and was to lead to practical results which were to convert the world to humanity. in this case, as in so many others, from france was spread and popularized not only the scepticism which destroyed the theological theory, but also the devotion which built up the new scientific theory and endowed the world with a new treasure of civilization. in 1756 some physicians of the great hospital at paris known as the hotel-dieu protested that the cruelties prevailing in the treatment of the insane were aggravating the disease; and some protests followed from other quarters. little effect was produced at first; but just before the french revolution, tenon, la rochefoucauld-liancourt, and others took up the subject, and in 1791 a commission was appointed to undertake a reform. by great good fortune, the man selected to lead in the movement was one who had already thrown his heart into it--jean baptiste pinel. in 1792 pinel was made physician at bicetre, one of the most extensive lunatic asylums in france, and to the work there imposed upon him he gave all his powers. little was heard of him at first. the most terrible scenes of the french revolution were drawing nigh; but he laboured on, modestly and devotedly--apparently without a thought of the great political storm raging about him. his first step was to discard utterly the whole theological doctrine of "possession," and especially the idea that insanity is the result of any subtle spiritual influence. he simply put in practice the theory that lunacy is the result of bodily disease. it is a curious matter for reflection, that but for this sway of the destructive philosophy of the eighteenth century, and of the terrorists during the french revolution, pinel's blessed work would in all probability have been thwarted, and he himself excommunicated for heresy and driven from his position. doubtless the same efforts would have been put forth against him which the church, a little earlier, had put forth against inoculation as a remedy for smallpox; but just at that time the great churchmen had other things to think of besides crushing this particular heretic: they were too much occupied in keeping their own heads from the guillotine to give attention to what was passing in the head of pinel. he was allowed to work in peace, and in a short time the reign of diabolism at bicetre was ended. what the exorcisms and fetiches and prayers and processions, and drinking of holy water, and ringing of bells, had been unable to accomplish during eighteen hundred years, he achieved in a few months. his method was simple: for the brutality and cruelty which had prevailed up to that time, he substituted kindness and gentleness. the possessed were taken out of their dungeons, given sunny rooms, and allowed the liberty of pleasant ground for exercise; chains were thrown aside. at the same time, the mental power of each patient was developed by its fitting exercise, and disease was met with remedies sanctioned by experiment, observation, and reason. thus was gained one of the greatest, though one of the least known, triumphs of modern science and humanity. the results obtained by pinel had an instant effect, not only in france but throughout europe: the news spread from hospital to hospital. at his death, esquirol took up his work; and, in the place of the old training of judges, torturers, and executioners by theology to carry out its ideas in cruelty, there was now trained a school of physicians to develop science in this field and carry out its decrees in mercy.[[132]] a similar evolution of better science and practice took place in england. in spite of the coldness, and even hostility, of the greater men in the established church, and notwithstanding the scriptural demonstrations of wesley that the majority of the insane were possessed of devils, the scientific method steadily gathered strength. in 1750 the condition of the insane began to attract especial attention; it was found that mad-houses were swayed by ideas utterly indefensible, and that the practices engendered by these ideas were monstrous. as a rule, the patients were immured in cells, and in many cases were chained to the walls; in others, flogging and starvation played leading parts, and in some cases the patients were killed. naturally enough, john howard declared, in 1789, that he found in constantinople a better insane asylum than the great st. luke's hospital in london. well might he do so; for, ever since caliph omar had protected and encouraged the scientific investigation of insanity by paul of aegina, the moslem treatment of the insane had been far more merciful than the system prevailing throughout christendom.[[132b]] in 1792--the same year in which pinel began his great work in france--william tuke began a similar work in england. there seems to have been no connection between these two reformers; each wrought independently of the other, but the results arrived at were the same. so, too, in the main, were their methods; and in the little house of william tuke, at york, began a better era for england. the name which this little asylum received is a monument both of the old reign of cruelty and of the new reign of humanity. every old name for such an asylum had been made odious and repulsive by ages of misery; in a happy moment of inspiration tuke's gentle quaker wife suggested a new name; and, in accordance with this suggestion, the place became known as a "retreat." from the great body of influential classes in church and state tuke received little aid. the influence of the theological spirit was shown when, in that same year, dr. pangster published his _observations on mental disorders_, and, after displaying much ignorance as to the causes and nature of insanity, summed up by saying piously, "here our researches must stop, and we must declare that `wonderful are the works of the lord, and his ways past finding out.'" such seemed to be the view of the church at large: though the new "retreat" was at one of the two great ecclesiastical centres of england, we hear of no aid or encouragement from the archbishop of york or from his clergy. nor was this the worst: the indirect influence of the theological habit of thought and ecclesiastical prestige was displayed in the _edinburgh review_. that great organ of opinion, not content with attacking tuke, poured contempt upon his work, as well as on that of pinel. a few of tuke's brother and sister quakers seem to have been his only reliance; and in a letter regarding his efforts at that time he says, "all men seem to desert me."[[133]] in this atmosphere of english conservative opposition or indifference the work could not grow rapidly. as late as 1815, a member of parliament stigmatized the insane asylums of england as the shame of the nation; and even as late as 1827, and in a few cases as late as 1850, there were revivals of the old absurdity and brutality. down to a late period, in the hospitals of st. luke and bedlam, long rows of the insane were chained to the walls of the corridors. but gardner at lincoln, donnelly at hanwell, and a new school of practitioners in mental disease, took up the work of tuke, and the victory in england was gained in practice as it had been previously gained in theory. there need be no controversy regarding the comparative merits of these two benefactors of our race, pinel and tuke. they clearly did their thinking and their work independently of each other, and thereby each strengthened the other and benefited mankind. all that remains to be said is, that while france has paid high honours to pinel, as to one who did much to free the world from one of its most cruel superstitions and to bring in a reign of humanity over a wide empire, england has as yet made no fitting commemoration of her great benefactor in this field. york minster holds many tombs of men, of whom some were blessings to their fellow-beings, while some were but "solemnly constituted impostors" and parasites upon the body politic; yet, to this hour, that great temple has received no consecration by a monument to the man who did more to alleviate human misery than any other who has ever entered it. but the place of these two men in history is secure. they stand with grotius, thomasius, and beccaria--the men who in modern times have done most to prevent unmerited sorrow. they were not, indeed, called to suffer like their great compeers; they were not obliged to see their writings--among the most blessed gifts of god to man--condemned, as were those of grotius and beccaria by the catholic church, and those of thomasius by a large section of the protestant church; they were not obliged to flee for their lives, as were grotius and thomasius; but their effort is none the less worthy. the french revolution, indeed, saved pinel, and the decay of english ecclesiasticism gave tuke his opportunity; but their triumphs are none the less among the glories of our race; for they were the first acknowledged victors in a struggle of science for humanity which had lasted nearly two thousand years. chapter xvi. from diabolism to hysteria. i. the epidemics of "possession." in the foregoing chapter i have sketched the triumph of science in destroying the idea that individual lunatics are "possessed by devils," in establishing the truth that insanity is physical disease, and in substituting for superstitious cruelties toward the insane a treatment mild, kindly, and based upon ascertained facts. the satan who had so long troubled individual men and women thus became extinct; henceforth his fossil remains only were preserved: they may still be found in the sculptures and storied windows of medieval churches, in sundry liturgies, and in popular forms of speech. but another satan still lived--a satan who wrought on a larger scale--who took possession of multitudes. for, after this triumph of the scientific method, there still remained a class of mental disorders which could not be treated in asylums, which were not yet fully explained by science, and which therefore gave arguments of much apparent strength to the supporters of the old theological view: these were the epidemics of "diabolic possession" which for so many centuries afflicted various parts of the world. when obliged, then, to retreat from their old position in regard to individual cases of insanity, the more conservative theologians promptly referred to these epidemics as beyond the domain of science--as clear evidences of the power of satan; and, as the basis of this view, they cited from the old testament frequent references to witchcraft, and, from the new testament, st. paul's question as to the possible bewitching of the galatians, and the bewitching of the people of samaria by simon the magician. naturally, such leaders had very many adherents in that class, so large in all times, who find that "to follow foolish precedents and wink with both our eyes, is easier than to think."[[136]] it must be owned that their case seemed strong. though in all human history, so far as it is closely known, these phenomena had appeared, and though every classical scholar could recall the wild orgies of the priests, priestesses, and devotees of dionysus and cybele, and the epidemic of wild rage which took its name from some of these, the great fathers and doctors of the church had left a complete answer to any scepticism based on these facts; they simply pointed to st. paul's declaration that the gods of the heathen were devils: these examples, then, could be transformed into a powerful argument for diabolic possession.[[136b]] but it was more especially the epidemics of diabolism in medieval and modern times which gave strength to the theological view, and from these i shall present a chain of typical examples. as early as the eleventh century we find clear accounts of diabolical possession taking the form of epidemics of raving, jumping, dancing, and convulsions, the greater number of the sufferers being women and children. in a time so rude, accounts of these manifestations would rarely receive permanent record; but it is very significant that even at the beginning of the eleventh century we hear of them at the extremes of europe--in northern germany and in southern italy. at various times during that century we get additional glimpses of these exhibitions, but it is not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that we have a renewal of them on a large scale. in 1237, at erfurt, a jumping disease and dancing mania afflicted a hundred children, many of whom died in consequence; it spread through the whole region, and fifty years later we hear of it in holland. but it was the last quarter of the fourteenth century that saw its greatest manifestations. there was abundant cause for them. it was a time of oppression, famine, and pestilence: the crusading spirit, having run its course, had been succeeded by a wild, mystical fanaticism; the most frightful plague in human history--the black death--was depopulating whole regions--reducing cities to villages, and filling europe with that strange mixture of devotion and dissipation which we always note during the prevalence of deadly epidemics on a large scale. it was in this ferment of religious, moral, and social disease that there broke out in 1374, in the lower rhine region, the greatest, perhaps, of all manifestations of "possession"--an epidemic of dancing, jumping, and wild raving. the cures resorted to seemed on the whole to intensify the disease: the afflicted continued dancing for hours, until they fell in utter exhaustion. some declared that they felt as if bathed in blood, some saw visions, some prophesied. into this mass of "possession" there was also clearly poured a current of scoundrelism which increased the disorder. the immediate source of these manifestations seems to have been the wild revels of st. john's day. in those revels sundry old heathen ceremonies had been perpetuated, but under a nominally christian form: wild bacchanalian dances had thus become a semi-religious ceremonial. the religious and social atmosphere was propitious to the development of the germs of diabolic influence vitalized in these orgies, and they were scattered far and wide through large tracts of the netherlands and germany, and especially through the whole region of the rhine. at cologne we hear of five hundred afflicted at once; at metz of eleven hundred dancers in the streets; at strasburg of yet more painful manifestations; and from these and other cities they spread through the villages and rural districts. the great majority of the sufferers were women, but there were many men, and especially men whose occupations were sedentary. remedies were tried upon a large scale-exorcisms first, but especially pilgrimages to the shrine of st. vitus. the exorcisms accomplished so little that popular faith in them grew small, and the main effect of the pilgrimages seemed to be to increase the disorder by subjecting great crowds to the diabolic contagion. yet another curative means was seen in the flagellant processions--vast crowds of men, women, and children who wandered through the country, screaming, praying, beating themselves with whips, imploring the divine mercy and the intervention of st. vitus. most fearful of all the main attempts at cure were the persecutions of the jews. a feeling had evidently spread among the people at large that the almighty was filled with wrath at the toleration of his enemies, and might be propitiated by their destruction: in the principal cities and villages of germany, then, the jews were plundered, tortured, and murdered by tens of thousands. no doubt that, in all this, greed was united with fanaticism; but the argument of fanaticism was simple and cogent; the dart which pierced the breast of israel at that time was winged and pointed from its own sacred books: the biblical argument was the same used in various ages to promote persecution; and this was, that the wrath of the almighty was stirred against those who tolerated his enemies, and that because of this toleration the same curse had now come upon europe which the prophet samuel had denounced against saul for showing mercy to the enemies of jehovah. it is but just to say that various popes and kings exerted themselves to check these cruelties. although the argument of samuel to saul was used with frightful effect two hundred years later by a most conscientious pope in spurring on the rulers of france to extirpate the huguenots, the papacy in the fourteenth century stood for mercy to the jews. but even this intervention was long without effect; the tide of popular superstition had become too strong to be curbed even by the spiritual and temporal powers.[[138]] against this overwhelming current science for many generations could do nothing. throughout the whole of the fifteenth century physicians appeared to shun the whole matter. occasionally some more thoughtful man ventured to ascribe some phase of the disease to natural causes; but this was an unpopular doctrine, and evidently dangerous to those who developed it. yet, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, cases of "possession" on a large scale began to be brought within the scope of medical research, and the man who led in this evolution of medical science was paracelsus. he it was who first bade modern europe think for a moment upon the idea that these diseases are inflicted neither by saints nor demons, and that the "dancing possession" is simply a form of disease, of which the cure may be effected by proper remedies and regimen. paracelsus appears to have escaped any serious interference: it took some time, perhaps, for the theological leaders to understand that he had "let a new idea loose upon the planet," but they soon understood it, and their course was simple. for about fifty years the new idea was well kept under; but in 1563 another physician, john wier, of cleves, revived it at much risk to his position and reputation.[[139]] although the new idea was thus resisted, it must have taken some hold upon thoughtful men, for we find that in the second half of the same century the st. vitus's dance and forms of demoniacal possession akin to it gradually diminished in frequency and were sometimes treated as diseases. in the seventeenth century, so far as the north of europe is concerned, these displays of "possession" on a great scale had almost entirely ceased; here and there cases appeared, but there was no longer the wild rage extending over great districts and afflicting thousands of people. yet it was, as we shall see, in this same seventeenth century, in the last expiring throes of this superstition, that it led to the worst acts of cruelty.[[140]] while this satanic influence had been exerted on so great a scale throughout northern europe, a display strangely like it, yet strangely unlike it, had been going on in italy. there, too, epidemics of dancing and jumping seized groups and communities; but they were attributed to a physical cause--the theory being that the bite of a tarantula in some way provoked a supernatural intervention, of which dancing was the accompaniment and cure. in the middle of the sixteenth century fracastoro made an evident impression on the leaders of italian opinion by using medical means in the cure of the possessed; though it is worthy of note that the medicine which he applied successfully was such as we now know could not by any direct effects of its own accomplish any cure: whatever effect it exerted was wrought upon the imagination of the sufferer. this form of "possession," then, passed out of the supernatural domain, and became known as "tarantism." though it continued much longer than the corresponding manifestations in northern europe, by the beginning of the eighteenth century it had nearly disappeared; and, though special manifestations of it on a small scale still break out occasionally, its main survival is the "tarantella," which the traveller sees danced at naples as a catchpenny assault upon his purse.[[140b]] but, long before this form of "possession" had begun to disappear, there had arisen new manifestations, apparently more inexplicable. as the first great epidemics of dancing and jumping had their main origin in a religious ceremony, so various new forms had their principal source in what were supposed to be centres of religious life--in the convents, and more especially in those for women. out of many examples we may take a few as typical. in the fifteenth century the chroniclers assure us that, an inmate of a german nunnery having been seized with a passion for biting her companions, her mania spread until most, if not all, of her fellow-nuns began to bite each other; and that this passion for biting passed from convent to convent into other parts of germany, into holland, and even across the alps into italy. so, too, in a french convent, when a nun began to mew like a cat, others began mewing; the disease spread, and was only checked by severe measures.[[141]] in the sixteenth century the protestant reformation gave new force to witchcraft persecutions in germany, the new church endeavouring to show that in zeal and power she exceeded the old. but in france influential opinion seemed not so favourable to these forms of diabolical influence, especially after the publication of montaigne's _essays_, in 1580, had spread a sceptical atmosphere over many leading minds. in 1588 occurred in france a case which indicates the growth of this sceptical tendency even in the higher regions of the french church, in that year martha brossier, a country girl, was, it was claimed, possessed of the devil. the young woman was to all appearance under direct satanic influence. she roamed about, begging that the demon might be cast out of her, and her imprecations and blasphemies brought consternation wherever she went. myth-making began on a large scale; stories grew and sped. the capuchin monks thundered from the pulpit throughout france regarding these proofs of the power of satan: the alarm spread, until at last even jovial, sceptical king henry iv was disquieted, and the reigning pope was asked to take measures to ward off the evil. fortunately, there then sat in the episcopal chair of angers a prelate who had apparently imbibed something of montaigne's scepticism--miron; and, when the case was brought before him, he submitted it to the most time-honoured of sacred tests. he first brought into the girl's presence two bowls, one containing holy water, the other ordinary spring water, but allowed her to draw a false inference regarding the contents of each: the result was that at the presentation of the holy water the devils were perfectly calm, but when tried with the ordinary water they threw martha into convulsions. the next experiment made by the shrewd bishop was to similar purpose. he commanded loudly that a book of exorcisms be brought, and under a previous arrangement, his attendants brought him a copy of virgil. no sooner had the bishop begun to read the first line of the _aeneid_ than the devils threw martha into convulsions. on another occasion a latin dictionary, which she had reason to believe was a book of exorcisms, produced a similar effect. although the bishop was thereby led to pronounce the whole matter a mixture of insanity and imposture, the capuchin monks denounced this view as godless. they insisted that these tests really proved the presence of satan--showing his cunning in covering up the proofs of his existence. the people at large sided with their preachers, and martha was taken to paris, where various exorcisms were tried, and the parisian mob became as devoted to her as they had been twenty years before to the murderers of the huguenots, as they became two centuries later to robespierre, and as they more recently were to general boulanger. but bishop miron was not the only sceptic. the cardinal de gondi, archbishop of paris, charged the most eminent physicians of the city, and among them riolan, to report upon the case. various examinations were made, and the verdict was that martha was simply a hysterical impostor. thanks, then, to medical science, and to these two enlightened ecclesiastics who summoned its aid, what fifty or a hundred years earlier would have been the centre of a widespread epidemic of possession was isolated, and hindered from producing a national calamity. in the following year this healthful growth of scepticism continued. fourteen persons had been condemned to death for sorcery, but public opinion was strong enough to secure a new examination by a special commission, which reported that "the prisoners stood more in need of medicine than of punishment," and they were released.[[143]] but during the seventeenth century, the clergy generally having exerted themselves heroically to remove this "evil heart of unbelief" so largely due to montaigne, a theological reaction was brought on not only in france but in all parts of the christian world, and the belief in diabolic possession, though certainly dying, flickered up hectic, hot, and malignant through the whole century. in 1611 we have a typical case at aix. an epidemic of possession having occurred there, gauffridi, a man of note, was burned at the stake as the cause of the trouble. michaelis, one of the priestly exorcists, declared that he had driven out sixty-five hundred devils from one of the possessed. similar epidemics occurred in various parts of the world.[[143b]] twenty years later a far more striking case occurred at loudun, in western france, where a convent of ursuline nuns was "afflicted by demons." the convent was filled mainly with ladies of noble birth, who, not having sufficient dower to secure husbands, had, according to the common method of the time, been made nuns. it is not difficult to understand that such an imprisonment of a multitude of women of different ages would produce some woful effects. any reader of manzoni's _promessi sposi_, with its wonderful portrayal of the feelings and doings of a noble lady kept in a convent against her will, may have some idea of the rage and despair which must have inspired such assemblages in which pride, pauperism, and the attempted suppression of the instincts of humanity wrought a fearful work. what this work was may be seen throughout the middle ages; but it is especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that we find it frequently taking shape in outbursts of diabolic possession.[[143c]] in this case at loudun, the usual evidences of satanic influence appeared. one after another of the inmates fell into convulsions: some showed physical strength apparently supernatural; some a keenness of perception quite as surprising; many howled forth blasphemies and obscenities. near the convent dwelt a priest--urbain grandier--noted for his brilliancy as a writer and preacher, but careless in his way of living. several of the nuns had evidently conceived a passion for him, and in their wild rage and despair dwelt upon his name. in the same city, too, were sundry ecclesiastics and laymen with whom grandier had fallen into petty neighbourhood quarrels, and some of these men held the main control of the convent. out of this mixture of "possession" within the convent and malignity without it came a charge that grandier had bewitched the young women. the bishop of poictiers took up the matter. a trial was held, and it was noted that, whenever grandier appeared, the "possessed" screamed, shrieked, and showed every sign of diabolic influence. grandier fought desperately, and appealed to the archbishop of bordeaux, de sourdis. the archbishop ordered a more careful examination, and, on separating the nuns from each other and from certain monks who had been bitterly hostile to grandier, such glaring discrepancies were found in their testimony that the whole accusation was brought to naught. but the enemies of satan and of grandier did not rest. through their efforts cardinal richelieu, who appears to have had an old grudge against grandier, sent a representative, laubardemont, to make another investigation. most frightful scenes were now enacted: the whole convent resounded more loudly than ever with shrieks, groans, howling, and cursing, until finally grandier, though even in the agony of torture he refused to confess the crimes that his enemies suggested, was hanged and burned. from this centre the epidemic spread: multitudes of women and men were affected by it in various convents; several of the great cities of the south and west of france came under the same influence; the "possession" went on for several years longer and then gradually died out, though scattered cases have occurred from that day to this.[[145]] a few years later we have an even more striking example among the french protestants. the huguenots, who had taken refuge in the mountains of the cevennes to escape persecution, being pressed more and more by the cruelties of louis xiv, began to show signs of a high degree of religious exaltation. assembled as they were for worship in wild and desert places, an epidemic broke out among them, ascribed by them to the almighty, but by their opponents to satan. men, women, and children preached and prophesied. large assemblies were seized with trembling. some underwent the most terrible tortures without showing any signs of suffering. marshal de villiers, who was sent against them, declared that he saw a town in which all the women and girls, without exception, were possessed of the devil, and ran leaping and screaming through the streets. cases like this, inexplicable to the science of the time, gave renewed strength to the theological view.[[145b]] toward the end of the same century similar manifestations began to appear on a large scale in america. the life of the early colonists in new england was such as to give rapid growth to the germs of the doctrine of possession brought from the mother country. surrounded by the dark pine forests; having as their neighbours indians, who were more than suspected of being children of satan; harassed by wild beasts apparently sent by the powers of evil to torment the elect; with no varied literature to while away the long winter evenings; with few amusements save neighbourhood quarrels; dwelling intently on every text of scripture which supported their gloomy theology, and adopting its most literal interpretation, it is not strange that they rapidly developed ideas regarding the darker side of nature.[[146]] this fear of witchcraft received a powerful stimulus from the treatises of learned men. such works, coming from europe, which was at that time filled with the superstition, acted powerfully upon conscientious preachers, and were brought by them to bear upon the people at large. naturally, then, throughout the latter half of the seventeenth century we find scattered cases of diabolic possession. at boston, springfield, hartford, groton, and other towns, cases occurred, and here and there we hear of death-sentences. in the last quarter of the seventeenth century the fruit of these ideas began to ripen. in the year 1684 increase mather published his book, _remarkable providences_, laying stress upon diabolic possession and witchcraft. this book, having been sent over to england, exercised an influence there, and came back with the approval of no less a man than richard baxter: by this its power at home was increased. in 1688 a poor family in boston was afflicted by demons: four children, the eldest thirteen years of age, began leaping and barking like dogs or purring like cats, and complaining of being pricked, pinched, and cut; and, to help the matter, an old irishwoman was tried and executed. all this belief might have passed away like a troubled dream had it not become incarnate in a strong man. this man was cotton mather, the son of increase mather. deeply religious, possessed of excellent abilities, a great scholar, anxious to promote the welfare of his flock in this world and in the next, he was far in advance of ecclesiastics generally on nearly all the main questions between science and theology. he came out of his earlier superstition regarding the divine origin of the hebrew punctuation; he opposed the old theologic idea regarding the taking of interest for money; he favoured inoculation as a preventive of smallpox when a multitude of clergymen and laymen opposed it; he accepted the newtonian astronomy despite the outcries against its "atheistic tendency"; he took ground against the time-honoured dogma that comets are "signs and wonders." he had, indeed, some of the defects of his qualities, and among them pedantic vanity, pride of opinion, and love of power; but he was for his time remarkably liberal and undoubtedly sincere. he had thrown off a large part of his father's theology, but one part of it he could not throw off: he was one of the best biblical scholars of his time, and he could not break away from the fact that the sacred scriptures explicitly recognise witchcraft and demoniacal possession as realities, and enjoin against witchcraft the penalty of death. therefore it was that in 1689 he published his _memorable providences relating to witchcrafts and possessions_. the book, according to its title-page, was "recommended by the ministers of boston and charleston," and its stories soon became the familiar reading of men, women, and children throughout new england. out of all these causes thus brought to bear upon public opinion began in 1692 a new outbreak of possession, which is one of the most instructive in history. the rev. samuel parris was the minister of the church in salem, and no pope ever had higher ideas of his own infallibility, no bishop a greater love of ceremony, no inquisitor a greater passion for prying and spying.[[147]] before long mr. parris had much upon his hands. many of his hardy, independent parishioners disliked his ways. quarrels arose. some of the leading men of the congregation were pitted against him. the previous minister, george burroughs, had left the germs of troubles and quarrels, and to these were now added new complications arising from the assumptions of parris. there were innumerable wranglings and lawsuits; in fact, all the essential causes for satanic interference which we saw at work in and about the monastery at loudun, and especially the turmoil of a petty village where there is no intellectual activity, and where men and women find their chief substitute for it in squabbles, religious, legal, political, social, and personal. in the darkened atmosphere thus charged with the germs of disease it was suddenly discovered that two young girls in the family of mr. parris were possessed of devils: they complained of being pinched, pricked, and cut, fell into strange spasms and made strange speeches--showing the signs of diabolic possession handed down in fireside legends or dwelt upon in popular witch literature--and especially such as had lately been described by cotton mather in his book on _memorable providences_. the two girls, having been brought by mr. parris and others to tell who had bewitched them, first charged an old indian woman, and the poor old indian husband was led to join in the charge. this at once afforded new scope for the activity of mr. parris. magnifying his office, he immediately began making a great stir in salem and in the country round about. two magistrates were summoned. with them came a crowd, and a court was held at the meeting-house. the scenes which then took place would have been the richest of farces had they not led to events so tragical. the possessed went into spasms at the approach of those charged with witchcraft, and when the poor old men and women attempted to attest their innocence they were overwhelmed with outcries by the possessed, quotations of scripture by the ministers, and denunciations by the mob. one especially--ann putnam, a child of twelve years--showed great precocity and played a striking part in the performances. the mania spread to other children; and two or three married women also, seeing the great attention paid to the afflicted, and influenced by that epidemic of morbid imitation which science now recognises in all such cases, soon became similarly afflicted, and in their turn made charges against various persons. the indian woman was flogged by her master, mr. parris, until she confessed relations with satan; and others were forced or deluded into confession. these hysterical confessions, the results of unbearable torture, or the reminiscences of dreams, which had been prompted by the witch legends and sermons of the period, embraced such facts as flying through the air to witch gatherings, partaking of witch sacraments, signing a book presented by the devil, and submitting to satanic baptism. the possessed had begun with charging their possession upon poor and vagrant old women, but ere long, emboldened by their success, they attacked higher game, struck at some of the foremost people of the region, and did not cease until several of these were condemned to death, and every man, woman, and child brought under a reign of terror. many fled outright, and one of the foremost citizens of salem went constantly armed, and kept one of his horses saddled in the stable to flee if brought under accusation. the hysterical ingenuity of the possessed women grew with their success. they insisted that they saw devils prompting the accused to defend themselves in court. did one of the accused clasp her hands in despair, the possessed clasped theirs; did the accused, in appealing to heaven, make any gesture, the possessed simultaneously imitated it; did the accused in weariness drop her head, the possessed dropped theirs, and declared that the witch was trying to break their necks. the court-room resounded with groans, shrieks, prayers, and curses; judges, jury, and people were aghast, and even the accused were sometimes thus led to believe in their own guilt. very striking in all these cases was the alloy of frenzy with trickery. in most of the madness there was method. sundry witches charged by the possessed had been engaged in controversy with the salem church people. others of the accused had quarrelled with mr. parris. still others had been engaged in old lawsuits against persons more or less connected with the girls. one of the most fearful charges, which cost the life of a noble and lovely woman, arose undoubtedly from her better style of dress and living. old slumbering neighbourhood or personal quarrels bore in this way a strange fruitage of revenge; for the cardinal doctrine of a fanatic's creed is that his enemies are the enemies of god. any person daring to hint the slightest distrust of the proceedings was in danger of being immediately brought under accusation of a league with satan. husbands and children were thus brought to the gallows for daring to disbelieve these charges against their wives and mothers. some of the clergy were accused for endeavouring to save members of their churches.[[150]] one poor woman was charged with "giving a look toward the great meeting-house of salem, and immediately a demon entered the house and tore down a part of it." this cause for the falling of a bit of poorly nailed wainscoting seemed perfectly satisfactory to dr. cotton mather, as well as to the judge and jury, and she was hanged, protesting her innocence. still another lady, belonging to one of the most respected families of the region, was charged with the crime of witchcraft. the children were fearfully afflicted whenever she appeared near them. it seemed never to occur to any one that a bitter old feud between the rev. mr. parris and the family of the accused might have prejudiced the children and directed their attention toward the woman. no account was made of the fact that her life had been entirely blameless; and yet, in view of the wretched insufficiency of proof, the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty. as they brought in this verdict, all the children began to shriek and scream, until the court committed the monstrous wrong of causing her to be indicted anew. in order to warrant this, the judge referred to one perfectly natural and harmless expression made by the woman when under examination. the jury at last brought her in guilty. she was condemned; and, having been brought into the church heavily ironed, was solemnly excommunicated and delivered over to satan by the minister. some good sense still prevailed, and the governor reprieved her; but ecclesiastical pressure and popular clamour were too powerful. the governor was induced to recall his reprieve, and she was executed, protesting her innocence and praying for her enemies.[[150b]] another typical case was presented. the rev. mr. burroughs, against whom considerable ill will had been expressed, and whose petty parish quarrel with the powerful putnam family had led to his dismissal from his ministry, was named by the possessed as one of those who plagued them, one of the most influential among the afflicted being ann putnam. mr. burroughs had led a blameless life, the main thing charged against him by the putnams being that he insisted strenuously that his wife should not go about the parish talking of her own family matters. he was charged with afflicting the children, convicted, and executed. at the last moment he repeated the lord's prayer solemnly and fully, which it was supposed that no sorcerer could do, and this, together with his straightforward christian utterances at the execution, shook the faith of many in the reality of diabolic possession. ere long it was known that one of the girls had acknowledged that she had belied some persons who had been executed, and especially mr. burroughs, and that she had begged forgiveness; but this for a time availed nothing. persons who would not confess were tied up and put to a sort of torture which was effective in securing new revelations. in the case of giles corey the horrors of the persecution culminated. seeing that his doom was certain, and wishing to preserve his family from attainder and their property from confiscation, he refused to plead. though eighty years of age, he was therefore pressed to death, and when, in his last agonies, his tongue was pressed out of his mouth, the sheriff with his walking-stick thrust it back again. everything was made to contribute to the orthodox view of possession. on one occasion, when a cart conveying eight condemned persons to the place of execution stuck fast in the mire, some of the possessed declared that they saw the devil trying to prevent the punishment of his associates. confessions of witchcraft abounded; but the way in which these confessions were obtained is touchingly exhibited in a statement afterward made by several women. in explaining the reasons why, when charged with afflicting sick persons, they made a false confession, they said: "... by reason of that suddain surprizal, we knowing ourselves altogether innocent of that crime, we were all exceedingly astonished and amazed, and consternated and affrighted even out of our reason; and our nearest and dearest relations, seeing us in that dreadful condition, and knowing our great danger, apprehending that there was no other way to save our lives,... out of tender... pitty perswaded us to confess what we did confess. and indeed that confession, that it is said we made, was no other than what was suggested to us by some gentlemen; they telling us, that we were witches, and they knew it, and we knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which made us think that it was so; and our understanding, our reason, and our faculties almost gone, we were not capable of judging our condition; as also the hard measures they used with us, rendred us uncapable of making our defence, but said anything and everything which they desired, and most of what we said, was in effect a consenting to what they said...."[[152]] case after case, in which hysteria, fanaticism, cruelty, injustice, and trickery played their part, was followed up to the scaffold. in a short time twenty persons had been put to a cruel death, and the number of the accused grew larger and larger. the highest position and the noblest character formed no barrier. daily the possessed became more bold, more tricky, and more wild. no plea availed anything. in behalf of several women, whose lives had been of the purest and gentlest, petitions were presented, but to no effect. a scriptural text was always ready to aid in the repression of mercy: it was remembered that "satan himself is transformed into an angel of light," and above all resounded the old testament injunction, which had sent such multitudes in europe to the torture-chamber and the stake, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." such clergymen as noyes, parris, and mather, aided by such judges as stoughton and hathorn, left nothing undone to stimulate these proceedings. the great cotton mather based upon this outbreak of disease thus treated his famous book, _wonders of the invisible world_, thanking god for the triumphs over satan thus gained at salem; and his book received the approbation of the governor of the province, the president of harvard college, and various eminent theologians in europe as well as in america. but, despite such efforts as these, observation, and thought upon observation, which form the beginning of all true science, brought in a new order of things. the people began to fall away. justice bradstreet, having committed thirty or forty persons, became aroused to the absurdity of the whole matter; the minister of andover had the good sense to resist the theological view; even so high a personage as lady phips, the wife of the governor, began to show lenity. each of these was, in consequence of this disbelief, charged with collusion with satan; but such charges seemed now to lose their force. in the midst of all this delusion and terrorism stood cotton mather firm as ever. his efforts to uphold the declining superstition were heroic. but he at last went one step too far. being himself possessed of a mania for myth-making and wonder-mongering, and having described a case of witchcraft with possibly greater exaggeration than usual, he was confronted by robert calef. calef was a boston merchant, who appears to have united the good sense of a man of business to considerable shrewdness in observation, power in thought, and love for truth; and he began writing to mather and others, to show the weak points in the system. mather, indignant that a person so much his inferior dared dissent from his opinion, at first affected to despise calef; but, as calef pressed him more and more closely, mather denounced him, calling him among other things "a coal from hell." all to no purpose: calef fastened still more firmly upon the flanks of the great theologian. thought and reason now began to resume their sway. the possessed having accused certain men held in very high respect, doubts began to dawn upon the community at large. here was the repetition of that which had set men thinking in the german bishoprics when those under trial for witchcraft there had at last, in their desperation or madness, charged the very bishops and the judges upon the bench with sorcery. the party of reason grew stronger. the rev. mr. parris was soon put upon the defensive: for some of the possessed began to confess that they had accused people wrongfully. herculean efforts were made by certain of the clergy and devout laity to support the declining belief, but the more thoughtful turned more and more against it; jurymen prominent in convictions solemnly retracted their verdicts and publicly craved pardon of god and man. most striking of all was the case of justice sewall. a man of the highest character, he had in view of authority deduced from scripture and the principles laid down by the great english judges, unhesitatingly condemned the accused; but reason now dawned upon him. he looked back and saw the baselessness of the wliole proceedings, and made a public statement of his errors. his diary contains many passages showing deep contrition, and ever afterward, to the end of his life, he was wont, on one day in the year, to enter into solitude, and there remain all the day long in fasting, prayer, and penitence. chief-justice stoughton never yielded. to the last he lamented the "evil spirit of unbelief" which was thwarting the glorious work of freeing new england from demons. the church of salem solemnly revoked the excommunications of the condemned and drove mr. parris from the pastorate. cotton mather passed his last years in groaning over the decline of the faith and the ingratitude of a people for whom he had done so much. very significant is one of his complaints, since it shows the evolution of a more scientific mode of thought abroad as well as at home: he laments in his diary that english publishers gladly printed calef's book, but would no longer publish his own, and he declares this "an attack upon the glory of the lord." about forty years after the new england epidemic of "possession" occurred another typical series of pheniomena in france. in 1727 there died at the french capital a simple and kindly ecclesiastic, the archdeacon paris. he had lived a pious, christian life, and was endeared to multitudes by his charity; unfortunately, he had espoused the doctrine of jansen on grace and free will, and, though he remained in the gallican church, he and those who thought like him were opposed by the jesuits, and finally condemned by a papal bull. his remains having been buried in the cemetery of st. medard, the jansenists flocked to say their prayers at his grave, and soon miracles began to be wrought there. ere long they were multiplied. the sick being brought and laid upon the tombstone, many were cured. wonderful stories were attested by eye-witnesses. the myth-making tendency--the passion for developing, enlarging, and spreading tales of wonder--came into full play and was given free course. many thoughtful men satisfied themselves of the truth of these representations. one of the foremost english scholars came over, examined into them, and declared that there could be no doubt as to the reality of the cures. this state of things continued for about four years, when, in 1731, more violent effects showed themselves. sundry persons approaching the tomb were thrown into convulsions, hysterics, and catalepsy; these diseases spread, became epidemic, and soon multitudes were similarly afflicted. both religious parties made the most of these cases. in vain did such great authorities in medical science as hecquet and lorry attribute the whole to natural causes: the theologians on both sides declared them supernatural--the jansenists attributing them to god, the jesuits to satan. of late years such cases have been treated in france with much shrewdness. when, about the middle of the present century, the arab priests in algiers tried to arouse fanaticism against the french christians by performing miracles, the french government, instead of persecuting the priests, sent robert-houdin, the most renowned juggler of his time, to the scene of action, and for every arab miracle houdin performed two: did an arab marabout turn a rod into a serpent, houdin turned his rod into two serpents; and afterward showed the people how he did it. so, too, at the last international exposition, the french government, observing the evil effects produced by the mania for table turning and tipping, took occasion, when a great number of french schoolmasters and teachers were visiting the exposition, to have public lectures given in which all the business of dark closets, hand-tying, materialization of spirits, presenting the faces of the departed, and ghostly portraiture was fully performed by professional mountebanks, and afterward as fully explained. so in this case. the government simply ordered the gate of the cemetery to be locked, and when the crowd could no longer approach the tomb the miracles ceased. a little parisian ridicule helped to end the matter. a wag wrote up over the gate of the cemetery. "de par le roi, defense a dieu de faire des miracles dans ce lieu"-which, being translated from doggerel french into doggerel english, is- "by order of the king, the lord must forbear to work any more of his miracles here." but the theological spirit remained powerful. the french revolution had not then intervened to bring it under healthy limits. the agitation was maintained, and, though the miracles and cases of possession were stopped in the cemetery, it spread. again full course was given to myth-making and the retailing of wonders. it was said that men had allowed themselves to be roasted before slow fires, and had been afterward found uninjured; that some had enormous weights piled upon them, but had supernatural powers of resistance given them; and that, in one case, a voluntary crucifixion had taken place. this agitation was long, troublesome, and no doubt robbed many temporarily or permanently of such little brains as they possessed. it was only when the violence had become an old story and the charm of novelty had entirely worn off, and the afflicted found themselves no longer regarded with especial interest, that the epidemic died away.[[156]] but in germany at that time the outcome of this belief was far more cruel. in 1749 maria renata singer, sub-prioress of a convent at wurzburg, was charged with bewitching her fellow-nuns. there was the usual story--the same essential facts as at loudun--women shut up against their will, dreams of satan disguised as a young man, petty jealousies, spites, quarrels, mysterious uproar, trickery, utensils thrown about in a way not to be accounted for, hysterical shrieking and convulsions, and, finally, the torture, confession, and execution of the supposed culprit.[[157]] various epidemics of this sort broke out from time to time in other parts of the world, though happily, as modern scepticism prevailed, with less cruel results. in 1760 some congregations of calvinistic methodists in wales became so fervent that they began leaping for joy. the mania spread, and gave rise to a sect called the "jumpers." a similar outbreak took place afterward in england, and has been repeated at various times and places since in our own country.[[157b]] in 1780 came another outbreak in france; but this time it was not the jansenists who were affected, but the strictly orthodox. a large number of young girls between twelve and nineteen years of age, having been brought together at the church of st. roch, in paris, with preaching and ceremonies calculated to arouse hysterics, one of them fell into convulsions. immediately other children were similarly taken, until some fifty or sixty were engaged in the same antics. this mania spread to other churches and gatherings, proved very troublesome, and in some cases led to results especially painful. about the same period came a similar outbreak among the protestants of the shetland isles. a woman having been seized with convulsions at church, the disease spread to others, mainly women, who fell into the usual contortions and wild shriekings. a very effective cure proved to be a threat to plunge the diseased into a neighbouring pond. ii. beginnings of helpful scepticism. but near the end of the eighteenth century a fact very important for science was established. it was found that these manifestations do not arise in all cases from supernatural sources. in 1787 came the noted case at hodden bridge, in lancashire. a girl working in a cotton manufactory there put a mouse into the bosom of another girl who had a great dread of mice. the girl thus treated immediately went into convulsions, which lasted twenty-four hours. shortly afterward three other girls were seized with like convulsions, a little later six more, and then others, until, in all, twenty-four were attacked. then came a fact throwing a flood of light upon earlier occurrences. this epidemic, being noised abroad, soon spread to another factory five miles distant. the patients there suffered from strangulation, danced, tore their hair, and dashed their heads against the walls. there was a strong belief that it was a disease introduced in cotton, but a resident physician amused the patients with electric shocks, and the disease died out. in 1801 came a case of like import in the charite hospital in berlin. a girl fell into strong convulsions. the disease proved contagious, several others becoming afflicted in a similar way; but nearly all were finally cured, principally by the administration of opium, which appears at that time to have been a fashionable remedy. of the same sort was a case at lyons in 1851. sixty women were working together in a shop, when one of them, after a bitter quarrel with her husband, fell into a violent nervous paroxysm. the other women, sympathizing with her, gathered about to assist her, but one after another fell into a similar condition, until twenty were thus prostrated, and a more general spread of the epidemic was only prevented by clearing the premises.[[158]] but while these cases seemed, in the eye of science, fatal to the old conception of diabolic influence, the great majority of such epidemics, when unexplained, continued to give strength to the older view. in roman catholic countries these manifestations, as we have seen, have generally appeared in convents, or in churches where young girls are brought together for their first communion, or at shrines where miracles are supposed to be wrought. in protestant countries they appear in times of great religious excitement, and especially when large bodies of young women are submitted to the influence of noisy and frothy preachers. well-known examples of this in america are seen in the "jumpers," "jerkers," and various revival extravagances, especially among the negroes and "poor whites" of the southern states. the proper conditions being given for the development of the disease--generally a congregation composed mainly of young women--any fanatic or overzealous priest or preacher may stimulate hysterical seizures, which are very likely to become epidemic. as a recent typical example on a large scale, i take the case of diabolic possession at morzine, a french village on the borders of switzerland; and it is especially instructive, because it was thoroughly investigated by a competent man of science. about the year 1853 a sick girl at morzine, acting strangely, was thought to be possessed of the devil, and was taken to besancon, where she seems to have fallen into the hands of kindly and sensible ecclesiastics, and, under the operation of the relics preserved in the cathedral there--especially the handkerchief of christ--the devil was cast out and she was cured. naturally, much was said of the affair among the peasantry, and soon other cases began to show themselves. the priest at morzine attempted to quiet the matter by avowing his disbelief in such cases of possession; but immediately a great outcry was raised against him, especially by the possessed themselves. the matter was now widely discussed, and the malady spread rapidly; myth-making and wonder-mongering began; amazing accounts were thus developed and sent out to the world. the afflicted were said to have climbed trees like squirrels; to have shown superhuman strength; to have exercised the gift of tongues, speaking in german, latin, and even in arabic; to have given accounts of historical events they had never heard of; and to have revealed the secret thoughts of persons about them. mingled with such exhibitions of power were outbursts of blasphemy and obscenity. but suddenly came something more miraculous, apparently, than all these wonders. without any assigned cause, this epidemic of possession diminished and the devil disappeared. not long after this, prof. tissot, an eminent member of the medical faculty at dijon, visited the spot and began a series of researches, of which he afterward published a full account. he tells us that he found some reasons for the sudden departure of satan which had never been published. he discovered that the government had quietly removed one or two very zealous ecclesiastics to another parish, had sent the police to morzine to maintain order, and had given instructions that those who acted outrageously should be simply treated as lunatics and sent to asylums. this policy, so accordant with french methods of administration, cast out the devil: the possessed were mainly cured, and the matter appeared ended. but dr. tissot found a few of the diseased still remaining, and he soon satisfied himself by various investigations and experiments that they were simply suffering from hysteria. one of his investigations is especially curious. in order to observe the patients more carefully, he invited some of them to dine with him, gave them without their knowledge holy water in their wine or their food, and found that it produced no effect whatever, though its results upon the demons when the possessed knew of its presence had been very marked. even after large draughts of holy water had been thus given, the possessed remained afflicted, urged that the devil should be cast out, and some of them even went into convulsions; the devil apparently speaking from their mouths. it was evident that satan had not the remotest idea that he had been thoroughly dosed with the most effective medicine known to the older theology.[[160]] at last tissot published the results of his experiments, and the stereotyped answer was soon made. it resembled the answer made by the clerical opponents of galileo when he showed them the moons of jupiter through his telescope, and they declared that the moons were created by the telescope. the clerical opponents of tissot insisted that the non-effect of the holy water upon the demons proved nothing save the extraordinary cunning of satan; that the archfiend wished it to be thought that he does not exist, and so overcame his repugnance to holy water, gulping it down in order to conceal his presence. dr. tissot also examined into the gift of tongues exercised by the possessed. as to german and latin, no great difficulty was presented: it was by no means hard to suppose that some of the girls might have learned some words of the former language in the neighbouring swiss cantons where german was spoken, or even in germany itself; and as to latin, considering that they had heard it from their childhood in the church, there seemed nothing very wonderful in their uttering some words in that language also. as to arabic, had they really spoken it, that might have been accounted for by the relations of the possessed with zouaves or spahis from the french army; but, as tissot could discover no such relations, he investigated this point as the most puzzling of all. on a close inquiry, he found that all the wonderful examples of speaking arabic were reduced to one. he then asked whether there was any other person speaking or knowing arabic in the town. he was answered that there was not. he asked whether any person had lived there, so far as any one could remember, who had spoken or understood arabic, and he was answered in the negative. he then asked the witnesses how they knew that the language spoken by the girl was arabic: no answer was vouchsafed him; but he was overwhelmed with such stories as that of a pig which, at sight of the cross on the village church, suddenly refused to go farther; and he was denounced thoroughly in the clerical newspapers for declining to accept such evidence. at tissot's visit in 1863 the possession had generally ceased, and the cases left were few and quiet. but his visits stirred a new controversy, and its echoes were long and loud in the pulpits and clerical journals. believers insisted that satan had been removed by the intercession of the blessed virgin; unbelievers hinted that the main cause of the deliverance was the reluctance of the possessed to be shut up in asylums. under these circumstances the bishop of annecy announced that he would visit morzine to administer confirmation, and word appears to have spread that he would give a more orthodox completion to the work already done, by exorcising the devils who remained. immediately several new cases of possession appeared; young girls who had been cured were again affected; the embers thus kindled were fanned into a flame by a "mission" which sundry priests held in the parish to arouse the people to their religious duties--a mission in roman catholic countries being akin to a "revival" among some protestant sects. multitudes of young women, excited by the preaching and appeals of the clergy, were again thrown into the old disease, and at the coming of the good bishop it culminated. the account is given in the words of an eye-witness: "at the solemn entrance of the bishop into the church, the possessed persons threw themselves on the ground before him, or endeavoured to throw themselves upon him, screaming frightfully, cursing, blaspheming, so that the people at large were struck with horror. the possessed followed the bishop, hooted him, and threatened him, up to the middle of the church. order was only established by the intervention of the soldiers. during the confirmation the diseased redoubled their howls and infernal vociferations, and tried to spit in the face of the bishop and to tear off his pastoral raiment. at the moment when the prelate gave his benediction a still more outrageous scene took place. the violence of the diseased was carried to fury, and from all parts of the church arose yells and fearful howling; so frightful was the din that tears fell from the eyes of many of the spectators, and many strangers were thrown into consternation." among the very large number of these diseased persons there were only two men; of the remainder only two were of advanced age; the great majority were young women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five years. the public authorities shortly afterward intervened, and sought to cure the disease and to draw the people out of their mania by singing, dancing, and sports of various sorts, until at last it was brought under control.[[163]] scenes similar to these, in their essential character, have arisen more recently in protestant countries, but with the difference that what has been generally attributed by roman catholic ecclesiastics to satan is attributed by protestant ecclesiastics to the almighty. typical among the greater exhibitions of this were those which began in the methodist chapel at redruth in cornwall--convulsions, leaping, jumping, until some four thousand persons were seized by it. the same thing is seen in the ruder parts of america at "revivals" and camp meetings. nor in the ruder parts of america alone. in june, 1893, at a funeral in the city of brooklyn, one of the mourners having fallen into hysterical fits, several other cases at once appeared in various parts of the church edifice, and some of the patients were so seriously affected that they were taken to a hospital. in still another field these exhibitions are seen, but more after a medieval pattern: in the tigretier of abyssinia we have epidemics of dancing which seek and obtain miraculous cures. reports of similar manifestations are also sent from missionaries from the west coast of africa, one of whom sees in some of them the characteristics of cases of possession mentioned in our gospels, and is therefore inclined to attribute them to satan.[[163b]] iii. theological "restatements."--final triumph of the scientific view and methods. but, happily, long before these latter occurrences, science had come into the field and was gradually diminishing this class of diseases. among the earlier workers to this better purpose was the great dutch physician boerhaave. finding in one of the wards in the hospital at haarlem a number of women going into convulsions and imitating each other in various acts of frenzy, he immediately ordered a furnace of blazing coals into the midst of the ward, heated cauterizing irons, and declared that he would burn the arms of the first woman who fell into convulsions. no more cases occurred.[[164]] these and similar successful dealings of medical science with mental disease brought about the next stage in the theological development. the church sought to retreat, after the usual manner, behind a compromise. early in the eighteenth century appeared a new edition of the great work by the jesuit delrio which for a hundred years had been a text-book for the use of ecclesiastics in fighting witchcraft; but in this edition the part played by satan in diseases was changed: it was suggested that, while diseases have natural causes, it is necessary that satan enter the human body in order to make these causes effective. this work claims that satan "attacks lunatics at the full moon, when their brains are full of humours"; that in other cases of illness he "stirs the black bile"; and that in cases of blindness and deafness he "clogs the eyes and ears." by the close of the century this "restatement" was evidently found untenable, and one of a very different sort was attempted in england. in the third edition of the _encyclopaedia britannica_, published in 1797, under the article _daemoniacs_, the orthodox view was presented in the following words: "the reality of demoniacal possession stands upon the same evidence with the gospel system in general." this statement, though necessary to satisfy the older theological sentiment, was clearly found too dangerous to be sent out into the modern sceptical world without some qualification. another view was therefore suggested, namely, that the personages of the new testament "adopted the vulgar language in speaking of those unfortunate persons who were generally imagined to be possessed with demons." two or three editions contained this curious compromise; but near the middle of the present century the whole discussion was quietly dropped. science, declining to trouble itself with any of these views, pressed on, and toward the end of the century we see dr. rhodes at lyons curing a very serious case of possession by the use of a powerful emetic; yet myth-making came in here also, and it was stated that when the emetic produced its effect people had seen multitudes of green and yellow devils cast forth from the mouth of the possessed. the last great demonstration of the old belief in england was made in 1788. near the city of bristol at that time lived a drunken epileptic, george lukins. in asking alms, he insisted that he was "possessed," and proved it by jumping, screaming, barking, and treating the company to a parody of the _te deum_. he was solemnly brought into the temple church, and seven clergymen united in the effort to exorcise the evil spirit. upon their adjuring satan, he swore "by his infernal den" that he would not come out of the man--"an oath," says the chronicler, "nowhere to be found but in bunyan's _pilgrim's progress_, from which lukins probably got it." but the seven clergymen were at last successful, and seven devils were cast out, after which lukins retired, and appears to have been supported during the remainder of his life as a monument of mercy. with this great effort the old theory in england seemed practically exhausted. science had evidently carried the stronghold. in 1876, at a little town near amiens, in france, a young woman suffering with all the usual evidences of diabolic possession was brought to the priest. the priest was besought to cast out the devil, but he simply took her to the hospital, where, under scientific treatment, she rapidly became better.[[165]] the final triumph of science in this part of the great field has been mainly achieved during the latter half of the present century. following in the noble succession of paracelsus and john hunter and pinel and tuke and esquirol, have come a band of thinkers and workers who by scientific observation and research have developed new growths of truth, ever more and more precious. among the many facts thus brought to bear upon this last stronghold of the prince of darkness, may be named especially those indicating "expectant attention"--an expectation of phenomena dwelt upon until the longing for them becomes morbid and invincible, and the creation of them perhaps unconscious. still other classes of phenomena leading to epidemics are found to arise from a morbid tendency to imitation. still other groups have been brought under hypnotism. multitudes more have been found under the innumerable forms and results of hysteria. a study of the effects of the imagination upon bodily functions has also yielded remarkable results. and, finally, to supplement this work, have come in an array of scholars in history and literature who have investigated myth-making and wonder-mongering. thus has been cleared away that cloud of supernaturalism which so long hung over mental diseases, and thus have they been brought within the firm grasp of science.[[166]] conscientious men still linger on who find comfort in holding fast to some shred of the old belief in diabolic possession. the sturdy declaration in the last century by john wesley, that "giving up witchcraft is giving up the bible," is echoed feebly in the latter half of this century by the eminent catholic ecclesiastic in france who declares that "to deny possession by devils is to charge jesus and his apostles with imposture," and asks, "how can the testimony of apostles, fathers of the church, and saints who saw the possessed and so declared, be denied?" and a still fainter echo lingers in protestant england.[[167]] but, despite this conscientious opposition, science has in these latter days steadily wrought hand in hand with christian charity in this field, to evolve a better future for humanity. the thoughtful physician and the devoted clergyman are now constantly seen working together; and it is not too much to expect that satan, having been cast out of the insane asylums, will ere long disappear from monasteries and camp meetings, even in the most unenlightened regions of christendom. chapter xvii. from babel to comparative philology. i. the sacred theory in its first form. among the sciences which have served as entering wedges into the heavy mass of ecclesiastical orthodoxy--to cleave it, disintegrate it, and let the light of christianity into it--none perhaps has done a more striking work than comparative philology. in one very important respect the history of this science differs from that of any other; for it is the only one whose conclusions theologians have at last fully adopted as the result of their own studies. this adoption teaches a great lesson, since, while it has destroyed theological views cherished during many centuries, and obliged the church to accept theories directly contrary to the plain letter of our sacred books, the result is clearly seen to have helped christianity rather than to have hurt it. it has certainly done much to clear our religious foundations of the dogmatic rust which was eating into their structure. how this result was reached, and why the church has so fully accepted it, i shall endeavour to show in the present chapter. at a very early period in the evolution of civilization men began to ask questions regarding language; and the answers to these questions were naturally embodied in the myths, legends, and chronicles of their sacred books. among the foremost of these questions were three: "whence came language?" "which was the first language?" "how came the diversity of language?" the answer to the first of these was very simple: each people naturally held that language was given it directly or indirectly by some special or national deity of its own; thus, to the chaldeans by oannes, to the egyptians by thoth, to the hebrews by jahveh. the hebrew answer is embodied in the great poem which opens our sacred books. jahveh talks with adam and is perfectly understood; the serpent talks with eve and is perfectly understood; jahveh brings the animals before adam, who bestows on each its name. language, then, was god-given and complete. of the fact that every language is the result of a growth process there was evidently, among the compilers of our sacred books, no suspicion, the answer to the second of these questions was no less simple. as, very generally, each nation believed its own chief divinity to be "a god above all gods,"--as each believed itself "a chosen people,"--as each believed its own sacred city the actual centre of the earth, so each believed its own language to be the first--the original of all. this answer was from the first taken for granted by each "chosen people," and especially by the hebrews: throughout their whole history, whether the almighty talks with adam in the garden or writes the commandments on mount sinai, he uses the same language--the hebrew. the answer to the third of these questions, that regarding the diversity of languages, was much more difficult. naturally, explanations of this diversity frequently gave rise to legends somewhat complicated. the "law of wills and causes," formulated by comte, was exemplified here as in so many other cases. that law is, that, when men do not know the natural causes of things, they simply attribute them to wills like their own; thus they obtain a theory which provisionally takes the place of science, and this theory forms a basis for theology. examples of this recur to any thinking reader of history. before the simpler laws of astronomy were known, the sun was supposed to be trundled out into the heavens every day and the stars hung up in the firmament every night by the right hand of the almighty. before the laws of comets were known, they were thought to be missiles hurled by an angry god at a wicked world. before the real cause of lightning was known, it was supposed to be the work of a good god in his wrath, or of evil spirits in their malice. before the laws of meteorology were known, it was thought that rains were caused by the almighty or his angels opening "the windows of heaven" to let down upon the earth "the waters that be above the firmament." before the laws governing physical health were known, diseases were supposed to result from the direct interposition of the almighty or of satan. before the laws governing mental health were known, insanity was generally thought to be diabolic possession. all these early conceptions were naturally embodied in the sacred books of the world, and especially in our own.[[170]] so, in this case, to account for the diversity of tongues, the direct intervention of the divine will was brought in. as this diversity was felt to be an inconvenience, it was attributed to the will of a divine being in anger. to explain this anger, it was held that it must have been provoked by human sin. out of this conception explanatory myths and legends grew as thickly and naturally as elms along water-courses; of these the earliest form known to us is found in the chaldean accounts, and nowhere more clearly than in the legend of the tower of babel. the inscriptions recently found among the ruins of assyria have thrown a bright light into this and other scriptural myths and legends: the deciphering of the characters in these inscriptions by grotefend, and the reading of the texts by george smith, oppert, sayce, and others, have given us these traditions more nearly in their original form than they appear in our own scriptures. the hebrew story of babel, like so many other legends in the sacred books of the world, combined various elements. by a play upon words, such as the history of myths and legends frequently shows, it wrought into one fabric the earlier explanations of the diversities of human speech and of the great ruined tower at babylon. the name babel (_bab-el_) means "gate of god" or "gate of the gods." all modern scholars of note agree that this was the real significance of the name; but the hebrew verb which signifies _to confound_ resembles somewhat the word babel, so that out of this resemblance, by one of the most common processes in myth formation, came to the hebrew mind an indisputable proof that the tower was connected with the confusion of tongues, and this became part of our theological heritage. in our sacred books the account runs as follows: "and the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. "and it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of shinar; and they dwelt there. "and they said one to another, go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. and they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. "and they said, go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. "and the lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. "and the lord said, behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. "go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. "so the lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. "therefore is the name of it called babel; because the lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." (genesis xi, 1-9.) thus far the legend had been but slightly changed from the earlier chaldean form in which it has been found in the assyrian inscriptions. its character is very simple: to use the words of prof. sayce, "it takes us back to the age when the gods were believed to dwell in the visible sky, and when man, therefore, did his best to rear his altars as near them as possible." and this eminent divine might have added that it takes us back also to a time when it was thought that jehovah, in order to see the tower fully, was obliged to come down from his seat above the firmament. as to the real reasons for the building of the towers which formed so striking a feature in chaldean architecture--any one of which may easily have given rise to the explanatory myth which found its way into our sacred books--there seems a substantial agreement among leading scholars that they were erected primarily as parts of temples, but largely for the purpose of astronomical observations, to which the chaldeans were so devoted, and to which their country, with its level surface and clear atmosphere, was so well adapted. as to the real cause of the ruin of such structures, one of the inscribed cylinders discovered in recent times, speaking of a tower which most of the archaeologists identify with the tower of babel, reads as follows: "the building named the stages of the seven spheres, which was the tower of borsippa, had been built by a former king. he had completed forty-two cubits, but he did not finish its head. during the lapse of time, it had become ruined; they had not taken care of the exit of the waters, so that rain and wet had penetrated into the brickwork; the casing of burned brick had swollen out, and the terraces of crude brick are scattered in heaps." we can well understand how easily "the gods, assisted by the winds," as stated in the chaldean legend, could overthrow a tower thus built. it may be instructive to compare with the explanatory myth developed first by the chaldeans, and in a slightly different form by the hebrews, various other legends to explain the same diversity of tongues. the hindu legend of the confusion of tongues is as follows: "there grew in the centre of the earth the wonderful `world tree,' or `knowledge tree.' it was so tall that it reached almost to heaven. it said in its heart, `i shall hold my head in heaven and spread my branches over all the earth, and gather all men together under my shadow, and protect them, and prevent them from separating.' but brahma, to punish the pride of the tree, cut off its branches and cast them down on the earth, when they sprang up as wata trees, and made differences of belief and speech and customs to prevail on the earth, to disperse men upon its surface." still more striking is a mexican legend: according to this, the giant xelhua built the great pyramid of cholula, in order to reach heaven, until the gods, angry at his audacity, threw fire upon the building and broke it down, whereupon every separate family received a language of its own. such explanatory myths grew or spread widely over the earth. a well-known form of the legend, more like the chaldean than the hebrew later form, appeared among the greeks. according to this, the aloidae piled mount ossa upon olympus and pelion upon ossa, in their efforts to reach heaven and dethrone jupiter. still another form of it entered the thoughts of plato. he held that in the golden age men and beasts all spoke the same language, but that zeus confounded their speech because men were proud and demanded eternal youth and immortality.[[173]] but naturally the version of the legend which most affected christendom was that modification of the chaldean form developed among the jews and embodied in their sacred books. to a thinking man in these days it is very instructive. the coming down of the almighty from heaven to see the tower and put an end to it by dispersing its builders, points to the time when his dwelling was supposed to be just above the firmament or solid vault above the earth: the time when he exercised his beneficent activity in such acts as opening "the windows of heaven" to give down rain upon the earth; in bringing out the sun every day and hanging up the stars every night to give light to the earth; in hurling comets, to give warning; in placing his bow in the cloud, to give hope; in coming down in the cool of the evening to walk and talk with the man he had made; in making coats of skins for adam and eve; in enjoying the odour of flesh which noah burned for him; in eating with abraham under the oaks of mamre; in wrestling with jacob; and in writing with his own finger on the stone tables for moses. so came the answer to the third question regarding language; and all three answers, embodied in our sacred books and implanted in the jewish mind, supplied to the christian church the germs of a theological development of philology. these germs developed rapidly in the warm atmosphere of devotion and ignorance of natural law which pervaded the early church, and there grew a great orthodox theory of language, which was held throughout christendom, "always, everywhere, and by all," for nearly two thousand years, and to which, until the present century, all science has been obliged, under pains and penalties, to conform. there did, indeed, come into human thought at an early period some suggestions of the modern scientific view of philology. lucretius had proposed a theory, inadequate indeed, but still pointing toward the truth, as follows: "nature impelled man to try the various sounds of the tongue, and so struck out the names of things, much in the same way as the inability to speak is seen in its turn to drive children to the use of gestures." but, among the early fathers of the church, the only one who seems to have caught an echo of this utterance was st. gregory of nyssa: as a rule, all the other great founders of christian theology, as far as they expressed themselves on the subject, took the view that the original language spoken by the almighty and given by him to men was hebrew, and that from this all other languages were derived at the destruction of the tower of babel. this doctrine was especially upheld by origen, st. jerome, and st. augustine. origen taught that "the language given at the first through adam, the hebrew, remained among that portion of mankind which was assigned not to any angel, but continued the portion of god himself." st. augustine declared that, when the other races were divided by their own peculiar languages, heber's family preserved that language which is not unreasonably believed to have been the common language of the race, and that on this account it was henceforth called hebrew. st. jerome wrote, "the whole of antiquity affirms that hebrew, in which the old testament is written, was the beginning of all human speech." amid such great authorities as these even gregory of nyssa struggled in vain. he seems to have taken the matter very earnestly, and to have used not only argument but ridicule. he insists that god does not speak hebrew, and that the tongue used by moses was not even a pure dialect of one of the languages resulting from "the confusion." he makes man the inventor of speech, and resorts to raillery: speaking against his opponent eunomius, he says that, "passing in silence his base and abject garrulity," he will "note a few things which are thrown into the midst of his useless or wordy discourse, where he represents god teaching words and names to our first parents, sitting before them like some pedagogue or grammar master." but, naturally, the great authority of origen, jerome, and augustine prevailed; the view suggested by lucretius, and again by st. gregory of nyssa, died, out; and "always, everywhere, and by all," in the church, the doctrine was received that the language spoken by the almighty was hebrew,--that it was taught by him to adam,--and that all other languages on the face of the earth originated from it at the dispersion attending the destruction of the tower of babel.[[176]] this idea threw out roots and branches in every direction, and so developed ever into new and strong forms. as all scholars now know, the vowel points in the hebrew language were not adopted until at some period between the second and tenth centuries; but in the mediaeval church they soon came to be considered as part of the great miracle,--as the work of the right hand of the almighty; and never until the eighteenth century was there any doubt allowed as to the divine origin of these rabbinical additions to the text. to hesitate in believing that these points were dotted virtually by the very hand of god himself came to be considered a fearful heresy. the series of battles between theology and science in the field of comparative philology opened just on this point, apparently so insignificant: the direct divine inspiration of the rabbinical punctuation. the first to impugn this divine origin of these vocal points and accents appears to have been a spanish monk, raymundus martinus, in his _pugio fidei_, or poniard of the faith, which he put forth in the thirteenth century. but he and his doctrine disappeared beneath the waves of the orthodox ocean, and apparently left no trace. for nearly three hundred years longer the full sacred theory held its ground; but about the opening of the sixteenth century another glimpse of the truth was given by a jew, elias levita, and this seems to have had some little effect, at least in keeping the germ of scientific truth alive. the reformation, with its renewal of the literal study of the scriptures, and its transfer of all infallibility from the church and the papacy to the letter of the sacred books, intensified for a time the devotion of christendom to this sacred theory of language. the belief was strongly held that the writers of the bible were merely pens in the hand of god (_dei calami_). hence the conclusion that not only the sense but the words, letters, and even the punctuation proceeded from the holy spirit. only on this one question of the origin of the hebrew points was there any controversy, and this waxed hot. it began to be especially noted that these vowel points in the hebrew bible did not exist in the synagogue rolls, were not mentioned in the talmud, and seemed unknown to st. jerome; and on these grounds some earnest men ventured to think them no part of the original revelation to adam. zwingli, so much before most of the reformers in other respects, was equally so in this. while not doubting the divine origin and preservation of the hebrew language as a whole, he denied the antiquity of the vocal points, demonstrated their unessential character, and pointed out the fact that st. jerome makes no mention of them. his denial was long the refuge of those who shared this heresy. but the full orthodox theory remained established among the vast majority both of catholics and protestants. the attitude of the former is well illustrated in the imposing work of the canon marini, which appeared at venice in 1593, under the title of _noah's ark: a new treasury of the sacred tongue_. the huge folios begin with the declaration that the hebrew tongue was "divinely inspired at the very beginning of the world," and the doctrine is steadily maintained that this divine inspiration extended not only to the letters but to the punctuation. not before the seventeenth century was well under way do we find a thorough scholar bold enough to gainsay this preposterous doctrine. this new assailant was capellus, professor of hebrew at saumur; but he dared not put forth his argument in france: he was obliged to publish it in holland, and even there such obstacles were thrown in his way that it was ten years before he published another treatise of importance. the work of capellus was received as settling the question by very many open-minded scholars, among whom was hugo grotius. but many theologians felt this view to be a blow at the sanctity and integrity of the sacred text; and in 1648 the great scholar, john buxtorf the younger, rose to defend the orthodox citadel: in his _anticritica_ he brought all his stores of knowledge to uphold the doctrine that the rabbinical points and accents had been jotted down by the right hand of god. the controversy waxed hot: scholars like voss and brian walton supported capellus; wasmuth and many others of note were as fierce against him. the swiss protestants were especially violent on the orthodox side; their formula consensus of 1675 declared the vowel points to be inspired, and three years later the calvinists of geneva, by a special canon, forbade that any minister should be received into their jurisdiction until he publicly confessed that the hebrew text, as it to-day exists in the masoretic copies, is, both as to the consonants and vowel points, divine and authentic. while in holland so great a man as hugo grotius supported the view of capellus, and while in france the eminent catholic scholar richard simon, and many others, catholic and protestant, took similar ground against this divine origin of the hebrew punctuation, there was arrayed against them a body apparently overwhelming. in france, bossuet, the greatest theologian that france has ever produced, did his best to crush simon. in germany, wasmuth, professor first at rostock and afterward at kiel, hurled his _vindiciae_ at the innovators. yet at this very moment the battle was clearly won; the arguments of capellus were irrefragable, and, despite the commands of bishops, the outcries of theologians, and the sneering of critics, his application of strictly scientific observation and reasoning carried the day. yet a casual observer, long after the fate of the battle was really settled, might have supposed that it was still in doubt. as is not unusual in theologic controversies, attempts were made to galvanize the dead doctrine into an appearance of life. famous among these attempts was that made as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century by two bremen theologians, hase and iken, they put forth a compilation in two huge folios simultaneously at leyden and amsterdam, prominent in which work is the treatise on _the integrity of scripture_, by johann andreas danzius, professor of oriental languages and senior member of the philosophical faculty of jena, and, to preface it, there was a formal and fulsome approval by three eminent professors of theology at leyden. with great fervour the author pointed out that "religion itself depends absolutely on the infallible inspiration, both verbal and literal, of the scripture text"; and with impassioned eloquence he assailed the blasphemers who dared question the divine origin of the hebrew points. but this was really the last great effort. that the case was lost was seen by the fact that danzius felt obliged to use other missiles than arguments, and especially to call his opponents hard names. from this period the old sacred theory as to the origin of the hebrew points may be considered as dead and buried. ii. the sacred theory of language in its second form. but the war was soon to be waged on a wider and far more important field. the inspiration of the hebrew punctuation having been given up, the great orthodox body fell back upon the remainder of the theory, and intrenched this more strongly than ever: the theory that the hebrew language was the first of all languages--that which was spoken by the almighty, given by him to adam, transmitted through noah to the world after the deluge--and that the "confusion of tongues" was the origin of all other languages. in giving account of this new phase of the struggle, it is well to go back a little. from the revival of learning and the reformation had come the renewed study of hebrew in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and thus the sacred doctrine regarding the origin of the hebrew language received additional authority. all the early hebrew grammars, from that of reuchlin down, assert the divine origin and miraculous claims of hebrew. it is constantly mentioned as "the sacred tongue"--_sancta lingua_. in 1506, reuchlin, though himself persecuted by a large faction in the church for advanced views, refers to hebrew as "spoken by the mouth of god." this idea was popularized by the edition of the _margarita philosophica_, published at strasburg in 1508. that work, in its successive editions a mirror of human knowledge at the close of the middle ages and the opening of modern times, contains a curious introduction to the study of hebrew, in this it is declared that hebrew was the original speech "used between god and man and between men and angels." its full-page frontispiece represents moses receiving from god the tables of stone written in hebrew; and, as a conclusive argument, it reminds us that christ himself, by choosing a hebrew maid for his mother, made that his mother tongue. it must be noted here, however, that luther, in one of those outbursts of strong sense which so often appear in his career, enforced the explanation that the words "god said" had nothing to do with the articulation of human language. still, he evidently yielded to the general view. in the roman church at the same period we have a typical example of the theologic method applied to philology, as we have seen it applied to other sciences, in the statement by luther's great opponent, cajetan, that the three languages of the inscription on the cross of calvary "were the representatives of all languages, because the number three denotes perfection." in 1538 postillus made a very important endeavour at a comparative study of languages, but with the orthodox assumption that all were derived from one source, namely, the hebrew. naturally, comparative philology blundered and stumbled along this path into endless absurdities. the most amazing efforts were made to trace back everything to the sacred language. english and latin dictionaries appeared, in which every word was traced back to a hebrew root. no supposition was too absurd in this attempt to square science with scripture. it was declared that, as hebrew is written from right to left, it might be read either way, in order to produce a satisfactory etymology. the whole effort in all this sacred scholarship was, not to find what the truth is--not to see how the various languages are to be classified, or from what source they are really derived--but to demonstrate what was supposed necessary to maintain what was then held to be the truth of scripture; namely, that all languages are derived from the hebrew. this stumbling and blundering, under the sway of orthodox necessity, was seen among the foremost scholars throughout europe. about the middle of the sixteenth century the great swiss scholar, conrad gesner, beginning his _mithridates_, says, "while of all languages hebrew is the first and oldest, of all is alone pure and unmixed, all the rest are much mixed, for there is none which has not some words derived and corrupted from hebrew." typical, as we approach the end of the sixteenth century, are the utterances of two of the most noted english divines. first of these may be mentioned dr. william fulke, master of pembroke hall, in the university of cambridge. in his _discovery of the dangerous rock of the romish church_, published in 1580, he speaks of "the hebrew tongue,... the first tongue of the world, and for the excellency thereof called `the holy tongue.'" yet more emphatic, eight years later, was another eminent divine, dr. william whitaker, regius professor of divinity and master of st. john's college at cambridge. in his _disputation on holy scripture_, first printed in 1588, he says: "the hebrew is the most ancient of all languages, and was that which alone prevailed in the world before the deluge and the erection of the tower of babel. for it was this which adam used and all men before the flood, as is manifest from the scriptures, as the fathers testify." he then proceeds to quote passages on this subject from st. jerome, st. augustine, and others, and cites st. chrysostom in support of the statement that "god himself showed the model and method of writing when he delivered the law written by his own finger to moses."[[181]] this sacred theory entered the seventeenth century in full force, and for a time swept everything before it. eminent commentators, catholic and protestant, accepted and developed it. great prelates, catholic and protestant, stood guard over it, favouring those who supported it, doing their best to destroy those who would modify it. in 1606 stephen guichard built new buttresses for it in catholic france. he explains in his preface that his intention is "to make the reader see in the hebrew word not only the greek and latin, but also the italian, the spanish, the french, the german, the flemish, the english, and many others from all languages." as the merest tyro in philology can now see, the great difficulty that guichard encounters is in getting from the hebrew to the aryan group of languages. how he meets this difficulty may be imagined from his statement, as follows: "as for the derivation of words by addition, subtraction, and inversion of the letters, it is certain that this can and ought thus to be done, if we would find etymologies--a thing which becomes very credible when we consider that the hebrews wrote from right to left and the greeks and others from left to right. all the learned recognise such derivations as necessary;... and... certainly otherwise one could scarcely trace any etymology back to hebrew." of course, by this method of philological juggling, anything could be proved which the author thought necessary to his pious purpose. two years later, andrew willett published at london his _hexapla, or sixfold commentary upon genesis_. in this he insists that the one language of all mankind in the beginning "was the hebrew tongue preserved still in heber's family." he also takes pains to say that the tower of babel "was not so called of belus, as some have imagined, but of confusion, for so the hebrew word _ballal_ signifieth"; and he quotes from st. chrysostom to strengthen his position. in 1627 dr. constantine l'empereur was inducted into the chair of philosophy of the sacred language in the university of leyden. in his inaugural oration on _the dignity and utility of the hebrew tongue_, he puts himself on record in favour of the divine origin and miraculous purity of that language. "who," he says, "can call in question the fact that the hebrew idiom is coeval with the world itself, save such as seek to win vainglory for their own sophistry?" two years after willett, in england, comes the famous dr. lightfoot, the most renowned scholar of his time in hebrew, greek, and latin; but all his scholarship was bent to suit theological requirements. in his _erubhin_, published in 1629, he goes to the full length of the sacred theory, though we begin to see a curious endeavour to get over some linguistic difficulties. one passage will serve to show both the robustness of his faith and the acuteness of his reasoning, in view of the difficulties which scholars now began to find in the sacred theory." other commendations this tongue (hebrew) needeth none than what it hath of itself; namely, for sanctity it was the tongue of god; and for antiquity it was the tongue of adam. god the first founder, and adam the first speaker of it.... it began with the world and the church, and continued and increased in glory till the captivity in babylon.... as the man in seneca, that through sickness lost his memory and forgot his own name, so the jews, for their sins, lost their language and forgot their own tongue.... before the confusion of tongues all the world spoke their tongue and no other but since the confusion of the jews they speak the language of all the world and not their own." but just at the middle of the century (1657) came in england a champion of the sacred theory more important than any of these--brian walton, bishop of chester. his polyglot bible dominated english scriptural criticism throughout the remainder of the century. he prefaces his great work by proving at length the divine origin of hebrew, and the derivation from it of all other forms of speech. he declares it "probable that the first parent of mankind was the inventor of letters." his chapters on this subject are full of interesting details. he says that the welshman, davis, had already tried to prove the welsh the primitive speech; wormius, the danish; mitilerius, the german; but the bishop stands firmly by the sacred theory, informing us that "even in the new world are found traces of the hebrew tongue, namely, in new england and in new belgium, where the word _aguarda_ signifies earth, and the name joseph is found among the hurons." as we have seen, bishop walton had been forced to give up the inspiration of the rabbinical punctuation, but he seems to have fallen back with all the more tenacity on what remained of the great sacred theory of language, and to have become its leading champion among english-speaking peoples. at that same period the same doctrine was put forth by a great authority in germany. in 1657 andreas sennert published his inaugural address as professor of sacred letters and dean of the theological faculty at wittenberg. all his efforts were given to making luther's old university a fortress of the orthodox theory. his address, like many others in various parts of europe, shows that in his time an inaugural with any save an orthodox statement of the theological platform would not be tolerated. few things in the past are to the sentimental mind more pathetic, to the philosophical mind more natural, and to the progressive mind more ludicrous, than addresses at high festivals of theological schools. the audience has generally consisted mainly of estimable elderly gentlemen, who received their theology in their youth, and who in their old age have watched over it with jealous care to keep it well protected from every fresh breeze of thought. naturally, a theological professor inaugurated under such auspices endeavours to propitiate his audience. sennert goes to great lengths both in his address and in his grammar, published nine years later; for, declaring the divine origin of hebrew to be quite beyond controversy, he says: "noah received it from our first parents, and guarded it in the midst of the waters; heber and peleg saved it from the confusion of tongues." the same doctrine was no less loudly insisted upon by the greatest authority in switzerland, buxtorf, professor at basle, who proclaimed hebrew to be "the tongue of god, the tongue of angels, the tongue of the prophets"; and the effect of this proclamation may be imagined when we note in 1663 that his book had reached its sixth edition. it was re-echoed through england, germany, france, and america, and, if possible, yet more highly developed. in england theophilus gale set himself to prove that not only all the languages, but all the learning of the world, had been drawn from the hebrew records. this orthodox doctrine was also fully vindicated in holland. six years before the close of the seventeenth century, morinus, doctor of theology, professor of oriental languages, and pastor at amsterdam, published his great work on _primaeval language_. its frontispiece depicts the confusion of tongues at babel, and, as a pendant to this, the pentecostal gift of tongues to the apostles. in the successive chapters of the first book he proves that language could not have come into existence save as a direct gift from heaven; that there is a primitive language, the mother of all the rest; that this primitive language still exists in its pristine purity; that this language is the hebrew. the second book is devoted to proving that the hebrew letters were divinely received, have been preserved intact, and are the source of all other alphabets. but in the third book he feels obliged to allow, in the face of the contrary dogma held, as he says, by "not a few most eminent men piously solicitous for the authority of the sacred text," that the hebrew punctuation was, after all, not of divine inspiration, but a late invention of the rabbis. france, also, was held to all appearance in complete subjection to the orthodox idea up to the end of the century. in 1697 appeared at paris perhaps the most learned of all the books written to prove hebrew the original tongue and source of all others. the gallican church was then at the height of its power. bossuet as bishop, as thinker, and as adviser of louis xiv, had crushed all opposition to orthodoxy. the edict of nantes had been revoked, and the huguenots, so far as they could escape, were scattered throughout the world, destined to repay france with interest a thousandfold during the next two centuries. the bones of the jansenists at port royal were dug up and scattered. louis xiv stood guard over the piety of his people. it was in the midst of this series of triumphs that father louis thomassin, priest of the oratory, issued his _universal hebrew glossary_. in this, to use his own language, "the divinity, antiquity, and perpetuity of the hebrew tongue, with its letters, accents, and other characters," are established forever and beyond all cavil, by proofs drawn from all peoples, kindreds, and nations under the sun. this superb, thousand-columned folio was issued from the royal press, and is one of the most imposing monuments of human piety and folly--taking rank with the treatises of fromundus against galileo, of quaresmius on lot's wife, and of gladstone on genesis and geology. the great theologic-philologic chorus was steadily maintained, and, as in a responsive chant, its doctrines were echoed from land to land. from america there came the earnest words of john eliot, praising hebrew as the most fit to be made a universal language, and declaring it the tongue "which it pleased our lord jesus to make use of when he spake from heaven unto paul." at the close of the seventeenth century came from england a strong antiphonal answer in this chorus; meric casaubon, the learned prebendary of canterbury, thus declared: "one language, the hebrew, i hold to be simply and absolutely the source of all." and, to swell the chorus, there came into it, in complete unison, the voice of bentley--the greatest scholar of the old sort whom england has ever produced. he was, indeed, one of the most learned and acute critics of any age; but he was also master of trinity, archdeacon of bristol, held two livings besides, and enjoyed the honour of refusing the bishopric of bristol, as not rich enough to tempt him. _noblesse oblige_: that bentley should hold a brief for the theological side was inevitable, and we need not be surprised when we hear him declaring: "we are sure, from the names of persons and places mentioned in scripture before the deluge, not to insist upon other arguments, that the hebrew was the primitive language of mankind, and that it continued pure above three thousand years until the captivity in babylon." the power of the theologic bias, when properly stimulated with ecclesiastical preferment, could hardly be more perfectly exemplified than in such a captivity of such a man as bentley. yet here two important exceptions should be noted. in england, prideaux, whose biblical studies gave him much authority, opposed the dominant opinion; and in america, cotton mather, who in taking his master's degree at harvard had supported the doctrine that the hebrew vowel points were of divine origin, bravely recanted and declared for the better view.[[187]] but even this dissent produced little immediate effect, and at the beginning of the eighteenth century this sacred doctrine, based upon explicit statements of scripture, seemed forever settled. as we have seen, strong fortresses had been built for it in every christian land: nothing seemed more unlikely than that the little groups of scholars scattered through these various countries could ever prevail against them. these strongholds were built so firmly, and had behind them so vast an army of religionists of every creed, that to conquer them seemed impossible. and yet at that very moment their doom was decreed. within a few years from this period of their greatest triumph, the garrisons of all these sacred fortresses were in hopeless confusion, and the armies behind them in full retreat; a little later, all the important orthodox fortresses and forces were in the hands of the scientific philologists. how this came about will be shown in the third part of this chapter. iii. breaking down of the theological view. we have now seen the steps by which the sacred theory of human language had been developed: how it had been strengthened in every land until it seemed to bid defiance forever to advancing thought; how it rested firmly upon the letter of scripture, upon the explicit declarations of leading fathers of the church, of the great doctors of the middle ages, of the most eminent theological scholars down to the beginning of the eighteenth century, and was guarded by the decrees of popes, kings, bishops, catholic and protestant, and the whole hierarchy of authorities in church and state. and yet, as we now look back, it is easy to see that even in that hour of its triumph it was doomed. the reason why the church has so fully accepted the conclusions of science which have destroyed the sacred theory is instructive. the study of languages has been, since the revival of learning and the reformation, a favourite study with the whole western church, catholic and protestant. the importance of understanding the ancient tongues in which our sacred books are preserved first stimulated the study, and church missionary efforts have contributed nobly to supply the material for extending it, and for the application of that comparative method which, in philology as in other sciences, has been so fruitful. hence it is that so many leading theologians have come to know at first hand the truths given by this science, and to recognise its fundamental principles. what the conclusions which they, as well as all other scholars in this field, have been absolutely forced to accept, i shall now endeavour to show. the beginnings of a scientific theory seemed weak indeed, but they were none the less effective. as far back as 1661, hottinger, professor at heidelberg, came into the chorus of theologians like a great bell in a chime; but like a bell whose opening tone is harmonious and whose closing tone is discordant. for while, at the beginning, hottinger cites a formidable list of great scholars who had held the sacred theory of the origin of language, he goes on to note a closer resemblance to the hebrew in some languages than in others, and explains this by declaring that the confusion of tongues was of two sorts, total and partial: the arabic and chaldaic he thinks underwent only a partial confusion; the egyptian, persian, and all the european languages a total one. here comes in the discord; here gently sounds forth from the great chorus a new note--that idea of grouping and classifying languages which at a later day was to destroy utterly the whole sacred theory. but the great chorus resounded on, as we have seen, from shore to shore, until the closing years of the seventeenth century; then arose men who silenced it forever. the first leader who threw the weight of his knowledge, thought, and authority against it was leibnitz. he declared, "there is as much reason for supposing hebrew to have been the primitive language of mankind as there is for adopting the view of goropius, who published a work at antwerp in 1580 to prove that dutch was the language spoken in paradise." in a letter to tenzel, leibnitz wrote, "to call hebrew the primitive language is like calling the branches of a tree primitive branches, or like imagining that in some country hewn trunks could grow instead of trees." he also asked, "if the primeval language existed even up to the time of moses, whence came the egyptian language?" but the efficiency of leibnitz did not end with mere suggestions. he applied the inductive method to linguistic study, made great efforts to have vocabularies collected and grammars drawn up wherever missionaries and travellers came in contact with new races, and thus succeeded in giving the initial impulse to at least three notable collections--that of catharine the great, of russia; that of the spanish jesuit, lorenzo hervas; and, at a later period, the _mithridates_ of adelung. the interest of the empress catharine in her collection of linguistic materials was very strong, and her influence is seen in the fact that washington, to please her, requested governors and generals to send in materials from various parts of the united states and the territories. the work of hervas extended over the period from 1735 to 1809: a missionary in america, he enlarged his catalogue of languages to six volumes, which were published in spanish in 1800, and contained specimens of more than three hundred languages, with the grammars of more than forty. it should be said to his credit that hervas dared point out with especial care the limits of the semitic family of languages, and declared, as a result of his enormous studies, that the various languages of mankind could not have been derived from the hebrew. while such work was done in catholic spain, protestant germany was honoured by the work of adelung. it contained the lord's prayer in nearly five hundred languages and dialects, and the comparison of these, early in the nineteenth century, helped to end the sway of theological philology. but the period which intervened between leibnitz and this modern development was a period of philological chaos. it began mainly with the doubts which leibnitz had forced upon europe, and ended only with the beginning of the study of sanskrit in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and with the comparisons made by means of the collections of catharine, hervas, and adelung at the beginning of the nineteenth. the old theory that hebrew was the original language had gone to pieces; but nothing had taken its place as a finality. great authorities, like buddeus, were still cited in behalf of the narrower belief; but everywhere researches, unorganized though they were, tended to destroy it. the story of babel continued indeed throughout the whole eighteenth century to hinder or warp scientific investigation, and a very curious illustration of this fact is seen in the book of lord nelme on _the origin and elements of language_. he declares that connected with the confusion was the cleaving of america from europe, and he regards the most terrible chapters in the book of job as intended for a description of the flood, which in all probability job had from noah himself. again, rowland jones tried to prove that celtic was the primitive tongue, and that it passed through babel unharmed. still another effect was made by a breton to prove that all languages took their rise in the language of brittany. all was chaos. there was much wrangling, but little earnest controversy. here and there theologians were calling out frantically, beseeching the church to save the old doctrine as "essential to the truth of scripture"; here and there other divines began to foreshadow the inevitable compromise which has always been thus vainly attempted in the history of every science. but it was soon seen by thinking men that no concessions as yet spoken of by theologians were sufficient. in the latter half of the century came the bloom period of the french philosophers and encyclopedists, of the english deists, of such german thinkers as herder, kant, and lessing; and while here and there some writer on the theological side, like perrin, amused thinking men by his flounderings in this great chaos, all remained without form and void.[[192]] nothing better reveals to us the darkness and duration of this chaos in england than a comparison of the articles on philology given in the successive editions of the _encyclopaedia britannica_. the first edition of that great mirror of british thought was printed in 1771: chaos reigns through the whole of its article on this subject. the writer divides languages into two classes, seems to indicate a mixture of divine inspiration with human invention, and finally escapes under a cloud. in the second edition, published in 1780, some progress has been made. the author states the sacred theory, and declares: "there are some divines who pretend that hebrew was the language in which god talked with adam in paradise, and that the saints will make use of it in heaven in those praises which they will eternally offer to the almighty. these doctors seem to be as certain in regard to what is past as to what is to come." this was evidently considered dangerous. it clearly outran the belief of the average british philistine; and accordingly we find in the third edition, published seventeen years later, a new article, in which, while the author gives, as he says, "the best arguments on both sides," he takes pains to adhere to a fairly orthodox theory. this soothing dose was repeated in the fourth and fifth editions. in 1824 appeared a supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions, which dealt with the facts so far as they were known; but there was scarcely a reference to the biblical theory throughout the article. three years later came another supplement. while this chaos was fast becoming cosmos in germany, such a change had evidently not gone far in england, for from this edition of the _encyclopaedia_ the subject of philology was omitted. in fact, babel and philology made nearly as much trouble to encyclopedists as noah's deluge and geology. just as in the latter case they had been obliged to stave off a presentation of scientific truth, by the words "for deluge, see flood" and "for flood, see noah," so in the former they were obliged to take various provisional measures, some of them comical. in 1842 came the seventh edition. in this the first part of the old article on philology which had appeared in the third, fourth, and fifth editions was printed, but the supernatural part was mainly cut out. yet we find a curious evidence of the continued reign of chaos in a foot-note inserted by the publishers, disavowing any departure from orthodox views. in 1859 appeared the eighth edition. this abandoned the old article completely, and in its place gave a history of philology free from admixture of scriptural doctrines. finally, in the year 1885, appeared the ninth edition, in which professors whitney of yale and sievers of tubingen give admirably and in fair compass what is known of philology, making short work of the sacred theory--in fact, throwing it overboard entirely. iv. triumph of the new science. such was that chaos of thought into which the discovery of sanskrit suddenly threw its great light. well does one of the foremost modern philologists say that this "was the electric spark which caused the floating elements to crystallize into regular forms." among the first to bring the knowledge of sanskrit to europe were the jesuit missionaries, whose services to the material basis of the science of comparative philology had already been so great; and the importance of the new discovery was soon seen among all scholars, whether orthodox or scientific. in 1784 the asiatic society at calcutta was founded, and with it began sanskrit philology. scholars like sir william jones, carey, wilkins, foster, colebrooke, did noble work in the new field. a new spirit brooded over that chaos, and a great new orb of science was evolved. the little group of scholars who gave themselves up to these researches, though almost without exception reverent christians, were recognised at once by theologians as mortal foes of the whole sacred theory of language. not only was the dogma of the multiplication of languages at the tower of babel swept out of sight by the new discovery, but the still more vital dogma of the divine origin of language, never before endangered, was felt to be in peril, since the evidence became overwhelming that so many varieties had been produced by a process of natural growth. heroic efforts were therefore made, in the supposed interest of scripture, to discredit the new learning. even such a man as dugald stewart declared that the discovery of sanskrit was altogether fraudulent, and endeavoured to prove that the brahmans had made it up from the vocabulary and grammar of greek and latin. others exercised their ingenuity in picking the new discovery to pieces, and still others attributed it all to the machinations of satan. on the other hand, the more thoughtful men in the church endeavoured to save something from the wreck of the old system by a compromise. they attempted to prove that hebrew is at least a cognate tongue with the original speech of mankind, if not the original speech itself; but here they were confronted by the authority they dreaded most--the great christian scholar, sir william jones himself. his words were: "i can only declare my belief that the language of noah is irretrievably lost. after diligent search i can not find a single word used in common by the arabian, indian, and tartar families, before the intermixture of dialects occasioned by the mohammedan conquests." so, too, in germany came full acknowledgment of the new truth, and from a roman catholic, frederick schlegel. he accepted the discoveries in the old language and literature of india as final: he saw the significance of these discoveries as regards philology, and grouped the languages of india, persia, greece, italy, and germany under the name afterward so universally accepted--indo-germanic. it now began to be felt more and more, even among the most devoted churchmen, that the old theological dogmas regarding the origin of language, as held "always, everywhere, and by all," were wrong, and that lucretius and sturdy old gregory of nyssa might be right. but this was not the only wreck. during ages the great men in the church had been calling upon the world to admire the amazing exploit of adam in naming the animals which jehovah had brought before him, and to accept the history of language in the light of this exploit. the early fathers, the mediaeval doctors, the great divines of the reformation period, catholic and protestant, had united in this universal chorus. clement of alexandria declared adam's naming of the animals proof of a prophetic gift. st. john chrysostom insisted that it was an evidence of consummate intelligence. eusebius held that the phrase "that was the name thereof" implied that each name embodied the real character and description of the animal concerned. this view was echoed by a multitude of divines in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. typical among these was the great dr. south, who, in his sermon on _the state of man before the fall_, declared that "adam came into the world a philosopher, which sufficiently appears by his writing the nature of things upon their names." in the chorus of modern english divines there appeared one of eminence who declared against this theory: dr. shuckford, chaplain in ordinary to his majesty george ii, in the preface to his work on _the creation and fall of man_, pronounced the whole theory "romantic and irrational." he goes on to say: "the original of our speaking was from god; not that god put into adam's mouth the very sounds which he designed he should use as the names of things; but god made adam with the powers of a man; he had the use of an understanding to form notions in his mind of the things about him, and he had the power to utter sounds which should be to himself the names of things according as he might think fit to call them." this echo of gregory of nyssa was for many years of little avail. historians of philosophy still began with adam, because only a philosopher could have named all created things. there was, indeed, one difficulty which had much troubled some theologians: this was, that fishes were not specially mentioned among the animals brought by jehovah before adam for naming. to meet this difficulty there was much argument, and some theologians laid stress on the difficulty of bringing fishes from the sea to the garden of eden to receive their names; but naturally other theologians replied that the almighty power which created the fishes could have easily brought them into the garden, one by one, even from the uttermost parts of the sea. this point, therefore, seems to have been left in abeyance.[[196]] it had continued, then, the universal belief in the church that the names of all created things, except possibly fishes, were given by adam and in hebrew; but all this theory was whelmed in ruin when it was found that there were other and indeed earlier names for the same animals than those in the hebrew language; and especially was this enforced on thinking men when the egyptian discoveries began to reveal the pictures of animals with their names in hieroglyphics at a period earlier than that agreed on by all the sacred chronologists as the date of the creation. still another part of the sacred theory now received its death-blow. closely allied with the question of the origin of language was that of the origin of letters. the earlier writers had held that letters were also a divine gift to adam; but as we go on in the eighteenth century we find theological opinion inclining to the belief that this gift was reserved for moses. this, as we have seen, was the view of st. john chrysostom; and an eminent english divine early in the eighteenth century, john johnson, vicar of kent, echoed it in the declaration concerning the alphabet, that "moses first learned it from god by means of the lettering on the tables of the law." but here a difficulty arose--the biblical statement that god commanded moses to "write in a book" his decree concerning amalek before he went up into sinai. with this the good vicar grapples manfully. he supposes that god had previously concealed the tables of stone in mount horeb, and that moses, "when he kept jethro's sheep thereabout, had free access to these tables, and perused them at discretion, though he was not permitted to carry them down with him." our reconciler then asks for what other reason could god have kept moses up in the mountain forty days at a time, except to teach him to write; and says, "it seems highly probable that the angel gave him the alphabet of the hebrew, or in some other way unknown to us became his guide." but this theory of letters was soon to be doomed like the other parts of the sacred theory. studies in comparative philology, based upon researches in india, began to be reenforced by facts regarding the inscriptions in egypt, the cuneiform inscriptions of assyria, the legends of chaldea, and the folklore of china--where it was found in the sacred books that the animals were named by fohi, and with such wisdom and insight that every name disclosed the nature of the corresponding animal. but, although the old theory was doomed, heroic efforts were still made to support it. in 1788 james beattie, in all the glory of his oxford doctorate and royal pension, made a vigorous onslaught, declaring the new system of philology to be "degrading to our nature," and that the theory of the natural development of language is simply due to the beauty of lucretius' poetry. but his main weapon was ridicule, and in this he showed himself a master. he tells the world, "the following paraphrase has nothing of the elegance of horace or lucretius, but seems to have all the elegance that so ridiculous a doctrine deserves": "when men out of the earth of old a dumb and beastly vermin crawled; for acorns, first, and holes of shelter, they tooth and nail, and helter skelter, fought fist to fist; then with a club each learned his brother brute to drub; till, more experienced grown, these cattle forged fit accoutrements for battle. at last (lucretius says and creech) they set their wits to work on _speech_: and that their thoughts might all have marks to make them known, these learned clerks left off the trade of cracking crowns, and manufactured verbs and nouns." but a far more powerful theologian entered the field in england to save the sacred theory of language--dr. adam clarke. he was no less severe against philology than against geology. in 1804, as president of the manchester philological society, he delivered an address in which he declared that, while men of all sects were eligible to membership, "he who rejects the establishment of what we believe to be a divine revelation, he who would disturb the peace of the quiet, and by doubtful disputations unhinge the minds of the simple and unreflecting, and endeavour to turn the unwary out of the way of peace and rational subordination, can have no seat among the members of this institution." the first sentence in this declaration gives food for reflection, for it is the same confusion of two ideas which has been at the root of so much interference of theology with science for the last two thousand years. adam clarke speaks of those "who reject the establishment of what, _we believe_, to be a divine revelation." thus comes in that customary begging of the question--the substitution, as the real significance of scripture, of "_what we believe_" for what _is_. the intended result, too, of this ecclesiastical sentence was simple enough. it was, that great men like sir william jones, colebrooke, and their compeers, must not be heard in the manchester philological society in discussion with dr. adam clarke on questions regarding sanskrit and other matters regarding which they knew all that was then known, and dr. clarke knew nothing. but even clarke was forced to yield to the scientific current. thirty years later, in his _commentary on the old testament_, he pitched the claims of the sacred theory on a much lower key. he says: "mankind was of one language, in all likelihood the hebrew.... the proper names and other significations given in the scripture seem incontestable evidence that the hebrew language was the original language of the earth,--the language in which god spoke to man, and in which he gave the revelation of his will to moses and the prophets." here are signs that this great champion is growing weaker in the faith: in the citations made it will be observed he no longer says "_is_," but "_seems_"; and finally we have him saying, "what the first language was is almost useless to inquire, as it is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory information on this point." in france, during the first half of the nineteenth century, yet more heavy artillery was wheeled into place, in order to make a last desperate defence of the sacred theory. the leaders in this effort were the three great ultramontanes, de maistre, de bonald, and lamennais. condillac's contention that "languages were gradually and insensibly acquired, and that every man had his share of the general result," they attacked with reasoning based upon premises drawn from the book of genesis. de maistre especially excelled in ridiculing the philosophic or scientific theory. lamennais, who afterward became so vexatious a thorn in the side of the church, insisted, at this earlier period, that "man can no more think without words than see without light." and then, by that sort of mystical play upon words so well known in the higher ranges of theologic reasoning, he clinches his argument by saying, "the word is truly and in every sense `the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.'" but even such champions as these could not stay the progress of thought. while they seemed to be carrying everything before them in france, researches in philology made at such centres of thought as the sorbonne and the college of france were undermining their last great fortress. curious indeed is it to find that the sorbonne, the stronghold of theology through so many centuries, was now made in the nineteenth century the arsenal and stronghold of the new ideas. but the most striking result of the new tendency in france was seen when the greatest of the three champions, lamennais himself, though offered the highest church preferment, and even a cardinal's hat, braved the papal anathema, and went over to the scientific side.[[200]] in germany philological science took so strong a hold that its positions were soon recognised as impregnable. leaders like the schlegels, wilhelm von humboldt, and above all franz bopp and jacob grimm, gave such additional force to scientific truth that it could no longer be withstood. to say nothing of other conquests, the demonstration of that great law in philology which bears grimm's name brought home to all thinking men the evidence that the evolution of language had not been determined by the philosophic utterances of adam in naming the animals which jehovah brought before him, but in obedience to natural law. true, a few devoted theologians showed themselves willing to lead a forlorn hope; and perhaps the most forlorn of all was that of 1840, led by dr. gottlieb christian kayser, professor of theology at the protestant university of erlangen. he does not, indeed, dare put in the old claim that hebrew is identical with the primitive tongue, but he insists that it is nearer it than any other. he relinquishes the two former theological strongholds--first, the idea that language was taught by the almighty to adam, and, next, that the alphabet was thus taught to moses--and falls back on the position that all tongues are thus derived from noah, giving as an example the language of the caribbees, and insisting that it was evidently so derived. what chance similarity in words between hebrew and the caribbee tongue he had in mind is past finding out. he comes out strongly in defence of the biblical account of the tower of babel, and insists that "by the symbolical expression `god said, let us go down,' a further natural phenomenon is intimated, to wit, the cleaving of the earth, whereby the return of the dispersed became impossible--that is to say, through a new or not universal flood, a partial inundation and temporary violent separation of great continents until the time of the rediscovery" by these words the learned doctor means nothing less than the separation of europe from america. while at the middle of the nineteenth century the theory of the origin and development of language was upon the continent considered as settled, and a well-ordered science had there emerged from the old chaos, great britain still held back, in spite of the fact that the most important contributors to the science were of british origin. leaders in every english church and sect vied with each other, either in denouncing the encroachments of the science of language or in explaining them away. but a new epoch had come, and in a way least expected. perhaps the most notable effort in bringing it in was made by dr. wiseman, afterward cardinal archbishop of westminster. his is one of the best examples of a method which has been used with considerable effect during the latest stages of nearly all the controversies between theology and science. it consists in stating, with much fairness, the conclusions of the scientific authorities, and then in persuading one's self and trying to persuade others that the church has always accepted them and accepts them now as "additional proofs of the truth of scripture." a little juggling with words, a little amalgamation of texts, a little judicious suppression, a little imaginative deduction, a little unctuous phrasing, and the thing is done. one great service this eminent and kindly catholic champion undoubtedly rendered: by this acknowledgment, so widely spread in his published lectures, he made it impossible for catholics or protestants longer to resist the main conclusions of science. henceforward we only have efforts to save theological appearances, and these only by men whose zeal outran their discretion. on both sides of the atlantic, down to a recent period, we see these efforts, but we see no less clearly that they are mutually destructive. yet out of this chaos among english-speaking peoples the new science began to develop steadily and rapidly. attempts did indeed continue here and there to save the old theory. even as late as 1859 we hear the emninent presbyterian divine, dr. john cumming, from his pulpit in london, speaking of hebrew as "that magnificent tongue--that mother-tongue, from which all others are but distant and debilitated progenies." but the honour of producing in the nineteenth century the most absurd known attempt to prove hebrew the primitive tongue belongs to the youngest of the continents, australia. in the year 1857 was printed at melbourne _the triumph of truth, or a popular lecture on the origin of languages_, by b. atkinson, m. r. c. p. l.--whatever that may mean. in this work, starting with the assertion that "the hebrew was the primary stock whence all languages were derived," the author states that sanskrit is "a dialect of the hebrew," and declares that "the manuscripts found with mummies agree precisely with the chinese version of the psalms of david." it all sounds like _alice in wonderland_. curiously enough, in the latter part of his book, evidently thinking that his views would not give him authority among fastidious philologists, he says, "a great deal of our consent to the foregoing statements arises in our belief in the divine inspiration of the mosaic account of the creation of the world and of our first parents in the garden of eden." a yet more interesting light is thrown upon the author's view of truth, and of its promulgation, by his dedication: he says that, "being persuaded that literary men ought to be fostered by the hand of power," he dedicates his treatise "to his excellency sir h. barkly," who was at the time governor of victoria. still another curious survival is seen in a work which appeared as late as 1885, at edinburgh, by william galloway, m. a., ph. d., m. d. the author thinks that he has produced abundant evidence to prove that "jehovah, the second person of the godhead, wrote the first chapter of genesis on a stone pillar, and that this is the manner by which he first revealed it to adam; and thus adam was taught not only to speak but to read and write by jehovah, the divine son; and that the first lesson he got was from the first chapter of genesis." he goes on to say: "jehovah wrote these first two documents; the first containing the history of the creation, and the second the revelation of man's redemption,... for adam's and eve's instruction; it is evident that he wrote them in the hebrew tongue, because that was the language of adam and eve." but this was only a flower out of season. and, finally, in these latter days mr. gladstone has touched the subject. with that well-known facility in believing anything he wishes to believe, which he once showed in connecting neptune's trident with the doctrine of the trinity, he floats airily over all the impossibilities of the original babel legend and all the conquests of science, makes an assertion regarding the results of philology which no philologist of any standing would admit, and then escapes in a cloud of rhetoric after his well-known fashion. this, too, must be set down simply as a survival, for in the british isles as elsewhere the truth has been established. such men as max muller and sayce in england,--steinthal, schleicher, weber, karl abel, and a host of others in germany,--ascoli and de gubernatis in italy,--and whitney, with the scholars inspired by him, in america, have carried the new science to a complete triumph. the sons of yale university may well be proud of the fact that this old puritan foundation was made the headquarters of the american oriental society, which has done so much for the truth in this field.[[204]] v. summary. it may be instructive, in conclusion, to sum up briefly the history of the whole struggle. first, as to the origin of speech, we have in the beginning the whole church rallying around the idea that the original language was hebrew; that this language, even including the medieval rabbiinical punctuation, was directly inspired by the almighty; that adam was taught it by god himself in walks and talks; and that all other languages were derived from it at the "confusion of babel." next, we see parts of this theory fading out: the inspiration of the rabbinical points begins to disappear. adam, instead of being taught directly by god, is "inspired" by him. then comes the third stage: advanced theologians endeavour to compromise on the idea that adam was "given verbal roots and a mental power." finally, in our time, we have them accepting the theory that language is the result of an evolutionary process in obedience to laws more or less clearly ascertained. babel thus takes its place quietly among the sacred myths. as to the origin of writing, we have the more eminent theologians at first insisting that god taught adam to write; next we find them gradually retreating from this position, but insisting that writing was taught to the world by noah. after the retreat from this position, we find them insisting that it was moses whom god taught to write. but scientific modes of thought still progressed, and we next have influential theologians agreeing that writing was a mosaic invention; this is followed by another theological retreat to the position that writing was a post-mosaic invention. finally, all the positions are relinquished, save by some few skirmishers who appear now and then upon the horizon, making attempts to defend some subtle method of "reconciling" the babel myth with modern science. just after the middle of the nineteenth century the last stage of theological defence was evidently reached--the same which is seen in the history of almost every science after it has successfully fought its way through the theological period--the declaration which we have already seen foreshadowed by wiseman, that the scientific discoveries in question are nothing new, but have really always been known and held by the church, and that they simply substantiate the position taken by the church. this new contention, which always betokens the last gasp of theological resistance to science, was now echoed from land to land. in 1856 it was given forth by a divine of the anglican church, archdeacon pratt, of calcutta. he gives a long list of eminent philologists who had done most to destroy the old supernatural view of language, reads into their utterances his own wishes, and then exclaims, "so singularly do their labours confirm the literal truth of scripture." two years later this contention was echoed from the american presbyterian church, and dr. b. w. dwight, having stigmatized as "infidels" those who had not incorporated into their science the literal acceptance of hebrew legend, declared that "chronology, ethnography, and etymology have all been tortured in vain to make them contradict the mosaic account of the early history of man." twelve years later this was re-echoed from england. the rev. dr. baylee, principal of the college of st. aidan's, declared, "with regard to the varieties of human language, the account of the confusion of tongues is receiving daily confirmation by all the recent discoveries in comparative philology." so, too, in the same year (1870), in the united presbyterian church of scotland, dr. john eadie, professor of biblical literature and exegesis, declared, "comparative philology has established the miracle of babel." a skill in theology and casuistry so exquisite as to contrive such assertions, and a faith so robust as to accept them, certainly leave nothing to be desired. but how baseless these contentions are is shown, first, by the simple history of the attitude of the church toward this question; and, secondly, by the fact that comparative philology now reveals beyond a doubt that not only is hebrew not the original or oldest language upon earth, but that it is not even the oldest form in the semitic group to which it belongs. to use the words of one of the most eminent modern authorities, "it is now generally recognised that in grammatical structure the arabic preserves much more of the original forms than either the hebrew or aramaic." history, ethnology, and philology now combine inexorably to place the account of the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of races at babel among the myths; but their work has not been merely destructive: more and more strong are the grounds for belief in an evolution of language. a very complete acceptance of the scientific doctrines has been made by archdeacon farrar, canon of westminster. with a boldness which in an earlier period might have cost him dear, and which merits praise even now for its courage, he says: "for all reasoners except that portion of the clergy who in all ages have been found among the bitterest enemies of scientific discovery, these considerations have been conclusive. but, strange to say, here, as in so many other instances, this self-styled orthodoxy--more orthodox than the bible itself--directly contradicts the very scriptures which it professes to explain, and by sheer misrepresentation succeeds in producing a needless and deplorable collision between the statements of scripture and those other mighty and certain truths which have been revealed to science and humanity as their glory and reward." still another acknowledgment was made in america through the instrumentality of a divine of the methodist episcopal church, whom the present generation at least will hold in honour not only for his scholarship but for his patriotism in the darkest hour of his country's need--john mcclintock. in the article on _language_, in the _biblical cyclopaedia_, edited by him and the rev. dr. strong, which appeared in 1873, the whole sacred theory is given up, and the scientific view accepted.[[206]] it may, indeed, be now fairly said that the thinking leaders of theology have come to accept the conclusions of science regarding the origin of language, as against the old explanations by myth and legend. the result has been a blessing both to science and to religion. no harm has been done to religion; what has been done is to release it from the clog of theories which thinking men saw could no longer be maintained. no matter what has become of the naming of the animals by adam, of the origin of the name babel, of the fear of the almighty lest men might climb up into his realm above the firmament, and of the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of nations; the essentials of christianity, as taught by its blessed founder, have simply been freed, by comparative philology, from one more great incubus, and have therefore been left to work with more power upon the hearts and minds of mankind. nor has any harm been done to the bible. on the contrary, this divine revelation through science has made it all the more precious to us. in these myths and legends caught from earlier civilizations we see an evolution of the most important religious and moral truths for our race. myth, legend, and parable seem, in obedience to a divine law, the necessary setting for these truths, as they are successively evolved, ever in higher and higher forms. what matters it, then, that we have come to know that the accounts of creation, the fall, the deluge, and much else in our sacred books, were remembrances of lore obtained from the chaldeans? what matters it that the beautiful story of joseph is found to be in part derived from an egyptian romance, of which the hieroglyphs may still be seen? what matters it that the story of david and goliath is poetry; and that samson, like so many men of strength in other religions, is probably a sun-myth? what matters it that the inculcation of high duty in the childhood of the world is embodied in such quaint stories as those of jonah and balaam? the more we realize these facts, the richer becomes that great body of literature brought together within the covers of the bible. what matters it that those who incorporated the creation lore of babylonia and other oriental nations into the sacred books of the hebrews, mixed it with their own conceptions and deductions? what matters it that darwin changed the whole aspect of our creation myths; that lyell and his compeers placed the hebrew story of creation and of the deluge of noah among legends; that copernicus put an end to the standing still of the sun for joshua; that halley, in promulgating his law of comets, put an end to the doctrine of "signs and wonders"; that pinel, in showing that all insanity is physical disease, relegated to the realm of mythology the witch of endor and all stories of demoniacal possession; that the rev. dr. schaff, and a multitude of recent christian travellers in palestine, have put into the realm of legend the story of lot's wife transformed into a pillar of salt; that the anthropologists, by showing how man has risen everywhere from low and brutal beginnings, have destroyed the whole theological theory of "the fall of man"? our great body of sacred literature is thereby only made more and more valuable to us: more and more we see how long and patiently the forces in the universe which make for righteousness have been acting in and upon mankind through the only agencies fitted for such work in the earliest ages of the world--through myth, legend, parable, and poem. chapter xviii. from the dead sea legends to comparative mythology, i. the growth of explanatory transformation myths. a few years since, maxime du camp, an eminent member of the french academy, travelling from the red sea to the nile through the desert of kosseir, came to a barren slope covered with boulders, rounded and glossy. his mohammedan camel-driver accounted for them on this wise: "many years ago hadji abdul-aziz, a sheik of the dervishes, was travelling on foot through this desert: it was summer: the sun was hot and the dust stifling; thirst parched his lips, fatigue weighed down his back, sweat dropped from his forehead, when looking up he saw--on this very spot--a garden beautifully green, full of fruit, and, in the midst of it, the gardener. "`o fellow-man,' cried hadji abdul-aziz, `in the name of allah, clement and merciful, give me a melon and i will give you my prayers.'" the gardener answered: `i care not for your prayers; give me money, and i will give you fruit.' "`but,' said the dervish, `i am a beggar; i have never had money; i am thirsty and weary, and one of your melons is all that i need.' "`no,' said the gardener; `go to the nile and quench your thirst.' "thereupon the dervish, lifting his eyes toward heaven, made this prayer: `o allah, thou who in the midst of the desert didst make the fountain of zem-zem spring forth to satisfy the thirst of ismail, father of the faithful: wilt thou suffer one of thy creatures to perish thus of thirst and fatigue?' "and it came to pass that, hardly had the dervish spoken, when an abundant dew descended upon him, quenching his thirst and refreshing him even to the marrow of his bones. "now at the sight of this miracle the gardener knew that the dervish was a holy man, beloved of allah, and straightway offered him a melon. "`not so,' answered hadji abdul-aziz; `keep what thou hast, thou wicked man. may thy melons become as hard as thy heart, and thy field as barren as thy soul!' "and straightway it came to pass that the melons were changed into these blocks of stone, and the grass into this sand, and never since has anything grown thereon." in this story, and in myriads like it, we have a survival of that early conception of the universe in which so many of the leading moral and religious truths of the great sacred books of the world are imbedded. all ancient sacred lore abounds in such mythical explanations of remarkable appearances in nature, and these are most frequently prompted by mountains, rocks, and boulders seemingly misplaced. in india we have such typical examples among the brahmans as the mountain-peak which durgu threw at parvati; and among the buddhists the stone which devadatti hurled at buddha. in greece the athenian, rejoicing in his belief that athena guarded her chosen people, found it hard to understand why the great rock lycabettus should be just too far from the acropolis to be of use as an outwork; but a myth was developed which explained all. according to this, athena had intended to make lycabettus a defence for the athenians, and she was bringing it through the air from pallene for that very purpose; but, unfortunately, a raven met her and informed her of the wonderful birth of erichthonius, which so surprised the goddess that she dropped the rock where it now stands. so, too, a peculiar rock at aegina was accounted for by a long and circumstantial legend to the effect that peleus threw it at phocas. a similar mode of explaining such objects is seen in the mythologies of northern europe. in scandinavia we constantly find rocks which tradition accounts for by declaring that they were hurled by the old gods at each other, or at the early christian churches. in teutonic lands, as a rule, wherever a strange rock or stone is found, there will be found a myth or a legend, heathen or christian, to account for it. so, too, in celtic countries: typical of this mode of thought in brittany and in ireland is the popular belief that such features in the landscape were dropped by the devil or by fairies. even at a much later period such myths have grown and bloomed. marco polo gives a long and circumstantial legend of a mountain in asia minor which, not long before his visit, was removed by a christian who, having "faith as a grain of mustard seed," and remembering the saviour's promise, transferred the mountain to its present place by prayer, "at which marvel many saracens became christians."[[211]] similar mythical explanations are also found, in all the older religions of the world, for curiously marked meteoric stones, fossils, and the like. typical examples are found in the imprint of buddha's feet on stones in siam and ceylon; in the imprint of the body of moses, which down to the middle of the last century was shown near mount sinai; in the imprint of poseidon's trident on the acropolis at athens; in the imprint of the hands or feet of christ on stones in france, italy, and palestine; in the imprint of the virgin's tears on stones at jerusalem; in the imprint of the feet of abraham at jerusalem and of mohammed on a stone in the mosque of khait bey at cairo; in the imprint of the fingers of giants on stones in the scandinavian peninsula, in north germany, and in western france; in the imprint of the devil's thighs on a rock in brittany, and of his claws on stones which he threw at churches in cologne and saint-pol-de-leon; in the imprint of the shoulder of the devil's grand mother on the "elbow-stone" at the mohriner see; in the imprint of st. otho's feet on a stone formerly preserved in the castle church at stettin; in the imprint of the little finger of christ and the head of satan at ehrenberg; and in the imprint of the feet of st. agatha at catania, in sicily. to account for these appearances and myriads of others, long and interesting legends were developed, and out of this mass we may take one or two as typical. one of the most beautiful was evolved at rome. on the border of the medieval city stands the church of "domine quo vadis"; it was erected in honour of a stone, which is still preserved, bearing a mark resembling a human footprint--perhaps the bed of a fossil. out of this a pious legend grew as naturally as a wild rose in a prairie. according to this story, in one of the first great persecutions the heart of st. peter failed him, and he attempted to flee from the city: arriving outside the walls he was suddenly confronted by the master, whereupon peter in amazement asked, "lord, whither goest thou?" (_domine quo vadis_?); to which the master answered, "to rome, to be crucified again." the apostle, thus rebuked, returned to martyrdom; the master vanished, but left, as a perpetual memorial, his footprint in the solid rock. another legend accounts for a curious mark in a stone at jerusalem. according to this, st. thomas, after the ascension of the lord, was again troubled with doubts, whereupon the virgin mother threw down her girdle, which left its imprint upon the rock, and thus converted the doubter fully and finally. and still another example is seen at the very opposite extreme of europe, in the legend of the priestess of hertha in the island of rugen. she had been unfaithful to her vows, and the gods furnished a proof of her guilt by causing her and her child to sink into the rock on which she stood.[[213]] another and very fruitful source of explanatory myths is found in ancient centres of volcanic action, and especially in old craters of volcanoes and fissures filled with water. in china we have, among other examples, lake man, which was once the site of the flourishing city chiang shui--overwhelmed and sunk on account of the heedlessness of its inhabitants regarding a divine warning. in phrygia, the lake and morass near tyana were ascribed to the wrath of zeus and hermes, who, having visited the cities which formerly stood there, and having been refused shelter by all the inhabitants save philemon and baucis, rewarded their benefactors, but sunk the wicked cities beneath the lake and morass. stories of similar import grew up to explain the crater near sipylos in asia minor and that of avernus in italy: the latter came to be considered the mouth of the infernal regions, as every schoolboy knows when he has read his virgil. in the later christian mythologies we have such typical legends as those which grew up about the old crater in ceylon; the salt water in it being accounted for by supposing it the tears of adam and eve, who retreated to this point after their expulsion from paradise and bewailed their sin during a hundred years. so, too, in germany we have multitudes of lakes supposed to owe their origin to the sinking of valleys as a punishment for human sin. of these are the "devil's lake," near gustrow, which rose and covered a church and its priests on account of their corruption; the lake at probst-jesar, which rose and covered an oak grove and a number of peasants resting in it on account of their want of charity to beggars; and the lucin lake, which rose and covered a number of soldiers on account of their cruelty to a poor peasant. such legends are found throughout america and in japan, and will doubtless be found throughout asia and africa, and especially among the volcanic lakes of south america, the pitch lakes of the caribbean islands, and even about the salt lake of utah; for explanatory myths and legends under such circumstances are inevitable.[[214]] to the same manner of explaining striking appearances in physical geography, and especially strange rocks and boulders, we mainly owe the innumerable stories of the transformation of living beings, and especially of men and women, into these natural features. in the mythology of china we constantly come upon legends of such transformations--from that of the first counsellor of the han dynasty to those of shepherds and sheep. in the brahmanic mythology of india, salagrama, the fossil ammonite, is recognised as containing the body of vishnu's wife, and the binlang stone has much the same relation to siva; so, too, the nymph ramba was changed, for offending ketu, into a mass of sand; by the breath of siva elephants were turned into stone; and in a very touching myth luxman is changed into stone but afterward released. in the buddhist mythology a nat demon is represented as changing himself into a grain of sand. among the greeks such transformation myths come constantly before us--both the changing of stones to men and the changing of men to stones. deucalion and pyrrha, escaping from the flood, repeopled the earth by casting behind them stones which became men and women; heraulos was changed into stone for offending mercury; pyrrhus for offending rhea; phineus, and polydectes with his guests, for offending perseus: under the petrifying glance of medusa's head such transformations became a thing of course. to myth-making in obedience to the desire of explaining unusual natural appearances, coupled with the idea that sin must be followed by retribution, we also owe the well-known niobe myth. having incurred the divine wrath, niobe saw those dearest to her destroyed by missiles from heaven, and was finally transformed into a rock on mount sipylos which bore some vague resemblance to the human form, and her tears became the rivulets which trickled from the neighbouring strata. thus, in obedience to a moral and intellectual impulse, a striking geographical appearance was explained, and for ages pious greeks looked with bated breath upon the rock at sipylos which was once niobe, just as for ages pious jews, christians, and mohammedans looked with awe upon the salt pillar at the dead sea which was once lot's wife. pausanias, one of the most honest of ancient travellers, gives us a notable exhibition of this feeling. having visited this monument of divine vengeance at mount sipylos, he tells us very naively that, though he could discern no human features when standing near it, he thought that he could see them when standing at a distance. there could hardly be a better example of that most common and deceptive of all things--belief created by the desire to believe. in the pagan mythology of scandinavia we have such typical examples as bors slaying the giant ymir and transforming his bones into boulders; also "the giant who had no heart" transforming six brothers and their wives into stone; and, in the old christian mythology, st. olaf changing into stone the wicked giants who opposed his preaching. so, too, in celtic countries we have in ireland such legends as those of the dancers turned into stone; and, in brittany, the stones at plesse, which were once hunters and dogs violating the sanctity of sunday; and the stones of carnac, which were once soldiers who sought to kill st. cornely. teutonic mythology inherited from its earlier eastern days a similar mass of old legends, and developed a still greater mass of new ones. thus, near the konigstein, which all visitors to the saxon switzerland know so well, is a boulder which for ages was believed to have once been a maiden transformed into stone for refusing to go to church; and near rosenberg in mecklenburg is another curiously shaped stone of which a similar story is told. near spornitz, in the same region, are seven boulders whose forms and position are accounted for by a long and circumstantial legend that they were once seven impious herdsmen; near brahlsdorf is a stone which, according to a similar explanatory myth, was once a blasphemous shepherd; near schwerin are three boulders which were once wasteful servants; and at neustadt, down to a recent period, was shown a collection of stones which were once a bride and bridegroom with their horses--all punished for an act of cruelty; and these stories are but typical of thousands. at the other extremity of europe we may take, out of the multitude of explanatory myths, that which grew about the well-known group of boulders near belgrade. in the midst of them stands one larger than the rest: according to the legend which was developed to account for all these, there once lived there a swineherd, who was disrespectful to the consecrated host; whereupon he was changed into the larger stone, and his swine into the smaller ones. so also at saloniki we have the pillars of the ruined temple, which are widely believed, especially among the jews of that region, to have once been human beings, and are therefore known as the "enchanted columns." among the arabs we have an addition to our sacred account of adam--the legend of the black stone of the caaba at mecca, into which the angel was changed who was charged by the almighty to keep adam away from the forbidden fruit, and who neglected his duty. similar old transformation legends are abundant among the indians of america, the negroes of africa, and the natives of australia and the pacific islands. nor has this making of myths to account for remarkable appearances yet ceased, even in civilized countries. about the beginning of this century the grand duke of weimar, smitten with the classical mania of his time, placed in the public park near his palace a little altar, and upon this was carved, after the manner so frequent in classical antiquity, a serpent taking a cake from it. and shortly there appeared, in the town and the country round about, a legend to explain this altar and its decoration. it was commonly said that a huge serpent had laid waste that region in the olden time, until a wise and benevolent baker had rid the world of the monster by means of a poisoned biscuit. so, too, but a few years since, in the heart of the state of new york, a swindler of genius having made and buried a "petrified giant," one theologian explained it by declaring it a phoenician idol, and published the phoenician inscription which he thought he had found upon it; others saw in it proofs that "there were giants in those days," and within a week after its discovery myths were afloat that the neighbouring remnant of the onondaga indians had traditions of giants who frequently roamed through that region.[[218]] to the same stage of thought belongs the conception of human beings changed into trees. but, in the historic evolution of religion and morality, while changes into stone or rock were considered as punishments, or evidences of divine wrath, those into trees and shrubs were frequently looked upon as rewards, or evidences of divine favour. a very beautiful and touching form of this conception is seen in such myths as the change of philemon into the oak, and of baucis into the linden; of myrrha into the myrtle; of melos into the apple tree; of attis into the pine; of adonis into the rose tree; and in the springing of the vine and grape from the blood of the titans, the violet from the blood of attis, and the hyacinth from the blood of hyacinthus. thus it was, during the long ages when mankind saw everywhere miracle and nowhere law, that, in the evolution of religion and morality, striking features in physical geography became connected with the idea of divine retribution.[[219]] but, in the natural course of intellectual growth, thinking men began to doubt the historical accuracy of these myths and legends--or, at least, to doubt all save those of the theology in which they happened to be born; and the next step was taken when they began to make comparisons between the myths and legends of different neighbourhoods and countries: so came into being the science of comparative mythology--a science sure to be of vast value, because, despite many stumblings and vagaries, it shows ever more and more how our religion and morality have been gradually evolved, and gives a firm basis to a faith that higher planes may yet be reached. such a science makes the sacred books of the world more and more precious, in that it shows how they have been the necessary envelopes of our highest spiritual sustenance; how even myths and legends apparently the most puerile have been the natural husks and rinds and shells of our best ideas; and how the atmosphere is created in which these husks and rinds and shells in due time wither, shrivel, and fall away, so that the fruit itself may be gathered to sustain a nobler religion and a purer morality. the coming in of christianity contributed elements of inestimable value in this evolution, and, at the centre of all, the thoughts, words, and life of the master. but when, in the darkness that followed the downfall of the roman empire, there was developed a theology and a vast ecclesiastical power to enforce it, the most interesting chapters in this evolution of religion and morality were removed from the domain of science. so it came that for over eighteen hundred years it has been thought natural and right to study and compare the myths and legends arising east and west and south and north of palestine with each other, but never with those of palestine itself; so it came that one of the regions most fruitful in materials for reverent thought and healthful comparison was held exempt from the unbiased search for truth; so it came that, in the name of truth, truth was crippled for ages. while observation, and thought upon observation, and the organized knowledge or science which results from these, progressed as regarded the myths and legends of other countries, and an atmosphere was thus produced giving purer conceptions of the world and its government, myths of that little geographical region at the eastern end of the mediterranean retained possession of the civilized world in their original crude form, and have at times done much to thwart the noblest efforts of religion, morality, and civilization. ii. mediaeval growth of the dead sea legends. the history of myths, of their growth under the earlier phases of human thought and of their decline under modern thinking, is one of the most interesting and suggestive of human studies; but, since to treat it as a whole would require volumes, i shall select only one small group, and out of this mainly a single myth--one about which there can no longer be any dispute--the group of myths and legends which grew upon the shore of the dead sea, and especially that one which grew up to account for the successive salt columns washed out by the rains at its southwestern extremity. the dead sea is about fifty miles in length and ten miles in width; it lies in a very deep fissure extending north and south, and its surface is about thirteen hundred feet below that of the mediterranean. it has, therefore, no outlet, and is the receptacle for the waters of the whole system to which it belongs, including those collected by the sea of galilee and brought down thence by the river jordan. it certainly--or at least the larger part of it--ranks geologically among the oldest lakes on earth. in a broad sense the region is volcanic: on its shore are evidences of volcanic action, which must from the earliest period have aroused wonder and fear, and stimulated the myth-making tendency to account for them. on the eastern side are impressive mountain masses which have been thrown up from old volcanic vents; mineral and hot springs abound, some of them spreading sulphurous odours; earthquakes have been frequent, and from time to time these have cast up masses of bitumen; concretions of sulphur and large formations of salt constantly appear. the water which comes from the springs or oozes through the salt layers upon its shores constantly brings in various salts in solution, and, being rapidly evaporated under the hot sun and dry wind, there has been left, in the bed of the lake, a strong brine heavily charged with the usual chlorides and bromides--a sort of bitter "mother liquor" this fluid has become so dense as to have a remarkable power of supporting the human body; it is of an acrid and nauseating bitterness; and by ordinary eyes no evidence of life is seen in it. thus it was that in the lake itself, and in its surrounding shores, there was enough to make the generation of explanatory myths on a large scale inevitable. the main northern part of the lake is very deep, the plummet having shown an abyss of thirteen hundred feet; but the southern end is shallow and in places marshy. the system of which it forms a part shows a likeness to that in south america of which the mountain lake titicaca is the main feature; as a receptacle for surplus waters, only rendering them by evaporation, it resembles the caspian and many other seas; as a sort of evaporating dish for the leachings of salt rock, and consequently holding a body of water unfit to support the higher forms of animal life, it resembles, among others, the median lake of urumiah; as a deposit of bitumen, it resembles the pitch lakes of trinidad.[[222]] in all this there is nothing presenting any special difficulty to the modern geologist or geographer; but with the early dweller in palestine the case was very different. the rocky, barren desolation of the dead sea region impressed him deeply; he naturally reasoned upon it; and this impression and reasoning we find stamped into the pages of his sacred literature, rendering them all the more precious as a revelation of the earlier thought of mankind. the long circumstantial account given in genesis, its application in deuteronomy, its use by amos, by isaiah, by jeremiah, by zephaniah, and by ezekiel, the references to it in the writings attributed to st. paul, st. peter, and st. jude, in the apocalypse, and, above all, in more than one utterance of the master himself--all show how deeply these geographical features impressed the jewish mind. at a very early period, myths and legends, many and circumstantial, grew up to explain features then so incomprehensible. as the myth and legend grew up among the greeks of a refusal of hospitality to zeus and hermes by the village in phrygia, and the consequent sinking of that beautiful region with its inhabitants beneath a lake and morass, so there came belief in a similar offence by the people of the beautiful valley of siddim, and the consequent sinking of that valley with its inhabitants beneath the waters of the dead sea. very similar to the accounts of the saving of philemon and baucis are those of the saving of lot and his family. but the myth-making and miracle-mongering by no means ceased in ancient times; they continued to grow through the medieval and modern period until they have quietly withered away in the light of modern scientific investigation, leaving to us the religious and moral truths they inclose. it would be interesting to trace this whole group of myths: their origin in times prehistoric, their development in greece and rome, their culmination during the ages of faith, and their disappearance in the age of science. it would be especially instructive to note the conscientious efforts to prolong their life by making futile compromises between science and theology regarding them; but i shall mention this main group only incidentally, confining my self almost entirely to the one above named--the most remarkable of all--the myth which grew about the salt pillars of usdum. i select this mainly because it involves only elementary principles, requires no abstruse reasoning, and because all controversy regarding it is ended. there is certainly now no theologian with a reputation to lose who will venture to revive the idea regarding it which was sanctioned for hundreds, nay, thousands, of years by theology, was based on scripture, and was held by the universal church until our own century. the main feature of the salt region of usdum is a low range of hills near the southwest corner of the dead sea, extending in a southeasterly direction for about five miles, and made up mainly of salt rock. this rock is soft and friable, and, under the influence of the heavy winter rains, it has been, without doubt, from a period long before human history, as it is now, cut ever into new shapes, and especially into pillars or columns, which sometimes bear a resemblance to the human form. an eminent clergyman who visited this spot recently speaks of the appearance of this salt range as follows: "fretted by fitful showers and storms, its ridge is exceedingly uneven, its sides carved out and constantly changing;... and each traveller might have a new pillar of salt to wonder over at intervals of a few years."[[225]] few things could be more certain than that, in the indolent dream-life of the east, myths and legends would grow up to account for this as for other strange appearances in all that region. the question which a religious oriental put to himself in ancient times at usdum was substantially that which his descendant to-day puts to himself at kosseir. "why is this region thus blasted?" "whence these pillars of salt?" or "whence these blocks of granite?" "what aroused the vengeance of jehovah or of allah to work these miracles of desolation?" and, just as maxime du camp recorded the answer of the modern shemite at kosseir, so the compilers of the jewish sacred books recorded the answer of the ancient shemite at the dead sea; just as allah at kosseir blasted the land and transformed the melons into boulders which are seen to this day, so jehovah at usdum blasted the land and transformed lot's wife into a pillar of salt, which is seen to this day. no more difficulty was encountered in the formation of the lot legend, to account for that rock resembling the human form, than in the formation of the niobe legend, which accounted for a supposed resemblance in the rock at sipylos: it grew up just as we have seen thousands of similar myths and legends grow up about striking natural appearances in every early home of the human race. being thus consonant with the universal view regarding the relation of physical geography to the divine government, it became a treasure of the jewish nation and of the christian church--a treasure not only to be guarded against all hostile intrusion, but to be increased, as we shall see, by the myth-making powers of jews, christians, and mohammedans for thousands of years. the spot where the myth originated was carefully kept in mind; indeed, it could not escape, for in that place alone were constantly seen the phenomena which gave rise to it. we have a steady chain of testimony through the ages, all pointing to the salt pillar as the irrefragable evidence of divine judgment. that great theological test of truth, the dictum of st. vincent of lerins, would certainly prove that the pillar was lot's wife, for it was believed so to be by jews, christians, and mohammedans from the earliest period down to a time almost within present memory-"always, everywhere, and by all." it would stand perfectly the ancient test insisted upon by cardinal newman," _securus judicat orbis terrarum_." for, ever since the earliest days of christianity, the identity of the salt pillar with lot's wife has been universally held and supported by passages in genesis, in st. luke's gospel, and in the second epistle of st. peter--coupled with a passage in the book of the wisdom of solomon, which to this day, by a majority in the christian church, is believed to be inspired, and from which are specially cited the words, "a standing pillar of salt is a monument of an unbelieving soul."[[226]] never was chain of belief more continuous. in the first century of the christian era josephus refers to the miracle, and declares regarding the statue, "i have seen it, and it remains at this day"; and clement, bishop of rome, one of the most revered fathers of the church, noted for the moderation of his statements, expresses a similar certainty, declaring the miraculous statue to be still standing. in the second century that great father of the church, bishop and martyr, irenaeus, not only vouched for it, but gave his approval to the belief that the soul of lot's wife still lingered in the statue, giving it a sort of organic life: thus virtually began in the church that amazing development of the legend which we shall see taking various forms through the middle ages--the story that the salt statue exercised certain physical functions which in these more delicate days can not be alluded to save under cover of a dead language. this addition to the legend, which in these signs of life, as in other things, is developed almost exactly on the same lines with the legend of the niobe statue in the rock of mount sipylos and with the legends of human beings transformed into boulders in various mythologies, was for centuries regarded as an additional confirmation of revealed truth. in the third century the myth burst into still richer bloom in a poem long ascribed to tertullian. in this poem more miraculous characteristics of the statue are revealed. it could not be washed away by rains; it could not be overthrown by winds; any wound made upon it was miraculously healed; and the earlier statements as to its physical functions were amplified in sonorous latin verse. with this appeared a new legend regarding the dead sea; it became universally believed, and we find it repeated throughout the whole medieval period, that the bitumen could only he dissolved by such fluids as in the processes of animated nature came from the statue. the legend thus amplified we shall find dwelt upon by pious travellers and monkish chroniclers for hundreds of years: so it came to he more and more treasured by the universal church, and held more and more firmly--"always, everywhere, and by all." in the two following centuries we have an overwhelming mass of additional authority for the belief that the very statue of salt into which lot's wife was transformed was still existing. in the fourth, the continuance of the statue was vouched for by st. silvia, who visited the place: though she could not see it, she was told by the bishop of segor that it had been there some time before, and she concluded that it had been temporarily covered by the sea. in both the fourth and fifth centuries such great doctors in the church as st. jerome, st. john chrysostom, and st. cyril of jerusalem agreed in this belief and statement; hence it was, doubtless, that the hebrew word which is translated in the authorized english version "pillar," was translated in the vulgate, which the majority of christians believe virtually inspired, by the word "statue"; we shall find this fact insisted upon by theologians arguing in behalf of the statue, as a result and monument of the miracle, for over fourteen hundred years afterward.[[228]] about the middle of the sixth century antoninus martyr visited the dead sea region and described it, but curiously reversed a simple truth in these words: "nor do sticks or straws float there, nor can a man swim, but whatever is cast into it sinks to the bottom." as to the statue of lot's wife, he threw doubt upon its miraculous renewal, but testified that it was still standing. in the seventh century the targum of jerusalem not only testified that the salt pillar at usdum was once lot's wife, but declared that she must retain that form until the general resurrection. in the seventh century too, bishop arculf travelled to the dead sea, and his work was added to the treasures of the church. he greatly develops the legend, and especially that part of it given by josephus. the bitumen that floats upon the sea "resembles gold and the form of a bull or camel"; "birds can not live near it"; and "the very beautiful apples" which grow there, when plucked, "burn and are reduced to ashes, and smoke as if they were still burning." in the eighth century the venerable bede takes these statements of arculf and his predecessors, binds them together in his work on _the holy places_, and gives the whole mass of myths and legends an enormous impulse.[[229]] in the tenth century new force is given to it by the pious moslem mukadassi. speaking of the town of segor, near the salt region, he says that the proper translation of its name is "hell"; and of the lake he says, "its waters are hot, even as though the place stood over hell-fire." in the crusading period, immediately following, all the legends burst forth more brilliantly than ever. the first of these new travellers who makes careful statements is fulk of chartres, who in 1100 accompanied king baldwin to the dead sea and saw many wonders; but, though he visited the salt region at usdum, he makes no mention of the salt pillar: evidently he had fallen on evil times; the older statues had probably been washed away, and no new one had happened to be washed out of the rocks just at that period. but his misfortune was more than made up by the triumphant experience of a far more famous traveller, half a century later--rabhi benjamin of tudela. rabbi benjamin finds new evidences of miracle in the dead sea, and develops to a still higher point the legend of the salt statue of lot's wife, enriching the world with the statement that it was steadily and miraculously rene wed; that, though the cattle of the region licked its surface, it never grew smaller. again a thrill of joy went through the monasteries and pulpits of christendom at this increasing "evidence of the truth of scripture." toward the end of the thirteenth century there appeared in palestine a traveller superior to most before or since--count burchard, monk of mount sion. he had the advantage of knowing something of arabic, and his writings show him to have been observant and thoughtful. no statue of lot's wife appears to have been washed clean of the salt rock at his visit, but he takes it for granted that the dead sea is "the mouth of hell," and that the vapour rising from it is the smoke from satan's furnaces. these ideas seem to have become part of the common stock, for ernoul, who travelled to the dead sea during the same century, always speaks of it as the "sea of devils." near the beginning of the fourteenth century appeared the book of far wider influence which bears the name of sir john mandeville, and in the various editions of it myths and legends of the dead sea and of the pillar of salt burst forth into wonderful luxuriance. this book tells us that masses of fiery matter are every day thrown up from the water "as large as a horse"; that, though it contains no living thing, it has been shown that men thrown into it can not die; and, finally, as if to prove the worthlessness of devout testimony to the miraculous, he says: "and whoever throws a piece of iron therein, it floats; and whoever throws a feather therein, it sinks to the bottom; and, because that is contrary to nature, i was not willing to believe it until i saw it." the book, of course, mentions lot's wife, and says that the pillar of salt "stands there to-day," and "has a right salty taste." injustice has perhaps been done to the compilers of this famous work in holding them liars of the first magnitude. they simply abhorred scepticism, and thought it meritorious to believe all pious legends. the ideal mandeville was a man of overmastering faith, and resembled tertullian in believing some things "because they are impossible"; he was doubtless entirely conscientious; the solemn ending of the book shows that he listened, observed, and wrote under the deepest conviction, and those who re-edited his book were probably just as honest in adding the later stories of pious travellers. _the travels of sir john mandeville_, thus appealing to the popular heart, were most widely read in the monasteries and repeated among the people. innumerable copies were made in manuscript, and finally in print, and so the old myths received a new life.[[231]] in the fifteenth century wonders increased. in 1418 we have the lord of caumont, who makes a pilgrimage and gives us a statement which is the result of the theological reasoning of centuries, and especially interesting as a typical example of the theological method in contrast with the scientific. he could not understand how the blessed waters of the jordan could be allowed to mingle with the accursed waters of the dead sea. in spite, then, of the eye of sense, he beheld the water with the eye of faith, and calmly announced that the jordan water passes through the sea, but that the two masses of water are not mingled. as to the salt statue of lot's wife, he declares it to be still existing; and, copying a table of indulgences granted by the church to pious pilgrims, he puts down the visit to the salt statue as giving an indulgence of seven years. toward the end of the century we have another traveller yet more influential: bernard of breydenbach, dean of mainz. his book of travels was published in 1486, at the famous press of schoeffer, and in various translations it was spread through europe, exercising an influence wide and deep. his first important notice of the dead sea is as follows: "in this, tirus the serpent is found, and from him the tiriac medicine is made. he is blind, and so full of venom that there is no remedy for his bite except cutting off the bitten part. he can only be taken by striking him and making him angry; then his venom flies into his head and tail." breydenbach calls the dead sea "the chimney of hell," and repeats the old story as to the miraculous solvent for its bitumen. he, too, makes the statement that the holy water of the jordan does not mingle with the accursed water of the infernal sea, but increases the miracle which caumont had announced by saying that, although the waters appear to come together, the jordan is really absorbed in the earth before it reaches the sea. as to lot's wife, various travellers at that time had various fortunes. some, like caumont and breydenbach, took her continued existence for granted; some, like count john of solms, saw her and were greatly edified; some, like hans werli, tried to find her and could not, but, like st. silvia, a thousand years before, were none the less edified by the idea that, for some inscrutable purpose, the sea had been allowed to hide her from them; some found her larger than they expected, even forty feet high, as was the salt pillar which happened to be standing at the visit of commander lynch in 1848; but this only added a new proof to the miracle, for the text was remembered, "there were giants in those days." out of the mass of works of pilgrims during the fifteenth century i select just one more as typical of the theological view then dominant, and this is the noted book of felix fabri, a preaching friar of ulm. i select him, because even so eminent an authority in our own time as dr. edward robinson declares him to have been the most thorough, thoughtful, and enlightened traveller of that century. fabri is greatly impressed by the wonders of the dead sea, and typical of his honesty influenced by faith is his account of the dead sea fruit; he describes it with almost perfect accuracy, but adds the statement that when mature it is "filled with ashes and cinders." as to the salt statue, he says: "we saw the place between the sea and mount segor, but could not see the statue itself because we were too far distant to see anything of human size; but we saw it with firm faith, because we believed scripture, which speaks of it; and we were filled with wonder." to sustain absolute faith in the statue he reminds his reader's that "god is able even of these stones to raise up seed to abraham," and goes into a long argument, discussing such transformations as those of king atlas and pygmalion's statue, with a multitude of others, winding up with the case, given in the miracles of st. jerome, of a heretic who was changed into a log of wood, which was then burned. he gives a statement of the hebrews that lot's wife received her peculiar punishment because she had refused to add salt to the food of the angels when they visited her, and he preaches a short sermon in which he says that, as salt is the condiment of food, so the salt statue of lot's wife "gives us a condiment of wisdom."[[233]] there were, indeed, many discrepancies in the testimony of travellers regarding the salt pillar--so many, in fact, that at a later period the learned dom calmet acknowledged that they shook his belief in the whole matter; but, during this earlier time, under the complete sway of the theological spirit, these difficulties only gave new and more glorious opportunities for faith. for, if a considerable interval occurred between the washing of one salt pillar out of existence and the washing of another into existence, the idea arose that the statue, by virtue of the soul which still remained in it, had departed on some mysterious excursion. did it happen that one statue was washed out one year in one place and another statue another year in another place, this difficulty was surmounted by believing that lot's wife still walked about. did it happen that a salt column was undermined by the rains and fell, this was believed to be but another sign of life. did a pillar happen to be covered in part by the sea, this was enough to arouse the belief that the statue from time to time descended into the dead sea depths--possibly to satisfy that old fatal curiosity regarding her former neighbours. did some smaller block of salt happen to be washed out near the statue, it was believed that a household dog, also transformed into salt, had followed her back from beneath the deep. did more statues than one appear at one time, that simply made the mystery more impressive. in facts now so easy of scientific explanation the theologians found wonderful matter for argument. one great question among them was whether the soul of lot's wife did really remain in the statue. on one side it was insisted that, as holy scripture declares that lot's wife was changed into a pillar of salt, and as she was necessarily made up of a soul and a body, the soul must have become part of the statue. this argument was clinched by citing that passage in the book of wisdom in which the salt pillar is declared to be still standing as "the monument of an unbelieving _soul_." on the other hand, it was insisted that the soul of the woman must have been incorporeal and immortal, and hence could not have been changed into a substance corporeal and mortal. naturally, to this it would be answered that the salt pillar was no more corporeal than the ordinary materials of the human body, and that it had been made miraculously immortal, and "with god all things are possible." thus were opened long vistas of theological discussion.[[234]] as we enter the sixteenth century the dead sea myths, and especially the legends of lot's wife, are still growing. in 1507 father anselm of the minorites declares that the sea sometimes covers the feet of the statue, sometimes the legs, sometimes the whole body. in 1555, gabriel giraudet, priest at puy, journeyed through palestine. his faith was robust, and his attitude toward the myths of the dead sea is seen by his declaration that its waters are so foul that one can smell them at a distance of three leagues; that straw, hay, or feathers thrown into them will sink, but that iron and other metals will float; that criminals have been kept in them three or four days and could not drown. as to lot's wife, he says that he found her "lying there, her back toward heaven, converted into salt stone; for i touched her, scratched her, and put a piece of her into my mouth, and she tasted salt." at the centre of all these legends we see, then, the idea that, though there were no living beasts in the dead sea, the people of the overwhelmed cities were still living beneath its waters, probably in hell; that there was life in the salt statue; and that it was still curious regarding its old neighbours. hence such travellers in the latter years of the century as count albert of lowenstein and prince nicolas radziwill are not at all weakened in faith by failing to find the statue. what the former is capable of believing is seen by his statement that in a certain cemetery at cairo during one night in the year the dead thrust forth their feet, hands, limbs, and even rise wholly from their graves. there seemed, then, no limit to these pious beliefs. the idea that there is merit in credulity, with the love of myth-making and miracle-mongering, constantly made them larger. nor did the protestant reformation diminish them at first; it rather strengthened them and fixed them more firmly in the popular mind. they seemed destined to last forever. how they were thus strengthened at first, under protestantism, and how they were finally dissolved away in the atmosphere of scientific thought, will now be shown.[[235]] iii. post-reformation culmination of the dead sea legends.--beginnings of a healthful scepticism. the first effect of the protestant reformation was to popularize the older dead sea legends, and to make the public mind still more receptive for the newer ones. luther's great pictorial bible, so powerful in fixing the ideas of the german people, showed by very striking engravings all three of these earlier myths--the destruction of the cities by fire from heaven, the transformation of lot's wife, and the vile origin of the hated moabites and ammonites; and we find the salt statue, especially, in this and other pictorial bibles, during generation after generation. catholic peoples also held their own in this display of faith. about 1517 francois regnault published at paris a compilation on palestine enriched with woodcuts: in this the old dead sea legend of the "serpent tyrus" reappears embellished, and with it various other new versions of old stories. five years later bartholomew de salignac travels in the holy land, vouches for the continued existence of the lot's wife statue, and gives new life to an old marvel by insisting that the sacred waters of the jordan are not really poured into the infernal basin of the dead sea, but that they are miraculously absorbed by the earth. these ideas were not confined to the people at large; we trace them among scholars. in 1581, bunting, a north german professor and theologian, published his _itinerary of holy scripture_, and in this the dead sea and lot legends continue to increase. he tells us that the water of the sea "changes three times every day"; that it "spits forth fire" that it throws up "on high" great foul masses which "burn like pitch" and "swim about like huge oxen"; that the statue of lot's wife is still there, and that it shines like salt. in 1590, christian adrichom, a dutch theologian, published his famous work on sacred geography. he does not insist upon the dead sea legends generally, but declares that the statue of lot's wife is still in existence, and on his map he gives a picture of her standing at usdum. nor was it altogether safe to dissent from such beliefs. just as, under the papal sway, men of science were severely punished for wrong views of the physical geography of the earth in general, so, when calvin decided to burn servetus, he included in his indictment for heresy a charge that servetus, in his edition of ptolemy, had made unorthodox statements regarding the physical geography of palestine.[[237]] protestants and catholics vied with each other in the making of new myths. thus, in his _most devout journey_, published in 1608, jean zvallart, mayor of ath in hainault, confesses himself troubled by conflicting stories about the salt statue, but declares himself sound in the faith that "some vestige of it still remains," and makes up for his bit of freethinking by adding a new mythical horror to the region--"crocodiles," which, with the serpents and the "foul odour of the sea," prevented his visit to the salt mountains. in 1615 father jean boucher publishes the first of many editions of his _sacred bouquet of the holy land_. he depicts the horrors of the dead sea in a number of striking antitheses, and among these is the statement that it is made of mud rather than of water, that it soils whatever is put into it, and so corrupts the land about it that not a blade of grass grows in all that region. in the same spirit, thirteen years later, the protestant christopher heidmann publishes his _palaestina_, in which he speaks of a fluid resembling blood oozing from the rocks about the dead sea, and cites authorities to prove that the statue of lot's wife still exists and gives signs of life. yet, as we near the end of the sixteenth century, some evidences of a healthful and fruitful scepticism begin to appear. the old stream of travellers, commentators, and preachers, accepting tradition and repeating what they have been told, flows on; but here and there we are refreshed by the sight of a man who really begins to think and look for himself. first among these is the french naturalist pierre belon. as regards the ordinary wonders, he had the simple faith of his time. among a multitude of similar things, he believed that he saw the stones on which the disciples were sleeping during the prayer of christ; the stone on which the lord sat when he raised lazarus from the dead; the lord's footprints on the stone from which he ascended into heaven; and, most curious of all, "the stone which the builders rejected." yet he makes some advance on his predecessors, since he shows in one passage that he had thought out the process by which the simpler myths of palestine were made. for, between bethlehem and jerusalem, he sees a field covered with small pebbles, and of these he says: "the common people tell you that a man was once sowing peas there, when our lady passed that way and asked him what he was doing; the man answered "i am sowing pebbles" and straightway all the peas were changed into these little stones." his ascribing belief in this explanatory transformation myth to the "common people" marks the faint dawn of a new epoch. typical also of this new class is the german botanist leonhard rauwolf. he travels through palestine in 1575, and, though devout and at times credulous, notes comparatively few of the old wonders, while he makes thoughtful and careful mention of things in nature that he really saw; he declines to use the eyes of the monks, and steadily uses his own to good purpose. as we go on in the seventeenth century, this current of new thought is yet more evident; a habit of observing more carefully and of comparing observations had set in; the great voyages of discovery by columbus, vasco da gama, magellan, and others were producing their effect; and this effect was increased by the inductive philosophy of bacon, the reasonings of descartes, and the suggestions of montaigne. so evident was this current that, as far back as the early days of the century, a great theologian, quaresmio of lodi, had made up his mind to stop it forever. in 1616, therefore, he began his ponderous work entitled _the historical, theological, and moral explanation of the holy land_. he laboured upon it for nine years, gave nine years more to perfecting it, and then put it into the hands of the great publishing house of plantin at antwerp: they were four years in printing and correcting it, and when it at last appeared it seemed certain to establish the theological view of the holy land for all time. while taking abundant care of other myths which he believed sanctified by holy scripture, quaresmio devoted himself at great length to the dead sea, but above all to the salt statue; and he divides his chapter on it into three parts, each headed by a question: first, "_how_ was lot's wife changed into a statue of salt?" secondly, "_where_ was she thus transformed?" and, thirdly, "d_oes that statue still exist_?" through each of these divisions he fights to the end all who are inclined to swerve in the slightest degree from the orthodox opinion. he utterly refuses to compromise with any modern theorists. to all such he says, "the narration of moses is historical and is to be received in its natural sense, and no right-thinking man will deny this." to those who favoured the figurative interpretation he says, "with such reasonings any passage of scripture can be denied." as to the spot where the miracle occurred, he discusses four places, but settles upon the point where the picture of the statue is given in adrichom's map. as to the continued existence of the statue, he plays with the opposing view as a cat fondles a mouse; and then shows that the most revered ancient authorities, venerable men still living, and the bedouins, all agree that it is still in being. throughout the whole chapter his thoroughness in scriptural knowledge and his profundity in logic are only excelled by his scorn for those theologians who were willing to yield anything to rationalism. so powerful was this argument that it seemed to carry everything before it, not merely throughout the roman obedience, but among the most eminent theologians of protestantism. as regards the roman church, we may take as a type the missionary priest eugene roger, who, shortly after the appearance of quaresmio's book, published his own travels in palestine. he was an observant man, and his work counts among those of real value; but the spirit of quaresmio had taken possession of him fully. his work is prefaced with a map showing the points of most importance in scriptural history, and among these he identifies the place where samson slew the thousand philistines with the jawbone of an ass, and where he hid the gates of gaza; the cavern which adam and eve inhabited after their expulsion from paradise; the spot where balaam's ass spoke; the tree on which absalom was hanged; the place where jacob wrestled with the angel; the steep place where the swine possessed of devils plunged into the sea; the spot where the prophet elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire; and, of course, the position of the salt statue which was once lot's wife. he not only indicates places on land, but places in the sea; thus he shows where jonah was swallowed by the whale, and "where st. peter caught one hundred and fifty-three fishes." as to the dead sea miracles generally, he does not dwell on them at great length; he evidently felt that quaresmio had exhausted the subject; but he shows largely the fruits of quaresmio's teaching in other matters. so, too, we find the thoughts and words of quaresmio echoing afar through the german universities, in public disquisitions, dissertations, and sermons. the great bible commentators, both catholic and protestant, generally agreed in accepting them. but, strong as this theological theory was, we find that, as time went on, it required to be braced somewhat, and in 1692 wedelius, professor of medicine at jena, chose as the subject of his inaugural address _the physiology of the destruction of sodom and of the statue of salt_. it is a masterly example of "sanctified science." at great length he dwells on the characteristics of sulphur, salt, and thunderbolts; mixes up scriptural texts, theology, and chemistry after a most bewildering fashion; and finally comes to the conclusion that a thunderbolt, flung by the almighty, calcined the body of lot's wife, and at the same time vitrified its particles into a glassy mass looking like salt.[[241]] not only were these views demonstrated, so far as theologico-scientific reasoning could demonstrate anything, but it was clearly shown, by a continuous chain of testimony from the earliest ages, that the salt statue at usdum had been recognised as the body of lot's wife by jews, mohammedans, and the universal christian church, "always, everywhere, and by all." under the influence of teachings like these--and of the winter rains--new wonders began to appear at the salt pillar. in 1661 the franciscan monk zwinner published his travels in palestine, and gave not only most of the old myths regarding the salt statue, but a new one, in some respects more striking than any of the old--for he had heard that a dog, also transformed into salt, was standing by the side of lot's wife. even the more solid benedictine scholars were carried away, and we find in the _sacred history_ by prof. mezger, of the order of st. benedict, published in 1700, a renewal of the declaration that the salt statue must be a "_perpetual_ memorial." but it was soon evident that the scientific current was still working beneath this ponderous mass of theological authority. a typical evidence of this we find in 1666 in the travels of doubdan, a canon of st. denis. as to the dead sea, he says that he saw no smoke, no clouds, and no "black, sticky water"; as to the statue of lot's wife, he says, "the moderns do not believe so easily that she has lasted so long"; then, as if alarmed at his own boldness, he concedes that the sea _may_ be black and sticky _in the middle_; and from lot's wife he escapes under cover of some pious generalities. four years later another french ecclesiastic, jacques goujon, referring in his published travels to the legends of the salt pillar, says: "people may believe these stories as much as they choose; i did not see it, nor did i go there." so, too, in 1697, morison, a dignitary of the french church, having travelled in palestine, confesses that, as to the story of the pillar of salt, he has difficulty in believing it. the same current is observed working still more strongly in the travels of the rev. henry maundrell, an english chaplain at aleppo, who travelled through palestine during the same year. he pours contempt over the legends of the dead sea in general: as to the story that birds could not fly over it, he says that he saw them flying there; as to the utter absence of life in the sea, he saw small shells in it; he saw no traces of any buried cities; and as to the stories regarding the statue of lot's wife and the proposal to visit it, he says, "nor could we give faith enough to these reports to induce us to go on such an errand." the influence of the baconian philosophy on his mind is very clear; for, in expressing his disbelief in the dead sea apples, with their contents of ashes, he says that he saw none, and he cites lord bacon in support of scepticism on this and similar points. but the strongest effect of this growing scepticism is seen near the end of that century, when the eminent dutch commentator clericus (le clerc) published his commentary on the pentateuch and his _dissertation on the statue of salt_. at great length he brings all his shrewdness and learning to bear against the whole legend of the actual transformation of lot's wife and the existence of the salt pillar, and ends by saying that "the whole story is due to the vanity of some and the credulity of more." in the beginning of the eighteenth century we find new tributaries to this rivulet of scientific thought. in 1701 father felix beaugrand dismisses the dead sea legends and the salt statue very curtly and dryly--expressing not his belief in it, but a conventional wish to believe. in 1709 a scholar appeared in another part of europe and of different faith, who did far more than any of his predecessors to envelop the dead sea legends in an atmosphere of truth--adrian reland, professor at the university of utrecht. his work on palestine is a monument of patient scholarship, having as its nucleus a love of truth as truth: there is no irreverence in him, but he quietly brushes away a great mass of myths and legends: as to the statue of lot's wife, he treats it warily, but applies the comparative method to it with killing effect, by showing that the story of its miraculous renewal is but one among many of its kind.[[243]] yet to superficial observers the old current of myth and marvel seemed to flow into the eighteenth century as strong as ever, and of this we may take two typical evidences. the first of these is the pious pilgrimage of vincent briemle. his journey was made about 171o; and his work, brought out under the auspices of a high papal functionary some years later, in a heavy quarto, gave new life to the stories of the hellish character of the dead sea, and especially to the miraculous renewal of the salt statue. in 172o came a still more striking effort to maintain the old belief in the north of europe, for in that year the eminent theologian masius published his great treatise on _the conversion of lot's wife into a statue of salt_. evidently intending that this work should be the last word on this subject in germany, as quaresmio had imagined that his work would be the last in italy, he develops his subject after the high scholastic and theologic manner. calling attention first to the divine command in the new testament, "remember lot's wife," he argues through a long series of chapters. in the ninth of these he discusses "the _impelling cause_" of her looking back, and introduces us to the question, formerly so often treated by theologians, whether the soul of lot's wife was finally saved. here we are glad to learn that the big, warm heart of luther lifted him above the common herd of theologians, and led him to declare that she was "a faithful and saintly woman," and that she certainly was not eternally damned. in justice to the roman church also it should be said that several of her most eminent commentators took a similar view, and insisted that the sin of lot's wife was venial, and therefore, at the worst, could only subject her to the fires of purgatory. the eleventh chapter discusses at length the question _how_ she was converted into salt, and, mentioning many theological opinions, dwells especially upon the view of rivetus, that a thunderbolt, made up apparently of fire, sulphur, and salt, wrought her transformation at the same time that it blasted the land; and he bases this opinion upon the twenty-ninth chapter of deuteronomy and the one hundred and seventh psalm. later, masius presents a sacred scientific theory that "saline particles entered into her until her whole body was infected"; and with this he connects another piece of sanctified science, to the effect that "stagnant bile" may have rendered the surface of her body "entirely shining, bitter, dry, and deformed." finally, he comes to the great question whether the salt pillar is still in existence. on this he is full and fair. on one hand he allows that luther thought that it was involved in the general destruction of sodom and gomorrah, and he cites various travellers who had failed to find it; but, on the other hand, he gives a long chain of evidence to show that it continued to exist: very wisely he reminds the reader that the positive testimony of those who have seen it must outweigh the negative testimony of those who have not, and he finally decides that the salt statue is still in being. no doubt a work like this produced a considerable effect in protestant countries; indeed, this effect seems evident as far off as england, for, in 172o, we find in dean prideaux's _old and new testament connected_ a map on which the statue of salt is carefully indicated. so, too, in holland, in the _sacred geography_ published at utrecht in 1758 by the theologian bachiene, we find him, while showing many signs of rationalism, evidently inclined to the old views as to the existence of the salt pillar; but just here comes a curious evidence of the real direction of the current of thought through the century, for, nine years later, in the german translation of bachiene's work we find copious notes by the translator in a far more rationalistic spirit; indeed, we see the dawn of the inevitable day of compromise, for we now have, instead of the old argument that the divine power by one miraculous act changed lot's wife into a salt pillar, the suggestion that she was caught in a shower of sulphur and saltpetre, covered by it, and that the result was a lump, which in a general way _is called_ in our sacred books "a pillar of salt."[[245]] but, from the middle of the eighteenth century, the new current sets through christendom with ever-increasing strength. very interesting is it to compare the great scriptural commentaries of the middle of this century with those published a century earlier. of the earlier ones we may take matthew poole's _synopsis_ as a type: as authorized by royal decree in 1667 it contains very substantial arguments for the pious belief in the statue. of the later ones we may take the edition of the noted commentary of the jesuit tirinus seventy years later: while he feels bound to present the authorities, he evidently endeavours to get rid of the subject as speedily as possible under cover of conventionalities; of the spirit of quaresmio he shows no trace.[[246]] about 1760 came a striking evidence of the strength of this new current. the abate mariti then published his book upon the holy land; and of this book, by an italian ecclesiastic, the most eminent of german bibliographers in this field says that it first broke a path for critical study of the holy land. mariti is entirely sceptical as to the sinking of the valley of siddim and the overwhelming of the cities. he speaks kindly of a capuchin father who saw everywhere at the dead sea traces of the divine malediction, while he himself could not see them, and says, "it is because a capuchin carries everywhere the five senses of faith, while i only carry those of nature." he speaks of "the lies of josephus," and makes merry over "the rude and shapeless block" which the guide assured him was the statue of lot's wife, explaining the want of human form in the salt pillar by telling him that this complete metamorphosis was part of her punishment. about twenty years later, another remarkable man, volney, broaches the subject in what was then known as the "philosophic" spirit. between the years 1783 and 1785 he made an extensive journey through the holy land and published a volume of travels which by acuteness of thought and vigour of style secured general attention. in these, myth and legend were thrown aside, and we have an account simply dictated by the love of truth as truth. he, too, keeps the torch of science burning by applying his geological knowledge to the regions which he traverses. as we look back over the eighteenth century we see mingled with the new current of thought, and strengthening it, a constantly increasing stream of more strictly scientific observation and reflection. to review it briefly: in the very first years of the century maraldi showed the paris academy of sciences fossil fishes found in the lebanon region; a little later, cornelius bruyn, in the french edition of his eastern travels, gave well-drawn representations of fossil fishes and shells, some of them from the region of the dead sea; about the middle of the century richard pococke, bishop of meath, and korte of altona made more statements of the same sort; and toward the close of the century, as we have seen, volney gave still more of these researches, with philosophical deductions from them. the result of all this was that there gradually dawned upon thinking men the conviction that, for ages before the appearance of man on the planet, and during all the period since his appearance, natural laws have been steadily in force in palestine as elsewhere; this conviction obliged men to consider other than supernatural causes for the phenomena of the dead sea, and myth and marvel steadily shrank in value. but at the very threshold of the nineteenth century chateaubriand came into the field, and he seemed to banish the scientific spirit, though what he really did was to conceal it temporarily behind the vapours of his rhetoric. the time was propitious for him. it was the period of reaction after the french revolution, when what was called religion was again in fashion, and when even atheists supported it as a good thing for common people: of such an epoch chateaubriand, with his superficial information, thin sentiment, and showy verbiage, was the foreordained prophet. his enemies were wont to deny that he ever saw the holy land; whether he did or not, he added nothing to real knowledge, but simply threw a momentary glamour over the regions he described, and especially over the dead sea. the legend of lot's wife he carefully avoided, for he knew too well the danger of ridicule in france. as long as the napoleonic and bourbon reigns lasted, and indeed for some time afterward, this kind of dealing with the holy land was fashionable, and we have a long series of men, especially of frenchmen, who evidently received their impulse from chateaubriand. about 1831 de geramb, abbot of la trappe, evidently a very noble and devout spirit, sees vapour above the dead sea, but stretches the truth a little--speaking of it as "vapour or smoke." he could not find the salt statue, and complains of the "diversity of stories regarding it." the simple physical cause of this diversity--the washing out of different statues in different years--never occurs to him; but he comforts himself with the scriptural warrant for the metamorphosis.[[248]] but to the honour of scientific men and scientific truth it should be said that even under napoleon and the bourbons there were men who continued to explore, observe, and describe with the simple love of truth as truth, and in spite of the probability that their researches would be received during their lifetime with contempt and even hostility, both in church and state. the pioneer in this work of the nineteenth century was the german naturalist ulrich seetzen. he began his main investigation in 1806, and soon his learning, courage, and honesty threw a flood of new light into the dead sea questions. in this light, myth and legend faded more rapidly than ever. typical of his method is his examination of the dead sea fruit. he found, on reaching palestine, that josephus's story regarding it, which had been accepted for nearly two thousand years, was believed on all sides; more than this, he found that the original myth had so grown that a multitude of respectable people at bethlehem and elsewhere assured him that not only apples, but pears, pomegranates, figs, lemons, and many other fruits which grow upon the shores of the dead sea, though beautiful to look upon, were filled with ashes. these good people declared to seetzen that they had seen these fruits, and that, not long before, a basketful of them which had been sent to a merchant of jaffa had turned to ashes. seetzen was evidently perplexed by this mass of testimony and naturally anxious to examine these fruits. on arriving at the sea he began to look for them, and the guide soon showed him the "apples." these he found to be simply an _asclepia_, which had been described by linnaeus, and which is found in the east indies, arabia, egypt, jamaica, and elsewhere--the "ashes" being simply seeds. he looked next for the other fruits, and the guide soon found for him the "lemons": these he discovered to be a species of _solanum_ found in other parts of palestine and elsewhere, and the seeds in these were the famous "cinders." he looked next for the pears, figs, and other accursed fruits; but, instead of finding them filled with ashes and cinders, he found them like the same fruits in other lands, and he tells us that he ate the figs with much pleasure. so perished a myth which had been kept alive two thousand years,--partly by modes of thought natural to theologians, partly by the self-interest of guides, and partly by the love of marvel-mongering among travellers. the other myths fared no better. as to the appearance of the sea, he found its waters not "black and sticky," but blue and transparent; he found no smoke rising from the abyss, but tells us that sunlight and cloud and shore were pleasantly reflected from the surface. as to lot's wife, he found no salt pillar which had been a careless woman, but the arabs showed him many boulders which had once been wicked men. his work was worthily continued by a long succession of true investigators,--among them such travellers or geographers as burckhardt, irby, mangles, fallmerayer, and carl von raumer: by men like these the atmosphere of myth and legend was steadily cleared away; as a rule, they simply forgot lot's wife altogether. in this noble succession should be mentioned an american theologian, dr. edward robinson, professor at new york. beginning about 1826, he devoted himself for thirty years to the thorough study of the geography of palestine, and he found a worthy coadjutor in another american divine, dr. eli smith. neither of these men departed openly from the old traditions: that would have cost a heart-breaking price--the loss of all further opportunity to carry on their researches. robinson did not even think it best to call attention to the mythical character of much on which his predecessors had insisted; he simply brought in, more and more, the dry, clear atmosphere of the love of truth for truth's sake, and, in this, myths and legends steadily disappeared. by doing this he rendered a far greater service to real christianity than any other theologian had ever done in this field. very characteristic is his dealing with the myth of lot's wife. though more than once at usdum,--though giving valuable information regarding the sea, shore, and mountains there, he carefully avoids all mention of the salt pillar and of the legend which arose from it. in this he set an example followed by most of the more thoughtful religious travellers since his time. very significant is it to see the new testament injunction, "remember lot's wife," so utterly forgotten. these later investigators seem never to have heard of it; and this constant forgetfulness shows the change which had taken place in the enlightened thinking of the world. but in the year 1848 came an episode very striking in its character and effect. at that time, the war between the united states and mexico having closed, lieutenant lynch, of the united states navy, found himself in the port of vera cruz, commanding an old hulk, the _supply_. looking about for somnething to do, it occurred to him to write to the secretary of the navy asking permission to explore the dead sea. under ordinary circumstances the proposal would doubtless have been strangled with red tape; but, fortunately, the secretary at that time was mr. john y. mason, of virginia. mr. mason was famous for his good nature. both at washington and at paris, where he was afterward minister, this predominant trait has left a multitude of amusing traditions; it was of him that senator benton said, "to be supremely happy he must have his paunch full of oysters and his hands full of cards." the secretary granted permission, but evidently gave the matter not another thought. as a result, came an expedition the most comical and one of the most rich in results to be found in american annals. never was anything so happy-go-lucky. lieutenant lynch started with his hulk, with hardly an instrument save those ordinarily found on shipboard, and with a body of men probably the most unfit for anything like scientific investigation ever sent on such an errand; fortunately, he picked up a young instructor in mathematics, mr. anderson, and added to his apparatus two strong iron boats. arriving, after a tedious voyage, on the coast of asia minor, he set to work. he had no adequate preparation in general history, archaeology, or the physical sciences; but he had his american patriotism, energy, pluck, pride, and devotion to duty, and these qualities stood him in good stead. with great labour he got the iron boats across the country. then the tug of war began. first of all investigators, he forced his way through the whole length of the river jordan and from end to end of the dead sea. there were constant difficulties--geographical, climatic, and personal; but lynch cut through them all. he was brave or shrewd, as there was need. anderson proved an admirable helper, and together they made surveys of distances, altitudes, depths, and sundry simple investigations in a geological, mineralogical, and chemical way. much was poorly done, much was left undone, but the general result was most honourable both to lynch and anderson; and secretary mason found that his easy-going patronage of the enterprise was the best act of his official life. the results of this expedition on public opinion were most curious. lynch was no scholar in any sense; he had travelled little, and thought less on the real questions underlying the whole investigation; as to the difference in depth of the two parts of the lake, he jumped--with a sailor's disregard of logic--to the conclusion that it somehow proved the mythical account of the overwhelming of the cities, and he indulged in reflections of a sort probably suggested by his recollections of american sunday-schools. especially noteworthy is his treatment of the legend of lot's wife. he found the pillar of salt. it happened to be at that period a circular column of friable salt rock, about forty feet high; yet, while he accepts every other old myth, he treats the belief that this was once the wife of lot as "a superstition." one little circumstance added enormously to the influence of this book, for, as a frontispiece, he inserted a picture of the salt column. it was delineated in rather a poetic manner: light streamed upon it, heavy clouds hung above it, and, as a background, were ranged buttresses of salt rock furrowed and channelled out by the winter rains: this salt statue picture was spread far and wide, and in thousands of country pulpits and sunday-schools it was shown as a tribute of science to scripture. nor was this influence confined to american sunday-school children: lynch had innocently set a trap into which several european theologians stumbled. one of these was dr. lorenz gratz, vicar-general of augsburg, a theological professor. in the second edition of his _theatre of the holy scriptures_, published in 1858, he hails lynch's discovery of the salt pillar with joy, forgets his allusion to the old theory regarding it as a superstition, and does not stop to learn that this was one of a succession of statues washed out yearly by the rains, but accepts it as the original lot's wife. the french churchmen suffered most. about two years after lynch, de saulcy visited the dead sea to explore it thoroughly, evidently in the interest of sacred science--and of his own promotion. of the modest thoroughness of robinson there is no trace in his writings. he promptly discovered the overwhelmed cities, which no one before or since has ever found, poured contempt on other investigators, and threw over his whole work an air of piety. but, unfortunately, having a frenchman's dread of ridicule, he attempted to give a rationalistic explanation of what he calls "the enormous needles of salt washed out by the winter rain," and their connection with the lot's wife myth, and declared his firm belief that she, "being delayed by curiosity or terror, was crushed by a rock which rolled down from the mountain, and when lot and his children turned about they saw at the place where she had been only the rock of salt which covered her body." but this would not do at all, and an eminent ecclesiastic privately and publicly expostulated with de saulcy--very naturally declaring that "it was not lot who wrote the book of genesis." the result was that another edition of de saulcy's work was published by a church book society, with the offending passage omitted; but a passage was retained really far more suggestive of heterodoxy, and this was an arab legend accounting for the origin of certain rocks near the dead sea curiously resembling salt formations. this in effect ran as follows: "abraham, the friend of god, having come here one day with his mule to buy salt, the salt-workers impudently told him that they had no salt to sell, whereupon the patriarch said: `your words are, true. you have no salt to sell,' and instantly the salt of this whole region was transformed into stone, or rather into a salt which has lost its savour." nothing could be more sure than this story to throw light into the mental and moral process by which the salt pillar myth was originally created. in the years 1864 and 1865 came an expedition on a much more imposing scale: that of the duc de luynes. his knowledge of archaeology and his wealth were freely devoted to working the mine which lynch had opened, and, taking with him an iron vessel and several _savants_, he devoted himself especially to finding the cities of the dead sea, and to giving less vague accounts of them than those of de saulcy. but he was disappointed, and honest enough to confess his disappointment. so vanished one of the most cherished parts of the legend. but worse remained behind. in the orthodox duke's company was an acute geologist, monsieur lartet, who in due time made an elaborate report, which let a flood of light into the whole region. the abbe richard had been rejoicing the orthodox heart of france by exhibiting some prehistoric flint implements as the knives which joshua had made for circumcision. by a truthful statement monsieur lartet set all france laughing at the abbe, and then turned to the geology of the dead sea basin. while he conceded that man may have seen some volcanic crisis there, and may have preserved a vivid remembrance of the vapour then rising, his whole argument showed irresistibly that all the phenomena of the region are due to natural causes, and that, so far from a sudden rising of the lake above the valley within historic times, it has been for ages steadily subsiding. since balaam was called by balak to curse his enemies, and "blessed them altogether," there has never been a more unexpected tribute to truth. even the salt pillar at usdum, as depicted in lynch's book, aided to undermine the myth among thinking men; for the background of the picture showed other pillars of salt in process of formation; and the ultimate result of all these expeditions was to spread an atmosphere in which myth and legend became more and more attenuated. to sum up the main points in this work of the nineteenth century: seetzen, robinson, and others had found that a human being could traverse the lake without being killed by hellish smoke; that the waters gave forth no odours; that the fruits of the region were not created full of cinders to match the desolation of the dead sea, but were growths not uncommon in asia minor and elsewhere; in fact, that all the phenomena were due to natural causes. ritter and others had shown that all noted features of the dead sea and the surrounding country were to be found in various other lakes and regions, to which no supernatural cause was ascribed among enlightened men. lynch, van de velde, osborne, and others had revealed the fact that the "pillar of salt" was frequently formed anew by the rains; and lartet and other geologists had given a final blow to the myths by making it clear from the markings on the neighbouring rocks that, instead of a sudden upheaval of the sea above the valley of siddim, there had been a gradual subsidence for ages.[[254]] even before all this evidence was in, a judicial decision had been pronounced upon the whole question by an authority both christian and scientific, from whom there could be no appeal. during the second quarter of the century prof. carl ritter, of the university of berlin, began giving to the world those researches which have placed him at the head of all geographers ancient or modern, and finally he brought together those relating to the geography of the holy land, publishing them as part of his great work on the physical geography of the earth. he was a christian, and nothing could be more reverent than his treatment of the whole subject; but his german honesty did not permit him to conceal the truth, and he simply classed together all the stories of the dead sea--old and new--no matter where found, whether in the sacred books of jews, christians, or mohammedans, whether in lives of saints or accounts of travellers, as "myths" and "sagas." from this decision there has never been among intelligent men any appeal. the recent adjustment of orthodox thought to the scientific view of the dead sea legends presents some curious features. as typical we may take the travels of two german theologians between 1860 and 1870--john kranzel, pastor in munich, and peter schegg, lately professor in the university of that city. the archdiocese of munich-freising is one of those in which the attempt to suppress modern scientific thought has been most steadily carried on. its archbishops have constantly shown themselves assiduous in securing cardinals' hats by thwarting science and by stupefying education. the twin towers of the old cathedral of munich have seemed to throw a killing shadow over intellectual development in that region. naturally, then, these two clerical travellers from that diocese did not commit themselves to clearing away any of the dead sea myths; but it is significant that neither of them follows the example of so many of their clerical predecessors in defending the salt-pillar legend: they steadily avoid it altogether. the more recent history of the salt pillar, since lynch, deserves mention. it appears that the travellers immediately after him found it shaped by the storms into a spire; that a year or two later it had utterly disappeared; and about the year 1870 prof. palmer, on visiting the place, found at some distance from the main salt bed, as he says, "a tall, isolated needle of rock, which does really bear a curious resemblance to an arab woman with a child upon her shoulders." and, finally, smith's _dictionary of the bible_, the standard work of reference for english-speaking scholars, makes its concession to the old belief regarding sodom and gomorrah as slight as possible, and the myth of lot's wife entirely disappears. iv. theological efforts at compromise.- triumph of the scientific view. the theological effort to compromise with science now came in more strongly than ever. this effort had been made long before: as we have seen, it had begun to show itself decidedly as soon as the influence of the baconian philosophy was felt. le clerc suggested that the shock caused by the sight of fire from heaven killed lot's wife instantly and made her body rigid as a statue. eichhorn suggested that she fell into a stream of melted bitumen. michaelis suggested that her relatives raised a monument of salt rock to her memory. friedrichs suggested that she fell into the sea and that the salt stiffened around her clothing, thus making a statue of her. some claimed that a shower of sulphur came down upon her, and that the word which has been translated "salt" could possibly be translated "sulphur." others hinted that the salt by its antiseptic qualities preserved her body as a mummy. de saulcy, as we have seen, thought that a piece of salt rock fell upon her, and very recently principal dawson has ventured the explanation that a flood of salt mud coming from a volcano incrusted her. but theologians themselves were the first to show the inadequacy of these explanations. the more rationalistic pointed out the fact that they were contrary to the sacred text: von bohlen, an eminent professor at konigsberg, in his sturdy german honesty, declared that the salt pillar gave rise to the story, and compared the pillar of salt causing this transformation legend to the rock in greek mythology which gave rise to the transformation legend of niobe. on the other hand, the more severely orthodox protested against such attempts to explain away the clear statements of holy writ. dom calmet, while presenting many of these explanations made as early as his time, gives us to understand that nearly all theologians adhered to the idea that lot's wife was instantly and really changed into salt; and in our own time, as we shall presently see, have come some very vigorous protests. similar attempts were made to explain the other ancient legends regarding the dead sea. one of the most recent of these is that the cities of the plain, having been built with blocks of bituminous rock, were set on fire by lightning, a contemporary earthquake helping on the work. still another is that accumulations of petroleum and inflammable gas escaped through a fissure, took fire, and so produced the catastrophe.[[257]] the revolt against such efforts to _reconcile_ scientific fact with myth and legend had become very evident about the middle of the nineteenth century. in 1851 and 1852 van de velde made his journey. he was a most devout man, but he confessed that the volcanic action at the dead sea must have been far earlier than the catastrophe mentioned in our sacred books, and that "the overthrow of sodom and gomorrah had nothing to do with this." a few years later an eminent dignitary of the english church, canon tristram, doctor of divinity and fellow of the royal society, who had explored the holy land thoroughly, after some generalities about miracles, gave up the whole attempt to make science agree with the myths, and used these words: "it has been frequently assumed that the district of usdum and its sister cities was the result of some tremendous geological catastrophe.... now, careful examination by competent geologists, such as monsieur lartet and others, has shown that the whole district has assumed its present shape slowly and gradually through a succession of ages, and that its peculiar phenomena are similar to those of other lakes." so sank from view the whole mass of dead sea myths and legends, and science gained a victory both for geology and comparative mythology. as a protest against this sort of rationalism appeared in 1876 an edition of monseigneur mislin's work on _the holy places_. in order to give weight to the book, it was prefaced by letters from pope pius ix and sundry high ecclesiastics--and from alexandre dumas! his hatred of protestant missionaries in the east is phenomenal: he calls them "bagmen," ascribes all mischief and infamy to them, and his hatred is only exceeded by his credulity. he cites all the arguments in favour of the salt statue at usdum as the identical one into which lot's wife was changed, adds some of his own, and presents her as "a type of doubt and heresy." with the proverbial facility of dogmatists in translating any word of a dead language into anything that suits their purpose, he says that the word in the nineteenth chapter of genesis which is translated "statue" or "pillar," may be translated "eternal monument"; he is especially severe on poor monsieur de saulcy for thinking that lot's wife was killed by the falling of a piece of salt rock; and he actually boasts that it was he who caused de saulcy, a member of the french institute, to suppress the obnoxious passage in a later edition. between 1870 and 1880 came two killing blows at the older theories, and they were dealt by two american scholars of the highest character. first of these may be mentioned dr. philip schaff, a professor in the presbyterian theological seminary at new york, who published his travels in 1877. in a high degree he united the scientific with the religious spirit, but the trait which made him especially fit for dealing with this subject was his straightforward german honesty. he tells the simple truth regarding the pillar of salt, so far as its physical origin and characteristics are concerned, and leaves his reader to draw the natural inference as to its relation to the myth. with the fate of dr. robertson smith in scotland and dr. woodrow in south carolina before him--both recently driven from their professorships for truth-telling-dr. schaff deserves honour for telling as much as he does. similar in effect, and even more bold in statement, were the travels of the rev. henry osborn, published in 1878. in a truly scientific spirit he calls attention to the similarity of the dead sea, with the river jordan, to sundry other lake and river systems; points out the endless variations between writers describing the salt formations at usdum; accounts rationally for these variations, and quotes from dr. anderson's report, saying, "from the soluble nature of the salt and the crumbling looseness of the marl, it may well be imagined that, while some of these needles are in the process of formation, others are being washed away." thus came out, little by little, the truth regarding the dead sea myths, and especially the salt pillar at usdum; but the final truth remained to be told in the church, and now one of the purest men and truest divines of this century told it. arthur stanley, dean of westminster, visiting the country and thoroughly exploring it, allowed that the physical features of the dead sea and its shores suggested the myths and legends, and he sums up the whole as follows: "a great mass of legends and exaggerations, partly the cause and partly the result of the old belief that the cities were buried under the dead sea, has been gradually removed in recent years." so, too, about the same time, dr. conrad furrer, pastor of the great church of st. peter at zurich, gave to the world a book of travels, reverent and thoughtful, and in this honestly acknowledged that the needles of salt at the southern end of the dead sea "in primitive times gave rise to the tradition that lot's wife was transformed into a statue of salt." thus was the mythical character of this story at last openly confessed by leading churchmen on both continents. plain statements like these from such sources left the high theological position more difficult than ever, and now a new compromise was attempted. as the siberian mother tried to save her best-beloved child from the pursuing wolves by throwing over to them her less favoured children, so an effort was now made in a leading commentary to save the legends of the valley of siddim and the miraculous destruction of the cities by throwing overboard the legend of lot's wife.[[260]] an amusing result has followed this development of opinion. as we have already seen, traveller after traveller, catholic and protestant, now visits the dead sea, and hardly one of them follows the new testament injunction to "remember lot's wife." nearly every one of them seems to think it best to forget her. of the great mass of pious legends they are shy enough, but that of lot's wife, as a rule, they seem never to have heard of, and if they do allude to it they simply cover the whole subject with a haze of pious rhetoric.[[260b]] naturally, under this state of things, there has followed the usual attempt to throw off from christendom the responsibility of the old belief, and in 1887 came a curious effort of this sort. in that year appeared the rev. dr. cunningham geikie's valuable work on _the holy land and the bible_. in it he makes the following statement as to the salt formation at usdum: "here and there, hardened portions of salt withstanding the water, while all around them melts and wears off, rise up isolated pillars, one of which bears among the arabs the name of `lot's wife.'" in the light of the previous history, there is something at once pathetic and comical in this attempt to throw the myth upon the shoulders of the poor arabs. the myth was not originated by mohammedans; it appears, as we have seen, first among the jews, and, i need hardly remind the reader, comes out in the book of wisdom and in josephus, and has been steadily maintained by fathers, martyrs, and doctors of the church, by at least one pope, and by innumerable bishops, priests, monks, commentators, and travellers, catholic and protestant, ever since. in thus throwing the responsibility of the myth upon the arabs dr. geikie appears to show both the "perfervid genius" of his countrymen and their incapacity to recognise a joke. nor is he more happy in his rationalistic explanations of the whole mass of myths. he supposes a terrific storm, in which the lightning kindled the combustible materials of the cities, aided perhaps by an earthquake; but this shows a disposition to break away from the exact statements of the sacred books which would have been most severely condemned by the universal church during at least eighteen hundred years of its history. nor would the explanations of sir william dawson have fared any better: it is very doubtful whether either of them could escape unscathed today from a synod of the free church of scotland, or of any of the leading orthodox bodies in the southern states of the american union.[[261]] how unsatisfactory all such rationalism must be to a truly theological mind is seen not only in the dealings with prof. robertson smith in scotland and prof. woodrow in south carolina, but most clearly in a book published in 1886 by monseigneur haussmann de wandelburg. among other things, the author was prelate of the pope's house-hold, a mitred abbot, canon of the holy sepulchre, and a doctor of theology of the pontifical university at rome, and his work is introduced by approving letters from pope leo xiii and the patriarch of jerusalem. monseigneur de wandelburg scorns the idea that the salt column at usdum is not the statue of lot's wife; he points out not only the danger of yielding this evidence of miracle to rationalism, but the fact that the divinely. inspired authority of the book of wisdom, written, at the latest, two hundred and fifty years before christ, distinctly refers to it. he summons josephus as a witness. he dwells on the fact that st. clement of rome, irenaeus, hegesippus, and st. cyril, "who as bishop of jerusalem must have known better than any other person what existed in palestine," with st. jerome, st. chrysostom, and a multitude of others, attest, as a matter of their own knowledge or of popular notoriety, that the remains of lot's wife really existed in their time in the form of a column of salt; and he points triumphantly to the fact that lieutenant lynch found this very column. in the presence of such a continuous line of witnesses, some of them considered as divinely inspired, and all of them greatly revered--a line extending through thirty-seven hundred years--he condemns most vigorously all those who do not believe that the pillar of salt now at usdum is identical with the wife of lot, and stigmatizes them as people who "do not wish to believe the truth of the word of god." his ignorance of many of the simplest facts bearing upon the legend is very striking, yet he does not hesitate to speak of men who know far more and have thought far more upon the subject as "grossly ignorant." the most curious feature in his ignorance is the fact that he is utterly unaware of the annual changes in the salt statue. he is entirely ignorant of such facts as that the priest gabriel giraudet in the sixteenth century found the statue lying down; that the monk zwinner found it in the seventeenth century standing, and accompanied by a dog also transformed into salt; that prince radziwill found no statue at all; that the pious vincent briemle in the eighteenth century found the monument renewing itself; that about the middle of the nineteenth century lynch found it in the shape of a tower or column forty feet high; that within two years afterward de saulcy found it washed into the form of a spire; that a year later van de velde found it utterly washed away; and that a few years later palmer found it "a statue bearing a striking resemblance to an arab woman with a child in her arms." so ended the last great demonstration, thus far, on the side of sacred science--the last retreating shot from the theological rear guard. it is but just to say that a very great share in the honour of the victory of science in this field is due to men trained as theologians. it would naturally be so, since few others have devoted themselves to direct labour in it; yet great honour is none the less due to such men as reland, mariti, smith, robinson, stanley, tristram, and schat. they have rendered even a greater service to religion than to science, for they have made a beginning, at least, of doing away with that enforced belief in myths as history which has become a most serious danger to christianity. for the worst enemy of christianity could wish nothing more than that its main leaders should prove that it can not be adopted save by those who accept, as historical, statements which unbiased men throughout the world know to be mythical. the result of such a demonstration would only be more and more to make thinking people inside the church dissemblers, and thinking people outside, scoffers. far better is it to welcome the aid of science, in the conviction that all truth is one, and, in the light of this truth, to allow theology and science to work together in the steady evolution of religion and morality. the revelations made by the sciences which most directly deal with the history of man all converge in the truth that during the earlier stages of this evolution moral and spiritual teachings must be inclosed in myth, legend, and parable. "the master" felt this when he gave to the poor peasants about him, and so to the world, his simple and beautiful illustrations. in making this truth clear, science will give to religion far more than it will take away, for it will throw new life and light into all sacred literature. chapter xix. from leviticus to political economy i. origin and progress of hostility to loans at interest. among questions on which the supporters of right reason in political and social science have only conquered theological opposition after centuries of war, is the taking of interest on loans. in hardly any struggle has rigid adherence to the letter of our sacred books been more prolonged and injurious. certainly, if the criterion of truth, as regards any doctrine, be that of st. vincent of lerins--that it has been held in the church "always, everywhere, and by all"--then on no point may a christian of these days be more sure than that every savings institution, every loan and trust company, every bank, every loan of capital by an individual, every means by which accumulated capital has been lawfully lent even at the most moderate interest, to make men workers rather than paupers, is based on deadly sin. the early evolution of the belief that taking interest for money is sinful presents a curious working together of metaphysical, theological, and humanitarian ideas. in the main centre of ancient greek civilization, the loaning of money at interest came to be accepted at an early period as a condition of productive industry, and no legal restriction was imposed. in rome there was a long process of development: the greed of creditors in early times led to laws against the taking of interest; but, though these lasted long, that strong practical sense which gave rome the empire of the world substituted finally, for this absolute prohibition, the establishment of rates by law. yet many of the leading greek and roman thinkers opposed this practical settlement of the question, and, foremost of all, aristotle. in a metaphysical way he declared that money is by nature "barren"; that the birth of money from money is therefore "unnatural"; and hence that the taking of interest is to be censured and hated. plato, plutarch, both the catos, cicero, seneca, and various other leaders of ancient thought, arrived at much the same conclusion--sometimes from sympathy with oppressed debtors; sometimes from dislike of usurers; sometimes from simple contempt of trade. from these sources there came into the early church the germ of a theological theory upon the subject. but far greater was the stream of influence from the jewish and christian sacred books. in the old testament stood various texts condemning usury--the term usury meaning any taking of interest: the law of moses, while it allowed usury in dealing with strangers, forbade it in dealing with jews. in the new testament, in the sermon on the mount, as given by st. luke, stood the text "lend, hoping for nothing again." these texts seemed to harmonize with the most beautiful characteristic of primnitive christianity; its tender care for the poor and oppressed: hence we find, from the earliest period, the whole weight of the church brought to bear against the taking of interest for money.[[265]] the great fathers of the eastern church, and among them st. basil, st. chrysostom, and st. gregory of nyssa,--the fathers of the western church, and among them tertullian, st. ambrose, st. augustine, and st. jerome, joined most earnestly in this condemnation. st. basil denounces money at interest as a "fecund monster," and says, "the divine law declares expressly, `thou shalt not lend on usury to thy brother or thy neighbour.'" st. gregory of nyssa calls down on him who lends money at interest the vengeance of the almighty. st. chrysostom says: "what can be more unreasonable than to sow without land, without rain, without ploughs? all those who give themselves up to this damnable culture shall reap only tares. let us cut off these monstrous births of gold and silver; let us stop this execrable fecundity." lactantius called the taking of interest "robbery." st. ambrose declared it as bad as murder, st. jerome threw the argument into the form of a dilemma, which was used as a weapon against money-lenders for centuries. pope leo the great solemnly adjudged it a sin worthy of severe punishment.[[266]] this unanimity of the fathers of the church brought about a crystallization of hostility to interest-bearing loans into numberless decrees of popes and councils and kings and legislatures throughout christendom during more than fifteen hundred years, and the canon law was shaped in accordance with these. at first these were more especially directed against the clergy, but we soon find them extending to the laity. these prohibitions were enforced by the council of arles in 314, and a modern church apologist insists that every great assembly of the church, from the council of elvira in 306 to that of vienne in 1311, inclusive, solemnly condemned lending money at interest. the greatest rulers under the sway of the church--justinian, in the empire of the east; charlemagne, in the empire of the west; alfred, in england; st. louis, in france--yielded fully to this dogma. in the ninth century alfred went so far as to confiscate the estates of money-lenders, denying them burial in consecrated ground; and similar decrees were made in other parts of europe. in the twelfth century the greek church seems to have relaxed its strictness somewhat, but the roman church grew more severe. st. anselm proved from the scriptures that the taking of interest is a breach of the ten commandments. peter lombard, in his _sentences_, made the taking of interest purely and simply theft. st. bernard, reviving religious earnestness in the church, took the same view. in 1179 the third council of the lateran decreed that impenitent money-lenders should be excluded from the altar, from absolution in the hour of death, and from christian burial. pope urban iii reiterated the declaration that the passage in st. luke forbade the taking of any interest whatever. pope alexander iii declared that the prohibition in this matter could never be suspended by dispensation. in the thirteenth century pope gregory ix dealt an especially severe blow at commerce by his declaration that even to advance on interest the money necessary in maritime trade was damnable usury; and this was fitly followed by gregory x, who forbade christian burial to those guilty of this practice; the council of lyons meted out the same penalty. this idea was still more firmly fastened upon the world by the two greatest thinkers of the time: first, by st. thomas aquinas, who knit it into the mind of the church by the use of the scriptures and of aristotle; and next by dante, who pictured money-lenders in one of the worst regions of hell. about the beginning of the fourteenth century the "subtile doctor" of the middle ages, duns scotus, gave to the world an exquisite piece of reasoning in evasion of the accepted doctrine; but all to no purpose: the council of vienne, presided over by pope clement v, declared that if any one "shall pertinaciously presume to affirm that the taking of interest for money is not a sin, we decree him to be a heretic, fit for punishment." this infallible utterance bound the dogma with additional force on the conscience of the universal church. nor was this a doctrine enforced by rulers only; the people were no less strenuous. in 1390 the city authorities of london enacted that, "if any person shall lend or put into the hands of any person gold or silver to receive gain thereby, such person shall have the punishment for usurers." and in the same year the commons prayed the king that the laws of london against usury might have the force of statutes throughout the realm. in the fifteenth century the council of the church at salzburg excluded from communion and burial any who took interest for money, and this was a very general rule throughout germany. an exception was, indeed, sometimes made: some canonists held that jews might be allowed to take interest, since they were to be damned in any case, and their monopoly of money-lending might prevent christians from losing their souls by going into the business. yet even the jews were from time to time punished for the crime of usury; and, as regards christians, punishment was bestowed on the dead as well as the living--the bodies of dead money-lenders being here and there dug up and cast out of consecrated ground. the popular preachers constantly declaimed against all who took interest. the medieval anecdote books for pulpit use are especially full on this point. jacques de vitry tells us that demons on one occasion filled a dead money-lender's mouth with red-hot coins; cesarius of heisterbach declared that a toad was found thrusting a piece of money into a dead usurer's heart; in another case, a devil was seen pouring molten gold down a dead money-lender's throat.[[268]] this theological hostility to the taking of interest was imbedded firmly in the canon law. again and again it defined usury to be the taking of anything of value beyond the exact original amount of a loan; and under sanction of the universal church it denounced this as a crime and declared all persons defending it to be guilty of heresy. what this meant the world knows but too well. the whole evolution of european civilization was greatly hindered by this conscientious policy. money could only be loaned in most countries at the risk of incurring odium in this world and damnation in the next; hence there was but little capital and few lenders. the rates of interest became at times enormous; as high as forty per cent in england, and ten per cent a month in italy and spain. commerce, manufactures, and general enterprise were dwarfed, while pauperism flourished. yet worse than these were the moral results. doing what one holds to be evil is only second in bad consequences to doing what is really evil; hence, all lending and borrowing, even for the most legitimate purposes and at the most reasonable rates, tended to debase both borrower and lender. the prohibition of lending at interest in continental europe promoted luxury and discouraged economy; the rich, who were not engaged in business, finding no easy way of employing their incomes productively, spent them largely in ostentation and riotous living. one evil effect is felt in all parts of the world to this hour. the jews, so acute in intellect and strong in will, were virtually drawn or driven out of all other industries or professions by the theory that their race, being accursed, was only fitted for the abhorred profession of money-lending.[[270]] these evils were so manifest, when trade began to revive throughout europe in the fifteenth century, that most earnest exertions were put forth to induce the church to change its position. the first important effort of this kind was made by john gerson. his general learning made him chancellor of the university of paris; his sacred learning made him the leading orator at the council of constance; his piety led men to attribute to him _the imitation of christ_. shaking off theological shackles, he declared, "better is it to lend money at reasonable interest, and thus to give aid to the poor, than to see them reduced by poverty to steal, waste their goods, and sell at a low price their personal and real property." but this idea was at once buried beneath citations from the scriptures, the fathers, councils, popes, and the canon law. even in the most active countries there seemed to be no hope. in england, under henry vii, cardinal morton, the lord chancellor, addressed parliament, asking it to take into consideration loans of money at interest. the result was a law which imposed on lenders at interest a fine of a hundred pounds besides the annulment of the loan; and, to show that there was an offence against religion involved, there was added a clause "reserving to the church, notwithstanding this punishment, the correction of their souls according to the laws of the same." similar enactments were made by civil authority in various parts of europe; and just when the trade, commerce, and manufactures of the modern epoch had received an immense impulse from the great series of voyages of discovery by such men as columbus, vasco da gama, magellan, and the cabots, this barrier against enterprise was strengthened by a decree from no less enlightened a pontiff than leo x. the popular feeling warranted such decrees. as late as the end of the middle ages we find the people of piacenza dragging the body of a money-lender out of his grave in consecrated ground and throwing it into the river po, in order to stop a prolonged rainstorm; and outbreaks of the same spirit were frequent in other countries.[[271]] another mode of obtaining relief was tried. subtle theologians devised evasions of various sorts. two among these inventions of the schoolmen obtained much notoriety. the first was the doctrine of " _damnum emergens_": if a lender suffered loss by the failure of the borrower to return a loan at a date named, compensation might be made. thus it was that, if the nominal date of payment was made to follow quickly after the real date of the loan, the compensation for the anticipated delay in payment had a very strong resemblance to interest. equally cogent was the doctrine of "_lucrum cessans_": if a man, in order to lend money, was obliged to diminish his income from productive enterprises, it was claimed that he might receive in return, in addition to his money, an amount exactly equal to this diminution in his income. but such evasions were looked upon with little favour by the great body of theologians, and the name of st. thomas aquinas was triumphantly cited against them. opposition on scriptural grounds to the taking of interest was not confined to the older church. protestantism was led by luther and several of his associates into the same line of thought and practice. said luther. "to exchange anything with any one and gain by the exchange is not to do a charity; but to steal. every usurer is a thief worthy of the gibbet. i call those usurers who lend money at five or six per cent." but it is only just to say that at a later period luther took a much more moderate view. melanchthon, defining usury as any interest whatever, condemned it again and again; and the goldberg _catechism_ of 1558, for which he wrote a preface and recommendation, declares every person taking interest for money a thief. from generation to generation this doctrine was upheld by the more eminent divines of the lutheran church in all parts of germany. the english reformers showed the same hostility to interest-bearing loans. under henry viii the law of henry vii against taking interest had been modified for the better; but the revival of religious feeling under edward vi caused in 1552 the passage of the "bill of usury." in this it is said, "forasmuch as usury is by the word of god utterly prohibited, as a vice most odious and detestable, as in divers places of the holy scriptures it is evident to be seen, which thing by no godly teachings and persuasions can sink into the hearts of divers greedy, uncharitable, and covetous persons of this realm, nor yet, by any terrible threatenings of god's wrath and vengeance," etc., it is enacted that whosoever shall thereafter lend money "for any manner of usury, increase, lucre, gain, or interest, to be had, received, or hoped for," shall forfeit principal and interest, and suffer imprisonment and fine at the king's pleasure.[[273]] but, most fortunately, it happened that calvin, though at times stumbling over the usual texts against the taking of interest for money, turned finally in the right direction. he cut through the metaphysical arguments of aristotle, and characterized the subtleties devised to evade the scriptures as "a childish game with god." in place of these subtleties there was developed among protestants a serviceable fiction--the statement that usury means _illegal or oppressive interest_. under the action of this fiction, commerce and trade revived rapidly in protestant countries, though with occasional checks from exact interpreters of scripture. at the same period in france, the great protestant jurist dumoulin brought all his legal learning and skill in casuistry to bear on the same side. a certain ferretlike acuteness and litheness seem to have enabled him to hunt down the opponents of interest-taking through the most tortuous arguments of scholasticism. in england the struggle went on with varying fortune; statesmen on one side, and theologians on the other. we have seen how, under henry viii, interest was allowed at a fixed rate, and how, the development of english protestantism having at first strengthened the old theological view, there was, under edward vi, a temporarily successful attempt to forbid the taking of interest by law. the puritans, dwelling on old testament texts, continued for a considerable time especially hostile to the taking of any interest. henry smith, a noted preacher, thundered from the pulpit of st. clement danes in london against "the evasions of scripture" which permitted men to lend money on interest at all. in answer to the contention that only "biting" usury was oppressive, wilson, a noted upholder of the strict theological view in political economy, declared: "there is difference in deed between the bite of a dogge and the bite of a flea, and yet, though the flea doth lesse harm, yet the flea doth bite after hir kinde, yea, and draweth blood, too. but what a world this is, that men will make sin to be but a fleabite, when they see god's word directly against them!" the same view found strong upholders among contemporary english catholics. one of the most eminent of these, nicholas sanders, revived very vigorously the use of an old scholastic argument. he insisted that "man can not sell time," that time is not a human possession, but something which is given by god alone: he declared, "time was not of your gift to your neighbour, but of god's gift to you both." in the parliament of the period, we find strong assertions of the old idea, with constant reference to scripture and the fathers. in one debate, wilson cited from ezekiel and other prophets and attributed to st. augustine the doctrine that "to take but a cup of wine is usury and damnable." fleetwood recalled the law of king edward the confessor, which submitted usurers to the ordeal. but arguments of this sort had little influence upon elizabeth and her statesmen. threats of damnation in the next world troubled them little if they could have their way in this. they re-established the practice of taking interest under restrictions, and this, in various forms, has remained in england ever since. most notable in this phase of the evolution of scientific doctrine in political economy at that period is the emergence of a recognised difference between _usury_ and _interest_. between these two words, which had so long been synonymous, a distinction now appears: the former being construed to indicate _oppressive interest_, and the latter _just rates_ for the use of money. this idea gradually sank into the popular mind of protestant countries, and the scriptural texts no longer presented any difficulty to the people at large, since there grew up a general belief that the word "usury," as employed in scripture, had _always_ meant exorbitant interest; and this in spite of the parable of the talents. still, that the old aristotelian quibble had not been entirely forgotten, is clearly seen by various passages in shakespeare's _merchant of venice_. but this line of reasoning seems to have received its quietus from lord bacon. he did not, indeed, develop a strong and connected argument on the subject; but he burst the bonds of aristotle, and based interest for money upon natural laws. how powerful the new current of thought was, is seen from the fact that james i, of all monarchs the most fettered by scholasticism and theology, sanctioned a statute dealing with interest for money as absolutely necessary. yet, even after this, the old idea asserted itself; for the bishops utterly refused to agree to the law allowing interest until a proviso was inserted that "nothing in this law contained shall be construed or expounded to allow the practice of usury in point of religion or conscience." the old view cropped out from time to time in various public declarations. famous among these were the _treatise of usury_, published in 1612 by dr. fenton, who restated the old arguments with much force, and the _usury condemned_ of john blaxton, published in 1634. blaxton, who also was a clergyman, defined usury as the taking of any interest whatever for money, citing in support of this view six archbishops and bishops and over thirty doctors of divinity in the anglican church, some of their utterances being very violent and all of them running their roots down into texts of scripture. typical among these is a sermon of bishop sands, in which he declares, regarding the taking of interest: "this canker hath corrupted all england; we shall doe god and our country true service by taking away this evill; represse it by law, else the heavy hand of god hangeth over us and will strike us." ii. retreat of the church, protestant and catholic. but about the middle of the seventeenth century sir robert filmer gave this doctrine the heaviest blow it ever received in england. taking up dr. fenton's treatise, he answered it, and all works like it, in a way which, however unsuitable to this century, was admirably adapted to that. he cites scripture and chops logic after a masterly manner. characteristic is this declaration: "st. paul doth, with one breath, reckon up seventeen sins, and yet usury is none of them; but many preachers can not reckon up seven deadly sins, except they make usury one of them." filmer followed fenton not only through his theology, but through his political economy, with such relentless keenness that the old doctrine seems to have been then and there practically worried out of existence, so far as england was concerned. departures from the strict scriptural doctrines regarding interest soon became frequent in protestant countries, and they were followed up with especial vigour in holland. various theologians in the dutch church attempted to assert the scriptural view by excluding bankers from the holy communion; but the commercial vigour of the republic was too strong: salmasius led on the forces of right reason brilliantly, and by the middle of the seventeenth century the question was settled rightly in that country. this work was aided, indeed, by a far greater man, hugo grotius; but here was shown the power of an established dogma. great as grotius was--and it may well be held that his book on _war and peace_ has wrought more benefit to humanity than any other attributed to human authorship--he was, in the matter of interest for money, too much entangled in theological reasoning to do justice to his cause or to himself. he declared the prohibition of it to be scriptural, but resisted the doctrine of aristotle, and allowed interest on certain natural and practical grounds. in germany the struggle lasted longer. of some little significance, perhaps, is the demand of adam contzen, in 1629, that lenders at interest should be punished as thieves; but by the end of the seventeenth century puffendorf and leibnitz had gained the victory. protestantism, open as it was to the currents of modern thought, could not long continue under the dominion of ideas unfavourable to economic development, and perhaps the most remarkable proof of this was presented early in the eighteenth century in america, by no less strict a theologian than cotton mather. in his _magnalia_ he argues against the whole theological view with a boldness, acuteness, and good sense which cause us to wonder that this can be the same man who was so infatuated regarding witchcraft. after an argument so conclusive as his, there could have been little left of the old anti-economic doctrine in new england.[[277]] but while the retreat of the protestant church from the old doctrine regarding the taking of interest was henceforth easy, in the catholic church it was far more difficult. infallible popes and councils, with saints, fathers, and doctors, had so constantly declared the taking of any interest at all to be contrary to scripture, that the more exact though less fortunate interpretation of the sacred text relating to interest continued in catholic countries. when it was attempted in france in the seventeenth century to argue that usury "means oppressive interest," the theological faculty of the sorbonne declared that usury is the taking of any interest at all, no matter how little; and the eighteenth chapter of ezekiel was cited to clinch this argument. another attempt to ease the burden of industry and commerce was made by declaring that "usury means interest demanded not as a matter of favour but as a matter of right." this, too, was solemnly condemned by pope innocent xi. again an attempt was made to find a way out of the difficulty by declaring that "usury is interest greater than the law allows." this, too, was condemned, and so also was the declaration that "usury is interest on loans not for a fixed time." still the forces of right reason pressed on, and among them, in the seventeenth century, in france, was richard simon. he attempted to gloss over the declarations of scripture against lending at interest, in an elaborate treatise, but was immediately confronted by bossuet. just as bossuet had mingled scripture with astronomy and opposed the copernican theory, so now he mingled scripture with political economy and denounced the lending of money at interest. he called attention to the fact that the scriptures, the councils of the church from the beginning, the popes, the fathers, had all interpreted the prohibition of "usury" to be a prohibition of any lending at interest; and he demonstrated this interpretation to be the true one. simon was put to confusion and his book condemned. there was but too much reason for bossuet's interpretation. there stood the fact that the prohibition of one of the most simple and beneficial principles in political and economical science was affirmed, not only by the fathers, but by twenty-eight councils of the church, six of them general councils, and by seventeen popes, to say nothing of innumerable doctors in theology and canon law. and these prohibitions by the church had been accepted as of divine origin by all obedient sons of the church in the government of france. such rulers as charles the bald in the ninth century, and st. louis in the thirteenth, had riveted this idea into the civil law so firmly that it seemed impossible ever to detach it.[[279]] as might well be expected, italy was one of the countries in which the theological theory regarding usury--lending at interest--was most generally asserted and assented to. among the great number of italian canonists who supported the theory, two deserve especial mention, as affording a contrast to the practical manner in which the commercial italians met the question. in the sixteenth century, very famous among canonists was the learned benedictine, vilagut. in 1589 he published at venice his great work on usury, supporting with much learning and vigour the most extreme theological consequences of the old doctrine. he defines usury as the taking of anything beyond the original loan, and declares it mortal sin; he advocates the denial to usurers of christian burial, confession, the sacraments, absolution, and connection with the universities; he declares that priests receiving offerings from usurers should refrain from exercising their ministry until the matter is passed upon by the bishop. about the middle of the seventeenth century another ponderous folio was published in venice upon the same subject and with the same title, by onorato leotardi. so far from showing any signs of yielding, he is even more extreme than vilagut had been, and quotes with approval the old declaration that lenders of money at interest are not only robbers but murderers. so far as we can learn, no real opposition was made in either century to this theory, as a theory; as to _practice_, it was different. the italian traders did not answer theological argument; they simply overrode it. in spite of theology, great banks were established, and especially that of venice at the end of the twelfth century, and those of barcelona and genoa at the beginning of the fifteenth. nowhere was commerce carried on in more complete defiance of this and other theological theories hampering trade than in the very city where these great treatises were published. the sin of usury, like the sin of commerce with the mohammedans, seems to have been settled for by the venetian merchants on their deathbeds; and greatly to the advantage of the magnificent churches and ecclesiastical adornments of the city. by the seventeenth century the clearest thinkers in the roman church saw that her theology must be readjusted to political economy: so began a series of amazing attempts to reconcile a view permitting usury with the long series of decrees of popes and councils forbidding it. in spain, the great jesuit casuist escobar led the way, and rarely had been seen such exquisite hair-splitting. but his efforts were not received with the gratitude they perhaps deserved. pascal, revolting at their moral effect, attacked them unsparingly in his _provincial letters_, citing especially such passages as the following: "it is usury to receive profit from those to whom one lends, if it be exacted as justly due; but, if it be exacted as a debt of gratitude, it is not usury." this and a multitude of similar passages pascal covered with the keen ridicule and indignant denunciation of which he was so great a master. but even the genius of pascal could not stop such efforts. in the eighteenth century they were renewed by a far greater theologian than escobar--by him who was afterward made a saint and proclaimed a doctor of the church--alphonso liguori. starting with bitter denunciations of usury, liguori soon developed a multitude of subtle devices for escaping the guilt of it. presenting a long and elaborate theory of "mental, usury" he arrives at the conclusion that, if the borrower pay interest of his own free will, the lender may keep it. in answer to the question whether the lender may keep what the borrower paid, not out of gratitude but out of fear--fear that otherwise loans might be refused him in future--liguori says, "to be usury it must be paid by reason of a contract, or as justly due; payment by reason of such a fear does not cause interest to be paid as an actual price." again liguori tells us, "it is not usury to exact something in return for the danger and expense of regaining the principal." the old subterfuges of "_damnum emergens_" and "_lucrum cessans_" are made to do full duty. a remarkable quibble is found in the answer to the question whether he sins who furnishes money to a man whom he knows to intend employing it in usury. after citing affirmative opinions from many writers, liguori says, "notwithstanding these opinions, the better opinion seems to me to be that the man thus putting out his money is not bound to make restitution, for his action is not injurious to the borrower, but rather favourable to him," and this reasoning the saint develops at great length. in the latin countries this sort of casuistry eased the relations of the church with the bankers, and it was full time; for now there came arguments of a different kind. the eighteenth century philosophy had come upon the stage, and the first effective onset of political scientists against the theological opposition in southern europe was made in italy--the most noted leaders in the attack being galiani and maffei. here and there feeble efforts were made to meet them, but it was felt more and more by thinking churchmen that entirely different tactics must be adopted. about the same time came an attack in france, and though its results were less immediate at home, they were much more effective abroad. in 1748 appeared montesquieu's _spirit of the laws_. in this famous book were concentrated twenty years of study and thought by a great thinker on the interests of the world about him. in eighteen months it went through twenty-two editions; it was translated into every civilized language; and among the things on which montesquieu brought his wit and wisdom to bear with especial force was the doctrine of the church regarding interest on loans. in doing this he was obliged to use a caution in forms which seems strangely at variance with the boldness of his ideas. in view of the strictness of ecclesiastical control in france, he felt it safest to make his whole attack upon those theological and economic follies of mohammedan countries which were similar to those which the theological spirit had fastened on france.[[282]] by the middle of the eighteenth century the church authorities at rome clearly saw the necessity of a concession: the world would endure theological restriction no longer; a way of escape _must_ be found. it was seen, even by the most devoted theologians, that mere denunciations and use of theological arguments or scriptural texts against the scientific idea were futile. to this feeling it was due that, even in the first years of the century, the jesuit casuists had come to the rescue. with exquisite subtlety some of their acutest intellects devoted themselves to explaining away the utterances on this subject of saints, fathers, doctors, popes, and councils. these explanations were wonderfully ingenious, but many of the older churchmen continued to insist upon the orthodox view, and at last the pope himself intervened. fortunately for the world, the seat of st. peter was then occupied by benedict xiv, certainly one of the most gifted, morally and intellectually, in the whole line of roman pontiffs. tolerant and sympathetic for the oppressed, he saw the necessity of taking up the question, and he grappled with it effectually: he rendered to catholicism a service like that which calvin had rendered to protestantism, by shrewdly cutting a way through the theological barrier. in 1745 he issued his encyclical _vix pervenit_, which declared that the doctrine of the church remained consistent with itself; that usury is indeed a sin, and that it consists in _demanding any amount beyond the exact amount lent_, but that there are occasions when on special grounds the lender may obtain such additional sum. what these "occasions" and "special grounds" might be, was left very vague; but this action was sufficient. at the same time no new restrictions upon books advocating the taking of interest for money were imposed, and, in the year following his encyclical, benedict openly accepted the dedication of one of them--the work of maffei, and perhaps the most cogent of all. like the casuistry of boscovich in using the copernican theory for "convenience in argument," while acquiescing in its condemnation by the church authorities, this encyclical of pope benedict broke the spell. turgot, quesnay, adam smith, hume, bentham, and their disciples pressed on, and science won for mankind another great victory.[[283]] yet in this case, as in others, insurrections against the sway of scientific truth appeared among some overzealous religionists. when the sorbonne, having retreated from its old position, armed itself with new casuistries against those who held to its earlier decisions, sundry provincial doctors in theology protested indignantly, making the old citations from the scriptures, fathers, saints, doctors, popes, councils, and canonists. again the roman court intervened. in 1830 the inquisition at rome, with the approval of pius viii, though still declining to commit itself on the _doctrine_ involved, decreed that, as to _practice_, confessors should no longer disturb lenders of money at legal interest. but even this did not quiet the more conscientious theologians. the old weapons were again furbished and hurled by the abbe laborde, vicar of the metropolitan archdiocese of auch, and by the abbe dennavit, professor of theology at lyons. good abbe dennavit declared that he refused absolution to those who took interest and to priests who pretend that the sanction of the civil law is sufficient. but the "wisdom of the serpent" was again brought into requisition, and early in the decade between 1830 and 1840 the abbate mastrofini issued a work on usury, which, he declared on its title-page, demonstrated that "moderate usury is not contrary to holy scripture, or natural law, or the decisions of the church." nothing can be more comical than the suppressions of truth, evasions of facts, jugglery with phrases, and perversions of history, to which the abbate is forced to resort throughout his book in order to prove that the church has made no mistake. in the face of scores of explicit deliverances and decrees of fathers, doctors, popes, and councils against the taking of any interest whatever for money, he coolly pretended that what they had declared against was _exorbitant_ interest. he made a merit of the action of the church, and showed that its course had been a blessing to humanity. but his masterpiece is in dealing with the edicts of clement v and benedict xiv. as to the first, it will be remembered that clement, in accord with the council of vienne, had declared that "any one who shall pertinaciously presume to affirm that the taking of interest for money is not a sin, we decree him to be a heiretic fit for punishment," and we have seen that benedict xiv did not at all deviate from the doctrines of his predecessors. yet mastrofini is equal to his task, and brings out, as the conclusion of his book, the statement put upon his title-page, that what the church condemns is only _exorbitant_ interest. this work was sanctioned by various high ecclesiastical dignitaries, and served its purpose; for it covered the retreat of the church. in 1872 the holy office, answering a question solemnly put by the bishop of ariano, as solemnly declared that those who take eight per cent interest per annum are "not to be disquieted"; and in 1873 appeared a book published under authority from the holy see, allowing the faithful to take moderate interest under condition that any future decisions of the pope should be implicitly obeyed. social science as applied to political economy had gained a victory final and complete. the torlonia family at rome to-day, with its palaces, chapels, intermarriages, affiliations, and papal favour --all won by lending money at interest, and by liberal gifts, from the profits of usury, to the holy see--is but one out of many growths of its kind on ramparts long since surrendered and deserted.[[285]] the dealings of theology with public economy were by no means confined to the taking of interest for money. it would be interesting to note the restrictions placed upon commerce by the church prohibition of commercial intercourse with infidels, against which the republic of venice fought a good fight; to note how, by a most curious perversion of scripture in the greek church, many of the peasantry of russia were prevented from raising and eating potatoes; how, in scotland, at the beginning of this century, the use of fanning mills for winnowing grain was widely denounced as contrary to the text, "the wind bloweth where it listeth," etc., as leaguing with satan, who is "prince of the powers of the air," and therefore as sufficient cause for excommunication from the scotch church. instructive it would be also to note how the introduction of railways was declared by an archbishop of the french church to be an evidence of the divine displeasure against country innkeepers who set meat before their guests on fast days, and who were now punished by seeing travellers carried by their doors; how railways and telegraphs were denounced from a few noted pulpits as heralds of antichrist; and how in protestant england the curate of rotherhithe, at the breaking in of the thames tunnel, so destructive to life and property, declared it from his pulpit a just judgment upon the presumptuous aspirations of mortal man. the same tendency is seen in the opposition of conscientious men to the taking of the census in sweden and the united states, on account of the terms in which the numbering of israel is spoken of in the old testament. religious scruples on similar grounds have also been avowed against so beneficial a thing as life insurance. apparently unimportant as these manifestations are, they indicate a widespread tendency; in the application of scriptural declarations to matters of social economy, which has not yet ceased, though it is fast fading away.[[286]] worthy of especial study, too, would be the evolution of the modern methods of raising and bettering the condition of the poor,--the evolution, especially, of the idea that men are to be helped to help themselves, in opposition to the old theories of indiscriminate giving, which, taking root in some of the most beautiful utterances of our sacred books, grew in the warm atmosphere of medieval devotion into great systems for the pauperizing of the labouring classes. here, too, scientific modes of thought in social science have given a new and nobler fruitage to the whole growth of christian benevolence.[[287]] chapter xx. from the divine oracles to the higher criticism. i. the older interpretation. the great sacred books of the world are the most precious of human possessions. they embody the deepest searchings into the most vital problems of humanity in all its stages: the naive guesses of the world's childhood, the opening conceptions of its youth, the more fully rounded beliefs of its maturity. these books, no matter how unhistorical in parts and at times, are profoundly true. they mirror the evolution of man's loftiest aspirations, hopes, loves, consolations, and enthusiasms; his hates and fears; his views of his origin and destiny; his theories of his rights and duties; and these not merely in their lights but in their shadows. therefore it is that they contain the germs of truths most necessary in the evolution of humanity, and give to these germs the environment and sustenance which best insure their growth and strength. with wide differences in origin and character, this sacred literature has been developed and has exercised its influence in obedience to certain general laws. first of these in time, if not in importance, is that which governs its origin: in all civilizations we find that the divine spirit working in the mind of man shapes his sacred books first of all out of the chaos of myth and legend; and of these books, when life is thus breathed into them, the fittest survive. so broad and dense is this atmosphere of myth and legend enveloping them that it lingers about them after they have been brought forth full-orbed; and, sometimes, from it are even produced secondary mythical and legendary concretions--satellites about these greater orbs of early thought. of these secondary growths one may be mentioned as showing how rich in myth-making material was the atmosphere which enveloped our own earlier sacred literature. in the third century before christ there began to be elaborated among the jewish scholars of alexandria, then the great centre of human thought, a greek translation of the main books constituting the old testament. nothing could be more natural at that place and time than such a translation; yet the growth of explanatory myth and legend around it was none the less luxuriant. there was indeed a twofold growth. among the jews favourable to the new version a legend rose which justified it. this legend in its first stage was to the effect that the ptolemy then on the egyptian throne had, at the request of his chief librarian, sent to jerusalem for translators; that the jewish high priest eleazar had sent to the king a most precious copy of the scriptures from the temple at jerusalem, and six most venerable, devout, and learned scholars from each of the twelve tribes of israel; that the number of translators thus corresponded with the mysterious seventy-two appellations of god; and that the combined efforts of these seventy-two men produced a marvellously perfect translation. but in that atmosphere of myth and marvel the legend continued to grow, and soon we have it blooming forth yet more gorgeously in the statement that king ptolemy ordered each of the seventy-two to make by himself a full translation of the entire old testament, and shut up each translator in a separate cell on the island of pharos, secluding him there until the work was done; that the work of each was completed in exactly seventy-two days; and that when, at the end of the seventy-two days, the seventy-two translations were compared, each was found exactly like all the others. this showed clearly jehovah's _approval_. but out of all this myth and legend there was also evolved an account of a very different sort. the jews who remained faithful to the traditions of their race regarded this greek version as a profanation, and therefore there grew up the legend that on the completion of the work there was darkness over the whole earth during three days. this showed clearly jehovah's _disapproval_. these well-known legends, which arose within what--as compared with any previous time--was an exceedingly enlightened period, and which were steadfastly believed by a vast multitude of jews and christians for ages, are but single examples among scores which show how inevitably such traditions regarding sacred books are developed in the earlier stages of civilization, when men explain everything by miracle and nothing by law.[[290]] as the second of these laws governing the evolution of sacred literature may be mentioned that which we have constantly seen so effective in the growth of theological ideas--that to which comte gave the name of the _law of wills and causes_. obedient to this, man attributes to the supreme being a physical, intellectual, and moral structure like his own; hence it is that the votary of each of the great world religions ascribes to its sacred books what he considers absolute perfection: he imagines them to be what he himself would give the world, were he himself infinitely good, wise, and powerful. a very simple analogy might indeed show him that even a literature emanating from an all-wise, beneficent, and powerful author might not seem perfect when judged by a human standard; for he has only to look about him in the world to find that the work which he attributes to an all-wise, all-beneficent, and all-powerful creator is by no means free from evil and wrong. but this analogy long escapes him, and the exponent of each great religion proves to his own satisfaction, and to the edification of his fellows, that their own sacred literature is absolutely accurate in statement, infinitely profound in meaning, and miraculously perfect in form. from these premises also he arrives at the conclusion that his own sacred literature is unique; that no other sacred book can have emanated from a divine source; and that all others claiming to be sacred are impostures. still another law governing the evolution of sacred literature in every great world religion is, that when the books which compose it are once selected and grouped they come to be regarded as a final creation from which nothing can be taken away, and of which even error in form, if sanctioned by tradition, may not be changed. the working of this law has recently been seen on a large scale. a few years since, a body of chosen scholars, universally acknowledged to be the most fit for the work, undertook, at the call of english-speaking christendom, to revise the authorized english version of the bible. beautiful as was that old version, there was abundant reason for a revision. the progress of biblical scholarship had revealed multitudes of imperfections and not a few gross errors in the work of the early translators, and these, if uncorrected, were sure to bring the sacred volume into discredit. nothing could be more reverent than the spirit of the revisers, and the nineteenth century has known few historical events of more significant and touching beauty than the participation in the holy communion by all these scholars--prelates, presbyters, ministers, and laymen of churches most widely differing in belief and observance--kneeling side by side at the little altar in westminster abbey. nor could any work have been more conservative and cautious than theirs; as far as possible they preserved the old matter and form with scrupulous care. yet their work was no sooner done than it was bitterly attacked and widely condemned; to this day it is largely regarded with dislike. in great britain, in america, in australia, the old version, with its glaring misconceptions, mistranslations, and interpolations, is still read in preference to the new; the great body of english-speaking christians clearly preferring the accustomed form of words given by the seventeenth-century translators, rather than a nearer approach to the exact teaching of the holy ghost. still another law is, that when once a group of sacred books has been evolved--even though the group really be a great library of most dissimilar works, ranging in matter from the hundredth psalm to the song of songs, and in manner from the sublimity of isaiah to the offhand story-telling of jonah--all come to be thought one inseparable mass of interpenetrating parts; every statement in each fitting exactly and miraculously into each statement in every other; and each and every one, and all together, literally true to fact, and at the same time full of hidden meanings. the working of these and other laws governing the evolution of sacred literature is very clearly seen in the great rabbinical schools which flourished at jerusalem, tiberias, and elsewhere, after the return of the jews from the babylonian captivity, and especially as we approach the time of christ. these schools developed a subtlety in the study of the old testament which seems almost preternatural. the resultant system was mainly a jugglery with words, phrases, and numbers, which finally became a "sacred science," with various recognised departments, in which interpretation was carried on sometimes by attaching a numerical value to letters; sometimes by interchange of letters from differently arranged alphabets; sometimes by the making of new texts out of the initial letters of the old; and with ever-increasing subtlety. such efforts as these culminated fitly in the rabbinical declaration that each passage in the law has seventy distinct meanings, and that god himself gives three hours every day to their study. after this the jewish world was prepared for anything, and it does not surprise us to find such discoveries in the domain of ethical culture as the doctrine that, for inflicting the forty stripes save one upon those who broke the law, the lash should be braided of ox-hide and ass-hide; and, as warrant for this construction of the lash, the text, "the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but israel doth not know"; and, as the logic connecting text and lash, the statement that jehovah evidently intended to command that "the men who know not shall be beaten by those animals whose knowledge shames them." by such methods also were revealed such historical treasures as that og, king of bashan, escaped the deluge by wading after noah's ark. there were, indeed, noble exceptions to this kind of teaching. it can not be forgotten that rabbi hillel formulated the golden rule, which had before him been given to the extreme orient by confucius, and which afterward received a yet more beautiful and positive emphasis from jesus of nazareth; but the seven rules of interpretation laid down by hillel were multiplied and refined by men like rabbi ismael and rabbi eleazar until they justified every absurd subtlety.[[293]] an eminent scholar has said that while the letter of scripture became ossified in palestine, it became volatilized at alexandria; and the truth of this remark was proved by the alexandrian jewish theologians just before the beginning of our era. this, too, was in obedience to a law of development, which is, that when literal interpretation clashes with increasing knowledge or with progress in moral feeling, theologians take refuge in mystic meanings--a law which we see working in all great religions, from the brahmans finding hidden senses in the vedas, to plato and the stoics finding them in the greek myths; and from the sofi reading new meanings into the koran, to eminent christian divines of the nineteenth century giving a non-natural sense to some of the plainest statements in the bible. nothing is more natural than all this. when naive statements of sacred writers, in accord with the ethics of early ages, make brahma perform atrocities which would disgrace a pirate; and jupiter take part in adventures worthy of don juan; and jahveh practise trickery, cruelty, and high-handed injustice which would bring any civilized mortal into the criminal courts, the invention of allegory is the one means of saving the divine authority as soon as men reach higher planes of civilization. the great early master in this evolution of allegory, for the satisfaction of jews and christians, was philo: by him its use came in as never before. the four streams of the garden of eden thus become the four virtues; abraham's country and kindred, from which he was commanded to depart, the human body and its members; the five cities of sodom, the five senses; the euphrates, correction of manners. by philo and his compeers even the most insignificant words and phrases, and those especially, were held to conceal the most precious meanings. a perfectly natural and logical result of this view was reached when philo, saturated as he was with greek culture and nourished on pious traditions of the utterances at delphi and dodona, spoke reverently of the jewish scriptures as "_oracles_". oracles they became: as oracles they appeared in the early history of the christian church; and oracles they remained for centuries: eternal life or death, infinite happiness or agony, as well as ordinary justice in this world, being made to depend on shifting interpretations of a long series of dark and doubtful utterances--interpretations frequently given by men who might have been prophets and apostles, but who had become simply oracle-mongers. pressing these oracles into the service of science, philo became the forerunner of that long series of theologians who, from augustine and cosmas to mr. gladstone, have attempted to extract from scriptural myth and legend profound contributions to natural science. thus he taught that the golden candlesticks in the tabernacle symbolized the planets, the high priest's robe the universe, and the bells upon it the harmony of earth and water--whatever that may mean. so cosmas taught, a thousand years later, that the table of shewbread in the tabernacle showed forth the form and construction of the world; and mr. gladstone hinted, more than a thousand years later still, that neptune's trident had a mysterious connection with the christian doctrine of the trinity.[[294]] these methods, as applied to the old testament, had appeared at times in the new; in spite of the resistance of tertullian and irenaeus, they were transmitted to the church; and in the works of the early fathers they bloomed forth luxuriantly. justin martyr and clement of alexandria vigorously extended them. typical of justin's method is his finding, in a very simple reference by isaiah to damascus, samaria, and assyria, a clear prophecy of the three wise men of the east who brought gifts to the infant saviour; and in the bells on the priest's robe a prefiguration of the twelve apostles. any difficulty arising from the fact that the number of bells is not specified in scripture, justin overcame by insisting that david referred to this prefiguration in the nineteenth psalm: "their sound is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." working in this vein, clement of alexandria found in the form, dimensions, and colour of the jewish tabernacle a whole wealth of interpretation--the altar of incense representing the earth placed at the centre of the universe; the high priest's robe the visible world; the jewels on the priest's robe the zodiac; and abraham's three days' journey to mount moriah the three stages of the soul in its progress toward the knowledge of god. interpreting the new testament, he lessened any difficulties involved in the miracle of the barley loaves and fishes by suggesting that what it really means is that jesus gave mankind a preparatory training for the gospel by means of the law and philosophy; because, as he says, barley, like the law, ripens sooner than wheat, which represents the gospel; and because, just as fishes grow in the waves of the ocean, so philosophy grew in the waves of the gentile world. out of reasonings like these, those who followed, especially cosmas, developed, as we have seen, a complete theological science of geography and astronomy.[[296]] but the instrument in exegesis which was used with most cogent force was the occult significance of certain numbers. the chaldean and egyptian researches of our own time have revealed the main source of this line of thought; the speculations of plato upon it are well known; but among the jews and in the early church it grew into something far beyond the wildest imaginings of the priests of memphis and babylon. philo had found for the elucidation of scripture especially deep meanings in the numbers four, six, and seven; but other interpreters soon surpassed him. at the very outset this occult power was used in ascertaining the canonical books of scripture. josephus argued that, since there were twenty-two letters in the hebrew alphabet, there must be twenty-two sacred books in the old testament; other jewish authorities thought that there should be twenty-four books, on account of the twenty-four watches in the temple. st. jerome wavered between the argument based upon the twenty-two letters in the hebrew alphabet and that suggested by the twenty-four elders in the apocalypse. hilary of poitiers argued that there must be twenty-four books, on account of the twenty-four letters in the greek alphabet. origen found an argument for the existence of exactly four gospels in the existence of just four elements. irenaeus insisted that there could be neither more nor fewer than four gospels, since the earth has four quarters, the air four winds, and the cherubim four faces; and he denounced those who declined to accept this reasoning as "vain, ignorant, and audacious."[[297]] but during the first half of the third century came one who exercised a still stronger influence in this direction--a great man who, while rendering precious services, did more than any other to fasten upon the church a system which has been one of its heaviest burdens for more than sixteen hundred years: this was origen. yet his purpose was noble and his work based on profound thought. he had to meet the leading philosophers of the pagan world, to reply to their arguments against the old testament, and especially to break the force of their taunts against its imputation of human form, limitations, passions, weaknesses, and even immoralities to the almighty. starting with a mistaken translation of a verse in the book of proverbs, origen presented as a basis for his main structure the idea of a threefold sense of scripture: the literal, the moral, and the mystic--corresponding to the platonic conception of the threefold nature of man. as results of this we have such masterpieces as his proof, from the fifth verse of chapter xxv of job, that the stars are living beings, and from the well-known passage in the nineteenth chapter of st. matthew his warrant for self-mutilation. but his great triumphs were in the allegorical method. by its use the bible was speedily made an oracle indeed, or, rather, a book of riddles. a list of kings in the old testament thus becomes an enumeration of sins; the waterpots of stone, "containing two or three firkins apiece," at the marriage of cana, signify the literal, moral, and spiritual sense of scripture; the ass upon which the saviour rode on his triumphal entry into jerusalem becomes the old testament, the foal the new testament, and the two apostles who went to loose them the moral and mystical senses; blind bartimeus throwing off his coat while hastening to jesus, opens a whole treasury of oracular meanings. the genius and power of origen made a great impression on the strong thinkers who followed him. st. jerome called him "the greatest master in the church since the apostles," and athanasius was hardly less emphatic. the structure thus begun was continued by leading theologians during the centuries following: st. hilary of poitiers--"the athanasius of gaul"--produced some wonderful results of this method; but st. jerome, inspired by the example of the man whom he so greatly admnired, went beyond him. a triumph of his exegesis is seen in his statement that the shunamite damsel who was selected to cherish david in his old age signified heavenly wisdom. the great mind of st. augustine was drawn largely into this kind of creation, and nothing marks more clearly the vast change which had come over the world than the fact that this greatest of the early christian thinkers turned from the broader paths opened by plato and aristotle into that opened by clement of alexandria. in the mystic power of numbers to reveal the sense of scripture augustine found especial delight. he tells us that there is deep meaning in sundry scriptural uses of the number forty, and especially as the number of days required for fasting. forty, he reminds us, is four times ten. now, four, he says, is the number especially representing time, the day and the year being each divided into four parts; while ten, being made up of three and seven, represents knowledge of the creator and creature, three referring to the three persons in the triune creator, and seven referring to the three elements, heart, soul, and mind, taken in connection with the four elements, fire, air, earth, and water, which go to make up the creature. therefore this number ten, representing knowledge, being multiplied by four, representing time, admonishes us to live during time according to knowledge--that is, to fast for forty days. referring to such misty methods as these, which lead the reader to ask himself whether he is sleeping or waking, st. augustine remarks that "ignorance of numbers prevents us from understanding such things in scripture." but perhaps the most amazing example is to be seen in his notes on the hundred and fifty and three fishes which, according to st. john's gospel, were caught by st. peter and the other apostles. some points in his long development of this subject may be selected to show what the older theological method could be made to do for a great mind. he tells us that the hundred and fifty and three fishes embody a mystery; that the number ten, evidently as the number of the commandments, indicates the law; but, as the law without the spirit only kills, we must add the seven gifts of the spirit, and we thus have the number seventeen, which signifies the old and new dispensations; then, if we add together every several number which seventeen contains from one to seventeen inclusive, the result is a hundred and fifty and three--the number of the fishes. with this sort of reasoning he finds profound meanings in the number of furlongs mentioned in the sixth chapter of st. john. referring to the fact that the disciples had rowed about "twenty-five or thirty furlongs," he declares that "twenty-five typifies the law, because it is five times five, but the law was imperfect before the gospel came; now perfection is comprised in six, since god in six days perfected the world, hence five is multiplied by six that the law may be perfected by the gospel, and six times five is thirty." but augustine's exploits in exegesis were not all based on numerals; he is sometimes equally profound in other modes. thus he tells us that the condemnation of the serpent to eat dust typifies the sin of curiosity, since in eating dust he "penetrates the obscure and shadowy"; and that noah's ark was "pitched within and without with pitch" to show the safety of the church from the leaking in of heresy. still another exploit--one at which the church might well have stood aghast--was his statement that the drunkenness of noah prefigured the suffering and death of christ. it is but just to say that he was not the original author of this interpretation: it had been presented long before by st. cyprian. but this was far from augustine's worst. perhaps no interpretation of scripture has ever led to more cruel and persistent oppression, torture, and bloodshed than his reading into one of the most beautiful parables of jesus of nazareth--into the words "compel them to come in"--a warrant for religious persecution: of all unintended blasphemies since the world began, possibly the most appalling. another strong man follows to fasten these methods on the church: st. gregory the great. in his renowned work on the book of job, the _magna moralia_, given to the world at the end of the sixth century, he lays great stress on the deep mystical meanings of the statement that job had seven sons. he thinks the seven sons typify the twelve apostles, for "the apostles were selected through the sevenfold grace of the spirit; moreover, twelve is produced from seven--that is, the two parts of seven, four and three, when multiplied together give twelve." he also finds deep significance in the number of the apostles; this number being evidently determined by a multiplication of the number of persons in the trinity by the number of quarters of the globe. still, to do him justice, it must be said that in some parts of his exegesis the strong sense which was one of his most striking characteristics crops out in a way very refreshing. thus, referring to a passage in the first chapter of job, regarding the oxen which were ploughing and the asses which were feeding beside them, he tells us pithily that these typify two classes of christians: the oxen, the energetic christians who do the work of the church; the asses, the lazy christians who merely feed.[[300]] thus began the vast theological structure of oracular interpretation applied to the bible. as we have seen, the men who prepared the ground for it were the rabbis of palestine and the hellenized jews of alexandria; and the four great men who laid its foundation courses were origen, st. augustine, st. jerome, and st. gregory. during the ten centuries following the last of these men this structure continued to rise steadily above the plain meanings of scripture. the christian world rejoiced in it, and the few great thinkers who dared bring the truth to bear upon it were rejected. it did indeed seem at one period in the early church that a better system might be developed. the school of antioch, especially as represented by chrysostom, appeared likely to lead in this better way, but the dominant forces were too strong; the passion for myth and marvel prevailed over the love of real knowledge, and the reasonings of chrysostom and his compeers were neglected.[[301]] in the ninth century came another effort to present the claims of right reason. the first man prominent in this was st. agobard, bishop of lyons, whom an eminent historian has well called the clearest head of his time. with the same insight which penetrated the fallacies and follies of image worship, belief in witchcraft persecution, the ordeal, and the judicial duel, he saw the futility of this vast fabric of interpretation, protested against the idea that the divine spirit extended its inspiration to the mere words of scripture, and asked a question which has resounded through every generation since: "if you once begin such a system, who can measure the absurdity which will follow?" during the same century another opponent of this dominant system appeared: john scotus erigena. he contended that "reason and authority come alike from the one source of divine wisdom"; that the fathers, great as their authority is, often contradict each other; and that, in last resort, reason must be called in to decide between them. but the evolution of unreason continued: agobard was unheeded, and erigena placed under the ban by two councils--his work being condemned by a synod as a "_commentum diaboli_." four centuries later honorius iii ordered it to be burned, as "teeming with the venom of hereditary depravity"; and finally, after eight centuries, pope gregory xiii placed it on the index, where, with so many other works which have done good service to humanity, it remains to this day. nor did abelard, who, three centuries after agobard and erigena, made an attempt in some respects like theirs, have any better success: his fate at the hands of st. bernard and the council of sens the world knows by heart. far more consonant with the spirit of the universal church was the teaching in the twelfth century of the great hugo of st. victor, conveyed in these ominous words, "learn first what is to be believed" (_disce primo quod credendum est_), meaning thereby that one should first accept doctrines, and then find texts to confirm them. these principles being dominant, the accretions to the enormous fabric of interpretation went steadily on. typical is the fact that the venerable bede contributed to it the doctrine that, in the text mentioning elkanah and his two wives, elkanah means christ and the two wives the synagogue and the church. even such men as alfred the great and st. thomas aquinas were added to the forces at work in building above the sacred books this prodigious structure of sophistry. perhaps nothing shows more clearly the tenacity of the old system of interpretation than the sermons of savonarola. during the last decade of the fifteenth century, just at the close of the medieval period, he was engaged in a life-and-death struggle at florence. no man ever preached more powerfully the gospel of righteousness; none ever laid more stress on conduct; even luther was not more zealous for reform or more careless of tradition; and yet we find the great florentine apostle and martyr absolutely tied fast to the old system of allegorical interpretation. the autograph notes of his sermons, still preserved in his cell at san marco, show this abundantly. thus we find him attaching to the creation of grasses and plants on the third day an allegorical connection with the "multitude of the elect" and with the "sound doctrines of the church," and to the creation of land animals on the sixth day a similar relation to "the jewish people" and to "christians given up to things earthly."[[303]] the revival of learning in the fifteenth century seemed likely to undermine this older structure. then it was that lorenzo valla brought to bear on biblical research, for the first time, the spirit of modern criticism. by truly scientific methods he proved the famous "letter of christ to abgarus" a forgery; the "donation of constantine," one of the great foundations of the ecclesiastical power in temporal things, a fraud; and the "apostles' creed" a creation which post-dated the apostles by several centuries. of even more permanent influence was his work upon the new testament, in which he initiated the modern method of comparing manuscripts to find what the sacred text really is. at an earlier or later period he would doubtless have paid for his temerity with his life; fortunately, just at that time the ruling pontiff and his contemporaries cared much for literature and little for orthodoxy, and from their palaces he could bid defiance to the inquisition. while valla thus initiated biblical criticism south of the alps, a much greater man began a more fruitful work in northern europe. erasmus, with his edition of the new testament, stands at the source of that great stream of modern research and thought which is doing so much to undermine and dissolve away the vast fabric of patristic and scholastic interpretation. yet his efforts to purify the scriptural text seemed at first to encounter insurmountable difficulties, and one of these may stimulate reflection. he had found, what some others had found before him, that the famous verse in the fifth chapter of the first epistle general of st. john, regarding the "three witnesses," was an interpolation. careful research through all the really important early manuscripts showed that it appeared in none of them. even after the bible had been corrected, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, by lanfranc, archbishop of canterbury, and by nicholas, cardinal and librarian of the roman church, "in accordance with the orthodox faith," the passage was still wanting in the more authoritative latin manuscripts. there was not the slightest tenable ground for believing in the authenticity of the text; on the contrary, it has been demonstrated that, after a universal silence of the orthodox fathers of the church, of the ancient versions of the scriptures, and of all really important manuscripts, the verse first appeared in a confession of faith drawn up by an obscure zealot toward the end of the fifth century. in a very mild exercise, then, of critical judgment, erasmus omitted this text from the first two editions of his greek testament as evidently spurious. a storm arose at once. in england, lee, afterward archbishop of york; in spain, stunica, one of the editors of the complutensian polyglot; and in france, bude, syndic of the sorbonne, together with a vast army of monks in england and on the continent, attacked him ferociously. he was condemned by the university of paris, and various propositions of his were declared to be heretical and impious. fortunately, the worst persecutors could not reach him; otherwise they might have treated him as they treated his disciple, berquin, whom in 1529 they burned at paris. the fate of this spurious text throws light into the workings of human nature in its relations to sacred literature. although luther omitted it from his translation of the new testament, and kept it out of every copy published during his lifetime, and although at a later period the most eminent christian scholars showed that it had no right to a place in the bible, it was, after luther's death, replaced in the german translation, and has been incorporated into all important editions of it, save one, since the beginning of the seventeenth century. so essential was it found in maintaining the dominant theology that, despite the fact that sir isaac newton, richard porson, the nineteenth-century revisers, and all other eminent authorities have rejected it, the anglican church still retains it in its lectionary, and the scotch church continues to use it in the westminster catechism, as a main support of the doctrine of the trinity. nor were other new truths presented by erasmus better received. his statement that "some of the epistles ascribed to st. paul are certainly not his," which is to-day universally acknowledged as a truism, also aroused a storm. for generations, then, his work seemed vain. on the coming in of the reformation the great structure of belief in the literal and historical correctness of every statement in the scriptures, in the profound allegorical meanings of the simplest texts, and even in the divine origin of the vowel punctuation, towered more loftily and grew more rapidly than ever before. the reformers, having cast off the authority of the pope and of the universal church, fell back all the more upon the infallibility of the sacred books. the attitude of luther toward this great subject was characteristic. as a rule, he adhered tenaciously to the literal interpretation of the scriptures; his argument against copernicus is a fair example of his reasoning in this respect; but, with the strong good sense which characterized him, he from time to time broke away from the received belief. thus, he took the liberty of understanding certain passages in the old testament in a different sense from that given them by the new testament, and declared st. paul's allegorical use of the story of sarah and hagar "too unsound to stand the test." he also emphatically denied that the epistle to the hebrews was written by st. paul, and he did this in the exercise of a critical judgment upon internal evidence. his utterance as to the epistle of st. james became famous. he announced to the church: "i do not esteem this an apostolic, epistle; i will not have it in my bible among the canonical books," and he summed up his opinion in his well-known allusion to it as "an epistle of straw." emboldened by him, the gentle spirit of melanchthon, while usually taking the bible very literally, at times revolted; but this was not due to any want of loyalty to the old method of interpretation: whenever the wildest and most absurd system of exegesis seemed necessary to support any part of the reformed doctrine, luther and melanchthon unflinchingly developed it. both of them held firmly to the old dictum of hugo of st. victor, which, as we have seen, was virtually that one must first accept the doctrine, and then find scriptural warrant for it. very striking examples of this were afforded in the interpretation by luther and melanchthon of certain alleged marvels of their time, and one out of several of these may be taken as typical of their methods. in 1523 luther and melanchthon jointly published a work under the title _der papstesel_--interpreting the significance of a strange, ass-like monster which, according to a popular story, had been found floating in the tiber some time before. this book was illustrated by startling pictures, and both text and pictures were devoted to proving that this monster was "a sign from god," indicating the doom of the papacy. this treatise by the two great founders of german protestantism pointed out that the ass's head signified the pope himself; "for," said they, "as well as an ass's head is suited to a human body, so well is the pope suited to be head over the church." this argument was clinched by a reference to exodus. the right hand of the monster, said to be like an elephant's foot, they made to signify the spiritual rule of the pope, since "with it he tramples upon all the weak": this they proved from the book of daniel and the second epistle to timothy. the monster's left hand, which was like the hand of a man, they declared to mean the pope's secular rule, and they found passages to support this view in daniel and st. luke. the right foot, which was like the foot of an ox, they declared to typify the servants of the spiritual power; and proved this by a citation from st. matthew. the left foot, like a griffin's claw, they made to typify the servants of the temporal power of the pope, and the highly developed breasts and various other members, cardinals, bishops, priests, and monks, "whose life is eating, drinking, and unchastity": to prove this they cited passages from second timothy and philippians. the alleged fish-scales on the arms, legs, and neck of the monster they made to typify secular princes and lords; "since," as they said, "in st. matthew and job the sea typifies the world, and fishes men." the old man's head at the base of the monster's spine they interpreted to mean "the abolition and end of the papacy," and proved this from hebrews and daniel. the dragon which opens his mouth in the rear and vomits fire, "refers to the terrible, virulent bulls and books which the pope and his minions are now vomiting forth into the world." the two great reformers then went on to insist that, since this monster was found at rome, it could refer to no person but the pope; "for," they said, "god always sends his signs in the places where their meaning applies." finally, they assured the world that the monster in general clearly signified that the papacy was then near its end. to this development of interpretation luther and melanchthon especially devoted themselves; the latter by revising this exposition of the prodigy, and the former by making additions to a new edition. such was the success of this kind of interpretation that luther, hearing that a monstrous calf had been found at freiburg, published a treatise upon it--showing, by citations from the books of exodus, kings, the psalms, isaiah, daniel, and the gospel of st. john, that this new monster was the especial work of the devil, but full of meaning in regard to the questions at issue between the reformers and the older church. the other main branch of the reformed church appeared for a time to establish a better system. calvin's strong logic seemed at one period likely to tear his adherents away from the older method; but the evolution of scholasticism continued, and the influence of the german reformers prevailed. at every theological centre came an amazing development of interpretation. eminent lutheran divines in the seventeenth century, like gerhard, calovius, coccerus, and multitudes of others, wrote scores of quartos to further this system, and the other branch of the protestant church emulated their example. the pregnant dictum of st. augustine--"greater is the authority of scripture than all human capacity"--was steadily insisted upon, and, toward the close of the seventeenth century, voetius, the renowned professor at utrecht, declared, "not a word is contained in the holy scriptures which is not in the strictest sense inspired, the very punctuation not excepted"; and this declaration was echoed back from multitudes of pulpits, theological chairs, synods, and councils. unfortunately, it was very difficult to find what the "authority of scripture" really was. to the greater number of protestant ecclesiastics it meant the authority of any meaning in the text which they had the wit to invent and the power to enforce. to increase this vast confusion, came, in the older branch of the church, the idea of the divine inspiration of the latin translation of the bible ascribed to st. jerome--the vulgate. it was insisted by leading catholic authorities that this was as completely a product of divine inspiration as was the hebrew original. strong men arose to insist even that, where the hebrew and the latin differed, the hebrew should be altered to fit jerome's mistranslation, as the latter, having been made under the new dispensation, must be better than that made under the old. even so great a man as cardinal bellarmine exerted himself in vain against this new tide of unreason.[[308]] nor was a fanatical adhesion to the mere letter of the sacred text confined to western europe. about the middle of the seventeenth century, in the reign of alexis, father of peter the great, nikon, patriarch of the russian greek church, attempted to correct the slavonic scriptures and service-books. they were full of interpolations due to ignorance, carelessness, or zeal, and in order to remedy this state of the texts nikon procured a number of the best greek and slavonic manuscripts, set the leading and most devout scholars he could find at work upon them, and caused russian church councils in 1655 and 1666 to promulgate the books thus corrected. but the same feelings which have wrought so strongly against our nineteenth-century revision of the bible acted even more forcibly against that revision in the seventeenth century. straightway great masses of the people, led by monks and parish priests, rose in revolt. the fact that the revisers had written in the new testament the name of jesus correctly, instead of following the old wrong orthography, aroused the wildest fanaticism. the monks of the great convent of solovetsk, when the new books were sent them, cried in terror: "woe, woe! what have you done with the son of god?" they then shut their gates, defying patriarch, council, and czar, until, after a struggle lasting seven years, their monastery was besieged and taken by an imperial army. hence arose the great sect of the "old believers," lasting to this day, and fanatically devoted to the corrupt readings of the old text.[310] strange to say, on the development of scripture interpretation, largely in accordance with the old methods, wrought, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, sir isaac newton. it is hard to believe that from the mind which produced the _principia_, and which broke through the many time-honoured beliefs regarding the dates and formation of scriptural books, could have come his discussions regarding the prophecies; still, at various points even in this work, his power appears. from internal evidence he not only discarded the text of the three witnesses, but he decided that the pentateuch must have been made up from several books; that genesis was not written until the reign of saul; that the books of kings and chronicles were probably collected by ezra; and, in a curious anticipation of modern criticism, that the book of psalms and the prophecies of isaiah and daniel were each written by various authors at various dates. but the old belief in prophecy as prediction was too strong for him, and we find him applying his great powers to the relation of the details given by the prophets and in the apocalypse to the history of mankind since unrolled, and tracing from every statement in prophetic literature its exact fulfilment even in the most minute particulars. by the beginning of the eighteenth century the structure of scriptural interpretation had become enormous. it seemed destined to hide forever the real character of our sacred literature and to obscure the great light which christianity had brought into the world. the church, eastern and western, catholic and protestant, was content to sit in its shadow, and the great divines of all branches of the church reared every sort of fantastic buttress to strengthen or adorn it. it seemed to be founded for eternity; and yet, at this very time when it appeared the strongest, a current of thought was rapidly dissolving away its foundations, and preparing that wreck and ruin of the whole fabric which is now, at the close of the nineteenth century, going on so rapidly. the account of the movement thus begun is next to be given.[311] ii. beginnings of scientific interpretation. at the base of the vast structure of the older scriptural interpretation were certain ideas regarding the first five books of the old testament. it was taken for granted that they had been dictated by the almighty to moses about fifteen hundred years before our era; that some parts of them, indeed, had been written by the corporeal finger of jehovah, and that all parts gave not merely his thoughts but his exact phraseology. it was also held, virtually by the universal church, that while every narrative or statement in these books is a precise statement of historical or scientific fact, yet that the entire text contains vast hidden meanings. such was the rule: the exceptions made by a few interpreters here and there only confirmed it. even the indifference of st. jerome to the doctrine of mosaic authorship did not prevent its ripening into a dogma. the book of genesis was universally held to be an account, not only divinely comprehensive but miraculously exact, of the creation and of the beginnings of life on the earth; an account to which all discoveries in every branch of science must, under pains and penalties, be made to conform. in english-speaking lands this has lasted until our own time: the most eminent of recent english biologists has told us how in every path of natural science he has, at some stage in his career, come across a barrier labelled "no thoroughfare moses." a favourite subject of theological eloquence was the perfection of the pentateuch, and especially of genesis, not only as a record of the past, but as a revelation of the future. the culmination of this view in the protestant church was the _pansophia mosaica of pfeiffer_, a lutheran general superintendent, or bishop, in northern germany, near the beginning of the seventeenth century. he declared that the text of genesis "must be received strictly"; that "it contains all knowledge, human and divine"; that "twenty-eight articles of the augsburg confession are to be found in it"; that "it is an arsenal of arguments against all sects and sorts of atheists, pagans, jews, turks, tartars, papists, calvinists, socinians, and baptists"; "the source of all sciences and arts, including law, medicine, philosophy, and rhetoric"; "the source and essence of all histories and of all professions, trades, and works"; "an exhibition of all virtues and vices"; "the origin of all consolation." this utterance resounded through germany from pulpit to pulpit, growing in strength and volume, until a century later it was echoed back by huet, the eminent bishop and commentator of france. he cited a hundred authors, sacred and profane, to prove that moses wrote the pentateuch; and not only this, but that from the jewish lawgiver came the heathen theology--that moses was, in fact, nearly the whole pagan pantheon rolled into one, and really the being worshipped under such names as bacchus, adonis, and apollo.[[312]] about the middle of the twelfth century came, so far as the world now knows, the first gainsayer of this general theory. then it was that aben ezra, the greatest biblical scholar of the middle ages, ventured very discreetly to call attention to certain points in the pentateuch incompatible with the belief that the whole of it had been written by moses and handed down in its original form. his opinion was based upon the well-known texts which have turned all really eminent biblical scholars in the nineteenth century from the old view by showing the mosaic authorship of the five books in their present form to be clearly disproved by the books themselves; and, among these texts, accounts of moses' own death and burial, as well as statements based on names, events, and conditions which only came into being ages after the time of moses. but aben ezra had evidently no aspirations for martyrdom; he fathered the idea upon a rabbi of a previous generation, and, having veiled his statement in an enigma, added the caution, "let him who understands hold his tongue."[[313]] for about four centuries the learned world followed the prudent rabbi's advice, and then two noted scholars, one of them a protestant, the other a catholic, revived his idea. the first of these, carlstadt, insisted that the authorship of the pentateuch was unknown and unknowable; the other, andreas maes, expressed his opinion in terms which would not now offend the most orthodox, that the pentateuch had been edited by ezra, and had received in the process sundry divinely inspired words and phrases to clear the meaning. both these innovators were dealt with promptly: carlstadt was, for this and other troublesome ideas, suppressed with the applause of the protestant church; and the book of maes was placed by the older church on the _index_. but as we now look back over the revival of learning, the age of discovery, and the reformation, we can see clearly that powerful as the older church then was, and powerful as the reformed church was to be, there was at work something far more mighty than either or than both; and this was a great law of nature--the law of evolution through differentiation. obedient to this law there now began to arise, both within the church and without it, a new body of scholars--not so much theologians as searchers for truth by scientific methods. some, like cusa, were ecclesiastics; some, like valla, erasmus, and the scaligers, were not such in any real sense; but whether in holy orders, really, nominally, or not at all, they were, first of all, literary and scientific investigators. during the sixteenth century a strong impulse was given to more thorough research by several very remarkable triumphs of the critical method as developed by this new class of men, and two of these ought here to receive attention on account of their influence upon the whole after course of human thought. for many centuries the decretals bearing the great name of isidore had been cherished as among the most valued muniments of the church. they contained what claimed to be a mass of canons, letters of popes, decrees of councils, and the like, from the days of the apostles down to the eighth century--all supporting at important points the doctrine, the discipline, the ceremonial, and various high claims of the church and its hierarchy. but in the fifteenth century that sturdy german thinker, cardinal nicholas of cusa, insisted on examining these documents and on applying to them the same thorough research and patient thought which led him, even before copernicus, to detect the error of the ptolemaic astronomy. as a result, he avowed his scepticism regarding this pious literature; other close thinkers followed him in investigating it, and it was soon found a tissue of absurd anachronisms, with endless clashing and confusion of events and persons. for a time heroic attempts were made by church authorities to cover up these facts. scholars revealing them were frowned upon, even persecuted, and their works placed upon the _index_; scholars explaining them away--the "apologists" or "reconcilers" of that day--were rewarded with church preferment, one of them securing for a very feeble treatise a cardinal's hat. but all in vain; these writings were at length acknowledged by all scholars of note, catholic and protestant, to be mainly a mass of devoutly cunning forgeries. while the eyes of scholars were thus opened as never before to the skill of early church zealots in forging documents useful to ecclesiasticism, another discovery revealed their equal skill in forging documents useful to theology. for more than a thousand years great stress had been laid by theologians upon the writings ascribed to dionysius the areopagite, the athenian convert of st. paul. claiming to come from one so near the great apostle, they were prized as a most precious supplement to holy writ. a belief was developed that when st. paul had returned to earth, after having been "caught up to the third heaven," he had revealed to dionysius the things he had seen. hence it was that the varied pictures given in these writings of the heavenly hierarchy and the angelic ministers of the almighty took strong hold upon the imagination of the universal church: their theological statements sank deeply into the hearts and minds of the mystics of the twelfth century and the platonists of the fifteenth; and the ten epistles they contained, addressed to st. john, to titus, to polycarp, and others of the earliest period, were considered treasures of sacred history. an emperor of the east had sent these writings to an emperor of the west as the most precious of imperial gifts. scotus erigena had translated them; st. thomas aquinas had expounded them; dante had glorified them; albert the great had claimed that they were virtually given by st. paul and inspired by the holy ghost. their authenticity was taken for granted by fathers, doctors, popes, councils, and the universal church. but now, in the glow of the renascence, all this treasure was found to be but dross. investigators in the old church and in the new joined in proving that the great mass of it was spurious. to say nothing of other evidences, it failed to stand the simplest of all tests, for these writings constantly presupposed institutions and referred to events of much later date than the time of dionysius; they were at length acknowledged by all authorities worthy of the name, catholic as well as protestant, to be simply--like the isidorian decretals--pious frauds. thus arose an atmosphere of criticism very different from the atmosphere of literary docility and acquiescence of the "ages of faith"; thus it came that great scholars in all parts of europe began to realize, as never before, the part which theological skill and ecclesiastical zeal had taken in the development of spurious sacred literature; thus was stimulated a new energy in research into all ancient documents, no matter what their claims. to strengthen this feeling and to intensify the stimulating qualities of this new atmosphere came, as we have seen, the researches and revelations of valla regarding the forged _letter of christ to abgarus_, the fraudulent _donation of constantine_, and the late date of the apostles' creed; and, to give this feeling direction toward the hebrew and christian sacred books, came the example of erasmus.[[316]] naturally, then, in this new atmosphere the bolder scholars of europe soon began to push mnore vigorously the researches begun centuries before by aben ezra, and the next efforts of these men were seen about the middle of the seventeenth century, when hobbes, in his _leviathan_, and la pevrere, in his _preadamites_, took them up and developed them still further. the result came speedily. hobbes, for this and other sins, was put under the ban, even by the political party which sorely needed him, and was regarded generally as an outcast; while la peyrere, for this and other heresies, was thrown into prison by the grand vicar of mechlin, and kept there until he fullv retracted: his book was refuted by seven theologians within a year after its appearance, and within a generation thirty-six elaborate answers to it had appeared: the parliament of paris ordered it to be burned by the hangman. in 1670 came an utterance vastly more important, by a man far greater than any of these--the _tractatus thrologico-politicus_ of spinoza. reverently but firmly he went much more deeply into the subject. suggesting new arguments and recasting the old, he summed up all with judicial fairness, and showed that moses could not have been the author of the pentateuch in the form then existing; that there had been glosses and revisions; that the biblical books had grown up as a literature; that, though great truths are to be found in them, and they are to be regarded as a divine revelation, the old claims of inerrancy for them can not be maintained; that in studying them men had been misled by mistaking human conceptions for divine meanings; that, while prophets have been inspired, the prophetic faculty has not been the dowry of the jewish people alone; that to look for exact knowledge of natural and spiritual phenomena in the sacred books is an utter mistake; and that the narratives of the old and new testaments, while they surpass those of profane history, differ among themselves not only in literary merit, but in the value of the doctrines they inculcate. as to the authorship of the pentateuch, he arrived at the conclusion that it was written long after moses, but that moses may have written some books from which it was compiled--as, for example, those which are mentioned in the scriptures, the _book of the wars of god_, the _book of the covenant_, and the like--and that the many repetitions and contradictions in the various books show a lack of careful editing as well as a variety of original sources. spinoza then went on to throw light into some other books of the old and new testaments, and added two general statements which have proved exceedingly serviceable, for they contain the germs of all modern broad churchmanship; and the first of them gave the formula which was destined in our own time to save to the anglican church a large number of her noblest sons: this was, that "sacred scripture _contains_ the word of god, and in so far as it contains it is incorruptible"; the second was, that "error in speculative doctrine is not impious." though published in various editions, the book seemed to produce little effect upon the world at that time; but its result to spinoza himself was none the less serious. though so deeply religious that novalis spoke of him as "a god-intoxicated man," and schleiermacher called him a "saint," he had been, for the earlier expression of some of the opinions it contained, abhorred as a heretic both by jews and christians: from the synagogue he was cut off by a public curse, and by the church he was now regarded as in some sort a forerunner of antichrist. for all this, he showed no resentment, but devoted himself quietly to his studies, and to the simple manual labour by which he supported himself; declined all proffered honours, among them a professorship at heidelberg; found pleasure only in the society of a few friends as gentle and affectionate as himself; and died contentedly, without seeing any widespread effect of his doctrine other than the prevailing abhorrence of himself. perhaps in all the seventeenth century there was no man whom jesus of nazareth would have more deeply loved, and no life which he would have more warmly approved; yet down to a very recent period this hatred for spinoza has continued. when, about 188o, it was proposed to erect a monument to him at amsterdam, discourses were given in churches and synagogues prophesying the wrath of heaven upon the city for such a profanation; and when the monument was finished, the police were obliged to exert themselves to prevent injury to the statue and to the eminent scholars who unveiled it. but the ideas of spinoza at last secured recognition. they had sunk deeply into the hearts and minds of various leaders of thought, and, most important of all, into the heart and mind of lessing; he brought them to bear in his treatise on the _education of the world_, as well as in his drama, _nathan the wise_, and both these works have spoken with power to every generation since. in france, also, came the same healthful evolution of thought. for generations scholars had known that multitudes of errors had crept into the sacred text. robert stephens had found over two thousand variations in the oldest manuscripts of the old testament, and in 1633 jean morin, a priest of the oratory, pointed out clearly many of the most glaring of these. seventeen years later, in spite of the most earnest protestant efforts to suppress his work, cappellus gave forth his _critica sacra_, demonstrating not only that the vowel pointing of scripture was not divinely inspired, but that the hebrew text itself, from which the modern translations were made, is full of errors due to the carelessness, ignorance, and doctrinal zeal of early scribes, and that there had clearly been no miraculous preservation of the "original autographs" of the sacred books. while orthodox france was under the uneasiness and alarm thus caused, appeared a _critical history of the old testament_ by richard simon, a priest of the oratory. he was a thoroughly religious man and an acute scholar, whose whole purpose was to develop truths which he believed healthful to the church and to mankind. but he denied that moses was the author of the pentateuch, and exhibited the internal evidence, now so well known, that the books were composed much later by various persons, and edited later still. he also showed that other parts of the old testament had been compiled from older sources, and attacked the time-honoured theory that hebrew was the primitive language of mankind. the whole character of his book was such that in these days it would pass, on the whole, as conservative and orthodox; it had been approved by the censor in 1678, and printed, when the table of contents and a page of the preface were shown to bossuet. the great bishop and theologian was instantly aroused; he pronounced the work "a mass of impieties and a bulwark of irreligion"; his biographer tells us that, although it was holy thursday, the bishop, in spite of the solemnity of the day, hastened at once to the chancellor le tellier, and secured an order to stop the publication of the book and to burn the whole edition of it. fortunately, a few copies were rescued, and a few years later the work found a new publisher in holland; yet not until there had been attached to it, evidently by some protestant divine of authority, an essay warning the reader against its dangerous doctrines. two years later a translation was published in england. this first work of simon was followed by others, in which he sought, in the interest of scriptural truth, to throw a new and purer light upon our sacred literature; but bossuet proved implacable. although unable to suppress all of simon's works, he was able to drive him from the oratory, and to bring him into disrepute among the very men who ought to have been proud of him as frenchmen and thankful to him as christians. but other scholars of eminence were now working in this field, and chief among them le clerc. virtually driven out of geneva, he took refuge at amsterdam, and there published a series of works upon the hebrew language, the interpretation of scripture, and the like. in these he combated the prevalent idea that hebrew was the primitive tongue, expressed the opinion that in the plural form of the word used in genesis for god, "elohim," there is a trace of chaldean polytheism, and, in his discussion on the serpent who tempted eve, curiously anticipated modern geological and zoological ideas by quietly confessing his inability to see how depriving the serpent of feet and compelling him to go on his belly could be punishment--since all this was natural to the animal. he also ventured quasi-scientific explanations of the confusion of tongues at babel, the destruction of sodom, the conversion of lot's wife into a pillar of salt, and the dividing of the red sea. as to the pentateuch in general, he completely rejected the idea that it was written by moses. but his most permanent gift to the thinking world was his answer to those who insisted upon the reference by christ and his apostles to moses as the author of the pentateuch. the answer became a formula which has proved effective from his day to ours: "our lord and his apostles did not come into this world to teach criticism to the jews, and hence spoke according to the common opinion." against all these scholars came a theological storm, but it raged most pitilessly against le clerc. such renowned theologians as carpzov in germany, witsius in holland, and huet in france berated him unmercifully and overwhelmed him with assertions which still fill us with wonder. that of huet, attributing the origin of pagan as well as christian theology to moses, we have already seen; but carpzov showed that protestantism could not be outdone by catholicism when he declared, in the face of all modern knowledge, that not only the matter but the exact form and words of the bible had been divinely transmitted to the modern world free from all error. at this le clerc stood aghast, and finally stammered out a sort of half recantation.[[321]] during the eighteenth century constant additions were made to the enormous structure of orthodox scriptural interpretation, some of them gaining the applause of the christian world then, though nearly all are utterly discredited now. but in 1753 appeared two contributions of permanent influence, though differing vastly in value. in the comparative estimate of these two works the world has seen a remarkable reversal of public opinion. the first of these was bishop lowth's _prelections upon the sacred poetry of the hebrews_. in this was well brought out that characteristic of hebrew poetry to which it owes so much of its peculiar charm--its parallelism. the second of these books was astruc's _conjectures on the original memoirs which moses used in composing the book of genesis_. in this was for the first time clearly revealed the fact that, amid various fragments of old writings, at least two main narratives enter into the composition of genesis; that in the first of these is generally used as an appellation of the almighty the word "elohim," and in the second the word "yahveh" (jehovah); that each narrative has characteristics of its own, in thought and expression, which distinguish it from the other; that, by separating these, two clear and distinct narratives may be obtained, each consistent with itself, and that thus, and thus alone, can be explained the repetitions, discrepancies, and contradictions in genesis which so long baffled the ingenuity of commentators, especially the two accounts of the creation, so utterly inconsistent with each other. interesting as was lowth's book, this work by astruc was, as the thinking world now acknowledges, infinitely more important; it was, indeed, the most valuable single contribution ever made to biblical study. but such was not the judgment of the world _then_. while lowth's book was covered with honour and its author promoted from the bishopric of st. david's to that of london, and even offered the primacy, astruc and his book were covered with reproach. though, as an orthodox catholic, he had mainly desired to reassert the authorship of moses against the argument of spinoza, he received no thanks on that account. theologians of all creeds sneered at him as a doctor of medicine who had blundered beyond his province; his fellow-catholics in france bitterly denounced him as a heretic; and in germany the great protestant theologian, michaelis, who had edited and exalted lowth's work, poured contempt over astruc as an ignoramus. the case of astruc is one of the many which show the wonderful power of the older theological reasoning to close the strongest minds against the clearest truths. the fact which he discovered is now as definitely established as any in the whole range of literature or science. it has become as clear as the day, and yet for two thousand years the minds of professional theologians, jewish and christian, were unable to detect it. not until this eminent physician applied to the subject a mind trained in making scientific distinctions was it given to the world. it was, of course, not possible even for so eminent a scholar as michaelis to pooh-pooh down a discovery so pregnant; and, curiously enough, it was one of michaelis's own scholars, eichhorn, who did the main work in bringing the new truth to bear upon the world. he, with others, developed out of it the theory that genesis, and indeed the pentateuch, is made up entirely of fragments of old writings, mainly disjointed. but they did far more than this: they impressed upon the thinking part of christendom the fact that the bible is not a _book_, but a _literature_; that the style is not supernatural and unique, but simply the oriental style of the lands and times in which its various parts were written; and that these must be studied in the light of the modes of thought and statement and the literary habits generally of oriental peoples. from eichhorn's time the process which, by historical, philological, and textual research, brings out the truth regarding this literature has been known as "the higher criticism." he was a deeply religious man, and the mainspring of his efforts was the desire to bring back to the church the educated classes, who had been repelled by the stiff lutheran orthodoxy; but this only increased hostility to him. opposition met him in germany at every turn; and in england, lloyd, regius professor of hebrew at cambridge, who sought patronage for a translation of eichhorn's work, was met generally with contempt and frequently with insult. throughout catholic germany it was even worse. in 1774 isenbiehl, a priest at mayence who had distinguished himself as a greek and hebrew scholar, happened to question the usual interpretation of the passage in isaiah which refers to the virgin-born immanuel, and showed then--what every competent critic knows now--that it had reference to events looked for in older jewish history. the censorship and faculty of theology attacked him at once and brought him before the elector. luckily, this potentate was one of the old easy-going prince-bishops, and contented himself with telling the priest that, though his contention was perhaps true, he "must remain in the old paths, and avoid everything likely to make trouble." but at the elector's death, soon afterward, the theologians renewed the attack, threw isenbiehl out of his professorship and degraded him. one insult deserves mention for its ingenuity. it was declared that he--the successful and brilliant professor--showed by the obnoxious interpretation that he had not yet rightly learned the scriptures; he was therefore sent back to the benches of the theological school, and made to take his seat among the ingenuous youth who were conning the rudiments of theology. at this he made a new statement, so carefully guarded that it disarmed many of his enemies, and his high scholarship soon won for him a new professorship of greek--the condition being that he should cease writing upon scripture. but a crafty bookseller having republished his former book, and having protected himself by keeping the place and date of publication secret, a new storm fell upon the author; he was again removed from his professorship and thrown into prison; his book was forbidden, and all copies of it in that part of germany were confiscated. in 1778, having escaped from prison, he sought refuge with another of the minor rulers who in blissful unconsciousness were doing their worst while awaiting the french revolution, but was at once delivered up to the mayence authorities and again thrown into prison. the pope, pius vi, now intervened with a brief on isenbiehl's book, declaring it "horrible, false, perverse, destructive, tainted with heresy," and excommunicating all who should read it. at this, isenbiehl, declaring that he had written it in the hope of doing a service to the church, recanted, and vegetated in obscurity until his death in 1818. but, despite theological faculties, prince-bishops, and even popes, the new current of thought increased in strength and volume, and into it at the end of the eighteenth century came important contributions from two sources widely separated and most dissimilar. the first of these, which gave a stimulus not yet exhausted, was the work of herder. by a remarkable intuition he had anticipated some of those ideas of an evolutionary process in nature and in literature which first gained full recognition nearly three quarters of a century after him; but his greatest service in the field of biblical study was his work, at once profound and brilliant, _the spirit of hebrew poetry_. in this field he eclipsed bishop lowth. among other things of importance, he showed that the psalms were by different authors and of different periods--the bloom of a great poetic literature. until his time no one had so clearly done justice to their sublimity and beauty; but most striking of all was his discussion of solomon's song. for over twenty centuries it had been customary to attribute to it mystical meanings. if here and there some man saw the truth, he was careful, like aben ezra, to speak with bated breath. the penalty for any more honest interpretation was seen, among protestants, when calvin and beza persecuted castellio, covered him with obloquy, and finally drove him to starvation and death, for throwing light upon the real character of the song of songs; and among catholics it was seen when philip ii allowed the pious and gifted luis de leon, for a similar offence, to be thrown into a dungeon of the inquisition and kept there for five years, until his health was utterly shattered and his spirit so broken that he consented to publish a new commentary on the song, "as theological and obscure as the most orthodox could desire." here, too, we have an example of the efficiency of the older biblical theology in fettering the stronger minds and in stupefying the weaker. just as the book of genesis had to wait over two thousand years for a physician to reveal the simplest fact regarding its structure, so the song of songs had to wait even longer for a poet to reveal not only its beauty but its character. commentators innumerable had interpreted it; st. bernard had preached over eighty sermons on its first two chapters; palestrina had set its most erotic parts to sacred music; jews and gentiles, catholics and protestants, from origen to aben ezra and from luther to bossuet, had uncovered its deep meanings and had demonstrated it to be anything and everything save that which it really is. among scores of these strange imaginations it was declared to represent the love of jehovah for israel; the love of christ for the church; the praises of the blessed virgin; the union of the soul with the body; sacred history from the exodus to the messiah; church history from the crucifixion to the reformation; and some of the more acute protestant divines found in it references even to the religious wars in germany and to the peace of passau. in these days it seems hard to imagine how really competent reasoners could thus argue without laughing in each other's faces, after the manner of cicero's augurs. herder showed solomon's song to be what the whole thinking world now knows it to be--simply an oriental love-poem. but his frankness brought him into trouble: he was bitterly assailed. neither his noble character nor his genius availed him. obliged to flee from one pastorate to another, he at last found a happy refuge at weimar in the society of goethe, wieland, and jean paul, and thence he exercised a powerful influence in removing noxious and parasitic growths from religious thought. it would hardly be possible to imagine a man more different from herder than was the other of the two who most influenced biblical interpretation at the end of the eighteenth century. this was alexander geddes--a roman catholic priest and a scotchman. having at an early period attracted much attention by his scholarship, and having received the very rare distinction, for a catholic, of a doctorate from the university of aberdeen, he began publishing in 1792 a new translation of the old testament, and followed this in 1800 with a volume of critical remarks. in these he supported mainly three views: first, that the pentateuch in its present form could not have been written by moses; secondly, that it was the work of various hands; and, thirdly, that it could not have been written before the time of david. although there was a fringe of doubtful theories about them, these main conclusions, supported as they were by deep research and cogent reasoning, are now recognised as of great value. but such was not the orthodox opinion then. though a man of sincere piety, who throughout his entire life remained firm in the faith of his fathers, he and his work were at once condemnned: he was suspended by the catholic authorities as a misbeliever, denounced by protestants as an infidel, and taunted by both as "a would-be corrector of the holy ghost." of course, by this taunt was meant nothing more than that he dissented from sundry ideas inherited from less enlightened times by the men who just then happened to wield ecclesiastical power. but not all the opposition to him could check the evolution of his thought. a line of great men followed in these paths opened by astruc and eichhorn, and broadened by herder and geddes. of these was de wette, whose various works, especially his _introduction to the old testament_, gave a new impulse early in the nineteenth century to fruitful thought throughout christendom. in these writings, while showing how largely myths and legends had entered into the hebrew sacred books, he threw especial light into the books deuteronomy and chronicles. the former he showed to be, in the main, a late priestly summary of law, and the latter a very late priestly recast of early history. he had, indeed, to pay a penalty for thus aiding the world in its march toward more truth, for he was driven out of germany, and obliged to take refuge in a swiss professorship; while theodore parker, who published an english translation of his work, was, for this and similar sins, virtually rejected by what claimed to be the most liberal of all christian bodies in the united states. but contributions to the new thought continued from quarters whence least was expected. gesenius, by his hebrew grammar, and ewald, by his historical studies, greatly advanced it. to them and to all like them during the middle years of the nineteenth century was sturdily opposed the colossus of orthodoxy--hengstenberg. in him was combined the haughtiness of a prussian drill-sergeant, the zeal of a spanish inquisitor, and the flippant brutality of a french orthodox journalist. behind him stood the gifted but erratic frederick william iv--a man admirably fitted for a professorship of aesthetics, but whom an inscrutable fate had made king of prussia. both these rulers in the german israel arrayed all possible opposition against the great scholars labouring in the new paths; but this opposition was vain: the succession of acute and honest scholars contiuued: vatke, bleek, reuss, graf, kayser, hupfeld, delitzsch, kuenen, and others wrought on in germany and holland, steadily developing the new truth. especially to be mentioned among these is hupfeld, who published in 1853 his treatise on _the sources of genesis_. accepting the _conjectures_ which astruc had published just a hundred years before, he established what has ever since been recognised by the leading biblical commentators as the true basis of work upon the pentateuch--the fact that _three_ true documents are combined in genesis, each with its own characteristics. he, too, had to pay a price for letting more light upon the world. a determined attempt was made to punish him. though deeply religious in his nature and aspirations, he was denounced in 1865 to the prussian government as guilty of irreverence; but, to the credit of his noble and true colleagues who trod in the more orthodox paths--men like tholuck and julius muller--the theological faculty of the university of halle protested against this persecuting effort, and it was brought to naught. the demonstrations of hupfeld gave new life to biblical scholarship in all lands. more and more clear became the evidence that throughout the pentateuch, and indeed in other parts of our sacred books, there had been a fusion of various ideas, a confounding of various epochs, and a compilation of various documents. thus was opened a new field of thought and work: in sifting out this literature; in rearranging it; and in bringing it into proper connection with the history of the jewish race and of humanity. astruc and hupfeld having thus found a key to the true character of the "mosaic" scriptures, a second key was found which opened the way to the secret of order in all this chaos. for many generations one thing had especially puzzled commentators and given rise to masses of futile "reconciliation": this was the patent fact that such men as samuel, david, elijah, isaiah, and indeed the whole jewish people down to the exile, showed in all their utterances and actions that they were utterly ignorant of that vast system of ceremonial law which, according to the accounts attributed to moses and other parts of our sacred books, was in full force during their time and during nearly a thousand years before the exile. it was held "always, everywhere, and by all," that in the old testament the chronological order of revelation was: first, the law; secondly, the psalms; thirdly, the prophets. this belief continued unchallenged during more than two thousand years, and until after the middle of the nineteenth century. yet, as far back as 1835, vatke at berlin had, in his _religion of the old testament_, expressed his conviction that this belief was unfounded. reasoning that jewish thought must have been subject to the laws of development which govern other systems, he arrived at the conclusion that the legislation ascribed to moses, and especially the elaborate paraphernalia and composite ceremonies of the ritual, could not have come into being at a period so rude as that depicted in the "mosaic" accounts. although vatke wrapped this statement in a mist of hegelian metaphysics, a sufficient number of watchmen on the walls of the prussian zion saw its meaning, and an alarm was given. the chroniclers tell us that "fear of failing in the examinations, through knowing too much, kept students away from vatke's lectures." naturally, while hengstenberg and frederick william iv were commanding the forces of orthodoxy, vatke thought it wise to be silent. still, the new idea was in the air; indeed, it had been divined about a year earlier, on the other side of the rhine, by a scholar well known as acute and thoughtful--reuss, of strasburg. unfortunately, he too was overawed, and he refrained from publishing his thought during more than forty years. but his ideas were caught by some of his most gifted scholars; and, of these, graf and kayser developed them and had the courage to publish them. at the same period this new master key was found and applied by a greater man than any of these--by kuenen, of holland; and thus it was that three eminent scholars, working in different parts of europe and on different lines, in spite of all obstacles, joined in enforcing upon the thinking world the conviction that the complete levitical law had been established not at the beginning, but at the end, of the jewish nation--mainly, indeed, after the jewish nation as an independent political body had ceased to exist; that this code had not been revealed in the childhood of israel, but that it had come into being in a perfectly natural way during israel's final decay--during the period when heroes and prophets had been succeeded by priests. thus was the historical and psychological evolution of jewish institutions brought into harmony with the natural development of human thought; elaborate ceremonial institutions being shown to have come after the ruder beginnings of religious development instead of before them. thus came a new impulse to research, and the fruitage was abundant; the older theological interpretation, with its insoluble puzzles, yielded on all sides. the lead in the new epoch thus opened was taken by kuenen. starting with strong prepossessions in favour of the older thought, and even with violent utterances against some of the supporters of the new view, he was borne on by his love of truth, until his great work, _the religion of israel_, published in 1869, attracted the attention of thinking scholars throughout the world by its arguments in favour of the upward movement. from him now came a third master key to the mystery; for he showed that the true opening point for research into the history and literature of israel is to be found in the utterances of the great prophets of the eighth century before our era. starting from these, he opened new paths into the periods preceding and following them. recognising the fact that the religion of israel was, like other great world religions, a development of higher ideas out of lower, he led men to bring deeper thinking and wider research into the great problem. with ample learning and irresistible logic he proved that old testament history is largely mingled with myth and legend; that not only were the laws attributed to moses in the main a far later development, but that much of their historical setting was an afterthought; also that old testament prophecy was never supernaturally predictive, and least of all predictive of events recorded in the new testament. thus it was that his genius gave to the thinking world a new point of view, and a masterly exhibition of the true method of study. justly has one of the most eminent divines of the contemporary anglican church indorsed the statement of another eminent scholar, that "kuenen stood upon his watch-tower, as it were the conscience of old testament science"; that his work is characterized "not merely by fine scholarship, critical insight, historical sense, and a religious nature, but also by an incorruptible conscientiousness, and a majestic devotion to the quest of truth." thus was established the science of biblical criticism. and now the question was, whether the church of northern germany would accept this great gift--the fruit of centuries of devoted toil and self-sacrifice--and take the lead of christendom in and by it. the great curse of theology and ecclesiasticism has always been their tendency to sacrifice large interests to small--charity to creed, unity to uniformity, fact to tradition, ethics to dogma. and now there were symptoms throughout the governing bodies of the reformed churches indicating a determination to sacrifice leadership in this new thought to ease in orthodoxy. every revelation of new knowledge encountered outcry, opposition, and repression; and, what was worse, the ill-judged declarations of some unwise workers in the critical field were seized upon and used to discredit all fruitful research. fortunately, a man now appeared who both met all this opposition successfully, and put aside all the half truths or specious untruths urged by minor critics whose zeal outran their discretion. this was a great constructive scholar--not a destroyer, but a builder--wellhausen. reverently, but honestly and courageously, with clearness, fulness, and convicting force, he summed up the conquests of scientific criticism as bearing on hebrew history and literature. these conquests had reduced the vast structures which theologians had during ages been erecting over the sacred text to shapeless ruin and rubbish: this rubbish he removed, and brought out from beneath it the reality. he showed jewish history as an evolution obedient to laws at work in all ages, and jewish literature as a growth out of individual, tribal, and national life. thus was our sacred history and literature given a beauty and high use which had long been foreign to them. thereby was a vast service rendered immediately to germany, and eventually to all mankind; and this service was greatest of all in the domain of religion.[[332]] iii. the continued growth of scientific interpretation. the science of biblical criticism was, as we have seen, first developed mainly in germany and holland. many considerations there, as elsewhere, combined to deter men from opening new paths to truth: not even in those countries were these the paths to preferment; but there, at least, the sturdy teutonic love of truth for truth's sake, strengthened by the kantian ethics, found no such obstacles as in other parts of europe. fair investigation of biblical subjects had not there been extirpated, as in italy and spain; nor had it been forced into channels which led nowhither, as in france and southern germany; nor were men who might otherwise have pursued it dazzled and drawn away from it by the multitude of splendid prizes for plausibility, for sophistry, or for silence displayed before the ecclesiastical vision in england. in the frugal homes of north german and dutch professors and pastors high thinking on these great subjects went steadily on, and the "liberty of teaching," which is the glory of the northern continental universities, while it did not secure honest thinkers against vexations, did at least protect them against the persecutions which in other countries would have thwarted their studies and starved their families.[[333]] in england the admission of the new current of thought was apparently impossible. the traditional system of biblical interpretation seemed established on british soil forever. it was knit into the whole fabric of thought and observance; it was protected by the most justly esteemed hierarchy the world has ever seen; it was intrenched behind the bishops' palaces, the cathedral stalls, the professors' chairs, the country parsonages--all these, as a rule, the seats of high endeavour and beautiful culture. the older thought held a controlling voice in the senate of the nation; it was dear to the hearts of all classes; it was superbly endowed; every strong thinker seemed to hold a brief, or to be in receipt of a retaining fee for it. as to preferment in the church, there was a cynical aphorism current, "he may hold anything who will hold his tongue."[[334]] yet, while there was inevitably much alloy of worldly wisdom in the opposition to the new thought, no just thinker can deny far higher motives to many, perhaps to most, of the ecclesiastics who were resolute against it. the evangelical movement incarnate in the wesleys had not spent its strength; the movement begun by pusey, newman, keble, and their compeers was in full force. the aesthetic reaction, represented on the continent by chateaubriand, manzoni, and victor hugo, and in england by walter scott, pugin, ruskin, and above all by wordsworth, came in to give strength to this barrier. under the magic of the men who led in this reaction, cathedrals and churches, which in the previous century had been regarded by men of culture as mere barbaric masses of stone and mortar, to be masked without by classic colonnades and within by rococo work in stucco and _papier mache_, became even more beloved than in the thirteenth century. even men who were repelled by theological disputations were fascinated and made devoted reactionists by the newly revealed beauties of medieval architecture and ritual.[[334b]] the centre and fortress of this vast system, and of the reaction against the philosophy of the eighteenth century, was the university of oxford. orthodoxy was its vaunt, and a special exponent of its spirit and object of its admiration was its member of parliament, mr, william ewart gladstone, who, having begun his political career by a laboured plea for the union of church and state, ended it by giving that union what is likely to be a death-blow. the mob at the circus of constantinople in the days of the byzantine emperors was hardly more wildly orthodox than the mob of students at this foremost seat of learning of the anglo-saxon race during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. the moslem students of el azhar are hardly more intolerant now than these english students were then. a curious proof of this had been displayed just before the end of that period. the minister of the united states at the court of st. james was then edward everett. he was undoubtedly the most accomplished scholar and one of the foremost statesmen that america had produced; his eloquence in early life had made him perhaps the most admired of american preachers; his classical learning had at a later period made him professor of greek at harvard; he had successfully edited the leading american review, and had taken a high place in american literature; he had been ten years a member of congress; he had been again and again elected governor of massachusetts; and in all these posts he had shown amply those qualities which afterward made him president of harvard, secretary of state of the united states, and a united states senator. his character and attainments were of the highest, and, as he was then occupying the foremost place in the diplomatic service of his country, he was invited to receive an appropriate honorary degree at oxford. but, on his presentation for it in the sheldonian theatre, there came a revelation to the people he represented, and indeed to all christendom: a riot having been carefully prepared beforehand by sundry zealots, he was most grossly and ingeniously insulted by the mob of undergraduates and bachelors of art in the galleries and masters of arts on the floor; and the reason for this was that, though by no means radical in his religious opinions, he was thought to have been in his early life, and to be possibly at that time, below what was then the oxford fashion in belief, or rather feeling, regarding the mystery of the trinity. at the centre of biblical teaching at oxford sat pusey, regius professor of hebrew, a scholar who had himself remained for a time at a german university, and who early in life had imbibed just enough of the german spirit to expose him to suspicion and even to attack. one charge against him at that time shows curiously what was then expected of a man perfectly sound in the older anglican theology. he had ventured to defend holy writ with the argument that there were fishes actually existing which could have swallowed the prophet jonah. the argument proved unfortunate. he was attacked on the scriptural ground that the fish which swallowed jonah was created for that express purpose. he, like others, fell back under the charm of the old system: his ideas gave force to the reaction: in the quiet of his study, which, especially after the death of his son, became a hermitage, he relapsed into patristic and medieval conceptions of christianity, enforcing them from the pulpit and in his published works. he now virtually accepted the famous dictum of hugo of st. victor--that one is first to find what is to be believed, and then to search the scriptures for proofs of it. his devotion to the main features of the older interpretation was seen at its strongest in his utterances regarding the book of daniel. just as cardinal bellarmine had insisted that the doctrine of the incarnation depends upon the retention of the ptolemaic astronomy; just as danzius had insisted that the very continuance of religion depends on the divine origin of the hebrew punctuation; just as peter martyr had made everything sacred depend on the literal acceptance of genesis; just as bishop warburton had insisted that christianity absolutely depends upon a right interpretation of the prophecies regarding antichrist; just as john wesley had insisted that the truth of the bible depends on the reality of witchcraft; just as, at a later period, bishop wilberforce insisted that the doctrine of the incarnation depends on the "mosaic" statements regarding the origin of man; and just as canon liddon insisted that christianity itself depends on a literal belief in noah's flood, in the transformation of lot's wife, and in the sojourn of jonah in the whale: so did pusey then virtually insist that christianity must stand or fall with the early date of the book of daniel. happily, though the ptolemaic astronomy, and witchcraft, and the genesis creation myths, and the adam, noah, lot, and jonah legends, and the divine origin of the hebrew punctuation, and the prophecies regarding antichrist, and the early date of the book of daniel have now been relegated to the limbo of ontworn beliefs, christianity has but come forth the stronger. nothing seemed less likely than that such a vast intrenched camp as that of which oxford was the centre could be carried by an effort proceeding from a few isolated german and dutch scholars. yet it was the unexpected which occurred; and it is instructive to note that, even at the period when the champions of the older thought were to all appearance impregnably intrenched in england, a way had been opened into their citadel, and that the most effective agents in preparing it were really the very men in the universities and cathedral chapters who had most distinguished themselves by uncompromising and intolerant orthodoxy. a rapid survey of the history of general literary criticism at that epoch will reveal this fact fully. during the last decade of the seventeenth century there had taken place the famous controversy over the _letters of phalaris_, in which, against charles boyle and his supporters at oxford, was pitted richard bentley at cambridge, who insisted that the letters were spurious. in the series of battles royal which followed, although boyle, aided by atterbury, afterward so noted for his mingled ecclesiastical and political intrigues, had gained a temporary triumph by wit and humour, bentley's final attack had proved irresistible. drawing from the stores of his wonderfully wide and minute knowledge, he showed that the letters could not have been written in the time of phalaris--proving this by an exhibition of their style, which could not then have been in use, of their reference to events which had not then taken place, and of a mass of considerations which no one but a scholar almost miraculously gifted could have marshalled so fully. the controversy had attracted attention not only in england but throughout europe. with bentley's reply it had ended. in spite of public applause at atterbury's wit, scholars throughout the world acknowledged bentley's victory: he was recognised as the foremost classical scholar of his time; the mastership of trinity, which he accepted, and the bristol bishopric, which he rejected, were his formal reward. although, in his new position as head of the greatest college in england, he went to extreme lengths on the orthodox side in biblical theology, consenting even to support the doctrine that the hebrew punctuation was divinely inspired, this was as nothing compared with the influence of the system of criticism which he introduced into english studies of classical literature in preparing the way for the application of a similar system to _all_ literature, whether called sacred or profane. up to that period there had really been no adequate criticism of ancient literature. whatever name had been attached to any ancient writing was usually accepted as the name of the author: what texts should be imputed to an author was settled generally on authority. but with bentley began a new epoch. his acute intellect and exquisite touch revealed clearly to english scholars the new science of criticism, and familiarized the minds of thinking men with the idea that the texts of ancient literature must be submitted to this science. henceforward a new spirit reigned among the best classical scholars, prophetic of more and more light in the greater field of sacred literature. scholars, of whom porson was chief, followed out this method, and though at times, as in porson's own case, they were warned off, with much loss and damage, from the application of it to the sacred text, they kept alive the better tradition. a hundred years after bentley's main efforts appeared in germany another epoch-making book--wolf's _introduction to homer_. in this was broached the theory that the _iliad_ and _odyssey_ are not the works of a single great poet, but are made up of ballad literature wrought into unity by more or less skilful editing. in spite of various changes and phases of opinion on this subject since wolf's day, he dealt a killing blow at the idea that classical works are necessarily to be taken at what may be termed their face value. more and more clearly it was seen that the ideas of early copyists, and even of early possessors of masterpieces in ancient literature, were entirely different from those to which the modern world is accustomed. it was seen that manipulations and interpolations in the text by copyists and possessors had long been considered not merely venial sins, but matters of right, and that even the issuing of whole books under assumed names had been practised freely. in 1811 a light akin to that thrown by bentley and wolf upon ancient literature was thrown by niebuhr upon ancient history. in his _history of rome_ the application of scientific principles to the examination of historical sources was for the first time exhibited largely and brilliantly. up to that period the time-honoured utterances of ancient authorities had been, as a rule, accepted as final: no breaking away, even from the most absurd of them, was looked upon with favour, and any one presuming to go behind them was regarded as troublesome and even as dangerous. through this sacred conventionalism niebuhr broke fearlessly, and, though at times overcritical, he struck from the early history of rome a vast mass of accretions, and gave to the world a residue infinitely more valuable than the original amalgam of myth, legend, and chronicle. his methods were especially brought to bear on students' history by one of the truest men and noblest scholars that the english race has produced--arnold of rugby--and, in spite of the inevitable heavy conservatism, were allowed to do their work in the field of ancient history as well as in that of ancient classical literature. the place of myth in history thus became more and more understood, and historical foundations, at least so far as _secular_ history was concerned, were henceforth dealt with in a scientific spirit. the extension of this new treatment to _all_ ancient literature and history was now simply a matter of time. such an extension had already begun; for in 1829 had appeared milman's _history of the jews_. in this work came a further evolution of the truths and methods suggested by bentley, wolf, and niebuhr, and their application to sacred history was made strikingly evident. milman, though a clergyman, treated the history of the chosen people in the light of modern knowledge of oriental and especially of semitic peoples. he exhibited sundry great biblical personages of the wandering days of israel as sheiks or emirs or bedouin chieftains; and the tribes of israel as obedient then to the same general laws, customs, and ideas governing wandering tribes in the same region now. he dealt with conflicting sources somewhat in the spirit of bentley, and with the mythical, legendary, and miraculous somewhat in the spirit of niebuhr. this treatment of the history of the jews, simply as the development of an oriental tribe, raised great opposition. such champions of orthodoxy as bishop mant and dr. faussett straightway took the field, and with such effect that the _family library_, a very valuable series in which milman's history appeared, was put under the ban, and its further publication stopped. for years milman, though a man of exquisite literary and lofty historical gifts, as well as of most honourable character, was debarred from preferment and outstripped by ecclesiastics vastly inferior to him in everything save worldly wisdom; for years he was passed in the race for honours by divines who were content either to hold briefs for all the contemporary unreason which happened to be popular, or to keep their mouths shut altogether. this opposition to him extended to his works. for many years they were sneered at, decried, and kept from the public as far as possible. fortunately, the progress of events lifted him, before the closing years of his life, above all this opposition. as dean of st. paul's he really outranked the contemporary archbishops: he lived to see his main ideas accepted, and his _history of latin christianity_ received as certainly one of the most valuable, and no less certainly the most attractive, of all church histories ever written. the two great english histories of greece--that by thirlwall, which was finished, and that by grote, which was begun, in the middle years of the nineteenth century--came in to strengthen this new development. by application of the critical method to historical sources, by pointing out more and more fully the inevitable part played by myth and legend in early chronicles, by displaying more and more clearly the ease with which interpolations of texts, falsifications of statements, and attributions to pretended authors were made, they paved the way still further toward a just and fruitful study of sacred literature.[[341]] down to the middle of the nineteenth century the traditionally orthodox side of english scholarship, while it had not been able to maintain any effective quarantine against continental criticism of classical literature, had been able to keep up barriers fairly strong against continental discussions of sacred literature. but in the second half of the nineteenth century these barriers were broken at many points, and, the stream of german thought being united with the current of devotion to truth in england, there appeared early in 1860 a modest volume entitled _essays and reviews_. this work discussed sundry of the older theological positions which had been rendered untenable by modern research, and brought to bear upon them the views of the newer school of biblical interpretation. the authors were, as a rule, scholars in the prime of life, holding influential positions in the universities and public schools. they were seven--the first being dr. temple, a successor of arnold at rugby; and the others, the rev. dr. rowland williams, prof. baden powell, the rev. h. b. wilson, mr. c. w. goodwin, the rev. mark pattison, and the rev. prof. jowett--the only one of the seven not in holy orders being goodwin. all the articles were important, though the first, by temple, on _the education of the world_, and the last, by jowett, on _the interpretation of scripture_, being the most moderate, served most effectually as entering wedges into the old tradition. at first no great attention was paid to the book, the only notice being the usual attempts in sundry clerical newspapers to pooh-pooh it. but in october, 1860, appeared in the _westminster review_ an article exulting in the work as an evidence that the new critical method had at last penetrated the church of england. the opportunity for defending the church was at once seized by no less a personage than bishop wilberforce, of oxford, the same who a few months before had secured a fame more lasting than enviable by his attacks on darwin and the evolutionary theory. his first onslaught was made in a charge to his clergy. this he followed up with an article in the _quarterly review_, very explosive in its rhetoric, much like that which he had devoted in the same periodical to darwin. the bishop declared that the work tended "toward infidelity, if not to atheism"; that the writers had been "guilty of criminal levity"; that, with the exception of the essay by dr. temple, their writings were "full of sophistries and scepticisms." he was especially bitter against prof. jowett's dictum, "interpret the scripture like any other book"; he insisted that mr. goodwin's treatment of the mosaic account of the origin of man "sweeps away the whole basis of inspiration and leaves no place for the incarnation"; and through the article were scattered such rhetorical adornments as the words "infidel," "atheistic," "false," and "wanton." it at once attracted wide attention, but its most immediate effect was to make the fortune of _essays and reviews_, which was straightway demanded on every hand, went through edition after edition, and became a power in the land. at this a panic began, and with the usual results of panic--much folly and some cruelty. addresses from clergy and laity, many of them frantic with rage and fear, poured in upon the bishops, begging them to save christianity and the church: a storm of abuse arose: the seven essayists were stigmatized as "the seven extinguishers of the seven lamps of the apocalypse," "the seven champions _not_ of christendom." as a result of all this pressure, sumner, archbishop of canterbury, one of the last of the old, kindly, bewigged pluralists of the georgian period, headed a declaration, which was signed by the archbishop of york and a long list of bishops, expressing pain at the appearance of the book, but doubts as to the possibility of any effective dealing with it. this letter only made matters worse. the orthodox decried it as timid, and the liberals denounced it as irregular. the same influences were exerted in the sister island, and the protestant archbishops in ireland issued a joint letter warning the faithful against the "disingenuousness" of the book. everything seemed to increase the ferment. a meeting of clergy and laity having been held at oxford in the matter of electing a professor of sanscrit, the older orthodox party, having made every effort to defeat the eminent scholar max miller, and all in vain, found relief after their defeat in new denunciations of _essays and reviews_. of the two prelates who might have been expected to breast the storm, tait, bishop of london, afterward archbishop of canterbury, bent to it for a period, though he soon recovered himself and did good service; the other, thirlwall, bishop of st. david's, bided his time, and, when the proper moment came, struck most effective blows for truth and justice. tait, large-minded and shrewd, one of the most statesmanlike of prelates, at first endeavoured to detach temple and jowett from their associates; but, though temple was broken down with a load of care, and especially by the fact that he had upon his shoulders the school at rugby, whose patrons had become alarmed at his connection with the book, he showed a most refreshing courage and manliness. a passage from his letters to the bishop of london runs as follows: "with regard to my own conduct i can only say that nothing on earth will induce me to do what you propose. i do not judge for others, but in me it would be base and untrue." on another occasion dr. temple, when pressed in the interest of the institution of learning under his care to detach himself from his associates in writing the book, declared to a meeting of the masters of the school that, if any statements were made to the effect that he disapproved of the other writers in the volume, he should probably find it his duty to contradict them. another of these letters to the bishop of london contains sundry passages of great force. one is as follows: "many years ago you urged us from the university pulpit to undertake the critical study of the bible. you said that it was a dangerous study, but indispensable. you described its difficulties, and those who listened must have felt a confidence (as i assuredly did, for i was there) that if they took your advice and entered on the task, you, at any rate, would never join in treating them unjustly if their study had brought with it the difficulties you described. such a study, so full of difficulties, imperatively demands freedom for its condition. to tell a man to study, and yet bid him, under heavy penalties, come to the same conclusions with those who have not studied, is to mock him. if the conclusions are prescribed, the study is precluded." and again, what, as coming from a man who has since held two of the most important bishoprics in the english church, is of great importance: "what can be a grosser superstition than the theory of literal inspiration? but because that has a regular footing it is to be treated as a good man's mistake, while the courage to speak the truth about the first chapter of genesis is a wanton piece of wickedness." the storm howled on. in the convocation of canterbury it was especially violent. in the lower house archdeacon denison insisted on the greatest severity, as he said, "for the sake of the young who are tainted, and corrupted, and thrust almost to hell by the action of this book." at another time the same eminent churchman declared: "of all books in any language which i ever laid my hands on, this is incomparably the worst; it contains all the poison which is to be found in tom paine's _age of reason_, while it has the additional disadvantage of having been written by clergymen." hysterical as all this was, the upper house was little more self-contained. both tait and thirlwall, trying to make some headway against the swelling tide, were for a time beaten back by wilberforce, who insisted on the duty of the church to clear itself publicly from complicity with men who, as he said, "gave up god's word, creation, redemption, and the work of the holy ghost." the matter was brought to a curious issue by two prosecutions--one against the rev. dr. williams by the bishop of salisbury, the other against the rev. mr. wilson by one of his clerical brethren. the first result was that both these authors were sentenced to suspension from their offices for a year. at this the two condemned clergymen appealed to the queen in council. upon the judicial committee to try the case in last resort sat the lord chancellor, the two archbishops, and the bishop of london; and one occurrence now brought into especial relief the power of the older theological reasoning and ecclesiastical zeal to close the minds of the best of men to the simplest principles of right and justice. among the men of his time most deservedly honoured for lofty character, thorough scholarship, and keen perception of right and justice was dr. pusey. no one doubted then, and no one doubts now, that he would have gone to the stake sooner than knowingly countenance wrong or injustice; and yet we find him at this time writing a series of long and earnest letters to the bishop of london, who, as a judge, was hearing this case, which involved the livelihood and even the good name of the men on trial, pointing out to the bishop the evil consequences which must follow should the authors of _essays and reviews_ be acquitted, and virtually beseeching the judges, on grounds of expediency, to convict them. happily, bishop tait was too just a man to be thrown off his bearings by appeals such as this. the decision of the court, as finally rendered by the lord chancellor, virtually declared it to be no part of the duty of the tribunal to pronounce any opinion upon the book; that the court only had to do with certain extracts which had been presented. among these was one adduced in support of a charge against mr. wilson--that he denied the doctrine of eternal punishment. on this the court decided that it did "not find in the formularies of the english church any such distinct declaration upon the subject as to require it to punish the expression of a hope by a clergyman that even the ultimate pardon of the wicked who are condemned in the day of judgment may be consistent with the will of almighty god." while the archbishops dissented from this judgment, bishop tait united in it with the lord chancellor and the lay judges. and now the panic broke out more severely than ever. confusion became worse confounded. the earnest-minded insisted that the tribunal had virtually approved _essays and reviews_; the cynical remarked that it had "dismissed hell with costs." an alliance was made at once between the more zealous high and low church men, and oxford became its headquarters: dr. pusey and archdeacon denison were among the leaders, and an impassioned declaration was posted to every clergyman in england and ireland, with a letter begging him, "for the love of god," to sign it. thus it was that in a very short time eleven thousand signatures were obtained. besides this, deputations claiming to represent one hundred and thirty-seven thousand laymen waited on the archbishops to thank them for dissenting from the judgment. the convocation of canterbury also plunged into the fray, bishop wilberforce being the champion of the older orthodoxy, and bishop tait of the new. caustic was the speech made by bishop thirlwall, in which he declared that he considered the eleven thousand names, headed by that of pusey, attached to the oxford declaration "in the light of a row of figures preceded by a decimal point, so that, however far the series may be advanced, it never can rise to the value of a single unit." in spite of all that could be done, the act of condemnation was carried in convocation. the last main echo of this whole struggle against the newer mode of interpretation was heard when the chancellor, referring to the matter in the house of lords, characterized the ecclesiastical act as "simply a series of well-lubricated terms--a sentence so oily and saponaceous that no one can grasp it; like an eel, it slips through your fingers, and is simply nothing." the word "saponaceous" necessarily elicited a bitter retort from bishop wilberforce; but perhaps the most valuable judgment on the whole matter was rendered by bishop tait, who declared, "these things have so effectually frightened the clergy that i think there is scarcely a bishop on the bench, unless it be the bishop of st. david's [thirlwall], that is not useless for the purpose of preventing the widespread alienation of intelligent men." during the whole controversy, and for some time afterward, the press was burdened with replies, ponderous and pithy, lurid and vapid, vitriolic and unctuous, but in the main bearing the inevitable characteristics of pleas for inherited opinions stimulated by ample endowments. the authors of the book seemed for a time likely to be swept out of the church. one of the least daring but most eminent, finding himself apparently forsaken, seemed, though a man of very tough fibre, about to die of a broken heart; but sturdy english sense at last prevailed. the storm passed, and afterward came the still, small voice. really sound thinkers throughout england, especially those who held no briefs for conventional orthodoxy, recognised the service rendered by the book. it was found that, after all, there existed even among churchmen a great mass of public opinion in favour of giving a full hearing to the reverent expression of honest thought, and inclined to distrust any cause which subjected fair play to zeal. the authors of the work not only remained in the church of england, but some of them have since represented the broader views, though not always with their early courage, in the highest and most influential positions in the anglican church.[[348]] iv. the closing struggle. the storm aroused by _essays and reviews_ had not yet subsided when a far more serious tempest burst upon the english theological world. in 1862 appeared a work entitled _the pentateuch and the book of joshua critically examined_ its author being colenso, anglican bishop of natal, in south africa. he had formerly been highly esteemed as fellow and tutor at cambridge, master at harrow, author of various valuable text-books in mathematics; and as long as he exercised his powers within the limits of popular orthodoxy he was evidently in the way to the highest positions in the church: but he chose another path. his treatment of his subject was reverent, but he had gradually come to those conclusions, then so daring, now so widespread among christian scholars, that the pentateuch, with much valuable historical matter, contains much that is unhistorical; that a large portion of it was the work of a comparatively late period in jewish history; that many passages in deuteronomy could only have been written after the jews settled in canaan; that the mosaic law was not in force before the captivity; that the books of chronicles were clearly written as an afterthought, to enforce the views of the priestly caste; and that in all the books there is much that is mythical and legendary. very justly has a great german scholar recently adduced this work of a churchman relegated to the most petty of bishoprics in one of the most remote corners of the world, as a proof "that the problems of biblical criticism can no longer be suppressed; that they are in the air of our time, so that theology could not escape them even if it took the wings of the morning and dwelt in the uttermost parts of the sea." the bishop's statements, which now seem so moderate, then aroused horror. especial wrath was caused by some of his arithmetical arguments, and among them those which showed that an army of six hundred thousand men could not have been mobilized in a single night; that three millions of people, with their flocks and herds, could neither have obtained food on so small and arid a desert as that over which they were said to have wandered during forty years, nor water from a single well; and that the butchery of two hundred thousand midianites by twelve thousand israelites, "exceeding infinitely in atrocity the tragedy at cawnpore, had happily only been carried out on paper." there was nothing of the scoffer in him. while preserving his own independence, he had kept in touch with the most earnest thought both among european scholars and in the little flock intrusted to his care. he evidently remembered what had resulted from the attempt to hold the working classes in the towns of france, germany, and italy to outworn beliefs; he had found even the zulus, whom he thought to convert, suspicious of the legendary features of the old testament, and with his clear practical mind he realized the danger which threatened the english church and christianity--the danger of tying its religion and morality to interpretations and conceptions of scripture more and more widely seen and felt to be contrary to facts. he saw the especial peril of sham explanations, of covering up facts which must soon be known, and which, when revealed, must inevitably bring the plain people of england to regard their teachers, even the most deserving, as "solemnly constituted impostors"--ecclesiastics whose tenure depends on assertions which they know to be untrue. therefore it was that, when his catechumens questioned him regarding some of the old testament legends, the bishop determined to tell the truth. he says: "my heart answered in the words of the prophet, `shall a man speak lies in the name of the lord?' i determined not to do so." but none of these considerations availed in his behalf at first. the outcry against the work was deafening: churchmen and dissenters rushed forward to attack it. archdeacon denison, chairman of the committee of convocation appointed to examine it, uttered a noisy anathema. convocation solemnly condemned it; and a zealous colonial bishop, relying upon a nominal supremacy, deposed and excommunicated its author, declaring him "given over to satan." on both sides of the atlantic the press groaned with "answers," some of these being especially injurious to the cause they were intended to serve, and none more so than sundry efforts by the bishops themselves. one of the points upon which they attacked him was his assertion that the reference in leviticus to the hare chewing its cud contains an error. upon this prof. hitzig, of leipsic, one of the best hebrew scholars of his time, remarked: "your bishops are making themselves the laughing-stock of europe. every hebraist knows that the animal mentioned in leviticus is really the hare;... every zoologist knows that it does not chew the cud."[[351]] on colenso's return to natal, where many of the clergy and laity who felt grateful for his years of devotion to them received him with signs of affection, an attempt was made to ruin these clergymen by depriving them of their little stipends, and to terrify the simple-minded laity by threatening them with the same "greater excommunication" which had been inflicted upon their bishop. to make the meaning of this more evident, the vicar-general of the bishop of cape town met colenso at the door of his own cathedral, and solemnly bade him "depart from the house of god as one who has been handed over to the evil one." the sentence of excommunication was read before the assembled faithful, and they were enjoined to treat their bishop as "a heathen man and a publican." but these and a long series of other persecutions created a reaction in his favour. there remained to colenso one bulwark which his enemies found stronger than they had imagined--the british courts of justice. the greatest efforts were now made to gain the day before these courts, to humiliate colenso, and to reduce to beggary the clergy who remained faithful to him; and it is worthy of note that one of the leaders in preparing the legal plea of the com mittee against him was mr. gladstone. but this bulwark proved impregnable: both the judicial committee of the privy council and the rolls court decided in colenso's favour. not only were his enemies thus forbidden to deprive him of his salary, but their excommunication of him was made null and void; it became, indeed, a subject of ridicule, and even a man so nurtured in religious sentiment as john keble confessed and lamented that the english people no longer believed in excommunication. the bitterness of the defeated found vent in the utterances of the colonial metropolitan who had excommunicated colenso--bishop gray, "the lion of cape town"--who denounced the judgment as "awful and profane," and the privy council as "a masterpiece of satan" and "the great dragon of the english church." even wilberforce, careful as he was to avoid attacking anything established, alluded with deep regret to "the devotion of the english people to the law in matters of this sort." their failure in the courts only seemed to increase the violence of the attacking party. the anglican communion, both in england and america, was stirred to its depths against the heretic, and various dissenting bodies strove to show equal zeal. great pains were taken to root out his reputation: it was declared that he had merely stolen the ideas of rationalists on the continent by wholesale, and peddled them out in england at retail; the fact being that, while he used all the sources of information at his command, and was large-minded enough to put himself into relations with the best biblical scholarship of the continent, he was singularly independent in his judgment, and that his investigations were of lasting value in modifying continental thought. kuenen, the most distinguished of all his contemporaries in this field, modified, as he himself declared, one of his own leading theories after reading colenso's argument; and other continental scholars scarcely less eminent acknowledged their great indebtedness to the english scholar for original suggestions.[[352]] but the zeal of the bishop's enemies did not end with calumny. he was socially ostracized--more completely even than lyell had been after the publication of his _principles of geology_ thirty years before. even old friends left him, among them frederick denison maurice, who, when himself under the ban of heresy, had been defended by colenso. nor was maurice the only heretic who turned against him; matthew arnold attacked him, and set up, as a true ideal of the work needed to improve the english church and people, of all books in the world, spinoza's _tractatus_. a large part of the english populace was led to regard him as an "infidel," a "traitor," an "apostate," and even as "an unclean being"; servants left his house in horror; "tray, blanche, and sweetheart were let loose upon him"; and one of the favourite amusements of the period among men of petty wit and no convictions was the devising of light ribaldry against him.[[353]] in the midst of all this controversy stood three men, each of whom has connected his name with it permanently. first of these was samuel wilberforce, at that time bishop of oxford. the gifted son of william wilberforce, who had been honoured throughout the world for his efforts in the suppression of the slave trade, he had been rapidly advanced in the english church, and was at this time a prelate of wide influence. he was eloquent and diplomatic, witty and amiable, always sure to be with his fellow-churchmen and polite society against uncomfortable changes. whether the struggle was against the slave power in the united states, or the squirearchy in great britain, or the evolution theory of darwin, or the new views promulgated by the _essayists and reviewers_, he was always the suave spokesman of those who opposed every innovator and "besought him to depart out of their coasts." mingling in curious proportions a truly religious feeling with care for his own advancement, his remarkable power in the pulpit gave him great strength to carry out his purposes, and his charming facility in being all things to all men, as well as his skill in evading the consequences of his many mistakes, gained him the sobriquet of "soapy sam." if such brethren of his in the episcopate as thirlwall and selwyn and tait might claim to be in the apostolic succession, wilberforce was no less surely in the succession from the most gifted and eminently respectable sadducees who held high preferment under pontius pilate. by a curious coincidence he had only a few years before preached the sermon when colenso was consecrated in westminster abbey, and one passage in it may be cited as showing the preacher's gift of prophecy both hortatory and predictive. wilberforce then said to colenso: "you need boldness to risk all for god--to stand by the truth and its supporters against men's threatenings and the devil's wrath;... you need a patient meekness to bear the galling calumnies and false surmises with which, if you are faithful, that same satanic working, which, if it could, would burn your body, will assuredly assail you daily through the pens and tongues of deceivers and deceived, who, under a semblance of a zeal for christ, will evermore distort your words, misrepresent your motives, rejoice in your failings, exaggerate your errors, and seek by every poisoned breath of slander to destroy your powers of service."[[355]] unfortunately, when colenso followed this advice his adviser became the most untiring of his persecutors. while leaving to men like the metropolitan of cape town and archdeacon denison the noisy part of the onslaught, wilberforce was among those who were most zealous in devising more effective measures. but time, and even short time, has redressed the balance between the two prelates. colenso is seen more and more of all men as a righteous leader in a noble effort to cut the church loose from fatal entanglements with an outworn system of interpretation; wilberforce, as the remembrance of his eloquence and of his personal charm dies away, and as the revelations of his indiscreet biographers lay bare his modes of procedure, is seen to have left, on the whole, the most disappointing record made by any anglican prelate during the nineteenth century. but there was a far brighter page in the history of the church of england; for the second of the three who linked their names with that of colenso in the struggle was arthur penrhyn stanley, dean of westminster. his action during this whole persecution was an honour not only to the anglican church but to humanity. for his own manhood and the exercise of his own intellectual freedom he had cheerfully given up the high preferment in the church which had been easily within his grasp. to him truth and justice were more than the decrees of a convocation of canterbury or of a pan-anglican synod; in this as in other matters he braved the storm, never yielded to theological prejudice, from first to last held out a brotherly hand to the persecuted bishop, and at the most critical moment opened to him the pulpit of westminster abbey.[[356]] the third of the high ecclesiastics of the church of england whose names were linked in this contest was thirlwall. he was undoubtedly the foremost man in the church of his time--the greatest ecclesiastical statesman, the profoundest historical scholar, the theologian of clearest vision in regard to the relations between the church and his epoch. alone among his brother bishops at this period, he stood "four square to all the winds that blew," as during all his life he stood against all storms of clerical or popular unreason. he had his reward. he was never advanced beyond a poor welsh bishopric; but, though he saw men wretchedly inferior constantly promoted beyond him, he never flinched, never lost heart or hope, but bore steadily on, refusing to hold a brief for lucrative injustice, and resisting to the last all reaction and fanaticism, thus preserving not only his own self-respect but the future respect of the english nation for the church. a few other leading churchmen were discreetly kind to colenso, among them tait, who had now been made archbishop of canterbury; but, manly as he was, he was somewhat more cautious in this matter than those who most revere his memory could now wish. in spite of these friends the clerical onslaught was for a time effective; colenso, so far as england was concerned, was discredited and virtually driven from his functions. but this enforced leisure simply gave him more time to struggle for the protection of his native flock against colonial rapacity and to continue his great work on the bible. his work produced its effect. it had much to do with arousing a new generation of english, scotch, and american scholars. while very many of his minor statements have since been modified or rejected, his main conclusion was seen more and more clearly to be true. reverently and in the deepest love for christianity he had made the unhistorical character of the pentateuch clear as noonday. henceforth the crushing weight of the old interpretation upon science and morality and religion steadily and rapidly grew less and less. that a new epoch had come was evident, and out of many proofs of this we may note two of the most striking. for many years the bampton lectures at oxford had been considered as adding steadily and strongly to the bulwarks of the old orthodoxy. if now and then orthodoxy had appeared in danger from such additions to the series as those made by dr. hampden, these lectures had been, as a rule, saturated with the older traditions of the anglican church. but now there was an evident change. the departures from the old paths were many and striking, until at last, in 1893, came the lectures on _inspiration_ by the rev. dr. sanday, ireland professor of exegesis in the university of oxford. in these, concessions were made to the newer criticism, which at an earlier time would have driven the lecturer not only out of the church but out of any decent position in society; for prof. sanday not only gave up a vast mass of other ideas which the great body of churchmen had regarded as fundamental, but accepted a number of conclusions established by the newer criticism. he declared that kuenen and wellhausen had mapped out, on the whole rightly, the main stages of development in the history of hebrew literature; he incorporated with approval the work of other eminent heretics; he acknowledged that very many statements in the pentateuch show "the naive ideas and usages of a primitive age." but, most important of all, he gave up the whole question in regard to the book of daniel. up to a time then very recent, the early authorship and predictive character of the book of daniel were things which no one was allowed for a moment to dispute. pusey, as we have seen, had proved to the controlling parties in the english church that christianity must stand or fall with the traditional view of this book; and now, within a few years of pusey's death, there came, in his own university, speaking from the pulpit of st. mary's whence he had so often insisted upon the absolute necessity of maintaining the older view, this professor of biblical criticism, a doctor of divinity, showing conclusively as regards the book of daniel that the critical view had won the day; that the name of daniel is only assumed; that the book is in no sense predictive, but was written, mainly at least, after the events it describes; that "its author lived at the time of the maccabean struggle"; that it is very inaccurate even in the simple facts which it cites; and hence that all the vast fabric erected upon its predictive character is baseless. but another evidence of the coming in of a new epoch was even more striking. to uproot every growth of the newer thought, to destroy even every germ that had been planted by colenso and men like him, a special movement was begun, of which the most important part was the establishment, at the university of oxford, of a college which should bring the old opinion with crushing force against the new thought, and should train up a body of young men by feeding them upon the utterances of the fathers, of the medieval doctors, and of the apologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and should keep them in happy ignorance of the reforming spirit of the sixteenth and the scientific spirit of the nineteenth century. the new college thus founded bore the name of the poet most widely beloved among high churchmen; large endowments flowed in upon it; a showy chapel was erected in accordance throughout with the strictest rules of medieval ecclesiology. as if to strike the keynote of the thought to be fostered in the new institution, one of the most beautiful of pseudo-medieval pictures was given the place of honour in its hall; and the college, lofty and gaudy, loomed high above the neighbouring modest abode of oxford science. kuenen might be victorious in holland, and wellhausen in germany, and robertson smith in scotland--even professors driver, sanday, and cheyne might succeed dr. pusey as expounders of the old testament at oxford--but keble college, rejoicing in the favour of a multitude of leaders in the church, including mr. gladstone, seemed an inexpugnable fortress of the older thought. but in 1889 appeared the book of essays entitled _lux mundi_, among whose leading authors were men closely connected with keble college and with the movement which had created it. this work gave up entirely the tradition that the narrative in genesis is a historical record, and admitted that all accounts in the hebrew scriptures of events before the time of abraham are mythical and legendary; it conceded that the books ascribed to moses and joshua were made up mainly of three documents representing different periods, and one of them the late period of the exile; that "there is a considerable idealizing element in old testament history"; that "the books of chronicles show an idealizing of history" and "a reading back into past records of a ritual development which is really later," and that prophecy is not necessarily predictive-"prophetic inspiration being consistent with erroneous anticipations." again a shudder went through the upholders of tradition in the church, and here and there threats were heard; but the _essays and reviews_ fiasco and the colenso catastrophe were still in vivid remembrance. good sense prevailed: benson, archbishop of canterbury, instead of prosecuting the authors, himself asked the famous question, "may not the holy spirit make use of myth and legend?" and the government, not long afterward, promoted one of these authors to a bishopric.[[359]] in the sister university the same tendency was seen. robertson smith, who had been driven out of his high position in the free church of scotland on account of his work in scriptural research, was welcomed into a professorship at cambridge, and other men, no less loyal to the new truths, were given places of controlling influence in shaping the thought of the new generation. nor did the warfare against biblical science produce any different results among the dissenters of england. in 1862 samuel davidson, a professor in the congregational college at manchester, published his _introduction to the old testament_. independently of the contemporary writers of _essays and reviews_, he had arrived in a general way at conclusions much like theirs, and he presented the newer view with fearless honesty, admitting that the same research must be applied to these as to other oriental sacred books, and that such research establishes the fact that all alike contain legendary and mythical elements. a storm was at once aroused; certain denominational papers took up the matter, and davidson was driven from his professorial chair; but he laboured bravely on, and others followed to take up his work, until the ideas which he had advocated were fully considered. so, too, in scotland the work of robertson smith was continued even after he had been driven into england; and, as votaries of the older thought passed away, men of ideas akin to his were gradually elected into chairs of biblical criticism and interpretation. wellhausen's great work, which smith had introduced in english form, proved a power both in england and scotland, and the articles upon various books of scripture and scriptural subjects generally, in the ninth edition of the _encyclopaedia britannica_, having been prepared mainly by himself as editor or put into the hands of others representing the recent critical research, this very important work of reference, which had been in previous editions so timid, was now arrayed on the side of the newer thought, insuring its due consideration wherever the english language is spoken. in france the same tendency was seen, though with striking variations from the course of events in other countries--variations due to the very different conditions under which biblical students in france were obliged to work. down to the middle of the nineteenth century the orthodoxy of bossuet, stiffly opposing the letter of scripture to every step in the advance of science, had only yielded in a very slight degree. but then came an event ushering in a new epoch. at that time jules simon, afterward so eminent as an author, academician, and statesman, was quietly discharging the duties of a professorship, when there was brought him the visiting card of a stranger bearing the name of "ernest renan, student at st. sulpice." admitted to m. simon's library, renan told his story. as a theological student he had devoted himself most earnestly, even before he entered the seminary, to the study of hebrew and the semitic languages, and he was now obliged, during the lectures on biblical literature at st. sulpice, to hear the reverend professor make frequent comments, based on the vulgate, but absolutely disproved by renan's own knowledge of hebrew. on renan's questioning any interpretation of the lecturer, the latter was wont to rejoin: "monsieur, do you presume to deny the authority of the vulgate--the translation by st. jerome, sanctioned by the holy ghost and the church? you will at once go into the chapel and say `hail mary' for an hour before the image of the blessed virgin." "but," said renan to jules simon, "this has now become very serious; it happens nearly every day, and, _mon dieu_! monsieur, i can not spend _all_ my time in saying, hail mary, before the statue of the virgin." the result was a warm personal attachment between simon and renan; both were bretons, educated in the midst of the most orthodox influences, and both had unwillingly broken away from them. renan was now emancipated, and pursued his studies with such effect that he was made professor at the college de france. his _life of jesus_, and other books showing the same spirit, brought a tempest upon him which drove him from his professorship and brought great hardships upon him for many years. but his genius carried the day, and, to the honour of the french republic, he was restored to the position from which the empire had driven him. from his pen finally appeared the _histoire du peuple israel_, in which scholarship broad, though at times inaccurate in minor details, was supplemented by an exquisite acuteness and a poetic insight which far more than made good any of those lesser errors which a german student would have avoided. at his death, in october, 1892, this monumental work had been finished. in clearness and beauty of style it has never been approached by any other treatise on this or any kindred subject: it is a work of genius; and its profound insight into all that is of importance in the great subjects which he treated will doubtless cause it to hold a permanent place in the literature not only of the latin nations but of the world. an interesting light is thrown over the history of advancing thought at the end of the nineteenth century by the fact that this most detested of heresiarchs was summoned to receive the highest of academic honours at the university which for ages had been regarded as a stronghold of presbyterian orthodoxy in great britain. in france the anathemas lavished upon him by church authorities during his life, their denial to him of christian burial, and their refusal to allow him a grave in the place he most loved, only increased popular affection for him during his last years and deepened the general mourning at his death.[[362]] in spite of all resistance, the desire for more light upon the sacred books penetrated the older church from every side. in germany, toward the close of the eighteenth century, jahn, catholic professor at vienna, had ventured, in an _introduction to old testament study_, to class job, jonah, and tobit below other canonical books, and had only escaped serious difficulties by ample amends in a second edition. early in the nineteenth century, herbst, catholic professor at tubingen, had endeavoured in a similar _introduction_ to bring modern research to bear on the older view; but the church authorities took care to have all passages really giving any new light skilfully and speedily edited out of the book. later still, movers, professor at breslau, showed remarkable gifts for old testament research, and much was expected of him; but his ecclesiastical superiors quietly prevented his publishing any extended work. during the latter half of the nineteenth century much the same pressure has continued in catholic germany. strong scholars have very generally been drawn into the position of "apologists" or "reconcilers," and, when found intractable, they have been driven out of the church. the same general policy had been evident in france and italy, but toward the last decade of the century it was seen by the more clear-sighted supporters of the older church in those countries that the multifarious "refutations" and explosive attacks upon renan and his teachings had accomplished nothing; that even special services of atonement for his sin, like the famous "_triduo_" at florence, only drew a few women, and provoked ridicule among the public at large; that throwing him out of his professorship and calumniating him had but increased his influence; and that his brilliant intuitions, added to the careful researches of german and english scholars, had brought the thinking world beyond the reach of the old methods of hiding troublesome truths and crushing persistent truth-tellers. therefore it was that about 1890 a body of earnest roman catholic scholars began very cautiously to examine and explain the biblical text in the light of those results of the newer research which could no longer be gainsaid. among these men were, in italy, canon bartolo, canon berta, and father savi, and in france monseigneur d'hulst, the abb loisy, professor at the roman catholic university at paris, and, most eminent of all, professor lenormant, of the french institute, whose researches into biblical and other ancient history and literature had won him distinction throughout the world. these men, while standing up manfully for the church, were obliged to allow that some of the conclusions of modern biblical criticism were well founded. the result came rapidly. the treatise of bartolo and the great work of lenormant were placed on the _index_; canon berta was overwhelmed with reproaches and virtually silenced; the abbe loisy was first deprived of his professorship, and then ignominiously expelled from the university; monseigneur d'hulst was summoned to rome, and has since kept silence.[[364]] the matter was evidently thought serious in the higher regions of the church, for in november, 1893, appeared an encyclical letter by the reigning pope, leo xiii, on _the study of sacred scripture_. much was expected from it, for, since benedict xiv in the last century, there had sat on the papal throne no pope intellectually so competent to discuss the whole subject. while, then, those devoted to the older beliefs trusted that the papal thunderbolts would crush the whole brood of biblical critics, votaries of the newer thought ventured to hope that the encyclical might, in the language of one of them, prove "a stupendous bridge spanning the broad abyss that now divides alleged orthodoxy from established science."[[364b]] both these expectations were disappointed; and yet, on the whole, it is a question whether the world at large may not congratulate itself upon this papal utterance. the document, if not apostolic, won credit as "statesmanlike." it took pains, of course, to insist that there can be no error of any sort in the sacred books; it even defended those parts which protestants count apocryphal as thoroughly as the remainder of scripture, and declared that the book of tobit was not compiled of man, but written by god. his holiness naturally condemned the higher-criticism, but he dwelt at the same time on the necessity of the most thorough study of the sacred scriptures, and especially on the importance of adjusting scriptural statements to scientific facts. this utterance was admirably oracular, being susceptible of cogent quotation by both sides: nothing could be in better form from an orthodox point of view; but, with that statesmanlike forecast which the present pope has shown more than once in steering the bark of st. peter over the troubled waves of the nineteenth century, he so far abstained from condemning any of the greater results of modern critical study that the main english defender of the encyclical, the jesuit father clarke, did not hesitate publicly to admit a multitude of such results--results, indeed, which would shock not only italian and spanish catholics, but many english and american protestants. according to this interpreter, the pope had no thought of denying the variety of documents in the pentateuch, or the plurality of sources of the books of samuel, or the twofold authorship of isaiah, or that all after the ninth verse of the last chapter of st. mark's gospel is spurious; and, as regards the whole encyclical, the distinguished jesuit dwelt significantly on the power of the papacy at any time to define out of existence any previous decisions which may be found inconvenient. more than that, father clarke himself, while standing as the champion of the most thorough orthodoxy, acknowledged that, in the old testament, "numbers must be expected to be used orientally," and that "all these seventies and forties, as, for example, when absalom is said to have rebelled against david for forty years, can not possibly be meant numerically"; and, what must have given a fearful shock to some protestant believers in plenary inspiration, he, while advocating it as a dutiful son of the church, wove over it an exquisite web with the declaration that "there is a human element in the bible pre-calculated for by the divine."[[365]] considering the difficulties in the case, the world has reason to be grateful to pope leo and father clarke for these utterances, which perhaps, after all, may prove a better bridge between the old and the new than could have been framed by engineers more learned but less astute. evidently pope leo xiii is neither a paul v nor an urban viii, and is too wise to bring the church into a position from which it can only be extricated by such ludicrous subterfuges as those by which it was dragged out of the galileo scandal, or by such a tortuous policy as that by which it writhed out of the old doctrine regarding the taking of interest for money. in spite, then, of the attempted crushing out of bartolo and berta and savi and lenormant and loisy, during this very epoch in which the pope issued this encyclical, there is every reason to hope that the path has been paved over which the church may gracefully recede from the old system of interpretation and quietly accept and appropriate the main results of the higher criticism. certainly she has never had a better opportunity to play at the game of "beggar my neighbour" and to drive the older protestant orthodoxy into bankruptcy. in america the same struggle between the old ideas and the new went on. in the middle years of the century the first adequate effort in behalf of the newer conception of the sacred books was made by theodore parker at boston. a thinker brave and of the widest range,--a scholar indefatigable and of the deepest sympathies with humanity,--a man called by one of the most eminent scholars in the english church "a religious titan," and by a distinguished french theologian "a prophet," he had struggled on from the divinity school until at that time he was one of the foremost biblical scholars, and preacher to the largest regular congregation on the american continent. the great hall in boston could seat four thousand people, and at his regular discourses every part of it was filled. in addition to his pastoral work he wielded a vast influence as a platform speaker, especially in opposition to the extension of slavery into the territories of the united states, and as a lecturer on a wide range of vital topics; and among those whom he most profoundly influenced, both politically and religiously, was abraham lincoln. during each year at that period he was heard discussing the most important religious and political questions in all the greater northern cities; but his most lasting work was in throwing light upon our sacred scriptures, and in this he was one of the forerunners of the movement now going on not only in the united states but throughout christendom. even before he was fairly out of college his translation of de wette's _introduction to the old testament_ made an impression on many thoughtful men; his sermon in 1841 on _the transient and permanent in christianity_ marked the beginning of his great individual career; his speeches, his lectures, and especially his _discourse on matters pertaining to religion_, greatly extended his influence. his was a deeply devotional nature, and his public prayers exercised by their touching beauty a very strong religious influence upon his audiences. he had his reward. beautiful and noble as were his life and his life-work, he was widely abhorred. on one occasion of public worship in one of the more orthodox churches, news having been received that he was dangerously ill, a prayer was openly made by one of the zealous brethren present that this arch-enemy might be removed from earth. he was even driven out from the unitarian body. but he was none the less steadfast and bold, and the great mass of men and women who thronged his audience room at boston and his lecture rooms in other cities spread his ideas. his fate was pathetic. full of faith and hope, but broken prematurely by his labours, he retired to italy, and died there at the darkest period in the history of the united states--when slavery in the state and the older orthodoxy in the church seemed absolutely and forever triumphant. the death of moses within sight of the promised land seems the only parallel to the death of parker less than six months before the publication of _essays and reviews_ and the election of abraham lincoln to the presidency, of the united states.[[367]] but here it must be noted that parker's effort was powerfully aided by the conscientious utterances of some of his foremost opponents. nothing during the american struggle against the slave system did more to wean religious and god-fearing men and women from the old interpretation of scripture than the use of it to justify slavery. typical among examples of this use were the arguments of hopkins, bishop of vermont, a man whose noble character and beautiful culture gave him very wide influence in all branches of the american protestant church. while avowing his personal dislike to slavery, he demonstrated that the bible sanctioned it. other theologians, catholic and protestant, took the same ground; and then came that tremendous rejoinder which echoed from heart to heart throughout the northern states: "the bible sanctions slavery? so much the worse for the bible." then was fulfilled that old saying of bishop ulrich of augsburg: "press not the breasts of holy writ too hard, lest they yield blood rather than milk."[[368]] yet throughout christendom a change in the mode of interpreting scripture, though absolutely necessary if its proper authority was to be maintained, still seemed almost hopeless. even after the foremost scholars had taken ground in favour of it, and the most conservative of those whose opinions were entitled to weight had made concessions showing the old ground to be untenable, there was fanatical opposition to any change. the _syllabus of errors_ put forth by pius ix in 1864, as well as certain other documents issued from the vatican, had increased the difficulties of this needed transition; and, while the more able-minded roman catholic scholars skilfully explained away the obstacles thus created, others published works insisting upon the most extreme views as to the verbal inspiration of the sacred books. in the church of england various influential men took the same view. dr. baylee, principal of st. aidan's college, declared that in scripture "every scientific statement is infallibly accurate; all its histories and narrations of every kind are without any inaccuracy. its words and phrases have a grammatical and philological accuracy, such as is possessed by no human composition." in 1861 dean burgon preached in christ church cathedral, oxford, as follows: "no, sirs, the bible is the very utterance of the eternal: as much god's own word as if high heaven were open and we heard god speaking to us with human voice. every book is inspired alike, and is inspired entirely. inspiration is not a difference of degree, but of kind. the bible is filled to overflowing with the holy spirit of god; the books of it and the words of it and the very letters of it." in 1865 canon macneile declared in exeter hall that "we must either receive the verbal inspiration of the old testament or deny the veracity, the insight, the integrity of our lord jesus christ as a teacher of divine truth." as late as 1889 one of the two most eloquent pulpit orators in the church of england, canon liddon, preaching at st. paul's cathedral, used in his fervour the same dangerous argument: that the authority of christ himself, and therefore of christianity, must rest on the old view of the old testament; that, since the founder of christianity, in divinely recorded utterances, alluded to the transformation of lot's wife into a pillar of salt, to noah's ark and the flood, and to the sojourn of jonah in the whale, the biblical account of these must be accepted as historical, or that christianity must be given up altogether. in the light of what was rapidly becoming known regarding the chaldean and other sources of the accounts given in genesis, no argument could be more fraught with peril to the interest which the gifted preacher sought to serve. in france and germany many similar utterances in opposition to the newer biblical studies were heard; and from america, especially from the college at princeton, came resounding echoes. as an example of many may be quoted the statement by the eminent dr. hodge that the books of scripture "are, one and all, in thought and verbal expression, in substance, and in form, wholly the work of god, conveying with absolute accuracy and divine authority all that god meant to convey without human additions and admixtures"; and that "infallibility and authority attach as much to the verbal expression in which the revelation is made as to the matter of the revelation itself." but the newer thought moved steadily on. as already in protestant europe, so now in the protestant churches of america, it took strong hold on the foremost minds in many of the churches known as orthodox: toy, briggs, francis brown, evans, preserved smith, moore, haupt, harper, peters, and bacon developed it, and, though most of them were opposed bitterly by synods, councils, and other authorities of their respective churches, they were manfully supported by the more intellectual clergy and laity. the greater universities of the country ranged themselves on the side of these men; persecution but intrenched them more firmly in the hearts of all intelligent well-wishers of christianity. the triumphs won by their opponents in assemblies, synods, conventions, and conferences were really victories for the nominally defeated, since they revealed to the world the fact that in each of these bodies the strong and fruitful thought of the church, the thought which alone can have any hold on the future, was with the new race of thinkers; no theological triumphs more surely fatal to the victors have been won since the vatican defeated copernicus and galileo. and here reference must be made to a series of events which, in the second half of the nineteenth century, have contributed most powerful aid to the new school of biblical research. v. yictory of the scientific and literary methods. while this struggle for the new truth was going on in various fields, aid appeared from a quarter whence it was least expected. the great discoveries by botta and layard in assyria were supplemented by the researches of rawlinson, george smith, oppert, sayce, sarzec, pinches, and others, and thus it was revealed more clearly than ever before that as far back as the time assigned in genesis to the creation a great civilization was flourishing in mesopotamia; that long ages, probably two thousand years, before the scriptural date assigned to the migration of abraham from ur of the chaldees, this chaldean civilization had bloomed forth in art, science, and literature; that the ancient inscriptions recovered from the sites of this and kindred civilizations presented the hebrew sacred myths and legends in earlier forms--forms long antedating those given in the hebrew scriptures; and that the accounts of the creation, the tree of life in eden, the institution and even the name of the sabbath, the deluge, the tower of babel, and much else in the pentateuch, were simply an evolution out of earlier chaldean myths and legends. so perfect was the proof of this that the most eminent scholars in the foremost seats of christian learning were obliged to acknowledge it.[[371]] the more general conclusions which were thus given to biblical criticism were all the more impressive from the fact that they had been revealed by various groups of earnest christian scholars working on different lines, by different methods, and in various parts of the world. very honourable was the full and frank testimony to these results given in 1885 by the rev. francis brown, a professor in the presbyterian theological seminary at new york. in his admirable though brief book on assyriology, starting with the declaration that "it is a great pity to be afraid of facts," he showed how assyrian research testifies in many ways to the historical value of the bible record; but at the same time he freely allowed to chaldean history an antiquity fatal to the sacred chronology of the hebrews. he also cast aside a mass of doubtful apologetics, and dealt frankly with the fact that very many of the early narratives in genesis belong to the common stock of ancient tradition, and, mentioning as an example the cuneiform inscriptions which record a story of the accadian king sargon--how "he was born in retirement, placed by his mother in a basket of rushes, launched on a river, rescued and brought up by a stranger, after which he became king"--he did not hesitate to remind his readers that sargon lived a thousand years and more before moses; that this story was told of him several hundred years before moses was born; and that it was told of various other important personages of antiquity. the professor dealt just as honestly with the inscriptions which show sundry statements in the book of daniel to be unhistorical; candidly making admissions which but a short time before would have filled orthodoxy with horror. a few years later came another testimony even more striking. early in the last decade of the nineteenth century it was noised abroad that the rev. professor sayce, of oxford, the most eminent assyriologist and egyptologist of great britain, was about to publish a work in which what is known as the "higher criticism" was to be vigorously and probably destructively dealt with in the light afforded by recent research among the monuments of assyria and egypt. the book was looked for with eager expectation by the supporters of the traditional view of scripture; but, when it appeared, the exultation of the traditionalists was speedily changed to dismay. for prof. sayce, while showing some severity toward sundry minor assumptions and assertions of biblical critics, confirmed all their more important conclusions which properly fell within his province. while his readers soon realized that these assumptions and assertions of overzealous critics no more disproved the main results of biblical criticism than the wild guesses of kepler disproved the theory of copernicus, or the discoveries of galileo, or even the great laws which bear kepler's own name, they found new mines sprung under some of the most lofty fortresses of the old dogmatic theology. a few of the statements of this champion of orthodoxy may be noted. he allowed that the week of seven days and the sabbath rest are of babylonian origin; indeed, that the very word "sabbath" is babylonian; that there are two narratives of creation on the babylonian tablets, wonderfully like the two leading hebrew narratives in genesis, and that the latter were undoubtedly drawn from the former; that the "garden of eden" and its mystical tree were known to the inhabitants of chaldea in pre-semitic days; that the beliefs that woman was created out of man, and that man by sin fell from a state of innocence, are drawn from very ancient chaldean-babylonian texts; that assyriology confirms the belief that the book genesis is a compilation; that portions of it are by no means so old as the time of moses; that the expression in our sacred book, "the lord smelled a sweet savour" at the sacrifice made by noah, is "identical with that of the babylonian poet"; that "it is impossible to believe that the language of the latter was not known to the biblical writer" and that the story of joseph and potiphar's wife was drawn in part from the old egyptian tale of _the two brothers_. finally, after a multitude of other concessions, prof. sayce allowed that the book of jonah, so far from being the work of the prophet himself, can not have been written until the assyrian empire was a thing of the past; that the book of daniel contains serious mistakes; that the so-called historical chapters of that book so conflict with the monuments that the author can not have been a contemporary of nebuchadnezzar and cyrus; that "the story of belshazzar's fall is not historical"; that the belshazzar referred to in it as king, and as the son of nehuchadnezzar, was not the son of nebuchadnezzar, and was never king; that "king darius the mede," who plays so great a part in the story, never existed; that the book associates persons and events really many years apart, and that it must have been written at a period far later than the time assigned in it for its own origin. as to the book of ezra, he tells us that we are confronted by a chronological inconsistency which no amount of ingenuity can explain away. he also acknowledges that the book of esther "contains many exaggerations and improbabilities, and is simply founded upon one of those same historical tales of which the persian chronicles seem to have been full." great was the dissatisfaction of the traditionalists with their expected champion; well might they repeat the words of balak to balaam, "i called thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast altogether blessed them."[[374]] no less fruitful have been modern researches in egypt. while, on one hand, they have revealed a very considerable number of geographical and archaeological facts proving the good faith of the narratives entering into the books attributed to moses, and have thus made our early sacred literature all the more valuable, they have at the same time revealed the limitations of the sacred authors and compilers. they have brought to light facts utterly disproving the sacred hebrew date of creation and the main framework of the early biblical chronology; they have shown the suggestive correspondence between the ten antediluvian patriarchs in genesis and the ten early dynasties of the egyptian gods, and have placed by the side of these the ten antediluvian kings of chaldean tradition, the ten heroes of armenia, the ten primeval kings of persian sacred tradition, the ten "fathers" of hindu sacred tradition, and multitudes of other tens, throwing much light on the manner in which the sacred chronicles of ancient nations were generally developed. these scholars have also found that the legends of the plagues of egypt are in the main but natural exaggerations of what occurs every year; as, for example, the changing of the water of the nile into blood--evidently suggested by the phenomena exhibited every summer, when, as various eminent scholars, and, most recent of all, maspero and sayce, tell us, "about the middle of july, in eight or ten days the river turns from grayish blue to dark red, occasionally of so intense a colour as to look like newly shed blood." these modern researches have also shown that some of the most important features in the legends can not possibly be reconciled with the records of the monuments; for example, that the pharaoh of the exodus was certainly not overwhelmed in the red sea. as to the supernatural features of the hebrew relations with egypt, even the most devoted apologists have become discreetly silent. egyptologists have also translated for us the old nile story of _the two brothers_, and have shown, as we have already seen, that one of the most striking parts of our sacred joseph legend was drawn from it; they have been obliged to admit that the story of the exposure of moses in the basket of rushes, his rescue, and his subsequent greatness, had been previously told, long before moses's time, not only of king sargon, but of various other great personages of the ancient world; they have published plans of egyptian temples and copies of the sculptures upon their walls, revealing the earlier origin of some of the most striking features of the worship and ceremonial claimed to have been revealed especially to the hebrews; they have found in the _egyptian book of the dead_, and in various inscriptions of the nile temples and tombs, earlier sources of much in the ethics so long claimed to have been revealed only to the chosen people in the book of the covenant, in the ten commandments, and elsewhere; they have given to the world copies of the egyptian texts showing that the theology of the nile was one of various fruitful sources of later ideas, statements, and practices regarding the brazen serpent, the golden calf, trinities, miraculous conceptions, incarnations, resurrections, ascensions, and the like, and that egyptian sacro-scientific ideas contributed to early jewish and christian sacred literature statements, beliefs, and even phrases regarding the creation, astronomy, geography, magic, medicine, diabolical influences, with a multitude of other ideas, which we also find coming into early judaism in greater or less degree from chaldean and persian sources. but egyptology, while thus aiding to sweep away the former conception of our sacred books, has aided biblical criticism in making them far more precious; for it has shown them to be a part of that living growth of sacred literature whose roots are in all the great civilizations of the past, and through whose trunk and branches are flowing the currents which are to infuse a higher religious and ethical life into the civilizations of the future.[[376]] but while archaeologists thus influenced enlightened opinion, another body of scholars rendered services of a different sort--the centre of their enterprise being the university of oxford. by their efforts was presented to the english-speaking world a series of translations of the sacred books of the east, which showed the relations of the more eastern sacred literature to our own, and proved that in the religions of the world the ideas which have come as the greatest blessings to mankind are not of sudden revelation or creation, but of slow evolution out of a remote past. the facts thus shown did not at first elicit much gratitude from supporters of traditional theology, and perhaps few things brought more obloquy on renan, for a time, than his statement that "the influence of persia is the most powerful to which israel was submitted." whether this was an overstatement or not, it was soon seen to contain much truth. not only was it made clear by study of the zend avesta that the old and new testament ideas regarding satanic and demoniacal modes of action were largely due to persian sources, but it was also shown that the idea of immortality was mainly developed in the hebrew mind during the close relations of the jews with the persians. nor was this all. in the zend avesta were found in earlier form sundry myths and legends which, judging from their frequent appearance in early religions, grow naturally about the history of the adored teachers of our race. typical among these was the temptation of zoroaster. it is a fact very significant and full of promise that the first large, frank, and explicit revelation regarding this whole subject in form available for the general thinking public was given to the english-speaking world by an eminent christian divine and scholar, the rev. dr. mills. having already shown himself by his translations a most competent authority on the subject, he in 1894 called attention, in a review widely read, to "the now undoubted and long since suspected fact that it pleased the divine power to reveal some of the important articles of our catholic creed first to the zoroastrians, and through their literature to the jews and ourselves." among these beliefs dr. mills traced out very conclusively many jewish doctrines regarding the attributes of god, and all, virtually, regarding the attributes of satan. there, too, he found accounts of the miraculous conception, virgin birth, and temptation of zoroaster, as to the last, dr. mills presented a series of striking coincidences with our own later account. as to its main features, he showed that there had been developed among the persians, many centuries before the christian era, the legend of a vain effort of the arch-demon, one seat of whose power was the summit of mount arezura, to tempt zoroaster to worship him,--of an argument between tempter and tempted,--and of zoroaster's refusal; and the doctor continued: "no persian subject in the streets of jerusalem, soon after or long after the return, could have failed to know this striking myth." dr. mills then went on to show that, among the jews, "the doctrine of immortality was scarcely mooted before the later isaiah--that is, before the captivity--while the zoroastrian scriptures are one mass of spiritualism, referring all results to the heavenly or to the infernal worlds." he concludes by saying that, as regards the old and new testaments, "the humble, and to a certain extent prior, religion of the mazda worshippers was useful in giving point and beauty to many loose conceptions among the jewish religious teachers, and in introducing many ideas which were entirely new, while as to the doctrines of immortality and resurrection--the most important of all--it positively determined belief."[[378]] even more extensive were the revelations made by scientific criticism applied to the sacred literature of southern and eastern asia. the resemblances of sundry fundamental narratives and ideas in our own sacred books with those of buddhism were especially suggestive. here, too, had been a long preparatory history. the discoveries in sanscrit philology made in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, by sir william jones, carey, wilkins, foster, colebrooke, and others, had met at first with some opposition from theologians. the declaration by dugald stewart that the discovery of sanscrit was fraudulent, and its vocabulary and grammar patched together out of greek and latin, showed the feeling of the older race of biblical students. but researches went on. bopp, burnouf, lassen, weber, whitney, max muller, and others continued the work during the nineteenth century more and more evident became the sources from which many ideas and narratives in our own sacred books had been developed. studies in the sacred books of brahmanism, and in the institutions of buddhism, the most widespread of all religions, its devotees outnumbering those of all branches of the christian church together, proved especially fruitful in facts relating to general sacred literature and early european religious ideas. noteworthy in the progress of this knowledge was the work of fathers huc and gabet. in 1839 the former of these, a french lazarist priest, set out on a mission to china. having prepared himself at macao by eighteen months of hard study, and having arrayed himself like a native, even to the wearing of the queue and the staining of his skin, he visited peking and penetrated mongolia. five years later, taking gabet with him, both disguised as lamas, he began his long and toilsome journey to the chief seats of buddhism in thibet, and, after two years of fearful dangers and sufferings, accomplished it. driven out finally by the chinese, huc returned to europe in 1852, having made one of the most heroic, self-denying, and, as it turned out, one of the most valuable efforts in all the noble annals of christian missions. his accounts of these journevs, written in a style simple, clear, and interesting, at once attracted attention throughout the world. but far more important than any services he had rendered to the church he served was the influence of his book upon the general opinions of thinking men; for he completed a series of revelations made by earlier, less gifted, and less devoted travellers, and brought to the notice of the world the amazing similarity of the ideas, institutions, observances, ceremonies, and ritual, and even the ecclesiastical costumes of the buddhists to those of his own church. buddhism was thus shown with its hierarchy, in which the grand lama, an infallible representative of the most high, is surrounded by its minor lamas, much like cardinals; with its bishops wearing mitres, its celibate priests with shaven crown, cope, dalmatic, and censer; its cathedrals with clergy gathered in the choir; its vast monasteries filled with monks and nuns vowed to poverty, chastity, and obedience; its church arrangements, with shrines of saints and angels; its use of images, pictures, and illuminated missals; its service, with a striking general resemblance to the mass; antiphonal choirs; intoning of prayers; recital of creeds; repetition of litanies; processions; mystic rites and incense; the offering and adoration of bread upon an altar lighted by candles; the drinking from a chalice by the priest; prayers and offerings for the dead; benediction with outstretched hands; fasts, confessions, and doctrine of purgatory--all this and more was now clearly revealed. the good father was evidently staggered by these amazing facts; but his robust faith soon gave him an explanation: he suggested that satan, in anticipation of christianity, had revealed to buddhism this divinely constituted order of things. this naive explanation did not commend itself to his superiors in the roman church. in the days of st. augustine or of st. thomas aquinas it would doubtless have been received much more kindly; but in the days of cardinal antonelli this was hardly to be expected: the roman authorities, seeing the danger of such plain revelations in the nineteenth century, even when coupled with such devout explanations, put the book under the ban, though not before it had been spread throughout the world in various translations. father huc was sent on no more missions. yet there came even more significant discoveries, especially bearing upon the claims of that great branch of the church which supposes itself to possess a divine safeguard against error in belief. for now was brought to light by literary research the irrefragable evidence that the great buddha--sakya muni himself--had been canonized and enrolled among the christian saints whose intercession may be invoked, and in whose honour images, altars, and chapels may be erected; and this, not only by the usage of the medieval church, greek and roman, but by the special and infallible sanction of a long series of popes, from the end of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth--a sanction granted under one of the most curious errors in human history. the story enables us to understand the way in which many of the beliefs of christendom have been developed, especially how they have been influenced from the seats of older religions; and it throws much light into the character and exercise of papal infallibility. early in the seventh century there was composed, as is now believed, at the convent of st. saba near jerusalem, a pious romance entitled _barlaam and josaphat_--the latter personage, the hero of the story, being represented as a hindu prince converted to christianity by the former. this story, having been attributed to st. john of damascus in the following century became amazingly popular, and was soon accepted as true: it was translated from the greek original not only into latin, hebrew, arabic, and ethiopic, but into every important european language, including even polish, bohemian, and icelandic. thence it came into the pious historical encyclopaedia of vincent of beauvais, and, most important of all, into the _lives of the saints_. hence the name of its pious hero found its way into the list of saints whose intercession is to be prayed for, and it passed without challenge until about 1590, when, the general subject of canonization having been brought up at rome, pope sixtus v, by virtue of his infallibility and immunity against error in everything relating to faith and morals, sanctioned a revised list of saints, authorizing and directing it to be accepted by the church; and among those on whom he thus forever infallibly set the seal of heaven was included "_the holy saint josaphat of india_, whose wonderful acts st. john of damascus has related." the 27th of november was appointed as the day set apart in honour of this saint, and the decree, having been enforced by successive popes for over two hundred and fifty years, was again officially approved by pius ix in 1873. this decree was duly accepted as infallible, and in one of the largest cities of italy may to-day be seen a christian church dedicated to this saint. on its front are the initials of his italianized name; over its main entrance is the inscription "_divo josafat_"; and within it is an altar dedicated to the saint--above this being a pedestal bearing his name and supporting a large statue which represents him as a youthful prince wearing a crown and contemplating a crucifix. moreover, relics of this saint were found; bones alleged to be parts of his skeleton, having been presented by a doge of venice to a king of portugal, are now treasured at antwerp. but even as early as the sixteenth century a pregnant fact regarding this whole legend was noted: for the portuguese historian diego conto showed that it was identical with the legend of buddha. fortunately for the historian, his faith was so robust that he saw in this resemblance only a trick of satan; the life of buddha being, in his opinion, merely a diabolic counterfeit of the life of josaphat centuries before the latter was lived or written--just as good abbe huc saw in the ceremonies of buddhism a similar anticipatory counterfeit of christian ritual. there the whole matter virtually rested for about three hundred years--various scholars calling attention to the legend as a curiosity, but none really showing its true bearings--until, in 1859, laboulaye in france, liebrecht in germany, and others following them, demonstrated that this christian work was drawn almost literally from an early biography of buddha, being conformed to it in the most minute details, not only of events but of phraseology; the only important changes being that, at the end of the various experiences showing the wretchedness of the world, identical with those ascribed in the original to the young prince buddha, the hero, instead of becoming a hermit, becomes a christian, and that for the appellation of buddha-"bodisat"--is substituted the more scriptural name josaphat. thus it was that, by virtue of the infallibility vouchsafed to the papacy in matters of faith and morals, buddha became a christian saint. yet these were by no means the most pregnant revelations. as the buddhist scriptures were more fully examined, there were disclosed interesting anticipations of statements in later sacred books. the miraculous conception of buddha and his virgin birth, like that of horus in egypt and of krishna in india; the previous annunciation to his mother maja; his birth during a journey by her; the star appearing in the east, and the angels chanting in the heavens at his birth; his temptation--all these and a multitude of other statements were full of suggestions to larger thought regarding the development of sacred literature in general. even the eminent roman catholic missionary bishop bigandet was obliged to confess, in his scholarly life of buddha, these striking similarities between the buddhist scriptures and those which it was his mission to expound, though by this honest statement his own further promotion was rendered impossible. fausboll also found the story of the judgment of solomon imbedded in buddhist folklore; and sir edwin arnold, by his poem, _the light of asia_, spread far and wide a knowledge of the anticipation in buddhism of some ideas which down to a recent period were considered distinctively christian. imperfect as the revelations thus made of an evolution of religious beliefs, institutions, and literature still are, they have not been without an important bearing upon the newer conception of our own sacred books: more and more manifest has become the interdependence of all human development; more and more clear the truth that christianity, as a great fact in man's history, is not dependent for its life upon any parasitic growths of myth and legend, no matter how beautiful they may be.[[384]] no less important was the closer research into the new testament during the latter part of the nineteenth century. to go into the subject in detail would be beyond the scope of this work, but a few of the main truths which it brought before the world may be here summarized.[[385]] by the new race of christian scholars it has been clearly shown that the first three gospels, which, down to the close of the last century, were so constantly declared to be three independent testimonies agreeing as to the events recorded, are neither independent of each other nor in that sort of agreement which was formerly asserted. all biblical scholars of any standing, even the most conservative, have come to admit that all three took their rise in the same original sources, growing by the accretions sure to come as time went on--accretions sometimes useful and often beautiful, but in no inconsiderable degree ideas and even narratives inherited from older religions: it is also fully acknowledged that to this growth process are due certain contradictions which can not otherwise be explained. as to the fourth gospel, exquisitely beautiful as large portions of it are, there has been growing steadily and irresistibly the conviction, even among the most devout scholars, that it has no right to the name, and does not really give the ideas of st. john, but that it represents a mixture of greek philosophy with jewish theology, and that its final form, which one of the most eminent among recent christian scholars has characterized as "an unhistorical product of abstract reflection," is mainly due to some gifted representative or representatives of the alexandrian school. bitter as the resistance to this view has been, it has during the last years of the nineteenth century won its way more and more to acknowledgment. a careful examination made in 1893 by a competent christian scholar showed facts which are best given in his own words, as follows: "in the period of thirty years ending in 1860, of the fifty great authorities in this line, _four to one_ were in favour of the johannine authorship. of those who in that period had advocated this traditional position, one quarter--and certainly the very greatest--finally changed their position to the side of a late date and non-johannine authorship. of those who have come into this field of scholarship since about 1860, some forty men of the first class, two thirds reject the traditional theory wholly or very largely. of those who have contributed important articles to the discussion from about 1880 to 1890, about _two to one_ reject the johannine authorship of the gospel in its present shape--that is to say, while forty years ago great scholars were _four to one in favour of_, they are now _two to one against_, the claim that the apostle john wrote this gospel as we have it. again, one half of those on the conservative side to-day--scholars like weiss, beyschlag, sanday, and reynolds--admit the existence of a dogmatic intent and an ideal element in this gospel, so that we do not have jesus's thought in his exact words, but only in substance."[[386]] in 1881 came an event of great importance as regards the development of a more frank and open dealing with scriptural criticism. in that year appeared the revised version of the new testament. it was exceedingly cautious and conservative; but it had the vast merit of being absolutely conscientious. one thing showed, in a striking way, ethical progress in theological methods. although all but one of the english revisers represented trinitarian bodies, they rejected the two great proof texts which had so long been accounted essential bulwarks of trinitarian doctrine. thus disappeared at last from the epistle of st. john the text of the three witnesses, which had for centuries held its place in spite of its absence from all the earlier important manuscripts, and of its rejection in later times by erasmus, luther, isaac newton, porson, and a long line of the greatest biblical scholars. and with this was thrown out the other like unto it in spurious origin and zealous intent, that interpolation of the word "god" in the sixteenth verse of the third chapter of the first epistle to timothy, which had for ages served as a warrant for condemning some of the noblest of christians, even such men as newton and milton and locke and priestley and channing. indeed, so honest were the revisers that they substituted the correct reading of luke ii, 33, in place of the time-honoured corruption in the king james version which had been thought necessary to safeguard the dogma of the virgin birth of jesus of nazareth. thus came the true reading, "his _father_ and his mother" instead of the old piously fraudulent words "_joseph_ and his mother." an even more important service to the new and better growth of christianity was the virtual setting aside of the last twelve verses of the gospel according to st. mark; for among these stood that sentence which has cost the world more innocent blood than any other--the words "he that believeth not shall be damned." from this source had logically grown the idea that the intellectual rejection of this or that dogma which dominant theology had happened at any given time to pronounce essential, since such rejection must bring punishment infinite in agony and duration, is a crime to be prevented at any cost of finite cruelty. still another service rendered to humanity by the revisers was in substituting a new and correct rendering for the old reading of the famous text regarding the inspiration of scripture, which had for ages done so much to make our sacred books a fetich. by this more correct reading the revisers gave a new charter to liberty in biblical research.[[388]] most valuable, too, have been studies during the latter part of the nineteenth century upon the formation of the canon of scripture. the result of these has been to substitute something far better for that conception of our biblical literature, as forming one book handed out of the clouds by the almighty, which had been so long practically the accepted view among probably the majority of christians. reverent scholars have demonstrated our sacred literature to be a growth in obedience to simple laws natural and historical; they have shown how some books of the old testament were accepted as sacred, centuries before our era, and how others gradually gained sanctity, in some cases only fully acquiring it long after the establishment of the christian church. the same slow growth has also been shown in the new testament canon. it has been demonstrated that the selection of the books composing it, and their separation from the vast mass of spurious gospels, epistles, and apocalytic literature was a gradual process, and, indeed, that the rejection of some books and the acceptance of others was accidental, if anything is accidental. so, too, scientific biblical research has, as we have seen, been obliged to admit the existence of much mythical and legendary matter, as a setting for the great truths not only of the old testament but of the new. it has also shown, by the comparative study of literatures, the process by which some books were compiled and recompiled, adorned with beautiful utterances, strengthened or weakened by alterations and interpolations expressing the views of the possessors or transcribers, and attributed to personages who could not possibly have written them. the presentation of these things has greatly weakened that sway of mere dogma which has so obscured the simple teachings of christ himself; for it has shown that the more we know of our sacred books, the less certain we become as to the authenticity of "proof texts," and it has disengaged more and more, as the only valuable residuum, like the mass of gold at the bottom of the crucible, the personality, spirit, teaching, and ideals of the blessed founder of christianity. more and more, too, the new scholarship has developed the conception of the new testament as, like the old, the growth of literature in obedience to law--a conception which in all probability will give it its strongest hold on the coming centuries. in making this revelation christian scholarship has by no means done work mainly destructive. it has, indeed, swept away a mass of noxious growths, but it has at the same time cleared the ground for a better growth of christianity--a growth through which already pulsates the current of a nobler life. it has forever destroyed the contention of scholars like those of the eighteenth century who saw, in the multitude of irreconcilable discrepancies between various biblical statements, merely evidences of priestcraft and intentional fraud. the new scholarship has shown that even such absolute contradictions as those between the accounts of the early life of jesus by matthew and luke, and between the date of the crucifixion and details of the resurrection in the first three gospels and in the fourth, and other discrepancies hardly less serious, do not destroy the historical character of the narrative. even the hopelessly conflicting genealogies of the saviour and the evidently mythical accretions about the simple facts of his birth and life are thus full of interest when taken as a natural literary development in obedience to the deepest religious feeling.[[390]] among those who have wrought most effectively to bring the leaders of thought in the english-speaking nations to this higher conception, matthew arnold should not be forgotten. by poetic insight, broad scholarship, pungent statement, pithy argument, and an exquisitely lucid style, he aided effectually during the latter half of the nineteenth century in bringing the work of specialists to bear upon the development of a broader and deeper view. in the light of his genius a conception of our sacred books at the same time more literary as well as more scientific has grown widely and vigorously, while the older view which made of them a fetich and a support for unchristian dogmas has been more and more thrown into the background. the contributions to these results by the most eminent professors at the great christian universities of the english-speaking world, oxford and cambridge taking the lead, are most hopeful signs of a new epoch. very significant also is a change in the style of argument against the scientific view. leading supporters of the older opinions see more and more clearly the worthlessness of rhetoric against ascertained fact: mere dogged resistance to cogent argument evidently avails less and less; and the readiness of the more prominent representatives of the older thought to consider opposing arguments, and to acknowledge any force they may have, is certainly of good omen. the concessions made in _lux mundi_ regarding scriptural myths and legends have been already mentioned. significant also has been the increasing reprobation in the church itself of the profound though doubtless unwitting immoralities of _reconcilers_. the castigation which followed the exploits of the greatest of these in our own time--mr. gladstone, at the hands of prof. huxley--did much to complete a work in which such eminent churchmen as stanley, farrar, sanday, cheyne, driver, and sayce had rendered good service. typical among these evidences of a better spirit in controversy has been the treatment of the question regarding mistaken quotations from the old testament in the new, and especially regarding quotations by christ himself. for a time this was apparently the most difficult of all matters dividing the two forces; but though here and there appear champions of tradition, like the bishop of gloucester, effectual resistance to the new view has virtually ceased; in one way or another the most conservative authorities have accepted the undoubted truth revealed by a simple scientific method. their arguments have indeed been varied. while some have fallen back upon le clerc's contention that "christ did not come to teach criticism to the jews," and others upon paley's argument that the master shaped his statements in accordance with the ideas of his time, others have taken refuge in scholastic statements--among them that of irenaeus regarding "a quiescence of the divine word," or the somewhat startling explanation by sundry recent theologians that "our lord emptied himself of his godhead."[[391]] nor should there be omitted a tribute to the increasing courtesy shown in late years by leading supporters of the older view. during the last two decades of the present century there has been a most happy departure from the older method of resistance, first by plausibilities, next by epithets, and finally by persecution. to the bitterness of the attacks upon darwin, the essayists and reviewers, and bishop colenso, have succeeded, among really eminent leaders, a far better method and tone. while matthew arnold no doubt did much in commending "sweet reasonableness" to theological controversialists, mr. gladstone, by his perfect courtesy to his opponents, even when smarting under their heaviest blows, has set a most valuable example. nor should the spirit shown by bishop ellicott, leading a forlorn hope for the traditional view, pass without a tribute of respect. truly pathetic is it to see this venerable and learned prelate, one of the most eminent representatives of the older biblical research, even when giving solemn warnings against the newer criticisms, and under all the temptations of _ex cathedra_ utterance, remaining mild and gentle and just in the treatment of adversaries whose ideas he evidently abhors. happily, he is comforted by the faith that christianitv will survive; and this faith his opponents fully share.[[392]] vi. reconstructive force of scientific criticism. for all this dissolving away of traditional opinions regarding our sacred literature, there has been a cause far more general and powerful than any which has been given, for it is a cause surrounding and permeating all. this is simply the atmosphere of thought engendered by the development of all sciences during the last three centuries. vast masses of myth, legend, marvel, and dogmatic assertion, coming into this atmosphere, have been dissolved and are now dissolving quietly away like icebergs drifted into the gulf stream. in earlier days, when some critic in advance of his time insisted that moses could not have written an account embracing the circumstances of his own death, it was sufficient to answer that moses was a prophet; if attention was called to the fact that the great early prophets, by all which they did and did not do, showed that there could not have existed in their time any "levitical code," a sufficient answer was "mystery"; and if the discrepancy was noted between the two accounts of creation in genesis, or between the genealogies or the dates of the crucifixion in the gospels, the cogent reply was "infidelity." but the thinking world has at last been borne by the general development of a scientific atmosphere beyond that kind of refutation. if, in the atmosphere generated by the earlier developed sciences, the older growths of biblical interpretation have drooped and withered and are evidently perishing, new and better growths have arisen with roots running down into the newer sciences. comparative anthropology in general, by showing that various early stages of belief and observance, once supposed to be derived from direct revelation from heaven to the hebrews, are still found as arrested developments among various savage and barbarous tribes; comparative mythology and folklore, by showing that ideas and beliefs regarding the supreme power in the universe are progressive, and not less in judea than in other parts of the world; comparative religion and literature, by searching out and laying side by side those main facts in the upward struggle of humanity which show that the israelites, like other gifted peoples, rose gradually, through ghost worship, fetichism, and polytheism, to higher theological levels; and that, as they thus rose, their conceptions and statements regarding the god they worshipped became nobler and better--all these sciences are giving a new solution to those problems which dogmatic theology has so long laboured in vain to solve. while researches in these sciences have established the fact that accounts formerly supposed to be special revelations to jews and christians are but repetitions of widespread legends dating from far earlier civilizations, and that beliefs formerly thought fundamental to judaism and christianity are simply based on ancient myths, they have also begun to impress upon the intellect and conscience of the thinking world the fact that the religious and moral truths thus disengaged from the old masses of myth and legend are all the more venerable and authoritative, and that all individual or national life of any value must be vitalized by them.[[394]] if, then, modern science in general has acted powerfully to dissolve away the theories and dogmas of the older theologic interpretation, it has also been active in a reconstruction and recrystallization of truth; and very powerful in this reconstruction have been the evolution doctrines which have grown out of the thought and work of men like darwin and spencer. in the light thus obtained the sacred text has been transformed: out of the old chaos has come order; out of the old welter of hopelessly conflicting statements in religion and morals has come, in obedience to this new conception of development, the idea of a sacred literature which mirrors the most striking evolution of morals and religion in the history of our race. of all the sacred writings of the world, it shows us our own as the most beautiful and the most precious; exhibiting to us the most complete religious development to which humanity has attained, and holding before us the loftiest ideals which our race has known. thus it is that, with the keys furnished by this new race of biblical scholars, the way has been opened to treasures of thought which have been inaccessible to theologians for two thousand years. as to the divine power in the universe: these interpreter's have shown how, beginning with the tribal god of the hebrews--one among many jealous, fitful, unseen, local sovereigns of asia minor--the higher races have been borne on to the idea of the just ruler of the whole earth, as revealed by the later and greater prophets of israel, and finally to the belief in the universal father, as best revealed in the new testament. as to man: beginning with men after jehovah's own heart--cruel, treacherous, revengeful--we are borne on to an ideal of men who do right for right's sake; who search and speak the truth for truth's sake; who love others as themselves. as to the world at large: the races dominant in religion and morals have been lifted from the idea of a "chosen people" stimulated and abetted by their tribal god in every sort of cruelty and injustice, to the conception of a vast community in which the fatherhood of god overarches all, and the brotherhood of man permeates all. thus, at last, out of the old conception of our bible as a collection of oracles--a mass of entangling utterances, fruitful in wrangling interpretations, which have given to the world long and weary ages of "hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness"; of fetichism, subtlety, and pomp; of tyranny bloodshed, and solemnly constituted imposture; of everything which the lord jesus christ most abhorred--has been gradually developed through the centuries, by the labours, sacrifices, and even the martyrdom of a long succession of men of god, the conception of it as a sacred literature--a growth only possible under that divine light which the various orbs of science have done so much to bring into the mind and heart and soul of man--a revelation, not of the fall of man, but of the ascent of man--an exposition, not of temporary dogmas and observances, but of the eternal law of righteousness--the one upward path for individuals and for nations. no longer an oracle, good for the "lower orders" to accept, but to be quietly sneered at by "the enlightened"--no longer a fetich, whose defenders must be persecuters, or reconcilers, or "apologists"; but a most fruitful fact, which religion and science may accept as a source of strength to both. [end.] 1894 the sphinx by oscar wilde in a dim corner of my room for longer than my fancy thinks, a beautiful and silent sphinx has watched me through the shifting gloom. inviolate and immobile she does not rise, she does not stir for silver moons are nought to her, and nought to her the suns that reel. red follows grey across the air the waves of moonlight ebb and flow but with the dawn she does not go and in the night-time she is there. dawn follows dawn, and nights grow old and all the while this curious cat lies crouching on the chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold. upon the mat she lies and leers, and on the tawny throat of her flutters the soft and fur or ripples to her pointed ears. come forth my lovely seneschal, so somnolent, so statuesque, come forth you exquisite grotesque, half woman and half animal, come forth my lovely languorous sphinx, and put your head upon my knee and let me stroke your throat and see your body spotted like the lynx, and let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory, and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your heavy velvet paws. a thousand weary centuries are thine, while i have hardly seen some twenty summers cast their green for autumn's gaudy liveries, but you can read the hieroglyphs on the great sandstone obelisks, and you have talked with basilisks and you have looked on hippogriffs o tell me, were you standing by when isis to osiris knelt, and did you watch the egyptian melt her union for anthony, and drink the jewel-drunken wine, and bend her head in mimic awe to see the huge pro-consul draw the salted tunny from the brine? and did you mark the cyprian kiss with adon on his catafalque, and did you follow amanalk the god of heliopolis? and did you talk with thoth, and did you hear the moon-horned io weep and know the painted kings who sleep beneath the wedge-shaped pyramid? lift up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one sinks, fawn at my feet, fantastic sphinx, and sing me all your memories. sing to me of the jewish maid who wandered with the holy child, and how you led them through the wild, and how they slept beneath your shade. sing to me of that odorous green eve when crouching by the marge you heard from adrian's gilded barge the laughter of antinous, and lapped the stream, and fed your drouth, and watched with hot and hungry stare the ivory body of that rare young slave with his pomegranate mouth. sing to me of the labyrinth in which the two-formed bull was stalled, sing to me of the night you crawled across the temple's granite plinth when through the purple corridors the screaming scarlet ibis flew in terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the moaning mandragores, and the great torpid crocodile within the great shed slimy tears, and tore the jewels from his ears and staggered back into the nile, and the priests cursed you with shrill psalms as in your claws you seized their snake and crept away with it to slake your passion by the shuddering palms. who were your lovers, who were they who wrestled for you in the dust? which was the vessel of your lust, what leman had you every day? did giant lizards come and crouch before you on the reedy banks? did gryphons with great metal flanks leap on you in your trampled couch, did monstrous hippopotami come sidling to you in the mist did gilt-scaled dragons write and twist with passion as you passed them by? and from that brick-built lycian tomb what horrible chimaera came with fearful heads and fearful flame to breed new wonders from your womb? or had you shameful secret guests and did you harry to your home some nereid coiled in amber foam with curious rock-crystal breasts; or did you, treading through the froth, call to the brown sidonian for tidings of leviathan, leviathan of behemoth? or did you when the sun was set, climb up the cactus-covered slope to meet your swarthy ethiop whose body was of polished jet? or did you while the earthen skiffs dropt down the gray nilotic flats at twilight, and the flickering bats flew round the temple's triple glyphs steal to the border of the bar and swim across the silent lake and slink into the vault and make the pyramid your lupanar, till from each black sarcophagus rose up the painted, swathed dead, or did you lure unto your bed the ivory-horned trageophos? or did you love the god of flies who plagued the hebrews and was splashed with wine unto the waist, or pasht who had green beryls for her eyes? or that young god, the tyrian, who was more amorous than the dove of ashtaroth, or did you love the god of the assyrian, whose wings that like transparent talc rose high above his hawk-faced head painted with silver and with red and ribbed with rods of oreichalch? or did huge apis from his car leap down and lay before your feet big blossoms of the honey-sweet, and honey-coloured nenuphar? how subtle secret is your smile; did you love none then? nay i know great ammon was your bedfellow, he lay with you beside the nile. the river-horses in the slime trumpeted when they saw him come odorous with syrian galbanum and smeared with spikenard and with thyme. he came along the river bank like some tall galley argent-sailed he strode across the waters, mailed in beauty and the waters sank. he strode across the desert sand, he reached the valley where you lay, he waited till the dawn of day, then touched your black breasts with his hand. you kissed his mouth with mouth of flame, you made the horned-god your own, you stood behind him on his throne; you called him by his secret name, you whispered monstrous oracles into the caverns of his ears, with blood of goats and blood of steers you taught him monstrous miracles, while ammon was your bedfellow your chamber was the steaming nile and with your curved archaic smile you watched his passion come and go. with syrian oils his brows were bright and wide-spread as a tent at noon his marble limbs made pale the moon and lent the day a larger light, his long hair was nine cubits span and coloured like that yellow gem which hidden in their garments' hem, the merchants bring from kurdistan. his face was as the must that lies upon a vat of new-made wine, the seas could not insapphirine the perfect azure of his eyes. his thick, soft throat was white as milk and threaded with thin veins of blue and curious pearls like frozen dew were broidered on his flowing silk. on pearl and porphyry pedestalled he was too bright to look upon for on his ivory breast there shone the wondrous ocean-emerald, that mystic, moonlight jewel which some diver of the colchian caves had found beneath the blackening waves and carried to the colchian witch. before his gilded galiot ran naked vine-wreathed corybants and lines of swaying elephants knelt down to draw his chariot, and lines of swarthy nubians bore up his litter as he rode down the great granite-paven road, between the nodding peacock fans. the merchants brought him steatite from sidon in their painted ships; the meanest cup that touched his lips was fashioned from a chrysolite. the merchants brought him cedar chests of rich apparel, bound with cords; his train was borne by memphian lords; young kings were glad to be his guests. ten hundred shaven priests did bow to ammon's altar day and night, ten hundred lamps did wave their light through ammon's carven house,and now foul snake and speckled adder with their young ones crawl from stone to stone for ruined is the house, and prone the great rose-marble monolith; wild ass or strolling jackal comes and crouches in the mouldering gates, wild satyrs call unto their mates across the fallen fluted drums. and on the summit of the pile, the blue-faced ape of horus sits and gibbers while the fig-tree splits the pillars of the peristyle. the god is scattered here and there; deep hidden in the windy sand i saw his giant granite hand still clenched in impotent despair. and many a wandering caravan of stately negroes, silken-shawled, crossing the desert, halts appalled before the neck that none can span. and many a bearded bedouin draws back his yellow-striped burnous to gaze upon the titan thews of him who was thy paladin. go seek his fragments on the moor, and wash them in the evening dew, and from their pieces make anew thy mutilated paramour. go seek them where they lie alone and from their broken pieces make thy bruised bedfellow! and wake mad passions in the senseless stone! charm his dull ear with syrian hymns; he loved your body; oh be kind! pour spikenard on his hair and wind soft rolls of linen round his limbs; wind round his head the figured coins, stain with red fruits the pallid lips; weave purple for his shrunken hips and purple for his barren loins! away to egypt! have no fear; only one god has ever died, only one god has let his side be wounded by a soldier's spear. but these, thy lovers, are not dead; still by the hundred-cubit gate dog-faced anubis sits in state with lotus lilies for thy head. still from his chair of porphyry giant memnon strains his lidless eyes across the empty land and cries each yellow morning unto thee. and nilus with his broken horn lies in his black and oozy bed and till thy coming will not spread his waters on the withering corn. your lovers are not dead, i know, and will rise up and hear thy voice and clash their symbols and rejoice and run to kiss your mouth,and so set wings upon your argosies! set horses to your ebon car! back to your nile! or if you are grown sick of dead divinities; follow some roving lion's spoor across the copper-coloured plain, reach out and hale him by the mane and bid him to be your paramour! crouch by his side upon the grass and set your white teeth in his throat, and when you hear his dying note, lash your long flanks of polished brass and take a tiger for your mate, whose amber sides are flecked with black, and ride upon his gilded back in triumph through the theban gate, and toy with him in amorous jests, and when he turns and snarls and gnaws, oh smite him with your jasper claws and bruise him with your agate breasts! why are you tarrying? get hence! i weary of your sullen ways. i weary of your steadfast gaze, your somnolent magnificence. your horrible and heavy breath makes the light flicker in the lamp, and on my brow i feel the damp and dreadful dews of night and death, your eyes are like fantastic moons that shiver in some stagnant lake, your tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances to fantastic tunes. your pulse makes poisonous melodies, and your black throat is like the hole left by some torch or burning coal on saracenic tapestries. away! the sulphur-coloured stars are hurrying through the western gate! away! or it may be too late to climb their silent silver cars! see, the dawn shivers round the gray, gilt-dialled towers, and the rain streams down each diamonded pane and blurs with tears the wannish day. what snake-tressed fury, fresh from hell, with uncouth gestures and unclean, stole from the poppy-drowsy queen and led you to a student's cell? what songless, tongueless ghost of sin crept through the curtains of the night and saw my taper burning bright, and knocked and bade you enter in? are there not others more accursed, whiter with leprosies than i? are abana and pharphar dry, that you come here to slake your thirst? false sphinx! false sphinx! by reedy styx, old charon, leaning on his oar, waits for my coin. go thou before and leave me to my crucifix, whose pallid burden, sick with pain, watches the world with wearied eyes. and weeps for every soul that dies, and weep for every soul in vain!!. the end . 1850 the system of dr. tarr and prof. fether by edgar allan poe southern provinces of france, my route led me within a few miles of a certain maison de sante or private mad-house, about which i had heard much in paris from my medical friends. as i had never visited a place of the kind, i thought the opportunity too good to be lost; and so proposed to my travelling companion (a gentleman with whom i had made casual acquaintance a few days before) that we should turn aside, for an hour or so, and look through the establishment. to this he objectedpleading haste in the first place, and, in the second, a very usual horror at the sight of a lunatic. he begged me, however, not to let any mere courtesy towards himself interfere with the gratification of my curiosity, and said that he would ride on leisurely, so that i might overtake him during the day, or, at all events, during the next. as he bade me good-bye, i bethought me that there might be some difficulty in obtaining access to the premises, and mentioned my fears on this point. he replied that, in fact, unless i had personal knowledge of the superintendent, monsieur maillard, or some credential in the way of a letter, a difficulty might be found to exist, as the regulations of these private mad-houses were more rigid than the public hospital laws. for himself, he added, he had, some years since, made the acquaintance of maillard, and would so far assist me as to ride up to the door and introduce me; although his feelings on the subject of lunacy would not permit of his entering the house. i thanked him, and, turning from the main road, we entered a grass-grown by-path, which, in half an hour, nearly lost itself in a dense forest, clothing the base of a mountain. through this dank and gloomy wood we rode some two miles, when the maison de sante came in view. it was a fantastic chateau, much dilapidated, and indeed scarcely tenantable through age and neglect. its aspect inspired me with absolute dread, and, checking my horse, i half resolved to turn back. i soon, however, grew ashamed of my weakness, and proceeded. as we rode up to the gate-way, i perceived it slightly open, and the visage of a man peering through. in an instant afterward, this man came forth, accosted my companion by name, shook him cordially by the hand, and begged him to alight. it was monsieur maillard himself. he was a portly, fine-looking gentleman of the old school, with a polished manner, and a certain air of gravity, dignity, and authority which was very impressive. my friend, having presented me, mentioned my desire to inspect the establishment, and received monsieur maillard's assurance that he would show me all attention, now took leave, and i saw him no more. when he had gone, the superintendent ushered me into a small and exceedingly neat parlor, containing, among other indications of refined taste, many books, drawings, pots of flowers, and musical instruments. a cheerful fire blazed upon the hearth. at a piano, singing an aria from bellini, sat a young and very beautiful woman, who, at my entrance, paused in her song, and received me with graceful courtesy. her voice was low, and her whole manner subdued. i thought, too, that i perceived the traces of sorrow in her countenance, which was excessively, although to my taste, not unpleasingly, pale. she was attired in deep mourning, and excited in my bosom a feeling of mingled respect, interest, and admiration. i had heard, at paris, that the institution of monsieur maillard was managed upon what is vulgarly termed the "system of soothing"that all punishments were avoidedthat even confinement was seldom resorted tothat the patients, while secretly watched, were left much apparent liberty, and that most of them were permitted to roam about the house and grounds in the ordinary apparel of persons in right mind. keeping these impressions in view, i was cautious in what i said before the young lady; for i could not be sure that she was sane; and, in fact, there was a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes which half led me to imagine she was not. i confined my remarks, therefore, to general topics, and to such as i thought would not be displeasing or exciting even to a lunatic. she replied in a perfectly rational manner to all that i said; and even her original observations were marked with the soundest good sense, but a long acquaintance with the metaphysics of mania, had taught me to put no faith in such evidence of sanity, and i continued to practise, throughout the interview, the caution with which i commenced it. presently a smart footman in livery brought in a tray with fruit, wine, and other refreshments, of which i partook, the lady soon afterward leaving the room. as she departed i turned my eyes in an inquiring manner toward my host. "no," he said, "oh, noa member of my familymy niece, and a most accomplished woman." "i beg a thousand pardons for the suspicion," i replied, "but of course you will know how to excuse me. the excellent administration of your affairs here is well understood in paris, and i thought it just possible, you know "yes, yessay no moreor rather it is myself who should thank you for the commendable prudence you have displayed. we seldom find so much of forethought in young men; and, more than once, some unhappy contre-temps has occurred in consequence of thoughtlessness on the part of our visitors. while my former system was in operation, and my patients were permitted the privilege of roaming to and fro at will, they were often aroused to a dangerous frenzy by injudicious persons who called to inspect the house. hence i was obliged to enforce a rigid system of exclusion; and none obtained access to the premises upon whose discretion i could not rely." "while your former system was in operation!" i said, repeating his words"do i understand you, then, to say that the 'soothing system' of which i have heard so much is no longer in force?" "it is now," he replied, "several weeks since we have concluded to renounce it forever." "indeed! you astonish me!" "we found it, sir," he said, with a sigh, "absolutely necessary to return to the old usages. the danger of the soothing system was, at all times, appalling; and its advantages have been much overrated. i believe, sir, that in this house it has been given a fair trial, if ever in any. we did every thing that rational humanity could suggest. i am sorry that you could not have paid us a visit at an earlier period, that you might have judged for yourself. but i presume you are conversant with the soothing practicewith its details." "not altogether. what i have heard has been at third or fourth hand." "i may state the system, then, in general terms, as one in which the patients were menages-humored. we contradicted no fancies which entered the brains of the mad. on the contrary, we not only indulged but encouraged them; and many of our most permanent cures have been thus effected. there is no argument which so touches the feeble reason of the madman as the argumentum ad absurdum. we have had men, for example, who fancied themselves chickens. the cure was, to insist upon the thing as a factto accuse the patient of stupidity in not sufficiently perceiving it to be a factand thus to refuse him any other diet for a week than that which properly appertains to a chicken. in this manner a little corn and gravel were made to perform wonders." "but was this species of acquiescence all?" "by no means. we put much faith in amusements of a simple kind, such as music, dancing, gymnastic exercises generally, cards, certain classes of books, and so forth. we affected to treat each individual as if for some ordinary physical disorder, and the word 'lunacy' was never employed. a great point was to set each lunatic to guard the actions of all the others. to repose confidence in the understanding or discretion of a madman, is to gain him body and soul. in this way we were enabled to dispense with an expensive body of keepers." "and you had no punishments of any kind?" "none." "and you never confined your patients?" "very rarely. now and then, the malady of some individual growing to a crisis, or taking a sudden turn of fury, we conveyed him to a secret cell, lest his disorder should infect the rest, and there kept him until we could dismiss him to his friendsfor with the raging maniac we have nothing to do. he is usually removed to the public hospitals." "and you have now changed all thisand you think for the better?" "decidedly. the system had its disadvantages, and even its dangers. it is now, happily, exploded throughout all the maisons de sante of france." "i am very much surprised," i said, "at what you tell me; for i made sure that, at this moment, no other method of treatment for mania existed in any portion of the country." "you are young yet, my friend," replied my host, "but the time will arrive when you will learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world, without trusting to the gossip of others. believe nothing you hear, and only one-half that you see. now about our maisons de sante, it is clear that some ignoramus has misled you. after dinner, however, when you have sufficiently recovered from the fatigue of your ride, i will be happy to take you over the house, and introduce to you a system which, in my opinion, and in that of every one who has witnessed its operation, is incomparably the most effectual as yet devised." "your own?" i inquired"one of your own invention?" "i am proud," he replied, "to acknowledge that it isat least in some measure." in this manner i conversed with monsieur maillard for an hour or two, during which he showed me the gardens and conservatories of the place. "i cannot let you see my patients," he said, "just at present. to a sensitive mind there is always more or less of the shocking in such exhibitions; and i do not wish to spoil your appetite for dinner. we will dine. i can give you some veal a la menehoult, with cauliflowers in veloute sauceafter that a glass of clos de vougeotthen your nerves will be sufficiently steadied." at six, dinner was announced; and my host conducted me into a large salle a manger, where a very numerous company were assembledtwenty-five or thirty in all. they were, apparently, people of rank-certainly of high breedingalthough their habiliments, i thought, were extravagantly rich, partaking somewhat too much of the ostentatious finery of the vielle cour. i noticed that at least two-thirds of these guests were ladies; and some of the latter were by no means accoutred in what a parisian would consider good taste at the present day. many females, for example, whose age could not have been less than seventy were bedecked with a profusion of jewelry, such as rings, bracelets, and earrings, and wore their bosoms and arms shamefully bare. i observed, too, that very few of the dresses were well madeor, at least, that very few of them fitted the wearers. in looking about, i discovered the interesting girl to whom monsieur maillard had presented me in the little parlor; but my surprise was great to see her wearing a hoop and farthingale, with high-heeled shoes, and a dirty cap of brussels lace, so much too large for her that it gave her face a ridiculously diminutive expression. when i had first seen her, she was attired, most becomingly, in deep mourning. there was an air of oddity, in short, about the dress of the whole party, which, at first, caused me to recur to my original idea of the "soothing system," and to fancy that monsieur maillard had been willing to deceive me until after dinner, that i might experience no uncomfortable feelings during the repast, at finding myself dining with lunatics; but i remembered having been informed, in paris, that the southern provincialists were a peculiarly eccentric people, with a vast number of antiquated notions; and then, too, upon conversing with several members of the company, my apprehensions were immediately and fully dispelled. the dining-room itself, although perhaps sufficiently comfortable and of good dimensions, had nothing too much of elegance about it. for example, the floor was uncarpeted; in france, however, a carpet is frequently dispensed with. the windows, too, were without curtains; the shutters, being shut, were securely fastened with iron bars, applied diagonally, after the fashion of our ordinary shop-shutters. the apartment, i observed, formed, in itself, a wing of the chateau, and thus the windows were on three sides of the parallelogram, the door being at the other. there were no less than ten windows in all. the table was superbly set out. it was loaded with plate, and more than loaded with delicacies. the profusion was absolutely barbaric. there were meats enough to have feasted the anakim. never, in all my life, had i witnessed so lavish, so wasteful an expenditure of the good things of life. there seemed very little taste, however, in the arrangements; and my eyes, accustomed to quiet lights, were sadly offended by the prodigious glare of a multitude of wax candles, which, in silver candelabra, were deposited upon the table, and all about the room, wherever it was possible to find a place. there were several active servants in attendance; and, upon a large table, at the farther end of the apartment, were seated seven or eight people with fiddles, fifes, trombones, and a drum. these fellows annoyed me very much, at intervals, during the repast, by an infinite variety of noises, which were intended for music, and which appeared to afford much entertainment to all present, with the exception of myself. upon the whole, i could not help thinking that there was much of the bizarre about every thing i sawbut then the world is made up of all kinds of persons, with all modes of thought, and all sorts of conventional customs. i had travelled, too, so much, as to be quite an adept at the nil admirari; so i took my seat very coolly at the right hand of my host, and, having an excellent appetite, did justice to the good cheer set before me. the conversation, in the meantime, was spirited and general. the ladies, as usual, talked a great deal. i soon found that nearly all the company were well educated; and my host was a world of good-humored anecdote in himself. he seemed quite willing to speak of his position as superintendent of a maison de sante; and, indeed, the topic of lunacy was, much to my surprise, a favorite one with all present. a great many amusing stories were told, having reference to the whims of the patients. "we had a fellow here once," said a fat little gentleman, who sat at my right,"a fellow that fancied himself a tea-pot; and by the way, is it not especially singular how often this particular crotchet has entered the brain of the lunatic? there is scarcely an insane asylum in france which cannot supply a human tea-pot. our gentleman was a britanniaware tea-pot, and was careful to polish himself every morning with buckskin and whiting." "and then," said a tall man just opposite, "we had here, not long ago, a person who had taken it into his head that he was a donkeywhich allegorically speaking, you will say, was quite true. he was a troublesome patient; and we had much ado to keep him within bounds. for a long time he would eat nothing but thistles; but of this idea we soon cured him by insisting upon his eating nothing else. then he was perpetually kicking out his heels-so-so-" "mr. de kock! i will thank you to behave yourself!" here interrupted an old lady, who sat next to the speaker. "please keep your feet to yourself! you have spoiled my brocade! is it necessary, pray, to illustrate a remark in so practical a style? our friend here can surely comprehend you without all this. upon my word, you are nearly as great a donkey as the poor unfortunate imagined himself. your acting is very natural, as i live." "mille pardons! ma'm'selle!" replied monsieur de kock, thus addressed"a thousand pardons! i had no intention of offending. ma'm'selle laplacemonsieur de kock will do himself the honor of taking wine with you." here monsieur de kock bowed low, kissed his hand with much ceremony, and took wine with ma'm'selle laplace. "allow me, mon ami," now said monsieur maillard, addressing myself, "allow me to send you a morsel of this veal a la st. menhoultyou will find it particularly fine." at this instant three sturdy waiters had just succeeded in depositing safely upon the table an enormous dish, or trencher, containing what i supposed to be the "monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." a closer scrutiny assured me, however, that it was only a small calf roasted whole, and set upon its knees, with an apple in its mouth, as is the english fashion of dressing a hare. "thank you, no," i replied; "to say the truth, i am not particularly partial to veal a la st.what is it?for i do not find that it altogether agrees with me. i will change my plate, however, and try some of the rabbit." there were several side-dishes on the table, containing what appeared to be the ordinary french rabbita very delicious morceau, which i can recommend. "pierre," cried the host, "change this gentleman's plate, and give him a side-piece of this rabbit au-chat." "this what?" said i. "this rabbit au-chat." "why, thank youupon second thoughts, no. i will just help myself to some of the ham." there is no knowing what one eats, thought i to myself, at the tables of these people of the province. i will have none of their rabbit au-chatand, for the matter of that, none of their cat-au-rabbit either. "and then," said a cadaverous looking personage, near the foot of the table, taking up the thread of the conversation where it had been broken off,"and then, among other oddities, we had a patient, once upon a time, who very pertinaciously maintained himself to be a cordova cheese, and went about, with a knife in his hand, soliciting his friends to try a small slice from the middle of his leg." "he was a great fool, beyond doubt," interposed some one, "but not to be compared with a certain individual whom we all know, with the exception of this strange gentleman. i mean the man who took himself for a bottle of champagne, and always went off with a pop and a fizz, in this fashion." here the speaker, very rudely, as i thought, put his right thumb in his left cheek, withdrew it with a sound resembling the popping of a cork, and then, by a dexterous movement of the tongue upon the teeth, created a sharp hissing and fizzing, which lasted for several minutes, in imitation of the frothing of champagne. this behavior, i saw plainly, was not very pleasing to monsieur maillard; but that gentleman said nothing, and the conversation was resumed by a very lean little man in a big wig. "and then there was an ignoramus," said he, "who mistook himself for a frog, which, by the way, he resembled in no little degree. i wish you could have seen him, sir,"here the speaker addressed myself"it would have done your heart good to see the natural airs that he put on. sir, if that man was not a frog, i can only observe that it is a pity he was not. his croak thuso-o-o-o-gho-o-o-o-gh! was the finest note in the worldb flat; and when he put his elbows upon the table thusafter taking a glass or two of wineand distended his mouth, thus, and rolled up his eyes, thus, and winked them with excessive rapidity, thus, why then, sir, i take it upon myself to say, positively, that you would have been lost in admiration of the genius of the man." "i have no doubt of it," i said. "and then," said somebody else, "then there was petit gaillard, who thought himself a pinch of snuff, and was truly distressed because he could not take himself between his own finger and thumb." "and then there was jules desoulieres, who was a very singular genius, indeed, and went mad with the idea that he was a pumpkin. he persecuted the cook to make him up into piesa thing which the cook indignantly refused to do. for my part, i am by no means sure that a pumpkin pie a la desoulieres would not have been very capital eating indeed!" "you astonish me!" said i; and i looked inquisitively at monsieur maillard. "ha! ha! ha!" said that gentleman"he! he! he!hi! hi! hi!ho! ho! ho!hu! hu! hu! hu!very good indeed! you must not be astonished, mon ami; our friend here is a wita droleyou must not understand him to the letter." "and then," said some other one of the party,"then there was bouffon le grandanother extraordinary personage in his way. he grew deranged through love, and fancied himself possessed of two heads. one of these he maintained to be the head of cicero; the other he imagined a composite one, being demosthenes' from the top of the forehead to the mouth, and lord brougham's from the mouth to the chin. it is not impossible that he was wrong; but he would have convinced you of his being in the right; for he was a man of great eloquence. he had an absolute passion for oratory, and could not refrain from display. for example, he used to leap upon the dinner-table thus, andand-" here a friend, at the side of the speaker, put a hand upon his shoulder and whispered a few words in his ear, upon which he ceased talking with great suddenness, and sank back within his chair. "and then," said the friend who had whispered, "there was boullard, the tee-totum. i call him the tee-totum because, in fact, he was seized with the droll but not altogether irrational crotchet, that he had been converted into a tee-totum. you would have roared with laughter to see him spin. he would turn round upon one heel by the hour, in this mannerso here the friend whom he had just interrupted by a whisper, performed an exactly similar office for himself. "but then," cried the old lady, at the top of her voice, "your monsieur boullard was a madman, and a very silly madman at best; for who, allow me to ask you, ever heard of a human tee-totum? the thing is absurd. madame joyeuse was a more sensible person, as you know. she had a crotchet, but it was instinct with common sense, and gave pleasure to all who had the honor of her acquaintance. she found, upon mature deliberation, that, by some accident, she had been turned into a chicken-cock; but, as such, she behaved with propriety. she flapped her wings with prodigious effectsosoand, as for her crow, it was delicious! cock-a-doodle-doo!cock-a-doodle-doo!cock-a-doodle-de-doo-dooo-do-o-o-o-o-o-o!" "madame joyeuse, i will thank you to behave yourself!" here interrupted our host, very angrily. "you can either conduct yourself as a lady should do, or you can quit the table forthwith-take your choice." the lady (whom i was much astonished to hear addressed as madame joyeuse, after the description of madame joyeuse she had just given) blushed up to the eyebrows, and seemed exceedingly abashed at the reproof. she hung down her head, and said not a syllable in reply. but another and younger lady resumed the theme. it was my beautiful girl of the little parlor. "oh, madame joyeuse was a fool!" she exclaimed, "but there was really much sound sense, after all, in the opinion of eugenie salsafette. she was a very beautiful and painfully modest young lady, who thought the ordinary mode of habiliment indecent, and wished to dress herself, always, by getting outside instead of inside of her clothes. it is a thing very easily done, after all. you have only to do soand then sososoand then sososoand then sosoand then "mon dieu! ma'm'selle salsafette!" here cried a dozen voices at once. "what are you about?forbear!that is sufficient!we see, very plainly, how it is done!hold! hold!" and several persons were already leaping from their seats to withhold ma'm'selle salsafette from putting herself upon a par with the medicean venus, when the point was very effectually and suddenly accomplished by a series of loud screams, or yells, from some portion of the main body of the chateau. my nerves were very much affected, indeed, by these yells; but the rest of the company i really pitied. i never saw any set of reasonable people so thoroughly frightened in my life. they all grew as pale as so many corpses, and, shrinking within their seats, sat quivering and gibbering with terror, and listening for a repetition of the sound. it came againlouder and seemingly nearerand then a third time very loud, and then a fourth time with a vigor evidently diminished. at this apparent dying away of the noise, the spirits of the company were immediately regained, and all was life and anecdote as before. i now ventured to inquire the cause of the disturbance. "a mere bagtelle," said monsieur maillard. "we are used to these things, and care really very little about them. the lunatics, every now and then, get up a howl in concert; one starting another, as is sometimes the case with a bevy of dogs at night. it occasionally happens, however, that the concerto yells are succeeded by a simultaneous effort at breaking loose, when, of course, some little danger is to be apprehended." "and how many have you in charge?" "at present we have not more than ten, altogether." "principally females, i presume?" "oh, noevery one of them men, and stout fellows, too, i can tell you." "indeed! i have always understood that the majority of lunatics were of the gentler sex." "it is generally so, but not always. some time ago, there were about twenty-seven patients here; and, of that number, no less than eighteen were women; but, lately, matters have changed very much, as you see." "yeshave changed very much, as you see," here interrupted the gentleman who had broken the shins of ma'm'selle laplace. "yeshave changed very much, as you see!" chimed in the whole company at once. "hold your tongues, every one of you!" said my host, in a great rage. whereupon the whole company maintained a dead silence for nearly a minute. as for one lady, she obeyed monsieur maillard to the letter, and thrusting out her tongue, which was an excessively long one, held it very resignedly, with both hands, until the end of the entertainment. "and this gentlewoman," said i, to monsieur maillard, bending over and addressing him in a whisper"this good lady who has just spoken, and who gives us the cock-a-doodle-de-dooshe, i presume, is harmlessquite harmless, eh?" "harmless!" ejaculated he, in unfeigned surprise, "whywhy, what can you mean?" "only slightly touched?" said i, touching my head. "i take it for granted that she is not particularly not dangerously affected, eh?" "mon dieu! what is it you imagine? this lady, my particular old friend madame joyeuse, is as absolutely sane as myself. she has her little eccentricities, to be surebut then, you know, all old womenall very old womenare more or less eccentric!" "to be sure," said i,"to be sureand then the rest of these ladies and gentlemen-" "are my friends and keepers," interupted monsieur maillard, drawing himself up with hauteur,"my very good friends and assistants." "what! all of them?" i asked,"the women and all?" "assuredly," he said,"we could not do at all without the women; they are the best lunatic nurses in the world; they have a way of their own, you know; their bright eyes have a marvellous effect;something like the fascination of the snake, you know." "to be sure," said i,"to be sure! they behave a little odd, eh?they are a little queer, eh?don't you think so?" "odd!queer!why, do you really think so? we are not very prudish, to be sure, here in the southdo pretty much as we pleaseenjoy life, and all that sort of thing, you know-" "to be sure," said i,"to be sure." and then, perhaps, this clos de vougeot is a little heady, you knowa little strongyou understand, eh?" "to be sure," said i,"to be sure. by the bye, monsieur, did i understand you to say that the system you have adopted, in place of the celebrated soothing system, was one of very rigorous severity?" "by no means. our confinement is necessarily close; but the treatmentthe medical treatment, i meanis rather agreeable to the patients than otherwise." "and the new system is one of your own invention?" "not altogether. some portions of it are referable to professor tarr, of whom you have, necessarily, heard; and, again, there are modifications in my plan which i am happy to acknowledge as belonging of right to the celebrated fether, with whom, if i mistake not, you have the honor of an intimate acquaintance." "i am quite ashamed to confess," i replied, "that i have never even heard the names of either gentleman before." "good heavens!" ejaculated my host, drawing back his chair abruptly, and uplifting his hands. "i surely do not hear you aright! you did not intend to say, eh? that you had never heard either of the learned doctor tarr, or of the celebrated professor fether?" "i am forced to acknowledge my ignorance," i replied; "but the truth should be held inviolate above all things. nevertheless, i feel humbled to the dust, not to be acquainted with the works of these, no doubt, extraordinary men. i will seek out their writings forthwith, and peruse them with deliberate care. monsieur maillard, you have reallyi must confess ityou have reallymade me ashamed of myself!" and this was the fact. "say no more, my good young friend," he said kindly, pressing my hand,"join me now in a glass of sauterne." we drank. the company followed our example without stint. they chattedthey jestedthey laughedthey perpetrated a thousand absurditiesthe fiddles shriekedthe drum row-de-dowedthe trombones bellowed like so many brazen bulls of phalarisand the whole scene, growing gradually worse and worse, as the wines gained the ascendancy, became at length a sort of pandemonium in petto. in the meantime, monsieur maillard and myself, with some bottles of sauterne and vougeot between us, continued our conversation at the top of the voice. a word spoken in an ordinary key stood no more chance of being heard than the voice of a fish from the bottom of niagra falls. "and, sir," said i, screaming in his ear, "you mentioned something before dinner about the danger incurred in the old system of soothing. how is that?" "yes," he replied, "there was, occasionally, very great danger indeed. there is no accounting for the caprices of madmen; and, in my opinion as well as in that of dr. tarr and professor fether, it is never safe to permit them to run at large unattended. a lunatic may be 'soothed,' as it is called, for a time, but, in the end, he is very apt to become obstreperous. his cunning, too, is proverbial and great. if he has a project in view, he conceals his design with a marvellous wisdom; and the dexterity with which he counterfeits sanity, presents, to the metaphysician, one of the most singular problems in the study of mind. when a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straitjacket." "but the danger, my dear sir, of which you were speaking, in your own experienceduring your control of this househave you had practical reason to think liberty hazardous in the case of a lunatic?" "here?in my own experience?why, i may say, yes. for example:no very long while ago, a singular circumstance occurred in this very house. the 'soothing system,' you know, was then in operation, and the patients were at large. they behaved remarkably well-especially so, any one of sense might have known that some devilish scheme was brewing from that particular fact, that the fellows behaved so remarkably well. and, sure enough, one fine morning the keepers found themselves pinioned hand and foot, and thrown into the cells, where they were attended, as if they were the lunatics, by the lunatics themselves, who had usurped the offices of the keepers." "you don't tell me so! i never heard of any thing so absurd in my life!" "factit all came to pass by means of a stupid fellowa lunaticwho, by some means, had taken it into his head that he had invented a better system of government than any ever heard of beforeof lunatic government, i mean. he wished to give his invention a trial, i suppose, and so he persuaded the rest of the patients to join him in a conspiracy for the overthrow of the reigning powers." "and he really succeeded?" "no doubt of it. the keepers and kept were soon made to exchange places. not that exactly eitherfor the madmen had been free, but the keepers were shut up in cells forthwith, and treated, i am sorry to say, in a very cavalier manner." "but i presume a counter-revolution was soon effected. this condition of things could not have long existed. the country people in the neighborhood-visitors coming to see the establishmentwould have given the alarm." "there you are out. the head rebel was too cunning for that. he admitted no visitors at allwith the exception, one day, of a very stupid-looking young gentleman of whom he had no reason to be afraid. he let him in to see the placejust by way of variety,to have a little fun with him. as soon as he had gammoned him sufficiently, he let him out, and sent him about his business." "and how long, then, did the madmen reign?" "oh, a very long time, indeeda month certainlyhow much longer i can't precisely say. in the meantime, the lunatics had a jolly season of itthat you may swear. they doffed their own shabby clothes, and made free with the family wardrobe and jewels. the cellars of the chateau were well stocked with wine; and these madmen are just the devils that know how to drink it. they lived well, i can tell you." "and the treatmentwhat was the particular species of treatment which the leader of the rebels put into operation?" "why, as for that, a madman is not necessarily a fool, as i have already observed; and it is my honest opinion that his treatment was a much better treatment than that which it superseded. it was a very capital system indeedsimpleneatno trouble at allin fact it was delicious it was here my host's observations were cut short by another series of yells, of the same character as those which had previously disconcerted us. this time, however, they seemed to proceed from persons rapidly approaching. "gracious heavens!" i ejaculated"the lunatics have most undoubtedly broken loose." "i very much fear it is so," replied monsieur maillard, now becoming excessively pale. he had scarcely finished the sentence, before loud shouts and imprecations were heard beneath the windows; and, immediately afterward, it became evident that some persons outside were endeavoring to gain entrance into the room. the door was beaten with what appeared to be a sledge-hammer, and the shutters were wrenched and shaken with prodigious violence. a scene of the most terrible confusion ensued. monsieur maillard, to my excessive astonishment threw himself under the side-board. i had expected more resolution at his hands. the members of the orchestra, who, for the last fifteen minutes, had been seemingly too much intoxicated to do duty, now sprang all at once to their feet and to their instruments, and, scrambling upon their table, broke out, with one accord, into, "yankee doodle," which they performed, if not exactly in tune, at least with an energy superhuman, during the whole of the uproar. meantime, upon the main dining-table, among the bottles and glasses, leaped the gentleman who, with such difficulty, had been restrained from leaping there before. as soon as he fairly settled himself, he commenced an oration, which, no doubt, was a very capital one, if it could only have been heard. at the same moment, the man with the teetotum predilection, set himself to spinning around the apartment, with immense energy, and with arms outstretched at right angles with his body; so that he had all the air of a tee-totum in fact, and knocked everybody down that happened to get in his way. and now, too, hearing an incredible popping and fizzing of champagne, i discovered at length, that it proceeded from the person who performed the bottle of that delicate drink during dinner. and then, again, the frog-man croaked away as if the salvation of his soul depended upon every note that he uttered. and, in the midst of all this, the continuous braying of a donkey arose over all. as for my old friend, madame joyeuse, i really could have wept for the poor lady, she appeared so terribly perplexed. all she did, however, was to stand up in a corner, by the fireplace, and sing out incessantly at the top of her voice, "cock-a-doodle-de-dooooooh!" and now came the climaxthe catastrophe of the drama. as no resistance, beyond whooping and yelling and cock-a-doodling, was offered to the encroachments of the party without, the ten windows were very speedily, and almost simultaneously, broken in. but i shall never forget the emotions of wonder and horror with which i gazed, when, leaping through these windows, and down among us pele-mele, fighting, stamping, scratching, and howling, there rushed a perfect army of what i took to be chimpanzees, ourang-outangs, or big black baboons of the cape of good hope. i received a terrible beatingafter which i rolled under a sofa and lay still. after lying there some fifteen minutes, during which time i listened with all my ears to what was going on in the room, i came to same satisfactory denouement of this tragedy. monsieur maillard, it appeared, in giving me the account of the lunatic who had excited his fellows to rebellion, had been merely relating his own exploits. this gentleman had, indeed, some two or three years before, been the superintendent of the establishment, but grew crazy himself, and so became a patient. this fact was unknown to the travelling companion who introduced me. the keepers, ten in number, having been suddenly overpowered, were first well tarred, thencarefully feathered, and then shut up in underground cells. they had been so imprisoned for more than a month, during which period monsieur maillard had generously allowed them not only the tar and feathers (which constituted his "system"), but some bread and abundance of water. the latter was pumped on them daily. at length, one escaping through a sewer, gave freedom to all the rest. the "soothing system," with important modifications, has been resumed at the chateau; yet i cannot help agreeing with monsieur maillard, that his own "treatment" was a very capital one of its kind. as he justly observed, it was "simpleneatand gave no trouble at allnot the least." i have only to add that, although i have searched every library in europe for the works of doctor tarr and professor fether, i have, up to the present day, utterly failed in my endeavors at procuring an edition. the end . internet wiretap edition of tom sawyer abroad by mark twain from "the writings of mark twain, volume xx" copyright 1903, samuel clemens. this text is placed in the public domain, may 1993. electronic edition by <dell@wiretap.spies.com> tom sawyer abroad chapter i. tom seeks new adventures do you reckon tom sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? i mean the adventures we had down the river, and the time we set the darky jim free and tom got shot in the leg. no, he wasn't. it only just p'isoned him for more. that was all the effect it had. you see, when we three came back up the river in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and the village received us with a torchlight procession and speeches, and everybody hurrah'd and shouted, it made us heroes, and that was what tom sawyer had always been hankering to be. for a while he was satisfied. everybody made much of him, and he tilted up his nose and stepped around the town as though he owned it. some called him tom sawyer the traveler, and that just swelled him up fit to bust. you see he laid over me and jim considerable, because we only went down the river on a raft and came back by the steamboat, but tom went by the steamboat both ways. the boys envied me and jim a good deal, but land! they just knuckled to the dirt before tom. well, i don't know; maybe he might have been satisfied if it hadn't been for old nat parsons, which was postmaster, and powerful long and slim, and kind o' good-hearted and silly, and bald-headed, on account of his age, and about the talkiest old cretur i ever see. for as much as thirty years he'd been the only man in the village that had a reputation -i mean a reputation for being a traveler, and of course he was mortal proud of it, and it was reckoned that in the course of that thirty years he had told about that journey over a million times and enjoyed it every time. and now comes along a boy not quite fifteen, and sets everybody admiring and gawking over his travels, and it just give the poor old man the high strikes. it made him sick to listen to tom, and to hear the people say "my land!" "did you ever!" "my goodness sakes alive!" and all such things; but he couldn't pull away from it, any more than a fly that's got its hind leg fast in the molasses. and always when tom come to a rest, the poor old cretur would chip in on his same old travels and work them for all they were worth; but they were pretty faded, and didn't go for much, and it was pitiful to see. and then tom would take another innings, and then the old man again -and so on, and so on, for an hour and more, each trying to beat out the other. you see, parsons' travels happened like this: when he first got to be postmaster and was green in the business, there come a letter for somebody he didn't know, and there wasn't any such person in the village. well, he didn't know what to do, nor how to act, and there the letter stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of it gave him a conniption. the postage wasn't paid on it, and that was another thing to worry about. there wasn't any way to collect that ten cents, and he reckon'd the gov'ment would hold him responsible for it and maybe turn him out besides, when they found he hadn't collected it. well, at last he couldn't stand it any longer. he couldn't sleep nights, he couldn't eat, he was thinned down to a shadder, yet he da'sn't ask anybody's advice, for the very person he asked for advice might go back on him and let the gov'ment know about the letter. he had the letter buried under the floor, but that did no good; if he happened to see a person standing over the place it'd give him the cold shivers, and loaded him up with suspicions, and he would sit up that night till the town was still and dark, and then he would sneak there and get it out and bury it in another place. of course, people got to avoiding him and shaking their heads and whispering, because, the way he was looking and acting, they judged he had killed somebody or done something terrible, they didn't know what, and if he had been a stranger they would've lynched him. well, as i was saying, it got so he couldn't stand it any longer; so he made up his mind to pull out for washington, and just go to the president of the united states and make a clean breast of the whole thing, not keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay it before the whole gov'ment, and say, "now, there she is -do with me what you're a mind to; though as heaven is my judge i am an innocent man and not deserving of the full penalties of the law and leaving behind me a family that must starve and yet hadn't had a thing to do with it, which is the whole truth and i can swear to it." so he did it. he had a little wee bit of steamboating, and some stage-coaching, but all the rest of the way was horseback, and it took him three weeks to get to washington. he saw lots of land and lots of villages and four cities. he was gone 'most eight weeks, and there never was such a proud man in the village as he when he got back. his travels made him the greatest man in all that region, and the most talked about; and people come from as much as thirty miles back in the country, and from over in the illinois bottoms, too, just to look at him -and there they'd stand and gawk, and he'd gabble. you never see anything like it. well, there wasn't any way now to settle which was the greatest traveler; some said it was nat, some said it was tom. everybody allowed that nat had seen the most longitude, but they had to give in that whatever tom was short in longitude he had made up in latitude and climate. it was about a stand-off; so both of them had to whoop up their dangerous adventures, and try to get ahead that way. that bullet-wound in tom's leg was a tough thing for nat parsons to buck against, but he bucked the best he could; and at a disadvantage, too, for tom didn't set still as he'd orter done, to be fair, but always got up and sauntered around and worked his limp while nat was painting up the adventure that he had in washington; for tom never let go that limp when his leg got well, but practiced it nights at home, and kept it good as new right along. nat's adventure was like this; i don't know how true it is; maybe he got it out of a paper, or somewhere, but i will say this for him, that he did know how to tell it. he could make anybody's flesh crawl, and he'd turn pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes women and girls got so faint they couldn't stick it out. well, it was this way, as near as i can remember: he come a-loping into washington, and put up his horse and shoved out to the president's house with his letter, and they told him the president was up to the capitol, and just going to start for philadelphia -not a minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. nat 'most dropped, it made him so sick. his horse was put up, and he didn't know what to do. but just then along comes a darky driving an old ramshackly hack, and he see his chance. he rushes out and shouts: "a half a dollar if you git me to the capitol in half an hour, and a quarter extra if you do it in twenty minutes!" "done!" says the darky. nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went a-ripping and a-tearing over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of it was something awful. nat passed his arms through the loops and hung on for life and death, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew up in the air, and the bottom fell out, and when it come down nat's feet was on the ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger if he couldn't keep up with the hack. he was horrible scared, but he laid into his work for all he was worth, and hung tight to the arm-loops and made his legs fairly fly. he yelled and shouted to the driver to stop, and so did the crowds along the street, for they could see his legs spinning along under the coach, and his head and shoulders bobbing inside through the windows, and he was in awful danger; but the more they all shouted the more the nigger whooped and yelled and lashed the horses and shouted, "don't you fret, i'se gwine to git you dah in time, boss; i's gwine to do it, sho'!" for you see he thought they were all hurrying him up, and, of course, he couldn't hear anything for the racket he was making. and so they went ripping along, and everybody just petrified to see it; and when they got to the capitol at last it was the quickest trip that ever was made, and everybody said so. the horses laid down, and nat dropped, all tuckered out, and he was all dust and rags and barefooted; but he was in time and just in time, and caught the president and give him the letter, and everything was all right, and the president give him a free pardon on the spot, and nat give the nigger two extra quarters instead of one, because he could see that if he hadn't had the hack he wouldn't'a' got there in time, nor anywhere near it. it was a powerful good adventure, and tom sawyer had to work his bullet-wound mighty lively to hold his own against it. well, by and by tom's glory got to paling down gradu'ly, on account of other things turning up for the people to talk about -first a horse-race, and on top of that a house afire, and on top of that the circus, and on top of that the eclipse; and that started a revival, same as it always does, and by that time there wasn't any more talk about tom, so to speak, and you never see a person so sick and disgusted. pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right along day in and day out, and when i asked him what was he in such a state about, he said it 'most broke his heart to think how time was slipping away, and him getting older and older, and no wars breaking out and no way of making a name for himself that he could see. now that is the way boys is always thinking, but he was the first one i ever heard come out and say it. so then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated; and pretty soon he struck it, and offered to take me and jim in. tom sawyer was always free and generous that way. there's a-plenty of boys that's mighty good and friendly when you've got a good thing, but when a good thing happens to come their way they don't say a word to you, and try to hog it all. that warn't ever tom sawyer's way, i can say that for him. there's plenty of boys that will come hankering and groveling around you when you've got an apple and beg the core off of you; but when they've got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a core one time, they say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going to be no core. but i notice they always git come up with; all you got to do is to wait. well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and tom told us what it was. it was a crusade. "what's a crusade?" i says. he looked scornful, the way he's always done when he was ashamed of a person, and says: "huck finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is?" "no," says i, "i don't. and i don't care to, nuther. i've lived till now and done without it, and had my health, too. but as soon as you tell me, i'll know, and that's soon enough. i don't see any use in finding out things and clogging up my head with them when i mayn't ever have any occasion to use 'em. there was lance williams, he learned how to talk choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. now, then, what's a crusade? but i can tell you one thing before you begin; if it's a patent-right, there's no money in it. bill thompson he --" "patent-right!" says he. "i never see such an idiot. why, a crusade is a kind of war." i thought he must be losing his mind. but no, he was in real earnest, and went right on, perfectly ca'm. "a crusade is a war to recover the holy land from the paynim." "which holy land?" "why, the holy land -there ain't but one." "what do we want of it?" "why, can't you understand? it's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our duty to take it away from them." "how did we come to let them git hold of it?" "we didn't come to let them git hold of it. they always had it." "why, tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?" "why of course it does. who said it didn't?" i studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way. i says: "it's too many for me, tom sawyer. if i had a farm and it was mine, and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to --" "oh, shucks! you don't know enough to come in when it rains, huck finn. it ain't a farm, it's entirely different. you see, it's like this. they own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they do own; but it was our folks, our jews and christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. it's a shame, and we ought not to stand it a minute. we ought to march against them and take it away from them." "why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing i ever see! now, if i had a farm and another person --" "don't i tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? farming is business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all you can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally different." "religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?" "certainly; it's always been considered so." jim he shook his head, and says: "mars tom, i reckon dey's a mistake about it somers -dey mos' sholy is. i's religious myself, en i knows plenty religious people, but i hain't run across none dat acts like dat." it made tom hot, and he says: "well, it's enough to make a body sick, such mullet-headed ignorance! if either of you'd read anything about history, you'd know that richard cur de loon, and the pope, and godfrey de bulleyn, and lots more of the most noble-hearted and pious people in the world, hacked and hammered at the paynims for more than two hundred years trying to take their land away from them, and swum neck-deep in blood the whole time -and yet here's a couple of sap-headed country yahoos out in the backwoods of missouri setting themselves up to know more about the rights and wrongs of it than they did! talk about cheek!" well, of course, that put a more different light on it, and me and jim felt pretty cheap and ignorant, and wished we hadn't been quite so chipper. i couldn't say nothing, and jim he couldn't for a while; then he says: "well, den, i reckon it's all right; beca'se ef dey didn't know, dey ain't no use for po' ignorant folks like us to be trying to know; en so, ef it's our duty, we got to go en tackle it en do de bes' we can. same time, i feel as sorry for dem paynims as mars tom. de hard part gwine to be to kill folks dat a body hain't been 'quainted wid and dat hain't done him no harm. dat's it, you see. ef we wuz to go 'mongst 'em, jist we three, en say we's hungry, en ast 'em for a bite to eat, why, maybe dey's jist like yuther people. don't you reckon dey is? why, dey'd give it, i know dey would, en den --" "then what?" "well, mars tom, my idea is like dis. it ain't no use, we can't kill dem po' strangers dat ain't doin' us no harm, till we've had practice -i knows it perfectly well, mars tom -'deed i knows it perfectly well. but ef we takes a' axe or two, jist you en me en huck, en slips acrost de river to-night arter de moon's gone down, en kills dat sick fam'ly dat's over on the sny, en burns dey house down, en --" "oh, you make me tired!" says tom. "i don't want to argue any more with people like you and huck finn, that's always wandering from the subject, and ain't got any more sense than to try to reason out a thing that's pure theology by the laws that protect real estate!" now that's just where tom sawyer warn't fair. jim didn't mean no harm, and i didn't mean no harm. we knowed well enough that he was right and we was wrong, and all we was after was to get at the how of it, and that was all; and the only reason he couldn't explain it so we could understand it was because we was ignorant -yes, and pretty dull, too, i ain't denying that; but, land! that ain't no crime, i should think. but he wouldn't hear no more about it -just said if we had tackled the thing in the proper spirit, he would 'a' raised a couple of thousand knights and put them in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a lieutenant and jim a sutler, and took the command himself and brushed the whole paynim outfit into the sea like flies and come back across the world in a glory like sunset. but he said we didn't know enough to take the chance when we had it, and he wouldn't ever offer it again. and he didn't. when he once got set, you couldn't budge him. but i didn't care much. i am peaceable, and don't get up rows with people that ain't doing nothing to me. i allowed if the paynim was satisfied i was, and we would let it stand at that. now tom he got all that notion out of walter scott's book, which he was always reading. and it was a wild notion, because in my opinion he never could've raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would've got licked. i took the book and read all about it, and as near as i could make it out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a mighty rocky time of it. chapter ii. the balloon ascension well, tom got up one thing after another, but they all had tender spots about 'em somewheres, and he had to shove 'em aside. so at last he was about in despair. then the st. louis papers begun to talk a good deal about the balloon that was going to sail to europe, and tom sort of thought he wanted to go down and see what it looked like, but couldn't make up his mind. but the papers went on talking, and so he allowed that maybe if he didn't go he mightn't ever have another chance to see a balloon; and next, he found out that nat parsons was going down to see it, and that decided him, of course. he wasn't going to have nat parsons coming back bragging about seeing the balloon, and him having to listen to it and keep quiet. so he wanted me and jim to go too, and we went. it was a noble big balloon, and had wings and fans and all sorts of things, and wasn't like any balloon you see in pictures. it was away out toward the edge of town, in a vacant lot, corner of twelfth street; and there was a big crowd around it, making fun of it, and making fun of the man, -a lean pale feller with that soft kind of moonlight in his eyes, you know, -and they kept saying it wouldn't go. it made him hot to hear them, and he would turn on them and shake his fist and say they was animals and blind, but some day they would find they had stood face to face with one of the men that lifts up nations and makes civilizations, and was too dull to know it; and right here on this spot their own children and grandchildren would build a monument to him that would outlast a thousand years, but his name would outlast the monument. and then the crowd would burst out in a laugh again, and yell at him, and ask him what was his name before he was married, and what he would take to not do it, and what was his sister's cat's grandmother's name, and all the things that a crowd says when they've got hold of a feller that they see they can plague. well, some things they said was funny, -yes, and mighty witty too, i ain't denying that, -but all the same it warn't fair nor brave, all them people pitching on one, and they so glib and sharp, and him without any gift of talk to answer back with. but, good land! what did he want to sass back for? you see, it couldn't do him no good, and it was just nuts for them. they had him, you know. but that was his way. i reckon he couldn't help it; he was made so, i judge. he was a good enough sort of cretur, and hadn't no harm in him, and was just a genius, as the papers said, which wasn't his fault. we can't all be sound: we've got to be the way we're made. as near as i can make out, geniuses think they know it all, and so they won't take people's advice, but always go their own way, which makes everybody forsake them and despise them, and that is perfectly natural. if they was humbler, and listened and tried to learn, it would be better for them. the part the professor was in was like a boat, and was big and roomy, and had water-tight lockers around the inside to keep all sorts of things in, and a body could sit on them, and make beds on them, too. we went aboard, and there was twenty people there, snooping around and examining, and old nat parsons was there, too. the professor kept fussing around getting ready, and the people went ashore, drifting out one at a time, and old nat he was the last. of course it wouldn't do to let him go out behind us. we mustn't budge till he was gone, so we could be last ourselves. but he was gone now, so it was time for us to follow. i heard a big shout, and turned around -the city was dropping from under us like a shot! it made me sick all through, i was so scared. jim turned gray and couldn't say a word, and tom didn't say nothing, but looked excited. the city went on dropping down, and down, and down; but we didn't seem to be doing nothing but just hang in the air and stand still. the houses got smaller and smaller, and the city pulled itself together, closer and closer, and the men and wagons got to looking like ants and bugs crawling around, and the streets like threads and cracks; and then it all kind of melted together, and there wasn't any city any more it was only a big scar on the earth, and it seemed to me a body could see up the river and down the river about a thousand miles, though of course it wasn't so much. by and by the earth was a ball -just a round ball, of a dull color, with shiny stripes wriggling and winding around over it, which was rivers. the widder douglas always told me the earth was round like a ball, but i never took any stock in a lot of them superstitions o' hers, and of course i paid no attention to that one, because i could see myself that the world was the shape of a plate, and flat. i used to go up on the hill, and take a look around and prove it for myself, because i reckon the best way to get a sure thing on a fact is to go and examine for yourself, and not take anybody's say-so. but i had to give in now that the widder was right. that is, she was right as to the rest of the world, but she warn't right about the part our village is in; that part is the shape of a plate, and flat, i take my oath! the professor had been quiet all this time, as if he was asleep; but he broke loose now, and he was mighty bitter. he says something like this: "idiots! they said it wouldn't go; and they wanted to examine it, and spy around and get the secret of it out of me. but i beat them. nobody knows the secret but me. nobody knows what makes it move but me; and it's a new power -a new power, and a thousand times the strongest in the earth! steam's foolishness to it! they said i couldn't go to europe. to europe! why, there's power aboard to last five years, and feed for three months. they are fools! what do they know about it? yes, and they said my air-ship was flimsy. why, she's good for fifty years! i can sail the skies all my life if i want to, and steer where i please, though they laughed at that, and said i couldn't. couldn't steer! come here, boy; we'll see. you press these buttons as i tell you." he made tom steer the ship all about and every which way, and learnt him the whole thing in nearly no time; and tom said it was perfectly easy. he made him fetch the ship down 'most to the earth, and had him spin her along so close to the illinois prairies that a body could talk to the farmers, and hear everything they said perfectly plain; and he flung out printed bills to them that told about the balloon, and said it was going to europe. tom got so he could steer straight for a tree till he got nearly to it, and then dart up and skin right along over the top of it. yes, and he showed tom how to land her; and he done it first-rate, too, and set her down in the prairies as soft as wool. but the minute we started to skip out the professor says, "no, you don't!" and shot her up in the air again. it was awful. i begun to beg, and so did jim; but it only give his temper a rise, and he begun to rage around and look wild out of his eyes, and i was scared of him. well, then he got on to his troubles again, and mourned and grumbled about the way he was treated, and couldn't seem to git over it, and especially people's saying his ship was flimsy. he scoffed at that, and at their saying she warn't simple and would be always getting out of order. get out of order! that graveled him; he said that she couldn't any more get out of order than the solar sister. he got worse and worse, and i never see a person take on so. it give me the cold shivers to see him, and so it did jim. by and by he got to yelling and screaming, and then he swore the world shouldn't ever have his secret at all now, it had treated him so mean. he said he would sail his balloon around the globe just to show what he could do, and then he would sink it in the sea, and sink us all along with it, too. well, it was the awfulest fix to be in, and here was night coming on! he give us something to eat, and made us go to the other end of the boat, and he laid down on a locker, where he could boss all the works, and put his old pepper-box revolver under his head, and said if anybody come fooling around there trying to land her, he would kill him. we set scrunched up together, and thought considerable, but didn't say much -only just a word once in a while when a body had to say something or bust, we was so scared and worried. the night dragged along slow and lonesome. we was pretty low down, and the moonshine made everything soft and pretty, and the farmhouses looked snug and homeful, and we could hear the farm sounds, and wished we could be down there; but, laws! we just slipped along over them like a ghost, and never left a track. away in the night, when all the sounds was late sounds, and the air had a late feel, and a late smell, too -about a two-o'clock feel, as near as i could make out -tom said the professor was so quiet this time he must be asleep, and we'd better -"better what?" i says in a whisper, and feeling sick all over, because i knowed what he was thinking about. "better slip back there and tie him, and land the ship," he says. i says: "no, sir! don' you budge, tom sawyer." and jim -well, jim was kind o' gasping, he was so scared. he says: "oh, mars tom, don't! ef you teches him, we's gone -we's gone sho'! i ain't gwine anear him, not for nothin' in dis worl'. mars tom, he's plumb crazy." tom whispers and says -"that's why we've got to do something. if he wasn't crazy i wouldn't give shucks to be anywhere but here; you couldn't hire me to get out -now that i've got used to this balloon and over the scare of being cut loose from the solid ground -if he was in his right mind. but it's no good politics, sailing around like this with a person that's out of his head, and says he's going round the world and then drown us all. we've got to do something, i tell you, and do it before he wakes up, too, or we mayn't ever get another chance. come!" but it made us turn cold and creepy just to think of it, and we said we wouldn't budge. so tom was for slipping back there by himself to see if he couldn't get at the steering-gear and land the ship. we begged and begged him not to, but it warn't no use; so he got down on his hands and knees, and begun to crawl an inch at a time, we a-holding our breath and watching. after he got to the middle of the boat he crept slower than ever, and it did seem like years to me. but at last we see him get to the professor's head, and sort of raise up soft and look a good spell in his face and listen. then we see him begin to inch along again toward the professor's feet where the steering-buttons was. well, he got there all safe, and was reaching slow and steady toward the buttons, but he knocked down something that made a noise, and we see him slump down flat an' soft in the bottom, and lay still. the professor stirred, and says, "what's that?" but everybody kept dead still and quiet, and he begun to mutter and mumble and nestle, like a person that's going to wake up, and i thought i was going to die, i was so worried and scared. then a cloud slid over the moon, and i 'most cried, i was so glad. she buried herself deeper and deeper into the cloud, and it got so dark we couldn't see tom. then it began to sprinkle rain, and we could hear the professor fussing at his ropes and things and abusing the weather. we was afraid every minute he would touch tom, and then we would be goners, and no help; but tom was already on his way back, and when we felt his hands on our knees my breath stopped sudden, and my heart fell down 'mongst my other works, because i couldn't tell in the dark but it might be the professor! which i thought it was. dear! i was so glad to have him back that i was just as near happy as a person could be that was up in the air that way with a deranged man. you can't land a balloon in the dark, and so i hoped it would keep on raining, for i didn't want tom to go meddling any more and make us so awful uncomfortable. well, i got my wish. it drizzled and drizzled along the rest of the night, which wasn't long, though it did seem so; and at daybreak it cleared, and the world looked mighty soft and gray and pretty, and the forests and fields so good to see again, and the horses and cattle standing sober and thinking. next, the sun come ablazing up gay and splendid, and then we began to feel rusty and stretchy, and first we knowed we was all asleep. chapter iii. tom explains we went to sleep about four o'clock, and woke up about eight. the professor was setting back there at his end, looking glum. he pitched us some breakfast, but he told us not to come abaft the midship compass. that was about the middle of the boat. well, when you are sharp-set, and you eat and satisfy yourself, everything looks pretty different from what it done before. it makes a body feel pretty near comfortable, even when he is up in a balloon with a genius. we got to talking together. there was one thing that kept bothering me, and by and by i says: "tom, didn't we start east?" "yes." "how fast have we been going?" "well, you heard what the professor said when he was raging round. sometimes, he said, we was making fifty miles an hour, sometimes ninety, sometimes a hundred; said that with a gale to help he could make three hundred any time, and said if he wanted the gale, and wanted it blowing the right direction, he only had to go up higher or down lower to find it." "well, then, it's just as i reckoned. the professor lied." "why?" "because if we was going so fast we ought to be past illinois, oughtn't we?" "certainly." "well, we ain't." "what's the reason we ain't?" "i know by the color. we're right over illinois yet. and you can see for yourself that indiana ain't in sight." "i wonder what's the matter with you, huck. you know by the color?" "yes, of course i do." "what's the color got to do with it?" "it's got everything to do with it. illinois is green, indiana is pink. you show me any pink down here, if you can. no, sir; it's green." "indiana pink? why, what a lie!" "it ain't no lie; i've seen it on the map, and it's pink." you never see a person so aggravated and disgusted. he says: "well, if i was such a numbskull as you, huck finn, i would jump over. seen it on the map! huck finn, did you reckon the states was the same color out-of-doors as they are on the map?" "tom sawyer, what's a map for? ain't it to learn you facts?" "of course." "well, then, how's it going to do that if it tells lies? that's what i want to know." "shucks, you muggins! it don't tell lies." "it don't, don't it?" "no, it don't." "all right, then; if it don't, there ain't no two states the same color. you git around that if you can, tom sawyer." he see i had him, and jim see it too; and i tell you, i felt pretty good, for tom sawyer was always a hard person to git ahead of. jim slapped his leg and says: "i tell you! dat's smart, dat's right down smart. ain't no use, mars tom; he got you dis time, sho'!" he slapped his leg again, and says, "my lan', but it was smart one!" i never felt so good in my life; and yet i didn't know i was saying anything much till it was out. i was just mooning along, perfectly careless, and not expecting anything was going to happen, and never thinking of such a thing at all, when, all of a sudden, out it came. why, it was just as much a surprise to me as it was to any of them. it was just the same way it is when a person is munching along on a hunk of corn-pone, and not thinking about anything, and all of a sudden bites into a di'mond. now all that he knows first off is that it's some kind of gravel he's bit into; but he don't find out it's a di'mond till he gits it out and brushes off the sand and crumbs and one thing or another, and has a look at it, and then he's surprised and glad -yes, and proud too; though when you come to look the thing straight in the eye, he ain't entitled to as much credit as he would 'a' been if he'd been hunting di'monds. you can see the difference easy if you think it over. you see, an accident, that way, ain't fairly as big a thing as a thing that's done a-purpose. anybody could find that di'mond in that corn-pone; but mind you, it's got to be somebody that's got that kind of a corn-pone. that's where that feller's credit comes in, you see; and that's where mine comes in. i don't claim no great things -i don't reckon i could 'a' done it again -but i done it that time; that's all i claim. and i hadn't no more idea i could do such a thing, and warn't any more thinking about it or trying to, than you be this minute. why, i was just as ca'm, a body couldn't be any ca'mer, and yet, all of a sudden, out it come. i've often thought of that time, and i can remember just the way everything looked, same as if it was only last week. i can see it all: beautiful rolling country with woods and fields and lakes for hundreds and hundreds of miles all around, and towns and villages scattered everywheres under us, here and there and yonder; and the professor mooning over a chart on his little table, and tom's cap flopping in the rigging where it was hung up to dry. and one thing in particular was a bird right alongside, not ten foot off, going our way and trying to keep up, but losing ground all the time; and a railroad train doing the same thing down there, sliding among the trees and farms, and pouring out a long cloud of black smoke and now and then a little puff of white; and when the white was gone so long you had almost forgot it, you would hear a little faint toot, and that was the whistle. and we left the bird and the train both behind, 'way behind, and done it easy, too. but tom he was huffy, and said me and jim was a couple of ignorant blatherskites, and then he says: "suppose there's a brown calf and a big brown dog, and an artist is making a picture of them. what is the main thing that that artist has got to do? he has got to paint them so you can tell them apart the minute you look at them, hain't he? of course. well, then, do you want him to go and paint both of them brown? certainly you don't. he paints one of them blue, and then you can't make no mistake. it's just the same with the maps. that's why they make every state a different color; it ain't to deceive you, it's to keep you from deceiving yourself." but i couldn't see no argument about that, and neither could jim. jim shook his head, and says: "why, mars tom, if you knowed what chuckleheads dem painters is, you'd wait a long time before you'd fetch one er dem in to back up a fac'. i's gwine to tell you, den you kin see for you'self. i see one of 'em a-paintin' away, one day, down in ole hank wilson's back lot, en i went down to see, en he was paintin' dat old brindle cow wid de near horn gone -you knows de one i means. en i ast him what he's paintin' her for, en he say when he git her painted, de picture's wuth a hundred dollars. mars tom, he could a got de cow fer fifteen, en i tole him so. well, sah, if you'll b'lieve me, he jes' shuck his head, dat painter did, en went on a-dobbin'. bless you, mars tom, dey don't know nothin'." tom lost his temper. i notice a person 'most always does that's got laid out in an argument. he told us to shut up, and maybe we'd feel better. then he see a town clock away off down yonder, and he took up the glass and looked at it, and then looked at his silver turnip, and then at the clock, and then at the turnip again, and says: "that's funny! that clock's near about an hour fast." so he put up his turnip. then he see another clock, and took a look, and it was an hour fast too. that puzzled him. "that's a mighty curious thing," he says. "i don't understand it." then he took the glass and hunted up another clock, and sure enough it was an hour fast too. then his eyes began to spread and his breath to come out kinder gaspy like, and he says: "ger-reat scott, it's the longitude!" i says, considerably scared: "well, what's been and gone and happened now?" "why, the thing that's happened is that this old bladder has slid over illinois and indiana and ohio like nothing, and this is the east end of pennsylvania or new york, or somewheres around there." "tom sawyer, you don't mean it!" "yes, i do, and it's dead sure. we've covered about fifteen degrees of longitude since we left st. louis yesterday afternoon, and them clocks are right. we've come close on to eight hundred miles." i didn't believe it, but it made the cold streaks trickle down my back just the same. in my experience i knowed it wouldn't take much short of two weeks to do it down the mississippi on a raft. jim was working his mind and studying. pretty soon he says: "mars tom, did you say dem clocks uz right?" "yes, they're right." "ain't yo' watch right, too?" "she's right for st. louis, but she's an hour wrong for here." "mars tom, is you tryin' to let on dat de time ain't de same everywheres?" "no, it ain't the same everywheres, by a long shot." jim looked distressed, and says: "it grieves me to hear you talk like dat, mars tom; i's right down ashamed to hear you talk like dat, arter de way you's been raised. yassir, it'd break yo' aunt polly's heart to hear you." tom was astonished. he looked jim over wondering, and didn't say nothing, and jim went on: "mars tom, who put de people out yonder in st. louis? de lord done it. who put de people here whar we is? de lord done it. ain' dey bofe his children? 'cose dey is. well, den! is he gwine to scriminate 'twixt 'em?" "scriminate! i never heard such ignorance. there ain't no discriminating about it. when he makes you and some more of his children black, and makes the rest of us white, what do you call that?" jim see the p'int. he was stuck. he couldn't answer. tom says: "he does discriminate, you see, when he wants to; but this case here ain't no discrimination of his, it's man's. the lord made the day, and he made the night; but he didn't invent the hours, and he didn't distribute them around. man did that." "mars tom, is dat so? man done it?" "certainly." "who tole him he could?" "nobody. he never asked." jim studied a minute, and says: "well, dat do beat me. i wouldn't 'a' tuck no sich resk. but some people ain't scared o' nothin'. dey bangs right ahead; dey don't care what happens. so den dey's allays an hour's diff'unce everywhah, mars tom?" "an hour? no! it's four minutes difference for every degree of longitude, you know. fifteen of 'em's an hour, thirty of 'em's two hours, and so on. when it's one clock tuesday morning in england, it's eight o'clock the night before in new york." jim moved a little way along the locker, and you could see he was insulted. he kept shaking his head and muttering, and so i slid along to him and patted him on the leg, and petted him up, and got him over the worst of his feelings, and then he says: "mars tom talkin' sich talk as dat! choosday in one place en monday in t'other, bofe in the same day! huck, dis ain't no place to joke -up here whah we is. two days in one day! how you gwine to get two days inter one day? can't git two hours inter one hour, kin you? can't git two niggers inter one nigger skin, kin you? can't git two gallons of whisky inter a one-gallon jug, kin you? no, sir, 'twould strain de jug. yes, en even den you couldn't, i don't believe. why, looky here, huck, s'posen de choosday was new year's -now den! is you gwine to tell me it's dis year in one place en las' year in t'other, bofe in de identical same minute? it's de beatenest rubbage! i can't stan' it -i can't stan' to hear tell 'bout it." then he begun to shiver and turn gray, and tom says: "now what's the matter? what's the trouble?" jim could hardly speak, but he says: "mars tom, you ain't jokin', en it's so?" "no, i'm not, and it is so." jim shivered again, and says: "den dat monday could be de las' day, en dey wouldn't be no las' day in england, en de dead wouldn't be called. we mustn't go over dah, mars tom. please git him to turn back; i wants to be whah --" all of a sudden we see something, and all jumped up, and forgot everything and begun to gaze. tom says: "ain't that the --" he catched his breath, then says: "it is, sure as you live! it's the ocean!" that made me and jim catch our breath, too. then we all stood petrified but happy, for none of us had ever seen an ocean, or ever expected to. tom kept muttering: "atlantic ocean -atlantic. land, don't it sound great! and that's it -and we are looking at it -we! why, it's just too splendid to believe!" then we see a big bank of black smoke; and when we got nearer, it was a city -and a monster she was, too, with a thick fringe of ships around one edge; and we wondered if it was new york, and begun to jaw and dispute about it, and, first we knowed, it slid from under us and went flying behind, and here we was, out over the very ocean itself, and going like a cyclone. then we woke up, i tell you! we made a break aft and raised a wail, and begun to beg the professor to turn back and land us, but he jerked out his pistol and motioned us back, and we went, but nobody will ever know how bad we felt. the land was gone, all but a little streak, like a snake, away off on the edge of the water, and down under us was just ocean, ocean, ocean -millions of miles of it, heaving and pitching and squirming, and white sprays blowing from the wave-tops, and only a few ships in sight, wallowing around and laying over, first on one side and then on t'other, and sticking their bows under and then their sterns; and before long there warn't no ships at all, and we had the sky and the whole ocean all to ourselves, and the roomiest place i ever see and the lonesomest. chapter iv. storm and it got lonesomer and lonesomer. there was the big sky up there, empty and awful deep; and the ocean down there without a thing on it but just the waves. all around us was a ring, where the sky and the water come together; yes, a monstrous big ring it was, and we right in the dead center of it -plumb in the center. we was racing along like a prairie fire, but it never made any difference, we couldn't seem to git past that center no way. i couldn't see that we ever gained an inch on that ring. it made a body feel creepy, it was so curious and unaccountable. well, everything was so awful still that we got to talking in a very low voice, and kept on getting creepier and lonesomer and less and less talky, till at last the talk ran dry altogether, and we just set there and "thunk," as jim calls it, and never said a word the longest time. the professor never stirred till the sun was overhead, then he stood up and put a kind of triangle to his eye, and tom said it was a sextant and he was taking the sun to see whereabouts the balloon was. then he ciphered a little and looked in a book, and then he begun to carry on again. he said lots of wild things, and, among others, he said he would keep up this hundred-mile gait till the middle of to-morrow afternoon, and then he'd land in london. we said we would be humbly thankful. he was turning away, but he whirled around when we said that, and give us a long look of his blackest kind -one of the maliciousest and suspiciousest looks i ever see. then he says: "you want to leave me. don't try to deny it." we didn't know what to say, so we held in and didn't say nothing at all. he went aft and set down, but he couldn't seem to git that thing out of his mind. every now and then he would rip out something about it, and try to make us answer him, but we dasn't. it got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it did seem to me i couldn't stand it. it was still worse when night begun to come on. by and by tom pinched me and whispers: "look!" i took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a whet out of a bottle. i didn't like the looks of that. by and by he took another drink, and pretty soon he begun to sing. it was dark now, and getting black and stormy. he went on singing, wilder and wilder, and the thunder begun to mutter, and the wind to wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether it was awful. it got so black we couldn't see him any more, and wished we couldn't hear him, but we could. then he got still; but he warn't still ten minutes till we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his noise again, so we could tell where he was. by and by there was a flash of lightning, and we see him start to get up, but he staggered and fell down. we heard him scream out in the dark: "they don't want to go to england. all right, i'll change the course. they want to leave me. i know they do. well, they shall -and now!" i 'most died when he said that. then he was still again -still so long i couldn't bear it, and it did seem to me the lightning wouldn't ever come again. but at last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on his hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us. my, but his eyes was terrible! he made a lunge for tom, and says, "overboard you go!" but it was already pitch-dark again, and i couldn't see whether he got him or not, and tom didn't make a sound. there was another long, horrible wait; then there was a flash, and i see tom's head sink down outside the boat and disappear. he was on the rope-ladder that dangled down in the air from the gunnel. the professor let off a shout and jumped for him, and straight off it was pitch-dark again, and jim groaned out, "po' mars tom, he's a goner!" and made a jump for the professor, but the professor warn't there. then we heard a couple of terrible screams, and then another not so loud, and then another that was 'way below, and you could only just hear it; and i heard jim say, "po' mars tom!" then it was awful still, and i reckon a person could 'a' counted four thousand before the next flash come. when it come i see jim on his knees, with his arms on the locker and his face buried in them, and he was crying. before i could look over the edge it was all dark again, and i was glad, because i didn't want to see. but when the next flash come, i was watching, and down there i see somebody a-swinging in the wind on the ladder, and it was tom! "come up!" i shouts; "come up, tom!" his voice was so weak, and the wind roared so, i couldn't make out what he said, but i thought he asked was the professor up there. i shouts: "no, he's down in the ocean! come up! can we help you?" of course, all this in the dark. "huck, who is you hollerin' at?" "i'm hollerin' at tom." "oh, huck, how kin you act so, when you know po' mars tom --" then he let off an awful scream, and flung his head and his arms back and let off another one, because there was a white glare just then, and he had raised up his face just in time to see tom's, as white as snow, rise above the gunnel and look him right in the eye. he thought it was tom's ghost, you see. tom clumb aboard, and when jim found it was him, and not his ghost, he hugged him, and called him all sorts of loving names, and carried on like he was gone crazy, he was so glad. says i: "what did you wait for, tom? why didn't you come up at first?" "i dasn't, huck. i knowed somebody plunged down past me, but i didn't know who it was in the dark. it could 'a' been you, it could 'a' been jim." that was the way with tom sawyer -always sound. he warn't coming up till he knowed where the professor was. the storm let go about this time with all its might; and it was dreadful the way the thunder boomed and tore, and the lightning glared out, and the wind sung and screamed in the rigging, and the rain come down. one second you couldn't see your hand before you, and the next you could count the threads in your coatsleeve, and see a whole wide desert of waves pitching and tossing through a kind of veil of rain. a storm like that is the loveliest thing there is, but it ain't at its best when you are up in the sky and lost, and it's wet and lonesome, and there's just been a death in the family. we set there huddled up in the bow, and talked low about the poor professor; and everybody was sorry for him, and sorry the world had made fun of him and treated him so harsh, when he was doing the best he could, and hadn't a friend nor nobody to encourage him and keep him from brooding his mind away and going deranged. there was plenty of clothes and blankets and everything at the other end, but we thought we'd ruther take the rain than go meddling back there. chapter v. land we tried to make some plans, but we couldn't come to no agreement. me and jim was for turning around and going back home, but tom allowed that by the time daylight come, so we could see our way, we would be so far toward england that we might as well go there, and come back in a ship, and have the glory of saying we done it. about midnight the storm quit and the moon come out and lit up the ocean, and we begun to feel comfortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on the lockers and went to sleep, and never woke up again till sun-up. the sea was sparkling like di'monds, and it was nice weather, and pretty soon our things was all dry again. we went aft to find some breakfast, and the first thing we noticed was that there was a dim light burning in a compass back there under a hood. then tom was disturbed. he says: "you know what that means, easy enough. it means that somebody has got to stay on watch and steer this thing the same as he would a ship, or she'll wander around and go wherever the wind wants her to." "well," i says, "what's she been doing since -er -since we had the accident?" "wandering," he says, kinder troubled --" wandering, without any doubt. she's in a wind now that's blowing her south of east. we don't know how long that's been going on, either." so then he p'inted her east, and said he would hold her there till we rousted out the breakfast. the professor had laid in everything a body could want; he couldn't 'a' been better fixed. there wasn't no milk for the coffee, but there was water, and everything else you could want, and a charcoal stove and the fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and matches; and wine and liquor, which warn't in our line; and books, and maps, and charts, and an accordion; and furs, and blankets, and no end of rubbish, like brass beads and brass jewelry, which tom said was a sure sign that he had an idea of visiting among savages. there was money, too. yes, the professor was well enough fixed. after breakfast tom learned me and jim how to steer, and divided us all up into four-hour watches, turn and turn about; and when his watch was out i took his place, and he got out the professor's papers and pens and wrote a letter home to his aunt polly, telling her everything that had happened to us, and dated it "in the welkin, approaching england," and folded it together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and directed it, and wrote above the direction, in big writing, "from tom sawyer, the erronort," and said it would stump old nat parsons, the postmaster, when it come along in the mail. i says: "tom sawyer, this ain't no welkin, it's a balloon." "well, now, who said it was a welkin, smarty?" "you've wrote it on the letter, anyway." "what of it? that don't mean that the balloon's the welkin." "oh, i thought it did. well, then, what is a welkin?" i see in a minute he was stuck. he raked and scraped around in his mind, but he couldn't find nothing, so he had to say: "i don't know, and nobody don't know. it's just a word, and it's a mighty good word, too. there ain't many that lays over it. i don't believe there's any that does." "shucks!" i says. "but what does it mean? -that's the p'int. " "i don't know what it means, i tell you. it's a word that people uses for -for -well, it's ornamental. they don't put ruffles on a shirt to keep a person warm, do they?" "course they don't." "but they put them on, don't they?" "yes." "all right, then; that letter i wrote is a shirt, and the welkin's the ruffle on it." i judged that that would gravel jim, and it did. "now, mars tom, it ain't no use to talk like dat; en, moreover, it's sinful. you knows a letter ain't no shirt, en dey ain't no ruffles on it, nuther. dey ain't no place to put 'em on; you can't put em on, and dey wouldn't stay ef you did." "oh do shut up, and wait till something's started that you know something about." "why, mars tom, sholy you can't mean to say i don't know about shirts, when, goodness knows, i's toted home de washin' ever sence --" "i tell you, this hasn't got anything to do with shirts. i only --" "why, mars tom, you said yo'self dat a letter --" "do you want to drive me crazy? keep still. i only used it as a metaphor." that word kinder bricked us up for a minute. then jim says -rather timid, because he see tom was getting pretty tetchy: "mars tom, what is a metaphor?" "a metaphor's a -well, it's a -a -a metaphor's an illustration." he see that didn't git home, so he tried again. "when i say birds of a feather flocks together, it's a metaphorical way of saying --" "but dey don't, mars tom. no, sir, 'deed dey don't. dey ain't no feathers dat's more alike den a bluebird en a jaybird, but ef you waits till you catches dem birds together, you'll --" "oh, give us a rest! you can't get the simplest little thing through your thick skull. now don't bother me any more." jim was satisfied to stop. he was dreadful pleased with himself for catching tom out. the minute tom begun to talk about birds i judged he was a goner, because jim knowed more about birds than both of us put together. you see, he had killed hundreds and hundreds of them, and that's the way to find out about birds. that's the way people does that writes books about birds, and loves them so that they'll go hungry and tired and take any amount of trouble to find a new bird and kill it. their name is ornithologers, and i could have been an ornithologer myself, because i always loved birds and creatures; and i started out to learn how to be one, and i see a bird setting on a limb of a high tree, singing with its head tilted back and its mouth open, and before i thought i fired, and his song stopped and he fell straight down from the limb, all limp like a rag, and i run and picked him up and he was dead, and his body was warm in my hand, and his head rolled about this way and that, like his neck was broke, and there was a little white skin over his eyes, and one little drop of blood on the side of his head; and, laws! i couldn't see nothing more for the tears; and i hain't never murdered no creature since that warn't doing me no harm, and i ain't going to. but i was aggravated about that welkin. i wanted to know. i got the subject up again, and then tom explained, the best he could. he said when a person made a big speech the newspapers said the shouts of the people made the welkin ring. he said they always said that, but none of them ever told what it was, so he allowed it just meant outdoors and up high. well, that seemed sensible enough, so i was satisfied, and said so. that pleased tom and put him in a good humor again, and he says: "well, it's all right, then; and we'll let bygones be bygones. i don't know for certain what a welkin is, but when we land in london we'll make it ring, anyway, and don't you forget it." he said an erronort was a person who sailed around in balloons; and said it was a mighty sight finer to be tom sawyer the erronort than to be tom sawyer the traveler, and we would be heard of all round the world, if we pulled through all right, and so he wouldn't give shucks to be a traveler now. toward the middle of the afternoon we got everything ready to land, and we felt pretty good, too, and proud; and we kept watching with the glasses, like columbus discovering america. but we couldn't see nothing but ocean. the afternoon wasted out and the sun shut down, and still there warn't no land anywheres. we wondered what was the matter, but reckoned it would come out all right, so we went on steering east, but went up on a higher level so we wouldn't hit any steeples or mountains in the dark. it was my watch till midnight, and then it was jim's; but tom stayed up, because he said ship captains done that when they was making the land, and didn't stand no regular watch. well, when daylight come, jim give a shout, and we jumped up and looked over, and there was the land sure enough -land all around, as far as you could see, and perfectly level and yaller. we didn't know how long we'd been over it. there warn't no trees, nor hills, nor rocks, nor towns, and tom and jim had took it for the sea. they took it for the sea in a dead ca'm; but we was so high up, anyway, that if it had been the sea and rough, it would 'a' looked smooth, all the same, in the night, that way. we was all in a powerful excitement now, and grabbed the glasses and hunted everywheres for london, but couldn't find hair nor hide of it, nor any other settlement -nor any sign of a lake or a river, either. tom was clean beat. he said it warn't his notion of england; he thought england looked like america, and always had that idea. so he said we better have breakfast, and then drop down and inquire the quickest way to london. we cut the breakfast pretty short, we was so impatient. as we slanted along down, the weather began to moderate, and pretty soon we shed our furs. but it kept on moderating, and in a precious little while it was 'most too moderate. we was close down now, and just blistering! we settled down to within thirty foot of the land -that is, it was land if sand is land; for this wasn't anything but pure sand. tom and me clumb down the ladder and took a run to stretch our legs, and it felt amazing good -that is, the stretching did, but the sand scorched our feet like hot embers. next, we see somebody coming, and started to meet him; but we heard jim shout, and looked around and he was fairly dancing, and making signs, and yelling. we couldn't make out what he said, but we was scared anyway, and begun to heel it back to the balloon. when we got close enough, we understood the words, and they made me sick: "run! run fo' yo' life! hit's a lion; i kin see him thoo de glass! run, boys; do please heel it de bes' you kin. he's bu'sted outen de menagerie, en dey ain't nobody to stop him!" it made tom fly, but it took the stiffening all out of my legs. i could only just gasp along the way you do in a dream when there's a ghost gaining on you. tom got to the ladder and shinned up it a piece and waited for me; and as soon as i got a foothold on it he shouted to jim to soar away. but jim had clean lost his head, and said he had forgot how. so tom shinned along up and told me to follow; but the lion was arriving, fetching a most ghastly roar with every lope, and my legs shook so i dasn't try to take one of them out of the rounds for fear the other one would give way under me. but tom was aboard by this time, and he started the balloon up a little, and stopped it again as soon as the end of the ladder was ten or twelve feet above ground. and there was the lion, a-ripping around under me, and roaring and springing up in the air at the ladder, and only missing it about a quarter of an inch, it seemed to me. it was delicious to be out of his reach, perfectly delicious, and made me feel good and thankful all up one side; but i was hanging there helpless and couldn't climb, and that made me feel perfectly wretched and miserable all down the other. it is most seldom that a person feels so mixed like that; and it is not to be recommended, either. tom asked me what he'd better do, but i didn't know. he asked me if i could hold on whilst he sailed away to a safe place and left the lion behind. i said i could if he didn't go no higher than he was now; but if he went higher i would lose my head and fall, sure. so he said, "take a good grip," and he started. "don't go so fast," i shouted. "it makes my head swim." he had started like a lightning express. he slowed down, and we glided over the sand slower, but still in a kind of sickening way; for it is uncomfortable to see things sliding and gliding under you like that, and not a sound. but pretty soon there was plenty of sound, for the lion was catching up. his noise fetched others. you could see them coming on the lope from every direction, and pretty soon there was a couple of dozen of them under me, jumping up at the ladder and snarling and snapping at each other; and so we went skimming along over the sand, and these fellers doing what they could to help us to not forgit the occasion; and then some other beasts come, without an invite, and they started a regular riot down there. we see this plan was a mistake. we couldn't ever git away from them at this gait, and i couldn't hold on forever. so tom took a think, and struck another idea. that was, to kill a lion with the pepper-box revolver, and then sail away while the others stopped to fight over the carcass. so he stopped the balloon still, and done it, and then we sailed off while the fuss was going on, and come down a quarter of a mile off, and they helped me aboard; but by the time we was out of reach again, that gang was on hand once more. and when they see we was really gone and they couldn't get us, they sat down on their hams and looked up at us so kind of disappointed that it was as much as a person could do not to see their side of the matter. chapter vi. it's a caravan i was so weak that the only thing i wanted was a chance to lay down, so i made straight for my locker-bunk, and stretched myself out there. but a body couldn't get back his strength in no such oven as that, so tom give the command to soar, and jim started her aloft. we had to go up a mile before we struck comfortable weather where it was breezy and pleasant and just right, and pretty soon i was all straight again. tom had been setting quiet and thinking; but now he jumps up and says: "i bet you a thousand to one i know where we are. we're in the great sahara, as sure as guns!" he was so excited he couldn't hold still; but i wasn't. i says: "well, then, where's the great sahara? in england or in scotland?" "'tain't in either; it's in africa." jim's eyes bugged out, and he begun to stare down with no end of interest, because that was where his originals come from; but i didn't more than half believe it. i couldn't, you know; it seemed too awful far away for us to have traveled. but tom was full of his discovery, as he called it, and said the lions and the sand meant the great desert, sure. he said he could 'a' found out, before we sighted land, that we was crowding the land somewheres, if he had thought of one thing; and when we asked him what, he said: "these clocks. they're chronometers. you always read about them in sea voyages. one of them is keeping grinnage time, and the other is keeping st. louis time, like my watch. when we left st. louis it was four in the afternoon by my watch and this clock, and it was ten at night by this grinnage clock. well, at this time of the year the sun sets at about seven o'clock. now i noticed the time yesterday evening when the sun went down, and it was half-past five o'clock by the grinnage clock, and half past 11 a.m. by my watch and the other clock. you see, the sun rose and set by my watch in st. louis, and the grinnage clock was six hours fast; but we've come so far east that it comes within less than half an hour of setting by the grinnage clock now, and i'm away out -more than four hours and a half out. you see, that meant that we was closing up on the longitude of ireland, and would strike it before long if we was p'inted right -which we wasn't. no, sir, we've been a-wandering -wandering 'way down south of east, and it's my opinion we are in africa. look at this map. you see how the shoulder of africa sticks out to the west. think how fast we've traveled; if we had gone straight east we would be long past england by this time. you watch for noon, all of you, and we'll stand up, and when we can't cast a shadow we'll find that this grinnage clock is coming mighty close to marking twelve. yes, sir, i think we're in africa; and it's just bully." jim was gazing down with the glass. he shook his head and says: "mars tom, i reckon dey's a mistake som'er's. hain't seen no niggers yit." "that's nothing; they don't live in the desert. what is that, 'way off yonder? gimme a glass." he took a long look, and said it was like a black string stretched across the sand, but he couldn't guess what it was. "well," i says, "i reckon maybe you've got a chance now to find out whereabouts this balloon is, because as like as not that is one of these lines here, that's on the map, that you call meridians of longitude, and we can drop down and look at its number, and --" "oh, shucks, huck finn, i never see such a lunkhead as you. did you s'pose there's meridians of longitude on the earth?" "tom sawyer, they're set down on the map, and you know it perfectly well, and here they are, and you can see for yourself." "of course they're on the map, but that's nothing; there ain't any on the ground." "tom, do you know that to be so?" "certainly i do." "well, then, that map's a liar again. i never see such a liar as that map." he fired up at that, and i was ready for him, and jim was warming his opinion, too, and next minute we'd 'a' broke loose on another argument, if tom hadn't dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands like a maniac and sing out: "camels! -camels!" so i grabbed a glass and jim, too, and took a look, but i was disappointed, and says: "camels your granny; they're spiders." "spiders in a desert, you shad? spiders walking in a procession? you don't ever reflect, huck finn, and i reckon you really haven't got anything to reflect with. don't you know we're as much as a mile up in the air, and that that string of crawlers is two or three miles away? spiders, good land! spiders as big as a cow? perhaps you'd like to go down and milk one of 'em. but they're camels, just the same. it's a caravan, that's what it is, and it's a mile long." "well, then, let's go down and look at it. i don't believe in it, and ain't going to till i see it and know it." "all right," he says, and give the command: "lower away." as we come slanting down into the hot weather, we could see that it was camels, sure enough, plodding along, an everlasting string of them, with bales strapped to them, and several hundred men in long white robes, and a thing like a shawl bound over their heads and hanging down with tassels and fringes; and some of the men had long guns and some hadn't, and some was riding and some was walking. and the weatherê-well, it was just roasting. and how slow they did creep along! we swooped down now, all of a sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their heads. the men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat on their stomachs, some begun to fire their guns at us, and the rest broke and scampered every which way, and so did the camels. we see that we was making trouble, so we went up again about a mile, to the cool weather, and watched them from there. it took them an hour to get together and form the procession again; then they started along, but we could see by the glasses that they wasn't paying much attention to anything but us. we poked along, looking down at them with the glasses, and by and by we see a big sand mound, and something like people the other side of it, and there was something like a man laying on top of the mound that raised his head up every now and then, and seemed to be watching the caravan or us, we didn't know which. as the caravan got nearer, he sneaked down on the other side and rushed to the other men and horses -for that is what they was -and we see them mount in a hurry; and next, here they come, like a house afire, some with lances and some with long guns, and all of them yelling the best they could. they come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the next minute both sides crashed together and was all mixed up, and there was such another popping of guns as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke you could only catch glimpses of them struggling together. there must 'a' been six hundred men in that battle, and it was terrible to see. then they broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and nail, and scurrying and scampering around, and laying into each other like everything; and whenever the smoke cleared a little you could see dead and wounded people and camels scattered far and wide and all about, and camels racing off in every direction. at last the robbers see they couldn't win, so their chief sounded a signal, and all that was left of them broke away and went scampering across the plain. the last man to go snatched up a child and carried it off in front of him on his horse, and a woman run screaming and begging after him, and followed him away off across the plain till she was separated a long ways from her people; but it warn't no use, and she had to give it up, and we see her sink down on the sand and cover her face with her hands. then tom took the hellum, and started for that yahoo, and we come a-whizzing down and made a swoop, and knocked him out of the saddle, child and all; and he was jarred considerable, but the child wasn't hurt, but laid there working its hands and legs in the air like a tumble-bug that's on its back and can't turn over. the man went staggering off to overtake his horse, and didn't know what had hit him, for we was three or four hundred yards up in the air by this time. we judged the woman would go and get the child now; but she didn't. we could see her, through the glass, still setting there, with her head bowed down on her knees; so of course she hadn't seen the performance, and thought her child was clean gone with the man. she was nearly a half a mile from her people, so we thought we might go down to the child, which was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake it to her before the caravan people could git to us to do us any harm; and besides, we reckoned they had enough business on their hands for one while, anyway, with the wounded. we thought we'd chance it, and we did. we swooped down and stopped, and jim shinned down the ladder and fetched up the kid, which was a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good humor, too, considering it was just out of a battle and been tumbled off of a horse; and then we started for the mother, and stopped back of her and tolerable near by, and jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when he was close back of her the child goo-goo'd, the way a child does, and she heard it, and whirled and fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump for the kid and snatched it and hugged it, and dropped it and hugged jim, and then snatched off a gold chain and hung it around jim's neck, and hugged him again, and jerked up the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all the time; and jim he shoved for the ladder and up it, and in a minute we was back up in the sky and the woman was staring up, with the back of her head between her shoulders and the child with its arms locked around her neck. and there she stood, as long as we was in sight a-sailing away in the sky. chapter vii. tom respects the flea "noon!" says tom, and so it was. his shadder was just a blot around his feet. we looked, and the grinnage clock was so close to twelve the difference didn't amount to nothing. so tom said london was right north of us or right south of us, one or t'other, and he reckoned by the weather and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles north, too; as many as from new york to the city of mexico, he guessed. jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the world, unless it might be some kinds of birds -a wild pigeon, maybe, or a railroad. but tom said he had read about railroads in england going nearly a hundred miles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird in the world that could do that -except one, and that was a flea. "a flea? why, mars tom, in de fust place he ain't a bird, strickly speakin' --" "he ain't a bird, eh? well, then, what is he?" "i don't rightly know, mars tom, but i speck he's only jist a' animal. no, i reckon dat won't do, nuther, he ain't big enough for a' animal. he mus' be a bug. yassir, dat's what he is, he's a bug." "i bet he ain't, but let it go. what's your second place?" "well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes a long ways, but a flea don't." "he don't, don't he? come, now, what is a long distance, if you know?" "why, it's miles, and lots of 'em -anybody knows dat." "can't a man walk miles?" "yassir, he kin." "as many as a railroad?" "yassir, if you give him time." "can't a flea?" "well -i s'pose so -ef you gives him heaps of time." "now you begin to see, don't you, that distance ain't the thing to judge by, at all; it's the time it takes to go the distance in that counts, ain't it?" "well, hit do look sorter so, but i wouldn't 'a' b'lieved it, mars tom." "it's a matter of proportion, that's what it is; and when you come to gauge a thing's speed by its size, where's your bird and your man and your railroad, alongside of a flea? the fastest man can't run more than about ten miles in an hour -not much over ten thousand times his own length. but all the books says any common ordinary third-class flea can jump a hundred and fifty times his own length; yes, and he can make five jumps a second too -seven hundred and fifty times his own length, in one little second -for he don't fool away any time stopping and starting -he does them both at the same time; you'll see, if you try to put your finger on him. now that's a common, ordinary, third-class flea's gait; but you take an eyetalian first-class, that's been the pet of the nobility all his life, and hasn't ever knowed what want or sickness or exposure was, and he can jump more than three hundred times his own length, and keep it up all day, five such jumps every second, which is fifteen hundred times his own length. well, suppose a man could go fifteen hundred times his own length in a second -say, a mile and a half. it's ninety miles a minute; it's considerable more than five thousand miles an hour. where's your man now? -yes, and your bird, and your railroad, and your balloon? laws, they don't amount to shucks 'longside of a flea. a flea is just a comet b'iled down small." jim was a good deal astonished, and so was i. jim said: "is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin' en no lies, mars tom?" "yes, they are; they're perfectly true." "well, den, honey, a body's got to respec' a flea. i ain't had no respec' for um befo', sca'sely, but dey ain't no gittin' roun' it, dey do deserve it, dat's certain." "well, i bet they do. they've got ever so much more sense, and brains, and brightness, in proportion to their size, than any other cretur in the world. a person can learn them 'most anything; and they learn it quicker than any other cretur, too. they've been learnt to haul little carriages in harness, and go this way and that way and t'other way according to their orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers, doing it as exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. they've been learnt to do all sorts of hard and troublesome things. s'pose you could cultivate a flea up to the size of a man, and keep his natural smartness a-growing and a-growing right along up, bigger and bigger, and keener and keener, in the same proportion -where'd the human race be, do you reckon? that flea would be president of the united states, and you couldn't any more prevent it than you can prevent lightning." "my lan', mars tom, i never knowed dey was so much to de beas'. no, sir, i never had no idea of it, and dat's de fac'." "there's more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any other cretur, man or beast, in proportion to size. he's the interestingest of them all. people have so much to say about an ant's strength, and an elephant's, and a locomotive's. shucks, they don't begin with a flea. he can lift two or three hundred times his own weight. and none of them can come anywhere near it. and, moreover, he has got notions of his own, and is very particular, and you can't fool him; his instinct, or his judgment, or whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and don't ever make a mistake. people think all humans are alike to a flea. it ain't so. there's folks that he won't go near, hungry or not hungry, and i'm one of them. i've never had one of them on me in my life." "mars tom!" "it's so; i ain't joking." "well, sah, i hain't ever heard de likes o' dat befo'." jim couldn't believe it, and i couldn't; so we had to drop down to the sand and git a supply and see. tom was right. they went for me and jim by the thousand, but not a one of them lit on tom. there warn't no explaining it, but there it was and there warn't no getting around it. he said it had always been just so, and he'd just as soon be where there was a million of them as not; they'd never touch him nor bother him. we went up to the cold weather to freeze 'em out, and stayed a little spell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazying along twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we'd been doing for the last few hours. the reason was, that the longer we was in that solemn, peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of soothed down in us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we got to feeling, and the more we got to liking the desert, and then loving it. so we had cramped the speed down, as i was saying, and was having a most noble good lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, sometimes stretched out on the lockers reading, sometimes taking a nap. it didn't seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to find land and git ashore, but it was. but we had got over that -clean over it. we was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn't want to be anywheres else. why, it seemed just like home; it 'most seemed as if i had been born and raised in it, and jim and tom said the same. and always i had had hateful people around me, a-nagging at me, and pestering of me, and scolding, and finding fault, and fussing and bothering, and sticking to me, and keeping after me, and making me do this, and making me do that and t'other, and always selecting out the things i didn't want to do, and then giving me sam hill because i shirked and done something else, and just aggravating the life out of a body all the time; but up here in the sky it was so still and sunshiny and lovely, and plenty to eat, and plenty of sleep, and strange things to see, and no nagging and no pestering, and no good people, and just holiday all the time. land, i warn't in no hurry to git out and buck at civilization again. now, one of the worst things about civilization is, that anybody that gits a letter with trouble in it comes and tells you all about it and makes you feel bad, and the newspapers fetches you the troubles of everybody all over the world, and keeps you downhearted and dismal 'most all the time, and it's such a heavy load for a person. i hate them newspapers; and i hate letters; and if i had my way i wouldn't allow nobody to load his troubles on to other folks he ain't acquainted with, on t'other side of the world, that way. well, up in a balloon there ain't any of that, and it's the darlingest place there is. we had supper, and that night was one of the prettiest nights i ever see. the moon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer; and once we see a lion standing all alone by himself, just all alone on the earth, it seemed like, and his shadder laid on the sand by him like a puddle of ink. that's the kind of moonlight to have. mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn't want to go to sleep. tom said we was right in the midst of the arabian nights now. he said it was right along here that one of the cutest things in that book happened; so we looked down and watched while he told about it, because there ain't anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked about. it was a tale about a camel-driver that had lost his camel, and he come along in the desert and met a man, and says: "have you run across a stray camel to-day?" and the man says: "was he blind in his left eye?" "yes." "had he lost an upper front tooth?" "yes." "was his off hind leg lame?" "yes." "was he loaded with millet-seed on one side and honey on the other?" "yes, but you needn't go into no more details -that's the one, and i'm in a hurry. where did you see him?" "i hain't seen him at all," the man says. "hain't seen him at all? how can you describe him so close, then?" "because when a person knows how to use his eyes, everything has got a meaning to it; but most people's eyes ain't any good to them. i knowed a camel had been along, because i seen his track. i knowed he was lame in his off hind leg because he had favored that foot and trod light on it, and his track showed it. i knowed he was blind on his left side because he only nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. i knowed he had lost an upper front tooth because where he bit into the sod his teeth-print showed it. the millet-seed sifted out on one side -the ants told me that; the honey leaked out on the other -the flies told me that. i know all about your camel, but i hain't seen him." jim says: "go on, mars tom, hit's a mighty good tale, and powerful interestin'." "that's all," tom says. "all?" says jim, astonished. "what 'come o' de camel?" "i don't know." "mars tom, don't de tale say?" "no." jim puzzled a minute, then he says: "well! ef dat ain't de beatenes' tale ever i struck. jist gits to de place whah de intrust is gittin' red-hot, en down she breaks. why, mars tom, dey ain't no sense in a tale dat acts like dat. hain't you got no idea whether de man got de camel back er not?" "no, i haven't." i see myself there warn't no sense in the tale, to chop square off that way before it come to anything, but i warn't going to say so, because i could see tom was souring up pretty fast over the way it flatted out and the way jim had popped on to the weak place in it, and i don't think it's fair for everybody to pile on to a feller when he's down. but tom he whirls on me and says: "what do you think of the tale?" of course, then, i had to come out and make a clean breast and say it did seem to me, too, same as it did to jim, that as long as the tale stopped square in the middle and never got to no place, it really warn't worth the trouble of telling. tom's chin dropped on his breast, and 'stead of being mad, as i reckoned he'd be, to hear me scoff at his tale that way, he seemed to be only sad; and he says: "some people can see, and some can't -just as that man said. let alone a camel, if a cyclone had gone by, you duffers wouldn't 'a' noticed the track." i don't know what he meant by that, and he didn't say; it was just one of his irrulevances, i reckon -he was full of them, sometimes, when he was in a close place and couldn't see no other way out -but i didn't mind. we'd spotted the soft place in that tale sharp enough, he couldn't git away from that little fact. it graveled him like the nation, too, i reckon, much as he tried not to let on. chapter viii. the disappearing lake we had an early breakfast in the morning, and set looking down on the desert, and the weather was ever so bammy and lovely, although we warn't high up. you have to come down lower and lower after sundown in the desert, because it cools off so fast; and so, by the time it is getting toward dawn, you are skimming along only a little ways above the sand. we was watching the shadder of the balloon slide along the ground, and now and then gazing off across the desert to see if anything was stirring, and then down on the shadder again, when all of a sudden almost right under us we see a lot of men and camels laying scattered about, perfectly quiet, like they was asleep. we shut off the power, and backed up and stood over them, and then we see that they was all dead. it give us the cold shivers. and it made us hush down, too, and talk low, like people at a funeral. we dropped down slow and stopped, and me and tom clumb down and went among them. there was men, and women, and children. they was dried by the sun and dark and shriveled and leathery, like the pictures of mummies you see in books. and yet they looked just as human, you wouldn't 'a' believed it; just like they was asleep. some of the people and animals was partly covered with sand, but most of them not, for the sand was thin there, and the bed was gravel and hard. most of the clothes had rotted away; and when you took hold of a rag, it tore with a touch, like spiderweb. tom reckoned they had been laying there for years. some of the men had rusty guns by them, some had swords on and had shawl belts with long, silvermounted pistols stuck in them. all the camels had their loads on yet, but the packs had busted or rotted and spilt the freight out on the ground. we didn't reckon the swords was any good to the dead people any more, so we took one apiece, and some pistols. we took a small box, too, because it was so handsome and inlaid so fine; and then we wanted to bury the people; but there warn't no way to do it that we could think of, and nothing to do it with but sand, and that would blow away again, of course. then we mounted high and sailed away, and pretty soon that black spot on the sand was out of sight, and we wouldn't ever see them poor people again in this world. we wondered, and reasoned, and tried to guess how they come to be there, and how it all happened to them, but we couldn't make it out. first we thought maybe they got lost, and wandered around and about till their food and water give out and they starved to death; but tom said no wild animals nor vultures hadn't meddled with them, and so that guess wouldn't do. so at last we give it up, and judged we wouldn't think about it no more, because it made us low-spirited. then we opened the box, and it had gems and jewels in it, quite a pile, and some little veils of the kind the dead women had on, with fringes made out of curious gold money that we warn't acquainted with. we wondered if we better go and try to find them again and give it back; but tom thought it over and said no, it was a country that was full of robbers, and they would come and steal it; and then the sin would be on us for putting the temptation in their way. so we went on; but i wished we had took all they had, so there wouldn't 'a' been no temptation at all left. we had had two hours of that blazing weather down there, and was dreadful thirsty when we got aboard again. we went straight for the water, but it was spoiled and bitter, besides being pretty near hot enough to scald your mouth. we couldn't drink it. it was mississippi river water, the best in the world, and we stirred up the mud in it to see if that would help, but no, the mud wasn't any better than the water. well, we hadn't been so very, very thirsty before, while we was interested in the lost people, but we was now, and as soon as we found we couldn't have a drink, we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as we was a quarter of a minute before. why, in a little while we wanted to hold our mouths open and pant like a dog. tom said to keep a sharp lookout, all around, everywheres, because we'd got to find an oasis or there warn't no telling what would happen. so we done it. we kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our arms got so tired we couldn't hold them any more. two hours -three hours -just gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, sand, and you could see the quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. dear, dear, a body don't know what real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain he ain't ever going to come to any water any more. at last i couldn't stand it to look around on them baking plains; i laid down on the locker, and give it up. but by and by tom raised a whoop, and there she was! a lake, wide and shiny, with pa'm-trees leaning over it asleep, and their shadders in the water just as soft and delicate as ever you see. i never see anything look so good. it was a long ways off, but that warn't anything to us; we just slapped on a hundredmile gait, and calculated to be there in seven minutes; but she stayed the same old distance away, all the time; we couldn't seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as far, and shiny, and like a dream; but we couldn't get no nearer; and at last, all of a sudden, she was gone! tom's eyes took a spread, and he says: "boys, it was a myridge!" said it like he was glad. i didn't see nothing to be glad about. i says: "maybe. i don't care nothing about its name, the thing i want to know is, what's become of it?" jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn't speak, but he wanted to ask that question himself if he could 'a' done it. tom says: "what's become of it? why, you see yourself it's gone." "yes, i know; but where's it gone to?" he looked me over and says: "well, now, huck finn, where would it go to! don't you know what a myridge is?" "no, i don't. what is it?" "it ain't anything but imagination. there ain't anything to it. " it warmed me up a little to hear him talk like that, and i says: "what's the use you talking that kind of stuff, tom sawyer? didn't i see the lake?" "yes -you think you did." "i don't think nothing about it, i did see it." "i tell you you didn't see it either -because it warn't there to see." it astonished jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind of pleading and distressed: "mars tom, please don't say sich things in sich an awful time as dis. you ain't only reskin' yo' own self, but you's reskin' us -same way like anna nias en siffra. de lake wuz dah -i seen it jis' as plain as i sees you en huck dis minute." i says: "why, he seen it himself! he was the very one that seen it first. now, then!" "yes, mars tom, hit's so -you can't deny it. we all seen it, en dat prove it was dah." "proves it! how does it prove it?" "same way it does in de courts en everywheres, mars tom. one pusson might be drunk, or dreamy or suthin', en he could be mistaken; en two might, maybe; but i tell you, sah, when three sees a thing, drunk er sober, it's so. dey ain't no gittin' aroun' dat, en you knows it, mars tom." "i don't know nothing of the kind. there used to be forty thousand million people that seen the sun move from one side of the sky to the other every day. did that prove that the sun done it?" "course it did. en besides, dey warn't no 'casion to prove it. a body 'at's got any sense ain't gwine to doubt it. dah she is now -a sailin' thoo de sky, like she allays done." tom turned on me, then, and says: "what do you say -is the sun standing still?" "tom sawyer, what's the use to ask such a jackass question? anybody that ain't blind can see it don't stand still." "well," he says, "i'm lost in the sky with no company but a passel of low-down animals that don't know no more than the head boss of a university did three or four hundred years ago." it warn't fair play, and i let him know it. i says: "throwin' mud ain't arguin', tom sawyer." "oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness gracious, dah's de lake agi'n!" yelled jim, just then. "now, mars tom, what you gwine to say?" yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder across the desert, perfectly plain, trees and all, just the same as it was before. i says: "i reckon you're satisfied now, tom sawyer." but he says, perfectly ca'm: "yes, satisfied there ain't no lake there." jim says: "don't talk so, mars tom -it sk'yers me to hear you. it's so hot, en you's so thirsty, dat you ain't in yo' right mine, mars tom. oh, but don't she look good! 'clah i doan' know how i's gwine to wait tell we gits dah, i's so thirsty." "well, you'll have to wait; and it won't do you no good, either, because there ain't no lake there, i tell you." i says: "jim, don't you take your eye off of it, and i won't, either." "'deed i won't; en bless you, honey, i couldn't ef i wanted to." we went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like nothing, but never gaining an inch on it -and all of a sudden it was gone again! jim staggered, and 'most fell down. when he got his breath he says, gasping like a fish: "mars tom, hit's a ghos', dat's what it is, en i hopes to goodness we ain't gwine to see it no mo'. dey's been a lake, en suthin's happened, en de lake's dead, en we's seen its ghos'; we's seen it twiste, en dat's proof. de desert's ha'nted, it's ha'nted, sho; oh, mars tom, le''s git outen it; i'd ruther die den have de night ketch us in it ag'in en de ghos' er dat lake come a-mournin' aroun' us en we asleep en doan' know de danger we's in." "ghost, you gander! it ain't anything but air and heat and thirstiness pasted together by a person's imagination. if i -gimme the glass!" he grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right. "it's a flock of birds," he says. "it's getting toward sundown, and they're making a bee-line across our track for somewheres. they mean business -maybe they're going for food or water, or both. let her go to starboard! -port your hellum! hard down! there -ease up -steady, as you go." we shut down some of the power, so as not to outspeed them, and took out after them. we went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and when we had followed them an hour and a half and was getting pretty discouraged, and was thirsty clean to unendurableness, tom says: "take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, away ahead of the birds." jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the locker sick. he was most crying, and says: "she's dah ag'in, mars tom, she's dah ag'in, en i knows i's gwine to die, 'case when a body sees a ghos' de third time, dat's what it means. i wisht i'd never come in dis balloon, dat i does." he wouldn't look no more, and what he said made me afraid, too, because i knowed it was true, for that has always been the way with ghosts; so then i wouldn't look any more, either. both of us begged tom to turn off and go some other way, but he wouldn't, and said we was ignorant superstitious blatherskites. yes, and he'll git come up with, one of these days, i says to myself, insulting ghosts that way. they'll stand it for a while, maybe, but they won't stand it always, for anybody that knows about ghosts knows how easy they are hurt, and how revengeful they are. so we was all quiet and still, jim and me being scared, and tom busy. by and by tom fetched the balloon to a standstill, and says: "now get up and look, you sapheads." we done it, and there was the sure-enough water right under us! -clear, and blue, and cool, and deep, and wavy with the breeze, the loveliest sight that ever was. and all about it was grassy banks, and flowers, and shady groves of big trees, looped together with vines, and all looking so peaceful and comfortable -enough to make a body cry, it was so beautiful. jim did cry, and rip and dance and carry on, he was so thankful and out of his mind for joy. it was my watch, so i had to stay by the works, but tom and jim clumb down and drunk a barrel apiece, and fetched me up a lot, and i've tasted a many a good thing in my life, but nothing that ever begun with that water. then we went down and had a swim, and then tom came up and spelled me, and me and jim had a swim, and then jim spelled tom, and me and tom had a foot-race and a boxing-mill, and i don't reckon i ever had such a good time in my life. it warn't so very hot, because it was close on to evening, and we hadn't any clothes on, anyway. clothes is well enough in school, and in towns, and at balls, too, but there ain't no sense in them when there ain't no civilization nor other kinds of bothers and fussiness around. "lions a-comin'! -lions! quick, mars tom! jump for yo' life, huck!" oh, and didn't we! we never stopped for clothes, but waltzed up the ladder just so. jim lost his head straight off -he always done it whenever he got excited and scared; and so now, 'stead of just easing the ladder up from the ground a little, so the animals couldn't reach it, he turned on a raft of power, and we went whizzing up and was dangling in the sky before he got his wits together and seen what a foolish thing he was doing. then he stopped her, but he had clean forgot what to do next; so there we was, so high that the lions looked like pups, and we was drifting off on the wind. but tom he shinned up and went for the works and begun to slant her down, and back toward the lake, where the animals was gathering like a camp-meeting, and i judged he had lost his head, too; for he knowed i was too scared to climb, and did he want to dump me among the tigers and things? but no, his head was level, he knowed what he was about. he swooped down to within thirty or forty feet of the lake, and stopped right over the center, and sung out: "leggo, and drop!" i done it, and shot down, feet first, and seemed to go about a mile toward the bottom; and when i come up, he says: "now lay on your back and float till you're rested and got your pluck back, then i'll dip the ladder in the water and you can climb aboard." i done it. now that was ever so smart in tom, because if he had started off somewheres else to drop down on the sand, the menagerie would 'a' come along, too, and might 'a' kept us hunting a safe place till i got tuckered out and fell. and all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and trying to divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was a misunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying to hog more than their share; so there was another insurrection, and you never see anything like it in the world. there must 'a' been fifty of them, all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and biting and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn't tell which was which, and the sand and fur a-flying. and when they got done, some was dead. and some was limping off crippled, and the rest was setting around on the battlefield, some of them licking their sore places and the others looking up at us and seemed to be kind of inviting us to come down and have some fun, but which we didn't want any. as for the clothes, they warn't any, any more. every last rag of them was inside of the animals; and not agreeing with them very well, i don't reckon, for there was considerable many brass buttons on them, and there was knives in the pockets, too, and smoking tobacco, and nails and chalk and marbles and fishhooks and things. but i wasn't caring. all that was bothering me was, that all we had now was the professor's clothes, a big enough assortment, but not suitable to go into company with, if we came across any, because the britches was as long as tunnels, and the coats and things according. still, there was everything a tailor needed, and jim was a kind of jack legged tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a suit or two down for us that would answer. chapter ix. tom discourses on the desert still, we thought we would drop down there a minute, but on another errand. most of the professor's cargo of food was put up in cans, in the new way that somebody had just invented; the rest was fresh. when you fetch missouri beefsteak to the great sahara, you want to be particular and stay up in the coolish weather. so we reckoned we would drop down into the lion market and see how we could make out there. we hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we was just above the reach of the animals, then we let down a rope with a slip-knot in it and hauled up a dead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub tiger. we had to keep the congregation off with the revolver, or they would 'a' took a hand in the proceedings and helped. we carved off a supply from both, and saved the skins, and hove the rest overboard. then we baited some of the professor's hooks with the fresh meat and went a-fishing. we stood over the lake just a convenient distance above the water, and catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever see. it was a most amazing good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak, fried fish, and hot corn-pone. i don't want nothing better than that. we had some fruit to finish off with. we got it out of the top of a monstrous tall tree. it was a very slim tree that hadn't a branch on it from the bottom plumb to the top, and there it bursted out like a featherduster. it was a pa'm-tree, of course; anybody knows a pa'm-tree the minute he see it, by the pictures. we went for cocoanuts in this one, but there warn't none. there was only big loose bunches of things like oversized grapes, and tom allowed they was dates, because he said they answered the description in the arabian nights and the other books. of course they mightn't be, and they might be poison; so we had to wait a spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. they done it; so we done it, too, and they was most amazing good. by this time monstrous big birds begun to come and settle on the dead animals. they was plucky creturs; they would tackle one end of a lion that was being gnawed at the other end by another lion. if the lion drove the bird away, it didn't do no good; he was back again the minute the lion was busy. the big birds come out of every part of the sky -you could make them out with the glass while they was still so far away you couldn't see them with your naked eye. tom said the birds didn't find out the meat was there by the smell; they had to find it out by seeing it. oh, but ain't that an eye for you! tom said at the distance of five mile a patch of dead lions couldn't look any bigger than a person's finger-nail, and he couldn't imagine how the birds could notice such a little thing so far off. it was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion, and we thought maybe they warn't kin. but jim said that didn't make no difference. he said a hog was fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he reckoned maybe a lion was pretty near as unprincipled though maybe not quite. he thought likely a lion wouldn't eat his own father, if he knowed which was him, but reckoned he would eat his brother-in-law if he was uncommon hungry, and eat his mother-in-law any time. but reckoning don't settle nothing. you can reckon till the cows come home, but that don't fetch you to no decision. so we give it up and let it drop. generly it was very still in the desert nights, but this time there was music. a lot of other animals come to dinner; sneaking yelpers that tom allowed was jackals, and roached-backed ones that he said was hyenas; and all the whole biling of them kept up a racket all the time. they made a picture in the moonlight that was more different than any picture i ever see. we had a line out and made fast to the top of a tree, and didn't stand no watch, but all turned in and slept; but i was up two or three times to look down at the animals and hear the music. it was like having a front seat at a menagerie for nothing, which i hadn't ever had before, and so it seemed foolish to sleep and not make the most of it; i mightn't ever have such a chance again. we went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then lazied around all day in the deep shade on an island, taking turn about to watch and see that none of the animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts for dinner. we was going to leave the next day, but couldn't, it was too lovely. the day after, when we rose up toward the sky and sailed off eastward, we looked back and watched that place till it warn't nothing but just a speck in the desert, and i tell you it was like saying good-bye to a friend that you ain't ever going to see any more. jim was thinking to himself, and at last he says: "mars tom, we's mos' to de end er de desert now, i speck." "why?" "well, hit stan' to reason we is. you knows how long we's been a-skimmin' over it. mus' be mos' out o' san'. hit's a wonder to me dat it's hilt out as long as it has." "shucks, there's plenty sand, you needn't worry." "oh, i ain't a-worryin', mars tom, only wonderin', dat's all. de lord's got plenty san', i ain't doubtin' dat; but nemmine, he ain't gwyne to was'e it jist on dat account; en i allows dat dis desert's plenty big enough now, jist de way she is, en you can't spread her out no mo' 'dout was'in' san'." "oh, go 'long! we ain't much more than fairly started across this desert yet. the united states is a pretty big country, ain't it? ain't it, huck?" "yes," i says, "there ain't no bigger one, i don't reckon." "well," he says, "this desert is about the shape of the united states, and if you was to lay it down on top of the united states, it would cover the land of the free out of sight like a blanket. there'd be a little corner sticking out, up at maine and away up northwest, and florida sticking out like a turtle's tail, and that's all. we've took california away from the mexicans two or three years ago, so that part of the pacific coast is ours now, and if you laid the great sahara down with her edge on the pacific, she would cover the united states and stick out past new york six hundred miles into the atlantic ocean." i say: "good land! have you got the documents for that, tom sawyer?" "yes, and they're right here, and i've been studying them. you can look for yourself. from new york to the pacific is 2,600 miles. from one end of the great desert to the other is 3,200. the united states contains 3,600,000 square miles, the desert contains 4,162,000. with the desert's bulk you could cover up every last inch of the united states, and in under where the edges projected out, you could tuck england, scotland, ireland, france, denmark, and all germany. yes, sir, you could hide the home of the brave and all of them countries clean out of sight under the great sahara, and you would still have 2,000 square miles of sand left." "well," i says, "it clean beats me. why, tom, it shows that the lord took as much pains makin' this desert as makin' the united states and all them other countries." jim says: "huck, dat don' stan' to reason. i reckon dis desert wa'n't made at all. now you take en look at it like dis -you look at it, and see ef i's right. what's a desert good for? 'taint good for nuthin'. dey ain't no way to make it pay. hain't dat so, huck?" "yes, i reckon." "hain't it so, mars tom?" "i guess so. go on." "ef a thing ain't no good, it's made in vain, ain't it?" "yes." "now, den! do de lord make anything in vain? you answer me dat." "well -no, he don't." "den how come he make a desert?" "well, go on. how did he come to make it?" "mars tom, i b'lieve it uz jes like when you's buildin' a house; dey's allays a lot o' truck en rubbish lef' over. what does you do wid it? doan' you take en k'yart it off en dump it into a ole vacant back lot? 'course. now, den, it's my opinion hit was jes like dat -dat de great sahara warn't made at all, she jes happen'." i said it was a real good argument, and i believed it was the best one jim ever made. tom he said the same, but said the trouble about arguments is, they ain't nothing but theories, after all, and theories don't prove nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a spell, when you are tuckered out butting around and around trying to find out something there ain't no way to find out. and he says: "there's another trouble about theories: there's always a hole in them somewheres, sure, if you look close enough. it's just so with this one of jim's. look what billions and billions of stars there is. how does it come that there was just exactly enough starstuff, and none left over? how does it come there ain't no sand-pile up there?" but jim was fixed for him and says: "what's de milky way? -dat's what i want to know. what's de milky way? answer me dat!" in my opinion it was just a sockdologer. it's only an opinion, it's only my opinion and others may think different; but i said it then and i stand to it now -it was a sockdologer. and moreover, besides, it landed tom sawyer. he couldn't say a word. he had that stunned look of a person that's been shot in the back with a kag of nails. all he said was, as for people like me and jim, he'd just as soon have intellectual intercourse with a catfish. but anybody can say that -and i notice they always do, when somebody has fetched them a lifter. tom sawyer was tired of that end of the subject. so we got back to talking about the size of the desert again, and the more we compared it with this and that and t'other thing, the more nobler and bigger and grander it got to look right along. and so, hunting among the figgers, tom found, by and by, that it was just the same size as the empire of china. then he showed us the spread the empire of china made on the map, and the room she took up in the world. well, it was wonderful to think of, and i says: "why, i've heard talk about this desert plenty of times, but i never knowed before how important she was." then tom says: "important! sahara important! that's just the way with some people. if a thing's big, it's important. that's all the sense they've got. all they can see is size. why, look at england. it's the most important country in the world; and yet you could put it in china's vest-pocket; and not only that, but you'd have the dickens's own time to find it again the next time you wanted it. and look at russia. it spreads all around and everywhere, and yet ain't no more important in this world than rhode island is, and hasn't got half as much in it that's worth saving." away off now we see a little hill, a-standing up just on the edge of the world. tom broke off his talk, and reached for a glass very much excited, and took a look, and says: "that's it -it's the one i've been looking for, sure. if i'm right, it's the one the dervish took the man into and showed him all the treasures." so we begun to gaze, and he begun to tell about it out of the arabian nights. chapter x. the treasure-hill tom said it happened like this. a dervish was stumping it along through the desert, on foot, one blazing hot day, and he had come a thousand miles and was pretty poor, and hungry, and ornery and tired, and along about where we are now he run across a camel-driver with a hundred camels, and asked him for some a'ms. but the cameldriver he asked to be excused. the dervish said: "don't you own these camels?" "yes, they're mine." "are you in debt?" "who -me? no." "well, a man that owns a hundred camels and ain't in debt is rich -and not only rich, but very rich. ain't it so?" the camel-driver owned up that it was so. then the dervish says: "god has made you rich, and he has made me poor. he has his reasons, and they are wise, blessed be his name. but he has willed that his rich shall help his poor, and you have turned away from me, your brother, in my need, and he will remember this, and you will lose by it." that made the camel-driver feel shaky, but all the same he was born hoggish after money and didn't like to let go a cent; so he begun to whine and explain, and said times was hard, and although he had took a full freight down to balsora and got a fat rate for it, he couldn't git no return freight, and so he warn't making no great things out of his trip. so the dervish starts along again, and says: "all right, if you want to take the risk; but i reckon you've made a mistake this time, and missed a chance." of course the camel-driver wanted to know what kind of a chance he had missed, because maybe there was money in it; so he run after the dervish, and begged him so hard and earnest to take pity on him that at last the dervish gave in, and says: "do you see that hill yonder? well, in that hill is all the treasures of the earth, and i was looking around for a man with a particular good kind heart and a noble, generous disposition, because if i could find just that man, i've got a kind of a salve i could put on his eyes and he could see the treasures and get them out." so then the camel-driver was in a sweat; and he cried, and begged, and took on, and went down on his knees, and said he was just that kind of a man, and said he could fetch a thousand people that would say he wasn't ever described so exact before. "well, then," says the dervish, "all right. if we load the hundred camels, can i have half of them?" the driver was so glad he couldn't hardly hold in, and says: "now you're shouting." so they shook hands on the bargain, and the dervish got out his box and rubbed the salve on the driver's right eye, and the hill opened and he went in, and there, sure enough, was piles and piles of gold and jewels sparkling like all the stars in heaven had fell down. so him and the dervish laid into it, and they loaded every camel till he couldn't carry no more; then they said good-bye, and each of them started off with his fifty. but pretty soon the camel-driver come a-running and overtook the dervish and says: "you ain't in society, you know, and you don't really need all you've got. won't you be good, and let me have ten of your camels?" "well," the dervish says, "i don't know but what you say is reasonable enough." so he done it, and they separated and the dervish started off again with his forty. but pretty soon here comes the camel-driver bawling after him again, and whines and slobbers around and begs another ten off of him, saying thirty camel loads of treasures was enough to see a dervish through, because they live very simple, you know, and don't keep house, but board around and give their note. but that warn't the end yet. that ornery hound kept coming and coming till he had begged back all the camels and had the whole hundred. then he was satisfied, and ever so grateful, and said he wouldn't ever forgit the dervish as long as he lived, and nobody hadn't been so good to him before, and liberal. so they shook hands good-bye, and separated and started off again. but do you know, it warn't ten minutes till the camel-driver was unsatisfied again -he was the lowdownest reptyle in seven counties -and he come arunning again. and this time the thing he wanted was to get the dervish to rub some of the salve on his other eye. "why?" said the dervish. "oh, you know," says the driver. "know what?" "well, you can't fool me," says the driver. "you're trying to keep back something from me, you know it mighty well. you know, i reckon, that if i had the salve on the other eye i could see a lot more things that's valuable. come -please put it on." the dervish says: "i wasn't keeping anything back from you. i don't mind telling you what would happen if i put it on. you'd never see again. you'd be stone-blind the rest of your days." but do you know that beat wouldn't believe him. no, he begged and begged, and whined and cried, till at last the dervish opened his box and told him to put it on, if he wanted to. so the man done it, and sure enough he was as blind as a bat in a minute. then the dervish laughed at him and mocked at him and made fun of him; and says: "good-bye -a man that's blind hain't got no use for jewelry." and he cleared out with the hundred camels, and left that man to wander around poor and miserable and friendless the rest of his days in the desert. jim said he'd bet it was a lesson to him. "yes," tom says, "and like a considerable many lessons a body gets. they ain't no account, because the thing don't ever happen the same way again -and can't. the time hen scovil fell down the chimbly and crippled his back for life, everybody said it would be a lesson to him. what kind of a lesson? how was he going to use it? he couldn't climb chimblies no more, and he hadn't no more backs to break." "all de same, mars tom, dey is sich a thing as learnin' by expe'ence. de good book say de burnt chile shun de fire." "well, i ain't denying that a thing's a lesson if it's a thing that can happen twice just the same way. there's lots of such things, and they educate a person, that's what uncle abner always said; but there's forty million lots of the other kind -the kind that don't happen the same way twice -and they ain't no real use, they ain't no more instructive than the small-pox. when you've got it, it ain't no good to find out you ought to been vaccinated, and it ain't no good to git vaccinated afterward, because the small-pox don't come but once. but, on the other hand, uncle abner said that the person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful. but i can tell you, jim, uncle abner was down on them people that's all the time trying to dig a lesson out of everything that happens, no matter whether --" but jim was asleep. tom looked kind of ashamed, because you know a person always feels bad when he is talking uncommon fine and thinks the other person is admiring, and that other person goes to sleep that way. of course he oughtn't to go to sleep, because it's shabby; but the finer a person talks the certainer it is to make you sleep, and so when you come to look at it it ain't nobody's fault in particular; both of them's to blame. jim begun to snore -soft and blubbery at first, then a long rasp, then a stronger one, then a half a dozen horrible ones like the last water sucking down the plug-hole of a bath-tub, then the same with more power to it, and some big coughs and snorts flung in, the way a cow does that is choking to death; and when the person has got to that point he is at his level best, and can wake up a man that is in the next block with a dipperful of loddanum in him, but can't wake himself up although all that awful noise of his'n ain't but three inches from his own ears. and that is the curiosest thing in the world, seems to me. but you rake a match to light the candle, and that little bit of a noise will fetch him. i wish i knowed what was the reason of that, but there don't seem to be no way to find out. now there was jim alarming the whole desert, and yanking the animals out, for miles and miles around, to see what in the nation was going on up there; there warn't nobody nor nothing that was as close to the noise as he was, and yet he was the only cretur that wasn't disturbed by it. we yelled at him and whooped at him, it never done no good; but the first time there come a little wee noise that wasn't of a usual kind it woke him up. no, sir, i've thought it all over, and so has tom, and there ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore. jim said he hadn't been asleep; he just shut his eyes so he could listen better. tom said nobody warn't accusing him. that made him look like he wished he hadn't said anything. and he wanted to git away from the subject, i reckon, because he begun to abuse the cameldriver, just the way a person does when he has got catched in something and wants to take it out of somebody else. he let into the camel-driver the hardest he knowed how, and i had to agree with him; and he praised up the dervish the highest he could, and i had to agree with him there, too. but tom says: "i ain't so sure. you call that dervish so dreadful liberal and good and unselfish, but i don't quite see it. he didn't hunt up another poor dervish, did he? no, he didn't. if he was so unselfish, why didn't he go in there himself and take a pocketful of jewels and go along and be satisfied? no, sir, the person he was hunting for was a man with a hundred camels. he wanted to get away with all the treasure he could." "why, mars tom, he was willin' to divide, fair and square; he only struck for fifty camels." "because he knowed how he was going to get all of them by and by." "mars tom, he tole de man de truck would make him bline." "yes, because he knowed the man's character. it was just the kind of a man he was hunting for -a man that never believes in anybody's word or anybody's honorableness, because he ain't got none of his own. i reckon there's lots of people like that dervish. they swindle, right and left, but they always make the other person seem to swindle himself. they keep inside of the letter of the law all the time, and there ain't no way to git hold of them. they don't put the salve on -oh, no, that would be sin; but they know how to fool you into putting it on, then it's you that blinds yourself. i reckon the dervish and the camel-driver was just a pair -a fine, smart, brainy rascal, and a dull, coarse, ignorant one, but both of them rascals, just the same." "mars tom, does you reckon dey's any o' dat kind o' salve in de worl' now?" "yes, uncle abner says there is. he says they've got it in new york, and they put it on country people's eyes and show them all the railroads in the world, and they go in and git them, and then when they rub the salve on the other eye the other man bids them goodbye and goes off with their railroads. here's the treasure-hill now. lower away!" we landed, but it warn't as interesting as i thought it was going to be, because we couldn't find the place where they went in to git the treasure. still, it was plenty interesting enough, just to see the mere hill itself where such a wonderful thing happened. jim said he wou'dn't 'a' missed it for three dollars, and i felt the same way. and to me and jim, as wonderful a thing as any was the way tom could come into a strange big country like this and go straight and find a little hump like that and tell it in a minute from a million other humps that was almost just like it, and nothing to help him but only his own learning and his own natural smartness. we talked and talked it over together, but couldn't make out how he done it. he had the best head on him i ever see; and all he lacked was age, to make a name for himself equal to captain kidd or george washington. i bet you it would 'a' crowded either of them to find that hill, with all their gifts, but it warn't nothing to tom sawyer; he went across sahara and put his finger on it as easy as you could pick a nigger out of a bunch of angels. we found a pond of salt water close by and scraped up a raft of salt around the edges, and loaded up the lion's skin and the tiger's so as they would keep till jim could tan them. chapter xi. the sand-storm we went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then just as the full moon was touching the ground on the other side of the desert, we see a string of little black figgers moving across its big silver face. you could see them as plain as if they was painted on the moon with ink. it was another caravan. we cooled down our speed and tagged along after it, just to have company, though it warn't going our way. it was a rattler, that caravan, and a most bully sight to look at next morning when the sun come a-streaming across the desert and flung the long shadders of the camels on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-longlegses marching in procession. we never went very near it, because we knowed better now than to act like that and scare people's camels and break up their caravans. it was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich clothes and nobby style. some of the chiefs rode on dromedaries, the first we ever see, and very tall, and they go plunging along like they was on stilts, and they rock the man that is on them pretty violent and churn up his dinner considerable, i bet you, but they make noble good time, and a camel ain't nowheres with them for speed. the caravan camped, during the middle part of the day, and then started again about the middle of the afternoon. before long the sun begun to look very curious. first it kind of turned to brass, and then to copper, and after that it begun to look like a bloodred ball, and the air got hot and close, and pretty soon all the sky in the west darkened up and looked thick and foggy, but fiery and dreadful -like it looks through a piece of red glass, you know. we looked down and see a big confusion going on in the caravan, and a rushing every which way like they was scared; and then they all flopped down flat in the sand and laid there perfectly still. pretty soon we see something coming that stood up like an amazing wide wall, and reached from the desert up into the sky and hid the sun, and it was coming like the nation, too. then a little faint breeze struck us, and then it come harder, and grains of sand begun to sift against our faces and sting like fire, and tom sung out: "it's a sand-storm -turn your backs to it!" we done it; and in another minute it was blowing a gale, and the sand beat against us by the shovelful, and the air was so thick with it we couldn't see a thing. in five minutes the boat was level full, and we was setting on the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only our heads out and could hardly breathe. then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off across the desert, awful to look at, i tell you. we dug ourselves out and looked down, and where the caravan was before there wasn't anything but just the sand ocean now, and all still and quiet. all them people and camels was smothered and dead and buried -buried under ten foot of sand, we reckoned, and tom allowed it might be years before the wind uncovered them, and all that time their friends wouldn't ever know what become of that caravan. tom said: "now we know what it was that happened to the people we got the swords and pistols from." yes, sir, that was just it. it was as plain as day now. they got buried in a sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn't get at them, and the wind never uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and warn't fit to eat. it seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor people as a person could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this last caravan's death went harder with us, a good deal harder. you see, the others was total strangers, and we never got to feeling acquainted with them at all, except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching the girl, but it was different with this last caravan. we was huvvering around them a whole night and 'most a whole day, and had got to feeling real friendly with them, and acquainted. i have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. just so with these. we kind of liked them from the start, and traveling with them put on the finisher. the longer we traveled with them, and the more we got used to their ways, the better and better we liked them, and the gladder and gladder we was that we run across them. we had come to know some of them so well that we called them by name when we was talking about them, and soon got so familiar and sociable that we even dropped the miss and mister and just used their plain names without any handle, and it did not seem unpolite, but just the right thing. of course, it wasn't their own names, but names we give them. there was mr. elexander robinson and miss adaline robinson, and colonel jacob mcdougal and miss harryet mcdougal, and judge jeremiah butler and young bushrod butler, and these was big chiefs mostly that wore splendid great turbans and simmeters, and dressed like the grand mogul, and their families. but as soon as we come to know them good, and like them very much, it warn't mister, nor judge, nor nothing, any more, but only elleck, and addy, and jake, and hattie, and jerry, and buck, and so on. and you know the more you join in with people in their joys and their sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you. now we warn't cold and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right down friendly and sociable, and took a chance in everything that was going, and the caravan could depend on us to be on hand every time, it didn't make no difference what it was. when they camped, we camped right over them, ten or twelve hundred feet up in the air. when they et a meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so much homeliker to have their company. when they had a wedding that night, and buck and addy got married, we got ourselves up in the very starchiest of the professor's duds for the blow-out, and when they danced we jined in and shook a foot up there. but it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the nearest, and it was a funeral that done it with us. it was next morning, just in the still dawn. we didn't know the diseased, and he warn't in our set, but that never made no difference; he belonged to the caravan, and that was enough, and there warn't no more sincerer tears shed over him than the ones we dripped on him from up there eleven hundred foot on high. yes, parting with this caravan was much more bitterer than it was to part with them others, which was comparative strangers, and been dead so long, anyway. we had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of them, too, and now to have death snatch them from right before our faces while we was looking, and leave us so lonesome and friendless in the middle of that big desert, it did hurt so, and we wished we mightn't ever make any more friends on that voyage if we was going to lose them again like that. we couldn't keep from talking about them, and they was all the time coming up in our memory, and looking just the way they looked when we was all alive and happy together. we could see the line marching, and the shiny spearheads a-winking in the sun; we could see the dromedaries lumbering along; we could see the wedding and the funeral; and more oftener than anything else we could see them praying, because they don't allow nothing to prevent that; whenever the call come, several times a day, they would stop right there, and stand up and face to the east, and lift back their heads, and spread out their arms and begin, and four or five times they would go down on their knees, and then fall forward and touch their forehead to the ground. well, it warn't good to go on talking about them, lovely as they was in their life, and dear to us in their life and death both, because it didn't do no good, and made us too down-hearted. jim allowed he was going to live as good a life as he could, so he could see them again in a better world; and tom kept still and didn't tell him they was only mohammedans; it warn't no use to disappoint him, he was feeling bad enough just as it was. when we woke up next morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and had had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed there is, and i don't see why people that can afford it don't have it more. and it's terrible good ballast, too; i never see the balloon so steady before. tom allowed we had twenty tons of it, and wondered what we better do with it; it was good sand, and it didn't seem good sense to throw it away. jim says: "mars tom, can't we tote it back home en sell it? how long'll it take?" "depends on the way we go." "well, sah, she's wuth a quarter of a dollar a load at home, en i reckon we's got as much as twenty loads, hain't we? how much would dat be?" "five dollars." "by jings, mars tom, le's shove for home right on de spot! hit's more'n a dollar en a half apiece, hain't it?" "yes." "well, ef dat ain't makin' money de easiest ever i struck! she jes' rained in -never cos' us a lick o' work. le's mosey right along, mars tom." but tom was thinking and ciphering away so busy and excited he never heard him. pretty soon he says: "five dollars -sho! look here, this sand's worth -worth -why, it's worth no end of money." "how is dat, mars tom? go on, honey, go on!" "well, the minute people knows it's genuwyne sand from the genuwyne desert of sahara, they'll just be in a perfect state of mind to git hold of some of it to keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for a curiosity. all we got to do is to put it up in vials and float around all over the united states and peddle them out at ten cents apiece. we've got all of ten thousand dollars' worth of sand in this boat." me and jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout whoopjamboreehoo, and tom says: "and we can keep on coming back and fetching sand, and coming back and fetching more sand, and just keep it a-going till we've carted this whole desert over there and sold it out; and there ain't ever going to be any opposition, either, because we'll take out a patent." "my goodness," i says, "we'll be as rich as creosote, won't we, tom?" "yes -creesus, you mean. why, that dervish was hunting in that little hill for the treasures of the earth, and didn't know he was walking over the real ones for a thousand miles. he was blinder than he made the driver." "mars tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?" "well, i don't know yet. it's got to be ciphered, and it ain't the easiest job to do, either, because it's over four million square miles of sand at ten cents a vial." jim was awful excited, but this faded it out considerable, and he shook his head and says: "mars tom, we can't 'ford all dem vials -a king couldn't. we better not try to take de whole desert, mars tom, de vials gwyne to bust us, sho'." tom's excitement died out, too, now, and i reckoned it was on account of the vials, but it wasn't. he set there thinking, and got bluer and bluer, and at last he says: "boys, it won't work; we got to give it up." "why, tom?" "on account of the duties." i couldn't make nothing out of that, neither could jim. i says: "what is our duty, tom? because if we can't git around it, why can't we just do it? people often has to." but he says: "oh, it ain't that kind of duty. the kind i mean is a tax. whenever you strike a frontier -that's the border of a country, you know -you find a customhouse there, and the gov'ment officers comes and rummages among your things and charges a big tax, which they call a duty because it's their duty to bust you if they can, and if you don't pay the duty they'll hog your sand. they call it confiscating, but that don't deceive nobody, it's just hogging, and that's all it is. now if we try to carry this sand home the way we're pointed now, we got to climb fences till we git tired -just frontier after frontier -egypt, arabia, hindostan, and so on, and they'll all whack on a duty, and so you see, easy enough, we can't go that road." "why, tom," i says, "we can sail right over their old frontiers; how are they going to stop us?" he looked sorrowful at me, and says, very grave: "huck finn, do you think that would be honest?" i hate them kind of interruptions. i never said nothing, and he went on: "well, we're shut off the other way, too. if we go back the way we've come, there's the new york custom-house, and that is worse than all of them others put together, on account of the kind of cargo we've got." "why?" "well, they can't raise sahara sand in america, of course, and when they can't raise a thing there, the duty is fourteen hundred thousand per cent. on it if you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it." "there ain't no sense in that, tom sawyer." "who said there was? what do you talk to me like that for, huck finn? you wait till i say a thing's got sense in it before you go to accusing me of saying it." "all right, consider me crying about it, and sorry. go on." jim says: "mars tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything we can't raise in america, en don't make no 'stinction 'twix' anything?" "yes, that's what they do." "mars tom, ain't de blessin' o' de lord de mos' valuable thing dey is?" "yes, it is." "don't de preacher stan' up in de pulpit en call it down on de people?" "yes." "whah do it come from?" "from heaven." "yassir! you's jes' right, 'deed you is, honey -it come from heaven, en dat's a foreign country. now, den! do dey put a tax on dat blessin'?" "no, they don't." "course dey don't; en so it stan' to reason dat you's mistaken, mars tom. dey wouldn't put de tax on po' truck like san', dat everybody ain't 'bleeged to have, en leave it off'n de bes' thing dey is, which nobody can't git along widout." tom sawyer was stumped; he see jim had got him where he couldn't budge. he tried to wiggle out by saying they had forgot to put on that tax, but they'd be sure to remember about it, next session of congress, and then they'd put it on, but that was a poor lame come-off, and he knowed it. he said there warn't nothing foreign that warn't taxed but just that one, and so they couldn't be consistent without taxing it, and to be consistent was the first law of politics. so he stuck to it that they'd left it out unintentional and would be certain to do their best to fix it before they got caught and laughed at. but i didn't feel no more interest in such things, as long as we couldn't git our sand through, and it made me low-spirited, and jim the same. tom he tried to cheer us up by saying he would think up another speculation for us that would be just as good as this one and better, but it didn't do no good, we didn't believe there was any as big as this. it was mighty hard; such a little while ago we was so rich, and could 'a' bought a country and started a kingdom and been celebrated and happy, and now we was so poor and ornery again, and had our sand left on our hands. the sand was looking so lovely before, just like gold and di'monds, and the feel of it was so soft and so silky and nice, but now i couldn't bear the sight of it, it made me sick to look at it, and i knowed i wouldn't ever feel comfortable again till we got shut of it, and i didn't have it there no more to remind us of what we had been and what we had got degraded down to. the others was feeling the same way about it that i was. i knowed it, because they cheered up so, the minute i says le's throw this truck overboard. well, it was going to be work, you know, and pretty solid work, too; so tom he divided it up according to fairness and strength. he said me and him would clear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and jim threefifths. jim he didn't quite like that arrangement. he says: "course i's de stronges', en i's willin' to do a share accordin', but by jings you's kinder pilin' it onto ole jim, mars tom, hain't you?" "well, i didn't think so, jim, but you try your hand at fixing it, and let's see." so jim reckoned it wouldn't be no more than fair if me and tom done a tenth apiece. tom he turned his back to git room and be private, and then he smole a smile that spread around and covered the whole sahara to the westward, back to the atlantic edge of it where we come from. then he turned around again and said it was a good enough arrangement, and we was satisfied if jim was. jim said he was. so then tom measured off our two-tenths in the bow and left the rest for jim, and it surprised jim a good deal to see how much difference there was and what a raging lot of sand his share come to, and said he was powerful glad now that he had spoke up in time and got the first arrangement altered, for he said that even the way it was now, there was more sand than enjoyment in his end of the contract, he believed. then we laid into it. it was mighty hot work, and tough; so hot we had to move up into cooler weather or we couldn't 'a' stood it. me and tom took turn about, and one worked while t'other rested, but there warn't nobody to spell poor old jim, and he made all that part of africa damp, he sweated so. we couldn't work good, we was so full of laugh, and jim he kept fretting and wanting to know what tickled us so, and we had to keep making up things to account for it, and they was pretty poor inventions, but they done well enough, jim didn't see through them. at last when we got done we was 'most dead, but not with work but with laughing. by and by jim was 'most dead, too, but: it was with work; then we took turns and spelled him, and he was as thankfull as he could be, and would set on the gunnel and swab the sweat, and heave and pant, and say how good we was to a poor old nigger, and he wouldn't ever forgit us. he was always the gratefulest nigger i ever see, for any little thing you done for him. he was only nigger outside; inside he was as white as you be. chapter xii. jim standing siege the next few meals was pretty sandy, but that don't make no difference when you are hungry; and when you ain't it ain't no satisfaction to eat, anyway, and so a little grit in the meat ain't no particular drawback, as far as i can see. then we struck the east end of the desert at last, sailing on a northeast course. away off on the edge of the sand, in a soft pinky light, we see three little sharp roofs like tents, and tom says: "it's the pyramids of egypt." it made my heart fairly jump. you see, i had seen a many and a many a picture of them, and heard tell about them a hundred times, and yet to come on them all of a sudden, that way, and find they was real, 'stead of imaginations, 'most knocked the breath out of me with surprise. it's a curious thing, that the more you hear about a grand and big and bully thing or person, the more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, and gets to be a big dim wavery figger made out of moonshine and nothing solid to it. it's just so with george washington, and the same with them pyramids. and moreover, besides, the thing they always said about them seemed to me to be stretchers. there was a feller come to the sunday-school once, and had a picture of them, and made a speech, and said the biggest pyramid covered thirteen acres, and was most five hundred foot high, just a steep mountain, all built out of hunks of stone as big as a bureau, and laid up in perfectly regular layers, like stair-steps. thirteen acres, you see, for just one building; it's a farm. if it hadn't been in sunday-school, i would 'a' judged it was a lie; and outside i was certain of it. and he said there was a hole in the pyramid, and you could go in there with candles, and go ever so far up a long slanting tunnel, and come to a large room in the stomach of that stone mountain, and there you would find a big stone chest with a king in it, four thousand years old. i said to myself, then, if that ain't a lie i will eat that king if they will fetch him, for even methusalem warn't that old, and nobody claims it. as we come a little nearer we see the yaller sand come to an end in a long straight edge like a blanket, and on to it was joined, edge to edge, a wide country of bright green, with a snaky stripe crooking through it, and tom said it was the nile. it made my heart jump again, for the nile was another thing that wasn't real to me. now i can tell you one thing which is dead certain: if you will fool along over three thousand miles of yaller sand, all glimmering with heat so that it makes your eyes water to look at it, and you've been a considerable part of a week doing it, the green country will look so like home and heaven to you that it will make your eyes water again. it was just so with me, and the same with jim. and when jim got so he could believe it was the land of egypt he was looking at, he wouldn't enter it standing up, but got down on his knees and took off his hat, because he said it wasn't fitten' for a humble poor nigger to come any other way where such men had been as moses and joseph and pharaoh and the other prophets. he was a presbyterian, and had a most deep respect for moses which was a presbyterian, too, he said. he was all stirred up, and says: "hit's de lan' of egypt, de lan' of egypt, en i's 'lowed to look at it wid my own eyes! en dah's de river dat was turn' to blood, en i's looking at de very same groun' whah de plagues was, en de lice, en de frogs, en de locus', en de hail, en whah dey marked de door-pos', en de angel o' de lord come by in de darkness o' de night en slew de fust-born in all de lan' o' egypt. ole jim ain't worthy to see dis day!" and then he just broke down and cried, he was so thankful. so between him and tom there was talk enough, jim being excited because the land was so full of history -joseph and his brethren, moses in the bulrushers, jacob coming down into egypt to buy corn, the silver cup in the sack, and all them interesting things; and tom just as excited too, because the land was so full of history that was in his line, about noureddin, and bedreddin, and such like monstrous giants, that made jim's wool rise, and a raft of other arabian nights folks, which the half of them never done the things they let on they done, i don't believe. then we struck a disappointment, for one of them early morning fogs started up, and it warn't no use to sail over the top of it, because we would go by egypt, sure, so we judged it was best to set her by compass straight for the place where the pyramids was gitting blurred and blotted out, and then drop low and skin along pretty close to the ground and keep a sharp lookout. tom took the hellum, i stood by to let go the anchor, and jim he straddled the bow to dig through the fog with his eyes and watch out for danger ahead. we went along a steady gait, but not very fast, and the fog got solider and solider, so solid that jim looked dim and ragged and smoky through it. it was awful still, and we talked low and was anxious. now and then jim would say: "highst her a p'int, mars tom, highst her!" and up she would skip, a foot or two, and we would slide right over a flat-roofed mud cabin, with people that had been asleep on it just beginning to turn out and gap and stretch; and once when a feller was clear up on his hind legs so he could gap and stretch better, we took him a blip in the back and knocked him off. by and by, after about an hour, and everything dead still and we a-straining our ears for sounds and holding our breath, the fog thinned a little, very sudden, and jim sung out in an awful scare: "oh, for de lan's sake, set her back, mars tom, here's de biggest giant outen de 'rabian nights acomin' for us!" and he went over backwards in the boat. tom slammed on the back-action, and as we slowed to a standstill a man's face as big as our house at home looked in over the gunnel, same as a house looks out of its windows, and i laid down and died. i must 'a' been clear dead and gone for as much as a minute or more; then i come to, and tom had hitched a boathook on to the lower lip of the giant and was holding the balloon steady with it whilst he canted his head back and got a good long look up at that awful face. jim was on his knees with his hands clasped, gazing up at the thing in a begging way, and working his lips, but not getting anything out. i took only just a glimpse, and was fading out again, but tom says: "he ain't alive, you fools; it's the sphinx!" i never see tom look so little and like a fly; but that was because the giant's head was so big and awful. awful, yes, so it was, but not dreadful any more, because you could see it was a noble face, and kind of sad, and not thinking about you, but about other things and larger. it was stone, reddish stone, and its nose and ears battered, and that give it an abused look, and you felt sorrier for it for that. we stood off a piece, and sailed around it and over it, and it was just grand. it was a man's head, or maybe a woman's, on a tiger's body a hundred and twenty-five foot long, and there was a dear little temple between its front paws. all but the head used to be under the sand, for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, but they had just lately dug the sand away and found that little temple. it took a power of sand to bury that cretur; most as much as it would to bury a steamboat, i reckon. we landed jim on top of the head, with an american flag to protect him, it being a foreign land; then we sailed off to this and that and t'other distance, to git what tom called effects and perspectives and proportions, and jim he done the best he could, striking all the different kinds of attitudes and positions he could study up, but standing on his head and working his legs the way a frog does was the best. the further we got away, the littler jim got, and the grander the sphinx got, till at last it was only a clothespin on a dome, as you might say. that's the way perspective brings out the correct proportions, tom said; he said julus cesar's niggers didn't know how big he was, they was too close to him. then we sailed off further and further, till we couldn't see jim at all any more, and then that great figger was at its noblest, a-gazing out over the nile valley so still and solemn and lonesome, and all the little shabby huts and things that was scattered about it clean disappeared and gone, and nothing around it now but a soft wide spread of yaller velvet, which was the sand. that was the right place to stop, and we done it. we set there a-looking and a-thinking for a half an hour, nobody a-saying anything, for it made us feel quiet and kind of solemn to remember it had been looking over that valley just that same way, and thinking its awful thoughts all to itself for thousands of years. and nobody can't find out what they are to this day. at last i took up the glass and see some little black things a-capering around on that velvet carpet, and some more a-climbing up the cretur's back, and then i see two or three wee puffs of white smoke, and told tom to look. he done it, and says: "they're bugs. no -hold on; they -why, i believe they're men. yes, it's men -men and horses both. they're hauling a long ladder up onto the sphinx's back -now ain't that odd? and now they're trying to lean it up a -there's some more puffs of smoke -it's guns! huck, they're after jim." we clapped on the power, and went for them abiling. we was there in no time, and come a-whizzing down amongst them, and they broke and scattered every which way, and some that was climbing the ladder after jim let go all holts and fell. we soared up and found him laying on top of the head panting and most tuckered out, partly from howling for help and partly from scare. he had been standing a siege a long time -a week, he said, but it warn't so, it only just seemed so to him because they was crowding him so. they had shot at him, and rained the bullets all around him, but he warn't hit, and when they found he wouldn't stand up and the bullets couldn't git at him when he was laying down, they went for the ladder, and then he knowed it was all up with him if we didn't come pretty quick. tom was very indignant, and asked him why he didn't show the flag and command them to git, in the name of the united states. jim said he done it, but they never paid no attention. tom said he would have this thing looked into at washington, and says: "you'll see that they'll have to apologize for insulting the flag, and pay an indemnity, too, on top of it even if they git off that easy." jim says: "what's an indemnity, mars tom?" "it's cash, that's what it is." "who gits it, mars tom?" "why, we do." "en who gits de apology?" "the united states. or, we can take whichever we please. we can take the apology, if we want to, and let the gov'ment take the money." "how much money will it be, mars tom?" "well, in an aggravated case like this one, it will be at least three dollars apiece, and i don't know but more." "well, den, we'll take de money, mars tom, blame de 'pology. hain't dat yo' notion, too? en hain't it yourn, huck?" we talked it over a little and allowed that that was as good a way as any, so we agreed to take the money. it was a new business to me, and i asked tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says: "yes; the little ones does." we was sailing around examining the pyramids, you know, and now we soared up and roosted on the flat top of the biggest one, and found it was just like what the man said in the sunday-school. it was like four pairs of stairs that starts broad at the bottom and slants up and comes together in a point at the top, only these stair-steps couldn't be clumb the way you climb other stairs; no, for each step was as high as your chin, and you have to be boosted up from behind. the two other pyramids warn't far away, and the people moving about on the sand between looked like bugs crawling, we was so high above them. tom he couldn't hold himself he was so worked up with gladness and astonishment to be in such a celebrated place, and he just dripped history from every pore, seemed to me. he said he couldn't scarcely believe he was standing on the very identical spot the prince flew from on the bronze horse. it was in the arabian night times, he said. somebody give the prince a bronze horse with a peg in its shoulder, and he could git on him and fly through the air like a bird, and go all over the world, and steer it by turning the peg, and fly high or low and land wherever he wanted to. when he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences that comes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change the subject and let him down easy, but git stuck and don't see no way, and before you can pull your mind together and do something, that silence has got in and spread itself and done the business. i was embarrassed, jim he was embarrassed, and neither of us couldn't say a word. well, tom he glowered at me a minute, and says: "come, out with it. what do you think?" i says: "tom sawyer, you don't believe that, yourself." "what's the reason i don't? what's to hender me?" "there's one thing to hender you: it couldn't happen, that's all." "what's the reason it couldn't happen?" "you tell me the reason it could happen." "this balloon is a good enough reason it could happen, i should reckon." "why is it?" "why is it? i never saw such an idiot. ain't this balloon and the bronze horse the same thing under different names?" "no, they're not. one is a balloon and the other's a horse. it's very different. next you'll be saying a house and a cow is the same thing." "by jackson, huck's got him ag'in! dey ain't no wigglin' outer dat!" "shut your head, jim; you don't know what you're talking about. and huck don't. look here, huck, i'll make it plain to you, so you can understand. you see, it ain't the mere form that's got anything to do with their being similar or unsimilar, it's the principle involved; and the principle is the same in both. don't you see, now?" i turned it over in my mind, and says: "tom, it ain't no use. principles is all very well, but they don't git around that one big fact, that the thing that a balloon can do ain't no sort of proof of what a horse can do." "shucks, huck, you don't get the idea at all. now look here a minute -it's perfectly plain. don't we fly through the air?" "yes." "very well. don't we fly high or fly low, just as we please?" "yes." "don't we steer whichever way we want to?" "yes." "and don't we land when and where we please?" "yes." "how do we move the balloon and steer it?" "by touching the buttons." "now i reckon the thing is clear to you at last. in the other case the moving and steering was done by turning a peg. we touch a button, the prince turned a peg. there ain't an atom of difference, you see. i knowed i could git it through your head if i stuck to it long enough." he felt so happy he begun to whistle. but me and jim was silent, so he broke off surprised, and says: "looky here, huck finn, don't you see it yet?" i says: "tom sawyer, i want to ask you some questions." "go ahead," he says, and i see jim chirk up to listen. "as i understand it, the whole thing is in the buttons and the peg -the rest ain't of no consequence. a button is one shape, a peg is another shape, but that ain't any matter?" "no, that ain't any matter, as long as they've both got the same power." "all right, then. what is the power that's in a candle and in a match?" "it's the fire." "it's the same in both, then?" "yes, just the same in both." "all right. suppose i set fire to a carpenter shop with a match, what will happen to that carpenter shop?" "she'll burn up." "and suppose i set fire to this pyramid with a candle -will she burn up?" "of course she won't." "all right. now the fire's the same, both times. why does the shop burn, and the pyramid don't?" "because the pyramid can't burn." "aha! and a horse can't fly!" "my lan', ef huck ain't got him ag'in! huck's landed him high en dry dis time, i tell you! hit's de smartes' trap i ever see a body walk inter -en ef i --" but jim was so full of laugh he got to strangling and couldn't go on, and tom was that mad to see how neat i had floored him, and turned his own argument ag'in him and knocked him all to rags and flinders with it, that all he could manage to say was that whenever he heard me and jim try to argue it made him ashamed of the human race. i never said nothing; i was feeling pretty well satisfied. when i have got the best of a person that way, it ain't my way to go around crowing about it the way some people does, for i consider that if i was in his place i wouldn't wish him to crow over me. it's better to be generous, that's what i think. chapter xiii. going for tom's pipe: by and by we left jim to float around up there in the neighborhood of the pyramids, and we clumb down to the hole where you go into the tunnel, and went in with some arabs and candles, and away in there in the middle of the pyramid we found a room and a big stone box in it where they used to keep that king, just as the man in the sunday-school said; but he was gone, now; somebody had got him. but i didn't take no interest in the place, because there could be ghosts there, of course; not fresh ones, but i don't like no kind. so then we come out and got some little donkeys and rode a piece, and then went in a boat another piece, and then more donkeys, and got to cairo; and all the way the road was as smooth and beautiful a road as ever i see, and had tall date-pa'ms on both sides, and naked children everywhere, and the men was as red as copper, and fine and strong and handsome. and the city was a curiosity. such narrow streets -why, they were just lanes, and crowded with people with turbans, and women with veils, and everybody rigged out in blazing bright clothes and all sorts of colors, and you wondered how the camels and the people got by each other in such narrow little cracks, but they done it -a perfect jam, you see, and everybody noisy. the stores warn't big enough to turn around in, but you didn't have to go in; the storekeeper sat tailor fashion on his counter, smoking his snaky long pipe, and had his things where he could reach them to sell, and he was just as good as in the street, for the camel-loads brushed him as they went by. now and then a grand person flew by in a carriage with fancy dressed men running and yelling in front of it and whacking anybody with a long rod that didn't get out of the way. and by and by along comes the sultan riding horseback at the head of a procession, and fairly took your breath away his clothes was so splendid; and everybody fell flat and laid on his stomach while he went by. i forgot, but a feller helped me to remember. he was one that had a rod and run in front. there was churches, but they don't know enough to keep sunday; they keep friday and break the sabbath. you have to take off your shoes when you go in. there was crowds of men and boys in the church, setting in groups on the stone floor and making no end of noise -getting their lessons by heart, tom said, out of the koran, which they think is a bible, and people that knows better knows enough to not let on. i never see such a big church in my life before, and most awful high, it was; it made you dizzy to look up; our village church at home ain't a circumstance to it; if you was to put it in there, people would think it was a drygoods box. what i wanted to see was a dervish, because i was interested in dervishes on accounts of the one that played the trick on the camel-driver. so we found a lot in a kind of a church, and they called themselves whirling dervishes; and they did whirl, too. i never see anything like it. they had tall sugar-loaf hats on, and linen petticoats; and they spun and spun and spun, round and round like tops, and the petticoats stood out on a slant, and it was the prettiest thing i ever see, and made me drunk to look at it. they was all moslems, tom said, and when i asked him what a moslem was, he said it was a person that wasn't a presbyterian. so there is plenty of them in missouri, though i didn't know it before. we didn't see half there was to see in cairo, because tom was in such a sweat to hunt out places that was celebrated in history. we had a most tiresome time to find the granary where joseph stored up the grain before the famine, and when we found it it warn't worth much to look at, being such an old tumble-down wreck; but tom was satisfied, and made more fuss over it than i would make if i stuck a nail in my foot. how he ever found that place was too many for me. we passed as much as forty just like it before we come to it, and any of them would 'a' done for me, but none but just the right one would suit him; i never see anybody so particular as tom sawyer. the minute he struck the right one he reconnized it as easy as i would reconnize my other shirt if i had one, but how he done it he couldn't any more tell than he could fly; he said so himself. then we hunted a long time for the house where the boy lived that learned the cadi how to try the case of the old olives and the new ones, and said it was out of the arabian nights, and he would tell me and jim about it when he got time. well, we hunted and hunted till i was ready to drop, and i wanted tom to give it up and come next day and git somebody that knowed the town and could talk missourian and could go straight to the place; but no, he wanted to find it himself, and nothing else would answer. so on we went. then at last the remarkablest thing happened i ever see. the house was gone -gone hundreds of years ago -every last rag of it gone but just one mud brick. now a person wouldn't ever believe that a backwoods missouri boy that hadn't ever been in that town before could go and hunt that place over and find that brick, but tom sawyer done it. i know he done it, because i see him do it. i was right by his very side at the time, and see him see the brick and see him reconnize it. well, i says to myself, how does he do it? is it knowledge, or is it instink? now there's the facts, just as they happened: let everybody explain it their own way. i've ciphered over it a good deal, and it's my opinion that some of it is knowledge but the main bulk of it is instink. the reason is this: tom put the brick in his pocket to give to a museum with his name on it and the facts when he went home, and i slipped it out and put another brick considerable like it in its place, and he didn't know the difference -but there was a difference, you see. i think that settles it -it's mostly instink, not knowledge. instink tells him where the exact place is for the brick to be in, and so he reconnizes it by the place it's in, not by the look of the brick. if it was knowledge, not instink, he would know the brick again by the look of it the next time he seen it -which he didn't. so it shows that for all the brag you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instink is worth forty of it for real unerringness. jim says the same. when we got back jim dropped down and took us in, and there was a young man there with a red skullcap and tassel on and a beautiful silk jacket and baggy trousers with a shawl around his waist and pistols in it that could talk english and wanted to hire to us as guide and take us to mecca and medina and central africa and everywheres for a half a dollar a day and his keep, and we hired him and left, and piled on the power, and by the time we was through dinner we was over the place where the israelites crossed the red sea when pharaoh tried to overtake them and was caught by the waters. we stopped, then, and had a good look at the place, and it done jim good to see it. he said he could see it all, now, just the way it happened; he could see the israelites walking along between the walls of water, and the egyptians coming, from away off yonder, hurrying all they could, and see them start in as the israelites went out, and then when they was all in, see the walls tumble together and drown the last man of them. then we piled on the power again and rushed away and huvvered over mount sinai, and saw the place where moses broke the tables of stone, and where the children of israel camped in the plain and worshiped the golden calf, and it was all just as interesting as could be, and the guide knowed every place as well as i knowed the village at home. but we had an accident, now, and it fetched all the plans to a standstill. tom's old ornery corn-cob pipe had got so old and swelled and warped that she couldn't hold together any longer, notwithstanding the strings and bandages, but caved in and went to pieces. tom he didn't know what to do. the professor's pipe wouldn't answer; it warn't anything but a mershum, and a person that's got used to a cob pipe knows it lays a long ways over all the other pipes in this world, and you can't git him to smoke any other. he wouldn't take mine, i couldn't persuade him. so there he was. he thought it over, and said we must scour around and see if we could roust out one in egypt or arabia or around in some of these countries, but the guide said no, it warn't no use, they didn't have them. so tom was pretty glum for a little while, then he chirked up and said he'd got the idea and knowed what to do. he says: "i've got another corn-cob pipe, and it's a prime one, too, and nearly new. it's laying on the rafter that's right over the kitchen stove at home in the village. jim, you and the guide will go and get it, and me and huck will camp here on mount sinai till you come back." "but, mars tom, we couldn't ever find de village. i could find de pipe, 'case i knows de kitchen, but my lan', we can't ever find de village, nur sent louis, nur none o' dem places. we don't know de way, mars tom." that was a fact, and it stumped tom for a minute. then he said: "looky here, it can be done, sure; and i'll tell you how. you set your compass and sail west as straight as a dart, till you find the united states. it ain't any trouble, because it's the first land you'll strike the other side of the atlantic. if it's daytime when you strike it, bulge right on, straight west from the upper part of the florida coast, and in an hour and three quarters you'll hit the mouth of the mississippi -at the speed that i'm going to send you. you'll be so high up in the air that the earth will be curved considerable -sorter like a washbowl turned upside down -and you'll see a raft of rivers crawling around every which way, long before you get there, and you can pick out the mississippi without any trouble. then you can follow the river north nearly, an hour and three quarters, till you see the ohio come in; then you want to look sharp, because you're getting near. away up to your left you'll see another thread coming in -that's the missouri and is a little above st. louis. you'll come down low then, so as you can examine the villages as you spin along. you'll pass about twenty-five in the next fifteen minutes, and you'll recognize ours when you see it -and if you don't, you can yell down and ask." "ef it's dat easy, mars tom, i reckon we kin do it -yassir, i knows we kin." the guide was sure of it, too, and thought that he could learn to stand his watch in a little while. "jim can learn you the whole thing in a half an hour," tom said. "this balloon's as easy to manage as a canoe." tom got out the chart and marked out the course and measured it, and says: "to go back west is the shortest way, you see. it's only about seven thousand miles. if you went east, and so on around, it's over twice as far." then he says to the guide, "i want you both to watch the tell-tale all through the watches, and whenever it don't mark three hundred miles an hour, you go higher or drop lower till you find a storm-current that's going your way. there's a hundred miles an hour in this old thing without any wind to help. there's twohundred-mile gales to be found, any time you want to hunt for them." "we'll hunt for them, sir." "see that you do. sometimes you may have to go up a couple of miles, and it'll be p'ison cold, but most of the time you'll find your storm a good deal lower. if you can only strike a cyclone -that's the ticket for you! you'll see by the professor's books that they travel west in these latitudes; and they travel low, too." then he ciphered on the time, and says -"seven thousand miles, three hundred miles an hour -you can make the trip in a day -twenty-four hours. this is thursday; you'll be back here saturday afternoon. come, now, hustle out some blankets and food and books and things for me and huck, and you can start right along. there ain't no occasion to fool around -i want a smoke, and the quicker you fetch that pipe the better." all hands jumped for the things, and in eight minutes our things was out and the balloon was ready for america. so we shook hands good-bye, and tom gave his last orders: "it's 1o minutes to 2 p.m. now, mount sinai time. in 24 hours you'll be home, and it'll be 6 to-morrow morning, village time. when you strike the village, land a little back of the top of the hill, in the woods, out of sight; then you rush down, jim, and shove these letters in the post-office, and if you see anybody stirring, pull your slouch down over your face so they won't know you. then you go and slip in the back way to the kitchen and git the pipe, and lay this piece of paper on the kitchen table, and put something on it to hold it, and then slide out and git away, and don't let aunt polly catch a sight of you, nor nobody else. then you jump for the balloon and shove for mount sinai three hundred miles an hour. you won't have lost more than an hour. you'll start back at 7 or 8 a.m., village time, and be here in 24 hours, arriving at 2 or 3 p.m., mount sinai time." tom he read the piece of paper to us. he had wrote on it: "thursday afternoon. tom sawyer the erro nort sends his love to aunt polly from mount sinai where the ark was, and so does huck finn, and she will get it to-morrow morning half-past six." * [* this misplacing of the ark is probably huck's error, not tom's. -m.t.] "that'll make her eyes bulge out and the tears come," he says. then he says: "stand by! one -two -three -away you go!" and away she did go! why, she seemed to whiz out of sight in a second. then we found a most comfortable cave that looked out over the whole big plain, and there we camped to wait for the pipe. the balloon come hack all right, and brung the pipe; but aunt polly had catched jim when he was getting it, and anybody can guess what happened: she sent for tom. so jim he says: "mars tom, she's out on de porch wid her eye sot on de sky a-layin' for you, en she say she ain't gwyne to budge from dah tell she gits hold of you. dey's gwyne to be trouble, mars tom, 'deed dey is." so then we shoved for home, and not feeling very gay, neither. end. . 1897 dracula by bram stoker chapter i. jonathan harker's journal. (kept in shorthand.) 3 may. bistriz.left munich at 8:35 p.m., on 1st may, arriving at vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. buda-pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which i got of it from the train and the little i could walk through the streets. i feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. the impression i had was that we were leaving the west and entering the east; the most western of splendid bridges over the danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of turkish rule. we left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to klausenburgh. here i stopped for the night at the hotel royale. i had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (mem., get recipe for mina.) i asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl," and that, as it was a national dish, i should be able to get it anywhere along the carpathians. i found my smattering of german very useful here; indeed, i don't know how i should be able to get on without it. having had some time at my disposal when in london, i had visited the british museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding transylvania; it had struck me that some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. i find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country just on the borders of three states, transylvania, moldavia and bukovina, in the midst of the carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of europe. i was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the castle dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own ordnance survey maps; but i found that bistritz, the post town named by count dracula, is a fairly well-known place. i shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when i talk over my travels with mina. in the population of transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: saxons in the south, and mixed with them the wallachs, who are the descendants of the dacians; magyars in the west, and szekelys in the east and north. i am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from attila and the huns. this may be so, for when the magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the huns settled in it. i read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. (mem., i must ask the count all about them.) i did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for i had all sorts of queer dreams. there was a dog howling all night under my window, which may have had something to do with it; or it may have been the paprika, for i had to drink up all the water in my carafe, and was still thirsty. towards morning i slept and was wakened by the continuous knocking at my door, so i guess i must have been sleeping soundly then. i had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was "mamaliga," and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata." (mem., get recipe for this also.) i had to hurry breakfast, for the train started a little before eight, or rather it ought to have done so, for after rushing to the station at 7:30 i had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour before we began to move. it seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. what ought they to be in china? all day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side of them to be subject to great floods. it takes a lot of water, and running strong, to sweep the outside edge of a river clear. at every station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds, and in all sorts of attire. some of them were just like the peasants at home or those i saw coming through france and germany, with short jackets and round hats and home-made trousers; but others were very picturesque. the women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist. they had all full white sleeves of some kind or other, and most of them had big belts with a lot of strips of something fluttering from them like the dresses in a ballet, but of course there were petticoats under them. the strangest figures we saw were the slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. they wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. they are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. on the stage they would be set down at once as some old oriental band of brigands. they are, however, i am told, very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion. it was on the dark side of twilight when we got to bistritz, which is a very interesting old place. being practically on the frontierfor the borgo pass leads from it into bukovinait has had a very stormy existence, and it certainly shows marks of it. fifty years ago a series of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five separate occasions. at the very beginning of the seventeenth century it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the casualties of war proper being assisted by famine and disease. count dracula had directed me to go to the golden krone hotel, which i found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of course i wanted to see all i could of the ways of the country. i was evidently expected, for when i got near the door i faced a cheery-looking elderly woman in the usual peasant dress-white undergarment with long double apron, front, and back, of coloured stuff fitting almost too tight for modesty. when i came close she bowed, and said, "the herr englishman?" "yes," i said, "jonathan harker." she smiled, and gave some message to an elderly man in white shirt-sleeves, who had followed her to the door. he went, but immediately returned with a letter: "my friend.welcome to the carpathians. i am anxiously expecting you. sleep well to-night. at three tomorrow the diligence will start for bukovina; a place on it is kept for you. at the borgo pass my carriage will await you and will bring you to me. i trust that your journey from london has been a happy one, and that you will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land." "your friend, "dracula." 4 may.i found that my landlord had got a letter from the count, directing him to secure the best place on the coach for me; but on making inquiries as to details he seemed somewhat reticent, and pretended that he could not understand my german. this could not be true, because up to then he had understood it perfectly; at least, he answered my questions exactly as if he did. he and his wife, the old lady who had received me, looked at each other in a frightened sort of way. he mumbled out that the money had been sent in a letter, and that was all he knew. when i asked him if he knew count dracula, and could tell me anything of his castle, both he and his wife crossed themselves, and, saying that they knew nothing at all, simply refused to speak further. it was so near the time of starting that i had no time to ask any one else, for it was all very mysterious and not by any means comforting. just before i was leaving, the old lady came up to my room and said in a very hysterical way: "must you go? oh young herr, must you go?" she was in such an excited state that she seemed to have lost her grip of what german she knew, and mixed it all up with some other language which i did not know at all. i was just able to follow her by asking many questions. when i told her that i must go at once, and that i was engaged on important business, she asked again: "do you know what day it is?" i answered that it was the fourth of may. she shook her head as she said again: "oh, yes! i know that! i know that but do you know what day it is?" on my saying that i did not understand, she went on: "it is the eve of st. george's day. do you not know that to-night, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? do you know where you are going, and what you are going to?" she was in such evident distress that i tried to comfort her, but without effect. finally she went down on her knees and implored me not to go; at least to wait a day or two before starting. it was all very ridiculous but i did not feel comfortable. how ever, there was business to be done, and i could allow nothing to interfere with it. i therefore tried to raise her up, and said, as gravely as i could, that i thanked her, but my duty was imperative, and that i must go. she then rose and dried her eyes, and taking a crucifix from her neck offered it to me. i did not know what to do, for, as an english churchman, i have been taught to regard such things as in some measure idolatrous, and yet it seemed so ungracious to refuse an old lady meaning so well and in such a state of mind. she saw, i suppose, the doubt in my face, for she put the rosary round my neck, and said, "for your mother's sake," and went out of the room. i am writing up this part of the diary whilst i am waiting for the coach, which, is, of course, late; and the crucifix is still round my neck. whether it is the old lady's fear, or the many ghostly traditions of this place, or the crucifix itself, i do not know, but i am not feeling nearly as easy in my mind as usual. if this book should ever reach mina before i do, let it bring my good-bye. here comes the coach! 5 may. the castle.the grey of the morning has passed, and the sun is high over the distant horizon, which seems jagged, whether with trees or hills i know not, for it is so far off that big things and little are mixed. i am not sleepy, and, as i am not to be called till i awake, naturally i write till sleep comes. there are many odd things to put down, and, lest who reads them may fancy that i dined too well before i left bistritz, let me put down my dinner exactly. i dined on what they call "robber steak"bits of bacon, onion, and beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks and roasted over the fire, in the simple style of the london cat's meat! the wine was golden mediasch, which produces a queer sting on the tongue, which is, however, not disagreeable. i had only a couple of glasses of this, and nothing else. when i got on the coach the driver had not taken his seat, and i saw him talking with the landlady. they were evidently talking of me, for every now and then they looked at me, and some of the people who were sitting on the bench outside the doorwhich they call by a name meaning "word-bearer"came and listened, and then looked at me, most of them pityingly. i could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for there were many nationalities in the crowd; so i quietly got my polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked them out. i must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were "ordog"satan, "pokol"hell, "stregoica"witch, "vrolok" and "vlkoslak"both of which mean the same thing, one being slovak and the other servian for something that is either were-wolf or vampire. (mem., i must ask the count about these superstitions.) when we started, the crowd round the inn door, which had by this time swelled to a considerable size, all made the sign of the cross and pointed two fingers towards me. with some difficulty i got a fellow-passenger to tell me what they meant; he would not answer at first, but on learning that i was english he explained that it was a charm or guard against the evil eye. this was not very pleasant for me, just starting for an unknown place to meet an unknown man; but every one seemed so kind-hearted, and so sorrowful, and so sympathetic that i could not but be touched. i shall never forget the last glimpse which i had of the innyard and its crowd of picturesque figures, all crossing themselves, as they stood round the wide archway, with its background of rich foliage of oleander and orange trees in green tubs clustered in the centre of the yard. then our driver, whose wide linen drawers covered the whole front of the box-seat"gotza" they call themcracked his big whip over his four small horses, which ran abreast, and we set off on our journey. i soon lost sight and recollection of ghostly fears in the beauty of the scene as we drove along, although had i known the language, or rather languages, which my fellow-passengers were speaking, i might not have been able to throw them off so easily. before us lay a green sloping land full of forests and woods, with here and there steep hills, crowned with clumps of trees or with farmhouses. the blank gable and to the road. there was everywhere a bewildering mass of fruit blossomapple, plum, pear, cherry; and as we drove by i could see the green grass under the trees spangled with the fallen petals. in and out amongst these green hills of what they call here the "mittel land" ran the road, losing itself as it swept round the grassy curve, or was shut out by the straggling ends of pine woods, which here and there ran down the hillsides like tongues of flame. the road was rugged, but still we seemed to fly over it with a feverish haste. i could not understand then what the haste meant, but the driver was evidently bent on losing no time in reaching borgo prund. i was told that this road is in summertime excellent, but that it had not yet been put in order after the winter snows. in this respect it is different from the general run of roads in the carpathians, for it is an old tradition that they are not to be kept in too good order. of old the hospadars would not repair them, lest the turk should think that they were preparing to bring in foreign troops, and so hasten the war which was always really at loading point. beyond the green swelling hills of the mittel land rose mighty slopes of forest up to the lofty steeps of the carpathians themselves. right and left of us they towered, with the afternoon sun falling full upon them and bringing out all the glorious colours of this beautiful range, deep blue and purple in the shadows of the peaks, green and brown where grass and rock mingled, and an endless perspective of jagged rock and pointed crags, till these were themselves lost in the distance, where the snowy peaks rose grandly. here and there seemed mighty rifts in the mountains, through which, as the sun began to sink, we saw now and again the white gleam of falling water. one of my companions touched my arm as we swept round the base of a hill and opened up the lofty, snow-covered peak of a mountain, which seemed, as we wound on our serpentine way, to be right before us: "look! isten szek!""god's seat!"and he crossed himself reverently. as we wound on our endless way, and the sun sank lower and lower behind us, the shadows of the evening began to creep round us. this was emphasised by the fact that the snowy mountain-top still held the sunset, and seemed to glow out with a delicate cool pink. here and there we passed cszeks and slovaks, all in picturesque attire, but i noticed that goitre was painfully prevalent. by the roadside were many crosses, and as we swept by, my companions all crossed themselves. here and there was a peasant man or woman kneeling before a shrine, who did not even turn round as we approached, but seemed in the self-surrender of devotion to have neither eyes nor ears for the outer world. there were many things new to me: for instance, hay-ricks in the trees, and here and there very beautiful masses of weeping birch, their white stems shining like silver through the delicate green of the leaves. now and again we passed a leiter-wagonthe ordinary peasant's cartwith its long, snake-like vertebra, calculated to suit the inequalities of the road. on this were sure to be seated quite a group of home-coming peasants, the cszeks with their white, and the slovaks with their coloured, sheepskins, the latter carrying lance-fashion their long staves, with axe at end. as the evening fell it began to get very cold, and the growing twilight seemed to merge into one dark mistiness the gloom of the trees, oak, beech, and pine, though in the valleys which ran deep between the spurs of the hills, as we ascended through the pass, the dark firs stood out here and there against the background of late-lying snow. sometimes, as the road was cut through the pine woods that seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us, great masses of greyness, which here and there bestrewed the trees, produced a peculiarly weird and solemn effect, which carried on the thoughts and grim fancies engendered earlier in the evening, when the failing sunset threw into strange relief the ghost-like clouds which amongst the carpathians seem to wind ceaselessly through the valleys. sometimes the hills were so steep that, despite our driver's haste, the horses could only go slowly. i wished to get down and walk up them, as we do at home, but the driver would not hear it. "no, no," he said; "you must not walk here; the dogs are too fierce;" and then he added, with what he evidently meant for grim pleasantryfor he looked round to catch the approving smile of the rest"and you may have enough of such matters before you go to sleep." the only stop he would make was a moment's pause to light his lamps. when it grew dark there seemed to be some excitement amongst the passengers, and they kept speaking to him, one after the other, as though urging him to further speed. he lashed the horses unmercifully with his long whip, and with wild cries of encouragement urged them on to further exertions. then through the darkness i could see a sort of patch of grey light ahead of us, as though there were a cleft in the hills. the excitement of the passengers grew greater; the crazy coach rocked on its great leather springs, and swayed like a boat tossed on a stormy sea. i had to hold on. the road grew more level, and we appeared to fly along. then the mountains seemed to come nearer to us on each side and to frown down upon us; we were entering on the borgo pass. one by one several of the passengers offered me gifts, which they pressed upon me with an earnestness which would take no denial; these were certainly of an odd and varied kind, but each was given in simple good faith, with a kindly word, and a blessing, and that strange mixture of fear-meaning movements which i had seen outside the hotel at bistritzthe sign of the cross and the guard against the evil eye. then, as we flew along, the driver leaned forward, and on each side the passengers, craning over the edge of the coach, peered eagerly into the darkness. it was evident that something very exciting was either happening or expected, but though i asked each passenger, no one would give me the slightest explanation. this state of excitement kept on for some little time; and at last we saw before us the pass opening out on the eastern side. there were dark, rolling clouds overhead, and in the air the heavy, oppressive sense of thunder. it seemed as though the mountain range had separated two atmospheres, and that now we had got into the thunderous one. i was now myself looking out for the conveyance which was to take me to the count. each moment i expected to see the glare of lamps through the blackness; but all was dark. the only light was the flickering rays of our own lamps, in which the steam from our hard-driven horses rose in a white cloud. we could now see the sandy road lying white before us, but there was on it no sign of a vehicle. the passengers drew back with a sigh of gladness, which seemed to mock my own disappointment. i was already thinking what i had best do, when the driver, looking at his watch, said to the others something which i could hardly hear, it was spoken so quietly and in so low a tone; i thought it was "an hour less than the time." then turning to me, he said in german worse than my own: "there is no carriage here. the herr is not expected after all. he will now come on to bukovina. and return tomorrow of the next day; better the next day." whilst he was speaking the horses began to neigh and snort and plunge wildly, so that the driver had to hold them up. then, amongst a chorus of screams from the peasants and a universal crossing of themselves, a caleche, with four horses, drove up behind us, overtook us, and drew up beside the coach. i could see from the flash of our lamps, as the rays fell on them, that the horses were coal-black and splendid animals. they were driven by a tall man, with a long brown beard and a great black hat, which seemed to hide his face from us. i could only see the gleam of a pair of very bright eyes, which seemed red in the lamplight, as he turned to us. he said to the driver: "you are early to-night my friend." the man stammered in reply: "the english herr was in a hurry," to which the stranger replied: "that is why, i suppose, you wished him to go on to bukovina. you cannot deceive me, my friend; i know too much, and my horses are swift." as he spoke he smiled, and the lamplight fell on a hard-looking mouth, with very red lips and sharp-looking teeth, as white as ivory. one of my companions whispered to another the line from burger's "lenore:" "denn die todten reiten schnell" ("for the dead travel fast.") the strange driver evidently heard the words, for he looked up with a gleaming smile. the passenger turned his face away, at the same time putting out his two fingers and crossing himself. "give me the herr's luggage," said the driver; and with exceeding alacrity my bags were handed out and put in the caleche. then i descended from the side of the coach, as the caleche was close alongside, the driver helping me with a hand which caught my arm in a grip of steel; his strength must have been prodigious. without a word he shook his reins, the horses turned, and we swept into the darkness of the pass. as i looked back i saw the steam from the horses of the coach by the light of the lamps, and projected against it the figures of my late companions crossing themselves. then the driver cracked his whip and called to his horses, and off they swept on their way to bukovina. as they sank into the darkness i felt a strange chill, and a lonely feeling came over me; but a cloak was thrown over my shoulders, and a rug across my knees, and the driver said in excellent german: "the night is chill, mein herr, and my master the count bade me take all care of you. there is a flask of slivovitz (the plum brandy of the country) underneath the seat, if you should require it." i did not take any, but it was a comfort to know it was there all the same. i felt a little strangely, and not a little frightened. i think had there been any alternative i should have taken it, instead of prosecuting that unknown night journey. the carriage went at a hard pace straight along, then we made a complete turn and went along another straight road. it seemed to me that we were simply going over and over the same ground again; and so i took note of some salient point, and found that this was so. i would have liked to have asked the driver what this all meant, but i really feared to do so, for i thought that, placed as i was, any protest would have had no effect in case there had been an intention to delay. by-and-by, however, as i was curious to know how time was passing, i struck a match, and by its flame looked at my watch; it was within a few minutes of midnight. this gave me a sort of shock, for i suppose the general superstition about midnight was increased by my recent experiences. i waited with a sick feeling of suspense. then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the roada long, agonised wailing, as if from fear. the sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of the night. at the first howl the horses began to strain and rear, but the driver spoke to them soothingly, and they quieted down, but shivered and sweated as though after a run-away from sudden fright. then, far off in the distance, from the mountains on each side of us began a louder and a sharper howlingthat of wolveswhich affected both the horses and myself in the same wayfor i was minded to jump from the caleche and run, whilst they reared again and plunged madly, so that the driver had to use all his great strength to keep them from bolting. in a few minutes, however, my own ears got accustomed to the sound, and the horses so far became quiet that the driver was able to descend and to stand before them. he petted and soothed them, and whispered something in their ears, as i have heard of horse-tamers doing, and with extraordinary effect, for under his caresses they became quite manageable again, though they still trembled. the driver again took his seat, and shaking his reins, started off at a great pace. this time, after going to the far side of the pass, he suddenly turned down a narrow roadway which ran sharply to the right. soon we were hemmed in with trees, which in places arched right over the roadway till we passed as through a tunnel; and again great frowning rocks guarded us boldly on either side. though we were in shelter, we could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as we swept along. it grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery snow began to fall, so that soon we and all around us were covered with a white blanket. the keen wind still carried the howling of the dogs, though this grew fainter as we went on our way. the baying of the wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though they were closing round on us from every side. i grew dreadfully afraid, and the horses shared my fear. the driver, however, was not in the least disturbed; he kept turning his head to left and right, but i could not see anything through the darkness. suddenly, away on our left, i saw a faint flickering blue flame. the driver saw it at the same moment; he at once checked the horses and, jumping to the ground, disappeared into the darkness. i did not know what to do, the less as the howling of the wolves grew closer, but while i wondered the driver suddenly appeared again, and without a word took his seat, and we resumed our journey. i think i must have fallen asleep and kept dreaming of the incident, for it seemed to be repeated endlessly, and now looking back, it is like a sort of awful nightmare. once the flame appeared so near the road, that even in the darkness around us i could watch the driver's motions. he went rapidly to where the blue flame aroseit must have been very faint, for it did not seem to illumine the place around it at alland gathering a few stones, formed them into some device. once there appeared a strange optical effect: when he stood between me and the flame he did not obstruct it, for i could see its ghostly flicker all the same. this startled me, but as the effect was only momentary, i took it that my eyes deceived me straining through the darkness. then for a time there were no blue flames, and we sped onwards through the gloom, with the howling of the wolves around us, as though they were following in a moving circle. at last there came a time when the driver went further afield than he had yet gone, and during his absence the horses began to tremble worse than ever and to snort and scream with fright. i could not see any cause for it, for the howling of the wolves had ceased altogether; but just then the moon, sailing through the black clouds, appeared behind the jagged crest of a beetling, pine-clad rock, and by its light i saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues, with long, sinewy limbs and shaggy hair. they were a hundred times more terrible in the grim silence which held them than even when they howled. for myself, i felt a sort of paralysis of fear. it is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can under stand their true import. all at once the wolves began to howl as though the moonlight had had some peculiar effect on them. the horses jumped about and reared, and looked helplessly round with eyes that rolled in a way painful to see; but the living ring of terror encompassed them on every side, and they had perforce to remain within it. i called to the coachman to come, for it seemed to me that our only chance was to try to break out through the ring and to aid his approach. i shouted and beat the side of the caleche, hoping by the noise to scare the wolves from that side, so as to give him a chance of reaching the trap. how he came there, i know not, but i heard his voice raised in a tone of imperious command, and looking towards the sound, saw him stand in the roadway. as he swept his long arms, as though brushing aside some impalpable obstacle, the wolves fell back and back further still. just then a heavy cloud passed across the face of the moon, so that we were again in darkness. when i could see again the driver was climbing into the caleche, and the wolves had disappeared. this was all so strange and uncanny that a dreadful fear came upon me, and i was afraid to speak or move. the time seemed interminable as we swept on our way, now in almost complete darkness, for the rolling clouds obscured the moon. we kept on ascending, with occasional periods of quick descent, but in the main always ascending. suddenly i became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky. chapter ii. jonathan harker's journal. 5 may.i must have been asleep, for certainly if i had been fully awake i must have noticed the approach of such a remarkable place. in the gloom the courtyard looked of considerable size, and as several dark ways led from it under great round arches it perhaps seemed bigger than it really is. i have not yet been able to see it by daylight. when the caleche stopped the driver jumped down, and held out his hand to assist me to alight. again i could not but notice his prodigious strength. his hand actually seemed like a steel vice that could have crushed mine if he had chosen. then he took out my traps, and placed them on the ground beside me as i stood close to a great door, old and studded with large iron nails, and set in a projecting doorway of massive stone. i could see even in the dim light that the stone was massively carved, but that the carving had been much worn by time and weather. as i stood, the driver jumped again into his seat and shook the reins; the horses started forward, and trap and all disappeared down one of the dark openings. i stood in silence where i was, for i did not know what to do. of bell or knocker there was no sign; through these frowning walls and dark window openings it was not likely that my voice could penetrate. the time i waited seemed endless, and i felt doubts and fears crowding upon me. what sort of place had i come to, and among what kind of people? what sort of grim adventure was it on which i had embarked? was this a customary incident in the life of a solicitor's clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a london estate to a foreigner? solicitor's clerk! mina would not like that. solicitor,for just before leaving london i got word that my examination was successful; and i am now a full-blown solicitor! i began to rub my eyes and pinch myself to see if i were awake. it all seemed like a horrible nightmare to me, and i expected that i should suddenly awake, and find myself at home, with the dawn struggling in through the windows, as i had now and again felt in the morning after a day of overwork. but my flesh answered the pinching test, and my eyes were not to be deceived. i was indeed awake and among the carpathians. all i could do now was to be patient, and to wait the coming of the morning. just as i had come to this conclusion i heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. a key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back. within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. he held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the name burned without chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. the old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent english, but with a strange intonation: "welcome to my house! enter freely and of your own will!" he made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. the instant, however, that i had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as icemore like the hand of a dead than a living man. again he said: "welcome to my house. come freely. go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring!" the strength of the handshake was so much akin to that which i had noticed in the driver, whose face i had not seen, that for a moment i doubted if it were not the same person to whom i was speaking; so to make sure, i said interrogatively: "count dracula?" he bowed in a courtly way as he replied: "i am dracula; and i bid you welcome, mr. harker, to my house. come in; the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest." as he was speaking he put the lamp on a bracket on the wall, and stepping out, took my luggage; he had carried it in before i could forestall him. i protested but he insisted: "nay, sir, you are my guest. it is late, and my people are not available. let me see to your comfort myself." he insisted on carrying my traps along the passage, and then up a great winding stair, and along another great passage, on whose stone floor our steps rang heavily. at the end of this he threw open a heavy door, and i rejoiced to see within a well-lit room in which a table was spread for supper, and on whose mighty hearth a great fire of logs, freshly replenished, flamed and flared. the count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing the room, opened another door, which led into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort. passing through this, he opened another door, and motioned me to enter. it was a welcome sight; for here was a great bedroom well lighted and warmed with another log fire,also added to but lately for the top logs were freshwhich sent a hollow roar up the wide chimney. the count himself left my luggage inside and withdrew, saying, before he closed the door: "you will need, after your journey, to refresh yourself by making your toilet. i trust you will find all you wish. when you are ready come into the other room, where you will find your supper prepared." the light and warmth and the count's courteous welcome seemed to have dissipated all my doubts and fears. having then reached my normal state, i discovered that i was half famished with hunger; so making a hasty toilet, i went into the other room. i found supper already laid out. my host, who stood on one side of the great fireplace, leaning against the stonework, made a graceful wave of his hand to the table, and said: "i pray you, be seated and sup how you please. you will, i trust, excuse me that i do not join you; but i have dined already, and i do not sup." i handed to him the sealed letter which mr. hawkins had entrusted to me. he opened it and read it gravely; then, with a charming smile, he handed it to me to read. one passage of it, at least, gave me a thrill of pleasure: "i much regret that an attack of gout, from which malady i am a constant sufferer, forbids absolutely any travelling on my part for some time to come; but i am happy to say i can send a sufficient substitute, one in whom i have every possible confidence. he is a young man, full of energy and talent in his own way, and of a very faithful disposition. he is discreet and silent, and has grown into manhood in my service. he shall be ready to attend on you when you will during his stay, and shall take your instructions in all matters." the count himself came forward and took off the cover of a dish, and i fell to at once on an excellent roast chicken. this, with some cheese and a salad and a bottle of old tokay, of which i had two glasses, was my supper. during the time i was eating it the count asked me many questions as to my journey, and i told him by degrees all i had experienced. by this time i had finished my supper, and by my host's desire had drawn up a chair by the fire and begun to smoke a cigar which he offered me, at the same time excusing himself that he did not smoke. i had now an opportunity of observing him, and found him of a very marked physiognomy. his face was a stronga very strongaquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. his eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. the mouth, so far as i could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. for the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. the general effect was one of extraordinary pallor. hitherto i had noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his knees in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine; but seeing them now close to me, i could not but notice that they were rather coarsebroad, with squat fingers. strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm. the nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point. as the count learned over me and his hands touched me, i could not repress a shudder. it may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what i would, i could not conceal. the count, evidently noticing it, drew back; and with a grim sort of smile. which showed more than he had yet done his protuberant teeth, sat himself down again on his own side of the fireplace. we were both silent for a while; and as i looked towards the window i saw the first dim streak of the coming dawn. there seemed a strange stillness over everything; but as i listened i heard as if from down below in the valley the howling of many wolves. the count's eyes gleamed, and he said: "listen to themthe children of the night. what music they make!" seeing, i suppose, some expression in my face strange to him, he added: "ah, sir, you dwellers in the city cannot enter into the feelings of the hunter." then he rose and said: "but you must be tired. your bedroom is all ready, and to-morrow you shall sleep as late as you will. i have to be away till the afternoon; so sleep well and dream well!" with a courteous bow, he opened for me himself the door to the octagonal room, and i entered my bedroom... i am all in a sea of wonders. i doubt; i fear, i think strange things which i dare not confess to my own soul. god keep me, if only for the sake of those dear to me! 7 may.it is again early morning, but i have rested and enjoyed the last twenty-four hours. i slept till late in the day, and awoke of my own accord. when i had dressed myself i went into the room where we had supped, and found a cold breakfast laid out, with coffee kept hot by the pot being placed on the hearth. there was a card on the table, on which was written: "i have to be absent for a while. do not wait for me.d." i set to and enjoyed a hearty meal. when i had done, i looked for a bell, so that i might let the servants know i had finished; but i could not find one. there are certainly odd deficiencies in the house, considering the extraordinary evidences of wealth which are round me. the table service is of gold, and so beautifully wrought that it must be of immense value. the curtains and upholstery of the chairs and sofas and the hangings of my bed are of the costliest and most beautiful fabrics, and must have been of fabulous value when they were made, for they are centuries old, though in excellent order. i saw something like them in hampton court, but there they were worn and frayed and moth-eaten. but still in none of the rooms in there a mirror. there is not even a toilet glass on my table and i had to get the little shaving glass from my bag before i could either shave or brush my hair. i have not yet seen a servant anywhere, or heard a sound near the castle except the howling of wolves. some time after i had finished my meali do not know whether to call it breakfast or dinner, for it was between five and six o'clock when i had iti looked about for something to read, for i did not like to go about the castle until i had asked the count's permission. there was absolutely nothing in the room, book, newspaper, or even writing materials; so i opened another door in the room and found a sort of library. the door opposite mine i tried, but found it locked. in the library i found, to my great delight, a vast number of english books, whole shelves full of them, and bound volumes of magazines and newspapers. a table in the centre was littered with english magazines and newspapers, though none of them were of very recent date. the books were of the most varied kindhistory, geography, politics, political economy, botany, geology, lawall relating to england and english life and customs and manners. there were even such books of reference as the london directory, the "red" and "blue" books, whitaker's almanac, the army and navy lists, andit somehow gladdened my heart to see itthe law list. whilst i was looking at the books, the door opened, and the count entered. he saluted me in a hearty way, and hoped that i had had a good night's rest. then he went on: "i am glad you found your way in here, for i am sure there is much that will interest you. these companions"and he laid his hand on some of the books"have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever since i had the idea of going to london, have given me many, many hours of pleasure. through them i have come to know your great england; and to know her is to love her. i long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty london, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is. but alas! as yet i only know your tongue through books. to you, my friend, i look that i know it to speak." "but, count," i said, "you know and speak english thoroughly!" he bowed gravely. "i thank you, my friend, for your all too flattering estimate, but yet i fear that i am but a little way on the road i would travel. true, i know the grammar and the words, but yet i know not how to speak them." "indeed," i said, "you speak excellently." "not so," he answered. "well i know that, did i move and speak in your london, none there are who would not know me for a stranger. that is not enough for me. here i am noble; i am boyar; the common people know me, and i am master. but a stranger in a strange land, he is no one; men know him notand to know not is to care not for. i am content if i am like the rest, so that no man stops if he see me, or pause in his speaking if he hear my words, 'ha, ha! a stranger!' i have been so long master that i would be master stillor at least that none other should be master of me. you come to me not alone as agent of my friend peter hawkins, of exeter, to tell me all about my new estate in london. you shall, i trust, rest here with me a while, so that by our talking i may learn the english intonation; and i would that you tell me when i make error, even of the smallest, in my speaking. i am sorry that i had to be away so long to-day; but you will, i know, forgive one who has so many important affairs in hand." of course i said all i could about being willing, and asked if i might come into that room when i chose. he answered: "yes, certainly," and added: "you may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors are locked, where of course you will not wish to go. there is reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand." i said i was sure of this, and then he went on: "we are in transylvania; and transylvania is not england. our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things. nay, from what you have told me of your experiences already, you know something of what strange things there may be." this led to much conversation; and as it was evident that he wanted to talk, if only for talking's sake, i asked him many questions regarding things that had already happened to me or come within my notice. sometimes he sheered off the subject, or turned the conversation by pretending not to understand; but generally he answered all i asked most frankly. then as time went on, and i had got somewhat bolder, i asked him of some of the strange things of the preceding night, as, for instance, why the coachman went to the places where he had seen the blue flames. he then explained to me that it was commonly believed that on a certain night of the yearlast night, in fact, when all evil spirits are supposed to have unchecked swaya blue flame is seen over any place where treasure has been concealed. "that treasure has been hidden," he went on, "in the region through which you came last night, there can be but little doubt; for it was the ground fought over for centuries by the wallachian, the saxon, and the turk. why, there is hardly a foot of soil in all this region that has not been enriched by the blood of men, patriots or invaders. in old days there were stirring times, when the austrian and the hungarian came up in hordes, and the patriots went out to meet themmen and women, the aged and the children tooand waited their coming on the rocks above the passes, that they might sweep destruction on them with their artificial avalanches. when the invader was triumphant he found but little, for whatever there was had been sheltered in the friendly soil." "but how," said i, "can it have remained so long undiscovered, when there is a sure index to it if men will but take the trouble to look?" the count smiled, and as his lips ran back over his gums, the long, sharp, canine teeth showed out strangely; he answered: "because your peasant is at heart a coward and a fool! those names only appear on one night; and on that night no man of this land will, if he can help it, stir without his doors. and, dear sir, even if he did he would not know what to do. why, even the peasant that you tell me of who marked the place of the flame would not know where to look in daylight even for his own work. even you would not, i dare be sworn, be able to find these places again?" "there you are right," i said. "i know no more than the dead where even to look for them." then we drifted into other matters. "come," he said at last, "tell me of london and of the house which you have procured for me." with an apology for my remissness, i went into my own room to get the papers from my bag. whilst i was placing them in order i heard a rattling of china and silver in the next room, and as i passed through, noticed that the table had been cleared and the lamp lit, for it was by this time deep into the dark. the lamps were also lit in the study or library, and i found the count lying on the sofa, reading, of all things in the world, an english bradshaw's guide. when i came in he cleared the books and papers from the table; and with him i went into plans and deeds and figures of all sorts. he was interested in everything, and asked me a myriad questions about the place and its surroundings. he clearly had studied beforehand all he could get on the subject of the neighborhood, for he evidently at the end knew very much more than i did. when i remarked this, he answered: "well, but, my friend, is it not needful that i should? when i go there i shall be all alone, and my friend harker jonathannay, pardon me, i fall into my country's habit of putting your patronymic firstmy friend jonathan harker will not be by my side to correct and aid me. he will be in exeter, miles away, probably working at papers of the law with my other friend, peter hawkins. so!" we went thoroughly into the business of the purchase of the estate at purfleet. when i had told him the facts and got his signature to the necessary papers, and had written a letter with them ready to post to mr. hawkins, he began to ask me how i had come across so suitable a place. i read to him the notes which i had made at the time, and which i inscribe here: "at purfleet, on a by-road, i came across just such a place as seemed to be required, and where was displayed a dilapidated notice that the place was for sale. it is surrounded by a high wall, of ancient structure, built of heavy stones, and has not been repaired for a large number of years. the closed gates are of heavy old oak and iron, all eaten with rust. "the estate is called carfax, no doubt a corruption of the old quatre face, as the house is four-sided, agreeing with the cardinal points of the compass. it contains in all some twenty acres, quite surrounded by the solid stone wall above mentioned. there are many trees on it, which make it in places gloomy, and there is a deep, dark-looking pond or small lake, evidently fed by some springs, as the water is clear and flows away in a fair-sized stream. the house is very large and of all periods back, i should say, to mediaeval times, for one part is of stone immensely thick, with only a few windows high up and heavily barred with iron. it looks like part of a keep, and is close to an old chapel or church. i could not enter it, as i had not the key of the door leading to it from the house, but i have taken with my kodak views of it from various points. the house has been added to, but in a very straggling way, and i can only guess at the amount of ground it covers, which must be very great. there are but few houses close at hand, one being a very large house only recently added to and formed into a private lunatic asylum. it is not, however, visible from the grounds." when i had finished, he said: "i am glad that it is old and big. i myself am of an old family, and to live in a new house would kill me. a house cannot be made habitable in a day; and, after all, how few days go to make up a century. i rejoice also that there is a chapel of old times. we transylvanian nobles love not to think that our bones may lie amongst the common dead. i seek not gaiety nor mirth, not the bright voluptuousness of much sunshine and sparkling waters which please the young and gay. i am no longer young; and my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is not attuned to mirth. moreover, the walls of my castle are broken; the shadows are many, and the wind breathes cold through the broken battlements and casements. i love the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when i may." somehow his words and his look did not seem to accord, or else it was that his cast of face made his smile look malignant and saturnine. presently, with an excuse, he left me, asking me to put all my papers together. he was some little time away, and i began to look at some of the books around me. one was an atlas, which i found opened naturally at england, as if that map had been much used. on looking at it i found in certain places little rings marked, and on examining these i noticed that one was near london on the east side, manifestly where his new estate was situated; the other two were exeter, and whitby on the yorkshire coast. it was the better part of an hour when the count returned. "aha!" he said; "still at your books? good! but you must not work always. come; i am informed that your supper is ready." he took my arm, and we went into the next room, where i found an excellent supper ready on the table. the count again excused himself, as he had dined out on his being away from home. but he sat as on the previous night, and chatted whilst i ate. after supper i smoked, as on the last evening, and the count stayed with me, chatting and asking questions on every conceivable subject, hour after hour. i felt that it was getting very late indeed, but i did not say anything, for i felt under obligation to meet my host's wishes in every way. i was not sleepy as the long sleep yesterday had fortified me; but i could not help experiencing that chill which comes over one at the coming of the dawn, which is like, in its way, the turn of the tide. they say that people who are near death die generally at the change to the dawn or at the turn of the tide; any one who has when tired, and tied as it were to his post, experienced this change in the atmosphere can well believe it. all at once we heard the crow of a cock coming up with preternatural shrillness through the clear morning air, count dracula, jumping to his feet, said: "why, there is the morning again! how remiss i am to let you stay up so long. you must make your conversation regarding my dear new country of england, less interesting, so that i may not forget how time flies by us," and, with courtly bow, he quickly left me. i went into my own room and drew the curtains, but there was little to notice; my window opened into the courtyard, all i could see was the warm grey of quickening sky. so i pulled the curtains again, and have written of this day. 8 may.i began to fear as i wrote in this book that i was getting too diffuse; but now i am glad that i went into detail from the first, for there is something so strange about this place and all in it that i cannot but feel uneasy. i wish i were safe out of it, or that i had never come. it may be that this strange night-existence is telling on me; but would that that were all! if there were any one to talk to i could bear it, but there is no one. i have only the count to speak with, and he!i fear i am myself the only living soul within the place. let me be prosaic so far as facts can be; it will help me to bear up, and imagination must not run riot with me. if it does i am lost. let me say at once how i standor seem to. i only slept a few hours when i went to bed, and feeling that i could not sleep any more, got up. i had hung my shaving glass by the window, and was just beginning to shave. suddenly i felt a hand on my shoulder, and heard the count's voice saying to me, "good-morning." i started, for it amazed me that i had not seen him, since the reflection of the glass covered the whole room behind me. in starting i had cut myself slightly, but did not notice it at the moment. having answered the count's salutation, i turned to the glass again to see how i had been mistaken. this time there could be no error, for the man was close to me, and i could see him over my shoulder. but there was no reflection of him in the mirror! the whole room behind me was displayed; but there was no sign of a man in it, except myself. this was startling, and, coming on the top of so many strange things, was beginning to increase that vague feeling of uneasiness which i always have when the count is near; but at the instant i saw that the cut had bled a little, and the blood was trickling over my chin. i laid down the razor, turning as i did so half round to look for some sticking plaster. when the count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat. i drew away, and his hand touched the string of beads which held the crucifix. it made an instant change in him, for the fury passed so quickly that i could hardly believe that it was ever there. "take care," he said, "take care how you cut yourself. it is more dangerous than you think in this country." then seizing the shaving glass, he went on: "and this is the wretched thing that has done the mischief. it is a foul bauble of man's vanity. away with it!" and opening the heavy window with one wrench of his terrible hand, he flung out the glass, which was shattered into a thousand pieces on the stones of the courtyard far below. then he withdrew without a word. it is very annoying, for i do not see how i am to shave, unless in my watch-case or the bottom of the shaving-pot, which is fortunately of metal. when i went into the dining-room, breakfast was prepared; but i could not find the count anywhere. so i breakfasted alone. it is strange that as yet i have not seen the count eat or drink. he must be a very peculiar man! after breakfast i did a little exploring in the castle. i went out on the stairs and found a room looking towards the south. the view was magnificent, and from where i stood there was every opportunity of seeing it. the castle is on the very edge of a terrible precipice. a stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! as far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests. but i am not in heart to describe beauty, for when i had seen the view i explored further, doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted. in no place save from the windows in the castle walls is there an available exit. the castle is a veritable prison, and i am a prisoner! chapter iii. jonathan harker's journal. when i found that i was a prisoner a sort of wild feeling came over me. i rushed up and down the stairs, trying every door and peering out of every window i could find; but after a little the conviction of my helplessness overpowered all other feelings. when i look back after a few hours i think i must have been mad for the time, for i behaved much as a rat does in a trap. when, however, the conviction had come to me that i was helpless i sat down quietlyas quietly as i have ever done anything in my lifeand began to think over what was best to be done. i am thinking still, and as yet have come to no definite conclusion. of one thing only am i certain; that it is no use making my ideas known to the count. he knows well that i am imprisoned; and as he has done it himself, and has doubtless his own motives for it, he would only deceive me if i trusted him fully with the facts. so far as i can see, my only plan will be to keep my knowledge and my fears to myself, and my eyes open. i am, i know, either being deceived, like a baby, by my own fears, or else i am in desperate straits; and if the latter be so, i need, and shall need, all my brains to get through. i had hardly come to this conclusion when i heard the great door below shut, and knew that the count had returned. he did not come at once into the library, so i went cautiously to my own room and found him making the bed. this was odd, but only confirmed what i had all along though that there were no servants in the house. when later i saw him through the chink of the hinges of the door laying the table in the dining-room, i was assured of it; for if he does himself all these menial offices, surely it is proof that there is no one else to do them. this gave me a fright, for if there is no one else in the castle, it must have been the count himself who was the driver of the coach that brought me here. this is a terrible thought; for if so, what does it mean that he could control the wolves, as he did, by only holding up his hand in silence. how was it that all the people at bistritz and on the coach had some terrible fear for me? what meant the giving of the crucifix, of the garlic, of the wild rose, of the mountain ash? bless that good, good woman who hung the crucifix round my neck! for it is a comfort and a strength to me whenever i touch it. it is odd that a thing which i have been taught to regard with disfavour and as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help. is it that there is something in the essence of the thing itself, or that it is a medium, a tangible help, in conveying memories of sympathy and comfort? some time, if it may be, i must examine this matter and try to make up my mind about it. in the meantime i must find out all i can about count dracula, as it may help me to understand. to-night he may talk of himself, if i turn the conversation that way. i must be very careful, however, not to awake his suspicion. midnight.i have had a long talk with the count. i asked him a few questions on transylvania history, and he warmed up to the subject wonderfully. in his speaking of things and people, and especially of battles, he spoke as if he had been present at them all. this he afterwards explained by saying that to a boyar the pride of his house and name is his own pride, that their glory is his glory, that their fate is his fate. whenever he spoke of his house he always said "we," and spoke almost in the plural, like a king speaking. i wish i could put down all he said exactly as he said it, for to me it was most fascinating. it seemed to have in it a whole history of the country. he grew excited as he spoke, and walked about the room pulling his great white moustache and grasping anything on which he laid his hands as though he would crush it by main strength. one thing he said which i shall put down as nearly as i can; for it tells in its way the story of his race: "we szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. here, in the whirlpool of european races, the ugric tribe bore down from iceland the fighting spirit which thor and wodin gave them, which their berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of europe, ay, and of asia and africa too, till the peoples thought that the were wolves themselves had come. here too when they came, they found the huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old witches, who, expelled from scythia had mated with the devils in the desert. fools, fools! what devil or what witch was ever so great as attila, whose blood is in these veins?" he held up his arms. "is it a wonder that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that when the magyar, the lombard, the avar, the bulgar, or the turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back? is it strange that when arpad and his legions swept through the hungarian fatherland he found us here when he reached the frontier; that the honfoglalas was completed there? and when the hungarian flood swept eastward, the szekelys were claimed as kindred by the victorious magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of turkey-land; ay and more than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for, as the turks say, 'water sleeps, and enemy is sleepless.' who more gladly than we throughout the four nations received the bloody sword, or at its warlike call flocked quicker to the standard of the king? when was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of cassova, when the flags of the wallach and the magyar went down beneath the crescent, who was it but one of my own race who as voivode crossed the danube and beat the turk on his own ground? this was a dracula indeed! woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the turk and brought the shame of slavery on them! was it not this dracula, indeed, who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his forces over the great river into turkey-land; who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph? they said that he thought only of himself. bah! what good are peasants without a leader? where ends the war without a brain and heart to conduct it? again, when, after the battle of mohacs, we threw off the hungarian yoke, we of the dracula blood were amongst their leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not free. ah, young sir, the szekelysand the dracula as their heart's blood, their brains, and their swordscan boast a record that mushroom growths like the hapsburgs and the romanoffs can never reach. the warlike days are over. blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told." it was by this time close on morning, and we went to bed. (mem. this diary seems horribly like the beginning of the "arabian nights," for everything has to break off at cockcrowor like the ghost of hamlet's father.) 12 may.let me begin with factsbare, meagre facts, verified by books and figures, and of which there can be no doubt. i must not confuse them with experiences which will have to rest on my own observation, or my memory of them. last evening when the count came from his room he began by asking me questions on legal matters and on the doing of certain kinds of business. i had spent the day wearily over books, and, simply to keep my mind occupied, went over some of the matters i had been examined in at lincoln's inn. there was a certain method in the count's inquiries, so i shall try to put them down in sequence; the knowledge may somehow or some time be useful to me. first, he asked if a man in england might have two solicitors or more. i told him he might have a dozen if he wished, but that it would not be wise to have more than one solicitor engaged in one transaction, as only one could act at a time, and that to change would be certain to militate against his interest. he seemed thoroughly to understand, and went on to ask if there would be any practical difficulty in having one man to attend, say, to banking, and another to look after shipping, in case local help were needed in a place far from the home of the banking solicitor. i asked him to explain more fully, so that i might not by any chance mislead him, so he said: "i shall illustrate. your friend and mine, mr. peter hawkins, from under the shadow of your beautiful cathedral at exeter, which is far from london, buys for me through your good self my place at london. good! now here let me say frankly, lest you should think it strange that i have sought the services of one so far off from london instead of some one resident there, that my motive was that no local interest might be served save my wish only; and as one of london resident might, perhaps, have some purpose of himself or friend to serve, i went thus afield to seek my agent, whose labours should be only to my interest. now, suppose i, who have much of affairs, wish to ship goods, say, to newcastle, or durham, or harwich, or dover, might it not be that it could with more ease be done by consigning to one in these ports?" i answered that certainly it would be most easy, but that we solicitors had a system of agency one for the other, so that local work could be done locally on instruction from any solicitor, so that the client, simply placing himself in the hands of one man, could have his wishes carried out by him without further trouble. "but," said he, "i could be at liberty to direct myself. is it not so?" "of course," i replied; "and such is often done by men of business, who do not like the whole of their affairs to be known by any one person." "good!" he said, and then went on to ask about the means of making consignments and the forms to be gone through, and of all sorts of difficulties which might arise, but by fore thought could be guarded against. i explained all these things to him to the best of my ability, and he certainly left me under the impression that he would have made a wonderful solicitor, for there was nothing that he did not think of or foresee. for a man who was never in the country, and who did not evidently do much in the way of business, his knowledge and acumen were wonderful. when he had satisfied himself on these points of which he had spoken, and i had verified all as well as i could by the books available, he suddenly stood up and said: "have you written since your first letter to our friend mr. peter hawkins, or to any other?" it was with some bitterness in my heart that i answered that i had not, that as yet i had not seen any opportunity of sending letters to anybody. "then write now, my young friend," he said, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder, "write to our friend and to any other, and say, if it will please you, that you shall stay with me until a month from now." "do you wish me to stay so long?" i asked, for my heart grew cold at the thought. "i desire it much; nay, i will take no refusal. when your master, employer, what you will, engaged that some one should come on his behalf, it was understood that my needs only were to be consulted. i have not stinted. is it not so?" what could i do but bow acceptance? it was mr. hawkins's interest, not mine, and i had to think of him, not myself, and besides, which count dracula was speaking, there was that in his eyes and in his bearing which made me remember that i was a prisoner, and that if i wished it i could have no choice. the count saw his victory in my bow, and his mastery in the trouble of my face, for he began at once to use them, but in his own smooth, resistless way: "i pray you, my good young friend, that you will not discourse of things other than business in your letters. it will doubtless please your friends to know that you are well, and that you look forward to getting home to them. is it not so?" as he spoke he handed me three sheets of note-paper and three envelopes. they were all of the thinnest foreign post, and looking at them, then at him, and noticing his quiet smile, with the sharp, canine teeth lying over the red underlip, i understood as well as if he had spoken that i should be careful what i wrote, for he would be able to read it. so i determined to write only formal notes now, but to write fully to mr. hawkins in secret, and also to mina, for to her i could write in shorthand, which would puzzle the count, if he did see it. when i had written my two letters i sat quiet, reading a book whilst the count wrote several notes, referring as he wrote them to some books on his table. then he took up my two and placed them with his own, and put by his writing materials, after which, the instant the door had closed behind him, i leaned over and looked at the letters, which were face down on the table. i felt no compunction in doing so, for under the circumstances i felt that i should protect myself in every way i could. one of the letters was directed to samuel f. billington, no. 7, the crescent, whitby, another to herr leutner, varna; the third was to coutts & co., london, and the fourth to herren klopstock & billreuth, bankers, buda-pesth. the second and fourth were unsealed. i was just about to look at them when i saw the door-handle move. i sank back in my seat, having just had time to replace the letters as they had been and to resume my book before the count, holding still another letter in his hand, entered the room. he took up the letters on the table and stamped them carefully, and then turning to me, said: "i trust you will forgive me, but i have much work to do in private this evening. you will, i hope, find all things as you wish." at the door he turned, and after a moment's pause said: "let me advise you, my dear young friendnay, let me warn you with all seriousness, that should you leave these rooms you will not by any chance go to sleep in any other part of the castle. it is old, and has many memories, and there are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely. be warned! should sleep now or ever overcome you, or be like to do, then haste to your own chamber or to these rooms, for your rest will then be safe. but if you be not careful in this respect, then"he finished his speech in a gruesome way, for he motioned with his hands as if he were washing them. i quite understood; my only doubt was as to whether any dream could be more terrible than the unnatural, horrible net of gloom and mystery which seemed closing round me. later.i endorse the last words written, but this time there is no doubt in question. i shall not fear to sleep in any place where he is not. i have placed the crucifix over the head of my bedi imagine that my rest is thus freer from dreams; and there it shall remain. when he left me i went to my room. after a little while, not hearing any sound, i came out and went up the stone stair to where i could look out towards the south. there was some sense of freedom in the vast expanse, inaccessible though it was to me, as compared with the narrow darkness of the courtyard. looking out on this, i felt that i was indeed in prison, and i seemed to want a breath of fresh air, though it were of the night. i am beginning to feel this nocturnal existence tell on me. it is destroying my nerve. i start at my own shadow, and am full of all sorts of horrible imaginings. god knows that there is ground for my terrible fear in this accursed place! i looked out over the beautiful expanse, bathed in soft yellow moonlight till it was almost as light as day. in the soft light the distant hills became melted, and the shadows in the valleys and gorges of velvety blackness. the mere beauty seemed to cheer me; there was peace and comfort in every breath i drew. as i leaned from the window my eye was caught by something moving a storey below me, and somewhat to my left, where i imagined, from the order of the rooms, that the windows of the count's own room would look out. the window at which i stood was tall and deep, stone-mullioned, and though weatherworn, was still complete; but it was evidently many a day since the case had been there. i drew back behind the stonework, and looked carefully out. what i saw was the count's head coming out from the window. i did not see the face, but i knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms. in any case i could not mistake the hands which i had had so many opportunities of studying. i was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. but my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when i saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. at first i could not believe my eyes. i thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow; but i kept looking, and it could be no delusion. i saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall. what manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man? i feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me; i am in fearin awful fearand there is no escape for me; i am encompassed about with terrors that i dare not think of... 15 may.once more have i seen the count go out in his lizard fashion. he moved downwards in a sidelong way, some hundred feet down, and a good deal to the left. he vanished into some hole or window. when his head had disappeared i leaned out to try and see more, but without availthe distance was too great to allow a proper angle of sight. i knew he had left the castle now, and thought to use the opportunity to explore more than i had dared to do as yet. i went back to the room, and taking a lamp, tried all the doors. they were all locked, as i had expected, and the locks were comparatively new, but i went down the stone stairs to the hall where i had entered originally. i found i could pull back the bolts easily enough and unhook the great chains; but the door was locked, and the key was gone that key must be in the count's room; i must watch should his door be unlocked, so that i may get it and escape. i went on to make a thorough examination of the various stairs and passages, and to try the doors that opened from them. one or two small rooms near the hall were open, but there was nothing to see in them except old furniture, dusty with age and moth-eaten. at last, however, i found one door at the top of the stairway which, though it seemed to be locked, gave a little under pressure. i tried it harder, and found that it was not really locked, but that the resistance came from the fact that the hinges had fallen somewhat, and the heavy door rested on the floor. here was an opportunity which i might not have again, so i exerted myself, and with many efforts forced it back so that i could enter. i was now in a wing of the castle further to the right than the rooms i knew and a storey lower down. from the windows i could see that the suite of rooms lay along to the south of the castle, the windows of the end room looking out both west and south. on the latter side, as well as to the former, there was a great precipice. the castle was built on the corner of a great rock, so that on three sides it was quite impregnable, and great windows were placed here where sling, or bow, or culverin could not reach, and consequently light and comfort, impossible to a position which had to be guarded, were secured. to the west was a great valley, and then, rising far away, great jagged mountain fastnesses, rising peak on peak, the sheer rock studded with mountain ash and thorn, whose roots clung in cracks and crevices and crannies of the stone. this was evidently the portion of the castle occupied by the ladies in bygone days, for the furniture had more air of comfort than any i had seen. the windows were curtainless, and the yellow moonlight, flooding in through the diamond panes, enabled one to see even colours, whilst it softened the wealth of dust which lay over all and disguised in some measure the ravages of time and the moth. my lamp seemed to be of little effect in the brilliant moonlight, but i was glad to have it with me, for there was a dread loneliness in the place which chilled my heart and made my nerves tremble. still, it was better than living alone in the rooms which i had come to hate from the presence of the count, and after trying a little to school my nerves, i found a soft quietude come over me. here i am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since i closed it last. it is nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. and yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere "modernity" cannot kill. later: the morning of 16 may.god preserve my sanity, for to this i am reduced. safety and the assurance of safety are things of the past. whilst i live on here there is but one thing to hope for; that i may not go mad, if, indeed, i be not mad already. if i be sane, then surely it is maddening to think that of all the foul things that lurk in this hateful place the count is the least dreadful to me; that to him alone i can look for safety, even though this be only whilst i can serve his purpose. great god! merciful god! let me be calm, for out of that way lies madness indeed. i begin to get new lights on certain things which have puzzled me. up to now i never quite knew what shakespeare meant when he made hamlet say: "my tablets! quick, my tablets! 'tis meet that i put it down," etc., for now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, i turn to my diary for repose. the habit of entering accurately must help to soothe me. the count's mysterious warning frightened me at the time; it frightens me more now, when i think of it, for in future he has a fearful hold upon me. i shall fear to doubt what he may say! when i had written in my diary and had fortunately replaced the book and pen in my pocket i felt sleepy. the count's warning came into my mind, but i took a pleasure in disobeying it. the sense of sleep was upon me, and with it the obstinacy which sleep brings as outrider. the soft moonlight soothed, and the wide expanse without gave a sense of freedom which refreshed me. i determined not to return to-night to the gloom-haunted rooms, but to sleep here, where of old ladies had sat and sung and lived sweet lives whilst their gentle breasts were sad for their menfolk away in the midst of remorseless wars. i drew a great couch out of its place near the corner, so that, as i lay, i could look at the lovely view to east and south, and unthinking of and uncaring for the dust, composed myself for sleep. i suppose i must have fallen asleep; i hope so, but i fear, for all that followed was startlingly realso real that now sitting here in the broad, full sunlight of the morning, i cannot in the least believe that it was all sleep. i was not alone. the room was the same, unchanged in any way since i came into it; i could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where i had disturbed the long accumulation of dust. in the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. i thought at the time that i must be dreaming when i saw them, for, though the moonlight was behind them, they threw no shadow on the floor. they came close to me and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. the other was fair, as fair as can be, with great wavy masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. i seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but i could not recollect at the moment how or where. all three had brilliant white teeth, that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. there was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. i felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. it is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet mina's eyes and cause her pain; but it is the truth. they whispered together, and then they all three laughedsuch a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips. it was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of water-glasses when played on by a cunning hand. the fair girl shook her head coquettishly, and the other two urged her on. one said: "go on! you are first, and we shall follow; yours is the right to begin." the other added: "he is young and strong; there are kisses for us all." i lay quiet, looking out under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. the fair girl advanced and bent over me till i could feel the movement of her breath upon me. sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood. i was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. the girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. there was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till i could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat. then she paused, and i could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and could feel the hot breath on my neck. then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearernearer. i could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. i closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waitedwaited with beating heart. but at that instant another sensation swept through me as quick as lightning. i was conscious of the presence of the count, and of his being as if lapped in a storm of fury. as my eyes opened involuntarily i saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant's power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with passion. but the count! never did i imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. his eyes were positively blazing. the red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell-fire blazed behind them. his face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires; the thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of white-hot metal. with a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back; it was the same imperious gesture that i had seen used to the wolves. in a voice which, though low and almost in a whisper seemed to cut through the air and then ring round the room as he said: "how dare you touch him, any of you? how dare you cast eyes on him when i had forbidden it? back, i tell you all! this man belongs to me! beware how you meddle with him, or you'll have to deal with me." the fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him: "you yourself never loved; you never love!" on this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear; it seemed like the pleasure of fiends. then the count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper: "yes, i too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. is it not so? well, now i promise you that when i am done with him you shall kiss him at your will. now go! go! i must awaken him, for there is work to be done." "are we to have nothing to-night?" said one of them, with a low laugh, as she pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the floor, and which moved as though there were some living thing within it. for answer he nodded his head. one of the women jumped forward and opened it. if my ears did not deceive me there was a gasp and a low wall, as of a half-smothered child. the women closed round, whilst i was aghast with horror; but as i looked they disappeared, and with them the dreadful bag. there was no door near them, and they could not have passed me without my noticing. they simply seemed to fade into the rays of the moonlight and pass out through the window, for i could see outside the dim, shadowy forms for a moment before they entirely faded away. "then the horror overcame me, and i sank down unconscious." chapter iv. jonathan harker's journal. i awoke in my own bed. if it be that i had not dreamt, the count must have carried me here. i tried to satisfy myself on the subject, but could not arrive at any unquestionable result. to be sure, there were certain small evidences, such as that my clothes were folded and laid by in a manner which was not my habit. my watch was still unwound, and i am rigourously accustomed to wind it the last thing before going to bed, and many such details. but these things are no proof, for they may have been evidences that my mind was not as usual, and, from some cause or another, i had certainly been much upset. i must watch for proof. of one thing i am glad: if it was that the count carried me here and undressed me, he must have been hurried in his task, for my pockets are intact. i am sure this diary would have been a mystery to him which he would not have brooked. he would have taken or destroyed it. as i look round this room, although it has been to me so full of fear, it is now a sort of sanctuary, for nothing can be more dreadful than those awful women, who werewho arewaiting to suck my blood. 18 may.i have been down to look at that room again in daylight, for i must know the truth. when i got to the doorway at the top of the stairs i found it closed. it had been so forcibly driven against the jamb that part of the woodwork was splintered. i could see that the bolt of the lock had not been shot, but the door is fastened from the inside. i fear it was no dream, and must act on this surmise. 19 may.i am surely in the toils. last night the count asked me in the suavest tones to write three letters, one saying that my work here was nearly done, and that i should start for home within a few days, another that i was starting on the next morning from the time of the letter, and the third that i had left the castle and arrived at bistritz. i would fain have rebelled, but felt that in the present state of things it would be madness to quarrel openly with the count whilst i am so absolutely in his power; and to refuse would be to excite his suspicion and to arouse his anger. he knows that i know too much, and that i must not live, lest i be dangerous to him; my only chance is to prolong my opportunities. something may occur which will give me a chance to escape. i saw in his eyes something of that gathering wrath which was manifest when he hurled that fair woman from him. he explained to me that posts were few and uncertain, and that my writing now would ensure ease of mind to my friends; and he assured me with so much impressiveness that he would countermand the later letters, which would be held over at bistritz until due time in case chance would admit of my prolonging my stay, that to oppose him would have been to create new suspicion. i therefore pretended to fall in with his views, and asked him what dates i should put on the letters. he calculated a minute, and then said: "the first should be june 12, the second june 19, and the third june 29." i know now the span of my life. god help me! 28 may.there is a chance of escape, or at any rate of being able to send word home. a band of szgany have come to the castle, and are encamped in the courtyard. these szgany are gipsies; i have notes of them in my book. they are peculiar to this part of the world, though allied to the ordinary gipsies all the world over. there are thousands of them in hungary and transylvania, who are almost outside all law. they attach themselves as a rule to some great noble or boyar, and call themselves by his name. they are fearless and without religion, save superstition, and they talk only their own varieties of the romany tongue. i shall write some letters home, and shall try to get them to have them posted. i have already spoken them through my window to begin acquaintanceship. they took their hats off and made obeisance and many signs, which, however, i could not understand any more than i could their spoken language... i have written the letters. mina's is in shorthand, and i simply ask mr. hawkins to communicate with her. to her i have explained my situation, but without the horrors which i may only surmise. it would shock and frighten her to death were i to expose my heart to her. should the letters not carry, then the count shall not yet know my secret or the extent of my knowledge... i have given the letters; i threw them through the bars of my window with a gold piece, and made what signs i could to have them posted. the man who took them pressed them to his heart and bowed, and then put them in his cap. i could do no more. i stole back to the study, and began to read. as the count did not come in, i have written here... the count has come. he sat down beside me, and said in his smoothest voice as he opened two letters: "the szgany has given me these, of which, though i know not whence they come, i shall, of course, take care. see!"he must have looked at it"one is from you, and to my friend peter hawkins; the other"here he caught sight of the strange symbols as he opened the envelope, and the dark look came into his face, and his eyes blazed wickedly"the other is a vile thing, an outrage upon friendship and hospitality! it is not signed. well! so it cannot matter to us." and he calmly held letter and envelope in the flame of the lamp till they were consumed. then he went on: "the letter to hawkinsthat i shall, of course, send on, since it is yours. your letters are sacred to me. your pardon, my friend, that unknowingly i did break the seal. will you not cover it again?" he held out the letter to me, and with a courteous bow handed me a clean envelope. i could only redirect it and hand it to him in silence. when he went out of the room i could hear the key turn softly. a minute later i went over and tried it, and the door was locked. when, an hour or two after, the count came quietly into the room; his coming wakened me, for i had gone to sleep on the sofa. he was very courteous and very cheery in his manner, and seeing that i had been sleeping, he said: "so, my friend, you are tired? get to bed. there is the surest rest. i may not have the pleasure to talk to-night, since there are many labours to me; but you will sleep, i pray." i passed to my room and went to bed, and, strange to say, slept without dreaming. despair has its own calms. 31 may.this morning when i woke i thought i would provide myself with some paper and envelopes from my bag and keep them in my pocket, so that i might write in case i should get an opportunity; but again a surprise, again a shock! every scrap of paper was gone, and with it all my notes, my memoranda, relating to railways and travel, my letter of credit, in fact all that might be useful to me were i once outside the castle. i sat and pondered a while, and then some thought occurred to me, and i made search of my portmanteau and in the wardrobe where i had placed my clothes. the suit in which i had travelled was gone, and also my overcoat and rug; i could find no trace of them anywhere. this looked like some new scheme of villainy... 17 june.this morning, as i was sitting on the edge of my bed cudgelling my brains, i heard without a cracking of whips and pounding and scraping of horses' feet up the rocky path beyond the courtyard. with joy i hurried to the window, and saw drive into the yard two great leiter-wagons, each drawn by eight sturdy horses, and at the head of each pair of slovak, with his hat, great, nail-studded belt, dirty sheepskin, and high boots. they had also their long staves in hand. i ran to the door, intending to descend and try and join them through the main hall, as i thought that way might be opened for them. again a shock: my door was fastened on the outside. then i ran to the window and cried to them. they looked up at me stupidly and pointed, but just then the "hetman" of the szgany came out, and seeing them pointing to my window, said something, at which they laughed. henceforth no effort of mine, no piteous cry or agonised entreaty, would make them even look at me. they resolutely turned away. the leiter-wagons contained great, square boxes, with handles of thick rope; these were evidently empty by the ease with which the slovaks handled them, and by their resonance as they were roughly moved. when they were all unloaded and packed in a great heap in one corner of the yard, the slovaks were given some money by the szgany, and spitting on it for luck, lazily went each to his horse's head. shortly afterwards i heard the cracking of their whips die away in the distance. 24 june, before morning.last night the count left me early, and locked himself into his own room. as soon as i dared i ran up the winding stair, and looked out of the window, which opened south. i thought i would watch for the count, for there is something going on. the szgany are quartered somewhere in the castle, and are doing work of some kind. i know it, for now and then i hear a far-away, muffled sound as of mattock and spade, and, whatever it is, it must be the end of some ruthless villainy. i had been at the window somewhat less than half an hour, when i saw something coming out of the count's window. i drew back and watched carefully, and saw the whole man emerge. it was a new shock to me to find that he had on the suit of clothes which i had worn whilst travelling here, and slung over his shoulder the terrible bag which i had seen the women take away. there could be no doubt as to his quest, and in my garb, too! this, then, is his new scheme of evil: that he will allow others to see me, as they think, so that he may both leave evidence that i have been seen in the towns or villages posting my own letters, and that any wickedness which he may do shall by the local people be attributed to me. it makes me rage to think that this can go on, and whilst i am shut up here, a veritable prisoner, but without that protection of the law which is even a criminal's right and consolation. i thought i would watch for the count's return, and for a long time sat doggedly at the window. then i began to notice that there were some quaint little specks floating in the rays of the moonlight. they were like the tiniest grains of dust, and they whirled round and gathered in clusters in a nebulous sort of way. i watched them with a sense of soothing, and a sort of calm stole over me. i leaned back in the embrasure in a more comfortable position, so that i could enjoy more fully the aerial gambolling. something made me start up, a low, piteous howling of dogs somewhere far below in the valley, which was hidden from my sight. louder it seemed to ring in my ears, and the floating motes of dust to take new shapes to the sound as they danced in the moonlight. i felt myself struggling to awake to some call of my instincts; may, my very soul was struggling, and my half-remembered sensibilities were striving to answer the call. i was becoming hypnotised! quicker and quicker danced the dust; the moonbeams seemed to quiver as they went by me into the mass of gloom beyond. more and more they gathered till they seemed to take dim phantom shapes. and then i started, broad awake and in full possession of my senses, and ran screaming from the place. the phantom shapes, which were becoming gradually materialised from the moonbeams, were those of the three ghostly women to whom i was doomed. i fled, and felt somewhat safer in my own room, where there was no moonlight and where the lamp was burning brightly. when a couple of hours had passed i heard something stirring in the count's room, something like a sharp wail quickly suppressed; and then there was silence, deep, awful silence, which chilled me. with a beating heart, i tried the door; but i was locked in my prison, and could do nothing. i sat down and simply cried. as i sat i heard a sound in the courtyard withoutthe agonised cry of a woman. i rushed to the window, and throwing it up, peered out between the bars. there, indeed, was a woman with dishevelled hair, holding her hands over her heart as one distressed with running. she was leaning against a corner of the gateway. when she saw my face at the window she threw herself forward, and shouted in a voice laden with menace: "monster, give me my child!" she threw herself on her knees, and raising up her hands, cried the same words in tones which wrung my heart. then she tore her hair and beat her breast, and abandoned herself to all the violences of extravagant emotion. finally, she threw herself forward, and, though i could not see her, i could hear the beating of her naked hands against the door. somewhere high overhead, probably on the tower, i heard the voice of the count calling in his harsh, metallic whisper. his call seemed to be answered from far and wide by the howling of wolves. before many minutes had passed a pack of them poured, like a pent-up dam when liberated, through the wide entrance into the courtyard. there was no cry from the woman, and the howling of the wolves was but short. before long they streamed away singly, licking their lips. i could not pity her, for i knew now what had become of her child, and she was better dead. what shall i do? what can i do? how can i escape from this dreadful thrall of night and gloom and fear? 25 june, morning.no man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and how dear to his heart and eye the morning can be. when the sun grew so high this morning that it struck the top of the great gateway opposite my window, the high spot which it touched seemed to me as if the dove from the ark had lighted there. my fear fell from me as if it had been a vapourous garment which dissolved in the warmth. i must take action of some sort whilst the courage of the day is upon me. last night one of my post-dated letters went to post, the first of that fatal series which is to blot out the very traces of my existence from the earth. let me not think of it. action! it has always been at night-time that i have been molested or threatened, or in some way in danger or in fear. i have not yet seen the count in the daylight. can it be that he sleeps when others wake, that he may be awake whilst they sleep? if i could only get into his room! but there is no possible way. the door is always locked, no way for me. yes, there is a way, if one dares to take it. where his body has gone why may not another body go? i have seen him myself crawl from his window? why should not i imitate him, and go in by his window? the chances are desperate, but my need is more desperate still. i shall risk it. at the worst it can only be death; and a man's death is not a calf's, and the dreaded hereafter may still be open to me. god help me in my task! good-bye. mina, if i fail; good-bye, my faithful friend and second father; good-bye, all, and last of all mina! same day, later.i have made the effort, and, god helping me, have come safely back to this room. i must put down every detail in order. i went whilst my courage was fresh straight to the window on the south side, and at once got outside on the narrow ledge of stone which runs round the building on this side. the stones are big and roughly cut, and the mortar has by process of time been washed away between them. i took off my boots, and ventured out on the desperate way. i looked down once, so as to make sure that a sudden glimpse of the awful depth would not overcome me, but after that kept my eyes away from it. i knew pretty well the direction and distance of the count's window, and made for it as well as i could, having regard to the opportunities available. i did not feel dizzyi suppose i was too excitedand the time seemed ridiculously short till i found myself standing on the window-sill and trying to raise up the sash. i was filled with agitation, however, when i bent down and slid feet foremost in through the window. then i looked around for the count, but, with surprise and gladness, made a discovery. the room was empty! it was barely furnished with odd things, which seemed to have never been used; the furniture was something the same style as that in the south rooms, and was covered with dust. i looked for the key, but it was not in the lock, and i could not find it anywhere. the only thing i found was a great heap of gold in one cornergold of all kinds, roman, and british, and austrian, and hungarian, and greek and turkish money, covered with a film of dust, as though it had lain long in the ground. none of it that i noticed was less than three hundred years old. there were also chains and ornaments, some jewelled, but all of them old and stained. at one corner of the room was a heavy door. i tried it, for, since i could not find the key of the room or the key of the outer door, which was the main object of my search, i must make further examination, or all my efforts would be in vain. it was open, and led through a stone passage to a circular stairway, which went steeply down. i descended, minding carefully where i went, for the stairs were dark, being only lit by loopholes in the heavy masonry. at the bottom there was a dark, tunnel-like passage, through which came a deathly, sickly odour, the odour of old earth newly turned. as i went through the passage the smell grew closer and heavier. at last i pulled open a heavy door which stood a jar, and found myself in an old, ruined chapel, which had evidently been used as a graveyard. the roof was broken, and in two places were steps leading to vaults, but the ground had recently been dug over, and the earth placed in great wooden boxes, manifestly those which had been brought by the slovaks. there was nobody about, and i made search for any further outlet, but there was none. then i went over every inch of the ground, so as not to lose a chance. i went down even into the vaults, where the dim light struggled, although to do so was a dread to my very soul. into two of these i went, but saw nothing except fragments of old coffins and piles of dust; in the third, however, i made a discovery. there, in one of the great boxes, of which there were fifty in all, on a pile of newly dug earth, lay the count! he was either dead or asleep, i could not say whichfor the eyes were open and stony, but without the glassiness of deathand the cheeks had the warmth of life through all their pallor, the lips were as red as ever. but there was no sign of movement, no pulse, no breath, no beating of the heart. i bent over him, and tried to find any sign of life, but in vain. he could not have lain there long, for the earthy smell would have passed away in a few hours. by the side of the box was its cover, pierced with holes here and there. i thought he might have the keys on him, but when i went to search i saw the dead eyes, and in them, dead though they were, such a look of hate, though unconscious of me or my presence, that i fled from the place, and leaving the count's room by the window, crawled again up the castle wall. regaining my room chamber, i threw myself panting upon the bed and tried to think... 29 june.to-day is the date of my last letter, and the count has taken steps to prove that it was genuine, for again i saw him leave the castle by the same window, and in my clothes. as he went down the wall, lizard fashion, i wished i had a gun or some lethal weapon, that i might destroy him; but i fear that no weapon wrought alone by man's hand would have any effect on him. i dared not wait to see him return, for i feared to see those weird sisters. i came back to the library, and read there till i fell asleep. i was awakened by the count, who looked at me as grimly as a man can look as he said: "to-morrow, my friend, we must part. you return to your beautiful england, i to some work which may have such an end that we may never meet. your letter home has been despatched; to-morrow i shall not be here, but all shall be ready for your journey. in the morning come the szgany, who have some labours of their own here, and also come some slovaks. when they have gone, my carriage shall come for you, and shall bear you to the borgo pass to meet the diligence from bukovina to bistritz. but i am in hopes that i shall see more of you at castle dracula." i suspected him, and determined to test his sincerity. sincerity! it seems like a profanation of the word to write it in connection with such a monster, so asked him point-blank: "why may i not go to-night?" "because, dear sir, my coachman and horses are away on a mission." "but i would walk with pleasure. i want to get away at once." he smiled, such a soft, smooth, diabolical smile that i knew there was some trick behind his smoothness. he said: "and your baggage?" "i do not care about it. i can send for it some other time." the count stood up, and said, with a sweet courtesy which made me rub my eyes, it seemed so real: "you english have a saying which is close to my heart, for its spirit is that which rules our boyars: 'welcome the coming; speed the parting guest.' come with me, my dear young friend. not an hour shall you wait in my house against your will, though sad am i at your going, and that you so suddenly desire it. come!" with a stately gravity, he, with the lamp, preceded me down the stairs and along the hall. suddenly he stopped. "hark!" close at hand came the howling of many wolves. it was almost as if the sound sprang up at the rising of his hand, just as the music of a great orchestra seems to leap under the baton of the conductor. after a pause of a moment, he proceeded, in his stately way, to the door, drew back the ponderous bolts, unhooked the heavy chains, and began to draw it open. to my intense astonishment i saw that it was unlocked. suspiciously i looked all round, but could see no key of any kind. as the door began to open, the howling of the wolves without grew louder and angrier, their red jaws, with champing teeth, and their blunt-clawed feet as they leaped, came in through the opening door. i knew then that to struggle at the moment against the count was useless. with such allies as these at his command, i could do nothing. but still the door continued slowly to open, and only the count's body stood in the gap. suddenly it struck me that this might be the moment and means of my doom; i was to be given to the wolves, and at my own instigation. there was a diabolical wickedness in the idea great enough for the count, and as a last chance i cried out: "shut the door; i shall wait till morning!" and covered my face with my hands to hide my tears of bitter disappointment. with one sweep of his powerful arm, the count threw the door shut, and the great bolts clanged and echoed through the hall as they shot back into their places. in silence we returned to the library, and after a minute or two i went to my own room. the last i saw of count dracula was his kissing his hand to me; with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that judas in hell might be proud of. when i was in my room and about to lie down, i thought i heard a whispering at my door. i went to it softly and listened. unless my ears deceived me, i heard the voice of the count: "back, back, to your own place! your time is not yet come. wait! have patience! to-night is mine. to-morrow night is yours!" there was a low, sweet ripple of laughter, and in a rage i threw open the door, and saw without the three terrible women licking their lips. as i appeared they all joined in a horrible laugh, and ran away. i came back to my room and threw myself on my knees. it is then so near the end? to-morrow! to-morrow! lord, help me, and those to whom i am dear! 30 june, morning.these may be the last words i ever write in this diary. i slept till just before the dawn, and when i woke threw myself on my knees, for i determined that if death came he should find me ready. at last i felt that subtle change in the air, and knew that the morning had come. then came the welcome cock-crow, and i felt that i was safe. with a glad heart, i opened my door and ran down to the hall. i had seen that the door was unlocked, and now escape was before me. with hands that trembled with eagerness, i unhooked the chains and drew back the massive bolts. but the door would not move. despair seized me. i pulled, and pulled, at the door, and shook it till, massive as it was, it rattled in its casement. i could see the bolt shot. it had been locked after i left the count. then a wild desire took me to obtain that key at any risk, and i determined then and there to scale the wall again and gain the count's room. he might kill me, but death now seemed the happier choice of evils. without a pause i rushed up to the east window, and scrambled down the wall, as before, into the count's room. it was empty, but that was as i expected. i could not see a key anywhere, but the heap of gold remained. i went through the door in the corner and down the winding stair and along the dark passage to the old chapel. i knew now well enough where to find the monster i sought. the great box was in the same place, close against the wall, but the lid was laid on it, not fastened down, but with the nails ready in their places to be hammered home. i knew i must reach the body for the key, so i raised the lid, and laid it back against the wall; and then i saw something which filled my very soul with horror. there lay the count, but looking as if his youth had been half renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey; the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. it seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. he lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion. i shuddered as i bent over to touch him, and every sense in me revolted at the contact; but i had to search, or i was lost. the coming night might see my own body a banquet in a similar way to those horrid three. i felt all over the body, but no sign could i find of the key. then i stopped and looked at the count. there was a mocking smile on the bloated face which seemed to drive me mad. this was the being i was helping to transfer to london, where, perhaps, for centuries to come he might, amongst its teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and create a new and ever-widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless. the very thought drove me mad. a terrible desire came upon me to rid the world of such a monster. there was no lethal weapon at hand, but i seized a shovel which the workmen had been using to fill the cases, and lifting it high struck, with the edge downward, at the hateful face. but as i did so the head turned, and the eyes fell full upon me, with all their blaze of basilisk horror. the sight seemed to paralyse me, and the shovel turned in my hand and glanced from the face, merely making a deep gash above the forehead. the shovel fell from my hand across the box, and as i pulled it away the flange of the blade caught the edge of the lid, which fell over again, and hid the horrid thing from my sight. the last glimpse i had was of the bloated face, bloodstained and fixed with a grin of malice which would have held its own in the nethermost hell. i thought and thought what should be my next move, but my brain seemed on fire, and i waited with a despairing feeling growing over me. as i waited i heard in the distance a gipsy song sung by merry voices coming closer, and through their song the rolling of heavy wheels and the cracking of whips; the szgany and the slovaks of whom the count had spoken were coming. with a last look around and at the box which contained the vile body, i ran from the place and gained the count's room, determined to rush out at the moment the door should be opened. with strained ears, i listened, and heard downstairs the grinding of the key in the great lock and the falling back of the heavy door. there must have been some other means of entry, or some one had a key for one of the locked doors. then there came the sound of many feet tramping and dying away in some passage which sent up a clanging echo. i turned to run down again towards the vault, where i might find the new entrance; but at the moment there seemed to come a violent puff of wind, and the door to the winding stair blew to with a shock that set the dust from the lintels flying. when i ran to push it open, i found that it was hopelessly fast. i was again a prisoner, and the net of doom was closing round me more closely. as i write there is in the passage below a sound of many tramping feet and the crash of weights being set down heavily, doubtless the boxes, with their freight of earth. there is a sound of hammering; it is the box being nailed down. now i can hear the heavy feet tramping again along the hall, with many other idle feet coming behind them. the door is shut, and the chains rattle; there is a grinding of the key in the lock; i can hear the key withdraw: then another door opens and shuts; i hear the creaking of lock and bolt. hark! in the courtyard and down the rocky way the roll of heavy wheels, the crack of whips, and the chorus of the szgany as they pass into the distance. i am alone in the castle with those awful women. faugh! mina is a woman, and there is nought in common. they are devils of the pit! i shall not remain alone with them; i shall try to scale the castle wall farther than i have yet attempted. i shall take some of the gold with me, lest i want it later. i may find a way from this dreadful place. and then away for home! away to the quickest and nearest train! away from this cursed spot, from this cursed land, where the devil and his children still walk with earthly feet! at least god's mercy is better than that of these monsters, and the precipice is steep and high. at its foot a man may sleepas a man. good-bye, all! mina! chapter v. letters, etc. letter from miss mina murray to miss lucy westenra. "9 may. "my dearest lucy, "forgive my long delay in writing, but i have been simply overwhelmed with work. the life of an assistant schoolmistress is sometimes trying. i am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air. i have been working very hard lately, because i want to keep up with jonathan's studies, and i have been practising shorthand very assiduously. when we are married i shall be able to be useful to jonathan, and if i can stenograph well enough i can take down what he wants to say in this way and write it out for him on the typewriter, at which also i am practising very hard. he and i sometimes write letters in shorthand, and he is keeping a stenographic journal of his travels abroad. when i am with you i shall keep a diary in the same way. i don't mean one of those two-pages-to-the-week-with-sunday-squeezed-in-a-corner diaries, but a sort of journal which i can write in whenever i feel inclined. i do not suppose there will be much of interest to other people; but it is not intended for them. i may show it to jonathan some day if there is in it anything worth sharing, but it is really an exercise book. i shall try to do what i see lady journalists do: interviewing and writing descriptions and trying to remember conversations. i am told that, with a little practise, one can remember all that goes on or that one hears said during a day. however we shall see. i will tell you of my little plans when we meet i have just had a few hurried lines from jonathan from transylvania. he is well, and will be returning in about a week. i am longing to hear all his news. it must be so nice to see strange countries. i wonder if wei mean jonathan and ishall ever see them together. there is the ten o'clock bell ringing. good-bye. "your loving "mina. "tell me all the news when you write. you have not told me anything for a long time. i hear rumours, and especially of a tall, handsome, curly-haired man???" letter, lucy westenra to mina murray. "17, chatham street "wednesday. "my dearest mina, "i must say you tax me very unfairly with being a bad correspondent. i wrote to you twice since we parted, and your last letter was only your second. besides, i have nothing to tell you. there is really nothing to interest you. town is very pleasant just now, and we go a good deal to picture-galleries and for walks and rides in the park. as to the tall, curly-haired man, i suppose it was the one who was with me at the last pop. some one has evidently been telling tales. that was mr. holmwood. he often comes to see us, and he and mamma get on very well together; they have so many things to talk about in common. we met some time ago a man that would just do for you, if you were not already engaged to jonathan. he is an excellent parti, being handsome, well off, and of good birth. he is a doctor and really clever. just fancy! he is only nine-and-twenty, and he has an immense lunatic asylum all under his own care. mr. holmwood introduced him to me, and he called here to see us, and often comes now. i think he is one of the most resolute men i ever saw, and yet the most calm. he seems absolutely imperturbable. i can fancy what a wonderful power he must have over his patients. he has a curious habit of looking one straight in the face, as if trying to read one's thoughts. he tries this on very much with me, but i flatter myself he has got a tough nut to crack. i know that from my glass. do you ever try to read your own face? i do, and i can tell you it is not a bad study, and gives you more trouble than you can well fancy if you have never tried it. he says that i afford him a curious psychological study, and i humbly think i do. i do not, as you know, take sufficient interest in dress to be able to describe the new fashions. dress is a bore. that is slang again, but never mind; arthur says that every day. there, it is all out. mina, we have told all our secrets to each other since we were children; we have slept together and eaten together, and laughed and cried together, and now, though i have spoken, i would like to speak more. oh, mina, couldn't you guess? i love him. i am blushing as i write, for although i think he loves me, he has not told me so in words. but oh, mina, i love him; i love him; i love him! there, that does me good. i wish i were with you, dear, sitting by the fire undressing, as we used to sit; and i would try to tell you what i feel. i do not know how i am writing this even to you. i am afraid to stop, or i should tear up the letter, and i don't want to stop, for i do so want to tell you all. let me hear from you at once, and tell me all that you think about it. mina, i must stop. good-night. bless me in your prayers; and, mina, pray for my happiness. "lucy. "p.s.i need not tell you this is a secret. good-night again. "l." letter, lucy westenra to mina murray. "24 may. "my dearest mina, "thanks, and thanks, and thanks again for your sweet letter. it was so nice to be able to tell you and to have your sympathy. "my dear, it never rains but it pours. how true the old proverbs are. here am i, who shall be twenty in september, and yet i never had a proposal till to-day, not a real proposal, and to-day i have had three. just fancy! three proposals in one day! isn't it awful i feel sorry, really and truly sorry, for two of the poor fellows. oh, mina, i am so happy that i don't know what to do with myself. and three proposals! but, for goodness' sake, don't tell any of the girls, or they would be getting all sorts of extravagant ideas and imagining themselves injured and slighted if in their very first day at home they did not get six at least. some girls are so vain! you and i, mina dear, who are engaged and are going to settle down soon soberly into old married women, can despise vanity. well, i must tell you about the three, but you must keep it a secret, dear, from every one, except, of course, jonathan. you will tell him, because i would, if i were in your place, certainly tell arthur. a woman ought to tell her husband everythingdon't you think so dear?and i must be fair. men like women, certainly their wives, to be quite as fair as they are; and women, i am afraid, are not always quite as fair as they should be. well, my dear, number one came just before lunch. i told you of him, dr. john seward, the lunatic-asylum man, with the strong jaw and the good forehead. he was very cool outwardly, but was nervous all the same. he had evidently been schooling himself as to all sorts of little things, and remembered them; but he almost managed to sit down on his silk hat, which men don't generally do when they are cool, and then when he wanted to appear at ease he kept playing with a lancet in a way that made me nearly scream. he spoke to me, mina, very straightforwardly. he told me how dear i was to him, though he had known me so little, and what his life would be with me to help and cheer him. he was going to tell me how unhappy he would be if i did not care for him, but when he saw me cry he said that he was a brute and would not add to my present trouble. then he broke off and asked if i could love him in time; and when i shook my head his hands trembled, and then with some hesitation he asked me if i cared already for any one else. he put it very nicely, saying that he did not want to wring my confidence from me, but only to know, because if a woman's heart was free a man might have hope. and then, mina, i felt a sort of duty to tell him that there was some one. i only told him that much, and then he stood up, and he looked very strong and very grave as he took both my hands in his and said he hoped i would be happy, and that if i ever wanted a friend i must count him one of my best. oh, mina dear, i can't help crying; and you must excuse this letter being all blotted. being proposed to is all very nice and all that sort of thing, but it isn't at all a happy thing when you have to see a poor fellow, whom you know loves you honestly, going away and looking all broken-hearted, and to know that, no matter what he may say at the moment, you are passing quite out of his life. my dear, i must stop here at present, i feel so miserable, though i am so happy. "evening. "arthur has just gone, and i feel in better spirits than when i left off, so i can go on telling you about the day. well, my dear, number two came after lunch. he is such a nice fellow, an american from texas, and he looks so young and so fresh that it seems almost impossible that he has been to so many places and has had such adventures. i sympathize with poor desdemona when she had such a dangerous stream poured in her ear, even by a black man. i suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him. i know now what i would do if i were a man and wanted to make a girl love me. no, i don't, for there was mr. morris telling us his stories, and arthur never told any, and yetmy dear, i am somewhat previous. mr. quincey p. morris found me alone. it seems that a man always does find a girl alone. no, he doesn't, for arthur tried twice to make a chance, and i helping him all i could; i am not ashamed to say it now. i must tell you beforehand that mr. morris doesn't always speak slangthat is to say, he never does so to strangers or before them, for he is really well educated and has exquisite mannersbut he found out that it amused me to hear him talk american slang, and whenever i was present, and there was no one to be shocked, he said such funny things. i am afraid, my dear, he has to invent it all, for it fits exactly into whatever else he has to say. but this is a way slang has. i do not know myself if i shall ever speak slang; i do not know if arthur likes it, as i have never heard him use any as yet. well, mr. morris sat down beside me and looked as happy and jolly as he could, but i could see all the same that he was very nervous. he took my hand in his, and said ever so sweetly: "'miss lucy, i know i ain't good enough to regulate the fixin's of your little shoes, but i guess if you wait till you find a man that is you will go join them seven young women with the lamps when you quit. won't you just hitch up alongside of me and let us go down the long road together, driving in double harness?' "well, he did look so good-humoured and so jolly that it didn't seem half so hard to refuse him as it did poor dr. seward; so i said, as lightly as i could, that i did not know anything of hitching, and that i wasn't broken to harness at all yet. then he said that he had spoken in a light manner, and he hoped that if he had made a mistake in doing so on so grave, so momentous, an occasion for him, i would forgive him. he really did look serious when he was saying it, and i couldn't help feeling a bit serious tooi know, mina, you will think me a horrid flirtthough i couldn't help feeling a sort of exultation that he was number two in one day. and then, my dear, before i could say a word he began pouring out a perfect torrent of love-making, laying his very heart and soul at my feet. he looked so earnest over it that i shall never again think that a man must be playful always, and never earnest, because he is merry at times. i suppose he saw something in my face which checked him, for he suddenly stopped, and said with a sort of manly fervour that i could have loved him for if i had been free: "'lucy, you are an honest-hearted girl, i know. i should not be here speaking to you as i am now if i did not believe you clean grit, right through to the very depths of your soul. tell me, like one good fellow to another, is there any one else that you care for? and if there is i'll never trouble you a hair's breadth again, but will be, if you will let me, a very faithful friend.' "my dear mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy of them? here was i almost making fun of this great-hearted, true gentleman. i burst into tearsi am afraid, my dear, you will think this a very sloppy letter in more ways than oneand i really felt very badly. why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? but this is heresy, and i must not say it. i am glad to say that, though i was crying, i was able to look into mr. morris's brave eyes, and i told him out straight: "'yes, there is some one i love, though he has not told me yet that he even loves me.' i was right to speak to him so frankly, for quite a light came into his face, and he put out both his hands and took minei think i put them into hisand said in a hearty way: "'that's my brave girl. it's better worth being late for a chance of winning you than being in time for any other girl in the world. don't cry, my dear. if it's for me, i'm a hard nut to crack; and i take it standing up. if that other fellow doesn't know his happiness, well, he'd better look for it soon, or he'll have to deal with me. little girl, your honesty and pluck have made me a friend, and that's rarer than a lover; it's more unselfish anyhow. my dear, i'm going to have a pretty lonely walk between this and kingdom come. won't you give me one kiss? it'll be something to keep off the darkness now and then. you can, you know, if you like, for that other good fellowhe must be a good fellow, my dear, and a fine fellow, or you could not love himhasn't spoken yet.' that quite won me, mina, for it was brave and sweet of him, and noble, too, to a rivalwasn't it?and he so sad; so i leant over and kissed him. he stood up with my two hands in his, and as he looked down into my facei am afraid i was blushing very muchhe said: "'little girl, i hold your hand, and you've kissed me, and if these things don't make us friends nothing ever will. thank you for your sweet honesty to me, and good-bye.' he wrung my hand, and taking up his hat, went straight out of the room without looking back, without a tear or a quiver or a pause; and i am crying like a baby. oh, why must a man like that be made unhappy when there are lots of girls about who would worship the very ground he trod on? i know i would if i were freeonly i don't want to be free. my dear, this quite upset me, and i feel i cannot write of happiness just at once, after telling you of it; and i don't wish to tell of the number three until it can be all happy. "ever your loving "lucy. "p.s.oh, about number threei needn't tell you of number three, need i? besides, it was all so confused; it seemed only a moment from his coming into the room till both his arms were round me, and he was kissing me. i am very, very happy, and i don't know what i have done to deserve it. i must only try in the future to show that i am not ungrateful to god for all his goodness to me in sending to me such a lover, such a husband, and such a friend. "good-bye." dr. seward's diary. (kept in phonograph) 25 may.ebb tide in appetite to-day. cannot eat, cannot rest, so diary instead. since my rebuff of yesterday i have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing... as i knew that the only cure for this sort of thing was work, i went down amongst the patients. i picked out one who has afforded me a study of much interest. he is so quaint in his mined to understand him as well as i can. to-day i seemed to get nearer than ever before to the heart of his mystery. i questioned him more fully than i had ever done, with a view to making myself master of the facts of his hallucination. in my manner of doing it there was, i now see, something of cruelty. i seemed to wish to keep him to the point of his madnessa thing which i avoid with the patients as i would the mouth of hell. (mem., under what circumstances would i not avoid the pit of hell?) omnia romae venalia sunt. hell has its price! verb. sap. if there be anything behind this instinct it will be valuable to trace it afterwards accurately, so i had better commence to do so, therefore r. m. renfield, aetat 59.sanguine temperament; great physical strength; morbidly excitable; periods of gloom, ending in some fixed idea which i cannot make out. i presume that the sanguine temperament itself and the disturbing influence end in a mentally-accomplished finish; a possibly dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish. in selfish men caution is as secure an armour for their foes as for themselves. what i think of on this point is, when self is the fixed point the centripetal force is balanced with the centrifugal; when duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed point, the latter force is paramount, and only accident or a series of accidents can balance it. letter, quincey p. morris to hon. arthur holmwood. "25 may. "my dear art, "we've told yarns by the camp-fire in the prairies; and dressed one another's wounds after trying a landing at the marquesas; and drunk healths on the shore of titicaca. there are more yarns to be told, and other wounds to be healed, and another health to be drunk. won't you let this be at my camp-fire to-morrow night? i have no hesitation in asking you, as i know a certain lady is engaged to a certain dinner-party, and that you are free. there will only be one other, our old pal at the korea, jack seward. he's coming, too, and we both want to mingle our weeps over the wine-cup, and to drink a health with all our hearts to the happiest man in all the wide world, who has won the noblest hear that god has made and the best worth winning. we promise you a hearty welcome, and a loving greeting, and a health as true as your own right hand. we shall both swear to leave you at home if you drink too deep to a certain pair of eyes. come! "yours, as ever and always, "quincey p. morris." telegram from arthur holmwood to quincey p morris. 26 may. "count me in every time. i bear messages which will make both your ears tingle. "art." chapter vi. mina murray's journal. 24 july. whitby.lucy met me at the station, looking sweeter and lovelier than ever, and we drove up to the house at the crescent in which they have rooms. this is a lovely place. the little river, the esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near the harbour. a great viaduct runs across, with high piers, through which the view seems somehow further away than it really is. the valley is beautifully green, and it is so steep that when you are on the high land on either side you look right across it, unless you are near enough to see down. the houses of the old townthe side away from usare all red-roofed, and seem piled up one over the other anyhow, like the pictures we see of nuremberg. right over the town is the ruin of whitby abbey, which was sacked by the danes, and which is the scene of part of "marmion," where the girl was built up in the wall. it is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows. between it and the town there is another church, the parish one, round which is a big graveyard, all full of tombstones. this is to my mind the nicest spot in whitby, for it lies right over the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the bay to where the headland called kettleness stretches out into the sea. it descends so steeply over the harbour that part of the bank has fallen away, and some of the graves have been destroyed. in one place part of the stonework of the graves stretches out over the sandy pathway far below. there are walks, with seats beside them, through the churchyard; and people go and sit there all day long looking at the beautiful view and enjoying the breeze. i shall come and sit here very often myself and work. indeed, i am writing now, with my book on my knee, and listening to the talk of three old men who are sitting beside me. they seem to do nothing all day but sit up here and talk. the harbour lies below me, with, on the far side, one long granite wall stretching out into the sea, with a curve outwards at the end of it, in the middle of which is a lighthouse. a heavy sea-wall runs along outside of it. on the near side, the sea-wall makes an elbow crooked inversely, and its end too has a lighthouse. between the two piers there is a narrow opening into the harbour, which then suddenly widens. it is nice at high water; but when the tide is out it shoals away to nothing, and there is merely the stream of the esk, running between banks of sand, with rocks here and there. outside the harbour on this side there rises for about half a mile a great reef, the sharp edge of which runs straight out from behind the south lighthouse. at the end of it is a buoy with a bell, which swings in bad weather, and sends in a mournful sound on the wind. they have a legend here that when a ship is lost bells are heard out at sea. i must ask the old man about this; he is coming this way... he is a funny old man. he must be awfully old, for his face is all gnarled and twisted like the bark of a tree. he tells me that he is nearly a hundred, and that he was a sailor in the greenland fishing fleet when waterloo was fought. he is, i am afraid, a very sceptical person, for when i asked him about the bells at sea and the white lady at the abbey he said very brusquely: "i wouldn't fash masel' about them, miss. them things be all wore out. mind, i don't say that they never was, but i do say that they wasn't in my time. they be all very well for comers and trippers, an' the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. them feet-folks from york and leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's an' drinkin' tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. i wonder masel' who'd be bothered tellin' lies to themeven the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk." i thought he would be a good person to learn interesting things from, so i asked him if he would mind telling me something about the whale-fishing in the old days. he was just settling himself to begin when the clock struck six, whereupon he laboured to get up, and said: "i must gang ageeanwards home now, miss. my grand-daughter doesn't like to be kept waitin' when the tea is ready, for it takes me time to crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of 'em; an', miss, i lack belly-timber sairly by the clock." he hobbled away, and i could see him hurrying, as well as he could, down the steps. the steps are a great feature of the place. they lead from the town up to the church; there are hundreds of themi do not know how manyand they wind up in a delicate curve; the slope is so gentle that a horse could easily walk up and down them. i think they must originally have had something to do with the abbey. i shall go home too. lucy went out visiting with her mother, and as they were only duty calls, i did not go. they will be home by this. 1 august.i came up here an hour ago with lucy, and we had a most interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come and join him. he is evidently the sir oracle of them, and i should think must have been in his time a most dictatorial person. he will not admit anything, and downfaces everybody. if he can't out-argue them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for agreement with his views. lucy was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn frock, she has got a beautiful colour since she has been here. i noticed that the old men did not lose any time in coming up and sitting near her when we sat down. she is so sweet with old people; i think they all fell in love with her on the spot. even my old man succumbed and did not contradict her, but gave me double share instead. i got him on the subject of the legends, and he went off at once into a sort of sermon. i must try to remember it and put it down: "it be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel; that's what it be, an' nowt else. these bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an' barguests an' bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women a-belderin'. they be nowt but air-blebs. they, an' all grims an' signs an' warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome beuk-bodies an' railway touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to get folks to do somethin' that they don't other incline to. it makes me ireful to think o' them. why, it's them that, not content with printin' lies on paper an' preachin' them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin' them on the tombsteans. look here all around you in what airt ye will; all them steans, holdin' up their heads as well as they can out of their pride, is acantsimply tumblin' down with the weight o' the lies wrote on them, 'here lies the body' or 'sacred to the memory' wrote on all of them, an' yet in nigh half of them there bean't no bodies at all; an' the memories of them bean't cared a pinch of snuff about, much less sacred. lies all of them, nothin' but lies of one kind or another! my gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the day of judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped together an' tryin' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was; some of them trimmlin' and ditherin', with their hands that dozzened an' slippy from lyin' in the sea that they can't even keep their grup o' them." i could see from the old fellow's self-satisfied air and the way in which he looked round for the approval of his cronies that he was "showing off," so i put in a word to keep him going: "oh, mr. swales, you can't be serious. surely these tombstones are not all wrong?" "yabblins! there may be a poorish few not wrong, savin' where they make out the people too good; for there be folk that do think a balm-bowl be like the sea, if only it be their own. the whole thing be only lies. now look you here; you come here a stranger, an' you see this kirk-garth." i nodded, for i thought it better to assent, though i did not quite understand his dialect. i knew it had something to do with the church. he went on: "and you consate that all these steans be aboon folk that be happed here, snod an' snog?" i assented again. "then that be just where the lie comes in. why, there be scores of these lay-beds that be toom as old dun's 'bacca-box on friday night." he nudged one of his companions, and they all laughed. "and my gog! how could they be otherwise? look at that one, the aftest abaft the bier-bank; read it!" i went over and read: "edward spencelagh, master mariner, murdered by pirates off the coast of andres, april, 1854, aet. 30." when i came back mr. swales went on: "who brought him home, i wonder, to hap him here? murdered off the coast of andres! an' you consated his body lay under! why, i could name ye a dozen whose bones lie in the greenland seas above"he pointed northwards"or where the currents may have drifted them. there be the steans around ye. ye can, with your young eyes, read the small-print of the lies from here. this braithwaite lowreyi knew his father, lost in the lively off greenland in '20; or andrew woodhouse, drowned in the same seas in 1777; or john paxton, drowned off cape farewell a year later; or old john rawlings, whose grandfather sailed with me, drowned in the gulf of finland in '50. do ye think that all these men will have to make a rush to whitby when the trumpet sounds? i have me antherums about it! i tell ye that when they got here they'd be jommlin' an' jostlin' one another that way that it 'ud be like a fight up on the ice in the old days, when we'd be at one another from daylight to dark, an' tryin' to tie up our cuts by the light of the aurora borealis." this was evidently local pleasantry, for the old man cackled over it, and his cronies joined in with gusto. "but," i said, "surely you are not quite correct, for you start on the assumption that all the poor people, or their spirits, will have to take their tombstones with them on the day of judgment. do you think that will be really necessary?" "well what else be they tombstones for? answer me that, miss!" "to please their relatives, i suppose." "to please their relatives, you suppose!" this he said with intense scorn. "how will it pleasure their relatives to know that lies is wrote over them, and that everybody in the place knows that they be lies?" he pointed to a stone at our feet which had been laid down as a slab, on which the seat was rested, close to the edge of the cliff. "read the lies on that thruff-stean," he said. the letters were upside down to me from where i sat, but lucy was more opposite to them, so she leant over and read: "sacred to the memory of george canon, who died, in the hope of a glorious resurrection, on july 29, 1873, falling from the rocks at kettleness. this tomb is erected by his sorrowing mother to her dearly beloved son. 'he was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.'" "really, mr. swales, i don't see anything very funny in that!" she spoke her comment very gravely and somewhat severely. "ye don't see aught funny! ha! ha! but that's because ye don't gawm the sorrowin' mother was a hell-cat that hated him because he was acrewk'da regular lamiter he wasan' he hated her so that he committed suicide in order that she mightn't get an insurance she put on his life. he blew night the top of his head off with an old musket that they had for scarin' the crows with. 'twarn't for crows then, for it brought the clegs and the dowps to him. that's the way he fell off the rocks. and, as to hopes of a glorious resurrection, i've often heard him say masel' that he hoped he'd go to hell, for his mother was so pious that she'd be sure to go to heaven, an' he didn't wan't to addle where she was. now isn't that stean at any rate"he hammered it with his stick as he spoke"a pack of lies? and won't it make gabriel keckle when geordie comes pantin' up the grees with the tombstean balanced on his hump, and asks it to be took as evidence!" i did not know what to say, but lucy turned the conversation as she said, rising up: "oh why did you tell us of this? it is my favourite seat, and i cannot leave it; and now i find i must go on sitting over the grave of a suicide." "that won't harm ye, my pretty; an' it may make poor geordie gladsome to have so trim a lass sittin' on his lap. that won't hurt ye. why, i've sat here off an' on for nigh twenty years past, an' it hasn't done me no harm. don't ye fash about them as lies under ye, or that doesn' lie there either! it'll be time for ye to be getting scart when ye see the tombsteans all run away with, and the place as bare as a stubble-field. there's the clock, an' i must gang. my service to ye, ladies!" and off he hobbled. lucy and i sat a while, and it was all so beautiful before us that we took hands as we sat; and she told me all over again about arthur and their coming marriage. that made me just a little heart-sick, for i haven't heard from jonathan for a whole month. the same day.i came up here alone, for i am very sad. there was no letter for me. i hope there cannot be anything the matter with jonathan. the clock has just struck nine. i see the lights scattered all over the town, sometimes in rows where the streets are, and sometimes singly; they run right up the esk and die away in the curve of the valley. to my left the view is cut off by a black line of roof of the old house next the abbey. the sheep and lambs are bleating in the fields away behind me, and there is a clatter of donkey's hoofs up the paved road below. the band on the pier is playing a harsh waltz in good time, and further along the quay there is a salvation army meeting in a back street. neither of the bands hears the other, but up here i hear and see them both. i wonder where jonathan is and if he is thinking of me! i wish he were here. dr. seward's diary. 5 june.the case of renfield grows more interesting the more i get to understand the man. he has certain qualities very largely developed; selfishness, secrecy, and purpose. i wish i could get at what is the object of the latter. he seems to have some settled scheme of his own, but what it is i do not yet know. his redeeming quality is a love of animals, though, indeed, he has such curious turns in it that i sometimes imagine he is only abnormally cruel. his pets are of odd sorts. just now his hobby is catching flies. he has at present such a quantity that i have had myself to expostulate. to my astonishment, he did not break out into a fury, as i expected, but took the matter in simple seriousness. he thought for a moment, and then said: "may i have three days? i shall clear them away." of course, i said that would do. i must watch him. 18 june.he has turned his mind now to spiders, and has got several big fellows in a box. he keeps feeding them with his flies, and the number of the latter is becoming sensibly diminished, although he has used half his food in attracting more flies from outside to his room. 1 july.his spiders are now becoming as great a nuisance as his flies, and to-day i told him that he must get rid of them. he looked very sad at this, so i said that he must clear out some of them, at all events. he cheerfully acquiesced in this, and i gave him the same time as before for reduction. he disgusted me much while with him, for when a horrid blow-fly, bloated with some carrion food, buzzed into the room, he caught it, held it exultantly for a few moments between his finger and thumb, and, before i knew what he was going to do, put it in his mouth and ate it. i scolded him for it, but he argued quietly that it was very good and very wholesome; that it was life, strong life, and gave life to him. this gave me an idea, or the rudiment of one. i must watch how he gets rid of his spiders. he has evidently some deep problem in his mind for he keeps a little note-book in which he is always jotting down something. whole pages of it are filled with masses of figures, generally single numbers added up in batches, and then the totals added in batches again, as though he were "focussing" some account, as the auditors put it. 8 july.there is a method in his madness, and the rudimentary idea in my mind is growing. it will be a whole idea soon, and then, oh, unconscious cerebration! you will have to give the wall to your conscious brother. i kept away from my friend for a few days, so that i might notice if there were any change. things remain as they were except that he has parted with some of his pets and got a new one. he has managed to get a sparrow, and has already partially tamed it. his means of taming is simple, for already the spiders have diminished. those that do remain, however, are well fed, for he still brings in the flies by tempting them with his food. 19 july.we are progressing. my friend has now a whole colony of sparrows, and his flies and spiders are almost obliterated. when i came in he ran to me and said he wanted to ask me a great favoura very, very great favour; and as he spoke he fawned on me like a dog. i asked him what it was, and he said, with a sort of rapture in his voice and bearing: "a kitten, a nice little, sleek, playful kitten, that i can play with, and teach, and feedand feed and feed!" i was not unprepared for this request, for i had noticed how his pets went on increasing in size and vivacity, but i did not care that his pretty family of tame sparrows should be wiped out in the same manner as the flies and the spiders; so i said i would see about it, and asked him if he would not rather have a cat than a kitten. his eagerness betrayed him as he answered: "oh, yes, i would like a cat! i only asked for a kitten lest you should refuse me a cat. no one would refuse me a kitten, would they?" i shook my head, and said that at present i feared it would not be possible, but that i would see about it. his face fell, and i could see a warning of danger in it, for there was a sudden fierce, sidelong, look which meant killing. the man is an undeveloped homicidal maniac. i shall test him with his present craving and see how it will work out; then i shall know more. 10 p.m.i have visited him again and found him sitting in a corner brooding. when i came in he threw himself on his knees before me and implored me to let him have a cat; that his salvation depended upon it. i was firm, however, and told him that he could not have it, whereupon he went without a word, and sat down, gnawing his fingers, in the corner where i had found him. i shall see him in the morning early. 20 july.visited renfield very early, before the attendant went his rounds. found him up and humming a tune. he was spreading out his sugar, which he had saved, in the window, and was manifestly beginning his fly-catching again; and beginning it cheerfully and with a good grace. i looked around for his birds, and not seeing them, asked him where they were. he replied, without turning round, that they had all flown away. there were a few feathers about the room and on his pillow a drop of blood. i said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report to me if there were anything odd about him during the day. 11 a.m.the attendant has just been to me to say that renfield has been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers. "my belief is, doctor," he said, "that he has eaten his birds, and that he just took and ate them raw!" 11 p.m.i gave renfield a strong opiate to-night, enough to make even him sleep, and took away his pocket-book to look at it. the thought that has been buzzing about my brain lately is complete, and the theory proved. my homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind. i shall have to invent a new classification for him, and call him a zoophagous (life-eating) maniac; what he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way. he gave many flies to one spider and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds. what would have been his later steps? it would almost be worth while to complete the experiment. it might be done if there were only a sufficient cause. men sneered at vivisection, and yet look at its results to-day! why not advance science in its most difficult and vital aspectthe knowledge of the brain? had i even the secret of one such minddid i hold the key to the fancy of even one lunatici might advance my own branch of science to a pitch compared with which burdon-sanderson's physiology or ferrier's brain-knowledge would be as nothing. if only there were a sufficient cause! i must not think too much of this, or i may be tempted; a good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not i too be of an exceptional brain, congenitally? how well the man reasoned; lunatics always do within their own scope. i wonder at how many lives he values a man, or if at only one. he has closed the account most accurately, and to-day begun a new record. how many of us begin a new record with each day of our lives? to me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new hope, and that truly i began a new record. so it will be until the great recorder sums me up and closes my ledger account with a balance to profit or loss. oh, lucy, lucy, i cannot be angry with you' nor can i be angry with my friend whose happiness is yours; but i must only wait on hopeless and work. work! work! if i only could have as strong a cause as my poor mad friend therea good, unselfish cause to make me workthat would be indeed happiness. mina murray's journal. 26 july.i am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here; it is like whispering to one's self and listening at the same time. and there is also something about the shorthand symbols that makes it different from writing. i am unhappy about lucy and about jonathan. i had not heard from jonathan for some time, and was very concerned; but yesterday dear mr. hawkins, who is always so kind, sent me a letter from him. i had written asking him if he had heard, and he said the enclosed had just been received. it is only a line dated from castle dracula, and says that he is just starting for home. that is not like jonathan; i do not understand it, and it makes me uneasy. then, too, lucy, although she is so well, has lately taken to her old habit of walking in her sleep. her mother has spoken to me about it, and we have decided that i am to lock the door of our room every night. mrs. westenra has got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of houses and along the edges of cliffs, and then get suddenly wakened and fall over with a despairing cry that echoes all over the place. poor dear, she is naturally anxious about lucy, and she tells me that her husband, lucy's father, had the same habit; that he would get up in the night and dress himself and go out, if he were not stopped. lucy is to be married in the autumn, and she is already planning out her dresses and how her house is to be arranged. i sympathise with her, for i do the same, only jonathan and i will start in life in a very simple way, and shall have to try to make both ends meet. mr. holmwoodhe is the hon. arthur holmwood, only son of lord godalmingis coming up here very shortlyas soon as he can leave town, for his father is not very well, and i think dear lucy is counting the moments till he comes. she wants to take him up to the seat on the churchyard cliff and show him the beauty of whitby. i daresay it is the waiting which disturbs her; she will be all right when he arrives. 27 july.no news from jonathan. i am getting quite uneasy about him, though why i should i do not know; but i do wish that he would write, if it were only a single line. lucy walks more than ever, and each night i am awakened by her moving about the room. fortunately, the weather is so hot that she cannot get cold; but still the anxiety and the perpetually being wakened is beginning to tell on me, and i am getting nervous and wakeful myself. thank god, lucy's health keeps up. mr. holmwood has been suddenly called to ring to see his father, who has been taken seriously ill. lucy frets at the postponement of seeing him, but it does not touch her looks; she is a trifle stouter, and her cheeks are a lovely rose pink. she has lost that anaemic look which she had. i pray it will all last. 3 august.another week gone, and no news from jonathan, not even to mr. hawkins, from whom i have heard. oh, i do hope he is not ill. he surely would have written. i look at that last letter of his, but somehow it does not satisfy me. it does not read like him, and yet it is his writing. there is no mistake of that. lucy has not walked much in her sleep the last week, but there is an odd concentration about her which i do not understand; even in her sleep she seems to be watching me. she tries the door, and finding it locked, goes about the room searching for the key. 6 august.another three days, and no news. this suspense is getting dreadful. if i only knew where to write to or where to go to, i should feel easier; but no one has heard a word of jonathan since that last letter. i must only pray to god for patience. lucy is more excitable than ever, but is otherwise well. last night was very threatening, and the fishermen say that we are in for a storm. i must try to watch it and learn the weather signs. to-day is a grey day, and the sun as i write is hidden in thick clouds, high over kettleness. everything is greyexcept the green grass, which seems like emerald amongst it; grey earthy rock; grey clouds, tinged with the sunburst at the far edge, hang over the grey sea, into which the sand-points stretch like grey fingers. the sea is tumbling in over the shallows and the sandy flats with a roar, muffled in the sea-mists drifting inland. the horizon is lost in a grey mist. all is vastness; the clouds are piled up like giant rocks, and there is a "brool" over the sea that sounds like some presage of doom. dark figures are on the beach here and there, sometimes half shrouded in the mist, and seem "men like trees walking." the fishing-boats are racing for home, and rise and dip in the ground swell as they sweep into the harbour, bending to the scuppers. here comes old mr. swales. he is making straight for me, and i can see, by the way he lifts his hat, that he wants to talk... i have been quite touched by the change in the poor old man. when he sat down beside me, he said in a very gentle way: "i want to say something to you, miss." i could see he was not at ease, so i took his poor old wrinkled hand in mine and asked him to speak fully; so he said, leaving his hand in mine: "i'm afraid, my deary, that i must have shocked you by all the wicked things i've been sayin' about the dead, and such like, for weeks past; but i didn't mean them, and i want ye to remember that when i'm gone. we aud folks that be daffled, and with one foot abaft the krok-hooal, don't altogether like to think of it, and we don't want to feel scart of it; an' that's why i've took to makin' light of it, so that i'd cheer up my own heart a bit. but, lord love ye, miss, i ain't afraid of dyin', not a bit; only i don't want to die if i can help it. my time must be nigh at hand now, for i be aud, and a hundred years is too much for any man to expect; and i'm so nigh it that the aud man is already whettin' his scythe. ye see, i can't get out o' the habit of affin' about it all at once: the chafts will wag as they be used to. some day soon the angel of death will sound his trumpet for me. but don't ye dooal an' greet, my deary!"for he saw that i was crying"if he should come this very night i'd not refuse to answer his call. for life be, after all, only a waitin' for somethin' else than what we're doin'; and death be all that we can rightly depend on. but i'm content, for it's comin' to me, my deary, and comin' quick. it may be comin' while we be lookin' and wonderin'. maybe it's in that wind out over the sea that's bringin' with it loss and wreck, and sore distress, and sad hearts. look! look!" he cried suddenly. "there's something in that wind and in the hoast beyont that sounds, and looks, and tastes, and smells like death. it's in the air, i feel it comin. lord, make me answer cheerful when my call comes!" he held up his arms devoutly, and raised his hat. his mouth moved as though he were praying. after a few minutes' silence, he got up, shook hands with me, and blessed me, and said good-bye, and hobbled off. it all touched me, and upset me very much. i was glad when the coastguard came along, with his spyglass under his arm. he stopped to talk with me, as he always does, but all the time kept looking at a strange ship. "i can't make her out," he said; "she's a russian, by the look of her; but she's knocking about in the queerest way. she doesn't know her mind a bit; she seems to see the storm coming, but can't decide whether to run up north in the open, or to put in here. look there again! she is steered mighty strangely, for she doesn't mind the hand on the wheel; changes about with every puff of wind. we'll hear more of her before this time to-morrow." chapter vii. cutting from "the dailygraph". (pasted in mina murray's journal.) from a correspondent. 8 august. whitby one of the greatest and suddenest storms on record has just been experienced here, with results both strange and unique. the weather had been somewhat sultry, but not to any degree uncommon in the month of august. saturday evening was as fine as was ever known, and the great body of holiday-makers laid out yesterday for visits to mulgrave woods, robin hood's bay, rig mill, runswick, staithes, and the various trips in the neighbourhood of whitby. the steamers emma and scarborough made trips up and down the coast, and there was an unusual amount of "tripping" both to and from whitby. the day was unusually fine till the afternoon, when some of the gossips who frequent the east cliff churchyard, and from that commanding eminence watch the wide sweep of sea visible to the north and east, called attention to a sudden show of "mares'-tails" high in the sky to the north-west. the wind was then blowing from the south-west in the mild degree which in barometrical language is ranked "no. 2: light breeze." the coastguard on duty at once made report, and one old fisherman, who for more than half a century has kept watch on weather signs from the east cliff, foretold in an emphatic manner the coming of a sudden storm. the approach of sunset was so very beautiful, so grand in its masses of splendidly-coloured clouds, that there was quite an assemblage on the walk along the cliff in the old churchyard to enjoy the beauty. before the sun dipped blow the black mass of kettleness, standing boldly athwart the western sky, its downward way was marked by myriad clouds of every sunset-colourflame, purple, pink, green, violet, and all the tints of gold; with here and there masses not large, but of seemingly absolute blackness, in all sorts of shapes, as well outlined as colossal silhouettes. the experience was not lost on the painters, and doubtless some of the sketches of the "prelude to the great storm" will grace the r.a. and r.i. walls in may next. more than one captain made up his mind then and there that his "cobble" or his "mule," as they term the different classes of boats, would remain in the harbour till the storm had passed. the wind fell away entirely during the evening, and at midnight there was a dead calm, a sultry heat, and that prevailing intensity which, on the approach of thunder, affects persons of a sensitive nature. there were but few lights in sight at sea, for even the coasting steamers, which usually "hug" the shore so closely, kept well to seaward, and but few fishing-boats were in sight. the only sail noticeable was a foreign schooner with all sails set, which was seemingly going westwards. the foolhardiness or ignorance of her officers was a prolific theme for comment whilst she remained in sight, and efforts were made to signal her to reduce sail in face of her danger. before the night shut down she was seen with sails idly napping as she gently rolled on the undulating swell of the sea, "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean." shortly before ten o'clock the stillness of the air grew quite oppressive, and the silence was so marked that the bleating of a sheep inland or the barking of a dog in the town was distinctly heard, and the band on the pier, with its lively french air, was like a discord in the great harmony of nature's silence. a little after midnight came a strange sound from over the sea, and high overhead the air began to carry a strange, faint, hollow booming. then without warning the tempest broke. with a rapidity which, at the time, seemed incredible, and even afterwards is impossible to realise, the whole aspect of nature at once became convulsed. the waves rose in growing fury, each overtopping its fellow, till in a very few minutes the lately glassy sea was like a roaring and devouring monster. white-crested waves beat madly on the level sands and rushed up the shelving cliffs; others broke over the piers, and with their spume swept the lanthorns of the lighthouses which rise from the end of either pier of whitby harbour. the wind roared like thunder, and blew with such force that it was with difficulty that even strong men kept their feet, or clung with grim clasp to the iron stanchions. it was found necessary to clear the entire piers from the mass of onlookers, or else the fatalities of the night would have been increased manifold. to add to the difficulties and dangers of the time, masses of sea-fog came drifting inlandwhite, wet clouds, which swept by in ghostly fashion, so dank and damp and cold that it needed but little effort of imagination to think that the spirits of those lost at sea were touching their living brethren with the clammy hands of death, and many a one shuddered as the wreaths of sea-mist swept by. at times the mist cleared, and the sea for some distance could be seen in the glare of the lightning, which now came thick and fast, followed by such sudden peals of thunder that the whole sky overhead seemed trembling under the shock of the footsteps of the storm. some of the scenes thus revealed were of immeasurable grandeur and of absorbing interestthe sea, running mountains high, threw skywards with each wave mighty masses of white foam, which the tempest seemed to snatch at and whirl away into space; here and there a fishing-boat, with a rag of sail, running madly for shelter before the blast; now and again the white wings of a storm-tossed sea-bird. on the summit of the east cliff the new searchlight was ready for experiment, but had not yet been tried. the officers in charge of it got it into working order, and in the pauses of the inrushing mist swept with it the surface of the sea. once or twice its service was most effective, as when a fishing-boat, with gunwale under water, rushed into the harbour, able, by the guidance of the sheltering light, to avoid the danger of dashing against the piers. as each boat achieved the safety of the port there was a shout of joy from the mass of people on shore, a shout which for a moment seemed to cleave the gale and was then swept away in its rush. before long the searchlight discovered some distance away a schooner with all sails set, apparently the same vessel which had been noticed earlier in the evening. the wind had by this time backed to the east, and there was a shudder amongst the watchers on the cliff as they realised the terrible danger in which she now was. between her and the port lay the great flat reef on which so many good ships have from time to time suffered, and, with the wind blowing from its present quarter, it would be quite impossible that she should fetch the entrance of the harbour. it was now nearly the hour of high tide, but the waves were so great that in their troughs the shallows of the shore were almost visible, and the schooner, with all sails set, was rushing with such speed that, in the words of one old salt, "she must fetch up somewhere, if it was only in hell." then came another rush of sea-fog, greater than any hithertoa mass of dank mist, which seemed to close on all things like a grey pall, and left available to men only the organ of hearing, for the roar of the tempest, and the crash of the thunder, and the booming of the mighty billows came through the damp oblivion even louder than before. the rays of the searchlight were kept fixed on the harbour mouth across the east pier, where the shock was expected, and men waited breathless. the wind suddenly shifted to the northeast, and the remnant of the sea-fog melted in the blast; and then, mirabile dictu, between the piers, leaping from wave to wave as it rushed at headlong speed, swept the strange schooner before the blast, with all sail set, and gained the safety of the harbour. the search-light followed her, and a shudder ran through all who saw her, for lashed to the helm was a corpse, with drooping head, which swung horribly to and fro at each motion of the ship. no other form could be seen on deck at all. a great awe came on all as they realised that the ship, as if by a miracle, had found the harbour, unsteered save by the hand of a dead man! however, all took place more quickly than it takes to write these words. the schooner paused not, but rushing across the harbour, pitched herself on that accumulation of sand and gravel washed by many tides and many storms into the south-east corner of the pier jutting under the east cliff, known locally as tate hill pier. there was of course a considerable concussion as the vessel drove up on the sand heap. every spar, rope, and stay was strained, and some of the "top-hammer" came crashing down. but, strangest of all, the very instant the shore was touched, an immense dog sprang up on deck from below, as if shot up by the concussion, and running forward, jumped from the bow on the sand. making straight for the steep cliff, where the churchyard hangs over the laneway to the east pier so steeply that some of the flat tombstones"thruff-steans" or "through-stones," as they call them in the whitby vernacularactually project over where the sustaining cliff has fallen away, it disappeared in the darkness, which seemed intensified just beyond the focus of the searchlight. it so happened that there was no one at the moment on tate hill pier, as all those whose houses are in close proximity were either in bed or were out on the heights above. thus the coastguard on duty on the eastern side of the harbour, who at once ran down to the little pier, was the first to climb on board. the men working the searchlight, after scouring the entrance of the harbour without seeing anything, then turned the light on the derelict and kept it there. the coastguard ran aft, and when he came beside the wheel, bent over to examine it, and recoiled at once as though under some sudden emotion. this seemed to pique general curiosity, and quite a number of people began to run. it is a good way round from the west cliff by the drawbridge to tate hill pier, but your correspondent is a fairly good runner, and came well ahead of the crowd. when i arrived, however, i found already assembled on the pier a crowd, whom the coastguard and police refused to allow to come on board. by the courtesy of the chief boatman, i was, as your correspondent, permitted to climb on deck, and was one of a small group who saw the dead seaman whilst actually lashed to the wheel. it was no wonder that the coastguard was surprised, or even awed, for not often can such a sight have been seen. the man was simply fastened by his hands, tied one over the other, to a spoke of the wheel. between the inner hand and the wood was a crucifix, the set of beads on which it was fastened being around both wrists and wheel, and all kept fast by the binding cords. the poor fellow may have been seated at one time, but the flapping and buffeting of the sails had worked through the rudder of the wheel and dragged him to and fro, so that the cords with which he was tied had cut the flesh to the bone. accurate note was made of the state of things, and a doctorsurgeon j. m. caffyn, of 33, east elliot placewho came immediately after me, declared, after making examination, that the man must have been dead for quite two days. in his pocket was a bottle, carefully corked, empty save for a little roll of paper, which proved to be the addendum to the log. the coastguard said the man must have tied up his own hands, fastening the knots with his teeth. the fact that a coastguard was the first on board may save some complications, later on, in the admiralty court; for coastguards cannot claim the salvage which is the tight of the first civilian entering on a derelict. already however, the legal tongues are wagging, and one young law student is loudly asserting that the rights of the owner are already completely sacrificed, his property being held in contravention of the statutes of mortmain, since the tiller, as emblemship, if not proof, of delegated possession, is held in a dead hand. it is needless to say that the dead steersman has been reverently removed from the place where he held his honourable watch and ward till deatha steadfastness as noble as that of the young casablancaand placed in the mortuary to await inquest. already the sudden storm is passing, and its fierceness is abating; crowds are scattering homeward, and the sky is beginning to redden over the yorkshire wolds. i shall send, in time for your next issue, further details of the derelict ship which found her way so miraculously into harbour in the storm. whitby. 9 august.the sequel to the strange arrival of the derelict in the storm last night is almost more startling than the thing itself. it turns out that the schooner is a russian from varna, and is called the demeter. she is almost entirely in ballast of silver sand, with only a small amount of cargoa number of great wooden boxes filled with mould. this cargo was consigned to a whitby solicitor, mr. s. f. billington, of 7, the crescent, who this morning went aboard and formally took possession of the goods consigned to him. the russian consul, too, acting for the charter-party, took formal possession of the ship, and paid all harbour dues, etc. nothing is talked about here to-day except the strange coincidence; the officials of the board of trade have been most exacting in seeing that every compliance has been made with existing regulations. as the matter is to be a "nine days' wonder," they are evidently determined that there shall be no cause of after complaint. a good deal of interest was abroad concerning the dog which landed when the ship struck, and more than a few of the members of the s.p.c.a., which is very strong in whitby, have tried to befriend the animal. to the general disappointment, however, it was not to be found; it seems to have disappeared entirely from the town. it may be that it was frightened and made its way on to the moors, where it is still hiding in terror. there are some who look with dread on such a possibility, lest later on it should in itself become a danger, for it is evidently a fierce brute. early this morning a large dog, a half-bred mastiff belonging to a coal merchant close to tate hill pier, was found dead in the roadway opposite to master's yard. it had been fighting, and manifestly had had a savage opponent, for its throat was torn away, and its belly was slit open as if with a savage claw. later.by the kindness of the board of trade inspector, i have been permitted to look over the log-book of the demeter, which was in order up to within three days, but contained nothing of special interest except as to facts of missing men. the greatest interest, however, is with regard to the paper found in the bottle, which was to-day produced at the inquest; and a more strange narrative than the two between them unfold it has not been my lot to come across. as there is no motive for concealment, i am permitted to use them, and accordingly send you a rescript, simply omitting technical details of seamanship and supercargo. it almost seems as though the captain had been seized with some kind of mania before he had got well into blue water, and that this had developed persistently throughout the voyage. of course my statement must be taken cum grano, since i am writing from the dictation of a clerk of the russian consul, who kindly translated for me, time being short. log of the "demeter." varna to whitby. written 18 july, things so strange happening, that i shall keep accurate note henceforth till we land. on 6 july we finished taking in cargo, silver sand and boxes of earth. at noon set sail. east wind, fresh. crew, five hands,... two mates, cook, and myself (captain). on 11 july at dawn entered bosphorus. boarded by turkish customs officers. backsheesh. all correct. under way at 4 p.m. on 12 july through dardanelles. more customs officers and flagboat of guarding squadron,. backsheesh again. work of officers thorough, but quick. want us off soon. at dark passed into archipelago. on 13 july passed cape matapan. crew dissatisfied about something. seemed scared, but would not speak out. on 14 july was somewhat anxious about crew. men all steady fellows, who sailed with me before. mate could not make out what was wrong; they only told him there was something, and crossed themselves. mate lost temper with one of them that day and struck him. expected fierce quarrel, but all was quiet. on 16 july mate reported in the morning that one of crew, petrofsky, was missing. could not account for it. took larboard watch eight bells last night; was relieved by abramoff, but did not go to bunk. men more downcast than ever. all said they expected something of the kind, but would not say more than that there was something aboard. mate getting very impatient with them; feared some trouble ahead. on 17 july, yesterday, one of the men, olgaren, came to my cabin, and in an awestruck way confided to me that he thought there was a strange man aboard the ship. he said that in his watch he had been sheltering behind the deck-house, as there was a rain-storm, when he saw a tall, thin man, who was not like any of the crew, come up the companion-way, and go along the deck forward, and disappear. he followed cautiously, but when he got to bows found no one, and the hatchways were all closed. he was in a panic of superstitious fear, and i am afraid the panic may spread. to allay it, i shall to-day search entire ship carefully from stem to stern. later in the day i got together the whole crew, and told them, as they evidently thought there was some one in the ship, we would search from stem to stern. first mate angry; said it was folly, and to yield to such foolish ideas would demoralise the men; said he would engage to keep them out of trouble with a handspike. i let him take the helm, while the rest began thorough search, all keeping abreast, with lanterns; we left no corner unsearched. as there were only the big wooden boxes, there were no odd corners where a man could hide. men much relieved when search over, and went back to work cheerfully. first mate scowled, but said nothing. 22 july.rough weather last three days, and all hands busy with sailsno time to be frightened. men seem to have forgotten their dread. mate cheerful again, and all on good terms. praised men for work in bad weather. passed gibraltar and out through straits. all well. 24 july.there seems some doom over this ship. already a hand short, and entering on the bay of biscay with wild weather ahead, and yet last night another man lostdisappeared. like the first, he came off his watch and was not seen again. men all in a panic of fear; sent a round robin, asking to have double watch, as they fear to be alone. mate angry. fear there will be some trouble, as either he or the men will do some violence. 28 july.four days in hell, knocking about in a sort of maelstrom, and the wind a tempest. no sleep for any one. men all worn out. hardly know how to set a watch, since no one fit to go on. second mate volunteered to steer and watch, and let men snatch a few hours' sleep. wind abating; seas still terrific, but feel them less, as ship is steadier. 29 july.another tragedy. had single watch to-night, as crew too tired to double. when morning watch came on deck could find no one except steersman. raised outcry, and all came on deck. thorough search, but no one found. are now without second mate, and crew in a panic. mate and i agreed to go armed henceforth and wait for any sign of cause. 30 july.last night. rejoiced we are nearing england. weather fine, all sails set. retired worn out; slept soundly; awaked by mate telling me that both man of watch and steersman missing. only self and mate and two hands left to work ship. 1 august.two days of fog, and not a sail sighted. had hoped when in the english channel to be able to signal for help or get in somewhere. not having power to work sails, have to run before wind. dare not lower, as could not raise them again. we seem to be drifting to some terrible doom. mate now more demoralised than either of men. his stronger nature seems to have worked inwardly against himself. men are beyond fear, working stolidly and patiently, with minds made up to worst. they are russian, he roumanian. 2 august, midnight.woke up from few minutes' sleep by hearing a cry, seemingly outside my port. could see nothing in fog. rushed on deck, and ran against mate. tells me heard cry and ran, but no sign of man on watch. one more gone. lord, help us! mate says we must be past straits of dover, as in a moment of fog lifting he saw north foreland, just as he heard the man cry out. if so we are now off in the north sea, and only god can guide us in the fog, which seems to move with us; and god seems to have deserted us. 3 august.at midnight i went to relieve the man at the wheel, and when i got to it found no one there. the wind was steady, and as we ran before it there was no yawing. i dared not leave it, so shouted for the mate. after a few seconds he rushed up on deck in his flannels. he looked wild-eyed and haggard, and i greatly fear his reason has given way. he came close to me and whispered hoarsely, with his mouth to my ear, as though fearing the very air might hear: "it is here; i know it, now. on the watch last night i saw it, like a man, tall and thin, and ghastly pale. it was in the bows, and looking out. i crept behind it, and gave it my knife; but the knife went through it, empty as the air." and as he spoke he took his knife and drove it savagely into space. then he went on: "but it is here, and i'll find it. it is in the hold, perhaps in one of those boxes. i'll unscrew them one by one and see. you work the helm." and with a warning look and his finger on his lip, he went below. there was springing up a choppy wind, and i could not leave the helm. i saw him come out on deck again with a tool-chest and a lantern, and go down the forward hatchway. he is mad, stark, raving mad, and it's no use my trying to stop him. he can't hurt those big boxes: they are invoiced as "clay," and to pull them about is as harmless a thing as he can do. so here i stay, and mind the helm, and write these notes. i can only trust in god and wait till the fog clears. then, if i can't steer to any harbour with the wind that is, i shall cut down sails and lie by, and signal for help. it is nearly all over now. just as i was beginning to hope that the mate would come out calmerfor i heard him knocking away at something in the hold, and work is good for himthere came up the hatchway a sudden, startled scream, which made my blood run cold, and up on the deck he came as if shot from a guna raging madman, with his eyes rolling and his face convulsed with fear. "save me! save me!" he cried, and then looked round on the blanket of fog. his horror turned to despair, and in a steady voice he said: "you had better come too, captain, before it is too late. he is there. i know the secret now. the sea will save me from him, and it is all that is left!" before i could say a word, or move forward to seize him, he sprang on the bulwark and deliberately threw himself into the sea. i suppose i know the secret too, now. it was this madman who had got rid of the men one by one, and now he has followed them himself. god help me! how am i to account for all these horrors when i get to port? when i get to port! will that ever be? 4 august.still fog, which the sunrise cannot pierce. i know there is sunrise because i am a sailor, why else i know not. i dared not go below, i dared not leave the helm; so here all night i stayed, and in the dimness of the night i saw ithim! god forgive me, but the mate was right to jump overboard. it was better to die like a man; to die like a sailor in blue water no man can object. but i am captain, and i must not leave my ship. but i shall baffle this fiend or monster, for i shall tie my hands to the wheel when my strength begins to fail, and along with them i shall tie that which heit!dare not touch; and then, come good wind or foul, i shall save my soul, and my honour as a captain. i am growing weaker, and the night is coming on. if he can look me in the face again, i may not have time to act... if we are wrecked, mayhap this bottle may be found, and those who find it may understand; if not,... well, then all men shall know that i have been true to my trust. god and the blessed virgin and the saints help a poor ignorant soul trying to do his duty... of course the verdict was an open one. there is no evidence to adduce; and whether or not the man himself committed the murders there is now none to say. the folk here hold almost universally that the captain is simply a hero, and he is to be given a public funeral. already it is arranged that his body is to be taken with a train of boats up the esk for a piece and then brought back to tate hill pier and up the abbey steps; for he is to be buried in the churchyard on the cliff. the owners of more than a hundred boats have already given in their names as wishing to follow him to the grave. no trace has ever been found of the great dog; at which there is much mourning, for, with public opinion in its present state, he would, i believe, be adopted by the town. tomorrow will see the funeral; and so will end this one more "mystery of the sea." mina murray's journal. 8 august.lucy was very restless all night, and i, too, could not sleep. the storm was fearful, and as it boomed loudly among the chimney-pots, it made me shudder. when a sharp puff came it seemed to be like a distant gun. strangely enough, lucy did not wake; but she got up twice and dressed herself. fortunately, each time i awoke in time, and managed to undress her without waking her, and got her back to bed. it is a very strange thing, this sleep-walking, for as soon as her will is thwarted in any physical way, her intention, if there be any, disappears, and she yields herself almost exactly to the routine of her life. early in the morning we both got up and went down to the harbour to see if anything had happened in the night. there were very few people about, and though the sun was bright, and the air clear and fresh, the big, grim-looking waves, that seemed dark themselves because the foam that topped them was like snow, forced themselves in through the narrow mouth of the harbourlike a bullying man going through a crowd. somehow i felt glad that jonathan was not on the sea last night, but on land. but, oh, is he on land or sea? where is he, and how? i am getting fearfully anxious about him. if i only knew what to do, and could do anything! 10 august.the funeral of the poor sea-captain to-day was most touching. every boat in the harbour seemed to be there, and the coffin was carried by captains all the way from tate hill pier up to the churchyard. lucy came with me, and we went early to our old seat, whilst the cortege of boats went up the river to the viaduct and came down again. we had a lovely view and saw the procession nearly all the way. the poor fellow was laid to rest quite near our seat so that we stood on it when the time came and saw everything. poor lucy seemed much upset. she was restless and uneasy all the time, and i cannot but think that her dreaming at night is telling on her. she is quite odd in one thing: she will not admit to me that there is any cause for restlessness; or if there be, she does not understand it herself. there is an additional cause in that poor old mr. swales was found dead this morning on our seat, his neck being broken. he had evidently, as the doctor said, fallen back in the seat in some sort of fright, for there was a look of fear and horror on his face that the men said made them shudder. poor dear old man! perhaps he had seen death with his dying eyes! lucy is so sweet and sensitive that she feels influences more acutely than other people do. just now she was quite upset by a little thing which i did not much heed, though i am myself very fond of animals. one of the men who came up here often to look for the boats was followed by his dog. the dog is always with him. they are both quiet persons, and i never saw the man angry, nor heard the dog bark. during the service the dog would not come to its master, who was on the seat with us, but kept a few yards off, barking and howling. its master spoke to it gently, and then harshly, and then angrily; but it would neither come nor cease to make a noise. it was in a sort of fury, with its eyes savage, and all its hairs bristling out like a cat's tail when puss, is, on the war-path. finally the man, too, got angry, and jumped down and kicked the dog, and then took it by the scruff of the neck and half dragged and half threw it on the tombstone on which the seat is fixed. the moment it touched the stone the poor thing became quiet and fell all into a tremble. it did not try to get away, but crouched down, quivering and cowering, and was in such a pitiable state of terror that i tried, though without effect, to comfort it. lucy was full of pity, too, but she did not attempt to touch the dog, but looked at it in an agonised sort of way. i greatly fear that she is of too supersensitive a nature to go through the world without trouble. she will be dreaming of this to-night, i am sure. the whole agglomeration of thingsthe ship steered into port by a dead man; his attitude, tied to the wheel with a crucifix and beads; the touching funeral; the dog, now furious and now in terrorwill all afford material for her dreams. i think it will be best for her to go to bed tired out physically, so i shall take her for a long walk by the cliffs to robin hood's bay and back. she ought not to have much inclination for sleep-walking then. chapter viii. mina murray's journal. same day, 11 o'clock p.m.oh, but i am tired! if it were not that i had made my diary a duty i should not open it tonight. we had a lovely walk. lucy, after a while, was in gay spirits, owing, i think, to some dear cows who came nosing towards us in a field close to the lighthouse, and frightened the wits out of us. i believe we forgot everything, except, of course, personal fear, and it seemed to wipe there slate clean and give us a fresh start. we had a capital "severe tea" at robin hood's bay in a sweet little old-fashioned inn, with a bow-window right over the seaweed-covered rocks of the strand. i believe we should have shocked the "new woman" with our appetites. men are more tolerant, bless them! then we walked home with some, or rather many, stoppages to rest, and with our hearts full of a constant dread of wild bulls. lucy was really tired, and we intended to creep off to bed as soon as we could. the young curate came in, however, and mrs. westenra asked him to stay for supper. lucy and i had both a fight for it with the dusty miller; i know it was a hard fight on my part, and i am quite heroic. i think that some day the bishops must get together and see about breeding up a new class of curates, who don't take supper, no matter how they may be pressed to, and who will know when girls are tired. lucy is asleep and breathing softly. she has more colour in her cheeks than usual, and looks, oh, so sweet. if mr. holmwood fell in love with her seeing her only in the drawingroom, i wonder what he would say if he saw her now. some of the "new women" writers will some day start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing or accepting. but i suppose the new woman won't condescend in future to accept; she will do the proposing herself and a nice job she will make of it, too! there's some consolation in that. i am so happy to-night, because dear lucy seems better. i really believe she has turned the corner, and that we are over her troubles with dreaming. i should be quite happy if i only knew if jonathan... god bless and keep him. 11 august, 3 a.m.diary again. no sleep now, so i may as well write. i am too agitated to sleep. we have had such an adventure, such an agonising experience. i fell asleep as soon as i had closed my diary... suddenly i became broad awake, and sat up, with a horrible sense of fear upon me, and of some feeling of emptiness around me. the room was dark, so i could not see lucy's bed; i stole across and felt for her. the bed was empty. i lit a match, and found that she was not in the room. the door was shut, but not locked, as i had left it. i feared to wake her mother, who has been more than usually ill lately, so threw on some clothes and got ready to look for her. as i was leaving the room it struck me that the clothes she wore might give me some clue to her dreaming intention. dressing-gown would mean house; dress, outside. dressing-gown and dress were both in their places. "thank god," i said to myself, "she cannot be far, as she is only in her nightdress." i ran downstairs and looked in the sitting-room. not there! then i looked in all the other open rooms of the house, with an ever-growing fear chilling my heart. finally i came to the hall-door and found it open. it was not wide open, but the catch of the lock had not caught. the people of the house are careful to lock the door every night, so i feared that lucy must have gone out as she was. there was no time to think of what might happen; a vague, overmastering fear obscured all details. i took a big, heavy shawl and ran out. the clock was striking one as i was in the crescent, and there was not a soul in sight. i ran along the north terrace, but could see no sign of the white figure which i expected. at the edge of the west cliff above the pier i looked across the harbour to the east cliff, in the hope or feari don't know whichof seeing lucy in our favourite seat. there was a bright full moon, with heavy black, driving clouds, which threw the whole scene into a fleeting diorama of light and shade as they sailed across. for a moment or two i could see nothing, as the shadow of a cloud obscured st. mary's church and all around it. then as the cloud passed i could see the ruins of the abbey coming into view; and as the edge of a narrow band of light as sharp as a sword-cut moved along, the church and the churchyard became gradually visible. whatever my expectation was, it was not disappointed, for there, on our favourite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining figure, snowy white. the coming of the cloud was too quick for me to see much, for shadow shut down on light almost immediately; but it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. what it was, whether man or beast, i could not tell; i did not wait to catch another glance, but flew down the steep steps to the pier and along by the fish-market to the bridge, which was the only way to reach the east cliff. the town seemed as dead, for not a soul did i see; i rejoiced that it was so, for i wanted no witness of poor lucy's condition. the time and distance seemed endless, and my knees trembled and my breath came laboured as i toiled up the endless steps to the abbey. i must have gone fast, and yet it seemed to me as if my feet were weighted with lead, and as though every joint in my body were rusty. when i got almost to the top i could see the seat and the white figure, for i was now close enough to distinguish it even through the spells of shadow. there was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure. i called in fright, "lucy! lucy!" and something raised a head, and from where i was i could see a white face and red, gleaming eyes. lucy did not answer, and i ran on to the entrance of the churchyard. as i entered, the church was between me and the seat, and for a minute or so i lost sight of her. when i came in view again the cloud had passed, and the moonlight struck so brilliantly that i could see lucy half reclining with her head lying over the back of the seat. she was quite alone, and there was not a sign of any living thing about. when i bent over her i could see that she was still asleep. her lips were parted, and she was breathingnot softly, as usual with her, but in long, heavy gasps, as though striving to get her lungs full at every breath. as i came close, she put up her hand in her sleep and pulled the collar of her nightdress close around her throat. whilst she did so there came a little shudder through her, as though she felt the cold. i flung the warm shawl over her, and drew the edges tight round her neck, for i dreaded lest she should get some deadly chill from the night air, unclad as she was i feared to wake her all at once, so, in order to have my hands free that i might help her. i fastened the shawl at her throat with a big safety-pin; but i must have been clumsy in my anxiety and pinched or pricked her with it, for by-and-by, when her breathing became quieter, she put her hand to her throat again and moaned. when i had her carefully wrapped up i put my shoes on her feet, and then began very gently to wake her. at first she did not respond; but gradually she became more and more uneasy in her sleep, moaning and sighing occasionally. at last, as time was passing fast, and, for many other reasons, i wished to get her home at once, i shook her more forcibly, till finally she opened her eyes and awoke. she did not seem surprised to see me, as, of course, she did not realise all at once where she was. lucy always wakes prettily, and even at such a time, when her body must have been chilled with cold, and her mind somewhat appalled at waking unclad in a churchyard at night, she did not lose her grace. she trembled a little, and clung to me; when i told her to come at once with me home she rose without a word, with the obedience of a child. as we passed along, the gravel hurt my feet, and lucy noticed me wince. she stopped and wanted to insist upon my taking my shoes; but i would not. however, when we got to the pathway outside the churchyard, where there was a puddle of water remaining from the storm, i daubed my feet with mud, using each foot in turn on the other, so that as we went home no one, in case we should meet any one, should notice my bare feet. fortune favoured us, and we got home without meeting a soul. once we saw a man, who seemed not quite sober, passing along a street in front of us; but we hid in a door till he had disappeared up an opening such as there are here, steep little closes, or "wynds," as they call them in scotland. my heart beat so loud all the time that sometimes i thought i should faint. i was filled with anxiety about lucy, not only for her health, lest she should suffer from the exposure, but for her reputation in case the story should get wind. when we got in, and had washed our feet, and had said a prayer of thankfulness together, i tucked her into bed. before falling asleep she askedeven imploredme not to say a word to any one, even her mother, about her sleep-walking adventure. i hesitated at first to promise; but on thinking of the state of her mother's health, and how the knowledge of such a thing would fret her, and thinking, too, of how such a story might become distortedmay, infallibly wouldin case it should leak out, i thought it wiser to do so. i hope i did right. i have locked the door, and the key is tied to my wrist, so perhaps i shall not be again disturbed. lucy is sleeping soundly; the reflex of the dawn is high and far over the sea... same day, noon.all goes well. lucy slept till i woke her, and seemed not to have even changed her side. the adventure of the night does not seem to have harmed her; on the contrary, it has benefited her, for she looks better this morning than she has done for weeks. i was sorry to notice that my clumsiness with the safety-pin hurt her. indeed, it might have been serious, for the skin of her throat was pierced. i must have pinched up a piece of loose skin and have transfixed it, for there are two little red points like pin-pricks, and on the band of her nightdress was a drop of blood. when i apologised and was concerned about it, she laughed and petted me, and said she did not even feel it. fortunately it cannot leave a scar, as it is so tiny. same day, night.we passed a happy day. the air was clear, and the sun bright, and there was a cool breeze. we took our lunch to mulgrave woods, mrs. westenra driving by the road and lucy and i walking by the cliff-path and joining her at the gate. i felt a little sad myself, for i could not but feel how absolutely happy it would have been had jonathan been with me. but there! i must only be patient. in the evening we strolled in the casino terrace, and heard some good music by spohr and mackenzie, and went to bed early. lucy seems more restful than she has been for some time, and fell asleep at once. i shall lock the door and secure the key the same as before, though i do not expect any trouble to-night. 12 august.my expectations were wrong, for twice during the night i was wakened by lucy trying to get out. she seemed, even in her sleep, to be a little impatient at finding the door shut, and went back to bed under a sort of protest. i woke with the dawn, and heard the birds chirping outside of the window. lucy woke, too, and, i was glad to see, was even better than on the previous morning. all her old gaiety of manner seemed to have come back, and she came and snuggled in beside me, and told me all about arthur. i told her how anxious i was about jonathan, and then she tried to comfort me. well, she succeeded somewhat, for, though sympathy can't alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable. 13 august.another quiet day, and to bed with the key on my wrist as before. again i awoke in the night, and found lucy sitting up in bed, still asleep, pointing to the window. i got up quietly, and pulling aside the blind, looked out. it was brilliant moonlight, and the soft effect of the light over the sea and skymerged together in one great, silent mysterywas beautiful beyond words. between me and the moonlight flitted a great bat, coming and going in great, whirling circles. once or twice it came quite close, but was, i suppose, frightened at seeing me, and flitted away across the harbour towards the abbey. when i came back from the window lucy had lain down again, and was sleeping peacefully. she did not stir again all night. 14 august.on the east cliff, reading and writing all day. lucy seems to have become as much in love with the spot as i am, and it is hard to get her away from it when it is time to come home for lunch or tea or dinner. this afternoon she made a funny remark. we were coming home for dinner, and had come to the top of the steps up from the west pier and stopped to look at the view, as we generally do. the setting sun, low down in the sky, was just dropping behind kettleness; the red light was thrown over on the east cliff and the old abbey, and seemed to bathe everything in a beautiful rosy glow. we were silent for a while, and suddenly lucy murmured as if to herself: "his red eyes again! they are just the same." it was such an odd expression, coming apropos of nothing, that it quite startled me. i slewed round a little, so as to see lucy well without seeming to stare at her, and saw that she was in a half-dreamy state, with an odd look on her face that i could not quite make out; so i said nothing, but followed her eyes. she appeared to be looking over at our own seat, whereon was a dark figure seated alone. i was a little startled myself, for it seemed for an instant as if the stranger had great eyes like burning flames; but a second look dispelled the illusion. the red sunlight was shining on the windows of st. mary's church behind our seat, and as the sun dipped there was just sufficient change in the refraction and reflection to make it appear as if the light moved. i called lucy's attention to the peculiar effect, and she became herself with a start, but she looked sad all the same; it may have been that she was thinking of that terrible night up there. we never refer to it; so i said nothing, and we went home to dinner. lucy had a headache and went early to bed. i saw her asleep, and went out for a little stroll myself, i walked along the cliffs to the westward, and was full of sweet sadness, for i was thinking of jonathan. when coming homeit was then bright moonlight, so bright that, though the front of our part of the crescent was in shadow, everything could be well seeni threw a glance up at our window, and saw lucy's head leaning out. i thought that perhaps she was looking out for me, so i opened my handkerchief and waved it. she did not notice or make any movement whatever. just then, the moonlight crept round an angle of the building, and the light fell on the window. there distinctly was lucy with her head lying up against the side of the window-sill and her eyes shut. she was fast asleep, and by her, seated on the window-sill, was something that looked like a good-sized bird. i was afraid she might get a chill, so i ran upstairs, but as i came into the room she was moving back to her bed, fast asleep, and breathing heavily; she was holding her hand to her throat, as though to protect it from cold. i did not wake her, but tucked her up warmly; i have taken care that the door is locked and the window securely fastened. she looks so sweet as she sleeps; but she is paler than is her wont, and there is a drawn, haggard look under her eyes which i do not like. i fear she is fretting about something. i wish i could find out what it is. 15 august.rose later than usual. lucy was languid and tired, and slept on after we had been called. we had a happy surprise at breakfast. arthur's father is better, and wants the marriage to come off soon. lucy is full of quiet joy, and her mother is glad and sorry at once. later on in the day she told me the cause. she is grieved to lose lucy as her very own, but she is rejoiced that she is soon to have some one to protect her. poor dear, sweet lady! she confided to me that she has got her death-warrant. she has not told lucy, and made me promise secrecy; her doctor told her that within a few months, at most, she must die, for her heart is weakening. at any time, even now, a sudden shock would be almost sure to kill her. ah, we were wise to keep from her the affair of the dreadful night of lucy's sleep-walking. 17 august.no diary for two whole days. i have not had the heart to write. some sort of shadowy pall seems to be coming over our happiness. no news from jonathan, and lucy seems to be growing weaker, whilst her mother's hours are numbering to a close. i do not understand lucy's fading away as she is doing. she eats well and sleeps well, and enjoys the fresh air; but all the time the roses in her cheeks are fading, and she gets weaker and more languid day by day; at night i hear her gasping as if for air. i keep the key of our door always fastened to my wrist at night, but she gets up and walks about the room, and sits at the open window. last night i found her leaning out when i woke up, and when i tried to wake her i could not; she was in a faint. when i managed to restore her she was as weak as water, and cried silently between long, painful struggles for breath. when i asked her how she came to be at the window she shook her head and turned away. i trust her feeling ill may not be from that unlucky prick of the safety pin. i looked at her throat just now as she lay asleep, and the tiny wounds seem not to have healed. they are still open, and, if anything, larger than before, and the edges of them are faintly white. they are like little white dots with red centres. unless they heal within a day or two, i shall insist on the doctor seeing about them. letter, samuel f. billington & son, solicitors, whitby, to messrs. carter, paterson & co., london. "17 august. "dear sirs, "herewith please receive invoice of goods sent by great northern railway. same are to be delivered at carfax, near purfleet, immediately on receipt at goods station king's cross. the house is at present empty, but enclosed please find keys, all of which are labelled. "you will please deposit the boxes, fifty in number, which form the consignment, in the partially ruined building forming part of the house and marked 'a' on rough diagram enclosed. your agent will easily recognise the locality, as it is the ancient chapel of the mansion. the goods leave by the train at 9:30 to-night, and will be due at king's cross at 4:30 to-morrow afternoon. as our client wishes the delivery made as soon as possible, we shall be obliged by your having teams ready at king's cross at the time named and forthwith conveying the goods to destination. in order to obviate any delays possible through any routine requirements as to payment in your departments, we enclose cheque herewith for ten pounds (l10), receipt of which please acknowledge. should the charge be less than this amount, you can return balance; if greater, we shall at once send cheque for difference on hearing from you. you are to leave the keys on coming away in the main hall of the house, where the proprietor may get them on his entering the house by means of his duplicate key. "pray do not take us as exceeding the bounds of business courtesy in pressing you in all ways to use the utmost expedition. "we are, dear sirs, "faithfully yours, "samuel f. billington & son." letter, messrs. carter, paterson & co., london, to messrs. billington & son, whitby. "21 august. "dear sirs, "we beg to acknowledge 10 pounds (l10) received and to return cheque l1 17s. 9d., amount of overplus, as shown in receipted account herewith. goods are delivered in exact accordance with instructions, and keys left in parcel in main hall, as directed. "we are, dear sirs, "yours respectfully, "pro carter, paterson & co." 18 august.i am happy to-day, and write sitting on the seat in the churchyard. lucy is ever so much better. last night she slept well all night, and did not disturb me once. the roses seem coming back already to her cheeks, though she is still sadly pale and wan-looking. if she were in any way anaemic i could understand it, but she is not. she is in gay spirits and full of life and cheerfulness. all the morbid reticence seems to have passed from her, and she has just reminded me, as if i needed any reminding, of that night, and that it was here, on this very seat, i found her asleep. as he told me she tapped playfully with the heel of her boot on the stone slab and said: "my poor little feet didn't make much noise then! i daresay poor old mr. swales would have told me that it was because i didn't want to wake up geordie." as she was in such a communicative humour, i asked her if she had dreamed at all that night. before she answered, that sweet, puckered look came into her forehead, which arthuri call him arthur from her habitsays he loves; and, indeed, i don't wonder that he does. then she went on in a half-dreaming kind of way, as if trying to recall it to herself: "i didn't quite dream; but it all seemed to be real. i only wanted to be here in this spoti don't know why, for i was afraid of somethingi don't know what. i remember though i suppose i was asleep, passing through the streets and over the bridge. a fish leaped as i went by, and i leaned over to look at it, and i heard a lot of dogs howlingthe whole town seemed as if it must be full of dogs all howling at onceas i went up the steps. then i had a vague memory of something long and dark with red eyes, just as we saw in the sunset, and something very sweet and very bitter all around me at once; and then i seemed sinking into deep green water, and there was a singing in my ears, as i have heard there is to drowning men; and then everything seemed passing away from me; my soul seemed to go out from my body and float about the air. i seem to remember that once the west lighthouse was right under me, and then there was a sort of agonising feeling, as if i were in an earthquake, and i came back and found you shaking my body. i saw you do it before i felt you." then she began to laugh. it seemed a little uncanny to me, and i listened to her breathlessly. i did not quite like it, and thought it better not to keep her mind on the subject, so we drifted on to other subjects, and lucy was like her old self again. when we got home the fresh breeze had braced her up, and her pale cheeks were really more rosy. her mother rejoiced when she saw her, and we all spent a very happy evening together. 19 august.joy, joy, joy! although not all joy. at last, news of jonathan. the dear fellow has been ill; that is why he did not write. i am not afraid to think it or say it, now that i know. mr. hawkins sent me on the letter, and wrote himself, oh, so kindly. i am to leave in the morning and go over to jonathan, and to help to nurse him if necessary, and to bring him home. mr. hawkins says it would not be a bad thing if we were to be married out there. i have cried over the good sister's letter till i can feel it wet against my bosom, where it lies. it is of jonathan, and must be next my heart, for he is in my heart. my journey is all mapped out, and my luggage ready. i am only taking one change of dress; lucy all bring my trunk to london and keep it till i send for it, for it may be that... i must write no more; i must keep it to say to jonathan, my husband. the letter that he has seen and touched must comfort me till we meet. letter, sister agatha, hospital of sl joseph and ste. mary, buda-pesth, to miss wilhelmina murray. "12 august. "dear madam, "i write by desire of mr. jonathan harker, who is himself not strong enough to write, though progressing well, thanks to god and st. joseph and ste. mary. he has been under our care for nearly six weeks, suffering from a violent brain fever. he wishes me to convey his love, and to say that by this post i write for him to mr. peter hawkins, exeter, to say, with his dutiful respects, that he is sorry for his delay, and that all of his work is completed. he will require some few weeks' rest in our sanatorium in the hills, but will then return. he wishes me to say that he has not sufficient money with him, and that he would like to pay for his staying here, so that others who need shall not be wanting for help. "believe me, "yours, with sympathy and all blessings, "sister agatha. "p.s.my patient being asleep, i open this to let you know something more. he has told me all about you, and that you are sortly to be his wife. all blessings to you both! he has had some fearful shockso says our doctorand in his delirium his ravings have been dreadful; of wolves and poison and blood; of ghosts and demons; and i fear to say of what. be careful with him always that there may be nothing to excite him of this kind for a long time to come; the traces of such an illness as his do not lightly die away. we should have written long ago, but we knew nothing of his friends, and there was on him nothing that any one could understand. he came in the train from klausenburg, and the guard was told by the station-master there that he rushed into the station shouting for a ticket for home. seeing from his violent demeanour that he was english, they gave him a ticket for the furthest station on the way thither that the train reached. "be assured that he is well cared for. he has won all hearts by his sweetness and gentleness. he is truly getting on well, and i have no doubt will in a few weeks be all himself but be careful of him for safety's sake. there are, i pray god and st. joseph and ste. mary, many, many, happy years for you both." dr. seward's diary. 19 august.strange and sudden change in renfield last night. about eight o'clock he began to get excited and to sniff about as a dog does when setting. the attendant was struck by his manner, and knowing my interest in him, encouraged him to talk. he is usually respectful to the attendant, and at times servile; but to-night, the man tells me, he was quite haughty. would not condescend to talk with him at all. all he would say was: "i don't want to talk to you: you don't count now; the master is at hand." the attendant thinks it is some sudden form of religious mania which has seized him. if so, we must look out for squalls, for a strong man with homicidal and religious mania at once might be dangerous. the combination is a dreadful one. at nine o'clock i visited him myself. his attitude to me was the same as that to the attendant; in his sublime self-feeling the difference between myself and attendant seemed to him as nothing. it looks like religious mania, and he will soon think that he himself is god. these infinitesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an omnipotent being. how these madmen give themselves away! the real god taketh heed lest a sparrow fall; but the god created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow. oh, if men only knew! for half an hour or more renfield kept getting excited in greater and greater degree. i did not pretend to be watching him, but i kept strict observation all the same. all at once that shifty look came into his eyes which we always see when a madman has seized an idea, and with it the shifty movement of the head and back which asylum attendants come to know so well. he became quite quiet, and went and sat on the edge of his bed resignedly, and looked into space with lack-lustre eyes. i thought i would find out if his apathy were real or only assumed, and tried to lead him to talk of his pets, a theme which had never failed to excite his attention. at first he made no reply, but at length said testily: "bother them all! i don't care a pin about them." "what?" i said. "you don't mean to tell me you don't care about spiders?" (spiders at present are his hobby, and the note-book is filling up with columns of small figures.) to this he answered enigmatically: "the bride-maidens rejoice the eyes that wait the coming of the bride; but when the bride draweth nigh, then the maidens shine not to the eyes that are filled." he would not explain himself, but remained obstinately seated on his bed all the time i remained with him. i am weary to-night and low in spirits. i cannot but think of lucy, and how different things might have been. if i don't sleep at once, chloral, the modern morpheusc(2) hcl(3)o: h(2)o! i must be careful not to let it grow into a habit. no, i shall take none ton-night! i have thought of lucy, and i shall not dishonour her by mixing the two. if need be, to-night shall be sleepless. later.glad i made the resolution; gladder that i kept to it. i had lain tossing about, and had heard the clock strike only twice, when the night-watchman came to me, sent up from the ward, to say that renfield had escaped. i threw on my clothes and ran down at once; my patient is too dangerous a person to be roaming about. those ideas of his might work out dangerously with strangers. the attendant was waiting for me. he said he had seen him not ten minutes before, seemingly asleep in his bed, when he had looked through the observation-trap in the door. his attention was called by the sound of the window being wrenched out. he ran back and saw his feet disappear through the window, and had at once sent up for me. he was only in his night-gear, and cannot be far off. the attendant thought it would be more useful to watch where he should go than to follow him, as he might lose sight of him whilst getting out of the building by the door. he is a bulky man, and couldn't get through the window. i am thin, so, with his aid, i got out, but feet foremost, and, as we were only a few feet above ground, landed unhurt. the attendant told me the patient had gone to the left, and had taken a straight line, so i ran as quickly as i could. as i got through the belt of trees i saw a white figure scale the high wall which separates our grounds from those of the deserted house. i ran back at once, told the watchman to get three or four men immediately and follow me into the grounds of carfax, in case our friend might be dangerous. i got a ladder myself, and crossing the wall, dropped down on the other side. i could see renfield's figure just disappearing behind the angle of the house, so i ran after him. on the far side of the house i found him pressed close against the old iron-bound oak door of the chapel. he was talking, apparently to some one, but i was afraid to go near enough to hear what he was saying, lest i might frighten him, and he should run off. chasing an errant swarm of bees is nothing to following a naked lunatic, when the fit of escaping is upon him! after a few minutes, however, i could see that he did not take note of anything around him, and so ventured to draw nearer to himthe more so as my men had now crossed the wall and were closing him in. i heard him say: "i am here to do your bidding, master. i am your slave, and you will reward me, for i shall be faithful. i have worshipped you long and afar off. now that you are near, i await your commands, and you will not pass me by, will you, dear master, in your distribution of good things?" he is a selfish old beggar anyhow. he thinks of the loaves and fishes even when he believes he is in a real presence. his manias make a startling combination. when we closed in on him he fought like a tiger. he is immensely strong, and he was more like a wild beast than a man. i never saw a lunatic in such a paroxysm of rage before; and i hope i shall not again. it is a mercy that we have found out his strength and his danger in good time. with strength, and determination like his, he might have done wild work before he was caged. he is safe now at any rate. jack sheppard himself couldn't get free from the strait-waistcoat that keeps him restrained, and he's chained to the wall in the padded room. his cries are at times awful, but the silences that follow are more deadly still, for he means murder in every turn and movement. just now he spoke coherent words for the first time: "i shall be patient, master. it is comingcomingcoming!" so i took the hint, and came too. i was too excited to sleep, but this diary has quieted me, and i feel i shall get some sleep to-night. chapter ix. letters, etc.continued. letter, mina harker to lucy westenra. "buda-pesth, 24 august. "my dearest lucy, "i know you will be anxious to hear all that has happened since we parted at the railway station at whitby. well, my dear, i got to hull all right, and caught the boat to homburg, and then the train on here. i feel that i can hardly recall anything of the journey, except that i knew i was coming to jonathan, and, that as i should have to do some nursing, i had better get all the sleep i could... i found my dear one, oh, so thin and pale and weak-looking. all the resolution has gone out of his dear eyes, and that quiet dignity which i told you was in his face has vanished. he is only a wreck of himself, and he does not remember anything that has happened to him for a long time past. at least, he wants me to believe so, and i shall never ask. he has had some terrible shock, and i fear it might tax his poor brain if he were to try to recall it. sister agatha, who is a good creature and a born nurse, tells me that he raved of dreadful things whilst he was off his head. i wanted her to tell me what they were; but she would only cross herself, and say she would never tell; that the ravings of the sick were the secrets of god, and that if a nurse through her vocation should hear them, she should respect her trust. she is a sweet, good soul, and the next day, when she saw i was troubled, she opened up the subject again, and after saying that she could never mention what my poor dear raved about, added: 'i can tell you this much, my dear: that it was not about anything which he has done wrong himself, and you, as his wife to be, have no cause to be concerned. he has not forgotten you or what he owes to you. his fear was of great and terrible things, which no mortal can treat of.' i do believe the dear soul thought i might be jealous lest my poor dear should have fallen in love with any other girl. the idea of my being jealous about jonathan! and yet, my dear, let me whisper, i felt a thrill of joy through me when i knew that no other woman was a cause of trouble. i am now sitting by his bedside, where i can see his face while he sleeps. he is waking!... "when he woke he asked me for his coat, as he wanted to get something from the pocket; i asked sister agatha, and she brought all his things. i saw that amongst them was his note-book, and was going to ask him to let me look at itfor i knew then that i might find some clue to his troublebut i suppose he must have seen my wish in my eyes, for he sent me over to the window, saying he wanted to be quite alone for a moment. then he called me back, and when i came he had his hand over the note-book, and he said to me very solemnly: "'wilhelmina'i knew then that he was in deadly earnest, for he has never called me by that name since he asked me to marry him'you know, dear, my ideas of the trust between husband and wife: there should be no secret, no concealment. i have had a great shock, and when i try to think of what it is i feel my head spin round, and i do not know if it was all real or the dreaming of a madman. you know i have had brain fever, and that is to be mad. the secret is here, and i do not want to know it. i want to take up my life here, with our marriage.' for, my dear, we had decided to be married as soon as the formalities are complete. 'are you willing, wilhelmina, to share my ignorance? here is the book. take it and keep it, read it if you will, but never let me know; unless, indeed, some solemn duty should come upon me to go back to the bitter hours, asleep or awake, sane or mad, recorded here.' he fell back exhausted, and i put the book under his pillow, and kissed him i have asked sister agatha to beg the superior to let our wedding be this afternoon, and am waiting her reply... "she has come and told me that the chaplain of the english mission church has been sent for. we are to be married in an hour, or as soon after as jonathan awakes... "lucy, the time has come and gone. i feel very solemn, but very, very happy. jonathan woke a little after the hour, and all was ready, and he sat up in bed, propped up with pillows. he answered his 'i will' firmly and strongly. i could hardly speak; my heart was so full that even those words seemed to choke me. the dear sisters were so kind. please god, i shall never, never forget them, nor the grave and sweet responsibilities i have taken upon me. i must tell you of my wedding present. when the chaplain and the sisters had left me alone with my husbandoh, lucy, it is the first time i have written the words 'my husband'left me alone with my husband, i took the book from under his pillow, and wrapped it up in white paper, and tied it with a little bit of pale blue ribbon which was round my neck, and sealed it over the knot with sealing-wax, and for my seal i used my wedding ring. then i kissed it and showed it to my husband, and told him that i would keep it so, and then it would be an outward and visible sign for us all our lives that we trusted each other; that i would never open it unless it were for his own dear sake or for the sake of some stern duty. then he took my hand in his, and oh, lucy, it was the first time he took his wifes hand, and said that it was the dearest thing in all the wide world, and that he would go through all the past again to win it, if need be. the poor dear meant to have said a part of the past; but he cannot think of time yet, and i shall not wonder if at first he mixes up not only the month, but the year. "well, my dear, what could i say? i could only tell him that i was the happiest woman in all the wide world, and that i had nothing to give him except myself, my life, and my trust, and that with these went my love and duty for all the days of my life. and, my dear, when he kissed me, and drew me to him with his poor weak hands, it was like a very solemn pledge between us... "lucy dear, do you know why i tell you all this? it is not only because it is all sweet to me, but because you have been, and are, very dear to me. it was my privilege to be your friend and guide when you came from the schoolroom to prepare for the world of life. i want you to see now, and with the eyes of a very happy wife, whither duty has led me; so that in your own married life you too may be all happy as i am. my dear, please almighty god, your life may be all it promises: a long day of sunshine, with no harsh kind, no forgetting duty, no distrust. i must not wish you no pain, for that can never be; but i do hope you will be always as happy as i am now good-bye, my dear. i shall post this at once, and, perhaps, write you very soon again. i must stop, for jonathan is wakingi must attend to my husband! "your ever-loving "mina harker." letter, lucy westenra to mina harker. "whitby, 30 august. "my dearest mina, "oceans of love and millions of kisses, and may you soon be in your own home with your husband. i wish you could be coming home soon enough to stay with us here. the strong air would soon restore jonathan; it has quite restored me. i have an appetite like a cormorant, am full of life, and sleep well. you will be glad to know that i have quite given up walking in my sleep. i think i have not stirred out of my bed for a week, that is when i once got into it at night. arthur says i am getting fat. by the way, i forgot to tell you that arthur is here. we have such walks and drives, and rides, and rowing, and tennis, and fishing together; and i love him more than ever. he tells me that he loves me more, but i doubt that, for at first he told me that he couldn't love me more than he did then. but this is nonsense. there he is, calling to me. so no more just at present from your loving "lucy. "p.s.mother sends her love. she seems better, poor dear. "p.p.s.we are to be married on 28 september." dr. seward's diary. 20 august.the case of renfield grows even more interesting. he has now so far quieted that there are spells or cessation from his passion. for the first week after his attack he was perpetually violent. then one night, just as the moon rose, he grew quiet, and kept murmuring to himself"now i can wait; now i can wait." the attendant came to tell me, so i ran down at once to have a look at him. he was still in the strait-waistcoat and in the padded room, but the suffused look had gone from his face, and his eyes had something of their old pleadingi might almost say, "cringing"softness, i was satisfied with his present condition, and directed him to be relieved. the attendants hesitated, but finally carried out my wishes without protest. it was a strange thing that the patient had humour enough to see their distrust, for, coming close to me, he said in a whisper, all the while looking furtively at them: "they think i could hurt you! fancy me hurting you! the fools!" it was soothing, somehow, to the feelings to find myself dissociated even in the mind of this poor madman from the others; but all the same i do not follow his thought. am i to take it that i have anything in common with him, so that we are, as it were, to stand together; or has he to gain from me some good so stupendous that my well-being is needful to him? i must find out later on. to-night he will not speak. even the offer of a kitten or even a full-grown cat will not tempt him. he will only say: "i don't take any stock in cats. i have more to think of now, and i can wait; i can wait." after a while i left him. the attendant tells me that he was quiet until just before dawn, and that then he began to get uneasy, and at length violent, until at last he fell into a paroxysm which exhausted him so that he swooned into a sort of coma. ...three nights has the same thing happenedviolent all day then quiet from moonrise to sunrise. i wish i could get some clue to the cause. it would almost seem as if there was some influence which came and went. happy thought! we shall to-night play sane wits against mad ones. he escaped before without our help; to-night he shall escape with it. we shall give him a chance, and have the men ready to follow in case they are required... 23 august."the unexpected always happens." how well disraeli knew life. our bird when he found the cage open would not fly, so all our subtle arrangements were for nought. at any rate, we have proved one thing; that the spells of quietness last a reasonable time. we shall in future be able to ease his bonds for a few hours each day. i have given orders to the night attendant merely to shut him in the padded room, when once he is quiet, until an hour before sunrise. the poor soul's body will enjoy the relief even if his mind cannot appreciate it. hark! the unexpected again! i am called; the patient has once more escaped. later.another night adventure. renfield artfully waited until the attendant was entering the room to inspect. then he dashed out past him and new down the passage. i sent word for the attendants to follow. again he went into the grounds of the deserted house, and we found him in the same place, pressed against the old chapel door. when he saw me he became furious, and had not the attendants seized him in time, he would have tried to kill me. as we were holding him a strange thing happened. he suddenly redoubled his efforts, and then as suddenly grew calm. i looked round instinctively, but could see nothing. then i caught the patient's eye and followed it, but could trace nothing as it looked into the moonlit sky except a big bat, which was flapping its silent and ghostly way to the west. bats usually wheel and flit about, but this one seemed to go straight on, as if it knew where it was bound for or had some intention of its own. the patient grew calmer every instant, and presently said: "you needn't tie me; i shall go quietly!" without trouble we came back to the house. i feel there is something ominous in his calm, and shall not forget this night... lucy westenra's diary. hillingham, 24 august.i must imitate mina, and keep writing things down. then we can have long talks when we do meet. i wonder when it will be. i wish she were with me again, for i feel so unhappy. last night i seemed to be dreaming again just as i was at whitby. perhaps it is the change of air, or getting home again. it is all dark and horrid to me, for i can remember nothing; but i am full of vague fear, and i feel so weak and worn out. when arthur came to lunch he looked quite grieved when he saw me, and i hadn't the spirit to try to be cheerful. i wonder if i could sleep in mother's room to-night. i shall make an excuse and try. 25 august.another bad night. mother did not seem to take to my proposal. she seems not too well herself, and doubtless she fears to worry me. i tried to keep awake, and succeeded for a while; but when the clock struck twelve it waked me from a doze, so i must have been falling asleep. there was a sort of scratching or flapping at the window, but i did not mind it, and as i remember no more, i suppose i must then have fallen asleep. more bad dreams. i wish i could remember them. this morning i am horribly weak. my face is ghastly pale, and my throat pains me. it must be something wrong with my lungs, for i don't seem ever to get air enough. i shall try to cheer up when arthur comes, or else i know he will be miserable to see me so. letter, arthur holmwood to dr. seward. "albemarle hotel, 31 august. "my dear jack, "i want you to do me a favour. lucy is ill; that is, she has no special disease, but she looks awful, and is getting worse every day. i have asked her if there is any cause; i do not dare to ask her mother, for to disturb the poor lady's mind about her daughter in her present state of health would be fatal. mrs. westenra has confided to me that her doom is spokendisease of the heartthough poor lucy does not know it yet. i am sure that there is something preying on my dear girl's mind: i am almost distracted when i think of her; to look at her gives me a pang. i told her i should ask you to see her, and though she demurred at firsti know why, old fellowshe finally consented. it will be a painful task for you, i know, old friend, but it is for her sake, and i must not hesitate to ask, or you to act. you are to come to lunch at hillingham to-morrow, two o'clock, so as not to arose any suspicion in mrs. westenra, and after lunch lucy will take an opportunity of being alone with you. i shall come in for tea, and we can go away together; i am filled with anxiety, and want to consult with you alone as soon as i can after you have seen her. do not fail! "arthur." telegram, arthur holmwood to seward. "1 september. "am summoned to see my father, who is worse. am writing. write me fully by to-night's post to ring. wire me if necessary." letter from dr. seward to arthur holmwood. "2 september. "my dear old fellow, "with regard to miss westenra's health i hasten to let you know at once that in my opinion there is not any functional disturbance or any malady that i know of. at the same time, i am not by any means satisfied with her appearance; she is woefully different from what she was when i saw her last. of course you must bear in mind that i did not have full opportunity of examination such as i should wish; our very friendship makes a little difficulty which not even medical science or custom can bridge over. i had better tell you exactly what happened, leaving you to draw, in a measure, your own conclusions. i shall then say what i have done and propose doing. "i found miss westenra in seemingly gay spirits. her mother was present, and in a few seconds i made up my mind that she was trying all she knew to mislead her mother and prevent her from being anxious. i have no doubt she guesses, if she does not know, what need of caution there is. we lunched alone, and as we all exerted ourselves to be cheerful, we got, as some kind of reward for our labours, some real cheerfulness amongst us. then mrs. westenra went to lie down, and lucy was left with me. we went into her boudoir, and till we got there her gaiety remained, for the servants were coming and going. as soon as the door was closed, however, the mask fell from her face, and she sank down into a chair with a great sigh, and hid her eyes with her hand. when i saw that her high spirits had failed, i at once took advantage of her reaction to make a diagnosis. she said to me very sweetly: "'i cannot tell you how i loathe talking about myself.' i reminded her that a doctor's confidence was sacred, but that you were grievously anxious about her. she caught on to my meaning at once, and settled that matter in a word. 'tell arthur everything you choose. i do not care for myself, but all for him!' so i am quite free. "i could easily see that she is somewhat bloodless, but i could not see the usual anaemic signs, and by a chance i was actually able to test the quality of her blood, for in opening a window which was stiff a cord gave way, and she cut her hand slightly with broken glass. it was a slight matter in itself, but it gave me an evident chance, and i secured a few drops of the blood and have analysed them. the qualitative analysis gives a quite normal condition, and shows, i should infer, in itself a vigorous state of health. in other physical matters i was quite satisfied that there is no need for anxiety; but as there must be a cause somewhere, i have come to the conclusion that it must be something mental. she complains of difficulty in breathing satisfactorily at times, and of heavy, lethargic sleep, with dreams that frighten her, but regarding which she can remember nothing. she says that as a child she used to walk in her sleep, and that when in whitby the habit came back, and that once she walked out in the night and went to the east cliff, where miss murray found her; but she assures me that of late the habit has not returned. i am in doubt, and so have done the best thing i know of, i have written to my old friend and master, professor van helsing, of amsterdam, who knows as much about obscure diseases as any one in the world. i have asked him to come over, and as you told me that all things were to be at your charge, i have mentioned to him who you are and your relations to miss westenra. this, my dear fellow, is in obedience to your wishes, for i am only too proud and happy to do anything i can for her. van helsing would, i know, do anything for me for a personal reason. so, no matter on what ground he comes, we must accept his wishes. he is a seemingly arbitrary man, but this is because he knows what he is talking about better than any one else. he is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day; and he has, i believe, an absolutely open mind. this, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice-brook, an indomitable resolution, self-command and toleration exalted from virtues to blessings, and the kindliest and truest heart that beatsthese form his equipment for the noble work that he is doing for mankindwork both in theory and practice, for his views are as wide as his all-embracing sympathy. i tell you these facts that you may know why i have such confidence in him. i have asked him to come at once. i shall see miss westenra to-morrow again. she is to meet me at the stores, so that i may not alarm her mother by too early a repetition of my call. "yours always, "john seward." letter, abraham van helsing, m.d., d. ph., d. lit., etc., etc., to dr. seward. "2 september. "my good friend, "when i have received your letter i am already coming to you. by good fortune i can leave just at once, without wrong to any of those who have trusted me. were fortune other, then it were bad for those who have trusted, for i come to my friend when he call me to aid those he holds dear. tell your friend that when that time you suck from my wound so swiftly the poison of the gangrene from that knife that our other friend, too nervous, let slip, you did more for him when he wants my aids and you call for them than all his great fortune could do. but it is pleasure added to do for him, your friend; it is to you that i come. have then rooms for me at the great eastern hotel, so that i may be near to hand, and please it so arrange that we may see the young lady not too late on to-morrow, for it is likely that i may have to return here that night. but if need be i shall come again in three days, and stay longer if it must. till then good-bye, my friend john. "van helsing." letter, dr. seward to hon. arthur holmwood. "3 september. "my dear art, "van helsing has come and gone. he came on with me to hillingham, and found that, by lucy's discretion, her mother was lunching out, so that we were alone with her. van helsing made a very careful examination of the patient. he is to report to me, and i shall advise you, for of course i was not present all the time. he is, i fear, much concerned, but says he must think. when i told him of our friendship and how you trust to me in the matter, he said: 'you must tell him all you think. tell him what i think, if you can guess it, if you will. nay, i am not jesting. this is no jest, but life and death, perhaps more.' i asked what he meant by that, for he was very serious. this was when we had come back to town, and he was having a cup of tea before starting on his return to amsterdam. he would not give me any further clue. you must not be angry with me, art, because his very reticence means that all his brains are working for her good. he will speak plainly enough when the time comes, be sure. so i told him i would simply write an account of our visit, just as if i were doing a descriptive special article for the dally telegraph. he seemed not to notice, but remarked that the smuts in london were not quite so bad as they used to be when he was a student here. i am to get his report tomorrow if he can possible make it. in any case i am to have a letter. "well, as to the visit. lucy was more cheerful than on the day i first saw her, and certainly looked better. she had lost something of the ghastly look that so upset you, and her breathing was normal. she was very sweet to the professor (as she always is), and tried to make him feel at ease; though i could see that the poor girl was making a hard struggle for it. i believe van helsing saw it, too, for i saw the quick look under his bushy brows that i knew of old. then he began to chat of all things except ourselves and diseases and with such an infinite geniality that i could see poor lucy's pretense of animation merge into reality. then, without any seeming change, he brought the conversation gently round to his visit, and suavely said: "'my dear young miss, i have the so great pleasure because you are much beloved. that is much, my dear, even were there that which i do not see. they told me you were down in the spirit, and that you were of a ghastly pale. to them i say: "pouf!"' and he snapped his fingers at me and went on: 'but you and i shall show them how wrong they are. how can he'and he pointed at me with the same look and gesture as that with which once he pointed me out to his class, on, or rather after, a particular occasion which he never fails to remind me of'know anything of a young ladies? he has his madams to play with, and to bring them back to happiness and to those that love them. it is much to do, and, oh, but there are rewards, in that we can bestow such happiness. but the young ladies! he has no wife nor daughter, and the young do not tell themselves to the young, but to the old, like me, who have known so many sorrows and the causes of them. so, my dear, we will send him away to smoke the cigarette in the garden, whiles you and i have little talk all to ourselves.' i took the hint, and strolled about, and presently the professor came to the window and called me in. he looked grave, but said: 'i have made careful examination, but there is no functional cause. with you i agree that there has been much blood lost; it has been, but is not. but the conditions of her are in no way anaemic. i have asked her to send me her maid, that i may ask just one or two question, that so i may not chance to miss nothing. i know well what she will say. and yet there is cause; there is always cause for everything. i must go back home and think. you must send to me the telegram every day; and if there be cause i shall come again. the diseasefor not to be all well is a diseaseinterest me, and the sweet young dear, she interest me too. she charm me, and for her, if not for you or disease, i come.' "as i tell you, he would not say a word more, even when we were alone. and so now, art, you know all i know. i shall keep stern watch. i trust your poor father is rallying. it must be a terrible thing to you, my dear old fellow, to be placed in such a position between two people who are both so dear to you. i know your idea of duty to your father, and you are right to stick to it; but, if need be, i shall send you word to come at once to lucy; so do not be over-anxious unless you hear from me." dr. seward's diary. 4 september.zoophagous patient still keeps up our interest in him. he had only one outburst and that was yesterday at an unusual time. just before the stroke of noon he began to grow restless. the attendant knew the symptoms, and at once summoned aid. fortunately the men came at a run, and were just in time, for at the stroke of noon he became so violent that it took all their strength to hold him. in about five minutes, however, he began to get more and more quiet, and finally sank into a sort of melancholy, in which state he has remained up to now. the attendant tells me that his screams whilst in the paroxysm were really appalling; i found my hands full when i got in, attending to some of the other patients who were frightened by him. indeed, i can quite understand the effect, for the sounds disturbed even me, though i was some distance away. it is now after the dinner-hour of the asylum, and as yet my patient sits in a corner brooding, with a dull, sullen, woe-be-gone look in his face, which seems rather to indicate than to show something directly. i cannot quite understand it. later.another change in my patient. at five o'clock i looked in on him, and found him seemingly as happy and contented as he used to be. he was catching flies and eating them, and was keeping note of his capture by making nailmarks on the edge of the door between the ridges of padding. when he saw me, he came over and apologised for his bad conduct, and asked me in a very humble, cringing way to be led back to his own room and to have his note-book again. i thought it well to humour him; so he is back in his room, with the window open. he has the sugar of his tea spread out on the window-sill, and is reaping quite a harvest of flies. he is not now eating them, but putting them into a box, as of old, and is already examining the corners of his room to find a spider. i tried to get him to talk about the past few days, for any clue to his thoughts would be of immense help to me; but he would not rise. for a moment or two he looked very sad, and said in a sort of far-away voice, as though saying it rather to himself than to me: "all over! all over! he has deserted me. no hope for me now unless i do it for myself!" then suddenly turning to me in a resolute way, he said: "doctor, won't you be very good to me and let me have a little more sugar? i think it would be good for me." "and the flies?" i said. "yes! the flies like it, too, and i like the flies; therefore i like it." and there are people who know so little as to think that madmen do not argue. i procured him a double supply, and left him as happy a man as, i suppose, any in the world. i wish i could fathom his mind. midnight.another change in him. i had been to see miss westenra, whom i found much better, and had just returned, and was standing at our own gate looking at the sunset, when once more i heard him yelling. as his room is on this side of the house, i could hear it better than in the morning. it was a shock to me to turn from the wonderful smoky beauty of a sunset over london, with its lurid lights and inky shadows and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds even as on foul water, and to realise all the grim sternness of my own cold stone building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart to endure it all. i reached him just as the sun was going down, and from his window saw the red disc sink. as it sank he became less and less frenzied; and just as it dipped he slid from the hands that held him, an inert mass, on the floor. it is wonderful, however, what intellectual recuperative power lunatics have, for within a few minutes he stood up quite calmly and looked around him. i signalled to the attendants not to hold him, for i was anxious to see what he would do. he went straight over to the window and brushed out the crumbs of sugar; then he took his fly-box and emptied it outside, and threw away the box: then he shut the window and crossing over, sat down on his bed. all this surprised me, so i asked him: "are you not going to keep flies any more?" "no," said he; "i am sick of all that rubbish!" he certainly is a wonderfully interesting study. i wish i could get some glimpse of his mind or of the cause of his sudden passion. stop; there may be a clue after all, if we can find why to-day his paroxysms came on at high noon and at sunset. can it be that there is a malign influence of the sun at periods which affects certain naturesas at times the moon does others? we shall see. telegram, seward, london, to van helsing, amsterdam. "4 september.patient still better to-day." telegram, seward, london, to van helsing, amsterdam. "5 septemberpatient greatly improved. good appetite; sleeps naturally; good spirits; colour coming back." telegram, seward, london, to van helsing, amsterdam. "6 september.terrible change for the worse. come at once; do not lose an hour. i hold over telegram to holmwood till have seen you." chapter x. letters, etc.continued. letter, dr. seward to hon. arthur holmwood. "6 september. "my dear art, "my news to-day is not so good. lucy this morning has gone back a bit. there is, however, one good thing which has arisen from it; mrs. westenra was naturally anxious concerning lucy, and has consulted me professionally about her. i took advantage of the opportunity, and told her that my old master, van helsing, the great specialist, was coming to stay with me, and that i would put her in his charge conjointly with myself, so now we can come and go without alarming her unduly, for a shock to her would mean sudden death, and this, in lucy's weak condition, might be disastrous to her. we are hedged in with difficulties, all of us, my poor old fellow; but, please god, we shall come through them all right. if any need i shall write, so that, if you do not hear from me, take it for granted that i am simply waiting for news. in haste. yours ever, "john seward." dr. seward's diary. 7 september.the first thing van helsing said to me when we met a liverpool street was: "have you said anything to our young friend the lover of her?" "no," i said. "i waited till i had seen you, as i said in my telegram. i wrote him a letter simply telling him that you were coming, as miss westenra was not so well, and that i should let him know if need be." "right, my friend," he said, "quite right! better he not know as yet; perhaps he shall never know. i pray so; but if it be needed, then he shall know all. and, my good friend john, let me caution you. you deal with the madmen. all men are mad in some way or the other; and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with god's madmen, toothe rest of the world. you tell not your madmen what you do nor why you do it; you tell them not what you think. so you shall keep knowledge in its place, where it may restwhere it may gather its kind around it and breed. you and i shall keep as yet what we know here, and here." he touched me on the heart and on the forehead, and then touched himself the same way. "i have for myself thoughts at the present. later i shall unfold to you." "why not now?" i asked. "it may do some good; we may arrive at some decision." he stopped and looked at me, and said: "my friend john, when the corn is grown, even before it has ripenedwhile the milk of its mother-earth is in him, and the sunshine has not yet begun to paint him with his gold, the husbandman he pull the ear and rub him between his rough hands, and blow away the green chaff, and say to you: 'look! he's good corn; he will make good crop when the time comes.'" i did not see the application, and told him so. for reply he reached over and took my ear in his hand and pulled it playfully, as he used long ago to do at lectures, and said: "the good husbandman tell you so then because he knows, but not till then. but you do not find the good husbandman dig up his planted corn to see if he grow; that is for the children who play at husbandry, and not for those who take it as of the work of their life. see you now, friend john? i have sown my corn, and nature has her work to do in making it sprout; if he sprout at all, there's some promise; and i wait till the ear begins to swell." he broke off, for he evidently saw that i understood. then he went on, and very gravely: "you were always a careful student, and your case-book was ever more full than the rest. you were only student then; now you are master, and i trust that good habit have not fail. remember, my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker. even if you have not kept the good practise, let me tell you that this case of our dear miss is one that may bemind, i say may beof such interest to us and others that all the rest may not make him kick the beam, as your peoples say. take then good note of it. nothing is too small. i counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. we learn from failure, not from success!" when i described lucy's symptomsthe same as before, but infinitely more markedhe looked very grave, but said nothing. he took with him a bag in which were many instruments and drugs, "the ghastly paraphernalia of our beneficial trade," as he once called, in one of his lectures, the equipment of a professor of the healing craft. when we were shown in, mrs. westenra met us. she was alarmed, but not nearly so much as i expected to find her. nature in one of her beneficent moods has ordained that even death has some antidote to its own terrors. here, in a case where any shock may prove fatal, matters are so ordered that, from some cause or other, the things not personaleven the terrible change in her daughter to whom she is so attacheddo not seem to reach her. it is something like the way dame nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact. if this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause before we condemn any one for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper roots for its causes than we have knowledge of. i used my knowledge of this phase of spiritual pathology, and laid down a rule that she should not be present with lucy or think of her illness more than was absolutely required. she assented readily, so readily that i saw again the hand of nature fighting for life. van helsing and i were shown up to lucy's room. if i was shocked when i saw her yesterday, i was horrified when i saw her to-day. she was ghastly, chalkily pale; the red seemed to have gone even from her lips and gums, and the bones of her face stood out prominently; her breathing was painful to see or hear. van helsing's face grew set as marble, and his eyebrows converged till they almost touched over his nose. lucy lay motionless and did not seem to have strength to speak, so for a while we were all silent. then van helsing beckoned to me, and we went gently out of the room. the instant we had closed the door he stepped quickly along the passage to the next door, which was open. then he pulled me quickly in with him and closed the door. "my god!" he said; "this is dreadful. there is no time to be lost. she will die for sheer want of blood to keep the heart's action as it should be. there must be transfusion of blood at once. is it you or me?" "i am younger and stronger, professor. it must be me." "then get ready at once. i will bring up my bag. i am prepared." i went downstairs with him, and as we were going there was a knock at the hall-door. when we reached the hall the maid had just opened the door, and arthur was stepping quickly in. he rushed up to me, saying in an eager whisper: "jack, i was so anxious. i read between the lines of your letter, and have been in an agony. the dad was better, so i ran down here to see for myself. is not that gentleman dr. van helsing? i am so thankful to you, sir, for coming." when first the professor's eye had lit upon him he had been angry at my interruption at such a time; but now, as he took in his stalwart proportions and recognised the strong young manhood which seemed to emanate from him, his eyes gleamed. without a pause he said to him gravely as he held out his hand: "sir, you have come in time. you are the lover of our lear miss. she is bad, very, very bad. nay, my child, do not go like that." for he suddenly grew pale and sat down in a chair almost fainting. "you are to help her. you can do more than any that live, and your courage is your best help." "what can i do?" asked arthur hoarsely. "tell me, and i shall do it. my life is hers, and i would give the last drop of blood in my body for her." the professor has a strongly humourous side, and i could from old knowledge detect a trace of its origin in his answer: "my young sir, i do not ask so much as thatnot the last!" "what shall i do?" there was fire in his eyes, and his open nostril quivered with intent. van helsing slapped him on the shoulder. "come!" he said. "you are a man, and it is a man we want. you are better than me, better than my friend john." arthur looked bewildered, and the professor went on by explaining in a kindly way: "young miss is bad, very bad. she wants blood, and blood she must have or die. my friend john and i have consulted; and we are about to perform what we call transfusion of bloodto transfer from full veins of one to the empty veins which pine for him. john was to give his blood, as he is the more young and strong than me"here arthur took my hand and wrung it hard in silence"but, now you are here, you are more good than us, old or young, who toil much in the world of thought. our nerves are not so calm and our blood not so bright than yours!" arthur turned to him and said: "if you only knew how gladly i would die for her you would understand-" he stopped, with a sort of choke in his voice. "good boy!" said van helsing. "in the not-so-far-off you will be happy that you have done all for her you love. come now and be silent. you shall kiss her once before it is done, but then you must go; and you must leave at my sign. say no word to madame; you know how it is with her! there must be no shock; any knowledge of this would be one. come!" we all went up to lucy's room. arthur by direction remained outside. lucy turned her head and looked at us, but said nothing. she was not asleep, but she was simply too weak to make the effort. her eyes spoke to us; that was all. van helsing took some things from his bag and laid them on a little table out of sight. then he mixed a narcotic, and coming over to the bed, said cheerily: "now, little miss, here is your medicine. drink it off, like a good child. see, i lift you so that to swallow is easy. yes." she had made the effort with success. it astonished me how long the drug took to act. this, in fact, marked the extent of her weakness. the time seemed endless until sleep began to flicker in her eyelids. at last, however, the narcotic began to manifest its potency; and she fell into a deep sleep. when the professor was satisfied he called arthur into the room, and bade him strip off his coat. then he added: 'you may take that one little kiss whiles i bring over the table. friend john, help to me!so neither of us looked whilst he bent over her. van helsing turning to me, said: "he is so young and strong and of blood so pure that we need not defibrinate it." then with swiftness, but with absolute method, van helsing performed the operation. as the transfusion went on something like life seemed to come back to poor lucy's cheeks, and through arthur's growing pallor the joy of his face seemed absolutely to shine. after a bit i began to grow anxious, for the loss of blood was telling on arthur, strong man as he was. it gave me an idea of what a terrible strain lucy's system must have undergone that what weakened arthur only partially restored her. but the professor's face was set, and he stood watch in hand and with his eyes fixed now on the patient and now on arthur. i could hear my own heart beat. presently he said in a soft voice: "do not stir an instant. it is enough. you attend him; i will look to her." when all was over i could see how much arthur was weakened. i dressed the wound and took his arm to bring him away, when van helsing spoke without turning roundthe man seems to have eyes in the back of his head: "the brave lover, i think deserve another kiss, which he shall have presently." and as he had now finished his operation, he adjusted the pillow to the patient's head. as he did so the narrow black velvet band which she seems always to wear round her throat, buckled with an old diamond buckle which her lover had given her, was dragged a little up, and showed a red mark on her throat. arthur did not notice it, but i could hear the deep hiss of indrawn breath which is one of van helsing's ways of betraying emotion. he said nothing at the moment, but turned to me, saying: "now take down our brave young lover, give him of the port wine, and let him lie down a while. he must then go home and rest, sleep much and eat much, that he may be recruited of what he has so given to his love. he must not stay here. hold! a moment. i may take it, sir, that you are anxious of result. then bring it with you that in all ways the operation is successful. you have saved her life this time, and you can go home and rest easy in mind that all that can be is. i shall tell her all when she is well; she shall love you none the less for what you have done. good-bye." when arthur had gone i went back to the room. lucy was sleeping gently, but her breathing was stronger; i could see the counterpane move as her breast heaved. by the bedside sat van helsing, looking at her intently. the velvet band again covered the red mark. i asked the professor in a whisper: "what do you make of that mark on her throat?" "what do you make of it?" "i have not examined it yet," i answered, and then and there proceeded to loose the band. just over the external jugular vein there were two punctures, not large, but not wholesome-looking. there was no sign of disease, but the edges were white and worn-looking, as if by some trituration. it at once occurred to me that this wound, or whatever it was, might be the means of that manifest loss of blood; but i abandoned the idea as soon as formed, for such a thing could not be. the whole bed would have been drenched to a scarlet with the blood which the girl must have lost to leave such a pallor as she had before the transfusion. "well?" said van helsing. "well," said i, "i can make nothing of it." the professor stood up. "i must go back to amsterdam to-night," he said. "there are books and things there which i want. you must remain here all the night, and you must not let your sight pass from her." "shall i have a nurse?" i asked. "we are the best nurses, you and i. you keep watch all night; see that she is well fed, and that nothing disturbs her. you must not sleep all the night. later on we can sleep, you and i. i shall be back as soon as possible. and then we may begin." "may begin?" i said. "what on earth do you mean?" "we shall see!" he answered as he hurried out. he came back a moment later and put his head inside the door and said with warning finger held up: "remember, she is your charge. if you leave her, and harm befall, you shall not sleep easy hereafter!" dr. seward's diarycontinued. 8 september.i sat up all night with lucy. the opiate worked itself off towards dusk, and she waked naturally; she looked a different being from what she had been before the operation. her spirits even were good, and she was full of a happy vivacity, but i could see evidences of the absolute prostration which she had undergone. when i told mrs. westenra that dr. van helsing had directed that i should sit up with her she almost pooh-poohed the idea, pointing out her daughter's renewed strength and excellent spirits. i was firm, however, and made preparations for my long vigil. when her maid had prepared her for the night i came in, having in the meantime had supper, and took a seat by the bedside. she did not in any way make objection, but looked at me gratefully whenever i caught her eye. after a long spell she seemed sinking off to sleep, but with an effort seemed to pull herself together and shook it off. this was repeated several times, with greater effort and with shorter pauses as the time moved on. it was apparent that she did not want to sleep, so i tackled the subject at once: "you do not want to go to sleep?" "no; i am afraid." "afraid to go to sleep! why so? it is the boon we all crave for." "ah, not if you were like meif sleep was to you a presage of horror!" "a presage of horror! what on earth do you mean?" "i don't know; oh, i don't know. and that is what is so terrible. all this weakness comes to me in sleep; until i dread the very thought." "but, my dear girl, you may sleep to-night. i am here watching you, and i can promise that nothing will happen." "ah, i can trust you!" i seized the opportunity, and said: "i promise you that if i see any evidence of bad dreams i will wake you at once." "you will? oh, will you really? how good you are to me. then i will sleep!" and almost at the word she gave a deep sigh of relief, and sank back, asleep. all night long i watched by, her. she never stirred, but slept on and on in a deep, tranquil, life-giving, health-giving sleep. her lips were slightly parted, and her breast rose and fell with the regularity of a pendulum. there was a smile on her face, and it was evident that no bad dreams had come to disturb her peace of mind. in the early morning her maid came, and i left her in her care and took myself back home, for i was anxious about many things. i sent a short wire to van helsing and to arthur, telling them of the excellent result of the operation. my own work, with its manifold arrears, took me all day to clear off, it was dark when i was able to inquire about my zoophagous patient. the report was good; he had been quite quiet for the past day and night. a telegram came from van helsing at amsterdam whilst i was at dinner, suggesting that i should be at hillingham to-night, as it might be well to be at hand, and stating that he was leaving by the night mail and would join me early in the morning. 9 september.i was pretty tired and worn out when i got to hillingham. for two nights i had hardly had a wink of sleep, and my brain was beginning to feel that numbness which marks cerebral exhaustion. lucy was up and in cheerful spirits. when she shook hands with me she looked sharply in my face and said: "no sitting up to-night for you. you are worn out. i am quite well again; indeed, i am; and if there is to be any sitting up, it is i who will sit up with you." i would not argue the point, but went and had my supper. lucy came with me, and, enlivened by her charming presence, i made an excellent meal, and had a couple of glasses of the more than excellent port. then lucy took me upstairs, and showed me a room next her own, where a cozy fire was burning. "now," she said, "you must stay here. i shall leave this door open and my door too. you can lie on the sofa for i know that nothing would induce any of you doctors to go to bed whilst there is a patient above the horizon. if i want anything i shall call out, and you can come to me at once." i could not but acquiesce, for i was "dob-tired," and could not have sat up had i tried. so, on her renewing her promise to call me if she should want anything, i lay on the sofa, and forgot all about everything. lucy westenra's diary. 9 september.i feel so happy to-night. i have been so miserably weak, that to be able to think and move about is like feeling sunshine after a long spell of east wind out of a steel sky. somehow arthur feels very, very close to me. i seem to feel his presence warm about me. i suppose it is that sickness and weakness are selfish things and turn our inner eyes and sympathy on ourselves, whilst health and strength give love rein, and in thought and feeling he can wander where he wills. i know where my thoughts are. if arthur only knew! my dear, my dear, your ears must tingle as you sleep, as mine do waking. oh, the blissful rest of last night! how i slept, with that dear, good dr. seward watching me. and to-night i shall not fear to sleep, since he is close at hand and within call. thank everybody for being so good to me! thank god! good-night arthur. dr. seward's diary. 10 september.i was conscious of the professor's hand on my head, and started awake all in a second. that is one of the things that we learn in an asylum, at any rate. "and how is our patient?" "well, when i left her, or rather when she left me," i answered. "come, let us see," he said. and together we went into the room. the blind was down, and i went over to raise it gently, whilst van helsing stepped, with his soft, cat-like tread, over to the bed. as i raised the blind, and the morning sunlight flooded the room, i heard the professor's low hiss of inspiration, and knowing its rarity, a deadly fear shot through my heart. as i passed over he moved back, and his exclamation of horror, "gott in himmel!" needed no enforcement from his agonised face. he raised his hand and pointed to the bed, and his iron face was drawn and ashen white. i felt my knees begin to tremble. there on the bed, seemingly in a swoon, lay poor lucy, more horribly white and wan-looking than ever. even the lips were white, and the gums seemed to have shrunken back from the teeth, as we sometimes see in a corpse after a prolonged illness. van helsing raised his foot to stamp in anger, but the instinct of his life and all the long years of habit stood to him, and he put it down again softly. "quick!" he said. "bring the brandy." i flew to the dining-room, and returned with the decanter. he wetted the poor white lips with it, and together we rubbed palm and wrist and heart. he felt her heart, and after a few moments of agonising suspense said: "it is not too late. it beats, though but feebly. all our work is undone; we must begin again. there is no young arthur here now; i have to call on you yourself this time, friend john." as he spoke, he was dipping into his bag and producing the instruments for transfusion; i had taken off my coat and rolled up my shirt-sleeve. there was no possibility of an opiate just at present, and no need of one; and so, without a moment's delay, we began the operation. after a timeit did not seem a short time either, for the draining away of one's blood, no matter how willingly it be given, is a terrible feelingvan helsing held up a warning finger. "do not stir," he said, "but i fear that with growing strength she may wake; and that would make danger, oh, so much danger. but i shall precaution take. i shall give hypodermic injection of morphia." he proceeded then, swiftly and deftly, to carry out his intent. the effect on lucy was not bad, for the faint seemed to merge subtly into the narcotic sleep. it was with a feeling of personal pride that i could see a faint tinge of colour steal back into the pallid cheeks and lips. no man knows till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the veins of the woman he loves. the professor watched me critically. "that will do," he said. "already?" i remonstrated. "you took a great deal more from art." to which he smiled a sad sort of smile as he replied: "he is her lover, her fiance. you have work, much work, to do for her and for others; and the present will suffice." when we stopped the operation, he attended to lucy, whilst i applied digital pressure to my own incision. i laid down, whilst i waited his leisure to attend to me, for i felt faint and a little sick. by-and-by he bound up my wound, and sent me downstairs to get a glass of wine for myself. as i was leaving the room, he came after me, and half whispered: "mind, nothing must be said of this. if our young lover should turn up unexpected, as before, no word to him. it would at once frighten him and enjealous him, too. there must be none. so!" when i came back he looked at me carefully, and then said: "you are not much the worse. go into the room, and lie on your sofa, and rest awhile; then have much breakfast, and come here to me." i followed out his orders, for i knew how right and wise they were. i had done my part, and now my next duty was to keep up my strength. i felt very weak, and in the weakness lost something of the amazement at what had occurred. i fell asleep on the sofa, however, wondering over and over again how lucy had made such a retrograde movement, and how she could have been drained of so much blood with no sign anywhere to show for it. i think i must have continued my wonder in my dreams, for, sleeping and waking, my thoughts always came back to the little punctures in her throat and the ragged, exhausted appearance of their edgestiny though they were. lucy slept well into the day and when she woke she was fairly well and strong, though not nearly so much so as the day before. when van helsing had seen her, he went out for a walk, leaving me in charge, with strict injunctions that i was not to leave her for a moment. i could hear his voice in the hall, asking the way to the nearest telegraph office. lucy chatted with me freely, and seemed quite unconscious that anything had happened. i tried to keep her amused and interested. when her mother came up to see her, she did not seem to notice any change whatever, but said to me gratefully: "we owe you so much, dr. seward, for all you have done, but you really must now take care not to overwork yourself. you are looking pale yourself. you want a wife to nurse and look after you a bit; that you do!" as she spoke, lucy turned crimson, though it was only momentarily, for her poor wasted veins could not stand for long such an unwonted drain to the head. the reaction came in excessive pallor as she turned imploring eyes on me. i smiled and nodded, and laid my finger on my lips; with a sigh, she sank back amid her pillows. van helsing returned in a couple of hours, and presently said to me: "now you go home, and eat much and drink enough. make yourself strong. i stay here to-night, and i shall sit up with little miss myself. you and i must watch the case, and we must have none other to know. i have grave reasons. no, do not ask them; think what you will. do not fear to think even the most not-probable. good-night." in the hall two of the maids came to me, and asked if they or either of them might not sit up with miss lucy. they implored me to let them; and when i said it was dr. van helsing's wish that either he or i should sit up, they asked me quite piteously to intercede with the "foreign gentleman." i was much touched by their kindness. perhaps it is because i am weak at present, and perhaps because it was on lucy's account, that their devotion was manifested; for over and over again have i seen similar instances of woman's kindness. i got back here in time for a late dinner; went my roundsall well; and set this down whilst waiting for sleep. it is coming. 11 september.this afternoon i went over to hillingham. found van helsing in excellent spirits, and lucy much better. shortly after i had arrived, a big parcel from abroad came for the professor. he opened it with much impressmentassumed, of courseand showed a great bundle of white flowers. "these are for you, miss lucy," he said. "for me? oh, dr. van helsing!" "yes, my dear, but not for you to play with. these are medicines." here lucy made a wry face. "nay, but they are not to take in a decoction or in nauseous form, so you need not snub that so charming nose, or i shall point out to my friend arthur what woes he may have to endure in seeing so much beauty that he so loves so much distort. aha, my pretty miss, that bring the so nice nose all straight again, this is medicinal, but you do not know how. i put him in your window, i make pretty wreath, and hang him round your neck, so that you sleep well. oh yes! they, like the lotus flower, make your trouble forgotten. it smell so like the waters of lethe, and of that fountain of youth that the conquistodores sought for in the floridas, and find him all too late." whilst he was speaking, lucy had been examining the flowers and smelling them. now she threw them down. saying, with half-laughter and half-disgust: "oh, professor, i believe you are only putting up a joke on me. why, these flowers are only common garlic." to my surprise, van helsing rose up and said with all his sterness, his iron jaw set and his bushy eyebrows meeting: "no trifling with me! i never jest! there is grim purpose in all i do; and i warn you that you do not thwart me. take care, for the sake of others if not for your own." then seeing poor lucy scared, as she might well be, he went on more gently: "oh, little miss, my dear, do not fear me. i only do for your good; but there is much virtue to you in those so common flowers. see, i place them myself in your room. i make myself the wreath that you are to wear. but hush! no telling to others that make so inquisitive questions. we must obey, and silence is a part of obedience; and obedience is to bring you strong and well into loving arms that wait for you. now sit still awhile. come with me, friend john, and you shall help me deck the room with my garlic, which is all the way from haarlem, where my friend vanderpool raise herb in his glass-houses all the year. i had to telegraph yesterday, or they would not have been here." we went into the room, taking the flowers with us. the professor's actions were certainly odd and not to be found in any pharmacopoeia that i ever heard of. first he fastened up the windows and latched them securely; next, taking a handful of the flowers, he rubbed them all over the sashes, as though to ensure that every whiff of air that might get in would be laden with the garlic smell. then with the wisp he rubbed all over the jamb of the door, above, below, and at each side, and round the fireplace in the same way. it all seemed grotesque to me, and presently i said: "well, professor, i know you always have a reason for what you do, but this certainly puzzles me. it is well we have no sceptic here, or he would say that you were working some spell to keep out an evil spirit." "perhaps i am!" he answered quietly as he began to make the wreath which lucy was to wear round her neck. we then waited whilst lucy made her toilet for the night, and when she was in bed he came and himself fixed the wreath of garlic round her neck. the last words he said to her were: "take care you do not disturb it; and even if the room feel close, do not to-night open the window or the door." "i promise," said lucy,"and thank you both a thousand times for all your kindness to me! oh, what have i done to be blessed with such friends?" as we left the house in my fly, which was waiting, van helsing said: "to-night i can sleep in peace, and sleep i wanttwo nights of travel, much reading in the day between, and much anxiety on the day to follow, and a night to sit up, without to wink. to-morrow in the morning early you call for me, and we come together to see our pretty miss, so much more strong for my 'spell' which i have work. ho! ho!" he seemed so confident that i, remembering my own confidence two nights before and with the baneful result, felt awe and vague terror. it must have been my weakness that made me hesitate to tell it to my friend, but i felt it all the more, like unshed tears. chapter xi. letters, etc.continued. lucy westenra's diary. 12 september.how good they all are to me. i quite love that dear dr. van helsing. i wonder why he was so anxious about these flowers. he positively frightened me, he was so fierce. and yet he must have been right, for i feel comfort from them already. somehow, i do not dread being alone to-night, and i can go to sleep without fear. i shall not mind any flapping outside the window. oh, the terrible struggle that i have had against sleep so often of late; the pain of the sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, with such unknown horrors as it has for me! how blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams. well, here i am to-night, hoping for sleep, and lying like ophelia in the play, with "virgin crants and maiden strewments." i never liked garlic before, but to-night it is delightful! there is peace in its smell; i feel sleep coming already. good-night, everybody. dr. seward's diary. 13 september.called at the berkeley and found van helsing, as usual, up to time. the carriage ordered from the hotel was waiting. the professor took his bag, which he always brings with him now. let all be put down exactly. van helsing and i arrived at hillingham at eight o'clock. it was a lovely morning; the bright sunshine and all the fresh feeling of early autumn seemed liked the completion of nature's annual work. the leaves were turning to all kinds of beautiful colours, but had not yet begun to drop from the trees. when we entered we met mrs. westenra coming out of the morning room. she is always an early riser. she greeted us warmly and said: "you will be glad to know that lucy is better. the dear child is still asleep. i looked into her room and saw her, but did not go in, lest i should disturb her." the professor smiled, and looked quite jubilant. he rubbed his hands together, and said: "aha! i thought i had diagnosed the case. my treatment is working," to which she answered: "you must not take all the credit to yourself, doctor lucy's state this morning is due in part to me." "how do you mean, ma'am?" asked the professor. "well, i was anxious about the dear child in the night, and went into her room. she was sleeping soundlyso soundly that even my coming did not wake her. but the room was awfully stuffy. there were a lot of those horrible, strong-smelling flowers about everywhere, and she had actually a bunch of them round her neck. i feared that the heavy odour would be too much for the dear child in her weak state, so i took them all away and opened a bit of the window to let in a little fresh air. you will be pleased with her, i am sure." she moved off into her boudoir, where she usually breakfasted early. as she had spoken, i watched the professor's face, and saw it turn ashen grey. he had been able to retain his self-command whilst the poor lady was present, for he knew her state and how mischievous a shock would be; he actually smiled on her as he held open the door for her to pass into her room. but the instant she had disappeared he pulled me, suddenly and forcibly, into the dining-room and closed the door. then, for the first time in my life, i saw van helsing break down. he raised his hands over his head in a sort of mute despair, and then beat his palms together in a helpless way; finally he sat down on a chair, and putting his hands before his face, began to sob, with loud, dry sobs that seemed to come from the very racking of his heart. then he raised his arms again, as though appealing to the whole universe. "god! god! god!" he said. "what have we done, what has this poor thing done, that we are so sore beset? is there fate amongst us still, sent down form the pagan world of old, that such things must be, and in such way? this poor mother, all unknowing, and all for the best as she think, does such thing as lose her daughter body and soul; and we must not tell her, we must not even warn her, or she die, and then both die. oh, how we are beset! how are all the powers of the devils against us!" suddenly he jumped to his feet. "come," he said, "come, we must see and act. devils or no devils, or all the devils at once, it matters not; we fight him all the same." he went to the hall-door for his bag; and together we went up to lucy's room. once again i drew up the blind, whilst van helsing went towards the bed. this time he did not start as he looked on the poor face with the same awful, waxen pallor as before. he wore a look of stern sadness and infinite pity. "as i expected," he murmured, with that hissing inspiration of his which meant so much. without a word he went and locked the door, and then began to set out on the little table the instruments for yet another operation of transfusion of blood. i had long ago recognised the necessity, and begun to take off my coat, but he stopped me with a warning hand. "no!" he said. "to-day you must operate. i shall provide. you are weakened already." as he spoke he took off his coat and rolled up his shirt-sleeve. again the operation; again the narcotic; again some return of colour to the ashy cheeks, and the regular breathing of healthy sleep. this time i watched whilst van helsing recruited himself and rested. presently he took an opportunity of telling mrs. westenra that she must not remove anything from lucy's room without consulting him; that the flowers were of medicinal value, and that the breathing of their odour was a part of the system of cure. then he took over the care of the case himself, saying that he would watch this night and the next and would send me word when to come. after another hour lucy waked from her sleep, fresh and bright and seemingly not much the worse for her terrible ordeal. what does it all mean? i am beginning to wonder if my long habit of life amongst the insane is beginning to tell upon my own brain. lucy westenra's diary. 17 september.four days and nights of peace. i am getting so strong again that i hardly know myself it is as if i had passed through some long nightmare, and had just awakened to see the beautiful sunshine and feel the fresh air of the morning around me. i have a dim half-remembrance of long, anxious times of waiting and fearing; darkness in which there was not even the pain of hope to make present distress more poignant; and then long spell of oblivion, and the rising back to life as a diver coming up through a great press of water. since, however, dr. van helsing has been with me, all this bad dreaming seems to have passed away; the noises that used to frighten me out of my witsthe flapping against the windows, the distant voices which seemed so close to me, the harsh sounds that came form i know not where and commanded me to do i know not whathave all ceased. i go to bed now without any fear of sleep. i do not even try to keep awake. i have grown quite fond of the garlic, and a boxful arrives for me every day from haarlem. to-night dr. van helsing is going away, as he has to be for a day in amsterdam. but i need not be watched; i am well enough to be left alone. thank god for mother's sake, and dear arthur's, and for all our friends who have been so kind! i shall not even feel the change, for last night dr. van helsing slept in his chair a lot of the time. i found him asleep twice when i awoke; but i did not fear to go to sleep again, although the boughs or bats or something flapped almost angrily against the window-panes. "the pall mall gazette," 18 september. the escaped wolf. perilous adventure of our interviewer. interview with the keeper in the zoological gardens. after many inquiries and almost as many refusals, and perpetually using the words "pall mall gazette" as a sort of talisman, i managed to find the keeper of the section of the zoological gardens in which the wolf department is included. thomas bilder lives in one of the cottages in the enclosure behind the elephant-house, and was just sitting down to his tea when i found him. thomas and his wife are hospitable folk, elderly, and without children, and if the specimen i enjoyed of their hospitality be of the average kind, their lives must be pretty comfortable. the keeper would not enter on what he called "business" until the supper was over, and we were all satisfied. then when the table was cleared, and he had lit his pipe, he said: "now, sir you can go on and arsk me what you want. you'll excoose me refoosin' to talk of perfeshunal subjects afore meals. i gives the wolves and the jackals and the hyenas in all our section their tea afore i begins to arsk them questions." "how do you mean, ask them questions?" i queried, wishful to get him into a talkative humour. "'ittin' of them over the 'ead with a pole is one way; scratchin' of their hears is another, when gents as is flush wants a bit of a show-orf to their gals. i don't so much mind the fustthe 'ittin' with a pole afore i chucks in their dinner; but i waits till they've 'ad their sherry and kawfee, so to speak, afore i tries on with the ear-scratchin'. mind you," he added philosophically, "there's a deal of the same nature in us as in them theer animiles. here's you a-comin' and arksin' of me questions about my business, and i that grumpy-like that only for your bloomin' 'arf-quid i'd 'a' seen you blowed fust 'fore i'd answer. not even when you arsked me sarcastic-like if i'd like you to arsk the superintendent if you might arsk me questions. without offense, did i tell yer to go to 'ell?" "you did." "an' when you said you'd report me for usin' of obscene language that was 'ittin' me over the ead; but the 'arf-quid made that all right. i weren't a-goin' to fight, so i waited for the food, and did with my 'owl as the wolves, and lions, and tigers does. but, lor' love yer 'art, now that the old 'ooman has stuck a chunk if her tea-cake in me, an' rinsed me out with her bloomin' old teapot, and i've lit hup, you may scratch my ears for all you're worth, and won't git even a growl out of me. drive along with your questions. i know what yer a-comin' at, that 'ere escaped wolf." "exactly. i want you to give me your view of it. just tell me how it happened; and when i know the facts i'll get you to say what you consider was the cause of it, and how you think the whole affair will end." "all right, guv'nor. this 'ere is about the 'ole story. that 'ere wolf what we called bersicker was one of three grey ones that come from norway to jamrach's, which we bought off him four year ago. he was a nice well-behaved wolf, that never gave no trouble to talk of. i'm more surprised at 'im for wantin' to get out nor any other animile in the place. but, there, you can't trust wolves no more nor women." "don't you mind him, sir!" broke in mrs. tom, with a cherry laugh. "'e's got mindin' the animiles so long that blest if he ain't like a old wolf 'isself! but there ain't no 'arm in 'im." "well, sir, it was about two hours after feedin' yesterday when i first hear my disturbance. i was makin' up a litter in the monkey-house for a young puma which is ill; but when i heard the yelpin' and 'owlin' i kem away straight. there was bersicker a-tearin' like a mad thing at the bars as if he wanted to get out. there wasn't much people about that day, and close at hand was only one man, a tall, thin chap, with a 'ook nose and a pointed beard, with a few white hairs runnin' through it. he had a 'ard, cold look and red eyes, and i took a sort of mislike to him, for it seemed as if it was 'im as they was hirritated at. he 'ad white kid gloves on 'is 'ands, and he pointed out the animiles to me and says: 'keeper, these wolves seem upset at something.' "'maybe it's you,'says i, for i did not like the airs as he give 'isself. he didn't git angry, as i 'oped he would, but he smiled a kind of insolent smile, with a mouth full of white sharp teeth. 'oh no, they wouldn't like me,' 'e says. "'ow yes, they would,' says i, a-imitatin' of him. 'they always likes a bone or two to clean their teeth on about tea-time, which you 'as a bagful.' "well, it was a odd thing, but when the animiles see us a-talkin' they lay down, and when i went over to bersicker he let me stroke his ears same as ever. that there man kem over, and blessed but if he didn't put in his hand and stroke the old wolfs ears too! "'tyke care,' says i. 'bersicker is quick.' "'never mind,' he says. 'i'm used to 'em!' "'are you in the business yourself?' i says, tyking off my 'at, for a man what trades in wolves, anceterer, is a good friend to keeper. "'no.' says he, 'not exactly in the business, but i 'ave made pets of several.' and with that he lifts his 'at as perlite as a lord, and walks away. old bersicker kep' a-lookin' arter' 'im till 'e was out of sight, and then went and lay down in a corner, and wouldn't come hout the 'ole hevening. well, larst night, so soon as the moon was hup, the wolves here all began a-'owling. there warn't nothing for them to 'owl at. there warn't no one near, except some one that was evidently a-callin' a dog somewheres out back of the gardings in the park road. once or twice i went out to see that all was right, and it was, and then the 'owling stopped. just before twelve o'clock i just took a look round afore turnin' in, an, bust me, but when i kem opposite to old bersicker's cage i see the rails broken and twisted about and the cage empty. and that's all i know for certing." "did any one else see anything?" "one of our gard'ners was a-comin' 'ome about that time from a 'armony, when he sees a big grey dog comin' out through the garding 'edges. at least, so he says; but i don't give much for it myself, for if he did 'e never said a word about it to his missis when 'e got 'ome, and it was only after the escape of the wolf was made known, and we had been up all nighta-huntin' of the park for bersicker, that he remembered seein' anything. my own belief was that the 'armony 'ad got into his 'ead." "now, mr. bilder, can you account in any way for the escape of the wolf?" "well, sir," he said, with a suspicious sort of modesty, "i think i can; but i don't know as 'ow you'd be satisfied with the theory." "certainly i shall. if a man like you, who knows the animals from experience, can't hazard a good guess at any rate, who is even to try?" "well then, sir, i accounts for it this way; it seems to me that 'ere wolf escapedsimply because he wanted to get out." from the hearty way that both thomas and his wife laughed at the joke i could see that it had done service before, and that the whole explanation was simply an elaborate sell. i couldn't cope in badinage with the worthy thomas, but i thought i knew a surer way to his heart, so i said: "now, mr. bilder, we'll consider that first half-sovereign worked off, and this brother of his is waiting to be claimed when you've told me what you think will happen." "right y'are, sir," he said briskly. "ye'll excoose me, i know, for a-chaffin' of ye, but the old woman here winked at me, which was as much as telling me to go on." "well, i never!" said the old lady. "my opinion is this: that 'ere wolf is a-'idin' of, somewheres. the gard'ner wot didn't remember said he was a-gallopin' northward faster than a horse could go; but i don't believe him, for, yer see, sir, wolves don't gallop no more nor dogs does, they not bein' built that way. wolves is fine things in a story-book, and i dessay when they gets in packs and does be chivyin' somethin' that's more afeared than they is they can make a devil of a noise and chop it up, whatever it is. but, lor' bless you, in real life a wolf is only a low creature, not half so clever or bold as a good dog; and not half a quarter so much fight in 'im. this one ain't been used to fightin' or even to providin' for hisself, and more like he's somewhere round the park a-'idin' an' a-shiverin' of, and, if he thinks at all, wonderin' where he is to get his breakfast from; or maybe he's got down some area and is an a coal-celler. my eye, won't some cook get a rum start when she sees his green eyes a-shining at her out of the dark! if he can't get food he's bound to look for it, and mayhap he may chance to light on a butcher's shop in time. if he doesn't, and some nursemaid goes a-walkin' orf with a soldier, leavin' of the hinfant in the perambulatorwell then i shouldn't be surprised if the census is one babby the less. that's all." i was handing him the half-sovereign, when something came bobbing up against the window, and mr. bilder's face doubled its natural length with surprise. "god bless me!" he said. "if there ain't old bersicker come back by 'isself!" he went to the door and opened it; a most unnecessary proceeding it seemed to me. i have always thought that a wild animal never looks so well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between us; a personal experience has intensified rather than diminished that idea. after all, however, there is nothing like custom, for neither bilder nor his wife thought any more of the wolf than i should of a dog. the animal itself was as peaceful and well-behaved as that father of all picture-wolvesred riding hood's quondam friend, whilst moving her confidence in masquerade. the whole scene was an unutterable mixture of comedy and pathos. the wicked wolf that for half a day had paralysed london and set all the children in the town shivering in their shoes, was there in a sort of penitent mood, and was received and petted like a sort of vulpine prodigal son. old bilder examined him all over with most tender solicitude, and when he had finished with his penitent said: "there, i knew the poor old chap would get into some kind of trouble; didn't i say it all along? here's his head all cut and full of broken glass. 'e's been a-gettin' over some bloomin' wall or other. it's a shyme that people are allowed to top their walls with broken bottles. this 'ere's what comes of it. come along, bersicker." he took the wolf and locked him up in a cage, with a piece of meat that satisfied, in quantity at any rate, the elementary conditions of the fatted calf, and went off to report. i came off, too, to report the only exclusive information that is given to-day regarding the strange escapade at the zoo. dr. seward's diary. 17 september.i was engaged after dinner in my study posting up my books, which, through press of other work and the many visits to lucy, had fallen sadly into arrear. suddenly the door was burst open, and in rushed my patient, with his face distorted with passion. i was thunder-struck, for such a thing as a patient getting of his own accord into the superintendent's study is almost unknown. without an instant's pause he made straight at me. he had a dinner-knife in his hand, and, as i saw he was dangerous, i tried to keep the table between us. he was too quick and too strong for me, however; for before i could get my balance he had struck at me and cut my left wrist rather severely. before he could strike again, however, i got in my right, and he was sprawling on his back on the floor. my wrist bled freely, and quite a little pool trickled on to the carpet. i saw that my friend was not intent on further effort, and occupied myself binding up my wrist, keeping a wary eye on the prostrate figure all the time. when the attendants rushed in, and we turned our attention to him, his employment positively sickened me. he was lying on his belly on the floor licking up, like a dog, the blood which had fallen from my wounded wrist. he was easily secured, and, to my surprise, went with the attendants quite placidly, simply repeating over and over again: "the blood is the life! the blood is the life!" i cannot afford to lose blood just at present: i have lost too much of late for my physical good, and then the prolonged strain of lucy's illness and its horrible phases is telling on me. i am overexcited and weary, and i need rest, rest, rest. happily van helsing has not summoned me, so i need not forego my sleep; to-night i could not well do without it. telegram, van helsing, antwerp, to seward, carfax. (sent to carfax, sussex, as no county given; delivered late by twenty-two hours.) "17 september.do not fail to be at hillingham to-night. if not watching all the time, frequently visit and see that flowers are as placed; very important; do not fail. shall be with you as soon as possible after arrival." dr. seward's diary. 18 september.just off for train to london. the arrival of van helsing's telegram filled me with dismay. a whole night lost, and i know by bitter experience what may happen in a night. of course it is possible that all may be well, but what may have happened? surely there is some horrible doom hanging over us that every possible accident should thwart us in all we try to do. i shall take this cylinder with me, and then i can complete my entry on lucy's phonograph. memorandum left by lucy westenra. 17 september. night.i write this and leave it to be seen, so that no one may by any chance get into trouble through me. this is an exact record of what took place tonight. i feel i am dying of weakness, and have barely strength to write, but it must be done if i die in the doing. i went to bed as usual, taking care that the flowers were placed as dr. van helsing directed, and soon fell asleep. i was waked by the flapping at the window, which had begun after that sleep-walking on the cliff at whitby when mina saved me, and which now i know so well. i was not afraid, but i did wish that dr. seward was in the next roomas dr. van helsing said he would beso that i might have called him. i tried to go to sleep, but could not. then there came to me the old fear of sleep, and i determined to keep awake. perversely sleep would try to come then when i did not want it; so, as i feared to be alone, i opened my door and called out:is there anybody there?' there was no answer. i was afraid to wake mother, and so closed my door again. then outside in the shrubbery i heard a sort of howl like a dog's, but more fierce and deeper. i went to the window and looked out, but could see nothing, except a big bat, which had evidently been buffeting its wings against the window. so i went back to bed again, but determined not to go to sleep. presently the door opened, and mother looked in; seeing by my moving that i was not asleep, came in, and sat by me. she said to me even more sweetly and softly than her wont: "i was uneasy about you, darling, and came in to see that you were all right." i feared she might catch cold sitting there, and asked her to come in and sleep with me, so she came into bed, and lay down beside me; she did not take off her dressing gown, for she said she would only stay a while and then go back to her own bed. as she lay there in my arms, and i in hers, the flapping and buffeting came to the window again. she was startled and a little frightened, and cried out: "what is that?" i tried to pacify her, and at last succeeded, and she lay quiet; but i could hear her poor dear heart still beating terribly. after a while there was the low howl again out in the shrubbery, and shortly after there was a crash at the window, and a lot of broken glass was hurled on the floor. the window blind blew back with the wind that rushed in, and in the aperture of the broken panes there was the head of a great, gaunt grey wolf. mother cried out in a fright, and struggled up into a sitting posture, and clutched wildly at anything that would help her. amongst other things, she clutched the wreath of flowers that dr. van helsing insisted on my wearing round my neck, and tore it away form me. for a second or two she sat up, pointing at the wolf, and there was a strange and horrible gurgling in her throat; then she fell over, as if struck with lightning, and her head hit my forehead and made me dizzy for a moment or two. the room and all round seemed to spin round. i kept my eyes fixed on the window, but the wolf drew his head back, and a whole myriad of little specks seemed to come blowing in through the broken window, and wheeling and circling round like the pillar of dust that travellers describe when there is a simoom in the desert. i tried to stir, but there was some spell upon me, and dear mother's poor body, which seemed to grow cold alreadyfor her dear heart had ceased to beatweighed me down; and i remembered no more for a while. the time did not seem long, but very, very awful, till i recovered consciousness again. somewhere near, a passing bell was tolling; the dogs all round the neighborhood were howling; and in our shrubbery, seemingly just outside, a nightingale was singing. i was dazed and stupid with pain and terror and weakness, but the sound of the nightingale seemed like the voice of my dead mother come back to comfort me. the sounds seemed to have awakened the maids, too, for i could hear their bare feet pattering outside my door. i called to them, and they came in, and when they saw what had happened, and what it was that lay over me on the bed, they screamed out. the wind rushed in through the broken window, and the door slammed to. they lifted off the body of my dear mother, and laid her, covered up with a sheet, on the bed after i had got up. they were all so frightened and nervous that i directed them to go to the dining-room and have each a glass of wine. the door flew open for an instant and closed again. the maids shrieked, and then went in a body to the dining-room; and i laid what flowers i had on my dear mother's breast. when they were there i remembered what dr. van helsing had told me, but i didn't like to remove them, and, besides, i would have some of the servants to sit up with me now. i was surprised that the maids did not come back. i called them, but got no answer, so i went to the dining-room to look for them. my heart sank when i saw what had happened. they all four lay helpless on the floor, breathing heavily. the decanter of sherry was on the table half full, but there was a queer, acrid smell about. i was suspicious, and examined the decanter. it smelt of laudanum, and looking on the sideboard, i found that the bottle which mother's doctor uses for heroh! did usewas empty. what am i to do? what am i to do? i am back in the room with mother. i cannot leave her, and i am alone, save for the sleeping servants, whom some one has drugged. alone with the dead! i dare not go out, for i can hear the low howl of the wolf through the broken window. the air seems full of specks, floating and circling in the draught from the window, and the lights burn blue and dim. what am i to do? god shield me from harm this night! i shall hide this paper in my breast, where they shall find it when they come to lay me out. my dear mother gone! it is time that i go too. good-bye, dear arthur, if i should not survive this night. god keep you, dear, and god help me! chapter xii. dr. seward's diary. 18 septemberi drove at once to hillingham and arrived early. keeping my cab at the gate, i went up the avenue alone. i knocked gently and rang as quietly as possible, for i feared to disturb lucy or her mother, and hoped to only bring a servant to the door. after a while, finding no response, i knocked and rang again; still no answer. i cursed the laziness of the servants that they should lie abed at such an hourfor it was now ten o'clockand so rang and knocked again, but more impatiently, but still without response. hitherto i had blamed only the servants, but now a terrible fear began to assail me. was this desolation but another link in the chain of doom which seemed drawing tight around us? was it indeed a house of death to which i had come, too late? i knew that minutes, even seconds, of delay might mean hours of danger to lucy, if she had had again one of those frightful relapses; and i went round the house to try if i could find by chance an entry anywhere. i could find no means of ingress. every window and door was fastened and locked, and i returned baffled to the porch. as i did so, i heard the rapid pit-pat of a swiftly driven horse's feet. they stopped at the gate, and a few seconds later i met van helsing running up the avenue. when he saw me, he gasped out: "then it was you, and just arrived. how is she? are we too late? did you not get my telegram?" i answered as quickly and coherently as i could that i had only got his telegram early in the morning and had not lost a minute in coming here, and that i could not make any one in the house hear me. he paused and raised his hat as he said solemnly: "then i fear we are too late. god's will be done!" with his usual recuperative energy, he went on: "come. if there be no way open to get in, we must make one. time is all in all to us now." we went round to the back of the house, where there was a kitchen window. the professor took a small surgical saw from his case, and handing it to me, pointed to the iron bars which guarded the window. i attacked them at once and had very soon cut through three of them. then with a long, thin knife we pushed back the fastening of the sashes and opened the window. i helped the professor in, and followed him. there was no one in the kitchen or in the servants' rooms, which were close at hand. we tried all the rooms as we went along, and in the dining-room, dimly lit by rays of light through the shutters, found four servant-women lying on the floor. there was no need to think them dead, for their stertorous breathing and the acrid smell of laudanum in the room left no doubt as to their condition. van helsing and i looked at each other, and as we moved away he said: "we can attend to them later." then we ascended to lucy's room. for an instant or two we paused at the door to listen, but there was no sound that we could hear. with white faces and trembling hands, we opened the door gently, and entered the room. how shall i describe what we saw? on the bed lay two women, lucy and her mother. the latter lay farthest in, and she was covered with a white sheet, the edge of which had been blown back by the draught through the broken window, showing the drawn, white face, with a look of terror fixed upon it. by her side lay lucy, with face white and still more drawn. the flowers which had been round her neck we found upon her mother's bosom, and her throat was bare, showing the two little wounds which we had noticed before, but looking horribly white and mangled. without a word the professor bent over the bed, his head almost touching poor lucy's breast; then he gave a quick turn of his head, as of one who listens, and leaping to his feet, he cried out to me: "it is not yet too late! quick! quick! bring the brandy!" i flew downstairs and returned with it, taking care to smell and taste it, lest it, too, were drugged like the decanter of sherry which i found on the table. the maids were still breathing, but more restlessly, and i fancied that the narcotic was wearing off. i did not stay to make sure, but returned to van helsing. he rubbed the brandy, as on another occasion, on her lips and gums and on her wrists and the palms of her hands. he said to me: "i can do this, all that can be at the present. you go wake those maids. flick them in the face with a wet towel, and flick them hard. make them get heat and fire and a warm bath. this poor soul is nearly as cold as that beside her. she will need be heated before we can do anything more." i went at once, and found little difficulty in waking three of the women. the fourth was only a young girl, and the drug had evidently affected her more strongly, so i lifted her on the sofa and let her sleep. the others were dazed at first, but as remembrance came back to them they cried and sobbed in a hysterical manner. i was stern with them, however, and would not let them talk. i told them that one life was bad enough to lose, and that if they delayed they would sacrifice miss lucy. so, sobbing and crying, they went about their way, half clad as they were, and prepared fire and water. fortunately, the kitchen and boiler fires were still alive, and there was no lack of hot water. we got a bath, and carried lucy out as she was and placed her in it. whilst we were busy chafing her limbs there was a knock at the halldoor. one of the maids ran off, hurried on some more clothes, and opened it. then she returned and whispered to us that there was a gentleman who had come with a message from mr. holmwood. i bade her simply tell him that he must wait, for we could see no one now. she went away with the message, and, engrossed with our work, i clean forgot all about him. i never saw in all my experience the professor work in such deadly earnest. i knewas he knewthat it was a stand-up fight with death, and in a pause told him so. he answered me in a way that i did not understand, but with the sternest look that his face could wear: "if that were all, i would stop here where we are now, and let her fade away into peace, for i see no light in life over her horizon." he went on with his work with, if possible, renewed and more frenzied vigour. presently we both began to be conscious that the heat was beginning to be of some effect. lucy's heart beat a trine more audibly to the stethoscope, and her lungs had a perceptible movement. van helsing's face almost beamed, and as we lifted her from the bath and rolled her in a hot sheet to dry her he said to me: "the first gain is ours! check to the king!" we took lucy into another room, which had by now been prepared, and laid her in bed and forced a few drops of brandy down her throat. i noticed that van helsing tied a soft silk handkerchief round her throat. she was still unconscious, and was quite as bad as, if not worse than, we had ever seen her. van helsing called in one of the women, and told her to stay with her and not to take her eyes off her till we returned, and then beckoned me out of the room. "we must consult as to what is to be done," he said as we descended the stairs. in the hall he opened the dining-room door, and we passed in, he closing the door carefully behind him. the shutters had been opened, but the blinds were already down, with that obedience to the etiquette of death which the british woman of the lower classes always rigidly observes. the room was, therefore, dimly dark. it was, however, light enough for our purposes. van helsing's sternness was somewhat relieved by a look of perplexity. he was evidently torturing his mind about something, so i waited for an instant, and he spoke: "what are we to do now? where are we to turn for help? we must have another transfusion of blood, and that soon, or that poor girl's life won't be worth an hour's purchase. you are exhausted already; i am exhausted too. i fear to trust those women, even if they would have courage to submit. what are we to do for some one who will open his veins for her?" "what's the matter with me, anyhow?" the voice came from the sofa across the room, and its tones brought relief and joy to my heart, for they were those of quincey morris. van helsing started angrily at the first sound, but his face softened and a glad look came into his eyes as i cried out: "quincey morris!" and rushed towards him with outstretched hands. "what brought you here?" i cried as our hands met. "i guess art is the cause." he handed me a telegram: "have not heard from seward for three days, and am terribly anxious. cannot leave. father still in same condition. send me word how lucy is. do not delay.holmwood." "i think i came just in the nick of time. you know you have only to tell me what to do." van helsing strode forward and took his hand, looking him straight in the eyes as he said: "a brave man's blood is the best thing on this earth when a woman is in trouble. you're a man and no mistake. well, the devil may work against us for all he's worth, but god sends us men when we want them." once again we went through that ghastly operation. i have not the heart to go through with the details. lucy had got a terrible shock and it told on her more than before, for though plenty of blood went into her veins, her body did not respond to the treatment as well as on the other occasions. her struggle back into life was something frightful to see and hear. however, the action of both heart and lungs improved, and van helsing made a subcutaneous injection of morphia, as before, and with good effect. her faint became a profound slumber. the professor watched whilst i went downstairs with quincey morris, and sent one of the maids to pay off one of the cabmen who were waiting. i left quincey lying down after having a glass of wine, and told the cook to get ready a good breakfast. then a thought struck me, and i went back to the room where lucy now was. when i came softly in, i found van helsing with a sheet or two of note-paper in his hand. he had evidently read it, and was thinking it over as he sat with his hand to his brow. there was a look of grim satisfaction in his face, as of one who has had a doubt solved. he handed me the paper saying only: "it dropped from lucy's breast when we carried her to the bath." when i had read it, i stood looking at the professor, and after a pause asked him: "in god's name, what does it all mean?" was she, or is she, mad; or what sort of horrible danger is it? i was so bewildered that i did not know what to say more. van helsing put out his hand and took the paper, saying: "do not trouble about it now. forget it for the present. you shall know and understand it all in good time; but it will be later. and now what is it that you came to say?" this brought me back to fact, and i was all myself again. "i came to speak about the certificate of death. if we do not act properly and wisely, there may be an inquest, and that paper would have to be produced. i am in hopes that we need have no inquest, for if we had it would surely kill poor lucy, if nothing else did. i know, and you know, and the other doctor who attended her knows, that mrs. westenra had disease of the heart, and we can certify that she died of it. let us fill up the certificate at once, and i shall take it myself to the registrar and go on to the undertaker." "good, oh my friend john! well thought of! truly miss lucy, if she be sad in the foes that beset her, is at least happy in the friends that love her. one, two, three, all open their veins for her, besides one old man. ah yes, i know, friend john; i am not blind! i love you all the more for it! now go." in the hall i met quincey morris, with a telegram for arthur telling him that mrs. westenra was dead; that lucy also had been ill, but was now going on better; and that van helsing and i were with her. i told him where i was going, and he hurried me out, but as i was going said: "when you come back, jack, may i have two words with you all to ourselves?" i nodded in reply and went out. i found no difficulty about the registration, and arranged with the local undertaker to come up in the evening to measure for the coffin and to make arrangements. when i got back quincey was waiting for me. i told him i would see him as soon as i knew about lucy, and went up to her room. she was still sleeping, and the professor seemingly had not moved from his seat at her side. from his putting his finger to his lips, i gathered that he expected her to wake before long and was afraid of forestalling nature. so i went down to quincey and took him into the breakfast-room, where the blinds were not drawn down, and which was a little more cheerful, or rather less cheerless, than the other rooms. when we were alone, he said to me: "jack seward, i don't want to shove myself in anywhere where i've no right to be; but this is no ordinary case. you know i loved that girl and wanted to marry her; but, although that's all past and gone, i can't help feeling anxious about her all the same. what is it that's wrong with her? the dutchmanand a fine old fellow he is; i can see thatsaid, that time you two came into the room, that you must have another transfusion of blood, and that both you and he were exhausted. now i know well that you medical men speak in camera, and that a man must not expect to know what they consult about in private. but this is no common matter, and, whatever it is, i have done my part. is not that so?" "that's so," i said, and he went on: "i take it that both you and van helsing had done already what i did to-day. is not that so?" "that's so." "and i guess art was in it too. when i saw him four days ago down at his own place he looked queer. i have not seen anything pulled down so quick since i was on the pampas and had a mare that i was fond of go to grass all in a night. one of those big bats that they call vampires had got at her in the night, and, what with his gorge and the vein left open, there wasn't enough blood in her to let her stand up, and i had to put a bullet through her as she lay. jack, if you may tell me without betraying confidence, arthur was the first; is not that so?" as he spoke the poor fellow looked terribly anxious. he was in a torture of suspense regarding the woman he loved, and his utter ignorance of the terrible mystery which seemed to surround her intensified his pain. his very heart was bleeding, and it took all the manhood of himand there was a royal lot of it, tooto keep him from breaking down. i paused before answering, for i felt that i must not betray anything which the professor wished kept secret; but already he knew so much, and guessed so much, that there could be no reason for not answering, so i answered in the same phrase: "that's so." "and how long has this been going on?" "about ten days." "ten days! then i guess, jack seward, that that poor pretty creature that we all love has had put into her veins within that time the blood of four strong men. man alive, her whole body wouldn't hold it." then, coming close to me, he spoke in a fierce half-whisper: "what took it out?" i shook my head. "that," i said, "is the crux. van helsing is simply frantic about it, and i am at my wits' end. i can't even hazard a guess. there has been a series of little circumstances which have thrown out all our calculations as to lucy being properly watched. but these shall not occur again. here we stay until all be wellor ill." quincey held out his hand. " count me in," he said. "you and the dutchman will tell me what to do, and i'll do it." when she woke late in the afternoon, lucy's first movement was to feel in her breast, and, to my surprise, produced the paper which van helsing had given me to read. the careful professor had replaced it where it had come from, lest on waking she should be alarmed. her eye then lit on van helsing and on me too, and gladdened. then she looked around the room, and seeing where she was, shuddered; she gave a loud cry, and put her poor thin hands before her pale face. we both understood what that meantthat she had realised to the full her mother's death; so we tried what we could to comfort her. doubtless sympathy eased her somewhat, but she was very low in thought and spirit, and wept silently and weakly for a long time. we told her that either or both of us would now remain with her all the time, and that seemed to comfort her. towards dusk she fell into a doze. here a very odd thing occurred. whilst still asleep she took the paper from her breast and tore it in two. van helsing stepped over and took the pieces from her. all the same, however, she went on with the action of tearing, as though the material were still in her hands; finally she lifted her hands and opened them as though scattering the fragments. van helsing seemed surprised, and his brows gathered as if in thought, but he said nothing. 19 september.all last night she slept fitfully, being always afraid to sleep, and something weaker when she woke from it. the professor and i took it in turns to watch, and we never left her for a moment unattended. quincey morris said nothing about his intention, but i knew that all night long he patrolled round and round the house. when the day came, its searching light showed the ravages in poor lucy's strength. she was hardly able to turn her head, and the little nourishment which she could take seemed to do her no good. at times she slept, and both van helsing and i noticed the difference in her, between sleeping and waking. whilst asleep she looked stronger, although more haggard, and her breathing was softer; her open mouth showed the pale gums drawn back from the teeth, which thus looked positively longer and sharper than usual; when she woke the softness of her eyes evidently changed the expression, for she looked her own self, although a dying one. in the afternoon she asked for arthur, and we telegraphed for him. quincey went off to meet him at the station. when he arrived it was nearly six o'clock, and the sun was setting full and warm, and the red light streamed in through the window and gave more colour to the pale cheeks. when he saw her, arthur was simply chocking with emotion, and none of us could speak. in the hours that had passed, the fits of sleep, or the comatose condition that passed for it, had grown more frequent, so that the pauses when conversation was possible were shortened. arthur's presence, however, seemed to act as a stimulant; she rallied a little, and spoke to him more brightly than she had done since we arrived. he too pulled himself together, and spoke as cheerily as he could, so that the best was made of everything. it was now nearly one o'clock, and he and van helsing are sitting with her. i am to relieve them in a quarter of an hour, and i am entering this on lucy's phonograph. until six o'clock they are to try to rest. i fear that to-morrow will end our watching, for the shock has been too great; the poor child cannot rally. god help us all. letter, mina harker to lucy westenra. (unopened by her.) "17 september. "my dearest lucy, "it seems an age since i heard from you, or indeed since i wrote. you will pardon me, i know, for all my faults when you have read all my budget of news. well i got my husband back all right; when we arrived at exeter there was a carriage waiting for us, and in it, though he had an attack of gout, mr. hawkins. he took us to his house, where there were rooms for us all nice and comfortable, and we dined together. after dinner mr. hawkins said: "'my dears, i want to drink your health and prosperity; and may every blessing attend you both. i know you both from children, and have, with love and pride, seen you grow up. now i want you to make your home here with me. i have left to me neither chick nor child; all are gone, and in my will i have left you everything.' i cried, lucy dear, as jonathan and the old man clasped hands. our evening was a very, very happy one. "so here we are, installed in this beautiful old house, and from both my bedroom and the drawing-room i can see the great elms of the cathedral close, with their great black stems standing our against the old yellow stone of the cathedral and i can hear the rooks overhead cawing and cawing and flattering and gossiping all day, after the manner of rooksand humans. i am busy, i need not tell you, arranging things and housekeeping. jonathan and mr. hawkins are busy all day; for, now that jonathan is a partner, mr. hawkins wants to tell him all about the clients. "how is your dear mother getting on? i wash i could run up to town for a day or two to see you, dear, but i dare not go yet, with so much on my shoulders; and jonathan wants looking after still. he is beginning to put some flesh on his bones again, but he was terribly weakened by the long illness; even now he sometimes starts out of his sleep in a sudden way and awakes all trembling until i can coax him back to his usual placidity. however, thank god, these occasions grow less frequent as the days go on, and they will in time pass away altogether, i trust and now i have told you my news, let me ask yours. when are you to be married, and where, and who is to perform the ceremony, and what are you to wear, and is it to be a public or a private wedding? tell me all about it, dear; tell me all about everything, for there is nothing which interests you which will not be dear to me. jonathan asks me to send his 'respectful duty,' but i do not think that is good enough from the junior partner of the important firm hawkins & harker; and so, as you love me, and he loves me, and i love you with all the moods and tenses of the verb, i send you simply his 'love' instead. good-bye, my dearest lucy, and all blessings on you. "yours, "mina harker." report from patrick hennessey, m.d., m.r.c.s.l.k. q.c.p.i., etc., etc., to john seward, m.d. "20 september. "my dear sir, "in accordance with your wishes, i enclose report of the conditions of everything left in my charge... with regard to patient, renfield, there is more to say. he has had another outbreak which might have had a dreadful ending, but which, as it fortunately happened, was unattended with any unhappy results. this afternoon a carrier's cart with two men made a call at the empty house whose grounds about on oursthe house to which, you will remember, the patient twice ran away. the men stopped at our gate to ask the porter their way, as they were strangers. i was myself looking out of the study window, having a smoke after dinner, and saw one of them come up to the house. as he passed the window of renfield's room, the patient began to rate him from within, and called him all the foul names he could lay his tongue to. the man, who seemed a decent fellow enough, contented himself by telling him to "shut up for a foul-mouthed beggar," whereon our man accused him of robbing him and wanting to murder him and said that he would hinder him if he were to swing for it. i opened the window and signed to the man not to notice, so he contented himself after looking the place over and making up his mind as to what kind of a place he had got to by saying: 'lor' bless yer, sir, i wouldn't mind what was said to me in a bloomin' madhouse. i pity ye and the guv'nor for havin' to live in the house with a wild beast like that.' then he asked his way civilly enough, and i told him where the gate of the empty house was; he went away, followed by threats and curses and revilings from our man. i went down to see if i could make out any cause for his anger, since he is usually such a well-behaved man, and except his violent fits nothing of the kind had ever occurred. i found him, to my astonishment, quite composed and most genial in his manner. i tried to get him to talk of the incident, but he blandly asked me questions as to what i meant, and led me to believe that he was completely oblivious of the affair. it was, i am sorry to say, however, only another instance of his cunning, for within half an hour i heard of him again. this time he had broken out through the window of his room, and was running down the avenue. i called to the attendants to follow me, and ran after him, for i feared he was intent on some mischief. my fear was justified when i saw the same cart which had passed before coming down the road, having on it some great wooden boxes. the men were wiping their foreheads, and were flushed in the face, as if with violent exercise. before i could get up to him the patient rushed at them, and pulling one of them off the cart, began to knock his head against the ground. if i had not seized him just at the moment i believe he would have killed the man there and then. the other fellow jumped down and struck him over the head with the butt-end of his heavy whip. it was a terrible blow: but he did not seem to mind it, but seized him also, and struggled with the three of us, pulling us to and fro as if we were kittens. you know i am no light weight, and the others were both burly men. at first he was silent in his fighting; but as we began to master him, and the attendants were putting a strait-waistcoat on him, he began to shout: 'i'll frustrate them! they shan't rob me! they shan't murder me by inches! i'll fight for my lord and master!' and all sorts of similar incoherent ravings. it was with very considerable difficulty that they got him back to the house and put him in the padded room. one of the attendants, hardy, had a finger broken. however, i set it all right; and he is going on well. "the two carriers were at first loud in their threats of actions for damages, and promised to rain all the penalties of the law on us. their threats were, however, mingled with some sort of indirect apology for the defeat of the two of them by a feeble madman. they said that if it had not been for the way their strength had been spent in carrying and raising the heavy boxes to the cart they would have made short work of him. they gave as another reason for their defeat the extraordinary state of drouth to which they had been reduced by the dusty nature of their occupation and the reprehensible distance from the scene of their labours of any place of public entertainment. i quite understood their drift, and after a stiff glass of grog, or rather more of the same, and with each a sovereign in hand, they made light of the attack, and swore that they would encounter a worse madman any day for the pleasure of meeting so 'bloomin' good a bloke' as your correspondent. i took their names and addresses, in case they might be needed. they are as follows:jack smollet, of dudding's rents, king george's road, great walworth, and thomas snelling, peter farley's row, guide court, bethnal green. they are both in the employment of harris & sons, moving and shipment company, orange master's yard, soho. "i shall report to you any matter of interest occurring here, and shall wire you at once if there is anything of importance. "believe me, dear sir, "yours faithfully, "patrick hennessey." letter, mina harker to lucy westenra. (unopened by her.) "18 september. "my dearest lucy, "such a sad blow has befallen us. mr. hawkins has died very suddenly. some may not think it so sad for us, but we had both come to so love him that it really seems as though we had lost a father. i never knew either father or mother, so that the dear old man's death is a real blow to me. jonathan is greatly distressed. it is not only that he feels sorrow, deep sorrow, for the dear, good man who has be-friended him all his life, and now at the end has treated him like his own son and left him a fortune which to people of our modest bringing up is wealth beyond the dream of avarice, but jonathan feels it on another account. he says the amount of responsibility which it puts upon him makes him nervous. he begins to doubt himself. i try to cheer him up, and my belief in him helps him to have a belief in himself. but it is here that the grave shock that he experienced tells upon him the most. oh, it is too hard that a sweet, simple, noble, strong nature such as hisa nature which enabled him by our dear, good friend's aid to rise from clerk to master in a few yearsshould be so injured that the very essence of its strength is gone. forgive me, dear, if i worry you with my troubles in the midst of your own happiness; but, lucy dear, i must tell some one, for the strain of keeping up a brave and cheerful appearance to jonathan tries me, and i have no one here that i can confide in. i dread coming up to london, as we must do the day after to-morrow; for poor mr. hawkins left in his will that he was to be buried in the grave with his father. as there are no relations at all, jonathan will have to be chief mourner. i shall try to run over to see you, dearest, if only for a few minutes. forgive me for troubling you. with all blessings, "your loving "mina harker." dr. seward's diary. 20 september.only resolution and habit can let me make an entry to-night. i am too miserable, too low-spirited, too sick of the world and all in it, including life itself that i would not care if i heard this moment the flapping of the wings of the angel of death. and he has been flapping those grim wings to some purpose of latelucy's mother and arthur's father, and now... let me get on with my work. i duly relieved van helsing in his watch over lucy. we wanted arthur to go to rest also, but he refused at first. it was only when i told him that we should want him to help us during the day, and that we must not all break down for want of rest, lest lucy should suffer, that he agreed to go. van helsing was very kind to him. "come, my child," he said; "come with me. you are sick and weak, and have had much sorrow and much mental pain, as well as that tax on your strength that we know of. you must not be alone; for to be alone is to be full of fears and alarms. come to the drawing-room, where there is a big fire, and there are two sofas. you shall lie on one, and i on the other, and our sympathy will be comfort to each other, even though we do not speak, and even if we sleep." arthur went off with him, casting back a longing look on lucy's face, which lay on her pillow, almost whiter than the lawn. she lay quite still and i looked round the room to see that all was as it should be. i could see that the professor had carried out in this room, as in the other, his purpose of using the garlic; the whole of the window-sashes reeked with it, and round lucy's neck, over the silk handkerchief which van helsing made her keep on, was a rough chaplet of the same odorous flowers. lucy was breathing somewhat stertorously, and her face was at its worst, for the open mouth showed the pale gums. her teeth, in the dim, uncertain light, seemed longer and sharper than they had been in the morning. in particular, by some trick of the light, the canine teeth looked longer and sharper than the rest. i sat down by her, and presently she moved uneasily. at the same moment there came a sort of dull flapping or buffeting at the window. i went over to it softly, and peeped out by the corner of the blind. there was a full moonlight, and i could see that the noise was made by a great bat, which wheeled rounddoubtless attracted by the light, although so dimand every now and again struck the window with its wings. when i came back to my seat i found that lucy had moved slightly, and had torn away the garlic flowers from her throat. i replaced them as well as i could, and sat watching her. presently she woke, and i gave her food, as van helsing had prescribed. she took but a little, and that languidly. there did not seem to be with her now the unconscious struggle for life and strength that had hitherto so marked her illness. it struck me as curious that the moment she became conscious she pressed the garlic flowers close to her. it was certainly odd that whenever she got into that lethargic state, with the stertorous breathing, she put the flowers from her; but that when she waked she clutched them close. there was no possibility of making any mistake about this, for in the long hours that followed, she had many spells of sleeping and waking and repeated both actions many times. at six o'clock van helsing came to relieve me. arthur had then fallen into a doze, and he mercifully let him sleep on. when he saw lucy's face i could hear the hissing in-draw of his breath, and he said to me in a sharp whisper: "draw up the blind; i want light!" then he bent down, and, with his face almost touching lucy's, examined her carefully. he removed the flowers and lifted the silk handkerchief from her throat. as he did so he started back, and i could hear his ejaculation, "mein gott!" as it was smothered in his throat. i bent over and looked too, and as i noticed some queer chill came over me. the wounds on the throat had absolutely disappeared. for fully five minutes van helsing stood looking at her, with his face at its sternest. then he turned to me and said calmly: "she is dying. it will not be long now. it will be much difference, mark me, whether she dies conscious or in her sleep. wake that poor boy, and let him come and see the last; he trusts us, and we have promised him." i went to the dining-room and waked him. he was dazed for a moment, but when he saw the sunlight streaming in through the edges of the shutters he thought he was late, and expressed his fear. i assured him that lucy was still asleep, but told him as gently as i could that both van helsing and i feared that the end was near. he covered his face with his hands, and slid down on his knees by the sofa, where he remained, perhaps a minute, with his head buried, praying, whilst his shoulders shook with grief. i took him by the hand and raised him up. "come," i said, "my dear old fellow, summon all your fortitude; it will be best and easiest for her." when we came into lucy's room i could see that van helsing had, with his usual forethought, been putting matters straight and making everything look as pleasing as possible. he had even brushed lucy's hair, so that it lay on the pillow in its usual sunny ripples. when we came into the room she opened her eyes, and seeing him, whispered softly: "arthur! oh, my love, i am so glad you have come!" he was stooping to kiss her, when van helsing motioned him back. "no," he whispered, "not yet! hold her hand; it will comfort her more." so arthur took her hand and knelt beside her, and she looked her best, with all the soft lines matching the angelic beauty of her eyes. then gradually her eyes closed, and she sank to sleep. for a little bit her breast heaved softly, and her breath came and went like a tired child's. and then insensibly there came the strange change which i had noticed in the night. her breathing grew stertorous, the mouth opened, and the pale gums, drawn back, made the teeth look longer and sharper than ever. in a sort of sleep-waking, vague, unconscious way she opened her eyes, which were now dull and hard at once, and said in a soft, voluptuous voice, such as i had never heard from her lips: "arthur! oh, my love, i am so glad you have come! kiss me!" arthur bent eagerly over to kiss her; but at that instant van helsing, who, like me, had been startled by her voice, swooped upon him, and catching him by the neck with both hands, dragged him back with a fury of strength which i never thought he could have possessed, and actually hurled him almost across the room. "not for your life!" he said; "not for your living soul and hers!" and he stood between them like a lion at bay. arthur was so taken aback that he did not for a moment know what to do or say; and before any impulse of violence, could seize him he realised the place and the occasion, and stood silent, waiting. i kept my eyes fixed on lucy, as did van helsing, and we saw a spasm as of rage flit like a shadow over her face; the sharp teeth champed together. then her eyes closed, and she breathed heavily. very shortly after she opened her eyes in all their softness, and putting out her poor, pale, thin hand, took van helsing's great brown one; drawing it to her, she kissed it "my true friend," she said, in a faint voice, but with untellable pathos, "my true friend, and his! oh, guard him, and give me peace!" "i swear it!" said he solemnly, kneeling beside her and holding up his hand, as one who registers an oath. then he turned to arthur, and said to him: "come, my child, take her hand in yours, and kiss her on the forehead, and only once." their eyes met instead of their lips; and so they parted. lucy's eyes closed; and van helsing, who had been watching closely, took arthur's arm, and drew him away. and then lucy's breathing became stertorous again, and all at once it ceased. "it is all over," said van helsing. "she is dead!" i took arthur by the arm, and led him away to the drawing-room, where he sat down, and covered his face with his hands, sobbing in a way that nearly broke me down to see. i went back to the room, and found van helsing looking at poor lucy, and his face was sterner than ever. some change had come over her body. death had given back part of her beauty, for her brow and cheeks had recovered some of their flowing lines; even the lips had lost their deadly pallor. it was as if the blood, no longer needed for the working of the heart, had gone to make the harshness of death as little rude as might be. "we thought her dying whilst she slept, and sleeping when she died." i stood beside van helsing, and said: "ah well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. it is the end!" he turned to me, and said with grave solemnity: "not so; alas! not so. it is only the beginning!" when i asked him what he meant, he only shook his head and answered: "we can do nothing as yet. wait and see." chapter xiii. dr. seward's diary. the funeral was arranged for the next succeeding day, so that lucy and her mother might be buried together. i attended to all the ghastly formalities, and the urbane undertaker proved that his staff were afflictedor blessedwith something of his own obsequious suavity. even the woman who performed the last offices for the dead remarked to me, in a confidential, brother-professional way, when she had come out from the death-chamber: "she makes a very beautiful corpse, sir. it's quite a privilege to attend on her. it's not too much to say that she will do credit to our establishment!" i noticed that van helsing never kept far away. this was possible from the disordered state of things in the household. there were no relatives at hand; and as arthur had to be back the next day to attend at his father's funeral, we were unable to notify any one who should have been bidden. under the circumstances, van helsing and i took it upon ourselves to examine papers, etc. he insisted upon looking over lucy's papers himself. i asked him why, for i feared that he, being a foreigner, might not be quite aware of english legal requirements, and so might in ignorance make some unnecessary trouble. he answered me: "i know; i know. you forget that i am a lawyer as well as a doctor. but this is not altogether for the law. you knew that, when you avoided the coroner. i have more than him to avoid. there may be papers moresuch as this." as he spoke he took from his pocket-book the memorandum which had been in lucy's breast, and which she had torn in her sleep. "when you find anything of the solicitor who is for the late mrs. westenra, seal all her papers, and write him tonight. for me, i watch here in the room and in miss lucy's old room all night, and i myself search for what may be. it is not well that her very thoughts go into the hands of strangers." i went on with my part of the work, and in another half hour had found the name and address of mrs. westenra's solicitor and had written to him. all the poor lady's papers were in order; explicit directions regarding the place of burial were given. i had hardly sealed the letter, when, to my surprise, van helsing walked into the room, saying: "can i help you, friend john? i am free, and if i may, my service is to you." "have you got what you looked for?" i asked, to which he replied: "i did not look for any specific thing. i only hoped to find, and find i have, all that there wasonly some letters and a few memoranda, and a diary new begun. but i have them here, and we shall for the present say nothing of them. i shall see that poor lad to-morrow evening, and, with his sanction, i shall use some." when we had finished the work in hand, he said to me: "and now, friend john, i think we may to bed. we want sleep, both you and i, and rest to recuperate. to-morrow we shall have much to do, but for the to-night there is no need of us. alas!" before turning in we went to look at poor lucy. the undertaker had certainly done his work well, for the room was turned into a small chapelle ardente. there was a wilderness of beautiful white flowers, and death was made as little repulsive as might be. the end of the winding-sheet was laid over the face; when the professor bent over and turned it gently back, we both started at the beauty before us, the tall wax candies showing a sufficient light to note it well. all lucy's loveliness had come back to her in death, and the hours that had passed, instead of leaving traces of "decay's effacing fingers," had but restored the beauty of life, till positively i could not believe my eyes that i was looking at a corpse. the professor looked sternly grave. he had not loved her as i had, and there was no need for tears in his eyes. he said to me: "remain till i return," and left the room. he came back with a handful of wild garlic from the box waiting in the hall, but which had not been opened, and placed the flowers amongst the others on and around the bed. then he took from his neck, inside his collar, a little gold crucifix, and placed it over the mouth. he restored the sheet to its place, and we came away. i was undressing in my own room, when, with a premonitory tap at the door, he entered, and at once began to speak: "to-morrow i want you to bring me, before night, a set of post-mortem knives." "must we make an autopsy?" i asked. "yes and no. i want to operate, but not as you think. let me tell you now, but not a word to another. i want to cut off her head and take out her heart. ah! you a surgeon, and so shocked! you, whom i have seen with no tremble of hand or heart, do operations of life and death that make the rest shudder. oh, but i must not forget, my dear friend john, that you loved her; and i have not forgotten it, for it is i that shall operate, and you must only help. i would like to do it to-night, but for arthur i must not; he will be free after his father's funeral to-morrow, and he will want to see herto see it. then, when she is coffined ready for the next day, you and i shall come when all sleep. we shall unscrew the coffin-lid, and shall do our operation; and then replace all, so that none know, save we alone." "but why do it at all? the girl is dead. why mutilate her poor body without need? and if there is no necessity for a post-mortem and nothing to gain by itno good to her, to us, to science, to human knowledgewhy do it? without such it is monstrous." for answer he put his hand on my shoulder, and said, with infinite tenderness: "friend john, i pity your poor bleeding heart; and i love you the more because it does so bleed. if i could, i would take on myself the burden that you do bear. but there are things that you know not, but that you shall know, and bless me for knowing, though they are not pleasant things. john, my child, you have been my friend now many years, and yet did you ever know me to do any without good cause? i may erri am but man; but i believe in all i do. was it not for these causes that you send for me when the great trouble came? yes! were you not amazed, nay horrified, when i would not let arthur kiss his lovethough she was dyingand snatched him away by all my strength? yes! and yet you saw how she thanked me, with her so beautiful dying eyes, her voice, too, so weak, and she kiss my rough old hand and bless me? yes! and did you not hear me swear promise to her, that so she closed her eyes grateful? yes! "well, i have good reason now for all i want to do. you have for many years trust me; you have believe me weeks past, when there be things so strange that you might have well doubt. believe me yet a little, friend john. if you trust me not, then i must tell what i think; and that is not perhaps well. and if i workas work i shall, no matter trust or no trustwithout my friend trust in me, i work with heavy heart and feel, oh! so lonely when i want all help and courage that may be!" he paused a moment and went on solemnly: "friend john, there are strange and terrible days before us. let us not be two, but one, that so we work to a good end. will you not have faith in me?" i took his hand, and promised him. i held my door open as he went away, and watched him go into his room and close the door. as i stood without moving, i saw one of the maids pass silently along the passageshe had her back towards me, so did not see meand go into the room where lucy lay. the sight touched me. devotion is so rare, and we are so grateful to those who show it unasked to those we love. here was a poor girl putting aside the terrors which she naturally had of death to go watch alone by the bier of the mistress whom she loved, so that the poor clay might not be lonely till laid to eternal rest... i must have slept long and soundly, for it was broad daylight when van helsing waked me by coming into my room. he came over to my bedside and said: "you need not trouble about the knives; we shall not do it." "why not?" i asked. for his solemnity of the night before had greatly impressed me. "because," he said sternly, "it is too lateor too early. see!" here he held up the little golden crucifix. "this was stolen in the night." "how, stolen," i asked in wonder, "since you have it now?" "because i get it back from the worthless wretch who stole it, from the woman who robbed the dead and the living. her punishment will surely come, but not through me; she knew not altogether what she did, and thus unknowing she only stole. now we must wait." he went away on the word, leaving me with a new mystery to think of, a new puzzle to grapple with. the forenoon was a dreary time, but at noon the solicitor came: mr. marquand, of wholeman, sons, marquand & lidderdale. he was very genial and very appreciative of what we had done, and took off our hands all cares as to details. during lunch he told us that mrs. westenra had for some time expected sudden death from her heart, and had put her affairs in absolute order; he informed us that, with the exception of a certain entailed property of lucy's father's which now, in default of direct issue, went back to a distant branch of the family, the whole estate, real and personal, was left absolutely to arthur holmwood. when he had told us so much he went on: "frankly we did our best to prevent such a testamentary disposition, and pointed out certain contingencies that might leave her daughter either penniless or not so free as she should be to act regarding a matrimonial alliance. indeed, we pressed the matter so far that we almost came into collision, for she asked us if we were or were not prepared to carry out her wishes. of course, we had then no alternative but to accept. we were right in principle, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred we should have proved, by the logic of events, the accuracy of our judgment. frankly, however, i must admit that in this case any other form of disposition would have rendered impossible the carrying out of her wishes. for by her predeceasing her daughter the latter would have come into possession of the property, and, even had she only survived her mother by five minutes, her property would, in case there were no willand a will was a practical impossibility in such a casehave been treated at her decease as under intestacy. in which case lord godalming, though so dear a friend, would have had no claim in the world; and the inheritors, being remote, would not be likely to abandon their just rights, for sentimental reasons regarding an entire stranger. i assure you, my dear sirs, i am rejoiced at the result, perfectly rejoiced." he was a good fellow, but his rejoicing at the one little partin which he was officially interestedof so great a tragedy, was an object-lesson in the limitations of sympathetic understanding. he did not remain long, but said he would look in later in the day and see lord godalming. his coming, however, had been a certain comfort to us, since it assured us that we should not have to dread hostile criticism as to any of our acts. arthur was expected at five o'clock, so a little before that time we visited the death-chamber. it was so in very truth, for now both mother and daughter lay in it. the undertaker, true to his craft, had made the best display he could of his goods, and there was a mortuary air about the place that lowered our spirits at once. van helsing ordered the former arrangement to be adhered to, explaining that, as lord godalming was coming very soon, it would be less harrowing to his feelings to see all that was left of his fiancee quite alone. the undertaker seemed shocked at his own stupidity, and exerted himself to restore things to the condition in which we left them the night before, so that when arthur came such shocks to his feelings as we could avoid were saved. poor fellow! he looked desperately sad and broken; even his stalwart manhood seemed to have shrunk somewhat under the strain of his much-tried emotions. he had, i knew, been very genuinely and devotedly attached to his father; and to lose him, and at such a time, was a bitter blow to him. with me he was warm as ever, and to van helsing he was sweetly courteous; but i could not help seeing that there was some constraint with him. the professor noticed it, too, and motioned me to bring him upstairs. i did so, and left him at the door of the room, as i felt he would like to be quite alone with her; but he took my arm and led me in, saying huskily: "you loved her too, old fellow; she told me all about it, and there was no friend had a closer place in her heart than you. i don't know how to thank you for all you have done for her. i can't think yet..." here he suddenly broke down, and threw his arms round my shoulders and laid his head on my breast, crying: "oh, jack! jack! what shall i do? the whole of life seems gone from me all at once, and there is nothing in the wide world for me to live for." i comforted him as well as i could. in such cases men do not need much expression. a grip of the hand, the tightening of an arm over the shoulder, a sob in unison, are expressions of sympathy dear to a man's heart. i stood still and silent till his sobs died away, and then i said softly to him: "come and look at her." together we moved over to the bed, and i lifted the lawn from her face. god! how beautiful she was. every hour seemed to be enhancing her loveliness. it frightened and amazed me somewhat; and as for arthur, he fell a-trembling, and finally was shaken with doubt as with an ague. at last, after a long pause, he said to me in a faint whisper: "jack, is she really dead?" i assured him sadly that it was so, and went on to suggestfor i felt that such a horrible doubt should not have life for a moment longer than i could helpthat it often happened that after death faces became softened and even resolved into their youthful beauty; that this was especially so when death had been preceded by any acute or prolonged suffering. it seemed to quite do away with any doubt, and, after kneeling beside the couch for a while and looking at her lovingly and long, he turned aside. i told him that that must be good-bye, as the coffin had to be prepared; so he went back and took her dead hand in his and kissed it, and bent over and kissed her forehead. he came away, fondly looking back over his shoulder at her as he came. i left him in the drawing-room, and told van helsing that he had said good-bye; so the latter went to the kitchen to tell the undertaker's men to proceed with the preparations and to screw up the coffin. when he came out of the room again i told him of arthur's question, and he replied: "i am not surprised. just now i doubted for a moment myself!" we all dined together, and i could see that poor art was trying to make the best of things. van helsing had been silent all dinner-time; but when we had lit our cigars he said: "lord-;" but arthur interrupted him: "no, no, not that, for god's sake! not yet at any rate. forgive me, sir: i did not mean to speak offensively; it is only because my loss is so recent." the professor answered very sweetly: "i only used that name because i was in doubt. i must not call you 'mr.,'and i have grown to love youyes, my dear boy, to love youas arthur." arthur held out his hand, and took the old man's warmly. "call me what you will," he said. "i hope i may always have the title of a friend. and let me say that i am at a loss for words to thank you for your goodness to my poor dear." he paused a moment, and went on: "i know that she understood your goodness even better than i do; and if i was rude or in any way wanting at that time you acted soyou remember"the professor nodded"you must forgive me." he answered with a grave kindness: "i know it was hard for you to quite trust me then, for to trust such violence needs to understand; and i take it that you do notthat you cannottrust me now, for you do not yet understand. and there may be more times when i shall want you to trust when you cannotand may notand must not yet understand. but the time will come when your trust shall be whole and complete in me, and when you shall understand as though the sunlight himself shone through. then you shall bless me from first to last for your own sake, and for the sake of others, and for her dear sake to whom i swore to protect." "and, indeed, indeed, sir," said arthur warmly, "i shall in all ways trust you. i know and believe you have a very noble heart, and you are jack's friend, and you were hers. you shall do what you like." the professor cleared his throat a couple of times, as though about to speak, and finally said: "may i ask you something now?" "certainly." "you know that mrs. westenra left you all her property?" "no, poor dear; i never thought of it." "and as it is all yours, you have a right to deal with it as you will. i want you to give me permission to read all miss lucy's papers and letters. believe me, it is no idle curiosity. i have a motive of which, be sure, she would have approved. i have them all here. i took them before we knew that all was yours, so that no strange hand might touch themno strange eye look through words into her soul. i shall keep them, if i may; even you may not see them yet, but i shall keep them safe. no word shall be lost; and in the good time i shall give them back to you. it's a hard thing i ask, but you will do it, will you not, for lucy's sake?" arthur spoke out heartily, like his old self: "dr. van helsing, you may do what you will. i feel that in saying this i am doing what my dear one would have approved. i shall not trouble you with questions till the time comes." the old professor stood up as he said solemnly: "and you are right. there will be pain for us all; but it will not be all pain, nor will this pain be the last. we and you tooyou most of all, my dear boywill have to pass through the bitter water before we reach the sweet. but we must be brave of heart and unselfish, and do our duty, and all will be well!" i slept on a sofa in arthur's room that night. van helsing did not go to bed at all. he went to and fro, as if patrolling the house, and was never out of sight of the room where lucy lay in her coffin, strewn with the wild garlic flowers, which sent, through the odour of lily and rose, a heavy, overpowering smell into the night. mina harker's journal. 22 septemberin the train to exeter. jonathan sleeping. it seems only yesterday that the last entry was made, and yet how much between then, in whitby and all the world before me, jonathan away and no news of him; and now, married to jonathan, jonathan a solicitor, a partner, rich, master of his business, mr. hawkins dead and buried, and jonathan with another attack that may harm him. some day he may ask me about it. down it all goes. i am rusty in my shorthandsee what unexpected prosperity does for usso it may be as well to freshen it up again with an exercise anyhow. the service was very simple and very solemn. there were only ourselves and the servants there, one or two old friends of his from exeter, his london agent, and a gentleman representing sir john paxton, the president of the incorporated law society. jonathan and i stood hand in hand, and we felt that our best and dearest friend was gone from us. we came back to town quietly, taking a bus to hyde park corner. jonathan thought it would interest me to go into the row for a while, so we sat down; but there were very few people there, and it was sad-looking and desolate to see so many empty chairs. it made us think of the empty chair at home; so we got up and walked down piccadilly. jonathan was holding me by the arm, the way he used to in old days before i went to school. i felt it very improper, for you can't go on for some years teaching etiquette and decorum to other girls without the pedantry of it biting into yourself a bit; but it was jonathan, and he was my husband, and we didn't know anybody who saw usand we didn't care if they didso on we walked. i was looking at a very beautiful girl, in a big cart-wheel flat, sitting in a victoria outside giuliano's, when i felt jonathan clutch my arm so tight that he hurt me, and he said under his breath: "my god!" i am always anxious about jonathan, for i fear that some nervous fit may upset him again; so i turned to him quickly, and asked him what it was that disturbed him. he was very pale, and his eyes seemed bulging out as, half in terror and half in amazement, he gazed at a tall, thin man, with a beaky nose and black moustache and pointed beard, who was also observing the pretty girl. he was looking at her so hard that he did not see either of us, and so i had a good view of him. his face was not a good face; it was hard, and cruel, and sensual, and his big white teeth, that looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like an animal's. jonathan kept staring at him, till i was afraid he would notice. i feared he might take it ill, he looked so fierce and nasty. i asked jonathan why he was disturbed, and he answered, evidently thinking i knew as much about it as he did: "do you see who it is?" "no, dear," i said; "i don't know him; who is it?" his answer seemed to shock and thrill me, for it was said as if he did not know that it was to me, mina, to whom he was speaking: "it is the man himself!" the poor dear was evidently terrified at somethingvery greatly terrified; i do believe that if he had not had me to lean on and to support him he would have sunk down. he kept staring; a man came out of the shop with a small parcel, and gave it to the lady, who then drove off. the dark man kept his eyes fixed on her, and when the carriage moved up piccadilly he followed in the same direction, and hailed a hansom. jonathan kept looking after him, and said, as if to himself. "i believe it is the count, but he has grown young. my god, if this be so! oh, my god! my god! if i only knew! if i only knew!" he was distressing himself so much that i feared to keep his mind on the subject by asking him any questions, so i remained silent. i drew him away quietly, and he, holding my arm, came easily. we walked a little further, and then went in and sat for a while in the green park. it was a hot day for autumn, and there was a comfortable seat in a shady place. after a few minutes staring at nothing, jonathan's eyes closed, and he went quietly into a sleep, with his head on my shoulder. i thought it was the best thing for him, so did not disturb him. in about twenty minutes he woke up, and said to me quite cheerfully: "why, mina, i have been asleep! oh, do forgive me for being so rude. come, and we'll have a cup of tea somewhere." he had evidently forgotten all about the dark stranger, as in his illness he had forgotten all that this episode had reminded him of. i don't like this lapsing into forgetfulness; it may make or continue some injury to the brain. i must not ask him, for fear i shall do more harm than good; but i must somehow learn the facts of his journey abroad. the time is come, i fear, when i must open that parcel and know what is written. oh, jonathan, you will, i know, forgive me if i do wrong, but it is for your own dear sake. later.a sad home-coming in every waythe house empty of the dear soul who was so good to us; jonathan still pale and dizzy under a slight relapse of his malady; and now a telegram from van helsing, whoever he may be: "you will be grieved to hear that mrs. westenra died five days ago, and that lucy died the day before yesterday. they were both buried to-day." oh, what a wealth of sorrow in a few words! poor mrs. westenra! poor lucy gone, gone, never to return to us! and poor, poor arthur, to have lost such sweetness out of his life! god help us all to bear our troubles. dr. seward's diary. 22 september.it is all over. arthur has gone back to ring, and has taken quincey morris with him. what a fine fellow is quincey! i believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about lucy's death as any of us; but he bore himself through it like a moral viking. if america can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed. van helsing is lying down, having a rest preparatory to his journey. he goes over to amsterdam to-night, but says he returns to-morrow night; that he only wants to make some arrangements which can only be made personally. he is to stop with me then, if he can; he says he has work to do in london which may take him some time. poor old fellow! i fear that the strain of the past week has broken down even his iron strength. all the time of the burial he was, i could see, putting some terrible restraint on himself. when it was all over, we were standing beside arthur, who, poor fellow, was speaking of his part in the operation where his blood had been transfused to his lucy's veins; i could see van helsing's face grow white and purple by turns. arthur was saying that he felt since then as if they two had been really married, and that she was his wife in the sight of god. none of us said a word of the other operations, and none of us ever shall. arthur and quincey went away together to the station, and van helsing and i came on here. the moment we were alone in the carriage he gave way to a regular fit of hysterics. he has denied to me since that it was hysterics, and insisted that it was only his sense of humour asserting itself under very terrible conditions. he laughed till he cried, and i had to draw down the blinds lest any one should see us and misjudge; and then he cried till he laughed again; and laughed and cried together, just as a woman does. i tried to be stern with him, as one is to a woman under the circumstances; but it had no effect. men and women are so different in manifestations of nervous strength or weakness! then where his face grew grave and stern again i asked him why his mirth, and why at such a time. his reply was in a way characteristic of him, for it was logical and forceful and mysterious. he said: "ah, you don't comprehend, friend john. do not think that i am not sad, though i laugh. see, i have cried even when the laugh did choke me. but no more think that i am all sorry when i cry, for the laugh he come just the same. keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, 'may i come in?' is not the true laughter. no! he is a king, and he come when and how he like. he ask no person; he choose no time of suitability. he say, 'i am here.' behold, in example i grieve my heart out for that so sweet young girl; i give my blood for her, though i am old and worn; i give my time, my skill, my sleep; i let my other sufferers want that so she may have all. and yet i can laugh at her very gravelaugh when the clay from the spade of the sexton drop upon her coffin and say. 'thud! thud!' to my heart, till it send back the blood from my cheek. my heart bleed for that poor boythat dear boy, so of the age of mine own boy had i been so blessed that he live, and with his hair and eyes the same. there, you know now why i love him so. and yet when he say things that touch my husband-heart to the quick, and make my father-heart yearn to him as to no other mannot even to you, friend john, for we are more level in experiences than father and sonyet even at such moment king laugh he come to me and shout and bellow in my ear, 'here i am! here i am!' till the blood come dance back and bring some of the sunshine that he carry with him to my cheek. oh, friend john, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles; and yet when king laugh come he make them all dance to the tune he play. bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fallall dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. and believe me, friend john, that he is good to come, and kind. ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. then tears come; and, like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. but king laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again; and we bear to go on with our labour what it may be." i did not like to wound him by pretending not to see his idea; but, as i did not yet understand the cause of his laughter, i asked him. as he answered the his face grew stern, and he said in quite a different tone: "oh, it was the grim irony of it allthis so lovely lady garlanded with flowers, that looked so fair as life, till one by one we wondered if she were truly dead; she laid in that so fine marble house in that lonely churchyard, where rest so many of her kin, laid there with the mother who loved her, and whom she loved; and that sacred bell going 'toll! toll! toll!' so sad and slow; and those holy men, with the white garments of the angel, pretending to read books, and yet all the time their eyes never on the page; and all of us with the bowed head. and all for what? she is dead; so! is it not?" "well, for the life of me, professor," i said, "i can't see anything to laugh at in all that. why, your explanation makes it a harder puzzle than before. but even if the burial service was comic, what about poor art and his trouble? why, his heart was simply breaking." "just so. said he not that the transfusion of his blood to her veins had made her truly his bride?" "yes, and it was a sweet and comforting idea for him." "quite so. but there was a difficulty, friend john. if so that, then what about the others? ho, ho! there this so sweet maid is a polyandrist, and me, with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by church's law, though no wits, all goneeven i, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife, am bigamist." "i don't see where the joke comes in there either!" i said; and i did not feel particularly pleased with him for saying such things. he laid his hand on my arm, and said: "friend john, forgive me if i pain. i showed not my feeling to others when it would wound, but only to you, my old friend, whom i can trust. if you could have looked into my very heart then when i want to laugh; if you could have done so when the laugh arrived; if you could do so now, when king laugh have pack up his crown and all that is to himfor he go far, far away from me, and for a long, long timemaybe you would perhaps pity me the most of all." i was touched by the tenderness of his tone, and asked why. "because i know!" and now we are all scattered; and for many a long day loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings. lucy lies in the tomb of her kin, a lordly death-house in a lonely churchyard, away from teeming london; where the air is fresh, and the sun rises over hampstead hill, and where wild flowers grow of their own accord. so i can finish this diary; and god only knows if i shall ever begin another. if i do, or i i even open this again, it will be to deal with different people and different themes; for here at the end, where the romance of my life is told, ere i go back to take up the thread of my life-work, i say sadly and without hope, "finis." "the westminister gazette," 25 september a hampstead mystery. the neighbourhood of hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines as "the kensington horror," or "the stabbing woman," or "the woman in black." during the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the heath. in all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a "bloofer lady." it has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. it is generally supposed in the neighbourhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a "bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. this is the more natural as the favourite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. a correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the "bloofer lady" is supremely funny. some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture. it is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady" should be the popular role at these al fresco performances. our correspondent naively says that even ellen terry could not be so willingly attractive as some of these grubby-faced little children pretendand even imagine themselvesto be. there is, however, possibly a serious side to the question, for some of the children, indeed all who have been missed at night, have been slightly torn or wounded in the throat. the wounds seem such as might be made by a rat or a small dog, and although of not much importance individually, would tend to show that whatever animal inflicts them has a system or method of its own. the police of the division have been instructed to keep a sharp look-out for straying children, especially when very young, in and around hampstead heath, and for any stray dog which may be about. "the westminister gazette," 25 september. extra special. the hampstead horror. another child injured. the "bloofer lady." we have just received intelligence that another child, missed last night, was only discovered late in the morning under a furze bush at the shooter's hill side of hampstead heath, which is, perhaps, less frequented than the other parts. it has the same tiny wound in the throat as has been noticed in other cases. it was terribly weak, and looked quite emaciated. it too, when partially restored, had the common story to tell of being lured away by the "bloofer lady." chapter xiv. mina harker's journal. 23 september.jonathan is better after a bad night. i am so glad that he has plenty of work to do, for that keeps his mind off the terrible things; and oh, i am rejoiced that he is not now weighed down with the responsibility of his new position. i knew he would be true to himself, and now how proud i am to see my jonathan rising to the height of his advancement and keeping pace in all ways with the duties that come upon him. he will be away all day till late, for he said he could not lunch at home. my household work is done, so i shall take his foreign journal, and lock myself up in my room and read it... 24 september.i hadn't the heart to write last night; that terrible record of jonathan's upset me so. poor dear! how he must have suffered, whether it be true or only imagination. i wonder if there is any truth in it at all. did he get his brain fever, and then write all those terrible things, or had he some cause for it all? i suppose i shall never know, for i dare not open the subject to him... and yet that man we saw yesterday! he seemed quite certain of him... poor fellow! i suppose it was the funeral upset him and sent his mind back on some train of thought... he believes it all himself. i remember how on our wedding-day he said: "unless some solemn duty come upon me to go back to the bitter hours, asleep or awake, mad or sane." there seems to be through it all some thread of continuity... that fearful count was coming to london... if it should be, and he came to london, with his teeming millions... there may be a solemn duty; and if it come we must not shrink from it... i shall be prepared. i shall get my typewriter this very hour and begin transcribing. then we shall be ready for other eyes if required. and if it be wanted; then, perhaps, if i am ready, poor jonathan may not be upset, for i can speak for him and never let him be troubled or worried with it at all. if ever jonathan quite gets over the nervousness he may want to tell me of it all, and i can ask him questions and find out things, and see how i may comfort him. letter, van helsing to mrs. harker. "24 september. (confidence) "dear madam, "i pray you to pardon my writing, in that i am so far friend as that i sent to you sad news of miss lucy westenra's death. by the kindness of lord godalming, i am empowered to read her letters and papers, for i am deeply concerned about certain matters vitally important. in them i find some letters from you, which show how great friends you were and how you love her. oh, madam mina, by that love, i implore you, help me. it is for others' good that i askto redress great wrong, and to lift much and terrible troublesthat may be more great than you can know. may it be that i see you? you can trust me. i am friend of dr. john seward and of lord godalming (that was arthur of miss lucy). i must keep it private for the present from all. i should come to exeter to see you at once if you tell me i am privilege to come, and where and when. i implore your pardon, madam. i have read your letters to poor lucy, and know how good you are and how your husband suffer; so i pray you, if it may be, enlighten him not, lest it may harm. again your pardon, and forgive me. "van helsing." telegram, mrs. harker to van helsing. "25 september.come to-day by quarter-past ten train if you can catch it. can see you any time you call. "wilhelmina harker." mina harker's journal. 25 september.i cannot help feeling terribly excited as the time draws near for the visit of dr. van helsing, for somehow i expect that it will throw some light upon jonathan's sad experience: and as he attended poor dear lucy in her last illness, he can tell me all about her. that is the reason of his coming, it is concerning lucy and her sleep-walking, and not about jonathan. then i shall never know the real truth now! how silly i am. that awful journal gets hold of my imagination and tinges everything with something of its own colour. of course it is about lucy. that habit came back to the poor dear, and that awful night on the cliff must have made her ill. i had almost forgotten in my own affairs how ill she was afterwards. she must have told him of her sleep-walking adventure on the cliff, and that i knew all about it; and now he wants me to tell him what she knows, so that he may understand. i hope i did right in not saying anything of it to mrs. westenra; i should never forgive myself if any act of mine, were it even a negative one, brought harm on poor dear lucy. i hope, too, dr. van helsing will not blame me; i have had so much trouble and anxiety of late that i feel i cannot bear more just at present. i suppose a cry does us all good at timesclears the air as other rain does. perhaps it was reading the journal yesterday that upset me, and then jonathan went away this morning to stay away from me a whole day and night, the first time we have been parted since our marriage. i do hope the dear fellow will take care of himself, and that nothing will occur to upset him. it is two o'clock, and the doctor will be here soon now. i shall say nothing of jonathan's journal unless he asks me. i am so glad i have type-written out my own journal, so that, in case he asks about lucy, i can hand it to him; it will save much questioning. later.he has come and gone. oh, what a strange meeting, and how it all makes my head whirl round! i feel like one in a dream. can it be all possible, or even a part of it? if i had not read jonathan's journal first, i should never have accepted even a possibility. poor, poor, dear jonathan! how he must have suffered. please the good god, all this may not upset him again. i shall try to save him from it; but it may be even a consolation and a help to himterrible though it be and awful in its consequencesto know for certain that his eyes and ears and brain did not deceive him, and that it is all true. it may be that it is the doubt which haunts him; that when the doubt is removed, no matter whichwaking or dreamingmay prove the truth, he will be more satisfied and better able to bear the shock. dr. van helsing must be a good man as well as a clever one if he is arthur's friend and dr. seward's, and if they brought him all the way from holland to look after lucy. i feel from having seen him that he is good and kind and of a noble nature. when he comes to-morrow i shall ask him about jonathan; and then, please god, all this sorrow and anxiety may lead to a good end. i used to think i would like to practice interviewing; jonathan's friend on "the exeter news" told him that memory was everything in such workthat you must be able to put down exactly almost every word spoken, even if you had to refine some of it afterwards. here was a rare interview; i shall try to record it verbatim. it was half-past two o'clock when the knock came. i took my courage a deux mains and waited. in a few minutes mary opened the door, and announced "dr. van helsing." i rose and bowed, and he came towards me; a man of medium weight, strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck. the poise of the head strikes one at once as indicative of thought and power, the head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the ears. the face shows a hard, square chin, a large, resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big, bushy brows come down and the mouth tightens. the forehead is broad and fine, rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps or ridges wide apart; such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides. big, dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man's moods. he said to me: "mrs. harker, is it not?" i bowed assent. "that was miss mina murray?" again i assented. "it is mina murray that i came to see that was friend of that poor dear child lucy westenra. madam mina, it is on account of the dead i come." "sir," i said, "you could have no better claim on me than that you were a friend and helper of lucy westenra." and i held out my hand. he took it and said tenderly: "oh, madam mina, i knew that the friend of that poor lily girl must be good, but i had yet to learn-" he finished his speech with a courtly bow. i asked him what it was that he wanted to see me about, so he at once began: "i have read your letters to miss lucy. forgive me, but i had to begin to inquire somewhere, and there was none to ask. i know that you were with her at whitby. she sometimes kept a diaryyou need not look, surprised madam mina; it was begun after you had left, and was made in imitation of youand in that diary she traces by inference certain things to a sleep-walking in which she puts down that you saved her. in great perplexity then i come to you, and ask you out of your so much kindness to tell me all of it that you remember." "i can tell you, i think, dr. van helsing, all about it." "ah, then you have good memory for facts, for details? it is not always so with young ladies." "no, doctor, but i wrote it all down at the time. i can show it to you if you like." "oh, madam mina, i will be grateful; you will do me much favour." i could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a biti suppose it is some of the taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouthsso i handed him the shorthand diary. he took it with a grateful bow, and said: "may i read it?" "if you wish," i answered as demurely as i could. he opened it, and for an instant his face fell. then he stood up and bowed. "oh, you so clever woman!" he said. "i long knew that mr. jonathan was a man of much thankfulness; but see, his wife have all the good things. and will you not so much honour me and so help me as to read it for me? alas! i know not the shorthand." by this time my little joke was over, and i was almost ashamed; so i took the type-written copy from my workbasket and handed it to him. "forgive me," i said: "i could not help it; but i had been thinking that it was of dear lucy that you wished to ask, and so that you might not have to waitnot on my account, but because i know your time must be preciousi have written it out on the typewriter for you." he took it and his eyes glistened. "you are so good," he said. "and may i read it now? i may want to ask you some things when i have read." "by all means," i said, "read it over whilst i order lunch; and then you can ask me questions whilst we eat." he bowed and settled himself in a chair with his back to the light, and became absorbed in the papers, whilst i went to see after lunch, chiefly in order that he might not be disturbed. when i came back i found him walking hurriedly up and down the room, his face all ablaze with excitement. he rushed up to me and took me by both hands. "oh, madam mina," he said, "how can i say what i owe to you? this paper is as sunshine. it opens the gate to me. i am daze, i am dazzle, with so much light; and yet clouds roll in behind the light every time. but that you do not, cannot, comprehend. oh, but i am grateful to you, you so clever woman. madam"he said this very solemnly"if ever abraham van helsing can do anything for you or yours, i trust you will let me know. it will be pleasure and delight if i may serve you as a friend; as a friend, but all i have ever learned, all i can ever do, shall be for you and those you love. there are darknesses in life, and there are lights; you are one of the lights. you will have happy life and good life, and your husband will be blessed in you." "but, doctor, you praise me too much, andand you do not know me." "not know youi, who am old, and who have studied all my life men and women; i, who have made my specialty the brain and all that belongs to him and all that follow from him! and i have read your diary that you have so goodly written for me, and which breathes out truth in every line. i, who have read your so sweet letter to poor lucy of your marriage and your trust, not know you! oh, madam mina, good women tell all their lives, and by day and by hour and by minute, such things that angels can read; and we men who wish to know have in us something of angels' eyes. your husband is noble nature, and you are noble too, for you trust, and trust cannot be where there is mean nature. and your husbandtell me of him. is he quite well? is all that fever gone, and is he strong and hearty?" i saw here an opening to ask him about jonathan, so i said: "he was almost recovered, but he has been greatly upset by mr. hawkins's death." he interrupted: "oh yes, i know, i know. i have read your last two letters." i went on: "i suppose this upset him, for when we were in town on thursday last he had a sort of shock." "a shock, and after brain fever so soon! that was not good. what kind of shock was it?" "he thought he saw some one who recalled something terrible, something which led to his brain fever." and here the whole thing seemed to overwhelm me in a rush. the pity for jonathan, the horror which he experienced, the whole fearful mystery of his diary, and the fear that has been brooding over me ever since, all came in a tumult. i suppose i was hysterical, for i threw myself on my knees and held up my hands to him, and implored him to make my husband well again. he took my hands and raised me up, and made me sit on the sofa, and sat by me; he held my hand in his, and said to me with, oh, such infinite sweetness: "my life is a barren and lonely one, and so full of work that i have not had much time for friendships; but since i have been summoned to here by my friend john seward i have known so many good people and seen such nobility that i feel more than everand it has grown with my advancing yearsthe loneliness of my life. believe me, then, that i come here full of respect for you, and you have given me hopehope, not in what i am seeking of, but that there are good women still left to make life happygood women, whose lives and whose truths may make good lesson for the children that are to be. i am glad, glad, that i may here be of some use to you; for if your husband suffer, he suffer within the range of my study and experience. i promise you that i will gladly do all for him that i canall to make his life strong and manly, and your life a happy one. now you must eat. you are overwrought and perhaps over-anxious. husband jonathan would not like to see you so pale; and what he like not where he love, is not to his good. therefore for his sake you must eat and smile. you have told me all about lucy, and so now we shall not speak of it, lest it distress. i shall stay in exeter to-night, for i want to think much over what you have told me, and when i have thought i will ask you questions, if i may. and then, too, you will tell me of husband jonathan's trouble so far as you can, but not yet. you must eat now; afterwards you shall tell me all." after lunch, when we went back to the drawing-room, he said to me: "and now tell me all about him." when it came to speaking to this great, learned man, i began to fear that he would think me a weak fool, and jonathan a madmanthat journal is all so strangeand i hesitated to go on. but he was so sweet and kind, and he had promised to help, and i trusted him, so i said: "dr. van helsing, what i have to tell you is so queer that you must not laugh at me or at my husband. i have been since yesterday in a sort of fever of doubt; you must be kind to me, and not think me foolish that i have even half believed some very strange things." he reassured me by his manner as well as his words when he said: "oh, my dear, if you only knew how strange is the matter regarding which i am here, it is you who would laugh. i have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it be. i have tried to keep an open mind; and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane." "thank you, thank you, a thousand times! you have taken a weight off my mind. if you will let me, i shall give you a paper to read. it is long, but i have typewritten it out. it will tell you my trouble and jonathan's. it is the copy of his journal when abroad, and all that happened. i happ dare not say anything of it; you will read for yourself and judge. and then when i see you, perhaps, you will be very kind and tell me what you think." "i promise," he said as i gave him the papers; "i shall in the morning, so soon as i can, come to see you and your husband, if i may." "jonathan will be here at half-past eleven, and you must come to lunch with us and see him then; you could catch the quick 3:34 train, which will leave you at paddington before eight." he was surprised at my knowledge of the trains off-hand, but he does not know that i have made up all the trains to and from exeter, so that i may help jonathan in case he is in a hurry. so he took the papers with him and went away, and i sit here thinkingthinking i don't know what. letter (by hand), van helsing to mrs. harker. "25 september, 6 o'clock. "dear madam mina, "i have read your husband's so wonderful diary. you may sleep without doubt. strange and terrible as it is, it is true! i will pledge my life on it. it may be worse for others; but for him and you there is no dread. he is a noble fellow; and let me tell you from experience of men, that one who would do as he did in going down that wall and to that roomay, and going a second timeis not one to be injured in permanence by a shock. his brain and his heart are all right; this i swear, before i have even seen him; so be at rest. i shall have much to ask him of other things. i am blessed that to-day i come to see you, for i have learn all at once so much that again i am dazzledazzle more than ever, and i must think. "yours the most faithful, "abraham van helsing." letter, mrs. harker to van helsing. "25 september, 6:30 p.m. "my dear dr. van helsing, "a thousand thanks for your kind letter, which has taken a great weight off my mind. and yet, if it be true, what terrible things there are in the world, and what an awful thing if that man, that monster, be really in london! i fear to think. i have this moment, whilst writing, had a wire from jonathan, saying that he leaves by the 6:25 to-night from launceston and will be here at 10:18, so that i shall have no fear to-night. will you, therefore, instead of lunching with us, please come to breakfast at eight o'clock, if this be not too early for you? you can get away, if you are in a hurry, by the 10:30 train, which will bring you to paddington by 2:35. do not answer this, as i shall take it that if i do not hear, you will come to breakfast. "believe me, "your faithful and grateful friend, "mina harker." jonathan harker's journal. 26 september.i thought never to write in this diary again, but the time has come. when i got home last night mina had supper ready, and when we had supped she told me of van helsing's visit, and of her having given him the two diaries copied out, and of how anxious she has been about me. she showed me in the doctor's letter that all i wrote down was true. it seems to have made a new man of me. it was the doubt as to the reality of the whole thing that knocked me over. i felt impotent, and in the dark, and distrustful. but, now that i know, i am not afraid, even of the count. he has succeeded after all, then, in his design in getting to london, and it was he i saw. he has got younger, and how? van helsing is the man to unmask him and hunt him out, if he is anything like what mina says. we sat late, and talked it all over. mina is dressing, and i shall call at the hotel in a few minutes and bring him over... he was, i think, surprised to see me. when i came into the room where he was, and introduced myself, he took me by the shoulder, and turned my face round to the light, and said, after a sharp scrutiny: "but madam mina told me you were ill, that you had had a shock." it was so funny to hear my wife called "madam mina" by this kindly, strong-faced old man. i smiled, and said: "i was ill, i have had a shock; but you have cured me already." "and how?" "by your letter to mina last night. i was in doubt, and then everything took a hue of unreality, and i did not know what to trust, even the evidence of my own senses. not knowing what to trust, i did not know what to do; and so had only to keep on working in what had hitherto been the groove of my life. the groove ceased to avail me, and i mistrusted myself. doctor, you don't know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. no, you don't; you couldn't with eyebrows like yours." he seemed pleased, and laughed as he said: "so! you are physiognomist. i learn more here with each hour. i am with so much pleasure coming to you to breakfast; and, oh, sir, you will pardon praise from an old man, but you are blessed in your wife." i would listen to him go on praising mina for a day, so i simply nodded and stood silent. "she is one of god's women, fashioned by his own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. so true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egoistand that, let me tell you, is much in this age, so sceptical and selfish. and you, siri have read all the letters to poor miss lucy, and some of them speak of you, so i know you since some days from the knowing of others; but i have seen your true self since last night. you will give me your hand, will you not? and let us be friends for all our lives." we shook hands, and he was so earnest and so kind that it made me quite choky. "and now." he said, "may i ask you for some more help? i have a great task to do, and at the beginning it is to know. you can help me here. can you tell me what went before your going to transylvania? later on i may ask more help, and of a different kind; but at first this will do." "look here, sir," i said, "does what you have to do concern the count?" "it does," he said solemnly. "then i am with you heart and soul. as you go by the 10:30 train, you will not have time to read them; but i shall get the bundle of papers. you can take them with you and read them in the train." after breakfast i saw him to the station. when we were parting he said: "perhaps you will come to town if i send to you, and take madam mina too." "we shall both come when you will," i said. i had got him the morning papers and the london papers of the previous night, and while we were talking at the carriage window, waiting for the train to start, he was turning them over. his eye suddenly seemed to catch something in one of them, "the westminster gazette"i knew it by the colourand he grew quite white. he read something intently, groaning to himself. "mein gott! mein gott! so soon! so soon!" i do not think he remembered me at the moment. just then the whistle blew, and the train moved off. this recalled him to himself, and he leaned out of the window and waved his hand, calling out: "love to madam mina; i shall write so soon as ever i can." dr. seward's diary. 26 september.truly there is no such thing as finality. not a week since i said "finis," and yet here i am starting fresh again, or rather going on with the same record. until this afternoon i had no cause to think of what is done. renfield had become, to all intents, as sane as he ever was. he was already well ahead with his fly business; and he had just started in the spider line also; so he had not been of any trouble to me. i had a letter from arthur, written on sunday, and from it i gather that he is bearing up wonderfully well. quincey morris is with him, and that is much of a help, for he himself is a bubbling well of good spirits. quincey wrote me a line too, and from him i hear that arthur is beginning to recover something of his old buoyancy; so as to them all my mind is at rest. as for myself, i was settling down to my work with the enthusiasm which i used to have for it, so that i might fairly have said that the wound which poor lucy left on me was becoming cicatrised. everything is, however, now reopened; and what is to be the end god only knows. i have an idea that van helsing thinks he knows too, but he will only let out enough at a time to whet curiosity. he went to exeter yesterday, and stayed there all night. to-day he came back, and almost bounded into the room at about half-past five o'clock, and thrust last night's "westminister gazette" into my hand. "what do you think of that?" he asked as he stood back and folded his arms. i looked over the paper, for i really did not know what he meant; but he took it from me and pointed out a paragraph about children being decoyed away at hampstead. it did not convey much to me, until i reached a passage where it described small punctured wounds on their throats. an idea struck me, and i looked up. "well?" he said. "it is like poor lucy's." "and what do you make of it?" "simply that there is some cause in common. whatever it was that injured her has injured them." i did not quite understand his answer: "that is true indirectly, but not directly." "how do you mean, professor?" i asked. i was a little inclined to take his seriousness lightlyfor, after all, four days of rest and freedom from burning, harrowing anxiety does help to restore one's spiritsbut when i saw his face, it sobered me. never, even in the midst of our despair about poor lucy, had he looked more stern. "tell me!" i said. "i can hazard no opinion. i do not know what to think, and i have no data on which to found a conjecture." "do you mean to tell me, friend john, that you have no suspicion as to what poor lucy died of, not after all the hints given, not only by events, but by me?" "of nervous prostration following on great loss or waste of blood." "and how the blood lost or waste?" i shook my head. he stepped over and sat down beside me, and went on: "you are clever man, friend john; you reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too prejudiced. you do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? but there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men's eyes, because they knowor think they knowsome things which other men have told them. ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. but yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be younglike the fine ladies at the opera. i suppose now you do not believe in corporeal transference. no? nor in materialisation. no? nor in astral bodies. no? nor in the reading of thought. no? nor in hypnotism-" "yes," i said. "charcot has proved that pretty well." he smiled as he went on: "then you are satisfied as to it. yes? and of course then you understand how it act, and can follow the mind of the great charcotalas that he is no more!into the very soul of the patient that he influence. no? then, friend john, am i to take it that you simply accept fact, and are satisfied to let from premise to conclusion be a blank? no? then tell mefor i am student of the brainhow you accept the hypnotism and reject the thought reading. let me tell you, my friend, that there are things done to-day in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the very men who discovered electricitywho would themselves not so long before have been burned as wizards. there are always mysteries in life. why was it that methuselah lived nine hundred years, and 'old parr' one hundred and sixty-nine, and yet that poor lucy, with four men's blood in her poor veins, could not live even one day? for, had she live one more day, we could have save her. do you know all the mystery of life and death? do you know the altogether of comparative anatomy, and can say wherefore the qualities of brutes are in some men, and not in others? can you tell me why, when other spiders die small and soon, that one great spider lived for centuries in the tower of the old spanish church and grew and grew, till, on descending, he could drink the oil of all the church lamps? can you tell me why in the pampas, ay and elsewhere, there are bats that come at night and open the veins of cattle and horses and suck dry their veins; how in some islands of the western seas there are bats which hang on the trees all day, that those who have seen describe as like giant nuts or pods and that when the sailors sleep on the deck, because that it is hot, flit down on them, and thenand then in the morning are found dead men, white as even miss lucy was?" "good god, professor!" i said, starting up. "do you mean to tell me that lucy was bitten by such a bat; and that such a thing is here in london in the nineteenth century?" he waved his hand for silence, and went on: "can you tell me why the tortoise lives more long than generations of men; why the elephant goes on and on till he have seen dynasties; and why the parrot never die only of bite of cat or dog or other complaint? can you tell me why men believe in all ages and places that there are some few who live on always if they be permit; that there are men and women who cannot die? we all knowbecause science has vouched for the factthat there have been toads shut up in rocks for thousands of years, shut in one so small hole that only hold him since the youth of the world. can you tell me how the indian fakir make himself to die and have been buried, and his grave sealed and corn sowed on it, and the corn reaped and be cut and sown and reaped and cut again, and then men come and take away the unbroken seal, and that there lie the indian fakir, not dead, but that rise up and walk amongst them as before?" here i interrupted him. i was getting bewildered; he so crowded on my mind his list of nature's eccentricities and possible impossibilities that my imagination was getting fired. i had a dim idea that he was teaching me some lesson, as long ago he used to do in his study at amsterdam; but he used then to tell me the thing, so that i could have the object of thought in mind all the time. but now i was without this help, yet i wanted to follow him, so i said: "professor, let me be your pet student again. tell me the thesis so that i may apply your knowledge as you go on. at present i am going in my mind from point to point as a mad man, and not a sane one, follows an idea. i feel like a novice blundering through a bog in a mist, jumping from one tussock to another in the mere blind effort to move on without knowing where i am going." "that is good image," he said. "well, i shall tell you my thesis is this: i want you to believe." "to believe what?" "to believe in things that you cannot. let me illustrate. i heard once of an american who so defined faith: 'that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.' for one, i follow that man. he meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of a big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. we get the small truth first. good! we keep him, and we value him; but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe." "then you want me not to let some previous conviction injure the receptivity of my mind with regard to some strange matter. do i read your lesson aright?" "ah, you are my favourite pupil still. it is worth to teach you. now that you are willing to understand, you have taken the first step to understand. you think then that those so small holes in the children's throats were made by the same that made the hole in miss lucy?" "i suppose so" he stood up and said solemnly: "then you are wrong. oh, would it were so! but alas! no. it is worse, far, far worse." "in god's name, professor van helsing, what do you mean?" i cried. he threw himself with a despairing gesture into a chair, and placed his elbows on the table, covering his face with his hands as he spoke: "they were made by miss lucy!" chapter xv. dr. seward's diary. for a while sheer anger mastered me; it was as if he had during her life struck lucy on the face. i smote the table hard and rose up as i said to him: "dr. van helsing, are you mad?" he raised his head and looked at me, and somehow the tenderness of his face calmed me at once. "would i were!" he said. "madness were easy to bear compared with truth like this. oh, my friend, why, think you, did i go so far round, why take so long to tell you so simple a thing? was it because i hate you and have hated you all my life? was it because i wished to give you pain? was it that i wanted, now so late, revenge for that time when you saved my life, and from a fearful death? ah no!" "forgive me," said i. he went on: "my friend, it was because i wished to be gentle in the breaking to you, for i know you have loved that so sweet lady. but even yet i do not expect you to believe. it is so hard to accept at once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we have always believed the 'no' of it; it is more hard still to accept so sad a concrete truth, and of such a one as miss lucy. to-night i go to prove it. dare you come with me?" this staggered me. a man does not like to prove such a truth; byron excepted from the category, jealousy. "and prove the very truth he most abhorred." he saw my hesitation, and spoke: "the logic is simple, no madman's logic this time, jumping from tussock to tussock in a misty bog. if it be not true, then proof will be relief, at worst it will not harm. if it be true! ah, there is the dread; yet very dread should help my cause, for in it is some need of belief. come, i tell you what i propose: first, that we go off now and see that child in the hospital. dr. vincent, of the north hospital, where the papers say the child is, is friend of mine, and i think of yours since you were in class at amsterdam. he will let two scientists see his case, if he will not let two friends. we shall tell him nothing, but only that we wish to learn. and then-" "and then?" he took a key from his pocket and held it up. "and then we spend the night, you and i, in the church-yard where lucy lies. this is the key that lock the tomb. i had it from the coffin-man to give to arthur." my heart sank within me, for i felt that there was some fearful ordeal before us. i could do nothing, however, so i plucked up what heart i could and said that we had better hasten, as the afternoon was passing. we found the child awake. it had had a sleep and taken some food, and altogether was going on well. dr. vincent took the bandage from its throat, and showed us the punctures. there was no mistaking the similarity to those which had been on lucy's throat. they were smaller, and the edges looked fresher; that was all. we asked vincent to what he attributed them, and he replied that it must have been a bite of some animal, perhaps a rat; but, for his own part, he was inclined to think that it was one of the bats which are so numerous on the northern heights of london. "out of so many harmless ones," he said, "there may be sonic wild specimen from the south of a more malignant species. some sailor may have brought one home, and it managed to escape; or even from the zoological gardens a young one may have got loose, or one be bred there from a vampire. these things do occur, you know. only ten days ago a wolf got out, and was, i believe, traced up in this direction. for a week after, the children were playing nothing but red riding hood on the heath and in every alley in the place until this 'bloofer lady' scare came along, since when it has been quite a gala-time with them. even this poor little mite, when he woke up to-day, asked the nurse if he might go away. when she asked him why he wanted to go, he said he wanted to play with the 'bloofer lady.'" "i hope," said van helsing, "that when you are sending the child home you will caution its parents to keep strict watch over it. these fancies to stray are most dangerous; and if the child were to remain out another night, it would probably be fatal. but in any case i suppose you will not let it away for some days?" "certainly not, not for a week at least; longer if the wound is not healed." our visit to the hospital took more time than we had reckoned on, and the sun had dipped before we came out. when van helsing saw how dark it was, he said: "there is no hurry. it is more late than i thought. come, let us seek somewhere that we may eat, and then we shall go on our way." we dined at "jack straw's castle" along with a little crowd of bicyclists and others who were genially noisy. about ten o'clock we started from the inn. it was then very dark, and the scattered lamps made the darkness greater when we were once outside their individual radius. the professor had evidently noted the road we were to go, for he went on unhesitatingly; but, as for me, i was in quite a mix-up as to locality. as we went further, we met fewer and fewer people, till at last we were somewhat surprised when we met even the patrol of horse police going their usual suburban round. at last we reached the wall of the church-yard, which we climbed over. with some little difficultyfor it was very dark, and the whole place seemed so strange to uswe found the westenra tomb. the professor took the key, opened the creaky door, and standing back, politely, but quite unconsciously, motioned me to precede him. there was a delicious irony in the offer, in the courtliness of giving preference on such a ghastly occasion. my companion followed me quickly, and cautiously drew the door to, after carefully ascertaining that the lock was a falling, and not a spring, one. in the latter case we should have been in a bad plight. then he fumbled in his bag, and taking out a match-box and a piece of candle, proceeded to make a light. the tomb in the day-time, and when wreathed with fresh flowers, had looked grim and gruesome enough; but now, some days afterwards, when the flowers hung lank and dead, their whites turning to rust and their greens to browns; when the spider and the beetle had resumed their accustomed dominance; when time-discoloured stone, and dust-encrusted mortar, and rusty, dank iron, and tarnished brass, and clouded silver-plating gave back the feeble glimmer of a candle, the effect was more miserable and sordid than could have been imagined it conveyed irresistibly the idea that lifeanimal lifewas not the only thing which could pass away. van helsing went about his work systematically. holding his candle so that he could read the coffin plates, and so holding it that the sperm dropped in white patches which congealed as they touched the metal, he made assurance of lucy's coffin. another search in his bag, and he took out a turnscrew. "what are you going to do?" i asked. "to open the coffin. you shall yet be convinced." straightway he began taking out the screws, and finally lifted off the lid, showing the casing of lead beneath. the sight was almost too much for me. it seemed to be as much an affront to the dead as it would have been to have stripped off her clothing in her sleep whilst living; i actually took hold of his hand to stop him. he only said: "you shall see," and again fumbling in his bag, took out a tiny fret-saw. striking the turnscrew through the lead with a swift downward stab, which made me wince, he made a small hole, which was, however, big enough to admit the point of the saw. i had expected a rush of gas from the week-old corpse. we doctors, who have had to study our dangers, have to become accustomed to such things, and i drew back towards the door. but the professor never stopped for a moment; he sawed down a couple of feet along one side of the lead coffin, and then across, and down the other side. taking the edge of the loose flange, he bent it back towards the foot of the coffin, and holding up the candle into the aperture, motioned to me to look. i drew near and looked. the coffin was empty. it was certainly a surprise to me, and gave me a considerable shock, but van helsing was unmoved. he was now more sure than ever of his ground, and so emboldened to proceed in his task. "are you satisfied now, friend john?" he asked. i felt all the dogged argumentativeness of my nature awake within me as i answered him: "i am satisfied that lucy's body is not in that coffin; but that only proves one thing." "and what is that, friend john?" "that it is not there." "that is good logic," he said, "so far as it goes. but how do youhow can youaccount for it not being there?" "perhaps a body-snatcher," i suggested. "some of the undertaker's people may have stolen it." i felt that i was speaking folly, and yet it was the only real cause which i could suggest. the professor sighed. "ah well!" he said, "we must have more proof. come with me." he put on the coffin-lid again, gathered up all his things and placed them in the bag, blew out the light, and placed the candle also in the bag. we opened the door, and went out. behind us he closed the door and locked it. he handed me the key, saying: "will you keep it? you had better be assured." i laughedit was not a very cheerful laugh, i am bound to sayas i motioned him to keep it. "a key is nothing," i said; "there may be duplicates; and anyhow it is not difficult to pick a lock of that kind." he said nothing, but put the key in his pocket. then he told me to watch at one side of the churchyard whilst he would watch at the other. i took up my place behind a yew-tree, and i saw his dark figure move until the intervening headstones and trees hid it from my sight. it was a lonely vigil. just after i had taken my place i heard a distant clock strike twelve, and in time came one and two. i was chilled and unnerved, and angry with the professor for taking me on such an errand and with myself for coming. i was too cold and too sleepy to be keenly observant, and not sleepy enough to betray my trust; so altogether i had a dreary, miserable time. suddenly, as i turned round, i thought i saw something like a white streak, moving between two dark yew-trees at the side of the churchyard farthest from the tomb; at the same time a dark mass moved from the professor's side of the ground, and hurriedly went towards it. then i too moved; but i had to go round headstones and railed-off tombs, and i stumbled over graves. the sky was overcast, and somewhere far off an early cock crew. a little way off, beyond a line of scattered juniper-trees, which marked the pathway to the church, a white, dim figure flitted in the direction of the tomb. the tomb itself was hidden by trees, and i could not see where the figure disappeared. i heard the rustle of actual movement where i had first seen the white figure, and coming over, found the professor holding in his arms a tiny child. when he saw me he held it out to me, and said: "are you satisfied now?" "no," i said, in a way that i felt was aggressive. "do you not see the child?" "yes, it is a child, but who brought it here? and is it wounded?" i asked. "we shall see," said the professor, and with one impulse we took our way out of the churchyard, he carrying the sleeping child. when we had got some little distance away, we went into a clump of trees, and struck a match, and looked at the child's throat. it was without a scratch or scar of any kind. "was i right?" i asked triumphantly. "we were just in time," said the professor thankfully. we had now to decide what we were to do with the child, and so consulted about it. if we were to take it to a police-station we should have to give some account of our movements during the night; at least, we should have had to make some statement as to how we had come to find the child. so finally we decided that we would take it to the heath, and when we heard a policeman coming, would leave it where he could not fail to find it; we would then seek our way home as quickly as we could. all fell out well. at the edge of hampstead heath we heard a policeman's heavy tramp, and laying the child on the pathway, we waited and watched until he saw it as he flashed his lantern to and fro. we heard his exclamation of astonishment, and then we went away silently. by good chance we got a cab near the "spaniards," and drove to town. i cannot sleep, so i make this entry. but i must try to get a few hours' sleep, as van helsing is to call for me at noon. he insists that i shall go with him on another expedition. 27 septemberit was two o'clock before we found a suitable opportunity for our attempt. the funeral held at noon was all completed, and the last stragglers of the mourners had taken themselves lazily away, when, looking carefully from behind a clump of alder-trees, we saw the sexton lock the gate after him. we knew then that we were safe till morning did we desire it; but the professor told me that we should not want more than an hour at most. again i felt that horrid sense of the reality of things, in which any effort of imagination seemed out of place; and i realised distinctly the perils of the law which we were incurring in our unhallowed work. besides, i felt it was all so useless. outrageous as it was to open a leaden coffin, to see if a woman dead nearly a week were really dead, it now seemed the height of folly to open the tomb again, when we knew, from the evidence of our own eyesight, that the coffin was empty. i shrugged my shoulders, however, and rested silent, for van helsing had a way of going on his own road, no matter who remonstrated. he took the key, opened the vault, and again courteously motioned me to precede. the place was not so gruesome as last night, but oh, how unutterably mean-looking when the sunshine streamed in. van helsing walked over to lucy's coffin, and i followed. he bent over and again forced back the leaden flange; and then a shock of surprise and dismay shot through me. there lay lucy, seemingly just as we had seen her the night before her funeral. she was, if possible, more radiantly beautiful than ever; and i could not believe that she was dead. the lips were red, nay redder than before; and on the cheeks was a delicate bloom. "is this a juggle?" i said to him. "are you convinced now?" said the professor in response, and as he spoke he put over his hand, and in a way that made me shudder, pulled back the dead lips and showed the white teeth. "see," he went on, "see, they are even sharper than before. with this and this"and he touched one of the canine teeth and that below it"the little children can be bitten. are you of belief now, friend john?" once more, argumentative hostility woke within me. i could not accept such an overwhelming idea as he suggested; so, with an attempt to argue of which i was even at the moment ashamed, i said: "she may have been placed here since last night." "indeed? that is so, and by whom?" "i do not know. some one has done it." "and yet she has been dead one week. most peoples in that time would not look so." i had no answer for this, so was silent. van helsing did not seem to notice my silence; at any rate, he showed neither chagrin nor triumph. he was looking intently at the face of the dead woman, raising the eyelids and looking at the eyes, and once more opening the lips and examining the teeth. then he turned to me and said: "here, there is one thing which is different from all recorded; here is some dual life that is not as the common. she was bitten by the vampire when she was in a trance, sleep-walkingoh, you start; you do not know that, friend john, but you shall know it all laterand in trance could he best come to take more blood. in trance she died, and in trance she is un-dead, too. so it is that she differ from all other. usually when the un-dead sleep at home"as he spoke he made a comprehensive sweep of his arm to designate what to a vampire was "home""their face show what they are, but this so sweet that was when she not un-dead she go back to the nothings of the common dead. there is no malign there, see, and so it make hard that i must kill her in her sleep." this turned my blood cold, and it began to dawn upon me that i was accepting van helsing's theories; but if she were really dead, what was there of terror in the idea of killing her? he looked up at me, and evidently saw the change in my face, for he said almost joyously: "ah, you believe now?" i answered; "do not press me too hard all at once. i am willing to accept. how will you do this bloody work?" "i shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and i shall drive a stake through her body." it made me shudder to think of so mutilating the body of the woman whom i had loved. and yet the feeling was not so strong as i had expected. i was, in fact, beginning to shudder at the presence of this being, this un-dead, as van helsing called it, and to loathe it. is it possible that love is all subjective, or all objective? i waited a considerable time for van helsing to begin, but he stood as if wrapped in thought. presently he closed the catch of his bag with a snap, and said: "i have been thinking, and have made up my mind as to what is best. if i did simply follow my inclining i would do now, at this moment, what is to be done; but there are other things to follow, and things that are thousand times more difficult in that them we do not know. this is simple. she have yet no life taken, though that is of time; and to act now would be to take danger from her for ever. but then we may have to want arthur, and how shall we tell him of this? if you, who saw the wounds on lucy's throat, and saw the wounds so similar on the child's at the hospital; if you, who saw the coffin empty last night and full to-day with a woman who have not change only to be more rose and more beautiful in a whole week, after she dieif you know of this and know of the white figure last night that brought the child to the churchyard, and yet of your own senses you did not believe, how, then, can i expect arthur, who know none of those things, to believe? he doubted me when i took him from her kiss when she was dying. i know he has forgiven me because in some mistaken idea i have done things that prevent him say good-bye as he ought; and he may think that in some more mistaken idea this woman was buried alive; and that in most mistake of all we have killed her. he will then argue back that it is we, mistaken ones, that have killed her by our ideas; and so he will be much unhappy always. yet he never can be sure; and that is the worst of all. and he will sometimes think that she he loved was buried alive, and that will paint his dreams with horrors of what she must have suffered; and again, he will think that we may be right, and that his so beloved was, after all, an un-dead. no! i told him once, and since then i learn much. now, since i know it is all true, a hundred thousand times more do i know that he must pass through the bitter waters to reach the sweet. he, poor fellow, must have one hour that will make the very face of heaven grow black to him; then we can act for good all round and send him peace. my mind is made up. let us go. you return home for to-night to your asylum, and see that all be well. as for me, i shall spend the night here in this churchyard in my own way. to-morrow night you will come to me to the berkeley hotel at ten of the clock. i shall send for arthur to come too, and also that so fine young man of america that gave his blood. later we shall all have work to do. i come with you so far as piccadilly and there dine, for i must be back here before the sun set." so we locked the tomb and came away, and got over the wall of the churchyard, which was not much of a task, and drove back to piccadilly. note left by van helsing in his portmanteau, berkeley hotel, directed to john seward, m.d. (not delivered.) "27 september. "friend john, "i write this in case anything should happen. i go alone to watch in that churchyard. it pleases me that the un-dead, miss lucy, shall not leave to-night, that so on the morrow night she may be more eager. therefore i shall fix some things she like notgarlic and a crucifixand so seal up the door of the tomb. she is young as un-dead, and will heed. moreover, these are only to prevent her coming out; they may not prevail on her wanting to get in; for then the un-dead is desperate, and must find the line of least resistance, whatsoever it may be. i shall be at hand all the night from sunset till after the sunrise, and if there be aught that may be learned i shall learn it. for miss lucy, or from her, i have no fear; but that other to whom is there that she is un-dead, he have now the power to seek her tomb and find shelter. he is cunning, as i know from mr. jonathan and from the way that all along he have fooled us when he played with us for miss lucy's life, and we lost; and in many ways the un-dead are strong. he have always the strength in his hand of twenty men; even we four who gave our strength to miss lucy it also is all to him. besides, he can summon his wolf and i know not what. so if it be that he come thither on this night he shall find me; but none other shalluntil it be too late. but it may be that he will not attempt the place. there is no reason why he should; his hunting ground is more full of game than the churchyard where the un-dead woman sleep, and one old man watch. "therefore i write this in case... take the papers that are with this, the diaries of harker and the rest, and read them, and then find this great un-dead, and cut off his head and burn his heart or drive a stake through it, so that the world may rest from him. "if it be so, farewell. "van helsing." dr. seward's diary. 28 september.it is wonderful what a good night's sleep will do for one. yesterday i was almost willing to accept van helsing's monstrous ideas; but now they seem to start out lurid before me as outrages on common sense. i have no doubt that he believes it all. i wonder if his mind can have become in any way unhinged. surely there must be some rational explanation of all these mysterious things. is it possible that the professor can have done it himself? he is so abnormally clever that if he went off his head he would carry out his intent with regard to some fixed idea in a wonderful way. i am loath to think it, and indeed it would be almost as great a marvel as the other to find that van helsing was mad; but anyhow i shall watch him carefully. i may get some light on the mystery. 29 september, morning... last night, at a little before ten o'clock, arthur and quincey came into van helsing's room; he told us all that he wanted us to do, but especially addressing himself to arthur, as if all our wills were centered in his. he began by saying that he hoped we would all come with him too, "for," he said, "there is a grave duty to be done there. you were doubtless surprised at my letter?" this query was directly addressed to lord godalming. "i was. it rather upset me for a bit. there has been so much trouble around my house of late that i could do without any more. i have been curious, too, as to what you mean. quincey and i talked it over; but the more we talked, the more puzzled we got, till now i can say for myself that i'm about up a tree as to any meaning about anything." "me, too," said quincey morris laconically. "oh," said the professor, "then you are nearer the beginning, both of you, than friend john here, who has to go a long way back before he can even get so far as to begin." it was evident that he recognised my return to my old doubting frame of mind without my saying a word. then, turning to the other two, he said with intense gravity: "i want your permission to do what i think good this night. it is, i know, much to ask; and when you know what it is i propose to do you will know, and only then, how much. therefore may i ask that you promise me in the dark, so that afterwards, though you may be angry with me for a timei must not disguise from myself the possibility that such may beyou shall not blame yourselves for anything." "that's frank anyhow," broke in quincey. "i'll answer for the professor. i don't quite see his drift, but i swear he's honest; and that's good enough for me." "i thank you, sir," said van helsing proudly. "i have done myself the honour of counting you one trusting friend, and such endorsement is dear to me." he held out a hand, which quincey took. then arthur spoke out: "dr. van helsing, i don't quite like to 'buy a pig in a poke,' as they say in scotland, and if it be anything in which my honour as a gentleman or my faith as a christian is concerned, i cannot make such a promise. if you can assure me that what you intend does not violate either of these two, then i give my consent at once; though, for the life of me, i cannot understand what you are driving at." "i accept your limitation," said van helsing, "and all i ask of you is that if you feel it necessary to condemn any act of mine, you will first consider it well and be satisfied that it does not violate your reservations." "agreed!" said arthur; "that is only fair. and now that the pourparlers are over, may i ask what it is we are to do?" "i want you to come with me, and to come in secret, to the churchyard at kingstead." arthur's face fell as he said in an amazed sort of way: "where poor lucy is buried?" the professor bowed. arthur went on: "and when there?" "to enter the tomb!" arthur stood up. "professor, are you in earnest; or it is some monstrous joke? pardon me, i see that you are in earnest." he sat down again, but i could see that he sat firmly and proudly, as one who is on his dignity. there was silence until he asked again: "and when in the tomb?" "to open the coffin." "this is too much!" he said, angrily rising again. "i am willing to be patient in all things that are reasonable; but in thisthis desecration of the graveof one who-" he fairly choked with indignation. the professor looked pityingly at him. "if i could spare you one pang, my poor friend," he said, "god knows i would. but this night our feet must tread in thorny paths; or later, and for ever, the feet you love must walk in paths of flame!" arthur looked up with set, white face and said: "take care, sir, take care!" "would it not be well to hear what i have to say?" said van helsing. "and then you will at least know the limit of my purpose. shall i go on?" "that's fair enough," broke in morris. after a pause van helsing went on, evidently with an effort: "miss lucy is dead; is it not so? yes! then there can be no wrong to her. but if she be not dead-" arthur jumped to his feet. "good god!" he cried. "what do you mean? has there been any mistake; has she been buried alive?" he groaned in anguish that not even hope could soften. "i did not say she was alive, my child; i did not think it. i go no further than to say that she might be un-dead." "un-dead! not alive! what do you mean? is this all a nightmare, or what is it?" "there are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part. believe me, we are now on the verge of one. but i have not done. may i cut off the head of dead miss lucy?" "heavens and earth, no!" cried arthur in a storm of passion. "not for the wide world will i consent to any mutilation of her dead body. dr. van helsing, you try me too far. what have i done to you that you should torture me so? what did that poor, sweet girl do that you should want to cast such dishonour on her grave? are you mad that speak such things, or am i mad that listen to them? don't dare to think more of such a desecration; i shall not give my consent to anything you do. i have a duty to do in protecting her grave from outrage; and, by god, i shall do it!" van helsing rose up from where he had all the time been seated, and said, gravely and sternly: "my lord godalming, i, too, have a duty to do, a duty to others, a duty to you, a duty to the dead; and, by god, i shall do it! all i ask you now is that you come with me, that you look and listen; and if when later i make the same request you do not be more eager for its fulfilment even than i am, thenthen i shall do my duty, whatever it may seem to me. and then, to follow of your lordship's wishes, i shall hold myself at your disposal to render an account to you, when and where you will." his voice broke a little, and he went on with a voice full of pity: "but, i beseech you, do not go forth in anger with me. in a long life of acts which were often not pleasant to do, and which sometimes did wring my heart, i have never had so heavy a task as now. believe me that if the time comes for you to change your mind towards me, one look from you will wipe away all this so sad hour, for i would do what a man can to save you from sorrow. just think. for why should i give myself so much of labour and so much of sorrow? i have come here from my own land to do what i can of good; at the first to please my friend john, and then to help a sweet young lady, whom, too, i came to love. for heri am ashamed to say so much, but i say it in kindnessi gave what you gave; the blood of my veins; i gave it, i, who was not, like you, her lover, but only her physician and her friend. i gave to her my nights and daysbefore death, after death; and if my death can do her good even now, when she is the dead un-dead, she shall have it freely." he said this with a very grave, sweet pride, and arthur was much affected by it. he took the old man's hand and said in a broken voice: "oh, it is hard to think of it, and i cannot understand; but at least i shall go with you and wait." chapter xvi. dr. seward's diary. it was just a quarter before twelve o'clock when we got into the churchyard over the low wall. the night was dark, with occasional gleams of moonlight between the rents of the heavy clouds that scudded across the sky. we all kept somehow close together, with van helsing slightly in front as he led the way. when we had come close to the tomb i looked well at arthur, for i feared that the proximity to a place laden with so sorrowful a memory would upset him; but he bore himself well. i took it that the very mystery of the proceeding was in some way a counteractant to his grief. the professor unlocked the door, and seeing a natural hesitation amongst us for various reasons, solved the difficulty by entering first himself. the rest of us followed, and he closed the door. he then lit a dark lantern and pointed to the coffin. arthur stepped forward hesitatingly; van helsing said to me: "you were with me here yesterday. was the body of miss lucy in that coffin?" "it was." the professor turned to the rest saying: "you hear; and yet there is no one who does not believe with me." he took his screwdriver and again took off the lid of the coffin. arthur looked on, very pale but silent; when the lid was removed he stepped forward. he evidently did not know that there was a leaden coffin, or, at any rate, had not thought of it. when he saw the rent in the lead, the blood rushed to his face for an instant, but as quickly fell away again, so that he remained of a ghastly whiteness; he was still silent. van helsing forced back the leaden flange, and we all looked in and recoiled. the coffin was empty! for several minutes no one spoke a word. the silence was broken by quincey morris: "professor, i answered for you. your word is all i want. i wouldn't ask such a thing ordinarilyi wouldn't so dishonour you as to imply a doubt; but this is a mystery that goes beyond any honour or dishonour. is this your doing?" "i swear to you by all that i hold sacred that i have not removed nor touched her. what happened was this: two nights ago my friend seward and i came herewith good purpose, believe me. i opened that coffin, which was then sealed up, and we found it, as now empty. we then waited, and saw something white come through the trees. the next day we came here in day-time, and she lay there. did she not, friend john?" "yes." "that night we were just in time. one more so small child was missing, and we find it, thank god, unharmed amongst the graves. yesterday i came here before sundown, for at sundown the un-dead can move. i waited here all the night till the sun rose, but i saw nothing. it was most probable that it was because i had laid over the clamps of those doors garlic, which the un-dead cannot bear, and other things which they shun. last night there was no exodus, so to-night before the sundown i took away my garlic and other things. and so it is we find this coffin empty. but bear with me. so far there is much that is strange. wait you with me outside, unseen and unheard, and things much stranger are yet to be. so"here he shut the dark slide of his lantern"now to the outside." he opened the door, and we filed out, he coming last and locking the door behind him. oh! but it seemed fresh and pure in the night air after the terror of that vault. how sweet it was to see the clouds race by, and the passing gleams of the moonlight between the scudding clouds crossing and passinglike the gladness and sorrow of a man's life; how sweet it was to breathe the fresh air, that had no taint of death and decay; how humanising to see the red lighting of the sky beyond the hill, and to hear far away the muffled roar that marks the life of a great city. each in his own way was solemn and overcome. arthur was silent, and was, i could see, striving to grasp the purpose and the inner meaning of the mystery. i was myself tolerably patient, and half inclined again to throw aside doubt and to accept van helsing's conclusions. quincey morris was phlegmatic in the way of a man who accepts all things, and accepts them in the spirit of cool bravery, with hazard of all he has to stake. not being able to smoke, he cut himself a good-sized plug of tobacco and began to chew. as to van helsing, he was employed in a definite way. first he took from his bag a mass of what looked like thin, wafer-like biscuit, which was carefully rolled up in a white napkin; next he took out a double-handful of some whitish stuff, like dough or putty. he crumbled the wafer up fine and worked it into the mass between his hands. this he then took, and rolling it into thin strips, began to lay them into the crevices between the door and its setting in the tomb. i was somewhat puzzled at this, and being close, asked him what it was that he was doing. arthur and quincey drew near also, as they too were curious. he answered: "i am closing the tomb, so that the un-dead may not enter." "and is that stuff you have put there going to do it?" asked quincey. "great scott! is this a game?" "it is." "what is that which you are using?" this time the question was by arthur. van helsing reverently lifted his hat as he answered: "the host. i brought it from amsterdam. i have an indulgence." it was an answer that appalled the most sceptical of us, and we felt individually that in the presence of such earnest purpose as the professor's, a purpose which could thus use the to him most sacred of things, it was impossible to distrust. in respectful silence we took the places assigned to us close round the tomb, but hidden from the sight of any one approaching. i pitied the others, especially arthur. i had myself been apprenticed by my former visits to this watching horror; and yet i, who had up to an hour ago repudiated the proofs, felt my heart sink within me. never did tombs look so ghastly white; never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funeral gloom; never did tree or grass wave or rustle so ominously; never did bough creak so mysteriously; and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night. there was a long spell of silence, a big, aching void, and then from the professor a keen "s-s-s-s!" he pointed; and far down the avenue of yews we saw a white figure advancea dim white figure, which held something dark at its breast. the figure stopped, and at the moment a ray of moonlight fell upon the masses of driving clouds and showed in startling prominence a dark-haired woman, dressed in the cerements of the grave. we could not see the face, for it was bent down over what we saw to be a fair-haired child. there was a pause and a sharp little cry, such as a child gives in sleep, or a dog as it lies before the fire and dreams. we were starting forward, but the professor's warning hand, seen by us as he stood behind a yew-tree, kept us back; and then as we looked the white figure moved forwards again. it was now near enough for us to see clearly, and the moonlight still held. my own heart grew cold as ice, and i could hear the gasp of arthur, as we recognised the features of lucy westenra. lucy westenra, but yet how changed. the sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness. van helsing stepped out, and, obedient to his gesture, we all advanced too; the four of us ranged in a line before the door of the tomb. van helsing raised his lantern and drew the slide; by the concentrated light that fell on lucy's face we could see that the lips were crimson with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death-robe. we shuddered with horror. i could see by the tremulous light that even van helsing's iron nerve had failed. arthur was next to me, and if i had not seized his arm and held him up, he would have fallen. when lucyi call the thing that was before us lucy because it bore her shapesaw us she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat gives when taken unawares; then her eyes ranged over us. lucy's eyes in form and colour; but lucy's eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew. at that moment the remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing; had she then to be killed, i could have done it with savage delight. as she looked, her eyes blazed with unholy light, and the face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile. oh, god, how it made me shudder to see it! with a careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone. the child gave a sharp cry, and lay there moaning. there was a cold-bloodedness in the act which wrung a groan from arthur; when she advanced to him with outstreched arms and a wanton smile he fell back and hid his face in his hands. she still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said: "come to me arthur. leave these others and come to me. my arms are hungry for you. come, and we can rest together. come, my husband, come!" there was something diabolically sweet in her tonessomething of the tingling of glass when struckwhich rang through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to another. as for arthur, he seemed under a spell; moving his hands from his face, he opened wide his arms. she was leaping for them, when van helsing sprang forward and held between them his little golden crucifix. she recoiled from it, and, with a suddenly distorted face, full of rage, dashed past him as if to enter the tomb. when within a foot or two of the door, however, she stopped as if arrested by some irresistible force. then she turned, and her face was shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which had now no quiver from van helsing's iron nerves. never did i see such baffled malice on a face; and never, i trust, shall such ever be seen again by mortal eyes. the beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to throw out sparks of hell-fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of the flesh were the coils of medusa's snakes, and the lovely, blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of the greeks and japanese. if ever a face meant deathif looks could killwe saw it at that moment. and so for full half a minute, which seemed an eternity, she remained between the lifted crucifix and the sacred closing of her means of entry: van helsing broke the silence by asking arthur: "answer me, oh my friend! am i to proceed in my work?" arthur threw himself on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, as he answered: "do as you will, friend; do as you will. there can be no horror like this ever any more;" and he groaned in spirit. quincey and i simultaneously moved towards him, and took his arms. we could hear the click of the closing lantern as van helsing held it down; coming close to the tomb, he began to remove from the chinks some of the sacred emblem which he had placed there. we all looked on in horrified amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman, with a corporeal body as real at that moment as our own, pass in through the interstice where scarce a knife-blade could have gone. we all felt a glad sense of relief when we saw the professor calmly restoring the strings of putty to the edges of the door. when this was done, he lifted the child and said: "come now, my friends; we can do no more till to-morrow. there is a funeral at noon, so here we shall all come before long after that. the friends of the dead will all be gone by two, and when the sexton lock the gate we shall remain. then there is more to do; but not like this of to-night. as for this little one, he is not much harm, and by to-morrow night he shall be well. we shall leave him where the police will find him, as on the other night; and then to home." coming close to arthur, he said: "my friend arthur, you have had sore trial; but after, when you will look back, you will see how it was necessary. you are now in the bitter waters, my child. by this time tomorrow you will, please god, have passed them, and have drunk of the sweet waters; so do not mourn overmuch. till then i shall not ask you to forgive me." arthur and quincey came home with me, and we tried to cheer each other on the way. we had left the child in safety, and were tired; so we all slept with more or less reality of sleep. 29 september, night.a little before twelve o'clock we threearthur, quincey morris, and myselfcalled for the professor. it was odd to notice that by common consent we had all put on black clothes. of course, arthur wore black, for he was in deep mourning, but the rest of us wore it by instinct. we got to the churchyard by half-past one, and strolled about, keeping out of official observation, so that when the gravediggers had completed their task and the sexton, under the belief that every one had gone, had locked the gate, we had the place all to ourselves. van helsing, instead of his little black bag, had with him a long leather one, something like a cricketing bag; it was manifestly of fair weight. when we were alone and had heard the last of the footsteps die out up the road, we silently, and as if by ordered intention, followed the professor to the tomb. he unlocked the door, and we entered, closing it behind us. then he took from his bag the lantern, which he lit, and also two wax candles, which, when lighted, he stuck, by melting their own ends, on other coffins, so that they might give light sufficient to work by. when he again lifted the lid off lucy's coffin we all lookedarthur trembling like an aspenand saw that the body lay there in all its death-beauty. but there was no love in my own heart, nothing but loathing for the foul thing which had taken lucy's shape without her soul. i could see even arthur's face grow hard as he looked. presently he said to van helsing: "is this really lucy's body, or only a demon in her shape?" "it is her body, and yet not it. but wait a while, and you shall see her as she was, and is." she seemed like a nightmare of lucy as she lay there; the pointed teeth, the bloodstained, voluptuous mouthwhich it made one shudder to seethe whole carnal and unspiritual appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of lucy's sweet purity. van helsing, with his usual methodicalness, began taking the various contents from his bag and placing them ready for use. first he took out a soldering iron and some plumbing solder, and then a small oil-lamp, which gave out, when lit in a corner of the tomb, gas which burned at fierce heat with a blue flame; then his operating knives, which he placed to hand; and last a round wooden stake, some two and a half or three inches thick and about three feet long. one end of it was hardened by charring in the fire, and was sharpened to a fine point. with this stake came a heavy hammer, such as in households is used in the coal-cellar for breaking the lumps. to me, a doctor's preparations for work of any kind are stimulating and bracing, but the effect of these things on both arthur and quincey was to cause them a sort of consternation. they both, however, kept their courage, and remained silent and quiet. when all was ready, van helsing said: "before we do anything, let me tell you this; it is out of the lore and experience of the ancients and of all those who have studied the powers of the un-dead. when they become such, there comes with the change the curse of immortality; they cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world; for all that die from the preying of the un-dead become themselves un-dead, and prey on their kind. and so the circle goes on ever widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water. friend arthur, if you had met that kiss which you know of before poor lucy die; or again, last night when you open your arms to her, you would in time, when you had died, have become nosferatu, as they call it in eastern europe, and would all time make more of those un-deads that so have fill us with horror. the career of this so unhappy dear lady is but just begun. those children whose blood she suck are not as yet so much the worse; but if she live on, un-dead, more and more they lose their blood and by her power over them they come to her; and so she draw their blood with that so wicked mouth. but if she die in truth, then all cease; the tiny wounds of the throats disappear, and they go back to their plays unknowing ever of what has been. but of the most blessed of all, when this now un-dead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor lady whom we love shall again be free. instead of working wickedness by night and growing more debased in the assimilation of it by day, she shall take her place with the other angels. so that, my friend, it will be a blessed hand for her that shall strike the blow that sets her free. to this i am willing; but is there none amongst us who has a better right? will it be no joy to think of hereafter in the silence of the night when sleep is not: 'it was my hand that sent her to the stars; it was the hand of him that loved her best; the hand that of all she would herself have chosen, had it been to her to choose?' tell me if there be such a one amongst us?" we all looked at arthur. he saw, too, what we all did, the infinite kindness which suggested that his should be the hand which would restore lucy to us as a holy, and not an unholy, memory; he stepped forward and said bravely, though his hand trembled, and his face was as pale as snow: "my true friend, from the bottom of my broken heart i thank you. tell me what i am to do, and i shall not falter!" van helsing laid a hand on his shoulder, and said: "brave lad! a moment's courage, and it is done. this stake must be driven through her. it will be a fearful ordealbe not deceived in thatbut it will be only a short time, and you will then rejoice more than your pain was great; from this grim tomb you will emerge as though you tread on air. but you must not falter when once you have begun. only think that we, your true friends, are round you, and that we pray for you all the time." "go on," said arthur hoarsely. "tell me what i am to do." "take this stake in your left hand, ready to place the point over the heart, and the hammer in your right. then when we begin our prayer for the deadi shall read him, i have here the book, and the others shall followstrike in god's name, that so all may be well with the dead that we love and that the un-dead pass away." arthur took the stake and the hammer, and when once his mind was set on action his hands never trembled nor even quivered. van helsing opened his missal and began to read, and quincey and i followed as well as we could. arthur placed the point over the heart, and as i looked i could see its dint in the white flesh. then he struck with all his might. the thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. the body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. but arthur never faltered. he looked like a figure of thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. his face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through it; the sight of it gave us courage, so that our voices seemed to ring through the little vault. and then the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and the teeth seemed to champ, and the face to quiver. finally it lay still. the terrible task was over. the hammer fell from arthur's hand. he reeled and would have fallen had we not caught him. the great drops of sweat sprang from his forehead, and his breath came in broken gasps. it had indeed been an awful strain on him; and had he not been forced to his task by more than human considerations he could never have gone through with it. for a few minutes we were so taken up with him that we did not look towards the coffin. when we did, however, a murmur of startled surprise ran from one to the other of us, we gazed so eagerly that arthur rose, for he had been seated on the ground, and came and looked too; and then a glad, strange light broke over his face and dispelled altogether the gloom of horror that lay upon it. there, in the coffin lay no longer the foul thing that we had so dreaded and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as a privilege to the one best entitled to it, but lucy as we had seen her in her life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity. true that there were there, as we had seen them in life, the traces of care and pain and waste; but these were all dear to us, for they marked her truth to what we knew. one and all we felt that the holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign forever. van helsing came and laid his hand on arthur's shoulder, and said to him: "and now, arthur, my friend, dear lad, am i not forgiven?" the reaction of the terrible strain came as he took the old man's hand in his, and raising it to his lips, pressed it, and said: "forgiven! god bless you that you have given my dear one her soul again, and me peace." he put his hands on the professor's shoulder, and laying his head on his breast, cried for a while silently, whilst we stood unmoving. when he raised his head van helsing said to him: "and now, my child, you may kiss her. kiss her dead lips if you will, as she would have you to, if for her to choose. for she is not a grinning devil nownot any more a foul thing for all eternity. no longer she is the devil's un-dead. she is god's true dead, whose soul is with him!" arthur bent and kissed her, and then we sent him and quincey out of the tomb; the professor and i sawed the top off the stake, leaving the point of it in the body. then we cut off the head and filled the mouth with garlic. we soldered up the leaden coffin, screwed on the coffin-lid, and gathering up our belongings, came away. when the professor locked the door he gave the key to arthur. outside the air was sweet, the sun shone, and the birds sang, and it seemed as if all nature were tuned to a different pitch. there was gladness and mirth and peace everywhere, for we were at rest ourselves on one account, and we were glad, though it was with a tempered joy. before we moved away van helsing said: "now, my friends, one step of our work is done, one the most harrowing to ourselves. but there remains a greater task: to find out the author of all this our sorrow and to stamp him out. i have clues which we can follow; but it is a long task, and a difficult, and there is danger in it, and pain. shall you not all help me? we have learned to believe, all of usis it not so? and since so, do we not see our duty? yes! and do we not promise to go on to the better end?" each in turn, we took his hand, and the promise was made. then said the professor as we moved off: "two nights hence you shall meet with me and dine together at seven of the clock with friend john. i shall entreat two others, two that you know not as yet; and i shall be ready to all our work show and our plans unfold. friend john, you come with me home, for i have much to consult about, and you can help me. to-night i leave for amsterdam, but shall return to-morrow night. and then begins our great quest. but first i shall have much to say, so that you may know what is to do and to dread. then our promise shall be made to each other anew; for there is a terrible task before us, and once our feet are on the ploughshare, we must not draw back." chapter xvii. dr. seward's diary. when we arrived at the berkeley hotel, van helsing found a telegram waiting for him: "am coming up by train. jonathan at whitby. important news.mina harker." the professor was delighted. "ah, that wonderful madam mina," he said, "pearl among women! she arrive, but i cannot stay. she must go to your house, friend john. you must meet her at the station. telegraph her enroute, so that she may be prepared." when the wire was despatched he had a cup of tea; over it he told me of a diary kept by jonathan harker when abroad, and gave me a typewritten copy of it, as also of mrs. harker's diary at whitby. "take these," he said, "and study them well. when i have returned you will be master of all the facts, and we can then better enter on our inquisition. keep them safe, for there is in them much of treasure. you will need all your faith, even you who have had such an experience as that of to-day. what is here told," he laid his hand heavily and gravely on the packet of papers as he spoke, "may be the beginning of the end to you and me and many another; or it may sound the knell of the un-dead who walk the earth. read all, i pray you, with the open mind; and if you can add in any way to the story here told do so, for it is all-important. you have kept diary of all these so strange things; is it not so? yes! then we shall go through all these together when that we meet." he then made ready for his departure, and shortly after drove off to liverpool street. i took my way to paddington, where i arrived about fifteen minutes before the train came in. the crowd melted away, after the bustling fashion common to arrival platforms; and i was beginning to feel uneasy, last i might miss my guest, when a sweet-faced, dainty-looking girl stepped up to me, and, after a quick glance, said: "dr. seward, is it not?" "and you are mrs. harker!" i answered at once; whereupon she held out her hand. "i knew you from the description of poor dear lucy, but-" she stopped suddenly, and a quick blush overspread her face. the blush that rose to my own cheeks somehow set us both at ease, for it was a tacit answer to her own. i got her luggage, which included a typewriter, and we took the underground to fenchurch street, after i had sent a wire to my housekeeper to have a sitting-room and bedroom prepared at once for mrs. harker. in due time we arrived. she knew, of course, that the place was a lunatic asylum, but i could see that she was unable to repress a shudder when we entered. she told me that, if she might, she would come presently to my study, as she had much to say. so here i am finishing my entry in my phonograph diary whilst i await her. as yet i have not had the chance of looking at the papers which van helsing left with me, though they lie open before me. i must get her interested in something, so that i may have an opportunity of reading them. she does not know how precious time is, or what a task we have in hand. i must be careful not to frighten her. here she is! mina harker's journal. 29 september.after i had tidied myself, i went down to dr. seward's study. at the door i paused a moment, for i thought i heard him talking with some one. as, however, he had pressed me to be quick, i knocked at the door, and on his calling out, "come in," i entered. to my intense surprise, there was no one with him. he was quite alone, and on the table opposite him was what i knew at once from the description to be a phonograph. i had never seen one, and was much interested. "i hope i did not keep you waiting," i said; "but i stayed at the door as i heard you talking, and thought there was some one with you." "oh," he replied with a smile, "i was only entering my diary." "your diary?" i asked him in surprise. "yes," he answered. "i keep it in this." as he spoke he laid his hand on the phonograph. i felt quite excited over it, and blurted out: "why, this beats even shorthand! may i hear it say something?" "certainly," he replied with alacrity, and stood up to put it in train for speaking. then he paused, and a troubled look overspread his face. "the fact is," he began awkwardly, "i only keep my diary in it; and as it is entirelyalmost entirelyabout my cases, it may be awkwardthat is, i mean"he stopped, and i tried to help him out of his embarrassment: "you helped to attend dear lucy at the end. let me hear how she died; for all that i know of her, i shall be very grateful. she was very, very dear to me." to my surprise, he answered, with a horrorstruck look in his face "tell you of her death? not for the wide world!" "why not?" i asked, for some grave, terrible feeling was coming over me. again he paused, and i could see that he was trying to invent an excuse. at length he stammered out: "you see, i do not know how to pick out any particular part of the diary." even while he was speaking an idea dawned upon him, and he said with unconscious simplicity, in a different voice, and with the naivete of a child: "that's quite true, upon my honour. honest indian!" i could not but smile, at which he grimaced. "i gave myself away that time!" he said. "but do you know that, although i have kept the diary for months past, it never once struck me how i was going to find any particular part of it in case i wanted to look it up?" by this time my mind was made up that the diary of a doctor who attended lucy might have something to add to the sum of our knowledge of that terrible being, and i said boldly; "then, dr. seward, you had better let me copy it out for you on my typewriter." he grew to a positively deathly pallor as he said: "no! no! no! for all the world, i wouldn't let you know that terrible story!" then it was terrible; my intuition was right! for a moment i thought, and as my eyes ranged the room, unconsciously looking for something or some opportunity to aid me, they lit on the great batch of typewriting on the table. his eyes caught the look in mine, and, without his thinking, followed their direction. as they saw the parcel he realised my meaning. "you do not know me." i said. "when you have read those papersmy own diary and my husband's also, which i have typedyou will know me better. i have not faltered in giving every thought of my own heart in this cause; but, of course, you do not know meyet; and i must not expect you to trust me so far." he is certainly a man of noble nature; poor dear lucy was right about him. he stood up and opened a large drawer, in which were arranged in order a number of hollow cylinders of metal covered with dark wax, and said: "you are quite right. i did not trust you because i did not know you. but i know you now; and let me say that i should have known you long ago. i know that lucy told you of me; she told me of you too. may i make the only atonement in my power? take the cylinders and hear themthe first half-dozen of them are personal to me, and they will not horrify you; then you will know me better. dinner will by then be ready. in the meantime i shall read over some of these documents, and shall be better able to understand certain things." he carried the phonograph himself up to my sitting-room and adjusted it for me. now i shall learn something pleasant, i am sure; for it will tell me the other side of a true love episode of which i know one side already... dr. seward's diary. 29 september.i was so absorbed in that wonderful diary of jonathan harker and that other of his wife that i let the time run on without thinking. mrs. harker was not down when the maid came to announce dinner, so i said: "she is possibly tired; let dinner wait an hour;" and i went on with my work. i had just finished mrs. harker's diary, when she came in. she looked sweetly pretty, but very sad, and her eyes were flushed with crying. this somehow moved me much. of late i have had cause for tears, god knows! but the relief of them was denied me; and now the sight of those sweet eyes, brightened with recent tears, went straight to my heart. so i said as gently as i could: "i greatly fear i have distressed you." "oh no, not distressed me," she replied, "but i have been more touched than i can say by your grief. that is a wonderful machine, but it is cruelly true. it told me, in its very tones, the anguish of your heart. it was like a soul crying out to almighty god. no one must hear them spoken ever again! see. i have tried to be useful. i have copied out the words on my typewriter, and none other need now hear your heart beat, as i did." "no one need ever know, shall ever know." i said in a low voice. she laid her hand on mine and said very gravely: "ah, but they must!" "must! but why?" i asked. "because it is a part of the terrible story, a part of poor dear lucy's death and all that led to it; because in the struggle which we have before us to rid the earth of this terrible monster we must have all the knowledge and all the help which we can get. i think that the cylinders which you gave me contained more than you intended me to know; but i can see that there are in your record many lights to this dark mystery. you will let me help, will you not? i know all up to a certain point; and i see already, though your diary only took me to 7 september, how poor lucy was beset, and how her terrible doom was being wrought out. jonathan and i have been working day and night since professor van helsing saw us. he is gone to whitby to get more information, and he will be here to-morrow to help us. we need have no secrets amongst us; working together and with absolute trust, we can surely be stronger than if some of us were in the dark." she looked at me so appealingly, and at the same time manifested such courage and resolution in her bearing, that i gave in at once to her wishes. "you shall," i said, "do as you like in the matter. god forgive me if i do wrong! there are terrible things yet to learn of, but if you so have so far travelled on the road to poor lucy's death, you will not be content, i know, to remain in the dark. nay, the endthe very endmay give you a gleam of peace. come, there is dinner. we must keep one another strong for what is before us; we have a cruel and dreadful task. when you have eaten you shall learn the rest, and i shall answer any questions you askif there be anything which you do not understand, though it was apparent to us who were present." mina harker's journal. 29 september.after dinner i came with dr. seward to his study. he brought back the phonograph from my room, and i took my typewriter. he placed me in a comfortable chair, and arranged the phonograph so that i could touch it without getting up, and showed me how to stop it in case i should want to pause. then he very thoughtfully, took a chair, with his back to me, so that i might be as free as possible, and began to read. i put the forked metal to my ears and listened. when the terrible story of lucy's death, andand all that followed, was done, i lay back in my chair powerless. fortunately i am not of a fainting disposition. when dr. seward saw me he jumped up with a horrified exclamation, and hurriedly taking a case-bottle from a cupboard, gave me some brandy, which in a few minutes somewhat restored me. my brain was all in a whirl, and only that there came through all the multitude of horrors, the holy ray of light that my dear, dear lucy was at lest at peace, i do not think i could have borne it without making a scene. it is all so wild, and mysterious, and strange that if i had not known jonathan's experience in transylvania i could not have believed. as it was, i didn't know what to believe, and so got out of my difficulty by attending to something else. i took the cover off my typewriter, and said to dr. seward: "let me write this all out now. we must be ready for dr. van helsing when he comes. i have sent a telegram to jonathan to come on here when he arrives in london from whitby. in this matter dates are everything, and i think that if we get all our material ready, and have every item put in chronological order, we shall have done much. you tell me that lord godalming and mr. morris are coming too. let us be able to tell them when they come." he accordingly set the phonograph at a slow pace, and i began to typewrite from the beginning of the seventh cylinder. i used manifold, and so took three copies of the diary just as i had done with all the rest. it was late when i got through, but dr. seward went about his work of going his round of the patients; when he had finished he came back and sat near me, reading, so that i did not feel too lonely whilst i worked. how good and thoughtful he is; the world seems full of good meneven if there are monsters in it. before i left him i remembered what jonathan put in his diary of the professor's perturbation at reading something in an evening paper at the station at exeter; so, seeing that dr. seward keeps his newspapers, i borrowed the files of "the westminister gazette" and "the pall mall gazette," and took them to my room. i remember how much "the dailygraph" and "the whitby gazette." of which i had made cuttings, helped us to understand the terrible events at whitby when count dracula landed, so i shall look through the evening papers since then, and perhaps i shall get some new light. i am not sleepy, and the work will help to keep me quiet. dr. seward's diary. 30 september.mr. harker arrived at nine o'clock. he had got his wife's wire just before starting. he is uncommonly clever, if one can judge from his face, and full of energy. if his journal be trueand judging by one's own wonderful experiences, it must behe is also a man of great nerve. that going down to the vault a second time was a remarkable piece of daring. after reading his account of it i was prepared to meet a good specimen of manhood, but hardly the quiet, business-like gentleman who came here to-day. later.after lunch harker and his wife went back to their own room, and as i passed a while ago i heard the click of the typewriter. they are hard at it. mrs. harker says that they are knitting together in chronological order every scrap of evidence they have. harker has got the letters between the consignee of the boxes at whitby and the carriers in london who took charge of them. he is now reading his wife's typescript of my diary. i wonder what they make out of it. here it is... strange that it never struck me that the very next house might be the count's hiding-place! goodness knows that we had enough clues from the conduct of the patient renfield! the bundle of letters relating to the purchase of the house were with the typescript. oh, if we had only had them earlier we might have saved poor lucy! stop; that way madness lies! harker has gone back, and is again collating his material. he says that by dinner-time they will be able to show a whole connected narrative. he thinks that in the meantime i should see renfield, as hitherto he has been a sort of index to the coming and going of the count. i hardly see this yet, but when i get at the dates i suppose i shall. what a good thing that mrs. harker put my cylinders into type! we never could have found the dates otherwise... i found renfield sitting placidly in his room with his hands folded, smiling benignly. at the moment he seemed as sane as any one i ever saw. i sat down and talked with him on a lot of subjects, all of which he treated naturally. he then, of his own accord, spoke of going home, a subject he has never mentioned to my knowledge during his sojourn here. in fact, he spoke quite confidently of getting his discharge at once. i believe that had i not had the chat with harker and read the letters and the dates of his outbursts, i should have been prepared to sign for him after a brief time of observation. as it is, i am darkly suspicious. all those outbreaks were in some way linked with the proximity of the count. what then does his absolute content mean? can it be that his instinct is satisfied as to the vampire's ultimate triumph? stay; he is himself zoophagous, and in his wild ravings outside the chapel door of the deserted house he always spoke of "master." this all seems confirmation of our idea. however, after a while i came away; my friend is just a little too sane at present to make it safe to probe him too deep with questions. he might begin to think, and then-! so i came away. i mistrust these quiet moods of his; so i have given the attendant a hint to look closely after him, and to have a strait-waistcoat ready in case of need. jonathan harker's journal. 29 september, in train to london.when i received mr. billington's courteous message that he would give me any information in his power i thought it best to go down to whitby and make, on the spot, such inquiries as i wanted. it was now my object to trace that horrid cargo of the count's to its place in london. later, we may be able to deal with it. billington junior, a nice lad, met me at the station, and brought me to his father's house, where they had decided that i must stay the night. they are hospitable, with true yorkshire hospitality: give a guest everything, and leave him free to do as he likes. they all knew that i was busy, and that my stay was short, and mr. billington had ready in his office all the papers concerning the consignment of boxes. it gave me almost a turn to see again one of the letters which i had seen on the count's table before i knew of his diabolical plans. everything had been carefully thought out, and done systematically and with precision. he seemed to have been prepared for every obstacle which might be placed by accident in the way of his intentions being carried out. to use an americanism, he had "taken no chances," and the absolute accuracy with which his instructions were fulfilled, was simply the logical result of his care. i saw the invoice, and took note of it: "fifty cases of common earth, to be used for experimental purposes." also the copy of letter to carter paterson, and their reply, of both of these i got copies. this was all the information mr. billington could give me, so i went down to the port and saw the coastguards, the customs officers and the harbour-master. they had all something to say of the strange entry of the ship, which is already taking its place in local tradition; but no one could add to the simple description. "fifty cases of common earth." i then saw the station-master, who kindly put me in communication with the men who had actually received the boxes. their tally was exact with the list, and they had nothing to add except that the boxes were "main and mortal heavy," and that shifting them was dry work. one of them added that it was hard lines that there wasn't any gentleman "such-like as yourself, squire," to show some sort of appreciation of their efforts in a liquid form; another put in a rider that the thirst then generated was such that even the time which had elapsed had not completely allayed it. needless to add, i took care before leaving to lift, for ever and adequately, this source of reproach. 30 september.the station-master was good enough to give me a line to his old companion the station-master at king's cross, so that when i arrived there in the morning i was able to ask him about the arrival of the boxes. he, too, put me at once in communication with the proper officials, and i saw that their tally was correct with the original invoice. the opportunities of acquiring an abnormal thirst had been here limited; a noble use of them, had, however, been made, and again i was compelled to deal with the result in an ex post facto manner. from thence i went on to carter patterson's central office, where i met with the utmost courtesy. they looked up the transaction in their day-book and letter-book, and at once telephoned to their king's cross office for more details. by good fortune, the men who did the teaming were waiting for work, and the official at once sent them over, sending also by one of them the way-bill and all the papers connected with the delivery of the boxes at carfax. here again i found the tally agreeing exactly; the carriers' men were able to supplement the paucity of the written words with a few details. these, were i shortly found, connected almost solely with the dusty nature of the job, and of the consequent thirst engendered in the operators. on my affording an opportunity, through the medium of the currency of the realm, of the allaying, at a later period, this beneficial evil, one of the men remarked: "that 'ere 'ouse, guv'nor, is the rummiest i ever was in. blyme! but it ain't been touched sence a hundred years. there was dust that thick in the place that you might have slep' on it without 'urtin' of yer bones; an' the place was that neglected that yer might 'ave smelled ole jerusalem in it. but the ole chappelthat took the cike, that did! me and my mate, we thort we wouldn't never git out quick enough. lor, i wouldn't take less nor a quid a moment to stay there arter dark." having been in the house, i could well believe him; but if he knew what i know, he would, i think, have raised his terms. of one thing i am now satisfied: that all the boxes which arrived at whitby from varna in the demeter were safely deposited in the old chapel of carfax. there should be fifty of them there, unless any have since been removedas from dr. seward's diary i fear. i shall try to see the carter who took away the boxes from carfax when renfield attacked them. by following up this clue we may learn a good deal. later.mina and i have worked all day, and we have put all the papers into order. mina harker's journal. 30 september,i am so glad that i hardly know how to contain myself. it is, i suppose, the reaction from the haunting fear which i have had: that this terrible affair and the reopening of his old wound might act detrimentally on jonathan. i saw him leave for whitby with as brave a face as i could, but i was sick with apprehension. the effort has, however, done him good. he was never so resolute, never so strong, never so full of volcanic energy, as at present. it is just as that dear, this good professor van helsing said: he is true grit, and he improves under strain that would kill a weaker nature. he came back full of life and hope and determination; we have got everything in order for to-night. i feel myself quite wild with excitement. i suppose one ought to pity any thing so hunted as is the count. that is just it: this thing is not humannot even beast. to read dr. seward's account of poor lucy's death, and what followed, is enough to dry up the springs of pity in one's heart. later.lord godalming and mr. morris arrived earlier than we expected. dr. seward was out on business, and had taken jonathan with him, so i had to see them. it was to me a painful meeting, for it brought back all poor dear lucy's hopes of only a few months ago. of course they had heard lucy speak to me, and it seemed that dr. van helsing, too, has been quite "blowing my trumpet," as mr. morris expressed it. poor fellows, neither of them is aware that i know all about the proposals they made to lucy. they did not quite know what to say or do, as they were ignorant of the amount of my knowledge; so they had to keep on neutral subjects. however, i thought the matter over, and came to the conclusion that the best thing i could do would be to post them in affairs right up to date. i knew from dr. seward's diary that they had been at lucy's deathher real deathand that i need not fear to betray any secret before the time. so i told them, as well as i could, that i had read all the papers and diaries, and that my husband and i, having typewritten them, had just finished putting them in order. i gave them each a copy to read in the library. when lord godalming got his and turned it overit does make a pretty good pilehe said: "did you write all this, mrs. harker?" i nodded, and he went on: "i don't quite see the drift of it; but you people are all so good and kind, and have been working so earnestly and so energetically, that all i can do is to accept your ideas blindfold and try to help you. i have had one lesson already in accepting facts that should make a man humble to the last hour of his life. besides, i know you loved my poor lucy-" here he turned away and covered his face with his hands. i could hear the tears in his voice. mr. morris, with instinctive delicacy just laid a hand for a moment on his shoulder, and then walked quietly out of the room. i suppose there is something in woman's nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood; for when lord godalming found himself alone with me he sat down on the sofa and gave way utterly and openly. i sat down beside him and took his hand. i hope he didn't think it forward of me, and that if he ever thinks of it afterwards he never will have such a thought. there i wrong him; i know he never willhe is too true a gentleman. i said to him, for i could see that his heart was breaking: "i loved dear lucy, and i know what she was to you, and what you were to her. she and i were like sisters; and now she is gone, will you not let me be like a sister to you in your trouble? i know what sorrows you have had, though i cannot measure the depth of them. if sympathy and pity can help in your affliction, won't you let me be of some little servicefor lucy's sake?" in an instant the poor dear fellow was overwhelmed with grief. it seemed to me that all that he had of late been suffering in silence found a vent at once. he grew quite hysterical, and raising his open hands, beat his palms together in a perfect agony of grief. he stood up and then sat down again, and the tears rained down his cheeks. i felt an infinite pity for him, and opened my arms unthinkingly. with a sob he laid his head on my shoulder, and cried like a wearied child, whilst he shook with emotion. we women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked; i felt this big, sorrowing man's head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that some day may he on my bosom, and i stroked his hair as though he were my own child. i never thought at the time how strange it all was. after a little bit his sobs ceased, and he raised himself with an apology, though he made no disguise of his emotion. he told me that for days and nights pastweary days and sleepless nightshe had been unable to speak with any one, as a man must speak in his time of sorrow. there was no woman whose sympathy could be given to him, or with whom, owing to the terrible circumstance with which his sorrow was surrounded, he could speak freely. "i know now how i suffered," he said, as he dried his eyes, "but i do not know even yetand none other can ever knowhow much your sweet sympathy has been to me to-day. i shall know better in time; and believe me that, though i am not ungrateful now, my gratitude will grow with my understanding. you will let me be like a brother, will you not, for all our livesfor dear lucy's sake?" "for dear lucy's sake," i said as we clasped hands. "ay, and for your own sake," he added, "for if a man's esteem and gratitude are ever worth the winning, you have won mine to-day. if ever the future should bring to you a time when you need a man's help, believe me, you will not call in vain. god grant that no such time may ever come to you to break the sunshine of your life; but if it should ever come, promise me that you will let me know." he was so earnest, and his sorrow was so fresh, that i felt it would comfort him, so i said: "i promise." as i came along the corridor i saw mr. morris looking out of a window. he turned as he heard my footsteps. "how is art?" he said. then noticing my red eyes, he went on; "ah, i see you have been comforting him. poor old fellow! he needs it. no one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart; and he had no one to comfort him." he bore his own trouble so bravely that my heart bled for him. i saw the manuscript in his hand, and i knew that when he read it he would realise how much i knew; so i said to him: "i wish i could comfort all who suffer from the heart. will you let me be your friend, and will you come to me for comfort if you need it? you will know, later on, why i speak." he saw that i was in earnest, and stooping, took my hand, and raising it to his lips, kissed it. it seemed but poor comfort to so brave and unselfish a soul, and impulsively i bent over and kissed him. the tears rose in his eyes, and there was a momentary choking in his throat; he said quite calmly: "little girl, you will never regret that true-hearted kindness, so long as ever you live!" then he went into the study to his friend. "little girl!"the very words he had used to lucy, and oh, but he proved himself a friend! chapter xviii. dr. seward's diary. 30 september.i got home at five o'clock, and found that godalming and morris had not only arrived, but had already studied the transcript of the various diaries and letters which harker and his wonderful wife had made and arranged. harker had not yet returned from his visit to the carriers' men, of whom dr. hennessey had written to me. mrs. harker gave us a cup of tea, and i can honestly say that, for the first time since i have lived in it, this old house seemed like home. when we had finished, mrs. harker said: "dr. seward, may i ask a favour? i want to see your patient, mr. renfield. do let me see him. what you have said of him in your diary interests me so much!" she looked so appealing and so pretty that i could not refuse her, and there was no possible reason why i should; so i took her with me. when i went into the room, i told the man that a lady would like to see him; to which he simply answered: "why?" "she is going through the house, and wants to see every one in it," i answered. "oh, very well," he said; "let her come in, by all means; but just wait a minute till i tidy up the place." his method of tidying was peculiar: he simply swallowed all the flies and spiders in the boxes before i could stop him. it was quite evident that he feared, or was jealous of, some interference. when he had got through his disgusting task, he said cheerfully: "let the lady come in," and sat down on the edge of his bed with his head down, but with his eyelids raised so that he could see her as she entered. for a moment i thought that he might have some homicidal intent; i remembered how quiet he had been just before he attacked me in my own study, and i took care to stand where i could seize him at once if he attempted to make a spring at her. she came into the room with an easy gracefulness which would at once command the respect of any lunaticfor easiness is one of the qualities mad people most respect. she walked over to him, smiling pleasantly, and held out her hand. "good-evening, mr. renfield," said she. "you see, i know you, for dr. seward has told me of you." he made no immediate reply, but eyed her all over intently with a set frown on his face. this look gave way to one of wonder, which merged in doubt; then, to my intense astonishment, he said: "you're not the girl the doctor wanted to marry, are you? you can't be, you know, for she's dead." mrs. harker smiled sweetly as she replied: "oh no! i have a husband of my own, to whom i was married before i ever saw dr. seward, or he me. i am mrs. harker." "then what are you doing here?" "my husband and i are staying on a visit with dr. seward." "then don't stay." "but why not?" i thought that this style of conversation might not be pleasant to mrs. harker, any more than it was to me, so i joined in: "how did you know i wanted to marry any one?" his reply was simply contemptuous, given in a pause in which he turned his eyes from mrs. harker to me, instantly turning them back again: "what an asinine question!" "i don't see that at all, mr. renfield," said mrs. harker, at once championing me. he replied to her with as much courtesy and respect as he had shown contempt to me: "you will, of course, understand, mrs. harker, that when a man is so loved and honoured as our host is, everything regarding him is of interest in our little community. dr. seward is loved not only by his household and his friends, but even by his patients, who, being some of them hardly in mental equilibrium, are apt to distort causes and effects. since i myself have been an inmate of a lunatic asylum, i cannot but notice that the sophistic tendencies of some of its inmates lean towards the errors of non causa and ignoratio elenchi." i positively opened my eyes at this new development. here was my own pet lunaticthe most pronounced of his type that i had ever met withtalking elemental philosophy, and with the manner of a polished gentleman. i wonder if it was mrs. harker's presence which had touched some chord in his memory. if this new phase was spontaneous, or in any way due to her unconscious influence, she must have some rare gift or power. we continued to talk for some time; and, seeing that he was seemingly quite reasonable, she ventured, looking at me questioningly as she began, to lead him to his favourite topic. i was again astonished, for he addressed himself to the question with the impartiality of the completest sanity: he even took himself as an example when he mentioned certain things. "why, i myself am an instance of a man who had a strange belief. indeed, it was no wonder that my friends were alarmed, and insisted on my being put under control. i used to fancy that life was a positive and perpetual entity and that by consuming a multitude of live things, no matter how low in the scale of creation, one might indefinitely prolong life. at times i held the belief so strongly that i actually tried to take human life. the doctor here will bear me out that on one occasion i tried to kill him for the purpose of strengthening my vital powers by the assimilation with my own body of his life through the medium of his blood-relying, of course, upon the scriptual phrase. 'for the blood is the life.' though, indeed, the vendor of a certain nostrum has vulgarised the truism to the very point of contempt. isn't that true, doctor?" i nodded assent, for i was so amazed that i hardly knew what to either think or say; it was hard to imagine that i had seen him eat up his spiders and flies not five minutes before. looking at my watch, i saw that i should go to the station to meet van helsing, so i told mrs. harker that it was time to leave. she came at once, after saying pleasantly to mr. renfield: "good-bye, and i hope i may see you often, under auspices pleasanter to yourself," to which, to my astonishment, he replied: "good-bye, my dear. i pray god i may never see your sweet face again. may he bless and keep you!" when i went to the station to meet van helsing i left the boys behind me. poor art seemed more cheerful than he has been since lucy first took ill, and quincey is more like his own bright self than he has been for many a long day. van helsing stepped from the carriage with the eager nimbleness of a boy. he saw me at once, and rushed up to me, saying: "ah, friend john, how goes all? well? so! i have been busy, for i come here to stay if need be. all affairs are settled with me, and i have much to tell. madame mina is with you? yes. and her so fine husband? and arthur and my friend quincey, they are with you, too? good!" as i drove to the house i told him of what had passed, and of how my own diary had come to be of some use through mrs. harker's suggestion; at which the professor interrupted me: "ah, that wonderful madam mina! she has man's braina brain that a man should have were he much giftedand woman's heart. the good god fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when he made that so good combination. friend john, up to now fortune has made that woman of help to us; after to-night she must not have to do with this terrible affair. it is not good that she run a risk so great. we men are determinednay, are we not pledged?to destroy this monster; but it is no part for a woman. even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may sufferboth in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams. and, besides, she is young woman and not so long married; there may be other things to think of some time, if not now. you tell me she has wrote all, then she must consult with us; but to-morrow she say good-bye to this work, and we go alone." i agreed heartily with him, and then i told him what we had found in his absence: that the house which dracula had bought was the very next one to my own. he was amazed, and a great concern seemed to come on him. "oh that we had known it before!" he said, "for then we might have reached him in time to save poor lucy. however, 'the milk that is spilt cries not out afterwards,' as you say. we shall not think of that, but go on our way to the end." then he fell into a silence that lasted till we entered my own gateway. before we went to prepare for dinner he said to mrs. harker: "i am told, madam mina, by my friend john that you and your husband have put up in exact order all things that have been, up to this moment." "not up to this moment, professor," she said impulsively, "but up to this morning." "but why not up to now? we have seen hitherto how good light all the little things have made. we have told our secrets, and yet no one who has told is the worse for it." mrs. harker began to blush, and taking a paper from her pockets, she said: "dr. van helsing, will you read this, and tell me if it must go in. it is my record of to-day. i too have seen the need of putting down at present everything, however trivial; but there is little in this except what is personal. must it go in?" the professor read it over gravely, and handed it back, saying: "it need not go in if you do not wish it; but i pray that it may. it can but make your husband love you the more, and all us, your friends, more honour youas well as more esteem and love." she took it back with another blush and a bright smile. and so now, up to this very hour, all the records we have are complete and in order. the professor took away one copy to study after dinner, and before our meeting, which is fixed for nine o'clock. the rest of us have already read everything; so when we meet in the study we shall all be informed as to facts, and can arrange our plan of battle with this terrible and mysterious enemy. mina harker's journal. 30 september.when we met in dr. seward's study two hours after dinner, which had been at six o'clock, we unconsciously formed a sort of board or committee. professor van helsing took the head of the table, to which dr. seward motioned him as he came into the room. he made me sit next to him on his right, and asked me to act as secretary; jonathan sat next to me. opposite us were lord godalming, dr. seward, and mr. morrislord godalming being next the professor, and dr. seward in the centre. the professor said: "i may, i suppose, take it that we are all acquainted with the facts that are in these papers." we all expressed assent, and he went on: "then it were, i think good that i tell you something of the kind of enemy with which we have to deal. i shall then make it known to you something of the history of this man, which has been ascertained for me. so we then can discuss how we shall act, and can take our measure according. "there are such beings as vampires; some of us have evidence that they exist. even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples. i admit that at the first i was sceptic. were it not that through long years i have train myself to keep an open mind, i could not have believe until such time as that fact thunder on my ear. 'see! see! i prove; i prove,' alas! had i known at the first what now i knownay, had i even guess at himone so precious life had been spared to many of us who did love her. but that is gone; and we must so work, that other poor souls perish not, whilst we can save. the nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once. he is only stronger; and being stronger, have yet more power to work evil. this vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men; he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages; he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within limitations, appear at will when, and where, and ill any of the forms that are to him; he can, within his range, direct the elements; the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command all the meaner things: the rat, and the owl, and the batthe moth, and the fox, and the wolf, he can grow and become small; and he can at times vanish and come unknown. how then are we to begin our strife to destroy him? how shall we find his where, and having found it, how can we destroy? my friends, this is much; it is a terrible task that we undertake, and there may be consequence to make the brave shudder. for if we fail in this our fight he must surely win; and then where end we? life is nothings; i heed him not. but to fail here, is not mere life or death. it is that we become as him; that we henceforward become foul things of the night like himwithout heart or conscience, preying on the bodies and the souls of those we love best. to us for ever are the gates of heaven shut: for who shall open them to us again? we go on for all time abhorred by all; a blot on the face of god's sunshine; an arrow in the side of him who died for man. but we are face to face with duty; and in such case must we shrink? for me, i say, no; but then i am old, and life, with his sunshine, his fair places, his song of birds, his music and his love, lie far behind. you others are young. some have seen sorrow; but there are fair days yet in store. what say you?" whilst he was speaking jonathan had taken my hand. i feared, oh so much, that the appalling nature of our danger was overcoming him when i saw his hand stretch out; but it was life to me to feel its touchso strong, so self-reliant, so resolute. a brave man's hand can speak for itself, it does not even need a woman's love to hear its music. when the professor had done speaking my husband looked in my eyes, and i in his; there was no need for speaking between us. "i answer for mina and myself," he said. "count me in, professor," said mr. quincey morris, laconically as usual. "i am with you," said lord godalming, "for lucy's sake, if for no other reason." dr. dr. seward simply nodded. the professor stood up and, after laying his golden crucifix on the table, held out his hand on either side. i took his right hand, and lord godalming his left; jonathan held my right with his left and stretched across to mr. morris. so as we all took hands our solemn compact was made. i felt my heart icy cold, but it did not even occur to me to draw back. we resumed our places, and dr. van helsing went on with a sort of cheerfulness which showed that the serious work had begun. it was to be taken as gravely, and in as businesslike a way, as any other transaction of life: "well, you know what we have to contend against; but we, too, are not without strength. we have on our side power of combinationa power denied to the vampire kind; we have sources of science; we are free to act and think; and the hours of the day and the night are ours equally. in fact, so far as our powers extend, they are unfettered, and we are free to use them. we have self-devotion in a cause, and an end to achieve which is not a selfish one. these things are much. "now let us see how far the general powers arrayed against us are restrict, and how the individual cannot. in fine, let us consider the limitations of the vampire in general, and of this one in particular. "all we have to go upon are traditions and superstitions. these do not at the first appear much, when the matter is one of life and deathnay of more than either life or death. yet must we be satisfied; in the first place because we have to beno other means is at our controland secondly, because, after all, these thingstradition and superstitionare everything. does not the belief in vampires rest for othersthough not, alas! for uson them? a year ago which of us would have received such a possibility, in the midst of our scientific, sceptical, matter-of-fact nineteenth century? we even scouted a belief that we saw justified under our very eyes. take it, then, that the vampire, and the belief in his limitations and his cure, rest for the moment on the same base. for, let me tell you, he is known everywhere that men have been. in old greece, in old rome; he nourish in germany all over, in france, in india, even in the chersonese; and in china, so far from us in all ways, there even is he, and the peoples fear him at this day. he have follow the wake of the berserker icelander, the devil-begotten hun, the slav, the saxon, the magyar. so far, then, we have all we may act upon; and let me tell you that very much of the beliefs are justified by what we have seen in our own so unhappy experience. the vampire live on, and cannot die by mere passing of the time; he can flourish when that he can fatten on the blood of the living. even more, we have seen amongst us that he can even grow younger; that his vital faculties grow strenuous, and seem as though they refresh themselves when his special pabulum is plenty. but he cannot flourish without this diet; he eat not as others. even friend jonathan, who lived with him for weeks, did never see him to eat, never! he throws no shadow; he make in the mirror no reflect, as again jonathan observe. he has the strength of many of his handwitness again jonathan when he shut the door against the wolfs, and when he help him from the diligence too. he can transform himself to wolf, as we gather from the ship arrival in whitby, when he tear open the dog; he can be as bat, as madam mina saw him on the window at whitby, and as friend john saw him fly from this so near house, and as my friend quincey saw him at the window of miss lucy. he can come in mist which he createthat noble ship's captain proved him of this; but, from what we know, the distance he can make this mist is limited, and it can only be round himself. he come on moonlight rays as elemental dustas again jonathan saw those sisters in the castle of dracula. he become so smallwe ourselves saw miss lucy, ere she was at peace, slip through a hairbreadth space at the tomb door. he can, when once he find his way, come out from anything or into anything, no matter how close it be bound or even fused up with fire-solder you call it. he can see in the darkno small power this, in a world which is one half shut from the light. ah, but hear me through. he can do all these things, yet he is not free. nay; he is even more prisoner than the slave of the galley, than the madman in his cell. he cannot go where he lists; he who is not of nature has yet to obey some of nature's lawswhy we know not. he may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come; though afterwards he can come as he please. his power ceases, as does that of all evil things, at the coming of the day. only at certain times can he have limited freedom. if ire be not at the place whither he is bound, he can only change himself at noon or at exact sunrise or sunset. these things are we told, and in this record of ours we have proof by inference. thus, whereas he can do as he will within his limit, when he have his earth-home, his coffin-home, his hell-home, the place unhallowed, as we saw when he went to the grave of the suicide at whitby; still at other time he can only change when the time come. it is said, too, that he can only pass running water at the slack or the flood of the tide. then there are things which so afflict him that he has no power, as the garlic that we know of, and as for things scared, as this symbol, my crucifix, that was amongst us even now when we resolve, to them he is nothing, but in their presence he take his place far off and silent with respect. there are others, too, which i shall tell you of, lest in our seeking we may need them. the branch of wild rose on his coffin keep him that he move not from it; a sacred bullet fired into the coffin kill him so that he be true dead; and as for the stake through him, we know already of its peace; or the cut-off head that giveth rest. we have seen it with our eyes. "thus when we find the habitation of this man-that-was, we can confine him to his coffin and destroy him, if we obey what we know. but he is clever. i have asked my friend arminius, of buda-pesth university, to make his record; and, from all the means that are, he tell me of what he has seen. he must, indeed, have been that voivode dracula who won his name against the turk, over the great river on the very frontier of turkey-land. if it be so, then was he no common man; for in that time, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the 'land beyond the forest.' that mighty brain and that iron resolution went with him to his grave, and are even now arrayed against us. the draculas were, says arminius, a great and noble race, though now and again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with the evil one. they learned his secrets in the scholomance, amongst the mountains over lake hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due. in the records are such words as 'stregoica'witch, 'ordog,' and 'pokol'satan and hell; and in one manuscript this very dracula is spoken of as 'wampyr,' which we all understand too well. there have been from the loins of this very one great men and good women, and their graves make sacred the earth where alone this foulness can dwell. for it is not the least of its terrors that this evil thing is rooted deep in all good; in soil barren of holy memories it cannot rest." whilst they were talking mr. morris was looking steadily at the window, and he now got up quietly, and went out of the room. there was a little pause, and then the professor went on: "and now we must settle what we do. we have here much data, and we must proceed to lay out our campaign. we know from the inquiry of jonathan that from the castle to whitby came fifty boxes of earth, all of which were delivered at carfax; we also know that at least some of these boxes have been removed. it seems to the, that our first step should be to ascertain whether all the rest remain in the house beyond that wall where we look to-day; or whether any more have been removed. if the latter, we must trace-" here we were interrupted in a very startling way. outside the house came the sound of a pistol shot; the glass of the window was shattered with a bullet, which, ricochetting from the top of the embrasure, struck the far wall of the room. i am afraid i am at heart a coward, for i shrieked out. the men all jumped to their feet; lord godalming flew over to the window and threw up the sash. as he did so we heard mr. morris's voice without. "sorry! i fear i have alarmed you. i shall come in and tell you about it." a minute later he came in and said: "it was an idiotic thing of me to do, and i ask your pardon, mrs. harker, most sincerely; i fear i must have frightened you terribly. but the fact is that whilst the professor was talking there came a big bat and sat on the window-sill. i have got such a horror of the damned brutes from recent events that i cannot stand then, and i went out to have a shot, as i have been doing of late of evenings whenever i have seen one. you used to laugh at me for it then, art." "did you hit it?" asked dr. van helsing. "i don't know; i fancy not, for it flew away into the wood." without saying any more he took his seat, and the professor began to resume his statement: "we must trace each of these boxes; and when we are ready, we must either capture or kill this monster in his lair; or we must, so to speak, sterilise the earth, so that no more he can seek safety in it. thus in the end we may find him in his form of man between the hours of noon and sunset, and so engage with him when he is at his most weak. "and now for you, madam mina, this night is the end until all be well. you are too precious to us to have such risk. when we part to-night, you no more must question. we shall tell you all in good time. we are men and are able to bear; but you must be our star and our hope, and we shall act all the more free that you are not in the danger, such as we are." all the men, even jonathan, seemed relieved; but it did not seem to me good that they should brave danger and, perhaps, lessen their safetystrength being the best safetythrough care of me; but their minds were made up, and, though it was a bitter pill for me to swallow, i could say nothing, save to accept their chivalrous care of me. mr. morris resumed the discussion: "as there is no time to lose, i vote we have a look at his house right now. time is everything with him; and swift action on our part may save another victim." i own that my heart began to fail me when the time for action came so close, but i did not say anything, for i had a greater fear that if i appeared as a drag or a hindrance to their work, they might even leave me out of their counsels altogether. they have now gone off to carfax, with means to get into the house. manlike, they had told me to go to bed and sleep; as if a woman can sleep when those she loves are in danger! i shall lie down and pretend to sleep, lest jonathan have added anxiety about me when he returns. dr. seward's diary. 1 october, 4 a.m.just as we were about to leave the house, an urgent message was brought to me from renfield to know if i would see him at once, as he had something of the utmost importance to say to me. i told the messenger to say that i would attend to his wishes in the morning; i was busy just at the moment. the attendant added: "he seems very importunate, sir. i have never seen him so eager. i don't know but what, if you don't see him soon, he will have one of his violent fits." i knew the man would not have said this without some cause, so i said: "all right; i'll go now;" and i asked the others to wait a few minutes for me, as i had to go and see my "patient." "take me with you, friend john," said the professor. "his case in your diary interest me much, and it had bearing, too, now and again on our case. i should much like to see him, and especial when his mind is disturbed." "may i come also?" asked lord godalming. "me too?" said quincey morris. "may i come?" said harker. i nodded, and we all went down the passage together. we found him in a state of considerable excitement, but far more rational in his speech and manner than i had ever seen him. there was an unusual understanding of himself, which was unlike anything i had ever met with in a lunatic; and he took it for granted that his reasons would prevail with others entirely sane, we all four went into the room, but none of the others at first said anything. his request was that i would at once release him from the asylum and send him home. this he backed up with arguments regarding his complete recovery, and adduced his own existing sanity. "i appeal to your friends," he said, "they will, perhaps, not mind sitting in judgment on my case. by the way, you have not introduced me." i was so much astonished, that the oddness of introducing a madman in an asylum did not strike me at the moment; and, besides, there was a certain dignity in the man's manner, so much of the habit of equality, that i at once made the introduction: "lord godalming; professor van helsing; mr. quincey morris, of texas; mr. renfield." he shook hands with each of them, saying in turn: "lord godalming, i had the honour of seconding your father at the windham; i grieve to know, by your holding the title, that he is no more. he was a man loved and honoured by all who knew him; and in his youth was, i have heard, the inventor of a burnt rum punch, much patronised on derby night. mr. morris, you should be proud of your great state. its reception into the union was a precedent which may have far-reaching effects hereafter, when the pole and the tropics may hold alliance to the stars and stripes. the power of treaty may yet prove a vast engine of enlargement, when the monroe doctrine takes its true place as a political fable. what shall any man say of his pleasure at meeting van helsing? sir, i make no apology for dropping all forms of conventional prefix. when an individual has revolutionised therapeutics by his discovery of the continuous evolution of brain-matter, conventional forms are unfitting, since they would seem to limit him to one of a class. you, gentlemen, who by nationality, by heredity, or by the possession of natural gifts, are fitted to hold your respective places in the moving world, i take to witness that i am as sane as at least the majority of men who are in full possession of their liberties. and i am sure that you, dr. seward, humanitarian and medico-jurist as well as scientist, will deem it a moral duty to deal with me as one to be considered as under exceptional circumstances." he made this last appeal with a courtly air of conviction which was not without its own charm. i think we were all staggered. for my own part, i was under the conviction, despite my knowledge of the man's character and history, that his reason had been restored; and i felt under a strong impulse to tell him that i was satisfied as to his sanity, and would see about the necessary formalities for his release in the morning. i thought it better to wait, however, before making so grave a statement, for of old i knew the sudden changes to which this particular patient was liable. so i contented myself with making a general statement that he appeared to be improving very rapidly; that i would have a longer chat with him in the morning, and would then see what i could do in the direction of meeting his wishes. this did not at all satisfy him, for he said quickly: "but i fear, dr. seward, that you hardly apprehend my wish. i desire to go at onceherenowthis very hourthis very moment, if i may. time presses, and in our implied agreement with the old scytheman it is of the essence of the contract. i am sure it is only necessary to put before so admirable a practitioner as dr. seward so simple, yet so momentous a wish, to ensure its fulfilment." he looked at me keenly, and seeing the negative in my face, turned to the others, and scrutinised them closely. not meeting any sufficient response, he went on: "is it possible that i have erred in my supposition?" "you have," i said frankly, but at the same time, as i felt, brutally. there was a considerable pause, and then he said slowly: "then i suppose i must only shift my ground of request. let me ask for this concessionboon, privilege, what you will. i am content to implore in such a case, not on personal grounds, but for the sake of others. i am not at liberty to give you the whole of my reasons; but you may, i assure you, take it from me that they are good ones, sound and unselfish, and springing from the highest sense of duty. could you look, sir, into my heart, you would approve to the full the sentiments which animate me. nay, more, you would count me amongst the best and truest of your friends." again he looked at us all keenly. i had a growing conviction that this sudden change of his entire intellectual method was but yet another form or phase of his madness, and so determined to let him go on a little longer, knowing from experience that he would, like all lunatics, give himself away in the end. van helsing was gazing at him with a look of the utmost intensity, his bushy eyebrows almost meeting with the fixed concentration of his look. he said to renfield in a tone which did not surprise me at the time, but only when i thought of it afterwardsfor it was as of one addressing an equal: "can you not tell frankly your real reason for wishing to be free to-night? i will undertake that if you will satisfy even mea stranger, without prejudice, and with the habit of keeping an open minddr. seward will give you, at his own risk and on his own responsibility, the privilege you seek." he shook his head sadly, and with a look of poignant regret on his face. the professor went on: "come, sir, bethink yourself. you claim the privilege of reason in the highest degree, since you seek to impress us with your complete reasonableness. you do this, whose sanity we have reason to doubt, since you are not yet released from medical treatment for this very defect. if you will not help us in our effort to choose the wisest course, how can we perform the duty which you yourself put upon us? be wise, and help us; and if we can we shall aid you to achieve your wish." he still shook his head as he said: "dr. van helsing, i have nothing to say. your argument is complete, and if i were free to speak i should not hesitate a moment; but i am not my own master in the matter. i can only ask you to trust me. if i am refused, the responsibility does not rest with me." i thought it was now time to end the scene, which was becoming too comically grave, so i went towards the door, simply saying: "come, my friends, we have work to do. good-night." as, however, i got near the door, a new change came over the patient. he moved towards me so quickly that for the moment i feared that he was about to make another homicidal attack. my fears, however, were groundless, for he held up his two hands imploringly, and made his petition in a moving manner. as he saw that the very excess of his emotion was militating against him, by restoring us more to our old relations, he became still more demonstrative. i glanced at van helsing, and saw my conviction reflected in his eyes; so i became a little more fixed in my manner, if not more stern, and motioned to him that his efforts were unavailing. i had previously seen something of the same constantly growing excitement in him when he had to make some request of which at the time he had thought much, such, for instance, as when he wanted a cat; and i was prepared to see the collapse into the same sullen acquiescence on this occasion. my expectation was not realised, for, when he found that his appeal would not be successful, he got into quite a frantic condition. he threw himself on his knees, and held up his hands, wringing them in plaintive supplication, and poured forth a torrent of entreaty, with the tear's rolling down his cheeks and his whole face and form expressive of the deepest emotion: "let me entreat you. dr. seward, oh, let me implore you to let me out of this house at once. send me away how you will and where you will; send keepers with me with whips and chains; let them take me in a strait-waistcoat, manacled and leg-ironed, even to a goal; but let me go out of this. you don't know what you do by keeping me here. i am speaking from the depths of my heartof my very soul. you don't know whom you wrong, or how; and i may not tell. woe is me! i may not tell. by all you hold sacredby all you hold dearby your love that is lostby your hope that livesfor the sake of the almighty, take me out of this and save my soul from guilt! can't you hear me, man? can't you understand? will you never learn? don't you know that i am sane and earnest now; that i am no lunatic in a mad fit, but a sane man fighting for his soul? oh, hear me! hear me! let me go! let me go! let me go!" i thought that the longer this went on the wilder he would get, and so would bring on a fit; so i took him by the hand and raised him up. "come," i said sternly, "no more of this; we have had quite enough already. get to your bed and try to behave more discreetly." he suddenly stopped and looked at me intently for several moments. then, without a word, he rose and moving over, sat down on the side of the bed. the collapse had come, as on former occasion, just as i had expected. when i was leaving the room, last of our party, he said to me in a quiet, well-bred voice: "you will, i trust, dr. seward, do me the justice to bear in mind, later on, that i did what i could to convince you to-night." chapter xix. jonathan harker's journal. 1 october, 5 a.m.i went with the party to the search with an easy mind, for i think i never saw mina so absolutely strong and well. i am so glad that she consented to hold back and let us men do the work. somehow, it was a dread to me that she was in this fearful business at all; but now that her work is done, and that it is due to her energy and brains and foresight that the whole story is put together in such a way that every point tells, she may well feel that her part is finished, and that she can henceforth leave the rest to us. we were, i think, all a little upset by the scene with mr. renfield. when we came away from his room we were silent till we got back to the study. then mr. morris said to dr. seward: "say, jack, if that man wasn't attempting a bluff, he is about the sanest lunatic i ever saw. i'm not sure, but i believe that he had some serious purpose, and if he had, it was pretty rough on him not to get a chance." lord godalming and i were silent, but dr. van helsing added: "friend john, you know more of lunatics than i do, and i'm glad of it, for i fear that if it had been to me to decide i would before that last hysterical outburst have given him free. but we live and learn, and in our present task we must take no chance, as my friend quincey would say. all is best as they are." dr. seward seemed to answer them both in a dreamy kind of way: "i don't know but that i agree with you. if that man had been an ordinary lunatic i would have taken my chance of trusting him; but he seems so mixed up with the count in an indexy kind of way that i am afraid of doing anything wrong by helping his fads. i can't forget how he prayed with almost equal fervour for a cat, and then tried to tear my throat out with his teeth. besides, he called the count 'lord and master,' and he may want to get out to help him in some diabolical way. that horrid thing has the wolves and the rats and his own kind to help him, so i suppose he isn't above trying to use a respectable lunatic. he certainly did seem earnest, though. i only hope we have done what is best. these things, in conjunction with the wild work we have in hand, help to unnerve a man." the professor stepped over, and laying his hand on his shoulder, said in his grave, kindly way: "friend john, have no fear. we are trying to do our duty in a very sad and terrible case; we can only do as we deem best. what else have we to hope for, except the pity of the good god?" lord godalming had slipped away for a few minutes, but he now returned. he held up a little silver whistle as he remarked: "that old place may be full of rats, and if so, i've got an antidote on call." having passed the wall, we took our way to the house, taking care to keep in the shadows of the trees on the lawn when the moonlight shone out. when we got to the porch the professor opened his bag and took out a lot of things, which he laid on the step, sorting them into four little groups, evidently one for each. then he spoke: "my friends, we are going into a terrible danger, and we need arms of many kinds. our enemy is not merely spiritual. remember that he has the strength of twenty men, and that, though our necks or our windpipes are of the common kindand therefore breakable or crushablehis are not amenable to mere strength. a stronger man, or a body of men more strong in all than him, can at certain times hold him; but yet they cannot hurt him as we can be hurt by him. we must, therefore, guard ourselves from his touch. keep this near your heart"as he spoke he lifted a little silver crucifix and held it out to me, i being nearest to him"put these flowers round your neck"here he handed to me a wreath of withered garlic blossoms"for other enemies more mundane, this revolver and this knife; and for aid in all, these small electric lamps, which you can fasten to your breast; and for all, and above all at the last, this, which we must not desecrate needless." this was a portion of sacred wafer, which he put in an envelope and handed to me. each of the others was similarly equipped. "now," he said, "friend john, where are the skeleton keys? if so that we can open the door, we need not break house by the window, as before at miss lucy's." dr. seward tried one or two skeleton keys, his mechanical dexterity as a surgeon standing him in good stead. presently he got one to suit; after a little play back and forward the bolt yielded, and, with a rusty clang, shot back. we pressed on the door, the rusty hinges creaked, and it slowly opened. it was startlingly like the image conveyed to me in dr. seward's diary of the opening of miss westenra's tomb; i fancy that the same idea seemed to strike the others, for with one accord they shrank back. the professor was the first to move forward, and stepped into the open door. "in manus tuas, domine!" he said, crossing himself as he passed over the threshold. we closed the door behind us, lest when we should have lit our lamps we should possibly attract attention from the road. the professor carefully tried the lock, lest we might not be able to open it from within should we be in a hurry making our exit. then we all lit our lamps and proceeded on our search. the light from the tiny lamps fell in all sorts of odd forms, as the rays crossed each other, or the opacity of our bodies threw great shadows. i could not for my life get away from the feeling that there was some one else amongst us. i suppose it was the recollection, so powerfully brought home to me by the grim surroundings, of that terrible experience in transylvania. i think the feeling was common to us all, for i noticed that the others kept looking over their shoulders at every sound and every new shadow, just as i felt myself doing. the whole place was thick with dust. the floor was seemingly inches deep, except where there were recent footsteps, in which on holding down my lamp i could see marks of hobnails where the dust was cracked. the walls were fluffy and heavy with dust, and in the corners were masses of spider's webs, whereon the dust had gathered till they looked like old tattered rags as the weight had torn them partly down. on a table in the hall was a great bunch of keys, with a time-yellowed label on each. they had been used several times, for on the table were several similar rents in the blanket of dust, similar to that exposed when the professor lifted them. he turned to me and said: "you know this place, jonathan. you have copied maps of it, and you know it at least more than we do. which is the way to the chapel?" i had an idea of its direction, though on my former visit i had not been able to get admission to it; so i led the way, and after a few wrong turnings found myself opposite a low, arched oaken door, ribbed with iron bands. "this is the spot," said the professor as he turned his lamp on a small map of the house, copied from the file of my original correspondence regarding the purchase. with a little trouble we found the key on the bunch and opened the door. we were prepared for some unpleasantness, for as we were opening the door a faint, malodorous air seemed to exhale through the gaps, but none of us even expected such an odour as we encountered. none of the others had met the count at all at close quarters, and when i had seen him he was either in the fasting stage of his existence in his rooms or, when he was gloated with fresh blood, in a ruined building open to the air; but here the place was small and close, and the long disuse had made the air stagnant and foul. there was an earthy smell, as of some dry miasma, which came through the fouler air. but as to the odour itself, now shall i describe it? it was not alone that it was composed of all the ills of mortality and with the pungent, acrid smell of blood, but it seemed as though corruption had become itself corrupt. faugh! it sickens me to think of it. every breath exhaled by that monster seemed to have clung to the place and intensified its loathsomeness. under ordinary circumstances such a stench would have brought our enterprise to an end; but this was no ordinary case, and the high and terrible purpose in which we were involved gave us a strength which rose above merely physical considerations. after the involuntary shrinking consequent on the first nauseous whiff, we one and all set about our work as though that loathsome place were a garden of roses. we made an accurate examination of the place, and professor saying as we began: "the first thing is to see how many of the boxes are left; we must then examine every hole and corner and cranny and see if we cannot get some clue as to what has become of the rest." a glance was sufficient to show how many remained, for the great earth chests were bulky, and there was no mistaking them. there were only twenty-nine left out of the fifty! once i got a fright, for, seeing lord godalming suddenly turn and look out of the vaulted door into the dark passage beyond, i looked too, and for an instant my heart stood still. somewhere, looking out from the shadow, i seemed to see the high lights of the count's evil face, the ridge of the nose, the red eyes, the red lips, the awful pallor. it was only for a moment, for, as lord godalming said, "i thought i saw a face, but it was only the shadows," and resumed his inquiry, i turned my lamp in the direction, and stepped into the passage. there was no sign of any one; and as there were no corners, no doors, no aperture of any kind, but only the solid walls of the passage, there could be no hiding-place even for him. i took it that fear had helped imagination, and said nothing. a few minutes later i saw morris step suddenly back from a corner, which he was examining. we all followed his movements with our eyes, for undoubtedly some nervousness was growing on us, and we saw a whole mass of phosphorescence, which twinkled like stars. we all instinctively drew back. the whole place was becoming alive with rats. for a moment or two we stood appalled, all save lord godalming, who was seemingly prepared for such an emergency. rushing over to the great iron-bound oaken door, which dr. seward had described from the outside, and which i had seen myself, he turned the key in the lock, drew the huge bolts, and swung the door open. then, taking his little silver whistle from his pocket, he blew a low, shrill call. it was answered from behind dr. seward's house by the yelping of dogs, and after about a minute three terriers came dashing round the corner of the house. unconsciously we had all moved towards the door, and as we moved i noticed that the dust had been much disturbed: the boxes which had been taken out had been brought this way. but even in the minute that had elapsed the number of the rats had vastly increased. they seemed to swarm over the place all at once, till the lamplight, shining on their moving dark bodies and glittering, baleful eyes, made the place look like a bank of earth set with fireflies. the dogs dashed on, but at the threshold suddenly stopped and snarled, and then, simultaneously lifting their noses, began to howl in most lugubrious fashion. the rats were multiplying in thousands, and we moved out. lord godalming lifted one of the dogs, and carrying him in, placed him on the floor. the instant his feet touched the ground he seemed to recover his courage, and rushed at his natural enemies. they fled before him so fast that before he had shaken the life out of a score, the other dogs, who had by now been lifted in in the same manner, had but small prey ere the whole mass had vanished. with their going it seemed as if some evil presence had departed, for the dogs frisked about and barked merrily as they made sudden darts at their prostrate foes, and turned them over and over and tossed them in the air with vicious shakes. we all seemed to find our spirits rise. whether it was the purifying of the deadly atmosphere by the opening of the chapel door, or the relief which we experienced by finding ourselves in the open i know not; but most certainly the shadow of dread seemed to slip from us like a robe, and the occasion of our coming lost something of its grim significance, though we did not slacken a whit in our resolution. we closed the outer door and barred and locked it, and bringing the dogs with us, began our search of the house. we found nothing throughout except dust in extraordinary proportions, and all untouched save for my own footsteps when i had made my first visit. never once did the dogs exhibit any symptom of uneasiness, and even when we returned to the chapel they frisked about as though they had been rabbit-hunting in a summer wood. the morning was quickening in the east when we emerged from the front. dr. van helsing had taken the key of the hall-door from the bunch, and locked the door in orthodox fashion, putting the key into his pocket when he had done. "so far," he said, "our night has been eminently successful. no harm has come to us such as i feared might be and yet we have ascertained how many boxes are missing. more than all do i rejoice that this, our firstand perhaps our most difficult and dangerousstep has been accomplished without the bringing thereinto our most sweet madam mina or troubling her walking or sleeping thoughts with sights and sounds and smells of horror which she might never forget. one lesson, too, we have learned, if it be allowable to argue a particulari: that the brute beasts which are to the count's command are yet themselves not amenable to his spiritual power; for look, these rats that would come to his call, just as from his castle top he summon the wolves to your going and to that poor mother's cry, though they come to him, they run pell-mell from the so little dogs of my friend arthur. we have other matters before us, other dangers, other fears; and that monsterhe has not used his power over the brute world for the only or the last time to-night. so be it that he has gone elsewhere. good! it has given us opportunity to cry 'check' in some ways in this chess game, which we play for the stake of human souls. and now let us go home. the dawn is close at hand, and we have reason to be content with our first night's work. it may be ordained that we have many nights and days to follow, if full of peril; but we must go on, and from no danger shall we shrink." the house was silent when we got back, save for some poor creature who was screaming away in one of the distant wards, and a low, moaning sound from renfield's room. the poor wretch was doubtless torturing himself, after the manner of the insane, with needless thoughts of pain. i came tiptoe into our own room, and found mina asleep, breathing so softly that i had to put my ear down to hear it. she looks paler than usual. i hope the meeting to-night has not upset her. i am truly thankful that she is to be left out of our future work, and even of our deliberations. it is too great a strain for a woman to bear. i did not think so at first, but i know better now. therefore i am glad that it is settled. there may be things which would frighten her to hear; and yet to conceal them from her might be worse than to tell her if once she suspected that there was any concealment. henceforth our work is to be a sealed book to her, till at least such time as we can tell her that all is finished, and the earth free from a monster of the nether world. i daresay it will be difficult to begin to keep silence after such confidence as ours; but i must be resolute, and to-morrow i shall keep dark over to-night's doings, and shall refuse to speak of anything that has happened. i rest on the sofa, so as not to disturb her. 1 october, later.i suppose it was natural that we should have all overslept ourselves, for the day was a busy one, and the night had no rest at all. even mina must have felt its exhaustion, for though i slept till the sun was high, i was awake before her, and had to call two or three times before she awoke. indeed, she was so sound asleep that for a few seconds she did not recognize me, but looked at me with a sort of blank terror, as one looks who has been waked out of a bad dream. she complained a little of being tired, and i let her rest till later in the day. we now know of twenty one boxes having been removed, and if it be that several were taken in any of these removals we may be able to trace them all. such will, of course, immensely simplify our labour, and the sooner the matter is attended to the better. i shall look up thomas snelling to-day. dr. seward's diary. 1 october.it was towards noon when i was awakened by the professor walking into my room. he was more jolly and cheerful than usual, and it is quite evident that last night's work has helped to take some of the brooding weight off his mind. after going over the adventure of the night he suddenly said: "your patient interests me much. may it be that with you i visit him this morning? or if that you are too occupy, i can go alone if it may be. it is a new experience to me to find a lunatic who talk philosophy, and reason sound." i had some work to do which pressed, so i told him that if he would go alone i would be glad, as then i should not have to keep him waiting; so i called an attendant and gave him the necessary instructions. before the professor left the room i cautioned him against getting any false impression from my patient. "but," he answered, "i want him to talk of himself and of his delusion as to consuming live things. he said to madam mina, as i see in your diary of yesterday, that he had once had such a belief. why do you smile, friend john?" "excuse me," i said, "but the answer is here." i laid my hand on the type-written matter. "when our sane and learned lunatic made that very statement of how he used to consume life, his mouth was actually nauseous with the flies and spiders which he had eaten just before mrs. harker entered the room." van helsing smiled in turn. "good!" he said. "your memory is true, friend john. i should have remembered. and yet it is this very obliquity of thought and memory which makes mental disease such a fascinating study. perhaps i may gain more knowledge out of the folly of this madman than i shall from the teaching of the most wise. who knows?" i went on with my work, and before long was through that in hand. it seemed that the time had been very short indeed, but there was van helsing back in the study. "do i interrupt?" he asked politely as he stood at the door. "not at all," i answered. "come in. my work is finished, and i am free. i can go with you now, if you like" "it is needless; i have seen him!" "well?" "i fear that he does not appraise me at much. our interview was short. when i entered his room he was sitting on a stool in the centre, with his elbows on his knees, and his face was the picture of sullen discontent. i spoke to him as cheerfully as i could, and with such a measure of respect as i could assume. he made no reply whatever. "don't you know me?" i asked. his answer was not reassuring: "i know you well enough; you are the old fool van helsing. i wish you would take yourself and your idiotic brain theories somewhere else. damn all thick-headed dutchmen!" not a word more would he say, but sat in his implacable sullenness as indifferent to the as though i had not been ill the room at all. thus departed for this time my chance of much learning from this so clever lunatic; so i shall go, if i may, and cheer myself with a few happy words with that sweet soul madam mina. friend john, it does rejoice me unspeakable that she is no more to be pained, no more to be worried, with our terrible things. though we shall much miss her help, it is better so." "i agree with you with all my heart," i answered earnestly, for i did not want him to weaken in this matter, "mrs. harker is better out of it. things are quite bad enough for us, all men of the world, and who have been in many tight places in our time; but it is no place for a woman, and if she had remained in touch with the affair, it would in time infallibly have wrecked her." so van helsing has gone to confer with mrs. harker and harker; quincey and art are all out following up the clues as to the earth-boxes. i shall finish my round of work, and we shall meet to-night. mina harker's journal. 1 october.it is strange to me to be kept in the dark as i am to-day; after jonathan's full confidence for so many years, to see him manifestly avoid certain matters, and those the most vital of all. this morning i slept late after the fatigues of yesterday, and though jonathan was late too, he was the earlier. he spoke to me before he went out, never more sweetly or tenderly, but he never mentioned a word of what had happened in the visit to the count's house. and yet he must have known how terribly anxious i was. poor dear fellow! i suppose it must have distressed him even more than it did me. they all agreed that it was best that i should not be drawn further into this awful work, and i acquiesced. but to think that he keeps anything from me! and now i am crying like a silly fool, when i know it comes from my husband's great love and from the good, good wishes of those other strong men... that has done me good. well, some day jonathan will tell me all, and lest it should ever be that he should think for a moment that i kept anything from him, i still keep my journal as usual. then if he has feared of my trust i shall show it to him, with every thought of my heart put down for his dear eyes to read. i feel strangely sad and low-spirited to-day. i suppose it is the reaction from the terrible excitement. last night i went to bed when the men had gone, simply because they told me to. i didn't feel sleepy, and i did feel full of devouring anxiety. i kept thinking over everything that has been ever since jonathan came to see me in london, and it all seems like a horrible tragedy, with fate pressing on relentlessly to some destined end. everything that one does seems, no matter how right it may be, to bring on the very thing which is most to be deplored. if i hadn't gone to whitby, perhaps poor dear lucy would be with us now. she hadn't taken to visiting the churchyard till i came, and if she hadn't come there in the day-time with me she wouldn't have walked there in her sleep; and if she hadn't gone there at night and asleep, that monster couldn't have destroyed her as he did. oh, why did i ever go to whitby? there now, crying again! i wonder what has come over me today. i must hide it from jonathan, for if he knew that i had been crying twice in one morningi, who never cried on my own account, and whom he has never caused to shed a tearthe dear fellow would fret his heart out. i shall put a bold face on, and if i do feel weepy, he shall never see it. i suppose it is one of the lessons that we poor women have to learn... i can't quite remember how i fell asleep last night. i remember hearing the sudden barking of the dogs and a lot of queer sounds, like praying on a very tumultuous scale, from mr. renfield's room, which is somewhere under this. and then there was silence over everything, silence so profound that it startled me, and i got up and looked out of the window. all was dark and silent, the black shadows thrown by the moonlight seeming full of a silent mystery of their own. not a thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or fate; so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost imperceptible slowness across the grass towards the house, seemed to have a sentience and a vitality of its own. i think that the digression of my thoughts must have done me good, for when i got back to bed i found a lethargy creeping over me. i lay a while, but could not quite sleep, so i got out and looked out of the window again. the mist was spreading, and was now close up to the house, so that i could see it lying thick against the wall, as though it were stealing up to the windows. the poor man was more loud than ever, and though i could not distinguish a word he said, i could in some way recognise in his tones some passionate entreaty on his part. then there was the sound of a struggle, and i knew that the attendants were dealing with him. i was so frightened that i crept into bed, and pulled the clothes over my head, putting my fingers in my ears. i was not then a bit sleepy, at least so i thought; but i must have fallen asleep, for, except dreams, i do not remember anything until the morning, when jonathan woke me. i think that it took me an effort and a little time to realise where i was, and that it was jonathan who was bending over me. my dream was very peculiar, and was almost typical of the way that waking thoughts become merged in, or continued in, dreams. i thought that i was asleep, and waiting for jonathan to come back. i was very anxious about him, and i was powerless to act; my feet, and my hands, and my brain were weighted, so that nothing could proceed at the usual pace. and so i slept uneasily and thought. then it began to dawn upon me that the air was heavy, and dank, and cold. i put back the clothes from my face, and found, to my surprise, that all was dim around. the gas-light which i had left lit for jonathan, but turned down, came only like a tiny red spark through the fog, which had evidently grown thicker and poured into the room. there it occurred to me that i had shut the window before i had come to bed. i would have got out to make certain on the point, but some leaden lethargy seemed to chain my limbs and even my will. i lay still and endured; that was all. i closed my eyes, but could still see through my eyelids. (it is wonderful what tricks our dreams play us, and how conveniently we can imagine.) the mist grew thicker and thicker, and i could see now how it came in, for i could see it like smokeor with the white energy of boiling waterpouring in, not through the window, but through the joinings of the door. it got thicker and thicker, till it seemed as if it became concentrated into a sort of pillar of cloud in the room, through the top of which i could see the light of the gas shining like a red eye. things began to whirl through my brain just as the cloudy column was now whirling in the room, and through it all came the scriptural words "a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night." was it indeed some such spiritual guidance that was coming to me in my sleep? but the pillar was composed of both the day and the night-guiding, for the fire was in the red eye, which at the thought got a new fascination for me; till, as i looked, the fire divided, and seemed to shine on me through the fog like two red eyes, such as lucy told me of in her momentary mental wandering when, on the cliff, the dying sunlight struck the windows of st. mary's church. suddenly the horror burst upon me that it was thus that jonathan had seen those awful women growing into reality throught the whirling mist in the moonlight, and in my dream i must have fainted, for all became black darkness. the last conscious effort which imagination made was to show me a livid white face bending over me out of the mist. i must be careful of such dreams, for they would unseat one's reason if there were too much of them. i would get dr. van helsing or dr. seward to prescribe something for me which would make me sleep, only that i fear to alarm them. such a dream at the present time would become woven into their fears for me. to-night i shall strive hard to sleep naturally. if i do not, i shall to-morrow night get them to give me a dose of chloral; that cannot hurt me for once, and it will give me a good night's sleep. last night tired me more than if i had not slept at all. 2 october 10 p.m.last night i slept, but did not dream, i must have slept soundly, for i was not waked by jonathan coming to bed; but the sleep has not refreshed me, for to-day i feel terribly weak and spiritless. i spent all yesterday trying to read, or lying down dozing. in the afternoon mr. renfield asked if he might see me. poor man, he was very gentle, and when i came away he kissed my hand and bade god bless me. some way it affected me much; i am crying when i think of him. this is a new weakness, of which i must be careful. jonathan would be miserable if he knew i had been crying. he and the others were out until dinner-time, and they all came in tired. i did what i could to brighten them up, and i suppose that the effort did me good, for i forgot how tired i was. after dinner they sent me to bed, and all went off to smoke together, as they said, but i knew that they wanted to tell each other of what had occurred to each during the day; i could see from jonathan's manner that he had something important to communicate. i was not so sleepy as i should have been; so before they went i asked dr. seward to give me a little opiate of some kind, as i had not slept well the night before. he very kindly made me up a sleeping draught, which he gave to me, telling me that it would do me no harm, as it was very mild... i have taken it, and am waiting for sleep, which still keeps aloof. i hope i have not done wrong, for as sleep begins to flirt with me, a new fear comes: that i may have been foolish in thus depriving myself of the power of waking. i might want it. here comes sleep. goodnight. chapter xx. jonathan harker's journal. 1 october, evening.i found thomas snelling in his house at bethnal green, but unhappily he was not in a condition to remember anything. the very prospect of beer which my expected coming had opened to him had proved too much, and he had begun too early on his expected debauch. i learned, however, from his wife, who seemed a decent, poor soul, that he was only the assistant to smollet, who of the two mates was the responsible person. so off i drove to walworth, and found mr. joseph smollet at home and in his shirtsleeves, taking a late tea out of a saucer. he is a decent, intelligent fellow, distinctly a good, reliable type of workman, and with a headpiece of his own. he remembered all about the incident of the boxes, and from a wonderful dog's-eared notebook, which he produced from some mysterious receptable about the seat of his trousers, and which had hieroglyphical entries in thick, half-obliterated pencil, he gave me the destinations of the boxes. there were, he said, six in the cartload which he took from carfax and left at 197, chicksand street, mile end new town, and another six which he deposited at jamaica lane, bermondsey. if then the count meant to scatter these ghastly refuges of his over london, these places were chosen as the first of delivery, so that later he might distribute more fully. the systematic manner in which this was done made me think that he could not mean to confine himself to two sides of london. he was now fixed on the far east of the northern shore, on the east of the southern shore, and on the south. the north and west were surely never meant to be left out of his diabolical schemelet alone the city itself and the very heart of fashionable london in the south-west and west. i went back to smollet, and asked him if he could tell us if any other boxes had been taken from carfax. he replied: "well, guv'nor, you've treated me wery' an'some"i had given him half a sovereign"an' i'll tell yer all i know i heard a man by the name of bloxam say four nights ago in the 'are an 'ounds, in pincher's alley, as 'ow he an' his mate 'ad 'ad a rare dusty job in a old 'ouse at purfect. there ain't a-many such jobs as this 'ere, an' i'm thinkin' that maybe sam bloxam could tell ye summut." i asked if he could tell me where to find him. i told him that if he could get me the address it would be worth another half-sovereign to him. so he gulped down the rest of his tea and stood up, saying that he was going to begin the search then and there. at the door he stopped, and said: "look 'ere, guv'nor, there ain't no sense in me a-keepin' you 'ere. i may find sam soon, or i mayn't; but anyhow he ain't like to be in a way to tell ye much to-night. sam is a rare one when he starts on the booze. if you can give me a envelope with a stamp on it, and put yer address on it, i'll find out where sam is to be found and post it ye to-night. but ye'd better be up arter 'im soon in the mornin', or maybe ye won't ketch 'im; for sam gets off main early, never mind the booze the night afore." this was all practical, so one of the children went off with a penny to buy an envelope and a sheet of paper, and to keep the change. when she came back, i addressed the envelope and stamped it, and when smollet had again faithfully promised to post the address when found, i took my way to home. we're on the track anyhow. i am tired to-night, and want sleep. mina is fast asleep, and looks a little too pale; her eyes look as though she had been crying. poor dear, i've no doubt it frets her to be kept in the dark, and it may make her doubly anxious about me and the others. but it is best as it is. it is better to be disappointed and worried in such a way now than to have her nerve broken. the doctors were quite right to insist on her being kept out of this dreadful business. i must be firm, for on me this particular burden of silence must rest. i shall not ever enter on the subject with her under any circumstances. indeed, it may not be a hard task, after all, for she herself has become reticent on the subject, and has not spoken of the count or his doings ever since we told her of our decision. 2 october, evening.a long and trying and exciting day. by the first post i got my directed envelope with a dirty scrap of paper enclosed, on which was written with a carpenter's pencil in a sprawling hand: "sam bloxam, korkrans, 4, poters cort, bartel street, walworth. arsk for the depite." i got the letter in bed, and rose without waking mina. she looked heavy and sleepy and pale, and far from well. i determined not to wake her, but that, when i should return from this new search, i would arrange for her going back to exeter. i think she would be happier in our own home, with her daily tasks to interest her, than in being here amongst us and in ignorance. i only saw dr. seward for a moment, and told him where i was off to, promising to come back and tell the rest so soon as i should have found out anything. i drove to walworth and found, with some difficulty, potter's court. mr. smollet's spelling misled me, as i asked for poter's court instead of potter's court. however, when i had found the court, i had no difficulty in discovering corcoran's lodging-house. when i asked the man who came to the door for the "depite," he shook his head, and said: "i dunno 'im. there ain't no such a person 'ere; i never 'eard of 'im in all my bloomin days. don't believe there ain't nobody of that kind livin 'ere or anywheres." i took out smollet's letter, and as i read it it seemed to me that the lesson of the spelling of the name of the court might guide me. "what are you?" i asked. "i'm the depity," he answered. i saw at once that i was on the right track, phonetic spelling had again misled me. a half-crown tip put the deputy's knowledge at my disposal, and i learned that mr. bloxam, who had slept off the remains of his beer on the previous night at corcoran's, had left for his work at poplar at five o'clock that morning. he could not tell me where the place of work was situated, but he had a vague idea that it was some kind of a "new-fangled ware'us;" and with this slender clue i had to start for poplar. it was twelve o'clock before i got any satisfactory hint of such a building, and this i got at a coffee-shop, where some workmen were having their dinner. one of these suggested that there was being erected at cross angel street a new "cold storage" building; and as this suited the condition of a "new-fangled ware'us," i at once drove to it. an interview with a surly gatekeeper and a surlier foreman, both of whom were appeased with the coin of the realm, put me on the track of bloxam; he was sent for on my suggesting that i was willing to pay his day's wages to his foreman for the privilege of asking him a few questions on a private matter. he was a smart enough fellow, though rough of speech and bearing. when i had promised to pay for his information and given him an earnest, he told me that he had made two journeys between carfax and a house in piccadilly, and had taken from this house to the latter nine great boxes"main heavy ones"with a horse and cart hired by him for this purpose. i asked him if he could tell me the number of the house in piccadilly, to which he replied: "well, guv'nor, i forgits the number, but it was only a few doors from a big white church or somethink of the kind, not long built. it was a dusty old 'ouse, too, though nothin' to the dustiness of the 'ouse we tooked the bloomin' boxes from." "how did you get into the houses if they were both empty?" "there was the old party what engaged me a-waitin' in the 'ouse at purfleet. he 'elped me to lift the boxes and put them in the dray. curse me, but he was the strongest chap i ever struck, an' him a old feller, with a white moustache, one that thin you would think he couldn't throw a shadder." how this phrase thrilled through me! "why, 'e took up 'is end o' the boxes like they was pounds of tea, and me a-puffin' an' a-blowin' afore i could up-end mine anyhowan' i'm no chicken, neither." "how did you get into the house in piccadilly?" i asked. "he was there too. he must 'a' started off and got there afore me, for when i rung of the bell he kem an' opened the door 'isself an' 'elped me to carry the boxes into the 'all." "the whole nine?" i asked. "yus; there was five in the first load an' four in the second. it was main dry work, an' i don't so well remember 'ow i got 'ome." i interrupted him: "were the boxes left in the hall?" "yus; it was a big 'all, an' there was nothin' else in it." i made one more attempt to further matters: "you didn't have any key?" "never used no key nor nothink. the old gent, he opened the door 'isself an' shut it again when i druv off. i don't remember the last timebut that was the beer." "and you can't remember the number of the house?" "no, sir. but ye needn't have no difficulty about that. it's a 'igh 'un with a stone front with a bow on it, an' 'igh steps up to the door. i know them steps, 'avin 'ad to carry the boxes up with three loafers what come round to earn a copper. the old gent give them shillin's an' they seein' they got so much, they wanted more; but 'e took one of them by the shoulder and was like to throw 'im down the steps, till the lot of them went away cussin'." i thought that with this description i could find the house, so, having paid my friend for his information, i started off for piccadilly. i had gained a new painful experience; the count could, it was evident, handle the earth-boxes himself! if so, time was precious; for, now that he had achieved a certain amount of distribution, he could, by choosing his own time, complete the task unobserved. at piccadilly circus i discharged my cab, and walked westward; beyond the junior constitutional i came across the house described, and was satisfied that this was the next of the lairs arranged by dracula. the house looked as though it had been long untenanted. the windows were encrusted with dust, and the shutters were up. all the framework was black with time, and from the iron the paint had mostly scaled away. it was evident that up to lately there had been a large notice-board in front of the balcony; it had, however, been roughly torn away, the uprights which had supported it still remaining. behind the rails of the balcony i saw there were some loose boards, whose raw edges looked white. i would have given a good deal to have been able to see the notice-board intact, as it would, perhaps, have given some clue to the owner-ship of the house. i remembered my experience of the investigation and purchase of carfax, and i could not but feel that if i could find the former owner there might be some means discovered of gaining access to the house. there was at present nothing to be learned from the piccadilly side, and nothing could be done; so i went round to the back to see if anything could be gathered from this quarter. the mews were active, the piccadilly houses being mostly in occupation. i asked one or two of the grooms and helpers whom i saw around if they could tell me anything about the empty house. one of them said that he heard it had lately been taken, but he couldn't say from whom. he told me, however, that up to very lately there had been a notice-board of "for sale" up, and that perhaps mitchell, sons, & candy, the house agents, could tell me something, as he thought he remembered seeing the name of that firm on the board. i did not wish to seem too eager, or to let my informant know or guess too much, so, thanking him in the usual manner, i strolled away. it was now growing dusk, and the autumn night was closing in, so i did not lose any time. having learned the address of mitchell, sons, & candy from a directory at the berkeley, i was soon at their office in sackville street. the gentleman who saw me was particularly suave in manner, but uncommunicative in equal proportion. having once told me that the piccadilly housewhich throughout our interview he called a "mansion"was sold, he considered my business as concluded. when i asked who had purchased it, he opened his eyes a thought wider, and paused a few seconds before replying: "it is sold, sir." "pardon me," i said, with equal politeness, "but i have a special reason for wishing to know who purchased it." again he paused longer, and raised his eyebrows still more. "it is sold sir," was again his laconic reply. "surely," i said, "you do not mind letting me know so much." "but i do mind," he answered. "the affairs of their clients are absolutely safe in the hands of mitchell, sons, & candy." this was manifestly a prig of the first water, and there was no use arguing with him. i thought i had best meet him on his own ground, so i said: "your clients, sir, are happy in having so resolute a guardian of their confidence. i am myself a professional man." here i handed him my card. "in this instance i am not prompted by curiosity; i act on the part of lord godalming, who wishes to know something of the property which was, he understood, lately for sale." these words put a different complexion on affairs. he said: "i would like to oblige you if i could, mr. harker, and especially would i like to oblige his lordship. we once carried out a small matter of renting some chambers for him when he was the honourable arthur holmwood. if you will let me have his lordship's address i will consult the house on the subject, and will in any case, communicate with his lordship by to-night's post. it will be a pleasure if we can so far deviate from our rules as to give the required information to his lordship." i wanted to secure a friend, and not to make an enemy, so i thanked him, gave the address at dr. seward's, and came away. it was now dark, and i was tired and hungry. i got a cup of tea at the aerated bread company and came down to purfleet by the next train. i found all the others at home. mina was looking tired and pale, but she made a gallant effort to be bright and cheerful; it wrung my heart to think that i had had to keep anything from her and so caused her inquietude. thank god, this will be the last night of her looking on at our conferences, and feeling the sting of our not showing our confidence. it took all my courage to hold to the wise resolution of keeping her out of our grim task. she seems somehow more reconciled; or else the very subject seems to have become repugnant to her, for when any accidental allusion is made she actually shudders. i am glad we made our resolution in time, as with such a feeling as this, our growing knowledge would be torture to her. i could not tell the others of the day's discovery till we were alone; so after dinnerfollowed by a little music to save appearances even amongst ourselvesi took mina to her room and left her to go to bed. the dear girl was more affectionate with me than ever, and clung to me as though she would detain me; but there was much to be talked of and i came away. thank god, the ceasing of telling things has made no difference between us. when i came down again i found the others all gathered round the fire in the study. in the train i had written my diary so far, and simply read it off to them as the best means of letting them get abreast of my own information; when i had finished van helsing said: "this has been a great day's work, friend jonathan. doubtless we are on the track of the missing boxes. if we find them all in that house, then our work is near the end. but if there be some missing, we must search until we find them. then shall we make our final coup, and hunt the wretch to his real death." we all sat silent awhile and all at once mr. morris spoke: "say! how are we going to get into that house?" "we got into the other," answered lord godalming quickly. "but, art, this is different. we broke house at carfax, but we had night and a walled park to protect us. it will be a mighty different thing to commit burglary in piccadilly, either by day or night. i confess i don't see how we are going to get in unless that agency duck can find us a key of some sort; perhaps we shall know when you get his letter in the morning." lord godalming's brows contracted, and he stood up and walked about the room. by-and-by he stopped and said, turning from one to another of us: "quincey's head is level. this burglary business is getting serious; we got off once all right; but we have now a rare job on handunless we can find the count's key basket." as nothing could well be done before morning, and as it would be at least advisable to wait till lord godalming should hear from mitchell's, we decided not to take any active step before breakfast time. for a good while we sat and smoked, discussing the matter in its various lights and bearings; i took the opportunity of bringing this diary right up to the moment. i am very sleepy and shall go to bed... just a line. mina sleeps soundly and her breathing is regular. her forehead is puckered up into little wrinkles, as though she thinks even in her sleep. she is still too pale, but does not look so haggard as she did this morning. tomorrow will, i hope, mend all this; she will be herself at home in exeter. oh, but i am sleepy! dr. seward's diary. 1 octoberi am puzzled afresh about renfield. his moods change so rapidly that i find it difficult to keep touch of them, and as they always mean something more than his own well-being, they form a more than interesting study. this morning, when i went to see him after his repulse of van helsing, his manner was that of a man commanding destiny. he was, in fact, commanding destinysubjectively. he did not really care for any of the things of mere earth; he was in the clouds and looked down on all the weaknesses and wants of us poor mortals. i thought i would improve the occasion and learn something, so i asked him: "what about the flies these times?" he smiled on me in quite a superior sort of waysuch a smile as would have become the face of malvolioas he answered me: "the fly, my dear sir, has one striking feature; its wings are typical of the aerial powers of the psychic faculties. the ancients did well when they typified the soul as a butterfly!" i thought i would push his analogy to its utmost logically, so i said quickly: "oh, it is a soul you are after now, is it?" his madness foiled his reason, and a puzzled look spread over his face as, shaking his head with a decision which i had but seldom seen in him, he said: "oh no, oh no! i want no souls. life is all i want." here he brightened up; "i am pretty indifferent about it at present. life is all right; i have all i want. you must get a new patient, doctor, if you wish to study zoophagy!" this puzzled me a little, so i drew him on: "then you command life; you are a god i suppose?" he smiled with an ineffably benign superiority. "oh no! far be it from me to arrogate to myself the attributes of the deity. i am not even concerned in his especially spiritual doings. if i may state my intellectual position i am, so far as concerns things purely terrestrial, somewhat in the position which enoch occupied spiritually!" this was a poser to me. i could not at the moment recall enoch's appositeness; so i had to ask a simple question, though i felt that by so doing i was lowering myself in the eyes of the lunatic: "and why with enoch?" "because he walked with god." i could not see the analogy, but did not like to admit it; so i harked back to what he had denied: "so you don't care about life and you don't want souls. why not?" i put my question quickly and somewhat sternly, on purpose to disconcert him. the effort succeeded; for an instant he unconsciously relapsed into his old servile manner, bent low before me, and actually fawned upon me as he replied: "i don't want any souls, indeed, indeed! i don't. i couldn't use them if i had them; they would be no manner of use to me. i couldn't eat them or-" he suddenly stopped and the old cunning look spread over his face, like a wind-sweep on the surface of the water. "and doctor, as to life, what is it after all? when you've got all you require, and you know that you will never want, that is all. i have friendsgood friendslike you dr. seward;" this was said with a leer of inexpressible cunning, "i know that i shall never lack the means of life!" i think that through the cloudiness of his insanity he saw some antagonism in me, for he at once fell back on the last refuge of such as hea dogged silence. after a short time i saw that for the present it was useless to speak to him. he was sulky, and so i came away. later in the day he sent for me. ordinarily i would not have come without special reason, but just at present i am so interested in him that i would gladly make an effort. besides, i am glad to have anything to help to pass the time. harker is out, following up clues; and so are lord godalming and quincey. van helsing sits in my study poring over the record prepared by the harkers; he seems to think that by accurate knowledge of all details he will light upon some clue. he does not wish to be disturbed in the work, without cause. i would have taken him with me to see the patient, only i thought that after his last repulse he might not care to go again. there was also another reason: renfield might not speak so freely before a third person as when he and i were alone. i found him sitting out in the middle of the floor on his stool, a pose which is generally indicative of some mental energy on his part. when i came in, he said at once, as though the question had been waiting on his lips: "what about souls?" it was evident then that my surmise had been correct. unconscious cerebration was doing its work, even with the lunatic. i determined to have the matter out. "what about them yourself?" i asked. he did not reply for a moment but looked all round him, and up and down, as though he expected to find some inspiration for an answer. "i don't want any souls!" he said in a feeble, apologetic way. the matter seemed preying on his mind, and so i determined to use itto "be cruel only to be kind." so i said: "you like life, and you want life?" "oh yes! but that is all right; you needn't worry about that!" "but," i asked, "how are we to get the life without getting the soul also?" this seemed to puzzle him, so i followed it up: "a nice time you'll have some time when you're flying out there, with the souls of thousands of flies and spiders and birds and cats buzzing and twittering and miauing all round you. you've got their lives, you know, and you must put up with their souls!" something seemed to affect his imagination, for he put his fingers to his ears and shut his eyes, screwing them up tightly just as a small boy does when his face is being soaped. there was something pathetic in it that touched me; it also gave me a lesson, for it seemed that before me was a childonly a child, though the features were worn, and the stubble on the jaws was white. it was evident that he was undergoing some process of mental disturbance, and, knowing how his past moods had interpreted things seemingly foreign to himself, i thought i would enter into his mind as well as i could and go with him. the first step was to restore confidence, so i asked him, speaking pretty loud so that he would hear me through his closed ears: "would you like some sugar to get your flies round again?" he seemed to wake up all at once, and shook his head. with a laugh he replied: "not much! flies are poor things, after all!" after a pause he added, "but i don't want their souls buzzing round me, all the same." "or spiders?" i went on. "blow spiders! what's the use of spiders? there isn't anything in them to eat or"he stopped suddenly, as though reminded of a forbidden topic. "so, so!" i thought to myself, "this is the second time he has suddenly stopped at the word 'drink;' what does it mean?" renfield seemed himself aware of having made a lapse, for he hurried on, as though to distract my attention from it: "i don't take any stock at all in such matters. 'rats and mice and such small deer,' as shakespeare has it, 'chicken-feed of the larder' they might be called. i'm past all that sort of nonsense. you might as well ask a man to eat molecules with a pair of chop-sticks, as to try to interest me about the lesser carnivora, when i know of what is before me." "i see," i said. "you want big things that you can make your teeth meet in? how would you like to breakfast on elephant?" "what ridiculous nonsense you are talking!" he was getting too wide awake, so i thought i would press him hard. "i wonder," i said reflectively, "what an elephant's soul is like!" the effect i desired was obtained, for he at once fell from his high-horse and became a child again. "i don't want an elephant's soul, or, any soul at all!" he said. for a few moments he sat despondently. suddenly he jumped to his feet, with his eyes blazing and all the signs of intense cerebral excitement. "to hell with you and your souls!" he shouted. "why do you plague me about souls. haven't i got enough to worry, and pain, and distract me already, without thinking of souls!" he looked so hostile that i thought he was in for another homicidal fit, so i blew my whistle. the instant, however, that i did so he became calm, and said apologetically: "forgive me, doctor; i forgot myself. you do not need any help. i am so worried in my mind that i am apt to be irritable. if you only knew the problem i have to face, and that i am working out, you would pity, and tolerate, and pardon me. pray do not put me in a strait-waistcoat. i want to think and i cannot think freely when my body is confined. i am sure you will understand!" he had evidently self-control; so when the attendants came i told them not to mind, and they withdrew. renfield watched them go; when the door was closed he said, with considerable dignity and sweetness: "dr. seward you have been very considerate towards me. believe me that i am very, very grateful to you!" i thought it well to leave him in this mood, and so i came away. there is certainly something to ponder over in this man's state. several points seem to make what the american interviewer calls "a story," if one could only get them in proper order. here they are: will not mention "drinking." fears the thought of being burdened with the "soul" of anything. has no dread of wanting "life" in the future. despises the meaner forms of life altogether, though he dreads being haunted by their souls. logically all these things point one way! he has assurance of some kind that he will acquire some higher life. he dreads the consequencethe burden of a soul. then it is a human life he looks to! and the assurance-? merciful god! the count has been to him, and there is some new scheme of terror afoot! later.i went after my round to van helsing and told him my suspicion. he grew very grave; and, after thinking the matter over for a while asked me to take him to renfield. i did so. as we came to the door we heard the lunatic within singing gaily, as he used to do in the time which now seems so long ago. when we entered we saw with amazement that he had spread out his sugar as of old; the flies, lethargic with the autumn, were beginning to buzz into the room. we tried to make him talk of the subject of our previous conversation, but he would not attend. he went on with his singing, just as though we had not been present. he had got a scrap of paper and was folding it into a note-book. we had to come away as ignorant as we went in. his is a curious case indeed; we must watch him to-night. letter, mitchell, sons and candy to lord godalming. "1 october. "my lord, "we are at all times only too happy to meet your wishes. we beg, with regard to the desire of your lordship, expressed by mr. harker on your behalf, to supply the following information concerning the sale and purchase of no. 347 piccadilly. the original vendors are the executors of the late mr. archibald winter-suffield. the purchaser is a foreign nobleman, count de ville, who effected the purchase himself paying the purchase money in notes 'over the counter,' if your lordship will pardon us using so vulgar an expression. beyond this we know nothing whatever of him. "we are, my lord, "your lordship's humble servants. "mitchell, sons & candy." dr. seward's diary. 2 october.i placed a man in the corridor last night, and told him to make an accurate note of any sound he might hear from renfield's room, and gave him instructions that if there should be anything strange he was to call me. after dinner, when we had all gathered round the fire in the studymrs. harker having gone to bedwe discussed the attempts and discoveries of the day. harker was the only one who had any result, and we are in great hopes that his clue may be an important one. before going to bed i went round to the patient's room and looked in through the observation trap. he was sleeping soundly, and his heart rose and fell with regular respiration. this morning the man on duty reported to me that a little after midnight he was restless and kept saying his prayers somewhat loudly. i asked him if that was all; he replied that it was all he heard. there was something about his manner so suspicious that i asked him point blank if he had been asleep. he denied sleep, but admitted to having "dozed" for a while. it is too bad that men cannot be trusted unless they are watched. to-day harker is out following up his clue, and art and quincey are looking after horses. godalming thinks that it will be well to have horses always in readiness, for when we get the information which we seek there will be no time to lose. we must sterilise all the imported earth between sunrise and sunset; we shall thus catch the count at his weakest, and without a refuge to fly to. van helsing is off to the british museum looking up some authorities on ancient medicine. the old physicians took account of things which their followers do not accept, and the professor is searching for witch and demon cures which may be useful to us later. i sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats. later.we have met again. we seem at last to be on the track, and our work of to-morrow may be the beginning of the end. i wonder if renfield's quiet has anything to do with this. his moods have so followed the doings of the count, that the coming destruction of the monster may be carried to him in some subtle way. if we could only get some hint as to what passed in his mind, between the time of my argument with him to-day and his resumption of fly-catching, it might afford us a valuable clue. he is now seemingly quiet for a spell... is he?that wild yell seemed to come from his room. the attendant came bursting into my room and told me that renfield had somehow met with some accident. he had heard him yell; and when he went to him found him lying on his face on the floor, all covered with blood. i must go at once... chapter xxi. dr. seward's diary. 3 october. let me put down with exactness all that happened, as well as i can remember it, since last i made an entry. not a detail that i can recall must be forgotten; in all calmness i must proceed. when i came to renfield's room i found him lying on the floor on his left side in a glittering pool of blood. when i went to move him, it became at once apparent that he had received some terrible injuries; there seemed none of that unity of purpose between the parts of the body which marks even lethargic sanity. as the face was exposed i could see that it was horribly bruised, as though it had been beaten against the floorindeed it was from the face wounds that the pool of blood originated. the attendant who was kneeling beside the body said to me as we turned him over: "i think, sir, his back is broken. see, both his right arm and leg and the whole side of his face are paralysed." how such a thing could have happened puzzled the attendant beyond measure. he seemed quite bewildered, and his brows were gathered in as he said: "i can't understand the two things. he could mark his face like that by beating his own head on the floor. i saw a young woman do it once at the eversfield asylum before anyone could lay hands on her. and i suppose he might have broken his neck by falling out of bed, if he got in an awkward kink. but for the life of me i can't imagine how the two things occurred. if his back was broke, he couldn't beat his head; and if his face was like that before the fall out of bed, there would be marks of it." i said to him: "go to dr. van helsing, and ask him to kindly come here at once. i want him without an instant's delay." the man ran off, and within a few minutes the professor, in his dressing gown and slippers appeared. when he saw renfield on the ground, he looked keenly at him a moment and then turned to me. i think he recognised my thought in my eyes, for he said very quietly manifestly for the ears of the attendant: "ah a sad accident! he will need very careful watching, and much attention. i shall stay with you myself, but i shall first dress myself if you will remain i shall in a few minutes join you." the patient was now breathing stertorously and it was easy to see that he had suffered some terrible injury. van helsing returned with extraordinary celerity, bearing with him a surgical case. he had evidently been thinking and had his mind made up; for, almost before he looked at the patient, he whispered to me: "send the attendant away. we must be alone with him when he becomes conscious, after the operation." so i said: "i think that will do now simmons. we have done all that we can at present. you had better go your round, and dr. van helsing will operate. let me know instantly if there be anything unusual anywhere." the man withdrew, and we went into a strict examination of the patient. the wounds of the face were superficial; the real injury was a depressed fracture of the skull, extending right up through the motor area. the professor thought a moment and said: "we must reduce the pressure and get back to normal conditions, as far as can be; the rapidity of the suffusion shows the terrible nature of his injury. the whole motor area seems affected. the suffusion of the brain will increase quickly, so we must trephine at once or it may be too late." as he was speaking there was a soft tapping at the door. i went over and opened it and found in the corridor without, arthur and quincey in pajamas and slippers: the former spoke: "i heard your man call up dr. van helsing and tell him of an accident. so i woke quincey or rather called for him as he was not asleep. things are moving too quickly and too strangely for sound sleep for any of us these times. i've been thinking that to-morrow night will not see things as they have been. we'll have to look backand forward a little more than we have done. may we come in?" i nodded, and held the door open till they had entered; then i closed it again. when quincey saw the attitude and state of the patient, and noted the horrible pool on the floor, he said softly: "my god! what has happened to him? poor, poor devil!" i told him briefly, and added that we expected he would recover consciousness after the operationfor a short time at all events. he went at once and sat down on the edge of the bed, with godalming beside him; we all watched in patience. "we shall wait," said van helsing, "just long enough to fix the best spot for trephining, so that we may most quickly and perfectly remove the blood clot; for it is evident that the haemorrhage is increasing." the minutes during which we waited passed with fearful slowness. i had a horrible sinking in my heart, and from van helsing's face i gathered that he felt some fear or apprehension as to what was to come. i dreaded the words that renfield might speak. i was positively afraid to think; but the conviction of what was coming was on me, as i have read of men who have heard the death-watch. the poor man's breathing came in uncertain gasps. each instant he seemed as though he would open his eyes and speak, but then would follow a prolonged stertorous breath, and he would relapse into a more fixed insensibility. inured as i was to sick beds and death, this suspense grew, and grew upon me. i could almost hear the beating of my own heart; and the blood surging through my temples sounded like blows from a hammer. the silence finally became agonising. i looked at my companions, one after another, and saw from their flushed faces and damp brows that they were enduring equal torture. there was a nervous suspense over us all, as though overhead some dread bell would peal out powerfully when we should least expect it. at last there came a time when it was evident that the patient was sinking fast; he might die at any moment. i looked up at the professor and caught his eyes fixed on mine. his face was sternly set as he spoke: "there is no time to lose. his words may be worth many lives; i have been thinking so, as i stood here. it may be there is a soul at stake! we shall operate just above the ear." without another word he made the operation. for a few moments the breathing continued to be stertorous. then there came a breath so prolonged that it seemed as though it would tear open his chest. suddenly his eyes opened, and became fixed in a wild, helpless stare. this was continued for a few moments; then it softened into a glad surprise, and from the lips came a sigh of relief. he moved convulsively and as he did so, said: "i'll be quiet, doctor. tell them to take off the strait-waistcoat. i have had a terrible dream, and it has left me so weak that i cannot move. what's wrong with my face? it feels all swollen, and it smarts dreadfully." he tried to turn his head; but even with the effort his eyes seemed to grow glassy again, so i gently put it back. then van helsing said in a quiet grave tone: "tell us your dream, mr. renfield." as he heard the voice his face brightened through its mutilation, and he said: "that is dr. van helsing. how good it is of you to be here. give me some water, my lips are dry; and i shall try to tell you. i dreamed"he stopped and seemed fainting, i called quietly to quincey"the brandyit is in my studyquick!" he flew and returned with a glass, the decanter of brandy and a carafe of water. we moistened the parched lips, and the patient quickly revived. it seemed, however, that his poor injured brain had been working in the interval, for, when he was quite conscious, he looked at me piercingly with an agonised confusion which i shall never forget, and said: "i must not deceive myself, it was no dream, but all a grim reality." then his eyes roved round the room; as they caught sight of the two figures sitting patiently on the edge of the bed he went on: "if i were not sure already, i would know from them." for an instant his eyes closednot with pain or sleep but voluntarily, as though he were bringing all his faculties to bear, when he opened them he said, hurriedly, and with more energy than he had yet displayed: "quick, doctor, quick. i am dying! i feel that i have but a few minutes; and then i must go back to deathor worse! wet my lips with brandy again. i have something that i must say before i die; or before my poor crushed brain dies anyhow. thank you! it was that night after you left me, when i implored you to let me go away. i couldn't speak then, for i felt my tongue was tied; but i was as sane then, except in that way, as i am now. i was in an agony of despair for a long time after you left me; it seemed hours. then there came a sudden peace to me. my brain seemed to become cool again, and i realised where i was. i heard the dogs bark behind our house, but not where he was!" as he spoke van helsing's eyes never blinked, but his hand came out and met mine and gripped it hard. he did not, however, betray himself, he nodded slightly and said: "go on," in a low voice. renfield proceeded: "he came up to the window in the mist, as i had seen him often before; but he was solid thennot a ghost, and his eyes were fierce like a man's when angry. he was laughing with his red mouth; the sharp white teeth glinted in the moonlight when he turned to look back over the belt of trees, to where the dogs were barking. i wouldn't ask him to come in at first, though i knew he wanted to just as he had wanted all along. then he began promising me thingsnot in words but by doing them." he was interrupted by a word from the professor: "how?" "by making them happen; just as he used to send in the flies when the sun was shining. great big fat ones with steel and sapphire on their wings; and big moths, in the night, with skull and crossbones on their backs." van helsing nodded to him as he whispered to me unconsciously: "the acherontia aiettropos of the sphingeswhat you call the 'death's-head moth?'" the patient went on without stopping. "then he began to whisper: 'rats, rats, rats! hundreds, thousands, millions of them, and every one a life; and dogs to eat them, and cats too. all lives! all red blood, with years of life in it; and not merely buzzing flies!' i laughed at him, for i wanted to see what he could do. then the dogs howled, away beyond the dark trees in his house. he beckoned me to the window. i got up and looked out, and he raised his hands, and seemed to call out without using any words. a dark mass spread over the grass, coming on like the shape of a flame of fire; and then he moved the mist to the right and left, and i could see that there were thousands of rats with their eyes blazing redlike his, only smaller. he held up his hand, and they all stopped; and i thought he seemed to be saying: 'all these lives will i give you, ay, and many more and greater, through countless ages, if you will fall down and worship me!' and then a red cloud, like the colour of blood, seemed to close over my eyes; and before i knew what i was doing, i found myself opening the sash and saying to him: 'come in, lord and master!' the rats were all gone, but he slid into the room through the sash, though it was only open an inch widejust as the moon herself has often come in through the tiniest crack and has stood before me in all her size and splendour." his voice was weaker, so i moistened his lips with the brandy again, and he continued; but it seemed as though his memory had gone on working in the interval for his story was further advanced. i was about to call him back to the point, but van helsing whispered to me: "let him go on. do not interrupt him; he cannot go back, and may-be could not proceed at all if once he lost the thread of his thought." he proceeded: "all day i waited to hear from him, but he did not send me anything, not even a blow-fly, and when the moon got up i was pretty angry with him. when he slid in through the window, though it was shut, and did not even knock, i got mad with him. he sneered at me, and his white face looked out of the mist with his red eyes gleaming, and he went on as though he owned the whole place, and i was no one. he didn't even smell the same as he went by me. i couldn't hold him. i thought that, somehow, mrs. harker had come into the room." the two men sitting on the bed stood up and came over standing behind him so that he could not see them, but where they could hear better. they were both silent, but the professor started and quivered; his face, however, grew grimmer and sterner still. renfield went on without noticing: "when mrs. harker came in to see me this afternoon she wasn't the same; it was like tea after the teapot had been watered." here we all moved, but no one said a word; he went on: "i didn't know that she was here till she spoke; and she didn't look the same. i don't care for the pale people; i like them with lots of blood in them, and hers had all seemed to have run out. i didn't think of it at the time; but when she went away i began to think, and it made me mad to know that he had been taking the life out of her." i could feel that the rest quivered, as i did; but we remained otherwise still. "so when he came to-night i was ready for him. i saw the mist stealing in, and i grabbed it tight. i had heard that madmen have unnatural strength; and as i knew i was a madmanat times anyhowi resolved to use my power. ay, and he felt it too, for he had to come out of the mist to struggle with me. i held tight; and i thought i was going to win, for i didn't mean him to take any more of her life, till i saw his eyes. they burned into me, and my strength became like water. he slipped through it, and when i tried to cling to him, he raised me up and flung me down. there was a red cloud before me, and a noise like thunder, and the mist seemed to steal away under the door." his voice was becoming fainter and his breath more stertorous. van helsing stood up instinctively. "we know the worst now," he said. "he is here, and we know his purpose. it may not be too late. let us be armedthe same as we were the other night, but lose no time; there is not an instant to spare." there was no need to put our fear, nay our conviction, into wordswe shared them in common. we all hurried and took from our rooms the same things that we had when we entered the court's house. the professor had his ready, and as we met in the corridor he pointed to them significantly as he said: "they never leave me; and they shall not till this unhappy business is over. be wise also, my friends. it is no common enemy that we deal with. alas! alas! that that dear madam mina should suffer!" he stopped; his voice was breaking, and i do not know if rage or terror predominated in my own heart. outside the harker's door we paused. art and quincey held back, and the latter said: "should we disturb her?" "we must," said van helsing grimly. "if the door be locked, i shall break it in." "may it not frighten her terribly? it is unusual to break into a lady's room!" van helsing said solemnly. "you are always right; but this is life and death. all chambers are alike to the doctor, and even were they not they are all as one to me to-night. friend john, when i turn the handle, if the door does not open, do you put your shoulder down and shove; and you too, my friends, now!" he turned the handle as he spoke, but the door did not yield. we threw ourselves against it; with a crash it burst open, and we almost fell headlong into the room. the professor did actually fall, and i saw across him as he gathered himself up from hands and knees. what i saw appalled me. i felt my hair rise like bristles on the back of my neck, and my heart seemed to stand still. the moonlight was so bright that through the thick yellow blind the room was light enough to see. on the bed beside the window lay jonathan harker, his face flushed and breathing heavily as though in a stupor. kneeling on the near edge of the bed facing outwards was the white-clad figure of his wife. by her side stood a tall, thin man, clad in black. his face was turned from us, but the instant we saw we all recognised the countin every way, even to the scar on his forehead. with his left hand he held both mrs. harker's hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension; his right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. her white night-dress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man's bare breast which was shown by his torn-open dress. the attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten's nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink. as we burst into the room, the count turned his face, and the hellish look that i had heard described seemed to leap into it. his eyes flamed red with devilish passion; the great nostrils of the white aquiline nose opened wide and quivered at the edge; and the white sharp teeth, behind the full lips of the blood-dripping mouth, champed together like those of a wild beast. with a wrench, which threw his victim back upon the bed as though hurled from a height, he turned and sprang at us. but by this time the professor had gained his feet, and was holding towards him the envelope which contained the sacred wafer. the count suddenly stopped, just as poor lucy had done outside the tomb, and cowered back. further and further back he cowered, as we, lifting our crucifixes, advanced. the moonlight suddenly failed, as a great black cloud sailed across the sky; and when the gaslight sprang up under quincey's match, we saw nothing but a faint vapour. this, as we looked, trailed under the door, which with the recoil from its bursting open, had swung back to its old position. van helsing, art, and i moved forward to mrs. harker, who by this time had drawn her breath and with it had given a scream so wild, so ear-piercing, so despairing that it seems to me now that it will ring in my ears till my dying day. for a few seconds she lay in her helpless attitude and disarray. her face was ghastly, with a pallor which was accentuated by the blood which smeared her lips and cheeks and chin; from her throat trickled a thin stream of blood her eyes were mad with terror. then she put before her face her poor crushed hands, which bore on their whiteness the red mark of the count's terrible grip, and from behind them came a low desolate wail which made the terrible scream seem only the quick expression of an endless grief. van helsing stepped forward and drew the coverlet gently over her body, whilst art, after looking at her face for an instant despairingly, ran out of the room. van helsing whispered to me: "jonathan is in a stupor such as we know the vampire can produce. we can do nothing with poor madam mina for a few moments till she recovers herself, i must wake him!" he dipped the end of a towel in cold water and with it began to flick him on the face, his wife all the while holding her face between her hands and sobbing in a way that was heart-breaking to hear. i raised the blind, and looked out of the window. there was much moonshine; and as i looked i could see quincey morris run across the lawn and hide himself in the shadow of a great yew tree. it puzzled me to think why he was doing this; but at the instant i heard harker's quick exclamation as he woke to partial consciousness, and turned to the bed. on his face, as there might well be, was a look of wild amazement. he seemed dazed for a few seconds, and then full consciousness seemed to burst upon him all at once, and he started up. his wife was aroused by the quick movement, and turned to him with her arms stretched out, as though to embrace him; instantly, however, she drew them in again, and putting her elbows together, held her hands before her face, and shuddered till the bed beneath her shook. "in god's name what does this mean?" harker cried out, "dr. seward, dr. van helsing, what is it? what has happened? what is wrong? mina, dear, what is it? what does that blood mean? my god, my god! has it come to this!" and, raising himself to his knees, he beat his hands wildly together. "good god help us! help her! oh, help her!" with a quick movement he jumped from bed, and began to pull on his clothes,all the man in him awake at the need for instant exertion. "what has happened? tell me all about it?" he cried without pausing. "dr. van helsing, you love mina, i know. oh, do something to save her. it cannot have gone too far yet. guard her while i look for him!" his wife, through her terror and horror and distress saw some sure danger to him: instantly forgetting her own grief, she seized hold of him and cried out: "no! no! jonathan, you must not leave me. i have suffered enough to-night, god knows, without the dread of his harming you. you must stay with me. stay with these friends who will watch over you!" her expression became frantic as she spoke; and, he yielding to her, she pulled him down sitting on the bed side, and clung to him fiercely. van helsing and i tried to calm them both. the professor held up his little golden crucifix, and said with wonderful calmness: "do not fear, my dear. we are here; and whilst this is close to you no foul thing can approach. you are safe for to-night; and we must be calm and take counsel together." she shuddered and was silent, holding down her head on her husband's breast. when she raised it, his white night-robe was stained with blood where her lips had touched, and where the thin open wound in her neck had sent forth drops. the instant she saw it she drew back, with a low wall, and whispered, amidst choking sobs: "unclean, unclean! i must touch him or kiss him no more. oh, that it should be that it is i who am now his worst enemy, and whom he may have most cause to fear." to this he spoke out resolutely: "nonsense, mina. it is a shame to me to hear such a word. i would not hear it of you; and i shall not hear it from you. may god judge me by my deserts, and punish me with more bitter suffering than even this hour, if by any act or will of mine anything ever come between us!" he put out his arms and folded her to his breast; and for a while she lay there sobbing. he looked at us over her bowed head, with eyes that blinked damply above his quivering nostrils; his mouth was set as steel. after a while her sobs became less frequent and more faint, and then he said to me, speaking with a studied calmness which i felt tried his nervous power to the utmost: "and now, dr. seward, tell me all about it. too well i know the broad fact; tell me all that has been." i told him exactly what had happened, and he listened with seeming impassiveness; but his nostrils twitched and his eyes blazed as i told how the ruthless hands of the count had held his wife in that terrible and horrid position, with her mouth to the open wound in his breast. it interested me, even at that moment, to see, that, whilst the face of white set passion worked convulsively over the bowed head, the hands tenderly and lovingly stroked the ruffled hair. just as i had finished, quincey and godalming knocked at the door. they entered in obedience to our summons. van helsing looked at me questioningly. i understood him to mean if we were to take advantage of their coming to divert if possible the thoughts of the unhappy husband and wife from each other and from themselves; so on nodding acquiescence to him he asked them what they had seen or done. to which lord godalming answered: "i could not see him anywhere in the passage, or in any of our rooms. i looked in the study but, though he had been there, he had gone. he had, however-" he stopped suddenly looking at the poor drooping figure on the bed. van helsing said gravely: "go on friend arthur. we want here no more concealments. our hope now is in knowing all. tell freely!" so art went on: "he had been there, and though it could only have been for a few seconds, he made rare hay of the place. all the manuscript had been burned, and the blue flames were flickering amongst the white ashes; the cylinders of your phonograph too were thrown on the fire, and the wax had helped the flames." here i interrupted. "thank god there is the other copy in the safe!" his face lit for a moment, but fell again as he went on; "i ran down stairs then, but could see no sign of him. i looked into renfield's room; but there was no trace there except-!" again he paused. "go on," said harker hoarsely; so he bowed his head and moistening his lips with his tongue, added: "except that the poor fellow is dead." mrs. harker raised her head, looking from one to the other of us she said solemnly: "god's will be done!" i could not but feel that art was keeping back something; but, as i took it that it was with a purpose, i said nothing. van helsing turned to morris and asked: "and you, friend quincey, have you any to tell?" "a little," he answered. "it may be much eventually, but at present i can't say. i thought it well to know if possible where the count would go when he left the house. i did not see him; but i saw a bat rise from renfield's window, and flap westward. i expected to see him in some shape go back to carfax; but he evidently sought some other lair. he will not be back to-night; for the sky is reddening in the east, and the dawn is close. we must work to-morrow!" he said the latter words through his shut teeth. for a space of perhaps a couple of minutes there was silence, and i could fancy that i could hear the sound of our hearts beating; then van helsing said, placing his hand very tenderly on mrs. harker's head: "and now, madam minapoor, dear, dear madam minatell us exactly what happened. god knows that i do not want that you be pained; but it is need that we know all. for now more than ever has all work to be done quick and sharp, and in deadly earnest. the day is close to us that must end all, if it may be so; and now is the chance that we may live and learn." the poor, dear lady shivered, and i could see the tension of her nerves as she clasped her husband closer to her and bent her head lower and lower still on his breast. then she raised her head proudly, and held out one hand to van helsing who took it in his, and, after stooping and kissing it reverently, held it fast. the other hand was locked in that of her husband, who held his other arm thrown round her protectingly. after a pause in which she was evidently ordering her thoughts, she began: "i took the sleeping draught which you had so kindly given me, but for a long time it did not act. i seemed to become more wakeful, and myriads of horrible fancies began to crowd in upon my mindall of them connected with death, and vampires; with blood, and pain, and trouble." her husband involuntarily groaned as she turned to him and said lovingly: "do not fret dear. you must be brave and strong, and help me through the horrible task. if you only knew what an effort it is to me to tell of this fearful thing at all, you would understand how much i need your help. well, i saw i must try to help the medicine to its work with my will, if it was to do me any good, so i resolutely set myself to sleep. sure enough sleep must soon have come to me, for i remember no more. jonathan coming in had not waked me, for he lay by my side when next i remember. there was in the room the same thin white mist that i had before noticed. but i forget now if you know of this; you will find it in my diary which i shall show you later. i felt the same vague terror which had come to me before and the same sense of some presence. i turned to wake jonathan, but found that he slept so soundly that it seemed as if it was he who had taken the sleeping draught, and not i. i tried, but i could not wake him. this caused me a great fear, and i looked around terrified. then indeed, my heart sank within me: beside the bed, as if he had stepped out of the mistor rather as if the mist had turned into his figure, for it had entirely disappearedstood a tall, thin man, all in black. i knew him at once from the description of the others. the waxen face; the high aquiline nose, on which the light fell in a thin white line; the parted red lips, with the sharp white teeth showing between; and the red eyes that i had seemed to see in the sunset on the windows of st. mary's church at whitby. i knew, too, the red scar on his forehead where jonathan had struck him. for an instant my heart stood still, and i would have screamed out, only that i was paralysed. in the pause he spoke in a sort of keen, cutting, whisper, pointing as he spoke to jonathan: "'silence! if you make a sound i shall take him and dash his brains out before your very eyes.' i was appalled and was too bewildered to do or say anything. with a mocking smile, he placed one hand upon my shoulder and, holding me tight, bared my throat with the other, saying as he did so; 'first, a little refreshment to reward my exertions. you may as well be quiet, it is not the first time, or the second, that your veins have appeased my thirst!' i was bewildered, and, strangely enough, i did not want to hinder him. i suppose it is a part of the horrible curse that such is, when his touch is on his victim. and oh, my god, my god, pity me! he placed his reeking lips upon my throat!" her husband groaned again. she clasped his hand harder, and looked at him pityingly, as if he were the injured one, and went on: "i felt my strength fading away, and i was in a half swoon. how long this horrible thing lasted i know not; but it seemed that a long time must have passed before he took his foul, awful, sneering mouth away. i saw it drip with the fresh blood!" the remembrance seemed for a while to overpower her, and she drooped and would have sunk down but for her husband's sustaining arm. with a great effort she recovered herself and went on: "then he spoke to me mockingly, 'and so you, like the others, would play your brains against mine. you would help these men to hunt me and frustrate me in my designs! you know now, and they know in part already, and will know in full before long, what it is to cross my path. they should have kept their energies for use closer to home. whilst they played wits against meagainst me who commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before they were borni was countermining them. and you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for a while; and shall be later on my companion and my helper. you shall be avenged in turn; for not one of them but shall minister to your needs. but as yet you are to be punished for what you have done. you have aided in thwarting me; now you shall come to my call. when my brain says "come!" to you, you shall cross land or sea to do my bidding; and to that end this!' with that he pulled open his shirt, and with his long sharp nails opened a vein in his breast. when the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that i must either suffocate or swallow some of theoh my god! my god! what have i done? what have i done to deserve such a fate, i who have tried to walk in meekness and righteousness all my days. god pity me! look down on a poor soul in worse than mortal peril; and in mercy pity those to whom she is dear!" then she began to rub her lips as though to cleanse them from pollution. as she was telling her terrible story, the eastern sky began to quicken, and everything became more and more clear. harker was still and quiet; but over his face, as the awful narrative went on, came a grey look which deepened and deepened in the morning light, till when the first red streak of the coming dawn shot up, the flesh stood darkly out against the whitening hair. we have arranged that one of us is to stay within call of the unhappy pair till we can meet together and arrange about taking action. of this i am sure: the sun rises to-day on no more miserable house in all the great round of its daily course. chapter xxii. jonathan harker's journal. 3 october.as i must do something or go mad, i write this diary. it is now six o'clock, and we are to meet in the study in half an hour and take something to eat, for dr. van helsing and dr. seward are agreed that if we do not eat we cannot work our best. our best will be, god knows, required today. i must keep writing at every chance, for i dare not stop to think. all, big and little, must go down; perhaps at the end the little things may teach us most. the teaching, big or little, could not have landed mina or me anywhere worse than we are to-day. however, we must trust and hope. poor mina told me just now, with the tears running down her dear cheeks, that it is in trouble and trial that our faith is testedthat we must keep on trusting; and that god will aid us up to the end. the end! oh my god! what end?... to work! to work! when dr. van helsing and dr. seward had come back from seeing poor renfield, we went gravely into what was to be done. first, dr. seward told us that when he and dr. van helsing had gone down to the room below they had found renfield lying on the floor, all in a heap. his face was all bruised and crushed in, and the bones of the neck were broken. dr. seward asked the attendant who was on duty in the passage if he had heard anything. he said that he had been sitting downhe confessed to half dozingwhen he heard loud voices in the room, and then renfield had called out loudly several times, "god! god! god!" after that there was a sound of falling, and when he entered the room he found him lying on the floor, face down, just as the doctors had seen him. van helsing asked if he had heard "voices" or "a voice," and he said he could not say; that at first it had seemed to him as if there were two, but as there was no one in the room it could have been only one. he could swear to it, if required, that the word "god" was spoken by the patient. dr. seward said to us, when we were alone, that he did not wish to go into the matter; the question of an inquest had to be considered, and it would never do to put forward the truth, as no one would believe it. as it was, he thought that on the attendant's evidence he could give a certificate of death by misadventure in falling from bed. in case the coroner should demand it, there would be a formal inquest, necessarily to the same result. when the question began to be discussed as to what should be our next step, the very first thing we decided was that mina should be in full confidence; that nothing of any sortno matter how painfulshould be kept from her. she herself agreed as to its wisdom, and it was pitiful to see her so brave and yet so sorrowful, and in such a depth of despair. "there must be no concealment," she said, "alas! we have had too much already. and besides there is nothing in all the world that can give me more pain than i have already enduredthan i suffer now! whatever may happen, it must be of new hope or of new courage to me!" van helsing was, looking at her fixedly as she spoke, and said, suddenly but quietly: "but dear madam mina are you not afraid; not for yourself, but for others from yourself, after what has happened?" her face grew set in its lines, but her eyes shone with the devotion of a martyr as she answered: "ah no! for my mind is made up!" "to what?" he asked gently, whilst we were all very still; for each in our own way we had a sort of vague idea of what she meant. her answer came with direct simplicity, as though she were simply stating a fact: "because if i find in myselfand i shall watch keenly for ita sign of harm to any that i love, i shall die!" "you would not kill yourself?" he asked, hoarsely. "i would; if there were no friend who loved me, who would save me such a pain, and so desperate an effort!" she looked at him meaningly as she spoke. he was sitting down; but now he rose and came close to her and put his hand on her head as he said solemnly: "my child, there is such an one if it were for your good. for myself i could hold it in my account with god to find such an euthanasia for you, even at this moment if it were best. nay, were it safe! but my child-" for a moment he seemed choked, and a great sob rose in his throat; he gulped it down and went on: "there are here some who would stand between you and death. you must not die. you must not die by any hand; but least of all by your own. until the other, who has fouled your sweet life, is true dead you must not die; for if he is still with the quick un-dead, your death would make you even as he is. no, you must live! you must struggle and strive to live, though death would seem a boon unspeakable. you must fight death himself, though he come to you in pain or in joy; by the day, or the night; in safety or in peril! on your living soul i charge you that you do not dienay nor think of deathtill this great evil be past." the poor dear grew white as death, and shook and shivered, as i have seen a quicksand shake and shiver at the incoming of the tide. we were all silent; we could do nothing. at length she grew more calm and turning to him said, sweetly, but oh! so sorrowfully, as she held out her hand. "i promise you, my dear friend, that if god will let me live, i shall strive to do so; till, if it may be in his good time, this horror may have passed away from me." she was so good and brave that we all felt that our hearts were strengthened to work and endure for her, and we began to discuss what we were to do. i told her that she was to have all the papers in the safe, and all the papers or diaries and phonographs we might hereafter use; and was to keep the record as she had done before. she was pleased with the prospect of anything to doif "pleased" could be used in connection with so grim an interest. as usual van helsing had thought ahead of everyone else, and was prepared with an exact ordering of our work. "it is perhaps well" he said "that at our meeting after our visit to carfax we decided not to do anything with the earthboxes that lay there. had we done so, the count must have guessed our purpose, and would doubtless have taken measures in advance to frustrate such an effort with regard to the others; but now he does not know our intentions. nay more, in all probability, he does not know that such a power exists to us as can sterilise his lairs, so that he cannot use them as of old. we are now so much further advanced in our knowledge as to their disposition, that, when we have examined the house in piccadilly, we may track the very last of them. to-day, then, is ours; and in it rests our hope. the sun that rose on our sorrow this morning guards us in its course. until it sets tonight, that monster must retain whatever form he now has. he is confined within the limitations of his earthly envelope. he cannot melt into thin air nor disappear through cracks or chinks or crannies. if he go through a door-way, he must open the door like a mortal. and so we have this day to hunt out all his lairs and sterilise them. so we shall, if we have not yet catch him and destroy him, drive him to bay in some place where the catching and the destroying shall be, in time, sure." here i started up for i could not contain myself at the thought that the minutes and seconds so preciously laden with mina's life and happiness were flying from us, since whilst we talked action was impossible. but van helsing held up his hand warningly. "nay, friend jonathan," he said, "in this, the quickest way home is the longest way, so your proverb say. we shall all act and act with desperate quick, when the time has come. but think, in all probable the key of the situation is in that house in piccadilly. the count may have many houses which he has bought. of them he will have deeds of purchase, keys and other things. he will have paper that he write on; he will have his book of cheques. there are many belongings that he must have somewhere; why not in this place so central, so quiet, where he come and go by the front or the back at all hour, when in the very vast of the traffic there is none to notice. we shall go there and search that house; and when we learn what it holds, then we do what our friend arthur call, in his phrases of hunt 'stop the earths' and so we run down our old foxso? is it not?" "then let us come at once," i cried, "we are wasting the precious, precious time!" the professor did not move, but simply said: "and how are we to get into that house in piccadilly?" "any way!" i cried. "we shall break in if need be." "and your police; where will they be, and what will they say?" i was staggered; but i knew that if he wished to delay he had a good reason for it. so i said, as quietly as i could: "don't wait more than need be; you know, i am sure, what torture i am in." "ah, my child, that i do; and indeed there is no wish of me to add to your anguish. but just think, what can we do, until all the world be at movement. then will come our time. i have thought and thought, and it seems to me that the simplest way is the best of all. now we wish to get into the house, but we have no key; is it not so?" i nodded. "now suppose that you were, in truth, the owner of that house, and could not still get it, and think there was to you no conscience of the housebreaker, what would you do?" "i should get a respectable locksmith, and set him to work to pick the lock for me." "and your police, they would interfere, would they not?" "oh, no! not if they knew the man was properly employed." "then," he looked at me keenly as he spoke, "all that is in doubt is the conscience of the employer, and the belief of your policemen as to whether or no that employer has a good conscience or a bad one. your police must indeed be zealous men and cleveroh so clever!in reading the heart, that they trouble themselves in such matter. no, no, my friend jonathan, you go take the lock off a hundred empty house in this your london, or of any city in the world; and if you do it as such things are rightly done, and at the time such things are rightly done, no one will interfere. i have read of a gentleman who owned a so fine house in your london, and when he went for months of summer to switzerland and lock up his house, some burglar came and broke window at back and got in. then he went and made open the shutters in front and walk out and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. then he have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice; and when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of that other man who own them. then he go to a builder, and he sell him that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away within a certain time. and your police and other authority help him all they can. and when that owner come back from his holiday in switzerland he find only an empty hole where his house had been. this was all done en regle, and in our work we shall be en regle too. we shall not go so early that the policemen who have then little to think of, shall deem it strange; but we shall go after ten o'clock, when there are many about, and when such things would be done were we indeed owners of the house." i could not but see how right he was and the terrible despair of mina's face became relaxed a thought; there was hope in such good counsel. van helsing went on: "when once within that house we may find more clues; at any rate some of us can remain there whilst the rest find the other places where there be more earth-boxesat bermondsey and mile end." lord godalming stood up. "i can be of some use here," he said. "i shall wire to my people to have horses and carriages where they will be most convenient." "look here, old fellow," said morris, "it is a capital idea to have all ready in case we want to go horse-backing; but don't you think that one of your snappy carriages with its heraldic adornments in a byway of walworth or mile end would attract too much attention for our purposes? it seems to me that we ought to take cabs when we go south or east; and even leave them somewhere near the neighborhood we are going to." "friend quincey is right!" said the professor. "his head is what you call in plane with the horizon. it is a difficult thing that we go to do, and we do not want no peoples to watch us if so it may." mina took a growing interest in everything and i was rejoiced to see that the exigency of affairs was helping her to forget for a time the terrible experience of the night. she was very, very palealmost ghastly, and so thin that her lips were drawn away, showing her teeth in somewhat of prominence. i did not mention this last, lest it should give her needless pain; but it made my blood run cold in my veins to think of what had occurred with poor lucy when the count had sucked her blood. as yet there was no sign of the teeth growing sharper, but the time as yet was short, and there was time for fear. when we came to the discussion of the sequence of our efforts and of the disposition of our forces, there were new sources of doubt. it was finally agreed that before starting for piccadilly we should destroy the count's lair close at hand. in case he should find it out too soon, we should thus be still ahead of him in our work of destruction; and his presence in his purely material shape, and at his weakest, might give us some new clue. as to the disposal of forces, it was suggested by the professor that, after our visit to carfax, we should all enter the house in piccadilly; that the two doctors and i should remain there, whilst lord godalming and quincey found the lairs at walworth and mile end and destroyed them. it was possible, if not likely, the professor urged, that the count might appear in piccadilly during the day, and that if so we might be able to cope with him then and there. at any rate, we might be able to follow him in force. to this plan i strenuously objected, and so far as my going was concerned, for i said that i intended to stay and protect mina. i thought that my mind was made up on the subject; but mina would not listen to my objection. she said that there might be some law matter in which i could be useful; that amongst the count's papers might be some clue which i could understand out of my experience in transylvania; and that, as it was, all the strength we could muster was required to cope with the count's extraordinary power. i had to give in, for mina's resolution was fixed; she said that it was the last hope for her that we should all work together. "as for me," she said, "i have no fear. things have been as bad as they can be; and whatever may happen must have in it some element of hope or comfort. go, my husband! god can, if he wishes it, guard me as well alone as with any one present." so i started up crying out: "then in god's name let us come at once, for we are losing time. the count may come to piccadilly earlier than we think." "not so!" said van helsing, holding up his hand. "but why?" i asked. "do you forget," he said, with actually a smile, "that last night he banqueted heavily, and will sleep late?" did i forget! shall i evercan i ever! can any of us ever forget that terrible scene! mina struggled hard to keep her brave countenance; but the pain overmastered her and she put her hands before her face, and shuddered whilst she moaned. van helsing had not intended to recall her frightful experience. he had simply lost sight of her and her part in the affair in his intellectual effort. when it struck him what he said, he was horrified at his thoughtlessness and tried to comfort her. "oh, madam mina," he said, "dear, dear madam mina, alas! that i of all who so reverence you should have said anything so forgetful. these stupid old lips of mine and this stupid old head do not deserve so; but you will forget it, will you not?" he bent low beside her as he spoke; she took his hand, and looking at him through her tears, said hoarsely: "no, i shall not forget, for it is well that i remember; and with it i have so much in memory of you that is sweet, that i take it all together. now, you must all be going soon. breakfast is ready, and we must all eat that we may be strong." breakfast was a strange meal to us all. we tried to be cheerful and encourage each other, and mina was the brightest and most cheerful of us. when it was over, van helsing stood up and said: "now, my dear friends, we go forth to our terrible enterprise. are we all armed, as we were on that night when first we visited our enemy's lair; armed against ghostly as well as carnal attack?" we all assured him. "then it is well. now madam mina, you are in any case quite safe here until the sunset; and before then we shall returnifwe shall return! but before we go let me see you armed against personal attack. i have myself, since you came down, prepared your chamber by the placing of things of which we know, so that he may not enter. now let me guard yourself. on your forehead i touch this piece of sacred wafer in the name of the father, the son, and-" there was a fearful scream which almost froze our hearts to hear. as he had placed the wafer on mina's forehead, it had seared ithad burned into the flesh as though it had been a piece of white-hot metal. my poor darling's brain had told her the significance of the fact as quickly as her nerves received the pain of it; and the two so overwhelmed her that her overwrought nature had its voice in that dreadful scream. but the words to her thought came quickly; the echo of the scream had not ceased to ring on the air when there came the reaction, and she sand on her knees on the floor in an agony of abasement. pulling her beautiful hair over her face, as the leper of old his mantle, she wailed out: "unclean! unclean! even the almighty shuns my polluted flesh! i must bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the judgement day." they all paused. i had thrown myself beside her in an agony of helpless grief, and putting my arms around held her tight. for a few minutes our sorrowful hearts beat together, whilst the friends around us turned away their eyes that ran tears silently. then van helsing turned and said gravely; so gravely that i could not help feeling that he was in some way inspired, and was stating things outside himself: "it may be that you may have to bear that mark till god himself see fit, as he most surely shall, on the judgment day, to redress all wrongs of the earth and of his children that he has placed thereon. and oh, madam mina, my dear, my dear, may we who love you be there to see, when that red scar, the sign of god's knowledge of what has been, shall pass away and leave your forehead as pure as the heart we know. for so surely as we live, that scar shall pass away when god sees right to lift the burden that is hard upon us. till then we bear our cross, as his son did in obedience to his will. it may be that we are chosen instruments of his good pleasure, and that we ascend to his bidding as that other through stripes and shame; through tears and blood; through doubts and fears, and all that makes the difference between god and man." there was hope in his words, and comfort, and they made for resignation. mina and i both felt so, and simultaneously we each took one of the old man's hands and bent over and kissed it. then without a word we all knelt down together, and, all holding hands, swore to be true to each other. we men pledged ourselves to raise the veil of sorrow from the head of her whom, each in his own way, we loved; and we prayed for help and guidance in the terrible task which lay before us. it was then time to start. so i said farewell to mina, a parting which neither of us shall forget to our dying day; and we set out. to one thing i have made up my mind: if we find out that mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. i suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many; just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks. we entered carfax without trouble and found all things the same as on the first occasion. it was hard to believe that amongst so prosaic surroundings of neglect and dust and decay there was any ground for such fear as already we knew. had not our minds been made up, and had there not been terrible memories to spur us on, we could hardly have proceeded with our task. we found no papers, or any sign of use in the house; and in the old chapel the great boxes looked just as we had seen them last. dr. van helsing said to us solemnly as we stood before them: "and now, my friends, we have a duty here to do. we must sterilise this earth, so sacred of holy memories, that he has brought from a far distant land for such fell use. he has chosen this earth because it has been holy. thus we defeat him with his own weapon, for we make it more holy still. it was sanctified to such use of man, now we sanctify it to god." as he spoke he took from his bag a screw-driver and a wrench, and very soon the top of one of the cases was thrown open. the earth smelled musty and close; but we did not somehow seem to mind, for our attention was concentrated on the professor. taking from his box a piece of the sacred wafer he laid it reverently on the earth, and then shutting down the lid began to screw it home, we aiding him as he worked. one by one we treated in the same way each of the great boxes, and left them as we had found them to all appearance; but in each was a portion of the host. when we closed the door behind us, the professor said solemnly: "so much is already done. if it may be that with all the others we can be so successful, then the sunset of this evening may shine on madam mina's forehead all white as ivory and with no stain!" as we passed across the lawn on our way to the station to catch our train we could see the front of the asylum. i looked eagerly, and in the window of my own room saw mina. i waved my hand to her, and nodded to tell that our work there was successfully accomplished. she nodded in reply to show that she understood. the last i saw, she was waving her hand in farewell. it was with a heavy heart that we sought the station and just caught the train, which was steaming in as we reached the platform. i have written this in the train. piccadilly, 12:30 o'clock.just before we reached fenchurch street lord godalming said to me: "quincey and i will find a locksmith. you had better not come with us in case there should be any difficulty; for under the circumstances it wouldn't seem so bad for us to break into an empty house. but you are a solicitor and the incorporated law society might tell you that you should have known better." i demurred as to my not sharing any danger even of odium, but he went on: "besides, it will attract less attention if there are not too many of us. my title will make it all right with the locksmith, and with any policeman that may come along. you had better go with jack and the professor and stay in the green park, somewhere in sight of the house; and when you see the door opened and the smith has gone away, do you all come across. we shall be on the look out for you, and shall let you in." "the advice is good!" said van helsing, so we said no more. godalming and morris hurried off in a cab, we following in another. at the corner of arlington street our contingent got our and strolled into the green park. my heart beat as i saw the house on which so much of our hope was centered, looming up grim and silent in its deserted condition amongst its more lively and spruce-looking neighbours. we sat down on a bench within good view, and began to smoke cigars so as to attract as little attention as possible. the minutes seemed to pass with leaden feet as we waited for the coming of the others. at length we saw a four-wheeler drive up. out of it, in leisurely fashion, got lord godalming and morris; and down from the box descended a thick-set working man with his rush-woven basket of tools. morris paid the cabman, who touched his hat and drove away. together the two ascended the steps, and lord godalming pointed out what he wanted done. the workman took off his coat leisurely and hung it on one of the spikes of the rail, saying something to a policeman who just then sauntered along. the policeman nodded acquiescence, and the man kneeling down placed his bag beside him. after searching through it, he took out a selection of tools which he produced to lay beside him in orderly fashion. then he stood up, looked into the keyhole, blew into it, and, turning to his employers, made some remark. lord godalming smiled, and the man lifted a good sized bunch of keys; selecting one of them, he began to probe the lock, as if feeling his way with it. after fumbling about for a bit he tried a second, and then a third. all at once the door opened under a slight push from him, and he and the two others entered the hall. we sat still; my own cigar burnt furiously, but van helsing's went cold altogether. we waited patiently as we saw the workman come out and bring in his bag. then he held the door partly open, steadying it with his knees, whilst he fitted a key to the lock. this he finally handed to lord godalming, who took out his purse and gave him something. the man touched his hat, took his bag, put on his coat and departed; not a soul took the slightest notice of the whole transaction. when the man had fairly gone, we three crossed the street and knocked at the door. it was immediately opened by quincey morris, beside whom stood lord godalming lighting a cigar. "the place smells so vilely," said the latter as we came in. it did indeed smell vilelylike the old chapel at carfaxand with our previous experience it was plain to us that the count had been using the place pretty freely. we moved to explore the house, all keeping together in case of attack; for we knew we had a strong and wily enemy to deal with, and as yet we did not know whether the count might not be in the house. in the dining-room, which lay at the back of the hall, we found eight boxes of earth. eight boxes only out of the nine which we sought! our work was not over, and would never be until we should have found the missing box. first we opened the shutters of the window which looked out across a narrow stone-flagged yard at the blank face of a stable, pointed to look like the front of a miniature house. there were no windows in it, so we were not afraid of being overlooked. we did not lose any time in examining the chests. with the tools which we had brought with us we opened them, one by one, and treated them as we had treated those others in the old chapel. it was evident to us that the count was not at present in the house, and we proceeded to search for any of his effects. after a cursory glance at the rest of the rooms, from basement to attic, we came to the conclusion that the dining room contained any effects which might belong to the count; and so we proceeded to minutely examine them. they lay in a sort of orderly disorder on the great dining-room table. there were title deeds of the piccadilly house in a great bundle; deeds of the purchase of the houses at mile end and bermondsey; notepaper, envelopes, and pens and ink. all were covered up in thin wrapping paper to keep them from the dust. there were also a clothes brush, a brush and comb, and a jug and basinthe latter containing dirty water which was reddened as if with blood. last of all was a little heap of keys of all sorts and sizes, probably those belonging to the other houses. when we had examined this last find, lord godalming and quincey morris taking accurate notes of the various addresses of the houses in the east and the south, took with them the keys in a great bunch, and set out to destroy the boxes in these places. the rest of us are, with what patience we can, waiting their returnor the coming of the count. chapter xxiii. dr. seward's diary. 3 octoberthe time seemed terribly long whilst we were waiting for the coming of godalming and quincey morris. the professor tried to keep our minds active by using them all the time. i could see his beneficent purpose, by the side glances which he threw from time to time at harker. the poor fellow is overwhelmed in a misery that is appalling to see. last night he was a frank, happy-looking man, with strong, youthful face, full of energy, and with dark brown hair. to-day he is a drawn, haggard old man, whose white hair matches well with the hollow burning eyes and grief-written lines of his face. his energy is still intact; in fact, he is like a living flame. this may yet be his salvation, for, if all go well, it will tide him over the despairing period; he will then, in a kind of way, wake again to the realities of life. poor fellow, i thought my own trouble was bad enough, but his-! the professor knows this well enough, and is doing his best to keep his mind active. what he has been saying was, under the circumstances, of absorbing interest. so well as i can remember, here it is: "i have studied, over and over again since they came into my hands, all the papers relating to this monster; and the more i have studied, the greater seems the necessity to utterly stamp him out. all through there are signs of his advance; not only of his power, but of his knowledge of it. as i learned from the researches of my friend arminius of buda-pesth, he was in life a most wonderful man. soldier, statesman, and alchemistwhich latter was the highest development of the science knowledge of his time. he had a mighty brain, a learning beyond compare, and a heart that knew no fear and no remorse. he dared even to attend the scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay. well, in him the brain powers survived the physical death; though it would seem that memory was not all complete. in some faculties of mind he has been, and is, only a child; but he is growing, and some things that were childish at the first are now of man's stature. he is experimenting, and doing it well; and if it had not been that we have crossed his path he would be yethe may be yet if we failthe father or furtherer of a new order of beings, whose road must lead through death, not life." harker groaned and said, "and this is all arrayed against my darling! but how is he experimenting? the knowledge may help us to defeat him!" "he has all along, since his coming, been trying his power, slowly but surely; that big child-brain of his working. well for us, it is, as yet, a child-brain; for had he dared, at the first, to attempt certain things he would long ago have been beyond our power. however, he means to succeed, and a man who has centuries before him can afford to wait and to go slow. festina lente may well be his motto." "i fail to understand," said harker wearily. "oh, do be more plain to me! perhaps grief and trouble are dulling my brain." the professor laid his hand tenderly on his shoulder as he spoke: "ah, my child, i will be plain. do you not see how, of late, this monster has been creeping into knowledge experimentally. how he has been making use of the zoophagous patient to effect his entry into friend john's home; for your vampire, though in all afterwards he can come when and how he will, must at the first make entry only when asked thereto by an inmate. but these are not his most important experiments. do we not see how at the first all these so great boxes were moved by others. he knew not then but that must be so. but all the time that so great child-brain of his was growing, and he began to consider whether might not himself move the box. so he began to help; and then, when he found that this be all-right, he try to move them all alone. and so he progress, and he scatter these graves of him; and none but he know where they are hidden. he may have intend to bury them deep in the ground. so that he only use them in the night, or at such time as he can change his form, they do him equal well; and none may know these are his hiding place but, my child, do not despair, this knowledge come to him just too late! already all of his lairs but one be sterilise as for him; and before the sunset this shall be so. then he have no place where he can move and hide. i delayed this morning that so we might be sure. is there not more at stake for us than for him? then why we not be even more careful than him? by my clock it is one hour, and already, if all be well, friend arthur and quincey are on their way to us. to-day is our day, and we must go sure, if slow, and lose no chance. see! there are five of us when those absent ones return." whilst he was speaking we were startled by a knock at the hall door, the double postman's knock of the telegraph boy. we all moved out to the hall with one impulse, and van helsing, holding up his hand to us to keep silence, stepped to the door and opened it. the boy handed in a despatch. the professor closed the door again and, after looking at the direction, opened it and read aloud. "look out for d. he has just now, 12.45, come from carfax hurriedly and hastened towards the south. he seems to be going the round and may want to see you: mina." there was a pause, broken by jonathan harker's voice: "now, god be thanked, we shall soon meet!" van helsing turned to him quickly and said: "god will act in his own way and time. do not fear, and do not rejoice as yet; for what we wish for at the moment may be our undoings." "i care for nothing now," he answered hotly, "except to wipe out this brute from the face of creation. i would sell my soul to do it!" "oh hush, hush, my child!" said van helsing, "god does not purchase souls in this wise; and the devil, though he may purchase, does not keep faith. but god is merciful and just, and knows your pain and your devotion to that dear madam mina. think you, how her pain would be doubled, did she but hear your wild words. do not fear any of us, we are all devoted to this cause, and to-day shall see the end. the time is coming for action; to-day this vampire is limit to the powers of man, and fill sunset he may not change. it will take him time to arrive heresee, it is twenty minutes past oneand there are yet some times before he can hither come, be he never so quick. what we must hope for is that my lord arthur and quincey arrive first." about half an hour after we had received mrs. harker's telegram, there came a quiet, resolute knock at the hall door. it was just an ordinary knock, such as is given hourly by thousands of gentlemen, but it made the professor's heart and mine beat loudly. we looked at each other, and together moved out into the hall; we each held ready to use our various armamentsthe spiritual in the left hand, the mortal in the right. van helsing pulled back the latch, and, holding the door half open, stood back, having both hands ready for action. the gladness of our hearts must have shown upon our faces when on the step, close to the door, we saw lord godalming and quincey morris. they came quickly in and closed the door behind them, the former saying, as they moved along the hall: "it is all right. we found both places; six boxes in each, and we destroyed them all!" "destroyed?" asked the professor. "for him!" we were silent for a minute, and then quincey said: "there's nothing to do but to wait here. if, however, he doesn't turn up by five o'clock, we must start off, for it won't do to leave mrs. harker alone after sunset." "he will be here before long now," said van helsing, who had been consulting his pocket-book. "nota bene, in madam's telegram he went south from carfax, that means he went to cross the river, and he could only do so at slack of tide, which should be something before one o'clock. that he went south has a meaning for us. he is as yet only suspicious; and he went from carfax first to the place where he would suspect interference least. you must have been at bermondsey only a short time before him. that he is not here already shows that he went to mile end next. this took him some time; for he would then have to be carried over the river in some way. believe me, my friends, we shall not have long to wait now. we should have ready some plan of attack, so that we may throw away no chance. hush, there is no time now. have all your arms! be ready!" he held up a warning hand as he spoke, for we all could hear a key softly inserted in the lock of the hall door. i could not but admire, even at such a moment, the way in which a dominant spirit asserted itself. in all our hunting parties and adventures in different parts of the world, quincey morris had always been the one to arrange the plan of action, and arthur and i had been accustomed to obey him implicitly. now, the old habit seemed to be renewed instinctively. with a swift glance around the room, he at once laid out our plan of attack, and, without speaking a word, with a gesture, placed us each in position. van helsing, harker and i were just behind the door, so that when it was opened the professor could guard it whilst we two stepped between the incomer and the door. godalming behind and quincey in front stood just out of sight ready to move in front of the window. we waited in a suspense that made the seconds pass with nightmare slowness. the slow, careful steps came along the hall; the count was evidently prepared for some surpriseat least he feared it. suddenly with a single bound he leaped into the room, winning a way past us before any of us could raise a hand to stay him. there was something so panther-like in the movementsomething so unhuman, that it seemed to sober us all from the shock of his coming. the first to act was harker, who, with a quick movement, threw himself before the door leading into the room in the front of the house. as the count saw us, a horrible sort of snarl passed over his face, showing the eye-teeth long and pointed; but the evil smile as quickly passed into a cold stare of lion-like disdain. his expression again changed, as, with a single impulse, we all advanced upon him. it was a pity that we had not some better organised plan of attack, for even at the moment i wondered what we were to do. i did not myself know whether our lethal weapons would avail us anything. harker evidently meant to try the matter, for he had ready his great kukri knife, and made a fierce and sudden cut at him. the blow was a powerful one; only the diabolical quickness of the count's leap back saved him. a second less and the trenchant blade had shorne through his heart. as it was, the point just cut the cloth of his coat, making a wide gap whence a bundle of bank-notes and a stream of gold fell out. the expression of the count's face was so hellish, that for a moment i feared for harker, though i saw him throw the terrible knife aloft again for another stroke. instinctively i moved forward with a protective impulse, holding the crucifix and wafer in my left-hand. i felt a mighty power fly along my arm; and it was without surprise i saw that the monster cower back before a similar movement made spontaneously by each one of us. it would be impossible to describe the expression of hate and baffled malignityof anger and hellish ragewhich came over the count's face. his waxen hue became greenish-yellow by the contrast of his burning eyes, and the red scar on the forehead showed on the pallid skin like a palpitating wound. the next instant, with a sinuous dive he swept under harker's arm, ere his blow could fall, and, grasping a handful of the money from the floor, dashed across the room, threw himself at the window. amid the crash and glitter of the falling glass, he tumbled into the flagged area below. through the sound of the shivering glass i could hear the "ting" of the gold, as some of the sovereigns fell on the flagging. we ran over and saw him spring unhurt from the ground. he, rushing up the steps, crossed the flagged yard, and pushed open the stable door. there he turned and spoke to us: "you think to baffle me, youwith your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher's. you shall be sorry yet, each one of you you think you have left me without a place to rest; but i have more. my revenge is just begun! i spread it over centuries, and time is on my side. your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be minemy creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when i want to feed. bah!" with a contemptuous sneer, he passed quickly through the door, and we heard the rusty bolt creak as he fastened it behind him. a door beyond opened and shut. the first of us to speak was the professor, as, realising the difficulty of following him through the stable, we moved toward the hall. we have learnt somethingmuch! notwithstanding his brave words, he fears us; he fear time, he fear want! for if not, why he hurry so? his very tone betray him, or my ears deceive. why take that money? you follow quick. you are hunters of wild beast, and understand it so. for me, i make sure that nothing here may be of use to him, if so that he return.as he spoke he put the money remaining into his pocket; took the title-deeds in the bundle as harker had left them; and swept the remaining things into the open fireplace, where he set fire to them with a match. godalming and morris had rushed out into the yard, and harker had lowered himself from the window to follow the count. he had, however, bolted the stable door, and by the time they had forced it open there was no sign of him. van helsing and i tried to make inquiry at the back of the house; but the mews was deserted and no one had seen him depart. it was now late in the afternoon, and sunset was not far off. we had to recognise that our game was up; with heavy hearts we agreed with the professor when he said: "let us go back to madam minapoor, poor dear madam mina. all we can do just now is done; and we can there, at least, protect her. but we need not despair. there is but one more earth-box, and we must try to find it; when that is done all may yet be well." i could see that he spoke as bravely as he could to comfort harker. the poor fellow was quite broken down; now and again he gave a low groan which he could not suppresshe was thinking of his wife. with sad hearts we came back to my house, where we found mrs. harker waiting us, with an appearance of cheerfulness which did honour to her bravery and unselfishness. when she saw our faces, her own became as pale as death; for a second or two her eyes were closed as if she were in secret prayer, and then she said cheerfully: "i can never thank you all enough. oh, my poor darling!" as she spoke, she took her husband's grey head in her hands and kissed it"lay your poor head here and rest it. all will yet be well, dear! god will protect us if he so will it in his good intent." the poor fellow only groaned. there was no place for words in his sublime misery. we had a sort of perfunctory supper together, and i think it cheered us all up somewhat. it was, perhaps, the mere animal heat of food to hungry peoplefor none of us had eaten anything since breakfastor the sense of companionship may have helped us; but anyhow we were all less miserable, and saw the morrow as not altogether without hope. true to our promise, we told mrs. harker everything which had passed; and although she grew snowy white at times when danger had seemed to threaten her husband, and red at others when his devotion to her was manifested, she listened bravely and with calmness. when we came to the part where harker had rushed at the count so recklessly, she clung to her husband's arm, and held it tight as though her clinging could protect him from any harm that might come. she said nothing, however, till the narration was all done, and matters had been brought right up to the present time. then without letting go her husband's hand she stood up amongst us and spoke. oh that i could give any idea of the scene; of that sweet, sweet, good, good woman in all the radiant beauty of her youth and animation, with the red scar on her forehead, of which she was conscious, and which we saw with grinding of our teethremembering whence and how it came; her loving kindness against our grim hate; her tender faith against all our fears and doubting; and we, knowing that so far as symbols went, she with all her goodness and purity and faith, was outcast from god. "jonathan," she said, and the word sounded like music on her lips it was so full of love and tenderness, "jonathan dear, and you all my true, true friends, i want you to bear something in mind through all this dreadful time. i know that you must fightthat you must destroy even as you destroyed the false lucy so that the true lucy might live hereafter, but it is not a work of hate. that poor soul who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all. just think what will be his joy when he, too, is destroyed in his worser part that his better part may have spiritual immortality. you must be pitiful to him, too, though it may not hold your hands from his destruction." as she spoke i could see her husband's face darken and draw together, as though the passion in him were shriveling his being to its core. instinctively the clasp on his wife's hand grew closer, till his knuckles looked white. she did not flinch from the pain which i knew she must have suffered, but looked at him with eyes that were more appealing than ever. as she stopped speaking he leaped to his feet, almost tearing his hand from hers as he spoke: "may god give him into my hand just for long enough to destroy that earthly life of him which we are aiming at. if beyond it i could send his soul for ever and ever to burning hell i would do it!" "oh, hush! oh, hush! in the name of the good god. don't say such things, jonathan, my husband; or you will crush me with fear and horror. just think, my deari have been thinking all this long, long day of itthat... perhaps... some day... i, too, may need such pity; and that some other like youand with equal cause for angermay deny it to me! oh, my husband! my husband, indeed i would have spared you such a thought had there been another way; but i pray that god may not have treasured your wild words, except as the heart-broken wall of a very loving and sorely stricken man. oh god, let these poor white hairs go in evidence of what he has suffered, who all his life has done no wrong, and on whom so many sorrows have come." we men were all in tears now. there was no resisting them, and we wept openly. she wept, too, to see that her sweeter counsels had prevailed. her husband flung himself on his knees beside her, and putting his arms round her, hid his face in the folds of her dress. van helsing beckoned to us and we stole out of the room, leaving the two loving hearts alone with their god. before they retired the professor fixed up the room against any coming of the vampire, and assured mrs. harker that she might rest in peace. she tried to school herself to the belief, and, manifestly for her husband's sake, tried to seem content. it was a brave struggle; and was, i think and believe, not without its reward. van helsing had placed at hand a bell which either of them was to sound in case of any emergency. when they had retired, quincey, godalming, and i arranged that we should sit up, dividing the night between us, and watch over the safety of the poor stricken lady. the first watch falls to quincey, so the rest of us shall be off to bed as soon as we can. godalming has already turned in, for his is the second watch. now that my work is done i, too, shall go to bed. jonathan harker's journal. 3-4 october, close to midnight.i thought yesterday would never end. there was over me a yearning for sleep, in some sort of blind belief that to wake would be to find things changed, and that any change must now be for the better. before we parted, we discussed what our next step was to be, but we could arrive at no result. all we knew was that one earth-box remained, and that the count alone knew where it was. if he chooses to lie hidden, he may baffle us for years; and in the meantime!the thought is too horrible, i dare not think of it even now. this i know: that if ever there was a woman who was all perfection, that one is my poor wronged darling. i love her a thousand times more for her sweet pity of last night, a pity that made my own hate of the monster seem despicable. surely god will not permit the world to be the poorer by the loss of such a creature. this is hope to me. we are all drifting reefwards now, and faith is our only anchor. thank god! mina is sleeping, and sleeping without dreams. i fear what her dreams might be like, with such terrible memories to ground them in. she has not been so calm, within my seeing, since the sunset. then, for a while, there came over her face a repose which was like spring after the blasts of march. i thought at the time that it was the softness of the red sunset on her face, but somehow now i think it has a deeper meaning. i am not sleepy myself, though i am wearyweary to death. however, i must try to sleep; for there is to-morrow to think of, and there is no rest for me until... later.i must have fallen asleep, for i was awaked by mina, who was sitting up in bed, with a startled look on her face. i could see easily, for we did not leave the room in darkness; she had placed a warning hand over my mouth, and now she whispered in my ear: "hush! there is someone in the corridor!" i got up softly, and, crossing the room, gently opened the door. just outside, stretched on a mattress, lay mr. morris, wide awake. he raised a warning hand for silence as he whispered to me: "hush! go back to bed; it is all right. one of us will be here all night. we don't mean to take any chances!" his look and gesture forbade discussion, so i came back and told mina. she sighed and positively a shadow of a smile stole over her poor, pale face as she put her arms round me and said softly: "oh, thank god for good brave men!" with a sigh she sank back again to sleep. i write this now as i am not sleepy, though i must try again. 4 october, morning.once again during the night i was wakened by mina. this time we had all had a good sleep, for the grey of the coming dawn was making the windows into sharp oblongs, and the gas flame was like a speck rather than a disc of light. she said to me hurriedly: "go, call the professor. i want to see him at once." "why?" i asked. "i have an idea. i suppose it must have come in the night, and matured without my knowing it. he must hypnotise me before the dawn, and then i shall be able to speak. go quick, dearest, the time is getting close." i went to the door. dr. seward was resting on the mattress, and, seeing me, he sprang to his feet. "is anything wrong?" he asked, in alarm. "no," i replied; "but mina wants to see dr. van helsing at once." "i will go," he said, and hurried into the professor's room. in two or three minutes later van helsing was in the room in his dressing-gown, and mr. morris and lord godalming were with dr. seward at the door asking questions. when the professor saw mina a smilea positive smile ousted the anxiety of his face; he rubbed his hands as he said: "oh, my dear madam mina, this is indeed a change. see! friend jonathan, we have got our dear madam mina, as of old, back to us to-day!" then turning to her, he said, cheerfully: "and what am i do for you? for at this hour you do not want me for nothings." "i want you to hypnotise me!" she said. "do it before the dawn, for i feel that then i can speak, and speak freely. be quick, for the time is short!" without a word he motioned her to sit up in bed. looking fixedly at her, he commenced to make passes in front of her, from over the top of her head downward, with each hand in turn. mina gazed at him fixedly for a few minutes, during which my own heart beat like a trip hammer, for i felt that some crisis was at hand. gradually her eyes closed, and she sat, stock still; only by the gentle heaving of her bosom could one know that she was alive. the professor made a few more passes and then stopped, and i could see that his forehead was covered with great beads of perspiration. mina opened her eyes; but she did not seem the same woman. there was a far-away look in her eyes, and her voice had a sad dreaminess which was new to me. raising his hand to impose silence, the professor motioned to me to bring the others in. they came on tip-toe, closing the door behind them, and stood at the foot of the bed, looking on. mina appeared not to see them. the stillness was broken by van helsing's voice speaking in a low level tone which would not break the current of her thoughts: "where are you?" the answer came in a neutral way: "i do not know. sleep has no place it can call its own." for several minutes there was silence. mina sat rigid, and the professor stood staring at her fixedly; the rest of us hardly dared to breathe. the room was growing lighter, without taking his eyes from mina's face, dr. van helsing motioned me to pull up the blind. i did so, and the day seemed just upon us. a red streak shot up, and a rosy light seemed to diffuse itself through the room. on the instant the professor spoke again: "where are you now?" the answer came dreamily, but with intention; it were as though she were interpreting something. i have heard her use the same tone when reading her shorthand notes. "i do not know. it is all strange to me!" "what do you see?" "i can see nothing; it is all dark." "what do you hear?" i could detect the strain in the professor's patient voice. "the lapping of water. it is gurgling by, and little waves leap. i can hear them on the outside." "then you are on a ship?" we all looked at each other, trying to glean something each from the other. we were afraid to think. the answer came quick: "oh, yes!" "what else do you hear?" "the sound of men stamping overhead as they run about. there is the creaking of a chain, and the loud tinkle as the check of the capstan falls into the rachet." "what are you doing?" "i am stilloh, so still. it is like death!" the voice faded away into a deep breath as of one sleeping, and the open eyes closed again. by this time the sun had risen, and we were all in the full light of day. dr. van helsing placed his hands on mina's shoulders, and laid her head down softly on her pillow. she lay like a sleeping child for a few moments, and then, with a long sigh, awoke and stared in wonder to see us all around her. "have i been talking in my sleep?" was all she said. she seemed, however, to know the situation without telling; though she was eager to know what she had told. the professor repeated the conversation, and she said: "then there is not a moment to lose: it may not be yet too late!" mr. morris and lord godalming started for the door but the professor's calm voice called them back: "stay, my friends. that ship wherever it was, was weighing anchor whilst she spoke. there are many ships weighing anchor at the moment in your so great port of london. which of them is it that you seek? god be thanked that we have once again a clue, though whither it may lead us we know not. we have been blind somewhat: blind after the manner of men, since when we can look back we see what we might have seen looking forward if we had been able to see what we might have seen alas! but that sentence is a puddle; is it not? we can know now what was in the count's mind when he seize that money, though jonathan's so fierce knife put him in the danger that even he dread. he meant escape. hear me, escape! he saw that with but one earth-box left, and a pack of men following like dogs after a fox, this london was no place for him. he have take his last earth-box on board a ship, and he leave the land. he think to escape, but no! we follow him. tally ho! as friend arthur would say when he put on his red frock! our old fox is wily; oh! so wily and we must follow with wile. i too am wily and i think his mind in a little while. in meantime we may rest and in peace, for there are waters between us which he do not want to pass, and which he could not if he wouldunless the ship were to touch the land, and then only at full or slack tide. see, and the sun is just rose, and all day to sunset is to us. let us take bath, and dress, and have breakfast which we all need, and which we can eat comfortably since he be not in the same land with us." mina looked at him appealingly as she asked: "but why need we seek him further, when he is gone away from us?" he took her hand and patted it as he replied: "ask me nothings as yet. when we have breakfast, then i answer all questions." he would say no more, and we separated to dress. after breakfast mina repeated her question. he looked at her gravely for a minute and then said sorrowfully: "because my dear, dear madam mina, now more than ever must we find him even if we have to follow him to the jaws of hell!" she grew paler as she asked faintly: "why?" "because," he answered solemnly, "he can live for centuries, and you are but mortal woman. time is now to be dreadedsince once he put that mark upon your throat." i was just in time to catch her as she fell forward in a faint. chapter xxiv. dr. seward's phonograph diary. (spoken by van helsing). this to jonathan harker. you are to stay with your dear madam mina. we shall go to make our searchif i can call it so, for it is not search but knowing, and we seek confirmation only. but do you stay and take care of her to-day. this is your best and most holiest office. this day nothing can find him here. let me tell you that so you will know what we four know already, for i have tell them. he, our enemy, have gone away; he have gone back to his castle in transylvania. i know it so well, as if a great hand of fire wrote it on the wall. he have prepare for this in some way, and that last earth-box was ready to ship somewheres. for this he took the money; for this he hurry at the last, lest we catch him before the sun go down. it was his last hope, save that the might hide in the tomb that he think poor miss lucy, being as he thought like him, keep open to him. but there was not of time. when that fail he make straight for his last resourcehis last earthwork i might say did i wish double entente. he is clever, oh so clever! he know that his game here was finish; and so he decide he go back home. he find ship going by the route he came, and he go in it. we go off now to find what ship, and whither bound; when we have discover that, we come back and tell you all. then we will comfort you and poor dear madam mina with new hope. for it will be hope when you think it over: that all is not lost. this very creature that we pursue, he take hundreds of years to get so far as london; and yet in one day, when we know of the disposal of him we drive him out. he is finite, though he is powerful to do much harm and suffers not as we do. but we are strong, each in our purpose; and we are all more strong together. take heart afresh dear husband of madam mina. this battle is but begun, and in the end we shall winso sure as that god sits on high to watch over his children. therefore be of much comfort till we return. van helsing jonathan harker's journal. 4 october.when i read to mina, van helsing's message in the phonograph, the poor girl brightened up considerably. already the certainty that the count is out of the country has given her comfort; and comfort is strength to her. for my own part, now that his horrible danger is not face to face with us, it seems almost impossible to believe in it. even my own terrible experiences in castle dracula seem like a long-forgotten dream. here in the crisp autumn air in the bright sunlight alas! how can i disbelieve! in the midst of my thought my eye fell on the red scar on my poor darling's white forehead. whilst that lasts, there can be no disbelief. and afterwards the very memory of it will keep faith crystal clear. mina and i fear to be idle, so we have been over all the diaries agains and again. somehow, although the reality seems greater each time, the pain and the fear seem less. there is something of a guiding purpose manifest throughout, which is comforting. mina says that perhaps we are the instruments of ultimate good. it may be i shall try to think as she does. we have never spoken to each other yet of the future. it is better to wait till we see the professor and the others after their investigations. the day is running by more quickly than i ever thought a day could run for me again. it is now three o'clock. mina harker's journal. 5 october, 5 p.m.our meeting for report. present: professor van helsing, lord godalming, dr. seward, mr. quincey morris, jonathan harker, mina harker. dr. van helsing described what steps were taken during the day to discover on what boat and whither bound count dracula made his escape: "as i knew that he wanted to get back to transylvania, i felt sure that he must go by the danube mouth; or by somewhere in the black sea, since by that way he come. it was a dreary blank that was before us. omne ignotum pro magnifico, and so with heavy hearts we start to find what ships leave for the black sea last night. he was in sailing ship, since madam mina tell of sails being set. these not so important as to go in your list of the shipping in the times. and so we go, by suggestion of lord godalming, to your lloyd's, where are note of all ships that sail, however so small. there we find that only one black-sea-bound ship go out with the tide. she is the czarina catherine, and she sail from doolittle's wharf for varna, and thence on to other parts and up the danube. 'soh!' said i, 'this is the ship whereon is the count.' so off we go to doolittle's wharf, and there we find a man in an office of wood so small that the man look bigger than the office. from him we inquire of the goings of the czarina catherine. he swear much, and he red face and loud of voice, but he good fellow all the same; and when quincey give him something from his pocket which crackle as he roll it up, and put it in a so small bag which he have hid deep in his clothing, he still better fellow and humble servant to us. he come with us, and ask many men who are rough and hot; these be better fellows too when they have been no more thirsty. they say much of blood and bloom and of others which i comprehend not, though i guess what they mean; but nevertheless they tell us all things which we want to know. "they make known to us among them, how last afternoon at about five o'clock comes a man so hurry. a tall man, thin and pale, with high nose and teeth so white, and eyes that seem to be burning. that he be all in black, except that he have a hat of straw which suit not him or the time. that he scatter his money in making quick inquiry as to what ship sails for the black sea and for where. some took him to the office and then to the ship, where he will not go aboard but halt at shore end of gang-plank, and ask that the captain come to him. the captain come, when told that he will be pay well; and though he swear much at the first he agree to term. then the thin man go and some one tell him where horse and cart can be hired. he go there and soon he come again, himself driving cart on which a great box; this he himself lift down, though it take several to put it on truck for the ship. he give much talk to captain as to how and where his box is to be place; but the captain like it not and swear at him in many tongues, and tell him that if he like he can come and see where it shall be. but he say 'no;' that he come not yet, for that he have much to do. whereupon the captain tell him that he had better be quickwith bloodfor that his ship will leave the placeof bloodbefore the turn of the tidewith blood. then the thin man smile and say that of course he must go when he think fit; but he will be surprise if he go quite so soon. the captain swear again, polyglot, and the thin man make him bow, and thank him, and say that he will so far intrude on his kindness as to come aboard before the sailing. final the captain, more red than ever, and in more tongues, tell him that he doesn't want no frenchmenwith bloom upon them and also with bloodin his shipwith blood on her also. and so, after asking where there might be close at hand a shop where he might purchase ship forms, he departed. "no one knew where he went 'or bloomin' well cared,' as they said, for they had something else to think ofwell with blood again; for it soon became apparent to all that the czarina catherine would not sail as was expected. a thin mist began to creep up from the river, and it grew, and grew, till soon a dense fog enveloped the ship and all around her. the captain swore polyglotvery polyglotpolyglot with bloom and blood; but he could do nothing. the water rose and rose; and he began to fear that he would lose the tide altogether. he was in no friendly mood, when just at full tide, the thin man came up the gang-plank again and asked to see where his box had been stowed. then the captain replied that he wished that he and his boxold and with much bloom and bloodwere in hell. but the thin man did not be offend, and went down with the mate and saw where it was place, and came up and stood awhile on deck in fog. he must have come off by himself, for none notice him. indeed they thought not of him; for soon the fog begin to melt away, and all was clear again. my friends of the thirst and the language that was of bloom and blood laughed, as they told how the captain's swears exceeded even his usual polyglot, and was more than ever full of picturesque, when on questioning other mariners who were on movement up and down on the river that hour, he found that few of them had seen any of fog at all, except where it lay round the wharf! however, the ship went out on the ebb tide; and was doubtless by morning far down the river mouth. she was by then, when they told us, well out to sea. "and so my dear madam mina, it is that we have to rest for a time, for our enemy is on the sea, with the fog at his command, on his way to the danube mouth. to sail a ship takes time, go she never so quick; and when we start we go on land more quick, and we meet him there. our best hope is to come on him when in the box between sunrise and sunset; for then he can make no struggle, and we may deal with him as we should. there are days for us, in which we can make ready our plan. we know all about where he go; for we have seen the owner of the ship, who have shown us invoices and all papers that can be. the box we seek is to be landed in varna, and to be given to an agent, one ristics who will there present his credentials; and so our merchant friend will have done his part. when he ask if there be any wrong, for that so, he can telegraph and have inquiry made at varna, we say 'no;' for what is to be done is not for police or of the customs. it must be done by us alone and in our own way." when dr. van helsing had done speaking, i asked him if he were certain that the count had remained on board the ship. he replied: "we have the best proof of that: your own evidence, when in the hypnotic trance this morning." i asked him again if it were really necessary that they should pursue the count, for oh! i dread jonathan leaving me, and i know that he would surely go if the others went. he answered in growing passion, at first quietly. as he went on, however, he grew more angry and more forceful, till in the end we could not but see wherein was at least some of that personal dominance which made him so long a master amongst men: "yes it is necessarynecessarynecessary! for your sake in the first, and then for the sake of humanity. this monster has done much harm already, in the narrow scope where he find himself, and in the short time when as yet he was only as a body groping his so small measure in darkness and not knowing. all this have i told these others; you, my dear madam mina, will learn it in the phonograph of my friend john, or in that of your husband. i have told them how the measure of leaving his own barren landbarren of peoplesand coming to a new land where life of man teems till they are like the multitude of standing corn, was the work of centuries. were another of the un-dead, like him, to try to do what he has done, perhaps not all the centuries of the world that have been, or that will be, could aid him. with this one, all the forces of nature that are occult and deep and strong must have worked together in some wondrous way. the very place, where he have been alive, un-dead for all these centuries, is full of strangeness of the geologic and chemical world. there are deep caverns and fissures that reach none know whither. there have been volcanoes, some of whose openings still send out waters of strange properties, and gases that kill or make to vivify. doubtless, there is something magnetic or electric in some of these combinations of occult forces which work for physical life in strange way; and in himself were from the first some great qualities. in a hard and warlike time he was celebrate that he have more iron nerve, more subtle brain, more braver heart, than any man. in him some vital principle have in strange way found their utmost; and as his body keep strong and grow and thrive, so his brain grow too. all this without that diabolic aid which is surely to him; for it have to yield to the powers that come from, and are, symbolic of good. and now this is what he is to us. he have infect youoh forgive me, my dear, that i must say such; but it is for good of you that i speak. he infect you in such wise, that even if he do no more, you have only to liveto live in your own old, sweet way; and so in time, death, which is of man's common lot and with god's sanction, shall make you like to him. this must not be! we have sworn together that it must not. thus are we ministers of god's own wish: that the world, and men for whom his son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame him. he have allowed us to redeem one soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the cross to redeem more. like them we shall travel towards the sunrise; and like them, if we fall, we fall in good cause." he paused and i said: "but will not the count take his rebuff wisely? since he has been driven from england, will he not avoid it, as a tiger does the village from which he has been hunted?" "aha!" he said, "your simile of the tiger good, for me, and i shall adopt him. your man-eater, as they of india call the tiger who has once taste blood of the human, care no more for other prey, but prowl unceasing till he get him. this that we hunt from our village is a tiger, too, a man-eater, and he never cease to prowl. nay in himself he is not one to retire and stay afar. in his life, his living life, he go over the turkey frontier and attack his enemy on his own ground; he be beaten back, but did he stay? no! he come again, and again, and again. look at his persistence and endurance. with the child-brain that was to him he have long since conceive the idea of coming to a great city. what does he do? he find out the place of all the world most of promise for him. then he deliberately set himself down to prepare for the task. he find in patience just how is his strength, and what are his powers. he study new tongues. he learn new social life; new environment of old ways, the politic, the law, the finance, the science, the habit of a new land and a new people who have come to be since he was. his glimpse that he have had, whet his appetite only and enkeen his desire. nay, it help him to grow as to his brain; for it all prove to him how right he was at the first in his surmises. he have done this alone; all alone! from a ruin tomb in a forgotten land. what more may he not do when the greater world of thought is open to him. he that can smile at death, as we know him; who can flourish in the midst of diseases that kill off whole peoples. oh! if such an one was to come from god, and not the devil, what a force for good might he not be in this old world of ours. but we are pledged to set the world free. our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret; for in this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength. it would be at once his sheath and his armour, and his weapons to destroy us, his enemies, who are willing to peril even our own souls for the safety of one we lovefor the good of mankind, and for the honour and glory of god." after a general discussion it was determined that for tonight nothing be definitely settled; that we should all sleep on the facts, and try to think out the proper conclusions. to-morrow at breakfast we are to meet again, and, after making our conclusions known to one another, we shall decide on some definite cause of action. i feel a wonderful peace and rest to-night. it is as if some haunting presence were removed from me. perhaps... my surmise was not finished, could not be; for i caught sight in the mirror of the red mark upon my forehead; and i knew that i was still unclean. dr. seward's diary. 5 october.we all rose early, and i think that sleep did much for each and all of us. when we met at early breakfast there was more general cheerfulness than any of us had ever expected to experience again. it is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any wayeven by deathand we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment. more than once as we sat around the table, my eyes opened in wonder whether the whole of the past days had not been a dream. it was only when i caught sight of the red blotch on mrs. harker's forehead that i was brought back to reality. even now, when i am gravely revolving the matter, it is almost impossible to realise that the cause of all our trouble is still existent. even mrs. harker seems to lose sight of her trouble for whole spells; it is only now and again, when something recalls it to her mind, that she thinks of her terrible scar. we are to meet here in my study in half an hour and decide on our course of action. i see only one immediate difficulty, i know it by instinct rather than reason: we shall all have to speak frankly; and yet i fear that in some mysterious way poor mrs. harker's tongue is tied. i know that she forms conclusions of her own, and from all that has been i can guess how brilliant and how true they must be; but she will not, or cannot, give them utterance. i have mentioned this to van helsing, and he and i are to talk it over when we are alone. i suppose it is some of that horrid poison which has got into her veins beginning to work. the count had his own purposes when he gave her what van helsing called "the vampire's baptism of blood." well, there may be a poison that distils itself out of good things; in an age when the existence of ptomaines is a mystery we should not wonder at anything! one thing i know: that if my instinct be true regarding poor mrs. harker's silences, then there is a terrible difficultyan unknown dangerin the work before us. the same power that compels her silence may compel her speech. i dare not think further; for so i should in my thoughts dishonour a noble woman! van helsing is coming to my study a little before the others. i shall try to open the subject with him. later.when the professor came in, we talked over the state of things. i could see that he had something on his mind which he wanted to say, but felt some hesitancy about broaching the subject. after beating about the bush a little, he said suddenly: "friend john, there is something that you and i must talk of alone, just at the first at any rate. later, we may have to take the others into our confidence;" then he stopped, so i waited; he went on: "madam mina, our poor, dear madam mina is changing." a cold shiver ran through me to find my worst fears thus endorsed. van helsing continued: "with the sad experience of miss lucy, we must this time be warned before things go too far. our task is now in reality more difficult than ever, and this new trouble makes every hour of the direst importance. i can see the characteristics of the vampire coming in her face. it is now but very, very slight; but it is to be seen if we have eyes to notice without to prejudge. her teeth are some sharper, and at times her eyes are more hard. but these are not all, there is to her the silence now often; as so it was with miss lucy. she did not speak, even when she wrote that which she wished to be known later. now my fear is this. if it be that she can, by our hypnotic trance, tell what the count see and hear, is it not more true that he who have hypnotise her first, and who have drink of her very blood and make her drink of his, should, if he will, compel her mind to disclose to him that which she know?" i nodded acquiescence; he went on: "then, what we must do is to prevent this; we must keep her ignorant of our intent, and so she cannot tell what she know not. this is a painful task! oh! so painful that it heart-break me to think of, but it must be. when to-day we meet, i must tell her that for reason which we will not to speak she must not more be of our council, but be simply guarded by us." he wiped his forehead, which had broken out in profuse perspiration at the thought of the pain which he might have to inflict upon the poor soul already so tortured. i knew that it would be some sort of comfort to him if i told him that i also had come to the same conclusion; for at any rate it would take away the pain of doubt. i told him, and the effect was as i expected. it is now close to the time of our general gathering. van helsing has gone away to prepare for the meeting, and his painful part of it. i really believe his purpose is to be able to pray alone. later.at the very outset of our meeting a great personal relief was experienced by both van helsing and myself. mrs. harker had sent a message by her husband to say that she would not join us at present, as she thought it better that we should be free to discuss our movements without her presence to embarrass us. the professor and i looked at each other for an instant, and somehow we both seemed relieved. for my own part, i thought that if mrs. harker realised the danger herself, it was much pain as well as much danger averted. under the circumstances we agreed, by a questioning look and answer, with finger on lip, to preserve silence in our suspicions, until we should have been able to confer alone again. we went at once into our plan of campaign. van helsing roughly put the facts before us first: "the czarina catherine left the thames yesterday morning. it will take her at the quickest speed she has ever made at least three weeks to reach varna; but we can travel overland to the same place in three days. now, if we allow for two days less for the ship's voyage, owing to such weather influences as we know that the count can bring to bear, and if we allow a whole day and night for any delays which may occur to us, then we have a margin of nearly two weeks. thus, in order to be quite safe, we must leave here on 17th at latest. then we shall at any rate be in varna a day before the ship arrives, and able to make such preparations as may be necessary. of course we shall all go armedarmed against evil things, spiritual as well as physical." here quincey morris added: "i understand that the count comes from a wolf country, and it may be that he shall get there before us. i propose that we add winchesters to our armament. i have a kind of belief in a winchester when there is any trouble of that sort around. do you remember art, when we had the pack after us at tobolsk? what wouldn't we have given then for a repeater apiece!" "good!" said van helsing, "winchester's it shall be. quincey's head is level at all times, but most so when there is to hunt, though my metaphor be more dishonour to science than wolves be of danger to man. in the meantime we can do nothing here; and as i think that varna is not familiar to any of us, why not go there more soon? it is as long to wait here as there. to-night and to-morrow we can get ready, and then, if all be well, we four can set out on our journey." "we four?" said harker interrogatively, looking from one to another of us. "of course!" answered the professor quickly, "you must remain to take care of your so sweet wife!" harker was silent for awhile and then said in a hollow voice: "let us talk of that part of it in the morning. i want to consult with mina." i thought that now was the time for van helsing to warn him not to disclose our plans to her, but he took no notice. i looked at him significantly and coughed. for answer he put his finger on his lips and turned away. jonathan harker's journal. 5 october, afternoon.for some time after our meeting this morning i could not think. the new phases of things leave my mind in a state of wonder which allows no room for active thought. mina's determination not to take any part in the discussion set me thinking; and as i could not argue the matter with her, i could only guess. i am as far as ever from a solution now. the way the others received it, too, puzzled me; the last time we talked of the subject we agreed that there was to be no more concealment of anything amongst us. mina is sleeping now, calmly and sweetly like a little child. her lips are curved and her face beams with happiness. thank god there are such moments still for her. later.how strange it all is. i sat watching mina's happy sleep, and came as near to being happy myself as i suppose i shall ever be. as the evening drew on, and the earth took its shadows from the sun sinking lower, the silence of the room grew more and more solemn to me. all at once mina opened her eyes, and looking at me tenderly, said: "jonathan, i want you to promise me something on your word of honour. a promise made to me, but made holily in god's hearing, and not to be broken though i should go down on my knees and implore you with bitter tears. quick, you must make it to me at once." "mina," i said, "a promise like that, i cannot make at once. i may have no right to make it." "but, dear one," she said, with such spiritual intensity that her eyes were like pole stars, "it is i who wish it; and it is not for myself. you can ask dr. van helsing if i am not right; if he disagrees you may do as you will. nay more, if you all agree, later, you are absolved from the promise." "i promise!" i said, and for a moment she looked supremely happy; though to me all happiness for her was denied by the red scar on her forehead. she said: "promise me that you will not tell me anything of the plans formed for the campaign against the count. not by word, or inference, or implication; not at any time whilst this remains to me!" and she solemnly pointed to the scar. i saw that she was in earnest, and said solemnly: "i promise!" and as i said it i felt that from that instant a door had been shut between us. later, midnightmina has been bright and cheerful all the evening. so much so that all the rest seemed to take courage, as if infected somewhat with her gaiety; as a result even i myself felt as if the pall of gloom which weighs us down were somewhat lifted. we all retired early. mina is now sleeping like a little child; it is a wonderful thing that her faculty of sleep remains to her in the midst of her terrible trouble. thank god for it, for then at least she can forget her care. perhaps her example may affect me as her gaiety did to-night. i shall try it. oh! for a dreamless sleep. 6 october, morning.another surprise. mina woke me early, about the same time as yesterday, and asked me to bring dr. van helsing. i thought that it was another occasion for hypnotism, and without question went for the professor. he had evidently expected some such call, for i found him dressed in his room. his door was ajar, so that he could hear the opening of the door of our room. he came at once; as he passed into the room, he asked mina if the others might come too. "no," she said quite simply, "it will not be necessary. you can tell them just as well. i must go with you on your journey." dr. van helsing was startled as i was. after a moment's pause he asked: "but why?" "you must take me with you. i am safer with you, and you shall be safer too." "but why, dear madam mina? you know that your safety is our solemnest duty. we go into danger, to which you are, or may be, more liable than any of us fromfrom circumstancesthings that have been." he paused embarrassed. as she replied, she raised her finger and pointed to her forehead: "i know. that is why i must go. i can tell you now, whilst the sun is coming up; i may not be able again. i know that when the count wills me i must go. i know that if he tells me to come in secret, i must come by wile; by any device to hoodwinkeven jonathan." god saw the look that she turned on me as she spoke, and if there be indeed a recording angel that look is noted to her everlasting honour. i could only clasp her hand. i could not speak; my emotion was too great for even the relief of tears. she went on: "you men are brave and strong. you are strong in your numbers, for you can defy that which would break down the human endurance of one who had to guard alone. besides, i may be of service, since you can hypnotise me and so learn that which even i myself do not know." dr. van helsing said very gravely: "madam mina you are, as always, most wise. you shall with us come; and together we shall do that which we go forth to achieve." when he had spoken, mina's long spell of silence made me look at her. she had fallen back on her pillow asleep; she did not even wake when i had pulled up the blind and let in the sunlight which flooded the room. van helsing motioned to me to come with him quietly. we went to his room, and within a minute lord godalming, dr. seward, and mr. morris were with us also. he told them what mina had said, and went on: "in the morning we shall leave for varna. we have now to deal with a new factor: madam mina. oh, but her soul is true. it is to her an agony to tell us so much as she has done; but it is most right, and we are warned in time. there must be no chance lost, and in varna we must be ready to act the instant when that ship arrives." "what shall we do exactly?" asked mr. morris laconically. the professor paused before replying: "we shall at the first board that ship; then, when we have identified the box, we shall place a branch of the wild rose on it. this we shall fasten, for when it is there none can emerge; so at least says the superstition. and to superstition must we trust at the first; it was man's faith in the early, and it have its root in faith still. then, when we get the opportunity that we seek, when none are near to see, we shall open the box, andand all will be well." "i shall not wait for any opportunity," said morris. "when i see the box i shall open it and destroy the monster, though there were a thousand men looking on, and if i am to be wiped out for it the next moment!" i grasped his hand instinctively and found it as firm as a piece of steel. i think he understood my look; i hope he did. "good boy," said dr. van helsing. "brave boy. quincey is all man, god bless him for it. my child, believe me none of us shall lag behind or pause from any fear. i do but say what we may dowhat we must do. but, indeed, indeed we cannot say what we shall do. there are so many things which may happen, and their ways and their ends are so various that until the moment we may not say. we shall all be armed, in all ways; and when the time for the end has come, our effort shall not be lack. now let us to-day put all our affairs in order. let all things which touch on others dear to us, and who on us depend, be complete; for none of us can tell what, or when, or how, the end may be. as for me, my own affairs are regulate; and as i have nothing else to do, i shall go make arrangement for the travel. i shall have all tickets and so forth for our journey." "there was nothing further to be said, and we parted. i shall now settle up all my affairs of earth, and be ready for whatever may come... later.it is all done; my will is made, and all complete. mina if she survive is my sole heir. if it should not be so, then the others who have been so good to us shall have remainder. it is now drawing towards the sunset; mina's uneasiness calls my attention to it. i am sure that there is something on her mind which the time of exact sunset will reveal. these occasions are becoming harrowing times for us all, for each sunrise and sunset opens up some new dangersome new pain, which, however, may in god's will be means to a good end. i write all these things in the diary since my darling must not hear them now, but if it may be that she can see them again, they shall be ready." she is calling to me. chapter xxv. dr. seward's diary. 11 october, evening.jonathan harker has asked me to note this, as he says he is hardly equal to the task, and he wants an exact record kept. i think that none of us were surprised when we were asked to see mrs. harker a little before the time of sunset. we have of late come to understand that sunrise and sunset are to her times of peculiar freedom; when her old self can be manifest without any controlling force subduing or restraining her, or inciting her to action. this mood or condition begins some half hour or more before actual sunrise or sunset, and lasts till either the sun is high, or whilst the clouds are still aglow with the rays streaming above the horizon. at first there is a sort of negative condition, as if some tie were loosened, and then the absolute freedom quickly follows; when, however, the freedom ceases the change-back or relapse comes quickly, preceded only by a spell of warning silence. to-night, when we met she was somewhat constrained, and bore all the signs of an internal struggle. i put it down myself to her making a violent effort at the earliest instant she could do so. a very few minutes, however, gave her complete control of herself, then, motioning her husband to sit beside her on the sofa where she was half reclining, she made the rest of us bring chairs up close. taking her husband's hand in hers began: "we are all here together in freedom, for perhaps the last time! i know, dear; i know that you will always be with me to the end." this was to her husband whose hand had, as we could see, tightened upon hers. "in the morning we go out upon our task, and god alone knows what may be in store for any of us. you are going to be so good to me as to take me with you. i know that all that brave earnest men can do for a poor weak woman, whose soul perhaps is lostno, no, not yet, but is at any rate at stakeyou will do. but you must remember that i am not as you are. there is a poison in my blood, in my soul, which may destroy me; which must destroy me, unless some relief comes to us. oh, my friends, you know as well as i do, that my soul is at stake; and though i know there is one way out for me, you must not and i must not take it!" she looked appealingly to us all in turn, beginning and ending with her husband. "what is that way?" asked van helsing in a hoarse voice. "what is that way, which we must notmay nottake?" "that i may die now, either by my own hand or that of another, before the greater evil is entirely wrought. i know, and you know, that were i once dead you could and would set free my immortal spirit, even as you did my poor lucy's. were death, or the fear of death, the only thing that stood in the way i would not shrink to die here, now, amidst the friends who love me. but death is not all. i cannot believe that to die in such a case, when there is hope before us and a bitter task to be done, is god's will. therefore, i on my part, give up here the certainty of eternal rest, and go out into the dark where may be the blackest things that the world or the nether world holds!" we were all silent, for we knew instinctively that this was only a prelude. the faces of the others were set, and harker's grew ashen grey; perhaps he guessed better than any of us what was coming. she continued: "this is what i can give into the hotch-pot." i could not but note the quaint legal phrase which she used in such a place, and with all seriousness. "what will each of you give? your lives i know," she went on quickly, "that is easy for brave men. your lives are god's, and you can give them back to him; but what will you give to me?" she looked again questioningly, but this time avoided her husband's face. quincey seemed to understand; he nodded, and her face lit up. "then i shall tell you plainly what i want, for there must be no doubtful matter in this connection between us now. you must promise me, one and alleven you my beloved husbandthat, should the time come, you will kill me." "what is that time?" the voice was quincey's, but was low and strained. "when you shall be convinced that i am so changed that it is better that i die that i may live. when i am thus dead in the flesh, then you will, without a moment's delay, drive a stake through me and cut off my head; or do whatever else may be wanting to give me rest!" quincey was the first to rise after the pause. he knelt down before her and taking her hand in his said solemnly: "i'm only a rough fellow, who hasn't, perhaps, lived as a man should to win such a distinction, but i swear to you by all that i hold sacred and dear that, should the time ever come, i shall not flinch from the duty that you have set us. and i promise you, too, that i shall make all certain, for if i am only doubtful i shall take it that the time has come!" "my true friend!" was all she could say amid her fast falling tears, as, bending over, she kissed his hand. "i swear the same, my dear madam mina!" said van helsing. "and i!" said lord godalming, each of them in turn kneeling to her to take the oath. i followed, myself. then her husband turned to her wan-eyed and with a greenish pallor which subdued the snowy whiteness of his hair, and asked: "and must i, too, make such a promise, oh my wife?" "you too, my dearest," she said, with infinite yearning of pity in her voice and eyes. "you must not shrink. you are nearest and dearest and all the world to me; our souls are knit into one, for all life and all time. think dear, that there have been times when brave men have killed their wives and their womenkind, to keep them from failing into the hands of the enemy. their hands did not falter any the more because those that they loved implored them to slay them. it is men's duty towards those whom they love, in such times of sore trial! and oh, my dear, if it is to be that i must meet death at any hand, let it be at the hand of him that loves me best. dr. van helsing, i have not forgotten your mercy in poor lucy's case to him who loved"she stopped with a flying blush, and changed her phrase"to him who had best right to give her peace. if that time shall come again, i look to you to make it a happy memory of my husband's life that it was his loving hand which set me free from the awful thrall upon me." "again i swear!" came the professor's resonant voice. mrs. harker smiled, positively smiled, as with a sigh of relief she leaned back and said: "and now one word of warning, a warning which you must never forget: this time, if it ever come, may come quickly and unexpectedly, and in such case you must lose no time in using your opportunity. at such a time i myself might benay! if the time ever comes, shall beleagued with your enemy against you." "one more request;" she became very solemn as she said this, "it is not vital and necessary like the other, but i want you to do one thing for me, if you will." we all acquiesced, but no one spoke; there was no need to speak: "i want you to read the burial service." she was interrupted by a deep groan from her husband; taking his hand in hers, she held it over her heart, and continued. "you must read it over me some day. whatever may be the issue of all this fearful state of things, it will be a sweet thought to all or some of us. you, my dearest, will i hope read it, for then it will be in your voice in my memory for evercome what may!" "but oh, my dear one," he pleaded, "death afar off from you." "nay," she said, holding up a warning hand. "i am deeper in death at this moment than if the weight of an earthly grave lay heavy upon me!" "oh my wife, must i read it?" he said, before he began. "it would comfort me, my husband!" was all she said; and he began to read when she had got the book ready. "how can ihow could any onetell of that strange scene, its solemnity, its gloom, its sadness, its horror; and withal, its sweetness. even a sceptic, who can see nothing but travesty of bitter truth in anything holy or emotional, would have been melted to the heart had he seen that little group of loving and devoted friends kneeling round that stricken and sorrowing lady; or heard the tender passion of her husband's voice, as in tones so broken with emotion that often he had to pause, he read the simple and beautiful service from the burial of the dead. ii cannot go onwordsandv-voicef-fail m-me!"... she was right in her instinct. strange as it all was, bizarre as it may hereafter seem even to us who felt its potent influence at the time, it comforted us much; and the silence, which showed mrs. harker's coming relapse from her freedom of soul, did not seem so full of despair to any of us as we had dreaded. jonathan harker's journal. 15 october, varna.we left charing cross on the morning of the 12th, got to paris the same night, and took the places secured for us in the orient express. we travelled night and day, arriving here at about five o'clock. lord godalming went to the consulate to see if any telegram had arrived for him, whilst the rest of us came on to this hotel"the odessus." the journey may have had incidents; i was, however, too eager to get on, to care for them. until the czarina catherine comes into port there will be no interest for me in anything in the wide world. thank god! mina is well, and looks to be getting stronger; her colour is coming back. she sleeps a great deal; throughout the journey she slept nearly all the time. before sunrise and sunset, however, she is very wakeful and alert; and it has become a habit for van helsing to hypnotise her at such times. at first, some effort was needed, and he had to make many passes; but now, she seems to yeild at once, as if by habit, and scarcely any action is needed. he seems to have power at these particular moments to simply will, and her thoughts obey him. he always asks her what she can see and hear. she answers to the first: "nothing; all is dark." and to the second: "i can hear the waves lapping against the ship, and the water rushing by. canvas and cordage strain and masts and yards creak. the wind is highi can hear it in the shrouds, and the bow throws back the foam." it is evident that the czarina catherine is still a sea, hastening on her way to varna. lord godalming has just returned. he had four telegrams, one each day since we started, and all to the same effect: that the czarina catherine had not been reported to lloyd's from anywhere. he had arranged before leaving london that his agent should send him every day a telegram saying if the ship had been reported. he was to have a message even if she were not reported, so that he might be sure that there was a watch being kept at the other end of the wire. we had dinner and went to bed early. to-morrow we are to see the vice-counsul, and to arrange, if we can, about getting on board the ship as soon as she arrives. van helsing says that our chance will be to get on the boat between sunrise and sunset. the count, even if he takes the form of a bat, cannot cross the running water of his own volition, and so cannot leave the ship. as he dare not change to man's form without suspicionwhich he evidently washes to avoidhe must remain in the box. if, then, we can come on board after sunrise, he is at our mercy; for we can open the box and make sure of him, as we did of poor lucy, before he wakes. what mercy he shall get from us will not count for much. we think that we shall not have much trouble with officials or the seamen. thank god! this is the country where bibery can do anything, and we are well supplied with money. we have only to make sure that the ship cannot come into port between sunset and sunrise without our being warned, and we shall be safe. judge moneybag will settle this case, i think! 16 october.mina's report still the same: lapping waves and rushing water, darkness and favouring winds. we are evidently in good time, and when we hear of the czarina catherine we shall be ready. as she must pass the dardanelles we are sure to have some report. 17 october.everything is pretty well fixed now, i think, to welcome the count on his return from his tour. godalming told the shippers that he fancied that the box sent aboard might contain something stolen from a friend of his, and got a half consent that he might open it at his own risk. the owner gave him a paper telling the captain to give him every facility in doing whatever he chose on board the ship, and also a similar authorisation to his agent at varna. we have seen the agent, who was much impressed with godalming's kindly manner to him, and we are all satisfied that whatever he can do to aid our wishes will be done. we have already arranged what to do in case we get the box open. if the count is there, van helsing and seward will cut off his head at once and drive a stake through his heart. morris and godalming and i shall prevent interference, even if we have to use the arms which we shall have ready. the professor says that if we can so treat the count's body, it will soon after fall into dust. in such case there would be no evidence against us, in case any suspicion of murder were aroused. but even if it were not, we should stand or fall by our act, and perhaps some day this very script may be evidence to come between some of us and a rope. for myself, i should take the chance only too thankfully if it were to come. we mean to leave no stone unturned to carry out our intent. we have arranged with certain officials that the instant the czarina catherine is seen, we are to be informed by a special messenger. 24 october.a whole week of waiting. dally telegrams to godalming, but only the same story: "not yet reported." mina's morning and evening hypnotic answer is unvaried: lapping waves, rushing water, and creaking masts. telegram, october 24th. rufus smith, lloyd's london, to lord godalming, care of h.b.m. vice-consul, varna. "czarina catherine reported this morning from dardanelles." dr. seward's diary. 25 october.how i miss my phonograph! to write diary with a pen is irksome to me; but van helsing says i must. we were all wild with excitement yesterday when godalming got his telegram from lloyd's. i know now what men feel in battle when the call to action is heard. mrs. harker, alone of our party, did not show any signs of emotion. after all, it is not strange that she did not; for we took special care not to let her know anything about it, and we all tried not to show any excitement when we were in her presence. in old days she would, i am sure, have noticed, no matter how we might have tried to conceal it; but in this way she is greatly changed during the past three weeks. the lethargy grows upon her, and though she seems strong and well, and is getting back some of her colour, van helsing and i are not satisfied. we talk of her often; we have not, however, said a word to the others. it would break poor harker's heartcertainly his nerveif he knew that we had even a suspicion on the subject. van helsing examines, he tells me, her teeth very carefully, whilst she is in the hypnotic condition, for he says that so long as they do not begin to sharpen there is no active danger of a change in her. if this change should come, it would be necessary to take steps!... we both know what those steps would have to be, though we do not mention our thoughts to each other. we should neither of us shrink from the taskawful though it be to contemplate. "euthanasia" is an excellent and a comforting word! i am grateful to whoever invented it. it is only about 24 hours' sail from the dardanelles to here, at the rate the czarina catherine has come from london. she should therefore arrive some time in the morning; but as she cannot possibly get in before then, we are all about to retire early. we shall get up at one o'clock, so as to be ready. 25 october, noon.no news yet of the ship's arrival. mrs. harker's hypnotic report this morning was the same as usual, so it is possible that we may get news at any moment. we men are all in a fever of excitement, except harker, who is calm; his hands are as cold as ice, and an hour ago i found him whetting the edge of the great ghoorka knife which he now always carries with him. it will be a bad look out for the count if the edge of that "kukri" ever touches his throat, driven by that stern, ice-cold hand! van helsing and i were a little alarmed about mrs. harker to-day. about noon she got into a sort of lethargy which we did not like; although we kept silence to the others, we were neither of us happy about it. she had been restless all the morning, so that we were at first glad to know that she was sleeping. when, however, her husband mentioned casually that she was sleeping so soundly that he could not wake her, we went to her room to see for ourselves. she was breathing naturally and looked so well and peaceful that we agreed that the sleep was better for her than anything else. poor girl, she has so much to forget that it is no wonder that sleep, if it brings oblivion to her, does her good. later.our opinion was justified, for when after a refreshing sleep of some hours she woke up, she seemed brighter and better than she had been for days. at sunset she made the usual hypnotic report. wherever he may be in the black sea, the count is hurrying to his destination. to his doom, i trust! 26 october.another day and no tidings of the czarina catherine. she ought to be here by now. that she is still journeying somewhere is apparent, for mrs. harker's hypnotic report at sunrise was still the same. it is possible that the vessel may be lying by, at times, for fog; some of the steamers which came in last evening reported patches of fog both to north and south of the port. we must continue our watching, as the ship may now be signalled any moment. 27 october, noon.most strange; no news yet of the ship we wait for. mrs. harker reported last night and this morning as usual: "lapping waves and rushing water," though she added that "the waves were very faint." the telegrams from london have been the same: "no further report." van helsing is terribly anxious, and told me just now that he fears the count is escaping us. he added significantly: "i did not like that lethargy of madam mina's. souls and memories can do strange things during trance." i was about to ask him more, but harker just then came in, and he held up a warning hand. we must try to-night at sunset to make her speak more fully when in her hypnotic state. 28 october.telegram. rufus smith, london, to lord godalming, care h.b.m. vice consul, varna. "czarina catherine reported entering galatz at one o'clock to-day." dr. seward's diary. 28 october.when the telegram came announcing the arrival in galatz i do not think it was such a shock to any of us as might have been expected. true, we did not know whence, or how, or when, the bolt would come; but i think we all expected that something strange would happen. the delay of arrival at varna made us individually satisfied that things would not be just as we had expected; we only waited to learn where the change would occur. none the less, however, was it a surprise. i suppose that nature works on such a hopeful basis that we believe against ourselves that things will be as they ought to be, not as we should know that they will be. transcendentalism is a beacon to the angels, even if it be a will-o'-the-wisp to man. it was an odd experience and we all took it differently. van helsing raised his hand over his head for a moment, as though in remonstrance with the almighty; but he said not a word, and in a few second stood up with his face sternly set. lord godalming grew very pale, and sat breathing heavily. i was myself half stunned and looked in wonder at one after another. quincey morris tightened his belt with that quick movement which i knew so well; in our old wandering days it meant "action." mrs. harker grew ghastly white, so that the scar on her forehead seemed to burn, but she folded her hands meekly and looked up in prayer. harker smiledactually smiledthe dark, bitter smile of one who is without hope; but at the same time his action belied his words, for his hands instinctively sought the hilt of the great kukri knife and rested there. "when does the next train start for galatz?" said van helsing to us generally. "at 6:30 to-morrow morning!" we all stared, for the answer came from mrs. harker. "how on earth do you know?" said art. "you forgetor perhaps you do not know, though jonathan does and so does dr. van helsingthat i am the train fiend. at home in exeter i always used to make up the time-tables, so as to be helpful to my husband. i found it so useful sometimes, that i always make a study of the timetables now. i knew that if anything were to take us to castle dracula we should go by galatz, or at any rate through bucharest, so i learned the times very carefully. unhappily there are not many to learn, as the only train tomorrow leaves as i say." "wonderful woman!" murmured the professor. "can't we get a special?" asked lord godalming. van helsing shook his head: "i fear not. this land is very different from your's or mine; even if we did have a special, it would probably not arrive as soon as our regular train. moreover, we have something to prepare. we must think. now let us organize. you, friend arthur, go to the train and get the tickets and arrange that all be ready for us to go in the morning. do you, friend jonathan, go to the agent of the ship and get from him letters to the agent in galatz, with authority to make search the ship just as it was here. morris quincey, you see the vice-consul, and get his aid with his fellow in galatz and all he can do to make our way smooth, so that no times be lost when over the danube. john will stay with madam mina and me, and we shall consult. for so if time be long you may be delayed; and it will not matter when the sun set, since i am here with madam to make report." "and i," said mrs. harker brightly, and more like her old self than she had been for many a long day, "shall try to be of use in all ways, and shall think and write for you as i used to do. something is shifting from me in some strange way, and i feel freer than i have been of late!" the three younger men looked happier at the moment as they seemed to realise the significance of her words; but van helsing and i, turning to each other, met each a grave and troubled glance. we said nothing at the time, however. when the three men had gone out to their tasks van helsing asked mrs. harker to look up the copy of the diaries and find him the part of harker's journal at the castle. she went away to get it; when the door was shut upon her he said to me: "we mean the same! speak out!" "there is some change. it is a hope that makes me sick, for it may deceive us." "quite so. do you know why i asked her to get the manuscript?" "no!" said i, "unless it was to get an opportunity of seeing me alone." "you are in part right, friend john, but only in part. i want to tell you something. and oh, my friend, i am taking a greata terriblerisk; but i believe it is right. in the moment when madam mina said those words that arrest both our understanding, an inspiration came to me. in the trance of three days ago the count sent her his spirit to read her mind; or more like he took her to see him in his earth-box in the ship with water rushing, just as it go free at rise and set of sun. he learn then that we are here; for she have more to tell in her open life with eyes to see and ears to hear than he, shut, as he is, in his coffin-box. now he make his most effort to escape us. at present he want her not. "he is sure with his so great knowledge that she will come at his call; but he cut her offtake her, as he can do, out of his own power, that so she come not to him. ah! there i have hope that our man-brains that have been of man so long and that have not lost the grace of god, will come, higher than his child-brain that lie in his tomb for centuries, that grow not yet to our stature, and that do only work selfish and therefore small. here comes madam mina; not a word to her of her trance! she know it not; and it would overwhelm her and make despair just when we want all her hope all her courage; when most we want all her great brain which is trained like man's brain, but is of sweet woman and have a special power which the count give her, and which he may not take away altogetherthough he think not so. hush! let me speak, and you shall learn. oh, john, my friend, we are in awful straits. i fear, as i never feared before. we can only trust the good god. silence! here she comes!" i thought that the professor was going to break down and have hysterics, just as he had when lucy died, but with a great effort he controlled himself and was at perfect nervous poise when mrs. harker tripped into the room, bright and happy-looking and, in the doing of work, seemingly forgetful of her misery. as she came in, she handed a number of sheets of typewriting to van helsing. he looked over them gravely, his face brightening up as he read. then holding the pages between his finger and thumb he said: "friend john, to you with so much of experience alreadyand you, too, dear madam mina, that are young,here is a lesson: do not fear ever to think. a half-thought has been buzzing often in my brain, but i fear to let him loose his wings. here now, with more knowledge, i go back to where that half-thought come from, and i find that he be no half-thought at all; that be a whole thought, though so young that he is not yet strong to use his little wings. nay, like the "ugly duck" of my friend hans andersen, he be no duck-thought at all, but a big swan-thought that sail nobly on big wings, when the time come for him to try them. see i read here what jonathan have written: "that other of his race who, in a later age, again and again, brought his forces over the great river into turkey land; who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph." "what does this tell us? not much? no! the count's child-thought see nothing; therefore he speak so free. your man-thought see nothing; my man-thought see nothing, till just now. no! but there comes another word from some one who speak without thought because she, too, know not what it meanwhat it might mean. just as there are elements which rest, yet when in nature's course they move on their way and they touchthen pouf! and there comes a flash of light, heaven wide, that blind and kill and destroy some: but that show up all earth below for leagues and leagues. is it not so? well, i shall explain. to begin, have you ever study the philosophy of crime. 'yes' and 'no.' you, john, yes; for it is a study of insanity. you, no, madam mina; for crime touch you notnot but once. still, your mind works true, and argues not a particulari and universale. there is this pecularity in criminals. it is so constant, in all countries and at all times, that even police, who know not much from philosophy, come to know it empirically, that it is. that is to be empiric. the criminal always work at one crimethat is the true criminal who seems predestinate to crime, and who will of none other. this criminal has not full man-brain. he is clever and cunning and resourceful; but he be not of man-stature as to brain. he be of child-brain in much. now this criminal of ours is predestinate to crime also; he, too, have child-brain, and it is of the child to do what he have done. the little bird, the little fish, the little animal learn not by principle, but empirically; and when he learn to do, then there is to him the ground to start from to do more. 'dos pou sto,' said archimedes. 'give me a fulcrum, and i shall move the world!' to do once, is the fulcrum whereby child-brain become man-brain; and until he have the purpose to do more, he continue to do the same again every time, just as he have done before! oh, my dear, i see that your eyes are opened, and that to you the lightning flash show all the leagues," for mrs. harker began to clap her hands and her eyes sparkled. he went on: "now you shall speak. tell us two dry men of science what you see with those so bright eyes." he took her hand and held it whilst she spoke. his finger and thumb closed on her pulse, as i thought instinctively and unconsciously, as she spoke: "the count is a criminal and of criminal type. nordau and lombroso would so classify him, and qua criminal he is of imperfectly formed mind. thus, in a difficulty he has to seek resource in habit. his past is a clue, and the one page of it that we knowand that from his own lipstells that once before, when in what mr. morris would call a 'tight place,' he went back to his own country from the land he had tried to invade, and thence, without losing purpose, prepared himself for a new effort. he came again better equipped for his work; and won. so he came to london to invade a new land. he was beaten, and when all hope of success was lost, and his existence in danger, he fled back over the sea to his home; just as formerly he had fled back over the danube from turkey land." "good, good! oh, you so clever lady?" said van helsing, enthusiastically, as he stooped and kissed her hand. a moment later he said to me, as calmly as though we had been having a sickroom consultation: "seventy-two only; and in all this excitement. i have hope." turning to her again, he said with keen expectation: "but go on. go on! there is more to tell if you will. be not afraid; john and i know. i do in any case, and shall tell you if you are right. speak, without fear!" "i will try to; but you will forgive me if i seem egotistical." "nay! fear not, you must be egotist, for it is of you that we think." "then, as he is criminal he is selfish; and as his intellect is small and his action is based on selfishness, he confines himself to one purpose. that purpose is remorseless. as he fled back over the danube, leaving his forces to be cut to pieces, so now he is intent on being safe, careless of all. so, his own selfishness frees my soul somewhat from the terrible power which he acquired over me on that dreadful night. i felt it! oh, i felt it! thank god, for his great mercy! my soul is freer than it has been since that awful hour; and all that haunts me is a fear lest in some trance or dream he may have used my knowledge for his ends." the professor stood up: "he has so used your mind; and by it he has left us here in varna, whilst the ship that carried him rushed through enveloping fog up to galatz, where, doubtless, he had made preparation for escaping from us. but his child-mind only saw so far, and it may be that, as ever is in god's providence, the very thing that the evil-doer most reckoned on for his selfish good, turns out to be his chiefest harm. the hunter is taken in his own snare, as the great psalmist says, for now that he think he is free from every trace of us all, and that he has escaped us with so many hours to him, then his selfish child-brain will whisper him to sleep. he think, too, that as he cut himself off from knowing your mind, there can be no knowledge of him to you; there is where he fall! that terrible baptism of blood which he give you makes you free to go to him in spirit, as you have as yet done in your times of freedom, when the sun rise and set. at such times you go by my volition and not by his; and this power to good of you and others, you have won from your suffering at his hands. this is now all more precious that he know it not, and to guard himself have even cut himself off from his knowledge of our where. we, however, are not selfish, and we believe that god is with us through all this blackness, and these many dark hours. we shall follow him; and we shall not flinch; even if we peril ourselves that we become like him. friend john, this has been a great hour, and it have done much to advance us on our way. you must be scribe and write him all down, so that when the others return from their work you can give it to them; then they shall know as we do.' and so i have written it whilst we wait their return, and mrs. harker has written with her typewriter all since she brought the ms. to us. chapter xxvi. dr. seward's diary. 29 october.this is written in the train from varna to galatz. last night we all assembled a little before the time of sunset. each of us had done his work as well as he could; so far as thought, and endeavour, and opportunity go, we are prepared for the whole of our journey, and for our work when we get to galatz. when the usual time came round mrs. harker prepared herself for her hypnotic effort; and after a longer and more serious effort on the part of van helsing than has been usually necessary, she sank into the trance. usually she speaks on a hint; but this time the professor had to ask her questions, and to ask them pretty resolutely, before we could learn anything; at last her answer came: "i can see nothing; we are still; there are no waves lapping, but only a steady swirl of water softly running against the hawser. i can hear men's voices calling, near and far, and the roll and creak of oars in the rowlocks. a gun is fired somewhere; the echo of it seems far away. there is tramping of feet overhead, and ropes and chains are dragged along. what is this? there is a gleam of light; i can feel the air blowing upon me." here she stopped. she had risen, as if impulsively, from where she lay on the sofa, and raised both her hands, palms upwards, as if lifting a weight. van helsing and i looked at each other with understanding. quincey raised her eyebrows slightly and looked at her intently, whilst harker's hand instinctively closed round the hilt of his kukri. there was a long pause. we all knew that the time when she could speak was passing; but we felt that it was useless to say anything. suddenly she sat up, and, as she opened her eyes, said sweetly: "would none of you like a cup of tea? you must all be so tired!" we could only make her happy, and so acquiesced. she bustled off to get tea; when she had gone van helsing said: "you see, my friends. he is close to land: he has left his earth-chest. but he has yet to get on shore. in the night he may lie hidden somewhere; but if he be not carried on shore, or if the ship do not touch it, he cannot achieve the land. in such case he can, if it be in the night, change his form and can jump or fly on shore, as he did at whitby. but if the day come before he get on shore, then, unless he be carried he cannot escape. and if he be carried, then the customs men may discover what the box contains. thus, in fine, if he escape not on shore to-night, or before dawn, there will be the whole day lost to him. we may then arrive in time; for if he escape not at night we shall come on him in daytime, boxed up and at our mercy; for he dare not be his true self, awake and visible, lest he be discovered." there was no more to be said, so we waited in patience until the dawn; at which time we might learn more from mrs. harker. early this morning we listened, with breathless anxiety, for her response in her trance. the hypnotic stage was even longer in coming than before; and when it came the time remaining until full sunrise was so short that we began to despair. van helsing seemed to throw his whole soul into the effort; at last, in obedience to his will she made reply: "all is dark. i hear lapping water, level with me, and some creaking as of wood on wood." she paused, and the red sun shot up. we must wait till to-night. and so it is that we are travelling towards galatz in an agony of expectation. we are due to arrive between two and three in the morning; but already, at bucharest, we are three hours late, so we cannot possibly get in till well after sunup. thus we shall have two more hypnotic messages from mrs. harker, either or both may possibly throw more light on what is happening. later.sunset has come and gone. fortunately it came at a time when there was no distraction; for had it occurred whilst we were at a station, we might not have secured the necessary calm and isolation. mrs. harker yielded to the hypnotic influence even less readily than this morning. i am in fear that her power of reading the count's sensations may die away just when we want it most. it seems to me that her imagination is beginning to work. whilst she has been in the trance hitherto she has confined herself to the simplest of facts. if this goes on it may ultimately mislead us. if i thought that the count's power over her would die away equally with her power of knowledge it would be a happy thought; but i am afraid that it may not be so. when she did speak, her words were enigmatical: "something is going out; i can feel it pass me like a cold wind. i can hear, far off, confused soundsas of men talking in strange tongues, fiercefalling water, and the howling of wolves." she stopped and a shudder ran through her, increasing in intensity for a few seconds, till, at the end, she shook as though in a palsy. she said no more, even in answer to the professor's imperative questioning. when she woke from the trance, she was cold, and exhausted, and languid; but her mind was all alert. she could not remember anything, but asked what she had said; when she was told, she pondered over it deeply, for a long time and in silence. 30 october, 7 a.m.we are near galatz now, and i may not have time to write later. sunrise this morning was anxiously looked for by us all. knowing of the increasing difficulty of procuring the hypnotic trance, van helsing began his passes earlier than usual. they produced no effect, however, until the regular time, when she yielded with a still greater difficulty, only a minute before the sun rose. the professor lost no time in his questioning; her answer came with equal quickness: "all is dark. i hear water swirling by, level with my ears, and the creaking of wood on wood. cattle low far off. there is another sound, a queer one like-" she stopped and grew white, and whiter still. "go on; go on! speak, i command you!" said van helsing in an agonised voice. at the same time there was despair in his eyes, for the risen sun was reddening even mrs. harker's pale face. she opened her eyes, and we all started as she said, sweetly and seemingly with the utmost unconcern: "oh, professor, why ask me to do what you know i can't? i don't remember anything." then, seeing the look of amazement on our faces, she said, turning from one to the other with a troubled look: "what have i said? what have i done? i know nothing, only that i was lying here, half asleep, and heard you say 'go on! speak, i command you!' it seemed so funny to hear you order me about, as if i were a bad child!" "oh, madam mina," he said, sadly, "it is proof, if proof be needed, of how i love and honour you, when a word for your good, spoken more earnest than ever, can seem so strange because it is to order her whom i am proud to obey!" the whistles are sounding; we are nearing galatz. we are on fire with anxiety and eagerness. mina harker's journal. 30 october.mr. morris took me to the hotel where our rooms had been ordered by telegraph, he being the one who could best be spared, since he does not speak any foreign language. the forces were distributed much as they had been at varna, except that lord godalming went to the vice-consul, as his rank might serve as an immediate guarantee of some sort to the official, we being in extreme hurry. jonathan and the two doctors went to the shipping agent to learn particulars of the arrival of the czarina catherine. later.lord godalming has returned. the consul is away, and the vice-consul sick; so the routine work has been attended to by a clerk. he was very obliging, and offered to do anything in his power. jonathan harker's journal. 30 october.at nine o'clock dr. van helsing, dr. seward, and i called on messrs. mackenzie & steinkoff, the agents of the london firm of hapgood. they had received a wire from london, in answer to lord godalming's telegraphed request, asking us to show them any civility in their power. they were more than kind and courteous, and took us at once on board the czarina catherine, which lay at anchor out in the river harbour. there we saw the captain, donelson by name, who told us of his voyage. he said that in all his life he had never had so favourable a run. "man!" he said, "but it made us afeard, for we expeckit that we should have to pay for it wi' some rare piece o' ill luck, so as to keep up the average. it's no canny to run frae london to the black sea wi' a wind ahint ye, as though the deil himself were blawin' on yer sail for his ain purpose an' a' the time we could no speer a thing. gin we were nigh a ship, or a port, or a headland, a fog fell on us and travelled wi' us, till when after it had lifted and we looked out, the deil a thing could we see. we ran by gibraltar wi'oot bein' able to signal; an'till we came to the dardanelles and had to wait to get our permit to pass, we never were within hail o' aught. at first i inclined to slack off sail and beat about till the fog was lifted; but whiles, i thocht that if the deil was minded to get us into the black sea quick, he was like to do it whether we would or no. if we had a quick voyage it would be no to our miscredit wi' the owners, or no hurt to our traffic; an' the old mon who had served his ain purpose wad be decently grateful to us for no hinderin' him." this mixture of simplicity and cunning, of superstition and commercial reasoning, aroused van helsing, who said: "mine friend, that devil is more clever than he is thought by some; and he know when he meet his match!" the skipper was not displeased with the compliment, and went on: "when we got past the bosphorus the men began to grumble; some o' them, the roumanians, came and asked me to heave overboard a big box which had been put on board by a queer lookin' old man just before we had started frae london. i had seen them speer at the fellow, and put out their twa fingers when they saw him, to guard against the evil eye. man! but the supersteetion of foreigners is pairfectly rideeculous! i sent them aboot their business pretty quick; but as just after a fog closed in on us, i felt a wee bit as they did anent something, though i wouldn't say it was agin the bit box. well, on we went, and as the fog didn't let up for five days i joost let the wind carry us; for if the deil wanted to get somewhereswell, he would fetch it up a'reet. an' if he didn't, well, we'd keep a sharp look out anyhow. sure eneuch, we had a fair way and deep water all the time; and two days ago, when the mornin' sun came through the fog, we found ourselves just in the river opposite galatz. the roumanians were wild, and wanted me right or wrong to take out the box and fling it in the river. i had to argy wi' them aboot it wi' a handspike; an' when the last o' them rose off the deck, wi' his head in his hand, i had convinced them that, evil eye or no evil eye, the property and the trust of my owners were better in my hands than in the river danube. they had, mind ye, taken the box on the deck ready to fling in, and as it was marked galatz via varna, i thocht i'd let it lie till we discharged in the port an' get rid o't athegither. we didn't do much clearin' that day, an' had to remain the nicht at anchor, but in the mornin', braw an' airly, an hour before sun-up, a man came aboard wi' an order, written to him from england, to receive a box marked for one count dracula. sure eneuch the matter was one ready to his hand. he had his papers a' reet, an' glad i was to be rid o' the dam thing, for i was beginnin' masel' to feel uneasy at it. if the deil did have any luggage aboord the ship, i'm thinkin' it was nane ither than that same!" "what was the name of the man who took it?" asked dr. van helsing with restrained eagerness. "i'll be tellin' ye quick!" he answered, and, stepping down to his cabin, produced a receipt signed "immanuel hildesheim." burgen-strasse 16 was the address. we found out that this was all the captain knew; so with thanks we came away. we found hildesheim in his office, a hebrew of rather the adelphi theatre type, with a nose like a sheep, and a fez. his arguments were pointed with speciewe doing the punctuationand with a little bargaining he told us what he knew. this turned out to be simple but important. he had received a letter from mr. de ville of london, telling him to receive, if possible before sunrise so as to avoid customs, a box which would arrive at galatz in the czarina catherine. this he was to give in charge to a certain petrof skinsky, who dealth with the slovaks who traded down the river to the port. he had been paid for his work by an english bank note, which had been duly cashed for gold at the danube international bank. when skinsky had come to him, he had taken him to the ship and handed over the box, so as to save porterage. that was all he knew. we then sought for skinsky, but were unable to find him. one of his neighbours, who did not seem to bear him any affection, said that he had gone away two days before, no one knew whither. this was corroborated by his landlord, who had received by messenger the key of the house together with the rent due, in english money. this had been between ten and eleven o'clock last night. we were at a standstill again. whilst we were talking one came running and breathlessly gasped out that the body of skinsky had been found inside the wall of the churchyard of st. peter, and that the throat had been torn open as if by some wild animal. those we had been speaking with ran off to see the horror, the women crying out "this is the work of a slovak!" we hurried away lest we should have been in some way drawn into the affair, and so detained. as we came home we could arrive at no definite conclusion. we were all convinced that the box was on its way, by water, to somewhere; but where that might be we would have to discover. with heavy hearts we came home to the hotel to mina. when we met together, the first thing was to consult as to taking mina again into our confidence. things are getting desperate, and it is at least a chance, though a hazardous one. as a preliminary step, i was released from my promise to her. mina harker's journal. 30 october, evening.they were so tired and worn out and dispirited that there was nothing to be done till they had some rest; so i asked them all to lie down for half an hour whilst i should enter everything up to the moment. i feel so grateful to the man who invented the "traveller's" typewriter, and to mr. morris for getting this one for me. i should have felt quite astray doing the work if i had to write with a pen... it is all done; poor dear, dear jonathan, what he must have suffered, what must he be suffering now. he lies on the sofa hardly seeming to breathe, and his whole body appears in collapse. his brows are knit; his face is drawn with pain. poor fellow, maybe he is thinking, and i can see his face all wrinkled up with the concentration of his thoughts. oh! if i could only help at all... i shall do what i can. i have asked dr. van helsing, and he has got me all the papers that i have not yet seen... whilst they are resting, i shall go over all carefully, and perhaps i may arrive at some conclusion. i shall try to follow the professor's example, and think without prejudice on the facts before me... i do believe that under god's providence i have made a discovery. i shall get the maps and look over them... i am more than ever sure that i am right. my new conclusion is ready, so i shall get our party together and read it. they can judge it; it is well to be accurate, and every minute is precious. mina harker's memorandum. (entered in her journal.) ground of inquiry.count dracula's problem is to get back to his own place. (a) he must be brought back by some one. this is evident; for had he power to move himself as he wished he could go either as man, or wolf, or bat, or in some other way. he evidently fears discovery or interference, in the state of helplessness in which he must be confined as he is between dawn and sunset in his wooden box. (b) how is he to be taken?here a process of exclusions may help us. by road, by rail, by water? 1. by road.there are endless difficulties, especially in leaving the city. (x) there are people; and people are curious, and investigate. a hint, a surmise, a doubt as to what might be in the box, would destroy him. (y) there are, or there may be, customs and octroi officers to pass. (z) his pursuers might follow. this is his highest fear; and in order to prevent his being betrayed he has repelled, so far as he can, even his victimme! 2. by rail.there is no one in charge of the box. it would have to take its chance of being delayed; and delay would be fatal, with enemies on the track. true, he might escape at night, but what would he be, if left in a strange place with no refuge that he could fly to. this is not what he intends; and he does not mean to risk it. 3. by water.here is the safest way, in one respect, but with most danger in another. on the water he is powerless except at night; even then he can only summon fog and storm and snow and his wolves. but were he wrecked, the living water would engulf him, helpless; and he would indeed be lost. he could have the vessel drive to land; but if it were unfriendly land, wherein he was not free to move, his position would still be desperate. we know from the record that he was on the water, so what we have to do is to ascertain what water. the first thing is to realise exactly what he has done as yet; we may, then, get a light on what his later task is to be. firstly.we must differentiate between what he did in london as part of his general plan of action, when he was pressed for moments and had to arrange as best he could. secondly.we must see, as well as we can surmise it from the facts we know of, what he has done here. as to the first, he evidently intended to arrive at galatz, and sent invoice to varna to deceive us lest we should ascertain his means of exit from england; his immediate and sole purpose then was to escape. the proof of this, is the letter of instructions sent to immanuel hildesheim to clear and take away the box before sunrise. there is also the instruction to petrof skinsky. these we must only guess at; but there must have been some letter or message, since skinsky came to hildesheim. that, so far, his plans were successful we know. the czarina catherine made a phenomenally quick journeyso much so that captain donelson's suspicions were aroused; but his superstition united with his canniness played the count's game for him, and he ran with his favouring wind through fogs and all till he brought up blindfold at galatz. that the count's arrangements were well made, has been proved. hildesheim cleared the box, took it off, and gave it to skinsky. skinsky took itand here we lose the trail. we only know that the box is somewhere on the water, moving along. the customs and the octroi; if there be any, have been avoided. now we come to what the count must have done after his arrivalon land, at galatz. the box was given to skinsky before sunrise. at sunrise the count could appear in his own form. here, we ask why skinsky was chosen at all to aid in the work? in my husband's diary, skinsky is mentioned as dealing with the slovaks who trade down the river to the port; and the man's remark, that the murder was the work of a slovak, showed the general feeling against his class. the count wanted isolation. my surmise is, this: that in london the count decided to get back to his castle by water, as the most safe and secret way. he was brought from the castle by szgany, and probably they delivered their cargo to slovaks who took the boxes to varna, for there they were shipped for london. thus the count had knowledge of the persons who could arrange this service. when the box was on land, before sunrise or after sunset, he came out from his box, met skinsky and instructed him what to do as to arranging the carriage of the box up some river. when this was done, and he knew that all was in train, he blotted out his traces, as he thought, by murdering his agent. i have examined the map and find that the river most suitable for the slovaks to have ascended is either the pruth or the sereth. i read in the typescript that in my trance i heard cows low and water swirling level with my ears and the creaking of wood. the count in his box, then, was on a river in an open boatpropelled probably either by oars or poles, for the banks are near and it is working against stream. there would be no such sound if floating down stream. of course it may not be either the sereth or the pruth, but we may possibly investigate further. now of these two, the pruth is the more easily navigated, but the sereth is, at fundu, joined by the bistritza which runs up round the borgo pass. the loop it makes is manifestly as close to dracula's castle as can be got by water. mina harker's journalcontinued. when i had done reading, jonathan took me in his arms and kissed me. the others kept shaking me by both hands, and dr. van helsing said: "our dear madam mina is once more our teacher. her eyes have been where we were blinded. now we are on the track once again, and this time we may succeed. our enemy is at his most helpless; and if we can come on him by day, on the water, our task will be over. he has a start, but he is powerless to hasten, as he may not leave his box lest those who carry him may suspect; for them to suspect would be to prompt them to throw him in the stream where he perish. this he knows, and will not. now men, to our council of war, for, here and now, we must plan what each and all shall do." "i shall get a steam launch and follow him," said lord godalming. "and i, horses to follow on the bank lest by chance he land," said mr. morris. "good!" said the professor, "both good. but neither must go alone. there must be force to overcome force if need be; the slovak is strong and rough, and he carries rude arms." all the men smiled, for amongst them they carried a small arsenal. said mr. morris: "i have brought some winchesters; they are pretty handy in a crowd, and there may be wolves. the count, if you remember, took some other precautions; he made some requisitions on others that mrs. harker could not quite hear or understand. we must be ready at all points." dr. seward said: "i think i had better go with quincey. we have been accustomed to hunt together, and we two, well armed, will be a match for whatever may come along. you must not be alone art. it may be necessary to fight the slovaks, and a chance thrustfor i don't suppose these fellows carry gunswould undo all our plans. there must be no chances, this time; we shall not rest until the count's head and body have been separated, and we are sure that he cannot re-incarnate." he looked at jonathan as he spoke, and jonathan looked at me. i could see that the poor dear was torn about in his mind. of course he wanted to be with me; but then the boat service would, most likely, be the one which would destroy the... the... the... vampire. (why did i hesitate to write the word?) he was silent awhile, and during his silence dr. van helsing spoke: "friend jonathan, this is to you for twice reasons. first, because you are young and brave and can fight, and all energies may be needed at the last; and again that it is your right to destroy himthatwhich has wrought such woe to you and yours. be not afraid for madam mina; she will be my care, if i may. i am old. my legs are not so quick to run as once; and i am not used to ride so long or to pursue as need be, or to fight with lethal weapons. but i can be of other service; i can fight in other way. and i can die, if need be, as well as younger men. now let me say that what i would is this: while you, my lord godalming, and friend jonathan go in your so swift little steamboat up the river, and whilst john and quincey guard the bank where perchance he might be landed, i will take madam mina right into the heart of the enemy's country. whilst the old fox is tied in his box, floating on the running stream whence he cannot escape to land-where he dares not raise the lid of his coffin-box lest his slovak carriers should in fear leave him to perishwe shall go in the track where jonathan went,from bistritz over the borgo, and find our way to the castle of dracula. here, madam mina's hypnotic power will surely help, and we shall and our wayall dark and unknown otherwiseafter the first sunrise when we are near that fateful place. there is much to be done, and other places to be made sanctify, so that that nest of vipers be obliterated." here jonathan interrupted him hotly: "do you mean to say, professor van helsing, that you would bring mina, in her sad case and tainted as she is with that devil's illness, right into the jaws of his death-trap? not for the world! not for heaven or hell!" he became almost speechless for a minute, and then went on: "do you know what the place is? have you seen that awful den of hellish infamywith the very moonlight alive with grisly shapes, and every speck of dust that whirls in the wind a devouring monster in embryo? have you felt the vampire's lips upon your throat?" here he turned to me, and as his eyes lit on my forehead, he threw up his arms with a cry: "oh, my god, what have we done to have this terror upon us!" and he sank down on the sofa in a collapse of misery. the professor's voice, as he spoke in clear, sweet tones, which seemed to vibrate in the air, calmed us all: "oh my friend, it is because i would save madam mina from that awful place that i would go. god forbid that i should take her into that place. there is workwild workto be done there, that her eyes may not see. we men here, all save jonathan, have seen with their own eyes what is to be done before that place can be purify. remember that we are in terrible straits. if the count escape us this timeand he is strong and subtle and cunninghe may choose to sleep him for a century, and then in time our dear one"he took my hand"would come to him to keep him company, and would be as those others that you, jonathan, saw. you have told us of their gloating lips; you heard their ribald laugh as they clutched the moving bag that the count threw to them, you shudder, and well may it be. forgive me that i make you so much pain, but it is necessary. my friend, is it not a dire need for the which i am giving, possibly my life? if it were that anyone went into that place to stay, it is i who would have to go, to keep them company." "do as you will;" said jonathan with a sob that shook him all over, "we are in the hands of god!" later."oh, it did me good to see the way that these brave men worked. how can women help loving men when they are so earnest, and so true, and so brave! and, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of money what can it not do when it is properly applied; and what might it do when basely used. i felt so thankful that lord godalming is rich, and that both he and mr. morris, who also has plenty of money, are willing to spend it so freely. for if they did not, our little expedition could not start, either so promptly or so well equipped, as it will within another hour. it is not three hours since it was arranged what part each of us was to do; and now lord godalming and jonathan have a lovely steam launch, with steam up ready to start at a moment's notice. dr. seward and mr. morris have half a dozen good horses, well appointed. we have all the maps and appliances of various kinds that can be had. professor van helsing and i are to leave by the 11:40 train to-night for veresti, where we are to get a carriage to drive to the borgo pass. we are bringing a good deal of ready money, as we are to buy a carriage and horses. we shall drive ourselves, for we have no one whom we can trust in the matter. the professor knows something of a great many languages, so we shall get on all right. we have all got arms, even for me a large-bore revolver, jonathan would not be happy unless i was armed like the rest. alas! i cannot carry one arm that the rest do; the scar on my forehead forbids that. dear dr. van helsing comforts me by telling me that i am fully armed as there may be wolves; the weather is getting colder every hour, and there are snow-flurries which come and go as warnings. later.it took all my courage to say good-bye to my darling. we may never meet again. courage, mina! the professor is looking at you keenly; his look is a warning. there must be no tears nowunless it may be that god will let them fall in gladness. jonathan harker's journal. october 30. night.i am writing this in the light from the furnace door of the steam launch; lord godalming is firing up. he is an experienced hand at the work, as he has had for years a launch of his own on the thames, and an other on the norfolk broads. regarding our plans, we finally decided that mina's guess was correct, and that if any waterway was chosen for the count's escape back to his castle, the sereth and then the bistritza at its junction, would be the one. we took it, that somewhere about the 47th degree, north latitude, would be the place chosen for the crossing the country between the river and the carpathians. we have no fear in running at good speed up the river at night; there is plenty of water, and the banks are wide enough apart to make steaming, even in the dark, easy enough. lord godalming tells me to sleep for a while, as it is enough for the present for one to be on watch. but i cannot sleephow can i with the terrible danger hanging over my darling, and her going out into that awful place... my only comfort is that we are in the hands of god. only for that faith it would be easier to die than to live, and so be quit of all the trouble. mr. morris and dr. seward were off on their long ride before we started; they are to keep up the right bank, far enough off to get on higher lands where they can see a good stretch of river and avoid the following of its curves. they have, for the first stages, two men to ride and lead their spare horsesfour in all, so as not to excite curiosity. when they dismiss the men, which shall be shortly, they shall themselves look after the horses. it may be necessary for us to join forces; if so they can mount our whole party. one of the saddles has a movable horn, and can be easily adapted for mina, if required. it is a wild adventure we are on. here, as we are rushing along through the darkness, with the cold from the river seeming to rise up and strike us; with all the mysterious voices of the night around us, it all comes home. we seem to be drifting into unknown places and unknown ways; into a whole world of dark and dreadful things. godalming is shutting the furnace door... 31 october.still hurrying along. the day has come, and godalming is sleeping. i am on watch. the morning is bitterly cold; the furnace heat is grateful, though we have heavy fur coats. as yet we have passed only a few open boats, but none of them had on board any box or package of anything like the size of the one we seek. the men were scared every time we turned our electric lamp on them, and fell on their knees and prayed. 1 november, evening.no news all day; we have found nothing of the kind we seek. we have now passed into the bistritza; and if we are wrong in our surmise our chance is gone. we have overhauled every boat, big and little. early this morning, one crew took us for a government boat, and treated us accordingly. we saw in this a way of smoothing matters, so at fundu, where the bistritza runs into the sereth, we got a roumanian flag which we now fly conspicuously. with every boat which we have overhauled since then this trick has succeeded; we have had every deference shown to us, and not once any objection to whatever we chose to ask or do. some of the slovaks tell us that a big boat passed them, going at more than usual speed as she had a double crew on board. this was before they came to fundu, so they could not tell us whether the boat turned into the bistritza or continued on up the sereth. at fundu we could not hear of any such boat, so she must have passed there in the night. i am feeling very sleepy; the cold is perhaps beginning to tell upon me, and nature must have rest some time. godalming insists that he shall keep the first watch. god bless him for all his goodness to poor dear mina and me. 2 november, morning.it is broad daylight. that good fellow would not wake me. he says it would have been a sin to, for i slept so peacefully and was forgetting my trouble. it seems brutally selfish to me to have slept so long, and let him watch all night; but he was quite right. i am a new man this morning; and, as i sit here and watch him sleeping, i can do all that is necessary both as to minding the engine, steering, and keeping watch. i can feel that my strength and energy are coming back to me. i wonder where mina is now, and van helsing. they should have got to veresti about noon on wednesday. it would take them some time to get the carriage and horses; so if they had started and travelled hard, they would be about now at the borgo pass. god guide and help them! i am afraid to think what may happen. if we could only go faster! but we cannot; the engines are throbbing and doing their utmost. i wonder how dr. seward and mr. morris are getting on. there seem to be endless streams running down from the mountains into this river, but as none of them are very largeat present, at all events, though they are terrible doubtless in winter and when the snow meltsthe horsemen may not have met much obstruction. i hope that before we get to strasba we may see them; for if by that time we have not overtaken the count, it may be necessary to take counsel together what to do next. dr. seward's diary. 2 november.three days on the road. no news, and no time to write it if there had been, for every moment is precious. we have had only the rest needful for the horses; but we are both bearing it wonderfully. those adventurous days of ours are turning up useful. we must push on; we shall never feel happy till we get the launch in sight again. 3 november.we heard at fundu that the launch had gone up the bistritza. i wish it wasn't so cold. there are signs of snow coming; and if it falls heavy it will stop us. in such case we must get a sledge and go on, russian fashion. 4 november.to-day we heard of the launch having been detained by an accident when trying to force a way up the rapid. the slovak boats get up all right, by aid of a rope, and steering with knowledge. some went up only a few hours before. godalming is an amateur fitter himself, and evidently it was he who put the launch in trim again. finally, they got up the rapids all right, with local help, and are off on the chase afresh. i fear that the boat is not any better for the accident; the peasantry tell us that after she got upon the smooth water again, she kept stopping every now and again so long as she was in sight. we must push on harder than ever; our help may be wanted soon. mina harker's journal. 31 october.arrived at veresti at noon. the professor tells me that this morning at dawn he could hardly hypnotise me at all, and that all i could say was: "dark and quiet." he is off now buying a carriage and horses. he says that he will later on try to buy additional horses, so that we may be able to change them on the way. we have something more than 70 miles before us. the country is lovely, and most interesting; if only we were under different conditions, how delightful it would be to see it all. if jonathan and i were driving through it alone what a pleasure it would be. to stop and see people, and learn something of their life, and to fill our minds and memories with all the colour and picturesqueness of the whole wild, beautiful country and the quaint people! but, alas! later.dr. van helsing has returned. he has got the carriage and horses; we are to have some dinner, and to start in an hour. the landlady is putting us up a huge basket of provisions; it seems enough for a company of soldiers. the professor encourages her, and whispers to me that it may be a week before we can get any good food again. he has been shopping too, and has sent home such a wonderful lot of fur coats and wraps, and all sorts of warm things. there will not be any chance of our being cold. we shall soon be off. i am afraid to think what may happen to us. we are truly in the hands of god. he alone knows what may be, and i pray him, with all the strength of my sad and humble soul, that he will watch over my beloved husband; that whatever may happen, jonathan may know that i loved him and honoured him more than i can say, and that my latest and truest thought will be always for him. chapter xxvii. mina harker's journal. 1 november.all day long we have travelled, and at a good speed. the horses seem to know that they are being kindly treated, for they go willingly their full stage at best speed. we have now had so many changes and find the same thing so constantly that we are encouraged to think that the journey will be an easy one. dr. van helsing is laconic; he tells the farmers that he is hurrying to bistritz, and pays them well to make the exchange of horses. we get hot soup, or coffee, or tea; and off we go. it is a lovely country; full of beauties of all imaginable kinds, and the people are brave, and strong, and simple, and seem full of nice qualities. they are very, very superstitious. in the first house where we stopped, when the woman who served us saw the scar on my forehead, she crossed herself and put out two fingers towards me, to keep off the evil eye. i believe they went to the trouble of putting an extra amount of garlic into our food; and i can't abide garlic. ever since then i have taken care not to take off my hat or veil, and so have escaped their suspicions. we are travelling fast, and as we have no driver with us to carry tales, we go ahead of scandal; but i daresay that fear of the evil eye will follow hard behind us all the way. the professor seems tireless; all day he would not take any rest, though he made me sleep for a long spell. at sunset time he hypnotised me, and he says that i answered as usual "darkness, lapping water and creaking wood;" so our enemy is still on the river. i am afraid to think of jonathan, but somehow i have now no fear for him, or for myself i write this whilst we wait in a farmhouse for the horses to be got ready. dr. van helsing is sleeping. poor dear, he looks very tired and old and grey, but his mouth is set as firmly as a conqueror's; even in his sleep he is instinct with resolution. when we have well started i must make him rest whilst i drive. i shall tell him that we have days before us, and he must not break down when most of all his strength will be needed... all is ready; we are off shortly. 2 november, morning.i was successful, and we took turns driving all night; now the day is on us, bright though cold. there is a strange heaviness in the airi say heaviness for want of a better word; i mean that it oppresses us both. it is very cold, and only our warm furs keep us comfortable. at dawn van helsing hypnotised me; he says i answered "darkness, creaking wood and roaring water," so the river is changing as they ascend. i do hope that my darling will not run any chance of dangermore than need be; but we are in god's hands. 2 november, night.all day long driving. the country gets wilder as we go, and the great spurs of the carpathians, which at veresti seemed so far from us and so low on the horizon, now seem to gather round us and tower in front. we both seem in good spirits; i think we make an effort each to cheer the other; in the doing so we cheer ourselves. dr. van helsing says that by morning we shall reach the borgo pass. the houses are very few here now, and the professor says that the last horses we got will have to go on with us, as we may not be able to change. he got two in addition to the two we changed, so that now we have a rude four-in-hand. the dear horses are patient and good, and they give us no trouble. we are not worried with other travellers, and so even i can drive. we shall get to the pass in daylight; we do not want to arrive before. so we take it easy, and have each a long rest in turn. oh, what will to-morrow bring to us? we go to seek the place where my poor darling suffered so much. god grant that we may be guided aright, and that he will deign to watch over my husband and those dear to us both, and who are in such deadly peril. as for me, i am not worthy in his sight. alas! i am unclean to his eyes, and shall be until he may deign to let me stand forth in his sight as one of those who have not incurred his wrath. memorandum by abraham van helsing. 4 november.this to my old and true friend john seward, m.d., of purfleet, london, in case i may not see him. it may explain. it is morning, and i write by a fire which all the night i have kept alivemadam mina aiding me. it is cold, cold; so cold that the grey heavy sky is full of snow, which when it falls will settle for all winter as the ground is hardening to receive it. it seems to have affected madam mina; she has been so heavy of head all day that she was not like herself. she sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps! she, who is usual so alert, have done literally nothing all the day; she even have lost her appetite. she make no entry into her little diary, she who write so faithful at every pause. something whisper to me that all is not well. however to-night she is more vif. her long sleep all day have refresh and restore her, for now she is all sweet and bright as ever. at sunset i try to hypnotise her, but alas! with no effect; the power has grown less and less with each day, and to-night it fail me altogether. well, god's will be donewhatever it may be, and whithersoever it may lead! now to the historical, for as madam mina write not in her stenography, i must, in my cumbrous old fashion, that so each day of us may not go unrecorded. we got to the borgo pass just after sunrise yesterday morning. when i saw the signs of the dawn i got ready for the hypnotism. we stopped our carriage, and got down so that there might be no disturbance. i made a couch with furs, and madam mina, lying down, yield herself as usual, but more slow and more short time than ever, to the hypnotic sleep. as before, came the answer: "darkness and the swirling of water." then she woke, bright and radiant, and we go on our way and soon reach the pass. at this time and place she become all on fire with zeal; some new guiding power be in her manifested, for she point to a road and say: "this is the way." "how know you it?" i ask. "of course i know it," she answer, and with a pause, add: "have not my jonathan travelled it and wrote of his travel?" at first i think somewhat strange, but soon i see that there be only one such by-road. it is used but little, and very different from the coach road from the bukovina to bistritz, which is more wide and hard, and more of use. so we came down this road; when we meet other waysnot always were we sure that they were roads at all, for they be neglect and light snow have fallenthe horses know and they only. i give rein to them, and they go on so patient. by-and-by we find all the things which jonathan have note in that wonderful diary of him. then we go on for long, long hours and hours. at the first, i tell madam mina to sleep; she try, and she succeed. she sleep all the time; till at the last, i feel myself to suspicious grow, and attempt to wake her. but she sleep on, and i may not wake her though i try. i do not wish to try too hard lest i harm her; for i know that she have suffer much, and sleep at times be all-in-all to her. i think i drowse myself, for all of sudden i feel guilt, as though i have done something; i find myself bolt up, with the reins in my hand, and the good horses go along jog, jog, just as ever. i look down and find madam mina still sleep. it is now not far off sunset time, and over the snow the light of the sun flow in big yellow flood, so that we throw great long shadow on where the mountain rise so steep. for we are going up, and up; and all is oh so wild and rocky, as though it were the end of the world. then i arouse madam mina. this time she wake with not much trouble, and then i try to put her to hypnotic sleep. but she sleep not, being as though i were not. still i try and try, till all at once i find her and myself in dark; so i look round, and find that the sun have gone down. madam mina laugh, and i turn and look at her. she is now quite awake, and look so well as i never saw her since that night at carfax when we first enter the count's house. i am amaze, and not at ease then; but she is so bright and tender and thoughtful for me that i forget all fear. i light a fire, for we have brought supply of wood with us, and she prepare food while i undo the horses and set them, tethered in shelter, to feed. then when i return to the fire she have my supper ready. i go to help her, but she smile, and tell me that she have eat alreadythat she was so hungry that she would not wait. i like it not, and i have grave doubts; but i fear to affright her, and so i am silent of it. she help me and i eat alone; and then we wrap in fur and lie beside the fire, and i tell her to sleep while i watch. but presently i forget all of watching; and when i sudden remember that i watch, i find her lying quiet, but awake, and looking at me with so bright eyes. once, twice more the same occur, and i get much sleep till before morning. when i wake i try to hypnotise her; but alas! though she shut her eyes obedient, she may not sleep. the sun rise up, and up, and up; and then sleep come to her too late, but so heavy that she will not wake. i have to lift her up, and place her sleeping in the carriage when i have harnessed the horses and made all ready. madam still sleep, and sleep; and she look in her sleep more healthy and more redder than before. and i like it not. and i am afraid, afraid, afraid!i am afraid of all thingseven to think; but i must go on my way. the stake we play for is life and death, or more than these, and we must not flinch. 5 november, morning.let me be accurate in everything, for though you and i have seen some strange things together, you may at the first think that i, van helsing, am madthat the many horrors and the so long strain on nerves has at the last turn my brain. all yesterday we travel, ever getting closer to the mountains, and moving into a more and more wild and desert land. there are great, frowning precipices and much falling water, and nature seem to have held sometime her carnival. madam mina still sleep and sleep; and though i did have hunger and appeased it, i could not waken hereven for food. i began to fear that the fatal spell of the place was upon her, tainted as she is with that vampire baptism. "well," said i to myself, "if it be that she sleep all the day, it shall also be that i do not sleep at night." as we travel on the rough road, for a road of an ancient and imperfect kind there was, i held down my head and slept. again i waked with a sense of guilt and of time passed, and found madam mina still sleeping, and the sun low down. but all was indeed changed; the frowning mountains seemed further away, and we were near the top of a steep-rising hill, on summit of which was such a castle as jonathan tell of in his diary. at once i exulted and feared; for now, for good or ill, the end was near. i woke madam mina, and again tried to hypnotise her, but alas! unavailing till too late. then, ere the great dark came upon usfor even after down-sun the heavens reflected the gone sun on the snow, and all was for a time in a great twilighti took out the horses and fed them in what shelter i could. then i make a fire; and near it i make madam mina, now awake and more charming than ever, sit comfortable amid her rugs. i got ready food: but she would not eat, simply saying that she had not hunger. i did not press her, knowing her unavailingness. but i myself eat, for i must needs now be strong for all. then, with the fear on me of what might be, i drew a ring so big for her comfort, round where madam mina sat; and over the ring i passed some of the wafer, and i broke it fine so that all was well guarded. she sat still all the timeso still as one dead; and she grew whiter and ever whiter till the snow was not more pale; and no word she said. but when i drew near, she clung to me, and i could know that the poor soul shook her from head to feet with a tremor that was pain to feel. i said to her presently, when she had grown more quiet: "will you not come over to the fire?" for i wished to make a test of what she could. she rose obedient, but when she have made a step she stopped, and stood as one stricken. "why not go on?" i asked. she shook her head, and, coming back, sat down in her place. then, looking at me with open eyes, as of one waked from sleep, she said simply: "i cannot!" and remained silent. i rejoiced, for i knew that what she could not, none of those that we dreaded could. though there might be danger to her body, yet her soul was safe! presently the horses began to scream, and tore at their tethers till i came to them and quieted them. when they did feel my hands on them, they whinnied low as in joy, and licked at my hands and were quiet for a time. many times through the night did i come to them, till it arrive to the cold hour when all nature is at lowest; and every time my coming was with quiet of them. in the cold hour the fire began to die, and i was about stepping forth to replenish it, for now the snow came in flying sweeps and with it a chill mist. even in the dark there was a light of some kind, as there ever is over snow; and it seemed as though the snow-flurries and the wreaths of mist took shape as of women with trailing garments. all was in dead, grim silence only that the horses whinnied and cowered, as if in terror of the worst. i began to fearhorrible fears; but then came to me the sense of safety in that ring wherein i stood. i began, too, to think that my imaginings were of the night, and the gloom, and the unrest that i have gone through, and all the terrible anxiety. it was as though my memories of all jonathan's horrid experience were befooling me; for the snow flakes and the mist began to wheel and circle round, till i could get as though a shadowy glimpse of those women that would have kissed him. and then the horses cowered lower and lower, and moaned in terror as men do in pain. even the madness of fright was not to them, so that they could break away. i feared for my dear madam mina when these weird figures drew near and circled round. i looked at her, but she sat calm, and smiled at me; when i would have stepped to the fire to replenish it, she caught me and held me back, and whispered, like a voice that one hears in a dream, so low it was: "no! no! do not go without. here you are safe!" i turned to her, and looking in her eyes, said: "but you? it is for you that i fear!" whereat she laugheda laugh, low and unreal, and said: "fear for me! why fear for me? none safer in all the world from them than i am," and as i wondered at the meaning of her words, a puff of wind made the flame leap up, and i see the red scar on her forehead. then, alas! i knew. did i not, i would soon have learned, for the wheeling figures of mist and snow came closer, but keeping ever without the holy circle. then they began to materialise, tillif god have not take away my reason, for i saw it through my eyesthere were before me in actual flesh the same three women that jonathan saw in the room, when they would have kissed his throat. i knew the swaying round forms, the bright hard eyes, the white teeth, the ruddy colour, the voluptuous lips. they smiled ever at poor dear madam mina; and as their laugh came through the silence of the night, they twined their arms and pointed to her, and said in those so sweet tingling tones that jonathan said were of the intolerable sweetness of the water-glasses: "come, sister. come to us. come! come!" in fear i turned to my poor madam mina, and my heart with gladness leapt like flame; for oh! the terror in her sweet eyes, the repulsion, the horror, told a story to my heart that was all of hope. god be thanked she was not, yet, of them. i seized some of the firewood which was by me, and holding out some of the wafer, advanced on them towards the fire. they drew back before me, and laughed their low horrid laugh. i fed the fire, and feared them not; for i knew that we were safe within our protections. they could not approach me, whilst so armed, nor madam mina whilst she remained within the ring, which she could not leave no more than they could enter. the horses had ceased to moan, and lay still on the ground; the snow fell on them softly, and they grew whiter. i knew that there was for the poor beasts no more of terror. and so we remained till the red of the dawn began to fall through the snow-gloom. i was desolate and afraid, and full of woe and terror, but when that beautiful sun began to climb the horizon life was to me again. at the first coming of the dawn the horrid figures melted in the whirling mist and snow; the wreaths of transparent gloom moved away towards the castle, and were lost. instinctively, with the dawn coming, i turned to madam mina, intending to hypnotise her, but she lay in a deep and sudden sleep, from which i could not wake her. i tried to hypnotise through her sleep, but she made no response, none at all; and the day broke. i fear yet to stir. i have made my fire and have seen the horses, they are all dead. to-day i have much to do here, and i keep waiting till the sun is up high; for there may be places where i must go, where that sunlight, though snow and mist obscure it, will be to me a safety. i will strengthen me with breakfast, and then i will to my terrible work. madam mina still sleeps; and, god be thanked she is calm in her sleep... jonathan harker's journal. 4 november, evening.the accident to the launch has been a terrible thing for us. only for it we should have overtaken the boat long ago; and by now my dear mina would have been free. i fear to think of her, off on the wolds near that horrid place. we have got horses, and we follow on the track. i note this whilst godalming is getting ready. we have our arms. the szgany must look out if they mean fight. oh, if only morris and seward were with us. we must only hope! if i write no more good-bye mina! god bless and keep you. dr. seward's diary. 5 november.with the dawn we saw the body of szgany before us dashing away from the river with their leiter-wagon. they surrounded it in a cluster, and hurried along as though beset. the snow is falling lightly and there is a strange excitement in the air. it may be our own feelings, but the depression is strange. far off i hear the howling of wolves; the snow brings them down from the mountains, and there are dangers to all of us, and from all sides. the horses are nearly ready, and we are soon off. we ride to death of some one. god alone knows who, or where, or what, or when, or how it may be... dr. van helsing's memorandum. 5 november, afternoon.i am at least sane. thank god for that mercy at all events, though the proving it has been dreadful. when i left madam mina sleeping within the holy circle, i took my way to the castle. the blacksmith hammer which i took in the carriage from veresti was useful; though the doors were all open i broke them off the rusty hinges, lest some ill-intent or ill-chance should close them, so that being entered i might not get out. jonathan's bitter experience served me here. by memory of his diary i found my way to the old chapel, for i knew that here my work lay. the air was oppressive; it seemed as if there was some sulphurous fume, which at times made me dizzy. either there was a roaring in my ears or i heard afar off the howl of wolves. then i bethought me of my dear madam mina, and i was in terrible plight. the dilemma had me between his horns. her, i had not dare to take into this place, but left safe from the vampire in that holy circle; and yet even there would be the wolf! i resolve me that my work lay here, and that as to the wolves we must submit, if it were god's will. at any rate it was only death and freedom beyond. so did i choose for her. had it but been for myself the choice had been easy, the maw of the wolf were better to rest in than the grave of the vampire! so i make my choice to go on with my work. i knew that there were at least three graves to findgraves that are inhabit; so i search, and search, and i find one of them. she lay in her vampire sleep, so full of life and voluptuous beauty that i shudder as though i have come to do murder. ah, i doubt not that in old time, when such things were, many a man who set forth to do such a task as mine, found at the last his heart fail him, and then his nerve. so he delay, and delay, and delay, till the mere beauty and the fascination of the wanton un-dead have hypnotise him; and he remain on, and on, till sunset come, and the vampire sleep be over. then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kissand man is weak. and there remain one more victim in the vampire fold; one more to swell the grim and grisly ranks of the un-dead!... there is some fascination, surely, when i am moved by the mere presence of such an one, even lying as she lay in a tomb fretted with age and heavy with the dust of centuries, though there be that horrid odour such as the lairs of the count have had. yes, i was movedi, van helsing, with all my purpose and with my motive for hatei was moved to a yearning for delay which seemed to paralyse my faculties and to clog my very soul. it may have been that the need of natural sleep, and the strange oppression of the air were beginning to overcome me. certain it was that i was lapsing into sleep, the open-eyed sleep of one who yields to a sweet fascination, when there came through the snow-stilled air a long, low wail, so full of woe and pity that it woke me like the sound of a clarion. for it was the voice of my dear madam mina that i heard. then i braced myself again to my horrid task, and found by wrenching away tomb-tops one other of the sisters, the other dark one. i dared not pause to look on her as i had on her sister, lest once more i should begin to be enthrall; but i go on searching until, presently, i find in a high great tomb as if made to one much beloved that other fair sister which, like jonathan i had seen to gather herself out of the atoms of the mist. she was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful, so exquisitely voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me, which calls some of my sex to love and to protect one of hers, made my head whirl with new emotion. but god be thanked, that soul-wall of my dear madam mina had not died out of my ears; and, before the spell could be wrought further upon me, i had nerved myself to my wild work. by this time i had searched all the tombs in the chapel, so far as i could tell; and as there had been only three of these un-dead phantoms around us in the night, i took it that there were no more of active un-dead existent. there was one great tomb more lordly than all the rest; huge it was, and nobly proportioned. on it was but one word dracula. this then was the un-dead home of the king-vampire, to whom so many more were due. its emptiness spoke eloquent to make certain what i knew. before i began to restore these women to their dead selves through my awful work, i laid in dracula's tomb some of the wafer, and so banished him from it, un-dead, for ever. then began my terrible task, and, i dreaded it. had it been but one, it had been easy, comparative. but three! to begin twice more after i had been through a deed of horror, for if it was terrible with the sweet miss lucy, what would it not be with these strange ones who had survived through centuries, and who had been strengthened by the passing of the years; who would, if they could, have fought for their foul lives... oh, my friend john, but it was butcher work; had i not been nerved by thoughts of other dead, and of the living over whom hung such a pall of fear, i could not have gone on. i tremble and tremble even yet, though till all was over, god be thanked, my nerve did stand. had i not seen the repose in the first place, and the gladness that stole over it just ere the final dissolution came, as realisation that the soul had been won, i could not have gone further with my butchery. i could not have endured the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam. i should have fled in terror and left my work undone. but it is over! and the poor souls, i can pity them now and weep, as i think of them placid each in her full sleep of death, for a short moment ere fading. for, friend john, hardly had my knife severed the head of each, before the whole body began to melt away and crumble into its native dust, as though the death that should have come centuries agone had at last assert himself and say at once and loud "i am here!" before i left the castle i so fixed its entrances that never more can the count enter there un-dead. when i stepped into the circle where madam mina slept, she woke from her sleep, and, seeing me, cried out in pain that i had endured too much. "come!" she said, "come away from this awful place! let us go to meet my husband who is, i know, coming towards us." she was looking thin and pale and weak; but her eyes were pure and glowed with fervour. i was glad to see her paleness and her illness, for my mind was full of the fresh horror of that ruddy vampire sleep. and so with trust and hope, and yet full of fear, we go eastward to meet our friendsand himwhom madam mina tell me that she know are coming to meet us. mina harker's journal. 6 november.it was late in the afternoon when the professor and i took our way towards the east whence i knew jonathan was coming. we did not go fast, though the way was steeply downhill, for we had to take heavy rugs and wraps with us; we dared not face the possibility of being left without warmth in the cold and the snow. we had to take some of our provisions too, for we were in a perfect desolation, and, so far as we could see through the snowfall, there was not even the sign of habitation. when we had gone about a mile, i was tired with the heavy walking and sat down to rest. then we looked back and saw where the clear line of dracula's castle cut the sky; for we were so deep under the hill whereon it was set that the angle of perspective of the carpathian mountains was far below it. we saw it in all its grandeur, perched a thousand feet on the summit of a sheer precipice, and with seemingly a great gap between it and the steep of the adjacent mountain on any side. there was something wild and uncanny about the place. we could hear the distant howling of wolves. they were far off, but the sound, even though coming muffled through the deadening snowfall, was full of terror. i knew from the way dr. van helsing was searching about that he was trying to seek some strategic point, where we would be less exposed in case of attack. the rough roadway still led downwards; we could trace it through the drifted snow. in a little while the professor signalled to me, so i got up and joined him. he had found a wonderful spot, a sort of natural hollow in a rock, with an entrance like a doorway between two boulders. he took me by the hand and drew me in. "see!" he said, "here you will be in shelter, and if the wolves do come i can meet them one by one." he brought in our furs, and made a snug nest for me, and got out some provisions and forced them upon me. but i could not eat; to even try to do so was repulsive to me, and, much as i would have liked to please him, i could not bring myself to the attempt. he looked very sad, but did not reproach me. taking his field-glasses from the case, he stood on the top of the rock, and began to search the horizon. suddenly he called out: "look! madam mina, look! look!" i sprang up and stood beside him on the rock; he handed me his glasses and pointed. the snow was now falling more heavily, and swirled about fiercely, for a high wind was beginning to blow. however there were times when there were pauses between the snow flurries and i could see a long way round. from the height where we were it was possible to see a great distance; and far off, beyond the white waste of snow, i could see the river lying like a black ribbon in kinks and curls as it wound its way. straight in front of us and not far offin fact so near that i wondered we had not noticed beforecame a group of mounted men hurrying along. in the midst of them was a cart, a long leiter-wagon which swept from side to side, like a dog's tail wagging, with each stern inequality of the road. outlined against the snow as they were, i could see from the men's clothes that they were peasants or gypsies of some kind. on the cart was a great square chest. my heart leaped as i saw it, for i felt that the end was coming. the evening was now drawing close, and well i knew that at sunset the thing, which was till then imprisoned there, would take new freedom and could in any of many forms elude all pursuit. in fear i turned to the professor, to my consternation, however, he was not there. an instant later, i saw him below me. round the rock he had drawn a circle, such as we had found shelter in last night. when he had completed it he stood beside me again, saying: "at least you shall be safe here from him!" he took the glasses from me, and at the next lull of the snow swept the whole space below us. "see," he said, "they come quickly; they are flogging the horses, and galloping as hard as they can." he paused and went on in a hollow voice: "they are racing for the sunset. we may be too late. god's will be done!" down came another blinding rush of driving snow, and the whole landscape was blotted out. it soon passed, however, and once more his glasses were fixed on the plain. then came a sudden cry: "look! look! look! see, two horsemen follow fast, coming up from the south. it must be quincey and john. take the glass. look, before the snow blots it all out!" i took it and looked. the two men might be dr. seward and mr. morris. i knew at all events that neither of them was jonathan. at the same time i knew that jonathan was not far off, looking around i saw on the north side of the coming party two other men, riding at break-neck speed. one of them i knew was jonathan, and the other i took, of course, to be lord godalming. they, too, were pursuing the party with the cart. when i told the professor he shouted in glee like a schoolboy, and, after looking intently till a snow fall made sight impossible, he laid his winchester rifle ready for use against the boulder at the opening of our shelter. "they are all converging," he said. "when the time comes we shall have the gypsies on all sides." i got out my revolver ready to hand, for whilst we were speaking the howling of wolves came louder and closer. when the snow storm abated a moment we looked again. it was strange to see the snow falling in such heavy flakes close to us, and beyond, the sun shining more and more brightly as it sank down towards the far mountain tops. sweeping the glass all around us i could see here and there dots moving singly and in twos and threes and larger numbersthe wolves were gathering for their prey. every instant seemed an age whilst we waited. the wind came now in fierce bursts, and the snow was driven with fury as it swept upon us in circling eddies. at times we could not see an arm's length before us; but at others as the hollow-sounding wind swept by us, it seemed to clear the air-space around us so that we could see afar off. we had of late been so accustomed to watch for sunrise and sunset, that we knew with fair accuracy when it would be; and we knew that before long the sun would set. it was hard to believe that by our watches it was less than an hour that we waited in that rocky shelter before the various bodies began to converge close upon us. the wind came now with fiercer and more bitter sweeps, and more steadily from the north. it seemingly had driven the snow clouds from us, for, with only occasional bursts, the snow fell. we could distinguish clearly the individuals of each party, the pursued and the pursuers. strangely enough those pursued did not seem to realise, or at least to care, that they were pursued; they seemed, however, to hasten with redoubled speed as the sun dropped lower and lower on the mountain tops. closer and closer they drew. the professor and i crouched down behind our rock, and held our weapons ready; i could see that he was determined that they should not pass. one and all were quite unaware of our presence. all at once two voices shouted out to: "halt!" one was my jonathan's, raised in a high key of passion; the other mr. morris' strong resolute tone of quiet command. the gypsies may not have known the language, but there was no mistaking the tone, in whatever tongue the words were spoken. instinctively they reined in, and at the instant lord godalming and jonathan dashed up at one side and dr. seward and mr. morris on the other. the leader of the gypsies, a splendid looking fellow who sat his horse like a centaur, waved them back, and in a fierce voice gave to his companions some word to proceed. they lashed the horses which sprang forward; but the four men raised their winchester rifles, and in an unmistakable way commanded them to stop. at the same moment dr. van helsing and i rose behind the rock and pointed our weapons at them. seeing that they were surrounded the men tightened their reins and drew up. the leader turned to them and gave a word at which every man of the gypsy party drew what weapon he carried, knife or pistol, and held himself in readiness to attack. issue was joined in an instant. the leader, with a quick movement of his rein, threw his horse out in front, and pointing first to the sunnow close down on the hill topsand then to the castle, said something which i did not understand. for answer, all four men of our party threw themselves from their horses and dashed towards the cart. i should have felt terrible fear at seeing jonathan in such danger, but that the ardour of battle must have been upon me as well as the rest of them; i felt no fear, but only a wild, surging desire to do something. seeing the quick movement of our parties, the leader of the gypsies gave a command; his men instantly formed round the cart in a sort of undisciplined endeavour, each one shouldering and pushing the other in his eagerness to carry out the order. in the midst of this i could see that jonathan on one side of the ring of men, and quincey on the other, were forcing a way to the cart; it was evident that they were bent on finishing their task before the sun should set. nothing seemed to stop or even to hinder them. neither the levelled weapons or the flashing knives of the gypsies in front, or the howling of the wolves behind, appeared to even attract their attention. jonathan's impetuosity, and the manifest singleness of his purpose, seemed to overawe those in front of him; instinctively they cowered aside and let him pass. in an instant he had jumped upon the cart, and, with a strength which seemed incredible, raised the great box, and flung it over the wheel to the ground. in the meantime, mr. morris had had to use force to pass through his side of the ring of szgany. all the time i had been breathlessly watching jonathan i had, with the tail of my eye, seen him pressing desperately forward, and had seen the knives of the gypsies flash as he won a way through them, and they cut at him. he had parried with his great bowie knife, and at first i thought that he too had come through in safety; but as he sprang beside jonathan, who had by now jumped from the cart, i could see that with his left hand he was clutching at his side, and that the blood was spurting through his fingers. he did not delay notwithstanding this, for as jonathan with desperate energy, attacked one end of the chest, attempting to prize off the lid with his great kukri knife, he attacked the other frantically with his bowie. under the efforts of both men the lid began to yield; the nails drew with a quick screeching sound, and the top of the box was thrown back. by this time the gypsies, seeing themselves covered by the winchesters, and at the mercy of lord godalming and dr. seward, had given in and made no further resistance. the sun was almost down on the mountain tops, and the shadows of the whole group fell long upon the snow. i saw the count lying within the box upon the earth, some of which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him. he was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which i knew too well. as i looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph. but, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of jonathan's great knife. i shrieked as i saw it shear through the throat, whilst at the same moment mr. morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart. it was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight. i shall be glad as long as i live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as i never could have imagined might have rested there. the castle of dracula now stood out against the red sky, and every stone of its broken battlements was articulated against the light of the setting sun. the gypsies, taking us as in some way the cause of the extraordinary disappearance of the dead man, turned, without a word, and rode away as if for their lives. those who were unmounted jumped upon the leiter-wagon and shouted to the horsemen not to desert them. the wolves, which had withdrawn to a safe distance, followed in their wake, leaving us alone. mr. morris, who had sunk to the ground, leaned on his elbow, holding his hand pressed to his side; the blood still gushed through his fingers. i flew to him, for the holy circle did not now keep me back; so did the two doctors. jonathan knelt behind him and the wounded man laid back his head on his shoulder. with a sigh he took, with a feeble effort, my hand in that of his own which was unstained. he must have seen the anguish of my heart in my face, for he smiled at me and said: "i am only too happy to have been of any service! oh, god!" he cried suddenly, struggling up to a sitting posture and pointing to me, "it was worth for this to die! look! look!" the sun was now right down upon the mountain top, and the red gleams fell upon my face, so that it was bathed in rosy light. with one impulse the men sank on their knees and a deep and earnest "amen" broke from all as their eyes followed the pointing of his finger. the dying man spoke: "now god be thanked that all has not been in vain! see! the snow is not more stainless than her forehead the curse has passed away!" and, to our bitter grief, with a smile and in silence, he died, a gallant gentleman. note. seven years ago we all went through the flames; and the happiness of some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pain we endured. it is an added joy to mina and to me that our boy's birthday is the same day as that on which quincey morris died. his mother holds, i know, the secret belief that some of our brave friend's spirit has passed into him. his bundle of names links all our little band of men together, but we call him quincey. in the summer of this year we made a journey to transylvania, and went over the old ground which was, and is, to us so full of vivid and terrible memories. it was almost impossible to believe that the things which we had seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears were living truths. every trace of all that had been was blotted out. the castle stood as before, reared high above a waste of desolation. when we got home we were talking of the old timewhich we could all look back on without despair, for godalming and seward are both happily married. i took the papers from the safe where they had been ever since our return so long ago. we were struck with the fact, that in all the mass of material of which the record is composed, there is hardly one authentic document; nothing but a mass of type-writing, except the later note-books of mina and seward and myself, and van helsing's memorandum. we could hardly ask any one, even did we wish to, to accept these as proofs of so wild a story. van helsing summed it all up as he said, with our boy on his knee: "we want no proofs; we ask none to believe us! this boy will some day know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. already he knows her sweetness and loving care; later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake." jonathan harker. the end . project gutenberg etext frank's campaign, by horatio alger, jr. #9 in our series by horatio alger, jr. copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! please take a look at the important information in this header. we encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. do not remove this. **welcome to the world of free plain vanilla electronic texts** **etexts readable by both humans and by computers, since 1971** *these etexts prepared by hundreds of volunteers and donations* information on contacting project gutenberg to get etexts, and further information is included below. we need your donations. project gutenberg surfs with a modem donated by supra. frank's campaign or the farm and the camp by horatio alger, jr. december, 1998 [etext #1573] project gutenberg etext frank's campaign, by horatio alger, jr. ******this file should be named frcmp10.txt or frcmp10.zip****** corrected editions of our etexts get a new number, frcmp11.txt versions based on separate sources get new letter, frcmp10a.txt scanned by charles keller with omnipage professional ocr software project gutenberg etexts are usually created from multiple editions, all of which are in the public domain in the united states, unless a copyright notice is included. therefore, we do not keep these books in compliance with any particular paper edition, usually otherwise. we are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing. please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. the official release date of all project gutenberg etexts is at midnight, central time, of the last day of the stated month. a preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. to be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less. information about project gutenberg (one page) we produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. the fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. this projected audience is one hundred million readers. if our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month, or 384 more etexts in 1998 for a total of 1500+ if these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach over 150 billion etexts given away. the goal of project gutenberg is to give away one trillion etext files by the december 31, 2001. 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[3] pay a trademark license fee to the project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. if you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. royalties are payable to "project gutenberg association/carnegie-mellon university" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. what if you *want* to send money even if you don't have to? the project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, ocr software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. money should be paid to "project gutenberg association / carnegie-mellon university". *end*the small print! for public domain etexts*ver.04.29.93*end* pages 13-14 missing from my print edition! scanned by charles keller with omnipage professional ocr software frank's campaign or the farm and the camp by horatio alger, jr. frank's campaign chapter i. the war meeting the town hall in rossville stands on a moderate elevation overlooking the principal street. it is generally open only when a meeting has been called by the selectmen to transact town business, or occasionally in the evening when a lecture on temperance or a political address is to be delivered. rossville is not large enough to sustain a course of lyceum lectures, and the townspeople are obliged to depend for intellectual nutriment upon such chance occasions as these. the majority of the inhabitants being engaged in agricultural pursuits, the population is somewhat scattered, and the houses, with the exception of a few grouped around the stores, stand at respectable distances, each encamped on a farm of its own. one wednesday afternoon, toward the close of september, 1862, a group of men and boys might have been seen standing on the steps and in the entry of the town house. why they had met will best appear from a large placard, which had been posted up on barns and fences and inside the village store and postoffice. it ran as follows: war meeting! the citizens of rossville are invited to meet at the town hall, on wednesday, september 24, at 3 p. m. to decide what measures shall be taken toward raising the town's quota of twenty-five men, under the recent call of the president of the united states. all patriotic citizens, who are in favor of sustaining the free institutions transmitted to us by our fathers, are urgently invited to be present. the hon. solomon stoddard is expected to address the meeting. come one, come all. at the appointed hour one hundred and fifty men had assembled in the hall. they stood in groups, discussing the recent call and the general management of the war with that spirit of independent criticism which so eminently characterizes the little democracies which make up our new england states. "the whole thing has been mismanaged from the first," remarked a sapient-looking man with a gaunt, cadaverous face, addressing two listeners. "the administration is corrupt; our generals are either incompetent or purposely inefficient. we haven't got an officer that can hold a candle to general lee. abraham lincoln has called for six hundred thousand men. what'll he do with 'em when he gets 'em? just nothing at all. they'll melt away like snow, and then he'll call for more men. give me a third of six hundred thousand, and i'll walk into richmond in less'n thirty days." a quiet smile played over the face of one of the listeners. with a slight shade of irony in his voice he said, "if such are your convictions, mr. holman, i think it a great pity that you are not in the service. we need those who have clear views of what is required in the present emergency. don't you intend to volunteer?" "i!" exclaimed the other with lofty scorn. "no, sir; i wash my hands of the whole matter. i ain't clear about the justice of warring upon our erring brethren at all. i have no doubt they would be inclined to accept overtures of peace if accompanied with suitable concessions. still, if war must be waged, i believe i could manage matters infinitely better than lincoln and his cabinet have done." "wouldn't it be well to give them the benefit of your ideas on the subject?" suggested the other quietly. "ahem!" said mr. holman, a little suspiciously. "what do you mean, mr. frost?" "only this, that if, like you, i had a definite scheme, which i thought likely to terminate the war, i should feel it my duty to communicate it to the proper authorities, that they might take it into consideration." "it wouldn't do any good," returned holman, still a little suspicious that he was quietly laughed at. "they're too set in their own ways to be changed." at this moment there was a sharp rap on the table, and a voice was heard, saying, "the meeting will please come to order." the buzz of voices died away; and all eyes were turned toward the speaker's stand. "it will be necessary to select a chairman to preside over your deliberations," was next heard. "will any one nominate?" "i nominate doctor plunkett," came from a man in the corner. the motion was seconded, and a show of hands resulted in favor of the nominee. a gentlemanly-looking man with a pleasant face advanced to the speaker's stand, and with a bow made a few remarks to this effect: "fellow citizens: this is new business to me, as you are doubtless aware. my professional engagements have not often allowed me to take part in the meetings which from time to time you have held in this hall. on the present occasion, however, i felt it to be my duty, and the duty of every loyal citizen, to show by his presence how heartily he approves the object which has called us together. the same consideration will not suffer me to decline the unexpected responsibility which you have devolved upon me. before proceeding farther, i would suggest that a clerk will be needed to complete the organization." a young man was nominated and elected without opposition. doctor plunkett again addressed the meeting: "it is hardly necessary," he said, "to remind you of the object which has brought us together. our forces in the field need replenishing. the rebellion has assumed more formidable proportions than we anticipated. it is quite clear that we cannot put it down with one hand. we shall need both. impressed with this conviction, president lincoln has made an extraordinary levy upon the country. he feels that it is desirable to put down the rebellion as speedily as possible, and not suffer it to drag through a series of years. but he cannot work single-handed. the loyal states must give their hearty cooperation. our state, though inferior in extent and population to some others, has not fallen behind in loyal devotion. nor, i believe, will rossville be found wanting in this emergency. twenty-five men have been called for. how shall we get them? this is the question which we are called upon to consider. i had hoped the honorable solomon stoddard would be here to address you; but i regret to learn that a temporary illness will prevent his doing so. i trust that those present will not be backward in expressing their opinions." mr. holman was already on his feet. his speech consisted of disconnected remarks on the general conduct of the war, mingled with severe denunciation of the administration. he had spoken for fifteen minutes in this strain, when the chairman interfered---"your remarks are out of order, mr. holman. they are entirely irrelevant to the question." holman wiped his cadaverous features with a red silk pocket-handkerchief, and inquired, sarcastically, "am i to understand that freedom of speech is interdicted in this hall?" "freedom of speech is in order," said the chairman calmly, "provided the speaker confines himself to the question under discussion. you have spoken fifteen minutes without once touching it." "i suppose you want me to praise the administration," said holman, evidently thinking that he had demolished the chairman. he looked around to observe what effect his shot had produced. "that would be equally out of order," ruled the presiding officer. "we have not assembled to praise or to censure the administration, but to consider in what manner we shall go to work to raise our quota." holman sat down with the air of a martyr. mr. frost rose next. it is unnecessary to report his speech. it was plain, practical, and to the point. he recommended that the town appropriate a certain sum as bounty money to volunteers. other towns had done so, and he thought with good reason. it would undoubtedly draw in recruits more rapidly. a short, stout, red-faced man, wearing gold spectacles, rose hastily. "mr. chairman," he commenced, "i oppose that suggestion. i think it calculated to work serious mischief. do our young men need to be hired to fight for their country? i suppose that is what you call patriotism. for my part, i trust the town will have too much good sense to agree to any such proposition. the consequence of it would be to plunge us into debt, and increase our taxes to a formidable amount." it may be remarked that squire haynes, the speaker, was the wealthiest man in town, and, of course, would be considerably affected by increased taxation. even now he never paid his annual tax-bill without an inward groan, feeling that it was so much deducted from the sum total of his property. mr. frost remained standing while squire haynes was speaking, and at the close continued his speech: "squire haynes objects that my proposition, if adopted, will make our taxes heavier. i grant it: but how can we expect to carry on this gigantic war without personal sacrifices? if they only come in the form of money, we may account ourselves fortunate. i take it for granted that there is not a man here present who does not approve the present war--who does not feel that we are waging it for good and sufficient reasons." here mr. holman moved uneasily in his seat, and seemed on the point of interrupting the speaker, but for some reason forbore. "such being the case, we cannot but feel that the burden ought to fall upon the entire community, and not wholly upon any particular portion. the heaviest sacrifices must undoubtedly be made by those who leave their homes and peril life and limb on the battlefield. when i propose that you should lighten that sacrifice so far as it lies in your power, by voting them a bounty, it is because i consider that money will compensate them for the privations they must encounter and the perils they will incur. for that, they must look to the satisfaction that will arise from the feeling that they have responded to their country's call, and done something to save from ruin the institutions which our fathers transmitted as a sacred trust to their descendants. money cannot pay for loss of life or limb. but some of them leave families behind. it is not right that these families should suffer because the fathers have devoted themselves to the sacred cause of liberty. when our soldiers go forth, enable them to feel that their wives and children shall not lack for the necessaries of life. the least that those who are privileged to stay at home can do is to tax their purses for this end." "mr. chairman," said squire haynes sarcastically, "i infer that the last speaker is intending to enlist." mr. frost's face flushed at this insinuation. "squire haynes chooses to impute to me interested motives. i need enter into no defense before an audience to whom i am well known. i will only inquire whether interested motives have nothing to do with his opposition to voting bounties to our soldiers?" this was such a palpable hit that squire haynes winced under it, and his red face turned redder as he saw the smiles of those about him. "impudent puppy!" he muttered to himself; "he seems to forget that i have a mortgage of eight hundred dollars on his farm. when the time comes to foreclose it, i will show him no mercy. i'll sell him out, root and branch!" mr. frost could not read the thoughts that were passing through the mind of his creditor. they might have given him a feeling of uneasiness, but would not in the least have influenced his action. he was a man loyal to his own convictions of duty, and no apprehension of personal loss would have prevented his speaking in accordance with what he felt to be right. the considerations which had been urged were so reasonable that the voters present, with very little opposition, voted to pay one hundred and fifty dollars to each one who was willing to enlist as one of the town's quota. a list was at once opened, and after the close of the meeting four young men came forward and put down their names, amid the applause of the assembly. "i wanted to do it before," said john drake, one of the number, to mr. frost, "but i've got a wife and two little children dependent upon me for support. i couldn't possibly support them out of my thirteen dollars a month, even with the state aid. but your motion has decided me. i could do better by staying at home, even with that; but that isn't the question. i want to help my country in this hour of her need; and now that my mind is at ease about my family, i shall cheerfully enter the service." "and i know of no one who will make a better soldier!" said mr. frost heartily. chapter ii. the prize a few rods distant from the town hall, but on the opposite side of the street, stood the rossville academy. it had been for some years under the charge of james rathburn, a. m., a thorough scholar and a skilful teacher. a large part of his success was due to his ability in making the ordinary lessons of the schoolroom interesting to his scholars. some forty students attended the academy, mostly from the town of rossville. mr. rathburn, however, received a few boarders into his family. there were three classes in the latin language; but the majority of those who had taken it up stopped short before they had gone beyond the latin reader. one class, however, had commenced reading the aeneid of virgil, and was intending to pursue the full course of preparation for college; though .n regard to one member of the class there was some doubt whether he would be able to enter college. as this boy is to be our hero we will take a closer look at him. frank frost is at this time in his sixteenth year. he is about the medium size, compactly made, and the heallhful color in his cheeks is good evidence that he is not pursuing his studies at the expense of his health. he has dark chestnut hair, with a slight wave, and is altogether a fine-looking boy. at a desk behind him sits john haynes, the son of squire haynes, introduced in our last chapter. he is nearly two years older than frank, and about as opposite to him in personal appearance as can well be imagined. he has a thin face, very black hair is tall of his age, and already beginning to feel himself a young man. his manner is full of pretension. he never forgets that his father is the richest man in town, and can afford to give him advantages superior to those possessed by his schoolfellows. he has a moderate share of ability but is disinclined to work hard. his affectation of superiority makes him as unpopular among his schoolfellows as frank is popular. these two boys, together with henry tufts, constitute the preparatory class of rossville academy. henry is mild in his manners, and a respectable student, but possesses no positive character. he comes from a town ten miles distant, and boards with the principal. frank, though the youngest of the three, excels the other two in {pages 13-14 missing} frank's face flushed with pleasure, and his eyes danced with delight. he had made a great effort to succeed, and he knew that at home they would be very happy to hear that the prize had been awarded to him. "frank frost will come forward," said mr. rathburn. frank left his seat, and advanced modestly. mr. rathburn placed in his hand a neat edition of whittier's poem's in blue and gold. "let this serve as an incentive to renewed effort," he said. the second prize was awarded to one of the girls. as she has no part in our story, we need say nothing more on this point. at recess, frank's desk was surrounded by his schoolmates, who were desirous of examining the prize volumes. all expressed hearty good-will, congratulating him on his success, with the exception of john haynes. "you seem mighty proud of your books, frank frost," said he with a sneer. "we all know that you're old rathburn's favorite. it didn't make much difference what you wrote, as long as you were sure of the prize." "for shame, john haynes!" exclaimed little harvey grover impetuously. "you only say that because you wanted the prize yourself, and you're disappointed." "disappointed!" retorted john scornfully. "i don't want any of old rathburn's sixpenny books. i can buy as many as i please. if he'd given 'em to me, i should have asked him to keep 'em for those who needed 'em more." frank was justly indignant at the unfriendly course which john chose to pursue, but feeling that it proceeded from disappointed rivalry, he wisely said nothing to increase his exasperation. he put the two books carefully away in his desk, and settled himself quietly to his day's lessons. it was not until evening that john and his father met. both had been chafed--the first by his disappointment, the second by the failure of his effort to prevent the town's voting bounties to volunteers. in particular he was incensed with mr. frost, for his imputation of interested motives, although it was only in return for a similar imputation brought against himself. "well, father, i didn't get the prize," commenced john, in a discontented voice. "so much the worse for you," said his father coldly. "you might have gained it if you had made an effort." "no, i couldn't. rathburn was sure to give it to his favorite." "and who is his favorite?" questioned squire haynes, not yet siding with his son. "frank frost, to be sure." "frank frost!" repeated the squire, rapidly wheeling round to his son's view of the matter. his dislike of the father was so great that it readily included the son. "what makes you think he is the teacher's favorite?" "oh, rathburn is always praising him for something or other. all the boys know frank frost is his pet. you won't catch him praising me, if i work ever so hard." john did not choose to mention that he had not yet tried this method of securing the teacher's approval. "teachers should never have favorites," said the squire dogmatically. "it is highly detrimental to a teacher's influence, and subversive of the principles of justice. have you got your essay with you, john?" "yes, sir." "you may sit down and read it to me, and if i think it deserving, i will take care that you sha'n't lose by the teacher's injustice." john readily obeyed. he hurried up to his chamber, and, opening his writing-desk, took out a sheet of foolscap, three sides of which were written over. this he brought down-stairs with him. he began to hope that he might get the boat after all. the squire, in dressing-gown and slippers, sat in a comfortable armchair, while john in a consequential manner read his rejected essay. it was superficial and commonplace, and abundantly marked with pretension, but to the squire's warped judgment it seemed to have remarkable merit. "it does you great credit, john," said he emphatically. "i don't know what sort of an essay young frost wrote, but i venture to say it was not as good. if he's anything like his father, he is an impertinent jackanapes." john pricked up his ears, and listened attentively. "he grossly insulted me at the town meeting to-day, and i sha'n't soon forget it. it isn't for his interest to insult a man who has the power to annoy him that i possess." "haven't you got a mortgage on his farm?" "yes, and at a proper time i shall remind him of it. but to come back to your own affairs. what was the prize given to young frost?" "a blue-and-gold copy of whittier's poems, in two volumes." "plain binding, i suppose." "yes, sir." "very well. the next time i go to boston, i will buy you the same thing bound in calf. i don't intend that you shall suffer by your teacher's injustice." "it wasn't so much the prize that i cared for," said john, who felt like making the most of his father's favorable mood, "but you know you promised me twenty-five dollars if i gained it." "and as you have been defrauded of it, i will give you thirty instead," said the squire promptly. john's eyes sparkled with delight. "oh, thank you, sir!" he said. "i wouldn't change places with frank frost now for all his prize." "i should think not, indeed," said the squire pompously. "your position as the son of a poor farmer wouldn't be quite so high as it is now." as he spoke he glanced complacently at the handsome furniture which surrounded him, the choice engravings which hung on the walls, and the full-length mirror in which his figure was reflected. "ten years from now frank frost will be only a common laborer on his father's farm--that is," he added significantly, "if his father manages to keep it; while you, i hope, will be winning distinction at the bar." father and son were in a congenial mood that evening, and a common hatred drew them more closely together than mutual affection had ever done. they were very much alike--both cold, calculating, and selfish. the squire was indeed ambitious for his son, but could hardly be said to love him, since he was incapable of feeling a hearty love for any one except himself. as for john, it is to be feared that he regarded his father chiefly as one from whom he might expect future favors. his mother had been a good, though not a strong-minded woman, and her influence might have been of advantage to her son; but unhappily she had died when john was in his tenth year, and since then he had become too much like his father. chapter iii. frank at home mr. frost's farm was situated about three-quarters of a mile from the village. it comprised fifty acres, of which twenty were suitable for tillage, the remainder being about equally divided between woodland and pasture. mr. frost had for some years before his marriage been a painter, and had managed to save up from his earnings not far from a thousand dollars. thinking, however, that farming would be more favorable to health, he purchased his fifty-acre farm for twenty-eight hundred dollars, payable one thousand down, and the rest remaining on mortgage. at the date of our story he had succeeded in paying up the entire amount within eight hundred dollars, a mortgage for that amount being held by squire haynes. he had not been able to accomplish this without strict economy, in which his wife had cheerfully aided him. but his family had grown larger and more expensive. besides frank, who was the oldest, there were now three younger children--alice, twelve years of age; maggie, ten; and charlie, seven. the farmhouse was small but comfortable, and the family had never been tempted to sigh for a more costly or luxurious home. they were happy and contented, and this made their home attractive. on the evening succeeding that of the war meeting, frank was seated in the common sitting-room with his father and mother. there was a well-worn carpet on the floor, a few plain chairs were scattered about the room, and in the corner ticked one of the old-fashioned clocks such as used to be the pride of our new england households. in the center of the room stood a round table, on which had been set a large kerosene-lamp, which diffused a cheerful light about the apartment. on a little table, over which hung a small mirror, were several papers and magazines. economical in most things, mr. frost was considered by many of his neighbors extravagant in this. he subscribed regularly for harper's magazine and weekly, a weekly agricultural paper, a daily paper, and a child's magazine. "i don't see how you can afford to buy so much reading-matter," said a neighbor, one day. "it must cost you a sight of money. as for me, i only take a weekly paper, and i think i shall have to give that up soon." "all my papers and magazines cost me in a year, including postage, is less than twenty dollars," said mr. frost quietly. "a very slight additional economy in dress--say three dollars a year to each of us will pay that. i think my wife would rather make her bonnet wear doubly as long than give up a single one of our papers. when you think of the comparative amount of pleasure given by a paper that comes to you fifty-two times in a year, and a little extra extravagance in dress, i think you will decide in favor of the paper." "but when you've read it, you haven't anything to show for your money." "and when clothes are worn out you may say the same of them. but we value both for the good they have done, and the pleasure they have afforded. i have always observed that a family where papers and magazines are taken is much more intelligent and well informed than where their bodies are clothed at the expense of their minds. our daily paper is the heaviest item; but i like to know what is passing in the world, and, besides, i think i more than defray the expense by the knowledge i obtain of the markets. at what price did you sell your apples last year?" "at one dollar and seventy-five cents per barrel." "and i sold forty barrels at two dollars per barrel. i found from my paper that there was reason to expect an increase in the price, and held on. by so doing i gained ten dollars, which more than paid the expense of my paper for the year. so even in a money way i was paid for my subscription. no, neighbor, though i have good reason to economize, i don't care to economize in that direction. i want my children to grow up intelligent citizens. let me advise you, instead of stopping your only paper, to subscribe for two or three more." "i don't know," was the irresolute reply. "it was pretty lucky about the apples; but it seems a good deal to pay. as for my children, they don't get much time to read. they've got to earn their livin', and that ain't done by settin' down and readin'." "i am not so sure of that," said mr. frost. "education often enables a man to make money." the reader may have been surprised at the ease with which mr. frost expressed himself in his speech at the war meeting. no other explanation is required than that he was in the habit of reading, every day, well-selected newspapers. "a man is known by the company he keeps." "so you gained the prize, frank?" said his father approvingly. "i am very glad to hear it. it does you great credit. i hope none were envious of your success." "most of the boys seemed glad of it," was the reply; "but john haynes was angry because he didn't get it himself. he declared that i succeeded only because i was a favorite with mr. rathburn." "i am afraid he has not an amiable disposition. however, we must remember that his home influences haven't been the best. his mother's death was unfortunate for him." "i heard at the store that you and squire haynes had a discussion at the war meeting," said frank inquiringly. "how was it, father?" "it was on the question of voting a bounty to our volunteers. i felt that such a course would be only just. the squire objected on the ground that our taxes would be considerably increased." "and how did the town vote?" "they sustained my proposition, much to the squire's indignation. he doesn't seem to feel that any sacrifices ought to be expected of him." "what is the prospect of obtaining the men, father?" "four have already enlisted, but twenty-one are still required. i fear there will be some difficulty in obtaining the full number. in a farming town like ours the young men are apt to go off to other places as soon as they are old enough; so that the lot must fall upon some who have families." frank sat for some minutes gazing thoughtfully into the wood-fire that crackled in the fireplace. "i wish i was old enough to go, father," he said, at length. "i wish you were," said his father earnestly. "not that it wouldn't be hard to send you out into the midst of perils; but our duty to our country ought to be paramount to our personal preferences." "there's another reason," he said, after awhile, "why i wish you were older. you could take my place on the farm, and leave me free to enlist. i should have no hesitation in going. i have not forgotten that my grandfather fought at bunker hill." "i know, father," said frank, nodding; "and that's his musket that hangs up in your room, isn't it?" "yes; it was his faithful companion for three years. i often think with pride of his services. i have been trying to think all day whether i couldn't make some arrangement to have the farm carried on in my absence; but it is very hard to obtain a person in whom i could confide." "if i were as good a manager as some," said mrs. frost, with a smile, "i would offer to be your farmer; but i am afraid that, though my intentions would be the best, things would go on badly under my administration." "you have enough to do in the house, mary," said her husband. "i should not wish you to undertake the additional responsibility, even if you were thoroughly competent. i am afraid i shall have to give up the idea of going." mr. frost took up the evening paper. frank continued to look thoughtfully into the fire, as if revolving something in his mind. finally he rose, and lighting a candle went up to bed. but he did not go to sleep for some time. a plan had occurred to him, and he was considering its feasibility. "i think i could do it," he said, at last, turning over and composing himself to sleep. "i'll speak to father the first thing to-morrow morning." chapter iv. frank makes a proposition when frank woke the next morning the sun was shining into his window. he rubbed his eyes and tried to think what it was that occupied his mind the night before. it came to him in a moment, and jumping out of bed, he dressed himself with unusual expedition. hurrying down-stairs, he found his mother in the kitchen, busily engaged in getting breakfast. "where's father?" he asked. "he hasn't come in from the barn yet, frank," his mother answered. "you can have your breakfast now, if you are in a hurry to get to studying." "never mind, just now, mother," returned frank. "i want to speak to father about something." taking his cap from the nail in the entry where it usually hung, frank went out to the barn. he found that his father was nearly through milking. "is breakfast ready?" asked mr. frost, looking up. "tell your mother she needn't wait for me." "it isn't ready yet," said frank. "i came out because i want to speak to you about something very particular." "very well, frank, go on." "but if you don't think it a good plan, or think that i am foolish in speaking of it, don't say anything to anybody." mr. frost looked at frank in some little curiosity. "perhaps," he said, smiling, "like our neighbor holman, you have formed a plan for bringing the war to a close." frank laughed. "i am not quite so presumptuous," he said. "you remember saying last night, that if i were old enough to take charge of the farm, you would have no hesitation in volunteering?" "yes." "don't you think i am old enough?" asked frank eagerly. "why, you are only fifteen, frank," returned his father, in surprise. "i know it, but i am strong enough to do considerable work." "it isn't so much that which is required. a man could easily be found to do the hardest of the work. but somebody is needed who understands farming, and is qualified to give directions. how much do you know of that?" "not much at present," answered frank modestly, "but i think i could learn easily. besides, there's mr. maynard, who is a good farmer, could advise me whenever i was in doubt, and you could write home directions in your letters." "that is true," said mr. frost thoughtfully. "i will promise to give it careful consideration. but have you thought that you will be obliged to give up attending school." "yes, father." "and, of course, that will put you back; your class-mates will get in advance of you." "i have thought of that, father, and i shall be very sorry for it. but i think that is one reason why i desire the plan." "i don't understand you, frank," said his father, a little puzzled. "you see, father, it would require a sacrifice on my part, and i should feel glad to think i had an opportunity of making a sacrifice for the sake of my country." "that's the right spirit, frank," said his father approvingly. "that's the way my grandfather felt and acted, and it's the way i like to see my son feel. so it would be a great sacrifice to me to leave you all." "and to us to be parted from you, father," said frank. "i have no doubt of it, my dear boy," said his father kindly. "we have always been a happy and united family, and, please god, we always shall be. but this plan of yours requires consideration. i will talk it over with your mother and mr. maynard, and will then come to a decision." "i was afraid you would laugh at me," said frank. "no," said his father, "it was a noble thought, and does you credit. i shall feel that, whatever course i may think it wisest to adopt." the sound of a bell from the house reached them. this meant breakfast. mr. frost had finished milking, and with a well-filled pail in either hand, went toward the house. "move the milking:-stool, frank," he said, looking behind him, "or the cow will kick it over." five minutes later they were at breakfast. "i have some news for you, mary," said mr. frost, as he helped his wife to a sausage. "indeed?" said she, looking up inquiringly. "some one has offered to take charge of the farm for me, in case i wish to go out as a soldier." "who is it?" asked mrs. frost, with strong interest. "a gentleman with whom you are well--i may say intimately acquainted," was the smiling response. "it isn't mr. maynard?" "no. it is some one that lives nearer than he." "how can that be? he is our nearest neighbor." "then you can't guess?" "no. i am quite mystified." "suppose i should say that it is your oldest son?" "what, frank?" exclaimed mrs. frost, turning from her husband to her son, whose flushed face indicated how anxious he was about his mother's favorable opinion. "you have hit it." "you were not in earnest, frank?" said mrs. frost inquiringly. "ask father." "i think he was. he certainly appeared to be." "but what does frank know about farming?" "i asked him that question myself. he admitted that he didn't know much at present, but thought that, with mr. maynard's advice, he might get along." mrs. frost was silent a moment. "it will be a great undertaking," she said, at last; "but if you think you can trust frank, i will do all i can to help him. i can't bear to think of having you go, yet i am conscious that this is a feeling which i have no right to indulge at the expense of my country." "yes," said her husband seriously. "i feel that i owe my country a service which i have no right to delegate to another, as long as i am able to discharge it myself. i shall reflect seriously upon frank's proposition." there was no more said at this time. both frank and his parents felt that it was a serious matter, and not to be hastily decided. after breakfast frank went up-stairs, and before studying his latin lesson, read over thoughtfully the following passage in his prize essay on "the duties of american boys at the present crisis:" "now that so large a number of our citizens have been withdrawn from their families and their ordinary business to engage in putting down this rebellion, it becomes the duty of the boys to take their places as far as they are able to do so. a boy cannot wholly supply the place of a man, but he can do so in part. and where he is not called on to do this, he can so conduct himself that his friends who are absent may feel at ease about him. he ought to feel willing to give up some pleasures, if by so doing he can help to supply the places of those who are gone. if he does this voluntarily, and in the right spirit, he is just as patriotic as if he were a soldier in the field." "i didn't think," thought frank, "when i wrote this, how soon my words would come back to me. it isn't much to write the words. the thing is to stand by them. if father should decide to go, i will do my best, and then, when the rebellion is over, i shall feel that i did something, even if it wasn't much, toward putting it down." frank put his essay carefully away in a bureau drawer in which he kept his clothes, and, spreading open his latin lexicon, proceeded to prepare his lesson in the third book of virgil's aeneid. chapter v. mr. rathburn makes a speech frank's seat in the schoolroom was directly in front of that occupied by john haynes. until the announcement of the prize john and he had been on friendly terms. they belonged to the same class in latin, and frank had often helped his classmate through a difficult passage which he had not the patience to construe for himself. now, however, a coolness grew up between them, originating with john. he felt envious of frank's success; and this feeling brought with it a certain bitterness which found gratification in anything which he had reason to suppose would annoy frank. on the morning succeeding the distribution of the prizes, frank arrived at the schoolhouse a few minutes before the bell rang. john, with half a dozen other boys, stood near the door. john took off his hat with mock deference. "make way for the great prize essayist, gentlemen!" he said. "the modern macaulay is approaching." frank colored with annoyance. john did not fail to notice this with pleasure. he was sorry, however, that none of the other boys seemed inclined to join in the demonstration. in fact, they liked frank much the better of the two. "that isn't quite fair, john," said frank, in a low voice. "i am always glad to pay my homage to distinguished talent," john proceeded, in the same tone. "i feel how presumptuous i was in venturing to compete with a gentleman of such genius!" "do you mean to insult me?" asked frank, growing angry. "oh, dear, no! i am only expressing my high opinion of your talents!" "let him alone, john!" said dick jones, "it isn't his fault that the teacher awarded the prize to him instead of you." "i hope you don't think i care for that!" said john, snapping his fingers. "he's welcome to his rubbishing books; they don't amount to much, anyway. i don't believe they cost more than two dollars at the most. if you'd like to see what i got for my essay, i'll show you." john pulled out his portemonnaie, and unrolled three new and crisp bank-notes of ten dollars each. "i think that's pretty good pay," he said, looking about him triumphantly. "i don't care how many prizes rathburn chooses to give his favorite. i rather think i can get along without them." john's face was turned toward the door, otherwise he would have observed the approach of the teacher, and spoken with more caution. but it was too late. the words had been spoken above his ordinary voice, and were distinctly heard by the teacher. he looked sharply at john haynes, whose glance fell before his, but without a word passed into the schoolroom. "see if you don't get a blowing-up, john," said dick jones. "what do i care!" said john, but in a tone too subdued to be heard by any one else. "it won't do rathburn any harm to hear the truth for once in his life." "well, i'm glad i'm not in your place, that's all!" replied dick. "you're easily frightened!" rejoined john, with a sneer. nevertheless, as he entered the schoolroom, and walked with assumed bravado to his seat in the back part of the room, he did not feel quite so comfortable as he strove to appear. as he glanced stealthily at the face of the teacher, who looked unusually stern and grave, he could not help thinking, "i wonder whether he will say anything about it." mr. rathburn commenced in the usual manner; but after the devotional exercises were over, he paused, and, after a brief silence, during which those who had heard john's words listened with earnest attention, spoke as follows: "as i approached the schoolroom this morning i chanced to catch some words which i presume were not intended for my ear. if i remember rightly they were, 'i don't care how many prizes rathburn gives his favorite!' there were several that heard them, so that i can be easily corrected if i have made any mistake. now i will not affect to misunderstand the charge conveyed by these words. i am accused of assigning the prizes, or at least, one of them, yesterday, not with strict regard to the merit of the essays presented, but under the influence of partiality. if this is the real feeling of the speaker, i can only say that i am sorry he should have so low an opinion of me. i do not believe the scholars generally entertain any such suspicion. though i may err in judgment, i think that most of you will not charge me with anything more serious. if you ask me whether a teacher has favorites, i say that he cannot help having them. he cannot help making a difference between the studious on the one hand, and the indolent and neglectful on the other. but in a matter like this i ask you to believe me when i say that no consideration except that of merit is permitted to weigh. the boy who made this charge is one of my most advanced scholars, and has no reason to believe that he would be treated with unfairness. i do not choose to say any more on this subject, except that i have decided to offer two similar prizes for the two best compositions submitted within the next four weeks. i shall assign them to the best of my judgment, without regard to the scholarship of the writer." mr. rathburn spoke in a quiet, dignified manner, which convinced all who heard him of his fairness. i say all, because even john haynes was persuaded against his own will, though he did not choose to acknowledge it. he had a dogged obstinacy which would not allow him to retract what he had once said. there was an unpleasant sneer on his face while the teacher was speaking, which he did not attempt to conceal. "the class in virgil," called mr. rathburn. this class consisted of frank frost, john haynes, and henry tufts. john rose slowly from his seat, and advanced to the usual place, taking care to stand as far from frank as possible. "you may commence, john," said the teacher. it was unfortunate for john that he had been occupied, first, by thoughts of his rejected essay, and afterward by thoughts of the boat which he proposed to buy with the thirty dollars of which he had become possessed, so that he had found very little time to devote to his latin. had he been on good terms with frank, he would have asked him to read over the lesson, which, as he was naturally quick, would have enabled him to get off passably. but, of course, under the circumstances, this was not to be thought of. so he stumbled through two or three sentences, in an embarrassed manner. mr. rathburn at first helped him along. finding, however, that he knew little or nothing of the lesson, he quietly requested frank to read, saying, "you don't seem so well prepared as usual, john." frank translated fluently and well, his recitation forming a very favorable contrast to the slipshod attempt of john. this john, in a spirit of unreasonableness, magnified into a grave offense, and a desire to "show off" at his expense. "trying to shine at my expense," he muttered. "well, let him! two or three years hence, when i am in college, perhaps things may be a little different." frank noticed his repellent look, and it made him feel uncomfortable. he was a warm-hearted boy, and wanted to be on good terms with everybody. still, he could not help feeling that in the present instance he had nothing to reproach himself with. john went back to his seat feeling an increased irritation against frank. he could not help seeing that he was more popular with his schoolmates than himself, and, of course, this, too, he considered a just cause of offense against him. while he was considering in what way he could slight frank, the thought of the boat he was about to purchase entered his mind. he brightened up at once, for this suggested something. he knew how much boys like going out upon the water. at present there was no boat on the pond. his would hold six or eight boys readily. he would invite some of the oldest boys to accompany him on his first trip, carefully omitting frank frost. the slight would be still more pointed because frank was his classmate. when the bell rang for recess he lost no time in carrying out the scheme he had thought of. "dick," he called out to dick jones, "i am expecting my boat up from boston next tuesday, and i mean to go out in her wednesday afternoon. wouldn't you like to go with me?" "with all the pleasure in life," said dick, "and thank you for the invitation." "how many will she hold?" "eight or ten, i expect. bob ingalls, would you like to go, too?" the invitation was eagerly accepted. john next approached henry tufts, who was speaking with frank frost. without even looking at the latter, he asked henry if he would like to go. "very much," was the reply. "then i will expect you," he said. he turned on his heel and walked off without taking any notice of frank. frank blushed in spite of himself. "don't he mean to invite you?" asked henry, in surprise. "it appears not," said frank. "it's mean in him, then," exclaimed henry; "i declare, i've a great mind not to go." "i hope you will go," said frank hastily. "you will enjoy it. promise me you will go." "would you really prefer to have me?" "i should be very sorry if you didn't." "then i'll go; but i think he's mean in not asking you, for all that." chapter vi. mr. frost makes up his mind "well, frank," said his father at supper-time, "i've been speaking to mr. maynard this afternoon about your plan." "what did he say?" asked frank, dropping his knife and fork in his eagerness. "after he had thought a little, he spoke of it favorably. he said that, being too old to go himself, he should be glad to do anything in his power to facilitate my going, if i thought it my duty to do so." "didn't he think frank rather young for such an undertaking?" asked mrs. frost doubtfully. "yes, he did; but still he thought with proper advice and competent assistance he might get along. for the first, he can depend upon mr. maynard and myself; as for the second, mr. maynard suggested a good man, who is seeking a situation as farm laborer." "is it anybody in this town?" asked frank. "no, it is a man from brandon, named jacob carter. mr. maynard says he is honest, industrious, and used to working on a farm. i shall write to him this evening." "then you have decided to go!" exclaimed frank and his mother in concert. "it will depend in part upon the answer i receive from this man carter. i shall feel if he agrees to come, that i can go with less anxiety." "how we shall miss you!" said his wife, in a subdued tone. "and i shall miss you quite as much. it will be a considerable sacrifice for all of us. but when my country has need of me, you will feel that i cannot honorably stay at home. as for frank, he may regard me as his substitute." "my substitute!" repeated frank, in a questioning tone. "yes, since but for you, taking charge of the farm in my absence, i should not feel that i could go." frank looked pleased. it made him feel that he was really of some importance. boys, unless they are incorrigibly idle, are glad to be placed in posts of responsibility. frank, though very modest, felt within himself unused powers and undeveloped capacities, which he knew must be called out by the unusual circumstances in which he would be placed. the thought, too, that he would be serving his country, even at home, filled him with satisfaction. after a pause, mr. frost said: "there is one point on which i still have some doubts. as you are all equally interested with myself, i think it proper to ask your opinion, and shall abide by your decision." frank and his mother listened with earnest attention. "you are aware that the town has decided to give a bounty of one hundred and fifty dollars to such as may volunteer toward filling the quota. you may remember, also, that although the town passed the vote almost unanimously, it was my proposition, and supported by a speech of mine." "squire haynes opposed it, i think you said, father." "yes, and intimated that i urged the matter from interested motives. he said he presumed i intended to enlist." "as if that sum would pay a man for leaving his home and incurring the terrible risks of war!" exclaimed mrs. frost, looking indignant. "very likely he did not believe it himself; but he was irritated with me, and it is his habit to impute unworthy motives to those with whom he differs. aside from this, however, i shall feel some delicacy in availing myself of a bounty which i was instrumental in persuading the town to vote. though i feel that i should be perfectly justified in so doing, i confess that i am anxious not to put myself in such a position as to hazard any loss of good opinion on the part of my friends in town." "then don't take it," said mrs. frost promptly. "that's what i say, too, father," chimed in frank. "don't decide too hastily," said mr. frost. "remember that in our circumstances this amount of money would be very useful. although frank will do as well as any boy of his age, i do not expect him to make the farm as profitable as i should do, partly on account of my experience being greater, and partly because i should be able to accomplish more work than he. one hundred and fifty dollars would procure many little comforts which otherwise you may have to do without." "i know that," said mrs. frost quickly. "but do you think i should enjoy them, if there were reports circulated, however unjustly, to your prejudice? besides, i shall know that the comforts at the camp must be fewer than you would enjoy at home. we shall not wish to fare so much better than you." "do you think with your mother, frank?" asked mr. frost. "i think mother is right," said frank, proud of having his opinion asked. he was secretly determined, in spite of what his father had said, to see if he could not make the farm as profitable as it would be under his father's management. mr. frost seemed relieved by his wife's expression of opinion. "then," said he, "i will accept your decision as final. i felt that it should be you, and not myself, who should decide it. now my mind will be at ease, so far as that goes." "you will not enlist at once, father?" asked frank. "not for three or four weeks. i shall wish to give you some special instructions before i go, so that your task may be easier." "hadn't i better leave school at once?" "you may finish this week out. however, i may as well begin my instructions without delay. i believe you have never learned to milk." "no, sir." "probably carter will undertake that. still, it will be desirable that you should know how, in case he gets sick. you may come out with me after supper and take your first lesson." frank ran for his hat with alacrity. this seemed like beginning in earnest. he accompanied his father to the barn, and looked with new interest at the four cows constituting his father's stock. "i think we will begin with this one," said his father, pointing to a red-and-white heifer. "she is better-natured than the others, and, as i dare say your fingers will bungle a little at first, that is a point to be considered." if any of my boy readers has ever undertaken the task of milking for the first time, he will appreciate frank's difficulties. when he had seen his father milking, it seemed to him extremely easy. the milk poured out in rich streams, almost without an effort. but under his inexperienced fingers none came. he tugged away manfully, but with no result. "i guess the cow's dry," said he at last, looking up in his father's face. mr. frost in reply drew out a copious stream. "i did the same as you," said frank, mystified, "and none came." "you didn't take hold right," said his father, "and you pressed at the wrong time. let me show you." before the first lesson was over frank had advanced a little in the art of milking, and it may as well be said here that in the course of a week or so he became a fair proficient, so that his father even allowed him to try vixen, a cow who had received this name from the uncertainty of her temper. she had more than once upset the pail with a spiteful kick when it was nearly full. one morning she upset not only the pail, but frank, who looked foolish enough as he got up covered with milk. frank also commenced reading the plowman, a weekly agricultural paper which his father had taken for years. until now he had confined his readings in it to the selected story on the fourth page. now, with an object in view, he read carefully other parts of the paper. he did this not merely in the first flush of enthusiasm, but with the steady purpose of qualifying himself to take his father's place. "frank is an uncommon boy," said mr. frost to his wife, not without feelings of pride, one night, when our hero had retired to bed. "i would trust him with the farm sooner than many who are half a dozen years older." chapter vii. like father, like son "well, father, i've got some news for you," said john haynes, as he entered his father's presence, two or three days later. "what is it, john?" inquired the squire, laying down a copy of the new york herald, which he had been reading. "who do you think has enlisted?" "i do not choose to guess," said his father coldly. "if you feel disposed to tell me, you may do so. john looked somewhat offended at his father's tone, but he was anxious to tell the news. "frost's going to enlist," he said shortly. "indeed!" said the squire, with interest. "how did you hear?" "i heard him say so himself, just now, in the store." "i expected it," said squire haynes, with a sneer. "i understood his motives perfectly in urging the town to pay an enormous bounty to volunteers. he meant to line his own pockets at the public expense." "he says that he doesn't mean to accept the bounty," continued john, in a tone which indicated a doubt whether mr. frost was in earnest. "did you hear him say that?" asked squire haynes abruptly. "yes. i heard him say so to mr. morse." "perhaps he means it, and perhaps he doesn't. if he don't take it, it is because he is afraid of public opinion. what's he going to do about the farm, while he is gone?" "that is the strangest part of it," said john. "i don't believe you could guess who is to be left in charge of it." "i don't choose to guess. if you know, speak out." john bit his lip resentfully. "it's that conceited jackanapes of his--frank frost." "do you mean that he is going to leave that boy to carry on the farm?" demanded squire haynes, in surprise. "yes." "well, all i can say is that he's more of a fool than i took him to be." "oh, he thinks everything of frank," said john bitterly. "he'll be nominating him for representative next." the squire winced a little. he had been ambitious to represent the town in the legislature, and after considerable wire-pulling had succeeded in obtaining the nomination the year previous. but it is one thing to be nominated and another to be elected. so the squire had found, to his cost. he had barely obtained fifty votes, while his opponent had been elected by a vote of a hundred and fifty. all allusions, therefore, recalling his mortifying defeat were disagreeable to him. "on the whole, i don't know but i'm satisfied," he said, recurring to the intelligence john had brought. "so far as i am concerned, i am glad he has made choice of this boy." "you don't think he is competent?" asked john, in surprise. "for that very reason i am glad he has been selected," said the squire emphatically. "i take it for granted that the farm will be mismanaged, and become a bill of expense, instead of a source of revenue. it's pretty certain that frost won't be able to pay the mortgage when it comes due. i can bid off the farm for a small sum additional and make a capital bargain. it will make a very good place for you to settle down upon, john." "me!" said john disdainfully. "you don't expect me to become a plodding farmer, i trust. i've got talent for something better than that, i should hope." "no," said the squire, "i have other news for you. still, you could hire a farmer to carry it on for you, and live out there in the summer." "well, perhaps that would do," said john, thinking that it would sound well for him, even if he lived in the city, to have a place in the country. "when does the mortgage come due, father?" "i don't remember the exact date. i'll look and see." the squire drew from a closet a box hooped with iron, and evidently made for security. this was his strong-box, and in this he kept his bonds, mortgages, and other securities. he selected a document tied with red ribbon, and examined it briefly. "i shall have the right to foreclose the mortgage on the first of next july," he said. "i hope you will do it then. i should like to see them frosts humbled." "them frosts! don't you know anything more about english grammar, john?" "those frosts, then. of course, i know; but a feller can't always be watching his words." "i desire you never again to use the low word 'feller,'" said the squire, who, as the reader will see, was more particular about grammatical accuracy than about some other things which might be naturally supposed to be of higher importance. "well," said john sulkily, "anything you choose." "as to the mortgage," proceeded squire haynes, "i have no idea they will be able to lift it. i feel certain that frost won't himself have the money at command, and i sha'n't give him any grace, or consent to a renewal. he may be pretty sure of that." "perhaps he'll find somebody to lend him the money." "i think not. there are those who would be willing, but i question whether there is any such who could raise the money at a moment's warning. by the way, you need not mention my purpose in this matter to any one. if it should leak out, mr. frost might hear of it, and prepare for it." "you may trust me for that, father," said john, very decidedly; "i want to see frank frost's proud spirit humbled. perhaps he'll feel like putting on airs after that." from the conversation which has just been chronicled it will be perceived that john was a worthy son of his father; and, though wanting in affection and cordial good feeling, that both were prepared to join hands in devising mischief to poor frank and his family. let us hope that the intentions of the wicked may be frustrated. chapter viii. discouraged and encouraged in a small village like rossville news flies fast. even the distinctions of social life do not hinder an interest being felt in the affairs of each individual. hence it was that mr. frost's determination to enlist became speedily known, and various were the comments made upon his plan of leaving frank in charge of the farm. that they were not all favorable may be readily believed. country people are apt to criticize the proceedings of their neighbors with a greater degree of freedom than is common elsewhere. as frank was on his way to school on saturday morning, his name was called by mrs. roxana mason, who stood in the doorway of a small yellow house fronting on the main street. "good morning, mrs. mason," said frank politely, advancing to the gate in answer to her call. "is it true what i've heard about your father's going to the war, frank frost?" she commenced "yes, mrs. mason; he feels it his duty to go." "and what's to become of the farm? anybody hired it?" "i am going to take charge of it," said frank modestly. "you!" exclaimed mrs. roxana, lifting both hands in amazement; "why, you're nothing but a baby!" "i'm a baby of fifteen," said frank good-humoredly, though his courage was a little dampened by her tone. "what do you know about farming?" inquired the lady, in a contemptuous manner. "your father must be crazy!" "i shall do my best, mrs. mason," said frank quietly, but with heightened color. "my father is willing to trust me; and as i shall have mr. maynard to look to for advice, i think i can get along." "the idea of putting a boy like you over a farm!" returned mrs. roxana, in an uncompromising tone. "i did think your father had more sense. it's the most shiftless thing i ever knew him to do. how does your poor mother feel about it?" "she doesn't seem as much disturbed about it as you do, mrs. mason," said frank, rather impatiently; for he felt that mrs. mason had no right to interfere in his father's arrangements. "well, well, we'll see!" said mrs. roxana, shaking her head significantly. "if you'll look in your bible, you'll read about 'the haughty spirit that goes before a fall.' i'm sure i wish you well enough. i hope that things'll turn out better'n they're like to. tell your mother i'll come over before long and talk with her about it." frank inwardly hoped that mrs. roxana wouldn't put herself to any trouble to call, but politeness taught him to be silent. leaving mrs. mason's gate, he kept on his way to school, but had hardly gone half a dozen rods before he met an old lady, whose benevolent face indicated a very different disposition from that of the lady he had just parted with. "good morning, mrs. chester," said frank cordially, recognizing one of his mother's oldest friends. "good morning, my dear boy," was the reply. "i hear your father is going to the war." "yes," said frank, a little nervously, not knowing but mrs. chester would view the matter in the same way as mrs. mason, though he felt sure she would express herself less disagreeably. "and i hear that you are going to try to make his place good at home." "i don't expect to make his place good, mrs. chester," said frank modestly, "but i shall do as well as i can." "i have no doubt of it, my dear boy," said the old lady kindly. "you can do a great deal, too. you can help your mother by looking out for your brothers and sisters, as well as supplying your father's place on the farm." "i am glad you think i can make myself useful," said frank, feeling relieved. "mrs. mason has just been telling me that i am not fit for the charge, and that discouraged me a little." "it's a great responsibility, no doubt, to come on one so young," said the old lady, "but it's of god's appointment. he will strengthen your hands, if you will only ask him. if you humbly seek his guidance and assistance, you need not fear to fail." "yes," said frank soberly, "that's what i mean to do." "then you will feel that you are in the path of duty. you'll be serving your country just as much as if you went yourself." "that's just the way i feel, mrs. chester," exclaimed frank eagerly. "i want to do something for my country." "you remind me of my oldest brother," said the old lady thoughtfully. "he was left pretty much as you are. it was about the middle of the revolutionary war, and the army needed recruits. my father hesitated, for he had a small family depending on him for support. i was only two years old at the time, and there were three of us. finally my brother james, who was just about your age, told my father that he would do all he could to support the family, and father concluded to go. we didn't have a farm, for father was a carpenter. my brother worked for neighboring farmers, receiving his pay in corn and vegetables, and picked up what odd jobs he could. then mother was able to do something; so we managed after a fashion. there were times when we were brought pretty close to the wall, but god carried us through. and by and by father came safely home, and i don't think he ever regretted having left us. after awhile the good news of peace came, and he felt that he had been abundantly repaid for all the sacrifices he had made in the good cause." frank listened to this narrative with great interest. it yielded him no little encouragement to know that another boy, placed in similar circumstances, had succeeded, and he just felt that he would have very much less to contend against than the brother of whom mrs. chester spoke "thank you for telling me about your brother mrs. chester," he said. "it makes me feel more as if things would turn out well. won't you come over soon and see us? mother is always glad to see you." "thank you, frank; i shall certainly do so. i hope i shall not make you late to school." "oh, no; i started half an hour early this morning." frank had hardly left mrs. chester when he heard a quick step behind him. turning round, he perceived that it was mr. rathburn, his teacher. "i hurried to come up with you, frank," he said, smiling. "i understand that i am to lose you from school." "yes, sir," answered frank. "i am very sorry to leave, for i am very much interested in my studies; but i suppose, sir, you have heard what calls me away." "your father has made up his mind to enlist." "yes, sir." "and you are to superintend the farm in his absence?" "yes, sir. i hope you do not think me presumptuous in undertaking such a responsibility?" he looked up eagerly into mr. rathburn's face, for he had a great respect for his judgment. but he saw nothing to discourage him. on the contrary, he read cordial sympathy and approval. "far from it," answered the teacher, with emphasis. "i think you deserving of great commendation, especially if, as i have heard, the plan originated with you, and was by you suggested to your father." "yes, sir." the teacher held out his hand kindly. "it was only what i should have expected of you," he said. "i have not forgotten your essay. i am glad to see that you not only have right ideas of duty, but have, what is rarer, the courage and self-denial to put them in practice." these words gave frank much pleasure, and his face lighted up. "shall you feel obliged to give up your studies entirely?" asked his teacher. "i think i shall be able to study some in the evening." "if i can be of any assistance to you in any way, don't hesitate to apply. if you should find any stumbling-blocks in your lessons, i may be able to help you over them." by this time they had come within sight of the schoolhouse. "there comes the young farmer," said john haynes, in a tone which was only subdued lest the teacher should hear him, for he had no disposition to incur another public rebuke. a few minutes later, when frank was quietly seated at his desk, a paper was thrown from behind, lighting upon his virgil, which lay open before him. there appeared to be writing upon it, and with some curiosity he opened and read the following: "what's the price of turnips?" it was quite unnecessary to inquire into the authorship. he felt confident it was written by john haynes. the latter, of course, intended it as an insult, but frank did not feel much disturbed. as long as his conduct was approved by such persons as his teacher and mrs. chester, he felt he could safely disregard the taunts and criticisms of others. he therefore quietly let the paper drop to the floor, and kept on with his lesson. john haynes perceived that he had failed in his benevolent purpose of disturbing frank's tranquillity, and this, i am sorry to say, only increased the dislike he felt for him. nothing is so unreasonable as anger, nothing so hard to appease. john even felt disposed to regard as an insult the disposition which frank had made of his insulting query. "the young clodhopper's on his dignity," he muttered to himself. "well, wait a few months, and see if he won't sing a different tune." just then john's class was called up, and his dislike to frank was not diminished by the superiority of his recitation. the latter, undisturbed by john's feelings, did not give a thought to him, but reflected with a touch of pain that this must be his last latin recitation in school for a long time to come. chapter ix. the last evening at home three weeks passed quickly. october had already reached its middle point. the glory of the indian summer was close at hand. too quickly the days fled for the little family at the farm, for they knew that each brought nearer the parting of which they could not bear to think. jacob carter, who had been sent for to do the heavy work on the farm, had arrived. he was a man of forty, stout and able to work, but had enjoyed few opportunities of cultivating his mind. though a faithful laborer, he was destitute of the energy and ambition which might ere this have placed him in charge of a farm of his own. in new england few arrive at his age without achieving some position more desirable and independent than that of farm laborer. however, he looked pleasant and good-natured, and mr. frost accounted himself fortunate in securing his services. the harvest had been got in, and during the winter months there would not be so much to do as before. jacob, therefore, "hired out" for a smaller compensation, to be increased when the spring work came in. frank had not been idle. he had accompanied his father about the farm, and received as much practical instruction in the art of farming as the time would admit. he was naturally a quick learner, and now felt impelled by a double motive to prepare himself as well as possible to assume his new responsibilities. his first motive was, of course, to make up his father's loss to the family, as far as it was possible for him to do so, but he was also desirous of showing mrs. roxana mason and other ill-boding prophets that they had underrated his abilities. the time came when mr. frost felt that he must leave his family. he had enlisted from preference in an old regiment, already in virginia, some members of which had gone from rossville. a number of recruits were to be forwarded to the camp on a certain day, and that day was now close at hand. let me introduce the reader to the farmhouse on the last evening for many months when they would be able to be together. they were all assembled about the fireplace. mr. frost sat in an armchair, holding charlie in his lap--the privileged place of the youngest. alice, with the air of a young woman, sat demurely by her father's side on a cricket, while maggie stood beside him, with one hand resting on his knee. frank sat quietly beside his mother, as if already occupying the place which he was in future to hold as her counselor and protector. frank and his mother looked sober. they had not realized fully until this evening what it would be to part with the husband and father--how constantly they would miss him at the family meal and in the evening circle. then there was the dreadful uncertainty of war. he might never return, or, if spared for that, it might be with broken constitution or the loss of a limb. "if it hadn't been for me," frank could not help thinking, "father would not now be going away. he would have stayed at home, and i could still go to school. it would have made a great difference to us, and the loss of one man could not affect the general result." a moment after his conscience rebuked him for harboring so selfish a thought. "the country needs him more even than we do," he said to himself. "it will be a hard trial to have him go, but it is our duty." "will my little charlie miss me when i am gone?" asked mr. frost of the chubby-faced boy who sat with great, round eyes peering into the fire, as if he were deeply engaged in thought. "won't you take me with you, papa?" asked charlie. "what could you do if you were out there, my little boy?" asked the father, smiling. "i'd shoot great big rebel with my gun," said charlie, waxing valiant. "your gun's only a wooden one," said maggie, with an air of superior knowledge. "you couldn't kill a rebel with that." "i'd kill 'em some," persisted charlie earnestly, evidently believing that a wooden gun differed from others not in kind, but in degree. "but suppose the rebels should fire at you," said frank, amused. "what would you do then, charlie?" charlie looked into the fire thoughtfully for a moment, as if this contingency had not presented itself to his mind until now. suddenly his face brightened up, and he answered. "i'd run away just as fast as i could." all laughed at this, and frank said: "but that wouldn't be acting like a brave soldier, charlie. you ought to stay and make the enemy run." "i wouldn't want to stay and be shooted," said charlie ingenuously. "there are many older than charlie," said mr. frost, smiling, "who would doubtless sympathize entirely with him in his objection to being shooted, though they might not be quite so ready to make confession as he has shown himself. i suppose you have heard the couplet: " 'he who fights and runs away may live to fight another day.' " "pray don't speak about shooting," said mrs. frost, with a shudder. "it makes me feel nervous." "and to-night we should only admit pleasant thoughts," said her husband. "who is going to write me letters when i am gone?" "i'll write to you, father," said alice. "and so will i," said maggie. "i, too," chimed in charlie. "then, if you have so many correspondents already engaged, you will hardly want to hear from frank and myself," said his wife, smiling. "the more the better. i suspect i shall find letters more welcome than anything else. you must also send me papers regularly. i shall have many hours that will pass heavily unless i have something to read." "i'll mail you harper's weekly regularly, shall i, father?" asked frank. "yes, i shall be glad enough to see it. then, there is one good thing about papers--after enjoying them myself, i can pass them round to others. there are many privations that i must make up my mind to, but i shall endeavor to make camp-life as pleasant as possible to myself and others." "i wish you were going out as an officer," said mrs. frost. "you would have more indulgences." "very probably i should. but i don't feel inclined to wish myself better off than others. i am: willing to serve my country in any capacity in which i can be of use. thank heaven, i am pretty strong and healthy, and better fitted than many to encounter the fatigues and exposures which are the lot of the private." "how early must you start to-morrow, father?" inquired frank. "by daylight. i must be in boston by nine o'clock, and you know it is a five-mile ride to the depot. i shall want you to carry me over." "will there be room for me?" asked mrs. frost. "i want to see the last of you." "i hope you won't do that for a long time to come," said mr. frost, smiling. "you know what i mean, henry." "oh, yes, there will be room. at any rate, we will make room for you. and now it seems to me it is time for these little folks to go to bed. charlie finds it hard work to keep his eyes open." "oh, papa, papa, not yet, not yet," pleaded the children; and with the thought that it might be many a long day before he saw their sweet young faces again, the father suffered them to have their way. after the children had gone to bed frank and his father and mother sat up for a long time. each felt that there was much to be said, but no one of them felt like saying much then. thoughts of the approaching separation swallowed up all others. the thought kept recurring that to-morrow would see them many miles apart, and that many a long to-morrow must pass before they would again be gathered around the fire. "frank," said his father, at length, "i have deposited in the brandon bank four hundred dollars, about half of which i have realized from crops sold this season. this you will draw upon as you have need, for grocery bills, to pay jacob, etc. for present purposes i will hand you fifty dollars, which i advise you to put under your mother's care." as he finished speaking, mr. frost drew from his pocketbook a roll of bills and handed them to frank. frank opened his portemonnaie and deposited the money therein. he had never before so large a sum of money in his possession, and although he knew it was not to be spent for his own benefit--at least, no considerable part of it--he felt a sense of importance and even wealth in being the custodian of so much money. he felt that his father had confidence in him, and that he was in truth going to be his representative. "a part of the money which i have in the bank," continued his father, "has been saved up toward the payment of the mortgage on the farm." "when does it come due, father?" "on the first of july of next year." "but you won't be prepared to meet it at that time?" "no, but undoubtedly squire haynes will be willing to renew it. i always pay the interest promptly, and he knows it is secured by the farm, and therefore a safe investment. by the way, i had nearly forgotten to say that there will be some interest due on the first of january. of course, you are authorized to pay it just as if you were myself." "how much will it be?" "twenty-four dollars--that is, six months' interest at six per cent. on eight hundred dollars." "i wish the farm were free from encumbrance," said frank. "so do i; and if providence favors me it shall be before many years are past. but in farming one can't expect to lay by money quite as fast as in some other employments." the old clock in the corner here struck eleven. "we mustn't keep you up too late the last night, henry," said mrs. frost. "you will need a good night's sleep to carry you through to-morrow." neither of the three closed their eyes early that night. thoughts of the morrow were naturally in their minds. at last all was still. sleep--god's beneficent messenger--wrapped their senses in oblivion, and the cares and anxieties of the morrow were for a time forgotten. chapter x. little pomp there was a hurried good-by at the depot. "kiss the children for me, mary," said her husband. "you will write very soon?" pleaded mrs. frost. "at the very first opportunity." "all aboard!" shouted the conductor. with a shrill scream the locomotive started. frank and his mother stood on the platform watching the receding train till it was quite out of sight, and then in silence our young hero assisted his mother into the carryall and turned the horse's head homeward. it was one of those quiet october mornings, when the air is soft and balmy as if a june day had found its way by mistake into the heart of autumn. the road wound partly through the woods. the leaves were still green and abundant. only one or two showed signs of the coming change, which in the course of a few weeks must leave them bare and leafless. "what a beautiful day!" said frank, speaking the words almost unconsciously. "beautiful indeed!" responded his mother. "on such a day as this the world seems too lovely for war and warlike passions to be permitted to enter it. when men might be so happy, why need they stain their hands with each other's blood?" frank was unprepared for an answer. he knew that it was his father's departure which led his mother to speak thus. he wished to divert her mind, if possible. circumstances favored his design. they had accomplished perhaps three-quarters of the distance home when, as they were passing a small one-story building by the roadside, a shriek of pain was heard, and a little black boy came running out of the house, screaming in affright: "mammy's done killed herself. she's mos' dead!" he ran out to the road and looked up at mrs. frost, as if to implore assistance. "that's chloe's child," said mrs. frost. "stop the horse, frank; i'll get out and see what has happened." chloe, as frank very well knew, was a colored woman, who until a few months since had been a slave in virginia. finally she had seized a favorable opportunity, and taking the only child which the cruel slave system had left her, for the rest had been sold south, succeeded in making her way into pennsylvania. chance had directed her to rossville, where she had been permitted to occupy, rent free, an old shanty which for some years previous had been uninhabited. here she had supported herself by taking in washing and ironing. this had been her special work on the plantation where she had been born and brought up, and she was therefore quite proficient in it. she found no difficulty in obtaining work enough to satisfy the moderate wants of herself and little pomp. the latter was a bright little fellow, as black as the ace of spades, and possessing to the full the mercurial temperament of the southern negro. full of fun and drollery, he attracted plenty of attention when he came into the village, and earned many a penny from the boys by his plantation songs and dances. now, however, he appeared in a mood entirely different, and it was easy to see that he was much frightened. "what's the matter, pomp?" asked frank, as he brought his horse to a standstill. "mammy done killed herself," he repeated, wringing his hands in terror. a moan from the interior of the house seemed to make it clear that something had happened. mrs. frost pushed the door open and entered. chloe had sunk down on the floor and was rocking back and forth, holding her right foot in both hands, with an expression of acute pain on her sable face. beside her was a small pail, bottom upward. mrs. frost was at no loss to conjecture the nature of the accident which had befallen her. the pail had contained hot water, and its accidental overturn had scalded poor chloe. "are you much hurt, chloe?" asked mrs. frost sympathizingly. "oh, missus, i's most dead," was the reply, accompanied by a groan. " 'spect i sha'n't live till mornin'. dunno what'll become of poor pomp when i'se gone." little pomp squeezed his knuckles into his eyes and responded with an unearthly howl. "don't be too much frightened, chloe," said mrs. frost soothingly. "you'll get over it sooner than you think. how did the pail happen to turn over?" "must have been de debbel, missus. i was kerryin' it just as keerful, when all at once it upsot." this explanation, though not very luminous to her visitor, appeared to excite a fierce spirit of resentment against the pail in the mind of little pomp. he suddenly rushed forward impetuously and kicked the pail with all the force he could muster. but, alas for poor pomp! his feet were unprotected by shoes, and the sudden blow hurt him much more than the pail. the consequence was a howl of the most distressing nature. frank had started forward to rescue pomp from the consequences of his precipitancy, but too late. he picked up the little fellow and, carrying him out, strove to soothe him. meanwhile, mrs. frost examined chloe's injuries. they were not so great as she had anticipated. she learned on inquiry that the water had not been scalding hot. there was little doubt that with proper care she would recover from her injuries in a week or ten days. but in the meantime it would not do to use the foot. "what shall i do, missus?" groaned chloe. "i ain't got nothin' baked up. 'pears like me and pomp must starve." "not so bad as that, chloe," said mrs. frost, with a reassuring smile. "after we have you on the bed we will take pomp home with us, and give him enough food to last you both a couple of days. at the end of that time, or sooner, if you get out, you can send him up again." chloe expressed her gratitude warmly, and mrs. frost, calling in frank's assistance, helped the poor woman to a comfortable position on the bed, which fortunately was in the corner of the same room. had it been upstairs, the removal would have been attended with considerable difficulty as well as pain to chloe. pomp, the acuteness of whose pain had subsided, looked on with wondering eyes while frank and mrs. frost "toted" his mother onto the bed, as he expressed it. chloe accepted, with wondering gratitude, the personal attentions of mrs. frost, who bound up the injured foot with a softness of touch which brought no pain to the sufferer. "you ain't too proud, missus, to tend to a poor black woman," she said. "down souf dey used to tell us dat everybody looked down on de poor nigger and lef' 'em to starve an' die if dey grow sick." "they told you a great many things that were not true, chloe," said mrs. frost quietly. "the color of the skin ought to make no difference where we have it in our power to render kind offices." "do you believe niggers go to de same heaven wid w'ite folks, missus?" asked chloe, after a pause. "why should they not? they were made by the same god." "i dunno, missus," said chloe. "i hopes you is right." "do you think you can spare pomp a little while to go home with us?" "yes, missus. here you, pomp," she called, "you go home wid dis good lady, and she'll gib you something for your poor sick mudder. do you hear?" "i'se goin' to ride?" said pomp inquiringly. "yes," said frank good-naturedly. "hi, hi, dat's prime!" ejaculated pomp, turning a somersault in his joy. "scramble in, then, and we'll start." pomp needed no second invitation. he jumped into the carriage, and was more leisurely followed by frank and his mother. it was probably the first time that pomp had ever been in a covered carriage, and consequently the novelty of his situation put him in high spirits. he was anxious to drive, and frank, to gratify him, placed the reins in his hands. his eyes sparkling with delight, and his expanded mouth showing a full set of ivories, pomp shook the reins in glee, shouting out, "hi, go along there, you ol' debble!" "pomp, you mustn't use that word," said mrs. frost reprovingly. "what word, missus?" demanded pomp innocently. "the last word you used," she answered. "don't 'member what word you mean, missus," said pomp. "hi, you debble!" "that's the word?" "not say 'debble'?" said pomp wonderingly. "why not, missus?" "it isn't a good word." "mammy says 'debble.' she calls me little debble when i run away, and don't tote in de wood." "i shall tell her not to use it. it isn't a good word for anybody to use." "hope you'll tell her so, missus," said pomp, grinning and showing his teeth. "wheneber she calls me little debble she pulls off her shoe and hits me. hurts like de debble. mebbe she won't hit me if you tell her not to say 'debble.' " mrs. frost could hardly forbear laughing. she managed, however, to preserve a serious countenance while she said, "you must take care to behave well, and then she won't have to punish you." it is somewhat doubtful whether pomp heard this last remark. he espied a pig walking by the side of the road, and was seized with a desire to run over it. giving the reins a sudden twitch, he brought the carriage round so that it was very near upsetting in a gully. frank snatched the reins in time to prevent this catastrophe. "what did you do that for, pomp?" he said quickly. "wanted to scare de pig," exclaimed pomp, laughing. "wanted to hear him squeal." "and so you nearly tipped us over." "didn't mean to do dat, mass' frank. 'pears like i didn't think." mrs. frost was too much alarmed by this narrow escape to consent to pomp's driving again, and for the moment felt as if she should like to usurp his mother's privilege of spanking him. but the little imp looked so unconscious of having done anything wrong that her vexation soon passed away. in half an hour pomp was on his way back, laden with a basketful of provisions for his sick mother and himself. chapter xi. punishing a bully it was fortunate for mrs. frost that she was so soon called upon to think for others. it gave her less time to grieve over her husband's absence, which was naturally a severe trial to her. as for frank, though the harvest was gathered in, there were plenty of small jobs to occupy his attention. he divided with jacob the care of the cows, and was up betimes in the morning to do his share of the milking. then the pigs and chickens must be fed every day, and this frank took entirely into his own charge. wood, also, must be prepared for the daily wants of the house, and this labor he shared with jacob. in the afternoon, however, frank usually had two or three hours at his own disposal, and this, in accordance with a previous determination, he resolved to devote to keeping up his studies. he did not expect to make the same progress that he would have done if he had been able to continue at school, but it was something to feel that he was not remaining stationary. frank resolved to say nothing to his classmates about his private studies. they would think he was falling far behind, and at some future time he would surprise them. still, there were times when he felt the need of a teacher. he would occasionally encounter difficulties which he found himself unable to surmount without assistance. at such times he thought of mr rathburn's kind offer. but his old teacher lived nearly a mile distant, and he felt averse to troubling him, knowing that his duties in school were arduous. occasionally he met some of his schoolmates. as nearly all of them were friendly and well-disposed to him, this gave him pleasure, and brought back sometimes the wish that he was as free as they. but this wish was almost instantly checked by the thought that he had made a sacrifice for his country's sake. a few days after the incident narrated in the last chapter, frank was out in the woods not far from chloe's cottage, collecting brushwood, to be afterward carried home, when his attention was called to an altercation, one of the parties in which he readily recognized as little pomp. to explain how it came about, we shall have to go back a little. pomp was returning from mrs. frost's, swinging a tin kettle containing provisions for his mother and himself, when all at once he met john haynes, who was coming from the opposite direction. now, john was something of a bully, and liked to exercise authority over the boys who were small enough to render the attempt a safe one. on the present occasion he felt in a hectoring mood. "i'll have some fun out of the little nigger," he said to himself, as he espied pomp. pomp approached, swinging his pail as before, and whistling a plantation melody. "what have you got there, pomp?" asked john. "i'se got a pail," said pomp independently. "don't yer know a pail when you see him?" "i know an impudent little nigger when i see him," retorted john, not overpleased with the answer. "come here directly, and let me see what you've got in your pail." "i ain't got noffin for you," said pomp defiantly. "we'll see about that," said john. "now, do you mean to come here or not? i'm going to count three, and i'll give you that time to decide. one--two--three!" pomp apparently had no intention of complying with john's request. he had halted about three rods from him, and stood swinging his pail, meanwhile watching john warily. "i see you want me to come after you," said john angrily. he ran toward pomp, but the little contraband dodged him adroitly, and got on the other side of a tree. opposition only stimulated john to new efforts. he had become excited in the pursuit, and had made up his mind to capture pomp, who dodged in and out among the trees with such quickness and dexterity that john was foiled for a considerable time. the ardor of his pursuit and its unexpected difficulty excited his anger. he lost sight of the fact that pomp was under no obligation to comply with his demand. but this is generally the way with tyrants, who are seldom careful to keep within the bounds of justice and reason. "just let me catch you, you little rascal, and i will give you the worst licking you ever had," john exclaimed, with passion. "wait till you catch me," returned pomp, slipping, eel-like, from his grasp. but pomp, in dodging, had now come to an open space, where he was at a disadvantage. john was close upon him, when suddenly he stood stock-still, bending his back so as to obtain a firm footing. the consequence was that his too ardent pursuer tumbled over him, and stretched his length upon the ground. unfortunately for pomp, john grasped his leg in falling, and held it by so firm a grip that he was unable to get free. in the moment of his downfall john attained his object. "now i've got you," he said, white with passion, "and i'm going to teach you a lesson." clinging to pomp with one hand, he drew a stout string from his pocket with the other, and secured the hands of the little contraband, notwithstanding his efforts to escape. "le' me go, you debble," he said, using a word which had grown familiar to him on the plantation. there was a cruel light in john's eyes which augured little good to poor pomp. suddenly, as if a new idea had struck him, he loosened the cord, and taking the boy carried him, in spite of his kicking and screaming, to a small tree, around which he clasped his hands, which he again confined with cords. he then sought out a stout stick, and divested it of twigs. pomp watched his preparations with terror. too well he knew what they meant. more than once he had seen those of his own color whipped on the plantation. unconsciously, he glided into the language which he would have used there. "don't whip me, massa john," he whimpered in terror. "for the lub of heaven, lef me be. i ain't done noffin' to you." "you'd better have thought of that before," said john, his eyes blazing anew with vengeful light. "if i whip you, you little black rascal, it's only because you richly deserve it." "i'll nebber do so again," pleaded pomp, rolling his eyes in terror. though what it was he promised not to do the poor little fellow would have found it hard to tell. it would have been as easy to soften the heart of a nether millstone as that of john haynes. by the time he had completed his preparations, and whirled his stick in the air preparatory to bringing it down with full force on pomp's back, rapid steps were heard, and a voice asked, "what are you doing there, john haynes?" john looked round, and saw standing near him frank frost, whose attention had been excited by what he had heard of pomp's cries. "save me, save me, mass' frank," pleaded poor little pomp. "what has he tied you up there for, pomp?" "it's none of your business, frank frost," said john passionately. "i think it's some of my business," said frank coolly, "when i find you playing the part of a southern overseer. you are not in richmond, john haynes, and you'll get into trouble if you undertake to act as if you were." "if you say much more, i'll flog you too!" screamed john, beside himself with excitement and rage. frank had not a particle of cowardice in his composition. he was not fond of fighting, but he felt that circumstances made it necessary for him to do so now. he did not easily lose his temper, and this at present gave him the advantage over john. "you are too excited to know what you are talking about," he said coolly. "pomp, why has he tied you up?" pomp explained that john had tried to get his pail from him. he closed by imploring "mass' frank" to prevent john from whipping him. "he shall not whip you, pomp," said frank quietly. as he spoke he stepped to the tree and faced john intrepidly. john, in a moment of less passion, would not have ventured to attack a boy so near his own size. like all bullies, he was essentially a coward, but now his rage got the better of his prudence. "i'll flog you both!" he exclaimed hoarsely, and sprang forward with upraised stick. frank was about half a head shorter than john, and was more than a year younger, but he was stout and compactly built; besides, he was cool and collected, and this is always an advantage. before john realized what had happened, his stick had flown from his hand, and he was forcibly pushed back, so that he narrowly escaped falling to the ground. "gib it to him, mass' frank!" shouted little pomp. "gib it to him!" this increased john's exasperation. by this time he was almost foaming at the mouth. "i'll kill you, frank frost," he exclaimed, this time rushing at him without a stick. frank had been in the habit of wrestling for sport with the boys of his own size. in this way he had acquired a certain amount of dexterity in "tripping up." john, on the contrary, was unpractised. his quick temper was so easily roused that other boys had declined engaging in friendly contests with him, knowing that in most cases they would degenerate into a fight. john rushed forward, and attempted to throw frank by the strength of his arms alone. frank eluded his grasp, and, getting one of his legs around john's, with a quick movement tripped him up. he fell heavily upon his back. "this is all foolish, john," said frank, bending over his fallen foe. "what are you fighting for? the privilege of savagely whipping a poor little fellow less than half your age?" "i care more about whipping you, a cursed sight!" said john, taking advantage of frank's withdrawing his pressure to spring to his feet. "you first, and him afterward!" again he threw himself upon frank; but again coolness and practice prevailed against blind fury and untaught strength, and again he lay prostrate. by this time pomp had freed himself from the string that fettered his wrists, and danced in glee round john haynes, in whose discomfiture he felt great delight. "you'd better pick up your pail and run home," said frank. he was generously desirous of saving john from further humiliation. "will you go away quietly if i will let you up, john?" he asked. "no, d----you!" returned john, writhing, his face almost livid with passion. "i am sorry," said frank, "for in that case i must continue to hold you down." "what is the trouble, boys?" came from an unexpected quarter. it was mr. maynard, who, chancing to pass along the road, had been attracted by the noise of the struggle. frank explained in a few words. "let him up, frank," said the old man. "i'll see that he does no further harm." john rose to his feet, and looked scowlingly from one to the other, as if undecided whether he had not better attack both. "you've disgraced yourself, john haynes," said the old farmer scornfully. "so you would turn negro-whipper, would you? your talents are misapplied here at the north. brutality isn't respectable here, my lad. you'd better find your way within the rebel lines, and then perhaps you can gratify your propensity for whipping the helpless." "some day i'll be revenged on you for this," said john, turning wrathfully upon frank. "perhaps you think i don't mean it, but the day will come when you'll remember what i say." "i wish you no harm, john," said frank composedly, "but i sha'n't stand by and see you beat a boy like pomp." "no," said the farmer sternly; "and if ever i hear of your doing it, i'll horsewhip you till you beg for mercy. now go home, and carry your disgrace with you." mr. maynard spoke contemptuously, but with decision, and pointed up the road. with smothered wrath john obeyed his order, because he saw that it would not be safe to refuse. "i'll come up with him yet," he muttered to himself, as he walked quietly toward home. "if he doesn't rue this day, my name isn't john haynes." john did not see fit to make known the circumstances of his quarrel with frank, feeling, justly, that neither his design nor the result would reflect any credit upon himself. but his wrath was none the less deep because he brooded over it in secret. he would have renewed his attempt upon pomp, but there was something in mr. maynard's eye which assured him that his threat would be carried out. frank, solicitous for the little fellow's safety, kept vigilant watch over him for some days, but no violence was attempted. he hoped john had forgotten his threats. chapter xii. a letter from the camp the little family at the frost farm looked forward with anxious eagerness to the first letter from the absent father. ten days had elapsed when frank was seen hurrying up the road with something in his hand. alice saw him first, and ran in, exclaiming, "mother, i do believe frank has got a letter from father. he is running up the road." mrs. frost at once dropped her work, no less interested than her daughter, and was at the door just as frank, flushed with running, reached the gate. "what'll you give me for a letter?" he asked triumphantly. "give it to me quick," said mrs. frost. "i am anxious to learn whether your father is well." "i guess he is, or he wouldn't have written such a long letter." "how do you know it's long?" asked alice. "you haven't read it." "i judge from the weight. there are two stamps on the envelope. i was tempted to open it, but, being directed to mother, i didn't venture." mrs. frost sat down, and the children gathered round her, while she read the following letter: "camp--------, virginia. "dear mary: when i look about me, and consider the novelty and strangeness of my surroundings, i can hardly realize that it is only a week since i sat in our quiet sitting-room at the farm, with you and our own dear ones around me. i will try to help your imagination to a picture of my present home. "but first let me speak of my journey hither. "it was tedious enough, traveling all day by rail. of course, little liberty was allowed us. military discipline is rigid, and must be maintained. of its necessity we had a convincing proof at a small station between hartford and new haven. one of our number, who, i accidentally learned, is a canadian, and had only been tempted to enlist by the bounty, selected a seat by the door of the car. i had noticed for some time that he looked nervous and restless, as if he had something on his mind. "at one of our stopping-places--a small, obscure station--he crept out of the door, and, as he thought, unobserved, dodged behind a shed, thinking, no doubt, that the train would go off without him. but an officer had his eye upon him, and a minute afterward he was ignominiously brought back and put under guard. i am glad to say that his case inspired no sympathy. to enlist, obtain a bounty, and then attempt to evade the service for which the bounty was given, is despicable in the extreme. i am glad to know that no others of our company had the least desire to follow this man's example. "we passed through new york, philadelphia, and washington, but i can give you little idea of either of these cities. the time we passed in each was mostly during the hours of darkness, when there was little opportunity of seeing anything. "in washington i was fortunate enough to see our worthy president. we were marching down pennsylvania avenue at the time. on the opposite side of the street we descried a very tall man, of slender figure, walking thoughtfully along, not appearing to notice what was passing around him. "the officer in command turned and said: 'boys, look sharp. that is abraham lincoln, across the way.' "of course, we all looked eagerly toward the man of whom we had heard so much. "i could not help thinking how great a responsibility rests upon this man--to how great an extent the welfare and destinies of our beloved country depend upon his patriotic course. "as i noticed his features, which, plain as they are, bear the unmistakable marks of a shrewd benevolence, and evince also, as i think, acute and original powers of mind, i felt reassured. i could not help saying to myself: 'this man is at least honest, and if he does not carry us in safety through this tremendous crisis, it will not be for the lack of an honest determination to do his duty.' "and now let me attempt to give you a picture of our present situation, with some account of the way we live. "our camp may appropriately be called 'hut village.' imagine several avenues lined with square log huts, surmounted by tent-coverings. the logs are placed transversely, and are clipped at the ends, so as to fit each other more compactly. in this way the interstices are made much narrower than they would otherwise be. these, moreover, are filled in with mud, which, as you have probably heard, is a staple production of virginia. this is a good protection against the cold, though it does not give our dwellings a very elegant appearance. "around most of our huts shallow trenches are dug, to carry off the water, thus diminishing the dampness. most of the huts are not floored, but mine, fortunately, is an exception to the general rule. my comrades succeeded in obtaining some boards somewhere, and we are a little in advance of our neighbors in this respect. "six of us are lodged in a tent. it is pretty close packing, but we don't stand upon ceremony here. my messmates seem to be pleasant fellows. i have been most attracted to frank grover; a bright young fellow of eighteen. he tells me that he is an only son, and his mother is a widow. " 'wasn't your mother unwilling to have you come out here?' i asked him one day. " 'no,' he answered, 'not unwilling. she was only sorry for the necessity. when i told her that i felt it to be my duty, she told me at once to go. she said she would never stand between me and my country.' " 'you must think of her often,' i said. " 'all the time,' he answered seriously, a thoughtful expression stealing over his young face. 'i write to her twice a week regular, and sometimes oftener. for her sake i hope my life may be spared to return.' " 'i hope so, too,' i answered warmly. then after a minute's silence, i added from some impulse: 'will you let me call you frank? i have a boy at home, not many years younger than you. his name is frank also--it will seem to remind me of him.' " 'i wish you would,' he answered, his face lighting up with evident pleasure. 'everybody calls me frank at home, and i am tired of being called grover.' "so our compact was made. i shall feel a warm interest in this brave boy, and i fervently hope that the chances of war will leave him unscathed. "i must give you a description of hiram marden, another of our small company, a very different kind of person from frank grover. but it takes all sorts of characters to make an army, as well as a world, and marden is one of the oddities. imagine a tall young fellow, with a thin face, lantern jaws, and long hair 'slicked' down on either side. though he may be patriotic, he was led into the army from a different cause. he cherished an attachment for a village beauty, who did not return his love. he makes no concealment of his rebuff, but appears to enjoy discoursing in a sentimental way upon his disappointment. he wears such an air of meek resignation when he speaks of his cruel fair one that the effect is quite irresistible, and i find it difficult to accord him that sympathy which his unhappy fate demands. fortunately for him, his troubles, deep-seated as they are, appear to have very little effect upon his appetite. he sits down to his rations with a look of subdued sorrow upon his face, and sighs frequently between the mouthfuls. in spite of this, however, he seldom leaves anything upon his tin plate, which speaks well for his appetite, since uncle sam is a generous provider, and few of us do full justice to our allowance. "you may wonder how i enjoy soldier's fare. i certainly do long sometimes for the good pumpkin and apple pies which i used to have at home, and confess that a little apple sauce would make my hardtack a little more savory. i begin to appreciate your good qualities as a housekeeper, mary, more than ever. pies can be got of the sutler, but they are such poor things that i would rather do without than eat them, and i am quite sure they would try my digestion sorely. "there is one very homely esculent which we crave in the camp--i mean the onion. it is an excellent preventive of scurvy, a disease to which our mode of living particularly exposes us. we eat as many as we can get, and should be glad of more. tell frank he may plant a whole acre of them. they will require considerable care, but even in a pecuniary way they will pay. the price has considerably advanced since the war began, on account of the large army demand, and will doubtless increase more. "as to our military exercises, drill, etc., we have enough to occupy our time well. i see the advantage of enlisting in a veteran regiment. i find myself improving very rapidly. besides my public company drill, i am getting my young comrade, frank grover, who has been in the service six months, to give me some private lessons. with the help of these, i hope to pass muster creditably before my first month is out. "and now, my dear mary, i must draw my letter to a close. in the army we are obliged to write under difficulties. i am writing this on my knapsack for a desk, and that is not quite so easy as a table. the constrained position in which i am forced to sit has tired me, and i think i will go out and 'limber' myself a little. frank, who has just finished a letter to his mother, will no doubt join me. two of my comrades are sitting close by, playing euchre. when i joined them i found they were in the habit of playing for small stakes, but i have succeeded in inducing them to give up a practice which might not unlikely lead to bad results. "in closing, i need not tell you how much and how often i think of you all. i have never before been separated from you, and there are times when my longing to be with you again is very strong. you must make up for your absence by frequent and long letters. tell me all that is going on. even trifles will serve to amuse us here. "tell frank to send me harper's weekly regularly. two or three times a week i should like to have a daily paper forwarded. every newspaper that finds its way into camp goes the rounds, and its contents are eagerly devoured. "i will write you again very soon. the letters i write and receive from home will be one of my principal sources of pleasure. god bless you all, is the prayer of your affectionate husband and father, "henry frost." it is hardly necessary to say that this letter was read with eager interest. that evening all the children, including little charlie, were busy writing letters to the absent father. i have not room to print them all, but as this was charlie's first epistolary effort, it may interest some of my youthful readers to see it. the mistakes in spelling will be excused on the score of charlie's literary inexperience. this is the way it commenced: "deer farther: i am sorry you hav to live in a log hous stuck up with mud. i shud think the mud wood cum off on your close. i am wel and so is maggie. frank is agoin to make me a sled--a real good one. i shal cal it the egle. i hope we shal soon hav sum sno. it will be my berth day next week. i shal be seven years old. i hope you cum back soon. good nite. "from charlie." charlie was so proud of his letter that he insisted on having it enclosed in a separate envelope and mailed by itself--a request which was complied with by his mother. chapter xiii. mischief on foot as may be supposed, john haynes was deeply incensed with frank frost for the manner in which he had foiled him in his attack upon pomp. he felt that in this whole matter he had appeared by no means to advantage. after all his boasting, he had been defeated by a boy younger and smaller than himself. the old grudge which he had against frank for the success gained over him at school increased and added poignancy to his mortification. he felt that he should never be satisfied until he had "come up" with frank in some way. the prospect of seeing him ejected from the farm was pleasant, but it was too far off. john did not feel like waiting so long for the gratification of his revengeful feelings. he resolved in the meantime to devise some method of injuring or annoying frank. he could not at once think of anything feasible. several schemes flitted across his mind, but all were open to some objection. john did not care to attempt anything which would expose him, if discovered, to a legal punishment. i am afraid this weighed more with him than the wrong or injustice of his schemes. at last it occurred to him that mr. frost kept a couple of pigs. to let them out secretly at night would be annoying to frank, as they would probably stray quite a distance, and thus a tedious pursuit would be made necessary. perhaps they might never be found, in which case john felt that he should not grieve much. upon this scheme john finally settled as the one promising the most amusement to himself and annoyance to his enemy, as he chose to regard frank. he felt quite averse, however, to doing the work himself. in the first place, it must be done by night, and he could not absent himself from the house at a late hour without his father's knowledge. again, he knew there was a risk of being caught, and it would not sound very well if noised abroad that the son of squire haynes had gone out by night and let loose a neighbor's pigs. he cast about in his mind for a confederate, and after awhile settled upon a boy named dick bumstead. this dick had the reputation of being a scape-grace and a ne'er-do-well. he was about the age of john haynes, but had not attended school for a couple of years, and, less from want of natural capacity than from indolence, knew scarcely more than a boy of ten. his father was a shoemaker, and had felt obliged to keep his son at home to assist him in the shop. he did not prove a very efficient assistant, however, being inclined to shirk duty whenever he could. it was upon this boy that john haynes fixed as most likely to help him in his plot. on his way home from school the next afternoon, he noticed dick loitering along a little in advance. "hold on, dick," he called out, in a friendly voice, at the same time quickening his pace. dick turned in some surprise, for john haynes had a foolish pride, which had hitherto kept him very distant toward those whom he regarded as standing lower than himself in the social scale. "how are you, john?" he responded, putting up the knife with which he had been whittling. "all right. what are you up to nowadays?" "working in the shop," said dick, shrugging his shoulders. "i wish people didn't wear shoes, for my part. i've helped make my share. pegging isn't a very interesting operation." "no," said john, with remarkable affability. "i shouldn't think there'd be much fun in it." "fun! i guess not. for my part, i'd be willing to go barefoot, if other people would, for the sake of getting rid of pegging." "i suppose you have some time to yourself, though, don't you?" "precious little. i ought to be in the shop now. father sent me down to the store for some awls, and he'll be fretting because i don't get back. i broke my awl on purpose," said dick, laughing, "so as to get a chance to run out a little while." "i suppose your father gives you some of the money that you earn, doesn't he?' inquired john. "a few cents now and then; that's all. he says everything is so high nowadays that it takes all we can both of us earn to buy food and clothes. so if a fellow wants a few cents now and then to buy a cigar, he can't have 'em." john was glad to hear this. he felt that he could the more readily induce dick to assist him in his plans. "dick!" he said abruptly, looking round to see that no one was within hearing-distance, "wouldn't you like to earn a two-dollar bill?" "for myself?" inquired dick. "certainly." "is there much work in it?" asked indolent dick cautiously. "no, and what little there is will be fun." "then i'm in for it. that is, i think i am. what is it?" "you'll promise not to tell?" said john. "honor bright." "it's only a little practical joke that i want to play upon one of the boys " "on who?" asked dick, unmindful of his grammar. "on frank frost." "frank's a pretty good fellow. it isn't going to hurt him any, is it?" "oh, no, of course not." "because i wouldn't want to do that. he's always treated me well." "of course he has. it's only a little joke, you know." "oh, well, if it's a joke, just count me in. fire away, and let me know what you want done." "you know that frank, or his father, keeps pigs?" "yes." "i want you to go some night--the sooner the better--and let them out, so that when morning comes the pigs will be minus, and master frank will have a fine chase after them." "seems to me," said dick, "that won't be much of a joke." "then i guess you never saw a pig-chase. pigs are so contrary that if you want them to go in one direction they are sure to go in another. the way they gallop over the ground, with their little tails wriggling behind them, is a caution." "but it would be a great trouble to frank to get them back." "oh, well, you could help him, and so get still more fun out of it, he not knowing, of course, that you had anything to do with letting them out." "and that would take me out of the shop for a couple of hours," said dick, brightening at the thought. "of course," said john; "so you would get a double advantage. come, what do you say?" "well, i don't know," said dick, wavering. "you'd pay me the money down on the nail, wouldn't you?" "yes," said john. "i'll show you the bill now." he took from his pocketbook a two-dollar greenback, and displayed it to dick. "you could buy cigars enough with this to last you some time," he said insinuatingly. "so i could. i declare, i've a good mind to take up your offer." "you'd better. it's a good one." "but why don't you do it yourself?" asked dick, with sudden wonder. "because father's very strict," said john glibly, "and if i should leave the house at night, he'd be sure to find it out." "that's where i have the advantage. i sleep downstairs, and can easily slip out of the window, without anybody's being the wiser." "just the thing. then you agree?" "yes, i might as well. are you particular about the night?" "no, take your choice about that. only the sooner the better." the two boys separated, john feeling quite elated with his success. chapter xiv. a raid upon the pig-pen the more dick thought of the enterprise which he had undertaken, the more he disliked it. he relished fun as much as any one, but he could not conceal from himself that he would be subjecting frank to a great deal of trouble and annoyance. as he had told john, frank had always treated him well, and this thought made the scheme disagreeable to him. still, john had promised him two dollars for his co-operation, and this, in his circumstances, was an important consideration. unfortunately, dick had contracted a fondness for smoking--a habit which his scanty supply of pocket-money rarely enabled him to indulge. this windfall would keep him in cigars for some time. it was this reflection which finally turned the wavering scale of dick's irresolution, and determined him to embrace john's offer. the moon was now at the full, and the nights were bright and beautiful. dick decided that it would be best to defer the accomplishment of his purpose till later in the month, when darker nights would serve as a screen, and render detection more difficult. by and by a night came which he thought suitable. a few stars were out, but they gave only a faint glimmer of light, not more than was necessary. dick went to bed at nine o'clock, as usual. by an effort he succeeded in keeping awake, feeling that if he once yielded to drowsiness, he should probably sleep on till morning. at half-past nine all in the house were abed. it was not till eleven, however, that dick felt it safe to leave the house. he dressed himself expeditiously and in silence, occasionally listening to see if he could detect any sound in the room above, where his parents slept. finally he raised the window softly, and jumped out. he crept out to the road, and swiftly bent his steps toward mr. frost's house. as this was not more than a third of a mile distant, a very few minutes sufficed to bring him to his destination. dick's feelings were not the most comfortable. though he repeatedly assured himself that it was only fun he was engaged in, he felt very much like a burglar about to enter a house. arrived before the farmhouse, he looked cautiously up to the windows, but could see no light burning. "the coast is clear," he thought. "i wish it were all over, and i were on my way home." dick had not reconnoitered thoroughly. there was a light burning in a window at the other end of the house. the pig-pen was a small, rough, unpainted building, with a yard opening from it. around the yard was a stone wall, which prevented the pigs from making their escape. they were now, as dick could with difficulty see, stretched out upon the floor of the pen, asleep. dick proceeded to remove a portion of the stones forming the wall. it was not very easy or agreeable work, the stones being large and heavy. at length he effected a gap which he thought would be large enough for the pigs to pass through. he next considered whether it would be better to disturb the slumbers of the pigs by poking them with a hoe, or wait and let them find out the avenue of escape in the morning. he finally decided to stir them up. he accordingly went round to the door and, seizing a hoe, commenced punching one of the pigs vigorously. the pig whose slumbers were thus rudely disturbed awoke with a loud grunt, and probably would have looked astonished and indignant if nature had given him the power of expressing such emotions. "get out, there, you lazy beast," exclaimed dick. the pig, as was perhaps only natural under the circumstances, seemed reluctant to get up, and was by no means backward in grunting his discontent. dick was earnestly engaged in overcoming his repugnance to locomotion, when he was startled by hearing the door of the building, which he had carefully closed, open slowly. looking up hastily, the hoe still in his hand, his dismayed glance fell upon frank frost, entering with a lantern. a half-exclamation of surprise and dismay escaped him. this called the attention of frank, who till that moment was unsuspicious of dick's presence. "dick bumstead!" he exclaimed, as soon as he recognized the intruder. "what brings you here at this time of night?" "a mean errand, frank," returned dick, with a wholesome feeling of shame. he had made up his mind to a confession. "you didn't come here to--to----" here frank stopped short. "no, not to steal. i ain't quite so mean as that comes to. i come to let out your pigs, so that in the morning you would have a long chase after them." "but what could put such a thing into your head, dick?" asked frank, in great surprise. "i thought it would be a good joke." "it wouldn't have been much of a joke to me," said frank. "no; and to tell the truth it wouldn't have been to me. the fact is, and i don't mind telling it, that i should never have thought of such a thing if somebody else hadn't put it into my head." "somebody else?" "yes; i'd a little rather not tell who that somebody is, for i don't believe he would like to have you know." "why didn't he come himself?" asked frank. "it seems to me he's been making a catspaw of you." "a catspaw?" "yes, haven't you read the story? a monkey wanted to draw some chestnuts out of the hot ashes, but, feeling a decided objection to burning his own paws in the operation, drew a cat to the fire and thrust her paw in." "i don't know but it's been so in my case," said dick. "i didn't want to do it, and that's a fact. i felt as mean as could be when i first came into your yard to-night. but he offered me two dollars to do it, and it's so seldom i see money that it tempted me." frank looked puzzled. "i don't see," he said thoughtfully, "how anybody should think it worth while to pay two dollars for such a piece of mischief." "perhaps he don't like you, and wanted to plague you," suggested dick. the thought at once flashed upon frank that john haynes must be implicated. he was the only boy who was likely to have two dollars to invest in this way, and the suggestion offered by dick of personal enmity was sufficient to supply a motive for his action. "i believe i know who it is, now, dick," he said quietly. "however, i won't ask you to tell me. there is one boy in the village who thinks he has cause of complaint against me, though i have never intentionally injured him." "what shall you do about it, frank?" asked dick, a little awkwardly, for he did not want his own agency made public. "nothing," answered frank. "i would rather take no notice of it." "at any rate, i hope you won't think hard of me," said dick. "you have always treated me well, and i didn't want to trouble you. but the money tempted me. i meant to buy cigars with it." "you don't smoke, dick?" "yes, when i get a chance." "i wouldn't if i were you. it isn't good for boys like you and me. it is an expensive habit, and injurious, too." "i don't know but you are right, frank," said dick candidly. "i know i am. you can leave off now, dick, better than when you are older." at this moment a voice was heard from the house, calling "frank!" "i came out for some herbs," said frank hurriedly. "jacob isn't very well, and mother is going to make him some herb tea. i won't mention that i have seen you." "all right. thank you, frank." a minute later frank went into the house, leaving dick by himself. "now," thought dick, "i must try to remedy the mischief i have done. i'm afraid i've got a job before me." he went round to the gap in the wall, and began to lay it again as well as he could. in lifting the heavy stones he began to realize how much easier it is to make mischief than to repair damages afterward. he pulled and tugged, but it took him a good half-hour, and by that time he felt very tired. "my clothes must be precious dirty," he said to himself. "at any rate, my hands are. i wonder where the pump is. but then it won't do to pump; it'll make too much noise. oh, here's some water in the trough." dick succeeded in getting some of the dirt off his hands, which he dried on his handkerchief. then with a feeling of relief, he took the road toward home. although he may be said to have failed most signally in his design, he felt considerably better than if he had succeeded. "frank's a good fellow," he said to himself. "some boys would have been mad, and made a great fuss. but he didn't seem angry at all, not even with john haynes, and did all he could to screen me. well i'm glad i didn't succeed." dick reached home without any further mischance, and succeeded in crawling in at the window without making any sound loud enough to wake up his parents. the next day john, who had been informed of his intention to make the attempt the evening previous, contrived to meet him. "well, dick," he said eagerly, "what success last night?" "none at all," answered dick. "didn't you try?" "yes." "what prevented your succeeding, then?" "frank came out to get some herbs to make tea for the hired man, and so caught me." "you didn't tell him who put you up to it?" said john apprehensively. "no," said dick coolly; "i don't do such things." "that's good," said john, relieved. "was he mad?" "no, he didn't make any fuss. he asked what made me do it, and i told him somebody else put it into my head." "you did! i thought you said you didn't." "i didn't tell who that somebody was, but frank said he could guess." "he can't prove it," said john hastily. "i don't think he'll try," said dick. "the fact is, john, frank's a good fellow, and if you want to get anybody to do him any mischief hereafter, you'd better not apply to me." "i don't know as he's any better than other boys," said john, sneering. he did not enjoy hearing frank's praises. "he's better than either of us, i'm sure of that," said dick decidedly. "speak for yourself, dick bumstead," said john haughtily. "i wouldn't lower myself by a comparison with him. he's only a laborer, and will grow up a clodhopper." "he's my friend, john haynes," said dick stoutly, "and if you've got anything else to say against him, you'll oblige me by going farther off." john left in high dudgeon. that day, to his father's surprise, dick worked with steady industry, and did not make a single attempt to shirk. chapter xv. pomp behaves badly the village of rossville was distant about five miles from the long line of railway which binds together with iron bands the cities of new york and boston. only when the wind was strongly that way could the monotonous noise of the railway-train be heard, as the iron monster, with its heavy burden, sped swiftly on its way. lately a covered wagon had commenced running twice a day between rossville and the railway-station at wellington. it was started at seven in the morning, in time to meet the early trains, and again at four, in order to receive any passengers who might have left the city in the afternoon. occupying a central position in the village stood the tavern--a two-story building, with a long piazza running along the front. here an extended seat was provided, on which, when the weather was not too inclement, the floating population of the village, who had plenty of leisure, and others when their work was over for the day, liked to congregate, and in neighborly chat discuss the affairs of the village, or the nation, speculating perchance upon the varying phases of the great civil contest, which, though raging hundreds of miles away, came home to the hearts and hearths of quiet rossville and every other village and hamlet in the land. the driver of the carriage which made its daily journeys to and fro from the station had received from his parents the rather uncommon name of ajax, not probably from any supposed resemblance to the ancient grecian hero, of whom it is doubtful whether his worthy progenitor had ever heard. he had been at one time a driver on a horse-car in new york, but had managed to find his way from the busy hum of the city to quiet rossville, where he was just in time for an employment similar to the one he had given up. one day, early in november, a young man of slight figure, apparently not far from twenty-five years of age, descended from the cars at the wellington station and, crossing the track, passed through the small station-house to the rear platform. "can you tell me," he inquired of a bystander, "whether there is any conveyance between this place and rossville?" "yes, sir," was the reply. "that's the regular carriage, and here's the driver. ajax, here's a passenger for you." "i have a trunk on the other side," said the young man, addressing the driver. "if you wild go round with me, we will bring it here." "all right, sir," said ajax, in a businesslike way. the trunk was brought round and placed on the rack behind the wagon. it was a large black trunk, securely bound with brass bands, and showed marks of service, as if it had been considerably used. two small strips of paper pasted on the side bore the custom-house marks of havre and liverpool. on one end was a large card, on which, written in large, bold letters, was the name of the proprietor, henry morton. in five minutes the "express" got under way. the road wound partly through the woods. in some places the boughs, bending over from opposite sides, nearly met. at present the branches were nearly destitute of leaves, and the landscape looked bleak. but in the summer nothing could be more charming. from his seat, beside ajax, henry morton regarded attentively the prominent features of the landscape. his survey was interrupted by a question from the driver. "are you calc'latin' to make a long stay in our village?" inquired ajax, with yankee freedom. "i am not quite certain. it is possible that i may." "there isn't much goin' on in winter." "no, i suppose not." after a few minutes' pause, he inquired, "can you tell me if there is a gentleman living in the village named haynes?" "i expect you mean squire haynes," said ajax. "very probably he goes by that name. he was formerly a lawyer." "yes, that's the man. do you know him?" "i have heard of him," said the young man, non-committally. "then you ain't going to stop there?" an expression of repugnance swept over the young man's face, as he hastily answered in the negative. by this time they had come to a turn in the road. this brought them in view of chloe's cottage. little pomp was on all fours, hunting for nuts among the fallen leaves under the shagbark-tree. under the influence of some freakish impulse, pomp suddenly jumped to his feet and, whirling his arms aloft, uttered a wild whoop. startled by the unexpected apparition, the horses gave a sudden start, and nearly succeeded in overturning the wagon. "massy on us!" exclaimed an old lady on the back seat, suddenly flinging her arms round young morton's neck, in the height of her consternation. "all right, marm," said ajax reassuringly, after a brief but successful conflict with the horses. "we sha'n't go over this time. i should like to give that little black imp a good shaking." "oh, i've lost my ban'box, with my best bunnit," hastily exclaimed the old lady. "le' me get out and find it. it was a present from my darter, cynthy ann, and i wouldn't lose it for a kingdom." in truth, when prompted by her apprehension to cling to the young man in front for protection, mrs. payson had inadvertently dropped the bandbox out of the window, where it met with an unhappy disaster. the horse, quite unconscious of the damage he was doing, had backed the wagon in such a manner that one of the wheels passed directly over it. when ajax picked up the mutilated casket, which, with the jewel it contained, had suffered such irreparable injury, and restored it to its owner, great was the lamentation. rachel weeping for her children could hardly have exhibited more poignant sorrow. "oh, it's sp'ilt!" groaned the old lady. "i can never wear it arter this. and it cost four dollars and sixty-two cents and a half without the ribbon. oh, deary me!" then, suddenly waxing indignant with the author of the mischief, she put her head out of the window, and, espying pomp on the other side of the stone wall, looking half-repentant and half-struck with the fun of the thing, she shook her fist at him, exclaiming, "oh, you little sarpint, ef i only had you here, i'd w'ip you till you couldn't stan'." pomp was so far from being terrified by this menace that he burst into a loud guffaw. this, of course, added fuel to the flame of the old lady's wrath, and filled her with thoughts of immediate vengeance. her sympathy with the oppressed black race was at that moment very small. "jest lend me your w'ip, driver," said she, "an' i'll l'arn that sassy imp to make fun of his elders." ajax, whose sense of humor was tickled by the old lady's peculiarities, quietly took her at her word, and coming round to the side opened the door of the carriage. "there, ma'am," said he, extending the whip. "don't spare him. he deserves a flogging." mrs. payson, her eyes flashing from beneath her glasses with a vengeful light, seized the proffered whip with alacrity, and jumped out of the wagon with a lightness which could hardly have been anticipated of one of her age. "now, look out," she said, brandishing the whip in a menacing way. "i'll git pay for that bunnit in one way, ef i don't in another." pomp maintained his position on the other side of the wall. he waited till the old lady was fairly over, and then commenced running. the old lady pursued with vindictive animosity, cracking the whip in a suggestive manner. pomp doubled and turned in a most provoking way. finally he had recourse to a piece of strategy. he had flung himself, doubled up in a ball, at the old lady's feet, and she, unable to check her speed, fell over him, clutching at the ground with her outstretched hands, from which the whip had fallen. "hi, hi!" shrieked pomp, with a yell of inconceivable delight, as he watched the signal downfall of his adversary. springing quickly to his feet, he ran swiftly away. "good for you, you old debble!" he cried from a safe distance. henry morton, though he found it difficult to restrain his laughter, turned to ajax and said, "i think it's time we interfered. if you'll overtake the little black boy and give him a shaking up, just to keep him out of mischief hereafter, i'll go and help the old lady." ajax started on his errand. pomp, now really alarmed, strove to escape from this more formidable adversary, but in vain. he was destined to receive a summary castigation. meanwhile, the young man approached mrs. payson. "i hope you're not much hurt, madam," said he respectfully. "i expect about every bone in my body's broke," she groaned. raising her to her feet, it became manifest that the damage was limited to a pair of hands begrimed by contact with the earth. nevertheless, the old lady persisted that "something or 'nother was broke. she didn't feel quite right inside." "i shouldn't keer so much," she added, "ef i'd caught that aggravatin' boy. i'd go fifty miles to see him hung. he'll die on the gallows, jest as sure's i stan' here." at this moment a shrill cry was heard, which could proceed from no one but pomp. "golly, mass' jack, don't hit so hard. couldn't help it, sure." "you'll have to help it the next time, you little rascal!" responded ajax. "le' me go. i hope to be killed if i ever do it ag'in," pleaded pomp, dancing about in pain. "i hope you gin it to him," said the old lady, as the driver reappeared. ajax smiled grimly. "i touched him up a little," he said. "oh, my poor bunnit!" groaned mrs. payson, once more, as her eyes fell upon the crushed article. "what will cynthy ann say?" "perhaps a milliner can restore it for you," suggested henry morton, with an attempt at consolation. the old lady shook her head disconsolately. "it's all jammed out of shape," she said dismally, "an' the flowers is all mashed up. looks as ef an elephant had trodden on to it." "as you are the only one of us that has suffered," said the young man politely, "i think it only fair that your loss should be lightened. will you accept this toward making it good?" he drew from his portemonnaie a five-dollar greenback, as he spoke, and offered it to mrs. payson. "are you in airnest?" inquired the old lady dubiously. "quite so." "you ain't robbin' yourself, be you?" asked mrs. payson, with a look of subdued eagerness lighting up her wrinkled face. "oh, no; i can spare it perfectly well." "then i'll take it," she responded, in evident gratification, "an' i'm sure i'm much obleeged to you. i'm free to confess that you're a gentleman sech as i don't often meet with. i wouldn't take it on no account, only the loss is considerable for me, and cynthy ann, she would have been disapp'inted if so be as i hadn't worn the bunnit. i'd like to know who it is that i'm so much obligated to." henry morton drew a card from his card-case and handed it with a bow to mrs. payson. "what's that?" asked the old lady. "my card." "le's see, where's my specs?" said mrs. payson, fumbling in her pocket. "oh, i've got 'em on. so your name's herod. what made 'em call you that?" "henry, madam--henry morton." "well, so 'tis, i declare. you ain't related to nahum morton, of gilead, be you; he that was put into the state's prison for breakin' open the gilead bank?" an amused smile overspread the young man's face. "i never had any relatives sent to the state's prison," he answered; "though i think it quite possible that some of them may have deserved it." "jest so," assented the old lady. "there's a good deal of iniquity that never comes to light. i once know'd a woman that killed her husband with the tongs, and nobody ever surmised it; though everybody thought it strange that he should disappear so suddint. well, this woman on her death-bed owned up to the tongs in a crazy fit that she had. but the most cur'us part of it," the old lady added rather illogically, "was, that the man was livin' all the while, and it was all his wife's fancy that she'd struck him with the tongs." by this time the "express" had rumbled into the main street of rossville, and the old lady had hardly completed her striking illustration of the truth, that murder will out, before they had drawn up in front of the tavern. "ain't you a-goin' to carry me to my darter's house?" she inquired with solicitude. "i can't walk noway." "yes, ma'am, ' answered ajax, "directly, just as soon as this gentleman's got out, and they've taken the mail." he tossed the mail-bag to a small boy who stood on the piazza in waiting to receive it, and then, whipping up his horses, speedily conveyed mrs. payson to her destination. "he's a very nice, obleeging young man," said the old lady, referring to henry morton. "i wonder ef his mother was a bent. there's old micajah bent's third daughter, roxana jane, married a morton, or it might have been a moulton. ever see him afore?" "no, ma'am. here you are." "so i be! and there's reuben at the gate. how are ye all? jest take this carpetbag, will ye, and i'll give you a cent some time or 'nother." reuben did not appear much elated by this promise. it had been made too many times without fulfilment. the old lady having reached her destination, we take leave of her for the present, promising to resume her acquaintance in subsequent chapters. chapter xvi. frank makes a friend henry morton rose with the sun. this was not so early as may be supposed, for already november had touched its middle point, and the tardy sun did not make its appearance till nearly seven o'clock. as he passed through the hall he noticed that breakfast was not quite ready. "a little walk will sharpen my appetite," he thought. he put on his hat, and, passing through the stable-yard at the rear, climbed over a fence and ascended a hill which he had observed from his chamber window. the sloping sides, which had not yet wholly lost their appearance of verdure, were dotted with trees, mostly apple-trees. "it must be delightful in summer," said the young man, as he looked thoughtfully about him. the hill was by no means high, and five minutes' walk brought him to the summit. from this spot he had a fine view of the village which lay at his feet embowered in trees. a narrow river wound like a silver thread through the landscape. groups of trees on either bank bent over as if to see themselves reflected in the rapid stream. at one point a dam had been built across from bank to bank, above which the river widened and deepened, affording an excellent skating-ground for the boys in the cold days of december and january. a whirring noise was heard. the grist-mill had just commenced its work for the day. down below the dam the shallow water eddied and whirled, breaking in fleecy foam over protuberant rocks which lay in the river-bed. the old village church with its modest proportions occupied a knoll between the hill and the river. it was girdled about with firs intermingled with elms. near-by was a small triangular common, thickly planted with trees, each facing a separate street. houses clustered here and there. comfortable buildings they were, but built evidently rather for use than show. the architect had not yet come to the assistance of the village carpenter. seen in the cheering light of the rising sun, henry morton could not help feeling that a beautiful picture was spread out before him. "after all," he said thoughtfully, "we needn't go abroad for beauty, when we can find so much of it at our own doors. yet, perhaps the more we see of the beautiful, the better we are fitted to appreciate it in the wonderful variety of its numberless forms." he slowly descended the hill, but in a different direction. this brought him to the road that connected the village with north rossville, two miles distant. coming from a different direction, a boy reached the stile about the same time with himself, and both clambered over together. "it is a beautiful morning," said the young man courteously. "yes, sir," was the respectful answer. "have you been up looking at the view?" "yes--and to get an appetite for breakfast. and you?" frank frost--for it was he--laughed. "oh, i am here on quite a different errand," he said. "i used to come here earlier in the season to drive the cows to pasture. i come this morning to carry some milk to a neighbor who takes it of us. she usually sends for it, but her son is just now sick with the measles." "yet i think you cannot fail to enjoy the pleasant morning, even if you are here for other purposes." "i do enjoy it very much," said frank. "when i read of beautiful scenery in other countries, i always wish that i could visit them, and see for myself." "perhaps you will some day." frank smiled, and shook his head incredulously. "i am afraid there is not much chance of it," he said. "so i thought when i was of your age," returned henry morton. "then you have traveled?" said frank, looking interested. "yes. i have visited most of the countries of europe." "have you been in rome?" inquired frank. "yes. are you interested in rome?" "who could help it, sir? i should like to see the capitol, and the via sacra, and the tarpeian rock, and the forum--and, in fact, rome must be full of objects of interest. who knows but i might tread where cicero, and virgil, and caesar had trodden before me?" henry morton looked at the boy who stood beside him with increased interest. "i see you are quite a scholar," he said. "where did you learn about all these men and places?" "i have partly prepared for college," answered frank; "but my father went to the war some weeks since, and i am staying at home to take charge of the farm, and supply his place as well as i can." "it must have been quite a sacrifice to you to give up your studies?" said his companion. "yes, sir, it was a great sacrifice; but we must all of us sacrifice something in these times. even the boys can do something for their country." "what is your name?" asked henry morton, more and more pleased with his chance acquaintance. "i should like to become better acquainted with you." frank blushed, and his expressive face showed that he was gratified by the compliment. "my name is frank frost," he answered, "and i live about half a mile from here." "and i am henry morton. i am stopping temporarily at the hotel. shall you be at leisure this evening, frank?" "yes, sir." "then i should be glad to receive a call from you. i have no acquaintances, and perhaps we may help each other to make the evening pass pleasantly. i have some pictures collected abroad, which i think you might like to look at." "i shall be delighted to come," said frank, his eyes sparkling with pleasure. by this time they had reached the church, which was distant but a few rods from the hotel. they had just turned the corner of the road, when the clang of a bell was heard. "i suppose that is my breakfast-bell," said the young man. "it finds me with a good appetite. good morning, frank. i will expect you, then, this evening." frank returned home, feeling quite pleased with his invitation. "i wish," thought he, "that i might see considerable of mr. morton. i could learn a great deal from him, he has seen so much." his road led him past the house of squire haynes. john was sauntering about the yard with his hands in his pockets. "good morning, john," said frank, in a pleasant voice. john did not seem inclined to respond to this politeness. on seeing frank he scowled, and without deigning to make a reply turned his back and went into the house. he had not forgotten the last occasion on which they had met in the woods, when frank defeated his cruel designs upon poor pomp. there was not much likelihood that he would forget it very soon. "i can't understand john," thought frank. "the other boys will get mad and get over it before the next day; john broods over it for weeks. i really believe he hates me. but, of course, i couldn't act any differently. i wasn't going to stand by and see pomp beaten. i should do just the same again." the day wore away, and in the evening frank presented himself at the hotel, and inquired for mr. morton. he was ushered upstairs, and told to knock at the door of a room in the second story. his knock was answered by the young man in person, who shook his hand with a pleasant smile, and invited him in. "i am glad to see you, frank," he said, very cordially. "and i am much obliged to you for inviting me, mr. morton." they sat down together beside the table, and conversed on a variety of topics. frank had numberless questions to ask about foreign scenes and countries, all of which were answered with the utmost readiness. henry morton brought out a large portfolio containing various pictures, some on note-paper, representing scenes in different parts of europe. the evening wore away only too rapidly for frank. he had seldom passed two hours so pleasantly. at half-past nine, he rose, and said half-regretfully, "i wish you were going to live in the village this winter, mr. morton." the young man smiled. "such is my intention, frank," he said quietly. "shall you stay?" said frank joyfully. "i suppose you will board here?" "i should prefer a quieter boarding-place. can you recommend one?" frank hesitated. "where," continued mr. morton, "i could enjoy the companionship of an intelligent young gentleman of your age?" "if we lived nearer the village," frank began, and stopped abruptly. "half a mile would be no objection to me. as i don't think you will find it unpleasant, frank, i will authorize you to offer your mother five dollars a week for a room and a seat at her table." "i am quite sure she would be willing, mr. morton, but i am afraid we should not live well enough to suit you. and i don't think you ought to pay so much as five dollars a week." "leave that to me, frank. my main object is to obtain a pleasant home; and that i am sure i should find at your house." "thank you, sir," said frank; "i will mention it to my mother, and let you know in the course of to-morrow." chapter xvii. a shade of mystery frank found little difficulty in persuading his mother to accept young morton's proposition. from her son's description she felt little doubt that he would be a pleasant addition to the family circle, while his fund of information would make him instructive as well as agreeable. there was another consideration besides which determined her to take him. five dollars a week would go a great way in housekeeping, or, rather, as their income from other sources would probably be sufficient for this, she could lay aside the entire amount toward paying the mortgage held by squire haynes. this plan occurred simultaneously to frank and his mother. "i should certainly feel myself to blame if i neglected so good an opportunity of helping your father," said mrs. frost. "suppose we don't tell him, mother," suggested frank; "but when he gets home surprise him with the amount of our savings." "no," said mrs. frost, after a moment's thought, "your father will be all the better for all the good news we can send him. it will make his life more tolerable." frank harnessed his horse to a light wagon and drove down to the tavern. henry morton was sitting on the piazza, as the day was unusually-warm, with a book in his hand. "well," he said, looking up with a smile, "i hope you have come for me." "that is my errand, mr. morton," answered frank. "if your trunk is already packed, we will take it along with us." "it is quite ready. if you will come up and help me downstairs with it, i will settle with the landlord and leave at once." this was speedily arranged, and the young man soon occupied a seat beside frank. arrived at the farmhouse, frank introduced the new boarder to his mother. "i hope we shall be able to make you comfortable," said mrs. frost, in a hospitable tone. "i entertain no doubt of it," he said politely. "i am easy to suit, and i foresee that frank and i will become intimate friends." "he was very urgent to have you come. i am not quite sure whether it would have been safe for me to refuse." "i hope he will be as urgent to have me stay. that will be a still higher compliment." "here is the room you are to occupy, mr. morton," said mrs. frost, opening a door at the head of the front stairs. it was a large square room, occupying the front eastern corner of the house. the furniture was neat and comfortable, though not pretentious. "i like this," said the young man, surveying his new quarters with an air of satisfaction. "the sun will find me out in the morning." "yes, it will remain with you through the forenoon. i think you will find the room warm and comfortable. but whenever you get tired of it you will be welcome downstairs." "that is an invitation of which i shall be only too glad to avail myself. now, frank, if you will be kind enough to help me upstairs with my trunk." the trunk was carried up between them, and placed in a closet. "i will send for a variety of articles from the city to make my room look social and cheerful," said mr. morton. "i have some books and engravings in boston, which i think will contribute to make it so." a day or two later, two large boxes arrived, one containing pictures, the other books. of the latter there were perhaps a hundred and fifty, choice and well selected. frank looked at them with avidity. "you shall be welcome to use them as freely as you like," said the owner--an offer which frank gratefully accepted. the engravings were tastefully framed in black walnut. one represented one of raphael's madonnas. another was a fine photograph, representing a palace in venice. several others portrayed foreign scenes. among them was a street scene in rome. an entire family were sitting in different postures on the portico of a fine building, the man with his swarthy features half-concealed under a slouch hat, the woman holding a child in her lap, while another, a boy with large black eyes, leaned his head upon her knees. "that represents a roman family at home," explained henry morton. "at home!" "yes, it is the only home they have. they sleep wherever night finds them, sheltering themselves from the weather as well as they can." "but how do they get through the winter? should think they would freeze." "nature has bestowed upon italy a mild climate, so that, although they may find the exposure at this season disagreeable, they are in no danger of freezing." there was another engraving which frank looked at curiously. it represented a wagon laden with casks of wine, and drawn by an ox and a donkey yoked together. underneath was a descriptive phrase, "caro di vino." "you don't see such teams in this country," said mr. morton, smiling. "in italy they are common enough. in the background you notice a priest with a shovel-hat, sitting sideways on a donkey. such a sight is much more common there than that of a man on horseback. indeed, this stubborn animal is found very useful in ascending and descending mountains, being much surer-footed than the horse. i have ridden down steep descents along the verge of a precipice where it would have been madness to venture on horseback, but i felt the strongest confidence in the donkey i bestrode." frank noticed a few latin books in the collection. "do you read latin, mr. morton?" he inquired. "yes, with tolerable ease. if i can be of any assistance to you in carrying on your latin studies, it will afford me pleasure to do so." "i am very much obliged to you, mr. morton. i tried to go on with it by myself, but every now and then i came to a difficult sentence which i could not make out." "i think we can overcome the difficulties between us. at any rate, we will try. have no hesitation in applying to me." before closing this chapter, i think it necessary to narrate a little incident which served to heighten the interest with which frank regarded his new friend, though it involved the latter in a shadow of mystery. mrs. frost did not keep what in new england is denominated "help." being in good health, she performed the greater part of her household tasks unassisted. when washing and house-cleaning days came, however, she obtained outside assistance. for this purpose she engaged chloe to come twice a week, on monday and saturday, not only because in this way she could help the woman to earn a living, but also because she found her a valuable and efficient assistant. henry morton became a member of the little household at the farm on thursday, and two days later chloe came as usual to "clean house." the young man was standing in the front yard as chloe, with a white turban on her head, for she had not yet laid aside her southern mode of dress, came from the street by a little path which led to the back door. her attention was naturally drawn to the young man. no sooner did she obtain a full view of him, than she stopped short and exclaimed with every appearance of surprise, "why, mass' richard, who'd'a' thought to see you here. you look just like you used to do, dat's a fac'. it does my old eyes good to see you." henry morton turned suddenly. "what, chloe!" he exclaimed in equal surprise. "what brings you up here? i thought you were miles away, in virginia." "so i was, mass' richard. but lor' bless you, when de linkum sogers come, i couldn't stay no longer. i took and runned away." "and here you are, then." "yes, mass' richard, here i is, for sure." "how do you like the north, chloe?" "don't like it as well as de souf. it's too cold," and chloe shivered. "but you would rather be here than there?" "yes, mass' richard. here i own myself. don't have no oberseer to crack his whip at me now. i'se a free woman now, and so's my little pomp." the young man smiled at the innocent mistake. "pomp is your little boy, i suppose, chloe." "yes, mass' richard." "is he a good boy?" "he's as sassy as de debble," said chloe emphatically. "i don't know what's goin' to 'come of dat boy. he's most worried my life out." "oh, he'll grow better as he grows older. don't trouble yourself about him. but, chloe, there's one favor i am going to ask of you." "yes, mass' richard." "don't call me by my real name. for some reasons, which i can't at present explain, i prefer to be known as henry morton, for some months to come. do you think you can remember to call me by that name?" "yes, mass'--henry," said chloe, looking perplexed. henry morton turned round to meet the surprised looks of frank and his mother. "my friends," he said, "i hope you will not feel distrustful of me, when i freely acknowledge to you that imperative reasons compel me for a time to appear under a name not my own. chloe and i are old acquaintances, but i must request her to keep secret for a time her past knowledge concerning me. i think," he added with a smile, "that she would have nothing to say that would damage me. some time you shall know all. are you satisfied?" "quite so," said mrs. frost. "i have no doubt you have good and sufficient reason." "i will endeavor to justify your confidence," said henry morton, an expression of pleasure lighting up his face. chapter xviii. thanksgiving at the farm the chill november days drew to a close. the shrill winds whistled through the branches of the trees, and stirred the leaves which lay in brown heaps upon the ground. but at the end of the month came thanksgiving--the farmer's harvest home. the fruits of the field were in abundance but in many a home there were vacant chairs, never more, alas! to be filled. but he who dies in a noble cause leaves sweet and fragrant memories behind, which shall ever after make it pleasant to think of him. thanksgiving morning dawned foggy and cold. yet there is something in the name that warms the heart and makes the dullest day seem bright. the sunshine of the heart more than compensates for the absence of sunshine without. frank had not been idle. the night before he helped jacob kill a turkey and a pair of chickens, and seated on a box in the barn they had picked them clean in preparation for the morrow, within the house, too, might be heard the notes of busy preparation. alice, sitting in a low chair, was busily engaged in chopping meat for mince pies. maggie sat near her paring pumpkins, for a genuine new england thanksgiving cannot be properly celebrated without pumpkin pies. even little charlie found work to do in slicing apples. by evening a long row of pies might be seen upon the kitchen dresser. brown and flaky they looked, fit for the table of a prince. so the children thought as they surveyed the attractive array, and felt that thanksgiving, come as often as it might, could never be unwelcome. through the forenoon of thanksgiving day the preparations continued. frank and mr. morton went to the village church, where an appropriate service was held by reverend mr. apthorp. there were but few of the village matrons present. they were mostly detained at home by housewifely cares, which on that day could not well be delegated to other hands. "mr. morton," said frank, as they walked leisurely home, "did you notice how squire haynes stared at you this morning?" mr. morton looked interested. "did he?" he asked. "i did not notice." "yes, he turned halfround, and looked at you with a puzzled expression, as if he thought he had seen you somewhere before, but could not recall who you were." "perhaps i reminded him of some one he has known in past years," said the young man quietly. "we sometimes find strange resemblances in utter strangers." "i think he must have felt quite interested," pursued frank, "for he stopped me after church, and inquired who you were." "indeed!" said henry morton quietly. "and what did you tell him?" "i told him your name, and mentioned that you were boarding with us." "what then? did he make any further inquiries?" "he asked where you came from." "he seemed quite curious about me. i ought to feel flattered. and what did you reply?" "i told him i did not know--that i only knew that part of your life had been passed in europe. i heard him say under his breath, 'it is singular.' " "frank," said mr. morton, after a moment's thought, "i wish to have squire haynes learn as little of me as possible. if, therefore, he should ask you how i am employed, you say that i have come here for the benefit of my health. this is one of my motives, though not the principal one." "i will remember," said frank. "i don't think he will say much to me, however. he has a grudge against father, and his son does not like me. i am sorry that father is compelled to have some business relations with the squire." "indeed!" "yes, he holds a mortgage on our farm for eight hundred dollars. it was originally more, but it has been reduced to this. he will have the right to foreclose on the first of july." "shall you have the money ready for him at that time?" "no; we may have half enough, perhaps. i am sometimes troubled when i think of it. father feels confident, however, that the squire will not be hard upon us, but will renew the mortgage." henry morton looked very thoughtful, but said nothing. they had now reached the farmhouse. dinner was already on the table. in the center, on a large dish, was the turkey, done to a turn. it was flanked by the chickens on a smaller dish. these were supported by various vegetables, such as the season supplied. a dish of cranberry sauce stood at one end of the table, and at the opposite end a dish of apple sauce. "do you think you can carve the turkey, mr. morton?" asked mrs. frost. "i will at least make the attempt." "i want the wish-bone, mr. morton," said maggie. "no, i want it," said charlie. "you shall both have one," said the mother. "luckily each of the chickens is provided with one." "i know what i am going to wish," said charlie. nodding his head with decision. "well, charlie, what is it?" asked frank. "i shall wish that papa may come home safe." "and so will i," said maggie. "i wish he might sit down with us to-day," said mrs. frost, with a little sigh. "he has never before been absent from us on thanksgiving day." "was he well when you last heard from him?" "yes, but hourly expecting orders to march to join the army in maryland. i am afraid he won't get as good a thanksgiving dinner as this." "two years ago," said mr. morton, "i ate my thanksgiving dinner in amsterdam." "do they have thanksgiving there, mr. morton?" inquired alice. "no, they know nothing of our good new england festival. i was obliged to order a special dinner for myself. i don't think you would have recognized plum pudding under the name which they gave it." "what was it?" asked frank curiously. "blom buden was the name given on the bill." "i can spell better than that," said charlie. "we shall have to send you out among the dutchmen as a schoolmaster plenipotentiary," said frank, laughing. "i hope the 'blom buden' was good in spite of the way it was spelt." "yes, it was very good." "i don't believe it beat mother's," said charlie. "at your present rate of progress, charlie, you won't leave room for any," said frank. "i wish i had two stomachs," said charlie, looking regretfully at the inviting delicacies which tempted him with what the french call the embarrassment of riches. "well done, charlie!" laughed his mother. dinner was at length over. havoc and desolation reigned upon the once well-filled table. in the evening, as they all sat together round the table, maggie climbed on mr. morton's knee and petitioned for a story. "what shall it be about?" he asked. "oh, anything." "let me think a moment," said the young man. he bent his eyes thoughtfully upon the wood-fire that crackled in the wide-open fireplace, and soon signified that he was ready to begin. all the children gathered around him, and even mrs. frost, sitting quietly at her knitting, edged her chair a little nearer, that she, too, might listen to mr. morton's story. as this was of some length, we shall devote to it a separate chapter. chapter xix. the wonderful transformation "my story," commenced mr. morton, "is rather a remarkable one in some respects; and i cannot vouch for its being true. i shall call it 'the wonderful transformation.' "thomas tubbs was a prosperous little tailor, and for forty years had been a resident of the town of webbington, where he had been born and brought up. i have called him little, and you will agree with me when i say that, even in high-heeled boots, which he always wore, he measured only four feet and a half in height. "in spite, however, of his undersize, thomas had succeeded in winning the hand of a woman fifteen inches taller than himself. if this extra height had been divided equally between them, possibly they might have attracted less observation. as it was, when they walked to church, the top of the little tailor's beaver just about reached the shoulders of mrs. tubbs. nevertheless, they managed to live very happily together, for the most part, though now and then, when thomas was a little refractory, his better half would snatch him up bodily, and, carrying him to the cellar, lock him up there. such little incidents only served to spice their domestic life, and were usually followed by a warm reconciliation. "the happy pair had six children, all of whom took after their mother, and promised to be tall; the oldest boy, twelve years of age, being already taller than his father, or, rather, he would have been but for the tall hat and high-heeled boots. "mr. tubbs was a tailor, as i have said. one day there came into his shop a man attired with extreme shabbiness. thomas eyed him askance. " 'mr. tubbs,' said the stranger, 'as you perceive, i am out at the elbows. i would like to get you to make me up a suit of clothes.' " 'ahem!' coughed thomas, and glanced upward at a notice affixed to the door, 'terms, cash.' "the stranger's eye followed the direction of mr. tubbs'. he smiled. " 'i frankly confess,' he said, 'that i shall not be able to pay immediately, but, if i live, i will pay you within six months.' " 'how am i to feel sure of that?' asked the tailor, hesitating. " 'i pledge my word,' was the reply. 'you see, mr. tubbs, i have been sick for some time past, and that, of course, has used up my money. now, thank providence, i am well again, and ready to go to work. but i need clothes, as you see, before i have the ability to pay for them.' " 'what's your name?' asked thomas. " 'oswald rudenheimer,' was the reply. " 'a foreigner?' " 'as you may suppose. now, mr. tubbs, what do you say? do you think you can trust me?' "thomas examined the face of his visitor. he looked honest, and the little tailor had a good deal of confidence in the excellence of human nature. " 'i may be foolish,' he said at last, 'but i'll do it.' " 'a thousand thanks!' said the stranger. 'you sha'n't repent of it.' "the cloth was selected, and thomas set to work. in three days the suit was finished, and thomas sat in his shop waiting for his customer. at last he came, but what a change! he was splendidly dressed. the little tailor hardly recognized him. " 'mr. tubbs,' said he, 'you're an honest man and a good fellow. you trusted me when i appeared penniless, but i deceived you. i am really one of the genii, of whom, perhaps, you have read, and lineally descended from those who guarded solomon's seal. instead of making you wait for your pay, i will recompense you on the spot, either in money or----' " 'or what? asked the astonished tailor. " 'or i will grant the first wish that may be formed in your mind. now choose.' "thomas did not take long to choose. his charge would amount to but a few dollars, while he might wish for a million. he signified his decision. " 'perhaps you have chosen wisely,' said his visitor. 'but mind that you are careful about your wish. you may wish for something you don't want.' " 'no fear of that,' said the tailor cheerfully. " 'at any rate, i will come this way six months hence, and should you then wish to be released from the consequences of your wish, and to receive instead the money stipulated as the price of the suit, i will give you the chance.' "of course, thomas did not object, though he considered it rather a foolish proposition. "his visitor disappeared, and the tailor was left alone. he laid aside his work. how could a man be expected to work who had only to wish, and he could come into possession of more than he could earn in a hundred or even a thousand years? " 'i might as well enjoy myself a little,' thought mr. tubbs. 'let me see. i think there is a show in the village to-day. i'll go to it.' "he accordingly slipped on his hat and went out, somewhat to the surprise of his wife, who concluded that her husband must be going out on business. "thomas tubbs wended his way to the marketplace. he pressed in among the people, a crowd of whom had already assembled to witness the show. i cannot tell you what the show was. i am only concerned in telling you what thomas tubbs saw and did; and, to tell the plain truth, he didn't see anything at all. he was wedged in among people a foot or two taller than himself. now, it is not pleasant to hear all about you laughing heartily and not even catch a glimpse of what amuses them so much. thomas tubbs was human, and as curious as most people. just as a six-footer squeezed in front of him he could not help framing, in his vexation, this wish: " 'oh, dear! i wish i were ten feet high!' "luckless thomas tubbs! never had he framed a more unfortunate wish. on the instant he shot up from an altitude of four feet six to ten feet. fortunately his clothes expanded proportionally. so, instead of being below the medium height, he was raised more than four feet above it. "of course, his immediate neighbors became aware of the gigantic presence, though they did not at all recognize its identity with the little tailor, thomas tubbs. "at once there was a shout of terror. the crowd scattered in all directions, forgetting the spectacle at which, the moment before, they had been laughing heartily, and the little tailor, no longer little, was left alone in the market-place. " 'good heavens!' he exclaimed in bewilderment, stretching out his brawny arm, nearly five feet in length, and staring at it in ludicrous astonishment, 'who'd have thought that i should ever be so tall?' "to tell the truth, the little man--i mean mr. tubbs--at first rather enjoyed his new magnitude. he had experienced mortification so long on account of his diminutive stature, that he felt a little exhilarated at the idea of being able to look down on those to whom he had hitherto felt compelled to look up. it was rather awkward to have people afraid of him. as he turned to leave the square, for the exhibitor of the show had run off in the general panic, he could see people looking at him from third-story windows, and pointing at him with outstretched fingers and mouths agape. " 'really,' thought thomas tubbs, 'i never expected to be such an object of interest. i think i'll go home.' "his house was a mile off, but so large were his strides that five minutes carried him to it. "now mrs. tubbs was busy putting the dinner on the table, and wondering why her husband did not make his appearance. she was fully determined to give him a scolding in case his delay was so great as to cause the dinner to cool. all at once she heard a bustle at the door. looking into the entry, she saw a huge man endeavoring to make his entrance into the house. as the portal was only seven feet in height, it was not accomplished without a great deal of twisting and squirming. "mrs. tubbs turned pale. " 'what are you trying to do, you monster?' she faltered. " 'i have come home to dinner, mary,' was the meek reply. " 'come home to dinner!' exclaimed mrs. tubbs, aghast. 'who in the name of wonder are you, you overgrown brute?' " 'who am i? asked the giant, smiling feebly, for he began to feel a little queer at this reception from the wife with whom he had lived for fifteen years. 'ha! ha! don't you know your own husband--your tommy?' " 'my husband!' exclaimed mrs. tubbs, astonished at the fellow's impudence. 'you, don't mean to say that you are my husband?' " 'of course i am,' said thomas. " 'then,' said mrs. tubbs, 'i would have you know that my husband is a respectable little man, not half your size.' " 'oh, dear!' thought thomas. 'well, here's a kettle of fish; my own wife won't own me!' " 'so i was,' he said aloud. 'i was only four feet six; but i've--i've grown.' " 'grown!' mrs. tubbs laughed hysterically. 'that's a likely story, when it's only an hour since my husband went into the street as short as ever. i only wish he'd come in, i do, to expose your imposition.' " 'but i have grown, mary,' said tubbs piteously. 'i was out in the crowd, and i couldn't see what was going on, and so i wished i was ten feet high; and, before i knew it, i was as tall as i am now.' " 'no doubt,' said mrs. tubbs incredulously, 'as to that, all i've got to say is, that you'd better wish yourself back again, as i sha'n't own you as my husband till you do!' " 'really,' thought mr. tubbs, 'this is dreadful! what can i do!' "just then one of his children ran into the room. " 'johnny, come to me,' said his father imploringly. 'come to your father.' " 'my father!' said johnny, shying out of the room. 'you ain't my father. my father isn't as tall as a tree.' " 'you see how absurd your claim is,' said mrs. tubbs. 'you'll oblige me by leaving the house directly.' " 'leave the house--my house!' said tubbs. " 'if you don't, i'll call in the neighbors,' said the courageous woman. " 'i don't believe they'd dare to come,' said tubbs, smiling queerly at the recollection of what a sensation his appearance had made. " 'won't you go?' " 'at least you'll let me have some dinner. i am 'most famished.' " 'dinner!" said mrs. tubbs, hesitating. 'i don't think there's enough in the house. however, you can sit down to the table.' "tubbs attempted to sit down on a chair, but his weight was so great that it was crushed beneath him. finally, he was compelled to sit on the floor, and even then his stature was such that his head rose to the height of six feet. "what an enormous appetite he had, too! the viands on the table seemed nothing. he at first supplied his plate with the usual quantity; but as the extent of his appetite became revealed to him, he was forced to make away with everything on the table. even then he was hungry. " 'well, i declare,' thought mrs. tubbs, in amazement, 'it does take an immense quantity to keep him alive!' "tubbs rose from the table, and, in doing so, hit his head a smart whack against the ceiling. before leaving the house he turned to make a last appeal to his wife, who, he could not help seeing, was anxious to have him go. " 'won't you own me, mary?' he asked. 'it isn't my fault that i am so big.' " 'own you!' exclaimed his wife. 'i wouldn't own you for a mint of money. you'd eat me out of house and home in less than a week.' " 'i don't know but i should,' said mr. tubbs mournfully. 'i don't see what gives me such an appetite. i'm hungry now.' " 'hungry, after you've eaten enough for six!' exclaimed his wife, aghast. 'well, i never!' " 'then you won't let me stay, mary?' " 'no, no.' "with slow and sad strides thomas tubbs left the house. the world seemed dark enough to the poor fellow. not only was he disowned by his wife and children, but he could not tell how he should ever earn enough to keep him alive, with the frightful appetite which he now possessed. 'i don't know,' he thought, 'but the best way is to drown myself at once.' so he walked to the river, but found it was not deep enough to drown him. "as he emerged from the river uncomfortably wet, he saw a man timidly approaching him. it proved to be the manager of the show. " 'hello!' said he hesitatingly. " 'hello!' returned tubbs disconsolately. " 'would you like to enter into a business engagement with me?' " 'of what sort?' asked tubbs, brightening up. " 'to be exhibited,' was the reply. 'you're the largest man living in the world. we could make a pretty penny together.' "tubbs was glad enough to accept this proposition, which came to him like a plank to a drowning man. accordingly an agreement was made that, after deducting expenses, he should share profits with the manager. "it proved to be a great success. from all quarters people flocked to see the great prodigy, the wonder of the world, as he was described in huge posters. scientific men wrote learned papers in which they strove to explain his extraordinary height, and, as might be expected, no two assigned the same cause. "at the end of six months tubbs had five thousand dollars as his share of the profits. but after all he was far from happy. he missed the society of his wife and children, and shed many tears over his separation from them. "at the end of six months his singular customer again made his appearance. " 'it seems to me you've altered some since i last saw you,' he said, with a smile. " 'yes,' said tubbs dolefully. " 'you don't like the change, i judge?' " 'no,' said tubbs. 'it separates me from my wife and children, and that makes me unhappy.' " 'would you like to be changed back again!' " 'gladly,' was the reply. "presto! the wonderful giant was changed back into the little tailor. no sooner was this effected than he returned post-haste to webbington. his wife received him with open arms. " 'oh, thomas,' she exclaimed, 'how could you leave us so? on the day of your disappearance a huge brute of a man came here and pretended to be you, but i soon sent him away.' "thomas wisely said nothing, but displayed his five thousand dollars. there was great joy in the little dwelling. thomas tubbs at once took a larger shop, and grew every year in wealth and public esteem. the only way in which he did not grow was in stature; but his six months' experience as a giant had cured him of any wish of that sort. the last i heard of him was his election to the legislature." "that's a bully story," said charlie, using a word which he had heard from older boys. "i wish i was a great tall giant." "what would you do if you were, charlie?" "i'd go and fight the rebels," said charlie manfully. chapter xx. pomp's education commences in the season of leisure from farm work which followed, frank found considerable time for study. the kind sympathy and ready assistance given by mr. morton made his task a very agreeable one, and his progress for a time was as rapid as if he had remained at school. he also assumed the office of teacher, having undertaken to give a little elementary instruction to pomp. here his task was beset with difficulties. pomp was naturally bright, but incorrigibly idle. his activity was all misdirected and led him into a wide variety of mischief. he had been sent to school, but his mischievous propensities had so infected the boys sitting near him that the teacher had been compelled to request his removal. three times in the week, during the afternoon, pomp came over to the farm for instruction. on the first of these occasions we will look in upon him and his teacher. pomp is sitting on a cricket by the kitchen fire. he has a primer open before him at the alphabet. his round eyes are fixed upon the page as long as frank is looking at him, but he requires constant watching. his teacher sits near-by, with a latin dictionary resting upon a light stand before him, and a copy of virgil's aeneid in his hand. "well, pomp, do you think you know your lesson?" he asks. "dunno, mass' frank; i reckon so." "you may bring your book to me, and i will try you." pomp rose from his stool and sidled up to frank with no great alacrity. "what's that letter, pomp?" asked the young teacher, pointing out the initial letter of the alphabet. pomp answered correctly. "and what is the next?" pomp shifted from one foot to the other, and stared vacantly out of the window, but said nothing. "don't you know?" " 'pears like i don't 'member him, mass' frank." here frank had recourse to a system of mnemonics frequently resorted to by teachers in their extremity. "what's the name of the little insect that stings people sometimes, pomp?" "wasp, mass' frank," was the confident reply. "no, i don't mean that. i mean the bee." "yes, mass' frank." "well, this is b." pomp looked at it attentively, and, after a pause, inquired, "where's him wings, mass' frank?" frank bit his lips to keep from laughing. "i don't mean that this is a bee that makes honey," he explained, "only it has the same name. now do you think you can remember how it is called?" "bumblebee!" repeated pomp triumphantly. pomp's error was corrected, and the lesson proceeded. "what is the next letter?" asked frank, indicating it with the point of his knife-blade. "x," answered the pupil readily. "no, pomp," was the dismayed reply. "it is very different from x." "dat's him name at school," said pomp positively. "no, pomp, you are mistaken. that is x, away down there." "perhaps him change his name," suggested pomp. "no. the letters never change their names. i don't think you know your lesson, pomp. just listen to me while i tell you the names of some of the letters, and try to remember them." when this was done, pomp was directed to sit down on the cricket, and study his lesson for twenty minutes, at the end of which he might again recite. pomp sat down, and for five minutes seemed absorbed in his book. then, unfortunately, the cat walked into the room, and soon attracted the attention of the young student. he sidled from his seat so silently that frank did not hear him. he was soon made sensible that pomp was engaged in some mischief by hearing a prolonged wail of anguish from the cat. looking up, he found that his promising pupil had tied her by the leg to a chair, and under these circumstances was amusing himself by pinching her tail. "what are you doing there, pomp?" he asked quickly. pomp scuttled back to his seat, and appeared to be deeply intent upon his primer. "ain't doin' noffin', mass' frank," he answered innocently. "then how came the cat tied to that chair?" " 'spec' she must have tied herself." "come, pomp, you know better than that. you know cats can't tie themselves. get up immediately and unfasten her." pomp rose with alacrity, and undertook to release puss from the thraldom of which she had become very impatient. perhaps she would have been quite as well off if she had been left to herself. the process of liberation did not appear to be very agreeable, judging from the angry mews which proceeded from her. finally, in her indignation against pomp for some aggressive act, she scratched him sharply. "you wicked old debble!" exclaimed pomp wrathfully. he kicked at the cat; but she was lucky enough to escape, and ran out of the room as fast as her four legs could carry her. "big ugly debble!" muttered pomp, watching the blood ooze from his finger. "what's the matter, pomp?" "old cat scratch me." "and what did you do to her, pomp? i am afraid you deserved your scratch." "didn't do noffin', mass' frank," said pomp virtuously. "i don't think you always tell the truth, pomp." "can't help it, mass' frank. 'spec' i've got a little debble inside of me." "what do you mean, pomp! what put that idea in your head?" "dat's what mammy says. dat's what she al'ays tells me." "then," said frank, "i think it will be best to whip it out of you. where's my stick?" "oh, no, mass' frank," said pomp, in alarm; "i'll be good, for sure." "then sit down and get your lesson." again pomp assumed his cricket. before he had time to devise any new mischief, mrs. frost came to the head of the stairs and called frank. frank laid aside his books, and presented himself at the foot of the stairs. "i should like your help a few minutes. can you leave your studies?" "certainly, mother." before going up, he cautioned pomp to study quietly, and not get into any mischief while he was gone. pomp promised very readily. frank had hardly got upstairs before his pupil rose from the cricket, and began to look attentively about him. his first proceeding was to, hide his primer carefully in mrs. frost's work-basket, which lay on the table. then, looking curiously about him, his attention was drawn to the old-fashioned clock that stood in the corner. now, pomp's curiosity had been strongly excited by this clock. it was not quite clear to him how the striking part was effected. here seemed to be a favorable opportunity for instituting an investigation. pomp drew his cricket to, the clock, and, opening it, tried to reach up to the face. but he was not yet high enough. he tried a chair, and still required a greater elevation. espying frank's latin dictionary, he pressed that into service. by and by frank and his mother heard the clock striking an unusual number of times. "what is the matter with the clock?" inquired mrs. frost. "i don't know," said frank unsuspiciously. "it has struck ten times, and it is only four o' clock." "i wonder if pomp can have got at it," said frank, with a sudden thought. he ran downstairs hastily. pomp heard him coming, and in his anxiety to escape detection, contrived to lose his balance and fall to the floor. as he fell, he struck the table, on which a pan of sour milk had been placed, and it was overturned, deluging poor pomp with the unsavory fluid. pomp shrieked and kicked most energetically. his appearance, as he picked himself up, was ludicrous in the extreme. his sable face was plentifully besprinkled with clotted milk, giving him the appearance of a negro who is coming out white in spots. the floor was swimming in milk. luckily the dictionary had fallen clear of it, and so escaped. "is this the way you study?" demanded frank, as sternly as his sense of the ludicrous plight in which he found pomp would permit. for once pomp's ready wit deserted him. he had nothing to say. "go out and wash yourself." pomp came back rather shamefaced, his face restored to its original color. "now, where is your book?" pomp looked about him, but, as he took good care not to look where he knew his book to be, of course he did not find it. "i 'clare, mass' frank, it done lost," he at length asserted. "how can it be lost when you had it only a few minutes ago?" "i dunno," answered pomp stolidly. "have you been out of the room?" pomp answered in the negative. "then it must be somewhere here." frank went quietly to the corner of the room and took therefrom a stick. "now, pomp," he said, "i will give you just two minutes to find the book in. if you don't find it, i shall have to give you a whipping." pomp looked at his teacher to see if he was in earnest. seeing that he was, he judged it best to find the book. looking into the work-box, he said innocently: "i 'clare to gracious, mass' frank, if it hasn't slipped down yere. dat's mi'ty cur's, dat is." "pomp, sit down," said frank. "i am going to talk to you seriously. what makes you tell so many lies?" "dunno any better," replied pomp, grinning. "yes, you do, pomp. doesn't your mother tell you not to lie?" "lor', mass' frank, she's poor ignorant nigger. she don't know nuffin'." "you mustn't speak so of your mother. she brings you up as well as she knows how. she has to work hard for you, and you ought to love her." "so i do, 'cept when she licks me." "if you behave properly she won't whip you. you'll grow up a 'poor, ignorant nigger' yourself. if you don't study." "shall i get white, mass' frank, if i study?" asked pomp, showing a double row of white teeth. "you were white enough just now," said frank, smiling. "yah, yah!" returned pomp, who appreciated the joke. "now, pomp," frank continued seriously, "if you will learn your lesson in fifteen minutes i will give you a piece of gingerbread." "i'll do it, mass' frank," said pomp promptly. pomp was very fond of gingerbread, as frank very well knew. in the time specified the lesson was got, and recited satisfactorily. as pomp's education will not again be referred to, it may be said that when frank had discovered how to manage him, he learned quite rapidly. chloe, who was herself unable to read, began to look upon pomp with a new feeling of respect when she found that he could read stories in words of one syllable, and the "lickings" of which he complained became less frequent. but his love of fun still remained, and occasionally got him into trouble, as we shall hereafter have occasion to see. chapter xxi. the battle of fredericksburg about the middle of december came the sad tragedy of fredericksburg, in which thousands of our gallant soldiers yielded up their lives in a hard, unequal struggle, which brought forth nothing but mortification and disaster. the first telegrams which appeared in the daily papers brought anxiety and bodings of ill to many households. the dwellers at the farm were not exempt. they had been apprised by a recent letter that mr. frost's regiment now formed a part of the grand army which lay encamped on the eastern side of the rappahannock. the probability was that he was engaged in the battle. frank realized for the first time to what peril his father was exposed, and mingled with the natural feeling which such a thought was likely to produce was the reflection that, but for him, his father would have been in safety at home. "did i do right?" frank asked himself anxiously, the old doubt recurring once more. then, above the selfish thought of peril to him and his, rose the consideration of the country's need, and frank said to himself, "i have done right--whatever happens. i feel sure of that." yet his anxiety was by no means diminished, especially when, a day or two afterward, tidings of the disaster came to hand, only redeemed by the masterly retreat across the river, in which a great army, without the loss of a single gun, ambulance, or wagon, withdrew from the scene of a hopeless struggle, under the very eyes of the enemy, yet escaping discovery. one afternoon frank went to the post-office a little after the usual time. as he made his way through a group at the door, he notice compassionate glances directed toward him. his heart gave a sudden bound. "has anything happened to my father?" he inquired, with pale face. "have any of you heard anything?" "he is wounded, frank," said the nearest bystander. "show it to me," said frank. in the evening paper, which was placed in his hands, he read a single line, but of fearful import: "henry frost, wounded." whether the wound was slight or serious, no intimation was given. frank heaved a sigh of comparative relief. his father was not dead, as he at first feared. yet he felt that the suspense would be a serious trial. he did not know how to tell his mother. she met him at the gate. his serious face and lagging steps revealed the truth, exciting at first apprehensions of something even more serious. for two days they remained without news. then came a letter from the absent father, which wonderfully lightened all their hearts. the fact that he was able to write a long letter with his own hand showed plainly that his wound must be a trifling one. the letter ran thus: "dear mary: i fear that the report of my wound will reach you before this letter comes to assure you that it is a mere scratch, and scarcely worth a thought. i cannot for an instant think of it, when i consider how many of our poor fellows have been mown down by instant death, or are now lying with ghastly wounds on pallets in the hospital. we have been through a fearful trial, and the worst thought is that our losses are not compensated by a single advantage. "before giving you an account of it from the point of view of a private soldier, let me set your mind at rest by saying that my injury is only a slight flesh-wound in the arm, which will necessitate my carrying it in a sling for a few days; that is all. "early on the morning of thursday, the 10th inst., the first act in the great drama commenced with laying the pontoon bridges over which our men were to make their way into the rebel city. my own division was to cross directly opposite the city. all honor to the brave men who volunteered to lay the bridges. it was a trying and perilous duty. on the other side, in rifle-pits and houses at the brink of the river, were posted the enemy's sharpshooters, and these at a given signal opened fire upon our poor fellows who were necessarily unprotected. the firing was so severe and deadly, and impossible to escape from, that for the time we were obliged to desist. before anything could be effected it became clear that the sharpshooters must be dislodged. "then opened the second scene. "a deluge of shot and shell from our side of the river rained upon the city, setting some buildings on fire, and severely damaging others. it was a most exciting spectacle to us who watched from the bluffs, knowing that ere long we must make the perilous passage and confront the foe, the mysterious silence of whose batteries inspired alarm, as indicating a consciousness of power. "the time of our trial came at length. "toward the close of the afternoon general howard's division, to which i belong, crossed the pontoon bridge whose building had cost us more than one gallant soldier. the distance was short, for the rappahannock at this point is not more than a quarter of a mile wide. in a few minutes we were marching through the streets of fredericksburg. we gained possession of the lower streets, but not without some street fighting, in which our brigade lost about one hundred in killed and wounded. "for the first time i witnessed violent death. the man marching by my side suddenly reeled, and, pressing his hand to his breast, fell forward. only a moment before he had spoken to me, saying, 'i think we are going to have hot work.' now he was dead, shot through the heart. i turned sick with horror, but there was no time to pause. we must march on, not knowing that our turn might not come next. each of us felt that he bore his life in his hand. "but this was soon over, and orders came that we should bivouac for the night. you will not wonder that i lay awake nearly the whole night. a night attack was possible, and the confusion and darkness would have made it fearful. as i lay awake i could not help thinking how anxious you would feel if you had known where i was. "so closed the first day. "the next dawned warm and pleasant. in the quiet of the morning it seemed hard to believe that we were on the eve of a bloody struggle. discipline was not very strictly maintained. some of our number left the ranks and ransacked the houses, more from curiosity than the desire to pillage. "i went down to the bank of the river, and took a look at the bridge which it had cost us so much trouble to throw across. it bore frequent marks of the firing of the day previous. "at one place i came across an old negro, whose white head and wrinkled face indicated an advanced age. clinging to him were two children, of perhaps four and six years of age, who had been crying. " 'don't cry, honey,' i heard him say soothingly, wiping the tears from the cheeks of the youngest with a coarse cotton handkerchief. " 'i want mama,' said the child piteously. "a sad expression came over the old black's face. " 'what is the matter?' i asked, advancing toward him. " 'she is crying for her mother,' he said. " 'is she dead?' " 'yes, sir; she'd been ailing for a long time, and the guns of yesterday hastened her death.' " 'where did you live?' " 'in that house yonder, sir.' " 'didn't you feel afraid when we fired on the town?' " 'we were all in the cellar, sir. one shot struck the house, but did not injure it much.' " 'you use very good language,' i could not help saying. " 'yes, sir; i have had more advantages than most of--of my class.' these last words he spoke rather bitterly. 'when i was a young man my master amused himself with teaching me; but he found i learned so fast that he stopped short. but i carried it on by myself.' " 'didn't you find that difficult?' " 'yes, sir; but my will was strong. i managed to get books, now one way, now another. i have read considerable, sir.' "this he said with some pride. " 'have you ever read shakespeare?' " 'in part, sir; but i never could get hold of "hamlet." i have always wanted to read that play.' "i drew him out, and was astonished at the extent of his information, and the intelligent judgment which he expressed. " 'i wonder that, with your acquirements, you should have been content to remain in a state of slavery.' " 'content!' he repeated bitterly. 'do you think i have been content? no, sir. twice i attempted to escape. each time i was caught, dragged back, and cruelly whipped. then i was sold to the father of these little ones. he treated me so well, and i was getting so old, that i gave up the idea of running away.' " 'and where is he now?' " 'he became a colonel in the confederate service, and was killed at antietam. yesterday my mistress died, as i have told you.' " 'and are you left in sole charge of these little children?' " 'yes, sir.' " 'have they no relatives living?' " 'their uncle lives in kentucky. i shall try to carry them there.' " 'but you will find it hard work. you have only to cross the river, and in our lines you will be no longer a slave.' " 'i know it, sir. three of my children have got their freedom, thank god, in that way. but i can't leave these children.' "i looked down at them. they were beautiful children. the youngest was a girl, with small features, dark hair, and black eyes. the boy, of six, was pale and composed, and uttered no murmur. both clung confidently to the old negro. "i could not help admiring the old man, who could resist the prospect of freedom, though he had coveted it all his life, in order to remain loyal to his trust. i felt desirous of drawing him out on the subject of the war. " 'what do you think of this war?' i asked. "he lifted up his hand, and in a tone of solemnity, said, 'i think it is the cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night, that's going to draw us out of our bondage into the promised land.' "i was struck by his answer. " 'do many of you--i mean of those who have not enjoyed your advantages of education--think so?' " 'yes, sir; we think it is the lord's doings, and it is marvelous in our eyes. it's a time of trial and of tribulation; but it isn't a-going to last. the children of israel were forty years in the wilderness, and so it may be with us. the day of deliverance will come.' "at this moment the little girl began again to cry, and he addressed himself to soothe her. "this was not the only group i encountered. some women had come, down to the river with children half-bereft of their senses--some apparently supposing that we should rob or murder them. the rebel leaders and newspapers have so persistently reiterated these assertions, that they have come to believe them. "the third day was unusually lovely, but our hearts were too anxious to admit of our enjoying it. the rebels were entrenched on heights behind the town. it was necessary that these should be taken, and about noon the movement commenced. our forces marched steadily across the intervening plain. the rebels reserved their fire till we were half-way across, and then from all sides burst forth the deadly fire. we were completely at their mercy. twenty men in my own company fell dead or wounded, among them the captain and first lieutenant. of what followed i can give you little idea. i gave myself up for lost. a desperate impulse enabled me to march on to what seemed certain destruction. all at once i felt a sensation of numbness in my left arm, and looking down, i saw that the blood was trickling from it. "but i had little time to think of myself. hearing a smothered groan, i looked round, and saw frank grover, pale and reeling. " 'i'm shot in the leg,' he said. 'don't leave me here. help me along, and i will try to keep up with you.' "the poor lad leaned upon me, and we staggered forward. but not for long. a stone wall stared us in the face. here rebel sharpshooters had been stationed, and they opened a galling fire upon us. we returned it, but what could we do? we were compelled to retire, and did so in good order, but unfortunately not until the sharpshooters had picked off some of our best men. "among the victims was the poor lad whom i assisted. a second bullet struck him in the heart. he uttered just one word, 'mother,' and fell. poor boy, and poor mother! he seemed to have a premonition of his approaching death, and requested me the day previous to take charge of his effects, and send them with his love and a lock of his hair to his mother if anything should befall him. this request i shall at once comply with. i have succeeded in getting the poor fellow's body brought to camp, where it will be decently buried, and have cut from his head two brown locks, one for his mother, and one for myself. "at last we got back with ranks fearfully diminished. many old familiar faces were gone--the faces of those now lying stiff and stark in death. more were groaning with anguish in the crowded hospital. my own wound was too trifling to require much attention. i shall have to wear a sling for a few days perhaps. "there is little more to tell. until tuesday evening we maintained our position in daily expectation of an attack. but none was made. this was more fortunate for us. i cannot understand what withheld the enemy from an assault. "on tuesday suddenly came the order to re-cross the river. it was a stormy and dreary night, and so, of course, favorable to our purpose. the maneuver was executed in silence, and with commendable expedition. the rebels appeared to have no suspicion of general burnside's intentions. the measured beat of our double quick was drowned by the fury of the storm, and with minds relieved, though bodies drenched, we once more found ourselves with the river between us and our foes. nothing was left behind. "here we are again, but not all of us. many a brave soldier has breathed his last, and lies under the sod. 'god's ways are dark, but soon or late they touch the shining hills of day.' so sings our own whittier, and so i believe, in spite of the sorrowful disaster which we have met with. it is all for the best if we could but see it. "our heavy losses of officers have rendered some new appointments necessary. our second lieutenant has been made captain. the orderly sergeant and second sergeant are now our lieutenants, and the line of promotion has even reached me. i am a corporal. "i have been drawn into writing a very long letter, and i must now close, with the promise of writing again very soon. after i have concluded, i must write to poor frank grover's mother. may god comfort her, for she has lost a boy of whom any mother might feel proud. "with love to the children, i remain, as ever, your affectionate husband. henry frost." "how terrible it must have been," said mrs. frost, with a shudder, as she folded up the letter and laid it down. "we ought indeed to feel thankful that your father's life was spared." "if i were three years older, i might have been in the battle," thought frank. chapter xxii. frank broaches a new plan for some time frank had been revolving in his mind the feasibility of a scheme which he hoped to be able to carry into execution. it was no less than this--to form a military company among the boys, which should be organized and drilled in all respects like those composed of older persons. he did not feel like taking any steps in the matter till he had consulted with some one in whose judgment he had confidence. one evening he mentioned his plan to mr. morton. "it is a capital idea, frank," said the young man, with warm approval. "if i can be of service to you in this matter, it will afford me much pleasure." "there is one difficulty," suggested frank. "none of us boys know anything about military tactics, and we shall need instruction to begin with; but where we are to find a teacher i am sure i can't tell." "i don't think you will have to look far," said mr. morton, with a smile. "are you acquainted with the manual?" asked frank eagerly. "i believe so. you see you have not yet got to the end of my accomplishments. i shall be happy to act as your drill-master until some one among your number is competent to take my place. i can previously give you some private lessons, if you desire it." "there's nothing i should like better, mr. morton," said frank joyfully. "have you got a musket in the house, then? we shall get along better with one." "there's one in the attic." "very well; if you will get it, we can make a beginning now." frank went in search of the musket; but in his haste tumbled down the attic stairs, losing his grasp of the musket, which fell down with a clatter. mrs. frost, opening the door of her bedroom in alarm, saw frank on his back with the musket lying across his chest. "what's the matter?" she asked, not a little startled. frank got up rubbing himself and looking rather foolish. "nothing, mother; only i was in a little too much of a hurry." "what are you going to do with that musket, frank?" "mr. morton is going to teach me the manual, that is all, mother." "i suppose the first position is horizontal," said his mother, with a smile. "i don't like that position very well," returned frank, with a laugh. "i prefer the perpendicular." under his friend's instructions, frank progressed rapidly. at the end of the third lesson, mr. morton said, "you are nearly as competent to give instructions now as i am. there are some things, however, that cannot be learned alone. you had better take measures to form your company." frank called upon mr. rathburn, the principal of the academy, and after communicating his plan, which met with the teacher's full approval, arranged to have notice given of a meeting of the boys immediately after the afternoon session. on thursday afternoon when the last class had recited, previous to ringing the bell, which was a signal that school was over, mr. rathburn gave this brief notice: "i am requested to ask the boys present to remain in their seats, and in which i think they will all feel interested." looks of curiosity were interchanged among the boys, and every one thought, "what's coming now?" at this moment a modest knock was heard, and mr. rathburn, going to the door, admitted frank. he quietly slipped into the nearest seat. "your late schoolfellow, frank frost," proceeded mr. rathburn, "has the merit of originating the plan to which i have referred, and he is no doubt prepared to unfold it to you." mr. rathburn put on his hat and coat, and left the schoolroom. after his departure frank rose and spoke modestly, thus: "boys, i have been thinking for some time past that we were not doing all that we ought in this crisis, which puts in such danger the welfare of our country. if anything, we boys ought to feel more deeply interested than our elders, for while they will soon pass off the stage we have not yet reached even the threshold of manhood. you will ask me what we can do. let me remind you that when the war broke out the great want was, not of volunteers, but of men trained to military exercises. our regiments were at first composed wholly of raw recruits. in europe, military instruction is given as a matter of course; and in germany, and perhaps other countries, young men are obliged to serve for a time in the army. "i think we ought to profit by the lessons of experience. however the present war may turn out, we cannot be certain that other wars will not at some time break out. by that time we shall have grown to manhood, and the duty of defending our country in arms will devolve upon us. should that time come, let it not find us unprepared. i propose that we organize a military company among the boys, and meet for drill at such times as we may hereafter agree upon. i hope that any who feel interested in the matter will express their opinions freely." frank sat down, and a number of the boys testified their approbation by stamping with their feet. john haynes rose, with a sneer upon his face. "i would humbly inquire, mr. chairman, for you appear to have assumed that position, whether you intend to favor us with your valuable services as drillmaster." frank rose, with a flushed face. "i am glad to be reminded of one thing, which i had forgotten," he said. "as this is a meeting for the transaction of business, it is proper that it should be regularly organized. will some one nominate a chairman?" "frank frost!" exclaimed half a dozen voices. "i thank you for the nomination," said frank, "but as i have something further to communicate to the meeting, it will be better to select some one else." "i nominate charles reynolds," said one voice. "second the motion," said another. "those who are in favor of charles reynolds, as chairman of this meeting, will please signify it in the usual manner," said frank. charles reynolds, being declared duly elected, advanced to the teacher's chair. "mr. chairman," said frank, "i will now answer the question just put to me. i do not propose to offer my services as drill-master, but i am authorized to say that a gentleman whom you have all seen, mr. henry morton, is willing to give instruction till you are sufficiently advanced to get along without it." john haynes, who felt disappointed at not having been called upon to preside over the meeting, determined to make as much trouble as possible. "how are we to know that this morton is qualified to give instruction?" he asked, looking round at the boys. "the gentleman is out of order. he will please address his remarks to the chair, and not to the audience," said the presiding officer. "i beg pardon, mr. chairman," said john mockingly. "i forgot how tenacious some people are of their brief authority." "order! order!" called half a dozen voices. "the gentleman will come to order," said the chairman firmly, "and make way for others unless he can treat the chair with proper respect." "mr. chairman," said frank, rising, "i will mention, for the general information, that mr. morton has acted as an officer of militia, and that i consider his offer a kind one, since it will take up considerable of his time and put him to some trouble." "i move that mr. morton's offer be accepted, with thanks," said henry tufts. the motion was seconded by tom wheeler, and carried unanimously, with the exception of one vote. john haynes sat sullenly in his seat and took no part in it. "who shall belong to the company?" asked the chairman. "shall a fixed age be required?" "i move that the age be fixed at eleven," said robert ingalls. this was objected to as too young, and twelve was finally fixed upon. john haynes moved not to admit any one who did not attend the academy. of course, this would exclude frank, and his motion was not seconded. it was finally decided to admit any above the age of twelve who desired it, but the boys reserved to themselves the right of rejecting any who should conduct himself in a manner to bring disgrace upon them. "mr. chairman," said frank, "in order to get under way as soon as possible, i have written down an agreement to which those who wish to join our proposed company can sign their names. if anybody can think of anything better, i shall be glad to have it adopted instead of this." he handed a sheet of paper to the chairman, who read from it the following form of agreement: "we, the subscribers, agree to form a boys' volunteer company, and to conform to the regulations which may hereafter be made for its government." "if there is no objection, we will adopt this form, and subscribe our names," said the chairman. the motion for adoption being carried, the boys came up one by one and signed their names. john haynes would have held back, but for the thought that he might be elected an officer of the new company. "is there any further business to come before the meeting?" inquired the presiding officer. "the boys at webbington had a company three or four years ago," said joe barry, "and they used wooden guns." "wooden guns!" exclaimed wilbur summerfield disdainfully. "you won't catch me training round town with a wooden gun." "i would remind the last three gentlemen that their remarks should be addressed to the chair," said the presiding officer. "of course, i don't care anything about it, but i think you would all prefer to have the meeting conducted properly." "that's so!" exclaimed several boys. "then," said the chairman, "i shall call to order any boy who addresses the meeting except through me." "mr. chairman," said frank, rising, "as to the wooden guns, i quite agree with the last speaker. it would seem too much like boy's play, and we are too much in earnest for that. i have thought of an arrangement which can be made if the selectmen will give their consent. ten or fifteen years ago, longer than most of us can remember, as my father has told me, there was a militia company in rossville, whose arms were supplied and owned by the town. when the company was disbanded the muskets went back to the town, and i believe they are now kept in the basement of the town hall. i presume that we can have the use of them on application. i move that a committee be appointed to lay the matter before the selectmen and ask their permission." his motion was agreed to. "i will appoint john haynes to serve on that committee," said the chairman, after a pause. this was a politic appointment, as squire haynes was one of the selectmen, and would be gratified at the compliment paid to his son. "i accept the duty," said john, rising, and speaking in a tone of importance. "is there any other business to come before the meeting?" "i should like to inquire, mr. chairman, when our first meeting will take place, and where is it to be?" asked herbert metcalf. "i will appoint as a committee to make the necessary arrangements, frank frost, tom wheeler, and robert ingalls. due notice will be given in school of the time and place selected, and a written notice will also be posted up in the postoffice." "would it not be well, mr. chairman," suggested frank, "to circulate an invitation to other boys not present to-day to join the company? the larger our number, the more interest will be felt. i can think of quite a number who would be valuable members. there are dick bumstead, and william chamberlain, and many others." at the sound of dick bumstead's name john haynes looked askance at frank, but for the moment the thought of dick's agency in the affair of the pig-pen had escaped his recollection, and he looked quite unconscious of any indirect reference to it. "will you make a motion to that effect?" "yes, if necessary." "is the motion seconded?" "second it," said moses rogers. "i will appoint wilbur summerfield and moses rogers on that committee," said the chairman. "i move that the meeting adjourn ipse dixit," said sam davis, bringing out the latter phrase with considerable emphasis. a roar of laughter followed which shook the schoolhouse to the very rafters, and then a deafening clamor of applause. the proposer sat down in confusion. "what are you laughing at?" he burst forth indignantly. "mr. chairman," said henry tufts, struggling with his laughter, "i second the gentleman's motion, all except the latin." the motion was carried in spite of the manner in which it was worded, and the boys formed little groups, and began eagerly to discuss the plan which had been proposed. frank had reason to feel satisfied with the success of his suggestion. several of the boys came up to him and expressed their pleasure that he had brought the matter before them. "i say, frank," said robert ingalls, "we'll have a bully company." "yes," said wilbur summerfield, "if john haynes belongs to it. he's a bully, and no mistake." "what's that you are saying about me?" blustered john haynes, who caught a little of what was said. "listeners never hear anything good of themselves," answered wilbur. "say that again, wilbur summerfield," said john menacingly. "certainly, if it will do you any good. i said that you were a bully, john haynes; and there's not a boy here that doesn't know it to be true." "take care!" said john, turning white with passion. "while i'm about it, there's something more i want to say," continued wilbur undauntedly. "yesterday you knocked my little brother off his sled and sent him home crying. if you do it again, you will have somebody else to deal with." john trembled with anger. it would have done him good to "pitch into" wilbur, but the latter looked him in the face so calmly and resolutely that discretion seemed to him the better part of valor, and with an oath he turned away. "i don't know what's got into john haynes," said wilbur. "i never liked him, but now he seems to be getting worse and worse every day." chapter xxiii. pomp takes mrs. payson prisoner old mrs. payson, who arrived in rossville at the same time with henry morton, had been invited by her daughter, "cynthy ann," to pass the winter, and had acquiesced without making any very strenuous objections. her "bunnit," which she had looked upon as "sp'ilt," had been so far restored by a skilful milliner that she was able to wear it for best. as this restoration cost but one dollar and a half out of the five which had been given her by young morton, she felt very well satisfied with the way matters had turned out. this did not, however, by any means diminish her rancor against pomp, who had been the mischievous cause of the calamity. "ef i could only get hold on him," mrs. payson had remarked on several occasions to cynthy ann, "i'd shake the mischief out of him, ef i died for't the very next minute." mrs. payson was destined to meet with a second calamity, which increased, if possible, her antipathy to the "young imp." being of a social disposition, she was quite in the habit of dropping in to tea at different homes in the village. having formerly lived in rossville, she was acquainted with nearly all the townspeople, and went the rounds about once in two weeks. one afternoon she put her knitting into a black work-bag, which she was accustomed to carry on her arm, and, arraying herself in a green cloak and hood, which had served her for fifteen years, she set out to call on mrs. thompson. now, the nearest route to the place of her destination lay across a five-acre lot. the snow lay deep upon the ground, but the outer surface had become so hard as, without difficulty, to bear a person of ordinary weight. when mrs. payson came up to the bars, she said to herself, " 'tain't so fur to go across lots. i guess i'll ventur'." she let down a bar and, passing through, went on her way complacently. but, alas, for the old lady's peace of mind! she was destined to come to very deep grief. that very afternoon pomp had come over to play with sam thompson, and the two, after devising various projects of amusement, had determined to make a cave in the snow. they selected a part of the field where it had drifted to the depth of some four or five feet. beginning at a little distance, they burrowed their way into the heart of the snow, and excavated a place about four feet square by four deep, leaving the upper crust intact, of course, without its ordinary strength. the two boys had completed their task, and were siting down in their subterranean abode, when the roof suddenly gave way, and a visitor entered in the most unceremonious manner. the old lady had kept on her way unsuspiciously, using as a cane a faded blue umbrella, which she carried invariably, whatever the weather. when mrs. payson felt herself sinking, she uttered a loud shriek and waved her arms aloft, brandishing her umbrella in a frantic way. she was plunged up to her armpits in the snow, and was, of course, placed in a very unfavorable position for extricating herself. the two boys were at first nearly smothered by the descent of snow, but when the first surprise was over they recognized their prisoner. i am ashamed to say that their feeling was that of unbounded delight, and they burst into a roar of laughter. the sound, indistinctly heard, terrified the old lady beyond measure, and she struggled frantically to escape, nearly poking out pomp's eye with the point of her umbrella. " pomp, always prompt to repel aggression, in return, pinched her foot. "massy sakes! where am i?" ejaculated the affrighted old lady. "there's some wild crittur down there. oh, cynthy ann, ef you could see your marm at this moment!" she made another vigorous flounder, and managed to kick sam in the face. partly as a measure of self-defense, he seized her ankle firmly. "he's got hold of me!" shrieked the old lady "help! help! i shall be murdered." her struggles became so energetic that the boys soon found it expedient to evacuate the premises. they crawled out by the passage they had made, and appeared on the surface of the snow. the old lady presented a ludicrous appearance. her hood had slipped off, her spectacles were resting on the end of her nose, and she had lost her work-bag. but she clung with the most desperate energy to the umbrella, on which apparently depended her sole hope of deliverance. "hi yah!" laughed pomp, as he threw himself back on the snow and began to roll about in an ecstasy of delight. instantly mrs. payson's apprehensions changed to furious anger. "so it's you, you little varmint, that's done this. jest le' me get out, and i'll whip you so you can't stan'. see ef i don't." "you can't get out, missus; yah, yah!" laughed pomp. "you's tied, you is, missus." "come an' help me out, this minute!" exclaimed the old lady, stamping her foot. "lor', missus, you'll whip me. you said you would." "so i will, i vum," retorted the irate old lady, rather undiplomatically. "as true as i live, i'll whip you till you can't stan'." as she spoke, she brandished her umbrella in a menacing manner. "den, missus, i guess you'd better stay where you is." "oh, you imp. see ef i don't have you put in jail. here, you, sam thompson, come and help me out. ef you don't, i'll tell your mother, an' she'll give you the wust lickin' you ever had. i'm surprised at you." "you won't tell on me, will you?" said sam, irresolutely. "i'll see about it," said the old lady, in a politic tone. she felt her powerlessness, and that concession must precede victory. "then, give me the umbrella," said sam, who evidently distrusted her. "you'll run off with it," said mrs. payson suspiciously. "no, i won't." "well, there 'tis." "come here, pomp, and help me," said sam. pomp held aloof. "she'll whip me," he said, shaking his head. "she's an old debble." "oh, you--you sarpint!" ejaculated the old lady, almost speechless with indignation. "you can run away as soon as she gets out," suggested sam. pomp advanced slowly and warily, rolling his eyes in indecision. "jest catch hold of my hands, both on ye," said mrs. payson, "an' i'll give a jump." these directions were followed, and the old lady rose to the surface, when, in an evil hour, intent upon avenging herself upon pomp, she made a clutch for his collar. in doing so she lost her footing and fell back into the pilt from which she had just emerged. her spectacles dropped off and, falling beneath her, were broken. she rose, half-provoked and half-ashamed of her futile attempt. it was natural that neither of these circumstances should effect an improvement in her temper. "you did it a purpose," she said, shaking her fist at pomp, who stood about a rod off, grinning at her discomfiture. "there, i've gone an' broke my specs, that i bought two years ago, come fall, of a pedler. i'll make you pay for 'em." "lor', missus, i ain't got no money," said pomp. "nebber had none." unfortunately for the old lady, it was altogether probable that pomp spoke the truth this time. "three and sixpence gone!" groaned mrs. payson. "fust my bunnit, an' then my specs. i'm the most unfort'nit' crittur. why don't you help me, sam thompson, instead of standin' and gawkin' at me?" she suddenly exclaimed, glaring at sam. "i didn't know as you was ready," said sam. "you might have been out before this, ef you hadn't let go. here, pomp, lend a hand." pomp shook his head decisively. "don't catch dis chile again," he said. "i'm goin' home. ole woman wants to lick me." sam endeavored to persuade pomp, but he was deaf to persuasion. he squatted down on the snow, and watched the efforts his companion made to extricate the old lady. when she was nearly out he started on a run, and was at a safe distance before mrs. payson was in a situation to pursue him. the old lady shook herself to make sure that no bones were broken. next, she sent sam down into the hole to pick up her bag, and then, finding, on a careful examination, that she had recovered everything, even to the blue umbrella, fetched the astonished sam a rousing box on the ear. "what did you do that for?" he demanded in an aggrieved tone. " 'taint half as much as you deserve," said the old lady. "i'm goin' to your house right off, to tell your mother what you've been a-doin'. ef you was my child, i'd beat you black and blue." "i wish i'd left you down there," muttered sam. "what's that?" demanded mrs. payson sharply. "don't you go to bein' sassy. it'll be the wuss for ye. you'll come to the gallows some time, ef you don't mind your p's and q's. i might 'ave stayed there till i died, an' then you'd have been hung." "what are, you jawing about?" retorted sam. "how could i know you was comin'?" "you know'd it well enough," returned the old lady. "you'll bring your mother's gray hairs with sorrer to the grave." "she ain't got any gray hairs," said sam doggedly. "well, she will have some, ef she lives long enough. i once know'd a boy just like you, an' he was put in jail for stealin'." "i ain't a-goin to stay and be jawed that way," said sam. "you won't catch me pulling you out of a hole again. i wouldn't have you for a grandmother for all the world. tom baldwin told me, only yesterday, that you was always a-hectorin' him." tom baldwin was the son of cynthy ann, and consequently old mrs. payson's grandson. "did tom baldwin tell you that?" demanded the old lady abruptly, looking deeply incensed. "yes, he did." "well, he's the ungratefullest cub that i ever sot eyes on," exclaimed his indignant grandmother. "arter all i've done for him. i'm knittin' a pair of socks for him this blessed minute. but he sha'n't have 'em. i'll give 'em to the soldiers, i vum. did he say anything else?" "yes, he said he should be glad when you were gone." "i'll go right home and tell cynthy ann," exclaimed mrs. payson, "an' if she don't w'ip him i will. i never see such a bad set of boys as is growin' up. there ain't one on 'em that isn't as full of mischief as a nut is of meat. i'll come up with them, as true as i live." full of her indignation, mrs. payson gave up her proposed call on mrs. thompson, and, turning about, hurried home to lay her complaint before cynthy ann. "i'm glad she's gone," said sam, looking after her, as with resolute steps she trudged along, punching the snow vigorously with the point of her blue cotton umbrella. "i pity tom baldwin; if i had such a grandmother as that, i'd run away to sea. that's so!" chapter xxiv. a chapter from hardee a few rods east of the post-office, on the opposite side of the street, was a two-story building used as an engine-house, the second story consisted of a hall used for company meetings. this the fire company obligingly granted to the boys as a drill-room during the inclement season, until the weather became sufficiently warm to drill out of doors. on the monday afternoon succeeding the preliminary meeting at the academy, about thirty boys assembled in this hall, pursuant to a notice which had been given at school and posted up at the tavern and post-office. at half-past two frank entered, accompanied by mr. morton. some of the boys were already acquainted with him, and came up to speak. he had a frank, cordial way with boys, which secured their favor at first sight. "well, boys," said he pleasantly, "i believe i am expected to make soldiers of you." "yes, sir," said charles reynolds respectfully: "i hope we shall learn readily and do credit to your instructions." "i have no fear on that score," was the reply. "perhaps you may have some business to transact before we commence our lessons. if so, i will sit down a few minutes and wait till you are ready." a short business meeting was held, organized as before. john haynes reported that he had spoken to his father, and the question of allowing the boys the use of the muskets belonging to the town would be acted upon at the next meeting of the selectmen. squire haynes thought that the request would be granted. "what are we going to do. this afternoon?" asked robert ingalls. "i can answer that question, mr. chairman," said henry morton. "we are not yet ready for muskets. i shall have to drill you first in the proper position of a soldier, and the military step. probably it will be a week before i shall wish to place muskets into your hands. may i inquire how soon there will be a meeting of the selectmen?" john haynes announced that the next meeting would be held in less than a week. "then there will be no difficulty as to the muskets," said mr. morton. wilbur summerfield reported that he had extended an invitation to boys not connected with the academy to join the company. several were now present. dick bumstead, though not able to attend that day, would come to the next meeting. he thought they would be able to raise a company of fifty boys. this report was considered very satisfactory. tom wheeler arose and inquired by what name the new company would be called. "i move," said robert ingalls, "that we take the name of the rossville home guards." "if the enemy should invade rossville, you'd be the first to run," sneered john haynes. "not unless i heard it before you," was the quick reply. there was a general laugh, and cries of "bully for you, bob!" were heard. "order!" cried the chairman, pounding the table energetically. "such disputes cannot be allowed. i think we had better defer obtaining a name for our company till we find how well we are likely to succeed." this proposal seemed to be acquiesced in by the boys generally. the business meeting terminated, and mr. morton was invited to commence his instructions. "the boys will please form themselves in a line," said the teacher, in a clear, commanding voice. this was done. the positions assumed were, most of them, far from military. some stood with their legs too far apart, others with one behind the other, some with the shoulders of unequal height. frank alone stood correctly, thanks to the private instructions he had received. "now, boys," said mr. morton, "when i say 'attention!' you must all look at me and follow my directions implicitly. attention and subordination are of the first importance to a soldier. let me say, to begin with, that, with one exception, you are all standing wrong." here there was a general shifting of positions. robert ingalls, who had been standing with his feet fifteen inches apart, suddenly brought them close together in a parallel position. tom wheeler, who had been resting his weight mainly on the left foot, shifted to the right. moses rogers, whose head was bent over so as to watch his feet, now threw it so far back that he seemed to be inspecting the ceiling. frank alone remained stationary. mr. morton smiled at the changes elicited by his remarks, and proceeded to give his first command. "heels on the same line!" he ordered. all the boys turned their heads, and there was a noisy shuffling of feet. "quit crowding, tom baldwin!" exclaimed sam rivers in an audible tone. "quit crowding, yourself," was the reply. "you've got more room than i, now." "silence in the ranks!" said the instructor authoritatively. "frank frost, i desire you to see that the boys stand at regular distances." this was accomplished. "turn out your feet equally, so as to form a right angle with each other. so." mr. morton illustrated his meaning practically. this was very necessary, as some of the boys had very confused ideas as to what was meant by a right angle. after some time this order was satisfactorily carried out. "the knees must be straight. i see that some are bent, as if the weight of the body were too much for them. not too stiff! rivers, yours are too rigid. you couldn't walk a mile in that way without becoming very tired. there, that is much better. notice my position." the boys, after adjusting their positions, looked at the rest to see how they had succeeded. "don't look at each other," said mr. morton. "if you do you will be certain to make blunders. i notice that some of you are standing with one shoulder higher than the other. the shoulders should be square, and the body should be erect upon the hips. attention! so!" "very well. haynes, you are trying to stand too upright. you must not bend backward. all, incline your bodies a little forward. frank ingalls is standing correctly." "i don't think that's very soldierly," said john haynes, who felt mortified at being corrected, having flattered himself that he was right and the rest were wrong. "a soldier shouldn't be round-shouldered, or have a slouching gait," said the instructor quietly; "but you will find when you come to march that the opposite extreme is attended with great inconvenience and discomfort. until then you must depend upon my assurance." mr. morton ran his eye along the line, and observed that most of the boys were troubled about their arms. some allowed them to hang in stiff rigidity by their sides. one, even, had his clasped behind his back., others let theirs dangle loosely, swinging now hither, now thither. he commented upon these errors, and added, "let your arms hang naturally, with the elbows near the body, the palm of the hand a little turned to the front, the little finger behind the seam of the pantaloons. this you will find important when you come to drill with muskets. you will find that it will economize space by preventing your occupying more room than is necessary. frank, will you show sam rivers and john haynes how to hold their hands?" "you needn't trouble yourself," said john haughtily, but in too low a voice, as he supposed, for mr. morton to hear. "i don't want a clodhopper to teach me." frank's face flushed slightly, and without a word he passed john and occupied himself with showing sam rivers, who proved more tractable. "no talking in the ranks!" said mr. morton, in a tone of authority. "if any boy wishes to ask any explanation of me he may do so, but it is a breach of discipline to speak to each other." "my next order will be, 'faces to the front!' he resumed, after a pause. "nothing looks worse than to see a file of men with heads turned in various directions. the eyes should be fixed straight before you, striking the ground at about fifteen paces forward." it required some time to have this direction properly carried out. half an hour had now passed, and some of the boys showed signs of weariness. "i will now give you a little, breathing-spell for ten minutes," said mr. morton. "after this we will resume our exercises.' the boys stretched their limbs, and began to converse in an animated strain about the lesson which they had just received. at the expiration of ten minutes the lesson was resumed, and some additional directions were given. it will not be necessary for us to follow the boys during the remainder of the lesson. most of them made very creditable progress, and the line presented quite a different appearance at the end of the exercise from what it had at the commencement. "i shall be prepared to give you a second lesson on saturday afternoon," announced mr. morton. "in the meantime it will be well for you to remember what i have said, and if you should feel inclined to practice by yourselves, it will no doubt make your progress more rapid." these remarks were followed by a clapping of hands on the part of the boys--a demonstration of applause which mr. morton acknowledged by a bow and a smile. "well, how do you like it?" asked frank frost of robert ingalls. "oh, it's bully fun!" returned bob enthusiastically. "i feel like a hero already." "you're as much of one now, bob, as you'll ever be," said wilbur good-naturedly. "i wouldn't advise you to be a soldier," retorted bob. "you're too fat to run, and would be too frightened to fight." "i certainly couldn't expect to keep up with those long legs of yours, bob," said wilbur, laughing. the boys dispersed in excellent humor, fully determined to persevere in their military exercises. chapter xxv. election of officers for the six weeks following, mr. morton gave lessons twice a week to the boys. at the third lesson they received their muskets, and thenceforth drilled with them. a few, who had not been present at the first two lessons, and were consequently ignorant of the positions, mr. morton turned over to frank, who proved an efficient and competent instructor. at the end of the twelfth lesson, mr. morton, after giving the order "rest!" addressed the boys as follows: "boys, we have now taken twelve lessons together. i have been very much gratified by the rapid improvement which you have made, and feel that it is due quite as much to your attention as to any instructions of mine. i can say with truth that i have known companies of grown men who have made less rapid progress than you. "the time has now come when i feel that i can safely leave you to yourselves, there are those among you who are competent to carry on the work which i have commenced. it will be desirable for you at once to form a company organization. as there are but fifty on your muster-roll, being about half the usual number, you will not require as many officers. i recommend the election of a captain, first and second lieutenants, three sergeants and three corporals. you have already become somewhat accustomed to company drill, so that you will be able to go on by yourselves under the guidance of your officers. if any doubtful questions should arise, i shall always be happy to give you any information or assistance in my power. "and now, boys, i will bid you farewell in my capacity of instructor, but i need not say that i shall continue to watch with interest your progress in the military art." here mr. morton bowed, and sat down. after the applause which followed his speech had subsided, there was a silence and hush of expectation among the boys, after which charles reynolds rose slowly, and, taking from the seat beside him a package, advanced toward mr. morton and made a brief speech of presentation, having been deputed by the boys to perform that duty. "mr morton: i stand here in behalf of the boys present, who wish to express to you their sense of your kindness in giving them the course of lessons which has just ended. we have taken up much of your time, and no doubt have tried your patience more than once. if we have improved, as you were kind enough to say, we feel that it is principally owing to our good fortune in having so skilful a teacher. we wish to present you some testimonial of the regard which we have for you, and accordingly ask your acceptance of this copy of 'abbott's life of napoleon.' we should have been glad to give you something more valuable, but we are sure you will value the gift for other reasons than its cost." here charles reynolds sat down, and all eyes were turned toward mr. morton. it was evident that he was taken by surprise. it was equally evident that he was much gratified by this unexpected token of regard. he rose and with much feeling spoke as follows: "my dear boys, for you must allow me to call you so, i can hardly tell you how much pleasure your kind gift has afforded me. it gives me the assurance, which indeed, i did not need, that you are as much my friends as i am yours. the connection between us has afforded me much pleasure and satisfaction. in training you to duties which patriotism may hereafter devolve upon you, though i pray heaven that long before that time our terrible civil strife may be at an end, i feel that i have helped you to do something to show your loyal devotion to the country which we all love and revere." here there was loud applause. "if you were a few years older, i doubt not that your efforts would be added to those of your fathers and brothers who are now encountering the perils and suffering the privations of war. and with a little practise i am proud to say that you would not need to be ashamed of the figure you would cut in the field. "i have little more to say. i recognize a fitness in the selection of the work which you have given me. napoleon is without doubt the greatest military genius which our modern age has produced. yet he lacked one very essential characteristic of a good soldier. he was more devoted to his own selfish ends than to the welfare of his country. i shall value your gift for the good wishes that accompany it, and the recollection of this day will be among my pleasantest memories." mr. morton here withdrew in the midst of hearty applause. when he had left the hall a temporary organization for business purposes was at once effected. wilbur summerfield was placed in the chair, and the meeting proceeded at once to an election of officers. for a week or two past there had been considerable private canvassing among the boys. there were several who would like to have been elected captain, and a number of others who, though not aspiring so high, hoped to be first or second lieutenants. among the first class was john haynes. like many persons who are unpopular, he did not seem to be at all aware of the extent of his unpopularity. but there was another weighty reason why the choice of the boys would never have fallen upon him. apart from his unpopularity, he was incompetent for the posts to which he aspired. probably there were not ten boys in the company who were not more proficient in drill than he. this was not owing to any want of natural capacity, but to a feeling that he did not require much instruction and a consequent lack of attention to the directions of mr. morton. he had frequently been corrected in mistakes, but always received the correction with sullenness and impatience. he felt in his own mind that he was much better fitted to govern than to obey, forgetting in his ambition that it is those only who have first learned to obey who are best qualified to rule others. desirious of ingratiating himself with the boys, and so securing their votes, he had been unusually amiable and generous during the past week. at the previous lesson he had brought half a bushel of apples, from which he had requested the boys to help themselves freely. by this means he hoped to attain the object of his ambition. squire haynes, too, was interested in the success of his son. "if they elect you captain, john," he promised, "i will furnish you money enough to buy a handsome sash and sword." besides john, there were several others who cherished secret hopes of success. among these were charles reynolds and wilbur summerfield. as for frank frost, though he had thought little about it, he could not help feeling that he was among those best qualified for office, though he would have been quite content with either of the three highest offices, or even with the post of orderly sergeant. among those who had acquitted themselves with the greatest credit was our old friend dick bumstead, whom we remember last as concerned in rather a questionable adventure. since that time his general behavior had very much changed for the better. before, he had always shirked work when it was possible. now he exhibited a steadiness and industry which surprised no less than it gratified his father. this change was partly owing to his having given up some companions who had done him no good, and, instead, sought the society of frank. the energy and manliness exhibited by his new friend, and the sensible views which he took of life and duty, had wrought quite a revolution in dick's character. he began to see that if he ever meant to accomplish anything he must begin now. at frank's instance he had given up smoking, and this cut off one of the temptations which had assailed him. gradually the opinion entertained of dick in the village as a ne'er-do-well was modified, and he had come to be called as one of the steady and reliable boys--a reputation not to, be lightly regarded. in the present election dick did not dream that he could have any interest. while he had been interested in the lessons, and done his best, he felt that his previous reputation would injure his chance, and he had made up his mind that he should have to serve in the ranks. this did not trouble him, for dick, to his credit be it said, was very free from jealousy, and had not a particle of envy in his composition. he possessed so many good qualities that it would have been a thousand pities if he had kept on in his former course. "you will bring in your votes for captain," said the chairman. tom wheeler distributed slips of paper among the boys, and there was forthwith a plentiful show of pencils. "are the votes all in?" inquired the chairman, a little later. "if so, we will proceed to. count them." there was a general hush of expectation while wilbur summerfield, the chairman, and robert ingalls, the secretary of the meeting, were counting the votes. john haynes, was evidently nervous, and fidgeted about, anxious to learn his fate. at length the count was completed, and wilbur, rising, announced it as follows: whole number of votes...... 49 necessary for a choice..... 25 robert ingalls.............. 2 votes john haynes................. 2 " wilbur summerfield.......... 4 " moses rogers................ 4 " charles reynolds........... 10 " frank frost................ 27 " "gentlemen, i have the pleasure of announcing that you have made choice of frank frost as your captain." frank rose amid a general clapping of hands, and, with heightened color but modest self-possession, spoke as follows "boys, i thank you very much for this proof of your confidence. all i can say is that i will endeavor to deserve it. i shall no doubt make some mistakes, but i feel sure that you will grant me your indulgence, and not expect too much of my inexperience." this speech was regarded with favor by all except john haynes, who would rather have had any one else elected, independent of his own disappointment, which was great. "you will now prepare your votes for first lieutenant," said the presiding officer. it will be noticed that two votes were cast for john haynes. one of these was thrown by a competitor, who wished to give his vote to some one who stood no possible chance of succeeding, and accordingly selected john on account of his well-known unpopularity. this vote, therefore, was far from being a compliment. as for the other vote, john haynes himself best knew by whom it was cast. the boys began to prepare their votes for first lieutenant. john brightened up a little. he felt that it would be something to gain this office. but when the result of the balloting was announced it proved that he had but a single vote. there were several scattering votes. the two prominent candidates were dick bumstead, who received eight votes, and charles reynolds, who received thirty-two, and was accordingly declared elected. no one was more surprised by this announcement than dick. he felt quite bewildered, not having the slightest expectation of being a candidate. he was almost tempted to believe that the votes had only been cast in jest. but dick was destined to a still greater surprise. at the next vote, for second lieutenant, there were five scattering votes. then came ten for wilbur summerfield, and richard bumstead led off with thirty-four, and was accordingly declared elected. "speech! speech!" exclaimed half a dozen, vociferously. dick looked a little confused, and tried to escape the call. but the boys were determined to have him up, and he was finally compelled to rise, looking and feeling rather awkward but his natural good sense and straightforwardness came to his aid, and he acquitted himself quite creditably. this was dick's speech: "boys, i don't know how to make speeches, and i s'pose you know that as well as i do. i hardly knew who was meant when richard bumstead's name was mentioned, having always been called dick, but if it means me, all i can say is, that i am very much obliged to you for the unexpected honor. one reason why i did not expect to be elected to any office was because i ain't as good a scholar as most of you. i am sure there are a great many of you who would make better officers than i, but i don't think there's any that will try harder to do well than i shall." here dick sat down, very much astonished to find that he had actually made a speech. his speech was modest, and made a favorable impression, as was shown by the noisy stamping of feet and shouts of "bully for you, dick!" "you're a trump!" and other terms in which boys are wont to signify their approbation. through all this john haynes looked very much disgusted, and seemed half-decided upon leaving the room. he had some curiosity, however, to learn who would be elected to the subordinate offices, and so remained. he had come into the room with the determination not to accept anything below a lieutenancy, but now made up his mind not to reject the post of orderly sergeant if it should be offered to him. the following list of officers, however will show that he was allowed no choice in the matter: captain, frank frost. first lieutenant, charles reynolds. second lieutenant, richard bumstead. orderly sergeant, wilbur summerfield. second sergeant, robert ingalls. third sergeant, moses rogers. first corporal, tom wheeler. second corporal, joseph barry. third corporal, frank ingalls. the entire list of officers was now read and received with applause. if there were some who were disappointed, they acquiesced good-naturedly, with one exception. when the applause had subsided, john haynes rose and, in a voice trembling with passion, said: "mr. chairman, i wish to give notice to all present that i resign my place as a member of this company. i don't choose to serve under such officers as you have chosen to-day. i don't think they are fit to have command." here there was a general chorus of hisses, drowning john's voice completely. after glancing about him a moment in speechless fury, he seized his hat, and left the room in indignant haste, slamming the door after him. "he's a mean fellow!" said frank ingalls. "i suppose he expected to be captain." "shouldn't wonder," said sam rivers. "anyhow, he's a fool to make such a fuss about it. as for me," he added, with a mirthful glance, "i am just as much disappointed as he is. when i came here this afternoon i expected i should be elected captain, and i'd got my speech all ready, but now i'm sorry that it will have to be wasted." there was a general burst of laughter, for sam rivers, whom everybody liked for his good nature, was incorrigibly awkward, and had made a larger number of blunders, probably, than any other member of the company." "give us the speech, sam," said bob ingalls. "yes, don't let it be wasted." "speech! speech!" cried joseph barry. "very well, gentlemen, if you desire it." sam drew from his pocket a blank piece of paper, and pretended to read the following speech, which he made up on the spur of the moment. "ahem! gentlemen," he commenced, in a pompous tone, assuming an air of importance; "i am deeply indebted to you for this very unexpected honor." "oh, very," said one of the boys near. "i feel that you have done yourself credit in your selection." here there was a round of applause. "i am sorry that some of you are still very awkward, but i hope under my excellent discipline to make veterans of you in less than no time." "good for you!" "you cannot expect me to remain long with you, as i am now in the line of promotion, and don't mean to stop short of a brigadier. but as long as i am your captain i hope you will appreciate your privileges." sam's speech was followed by a chorus of laughter, in which he joined heartily himself. as for john's defection, nobody seemed to regret it much. it was generally felt that the company would have no difficulty in getting along without him. chapter xxvi. the rebel trap on the first of april frank received the following letter from his father. it was the more welcome because nearly a month had elapsed since anything had been received, and the whole family had become quite anxious: "dear frank," the letter commenced, "you are no doubt feeling anxious on account of my long silence. you will understand the cause of it when i tell you that since the date of my last letter i have been for a fortnight in the enemy's hands as a prisoner. fortunately, i have succeeded in effecting my escape. you will naturally be interested to learn the particulars. "three weeks since, a lady occupying an estate about five miles distant from our camp waited on our commanding officer and made an urgent request to have a few soldiers detailed as a guard to protect her and her property from molestation and loss. our colonel was not at first disposed to grant her request, but finally acceded to it, rather reluctantly, declaring that it was all nonsense. i was selected, with five other men, to serve as a guard. mrs. roberts--for this was her name--appeared quite satisfied to find her request granted, and drove slowly home under our escort. "on arriving, we found a mansion in the old virginia style, low in elevation, broad upon the ground, and with a piazza extending along the front. surrounding it was a good-sized plantation. at a little distance from the house was a row of negro huts. these were mostly vacant, the former occupants having secured their freedom by taking refuge within our lines. "as sergeant in command--you must know that i have been promoted--i inquired of mrs. roberts what danger she apprehended. her answers were vague and unsatisfactory. however, she seemed disposed to treat me very civilly, and at nine o'clock invited the whole party into the house to partake of a little refreshment. this invitation was very welcome to soldiers who had not for months partaken of anything better than camp fare. it was all the more acceptable because outside a cold rain was falling, and the mod was deep and miry. "in the dining-room we found a plentiful meal spread, including hot coffee, hot corn bread, bacon, and other viands. we were not, however, destined to take our supper in peace. as i was drinking my second cup of coffee i thought i heard a noise outside, and remarked it to mrs. roberts. " 'it is only the wind, sergeant,' said she, indifferently. "it was not long before i became convinced that it was something more serious. i ordered my men to stand to their arms, in spite of the urgent protestations of the old lady, and marched them out upon the lawn, just in time to be confronted by twenty or thirty men on horseback, clad in the rebel uniform. "resistance against such odds would have been only productive of useless loss of life, and with my little force i was compelled to surrender myself a prisoner. "of course, i no longer doubted that we were the victims of a trick, and had been lured by mrs. roberts purposely to be made prisoners. if i had had any doubts on the subject, her conduct would have dissipated them. she received our captors with open arms. they stepped into our places as guests, and the house was thrown open to them. our arms were taken from us, our hands pinioned, and a scene of festivity ensued. a cask of wine was brought up from the cellar, and the contents freely distributed among the rebels, or gray backs, as we call them here. "once, as mrs. roberts passed through the little room where we were confined, i said, 'do you consider this honorable conduct, madam, to lure us here by false representations, and then betray us to our enemies?' " 'yes, i do!' said she hotly. 'what business have you to come down here and lay waste our territory? there is no true southern woman but despises you heartily, and would do as much as i have, and more, too. you've got my son a prisoner in one of your yankee prisons. when i heard that he was taken, i swore to be revenged, and i have kept my word. i've got ten for one, though he's worth a hundred such as you!' "so saying, she swept out of the room, with a scornful look of triumph in her eyes. the next day, as i afterward learned, she sent word to our colonel that her house had been unexpectedly attacked by a large party of the rebels, and that we had been taken prisoners. her complicity was suspected, but was not proved till our return to the camp. of course, a further guard, which she asked for, to divert suspicion, was refused. "meanwhile we were carried some twenty miles across the river, and confined in a building which had formerly been used as a storehouse. "the place was dark and gloomy. there were some dozen others who shared our captivity. here we had rather a doleful time. we were supplied with food three times a day; but the supply was scanty, and we had meat but once in two days. we gathered that it was intended to send us to richmond; but from day to day there was a delay in doing so. we decided that our chance of escape would be much better then than after we reached the rebel capital. we, therefore, formed a plan for defeating the intentions of our captors. "though the building assigned to us as a prison consisted of two stories, we were confined in the lower part. this was more favorable to our designs. during the night we busied ourselves in loosening two of the planks of the flooring, so that we could remove them at any time. then lowering two of our number into the cellar, we succeeded in removing enough of the stone foundation to allow the escape of one man at a time through the aperture. our arrangements were hastened by the assignment of a particular day on which we were to be transferred from our prison, and conveyed to richmond. though we should have been glad to enter the city under some circumstances, we did not feel very desirous of going as prisoners of war. "on the night selected we waited impatiently till midnight. then, as silently as possible, we removed the planking, and afterwards the stones of the basement wall, and crept through one by one. all this was effected so noiselessly that we were all out without creating any alarm. we could hear the measured tramp of the sentinel, as he paced up and down in front of the empty prison. we pictured to ourselves his surprise when he discovered, the next morning, that we escaped under his nose without his knowing it! "i need not dwell upon the next twenty-four hours. the utmost vigilance was required to elude the rebel pickets. at last, after nearly twenty hours, during which we had nothing to eat, we walked into camp, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, to the great joy of our comrades from whom we had been absent a fortnight. "on receiving information of the manner in which we had been captured, our commanding officer at once despatched me with a detachment of men to arrest mrs. roberts and her daughter. her surprise and dismay at seeing me whom she supposed safe in richmond were intense. she is still under arrest. "i suppose our campaign will open as soon as the roads are dried up. the mud in virginia is much more formidable than at the north, and presents an insuperable, perhaps i should say an unfathomable, obstacle to active operations. i hope general grant will succeed in taking vicksburg. the loss of that important stronghold would be a great blow to the rebels. "you ask me, in your last letter, whether i see much of the contrabands. i have talked with a considerable number. one, a very intelligent fellow, had been very much trusted by his master, and had accompanied him to various parts of the south. i asked him the question: 'is it true that there are a considerable number of slaves who would prefer to remain in their present condition to becoming free?' " 'nebber see any such niggers, massa,' he answered, shaking his head decisively. 'we all want to be free. my old massa treated me kindly, but i'd a left him any minute to be my own man.' "i hope the time will soon come, when, from canada to the gulf, there will not be a single black who is not his own man. we in the army are doing what we can, but we must be backed up by those who stay at home. my own feeling is that slavery has received its death-blow. it may continue to live for some years, but it has fallen from its pomp and pride of place. it is tottering to its fall. what shall be done with the negroes in the transition state will be a problem for statesmen to consider. i don't think we need fear the consequences of doing right, and on this subject there can be no doubt of what is right; the apparent insensibility and brutish ignorance which we find among some of the slaves will wear away under happier influences. "there is a little fellow of perhaps a dozen years who comes into our camp and runs of errands and does little services for the men. yesterday morning he came to my tent, and with a grin, said to me, 'de ol' man died last night.' " 'what, your father?' i inquired in surprise. " 'yes, massa,' with another grin: 'goin' to tote him off dis mornin'.' "as he only lived a quarter of a mile off, i got permission to go over to the house, or cabin, where scip's father had lived. "the outer door was open, and i entered without knocking. a woman was bending over a washtub at the back part of the room. i looked around me for the body, but could see no indication of anything having happened out of the ordinary course. "i thought it possible that scip had deceived me, and accordingly spoke to the woman, inquiring if she was scip's mother. "she replied in the affirmative. " 'and where is his father?' i next inquired. " 'oh, he's done dead,' she said, continuing her washing. " 'when did he die?' " 'las' night, massa.' " 'and where is the body?' " 'toted off, massa, very first t'ing dis mornin'.' "in spite of this case of apparent insensibility, the negro's family attachments are quite as warm naturally as our own. they have little reason, indeed, to mourn over the loss of a husband or father, since, in most cases, it is the only portal to the freedom which they covet. the separation of families, too, tends, of course, to weaken family ties. while i write these words i cannot help recalling our own happy home, and longing for an hour, if not more, of your society. i am glad that you find mr. morton so agreeable an inmate. you ought to feel quite indebted him for his assistance in your studies. i am glad you have formed a boy's company. it is very desirable that the elements of military science should be understood even by boys, since upon them must soon devolve the defense of their country from any blows that may be directed against her, whether by foes from within or enemies from abroad. "the coming season will be a busy one with you. when you receive this letter it will be about time for you to begin to plow whatever land is to be planted. as i suggested in my first letter from camp, i should like you to devote some space-perhaps half an acre-to the culture of onions. we find them very useful for promoting health in the army. they are quite high on account of the largely increased demand, so that it will be a good crop for financial reasons." (here followed some directions with regard to the spring planting, which we omit, as not likely to interest our readers.) the letter ended thus: "it is nearly time for me to mail this letter, and it is already much longer than i intended to write. may god keep you all in health and happiness is the fervent wish of "your affectionate father, "henry frost." the intelligence that their father had been a prisoner made quite a sensation among the children. charlie declared that mrs. roberts was a wicked woman, and he was glad she was put in prison--an expression of joy in which the rest fully participated. chapter xxvii. pomp's light infantry tactics little pomp continued to pursue his studies under frank as a teacher. by degrees his restlessness diminished, and, finding frank firm in exacting a certain amount of study before he would dismiss him, he concluded that it was best to study in earnest, and so obtain the courted freedom as speedily as possible. frank had provided for his use a small chair, which he had himself used when at pomp's age, but for this the little contraband showed no great liking. he preferred to throw himself on a rug before the open fire-place, and, curling up, not unlike a cat, began to pore over his primer. frank often looked up from his own studies and looked down with an amused glance at little pomp's coal-back face and glistening eyes riveted upon the book before him. there was no lack of brightness or intelligence in the earnest face of his young pupil. he seemed to be studying with all his might. in a wonderfully short time he would uncoil himself, and, coming to his teacher, would say, "i guess i can say it, mass' frank." finding how readily pomp learned his lessons, frank judiciously lengthened them, so that, in two or three months, pomp could read words of one syllable with considerable ease, and promised very soon to read as well as most boys of his age. frank also took considerable pains to cure pomp of his mischievous propensities, but this he found a more difficult task than teaching him to read. pomp had an innate love of fun which seemed almost irrepressible, and his convictions of duty sat too lightly upon him to interfere very seriously with its gratification. one adventure into which he was led came near having serious consequences. pomp, in common with other village boys of his age, had watched with considerable interest the boys 'company, as they drilled publicly or paraded through the main street, and he had conceived a strong desire to get hold of a musket, to see if he, too, could not go through with the manual. frank generally put his musket carefully away, only bringing it out when it was needful. one morning, however, he had been out on a hunting-expedition, and on his return left the musket in the corner of the shed. pomp espied it when he entered the house, and resolved, if possible, to take temporary possession of it after his lesson was over. having this in view, he worked with an uncommon degree of industry, and in less time than usual had learned and said his lesson. "very well, pomp," said his teacher approvingly. "you have worked unusually well to-day. if you keep on you will make quite a scholar some day." 'i's improvin', isn't i?" inquired pomp, with an appearance of interest. "yes, pomp, you have improved rapidly. by and by you can teach your mother how to read." "she couldn't learn, mass' frank. she's poor ignorant nigger." "you shouldn't speak so of your mother, pomp. she's a good mother to you, and works hard to earn money to support you." "yes, mass' frank," said pomp, who was getting impatient to go. "i guess i'll go home and help her." frank thought that what he had said was producing a good effect. he did not know the secret of pomp's haste. pomp left the room, and, proceeding to the wood-shed, hastily possessed himself of the musket. in a stealthy manner he crept with it through a field behind the house, until he got into the neighboring woods. he found it a hard tug to carry the gun, which was heavier than those made at the present day. at length he reached an open space in the woods, only a few rods from the road which led from the farmhouse, past the shanty occupied by old chloe. as this road was not much traveled, pomp felt pretty safe from discovery, and accordingly here it was that he halted, and made preparations to go through the manual. "it begins dis yer way," said pomp, after a little reflection. grasping the musket with one hand he called out in an important tone: " 'tention, squab!" for the benefit of the uninitiated it may be explained that pomp meant "attention, squad!" "s'port arms!" pomp found it considerably easier to give the word of command than to obey it. with some difficulty he succeeded in accomplishing this movement, and proceeded with the manual, with several original variations which would have astonished a military instructor. meanwhile, though pomp did not realize it, he was exposing himself to considerable danger. the gun had been loaded with buckshot in the morning, and the charge had not been withdrawn. it seemed to be the lot of poor mrs. payson to suffer fright or disaster whenever she encountered pomp, and this memorable afternoon was to make no exception to the rule. "cynthy ann," she said to her daughter, in the afternoon, "i guess i'll go and spend the arternoon with mis' forbes. i hain't been to see her for nigh a month, and i calc'late she'll be glad to see me. besides, she ginerally bakes thursdays, an' mos' likely she'll have some hot gingerbread. i'm partic'larly fond of gingerbread, an' she does know how to make it about the best of anybody i know on. you needn't wait supper for me, cynthy ann, for ef i don't find mis' forbes to home i'll go on to mis' frost's." mrs. payson put on her cloak and hood, and, armed with the work-bag and the invariable blue cotton umbrella, sallied out. mrs. forbes lived at the distance of a mile, but mrs. payson was a good walker for a woman of her age, and less than half an hour brought her to the door of the brown farmhouse in which mrs. forbes lived. she knocked on the door with the handle of her umbrella. the summons was answered by a girl of twelve. "how dy do, betsy?" said mrs. payson. "is your ma'am to home?" "no, she's gone over to webbington to spend two or three days with aunt prudence." "then she won't be home to tea," said mrs. payson, considerably disappointed. "no, ma'am, i don't expect her before to-morrow." "well, i declare for't, i am disapp'inted," said the old lady regretfully. "i've walked a mile on puppus to see her. i'm most tuckered out." "won't you step in and sit down?" "well, i don't keer ef i do a few minutes. i feel like to drop. do you do the cooking while you maam's gone?" "no, she baked up enough to last before she went away." "you hain't got any gingerbread in the house?" asked mrs. payson, with subdued eagerness. "i always did say mis' forbes beat the world at makin' gingerbread." "i'm very sorry, mrs. payson, but we ate the last for supper last night." "oh, dear!" sighed the old lady, "i feel sort of faint--kinder gone at the stomach. i didn't have no appetite at dinner, and i s'pose it don't agree with me walkin' so fur on an empty stomach." "couldn't you eat a piece of pie?" asked betsy sympathizingly. "well," said the old lady reflectively, "i don't know but i could eat jest a bite. but you needn't trouble yourself. i hate to give trouble to anybody." "oh, it won't be any trouble," said betsy cheerfully. "and while you're about it," added mrs. payson, "ef you have got any of that cider you give me when i was here before, i don't know but i could worry down a little of it." "yes, we've got plenty. i'll bring it in with the pie." "well," murmured the old lady, "i'll get something for my trouble. i guess i'll go and take supper at mis' frost's a'terward." betsy brought in a slice of apple and one of pumpkin pie, and set them down before the old lady. in addition she brought a generous mug of cider. the old lady's eyes brightened, as she saw this substantial refreshment. "you're a good gal, betsy," she said in the overflow of her emotions. "i was saying to my darter yesterday that i wish all the gals round here was as good and considerate as you be." "oh, no, mrs. payson," said betsy modestly. "i ain't any better than girls generally." "yes, you be. there's my granddarter, jane, ain't so respectful as she'd arter be to her old grandma'am. i often tell her that when she gets to have children of her own, she'll know what tis to be a pilgrim an' a sojourner on the arth without nobody to consider her feelin's. your cider is putty good." here the old lady took a large draft, and set down the mug with a sigh of satisfaction. "it's jest the thing to take when a body's tired. it goes to the right spot. cynthy ann's husband didn't have none made this year. i wonder ef your ma would sell a quart or two of it." "you can have it and welcome, mrs. payson." "can i jest as well as not? well, that's kind. but i didn't expect you to give it to me." "oh, we have got plenty." "i dunno how i can carry it home," said the lady hesitatingly. "i wonder ef some of your folks won't be going up our way within a day or two." "we will send it. i guess father'll be going up to-morrow." "then ef you can spare it you might send round a gallon, an' ef there's anything to pay i'll pay for it." this little business arrangement being satisfactorily adjusted, and the pie consumed, mrs. payson got up and said she must be going. "i'm afraid you haven't got rested yet, mrs. payson." "i ain't hardly," was the reply; "but i guess i shall stop on the way at mis' frost's. tell your ma i'll come up an' see her ag'in afore long." "yes, ma'am." "an' you won't forget to send over that cider?" "no, ma'am." "i'm ashamed to trouble ye, but their ain't anybody over to our house that i can send. there's tom grudges doin' anything for his old grandma'am. a'ter all that i do for him, too! good-by!" the old lady set out on her way to mrs. frost's. her road lay through the woods, where an unforeseen danger lay in wait for her. meanwhile pomp was pursuing military science under difficulties. the weight of the musket made it very awkward for him to handle. several times he got out of patience with it, and apostrophized it in terms far from complimentary. at last, in one of his awkward maneuvers, he accidentally pulled the trigger. instantly there was a loud report, followed by a piercing shriek from the road. the charge had entered old mrs. payson's umbrella and knocked it out of her hand. the old lady fancied herself hit, and fell backward, kicking energetically, and screaming "murder" at the top of her lungs. the musket had done double execution. it was too heavily loaded, and as it went off, 'kicked,' leaving pomp, about as scared as the old lady, sprawling on the ground. henry morton was only a few rods off when he heard the explosion. he at once ran to the old lady's assistance, fancying her hurt. she shrieked the louder on his approach, imagining that he was a robber, and had fired at her. "go away!" she cried, in affright. "i ain't got any money. i'm a poor, destitute widder!" "what do you take me for?" inquired mr. morton, somewhat amazed at this mode of address. "ain't you a highwayman?" asked the old lady. "if you look at me close i think you will be able to answer that question for yourself." the old lady cautiously rose to a sitting posture, and, mechanically adjusting her spectacles, took a good look at the young man. "why, i declare for it, ef it ain't mr. morton! i thought 'twas you that fired at me." "i hope you are not hurt," said mr. morton, finding a difficulty in preserving his gravity. "i dunno," said the old lady dubiously, pulling up her sleeve, and examining her arm. "i don't see nothin'; but i expect i've had some injury to my inards. i feel as ef i'd had a shock somewhere. do you think he'll fire again?" she asked, with a sudden alarm. "you need not feel alarmed," was the soothing reply. "it was no doubt an accident." turning suddenly, he espied pomp peering from behind a tree, with eyes and mouth wide open. the little contraband essayed a hasty flight; but mr. morton, by a masterly flank movement, came upon him, and brought forward the captive kicking and struggling. "le' me go!" said pomp. "i ain't done noffin'!" "didn't you fire a gun at this lady?" "no," said pomp boldly. "wish i may be killed ef i did!" "i know 'twas you--you--you imp!" exclaimed mrs. payson, in violent indignation. "i seed you do it. you're the wust boy that ever lived, and you'll be hung jest as sure as i stan' here!" "how did it happen, pomp?" asked mr. morton quietly. "it jest shooted itself!" said pomp, in whom the old lady's words inspired a vague feeling of alarm. "i 'clare to gracious, mass' morton, it did!" "didn't you have the gun in your hand, pomp? where did you get it?" "i jest borrered it of mass' frank, to play sojer a little while," said pomp reluctantly. "does he know that you have got it?" "i 'clare i done forgot to tell him," said pomp reluctantly. "will you promise never to touch it again?" "don't want to!" ejaculated pomp, adding spitefully, "he kick me over!" "i'm glad on't," said the old lady emphatically, with a grim air of satisfaction. "that'll l'arn you not to fire it off at your elders ag'in. i've a great mind to box your ears, and sarve you right, too." mrs. payson advanced, to effect her purpose; but pomp was wary, and, adroitly freeing himself from mr. morton's grasp, butted at the old lady with such force that she would have fallen backward but for the timely assistance of mr. morton, who sprang to her side. her bag fell to the ground, and she struggled to regain her lost breath. "oh!" groaned the old lady, gasping for breath, "he's mos' knocked the breath out of me. i sha'n't live long a'ter such a shock. i'm achin' all over. why did you let him do it?" "he was too quick for me, mrs. payson. i hope you feel better." "i dunno as i shall ever feel any better," said mrs. payson gloomily. "if cynthy ann only knew how her poor old ma'am had been treated! i dunno as i shall live to get home!" "oh, yes, you will," said the young man cheerfully, "and live to see a good many years more. would you like to have me attend you home?" "i ain't got strength to go so fur," said mrs. payson, who had not given up her plan of taking tea out. "i guess i could go as fur as mis' frost's, an' mebbe some on you will tackle up an' carry me back to cynthy ann's a'ter tea." arrived at the farmhouse, mrs. payson indulged in a long detail of grievances; but it was observed that they did not materially affect her appetite at tea. the offending musket was found by frank under a tree, where pomp had dropped it when it went off. chapter xxviii. john haynes has a narrow escape john haynes found the time hang heavily upon his hand after his withdrawal from the boys' volunteer company. all the boys with whom he had been accustomed to associate belonged to it, and in their interest could talk of nothing else. to him, on the contrary, it was a disagreeable subject. in the pleasant spring days the company came out twice a week, and went through company drill on the common, under the command of frank, or captain frost, as he was now called. had frank shown himself incompetent, and made himself ridiculous by blunders, it would have afforded john satisfaction. but frank, thorough in all things, had so carefully prepared himself for his duties that he never made a mistake, and always acquitted himself so creditably and with such entire self-possession, that his praises were in every mouth. dick bumstead, too, manifested an ambition to fill his second lieutenancy, to which, so much to his own surprise, he had been elected, in such a manner as to justify the company in their choice. in this he fully succeeded. he had become quite a different boy from what he was when we first made his acquaintance. he had learned to respect himself, and perceived with great satisfaction that he was generally respected by the boys. he no longer attempted to shirk his work in the shop, and his father now spoke of him with complacency, instead of complaint as formerly. "yes," said he one day, "dick's a good boy. he was always smart, but rather fly-a-way. i couldn't place any dependence upon him once, but it is not so now. i couldn't wish for a better boy. i don't know what has come over him, but i hope it'll last." dick happened to overhear his father speaking thus to a neighbor, and he only determined, with a commendable feeling of pride, that the change that had given his father so much pleasure should last. it does a boy good to know that his efforts are appreciated. in this case it had a happy effect upon dick, who, i am glad to say, kept his resolution. it has been mentioned that john was the possessor of a boat. finding one great source of amusement cut off, and being left very much to himself, he fell back upon this, and nearly every pleasant afternoon he might be seen rowing on the river above the dam. he was obliged to confine himself to this part of the river, since, in the part below the dam, the water was too shallow. there is one great drawback, however, upon the pleasure of owning a rowboat. it is tiresome to row single-handed after a time. so john found it, and, not being overfond of active exertion, he was beginning to get weary of this kind of amusement when all at once a new plan was suggested to him. this was, to rig up a mast and sail, and thus obviate the necessity of rowing. no sooner had this plan suggested itself than he hastened to put it into execution. his boat was large enough to bear a small mast, so there was no difficulty on that head. he engaged the village carpenter to effect the desired change. he did not choose to consult his father on the subject, fearing that he might make some objection either on score of safety or expense, while he had made up his mind to have his own way. when it was finished, and the boat with its slender mast and white sail floated gently on the, quiet bosom of the stream, john's satisfaction was unbounded. "you've got a pretty boat," said mr. plane, the carpenter. "i suppose you know how to manage it?" he added inquiringly. "yes," answered john carelessly, "i've been in a sailboat before to-day." mr. plane's doubts were set at rest by john's confident manner, and he suppressed the caution which he had intended to give him. it made little difference, however, for john was headstrong, and would have been pretty certain to disregard whatever he might say. it was true that this was not the first time john had been in a sailboat; but if not the first, it was only the second. the first occasion had been three years previous, and at that time he had had nothing to do with the management of the boat--a very important matter. it was in john's nature to be over-confident, and he thought he understood merely from observation exactly how a boat ought to be managed. as we shall see, he found out his mistake. the first day after his boat was ready john was greatly disappointed that there was no wind. the next day, as if to make up for it, the wind was very strong. had john possessed a particle of prudence he would have seen that it was no day to venture out in a sailboat. but he was not in the habit of curbing his impatience, and he determined that he would not wait till another day. he declared that it was a mere "capful of wind," and would be all the better for the purpose. "it's a tip-top wind. won't it make my boat scud," he said to himself exultantly, as be took his place, and pushed off from shore. henry morton had been out on a walk, and from the summit of a little hill near the river-bank espied john pushing off in his boat. "he'll be sure to capsize," thought the young man in alarm. "even if he is used to a sailboat he is very imprudent to put out in such a wind; i will hurry down and save him if i can." he hurried to the bank of the river, reaching it out of breath. john was by this time some distance out. the wind had carried him along finely, the boat scudding, as he expressed it. he was congratulating himself on the success of his trial trip, when all at once a flaw struck the boat. not being a skillful boatman he was wholly unprepared for it, and the boat upset. struggling in terror and confusion, john struck out for the shore. but he was not much of a swimmer, and the suddenness of the accident had unnerved him, and deprived him of his self-possession. the current of the river was rapid, and he would inevitably have drowned but for the opportune assistance of mr. morton. the young man had no sooner seen the boat capsize, than he flung off his coat and boots, and, plunging into the river, swam vigorously toward the imperiled boy. luckily for john, mr. morton was, though of slight frame, muscular, and an admirable swimmer. he reached him just as john's strokes were becoming feebler and feebler; he was about to give up his unequal struggle with the waves. "take hold of me," he said. "have courage, and i will save you." john seized him with the firm grip of a drowning person, and nearly prevented him from striking out. but mr. morton's strength served him in good stead; and, notwithstanding the heavy burden, he succeeded in reaching the bank in safety, though with much exhaustion. john no sooner reached the bank than he fainted away. the great danger which he had just escaped, added to his own efforts, had proved too much for him. mr. morton, fortunately knew how to act in such emergencies. by the use of the proper remedies, he was fortunately brought to himself, and his preserver offered to accompany him home. john still felt giddy, and was glad to accept mr. morton's offer. he knew that his father would be angry with him for having the boat fitted up without his knowledge, especially as he had directed mr. plane to charge it to his father's account. supposing that squire haynes approved, the carpenter made no objections to doing so. but even the apprehension of his father's anger was swallowed up by the thought of the great peril from which he had just escaped, and the discomfort of the wet clothes which he had on. mr. morton, too, was completely wet through, with the exception of his coat, and but for john's apparent inability to go home alone, would at once have returned to his boarding-house to exchange his wet clothes for dry ones. it so happened that squire haynes was sitting at a front window, and saw mr. morton and his son as they entered the gate and came up the graveled walk. he had never met mr. morton, and was surprised now at seeing him in john's company. he had conceived a feeling of dislike to the young man, for which he could not account, while at the same time he felt a strong curiosity to know more of him. when they came nearer, he perceived the drenched garments, and went to the door himself to admit them. "what's the matter, john?" he demanded hastily, with a contraction of the eyebrows. "i'm wet!" said john shortly. "it is easy to see that. but how came you so wet?" "i've been in the river," answered john, who did not seem disposed to volunteer any particulars of his adventure. "how came you there?" "your son's boat capsized," explained mr. morton; "and, as you will judge from my appearance, i jumped in after him. i should advise him to change his clothing, or he will be likely to take cold." squire haynes looked puzzled. "i don't see how a large rowboat like his could capsize," he said; "he must have been very careless." "it was a sailboat," explained john, rather reluctantly. "a sailboat! whose?" "mine." "i don't understand at all." "i had a mast put in, and a sail rigged up, two or three days since," said john, compelled at last to explain. "why did you do this without my permission?" demanded the squire angrily. "perhaps," said mr. morton quietly, "it will be better to postpone inquiries until your son has changed his clothes. squire haynes, though somewhat irritated by this interference, bethought himself that it would be churlish not to thank his son's preserver. "i am indebted to you, sir," he said, "for your agency in saving the life of this rash boy. i regret that you should have got wet." "i shall probably experience nothing more than temporary inconvenience." "you have been some months in the village, i believe, mr. morton. i trust you will call at an early day, and enable me to follow up the chance which has made us acquainted." "i seldom make calls," said mr. morton, in a distant tone. "yet," added he, after a pause, "i may have occasion to accept your invitation some day. good morning, sir." "good morning," returned the squire, looking after him with an expression of perplexity. "he boards at the frosts', doesn't he, john?" asked squire haynes, turning to his son. "yes, sir." "there's something in his face that seems familiar," mused the squire absently. "he reminds me of somebody, though i can't recall who." it was not long before the squire's memory was refreshed, and he obtained clearer information respecting the young man, and the errand which had brought him to rossville. when that information came, it was so far from pleasing that he would willingly have postponed it indefinitely. chapter xxix. mr. morton's story the planting-season was over. for a month frank had worked industriously, in conjunction with jacob carter. his father had sent him directions so full and minute, that he was not often obliged to call upon farmer maynard for advice. the old farmer proved to be very kind and obliging. jacob, too, was capable and faithful, so that the farmwork went on as well probably as if mr. frost had been at home. one evening toward the middle of june, frank walked out into the fields with mr. morton. the corn and potatoes were looking finely. the garden vegetables were up, and to all appearance doing well. frank surveyed the scene with a feeling of natural pride. "don't you think i would make a successful farmer, mr. morton?" he asked. "yes, frank; and more than this, i think you will be likely to succeed in any other vocation you may select." "i am afraid you're flattering me, mr. morton." "such is not my intention, frank, but i like to award praise where i think it due. i have noticed in you a disposition to be faithful to whatever responsibility is imposed upon you, and wherever i see that i feel no hesitation in predicting a successful career." "thank you," said frank, looking very much pleased with the compliment. "i try to be faithful. i feel that father has trusted me more than it is usual to trust boys of my age, and i want to show myself worthy of his confidence." "you are fortunate in having a father, frank," said the young man, with a shade of sadness in his voice. "my father died before i was of your age." "do you remember him?" inquired frank, with interest. "i remember him well. he was always kind to me. i never remember to have received a harsh word from him. it is because he was so kind and indulgent to me that i feel the more incensed against a man who took advantage of his confidence to defraud him, or, rather, me, through him." "you have never mentioned this before, mr. morton." "no. i have left you all in ignorance of much of my history. this morning, if it will interest you, i propose to take you into my confidence," the eagerness with which frank greeted this proposal showed that for him the story would have no lack of interest. "let us sit down under this tree," said henry morton, pointing to a horse-chestnut, whose dense foliage promised a pleasant shelter from the sun's rays. they threw themselves upon the grass, and he forthwith commenced his story. "my father was born in boston, and, growing up, engaged in mercantile pursuits. he was moderately successful, and finally accumulated fifty thousand dollars. he would not have stopped there, for he was at the time making money rapidly, but his health became precarious, and his physician required him absolutely to give up business. the seeds of consumption, which probably had been lurking for years in his system, had begun to show themselves unmistakably, and required immediate attention. "by the advice of his physician he sailed for the west india islands, hoping that the climate might have a beneficial effect upon him. at that time i was twelve years old, and an only child. my mother had died some years before, so that i was left quite alone in the world. i was sent for a time to virginia, to my mother's brother, who possessed a large plantation and numerous slaves. here i remained for six months. you will remember that aunt chloe recognized me at first sight. you will not be surprised at this when i tell you that she was my uncle's slave, and that as a boy i was indebted to her for many a little favor which she, being employed in the kitchen, was able to render me. as i told you at the time, my real name is not morton. it will not be long before you understand the reason of my concealment. "my father had a legal adviser, in whom he reposed a large measure of confidence, though events showed him to be quite unworthy of it. on leaving boston he divided his property, which had been converted into money, into two equal portions. one part he took with him. the other he committed to the lawyer's charge. so much confidence had he in this man's honor, that he did not even require a receipt. one additional safeguard he had, however. this was the evidence of the lawyer's clerk, who was present on the occasion of the deposit. "my father went to the west indies, but the change seemed only to accelerate the progress of his malady. he lingered for a few months and then died. before his death he wrote two letters, one to my uncle and one to myself. in these he communicated the fact of his having deposited twenty-five thousand dollars with his lawyer. he mentioned incidentally the presence of the lawyer's clerk at the time. i am a little surprised that he should have done it, as not the faintest suspicion of the lawyer's good faith had entered his thoughts. "on receiving this letter my uncle, on my behalf, took measures to claim this sum, and for this purpose came to boston. imagine his surprise and indignation when the lawyer positively denied having received any such deposit and called upon him, to prove it. with great effrontery he declared that it was absurd to suppose that my father would have entrusted him with any such sum without a receipt for it. this certainly looked plausible, and i acknowledge that few except my father, who never trusted without trusting entirely, would have acted so imprudently. " 'where is the clerk who was in your office at the time?" inquired my uncle. the lawyer looked somewhat discomposed at this question. " 'why do you ask?'he inquired abruptly. " 'because,' was the reply, 'his evidence is very important to us. my brother states that he was present when the deposit was made.' " 'i don't know where he is,' said the lawyer. 'he was too dissipated to remain in my office, and i accordingly discharged him.' "my uncle suspected that the clerk had been bribed to keep silence, and for additional security sent off to some distant place. "nothing could be done. strong as our suspicions, and absolute as was our conviction of the lawyer's guilt, we had no recourse. but from that time i devoted my life to the exposure of this man. fortunately i was not without means. the other half of my father's property came to me; and the interest being considerably more than i required for my support, i have devoted the remainder to, prosecuting inquiries respecting the missing clerk. just before i came to rossville, i obtained a clue which i have since industriously followed up. "last night i received a letter from my agent, stating that he had found the man--that he was in a sad state of destitution, and that he was ready to give his evidence." "is the lawyer still living?" inquired frank. "he is." "what a villain he must be." "i am afraid he is, frank." "does he still live in boston?" "no. after he made sure of his ill-gotten gains, he removed into the country, where he built him a fine house. he has been able to live a life of leisure; but i doubt if he has been as happy as he would have been had he never deviated from the path of rectitude." "have you seen him lately?" asked frank. "i have seen him many times within the last few months," said the young man, in a significant tone. frank jumped to his feet in surprise. "you don't mean----" he said, as a sudden suspicion of the truth dawned upon his mind. "yes," said mr. morton deliberately, "i do mean that the lawyer who defrauded my father lives in this village. you know him well as squire haynes." "i can hardly believe it," said frank, unable to conceal his astonishment. "do you think he knows who you are?" "i think he has noticed my resemblance to my father. if i had not assumed a different name he would have been sure to detect me. this would have interfered with my plans, as he undoubtedly knew the whereabouts of his old clerk, and would have arranged to remove him, so as to delay his discovery, perhaps indefinitely. here is the letter i received last night. i will read it to you." the letter ran as follows: "i have at length discovered the man of whom i have so long been in search. i found him in detroit. he had recently removed thither from st. louis. he is very poor, and, when i found him, was laid up with typhoid fever in a mean lodging-house. i removed him to more comfortable quarters, supplied him with relishing food and good medical assistance. otherwise i think he would have died. the result is, that he feels deeply grateful to me for having probably saved his life. when i first broached the idea of his giving evidence against his old employer, i found him reluctant to do so--not from any attachment he bore him, but from a fear that he would be held on a criminal charge for concealing a felony. i have undertaken to assure him, on your behalf, that he shall not be punished if he will come forward and give his evidence unhesitatingly. i have finally obtained his promise to, do so. "we shall leave detroit day after to-morrow, and proceed to new england by way of new york. can you meet me in new york on the 18th inst.? you can, in that case, have an interview with this man travers; and it will be well to obtain his confession, legally certified, to guard against any vacillation of purpose on his part. i have no apprehension of it, but it is as well to be certain." this letter was signed by mr. morton's agent. "i was very glad to get that letter, frank," said his companion. "i don't think i care so much for the money, though that is not to be dispised, since it will enable me to do more good than at present i have it in my power to do. but there is one thing i care for still more, and that is, to redeem my father's memory from reproach. in the last letter he ever wrote he made a specific statement, which this lawyer declares to be false. the evidence of his clerk will hurl back the falsehood upon himself." "how strange it is, mr. morton," exclaimed frank, "that you should have saved the life of a son of the man who has done so much to injure you!" "yes, that gives me great satisfaction. i do not wish squire haynes any harm, but i am determined that justice shall be done. otherwise than that, if i can be of any service to him, i shall not refuse." "i remember now," said frank, after a moment's pause, "that, on the first sunday you appeared at church, squire haynes stopped me to inquire who you were." "i am thought to look much as my father did. he undoubtedly saw the resemblance. i have often caught his eyes fixed upon me in perplexity when he did not know that i noticed him. it is fourteen years since my father died. retribution has been slow, but it has come at last." "when do you go on to new york?" asked frank, recalling the agent's request. "i shall start to-morrow morning. for the present i will ask you to keep what i have said a secret even from your good mother. it is as well not to disturb squire haynes in his fancied security until we are ready to overwhelm him with our evidence." "how long shall you be absent, mr. morton?" "probably less than a week. i shall merely say that i have gone on business. i trust to your discretion to say nothing more." "i certainly will not," said frank. "i am very much obliged to you for having told me first." the two rose from their grassy seats, and walked slowly back to the farmhouse. chapter xxx. frank calls on squire haynes the next morning mr. morton was a passenger by the early stage for webbington, where he took the train for boston. thence he was to proceed to new york by the steamboat train. "good-by, mr. morton," said frank, waving his cap as the stage started. "i hope you'll soon be back." "i hope so, too; good-by." crack went the whip, round went the wheels. the horses started, and the stage rumbled off, swaying this way and that, as if top-heavy. frank went slowly back to the house, feeling quite lonely. he had become so accustomed to mr. morton's companionship that his departure left a void which he hardly knew how to fill. as he reflected upon mr. morton's story he began to feel an increased uneasiness at the mortgage held by squire haynes upon his father's farm. the time was very near at hand--only ten days off--when the mortgage might be foreclosed, and but half the money was in readiness. perhaps, however, squire haynes had no intention of foreclosing. if so, there was no occasion for apprehension. but about this he felt by no means certain. he finally determined, without consulting his mother, to make the squire a visit and inquire frankly what he intended to do. the squire's answer would regulate his future proceedings. it was frank's rule--and a very good one, too --to do at once whatever needed to be done. he resolved to lose no time in making his call. "frank," said his mother, as he entered the house, "i want you to go down to the store some time this forenoon, and get me half a dozen pounds of sugar." "very well, mother, i'll go now. i suppose it won't make any difference if i don't come back for an hour or two." "no, that will be in time." mrs. frost did not ask frank where he was going. she had perfect faith in him, and felt sure that he would never become involved in anything discreditable. frank passed through the village without stopping at the store. he deferred his mother's errand until his return. passing up the village street, he stopped before the fine house of squire haynes. opening the gate he walked up the graveled path and rang the bell. a servant-girl came to the door. "is squire haynes at home?" inquired frank. "yes, but he's eating breakfast." "will he be through soon?" "shure and i think so." "then i will step in and wait for him." "who shall i say it is?" "frank frost." squire haynes had just passed his cup for coffee when bridget entered and reported that frank frost was in the drawing-room and would like to see him when he had finished his breakfast. "frank frost!" repeated the squire, arching his eyebrows. "what does he want, i wonder?" "shure he didn't say," said bridget. "very well." "he is captain of the boys' company, john, isn't he?" asked the squire. "yes," said john sulkily. "i wish him joy of his office. i wouldn't have anything to do with such a crowd of ragamuffins." of course the reader understands that this was "sour grapes" on john's part. finishing his breakfast leisurely, squire haynes went into the room where frank was sitting patiently awaiting him. frank rose as he entered. "good morning, squire haynes," he said, politely rising as he spoke. "good morning," said the squire coldly. "you are an early visitor." if this was intended for a rebuff, frank did not choose to take any notice of it. "i call on a little matter of business, squire haynes," continued frank. "very well," said the squire, seating himself in a luxurious armchair, "i am ready to attend to you." "i believe you hold a mortgage on our farm." squire haynes started. the thought of frank's real business had not occurred to him. he had hoped that nothing would have been said in relation to the mortgage until he was at liberty to foreclose, as he wished to take the frosts unprepared. he now resolved, if possible, to keep frank in ignorance of his real purpose, that he might not think it necessary to prepare for his attack. "yes," said he indifferently; "i hold quite a number of mortgages, and one upon your father's farm among them." "isn't the time nearly run out?" asked frank anxiously. "i can look if you desire it," said the squire, in the same indifferent tone. "i should be glad if you would." "may i ask why you are desirous of ascertaining the precise date?" asked the squire. "are you intending to pay off the mortgage?" "no, sir," said frank. "we are not prepared to do so at present." squire haynes felt relieved. he feared for a moment that mr. frost had secured the necessary sum, and that he would be defeated in his wicked purpose. he drew out a large number of papers, which he rather ostentatiously scattered about the table, and finally came to the mortgage. "the mortgage comes due on the first of july," he said. "will it be convenient for you to renew it, squire haynes?" asked frank anxiously. "father being absent, it would be inconvenient for us to obtain the amount necessary to cancel it. of course, i shall be ready to pay the interest promptly." "unless i should have sudden occasion for the money," said the squire, "i will let it remain. i don't think you need feel any anxiety on the subject." with the intention of putting frank off his guard, squire haynes assumed a comparatively gracious tone. this, in the case of any other man, would have completely reassured frank. but he had a strong distrust of the squire, since the revelation of his character made by his friend mr. morton. "could you tell me positively?" he asked, still uneasy. "it is only ten days now to the first of july, and that is little enough to raise the money in." "don't trouble yourself," said the squire. "i said unless i had sudden occasion for the money, because unforeseen circumstances might arise. but as i have a considerable sum lying at the bank, i don't anticipate anything of the kind." "i suppose you will give me immediate notice, should it be necessary. we can pay four hundred dollars now. so, if you please, the new mortgage can be made out for half the present amount." "very well," said the squire carelessly. "just as you please as to that. still, as you have always paid my interest regularly, i consider the investment a good one, and have no objection to the whole remaining." "thank you, sir," said frank, rising to go. frank took his hat, and, bowing to the squire, sought the front door. his face wore a perplexed expression. he hardly knew what to think about the interview he had just had. "squire haynes talks fair enough," he soliloquized; "and, perhaps, he means what he says. if it hadn't been for what mr. morton told me, i should have confidence in him. but a man who will betray a trust is capable of breaking his word to me. i think i'll look round a little, and see if i can't provide for the worse in case it comes." just after frank left the house, john entered his father's presence. "what did frank frost want of you, father?" he asked. "he came about the mortgage." "did he want to pay it?" "no, he wants me to renew it." "of course you refused." "of course i did no such thing. do you think i am a fool?" "you don't mean to say that you agreed to renew it?" demanded john, in angry amazement. squire haynes rather enjoyed john's mystification. "come," said he, "i'm afraid you'll never make a lawyer if you're not sharper than that comes to. never reveal your plans to your adversary. that's an important principle. if i had refused, he would have gone to work, and in ten days between now and the first of july, he'd have managed in some way to scrape together the eight hundred dollars. he's got half of it now." "what did you tell him, then?" "i put him off by telling him not to trouble himself--that i would not foreclose the mortgage unless i had unexpected occasion for the money." "yes, i see," said john, his face brightening at the anticipated disaster to the frosts. "you'll take care that there shall be some sudden occasion." "yes," said the squire complacently. "i'll have a note come due, which i had not thought about, or something of the kind." "oh, that'll be bully." "don't use such low words, john. i have repeatedly requested you to be more careful about your language. by the way, your teacher told me yesterday that you are not doing as well now as formerly." "oh, he's an old muff. besides, he's got a spite against me. i should do a good deal better at another school." "we'll see about that. but i suspect he's partly right." "well, how can a feller study when he knows the teacher is determined to be down upon him?" " 'feller!' i am shocked at hearing you use that word. 'down upon him,' too!" "very well; let me go where i won't hear such language spoken." it would have been well if squire haynes had been as much shocked by bad actions as by low language. this little disagreement over, they began again to anticipate with pleasure the effect of the squire's premeditated blow upon the frosts. "we'll come up with 'em?" said john, with inward exultation. meanwhile, though the squire was entirely unconscious of it, there was a sword hanging over his own head. chapter xxxi. squire haynes springs his trap as intimated in the last chapter, frank determined to see if he could not raise the money necessary to pay off the mortgage in case it should be necessary to do so. farmer maynard was a man in very good circumstances. he owned an excellent farm, which yielded more than enough to support his family. probably he had one or two thousand dollars laid aside. "i think he will help me," frank said to himself, "i'll go to him." he went to the house, and was directed to the barn. there he found the farmer engaged in mending a hoe-handle, which had been broken, by splicing it. he unfolded his business. the farmer listened attentively to his statement. "you say the squire as much as told you that he would renew the mortgage?" "yes." "well, i wouldn't trouble myself then; i've no doubt he'll do it." "he said, unless he should have some sudden occasion for the money." "all right. he is a prudent man, and don't want to bind himself. that is all. you know the most unlikely things may happen; but i don't believe the squire'll want the money. he's got plenty in the bank." "but if he should?" "then he'll wait, or take part. i suppose you can pay part." "yes, half." "then i guess there won't be any chance of anything going wrong." "if there should," persisted frank, "could you lend us four hundred dollars to make up the amount?" "i'd do it in a minute, frank, but i hain't got the money by me. what money i have got besides the farm is lent out in notes. only last week i let my brother-in-law have five hundred dollars, and that leaves me pretty short." "perhaps somebody else will advance the money," said frank, feeling a little discouraged at the result of his first application. "yes, most likely. but i guess you won't need any assistance. i look upon it as certain that the mortgage will be renewed. next fall i shall have the money, and if the squire wants to dispose of the mortgage, i shall be ready to take it off his hands." frank tried to feel that he was foolish in apprehending trouble from squire haynes, but he found it impossible to rid himself of a vague feeling of uneasiness. he made application to another farmer--an intimate friend of his father's--but he had just purchased and paid for a five-acre lot adjoining his farm, and that had stripped him of money. he, too, bade frank lay aside all anxiety, and assured him that his fears were groundless. with this frank had to be content. "perhaps i am foolish," he said to himself. "i'll try to think no more about it." he accordingly returned to his usual work, and, not wishing to trouble his mother to no purpose, resolved not to impart his fears to her. another ground of relief suggested itself to him. mr. morton would probably be back on the 27th of june. such, at least, was his anticipation when he went away. there was reason to believe that he would be both ready and willing to take up the mortgage, if needful. this thought brought back frank's cheerfulness. it was somewhat dashed by the following letter which he received a day or two later from his absent friend. it was dated new york, june 25, 1863. as will appear from its tenor, it prepared frank for a further delay in mr. morton's arrival. "dear frank: i shall not be with you quite as soon as i intended. i hope, however, to return a day or two afterward at latest. my business is going on well, and i am assured of final success. will you ask your mother if she can accommodate an acquaintance of mine for a day or two? i shall bring him with me from new york, and shall feel indebted for the accommodation. "your true friend, "henry morton." frank understood at once that the acquaintance referred to must be the clerk, whose evidence was so important to mr. morton's case. being enjoined to secrecy, however, he, of course, felt that he was not at liberty to mention this. one day succeeded another until at length the morning of the thirtieth of june dawned. mr. morton had not yet arrived; but, on the other hand, nothing had been heard from squire haynes. frank began to breathe more freely. he persuaded himself that he had been foolishly apprehensive. "the squire means to renew the mortgage," he said to himself hopefully. he had a talk with his mother, and she agreed that it would be well to pay the four hundred dollars they could spare, and have a new mortgage made out for the balance. frank accordingly rode over to brandon in the forenoon, and withdrew from the bank the entire sum there deposited to his father's credit. this, with money which had been received from mr. morton in payment of his board, made up the requisite amount. about four o'clock in the afternoon, as mrs. frost was sewing at a front window, she exclaimed to frank, who was making a kite for his little brother charlie, "frank, there's squire haynes coming up the road." frank's heart gave an anxious bound. "is he coming here?" he asked, with anxiety. "yes," said mrs. frost, after a moment's pause. frank turned pale with apprehension. a moment afterward the huge knocker was heard to sound, and mrs. frost, putting down her work, smoothed her apron and went to the door. "good afternoon, mrs. frost," said the squire, lifting his hat. "good afternoon, squire haynes. won't you walk in?" "thank you; i will intrude for a few minutes. how do you do?" he said, nodding to frank as he entered. "pretty well, thank you, sir," said frank nervously. the squire, knowing the odium which would attach to the course he had settled upon, resolved to show the utmost politeness to the family he was about to injure, and justify his action by the plea of necessity. "take a seat, squire haynes," said mrs. frost "you'll find this rocking-chair more comfortable.' "i am very well seated, thank you. i cannot stop long. i have merely called on a matter of business." "about the mortgage?" interrupted frank, who could keep silence no longer. "precisely so. i regret to say that i have urgent occasion for the money, and shall be unable to renew it." "we have got four hundred dollars," said mrs. frost, "which we are intending to pay." "i am sorry to say that this will not answer my purpose." "why did you not let us know before?" asked frank abruptly. "frank!" said his mother reprovingly. "it was only this morning that the necessity arose. i have a note due which must be paid." "we are not provided with the money, squire haynes," said mrs. frost. "if, however, you will wait a few days, we can probably raise it among our friends." "i regret to say that this will not do," said the squire, "i would gladly postpone the matter. the investment has been satisfactory to me, but necessity knows no law." frank was about to burst out with some indignant exclamation, but his mother, checking him, said: "i think there is little chance of our being able to pay you to-morrow. may i inquire what course you propose to take?" "it will be my painful duty to foreclose the mortgage." "squire haynes," said frank boldly, "haven't you intended to foreclose the mortgage all along? hadn't you decided about it when i called upon you ten days ago?" "what do you mean by your impertinence, sir?" demanded the squire, giving vent to his anger. "just what i say. i believe you bear a grudge against my father, and only put me off the other day in order to prevent my being able to meet your demands to-morrow. what do you suppose we can do in less than twenty-four hours?" "madam!" said the squire, purple with rage, "do you permit your son to insult me in this manner?" "i leave it to your conscience, squire haynes, whether his charges are not deserved. i do not like to think ill of any man, but your course is very suspicious." "madam," said squire haynes, now thoroughly enraged, "you are a woman, and can say what you please; but as for this young rascal, i'll beat him within an inch of his life if i ever catch him out of your presence." "he is under the protection of the laws," said mrs. frost composedly, "which you, being a lawyer, ought to understand." "i'll have no mercy on you. i'll sell you up root and branch," said squire haynes, trembling with passion, and smiting the floor with his cane. "at all events the house is ours to-day," returned mrs. frost, with dignity, "and i must request you to leave us in quiet possession of it." the squire left the house in undignified haste, muttering threats as he went. "good, mother!" exclaimed frank admiringly. "you turned him out capitally. but," he added, an expression of dismay stealing over his face, "what shall we do?" "we must try to obtain a loan," said mrs. frost, "i will go and see mr. sanger, while you go to mr. perry. possibly they may help us. there is no time to be lost." an hour afterward frank and his mother returned, both disappointed. mr. sanger and mr. perry both had the will to help but not the ability. there seemed no hope left save in mr. morton. at six o'clock the stage rolled up to the gate. "thank heaven! mr. morton has come!" exclaimed frank eagerly. mr. morton got out of the stage, and with him a feeble old man, or such he seemed, whom the young man assisted to alight. they came up the gravel walk together. "how do you do, frank?" he said, with a cheerful smile. "we are in trouble," said frank. "squire haynes is going to foreclose the mortgage to-morrow." "never mind!" said mr. morton. "we will be ready for him. he can't do either of us any more mischief, frank. his race is about run." a heavy weight seemed lifted from frank's heart. for the rest of the day he was in wild spirits. he asked no questions of mr. morton. he felt a firm confidence that all would turn out for the best. chapter xxxii. turning the tables the next morning mr. morton made inquiries of frank respecting the mortgage. frank explained that a loan of four hundred dollars would enable him to cancel it. "that is very easily arranged, then," said henry morton. he opened his pocketbook and drew out four crisp new united states notes, of one hundred dollars each. "there, frank," said he; "that will loosen the hold squire haynes has upon you. i fancy he will find it a little more difficult to extricate himself from my grasp." "how can i ever thank you, mr. morton?" said frank, with emotion. "it gives me great pleasure to have it in my power to be of service to you, frank," said his friend kindly. "we will have a mortgage made out to you," continued frank. "not without my consent, i hope," said mr. morton, smiling. frank looked puzzled. "no, frank," resumed mr. morton, "i don't care for any security. you may give me a simple acknowledgment of indebtedness, and then pay me at your leisure." frank felt with justice that mr. morton was acting very generously, and he was more than ever drawn to him. so passed the earlier hours of the forenoon. about eleven o'clock squire haynes was observed approaching the house. his step was firm and elastic, as if he rejoiced in the errand he was upon. again he lifted the knocker, and sounded a noisy summons. it was in reality a summons to surrender. the door was opened again by mrs. frost, who invited the squire to enter. he did so, wondering at her apparent composure. "they can't have raised the money," thought he apprehensively. "no, i am sure the notice was too short." frank was in the room, but squire haynes did not deign to notice him, nor did frank choose to make advances. mrs. frost spoke upon indifferent subjects, being determined to force squire haynes to broach himself the business that had brought him to the farm. finally, clearing his throat, he said: "well, madam, are you prepared to cancel the mortgage which i hold upon your husband's farm?" "i hope," said mrs. frost, "you will give us time. it is hardly possible to obtain so large a sum in twenty-four hours." "they haven't got it," thought the squire exultingly. "as to that," he said aloud, "you've had several years to get ready in." "have you no consideration? remember my husband's absence, and i am unacquainted with business." "i have already told you," said the squire hastily, "that i require the money. i have a note to pay, and----" "can you give us a week?" "no, i must have the money at once." "and if we cannot pay?" "i must foreclose." "will that give you the money any sooner? i suppose you would have to advertise the farm for sale before you could realize anything, and i hardly think that car be accomplished sooner than a week hence." "the delay is only a subterfuge on your part," said the squire hotly. "you would be no better prepared at the end of a week than you are now." "no, perhaps not," said mrs. frost quietly. "and yet you ask me to wait," said the squire indignantly. "once for all, let me tell you that all entreaties are vain. my mind is made up to foreclose, and foreclose i will." "don't be too sure of that," interrupted frank, with a triumphant smile. "ha, young impudence!" exclaimed the squire, wheeling round. "who's to prevent me, i should like to know?" "i am," said frank boldly. the squire fingered his cane nervously. he was very strongly tempted to lay it on our hero's back. but he reflected that the power was in his hands, and that he was sure of his revenge. "you won't gain anything by your impudence," he said loftily. "i might have got you a place, out of pity to your mother, if you had behaved differently. i need a boy to do odd jobs about the house, and i might have offered the place to you." "thank you for your kind intentions," said frank, "but i fear the care of this farm will prevent my accepting your tempting offer." "the care of the farm!" repeated the squire angrily. "do you think i will delegate it to you?" "i don't see what you have to do about it," said frank. "then you'll find out," roared the squire. "i shall take immediate possession, and require you to leave at once." "then i suppose we had better pay the mortgage, mother," said frank. "pay the mortgage! you can't do it," said the squire exultingly. "have you the document with you?" inquired mrs. frost. "yes, madam." "name the amount due on it." "with interest eight hundred and twenty-four dollars." "frank, call in mr. morton as a witness." mr. morton entered. "now, frank, you may count out the money." "what!" stammered the squire, in dismay, "can you pay it." "we can." "why didn't you tell me so in the first place?" demanded squire haynes, his wrath excited by his bitter disappointment. "i wished to ascertain whether your course was dictated by necessity or a desire to annoy and injure us. i can have no further doubt about it." there was no help for it. squire haynes was compelled to release his hold upon the frost farm, and pocket his money. he had never been so sorry to receive money before. this business over, he was about to beat a hurried retreat, when he was suddenly arrested by a question from henry morton. "can you spare me a few minutes, squire haynes?" "i am in haste, sir." "my business is important, and has already been too long delayed." "too long delayed?" "yes, it has waited twelve years." "i don't understand you, sir," said the squire. "perhaps i can assist you. you know me as henry morton. that is not my real name." "an alias!" sneered the squire in a significant tone. "yes, i had my reasons," returned the young man, unmoved. "i have no doubt of it." henry morton smiled, but did not otherwise notice the unpleasant imputation. "my real name is richard waring." squire haynes started violently and scrutinized the young man closely through his spectacles. his vague suspicions were confirmed. "do you wish to know my business with you?" the squire muttered something inaudible. "i demand the restitution of the large sum of money entrusted to you by my father, just before his departure to the west indies--a sum of which you have been the wrongful possessor for twelve years." "do you mean to insult me?" exclaimed the squire, bold in the assurance that the sole evidence of his fraud was undiscovered. "unless you comply with my demand i shall proceed against you legally, and you are enough of a lawyer to understand the punishment meted out to that description of felony." "pooh, pooh! your threats won't avail you," said the squire contemptuously. "your plan is a very clumsy one. let me suggest to you, young man, that threats for the purpose of extorting money are actionable." "do you doubt my identity?" "you may very probably be the person you claim to be, but that won't save you." "very well. you have conceded one point." he walked quietly to the door of the adjoining room, opened it, and in a distinct voice called "james travers." at the sound of this name squire haynes sank into a chair, ashy pale. a man, not over forty, but with seamed face, hair nearly white, and a form evidently broken with ill health, slowly entered. squire haynes beheld him with dismay. "you see before you, squire haynes, a man whose silence has been your safeguard for the last twelve years. his lips are now unsealed. james travers, tell us what you know of the trust reposed in this man by my father," "no, no," said the squire hurriedly. "it--it is enough. i will make restitution." "you have done wisely," said richard waring. (we must give him his true name.) "when will you be ready to meet me upon this business?" "to-morrow," muttered the squire. he left the house with the air of one who has been crushed by a sudden blow. the pride of the haughty had been laid low, and retribution, long deferred, had come at last. numerous and hearty were the congratulations which mr. morton--i mean mr. waring--received upon his new accession of property. "i do not care so much for that," he said, "but my father's word has been vindicated. my mind is now at peace." there was more than one happy heart at the farm that night. mr. waring had accomplished the great object of his life; and as for frank and his mother, they felt that the black cloud which had menaced their happiness had been removed, and henceforth there seemed prosperous days in store. to cap the climax of their happiness, the afternoon mail brought a letter from mr. frost, in which he imparted the intelligence that he had been promoted to a second lieutenancy. "mother," said frank, "you must be very dignified now, you are an officer's wife." chapter xxxiii. conclusion the restitution which squire haynes was compelled to make stripped him of more than half his property. his mortification and chagrin was so great that he determined to remove from rossville. he gave no intimation where he was going, but it is understood that he is now living in the vicinity of philadelphia, in a much more modest way than at rossville. to anticipate matters a little, it may be said that john was recently examined for college, but failed so signally that he will not again make the attempt. he has shown a disposition to be extravagant, which, unless curbed, will help him run through his father's diminished property at a rapid rate whenever it shall come into his possession. the squire's handsome house in rossville was purchased by henry morton--i must still be allowed to call him thus, though not his real name. he has not yet taken up his residence there, but there is reason to believe that ere long there will be a mrs. morton to keep him company therein. not long since, as he and frank lay stretched out beneath a thick-branching oak in the front yard at the farm, mr. morton turned to our hero and said, "are you meaning to go to college when your father comes home, frank?" frank hesitated. "i have always looked forward to it," he said, "but lately i have been thinking that i shall have to give up the idea." "why so?" "because it is so expensive that my father cannot, in justice to his other children, support me through a four years' course. besides, you know, mr. morton, we are four hundred dollars in your debt." "should you like very much to go to college, frank?" "better than anything else in the world." "then you shall go." frank looked up in surprise. "don't you understand me?" said mr. morton. "i mean that i will defray your expenses through college." frank could hardly believe his ears. "you would spend so much money on me!" he exclaimed incredulously. "why, it will cost a thousand dollars." "very well, i can afford it," said mr. morton. "but perhaps you object to the plan." "how good you are to me!" said frank, impulsively seizing his friend's hand. "what have i done to deserve so much kindness?" "you have done your duty, frank, at the sacrifice of your inclinations. i think you ought to be rewarded. god has bestowed upon me more than i need. i think he intends that i shall become his almoner. if you desire to express your gratitude, you can best do it by improving the advantages which will be opened to you." frank hastened to his mother to communicate his brilliant prospects. her joy was scarcely less than his. "do not forget, frank," she said, "who it is that has raised up this friend for you. give him the thanks." there was another whose heart was gladdened when this welcome news reached him in his tent beside the rappahannock. he felt that while he was doing his duty in the field, god was taking better care of his family than he could have done if he remained at home. before closing this chronicle i must satisfy the curiosity of my readers upon a few points in which they may feel interested. the rossville guards are still in existence, "and frank is still their captain. they have already done escort duty on several occasions, and once they visited boston, and marched up state street with a precision of step which would have done no discredit to veteran soldiers. dick bumstead's reformation proved to be a permanent one. he is frank's most intimate friend, and with his assistance is laboring to remedy the defects of his early education. he has plenty of ability, and, now that he has turned over a new leaf, i have no hesitation in predicting for him a useful and honorable career. old mrs. payson has left rossville, much to the delight of her grandson sam, who never could get along with his grandmother. she still wears for best the "bunnit" presented her by cynthy ann, which, notwithstanding its mishap, seems likely to last her to the end of her natural life. she still has a weakness for hot gingerbread and mince pie, and, though she is turned of seventy, would walk a mile any afternoon with such an inducement. should any of my readers at any time visit the small town of sparta, and encounter in the street a little old lady dressed in a brown cloak and hood, and firmly grasping in her right hand a faded blue cotton umbrella, they may feel quite certain that they are in the presence of mrs. mehitabel payson, relict of jeremiah payson, deceased. little pomp has improved very much both in his studies and his behavior. he now attends school regularly, and is quite as far advanced as most boys of his age. though he is not entirely cured of his mischievous propensities, he behaves "pretty well, considering," and is a great deal of company to old chloe, to whom he reads stories in books lent him by frank and others. chloe is amazingly proud of pomp, whom she regards as a perfect prodigy of talent. "lor' bress you, missus," she remarked to mrs. frost one day, "he reads jest as fast as i can talk. he's an awful smart boy, dat pomp." "why don't you let him teach you to read, chloe?" "oh, lor', missus, i couldn't learn, nohow. i ain't got no gumption. i don't know noffin'." "why couldn't you learn as well as pomp?" "dat ar boy's a gen'us, missus. his fader was a mighty smart niggar, and pomp's took arter him." chloe's conviction of her own inferiority and pomp's superior ability seemed so rooted that mrs. frost finally gave up her persuasions. meanwhile, as chloe is in good health and has abundance of work, she has no difficulty in earning a comfortable subsistence for herself and pomp. as soon as pomp is old enough, frank will employ him upon the farm. while i am writing these lines intelligence has just been received from frank's substitute at the seat of war. he has just been promoted to a captaincy. in communicating this he adds: "you may tell frank that i am now his equal in rank, though his commission bears an earlier date. i suppose, therefore, i must content myself with being captain frost, jr. i shall be very glad when the necessities of the country will permit me to lay aside the insignia of rank and, returning to rossville, subside into plain henry frost again. if you ask me when this is to be, i can only say that it depends on the length of our struggle. i am enlisted for the war, and i mean to see it through! till that time frank must content himself with acting as my substitute at home. i am so well pleased with his management of the farm that i am convinced it is doing as well as if i were at home to superintend it in person. express to mr. waring my gratitude for the generous proposal he has made to frank. i feel that words are inadequate to express the extent of our obligations to him." some years have passed since the above letter was written. the war is happily over, and captain frost has returned home with an honorable record of service. released from duty at home, frank has exchanged the farm for the college hall, and he is now approaching graduation, one of the foremost scholars in his class. he bids fair to carry out the promise of his boyhood, and in the more varied and prolonged campaign which manhood opens before him we have reason to believe that he will display equal fidelity and gain an equal success. end of project gutenberg etext frank's campaign, by horatio alger, jr. 1843 the history of the conquest of mexico by william hickling prescott book i: introduction view of the aztec civilisation chapter i ancient mexicoits climate and its products its primitive racesaztec empire the country of the ancient mexicans, or aztecs as they were called, formed but a very small part of the extensive territories comprehended in the modern republic of mexico. its boundaries cannot be defined with certainty. they were much enlarged in the latter days of the empire, when they may be considered as reaching from about the eighteenth degree north to the twenty-first on the atlantic; and from the fourteenth to the nineteenth, including a very narrow strip, on the pacific. in its greatest breadth, it could not exceed five degrees and a half, dwindling, as it approached its south-eastern limits, to less than two. it covered, probably, less than sixteen thousand square leagues. yet, such is the remarkable formation of this country, that though not more than twice as large as new england, it presented every variety of climate, and was capable of yielding nearly every fruit found between the equator and. the arctic circle. all along the atlantic the country is bordered by a broad tract, called the tierra caliente, or hot region, which has the usual high temperature of equinoctial lands. parched and sandy plains are intermingled with others of exuberant fertility, almost impervious from thickets of aromatic shrubs and wild flowers, in the midst of which tower up trees of that magnificent growth which is found only within the tropics. in this wilderness of sweets lurks the fatal malaria, engendered, probably, by the decomposition of rank vegetable substances in a hot and humid soil. the season of the bilious fever,vomito, as it is called,which scourges these coasts, continues from the spring to the autumnal equinox, when it is checked by the cold winds that descend from hudson's bay. these winds in the winter season frequently freshen into tempests, and, sweeping down the atlantic coast and the winding gulf of mexico, burst with the fury of a hurricane on its unprotected shores, and on the neighbouring west india islands. such are the mighty spells with which nature has surrounded this land of enchantment, as if to guard the golden treasures locked up within its bosom. the genius and enterprise of man have proved more potent than her spells. after passing some twenty leagues across this burning region, the traveller finds himself rising into a purer atmosphere. his limbs recover their elasticity. he breathes more freely, for his senses are not now oppressed by the sultry heats and intoxicating perfumes of the valley. the aspect of nature, too, has changed, and his eye no longer revels among the gay variety of colours with which the landscape was painted there. the vanilla, the indigo, and the flowering cocoa-groves disappear as he advances. the sugar-cane and the glossy-leaved banana still accompany him; and, when he has ascended about four thousand feet, he sees in the unchanging verdure, and the rich foliage of the liquid-amber tree, that he has reached the height where clouds and mists settle, in their passage from the mexican gulf. this is the region of perpetual humidity; but he welcomes it with pleasure, as announcing his escape from the influence of the deadly vomito. he has entered the tierra templada, or temperate region, whose character resembles that of the temperate zone of the globe. the features of the scenery become grand, and even terrible. his road sweeps along the base of mighty mountains, once gleaming with volcanic fires, and still resplendent in their mantles of snow, which serve as beacons to the mariner, for many a league at sea. all around he beholds traces of their ancient combustion, as his road passes along vast tracts of lava, bristling in the innumerable fantastic forms into which the fiery torrent has been thrown by the obstacles in its career. perhaps, at the same moment, as he casts his eye down some steep slope, or almost unfathomable ravine, on the margin of the road, he sees their depths glowing with the rich blooms and enamelled vegetation of the tropics. such are the singular contrasts presented, at the same time, to the senses, in this picturesque region! still pressing upwards, the traveller mounts into other climates favourable to other kinds of cultivation. the yellow maize, or indian corn, as we usually call it, has continued to follow him up from the lowest level; but he now first sees fields of wheat, and the other european grains, brought into the country by the conquerors. mingled with them he views the plantations of the aloe or maguey (agave americana), applied to such various and important uses by the aztecs. the oaks now acquire a sturdier growth, and the dark forests of pine announce that he has entered the tierra fria, or cold region, the third and last of the great natural terraces into which the country is divided. when he has climbed to the height of between seven and eight thousand feet, the weary traveller sets his foot on the summit of the cordillera of the andes,the colossal range that, after traversing south america and the isthmus of darien, spreads out, as it enters mexico, into that vast sheet of tableland which maintains an elevation of more than six thousand feet, for the distance of nearly two hundred leagues, until it gradually declines in the higher latitudes of the north. across this mountain rampart a chain of volcanic hills stretches, in a westerly direction, of still more stupendous dimensions, forming, indeed, some of the highest land on the globe. their peaks, entering the limits of perpetual snow, diffuse a grateful coolness over the elevated plateaus below; for these last, though termed "cold," enjoy a climate, the mean temperature of which is not lower than that of the central parts of italy. the air is exceedingly dry; the soil, though naturally good, is rarely clothed with the luxuriant vegetation of the lower regions. it frequently, indeed, has a parched and barren aspect, owing partly to the greater evaporation which takes place on these lofty plains, through the diminished pressure of the atmosphere; and partly, no doubt, to the want of trees to shelter the soil from the fierce influence of the summer sun. in the time of the aztecs, the tableland was thickly covered with larch, oak, cypress, and other forest trees, the extraordinary dimensions of some of which, remaining to the present day, show that the curse of barrenness in later times is chargeable more on man than on nature. indeed the early spaniards made as indiscriminate war on the forests as did our puritan ancestors, though with much less reason. after once conquering the country, they had no lurking ambush to fear from the submissive semi-civilised indian, and were not, like our forefathers, obliged to keep watch and ward for a century. this spoliation of the ground, however, is said to have been pleasing to their imaginations, as it reminded them of the plains of their own castile,the tableland of europe; where the nakedness of the landscape forms the burden of every traveller's lament, who visits that country. midway across the continent, somewhat nearer the pacific than the atlantic ocean, at an elevation of nearly seven thousand five hundred feet, is the celebrated valley of mexico. it is of an oval form, about sixty-seven leagues in circumference, and is encompassed by a towering rampart of porphyritic rock, which nature seems to have provided, though ineffectually, to protect it from invasion. the soil, once carpeted with a beautiful verdure and thickly sprinkled with stately trees, is often bare, and, in many places, white with the incrustation of salts, caused by the draining of the waters. five lakes are spread over the valley, occupying one tenth of its surface. on the opposite borders of the largest of these basins, much shrunk in its dimensions since the days of the aztecs, stood the cities of mexico and tezcuco, the capitals of the two most potent and flourishing states of anahuac, whose history, with that of the mysterious races that preceded them in the country, exhibits some of the nearest approaches to civilisation to be met with anciently on the north american continent. of these races the most conspicuous were the toltecs. advancing from a northerly direction, but from what region is uncertain, they entered the territory of anahuac, probably before the close of the seventh century. of course, little can be gleaned, with certainty, respecting a people whose written records have perished, and who are known to us only through the traditionary legends of the nations that succeeded them. by the general agreement of these, however, the toltecs were well instructed in agriculture, and many of the most useful mechanic arts; were nice workers of metals; invented the complex arrangement of time adopted by the aztecs; and, in short, were the true fountains of the civilisation which distinguished this part of the continent in later times. they established their capital at tula, north of the mexican valley, and the remains of extensive buildings were to be discerned there at the time of the conquest. the noble ruins of religious and other edifices, still to be seen in various parts of new spain, are referred to this people, whose name, toltec, has passed into a synonym for architect. their shadowy history reminds us of those primitive races, who preceded the ancient egyptians in the march of civilisation; fragments of whose monuments, as they are seen at this day, incorporated with the buildings of the egyptians themselves, give to these latter the appearance of almost modern constructions. after a period of four centuries, the toltecs, who had extended their sway over the remotest borders of anahuac, having been greatly reduced, it is said, by famine, pestilence, and unsuccessful wars, disappeared from the land as silently and mysteriously as they had entered it. a few of them still lingered behind, but much the greater number, probably, spread over the region of central america and the neighbouring isles; and the traveller now speculates on the majestic ruins of mitla and palenque as possibly the work of this extraordinary people. after the lapse of another hundred years, a numerous and rude tribe, called the chichemecs, entered the deserted country from the regions of the far north-west. they were speedily followed by other races, of higher civilisation, perhaps of the same family with the toltecs, whose language they appear to have spoken. the most noted of these were the aztecs, or mexicans, and the acolhuans. the latter, better known in later times by the name of tezcucans, from their capital, tezcuco, on the eastern border of the mexican lake, were peculiarly fitted, by their comparatively mild religion and manners, for receiving the tincture of civilisation which could be derived from the few toltecs that still remained in the country. this, in their turn, they communicated to the barbarous chichemees, a large portion of whom became amalgamated with the new settlers as one nation. availing themselves of the strength derived, not only from the increase of numbers, but from their own superior refinement, the acolhuans gradually stretched their empire over the ruder tribes in the north; while their capital was filled with a numerous population, busily employed in many of the more useful and even elegant arts of a civilised community. in this palmy state, they were suddenly assaulted by a warlike neighbour, the tepanecs, their own kindred, and inhabitants of the same valley as themselves. their provinces were overrun, their armies beaten, their king assassinated, and the flourishing city of tezcuco became the prize of the victor. from this abject condition the uncommon abilities of the young prince nezahualcoyotl, the rightful heir to the crown, backed by the efficient aid of his mexican allies, at length redeemed the state, and opened to it a new career of prosperity, even more brilliant than the former. the mexicans, with whom our history is principally concerned, came also, as we have seen, from the remote regions of the north,the populous hive of nations in the new world, as it has been in the old. they arrived on the borders of anahuac towards the beginning of the thirteenth century, some time after the occupation of the land by the kindred races. for a long time they did not establish themselves in any permanent residence; but continued shifting their quarters to different parts of the mexican valley, enduring all the casualties and hardships of a migratory life. on one occasion, they were enslaved by a more powerful tribe; but their ferocity soon made them formidable to their masters. after a series of wanderings and adventures, which need not shrink from comparison with the most extravagant legends of the heroic ages of antiquity, they at length halted on the south-western borders of the principal lake, in the year 1325. they there beheld, perched on the stem of a prickly pear, which shot out from the crevice of a rock that was washed by the waves, a royal eagle of extraordinary size and beauty, with a serpent in his talons, and his broad wings open to the rising sun. they hailed the auspicious omen, announced by an oracle as indicating the site of their future city, and laid its foundations by sinking piles into the shallows; for the low marshes were half buried under water. on these they erected their light fabrics of reeds and rushes; and sought a precarious subsistence from fishing, and from the wild fowl which frequented the waters, as well as from the cultivation of such simple vegetables as they could raise on their floating gardens. the place was called tenochtitlan, though only known to europeans by its other name of mexico, derived from their war-god, mexitli. the legend of its foundation is still further commemorated by the device of the eagle and the cactus, which form the arms of the modern mexican republic. such were the humble beginnings of the venice of the western world. the forlorn condition of the new settlers was made still worse by domestic feuds. a part of the citizens seceded from the main body, and formed a separate community on the neighbouring marshes. thus divided, it was long before they could aspire to the acquisition of territory on the main land. they gradually increased, however, in numbers, and strengthened themselves yet more by various improvements in their polity and military discipline, while they established a reputation for courage as well as cruelty in war, which made their name terrible throughout the valley. in the early part of the fifteenth century, nearly a hundred years from the foundation of the city, an event took place which created an entire revolution in the circumstances, and, to some extent, in the character of the aztecs. this was the subversion of the tezcucan monarchy by the tepanecs, already noticed. when the oppressive conduct of the victors had at length aroused a spirit of resistance, its prince, nezahualcoyotl, succeeded, after incredible perils and escapes, in mustering such a force, as, with the aid of the mexicans, placed him on a level with his enemies. in two successive battles these were defeated with great slaughter, their chief slain, and their territory, by one of those sudden reverses which characterise the wars of petty states, passed into the hands of the conquerors. it was awarded to mexico, in return for its important services. then was formed that remarkable league, which, indeed, has no parallel in history. it was agreed between the states of mexico, tezcuco, and the neighbouring little kingdom of tlacopan, that they should mutually support each other in their wars, offensive and defensive, and that, in the distribution of the spoil, one fifth should be assigned to tlacopan, and the remainder be divided, in what proportions is uncertain, between the other powers. the tezcucan writers claim an equal share for their nation with the aztecs. but this does not seem to be warranted by the immense increase of territory subsequently appropriated by the latter. and we may account for any advantage conceded to them by the treaty, on the supposition, that however inferior they may have been originally, they were, at the time of making it, in a more prosperous condition than their allies, broken and dispirited by long oppression. what is more extraordinary than the treaty itself, however, is the fidelity with which it was maintained. during a century of uninterrupted warfare that ensued, no instance occurred where the parties quarrelled over the division of the spoil, which so often makes shipwreck of similar confederacies among civilised states. the allies for some time found sufficient occupation for their arms in their own valley; but they soon overleaped its rocky ramparts, and by the middle of the fifteenth century, under the first montezuma, had spread down the sides of the tableland to the borders of the gulf of mexico. tenochtitlan, the aztec capital, gave evidence of the public prosperity. its frail tenements were supplanted by solid structures of stone and lime. its population rapidly increased. its old feuds were healed. the citizens who had seceded were again brought under a common government with the body, and the quarter they occupied was permanently connected with the parent city; the dimensions of which, covering the same ground, were much larger than those of the modern capital. fortunately, the throne was filled by a succession of able princes, who knew how to profit by their enlarged resources and by the martial enthusiasm of the nation. year after year saw them return, loaded with the spoils of conquered cities, and with throngs of devoted captives, to their capital. no state was able long to resist the accumulated strength of the confederates. at the beginning of the sixteenth century, just before the arrival of the spaniard, the aztec dominion reached across the continent from the atlantic to the pacific; and, under the bold and bloody ahuitzotl, its arms had been carried far over the limits already noticed as defining its permanent territory, into the farthest corners of guatemala and nicaragua. this extent of empire, however limited in comparison with that of many other states, is truly wonderful, considering it as the acquisition of a people whose whole population and resources had so recently been comprised within the walls of their own petty city; and considering, moreover, that the conquered territory was thickly settled by various races, bred to arms like the mexicans, and little inferior to them in social organisation. the history of the aztecs suggests some strong points of resemblance to that of the ancient romans, not only in their military successes, but in the policy which led to them. chapter ii succession to the crownaztec nobilityjudicial system laws and revenuesmilitary institutions the form of government differed in the different states of anahuac. with the aztecs and tezcucans it was monarchical and nearly absolute. i shall direct my inquiries to the mexican polity, borrowing an illustration occasionally from that of the rival kingdom. the government was an elective monarchy. four of the principal nobles, who had been chosen by their own body in the preceding reign, filled the office of electors, to whom were added, with merely an honorary rank, however, the two royal allies of tezcuco and tlacopan. the sovereign was selected from the brothers of the deceased prince, or, in default of them, from his nephews. thus the election was always restricted to the same family. the candidate preferred must have distinguished himself in war, though, as in the case of the last montezuma, he were a member of the priesthood. this singular mode of supplying the throne had some advantages. the candidates received an education which fitted them for the royal dignity, while the age at which they were chosen not only secured the nation against the evils of minority, but afforded ample means for estimating their qualifications for the office. the result, at all events, was favourable; since the throne, as already noticed, was filled by a succession of able princes, well qualified to rule over a warlike and ambitious people. the scheme of election, however defective, argues a more refined and calculating policy than was to have been expected from a barbarous nation. the new monarch was installed in his regal dignity with much parade of religious ceremony; but not until, by a victorious campaign, he had obtained a sufficient number of captives to grace his triumphal entry into the capital, and to furnish victims for the dark and bloody rites which stained the aztec superstition. amidst this pomp of human sacrifice he was crowned. the crown, resembling a mitre in its form, and curiously ornamented with gold, gems, and feathers, was placed on his head by the lord of tezcuco, the most powerful of his royal allies. the title of king, by which the earlier aztec princes are distinguished by spanish writers, is supplanted by that of emperor in the later reigns, intimating, perhaps, his superiority over the monarchies of tlacopan and tezcuco. the aztec princes, especially towards the close of the dynasty, lived in a barbaric pomp, truly oriental. their spacious palaces were provided with halls for the different councils, who aided the monarch in the transaction of business. the chief of these was a sort of privy council, composed in part, probably, of the four electors chosen by the nobles after the accession, whose places, when made vacant by death, were immediately supplied as before. it was the business of this body, so far as can be gathered from the very loose accounts given of it, to advise the king in respect to the government of the provinces, the administration of the revenues, and, indeed, on all great matters of public interest. in the royal buildings were accommodations, also, for a numerous body-guard of the sovereign, made up of the chief nobility. it is not easy to determine with precision, in these barbarian governments, the limits of the several orders. it is certain there was a distinct class of nobles, with large landed possessions, who held the most important offices near the person of the prince, and engrossed the administration of the provinces and cities. many of these could trace their descent from the founders of the aztec monarchy. according to some writers of authority, there were thirty great caciques, who had their residence, at least a part of the year, in the capital, and who could muster a hundred thousand vassals each on their estates. without relying on such wild statements, it is clear, from the testimony of the conquerors, that the country was occupied by numerous powerful chieftains, who lived like independent princes on their domains. it it be true that the kings encouraged, or indeed exacted, the residence of these nobles in the capital, and required hostages in their absence, it is evident that their power must have been very formidable. their estates appear to have been held by various tenures, and to have been subject to different restrictions. some of them, earned by their own good swords or received as the recompense of public services, were held without any limitation, except that the possessors could not dispose of them to a plebeian. others were entailed on the eldest male issue, and, in default of such, reverted to the crown. most of them seem to have been burdened with the obligation of military service. the principal chiefs of tezcuco, according to its chronicler, were expressly obliged to support their prince with their armed vassals, to attend his court, and aid him in the counsel. some, instead of these services, were to provide for the repairs of his buildings, and to keep the royal demesnes in order, with an annual offering, by way of homage, of fruits and flowers. it was usual for a new king, on his accession, to confirm the investiture of estates derived from the crown. it cannot be denied that we recognise in all this several features of the feudal system, which, no doubt, lose nothing of their effect, under the hands of the spanish writers, who are fond of tracing analogies to european institutions. but such analogies lead sometimes to very erroneous conclusions. the obligation of military service, for instance, the most essential principle of a fief, seems to be naturally demanded by every government from its subjects. as to minor points of resemblance, they fall far short of that harmonious system of reciprocal service and protection which embraced, in nice gradation, every order of a feudal monarchy. the kingdoms of anahuac were, in their nature, despotic, attended, indeed, with many mitigating circumstances unknown to the despotisms of the east; but it is chimerical to look for much in commonbeyond a few accidental forms and ceremonieswith those aristocratic institutions of the middle ages, which made the court of every petty baron the precise image in miniature of that of his sovereign. the legislative power, both in mexico and tezcuco, resided wholly with the monarch. this feature of despotism, however, was in some measure counteracted by the constitution of the judicial tribunalsof more importance, among a rude people, than the legislative, since it is easier to make good laws for such a community than to enforce them, and the best laws, badly administered, are but a mockery. over each of the principal cities, with its dependent territories, was placed a supreme judge, appointed by the crown, with original and final jurisdiction in both civil and criminal cases. there was no appeal from his sentence to any other tribunal, nor even to the king. he held his office during life; and any one who usurped his ensigns was punished with death. below this magistrate was a court, established in each province, and consisting of three members. it held concurrent jurisdiction with the supreme judge in civil suits, but in criminal an appeal lay to his tribunal. besides these courts, there was a body of inferior magistrates distributed through the country, chosen by the people themselves in their several districts. their authority was limited to smaller causes, while the more important were carried up to the higher courts. there was still another class of subordinate officers, appointed also by the people, each of whom was to watch over the conduct of a certain number of families, and report any disorder or breach of the laws to the higher authorities. in tezcuco the judicial arrangements were of a more refined character; and a gradation of tribunals finally terminated in a general meeting or parliament, consisting of all the judges, great and petty, throughout the kingdom, held every eighty days in the capital, over which the king presided in person. this body determined all suits, which, from their importance, or difficulty, had been reserved for its consideration by the lower tribunals. it served, moreover, as a council of state, to assist the monarch in the transaction of public business. such are the vague and imperfect notices that can be gleaned respecting the aztec tribunals, from the hieroglyphical paintings still preserved, and from the most accredited spanish writers. these, being usually ecclesiastics, have taken much less interest in this subject than in matters connected with religion. they find some apology, certainly, in the early destruction of most of the indian paintings, from which their information was, in part, to be gathered. on the whole, however, it must be inferred, that the aztecs were sufficiently civilised to envince a solicitude for the rights both of property and of persons. the law, authorising an appeal to the highest judicature in criminal matters only, shows an attention to personal security, rendered the more obligatory by the extreme severity of their penal code, which would naturally have made them more cautious of a wrong conviction. the existence of a number of co-ordinate tribunals, without a central one of supreme authority to control the whole, must have given rise to very discordant interpretations of the law in different districts, an evil which they shared in common with most of the nations of europe. the provision for making the superior judges wholly independent of the crown was worthy of an enlightened people. it presented the strongest barrier, that a mere constitution could afford, against tyranny. it is not, indeed, to be supposed that, in a government otherwise so despotic, means could not be found for influencing the magistrate. but it was a great step to fence round his authority with the sanction of the law; and no one of the aztec monarch, as far as i know, is accused of an attempt to violate it. to receive presents or a bribe, to be guilty of collusion in any way with a suitor, was punished, in a judge, with death. who, or what tribunal, decided as to his guilt, does not appear. in tezcuco this was done by the rest of the court. but the king presided over that body. the tezcucan prince, nezahualpilli, who rarely tempered justice with mercy, put one judge to death for taking a bribe, and another for determining suits in his own house,a capital offence, also, by law. the judges of the higher tribunals were maintained from the produce of a part of the crown lands, reserved for this purpose. they, as well as the supreme judge, held their offices for life. the proceedings in the courts were conducted with decency and order. the judges wore an appropriate dress, and attended to business both parts of the day, dining always, for the sake of despatch, in an apartment of the same building where they held their session; a method of proceeding much commended by the spanish chroniclers, to whom despatch was not very familiar in their own tribunals. officers attended to preserve order, and others summoned the parties, and produced them in court. no counsel was employed; the parties stated their own case, and supported it by their witnesses. the oath of the accused was also admitted in evidence. the statement of the case, the testimony, and the proceedings of the trial, were all set forth by a clerk, in hieroglyphical paintings, and handed over to the court. the paintings were executed with so much accuracy, that, in all suits respecting real property, they were allowed to be produced as good authority in the spanish tribunals, very long after the conquest. a capital sentence was indicated by a line traced with an arrow across the portrait of the accused. in tezcuco, where the king presided in the court, this, according to the national chronicler, was done with extraordinary parade. his description, which is of rather a poetical cast, i give in his own words: "in the royal palace of tezcuco was a courtyard, on the opposite sides of which were two halls of justice. in the principal one, called the 'tribunal of god,' was a throne of pure gold inlaid with turquoises and other precious stones. on a stool in front, was placed a human skull, crowned with an immense emerald, of a pyramidal form, and surmounted by an aigrette of brilliant plumes and precious stones. the skull was laid on a heap of military weapons, shields, quivers, bows, and arrows. the walls were hung with tapestry, made of the hair of different wild animals, of rich and various colours, festooned by gold rings, and embroidered with figures of birds and flowers. above the throne was a canopy of variegated plumage, from the centre of which shot forth resplendent rays of gold and jewels. the other tribunal, called 'the king's,' was also surmounted by a gorgeous canopy of feathers, on which were emblazoned the royal arms. here the sovereign gave public audience, and communicated his despatches. but, when he decided important causes, or confirmed a capital sentence, he passed to 'the tribunal of god,' attended by the fourteen great lords of the realm, marshalled according to their rank. then, putting on his mitred crown, incrusted with precious stones, and holding a golden arrow, by way of sceptre, in his left hand, he laid his right upon the skull, and pronounced judgment." all this looks rather fine for a court of justice, it must be owned. but it is certain, that the tezcucans, as we shall see hereafter, possessed both the materials and the skill requisite to work them up in this manner. had they been a little further advanced in refinement, one might well doubt their having the bad taste to do so. the laws of the aztecs were registered, and exhibited to the people in their hieroglyphical paintings. much the larger part of them, as in every nation imperfectly civilised, relates rather to the security of persons than of property. the great crimes against society were all made capital. even the murder of a slave was punished with death. adulterers, as among the jews, were stoned to death. thieving, according to the degree of the offence, was punished by slavery or death. yet the mexicans could have been under no great apprehension of this crime, since the entrances to their dwellings were not secured by bolts, or fastenings of any kind. it was a capital offence to remove the boundaries of another's lands; to alter the established measures; and for a guardian not to be able to give a good account of his ward's property. these regulations evince a regard for equity in dealings, and for private rights, which argues a considerable progress in civilisation. prodigals, who squandered their patrimony, were punished in like manner; a severe sentence, since the crime brought its adequate punishment along with it. intemperance, which was the burden, moreover, of their religious homilies, was visited with the severest penalties; as if they had foreseen in it the consuming canker of their own, as well as of the other indian races in later times. it was punished in the young with death, and in older persons with loss of rank and confiscation of property. yet a decent conviviality was not meant to be proscribed at their festivals, and they possessed the means of indulging it, in a mild fermented liquor, called pulque. the rites of marriage were celebrated with as much formality as in any christian country; and the institution was held in such reverence, that a tribunal was instituted for the sole purpose of determining questions relating to it. divorces could not be obtained, until authorised by a sentence of this court, after a patient hearing of the parties. but the most remarkable part of the aztec code was that relating to slavery. there were several descriptions of slaves: prisoners taken in war, who were almost always reserved for the dreadful doom of sacrifice; criminals, public debtors, persons who, from extreme poverty, voluntarily resigned their freedom, and children who were sold by their own parents. in the last instance, usually occasioned also by poverty, it was common for the parents, with the master's consent, to substitute others of their children successively, as they grew up: thus distributing the burden, as equally as possible, among the different members of the family. the willingness of freemen to incur the penalties of this condition is explained by the mild form in which it existed. the contract of sale was executed in the presence of at least four witnesses. the services to be exacted were limited with great precision. the slave was allowed to have his own family, to hold property, and even other slaves. his children were free. no one could be born to slavery in mexico, an honourable distinction, not known, i believe, in any civilised community where slavery has been sanctioned. slaves were not sold by their masters, unless when these were driven to it by poverty. they were often liberated by them at their death, and sometimes, as there was no natural repugnance founded on difference of blood and race, were married to them. yet a refractory or vicious slave might be led into the market, with a collar round his neck, which intimated his bad character, and there be publicly sold, and, on a second sale, reserved for sacrifice. the royal revenues were derived from various sources. the crown lands, which appear to have been extensive, made their returns in kind. the places in the neighbourhood of the capital were bound to supply workmen and materials for building the king's palaces, and keeping them in repair. they were also to furnish fuel, provisions, and whatever was necessary for his ordinary domestic expenditure, which was certainly on no stinted scale. the principal cities, which had numerous villages and a large territory dependent on them, were distributed into districts, with each a share of the lands allotted to it, for its support. the inhabitants paid a stipulated part of the produce to the crown. the vassals of the great chiefs, also, paid a portion of their earnings into the public treasury; an arrangement not at all in the spirit of the feudal institutions. in addition to this tax on all the agricultural produce of the kingdom, there was another on its manufactures. the nature and the variety of the tributes will be best shown by an enumeration of some of the principal articles. these were cotton dresses, and mantles of feather-work, exquisitely made; ornamented armour; vases and plates of gold; gold-dust, bands and bracelets; crystal, gilt, and varnished jars and goblets; bells, arms, and utensils of copper; reams of paper; grain, fruits, copal, amber, cochineal, cocoa, wild animals and birds, timber, lime, mats, etc. in this curious medley of the most homely commodities, and the elegant superfluities of luxury, it is singular that no mention should be made of silver, the great staple of the country in later times, and the use of which was certainly known to the aztecs. garrisons were established in the larger cities,probably those at a distance, and recently conquered,to keep down revolt, and to enforce the payment of the tribute. tax-gatherers were also distributed throughout the kingdom, who were recognised by their official badges, and dreaded from the merciless rigour of their exactions. by a stern law, every defaulter was liable to be taken and sold as a slave. in the capital were spacious granaries and warehouses for the reception of the tributes. a receiver-general was quartered in the palace, who rendered in an exact account of the various contributions, and watched over the conduct of the inferior agents, in whom the least malversation was summarily punished. this functionary was furnished with a map of the whole empire, with a minute specification of the imposts assessed on every part of it. these imposts, moderate under the reigns of the early princes, became so burdensome under those of the close of the dynasty, being rendered still more oppressive by the manner of collection, that they bred disaffection throughout the land, and prepared the way for its conquest by the spaniards. communication was maintained with the remotest parts of the country by means of couriers. post-houses were established on the great roads, about two leagues distant from each other. the courier, bearing his despatches in the form of a hieroglyphical painting, ran with them to the first station, where they were taken by another messenger, and carried forward to the next, and so on till they reached the capital. these couriers, trained from childhood, travelled with incredible swiftness; not four or five leagues an hour, as an old chronicler would make us believe, but with such speed that despatches were carried from one to two hundred miles a day. fresh fish was frequently served at montezuma's table in twenty-four hours from the time it had been taken in the gulf of mexico, two hundred miles from the capital. in this way intelligence of the movements of the royal armies was rapidly brought to court; and the dress of the courier, denoting by its colour that of his tidings, spread joy or consternation in the towns through which he passed. but the great aim of the aztec institutions to which private discipline and public honours were alike directed, was the profession of arms. in mexico, as in egypt, the soldier shared with the priest the highest consideration. the king, as we have seen, must be an experienced warrior. the tutelary deity of the aztecs was the god of war. a great object of their military expeditions was, to gather hecatombs of captives for his altars. the soldier, who fell in battle, was transported at once to the region of ineffable bliss in the bright mansions of the sun. every war, therefore, became a crusade; and the warrior, animated by a religious enthusiasm, like that of the early saracen, or the christian crusader, was not only raised to a contempt of danger, but courted it, for the imperishable crown of martyrdom. thus we find the same impulse acting in the most opposite quarters of the globe, and the asiatic, the european, and the american, each earnestly invoking the holy name of religion in the perpetration of human butchery. the question of war was discussed in a council of the king and his chief nobles. ambassadors were sent, previously to its declaration, to require the hostile state to receive the mexican gods, and to pay the customary tribute. the persons of ambassadors were held sacred throughout anahuac. they were lodged and entertained in the great towns at the public charge, and were everywhere received with courtesy, so long as they did not deviate from the high-roads on their route. when they did, they forfeited their privileges. if the embassy proved unsuccessful, a defiance, or open declaration of war, was sent; quotas were drawn from the conquered provinces, which were always subjected to military service, as well as the payment of taxes; and the royal army, usually with the monarch at its head, began its march. the aztec princes made use of the incentive employed by european monarchs to excite the ambition of their followers. they established various military orders, each having its privileges and peculiar insignia. there seems, also, to have existed a sort of knighthood, of inferior degree. it was the cheapest reward of martial prowess, and whoever had not reached it was excluded from using ornaments on his arms or his person, and obliged to wear a coarse white stuff, made from the threads of the aloe, called nequen. even the members of the royal family were not excepted from this law, which reminds one of the occasional practice of christian knights, to wear plain armour, or shields without device, till they had achieved some doughty feat of chivalry. although the military orders were thrown open to all, it is probable that they were chiefly filled with persons of rank, who, by their previous training and connections, were able to come into the field under peculiar advantages. the dress of the higher warriors was picturesque, and often magnificent. their bodies were covered with a close vest of quilted cotton, so thick as to be impenetrable to the light missiles of indian warfare. this garment was so light and serviceable that it was adopted by the spaniards. the wealthier chiefs sometimes wore, instead of this cotton mail, a cuirass made of thin plates of gold, or silver. over it was thrown a surcoat of the gorgeous feather-work in which they excelled. their helmets were sometimes of wood, fashioned like the heads of wild animals, and sometimes of silver, on the top of which waved a panache of variegated feathers, sprinkled with precious stones and ornaments of gold. they wore also collars, bracelets, and earrings, of the same rich materials. their armies were divided into bodies of eight thousand men; and these, again, into companies of three or four hundred, each with its own commander. the national standard, which has been compared to the ancient roman, displayed, in its embroidery of gold and feather-work, the armorial ensigns of the state. these were significant of its name, which, as the names of both persons and places were borrowed from some material object, was easily expressed by hieroglyphical symbols. the companies and the great chiefs had also their appropriate banners and devices, and the gaudy hues of their many-coloured plumes gave a dazzling splendour to the spectacle. their tactics were such as belong to a nation with whom war, though a trade, is not elevated to the rank of a science. they advanced singing, and shouting their war-cries, briskly charging the enemy, as rapidly retreating, and making use of ambuscades, sudden surprises, and the light skirmish of guerilla warfare. yet their discipline was such as to draw forth the encomiums of the spanish conquerors. "a beautiful sight it was," says one of them, "to see them set out on their march, all moving forward so gaily, and in so admirable order!" in battle, they did not seek to kill their enemies, so much as to take them prisoners; and they never scalped, like other north american tribes. the valour of a warrior was estimated by the number of his prisoners; and no ransom was large enough to save the devoted captive. their military code bore the same stern features as their other laws. disobedience of orders was punished with death. it was death, also, for a soldier to leave his colours to attack the enemy before the signal was given, or to plunder another's booty or prisoners. one of the last tezcucan princes, in the spirit of an ancient roman, put two sons to death,after having cured their wounds,for violating the last-mentioned law. i must not omit to notice here an institution, the introduction of which, in the old world, is ranked among the beneficent fruits of christianity. hospitals were established in the principal cities for the cure of the sick, and the permanent refuge of the disabled soldier; and surgeons were placed over them, "who were so far better than those in europe," says an old chronicler, "that they did not protract the cure, in order to increase the pay." such is the brief outline of the civil and military polity of the ancient mexicans; less perfect than could be desired, in regard to the former, from the imperfection of the sources whence it is drawn. whoever has had occasion to explore the early history of modern europe has found how vague and unsatisfactory is the political information which can be gleaned from the gossip of monkish annalists. how much is the difficulty increased in the present instance, where this information, first recorded in the dubious language of hieroglyphics, was interpreted in another language, with which the spanish chroniclers were imperfectly acquainted, while it related to institutions of which their past experience enabled them to form no adequate conception! amidst such uncertain lights, it is in vain to expect nice accuracy of detail. all that can be done is, to attempt an outline of the more prominent features, that a correct impression, so far as it goes, may be produced on the mind of the reader. enough has been said, however, to show that the aztec and tezcucan races were advanced in civilisation very far beyond the wandering tribes of north america. the degree of civilisation which they had reached, as inferred by their political institutions, may be considered, perhaps, not much short of that enjoyed by our saxon ancestors, under alfred. in respect to the nature of it, they may be better compared with the egyptians; and the examination of their social relations and culture may suggest still stronger points of resemblance to that ancient people. chapter iii mexican mythologythe sacerdotal orderthe temples human sacrifices the civil polity of the aztecs is so closely blended with their religion, that, without understanding the latter, it is impossible to form correct ideas of their government or their social institutions. i shall pass over, for the present, some remarkable traditions, bearing a singular resemblance to those found in the scriptures, and endeavour to give a brief sketch of their mythology, and their careful provisions for maintaining a national worship. in contemplating the religious system of the aztecs, one is struck with its apparent incongruity, as if some portion of it had emanated from a comparatively refined people, open to gentle influences, while the rest breathes a spirit of unmitigated ferocity. it naturally suggests the idea of two distinct sources, and authorises the belief that the aztecs had inherited from their predecessors a milder faith, on which was afterwards engrafted their own mythology. the latter soon became dominant, and gave its dark colouring to the creeds of the conquered nations,which the mexicans, like the ancient romans, seem willingly to have incorporated into their own,until the same funereal superstition settled over the farthest borders of anahuac. the aztecs recognised the existence of a supreme creator and lord of the universe. they addressed him, in their prayers, as "the god by whom we live," "omnipresent, that knoweth all thoughts, and giveth all gifts," "without whom man is as nothing," "invisible, incorporeal, one god, of perfect perfection and purity," "under whose wings we find repose and a sure defence." these sublime attributes infer no inadequate conception of the true god. but the idea of unityof a being, with whom volition is action, who has no need of inferior ministers to execute his purposeswas too simple, or too vast, for their understandings; and they sought relief, as usual, in the plurality of deities, who presided over the elements, the changes of the seasons, and the various occupations of man. of these, there were thirteen principal deities, and more than two hundred inferior; to each of whom some special day, or appropriate festival, was consecrated. at the head of all stood the terrible huitzilopochtli, the mexican mars; although it is doing injustice to the heroic war-god of antiquity to identify him with this sanguinary monster. this was the patron deity of the nation. his fantastic image was loaded with costly ornaments. his temples were the most stately and august of the public edifices; and his altars reeked with the blood of human hecatombs in every city of the empire. disastrous, indeed, must have been the influence of such a superstition on the character of the people. a far more interesting personage in their mythology, was quetzalcoatl, god of the air, a divinity who, during his residence on earth, instructed the natives in the use of metals, in agriculture, and in the arts of government. he was one of those benefactors of their species, doubtless, who have been deified, by the gratitude of posterity. under him, the earth teemed with fruits and flowers, without the pains of culture. an ear of indian corn was as much as a single man could carry. the cotton, as it grew, took, of its own accord, the rich dyes of human art. the air was filled with intoxicating perfumes and the sweet melody of birds. in short, these were the halcyon days, which find a place in the mythic systems of so many nations in the old world. it was the golden age of anahuac. from some cause, not explained, quetzalcoatl incurred the wrath of one of the principal gods, and was compelled to abandon the country. on his way, he stopped at the city of cholula, where a temple was dedicated to his worship, the massy ruins of which still form one of the most interesting relics of antiquity in mexico. when he reached the shores of the mexican gulf, he took leave of his followers, promising that he and his descendants would revist them hereafter, and then entering his wizard skill, made of serpents' skins, embarked on the great ocean for the fabled land of tlapallan. he was said to have been tall in stature, with a white skin, long, dark hair, and a flowing beard. the mexicans looked confidently to the return of the benevolent deity; and this remarkable tradition, deeply cherished in their hearts, prepared the way, as we shall see hereafter, for the future success of the spaniards. we have not space for further details respecting the mexican divinities, the attributes of many of whom were carefully defined, as they descended in regular gradation, to the penates or household gods, whose little images were to be found in the humblest dwelling. the aztecs felt the curiosity, common to man in almost every stage of civilisation, to lift the veil which covers the mysterious past, and the more awful future. they sought relief, like the nations of the old continent, from the oppressive idea of eternity, by breaking it up into distinct cycles, or periods of time, each of several thousand years' duration. there were four of these cycles, and at the end of each, by the agency of one of the elements, the human family was swept from the earth, and the sun blotted out from the heavens, to be again rekindled. they imagined three separate states of existence in the future life. the wicked, comprehending the great part of mankind, were to expiate their sins in a place of everlasting darkness. another class, with no other merit than that of having died of certain diseases, capriciously selected, were to enjoy a negative existence of indolent contentment. the highest place was reserved, as in most warlike nations, for the heroes who fell in battle, or in sacrifice. they passed, at once, into the presence of the sun, whom they accompanied with songs and choral dances, in his bright progress through the heavens; and, after some years, their spirits went to animate the clouds and singing birds of beautiful plumage, and to revel amidst the rich blossoms and odours of the gardens of paradise. such was the heaven of the aztecs; more refined in its character than that of the more polished pagan, whose elysium reflected only the martial sports, or sensual gratifications, of this life. in the destiny they assigned to the wicked, we discern similar traces of refinement; since the absence of all physical torture forms a striking contrast to the schemes of suffering so ingeniously devised by the fancies of the most enlightened nations.in all this, so contrary to the natural suggestions of the ferocious aztec, we see the evidences of a higher civilisation, inherited from their predecessors in the land. our limits will allow only a brief allusion to one or two of their most interesting ceremonies. on the death of a person, his corpse was dressed in the peculiar habiliments of his tutelar deity. it was strewed with pieces of paper, which operated as charms, against the dangers of the dark road he was to travel. a throng of slaves, if he were rich, was sacrificed at his obsequies. his body was burned, and the ashes, collected in a vase, were preserved in one of the apartments of his house. here we have successively the usages of the roman catholic, the mussulman, the tartar, and the ancient greek and roman, curious coincidences, which may show how cautious we should be in adopting conclusions founded on analogy. a more extraordinary coincidence may be traced with christian rites, in the ceremony of naming their children. the lips and bosom of the infant were sprinkled with water, and "the lord was implored to permit the holy drops to wash away the sin that was given to it before the foundation of the world; so that the child might be born anew." we are reminded of christian morals, in more than one of their prayers, in which they use regular forms. "wilt thou blot us out, o lord, for ever? is this punishment intended, not for our reformation, but for our destruction?" again, "impart to us, out of thy great mercy, thy gifts which we are not worthy to receive through our own merits." "keep peace with all," says another petition; "bear injuries with humility; god, who sees, will avenge you." but the most striking parallel with scripture is in the remarkable declaration, that "he who looks too curiously on a woman, commits adultery with his eyes." these pure and elevated maxims, it is true, are mixed up with others of a puerile, and even brutal character, arguing that confusion of the moral perceptions, which is natural in the twilight of civilisation. one would not expect, however, to meet, in such a state of society, with doctrines as sublime as any inculcated by the enlightened codes of ancient philosophy. but, although the aztec mythology gathered nothing from the beautiful inventions of the poet, nor from the refinements of philosophy, it was much indebted, as i have noticed, to the priests, who endeavoured to dazzle the imagination of the people by the most formal and pompous ceremonial. the influence of the priesthood must be greatest in an imperfect state of civilisation, where it engrosses all the scanty science of the time in its own body. this is particularly the case, when the science is of that spurious kind which is less occupied with the real phenomena of nature, than with the fanciful chimeras of human superstition. such are the sciences of astrology and divination, in which the aztec priests were well initiated; and while they seemed to hold the keys of the future in their own hands, they impressed the ignorant people with sentiments of superstitious awe, beyond that which has probably existed in any other country,even in ancient egypt. the sacerdotal order was very numerous; as may be inferred from the statement that five thousand priests were, in some way or other, attached to the principal temple in the capital. the various ranks and functions of this multitudinous body were discriminated with great exactness. those best instructed in music took the management of the choirs. others arranged the festivals conformably to the calendar. some superintended the education of youth, and others had charge of the hieroglyphical paintings and oral traditions; while the dismal rites of sacrifice were reserved for the chief dignitaries of the order. at the head of the whole establishment were two high-priests, elected from the order, as it would seem, by the king and principal nobles, without reference to birth, but solely for their qualifications, as shown by their previous conduct in a subordinate station. they were equal in dignity, and inferior only to the sovereign, who rarely acted without their advice in weighty matters of public concern. the priests were each devoted to the service of some particular deity, and had quarters provided within the spacious precincts of their temple; at least, while engaged in immediate attendance there,for they were allowed to marry and have families of their own. in this monastic residence they lived in all the stern severity of conventual discipline. thrice during the day, and once at night, they were called to prayers. they were frequent in their ablutions and vigils, and mortified the flesh by fasting and cruel penance,drawing blood from their bodies by flagellation, or by piercing them with the thorns of the aloe. the great cities were divided into districts, placed under the charge of a sort of parochial clergy, who regulated every act of religion within their precincts. it is remarkable that they administered the rites of confession and absolution. the secrets of the confessional were held inviolable, and penances were imposed of much the same kind as those enjoined in the roman catholic church. there were two remarkable peculiarities in the aztec ceremony. the first was, that, as the repetition of an offence, once atoned for, was deemed inexpiable, confession was made but once in a man's life, and was usually deferred to a late period of it, the penitent unburdened his conscience, and settled, at once, the long arrears of iniquity. another peculiarity was, that priestly absolution was received in place of the legal punishment of offences, and authorised an acquittal in case of arrest. long after the conquest, the simple natives, when they came under the arm of the law, sought to escape by producing the certificate of their confession. one of the most important duties of the priesthood was that of education, to which certain buildings were appropriated within the enclosure of the principal temple. here the youth of both sexes, of the higher and middling orders, were placed at a very tender age. the girls were intrusted to the care of priestesses; for women were allowed to exercise sacerdotal functions, except those of sacrifice. in these institutions the boys were drilled in the routine of monastic discipline; they decorated the shrines of the gods with flowers, fed the sacred fires, and took part in the religious chants and festivals. those in the higher school,the calmecac, as it was called,were initiated in their traditionary lore, the mysteries of hieroglyphics, the principles of government, and such branches of astronomical and natural science as were within the compass of the priesthood. the girls learned various feminine employments, especially to weave and embroider rich coverings for the altars of the gods. great attention was paid to the moral discipline of both sexes. the most perfect decorum prevailed; and offences were punished with extreme rigour, in some instances with death itself. terror, not love, was the spring of education with the aztecs. at a suitable age for marrying, or for entering into the world, the pupils were dismissed, with much ceremony, from the convent, and the recommendation of the principal often introduced those most competent to responsible situations in public life. such was the crafty policy of the mexican priests, who, by reserving to themselves the business of instruction, were enabled to mould the young and plastic mind according to their own wills, and to train it early to implicit reverence for religion and its ministers; a reverence which still maintained its hold on the iron nature of the warrior, long after every other vestige of education had been effaced by the rough trade to which he was devoted. to each of the principal temples lands were annexed for the maintenance of the priests. these estates were augmented by the policy of devotion of successive princes, until, under the last montezuma, they had swollen to an enormous extent, and covered every district of the empire. the priests took the management of their property into their own hands; and they seem to have treated their tenants with the liberality and indulgence characteristic of monastic corporations. besides the large supplies drawn from this source, the religious order was enriched with the first-fruits, and such other offerings as piety or superstition dictated. the surplus beyond what was required for the support of the national worship was distributed in alms among the poor; a duty strenuously prescribed by their moral code. thus we find the same religion inculcating lessons of pure philanthropy, on the one hand, and of merciless extermination, as we shall soon see, on the other. the mexican templesteocallis, "houses of god," as they were calledwere very numerous. there were several hundreds in each of the principal cities, many of them, doubtless, very humble edifices. they were solid masses of earth, cased with brick or stone, and in their form somewhat resembled the pyramidal structures of ancient egypt. the bases of many of them were more than a hundred feet square, and they towered to a still greater height. they were distributed into four or five stories, each of smaller dimensions than that below. the ascent was by a flight of steps, at an angle of the pyramid, on the outside. this led to a sort of terrace or gallery, at the base of the second story, which passed quite round the building to another flight of stairs, commencing also at the same angle as the preceding and directly over it, and leading to a similar terrace; so that one had to make the circuit of the temple several times, before reaching the summit. in some instances the stairway led directly up the centre of the western face of the building. the top was a broad area, on which were erected one or two towers, forty or fifty feet high, the sanctuaries in which stood the sacred images of the presiding deities. before these towers stood the dreadful stone of sacrifice, and two lofty altars, on which fires were kept, as inextinguishable as those in the temple of vesta. there were said to be six hundred of these altars on smaller buildings within the inclosure of the great temple of mexico, which, with those on the sacred edifices in other parts of the city, shed a brilliant illumination over its streets, through the darkest night. from the construction of their temples, all religious services were public. the long processions of priests, winding round their massive sides, as they rose higher and higher towards the summit, and the dismal rites of sacrifice performed there, were all visible from the remotest corners of the capital, impressing on the spectator's mind a superstitious veneration for the mysteries of his religion, and for the dread ministers by whom they were interpreted. this impression was kept in full force by their numerous festivals. every month was consecrated to some protecting deity; and every weeknay, almost every day, was set down in their calendar for some appropriate celebration; so that it is difficult to understand how the ordinary business of life could have been compatible with the exactions of religion. many of their ceremonies were of a light and cheerful complexion, consisting of the national songs and dances, in which both sexes joined. processions were made of women and children crowned with garlands and bearing offerings of fruits, the ripened maize, or the sweet incense of copal and other odoriferous gums, while the altars of the deity were stained with no blood save that of animals. these were the peaceful rites derived from their toltec predecessors, on which the fierce aztecs engrafted a superstition too loathsome to be exhibited in all its nakedness, and one over which i would gladly draw a veil altogether, but that it would leave the reader in ignorance of their most striking institution, and one that had the greatest influence in forming the national character. human sacrifices were adopted by the aztecs early in the fourteenth century, about two hundred years before the conquest. rare at first, they became more frequent with the wider extent of their empire; till, at length, almost every festival was closed with this cruel abomination. these religious ceremonials were generally arranged in such a manner as to afford a type of the most prominent circumstances in the character or history of the deity who was the object of them. a single example will suffice. one of their most important festivals was that in honour of the god tezcatlipoca, whose rank was inferior only to that of the supreme being. he was called "the soul of the world," and supposed to have been its creator. he was depicted as a handsome man, endowed with perpetual youth. a year before the intended sacrifice, a captive, distinguished for his personal beauty, and without a blemish on his body, was selected to represent this deity. certain tutors took charge of him, and instructed him how to perform his new part with becoming grace and dignity. he was arrayed in a splendid dress, regaled with incense, and with a profusion of sweet-scented flowers, of which the ancient mexicans were as fond as their descendants of the present day. when he went abroad, he was attended by a train of the royal pages, and, as he halted in the streets to play some favourite melody, the crowd prostrated themselves before him, and did him homage as the representative of their good deity. in this way he led an easy, luxurious life, till within a month of his sacrifice. four beautiful girls, bearing the names of the principal goddesses, were then selected to share the honours of his bed; and with them he continued to live in idle dalliance feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who paid him all the honours of a divinity. at length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived. the term of his short-lived glories was at an end. he was stripped of his gaudy apparel, and bade adieu to the fair partners of his revelries. one of the royal barges transported him across the lake to a temple which rose on its margin, about a league from the city. hither the inhabitants of the capital flocked, to witness the consummation of the ceremony. as the sad procession wound up the sides of the pyramid, the unhappy victim threw away his gay chaplet of flowers, and broke in pieces the musical instruments with which he had solaced the hours of captivity. on the summit he was received by six priests, whose long and matted locks flowed disorderly over their sable robes, covered with hieroglyphic scrolls of mystic import. they led him to the sacrificial stone, a huge block of jasper, with its upper surface somewhat convex. on this the prisoner was stretched. five priests secured his head and his limbs; while the sixth, clad in a scarlet mantle, emblematic of his bloody office, dexterously opened the breast of the wretched victim with a sharp razor of itztli,a volcanic substance hard as flint,and, inserting his hand in the wound, tore out the palpitating heart. the minister of death, first holding this up towards the sun, an object of worship throughout anahuac, cast it at the feet of the deity to whom the temple was devoted, while the multitudes below prostrated themselves in humble adoration. the tragic story of this prisoner was expounded by the priests as the type of human destiny, which, brilliant in its commencement, too often closes in sorrow and disaster. such was the form of human sacrifice usually practised by the aztecs. it was the same that often met the indignant eyes of the europeans, in their progress through the country, and from the dreadful doom of which they themselves were not exempted. there were, indeed, some occasions when preliminary tortures, of the most exquisite kind,with which it is unnecessary to shock the reader,were inflicted, but they always terminated with the bloody ceremony above described. it should be remarked, however, that such tortures were not the spontaneous suggestions of cruelty, as with the north american indians; but were all rigorously prescribed in the aztec ritual, and doubtless, were often inflicted with the same compunctious visitings which a devout familiar of the holy office might at times experience in executing its stern decrees. women, as well as the other sex, were sometimes reserved for sacrifice. on some occasions, particularly in seasons of drought, at the festival of the insatiable tlaloc, the god of rain, children, for the most part infants, were offered up. as they were borne along in open litters, dressed in their festal robes, and decked with the fresh blossoms of spring, they moved the hardest heart to pity, though their cries were drowned in the wild chant of the priests, who read in their tears a favourable augury for their petition. these innocent victims were generally bought by the priests of parents who were poor, but who stifled the voice of nature, probably less at the suggestions of poverty than of a wretched superstition. the most loathsome part of the story, the manner in which the body of the sacrificed captive was disposed of, remains yet to be told. it was delivered to the warrior who had taken him in battle, and by him, after being dressed, was served up in an entertainment to his friends. this was not the coarse repast of famished cannibals, but a banquet teeming with delicious beverages and delicate viands, prepared with art, and attended by both sexes, who, as we shall see hereafter, conducted themselves with all the decorum of civilised life. surely, never were refinement and the extreme of barbarism brought so closely in contact with each other! human sacrifices have been practised by many nations, not excepting the most polished nations of antiquity; but never by any, on a scale to be compared with those in anahuac. the amount of victims immolated on its accursed altars would stagger the faith of the least scrupulous believer. scarcely any author pretends to estimate the yearly sacrifices throughout the empire at less than twenty thousand, and some carry the number as high as fifty! on great occasions, as the coronation of a king, or the consecration of a temple, the number becomes still more appalling. at the dedication of the great temple of huitzilopochtli, in 1486, the prisoners, who for some years had been reserved for the purpose, were drawn from all quarters to the capital. they were ranged in files, forming a procession nearly two miles long. the ceremony consumed several days, and seventy thousand captives are said to have perished at the shrine of this terrible deity! but who can believe that so numerous a body would have suffered themselves to be led, unresistingly, like sheep to the slaughter? or how could their remains, too great for consumption in the ordinary way, be disposed of, without breeding a pestilence in the capital? yet the event was of recent date, and is unequivocally attested by the best informed historians. one fact may be considered certain. it was customary to preserve the skulls of the sacrificed, in buildings appropriated to the purpose. the companions of cortes counted one hundred and thirty-six thousand in one of these edifices! without attempting a precise calculation, therefore, it is safe to conclude that thousands were yearly offered up, in the different cities of anahuac, on the bloody altars of the mexican divinities. indeed, the great object of war with the aztecs was quite as much to gather victims for their sacrifices, as to extend their empire. hence it was, that an enemy was never slain in battle, if there was a chance of taking him alive. to this circumstance the spaniards repeatedly owed their preservation. when montezuma was asked, "why he had suffered the republic of tlascala to maintain her independence on his borders," he replied, "that she might furnish him with victims for his gods!" as the supply began to fail, the priests, the dominicans of the new world, bellowed aloud for more, and urged on their superstitious sovereign by the denunciations of celestial wrath. like the militant churchmen of christendom in the middle ages, they mingled themselves in the ranks, and were conspicuous in the thickest of the fight, by their hideous aspects and frantic gestures. strange, that in every country the most fiendish passions of the human heart have been those kindled in the name of religion! the influence of these practices on the aztec character was as disastrous as might have been expected. familiarity with the bloody rites of sacrifice steeled the heart against human sympathy, and begat a thirst for carnage, like that excited in the romans by the exhibitions of the circus. the perpetual recurrence of ceremonies, in which the people took part, associated religion with their most intimate concerns, and spread the gloom of superstition over the domestic hearth, until the character of the nation wore a grave and even melancholy aspect, which belongs to their descendants at the present day. the influence of the priesthood, of course, became unbounded. the sovereign thought himself honoured by being permitted to assist in the services of the temple. far from limiting the authority of the priests to spiritual matters, he often surrendered his opinion to theirs, where they were least competent to give it. it was their opposition that prevented the final capitulation which would have saved the capital. the whole nation, from the peasant to the prince, bowed their necks to the worst kind of tyrannythat of a blind fanaticism. human sacrifice, however cruel, has nothing in it degrading to its victim. it may be rather said to ennoble him, by devoting him to the gods. although so terrible with the aztecs, it was sometimes voluntarily embraced by them, as the most glorious death, and one that opened a sure passage into paradise. the inquisition, on the other hand, branded its victims with infamy in this world, and consigned them to everlasting perdition in the next. one detestable feature of the aztec superstition, however, sunk it far below the christian. this was its cannibalism; though, in truth, the mexicans were not cannibals, in the coarsest acceptation of the term. they did not feed on human flesh merely to gratify a brutish appetite, but in obedience to their religion. their repasts were made of the victims whose blood had been poured out on the altar of sacrifice. this is a distinction worthy of notice. still, cannibalism, under any form, or whatever sanction, cannot but have a fatal influence on the nation addicted to it. it suggests ideas so loathsome, so degrading to man, to his spiritual and immortal nature, that it is impossible the people who practise it should make any great progress in moral or intellectual culture. the mexicans furnish no exception to this remark. the civilisation which they possessed descended from the toltecs, a race who never stained their altars, still less their banquets, with the blood of man. all that deserved the name of science in mexico came from this source; and the crumbling ruins of edifices, attributed to them, still extant in various parts of new spain, show a decided superiority in their architecture over that of the later races of anahuac. it is true, the mexicans made great proficiency in many of the social and mechanic arts, in that material culture,if i may so call it,the natural growth of increasing opulence, which ministers to the gratification of the senses. in purely intellectual progress, they were behind the tezcucans, whose wise sovereigns came into the abominable rites of their neighbours with reluctance, and practised them on a much more moderate scale. chapter iv aztec hieroglyphicsmanuscriptsarithmetic chronologyastronomy it is a relief to turn from the gloomy pages of the preceding chapter to a brighter side of the picture, and to contemplate the same nation in its generous struggle to raise itself from a state of barbarism, and to take a positive rank in the scale of civilisation. it is not the less interesting, that these efforts were made on an entirely new theatre of action, apart from those influences that operate in the old world; the inhabitants of which, forming one great brotherhood of nations, are knit together by sympathies, that make the faintest spark of knowledge struck out in one quarter, spread gradually wider and wider, until it has diffused a cheering light over the remotest. it is curious to observe the human mind, in this new position, conforming to the same laws as on the ancient continent, and taking a similar direction in its first inquiries after truth,so similar, indeed, as, although not warranting, perhaps, the idea of imitation, to suggest, at least, that of a common origin. in the eastern hemisphere, we find some nations, as the greeks, for instance, early smitten with such a love of the beautiful as to be unwilling to dispense with it, even in the graver productions of science; and other nations, again, proposing a severer end to themselves, to which even imagination and elegant art were made subservient. the productions of such a people must be criticised, not by the ordinary rules of taste, but by their adaptation to the peculiar end for which they were designed. such were the egyptians in the old world, and the mexicans in the new. we have already had occasion to notice the resemblance borne by the latter nation to the former in their religious economy. we shall be more struck with it in their scientific culture, especially their hieroglyphical writing and their astronomy. to describe actions and events by delineating visible objects, seems to be a natural suggestion, and is practised, after a certain fashion, by the rudest savages. the north american indian carves an arrow on the bark of trees to show his followers the direction of his march, and some other sign to show the success of his expeditions. but to paint intelligibly a consecutive series of these actionsforming what warburton has happily called picture-writingrequires a combination of ideas, that amounts to a positively intellectual effort. yet further, when the object of the painter, instead of being limited to the present, is to penetrate the past, and to gather from its dark recesses lessons of instruction for coming generations, we see the dawnings of a literary culture, and recognise the proof of a decided civilisation in the attempt itself, however imperfectly it may be executed. the literal imitation of objects will not answer for this more complex and extended plan. it would occupy too much space, as well as time, in the execution. it then becomes necessary to abridge the pictures, to confine the drawing to outlines, or to such prominent parts of the bodies delineated, as may readily suggest the whole. this is the representative or figurative writing, which forms the lowest stage of hieroglyphics. but there are things which have no type in the material world; abstract ideas, which can only be represented by visible objects supposed to have some quality analogous to the idea intended. this constitutes symbolical writing, the most difficult of all to the interpreter, since the analogy between the material and immaterial object is often purely fanciful, or local in its application. who, for instance, could suspect the association which made a beetle represent the universe, as with the egyptians, or a serpent typify time, as with the aztecs? the third and last division is the phonetic, in which signs are made to represent sounds, either entire words, or parts of them. this is the nearest approach of the hieroglyphical series to that beautiful invention, the alphabet, by which language is resolved into its elementary sounds, and an apparatus supplied for easily and accurately expressing the most delicate shades of thought. the egyptians were well skilled in all three kinds of hieroglyphics. but, although their public monuments display the first class, in their ordinary intercourse and written records, it is now certain that they almost wholly relied on the phonetic character. strange, that having thus broken down the thin partition which divided them from an alphabet, their latest monuments should exhibit no nearer approach to it than their earliest. the aztecs, also, were acquainted with the several varieties of hieroglyphics. but they relied on the figurative infinitely more than on the others. the egyptians were at the top of the scale, the aztecs at the bottom. in casting the eye over a mexican manuscript, or map, as it is called, one is struck with the grotesque caricatures it exhibits of the human figure; monstrous, overgrown heads, on puny misshapen bodies, which are themselves hard and angular in their outlines, and without the least skill in composition. on closer inspection, however, it is obvious that it is not so much a rude attempt to delineate nature, as a conventional symbol, to express the idea in the most clear and forcible manner; in the same way as the pieces of similar value on a chess-board, while they correspond with one another in form, bear little resemblance, usually, to the objects they represent. those parts of the figure are most distinctly traced, which are the most important. so, also the colouring, instead of the delicate gradations of nature, exhibits only gaudy and violent contrasts, such as may produce the most vivid impression. "for even colours," as gama observes, "speak in the aztec hieroglyphics." but in the execution of all this the mexicans were much inferior to the egyptians. the drawings of the latter, indeed, are exceedingly defective when criticised by the rules of art; for they were as ignorant of perspective as the chinese, and only exhibited the head in profile, with the eye in the centre, and with total absence of expression. but they handled the pencil more gracefully than the aztecs, were more true to the natural forms of objects, and, above all, showed great superiority in abridging the original figure by giving only the outlines, or some characteristic. or essential feature. this simplified the process, and facilitated the communication of thought. an egyptian text has almost the appearance of alphabetical writing in its regular lines of minute figures. a mexican text looks usually like a collection of pictures, each one forming the subject of a separate study. this is particularly the case with the delineations of mythology; in which the story is told by a conglomeration of symbols, that may remind one more of the mysterious anaglyphs sculptured on the temples of the egyptians, than of their written records. the aztecs had various emblems for expressing such things as, from their nature, could not be directly represented by the painter; as, for example, the years, months, days, the seasons, the elements, the heavens, and the like. a "tongue" denoted speaking; a "footprint," travelling; "a man sitting on the ground," an earthquake. these symbols were often very arbitrary, varying with the caprice of the writer; and it requires a nice discrimination to interpret them, as a slight change in the form or position of the figure intimated a very different meaning. an ingenious writer asserts, that the priests devised secret symbolic characters for the record of their religious mysteries. it is possible. but the researches of champollion lead to the conclusion, that the similar opinion, formerly entertained respecting the egyptian hieroglyphics, is without foundation. lastly, they employed, as above stated, phonetic signs, though these were chiefly confined to the names of persons and places; which, being derived from some circumstance, or characteristic quality, were accommodated to the hieroglyphical system. thus the town cimatlan was compounded of cimatl, a "root," which grew near it, and tlan, signifying "near"; tlaxcallan meant "the place of bread," from its rich fields of corn; huexotzinco, "a place surrounded by willows." the names of persons were often significant of their adventures and achievements. that of the great tezcucan prince, nezahualcoyotl, signified "hungry fox," intimating his sagacity, and his distresses in early life. the emblems of such names were no sooner seen, than they suggested to every mexican the person and place intended; and, when painted on their shields, or embroidered on their banners, became the armorial bearings by which city and chieftain were distinguished, as in europe, in the age of chivalry. but, although the aztecs were instructed in all the varieties of hieroglyphical painting, they chiefly resorted to the clumsy method of direct representation. had their empire lasted, like the egyptian, several thousand, instead of the brief space of two hundred, years, they would, doubtless, like them, have advanced to the more frequent use of the phonetic writing. but, before they could be made acquainted with the capabilities of their own system, the spanish conquest, by introducing the european alphabet, supplied their scholars with a more perfect contrivance for expressing thought, which soon supplanted the ancient pictorial character. clumsy as it was, however, the aztec picture-writing seems to have been adequate to the demands of the nation, in their imperfect state of civilisation. by means of it were recorded all their laws, and even their regulations for domestic economy; their tribute-rolls, specifying the imposts of the various towns; their mythology, calendars, and rituals; their political annals, carried back to a period long before the foundation of the city. they digested a complete system of chronology, and could specify with accuracy the dates of the most important events in their history; the year being inscribed on the margin, against the particular circumstance recorded. it is true, history, thus executed, must necessarily be vague and fragmentary. only a few leading incidents could be presented. but in this it did not differ much from the monkish chronicles of the dark ages, which often dispose of years in a few brief sentences; quite long enough for the annals of barbarians. in order to estimate aright the picture-writing of the aztecs, one must regard it in connection with oral tradition, to which it was auxiliary. in the colleges of the priests the youth were instructed in astronomy, history, mythology, etc.; and those who were to follow the profession of hieroglyphical painting were taught the application of the characters appropriated to each of these branches. in an historical work, one had charge of the chronology, another of the events. every part of the labour was thus mechanically distributed. the pupils, instructed in all that was before known in their several departments, were prepared to extend still further the boundaries of their imperfect science. the hieroglyphics served as a sort of stenography, a collection of notes, suggesting to the initiated much more than could be conveyed by a literal interpretation. this combination of the written and the oral comprehended what may be called the literature of the aztecs. their manuscripts were made of different materials,of cotton cloth, or skins nicely prepared; of a composition of silk and gum; but, for the most part, of a fine fabric from the leaves of the aloe, agave americana, called by the natives, maguey, which grows luxuriantly over the tablelands of mexico. a sort of paper was made from it, resembling somewhat the egyptian papyrus, which, when properly dressed and polished, is said to have been more soft and beautiful than parchment. some of the specimens, still existing, exhibit their original freshness, and the paintings on them retain their brilliancy of colours. they were sometimes done up into rolls, but more frequently into volumes of moderate size, in which the paper was shut up, like a folding-screen, with a leaf or tablet of wood at each extremity, that gave the whole, when closed, the appearance of a book. the length of the strips was determined only by convenience. as the pages might be read and referred to separately, this form had obvious advantages over the rolls of the ancients. at the time of the arrival of the spaniards, great quantities of these manuscripts were treasured up in the country. numerous persons were employed in painting, and the dexterity of their operations excited the astonishment of the conquerors. unfortunately, this was mingled with other, and unworthy feelings. the strange, unknown characters inscribed on them excited suspicion. they were looked on as magic scrolls; and were regarded in the same light with the idols and temples, as the symbols of a pestilent superstition that must be extirpated. the first archbishop of mexico, don juan de zumarraga,a name that should be as immortal as that of omar,collected these paintings from every quarter, especially from tezcuco, the most cultivated capital in anahuac, and the great depository of the national archives. he then caused them to be piled up in a "mountain-heap,"as it is called by the spanish writers themselves,and reduced them all to ashes! his greater countryman, archbishop ximenes, had celebrated a similar auto-dafe of arabic manuscripts, in granada, some twenty years before. never did fanaticism achieve two more signal triumphs, than by the annihilation of so many curious monuments of human ingenuity and learning! the unlettered soldiers were not slow in imitating the example of their prelate. every chart and volume which fell into their hands was wantonly destroyed; so that, when the scholars of a later and more enlightened age anxiously sought to recover some of these memorials of civilisation, nearly all had perished, and the few surviving were jealously hidden by the natives. through the indefatigable labours of a private individual, however, a considerable collection was eventually deposited in the archives of mexico; but was so little heeded there, that some were plundered, others decayed piecemeal from the damps and mildews, and others, again, were used up as waste-paper! we contemplate with indignation the cruelties inflicted by the early conquerors. but indignation is qualified with contempt, when we see them thus ruthlessly trampling out the spark of knowledge, the common boon and property of all mankind. we may well doubt, which has the strongest claims to civilisation, the victor or the vanquished. a few of the mexican manuscripts have found their way, from time to time, to europe, and are carefully preserved in the public libraries of its capitals. they are brought together in the magnificent work of lord kingsborough; but not one is there from spain. the most important of them, for the light in throws on the aztec institutions, is the mendoza codex; which, after its mysterious disappearance for more than a century, has at length re-appeared in the bodleian library at oxford. it has been several times engraved. the most brilliant in colouring, probably, is the borgian collection, in rome. the most curious, however, is the dresden codex, which has excited less attention than it deserves. although usually classed among mexican manuscripts, it bears little resemblance to them in its execution; the figures of objects are more delicately drawn, and the characters, unlike the mexican, appear to be purely arbitrary, and are possibly phonetic. their regular arrangement is quite equal to the egyptian. the whole infers a much higher civilisation than the aztec, and offers abundant food for curious speculation. some few of these maps have interpretations annexed to them, which were obtained from the natives after the conquest. the greater part are without any, and cannot now be unriddled. had the mexicans made free use of a phonetic alphabet, it might have been originally easy, by mastering the comparatively few signs employed in this kind of communication, to have got a permanent key to the whole. a brief inscription has furnished a clue to the vast labyrinth of egyptian hieroglyphics. but the aztec characters, representing individuals, or at most, species, require to be made out separately; a hopeless task, for which little aid is to be expected from the vague and general tenor of the few interpretations now existing. in less than a hundred years after the conquest, the knowledge of the hieroglyphics had so far declined, that a diligent tezcucan writer complains he could find in the country only two persons, both very aged, at all competent to interpret them. it is not probable, therefore, that the art of reading these picture-writings will ever be recovered; a circumstance certainly to be regretted. not that the records of a semi-civilised people would be likely to contain any new truth or discovery important to human comfort or progress; but they could scarcely fail to throw some additional light on the previous history of the nation, and that of the more polished people who before occupied the country. this would be still more probable, if any literary relics of their toltec predecessors were preserved; and, if report be true, an important compilation from this source was extant at the time of the invasion, and may have perhaps contributed to swell the holocaust of zumarraga. it is no great stretch of fancy, to suppose that such records might reveal the successive links in the mighty chain of migration of the primitive races, and, by carrying us back to the seat of their possessions in the old world, have solved the mystery which has so long perplexed the learned, in regard to the settlement and civilisation of the new. besides the hieroglyphical maps, the traditions of the country were embodied in the songs and hymns, which, as already mentioned, were carefully taught in the public schools. these were various, embracing the mythic legends of a heroic age, the warlike achievements of their own, or the softer tales of love and pleasure. many of them were composed by scholars and persons of rank, and are cited as affording the most authentic record of events. the mexican dialect was rich and expressive, though inferior to the tezcucan, the most polished of the idioms of anahuac. none of the aztec compositions have survived, but we can form some estimate of the general state of poetic culture from the odes which have come down to us from the royal house of tezcuco. sahagun has furnished us with translations of their more elaborate prose, consisting of prayers and public discourses, which give a favourable idea of their eloquence, and show that they paid much attention to rhetorical effect. they are said to have had, also, something like theatrical exhibitions, of a pantomimic sort, in which the faces of the performers were covered with masks, and the figures of birds or animals were frequently represented; an imitation to which they may have been led by the familiar delineation of such objects in their hieroglyphics. in all this we see the dawning of a literary culture, surpassed, however, by their attainments in the severer walks of mathematical science. they devised a system of notation in their arithmetic, sufficiently simple. the first twenty numbers were expressed by a corresponding number of dots. the first five had specific names; after which they were represented by combining the fifth with one of the four preceding: as five and one for six, five and two for seven, and so on. ten and fifteen had each a separate name, which was also combined with the first four, to express a higher quantity. these four, therefore, were the radical characters of their oral arithmetic, in the same manner as they were of the written with the ancient romans; a more simple arrangement, probably, than any existing among europeans. twenty was expressed by a separate hieroglyphic,a flag. larger sums were reckoned by twenties, and, in writing, by repeating the number of flags. the square of twenty, four hundred, had a separate sign, that of a plume, and so had the cube of twenty, or eight thousand, which was denoted by a purse, or sack. this was the whole arithmetical apparatus of the mexicans, by the combination of which they were enabled to indicate any quantity. for greater expedition, they used to denote fractions of the larger sums by drawing only a part of the object. thus, half or three-fourths of a plume, or of a purse, represented that proportion of their respective sums, and so on. with all this, the machinery will appear very awkward to us, who perform our operations with so much ease by means of the arabic, or rather, indian ciphers. it is not much more awkward, however, than the system pursued by the great mathematicians of antiquity unacquainted with the brilliant invention which has given a new aspect to mathematical science, of determining the value, in a great measure, by the relative position of the figures. in the measurement of time, the aztecs adjusted their civil year by the solar. they divided it into eighteen months of twenty days each. both months and days were expressed by peculiar hieroglyphics,those of the former often intimating the season of the year, like the french months, at the period of the revolution. five complementary days, as in egypt, were added, to make up the full number of three hundred and sixty-five. they belonged to no month, and were regarded as peculiarly unlucky. a month was divided into four weeks, of five days each, on the last of which was the public fair or market day. this arrangement, different from that of the nations of the old continent, whether of europe or asia, has the advantage of giving an equal number of days to each month, and of comprehending entire weeks, without a fraction, both in the months and in the year. as the year is composed of nearly six hours more than three hundred and sixty-five days, there still remained an excess, which, like other nations who have framed a calendar, they provided for by intercalation; not, indeed, every fourth year, as the europeans, but at longer intervals, like some of the asiatics. they waited till the expiration of fifty-two vague years, when they interposed thirteen days, or rather twelve and a half, this being the number which had fallen in arrear. had they inserted thirteen, it would have been too much, since the annual excess over three hundred and sixty-five is about eleven minutes less than six hours. but, as their calendar, at the time of the conquest, was found to correspond with the european (making allowance for the subsequent gregorian reform), they would seem to have adopted the shorter period of twelve days and a half, which brought them, within an almost inappreciable fraction, to the exact length of the tropical year, as established by the most accurate observations. indeed, the intercalation of twenty-five days, in every hundred and four years, shows a nicer adjustment of civil to solar time than is presented by any european calendar; since more than five centuries must elapse, before the loss of an entire day. such was the astonishing precision displayed by the aztecs, or, perhaps, by their more polished toltec predecessors, in these computations, so difficult as to have baffled, till a comparatively recent period, the most enlightened nations of christendom! the chronological system of the mexicans, by which they determined the date of any particular event, was also very remarkable. the epoch, from which they reckoned, corresponded with the year 1091, of the christian era. it was the period of the reform of their calendar, soon after their migration from aztlan. they threw the years, as already noticed, into great cycles, of fifty-two each, which they called "sheafs," or "bundles," and represented by a quantity of reeds bound together by a string. as often as this hieroglyphic occurs in their maps, it shows the number of half centuries. to enable them to specify any particular year, they divided the great cycle into four smaller cycles, or indictions, of thirteen years each. they then adopted two periodical series of signs, one consisting of their numerical dots up to thirteen, the other, of four hieroglyphics of the years.* these latter they repeated in regular succession, setting against each one a number of the corresponding series of dots, continued also in regular succession up to thirteen. the same system was pursued through the four indictions, which thus, it will be observed, began always with a different hieroglyphic of the year from the preceding; and in this way, each of the hieroglyphics was made to combine successively with each of the numerical signs, but never twice with the same; since four, and thirteen, the factors of fifty-two,the number of years in the cycle,must admit of just as many combinations as are equal to their product. thus every year had its appropriate symbol, by which it was, at once, recognised. and this symbol, preceded by the proper number of "bundles," indicating the half centuries, showed the precise time which had elapsed since the national epoch of 1091. the ingenious contrivance of a periodical series, in place of the cumbrous system of hieroglyphical notation, is not peculiar to the aztecs, and is to be found among various people on the asiatic continent,the same in principle, though varying materially in arrangement. * these hieroglyphics were a "rabbit," a "reed," a "flint," a "house." (see illustration.) the solar calendar, above described, might have answered all the purposes of the nation; but the priests chose to construct another for themselves. this was called a "lunar reckoning," though nowise accommodated to the revolutions of the moon. it was formed, also, of two periodical series; one of them consisting of thirteen numerical signs, or dots, the other of the twenty hieroglyphics of the days. but, as the product of these combinations would only be 260, and, as some confusion might arise from the repetition of the same terms for the remaining 105 days of the year, they invented a third series, consisting of nine additional hieroglyphics, which, alternating with the two preceding series, rendered it impossible that the three should coincide twice in the same year, or indeed in less than 2340 days; since 20 x 13 x 9 = 2340. thirteen was a mystic number, of frequent use in their tables. why they resorted to that of nine, on this occasion, is not so clear. this second calendar rouses a holy indignation in the early spanish missionaries, and father sahagun loudly condemns it as "most unhallowed, since it is founded neither on natural reason nor on the influence of the planets, nor on the true course of the year; but is plainly the work of necromancy, and the fruit of a compact with the devil!" one may doubt, whether the superstition of those who invented the scheme was greater than that of those who impugned it. at all events, we may, without having recourse to supernatural agency, find in the human heart a sufficient explanation of its origin; in that love of power, that has led the priesthood of many a faith to affect a mystery, the key to which was in their own keeping. by means of this calendar the aztec priests kept their own records, regulated the festivals and seasons of sacrifice, and made all their astrological calculations. the astrological scheme of the aztecs was founded less on the planetary influences than on those of the arbitrary signs they had adopted for the months and days. the character of the leading sign, in each lunar cycle of thirteen days, gave a complexion to the whole; though this was qualified, in some degree, by the signs of the succeeding days, as well as by those of the hours. it was in adjusting these conflicting forces that the great art of the diviner was shown. in no country, not even in ancient egypt, were the dreams of the astrologer more implicitly deferred to. on the birth of a child, he was instantly summoned. the time of the event was accurately ascertained; and the family hung in trembling suspense, as the minister of heaven cast the horoscope of the infant, and unrolled the dark volume of destiny. the influence of the priest was confessed by the mexican, in the very first breath which he inhaled. we know little further of the astronomical attainments of the aztecs. that they were acquainted with the cause of eclipses is evident from the representation on their maps, of the disk of the moon projected on that of the sun. whether they had arranged a system of constellations, is uncertain; though, that they recognised some of the most obvious, as the pleiades for example, is evident from the fact that they regulated their festivals by them. we know of no astronomical instruments used by them, except the dial. an immense circular block of carved stone, disinterred in 1790, in the great square of mexico, has supplied an acute and learned scholar with the means of establishing some interesting facts in regard to mexican science. this colossal fragment, on which the calendar is engraved, shows that they had the means of settling the hours of the day with precision, the periods of the solstices and of the equinoxes, and that of the transit of the sun across the zenith of mexico. we cannot contemplate the astronomical science of the mexicans, so disproportioned to their progress in other walks of civilisation, without astonishment. an acquaintance with some of the more obvious principles of astronomy is within the reach of the rudest people. with a little care, they may learn to connect the regular. changes of the seasons with those of the place of the sun at his rising and setting. they may follow the march of the great luminary through the heavens, by watching the stars that first brighten on his evening track, or fade in his morning beams. they may measure a revolution of the moon by marking her phases, and may even form a general idea of the number of such revolutions in a solar year. but that they should be capable of accurately adjusting their festivals by the movements of the heavenly bodies, and should fix the true length of the tropical year, with a precision unknown to the great philosophers of antiquity, could be the result only of a long series of nice and patient observations, evincing no slight progress in civilisation. but whence could the rude inhabitants of these mountain regions have derived this curious erudition? not from the barbarous hordes who roamed over the higher latitudes of the north; nor from the more polished races on the southern continent, with whom it is apparent they had no intercourse. if we are driven, in our embarrassment, like the greatest astronomer of our age, to seek the solution among the civilised communities of asia, we shall still be perplexed by finding, amidst general resemblance of outline, sufficient discrepancy in the details, to vindicate, in the judgments of many, the aztec claim to originality. i shall conclude the account of mexican science with that of a remarkable festival, celebrated by the natives at the termination of the great cycle of fifty-two years. we have seen, in the preceding chapter, their traditions of the destruction of the world at four successive epochs. they looked forward confidently to another such catastrophe, to take place like the preceding, at the close of a cycle, when the sun was to be effaced from the heavens, the human race from the earth, and when the darkness of chaos was to settle on the habitable globe. the cycle would end in the latter part of december, and, as the dreary season of the winter solstice approached, and the diminished light of day gave melancholy presage of its speedy extinction, their apprehensions increased; and, on the arrival of the five "unlucky" days which closed the year, they abandoned themselves to despair. they broke in pieces the little images of their household gods, in whom they no longer trusted. the holy fires were suffered to go out in the temples, and none were lighted in their own dwellings. their furniture and domestic utensils were destroyed; their garments torn in pieces; and everything was thrown into disorder, for the coming of the evil genii who were to descend on the desolate earth. on the evening of the last day, a procession of priests, assuming the dress and ornaments of their gods, moved from the capital towards a lofty mountain about two leagues distant. they carried with them a noble victim, the flower of their captives, and an apparatus for kindling the new fire, the success of which was an augury of the renewal of the cycle. on reaching the summit of the mountain, the procession paused till midnight; when, as the constellation of the pleiades approached the zenith, the new fire was kindled by the friction of the sticks placed on the wounded breast of the victim. the flame was soon communicated to a funeral pile, on which the body of the slaughtered captive was thrown. as the light streamed up towards heaven, shouts of joy and triumph burst forth from the countless multitudes who covered the hills, the terraces of the temples, and the house-tops, with eyes anxiously bent on the mount of sacrifice. couriers, with torches lighted at the blazing beacon, rapidly bore them over every part of the country; and the cheering element was seen brightening on altar and hearthstone, for the circuit of many a league, long before the sun, rising on his accustomed track, gave assurance that a new cycle had commenced its march, and that the laws of nature were not to be reversed. the following thirteen days were given up to festivity. the houses were cleansed and whitened. the broken vessels were replaced by new ones. the people, dressed in their gayest apparel, and crowned with garlands and chaplets of flowers, thronged in joyous procession, to offer up their oblations and thanksgiving in the temples. dances and games were instituted, emblematical of the regeneration of the world. it was the carnival of the aztecs; or rather the national jubilee, the great secular festival, like that of the romans, or ancient etruscans, which few alive had witnessed before,or could expect to see again. chapter v agriculturethe mechanical artsmerchants domestic manners agriculture in mexico was in the same advanced state as the other arts of social life. in few countries, indeed, has it been more respected. it was closely interwoven with the civil and religious institutions of the nation. there were peculiar deities to preside over it; the names of the months and of the religious festivals had more or less reference to it. the public taxes, as we have seen, were often paid in agricultural produce. all, except the soldiers and great nobles, even the inhabitants of the cities, cultivated the soil. the work was chiefly done by the men; the women scattering the seed, husking the corn, and taking part only in the lighter labours of the field. there was no want of judgment in the management of their ground. when somewhat exhausted, it was permitted to recover by lying fallow. its extreme dryness was relieved by canals, with which the land was partially irrigated; and the same end was promoted by severe penalties against the destruction of the woods, with which the country, as already noticed, was well covered before the conquest. lastly, they provided for their harvests ample granaries, which were admitted by the conquerors to be of admirable construction. in this provision we see the forecast of civilised man. amongst the most important articles of husbandry, we may notice the banana, whose facility of cultivation and exuberant returns are so fatal to habits of systematic and hardy industry. another celebrated plant was the cacao, the fruit of which furnished the chocolate,from the mexican chocolatl,now so common a beverage throughout europe. the vanilla, confined to a small district of the sea-coast, was used for the same purposes, of flavouring their food and drink, as with us. the great staple of the country, as, indeed, of the american continent, was maize, or indian corn, which grew freely along the valleys, and up the steep sides of the cordilleras to the high level of the talbleland. the aztecs were as curious in its preparation, and as well instructed in its manifold uses, as the most expert new england housewife. its gigantic stalks, in these equinoctial regions, afford a saccharine matter, not found to the same extent in northern latitudes, and supplied the natives with sugar little inferior to that of the cane itself, which was not introduced among them till after the conquest. but the miracle of nature was the great mexican aloe, or maguey, whose clustering pyramid of flowers, towering above their dark coronals of leaves, were seen sprinkled over many a broad acre of the tableland. as we have already noticed, its bruised leaves afforded a paste from which paper was manufactured; its juice was fermented into an intoxicating beverage, pulque, of which the natives, to this day, are excessively fond; its leaves further supplied an impenetrable thatch for the more humble dwellings; thread, of which coarse stuffs were made, and strong cords, were drawn from its tough and twisted fibres; pins and needles were made of the thorns at the extremity of its leaves; and the root, when properly cooked, was converted into a palatable and nutritious food. the agave, in short, was meat, drink, clothing, and writing materials for the aztec! surely, never did nature enclose in so compact a form so many of the elements of human comfort and civilisation! it would be obviously out of place to enumerate in these pages all the varieties of plants, many of them of medicinal virtue, which have been introduced from mexico into europe. still less can i attempt a catalogue of its flowers, which, with their variegated and gaudy colours, form the greatest attraction of our greenhouses. the opposite climates embraced within the narrow latitudes of new spain have given to it, probably, the richest and most diversified flora to be found in any country on the globe. these different products were systematically arranged by the aztecs, who understood their properties, and collected them into nurseries, more extensive than any then existing in the old world. it is not improbable that they suggested the idea of those "gardens of plants" which were introduced into europe not many years after the conquest. the mexicans were as well acquainted with the mineral, as with the vegetable treasures of their kingdom. silver, lead, and, tin they drew from the mines of tasco; copper from the mountains of zacotollan. these were taken, not only from the crude masses on the surface, but from veins wrought in the solid rock, into which they opened extensive galleries. in fact, the traces of their labours furnished the best indications for the early spanish miners. gold, found on the surface, or gleaned from the beds of rivers, was cast into bars, or, in the form of dust, made part of the regular tribute of the southern provinces of the empire. the use of iron, with which the soil was impregnated, was unknown to them. notwithstanding its abundance, it demands so many processes to prepare it for use, that it has commonly been one of the last metals pressed into the service of man. the age of iron has followed that of brass, in fact as well as in fiction. they found a substitute in an alloy of tin and copper; and, with tools made of this bronze, could cut not only metals, but, with the aid of a siliceous dust, the hardest substances, as basalt, porphyry, amethysts, and emeralds. they fashioned these last, which were found very large, into many curious and fantastic forms. they cast, also, vessels of gold and silver, carving them with their metallic chisels in a very delicate manner. some of the silver vases were so large, that a man could not encircle them with his arms. they imitated very nicely the figures of animals, and, what was extraordinary, could mix the metals in such a manner, that the feathers of a bird, or the scales of a fish, should be alternately of gold and silver. the spanish goldsmiths admitted their superiority over themselves in these ingenious works. they employed another tool, made of itztli, or obsidian, a dark transparent mineral, exceedingly hard, found in abundance in their hills. they made it into knives, razors, and their serrated swords. it took a keen edge, though soon blunted. with this they wrought the various stones and alabasters employed in the construction of their public works and principal dwellings. i shall defer a more particular account of these to the body of the narrative, and will only add here, that the entrances and angles of the buildings were profusely ornamented with images, sometimes of their fantastic deities, and frequently of animals. the latter were executed with great accuracy. "the former," according to torquemada, "were the hideous reflection of their own souls. and it was not till after they had been converted to christianity, that they could model the true figure of a man." the old chronicler's facts are well founded, whatever we may think of his reasons. the allegorical phantasms of his religion, no doubt, gave a direction to the aztec artist, in his delineation of the human figure; supplying him with an imaginary beauty in the personification of divinity, itself. as these superstitions lost their hold on his mind, it opened to the influences of a purer taste; and, after the conquest, the mexicans furnished many examples of correct, and some of beautiful portraiture. sculptured images were so numerous, that the foundations of the cathedral in the plaza mayor, the great square of mexico, are said to be entirely composed of them. this spot may, indeed, be regarded as the aztec forum,the great depository of the treasures of ancient sculpture, which now he hid in its bosom. such monuments are spread all over the capital, however, and a new cellar can hardly be dug, or foundation laid, without turning up some of the mouldering relics of barbaric art. but they are little heeded, and, if not wantonly broken in pieces at once, are usually worked into the rising wall, or supports of the new edifice! two celebrated bas-reliefs of the last montezuma and his father, cut in the solid rock in the beautiful groves of chapoltepec, were deliberately destroyed, as late as the last century, by order of the government! the monuments of the barbarian meet with as little respect from civilised man, as those of the civilised man from the barbarian. the most remarkable piece of sculpture yet disinterred is the great calendar stone, noticed in the preceding chapter. it consists of dark porphyry, and in its original dimensions, as taken from the quarry, is computed to have weighed nearly fifty tons. it was transported from the mountains beyond lake chalco, a distance of many leagues, over a broken country intersected by water-courses and canals. in crossing a bridge which traversed one of these latter, in the capital, the supports gave way, and the huge mass was precipitated into the water, whence it was with difficulty recovered. the fact, that so enormous a fragment of porphyry could be thus safely carried for leagues, in the face of such obstacles, and without the aid of cattle,for the aztecs had no animals of draught,suggests to us no mean ideas of their mechanical skill, and of their machinery; and implies a degree of cultivation little inferior to that demanded for the geometrical and astronomical science displayed in the inscriptions on this very stone. the ancient mexicans made utensils of earthenware for the ordinary purposes of domestic life, numerous specimens of which still exist. they made cups and vases of a lackered or painted wood, impervious to wet, and gaudily coloured. their dyes were obtained from both mineral and vegetable substances. among them was the rich crimson of the cochineal, the modern rival of the famed tyrian purple. it was introduced into europe from mexico, where the curious little insect was nourished with great care on plantations of cactus, since fallen into neglect. the natives were thus enabled to give a brilliant colouring to the webs, which were manufactured of every degree of fineness from the cotton raised in abundance throughout the warmer regions of the country. they had the art, also, of interweaving with these the delicate hair of rabbits and other animals, which made a cloth of great warmth as well as beauty, of a kind altogether original; and on this they often laid a rich embroidery of birds, flowers, or some other fanciful device. but the art in which they most delighted was their plumaje, or feather-work. with this they could produce all the effect of a beautiful mosaic. the gorgeous plumage of the tropical birds, especially of the parrot tribe, afforded every variety of colour; and the fine down of the humming-bird, which revelled in swarms among the honeysuckle bowers of mexico, supplied them with soft aerial tints that gave an exquisite finish to the picture. the feathers, pasted on a fine cotton web, were wrought into dresses for the wealthy, hangings for apartments, and ornaments for the temples. no one of the american fabries excited such admiration in europe, whither numerous specimens were sent by the conquerors. it is to be regretted that so graceful an art should have been suffered to fall into decay. there were no shops in mexico, but the various manufactures and agricultural products were brought together for sale in the great market-places of the principal cities. fairs were held there every fifth day, and were thronged by a numerous concourse of persons, who came to buy or sell from all the neighbouring country. a particular quarter was allotted to each kind of article. the numerous transactions were conducted without confusion, and with entire regard to justice, under the inspection of magistrates appointed for the purpose. the traffic was carried on partly by barter, and partly by means of a regulated currency, of different values. this consisted of transparent quills of gold dust; of bits of tin, cut in the form of a t; and of bags of cacao, containing a specified number of grains. "blessed money," exclaims peter martyr, "which exempts its possessors from avarice, since it cannot be long hoarded, nor hidden under ground!" there did not exist in mexico that distinction of castes found among the egyptian and asiatic nations. it was usual, however, for the son to follow the occupation of his father. the different trades were arranged into something like guilds; having each a particular district of the city appropriated to it, with its own chief, its own tutelar deity, its peculiar festivals, and the like. trade was held in avowed estimation by the aztecs. "apply thyself, my son," was the advice of an aged chief, "to agriculture, or to feather-work, or some other honourable calling. thus did your ancestors before you. else, how would they have provided for themselves and their families? never was it heard, that nobility alone was able to maintain its possessor." shrewd maxims, that must have sounded somewhat strange in the ear of a spanish hidalgo! but the occupation peculiarly respected was that of the merchant. it formed so important and singular a feature of their social economy, as to merit a much more particular notice than it has received from historians. the aztec merchant was a sort of itinerant trader, who made his journeys to the remotest borders of anahuac, and to the countries beyond, carrying with him merchandise of rich stuffs, jewelry, slaves, and other valuable commodities. the slaves were obtained at the great market of azcapotzalco, not many leagues from the capital, where fairs were regularly held for the sale of these unfortunate beings. they were brought thither by their masters, dressed in their gayest apparel, and instructed to sing, dance, and display their little stock of personal accomplishments, so as to recommend themselves to the purchaser. slave-dealing was an honourable calling among the aztecs. with this rich freight, the merchant visited the different provinces, always bearing some present of value from his own sovereign to their chiefs, and usually receiving others in return, with a permission to trade. should this be denied him, or should he meet with indignity or violence, he had the means of resistance in his power. he performed his journeys with a number of companions of his own rank, and a large body of inferior attendants who were employed to transport the goods. fifty or sixty pounds were the usual load for a man. the whole caravan went armed, and so well provided against sudden hostilities, that they could make good their defence, if necessary, till reinforced from home. in one instance, a body of these militant traders stood a siege of four years in the town of ayotlan, which they finally took from the enemy. their own government, however, was always prompt to embark in a war on this ground, finding it a very convenient pretext for extending the mexican empire. it was not unusual to allow the merchants to raise levies themselves, which were placed under their command. it was, moreover, very common for the prince to employ the merchants as a sort of spies, to furnish him information of the state of the countries through which they passed, and the dispositions of the inhabitants towards himself. thus their sphere of action was much enlarged beyond that of a humble trader, and they acquired a high consideration in the body politic. they were allowed to assume insignia and devices of their own. some of their number composed what is called by the spanish writers a council of finance; at least, this was the case in tezcuco. they were much consulted by the monarch, who had some of them constantly near his person; addressing them by the title of "uncle," which may remind one of that of primo, or "cousin," by which a grandee of spain is saluted by his sovereign. they were allowed to have their own courts, in which civil and criminal cases, not excepting capital, were determined; so that they formed an independent community, as it were, of themselves. and, as their various traffic supplied them with abundant stores of wealth, they enjoyed many of the most essential advantages of an hereditary aristocracy. that trade should prove the path to eminent political preferment in a nation but partially civilised, where the names of soldier and priest are usually the only titles to respect, is certainly an anomaly in history. it forms some contrast to the standard of the more polished monarchies of the old world, in which rank is supposed to be less dishonoured by a life of idle ease or frivolous pleasure, than by those active pursuits which promote equally the prosperity of the state and of the individual. if civilisation corrects many prejudices, it must be allowed that it creates others. we shall be able to form a better idea of the actual refinement of the natives, by penetrating into their domestic life, and observing the intercourse between the sexes. we have fortunately the means of doing this. we shall there find the ferocious aztec frequently displaying all the sensibility of a cultivated nature; consoling his friends under affliction, or congratulating them on their good fortune, as on occasion of a marriage, or of the birth or the baptism of a child, when he was punctilious in his visits, bringing presents of costly dresses and ornaments, or the more simple offering of flowers, equally indicative of his sympathy. the visits, at these times, though regulated with all the precision of oriental courtesy, were accompanied by expressions of the most cordial and affectionate regard. the discipline of children, especially at the public schools, as stated in a previous chapter, was exceedingly severe. but after she had come to a mature age, the aztec maiden was treated by her parents with a tenderness from which all reserve seemed banished. in the counsels to a daughter about to enter into life, they conjured her to preserve simplicity in her manners and conversation, uniform neatness in her attire, with strict attention to personal cleanliness. they inculcated modesty as the great ornament of a woman, and implicit reverence for her husband; softening their admonitions by such endearing epithets, as showed the fulness of a parent's love. polygamy was permitted among the mexicans, though chiefly confined, probably, to the wealthiest classes. and the obligations of the marriage vow, which was made with all the formality of a religious ceremony, were fully recognised, and impressed on both parties. the women are described by the spaniards as pretty, unlike their unfortunate descendants of the present day, though with the same serious and rather melancholy cast of countenance. their long black hair, covered, in some parts of the country, by a veil made of the fine web of the pita, might generally be seen wreathed with flowers, or among the richer people, with strings of precious stones, and pearls from the gulf of california. they appear to have been treated with much consideration by their husbands; and passed their time in indolent tranquillity, or in such feminine occupations as spinning, embroidery and the like; while their maidens beguiled the hours by the rehearsal of traditionary tales and ballads. the woman partook equally with the men of social festivities and entertainments. these were often conducted on a large scale, both as regards the number of guests and the costliness of the preparations. numerous attendants, of both sexes, waited at the banquet. the halls were scented with perfumes, and the courts strewed with odoriferous herb and flowers, which were distributed in profusion among the guests, as they arrived. cotton napkins and ewers of water were placed before them, as they took their seats at the board; for the venerable ceremony of ablution, before and after eating, was punctiliously observed by the aztecs. tobacco was then offered to the company, in pipes, mixed up with aromatic substances, or in the form of cigars, inserted in tubes of tortoise-shell or silver. they compressed the nostrils with the fingers, while they inhaled the smoke, which they frequently swallowed. whether the women, who sat apart from the men at table, were allowed the indulgence of the fragrant weed as in the most polished circles of modern mexico, is not told us. it is a curious fact, that the aztecs also took the dried leaf in the pulverised form of snuff. the table was well provided with substantial meats, especially game; among which the most conspicuous was the turkey, erroneously supposed, as its name imports, to have come originally from the east. these more solid dishes were flanked by others of vegetables and fruits, of every delicious variety found on the north american continent. the different viands were prepared in various ways, with delicate sauces and seasoning, of which the mexicans were very fond. their palate was still further regaled by confections and pastry, for which their maize-flour and sugar supplied ample materials. one other dish, of a disgusting nature, was sometimes added to the feast, especially when the celebration partook of a religious character. on such occasions a slave was sacrificed, and his flesh elaborately dressed, formed one of the chief ornaments of the banquet. cannibalism, in the guise of an epicurean science, becomes even the more revolting. the meats were kept warm by chafing-dishes. the table was ornamented with vases of silver, and sometimes gold, of delicate workmanship. the drinking-cups and spoons were of the same costly materials, and likewise of tortoise-shell. the favourite beverage was the chocolatl, flavoured with vanilla and different spices. they had a way of preparing the froth of it, so as to make it almost solid enough to be eaten, and took it cold. the fermented juice of the maguey, with a mixture of sweets and acids, supplied also various agreeable drinks of different degrees of strength, and formed the chief beverage of the elder part of the company. as soon as they had finished their repast, the young people rose from the table, to close the festivities of the day with dancing. they danced gracefully, to the sound of various instruments, accompanying their movements with chants of a pleasing, though somewhat plaintive character. the older guests continued at table, sipping pulque, and gossiping about other times, till the virtues of the exhilarating beverage put them in good humour with their own. intoxication was not rare in this part of the company, and, what is singular, was excused in them, though severely punished in the younger. the aztec character was perfectly original and unique. it was made up of incongruities apparently irreconcilable. it blended into one the marked peculiarities of different nations, not only of the same place of civilisation, but as far removed from each other as the extremes of barbarism and refinement. it may find a fitting parallel in their own wonderful climate, capable of producing, on a few square leagues of surface, the boundless variety of vegetable forms which belong to the frozen regions of the north, the temperate zone of europe, and the burning skies of arabia and hindostan! chapter vi the tezcucanstheir golden ageaccomplished princes decline of their monarchy the reader would gather but an imperfect notion of the civilisation of anahuac, without some account of the acolhuans, or tezcucans, as they are usually cared; a nation of the same great family with the aztecs, whom they rivalled in power, and surpassed in intellectual culture and the arts of social refinement. fortunately, we have ample materials for this in the records left by ixtlilxochitl, a lineal descendant of the royal line of tezcuco, who flourished in the century of the conquest. with every opportunity for information he combined much industry and talent, and, if his narrative bears the high colouring of one who would revive the faded glories of an ancient, but dilapidated house, he has been uniformly commended for his fairness and integrity, and has been followed without misgiving by such spanish writers as could have access to his manuscripts. i shall confine myself to the prominent features of the two reigns which may be said to embrace the golden age of tezcuco; without attempting to weigh the probability of the details, which i will leave to be settled by the reader, according to the measure of his faith. the acolhuans came into the valley, as we have seen, about the close of the twelfth century, and built their capital of tezcuco on the eastern borders of the lake, opposite to mexico. from this point they gradually spread themselves over the northern portion of anahuac, when their career was cheeked by an invasion of a kindred race, the tepanecs, who, after a desperate struggle, succeeded in taking their city, slaying their monarch, and entirely subjugating his kingdom. this event took place about 1418; and the young prince, nezahualcoyotl, the heir to the crown, then fifteen years old, saw his father butchered before his eyes, while he himself lay concealed among the friendly branches of a tree, which overshadowed the spot. his subsequent history is full of romantic daring and perilous escapes. not long after his flight from the field of his father's blood, the tezcucan prince fell into the hands of his enemy, was borne off in triumph to his city, and was thrown into a dungeon. he effected his escape, however, through the connivance of the governor of the fortress, an old servant of his family, who took the place of the royal fugitive, and paid for his loyalty with his life. he was at length permitted, through the intercession of the reigning family in mexico, which was allied to him, to retire to that capital, and subsequently to his own, where he found a shelter in his ancestral palace. here he remained unmolested for eight years, pursuing his studies under an old preceptor, who had had the care of his early youth, and who instructed him in the various duties befitting his princely station. at the end of this period the tepanec usurper died, bequeathing his empire to his son, maxtla, a man of fierce and suspicious temper. nezahualcoyotl hastened to pay his obeisance to him, on his accession. but the tyrant refused to receive the little present of flowers which he laid at his feet, and turned his back on him in presence of his chieftains. one of his attendants, friendly to the young prince, admonished him to provide for his own safety, by withdrawing, as speedily as possible, from the palace, where his life was in danger. he lost no time, consequently, in retreating from the inhospitable court, and returned to tezcuco. maxtla, however, was bent on his destruction. he saw with jealous eye the opening talents and popular manners of his rival, and the favour he was daily winning from his ancient subjects. he accordingly laid a plan for making away with him at an evening entertainment. it was defeated by the vigilance of the prince's tutor, who contrived to mislead the assassins, and to substitute another victim in the place of his pupil. the baffled tyrant now threw off all disguise, and sent a strong party of soldiers to tezcuco, with orders to enter the palace, seize the person of nezahualcoyotl, and slay him on the spot. the prince, who became acquainted with the plot through the watchfulness of his preceptor, instead of flying, as he was counselled, resolved to await his enemy. they found him playing at ball, when they arrived, in the court of his palace. he received them courteously and invited them in, to take some refreshments after their journey. while they were occupied in this way, he passed into an adjoining saloon, which excited no suspicion, as he was still visible through the open doors by which the apartments communicated with each other. a burning censer stood in the passage, and, as it was fed by the attendants, threw up such clouds of incense as obscured his movements from the soldiers. under this friendly veil he succeeded in making his escape by a secret passage, which communicated with a large earthen pipe formerly used to bring water to the palace. here he remained till nightfall, when, taking advantage of the obscurity, he found his way into the suburbs, and sought a shelter in the cottage of one of his father's vassals. the tepanec monarch, enraged at this repeated disappointment, ordered instant pursuit. a price was set on the head of the royal fugitive. whoever should take him, dead or alive, was promised, however humble his degree, the hand of a noble lady, and an ample domain along with it. troops of armed men were ordered to scour the country in every direction. in the course of the search, the cottage in which the prince had taken refuge was entered. but he fortunately escaped detection by being hid under a heap of maguey fibres used for manufacturing cloth. as this was no longer a proper place for concealment, he sought a retreat in the mountainous and woody district lying between the borders of his own state and tlascala. here he led a wretched wandering life, exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather, hiding himself in deep thickets and caverns, and stealing out at night to satisfy the cravings of appetite; while he was kept in constant alarm by the activity of his pursuers, always hovering on his track. on one occasion he sought refuge from them among a small party of soldiers, who proved friendly to him, and concealed him in a large drum around which they were dancing. at another time, he was just able to turn the crest of a hill, as his enemies were climbing it on the other side, when he fell in with a girl who was reaping chian,a mexican plant, the seed of which was much used in the drinks of the country. he persuaded her to cover him up with the stalks she had been cutting. when his pursuers came up, and inquired if she had seen the fugitive, the girl coolly answered that she had, and pointed out a path as the one he had taken. notwithstanding the high rewards offered, nezahualcoyotl seems to have incurred no danger from treachery, such was the general attachment felt to himself and his house. "would you not deliver up the prince, if he came in your way?" he inquired of a young peasant who was unacquainted with his person. "not i," replied the other. "what, not for a fair lady's hand, and a rich dowry beside?" rejoined the prince. at which the other only shook his head and laughed. on more than one occasion, his faithful people submitted to torture, and even to lose their lives, rather than disclose the place of his retreat. however gratifying such proofs of loyalty might be to his feelings, the situation of the prince in these mountain solitudes became every day more distressing. it gave a still keener edge to his own sufferings to witness those of the faithful followers who chose to accompany him in his wanderings. "leave me," he would say to them, "to my fate! why should you throw away your own lives for one whom fortune is never weary of persecuting?" most of the great tezcucan chiefs had consulted their interests by a timely adhesion to the usurper. but some still clung to their prince, preferring proscription, and death itself, rather than desert him in his extremity. in the meantime, his friends at a distance were active in measures for his relief. the oppressions of maxtla, and his growing empire, had caused general alarm in the surrounding states, who recalled the mild rule of the tezcucan princes. a coalition was formed, a plan of operations concerted, and, on the day appointed for a general rising, nezahualcoyotl found himself at the head of a force sufficiently strong to face his tepanec adversaries. an engagement came on, in which the latter were totally discomfited; and the victorious prince, receiving everywhere on his route the homage of his joyful subjects, entered his capital, not like a proscribed outcast, but as the rightful heir, and saw himself once more enthroned in the halls of his fathers. soon after, he united his forces with the mexicans, long disgusted with the arbitrary conduct of maxtla. the allied powers, after a series of bloody engagements with the usurper, routed him under the walls of his own capital. he fled to the baths, whence he was dragged out, and sacrificed with the usual cruel ceremonies of the aztecs; the royal city of azcapotzalco was razed to the ground, and the wasted territory was henceforth reserved as the great slavemarket for the nations of anahuac. these events were succeeded by the remarkable league among the three powers of tezcuco, mexico, and tlacopan, of which some account has been given in a previous chapter. the first measure of nezahualcoyotl, on returning to his dominions, was a general amnesty. it was his maxim, "that a monarch might punish, but revenge was unworthy of him." in the present instance, he was averse even to punish, and not only freely pardoned his rebel nobles, but conferred on some, who had most deeply offended, posts of honour and confidence. such conduct was doubtless politic, especially as their alienation was owing, probably, much more to fear of the usurper, than to any disaffection towards himself. but there are some acts of policy which a magnanimous spirit only can execute. the restored monarch next set about repairing the damages sustained under the late misrule, and reviving, or rather remodelling the various departments of government. he framed a concise, but comprehensive, code of laws, so well suited, it was thought, to the exigencies of the times, that it was adopted as their own by the two other members of triple alliance. he divided the burden of government among a number of departments, as the council of war, the council of finance, the council of justice. this last was a court of supreme authority, both in civil and criminal matters, receiving appeals from the lower tribunals of the provinces, which were obliged to make a full report, every four months, or eighty days, of their own proceedings to this higher judicature. in all these bodies, a certain number of citizens were allowed to have seats with the nobles and professional dignitaries. there was, however, another body, a council of state, for aiding the king in the despatch of business, and advising him in matters of importance, which was drawn altogether from the highest order of chiefs. it consisted of fourteen members; and they had seats provided for them at the royal table. lastly, there was an extraordinary tribunal, called the council of music, but which, differing from the import of its name, was devoted to the encouragement of science and art. works on astronomy, chronology, history, or any other science, were required to be submitted to its judgment before they could be made public. this censorial power was of some moment, at least with regard to the historical department, where the wilful perversion of truth was made a capital offence by the bloody code of nezahualcoyotl. yet a tezcucan author must have been a bungler, who could not elude a conviction under the cloudy veil of hieroglyphics. this body, which was drawn from the best instructed persons in the kingdom, with little regard to rank, had supervision of all the productions of art, and of the nicer fabrics. it decided on the qualifications of the professors in the various branches of science, on the fidelity of their instructions to their pupils, the deficiency of which was severely punished, and it instituted examinations of these latter. in short it was a general board of education for the country. on stated days, historical compositions, and poems treating of moral or traditional topics, were recited before it by their authors. seats were provided for the three crowned heads of the empire, who deliberated with the other members on the respective merits of the pieces, and distributed prizes of value to the successful competitors. the influence of this academy must have been most propitious to the capital, which became the nursery not only of such sciences as could be compassed by the scholarship of the period, but of various useful and ornamental arts. its historians, orators, and poets were celebrated throughout the country. its archives, for which accommodations were provided in the royal palace, were stored with the records of primitive ages. its idiom, more polished than the mexican, was indeed the purest of all the nahuatlac dialects; and continued, long after the conquest, to be that in which the best productions of the native races were composed. tezcuco claimed the glory of being the athens of the western world. among the most illustrious of her bards was the emperor himself,for the tezcucan writers claim this title for their chief, as head of the imperial alliance. he, doubtless, appeared as a competitor before that very academy where he so often sat as a critic. but the hours of the tezcucan monarch were not all passed in idle dalliance with the muse, nor in the sober contemplations of philosophy, as at a later period. in the freshness of youth and early manhood, he led the allied armies in their annual expeditions, which were certain to result in a wider extent of territory to the empire. in the intervals of peace he fostered those productive arts which are the surest sources of public prosperity. he encouraged agriculture above all; and there was scarcely a spot so rude, or a steep so inaccessible, as not to confess the power of cultivation. the land was covered with a busy population, and towns and cities sprung up in places since deserted, or dwindled into miserable villages. from resources thus enlarged by conquest and domestic industry, the monarch drew the means for the large consumption of his own numerous household, and for the costly works which he executed for the convenience and embellishment of the capital. he fined it with stately edifices for his nobles, whose constant attendance he was anxious to secure at his court. he erected a magnificent pile of buildings which might serve both for a royal residence and for the public offices. it extended, from east to west, twelve hundred and thirty-four yards; and from north to south, nine hundred and seventy-eight. it was encompassed by a wall of unburnt bricks and cement, six feet wide and nine high for one half of the circumference, and fifteen feet high for the other half. within this enclosure were two courts. the outer one was used as the great marketplace of the city; and continued to be so until long after the conquest. the interior court was surrounded by the council chambers and halls of justice. there were also accommodations there. for the foreign ambassadors; and a spacious saloon, with apartments: opening into it, for men of science and poets, who pursued their studies in this retreat, or met together to hold converse under its marble porticos. in this quarter, also, were kept the public archives; which fared better under the indian dynasty than they have since under their european successors. adjoining this court were the apartments of the king, including those for the royal harem, as liberally supplied with beauties as that of an eastern sultan. their walls were incrusted with alabasters, and richly tinted stucco, or hung with gorgeous tapestries of variegated feather-work. they led through long arcades, and through intricate labyrinths of shrubbery, into gardens, where baths and sparkling fountains were overshadowed by tall groves of cedar and cypress. the basins of water were well stocked with fish of various kinds, and the aviaries with birds glowing in all the gaudy plumage of the tropics. many birds and animals, which could not be obtained alive, were represented in gold and silver so skillfully as to have furnished the great naturalist hernandez with models. accommodations on a princely scale were provided for the sovereigns of mexico and tlacopan, when they visited the court. the whole of this lordly pile contained three hundred apartments, some of them fifty yards square. the height of the building is not mentioned. it was probably not great; but supplied the requisite room by the immense extent of ground which it covered. the interior was doubtless constructed of fight materials, especially of the rich woods, which, in that country, are remarkable, when polished, for the brilliancy and variety of their colours. that the more solid materials of stone and stucco were also liberally employed, is proved by the remains at the present day; remains which have furnished an inexhaustible quarry for the churches and other edifices since erected by the spaniards on the site of the ancient city. we are not informed of the time occupied in building this palace; but two hundred thousand workmen, it is said, were employed on it! however this may be, it is certain that the tezcucan monarchs, like those of asia, and ancient egypt, had the control of immense masses of men, and would sometimes turn the whole population of a conquered city, including the women, into the public works.the most gigantic monuments of architecture which the world has witnessed would never have been reared by the hands of freemen. adjoining the palace were buildings for the king's children, who, by his various wives, amounted to no less than sixty sons and fifty daughters. here they were instructed in all the exercises and accomplishments suited to their station; comprehending, what would scarcely find a place in a royal education on the other side of the atlantic,the arts of working in metals, jewelry, and feather-mosaic. once in every four months, the whole household, not excepting the youngest, and including all the officers and attendants on the king's person, assembled in a grand saloon of the palace, to listen to a discourse from an orator, probably one of the priesthood. the princes, on this occasion, were all dressed in nequen, the coarsest manufacture of the country. the preacher began by enlarging on the obligations of morality, and of respect for the gods, especially important in persons whose rank gave such additional weight to example. he occasionally seasoned his homily with a pertinent application to his audience, if any member of it had been guilty of a notorious delinquency. from this wholesome admonition the monarch himself was not exempted, and the orator boldly reminded him of his paramount duty to show respect for his own laws. the king, so far from taking umbrage, received the lesson with humility: and the audience, we are assured, were often melted into tears by the eloquence of the preacher. nezahualcoyotl's fondness for magnificence was shown in his numerous villas, which were embellished with all that could make a rural retreat delightful. his favourite residence was at tezcotzinco; a conical hill about two leagues from the capital. it was laid out in terraces, or hanging gardens, having a flight of steps five hundred and twenty in number, many of them hewn in the natural porphyry. in the garden on the summit was a reservoir of water, fed by an aqueduct that was carried over hill and valley, for several miles, on huge buttresses of masonry. a large rock stood in the midst of this basin, sculptured with the hieroglyphics representing the years of nezahualcoyotl's reign and his principal achievements in each. on a lower level were three other reservoirs, in each of which stood a marble statue of a woman, emblematic of the three states of the empire. another tank contained a winged lion, cut out of the solid rock, bearing in his mouth the portrait of the emperor. his likeness had been executed in gold, wood, feather-work, and stone, but this was the only one which pleased him. from these copious basins the water was distributed in numerous channels through the gardens, or was made to tumble over the rocks in cascades, shedding refreshing dews on the flowers and odoriferous shrubs below. in the depths of this fragrant wilderness, marble porticos and pavilions were erected, and baths excavated in the solid porphyry. the visitor descended by steps cut in the living stone, and polished so bright as to reflect like mirrors. towards the base of the hill, in the midst of cedar groves, whose gigantic branches threw a refreshing coolness over the verdure in the sultriest seasons of the year, rose the royal villa, with its light arcades and airy halls, drinking in the sweet perfumes of the gardens. here the monarch often retired, to throw off the burden of state, and refresh his wearied spirits in the society of his favourite wives, reposing during the noontide heats in the embowering shades of his paradise, or mingling, in the cool of the evening, in their festive sports and dances. here he entertained his imperial brothers of mexico and tlacopan, and followed the hardier pleasures of the chase in the noble woods that stretched for miles around his villa, flourishing in all their primeval majesty. here, too, he often repaired in the latter days of his life, when age had tempered ambition and cooled the ardour of his blood, to pursue in solitude the studies of philosophy and gather wisdom from meditation. it was not his passion to hoard. he dispensed his revenues munificently, seeking out poor, but meritorious objects, on whom to bestow them. he was particularly mindful of disabled soldiers, and those who had in any way sustained loss in the public service; and, in case of their death, extended assistance to their surviving families. open mendicity was a thing he would never tolerate, but chastised it with exemplary rigour. it would be incredible, that a man of the enlarged mind and endowments of nezahualcoyotl should acquiesce in the sordid superstitions of his countrymen, and still more in the sanguinary rites borrowed by them from the aztecs. in truth, his humane temper shrunk from these cruel ceremonies, and he strenuously endeavoured to recall his people to the more pure and simple worship of the ancient toltecs. a circumstance produced a temporary change in his conduct. he had been married some years, but was not blessed with issue. the priests represented that it was owing to his neglect of the gods of his country, and that his only remedy was to propitiate them by human sacrifice. the king reluctantly consented, and the altars once more smoked with the blood of slaughtered captives. but it was all in vain; and he indignantly exclaimed, "these idols of wood and stone can neither hear nor feel; much less could they make the heavens and the earth, and man, the lord of it. these must be the work of the all-powerful, unknown god, creator of the universe, on whom alone i must rely for consolation and support." he then withdrew to his rural palace of tezcotzinco, where he remained forty days, fasting and praying at stated hours, and offering up no other sacrifice than the sweet incense of copal, and aromatic herbs and gums. at the expiration of this time, he is said to have been comforted by a vision assuring him of the success of his petition. at all events, such proved to be the fact; and this was followed by the cheering intelligence of the triumph of his arms in a quarter where he had lately experienced some humiliating reverses. greatly strengthened in his former religious convictions, he now openly professed his faith, and was more earnest to wean his subjects from their degrading superstitions, and to substitute nobler and more spiritual conceptions of the deity. he built a temple in the usual pyramidal form, and on the summit a tower nine stories high, to represent the nine heavens; a tenth was surmounted by a roof painted black, and profusely gilded with stars on the outside, and incrusted with metals and precious stones within. he dedicated this to "the unknown god, the cause of causes." it seems probable, from the emblem on the tower, as well as from the complexion of his verses, as we shall see, that he mingled with his reverence for the supreme the astral worship which existed among the toltecs. various musical instruments were placed on the top of the tower, and the sound of them, accompanied by the ringing of a sonorous metal struck by a mallet, summoned the worshippers to prayers at regular seasons. no image was allowed in the edifice, as unsuited to the "invisible god"; and the people were expressly prohibited from profaning the altars with blood, or any other sacrifice than that of the perfume of flowers and sweet-scented gums. the remainder of his days was chiefly spent in his delicious solitudes of tezcotzinco, where he devoted himself to astronomical and, probably, astrological studies, and to meditation on his immortal destiny,giving utterance to his feelings in songs, or rather hymns, of much solemnity and pathos. at length, about the year 1470, nezahualcoyotl, full of years and honours, felt himself drawing near his end. almost half a century had elapsed since he mounted the throne of tezcuco. he had found his kingdom dismembered by faction, and bowed to the dust beneath the yoke of a foreign tyrant. he had broken that yoke; and breathed new life into the nation, renewed its ancient institutions, extended wide its domain; had seen it flourishing in all the activity of trade and agriculture, gathering strength from its enlarged resources, and daily advancing higher and higher in the great march of civilisation all this he had seen, and might fairly attribute no small portion of it to his own wise and beneficent rule. his long and glorious day was now drawing to its close; and he contemplated the event with the same serenity which he had shown under the clouds of its morning and in its meridian splendour. a short time before his death, he gathered around him those of his children in whom he most confided, his chief counsellors, the ambassadors of mexico and tlacopan, and his little son, the heir to the crown, his only offspring by the queen. he was then not eight years old; but had already given, as far as so tender a blossom might, the rich promise of future excellence. after tenderly embracing the child, the dying monarch threw over him the robes of sovereignty. he then gave audience to the ambassadors, and when they had retired, made the boy repeat the substance of the conversation. he followed this by such counsels as were suited to his comprehension, and which when remembered through the long vista of after years, would serve as lights to guide him in his government of the kingdom. he besought him not to neglect the worship of "the unknown god," regretting that he himself had been unworthy to know him, and intimating his conviction that the time would come when he should be known and worshipped throughout the land. he next addressed himself to that one of his sons in whom he placed the greatest trust, and whom he had selected as the guardian of the realm. "from this hour," he said to him, "you will fill the place that i have filled, of father to this child; you will teach him to live as he ought; and by your counsels he will rule over the empire. stand in his place, and be his guide, till he shall be of age to govern for himself." then, turning to his other children, he admonished them to live united with one another, and to show all loyalty to their prince, who, though a child, already manifested a discretion far above his years. "be true to him," he added, "and he will maintain you in your rights and dignities." feeling his end approaching, he exclaimed, "do not bewail me with idle lamentations. but sing the song of gladness, and show a courageous spirit, that the nations i have subdued may not believe you disheartened, but may feel that each one of you is strong enough to keep them in obedience!" the undaunted spirit of the monarch shone forth even in the agonies of death. that stout heart, however, melted as he took leave of his children and friends, weeping tenderly over them, while he bade each a last adieu. when they had withdrawn, he ordered the officers of the palace to allow no one to enter it again. soon after he expired, in the seventy-second year of his age, and the forty-third of his reign. thus died the greatest monarch and, perhaps, the best who ever sat upon an indian throne. his character is delineated with tolerable impartiality by his kinsman, the tezcucan chronicler. "he was wise, valiant, liberal; and, when we consider the magnanimity of his soul, the grandeur and success of his enterprises, his deep policy, as well as daring, we must admit him to have far surpassed every other prince and captain of this new world. he had few failings himself, and rigorously punished those of others. he preferred the public to his private interest; was most charitable in his nature, often buying articles at double their worth of poor and honest persons, and giving them away again to the sick and infirm. in seasons of scarcity he was particularly bountiful, remitting the taxes of his vassals, and supplying their wants from the royal granaries. he put no faith in the idolatrous worship of the country. he was well instructed in moral science, and sought, above all things, to obtain light for knowing the true god. he believed in one god only, the creator of heaven and earth, by whom we have our being, who never revealed himself to us in human form, nor in any other; with whom the souls of the virtuous are to dwell after death, while the wicked will suffer pains unspeakable. he invoked the most high, as him by whom we live, and 'who has all things in himself.' he recognised the sun for his father, and the earth for his mother. he taught his children not to confide in idols, and only to conform to the outward worship of them from deference to public opinion. if he could not entirely abolish human sacrifices, derived from the aztecs, he, at least, restricted them to slaves and captives." i have occupied so much space with this illustrious prince that but little remains for his son and successor, nezahualpilli. i have thought better, in our narrow limits, to present a complete view of a single epoch, the most interesting in the tezcucan annals, than to spread the inquiries over a broader, but comparatively barren field. yet nezahualpilli, the heir to the crown, was a remarkable person, and his reign contains many incidents, which i regret to be obliged to pass over in silence. nezahualpilli resembled his father in his passion for astronomical studies, and is said to have had an observatory on one of his palaces. he was devoted to war in his youth, but, as he advanced in years, resigned himself to a more indolent way of life, and sought his chief amusement in the pursuit of his favourite science, or in the soft pleasures of the sequestered gardens of tezcotzinco. this quiet life was ill suited to the turbulent temper of the times, and of his mexican rival, montezuma. the distant provinces fell off from their allegiance; the army relaxed its discipline; disaffection crept into its ranks; and the wily montezuma, partly by violence, and partly by stratagems unworthy of a king, succeeded in plundering his brother monarch of some of his most valuable domains. then it was that he arrogated to himself the title and supremacy of emperor, hitherto borne by the tezcucan princes, as head of the alliance. such is the account given by the historians of that nation, who in this way, explain the acknowledged superiority of the aztec sovereign, both in territory and consideration, on the landing of the spaniards. these misfortunes pressed heavily on the spirits of nezahualpilli. their effect was increased by certain gloomy prognostics of a near calamity which was to overwhelm the country. he withdrew to his retreat, to brood in secret over his sorrows. his health rapidly declined; and in the year 1515, at the age of fifty-two, he sunk into the grave; happy, at least, that, by his timely death, he escaped witnessing the fulfilment of his own predictions, in the ruin of his country, and the extinction of the indian dynasties, for ever. in reviewing the brief sketch here presented of the tezcucan monarchy, we are strongly impressed with the conviction of its superiority, in all the great features of civilisation, over the rest of anahuac. the mexicans showed a similar proficiency, no doubt, in the mechanic arts, and even in mathematical science. but in the science of government, in legislation, in the speculative doctrines of a religious nature, in the more elegant pursuits of poetry, eloquence, and whatever depended on refinement of taste and a polished idiom, they confessed themselves inferior, by resorting to their rivals for instruction, and citing their works as the masterpieces of their tongue. the best histories, the best poems, the best code of laws, the purest dialect, were all allowed to be tezcucan. what was the actual amount of the tezcucan civilisation, it is not easy to determine, with the imperfect light afforded us. it was certainly far below anything which the word conveys, measured by a european standard. in some of the arts, and in any walk of science, they could only have made, as it were, a beginning. but they had begun in the right way, and already showed a refinement in sentiment and manners, a capacity for receiving instruction, which, under good auspices, might have led them on to indefinite improvement. unhappily, they were fast falling under the dominion of the warlike aztecs. and that people repaid the benefits received from their more polished neighbours by imparting to them their own ferocious superstition, which, falling like a mildew on the land, would soon have blighted its rich blossoms of promise, and turned even its fruits to dust and ashes. book ii: discovery of mexico chapter i [1516-1518] spain under charles vprogress of discoverycolonial policy conquest of cubaexpeditions to yucatan in the beginning of the sixteenth century, spain occupied perhaps the most prominent position on the theatre of europe. the numerous states, into which she had been so long divided, were consolidated into one monarchy. the moslem crescent, after reigning there for eight centuries, was no longer seen on her borders. the authority of the crown did not, as in later times, overshadow the inferior orders of the state. the people enjoyed the inestimable privilege of political representation, and exercised it with manly independence. the nation at large could boast as great a degree of constitutional freedom as any other, at that time, in christendom. under a system of salutary laws and an equitable administration, domestic tranquillity was secured, public credit established, trade, manufactures, and even the more elegant arts, began to flourish; while a higher education called forth the first blossoms of that literature, which was to ripen into so rich a harvest, before the close of the century. arms abroad kept pace with arts at home. spain found her empire suddenly enlarged, by important acquisitions, both in europe and africa, while a new world beyond the waters poured into her lap treasures of countless wealth, and opened an unbounded field for honourable enterprise. such was the condition of the kingdom at the close of the long and glorious reign of ferdinand and isabella, when on the 23rd of january, 1516, the sceptre passed into the hands of their daughter joanna, or rather their grandson, charles the fifth, who alone ruled the monarchy during the long and imbecile existence of his unfortunate mother. during the two years following ferdinand's death, the regency, in the absence of charles, was held by cardinal ximenes, a man whose intrepidity, extraordinary talents, and capacity for great enterprises, were accompanied by a haughty spirit, which made him too indifferent as to the means of their execution. his administration, therefore, notwithstanding the uprightness of his intentions, was, from his total disregard of forms, unfavourable to constitutional liberty; for respect for forms is an essential element of freedom. with all his faults, however, ximenes was a spaniard; and the object he had at heart was the good of his country. it was otherwise on the arrival of charles, who, after a long absence, came as a foreigner into the land of his fathers. (november, 1517.) his manners, sympathies, even his language, were foreign, for he spoke the castilian with difficulty. he knew little of his native country, of the character of the people or their institutions. he seemed to care still less for them; while his natural reserve precluded that freedom of communication which might have counteracted, to some extent at least, the errors of education. in everything, in short, he was a foreigner; and resigned himself to the direction of his flemish counsellors with a docility that gave little augury of his future greatness. on his entrance into castile, the young monarch was accompanied by a swarm of courtly sycophants, who settled, like locusts, on every place of profit and honour throughout the kingdom. a fleming was made grand chancellor of castile; another fleming was placed in the archiepiscopal see of toledo. they even ventured to profane the sanctity of the cortes by intruding themselves on its deliberations. yet that body did not tamely submit to these usurpations, but gave vent to its indignation in tones becoming the representatives of a free people. the same pestilent foreign influence was felt, though much less sensibly, in the colonial administration. this had been placed, in the preceding reign, under the immediate charge of the two great tribunals, the council of the indies, and the casa de contratacion, or india house at seville. it was their business to further the progress of discovery, watch over the infant settlements, and adjust the disputes, which grew up in them. but the licences granted to private adventurers did more for the cause of discovery than the patronage of the crown or its officers. the long peace, enjoyed with slight interruption by spain in the early part of the sixteenth century, was most auspicious for this; and the restless cavalier, who could no longer win laurels on the fields of africa and europe, turned with eagerness to the brilliant career opened to him beyond the ocean. it is difficult for those of our time, as familiar from childhood with the most remote places on the globe as with those in their own neighbourhood, to picture to themselves the feelings of the men who lived in the sixteenth century. the dread mystery, which had so long hung over the great deep, had indeed been removed. it was no longer beset with the same undefined horrors as when columbus launched his bold bark on its dark and unknown waters. a new and glorious world had been thrown open. but as to the precise spot where that world lay, its extent, its history, whether it were island or continent,of all this, they had very vague and confused conceptions. many, in their ignorance, blindly adopted the erroneous conclusion into which the great admiral had been led by his superior science,that the new countries were a part of asia; and, as the mariner wandered among the bahamas, or steered his caravel across the caribbean seas, he fancied he was inhaling the rich odours of the spice-islands in the indian ocean. thus every fresh discovery, interpreted by his previous delusion, served to confirm him in his error, or, at least, to fill his mind with new perplexities. the career thus thrown open had all the fascinations of a desperate hazard, on which the adventurer staked all his hopes of fortune, fame, and life itself. it was not often, indeed, that he won the rich prize which he most coveted; but then he was sure to win the meed of glory, scarcely less dear to his chivalrous spirit; and, if he survived to return to his home, he had wonderful stories to recount, of perilous chances among the strange people he had visited, and the burning climes, whose rank fertility and magnificence of vegetation so far surpassed anything he had witnessed in his own. these reports added fresh fuel to imaginations already warmed by the study of those tales of chivalry which formed the favourite reading of the spaniards at that period. thus romance and reality acted on each other, and the soul of the spaniard was exalted to that pitch of enthusiasm, which enabled him to encounter the terrible trials that lay in the path of the discoverer. indeed, the life of the cavalier of that day was romance put into action. the story of his adventures in the new world forms one of the most remarkable pages in the history of man. under this chivalrous spirit of enterprise, the progress of discovery had extended, by the beginning of charles the fifth's reign, from the bay of honduras, along the winding shores of darien, and the south american continent, to the rio de la plata. the mighty barrier of the isthmus had been climbed, and the pacific descried, by nunez de balboa, second only to columbus in this valiant band of "ocean chivalry." the bahamas and caribbee islands had been explored, as well as the peninsula of florida on the northern continent. to this latter point sebastian cabot had arrived in his descent along the coast from labrador, in 1497. so that before 1518, the period when our narrative begins, the eastern borders of both the great continents had been surveyed through nearly their whole extent. the shores of the great mexican gulf, however, sweeping with a wide circuit far into the interior, remained still concealed, with the rich realms that lay beyond, from the eye of the navigator. the time had now come for their discovery. the business of colonisation had kept pace with that of discovery. in several of the islands, and in various parts of terra firma, and in darien, settlements had been established, under the control of governors who affected the state and authority of viceroys. grants of land were assigned to the colonists, on which they raised the natural products of the soil, but gave still more attention to the suggar-cane, imported from the canaries. sugar, indeed, together with the beautiful dye-woods of the country and the precious metals, formed almost the only articles of export in the infancy of the colonies, which had not yet introduced those other staples of the west indian commerce, which, in our day, constitute its principal wealth. yet the precious metals, painfully gleaned from a few scanty sources, would have made poor returns, but for the gratuitous labour of the indians. the cruel system of repartimientos, or distribution of the indians as slaves among the conquerors, had been suppressed by isabella. although subsequently countenanced by the government, it was under the most careful limitations. but it is impossible to license crime by halves,to authorise injustice at all, and hope to regulate the measure of it. the eloquent remonstrances of the dominicans,who devoted themselves to the good work of conversion in the new world with the same zeal that they showed for persecution in the old,but, above all, those of las casas, induced the regent ximenes to send out a commission with full powers to inquire into the alleged grievances, and to redress them. it had authority, moreover, to investigate the conduct of the civil officers, and to reform any abuses in their administration. this extraordinary commission consisted of three hieronymite friars and an eminent jurist, all men of learning and unblemished piety. they conducted the inquiry in a very dispassionate manner; but, after long deliberation, came to a conclusion most unfavourable to the demands of las casas, who insisted on the entire freedom of the natives. this conclusion they justified on the grounds that the indians would not labour without compulsion, and that, unless they laboured, they could not be brought into communication with the whites, nor be converted to christianity. whatever we may think of this argument, it was doubtless urged with sincerity by its advocates, whose conduct through their whole administration places their motives above suspicion. they accompanied it with many careful provisions for the protection of the natives,but in vain. the simple people, accustomed all their days to a life of indolence and ease, sunk under the oppressions of their masters, and the population wasted away with even more frightful rapidity than did the aborigines in our own country, under the operation of other causes. it is not necessary to pursue these details further, into which i have been led by the desire to put the reader in possession of the general policy and state of affairs in the new world, at the period when the present narrative begins. of the islands, cuba was the second discovered; but no attempt had been made to plant a colony there during the lifetime of columbus; who, indeed, after skirting the whole extent of its southern coast, died in the conviction that it was part of the continent. at length, in 1511, diego, the son and successor of the "admiral," who still maintained the seat of government in hispaniola, finding the mines much exhausted there, proposed to occupy the neighbouring island of cuba, or fernandina, as it was called, in compliment to the spanish monarch. he prepared a small force for the conquest, which he placed under the command of don diego velasquez; a man described by a contemporary, as "possessed of considerable experience in military affairs, having served seventeen years in the european wars; as honest, illustrious by his lineage and reputation, covetous of glory, and somewhat more covetous of wealth." the portrait was sketched by no unfriendly hand. velasquez, or rather his lieutenant narvaez, who took the office on himself of scouring the country, met with no serious opposition from the inhabitants, who were of the same family with the effeminate natives of hispaniola. the conquest, through the merciful interposition of las casas, "the protector of the indians," who accompanied the army in its march, was effected without much bloodshed. one chief, indeed, named hatuey, having fled originally from st. domingo to escape the oppression of its invaders, made a desperate resistance, for which he was condemned by velasquez to be burned alive. it was he who made that memorable reply, more eloquent than a volume of invective. when urged at the stake to embrace christianity, that his soul might find admission into heaven, he inquired if the white men would go there. on being answered in the affirmative, he exclaimed, "then i will not be a christian; for i would not go again to a place where i must find men so cruel!" the story is told by las casas in his appalling record of the cruelties of his countrymen in the new world. after the conquest, velasquez, now appointed governor, diligently occupied himself with measures for promoting the prosperity of the island. he formed a number of settlements, bearing the same names with the modern towns, and made st. jago, on the south-east corner, the seat of government. he invited settlers by liberal grants of land and slaves. he encouraged them to cultivate the soil, and gave particular attention to the sugar-cane, so profitable an article of commerce in later times. he was, above all, intent on working the gold mines, which promised better returns than those in hispaniola. the affairs of his government did not prevent him, meanwhile, from casting many a wistful glance at the discoveries going forward on the continent, and he longed for an opportunity to embark in these golden adventures himself. fortune gave him the occasion he desired. an hidalgo of cuba, named hernandez de cordova, sailed with three vessels on an expedition to one of the neighbouring bahama islands, in quest of indian slaves. (february 8, 1517.) he encountered a succession of heavy gales which drove him far out of his course, and at the end of three weeks he found himself on a strange but unknown coast. on landing and asking the name of the country, he was answered by the natives, "tectetan," meaning, "i do not understand you,"but which the spaniards, misinterpreting into the name of the place, easily corrupted into yucatan. some writers give a different etymology. such mistakes, however, were not uncommon with the early discoverers, and have been the origin of many a name on the american continent. cordova had landed on the north-eastern end of the peninsula, at cape catoche. he was astonished at the size and solid material of the buildings constructed of stone and lime, so different from the frail tenements of reeds and rushes which formed the habitations of the islanders. he was struck, also, with the higher cultivation of the soil, and with the delicate texture of the cotton garments and gold ornaments of the natives. everything indicated a civilisation far superior to anything he had before witnessed in the new world. he saw the evidence of a different race, moreover, in the warlike spirit of the people. rumours of the spaniards had, perhaps, preceded them, as they were repeatedly asked if they came from the east; and wherever they landed, they were met with the most deadly hostility. cordova himself, in one of his skirmishes with the indians, received more than a dozen wounds, and one only of his party escaped unhurt. at length, when he had coasted the peninsula as far as campeachy, he returned to cuba, which he reached after an absence of several months, having suffered all the extremities of ill, which these pioneers of the ocean were sometimes called to endure, and which none but the most courageous spirit could have survived. as it was, half the original number, consisting of one hundred and ten men, perished, including their brave commander, who died soon after his return. the reports he had brought back of the country, and still more, the specimens of curiously wrought gold, convinced velasquez of the importance of this discovery, and he prepared with all despatch to avail himself of it. he accordingly fitted out a little squadron of four vessels for the newly discovered lands, and placed it under the command of his nephew, juan de grijalva, a man on whose probity, prudence, and attachment to himself he knew he could rely. the fleet left the port of st. jago de cuba, may 1, 1518. it took the course pursued by cordova, but was driven somewhat to the south, the first land that it made being the island of cozumel. from this quarter grijalva soon passed over to the continent and coasted the peninsula, touching at the same places as his predecessor. everywhere he was struck, like him, with the evidences of a higher civilisation, especially in the architecture. he was astonished, also, at the sight of large stone crosses, evidently objects of worship, which he met with in various places. reminded by these circumstances of his own country, he gave the peninsula the name "new spain," a name since appropriated to a much wider extent of territory. wherever grijalva landed, he experienced the same unfriendly reception as cordova, though he suffered less, being better prepared to meet it. in the rio de tabasco or grijalva, as it is often called after him, he held an amicable conference with a chief, who gave him a number of gold plates fashioned into a sort of armour. as he wound round the mexican coast, one of his captains, pedro de alvarado, afterwards famous in the conquest, entered a river, to which he also left his own name. in a neighbouring stream, called the rio de vanderas, or "river of banners," from the ensigns displayed by the natives on its borders, grijalva had the first communication with the mexicans themselves. the cacique who ruled over this province had received notice of the approach of the europeans, and of their extraordinary appearance. he was anxious to collect all the information he could respecting them, and the motives of their visit, that he might transmit them to his master, the aztec emperor. a friendly conference took place between the parties on shore, where grijalva landed with all his force, so as to make a suitable impression on the mind of the barbaric chief. the interview lasted some hours, though, as there was no one on either side to interpret the language of the other, they could communicate only by signs. they, however, interchanged presents, and the spaniards had the satisfaction of receiving, for a few worthless toys and trinkets, a rich treasure of jewels, gold ornaments and vessels, of the most fantastic forms and workmanship. grijalva now thought that in this successful trafficsuccessful beyond his most sanguine expectationshe had accomplished the chief object of his mission. he steadily refused the solicitations of his followers to plant a colony on the spot,a work of no little difficulty in so populous and powerful a country as this appeared to be. to this, indeed, he was inclined, but deemed it contrary to his instructions, which limited him to barter with the natives. he therefore despatched alvarado in one of the caravels back to cuba, with the treasure and such intelligence as he had gleaned of the great empire in the interior, and then pursued his voyage along the coast. he touched at st. juan de ulua, and at the isla de los sacrificios, so called by him from the bloody remains of human victims found in one of the temples. he then held on his course as far as the province of panuco, where finding some difficulty in doubling a boisterous headland, he returned on his track, and after an absence of nearly six months, reached cuba in safety. grijalva has the glory of being the first navigator who set foot on the mexican soil, and opened an intercourse with the aztecs. on reaching the island, he was surprised to learn that another and more formidable armament had been fitted out to follow up his own discoveries, and to find orders at the same time from the governor, couched in no very courteous language, to repair at once to st. jago. he was received by that personage, not merely with coldness, but with reproaches for having neglected so fair an opportunity of establishing a colony in the country he had visited. velasquez was one of those captious spirits, who, when things do not go exactly to their minds, are sure to shift the responsibility of the failure from their own shoulders, where it should lie, to those of others. he had an ungenerous nature, says an old writer, credulous, and easily moved to suspicion. in the present instance it was most unmerited. grijalva, naturally a modest, unassuming person, had acted in obedience to the instructions of his commander, given before sailing; and had done this in opposition to his own judgment and the importunities of his followers. his conduct merited anything but censure from his employer. when alvarado had returned to cuba with his golden freight, and the accounts of the rich empire of mexico which he had gathered from the natives, the heart of the governor swelled with rapture as he saw his dreams of avarice and ambition so likely to be realised. impatient of the long absence of grijalva, he despatched a vessel in search of him under the command of olid, a cavalier who took an important part afterwards in the conquest. finally he resolved to fit out another armament on a sufficient scale to insure the subjugation of the country. he previously solicited authority for this from the hieronymite commission in st. domingo. he then despatched his, chaplain to spain with the royal share of the gold brought from mexico, and a full account of the intelligence gleaned there. he set forth his own manifold services, and solicited from the country full powers to go on with the conquest and colonisation of the newly discovered regions. before receiving an answer, he began his preparations for the armament, and, first of all, endeavoured to find a suitable person to share the expense of it, and to take the command. such a person he found, after some difficulty and delay, in hernando cortes; the man of all others best calculated to achieve this great enterprise,the last man to whom velasquez, could he have foreseen the results, would have confided it. chapter ii [1518] hernando corteshis early lifevisits the new world his residence in cubadifficulties with velasquez armada intrusted to cortes hernando cortes was born at medellin, a town in the south-east corner of estremadura, in 1485. he came of an ancient and respectable family; and historians have gratified the national vanity by tracing it up to the lombard kings, whose descendants crossed the pyrenees, and established themselves in aragon under the gothic monarchy. this royal genealogy was not found out till cortes had acquired a name which would confer distinction on any descent, however noble. his father, martin cortes de monroy, was a captain of infantry, in moderate circumstances, but a man of unblemished honour; and both he and his wife, dona catalina pizarro altamirano, appear to have been much regarded for their excellent qualities. in his infancy cortes is said to have had a feeble constitution, which strengthened as he grew older. at fourteen, he was sent to salamanca, as his father, who conceived great hopes from his quick and showy parts, proposed to educate him for the law, a profession which held out better inducements to the young aspirant than any other. the son, however, did not conform to these views. he showed little fondness for books, and after loitering away two years at college, returned home, to the great chagrin of his parents. yet his time had not been wholly misspent, since he had laid up a little store of latin, and learned to write good prose, and even verses "of some estimation, considering"as an old writer quaintly remarks"cortes as the author." he now passed his days in the idle, unprofitable manner of one who, too wilful to be guided by others, proposes no object to himself. his buoyant spirits were continually breaking out in troublesome frolics and capricious humours, quite at variance with the orderly habits of his father's. household. he showed a particular inclination for the military profession, or rather for the life of adventure to which in those days it was sure to lead. and when, at the age of seventeen, he proposed to enrol himself under the banners of the great captain, his parents, probably thinking a life of hardship and hazard abroad preferable to one of idleness at home, made no objection. the youthful cavalier, however, hesitated whether to seek his fortunes under that victorious chief, or in the new world, where gold as well as glory was to be won, and where the very dangers had a mystery and romance in them inexpressibly fascinating to a youthful fancy. it was in this direction, accordingly, that the hot spirits of that day found a vent, especially from that part of the country where cortes lived, the neighbourhood of seville and cadiz, the focus of nautical enterprise. he decided on this latter course, and an opportunity offered in the splendid armament fitted out under don nicolas de ovando, successor to columbus. an unlucky accident defeated the purpose of cortes. as he was scaling a high wall, one night, which gave him access to the apartment of a lady with whom he was engaged in an intrigue, the stones gave way, and he was thrown down with much violence and buried under the ruins. a severe contusion, though attended with no other serious consequences, confined him to his bed till after the departure of the fleet. two years longer he remained at home, profiting little, as it would seem, from the lesson he had received. at length he availed himself of another opportunity presented by the departure of a small squadron of vessels bound to the indian islands. he was nineteen years of age when he bade adieu to his native shores in 1504,the same year in which spain lost the best and greatest in her long line of princes, isabella the catholic. immediately on landing, cortes repaired to the house of the governor, to whom he had been personally known in spain. ovando was absent on an expedition into the interior, but the young man was kindly received by the secretary, who assured him there would be no doubt of his obtaining a liberal grant of land to settle on. "but i came to get gold," replied cortes, "not to till the soil like a peasant." on the governor's return, cortes consented to give up his roving thoughts, at least for a time, as the other laboured to convince him that he would be more likely to realise his wishes from the slow, indeed, but sure, returns of husbandry, where the soil and the labourers were a free gift to the planter, than by taking his chance in the lottery of adventure, in which there were so many blanks to a prize. he accordingly received a grant of land, with a repartimiento of indians, and was appointed notary of the town or settlement of agua. his graver pursuits, however, did not prevent his indulgence of the amorous propensities which belong to the sunny clime where he was born; and this frequently involved him in affairs of honour, from which, though an expert swordsman, he carried away sears that accompanied him to his grave. he occasionally, moreover, found the means of breaking up the monotony of his way of life by engaging in the military expeditions which, under the command of ovando's lieutenant, diego velasquez, were employed to suppress the insurrections of the natives. in this school the young adventurer first studied the wild tactics of indian warfare; he became familiar with toil and danger, and with those deeds of cruelty which have too often, alas! stained the bright scutcheons of the castilian chivalry in the new world. he was only prevented by illnessa most fortunate one, on this occasion,from embarking in nicuessa's expedition, which furnished a tale of woe, not often matched in the annals of spanish discovery. providence reserved him for higher ends. at length, in 1511, when velasquez undertook the conquest of cuba, cortes willingly abandoned his quiet life for the stirring scenes there opened, and took part in the expedition. he displayed throughout the invasion an activity and courage that won him the approbation of the commander; while his free and cordial manners, his good humour, and lively sallies of wit made him the favourite of the soldiers. "he gave little evidence," says a contemporary, "of the great qualities which he afterwards showed." it is probable these qualities were not known to himself; while to a common observer his careless manners and jocund repartees might well seem incompatible with anything serious or profound; as the real depth of the current is not suspected under the light play and sunny sparkling of the surface. after the reduction of the island, cortes seems to have been held in great favour by velasquez, now appointed its governor. according to las casas, he was made one of his secretaries. he still retained the same fondness for gallantry, for which his handsome person afforded obvious advantages, but which had more than once brought him into trouble in earlier life. among the families who had taken up their residence in cuba was one of the name of xuarez, from granada in old spain. it consisted of a brother, and four sisters remarkable for their beauty. with one of them, named catalina, the susceptible heart of the young soldier became enamoured. how far the intimacy was carried is not quite certain. but it appears he gave his promise to marry her,a promise which, when the time came, and reason, it may be, had got the better of passion, he showed no alacrity in keeping. he resisted, indeed, all remonstrances to this effect from the lady's family, backed by the governor, and somewhat sharpened, no doubt, in the latter by the particular interest he took in one of the fair sisters, who is said not to have repaid it with ingratitude. whether the rebuke of velasquez, or some other cause of disgust, rankled in the breast of cortes, he now became cold toward his patron, and connected himself with a disaffected party tolerably numerous in the island. they were in the habit of meeting at his house and brooding over their causes of discontent, chiefly founded, it would appear, on what they conceived an ill requital of their services in the distribution of lands and offices. it may well be imagined, that it could have been no easy task for the ruler of one of these colonies, however discreet and well intentioned, to satisfy the indefinite cravings of speculators and adventurers, who swarmed, like so many famished harpies, in the track of discovery in the new world. the malcontents determined to lay their grievances before the higher authorities in hispaniola, from whom velasquez had received his commission. the voyage was one of some hazard, as it was to be made in an open boat, across an arm of the sea, eighteen leagues wide; and they fixed on cortes, with whose fearless spirit they were well acquainted, as the fittest man to undertake it. the conspiracy got wind, and came to the governor's ears before the departure of the envoy, whom he instantly caused to be seized, loaded with fetters, and placed in strict confinement. it is even said, he would have hung him, but for the interposition of his friends. cortes did not long remain in durance. he contrived to throw back one of the bolts of his fetters; and, after extricating his limbs, succeeded in forcing open a window with the irons so as to admit of his escape. he was lodged on the second floor of the building, and was able to let himself down to the pavement without injury, and unobserved. he then made the best of his way to a neighbouring church, where he claimed the privilege of sanctuary. velasquez, though incensed at his escape, was afraid to violate the sanctity of the place by employing force. but he stationed a guard in the neighbourhood, with orders to seize the fugitive, if he should forget himself so far as to leave the sanctuary. in a few days this happened. as cortes was carelessly standing without the walls in front of the building, an alguacil suddenly sprung on him from behind and pinioned his arms, while others rushed in and secured him. this man, whose name was juan escudero, was afterwards hung by cortes for some offence in new spain. the unlucky prisoner was again put in irons, and carried on board a vessel to sail the next morning for hispaniola, there to undergo his trial. fortune favoured him once more. he succeeded after much difficulty and no little pain, in passing his feet through the rings which shackled them. he then came cautiously on deck, and, covered by the darkness of the night, stole quietly down the side of the ship into a boat that lay floating below. he pushed off from the vessel with as little noise as possible. as he drew near the shore, the stream became rapid and turbulent. he hesitated to trust his boat to it; and, as he was an excellent swimmer, prepared to breast it himself, and boldly plunged into the water. the current was strong, but the arm of a man struggling for life was stronger; and after buffeting the waves till he was nearly exhausted, he succeeded in gaining a landing; when he sought refuge in the same sanctuary which had protected him before. the facility with which cortes a second time effected his escape, may lead one to doubt the fidelity of his guards; who perhaps looked on him as the victim of persecution, and felt the influence of those popular manners which seem to have gained him friends in every society into which he was thrown. for some reason not explained,perhaps from policy,he now relinquished his objections to the marriage with catalina xuarez. he thus secured the good offices of her family. soon afterwards the governor himself relented, and became reconciled to his unfortunate enemy. a strange story is told in connection with this event. it is said, his proud spirit refused to accept the proffers of reconciliation made him by velasquez; and that one evening, leaving the sanctuary, he presented himself unexpectedly before the latter in his own quarters, when on a military excursion at some distance from the capital. the governor, startled by the sudden apparition of his enemy completely armed before him, with some dismay inquired the meaning of it. cortes answered by insisting on a full explanation of his previous conduct. after some hot discussion the interview terminated amicably; the parties embraced, and, when a messenger arrived to announce the escape of cortes, he found him in the apartments of his excellency, where, having retired to rest, both were actually sleeping in the same bed! the anecdote is repeated without distrust by more than one biographer of cortes. it is not very probable, however, that a haughty irascible man like velasquez should have given such uncommon proofs of condescension and familiarity to one, so far beneath him in station, with whom he had been so recently in deadly feud; nor, on the other hand, that cortes should have had the silly temerity to brave the lion in his den, where a single nod would have sent him to the gibbet,and that too with as little compunction or fear of consequences as would have attended the execution of an indian slave. the reconciliation with the governor, however brought about, was permanent. cortes, though not re-established in the office of secretary, received a liberal repartimiento of indians, and an ample territory in the neighbourhood of st. jago, of which he was soon after made alcalde. he now lived almost wholly on his estate, devoting himself to agriculture, with more zeal than formerly. he stocked his plantation with different kinds of cattle, some of which were first introduced by him into cuba. he wrought, also, the gold mines which fell to his share, and which in this island promised better returns than those in hispaniola. by this course of industry he found himself in a few years master of some two or three thousand castellanos, a large sum for one in his situation. "god, who alone knows at what cost of indian lives it was obtained," exclaims las casas, "will take account of it!" his days glided smoothly away in these tranquil pursuits, and in the society of his beautiful wife, who, however ineligible as a connection, from the inferiority of her condition, appears to have fulfilled all the relations of a faithful and affectionate partner. indeed, he was often heard to say at this time, as the good bishop above quoted remarks, "that he lived as happily with her as if she had been the daughter of a duchess." fortune gave him the means in after life of verifying the truth of his assertion. such was the state of things, when alvarado returned with the tidings of grijalva's discoveries, and the rich fruits of his traffic with the natives. the news spread like wildfire throughout the island; for all saw in it the promise of more important results than any hitherto obtained. the governor, as already noticed, resolved to follow up the track of discovery with a more considerable armament; and he looked around for a proper person to share the expense of it, and to take the command. several hidalgos presented themselves, whom, from want of proper qualifications, or from his distrust of their assuming an independence of their employer, he one after another rejected. there were two persons in st. jago in whom he placed great confidence,amador de lares, the contador, or royal treasurer, and his own secretary, andres de duero. cortes was also in close intimacy with both these persons; and he availed himself of it to prevail on them to recommend him as a suitable person to be intrusted with the expedition. it is said, he reinforced the proposal by promising a liberal share of the proceeds of it. however this may be, the parties urged his selection by the governor with all the eloquence of which they were capable. that officer had had ample experience of the capacity and courage of the candidate. he knew, too, that he had acquired a fortune which would enable him to co-operate materially in fitting out the armament. his popularity in the island would speedily attract followers to his standard. all past animosities had long since been buried in oblivion, and the confidence he was now to repose in him would insure his fidelity and gratitude. he lent a willing ear, therefore, to the recommendation of his counsellors, and, sending for cortes, announced his purpose of making him captaingeneral of the armada. cortes had now attained the object of his wishes,the object for which his soul had panted, ever since he had set foot in the new world. he was no longer to be condemned to a life of mercenary drudgery; nor to be cooped up within the precincts of a petty island; but he was to be placed on a new and independent theatre of action, and a boundless perspective was opened to his view, which might satisfy not merely the wildest cravings of avarice, but, to a bold aspiring spirit like his, the far more important cravings of ambition. he fully appreciated the importance of the late discoveries, and read in them the existence of the great empire in the far west, dark hints of which had floated from time to time in the islands, and of which more certain glimpses had been caught by those who had reached the continent. this was the country intimated to the "great admiral" in his visit to honduras in 1502, and which he might have reached, had he held on a northern course, instead of striking to the south in quest of an imaginary strait. as it was, "he had but opened the gate," to use his own bitter expression, "for others to enter." the time had at length come when they were to enter it; and the young adventurer, whose magic lance was to dissolve the spell which had so long hung over these mysterious regions, now stood ready to assume the enterprise. from this hour the deportment of cortes seemed to undergo a change. his thoughts, instead of evaporating in empty levities or idle flashes of merriment, were wholly concentrated on the great object to which he was devoted. his elastic spirits were shown in cheering and stimulating the companions of his toilsome duties, and he was roused to a generous enthusiasm, of which even those who knew him best had not conceived him capable. he applied at once all the money in his possession to fitting out the armament. he raised more by the mortgage of his estates, and by giving his obligations to some wealthy merchants of the place, who relied for their reimbursement on the success of the expedition; and, when his own credit was exhausted, he availed himself of that of his friends. the funds thus acquired he expended in the purchase of vessels, provisions, and military stores, while he invited recruits by offers of assistance to such as were too poor to provide for themselves, and by the additional promise of a liberal share of the anticipated profits. all was now bustle and excitement in the little town of st. jago. some were busy in refitting the vessels and getting them ready for the voyage; some in providing naval stores; others in converting their own estates into money in order to equip themselves; every one seemed anxious to contribute in some way or other to the success of the expedition. six ships, some of them of a large size, had already been procured; and three hundred recruits enrolled themselves in the course of a few days, eager to seek their fortunes under the banner of this daring and popular chieftain. how far the governor contributed towards the expenses of the outfit is not very clear. if the friends of cortes are to be believed, nearly the whole burden fell on him; since, while he supplied the squadron without remuneration, the governor sold many of his own stores at an exorbitant profit. yet it does not seem probable that velasquez, with such ample means at his command, should have thrown on his deputy the burden of the expedition; nor that the latter, had he done so, could have been in a condition to meet these expenses, amounting, as we are told, to more than twenty thousand gold ducats. still it cannot be denied that an ambitious man like cortes, who was to reap all the glory of the enterprise, would very naturally be less solicitous to count the gains of it, than his employer, who, inactive at home, and having no laurels to win, must look on the pecuniary profits as his only recompense. the question gave rise, some years later, to a furious litigation between the parties, with which it is not necessary at present to embarrass the reader. it is due to velasquez to state that the instructions delivered by him for the conduct of the expedition cannot be charged with a narrow or mercenary spirit. the first object of the voyage was to find grijalva, after which the two commanders were to proceed in company together. reports had been brought back by cordova, on his return from the first visit to yucatan, that six christians were said to be lingering in captivity in the interior of the country. it was supposed they might belong to the party of the unfortunate nicuessa, and orders were given to find them out, if possible, and restore them to liberty. but the great object of the expedition was barter with the natives. in pursuing this, special care was to be taken that they should receive no wrong, but be treated with kindness and humanity. cortes was to bear in mind, above all things, that the object which the spanish monarch had most at heart was the conversion of the indians. he was to impress on them the grandeur and goodness of his royal master, to invite them "to give in their allegiance to him, and to manifest it by regaling him with such comfortable presents of gold, pearls, and precious stones as, by showing their own good will, would secure his favour and protection." he was to make an accurate survey of the coast, sounding its bays and inlets for the benefit of future navigators. he was to acquaint himself with the natural products of the country, with the character of its different races, their institutions and progress in civilisation; and he was to send home minute accounts of all these, together with such articles as he should obtain in his intercourse with them. finally, he was to take the most careful care to omit nothing that might redound to the service of god or his sovereign. such was the general tenor of the instructions given to cortes, and they must be admitted to provide for the interests of science and humanity, as wen as for those which had reference only to a commercial speculation. it may seem strange, considering the discontent shown by velasquez with his former captain, grijalva, for not colonising, that no directions should have been given to that effect here. but he bad not yet received from spain the warrant for investing his agents with such powers; and that which had been obtained from the hieronymite fathers in hispaniola conceded only the right to traffic with the natives. the commission at the same time recognised the authority of cortes as captain general. chapter iii [1518-1519] jealousy of velasquezcortes embarksequipment of his fleet his person and characterrendezvous at havana strength of his armament the importance given to cortes by his new position, and perhaps a somewhat more lofty bearing, gradually gave uneasiness to the naturally suspicious temper of velasquez, who became apprehensive that his officer, when away where he would have the power, might also have the inclination, to throw off his dependence on him altogether. an accidental circumstance at this time heightened these suspicions. a mad fellow, his jester, one of those crack-brained wits,half wit, half fool,who formed in those days a common appendage to every great man's establishment, called out to the governor, as he was taking his usual walk one morning with cortes towards the port, "have a care, master velasquez, or we shall have to go a hunting, some day or other, after this same captain of ours!" "do you hear what the rogue says?" exclaimed the governor to his companion. "do not heed him," said cortes, "he is a saucy knave, and deserves a good whipping." the words sunk deep, however, in the mind of velasquez,as, indeed, true jests are apt to stick. there were not wanting persons about his excellency, who fanned the latent embers of jealousy into a blaze. these worthy gentlemen, some of them kinsmen of velasquez, who probably felt their own deserts somewhat thrown into the shade by the rising fortunes of cortes, reminded the governor of his ancient quarrel with that officer, and of the little probability that affronts so keenly felt at the time could ever be forgotten. by these and similar suggestions, and by misconstructions of the present conduct of cortes, they wrought on the passions of velasquez to such a degree, that he resolved to intrust the expedition to other hands. he communicated his design to his confidential advisers, lares and duero, and these trusty personages reported it without delay to cortes, although, "to a man of half his penetration," says las casas, "the thing would have been readily divined from the governor's altered demeanour." the two functionaries advised their friend to expedite matters as much as possible, and to lose no time in getting his fleet ready for sea, if he would retain the command of it. cortes showed the same prompt decision on this occasion, which more than once afterwards in a similar crisis gave the direction to his destiny. he had not yet got his complement of men, nor of vessels; and was very inadequately provided with supplies of any kind. but he resolved to weigh anchor that very night. he waited on his officers, informed them of his purpose, and probably of the cause of it; and at midnight, when the town was hushed in sleep, they all went quietly on board, and the little squadron dropped down the bay. first, however, cortes had visited the person whose business it was to supply the place with meat, and relieved him of all his stock on hand, notwithstanding his complaint that the city must suffer for it on the morrow, leaving him, at the same time, in payment, a massive gold chain of much value, which he wore round his neck. great was the amazement, of the good citizens of st. jago, when, at dawn, they saw that the fleet, which they knew was so ill prepared for the voyage, had left its moorings and was busily getting under way. the tidings soon came to the ears of his excellency, who, springing from his bed, hastily dressed himself, mounted his horse, and, followed by his retinue, galloped down to the quay. cortes, as soon as he descried their approach, entered an armed boat, and came within speaking distance of the shore. "and is it thus you part from me!" exclaimed velasquez; "a courteous way of taking leave, truly!" "pardon me," answered cortes, "time presses, and there are some things that should be done before they are even thought of. has your excellency any commands?" but the mortified governor had no commands to give; and cortes, politely waving his hand, returned to his vessel, and the little fleet instantly made sail for the port of macaca, about fifteen leagues distant. (november 18, 1518.) velasquez rode back to his house to digest his chagrin as he best might; satisfied, probably, that he had made at least two blunders; one in appointing cortes to the command,the other in attempting to deprive him of it. for, if it be true, that by giving our confidence by halves, we can scarcely hope to make a friend, it is equally true, that, by withdrawing it when given, we shall make an enemy. this clandestine departure of cortes has been severely criticised by some writers, especially by las casas. yet much may be urged in vindication of his conduct. he had been appointed to the command by the voluntary act of the governor, and this had been fully ratified by the authorities of hispaniola. he had at once devoted all his resources to the undertaking, incurring, indeed, a heavy debt in addition. he was now be deprived of his commission, without any misconduct having been alleged or at least proved against him. such an event must overwhelm him in irretrievable ruin, to say nothing of the friends from whom he had so largely borrowed, and the followers who had embarked their fortunes in the expedition on the faith of his commanding it. there are few persons, probably, who under these circumstances would have felt called tamely to acquiesce in the sacrifice of their hopes to a groundless and arbitrary whim. the most to have been expected from cortes was, that he should feel obliged to provide faithfully for the interests of his employer in the conduct of the enterprise. how far he felt the force of this obligation will appear in the sequel. from macaca, where cortes laid in such stores as he could obtain from the royal farms, and which, he said, he considered as "a loan from the king," he proceeded to trinidad; a more considerable town, on the southern coast of cuba. here he landed, and erecting his standard in front of his quarters, made proclamation, with liberal offers to all who would join the expedition. volunteers came in daily, and among them more than a hundred of grijalva's men, just returned from their voyage, and willing to follow up the discovery under an enterprising leader. the fame of cortes attracted, also, a number of cavaliers of family and distinction, some of whom, having accompanied grijalva, brought much information valuable for the present expedition. among these hidalgos may be mentioned pedro de alvarado and his brothers, christoval de olid, alonso de avila, juan velasquez de leon, a near relation of the governor, alonso hernandez de puertocarrero, and gonzalo de sandoval,all of them men who took a most important part in the conquest. their presence was of great moment, as giving consideration to the enterprise; and, when they entered the little camp of the adventurers, the latter turned out to welcome them amidst lively strains of music and joyous salvos of artillery. cortes meanwhile was active in purchasing military stores and provisions. learning that a trading vessel laden with grain and other commodities for the mines was off the coast, he ordered out one of his caravels to seize her and bring her into port. he paid the master in bills for both cargo and ship, and even persuaded this man, named sedeno, who was wealthy, to join his fortunes to the expedition. he also despatched one of his officers, diego de ordaz, in quest of another ship, of which he had tidings, with instructions to seize it in like manner, and to meet him with it off cape st. antonio, the westerly point of the island. by this he effected another object, that of getting rid of ordaz, who was one of the governor's household, and an inconvenient spy on his own actions. while thus occupied, letters from velasquez were received by the commander of trinidad, requiring him to seize the person of cortes, and to detain him, as he had been deposed from the command of the fleet, which was given to another. this functionary communicated his instructions to the principal officers in the expedition, who counselled him not to make the attempt, as it would undoubtedly lead to a commotion among the soldiers, that might end in laying the town in ashes. verdugo thought it prudent to conform to this advice. as cortes was willing to strengthen himself by still further reinforcements, he ordered alvarado with a small body of men to march across the country to the havana, while he himself would sail round the westerly point of the island, and meet him there with the squadron. in this port he again displayed his standard, making the usual proclamation. he caused all the large guns to be brought on shore, and with the small arms and crossbows, to be put in order. as there was abundance of cotton raised in this neighbourhood, he had the jackets of the soldiers thickly quilted with it, for a defence against the indian arrows, from which the troops in the former expeditions had grievously suffered. he distributed his men into eleven companies, each under the command of an experienced officer; and it was observed, that, although several of the cavaliers in the service were the personal friends and even kinsmen of velasquez, he appeared to treat them all with perfect confidence. his principal standard was of black velvet embroidered with gold, and emblazoned with a red cross amidst flames of blue and white, with this motto in latin beneath: "friends, let us follow the cross; and under this sign, if we have faith, we shall conquer." he now assumed more state in his own person and way of living, introducing a greater number of domestics and officers into his household, and placing it on a footing becoming a man of high station. this state he maintained through the rest of his life. cortes at this time was thirty-three, or perhaps thirty-four years of age. in stature he was rather above the middle size. his complexion was pale; and his large dark eye gave an expression of gravity to his countenance, not to have been expected in one of his cheerful temperament. his figure was slender, at least until later life; but his chest was deep, his shoulders broad, his frame muscular and well-proportioned. it presented the union of agility and vigour which qualified him to excel in fencing, horsemanship, and the other generous exercises of chivalry. in his diet he was temperate, careless of what he ate, and drinking little; while to toil and privation he seemed perfectly indifferent. his dress, for he did not disdain the impression produced by such adventitious aids, was such as to set off his handsome person to advantage; neither gaudy nor striking, but rich. he wore few ornaments, and usually the same; but those were of great price. his manners, frank and soldier-like, concealed a most cool and calculating spirit. with his gayest humour there mingled a settled air of resolution, which made those who approached him feel they must obey; and which infused something like awe into the attachment of his most devoted followers. such a combination, in which love was tempered by authority, was the one probably best calculated to inspire devotion in the rough and turbulent spirits among whom his lot was to be cast. the character of cortes seems to have undergone some change with change of circumstances; or to speak more correctly, the new scenes in which he was placed called forth qualities which before lay dormant in his bosom. there are some hardy natures that require the heats of excited action to unfold their energies; like the plants, which, closed to the mild influence of a temperate latitude, come to their full growth, and give forth their fruits, only in the burning atmosphere of the tropics. before the preparations were fully completed at the havana, the commander of the place, don pedro barba, received despatches from velasquez ordering him to apprehend cortes, and to prevent the departure of his vessels; while another epistle from the same source was delivered to cortes himself, requesting him to postpone his voyage till the governor could communicate with him, as he proposed, in person. "never," exclaims las casas, "did i see so little knowledge of affairs shown, as in this letter of diego velasquez,that he should have imagined that a man, who had so recently put such an affront on him, would defer his departure at his bidding!" it was, indeed, hoping to stay the flight of the arrow by a word, after it had left the bow. the captain-general, however, during his short stay had entirely conciliated the good will of barba. and, if that officer had had the inclination, he knew he had not the power, to enforce his principal's orders, in the face of a resolute soldiery, incensed at this ungenerous persecution of their commander, and "all of whom," in the words of the honest chronicler, bernal diaz, who bore part in the expedition, "officers and privates, would have cheerfully laid down their lives for him." barba contented himself, therefore, with explaining to velasquez the impracticability of the attempt, and at the same time endeavoured to traquillise his apprehensions by asserting his own confidence in the fidelity of cortes. to this the latter added a communication of his own, in which he implored his excellency to rely on his devotion to his interests, and concluded with the comfortable assurance that he and the whole fleet, god willing, would sail on the following morning. accordingly, on the 10th of february, 1519, the little squadron got under way, and directed its course towards cape st. antonio, the appointed place of rendezvous. when all were brought together, the vessels were found to be eleven in number; one of them, in which cortes himself went, was of a hundred tons' burden, three others were from seventy to eighty tons, the remainder were caravels and open brigantines. the whole was put under the direction of antonio de alaminos, as chief pilot; a veteran navigator, who, had acted as pilot to columbus in his last voyage, and to cordova and grijalva in the former expeditions to yucatan. landing on the cape and mustering his forces, cortes found they amounted to one hundred and ten mariners, five hundred and fifty-three soldiers, including thirty-two crossbow-men, and thirteen arquebusiers, besides two hundred indians of the island, and a few indian women for menial offices. he was provided with ten heavy guns, four lighter pieces called falconets, and with a good supply of ammunition. he had, besides, sixteen horses. they were not easily procured; for the difficulty of transporting them across the ocean in the flimsy craft of that day made them rare and incredibly dear in the islands. but cortes rightfully estimated the importance of cavalry, however small in number, both for their actual service in the field, and for striking terror into the savages. with so paltry a force did he enter on a conquest which even his stout heart must have shrunk from attempting with such means, had he but foreseen half its real difficulties! before embarking, cortes addressed his soldiers in a short but animated harangue. he told them they were about to enter on a noble enterprise, one that would make their name famous to after ages. he was leading them to countries more vast and opulent than any yet visited by europeans. "i hold out to you a glorious prize," continued the orator, "but it is to be won by incessant toil. great things are achieved only by great exertions and glory was never the reward of sloth. if i have laboured hard and staked my all on this undertaking, it is for the love of that renown, which is the noblest recompense of man. but, if any among you covet riches more, be but true to me, as i will be true to you and to the occasion, and i will make you masters of such as our countrymen have never dreamed of! you are few in number, but strong in resolution; and, if this does not falter, doubt not but that the almighty, who has never deserted the spaniard in his contest with the infidel, will shield you, though encompassed by a cloud of enemies; for your cause is a just cause, and you are to fight under the banner of the cross. go forward then," he concluded, "with alacrity and confidence, and carry to a glorious issue the work so auspiciously begun." the rough eloquence of the general, touching the various chords of ambition, avarice, and religious zeal, sent a thrill through the bosoms of his martial audience; and, receiving it with acclamations, they seemed eager to press forward under a chief who was to lead them not so much to battle, as to triumph. cortes was well satisfied to find his own enthusiasm so largely shared by his followers. mass was then celebrated with the solemnities usual with the spanish navigators, when entering on their voyages of discovery. the fleet was placed under the immediate protection of st. peter, the patron saint of cortes; and, weighing anchor, took its departure on the eighteenth day of february, 1519, for the coast of yucatan. chapter iv [1519] voyage to cozumelconversion of the natives jeronimo de aguilararmy arrives at tabasco great battle with the indianschristianity introduced orders were given for the vessels to keep as near together as possible, and to take the direction of the capitana, or admiral's ship, which carried a beacon-light in the stern during the night. but the weather, which had been favourable, changed soon after their departure, and one of those tempests set in, which at this season are often found in the latitudes of the west indies. it fell with terrible force on the little navy, scattering it far asunder, dismantling some of the ships, and driving them all considerably south of their proposed destination. cortes, who had lingered behind to convoy a disabled vessel, reached the island of cozumel last. on landing, he learned that one of his captains, pedro de alvarado, had availed himself of the short time he had been there to enter the temples, rifle them of their few ornaments, and, by his violent conduct, so far to terrify the simple natives, that they had fled for refuge into the interior of the island. cortes, highly incensed at these rash proceedings, so contrary to the policy he had proposed, could not refrain from severely reprimanding his officer in the presence of the army. he commanded two indian captives, taken by alvarado, to be brought before him, and explained to them the pacific purpose of his visit. this he did through the assistance of his interpreter, melchorejo, a native of yucatan, who had been brought back by grijalva, and who, during his residence in cuba, had picked up some acquaintance with the castilian. he then dismissed them loaded with presents, and with an invitation to their countrymen to return to their homes without fear of further annoyance. this humane policy succeeded. the fugitives, reassured, were not slow in coming back; and an amicable intercourse was established, in which spanish cutlery and trinkets were exchanged for the gold ornaments of the natives; a traffic in which each party congratulated itselfa philosopher might think with equal reasonon outwitting the other. the first object of cortes was, to gather tidings of the unfortunate christians who were reported to be still lingering in captivity on the neighbouring continent. from some traders in the islands he obtained such a confirmation of the report, that he sent diego de ordaz with two brigantines to the opposite coast of yucatan, with instructions to remain there eight days. some indians went as messengers in the vessels, who consented to bear a letter to the captives, informing them of the arrival of their countrymen in cozumel, with a liberal ransom for their release. meanwhile the general proposed to make an excursion to the different parts of the island, that he might give employment to the restless spirits of the soldiers, and ascertain the resources of the country. it was poor and thinly peopled. but everywhere he recognised the vestiges of a higher civilisation than what he had before witnessed in the indian islands. the houses were some of them large, and often built of stone and lime. he was particularly struck with the temples, in which were towers constructed of the same solid materials, and rising several stories in height. in the court of one of these he was amazed by the sight of a cross, of stone and lime, about ten palms high. it was the emblem of the god of rain. its appearance suggested the wildest conjectures, not merely to the unlettered soldiers, but subsequently to the european scholar, who speculated on the character of the races that had introduced there the sacred symbol of christianity. but no such inference, as we shall see hereafter, could be warranted. yet it must be regarded as a curious fact, that the cross should have been venerated as the object of religious worship both in the new world, and in regions of the old, where the light of christianity had never risen. the next object of cortes was to reclaim the natives from their gross idolatry, and to substitute a purer form of worship. in accomplishing this he was prepared to use force, if milder measures should be ineffectual. there was nothing which the spanish government had more earnestly at heart, than the conversion of the indians. it forms the constant burden of their instructions, and gave to the military expeditions in this western hemisphere somewhat of the air of a crusade. the cavalier who embarked in them entered fully into these chivalrous and devotional feelings. no doubt was entertained of the efficacy of conversion, however sudden might be the change, or however violent the means. the sword was a good argument when the tongue failed; and the spread of mahometanism had shown that seeds sown by the hand of violence, far from perishing in the ground, would spring up and bear fruit to after time. if this were so in a bad cause, how much more would it be true in a good one! the spanish cavalier felt he had a high mission to accomplish as a soldier of the cross. however unauthorised or unrighteous the war into which he had entered may seem to us, to him it was a holy war. he was in arms against the infidel. not to care for the soul of his benighted enemy was to put his own in jeopardy. the conversion of a single soul might cover a multitude of sins. it was not for morals that he was concerned, but for the faith. this, though understood in its most literal and limited sense, comprehended the whole scheme of christian morality. whoever died in the faith, however immoral had been his life, might be said to die in the lord. such was the creed of the castilian knight of that day, as imbibed from the preachings of the pulpit, from cloisters and colleges at home, from monks and missionaries abroad,from all save one, las casas, whose devotion, kindled at a purer source, was not, alas! permitted to send forth its radiance far into the thick gloom by which he was encompassed. no one partook more fully of the feelings above described than hernan cortes. he was, in truth, the very mirror of the times in which he lived, reflecting its motley characteristics, its speculative devotion, and practical licence,but with an intensity all his own. he was greatly scandalised at the exhibition of the idolatrous practices of the people of cozumel, though untainted, as it would seem, with human sacrifices. he endeavoured to persuade them to embrace a better faith, through the agency of two ecclesiastics who attended the expedition,the licentiate juan diaz and father bartolome de olmedo. the latter of these godly men afforded the rare examplerare in any ageof the union of fervent zeal with charity, while he beautifully illustrated in his own conduct the precepts which he taught. he remained with the army through the whole expedition, and by his wise and benevolent counsels was often enabled to mitigate the cruelties of the conquerors, and to turn aside the edge of the sword from the unfortunate natives. these two missionaries vainly laboured to persuade the people of cozumel to renounce their abominations, and to allow the indian idols, in which the christians recognised the true lineaments of satan, to be thrown down and demolished. the simple natives, filled with horror at the proposed profanation, exclaimed that these were the gods who sent them the sunshine and the storm, and, should any violence be offered, they would be sure to avenge it by sending their lightnings on the heads of its perpetrators. cortes was probably not much of a polemic. at all events, he preferred on the present occasion action to argument; and thought that the best way to convince the indians of their error was to prove the falsehood of the prediction. he accordingly, without further ceremony, caused the venerated images to be rolled down the stairs of the great temple, amidst the groans and lamentations of the natives. an altar was hastily constructed, an image of the virgin and child placed over it, and mass was performed by father olmedo and his reverend companion for the first time within the walls of a temple in new spain. the patient ministers tried once more to pour the light of the gospel into the benighted understandings of the islanders, and to expound the mysteries of the catholic faith. the indian interpreter must have afforded rather a dubious channel for the transmission of such abstruse doctrines. but they at length found favour with their auditors, who, whether overawed by the bold bearing of the invaders, or convinced of the impotence of deities that could not shield their own shrines from violation, now consented to embrace christianity. while cortes was thus occupied with the triumphs of the cross, he received intelligence that ordaz had returned from yucatan without tidings of the spanish captives. though much chagrined, the general did not choose to postpone longer his departure from cozumel. the fleet had been well stored with provisions by the friendly inhabitants, and, embarking his troops, cortes, in the beginning of march, took leave of its hospitable shores. the squadron had not proceeded far, however, before a leak in one of the vessels compelled them to return to the same port. the detention was attended with important consequences; so much so, indeed, that a writer of the time discerns in it "a great mystery and a miracle." soon after landing, a canoe with several indians was seen making its way from the neighbouring shores of yucatan. on reaching the island, one of the men inquired, in broken castilian, "if he were among christians"; and being answered in the affirmative, threw himself on his knees and returned thanks to heaven for his delivery. he was one of the unfortunate captives for whose fate so much interest had been felt. his name was jeronimo de aguilar, a native of ecija, in old spain, where he had been regularly educated for the church. he had been established with the colony at darien, and on a voyage from that place to hispaniola, eight years previous, was wrecked near the coast of yucatan. he escaped with several of his companions in the ship's boat, where some perished from hunger and exposure, while others were sacrificed, on their reaching land, by the cannibal natives of the peninsula. aguilar was preserved from the same dismal fate by escaping into the interior, where he fell into the hands of a powerful cacique, who, though he spared his life, treated him at first with great rigour. the patience of the captive, however, and his singular humility, touched the better feelings of the chieftain, who would have persuaded aguilar to take a wife among his people, but the ecclesiastic steadily refused, in obedience to his vows. this admirable constancy excited the distrust of the cacique, who put his virtue to a severe test by various temptations, and much of the same sort as those with which the devil is said to have assailed st. anthony. from all these fiery trials, however, like his ghostly predecessor, he came out unscorched. continence is too rare and difficult a virtue with barbarians not to challenge their veneration, and the practice of it has made the reputation of more than one saint in the old as well as the new world. aguilar was now intrusted with the care of his master's household and his numerous wives. he was a man of discretion, as well as virtue; and his counsels were found so salutary that he was consulted on all important matters. in short, aguilar became a great man among the indians. it was with much regret, therefore, that his master received the proposals for his return to his countrymen, to which nothing but the rich treasure of glass beads, hawk bells, and other jewels of like value, sent for his ransom, would have induced him to consent. when aguilar reached the coast, there had been so much delay that the brigantines had sailed, and it was owing to the fortunate return of the fleet to cozumel that he was enabled to join it. on appearing before cortes, the poor man saluted him in the indian style, by touching the earth with his hand, and carrying it to his head. the commander, raising him up, affectionately embraced him, covering him at the same time with his own cloak, as aguilar was simply clad in the habiliments of the country, somewhat too scanty for a european eye. it was long, indeed, before the tastes which he had acquired in the freedom of the forest could be reconciled to the constraints either of dress or manners imposed by the artificial forms of civilisation. aguilar's long residence in the country had familiarised him with the mayan dialects of yucatan, and, as he gradually revived his castilian, he became of essential importance as an interpreter. cortes saw the advantage of this from the first, but he could not fully estimate all the consequences that were to flow from it. the repairs of the vessels being at length completed, the spanish commander once more took leave of the friendly natives of cozumel, and set sail on the 4th of march. keeping as near as possible to the coast of yucatan, he doubled cape catoche, and with flowing sheets swept down the broad bay of campeachy. he passed potonchan, where cordova had experienced a rough reception from the natives; and soon after reached the mouth of the rio de tabasco, or grijalva, in which that navigator had carried on so lucrative a traffic. though mindful of the great object of his voyage,the visit to the aztec territories,he was desirous of acquainting himself with the resources of this country, and determined to ascend the river and visit the great town on its borders. the water was so shallow, from the accumulation of sand at the mouth of the stream, that the general was obliged to leave the ships at anchor, and to embark in the boats with a part only of his forces. the banks were thickly studded with mangrove trees, that, with their roots shooting up and interlacing one another, formed a kind of impervious screen or net-work, behind which the dark forms of the natives were seen glancing to and fro with the most menacing looks and gestures. cortes, much surprised at these unfriendly demonstrations, so unlike what he had reason to expect, moved cautiously up the stream. when he had reached an open place, where a large number of indians were assembled, he asked, through his interpreter, leave to land, explaining at the same time his amicable intentions. but the indians, brandishing their weapons, answered only with gestures of angry defiance. though much chagrined, cortes thought it best not to urge the matter further that evening, but withdrew to a neighbouring island, where he disembarked his troops, resolved to effect a landing on the following morning. when day broke the spaniards saw the opposite banks lined with a much more numerous array than on the preceding evening, while the canoes along the shore were filled with bands of armed warriors. cortes now made his preparations for the attack. he first landed a detachment of a hundred men under alonso de avila, at a point somewhat lower down the stream, sheltered by a thick grove of palms, from which a road, as he knew, led to the town of tabasco, giving orders to his officer to march at once on the place, while he himself advanced to assault it in front. then embarking the remainder of his troops, cortes crossed the river in face of the enemy; but, before commencing hostilities, that he might "act with entire regard to justice, and in obedience to the instructions of the royal council," he first caused proclamation to be made through the interpreter, that he desired only a free passage for his men; and that he proposed to revive the friendly relations which had formerly subsisted between his countrymen and the natives. he assured them that if blood were spilt, the sin would he on their heads, and that resistance would be useless, since he was resolved at all hazards to take up his quarters that night in the town of tabasco. this proclamation, delivered in lofty tone, and duly recorded by the notary, was answered by the indianswho might possibly have comprehended one word in ten of itwith shouts of defiance and a shower of arrows. cortes, having now complied with all the requisitions of a loyal cavalier, and shifted the responsibility from his own shoulders to those of the royal council, brought his boats alongside of the indian canoes. they grappled fiercely together and both parties were soon in the water, which rose above the girdle. the struggle was not long, though desperate. the superior strength of the europeans prevailed, and they forced the enemy back to land. here, however, they were supported by their countrymen, who showered down darts, arrows, and blazing billets of wood on the heads of the invaders. the banks were soft and slippery, and it was with difficulty the soldiers made good their footing. cortes lost a sandal in the mud, but continued to fight barefoot, with great exposure of his person, as the indians, who soon singled out the leader, called to one another, "strike at the chief!" at length the spaniards gained the bank, and were able to come into something like order, when they opened a brisk fire from their arquebuses and crossbows. the enemy, astounded by the roar and flash of the firearms, of which they had had no experience, fell back, and retreated behind a breastwork of timber thrown across the way. the spaniards, hot in the pursuit, soon carried these rude defences, and drove the tabascans before them towards the town, where they again took shelter behind their palisades. meanwhile avila had arrived from the opposite quarter, and the natives taken by surprise made no further attempt at resistance, but abandoned the place to the christians. they had previously removed their families and effects. some provisions fell into the hands of the victors, but little gold, "a circumstance," says las casas, "which gave them no particular satisfaction." it was a very populous place. the houses were mostly of mud; the better sort of stone and lime; affording proofs in the inhabitants of a superior refinement to that found in the islands, as their stout resistance had given evidence of superior valour. cortes, having thus made himself master of the town, took formal possession of it for the crown of castile. he gave three cuts with his sword on a large ceiba tree, which grew in the place, and proclaimed aloud, that he took possession of the city in the name and on behalf of the catholic sovereigns, and would maintain and defend the same with sword and buckler against all who should gainsay it. the same vaunting declaration was also made by the soldiers, and the whole was duly recorded and attested by the notary. this was the usual simple but chivalric form with which the spanish cavaliers asserted the royal title to the conquered territories in the new world. it was a good title, doubtless, against the claims of any other european potentate. the general took up his quarters that night in the courtyard of the principal temple. he posted his sentinels, and took all the precautions practised in wars with a civilised foe. indeed, there was reason for them. a suspicious silence seemed to reign through the place and its neighbourhood; and tidings were brought that the interpreter, melchorejo, had fled, leaving his spanish dress hanging on a tree. cortes was disquieted by the desertion of this man who would not only inform his countrymen of the small number of the spaniards, but dissipate any illusions that might be entertained of their superior natures. on the following morning, as no traces of the enemy were visible, cortes ordered out a detachment under alvarado, and another under francisco de lugo, to reconnoitre. the latter officer had not advanced a league before he learned the position of the indians, by their attacking him in such force that he was fain to take shelter in a large stone building, where he was closely besieged. fortunately the loud yells of the assailants, like most barbarous nations, seeking to strike terror by their ferocious cries, reached the ears of alvarado and his men, who, speedily advancing to the relief of their comrades, enabled them to force a passage through the enemy. both parties retreated closely pursued, on the town, when cortes, marching out to their support, compelled the tabascans to retire. a few prisoners were taken in this skirmish. by them cortes found his worst apprehensions verified. the country was everywhere in arms. a force consisting of many thousands had assembled from the neighbouring provinces, and a general assault was resolved on for the next day. to the general's inquiries why he had been received in so different a manner from his predecessor, grijalva, they answered, that "the conduct of the tabascans then had given great offence to the other indian tribes, who taxed them with treachery and cowardice; so that they had promised, on any return of the white men, to resist them in the same manner as their neighbours had done." cortes might now well regret that he had allowed himself to deviate from the direct object of his enterprise, and to become intangled in a doubtful war which could lead to no profitable result. but it was too late to repent. he had taken the step, and had no alternative but to go forward. to retreat would dishearten his own men at the outset, impair their confidence in him as their leader, and confirm the arrogance of his foes, the tidings of whose success might precede him on his voyage, and prepare the way for greater mortifications and defeats. he did not hesitate as to the course he was to pursue; but, calling his officers together, announced his intention to give battle the following morning. he sent back to the vessels such as were disabled by their wounds, and ordered the remainder of the forces to join the camp. six of the heavy guns were also taken from the ships, together with all the horses. the animals were stiff and torpid from long confinement on board; but a few hours' exercise restored them to their strength and usual spirit. he gave the command of the artilleryif it may be dignified with the nameto a soldier named mesa, who had acquired some experience as an engineer in the italian wars. the infantry he put under the orders of diego de ordaz, and took charge of the cavalry himself. it consisted of some of the most valiant gentlemen of his little band, among whom may be mentioned alvarado, velasquez de leon, avila, puertocarrero, olid, montejo. having thus made all the necessary arrangements, and settled his plan of battle, he retired to rest,but not to slumber. his feverish mind, as may well be imagined, was filled with anxiety for the morrow, which might decide the fate of his expedition; and as was his wont on such occasions, he was frequently observed, during the night, going the rounds, and visiting the sentinels, to see that no one slept upon his post. at the first glimmering of light he mustered his army, and declared his purpose not to abide, cooped up in the town, the assault of the enemy, but to march at once against him. for he well knew that the spirits rise with action, and that the attacking party gathers a confidence from the very movement, which is not felt by the one who is passively, perhaps anxiously, awaiting the assault. the indians were understood to be encamped on a level ground a few miles distant from the city, called the plain of ceutla. the general commanded that ordaz should march with the foot, including the artillery, directly across the country, and attack them in front, while he himself would fetch a circuit with the horse, and turn their flank when thus engaged, or fall upon their rear. these dispositions being completed, the little army heard mass and then sallied forth from the wooden walls of tabasco. it was lady-day, the 25th of march,long memorable in the annals of new spain. the district around the town was chequered with patches of maize, and, on the lower level, with plantations of cacao,supplying the beverage, and perhaps the coin of the country, as in mexico. these plantations, requiring constant irrigation, were fed by numerous canals and reservoirs of water, so that the country could not be traversed without great toil and difficulty. it was, however, intersected by a narrow path or causeway, over which the cannon could be dragged. the troops advanced more than a league on their laborious march, without descrying the enemy. the weather was sultry, but few of them were embarrassed by the heavy mail worn by the european cavaliers at that period. their cotton jackets, thickly quilted, afforded a tolerable protection against the arrows of the indian, and allowed room for the freedom and activity of movement essential to a life of rambling adventure in the wilderness. at length they came in sight of the broad plains of ceutla, and beheld the dusky lines of the enemy stretching, as far as the eye could reach, along the edge of the horizon. the indians had shown some sagacity in the choice of their position; and, as the weary spaniards came slowly on, floundering through the morass, the tabascans set up their hideous battle-cries, and discharged volleys of arrows, stones, and other missiles, which rattled like hail on the shields and helmets of the assailants. many were severely wounded before they could gain the firm ground, where they soon cleared a space for themselves, and opened a heavy fire of artillery and musketry on the dense columns of the enemy, which presented a fatal mark for the balls. numbers were swept down at every discharge; but the bold barbarians, far from being dismayed, threw up dust and leaves to hide their losses, and, sounding their war instruments, shot off fresh flights of arrows in return. they even pressed closer on the spaniards, and, when driven off by a vigorous charge, soon turned again, and, rolling back like the waves of the ocean, seemed ready to overwhelm the little band by weight of numbers. thus cramped, the latter had scarcely room to perform their necessary evolutions, or even to work their guns with effect. the engagement had now lasted more than an hour, and the spaniards, sorely pressed, looked with great anxiety for the arrival of the horse,which some unaccountable impediments must have detained,to relieve them from their perilous position. at this crisis, the furthest columns of the indian army were seen to be agitated and thrown into a disorder that rapidly spread through the whole mass. it was not long before the ears of the christians were saluted with the cheering war-cry of "san jago and san pedro," and they beheld the bright helmets and swords of the castilian chivalry flashing back the rays of the morning sun, as they dashed through the ranks of the enemy, striking to the right and left, and scattering dismay around them. the eye of faith, indeed, could discern the patron saint of spain himself, mounted on his grey war-horse, heading the rescue and trampling over the bodies of the fallen infidels! the approach of cortes had been greatly retarded by the broken nature of the ground. when he came up, the indians were so hotly engaged, that he was upon them before they observed his approach. he ordered his men to direct their lances at the faces of their opponents, who, terrified at the monstrous apparition,for they supposed the rider and the horse, which they had never before seen, to be one and the same,were seized with a panic. ordaz availed himself of it to command a general charge along the line, and the indians, many of them throwing away their arms, fled without attempting further resistance. cortes was too content with the victory, to care to follow it up by dipping his sword in the blood of the fugitives. he drew off his men to a copse of palms which skirted the place, and, under their broad canopy, the soldiers offered up thanksgivings to the almighty for the victory vouchsafed them. the field of battle was made the site of a town, called in honour of the day on which the action took place, santa maria de la vitoria, long afterwards the capital of the province. the number of those who fought or fell in the engagement is altogether doubtful. nothing, indeed, is more uncertain than numerical estimates of barbarians. and they gain nothing in probability, when they come, as in the present instance, from the reports of their enemies. most accounts, however, agree that the indian force consisted of five squadrons of eight thousand men each. there is more discrepancy as to the number of slain, varying from one to thirty thousand! in this monstrous discordance, the common disposition to exaggerate may lead us to look for truth in the neighbourhood of the smallest number. the loss of the christians was inconsiderable; not exceedingif we receive their own reports, probably, from the same causes, much diminishing the truthtwo killed, and less than a hundred wounded! we may readily comprehend the feelings of the conquerors, when they declared, that "heaven must have fought on their side, since their own strength could never have prevailed against such a multitude of enemies!" several prisoners were taken in the battle, among them two chiefs. cortes gave them their liberty, and sent a message by them to their countrymen, "that he would overlook the past, if they would come in at once, and tender their submission. otherwise he would ride over the land, and put every living thing in it, man, woman, and child, to the sword!" with this formidable menace ringing in their ears, the envoys departed. but the tabascans had no relish for further hostilities. a body of inferior chiefs appeared the next day, clad in dark dresses of cotton, intimating their abject condition, and implored leave to bury their dead. it was granted by the general, with many assurances of his friendly disposition; but at the same time he told them, he expected their principal caciques, as he would treat with none other. these soon presented themselves, attended by a numerous train of vassals, who followed with timid curiosity to the christian camp. among their propitiatory gifts were twenty female slaves, which, from the character of one of them, proved of infinitely more consequence than was anticipated by either spaniards or tabascans. confidence was soon restored; and was succeeded by a friendly intercourse, and the interchange of spanish toys for the rude commodities of the country, articles of food, cotton, and a few gold ornaments of little value. when asked where the precious metal was procured, they pointed to the west, and answered "culhua," "mexico." the spaniards saw this was no place for them to traffic, or to tarry in.yet here, they were not many leagues distant from a potent and opulent city, or what once had been so, the ancient palenque. but its glory may have even then passed away, and its name have been forgotten by the surrounding nations. before his departure the spanish commander did not omit to provide for one great object of his expedition, the conversion of the indians. he first represented to the caciques, that he had been sent thither by a powerful monarch on the other side of the water, to whom he had now a right to claim their allegiance. he then caused the reverend fathers olmedo and diaz to enlighten their minds, as far as possible, in regard to the great truths of revelation, urging them to receive these in place of their own heathenish abominations. the tabascans, whose perceptions were no doubt materially quickened by the discipline they had undergone, made but a faint resistance to either proposal. the next day was palm sunday, and the general resolved to celebrate their conversion by one of those pompous ceremonials of the church, which should make a lasting impression on their minds. a solemn procession was formed of the whole army with the ecclesiastics at their head, each soldier bearing a palm branch in his hand. the concourse was swelled by thousands of indians of both sexes, who followed in curious astonishment at the spectacle. the long files bent their way through the flowery savannas that bordered the settlement, to the principal temple, where an altar was raised, and the image of the presiding deity was deposed to make room for that of the virgin with the infant saviour. mass was celebrated by father olmedo, and the soldiers who were capable joined in the solemn chant. the natives listened in profound silence, and if we may believe the chronicler of the event who witnessed it, were melted into tears; while their hearts were penetrated with reverential awe for the god of those terrible beings who seemed to wield in their own hands the thunder and the lightning. these solemnities concluded, cortes prepared to return to his ships, well satisfied with the impression made on the new converts, and with the conquests he had thus achieved for castile and christianity. the soldiers, taking leave of their indian friends, entered the boats with the palm branches in their hands, and descending the river re-embarked on board their vessels, which rode at anchor at its mouth. a favourable breeze was blowing, and the little navy, opening its sails to receive it, was soon on its way again to the golden shores of mexico. chapter v [1519] voyage along the coastdona marina spaniards land in mexicointerview with the aztecs the fleet held its course so near the shore, that the inhabitants could be seen on it; and, as it swept along the winding borders of the gulf, the soldiers, who had been on the former expedition with grijalva, pointed out to their companions the memorable places on the coast. here was the rio de alvarado, named after the gallant adventurer, who was present, also, in this expedition; there the rio de vanderas, in which grijalva had carried on so lucrative a commerce with the mexicans; and there the isla de los sacrificios, where the spaniards first saw the vestiges of human sacrifice on the coast. the fleet had now arrived off st. juan de ulua, the island so named by grijalva. the weather was temperate and serene, and crowds of natives were gathered on the shore of the main land, gazing at the strange phenomenon, as the vessels glided along under easy sail on the smooth bosom of the waters. it was the evening of thursday in passion week. the air came pleasantly off the shore, and cortes, liking the spot, thought he might safely anchor under the lee of the island, which would shelter him from the nortes that sweep over these seas with fatal violence in the winter, sometimes even late in the spring. the ships had not been long at anchor, when a light pirogue, filled with natives, shot off from the neighbouring continent, and steered for the general's vessel, distinguished by the royal ensign of castile floating from the mast. the indians came on board with a frank confidence, inspired by the accounts of the spaniards spread by their countrymen who had traded with grijalva. they brought presents of fruits and flowers and little ornaments of gold, which they gladly exchanged for the usual trinkets. cortes was baffled in his attempts to hold a conversation with his visitors by means of the interpreter, aguilar, who was ignorant of the language; the mayan dialects, with which he was conversant, bearing too little resemblance to the aztec. the natives supplied the deficiency, as far as possible, by the uncommon vivacity and significance of their gestures,the hieroglyphics of speech,but the spanish commander saw with chagrin the embarrassments he must encounter in future for want of a more perfect medium of communication. in this dilemma, he was informed that one of the female slaves given to him by the tabascan chiefs was a native mexican, and understood the language. her namethat given to her by the spaniardswas marina; and, as she was to exercise a most important influence on their fortunes, it is necessary to acquaint the reader with something of her character and history. she was born at painalla, in the province of coatzacualco, on the south-eastern borders of the mexican empire. her father, a rich and powerful cacique, died when she was very young. her mother married again, and, having a son, she conceived the infamous idea of securing to this offspring of her second union marina's rightful inheritance. she accordingly feigned that the latter was dead, but secretly delivered her into the hands of some itinerant traders of xicallanco. she availed herself, at the same time, of the death of a child of one of her slaves, to substitute the corpse for that of her own daughter, and celebrated the obsequies with mock solemnity. these particulars are related by the honest old soldier, bernal diaz, who knew the mother, and witnessed the generous treatment of her afterwards by marina. by the merchants the indian maiden was again sold to the cacique of tabasco, who delivered her, as we have seen, to the spaniards. from the place of her birth she was well acquainted with the mexican tongue, which, indeed, she is said to have spoken with great elegance. her residence in tabasco familiarised her with the dialects of that country, so that she could carry on a conversation with aguilar, which he in turn rendered into the castilian. thus a certain, though somewhat circuitous channel was opened to cortes for communicating with the aztecs; a circumstance of the last importance to the success of his enterprise. it was not very long, however, before marina, who had a lively genius, made herself so far mistress of the castilian as to supersede the necessity of any other linguist. she learned it the more readily, as it was to her the language of love: cortes, who appreciated the value of her services from the first, made her his interpreter, then his secretary, and, won by her charms, his mistress. with the aid of his two intelligent interpreters, cortes entered into conversation with his indian visitors. he learned that they were mexicans, or rather subjects of the great mexican empire, of which their own province formed one of the comparatively recent conquests. the country was ruled by a powerful monarch, called moctheuzoma, or by europeans more commonly montezuma, who dwelt on the mountain plains of the interior, nearly seventy leagues from the coast; their own province was governed by one of his nobles, named teuhtlile, whose residence was eight leagues distant. cortes acquainted them in turn with his own friendly views in visiting their country, and with his desire of an interview with the aztec governor. he then dismissed them loaded with presents, having first ascertained that there was abundance of gold in the interior, like the specimens they had brought. cortes, pleased with the manners of the people, and the goodly reports of the land, resolved to take up his quarters here for the present. the next morning, april 21, being good friday, he landed with all his force, on the very spot where now stands the modern city of vera cruz. little did the conqueror imagine that the desolate beach, on which he first planted his foot, was one day to be covered by a flourishing city, the great mart of european and oriental trade, the commercial capital of new spain. it was a wide and level plain, except where the sand had been drifted into hillocks by the perpetual blowing of the norte. on these sand-hills he mounted his little battery of guns, so as to give him the command of the country. he then employed the troops in cutting down small trees and bushes which grew near, in order to provide a shelter from the weather. in this he was aided by the people of the country, sent, as it appeared, by the governor of the district, to assist the spaniards. with their help stakes were firmly set in the earth, and covered with boughs, and with mats and cotton carpets, which the friendly natives brought with them. in this way they secured, in a couple of days, a good defence against the scorching rays of the sun, which beat with intolerable fierceness on the sands. the place was surrounded by stagnant marshes, the exhalations from which, quickened by the heat into the pestilent malaria, have occasioned in later times wider mortality to europeans than all the hurricanes on the coast. the bilious disorders, now the terrible scourge of the tierra caliente, were little known before the conquest. the seeds of the poison seem to have been scattered by the hand of civilisation; for it is only necessary to settle a town, and draw together a busy european population, in order to call out the malignity of the venom which had before lurked in the atmosphere. while these arrangements were in progress, the natives flocked in from the adjacent district, which was tolerably populous in the interior, drawn by a natural curiosity to see the wonderful strangers. they brought with them fruits, vegetables, flowers in abundance, game, and many dishes cooked after the fashion of the country, with little articles of gold and other ornaments. they gave away some as presents, and bartered others for the wares of the spaniards; so that the camp, crowded with a motley throng of every age and sex, wore the appearance of a fair. from some of the visitors cortes learned the intention of the governor to wait on him the following day. this was easter. teuhtlile arrived, as he had announced, before noon. he was attended by a numerous train, and was met by cortes, who conducted him with much ceremony to his tent, where his principal officers were assembled. the aztec chief returned their salutations with polite, though formal courtesy. mass was first said by father olmedo, and the service was listened to by teuhtlile and his attendants with decent reverence. a collation was afterwards served, at which the general entertained his guest with spanish wines and confections. the interpreters were then introduced, and a conversation commenced between the parties. the first inquiries of teuhtlile were respecting the country of the strangers, and the purport of their visit. cortes told him, that "he was the subject of a potent monarch beyond the seas, who ruled over an immense empire, and had kings and princes for his vassals! that, acquainted with the greatness of the mexican emperor, his master had desired to enter into a communication with him, and had sent him as his envoy to wait on montezuma with a present in token of his good will, and a message which he must deliver in person." he concluded by inquiring of teuhtlile when he could be admitted to his sovereign's presence. to this the aztec noble somewhat haughtily replied, "how is it, that you have been here only two days, and demand to see the emperor?" he then added, with more courtesy, that "he was surprised to learn there was another monarch as powerful as montezuma; but that if it were so, he had no doubt his master would be happy to communicate with him. he would send his couriers with the royal gift brought by the spanish commander, and, so soon as he had learned montezuma's will, would communicate it." teuhtlile then commanded his slaves to bring forward the present intended for the spanish general. it consisted of ten loads of fine cotton, several mantles of that curious feather-work whose rich and delicate dyes might vie with the most beautiful painting, and a wicker basket filled with ornaments of wrought gold, all calculated to inspire the spaniards with high ideas of the wealth and mechanical ingenuity of the mexicans. cortes received these presents with suitable acknowledgments, and ordered his own attendants to lay before the chief the articles designed for montezuma. these were an arm-chair richly carved and painted, a crimson cap of cloth, having a gold medal emblazoned with st. george and the dragon, and a quantity of collars, bracelets, and other ornaments of cut glass, which, in a country where glass was not to be had, might claim to have the value of real gems, and no doubt passed for such with the inexperienced mexicans. teuhtlile observed a soldier in the camp with a shining gilt helmet on his head, which he said reminded him of one worn by the god quetzalcoatl in mexico; and he showed a desire that montezuma should see it. the coming of the spaniards, as the reader will soon see, was associated with some traditions of this same deity. cortes expressed his willingness that the casque should be sent to the emperor, intimating a hope that it would be returned filled with the gold dust of the country, that he might be able to compare its quality with that in his own! he further told the governor, as we are informed by his chaplain, "that the spaniards were troubled with a disease of the heart, for which gold was a specific remedy!" "in short," says las casas, "he contrived to make his want of gold very clear to the governor." while these things were passing, cortes observed one of teuhtlile's attendants busy with a pencil, apparently delineating some object. on looking at his work, he found that it was a sketch on canvas of the spaniards, their costumes, arms, and, in short, different objects of interest, giving to each its appropriate form and colour. this was the celebrated picture-writing of the aztecs, and, as teuhtlile informed him, this man was employed in portraying the various objects for the eye of montezuma, who would thus gather a more vivid notion of their appearance than from any description by words. cortes was pleased with the idea; and, as he knew how much the effect would be heightened by converting still life into action, he ordered out the cavalry on the beach, the wet sands of which afforded a firm footing for the horses. the bold and rapid movements of the troops, as they went through their military exercises; the apparent ease with which they managed the fiery animals on which they were mounted; the glancing of their weapons, and the shrill cry of the trumpet, all filled the spectators with astonishment; but when they heard the thunders of the cannon, which cortes ordered to be fired at the same time, and witnessed the volumes of smoke and flame issuing from these terrible engines, and the rushing sound of the balls, as they dashed through the trees of the neighbouring forest, shivering their branches into fragments, they were filled with consternation, from which the aztec chief himself was not wholly free. nothing of all this was lost on the painters, who faithfully recorded, after their fashion, every particular; not omitting the ships,"the water-houses," as they called them, of the strangerswhich, with their dark hulls and snow-white sails reflected from the water, were swinging lazily at anchor on the calm bosom of the bay. all was depicted with a fidelity, that excited in their turn the admiration of the spaniards, who, doubtless unprepared for this exhibition of skill, greatly overestimated the merits of the execution. these various matters completed, teuhtlile with his attendants withdrew from the spanish quarters, with the same ceremony with which he had entered them; leaving orders that his people should supply the troops with provisions and other articles requisite for their accommodation, till further instructions from the capital. chapter vi [1519] account of montezumastate of his empirestrange prognostics embassy and presentsspanish encampment we must now take leave of the spanish camp in the tierra caliente, and transport ourselves to the distant capital of mexico, where no little sensation was excited by the arrival of the wonderful strangers on the coast. the aztec throne was filled at that time by montezuma the second, nephew of the last, and grandson of a preceding monarch. he had been elected to the regal dignity in 1502, in preference to his brothers, for his superior qualifications, both as a soldier and a priest,a combination of offices sometimes found in the mexican candidates, as it was, more frequently, in the egyptian. in early youth he had taken an active part in the wars of the empire, though of late he had devoted himself more exclusively to the services of the temple; and he was scrupulous in his attentions to all the burdensome ceremonial of the aztec worship. he maintained a grave and reserved demeanour, speaking little and with prudent deliberation. his deportment was well calculated to inspire ideas of superior sanctity. montezuma displayed all the energy and enterprise in the commencement of his reign, which had been anticipated from him. his first expedition against a rebel province in the neighbourhood was crowned with success, and he led back in triumph a throng of captives for the bloody sacrifice that was to grace his coronation. this was celebrated with uncommon pomp. games and religious ceremonies continued for several days, and among the spectators who flocked from distant quarters were some noble tlascalans, the hereditary enemies of mexico. they were in disguise, hoping thus to elude detection. they were recognised, however, and reported to the monarch. but he only availed himself of the information to provide them with honourable entertainment, and a good place for witnessing the games. this was a magnanimous act, considering the long cherished hostility between the nations. in his first years, montezuma was constantly engaged in war, and frequently led his armies in person. the aztec banners were seen in the furthest provinces of the gulf of mexico, and the distant regions of nicaragua and honduras. the expeditions were generally successful; and the limits of the empire were more widely extended that at any preceding period. meanwhile the monarch was not inattentive to the interior concerns of the kingdom. he made some important changes in the courts of justice; and carefully watched over the execution of the laws, which he enforced with stern severity. he was in the habit of patrolling the streets of his capital in disguise, to make himself personally acquainted with the abuses in it. and with more questionable policy, it is said, he would sometimes try the integrity of his judges by tempting them with large bribes to swerve from their duty, and then call the delinquent to strict account for yielding to the temptation. he liberally recompensed all who served him. he showed a similar munificent spirit in his public works, constructing and embellishing the temples, bringing water into the capital by a new channel, and establishing a hospital, or retreat for invalid soldiers, in the city of colhuacan. these acts, so worthy of a great prince, were counterbalanced by others of an opposite complexion. the humility, displayed so ostentatiously before his elevation, gave way to an intolerable arrogance. in his pleasure-houses, domestic establishment, and way of living, he assumed a pomp unknown to his predecessors. he secluded himself from public observation, or, when he went abroad, exacted the most slavish homage; while in the palace he would be served only, even in the most menial offices, by persons of rank. he, further, dismissed several plebeians, chiefly poor soldiers of merit, from the places they had occupied near the person of his predecessor, considering their attendance a dishonour to royalty. it was in vain that his oldest and sagest counsellors remonstrated on a conduct so impolitic. while he thus disgusted his subjects by his haughty deportment, he alienated their affections by the imposition of grievous taxes. these were demanded by the lavish expenditure of his court. they fell with peculiar heaviness on the conquered cities. this oppression led to frequent insurrection and resistance; and the latter years of his reign present a scene of unintermitting hostility, in which the forces of one half of the empire were employed in suppressing the commotions of the other. unfortunately there was no principle of amalgamation by which the new acquisitions could be incorporated into the ancient monarchy, as parts of one whole. their interests, as well as sympathies, were different. thus the more widely the aztec empire was extended, the weaker it became, resembling some vast and ill-proportioned edifice, whose disjointed materials having no principle of cohesion, and tottering under their own weight, seem ready to fall before the first blast of the tempest. in 1516, died the tezcucan king, nezahualpilli, in whom montezuma lost his most sagacious counsellor. the succession was contested by his two sons, cacama and ixtlilxochitl. the former was supported by montezuma. the latter, the younger of the princes, a bold, aspiring youth, appealing to the patriotic sentiment of his nation, would have persuaded them that his brother was too much in the mexican interests to be true to his own country. a civil war ensued, and ended by a compromise, by which one half of the kingdom, with the capital, remained to cacama, and the northern portion to his ambitious rival. ixtlilxochitl became from that time the mortal foe of montezuma. a more formidable enemy still was the little republic of tlascala, lying midway between the mexican valley and the coast. it had maintained its independence for more than two centuries against the allied forces of the empire. its resources were unimpaired, its civilisation scarcely below that of its great rival states, and for courage and military prowess it had established a name inferior to none other of the nations of anahuac. such was the condition of the aztec monarchy, on the arrival of cortes;the people disgusted with the arrogance of the sovereign; the provinces and distant cities outraged by fiscal exactions; while potent enemies in the neighbourhood lay watching the hour when they might assail their formidable rival with advantage. still the kingdom was strong in its internal resources, in the will of its monarch, in the long habitual deference to his authority,in short, in the terror of his name, and in the valour and discipline of his armies, grown grey in active service, and well drilled in all the tactics of indian warfare. the time had now come when these imperfect tactics and rude weapons of the barbarian were to be brought into collision with the science and enginery of the most civilised nations of the globe. during the latter years of his reign, montezuma had rarely taken part in his military expeditions, which he left to his captains, occupying himself chiefly with his sacerdotal functions. under no prince had the priesthood enjoyed greater consideration and immunities. the religious festivals and rites were celebrated with unprecedented pomp. the oracles were consulted on the most trivial occasions; and the sanguinary deities were propitiated by hecatombs of victims dragged in triumph to the capital from the conquered or rebellious provinces. the religion, or, to speak correctly, the superstition of montezuma proved a principal cause of his calamities. in a preceding chapter i have noticed the popular traditions respecting quetzalcoatl, that deity with a fair complexion and flowing beard, so unlike the indian physiognomy, who, after fulfilling his mission of benevolence among the aztecs, embarked on the atlantic sea for the mysterious shores of tlapallan. he promised, on his departure, to return at some future day with his posterity, and resume the possession of his empire. that day was looked forward to with hope or with apprehension, according to the interest of the believer, but with general confidence throughout the wide borders of anahuac. even after the conquest, it still lingered among the indian races, by whom it was as fondly cherished, as the advent of their king sebastian continued to be by the portuguese, or that of the messiah by the jews. a general feeling seems to have prevailed in the time of montezuma, that the period for the return of the deity, and the full accomplishment of his promise, was near at hand. this conviction is said to have gained ground from various preternatural occurrences, reported with more or less detail by all the most ancient historians. in 1510, the great lake of tezcuco, without the occurrence of a tempest, or earthquake, or any other visible cause, became violently agitated, overflowed its banks, and, pouring into the streets of mexico, swept off many of the buildings by the fury of the waters. in 1511, one of the turrets of the great temple took fire, equally without any apparent cause, and continued to burn in defiance of all attempts to extinguish it. in the following years, three comets were seen; and not long before the coming of the spaniards a strange light broke forth in the east. it spread broad at its base on the horizon, and rising in a pyramidal form tapered off as it approached the zenith. it resembled a vast sheet or flood of fire, emitting sparkles, or, as an old writer expresses it, "seemed thickly powdered with stars." at the same time, low voices were heard in the air, and doleful wailings, as if to announce some strange, mysterious calamity! the aztec monarch, terrified at the apparitions in the heavens, took council of nezahualpilli, who was a great proficient in the subtle science of astrology. but the royal sage cast a deeper cloud over his spirit, by reading in these prodigies the speedy downfall of the empire. such are the strange stories reported by the chroniclers, in which it is not impossible to detect the glimmerings of truth. nearly thirty years had elapsed since the discovery of the islands by columbus, and more than twenty since his visit to the american continent. rumours, more or less distinct, of this wonderful appearance of the white men, bearing in their hands the thunder and the lightning, so like in many respects to the traditions of quetzalcoatl, would naturally spread far and wide among the indian nations. such rumours, doubtless, long before the landing of the spaniards in mexico, found their way up the grand plateau, filling the minds of men with anticipations of the near coming of the period when the great deity was to return and receive his own again. when tidings were brought to the capital of the landing of grijalva on the coast, in the preceding year, the heart of montezuma was filled with dismay. he felt as if the destinies which had so long brooded over the royal line of mexico were to be accomplished, and the sceptre was to pass away from his house for ever. though somewhat relieved by the departure of the spaniards, he caused sentinels to be stationed on the heights; and when the europeans returned under cortes, he doubtless received the earliest notice of the unwelcome event. it was by his orders, however, that the provincial governor had prepared so hospitable a reception for them. the hieroglyphical report of these strange visitors, now forwarded to the capital, revived all his apprehensions. he called without delay a meeting of his principal counsellors, including the kings of tezcuco and tlacopan, and laid the matter before them. there seems to have been much division of opinion in that body. some were for resisting the strangers at once, whether by fraud, or by open force. others contended, that, if they were supernatural beings, fraud and force would be alike useless. if they were, as they pretended, ambassadors from a foreign prince, such a policy would be cowardly and unjust. that they were not of the family of quetzalcoatl was argued from the fact, that they had shown themselves hostile to his religion; for tidings of the proceedings of the spaniards in tabasco, it seems, had already reached the capital. among those in favour of giving them a friendly and honourable reception was the tezcucan king, cacama. but montezuma, taking counsel of his own ill-defined apprehensions, preferred a half-way course,as usual, the most impolitic. he resolved to send an embassy, with such a magnificent present to the strangers, as should impress them with high ideas of his grandeur and resources; while at the same time, he would forbid their approach to the capital. this was to reveal, at once, both his wealth and his weakness. while the aztec court was thus agitated by the arrival of the spaniards, they were passing their time in the tierra caliente, not a little annoyed by the excessive heats and suffocating atmosphere of the sandy waste on which they were encamped. they experienced every alleviation that could be derived from the attentions of the friendly natives. these, by the governor's command, had constructed more than a thousand huts or booths of branches and matting which they occupied in the neighbourhood of the camp. here they prepared various articles of food for the tables of cortes and his officers, without any recompense; while the common soldiers easily obtained a supply for themselves, in exchange for such trifles as they brought with them for barter. thus the camp was liberally provided with meat and fish dressed in many savoury ways, with cakes of corn, bananas, pine-apples, and divers luscious vegetables of the tropics, hitherto unknown to the spaniards. the soldiers contrived, moreover, to obtain many little bits of gold, of no great value, indeed, from the natives; a traffic very displeasing to the partisans of velasquez, who considered it an invasion of his rights. cortes, however, did not think it prudent in this matter to baulk the inclinations of his followers. at the expiration of seven, or eight days at most, the mexican embassy presented itself before the camp. it may seem an incredibly short space of time, considering the distance of the capital was near seventy leagues. but it may be remembered that tidings were carried there by means of posts, as already noticed, in the brief space of four-and-twenty hours; and four or five days would suffice for the descent of the envoys to the coast, accustomed as the mexicans were to long and rapid travelling. at all events, no writer states the period occupied by the indian emissaries on this occasion as longer than that mentioned. the embassy, consisting of two aztec nobles, was accompanied by the governor, teuhtlile, and by a hundred slaves, bearing the princely gifts of montezuma. one of the envoys had been selected on account of the great resemblance which, as appeared from the painting representing the camp, he bore to the spanish commander. and it is a proof of the fidelity of the painting, that the soldiers recognised the resemblance, and always distinguished the chief by the name of the "mexican cortes." on entering the general's pavilion, the ambassadors saluted him and his officers, with the usual signs of reverence to persons of great consideration, touching the ground with their hands and then carrying them to their heads, while the air was filled with clouds of incense, which rose up from the censers borne by their attendants. some delicately wrought mats of the country (petates) were then unrolled, and on them the slaves displayed the various articles they had brought. they were of the most miscellaneous kind; shields, helmets, cuirasses, embossed with plates and ornaments of pure gold; collars and bracelets of the same metal, sandals, fans, panaches and crests of variegated feathers, intermingled with gold and silver thread, and sprinkled with pearls and precious stones; imitations of birds and animals in wrought and cast gold and silver, of exquisite workmanship; curtains, coverlets, and robes of cotton, fine as silk, of rich and various dyes, interwoven with feather-work that rivalled the delicacy of painting. there were more than thirty loads of cotton cloth in addition. among the articles was the spanish helmet sent to the capital, and now returned filled to the brim with grains of gold. but the things which excited the most admiration were two circular plates of gold and silver, "as large as carriage-wheels." one, representing the sun, was richly carved with plants and animals,no doubt, denoting the aztec century. it was thirty palms in circumference, and was valued at twenty thousand pesos de oro. the silver wheel, of the same size, weighed fifty marks.* * robertson cites bernal diaz as reckoning the value of the silver plate at 20,000 pesos or about l 5000. (history of america, vol. ii. note 75.) but bernal diaz speaks only of the value of the gold plate, which he estimates at 20,000 pesos de oro, a different affair from the pesos, dollars, or ounces of silver, with which the historian confounds them. as the mention of the peso de oro will often recur in these pages, it will be well to make the reader acquainted with its probable value. nothing more difficult than to ascertain the actual value of the currency of a distant age; so many circumstances occur to embarrass the calculation, besides the general depreciation of the precious metals, such as the adulteration of specific coins and the like. senior clemencin, the secretary of the royal academy of history, in the sixth volume of its memorias, has computed with great accuracy the value of the different denominations of the spanish currency at the close of the fifteenth century, the period just preceding that of the conquest of mexico. he makes no mention of the peso de oro in his tables. but he ascertains the precise value of the gold ducat, which will answer our purpose as well. (memorias de la real academia de historia [madrid, 1821], tom. vi. *ilust. 20.) oviedo, a contemporary of the conquerors, informs us that the peso de oro and the castellano were of the same value, and that was precisely one third greater than the value of the ducat. (hist. del ind., lib. 6, cap. 8, ap. ramusio, navigationi et viaggi [venetia, 1565], tom. iii.) now the ducat, as appears from clemencin, reduced to our own currency, would be equal to eight dollars and seventy-five cents. the peso de oro, therefore, was equal to eleven dollars and sixty-seven cents, or two pounds, twelve shillings, and sixpence sterling. keeping this in mind, it will be easy for the reader to determine the actual value in pesos de oro, of any sum that may be hereafter mentioned. when cortes and his officers had completed their survey, the ambassadors courteously delivered the message of montezuma. "it gave their master great pleasure," they said, "to hold this communication with so powerful a monarch as the king of spain, for whom he felt the most profound respect. he regretted much that he could not enjoy a personal interview with the spaniards, but the distance of his capital was too great; since the journey was beset with difficulties, and with too many dangers from formidable enemies, to make it possible. all that could be done, therefore, was for the strangers to return to their own land, with the proofs thus afforded them of his friendly disposition." cortes, though much chagrined at this decided refusal of montezuma to admit his visit, concealed his mortification as he best might, and politely expressed his sense of the emperor's munificence. "it made him only the more desirous," he said, "to have a personal interview with him. he should feel it, indeed, impossible to present himself again before his own sovereign, without having accomplished this great object of his voyage; and one, who had sailed over two thousand leagues of ocean, held lightly the perils and fatigues of so short a journey by land." he once more requested them to become the bearers of his message to their master, together with a slight additional token of his respect. this consisted of a few fine holland shirts, a florentine goblet, gilt and somewhat curiously enamelled, with some toys of little value,a sorry return for the solid magnificence of the royal present. the ambassadors may have thought as much. at least, they showed no alacrity in charging themselves either with the present. or the message; and, on quitting the castilian quarters, repeated their assurance that the general's application would be unavailing. the splendid treasure, which now lay dazzling the eyes of the spaniards, raised in their bosoms very different emotions, according to the difference of their characters. some it stimulated with the ardent desire to strike at once into the interior, and possess themselves of a country which teemed with such boundless stores of wealth. others looked on it as the evidence of a power altogether too formidable to be encountered with their present insignificant force. they thought, therefore, it would be most prudent to return and report their proceedings to the governor of cuba, where preparations could be made commensurate with so vast an undertaking. there can be little doubt as to the impression made on the bold spirit of cortes, on which difficulties ever operated as incentives rather than discouragements to enterprise. but he prudently said nothing,at least in public,preferring that so important a movement should flow from the determination of his whole army, rather than from his own individual impulse. meanwhile the soldiers suffered greatly from the inconveniences of their position amidst burning sands and the pestilent effluvia of the neighbouring marshes, while the venomous insects of these hot regions left them no repose, day or night. thirty of their number had already sickened and died; a loss that could in be afforded by the little band. to add to their troubles, the coldness of the mexican chiefs had extended to their followers; and the supplies for the camp were not only much diminished, but the prices set on them were exorbitant. the position was equally unfavourable for the shipping, which lay in an open roadstead, exposed to the fury of the first norte which should sweep the mexican gulf. the general was induced by these circumstances to despatch two vessels, under francisco de montejo, with alaminos for his pilot, to explore the coast in a northerly direction, and see if a safer port and more commodious quarters for the army could not be found there. after the lapse of ten days the mexican envoys returned. they entered the spanish quarters with the same formality as on the former visit, bearing with them an additional present of rich stuffs and metallic ornaments, which, though inferior in value to those before brought, were estimated at three thousand ounces of gold. besides these, there were four precious stones of a considerable size, resembling emeralds, called by the natives chalchuites, each of which, as they assured the spaniards, was worth more than a load of gold, and was designed as a mark of particular respect for the spanish monarch. unfortunately they were not worth as many loads of earth in europe. montezuma's answer was in substance the same as before. it contained a positive prohibition for the strangers to advance nearer to the capital; and expressed the confidence, that, now they had obtained what they had most desired, they would return to their own country without unnecessary delay. cortes received this unpalatable response courteously, though somewhat coldly, and, turning to his officers, exclaimed, "this is a rich and powerful prince indeed; yet it shall go hard, but we will one day pay him a visit in his capital!" while they were conversing, the bell struck for vespers. at the sound, the soldiers, throwing themselves on their knees, offered up their orisons before the large wooden cross planted in the sands. as the aztec chiefs gazed with curious surprise, cortes thought it a favourable occasion to impress them with what he conceived to be a principal object of his visit to the country. father olmedo accordingly expounded, as briefly and clearly as he could, the great doctrines of christianity, touching on the atonement, the passion, and the resurrection, and concluding with assuring his astonished audience, that it was their intention to extirpate the idolatrous practices of the nation, and to substitute the pure worship of the true god. he then put into their hands a little image of the virgin with the infant redeemer, requesting them to place it in their temples instead of their sanguinary deities. how far the aztec lords comprehended the mysteries of the faith, as conveyed through the double version of aguilar and marina, or how well they perceived the subtle distinctions between their own images and those of the roman church, we are not informed. there is a reason to fear, however, that the seed fell on barren ground; for, when the homily of the good father ended, they withdrew with an air of dubious reserve very different from their friendly manners at the first interview. the same night every hut was deserted by the natives, and the spaniards saw themselves suddenly cut off from supplies in the midst of a desolate wilderness. the movement had so suspicious an appearance, that cortes apprehended an attack would be made on his quarters, and took precautions accordingly. but none was meditated. the army was at length cheered by the return of montejo from his exploring expedition, after an absence of twelve days. he had run down the gulf as far as panuco, where he experienced such heavy gales, in attempting to double that headland, that he was driven back, and had nearly foundered. in the whole course of the voyage he had found only one place tolerably sheltered from the north winds. fortunately, the adjacent country, well watered by fresh running streams, afforded a favourable position for the camp; and thither, after some deliberation, it was determined to repair. chapter vii [1519] troubles in the campplan for a colonymanagement of cortes march to cempoallaproceedings with the natives foundation of villa rica de vera cruz there is no situation which tries so severely the patience and discipline of the soldier, as a life of idleness in camp, where his thoughts, instead of being bent on enterprise and action, are fastened on himself and the inevitable privations and dangers of his condition. this was particularly the case in the present instance, where, in addition to the evils of a scanty subsistence, the troops suffered from excessive heat, swarms of venomous insects, and the other annoyances of a sultry climate. they were, moreover, far from possessing the character of regular forces, trained to subordination under a commander whom they had long been taught to reverence and obey. they were soldiers of fortune, embarked with him in an adventure in which all seemed to have an equal stake, and they regarded their captainthe captain of a dayas little more than an equal. there was a growing discontent among the men at their longer residence in this strange land. they were still more dissatisfied on learning the general's intention to remove to the neighbourhood of the port discovered by montejo. "it was time to return," they said, "and report what had been done to the governor of cuba, and not linger on these barren shores until they had brought the whole mexican empire on their heads!" cortes evaded their importunities as well as he could, assuring them there was no cause for despondency. "everything so far had gone on prosperously, and, when they had taken up a more favourable position, there was no reason to doubt they might still continue the same profitable intercourse with the natives." while this was passing, five indians made their appearance in the camp one morning, and were brought to the general's tent. their dress and whole appearance were different from those of the mexicans. they wore rings of gold and gems of a bright blue stone in their ears and nostrils, while a gold leaf delicately wrought was attached to the under lip. marina was unable to comprehend their language; but, on her addressing them in aztec, two of them, it was found, could converse in that tongue. they said they were natives of cempoalla, the chief town of the totonacs, a powerful nation who had come upon the great plateau many centuries back, and descending its eastern slope, settled along the sierras and broad plains which skirt the mexican gulf towards the north. their country was one of the recent conquests of the aztecs, and they experienced such vexatious oppressions from their conquerors as made them very impatient of the yoke. they informed cortes of these and other particulars. the fame of the spaniards had reached their master, who sent these messengers to request the presence of the wonderful strangers in his capital. this communication was eagerly listened to by the general, who, it will be remembered, was possessed of none of those facts, laid before the reader, respecting the internal condition of the kingdom, which he had no reason to suppose other than strong and united. an important truth now flashed on his mind, as his quick eye descried in this spirit of discontent a potent lever by the aid of which he might hope to overturn this barbaric empire. he received the mission of the totonacs most graciously, and, after informing himself, as far as possible, of their dispositions and resources, dismissed them with presents, promising soon to pay a visit to their lord. meanwhile, his personal friends, among whom may be particularly mentioned alonso hernandez de puertocarrero, christoval de olid, alonso de avila, pedro de alvarado and his brothers, were very busy in persuading the troops to take such measures as should enable cortes to go foward in those ambitious plans for which he had no warrant from the powers of velasquez. "to return now," they said, "was to abandon the enterprise on the threshold, which, under such a leader, must conduct to glory and incalculable riches. to return to cuba would be to surrender to the greedy governor the little gains they had already got. the only way was to persuade the general to establish a permanent colony in the country, the government of which would take the conduct of matters into its own hands, and provide for the interests of its members. it was true, cortes had no such authority from velasquez. but the interests of the sovereigns, which were paramount to every other, imperatively demanded it." these conferences could not be conducted so secretly, though held by night, as not to reach the ears of the friends of velasquez. they remonstrated against the proceedings, as insidious and disloyal. they accused the general of instigating them; and, calling on him to take measures without delay for the return of the troops to cuba, announced their own intention to depart, with such followers as still remained true to the governor. cortes, instead of taking umbrage at this high-handed proceeding, or even answering in the same haughty tone, mildly replied, "that nothing was further from his desire than to exceed his instructions. he, indeed, preferred to remain in the country and continue his profitable intercourse with the natives. but, since the army thought otherwise, he should defer to their opinion, and give orders to return, as they desired." on the following morning, proclamation was made for the troops to hold themselves in readiness to embark at once on board the fleet, which was to sail for cuba. great was the sensation caused by their general's order. even many of those before clamorous for it, with the usual caprice of men whose wishes are too easily gratified, now regretted it. the partisans of cortes were loud in their remonstrances. "they were betrayed by the general," they cried, and thronging round his tent, called on him to countermand his orders. "we came here," said they, "expecting to form a settlement, if the state of the country authorised it. now it seems you have no warrant from the governor to make one. but there are interests, higher than those of velasquez, which demand it. these territories are not his property, but were discovered for the sovereigns; and it is necessary to plant a colony to watch over their interests, instead of wasting time in idle barter, or, still worse, of returning, in the present state of affairs, to cuba. if you refuse," they concluded, "we shall protest against your conduct as disloyal to their highnesses." cortes received this remonstrance with the embarrassed air of one by whom it was altogether unexpected. he modestly requested time for deliberation, and promised to give his answer on the following day. at the time appointed, he called the troops together, and made them a brief address. "there was no one," he said, "if he knew his own heart, more deeply devoted than himself to the welfare of his sovereigns, and the glory of the spanish name. he had not only expended his all, but incurred heavy debts, to meet the charges of this expedition, and had hoped to reimburse himself by continuing his traffic with the mexicans. but, if the soldiers thought a different course advisable, he was ready to postpone his own advantage to the good of the state." he concluded by declaring his willingness to take measures for settling a colony in the name of the spanish sovereigns, and to nominate a magistracy to preside over it. for the alcaldes he selected puertocarrero and montejo, the former cavalier his fast friend, and the latter the friend of velasquez, and chosen for that very reason; a stroke of policy which perfectly succeeded. the regidores, alguacil, treasurer, and other functionaries, were then appointed, all of them his personal friends and adherents. they were regularly sworn into office, and the new city received the title of villa rica de vera cruz, "the rich town of the true cross"; a name which was considered as happily intimating that union of spiritual and temporal interests to which the arms of the spanish adventurers in the new world were to be devoted. thus, by a single stroke of the pen, as it were, the camp was transformed into a civil community, and the whole framework and even title of the city were arranged before the site of it had been settled. the new municipality were not slow in coming together; when cortes presented himself cap in hand, before that august body, and, laying the powers of velasquez on the table, respectfully tendered the resignation of his office of captain general, "which, indeed," he said, "had necessarily expired, since the authority of the governor was now superseded by that of the magistracy of villa rica de vera cruz." he then, with a profound obeisance, left the apartment. the council, after a decent time spent in deliberation, again requested his presence. "there was no one," they said, "who, on mature reflection, appeared to them so well qualified to take charge of the interests of the community, both in peace and in war, as himself; and they unanimously named him, in behalf of their catholic highnesses, captain general and chief justice of the colony." he was further empowered to draw, on his own account, one fifth of the gold and silver which might hereafter be obtained by commerce or conquest from the natives. thus clothed with supreme civil and military jurisdiction, cortes was not backward in exerting his authority. he found speedy occasion for it. the transactions above described had succeeded each other so rapidly, that the governor's party seemed to be taken by surprise, and had formed no plan of opposition. when the last measure was carried, however, they broke forth into the most indignant and opprobrious invectives, denouncing the whole as a systematic conspiracy against velasquez. these accusations led to recrimination from the soldiers of the other side, until from words they nearly proceeded to blows. some of the principal cavaliers, among them velasquez de leon, a kinsman of the governor, escobar his page, and diego de ordaz, were so active in instigating these turbulent movements that cortes took the bold measure of putting them all in irons, and sending them on board the vessels. he then dispersed the common file by detaching many of them, with a strong party under alvarado, to forage the neighbouring country, and bring home provisions for the destitute camp. during their absence, every argument that cupidity or ambition could suggest was used to win the refractory to his views. promises, and even gold, it is said, were liberally lavished; till, by degrees, their understandings were opened to a clearer view of the merits of the case. and when the foraging party re-appeared with abundance of poultry and vegetables, and the cravings of the stomachthat great laboratory of disaffection, whether in camp or capitalwere appeased, good humour returned with good cheer, and the rival factions embraced one another as companions in arms, pledged to a common cause. even the high-mettled hidalgos on board the vessels did not long withstand the general tide of reconciliation, but one by one gave in their adhesion to the new government. what is more remarkable is, that this forced conversion was not a hollow one, but from this time forward several of these very cavaliers become the most steady and devoted partisans of cortes. such was the address of this extraordinary man, and such the ascendency which in a few months he had acquired over these wild and turbulent spirits! by this ingenious transformation of a military into a civil community, he had secured a new and effectual basis for future operations. he might now go forward without fear of cheek or control from a superior,at least from any other superior than the crown, under which alone he held his commission. in accomplishing this, instead of incurring the charge of usurpation, or of transcending his legitimate powers, he had transferred the responsibility, in a great measure, to those who had imposed on him the necessity of action. by this step, moreover, he had linked the fortunes of his followers indissolubly with his own. they had taken their chance with him, and, whether for weal or for woe, must abide the consequences. he was no longer limited to the narrow concerns of a sordid traffic, but sure of their co-operation, might now boldly meditate, and gradually disclose, those lofty schemes which he had formed in his own bosom for the conquest of an empire. harmony being thus restored, cortes sent his heavy guns on board the fleet, and ordered it to coast along the shore to the north as far as chiahuitztla, the town near which the destined port of the new city was situated; proposing, himself, at the head of his troops, to visit cempoalla, on the march. the road lay for some miles across the dreary plains in the neighbourhood of the modern vera cruz. in this sandy waste no signs of vegetation met their eyes, which, however, were occasionally refreshed by glimpses of the blue atlantic, and by the distant view of the magnificent orizaba, towering with his spotless diadem of snow far above his colossal brethren of the andes. as they advanced, the country gradually assumed a greener and richer aspect. they crossed a river, probably a tributary of the rio de la antigua, with difficulty, on rafts, and on some broken canoes that were lying on the banks. they now came in view of very different scenery,wide-rolling plains covered with a rich carpet of verdure, and overshadowed by groves of cocoas and feathery palms, among whose tall, slender stems were seen deer, and various wild animals with which the spaniards were unacquainted. some of the horsemen gave chase to the deer, and wounded, but did not succeed in killing them. they saw, also, pheasants and other birds; among them the wild turkey, the pride of the american forest, which the spaniards described as a species of peacock. on their route they passed through some deserted villages in which were indian temples, where they found censers, and other sacred utensils, and manuscripts of the agave fibre, containing the picture-writing, in which, probably, their religious ceremonies were recorded. they now beheld, also, the hideous spectacle, with which they became afterwards familiar, of the mutilated corpses of victims who had been sacrificed to the accursed deities of the land. the spaniards turned with loathing and indignation from a display of butchery, which formed so dismal a contrast to the fair scenes of nature by which they were surrounded. they held their course along the banks of the river, towards its source, when they were met by twelve indians, sent by the cacique of cempoalla to show them the way to his residence. at night they bivouacked in an open meadow, where they were well supplied with provisions by their new friends. they left the stream on the following morning, and, striking northerly across the country, came upon a wide expanse of luxuriant plains and woodland, glowing in all the splendour of tropical vegetation. the branches of the stately trees were gaily festooned with clustering vines of the dark-purple grape, variegated convolvuli, and other flowering parasites of the most brilliant dyes. the undergrowth of prickly aloe, matted with wild rose and honeysuckle, made in many places an almost impervious thicket. amid this wilderness of sweet-smelling buds and blossoms fluttered numerous birds of the parrot tribe, and clouds of butterflies, whose gaudy colours, nowhere so gorgeous as in the tierra caliente, rivalled those of the vegetable creation; while birds of exquisite song, the scarlet cardinal and the marvellous mockingbird, that comprehends in his own notes the whole music of a forest, filled the air with delicious melody.the hearts of the stern conquerors were not very sensible to the beauties of nature. but the magical charms of the scenery drew forth unbounded expressions of delight, and as they wandered through this "terrestrial paradise," as they called it, they fondly compared it to the fairest regions of their own sunny land. as they approached the indian city, they saw abundant signs of cultivation in the trim gardens and orchards that lined both sides of the road. they were now met by parties of the natives of either sex, who increased in numbers with every step of their progress. the women, as well as men, mingled fearlessly among the soldiers, bearing bunches and wreaths of flowers, with which they decorated the neck of the general's charger, and hung a chaplet of roses about his helmet. flowers were the delight of this people. they bestowed much care in their cultivation, in which they were well seconded by a climate of alternate heat and moisture, stimulating the soil to the spontaneous production of every form of vegetable life. the same refined taste, as we shall see, prevailed among the warlike aztecs. many of the women appeared, from their richer dress and numerous attendants, to be persons of rank. they were clad in robes of fine cotton, curiously coloured, which reached from the neckin the inferior orders, from the waistto the ankles. the men wore a sort of mantle of the same material, in the moorish fashion, over their shoulders, and belts or sashes about the loins. both sexes had jewels and ornaments of gold round their necks, while their ears and nostrils were perforated with rings of the same metal. just before reaching the town, some horsemen who had rode in advance returned with the amazing intelligence, "that they had been near enough to look within the gates, and found the houses all plated with burnished silver!" on entering the place, the silver was found to be nothing more than a brilliant coating of stucco, with which the principal buildings were covered; a circumstance which produced much merriment among the soldiers at the expense of their credulous comrades. such ready credulity is a proof of the exalted state of their imaginations, which were prepared to see gold and silver in every object around them. the edifices of the better kind were of stone and lime, or bricks dried in the sun; the poorer were of clay and earth. all were thatched with palm-leaves, which, though a flimsy roof, apparently, for such structures, were so nicely interwoven as to form a very effectual protection against the weather. the city was said to contain from twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants. this is the most moderate computation, and not improbable. slowly and silently the little army paced the narrow and now crowded streets of cempoalla, inspiring the natives with no greater wonder than they themselves experienced at the display of a policy and refinement so far superior to anything they had witnessed in the new world. the cacique came out in front of his residence to receive them. he was a tall and very corpulent man, and advanced leaning on two of his attendants. he received cortes and his followers with great courtesy; and, after a brief interchange of civillties, assigned the army its quarters in a neighbouring temple, into the spacious courtyard of which a number of apartments opened, affording excellent accommodations for the soldiery. here the spaniards were well supplied with provisions, meat cooked after the fashion of the country, and maize made into bread-cakes. the general received, also, a present of considerable value from the cacique, consisting of ornaments of gold and fine cottons. notwithstanding these friendly demonstrations, cortes did not relax his habitual vigilance, nor neglect any of the precautions of a good soldier. on his route, indeed, he had always marched in order of battle, well prepared against surprise. in his present quarters, he stationed his sentinels with like care, posted his small artillery so as to command the entrance, and forbade any soldier to leave the camp without orders, under pain of death. the following morning, cortes, accompanied by fifty of his men, paid a visit to the lord of cempoalla in his own residence. it was a building of stone and lime, standing on a steep terrace of earth, and was reached by a flight of stone steps. it may have borne resemblance in its structure to some of the ancient buildings found in central america. cortes, leaving his soldiers in the courtyard, entered the mansion with one of his officers, and his fair interpreter, dona marina. a long conference ensued, from which the spanish general gathered much light respecting the state of the country. he first announced to the chief, that he was the subject of a great monarch who dwelt beyond the waters; that he had come to the aztec shores, to abolish the inhuman worship which prevailed there, and to introduce the knowledge of the true god. the cacique replied that their gods, who sent them the sunshine and the rain, were good enough for them; that he was the tributary of a powerful monarch also, whose capital stood on a lake far off among the mountains; a stern prince, merciless in his exactions, and, in case of resistance, or any offence, sure to wreak his vengeance by carrying off their young men and maidens to be sacrificed to his deities. cortes assured him that he would never consent to such enormities; he had been sent by his sovereign to redress abuses and to punish the oppressor; and, if the totonacs would be true to him, he would enable them to throw off the detested yoke of the aztecs. the cacique added, that the totonac territory contained about thirty towns and villages, which could muster a hundred thousand warriors,a number much exaggerated. there were other provinces of the empire, he said, where the aztec rule was equally odious; and between him and the capital lay the warlike republic of tlascala, which had always maintained its independence of mexico. the fame of the spaniards had gone before them, and he was well acquainted with their terrible victory at tabasco. but still he looked with doubt and alarm to a rupture with "the great montezuma," as he always styled him; whose armies, on the least provocation, would pour down from the mountain regions of the west, and, rushing over the plains like a whirlwind, sweep off the wretched people to slavery and sacrifice! cortes endeavoured to reassure him, by declaring that a single spaniard was stronger than a host of aztecs. at the same time, it was desirable to know what nations would cooperate with him, not so much on his account, as theirs, that he might distinguish friend from foe, and know whom he was to spare in this war of extermination. having raised the confidence of the admiring chief by this comfortable and politic vaunt, he took an affectionate leave, with the assurance that he would shortly return and concert measures for their future operations, when he had visited his ships in the adjoining port, and secured a permanent settlement there. the intelligence gained by cortes gave great satisfaction to his mind. it confirmd his former views, and showed, indeed, the interior of the monarchy to be in a state far more distracted than he had supposed. if he had before scarcely shrunk from attacking the aztec empire in the true spirit of a knight-errant, with his single arm, as it were, what had he now to fear, when one half of the nation could be thus marshalled against the other? in the excitement of the moment, his sanguine spirit kindled with an enthusiasm which overleaped every obstacle. he communicated his own feelings to the officers about him, and, before a blow was struck, they already felt as if the banners of spain were waving in triumph the towers of montezuma! taking leave of the hospitable indian on the following day, the spaniards took the road to chiahuitztla, about four leagues distant, near which was the port discovered by montejo, where their ships were now riding at anchor. they were provided by the cacique with four hundred indian porters, tamanes, as they were called, to transport the baggage. these men easily carried fifty pounds' weight five or six leagues in a day. they were in use all over the mexican empire, and the spaniards found them of great service, henceforth, in relieving the troops from this part of their duty. they passed through a country of the same rich, voluptuous character as that which they had lately traversed; and arrived early next morning at the indian town, perched like a fortress on a bold, rocky eminence that commanded the gulf. most of the inhabitants had fled, but fifteen of the principal men remained, who received them in a friendly manner, offering the usual compliments of flowers and incense. the people of the place, losing their fears, gradually returned. while conversing with the chiefs, the spaniards were joined by the worthy cacique of cempoalla, borne by his men on a litter. he eagerly took part in their deliberations. the intelligence gained here by cortes confirmed the accounts already gathered of the feelings and resources of the totonac nation. in the midst of their conference, they were interrupted by a movement among the people, and soon afterwards five men entered the great square or market-place, where they were standing. by their lofty port, their peculiar and much richer dress, they seemed not to be of the same race as these indians. their dark glossy hair was tied in a knot on the top of the head. they had bunches of flowers in their hands, and were followed by several attendants, some bearing wands with cords, other fans, with which they brushed away the flies and insects from their lordly masters. as these persons passed through the place, they cast a haughty look on the spaniards, scarcely deigning to return their salutations. they were immediately joined, in great confusion, by the totonac chiefs, who seemed anxious to conciliate them by every kind of attention. the general, much astonished, inquired of marina what it meant. she informed him, they were aztec nobles, empowered to receive the tribute for montezuma. soon after, the chiefs returned with dismay painted on their faces. they confirmed marina's statement, adding, that the aztecs greatly resented the entertainment afforded the spaniards without the emperor's permission; and demanded in expiation twenty young men and women for sacrifice to the gods. cortes showed the strongest indignation at this insolence. he required the totonacs not only to refuse the demand, but to arrest the persons of the collectors, and throw them into prison. the chiefs hesitated, but he insisted on it so peremptorily, that they at length complied, and the aztecs were seized, bound hand and foot, and placed under a guard. in the night, the spanish general procured the escape of two of them, and had them brought secretly before him. he expressed his regret at the indignity they had experienced from the totonacs; told them, he would provide means for their flight, and to-morrow would endeavour to obtain the release of their companions. he desired them to report this to their master, with assurances of the great regard the spaniards entertained for him, notwithstanding his ungenerous behaviour in leaving them to perish from want on his barren shores. he then sent the mexican nobles down to the port, whence they were carried to another part of the coast by water, for fear of the violence of the totonacs. these were greatly incensed at the escape of the prisoners, and would have sacrificed the remainder at once, but for the spanish commander, who evinced the utmost horror at the proposal, and ordered them to be sent for safe custody on board the fleet. soon after, they were permitted to join their companions.this artful proceeding, so characteristic of the policy of cortes, had, as we shall see hereafter, all the effect intended on montezuma. by order of cortes, messengers were despatched to the totonac towns, to report what had been done, calling on them to refuse the payment of further tribute to montezuma. but there was no need of messengers. the affrighted attendants of the aztec lords had fled in every direction, bearing the tidings, which spread like wildfire through the country, of the daring insult offered to the majesty of mexico. the astonished indians, cheered with the sweet hope of regaining their ancient liberty, came in numbers to chiahuitztla, to see and confer with the formidable strangers. the more timid, dismayed at the thoughts of encountering the power of montezuma, recommended an embassy to avert his displeasure by timely concessions. but the dexterous management of cortes had committed them too far to allow any reasonable expectation of indulgence from this quarter. after some hesitation, therefore, it was determined to embrace the protection of the spaniards, and to make one bold effort for the recovery of freedom. oaths of allegiance were taken by the chiefs to the spanish sovereigns, and duly recorded by godoy, the royal notary. cortes, satisfied with the important acquisition of so many vassals to the crown, set out soon after for the destined port, having first promised to revisit cempoalla, where his business was but partially accomplished. the spot selected for the new city was only half a league distant, in a wide and fruitful plain, affording a tolerable haven for the shipping. cortes was not long in determining the circuit of the walls, and the sites of the fort, granary, townhouse, temple, and other public buildings. the friendly indians eagerly assisted, by bringing materials, stone, lime, wood, and bricks dried in the sun. every man put his hand to the work. the general laboured with the meanest of the soldiers, stimulating their exertions by his example, as well as voice. in a few weeks the task was accomplished, and a town rose up, which, if not quite worthy of the aspiring name it bore, answered most of the purposes for which it was intended. it served as a good point d'appui for future operations; a place of retreat for the disabled, as well as for the army in case of reverses; a magazine for stores, and for such articles as might be received from or sent to the mother country; a port for the shipping; a position of sufficient strength to overawe the adjacent country. it was the first colonythe fruitful parent of so many othersin new spain. it was hailed with satisfaction by the simple natives, who hoped to repose in safety under its protecting shadow. alas! they could not read the future, or they would have found no cause to rejoice in this harbinger of a revolution more tremendous than. any predicted by their bards and prophets. it was not the good quetzalcoatl who had returned to claim his own again, bringing peace, freedom, and civilisation in his train. their fetters, indeed, would be broken, and their wrongs be amply avenged on the proud head of the aztec; but it was to be by that strong arm which should bow down equally the oppressor and the oppressed. the light of civilisation would be poured on their land; but it would be the light of a consuming fire, before which their barbaric glory, their institutions, their very existence and name as a nation, would wither and become extinct! their doom was sealed when the white man. had set his foot on their soil. chapter viii [1519] another aztec embassydestruction of idols despatches sent to spainconspiracy in the campthe fleet sunk while the spaniards were occupied with their new settlement, they were surprised by the presence of an embassy from mexico. the account of the imprisonment of the royal collectors had spread rapidly through the country. when it reached the capital, all were filled with amazement at the unprecedented daring of the strangers. in montezuma every other feeling, even that of fear, was swallowed up in indignation; and he showed his wonted energy in the vigorous preparations which he instantly made to punish his rebellious vassals, and to avenge the insult offered to the majesty of the empire. but when the aztec officers liberated by cortes reached the capital and reported the courteous treatment they had received from the spanish commander, montezuma's anger was mitigated, and his superstitious fears, getting the ascendency again, induced him to resume his former timid and conciliatory policy. he accordingly sent an embassy, consisting of two youths, his nephews, and four of the ancient nobles of his court, to the spanish quarters. he provided them, in his usual munificent spirit, with a princely donation of gold, rich cotton stuffs, and beautiful mantles of the plumaje, or feather embroidery. the envoys, on coming before cortes, presented him with the articles, at the same time offering the acknowledgments of their master for the courtesy he had shown in liberating his captive nobles. he was surprised and afflicted, however, that the spaniards should have countenanced his faithless vassals in their rebellion. he had no doubt they were the strangers whose arrival had been so long announced by the oracles, and of the same lineage with himself. from deference to them he would spare the totonacs, while they were present. but the time for vengeance would come. cortes entertained the indian chieftains with frank hospitality. at the same time he took care to make such a display of his resources, as, while it amused their minds, should leave a deep impression of his power. he then, after a few trifling gifts, dismissed them with a conciliatory message to their master, and the assurance that he should soon pay his respects to him in his capital, where all misunderstanding between them would be readily adjusted. the totonac allies could scarcely credit their senses, when they gathered the nature of this interview. notwithstanding the presence of the spaniards, they had looked with apprehension to the consequences of their rash act; and their feelings of admiration were heightened into awe for the strangers who, at this distance, could exercise so mysterious an influence over the terrible montezuma. not long after, the spaniards received an application from the cacique of cempoalla to aid him in a dispute in which he was engaged with a neighbouring city. cortes marched with a part of his forces to his support. on the route, one morla, a common soldier, robbed a native of a couple of fowls. cortes, indignant at this violation of his orders before his face, and aware of the importance of maintaining a reputation for good faith with his allies, commanded the man to be hung up at once by the roadside, in face of the whole army. fortunately for the poor wretch, pedro de alvarado, the future conqueror of quiche, was present, and ventured to cut down the body while there was yet life in it. he, probably, thought enough had been done for example, and the loss of a single life, unnecessarily, was more than the little band could afford. the anecdote is characteristic, as showing the strict discipline maintained by cortes over his men and the freedom assumed by his captains, who regarded him on terms nearly of equality,as a fellow-adventurer with themselves. this feeling of companionship led to a spirit of insubordination among them, which made his own post as commander the more delicate and difficult. on reaching the hostile city, but a few leagues from the coast, they were received in an amicable manner; and cortes, who was accompanied by his allies, had the satisfaction of reconciling these different branches of the totonac family with each other, without bloodshed. he then returned to cempoalla, where he was welcomed with joy by the people, who were now impressed with as favourable an opinion of his moderation and justice, as they had before been of his valour. in token of his gratitude, the indian cacique delivered to the general eight indian maidens, richly dressed, wearing collars and ornaments of gold, with a number of female slaves to wait on them. they were daughters of the principal chiefs, and the cacique requested that the spanish captains might take them as their wives. cortes received the damsels courteously, but told the cacique they must first be baptised, as the sons of the church could have no commerce with idolaters. he then declared that it was a great object of his mission to wean the natives from their heathenish abominations, and besought the totonac lord to allow his idols to be cast down, and the symbols of the true faith to be erected in their place. to this the other answered as before, that his gods were good enough for him; nor could all the persuasion of the general, nor the preaching of father olmedo, induce him to acquiesce. mingled with his polytheism, he had conceptions of a supreme and infinite being, creator of the universe, and his darkened understanding could not comprehend how such a being could condescend to take the form of humanity, with its infirmities and ills, and wander about on earth, the voluntary victim of persecution from the hands of those whom his breath had called into existence. he plainly told the spaniards that he would resist any violence offered to his gods, who would, indeed, avenge the act themselves, by the instant destruction of their enemies. but the zeal of the christians had mounted too high to be cooled by remonstrance or menace. during their residence in the land, the had witnessed more than once the barbarous rites of the natives, their cruel sacrifices of human victims, and their disgusting cannibal repasts. their souls sickened at these abominations, and they agreed with one voice to stand by their general, when he told them, that "heaven would never smile on their enterprise, if they countenanced such atrocities; and that, for his own part, he was resolved the indian idols should be demolished that very hour, if it cost him his life." to postpone the work of conversion was a sin. in the enthusiasm of the moment, the dictates of policy and ordinary prudence were alike unheeded. scarcely waiting for his commands, the spaniards moved towards one of the principal teocallis, or temples, which rose high on a pyramidal foundation, with a steep ascent of stone steps in the middle. the cacique, divining their purpose, instantly called his men to arms. the indian warriors gathered from all quarters, with shrill cries and clashing of weapons; while the priests, in their dark cotton robes, with dishevelled tresses matted with blood, flowing wildly over their shoulders, rushed frantic among the natives, calling on them to protect their gods from violation! all was now confusion, tumult, and warlike menace, where so lately had been peace and the sweet brotherhood of nations. cortes took his usual prompt and decided measures. he caused the cacique and some of the principal inhabitants and priests to be arrested by his soldiers. he then commanded them to quiet the people, for, if an arrow was shot against a spaniard, it should cost every one of them his life. marina, at the same time, represented the madness of resistance, and reminded the cacique, that, if he now alienated the affections of the spaniards, he would be left without a protector against the terrible vengeance of montezuma. these temporal considerations seem to have had more weight with the totonac chieftain than those of a more spiritual nature. he covered his face with his hands, exclaiming, that the gods would avenge their own wrongs. the christians were not slow in availing themselves of his tacit acquiescence. fifty soldiers, at a signal from their general, sprang up the great stairway of the temple, entered the building on the summit, the walls of which were black with human gore, tore the huge wooden idols from their foundations, and dragged them to the edge of the terrace. their fantastic forms and features, conveying a symbolic meaning, which was lost on the spaniards, seemed in their eyes only the hideous lineaments of satan. with great alacrity they rolled the colossal monsters down the steps of the pyramid, amidst the triumphant shouts of their own companions, and the groans and lamentations of the natives. they then consummated the whole by burning them in the presence of the assembled multitude. the same effect followed as in cozumel. the totonacs, finding their deities incapable of preventing or even punishing this profanation of their shrines, conceived a mean opinion of their power, compared with that of the mysterious and formidable strangers. the floor and walls of the teocalli were then cleansed, by command of cortes, from their, foul impurities; a fresh coating of stucco was laid on them by the indian masons; and an altar was raised, surmounted by a lofty cross, and hung with garlands of roses. a procession was next formed, in which some of the principal totonae priests, exchanging their dark mantles for robes of white, carried lighted candles in their hands; while an image of the virgin, half smothered under the weight of flowers, was borne aloft, and, as the procession climbed the steps of the temple, was deposited above the altar. mass was performed by father olmedo, and the impressive character of the ceremony and the passionate eloquence of the good priest touched the feelings of the motley audience, until indians as well as spaniards, if we may trust the chronicler, were melted into tears and audible sobs. an old soldier named juan de torres, disabled by bodily infirmity, consented to remain and watch over the sanctuary and instruct the natives in its services. cortes then, embracing his totonac allies, now brothers in religion as in arms, set out once more for the villa rica, where he had some arrangements to complete, previous to his departure for the capital. he was surprised to find that a spanish vessel had arrived there in his absence, having on board twelve soldiers and two horses. it was under the command of a captain named saucedo, a cavalier of the ocean, who had followed in the track of cortes in quest of adventure. though a small, they afforded a very seasonable, body of recruits for the little army. by these men, the spaniards were informed that velasquez, the governor of cuba, had lately received a warrant from the spanish government to establish a colony in the newly discovered countries. cortes now, resolved to put a plan in execution which he had been some time meditating. he knew that all the late acts of the colony, as well as his own authority, would fall to the ground without the royal sanction. he knew, too, that the interest of velasquez, which was great at court, would, as soon as he was acquainted with his secession, be wholly employed to circumvent and crush him. he resolved to anticipate his movements, and to send a vessel to spain, with despatches addressed to the emperor himself, announcing the nature and extent of his discoveries, and to obtain, if possible, the confirmation of his proceedings. in order to conciliate his master's good will, he further proposed to send him such a present as should suggest lofty ideas of the importance of his own services to the crown. to effect this, the royal fifth he considered inadequate. he conferred with his officers, and persuaded them to relinquish their share of the treasure. at his instance, they made a similar application to the soldiers; representing that it was the earnest wish of the general, who set the example by resigning his own fifth, equal to the share of the crown. it was but little that each man was asked to surrender, but the whole would make a present worthy of the monarch for whom it was intended. by this sacrifice they might hope to secure his indulgence for the past, and his favour for the future; a temporary sacrifice, that would be well repaid by the security of the rich possessions which awaited them in mexico. a paper was then circulated among the soldiers, which all, who were disposed to relinquish their shares, were requested to sign. those who declined should have their claims respected, and receive the amount due to them. no one refused to sign; thus furnishing another example of the extraordinary power obtained by cortes over these rapacious spirits, who, at his call, surrendered up the very treasures which had been the great object of their hazardous enterprise!* * a complete inventory of the articles received from montezuma is contained in the carta de vera cruz.the following are a few of the items. two collars made of gold and precious stones. a hundred ounces of gold ore, that their highnesses might see in what state the gold came from the mines. two birds made of green feathers, with feet, beaks, and eyes of gold,and, in the same piece with them, animals of gold, resembling snails. a large alligator's head of gold. a bird of green feathers, with feet, beak, and eyes of gold. two birds made of thread and feather-work, having the quills of their wings and tails, their feet, eyes, and the ends of their beaks, of gold,standing upon two reeds covered with gold, which are raised on balls of feather-work and gold embroidery, one white and the other yellow, with seven tassels of feather-work hanging from each of them. a large wheel of silver weighing forty marks, and several smaller ones of the same metal. a box of feather-work embroidered on leather, with a large plate of gold, weighing seventy ounces, in the midst. two pieces of cloth woven with feathers; another with variegated colours; and another worked with black and white figures. a large wheel of gold, with figures of strange animals on it, and worked with tufts of leaves; weighing three thousand eight hundred ounces. a fan of variegated feather-work, with thirty-seven rods plated with gold. five fans of variegated feathers,four of which have ten, and the other thirteen rods, embossed with gold. sixteen shields of precious stones, with feathers of various colours hanging from their rims. two pieces of cotton very richly wrought with black and white embroidery. six shields, each covered with a plate of gold, with something resembling a golden mitre in the centre. he accompanied this present with a letter to the, emperor, in which he gave a full account of all that had befallen him since his departure from cuba; of his various discoveries, battles, and traffic with the natives; their conversion to christianity; his strange perils and sufferings; many particulars respecting the lands he had visited, and such as he could collect in regard to the great mexican monarchy and its sovereign. he stated his difficulties with the governor of cuba, the proceedings of the army in reference to colonisation, and besought the emperor to confirm their acts, as well as his own authority, expressing his entire confidence that he should be able, with the aid of his brave followers, to place the castilian crown in possession of this great indian empire. this was the celebrated first letter, as it is called, of cortes, which has hitherto eluded every search that has been made for it in the libraries of europe. its existence is fully established by references to it, both in his own subsequent letters, and in the writings of contemporaries. its general purport is given by his chaplain, gomara. the importance of the document has doubtless been much overrated; and, should it ever come to light, it will probably be found to add little of interest to the matter contained in the letter from vera cruz, which has formed the basis of the preceding portion of our narrative. he had no sources of information beyond those open to the authors of the latter document. he was even less full and frank in his communications, if it be true, that he suppressed all notice of the discoveries of his two predecessors. the magistrates of the villa rica, in their epistle, went over the same ground with cortes; concluding with an emphatic representation of the misconduct of velasquez, whose venality, extortion, and selfish devotion to his personal interests, to the exclusion of those of his sovereign's as well as of his own followers, they placed in a most clear and unenviable light. they implored the government not to sanction his interference with the new colony, which would be fatal to its welfare, but to commit the undertaking to hernando cortes, as the man most capable, by his experience and conduct, of bringing it to a glorious termination. with this letter went also another in the name of the citizen-soldiers of villa rica, tendering their dutiful submission to the sovereigns, and requesting the confirmation of their proceedings, above all that of cortes as their general. the selection of the agents for the mission was a delicate matter, as on the result might depend the future fortunes of the colony and its commander. cortes intrusted the affair to two cavaliers on whom he could rely: francisco de montejo, the ancient partisan of velasquez, and alonso hernandez de puertocarrero. the latter officer was a near kinsman of the count of medellin, and it was hoped his high connections might secure a favourable influence at court. together with the treasure, which seemed to verify the assertion that "the land teemed with gold as abundantly as that whence solomon drew the same precious metal for his temple," several indian manuscripts were sent. some were of cotton, others of the mexican agave. their unintelligible characters, says a chronicler, excited little interest in the conquerors. as evidence of intellectual culture, however, they formed higher objects of interest to a philosophic mind, than those costly fabrics which attested only the mechanical ingenuity of the nation. four indian slaves were added as specimens of the natives. they had been rescued from the cages in which they were confined for sacrifice. one of the best vessels of the fleet was selected for the voyage, manned by fifteen seamen, and placed under the direction of the pilot alaminos. he was directed to hold his course through the bahama channel, north of cuba, or fernandina, as it was then called, and on no account to touch at that island, or any other in the indian ocean. with these instructions, the good ship took its departure on the 26th of july, freighted with the treasures and the good wishes of the community of the villa rica de vera cruz. after a quick run the emissaries made the island of cuba, and, in direct disregard of orders, anchored before marien on the northern side of the island. this was done to accommodate montejo, who wished to visit a plantation owned by him in the neighbourhood. while off the port, a sailor got on shore, and, crossing the island to st. jago, the capital, spread everywhere tidings of the expedition, until they reached the ears of velasquez. it was the first intelligence which had been received of the armament since its departure; and, as the governor listened to the recital, it would not be easy to paint the mingled emotions of curiosity, astonishment, and wrath, which agitated his bosom. in the first sally of passion, he poured a storm of invective on the heads of his secretary and treasurer, the friends of cortes, who had recommended him as the leader of the expedition. after somewhat relieving himself in this way, he despatched two fast-sailing vessels to marien with orders to seize the rebel ship, and, in case of her departure, to follow and overtake her. but before the ships could reach that port, the bird had flown, and was far on her way across the broad atlantic. stung with mortification at his fresh disappointment, velasquez wrote letters of indignant complaint to the government at home, and to the fathers of st. jerome, in hispaniola, demanding redress. he obtained little satisfaction from the last. he resolved however, to take it into his own hands, and set about making formidable preparations for another squadron, which should be more than a match for that under his rebellious officer. he was indefatigable in his exertions, visiting every part of the island, and straining all his resources to effect his purpose. the preparations were on a scale that necessarily consumed many months. meanwhile the little vessel was speeding her prosperous way across the waters; and, after touching at one of the azores, came safely into the harbour of st. lucar, in the month of october. however long it may appear in the more perfect nautical science of our day, it was reckoned a fair voyage for that. of what befell the commissioners on their arrival, their reception at court, and the sensation caused by their intelligence, i defer the account to a future chapter. shortly after the departure of the commissioners, an affair occurred of a most unpleasant nature. a number of persons, with the priest juan diaz at their head, ill-affected, from some cause or other, towards the administration of cortes, or not relishing the hazardous expedition before them, laid a plan to seize one of the vessels, make the best of their way to cuba, and report to the governor the fate of the armament. it was conducted with so much secrecy, that the party had got their provisions, water, and everything necessary for the voyage, on board, without detection; when the conspiracy was betrayed on the very night they were to sail by one of their own number, who repented the part he had taken in it. the general caused the persons implicated to be instantly apprehended. an examination was instituted. the guilt of the parties was placed beyond a doubt. sentence of death was passed on two of the ringleaders; another, the pilot, was condemned to lose his feet, and several others to be whipped. the priest, probably the most guilty of the whole, claiming the usual benefit of clergy, was permitted to escape. one of those condemned to the gallows was named escudero, the very alguacil who, the reader may remember, so stealthily apprehended cortes before the sanctuary in cuba. the general, on signing the death warrants, was heard to exclaim, "would that i had never learned to write!" the arrangements being now fully settled at the villa rica, cortes sent forward alvarado, with a large part of the army, to cempoalla, where he soon after joined them with the remainder. the late affair of the conspiracy seems to have made a deep impression on his mind. it showed him that there were timid spirits in the camp on whom he could not rely, and who, he feared, might spread the seeds of disaffection among their companions. even the more resolute, on any occasion of disgust or disappointment hereafter, might falter in purpose, and, getting possession of the vessels, abandon the enterprise. this was already too vast, and the odds were too formidable, to authorise expectation of success with diminution of numbers. experience showed that this was always to be apprehended, while means of escape were at hand. the best chance for success was to cut off these means. he came to the daring resolution to destroy the fleet, without the knowledge of his army. when arrived at cempoalla, he communicated his design to a few of his devoted adherents, who entered warmly into his views. through them he readily persuaded the pilots, by means of those golden arguments which weigh more than any other with ordinary minds, to make such a report of the condition of the fleet as suited his purpose. the ships, they said, were grievously racked by the heavy gales they had encountered, and, what was worse, the worms had eaten into their sides and bottoms until most of them were not sea-worthy, and some indeed, could scarcely now be kept afloat. cortes received the communication with surprise; "for he could well dissemble," observes las casas, with his usual friendly comment, "when it suited his interests." "if it be so," he exclaimed, "we must make the best of it! heaven's will be done!" he then ordered five of the worst-conditioned to be dismantled, their cordage, sails, iron, and whatever was moveable, to be brought on shore, and the ships to be sunk. a survey was made of the others, and, on a similar report, four more were condemned in the same manner. only one small vessel remained! when the intelligence reached the troops in cempoalla, it caused the deepest consternation. they saw themselves cut off by a single blow from friends, family, country! the stoutest hearts quailed before the prospect of being thus abandoned on a hostile shore, a handful of men arrayed against a formidable empire. when the news arrived of the destruction of the five vessels first condemned, they had acquiesced in it, as a necessary measure, knowing the mischievous activity of the insects in these tropical seas. but, when this was followed by the loss of the remaining four, suspicions of the truth flashed on their minds. they felt they were betrayed. murmurs, at first deep, swelled louder and louder, menacing open mutiny. "their general," they said, "had led them like cattle to be butchered in the shambles!" the affair wore a most alarming aspect. in no situation was cortes ever exposed to greater danger from his soldiers. his presence of mind did not desert him at this crisis. he called his men together, and employing the tones of persuasion rather than authority, assured them that a survey of the ships showed they were not fit for service. it he had ordered them to be destroyed, they should consider, also, that his was the greatest sacrifice, for they were his property,all, indeed, he possessed in the world. the troops on the other hand, would derive one great advantage from it, by the addition of a hundred able-bodied recruits, before required to man the vessels. but, even if the fleet had been saved, it could have been of little service in their present expedition; since they would not need it if they succeeded, while they would be too far in the interior to profit by it if they failed. he besought them to turn their thoughts in another direction. to be thus calculating chances and means of escape was unworthy of brave souls. they had set their hands to the work; to look back, as they advanced, would be their ruin. they had only to resume their former confidence in themselves and their general, and success was certain. "as for me," he concluded, "i have chosen my part. i will remain here, while there is one to bear me company. if there be any so craven, as to shrink from sharing the dangers of our glorious enterprise, let them go home, in god's name. there is still one vessel left. let them take that and return to cuba. they can tell there how they deserted their commander and their comrades, and patiently wait till we return loaded with the spoils of the aztecs." the politic orator had touched the right chord in the bosoms of the soldiers. as he spoke, their resentment gradually died away. the faded visions of future riches and glory, rekindled by his eloquence, again floated before their imaginations. the first shock over, they felt ashamed of their temporary distrust. the enthusiasm for their leader revived, for they felt that under his banner only they could hope for victory; and they testified the revulsion of their feelings by making the air ring with their shouts, "to mexico! to mexico!" the destruction of his fleet by cortes is, perhaps, the most remarkable passage in the life of this remarkable man. history, indeed, affords examples of a similar expedient in emergencies somewhat similar; but none where the chances of success were so precarious, and defeat would be so disastrous. had he failed, it might well seem an act of madness. yet it was the fruit of deliberate calculation. he had set fortune, fame, life itself, all upon the cast, and must abide the issue. there was no alternative in his mind but to succeed or perish. the measure he adopted greatly increased the chance of success. but to carry it into execution, in the face of an incensed and desperate soldiery, was an act of resolution that has few parallels in history. book iii: march to mexico chapter i [1519] proceedings at cempoallathe spaniards climb the tableland transactions with the nativesembassy to tlascala while at cempoalla, cortes received a message from escalante, his commander at villa rica, informing him there were four strange ships hovering off the coast, and that they took no notice of his repeated signals. this intelligence greatly alarmed the general, who feared they might be a squadron sent by the governor of cuba to interfere with his movements. in much haste, he set out at the head of a few horsemen, and, ordering a party of light infantry to follow, posted back to villa rica. the rest of the army he left in charge of alvarado and of gonzalo de sandoval, a young officer, who had begun to give evidence of the uncommon qualities which have secured to him so distinguished a rank among the conquerors of mexico. escalante would have persuaded the general, on his reaching the town, to take some rest, and allow him to go in search of the strangers; but cortes replied with the homely proverb, "a wounded hare takes no nap," and, without stopping to refresh himself or his men, pushed on three or four leagues to the north, where he understood the ships were at anchor. on the way, he fell in with three spaniards, just landed from them. to his eager inquiries whence they came, they replied that they belonged to a squadron fitted out by francisco de garay, governor of jamaica. this person, the year previous, had visited the florida coast, and obtained from spainwhere he had some interest at courtauthority over the countries he might discover in that vicinity. the three men, consisting of a notary and two witnesses, had been sent on shore to warn their countrymen under cortes to desist from what was considered an encroachment on the territories of garay. probably neither the governor of jamaica, nor his officers, had any very precise notion of the geography and limits of these territories. cortes saw at once there was nothing to apprehend from this quarter. he would have been glad, however, if he could, by any means have induced the crews of the ships to join his expedition. he found no difficulty in persuading the notary and his companions. but when he came in sight of the vessels, the people on board, distrusting the good terms on which their comrades appeared to be with the spaniards, refused to send their boat ashore. in this dilemma, cortes had recourse to a stratagem. he ordered three of his own men to exchange dresses with the new comers. he then drew off his little band in sight of the vessels, affecting to return to the city. in the night, however, he came back to the same place, and lay in ambush, directing the disguised spaniards, when the morning broke, and they could be discerned, to make signals to those on board. the artifice succeeded. a boat put off, filled with armed men, and three or four leaped on shore. but they soon detected the deceit, and cortes, springing from his ambush, made them prisoners. their comrades in the boat, alarmed, pushed off at once for the vessels, which soon got under weigh, leaving those on shore to their fate. thus ended the affair. cortes returned to cempoalla, with the addition of half a dozen able-bodied recruits, and, what was of more importance, relieved in his own mind from the apprehension of interference with his operations. he now made arrangements for his speedy departure from the totonac capital. the forces reserved for the expedition amounted to about four hundred foot and fifteen horse, with seven pieces of artillery. he obtained, also, thirteen hundred indian warriors, and a thousand tamanes, or porters, from the cacique of cempoalla, to drag the guns, and transport the baggage. he took forty more of their principal men as hostages, as well as to guide him on the way, and serve him by their counsels among the strange tribes he was to visit. they were of essential service to him throughout the march. the remainder of his spanish force he left in garrison at villa rica de vera cruz, the command of which he had intrusted to the alguacil, juan de escalante, an officer devoted to his interests. the selection was judicious. it was important to place there a man who would resist any hostile interference from his european rivals, on the one hand, and maintain the present friendly relations with the natives, on the other. cortes recommended the totonac chiefs to apply to his officer, in case of any difficulty, assuring them that, so long as they remained faithful to their new sovereign and religion, they should find a sure protection in the spaniards. before marching, the general spoke a few words of encouragement to his own men. he told them they were now to embark in earnest, on an enterprise which had been the great object of their desires; and that the blessed saviour would carry them victorious through every battle with their enemies. "indeed," he added, "this assurance must be our stay, for every other refuge is now cut off, but that afforded by the providence of god, and your own stout hearts." he ended by comparing their achievements to those of the ancient romans, "in phrases of honeyed eloquence far beyond anything i can repeat," says the brave and simple-hearted bernal diaz, who heard them. cortes was, indeed, master of that eloquence which went to the soldiers' hearts. for their sympathies were his, and he shared in that romantic spirit of adventure which belonged to them. "we are ready to obey you," they cried as with one voice. "our fortunes, for better or worse, are cast with yours." taking leave, therefore, of their hospitable indian friends, the little army, buoyant with high hopes and lofty plans of conquest, set forward on the march to mexico, the sixteenth of august, 1519. after some leagues of travel over roads made nearly impassable by the summer rains, the troops began the gradual ascentmore gradual on the eastern than the western declivities of the cordilleraswhich leads up to the tableland of mexico. at the close of the second day, they reached xalapa, a place still retaining the same aztec name that it has communicated to the drug raised in its environs, the medicinal virtues of which are now known throughout the world.* still winding their way upward, the army passed through settlements containing some hundreds of inhabitants each, and on the fourth day reached a "strong town," as cortes terms it, standing on a rocky eminence, supposed to be that now known by the mexican name of naulinco. here they were hospitably entertained by the inhabitants, who were friends of the totonacs. cortes endeavoured, through father olmedo, to impart to them some knowledge of christian truths, which were kindly received, and the spaniards were allowed to erect a cross in the place, for the future adoration of the natives. indeed, the route of the army might be tracked by these emblems of man's salvation, raised wherever a willing population of indians invited it. * jalap, convolvulus jalapa. the x and j are convertible consonants in the castilian. the troops now entered a rugged defile, the bishop's pass, as it is called, capable of easy defence against an army. very soon they experienced a most unwelcome change of climate. cold winds from the mountains, mingled with rain, and, as they rose still higher, with driving sleet and hail, drenched their garments, and seemed to penetrate to their very bones. the spaniards, indeed, partially covered by their armour and thick jackets of quilted cotton, were better able to resist the weather, though their long residence in the sultry regions of the valley made them still keenly sensible to the annoyance. but the poor indians, natives of the tierra caliente, with little protection in the way of covering, sunk under the rude assault of the elements, and several of them perished on the road. the aspect of the country was as wild and dreary as the climate. their route wound along the spur of the huge cofre of perote, which borrows its name from the coffer-like rock on its summit. it is one of the great volcanoes of new spain. it exhibits now, indeed, no vestige of a crater on its top, but abundant traces of volcanic action at its base, where acres of lava, blackened scoriae, and cinders, proclaim the convulsions of nature, while numerous shrubs and mouldering trunks of enormous trees, among the crevices, attest the antiquity of these events. working their toilsome way across this scene of desolation, the path often led them along the border of precipices, down whose sheer depths of two or three thousand feet the shrinking eye might behold another climate, and see all the glowing vegetation of the tropics choking up the bottom of the ravines. after three days of this fatiguing travel, the way-worn army emerged through another defile, the sierra del agua. they soon came upon an open reach of country, with a genial climate, such as belongs to the temperate latitudes of southern europe. they had reached the level of more than seven thousand feet above the ocean, where the great sheet of tableland spreads out for hundreds of miles along the crests of the cordilleras. the country showed signs of careful cultivation, but the products were, for the most part, not familiar to the eyes of the spaniards. fields and hedges of the various tribes of the cactus, the towering organum, and plantations of aloes with rich yellow clusters of flowers on their tall stems, affording drink and clothing to the aztec, were everywhere seen. the plants of the torrid and temperate zones had disappeared, one after another, with the ascent into these elevated regions. the glossy and dark-leaved banana, the chief, as it is the cheapest, aliment of the countries below, had long since faded from the landscape. the hardy maize, however, still shone with its golden harvests in all the pride of cultivation, the great staple of the higher equally with the lower terraces of the plateau. suddenly the troops came upon what seemed the environs of a populous city, which, as they entered it, appeared to surpass even that of cempoalla in the size and solidity of its structures. these were of stone and lime, many of them spacious and tolerably high. there were thirteen teocallis in the place; and in the suburbs they had seen a receptacle, in which, according to bernal diaz, were stored a hundred thousand skulls of human victims, all piled and ranged in order! he reports the number as one he had ascertained by counting them himself. whatever faith we may attach to the precise accuracy of his figures, the result is almost equally startling. the spaniards were destined to become familiar with this appalling spectacle, as they approached nearer to the aztec capital. the lord of the town ruled over twenty thousand vassals. he was tributary to montezuma, and a strong mexican garrison was quartered in the place. he had probably been advised of the approach of the spaniards, and doubted how far it would be welcome to his sovereign. at all events, he gave them a cold reception, the more unpalatable after the extraordinary sufferings of the last few days. to the inquiry of cortes, whether he were subject to montezuma, he answered with real or affected surprise, "who is there that is not a vassal to montezuma?" the general told him, with some emphasis, that he was not. he then explained whence and why he came, assuring him that he served a monarch who had princes for his vassals as powerful as the aztec monarch himself. the cacique in turn fell nothing short of the spaniard in the pompous display of the grandeur and resources of the indian emperor. he told his guest that montezuma could muster thirty great vassals, each master of a hundred thousand men! his revenues were immense, as every subject, however poor, paid something. they were all expended on his magnificent state, and in support of his armies. these were continually in the field, while garrisons were maintained in most of the large cities of the empire. more than twenty thousand victims, the fruit of his wars, were annually sacrificed on the altars of his gods! his capital, the cacique said, stood in a lake in the centre of a spacious valley. the lake was commanded by the emperor's vessels, and the approach to the city was by means of causeways, several miles long, connected in parts by wooden bridges, which, when raised, cut off all communication with the country. some other things he added, in answer to queries of his guest, in which as the reader may imagine, the crafty or credulous cacique varnished over the truth with a lively colouring of romance. whether romance or reality, the spaniards could not determine. the particulars they gleaned were not of a kind to tranquillise their minds, and might well have made bolder hearts than theirs pause, ere they advanced. but far from it. "the words which we heard," says the stout old cavalier, so often quoted, "however they may have filled us with wonder, made ussuch is the temper of the spaniardonly the more earnest to prove the adventure, desperate as it might appear." in a further conversation cortes inquired of the chief whether his country abounded in gold, and intimated a desire to take home some, as specimens to his sovereign. but the indian lord declined to give him any, saying it might displease montezuma. "should he command it," he added, "my gold, my person, and all i possess, shall be at your disposal." the general did not press the matter further. the curiosity of the natives was naturally excited by the strange dresses, weapons, horses, and dogs of the spaniards. marina, in satisfying their inquiries, took occasion to magnify the prowess of her adopted countrymen, expatiating on their exploits and victories, and stating the extraordinary marks of respect they had received from montezuma. this intelligence seems to have had its effect; for soon after, the cacique gave the general some curious trinkets of gold, of no great value, indeed, but as a testimony of his good will. he sent him, also, some female slaves to prepare bread for the troops, and supplied the means of refreshment and repose, more important to them, in the present juncture, than all the gold of mexico. the spanish general, as usual, did not neglect the occasion to inculcate the great truths of revelation on his host, and to display the atrocity of the indian superstitions. the cacique listened with civil, but cold indifference. cortes, finding him unmoved, turned briskly round to his soldiers, exclaiming that now was the time to plant the cross! they eagerly seconded his pious purpose, and the same scenes might have been enacted as at cempoalla, with, perhaps, very different results, had not father olmedo, with better judgment, interposed. he represented that to introduce the cross among the natives, in their present state of ignorance and incredulity, would be to expose the sacred symbol to desecration, so soon as the backs of the spaniards were turned. the only way was to wait patiently the season when more leisure should be afforded to instil into their minds a knowledge of the truth. the sober reasoning of the good father prevailed over the passions of the martial enthusiasts. the spanish commander remained in the city four or five days to recruit his fatigued and famished forces. their route now opened on a broad and verdant valley, watered by a noble stream,a circumstance of not too frequent occurrence on the parched tableland of new spain. all along the river, on both sides of it, an unbroken line of indian dwellings, "so near as almost to touch one another," extended for three or four leagues; arguing a population much denser than at present. on a rough and rising ground stood a town, that might contain five or six thousand inhabitants, commanded by a fortress, which, with its walls and trenches, seemed to the spaniards quite "on a level with similar works in europe." here the troops again halted, and met with friendly treatment. cortes now determined his future line of march. at the last place he had been counselled by the natives to take the route of the ancient city of cholula, the inhabitants of which, subjects of montezuma, were a mild race, devoted to mechanical and other peaceful arts, and would be likely to entertain him kindly. their cempoalla allies, however, advised the spaniards not to trust the cholulans, "a false and perfidious people," but to take the road to tlascala, that valiant little republic which had so long maintained its independence against the arms of mexico. the people were frank as they were fearless, and fair in their dealings. they had always been on terms of amity with the totonacs, which afforded a strong guarantee for their amicable disposition on the present occasion. the arguments of his indian allies prevailed with the spanish commander, who resolved to propitiate the good will of the tlascalans by an embassy. he selected four of the principal cempoallans for this, and sent by them a martial gift,a cap of crimson cloth, together with a sword and a crossbow, weapons which, it was observed, excited general admiration among the natives. he added a letter, in which he asked permission to pass through their country. he expressed his admiration of the valour of the tlascalans, and of their long resistance to the aztecs, whose proud empire he designed to humble. it was not to be expected that this epistle, indited in good castilian, would be very intelligible to the tlascalans. but cortes communicated its import to the ambassadors. it mysterious characters might impress the natives with an idea of superior intelligence, and the letters serve instead of those hieroglyphical missives which formed the usual credentials of an indian ambassador. the spaniards remained three days in this hospitable place, after the departure of the envoys, when they resumed their progress. although in a friendly country, they marched always as if in a land of enemies, the horse and light troops in the van, with the heavy-armed and baggage in the rear, all in battle array. they were never without their armour, waking or sleeping, lying down with their weapons by their sides. this unintermitting and restless vigilance was, perhaps, more oppressive to the spirits than even bodily fatigue. but they were confident in their superiority in a fair field, and felt that the most serious danger they had to fear from indian warfare was surprise. "we are few against many, brave companions," cortes would say to them; "be prepared, then, not as if you were going to battle, but as if actually in the midst of it!" the road taken by the spaniards was the same which at present leads to tlascala; not that, however, usually followed in passing from vera cruz to the capital, which makes a circuit considerably to the south, towards puebla, in the neighbourhood of the ancient cholula. they more than once forded the stream that rolls through this beautiful plain, lingering several days on the way, in hopes of receiving an answer from the indian republic. the unexpected delay of the messengers could not be explained and occasioned some uneasiness. as they advanced into a country of rougher and bolder features, their progress was suddenly arrested by a remarkable fortification. it was a stone wall nine feet in height, and twenty in thickness, with a parapet a foot and a half broad, raised on the summit for the protection of those who defended it. it had only one opening, in the centre, made by two semicircular lines of wall, overlapping each other for the space of forty paces, and affording a passageway between, ten paces wide, so contrived, therefore, as to be perfectly commanded by the inner wall. this fortification, which extended more than two leagues, rested at either end on the bold natural buttresses formed by the sierra. the work was built of immense blocks of stones nicely laid together without cement; and the remains still existing, among which are rocks of the whole breadth of the rampart, fully attest its solidity and size. this singular structure marked the limits of tlascala, and was intended, as the natives told the spaniards, as a barrier against the mexican invasions. the army paused, filled with amazement at the contemplation of this cyclopean monument, which naturally suggested reflections on the strength and resources of the people who had raised it. it caused them, too, some painful solicitude as to the probable result of their mission to tlascala, and their own consequent reception there. but they were too sanguine to allow such uncomfortable surmises long to dwell in their minds. cortes put himself at the head of his cavalry, and calling out, "forward, soldiers, the holy cross is our banner, and under that we shall conquer," led his little army through the undefended passage, and in a few moments they trod the soil of the free republic of tlascala. chapter ii [1519] republic of tlascalaits institutionsits early history the discussions in the senatedesperate battles before advancing further with the spaniards into the territory of tlascala, it will be well to notice some traits in the character and institutions of the nation, in many respects the most remarkable in anahuac. the tlascalans belonged to the same great family with the aztecs. they came on the grand plateau about the same time with the kindred races, at the close of the twelfth century, and planted themselves on the western borders of the lake of tezcuco. here they remained many years engaged in the usual pursuits of a bold and partially civilised people. from some cause or other, perhaps their turbulent temper, they incurred the enmity of surrounding tribes. a coalition was formed against them; and a bloody battle was fought on the plains of poyauhtlan, in which the tlascalans were completely victorious. disgusted, however, with residence among nations with whom they found so little favour, the conquering people resolved to migrate. they separated into three divisions, the largest of which, taking a southern course by the great volcan of mexico, wound round the ancient city of cholula, and finally settled in the district of country overshadowed by the sierra of tlascala. the warm and fruitful valleys locked up in the embraces of this rugged brotherhood of mountains, afforded means of subsistence for an agricultural people, while the bold eminences of the sierra presented secure positions for their towns. after the lapse of years, the institutions of the nation underwent an important change. the monarchy was divided first into two, afterwards into four separate states, bound together by a sort of federal compact, probably not very nicely defined. each state, however, had its lord or supreme chief, independent in his own territories, and possessed of co-ordinate authority with the others in all matters concerning the whole republic. the affairs of government, especially all those relating to peace and war, were settled in a senate or council, consisting of the four lords with their inferior nobles. the lower dignitaries held of the superior, each in his own district, by a kind of feudal tenure, being bound to supply his table, and enable him to maintain his state in peace, as well as to serve him in war. in return he experienced the aid and protection of his suzerain. the same mutual obligations existed between him and the followers among whom his own territories were distributed. thus a chain of feudal dependencies was established, which, if not contrived with all the art and legal refinements of analogous institutions in the old world, displayed their most prominent characteristics in its personal relations, the obligations of military service on the one hand, and protection on the other. this form of government, so different from that of the surrounding nations, subsisted till the arrival of the spaniards. and it is certainly evidence of considerable civilisation, that so complex a polity should have so long continued undisturbed by violence or faction in the confederate states, and should have been found competent to protect the people in their rights, and the country from foreign invasion. the lowest order of the people, however, do not seem to have enjoyed higher immunities than under the monarchical governments; and their rank was carefully defined by an appropriate dress, and by their exclusion from the insignia of the aristocratic orders. the nation, agricultural in its habits, reserved its highest honours, like most other rude-unhappily also, civilised-nations, for military prowess. public games were instituted, and prizes decreed to those who excelled in such manly and athletic exercises as might train them for the fatigues of war. triumphs were granted to the victorious general, who entered the city, leading his spoils and captives in long procession, while his achievements were commemorated in national songs, and his effigy, whether in wood or stone, was erected in the temples. it was truly in the martial spirit of republican rome. an institution not unlike knighthood was introduced, very similar to one existing also among the aztecs. the aspirant to the honours of this barbaric chivalry watched his arms and fasted fifty or sixty days in the temple, then listened to a grave discourse on the duties of his new profession. various whimsical ceremonies followed, when his arms were restored to him; he was led in solemn procession through the public streets, and the inauguration was concluded by banquets and public rejoicings. the new knight was distinguished henceforth by certain peculiar privileges, as well as by a badge intimating his rank. it is worthy of remark, that this honour was not reserved exclusively for military merit; but was the recompense, also, of public services of other kinds, as wisdom in council, or sagacity and success in trade. for trade was held in as high estimation by the tlascalans as by the other people of anahuac. the temperate climate of the tableland furnished the ready means for distant traffic. the fruitfulness of the soil was indicated by the name of the country,tlascala signifying the "land of bread." its wide plains, to the slopes of its rocky hills, waved with yellow harvests of maize, and with the bountiful maguey, a plant which, as we have seen, supplied the materials for some important fabrics. with these, as well as the products of agricultural industry, the merchant found his way down the sides of the cordilleras, wandered over the sunny regions at their base, and brought back the luxuries which nature had denied to his own. the various arts of civilisation kept pace with increasing wealth and public prosperity; at least these arts were cultivated to the same limited extent, apparently, as among the other people of anahuac. the tlascalan tongue, says the national historian, simple as beseemed that of a mountain region, was rough compared with the polished tezcucan, or the popular aztec dialect, and, therefore, not so well fitted for composition. but they made like proficiency with the kindred nations in the rudiments of science. their calendar was formed on the same plan. their religion, their architecture, many of their laws and social usages were the same, arguing a common origin for all. their tutelary deity was the same ferocious war-god as that of the aztecs, though with a different name; their temples, in like manner, were drenched with the blood of human victims, and their boards groaned with the same cannibal repasts. though not ambitious of foreign conquest, the prosperity of the tlascalans, in time, excited the jealousy of their neighbours, and especially of the opulent state of cholula. frequent hostilities arose between them, in which the advantage was almost always on the side of the former. a still more formidable foe appeared in later days in the aztecs; who could ill brook the independence of tlascala, when the surrounding nations had acknowledged, one after another, their influence or their empire. under the ambitious axayacatl, they demanded of the tlascalans the same tribute and obedience rendered by other people of the country. if it were refused, the aztecs would raze their cities to their foundations, and deliver the land to their enemies. to this imperious summons, the little republic proudly replied, "neither they nor their ancestors had ever paid tribute or homage to a foreign power, and never would pay it. if their country was invaded, they knew how to defend it, and would pour out their blood as freely in defence of their freedom now, as their fathers did of yore, when they routed the aztecs on the plains of poyauhtlan!" this resolute answer brought on them the forces of the monarchy. a pitched battle followed, and the sturdy republicans were victorious. from this period hostilities between the two nations continued with more or less activity, but with unsparing ferocity. every captive was mercilessly sacrificed. the children were trained from the cradle to deadly hatred against the mexicans; and, even in the brief intervals of war, none of those intermarriages took place between the people of the respective countries which knit together in social bonds most of the other kindred races of anahuac. in this struggle, the tlascalans received an important support in the accession of the othomis, or otomies,as usually spelt by castilian writers,a wild and warlike race originally spread over the tableland north of the mexican valley. a portion of them obtained a settlement in the republic, and were speedily incorporated in its armies. their courage and fidelity to the nation of their adoption showed them worthy of trust, and the frontier places were consigned to their keeping. the mountain barriers, by which tlascala is encompassed, afforded many strong natural positions for defence against invasion. the country was open towards the east, where a valley, of some six miles in breadth, invited the approach of an enemy. but here it was, that the jealous tlascalans erected the formidable rampart which had excited the admiration of the spaniards, and which they manned with a garrison of otomies. efforts for their subjugation were renewed on a greater scale, after the accession of montezuma. his victorious arms had spread down the declivities of the andes to the distant provinces of vera paz and nicaragua, and his haughty spirit was chafed by the opposition of a petty state, whose territorial extent did not exceed ten leagues in breadth by fifteen in length. he sent an army against them under the command of a favourite son. his troops were beaten and his son was slain. the enraged and mortified monarch was roused to still greater preparations. he enlisted the forces of the cities bordering on his enemy, together with those of the empire, and with this formidable army swept over the devoted valleys of tlascala. but the bold mountaineers withdrew into the recesses of their hills, and, coolly awaiting their opportunity, rushed like a torrent on the invaders, and drove them back, with dreadful slaughter, from their territories. still, notwithstanding the advantages gained over the enemy in the field, the tlascalans were sorely pressed by their long hostilities with a foe so far superior to themselves in numbers and resources. the aztec armies lay between them and the coast, cutting off all communication with that prolific region, and thus limited their supplies to the products of their own soil and manufacture. for more than half a century they had neither cotton, nor cacao, nor salt. indeed, their taste had been so far affected by long abstinence from these articles, that it required the lapse of several generations after the conquest to reconcile them to the use of salt at their meals. during the short intervals of war, it is said, the aztec nobles, in the true spirit of chivalry, sent supplies of these commodities as presents, with many courteous expressions of respect, to the tlascalan chiefs. this intercourse, we are assured by the indian chronicler, was unsuspected by the people. nor did it lead to any further correspondence, he adds, between the parties, prejudicial to the liberties of the republic, "which maintained its customs and good government inviolate, and the worship of its gods." such was the condition of tlascala, at the coming of the spaniards; holding, it might seem, a precarious existence under the shadow of the formidable power which seemed suspended like an avalanche over her head, but still strong in her own resources, stronger in the indomitable temper of her people; with a reputation established throughout the land for good faith and moderation in peace, for valour in war, while her uncompromising spirit of independence secured the respect even of her enemies. with such qualities of character, and with an animosity sharpened by long, deadly hostility with mexico, her alliance was obviously of the last importance to the spaniards, in their present enterprise. it was not easy to secure it. the tlascalans had been made acquainted with the advance and victorious career of the christians, the intelligence of which had spread far and wide over the plateau. but they do not seem to have anticipated the approach of the strangers to their own borders. they were now much embarrassed by the embassy demanding a passage through their territories. the great council was convened, and a considerable difference of opinion prevailed in its members. some, adopting the popular superstition, supposed the spaniards might be the white and bearded men foretold by the oracles. at all events, they were the enemies of mexico, and as such might co-operate with them in their struggle with the empire. others argued that the strangers could have nothing in common with them. their march throughout the land might be tracked by the broken images of the indian gods, and desecrated temples. how did the tlascalans even know that they were foes to montezuma? they had received his embassies, accepted his presents, and were now in the company of his vassals on the way to his capital. these last were the reflections of an aged chief, one of the four who presided over the republic. his name was xicontecatl. he was nearly blind, having lived, as is said, far beyond the limits of a century. his son, an impetuous young man of the same name with himself, commanded a powerful army of tlascalan and otomie warriors, near the eastern frontier. it would be best, the old man said, to fall with this force at once on the spaniards. if victorious, the latter would then be in their power. if defeated, the senate could disown the act as that of the general, not of the republic. the cunning counsel of the chief found favour with his hearers, though assuredly not in the spirit of chivalry, nor of the good faith for which his countrymen were celebrated. but with an indian, force and stratagem, courage and deceit, were equally admissible in war, as they were among the barbarians of ancient rome.the cempoallan envoys were to be detained under pretence of assisting at a religious sacrifice. meanwhile, cortes and his gallant band, as stated in the preceding chapter, had arrived before the rocky rampart on the eastern confines of tlascala. from some cause or other, it was not manned by its otomie garrison, and the spaniards passed in, as we have seen, without resistance. cortes rode at the head of his body of horse, and, ordering the infantry to come on at a quick pace, went forward to reconnoitre. after advancing three or four leagues, he descried a small party of indians, armed with sword and buckler, in the fashion of the country. they fled at his approach. he made signs for them to halt, but, seeing that they only fled the faster, he and his companions put spurs to their horses, and soon came up with them. the indians, finding escape impossible, faced round, and, instead of showing the accustomed terror of the natives at the strange and appalling aspect of a mounted trooper, they commenced a furious assault on the cavaliers. the latter, however, were too strong for them, and would have cut their enemy to pieces without much difficulty, when a body of several thousand indians appeared in sight, and coming briskly on to the support of their countrymen. cortes, seeing them, despatched one of his party, in all haste, to accelerate the march of his infantry. the indians, after discharging their missiles, fell furiously on the little band of spaniards. they strove to tear the lances from their grasp, and to drag the riders from the horses. they brought one cavalier to the ground, who afterwards died of his wounds, and they killed two of the horses, cutting through their necks with their stout broadswordsif we may believe the chroniclerat a blow. in the narrative of these campaigns, there is sometimes but one stepand that a short onefrom history lo romance. the loss of the horses, so important and so few in number, was seriously felt by cortes, who could have better spared the life of the best rider in the troop. the struggle was a hard one. but the odds were as overwhelming as any recorded by the spaniards in their own romances, where a handful of knights is arrayed against legions of enemies. the lances of the christians did terrible execution here also; but they had need of the magic lance of astolpho, that overturned myriads with a touch, to carry them safe through so unequal a contest. it was with no little satisfaction, therefore, that they beheld their comrades rapidly advancing to their support. no sooner had the main body reached the field of battle, than, hastily forming, they poured such a volley from their muskets and crossbows as staggered the enemy. astounded, rather than intimidated, by the terrible report of the firearms, now heard for the first time in these regions, the indians made no further effort to continue the fight, but drew off in good order, leaving the road open to the spaniards. the latter, too well satisfied to be rid of the annoyance, to care to follow the retreating foe, again held on their way. their route took them through a country sprinkled over with indian cottages, amidst flourishing fields of maize and maguey, indicating an industrious and thriving peasantry. they were met here by two tlascalans envoys, accompanied by two of the cempoallans. the former, presenting themselves before the general, disavowed the assault on his troops as an unauthorised act, and assured him of a friendly reception at their capital. cortes received the communication in a courteous manner, affecting to place more confidence in its good faith than he probably felt. it was now growing late, and the spaniards quickened their march, anxious to reach a favourable ground for encampment before nightfall. they found such a spot on the borders of a stream that rolled sluggishly across the plain. a few deserted cottages stood along the banks, and the fatigued and famished soldiers ransacked them in quest of food. all they could find was some tame animals resembling dogs. these they killed and dressed without ceremony, and, garnishing their unsavoury repast with the fruit of the tuna, the indian fig, which grew wild in the neighbourhood, they contrived to satisfy the cravings of appetite. a careful watch was maintained by cortes, and companies of a hundred men each relieved each other in mounting guard through the night. but no attack was made. hostilities by night were contrary to the system of indian tactics. by break of day on the following morning, it being the 2nd of september, the troops were under arms. besides the spaniards, the whole number of indian auxiliaries might now amount to three thousand; for cortes had gathered recruits from the friendly places on his route; three hundred from the last. after hearing mass, they resumed their march. they moved in close array; the general had previously admonished the men not to lag behind, or wander from the ranks a moment, as stragglers would be sure to be cut off by their stealthy and vigilant enemy. the horsemen rode three abreast, the better to give one another support; and cortes instructed them in the heat of fight to keep together, and never to charge singly. he taught them how to carry their lances, that they might not be wrested from their hands by the indians, who constantly attempted it. for the same reason they should avoid giving thrusts, but aim their weapons steadily at the faces of their foes. they had not proceeded far, when they were met by the two remaining cempoallan envoys, who with looks of terror informed the general, that they had been treacherously seized and confined, in order to be sacrificed at an approaching festival of the tlascalans, but in the night had succeeded in making their escape. they gave the unwelcome tidings, also, that a large force of the natives was already assembled to oppose the progress of the spaniards. soon after, they came in sight of a body of indians, about a thousand, apparently all armed and brandishing their weapons, as the christians approached, in token of defiance. cortes, when he had come within hearing, ordered the interpreters to proclaim that he had no hostile intentions; but wished only to be allowed a passage through their country, which he had entered as a friend. this declaration he commanded the royal notary, godoy, to record on the spot, that, if blood were shed, it might not be charged on the spaniards. this pacific proclamation was met, as usual on such occasions, by a shower of darts, stones, and arrows, which fell like rain on the spaniards, rattling on their stout harness, and in some instances penetrating to the skin. galled by the smart of their wounds, they called on the general to lead them on, till he sounded the well-known battle-cry, "st. jago, and at them!" the indians maintained their ground for a while with spirit, when they retreated with precipitation, but not in disorder. the spaniards, whose blood was heated by the encounter, followed up their advantage with more zeal than prudence, suffering the wily enemy to draw them into a narrow glen or defile, intersected by a little stream of water, where the broken ground was impracticable for artillery, as well as for the movements of cavalry. pressing forward with eagerness, to extricate themselves from their perilous position, to their great dismay, on turning an abrupt angle of the pass, they came in presence of a numerous army choking up the gorge of the valley, and stretching far over the plains beyond. to the astonished eyes of cortes, they appeared a hundred thousand men, while no account estimates them at less than thirty thousand.* * as this was only one of several armies kept on foot by the tlascalans, the smallest amount is, probably, too large. the whole population of the state, according to clavigero, who would not be likely to underrate it, did not exceed half a million at the time of the invasion. they presented a confused assemblage of helmets, weapons, and many-coloured plumes, glancing bright in the morning sun, and mingled with banners, above which proudly floated one that bore as a device the heron on a rock. it was the well-known ensign of the house of titcala, and, as well as the white and yellow stripes on the bodies, and the like colours on the feather-mail of the indians, showed that they were the warriors of xicotencatl. as the spaniards came in sight, the tlascalans set up a hideous war-cry, or rather whistle, piercing the ear with its shrillness, and which, with the beat of their melancholy drums, that could be heard for half a league or more, might well have filled the stoutest heart with dismay. this formidable host came rolling on towards the christians, as if to overwhelm them by their very numbers. but the courageous band of warriors, closely serried together and sheltered under their strong panoplies, received the shock unshaken, while the broken masses of the enemy, chafing and heaving tumultuously around them, seemed to recede only to return with new and accumulated force. cortes, as usual, in the front of danger, in vain endeavoured, at the head of the horse, to open a passage for the infantry. still his men, both cavalry and foot, kept their array unbroken, offering no assailable point to their foe. a body of the tlascalans, however, acting in concert, assaulted a soldier named moran, one of the best riders in the troop. they succeeded in dragging him from his horse, which they despatched with a thousand blows. the spaniards, on foot, made a desperate effort to rescue their comrade from the hands of the enemy,and from the horrible doom of the captive. a fierce struggle now began over the body of the prostrate horse. ten of the spaniards were wounded, when they succeeded in retrieving the unfortunate cavalier from his assailants, but in so disastrous a plight that he died on the following day. the horse was borne off in triumph by the indians, and his mangled remains were sent, a strange trophy, to the different towns of tlascala. the circumstance troubled the spanish commander, as it divested the animal of the supernatural terrors with which the superstition of the natives had usually surrounded it. to prevent such a consequence, he had caused the two horses, killed on the preceding day, to be secretly buried on the spot. the enemy now began to give ground gradually, borne down by the riders, and trampled under the hoofs of their horses. through the whole of this sharp encounter, the indian allies were of great service to the spaniards. they rushed into the water, and grappled their enemies, with the desperation of men who felt that "their only safety was in the despair of safety." "i see nothing but death for us," exclaimed a cempoallan chief to marina; "we shall never get through the pass alive." "the god of the christians is with us," answered the intrepid woman; "and he will carry us safely through." amidst the din of battle the voice of cortes was heard, cheering on his soldiers. "if we fail now," he cried, "the cross of christ can never be planted in the land. forward, comrades! when was it ever known that a castilian turned his back on a foe?" animated by the words and heroic bearing of their general, the soldiers, with desperate efforts, at length succeeded in forcing a passage through the dark columns of the enemy, and emerged from the defile on the open plain beyond. here they quickly recovered their confidence with their superiority. the horse soon opened a space for the manoeuvres of artillery. the close files of their antagonists presented a sure mark; and the thunders of the ordnance vomiting forth torrents of fire and sulphurous smoke, the wide desolation caused in their ranks, and the strangely mangled carcasses of the slain, filled the barbarians with consternation and horror. they had no weapons to cope with these terrible engines, and their clumsy missiles, discharged from uncertain hands, seemed to fall ineffectual on the charmed heads of the christians. what added to their embarrassment was, the desire to carry off the dead and wounded from the field, a general practice among the people of anahuac, but which necessarily exposed them, while thus employed, to still greater loss. eight of their principal chiefs had now fallen; and xicotencatl, finding himself wholly unable to make head against the spaniards in the open field, ordered a retreat. far from the confusion of a panic-struck mob, so common among barbarians, the tlascalan force moved off the ground with all the order of a well-disciplined army. cortes, as on the preceding day, was too well satisfied with his present advantage to desire to follow it up. it was within an hour of sunset, and he was anxious before nightfall to secure a good position, where he might refresh his wounded troops, and bivouac for the night. gathering up his wounded, he held on his way, without loss of time; and before dusk reached a rocky eminence, called tzompachtepetl, or "the hill of tzompach," crowned by a sort of tower or temple. his first care was given to the wounded, both men and horses. fortunately, an abundance of provisions was found in some neighbouring cottages; and the soldiers, at least all who were not disabled by their injuries, celebrated the victory of the day with feasting and rejoicing. as to the number of killed or wounded on either side, it is matter of loosest conjecture. the indians must have suffered severely, but the practice of carrying off the dead from the field made it impossible to know to what extent. the injury sustained by the spaniards appears to have been principally in the number of their wounded. the great object of the natives of anahuac in their battles was to make prisoners, who might grace their triumphs, and supply victims for sacrifice. to this brutal superstition the christians were indebted, in no slight degree, for their personal preservation. to take the reports of the conquerors, their own losses in action were always inconsiderable. but whoever has had occasion to consult the ancient chroniclers of spain in relation to its wars with the infidel, whether arab or american, will place little confidence in numbers.* * according to cortes not a spaniard fellthough many were woundedin this action so fatal to the infidel! diaz allows one. the events of the day had suggested many topics for painful reflection to cortes. he had nowhere met with so determined a resistance within the borders of anahuac; nowhere had he encountered native troops so formidable for their, weapons, their discipline, and their valour. far from manifesting the superstitious terrors felt by the other indians at the strange arms and aspect of the spaniards, the tlascalans had boldly grappled with their enemy, and only yielded to the inevitable superiority of his military science. how important would the alliance of such a nation be in a struggle with those of their own racefor example, with the aztecs! but how was he to secure this alliance? hitherto, all overtures had been rejected with disdain; and it seemed probable, that every step of his progress in this populous land was to be fiercely contested. his army, especially the indians, celebrated the events of the day with feasting and dancing, songs of merriment, and shouts of triumph. cortes encouraged it, well knowing how important it was to keep up the spirits of his soldiers. but the sounds of revelry at length died away; and in the still watches of the night, many an anxious thought must have crowded on the mind of the general, while his little army lay buried in slumber in its encampment around the indian hill. chapter iii [1519] decisive victoryindian councilnight attack negotiations with the enemytlascalan hero the spaniards were allowed to repose undisturbed the following day, and to recruit their strength after the fatigue and hard fighting on the preceding. they found sufficient employment, however, in repairing and cleaning their weapons, replenishing their diminished stock of arrows, and getting everything in order for further hostilities, should the severe lesson they had inflicted on the enemy prove insufficient to discourage him. on the second day, as cortes received no overtures from the tlascalans, he determined to send an embassy to their camp, proposing a cessation of hostilities, and expressing his intention to visit their capital as a friend. he selected two of the principal chiefs taken in the late engagement as the bearers of the message. meanwhile, averse to leaving his men longer in a dangerous state of inaction, which the enemy might interpret as the result of timidity or exhaustion, he put himself at the head of the cavalry and such light troops as were most fit for service, and made a foray into the neighbouring country. it was a montainous region, formed by a. ramification of the great sierra of tlascala, with verdant slopes and valleys teeming with maize and plantations of maguey, while the eminences were crowned with populous towns and villages. in one of these, he tells us, he found three thousand dwellings. in some places he met with a resolute resistance, and on these occasions took ample vengeance by laying the country waste with fire and sword. after a successful inroad he returned laden with forage and provisions, and driving before him several hundred indian captives. he treated them kindly, however, when arrived in camp, endeavouring to make them understand that these acts of violence were not dictated by his own wishes, but by the unfriendly policy of their countrymen. in this way he hoped to impress the nation with the conviction of his power on the one hand, and of his amicable intentions, if met by them in the like spirit, on the other. on reaching his quarters, he found the two envoys returned from the tlascalan camp. they had fallen in with xicotencatl at about two leagues' distance, where he lay encamped with a powerful force. the cacique gave them audience at the head of his troops. he told them to return with the answer, "that the spaniards might pass on as soon as they chose to tlascala; and, when they reached it, their flesh would be hewn from their bodies, for sacrifice to the gods! if they preferred to remain in their own quarters, he would pay them a visit there the next day." the ambassadors added, that the chief had an immense force with him, consisting of five battalions of ten thousand men each. they were the flower of the tlascalan and otomie warriors, assembled under the banners of their respective leaders, by command of the senate, who were resolved to try the fortunes of the state in a pitched battle, and strike one decisive blow for the extermination of the invaders. this bold defiance fell heavily on the ears of the spaniards, not prepared for so pertinacious a spirit in their enemy. they had had ample proof of his courage and formidable prowess. they were now, in their crippled condition, to encounter him with a still more terrible array of numbers. the war, too, from the horrible fate with which it menaced the vanquished, wore a peculiarly gloomy aspect that pressed heavily on their spirits. "we feared death," says the lion-hearted diaz, with his usual simplicity, "for we were men." there was scarcely one in the army that did not confess himself that night to the reverend father olmedo, who was occupied nearly the whole of it with administering absolution, and with the other solemn offices of the church. armed with the blessed sacraments, the catholic soldier lay tranquilly down to rest, prepared for any fate that might betide him under the banner of the cross. as a battle was now inevitable, cortes resolved to march out and meet the enemy in the field. this would have a show of confidence, that might serve the double purpose of intimidating the tlascalans, and inspiriting his own men, whose enthusiasm might lose somewhat of its heat, if compelled to await the assault of their antagonists, inactive in their own intrenchments. the sun rose bright on the following morning, the 5th of september, 1519, an eventful day in the history of spanish conquest. the general reviewed his army, and gave them, preparatory to marching, a few words of encouragement and advice. the infantry he instructed to rely on the point rather than the edge of their swords, and to endeavour to thrust their opponents through the body. the horsemen were to charge at half speed, with their lances aimed at the eyes of the indians. the artillery the arquebusiers, and crossbowmen, were to support one another, some loading while others discharged their pieces, that there should be an unintermitted firing kept up through the action. above all, they were to maintain their ranks close and unbroken, as on this depended their preservation. they had not advanced a quarter of a league, when they came in sight of the tlascalan army. its dense array stretched far and wide over a vast plain or meadow ground, about six miles square. its appearance justified the report which had been given of its numbers. nothing could be more picturesque than the aspect of these indian battalions, with the naked bodies of the common soldiers gaudily painted, the fantastic helmets of the chiefs glittering with gold and precious stones, and the glowing panoplies of feather-work which decorated their persons. innumerable spears and darts tipped with points of transparent itztli or fiery copper, sparkled bright in the morning sun, like the phosphoric gleams playing on the surface of a troubled sea, while the rear of the mighty host was dark with the shadows of banners, on which were emblazoned the armorial bearings of the great tlascalan and otomie chieftains. among these, the white heron on the rock, the cognisance of the house of xicotencatl, was conspicuous, and, still more, the golden eagle with outspread wings, in the fashion of a roman signum, richly ornamented with emeralds and silver work, the great standard of the republic of tlascala. the common file wore no covering except a girdle round the loins. their bodies were painted with the appropriate colours of the chieftain whose banner they followed. the feather-mail of the higher class of warriors exhibited, also, a similar selection of colours for the like object, in the same manner as the colour of the tartan indicates the peculiar clan of the highlander. the caciques and principal warriors were clothed in a quilted cotton tunic, two inches thick, which, fitting close to the body, protected also the thighs and the shoulders. over this the wealthier indians wore cuirasses of thin gold plate, or silver. their legs were defended by leathern boots or sandals, trimmed with gold. but the most brilliant part of their costume was a rich mantle of the plumaje or feather-work, embroidered with curious art, and furnishing some resemblance to the gorgeous surcoat worn by the european knight over his armour in the middle ages. this graceful and picturesque dress was surmounted by a fantastic head-piece made of wood or leather, representing the head of some wild animal, and frequently displaying a formidable array of teeth. with this covering the warrior's head was enveloped, producing a most grotesque and hideous effect. from the crown floated a splendid panache of the richly variegated plumage of the tropics, indicating, by its form and colours, the rank and family of the wearer. to complete their defensive armour, they carried shields or targets, made sometimes of wood covered with leather, but more usually of a light frame of reeds quilted with cotton, which were preferred, as tougher and less liable to fracture than the former. they had other bucklers, in which the cotton was covered with an elastic substance, enabling them to be shut up in a more compact form, like a fan or umbrella. these shields were decorated with showy ornaments, according to the taste or wealth of the wearer, and fringed with a beautiful pendant of feather-work. their weapons were slings, bows and arrows, javelins, and darts. they were accomplished archers, and would discharge two or even three arrows at a time. but they most excelled in throwing the javelin. one species of this, with a thong attached to it, which remained in the slinger's hand, that he might recall the weapon, was especially dreaded by the spaniards. these various weapons were pointed with bone, or the mineral itztli (obsidian), the hard vitreous substance already noticed, as capable of taking an edge like a razor, though easily blunted. their spears and arrows were also frequently headed with copper. instead of a sword, they bore a two-handed staff, about three feet and a half long, in which, at regular distances, were inserted, transversely, sharp blades of itztli,a formidable weapon, which, an eye-witness assures us, he had seen fell a horse at a blow. such was the costume of the tlascalan warrior, and, indeed, of that great family of nations generally, who occupied the plateau of anahuac. some parts of it, as the targets and the cotton mail or escaupil, as it was called in castilian, were so excellent, that they were subsequently adopted by the spaniards, as equally effectual in the way of protection, and superior, on the score of lightness and convenience, to their own. they were of sufficient strength to turn an arrow, or the stroke of a javelin, although impotent as a defence against firearms. but what armour is not? yet it is probably no exaggeration to say that, in convenience, gracefulness, and strength, the arms of the indian warrior were not very inferior to those of the polished nations of antiquity. as soon as the castilians came in sight, the tlascalans set up their yell of defiance, rising high above the wild barbaric minstrelsy of shell, atabal, and trumpet, with which they proclaimed their triumphant anticipations of victory over the paltry forces of the invaders. when the latter had come within bowshot, the indians hurled a tempest of missiles, that darkened the sun for a moment as with a passing cloud, strewing the earth around with heaps of stones and arrows. slowly and steadily the little band of spaniards held on its way amidst this arrowy shower, until it had reached what appeared the proper distance for delivering its fire with full effect. cortes then halted, and, hastily forming his troops, opened a general well-directed fire along the whole line. every shot bore its errand of death; and the ranks of the indians were mowed down faster than their comrades in the rear could carry off their bodies, according to custom, from the field. the balls in their passage through the crowded files, bearing splinters of the broken harness and mangled limbs of the warriors, scattered havoc and desolation in their path. the mob of barbarians stood petrified with dismay, till, at length, galled to desperation by their intolerable suffering, they poured forth simultaneously their hideous war-shriek, and rushed impetuously on the christians. on they came like an avalanche, or mountain torrent, shaking the solid earth, and sweeping away every obstacle in its path. the little army of spaniards opposed a bold front to the overwhelming mass. but no strength could withstand it. they faltered, gave way, were borne along before it, and their ranks were broken and thrown into disorder. it was in vain the general called on them to close again and rally. his voice was drowned by the din of fight and the fierce cries of the assailants. for a moment, it seemed that all was lost. the tide of battle had turned against them, and the fate of the christians was sealed. but every man had that within his bosom which spoke louder than the voice of the general. despair gave unnatural energy to his arms. the naked body of the indian afforded no resistance to the sharp toledo steel; and with their good swords, the spanish infantry at length succeeded in staying the human torrent. the heavy guns from a distance thundered on the flank of the assailants, which, shaken by the iron tempest, was thrown into disorder. their very numbers increased the confusion, as they were precipitated on the masses in front. the horse at the same moment, charging gallantly under cortes, followed up the advantage, and at length compelled the tumultuous throng to fall back with greater precipitation and disorder than that with which they had advanced. more than once in the course of the action, a similar assault was attempted by the tlascalans, but each time with less spirit, and greater loss. they were too deficient in military science to profit by their vast superiority in numbers. they were distributed into companies, it is true, each serving under its own chieftain and banner. but they were not arranged by rank and file, and moved in a confused mass, promiscuously heaped together. they knew not how to concentrate numbers on a given point, or even how to sustain an assault, by employing successive detachments to support and relieve one another. a very small part only of their array could be brought into contact with an enemy inferior to them in amount of forces. the remainder of the army, inactive and worse than useless in the rear, served only to press tumultuously on the advance, and embarrass its movements by mere weight of numbers, while, on the least alarm, they were seized with a panic and threw the whole body into inextricable confusion. it was, in short, the combat of the ancient greeks and persians over again. still, the great numerical superiority of the indians might have enabled them, at a severe cost of their own lives, indeed, to wear out, in time, the constancy of the spaniards, disabled by wounds, and incessant fatigue. but, fortunately for the latter, dissensions arose among their enemies. a tlascalan chieftain, commanding one of the great divisions, had taken umbrage at the haughty demeanour of xicotencatl, who had charged him with misconduct or cowardice in the late action. the injured cacique challenged his rival to single combat. this did not take place. but, burning with resentment, he chose the present occasion to indulge it, by drawing off his forces, amounting to ten thousand men, from the field. he also persuaded another of the commanders to follow his example. thus reduced to about half his original strength, and that greatly crippled by the losses of the day, xicotencatl could no longer maintain his ground against the spaniards. after disputing the field with admirable courage for four hours, he retreated and resigned it to the enemy. the spaniards were too much jaded, and too many were disabled by wounds, to allow them to pursue; and cortes, satisfied with the decisive victory he had gained, returned in triumph to his position on the hill of tzompach. the number of killed in his own ranks had been very small, notwithstanding the severe loss inflicted on the enemy. these few he was careful to bury where they could not be discovered, anxious to conceal not only the amount of the slain, but the fact that the whites were mortal. but very many of the men were wounded, and all the horses. the trouble of the spaniards was much enhanced by the want of many articles important to them in their present exigency. they had neither oil, nor salt, which, as before noticed, was not to be obtained in tlascala. their clothing, accommodated to a softer climate, was ill adapted to the rude air of the mountains; and bows and arrows, as bernal diaz sarcastically remarks, formed an indifferent protection against the inclemency of the weather. still, they had much to cheer them in the events of the day; and they might draw from them a reasonable ground for confidence in their own resources, such as no other experience could have supplied. not that the results could authorise anything like contempt for their indian foe. singly and with the same weapons, he might have stood his ground against the spaniards. but the success of the day established the superiority of science and discipline over mere physical courage and numbers. it was fighting over again, as we have said, the old battle of the european and the asiatic. but the handful of greeks who routed the hosts of xerxes and darius, it must be remembered, had not so obvious an advantage on the score of weapons, as was enjoyed by the spaniards in these wars. the use of firearms gave an ascendency which cannot easily be estimated; one so great, that a contest between nations equally civilised, which should be similar in all other respects to that between the spaniards and the tlascalans, would probably be attended with a similar issue. to all this must be added the effect produced by the cavalry. the nations of anahuac had no large domesticated animals, and were unacquainted with any beast of burden. their imaginations were bewildered when they beheld the strange apparition of the horse and his rider moving in unison and obedient to one impulse, as if possessed of a common nature; and as they saw the terrible animal, with his "neck clothed in thunder," bearing down their squadrons and trampling them in the dust, no wonder they should have regarded him with the mysterious terror felt for a supernatural being. a very little reflection on the manifold grounds of superiority, both moral and physical, possessed by the spaniards in this contest, will surely explain the issue, without any disparagement to the courage or capacity of their opponents. cortes, thinking the occasion favourable, followed up the important blow he had struck by a new mission to the capital, bearing a message of similar import with that recently sent to the camp. but the senate was not yet sufficiently humbled. the late defeat caused, indeed, general consternation. maxixcatzin, one of the four great lords who presided over the republic, reiterated with greater force the arguments before urged by him for embracing the proffered alliance of the strangers. the armies of the state had been beaten too often to allow any reasonable hope of successful resistance; and he enlarged on the generosity shown by the politic conqueror to his prisoners,so unusual in anahuac,as an additional motive for an alliance with men who knew how to be friends as well as foes. but in these views he was overruled by the war-party, whose animosity was sharpened, rather than subdued, by the late discomfiture. their hostile feelings were further exasperated by the younger xicotencatl, who burned for an opportunity to retrieve his disgrace, and to wipe away the stain which had fallen for the first time on the arms of the republic. in their perplexity they called in the assistance of the priests whose authority was frequently invoked in the deliberations of the american chiefs. the latter inquired, with some simplicity, of these interpreters of fate, whether the strangers were supernatural beings, or men of flesh and blood like themselves. the priests, after some consultation, are said to have made the strange answer, that the spaniards, though not gods, were children of the sun; that they derived their strength from that luminary, and, when his beams were withdrawn, their powers would also fail. they recommended a night attack, therefore, as one which afforded the best chance of success. this apparently childish response may have had in it more of cunning than credulity. it was not improbably suggested by xicotencatl himself, or by the caciques in his interest, to reconcile the people to a measure which was contrary to the military usages,indeed, it may be said, to the public law of anahuac. whether the fruit of artifice or superstition, it prevailed; and the tlascalan general was empowered, at the head of a detachment of ten thousand warriors, to try the effect of an assault by night. the affair was conducted with such secrecy that it did not reach the ears of the spaniards. but their general was not one who allowed himself, sleeping or waking, to be surprised on his post. fortunately the night appointed was illumined by the full beams of an autumnal moon; and one of the videttes perceived by its light, at a considerable distance, a large body of indians moving towards the christian lines. he was not slow in giving the alarm to the garrison. the spaniards slept, as has been said, with their arms by their side; while their horses, picketed near them, stood ready saddled, with the bridle hanging at the bow. in five minutes the whole camp was under arms, when they beheld the dusky columns of the indians cautiously advancing over the plain, their heads just peering above the tall maize with which the land was partially covered. cortes determined not to abide the assault in his intrenchments, but to sally out and pounce on the enemy when he had reached the bottom of the hill. slowly and stealthily the indians advanced, while the christian camp, hushed in profound silence, seemed to them buried in slumber. but no sooner had they reached the slope of the rising ground, than they were astounded by the deep battle-cry of the spaniards, followed by the instantaneous apparition of the whole army, as they sallied forth from the works, and poured down the sides of the hill. brandishing aloft their weapons, they seemed to the troubled fancies of the tlascalans like so many spectres or demons hurrying to and fro in mid air, while the uncertain light magnified their numbers, and expanded the horse and his rider into gigantic and unearthly dimensions. scarcely waiting the shock of their enemy, the panic-struck barbarians let off a feeble volley of arrows, and, offering no other resistance, fled rapidly and tumultuously across the plain. the horse easily overtook the fugitives, riding them down and cutting them to pieces without mercy, until cortes, weary with slaughter, called off his men, leaving the field loaded with the bloody trophies of victory. the next day, the spanish commander, with his usual policy after a decisive blow had been struck, sent a new embassy to the tlascalan capital. the envoys received their instructions through the interpreter, marina. that remarkable woman had attracted general admiration by the constancy and cheerfulness with which she endured all the privations of the camp. far from betraying the natural weakness and timidity of her sex, she had shrunk from no hardship herself, and had done much to fortify the drooping spirits of the soldiers; while her sympathies, whenever occasion offered, had been actively exerted in mitigating the calamities of her indian countrymen. through his faithful interpreter, cortes communicated the terms of his message to the tlascalan envoys. he made the same professions of amity as before, promising oblivion of all past injuries; but, if this proffer were rejected, he would visit their capital as a conqueror, raze every house in it to the ground, and put every inhabitant to the sword! he then dismissed the ambassadors with the symbolical presents of a letter in one hand, and an arrow in the other. the envoys obtained respectful audience from the council of tlascala, whom they found plunged in deep dejection by their recent reverses. the failure of the night attack had extinguished every spark of hope in their bosoms. their armies had been beaten again and again, in the open field and in secret ambush. stratagem and courage, all their resources, had alike proved ineffectual against a foe whose hand was never weary, and whose eye was never closed. nothing remained but to submit. they selected four principal caciques, whom they intrusted with a mission to the christian camp. they were to assure the strangers of a free passage through the country, and a friendly reception in the capital. the proffered friendship of the spaniards was cordially embraced, with many awkward excuses for the past. the envoys were to touch at the tlascalan camp on their way, and inform xicotencatl of their proceedings. they were to require him, at the same time, to abstain from all further hostilities, and to furnish the white men with an ample supply of provisions. but the tlascalan deputies, on arriving at the quarters of that chief, did not find him in the humour to comply with these instructions. his repeated collisions with the spaniards, or, it may be, his constitutional courage, left him inaccessible to the vulgar terrors of his countrymen. he regarded the strangers not as supernatural beings, but as men like himself. the animosity of a warrior had rankled into a deadly hatred from the mortifications he had endured at their hands, and his head teemed with plans for recovering his fallen honours, and for taking vengeance on the invaders of his country. he refused to disband any of the force, still formidable, under his command; or to send supplies to the enemy's camp. he further induced the ambassadors to remain in his quarters, and relinquish their visit to the spaniards. the latter, in consequence, were kept in ignorance of the movements in their favour which had taken place in the tlascalan capital. the conduct of xicotencatl is condemned by castilian writers as that of a ferocious and sanguinary barbarian. it is natural they should so regard it. but those who have no national prejudice to warp their judgments may come to a different conclusion. they may find much to admire in that high, unconquerable spirit, like some proud column, standing alone in its majesty amidst the fragments and ruins around it. they may see evidences of a clearsighted sagacity, which, piercing the thin veil of insidious friendship proffered by the spaniards, and penetrating the future, discerned the coming miseries of his country; the noble patriotism of one who would rescue that country at any cost, and, amidst the gathering darkness, would infuse his own intrepid spirit into the hearts of his nation, to animate them to a last struggle for independence. chapter iv [1519] discontents in the armytlascalan spies peace with the republicembassy from montezuma desirous to keep up the terror of the castilian name, by leaving the enemy no respite, cortes on the same day that he despatched the embassy to tlascala, put himself at the head of a small corps of cavalry and light troops to scour the neighbouring country. he was at that time so ill from fever, aided by medical treatment, that he could hardly keep his seat in the saddle. it was a rough country, and the sharp winds from the frosty summits of the mountains pierced the scanty covering of the troops, and chilled both men and horses. four or five of the animals gave out, and the general, alarmed for their safety, sent them back to the camp. the soldiers, discouraged by this ill omen, would have persuaded him to return. but he made answer, "we fight under the banner of the cross; god is stronger than nature," and continued his march. it led through the same kind of chequered scenery of rugged hill and cultivated plain as that already described, well covered with towns and villages, some of them the frontier posts occupied by the otomies. practising the roman maxim of lenity to the submissive foe, he took full vengeance on those who resisted, and, as resistance too often occurred, marked his path with fire and desolation. after a short absence, he returned in safety, laden with the plunder of a successful foray. it would have been more honourable to him had it been conducted with less rigour. the excesses are imputed by bernal diaz to the indian allies, whom in the heat of victory it was found impossible to restrain. on whose head soever they fall, they seem to have given little uneasiness to the general, who declares in his letter to the emperor charles the fifth, "as we fought under the standard of the cross, for the true faith, and the service of your highness, heaven crowned our arms with such success, that, while multitudes of the infidel were slain, little loss was suffered by the castilians." the spanish conquerors, to judge from, their writings, unconscious of any worldly motive lurking in the bottom of their hearts, regarded themselves as soldiers of the church, fighting the great battle of christianity; and in the same edifying and comfortable light are regarded by most of the national historians of a later day. on his return to the camp, cortes found a new cause of disquietude in the discontents which had broken out among the soldiery. their patience was exhausted by a life of fatigue and peril, to which there seemed to be no end. the battles they had won against such tremendous odds had not advanced them a jot. the idea of their reaching mexico, says the old soldier so often quoted, "was treated as jest by the whole army"; and the indefinite prospect of hostilities with the ferocious people among whom they were now cast, threw a deep gloom over their spirits. among the malcontents were a number of noisy, vapouring persons, such as are found in every camp, who, like empty bubbles, are sure to rise to the surface and make themselves seen in seasons of agitation. they were, for the most part, of the old faction of velasquez, and had estates in cuba, to which they turned many a wistful glance as they receded more and more from the coast. they now waited on the general, not in a mutinous spirit of resistance,for they remembered the lesson in villa rica,but with the design of frank expostulation, as with a brother adventurer in a common cause. the tone of familiarity thus assumed was eminently characteristic of the footing of equality on which the parties in the expedition stood with one another. their sufferings, they told him, were too great to be endured. all the men had received one, most of them two or three wounds. more than fifty had perished, in one way or another, since leaving vera cruz. there was no beast of burden but led a life preferable to theirs. for when the night came, the former could rest from his labours; but they, fighting or watching, had no rest, day nor night. as to conquering mexico, the very thought of it was madness. if they had encountered such opposition from the petty republic of tlascala, what might they not expect from the great mexican empire? there was now a temporary suspension of hostilities. they should avail themselves of it to retrace their steps to vera cruz. it is true, the fleet there was destroyed; and by this act, unparalleled for rashness even in roman annals, the general had become responsible for the fate of the whole army. still there was one vessel left. that might be despatched to cuba, for reinforcements and supplies; and, when these arrived, they would be enabled to resume operations with some prospect of success. cortes listened to this singular expostulation with perfect composure. he knew his men, and, instead of rebuke or harsher measures, replied in the same frank and soldier-like vein which they had affected. there was much truth, he allowed, in what they said. the sufferings of the spaniards had been great; greater than those recorded of any heroes in greek or roman story. so much the greater would be their glory. he had often been filled with admiration as he had seen his little host encircled by myriads of barbarians, and felt that no people but spaniards could have triumphed over such formidable odds. nor could they, unless the arm of the almighty had been over them. and they might reasonably look for his protection hereafter; for was it not in his cause they were fighting? they had encountered dangers and difficulties, it was true; but they had not come here expecting a life of idle dalliance and pleasure. glory, as he had told them at the outset, was to be won only by toil and danger. they would do him the justice to acknowledge that he had never shrunk from his share of both. "this was a truth," adds the honest chronicler, who heard and reports the dialogue,which no one could deny. but, if they had met with hardships, he continued, they had been everywhere victorious. even now they were enjoying the fruits of this, in the plenty which reigned in the camp. and they would soon see the tlascalans, humbled by their late reverses, suing for peace on any terms. to go back now was impossible. the very stones would rise up against them. the tlascalans would hunt them in triumph down to the water's edge. and how would the mexicans exult at this miserable issue of their vainglorious vaunts! their former friends would become their enemies; and the totonacs, to avert the vengeance of the aztecs, from which the spaniards could no longer shield them, would join in the general cry. there was no alternative, then, but to go forward in their career. and he besought them to silence their pusillanimous scruples, and, instead of turning their eyes towards cuba, to fix them on mexico, the great object of their enterprise. while this singular conference was going on, many other soldiers had gathered round the spot; and the discontented party, emboldened by the presence of their comrades, as well as by the general's forbearance, replied, that they were far from being convinced. another such victory as the last would be their ruin. they were going to mexico only to be slaughtered. until, at length, the general's patience being exhausted, he cut the argument short by quoting a verse from an old song, implying that it was better to die with honour, than to live disgraced; a sentiment which was loudly echoed by the greater part of his audience, who, notwithstanding their occasional murmurs, had no design to abandon the expedition, still less the commander, to whom they were passionately devoted. the malcontents, disconcerted by this rebuke, slunk back to their own quarters, muttering half-smothered execrations on the leader who had projected the enterprise, the indians who had guided him, and their own countrymen who supported him in it. such were the difficulties that lay in the path of cortes: a wily and ferocious enemy; a climate uncertain, often unhealthy; illness in his own person, much aggravated by anxiety as to the manner in which his conduct would be received by his sovereign; last, not least, disaffection among his soldiers, on whose constancy and union he rested for the success of his operations,the great lever by which he was to overturn the empire of montezuma. on the morning following this event, the camp was surprised by the appearance of a small body of tlascalans, decorated with badges, the white colour of which intimated peace. they brought a quantity of provisions, and some trifling ornaments, which, they said, were sent by the tlascalan general, who was weary of the war, and desired an accommodation with the spaniards. he would soon present himself to arrange this in person. the intelligence diffused general joy, and the emissaries received a friendly welcome. a day or two elapsed, and while a few of the party left the spanish quarters, the others, about fifty in number, who remained, excited some distrust in the bosom of marina. she communicated her suspicions to cortes that they were spies. he caused several of them, in consequence, to be arrested, examined them separately, and ascertained that they were employed by xicotencatl to inform him of the state of the christian camp, preparatory to a meditated assault, for which he was mustering his forces. cortes, satisfied of the truth of this, determined to make such an example of the delinquents as should intimidate his enemy from repeating the attempt. he ordered their hands to be cut off, and in that condition sent them back to their countrymen, with the message, "that the tlascalans might come by day or night; they would find the spaniards ready for them." the doleful spectacle of their comrades returning in this mutilated state filled the indian camp with horror and consternation. the haughty crest of their chief was humbled. from that moment, he lost his wonted buoyancy and confidence. his soldiers, filled with superstitious fear, refused to serve longer against a foe who could read their very thoughts, and divine their plans before they were ripe for execution. the punishment inflicted by cortes may well shock the reader by its brutality. but it should be considered in mitigation, that the victims of it were spies, and, as such, by the laws of war, whether among civilised or savage nations, had incurred the penalty of death. the amputation of the limbs was a milder punishment, and reserved for inferior offences. if we revolt at the barbarous nature of the sentence, we should reflect that it was no uncommon one at that day; not more uncommon, indeed, than whipping and branding with a hot iron were in our own country at the beginning of the present century, or than cropping the ears was in the preceding one. a higher civilisation, indeed, rejects such punishments as pernicious in themselves, and degrading to humanity. but in the sixteenth century, they were openly recognised by the laws of the most polished nations in europe. and it is too much to ask of any man, still less one bred to the iron trade of war, to be in advance of the refinement of his age. we may be content, if, in circumstances so unfavourable to humanity, he does not fall below it. all thoughts of further resistance being abandoned, the four delegates of the tlascalan republic were now allowed to proceed on their mission. they were speedily followed by xicotencatl himself, attended by a numerous train of military retainers. as they drew near the spanish lines, they were easily recognised by the white and yellow colours of their uniforms, the livery of the house of titcala. the joy of the army was great at this sure intimation of the close of hostilities; and it was with difficulty that cortes was enabled to restore the men to tranquillity, and the assumed indifference which it was proper to maintain in the presence of an enemy. the spaniards gazed with curious eye on the valiant chief who had so long kept his enemies at bay, and who now advanced with the firm and fearless step of one who was coming rather to bid defiance than to sue for peace. he was rather above the middle size, with broad shoulders, and a muscular frame intimating great activity and strength. his head was large, and his countenance marked with the lines of hard service rather than of age, for he was but thirty-five. when he entered the presence of cortes, he made the usual salutation, by touching the ground with his hand, and carrying it to his head; while the sweet incense of aromatic gums rolled up in clouds from the censers carried by his slaves. far from a pusillanimous attempt to throw the blame on the senate, he assumed the whole responsibility of the war. he had considered the white men, he said, as enemies, for they came with the allies and vassals of montezuma. he loved his country, and wished to preserve the independence which she had maintained through her long wars with the aztecs. he had been beaten. they might be the strangers who, it had been so long predicted, would come from the east, to take possession of the country. he hoped they would use their victory with moderation, and not trample on the liberties of the republic. he came now in the name of his nation, to tender their obedience to the spaniards, assuring them they would find his countrymen as faithful in peace as they had been firm in war. cortes, far from taking umbrage, was filled with admiration at the lofty spirit which thus disdained to stoop beneath misfortunes. the brave man knows how to respect bravery in another. he assumed, however, a severe aspect, as he rebuked the chief for having so long persisted in bostilities. had xicotencatl believed the word of the spaniards, and accepted their proffered friendship sooner, he would have spared his people much suffering, which they well merited by their obstinacy. but it was impossible, continued the general, to retrieve the past. he was willing to bury it in oblivion, and to receive the tlascalans as vassals to the emperor, his master. if they proved true, they should find him a sure column of support; if false, he would take such vengeance on them as he had intended to take on their capital, had they not speedily given in their submission.it proved an ominous menace for the chief to whom it was addressed. the cacique then ordered his slaves to bring forward some trifling ornaments of gold and feather embroidery, designed as presents. they were of little value, he said, with a smile, for the tlascalans were poor. they had little gold, not even cotton, nor salt; the aztec emperor had left them nothing but their freedom and their arms. he offered this gift only as a token of his good will. "as such i receive it," answered cortes, "and coming from the tlascalans, set more value on it than i should from any other source, though it were a house full of gold"; a politic, as well as magnanimous reply, for it was by the aid of this good will that he was to win the gold of mexico. thus ended the bloody war with the fierce republic of tlascala, during the course of which, the fortunes of the spaniards, more than once, had trembled in the balance. had it been persevered in but a little longer, it must have ended in their confusion and ruin, exhausted as they were by wounds, watching, and fatigues, with the seeds of disaffection rankling among themselves. as it was, they came out of the fearful contest with untarnished glory. to the enemy, they seemed invulnerable, bearing charmed lives, proof alike against the accidents of fortune and the assaults of man. no wonder that they indulged a similar conceit in their own bosoms, and that the humblest spaniard should have fancied himself the subject of a special interposition of providence, which shielded him in the hour of battle, and reserved him for a higher destiny. while the tlascalans were still in the camp, an embassy was announced from montezuma. tidings of the exploits of the spaniards had spread far and wide over the plateau. the emperor, in particular, had watched every step of their progress, as they climbed the steeps of the cordilleras, and advanced over the broad tableland on their summit. he had seen them, with great satisfaction, take the road to tlascala, trusting that, if they were mortal men, they would find their graves there. great was his dismay, when courier after courier brought him intelligence of their successes, and that the most redoubtable warriors on the plateau had been scattered like chaff by the swords of this handful of strangers. his superstitious fears returned in full force. he saw in the spaniards "the men of destiny" who were to take possession of his sceptre. in his alarm and uncertainty, he sent a new embassy to the christian camp. it consisted of five great nobles of his court, attended by a train of two hundred slaves. they brought with them a present, as usual, dictated partly by fear, and, in part, by the natural munificence of his disposition. it consisted of three thousand ounces of gold, in grains, or in various manufactured articles, with several hundred mantles and dresses of embroidered cotton, and the picturesque feather-work. as they laid these at the feet of cortes, they told him, they had come to offer the congratulations of their master on the late victories of the white men. the emperor only regretted that it would not be in his power to receive them in his capital, where the numerous population was so unruly, that their safety would be placed in jeopardy. the mere intimation of the aztec emperor's wishes, in the most distant way, would have sufficed with the indian nations. it had very little weight with the spaniards; and the envoys, finding this puerile expression of them ineffectual, resorted to another argument, offering a tribute in their master's name to the castilian sovereign, provided the spaniards would relinquish their visit to his capital. this was a greater error; it was displaying the rich casket with one hand, which he was unable to defend with the other. yet the author of this pusillanimous policy, the unhappy victim of superstition, was a monarch renowned among the indian nations for his intrepidity and enterprise,the terror of anahuac! cortes, while he urged his own sovereign's commands as a reason for disregarding the wishes of montezuma, uttered expressions of the most profound respect for the aztec prince, and declared that if he had not the means of requiting his munificence, as he could wish, at present, he trusted to repay him, at some future day, with good works! the mexican ambassadors were not much gratified with finding the war at an end, and a reconciliation established between their mortal enemies and the spaniards. the mutual disgust of the two parties with each other was too strong to be repressed even in the presence of the general, who saw with satisfaction the evidences of a jealousy, which, undermining the strength of the indian emperor, was to prove the surest source of his own success. two of the aztec mission returned to mexico, to acquaint their sovereign with the state of affairs in the spanish camp. the others remained with the army, cortes being willing that they should be personal spectators of the deference shown him by the tlascalans. still he did not hasten his departure for their capital. not that he placed reliance on the injurious intimations of the mexicans respecting their good faith. yet he was willing to put this to some longer trial, and, at the same time, to re-establish his own health more thoroughly, before his visit. meanwhile, messengers daily arrived from the city, pressing his journey, and were finally followed by some of the aged rulers of the republic, attended by a numerous retinue, impatient of his long delay. they brought with them a body of five hundred tamanes, or men of burden, to drag his cannon, and relieve his own forces from this fatiguing part of their duty. it was impossible to defer his departure longer; and after mass, and a solemn thanksgiving to the great being who had crowned their arms with triumph, the spaniards bade adieu to the quarters which they had occupied for nearly three weeks on the hill of tzompach. chapter v [1519] spaniards enter tlascalaa description of the capital attempted conversionaztec embassyinvited to cholula the city of tlascala, the capital of the republic of the same name, lay at the distance of about six leagues from the spanish camp. the road led into a hilly region, exhibiting in every arable patch of ground the evidence of laborious cultivation. over a deep barranca, or ravine, they crossed on a bridge of stone, which, according to traditiona slippery authorityis the same still standing, and was constructed originally for the passage of the army. they passed some considerable towns on their route, where they experienced a full measure of indian hospitality. as they advanced, the approach to a populous city was intimated by the crowds who flocked out to see and welcome the strangers; men and women in their picturesque dresses, with bunches and wreaths of roses, which they gave to the spaniards, or fastened to the necks and caparisons of their horses, in the manner as at cempoalla. priests, with their white robes, and long matted tresses floating over them, mingled in the crowd, scattering volumes of incense from their burning censers. in this way, the multitudinous and motley procession defiled through the gates of the ancient capital of tlascala. it was the 23rd of september, 1519. the press was now so great, that it was with difficulty the police of the city could clear a passage for the army; while the azoteas, or flat-terraced roofs of the buildings, were covered with spectators, eager to catch a glimpse of the wonderful strangers. the houses were hung with festoons of flowers, and arches of verdant boughs, intertwined with roses and honeysuckle, were thrown across the streets. the whole population abandoned itself to rejoicing; and the air was rent with songs and shouts of triumph mingled with the wild music of the national instruments, that might have excited apprehensions in the breasts of the soldiery, had they not gathered their peaceful import from the assurance of marina, and the joyous countenances of the natives. with these accompaniments, the procession moved along the principal streets to the mansion of xicotencatl, the aged father of the tlascalan general, and one of the four rulers of the republic. cortes dismounted from his horse, to receive the old chieftain's embrace. he was nearly blind; and satisfied, as far as he could, a natural curiosity respecting the person of the spanish general, by passing his hand over his features. he then led the way to a spacious hall in his palace, where a banquet was served to the army. in the evening, they were shown to their quarters, in the buildings and open ground surrounding one of the principal teocallis; while the mexican ambassadors, at the desire of cortes, had apartments assigned them next to his own, that he might the better watch over their safety, in this city of their enemies. tlascala was one of the most important and populous towns on the tableland. cortes, in his letter to the emperor, compares it to granada, affirming that it was larger, stronger, and more populous than the moorish capital, at the time of the conquest, and quite as well built. but notwithstanding we are assured by a most respectable writer at the close of the last century that its remains justify the assertion, we shall be slow to believe that its edifices could have rivalled those monuments of oriental magnificence, whose light, aerial forms still survive after the lapse of ages, the admiration of every traveller of sensibility and taste. the truth is, that cortes, like columbus, saw objects through the warm medium of his own fond imagination, giving them a higher tone of colouring and larger dimensions than were strictly warranted by the fact. it was natural that the man who had made such rare discoveries should unconsciously magnify their merits to his own eyes and to those of others. the houses were, for the most part, of mud or earth; the better sort of stone and lime, or bricks dried in the sun. they were unprovided with doors or windows, but in the apertures for the former hung mats fringed with pieces of copper or something which, by its tinkling sound, would give notice of any one's entrance. the streets were narrow and dark. the population must have been considerable if, as cortes asserts, thirty thousand souls were often gathered in the market on a public day. these meetings were a sort of fairs, held, as usual in all the great towns, every fifth day, and attended by the inhabitants of the adjacent country, who brought there for sale every description of domestic produce and manufacture with which they were acquainted. they peculiarly excelled in pottery, which was considered as equal to the best in europe. it is a further proof of civilised habits, that the spaniards found barbers' shops, and baths, both of vapour and hot water, familiarly used by the inhabitants. a still higher proof of refinement may be discerned in a vigilant police which repressed everything like disorder among the people. the city was divided into four quarters, which might rather be called so many separate towns, since they were built at different times, and separated from each other by high stone walls, defining their respective limits. over each of these districts ruled one of the four great chiefs of the republic, occupying his own spacious mansion, and surrounded by his own immediate vassals. strange arrangement,and more strange that it should have been compatible with social order and tranquillity! the ancient capital, through one quarter of which flowed the rapid current of the zahuatl, stretched along the summits and sides of hills, at whose base are now gathered the miserable remains of its once flourishing population. far beyond, to the south-west, extended the bold sierra of tlascala, and the huge malinche, crowned with the usual silver diadem of the highest andes, having its shaggy sides clothed with dark green forests of firs, gigantic sycamores, and oaks whose towering stems rose to the height of forty or fifty feet, unencumbered by a branch. the clouds, which sailed over from the distant atlantic, gathered round the lofty peaks of the sierra, and, settling into torrents, poured over the plains in the neighbourhood of the city, converting them, at such seasons, into swamps. thunderstorms, more frequent and terrible here than in other parts of the tableland, swept down the sides of the mountains, and shook the frail tenements of the capital to their foundations. but, although the bleak winds of the sierra gave an austerity to the climate, unlike the sunny skies and genial temperature of the lower regions, it was far more favourable to the development of both the physical and moral energies. a bold and hardy peasantry was nurtured among the recesses of the hills, fit equally to cultivate the land in peace and to defend it in war. unlike the spoiled child of nature, who derives such facilities of subsistence from her too prodigal hand, as supersede the necessity of exertion on his own part, the tlascalan earned his breadfrom a soil not ungrateful, it is trueby the sweat of his brow. he led a life of temperance and toil. cut off by his long wars with the aztecs from commercial intercourse, he was driven chiefly to agricultural labour, the occupation most propitious to purity of morals and sinewy strength of constitution. his honest breast glowed with the patriotism,or local attachment to the soil, which is the fruit of its diligent culture; while he was elevated by a proud consciousness of independence, the natural birthright of the child of the mountains.such was the race with whom cortes was now associated for the achievement of his great work. some days were given by the spaniards to festivity, in which they were successively entertained at the hospitable boards of the four great nobles, in their several quarters of the city. amidst these friendly demonstrations, however, the general never relaxed for a moment his habitual vigilance, or the strict discipline of the camp; and he was careful to provide for the security of the citizens by prohibiting, under severe penalties, any soldier from leaving his quarters without express permission. indeed, the severity of his discipline provoked the remonstrance of more than one of his officers, as a superfluous caution; and the tlascalan chiefs took some exception at it, as inferring an unreasonable distrust of them. but, when cortes explained it, as in obedience to an established military system, they testified their admiration, and the ambitious young general of the republic proposed to introduce it, if possible, into his own ranks. the spanish commander, having assured himself of the loyalty of his new allies, next proposed to accomplish one of the great objects of his missiontheir conversion to christianity. by the advice of father olmedo, always opposed to precipitate measures, he had deferred this till a suitable opportunity presented itself for opening the subject. such a one occurred when the chiefs of the state proposed to strengthen the alliance with the spaniards, by the intermarriage of their daughters with cortes and his officers. he told them this could not be, while they continued in the darkness of infidelity. then, with the aid of the good friar, he expounded as well as he could the doctrines of the faith; and, exhibiting the image of the virgin with the infant redeemer, told them that there was the god, in whose worship alone they would find salvation, while that of their own false idols would sink them in eternal perdition. it is unnecessary to burden the reader with a recapitulation of his homily, which contained, probably, dogmas quite as incomprehensible to the untutored indian as any to be found in his own rude mythology. but, though it failed to convince his audience, they listened with a deferential awe. when he had finished, they replied, they had no doubt that the god of the christians must be a good and a great god, and as such they were willing to give him a place among the divinities of tlascala. the polytheistic system of the indians, like that of the ancient greeks, was of that accommodating kind which could admit within its elastic folds the deities of any other religion, without violence to itself. but every nation, they continued, must have its own appropriate and tutelary deities. nor could they, in their old age, abjure the service of those who had watched over them from youth. it would bring down the vengeance of their gods, and of their own nation, who were as warmly attached to their religion as their liberties, and would defend both with the last drop of their blood! it was clearly inexpedient to press the matter further, at present. but the zeal of cortes, as usual, waxing warm by opposition, had now mounted too high for him to calculate obstacles; nor would he have shrunk, probably, from the crown of martyrdom in so good a cause. but fortunately, at least for the success of his temporal cause, this crown was not reserved for him. the good monk, his ghostly adviser, seeing the course things were likely to take, with better judgment interposed to prevent it. he had no desire, he said, to see the same scenes acted over again as at cempoalla. he had no relish for forced conversions. they could hardly be lasting. the growth of an hour might well die with the hour. of what use was it to overturn the altar, if the idol remained enthroned in the heart? or to destroy the idol itself, if it were only to make room for another? better to wait patiently the effect of time and teaching to soften the heart and open the understanding, without which there could be no assurance of a sound and permanent conviction. these rational views were enforced by the remonstrances of alvarado, velasquez de leon, and those in whom cortes placed most confidence; till, driven from his original purpose, the military polemic consented to relinquish the attempt at conversion, for the present, and to refrain from a repetition of the scenes, which, considering the different mettle of the population, might have been attended with very different results from those at cozumel and cempoalla. but though cortes abandoned the ground of conversion for the present, he compelled the tlascalans to break the fetters of the unfortunate victims reserved for sacrifice; an act of humanity unhappily only transient in its effects, since the prisons were filled with fresh victims on his departure. he also obtained permission for the spaniards to perform the services of their own religion unmolested. a large cross was erected in one of the great courts or squares. mass was celebrated every day in the presence of the army and of crowds of natives, who, if they did not comprehend its full import, were so far edified, that they learned to reverence the religion of their conquerors. the direct interposition of heaven, however, wrought more for their conversion than the best homily of priest or soldier. scarcely had the spaniards left the city,the tale is told on very respectable authority,when a thin, transparent cloud descended and settled like a column on the cross, and, wrapping it round in its luminous folds, continued to emit a soft, celestial radiance through the night, thus proclaiming the sacred character of the symbol, on which was shed the halo of divinity! the principle of toleration in religious matters being established, the spanish general consented to receive the daughters of the caciques. five or six of the most beautiful indian maidens were assigned to as many of his principal officers, after they had been cleansed from the stains of infidelity by the waters of baptism. they received, as usual, on this occasion, good castilian names, in exchange for the barbarous nomenclature of their own vernacular. among them, xicotencatl's daughter, dona luisa, as she was called after her baptism, was a princess of the highest estimation and authority in tlascala. she was given by her father to alvarado, and their posterity intermarried with the noblest families of castile. the frank and joyous manners of this cavalier made him a great favourite with the tlascalans; and his bright open countenance, fair complexion, and golden locks, gave him the name of tonatiuh, the "sun." the indians often pleased their fancies by fastening a sobriquet, or some characteristic epithet, on the spaniards. as cortes was always attended, on public occasions, by dona marina, or malinche, as she was called by the natives, they distinguished him by the same name. by these epithets, originally bestowed in tlascala, the two spanish captains were popularly designated among the indian nations. while these events were passing, another embassy arrived from the court of mexico. it was charged, as usual, with a costly donative of embossed gold plate, and rich embroidered stuffs of cotton and feather-work. the terms of the message might well argue a vacillating and timid temper in the monarch, did they not mask a deeper policy. he now invited the spaniards to his capital, with the assurance of a cordial welcome. he besought them to enter into no alliance with the base and barbarous tlascalans; and he invited them to take the route of the friendly city of cholula, where arrangements, according to his orders, were made for their reception. the tlascalans viewed with deep regret the general's proposed visit to mexico. their reports fully confirmd all he had before heard of the power and ambition of montezuma. his armies, they said, were spread over every part of the continent. his capital was a place of great strength, and as, from its insular position, all communication could be easily cut off with the adjacent country, the spaniards, once entrapped there, would be at his mercy. his policy, they represented, was as insidious as his ambition was boundless. "trust not his fair words," they said, "his courtesies, and his gifts. his professions are hollow, and his friendships are false." when cortes remarked, that he hoped to bring about a better understanding between the emperor and them, they replied, it would be impossible; however smooth his words, he would hate them at heart. they warmly protested, also, against the general's taking the route of cholula. the inhabitants, not brave in the open field, were more dangerous from their perfidy and craft. they were montezuma's tools, and would do his bidding. the tlascalans seemed to combine with this distrust a superstitious dread of the ancient city, the headquarters of the religion of anahuac. it was here that the god quetzalcoatl held the pristine seat of his empire. his temple was celebrated throughout the land, and the priests were confidently believed to have the power, as they themselves boasted, of opening an inundation from the foundations of his shrine, which should bury their enemies in the deluge. the tlascalans further reminded cortes, that while so many other and distant places had sent to him at tlascala, to testify their good will, and offer their allegiance to his sovereign, cholula, only six leagues distant, had done neither. the last suggestion struck the general more forcibly than any of the preceding. he instantly despatched a summons to the city requiring a formal tender of its submission. among the embassies from different quarters which had waited on the spanish commander, while at tlascala, was one from ixtlilxochitl, son of the great nezahualpilli, and an unsuccessful competitor with his elder brotheras noticed in a former part of our narrativefor the crown of tezcuco. though defeated in his pretensions, he had obtained a part of the kingdom, over which he ruled with a deadly feeling of animosity towards his rival, and to montezuma, who had sustained him. he now offered his services to cortes, asking his aid, in return, to place him on the throne of his ancestors. the politic general returned such an answer to the aspiring young prince, as might encourage his expectations, and attach him to his interests. it was his aim to strengthen his cause by attracting to himself every particle of disaffection that was floating through the land. it was not long before deputies arrived from cholula, profuse in their expressions of good will, and inviting the presence of the spaniards in their capital. the messengers were of low degree, far beneath the usual rank of ambassadors. this was pointed out by the tlascalans; and cortes regarded it as a fresh indignity. he sent in consequence a new summons, declaring, if they did not instantly send him a deputation of their principal men, he would deal with them as rebels to his own sovereign, the rightful lord of these realms! the menace had the desired effect. the cholulans were not inclined to contest, at least for the present, his magnificent pretensions. another embassy appeared in the camp, consisting of some of the highest nobles; who repeated the invitation for the spaniards to visit their city, and excused their own tardy appearance by apprehensions for their personal safety in the capital of their enemies. the explanation was plausible, and was admitted by cortes. the tlascalans were now more than ever opposed to his projected visit. a strong aztec force, they had ascertained, lay in the neighbourhood of cholula, and the people were actively placing their city in a posture of defence. they suspected some insidious scheme concerted by montezuma to destroy the spaniards. these suggestions disturbed the mind of cortes, but did not turn him from his purpose. he felt a natural curiosity to see the venerable city so celebrated in the history of the indian nations. he had, besides, gone too far to recede,too far, at least, to do so without a show of apprehension, implying a distrust in his own resources, which could not fail to have a bad effect on his enemies, his allies, and his own men. after a brief consultation with his officers, he decided on the route to cholula. it was now three weeks since the spaniards had taken up their residence within the hospitable walls of tlascala; and nearly six since they entered her territory. they had been met on the threshold as an enemy, with the most determined hostility. they were now to part with the same people, as friends and allies; fast friends, who were to stand by them, side by side, through the whole of their arduous struggle. the result of their visit, therefore, was of the last importance, since on the co-operation of these brave and warlike republicans, greatly depended the ultimate success of the expedition. chapter vi [1519] city of cholulagreat templemarch to cholula reception accorded the spaniardsconspiracy detected the ancient city of cholula, capital of the republic of that name, lay nearly six leagues south of tlascala, and about twenty east, or rather south-east of mexico. it was said by cortes to contain twenty thousand houses within the walls, and as many more in the environs. whatever was its real number of inhabitants, it was unquestionably, at the time of the conquest, one of the most populous and flourishing cities in new spain. it was of great antiquity, and was founded by the primitive races who overspread the land before the aztecs. we have few particulars of its form of government, which seems to have been cast on a republican model similar to that of tlascala. this answered so well, that the state maintained its independence down to a very late period, when, if not reduced to vassalage by the aztecs, it was so far under their control as to enjoy few of the benefits of a separate political existence. their connection with mexico brought the cholulans into frequent collision with their neighbours and kindred, the tlascalans. but, although far superior to them in refinement and the various arts of civilisation, they were no match in war for the bold mountaineers, the swiss of anahuac. the cholulan capital was the great commercial emporium of the plateau. the inhabitants excelled in various mechanical arts, especially that of working in metals, the manufacture of cotton and agave cloths, and of a delicate kind of pottery, rivalling, it was said, that of florence in beauty. but such attention to the arts of a polished and peaceful community naturally indisposed them to war, and disqualified them for coping with those who made war the great business of life. the cholulans were accused of effeminacy, and were less distinguishedit is the charge of their rivalsby their courage than their cunning. but the capital, so conspicuous for its refinement and its great antiquity, was even more venerable for the religious traditions which invested it. it was here that the god quetzalcoatl paused in his passage to the coast, and passed twenty years in teaching the toltec inhabitants the arts of civilisation. he made them acquainted with better forms of government, and a more spiritualised religion, in which the only sacrifices were the fruits and flowers of the season. it is not easy to determine what he taught, since, his lessons have been so mingled with the licentious dogmas of his own priests, and the mystic commentaries of the christian missionary. it is probable that he was one of those rare and gifted beings, who dissipating the darkness of the age by the illumination of their own genius, are deified by a grateful posterity, and placed among the lights of heaven. it was in honour of this benevolent deity, that the stupendous mound was erected on which the traveller still gazes with admiration as the most colossal fabric in new spain, rivalling in dimensions, and somewhat resembling in form, the pyramidal structures of ancient egypt. the date of its erection is unknown, for it was found there when the aztecs entered on the plateau. it had the form common to the mexican teocallis, that of a truncated pyramid, facing with its four sides the cardinal points, and divided into the same number of terraces. its original outlines, however, have been effaced by the action of time and of the elements, while the exuberant growth of shrubs and wild flowers, which have mantled over its surface, give it the appearance of one of those symmetrical elevations thrown up by the caprice of nature, rather than by the industry of man. it is doubtful, indeed, whether the interior be not a natural hill, though it seems not improbable that it is an artificial composition of stone and earth, deeply incrusted, as is certain, in every part, with alternate strata of brick and clay. the perpendicular height of the pyramid is one hundred and seventy-seven feet. its base is one thousand four hundred and twenty-three feet long, twice as long as that of the great pyramid of cheops. it may give some idea of its dimensions to state, that its base, which is square, covers about forty-four acres, and the platform on its truncated summit, embraces more than one. it reminds us of those colossal monuments of brickwork, which are still seen in ruins on the banks of the euphrates, and, in much higher preservation, on those of the nile. on the summit stood a sumptuous temple, in which was the image of the mystic deity, "god of the air," with ebon features, unlike the fair complexion which he bore upon earth, wearing a mitre on his head waving with plumes of fire, with a resplendent collar of gold round his neck, pendants of mosaic turquoise in his ears, a jewelled sceptre in one hand, and a shield curiously painted, the emblem of his rule over the winds, in the other. the sanctity of the place, hallowed by hoary tradition, and the magnificence of the temple and its services, made it an object of veneration throughout the land, and pilgrims from the furthest corners of anahuac came to offer up their devotions at the shrine of quetzalcoatl. the number of these was so great, as to give an air of mendicity to the motley population of the city; and cortes, struck with the novelty, tells us that he saw multitudes of beggars such as are to be found in the enlightened capitals of europe;a whimsical criterion of civilisation which must place our own prosperous land somewhat low in the scale. cholula was not the resort only of the indigent devotee. many of the kindred races had temples of their own in the city, in the same manner as some christian nations have in rome, and each temple was provided with its own peculiar ministers for the service of the deity to whom it was consecrated. in no city was there seen such a concourse of priests, so many processions, such pomp of ceremonial sacrifice, and religious festivals. cholula was, in short, what mecca is among mahometans, or jerusalem among christians; it was the holy city of anahuac. the religious rites were not performed, however, in the pure spirit originally prescribed by its tutelary deity. his altars, as well as those of the numerous aztec gods, were stained with human blood; and six thousand victims are said to have been annually offered up at their sanguinary shrines. the great number of these may be estimated from the declaration of cortes, that he counted four hundred towers in the city; yet no temple had more than two, many only one. high above the rest rose the great "pyramid of cholula," with its undying fires flinging their radiance over the capital, and proclaiming to the nations that there was the mystic worshipalas! how corrupted by cruelty and superstitionof the good deity who was one day to return and resume his empire over the land. but it is time to return to tlascala. on the appointed morning the spanish army took up its march to mexico by the way of cholula. it was followed by crowds of the citizens, filled with admiration at the intrepidity of men who, so few in number, would venture to brave the great montezuma in his capital. yet an immense body of warriors offered to share the dangers of the expedition; but cortes, while he showed his gratitude for their good will, selected only six thousand of the volunteers to bear him company. he was unwilling to encumber himself with an unwieldy force that might impede his movements; and probably did not care to put himself so far in the power of allies whose attachment was too recent to afford sufficient guaranty for their fidelity. after crossing some rough and hilly ground, the army entered on the wide plain which spreads out for miles around cholula. at the elevation of more than six thousand feet above the sea they beheld the rich products of various climes growing side by side, fields of towering maize, the juicy aloe, the chilli or aztec pepper, and large plantations of the cactus, on which the brilliant cochineal is nourished. not a rood of land but was under cultivation; and the soilan uncommon thing on the tablelandwas irrigated by numerous streams and canals, and well shaded by woods, that have disappeared before the rude axe of the spaniards. towards evening they reached a small stream, on the banks of which cortes determined to take up his quarters for the night, being unwilling to disturb the tranquillity of the city by introducing so large a force into it at an unseasonable hour. here he was soon joined by a number of cholulan caciques and their attendants, who came to view and welcome the strangers. when they saw their tlascalan enemies in the camp, however, they exhibited signs of displeasure, and intimated an apprehension that their presence in the town might occasion disorder. the remonstrance seemed reasonable to cortes, and he accordingly commanded his allies to remain in their present quarters, and to join him as he left the city on the way to mexico. on the following morning he made his entrance at the head of his army into cholula, attended by no other indians than those from cempoalla, and a handful of tlascalans to take charge of the baggage. his allies, at parting, gave him many cautions respecting the people he was to visit, who, while they affected to despise them as a nation of traders, employed the dangerous arms of perfidy and cunning. as the troops drew near the city, the road was lined with swarms of people of both sexes and every age,old men tottering with infirmity, women with children in their arms, all eager to catch a glimpse of the strangers, whose persons, weapons, and horses were objects of intense curiosity to eyes which had not hitherto ever encountered them in battle. the spaniards, in turn, were filled with admiration at the aspect of the cholulans, much superior in dress and general appearance to the nations they had hitherto seen. they were particularly struck with the costume of the higher classes, who wore fine embroidered mantles, resembling the graceful albornoz, or moorish cloak, in their texture and fashion. they showed the same delicate taste for flowers as the other tribes of the plateau, decorating their persons with them, and tossing garlands and bunches among the soldiers. an immense number of priests mingled. with the crowd, swinging their aromatic censers, while music from various kinds of instruments gave a lively welcome to the visitors, and made the whole scene one of gay, bewildering enchantment. if it did not have the air of a triumphal procession so much as at tlascala, where the melody of instruments was drowned by the shouts of the multitude, it gave a quiet assurance of hospitality and friendly feeling not less grateful. the spaniards were also struck with the cleanliness of the city, the width and great regularity of the streets, which seemed to have been laid out on a settled plan, with the solidity of the houses, and the number and size of the pyramidal temples. in the court of one of these, and its surrounding buildings, they were quartered. they were soon visited by the principal lords of the place, who seemed solicitous to provide them with accommodations. their table was plentifully supplied, and, in short, they experienced such attentions as were calculated to dissipate their suspicions, and made them impute those of their tlascalan friends to prejudice and old national hostility. in a few days the scene changed. messengers arrived from montezuma, who, after a short and unpleasant intimation to cortes that his approach occasioned much disquietude to their master, conferred separately with the mexican ambassadors still in the castilian camp, and then departed, taking one of the latter along with them. from this time, the deportment of their cholulan hosts underwent a visible alteration. they did not visit the quarters as before, and, when invited to do so, excused themselves on pretence of illness. the supply of provisions was stinted, on the ground that they were short of maize. these symptoms of alienation, independently of temporary embarrassment, caused serious alarm in the breast of cortes, for the future. his apprehensions were not allayed by the reports of the cempoallans, who told him, that in wandering round the city they had seen several streets barricaded; the azoteas, or flat roofs of the houses, loaded with huge stones and other missiles, as if preparatory to an assault; and in some places they had found holes covered over with branches, and upright stakes planted within, as if to embarrass the movements of the cavalry. some tlascalans coming in also from their camp, informed the general that a great sacrifice, mostly of children, had been offered up in a distant quarter of the town, to propitiate the favour of the gods, apparently for some intended enterprise. they added, that they had seen numbers of the citizens leaving the city with their women and children, as if to remove them to a place of safety. these tidings confirmed the worst suspicions of cortes, who had no doubt that some hostile scheme was in agitation. if he had felt any, a discovery by marina, the good angel of the expedition, would have turned these doubts into certainty. the amiable manners of the indian girl had won her the regard of the wife of one of the caciques, who repeatedly urged marina to visit her house, darkly intimating that in this way she would escape the fate that awaited the spaniards. the interpreter, seeing the importance of obtaining further intelligence at once, pretended to be pleased with the proposal, and affected, at the same time, great discontent with the white men, by whom she was detained in captivity. thus throwing the credulous cholulan off her guard, marina gradually insinuated herself into her confidence, so far as to draw from her a full account of the conspiracy. it originated, she said, with the aztec emperor, who had sent rich bribes to the great caciques, and to her husband among others, to secure them in his views. the spaniards were to be assaulted as they marched out of the capital, when entangled in its streets, in which numerous impediments had been placed to throw the cavalry into disorder. a force of twenty thousand mexicans was already quartered at no great distance from the city, to support the cholulans in the assault. it was confidently expected that the spaniards, thus embarrassed in their movements, would fall an easy prey to the superior strength of their enemy. a sufficient number of prisoners was to be reserved to grace the sacrifices of cholula; the rest were to be led in fetters to the capital of montezuma. while this conversation was going on, marina occupied herself with putting up such articles of value and wearing apparel as she proposed to take with her in the evening, when she could escape unnoticed from the spanish quarters to the house of her cholulan friend, who assisted her in the operation. leaving her visitor thus employed, marina found an opportunity to steal away for a few moments, and, going to the general's apartment, disclosed to him her discoveries. he immediately caused the cacique's wife to be seized, and on examination she fully confirmed the statement of his indian mistress. the intelligence thus gathered by cortes filled him with the deepest alarm. he was fairly taken in the snare. to fight or to fly seemed equally difficult. he was in a city of enemies, where every house might be converted into a fortress, and where such embarrassments were thrown in the way, as might render the manoeuvres of his artillery and horse nearly impracticable. in addition to the wily cholulans, he must cope, under all these disadvantages, with the redoubtable warriors of mexico. he was like a traveller who has lost his way in the darkness among precipices, where any step may dash him to pieces, and where to retreat or to advance is equally perilous. he was desirous to obtain still further confirmation and particulars of the conspiracy. he accordingly induced two of the priests in the neighbourhood, one of them a person of much influence in the place, to visit his quarters. by courteous treatment, and liberal largesses of the rich presents he had received from montezuma,thus turning his own gifts against the giver,he drew from them a full confirmation of the previous report. the emperor had been in a state of pitiable vacillation since the arrival of the spaniards. his first orders to the cholulans were, to receive the strangers kindly. he had recently consulted his oracles anew, and obtained for answer, that cholula would be the grave of his enemies; for the gods would be sure to support him in avenging the sacrilege offered to the holy city. so confident were the aztecs of success, that numerous manacles, or poles with thongs which served as such, were already in the place to secure the prisoners. cortes, now feeling himself fully possessed of the facts, dismissed the priests, with injunctions of secrecy, scarcely necessary. he told them it was his purpose to leave the city on the following morning, and requested that they would induce some of the principal caciques to grant him an interview in his quarters. he then summoned a council of his officers, though, as it seems, already determined as to the course he was to take. the members of the council were differently affected by the startling intelligence, according to their different characters. the more timid, disheartened by the prospect of obstacles which seemed to multiply as they drew nearer the mexican capital, were for retracing their steps, and seeking shelter in the friendly city of tlascala. others, more persevering, but prudent, were for taking the more northerly route originally recommended by their allies. the greater part supported the general, who was ever of opinion that they had no alternative but to advance. retreat would be ruin. half-way measures were scarcely better; and would infer a timidity which must discredit them with both friend and foe. their true policy was to rely on themselves; to strike such a blow as should intimidate their enemies, and show them that the spaniards were as incapable of being circumvented by artifice, as of being crushed by weight of numbers and courage in the open field. when the caciques, persuaded by the priests, appeared before cortes, he contented himself with gently rebuking their want of hospitality, and assured them the spaniards would be no longer a burden to their city, as he proposed to leave it early on the following morning. he requested, moreover, that they would furnish a reinforcement of two thousand men to transport his artillery and baggage. the chiefs, after some consultation, acquiesced in a demand which might in some measure favour their own designs. on their departure, the general summoned the aztec ambassadors before him. he briefly acquainted them with his detection of the treacherous plot to destroy his army, the contrivance of which, he said, was imputed to their master, montezuma. it grieved him much, he added, to find the emperor implicated in so nefarious a scheme, and that the spaniards must now march as enemies against the prince, whom they had hoped to visit as a friend. the ambassadors, with earnest protestations, asserted their entire ignorance of the conspiracy; and their belief that montezuma was equally innocent of a crime, which they charged wholly on the cholulans. it was clearly the policy of cortes to keep on good terms with the indian monarch; to profit as long as possible by his good offices; and to avail himself of his fancied securitysuch feelings of security as the general could inspire him withto cover his own future operations. he affected to give credit, therefore, to the assertion of the envoys, and declared his unwillingness to believe that a monarch, who had rendered the spaniards so many friendly offices, would now consummate the whole by a deed of such unparalleled baseness. the discovery of their twofold duplicity, he added, sharpened his resentment against the cholulans, on whom he would take such vengeance as should amply requite the injuries done both to montezuma and the spaniards. he then dismissed the ambassadors, taking care, notwithstanding this show of confidence, to place a strong guard over them, to prevent communication with the citizens. that night was one of deep anxiety to the army. the ground they stood on seemed loosening beneath their feet, and any moment might be the one marked for their destruction. their vigilant general took all possible precautions for their safety, increasing the number of the sentinels, and posting his guns in such a manner as to protect the approaches to the camp. his eyes, it may well be believed, did not close during the night. indeed every spaniard lay down in his arms, and every horse stood saddled and bridled, ready for instant service. but no assault was meditated by the indians, and the stillness of the hour was undisturbed except by the occasional sounds heard in a populous city, even when buried in slumber, and by the hoarse cries of the priests from the turrets of the teocallis, proclaiming through their trumpets the watches of the night. chapter vii [1519] terrible massacretranquillity restored reflections on the massacrefurther proceedings envoys from montezuma with the first streak of morning light, cortes was seen on horseback, directing the movements of his little band. the strength of his forces he drew up in the great square or court, surrounded partly by buildings, as before noticed, and in part by a high wall. there were three gates of entrance, at each of which he placed a strong guard. the rest of his troops, with his great guns, he posted without the enclosure, in such a manner as to command the avenues, and secure those within from interruption in their bloody work. orders had been sent the night before to the tlascalan chiefs to hold themselves ready, at a concerted signal, to march into the city and join the spaniards. the arrangements were hardly completed, before the cholulan caciques appeared, leading a body of levies, tamanes, even more numerous than had been demanded. they were marched at once into the square, commanded, as we have seen, by the spanish infantry, which was drawn up under the walls. cortes then took some of the caciques aside. with a stern air, he bluntly charged them with the conspiracy, showing that he was well acquainted with all the particulars. he had visited their city, he said, at the invitation of their emperor; had come as friend; had respected the inhabitants and their property; and, to avoid all cause of umbrage, had left a great part of his forces without the walls. they had received him with a show of kindness and hospitality, and, reposing on this, he had been decoyed into the snare, and found this kindness only a mask to cover the blackest perfidy. the cholulans were thunderstruck at the accusation. an undefined awe crept over them as they gazed on the mysterious strangers, and felt themselves in the presence of beings who seemed to have the power of reading the thoughts scarcely formed in their bosoms. there was no use in prevarication or denial before such judges. they confessed the whole, and endeavoured to excuse themselves by throwing the blame on montezuma. cortes, assuming an air of higher indignation at this, assured them that the pretence should not serve, since, even if well founded, it would be no justification; and he would now make such an example of them for their treachery, that the report of it should ring throughout the wide borders of anahuac! the fatal signal, the discharge of an arquebuse was then given. in an instant every musket and crossbow was levelled at the unfortunate cholulans in the courtyard, and a frightful volley poured into them as they stood crowded together like a herd of deer in the centre. they were taken by surprise, for they had not heard the preceding dialogue with the chiefs. they made scarcely any resistance to the spaniards, who followed up the discharge of their pieces by rushing on them with their swords; and, as the half-naked bodies of the natives afforded no protection, they hewed them down with as much ease as the reaper mows down the ripe corn in harvest time. some endeavoured to scale the walls, but only afforded a surer mark to the arquebusiers and archers. others threw themselves into the gateways, but were received on the long pikes of the soldiers who guarded them. some few had better luck in hiding themselves under the heaps of slain with which the ground was soon loaded. while this work of death was going on, the countrymen of the slaughtered indians, drawn together by the noise of the massacre, had commenced a furious assault on the spaniards from without. but cortes had placed his battery of heavy guns in a position that commanded the avenues, and swept off the files of the assailants as they rushed on. in the intervals between the discharges, which, in the imperfect state of the science in that day, were much longer than in ours, he forced back the press by charging with the horse into the midst. the steeds, the guns, the weapons of the spaniards, were all new to the cholulans. notwithstanding the novelty of the terrific spectacle, the flash of firearms mingling with the deafening roar of the artillery, as its thunders reverberated among the buildings, the despairing indians pushed on to take the places of their fallen comrades. while this fierce struggle was going forward, the tlascalans, hearing the concerted signal, had advanced with quick pace into the city. they had bound, by order of cortes, wreaths of sedge round their heads, that they might the more surely be distinguished from the cholulans. coming up in the very heat of the engagement, they fell on the defenceless rear of the townsmen, who, trampled down under the heels of the castilian cavalry on one side, and galled by their vindictive enemies on the other, could no longer maintain their ground. they gave way, some taking refuge in the nearest buildings, which, being partly of wood, were speedily set on fire. others fled to the temples. one strong party, with a number of priests at its head, got possession of the great teocalli. there was a vulgar tradition, already alluded to, that, on removal of part of the walls, the god would send forth an inundation to overwhelm his enemies. the superstitious cholulans with great difficulty succeeded in wrenching away some of the stones in the walls of the edifice. but dust, not water followed. their false gods deserted them in the hour of need. in despair they flung themselves into the wooden turrets that crowned the temple, and poured down stones, javelins, and burning arrows on the spaniards, as they climbed the great staircase, which, by a flight of one hundred and twenty steps, scaled the face of the pyramid. but the fiery shower fell harmless on the steel bonnets of the christians, while they availed themselves of the burning shafts to set fire to the wooden citadel, which was speedily wrapt in flames. still the garrison held out, and though quarter, it is said, was offered, only one cholulan availed himself of it. the rest threw themselves headlong from the parapet, or perished miserably in the flames. all was now confusion and uproar in the fair city which had so lately reposed in security and peace. the groans of the dying, the frantic supplications of the vanquished for mercy, were mingled with the loud battle-cries of the spaniards, as they rode down their enemy, and with the shrill whistle of the tlascalans, who gave full scope to the long cherished rancour of ancient rivalry. the tumult was still further swelled by the incessant rattle of musketry, and the crash of falling timbers, which sent up a volume of flame that outshone the ruddy light of morning, making altogether a hideous confusion of sights and sounds, that converted the holy city into a pandemonium. as resistance slackened, the victors broke into the houses and sacred places, plundering them of whatever valuables they contained, plate, jewels, which were found in some quantity, wearing apparel and provisions, the two last coveted even more than the former by the simple tlascalans, thus facilitating a division of the spoil, much to the satisfaction of their christian confederates. amidst this universal licence, it is worthy of remark, the commands of cortes were so far respected that no violence was offered to women or children, though these, as well as numbers of the men, were made prisoners, to be swept into slavery by the tlascalans. these scenes of violence had lasted some hours, when cortes, moved by the entreaties of some cholulan chiefs, who had been reserved from the massacre, backed by the prayers of the mexican envoys, consented, out of regard, as he said, to the latter, the representatives of montezuma, to call off the soldiers, and put a stop, as well as he could, to further outrage. two of the caciques were also permitted to go to their countrymen with assurances of pardon and protection to all who would return to their obedience. these measures had their effect. by the joint efforts of cortes and the caciques, the tumult was with much difficulty appeased. the assailants, spaniards and indians, gathered under their respective banners, and the cholulans, relying on the assurance of their chiefs, gradually returned to their homes. the first act of cortes was, to prevail on the tlascalan chiefs to liberate their captives. such was their deference to the spanish commander, that they acquiesced, though not without murmurs, contenting themselves, as they best could, with the rich spoil rifled from the cholulans, consisting of various luxuries long since unknown in tlascala. his next care was to cleanse the city from its loathsome impurities, particularly from the dead bodies which lay festering in heaps in the streets and great square. the general, in his letter to charles the fifth, admits three thousand slain; most accounts say six, and some swell the amount yet higher. as the eldest and principal cacique was among the number, cortes assisted the cholulans in installing a successor in his place. by these pacific measures, confidence was gradually restored. the people in the environs, reassured, flocked into the capital to supply the place of the diminished population. the markets were again opened; and the usual avocations of an orderly, industrious community were resumed. still, the long piles of black and smouldering ruins proclaimed the hurricane which had so lately swept over the city, and the walls surrounding the scene of slaughter in the great square, which were standing more than fifty years after the event, told the sad tale of the massacre of cholula. this passage in their history is one of those that have left a dark stain on the memory of the conquerors. nor can we contemplate at this day, without a shudder, the condition of this fair and flourishing capital thus invaded in its privacy, and delivered over to the excesses of a rude and ruthless soldiery. but, to judge the action fairly, we must transport ourselves to the age when it happened. the difficulty that meets us in the outset is, to find a justification of the right of conquest at all. but it should be remembered, that religious infidelity, at this period, and till a much later, was regardedno matter whether founded on ignorance or education, whether hereditary or acquired, heretical or paganas a sin to be punished with fire and faggot in this world, and eternal suffering in the next. under this code, the territory of the heathen, wherever found, was regarded as a sort of religious waif, which, in default of a legal proprietor, was claimed and taken possession of by the holy see, and as such was freely given away, by the head of the church, to any temporal potentate whom he pleased, that would assume the burden of conquest. thus, alexander the sixth generously granted a large portion of the western hemisphere to the spaniards, and of the eastern to the portuguese. these lofty pretensions of the successors of the humble fisherman of galilee, far from being nominal, were acknowledged and appealed to as conclusive in controversies between nations. with the right of conquest, thus conferred, came also the obligation, on which it may be said to have been founded, to retrieve the nations sitting in darkness from eternal perdition. this obligation was acknowledged by the best and the bravest, the gownsman in his closet, the missionary, and the warrior in the crusade. however much it may have been debased by temporal motives and mixed up with worldly considerations of ambition and avarice, it was still active in the mind of the christian conqueror. we have seen how far paramount it was to every calculation of personal interest in the breast of cortes. the concession of the pope then, founded on and enforcing the imperative duty of conversion, was the assumed basisand, in the apprehension of that age, a sound oneof the right of conquest. the right could not, indeed, be construed to authorise any unnecessary act of violence to the natives. the present expedition, up to the period of its history at which we are now arrived, had probably been stained with fewer of such acts than almost any similar enterprise of the spanish discoverers in the new world. throughout the campaign, cortes had prohibited all wanton injuries to the natives, in person or property, and had punished the perpetrators of them with exemplary severity. he had been faithful to his friends, and, with perhaps a single exception, not unmerciful to his foes. whether from policy or principle, it should be recorded to his credit, though, like every sagacious mind, he may have felt that principle and policy go together. he had entered cholula as a friend, at the invitation of the indian emperor, who had a real, if not avowed, control over the state. he had been received as a friend, with every demonstration of good will; when, without any offence of his own or his followers, he found they were to be the victims of an insidious plot,that they were standing on a mine which might be sprung at any moment, and bury them all in its ruins. his safety, as he truly considered, left no alternative but to anticipate the blow of his enemies. yet who can doubt that the punishment thus inflicted was excessive,that the same end might have been attained by directing the blow against the guilty chiefs, instead of letting it fall on the ignorant rabble, who but obeyed the commands of their masters? but when was it ever seen, that fear, armed with power, was scrupulous in the exercise of it? or that the passions of a fierce soldiery, inflamed by conscious injuries, could be regulated in the moment of explosion? but whatever be thought of this transaction in a moral view, as a stroke of policy it was unquestionable. the nations of anahuac had beheld, with admiration mingled with awe, the little band of christian warriors steadily advancing along the plateau in face of every obstacle, overturning army after army with as much ease, apparently, as the good ship throws off the angry billows from her bows; or rather like the lava, which rolling from their own volcanoes, holds on its course unchecked by obstacles, rock, tree, or building, bearing them along, or crushing and consuming them in its fiery path. the prowess of the spaniards"the white gods," as they were often calledmade them to be thought invincible. but it was not till their arrival at cholula that the natives learned how terrible was their vengeance,and they trembled! none trembled more than the aztec emperor on his throne among the mountains. he read in these events the dark character traced by the finger of destiny. he felt his empire melting away like a morning mist. he might well feel so. some of the most important cities in the neighbourhood of cholula, intimidated by the fate of that capital, now sent their envoys to the castilian camp, tendering their allegiance, and propitiating the favour of the strangers by rich presents of gold and slaves. montezuma, alarmed at these signs of defection, took counsel again of his impotent deities; but, although the altars smoked with fresh hecatombs of human victims, he obtained no cheering response. he determined, therefore, to send another embassy to the spaniards, disavowing any participation in the conspiracy of cholula. meanwhile cortes was passing his time in that capital. he thought that the impression produced by the late scenes, and by the present restoration of tranquillity, offered a fair opportunity for the good work of conversion. he accordingly urged the citizens to embrace the cross, and abandon the false guardians who had abandoned them in their extremity. but the traditions of centuries rested on the holy city, shedding a halo of glory around it as "the sanctuary of the gods," the religious capital of anahuac. it was too much to expect that the people would willingly resign this preeminence, and descend to the level of an ordinary community. still cortes might have pressed the matter, however unpalatable, but for the renewed interposition of the wise olmedo, who persuaded him to postpone it till after the reduction of the whole country. during the occurrence of these events, envoys arrived from mexico. they were charged, as usual, with a rich present of plate and ornaments of gold; among others, artificial birds in imitation of turkeys, with plumes of the same precious metal. to these were added fifteen hundred cotton dresses of delicate fabric. the emperor even expressed his regret at the catastrophe of cholula, vindicated himself from any share in the conspiracy, which, he said, had brought deserved retribution on the heads of its authors, and explained the existence of an aztec force in the neighbourhood, by the necessity of repressing some disorders there. one cannot contemplate this pusillanimous conduct of montezuma without mingled feelings of pity and contempt. it is not easy to reconcile his assumed innocence of the plot with many circumstances connected with it. but it must be remembered here and always, that his history is to be collected solely from spanish writers, and such of the natives as flourished after the conquest, when the country had become a colony of spain. it is the hard fate of this unfortunate monarch, to be wholly indebted for his portraiture to the pencil of his enemies. more than a fortnight had elapsed since the entrance of the spaniards into cholula, and cortes now resolved, without loss of time, to resume his march towards the capital. his rigorous reprisals had so far intimidated the cholulans, that he felt assured he should no longer leave an active enemy in his rear, to annoy him in case of retreat. he had the satisfaction, before his departure, to heal the feudin outward appearance, at leastthat had so long subsisted between the holy city and tlascala, and which, under the revolution which so soon changed the destinies of the country, never revived. it was with some disquietude that he now received an application from his cempoallan allies to be allowed to withdraw from the expedition, and return to their own homes. they had incurred too deeply theresentment of the aztec emperor, by their insults to his collectors, and by their co-operation with the spaniards, to care to trust themselves in his capital. it was in vain cortes endeavoured to re-assure them by promises of his protection. their habitual distrust and dread of "the great montezuma" were not to be overcome. the general learned their determination with regret, for they had been of infinite service to the cause by their staunch fidelity and courage. all this made it the more difficult for him to resist their reasonable demand. liberally recompensing their services, therefore, from the rich wardrobe and treasures of the emperor, he took leave of his faithful followers, before his own departure from cholula. he availed himself of their return to send letters to juan de escalante, his lieutenant at vera cruz, acquainting him with the successful progress of the expedition. he enjoined on that officer to strengthen the fortifications of the place, so as the better to resist any hostile interference from cuba,an event for which cortes was ever on the watch,and to keep down revolt among the natives. he especially commended the totonacs to his protection, as allies whose fidelity to the spaniards exposed them, in no slight degree, to the vengeance of the aztecs. chapter viii [1519] march resumedvalley of mexicoimpression on the spaniards conduct of montezumathey descend into the valley everything being now restored to quiet in cholula, the allied army of spaniards and tlascalans set forward in high spirits, and resumed the march on mexico. the road lay through the beautiful savannas and luxuriant plantations that spread out for several leagues in every direction. on the march they were met occasionally by embassies from the neighbouring places, anxious to claim the protection of the white men, and to propitiate them by gifts, especially of gold, for which their appetite was generally known throughout the country. some of these places were allies of the tlascalans, and all showed much discontent with the oppressive rule of montezuma. the natives cautioned the spaniards against putting themselves in his power by entering his capital; and they stated, as evidence of his hostile disposition, that he had caused the direct road to it to be blocked up, that the strangers might be compelled to choose another, which, from its narrow passes and strong positions, would enable him to take them at great disadvantage. the information was not lost on cortes, who kept a strict eye on the movements of the mexican envoys, and redoubled his own precautions against surprise. cheerful and active, he was ever where his presence was needed, sometimes in the van, at others in the rear, encouraging the weak, stimulating the sluggish, and striving to kindle in the breasts of others the same courageous spirit which glowed in his own. at night he never omitted to go the rounds, to see that every man was at his post. on one occasion his vigilance had well nigh proved fatal to him. he approached so near a sentinel that the man, unable to distinguish his person in the dark, levelled his crossbow at him, when, fortunately, an exclamation of the general, who gave the watchword of the night, arrested a movement which might else have brought the campaign to a close, and given a respite for some time longer to the empire of montezuma. the army came at length to the place mentioned by the friendly indians, where the road forked, and one arm of it was found, as they had foretold, obstructed with large trunks of trees and huge stones which had been strewn across it. cortes inquired the meaning of this from the mexican ambassadors. they said it was done by the emperor's orders, to prevent their taking a route which, after some distance, they would find nearly impracticable for the cavalry. they acknowledged, however, that it was the most direct road; and cortes, declaring that this was enough to decide him in favour of it, as the spaniards made no account of obstacles, commanded the rubbish to be cleared away. the event left little doubt in the general's mind of the meditated treachery of the mexicans. but he was too politic to betray his suspicions. they were now leaving the pleasant champaign country, as the road wound up the bold sierra which separates the great plateaus of mexico and puebla. the air, as they ascended, became keen and piercing; and the blasts, sweeping down the frozen sides of the mountains, made the soldiers shiver in their thick harness of cotton, and benumbed the limbs of both men and horses. they were passing between two of the highest mountains on the north american continent, popocatepetl, "the hill that smokes," and iztaccihuatl, or "white woman,"a name suggested, doubtless, by the bright robe of snow spread over its broad and broken surface. a puerile superstition of the indians regarded these celebrated mountains as gods, and iztaccihuatl as the wife of her more formidable neighbour. a tradition of a higher character described the northern volcano as the abode of the departed spirits of wicked rulers, whose fiery agonies in their prison-house caused the fearful bellowings and convulsions in times of eruption. the army held on its march through the intricate gorges of the sierra. the route was nearly the same as that pursued at the present day by the courier from the capital to puebla, by the way of mecameca. it was not that usually taken by travellers from vera cruz, who follow the more circuitous road round the northern base of iztaccihuatl, as less fatiguing than the other, though inferior in picturesque scenery and romantic points of view. the icy winds, that now swept down the sides of the mountains, brought with them a tempest of arrowy sleet and snow, from which the christians suffered even more than the tlascalans, reared from infancy among the wild solitudes of their own native hills. as night came on, their sufferings would have been intolerable, but they luckily found a shelter in the commodious stone buildings which the mexican government had placed at stated intervals along the roads for the accommodation of the traveller and their own couriers. the troops, refreshed by a night's rest, succeeded, early on the following day, in gaining the crest of the sierra of ahualco, which stretches like a curtain between the two great mountains on the north and south. their progress was now comparatively easy, and they marched forward with a buoyant step, as they felt they were treading the soil of montezuma. they had not advanced far, when, turning an angle of the sierra, they suddenly came on a view which more than compensated the toils of the preceding day. it was that of the valley of mexico, or tenochtitlan, as more commonly called by the natives; which, with its picturesque assemblage of water, woodland, and cultivated plains, its shining cities and shadowy hills, was spread out like some gay and gorgeous panorama before them. in the highly rarefied atmosphere of these upper regions, even remote objects have a brilliancy of colouring and distinctness of outline which seem to annihilate distance. stretching far away at their feet were seen noble forests of oak, sycamore, and cedar, and beyond, yellow fields of maize and the towering maguey, intermingled with orchards and blooming gardens; for flowers, in such demand for their religious festivals, were even more abundant in this populous valley than in other parts of anahuac. in the centre of the great basin were beheld the lakes, occupying then a much larger portion of its surface than at present; their borders thickly studded with towns and hamlets, and, in the midst,like some indian empress with her coronal of pearls,the fair city of mexico, with her white towers and pyramidal temples, reposing, as it were, on the bosom of the waters,the far-famed "venice of the aztecs." high over all rose the royal hill of chapoltepec, the residence of the mexican monarchs, crowned with the same grove of gigantic cypresses which at this day fling their broad shadows over the land. in the distance beyond the blue waters of the lake, and nearly screened by intervening foliage, was seen a shining speck, the rival capital of tezcuco, and, still further on, the dark belt of porphyry, girding the valley around, like a rich setting which nature had devised for the fairest of her jewels. such was the beautiful vision which broke on the eyes of the conquerors. and even now, when so sad a change has come over the scene; when the stately forests have been laid low, and the soil, unsheltered from the fierce radiance of a tropical sun, is in many places abandoned to sterility; when the waters have retired, leaving a broad and ghastly margin white with the incrustation of salts, while the cities and hamlets on their borders have mouldered into ruins;even now that desolation broods over the landscape, so indestructible are the lines of beauty which nature has traced on its features, that no traveller, however cold, can gaze on them with any other emotions than those of astonishment and rapture. what, then, must have been the emotions of the spaniards, when, after working their toilsome way into the upper air, the cloudy tabernacle parted before their eyes, and they beheld these fair seenes in all their pristine magnificence and beauty! it was like the spectacle which greeted the eyes of moses from the summit of pisgah, and, in the warm glow of their feelings, they cried out, "it is the promised land!" but these feelings of admiration were soon followed by others of a very different complexion; as they saw in all this the evidences of a civilisation and power far superior to anything they had yet encountered. the more timid, disheartened by the prospect, shrunk from a contest so unequal, and demanded, as they had done on some former occasions, to be led back again to vera cruz. such was not the effect produced on the sanguine spirit of the general. his avarice was sharpened by the display of the dazzling spoil at his feet; and, if he felt a natural anxiety at the formidable odds, his confidence was renewed, as he gazed on the lines of his veterans, whose weather-beaten visages and battered armour told of battles won and difficulties surmounted, while his bold barbarians, with appetites whetted by the view of their enemy's country, seemed like eagles on the mountains, ready to pounce upon their prey. by argument, entreaty, and menace, he endeavoured to restore the faltering courage of the soldiers, urging them not to think of retreat, now that they had reached the goal for which they had panted, and the golden gates were open to receive them. in these efforts he was well seconded by the brave cavaliers, who held honour as dear to them as fortune; until the dullest spirits caught somewhat of the enthusiasm of their leaders, and the general had the satisfaction to see his hesitating columns, with their usual buoyant step, once more on their march down the slopes of the sierra. with every step of their progress, the woods became thinner; patches of cultivated land more frequent; and hamlets were seen in the green and sheltered nooks, the inhabitants of which, coming out to meet them, gave the troops a kind reception. everywhere they heard complaints of montezuma, especially of the unfeeling manner in which he carried off their young men to recruit his armies, and their maidens for his harem. these symptoms of discontent were noticed with satisfaction by cortes, who saw that montezuma's "mountain throne," as it was called, was indeed seated on a volcano, with the elements of combustion so active within, that it seemed as if any hour might witness an explosion. he encouraged the disaffected natives to rely on his protection, as he had come to redress their wrongs. he took advantage, moreover, of their favourable dispositions to scatter among them such gleams of spiritual light as time and the preaching of father olmedo could afford. he advanced by easy stages, somewhat retarded by the crowd of curious inhabitants gathered on the highways to see the strangers, and halting at every spot of interest or importance. on the road he was met by another embassy from the capital. it consisted of several aztec lords, freighted, as usual, with a rich largess of gold, and robes of delicate furs and feathers. the message of the emperor was couched in the same deprecatory terms as before. he even condescended to bribe the return of the spaniards, by promising, in that event, four loads of gold to the general, and one to each of the captains, with a yearly tribute to their sovereign. so effectually had the lofty and naturally courageous spirit of the barbarian monarch been subdued by the influence of superstition! but the man whom the hostile array of armies could not daunt, was not to be turned from his purpose by a woman's prayers. he received the embassy with his usual courtesy, declaring, as before, that he could not answer it to his own sovereign, if he were now to return without visiting the emperor in his capital. it would be much easier to arrange matters by a personal interview than by distant. negotiation. the spaniards came in the spirit of peace. montezuma would so find it, but, should their presence prove burdensome to him, it would be easy for them to relieve him of it. the aztec monarch, meanwhile, was a prey to the most dismal apprehensions. it was intended that the embassy above noticed should reach the spaniards before they crossed the mountains. when he learned that this was accomplished, and that the dread strangers were on their march across the valley, the very threshold of his capital, the last spark of hope died away in his bosom. like one who suddenly finds himself on the brink of some dark and yawning gulf, he was too much bewildered to be able to rally his thoughts, or even to comprehend his situation. he was the victim of an absolute destiny, against which no foresight or precautions could have availed. it was as if the strange beings, who had thus invaded his shores, had dropped from some distant planet, so different were they from all he had ever seen, in appearance and manners; so superiorthough a mere handful in numbersto the banded nations of anahuac in strength and science, and all the fearful accompaniments of war! they were now in the valley. the huge mountain-screen, which nature had so kindly drawn around it for its defence, had been overleaped. the golden visions of security and repose, in which he had so long indulged, the lordly sway descended from his ancestors, his broad imperial domain, were all to pass away. it seemed like some terrible dream,from which he was now, alas! to awake to a still more terrible reality. in a paroxysm of despair he shut himself up in his palace, refused food, and sought relief in prayer and in sacrifice. but the oracles were dumb. he then adopted the more sensible expedient of calling a council of his principal and oldest nobles. here was the same division of opinion which had before prevailed. cacama, the young king of tezcuco, his nephew, counselled him to receive the spaniards courteously, as ambassadors, so styled by themselves, of a foreign prince. cuitlahua, montezuma's more warlike brother, urged him to muster his forces on the instant, and drive back the invaders from his capital, or die in its defence. but the monarch found it difficult to rally his spirits for this final struggle. with downcast eye and dejected mien he exclaimed, "of what avail is resistance when the gods have declared themselves against us! yet i mourn most for the old and infirm, the women and children, too feeble to fight or to fly. for myself and the brave men around me, we must bare our breasts to the storm, and meet it as we may!" such are the sorrowful and sympathetic tones in which the aztec emperor is said to have uttered the bitterness of his grief. he would have acted a more glorious part had he put his capital in a posture of defence, and prepared, like the last of the palaeologi, to bury himself under its ruins. he straightway prepared to send a last embassy to the spaniards, with his nephew, the lord of tezcuco, at its head, to welcome them to mexico. the christian army, meanwhile, had advanced as far as amaquemecan, a well-built town of several thousand inhabitants. they were kindly received by the cacique, lodged in large commodious stone buildings, and at their departure presented, among other things, with gold to the amount of three thousand castellanos. having halted there a couple of days, they descended among flourishing plantations of maize and of maguey, the latter of which might be called the aztec vineyards, towards the lake of chalco. their first resting-place was ajotzinco, a town of considerable size, with a great part of it then standing on piles in the water. it was the first specimen which the spaniards had seen of this maritime architecture. the canals, which intersected the city instead of streets, presented an animated scene from the number of barks which glided up and down, freighted with provisions and other articles for the inhabitants. the spaniards were particularly struck with the style and commodious structure of the houses, built chiefly of stone, and with the general aspect of wealth, and even elegance which prevailed there. though received with the greatest show of hospitality, cortes found some occasion for distrust in the eagerness manifested by the people to see and approach the spaniards. not content with gazing at them in the roads, some even made their way stealthily into their quarters, and fifteen or twenty unhappy indians were shot down by the sentinels as spies. yet there appears, as well as we can judge at this distance of time, to have been no real ground for such suspicion. the undisguised jealousy of the court, and the cautions he had received from his allies, while they very properly put the general on his guard, seem to have given an unnatural acuteness, at least in the present instance, to his perceptions of danger. early on the following morning, as the army was preparing to leave the place, a courier came, requesting the general to postpone his departure till after the arrival of the king of tezcuco, who was advancing to meet him. it was not long before he appeared, borne in a palanquin or litter, richly decorated with plates of gold and precious stones, having pillars curiously wrought, supporting a canopy of green plumes, a favourite colour with the aztec princes. he was accompanied by a numerous suite of nobles and inferior attendants. as he came into the presence of cortes, the lord of tezcuco descended from his palanquin, and the obsequious officers swept the ground before him as he advanced. he appeared to be a young man of about twenty-five years of age, with a comely presence, erect and stately in his deportment. he made the mexican salutation usually addressed to persons of high rank, touching the earth with his right hand, and raising it to his head. cortes embraced him as he rose, when the young prince informed him that he came as the representative of montezuma, to bid the spaniards welcome to his capital. he then presented the general with three pearls of uncommon size and lustre. cortes, in return, threw over cacama's neck a chain of cut glass, which, where glass was a rare as diamonds, might be admitted to have a value as real as the latter. after this interchange of courtesies, and the most friendly and respectful assurances on the part of cortes, the indian prince withdrew, leaving the spaniards strongly impressed with the superiority of his state and bearing over anything they had hitherto seen in the country. resuming its march, the army kept along the southern borders of the lake of chalco, overshadowed at that time by noble woods, and by orchards glowing with autumnal fruits, of unknown names, but rich and tempting hues. more frequently it passed through cultivated fields waving with the yellow harvest, and irrigated by canals introduced from the neighbouring lake; the whole showing a careful and economical husbandry, essential to the maintenance of a crowded population. leaving the main land, the spaniards came on the great dike or causeway, which stretches some four or five miles in length, and divides lake chalco from xochimilco on the west. it was a lance in breadth in the narrowest part, and in some places wide enough for eight horsemen to ride abreast. it was a solid structure of stone and lime, running directly through the lake, and struck the spaniards as one of the most remarkable works which they had seen in the country. as they passed along, they beheld the gay spectacle of multitudes of indians darting up and down in their light pirogues, eager to catch a glimpse of the strangers, or bearing the products of the country to the neighbouring cities. they were amazed, also, by the sight of the chinampas, or floating gardens,those wandering islands of verdure, to which we shall have occasion to return hereafter,teeming with flowers and vegetables, and moving like rafts over the waters. all round the margin, and occasionally far in the lake, they beheld little towns and villages, which, half concealed by the foliage, and gathered in white clusters round the shore, looked in the distance like companies of wild swans riding quietly on the waves. a scene so new and wonderful filled their rude hearts with amazement. it seemed like enchantment; and they could find nothing to compare it with, but the magical pictures in the amadis de gaula. few pictures, indeed, in that or any other legend of chivalry, could surpass the realities of their own experience. the life of the adventurer in the new world was romance put into action. what wonder, then, if the spaniard of that day, feeding his imagination with dreams of enchantment at home, and with its realities abroad, should have displayed a quixotic enthusiasm,a romantic exaltation of character, not to be comprehended by the colder spirits of other lands! midway across the lake the army halted at the town of cuitlahuac, a place of moderate size, but distinguished by the beauty of the buildings,the most beautiful, according to cortes, that he had yet seen in the country. after taking some refreshment at this place, they continued their march along the dike. though broader in this northern section, the troops found themselves much embarrassed by the throng of indians, who, not content with gazing on them from the boats, climbed up the causeway, and lined the sides of the roads. the general, afraid that his ranks might be disordered, and that too great familiarity might diminish a salutary awe in the natives, was obliged to resort not merely to command but menace, to clear a passage. he now found, as he advanced, a considerable change in the feelings shown towards the government. he heard only of the pomp and magnificence, nothing of the oppressions of montezuma. contrary to the usual fact, it seemed that the respect for the court was greatest in its immediate neighbourhood. from the causeway, the army descended on that narrow point of land which divides the waters of the chalco from the tezcucan lake, but which in those days was overflowed for many a mile, now laid bare. traversing this peninsula, they entered the royal residence of iztapalapan, a place containing twelve or fifteen thousand houses, according to cortes. it was governed by cuitlahua, the emperor's brother, who, to do greater honour to the general, had invited the lords of some neighbouring cities, of the royal house of mexico, like himself, to be present at the interview. this was conducted with much ceremony, and, after the usual presents of gold and delicate stuffs, a collation was served to the spaniards in one of the great halls of the palace. the excellence of the architecture here, also, excited the admiration of the general, who does not hesitate, in the glow of his enthusiasm, to pronounce some of the buildings equal to the best in spain. they were of stone, and the spacious apartments had roofs of odorous cedar-wood, while the walls were tapestried with fine cottons stained with brilliant colours. but the pride of iztapalapan, on which its lord had freely lavished his care and his revenues, was its celebrated gardens. they covered an immense tract of land; were laid out in regular squares, and the paths intersecting them were bordered with trellises, supporting creepers and aromatic shrubs, that loaded the air with their perfumes. the gardens were stocked with fruit-trees, imported from distant places, and with the gaudy family of flowers which belong to the mexican flora, scientifically arranged, and growing luxuriant in the equable temperature of the tableland. the natural dryness of the atmosphere was counteracted by means of aqueducts and canals, that carried water into all parts of the grounds. in one quarter was an aviary, filled with numerous kinds of birds, remarkable in this region both for brilliancy of plumage and of song. the gardens were intersected by a canal communicating with the lake of tezcuco, and of sufficient size for barges to enter from the latter. but the most elaborate piece of work was a huge reservoir of stone, filled to a considerable height with water, well supplied with different sorts of fish. this basin was sixteen hundred paces in circumference, and was surrounded by a walk, made also of stone, wide enough for four persons to go abreast. the sides were curiously sculptured, and a flight of steps led to the water below, which fed the aqueducts above noticed, or, collected into fountains, diffused a perpetual moisture. such are the accounts transmitted of these celebrated gardens, at a period when similar horticultural establishments were unknown in europe; and we might well doubt their existence in this semi-civilised land, were it not a matter of such notoriety at the time, and so explicitly attested by the invaders. but a generation had scarcely passed after the conquest before a sad change came over these scenes so beautiful. the town itself was deserted, and the shore of the lake was strewed with the wreck of buildings which once were its ornament and its glory. the gardens shared the fate of the city. the retreating waters withdrew the means of nourishment, converting the flourishing plains into a foul and unsightly morass, the haunt of loathsome reptiles; and the water-fowl built her nest in what had once been the palaces of princes! in the city of iztapalapan, cortes took up his quarters for the night. we may imagine what a crowd of ideas must have pressed on the mind of the conqueror, as, surrounded by these evidences of civilisation, he prepared, with his handful of followers, to enter the capital of a monarch, who, as he had abundant reason to know, regarded him with distrust and aversion. this capital was now but a few miles distant, distinctly visible from iztapalapan. and as its long lines of glittering edifices, struck by the rays of the evening sun, trembled on the dark blue waters of the lake, it looked like a thing of fairy creation, rather than the work of mortal hands. into this city of enchantment cortes prepared to make his entry on the following morning. chapter ix [1519] environs of mexicointerview with montezuma entrance into the capitalhospitable reception visit to the emperor with the first faint streak of dawn, the spanish general was up, mustering his followers. they gathered, with beating hearts, under their respective banners as the trumpet sent forth its spirit-stirring sounds across water and woodland, till they died away in distant echoes among the mountains. the sacred flames on the altars of numberless teocallis, dimly seen through the grey mists of morning, indicated the site of the capital, till temple, tower, and palace were fully revealed in the glorious illumination which the sun, as he rose above the eastern barrier, poured over the beautiful valley. it was the 8th of november; a conspicuous day in history, as that on which the europeans first set foot in the capital of the western world. cortes, with his little body of horse formed a sort of advanced guard to the army. then came the spanish infantry, who in a summer campaign had acquired the discipline and the weather-beaten aspect of veterans. the baggage occupied the centre; and the rear was closed by the dark files of tlascalan warriors. the whole number must have fallen short of seven thousand; of which less than four hundred were spaniards. for a short distance, the army kept along the narrow tongue of land that divides the tezcucan from the chalcan waters, when it entered the great dike which, with the exception of an angle near the commencement, stretches in a perfectly straight line across the salt floods of tezcuco to the gates of the capital. it was the same causeway, or rather the basis of that which still forms the great southern avenue of mexico. the spaniards had occasion more than ever to admire the mechanical science of the aztecs, in the geometrical precision with which the work was executed, as well as the solidity of its construction. it was composed of huge stones well laid in cement; and wide enough, throughout its whole extent, for ten horsemen to ride abreast. they saw, as they passed along, several large towns, resting on piles, and reaching far into the water,a kind of architecture which found great favour with the aztecs, being in imitation of that of their metropolis. the busy population obtained a good subsistence from the manufacture of salt, which they extracted from the waters of the great lake. the duties on the traffic were a considerable source of revenue to the crown. everywhere the conquerors beheld the evidence of a. crowded and thriving population, exceeding all they had yet seen. the temples and principal buildings of the cities were covered with a hard white stucco, which glistened like enamel in the level beams of the morning. the margin of the great basin was more thickly gemmed, than that of chalco, with towns and hamlets. the water was darkened by swarms of canoes filled with indians, who clambered up the sides of the causeway, and gazed with curious astonishment on the strangers. and here, also, they beheld those fairy islands of flowers, overshadowed occasionally by trees of considerable size, rising and falling with the gentle undulation of the billows. at the distance of half a league from the capital, they encountered a solid work, or curtain of stone, which traversed the dike. it was twelve feet high, was strengthened by towers at the extremities, and in the centre was a battlemented gateway, which opened a passage to the troops. it was called the fort of xoloc, and became memorable in after times as the position occupied by cortes in the famous siege of mexico. here they were met by several hundred aztec chiefs, who came out to announce the approach of montezuma, and to welcome the spaniards to his capital. they were dressed in the fanciful gala costume of the country, with the maxtlatl, or cotton sash, around their loins, and a broad mantle of the same material, or of the brilliant feather-embroidery, flowing gracefully down their shoulders. on their necks and arms they displayed collars and bracelets of turquoise mosaic, with which delicate plumage was curiously mingled, while their ears, under-lips, and occasionally their noses, were garnished with pendants formed of precious stones, or crescents of fine gold as each cacique made the usual formal salutation of the country separately to the general, the tedious ceremony delayed the march more than an hour. after this, the army experienced no further interruption till it reached a bridge near the gates of the city. it was built of wood, since replaced by one of stone, and was thrown across an opening of the dike, which furnished an outlet to the waters, when agitated by the winds, or swollen by a sudden influx in the rainy season. it was a drawbridge; and the spaniards, as they crossed it, felt how truly they were committing themselves to the mercy of montezuma, who, by thus cutting off their communications with the country, might hold them prisoners in his capital. in the midst of these unpleasant reflections, they beheld the glittering retinue of the emperor emerging from the great street which led through the heart of the city. amidst a crowd of indian nobles, preceded by three officers of state, bearing golden wands, they saw the royal palanquin blazing with burnished gold. it was borne on the shoulders of nobles, and over it a canopy of gaudy feather-work, powdered with jewels, and fringed with silver, was supported by four attendants of the same rank. they were bare-footed, and walked with a slow, measured pace, and with eyes bent on the ground. when the train had come within a convenient distance, it halted, and montezuma, descending from his litter, came forward leaning on the arms of the lords of tezcuco and iztapalapan, his nephew and brother, both of whom, as we have seen, had already been made known to the spaniards. as the monarch advanced under the canopy, the obsequious attendants strewed the ground with cotton tapestry, that his imperial feet might not be contaminated by the rude soil. his subjects of high and low degree, who lined the sides of the causeway, bent forward with their eyes fastened on the ground as he passed, and some of the humbler class prostrated themselves before him. such was the homage paid to the indian despot, showing that the slavish forms of oriental adulation were to be found among the rude inhabitants of the western world. montezuma wore the girdle and ample square cloak, tilmatli, of his nation. it was made of the finest cotton, with the embroidered ends gathered in a knot round his neck. his feet were defended by sandals having soles of gold, and the leathern thongs which bound them to his ankles were embossed with the same metal. both the cloak and sandals were sprinkled with pearls and precious stones, among which the emerald and the chalchiuitla green stone of higher estimation than any other among the aztecswere conspicuous. on his head he wore no other ornament than a panache of plumes of the royal green, which floated down his back, the badge of military rather than of regal rank. he was at this time about forty years of age. his person was tall and thin, but not ill made. his hair, which was black and straight, was not very long; to wear it short was considered unbecoming persons of rank. his beard was thin; his complexion somewhat paler than is often found in his dusky, or rather copper-coloured race. his features, though serious in their expression, did not wear the look of melancholy, indeed, of dejection, which characterises his portrait, and which may well have settled on them at a later period. he moved with dignity, and his whole demeanour, tempered by an expression of benignity not to have been anticipated from the reports circulated of his character, was worthy of a great prince. such is the portrait left to us of the celebrated indian emperor, in this first interview with the white men. the army halted as he drew near. cortes, dismounting, threw his reins to a page, and, supported by a few of the principal cavaliers, advanced to meet him. the interview must have been one of uncommon interest to both. in montezuma cortes beheld the lord of the broad realms he had traversed, whose magnificence and power had been the burden of every tongue. in the spaniard, on the other hand, the aztec prince saw the strange being whose history seemed to be so mysteriously connected with his own; the predicted one of his oracles; whose achievements proclaimed him something more than human. but, whatever may have been the monarch's feelings, he so far suppressed them as to receive his guest with princely courtesy, and to express his satisfaction at personally seeing him in his capital. cortes responded by the most profound expressions of respect, while he made ample acknowledgments for the substantial proofs which the emperor had given the spaniards of his munificence. he then hung round montezuma's neck a sparkling chain of coloured crystal, accompanying this with a movement as if to embrace him, when he was restrained by the two aztec lords, shocked at the menaced profanation of the sacred person of their master. after the interchange of these civilities, montezuma appointed his brother to conduct the spaniards to their residence in the capital, and again entering his litter, was borne off amidst prostrate crowds in the same state in which he had come. the spaniards quickly followed, and with colours flying and music playing, soon made their entrance into the southern quarter of tenochtitlan. here, again, they found fresh cause for admiration in the grandeur of the city, and the superior style of its architecture. the dwellings of the poorer class were, indeed, chiefly of reeds and mud. but the great avenue through which they were now marching was lined with the houses of the nobles, who were encouraged by the emperor to make the capital their residence. they were built of a red porous stone drawn from quarries in the neighbourhood, and, though they rarely rose to a second story, often covered a large space of ground. the flat roofs, azoteas, were protected by stone parapets, so that every house was a fortress. sometimes these roofs resembled parterres of flowers, so thickly were they covered with them, but more frequently these were cultivated in broad terraced gardens, laid out between the edifices. occasionally a great square or market-place intervened, surrounded by its porticoes of stone and stucco; or a pyramidal temple reared its colossal bulk, crowned with its tapering sanctuaries, and altars blazing with inextinguishable fires. the great street facing the southern causeway, unlike most others in the place, was wide, and extended some miles in nearly a straight line, as before noticed, through the centre of the city. a spectator standing at one end of it, as his eye ranged along the deep vista of temples, terraces, and gardens, might clearly discern the other, with the blue mountains in the distance, which, in the transparent atmosphere of the tableland, seemed almost in contact with the buildings. but what most impressed the spaniards was the throngs of people who swarmed through the streets and on the canals, filling every doorway and window, and clustering on the roofs of the buildings. "i well remember the spectacle," exclaims bernal diaz; "it seems now, after so many years, as present to my mind as if it were but yesterday." but what must have been the sensations of the aztecs themselves, as they looked on the portentous pageant! as they heard, now for the first time, the well-cemented pavement ring under the iron tramp of the horses,the strange animals which fear had clothed in such supernatural terrors; as they gazed on the children of the east, revealing their celestial origin in their fair complexions; saw the bright falchions and bonnets of steel, a metal to them unknown, glancing like meteors in the sun, while sounds of unearthly musicat least, such as their rude instruments had never wakenedfloated in the air! but every other emotion was lost in that of deadly hatred, when they beheld their detested enemy, the tlascalan, stalking in defiance as it were through their streets, and staring around with looks of ferocity and wonder, like some wild animal of the forest, who had strayed by chance from his native fastnesses into the haunts of civilisation. as they passed down the spacious street, the troops repeatedly traversed bridges suspended above canals, along which they saw the indian barks gliding swiftly with their little cargoes of fruits and vegetables for the markets of tenochtitlan. at length, they halted before a broad area near the centre of the city, where rose the huge pyramidal pile dedicated to the patron war-god of the aztecs, second only in size, as well as sanctity, to the temple of cholula, and covering the same ground now in part occupied by the great cathedral of mexico. facing the western gate of the inclosure of the temple stood a low range of stone buildings, spreading over a wide extent of ground, the palace of axayacatl, montezuma's father, built by that monarch about fifty years before. it was appropriated as the barracks of the spaniards. the emperor himself was in the courtyard, waiting to receive them. approaching cortes, he took from a vase of flowers, borne by one of his slaves, a massy collar, in which the shell of a species of craw-fish, much prized by the indians, was set in gold, and connected by heavy links of the same metal. from this chain depended eight ornaments, also of gold, made in resemblance of the same shellfish, a span in length each, and of delicate workmanship; for the aztec goldsmiths were confessed to have shown skill in their craft, not inferior to their brethren of europe. montezuma, as he hung the gorgeous collar round the general's neck, said, "this palace belongs to you, malinche" (the epithet by which he always addressed him), "and your brethren. rest after your fatigues, for you have much need to do so, and in a little while i will visit you again." so saying, he withdrew with his attendants, evincing, in this act, a delicate consideration not to have been expected in a barbarian. cortes' first care was to inspect his new quarters. the building, though spacious, was low, consisting of one floor, except indeed in the centre, where it rose to an additional story. the apartments were of great size, and afforded accommodations, according to the testimony of the conquerors themselves, for the whole army! the hardy mountaineers of tlascala were, probably, not very fastidious, and might easily find a shelter in the out-buildings, or under temporary awnings in the ample courtyards. the best apartments were hung with gay cotton draperies, the floors covered with mats or rushes. there were, also, low stools made of single pieces of wood elaborately carved, and in most of the apartments beds made of the palm-leaf, woven into a thick mat, with coverlets, and sometimes canopies of cotton. these mats were the only beds used by the natives, whether of high or low degree. after a rapid survey of this gigantic pile, the general assigned to his troops their respective quarters, and took as vigilant precautions for security, as if he had anticipated a siege, instead of a friendly entertainment. the place was encompassed by a stone wall of considerable thickness, with towers or heavy buttresses at intervals, affording a good means of defence. he planted his cannon so as to command the approaches, stationed his sentinels along the works, and, in short, enforced in every respect as strict military discipline as had been observed in any part of the march. he well knew the importance to his little band, at least for the present, of conciliating the good will of the citizens; and to avoid all possibility of collision he prohibited any soldier from leaving his quarters without orders, under pain of death. having taken these precautions, he allowed his men to partake of the bountiful collation which had been prepared for them. they had been long enough in the country to become reconciled to, if not to relish, the peculiar cooking of the aztecs. the appetite of the soldier is not often dainty, and on the present occasion it cannot be doubted that the spaniards did full justice to the savoury productions of the royal kitchen. during the meal they were served by numerous mexican slaves, who were indeed, distributed through the palace, anxious to do the bidding of the strangers. after the repast was concluded, and they had taken their siesta, not less important to a spaniard than food itself, the presence of the emperor was again announced. montezuma was attended by a few of his principal nobles. he was received with much deference by cortes; and, after the parties had taken their seats, a conversation commenced between them through the aid of dona marina, while the cavaliers and aztec chieftains stood around in respectful silence. montezuma made many inquiries concerning the country of the spaniards, their sovereign, the nature of his government, and especially their own motives in visiting anahuac. cortes explained these motives by the desire to see so distinguished a monarch, and to declare to him the true faith professed by the christians. with rare discretion, he contented himself with dropping this hint for the present, allowing it to ripen in the mind of the emperor till a future conference. the latter asked, whether those white men, who in the preceding year had landed on the eastern shores of his empire, were their countrymen. he showed himself well-informed of the proceedings of the spaniards from their arrival in tabasco to the present time, information of which had been regularly transmitted in the hieroglyphical paintings. he was curious, also, in regard to the rank of his visitors in their own country; inquiring, if they were the kinsmen of the sovereign. cortes replied, they were kinsmen of one another, and subjects of their great monarch, who held them all in peculiar estimation. before his departure, montezuma made himself acquainted with the names of the principal cavaliers, and the position they occupied. in the army. at the conclusion of the interview, the aztec prince commanded his attendants to bring forward the presents prepared for his guests. they consisted of cotton dresses, enough to supply every man, it is said, including the allies, with a suit! and he did not fail to add the usual accompaniment of gold chains and other ornaments, which he distributed in profusion among the spaniards. he then withdrew with the same ceremony with which he had entered, leaving every one deeply impressed with his munificence and his affability, so unlike what they had been taught to expect by what they now considered an invention of the enemy. that evening, the spaniards celebrated their arrival in the mexican capital by a general discharge of artillery. the thunders of the ordnance reverberating among the buildings and shaking them to their foundations, the stench of the sulphureous vapour that rolled in volumes above the walls of the encampment, reminding the inhabitants of the explosions of the great volcan, filled the hearts of the superstitious aztecs with dismay. it proclaimed to them, that their city held in its bosom those dread beings whose path had been marked with desolation, and who could call down the thunderbolts to consume their enemies! it was doubtless the policy of cortes to strengthen this superstitious feeling as far as possible, and to impress the natives, at the outset, with a salutary awe of the supernatural powers of the spaniards. on the following morning, the general requested permission to return the emperor's visit, by waiting on him in his palace. this was readily granted, and montezuma sent his officers to conduct the spaniards to his presence. cortes dressed himself in his richest habit, and left the quarters attended by alvarado, sandoval, velasquez, and ordaz, together with five or six of the common file. the royal habitation was at no great distance. it was a vast, irregular pile of low stone buildings, like that garrisoned by the spaniards. so spacious was it indeed, that, as one of the conquerors assures us, although he had visited it more than once, for the express purpose, he had been too much fatigued each time by wandering through the apartments ever to see the whole of it. it was built of the red porous stone of the country, tetzontli, was ornamented with marble, and on the facade over the principal entrance were sculptured the arms or device of montezuma, an eagle bearing an ocelot in his talons. in the courts through which the spaniards passed, fountains of crystal water were playing, fed from the copious reservoir on the distant hill of chapoltepec, and supplying in their turn more than a hundred baths in the interior of the palace. crowds of aztec nobles were sauntering up and down in these squares, and in the outer halls, loitering away their hours in attendance on the court. the apartments were of immense size, though not lofty. the ceilings were of various sorts of odoriferous wood ingeniously carved; the floors covered with mats of the palm-leaf. the walls were hung with cotton richly stained, with the skins of wild animals, or gorgeous draperies of feather-work wrought in imitation of birds, insects, and flowers, with the nice art and glowing radiance of colours that might compare with the tapestries of flanders. clouds of incense rolled up from censers, and diffused intoxicating odours through the apartments. the spaniards might well have fancied themselves in the voluptuous precincts of an eastern harem, instead of treading the halls of a wild barbaric chief in the western world. on reaching the hall of audience, the mexican officers took off their sandals, and covered their gay attire with a mantle of nequen, a coarse stuff made of the fibres of the maguey, worn only by the poorest classes. this act of humiliation was imposed on all, except the members of his own family, who approached the sovereign. thus bare-footed, with downcast eyes, and formal obeisance, they ushered the spaniards into the royal presence. they found montezuma seated at the further end of a spacious saloon, and surrounded by a few of his favourite chiefs. he received them kindly, and very soon cortes, without much ceremony, entered on the subject which was uppermost in his thoughts. he was fully aware of the importance of gaining the royal convert, whose example would have such an influence on the conversion of his people. the general, therefore, prepared to display the whole store of his theological science, with the most winning arts of rhetoric he could command, while the interpretation was conveyed through the silver tones of marina, as inseparable from him, on these occasions, as his shadow. he set forth, as clearly as he could, the ideas entertained by the church in regard to the holy mysteries of the trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement. from this he ascended to the origin of things, the creation of the world, the first pair, paradise, and the fall of man. he assured montezuma, that the idols he worshipped were satan under different forms. a sufficient proof of it was the bloody sacrifices they imposed, which he contrasted with the pure and simple rite of the mass. their worship would sink him in perdition. it was to snatch his soul, and the souls of his people, from the flames of eternal fire by opening to them a purer faith, that the christians had come to his land. and he earnestly besought him not to neglect the occasion, but to secure his salvation by embracing the cross, the great sign of human redemption. the eloquence of the preacher was wasted on the insensible heart of his royal auditor. it doubtless lost somewhat of its efficacy, strained through the imperfect interpretation of so recent a neophyte as the indian damsel. but the doctrines were too abstruse in themselves to be comprehended at a glance by the rude intellect of a barbarian. and montezuma may have, perhaps, thought it was not more monstrous to feed on the flesh of a fellow-creature, than on that of the creator himself. he was, besides, steeped in the superstitions of his country from his cradle. he had been educated in the straitest sect of her religion; had been himself a priest before his election to the throne; and was now the head both of the religion and the state. little probability was there that such a man would be open to argument or persuasion, even from the lips of a more practised polemic than the spanish commander. how could he abjure the faith that was intertwined with the dearest affections of his heart, and the very elements of his being? how could he be false to the gods who had raised him to such prosperity and honours, and whose shrines were intrusted to his especial keeping? he listened, however, with silent attention, until the general had concluded his homily. he then replied, that he knew the spaniards, had held this discourse wherever they had been. he doubted not their god was, as they said, a good being. his gods, also, were good to him. yet what his visitor said of the creation of the world was like what he had been taught to believe. it was not worth while to discourse further of the matter. his ancestors, he said, were not the original proprietors of the land. they had occupied it but a few ages, and had been led there by a great being, who; after giving them laws and ruling over the nation for a time, had withdrawn to the regions where the sun rises. he had declared, on his departure, that he or his descendants would again visit them and resume his empire. the wonderful deeds of the spaniards, their fair complexions, and the quarter whence they came, all showed they were his descendants. if montezuma had resisted their visit to his capital, it was because he had heard such accounts of their cruelties,that they sent the lightning to consume his people, or crushed them to pieces under the hard feet of the ferocious animals on which they rode. he was now convinced that these were idle tales; that the spaniards were kind and generous in their natures; they were mortals of a different race, indeed, from the aztecs, wiser, and more valiant,and for this he honoured them. "you, too," he added, with a smile, "have been told, perhaps, that i am a god, and dwell in palaces of gold and silver. but you see, it is false. my houses, though large, are of stone and wood like those of others; and as to my body," he said, baring his tawny arm, "you see it is flesh and bone like yours. it is true, i have a great empire, inherited from my ancestors; lands, and gold, and silver. but your sovereign beyond the waters is, i know, the rightful lord of all. i rule in his name. you, malinche, are his ambassador; you and your brethren shall share these things with me. rest now from your labours. you are here in your own dwellings, and everything shall be provided for your subsistence. i will see that your wishes shall be obeyed in the same way as my own." as the monarch concluded these words, a few natural tears suffused his eyes, while the image of ancient independence, perhaps, flitted across his mind. cortes, while he encouraged the idea that his own sovereign was the great being indicated by montezuma, endeavoured to comfort the monarch by the assurance that his master had no desire to interfere with his authority, otherwise than, out of pure concern for his welfare, to effect his conversion and that of his people to christianity. before the emperor dismissed his visitors he consulted his munificent spirit, as usual, by distributing rich stuffs and trinkets of gold among them, so that the poorest soldier, says bernal diaz, one of the party, received at least two heavy collars of the precious metal for his share. the iron hearts of the spaniards were touched with the emotion displayed by montezuma, as well as by his princely spirit of liberality. as they passed him, the cavaliers, with bonnet in hand, made him the most profound obeisance, and, "on the way home," continues the same chronicler, "we could discourse of nothing but the gentle breeding and courtesy of the indian monarch, and of the respect we entertained for him." speculations of a graver complexion must have pressed on the mind of the general, as he saw around him the evidences of a civilisation, and consequently power, for which even the exaggerated reports of the nativesdiscredited from their apparent exaggerationhad not prepared him. in the pomp and burdensome ceremonial of the court, he saw that nice system of subordination and profound reverence for the monarch which characterise the semi-civilised empires of asia. in the appearance of the capital, its massy, yet elegant architecture, its luxurious social accommodations, its activity in trade, he recognised the proofs of the intellectual progress, mechanical skill, and enlarged resources, of an old and opulent community; while the swarms in the streets attested the existence of a population capable of turning these resources to the best account. in the aztec he beheld a being unlike either the rude republican tlascalan, or the effeminate cholulan; but combining the courage of the one with the cultivation of the other. he was in the heart of a great capital, which seemed like an extensive fortification, with its dikes and its drawbridges, where every house might be easily converted into a castle. its insular position removed it from the continent, from which, at the mere nod of the sovereign, all communication might be cut off, and the whole warlike population be at once precipitated on him and his handful of followers. what could superior science avail against such odds? as to the subversion of montezuma's empire, now that he had seen him in his capital, it must have seemed a more doubtful enterprise than ever. the recognition which the aztec prince had made of the feudal supremacy, if i may so say, of the spanish sovereign, was not to be taken too literally. whatever show of deference he be disposed to pay the latter, under the influence of his presentperhaps temporary-delusion, it was not to be supposed that he would so easily relinquish his actual power and possessions, or that his people would consent to it. indeed, his sensitive apprehensions in regard to this very subject, on the coming of the spaniards, were sufficient proof of the tenacity with which he clung to his authority. it is true that cortes had a strong lever for future operations in the superstitious reverence felt for himself both by prince and people. it was undoubtedly his policy to maintain this sentiment unimpaired in both, as far as possible. but, before settling any plan of operations, it was necessary to make himself personally acquainted with the topography and local advantages of the capital, the character of its population, and the real nature and amount of its resources. with this view, he asked the emperor's permission to visit the principal public edifices. book iv: residence in mexico chapter i [1519] tezcucan lakedescription of the capitalpalaces and museums royal householdmontezuma's way of life the ancient city of mexico covered the same spot occupied by the modern capital. the great causeways touched it in the same points; the streets ran in much the same direction, nearly from north to south, and from east to west; the cathedral in the plaza mayor stands on same ground that was covered by the temple of the aztec war-god; and the four principal quarters of the town are still known among the indians by their ancient names. yet an aztec of the days of montezuma, could he behold the modern metropolis; which has risen with such phoenix-like splendour from the ashes of the old, would not recognise its site as that of his own tenochtitlan. for the latter was encompassed by the salt floods of tezcuco, which flowed in ample canals through every part of the city; while the mexico of our day stands high and dry on the mainland, nearly a league distant, at its centre, from the water. the cause of this apparent change in its position is the diminution of the lake, which, from the rapidity of evaporation in these elevated regions, had become perceptible before the conquest, but which has since been greatly accelerated by artificial causes. the chinampas, that archipelago of wandering islands, to which our attention was drawn in the last chapter, have also nearly disappeared. these had their origin in the detached masses of earth, which, loosening from the shores, were still held together by the fibrous roots with which they were penetrated. the primitive aztecs, in their poverty of land, availed themselves of the hint thus afforded by nature. they constructed rafts of reeds, rushes, and other fibrous materials, which, tightly knit together, formed a sufficient basis for the sediment that they drew up from the bottom of the lake. gradually islands were formed, two or three hundred feet in length, and three or four feet in depth, with a rich stimulated soil, on which the economical indian raised his vegetables and flowers for the markets of tenochtitlan. some of these chinampas were even firm enough to allow the growth of small trees, and to sustain a hut for the residence of the person that had charge of it, who, with a long pole resting on the sides or the bottom of the shallow basin, could change the position of his little territory at pleasure, which with its rich freight of vegetable stores was seen moving like some enchanted island over the water. the ancient dikes were three in number. that of iztapalapan, by which the spaniards entered, approaching the city from the south. that of tepejacac, on the north, which, continuing the principal street, might be regarded, also, as a continuation of the first causeway. lastly, the dike of tlacopan, connecting the island-city with the continent on the west. this last causeway, memorable for the disastrous retreat of the spaniards, was about two miles in length. they were all built in the same substantial manner, of lime and stone, were defended by drawbridges, and were wide enough for ten or twelve horsemen to ride abreast. the rude founders of tenochtitlan built their frail tenements of reeds and rushes on the group of small islands in the western part of the lake. in process of time, these were supplanted by more substantial buildings. a quarry in the neighbourhood, of a red porous amygdaloid, tetzontli, was opened, and a light, brittle stone drawn from it, and wrought with little difficulty. of this their edifices were constructed, with some reference to architectural solidity, if not elegance. mexico, as already noticed, was the residence of the great chiefs, whom the sovereign encouraged, or rather compelled, from obvious motives of policy, to spend part of the year in the capital. it was also the temporary abode of the great lords of tezcuco and tlacopan, who shared nominally, at least, the sovereignty of the empire. the mansions of these dignitaries, and of the principal nobles, were on a scale of rude magnificence corresponding with their state. they were low, indeed; seldom of more than one floor, never exceeding two. but they spread over a wide extent of ground; were arranged in a quadrangular form, with a court in the centre, and were surrounded by porticoes embellished with porphyry and jasper, easily found in the neighbourhood, while not unfrequently a fountain of crystal water in the centre shed a grateful coolness over the atmosphere. the dwellings of the common people were also placed on foundations of stone, which rose to the height of a few feet, and were then succeeded by courses of unbaked bricks, crossed occasionally by wooden rafters. most of the streets were mean and narrow. some few, however, were wide and of great length. the principal street, conducting from the great southern causeway, penetrated in a straight line the whole length of the city, and afforded a noble vista, in which the long lines of low stone edifices were broken occasionally by intervening gardens, rising on terraces, and displaying all the pomp of aztec horticulture. the great streets, which were coated with a hard cement, were intersected by numerous canals. some of these were flanked by a solid way, which served as a foot-walk for passengers, and as a landing-place where boats might discharge their cargoes. small buildings were erected at intervals, as stations for the revenue officers who collected the duties on different articles of merchandise. the canals were traversed by numerous bridges, many of which could be raised affording the means of cutting off communication between different parts of the city. from the accounts of the ancient capital, one is reminded of those acquatic cities in the old world, the positions of which have been selected from similar motives of economy and defence; above all, of venice,if it be not rash to compare the rude architecture of the american indian with the marble palaces and templesalas, how shorn of their splendour!which crowned the once proud mistress of the adriatic. the example of the metropolis was soon followed by the other towns in the vicinity. instead of resting their foundations on terra firma, they were seen advancing far into the lake, the shallow waters of which in some parts do not exceed four feet in depth. thus an easy means of intercommunication was opened, and the surface of this inland "sea," as cortes styles it, was darkened by thousands of canoesan indian termindustriously engaged in the traffic between these little communities. how gay and picturesque must have been the aspect of the lake in those days, with its shining cities, and flowering islets rocking, as it were, at anchor on the fair bosom of its waters! the population of tenochtitlan, at the time of the conquest, is variously stated. no contemporary writer estimates it at less than sixty thousand houses, which, by the ordinary rules of reckoning, would give three hundred thousand souls. if a dwelling often contained, as is asserted, several families, it would swell the amount considerably higher. nothing is more uncertain than estimates of numbers among barbarous communities, who necessarily live in a more confused and promiscuous manner than civilised, and among whom no regular system is adopted for ascertaining the population. the concurrent testimony of the conquerors; the extent of the city, which was said to be nearly three leagues in circumference; the immense size of its great market-place; the long lines of edifices, vestiges of whose ruins may still be found in the suburbs, miles from the modern city; the fame of the metropolis throughout anahuac, which, however, could boast many large and populous places; lastly, the economical husbandry and the ingenious contrivances to extract aliment from the most unpromising sources,all attest a numerous population, far beyond that of the present capital. a careful police provided for the health and cleanliness of the city. a thousand persons are said to have been daily employed in watering and sweeping the streets, so that a manto borrow the language of an old spaniard"could walk through them with as little danger of soiling his feet as his hands." the water, in a city washed on all sides by the salt floods, was extremely brackish. a liberal supply of the pure element, however, was brought from chapoltepec, "the grasshopper's hill," less than a league distant. it was brought through an earthen pipe, along a dike constructed for the purpose. that there might be no failure in so essential an article, when repairs were going on, a double course of pipes was laid. in this way a column of water the size of a man's body was conducted into the heart of the capital, where it fed the fountains and reservoirs of the principal mansions. openings were made in the aqueduct as it crossed the bridges, and thus a supply was furnished to the canoes below, by means of which it was transported to all parts of the city. while montezuma encouraged a taste for architectural magnificence in his nobles, he contributed his own share towards the embellishment of the city. it was in his reign that the famous calendarstone, weighing, probably, in its primitive state, nearly fifty tons, was transported from its native quarry, many leagues distant, to the capital, where it still forms one of the most curious monuments of aztec science. indeed, when we reflect on the difficulty of hewing such a stupendous mass from its hard basaltic bed without the aid of iron tools, and that of transporting it such a distance across land and water without the help of animals, we may feel admiration at the mechanical ingenuity and enterprise of the people who accomplished it. not content with the spacious residence of his father, montezuma erected another on a yet more magnificent scale. it occupied the ground partly covered by the private dwellings on one side of the plaza mayor of the modern city. this building, or, as it might more correctly be styled, pile of buildings, spread over an extent of ground so vast, that, as one of the conquerors assures us, its terraced roof might have afforded ample room for thirty knights to run their courses in a regular tourney. i have already noticed its interior decorations, its fanciful draperies, its roofs inlaid with cedar and other odoriferous woods, held together without a nail, and probably without a knowledge of the arch, its numerous and spacious apartments, which cortes, with enthusiastic hyperbole, does not hesitate to declare superior to anything of the kind in spain. adjoining the principal edifices were others devoted to various objects. one was an armoury, filled with the weapons and military dresses worn by the aztecs, all kept in the most perfect order, ready for instant use. the emperor was himself very expert in the management of the maquahuitl, or indian sword, and took great delight in witnessing athletic exercises, and the mimic representation of war by his young nobility. another building was used as a granary, and others as warehouses for the different articles of food and apparel contributed by the districts charged with the maintenance of the royal household. there were also edifices appropriated to objects of quite another kind. one of these was an immense aviary, in which birds of splendid plumage were assembled from all parts of the empire. here was the scarlet cardinal, the golden pheasant, the endless parrot-tribe with their rainbow hues (the royal green predominant), and that miniature miracle of nature, the humming-bird, which delights to revel among the honeysuckle bowers of mexico. three hundred attendants had charge of this aviary, who made themselves acquainted with the appropriate food of its inmates, oftentimes procured at great cost, and in the moulting season were careful to collect the beautiful plumage, which, with its many-coloured tints, furnished the materials for the aztec painter. a separate building was reserved for the fierce birds of prey; the voracious vulture-tribes and eagles of enormous size, whose home was in the snowy solitudes of the andes. no less than five hundred turkeys, the cheapest meat in mexico, were allowed for the daily consumption of these tyrants of the feathered race. adjoining this aviary was a menagerie of wild animals, gathered from the mountain forests, and even from the remote swamps of the tierra caliente. the resemblance of the different species to those in the old world, with which no one of them, however, was identical, led to a perpetual confusion the nomenclature of the spaniards, as it has since done in that of better instructed naturalists. the collection was still further swelled by a great number of reptiles and serpents, remarkable for their size and venomous qualities, among which the spaniards beheld the fiery little animal "with the castanets in his tail," the terror of the american wilderness. the serpents were confined in long cages, lined with down or feathers, or in troughs of mud and water. the beasts and birds of prey were provided with apartments large enough to allow of their moving about, and secured by a strong lattice-work, through which light and air were freely admitted. the whole was placed under the charge of numerous keepers, who acquainted themselves with the habits of their prisoners, and provided for their comfort and cleanliness. with what deep interest would the enlightened naturalist of that dayan oviedo, or a martyr, for examplehave surveyed this magnificent collection, in which the various tribes which roamed over the western wilderness, the unknown races of an unknown world, were, brought into one view! how would they have delighted to study the peculiarities of these new species, compared with those of their own hemisphere, and thus have risen to some comprehension of the general laws by which nature acts in all her works! the rude followers of cortes did not trouble themselves with such refined speculations. they gazed on the spectacle with a vague curiosity, not unmixed with awe; and, as they listened to the wild cries of the ferocious animals and the hissings of the serpents, they almost fancied themselves in the infernal regions. i must not omit to notice a strange collection of human monsters, dwarfs, and other unfortunate persons, in whose organisation nature had capriciously deviated from her regular laws. such hideous anomalies were regarded by the aztecs as a suitable appendage of state. it is even said they were in some cases the result of artificial means, employed by unnatural parents, desirous to secure a provision for their offspring by thus qualifying them for a place in the royal museum! extensive gardens were spread out around these buildings, filled with fragrant shrubs and flowers, and especially with medicinal plants. no country has afforded more numerous species of these last, than new spain; and their virtues were perfectly understood by the aztecs, with whom medical botany may be said to have been studied as a science. amidst this labyrinth of sweet-scented groves and shrubberies, fountains of pure water might be seen throwing up their sparkling jets, and scattering refreshing dews over the blossoms. ten large tanks, well stocked with fish, afforded a retreat on their margins to various tribes of water-fowl, whose habits were so carefully consulted, that some of these ponds were of salt water, as that which they most loved to frequent. a tessellated pavement of marble inclosed the ample basins, which were overhung by light and fanciful pavilions, that admitted the perfumed breezes of the gardens, and offered a grateful shelter to the monarch and his mistresses in the sultry heats of summer. but the most luxurious residence of the aztec monarch, at that season, was the royal hill of chapoltepec, a spot consecrated, moreover, by the ashes of his ancestors. it stood in a westerly direction from the capital, and its base was, in his day, washed by the waters of the tezcuco. on its lofty crest of porphyritic rock there now stands the magnificent, though desolate, castle erected by the young viceroy galvez, at the close of the seventeenth century. the view from its windows is one of the finest in the environs of mexico. the landscape is not disfigured here, as in many other quarters, by the white and barren patches, so offensive to the sight; but the eye wanders over an unbroken expanse of meadows and cultivated fields, waving with rich harvests of european grain. montezuma's gardens stretched for miles around the base of the hill. two statues of that monarch and his father, cut in bas relief in the porphyry, were spared till the middle of the last century; and the grounds are still shaded by gigantic cypresses, more than fifty feet in circumference, which were centuries old at the time of the conquest. the place is now a tangled wilderness of wild shrubs, where the myrtle mingles its dark, glossy leaves with the red berries and delicate foliage of the pepper-tree. surely there is no spot better suited to awaken meditation on the past; none where the traveller, as he sits under those stately cypresses grey with the moss of ages, can so fitly ponder on the sad destinies of the indian races and the monarch who once held his courtly revels under the shadow of their branches. the domestic establishment of montezuma was on the same scale of barbaric splendour as everything else about him. he could boast as many wives as are found in the harem of an eastern sultan. they were lodged in their own apartments, and provided with every accommodation, according to their ideas, for personal comfort and cleanliness. they passed their hours in the usual feminine employments of weaving and embroidery, especially in the graceful feather-work, for which such rich materials were furnished by the royal aviaries. they conducted themselves with strict decorum, under the supervision of certain aged females, who acted in the respectable capacity of duennas, in the same manner as in the religious houses attached to the teocallis. the palace was supplied with numerous baths, and montezuma set the example, in his own person, of frequent ablutions. he bathed, at least once, and changed his dress four times, it is said, every day. he never put on the same apparel a second time, but gave it away to his attendants. queen elizabeth, with a similar taste for costume, showed a less princely spirit in hoarding her discarded suits. besides his numerous female retinue, the halls and antechambers were filled with nobles in constant attendance on his person, who served also as a sort of bodyguard. it had been usual for plebeians of merit to fill certain offices in the palace. but the haughty montezuma refused to be waited upon by any but men of noble birth. they were not unfrequently the sons of the great chiefs, and remained as hostages in the absence of their fathers; thus serving the double purpose of security and state. his meals the emperor took alone. the well-matted floor of a large saloon was covered with hundreds of dishes. sometimes montezuma himself, but more frequently his steward, indicated those which he preferred, and which were kept hot by means of chafingdishes. the royal bill of fare comprehended, besides domestic animals, game from the distant forests, and fish which, the day before, were swimming in the gulf of mexico! they were dressed in manifold ways, for the aztec artistes, as we have already had occasion to notice, had penetrated deep into the mysteries of culinary science. the meats were served by the attendant nobles, who then resigned the office of waiting on the monarch to maidens selected for their personal grace and beauty. a screen of richly gilt and carved wood was drawn around him, so as to conceal him from vulgar eyes during the repast. he was seated on a cushion, and the dinner was served on a low table, covered with a delicate cotton cloth. the dishes were of the finest ware of cholula. he had a service of gold, which was reserved for religious celebrations. indeed, it would scarcely have comported with even his princely revenues to have used it on ordinary occasions, when his table equipage was not allowed to appear a second time, but was given away to his attendants. the saloon was lighted by torches made of a resinous wood, which sent forth a sweet odour, and probably not a little smoke, as they burned. at his meal, he was attended by five or six of his ancient counsellors, who stood at a respectful distance, answering his questions, and occasionally rejoiced by some of the viands with which he complimented them from his table. this course of solid dishes was succeeded by another of sweetmeats and pastry, for which the aztec cooks, provided with the important requisites of maize-flour, eggs, and the rich sugar of the aloe, were famous. two girls were occupied at the further end of the apartment, during dinner, in preparing fine rolls and wafers, with which they garnished the board from time to time. the emperor took no other beverage than the chocolatl, a potation of chocolate, flavoured with vanilla and other spices, and so prepared as to be reduced to a froth of the consistency of honey, which gradually dissolved in the mouth. this beverage, if so it could be called, was served in golden goblets, with spoons of the same metal or of tortoise-shell finely wrought. the emperor was exceedingly fond of it, to judge from the quantity,no less than fifty jars or pitchers being prepared for his own daily consumption! two thousand more were allowed for that of his household. the general arrangement of the meal seems to have been not very unlike that of europeans. but no prince in europe could boast a dessert which could compare with that of the aztec emperor: for it was gathered fresh from the most opposite climes; and his board displayed the products of his own temperate region, and the luscious fruits of the tropics, plucked the day previous, from the green groves of the tierra caliente, and transmitted with the speed of steam, by means of couriers, to the capital. it was as if some kind fairy should crown our banquets with the spicy products that but yesterday were growing in a sunny isle of the far-off indian seas! after the royal appetite was appeased, water was handed to him by the female attendants in a silver basin, in the same manner as had been done before commencing his meal; for the aztecs were as constant in their ablutions, at these times, as any nation of the east. pipes were then brought, made of a varnished and richly gilt wood, from which he inhaled, sometimes through the nose, at others through the mouth, the fumes of an intoxicating weed, called "tobacco," mingled with liquid-amber. while this soothing process of fumigation was going on, the emperor enjoyed the exhibitions of his mountebanks and jugglers, of whom a regular corps was attached to the palace. no people, not even those of china or hindostan, surpassed the aztecs in feats of agility and legerdemain. sometimes he amused himself with his jester; for the indian monarch had his jesters, as well as his more refined brethren of europe at that day. indeed, he used to say, that more instruction was to be gathered from them than from wiser men, for they dared to tell the truth. at other times, he witnessed the graceful dances of his women, or took delight in listening to music,if the rude minstrelsy of the mexicans deserve that name,accompanied by a chant, in slow and solemn cadence, celebrating the heroic deeds of great aztec warriors or of his own princely line. when he had sufficiently refreshed his spirits with these diversions, he composed himself to sleep, for in his siesta he was as regular as a spaniard. on awaking, he gave audience to ambassadors from foreign states, or his own tributary cities, or to such caciques as had suits to prefer to him. they were introduced by the young nobles in attendance, and, whatever might be their rank, unless of the blood royal, they were obliged to submit to the humiliation of shrouding their rich dresses under the coarse mantle of nequen, and entering bare-footed, with downcast eyes, into the presence. the emperor addressed few and brief remarks to the suitors, answering them generally by his secretaries; and the parties retired with the same reverential obeisance, taking care to keep their faces turned towards the monarch. well might cortes exclaim that no court, whether of the grand seignior or any other infidel, ever displayed so pompous and elaborate a ceremonial! besides the crowd of retainers already noticed, the royal household was not complete without a host of artisans constantly employed in the erection or repair of buildings, besides a great number of jewellers and persons skilled in working metals, who found abundant demand for their trinkets among the dark-eyed beauties of the harem. the imperial mummers and jugglers were also very numerous, and the dancers belonging to the palace occupied a particular district of the city, appropriated exclusively to them. the maintenance of this little host, amounting to some thousands of individuals, involved a heavy expenditure, requiring accounts of a complicated, and, to a simple people, it might well be, embarrassing nature. everything, however, was conducted with perfect order; and all the various receipts and disbursements were set down in the picture-writing of the country. the arithmetical characters were of a more refined and conventional sort than those for narrative purposes; and a separate apartment was fired with hieroglyphical ledgers, exhibiting a complete view of the economy of the palace. the care of all this was intrusted to a treasurer, who acted as sort of major-domo in the household, having a general superintendence over all its concerns. this responsible office, on the arrival of the spaniards, was in the hands of a trusty cacique named tapia. such is the picture of montezuma's domestic establishment and way of living, as delineated by the conquerors, and their immediate followers, who had the best means of information, too highly coloured, it may be, by the proneness to exaggerate, which was natural to those who first witnessed a spectacle so striking to the imagination, so new and unexpected. i have thought it best to present the full details, trivial though they may seem to the reader, as affording a curious picture of manners, so superior in point of refinement to those of the other aboriginal tribes on the north american continent. nor are they, in fact, so trivial, when we reflect, that in these details of private life we possess a surer measure of civilisation, than in those of a public nature. in surveying them we are strongly reminded of the civilisation of the east; not of that higher, intellectual kind which belonged to the more polished arabs and the persians, but that semi-civilisation which has distinguished, for example, the tartar races, among whom art, and even science, have made, indeed, some progress in their adaptation to material wants and sensual gratification, but little in reference to the higher and more ennobling interests of humanity. it is characteristic of such a people to find a puerile pleasure in a dazzling and ostentatious pageantry; to mistake show for substance, vain pomp for power; to hedge round the throne itself with a barren and burdensome ceremonial, the counterfeit of real majesty. even this, however, was an advance in refinement compared with the rude manners of the earlier aztecs. the change may, doubtless, be referred in some degree to the personal influence of montezuma. in his younger days, he had tempered the fierce habits of the soldier with the milder profession of religion. in later life, he had withdrawn himself still more from the brutalising occupations of war, and his manners acquired a refinement tinctured, it may be added, with an effeminacy unknown to his martial predecessors. the condition of the empire, too, under his reign, was favourable to this change. the dismemberment of the tezcucan kingdom, on the death of the great nezahualpilli, had left the aztec monarchy without a rival; and it soon spread its colossal arms over the furthest limits of anahuac. the aspiring mind of montezuma rose with the acquisition of wealth and power; and he displayed the consciousness of new importance by the assumption of unprecedented state. he affected a reserve unknown to his predecessors; withdrew his person from the vulgar eye, and fenced himself round with an elaborate and courtly etiquette. when he went abroad, it was in state, on some public occasion, usually to the great temple, to take part in the religious services; and, as he passed along, he exacted from his people, as we have seen, the homage of an adulation worthy of an oriental despot. his haughty demeanour touched the pride of his more potent vassals, particularly those who at a distance felt themselves nearly independent of his authority. his exactions, demanded by the profuse expenditure of his palace, scattered broadcast the seeds of discontent; and, while the empire seemed towering in its most palmy and prosperous state, the canker had eaten deepest into its heart. chapter ii [1519] market of mexicogreat templeinterior sanctuaries spanish quarters four days had elapsed since the spaniards made their entry into mexico. whatever schemes their commander may have revolved in his mind, he felt that he could determine on no plan of operations till he had seen more of the capital, and ascertained by his own inspection the nature of its resources. he accordingly, as was observed at the close of the last book, sent to montezuma, asking permission to visit the great teocalli, and some other places in the city. the friendly monarch consented without difficulty. he even prepared to go in person to the great temple, to receive his guests there,it may be, to shield the shrine of his tutelar deity from any attempted profanation. he was acquainted, as we have already seen, with the proceedings of the spaniards on similar occasions in the course of their march.cortes put himself at the head of his little corps of cavalry, and nearly all the spanish foot, as usual, and followed the caciques sent by montezuma to guide him. they proposed first to conduct him to the great market of tlatelolco in the western part of the city. on the way, the spaniards were struck, in the same manner as they had been on entering the capital, with the appearance of the inhabitants, and their great superiority in the style and quality of their dress, over the people of the lower countries. the tilmatli, or cloak, thrown over the shoulders, and tied round the neck, made of cotton of different degrees of fineness, according to the condition of the wearer, and the ample sash around the loins, were often wrought in rich and elegant figures, and edged with a deep fringe or tassel. as the weather was now growing cool, mantles of fur or of the gorgeous feather-work were sometimes substituted. the latter combined the advantage of great warmth with beauty. the mexicans had also the art of spinning a fine thread of the hair of the rabbit and other animals, which they wove into a delicate web that took a permanent dye. the women, as in other parts of the country, seemed to go about as freely as the men. they wore several skirts or petticoats of different lengths, with highly ornamented borders, and sometimes over them loose flowing robes, which reached to the ankles. these also were made of cotton, for the wealthier classes, of a fine texture, prettily embroidered. no veils were worn here, as in some other parts of anahuac, where they were made of the aloe thread, or of the light web of hair above noticed. the aztec women had their faces exposed; and their dark raven tresses floated luxuriantly over their shoulders, revealing features which, although of a dusky or rather cinnamon hue, were not unfrequently pleasing, while touched with the serious, even sad expression characteristic of the national physiognomy. on drawing near to the tianguez, or great market, the spaniards were astonished at the throng of people pressing towards it, and, on entering the place, their surprise was still further heightened by the sight of the multitudes assembled there, and the dimensions of the inclosure, thrice as large as the celebrated square of salamanca. here were met together traders from all parts, with the products and manufactures peculiar to their countries; the goldsmiths of azcapotzalco; the potters and jewellers of cholula, the painters of tezcuco, the stone-cutters of tenajocan, the hunters of xilotepec, the fishermen of cuitlahuac, the fruiterers of the warm countries, the mat and chair-makers of quauhtitlan, and the florists of xochimilco,all busily engaged in recommending their respective wares, and in chaffering with purchasers. the market-place was surrounded by deep porticoes, and the several articles had each its own quarter allotted to it. here might be seen cotton piled up in bales, or manufactured into dresses and articles of domestic use, as tapestry, curtains, coverlets, and the like. the richly-stained and nice fabrics reminded cortes of the alcayceria, or silk-market of granada. there was the quarter assigned to the goldsmiths, where the purchaser might find various articles of ornament or use formed of the precious metals, or curious toys, such as we have already had occasion to notice, made in imitation of birds and fishes, with scales and feathers alternately of gold and silver, and with movable heads and bodies. these fantastic little trinkets were often garnished with precious stones, and showed a patient, puerile ingenuity in the manufacture, like that of the chinese. in an adjoining quarter were collected specimens of pottery, coarse and fine, vases of wood elaborately carved, varnished or gilt, of curious and sometimes graceful forms. there were also hatchets made of copper alloyed with tin, the substitute, and, as it proved, not a bad one, for iron. the soldier found here all the implements of his trade. the casque fashioned into the head of some wild animal, with its grinning defences of teeth, and bristling crest dyed with the rich tint of the cochineal; the escaupil, or quilted doublet of cotton, the rich surcoat of feather-mail, and weapons of all sorts, copper-headed lances and arrows, and the broad maquahuitl, the mexican sword, with its sharp blades of itztli. here were razors and mirrors of this same hard and polished mineral which served so many of the purposes of steel with the aztecs. in the square were also to be found booths occupied by barbers, who used these same razors in their vocation. for the mexicans, contrary to the popular and erroneous notions respecting the aborigines of the new world, had beards, though scanty ones. other shops or booths were tenanted by apothecaries, well provided with drugs, roots, and different medicinal preparations. in other places, again, blank books or maps for the hieroglyphical picture-writing were to be seen, folded together like fans, and made of cotton, skins, or more commonly the fibres of the agave, the aztec papyrus. under some of the porticoes they saw hides raw and dressed, and various articles for domestic or personal use made of the leather. animals, both wild and tame, were offered for sale, and near them, perhaps, a gang of slaves, with collars round their necks, intimating they were likewise on sale,a spectacle unhappily not confined to the barbarian markets of mexico, though the evils of their condition were aggravated there by the consciousness that a life of degradation might be consummated at any moment by the dreadful doom of sacrifice. the heavier materials for building, as stone, lime, timber, were considered too bulky to be allowed a place in the square, and were deposited in the adjacent streets on the borders of the canals. it would be tedious to enumerate all the various articles, whether for luxury or daily use, which were collected from all quarters in this vast bazaar. i must not omit to mention, however, the display of provisions, one of the most attractive features of the tianguez; meats of all kinds, domestic poultry, game from the neighbouring mountains, fish from the lakes and streams, fruits in all the delicious abundance of these temperate regions, green vegetables, and the unfailing maize. there was many a viand, too, ready dressed, which sent up its savoury steams provoking the appetite of the idle passenger; pastry, bread of the indian corn, cakes, and confectionery. along with these were to be seen cooling or stimulating beverages, the spicy foaming chocolatl,with its delicate aroma of vanilla, and the inebriating pulque, the fermented juice of the aloe. all these commodities, and every stall and portico, were set out, or rather smothered, with flowers, showing, on a much greater scale, indeed, a taste similar to that displayed in the markets of modern mexico. flowers seem to be the spontaneous growth of this luxuriant soil; which, instead of noxious weeds, as in other regions, is ever ready, without the aid of man, to cover up its nakedness with this rich and variegated livery of nature. as to the numbers assembled in the market, the estimates differ, as usual. the spaniards often visited the place, and no one states the amount at less than forty thousand! some carry it much higher. without relying too much on the arithmetic of the conquerors, it is certain that on this occasion, which occurred every fifth day, the city swarmed with a motley crowd of strangers, not only from the vicinity, but from many leagues around; the causeways were thronged, and the lake was darkened by canoes filled with traders flocking to the great tianguez. it resembled indeed the periodical fairs in europe, not as they exist now, but as they existed in the middle ages, when, from the difficulties of intercommunication, they served as the great central marts for commercial intercourse, exercising a most important and salutary influence on the community. the exchanges were conducted partly by barter, but more usually in the currency of the country. this consisted of bits of tin stamped with a character like a t, bags of cacao, the value of which was regulated by their size, and lastly quills filled with gold dust. gold was part of the regular currency, it seems, in both hemispheres. in their dealings it is singular that they should have had no knowledge of scales and weights. the quantity was determined by measure and number. the most perfect order reigned throughout this vast assembly. officers patrolled the square, whose business it was to keep the peace, to collect the duties imposed on the different articles of merchandise, to see that no false measures or fraud of any kind were used, and to bring offenders at once to justice. a court of twelve judges sat in one part of the tianguez, clothed with those ample and summary powers, which, in despotic countries, are often delegated even to petty tribunals. the extreme severity with which they exercised these powers, in more than one instance, proves that they were not a dead letter. the tianguez of mexico was naturally an object of great interest, as well as wonder, to the spaniards. for in it they saw converged into one focus, as it were, all the rays of civilisation scattered throughout the land. here they beheld the various evidences of mechanical skill, of domestic industry, the multiplied resources, of whatever kind, within the compass of the natives. it could not fail to impress them with high ideas of the magnitude of these resources, as well as of the commercial activity and social subordination by which the whole community was knit together; and their admiration is fully evinced by the minuteness and energy of their descriptions. from this bustling scene, the spaniards took their way to the great teocalli, in the neighbourhood of their own quarters. it covered, with the subordinate edifices, as the reader has already seen, the large tract of ground now occupied by the cathedral, part of the market-place, and some of the adjoining streets. it was the spot which had been consecrated to the same object, probably, ever since the foundation of the city. the present building, however, was of no great antiquity, having been constructed by ahuitzotl, who celebrated its dedication in 1486, by that hecatomb of victims, of which such incredible reports are to be found in the chronicles. it stood in the midst of a vast area, encompassed by a wall of stone and lime, about eight feet high, ornamented on the outer side by figures of serpents, raised in relief, which gave it the name of the coatepantli, or "wall of serpents." this emblem was a common one in the sacred sculpture of anahuac, as well as of egypt. the wall, which was quadrangular, was pierced by huge battlemented gateways, opening on the four principal streets of the capital. over each of the gates was a kind of arsenal, filled with arms and warlike gear; and, if we may credit the report of the conquerors, there were barracks adjoining, garrisoned by ten thousand soldiers, who served as a sort of military police for the capital, supplying the emperor with a strong arm in case of tumult or sedition. the teocalli itself was a solid pyramidal structure of earth and pebbles, coated on the outside with hewn stones, probably of the light, porous kind employed in the buildings of the city. it was probably square, with its sides facing the cardinal points. it was divided into five bodies or stories, each one receding so as to be of smaller dimensions than that immediately below it; the usual form of the aztec teocallis, as already described, and bearing obvious resemblance to some of the primitive pyramidal structures in the old world. the ascent was by a flight of steps on the outside, which reached to the narrow terrace or platform at the base of the second story, passing quite round the building, when a second stairway conducted to a similar landing at the base of the third. the breadth of this walk was just so much space as was left by the retreating story next above it. from this construction the visitor was obliged to pass round the whole edifice four times, in order to reach the top. this had a most imposing effect in the religious ceremonials, when the pompous procession of priests with their wild minstrelsy came sweeping round the huge sides of the pyramid, as they rose higher and higher in the presence of gazing multitudes, towards the summit. the dimensions of the temple cannot be given with any certainty. the conquerors judged by the eye, rarely troubling themselves with anything like an accurate measurement. it was, probably, not much less than three hundred feet square at the base; and, as the spaniards counted a hundred and fourteen steps, was probably less than one hundred feet in height. when cortes arrived before the teocalli, he found two priests and several caciques commissioned by montezuma to save him the fatigue of the ascent by bearing him on their shoulders, in the same manner as had been done to the emperor. but the general declined the compliment, preferring to march up at the head of his men. on reaching the summit, they found it a vast area, paved with broad flat stones. the first object that met their view was a large block of jasper, the peculiar shape of which showed it was the stone on which the bodies of the unhappy victims were stretched for sacrifice. its convex surface, by raising the breast, enabled the priest to perform his diabolical task more easily, of removing the heart. at the other end of the area were two towers or sanctuaries, consisting of three stories, the lower one of stone and stucco, the two upper of wood elaborately carved. in the lower division stood the images of their gods; the apartments above were filled with utensils for their religious services, and with the ashes of some of their aztec princes, who had fancied this airy sepulchre. before each sanctuary stood an altar with that undying fire upon it, the extinction of which boded as much evil to the empire, as that of the vestal flame would have done in ancient rome. here, also, was the huge cylindrical drum made of serpents' skins, and struck only on extraordinary occasions, when it sent forth a melancholy sound that might be heard for miles,a sound of woe in after times to the spaniards. montezuma, attended by the high-priest, came forward to receive cortes as he mounted the area. "you are weary, malinche," said he to him, "with climbing up our great temple." but cortes, with a politic vaunt, assured him "the spaniards were never weary!" then, taking him by the hand, the emperor pointed out the localities of the neighbourhood. the temple on which they stood, rising high above all other edifices in the capital, afforded the most elevated as well as central point of view. below them the city lay spread out like a map, with its streets and canals intersecting each other at right angles, its terraced roofs blooming like so many parterres of flowers. every place seemed alive with business and bustle; canoes were glancing up and down the canals, the streets were crowded with people in their gay, picturesque costume, while from the marketplace they had so lately left, a confused hum of many sounds and voices rose upon the air. they could distinctly trace the symmetrical plan of the city, with its principal avenues issuing, as it were, from the four gates of the coatepantli; and connecting themselves with the causeways, which formed the grand entrances to the capital. this regular and beautiful arrangement was imitated in many of the inferior towns, where the great roads converged towards the chief teocalli, or cathedral, as to a common focus. they could discern the insular position of the metropolis, bathed on all sides by the salt floods, of the tezcuco, and in the distance the clear fresh waters of the chalco; far beyond stretched a wide prospect of fields and waving woods, with the burnished walls of many a lofty temple rising high above the trees, and crowning the distant hill-tops. the view reached in an unbroken line to the very base of the circular range of mountains, whose frosty peaks glittered as if touched with fire in the morning ray; while long, dark wreaths of vapour, rolling up from the hoary head of popocatepetl, told that the destroying element was, indeed, at work in the bosom of the beautiful valley. cortes was filled with admiration at this grand and glorious spectacle, and gave utterance to his feelings in animated language to the emperor, the lord of these flourishing domains. his thoughts, however, soon took another direction; and, turning to father olmedo, who stood by his side, he suggested that the area would afford a most conspicuous position for the christian cross, if montezuma would but allow it to be planted there. but the discreet ecclesiastic, with the good sense which on these occasions seems to have been so lamentably deficient in his commander, reminded him that such a request, at present, would be exceedingly ill-timed, as the indian monarch had shown no dispositions as yet favourable to christianity. cortes then requested montezuma to allow him to enter the sanctuaries, and behold the shrines of his gods. to this the latter, after a short conference with the priests, assented, and conducted the spaniards into the building. they found themselves in a spacious apartment incrusted on the sides with stucco, on which various figures were sculptured, representing the mexican calendar, perhaps, or the priestly ritual. at one end of the saloon was a recess with a roof of timber richly carved and gilt. before the altar in this sanctuary stood the colossal image of huitzilopochtli, the tutelary deity and war-god of the aztecs. his countenance was distorted into hideous lineaments of symbolical import. in his right hand he wielded a bow, and in his left a bunch of golden arrows, which a mystic legend had connected with the victories of his people. the huge folds of a serpent, consisting of pearls and precious stones, were coiled round his waist, and the same rich materials were profusely sprinkled over his person. on his left foot were the delicate feathers of the humming-bird, which, singularly enough, gave its name to the dread deity. the most conspicuous ornament was a chain of gold and silver hearts alternate, suspended round his neck, emblematical of the sacrifice in which he most delighted. a more unequivocal evidence of this was afforded by three human hearts smoking and almost palpitating, as if recently torn from the victims, and now lying on the altar before him! the adjoining sanctuary was dedicated to a milder deity. this was tezcatlipoca, next in honour to that invisible being, the supreme god, who was represented by no image, and confined by no temple. it was tezcatlipoca who created the world, and watched over it with a providential care. he was represented as a young man, and his image, of polished black stone, was richly garnished with gold plates and ornaments; among which a shield, burnished like a mirror, was the most characteristic emblem, as in it he saw reflected all the doings of the world. but the homage to this god was not always of a more refined or merciful character than that paid to his carnivorous brother; for five bleeding hearts were also seen in a golden platter on his altar. the walls of both these chapels were stained with human gore. "the stench was more intolerable," exclaims diaz, "than that of the slaughter-houses in castile!" and the frantic forms of the priests, with their dark robes clotted with blood, as they flitted to and fro, seemed to the spaniards to be those of the very ministers of satan! from this foul abode they gladly escaped into the open air; when cortes, turning to montezuma, said with a smile, "i do not comprehend how a great and wise prince like you can put faith in such evil spirits as these idols, the representatives of the devil! if you will but permit us to erect here the true cross, and place the images of the blessed virgin and her son in your sanctuaries, you will soon see how your false gods will shrink before them!" montezuma was greatly shocked at this sacrilegious address. "these are the gods," he answered, "who have led the aztecs on to victory since they were a nation, and who send the seed-time and harvest in their seasons. had i thought you would have offered them this outrage, i would not have admitted you into their presence!" cortes, after some expressions of concern at having wounded the feelings of the emperor, took his leave. montezuma remained, saying that he must expiate, if possible, the crime of exposing the shrines of the divinities to such profanation by the strangers. on descending to the court, the spaniards took a leisurely survey of the other edifices in the inclosure. the area was protected by a smooth stone pavement, so polished, indeed, that it was with difficulty the horses could keep their legs. there were several other teocallis, built generally on the model of the great one, though of much inferior size, dedicated to the different aztec deities. on their summits were the altars crowned with perpetual flames, which, with those on the numerous temples in other quarters of the capital, shed a brilliant illumination over its streets, through the long nights. among the teocallis in the inclosure was one consecrated to quetzalcoatl, circular in its form, and having an entrance in imitation of a dragon's mouth, bristling with sharp fangs and dropping with blood. as the spaniards cast a furtive glance into the throat of this horrible monster, they saw collected there implements of sacrifice and other abominations of fearful import. their bold hearts shuddered at the spectacle, and they designated the place not inaptly as the "hell." one other structure may be noticed as characteristic of the brutish nature of their religion. this was a pyramidal mound or tumulus, having a complicated framework of timber on its broad summit. on this was strung an immense number of human skulls, which belonged to the victims, mostly prisoners of war, who had perished on the accursed stone of sacrifice. one of the soldiers had the patience to count the number of these ghastly trophies, and reported it to be one hundred and thirty-six thousand! belief might well be staggered, did not the old world present a worthy counterpart in the pyramidal golgothas which commemorated the triumphs of tamerlane. there were long ranges of buildings in the inclosure, appropriated as the residence of the priests and others engaged in the offices of religion. the whole number of them was said to amount to several thousand. here were, also, the principal seminaries for the instruction of youth of both sexes, drawn chiefly from the higher and wealthier classes. the girls were taught by elderly women, who officiated as priestesses in the temples, a custom familiar also to egypt. the spaniards admit that the greatest care for morals, and the most blameless deportment, were maintained in these institutions. the time of the pupils was chiefly occupied, as in most monastic establishments, with the minute and burdensome ceremonial of their religion. the boys were likewise taught such elements of science as were known to their teachers, and the girls initiated in the mysteries of embroidery and weaving, which they employed in decorating the temples. at a suitable age they generally went forth into the world to assume the occupations fitted to their condition, though some remained permanently devoted to the services of religion. the spot was also covered by edifices of a still different character. there were granaries filled with the rich produce of the churchlands, and with the first-fruits and other offerings of the faithful. one large mansion was reserved for strangers of eminence, who were on a pilgrimage to the great teocalli. the inclosure was ornamented with gardens, shaded by ancient trees, and watered by fountains and reservoirs from the copious streams of chapoltepec. the little community was thus provided with almost everything requisite for its own maintenance and the services of the temple. it was a microcosm of itself,a city within a city; and, according to the assertion of cortes, embraced a tract of ground large enough for five hundred houses. it presented in this brief compass the extremes of barbarism, blended with a certain civilisation, altogether characteristic of the aztecs. the rude conquerors saw only the evidence of the former. in the fantastic and symbolical features of the deities, they beheld the literal lineaments of satan; in the rites and frivolous ceremonial, his own especial code of damnation; and in the modest deportment and careful nurture of the inmates of the seminaries, the snares by which he was to beguile his deluded victims. before a century had elapsed, the descendants of these same spaniards discerned in the mysteries of the aztec religion the features, obscured and defaced, indeed, of the jewish and christian revelations! such were the opposite conclusions of the unlettered soldier and of the scholar. a philosopher, untouched by superstition, might well doubt which of the two was the most extraordinary. the sight of the indian abominations seems to have kindled in the spaniards a livelier feeling for their own religion; since, on the following day, they asked leave of montezuma to convert one of the halls in their residence into a chapel, that they might celebrate the services of the church there. the monarch, in whose bosom the feelings of resentment seem to have soon subsided, easily granted their request, and sent some of his own artisans to aid them in the work. while it was in progress, some of the spaniards observed what appeared to be a door recently plastered over. it was a common rumour that montezuma still kept the treasures of his father, king axayacatl, in this ancient palace. the spaniards, acquainted with this fact, felt no scruple in gratifying their curiosity by removing the plaster. as was anticipated, it concealed a door. on forcing this, they found the rumour was no exaggeration. they beheld a large hall filled with rich and beautiful stuffs, articles of curious workmanship of various kinds, gold and silver in bars and in the ore, and many jewels of value. it was the private hoard of montezuma, the contributions, it may be, of tributary cities, and once the property of his father. "i was a young man," says diaz, who was one of those that obtained a sight of it, "and it seemed to me as if all the riches of the world were in that room!" the spaniards, notwithstanding their elation at the discovery of this precious deposit, seem to have felt some commendable scruples as to appropriating it to their own use,at least for the present. and cortes, after closing up the wall as it was before, gave strict injunctions that nothing should be said of the matter, unwilling that the knowledge of its existence by his guests should reach the ears of montezuma. three days sufficed to complete the chapel; and the christians had the satisfaction to see themselves in possession of a temple where they might worship god in their own way, under the protection of the cross, and the blessed virgin. mass was regularly performed by the fathers, olmedo and diaz, in the presence of the assembled army, who were most earnest and exemplary in their devotions, partly, says the chronicler above quoted, from the propriety of the thing, and partly for its edifying influence on the benighted heathen. chapter iii [1519] anxiety of cortesseizure of montezuma his treatment by the spaniardsexecution of his officers montezuma in ironsreflections the spaniards had been now a week in mexico. during this time, they had experienced the most friendly treatment from the emperor. but the mind of cortes was far from easy. he felt that it was quite uncertain how long this amiable temper would last. a hundred circumstances might occur to change it. he might very naturally feel the maintenance of so large a body too burdensome on his treasury. the people of the capital might become dissatisfied at the presence of so numerous an armed force within their walls. many causes of disgust might arise betwixt the soldiers and the citizens. indeed, it was scarcely possible that a rude, licentious soldiery, like the spaniards, could be long kept in subjection without active employment. the danger was even greater with the tlascalans, a fierce race now brought into daily contact with the nation who held them in loathing and detestation. rumours were already rife among the allies, whether well-founded or not, of murmurs among the mexicans, accompanied by menaces of raising the bridges. even should the spaniards be allowed to occupy their present quarters unmolested, it was not advancing the great object of the expedition. cortes was not a whit nearer gaining the capital, so essential to his meditated subjugation of the country; and any day he might receive tidings that the crown, or, what he most feared, the governor of cuba, had sent a force of superior strength to wrest from him a conquest but half achieved. disturbed by these anxious reflections, he resolved to extricate himself from his embarrassment by one bold stroke. but he first submitted the affair to a council of the officers in whom he most confided, desirous to divide with them the responsibility of the act, and no doubt, to interest them more heartily in its execution, by making it in some measure the result of their combined judgments. when the general had briefly stated the embarrassments of their position, the council was divided in opinion. all admitted the necessity of some instant action. one party were for retiring secretly from the city, and getting beyond the causeways before their march could be intercepted. another advised that it should be done openly, with the knowledge of the emperor, of whose good will they had had so many proofs. but both these measures seemed alike impolitic. a retreat under these circumstances, and so abruptly made, would have the air of a flight. it would be construed into distrust of themselves; and anything like timidity on their part would be sure not only to bring on them the mexicans, but the contempt of their allies, who would, doubtless, join in the general cry. as to montezuma, what reliance could they place on the protection of a prince so recently their enemy, and who, in his altered bearing, must have taken counsel of his fears rather than his inclinations? even should they succeed in reaching the coast, their situation would be little better. it would be proclaiming to the world that, after all their lofty vaunts, they were unequal to the enterprise. their only hopes of their sovereign's favour, and of pardon for their irregular proceedings, were founded on success. hitherto, they had only made the discovery of mexico; to retreat would be to leave conquest and the fruits of it to another.in short, to stay and to retreat seemed equally disastrous. in this perplexity, cortes proposed an expedient, which none but the most daring spirit, in the most desperate extremity, would have conceived. this was, to march to the royal palace, and bring montezuma to the spanish quarters, by fair means if they could persuade him, by force if necessary,at all events, to get possession of his person. with such a pledge, the spaniards would be secure from the assault of the mexicans, afraid by acts of violence to compromise the safety of their prince. if he came by his own consent, they would be deprived of all apology for doing so. as long as the emperor remained among the spaniards, it would be easy, by allowing him a show of sovereignty, to rule in his name, until they had taken measures for securing their safety, and the success of their enterprise. the idea of employing a sovereign as a tool for the government of his own kingdom, if a new one in the age of cortes, is certainly not so in ours. a plausible pretext for the seizure of the hospitable monarchfor the most barefaced action seeks to veil itself under some show of decencywas afforded by a circumstance of which cortes had received intelligence at cholula. he had left, as we have seen, a faithful officer, juan de escalante, with a hundred and fifty men in garrison at vera cruz, on his departure for the capital. he had not been long absent, when his lieutenant received a message from an aztec chief named quauhpopoca, governor of a district to the north of the spanish settlement, declaring his desire to come in person and tender his allegiance to the spanish authorities at vera cruz. he requested that four of the white men might be sent to protect him against certain unfriendly tribes through which his road lay. this was not an uncommon request, and excited no suspicion in escalante. the four soldiers were sent; and on their arrival two of them were murdered by the false aztec. the other two made their way back to the garrison. the commander marched at once, with fifty of his men, and several thousand indian allies, to take vengeance on the cacique. a pitched battle followed. the allies fled from the redoubted mexicans. the few spaniards stood firm, and with the aid of the firearms and the blessed virgin, who was distinctly seen hovering over their ranks in the van, they made good the field against the enemy. it cost them dear, however, since seven or eight christians were slain, and among them the gallant escalante himself, who died of his injuries soon after his return to the fort. the indian prisoners captured in the battle spoke of the whole proceeding as having taken place at the instigation of montezuma. one of the spaniards fell into the hands of the natives, but soon after perished of his wounds. his head was cut off and sent to the aztec emperor. it was uncommonly large and covered with hair; and, as montezuma gazed on the ferocious features, rendered more horrible by death, he seemed to read in them the dark lineaments of the destined destroyers of his house. he turned from it with a shudder, and commanded that it should be taken from the city, and not offered at the shrine of any of his gods. although cortes had received intelligence of this disaster at cholula, he had concealed it within his own breast, or communicated it to very few only of his most trusty officers, from apprehension of the ill effect it might have on the spirits of the common soldiers. the cavaliers whom cortes now summoned to the council were men of the same mettle with their leader. their bold chivalrous spirit seemed to court danger for its own sake. if one or two, less adventurous, were startled by the proposal he made, they were soon overruled by the others, who, no doubt, considered that a desperate disease required as desperate a remedy. that night, cortes was heard pacing his apartment to and fro, like a man oppressed by thought, or agitated by strong emotion. he may have been ripening in his mind the daring scheme for the morrow. in the morning the soldiers heard mass as usual, and father olmedo invoked the blessing of heaven on their hazardous enterprise. whatever might be the cause in which he was embarked, the heart of the spaniard was cheered with the conviction that the saints were on his side. having asked an audience from montezuma, which was readily granted, the general made the necessary arrangements for his enterprise. the principal part of his force was drawn up in the courtyard, and he stationed a considerable detachment in the avenues leading to the palace, to cheek any attempt at rescue by the populace. he ordered twenty-five or thirty of the soldiers to drop in at the palace, as if by accident, in groups of three or four at a time, while the conference was going on with montezuma. he selected five cavaliers, in whose courage and coolness he placed most trust, to bear him company; pedro de alvarado, gonzalo de sandoval, francisco de lugo, velasquez de leon, and alonso de avila,brilliant names in the annals of the conquest. all were clad, as well as the common soldiers, in complete armour, a circumstance of too familiar occurrence to excite suspicion. the little party were graciously received by the emperor, who soon, with the aid of the interpreters, became interested in a sportive conversation with the spaniards, while he indulged his natural munificence by giving them presents of gold and jewels. he paid the spanish general the particular compliment of offering him one of his daughters as his wife; an honour which the latter respectfully declined, on the ground that he was already accommodated with one in cuba, and that his religion forbade a plurality. when cortes perceived that a sufficient number of his soldiers were assembled, he changed his playful manner, and with a serious tone briefly acquainted montezuma with the treacherous proceedings in the tierra caliente, and the accusation of him as their author. the emperor listened to the charge with surprise; and disavowed the act, which he said could only have been imputed to him by his enemies. cortes expressed his belief in his declaration, but added, that, to prove it true, it would be necessary to send for quauhpopoca and his accomplices, that they might be examined and dealt with according to their deserts. to this montezuma made no objection. taking from his wrist, to which it was attached, a precious stone, the royal signet, on which was cut the figure of the war-god, he gave it to one of his nobles, with orders to show it to the aztec governor, and require his instant presence in the capital, together with all those who had been accessory to the murder of the spaniards. if he resisted, the officer was empowered to call in the aid of the neighbouring towns to enforce the mandate. when the messenger had gone, cortes assured the monarch that this prompt compliance with his request convinced him of his innocence. but it was important that his own sovereign should be equally convinced of it. nothing would promote this so much as for montezuma to transfer his residence to the palace occupied by the spaniards, till on the arrival of quauhpopoca the affair could be fully investigated. such an act of condescension would, of itself, show a personal regard for the spaniards, incompatible with the base conduct alleged against him, and would fully absolve him from all suspicion! montezuma listened to this proposal, and the flimsy reasoning with which it was covered, with looks of profound amazement. he became pale as death; but in a moment his face flushed with resentment, as with the pride of offended dignity, he exclaimed, "men was it ever heard that a great prince, like myself, voluntarily left his own palace to become a prisoner in the hands of strangers!" cortes assured him he would not go as a prisoner. he would experience nothing but respectful treatment from the spaniards; would be surrounded by his own household, and hold intercourse with his people as usual. in short, it would be but a change of residence, from one of his palaces to another, a circumstance of frequent occurrence with him.it was in vain. "if i should consent to such a degradation," he answered, "my subjects never would!" when further pressed, he offered to give up one of his sons and of his daughters to remain as hostages with the spaniards, so that he might be spared this disgrace. two hours passed in this fruitless discussion, till a high-mettled cavalier, velasquez de leon, impatient of the long delay, and seeing that the attempt, if not the deed, must ruin them, cried out, "why do we waste words on this barbarian? we have gone too far to recede now. let us seize him, and, if he resists, plunge our swords into his body!" the fierce tone and menacing gestures with which this was uttered alarmed the monarch, who inquired of marina what the angry spaniard said. the interpreter explained it in as gentle a manner as she could, beseeching him "to accompany the white men to their quarters, where he would be treated with all respect and kindness, while to refuse them would but expose himself to violence, perhaps to death." marina, doubtless, spoke to her sovereign as she thought, and no one had better opportunity of knowing the truth than herself. this last appeal shook the resolution of montezuma. it was in vain that the unhappy prince looked around for sympathy or support. as his eyes wandered over the stern visages and iron forms of the spaniards, he felt that his hour was indeed come; and, with a voice scarcely audible from emotion, he consented to accompany the strangers,to quit the palace, whither he was never more to return. had he possessed the spirit of the first montezuma, he would have called his guards around him, and left his life-blood on the threshold, sooner than have been dragged a dishonoured captive across it. but his courage sank under circumstances. he felt he was the instrument of an irresistible fate! no sooner had the spaniards got his consent, than orders were given for the royal litter. the nobles, who bore and attended it, could scarcely believe their senses, when they learned their master's purpose. but pride now came to montezuma's aid, and, since he must go, he preferred that it should appear to be with his own free-will. as the royal retinue, escorted by the spaniards, marched through the street with downcast eyes and dejected mien, the people assembled in crowds, and a rumour ran among them, that the emperor was carried off by force to the quarters of the white men. a tumult would have soon arisen but for the intervention of montezuma himself, who called out to the people to disperse, as he was visiting his friends of his own accord; thus sealing his ignominy by a declaration which deprived his subjects of the only excuse for resistance. on reaching the quarters, he sent out his nobles with similar assurances to the mob, and renewed orders to return to their homes. he was received with ostentatious respect by the spaniards, and selected the suite of apartments which best pleased him. they were soon furnished with fine cotton tapestries, feather-work, and all the elegances of indian upholstery. he was attended by such of his household as he chose, his wives and his pages, and was served with his usual pomp and luxury at his meals. he gave audience, as in his own palace, to his subjects, who were admitted to his presence, few, indeed, at a time, under the pretext of greater order and decorum. from the spaniards themselves he met with a formal deference. no one, not even the general himself, approached him without doffing his casque, and rendering the obeisance due to his rank. nor did they ever sit in his presence, without being invited by him to do so. with all this studied ceremony and show of homage, there was one circumstance which too clearly proclaimed to his people that their sovereign was a prisoner. in the front of the palace a patrol of sixty men was established, and the same number in the rear. twenty of each corps mounted guard at once, maintaining a careful watch day and night. another body, under command of velasquez de leon, was stationed in the royal antechamber. cortes punished any departure from duty, or relaxation of vigilance, in these sentinels, with the utmost severity. he felt, as, indeed, every spaniard must have felt, that the escape of the emperor now would be their ruin. yet the task of this unintermitting watch sorely added to their fatigues. "better this dog of a king should die," cried a soldier one day, "than that we should wear out our lives in this manner." the words were uttered in the hearing of montezuma, who gathered something of their import, and the offender was severely chastised by order of the general. such instances of disrespect, however, were very rare. indeed, the amiable deportment of the monarch, who seemed to take pleasure in the society of his jailers, and who never allowed a favour or attention from the meanest soldier to go unrequited, inspired the spaniards with as much attachment as they were capable of feelingfor a barbarian. things were in this posture, when the arrival of quauhpopoca from the coast was announced. he was accompanied by his son and fifteen aztec chiefs. he had travelled all the way, borne, as became his high rank, in a litter. on entering montezuma's presence, he threw over his dress the coarse robe of nequen, and made the usual humiliating acts of obeisance. the poor parade of courtly ceremony was the more striking when placed in contrast with the actual condition of the parties. the aztec governor was coldly received by his master, who referred the affair (had he the power to do otherwise?) to the examination of cortes. it was, doubtless, conducted in a sufficiently summary manner. to the general's query, whether the cacique was the subject of montezuma, he replied, "and what other sovereign could i serve?" implying that his sway was universal. he did not deny his share in the transaction, nor did he seek to shelter himself under the royal authority, till sentence of death was passed on him and his followers, when they all laid the blame of their proceedings on montezuma. they were condemned to be burnt alive in the area before the palace. the funeral piles were made of heaps of arrows, javelins, and other weapons, drawn by the emperor's permission from the arsenals round the great teocalli, where they had been stored to supply means of defence in times of civic tumult or insurrection. by this politic precaution, cortes proposed to remove a ready means of annoyance in case of hostilities with the citizens. to crown the whole of these extraordinary proceedings, cortes, while preparations for the execution were going on, entered the emperor's apartment, attended by a soldier bearing fetters in his hands. with a severe aspect, he charged the monarch with being the original contriver of the violence offered to the spaniards, as was now proved by the declaration of his own instruments. such a crime, which merited death in a subject, could not be atoned for, even by a sovereign, without some punishment. so saying, he ordered the soldier to fasten the fetters on montezuma's ankles. he coolly waited till it was done; then, turning his back on the monarch, quitted the room. montezuma was speechless under the infliction of this last insult. he was like one struck down by a heavy blow, that deprives him of all his faculties. he offered no resistance. but, though he spoke not a word, low, ill-suppressed moans, from time to time, intimated the anguish of his spirit. his attendants, bathed in tears, offered him their consolations. they tenderly held his feet in their arms, and endeavoured, by inserting their shawls and mantles, to relieve them from the pressure of the iron. but they could not reach the iron which had penetrated into his soul. he felt that he was no more a king. meanwhile, the execution of the dreadful doom was going forward in the courtyard. the whole spanish force was under arms, to check any interruption that might be offered by the mexicans. but none was attempted. the populace gazed in silent wonder, regarding it as the sentence of the emperor. the manner of the execution, too, excited less surprise, from their familiarity with similar spectacles, aggravated, indeed, by additional horrors, in their own diabolical sacrifices. the aztec lord and his companions, bound hand and foot to the blazing piles, submitted without a cry or a complaint to their terrible fate. passive fortitude is the virtue of the indian warriors; and it was the glory of the aztec, as of the other races on the north american continent, to show how the spirit of the brave man may triumph over torture and the agonies of death. when the dismal tragedy was ended, cortes re-entered montezuma's apartment. kneeling down, he unclasped his shackles with his own hand, expressing at the same time his regret that so disagreeable a duty as that of subjecting him to such a punishment had been imposed on him. this last indignity had entirely crushed the spirit of montezuma; and the monarch, whose frown, but a week since, would have made the nations of anahuac tremble to their remotest borders, was now craven enough to thank his deliverer for his freedom, as for a great and unmerited boon! not long after, the spanish general, conceiving that his royal captive was sufficiently humbled, expressed his willingness that he should return, if he inclined, to his own palace. montezuma declined it; alleging, it is said, that his nobles had more than once importuned him to resent his injuries by taking arms against the spaniards; and that, were he in the midst of them, it would be difficult to avoid it, or to save his capital from bloodshed and anarchy. the reason did honour to his heart, if it was the one which influenced him. it is probable that he did not care to trust his safety to those haughty and ferocious chieftains who had witnessed the degradation of their master, and must despise his pusillanimity, as a thing unprecedented in an aztec monarch. whatever were his reasons, it is certain that he declined the offer; and the general, in a well-feigned, or real ecstasy, embraced him, declaring "that he loved him as a brother, and that every spaniard would be zealously devoted to his interests, since he had shown himself so mindful of theirs!" honeyed words, "which," says the shrewd old chronicler who was present, "montezuma was wise enough to know the worth of." the events recorded in this chapter are certainly some of the most extraordinary on the page of history. that a small body of men, like the spaniards, should have entered the palace of a mighty prince, have seized his person in the midst of his vassals, have borne him off a captive to their quarters,that they should have put to an ignominious death before his face his high officers, for executing probably his own commands, and have crowned the whole by putting the monarch in irons like a common malefactor,that this should have been done, not to a drivelling dotard in the decay of his fortunes, but to a proud monarch in the plenitude of his power, in the very heart of his capital, surrounded by thousands and tens of thousands who trembled at his nod, and would have poured out their blood like water in his defence,that all this should have been done by a mere handful of adventurers, is a thing too extravagant, altogether too improbable, for the pages of romance! it is, nevertheless, literally true. chapter iv [1520] montezuma's deportmenthis life in the spanish quarters meditated insurrectionlord of tezcuco seized further measures of cortes the settlement of la villa rica de vera cruz was of the last importance to the spaniards. it was the port by which they were to communicate with spain; the strong post on which they were to retreat in case of disaster, and which was to bridle their enemies and give security to their allies; the point d'appui for all their operations in the country. it was of great moment, therefore, that the care of it should be intrusted to proper hands. a cavalier, named alonso de grado, had been sent by cortes to take the place made vacant by the death of escalante. he was a person of greater repute in civil than military matters, and would be more likely, it was thought, to maintain peaceful relations with the natives, than a person of more belligerant spirit. cortes madewhat was rare with hima bad choice. he soon received such accounts of troubles in the settlement from the exactions and negligence of the new governor, that he resolved to supersede him. he now gave the command to gonzalo de sandoval, a young cavalier, who had displayed through the whole campaign singular intrepidity united with sagacity and discretion, while the good humour with which he bore every privation, and his affable manners, made him a favourite with all, privates as well as officers. sandoval accordingly left the camp for the coast. cortes did not mistake his man a second time. notwithstanding the actual control exercised by the spaniards through their royal captive, cortes felt some uneasiness, when he reflected that it was in the power of the indians, at any time, to cut off his communications with the surrounding country, and hold him a prisoner in the capital. he proposed, therefore, to build two vessels of sufficient size to transport his forces across the lake, and thus to render himself independent of the causeways. montezuma was pleased with the idea of seeing those wonderful "water-houses," of which he had heard so much, and readily gave permission to have the timber in the royal forests felled for the purpose. the work was placed under the direction of martin lopez, an experienced ship-builder. orders were also given to sandoval to send up from the coast a supply of cordage, sails, iron, and other necessary materials, which had been judiciously saved on the destruction of the fleet. the aztec emperor, meanwhile, was passing his days in the spanish quarters in no very different manner from what he had been accustomed to in his own palace. his keepers were too well aware of the value of their prize, not to do everything which could make his captivity comfortable, and disguise it from himself. but the chain will gall, though wreathed with roses. after montezuma's breakfast, which was a light meal of fruits or vegetables, cortes or some of his officers usually waited on him, to learn if he had any commands for them. he then devoted some time to business. he gave audience to those of his subjects who had petitions to prefer, or suits to settle. the statement of the party was drawn up on the hieroglyphic scrolls, which were submitted to a number of counsellors or judges, who assisted him with their advice on these occasions. envoys from foreign states or his own remote provinces and cities were also admitted, and the spaniards were careful that the same precise and punctilious etiquette should be maintained towards the royal puppet, as when in the plenitude of his authority. after business was despatched, montezuma often amused himself with seeing the castilian troops go through their military exercises. he, too, had been a soldier, and in his prouder days led armies in the field. it was very natural he should take an interest in the novel display of european tactics and discipline. at other times he would challenge cortes or his officers to play at some of the national games. a favourite one was called totoloque, played with golden balls aimed at a target or mark of the same metal. montezuma usually staked something of value,precious stones or ingots of gold. he lost with good humour; indeed it was of little consequence whether he won or lost, since he generally gave away his winnings to his attendants. he had, in truth, a most munificent spirit. his enemies accused him of avarice. but, if he were avaricious, it could have been only that he might have the more to give away. each of the spaniards had several mexicans, male and female, who attended to his cooking and various other personal offices. cortes, considering that the maintenance of this host of menials was a heavy tax on the royal exchequer, ordered them to be dismissed, excepting one to be retained for each soldier. montezuma, on learning this, pleasantly remonstrated with the general on his careful economy, as unbecoming a royal establishment and, countermanding the order, caused additional accommodations to be provided for the attendants, and their pay to be doubled. on another occasion, a soldier purloined some trinkets of gold from the treasure kept in the chamber, which, since montezuma's arrival in the spanish quarters, had been re-opened. cortes would have punished the man for the theft, but the emperor interfering said to him, "your countrymen are welcome to the gold and other articles, if you will but spare those belonging to the gods." some of the soldiers, making the most of his permission, carried off several hundred loads of fine cotton to their quarters. when this was represented to montezuma, he only replied, "what i have once given i never take back again." while thus indifferent to his treasures, he was keenly sensitive to personal slight or insult. when a common soldier once spoke to him angrily, the tears came into the monarch's eyes, as it made him feel the true character of his impotent condition. cortes, on becoming acquainted with it, was so much incensed, that he ordered the soldier to be hanged; but, on montezuma's intercession, commuted this severe sentence for a flogging. the general was not willing that any one but himself should treat his royal captive with indignity. montezuma was desired to procure a further mitigation of the punishment. but he refused, saying, "that, if a similar insult had been offered by any one of his subjects to malinche, he would have resented it in like manner." such instances of disrespect were very rare. montezuma's amiable and inoffensive manners, together with his liberality, the most popular of virtues with the vulgar, made him generally beloved by the spaniards. the arrogance, for which he had been so distinguished in his prosperous days, deserted him in his fallen fortunes. his character in captivity seems to have undergone something of that change which takes place in the wild animals of the forest, when caged within the walls of the menagerie. the indian monarch knew the name of every man in the army, and was careful to discriminate his proper rank. for some he showed a strong partiality. he obtained from the general a favourite page, named orteguilla, who, being in constant attendance on his person, soon learned enough of the mexican language to be of use to his countrymen. montezuma took great pleasure, also, in the society of velasquez de leon, the captain of his guard, and pedro de alvarado, tonatiuh, or "the sun," as he was called by the aztecs, from his yellow hair and sunny countenance. the sunshine, as events afterwards showed, could sometimes be the prelude to a terrible tempest. notwithstanding the care taken to cheat him of the tedium of captivity, the royal prisoner cast a wistful glance now and then beyond the walls of his residence to the ancient haunts of business or pleasure. he intimated a desire to offer up his devotions at the great temple, where he was once so constant in his worship. the suggestion startled cortes. it was too reasonable, however, for him to object to it, without wholly discarding the appearance which he was desirous to maintain. but he secured montezuma's return by sending an escort with him of a hundred and fifty soldiers under the same resolute cavaliers who had aided in his seizure. he told him also, that, in case of any attempt to escape, his life would instantly pay the forfeit. thus guarded, the indian prince visited the teocalli, where he was received with the usual state, and, after performing his devotions, he returned again to his quarters. it may well be believed that the spaniards did not neglect the opportunity afforded by his residence with them, of instilling into him some notions of the christian doctrine. fathers diaz and olmedo exhausted all their battery of logic and persuasion to shake his faith in his idols, but in vain. he, indeed, paid a most edifying attention, which gave promise of better things. but the conferences always closed with the declaration, that "the god of the christians was good, but the gods of his own country were the true gods for him." it is said, however, they extorted a promise from him, that he would take part in no more human sacrifices. yet such sacrifices were of daily occurrence in the great temples of the capital; and the people were too blindly attached to their bloody abominations for the spaniards to deem it safe, for the present at least, openly to interfere. montezuma showed, also, an inclination to engage in the pleasures of the chase, of which he once was immoderately fond. he had large forests reserved for the purpose on the other side of the lake. as the spanish brigantines were now completed, cortes proposed to transport him and his suite across the water in them. they were of a good size, strongly built. the largest was mounted with four falconets, or small guns. it was protected by a gaily-coloured awning stretched over the deck, and the royal ensign of castile floated proudly from the mast. on board of this vessel, montezuma, delighted with the opportunity of witnessing the nautical skill of the white men, embarked with a train of aztec nobles and a numerous guard of spaniards. a fresh breeze played on the waters, and the vessel soon left behind it the swarms of light pirogues which darkened their surface. she seemed like a thing of life in the eyes of the astonished natives, who saw her, as if disdaining human agency, sweeping by with snowy pinions as if on the wings of the wind, while the thunders from her sides now for the first time breaking on the silence of this "inland sea," showed that the beautiful phantom was clothed in terror. the royal chase was well stocked with game; some of which the emperor shot with arrows, and others were driven by the numerous attendants into nets. in these woodland exercises, while he ranged over his wild domain, montezuma seemed to enjoy again the sweets of liberty. it was but the shadow of liberty, however; as in his quarters, at home, he enjoyed but the shadow of royalty. at home or abroad, the eye of the spaniard was always upon him. but while he resigned himself without a struggle to his inglorious fate, there were others who looked on it with very different emotions. among them was his nephew cacama, lord of tezcuco, a young man not more than twenty-five years of age, but who enjoyed great consideration from his high personal qualities, especially his intrepidity of character. he was the same prince who had been sent by montezuma to welcome the spaniards on their entrance into the valley; and, when the question of their reception was first debated in the council, he had advised to admit them honourably as ambassadors of a foreign prince, and, if they should prove different from what they pretended, it would be time enough then to take up arms against them. that time, he thought, had now come. in a former part of this work, the reader has been made acquainted with the ancient history of the acolhuan or tezcucan monarchy, once the proud rival of the aztec in power, and greatly its superior in civilisation. under its last sovereign, nezahualpilli, its territory is said to have been grievously clipped by the insidious practices of montezuma, who fomented dissensions and insubordination among his subjects. on the death of the tezcucan prince, the succession was contested, and a bloody war ensued between his eldest son, cacama, and an ambitious younger brother, ixtlilxochitl. this was followed by a partition of the kingdom, in which the latter chieftain held the mountain districts north of the capital, leaving the residue to cacama. though shorn of a large part of his hereditary domain, the city was itself so important, that the lord of tezcuco still held a high rank among the petty princes of the valley. his capital, at the time of the conquest, contained, according to cortes, a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. it was embellished with noble buildings, rivalling those of mexico itself. the young tezcucan chief beheld, with indignation and no slight contempt, the abject condition of his uncle. he endeavoured to rouse him to manly exertion, but in vain. he then set about forming a league with several of the neighbouring caciques to rescue his kinsman, and to break the detested yoke of the strangers. he called on the lord of iztapalapan, montezuma's brother, the lord of tlacopan, and some others of most authority, all of whom entered heartily into his views. he then urged the aztec nobles to join them, but they expressed an unwillingness to take any step not first sanctioned by the emperor. they entertained, undoubtedly, a profound reverence for their master; but it seems probable that jealousy of the personal views of cacama had its influence on their determination. whatever were their motives, it is certain, that, by this refusal, they relinquished the best opportunity ever presented for retrieving their sovereign's independence, and their own. these intrigues could not be conducted so secretly as not to reach the ears of cortes, who, with his characteristic promptness, would have marched at once on tezcuco, and trodden out the spark of "rebellion," before it had time to burst into a flame. but from this he was dissuaded by montezuma, who represented that cacama was a man of resolution, backed by a powerful force, and not to be put down without a desperate struggle. he consented, therefore, to negotiate, and sent a message of amicable expostulation to the cacique. he received a haughty answer in return. cortes rejoined in a more menacing tone, asserting the supremacy of his own sovereign, the emperor of castile. to this cacama replied, "he acknowledged no such authority; he knew nothing of the spanish sovereign nor his people, nor did he wish to know anything of them." montezuma was not more successful in his application to cacama to come to mexico, and allow him to mediate his differences with the spaniards, with whom he assured the prince he was residing as a friend. but the young lord of tezcuco was not to be so duped. he understood the position of his uncle, and replied, "that, when he did visit his capital, it would be to rescue it, as well as the emperor himself, and their common gods, from bondage. he should come, not with his hand in his bosom, but on his sword,to drive out the detested strangers who had brought such dishonour on their country." cortes, incensed at this tone of defiance, would again have put himself in motion to punish it, but montezuma interposed with his more politic arts. he had several of the tezcucan nobles, he said, in his pay; and it would be easy, through their means, to secure cacama's person, and thus break up the confederacy at once, without bloodshed. the maintaining of corps of stipendiaries in the courts of neighbouring princes was a refinement which showed that the western barbarian understood the science of political intrigue, as well as some of his royal brethren on the other side of the water. by the contrivance of these faithless nobles, cacama was induced to hold a conference, relative to the proposed invasion, in a villa which overhung the tezcucan lake, not far from his capital. like most of the principal edifices, it was raised so as to admit the entrance of boats beneath it. in the midst of the conference, cacama was seized by the conspirators, hurried on board a bark in readiness for the purpose, and transported to mexico. when brought into montezuma's presence, the high-spirited chief abated nothing of his proud and lofty bearing. he taxed his uncle with his perfidy, and a pusillanimity so unworthy of his former character, and of the royal house from which he was descended. by the emperor he was referred to cortes, who, holding royalty but cheap in an indian prince, put him in fetters. there was at this time in mexico a brother of cacama, a stripling much younger than himself. at the instigation of cortes, montezuma, pretending that his nephew had forfeited the sovereignty by his late rebellion, declared him to be deposed, and appointed cuicuitzca in his place. the aztec sovereigns had always been allowed a paramount authority in questions relating to the succession. but this was a most unwarrantable exercise of it. the tezcucans acquiesced, however, with a ready ductility, which showed their allegiance hung but lightly on them, or, what is more probable, that they were greatly in awe of the spaniards; and the new prince was welcomed with acclamations to his capital. cortes still wanted to get into his hands the other chiefs who had entered into the confederacy with cacama. this was no difficult matter. montezuma's authority was absolute, everywhere but in his own palace. by his command, the caciques were seized, each in his own city, and brought in chains to mexico, where cortes placed them in strict confinement with their leader. he had now triumphed over all his enemies. he had set his foot on the necks of princes; and the great chief of the aztec empire was but a convenient tool in his hands for accomplishing his purposes. his first use of this power was to ascertain the actual resources of the monarchy. he sent several parties of spaniards, guided by the natives, to explore the regions where gold was obtained. it was gleaned mostly from the beds of rivers, several hundred miles from the capital. his next object was to learn if there existed any good natural harbour for shipping on the atlantic coast, as the road of vera cruz left no protection against the tempests that at certain seasons swept over these seas. montezuma showed him a chart on which the shores of the mexican gulf were laid down with tolerable accuracy. cortes, after carefully inspecting it, sent a commission, consisting of ten spaniards, several of them pilots, and some aztecs, who descended to vera cruz, and made a careful survey of the coast for nearly sixty leagues south of that settlement, as far as the great river coatzacualco, which seemed to offer the best, indeed the only, accommodations for a safe and suitable harbour. a spot was selected as the site of a fortified post, and the general sent a detachment of a hundred and fifty men, under velasquez de leon, to plant a colony there. he also obtained a grant of an extensive tract of land in the fruitful province of oaxaca, where he proposed to lay out a plantation for the crown. he stocked it with the different kinds of domesticated animals peculiar to the country, and with such indigenous grains and plants as would afford the best articles for export. he soon had the estate under such cultivation, that he assured his master, the emperor, charles the fifth, it was worth twenty thousand ounces of gold. chapter v [1520] montezuma swears allegiance to spainroyal treasures their divisionchristian worship in the teocalli discontents of the aztecs cortes now felt his authority sufficiently assured to demand from montezuma a formal recognition of the supremacy of the spanish emperor. the indian monarch had intimated his willingness to acquiesce in this, on their very first interview. he did not object, therefore, to call together his principal caciques for the purpose. when they were assembled, he made them an address, briefly stating the object of the meeting. they were all acquainted, he said, with the ancient tradition, that the great being, who had once ruled over the land, had declared, on his departure, that he should return at some future time and resume his sway. that time had now arrived. the white men had come from the quarter where the sun rises, beyond the ocean, to which the good deity had withdrawn. they were sent by their master to reclaim the obedience of his ancient subjects. for himself he was ready to acknowledge his authority. "you have been faithful vassals of mine," continued montezuma, "during the many years that i have sat on the throne of my fathers. i now expect that you will show me this last act of obedience by acknowledging the great king beyond the waters to be your lord, also, and that you will pay him tribute in the same manner as you have hitherto done to me." as he concluded, his voice was stifled by his emotion, and the tears fell fast down his cheeks. his nobles, many of whom, coming from a distance, had not kept pace with the changes which had been going on in the capital, were filled with astonishment as they listened to his words, and beheld the voluntary abasement of their master, whom they had hitherto reverenced as the omnipotent lord of anahuac. they were the more affected, therefore, by the sight of his distress. his will, they told him, had always been their law. it should be now; and, if he thought the sovereign of the strangers was the ancient lord of their country, they were willing to acknowledge him as such still. the oaths of allegiance were then administered with all due solemnity, attested by the spaniards present, and a full record of the proceedings was drawn up by the royal notary, to be sent to spain. there was something deeply touching in the ceremony by which an independent and absolute monarch, in obedience less to the dictates of fear than of conscience, thus relinquished his hereditary rights in favour of an unknown and mysterious power. it even moved those hard men who were thus unscrupulously availing themselves of the confiding ignorance of the natives; and, though "it was in the regular way of their own business," says an old chronicler, "there was not a spaniard who could look on the spectacle with a dry eye!" the rumour of these strange proceedings was soon circulated through the capital and the country. men read in them the finger of providence. the ancient tradition of quetzalcoatl was familiar to all; and where it had slept scarcely noticed in the memory, it was now revived with many exaggerated circumstances. it was said to be part of the tradition, that the royal line of the aztecs was to end with montezuma; and his name, the literal signification of which is "sad" or "angry lord," was construed into an omen of his evil destiny. having thus secured this great feudatory to the crown of castile, cortes suggested that it would be well for the aztec chiefs to send his sovereign such a gratuity as would conciliate his good will by convincing him of the loyalty of his new vassals. montezuma consented that his collectors should visit the principal cities and provinces, attended by a number of spaniards, to receive the customary tributes, in the name of the castilian sovereign. in a few weeks most of them returned, bringing back large quantities of gold and silver plate, rich stuffs, and the various commodities in which the taxes were usually paid. to this store montezuma added, on his own account, the treasure of axayacatl, previously noticed, some part of which had been already given to the spaniards. it was the fruit of long and careful hoarding,of extortion, it may be,by a prince who little dreamed of its final destination. when brought into the quarters, the gold alone was sufficient to make three great heaps. it consisted partly of native grains; part had been melted into bars; but the greatest portion was in utensils, and various kinds of ornaments and curious toys, together with imitations of birds, insects, or flowers, executed with uncommon truth and delicacy. there were also quantities of collars, bracelets, wands, fans, and other trinkets, in which the gold and feather-work were richly powdered with pearls and precious stones. many of the articles were even more admirable for the workmanship than for the value of the materials; such, indeed,if we may take the report of cortes to one who would himself have soon an opportunity to judge of its veracity, and whom it would not be safe to trifle with,as no monarch in europe could boast in his dominions! magnificent as it was, montezuma expressed his regret that the treasure was no larger. but he had diminished it, he said, by his former gifts to the white men. "take it," he added, "malinche, and let it be recorded in your annals, that montezuma sent his present to your master." the spaniards gazed with greedy eyes on the display of riches, now their own, which far exceeded an hitherto seen in the new world, and fell nothing short of the el dorado which their glowing imaginations had depicted. it may be that they felt somewhat rebuked by the contrast which their own avarice presented to the princely munificence of the barbarian chief. at least, they seemed to testify their sense of his superiority by the respectful homage which they rendered him, as they poured forth the fulness of their gratitude. they were not so scrupulous, however, as to manifest any delicacy in appropriating to themselves the donative, a small part of which was to find its way into the royal coffers. they clamoured loudly for an immediate division of the spoil, which the general would have postponed till the tributes from the remote provinces had been gathered in. the goldsmiths of azcapotzalco were sent for to take in pieces the larger and coarser ornaments, leaving untouched those of more delicate workmanship. three days were consumed in this labour, when the heaps of gold were cast into ingots, and stamped with the royal arms. some difficulty occurred in the division of the treasure, from the want of weights, which, strange as it appears, considering their advancement in the arts, were, as already observed, unknown to the aztecs. the deficiency was soon supplied by the spaniards, however, with scales and weights of their own manufacture, probably not the most exact. with the aid of these they ascertained the value of the royal fifth to be thirty-two thousand and four hundred pesos de oro. diaz swells it to nearly four times that amount. but their desire of securing the emperor's favour makes it improbable that the spaniards should have defrauded the exchequer of any part of its due; while, as cortes was responsible for the sum admitted in his letter, he would be still less likely to overstate it. his estimate may be received as the true one. the whole amounted, therefore, to one hundred and sixty-two thousand pesos de oro, independently of the fine ornaments and jewellery, the value of which cortes computes at five hundred thousand ducats more. there were, besides, five hundred marks of silver, chiefly in plate, drinking cups, and other articles of luxury. the inconsiderable quantity of the silver, as compared with the gold, forms a singular contrast to the relative proportions of the two metals since the occupation of the country by the europeans. the whole amount of the treasure, reduced to our own currency, and making allowance for the change in the value of gold since the beginning of the sixteenth century, was about six million three hundred thousand dollars, or one million four hundred and seventeen thousand pounds sterling; a sum large enough to show the incorrectness of the popular notion that little or no wealth was found in mexico. it was, indeed, small in comparison with that obtained by the conquerors in peru. but few european monarchs of that day could boast a larger treasure in their coffers. many of them, indeed, could boast little or nothing in their coffers. maximilian of germany, and the more prudent ferdinand of spain, left scarcely enough to defray their funeral expenses. the division of the spoil was a work of some difficulty. a perfectly equal division of it among the conquerors would have given them more than three thousand pounds sterling a-piece; a magnificent booty! but one fifth was to be deducted for the crown. an equal portion was reserved for the general, pursuant to the tenor of his commission. a large sum was then allowed to indemnify him and the governor of cuba for the charges of the expedition and the loss of the fleet, the garrison of vera cruz was also to be provided for. ample compensation was made to the principal cavaliers. the cavalry, arquebusiers, and crossbowmen, each received double pay. so that when the turn of the common soldiers came, there remained not more than a hundred pesos de oro for each; a sum so insignificant, in comparison with their expectations, that several refused to accept it. loud murmurs now rose among the men. "was it for this," they said, "that we left our homes and families, perilled our lives, submitted to fatigue and famine, and all for so contemptible a pittance! better to have stayed in cuba, and contented ourselves with the gains of a safe and easy traffic. when we gave up our share of the gold at vera cruz, it was on the assurance that we should be amply requited in mexico. we have indeed, found the riches we expected; but no sooner seen, than they are snatched from us by the very men who pledged us their faith!" the malcontents even went so far as to accuse their leaders of appropriating to themselves several of the richest ornaments, before the partition had been made; an accusation that receives some countenance from a dispute which arose between mexia, the treasurer for the crown, and velasquez de leon, a relation of the governor, and a favourite of cortes. the treasurer accused this cavalier of purloining certain pieces of plate before they were submitted to the royal stamp. from words the parties came to blows. they were good swordsmen; several wounds were given on both sides, and the affair might have ended fatally, but for the interference of cortes, who placed both under arrest. he then used all his authority and insinuating eloquence to calm the passions of his men. it was a delicate crisis. he was sorry, he said, to see them so unmindful of the duty of loyal soldiers, and cavaliers of the cross, as to brawl like common banditti over their booty. the division, he assured them, had been made on perfectly fair and equitable principles. as to his own share, it was no more than was warranted by his commission. yet, if they thought it too much, he was willing to forego his just claims, and divide with the poorest soldier. gold, however welcome, was not the chief object of his ambition. if it were theirs, they should still reflect, that the present treasure was little in comparison with what awaited them hereafter; for had they not the whole country and its mines at their disposal? it was only necessary that they should not give an opening to the enemy, by their discord, to circumvent and to crush them. with these honeyed words, of which he had good store for all fitting occasions, says an old soldier, for whose benefit, in part, they were intended, he succeeded in calming the storm for the present; while in private he took more effectual means, by presents judiciously administered, to mitigate the discontents of the importunate and refractory. and, although there were a few of more tenacious temper, who treasured this in their memories against a future day, the troops soon returned to their usual subordination. this was one of those critical conjunctures which taxed all the address and personal authority of cortes. he never shrunk from them, but on such occasions was true to himself. at vera cruz, he had persuaded his followers to give up what was but the earnest of future gains. here he persuaded them to relinquish these gains themselves. it was snatching the prey from the very jaws of the lion. why did he not turn and rend him? to many of the soldiers, indeed, it mattered little whether their share of the booty were more or less. gaming is a deep-rooted passion in the spaniard, and the sudden acquisition of riches furnished both the means and the motive for its indulgence. cards were easily made out of old parchment drumheads, and in a few days most of the prize-money, obtained with so much toil and suffering, had changed hands, and many of the improvident soldiers closed the campaign as poor as they had commenced it. others, it is true, more prudent, followed the example of their officers, who, with the aid of the royal jewellers, converted their gold into chains, services of plate, and other portable articles of ornament or use. cortes seemed now to have accomplished the great objects of the expedition. the indian monarch had declared himself the feudatory of the spanish. his authority, his revenues, were at the disposal of the general. the conquest of mexico seemed to be achieved, and that without a blow. but it was far from being achieved. one important step yet remained to be taken, towards which the spaniards had hitherto made little progress,the conversion of the natives. with all the exertions of father olmedo, backed by the polemic talents of the general, neither montezuma nor his subjects showed any disposition to abjure the faith of their fathers. the bloody exercises of their religion, on the contrary, were celebrated with all the usual circumstance and pomp of sacrifice before the eyes of the spaniards. unable further to endure these abominations, cortes, attended by several of his cavaliers, waited on montezuma. he told the emperor that the christians could no longer consent to have the services of their religion shut up within the narrow walls of the garrison. they wished to spread its light far abroad, and to open to the people a full participation in the blessings of christianity. for this purpose they requested that the great teocalli should be delivered up, as a fit place where their worship might be conducted in the presence of the whole city. montezuma listened to the proposal with visible consternation. amidst all his troubles he had leaned for support on his own faith, and, indeed, it was in obedience to it that he had shown such deference to the spaniards as the mysterious messenger predicted by the oracles. "why," said he, "malinche, why will you urge matters to an extremity, that must surely bring down the vengeance of our gods, and stir up an insurrection among my people, who will never endure this profanation of their temples?" cortes, seeing how greatly he was moved, made a sign to his officers to withdraw. when left alone with the interpreters, he told the emperor that he would use his influence to moderate the zeal of his followers, and persuade them to be contented with one of the sanctuaries of the teocalli. if that were not granted, they should be obliged to take it by force, and to roll down the images of his false deities in the face of the city. "we fear not for our lives," he added, "for, though our numbers are few, the arm of the true god is over us." montezuma, much agitated, told him that he would confer with the priests. the result of the conference was favourable to the spaniards, who were allowed to occupy one of the sanctuaries as a place of worship. the tidings spread great joy throughout the camp. they might now go forth in open day and publish their religion to the assembled capital. no time was lost in availing themselves of the permission. the sanctuary was cleansed of its disgusting impurities an altar was raised, surmounted by a crucifix and the image of the virgin. instead of the gold and jewels which blazed on the neighbouring pagan shrine, its walls were decorated with fresh garlands of flowers; and an old soldier was stationed to watch over the chapel, and guard it from intrusion. when these arrangements were completed, the whole army moved in solemn procession up the winding ascent of the pyramid. entering the sanctuary, and clustering round its portals, they listened reverently to the service of the mass, as it was performed by the fathers olmedo and diaz. and as the beautiful te deum rose towards heaven, cortes and his soldiers, kneeling on the ground, with tears streaming from their eyes, poured forth their gratitude to the almighty for this glorious triumph of the cross. it was a striking spectacle,that of these rude warriors lifting up their orisons on the summit of this mountain temple, in the very capital of heathendom, on the spot especially dedicated to its unhallowed mysteries. side by side, the spaniard and the aztec knelt down in prayer; and the christian hymn mingled its sweet tones of love and mercy with the wild chant raised by the indian priest in honour of the war-god of anahuac! it was an unnatural union, and could not long abide. a nation will endure any outrage sooner than that on its religion. this is an outrage both on its principles and its prejudices; on the ideas instilled into it from childhood, which have strengthened with its growth, until they become a part of its nature,which have to do with its highest interests here, and with the dread hereafter. any violence to the religious sentiment touches all alike, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the noble and the plebeian. above all, it touches the priests, whose personal consideration rests on that of their religion; and who, in a semi-civilised state of society, usually hold an unbounded authority. thus it was with the brahmins of india, the magi of persia, the roman catholic clergy in the dark ages, the priests of ancient egypt and mexico. the people had borne with patience all the injuries and affronts hitherto put on them by the spaniards. they had seen their sovereign dragged as a captive from his own palace; his ministers butchered before his eyes; his treasures seized and appropriated; himself in a manner deposed from his royal supremacy. all this they had seen without a struggle to prevent it. but the profanation of their temples touched a deeper feeling, of which the priesthood were not slow to take advantage. the first intimation of this change of feeling was gathered from montezuma himself. instead of his usual cheerfulness, he appeared grave and abstracted, and instead of seeking, as he was wont, the society of the spaniards, seemed rather to shun it. it was noticed, too, that conferences were more frequent between him and the nobles, and especially the priests. his little page, orteguilla, who had now picked up a tolerable acquaintance with the aztec, contrary to montezuma's usual practice, was not allowed to attend him at these meetings. these circumstances could not fail to awaken most uncomfortable apprehensions in the spaniards. not many days elapsed, however, before cortes received an invitation, or rather a summons, from the emperor, to attend him in his apartment. the general went with some feelings of anxiety and distrust, taking with him olid, captain of the guard, and two or three other trusty cavaliers. montezuma received them with cold civility, and, turning to the general, told him that all his predictions had come to pass. the gods of his country had been offended by the violation of their temples. they had threatened the priests that they would forsake the city, if the sacrilegious strangers were not driven from it, or rather sacrificed on the altars, in expiation of their crimes. the monarch assured the christians, it was from regard to their safety that he communicated this; and, "if you have any regard for it yourselves," he concluded, "you will leave the country without delay. i have only to raise my finger, and every aztec in the land will rise in arms against you." there was no reason to doubt his sincerity; for montezuma, whatever evils had been brought on him by the white men, held them in reverence as a race more highly gifted than his own, while for several, as we have seen, he had conceived an attachment, flowing, no doubt, from their personal attentions and deferences to himself. cortes was too much master of his feelings to show how far he was startled by this intelligence. he replied with admirable coolness, that he should regret much to leave the capital so precipitately, when he had no vessels to take him from the country. if it were not for this, there could be no obstacle to his leaving it at once. he should also regret another step to which he should be driven, if he quitted it under these circumstances,that of taking the emperor along with him. montezuma was evidently troubled by this last suggestion. he inquired how long it would take to build the vessels, and finally consented to send a sufficient number of workmen to the coast, to act under the orders of the spaniards; meanwhile, he would use his authority to restrain the impatience of the people, under the assurance that the white men would leave the land, when the means for it were provided. he kept his word. a large body of aztec artisans left the capital with the most experienced castilian ship-builders, and, descending to vera cruz, began at once to fell the timber and build a sufficient number of ships to transport the spaniards back to their own country. the work went forward with apparent alacrity. but those who had the direction of it, it is said, received private instructions from the general to interpose as many delays as possible, in hopes of receiving in the meantime such reinforcements from europe as would enable him to maintain his ground. the whole aspect of things was now changed in the castilian quarters. instead of the security and repose in which the troops had of late indulged, they felt a gloomy apprehension of danger, not the less oppressive to the spirits, that it was scarcely visible to the eye;like the faint speck just descried above the horizon by the voyager in the tropics, to the common gaze seeming only a summer cloud, but which to the experienced mariner bodes the coming of the hurricane. every precaution that prudence could devise was taken to meet it. the soldier, as he threw himself on his mats for repose, kept on his armour. he ate, drank, slept, with his weapons by his side. his horse stood ready caparisoned, day and night, with the bridle hanging at the saddle-bow. the guns were carefully planted, so as to command the great avenues. the sentinels were doubled, and every man, of whatever rank, took his turn in mounting guard. the garrison was in a state of siege. such was the uncomfortable position of the army when, in the beginning of may, 1520, six months after their arrival in the capital, tidings came from the coast, which gave greater alarm to cortes, than even the menaced insurrection of the aztecs. chapter vi [1520] fate of cortes' emissariesproceedings in the castilian court preparations of velasqueznarvaez lands in mexico politic conduct of corteshe leaves the capital before explaining the nature of the tidings alluded to in the preceding chapter, it will be necessary to cast a glance over some of the transactions of an earlier period. the vessel, which, as the reader may remember, bore the envoys puertocarrero and montejo with the despatches from vera cruz, after touching, contrary to orders, at the northern coast of cuba, and spreading the news of the late discoveries, held on its way uninterrupted towards spain, and early in october, 1519, reached the little port of san lucar. great was the sensation caused by her arrival and the tidings which she brought; a sensation scarcely inferior to that created by the original discovery of columbus. for now, for the first time, all the magnificent anticipations formed of the new world seemed destined to be realised. unfortunately, there was a person in seville, at this time, named benito martin, chaplain of velasquez, the governor of cuba. no sooner did this man learn the arrival of the envoys, and the particulars of their story, than he lodged a complaint with the casa de contratacion,the royal india house,charging those on board the vessel with mutiny and rebellion against the authorities of cuba, as well as with treason to the crown. in consequence of his representations, the ship was taken possession of by the public officers, and those on board were prohibited from moving their own effects, or anything else from her. the envoys were not even allowed the funds necessary for the expenses of the voyage, nor a considerable sum remitted by cortes to his father, don martin. in this embarrassment they had no alternative but to present themselves, as speedily as possible, before the emperor, deliver the letters with which they had been charged by the colony, and seek redress for their own grievances. they first sought out martin cortes, residing at medellin, and with him made the best of their way to court. charles the fifth was then on his first visit to spain after his accession. it was not a long one; long enough, however, to disgust his subjects, and, in a great degree, to alienate their affections. he had lately received intelligence of his election to the imperial crown of germany. from that hour, his eyes were turned to that quarter. his stay in the peninsula was prolonged only that he might raise supplies for appearing with splendour on the great theatre of europe. every act showed too plainly that the diadem of his ancestors was held lightly in comparison with the imperial bauble in which neither his countrymen nor his own posterity could have the slightest interest. the interest was wholly personal. contrary to established usage, he had summoned the castilian cortes to meet at compostella, a remote town in the north, which presented no other advantage than that of being near his place of embarkation. on his way thither he stopped some time at tordesillas, the residence of his unhappy mother, joanna "the mad." it was here that the envoys from vera cruz presented themselves before him, in march, 1520. at nearly the same time, the treasures brought over by them reached the court, where they excited unbounded admiration. hitherto, the returns from the new world had been chiefly in vegetable products, which, if the surest, are also the. slowest, sources of wealth. of gold they had as yet seen but little, and that in its natural state, or wrought into the rudest trinkets. the courtiers gazed with astonishment on the large masses of the precious metal, and the delicate manufacture of the various articles, especially of the richly-tinted feather-work. and, as they listened to the accounts, written and oral, of the great aztec empire, they felt assured that the castilian ships had, at length, reached the golden indies, which hitherto had seemed to recede before them. in this favourable mood there is little doubt the monarch would have granted the petition of the envoys, and confirmed the irregular proceedings of the conquerors, but for the opposition of a person who held the highest office in the indian department. this was juan rodriguez de fonseca, formerly dean of seville, now bishop of burgos. he was a man of noble family, and had been intrusted with the direction of the colonial concerns, on the discovery of the new world. on the establishment of the royal council of the indies by ferdinand the catholic, he had been made its president, and had occupied that post ever since. his long continuance in a position of great importance and difficulty is evidence of capacity for business. it was no uncommon thing in that age to find ecclesiastics in high civil, and even military employments. fonseca appears to have been an active, efficient person, better suited to a secular than to a religious vocation. he had, indeed, little that was religious in his temper; quick to take offence, and slow to forgive. his resentments seem to have been nourished and perpetuated like a part of his own nature. unfortunately his peculiar position enabled him to display them towards some of the most illustrious men of his time. from pique at some real or fancied slight from columbus, he had constantly thwarted the plans of the great navigator. he had shown the same unfriendly feeling towards the admiral's son, diego, the heir of his honours; and he now, and from this time forward, showed a similar spirit towards the conqueror of mexico. the immediate cause of this was his own personal relations with velasquez, to whom a near relative was betrothed. through this prelate's representations, charles, instead of a favourable answer to the envoys, postponed his decision till he should arrive at coruna, the place of embarkation. but here he was much pressed by the troubles which his impolitic conduct had raised, as well as by preparations for his voyage. the transaction of the colonial business, which, long postponed, had greatly accumulated on his hands, was reserved for the last week in spain. but the affairs of the "young admiral" consumed so large a portion of this, that he had no time to give to those of cortes; except, indeed, to instruct the board at seville to remit to the envoys so much of their funds as was required to defray the charges of the voyage. on the 16th of may, 1520, the impatient monarch bade adieu to his distracted kingdom, without one attempt to settle the dispute between his belligerent vassals in the new world, and without an effort to promote the magnificent enterprise which was to secure to him the possession of an empire. what a contrast to the policy of his illustrious predecessors, ferdinand and isabella! the governor of cuba, meanwhile, without waiting for support from home, took measures for redress into his own hands. we have seen, in a preceding chapter, how deeply he was moved by the reports of the proceedings of cortes and of the treasures which his vessel was bearing to spain. rage, mortification, disappointed avarice, distracted his mind. he could not forgive himself for trusting the affair to such hands. on the very week in which cortes had parted from him to take charge of the fleet, a capitulation had been signed by charles the fifth, conferring on velasquez the title of adelantado, with great augmentation of his original powers. the governor resolved, without loss of time, to send such a force to the aztec coast, as should enable him to assert his new authority to its full extent, and to take vengeance on his rebellious officer. he began his preparations as early as october. at first, he proposed to assume the command in person. but his unwieldy size, which disqualified him for the fatigues incident to such an expedition, or, according to his own account, tenderness for his indian subjects, then wasted by an epidemic, induced him to devolve the command on another. the person whom he selected was a castilian hidalgo, named panfilo de narvaez. he had assisted velasquez in the reduction of cuba, where his conduct cannot be wholly vindicated from the charge of inhumanity, which too often attaches to the early spanish adventurers. from that time he continued to hold important posts under the government, and was a decided favourite with velasquez. he was a man of some military capacity, though negligent and lax in his discipline. he possessed undoubted courage, but it was mingled with an arrogance, or rather overweening confidence in his own powers, which made him deaf to the suggestions of others more sagacious than himself. he was altogether deficient in that prudence and calculating foresight demanded in a leader who was to cope with an antagonist like cortes. the governor and his lieutenant were unwearied in their efforts to assemble an army. they visited every considerable town in the island, fitting out vessels, laying in stores and ammunition, and encouraging volunteers to enlist by liberal promises. but the most effectual bounty was the assurance of the rich treasures that awaited them in the golden regions of mexico. so confident were they in this expectation, that all classes and ages vied with one another in eagerness to embark in the expedition, until it seemed as if the whole white population would desert the island, and leave it to its primitive occupants. the report of these proceedings soon spread through the islands, and drew the attention of the royal audience of st. domingo. this body was intrusted, at that time, not only with the highest judicial authority in the colonies, but with a civil jurisdiction, which, as "the admiral" complained, encroached on his own rights. the tribunal saw with alarm the proposed expedition of velasquez, which, whatever might be its issue in regard to the parties, could not fail to compromise the interests of the crown. they chose accordingly one of their number, the licentiate ayllon, a man of prudence and resolution, and despatched him to cuba, with instructions to interpose his authority, and stay, if possible, the proceedings of velasquez. on his arrival, he found the governor in the western part of the island, busily occupied in getting the fleet ready for sea. the licentiate explained to him the purport of his mission, and the views entertained of the proposed enterprise by the royal audience. the conquest of a powerful country like mexico required the whole force of the spaniards, and, if one half were employed against the other, nothing but ruin could come of it. it was the governor's duty, as a good subject, to forego all private animosities, and to sustain those now engaged in the great work by sending them the necessary supplies. he might, indeed, proclaim his own powers, and demand obedience to them. but, if this were refused, he should leave the determination of his dispute to the authorised tribunals, and employ his resources in prosecuting discovery in another direction, instead of hazarding all by hostilities with his rival. this admonition, however sensible and salutary, was not at all to the taste of the governor. he professed, indeed, to have no intention of coming to hostilities with cortes. he designed only to assert his lawful jurisdiction over territories discovered under his own auspices. at the same time he denied the right of ayllon or of the royal audience to interfere in the matter. narvaez was still more refractory; and, as the fleet was now ready, proclaimed his intention to sail in a few hours. in this state of things, the licentiate, baffled in his first purpose of staying the expedition, determined to accompany it in person, that he might prevent, if possible, by his presence, an open rupture between the parties. the squadron consisted of eighteen vessels, large and small. it carried nine hundred men, eighty of whom were cavalry, eighty more arquebusiers, one hundred and fifty crossbowmen, with a number of heavy guns, and a large supply of ammunition and military stores. there were, besides, a thousand indians, natives of the island, who went probably in a menial capacity. so gallant an armadawith one exception, the great fleet under ovando, 1501, in which cortes had intended to embark for the new world,never before rode in the indian seas. none to compare with it had ever been fitted out in the western world. leaving cuba early in march, 1520, narvaez held nearly the same course as cortes, and running down what was then called the "island of yucatan," after a heavy tempest, in which some of his smaller vessels foundered, anchored, april 23, off san juan de ulua. it was the place where cortes also had first landed; the sandy waste covered by the present city of vera cruz. here the commander met with a spaniard, one of those sent by the general from mexico, to ascertain the resources of the country, especially its mineral products. this man came on board the fleet, and from him the spaniards gathered the particulars of all that had occurred since the departure of the envoys from vera cruz,the march into the interior, the bloody battles with the tlascalans, the occupation of mexico, the rich treasures found in it, and the seizure of the monarch, by means of which, concluded the soldier, "cortes rules over the land like its own sovereign, so that a spaniard may travel unarmed from one end of the country to the other, without insult or injury." his audience listened to this marvellous report with speechless amazement, and the loyal indignation of narvaez waxed stronger and stronger, as he learned the value of the prize which had been snatched from his employer. he now openly proclaimed his intention to march against cortes, and punish him for his rebellion. he made this vaunt so loudly, that the natives who had flocked in numbers to the camp, which was soon formed on shore, clearly comprehended that the new comers were not friends, but enemies, of the preceding. narvaez determined, also,though in opposition to the counsel of the spaniard, who quoted the example of cortes,to establish a settlement on this unpromising spot: and he made the necessary arrangements to organise a municipality. he was informed by the soldier of the existence of the neighbouring colony at villa rica, commanded by sandoval, and consisting of a few invalids, who, he was assured, would surrender on the first summons. instead of marching against the place, however, he determined to send a peaceful embassy to display his powers, and demand the submission of the garrison. these successive steps gave serious displeasure to ayllon, who saw they must lead to inevitable collision with cortes. but it was in vain he remonstrated, and threatened to lay the proceedings of narvaez before the government. the latter, chafed by his continued opposition and sour rebuke, determined to rid himself of a companion who acted as a spy on his movements. he caused him to be seized and sent back to cuba. the licentiate had the address to persuade the captain of the vessel to change her destination for st. domingo; and, when he arrived there, a formal report of his proceedings, exhibiting in strong colours the disloyal conduct of the governor and his lieutenant, was prepared and despatched by the royal audience to spain. sandoval, meanwhile, had not been inattentive to the movements of narvaez. from the time of his first appearance on the coast, that vigilant officer, distrusting the object of the armament, had kept his eye on him. no sooner was he apprised of the landing of the spaniards, than the commander of villa rica sent off his few disabled soldiers to a place of safety in the neighbourhood. he then put his works in the best posture of defence that he could, and prepared to maintain the place to the last extremity. his men promised to stand by him, and, the more effectually to fortify the resolution of any who might falter, he ordered a gallows to be set up in a conspicuous part of the town! the constancy of his men was not put to the trial. the only invaders of the place were a priest, a notary, and four other spaniards, selected for the mission already noticed, by narvaez. the ecclesiastic's name was guevara. on coming before sandoval, he made him a formal address, in which he pompously enumerated the services and claims of velasquez, taxed cortes and his adherents with rebellion, and demanded of sandoval to tender his submission as a loyal subject to the newly constituted authority of narvaez. the commander of la villa rica was so much incensed at this unceremonious mention of his companions in arms, that he assured the reverend envoy, that nothing but respect for his cloth saved him from the chastisement he merited. guevara now waxed wroth in his turn, and called on the notary to read the proclamation. but sandoval interposed, promising that functionary, that, if he attempted to do so, without first producing a warrant of his authority from the crown, he should be soundly flogged. guevara lost all command of himself at this, and stamping on the ground repeated his orders in a more peremptory tone than before. sandoval was not a man of many words; he simply remarked, that the instrument should be read to the general himself in mexico. at the same time, he ordered his men to procure a number of sturdy tamanes, or indian porters, on whose backs the unfortunate priest and his companions were bound like so many bales of goods. they were then placed under a guard of twenty spaniards, and the whole caravan took its march for the capital. day and night they travelled, stopping only to obtain fresh relays of carriers; and as they passed through populous towns, forests and cultivated fields, vanishing as soon as seen, the spaniards, bewildered by the strangeness of the scene, as well as of their novel mode of conveyance, hardly knew whether they were awake or in a dream. in this way, at the end of the fourth day, they reached the tezcucan lake in view of the aztec capital. its inhabitants had already been made acquainted with the fresh arrival of white men on the coast. indeed, directly on their landing, intelligence had been communicated to montezuma, who is said does not seem probable) to have concealed it some days from cortes. at length, inviting him to an interview, he told him there was no longer any obstacle to his leaving the country, as a fleet was ready for him. to the inquiries of the astonished general, montezuma replied by pointing to a hieroglyphical map sent him from the coast, on which the ships, the spaniards themselves, and their whole equipment, were minutely delineated. cortes, suppressing all emotions but those of pleasure, exclaimed, "blessed be the redeemer for his mercies!" on returning to his quarters, the tidings were received by the troops with loud shouts, the firing of cannon, and other demonstrations of joy. they hailed the new comers as a reinforcement from spain. not so their commander. from the first, he suspected them to be sent by his enemy, the governor of cuba. he communicated his suspicions to his officers, through whom they gradually found their way among the men. the tide of joy was instantly checked. alarming apprehensions succeeded, as they dwelt on the probability of this suggestion, and on the strength of the invaders. yet their constancy did not desert them; and they pledged themselves to remain true to their cause, and, come what might, to stand by their leader. it was one of those occasions, that proved the entire influence which cortes held over these wild adventurers. all doubts were soon dispelled by the arrival of the prisoners from villa rica. one of the convoy, leaving the party in the suburbs, entered the city, and delivered a letter to the general from sandoval, acquainting him with all the particulars. cortes instantly sent to the prisoners, ordered them to be released, and furnished them with horses to make their entrance into the capital,a more creditable conveyance than the backs of tamanes. on their arrival, he received them with marked courtesy, apologised for the rude conduct of his officers, and seemed desirous by the most assiduous attentions to soothe the irritation of their minds. he showed his good will still further by lavishing presents on guevara and his associates, until he gradually wrought such a change in their dispositions, that, from enemies, he converted them into friends, and drew forth many important particulars respecting not merely the designs of their leader, but the feelings of his army. the soldiers, in general, they said, far from desiring a rupture with those of cortes, would willingly co-operate with them, were it not for their commander. they had no feelings of resentment to gratify. their object was gold. the personal influence of narvaez was not great, and his arrogance and penurious temper had already gone far to alienate from him the affections of his followers. these hints were not lost on the general. he addressed a letter to his rival in the most conciliatory terms. he besought him not to proclaim their animosity to the world, and, by kindling a spirit of insubordination in the natives, unsettle all that had been so far secured. a violent collision must be prejudicial even to the victor, and might be fatal to both. it was only in union that they could look for success. he was ready to greet narvaez as a brother in arms, to share with him the fruits of conquest, and, if he could produce a royal commission, to submit to his authority. cortes well knew he had no such commission to show. soon after the departure of guevara and his comrades, the general determined to send a special envoy of his own. the person selected for this delicate office was father olmedo, who, through the campaign, had shown a practical good sense, and a talent for affairs, not always to be found in persons of his spiritual calling. he was intrusted with another epistle to narvaez, of similar import with the preceding. cortes wrote, also, to the licentiate ayllon, with whose departure he was not acquainted, and to andres de duero, former secretary of velasquez, and his own friend, who had come over in the present fleet. olmedo was instructed to converse with these persons in private, as well as with the principal officers and soldiers, and, as far as possible, to infuse into them a spirit of accommodation. to give greater weight to his arguments, he was furnished with a liberal supply of gold. during this time, narvaez had abandoned his original design of planting a colony on the sea-coast, and had crossed the country to cempoalla, where he had taken up his quarters. he was here when guevara returned, and presented the letter of cortes. narvaez glanced over it with a look of contempt, which was changed into one of stern displeasure, as his envoy enlarged on the resources and formidable character of his rival, counselling him, by all means, to accept his proffers of amity. a different effect was produced on the troops, who listened with greedy ears to the accounts given of cortes, his frank and liberal manners, which they involuntarily contrasted with those of their own commander, the wealth in his camp, where the humblest private could stake his ingot and chain of gold at play, where all revelled in plenty, and the life of the soldier seemed to be one long holiday. guevara had been admitted only to the sunny side of the picture. the impression made by these accounts was confirmed by the presence of olmedo. the ecclesiastic delivered his missives, in like manner, to narvaez, who ran through their contents with feelings of anger which found vent in the most opprobrious invectives against his rival; while one of his captains, named salvatierra, openly avowed his intention to cut off the rebel's ears, and broil them for his breakfast! such impotent sallies did not alarm the stout-hearted friar, who soon entered into communication with many of the officers and soldiers, whom he found better inclined to an accommodation. his insinuating eloquence, backed by his liberal largesses, gradually opened a way into their hearts, and a party was formed under the very eye of their chief, better affected to his rival's interests than to his own. the intrigue could not be conducted so secretly as wholly to elude the suspicions of narvaez, who would have arrested olmedo and placed him under confinement, but for the interposition of duero. he put a stop to his further machinations by sending him back again to his master. but the poison was left to do its work. narvaez made the same vaunt as at his landing, of his design to march against cortes and apprehend him as a traitor. the cempoallans learned with astonishment that their new guests, though the countrymen, were enemies of their former. narvaez also proclaimd his intention to release montezuma from captivity, and restore him to his throne. it is said he received a rich present from the aztec emperor, who entered into a correspondence with him. that montezuma should have treated him with his usual munificence, supposing him to be the friend of cortes, is very probable. but that he should have entered into a secret communication, hostile to the general's interests, is too repugnant to the whole tenor of his conduct, to be lightly admitted. these proceedings did not escape the watchful eye of sandoval. he gathered the particulars partly from deserters, who fled to villa rica, and partly from his own agents, who in the disguise of natives mingled in the enemy's camp. he sent a full account of them to cortes, acquainted him with the growing defection of the indians, and urged him to take speedy measures for the defence of villa rica, if he would not see it fall into the enemy's hands. the general felt that it was time to act. yet the selection of the course to be pursued was embarrassing in the extreme. if he remained in mexico and awaited there the attack of his rival, it would give the latter time to gather round him the whole forces of the empire, including those of the capital itself, all willing, no doubt, to serve under the banners of a chief who proposed the liberation of their master. the odds were too great to be hazarded. if he marched against narvaez, he must either abandon the city and the emperor, the fruit of all his toils and triumphs, or, by leaving a garrison to hold them in awe, must cripple his strength, already far too weak to cope with that of his adversary. yet on this latter course he decided. he trusted less, perhaps, to an open encounter of arms, than to the influence of his personal address and previous intrigues, to bring about an amicable arrangement. but he prepared himself for either result. in the preceding chapter, it was mentioned that velasquez de leon was sent with a hundred and fifty men to plant a colony on one of the great rivers emptying into the mexican gulf. cortes, on learning the arrival of narvaez, had despatched a messenger to his officer to acquaint him with the fact, and to arrest his further progress. but velasquez had already received notice of it from narvaez himself, who, in a letter written soon after his landing, had adjured him in the name of his kinsman, the governor of cuba, to quit the banners of cortes, and come over to him. that officer, however, had long since buried the feelings of resentment which he had once nourished against his general, to whom he was now devotedly attached, and who had honoured him throughout the campaign with particular regard. cortes had early seen the importance of securing this cavalier to his interests. without waiting for orders, velasquez abandoned his expedition, and commenced a countermarch on the capital, when he received the general's commands to wait him in cholula. cortes had also sent to the distant province of chinantla, situated far to the south-east of cholula, for a reinforcement of two thousand natives. they were a bold race, hostile to the mexicans, and had offered their services to him since his residence in the metropolis. they used a long spear in battle, longer, indeed, than that borne by the spanish or german infantry. cortes ordered three hundred of their double-headed lances to be made for him, and to be tipped with copper instead of itztli. with this formidable weapon he proposed to foil the cavalry of his enemy. the command of the garrison, in his absence, he instrusted to pedro de alvarado,the tonatiuh of the mexicans,a man possessed of many commanding qualities, of an intrepid, though somewhat arrogant spirit, and his warm personal friend. he inculcated on him moderation and forbearance. he was to keep a close watch on montezuma, for on the possession of the royal person rested all their authority in the land. he was to show him the deference alike due to his high station, and demanded by policy. he was to pay uniform respect to the usages and the prejudices of the people; remembering that though his small force would be large enough to overawe them in times of quiet, yet, should they be once roused, it would be swept away like chaff before the whirlwind. from montezuma he exacted a promise to maintain the same friendly relations with his lieutenant which he had preserved towards himself. this, said cortes, would be most grateful to his own master, the spanish sovereign. should the aztec prince do otherwise, and lend himself to any hostile movement, he must be convinced that he would fall the first victim of it. the emperor assured him of his continued good will. he was much perplexed, however, by the recent events. were the at his court, or those just landed, the true representatives of their sovereign? cortes, who had hitherto maintained a reserve on the subject, now told him that the latter were indeed his countrymen, but traitors to his master. as such it was his painful duty to march against them, and, when he had chastised their rebellion, he should return, before his departure from the land, in triumph to the capital. montezuma offered to support him with five thousand aztec warriors; but the general declined it, not choosing to encumber himself with a body of doubtful, perhaps disaffected, auxiliaries. he left in garrison, under alvarado, one hundred and forty men, two-thirds of his whole force. with these remained all the artillery, the greater part of the little body of horse, and most of the arquebusiers. he took with him only seventy soldiers, but they were men of the most mettle in the army and his staunch adherents. they were lightly armed, and encumbered with as little baggage as possible. everything depended on celerity of movement. montezuma, in his royal litter, borne on the shoulders of his nobles, and escorted by the whole spanish infantry, accompanied the general to the causeway. there, embracing him in the most cordial manner, they parted, with all the external marks of mutual regard.it was about the middle of may, 1520, more than six months since the entrance of the spaniards into mexico. during this time they had lorded it over the land with absolute sway. they were now leaving the city in hostile array, not against an indian foe, but their own countrymen. it was the beginning of a long career of calamity,chequered, indeed, by occasional triumphs,which was yet to be run before the conquest could be completed. chapter vii [1520] cortes descends from the tablelandnegotiates with narvaez prepares to assault himquarters of narvaez attacked by nightnarvaez defeated traversing the southern causeway, by which they had entered the capital, the little party were soon on their march across the beautiful valley. they climbed the mountain-screen which nature has so ineffectually drawn around it; passed between the huge volcanoes that, like faithless watch-dogs on their posts, have long since been buried in slumber; threaded the intricate defiles where they had before experienced such bleak and tempestuous weather; and, emerging on the other side, descended the eastern slope which opens on the wide expanse of the fruitful plateau of cholula. they heeded little of what they saw on their rapid march, nor whether it was cold or hot. the anxiety of their minds made them indifferent to outward annoyances; and they had fortunately none to encounter from the natives, for the name of spaniard was in itself a charm,a better guard than helm or buckler to the bearer. in cholula, cortes had the inexpressible satisfaction of meeting velasquez de leon, with the hundred and twenty soldiers intrusted to his command for the formation of a colony. that faithful officer had been some time at cholula, waiting for the general's approach. had he failed, the enterprise of cortes must have failed also. the idea of resistance, with his own handful of followers, would have been chimerical. as it was, his little band was now trebled, and acquired a confidence in proportion. cordially embracing their companions in arms, now knit together more closely than ever by the sense of a great and common danger, the combined troops traversed with quick step the streets of the sacred city, where many a dark pile of ruins told of their disastrous visit on the preceding autumn. they kept the high road to tlascala; and, at not many leagues' distance from that capital, fell in with father olmedo and his companions on their return from the camp of narvaez. the ecclesiastic bore a letter from that commander, in which he summoned cortes and his followers to submit to his authority, as captain-general of the country, menacing them with condign punishment, in case of refusal or delay. olmedo gave many curious particulars of the state of the enemy's camp. narvaez he described as puffed up by authority, and negligent of precautions against a foe whom he held in contempt. he was surrounded by a number of pompous conceited officers, who ministered to his vanity, and whose braggart tones, the good father, who had an eye for the ridiculous, imitated, to the no small diversion of cortes and the soldiers. many of the troops, he said, showed no great partiality for their commander, and were strongly disinclined to a rupture with their countrymen; a state of feeling much promoted by the accounts they had received of cortes, by his own arguments and promises, and by the liberal distribution of the gold with which he had been provided. in addition to these matters, cortes gathered much important intelligence respecting the position of the enemy's force, and his general plan of operations. at tlascala, the spaniards were received with a frank and friendly hospitality. it is not said whether any of the tlascalan allies accompanied them from mexico. if they did, they went no further than their native city. cortes requested a reinforcement of six hundred fresh troops to attend him on his present expedition. it was readily granted; but, before the army had proceeded many miles on its route, the indian auxiliaries fell off, one after another, and returned to their city. they had no personal feeling of animosity to gratify in the present instance, as in a war against mexico. it may be, too, that although intrepid in a contest with the bravest of the indian races, they had too fatal experience of the prowess of the white men to care to measure swords with them again. at any rate, they deserted in such numbers that cortes dismissed the remainder at once, saying, good-humouredly, "he had rather part with them then, than in the hour of trial." the troops soon entered on that wild district in the neighbourhood of perote, strewed with the wreck of volcanic matter, which forms so singular a contrast to the general character of beauty with which the scenery is stamped. it was not long before their eyes were gladdened by the approach of sandoval and about sixty soldiers from the garrison of vera cruz, including several deserters from the enemy. it was a most important reinforcement, not more on account of the numbers of the men than of the character of the commander. he had been compelled to fetch a circuit, in order to avoid falling in with the enemy, and had forced his way through thick forests and wild mountain passes, till he had fortunately, without accident, reached the appointed place of rendezvous, and stationed himself once more under the banner of his chieftain. at the same place, also, cortes was met by tobillos, a spaniard whom he had sent to procure the lances from chinantla. they were perfectly well made, after the pattern which had been given; double-headed spears, tipped with copper, and of great length. cortes now took a review of his army,if so paltry a force may be called an army,and found their numbers were two hundred and sixty-six, only five of whom were mounted. a few muskets and crossbows were sprinkled among them. in defensive armour they were sadly deficient. they were for the most part cased in the quilted doublet of the country, thickly stuffed with cotton, the escaupil, recommended by its superior lightness, but which, though competent to turn the arrow of the indian, was ineffectual against a musket-ball. most of this cotton mail was exceedingly out of repair, giving evidence, in its unsightly gaps, of much rude service, and hard blows. few, in this emergency, but would have given almost any pricethe best of the gold chains which they wore in tawdry display over their poor habilimentsfor a steel morion or cuirass, to take the place of their own hacked and battered armour. the troops now resumed their march across the tableland, until, reaching the eastern slope, their labours were lightened, as they descended towards the broad plains of the tierra caliente, spread out like a boundless ocean of verdure below them. at some fifteen leagues' distance from cempoalla, where narvaez, as has been noticed, had established his quarters, they were met by another embassy from that commander. it consisted of the priest, guevara, andres de duero, and two or three others. duero, the fast friend of cortes, had been the person most instrumental, originally, in obtaining him his commission from velasquez. they now greeted each other with a warm embrace, and it was not till after much preliminary conversation on private matters, that the secretary disclosed the object of his visit. he bore a letter from narvaez, couched in terms somewhat different from the preceding. that officer required, indeed, the acknowledgment of his paramount authority in the land, but offered his vessels to transport all who desired it, from the country, together with their treasures and effects, without molestation or inquiry. the more liberal tenor of these terms was, doubtless, to be ascribed to the influence of duero. the secretary strongly urged cortes to comply with them, as the most favourable that could be obtained, and as the only alternative affording him a chance of safety in his desperate condition. "for, however valiant your men may be, how can they expect," he asked, "to face a force so much superior in numbers and equipment as that of their antagonists?" but cortes had set his fortunes on the cast, and he was not the man to shrink from it. "if narvaez bears a royal commission," he returned, "i will readily submit to him. but he has produced none. he is a deputy of my rival, velasquez. for myself i am a servant of the king, i have conquered the country for him; and for him i and my brave followers will defend it, to the last drop of our blood. if we fall, it will be glory enough to have perished in the discharge of our duty." his friend might have been somewhat puzzled to comprehend how the authority of cortes rested on a different ground from that of narvaez; and if they both held of the same superior, the governor of cuba, why that dignitary should not be empowered to supersede his own officer in case of dissatisfaction, and appoint a substitute. but cortes here reaped the full benefit of that legal fiction, if it may be so termed, by which his commission, resigned to the self-constituted municipality of vera cruz, was again derived through that body from the crown. the device, indeed, was too palpable to impose on any but those who chose to be blinded. duero had arranged with his friend in cuba, when he took command of the expedition, that he himself was to have a liberal share of the profits. it is said that cortes confirmed this arrangement at the present juncture, and made it clearly for the other's interest that be should prevail in the struggle with narvaez. this was an important point, considering the position of the secretary. from this authentic source the general derived much information respecting the designs of narvaez, which had escaped the knowledge of olmedo. on the departure of the envoys, cortes intrusted them with a letter for his rival, a counterpart of that which he had received from him. this show of negotiation intimated a desire on his part to postpone if not avoid hostilities, which might the better put narvaez off his guard. in the letter he summoned that commander and his followers to present themselves before him without delay, and to acknowledge his authority as the representative of his sovereign. he should otherwise be compelled to proceed against them as rebels to the crown! with this missive, the vaunting tone of which was intended quite as much for his own troops as the enemy, cortes dismissed the envoys. they returned to disseminate among their comrades their admiration of the general and of his unbounded liberality, of which he took care they should experience full measure, and they dilated on the riches of his adherents, who, over their wretched attire, displayed with ostentatious profusion, jewels, ornaments of gold, collars, and massive chains winding several times round their necks and bodies, the rich spoil of the treasury of montezuma. the army now took its way across the level plains of the tierra caliente. coming upon an open reach of meadow, of some extent, they were, at length, stopped by a river or rather stream, called rio de canoas, "the river of canoes," of no great volume ordinarily, but swollen at this time by excessive rains; it had rained hard that day. the river was about a league distant from the camp of narvaez. before seeking out a practical ford, by which to cross it, cortes allowed his men to recruit their exhausted strength by stretching themselves on the ground. the shades of evening had gathered round; and the rising moon, wading through dark masses of cloud, shone with a doubtful and interrupted light. it was evident that the storm had not yet spent its fury. cortes did not regret this. he had made up his mind to an assault that very night, and in the darkness and uproar of the tempest his movements would be most effectually concealed. before disclosing his design, he addressed his men in one of those stirring, soldierly harangues, to which he had recourse in emergencies of great moment, as if to sound the depths of their hearts, and, where any faltered, to re-animate them with his own heroic spirit. he briefly recapitulated the great events of the campaign, the dangers they had surmounted, the victories they had achieved over the most appalling odds, the glorious spoil they had won. but of this they were now to be defrauded; not by men holding a legal warrant from the crown, but by adventurers, with no better title than that of superior force. they had established a claim on the gratitude of their country and their sovereign. this claim was now to be dishonoured; their very services were converted into crimes, and their names branded with infamy as those of traitors. but the time had at last come for vengeance. god would not desert the soldier of the cross. those, whom he had carried victorious through greater dangers, would not be left to fail now. and, if they should fail, better to die like brave men on the field of battle, than, with fame and fortune cast away, to perish ignominiously like slaves on the gibbet.this last point he urged upon his hearers; well knowing there was not one among them so dull as not to be touched by it. they responded with hearty acclamations, and velasquez de leon, and de lugo, in the name of the rest, assured their commander, if they failed, it should be his fault, not theirs. they would follow wherever he led.the general was fully satisfied with the temper of his soldiers, as he felt that his difficulty lay not in awakening their enthusiasm, but in giving it a right direction. one thing is remarkable. he made no allusion to the defection which he knew existed in the enemy's camp. he would have his soldiers, in this last pinch, rely on nothing but themselves. he announced his purpose to attack the enemy that very night, when he should be buried in slumber, and the friendly darkness might throw a veil over their own movements, and conceal the poverty of their numbers. to this the troops, jaded though they were by incessant marching, and half famished, joyfully assented. in their situation, suspense was the worst of evils. he next distributed the commands among his captains. to gonzalo de sandoval he assigned the important office of taking narvaez. he was commanded, as alguacil mayor, to seize the person of that officer as a rebel to his sovereign, and, if he made resistance, to kill him on the spot. he was provided with sixty picked men to aid him in this difficult task, supported by several of the ablest captains, among whom were two of the alvarados, de avila and ordaz. the largest division of the force was placed under christoval de olid, or according to some authorities, pizarro, one of that family so renowned in the subsequent conquest of peru. he was to get possession of the artillery, and to cover the assault of sandoval by keeping those of the enemy at bay, who would interfere with it. cortes reserved only a body of twenty men for himself, to act on any point that occasion might require. the watchword was espiritu santo, it being the evening of whitsunday. having made these arrangements, he prepared to cross the river. during the interval thus occupied by cortes, narvaez had remained at cempoalla, passing his days in idle and frivolous amusement. from this he was at length roused, after the return of duero, by the remonstrances of the old cacique of the city. "why are you so heedless?" exclaimed the latter; "do you think malinche is so? depend on it, he knows your situation exactly, and, when you least dream of it, he will be upon you." alarmed at these suggestions and those of his friends, narvaez at length put himself at the head of his troops, and, on the very day on which cortes arrived at the river of canoes, sallied out to meet him. but, when he had reached this barrier, narvaez saw no sign of an enemy. the rain, which fell in torrents, soon drenched the soldiers to the skin. made somewhat effeminate by their long and luxurious residence at cempoalla, they murmured at their uncomfortable situation. "of what use was it to remain there fighting with the elements? there was no sign of an enemy, and little reason to apprehend his approach in such tempestuous weather. it would be wiser to return to cempoalla, and in the morning they should be all fresh for action, should cortes make his appearance." narvaez took counsel of these advisers, or rather of his own inclinations. before retracing his steps, he provided against surprise, by stationing a couple of sentinels at no great distance from the river, to give notice of the approach of cortes. he also detached a body of forty horse in another direction, by which he thought it not improbable the enemy might advance on cempoalla. having taken these precautions, he fell back again before night on his own quarters. he there occupied the principal teocalli. it consisted of a stone building on the usual pyramidal basis; and the ascent was by a flight of steep steps on one of the faces of the pyramid. in the edifice or sanctuary above he stationed himself with a strong party of arquebusiers and crossbowmen. two other teocallis in the same area were garrisoned by large detachments of infantry. his artillery, consisting of seventeen or eighteen small guns, he posted in the area below, and protected it by the remainder of his cavalry. when he had thus distributed his forces, he returned to his own quarters, and soon after to repose, with as much indifference as if his rival had been on the other side of the atlantic, instead of a neighbouring stream. that stream was now converted by the deluge of waters into a furious torrent. it was with difficulty that a practicable ford could be found. the slippery stones, rolling beneath the feet, gave way at every step. the difficulty of the passage was much increased by the darkness and driving tempest. still, with their long pikes, the spaniards contrived to make good their footing, at least, all but two, who were swept down by the fury of the current. when they had reached the opposite side, they had new impediments to encounter in traversing a road never good, now made doubly difficult by the deep mire and the tangled brushwood with which it was overrun. here they met with a cross, which had been raised by them on their former march into the interior. they hailed it as a good omen; and cortes, kneeling before the blessed sign, confessed his sins, and declared his great object to be the triumph of the holy catholic faith. the army followed his example, and, having made a general confession, received absolution from father olmedo, who invoked the blessing of heaven on the warriors who had consecrated their swords to the glory of the cross. then rising up and embracing one another, as companions in the good cause, they found themselves wonderfully invigorated and refreshed. the incident is curious, and well illustrates the character of the time,in which war, religion, and rapine were so intimately blended together. adjoining the road was a little coppice; and cortes, and the few who had horses, dismounting, fastened the animals to the trees, where they might find some shelter from the storm. they deposited there, too, their baggage and such superfluous articles as would encumber their movement. the general then gave them a few last words of advice. "everything," said he, "depends on obedience. let no man, from desire of distinguishing himself, break his ranks. on silence, despatch, and, above all, obedience to your officers, the success of our enterprise depends." silently and stealthily they held on their way without beat of drum or sound of trumpet, when they suddenly came on the two sentinels who had been stationed by narvaez to give notice of their approach. this had been so noiseless, that the videttes were both of them surprised on their posts, and one only, with difficulty, effected his escape. the other was brought before cortes. every effort was made to draw from him some account of the present position of narvaez. but the man remained obstinately silent; and, though threatened with the gibbet, and having a noose actually drawn round his neck, his spartan heroism was not be vanquished. fortunately no change had taken place in the arrangements of narvaez since the intelligence previously derived from duero. the other sentinel, who had escaped, carried the news of the enemy's approach to the camp. but his report was not credited by the lazy soldiers, whose slumbers he had disturbed. "he had been deceived by his fears," they said, "and mistaken the noise of the storm, and the waving of the bushes, for the enemy. cortes and his men were far enough on the other side of the river, which they would be slow to cross in such a night." narvaez himself shared in the same blind infatuation, and the discredited sentinel slunk abashed to his own quarters, vainly menacing them with the consequences of their incredulity. cortes, not doubting that the sentinel's report must alarm the enemy's camp, quickened his pace. as he drew near, he discerned a light in one of the lofty towers of the city. "it is the quarters of narvaez," he exclaimed to sandoval, "and that light must be your beacon." on entering the suburbs, the spaniards were surprised to find no one stirring, and no symptom of alarm. not a sound was to be heard, except the measured tread of their own footsteps, half-drowned in the howling of the tempest. still they could not move so stealthily as altogether to elude notice, as they defiled through the streets of this populous city. the tidings were quickly conveyed to the enemy's quarters, where, in an instant, all was bustle and confusion. the trumpets sounded to arms. the dragoons sprang to their steeds, the artillerymen to their guns. narvaez hastily buckled on his armour, called his men around him, and summoned those in the neighbouring teocallis, to join him in the area. he gave his orders with coolness; for, however wanting in prudence, he was not deficient in presence of mind or courage. all this was the work of a few minutes. but in those minutes the spaniards had reached the avenue leading to the camp. cortes ordered his men to keep close to the walls of the buildings, that the cannon-shot might have free range. no sooner had they presented themselves before the inclosure than the artillery of narvaez opened a general fire. fortunately the pieces were pointed so high that most of the balls passed over their heads, and three men only were struck down. they did not give the enemy time to reload. cortes shouting the watchword of the night, "espiritu santo! espiritu santo! upon them!" in a moment olid and his division rushed on the artillerymen, whom they pierced or knocked down with their pikes, and got possession of their guns. another division engaged the cavalry, and made a diversion in favour of sandoval, who with his gallant little band sprang up the great stairway of the temple. they were received with a shower of missiles, arrows and musketballs, which, in the hurried aim, and the darkness of the night, did little mischief. the next minute the assailants were on the platform, engaged hand to hand with their foes. narvaez fought bravely in the midst, encouraging his followers. his standard-bearer fell by his side, run through the body. he himself received several wounds; for his short sword was not match for the long pikes of the assailants. at length, he received a blow from a spear, which struck out his left "santa maria!" exclaimed the unhappy man, "i am slain!" the cry was instantly taken up by the followers of cortes, who shouted, "victory!" disabled, and half-mad with agony from his wound, narvaez was withdrawn by his men into the sanctuary. the assailants endeavoured to force an entrance, but it was stoutly defended. at length a soldier, getting possession of a torch, or firebrand, flung it on the thatched roof, and in a few moments the combustible materials of which it was composed were in a blaze. those within were driven out by the suffocating heat and smoke. a soldier, named farfan, grappled with the wounded commander, and easily brought him to the ground; when he was speedily dragged down the steps, and secured with fetters. his followers, seeing@ the fate of their chief, made no further resistance. during this time, cortes and the troops of olid had been engaged with the cavalry, and had discomfited them, after some ineffectual attempts on the part of the latter to break through the dense array of pikes, by which several of their number were unhorsed and some of them slain. the general then prepared to assault the other teocallis, first summoning the garrisons to surrender. as they refused, he brought up the heavy guns to bear on them, thus turning the artillery against its own masters. he accompanied this menacing movement with offers of the most liberal import; an amnesty of the past, and a full participation in all the advantages of the conquest. one of the garrisons was under the command of salvatierra, the same officer who talked of cutting off the ears of cortes. from the moment he had learned the fate of his own general, the hero was seized with a violent fit of illness which disabled him from further action. the garrison waited only for one discharge of the ordnance, when they accepted the terms of capitulation. cortes, it is said, received, on this occasion, a support from an unexpected auxiliary. the air was filled with cocuyos,a species of large beetle which emits an intense phosphoric light from its body, strong enough to enable one to read by it. these wandering fires, seen in the darkness of the night, were converted by the excited imaginations of the besieged, into an army with matchlocks. such is the report of an eye-witness. but the facility with which the enemy surrendered may quite as probably to be referred to the cowardice of the commander, and the disaffection of the soldiers, not unwilling to come under the banners of cortes. the body of cavalry posted, it will be remembered, by narvaez on one of the roads to cempoalla, to intercept his rival, having learned what had been passing, were not long in tendering their submission. each of the soldiers in the conquered army was required, in token of his obedience, to deposit his arms in the hands of the alguacils, and to take the oaths to cortes as chief justice and captain general of the colony. the number of the slain is variously reported. it seems probable that no more than twelve perished on the side of the vanquished, and of the victors half that number. the small amount may be explained by the short duration of the action, and the random aim of the missiles in the darkness. the number of the wounded was much more considerable. the field was now completely won. a few brief hours had sufficed to change the condition of cortes from that of a wandering outlaw at the head of a handful of needy adventurers, a rebel with a price upon his head, to that of an independent chief, with a force at his disposal strong enough not only to secure his present conquests, but to open a career for still loftier ambition. while the air rung with the acclamations of the soldiery, the victorious general, assuming a deportment corresponding with his change of fortune, took his seat in a chair of state, and, with a rich embroidered mantle thrown over his shoulders, received, one by one, the officers and soldiers, as they came to tender their congratulations. the privates were graciously permitted to kiss his hand. the officers he noticed with words of compliment or courtesy; and, when duero, bermudez the treasurer, and some others of the vanquished party, his old friends, presented themselves, he cordially embraced them. narvaez, salvatierra, and two or three of the hostile leaders were led before him in chains. it was a moment of deep humiliation for the former commander, in which the anguish of the body, however keen, must have been forgotten in that of the spirit. "you have great reason, senor cortes," said the discomfited warrior, "to thank fortune for having given you the day so easily, and put me in your power.""i have much to be thankful for," replied the general; "but for my victory over you, i esteem it as one of the least of my achievements since my coming into the country!" he then ordered the wounds of the prisoners to be cared for, and sent them under a strong guard to vera cruz. notwithstanding the proud humility of his reply, cortes could scarcely have failed to regard his victory over narvaez as one of the most brilliant achievements in his career. with a few scores of followers, badly clothed, worse fed, wasted by forced marches, under every personal disadvantage, deficient in weapons and military stores, he had attacked in their own quarters, routed, and captured the entire force of the enemy, thrice his superior in numbers, well provided with cavalry and artillery, admirably equipped, and complete in all the munitions of war! the amount of troops engaged on either side was, indeed, inconsiderable. but the proportions are not affected by this: and the relative strength of the parties made a result so decisive one of the most remarkable events in the annals of war. chapter viii [1520] discontent of the troopsinsurrection in the capital return of cortesgeneral signs of hostility massacre by alvaradorising of the aztecs the tempest that had raged so wildly during the night passed away with the morning, which rose bright and unclouded on the field of battle. as the light advanced, it revealed more strikingly the disparity of the two forces so lately opposed to each other. those of narvaez could not conceal their chagrin; and murmurs of displeasure became audible, as they contrasted their own superior numbers and perfect appointments with the way-worn visages and rude attire of their handful of enemies! it was with some satisfaction, therefore, that the general beheld his dusky allies from chinantla, two thousand in number, arrive upon the field. they were a fine athletic set of men; and, as they advanced in a sort of promiscuous order, so to speak, with their gay banners of feather-work, and their lances tipped with itztli and copper, glistering in the morning sun, they had something of an air of military discipline. they came too late for the action, indeed, but cortes was not sorry to exhibit to his new followers the extent of his resources in the country. as he had now no occasion for his indian allies, after a courteous reception and a liberal recompense, he dismissed them to their homes. he then used his utmost endeavours to allay the discontent of the troops. he addressed them in his most soft and insinuating tones, and was by no means frugal of his promises. he suited the action to the word. there were few of them but had lost their accoutrements, or their baggage, or horses taken and appropriated by the victors. this last article was in great request among the latter, and many a soldier, weary with the long marches hitherto made on foot, had provided himself, as he imagined, with a much more comfortable as well as creditable conveyance for the rest of the campaign. the general now commanded everything to be restored. "they were embarked in the same cause," he said, "and should share with one another equally." he went still further; and distributed among the soldiers of narvaez a quantity of gold and other precious commodities gathered from the neighbouring tribes, or found in his rival's quarters. these proceedings, however politic in reference to his new followers, gave great disgust to his old. "our commander," they cried, "has forsaken his friends for his foes. we stood by him in his hour of distress, and are rewarded with blows and wounds, while the spoil goes to our enemies!" the indignant soldiery commissioned the priest olmedo and alonso de avila to lay their complaints before cortes. the ambassadors stated them without reserve, comparing their commander's conduct to the ungrateful proceeding of alexander, who, when he gained a victory, usually gave away more to his enemies than to the troops who enabled him to beat them. cortes was greatly perplexed. victorious or defeated, his path seemed equally beset with difficulties! he endeavoured to soothe their irritation by pleading the necessity of the case. "our new comrades," he said, "are formidable from their numbers; so much so, that we are even now much more in their power than they are in ours. our only security is to make them not merely confederates, but friends. on any cause of disgust, we shall have the whole battle to fight over again; and, if they are united, under a much greater disadvantage than before. i have considered your interests," he added, "as much as my own. all that i have is yours. but why should there be any ground for discontent, when the whole country, with its riches, is before us? and our augmented strength must henceforth secure the undisturbed control of it!" but cortes did not rely wholly on argument for the restoration of tranquillity. he knew this to be incompatible with inaction; and be made arrangements to divide his forces at once, and to employ them on distant services. he selected a detachment of two hundred men, under diego de ordaz, whom he ordered to form the settlement before meditated on the coatzacualco. a like number was sent with velasquez de leon, to secure the province of panuco, some three degrees to the north, on the mexican gulf. twenty in each detachment were drafted from his own veterans. two hundred men he despatched to vera cruz, with orders to have the rigging, iron, and everything portable on board of the fleet of narvaez, brought on shore, and the vessels completely dismantled. he appointed a person named cavallero superintendent of the marine, with instructions that if any ships hereafter should enter the port, they should be dismantled in like manner, and their officers imprisoned on shore. but while he was thus occupied with new schemes of discovery and conquest, he received such astounding intelligence from mexico, as compelled him to concentrate all his faculties and his forces on that one point. the city was in a state of insurrection. no sooner had the struggle with his rival been decided, than cortes despatched a courier with the tidings to the capital. in less than a fortnight, the same messenger returned with letters from alvarado, conveying the alarming information that the mexicans were in arms, and had vigorously assaulted the spaniards in their own quarters. the enemy, he added, had burned the brigantines, by which cortes had secured the means of retreat in case of the destruction of the bridges. they had attempted to force the defences, and had succeeded in partially undermining them, and they had overwhelmed the garrison with a tempest of missiles, which had killed several, and wounded a great number. the letter concluded with beseeching his commander to hasten to their relief, if he would save them, or keep his hold on the capital. these tidings were a heavy blow to the general,the heavier, it seemed, coming, as they did, in the hour of triumph, when he had thought to have all his enemies at his feet. there was no room for hesitation. to lose their footing in the capital, the noblest city in the western world, would be to lose the country itself, which looked up to it as its head. he opened the matter fully to his soldiers, calling on all who would save their countrymen to follow him. all declared their readiness to go; showing an alacrity, says diaz, which some would have been slow to manifest, had they foreseen the future. cortes now made preparations for instant departure. he countermanded the orders previously given to velasquez and ordaz, and directed them to join him with their forces at tlascala. he recalled the troops from vera cruz, leaving only a hundred men in garrison there, under command of one rodrigo rangre: for he could not spare the services of sandoval at this crisis. he left his sick and wounded at cempoalla, under charge of a small detachment, directing that they should follow as soon as they were in marching order. having completed these arrangements, he set out from cempoalla, well supplied with provisions by its hospitable cacique, who attended him some leagues on his way. the totonac chief seems to have had an amiable facility of accommodating himself to the powers that were in the ascendant. nothing worthy of notice occurred during the first part of the march. the troops everywhere met with a friendly reception from the peasantry, who readily supplied their wants. some time before reaching tlascala, the route lay through a country thinly settled, and the army experienced considerable suffering from want of food, and still more from that of water. their distress increased to an alarming degree, as, in the hurry of their march, they travelled with the meridian sun beating fiercely on their heads. several faltered by the way, and, throwing themselves down by the roadside, seemed incapable of further effort, and almost indifferent to life. in this extremity, cortes sent forward a small detachment of horse to procure provisions in tlascala, and speedily followed in person. on arriving, he found abundant supplies already prepared by the hospitable natives. they were sent back to the troops; the stragglers were collected one by one; refreshments were administered; and the army, restored in strength and spirits, entered the republican capital. here they gathered little additional news respecting the events in mexico, which a popular rumour attributed to the secret encouragement and machinations of montezuma. cortes was commodiously lodged in the quarters of maxixca, one of the four chiefs of the republic. they readily furnished him with two thousand troops. there was no want of heartiness, when the war was with their ancient enemy, the aztec. the spanish commander, on reviewing his forces, after the junction with his two captains, found that they amounted to about a thousand foot, and one hundred horse, besides the tlascalan levies. in the infantry were nearly a hundred arquebusiers, with as many crossbowmen; and the part of the army brought over by narvaez was admirably equipped. it was inferior, however, to his own veterans in what is better than any outward appointmentsmilitary training, and familiarity with the peculiar service in which they were engaged. leaving these friendly quarters, the spaniards took a more northerly route, as more direct than that by which they had before penetrated into the valley. it was the road to tezcuco. it still compelled them to climb the same bold range of the cordilleras, which attains its greatest elevation in the two mighty volcans at whose base they had before travelled. as they descended into the populous plains, their reception by the natives was very different from that which they had experienced on the preceding visit. there were no groups of curious peasantry to be seen gazing at them as they passed, and offering their simple hospitality. the supplies they asked were not refused, but granted with an ungracious air, that showed the blessing of their giver did not accompany them. this air of reserve became still more marked as the army entered the suburbs of the ancient capital of the acolhuas. no one came forth to greet them, and the population seemed to have dwindled away,so many of them were withdrawn to the neighbouring scene of hostilities at mexico. their cold reception was a sensible mortification to the veterans of cortes, who, judging from the past, had boasted to their new comrades of the sensation their presence would excite among the natives. the cacique of the place, who, as it may be remembered, had been created through the influence of cortes, was himself absent. the general drew an ill omen from all these circumstances, which even raised an uncomfortable apprehension in his mind respecting the fate of the garrison in mexico. but his doubts were soon dispelled by the arrival of a messenger in a canoe from that city, whence he had escaped through the remissness of the enemy, or, perhaps, with their connivance. he brought despatches from alvarado, informing his commander that the mexicans had for the last fortnight desisted from active hostilities, and converted their operations into a blockade. the garrison had suffered greatly, but alvarado expressed his conviction that the siege would be raised, and tranquillity restored, on the approach of his countrymen. montezuma sent a messenger, also, to the same effect. at the same time, he exculpated himself from any part in the late hostilities, which he said had not only been conducted without his privity, but contrary to his inclination and efforts. the spanish general, having halted long enough to refresh his wearied troops, took up his march along the southern margin of the lake, which led him over the same causeway by which he had before entered the capital. it was the day consecrated to st. john the baptist, the 24th of june, 1520. but how different was the scene from that presented on his former entrance! no crowds now lined the roads, no boats swarmed on the lake, filled with admiring spectators. a single pirogue might now and then be seen in the distance, like a spy stealthily watching their movements, and darting away the moment it had attracted notice. a death-like stillness brooded over the scene,a stillness that spoke louder to the heart than the acclamations of multitudes. cortes rode on moodily at the head of his battalions, finding abundant food for meditation, doubtless, in this change of circumstances. as if to dispel these gloomy reflections, he ordered his trumpets to sound, and their clear, shrill notes, borne across the waters, told the inhabitants of the beleaguered fortress that their friends were at hand. they were answered by a joyous peal of artillery, which seemed to give a momentary exhilaration to the troops, as they quickened their pace, traversed the great drawbridges, and once more found themselves within the walls of the imperial city. the appearance of things here was not such as to allay their apprehensions. in some places they beheld the smaller bridges removed, intimating too plainly, now that their brigantines were destroyed, how easy it would be cut off their retreat. the town seemed even more deserted than tezcuco. its once busy and crowded population had mysteriously vanished. and, as the spaniards defiled through the empty streets, the tramp of their horses' feet upon the pavement was answered by dull and melancholy echoes that fell heavily on their hearts. with saddened feelings they reached the great gates of the palace of axayacatl. the gates were thrown open, and cortes and his veterans, rushing in, were cordially embraced by their companions in arms, while both parties soon forgot the present in the interesting recapitulation of the past. the first inquiries of the general were respecting the origin of the tumult. the accounts were various. some imputed it to the desire of the mexicans to release their sovereign from confinement; others to the design of cutting off the garrison while crippled by the absence of cortes and their countrymen. all agreed, however, in tracing the immediate cause to the violence of alvarado. it was common for the aztecs to celebrate an annual festival in may, in honour of their patron war-god. it was called the "incensing of huitzilopochtli," and was commemorated by sacrifice, religious songs, and dances, in which most of the nobles engaged, for it was one of the great festivals which displayed the pomp of the aztec ritual. as it was held in the court of the teocalli, in the immediate neighbourhood of the spanish quarters, and as a part of the temple itself was reserved for a christian chapel, the caciques asked permission of alvarado to perform their rites there. they requested also to be allowed the presence of montezuma. this latter petition alvarado declined, in obedience to the injunctions of cortes; but acquiesced in the former, on condition that the aztecs should celebrate no human sacrifices, and should come without weapons. they assembled accordingly on the day appointed, to the number of six hundred, at the smallest computation. they were dressed in their most magnificent gala costumes, with their graceful mantles of feather-work, sprinkled with precious stones, and their necks, arms and legs ornamented with collars and bracelets of gold. they had that love of gaudy splendour which belongs to semi-civilised nations, and on these occasions displayed all the pomp and profusion of their barbaric wardrobes. alvarado and his soldiers attended as spectators, some of them taking their station at the gates, as if by chance, and others mingling in the crowd. they were all armed, a circumstance which, as it was usual, excited no attention. the aztecs were soon engrossed by the exciting movement of the dance, accompanied by their religious chant, and wild, discordant minstrelsy. while thus occupied, alvarado and his men, at a concerted signal, rushed with drawn swords on their victims. unprotected by armour or weapons of any kind, they were hewn down without resistance by their assailants, who, in their bloody work, says a contemporary, showed no touch of pity or compunction. some fled to the gates, but were caught on the long pikes of the soldiers. others, who attempted to scale the coatepantli, or wall of serpents, as it was called, which surrounded the area, shared the like fate, or were cut to pieces, or shot by the ruthless soldiery. the pavement, says a writer of the age, ran with streams of blood, like water in a heavy shower. not an aztec of all that gay company was left alive! it was repeating the dreadful scene of cholula, with the disgraceful addition, that the spaniards, not content with slaughtering their victims, rifled them of the precious ornaments on their persons! on this sad day fell the flower of the aztec nobility. not a family of note but had mourning and desolation brought within its walls; and many a doleful ballad, rehearsing the tragic incidents of the story, and adapted to the plaintive national airs, continued to be chanted by the natives long after the subjugation of the country. various explanations have been given of this atrocious deed; but few historians have been content to admit that of alvarado himself. according to this, intelligence had been obtained through his spiessome of them mexicansof an intended rising of the indians. the celebration of this festival was fixed on as the period for its execution, when the caciques would be met together, and would easily rouse the people to support them. alvarado, advised of all this, had forbidden them to wear arms at their meeting. while affecting to comply, they had secreted their weapons in the neighbouring arsenals, whence they could readily withdraw them. but his own blow, by anticipating theirs, defeated the design, and, as he confidently hoped, would deter the aztecs from a similar attempt in future. such is the account of the matter given by alvarado. but, if true, why did he not verify his assertion by exposing the arms thus secreted? why did he not vindicate his conduct in the eyes of the mexicans generally, by publicly avowing the treason of the nobles, as was done by cortes at cholula? the whole looks much like an apology devised after the commission of the deed, to cover up its atrocity. some contemporaries assign a very different motive for the massacre, which, according to them, originated in the cupidity of the conquerors, as shown by their plundering the bodies of their victims. bernal diaz, who, though not present, had conversed familiarly with those who were, vindicates them from the charge of this unworthy motive. according to him, alvarado struck the blow in order to intimidate the aztecs from any insurrectionary movement. but whether he had reason to apprehend such, or even affected to do so before the massacre, the old chronicler does not inform us. on reflection, it seems scarcely possible that so foul a deed, and one involving so much hazard to the spaniards themselves, should have been perpetrated from the mere desire of getting possession of the baubles worn on the persons of the natives. it is more likely this was an after-thought, suggested to the rapacious soldiery by the display of the spoil before them. it is not improbable that alvarado may have gathered rumours of a conspiracy among the nobles,rumours, perhaps, derived through the tlascalans, their inveterate foes, and for that reason very little deserving of credit. he proposed to defeat it by imitating the example of his commander at cholula. but he omitted to imitate his leader in taking precautions against the subsequent rising of the populace. and he grievously miscalculated, when he confounded the bold and warlike aztec with the effeminate cholulan. no sooner was the butchery accomplished, than the tidings spread like wildfire through the capital. men could scarcely credit their senses. all they had hitherto suffered, the desecration of their temples, the imprisonment of their sovereign, the insults heaped on his person, all were forgotten in this one act. every feeling of long smothered hostility and rancour now burst forth in the cry for vengeance. every former sentiment of superstitious dread was merged in that of inextinguishable hatred. it required no effort of the prieststhough this was not wantingto fan these passions into a blaze. the city rose in arms to a man; and on the following dawn, almost before the spaniards could secure themselves in their defences, they were assaulted with desperate fury. some of the assailants attempted to scale the walls; others succeeded in partially undermining and in setting fire to the works. whether they would have succeeded in carrying the place by storm is doubtful. but, at the prayers of the garrison, montezuma himself interfered, and mounting the battlements addressed the populace, whose fury he endeavoured to mitigate by urging considerations for his own safety. they respected their monarch so far as to desist from further attempts to storm the fortress, but changed their operations into a regular blockade. they threw up works around the palace to prevent the egress of the spaniards. they suspended the tianguez, or market, to preclude the possibility of their enemy's obtaining supplies; and they then quietly sat down, with feelings of sullen desperation, waiting for the hour when famine should throw their victims into their hands. the condition of the besieged, meanwhile, was sufficiently distressing. their magazines of provisions, it is true, were not exhausted; but they suffered greatly from want of water, which, within the inclosure, was exceedingly brackish, for the soil was saturated with the salt of the surrounding element. in this extremity, they discovered, it is said, a spring of fresh water in the area. such springs were known in some other parts of the city; but, discovered first under these circumstances, it was accounted as nothing less than a miracle. still they suffered much from their past encounters. seven spaniards, and many tlascalans, had fallen, and there was scarcely one of either nation who had not received several wounds. in this situation, far from their own countrymen, without expectation of succour from abroad, they seemed to have no alternative before them, but a lingering death by famine, or one more dreadful on the altar of sacrifice. from this gloomy state they were relieved by the coming of their comrades. cortes calmly listened to the explanation made by alvarado. but, before it was ended, the conviction must have forced itself on his mind, that he had made a wrong selection for this important post. yet the mistake was natural. alvarado was a cavalier of high family, gallant and chivalrous, and his warm personal friend. he had talents for action, was possessed of firmness and intrepidity, while his frank and dazzling manners made the tonatiuh an especial favourite with the mexicans. but, underneath this showy exterior, the future conqueror of guatemala concealed a heart rash, rapacious, and cruel. he was altogether destitute of that moderation, which, in the delicate position he occupied, was a quality of more worth than all the rest. when alvarado had concluded his answers to the several interrogatories of cortes, the brow of the latter darkened, as he said to his lieutenant, "you have done badly. you have been false to your trust. your conduct has been that of a madman!" and, turning abruptly on his heel, he left him in undisguised displeasure. yet this was not a time to break with one so popular, and in many respects so important to him, as this captain, much less to inflict on him the punishment he merited. the spaniards were like mariners labouring in a heavy tempest, whose bark nothing but the dexterity of the pilot, and the hearty co-operation of the crew, can save from foundering. dissensions at such a moment must be fatal. cortes, it is true, felt strong in his present resources. he now found himself at the head of a force which could scarcely amount to less than twelve hundred and fifty spaniards, and eight thousand native warriors, principally tlascalans. but, though relying on this to overawe resistance, the very augmentations of numbers increased the difficulty of subsistence. discontented with himself, disgusted with his officer, and embarrassed by the disastrous consequences in which alvarado's intemperance had involved him, he became irritable, and indulged in a petulance by no means common; for, though a man of lively passions by nature, he held them habitually under control. on the day that cortes arrived, montezuma had left his own quarters to welcome him. but the spanish commander, distrusting, as it would seem, however unreasonably, his good faith, received him so coldly that the indian monarch withdrew, displeased and dejected, to his apartment. as the mexican populace made no show of submission, and brought no supplies to the army, the general's ill-humour with the emperor continued. when, therefore, montezuma sent some of the nobles to ask an interview with cortes, the latter, turning to his own officers, haughtily exclaimed, "what have i to do with this dog of a king, who suffers us to starve before his eyes!" his captains, among whom were olid, de avila, and velasquez de leon, endeavoured to mitigate his anger, reminding him, in respectful terms, that, had it not been for the emperor, the garrison might even now have been overwhelmed by the enemy. this remonstrance only chafed him the more. "did not the dog," he asked, repeating the opprobrious epithet, "betray us in his communications with narvaez? and does he not now suffer his markets to be closed, and leave us to die of famine?" then, turning fiercely to the mexicans he said, "go, tell your master and his people to open the markets, or we will do it for them, at their cost!" the chiefs, who had gathered the import of his previous taunt on their sovereign, from his tone and gesture, or perhaps from some comprehensions of his language, left his presence swelling with resentment; and, in communicating his message, took care it should lose none of its effect. shortly after, cortes, at the suggestion, it is said, of montezuma, released his brother cuitlahua, lord of iztapalapan, who, it will be remembered, had been seized on suspicion of co-operating with the chief of tezcuco in his meditated revolt. it was thought he might be of service in allaying the present tumult, and bringing the. populace to a better state of feeling. but he returned no more to the fortress. he was a bold, ambitious prince, and the injuries he had received from the spaniards rankled deep in his bosom. he was presumptive heir to the crown, which, by the aztec laws of succession, descended much more frequently in a collateral than in a direct line. the people welcomed him as the representative of their reign, and chose him to supply the place of montezuma during his captivity. cuitlahua willingly accepted the post of honour and of danger. he was an experienced warrior, and exerted himself to reorganise the disorderly levies, and to arrange a more efficient plan of operations. the effect was soon visible. cortes, meanwhile, had so little doubt of his ability to overawe the insurgents, that he wrote to that effect to the garrison of villa rica, by the same despatches in which he informed them of his safe arrival in the capital. but scarcely had his messenger been gone half an hour, when he returned breathless with terror, and covered with wounds. "the city," he said, "was all in arms! the drawbridges were raised, and the enemy would soon be upon them!" he spoke truth. it was not long before a hoarse, sullen sound became audible, like that of the roaring of distant waters. it grew louder and louder; till, from the parapet surrounding the inclosure, the great avenues which led to it might be seen dark with the masses of warriors, who came rolling on in a confused tide towards the fortress. at the same time the terraces and azoteas or flat roofs, in the neighbourhood, were thronged with combatants brandishing their missiles, who seemed to have risen up as if by magic! it was a spectacle to appal the stoutest.but the dark storm to which it was the prelude, and which gathered deeper and deeper round the spaniards during the remainder of their residence in the capital, must form the subject of a separate book. book v: expulsion from mexico chapter i [1520] desperate assault on the quartersfury of the mexicans sally of the spaniardsmontezuma addresses the people dangerously wounded the palace of axayacatl, in which the spaniards were quartered, was, as the reader may remember, a vast, irregular pile of stone buildings, having but one floor, except in the centre, where another story was added, consisting of a suite of apartments which rose like turrets on the main building of the edifice. a vast area stretched around, encompassed by a stone wall of no great height. this was supported by towers or bulwarks at certain intervals, which gave it some degree of strength, not, indeed, as compared with european fortifications, but sufficient to resist the rude battering enginery of the indians. the parapet had been pierced here and there with embrasures for the artillery, which consisted of thirteen guns; and smaller apertures were made in other parts for the convenience of the arquebusiers. the spanish forces found accommodations within the great building; but the numerous body of tlascalan auxiliaries could have had no other shelter than what was afforded by barracks or sheds hastily constructed for the purpose in the spacious courtyard. thus crowded into a small compact compass, the whole army could be assembled at a moment's notice; and, as the spanish commander was careful to enforce the strictest discipline and vigilance, it was scarcely possible that he could be taken by surprise. no sooner, therefore, did the trumpet call to arms, as the approach of the enemy was announced, than every soldier was at his post, the cavalry mounted, the artillerymen at their guns, and the archers and arquebusiers stationed so as to give the assailants a warm reception. on they came, with the companies, or irregular masses, into which the multitude was divided, rushing forward each in its own dense column, with many a gay banner displayed, and many a bright gleam of light reflected from helmet, arrow, and spear-head, as they were tossed about in their disorderly array. as they drew near the inclosure, the aztecs set up a hideous yell, or rather that shrill whistle used in fight by the nations of anahuac, which rose far above the sound of shell and atabal, and their other rude instruments of warlike melody. they followed this by a tempest of missiles,stones, darts, and arrows,which fell thick as rain on the besieged, while volleys of the same kind descended from the crowded terraces of the neighbourhood. the spaniards waited until the foremost column had arrived within the best distance for giving effect to their fire, when a general discharge of artillery and arquebuses swept the ranks of the assailants, and mowed them down by hundreds. the mexicans were familiar with the report of these formidable engines, as they had been harmlessly discharged on some holiday festival; but never till now had they witnessed their murderous power. they stood aghast for a moment, as with bewildered looks they staggered under the fury of the fire; but, soon rallying, the bold barbarians uttered a piercing cry, and rushed forward over the prostrate bodies of their comrades. a second and a third volley checked their career, and threw them into disorder, but still they pressed on, letting off clouds of arrows; while their comrades on the roofs of the houses took more deliberate aim at the combatants in the courtyard. the mexicans were particularly expert in the use of the sling; and the stones which they hurled from their elevated positions on the heads of their enemies did even greater execution than the arrows. they glanced, indeed, from the mail-covered bodies of the cavaliers, and from those who were sheltered under the cotton panoply, or escaupil. but some of the soldiers, especially the veterans of cortes, and many of their indian allies, had but slight defences, and suffered greatly under this stony tempest. the aztecs, meanwhile, had advanced close under the walls of the intrenchment; their ranks broken and disordered, and their limbs mangled by the unintermitting fire of the christians. but they still pressed on, under the very muzzle of the guns. they endeavoured to scale the parapet, which from its moderate height was in itself a work of no great difficulty. but the moment they showed their heads above the rampart, they were shot down by the unerring marksmen within, or stretched on the ground by a blow of a tlascalan maquahuitl. nothing daunted, others soon appeared to take the place of the fallen, and strove, by raising themselves on the writhing bodies of their dying comrades, or by fixing their spears in the crevices of the wall, to surmount the barrier. but the attempt proved equally vain. defeated here, they tried to effect a breach in the parapet by battering it with heavy pieces of timber. the works were not constructed on those scientific principles by which one part is made to overlook and protect another. the besiegers, therefore, might operate at their pleasure, with but little molestation from the garrison within, whose guns could not be brought into a position to bear on them, and who could mount no part of their own works for their defence, without exposing their persons to the missiles of the whole besieging army. the parapet, however, proved too strong for the efforts of the assailants. in their despair, they endeavoured to set the christian quarters on fire, shooting burning arrows into them, and climbing up so as to dart their firebrands through the embrasures. the principal edifice was of stone. but the temporary defences of the indian allies, and other parts of the exterior works, were of wood. several of these took fire, and the flame spread rapidly among the light combustible materials. this was a disaster for which the besieged were wholly unprepared. they had little water, scarcely enough for their own consumption. they endeavoured to extinguish the flames by heaping on earth; but in vain. fortunately the great building was of materials which defied the destroying element. but the fire raged in some of the outworks, connected with the parapet, with a fury which could only be checked by throwing down a part of the wall itself, thus laying open a formidable breach. this, by the general's order, was speedily protected by a battery of heavy guns, and a file of arquebusiers, who kept up an incessant volley through the opening on the assailants. the fight now raged with fury on both sides. the walls around the palace belched forth an unintermitting sheet of flame and smoke. the groans of the wounded and dying were lost in the fiercer battle-cries of the combatants, the roar of the artillery, the sharper rattle of the musketry, and the hissing sound of indian missiles. it was the conflict of the european with the american; of civilised man with the barbarian; of the science of the one with the rude weapons and warfare of the other. and as the ancient walls of tenochtitlan shook under the thunders of the artillery,it announced that the white man, the destroyer, had set his foot within her precincts. night at length came, and drew her friendly mantle over the contest. the aztec seldom fought by night. it brought little repose, however, to the spaniards, in hourly expectation of an assault; and they found abundant occupation in restoring the breaches in their defences, and in repairing their battered armour. the ferocity shown by the mexicans seems to have been a thing for which cortes was wholly unprepared. his past experience, his uninterrupted career of victory with a much feebler force at his command, had led him to underrate the military efficiency, if not the valour, of the indians. the apparent facility with which the mexicans had acquiesced in the outrages on their sovereign and themselves, had led him to hold their courage, in particular, too lightly. he could not believe the present assault to be anything more than a temporary ebullition of the populace, which would soon waste itself by its own fury. and he proposed, on the following day, to sally out and inflict such chastisement on his foes as should bring them to their senses, and show who was master in the capital. with early dawn, the spaniards were up and under arms; but not before their enemies had given evidence of their hostility by the random missiles, which, from time to time, were sent into the inclosure. as the grey light of morning advanced, it showed the besieging army far from being diminished in numbers, filling up the great square and neighbouring avenues, in more dense array than on the preceding evening. instead of a confused, disorderly rabble, it had the appearance of something like a regular force, with its battalions distributed under their respective banners, the devices of which showed a contribution from the principal cities and districts in the valley. high above the rest was conspicuous the ancient standard of mexico, with its well-known cognisance, an eagle pouncing on an ocelot, emblazoned on a rich mantle of feather-work. here and there priests might be seen mingling in the ranks of the besiegers, and, with frantic gestures, animating them to avenge their insulted deities. the greater part of the enemy had little clothing save the maxtlatl, or sash, round the loins. they were variously armed, with long spears tipped with copper, or flint, or sometimes merely pointed and hardened in the fire. some were provided with slings, and others with darts having two or three points, with long strings attached to them, by which, when discharged, they could be torn away again from the body of the wounded. this was a formidable weapon, much dreaded by the spaniards. those of a higher order wielded the terrible maquahuitl, with its sharp and brittle blades of obsidian. amidst the motley bands of warriors, were seen many whose showy dress and air of authority intimated persons of high military consequence. their breasts were protected by plates of metal, over which was thrown the gay surcoat of feather-work. they wore casques resembling, in their form, the head of some wild and ferocious animal, crested with bristly hair, or overshadowed by tall and graceful plumes of many a brilliant colour. some few were decorated with the red fillet bound round the hair, having tufts of cotton attached to it, which denoted by their number that of the victories they had won, and their own pre-eminent rank among the warriors of the nation. the motley assembly showed that priest, warrior, and citizen had all united to swell the tumult. before the sun had shot his beams into the castilian quarters, the enemy were in motion, evidently preparing to renew the assault of the preceding day. the spanish commander determined to anticipate them by a vigorous sortie, for which he had already made the necessary dispositions. a general discharge of ordnance and musketry sent death far and wide into the enemy's ranks, and, before they had time to recover from their confusion, the gates were thrown open, and cortes, sallying out at the head of his cavalry, supported by a large body of infantry and several thousand tlascalans, rode at full gallop against them. taken thus by surprise, it was scarcely possible to offer much resistance. those who did were trampled down under the horses' feet, cut to pieces with the broadswords, or pierced with the lances of the riders. the infantry followed up the blow, and the rout for the moment was general. but the aztecs fled only to take refuge behind a barricade, or strong work of timber and earth, which had been thrown across the great street through which they were pursued. rallying on the other side, they made a gallant stand, and poured in turn a volley of their light weapons on the spaniards, who, saluted with a storm of missiles at the same time, from the terraces of the houses, were checked in their career, and thrown into some disorder. cortes, thus impeded, ordered up a few pieces of heavy ordnance, which soon swept away the barricades, and cleared a passage for the army. but it had lost the momentum acquired in its rapid advance. they enemy had time to rally and to meet the spaniards on more equal terms. they were attacked in flank, too, as they advanced, by fresh battalions, who swarmed in from the adjoining streets and lanes. the canals were alive with boats filled with warriors, who, with their formidable darts, searched every crevice or weak place in the armour of proof, and made havoc on the unprotected bodies of the tlascalans. by repeated and vigorous charges, the spaniards succeeded in driving the indians before them; though many, with a desperation which showed they loved vengeance better than life, sought to embarrass the movements of their horses by clinging to their legs, or more successfully strove to pull the riders from their saddles. and woe to the unfortunate cavalier who was thus dismounted,to be despatched by the brutal maquahuitl, or to be dragged on board a canoe to the bloody altar of sacrifice! but the greatest annoyance which the spaniards endured from the missiles from the azoteas, consisting often of large stones, hurled with a force that would tumble the stoutest rider from his saddle. galled in the extreme by these discharges, against which even their shields afforded no adequate protection, cortes ordered fire to be set to the buildings. this was no very difficult matter, since, although chiefly of stone, they were filled with mats, canework, and other combustible materials, which were soon in a blaze. but the buildings stood separated from one another by canals and drawbridges, so that the flames did not easily communicate to the neighbouring edifices. hence the labour of the spaniards was incalculably increased, and their progress in the work of destructionfortunately for the citywas comparatively slow. they did not relax their efforts, however, till several hundred houses had been consumed, and the miseries of a conflagration, in which the wretched inmates perished equally with the defenders, were added to the other horrors of the scene. the day was now far spent. the spaniards had been everywhere victorious. but the enemy, though driven back on every point, still kept the field. when broken by the furious charges of the cavalry, he soon rallied behind the temporary defences, which, at different intervals, had been thrown across the streets, and, facing about, renewed the fight with undiminished courage, till the sweeping away of the barriers by the cannon of the assailants left a free passage for the movements of their horse. thus the action was a succession of rallying and retreating, in which both parties suffered much, although the loss inflicted on the indians was probably tenfold greater than that of the spaniards. but the aztecs could better afford the loss of a hundred lives than their antagonists that of one. and while the spaniards showed an array broken, and obviously thinned in numbers, the mexican army, swelled by the tributary levies which flowed in upon it from the neighbouring streets, exhibited, with all its losses, no sign of diminution. at length, sated with carnage, and exhausted by toil and hunger, the spanish commander drew off his men, and sounded a retreat. on his way back to his quarters, he beheld his friend, the secretary duero, in a street adjoining, unhorsed, and hotly engaged with a body of mexicans, against whom he was desperately defending himself with his poniard. cortes, roused at the sight, shouted his war-cry, and, dashing into the midst of the enemy, scattered them like chaff by the fury of his onset; then recovering his friend's horse, he enabled him to remount, and the two cavaliers, striking their spurs into their steeds, burst through their opponents and joined the main body of the army. the undaunted aztecs hung on the rear of their retreating foes, annoying them at every step by fresh flights of stones and arrows; and when the spaniards had re-entered their fortress, the indian host encamped around it, showing the same dogged resolution as on the preceding evening. though true to their ancient habits of inaction during the night, they broke the stillness of the hour by insulting cries and menaces, which reached the ears of the besieged. "the gods have delivered you, at last, into our hands," they said; "huitzilopochtli has long cried for his victims. the stone of sacrifice is ready. the knives are sharpened. the wild beasts in the palace are roaring for their offal. and the cages," they added, taunting the tlascalans with their leanness, "are waiting for the false sons of anahuac, who are to be fattened for the festival." these dismal menaces, which sounded fearfully in the ears of the besieged, who understood too well their import, were mingled with piteous lamentations for their sovereign, whom they called on the spaniards to deliver up to them. cortes suffered much from a severe wound which he had received in the hand in the late action. but the anguish of his mind must have been still greater, as he brooded over the dark prospect before him. he had mistaken the character of the mexicans. their long and patient endurance had been a violence to their natural temper, which, as their whole history proves, was arrogant and ferocious beyond that of most of the races of anahuac. the restraint which, in deference to their monarch, more than to their own fears, they had so long put on their natures, being once removed, their passions burst forth with accumulated violence. the spaniards had encountered in the tlascalan an open enemy, who had no grievance to complain of, no wrong to redress. he fought under the vague apprehension only of some coming evil to his country. but the aztec, hitherto the proud lord of the land, was goaded by insult and injury, till he had reached that pitch of self-devotion, which made fife cheap, in comparison with revenge. considerations of this kind may have passed through the mind of cortes, as he reflected on his own impotence to restrain the fury of the mexicans, and resolved in despite of his late supercilious treatment of montezuma, to employ his authority to allay the tumult,an authority so successfully exerted in behalf of alvarado, at an earlier stage of the insurrection. he was the more confirmed in his purpose, on the following morning, when the assailants, redoubling their efforts, succeeded in scaling the works in one quarter, and effecting an entrance into the inclosure. it is true, they were met with so resolute a spirit, that not a man of those who entered was left alive. but in the impetuosity of the assault, it seemed, for a few moments, as if the place was to be carried by storm. cortes now sent to the aztec emperor to request his interposition with his subjects in behalf of the spaniards. but montezuma was not in the humour to comply. he had remained moodily in his quarters ever since the general's return. disgusted with the treatment he had received, he had still further cause for mortification in finding himself the ally of those who were the open enemies of his nation. from his apartment he had beheld the tragical scenes in his capital, and seen another, cuitlahua, the presumptive heir to his throne, whom cortes had released a few days previous, taking the place which he should have occupied at the head of his warriors, and fighting the battles of his country. distressed by his position, indignant at those who had placed him in it, he coldly answered, "what have i to do with malinche? i do not wish to hear from him. i desire only to die. to what a state has my willingness to serve him reduced me!" when urged still further to comply by olid and father olmedo, he added, "it is of no use. they will neither believe me, nor the false words and promises of malinche. you will never leave these walls alive." on being assured, however, that the spaniards would willingly depart, if a way were opened to them by their enemies, he at lengthmoved, probably, more by the desire to spare the blood of his subjects than of the christiansconsented to expostulate with his people. in order to give the greater effect to his presence, he put on his imperial robes. the tilmatli, his mantle of white and blue, flowed over his shoulders, held together by its rich clasp of the green chalchuitl. the same precious gem, with emeralds of uncommon size, set in gold, profusely ornamented other parts of his dress. his feet were shod with the golden sandals, and his brows covered by the copilli, or mexican diadem, resembling in form the pontifical tiara. thus attired, and surrounded by a guard of spaniards and several aztec nobles, and preceded by the golden wand, the symbol of sovereignty, the indian monarch ascended the central turret of the palace. his presence was instantly recognised by the people, and, as the royal retinue advanced along the battlements, a change, as if by magic, came over the scene. the clang of instruments, the fierce cries of the assailants, were hushed, and a death-like stillness pervaded the whole assembly, so fiercely agitated but a few moments before by the wild tumult of war! many prostrated themselves on the ground; others bent the knee; and all turned with eager expectation towards the monarch, whom they had been taught to reverence with slavish awe, and from whose countenance they had been wont to turn away as from the intolerable splendours of divinity! montezuma saw his advantage; and, while he stood thus confronted with his awe-struck people, he seemed to recover all his former authority and confidence as he felt himself to be still a king. with a calm voice, easily heard over the silent assembly, he is said by the castilian writers to have thus addressed them: "why do i see my people here in arms against the palace of my fathers? is it that you think your sovereign a prisoner, and wish to release him? if so, you have acted rightly. but you are mistaken. i am no prisoner. the strangers are my guests. i remain with them only from choice, and can leave them when i list. have you come to drive them from the city? that is unnecessary. they will depart of their own accord, if you will open a way for them. return to your homes, then. lay down your arms. show your obedience to me who have a right to it. the white men shall go back to their own land; and all shall be well again within the walls of tenochtitlan." as montezuma announced himself the friend of the detested strangers, a murmur ran through the multitude; a murmur of contempt for the pusillanimous prince who could show himself so insensible to the insults and injuries for which the nation was in arms! the swollen tide of their passions swept away all the barriers of ancient reverence, and, taking a new direction, descended on the head of the unfortunate monarch, so far degenerated from his warlike ancestors. "base aztec," they exclaimed, "woman, coward, the white men have made you a woman,fit only to weave and spin!" these bitter taunts were soon followed by still more hostile demonstrations. a chief, it is said, of high rank, bent a bow or brandished a javelin with an air of defiance against the emperor, when, in an instant, a cloud of stones and arrows descended on the spot where the royal train was gathered. the spaniards appointed to protect his person had been thrown off their guard by the respectful deportment of the people during their lord's address. they now hastily interposed their bucklers. but it was too late. montezuma was wounded by three of the missiles one of which, a stone, fell with such violence on his head, near the temple, as brought him senseless to the ground. the mexicans, shocked at their own sacrilegious act, experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling, and setting up a dismal cry, dispersed panic-struck in different directions. not one of the multitudinous array remained in the great square before the palace! the unhappy prince, meanwhile, was borne by his attendants to his apartments below. on recovering from the insensibility caused by the blow, the wretchedness of his condition broke upon him. he had tasted the last bitterness of degradation. he had been reviled, rejected, by his people. the meanest of the rabble had raised their hands against him. he had nothing more to live for. it was in vain that cortes and his officers endeavoured to soothe the anguish of his spirit and fill him with better thoughts. he spoke not a word in answer. his wound, though dangerous, might still, with skilful treatment, not prove mortal. but montezuma refused all the remedies prescribed for it. he tore off the bandages as often as they were applied, maintaining all the while the most determined silence. he sat with eyes dejected, brooding over his fallen fortunes, over the image of ancient majesty and present humiliation. he had survived his honour. but a spark of his ancient spirit seemed to kindle in his bosom, as it was clear he did not mean to survive his disgrace.from this painful scene the spanish general and his followers were soon called away by the new dangers which menaced the garrison. chapter ii [1520] storming of the great templespirit of the aztecs distresses of the garrisonsharp combats in the city death of montezuma opposite to the spanish quarters, at only a few rods' distance, stood the great teocalli of huitzilopochtli. this pyramidal mound, with the sanctuaries that crowned it, rising altogether to the height of near a hundred and fifty feet, afforded an elevated position that completely commanded the palace of axayacatl, occupied by the christians. a body of five or six hundred mexicans, many of them nobles and warriors of the highest rank, had got possession of the teocalli, whence they discharged such a tempest of arrows on the garrison, that no one could leave his defences for a moment without imminent danger; while the mexicans, under shelter of the sanctuaries, were entirely covered from the fire of the besieged. it was obviously necessary to dislodge the enemy, if the spaniards would remain longer in their quarters. cortes assigned this service to his chamberlain escobar, giving him a hundred men for the purpose, with orders to storm the teocalli, and set fire to the sanctuaries. but that officer was thrice repulsed in the attempt, and, after the most desperate efforts, was obliged to return with considerable loss and without accomplishing his object. cortes, who saw the immediate necessity of carrying the place, determined to lead the storming party himself. he was then suffering much from the wound in his left hand, which had disabled it for the present. he made the arm serviceable, however, by fastening his buckler to it, and, thus crippled, sallied out at the head of three hundred chosen cavaliers, and several thousand of his auxiliaries. in the courtyard of the temple he found a numerous body of indians prepared to dispute his passage. he briskly charged them, but the flat, smooth stones of the pavement were so slippery that the horses lost their footing and many of them fell. hastily dismounting, they sent back the animals to their quarters, and, renewing the assault, the spaniards succeeded without much difficulty in dispersing the indian warriors, and opening a free passage for themselves to the teocalli. cortes, having cleared a way for the assault, sprang up the lower stairway, followed by alvarado, sandoval, ordaz, and the other gallant cavaliers of his little band, leaving a file of arquebusiers and a strong corps of indian allies to hold the enemy in check at foot of the monument. on the first landing, as well as on the several galleries above, and on the summit, the aztec warriors were drawn up to dispute his passage. from their elevated position they showered down volleys of lighter missiles, together with heavy stones, beams, and burning rafters, which, thundering along the stairway, overturned the ascending spaniards, and carried desolation through their ranks. the more fortunate, eluding or springing over these obstacles, succeeded in gaining the first terrace, where, throwing themselves on their enemies. they compelled them, after a short resistance, to fall back. the assailants pressed on, effectually supported by a brisk fire of the musketeers from below, which so much galled the mexicans in their exposed situation, that they were glad to take shelter on the broad summit of the teocalli. cortes and his comrades were close upon their rear, and the two parties soon found themselves face to face on this aerial battle-field, engaged in mortal combat in presence of the whole city, as well as of the troops in the courtyard, who paused, as if by mutual consent, from their own hostilities, gazing in silent expectation on the issue of those above. the area, though somewhat smaller than the base of the teocalli, was large enough to afford a fair field of fight for a thousand combatants. it was paved with broad, flat stones. no impediment occurred over its surface, except the huge sacrificial block, and the temples of stone which rose to the height of forty feet, at the further extremity of the arena. one of these had been consecrated to the cross; the other was still occupied by the mexican war-god. the christian and the aztec contended for their religions under the very shadow of their respective shrines; while the indian priests, running to and fro, with their hair wildly streaming over their sable mantles, seemed hovering in mid air, like so many demons of darkness urging on the work of slaughter! the parties closed with the desperate fury of men who had no hope but in victory. quarter was neither asked nor given; and to fly was impossible. the edge of the area was unprotected by parapet or battlement. the least slip would be fatal; and the combatants, as they struggled in mortal agony, were sometimes seen to roll over the sheer sides of the precipice together. many of the aztecs, seeing the fate of such of their comrades as fell into the hands of the spaniards, voluntarily threw themselves headlong from the lofty summit and were dashed in pieces on the pavement. the battle lasted with unintermitting fury for three hours. the number of the enemy was double that of the christians; and it seemed as if it were a contest which must be determined by numbers and brute force, rather than by superior science. but it was not so. the invulnerable armour of the spaniard, his sword of matchless temper, and his skill in the use of it, gave him advantages which far outweighed the odds of physical strength and numbers. after doing all that the courage of despair could enable men to do, resistance grew fainter and fainter on the side of the aztecs. one after another they had fallen. two or three priests only survived to be led away in triumph by the victors. every other combatant was stretched a corpse on the bloody arena, or had been hurled from the giddy heights. yet the loss of the spaniards was not inconsiderable. it amounted to forty-five of their best men, and nearly all the remainder were more or less injured in the desperate conflict. the victorious cavaliers now rushed towards the sanctuaries. the lower story was of stone; the two upper were of wood. penetrating into their recesses, they had the mortification to find the image of the virgin and the cross removed. but in the other edifice they still beheld the grim figure of huitzilopochtli, with the censer of smoking hearts, and the walls of his oratory reeking with gore,not improbably of their own countrymen! with shouts of triumph the christians tore the uncouth monster from his niche, and tumbled him, in the presence of the horror-struck aztecs, down the steps of the teocalli. they then set fire to the accursed building. the flame speedily ran up the slender towers, sending forth an ominous light over city, lake, and valley, to the remotest hut among the mountains. it was the funeral pyre of paganism, and proclaimed the fall of that sanguinary religion which had so long hung like a dark cloud over the fair regions of anahuac! no achievement in the war struck more awe into the mexicans than this storming of the great temple, in which the white men seemed to bid defiance equally to the powers of god and man. having accomplished this good work, the spaniards descended the winding slopes of the teocalli with more free and buoyant step, as if conscious that the blessing of heaven now rested on their arms. they passed through the dusky files of indian warriors in the courtyard, too much dismayed by the appalling scenes they had witnessed to offer resistance; and reached their own quarters in safety. that very night they followed up the blow by a sortie on the sleeping town, and burned three hundred houses, the horrors of conflagration being made still more impressive by occurring at the hour when the aztecs, from their own system of warfare, were least prepared for them. hoping to find the temper of the natives somewhat subdued by these reverses, cortes now determined, with his usual policy, to make them a vantage-ground for proposing terms of accommodation. he accordingly invited the enemy to a parley, and, as the principal chiefs, attended by their followers, assembled in the great square, he mounted the turret before occupied by montezuma, and made signs that he would address them. marina, as usual, took her place by his side, as his interpreter. the multitude gazed with earnest curiosity on the indian girl, whose influence with the spaniards was well known, and whose connection with the general, in particular, had led the aztecs to designate him by her mexican name of malinche. cortes, speaking through the soft, musical tones of his mistress, told his audience they must now be convinced that they had nothing further to hope from opposition to the spaniards. they had seen their gods trampled in the dust, their altars broken, their dwellings burned, their warriors falling on all sides. "all this," continued he, "you have brought on yourselves by your rebellion. yet for the affection the sovereign, whom you have unworthily treated, still bears you, i would willingly stay my hand, if you will lay down your arms, and return once more to your obedience. but, if you do not," he concluded, "i will make your city a heap of ruins, and leave not a soul alive to mourn over it!" but the spanish commander did not yet comprehend the character of the aztecs, if he thought to intimidate them by menaces. calm in their exterior and slow to move, they were the more difficult to pacify when roused; and now that they had been stirred to their inmost depths, it was no human voice that could still the tempest. it may be, however, that cortes did not so much misconceive the character of the people. he may have felt that an authoritative tone was the only one he could assume with any chance of effect, in his present position, in which milder and more conciliatory language would, by intimating a consciousness of inferiority, have too certainly defeated its own object. it was true, they answered, he had destroyed their temples, broken in pieces their gods, massacred their countrymen. many more, doubtless, were yet to fall under their terrible swords. but they were content so long as for every thousand mexicans they could shed the blood of a single white man! "look out," they continued, "on our terraces and streets, see them still thronged with warriors as far as your eyes can reach. our numbers are scarcely diminished by our losses. yours, on the contrary, are lessening every hour. you are perishing from hunger and sickness. your provisions and water are failing. you must soon fall into our hands. the bridges are broken down, and you cannot escape! there will be too few of you left to glut the vengeance of our gods!" as they concluded, they sent a volley of arrows over the battlements, which compelled the spaniards to descend and take refuge in their defences. the fierce and indomitable spirit of the aztecs filled the besieged with dismay. all, then, that they had done and suffered, their battles by day, their vigils by night, the perils they had braved, even the victories they had won, were of no avail. it was too evident that they had no longer the spring of ancient superstition to work upon in the breasts of the natives, who, like some wild beast that has burst the bonds of his keeper, seemed now to swell and exult in the full consciousness of their strength. the annunciation respecting the bridges fell like a knell on the ears of the christians. all that they had heard was too true,and they gazed on one another with looks of anxiety and dismay. the same consequences followed, which sometimes take place among the crew of a shipwrecked vessel. subordination was lost in the dreadful sense of danger. a spirit of mutiny broke out, especially among the recent levies drawn from the army of narvaez. they had come into the country from no motive of ambition, but attracted simply by the glowing reports of its opulence, and they had fondly hoped to return in a few months with their pockets well lined with the gold of the aztec monarch. but how different had been their lot! from the first hour of their landing, they had experienced only trouble and disaster, privations of every description, sufferings unexampled, and they now beheld in perspective a fate yet more appalling. bitterly did they lament the hour when they left the sunny fields of cuba for these cannibal regions! and heartily did they curse their own folly in listening to the call of velasquez, and still more in embarking under the banner of cortes! they now demanded with noisy vehemence to be led instantly from the city, and refused to serve longer in defence of a place where they were cooped up like sheep in the shambles, waiting only to be dragged to slaughter. in all this they were rebuked by the more orderly soldier-like conduct of the veterans of cortes. these latter had shared with their general the day of his prosperity, and they were not disposed to desert him in the tempest. it was, indeed, obvious, on a little reflection, that the only chance of safety, in the existing crisis, rested on subordination and union; and that even this chance must be greatly diminished under any other leader than their present one. thus pressed by enemies without and by factions within, that leader was found, as usual, true to himself. circumstances so appalling as would have paralysed a common mind, only stimulated his to higher action, and drew forth all its resources. he combined what is most rare, singular coolness and constancy of purpose, with a spirit of enterprise that might well be called romantic. his presence of mind did not now desert him. he calmly surveyed his condition, and weighed the difficulties which surrounded him, before coming to a decision. independently of the hazard of a retreat in the face of a watchful and desperate foe, it was a deep mortification to surrender up the city, where he had so long lorded it as a master; to abandon the rich treasures which he had secured to himself and his followers; to forego the very means by which he had hoped to propitiate the favour of his sovereign, and secure an amnesty for his irregular proceedings. this, he well knew, must, after all, be dependent on success. to fly now was to acknowledge himself further removed from the conquest than ever. what a close was this to a career so auspiciously begun! what a contrast to his magnificent vaunts! what a triumph would it afford to his enemies! the governor of cuba would be amply revenged. but, if such humiliating reflections crowded on his mind, the alternative of remaining, in his present crippled condition, seemed yet more desperate. with his men daily diminishing in strength and numbers, their provisions reduced so low that a small daily ration of bread was all the sustenance afforded to the soldier under his extraordinary fatigues, with the breaches every day widening in his feeble fortifications, with his ammunition, in fine, nearly expended, it would be impossible to maintain the place much longerand none but men of iron constitutions and tempers, like the spaniards, could have held it out so longagainst the enemy. the chief embarrassment was as to the time and manner in which it would be expedient to evacuate the city. the best route seemed to be that of tlacopan (tacuba). for the causeway, the most dangerous part of the road, was but two miles long in that direction, and would therefore place the fugitives much sooner than either of the other great avenues on terra firma. before his final departure, however, he proposed to make another sally in that direction, in order to reconnoitre the ground, and, at the same time, divert the enemy's attention from his real purpose by a show of active operations. for some days his workmen had been employed in constructing a military machine of his own invention. it was called a manta, and was contrived somewhat on the principle of the mantelets used in the wars of the middle ages. it was, however, more complicated, consisting of a tower made of light beams and planks, having two chambers, one over the other. these were to be filled with musketeers, and the sides were provided with loop-holes, through which a fire could be kept up on the enemy. the great advantage proposed by this contrivance was, to afford a defence to the troops against the missiles hurled from the terraces. these machines, three of which were made, rested on rollers, and were provided with strong ropes, by which they were to be dragged along the streets by the tlascalan auxiliaries. the mexicans gazed with astonishment on this warlike machinery, and, as the rolling fortresses advanced, belching forth fire and smoke from their entrails, the enemy, incapable of making an impression on those within, fell back in dismay. by bringing the mantas under the walls of the houses, the spaniards were enabled to fire with effect on the mischievous tenants of the azoteas, and when this did not silence them, by letting a ladder, or light drawbridge, fall on the roof from the top of the manta, they opened a passage to the terrace, and closed with the combatants hand to hand. they could not, however, thus approach the higher buildings, from which the indian warriors threw down such heavy masses of stone and timber as dislodged the planks that covered the machines, or, thundering against their sides, shook the frail edifices to their foundations, threatening all within with indiscriminate ruin. indeed, the success of the experiment was doubtful, when the intervention of a canal put a stop to their further progress. the spaniards now found the assertion of their enemies too well confirmed. the bridge which traversed the opening had been demolished; and, although the canals which intersected the city were in general of no great width or depth, the removal of the bridges not only impeded the movements of the general's clumsy machines, but effectually disconcerted those of his cavalry. resolving to abandon the mantas, he gave orders to fill up the chasm with stone, timber, and other rubbish drawn from the ruined buildings, and to make a new passage-way for the army. while this labour was going on, the aztec slingers and archers on the other side of the opening kept up a galling discharge on the christians, the more defenceless from the nature of their occupation. when the work was completed, and a safe passage secured, the spanish cavaliers rode briskly against the enemy, who, unable to resist the shock of the steel-clad column, fell back with precipitation to where another canal afforded a similar strong position for defence. there were no less than seven of these canals, intersecting the great street of tlacopan, and at every one the same scene was renewed, the mexicans making a gallant stand, and inflicting some loss, at each, on their persevering antagonists. these operations consumed two days, when, after incredible toil, the spanish general had the satisfaction to find the line of communication completely re-established through the whole length of the avenue, and the principal bridges placed under strong detachments of infantry. at this juncture, when he had driven the foe before him to the furthest extremity of the street, where it touches on the causeway, he was informed that the mexicans, disheartened by their reverses, desired to open a parley with him respecting the terms of an accommodation, and that their chiefs awaited his return for that purpose at the fortress. overjoyed at the intelligence, he instantly rode back, attended by alvarado, sandoval, and about sixty of the cavaliers, to his quarters. the mexicans proposed that he should release the two priests captured in the temple, who might be the bearers of his terms, and serve as agents for conducting the negotiation. they were accordingly sent with the requisite instructions to their countrymen. but they did not return. the whole was an artifice of the enemy, anxious to procure the liberation of their religious leaders, one of whom was their teoteuctli, or high-priest, whose presence was indispensable in the probable event of a new coronation. cortes, meanwhile, relying on the prospects of a speedy arrangement, was hastily taking some refreshment with his officers, after the fatigues of the day, when he received the alarming tidings that the enemy were in arms again, with more fury than ever; that they had overpowered the detachments posted under alvarado at three of the bridges, and were busily occupied in demolishing them. stung with shame at the facility with which he had been duped by his wily foe, or rather by his own sanguine hopes, cortes threw himself into the saddle, and, followed by his brave companions, galloped back at full speed to the scene of action. the mexicans recoiled before the impetuous charge of the spaniards. the bridges were again restored; and cortes and his chivalry rode down the whole extent of the great street, driving the enemy, like frightened deer, at the points of their lances. but before he could return on his steps, he had the mortification to find, that the indefatigable foe, gathering from the adjoining lanes and streets, had again closed on his infantry, who, worn down by fatigue, were unable to maintain their position, at one of the principal bridges. new swarms of warriors now poured in on all sides, overwhelming the little band of christian cavaliers with a storm of stones, darts, and arrows, which rattled like hail on their armour and on that of their well-barbed horses. most of the missiles, indeed, glanced harmless from the good panoplies of steel, or thick quilted cotton; but, now and then, one better aimed penetrated the joints of the harness, and stretched the rider on the ground. the confusion became greater around the broken bridge. some of the horsemen were thrown into the canal, and their steeds floundered wildly about without a rider. cortes himself, at this crisis, did more than any other to cover the retreat of his followers. while the bridge was repairing, he plunged boldly into the midst of the barbarians, striking down an enemy at every vault of his charger, cheering on his own men, and spreading terror through the ranks of his opponents by the well-known sound of his battle-cry. never did he display greater hardihood, or more freely expose his person, emulating, says an old chronicler, the feats of the roman cocles. in this way he stayed the tide of assailants, till the last man had crossed the bridge, when, some of the planks having given way, he was compelled to leap a chasm of full six feet in width, amidst a cloud of missiles, before he could place himself in safety. a report ran through the army that the general was slain. it soon spread through the city, to the great joy of the mexicans, and reached the fortress, where the besieged were thrown into no less consternation. but, happily for them, it was false. he, indeed, received two severe contusions on the knee, but in other respects remained uninjured. at no time, however, had he been in such extreme danger; and his escape, and that of his companions, were esteemed little less than a miracle. the coming of night dispersed the indian battalions, which, vanishing like birds of ill-omen from the field, left the well-contested pass in possession of the spaniards. they returned, however, with none of the joyous feelings of conquerors to their citadel, but with slow step and dispirited, with weapons hacked, armour battered, and fainting under the loss of blood, fasting, and fatigue. in this condition they had yet to learn the tidings of a fresh misfortune in the death of montezuma. the indian monarch had rapidly declined, since he had received his injury, sinking, however, quite as much under the anguish of a wounded spirit, as under disease. he continued in the same moody state of insensibility as that already described; holding little communication with those around him, deaf to consolation, obstinately rejecting all medical remedies, as well as nourishment. perceiving his end approach, some of the cavaliers present in the fortress, whom the kindness of his manners had personally attached to him, were anxious to save the soul of the dying prince from the sad doom of those who perish in the darkness of unbelief. they accordingly waited on him, with father olmedo at their head, and in the most earnest manner implored him to open his eyes to the error of his creed, and consent to be baptised. but montezumawhatever may have been suggested to the contraryseems never to have faltered in his hereditary faith, or to have contemplated becoming an apostate; for surely he merits that name in its most odious application, who, whether christian or pagan, renounces his religion without conviction of its falsehood. indeed, it was a too implicit reliance on its oracles, which had led him to give such easy confidence to the spaniards. his intercourse with them had, doubtless, not sharpened his desire to embrace their communion; and the calamities of his country he might consider as sent by his gods to punish him for his hospitality to those who had desecrated and destroyed their shrines. when father olmedo, therefore, kneeling at his side, with the uplifted crucifix, affectionately besought him to embrace the sign of man's redemption, he coldly repulsed the priest, exclaiming, "i have but a few moments to live; and will. not at this hour desert the faith of my fathers." one thing, however, seemed to press heavily on montezuma's mind. this was the fate of his children, especially of three daughters, whom he had by his two wives; for there were certain rites of marriage, which distinguished the lawful wife from the concubine. calling cortes to his bedside, he earnestly commended these children to his care, as "the most precious jewels that he could leave him." he besought the general to interest his master, the emperor, in their behalf, and to see that they should not be left destitute, but be allowed some portion of their rightful inheritance. "your lord will do this," he concluded, "if it were only for the friendly offices i have rendered the spaniards, and for the love i have shown them,though it has brought me to this condition! but for this i bear them no ill-will." such, according to cortes himself, were the words of the dying monarch. not long after, on the 30th of june, 1520, he expired in the arms of some of his own nobles, who still remained faithful in their attendance on his person. montezuma, at the time of his death, was about forty-one years old, of which he reigned eighteen. his person and manners have been already described. he left a numerous progeny by his various wives, most of whom, having lost their consideration after the conquest, fell into obscurity as they mingled with the mass of the indian population. two of them, however, a son and a daughter, who embraced christianity, became the founders of noble houses in spain. the government, willing to show its gratitude for the large extent of empire derived from their ancestor, conferred on them ample estates, and important hereditary honours; and the counts of montezuma and tula, intermarrying with the best blood of castile, intimated by their names and titles their illustrious descent from the royal dynasty of mexico. montezuma's death was a misfortune to the spaniards. while he lived, they had a precious pledge in their hands, which, in extremity they might possibly have turned to account. now the last link was snapped which connected them with the natives of the country. but independently of interested feelings, cortes and his officers were much affected by his death from personal considerations; and, when they gazed on the cold remains of the ill-starred monarch, they may have felt a natural compunction as they contrasted his late flourishing condition with that to which his friendship for them had now reduced him. the spanish commander showed all respect for his memory. his body, arrayed in its royal robes, was laid decently on a bier, and borne on the shoulders of his nobles to his subjects in the city. what honours, if any, indeed, were paid to his remains, is uncertain. a sound of wailing, distinctly heard in the western quarters of the capital, was interpreted by the spaniards into the moans of a funeral procession, as it bore the body to be laid among those of his ancestors, under the princely shades of chapoltepec. others state, that it was removed to a burial-place in the city named copalco, and there burnt with the usual solemnities and signs of lamentation by his chiefs, but not without some unworthy insults from the mexican populace. whatever be the fact, the people, occupied with the stirring scenes in which they were engaged, were probably not long mindful of the monarch, who had taken no share in their late patriotic movements. nor is it strange that the very memory of his sepulchre should be effaced in the terrible catastrophe which afterwards overwhelmed the capital, and swept away every landmark from its surface. chapter iii [1520] council of warspaniards evacuate the city noche triste, or "the melancholy night"terrible slaughter halt for the nightamount of losses there was no longer any question as to the expediency of evacuating the capital. the only doubt was as to the time of doing so, and the route. the spanish commander called a council of officers to deliberate on these matters. it was his purpose to retreat on tlascala, and in that capital to decide according to circumstances on his future operations. after some discussion, they agreed on the causeway of tlacopan as the avenue by which to leave the city. it would, indeed, take them back by a circuitous route, considerably longer than either of those by which they had approached the capital. but, for that reason, it would be less likely to be guarded, as least suspected; and the causeway, itself being shorter than either of the other entrances, would sooner place the army in comparative security on the main land. there was some difference of opinion in respect to the hour of departure. the day-time, it was argued by some, would be preferable, since it would enable them to see the nature and extent of their danger, and to provide against it. darkness would be much more likely to embarrass their own movements than those of the enemy, who were familiar with the ground. a thousand impediments would occur in the night, which might prevent their acting in concert, or obeying, or even ascertaining, the orders of the commander. but, on the other hand, it was urged, that the night presented many obvious advantages in dealing with a foe who rarely carried his hostilities beyond the day. the late active operations of the spaniards had thrown the mexicans off their guard, and it was improbable they would anticipate so speedy a departure of their enemies. with celerity and caution they might succeed, therefore, in making their escape from the town, possibly over the causeway, before their retreat should be discovered; and, could they once get beyond that pass of peril, they felt little apprehension for the rest. these views were fortified, it is said, by the counsels of a soldier named botello, who professed the mysterious science of judicial astrology. he had gained credit with the army by some predictions which had been verified by the events; those lucky hits which make chance pass for calculation with the credulous multitude. this man recommended to his countrymen by all means to evacuate the place in the night, as the hour most propitious to them, although he should perish in it. the event proved the astrologer better acquainted with his own horoscope than with that of others. it is possible botello's predictions had some weight in determining the opinion of cortes. superstition was the feature of the age, and the spanish general, as we have seen, had a full measure of its bigotry. seasons of gloom, moreover, dispose the mind to a ready acquiescence in the marvellous. it is, however, quite as probable that he made use of the astrologer's opinion, finding it coincided with his own, to influence that of his men, and inspire them with higher confidence. at all events, it was decided to abandon the city that very night. the general's first care was to provide for the safe transportation of the treasure. many of the common soldiers had converted their share of the prize, as we have seen, into gold chains, collars, or other ornaments, which they easily carried about their persons. but the royal fifth, together with that of cortes himself, and much of the rich booty of the principal cavaliers had been converted into bars and wedges of solid gold, and deposited in one of the strong apartments of the palace. cortes delivered the share belonging to the crown to the royal officers, assigning them one of the strongest horses, and a guard of castilian soldiers to transport it. still, much of the treasure belonging both to the crown and to individuals was necessarily abandoned, from the want of adequate means of conveyance. the metal lay scattered in shining heaps along the floor, exciting the cupidity of the soldiers. "take what you will of it," said cortes to his men. "better you should have it than these mexican hounds. but be careful not to overload yourselves. he travels safest in the dark night who travels lightest." his own more wary followers took heed to his counsel, helping themselves to a few articles of least bulk, though, it might be, of greatest value. but the troops of narvaez, pining for riches, of which they had heard so much, and hitherto seen so little, showed no such discretion. to them it seemed as if the very mines of mexico were turned up before them, and, rushing on the treacherous spoil, they greedily loaded themselves with as much of it, not merely as they could accommodate about their persons, but as they could stow away in wallets, boxes, or any other mode of conveyance at their disposal. cortes next arranged the order of march. the van, composed of two hundred spanish foot, he placed under the command of the valiant gonzalo de sandoval, supported by diego de ordaz, francisco de lugo, and about twenty other cavaliers. the rear-guard, constituting the strength of the infantry, was intrusted to pedro de alvarado and velasquez de leon. the general himself took charge of the "battle," or centre, in which went the baggage, some of the heavy guns, most of which, however, remained in the rear, the treasure, and the prisoners. these consisted of a son and two daughters of montezuma, cacama, the deposed lord of tezcuco, and several other nobles, whom cortes retained as important pledges in his future negotiations with the enemy. the tlascalans were distributed pretty equally among the three divisions; and cortes had under his immediate command a hundred picked soldiers, his own veterans most attached to his service, who, with christoval de olid, francisco de morla, alonso de avila, and two or three other cavaliers, formed a select corps, to act wherever occasion might require. the general had already superintended the construction of a portable bridge to be laid over the open canals in the causeway. this was given in charge to an officer named magarino, with forty soldiers under his orders, all pledged to defend the passage to the last extremity. the bridge was to be taken up when the entire army had crossed one of the breaches, and transported to the next. there were three of these openings in the causeway, and most fortunate would it have been for the expedition, if the foresight of the commander had provided the same number of bridges. but the labour would have been great, and time was short. at midnight the troops were under arms, in readiness for the march. mass was performed by father olmedo, who invoked the protection of the almighty through the awful perils of the night. the gates were thrown open, and, on the first of july, 1520, the spaniards for the last time sallied forth from the walls of the ancient fortress, the scene of so much suffering and such indomitable courage. the night was cloudy, and a drizzling rain, which fell without intermission, added to the obscurity. the great square before the palace was deserted, as, indeed, it had been since the fall of montezuma. steadily, and as noiselessly as possible, the spaniards held their way along the great street of tlacopan, which so lately had resounded to the tumult of battle. all was now hushed in silence; and they were only reminded of the past by the occasional presence of some solitary corpse, or a dark heap of the slain, which too plainly told where the strife had been hottest. as they passed along the lanes and alleys which opened into the great street, or looked down the canals, whose polished surface gleamed with a sort of ebon lustre through the obscurity of night, they easily fancied that they discerned the shadowy forms of their foe lurking in ambush, and ready to spring on them. but it was only fancy; and the city slept undisturbed even by the prolonged echoes of the tramp of the horses, and the hoarse rumbling of the artillery and baggage trains. at length a lighter space beyond the dusky line of buildings showed the van of the army that it was emerging on the open causeway. they might well have congratulated themselves on having thus escaped the dangers of an assault in the city itself, and that a brief time would place them in comparative safety on the opposite shore. but the mexicans were not all asleep. as the spaniards drew near the spot where the street opened on the causeway, and were preparing to lay the portable bridge across the uncovered breach which now met their eyes, several indian sentinels, who had been stationed at this, as at the other approaches to the city, took the alarm, and fled, rousing their countrymen by their cries. the priests, keeping their night watch on the summit of the teocallis, instantly caught the tidings and sounded their shells, while the huge drum in the desolite temple of the war-god sent forth those solemn tones, which, heard only in seasons of calamity, vibrated through every corner of the capital. the spaniards saw that no time was to be lost. the bridge was brought forward and fitted with all possible expedition. sandoval was the first to try its strength, and, riding across, was followed by his little body of chivalry, his infantry, and tlascalan allies, who formed the first division of the army. then came cortes and his squadrons, with the baggage, ammunition wagons, and a part of the artillery. but before they had time to defile across the narrow passage, a gathering sound was heard, like that of a mighty forest agitated by the winds. it grew louder and louder, while on the dark waters of the lake was heard a splashing noise, as of many oars. then came a few stones and arrows striking at random among the hurrying troops. they fell every moment faster and more furious, till they thickened into a terrible tempest, while the very heavens were rent with the yells and war-cries of myriads of combatants, who seemed all at once to be swarming over land and lake! the spaniards pushed steadily on through this arrowy sleet, though the barbarians, dashing their canoes against the sides of the causeway, clambered up and broke in upon their ranks. but the christians, anxious only to make their escape, declined all combat except for self-preservation. the cavaliers, spurring forward their steeds, shook off their assailants, and rode over their prostrate bodies, while the men on foot with their good swords or the butts of their pieces drove them headlong again down the sides of the dike. but the advance of several thousand men, marching, probably, on a front of not more than fifteen or twenty abreast, necessarily required much time, and the leading files had already reached the second breach in the causeway before those in the rear had entirely traversed the first. here they halted; as they had no means of effecting a passage, smarting all the while under unintermitting volleys from the enemy, who were clustered thick on the waters around this second opening. sorely distressed, the vanguard sent repeated messages to the rear to demand the portable bridge. at length the last of the army had crossed, and magarino and his sturdy followers endeavoured to raise the ponderous framework. but it stuck fast in the sides of the dike. in vain they strained every nerve. the weight of so many men and horses, and above all of the heavy artillery, had wedged the timbers so firmly in the stones and earth, that it was beyond their power to dislodge them. still they laboured amidst a torrent of missiles, until, many of them slain, and all wounded, they were obliged to abandon the attempt. the tidings soon spread from man to man, and no sooner was their dreadful import comprehended, than a cry of despair arose, which for a moment drowned all the noise of conflict. all means of retreat were cut off. scarcely hope was left. the only hope was in such desperate exertions as each could make for himself. order and subordination were at an end. intense danger produced intense selfishness. each thought only of his own life. pressing forward, he trampled down the weak and the wounded, heedless whether it were friend or foe. the leading files, urged on by the rear, were crowded on the brink of the gulf. sandoval, ordaz, and the other cavaliers dashed into the water. some succeeded in swimming their horses across; others failed, and some, who reached the opposite bank, being overturned in the ascent, rolled headlong with their steeds into the lake. the infantry followed pellmell, heaped promiscuously on one another, frequently pierced by the shafts, or struck down by the war-clubs of the aztecs; while many an unfortunate victim was dragged half-stunned on board their canoes, to be reserved for a protracted, but more dreadful death. the carnage raged fearfully along the length of the causeway. its shadowy bulk presented a mark of sufficient distinctness for the enemy's missiles, which often prostrated their own countrymen in the blind fury of the tempest. those nearest the dike, running their canoes alongside, with a force that shattered them to pieces, leaped on the land and grappled with the christians, until both came rolling down the side of the causeway together. but the aztec fell among his friends, while his antagonist was borne away in triumph to the sacrifice. the struggle was long and deadly. the mexicans were recognised by their white cotton tunics, which showed faint through the darkness. above the combatants rose a wild and discordant clamour, in which horrid shouts of vengeance were mingled with groans of agony, with invocations of the saints and the blessed virgin, and with the screams of women; for there were several women, both native and spaniards, who had accompanied the christian camp. among these, one named maria de estrada is particularly noticed for the courage she displayed, battling with broadsword and target like the staunchest of the warriors. the opening in the causeway, meanwhile, was filled up with the wreck of matter which had been forced into it, ammunition wagons, heavy guns, bales of rich stuffs scattered over the waters, chests of solid ingots, and bodies of men and horses, till over this dismal ruin a passage was gradually formed, by which those in the rear were enabled to clamber to the other side. cortes, it is said, found a place that was fordable, where halting with the water up to his saddle-girths, he endeavoured to check the confusion, and lead his followers by a safer path to the opposite bank. but his voice was lost in the wild uproar, and finally, hurrying on with the tide, he pressed forward with a few trusty cavaliers, who remained near his person, to the van; but not before he had seen his favourite page, juan de salazar, struck down, a corpse, by his side. here he found sandoval and his companions, halting before the third and last breach, endeavouring to cheer on their followers to surmount it. but their resolution faltered. it was wide and deep; though the passage was not so closely beset by the enemy as the preceding ones. the cavaliers again set the example by plunging into the water. horse and foot followed as they could, some swimming, others with dying grasp clinging to the manes and tails of the struggling animals. those fared best, as the general had predicted, who travelled lightest; and many were the unfortunate wretches, who, weighed down by the fatal gold which they loved so well, were buried with it in the salt floods of the lake. cortes, with his gallant comrades, olid, morla, sandoval, and some few others, still kept in the advance, leading his broken remnant off the fatal causeway. the din of battle lessened in the distance; when the rumour reached them, that the rear-guard would be wholly overwhelmed without speedy relief. it seemed almost an act of desperation; but the generous hearts of the spanish cavaliers did not stop to calculate danger when the cry for succour reached them. turning their horses' bridles, they galloped back to the theatre of action, worked their way through the press, swam the canal, and placed themselves in the thick of the melee on the opposite bank. the first grey of the morning was now coming over the waters. it showed the hideous confusion of the scene which had been shrouded in the obscurity of night. the dark masses of combatants, stretching along the dike, were seen struggling for mastery, until the very causeway on which they stood appeared to tremble, and reel to and fro, as if shaken by an earthquake; while the bosom of the lake, as far as the eye could reach, was darkened by canoes crowded with warriors, whose spears and bludgeons, armed with blades of "volcanic glass," gleamed in the morning light. the cavaliers found alvarado unhorsed, and defending himself with a poor handful of followers against an overwhelming tide of the enemy. his good steed, which had borne him through many a hard fight, had fallen under him. he was himself wounded in several places, and was striving in vain to rally his scattered column, which was driven to the verge of the canal by the fury of the enemy, then in possession of the whole rear of the causeway, where they were reinforced every hour by fresh combatants from the city. the artillery in the earlier part of the engagement had not been idle, and its iron shower, sweeping along the dike, had mowed down the assailants by hundreds. but nothing could resist their impetuosity. the front ranks, pushed on by those behind, were at length forced up to the pieces, and, pouring over them like a torrent, overthrew men and guns in one general ruin. the resolute charge of the spanish cavaliers, who had now arrived, created a temporary check, and gave time for their countrymen to make a feeble rally. but they were speedily borne down by the returning flood. cortes and his companions were compelled to plunge again into the lake,though all did not escape. alvarado stood on the brink for a moment, hesitating what to do. unhorsed as he was, to throw himself into the water in the face of the hostile canoes that now swarmed around the opening, afforded but a desperate chance of safety. he had but a second for thought. he was a man of powerful frame, and despair gave him unnatural energy. setting his long lance firmly on the wreck which strewed the bottom of the lake, he sprung forward with all his might, and cleared the wide gap at a leap! aztecs and tlascalans gazed in stupid amazement, exclaiming, as they beheld the incredible feat, "this is truly the tonatiuh,the child of the sun!"the breadth of the opening is not given. but it was so great, that the valorous captain diaz, who well remembered the place, says the leap was impossible to any man. other contemporaries, however, do not discredit the story. cortes and his companions now rode forward to the front, where the troops in a loose, disorderly manner, were marching off the fatal causeway. a few only of the enemy hung on their rear, or annoyed them by occasional flights of arrows from the lake. the attention of the aztecs was diverted by the rich spoil that strewed the battle-ground; fortunately for the spaniards, who, had their enemy pursued with the same ferocity with which he had fought, would, in their crippled condition, have been cut off, probably to a man. but little molested, therefore, they were allowed to defile through the adjacent village, or suburbs, it might be called, of popotla. the spanish commander there dismounted from his jaded steed, and, sitting down on the steps of an indian temple, gazed mournfully on the broken files as they passed before him. what a spectacle did they present! the cavalry, most of them dismounted, were mingled with the infantry, who dragged their feeble limbs along with difficulty; their shattered mail and tattered garments dripping with the salt ooze, showing through their rents many a bruise and ghastly wound; their bright arms soiled, their proud crests and banners gone, the baggage, artilleryall, in short, that constitutes the pride and panoply of glorious war, for ever lost. cortes, as he looked wistfully on their thinned and disordered ranks, sought in vain for many a familiar face, and missed more than one dear companion who had stood side by side with him through all the perils of the conquest. though accustomed to control his emotions, or, at least, to conceal them, the sight was too much for him. he covered his face with his hands, and the tears which trickled down revealed too plainly the anguish of his soul. he found some consolation, however, in the sight of several of the cavaliers on whom he most relied. alvarado, sandoval, olid, ordaz, avila, were yet safe. he had the inexpressible satisfaction, also, of learning the safety of the indian interpreter, marina, so dear to him, and so important to the army. she had been committed with a daughter of a tlascalan chief, to several of that nation. she was fortunately placed in the van, and her faithful escort had carried her securely through all the dangers of the night. aguilar, the other interpreter, had also escaped; and it was with no less satisfaction that cortes learned the safety of the ship-builder, martin lopez. the general's solicitude for the fate of this man, so indispensable, as he proved, to the success of his subsequent operations, showed that amidst all his affliction, his indomitable spirit was looking forward to the hour of vengeance. meanwhile, the advancing column had reached the neighbouring city of tlacopan (tacuba), once the capital of an independent principality. there it halted in the great street, as if bewildered and altogether uncertain what course to take. cortes, who had hastily mounted and rode on to the front again, saw the danger of remaining in a populous place, where the inhabitants might sorely annoy the troops from the azoteas, with little risk to themselves. pushing forward, therefore, he soon led them into the country. there he endeavoured to reform his disorganised battalions, and bring them to something like order. hard by, at no great distance on the left, rose an eminence, looking towards a chain of mountains which fences in the valley on the west. it was called the hill of otoncalpolco, and sometimes the hill of montezuma. it was crowned with an indian teocalli, with its large outworks of stone covering an ample space, and by its strong position, which commanded the neighbouring plain, promised a good place of refuge for the exhausted troops. but the men, disheartened and stupefied by their late reverses, seemed for the moment incapable of further exertion; and the place was held by a body of armed indians. cortes saw the necessity of dislodging them, if he would save the remains of his army from entire destruction. the event showed he still held a control over their wills stronger than circumstances themselves. cheering them on, and supported by his gallant cavaliers, he succeeded in infusing into the most sluggish something of his own intrepid temper, and led them up the ascent in face of the enemy. but the latter made slight resistance, and after a few feeble volleys of missiles which did little injury, left the ground to the assailants. it was covered by a building of considerable size, and furnished ample accommodations for the diminished numbers of the spaniards. they found there some provisions; and more, it is said, were brought to them in the course of the day from some friendly otomie villages in the neighbourhood. there was, also, a quantity of fuel in the courts, destined to the uses of the temple. with this they made fires to dry their drenched garments, and busily employed themselves in dressing one another's wounds, stiff and extremely painful from exposure and long exertion. thus refreshed, the weary soldiers threw themselves down on the floor and courts of the temple, and soon found the temporary oblivion which nature seldom denies even in the greatest extremity of suffering. there was one eye in that assembly, however, which we may well believe did not so speedily close. for what agitating thoughts must have crowded on the mind of their commander, as he beheld his poor remnant of followers thus huddled together in this miserable bivouac! and this was all that survived of the brilliant array with which but a few weeks since he had entered the capital of mexico! where now were his dreams of conquest and empire? and what was he but a luckless adventurer, at whom the finger of scorn would be uplifted as a madman? whichever way he turned, the horizon was almost equally gloomy, with scarcely one light spot to cheer him. he had still a weary journey before him, through perilous and unknown paths, with guides of whose fidelity he could not be assured. and how could he rely on his reception at tlascala, the place of his destination; the land of his ancient enemies; where, formerly as a foe, and now as a friend, he had brought desolation to every family within its borders? yet these agitating and gloomy reflections, which might have crushed a common mind, had no power over that of cortes; or rather, they only served to renew his energies, and quicken his perceptions, as the war of the elements purifies and gives elasticity to the atmosphere. he looked with an unblenching eye on his past reverses; but, confident in his own resources, he saw a light through the gloom which others could not. even in the shattered relics which lay around him, resembling in their haggard aspect and wild attire a horde of famished outlaws, he discerned the materials out of which to reconstruct his ruined fortunes. in the very hour of discomfiture and general despondency, there is no doubt that his heroic spirit was meditating the plan of operations which he afterwards pursued with such dauntless constancy. the loss sustained by the spaniards on this fatal night, like every other event in the history of the conquest, is reported with the greatest discrepancy. if we believe cortes' own letter, it did not exceed one hundred and fifty spaniards and two thousand indians. but the general's bulletins, while they do full justice to the difficulties to be overcome, and the importance of the results, are less scrupulous in stating the extent either of his means or of his losses. thoan cano, one of the cavaliers present, estimates the slain at eleven hundred and seventy spaniards, and eight thousand allies. but this is a greater number than we have allowed for the whole army. perhaps we may come nearest the truth by taking the computation of gomara, the chaplain of cortes, who had free access doubtless, not only to the general's papers, but to other authentic sources of information. according to him, the number of christians killed and missing was four hundred and fifty, and that of natives four thousand. this, with the loss sustained in the conflicts of the previous week, may have reduced the former to something more than a third, and the latter to a fourth, or, perhaps, fifth, of the original force with which they entered the capital. the brunt of the action fell on the rear-guard, few of whom escaped. it was formed chiefly of the soldiers of narvaez, who fell the victims in some measure of their cupidity. forty-six of the cavalry were cut off, which with previous losses reduced the number in this branch of the service to twenty-three, and some of these in very poor condition. the greater part of the treasure, the baggage, the general's papers, including his accounts, and a minute diary of transactions since leaving cubawhich, to posterity, at least, would have been of more worth than the gold,had been swallowed up by the waters. the ammunition, the beautiful little train of artillery, with which cortes had entered the city, were all gone. not a musket even remained, the men having thrown them away, eager to disencumber themselves of all that might retard their escape on that disastrous night. nothing, in short, of their military apparatus was left, but their swords, their crippled cavalry, and a few damaged crossbows, to assert the superiority of the european over the barbarian. the prisoners, including, as already noticed, the children of montezuma and the cacique of tezcuco, all perished by the hands of their ignorant countrymen, it is said, in the indiscriminate fury of the assault. there were, also, some persons of consideration among the spaniards, whose names were inscribed on the same bloody roll of slaughter. such was francisco de morla, who fell by the side of cortes, on returning with him to the rescue. but the greatest loss was that of juan velasquez de leon, who, with alvarado, had command of the rear. it was the post of danger on that night, and he fell, bravely defending it, at an early part of the retreat. there was no cavalier in the army, with the exception, perhaps, of sandoval and alvarado, whose loss would have been so deeply deplored by the commander. such were the disastrous results of this terrible passage of the causeway; more disastrous than those occasioned by any other reverse which has stained the spanish arms in the new world; and which have branded the night on which it happened, in the national annals, with the name of the noche triste, "the sad or melancholy night." chapter iv [1520] the spaniards retreatdistresses of the army great battle of otumba the mexicans, during the day which followed the retreat of the spaniards, remained, for the most part, quiet in their own capital, where they found occupation in cleansing the streets and causeways from the dead, which lay festering in heaps that might have bred a pestilence. they may have been employed, also, in paying the last honours to such of their warriors as had fallen, solemnising the funeral rites by the sacrifice of their wretched prisoners, who, as they contemplated their own destiny, may well have envied the fate of their companions who left their bones on the battle-field. it was most fortunate for the spaniards, in their extremity, that they had this breathing-time allowed them by the enemy. but cortes knew that he could not calculate on its continuance, and, feeling how important it was to get the start of his vigilant foe, he ordered his troops to be in readiness to resume their march by midnight. fires were left burning, the better to deceive the enemy; and at the appointed hour, the little army, without sound of drum or trumpet, but with renewed spirits, sallied forth from the gates of the teocalli. it was arranged that the sick and wounded should occupy the centre, transported on litters, or on the backs of the tamanes, while those who were strong enough to keep their seats should mount behind the cavalry. the able-bodied soldiers were ordered to the front and rear, while others protected the flanks, thus affording all the security possible to the invalids. the retreating army held on its way unmolested under cover of the darkness. but, as morning dawned, they beheld parties of the natives moving over the heights, or hanging at a distance, like a cloud of locusts on their rear. they did not belong to the capital; but were gathered from the neighbouring country, where the tidings of their rout had already penetrated. the charm, which had hitherto covered the white men, was gone. the spaniards, under the conduct of their tlascalan guides, took a circuitous route to the north, passing through quauhtitlan, and round lake tzompanco (zumpango), thus lengthening their march, but keeping at a distance from the capital. from the eminences, as they passed along, the indians rolled down heavy stones, mingled with volleys of darts and arrows on the heads of the soldiers. some were even bold enough to descend into the plain and assault the extremities of the column. but they were soon beaten off by the horse, and compelled to take refuge among the hills, where the ground was too rough for the rider to follow. indeed, the spaniards did not care to do so, their object being rather to fly than to fight. in this way they slowly advanced, halting at intervals to drive off their assailants when they became too importunate, and greatly distressed by their missiles and their desultory attacks. at night, the troops usually found shelter in some town or hamlet, whence the inhabitants, in anticipation of their approach, had been careful to carry off all the provisions. the spaniards were soon reduced to the greatest straits for subsistence. their principal food was the wild cherry, which grew in the woods or by the roadside. fortunate were they if they found a few ears of corn unplucked. more frequently nothing was left but the stalks; and with them, and the like unwholesome fare, they were fain to supply the cravings of appetite. when a horse happened to be killed, it furnished an extraordinary banquet; and cortes himself records the fact of his having made one of a party who thus sumptuously regaled themselves, devouring the animal even to his hide. the wretched soldiers, faint with famine and fatigue, were sometimes seen to drop down lifeless on the road. others loitered behind unable to keep up with the march, and fell into the hands of the enemy, who followed in the track of the army like a flock of famished vultures, eager to pounce on the dying and the dead. others, again, who strayed too far, in their eagerness to procure sustenance, shared the same fate. the number of these, at length, and the consciousness of the cruel lot for which they were reserved, compelled cortes to introduce stricter discipline, and to enforce it by sterner punishments than he had hitherto done,though too often ineffectually, such was the indifference to danger, under the overwhelming pressure of present calamity. through these weary days cortes displayed his usual serenity and fortitude. he was ever in the post of danger, freely exposing himself in encounters with the enemy; in one of which he received a severe wound in the head, that afterwards gave him much trouble. he fared no better than the humblest soldier, and strove, by his own cheerful countenance and counsels, to fortify the courage of those who faltered, assuring them that their sufferings would soon be ended by their arrival in the hospitable "land of bread." his faithful officers co-operated with him in these efforts; and the common file, indeed, especially his own veterans, must be allowed, for the most part, to have shown a full measure of the constancy and power of endurance so characteristic of their nation,justifying the honest boast of an old chronicler, "that there was no people so capable of supporting hunger as the spaniards, and none of them who were ever more severely tried than the soldiers of cortes." a similar fortitude was shown by the tlascalans, trained in a rough school that made them familiar with hardships and privations. although they sometimes threw themselves on the ground, in the extremity of famine, imploring their gods not to abandon them, they did their duty as warriors; and, far from manifesting coldness towards the spaniards as the cause of their distresses, seemed only the more firmly knit to them by the sense of a common suffering. on the seventh morning, the army had reached the mountain rampart which overlooks the plains of otompan, or otumba, as commonly called, from the indian city,now a village,situated in them. the distance from the capital is hardly nine leagues. but the spaniards had travelled more than thrice that distance, in their circuitous march round the lakes. this had been performed so slowly, that it consumed a week; two nights of which had been passed in the same quarters, from the absolute necessity of rest. it was not, therefore, till the 7th of july that they reached the heights commanding the plains which stretched far away towards the territory of tlascala, in full view of the venerable pyramids of teotihuacan, two of the most remarkable monuments of the antique american civilisation now existing north of the isthmus. during all the preceding day, they had seen parties of the enemy hovering like dark clouds above the highlands, brandishing their weapons, and calling out in vindictive tones, "hasten on! you will soon find yourselves where you cannot escape!" words of mysterious import, which they were made fully to comprehend on the following morning. as the army was climbing the mountain steeps which shut in the valley of otompan, the videttes came in with the intelligence, that a powerful body was encamped on the other side, apparently awaiting their approach. the intelligence was soon confirmed by their own eyes, as they turned the crest of the sierra, and saw spread out, below, a mighty host, filling up the whole depth of the valley, and giving to it the appearance, from the white cotton mail of the warriors, of being covered with snow. it consisted of levies from the surrounding country, and especially the populous territory of tezcuco, drawn together at the instance of cuitlahua, montezuma's successor, and now concentrated on this point to dispute the passage of the spaniards. every chief of note had taken the field with his whole array gathered under his standard, proudly displaying all the pomp and rude splendour of his military equipment. as far as the eye could reach, were to be seen shields and waving banners, fantastic helmets, forests of shining spears, the bright feather-mail of the chief, and the coarse cotton panoply of his follower, all mingled together in wild confusion, and tossing to and fro like the billows of a troubled ocean. it was a sight to fill the stoutest heart among the christians with dismay, heightened by the previous expectation of soon reaching the friendly land which was to terminate their wearisome pilgrimage. even cortes, as he contrasted the tremendous array before him with his own diminished squadrons, wasted by disease and enfeebled by hunger and fatigue, could not escape the conviction that his last hour had arrived. but his was not the heart to despond; and he gathered strength from the very extremity of his situation. he had no room for hesitation; for there was no alternative left to him. to escape was impossible. he could not retreat on the capital, from which he had been expelled. he must advance,cut through the enemy, or perish. he hastily made his dispositions for the fight. he gave his force as broad a front as possible, protecting it on each flank by his little body of horse, now reduced to twenty. fortunately, he had not allowed the invalids, for the last two days, to mount, behind the riders, from a desire to spare the horses, so that these were now in tolerable condition; and, indeed, the whole army had been refreshed by halting, as we have seen, two nights and a day in the same place, a delay, however, which had allowed the enemy time to assemble in such force to dispute its progress. cortes instructed his cavaliers not to part with their lances, and to direct them at the face. the infantry were to thrust, not strike, with their swords; passing them, at once, through the bodies of their enemies. they were, above all, to aim at the leaders, as the general well knew how much depends on the life of the commander in the wars of barbarians, whose want of subordination makes them impatient of any control but that to which they are accustomed. he then addressed to his troops a few words of encouragement, as customary with him on the eve of an engagement. he reminded them of the victories they had won with odds nearly as discouraging as the present; thus establishing the superiority of science and discipline over numbers. numbers, indeed, were of no account, where the arm of the almighty was on their side. and he bade them have full confidence, that he, who had carried them safely through so many perils, would not now abandon them and his own good cause, to perish by the hand of the infidel. his address was brief, for he read in their looks that settled resolve which rendered words unnecessary. the circumstances of their position spoke more forcibly to the heart of every soldier than any eloquence could have done, filling it with that feeling of desperation, which makes the weak arm strong, and turns the coward into a hero. after they had earnestly commended themselves, therefore, to the protection of god, the virgin, and st. james, cortes led his battalions straight against the enemy. it was a solemn moment,that in which the devoted little band, with steadfast countenances, and their usual intrepid step, descended on the plain to be swallowed up, as it were, in the vast ocean of their enemies. the latter rushed on with impetuosity to meet them, making the mountains ring to their discordant yells and battle-cries, and sending forth volleys of stones and arrows which for a moment shut out the light of day. but, when the leading files of the two armies closed, the superiority of the christians was felt, as their antagonists, falling back before the charges of cavalry, were thrown into confusion by their own numbers who pressed on them from behind. the spanish infantry followed up the blow, and a wide lane was opened in the ranks of the enemy, who, receding on all sides, seemed willing to allow a free passage for their opponents. but it was to return on them with accumulated force, as, rallying, they poured upon the christians, enveloping the little army on all sides, which with its bristling array of long swords and javelins, stood firm,in the words of a contemporary,like an islet against which the breakers, roaring and surging, spend their fury in vain. the struggle was desperate of man against man. the tlascalan seemed to renew his strength, as he fought almost in view of his own native hills; as did the spaniard, with the horrible doom of the captive before his eyes. well did the cavaliers do their duty on that day; charging, in little bodies of four or five abreast, deep into the enemy's ranks, riding over the broken files, and by this temporary advantage giving strength and courage to the infantry. not a lance was there which did not reek with the blood of the infidel. among the rest, the young captain sandoval is particularly commemorated for his daring prowess. managing his fiery steed with easy horsemanship, he darted, when least expected, into the thickest of the melee, overturning the staunchest warriors, and rejoicing in danger, as if it were his natural element. but these gallant displays of heroism served only to ingulf the spaniards deeper and deeper in the mass of the enemy, with scarcely any more chance of cutting their way through his dense and interminable battalions, than of hewing a passage with their swords through the mountains. many of the tlascalans and some of the spaniards had fallen, and not one but had been wounded. cortes himself had received a second cut on the head, and his horse was so much injured that he was compelled to dismount, and take one from the baggage train, a strong-boned animal, who carried him well through the turmoil of the day. the contest had now lasted several hours. the sun rode high in the heavens, and shed an intolerable fervour over the plain. the christians, weakened by previous sufferings, and faint with loss of blood, began to relax in their desperate exertions. their enemies, constantly supported by fresh relays from the rear, were still in good heart, and, quick to perceive their advantage, pressed with redoubled force on the spaniards. the horse fell back, crowded on the foot; and the latter, in vain seeking a passage amidst the dusky throngs of the enemy, who now closed up the rear, were thrown into some disorder. the tide of battle was setting rapidly against the christians. the fate of the day would soon be decided; and all that now remained for them seemed to be to sell their lives as dearly as possible. at this critical moment, cortes, whose restless eye had been roving round the field in quest of any object that might offer him the means of arresting the coming ruin, rising in his stirrups, descried at a distance, in the midst of the throng, the chief who, from his dress and military cortege, he knew must be the commander of the barbarian forces. he was covered with a rich surcoat of feather-work; and a panache of beautiful plumes, gorgeously set in gold and precious stones, floated above his head. rising above this, and attached to his back, between the shoulders, was a short staff bearing a golden net for a banner,the singular, but customary, symbol of authority for an aztec commander. the cacique, whose name was cihuaca, was borne on a litter, and a body of young warriors, whose gay and ornamented dresses showed them to be the flower of the indian nobles, stood round as a guard of his person and the sacred emblem. the eagle eye of cortes no sooner fell on this personage, than it lighted up with triumph. turning quickly round to the cavaliers at his side, among whom were sandoval, olid, alvarado, and avila, he pointed out the chief, exclaiming, "there is our mark! follow and support me!" then crying his war-cry, and striking his iron heel into his weary steed, he plunged headlong into the thickest of the press. his enemies fell back, taken by surprise and daunted by the ferocity of the attack. those who did not were pierced through with his lance, or borne down by the weight of his charger. the cavaliers followed close in the rear. on they swept, with the fury of a thunderbolt, cleaving the solid ranks asunder, strewing their path with the dying and the dead, and bounding over every obstacle in their way. in a few minutes they were in the presence of the indian commander, and cortes, overturning his supporters, sprung forward with the strength of a lion, and, striking him through with his lance, hurled him to the ground. a young cavalier, juan de salamanca, who had kept close by his general's side, quickly dismounted and despatched the fallen chief. then tearing away his banner, he presented it to cortes, as a trophy to which he had the best claim. it was all the work of a moment. the guard, overpowered by the suddenness of the onset, made little resistance, but, flying, communicated their own panic to their comrades. the tidings of the loss soon spread over the field. the indians, filled with consternation, now thought only of escape. in their blind terror, their numbers augmented their confusion. they trampled on one another, fancying it was the enemy in their rear. the spaniards and tlascalans were not slow to avail themselves of the marvellous change in their affairs. their fatigue, their wounds, hunger, thirst, all were forgotten in the eagerness for vengeance; and they followed up the flying foe, dealing death at every stroke, and taking ample retribution for all they had suffered in the bloody marshes of mexico. long did they pursue, till, the enemy having abandoned the field, they returned sated with slaughter to glean the booty which he had left. it was great, for the ground was covered with the bodies of chiefs, at whom the spaniards, in obedience to the general's instructions, had particularly aimed; and their dresses displayed all the barbaric pomp of ornament, in which the indian warrior delighted. when his men had thus indemnified themselves, in some degree, for their late reverses, cortes called them again under their banners; and, after offering up a grateful acknowledgment to the lord of hosts for their miraculous preservation, they renewed their march across the now deserted valley. the sun was declining in the heavens, but before the shades of evening had gathered around, they reached an indian temple on an eminence, which afforded a strong and commodious position for the night. such was the famous battle of otompan, or otumba, as commonly called, from the spanish corruption of the name. it was fought on the 8th of july, 1520. the whole amount of the indian force is reckoned by castilian writers at two hundred thousand! that of the slain at twenty thousand! those who admit the first part of the estimate will find no difficulty in receiving the last. yet it was, undoubtedly, one of the most remarkable victories ever achieved in the new world. chapter v [1520] arrival in tlascalafriendly receptiondiscontents of the army jealousy of the tlascalansembassy from mexico on the following morning the army broke up its encampment at an early hour. the enemy do not seem to have made an attempt to rally. clouds of skirmishers, however, were seen during the morning, keeping at a respectful distance, though occasionally venturing near enough to salute the spaniards with a volley of missiles. on a rising ground they discovered a fountain, a blessing not too often met with in these arid regions, and gratefully commemorated by the christians, for the refreshment afforded by its cool and abundant waters. a little further on, they descried the rude works which served as the bulwark and boundary of the tlascalan territory. at the sight, the allies sent up a joyous shout of congratulation, in which the spaniards heartily joined, as they felt they were soon to be on friendly and hospitable ground. but these feelings were speedily followed by others of a different nature; and, as they drew nearer the territory, their minds were disturbed with the most painful apprehensions, as to their reception by the people among whom they were bringing desolation and mourning, and who might so easily, if ill-disposed take advantage of their present crippled condition. "thoughts like these," says cortes, "weighed as heavily on my spirit as any which i ever experienced in going to battle with the aztecs." still he put, as usual, a good face on the matter, and encouraged his men to confide in their allies, whose past conduct had afforded every ground for trusting to their fidelity in future. he cautioned them, however, as their own strength was so much impaired, to be most careful to give no umbrage, or ground for jealousy, to their high-spirited allies. "be but on your guard," continued the intrepid general, "and we have still stout hearts and strong hands to carry us through the midst of them!" with these anxious surmises, bidding adieu to the aztec domain, the christian army crossed the frontier, and once more trod the soil of the republic. the first place at which they halted was the town of huejotlipan, a place of about twelve or fifteen thousand inhabitants. they were kindly greeted by the people, who came out to receive them, inviting the troops to their habitations, and administering all the relief of their simple hospitality; yet not so disinterested as to prevent their expecting a share of the plunder. here the weary forces remained two or three days, when the news of their arrival having reached the capital, not more than four or five leagues distant, the old chief, maxixca, their efficient friend on their former visit, and xicontencatl, the young warrior who, it will be remembered, had commanded the troops of his nation in their bloody encounters with the spaniards, came with a numerous concourse of the citizens to welcome the fugitives to tlascala. maxixca, cordially embracing the spanish commander, testified the deepest sympathy for his misfortunes. that the white men could so long have withstood the confederated power of the aztecs was proof enough of their marvellous prowess. "we have made common cause together," said the lord of tlascala,"and we have common injuries to avenge; and, come weal or come woe, be assured we will prove true and loyal friends, and stand by you to the death." this cordial assurance and sympathy, from one who exercised a control over the public counsels beyond any other ruler, effectually dispelled the doubts that lingered in the mind of cortes. he readily accepted his invitation to continue his march at once to the capital, where he would find so much better accommodation for his army, than in a small town on the frontier. the sick and wounded, placed in hammocks, were borne on the shoulders of the friendly natives; and, as the troops drew near the city, the inhabitants came flocking out in crowds to meet them, rending the air with joyous acclamations and wild bursts of their rude indian minstrelsy. amidst the general jubilee, however, were heard sounds of wailing and sad lament, as some unhappy relative or friend, looking earnestly into the diminished files of their countrymen, sought in vain for some dear and familiar countenance, and, as they turned disappointed away, gave utterance to their sorrow in tones that touched the heart of every soldier in the army. with these mingled accompaniments of joy and woe,the motley web of human life,the way-worn columns of cortes at length re-entered the republican capital. the general and his suite were lodged in the rude, but spacious, palace of maxixca. the rest of the army took up their quarters in the district over which the tlascalan lord presided. here they continued several weeks, until, by the attentions of the hospitable citizens, and such medical treatment as their humble science could supply, the wounds of the soldiers were healed, and they recovered from the debility to which they had been reduced by their long and unparalleled sufferings. cortes was one of those who suffered severely. he lost the use of two of the fingers of his left hand. he had received, besides, two injuries on the head; one of which was so much exasperated by his subsequent fatigues and excitement of mind, that it assumed an alarming appearance. a part of the bone was obliged to be removed. a fever ensued, and for several days the hero, who had braved danger and death in their most terrible forms, lay stretched on his bed, as helpless as an infant. his excellent constitution, however, got the better of disease, and he was, at length, once more enabled to resume his customary activity.the spaniards, with politic generosity, requited the hospitality of their hosts by sharing with them the spoils of their recent victory; and cortes especially rejoiced the heart of maxixca, by presenting him with the military trophy which he had won from the indian commander. but while the spaniards were thus recruiting their health and spirits under the friendly treatment of their allies, and recovering the confidence and tranquillity of mind which had sunk under their hard reverses, they received tidings, from time to time, which showed that their late disaster had not been confined to the mexican capital. on his descent from mexico to encounter narvaez, cortes had brought with him a quantity of gold, which he left for safe keeping at tlascala. to this was added a considerable sum collected by the unfortunate velasquez de leon, in his expedition to the coast, as well as contributions from other sources. from the unquiet state of the capital, the general thought it best, on his return there, still to leave the treasure under the care of a number of invalid soldiers, who, when in marching condition, were to rejoin him in mexico. a party from vera cruz, consisting of five horsemen and forty foot, had since arrived at tlascala, and, taking charge of the invalids and treasure, undertook to escort them to the capital. he now learned they had been intercepted on the route, and all cut off, with the entire loss of the treasure. twelve other soldiers, marching in the same direction, had been massacred in the neighbouring province of tepeaca; and accounts continually arrived of some unfortunate castilian, who, presuming the respect hitherto shown to his countrymen, and ignorant of the disasters in the capital, had fallen a victim to the fury of the enemy. these dismal tidings filled the mind of cortes with gloomy apprehensions for the fate of the settlement at villa rica,the last of their hopes. he despatched a trusty messenger, at once, to that place; and had the inexpressible satisfaction to receive a letter in return from the commander of the garrison, acquainting him with the safety of the colony, and its friendly relations with the neighbouring totonacs. it was the best guarantee of the fidelity of the latter, that they had offended the mexicans too deeply to be forgiven. while the affairs of cortes wore so gloomy an aspect without, he had to experience an annoyance scarcely less serious from the discontents of his followers. many of them had fancied that their late appalling reverses would put an end to the expedition; or, at least, postpone all thoughts of resuming it for the present. but they knew little of cortes who reasoned thus. even while tossing on his bed of sickness, he was ripening in his mind fresh schemes for retrieving his honour, and for recovering the empire which had been lost more by another's rashness than his own. this was apparent, as he became convalescent, from the new regulations he made respecting the army, as well as from the orders sent to vera cruz for fresh reinforcements. the knowledge of all this occasioned much disquietude to the disaffected soldiers. they were, for the most part, the ancient followers of narvaez, on whom, as we have seen, the brunt of war had fallen the heaviest. many of them possessed property in the islands, and had embarked on this expedition chiefly from the desire of increasing it. but they had gathered neither gold nor glory in mexico. their present service filled them only with disgust; and the few, comparatively, who had been so fortunate as to survive, languished to return to their rich mines and pleasant farms in cuba, bitterly cursing the day when they had left them. finding their complaints little heeded by the general, they prepared a written remonstrance, in which they made their demand more formally. they represented the rashness of persisting in the enterprise in his present impoverished state, without arms or ammunition, almost without men; and this too, against a powerful enemy, who had been more than a match for him, with all the strength of his late resources. it was madness to think of it. the attempt would bring them all to the sacrifice-block. their only course was to continue their march to vera cruz. every hour of delay might be fatal. the garrison in that place might be overwhelmed from want of strength to defend itself; and thus their last hope would be annihilated. but, once there, they might wait in comparative security for such reinforcements as would join them from abroad; while, in case of failure, they could the more easily make their escape. they concluded with insisting on being permitted to return, at once, to the port of villa rica. this petition, or rather remonstrance, was signed by all the disaffected soldiers, and, after being formally attested by the royal notary, was presented to cortes. it was a trying circumstance for him. what touched him most nearly was, to find the name of his friend, the secretary duero, to whose good offices he had chiefly owed his command, at the head of the paper. he was not, however, to be shaken from his purpose for a moment; and while all outward resources seemed to be fading away, and his own friends faltered or failed him, he was still true to himself. he knew that to retreat to vera cruz would be to abandon the enterprise. once there, his army would soon find a pretext and a way for breaking up, and returning to the islands. all his ambitious schemes would be blasted. the great prize, already once in his grasp, would then be lost for ever. he would be a ruined man. in his celebrated letter to charles the fifth, he says, that, in reflecting on his position, he felt the truth of the old adage, "that fortune favours the brave. the spaniards were the followers of the cross; and, trusting in the infinite goodness and mercy of god, he could not believe that he would suffer them and his own good cause thus to perish among the heathen. he was resolved, therefore, not to descend to the coast, but at all hazards to retrace his steps and beard the enemy again in his capital." it was in the same resolute tone that he answered his discontented followers. he urged every argument which could touch their pride or honour as cavaliers. he appealed to that ancient castilian valour which had never been known to falter before an enemy; besought them not to discredit the great deeds which had made their name ring throughout europe; not to leave the emprise half achieved, for others more daring and adventurous to finish. how could they with any honour, he asked, desert their allies whom they had involved in the war, and leave them unprotected to the vengeance of the aztecs? to retreat but a single step towards villa rica would be to proclaim their own weakness. it would dishearten their friends, and give confidence to their foes. he implored them to resume the confidence in him which they had ever shown, and to reflect that, if they had recently met with reverses, he had up to that point accomplished all, and more than all, that he had promised. it would be easy now to retrieve their losses, if they would have patience, and abide in this friendly land until the reinforcements, which would be ready to come in at his call, should enable them to act on the offensive. if, however, there were any so insensible to the motives which touch a brave man's heart, as to prefer ease at home to the glory of this great achievement, he would not stand in their way. let them go in god's name. let them leave their general in his extremity. he should feel stronger in the service of a few brave spirits, than if surrounded by a host of the false or the faint-hearted. the disaffected party, as already noticed, was chiefly drawn from the troops of narvaez. when the general's own veterans heard this appeal, their blood warmed with indignation at the thoughts of abandoning him or the cause at such a crisis. they pledged themselves to stand by him to the last; and the malcontents silenced, if not convinced, by this generous expression of sentiment from their comrades, consented to postpone their departure for the present, under the assurance, that no obstacle should be thrown in their way, when a more favourable season should present itself. scarcely was this difficulty adjusted, when cortes was menaced with one more serious, in the jealousy springing up between his soldiers and their indian allies. notwithstanding the demonstrations of regard by maxixca and his immediate followers, there were others of the nation who looked with an evil eye on their guests, for the calamities in which they had involved them; and they tauntingly asked, if, in addition to this, they were now to be burdened by the presence and maintenance of the strangers? the sallies of discontent were not so secret as altogether to escape the ears of the spaniards, in whom they occasioned no little disquietude. they proceeded, for the most part, it is true, from persons of little consideration, since the four great chiefs of the republic appear to have been steadily secured to the interests of cortes. but they derived some importance from the countenance of the warlike xicotencatl, in whose bosom still lingered the embers of that implacable hostility which he had displayed so courageously on the field of battle; and sparkles of this fiery temper occasionally gleamed forth in the intimate intercourse into which he was now reluctantly brought with his ancient opponents. cortes, who saw with alarm the growing feelings of estrangement, which must sap the very foundations on which he was to rest the lever for future operations, employed every argument which suggested itself to restore the confidence of his own men. he reminded them of the good services they had uniformly received from the great body of the nation. they had a sufficient pledge of the future constancy of the tlascalans in their long cherished hatred of the aztecs, which the recent disasters they had suffered from the same quarter could serve only to sharpen. and he urged with much force, that, if any evil designs had been meditated by them against the spaniards, the tlascalans would doubtless have taken advantage of their late disabled condition, and not waited till they had recovered their strength and means of resistance. while cortes was thus endeavouring, with somewhat doubtful success, to stifle his own apprehensions, as well as those in the bosoms of his followers, an event occurred which happily brought the affair to an issue, and permanently settled the relations in which the two parties were to stand to each other. this will make it necessary to notice some events which had occurred in mexico since the expulsion of the spaniards. on montezuma's death, his brother cuitlahua, lord of iztapalapan, conformably to the usage regulating the descent of the aztec crown, was chosen to succeed him. he was an active prince, of large experience in military affairs, and, by the strength of his character, was well fitted to sustain the tottering fortunes of the monarchy. he appears, morever, to have been a man of liberal, and what may be called enlightened taste, to judge from the beautiful gardens which he had filled with rare exotics, and which so much attracted the admiration of the spaniards in his city of iztapalapan. unlike his predecessor, he held the white men in detestation; and had probably the satisfaction of celebrating his own coronation by the sacrifice of many of them. from the moment of his release from the spanish quarters, were he had been detained by cortes, he entered into the patriotic movements of his people. it was he who conducted the assaults both in the streets of the city, and on the "melancholy night"; and it was at his instigation that the powerful force had been assembled to dispute the passage of the spaniards in the vale of otumba. since the evacuation of the capital, he had been busily occupied in repairing the mischief it had received,restoring the buildings and the bridges, and putting it in the best posture of defence. he had endeavoured to improve the discipline and arms of his troops. he introduced the long spear among them, and, by attaching the swordblades taken from the christians to long poles, contrived a weapon that should be formidable against cavalry. he summoned his vassals, far and near, to hold themselves in readiness to march to the relief of the capital, if necessary, and, the better to secure their good will, relieved them from some of the burdens usually laid on them. but he was now to experience the instability of a government which rested not on love, but on fear. the vassals in the neighbourhood of the valley remained true to their allegiance; but others held themselves aloof, uncertain what course to adopt; while others, again, in the more distant provinces, refused obedience altogether, considering this a favourable moment for throwing off the yoke which had so long galled them. in this emergency, the government sent a deputation to its ancient enemies, the tlascalans. it consisted of six aztec nobles, bearing a present of cotton cloth, salt, and other articles, rarely seen, of late years, in the republic. the lords of the state, astonished at this unprecedented act of condescension in their ancient foe, called the council or senate of the great chiefs together, to give the envoys audience. before this body, the aztecs stated the purpose of their mission. they invited the tlascalans to bury all past grievances in oblivion, and to enter into a treaty with them. all the nations of anahuac should make common cause in defence of their country against the white men. the tlascalans would bring down on their own heads the wrath of the gods, if they longer harboured the strangers who had violated and destroyed their temples. if they counted on the support and friendship of their guests, let them take warning from the fate of mexico, which had received them kindly within its walls and which, in return, they had filled with blood and ashes. they conjured them, by their reverence for their common religion, not to suffer the white men, disabled as they now were, to escape from their hands, but to sacrifice them at once to the gods, whose temples they had profaned. in that event, they proffered them their alliance, and the renewal of that friendly traffic which would restore to the republic the possession of the comforts and luxuries of which it had been so long deprived. the proposals of the ambassadors produced different effects on their audience. xicotencatl was for embracing them at once. far better was it, he said, to unite with their kindred, with those who held their own language, their faith and usages, than to throw themselves into the arms of the fierce strangers, who, however they might talk of religion, worshipped no god but gold. this opinion was followed by that of the younger warriors, who readily caught the fire of his enthusiasm. but the elder chiefs, especially his blind old father, one of the four rulers of the state, who seem to have been all heartily in the interests of the spaniards, and one of them, maxixca, their staunch friend, strongly expressed their aversion to the proposed alliance with the aztecs. they were always the same, said the latter,fair in speech, and false in heart. they now proffered friendship to the tlascalans. but it was fear which drove them to it, and, when that fear was removed, they would return to their old hostility. who was it, but these insidious foes, that had so long deprived the country of the very necessaries of life, of which they were now so lavish in their offers? was it not owing to the white men that the nation at length possessed them? yet they were called on to sacrifice the white men to the gods!the warriors who, after fighting the battles of the tlascalans, now threw themselves on their hospitality. but the gods abhorred perfidy. and were not their guests the very beings whose coming had been so long predicted by the oracles? let us avail ourselves of it, he concluded, and unite and make common cause with them, until we have humbled our haughty enemy. this discourse provoked a sharp rejoinder from xicotencatl, tin the passion of the elder chieftain got the better of his patience, and, substituting force for argument, he thrust his younger antagonist with some violence from the council chamber. a proceeding so contrary to the usual decorum of indian debate astonished the assembly. but, far from bringing censure on its author, it effectually silenced opposition. even the hot-headed followers of xicotencatl shrunk from supporting a leader who had incurred such a mark of contemptuous displeasure from the ruler whom they most venerated. his own father openly condemned him; and the patriotic young warrior, gifted with a truer foresight into futurity than his countrymen, was left without support in the council, as he had formerly been on the field of battle.the proffered alliance of the mexicans was unanimously rejected; and the envoys, fearing that even the sacred character with which they were invested might not protect them from violence, made their escape secretly from the capital. the result of the conference was of the last importance to the spaniards, who, in their present crippled condition, especially if taken unawares, would have been, probably, at the mercy of the tlascalans. at all events, the union of these latter with the aztecs would have settled the fate of the expedition; since, in the poverty of his own resources, it was only by adroitly playing off one part of the indian population against the other, that cortes could ultimately hope for success. chapter vi [1520] war with the surrounding tribessuccesses of the spaniards death of maxixcaarrival of reinforcements return in triumph to tlascala the spanish commander, reassured by the result of the deliberations in the tlascalan senate, now resolved on active operations, as the best means of dissipating the spirit of faction and discontent inevitably fostered by a life of idleness. he proposed to exercise his troops, at first, against some of the neighbouring tribes who had laid violent hands on such of the spaniards as, confiding in their friendly spirit, had passed through their territories. among these were the tepeacans, a people often engaged in hostility with the tlascalans, and who, as mentioned in a preceding chapter, had lately massacred twelve spaniards in their march to the capital. an expedition against them would receive the ready support of his allies, and would assert the dignity of the spanish name, much dimmed in the estimation of the natives by the late disasters. the tepeacans were a powerful tribe of the same primitive stock as the aztecs, to whom they acknowledged allegiance. they had transferred this to the spaniards, on their first march into the country, intimidated by the bloody defeats of their tlascalan neighbours. but, since the troubles in the capital, they had again submitted to the aztec sceptre. their capital, now a petty village, was a flourishing city at the time of the conquest, situated in the fruitful plains that stretch far away towards the base of orizaba. the province contained, moreover, several towns of considerable size, filled with a bold and warlike population. as these indians had once acknowledged the authority of castile, cortes and his officers regarded their present conduct in the light of rebellion, and, in a council of war, it was decided that those engaged in the late massacre had fairly incurred the doom of slavery. before proceeding against them, however, the general sent a summons requiring their submission, and offering full pardon for the past, but, in case of refusal, menacing them with the severest retribution. to this the indians, now in arms, returned a contemptuous answer, challenging the spaniards to meet them in fight, as they were in want of victims for their sacrifices. cortes, without further delay, put himself at the head of his small corps of spaniards, and a large reinforcement of tlascalan warriors. they were led by the young xicotencatl, who now appeared willing to bury his recent animosity, and desirous to take a lesson in war under the chief who had so often foiled him in the field. the tepeacans received their enemy on their borders. a bloody battle followed, in which the spanish horse were somewhat embarrassed by the tall maize that covered part of the plain. they were successful in the end, and the tepeacans, after holding their ground like good warriors, were at length routed with great slaughter. a second engagement, which took place a few days after, was followed by like decisive results; and the victorious spaniards with their allies, marching straightway on the city of tepeaca, entered it in triumph. no further resistance was attempted by the enemy, and the whole province, to avoid further calamities, eagerly tendered its submission. cortes, however, inflicted the meditated chastisement on the places implicated in the massacre. the inhabitants were branded with a hot iron as slaves, and, after the royal fifth had been reserved, were distributed between his own men and the allies. the spaniards were familiar with the system of repartimientos established in the islands; but this was the first example of slavery in new spain. it was justified, in the opinion of the general and his military casuists, by the aggravated offences of the party. the sentence, however, was not countenanced by the crown, which, as the colonial legislation abundantly shows, was ever at issue with the craving and mercenary spirit of the colonist. satisfied with this display of his vengeance, cortes now established his head-quarters at tepeaca, which, situated in a cultivated country, afforded easy means for maintaining an army, while its position on the mexican frontier made it a good point d'appui for future operations. the aztec government, since it had learned the issue of its negotiations at tlascala, had been diligent in fortifying its frontier in that quarter. the garrisons usually maintained there were strengthened, and large bodies of men were marched in the same direction, with orders to occupy the strong positions on the borders. the conduct of these troops was in their usual style of arrogance and extortion, and greatly disgusted the inhabitants of the country. among the places thus garrisoned by the aztecs was quauhquechollan a city containing thirty thousand inhabitants, according to the historians, and lying to the south-west twelve leagues or more from the spanish quarters. it stood at the extremity of a deep valley, resting against a bold range of hills, or rather mountains, and flanked by two rivers with exceedingly high and precipitous banks. the only avenue by which the town could be easily approached, was protected by a stone wall more than twenty feet high, and of great thickness. into this place, thus strongly defended by art as well as by nature, the aztec emperor had thrown a garrison of several thousand warriors, while a much more formidable force occupied the heights commanding the city. the cacique of this strong post, impatient of the mexican yoke, sent to cortes, inviting him to march to his relief, and promising a co-operation of the citizens in an assault on the aztec quarters. the general eagerly embraced the proposal, and arranged with the cacique that, on the appearance of the spaniards, the inhabitants should rise on the garrison. everything succeeded as he had planned. no sooner had the christian battalions defiled on the plain before the town, than the inhabitants attacked the garrison with the utmost fury. the latter, abandoning the outer defences of the place, retreated to their own quarters in the principal teocalli, where they maintained a hard struggle with their adversaries. in the heat of it, cortes, at the head of his little body of horse, rode into the place, and directed the assault in person. the aztecs made a fierce defence. but fresh troops constantly arriving to support the assailants, the works were stormed, and every one of the garrison was put to the sword. the mexican forces, meanwhile, stationed on the neighbouring eminences, had marched down to the support of their countrymen in the town, and formed in order of battle in the suburbs, where they were encountered by the tlascalan levies. "they mustered," says cortes, speaking of the enemy, "at least thirty thousand men, and it was a brave sight for the eye to look on,such a beautiful array of warriors glistening with gold and jewels and variegated feather-work!" the action was well contested between the two indian armies. the suburbs were set on fire, and, in the midst of the flames, cortes and his squadrons, rushing on the enemy, at length broke their array, and compelled them to fall back in disorder into the narrow gorge of the mountain, from which they had lately descended. the pass was rough and precipitous. spaniards and tlascalans followed close in the rear, and the light troops, scaling the high wall of the valley, poured down on the enemy's flanks. the heat was intense, and both parties were so much exhausted by their efforts, that it was with difficulty, says the chronicler, that the one could pursue, or the other fly. they were not too weary, however, to slay. the mexicans were routed with terrible slaughter. they found no pity from their indian foes, who had a long account of injuries to settle with them. some few sought refuge by flying higher up into the fastnesses of the sierra. they were followed by their indefatigable enemy, until, on the bald summit of the ridge, they reached the mexican encampment. it covered a wide tract of ground. various utensils, ornamented dresses, and articles of luxury, were scattered round, and the number of slaves in attendance showed the barbaric pomp with which the nobles of mexico went to their campaigns. it was a rich booty for the victors, who spread over the deserted camp, and loaded themselves with the spoil, until the gathering darkness warned them to descend. cortes followed up the blow by assaulting the strong town of itzocan, held also by a mexican garrison, and situated in the depths of a green valley watered by artificial canals, and smiling in all the rich abundance of this fruitful region of the plateau. the place, though stoutly defended, was stormed and carried; the aztecs were driven across a river which ran below the town, and, although the light bridges that traversed it were broken down in the flight, whether by design or accident, the spaniards, fording and swimming the stream as they could, found their way to the opposite bank, following up the chase with the eagerness of bloodhounds. here, too, the booty was great; and the indian auxiliaries flocked by thousands to the banners of the chief who so surely led them on to victory and plunder. soon afterwards, cortes returned to his head-quarters at tepeaca. thence he detached his officers on expeditions which were usually successful. sandoval, in particular, marched against a large body of the enemy lying between the camp and vera cruz; defeated them in two decisive battles, and thus restored the communications with the port. the result of these operations was the reduction of that populous and cultivated territory which lies between the great volcan, on the west, and the mighty skirts of orizaba, on the east. many places, also, in the neighbouring province of mixtecapan, acknowledged the authority of the spaniards, and others from the remote region of oaxaca sent to claim their protection. the conduct of cortes towards his allies had gained him great credit for disinterestedness and equity. the indian cities in the adjacent territory appealed to him, as their umpire, in their differences with one another, and cases of disputed succession in their governments were referred to his arbitration. by his discreet and moderate policy, he insensibly acquired an ascendency over their counsels, which had been denied to the ferocious aztec. his authority extended wider and wider every day; and a new empire grew up in the very heart of the land, forming a counterpoise to the colossal power which had so long overshadowed it. cortes now felt himself strong enough to put in execution the plans for recovering the capital, over which he had been brooding ever since the hour of his expulsion. he had greatly undervalued the resources of the aztec monarchy. he was now aware, from bitter experience, that, to vanquish it, his own forces, and all he could hope to muster, would be incompetent, without a very extensive support from the indians themselves. a large army, would, moreover, require large supplies for its maintenance, and these could not be regularly obtained, during a protracted siege, without the friendly co-operation of the natives. on such support he might now safely calculate from tlascala, and the other indian territories, whose warriors were so eager to serve under his banners. his past acquaintance with them had instructed him in their national character and system of war; while the natives who had fought under his command, if they had caught little of the spanish tactics, had learned to act in concert with the white men, and to obey him implicitly as their commander. this was a considerable improvement in such wild and disorderly levies, and greatly augmented the strength derived from numbers. experience showed, that in a future conflict with the capital it would not do to trust to the causeways, but that to succeed, he must command the lake. he proposed, therefore, to build a number of vessels, like those constructed under his orders in montezuma's time, and afterwards destroyed by the inhabitants. for this he had still the services of the same experienced ship-builder, martin lopez, who, as we have seen, had fortunately escaped the slaughter of the "melancholy night." cortes now sent this man to tlascala, with orders to build thirteen brigantines, which might be taken to pieces and carried on the shoulders of the indians to be launched on the waters of lake tezcuco. the sails, rigging, and iron-work, were to be brought from vera cruz, where they had been stored since their removal from the dismantled ships. it was a bold conception, that of constructing a fleet to be transported across forest and mountain before it was launched on its destined waters! but it suited the daring genius of cortes, who, with the co-operation of his staunch tlascalan confederates, did not doubt his ability to carry it into execution. it was with no little regret, that the general learned at this time the death of his good friend maxixca, the old lord of tlascala, who had stood by him so steadily in the hour of adversity. he had fallen a victim to that terrible epidemic, the small-pox, which was now sweeping over the land like fire over the prairies, smiting down prince and peasant, and adding another to the long train of woes that followed the march of the white men. it was imported into the country, it is said, by a negro slave, in the fleet of narvaez. it first broke out in cempoalla. the poor natives, ignorant of the best mode of treating the loathsome disorder, sought relief in their usual practice of bathing in cold water, which greatly aggravated their trouble. from cempoalla it spread rapidly over the neighbouring country, and, penetrating through tlascala, reached the aztec capital, where montezuma's successor, cuitlahua, fell one of its first victims. thence it swept down towards the borders of the pacific, leaving its path strewn with the dead bodies of the natives, who, in the strong language of a contemporary, perished in heaps like cattle stricken with the murrain. it does not seem to have been fatal to the spaniards, many of whom, probably, had already had the disorder. the death of maxixca was deeply regretted by the troops, who lost in him a true and most efficient ally. with his last breath, he commended them to his son and successor, as the great beings whose coming into the country had been so long predicted by the oracles. he expressed a desire to die in the profession of the christian faith. cortes no sooner learned his condition than he despatched father olmedo to tlascala. the friar found that maxixca had already caused a crucifix to be placed before his sick couch, as the object of his adoration. after explaining, as intelligibly as he could, the truths of revelation, he baptised the dying chieftain; and the spaniards had the satisfaction to believe that the soul of their benefactor was exempted from the doom of eternal perdition that hung over the unfortunate indian who perished in his unbelief. their late brilliant successes seem to have reconciled most of the disaffected soldiers to the prosecution of the war. there were still a few among them, the secretary duero, bermudez the treasurer, and others high in office, or wealthy hidalgos, who looked with disgust on another campaign, and now loudly reiterated their demand of a free passage to cuba. to this cortes, satisfied with the support on which he could safely count, made no further objection. having once given his consent, he did all in his power to facilitate their departure, and provide for their comfort. he ordered the best ship at vera cruz to be placed at their disposal, to be well supplied with provisions and everything necessary for the voyage, and sent alvarado to the coast to superintend the embarkation. he took the most courteous leave of them, with assurances of his own unalterable regard. but, as the event proved, those who could part from him at this crisis had little sympathy with his fortunes; and we find duero not long afterwards in spain, supporting the claims of velasquez before the emperor, in opposition to those of his former friend and commander. the loss of these few men was amply compensated by the arrival of others, whom fortune most unexpectedly threw in his way. the first of these came in a small vessel sent from cuba by the governor, velasquez, with stores for the colony at vera cruz. he was not aware of the late transactions in the country, and of the discomfiture of his officer. in the vessel came despatches, it is said, from fonseca, bishop of burgos, instructing narvaez to send cortes, if he had not already done so, for trial to spain. the alcalde of vera cruz, agreeably to the general's instructions, allowed the captain of the bark to land, who had no doubt that the country was in the hands of narvaez. he was undeceived by being seized, together with his men, so soon as they had set foot on shore. the vessel was then secured; and the commander and his crew, finding out their error, were persuaded without much difficulty to join their countrymen in tlascala. a second vessel, sent soon after by velasquez, shared the same fate, and those on board consented also to take their chance in the expedition under cortes. about the same time, garay, the governor of jamaica, fitted out three ships with an armed force to plant a colony on the panuco, a river which pours into the gulf a few degrees north of villa rica. garay persisted in establishing this settlement, in contempt of the claims of cortes, who had already entered into a friendly communication with the inhabitants of that region. but the crews experienced such a rough reception from the natives on landing, and lost so many men, that they were glad to take to their vessels again. one of these foundered in a storm. the others put into the port of vera cruz to restore the men, much weakened by hunger and disease. here they were kindly received, their wants supplied, their wounds healed; when they were induced, by the liberal promises of cortes, to abandon the disastrous service of their employer, and enlist under his own prosperous banner. the reinforcements obtained from these sources amounted to full a hundred and fifty men, well provided with arms and ammunition, together with twenty horses. by this strange concurrence of circumstances, cortes saw himself in possession of the supplies he most needed; that, too, from the hands of his enemies, whose costly preparations were thus turned to the benefit of the very man whom they were designed to ruin. his good fortune did not stop here. a ship from the canaries touched at cuba, freighted with arms and military stores for the adventurers in the new world. their commander heard there of the recent discoveries in mexico, and, thinking it would afford a favourable market for him, directed his course to vera cruz. he was not mistaken. the alcalde, by the general's orders, purchased both ship and cargo; and the crews, catching the spirit of adventure, followed their countrymen into the interior. there seemed to be a magic in the name of cortes, which drew all who came within hearing of it under his standard. having now completed the arrangements for settling his new conquests, there seemed to be no further reason for postponing his departure to tlascala. he was first solicited by the citizens of tepeaca to leave a garrison with them, to protect them from the vengeance of the aztecs. cortes acceded to the request, and, considering the central position of the town favourable for maintaining his conquests, resolved to plant a colony there. for this object he selected sixty of his soldiers, most of whom were disabled by wounds or infirmity. he appointed the alcaldes, regidores, and other functionaries of a civic magistracy. the place be called segura de la frontera or security of the frontier. it received valuable privileges as a city, a few years later, from the emperor charles the fifth; and rose to some consideration in the age of the conquest. but its consequence soon after declined. even its castilian name, with the same caprice which has decided the fate of more than one name in our own country, was gradually supplanted by its ancient one, and the little village of tepeaca is all that now commemorates the once flourishing indian capital, and the second spanish colony in mexico. while at segura, cortes wrote that celebrated letter to the emperor,the second in the series,so often cited in the preceding pages. it takes up the narrative with the departure from vera cruz, and exhibits in a brief and comprehensive form the occurrences up to the time at which we are now arrived. in the concluding page, the general, after noticing the embarrassments under which he labours, says, in his usual manly spirit, that he holds danger and fatigue light in comparison with the attainment of his object; and that he is confident a short time will restore the spaniards to their former position, and repair all their losses. he notices the resemblance of mexico, in many of its features and productions, to the mother country, and requests that it may henceforth be called, "new spain of the ocean sea." he finally requests that a commission may be sent out at once, to investigate his conduct, and to verify the accuracy of his statements. this letter, which was printed at seville the year after its reception, has been since reprinted and translated more than once. it excited a great sensation at the court, and among the friends of science generally. the previous discoveries of the new world had disappointed the expectations which had been formed after. the solution of the grand problem of its existence. they had brought to light only rude tribes, which, however gentle and inoffensive in their manners, were still in the primitive stages of barbarism. here was an authentic account of a vast nation, potent and populous, exhibiting an elaborate social polity, well advanced in the arts of civilisation, occupying a soil that teemed with mineral treasures and with a boundless variety of vegetable products, stores of wealth, both natural and artificial, that seemed, for the first time, to realise the golden dreams in which the great discoverer of the new world had so fondly, and in his own day so fallaciously, indulged. well might the scholar of that age exult in the revelation of these wonders, which so many had long, but in vain, desired to see. with this letter went another to the emperor, signed, as it would seem, by nearly every officer and soldier in the camp. it expatiated on the obstacles thrown in the way of the expedition by velasquez and narvaez, and the great prejudice this had caused to the royal interests. it then set forth the services of cortes, and besought the emperor to confirm him in his authority, and not to allow any interference with one who, from his personal character, his intimate knowledge of the land and its people, and the attachment of his soldiers, was the man best qualified in all the world to achieve the conquest of the country. it added not a little to the perplexities of cortes, that he was still in entire ignorance of the light in which his conduct was regarded in spain. he had not even heard whether his despatches, sent the year preceding from vera cruz, had been received. mexico was as far removed from all intercourse with the civilised world, as if it had been placed at the antipodes. few vessels had entered, and none had been allowed to leave its ports. the governor of cuba, an island distant but a few days' sail, was yet ignorant, as we have seen, of the fate of his armament. on the arrival of every new vessel or fleet on these shores, cortes might well doubt whether it brought aid to his undertaking, or a royal commission to supersede him. his sanguine spirit relied on the former; though the latter was much the more probable, considering the intimacy of his enemy, the governor, with bishop fonseca. it was the policy of cortes, therefore, to lose no time; to push forward his preparations, lest another should be permitted to snatch the laurel now almost within his grasp. could he but reduce the aztec capital, he felt that he should be safe; and that, in whatever light his irregular proceedings might now be viewed, his services in that event would far more than counterbalance them in the eyes both of the crown and of the country. the general wrote, also, to the royal audience at st. domingo, in order to interest them in his cause. he sent four vessels to the same island, to obtain a further supply of arms and ammunition; and, the better to stimulate the cupidity of adventurers, and allure them to the expedition, he added specimens of the beautiful fabrics of the country, and of its precious metals. the funds for procuring these important supplies were probably derived from the plunder gathered in the late battles, and the gold which, as already remarked, had been saved from the general wreck by the castilian convoy. it was the middle of december, when cortes, having completed all his arrangements, set out on his return to tlascala, ten or twelve leagues distant. he marched in the van of the army, and took the way of cholula. how different was his condition from that in which he had left the republican capital not five months before! his march was a triumphal procession, displaying the various banners and military ensigns taken from the enemy, long files of captives, and all the rich spoils of conquest gleaned from many a hard-fought field. as the army passed through the towns and villages, the inhabitants poured out to greet them, and, as they drew near to tlascala, the whole population, men, women, and children, came forth celebrating their return with songs, dancing, and music. arches decorated with flowers were thrown across the streets through which they passed, and a tlascalan orator addressed the general, on his entrance into the city, in a lofty panegyric on his late achievements, proclaiming him the "avenger of the nation." amidst this pomp and triumphal show, cortes and his principal officers were seen clad in deep mourning in honour of their friend maxixca. and this tribute of respect to the memory of their venerated ruler touched the tlascalans more sensibly than all the proud display of military trophies. the general's first act was to confirm the son of his deceased friend in the succession, which had been contested by an illegitimate brother. the youth was but twelve years of age; and cortes prevailed on him without difficulty to follow his father's example, and receive baptism. he afterwards knighted him with his own hand; the first instance, probably, of the order of chivalry being conferred on an american indian. the elder xicotencatl was also persuaded to embrace christianity; and the example of their rulers had its obvious effect in preparing the minds of the people for the reception of the truth. cortes, whether from the suggestions of olmedo, or from the engrossing nature of his own affairs, did not press the work of conversion further at this time, but wisely left the good seed, already sown, to ripen in secret, till time should bring forth the harvest. the spanish commander, during his short stay in tlascala, urged forward the preparations for the campaign. he endeavoured to drill the tlascalans, and give them some idea of european discipline and tactics. he caused new arms to be made, and the old ones to be put in order. powder was manufactured with the aid of sulphur obtained by some adventurous cavaliers from the smoking throat of popocatepetl. the construction of the brigantines went forward prosperously under the direction of lopez, with the aid of the tlascalans. timber was cut in the forests, and pitch, an article unknown to the indians, was obtained from the pines on the neighbouring sierra de malinche. the rigging and other appurtenances were transported by the indian tamanes from villa rica; and by christmas, the work was so far advanced, that it was no longer necessary for cortes to delay the march to mexico. chapter vii [1520] guatemozin, new emperor of the aztecspreparations for the march military codespaniards cross the sierraenter tezcuco prince ixtlilxochitl while the events related in the preceding chapter were passing, an important change had taken place in the aztec monarchy. montezuma's brother and successor, cuitlahua, had suddenly died of the small-pox after a brief reign of four months,brief, but glorious, for it had witnessed the overthrow of the spaniards and their expulsion from mexico. on the death of their warlike chief, the electors were convened, as usual, to supply the vacant throne. it was an office of great responsibility in the dark hour of their fortunes. the choice fell on quauhtemotzin, or guatemozin, as euphoniously corrupted by the spaniards. he was nephew to the two last monarchs, and married his cousin, the beautiful princess tecuichpo, montezuma's daughter. "he was not more than twenty-five years old, and elegant in his person for an indian," says one who had seen him often; "valiant, and so terrible, that his followers trembled in his presence." he did not shrink from the perilous post that was offered to him; and, as he saw the tempest gathering darkly around, he prepared to meet it like a man. though young, he had ample experience in military matters, and had distinguished himself above all others in the bloody conflicts of the capital. by means of his spies, guatemozin made himself acquainted with the movements of the spaniards, and their design to besiege the capital. he prepared for it by sending away the useless part of the population, while he called in his potent vassals from the neighbourhood. he continued the plans of his predecessor for strengthening the defences of the city, reviewed his troops, and stimulated them by prizes to excel in their exercises. he made harangues to his soldiers to rouse them to a spirit of desperate resistance. he encouraged his vassals throughout the empire to attack the white men wherever they were to be met with, setting a price on their heads, as well as the persons of all who should be brought alive to him in mexico. and it was no uncommon thing for the spaniards to find hanging up in the temples of the conquered places the arms and accoutrements of their unfortunate countrymen who had been seized and sent to the capital for sacrifice. such was the young monarch who was now called to the tottering throne of the aztecs; worthy, by his bold and magnanimous nature, to sway the sceptre of his country, in the most flourishing period of her renown; and now, in her distress, devoting himself in the true spirit of a patriotic prince to uphold her falling fortunes, or bravely perish with them. we must now return to the spaniards in tlascala, where we left them preparing to resume their march on mexico. their commander had the satisfaction to see his troops tolerably complete in their appointments; varying, indeed, according to the condition of the different reinforcements which had arrived from time to time; but on the whole, superior to those of the army with which he had first invaded the country. his whole force fell little short of six hundred men; forty of whom were cavalry, together with eighty arquebusiers and crossbowmen. the rest were armed with sword and target, and with the copper-headed pike of chinantla. he had nine cannon of a moderate calibre, and was indifferently supplied with powder. as his forces were drawn up in order of march, cortes rode through the ranks, exhorting his soldiers, as usual with him on these occasions, to be true to themselves, and the enterprise in which they were embarked. he told them, they were to march against rebels, who had once acknowledged allegiance to the spanish sovereign; against barbarians, the enemies of their religion. they were to fight the battles of the cross and of the crown; to fight their own battles, to wipe away the stain from their arms, to avenge their injuries, and the loss of the dear companions who had been butchered on the field or on the accursed altar of their sacrifice. never was there a war which offered higher incentives to the christian cavalier; a war which opened to him riches and renown in this life, and an imperishable glory in that to come. they answered with acclamations, that they were ready to die in defence of the faith; and would either conquer, or leave their bones with those of their countrymen, in the waters of the tezcuco. the army of the allies next passed in review before the general. it is variously estimated by writers from a hundred and ten to a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers! the palpable exaggeration, no less than the discrepancy, shows that little reliance can be placed on any estimate. it is certain, however, that it was a multitudinous array, consisting not only of the flower of the tlascalan warriors, but of those of cholula, tepeaca, and the neighbouring territories, which had submitted to the castilian crown. cortes, with the aid of marina, made a brief address to his indian allies. he reminded them that he was going to fight their battles against their ancient enemies. he called on them to support him in a manner worthy of their renowned republic. to those who remained at home, he committed the charge of aiding in the completion of the brigantines, on which the success of the expedition so much depended; and he requested that none would follow his banner, who were not prepared to remain till the final reduction of the capital. this address was answered by shouts, or rather yells, of defiance, showing the exultation felt by his indian confederates at the prospect of at last avenging their manifold wrongs, and humbling their haughty enemy. before setting out on the expedition, cortes published a code of ordinances, as he terms them, or regulations for the army, too remarkable to be passed over in silence. the preamble sets forth that in all institutions, whether divine or human,if the latter have any worth,order is the great law. the ancient chronicles inform us, that the greatest captains in past times owed their successes quite as much to the wisdom of their ordinances, as to their own valour and virtue. the situation of the spaniards eminently demanded such a code; a mere handful of men as they were, in the midst of countless enemies, most cunning in the management of their weapons and in the art of war. the instrument then reminds the army that the conversion of the heathen is the work most acceptable in the eye of the almighty, and one that will be sure to receive his support. it calls on every soldier to regard this as the prime object of the expedition, without which the war would be manifestly unjust, and every acquisition made by it a robbery. the general solemnly protests, that the principal motive which operates in his own bosom, is the desire to wean the natives from their gloomy idolatry, and to impart to them the knowledge of a purer faith; and next, to recover for his master, the emperor, the dominions which of right belong to him. the ordinances then prohibit all blasphemy against god or the saints. another law is directed against gaming, to which the spaniards in all ages have been peculiarly addicted. cortes, making allowance for the strong national propensity, authorises it under certain limitations; but prohibits the use of dice altogether. then follow other laws against brawls and private combats, against personal taunts and the irritating sarcasms of rival companies; rules for the more perfect discipline of the troops, whether in camp or the field. among others is one prohibiting any captain, under pain of death, from charging the enemy without orders; a practice noticed as most pernicious and of too frequent occurrence,showing the impetuous spirit and want of true military subordination in the bold cavaliers who followed the standard of cortes. the last ordinance prohibits any man, officer or private, from securing to his own use any of the booty taken from the enemy, whether it be gold, silver, precious stones, feather-work, stuffs, slaves, or other commodity, however or wherever obtained, in the city or in the field; and requires him to bring it forthwith to the presence of the general, or the officer appointed to receive it. the violation of this law was punished with death and confiscation of property. so severe an edict may be thought to prove that, however much the conquistador may have been influenced by spiritual considerations, he was by no means insensible to those of a temporal character. these provisions were not suffered to remain a dead letter. the spanish commander, soon after their proclamation, made an example of two of his own slaves, whom he hanged for plundering the natives. a similar sentence was passed on a soldier for the like offence, though he allowed him to be cut down before the sentence was entirely executed. cortes knew well the character of his followers; rough and turbulent spirits, who required to be ruled with an iron hand. yet he was not eager to assert his authority on light occasions. the intimacy into which they were thrown by their peculiar situation, perils, and sufferings, in which all equally shared, and a common interest in the adventure, induced a familiarity between men and officers, most unfavourable to military discipline. the general's own manners, frank and liberal, seemed to invite this freedom, which on ordinary occasions he made no attempt to repress; perhaps finding it too difficult, or at least impolitic, since it afforded a safety-valve for the spirits of a licentious soldiery, that, if violently coerced, might have burst forth into open mutiny. but the limits of his forbearance were clearly defined; and any attempt to overstep them, or to violate the established regulations of the camp, brought a sure and speedy punishment on the offender. by thus tempering severity with indulgence, masking an iron will under the open bearing of a soldier,cortes established a control over his band of bold and reckless adventurers, such as a pedantic martinet, scrupulous in enforcing the minutiae of military etiquette, could never have obtained. the ordinances, dated on the twenty-second of december, were proclaimed to the assembled army on the twenty-sixth. two days afterwards, the troops were on their march. notwithstanding the great force mustered by the indian confederates, the spanish general allowed but a small part of them now to attend him. he proposed to establish his head-quarters at some place on the tezcucan lake, whence he could annoy the aztec capital, by reducing the surrounding country, cutting off the supplies, and thus placing the city in a state of blockade. the direct assault on mexico itself he intended to postpone, until the arrival of the brigantines should enable him to make it with the greatest advantage. meanwhile, he had no desire to encumber himself with a superfluous multitude, whom it would be difficult to feed; and he preferred to leave them at tlascala, whence they might convey the vessels, when completed, to the camp, and aid him in his future operations. three routes presented themselves to cortes, by which he might penetrate into the valley. he chose the most difficult, traversing the bold sierra which divides the eastern plateau from the western, and so rough and precipitous, as to be scarcely practicable for the march of an army. he wisely judged, that he should be less likely to experience annoyance from the enemy in this direction, as they might naturally confide in the difficulties of the ground. the first day the troops advanced five or six leagues, cortes riding in the van at the head of his little body of cavalry. they halted at the village of tetzmellocan, at the base of the mountain chain which traverses the country, touching at its southern limit the mighty iztaccihuatl, or "white woman,"white with the snows of ages. at this village they met with a friendly reception, and on the following morning began the ascent of the sierra. it was night before the way-worn soldiers reached the bald crest of the sierra, where they lost no time in kindling their fires; and, huddling round their bivouacs, they warmed their frozen limbs, and prepared their evening repast. with the earliest dawn, the troops were again in motion. mass was said, and they began their descent, more difficult and painful than their ascent on the day preceding; for, in addition to the natural obstacles of the road, they found it strewn with huge pieces of timber and trees, obviously felled for the purpose by the natives. cortes ordered up a body of light troops to clear away the impediments, and the army again resumed its march, but with the apprehension that the enemy had prepared an ambuscade, to surprise them when they should be entangled in the pass. they moved cautiously forward, straining their vision to pierce the thick gloom of the forests, where the wily foe might be lurking. but they saw no living thing, except only the wild inhabitants of the woods, and flocks of the zopilote, the voracious vulture of the country, which, in anticipation of a bloody banquet, hung like a troop of evil spirits on the march of the army. at length, the army emerged on an open level, where the eye, unobstructed by intervening wood or hill-top, could range far and wide over the valley of mexico. the magnificent vision, new to many of the spectators, filled them with rapture. even the veterans of cortes could not withhold their admiration, though this was soon followed by a bitter feeling, as they recalled the sufferings which had befallen them within these beautiful, but treacherous precincts. it made us feel, says the lion-hearted conqueror in his letters, that "we had no choice but victory or death; and our minds once resolved, we moved forward with as light a step as if we had been going on an errand of certain pleasure." as the spaniards advanced, they beheld the neighbouring hilltops blazing with beacon-fires, showing that the country was already alarmed and mustering to oppose them. the general called on his men to be mindful of their high reputation; to move in order, closing up their ranks, and to obey implicitly the commands of their officers. at every turn among the hills, they expected to meet the forces of the enemy drawn up to dispute their passage. and, as they were allowed to pass the defiles unmolested, and drew near to the open plains, they were prepared to see them occupied by a formidable host, who would compel them to fight over again the battle of otumba. but, although clouds of dusky warriors were seen, from time to time, hovering on the highlands, as if watching their progress, they experienced no interruption, till they reached a barranca, or deep ravine, through which flowed a little river, crossed by a bridge partly demolished. on the opposite side a considerable body of indians was stationed, as if to dispute the passage, but whether distrusting their own numbers, or intimidated by the steady advance of the spaniards, they offered them no annoyance, and were quickly dispersed by a few resolute charges of cavalry. the army then proceeded, without molestation, to a small town, called coatepec, where they halted for the night. before retiring to his own quarters, cortes made the rounds of the camp, with a few trusty followers, to see that all was safe. he seemed to have an eye that never slumbered, and a frame incapable of fatigue. it was the indomitable spirit within, which sustained him. yet he may well have been kept awake through the watches of the night, by anxiety and doubt. he was now but three leagues from tezcuco, the far-famed capital of the acolhuans. he proposed to establish his head-quarters, if possible, at this place. its numerous dwellings would afford ample accommodations for his army. an easy communication with tlascala, by a different route from that which he had traversed, would furnish him with the means of readily obtaining supplies from that friendly country, and for the safe transportation of the brigantines, when finished, to be launched on the waters of the tezcuco. but he had good reason to distrust the reception he should meet with in the capital; for an important revolution had taken place there, since the expulsion of the spaniards from mexico, of which it will be necessary to give some account. the reader will remember that the cacique of that place, named cacama, was deposed by cortes, during his first residence in the aztec metropolis, in consequence of a projected revolt against the spaniards, and that the crown had been placed on the head of a younger brother, cuicuitzea. the deposed prince was among the prisoners carried away by cortes, and perished with the others, in the terrible passage of the causeway, on the noche triste. his brother, afraid, probably, after the flight of the spaniards, of continuing with the aztecs, accompanied his friends in their retreat, and was so fortunate as to reach tlascala in safety. meanwhile, a second son of nezahualpilli, named coanaco, claimed the crown, on his elder brother's death, as his own rightful inheritance. as he heartily joined his countrymen and the aztecs in their detestation of the white men, his claims were sanctioned by the mexican emperor. soon after his accession, the new lord of tezcuco had an opportunity of showing his loyalty to his imperial patron in an effectual manner. a body of forty-five spaniards, ignorant of the disasters in mexico, were transporting thither a large quantity of gold, at the very time their countrymen were on the retreat to tlascala. as they passed through the tezcucan territory, they were attacked by coanaco's orders, most of them massacred on the spot, and the rest sent for sacrifice to mexico. the arms and accoutrements of these unfortunate men were hung up as trophies in the temples, and their skins, stripped from their dead bodies, were suspended over the bloody shrines, as the most acceptable offering to the offended deities. some months after this event, the exiled prince, cuicuitzca, wearied with his residence in tlascala, and pining for his former royal state, made his way back secretly to tezcuco, hoping, it would seem, to raise a party there in his favour. but if such were his expectations, they were sadly disappointed; for no sooner had he set foot in the capital, than he was betrayed to his brother, who, by the advice of guatemozin, put him to death, as a traitor to his country.such was the posture of affairs in tezcuco, when cortes, for the second time, approached its gates; and well might he doubt, not merely the nature of his reception there, but whether he would be permitted to enter it at all, without force of arms. these apprehensions were dispelled the following morning, when, before the troops were well under arms, an embassy was announced from the lord of tezcuco. it consisted of several nobles, some of whom were known to the companions of cortes. they bore a golden flag in token of amity, and a present of no great value to cortes. they brought also a message from the cacique, imploring the general to spare his territories, inviting him to take up his quarters in his capital, and promising on his arrival to become the vassal of the spanish sovereign. cortes dissembled the satisfaction with which he listened to these overtures, and sternly demanded of the envoys an account of the spaniards who had been massacred, insisting, at the same time, on the immediate restitution of the plunder. but the indian nobles excused themselves, by throwing the whole blame upon the aztec emperor, by whose orders the deed had been perpetrated, and who now had possession of the treasure. they urged cortes not to enter the city that day, but to pass the night in the suburbs, that their master might have time to prepare suitable accommodations for him. the spanish commander, however, gave no heed to this suggestion, but pushed forward his march, and, at noon, on the 31st of december, 1520, entered, at the head of his legions, the venerable walls of tezcuco. he was struck, as when he before visited this populous city, with the solitude and silence which reigned throughout its streets. he was conducted to the palace of nezahualpilli, which was assigned as his quarters. it was an irregular pile of low buildings, covering a wide extent of ground, like the royal residence occupied by the troops in mexico. it was spacious enough to furnish accommodations, not only for all the spaniards, says cortes, but for twice their number. he gave orders on his arrival, that all regard should be paid to the persons and property of the citizens; and forbade any spaniard to leave his quarters under pain of death. alarmed at the apparent desertion of the place, as well as by the fact that none of its principal inhabitants came to welcome him, cortes ordered some soldiers to ascend the neighbouring teocalli and survey the city. they soon returned with the report, that the inhabitants were leaving it in great numbers, with their families and effects, some in canoes upon the lake, others on foot towards the mountains. the general now comprehended the import of the cacique's suggestion, that the spaniards should pass the night in the suburbs,in order to secure time for evacuating the city. he feared that the chief himself might have fled. he lost no time in detaching troops to secure the principal avenues, where they were to turn back the fugitives, and arrest the cacique, if he were among the number. but it was too late. coanaco was already far on his way across the lake to mexico. cortes now determined to turn this event to his own account, by placing another ruler on the throne, who should be more subservient to his interests. he called a meeting of the few principal persons still remaining in the city, and by their advice and ostensible election advanced a brother of the late sovereign to the dignity, which they declared vacant. the prince, who consented to be baptised, was a willing instrument in the hands of the spaniards. he survived but a few months, and was succeeded by another member of the royal house, named ixtlilxochitl, who, indeed, as general of his armies, may be said to have held the reins of government in his hands during his brother's lifetime. as this person was intimately associated with the spaniards in their subsequent operations, to the success of which he essentially contributed, it is proper to give some account of his earlier history, which, in truth, is as much enveloped in the marvellous, as that of any fabulous hero of antiquity. he was son, by a second queen, of the great nezahualpilli. some alarming prodigies at his birth, and the gloomy aspect of the planets, led the astrologers, who cast his horoscope, to advise the king, his father, to take away the infant's life, since, if he lived to grow up, he was destined to unite with the enemies of his country, and overturn its institutions and religion. but the old monarch replied, says the chronicler, that the time had arrived when the sons of quetzalcoatl were to come from the east to take possession of the land; and, if the almighty had selected his child to co-operate with them in the work, his will be done. as the boy advanced in years, he exhibited a marvellous precocity not merely of talent, but of mischievous activity, which afforded an alarming prognostic for the future. when about twelve years old, be formed a little corps of followers of about his own age, or somewhat older, with whom he practised the military exercises of his nation, conducting mimic fights and occasionally assaulting the peaceful burghers, and throwing the whole city as well as palace into uproar and confusion. some of his father's ancient counsellors, connecting this conduct with the predictions at his birth, saw in it such alarming symptoms, that they repeated the advice of the astrologers, to take away the prince's life, if the monarch would not see his kingdom one day given up to anarchy. this unpleasant advice was reported to the juvenile offender, who was so much exasperated by it, that he put himself at the head of a party of his young desperadoes, and, entering the house of the offending counsellors, dragged them forth, and administered to them the garrote,the mode in which capital punishment was inflicted in tezcuco. he was seized and brought before his father. when questioned as to his extraordinary conduct, he cooly replied, "that he had done no more than he had a right to do. the guilty ministers had deserved their fate, by endeavouring to alienate his father's affections from him, for no other reason than his too great fondness for the profession of arms,the most honourable profession in the state, and the one most worthy of a prince. if they had suffered death, it was no more than they had intended for him." the wise nezahualpilli, says the chronicler, found much force in these reasons; and, as he saw nothing low and sordid in the action, but rather the ebulliton of a daring spirit, which in after life might lead to great things, he contented himself with bestowing a grave admonition on the juvenile culprit. whether this admonition had any salutary effect on his subsequent demeanour, we are not informed. it is said, however, that as he grew older he took an active part in the wars of his country, and when no more than seventeen had won for himself the insignia of a valiant and victorious captain. on his father's death, he disputed the succession with his elder brother, cacama. the country was menaced with a civil war, when the affair was compromised by his brother's ceding to him that portion of his territories which lay among the mountains. on the arrival of the spaniards, the young chieftain-for he was scarcely twenty years of age-made, as we have seen, many friendly demonstrations towards them, induced, no doubt, by his hatred of montezuma, who had supported the pretensions of cacama. it was not, however, till his advancement to the lordship of tezcuco, that he showed the full extent of his good will. from that hour, he became the fast friend of the christians, supporting them with his personal authority, and the whole strength of his military array and resources, which, although much shorn of their ancient splendour since the days of his father, were still considerable, and made him a most valuable ally. his important services have been gratefully commemorated by the castilian historians; and history should certainly not defraud him of his just meed of glory,the melancholy glory of having contributed more than any other chieftain of anahuac to rivet the chains round the necks of his countrymen. book vi: siege and surrender of mexico chapter i [1521] arrangements at tezcucosack of iztapalapan advantages of the spaniardswise policy of cortes transportation of the brigantines the city of tezcuco was the best position, probably, which cortes could have chosen for the head-quarters of the army. it supplied all the accommodation for lodging a numerous body of troops, and all the facilities for subsistence, incident to a large and populous town. it furnished, moreover, a multitude of artisans and labourers for the uses of the army. its territories, bordering on the tlascalan, afforded a ready means of intercourse with the country of his allies, while its vicinity to mexico enabled the general, without much difficulty, to ascertain the movements in that capital. its central situation, in short, opened facilities for communication with all parts of the valley, and made it an excellent point d'appui for his future operations. the first care of cortes was to strengthen himself in the palace assigned to him, and to place his quarters in a state of defence, which might secure them against surprise, not only from the mexicans, but from the tezcucans themselves. since the election of their new ruler, a large part of the population had returned to their homes, assured of protection in person and property. but the spanish general, notwithstanding their show of submission, very much distrusted its sincerity; for he knew that many of them were united too intimately with the aztecs, by marriage and other social relations, not to have their sympathies engaged in their behalf. the young monarch, however, seemed wholly in his interest; and, to secure him more effectually, cortes placed several spaniards near his person, whose ostensible province it was to instruct him in their language and religion, but who were in reality to watch over his conduct, and prevent his correspondence with those who might be unfriendly to the spanish interests. tezcuco stood about half a league from the lake. it would be necessary to open a communication with it, so that the brigantines, when put together in the capital, might be launched upon its waters. it was proposed, therefore, to dig a canal, reaching from the gardens of nezahualcoyotl, as they were called from the old monarch who planned them, to the edge of the basin. a little stream or rivulet, which flowed in that direction, was to be deepened sufficiently for the purpose; and eight thousand indian labourers were forthwith employed on this great work, under the direction of the young ixtlilxochitl. meanwhile cortes received messages from several places in the neighbourhood, intimating their desire to become the vassals of his sovereign, and to be taken under his protection. the spanish commander required, in return, that they should deliver up every mexican who should set foot in their territories. some noble aztecs, who had been sent on a mission to these towns, were consequently delivered into his hands. he availed himself of it to employ them as bearers of a message to their master, the emperor. in it he deprecated the necessity of the present hostilities. those who had most injured him, he said, were no longer among the living. he was willing to forget the past; and invited the mexicans, by a timely submission, to save their capital from the horrors of a siege. cortes had no expectation of producing any immediate result by this appeal. but he thought it might lie in the minds of the mexicans, and that, if there was a party among them disposed to treat with him, it might afford them encouragement, as showing his own willingness to co-operate with their views. at this time, however, there was no division of opinion in the capital. the whole population seemed animated by a spirit of resistance, as one man. in a former page i have mentioned that it was the plan of cortes, on entering the valley, to commence operations by reducing the subordinate cities before striking at the capital itself, which, like some goodly tree, whose roots had been severed one after another, would be thus left without support against the fury of the tempest. the first point of attack which he selected was the ancient city of iztapalapan; a place containing fifty thousand inhabitants, according to his own account, and situated about six leagues distant, on the narrow tongue of land which divides the waters of the great salt lake from those of the fresh. it was the private domain of the last sovereign of mexico; where, as the reader may remember, he entertained the white men the night before their entrance into the capital, and astonished them by the display of his princely gardens. to this monarch they owed no good will, for he had conducted the operations on the noche triste. he was, indeed, no more; but the people of his city entered heartily into his hatred of the strangers, and were now the most loyal vassals of the mexican crown. in a week after his arrival at his new quarters, cortes, leaving the command of the garrison to sandoval, marched against this indian city, at the head of two hundred spanish foot, eighteen horse, and between three and four thousand tlascalans. within two leagues of their point of destination, they were encountered by a strong aztec force, drawn up to dispute their progress. cortes instantly gave them battle. the barbarians showed their usual courage; but, after some hard fighting, were compelled to give way before the steady valour of the spanish infantry, backed by the desperate fury of the tlascalans, whom the sight of an aztec seemed to inflame almost to madness. the enemy retreated in disorder, closely followed by the spaniards. when they had arrived within half a league of iztapalapan, they observed a number of canoes filled with indians, who appeared to be labouring on the mole which hemmed in the waters of the salt lake. swept along in the tide of pursuit, they gave little heed to it, but, following up the chase, entered pell-mell with the fugitives into the city. the houses stood some of them on dry ground, some on piles in the water. the former were deserted by the inhabitants, most of whom had escaped in canoes across the lake, leaving, in their haste, their effects behind them. the tlascalans poured at once into the vacant dwellings and loaded themselves with booty; while the enemy, making the best of their way through this part of the town, sought shelter in the buildings erected over the water, or among the reeds which sprung from its shallow bottom. in the houses were many of the citizens also, who still lingered with their wives and children, unable to find the means of transporting themselves from the scene of danger. cortes, supported by his own men, and by such of the allies as could be brought to obey his orders, attacked the enemy in this last place of their retreat. both parties fought up to their girdles in the water. a desperate struggle ensued, as the aztec fought with the fury of a tiger driven to bay by the huntsmen. it was all in vain. the enemy was overpowered in every quarter. the citizen shared the fate of the soldier, and a pitiless massacre succeeded, without regard to sex or age. cortes endeavoured to stop it. but it would have been as easy to call away the starving wolf from the carcass he was devouring, as the tlascalan who had once tasted the blood of an enemy. more than six thousand, including women and children, according to the conqueror's own statement, perished in the conflict. darkness meanwhile had set in; but it was dispelled in some measure by the light of the burning houses, which the troops had set on fire in different parts of the town. their insulated position, it is true, prevented the flames from spreading from one building to another, but the solitary masses threw a strong and lurid glare over their own neighbourhood, which gave additional horror to the scene. as resistance was now at an end, the soldiers abandoned themselves to pillage, and soon stripped the dwellings of every portable article of any value. while engaged in this work of devastation, a murmuring sound was heard as of the hoarse rippling of waters, and a cry soon arose among the indians that the dikes were broken! cortes now comprehended the business of the men whom he had seen in the canoes at work on the mole which fenced in the great basin of lake tezcuco. it had been pierced by the desperate indians, who thus laid the country under an inundation, by suffering the waters of the salt lake to spread themselves over the lower level, through the opening. greatly alarmed, the general called his men together, and made all haste to evacuate the city. had they remained three hours longer, he says, not a soul could have escaped. they came staggering under the weight of booty, wading with difficulty through the water, which was fast gaining upon them. for some distance their path was illumined by the glare of the burning buildings. but, as the light faded away in distance, they wandered with uncertain steps, sometimes up to their knees, at others up to their waists, in the water, through which they floundered on with the greatest difficulty. as they reached the opening in the dike, the stream became deeper, and flowed out with such a current that the men were unable to maintain their footing. the spaniards, breasting the flood, forced their way through; but many of the indians, unable to swim, were borne down by the waters. all the plunder was lost. the powder was spoiled; the arms and clothes of the soldiers were saturated with the brine, and the cold night wind, as it blew over them, benumbed their weary limbs till they could scarcely drag them along. at dawn they beheld the lake swarming with canoes, full of indians, who had anticipated their disaster, and who now saluted them with showers of stones, arrows, and other deadly missiles. bodies of light troops, hovering in the distance, disquieted the flanks of the army in like manner. the spaniards had no desire to close with the enemy. they only wished to regain their comfortable quarters in tezcuco, where they arrived on the same day, more disconsolate and fatigued than after many a long march and hard-fought battle. the close of the expedition, so different from its brilliant commencement, greatly disappointed cortes. his numerical loss had, indeed, not been great; but this affair convinced him how much he had to apprehend from the resolution of a people, who were prepared to bury their country under water rather than to submit. still, the enemy had little cause for congratulation, since, independently of the number of slain, they had seen one of their most flourishing cities sacked, and in part, at least, laid in ruins,one of those, too, which in its public works displayed the nearest approach to civilisation. such are the triumphs of war! the expedition of cortes, notwithstanding the disasters which chequered it, was favourable to the spanish cause. the fate of iztapalapan struck a terror throughout the valley. the consequences were soon apparent in the deputations sent by the different places eager to offer their submission. its influence was visible, indeed, beyond the mountains. among others, the people of otumba, the town near which the spaniards had gained their famous victory, sent to tender their allegiance, and to request the protection of the powerful strangers. they excused themselves, as usual, for the part they had taken in the late hostilities, by throwing the blame on the aztecs. but the place of most importance which thus claimed their protection, was chalco, situated on the eastern extremity of the lake of that name. it was an ancient city, people by a kindred tribe of the aztecs, and once their formidable rival. the mexican emperor, distrusting their loyalty, had placed a garrison within their walls to hold them in check. the rulers of the city now sent a message secretly to cortes, proposing to put themselves under his protection, if he would enable them to expel the garrison. the spanish commander did not hesitate; but instantly detached a considerable force under sandoval for this object. on the march his rear-guard, composed of tlascalans, was roughly handled by some light troops of the mexicans. but he took his revenge in a pitched battle, which took place with the main body of the enemy at no great distance from chalco. they were drawn up on a level ground, covered with green crops of maize and maguey. sandoval, charging the enemy at the head of his cavalry, threw them into disorder. but they quickly rallied, formed again, and renewed the battle with greater spirit than ever. in a second attempt he was more fortunate; and, breaking through their lines by a desperate onset, the brave cavalier succeeded, after a warm but ineffectual struggle on their part, in completely routing and driving them from the field. the conquering army continued its march to chalco, which the mexican garrison had already evacuated, and was received in triumph by the assembled citizens, who seemed eager to testify their gratitude for their deliverance from the aztec yoke. after taking such measures as he could for the permanent security of the place, sandoval returned to tezcuco, accompanied by the two young lords of the city, sons of the late cacique. they were courteously received by cortes; and they informed him that their father had died full of years, a short time before. with his last breath he had expressed his regret that he should not have lived to see malinche. he believed that the white men were the beings predicted by the oracles, as one day to come from the east and take possession of the land; and he enjoined it on his children, should the strangers return to the valley, to render them their homage and allegiance. the young caciques expressed their readiness to do so; but, as this must bring on them the vengeance of the aztecs, they implored the general to furnish a sufficient force for their protection. cortes received a similar application from various other towns, which were disposed, could they do so with safety, to throw off the mexican yoke. but he was in no situation to comply with their request. he now felt, more sensibly than ever, the incompetency of his means to his undertaking. "i assure your majesty," he writes in his letter to the emperor, "the greatest uneasiness which i feel after all my labours and fatigues, is from my inability to succour and support our indian friends, your majesty's loyal vassals." far from having a force competent to this, he had scarcely enough for his own protection. his vigilant enemy had an eye on all his movements, and, should he cripple his strength by sending away too many detachments, or by employing them at too great a distance, would be prompt to take advantage of it. his only expeditions, hitherto, had been in the neighbourhood, where the troops, after striking some sudden and decisive blow, might speedily regain their quarters. the utmost watchfulness was maintained there, and the spaniards lived in as constant preparation for an assault, as if their camp was pitched under the walls of mexico. on two occasions the general had sallied forth and engaged the enemy in the environs of tezcuco. at one time a thousand canoes, filled with aztecs, crossed the lake to gather in a large crop of indian corn nearly ripe, on its borders. cortes thought it important to secure this for himself. he accordingly marched out and gave battle to the enemy, drove them from the field, and swept away the rich harvest to the granaries of tezcuco. another time a strong body of mexicans had established themselves in some neighbouring towns friendly to their interests. cortes, again sallying, dislodged them from their quarters, beat them in several skirmishes, and reduced the places to obedience. but these enterprises demanded all his resources, and left him nothing to spare for his allies. in this exigency, his fruitful genius suggested an expedient for supplying the deficiency of his means. some of the friendly cities without the valley, observing the numerous beacon-fires on the mountains, inferred that the mexicans were mustering in great strength, and that the spaniards must be hard pressed in their new quarters. they sent messengers to tezcuco, expressing their apprehension, and offering reinforcements, which the general, when he set out on his march, had declined. he returned many thanks for the proffered aid; but, while he declined it for himself, as unnecessary, he indicated in what manner their services might be effectual for the defence of chalco and the other places which had invoked his protection. but his indian allies were in deadly feud with these places, whose inhabitants had too often fought under the aztec banner not to have been engaged in repeated wars with the people beyond the mountains. cortes set himself earnestly to reconcile these differences. he told the hostile parties that they should be willing to forget their mutual wrongs, since they bad entered into new relations. they were now vassals of the same sovereign, engaged in a common enterprise against a formidable foe who had so long trodden them in the dust. singly they could do little, but united they might protect each other's weakness, and hold their enemy at bay till the spaniards could come to their assistance. these arguments finally prevailed; and the politic general had the satisfaction to see the high-spirited and hostile tribes forego their long-cherished rivalry, and, resigning the pleasures of revenge, so dear to the barbarian, embrace one another as friends and champions in a common cause. to this wise policy the spanish commander owed quite as much of his subsequent successes, as to his arms. thus the foundations of the mexican empire were hourly loosening, as the great vassals around the capital, on whom it most relied, fell off one after another from their allegiance. the aztecs, properly so called, formed but a small part of the population of the valley. this was principally composed of cognate tribes, members of the same great family of the nahuatlacs, who had come upon the plateau at nearly the same time. they were mutual rivals, and were reduced one after another by the more warlike mexican, who held them in subjection, often by open force, always by fear. fear was the great principle of cohesion which bound together the discordant members of the monarchy, and this was now fast dissolving before the influence of a power more mighty than that of the aztec. this, it is true, was not the first time that the conquered races had attempted to recover their independence; but all such attempts had failed for want of concert. it was reserved for the commanding genius of cortes to extinguish their old hereditary feuds, and, combining their scattered energies, to animate them with a common principle of action. encouraged by this state of things, the spanish general thought it a favourable moment to press his negotiations with the capital. he availed himself of the presence of some noble mexicans, taken in the late action with sandoval, to send another message to their master. it was in substance a repetition of the first with a renewed assurance, that, if the city would return to its allegiance to the spanish crown, the authority of guatemozin should be confirmed, and the persons and property of his subjects be respected. to this communication no reply was made. the young indian emperor had a spirit as dauntless as that of cortes himself. on his head descended the full effects of that vicious system of government bequeathed to him by his ancestors. but, as he saw his empire crumbling beneath him, he sought to uphold it by his own energy and resources. he anticipated the defection of some vassals by establishing garrisons within their walls. others he conciliated by exempting them from tributes, or greatly lightening their burdens, or by advancing them to posts of honour and authority in the state. he showed, at the same time, his implacable animosity towards the christians, by commanding that every one taken within his dominions should be sent to the capital, where he was sacrificed with all the barbarous ceremonies prescribed by the aztec ritual. while these occurrences were passing, cortes received the welcome intelligence, that the brigantines were completed and waiting to be transported to tezcuco. he detached a body for the service, consisting of two hundred spanish foot and fifteen horse, which he placed under the command of sandoval. this cavalier had been rising daily in the estimation both of the general and of the army. though one of the youngest officers in the service, he possessed a cool head and a ripe judgment, which fitted him for the most delicate and difficult undertakings. sandoval was a native of medellin, the birth-place of cortes himself. he was warmly attached to his commander, and had on all occasions proved himself worthy of his confidence. he was a man of few words, showing his worth rather by what he did, than what he said. his honest, soldier-like deportment made him a favourite with the troops, and had its influence even on his enemies. he unfortunately died in the flower of his age. but he discovered talents and military skill, which, had he lived to later life, would undoubtedly have placed his name on the roll with those of the greatest captains of his nation. sandoval's route was to lead him by zoltepec, a city where the massacre of the forty-five spaniards, already noticed, had been perpetrated. the cavalier received orders to find out the guilty parties, if possible, and to punish them for their share in the transaction. when the spaniards arrived at the spot, they found that the inhabitants, who had previous notice of their approach, had all fled. in the deserted temples they discovered abundant traces of the fate of their countrymen; for, besides their arms and clothing, and the hides of their horses, the heads of several soldiers, prepared in such a way that they could be well preserved, were found suspended as trophies of the victory. in a neighbouring building, traced with charcoal on the walls, they found the following inscription in castilian: "in this place the unfortunate juan juste, with many others of his company, was imprisoned." this hidalgo was one of the followers of narvaez, and had come with him into the country in quest of gold, but had found, instead, an obscure and inglorious death. the eyes of the soldiers were suffused with tears, as they gazed on the gloomy record, and their bosoms swelled with indignation, as they thought of the horrible fate of the captives. fortunately the inhabitants were not then before them. some few, who subsequently fell into their hands, were branded as slaves. but the greater part of the population, who threw themselves, in the most abject manner, on the mercy of the conquerors, imputing the blame of the affair to the aztecs, the spanish commander spared, from pity, or contempt. he now resumed his march on tlascala; but scarcely had he crossed the borders of the republic, when he descried the flaunting banners of the convoy which transported the brigantines, as it was threading its way through the defiles of the mountains. great was his satisfaction at the spectacle, for he had feared a detention of some days at tlascala, before the preparations for the march could be completed. there were thirteen vessels in all, of different sizes. they had been constructed under the direction of the experienced shipbuilder, martin lopez, aided by three of four spanish carpenters and the friendly natives, some of whom showed no mean degree of imitative skill. the brigantines, when completed, had been fairly tried on the waters of the zahuapan. they were then taken to pieces, and, as lopez was impatient of delay, the several parts, the timbers, anchors, iron-work, sails, and cordage were placed on the shoulders of the tamanes, and, under a numerous military escort, were thus far advanced on the way to tezcuco. sandoval dismissed a part of the indian convoy, as superfluous. twenty thousand warriors he retained, dividing them into two equal bodies for the protection of the tamanes in the centre. his own little body of spaniards be distributed in like manner. the tlascalans in the van marched under the command of a chief who gloried in the name of chichemecatl. for some reason sandoval afterwards changed the order of march, and placed this division in the rear,an arrangement which gave great umbrage to the doughty warrior that led it, who asserted his right to the front, the place which he and his ancestors had always occupied, as the post of danger. he was somewhat appeased by sandoval's assurance that it was for that very reason he had been transferred to the rear, the quarter most likely to be assailed by the enemy. but even then he was greatly dissatisfied, on finding that the spanish commander was to march by his side, grudging, it would seem, that any other should share the laurel with himself. slowly and painfully, encumbered with their heavy burden, the troops worked their way over steep eminences, and rough mountainpasses, presenting, one might suppose in their long line of march, many a vulnerable point to an enemy. but, although small parties of warriors were seen hovering at times on their flanks and rear, they kept at a respectful distance, not caring to encounter so formidable a foe. on the fourth day the warlike caravan arrived in safety before tezcuco. their approach was beheld with joy by cortes and the soldiers, who hailed it as a signal of a speedy termination of the war. the general, attended by his officers, all dressed in their richest attire, came out to welcome the convoy. it extended over a space of two leagues, and so slow was its progress that six hours elapsed before the closing files had entered the city. the tlascalan chiefs displayed their wonted bravery of apparel, and the whole array, composed of the flower of their warriors, made a brilliant appearance. they marched by the sound of atabal and comet, and, as they traversed the streets of the capital amidst the acclamations of the soldiery, they made the city ring with the shouts of "castile and tlascala, long live our sovereign, the emperor." "it was a marvellous thing," exclaims the conqueror, in his letters, "that few have seen, or even heard of,this transportation of thirteen vessels of war on the shoulders of men, for nearly twenty leagues across the mountains!" it was, indeed, a stupendous achievement, and not easily matched in ancient or modern story; one which only a genius like that of cortes could have devised, or a daring spirit like his have so successfully executed. little did he foresee, when he ordered the destruction of the fleet which first brought him to the country, and with his usual forecast commanded the preservation of the iron-work and rigging,little did he foresee the important uses for which they were to be reserved. so important, that on their preservation may be said to have depended the successful issue of his great enterprise. chapter ii [1521] cortes reconnoitres the capitaloccupies tacuba skirmishes with the enemyexpedition of sandoval arrival of reinforcements in the course of three or four days, the spanish general furnished the tlascalans with the opportunity so much coveted, and allowed their boiling spirits to effervesce in active operations. he had, for some time, meditated an expedition to reconnoitre the capital and its environs, and to chastise, on the way, certain places which had sent him insulting messages of defiance, and which were particularly active in their hostilities. he disclosed his design to a few only of his principal officers, from his distrust of the tezcucans, whom he suspected to be in correspondence with the enemy. early in the spring, he left tezcuco, at the head of three hundred and fifty spaniards and the whole strength of his allies. he took with him alvarado and olid, and intrusted the charge of the garrison to sandoval. cortes had practical acquaintance with the incompetence of the first of these cavaliers for so delicate a post, during his short, but disastrous, rule in mexico. but all his precautions had not availed to shroud his designs from the vigilant foe, whose eye was on all his movements; who seemed even to divine his thoughts, and to be prepared to thwart their execution. he had advanced but a few leagues, when he was met by a considerable body of mexicans, drawn up to dispute his progress. a sharp skirmish took place, in which the enemy were driven from the ground, and the way was left open to the christians. they held a circuitous route to the north, and their first point of attack was the insular town of xaltocan, situated on the northern extremity of the lake of that name, now called san christobal. the town was entirely surrounded by water, and communicated with the main land by means of causeways, in the same manner as the mexican capital. cortes, riding at the head of his cavalry, advanced along the dike, till he was brought to a stand by finding a wide opening in it, through which the waters poured so as to be altogether impracticable, not only for horse, but for infantry. the lake was covered with canoes, filled with aztec warriors, who, anticipating the movement of the spaniards, had come to the aid of the city. they now began a furious discharge of stones and arrows on the assailants, while they were themselves tolerably well protected from the musketry of their enemy by the light bulwarks, with which, for that purpose, they had fortified their canoes. the severe volleys of the mexicans did some injury to the spaniards and their allies, and began to throw them into disorder, crowded as they were on the narrow causeway, without the means of advancing, when cortes ordered a retreat. this was followed by renewed tempests of missiles, accompanied by taunts and fierce yells of defiance. the battle-cry of the aztec, like the war-whoop of the north american indian, was an appalling note, according to the conqueror's own acknowledgment, in the ears of the spaniards. at this juncture, the general fortunately obtained information from a deserter, one of the mexican allies, of a ford, by which the army might traverse the shallow lake, and penetrate the place. he instantly detached the greater part of the infantry on the service, posting himself with the remainder, and with the horse, at the entrance of the passage, to cover the attack and prevent any interruption in the rear. the soldiers, under the direction of the indian guide, forded the lake without much difficulty, though in some places the water came above their girdles. during the passage, they were annoyed by the enemy's missiles; but when they had gained the dry level, they took ample revenge, and speedily put all who resisted to the sword. the greater part, together with the townsmen, made their escape in the boats. the place was now abandoned to pillage. the troops found in it many women, who had been left to their fate; and these, together with a considerable quantity of cotton stuffs, gold, and articles of food, fell into the hands of the victors, who, setting fire to the deserted city, returned in triumph to their comrades. continuing his circuitous route, cortes presented himself successively before three other places, each of which had been deserted by the inhabitants in anticipation of his arrival. the principal of these, azcapotzalco, had once been the capital of an independent state. it was now the great slave-market of the aztecs, where their unfortunate captives were brought, and disposed of at public sale. it was also the quarter occupied by the jewellers; and the place whence the spaniards obtained the goldsmiths who melted down the rich treasures received from montezuma. but they found there only a small supply of the precious metals, or, indeed, of anything else of value, as the people had been careful to remove their effects. they spared the buildings, however, in consideration of their having met with no resistance. during the nights, the troops bivouacked in the open fields, maintaining the strictest watch, for the country was all in arms, and beacons were flaming on every hill-top, while dark masses of the enemy were occasionally descried in the distance. the spaniards were now traversing the most opulent region of anahuac. cities and villages were scattered over hill and valley, all giving token of a dense and industrious population. it was the general's purpose to march at once on tacuba, and establish his quarters in that ancient capital for the present. he found a strong force encamped under its walls, prepared to dispute his entrance. without waiting for their advance, he rode at full gallop against them with his little body of horse. the arquebuses and crossbows opened a lively volley on their extended wings, and the infantry, armed with their swords and copper-headed lances, and supported by the indian battalions, followed up the attack of the horse with an alacrity which soon put the enemy to flight. cortes led his troops without further opposition into the suburbs of tacuba, the ancient tlacopan, where he established himself for the night. on the following morning, he found the indefatigable aztecs again under arms, and, on the open ground before the city, prepared to give him battle. he marched out against them, and, after an action hotly contested, though of no long duration, again routed them. they fled towards the town, but were driven through the streets at the point of the lance, and were compelled, together with the inhabitants, to evacuate the place. the city was then delivered over to pillage; and the indian allies, not content with plundering the houses of everything portable within them, set them on fire, and in a short time a quarter of the townthe poorer dwellings, probably, built of light, combustible materialswas in flames. cortes proposed to remain in his present quarters for some days, during which time he established his own residence in the ancient palace of the lords of tlacopan. it was a long range of low buildings, like most of the royal residences in the country, and offered good accommodations for the spanish forces. during his halt here, there was not a day on which the army was not engaged in one or more rencontres with the enemy. they terminated almost uniformly in favour of the spaniards, though with more or less injury to them and to their allies. one encounter, indeed, had nearly been attended with more fatal consequences. the spanish general, in the heat of pursuit, had allowed himself to be decoyed upon the great causeway,the same which had once been so fatal to his army. he followed the flying foe, until he had gained the further side of the nearest bridge, which had been repaired since the disastrous action of the noche triste. when thus far advanced, the aztecs, with the rapidity of lightning, turned on him, and he beheld a large reinforcement in their rear, all fresh on the field, prepared to support their countrymen. at the same time, swarms of boats, unobserved in the eagerness of the chase, seemed to start up as if by magic, covering the waters around. the spaniards were now exposed to a perfect hailstorm of missiles, both from the causeway and the lake; but they stood unmoved amidst the tempest, when cortes, too late perceiving his error, gave orders for the retreat. slowly, and with admirable coolness, his men receded, step by step, offering a resolute front to the enemy. the mexicans came on with their usual vociferation, making the shores echo to their war-cries, and striking at the spaniards with their long pikes, and with poles, to which the swords taken from the christians had been fastened. a cavalier, named volante, bearing the standard of cortes, was felled by one of their weapons, and, tumbling into the lake, was picked up by the mexican boats. he was a man of a muscular frame, and, as the enemy were dragging him off, he succeeded in extricating himself from their grasp, and clenching his colours in his hand, with a desperate effort sprang back upon the causeway. at length, after some hard fighting, in which many of the spaniards were wounded, and many of their allies slain, the troops regained the land, where cortes, with a full heart, returned thanks to heaven for what he might well regard as a providential deliverance. it was a salutary lesson; though he should scarcely have needed one, so soon after the affair of iztapalapan, to warn him of the wily tactics of his enemy. it had been one of cortes' principal objects in this expedition to obtain an interview, if possible, with the aztec emperor, or with some of the great lords at his court, and to try if some means for an accommodation could not be found, by which he might avoid the appeal to arms. an occasion for such a parley presented itself, when his forces were one day confronted with those of the enemy, with a broken bridge interposed between them. cortes, riding in advance of his people, intimated by signs his peaceful intent, and that he wished to confer with the aztecs. they respected the signal, and, with the aid of his interpreter, he requested, that, if there were any great chief among them, he would come forward and hold a parley with him. the mexicans replied, in derision, they were all chiefs, and bade him speak openly whatever he had to tell them. as the general returned no answer, they asked, why he did not make another visit to the capital, and tauntingly added, "perhaps malinche does not expect to find there another montezuma, as obedient to his command as the former." some of them complimented the tlascalans with the epithet of women, who, they said, would never have ventured so near the capital, but for the protection of the white men. the animosity of the two nations was not confined to these harmless, though bitter jests, but showed itself in regular cartels of defiance, which daily passed between the principal chieftains. these were followed by combats, in which one or more champions fought on a side, to vindicate the honour of their respective countries. a fair field of fight was given to the warriors, who conducted those combats, a l'outrance, with the punctilio of a european tourney; displaying a valour worthy of the two boldest of the races of anahuac, and a skill in the management of their weapons, which drew forth the admiration of the spaniards. cortes had now been six days in tacuba. there was nothing further to detain him, as he had accomplished the chief objects of his expedition. he had humbled several of the places which had been most active in their hostility; and he had revived the credit of the castilian arms, which had been much tarnished by their former reverses in this quarter of the valley. he had also made himself acquainted with the condition of the capital, which he found in a better posture of defence than he had imagined. all the ravages of the preceding year seemed to be repaired, and there was no evidence, even to his experienced eye, that the wasting hand of war had so lately swept over the land. the aztec troops, which swarmed through the valley, seemed to be well appointed, and showed an invincible spirit, as if prepared to resist to the last. it is true, they had been beaten in every encounter. in the open field they were no match for the spaniards, whose cavalry they could never comprehend, and whose firearms easily penetrated the cotton mail, which formed the stoutest defence of the indian warrior. but, entangled in the long streets and narrow lanes of the metropolis, where every house was a citadel, the spaniards, as experience had shown, would lose much of their superiority. with the mexican emperor, confident in the strength of his preparations, the general saw there was no probability of effecting an accommodation. he saw, too, the necessity of the most careful preparations on his own partindeed, that he must strain his resources to the utmost, before he could safely venture to rouse the lion in his lair. the spaniards returned by the same route by which they had come. their retreat was interpreted into a flight by the natives, who hung on the rear of the army, uttering vainglorious vaunts, and saluting the troops with showers of arrows, which did some mischief. cortes resorted to one of their own stratagems to rid himself of this annoyance. he divided his cavalry into two or three small parties, and concealed them among some thick shrubbery, which fringed both sides of the road. the rest of the army continued its march. the mexicans followed, unsuspicious of the ambuscade, when the horse, suddenly darting from their place of concealment, threw the enemy's flanks into confusion, and the retreating columns of infantry, facing about suddenly, commenced a brisk attack, which completed their consternation. it was a broad and level plain, over which the panic-struck mexicans made the best of their way, without attempting resistance; while the cavalry, riding them down and piercing the fugitives with their lances, followed up the chase for several miles, in what cortes calls a truly beautiful style. the army experienced no further annoyance from the enemy. on their arrival at tezcuco, they were greeted with joy by their comrades, who had received no tidings of them during the fortnight which had elapsed since their departure. the tlascalans, immediately on their return, requested the general's permission to carry back to their own country the valuable booty which they had gathered in their foray,a request which, however unapalatable, he could not refuse. the troops had not been in quarters more than two or three days, when an embassy arrived from chalco, again soliciting the protection of the spaniards against the mexicans, who menaced them from several points in their neighbourhood. but the soldiers were so much exhausted by unintermitted vigils, forced marches, battles, and wounds, that cortes wished to give them a breathing-time to recruit, before engaging in a new expedition. he answered the application of the chalcans, by sending his missives to the allied cities, calling on them to march to the assistance of their confederate. it is not to be supposed that they could comprehend the import of his despatches. but the paper, with its mysterious characters, served for a warrant to the officer who bore it, as the interpreter of the general's commands. but, although these were implicitly obeyed, the chalcans felt the danger so pressing, that they soon repeated their petition for the spaniards to come in person to their relief. cortes no longer hesitated; for he was well aware of the importance of chalco, not merely on its own account, but from its position, which commanded one of the great avenues to tlascala, and to vera-cruz, the intercourse with which should run no risk of interruption. without further loss of time, therefore, he detached a body of three hundred spanish foot and twenty horse, under the command of sandoval, for the protection of the city. that active officer soon presented himself before chalco, and, strengthened by the reinforcement of its own troops and those of the confederate towns, directed his first operations against huaxtepec, a place of some importance, lying two leagues or more to the south among the mountains. it was held by a strong mexican force, watching their opportunity to make a descent upon chalco. the spaniards found the enemy drawn up at a distance from the town, prepared to receive them. the ground was broken and tangled with bushes, unfavourable to the cavalry, which in consequence soon fell into disorder; and sandoval, finding himself embarrassed by their movements, ordered them, after sustaining some loss, from the field. in their place he brought up his musketeers and crossbowmen, who poured a rapid fire into the thick columns of the indians. the rest of the infantry, with sword and pike, charged the flanks of the enemy, who, bewildered by the shock, after sustaining considerable slaughter, fell back in an irregular manner, leaving the field of battle to the spaniards. the victors proposed to bivouac there for the night. but, while engaged in preparations for their evening meal, they were aroused by the cry of "to arms, to arms! the enemy is upon us!" in an instant the trooper was in his saddle, the soldier grasped his musket or his good toledo, and the action was renewed with greater fury than before. the mexicans had received a reinforcement from the city. but their second attempt was not more fortunate than their first; and the victorious spaniards, driving their antagonists before them, entered and took possession of the town itself, which had already been evacuated by the inhabitants. sandoval took up his quarters in the dwelling of the lord of the place, surrounded by gardens, which rivalled those of iztapalapan in magnificence, and surpassed them in extent. they are said to have been two leagues in circumference, having pleasure-houses, and numerous tanks stocked with various kinds of fish; and they were embellished with trees, shrubs, and plants, native and exotic, some selected for their beauty and fragrance, others for their medicinal properties. they were scientifically arranged; and the whole establishment displayed a degree of horticultural taste and knowledge, of which it would not have been easy to find a counterpart, at that day, in the more civilised communities of europe. such is the testimony not only of the rude conquerors, but of men of science, who visited these beautiful repositories in the day of their glory. after halting two days to refresh his forces in this agreeable spot, sandoval marched on jacapichtla, about six miles to the eastward. it was a town, or rather fortress, perched on a rocky eminence, almost inaccessible from its steepness. it was garrisoned by a mexican force, who rolled down on the assailants, as they attempted to scale the heights, huge fragments of rock, which, thundering over the sides of the precipice, carried ruin and desolation in their path. the indian confederates fell back in dismay from the attempt. but sandoval, indignant that any achievement should be too difficult for a spaniard, commanded his cavaliers to dismount, and, declaring that he "would carry the place or die in the attempt," led on his men with the cheering cry of "st. iago." with renewed courage, they now followed their gallant leader up the ascent, under a storm of lighter missiles, mingled with huge masses of stone, which, breaking into splinters, overturned the assailants, and made fearful havoc in their ranks. sandoval, who had been wounded on the preceding day, received a severe contusion on the head, while more than one of his brave comrades were struck down by his side. still they clambered up, sustaining themselves by the bushes or projecting pieces of rock, and seemed to force themselves onward as much by the energy of their wills, as by the strength of their bodies. after incredible toil, they stood on the summit, face to face with the astonished garrison. for a moment they paused to recover breath, then sprang furiously on their foes. the struggle was short but desperate. most of the aztecs were put to the sword. some were thrown headlong over the battlements, and others, letting themselves down the precipice, were killed on the borders of a little stream that wound round its base, the waters of which were so polluted with blood, that the victors were unable to slake their thirst with them for a full hour! sandoval, having now accomplished the object of his expedition, by reducing the strongholds which had so long held the chalcans in awe, returned in triumph to tezcuco. meanwhile, the aztec emperor, whose vigilant eye had been attentive to all that had passed, thought that the absence of so many of its warriors afforded a favourable opportunity for recovering chalco. he sent a fleet of boats for this purpose across the lake, with a numerous force under the command of some of his most valiant chiefs. fortunately the absent chalcans reached their city before the arrival of the enemy; but, though supported by their indian allies, they were so much alarmed by the magnitude of the hostile array, that they sent again to the spaniards, invoking their aid. the messengers arrived at the same time with sandoval and his army. cortes was much puzzled by the contradictory accounts. he suspected some negligence in his lieutenant, and, displeased with his precipitate return in this unsettled state of the affair, ordered him back at once, with such of his forces as were in fighting condition. sandoval felt deeply injured by this proceeding, but he made no attempt at exculpation, and, obeying his commander in silence, put himself at the head of his troops, and made a rapid countermarch on the indian city. before he reached it, a battle had been fought between the mexicans and the confederates, in which the latter, who had acquired unwonted confidence from their recent successes, were victorious. a number of aztec nobles fell into their hands in the engagement, whom they delivered to sandoval to be carried off as prisoners to tezcuco. on his arrival there, the cavalier, wounded by the unworthy treatment he had received, retired to his own quarters without presenting himself before his chief. during his absence, the inquiries of cortes had satisfied him of his own precipitate conduct, and of the great injustice he had done his lieutenant. there was no man in the army on whose services he set so high a value, as the responsible situations in which he had placed him plainly showed; and there was none for whom he seems to have entertained a greater personal regard. on sandoval's return, therefore, cortes instantly sent to request his attendance; when, with a soldier's frankness, he made such an explanation as soothed the irritated spirit of the cavalier,a matter of no great difficulty, as the latter had too generous a nature, and too earnest a devotion to his commander and the cause in which they were embarked, to harbour a petty feeling of resentment in his bosom. during the occurrence of these events, the work was going forward actively on the canal, and the brigantines were within a fortnight of their completion. the greatest vigilance was required, in the mean time, to prevent their destruction by the enemy, who had already made three ineffectual attempts to burn them on the stocks. the precautions which cortes thought it necessary to take against the tezcucans themselves, added not a little to his embarrassment. at this time he received embassies from different indian states, some of them on the remote shores of the mexican gulf, tendering their allegiance and soliciting his protection. for this he was partly indebted to the good offices of ixtlilxochitl, who, in consequence of his brother's death, was now advanced to the sovereignty of tezcuco. this important position greatly increased his consideration and authority through the country, of which he freely availed himself to bring the natives under the dominion of the spaniards. the general received also at this time the welcome intelligence of the arrival of three vessels at villa rica, with two hundred men on board, well provided with arms and ammunition, and with seventy or eighty horses. it was a most seasonable reinforcement. from what quarter it came is uncertain; most probably, from hispaniola. cortes, it may be remembered, had sent for supplies to that place; and the authorities of the island, who had general jurisdiction over the affairs of the colonies, had shown themselves, on more than one occasion, well inclined towards him, probably considering him, under all circumstances, as better fitted than any other man to achieve the conquest of the country. the new recruits soon found their way to tezcuco; as the communications with the port were now open and unobstructed. among them were several cavaliers of consideration, one of whom, julian de alderete, the royal treasurer, came over to superintend the interests of the crown. chapter iii [1521] second reconnoitring expeditionthe capture of cuernavaca battles at xochimilconarrow escape of corteshe enters tacuba notwithstanding the relief which had been afforded to the people of chalco, it was so ineffectual, that envoys from that city again arrived at tezcuco, bearing a hieroglyphical chart, on which were depicted several strong places in their neighbourhood, garrisoned by the aztecs, from which they expected annoyance. cortes determined this time to take the affair into his own hands, and to scour the country so effectually, as to place chalco, if possible, in a state of security. he did not confine himself to this object, but proposed, before his return, to pass quite round the great lakes, and reconnoitre the country to the south of them, in the same manner as he had before done to the west. in the course of his march, he would direct his arms against some of the strong places from which the mexicans might expect support in the siege. two or three weeks must elapse before the completion of the brigantines; and, if no other good resulted from the expedition, it would give active occupation to his troops, whose turbulent spirits might fester into discontent in the monotonous existence of a camp. he selected for the expedition thirty horse and three hundred spanish infantry, with a considerable body of tlascalan and tezcucan warriors. the remaining garrison he left in charge of the trusty sandoval, who, with the friendly lord of the capital, would watch over the construction of the brigantines, and protect them from the assaults of the aztecs. on the fifth of april he began his march, and on the following day arrived at chalco, where he was met by a number of the confederate chiefs. with the aid of his faithful interpreters, dona marina and aguilar, he explained to them the objects of his present expedition; stated his purpose soon to enforce the blockade of mexico, and required their co-operation with the whole strength of their levies. to this they readily assented; and he soon received a sufficient proof of their friendly disposition in the forces which joined him on the march, amounting, according to one of the army, to more than had ever before followed his banner. taking a southerly direction, the troops, after leaving chalco, struck into the recesses of the wild sierra, which, with its bristling peaks, serves as a formidable palisade to fence round the beautiful valley; while, within its rugged arms, it shuts up many a green and fruitful pasture of its own. as the spaniards passed through its deep gorges, they occasionally wound round the base of some huge cliff or rocky eminence, on which the inhabitants had built their town in the same manner as was done by the people of europe in the feudal ages; a position which, however favourable to the picturesque, intimates a sense of insecurity as the cause of it, which may reconcile us to the absence of this striking appendage of the landscape in our own more fortunate country. the occupants of these airy pinnacles took advantage of their situation to shower down stones and arrows on the troops, as they defiled through the narrow passes of the sierra. though greatly annoyed by their incessant hostilities, cortes held on his way, till, winding round the base of a castellated cliff, occupied by a strong garrison of indians, he was so severely pressed, that he felt to pass on without chastising the aggressors would imply a want of strength, which must disparage him in the eyes of his allies. halting in the valley, therefore, he detached a small body of light troops to scale the heights, while he remained with the main body of the army below, to guard against surprise from the enemy. the lower region of the rocky eminence was so steep, that the soldiers found it no easy matter to ascend, scrambling, as well as they could, with hand and knee. but, as they came into the more exposed view of the garrison, the latter rolled down huge masses of rock, which, bounding along the declivity, and breaking into fragments, crushed the foremost assailants, and mangled their limbs in a frightful manner. still they strove to work their way upward, now taking advantage of some gulley, worn by the winter torrent, now sheltering themselves behind a projecting cliff, or some straggling tree, anchored among the crevices of the mountain. it was all in vain. for no sooner did they emerge again into open view, than the rocky avalanche thundered on their heads with a fury against which steel helm and cuirass were as little defence as gossamer. all the party were more or less wounded. eight of the number were killed on the spot,a loss the little band could ill afford,and the gallant ensign corral, who led the advance, saw the banner in his hand torn into shreds. cortes, at length convinced of the impracticability of the attempt, at least without a more severe loss than he was disposed to incur, commanded a retreat. it was high time; for a large body of the enemy were on full march across the valley to attack him. he did not wait for their approach, but gathering his broken files together, headed his cavalry, and spurred boldly against them. on the level plain, the spaniards were on their own ground. the indians, unable to sustain the furious onset, broke, and fell back before it. the fight soon became a rout, and the fiery cavaliers, dashing over them at full gallop, or running them through with their lances, took some revenge for their late discomfiture. the pursuit continued for some miles, till the nimble foe made their escape into the rugged fastnesses of the sierra, where the spaniards did not care to follow. the weather was sultry, and, as the country was nearly destitute of water, the men and horses suffered extremely. before evening they reached a spot overshadowed by a grove of wild mulberry trees, in which some scanty springs afforded a miserable supply to the army. near the place rose another rocky summit of the sierra, garrisoned by a stronger force than the one which they had encountered in the former part of the day; and at no great distance stood a second fortress at a still greater height, though considerably smaller than its neighbour. this was also tenanted by a body of warriors, who, as well as those of the adjoining cliff, soon made active demonstration of their hostility by pouring down missiles on the troops below. cortes, anxious to retrieve the disgrace of the morning, ordered an assault on the larger, and, as it seemed, more practicable eminence. but, though two attempts were made with great resolution, they were repulsed with loss to the assailants. the rocky sides of the hill had been artificially cut and smoothed, so as greatly to increase the natural difficulties of the ascent.the shades of evening now closed around; and cortes drew off his men to the mulberry grove, where he took up his bivouac for the night, deeply chagrined at having been twice foiled by the enemy on the same day. during the night, the indian force, which occupied the adjoining height, passed over to their brethren, to aid them in the encounter, which they foresaw would be renewed on the following morning. no sooner did the spanish general, at the break of day, become aware of this manoeuvre, than, with his usual quickness, he took advantage of it. he detached a body of musketeers and crossbowmen to occupy the deserted eminence, purposing, as soon as this was done, to lead the assault in person against the other. it was not long before the castilian banner was seen streaming from the rocky pinnacle, when the general instantly led up his men to the attack. and, while the garrison were meeting them resolutely on that quarter, the detachment on the neighbouring heights poured into the place a well-directed fire, which so much distressed the enemy, that, in a very short time, they signified their willingness to capitulate. on entering the place, the spaniards found that a plain of some extent ran along the crest of the sierra, and that it was tenanted, not only by men, but by women and their families, with their effects. no violence was offered by the victors to the property or persons of the vanquished, and the knowledge of his lenity induced the indian garrison, who had made so stout a resistance on the morning of the preceding day, to tender their submission. after a halt of two days in this sequestered region, the army resumed its march in a south-westerly direction on huaxtepec, the same city which had surrendered to sandoval. here they were kindly received by the cacique, and entertained in his magnificent gardens, which cortes and his officers, who had not before seen them, compared with the best in castile. still threading the wild mountain mazes, the army passed through jauhtepec and several other places, which were abandoned at their approach. as the inhabitants, however, hung in armed bodies on their flanks and rear, doing them occasionally some mischief, the spaniards took their revenge by burning the deserted towns. thus holding on their fiery track, they descended the bold slope of the cordilleras, which, on the south, are far more precipitous than on the atlantic side. indeed, a single day's journey is sufficient to place the traveller on a level several thousand feet lower than that occupied by him in the morning; thus conveying him in a few hours through the climates of many degrees of latitude. on the ninth day of their march, the troops arrived before the strong city of quauhnahuac, or cuernavaca, as since called by the spaniards. it was the ancient capital of the tlahuicas, and the most considerable place for wealth and population in this part of the country. it was tributary to the aztecs, and a garrison of this nation was quartered within its walls. the town was singularly situated, on a projecting piece of land, encompassed by barrancas, or formidable ravines, except on one side, which opened on a rich and well cultivated country. for, though the place stood at an elevation of between five and six thousand feet above the level of the sea, it had a southern exposure so sheltered by the mountain barrier on the north, that its climate was as soft and genial as that of a much lower region. the spaniards, on arriving before this city, the limit of their southerly progress, found themselves separated from it by one of the vast barrancas before noticed, which resembled one of those frightful rents not unfrequent in the mexican andes, the result, no doubt, of some terrible convulsion in earlier ages. the rocky sides of the ravine sunk perpendicularly down, and so bare as scarcely to exhibit even a vestige of the cactus or of the other hardy plants with which nature in these fruitful regions so gracefully covers up her deformities. at the bottom of the ravine was seen a little stream, which, oozing from the stony bowels of the sierra, tumbled along its narrow channel, and contributed by its perpetual moisture to the exuberant fertility of the valley. this rivulet, which at certain seasons of the year was swollen to a torrent, was traversed at some distance below the town, where the sloping sides of the barranca afforded a more practicable passage, by two rude bridges, both of which had been broken in anticipation of the coming of the spaniards. the latter had now arrived on the brink of the chasm. it was, as has been remarked, of no great width, and the army drawn up on its borders was directly exposed to the archery of the garrison, on whom its own fire made little impression, protected as they were by their defences. the general, annoyed by his position, sent a detachment to seek a passage lower down, by which the troops might be landed on the other side. but although the banks of the ravine became less formidable as they descended, they found no means of crossing the river, till a path unexpectedly presented itself, on which, probably, no one before hid ever been daring enough to venture. from the cliffs on the opposite sides of the barranca, two huge trees shot up to an enormous height, and, inclining towards each other, interlaced their boughs so as to form a sort of natural bridge. across this avenue, in mid air, a tlascalan conceived it would not be difficult to pass to the opposite bank. the bold mountaineer succeeded in the attempt, and was soon followed by several others of his countrymen, trained to feats of agility and strength among their native hills. the spaniards imitated their example. it was a perilous effort for an armed man to make his way over this aerial causeway, swayed to and fro by the wind, where the brain might become giddy, and where a single false movement of hand or foot would plunge him into the abyss below. three of the soldiers lost their hold and fell. the rest, consisting of some twenty or thirty spaniards, and a considerable number of tlascalans, alighted in safety on the other bank. there hastily forming, they marched with all speed on the city. the enemy, engaged in their contest with the castilians on the opposite brink of the ravine, were taken by surprise,which, indeed, could scarcely have been exceeded if they had seen their foe drop from the clouds on the field of battle. they made a brave resistance, however, when fortunately the spaniards succeeded in repairing one of the dilapidated bridges in such a manner as to enable both cavalry and foot to cross the river, though with much delay. the horse under and andres de tapia, instantly rode up to the succour of their countrymen. they were soon followed by cortes at the head of the remaining battalions; and the enemy, driven from one point to another, were compelled to evacuate the city, and to take refuge among the mountains. the buildings in one quarter of the town were speedily wrapt in flames. the place was abandoned to pillage, and, as it was one of the most opulent marts in the country, it amply compensated the victors for the toil and danger they had encountered. the trembling caciques, returning soon after to the city, appeared before cortes, and deprecating his resentment by charging the blame, as usual, on the mexicans, threw themselves on his mercy. satisfied with their submission, he allowed no further violence to the inhabitants. having thus accomplished the great object of his expedition across the mountains, the spanish commander turned his face northwards, to recross the formidable barrier which divided him from the valley. the ascent, steep and laborious, was rendered still more difficult by fragments of rock and loose stones which encumbered the passes. the weather was sultry, and, as the stony soil was nearly destitute of water, the troops suffered severely from thirst. several of them, indeed, fainted on the road, and a few of the indian allies perished from exhaustion. the line of march must have taken the army across the eastern shoulder of the mountain, called the cruz del marques, or cross of the marquess, from a huge stone cross, erected there to indicate the boundary of the territories granted by the crown to cortes, as marquess of the valley. much, indeed, of the route lately traversed by the troops lay across the princely domain subsequently assigned to the conqueror. the point of attack selected by the general was xochimilco, or the "field of flowers," as its name implies, from the floating gardens which rode at anchor, as it were, on the neighbouring waters. it was one of the most potent and wealthy cities in the mexican valley, and a staunch vassal of the aztec crown. it stood, like the capital itself, partly in the water, and was approached in that quarter by causeways of no great length. the town was composed of houses like those of most other places of like magnitude in the country, mostly of cottages or huts made of clay and the light bamboo, mingled with aspiring teocallis, and edifices of stone, belonging to the more opulent classes. as the spaniards advanced, they were met by skirmishing parties of the enemy, who, after dismissing a light volley of arrows, rapidly retreated before them. as they took the direction of xochimilco, cortes inferred that they were prepared to resist him in considerable force. it exceeded his expectations. on traversing the principal causeway, he found it occupied, at the further extremity, by a numerous body of warriors, who, stationed on the opposite sides of a bridge, which had been broken, were prepared to dispute his passage. they had constructed a temporary barrier of palisades, which screened them from the fire of the musketry. but the water in its neighbourhood was very shallow. and the cavaliers and infantry, plunging into it, soon made their way, swimming or wading, as they could, in face of a storm of missiles, to the landing, near the town. here they closed with the enemy, and, hand to hand, after a sharp struggle, drove them back on the city; a few, however, taking the direction of the open country, were followed up by the cavalry. the great mass hotly pursued by the infantry, were driven through street and lane, without much further resistance. cortes, with a few followers, disengaging himself from the tumult, remained near the entrance of the city. he had not been there long, when he was assailed by a fresh body of indians, who suddenly poured into the place from a neighbouring dike. the general, with his usual fearlessness, threw himself into the midst, in hopes to check their advance. but his own followers were too few to support him, and he was overwhelmed by the crowd of combatants. his horse lost his footing and fell; and cortes, who received a severe blow on the head before he could rise, was seized and dragged off in triumph by the indians. at this critical moment, a tlascalan, who perceived the general's extremity, sprang, like one of the wild ocelots of his own forests, into the midst of the assailants, and endeavoured to tear him from their grasp. two of the general's servants also speedily came to the rescue, and cortes, with their aid and that of the brave tlascalan, succeeded in regaining his feet and shaking off his enemies. to vault into the saddle and brandish his good lance was but the work of a moment. others of his men quickly came up, and the clash of arms reaching the ears of the spaniards who had gone in pursuit, they returned, and, after a desperate conflict, forced the enemy from the city. their retreat, however, was intercepted by the cavalry returning from the country, and, thus hemmed in between the opposite columns, they were cut to pieces, or saved themselves only by plunging into the lake. this was the greatest personal danger which cortes had yet encountered. his life was in the power of the barbarians, and, had it not been for their eagerness to take him prisoner, he must undoubtedly have lost it. to the same cause may be frequently attributed the preservation of the spaniards in these engagements. it was not yet dusk when cortes and his followers re-entered the city; and the general's first act was to ascend a neighbouring teocalli and reconnoitre the surrounding country. he there beheld a sight which might have troubled a bolder spirit than his. the surface of the salt lake was darkened with canoes, and the causeway, for many a mile, with indian squadrons, apparently on their march towards the christian camp. in fact, no sooner had guatemozin been apprised of the arrival of the white men at xochimilco, than he mustered his levies in great force to relieve the city. they were now on their march, and, as the capital was but four leagues distant, would arrive soon after nightfall. cortes made active preparations for the defence of his quarters. he stationed a corps of pikemen along the landing where the aztecs would be likely to disembark. he doubled the sentinels, and, with his principal officers, made the rounds repeatedly in the course of the night. in addition to other causes for watchfulness, the bolts of the crossbowmen were nearly exhausted, and the archers were busily employed in preparing and adjusting shafts to the copper heads, of which great store bad been provided for the army. there was little sleep in the camp that night. it passed away, however, without molestation from the enemy. though not stormy, it was exceedingly dark. but, although the spaniards on duty could see nothing, they distinctly heard the sound of many oars in the water, at no great distance from the shore. yet those on board the canoes made no attempt to land, distrusting, or advised, it may be, of the preparations made for their reception. with early dawn, they were under arms, and, without waiting for movement of the spaniards, poured into the city and attacked them in their own quarters. the spaniards, who were gathered in the area round one of the teocallis, were taken at disadvantage in the town, where the narrow lanes and streets, many of them covered with a smooth and slippery cement, offered obvious impediments to the manoeuvres of cavalry. but cortes hastily formed his muskeeters and crossbowmen, and poured such a lively, well directed fire into the enemy's ranks, as threw him into disorder, and compelled him to recoil. the infantry, with their long pikes, followed up the blow; and the horse, charging at full speed, as the retreating aztecs emerged from the city, drove them several miles along the main land. at some distance, however, they were met by a strong reinforcement of their countrymen, and rallying, the tide of battle turned, and the cavaliers, swept along by it, gave the rein to their steeds, and rode back at full gallop towards the town. they had not proceeded very far, when they came upon the main body of the army, advancing rapidly to their support. thus strengthened, they once more returned to the charge, and the rival hosts met together in full career, with the shock of an earthquake. for a time, victory seemed to hang in the balance, as the mighty press reeled to and fro under the opposite impulse, and a confused shout rose up towards heaven, in which the war-whoop of the savage was mingled with the battle-cry of the christian,a still stranger sound on these sequestered shores. but, in the end, castilian valour, or rather castilian arms and discipline, proved triumphant. the enemy faltered, gave way, and recoiling step by step, the retreat soon terminated in a rout, and the spaniards, following up the flying foe, drove them from the field with such dreadful slaughter, that they made no further attempt to renew the battle. the victors were now undisputed masters of the city. it was a wealthy place, well stored with indian fabrics, cotton, gold, feather-work, and other articles of luxury and use, affording a rich booty to the soldiers. while engaged in the work of plunder, a party of the enemy, landing from their canoes, fell on some of the stragglers laden with merchandise, and made four of them prisoners. it created a greater sensation among the troops than if ten times that number had fallen on the field. indeed, it was rare that a spaniard allowed himself to be taken alive. in the present instance the unfortunate men were taken by surprise. they were hurried to the capital, and soon after sacrificed; when their arms and legs were cut off, by the command of the ferocious young chief of the aztecs, and sent round to the different cities, with the assurance, that this should be the fate of the enemies of mexico! from the prisoners taken in the late engagement, cortes learned that the forces already sent by guatemozin formed but a small part of his levies; that his policy was to send detachment after detachment, until the spaniards, however victorious they might come off from the contest with each individually, would, in the end, succumb from mere exhaustion, and thus be vanquished, as it were, by their own victories. the soldiers having now sacked the city, cortes did not care to await further assaults from the enemy in his present quarters. on the fourth morning after his arrival, he mustered his forces on a neighbouring plain. they came many of them reeling under the weight of their plunder. the general saw this with uneasiness. they were to march, he said, through a populous country, all in arms to dispute their passage. to secure their safety, they should move as light and unencumbered as possible. the sight of so much spoil would sharpen the appetite of their enemies, and draw them on, like a flock of famished eagles after their prey. but his eloquence was lost on his men; who plainly told him they had a right to the fruit of their victories, and that what they had won with their swords, they knew well enough how to defend with them. seeing them thus bent on their purpose, the general did not care to baulk their inclinations. he ordered the baggage to the centre, and placed a few of the cavalry over it; dividing the remainder between the front and rear, in which latter post, as that most exposed to attack, he also stationed his arquebusiers and crossbowmen. thus prepared, he resumed his march; but first set fire to the combustible buildings of xochimilco, in retaliation for the resistance he had met there. the light of the burning city streamed high into the air, sending its ominous glare far and wide across the waters, and telling the inhabitants on their margin, that the fatal strangers so long predicted by their oracles had descended like a consuming flame upon their borders. small bodies of the enemy were seen occasionally at a distance, but they did not venture to attack the army on its march, which before noon brought them to cojohuacan, a large town about two leagues distant from xochimilco. one could scarcely travel that distance in this populous quarter of the valley without meeting with a place of considerable size, oftentimes the capital of what had formerly been an independent state. the inhabitants, members of different tribes, and speaking dialects somewhat different, belonged to the same great family of nations who had come from the real or imaginary region of aztlan, in the far north-west. gathered round the shores of their alpine sea, these petty communities continued, after their incorporation with the aztec monarchy, to maintain a spirit of rivalry in their intercourse with one another, whichas with the cities on the mediterranean, in the feudal agesquickened their mental energies, and raised the mexican valley higher in the scale of civilisation than most other quarters of anahuac. the town at which the army had now arrived was deserted by its inhabitants; and cortes halted two days there to restore his troops, and give the needful attention to the wounded. he made use of the time to reconnoitre the neighbouring ground, and taking with him a strong detachment, descended on the causeway which led from cojohuacan to the great avenue iztapalapan. at the point of intersection, called xoloc, he found a strong barrier or fortification, behind which a mexican force was intrenched. their archery did some mischief to the spaniards, as they came within bow-shot. but the latter, marching intrepidly forward in face of the arrowy shower, stormed the works, and, after an obstinate struggle, drove the enemy from their position. cortes then advanced some way on the great causeway of iztapalapan; but he beheld the further extremity darkened by a numerous array of warriors, and as he did not care to engage in unnecessary hostilities, especially as his ammunition was nearly exhausted, he fell back and retreated to his own quarters. the following day, the army continued its march, taking the road to tacuba, but a few miles distant. on the way it experienced much annoyance from straggling parties of the enemy, who, furious at the sight of the booty which the invaders were bearing away, made repeated attacks on their flanks and rear. cortes retaliated, as on the former expedition, by one of their own stratagems, but with less success than before; for, pursuing the retreating enemy too hotly, he fell with his cavalry into an ambuscade, which they had prepared for him in their turn. he was not yet a match for their wily tactics. the spanish cavaliers were enveloped in a moment by their subtle foe, and separated from the rest of the army. but, spurring on their good steeds, and charging in a solid column together, they succeeded in breaking through the indian array, and in making their escape, except two individuals, who fell into the enemy's hands. they were the general's own servants, who had followed him faithfully through the whole campaign, and he was deeply affected by their loss; rendered the more distressing by the consideration of the dismal fate that awaited them. when the little band rejoined the army, which had halted in some anxiety at their absence, under the walls of tacuba, the soldiers were astonished at the dejected mien of their commander, which too visibly betrayed his emotion. the sun was still high in the heavens, when they entered the ancient capital of the tepanecs. the first care of cortes was to ascend the principal teocalli, and survey the surrounding country. it was an admirable point of view, commanding the capital, which lay but little more than a league distant, and its immediate environs. cortes was accompanied by alderete, the treasurer, and some other cavaliers, who had lately joined his banner. the spectacle was still new to them; and, as they gazed on the stately city, with its broad lake covered with boats and barges hurrying to and fro, some laden with merchandise, or fruits and vegetables, for the markets of tenochtitlan, others crowded with warriors, they could not withhold their admiration at the life and activity of the scene, declaring that nothing but the hand of providence could have led their countrymen safe through the heart of this powerful empire. tacuba was the point which cortes had reached on his former expedition round the northern side of the valley. he had now, therefore, made the entire circuit of the great lake; had reconnoitred the several approaches to the capital, and inspected with his own eyes the dispositions made on the opposite quarters for its defence. he had no occasion to prolong his stay in tacuba, the vicinity of which to mexico must soon bring on him its whole warlike population. early on the following morning, he resumed his march, taking the route pursued in the former expedition, north of the small lakes. he met with less annoyance from the enemy than on the preceding days; a circumstance owing in some degree, perhaps, to the state of the weather, which was exceedingly tempestuous. the soldiers, with their garments heavy with moisture, ploughed their way with difficulty through the miry roads flooded by the torrents. on one occasion, as their military chronicler informs us, the officers neglected to go the rounds of the camp at night, and the sentinels to mount guard, trusting to the violence of the storm for their protection. yet the fate of narvaez might have taught them not to put their faith in the elements. at acolman, in the acolhuan territory, they were met by sandoval, with the friendly cacique of tezcuco, and several cavaliers, among whom were some recently arrived from the islands. they cordially greeted their countrymen, and communicated the tidings that the canal was completed, and that the brigantines, rigged and equipped, were ready to be launched on the bosom of the lake. there seemed to be no reason, therefore, for longer postponing operations against mexico.with this welcome intelligence, cortes and his victorious legions made their entry for the last time into the acolhuan capital, having consumed just three weeks in completing the circuit of the valley. chapter iv [1521] conspiracy in the armybrigantines launchedmuster of forces execution of xicotencatlmarch of the armybeginning of the siege at the very time when cortes was occupied with reconnoitring the valley, preparatory to his siege of the capital, a busy faction in castile was labouring to subvert his authority and defeat his plans of conquest altogether. the fame of his brilliant exploits had spread not only through the isles, but to spain and many parts of europe, where a general admiration was felt for the invincible energy of the man, who with his single arm as it were, could so long maintain a contest with the powerful indian empire. the absence of the spanish monarch from his dominions, and the troubles of the country, can alone explain the supine indifference shown by the government to the prosecution of this great enterprise. to the same causes it may be ascribed, that no action was had in regard to the suits of velasquez and narvaez, backed as they were by so potent an advocate as bishop fonseca, president of the council of the indies. the reins of government had fallen into the hands of adrian of utrecht, charles' preceptor, and afterwards pope,a man of learning, and not without sagacity, but slow and timid in his policy, and altogether incapable of that decisive action which suited the bold genius of his predecessor, cardinal ximenes. in the spring of 1521, however, a number of ordinances passed the council of the indies, which threatened an important innovation in the affairs of new spain. it was decreed, that the royal audience of hispaniola should abandon the proceedings already instituted against narvaez, for his treatment of the commissioner ayllon; that that unfortunate commander should be released from his confinement at vera cruz; and that an arbitrator should be sent to mexico, with authority to investigate the affairsand conduct of cortes, and to render ample justice to the governor of cuba. there were not wanting persons at court, who looked with dissatisfaction, on these proceedings, as an unworthy requital of the services of cortes, and who thought the present moment, at any rate, not the most suitable for taking measures which might discourage the general, and, perhaps, render him desperate. but the arrogant temper of the bishop of burgos overruled all objections; and the ordinances having been approved by the regency, were signed by that body, april 11, 1521. a person named tapia, one of the functionaries of the audience of st. domingo, was selected as the new commissioner to be despatched to vera cruz. fortunately circumstances occurred which postponed the execution of the design for the present, and permitted cortes to go forward unmolested in his career of conquest. but, while thus allowed to remain, for the present at least, in possession of authority, he was assailed by a danger nearer home, which menaced not only his authority, but his life. this was a conspiracy in the army, of a more dark and dangerous character than any hitherto formed there. it was set on foot by a common soldier, named antonio villafana, a native of old castile, of whom nothing is known but his share in this transaction. he was one of the troop of narvaez,that leaven of disaffection, which had remained with the army, swelling with discontent on every light occasion, and ready at all times to rise into mutiny. they had voluntarily continued in the service after the secession of their comrades at tlascala; but it was from the same mercenary hopes with which they had originally embarked in the expedition,and in these they were destined still to be disappointed. they had little of the true spirit of adventure, which distinguished the old companions of cortes; and they found the barren laurels of victory but a sorry recompense for all their toils and sufferings. with these men were joined others, who had causes of personal disgust with the general; and others, again, who looked with disgust on the result of the war. the gloomy fate of their countrymen, who had fallen into the enemy's hands, filled them with dismay. they felt themselves the victims of a chimerical spirit in their leader, who, with such inadequate means, was urging to extremity so ferocious and formidable a foe; and they shrunk with something like apprehension from thus pursuing the enemy into his own haunts, where he would gather tenfold energy from despair. these men would have willingly abandoned the enterprise, and returned to cuba; but how could they do it? cortes had control over the whole route from the city to the sea-coast; and not a vessel could leave its ports without his warrant. even if he were put out of the way, there were others, his principal officers, ready to step into his place, and avenge the death of their commander. it was necessary to embrace these, also, in the scheme of destruction; and it was proposed, therefore, together with cortes, to assassinate sandoval, olid, alvarado, and two or three others most devoted to his interests. the conspirators would then raise the cry of liberty, and doubted not that they should be joined by the greater part of the army, or enough, at least, to enable them to work their own pleasure. they proposed to offer the command, on cortes' death, to francisco verdugo, a brother-in-law of velasquez. he was an honourable cavalier, and not privy to their design. but they had little doubt that he would acquiesce in the command, thus, in a manner, forced upon him, and this would secure them the protection of the governor of cuba, who, indeed, from his own hatred of cortes, would be disposed to look with a lenient eye on their proceedings. the conspirators even went so far as to appoint the subordinate officers, an alguacil mayor, in place of sandoval, a quarter-master-general to succeed olid, and some others. the time fixed for the execution of the plot was soon after the return of cortes from his expedition. a parcel, pretended to have come by a fresh arrival from castile, was to be presented to him while at table, and, when he was engaged in breaking open the letters, the conspirators were to fall on him and his officers, and despatch them with their poniards. such was the iniquitous scheme devised for the destruction of cortes and the expedition. but a conspiracy, to be successful, especially when numbers are concerned, should allow but little time to elapse between its conception and its execution. on the day previous to that appointed for the perpetration of the deed, one, of the party, feeling a natural compunction at the commission of the crime, went to the general's quarters, and solicited a private interview with him. he threw himself at his commander's feet, and revealed all the particulars relating to the conspiracy, adding, that in villafana's possession a paper would be found, containing the names of his accomplices. cortes, thunderstruck at the disclosure, lost not a moment in profiting by it. he sent for alvarado, sandoval, and other officers marked out by the conspirator, and, after communicating the affair to them, went at once with them to villafana's quarters, attended by four alguacils. they found him in conference with three or four friends, who were instantly taken from the apartment, and placed in custody. villafana, confounded at this sudden apparition of his commander, had barely time to snatch a paper, containing the signatures of the confederates, from his bosom, and attempt to swallow it. but cortes arrested his arm, and seized the paper. as he glanced his eye rapidly over the fatal list, he was much moved at finding there the names of more than one who had some claim to consideration in the army. he tore the scroll in pieces, and ordered villafana, to be taken into custody. he was immediately tried by a military court hastily got together, at which the general himself presided. there seems to have been no doubt of the man's guilt. he was condemned to death, and, after allowing him time for confession and absolution, the sentence was executed by hanging him from the window of his own quarters. those ignorant of the affair were astonished at the spectacle; and the remaining conspirators were filled with consternation when they saw that their plot was detected, and anticipated a similar fate for themselves. but they were mistaken. cortes pursued the matter no further. a little reflection convinced him, that to do so would involve him in the most disagreeable, and even dangerous, perplexities. and, however much the parties implicated in so foul a deed might deserve death, he could ill afford the loss even of the guilty, with his present limited numbers. he resolved, therefore, to content himself with the punishment of the ringleader. he called his troops together, and briefly explained to them the nature of the crime for which villafana had suffered. he had made no confession, he said, and the guilty secret had perished with him. he then expressed his sorrow, that any should have been found in their ranks capable of so base an act, and stated his own unconsciousness of having wronged any individual among them; but, if he had done so, he invited them frankly to declare it, as he was most anxious to afford them all the redress in his power. but there was no one of his audience, whatever might be his grievances, who cared to enter his complaint at such a moment; least of all were the conspirators willing to do so, for they were too happy at having, as they fancied, escaped detection, to stand forward now in the ranks of the malcontents. the affair passed off, therefore, without further consequences. as was stated at the close of the last chapter, the spaniards, on their return to quarters, found the construction of the brigantines completed, and that they were fully rigged, equipped, and ready for service. the canal, also, after having occupied eight thousand men for nearly two months, was finished. it was a work of great labour; for it extended half a league in length, was twelve feet wide, and as many deep. the sides were strengthened by palisades of wood, or solid masonry. at intervals dams and locks were constructed, and part of the opening was through the hard rock. by this avenue the brigantines might now be safely introduced on the lake. cortes was resolved that so auspicious an event should be celebrated with due solemnity. on the 28th of april, the troops were drawn up under arms, and the whole population of tezcuco assembled to witness the ceremony. mass was performed, and every man in the army, together with the general, confessed and received the sacrament. prayers were offered up by father olmedo, and a benediction invoked on the little navy, the first worthy of the name ever launched on american waters. the signal was given by the firing of a cannon, when the vessels, dropping down the canal one after another, reached the lake in good order; and as they emerged on its ample bosom, with music sounding, and the royal ensign of castile proudly floating from their masts, a shout of admiration arose from the countless multitudes of spectators, which mingled with the roar of artillery and musketry from the vessels and the shore! it was a novel spectacle to the simple natives; and they gazed with wonder on the gallant ships, which, fluttering like sea-birds on their snowy pinions, bounded lightly over the waters, as if rejoicing in their element. it touched the stern hearts of the conquerors with a glow of rapture, and, as they felt that heaven had blessed their undertaking, they broke forth, by general accord, into the noble anthem of the te deum. but there was no one of that vast multitude for whom the sight had deeper interest than their commander. for he looked on it as the work, in a manner, of his own hands; and his bosom swelled with exultation, as he felt he was now possessed of a power strong enough to command the lake, and to shake the haughty towers of tenochtitlan. the general's next step was to muster his forces in the great square of the capital. he found they amounted to eighty-seven horse, and eight hundred and eighteen foot, of which one hundred and eighteen were arquebusiers and crossbowmen. he had three large field-pieces of iron, and fifteen lighter guns or falconets of brass. the heavier cannon had been transported from vera cruz to tezcuco, a little while before, by the faithful tlascalans. he was well supplied with shot and balls, with about ten hundredweight of powder, and fifty thousand copper-headed arrows, made after a pattern furnished by him to the natives. the number and appointments of the army much exceeded what they had been at any time since the flight from mexico, and showed the good effects of the late arrivals from the islands. indeed, taking the fleet into the account, cortes had never before been in so good a condition for carrying on his operations. three hundred of the men were sent to man the vessels, thirteen, or rather twelve, in number, one of the smallest having been found, on trial, too dull a sailer to be of service. half of the crews were required to navigate the ships. there was some difficulty in finding hands for this, as the men were averse to the employment. cortes selected those who came from palos, moguer, and other maritime towns, and notwithstanding their frequent claims of exemption, as hidalgos, from this menial occupation, he pressed them into the service. each vessel mounted a piece of heavy ordnance, and was placed under an officer of respectability, to whom cortes gave a general code of instructions for the government of the little navy, of which he proposed to take the command in person. he had already sent to his indian confederates, announcing his purpose of immediately laying siege to mexico, and called on them to furnish their promised levies within the space of ten days at furthest. the tlascalans he ordered to join him at tezcuco; the others were to assemble at chalco, a more convenient place of rendezvous for the operations in the southern quarter of the valley. the tlascalans arrived within the time prescribed, led by the younger xicotencatl, supported by chichemecatl, the same doughty warrior who had convoyed the brigantines to tezcuco. they came fifty thousand strong, according to cortes, making a brilliant show with their military finery, and marching proudly forward under the great national banner, emblazoned with a spread eagle, the arms of the republic. with as blithe and manly a step as if they were going to the battle-ground, they defiled through the gates of the capital, making its walls ring with the friendly shouts of "castile and tlascala." the observations which cortes had made in his late tour of reconnaissance had determined him to begin the siege by distributing his forces into three separate camps, which he proposed to establish at the extremities of the principal causeways. by this arrangement the troops would be enabled to move in concert on the capital, and be in the best position to intercept its supplies from the surrounding country. the first of these points was tacuba, commanding the fatal causeway of the noche triste. this was assigned to pedro de alvarado, with a force consisting, according to cortes' own statement, of thirty horse, one hundred and sixty-eight spanish infantry, and five and twenty thousand tlascalans. christoval de olid had command of the second army, of much the same magnitude, which was to take up its position at cojohuacan, the city, it will be remembered, overlooking the short causeway connected with that of iztapalapan. gonzalo de sandoval had charge of the third division, of equal strength with each of the two preceding, but which was to draw its indian levies from the forces assembled at chalco. this officer was to march on iztapalapan, and complete the destruction of that city, begun by cortes soon after his entrance into the valley. it was too formidable a post to remain in the rear of the army. the general intended to support the attack with his brigantines, after which the subsequent movements of sandoval would be determined by circumstances. having announced his intended dispositions to his officers, the spanish commander called his troops together, and made one of those brief and stirring harangues with which he was wont on great occasions to kindle the hearts of his soldiery. "i have taken the last step," he said; "i have brought you to the goal for which you have so long panted. a few days will place you before the gates of mexico,the capital from which you were driven with so much ignominy. but we now go forward under the smiles of providence. does any one doubt it? let him but compare our present condition with that in which we found ourselves not twelve months since, when, broken and dispirited, we sought shelter within the walls of tlascala; nay, with that in which we were but a few months since, when we took up our quarters in tezcuco. since that time our strength has been nearly doubled. we are fighting the battles of the faith, fighting for our honour, for riches, for revenge. i have brought you face to face with your foe. it is for you to do the rest." the address of the bold chief was answered by the thundering acclamations of his followers, who declared that every man would do his duty under such a leader; and they only asked to be led against the enemy. cortes then caused the regulations for the army, published at tlascala, to be read again to the troops, with the assurance that they should be enforced to the letter. it was arranged that the indian forces should precede the spanish by a day's march, and should halt for their confederates on the borders of the tezcucan territory. a circumstance occurred soon after their departure, which gave bad augury for the future. a quarrel had arisen in the camp at tezcuco between a spanish soldier and a tlascalan chief, in which the latter was badly hurt. he was sent back to tlascala, and the matter was hushed up, that it might not reach the ears of the general, who, it was known, would not pass it over lightly. xicotencatl was a near relative of the injured party, and on the first day's halt, he took the opportunity to leave the army, with a number of his followers, and set off for tlascala. other causes are assigned for his desertion. it is certain that, from the first, he looked on the expedition with an evil eye, and had predicted that no good would come of it. he came into it with reluctance, as, indeed, he detested the spaniards in his heart. his partner in the command instantly sent information of the affair to the spanish general, still encamped at tezcuco. cortes, who saw at once the mischievous consequences of this defection at such a time, detached a party of tlascalan and tezcucan indians after the fugitive, with instructions to prevail on him, if possible, to return to his duty. they overtook him on the road, and remonstrated with him on his conduct, contrasting it with that of his countrymen generally, and of his own father in particular, the steady friend of the white men. "so much the worse," replied the chieftain; "if they had taken my counsel, they would never have become the dupes of the perfidious strangers." finding their remonstrances received only with anger or contemptuous taunts, the emissaries returned without accomplishing their object. cortes did not hesitate on the course he was to pursue. "xicotencatl," he said, "had always been the enemy of the spaniards, first in the field, and since in the council-chamber; openly, or in secret, still the same,their implacable enemy. there was no use in parleying with the false-hearted indian." he instantly despatched a small body of horse with an alguacil to arrest the chief, wherever he might be found, even though it were in the streets of tlascala, and to bring him back to tezcuco. at the same time he sent information of xicotencatl's proceedings to the tlascalan senate, adding, that desertion among the spaniards was punished with death. the emissaries of cortes punctually fulfilled his orders. they arrested the fugitive chief,whether in tlascala or in its neighbourhood is uncertain,and brought him a prisoner to tezcuco, where a high gallows, erected in the great square, was prepared for his reception. he was instantly led to the place of execution; his sentence and the cause for which he suffered were publicly proclaimed, and the unfortunate cacique expiated his offence by the vile death of a malefactor. his ample property, consisting of lands, slaves, and some gold, was all confiscated to the castilian crown. thus perished xicotencatl, in the flower of his age,as dauntless a warrior as ever led an indian army to battle. he was the first chief who successfully resisted the arms of the invaders; and, had the natives of anahuac generally been animated with a spirit like his, cortes would probably never have set foot in the capital of montezuma. he was gifted with a clearer insight into the future than his countrymen; for he saw that the european was an enemy far more to be dreaded than the aztec. yet, when he consented to fight under the banner of the white men, he had no right to desert it, and he incurred the penalty prescribed by the code of savage as well as of civilised nations. it is said, indeed, that the tlascalan senate aided in apprehending him, having previously answered cortes, that his crime was punishable with death by their own laws. it was a bold act, however, thus to execute him in the midst of his people; for he was a powerful chief, heir to one of the four seigniories of the republic. his chivalrous qualities made him popular, especially with the younger part of his countrymen; and his garments were torn into shreds at his death, and distributed as sacred relics among them. still, no resistance was offered to the execution of the sentence, and no commotion followed it. he was the only tlascalan who ever swerved from his loyalty to the spaniards. according to the plan of operations settled by cortes, sandoval, with his division, was to take a southern direction; while alvarado and olid would make the northern circuit of the lakes. these two cavaliers, after getting possession of tacuba, were to advance to chapoltepec, and demolish the great aqueduct there, which supplied mexico with water. on the 10th of may, they commenced their march; but at acolman, where they halted for the night, a dispute arose between the soldiers of the two divisions, respecting their quarters. from words they came to blows, and a defiance was even exchanged between the leaders, who entered into the angry feelings of their followers. intelligence of this was soon communicated to cortes, who sent at once to the fiery chiefs, imploring them, by their regard for him and the common cause, to lay aside their differences, which must end in their own ruin, and that of the expedition. his remonstrance prevailed, at least, so far as to establish a show of reconciliation between the parties. but was not a man to forget, or easily to forgive; and alvarado, though frank and liberal, had an impatient temper, much more easily excited than appeased. they were never afterwards friends. the spaniards met with no opposition on their march. the principal towns were all abandoned by the inhabitants, who had gone to strengthen the garrison of mexico, or taken refuge with their families among the mountains. tacuba was in like manner deserted, and the troops once more established themselves in their old quarters in the lordly city of the tepanecs. their first undertaking was, to cut off the pipes that conducted the water from the royal streams of chapoltepec to feed the numerous tanks and fountains which sparkled-in the courtyards of the capital. the aqueduct, partly constructed of brickwork, and partly of stone and mortar, was raised on a strong, though narrow, dike, which transported it across an arm of the lake; and the whole work was one of the most pleasing monuments of mexican civilisation. the indians, well aware of its importance, had stationed a large body of troops for its protection. a battle followed, in which both sides suffered considerably, but the spaniards were victorious. a part of the aqueduct was demolished, and during the siege no water found its way again to the capital through this channel. on the following day the combined forces descended on the fatal causeway, to make themselves masters, if possible, of the nearest bridge. they found the dike covered with a swarm of warriors, as numerous as on the night of their disaster, while the surface of the lake was dark with the multitude of canoes. the intrepid christians strove to advance under a perfect hurricane of missiles from the water and the land, but they made slow progress. barricades thrown across the causeway embarrassed the cavalry, and rendered it nearly useless. the sides of the indian boats were fortified with bulwarks, which shielded the crews from the arquebuses and crossbows; and, when the warriors on the dike were hard pushed by the pikemen, they threw themselves fearlessly into the water, as if it were their native element, and re-appearing along the sides of the dike, shot off their arrows and javelins with fatal execution. after a long and obstinate struggle, the christians were compelled to fall back on their own quarters with disgrace, andincluding the allieswith nearly as much damage as they had inflicted on the enemy. olid, disgusted with the result of the engagement, inveighed against his companion, as having involved them in it by his wanton temerity, and drew off his forces the next morning to his own station at cojohuacan. the camps, separated by only two leagues, maintained an easy communication with each other. they found abundant employment in foraging the neighbouring country for provisions, and in repelling the active sallies of the enemy; on whom they took their revenge by cutting off his supplies. but their own position was precarious, and they looked with impatience for the arrival of the brigantines under cortes. it was in the latter part of may that took up his quarters at cojohuacan; and from that time may be dated the commencement of the siege of mexico. chapter v [1521] indian flotilla defeatedthe causeways occupied desperate assaultsfiring of the palacesspirit of the besieged barracks for the troops no sooner had cortes received intelligence that his two officers had established themselves in their respective posts, than he ordered sandoval to march on iztapalapan. the cavalier's route led him through a country for the most part friendly; and at chalco his little body of spaniards was swelled by the formidable muster of indian levies, who awaited there his approach. after this junction, he continued his march without opposition till he arrived before the hostile city, under whose walls he found a large force drawn up to receive him. a battle followed, and the natives, after maintaining their ground sturdily for some time, were compelled to give way, and to seek refuge either on the water or in that part of the town which hung over it. the remainder was speedily occupied by the spaniards. meanwhile cortes had set sail with his flotilla, intending to support his lieutenant's attack by water. on drawing near the southern shore of the lake, he passed under the shadow of an insulated peak, since named from him the "rock of the marquess." it was held by a body of indians, who saluted the fleet, as it passed, with showers of stones and arrows. cortes, resolving to punish their audacity, and to clear the lake of his troublesome enemy, instantly landed with a hundred and fifty of his followers. he placed himself at their head, scaled the steep ascent, in the face of a driving storm of missiles, and, reaching the summit, put the garrison to the sword. there was a number of women and children, also, gathered in the place, whom he spared. on the top of the eminence was a blazing beacon, serving to notify to the inhabitants of the capital when the spanish fleet weighed anchor. before cortes had regained his brigantine, the canoes and piraguas of the enemy had left the harbours of mexico, and were seen darkening the lake for many a rood. there were several hundred of them, all crowded with warriors, and advancing rapidly by means of their oars over the calm bosom of the waters. cortes, who regarded his fleet, to use his own language, as "the key of the war," felt the importance of striking a decisive blow in the first encounter with the enemy. it was with chagrin, therefore, that he found his sails rendered useless by the want of wind. he calmly waited the approach of the indian squadron, which, however, lay on their oars, at something more than musket-shot distance, as if hesitating to encounter these leviathans of their waters. at this moment, a light air from land rippled the surface of the lake; it gradually freshened into a breeze, and cortes, taking advantage of the friendly succour, which he may be excused, under all the circumstances, for regarding as especially sent him by heaven, extended his line of battle and bore down, under full press of canvas, on the enemy. the latter no sooner encountered the bows of their formidable opponents, than they were overturned and sent to the bottom by the shock, or so much damaged that they speedily filled and sank. the water was covered with the wreek of broken canoes, and with the bodies of men struggling for life in the waves, and vainly imploring their companions to take them on board their overcrowded vessels. the spanish fleet, as it dashed through the mob of boats, sent off its volleys to the right and left with a terrible effect, completing the discomfiture of the aztecs. the latter made no attempt at resistance, scarcely venturing a single flight of arrows, but strove with all their strength to regain the port from which they had so lately issued. they were no match in the chase, any more than in the fight, for their terrible antagonist, who, borne on the wings of the wind, careered to and fro at his pleasure, dealing death widely around him, and making the shores ring with the thunders of his ordnance. a few only of the indian flotilla succeeded in recovering the port, and, gliding up the canals, found a shelter in the bosom of the city, where the heavier burden of the brigantines made it impossible for them to follow. this victory, more complete than even the sanguine temper of cortes had prognosticated, proved the superiority of the spaniards, and left them, henceforth, undisputed masters of the aztec sea. it was nearly dusk when the squadron, coasting along the great southern causeway, anchored off the point of junction, called xoloc, where the branch from cojohuacan meets the principal dike. the avenue widened at this point, so as to afford room for two towers, or turreted temples, built of stone, and surrounded by walls of the same material, which presented altogether a position of some strength, and, at the present moment, was garrisoned by a body of aztecs. they were not numerous; and cortes, landing with his soldiers, succeeded without much difficulty in dislodging the enemy, and in getting possession of the works. it seems to have been originally the general's design to take up his own quarters with at cojohuacan. but, if so, he now changed his purpose, and wisely fixed on this spot, as the best position for his encampment. it was but half a league distant from the capital; and, while it commanded its great southern avenue, had a direct communication with the garrison at cojohuacan, through which he might receive supplies from the surrounding country. here, then, he determined to establish his head-quarters. he at once caused his heavy iron cannon to be transferred from the brigantines to the causeway, and sent orders to to join him with half his force, while sandoval was instructed to abandon his present quarters, and advance to cojohuacan, whence he was to detach fifty picked men of his infantry to the camp of cortes. having made these arrangements, the general busily occupied himself with strengthening the works at xoloc, and putting them in the best posture of defence. the two principal avenues to mexico, those on the south and the west, were now occupied by the christians. there still remained a third, the great dike of tepejacac, on the north, which, indeed, taking up the principal street, that passed in a direct line through the heart of the city, might be regarded as a continuation of the dike of iztapalapan. by this northern route a means of escape was still left open to the besieged, and they availed themselves of it, at present, to maintain their communications with the country, and to supply themselves with provisions. alvarado, who observed this from his station at tacuba, advised his commander of it, and the latter instructed sandoval to take up his position on the causeway. that officer, though suffering at the time from a severe wound received from a lance in one of the late skirmishes, hastened to obey; and thus, by shutting up its only communication with the surrounding country, completed the blockade of the capital. but cortes was not content to wait patiently the effects of a dilatory blockade, which might exhaust the patience of his allies, and his own resources. he determined to support it by such active assaults on the city as should still further distress the besieged, and hasten the hour of surrender. for this purpose he ordered a simultaneous attack, by the two commanders at the other stations, on the quarters nearest their encampments. on the day appointed, his forces were under arms with the dawn. mass, as usual, was performed; and the indian confederates, as they listened with grave attention to the stately and imposing service, regarded with undisguised admiration the devotional reverence shown by the christians, whom, in their simplicity, they looked upon as little less than divinities themselves. the spanish infantry marched in the van, led on by cortes, attended by a number of cavaliers, dismounted like himself. they had not moved far upon the causeway, when they were brought to a stand by one of the open breaches, that had formerly been traversed by a bridge. on the further side a solid rampart of stone and lime had been erected, and behind this a strong body of aztecs were posted, who discharged on the spaniards, as they advanced, a thick volley of arrows. the latter vainly endeavoured to dislodge them with their firearms and crossbows; they were too well secured behind their defences. cortes then ordered two of the brigantines, which had kept along, one on each side of the causeway, in order to co-operate with the army, to station themselves so as to enfilade the position occupied by the enemy. thus placed between two well-directed fires, the indians were compelled to recede. the soldiers on board the vessels, springing to land, bounded like deer up the sides of the dike. they were soon followed by their countrymen under cortes, who, throwing themselves into the water, swam the undefended chasm, and joined in pursuit of the enemy. the mexicans fell back, however, in something like order, till they reached another opening in the dike, like the former, dismantled of its bridge, and fortified in the same manner by a bulwark of stone, behind which the retreating aztecs, swimming across the chasm, and reinforced by fresh bodies of their countrymen, again took shelter. they made good their post till, again assailed by the cannonade from the brigantines, they were compelled to give way. in this manner breach after breach was carried, and, at every fresh instance of success, a shout went up from the crews of the vessels, which, answered by the long files of the spaniards and their confederates on the causeway, made the valley echo to its borders. cortes had now reached the end of the great avenue, where it entered the suburbs. there he halted to give time for the rearguard to come up with him. it was detained by the labour of filling up the breaches in such a manner as to make a practicable passage for the artillery and horse, and to secure one for the rest of the army on its retreat. this important duty was intrusted to the allies, who executed it by tearing down the ramparts on the margins, and throwing them into the chasms, and, when this was not sufficient,for the water was deep around the southern causeway,by dislodging the great stones and rubbish from the dike itself, which was broad enough to admit of it, and adding them to the pile, until it was raised above the level of the water. the street on which the spaniards now entered, was the great avenue that intersected the town from north to south, and the same by which they had first visited the capital. it was broad and perfectly straight, and, in the distance, dark masses of warriors might be seen gathering to the support of their countrymen, who were prepared to dispute the further progress of the spaniards. the sides were lined with buildings, the terraced roofs of which were also crowded with combatants, who, as the army advanced, poured down a pitiless storm of missiles on their heads, which glanced harmless, indeed, from the coat of mail, but too often found their way through the more common escaupil of the soldier, already gaping with many a ghastly rent. cortes, to rid himself of this annoyance for the future, ordered his indian pioneers to level the principal buildings, as they advanced; in which work of demolition, no less than in the repair of the breaches, they proved of inestimable service. the spaniards, meanwhile, were steadily, but slowly, advancing, as the enemy recoiled before the rolling fire of musketry, though turning at intervals to discharge their javelins and arrows against their pursuers. in this way they kept along the great street, until their course was interrupted by a wide ditch or canal, once traversed by a bridge, of which only a few planks now remained. these were broken by the indians the moment they had crossed, and a formidable array of spears were instantly seen bristling over the summit of a solid rampart of stone, which protected the opposite side of the canal. cortes was no longer supported by his brigantines, which the shallowness of the canals prevented from penetrating into the suburbs. he brought forward his arquebusiers, who, protected by the targets of their comrades, opened a fire on the enemy. but the balls fell harmless from the bulwarks of stone; while the assailants presented but too easy a mark to their opponents. the general then caused the heavy guns to be brought up, and opened a lively cannonade, which soon cleared a breach in the works, through which the musketeers and crossbowmen poured in their volleys thick as hail. the indians now gave way in disorder after having held their antagonists at bay for two hours. the latter, jumping into the shallow water, scaled the opposite bank without further resistance, and drove the enemy along the street towards the square, where the sacred pyramid reared its colossal bulk high over the other edifices of the city. it was a spot too familiar to the spaniards. on one side stood the palace of axacayatl, their old quarters, the scene to many of them of so much suffering. opposite was the pile of low, irregular, buildings, once the residence of the unfortunate montezuma; while the third side of the square was flanked by the coatepantli, or wall of serpents, which encompassed the great teocalli with its little city of holy edifices. the spaniards halted at the entrance of the square, as if oppressed, and for a moment overpowered, by the bitter recollections that crowded on their minds. but their intrepid leader, impatient at their hesitation, loudly called on them to advance before the aztecs had time to rally; and grasping his target in one hand, and waving his sword high above his head with the other, he cried his war-cry of "st. jago," and led them at once against the enemy. the mexicans, intimidated by the presence of their detested foe, who, in spite of all their efforts had again forced his way into the heart of their city, made no further resistance, but retreated, or rather fled, for refuge into the sacred inclosure of the teocalli, where the numerous buildings scattered over its ample area afforded many good points of defence. a few priests, clad in their usual wild and blood-stained vestments, were to be seen lingering on the terraces which wound round the stately sides of the pyramid, chanting hymns in honour of their god, and encouraging the warriors below to battle bravely for his altars. the spaniards poured through the open gates into the area, and a small party rushed up the winding corridors to its summit. no vestige now remained there of the cross, or of any other symbol of the pure faith to which it had been dedicated. a new effigy of the aztec war-god had taken the place of the one demolished by the christians, and raised its fantastic and hideous form in the same niche which had been occupied by its predecessor. the spaniards soon tore away its golden mask and the rich jewels with which it was bedizened, and hurling the struggling priests down the sides of the pyramid, made the best of their way to their comrades in the area. it was full time. the aztecs, indignant at the sacrilegious outrage perpetrated before their eyes, and gathering courage from the inspiration of the place, under the very presence of their deities, raised a yell of horror and vindictive fury, as, throwing themselves into something like order, they sprang by a common impulse on the spaniards. the latter, who had halted near the entrance, though taken by surprise, made an effort to maintain their position at the gateway. but in vain; for the headlong rush of the assailants drove them at once into the square, where they were attacked by other bodies of indians, pouring in from the neighbouring streets. broken, and losing their presence of mind, the troops made no attempt to rally, but, crossing the square, and abandoning the cannon planted there to the enemy, they hurried down the great street of iztapalapan. here they were soon mingled with the allies, who choked up the way, and who, catching the panic of the spaniards, increased the confusion, while the eyes of the fugitives, blinded by the missiles that rained on them from the azoteas, were scarcely capable of distinguishing friend from foe. in vain cortes endeavoured to stay the torrent, and to restore order. his voice was drowned in the wild uproar, as he was swept away, like driftwood, by the fury of the current. all seemed to be lost;when suddenly sounds were heard in an adjoining street, like the distant tramp of horses galloping rapidly over the pavement. they drew nearer and nearer, and a body of cavalry soon emerged on the great square. though but a handful in number, they plunged boldly into the thick of the enemy. we have often had occasion to notice the superstitious dread entertained by the indians of the horse and his rider. and, although the long residence of the cavalry in the capital had familiarised the natives, in some measure, with their presence, so long a time had now elapsed since they had beheld them, that all their former mysterious terrors revived in full force; and, when thus suddenly assailed in flank by the formidable apparition, they were seized with a panic, and fell into confusion. it soon spread to the leading files, and cortes, perceiving his advantage, turned with the rapidity of lightning, and, at this time supported by his followers, succeeded in driving the enemy with some loss back into the inclosure. it was now the hour of vespers, and, as night must soon overtake them, he made no further attempt to pursue his advantage. ordering the trumpets, therefore, to sound a retreat, he drew off his forces in good order, taking with him the artillery which had been abandoned in the square. the allies first went off the ground, followed by the spanish infantry, while the rear was protected by the horse, thus reversing the order of march on their entrance. the aztecs hung on the closing files, and though driven back by frequent charges of the cavalry, still followed in the distance, shooting off their ineffectual missiles, and filling the air with wild cries and howling, like a herd of ravenous wolves disappointed of their prey. it was late before the army reached its quarters at xoloc. cortes had been well supported by alvarado and sandoval in this assault on the city; though neither of these commanders had penetrated the suburbs, deterred, perhaps, by the difficulties of the passage, which, in alvarado's case, were greater than those presented to cortes, from the greater number of breaches with which the dike in his quarter was intersected. something was owing, too, to the want of brigantines, until cortes supplied the deficiency by detaching half of his little navy to the support of his officers. without their co-operation, however, the general himself could not have advanced so far, nor, perhaps, have succeeded at all in setting foot within the city. the success of this assault spread consternation, not only among the mexicans, but their vassals, as they saw that the formidable preparations for defence were to avail little against the white man, who had so soon, in spite of them, forced his way into the very heart of the capital. several of the neighbouring places, in consequence, now showed a willingness to shake off their allegiance, and claimed the protection of the spaniards. among these, were the territory of xochimilco, so roughly treated by the invaders, and some tribes of otomies, a rude but valiant people, who dwelt on the western confines of the valley. their support was valuable, not so much from the additional reinforcement which it brought, as from the greater security it gave to the army, whose outposts were perpetually menaced by these warlike barbarians. thus strengthened, cortes prepared to make another attack upon the capital, and that before it should have time to recover from the former. orders were given to his lieutenants on the other causeways, to march at the same time, and co-operate with him, as before, in the assault. it was conducted in precisely the same manner as on the previous entry, the infantry taking the van, and the allies and cavalry following. but, to the great dismay of the spaniards, they found two-thirds of the breaches restored to their former state, and the stones and other materials, with which they had been stopped, removed by the indefatigable enemy. they were again obliged to bring up the cannon, the brigantines ran alongside, and the enemy was dislodged, and driven from post to post, in the same manner as on the preceding attack. in short, the whole work was to be done over again. it was not till an hour after noon that the army had won a footing in the suburbs. here their progress was not so difficult as before; for the buildings from the terraces of which they had experienced the most annoyance had been swept away. still it was only step by step that they forced a passage in face of the mexican militia, who disputed their advance with the same spirit as before. cortes, who would willingly have spared the inhabitants, if he could have brought them to terms, saw them with regret, as he says, thus desperately bent on a war of extermination. he conceived that there would be no way more likely to affect their minds, than by destroying at once some of the principal edifices, which they were accustomed to venerate as the pride and ornament of the city. marching into the great square, he selected, as the first to be destroyed, the old palace of axayacatl, his former barracks. the ample range of low buildings was, it is true, constructed of stone; but the interior, as well as outworks, its turrets, and roofs, were of wood. the spaniards, whose associations with the pile were of so gloomy a character, sprang to the work of destruction with a satisfaction like that which the french mob may have felt in the demolition of the bastile. torches and firebrands were thrown about in all directions; the lower parts of the building were speedily on fire, which, running along the inflammable bangings and woodwork of the interior, rapidly spread to the second floor. there the element took freer range, and, before it was visible from without, sent up from every aperture and crevice a dense column of vapour, that hung like a funeral pall over the city. this was dissipated by a bright sheet of flame, which enveloped all the upper regions of the vast pile, till, the supporters giving way, the wide range of turreted chambers fell, amidst clouds of dust and ashes, with an appalling crash, that for a moment stayed the spaniards in the work of devastation. the aztecs gazed with inexpressible horror on this destruction of the venerable abode of their monarchs, and of the monuments of their luxury and splendour. their rage was exasperated almost to madness, as they beheld their hated foes, the tlascalans, busy in the work of desolation, and aided by the tezcucans, their own allies, and not unfrequently their kinsmen. they vented their fury in bitter execrations, especially on the young prince ixtlilxochitl, who, marching side by side with cortes, took his full share in the dangers of the day. the warriors from the housetops poured the most approbrious epithets on him as he passed, denouncing him as false-hearted traitor; false to his country and his blood,reproaches not altogether unmerited, as his kinsman, who chronicles the circumstance, candidly confesses. he gave little heed to their taunts, however, holding on his way with the dogged resolution of one true to the cause in which he was embarked; and, when he entered the great square, he grappled with the leader of the aztec forces, wrenched a lance from his grasp, won by the latter from the christians, and dealt him a blow with his mace, or maquahuitl, which brought him lifeless to the ground. the spanish commander, having accomplished the work of destruction, sounded a retreat, sending on the indian allies, who blocked up the way before him. the mexicans, maddened by their losses, in wild transports of fury hung close on his rear, and though driven back by the cavalry, still returned, throwing themselves desperately under the horses, striving to tear the riders from their saddles, and content to throw away their own lives for one blow at their enemy. fortunately the greater part of their militia was engaged with the assailants on the opposite quarters of the city; but, thus crippled, they pushed the spaniards under cortes so vigorously, that few reached the camp that night without bearing on their bodies some token of the desperate conflict. on the following day, and, indeed, on several days following, the general repeated his assaults with as little care for repose, as if he and his men had been made of iron. on one occasion he advanced some way down the street of tacuba, in which he carried three of the bridges, desirous, if possible, to open a communication with alvarado, posted on the contiguous causeway. but the spaniards in that quarter had not penetrated beyond the suburbs, still impeded by the severe character of the ground, and wanting, it may be, somewhat of that fiery impetuosity which the soldier feels who fights under the eye of his chief. in each of these assaults, the breaches were found more or less restored to their original state by the pertinacious mexicans, and the materials, which had been deposited in them with so much labour, again removed. it may seem strange, that cortes did not take measures to guard against the repetition of an act which caused so much delay and embarrassment to his operations. he notices this in his letter to the emperor, in which he says that to do so would have required, either that he should have established his quarters in the city itself, which would have surrounded him with enemies, and cut off his communications with the country; or that he should have posted a sufficient guard of spaniardsfor the natives were out of the questionto protect the breaches by night, a duty altogether beyond the strength of men engaged in so arduous a service through the day. yet this was the course adopted by alvarado; who stationed, at night, a guard of forty soldiers for the defence of the opening nearest to the enemy. this was relieved by a similar detachment in a few hours, and this again by a third, the two former still lying on their post; so that, on an alarm, a body of one hundred and twenty soldiers was ready on the spot to repel an attack. sometimes, indeed, the whole division took up their bivouac in the neighbourhood of the breach, resting on their arms, and ready for instant action. but a life of such incessant toil and vigilance was almost too severe even for the stubborn constitutions of the spaniards. "through the long night," exclaims diaz, who served in alvarado's division, "we kept our dreary watch; neither wind, nor wet, nor cold availing anything. there we stood, smarting, as we were, from the wounds we had received in the fight of the preceding day." it was the rainy season, which continues in that country from july to september; and the surface of the causeways, flooded by the storms, and broken up by the constant movement of such large bodies of men, was converted into a marsh, or rather quagmire, which added inconceivably to the distresses of the army. the troops under cortes were scarcely in a better situation. but few of them could find shelter in the rude towers that garnished the works of xoloc. the greater part were compelled to bivouac in the open air, exposed to all the inclemency of the weather. every man, unless his wounds prevented it, was required by the camp regulations to sleep on his arms; and they were often roused from their hasty slumbers by the midnight call to battle. for guatemozin, contrary to the usual practice of his countrymen, frequently selected the hours of darkness to aim a blow at the enemy. "in short," exclaims the veteran soldier above quoted, "so unintermitting were our engagements, by day and by night, during the three months in which we lay before the capital, that to recount them all would but exhaust the reader's patience, and make him to fancy he was perusing the incredible feats of a knight-errant of romance." the aztec emperor conducted his operations on a systematic plan, which showed some approach to military science. he not unfrequently made simultanious attacks on the three several divisions of the spaniards established on the causeways, and on the garrisons at their extremities. to accomplish this, he enforced the service not merely of his own militia of the capital, but of the great towns in the neighbourhood, who all moved in concert, at the well-known signal of the beacon-fire, or of the huge. drum struck by the priests on the summit of the temple. one of these general attacks, it was observed, whether from accident or design, took place on the eve of st. john the baptist, the anniversary of the day on which the spaniards made their second entry into the mexican capital. notwithstanding the severe drain on his forces by this incessant warfare, the young monarch contrived to relieve them in some degree by different detachments, who took the place of one another. this was apparent from the different uniforms and military badges of the indian battalions, who successively came and disappeared from the field. at night a strict guard was maintained in the aztec quarters, a thing not common with the nations of the plateau. the outposts of the hostile armies were stationed within sight of each other. that of the mexicans was usually placed in the neighbourhood of some wide breach, and its position was marked by a large fire in front. the hours for relieving guard were intimated by the shrill aztec whistle, while bodies of men might be seen moving behind the flame, which threw a still ruddier glow over the cinnamon-coloured skins of the warriors. while thus active on land, guatemozin was not idle on the water. he was too wise, indeed, to cope with the spanish navy again in open battle; but he resorted to stratagem, so much more congenial to indian warfare. he placed a large number of canoes in ambuscade among the tall reeds which fringed the southern shores of the lake, and caused piles, at the same time, to be driven into the neighbouring shallows. several piraguas, or boats of a larger size, then issued forth, and rowed near the spot where the spanish brigantines were moored. two of the smallest vessels, supposing the indian barks were conveying provisions to the besieged, instantly stood after them, as had been foreseen. the aztec boats fled for shelter to the reedy thicket, where their companions lay in ambush. the spaniards, following, were soon entangled among the palisades under the water. they were instantly surrounded by the whole swarm of indian canoes, most of the men were wounded, several, including the two commanders, slain, and one of the brigantines fella useless prizeinto the hands of the victors. among the slain was pedro barba, captain of the crossbowmen, a gallant officer, who had highly distinguished himself in the conquest. this disaster occasioned much mortification to cortes. it was a salutary lesson that stood him in good stead during the remainder of the war. it may appear extraordinary that guatemozin should have been able to provide for the maintenance of the crowded population now gathered in the metropolis, especially as the avenues were all in the possession of the besieging army. but, independently of the preparations made with this view before the siege and of the loathsome sustenance daily furnished by the victims for sacrifice, supplies were constantly obtained from the surrounding country across the lake. this was so conducted, for a time, as in a great measure to escape observation; and even when the brigantines were commanded to cruise day and night, and sweep the waters of the boats employed in this service, many still contrived, under cover of the darkness, to elude the vigilance of the cruisers, and brought their cargoes into port. it was not till the great towns in the neighbourhood cast off their allegiance that the supply began to fall, from the failure of its sources. the defection was more frequent, as the inhabitants became convinced that the government, incompetent to its own defence, must be still more so to theirs: and the aztec metropolis saw its great vassals fall off, one after another, as the tree, over which decay is stealing, parts with its leaves at the first blast of the tempest. the cities, which now claimed the spanish general's protection, supplied the camp with an incredible number of warriors; a number which, if we admit cortes' own estimate, one hundred and fifty thousand, could have only served to embarrass his operations on the long extended causeways. these levies were distributed among the three garrisons at the terminations of the causeways; and many found active employment in foraging the country for provisions, and yet more in carrying on hostilities against the places still unfriendly to the spaniards. cortes found further occupation for them in the construction of barracks for his troops, who suffered greatly from exposure to the incessant rains of the season, which were observed to fall more heavily by night than by day. quantities of stone and timber were obtained from the buildings that had been demolished in the city. they were transported in the brigantines to the causeway, and from these materials a row of huts or barracks was constructed, extending on either side of the works of xoloc. by this arrangement, ample accommodations were furnished for the spanish troops and their indian attendants, amounting in all to about two thousand. the great body of the allies, with a small detachment of horse and infantry, were quartered at the neighbouring post of cojohuacan, which served to protect the rear of the encampment, and to maintain its communications with the country. a similar disposition of forces took place in the other divisions of the army, under alvarado and sandoval, though the accommodations provided for the shelter of the troops on their causeways were not so substantial as those for the division of cortes. the spanish camp was supplied with provisions from the friendly towns in the neighbourhood, and especially from tezcuco. they consisted of fish, the fruits of the country, particularly a sort of fig borne by the tuna (cactus opuntia), and a species of cherry, or something much resembling it, which grew abundant at this season. but their principal food was the tortillas, cakes of indian meal, still common in mexico, for which bakehouses were established, under the care of the natives, in the garrison towns commanding the causeways. the aries, as appears too probable, reinforced their frugal fare with an occasional banquet of human flesh, for which the battle-field unhappily afforded them too much facility, and which, however shocking to the feelings of cortes, he did not consider himself in a situation at that moment to prevent. thus the tempest, which had been so long mustering, broke at length in all its fury on the aztec capital. its unhappy inmates beheld the hostile legions encompassing them about with their glittering files stretching as far as the eye could reach. they saw themselves deserted by their allies and vassals in their utmost need; the fierce stranger penetrating into their secret places, violating their temples, plundering their palaces, wasting the fair city by day, firing its suburbs by night, and intrenching himself in solid edifices under their walls as if determined never to withdraw his foot while one stone remained upon another. all this they saw, yet their spirits were unbroken; and, though famine and pestilence were beginning to creep over them, they still showed the same determined front to their enemies. cortes, who would gladly have spared the town and its inhabitants, beheld this resolution with astonishment. he intimated more than once, by means of the prisoners whom he released, his willingness to grant them fair terms of capitulation. day after day, he fully expected his proffers would be accepted. but day after day he was disappointed. he had yet to learn how tenacious was the memory of the aztecs; and that, whatever might be the horrors of their present situation, and their fears for the future, they were all forgotten in their hatred of the white man. chapter vi [1521] general assault on the citydefeat of the spaniards their disastrous conditionsacrifice of the captives defection of the alliesconstancy of the troops famine was now gradually working its way into the heart of the beleaguered city. it seemed certain that, with this strict blockade, the crowded population must in the end be driven to capitulate, though no arm should be raised against them. but it required time; and the spaniards, though constant and enduring by nature, began to be impatient of hardships scarcely inferior to those experienced by the besieged. in some respects their condition was even worse, exposed, as they were, to the cold, drenching rains, which fen with little intermission, rendering their situation dreary and disastrous in the extreme. in this state of things there were many who would willingly have shortened their sufferings, and taken the chance of carrying the place by a coup de main. others thought it would be best to get possession of the great market of tlatelolco, which, from its situation in the north-western part of the city, might afford the means of communication with the camps of both alvarado and sandoval. this place, encompassed by spacious porticos, would furnish accommodations for a numerous host; and, once established in the capital, the spaniards would be in a position to follow up the blow with far more effect than at a distance. these arguments were pressed by several of the officers, particularly by alderete, the royal treasurer, a person of much consideration, not only from his rank, but from the capacity and zeal he had shown in the service. in deference to their wishes, cortes summoned a council of war, and laid the matter before it. the treasurer's views were espoused by most of the high-mettled cavaliers, who looked with eagerness to any change of their present forlorn and wearisome life; and cortes, thinking it probably more prudent to adopt the less expedient course, than to enforce a cold and reluctant obedience to his own opinion, suffered himself to be overruled. a day was fixed for the assault, which was to be made simultaneously by the two divisions under alvarado and the commander-in-chief. sandoval was instructed to draw off the greater part of his forces from the northern causeway, and to unite himself with alvarado, while seventy picked soldiers were to be detached to the support of cortes. on the appointed morning, the two armies, after the usual celebration of mass, advanced along their respective causeways against the city. they were supported, in addition to the brigantines, by a numerous fleet of indian boats, which were to force a passage up the canals, and by a countless multitude of allies, whose very numbers served in the end to embarrass their operations. after clearing the suburbs, three avenues presented themselves, which all terminated in the square of tlatelolco. the principal one, being of much greater width than the other two, might rather be called a causeway than a street, since it was flanked by deep canals on either side. cortes divided his force into three bodies. one of them he placed under alderete, with orders to occupy the principal street. a second he gave in charge to andres de tapia and jorge de alvarado; the former a cavalier of courage and capacity, the latter, a younger brother of don pedro and possessed of the intrepid spirit which belonged to that chivalrous family. these were to penetrate by one of the parallel streets, while the general himself, at the head of the third division, was to occupy the other. a small body of cavalry, with two or three field-pieces, was stationed as a reserve in front of the great street of tacuba, which was designated as the rallying point for the different divisions. cortes gave the most positive instructions to his captains not to advance a step without securing the means of retreat, by carefully filling up the ditches, and the openings in the causeway. the neglect of this precaution by alvarado, in an assault which he had made on the city but a few days before, had been attended with such serious consequences to his army, that cortes rode over, himself, to his officer's quarters, for the purpose of publicly reprimanding him for his disobedience of orders. on his arrival at the camp, however, he found that his offending captain had conducted the affair with so much gallantry, that the intended reprimandthough well deservedsubsided into a mild rebuke. the arrangements being completed, the three divisions marched at once up the several streets. cortes, dismounting, took the van of his own squadron, at the head of his infantry. the mexicans fell back as he advanced, making less resistance than usual. the spaniards pushed on, carrying one barricade after another, and carefully filling up the gaps with rubbish, so as to secure themselves a footing. the canoes supported the attack, by moving along the canals, and grappling with those of the enemy; while numbers of the nimble-footed tlascalans, scaling the terraces, passed on from one house to another, where they were connected, hurling the defenders into the streets below. the enemy, taken apparently by surprise, seemed incapable of withstanding for a moment the fury of the assault; and the victorious christians, cheered on by the shouts of triumph which arose from their companions in the adjoining streets, were only the more eager to be first at the destined goal. indeed, the facility of his success led the general to suspect that he might be advancing too fast; that it might be a device of the enemy to draw them into the heart of the city, and then surround or attack them in the rear. he had some misgivings, moreover, lest his too ardent officers, in the heat of the chase, should, notwithstanding his commands, have overlooked the necessary precaution of filling up the breaches. he accordingly brought his squadron to a halt, prepared to baffle any insidious movement of his adversary. meanwhile he received more than one message from alderete, informing him that he had nearly gained the market. this only increased the general's apprehension, that, in the rapidity of his advance, he might have neglected to secure the ground. he determined to trust no eyes but his own, and, taking a small body of troops, proceeded to reconnoitre the route followed by the treasurer. he had not proceeded far along the great street, or causeway, when his progress was arrested by an opening ten or twelve paces wide, and filled with water, at least two fathoms deep, by which a communication was formed between the canals on the opposite sides. a feeble attempt had been made to stop the gap with the rubbish of the causeway, but in too careless a manner to be of the least service; and a few straggling stones and pieces of timber only showed that the work had been abandoned almost as soon as begun. to add to his consternation, the general observed that the sides of the causeway in this neighbourhood had been pared off, and, as was evident, very recently. he saw in all this the artifice of the cunning enemy; and had little doubt that his hot-headed officer had rushed into a snare deliberately laid for him. deeply alanned, he set about repairing the mischief as fast as possible, by ordering his men to fill up the yawning chasm. but they had scarcely begun their labours, when the hoarse echoes of conflict in the distance were succeeded by a hideous sound of mingled yells and war-whoops, that seemed to rend the very heavens. this was followed by a rushing noise, as of the tread of thronging multitudes, showing that the tide of battle was turned back from its former course, and was rolling on towards the spot where cortes and his little band of cavaliers were planted. his conjecture proved too true. alderete had followed the retreating aztecs with an eagerness which increased with every step of his advance. he had carried the barricades, which had defended the breach, without much difficulty, and, as he swept on, gave orders. that the opening should be stopped. but the blood of the high-spirited cavaliers was warmed by the chase, and no one cared to be detained by the ignoble occupation of filling up the ditches, while he could gather laurels so easily in the fight; and they all pressed on, exhorting and cheering one another with the assurance of being the first to reach the square of tlatelolco. in this way they suffered themselves to be decoyed into the heart of the city; when suddenly the horn of guatemozin sent forth a long and piercing note from the summit of a neighbouring teocalli. in an instant, the flying aztecs, as if maddened by the blast, wheeled about, and turned on their pursuers. at the same time, countless swarms of warriors from the adjoining streets and lanes poured in upon the flanks of the assailants, filling the air with the fierce, unearthly cries which bad reached the ears of cortes, and drowning, for a moment, the wild dissonance which reigned in the other quarters of the capital. the army, taken by surprise, and shaken by the fury of the assault, were thrown into the utmost disorder. friends and foes, white men and indians, were mingled together in one promiscuous mass; spears, swords, and war-clubs were brandished together in the air. blows fell at random. in their eagerness to escape, they trod down one another. blinded by the missiles, which now rained on them from the azoteas, they staggered on, scarcely knowing in what direction, or fell, struck down by hands which they could not see. on they came like a rushing torrent sweeping along some steep declivity, and rolling in one confused tide towards the open breach, on the further side of which stood cortes and his companions, horror-struck at the sight of the approaching ruin. the foremost files soon plunged into the gulf, treading one another under the flood, some striving ineffectually to swim, others, with more success, to clamber over the heaps of their suffocated comrades. many, as they attempted to scale the opposite sides of the slippery dike, fell into the water, or were hurried off by the warriors in the canoes, who added to the horrors of the rout by the fresh storm of darts and javelins which they poured on the fugitives. cortes, meanwhile, with his brave followers, kept his station undaunted on the other side of the breach. "i had made up my mind," he says, "to die rather than desert my poor followers in their extremity!" with outstretched hands he endeavoured to rescue as many as he could from the watery grave, and from the more appalling fate of captivity. he as vainly tried to restore something like presence of mind and order among the distracted fugitives. his person was too well known to the aztecs, and his position now made him a conspicuous mark for their weapons. darts, stones, and arrows fell around him as thick as hail, but glanced harmless from his steel helmet and armour of proof. at length a cry of "malinche, malinche!" arose among the enemy; and six of their number, strong and athletic warriors, rushing on him at once, made a violent effort to drag him on board their boat. in the struggle he received a severe wound in the leg, which, for the time, disabled it. there seemed to be no hope for him; when a faithful follower, christoval de olea, perceiving his general's extremity, threw himself on the aztecs, and with a blow cut off the arm of one savage, and then plunged his sword in the body of another. he was quickly supported by a comrade named lerma, and by a tlascalan chief, who, fighting over the prostrate body of cortes, despatched three more of the assailants, though the heroic olea paid dearly for his self-devotion, as he fell mortally wounded by the side of his general. the report soon spread among the soldiers that their commander was taken; and quinones, the captain of his guard, with several others pouring in to the rescue, succeeded in disentangling cortes from the grasp of his enemies who were struggling with him in the water, and raising him in their arms, placed him again on the causeway. one of his pages, meanwhile, had advanced some way through the press, leading a horse for his master to mount. but the youth received a wound in the throat from a javelin, which prevented him from effecting his object. another of his attendants was more successful. it was guzman, his chamberlain; but as be held the bridle, while cortes was assisted into the saddle, he was snatched away by the aztecs, and with the swiftness of thought, hurried off by their canoes. the general still lingered, unwilling to leave the spot, whilst his presence could be of the least service. but the faithful quinones, taking his horse by the bridle, turned his head from the breach, exclaiming at the same time, that "his master's life was too important to the army to be thrown away there." cortes at length succeeded in regaining the firm ground, and reaching the open place before the great street of tacuba. here, under a sharp fire of the artillery, he rallied his broken squadrons, and charging at the head of the little body of horse, which, not having been brought into action, were still fresh, he beat off the enemy. he then commanded the retreat of the two other divisions. the scattered forces again united; and the general, sending forward his indian confederates, took the rear with a chosen body of cavalry to cover the retreat of the army, which was effected with but little additional loss. andres de tapia was despatched to the western causeway to acquaint alvarado and sandoval with the failure of the enterprise. meanwhile the two captains had penetrated far into the city. cheered by the triumphant shouts of their countrymen in the adjacent streets, they had pushed on with extraordinary vigour, that they might not be outstripped in the race of glory. they had almost reached the market-place, which lay nearer to their quarters than to the general's, when they heard the blast from the dread horn of guatemozin, followed by the overpowering yell of the barbarians, which had so startled the ears of cortes: till at length the sounds the receding conflict died away in the distance. the two captains now understood that the day must have gone hard with their countrymen. they soon had further proof of it, when the victorious aztecs, returning from the pursuit of cortes, joined their forces to those engaged with sandoval and alvarado, and fell on them with redoubled fury. at the same time they rolled on the ground two or three of the bloody heads of the spaniards, shouting the name of "malinche." the captains, struck with horror at the spectacle, though they gave little credit to the words of the enemy,instantly ordered a retreat. the fierce barbarians followed up the spaniards to their very intrenchments. but here they were met, first by the cross fire of the brigantines, which, dashing through the palisades planted to obstruct their movements, completely enfiladed the causeway, and next by that of the small battery erected in front of the camp, which, under the management of a skilful engineer, named medrano, swept the whole length of the defile. thus galled in front and on flank, the shattered columns of the aztecs were compelled to give way and take shelter under the defences of the city. the greatest anxiety now prevailed in the camp, regarding the fate of cortes, for tapia had been detained on the road by scattered parties of the enemy, whom guatemozin had stationed there to interrupt the communications between the camps. he arrived, at length, however, though bleeding from several wounds. his intelligence, while it re-assured the spaniards as to the general's personal safety, was not calculated to allay their uneasiness in other respects. sandoval, in particular, was desirous to acquaint himself with the actual state of things, and the further intentions of cortes. suffering as he was from three wounds, which he had received in that day's fight, he resolved to visit in person the quarters of the commander-in-chief. it was mid-day,for the busy scenes of the morning had occupied but a few hours, when sandoval remounted the good steed, on whose strength and speed he knew he could rely. on arriving at the camp, he found the troops there much worn and dispirited by the disaster of the morning. they had good reason to be so. besides the killed, and a long file of wounded, sixty-two spaniards, with a multitude of allies, had fallen alive into the hands of the enemy. the loss of two field-pieces and seven horses crowned their own disgrace and the triumphs of the aztecs. cortes, it was observed, had borne himself throughout this trying day with his usual intrepidity and coolness. it was with a cheerful countenance, that he now received his lieutenant; but a shade of sadness was visible through this outward composure, showing how the catastrophe of the puente cuidada, "the sorrowful bridge," as he mournfully called it, lay heavy at his heart. to the cavalier's anxious inquiries, as to the cause of the disaster, he replied: "it is for my sins that it has befallen me, son sandoval"; for such was the affectionate epithet with which cortes often addressed his best-beloved and trusty officer. he then explained to him the immediate cause, in the negligence of the treasurer. further conversation followed, in which the general declared his purpose to forego active hostilities for a few days. "you must take my place," continued, "for i am too much crippled at present to discharge my duties. you must watch over the safety of the camps. give especial heed to alvarado's. he is a gallant soldier, i know it well; but i doubt the mexican hounds may, some hour, take him at disadvantage." these few words showed the general's own estimate of his two lieutenants; both equally brave and chivalrous; but the one uniting with these qualities the circumspection so essential to success in perilous enterprises, in which the other was signally deficient. it was under the training of cortes that he learned to be a soldier. the general, having concluded his instructions, affectionately embraced his lieutenant, and dismissed him to his quarters. it was late in the afternoon when he reached them; but the sun was still lingering above the western hills, and poured his beams wide over the valley, lighting up the old towers and temples of tenochtitlan with a mellow radiance that little harmonised with the dark scenes of strife in which the city had so lately been involved. the tranquillity of the hour, however, was on a sudden broken by the strange sounds of the great drum in the temple of the war-god,sounds which recalled the noche triste, with all its terrible images, to the minds of the spaniards, for that was the only occasion on which they had ever heard them. they intimated some solemn act of religion within the unhallowed precincts of the teocalli; and the soldiers, startled by the mournful vibrations, which might be heard for leagues across the valley, turned their eyes to the quarter whence they proceeded. they there beheld a long procession winding up the huge sides of the pyramid; for the camp of alvarado was pitched scarcely a mile from the city, and objects are distinctly visible, at a great distance, in the transparent atmosphere of the tableland. as the long file of priests and warriors reached the flat summit of the teocalli, the spaniards saw the figures of several men stripped to their waists, some of whom, by the whiteness of their skins, they recognised as their own countrymen. they were the victims for sacrifice. their heads were gaudily decorated with coronals of plumes, and they carried fans in their hands. they were urged along by blows, and compelled to take part in the dances in honour of the aztec war-god. the unfortunate captives, then stripped of their sad finery, were stretched one after another on the great stone of sacrifice. on its convex surface, their breasts were heaved up conveniently for the diabolical purpose of the priestly executioner, who cut asunder the ribs by a strong blow with his sharp razor of itztli, and thrusting his hand into the wound, tore away the heart, which, hot and reeking, was deposited on the golden censer before the idol. the body of the slaughtered victim was then hurled down the steep stairs of the pyramid, which, it may be remembered, were placed at the same angle of the pile, one flight below another; and the mutilated remains were gathered up by the savages beneath, who soon prepared with them the cannibal repast which completed the work of abomination! we may imagine with what sensations the stupefied spaniards must have gazed on this horrid spectacle, so near that they could almost recognise the persons of their unfortunate friends, see the struggles and writhing of their bodies, hearor fancy that they heardtheir screams of agony! yet so far removed that they could render them no assistance. their limbs trembled beneath them, as they thought what might one day be their own fate; and the bravest among them, who had hitherto gone to battle, as careless and lighthearted, as to the banquet or the ball-room, were unable, from this time forward, to encounter their ferocious enemy without a sickening feeling, much akin to fear, coming over them. the five following days passed away in a state of inaction, except indeed, so far as was necessary to repel the sorties, made from time to time, by the militia of the capital. the mexicans, elated with their success, meanwhile abandoned themselves to jubilee; singing, dancing and feasting on the mangled relics of their wretched victims. guatemozin sent several heads of the spaniards, as well as of the horses, round the country, calling on his old vassals to forsake the banners of the white men, unless they would share the doom of the enemies of mexico. the priests now cheered the young monarch and the people with the declaration, that the dread huitzilopochtli, their offended deity, appeased by the sacrifices offered up on his altars, would again take the aztecs under his protection, and deliver their enemies, before the expiration of eight days, into their hands. this comfortable prediction, confidently believed by the mexicans, was thundered in the ears of the besieging army in tones of exultation and defiance. however it may have been contemned by the spaniards, it had a very different effect on their allies. the latter had begun to be disgusted with a service so full of peril and suffering, and already protracted far beyond the usual term of indian hostilities. they had less confidence than before in the spaniards. experience had shown that they were neither invincible nor immortal, and their recent reverses made them even distrust the ability of the christians to reduce the aztec metropolis. they recalled to mind the ominous words of xicotencatl, that "so sacrilegious a war could come to no good for the people of anahuac." they felt that their arm was raised against the gods of their country. the prediction of the oracle fell heavy on their hearts. they had little doubt of its fulfilment, and were only eager to turn away the bolt from their own heads by a timely secession from the cause. they took advantage, therefore, of the friendly cover of night to steal away from their quarters. company after company deserted in this manner, taking the direction of their respective homes. those belonging to the great towns of the valley, whose allegiance was the most recent, were the first to cast it off. their example was followed by the older confederates, the militia of cholula, tepeaca, tezcuco, and even the faithful tlascala. there were, it is true, some exceptions to these, and among them, ixtlilxochitl, the younger lord of tezcuco, and chichemecatl, the valiant tlascalan chieftain, who, with a few of their immediate followers, still remained true to the banner under which they had. enlisted. but their number was insignificant. the spaniards beheld with dismay the mighty array, on which they relied for support, thus silently melting away before the breath of superstition. cortes alone maintained a cheerful countenance. he treated the prediction with contempt, as an invention of the priests, and sent his messengers after the retreating squadrons, beseeching them to postpone their departure, or at least to halt on the road, till the time, which would soon elapse, should show the falsehood of the prophecy. the affairs of the spaniards, at this crisis, must be confessed to have worn a gloomy aspect. deserted by their allies, with their ammunition nearly exhausted, cut off from the customary supplies from the neighbourhood, harassed by unintermitting vigils and fatigues, smarting under wounds, of which every man in the army had his share, with an unfriendly country in their rear, and a mortal foe in front, they might well be excused for faltering in their enterprise. night after night fresh victims were led up to the great altar of sacrifice; and while the city blazed with the illuminations of a thousand bonfires on the terraced roofs of the dwellings, and in the areas of the temples, the dismal pageant was distinctly visible from the camp below. one of the last of the sufferers was guzman, the unfortunate chamberlain of cortes, who lingered in captivity eighteen days before he met his doom. amidst all the distresses and multiplied embarrassments of their situation, the spaniards still remained true to their purpose. they relaxed in no degree the severity of the blockade. their camps still occupied the only avenues to the city; and their batteries, sweeping the long defiles at every fresh assault of the aztecs, mowed down hundreds of the assailants. their brigantines still rode on the waters, cutting off the communication with the shore. it is true, indeed, the loss of the auxiliary canoes left a passage open for the occasional introduction of supplies to the capital. but the whole amount of these supplies was small; and its crowded population, while exulting in their temporary advantage, and the delusive assurances of their priests, were beginning to sink under the withering grasp of an enemy within, more terrible than the one which lay before their gates. chapter vii [1521] success of the spaniardsfruitless offers to guatemozin buildings razed to the groundterrible famine the troops gain the marketplace thus passed away the eight days prescribed by the oracle; and the sun, which rose upon the ninth, beheld the fair city still beset on every side by the inexorable foe. it was a great mistake of the aztec priests,one not uncommon with false prophets, anxious to produce a startling impression on their followers,to assign so short a term for the fulfilment of their prediction. the tezcucan and tlascalan chiefs now sent to acquaint their troops with the failure of the prophecy, and to recall them to the christian camp. the tlascalans, who had halted on the way, returned, ashamed of their credulity, and with ancient feelings of animosity, heightened by the artifice of which they had been the dupes. their example was followed by many of the other confederates. in a short time the spanish general found himself at the head of an auxiliary force, which, if not so numerous as before, was more than adequate to all his purposes. he received them with politic benignity; and, while he reminded them that they had been guilty of a great crime in thus abandoning their commander, he was willing to overlook it in consideration of their past services. they must be aware that these services were not necessary to the spaniards, who had carried on the siege with the same vigour during their absence as when they were present. but he was unwilling that those who had shared the dangers of the war with him, should not also partake of its triumphs, and be present at the fall of their enemy, which he promised, with a confidence better founded than that of the priests in their prediction, should not be long delayed. yet the menaces and machinations of guatemozin were still not without effect in the distant provinces. before the full return of the confederates, cortes received an embassy from cuernavaca, ten or twelve leagues distant, and another from some friendly towns of the otomies, still further off, imploring his protection against their formidable neighbours, who menaced them with hostilities as allies of the spaniards. as the latter were then situated, they were in a condition to receive succour much more than to give it. most of the officers were accordingly opposed to granting a request, the compliance with which must still further impair their diminished strength. but cortes knew the importance, above all, of not betraying his own inability to grant it. "the greater our weakness," he said, "the greater need have we to cover it under a show of strength." he immediately detached tapia with a body of about a hundred men in one direction, and sandoval with a somewhat larger force in the other, with orders that their absence should not in any event be prolonged beyond ten days. the two capitains executed their commission promptly and effectually. they each met and defeated his adversary in a pitched battle; laid waste the hostile territories, and returned within the time prescribed. they were soon followed by ambassadors from the conquered places, soliciting the alliance of the spaniards; and the affair terminated by an accession of new confederates, and, what was more important, a conviction in the old, that the spaniards were both willing and competent to protect them. fortune, who seldom dispenses her frowns or her favours singlehanded, further showed her good will to the spaniards at this time, by sending a vessel into vera cruz laden with ammunition and military stores. it was part of the fleet destined for the florida coast by the romantic old knight, ponce de leon. the cargo was immediately taken by the authorities of the port, and forwarded, without delay, to the camp, where it arrived most seasonably, as the want of powder, in particular, had begun to be seriously felt. with strength thus renovated, cortes determined to resume active operations, but on a plan widely differing from that pursued before. in the former deliberations on the subject, two courses, as we have seen, presented themselves to the general. one was, to intrench himself in the heart of the capital, and from this point carry on hostilities; the other was the mode of proceeding hitherto followed. both were open to serious objections, which he hoped would be obviated by the one now adopted. this was, to advance no step without securing the entire safety of the army, not only on its immediate retreat, but in its future inroads. every breach in the causeway, every canal in the streets, was to be filled up in so solid a manner, that the work should not be again disturbed. the materials for this were to be furnished by the buildings, every one of which, as the army advanced, whether public or private, hut, temple, or palace, was to be demolished! not a building in their path was to be spared. they were all indiscriminately to be levelled, until, in the conqueror's own language, "the water should be converted into dry land," and a smooth and open ground be afforded for the manoeuvres of the cavalry and artillery. cortes came to this terrible determination with great difficulty. he sincerely desired to spare the city, "the most beautiful thing in the world," as he enthusiastically styles it, and which would have formed the most glorious trophy of his conquest. but, in a place where every house was a fortress, and every street was cut up by canals so embarrassing to his movements, experience proved it was vain to think of doing so, and becoming master of it. there was as little hope of a peaceful accommodation with the aztecs, who, so far from being broken by all they had hitherto endured, and the long perspective of future woes, showed a spirit as haughty and implacable as ever. the general's intentions were learned by the indian allies with unbounded satisfaction; and they answered his call for aid by thousands of pioneers, armed with their coas, or hoes of the country, all testifying the greatest alacrity in helping on the work of destruction. in a short time the breaches in the great causeways were filled up so effectually that they were never again molested. cortes himself set the example by carrying stones and timber with. his own hands. the buildings in the suburbs were then thoroughly levelled, the canals were filled up with the rubbish, and a wide space around the city was thrown open to the manoeuvres of the cavalry, who swept over it free and unresisted. the mexicans did not look with indifference on these preparations to lay waste their town, and leave them bare and unprotected against the enemy. they made incessant efforts to impede the labours of the besiegers, but the latter, under cover of their guns, which kept up an unintermitting fire, still advanced in the work of desolation. the gleam of fortune, which had so lately broken out on the mexicans, again disappeared; and the dark mist, after having been raised for a moment, settled on the doomed capital more heavily than before. famine, with all her hideous train of woes, was making rapid strides among its accumulated population. the stores provided for the siege were exhausted. the casual supply of human victims, or that obtained by some straggling pirogue from the neighbouring shores, was too inconsiderable to be widely felt. some forced a scanty sustenance from a mucilaginous substance, gathered in small quantities on the surface of the lake and canals. others appeased the cravings of appetite by devouring rats, lizards, and the like loathsome reptiles, which had not yet deserted the starving city. its days seemed to be already numbered. but the page of history has many an example, to show that there are no limits to the endurance of which humanity is capable, when animated by hatred and despair. with the sword thus suspended over it, the spanish commander, desirous to make one more effort to save the capital, persuaded three aztec nobles, taken in one of the late actions, to bear a message from him to guatemozin; though they undertook it with reluctance, for fear of the consequences to themselves. cortes told the emperor, that all had now been done that brave men could do in defence of their country. there remained no hope, no chance of escape for the mexicans. their provisions were exhausted; their communications were cut off; their vassals had deserted them; even their gods had betrayed them. they stood alone, with the nations of anahuac banded against them. there was no hope, but in immediate surrender. he besought the young monarch to take compassion on his brave subjects, who were daily perishing before his eyes; and on the fair city, whose stately buildings were fast crumbling into ruins. "return to the allegiance," he concludes, "which you once proffered to the sovereign of castile. the past shall be forgotten. the persons and propertyin short, all the rights of the aztecs shall be respected. you shall be confirmed in your authority, and spain will once more take your city under her protection." the eye of the young monarch kindled, and his dark cheek flushed with sudden anger, as he listened to proposals so humiliating. but, though his bosom glowed with the fiery temper of the indian, he had the qualities of a "gentle cavalier," says one of his enemies, who knew him well. he did no harm to the envoys; but, after the heat of the moment had passed off, he gave the matter a calm consideration, and called a council of his wise men and warriors to deliberate upon it. some were for accepting the proposals, as offering the only chance of preservation. but the priests took a different view of the matter. they knew that the ruin of their own order must follow the triumph of christianity. "peace was good," they said, "but not with the white men." they reminded guatemozin of the fate of his uncle montezuma, and the requital he had met with for all his hospitality: of the seizure and imprisonment of cacama, the cacique of tezcuco; of the massacre of the nobles by alvarado; of the insatiable avarice of the invaders, which had stripped the country of its treasures; of their profanation of the temples; of the injuries and insults which they had heaped without measure on the people and their religion. "better," they said, "to trust in the promises of their own gods, who had so long watched over the nation. better, if need be, give up our lives at once for our country, than drag them out in slavery and suffering among the false strangers." the eloquence of the priests, artfully touching the various wrongs of his people, roused the hot blood of guatemozin. "since it is so," he abruptly exclaimed, "let us think only of supplying the wants of the people. let no man, henceforth, who values his life, talk of surrender. we can at least die like warriors." the spaniards waited two days for the answer to their embassy. at length, it came in a general sortie of the mexicans, who, pouring through every gate of the capital, like a river that has burst its banks, swept on, wave upon wave, to the very intrenchments of the besiegers, threatening to overwhelm them by their numbers! fortunately, the position of the latter on the dikes secured their flanks, and the narrowness of the defile gave their small battery of guns all the advantages of a larger one. the fire of artillery and musketry blazed without intermission along the several causeways, belching forth volumes of sulphurous smoke, that, rolling heavily over the waters, settled dark around the indian city, and hid it from the surrounding country. the brigantines thundered, at the same time. on the flanks of the columns, which, after some ineffectual efforts to maintain themselves, rolled back in wild confusion, till their impotent fury died away in sullen murmurs within the capital. cortes now steadily pursued the plan he had laid down for the devastation of the city. day after day the several armies entered by their respective quarters; sandoval probably directing his operations against the north-eastern district. the buildings made of the porous tetzontli, though generally low, were so massy and extensive, and the canals were so numerous, that their progress was necessarily slow. they, however, gathered fresh accessions of strength every day from the numbers who flocked to the camp from the surrounding country, and who joined in the work of destruction with a hearty good will, which showed their eagerness to break the detested yoke of the aztecs. the latter raged with impotent anger as they beheld their lordly edifices, their temples, all they had been accustomed to venerate, thus ruthlessly swept away; their canals, constructed with so much labour, and what to them seemed science, filled up with rubbish; their flourishing city, in short, turned into a desert, over which the insulting foe now rode triumphant. they heaped many a taunt on the indian allies. "go on," they said, bitterly; "the more you destroy, the more you will have to build up again hereafter. if we conquer, you shall build for us; and if your white friends conquer, they will make you do as much for them." the event justified the prediction. the division of cortes had now worked its way as far north as the great street of tacuba, which opened a communication with alvarado's camp, and near which stood the palace of guatemozin. it was a spacious stone pile, that might well be called a fortress. though deserted by its royal master, it was held by a strong body of aztecs, who made a temporary defence, but of little avail against the battering enginery of the besiegers. it was soon set on fire, and its crumbling walls were levelled in the dust, like those other stately edifices of the capital, the boast and admiration of the aztecs, and some of the fairest fruits of their civilisation. "it was a sad thing to witness their destruction," exclaims cortes; "but it was part of our plan of operations, and we had no alternative." these operations had consumed several weeks, so that it was now drawing towards the latter part of july. during this time, the blockade had been maintained with the utmost rigour, and the wretched inhabitants were suffering all the extremities of famine. some few stragglers were taken, from time to time, in the neighbourhood of the christian camp, whither they had wandered in search of food. they were kindly treated by command of cortes, who was in hopes to induce others to follow their example, and thus to afford a means of conciliating the inhabitants, which might open the way to their submission. but few were found willing to leave the shelter of the capital, and they preferred to take their chance with their suffering countrymen, rather than trust themselves to the mercies of the besiegers. from these few stragglers, however, the spaniards heard a dismal tale of woe, respecting the crowded population in the interior of the city. all the ordinary means of sustenance had long since failed, and they now supported life as they could, by means of such roots as they could dig from the earth, by gnawing the bark of trees, by feeding on the grass,on anything, in short, however loathsome, that could allay the craving of appetite. their only drink was the brackish water of the soil, saturated with the salt lake. under this unwholesome diet, and the diseases engendered by it, the population was gradually wasting away. men sickened and died every day, in all the excruciating torments produced by hunger, and the wan and emaciated survivors seemed only to be waiting for their time. the spaniards had visible confirmation of all this, as they penetrated deeper into the city, and approached the district of tlatelolco now occupied by the besieged. they found the ground turned up in quest of roots and weeds, the trees stripped of their green stems, their foliage, and their bark. troops of famished indians flitted in the distance, gliding like ghosts among the scenes of their former residence. dead bodies lay unburied in the streets and courtyards, or filled up the canals. it was a sure sign of the extremity of the aztecs; for they held the burial of the dead as a solemn and imperative duty. in the early part of the siege, they had religiously attended to it. in its later stages, they were still careful to withdraw the dead from the public eye, by bringing their remains within the houses. but the number of these, and their own sufferings, had now so fearfully increased, that they had grown indifferent to this, and they suffered their friends and their kinsmen to lie and moulder on the spot where they drew their last breath! as the invaders entered the dwellings, a more appalling spectacle presented itself;the floors covered with the prostrate forms of the miserable inmates, some in the agonies of death, others festering in their corruption; men, women, and children, inhaling the poisonous atmosphere, and mingling promiscuously together; mothers, with their infants in their arms perishing of hunger before their eyes, while they were unable to afford them the nourishment of nature; men crippled by their wounds, with their bodies frightfully mangled, vainly attempting to crawl away, as the enemy entered. yet, even in this state, they scorned to ask for mercy, and glared on the invaders with the sullen ferocity of the wounded tiger, that the huntsmen have tracked to his forest cave. the spanish commander issued strict orders that mercy should be shown to these poor and disabled victims. but the indian allies made no distinction. an aztec, under whatever circumstances, was an enemy; and, with hideous shouts of triumph, they pulled down the burning buildings on their heads, consuming the living and the dead in one common funeral pile! yet the sufferings of the aztecs, terrible as they were, did not incline them to submission. there were many, indeed, who, from greater strength of constitution, or from the more favourable circumstances in which they were placed, still showed all their wonted energy of body and mind, and maintained the same undaunted and resolute demeanour as before. they fiercely rejected all the overtures of cortes, declaring they would rather die than surrender, and, adding with a bitter tone of exultation, that the invaders would be at least disappointed in their expectations of treasure, for it was buried where they could never find it! cortes had now entered one of the great avenues leading to the market-place of tlatelolco, the quarter towards which the movements of alvarado were also directed. a single canal only lay in his way, but this was of great width and stoutly defended by the mexican archery. at this crisis, the army one evening, while in their intrenchments on the causeway, were surprised by an uncommon light, that arose from the huge teocalli in that part of the city, which, being at the north, was the most distant from their own position. this temple, dedicated to the dread war-god, was inferior only to the pyramid in the great square; and on it the spaniards had more than once seen their unhappy countrymen led to slaughter. they now supposed that the enemy were employed in some of their diabolical ceremonies, when the flame, mounting higher and higher, showed that the sanctuaries themselves were on fire. a shout of exultation at the sight broke forth from the assembled soldiers, as they assured one another that their countrymen under alvarado had got possession of the building. it was indeed true. that gallant officer, whose position on the western causeway placed him near the district of tlatelolco, had obeyed his commander's instructions to the letter, razing every building to the ground in his progress, and filling up the ditches with their ruins. he, at length, found himself before the great teocalli in the neighbourhood of the market. he ordered a company, under a cavalier named gutierre de badajoz, to storm the place, which was defended by a body of warriors, mingled with priests, still more wild and ferocious than the soldiery. the garrison, rushing down the winding terraces, fell on the assailants with such fury, as compelled them to retreat in confusion, and with some loss. alvarado ordered another detachment to their support. this last was engaged, at the moment, with a body of aztecs, who hung on its rear as it wound up the galleries of the teocalli. thus hemmed in between two enemies, above and below, the position of the spaniards was critical. with sword and buckler, they plunged desperately on the ascending mexicans, and drove them into the courtyard below, where alvarado plied them with such lively volleys of musketry, as soon threw them into disorder and compelled them to abandon the ground. being thus rid of annoyance in the rear, the spaniards returned to the charge. they drove the enemy up the heights of the pyramid, and, reaching the broad summit, a fierce encounter followed in mid-air,such an encounter as takes place where death is the certain consequence of defeat. it ended as usual, in the discomfiture of the aztecs, who were either slaughtered on the spot still wet with the blood of their own victims, or pitched headlong down the sides of the pyramid. the spaniards completed their work by firing the sanctuaries, that the place might be no more polluted by these abominable rites. the flame crept slowly up the lofty pinnacles, in which stone was mingled with wood, till, at length, bursting into one bright blaze, it shot up its spiral volume to such a height, that it was seen from the most distant quarters of the valley. it was this which had been hailed by the soldiers of cortes. the commander-in-chief and his division, animated by the spectacle, made, in their entrance on the following day, more determined efforts to place themselves alongside of their companions under alvarado. the broad canal, above noticed as the only impediment now lying in his way, was to be traversed; and on the further side, the emaciated figures of the aztec warriors were gathered in numbers to dispute the passage. they poured down a storm of missiles on the heads of the indian labourers, while occupied with filling up the wide gap with the ruins of the surrounding buildings. still they toiled on in defiance of the arrowy shower, fresh numbers taking the place of those who fell. and when at length the work was completed, the cavalry rode over the rough plain at full charge against the enemy, followed by the deep array of spearmen, who bore down all opposition with their invincible phalanx. the spaniards now found themselves on the same ground with alvarado's division. soon afterwards that chief, attended by several of his staff, rode into their lines, and cordially embraced his countrymen and companions in arms, for the first time since the beginning of the siege. they were now in the neighbourhood of the market. cortes, taking with him a few of his cavaliers, galloped into it. it was a vast inclosure, as the reader has already seen, covering many an acre. the flat roofs of the piazzas were now covered with crowds of men and women, who gazed in silent dismay on the steel-clad horsemen, that profaned these precincts with their presence for the first time since their expulsion from the capital. the multitude, composed for the most part, probably, of unarmed citizens, seemed taken by surprise; at least, they made no show of resistance; and the general, after leisurely viewing the ground, was permitted to ride back unmolested to the army. on arriving there, he ascended the teocalli, from which the standard of castile, supplanting the memorials of aztec superstition, was now triumphantly floating. the conqueror, as he strode among the smoking embers on the summit, calmly surveyed the scene of desolation below. the palaces, the temples, the busy marts of industry and trade, the glittering canals, covered with their rich freights from the surrounding country, the royal pomp of groves and gardens, all the splendours of the imperial city, the capital of the western world, for ever gone,and in their place a barren wilderness! how different the spectacle which the year before had met his eye, as it wandered over the scenes from the heights of the neighbouring teocalli, with montezuma at his side! seven-eighths of the city were laid in ruins, with the occasional exception, perhaps, of some colossal temple. the remaining eighth, comprehending the district of tlatelolco, was all that now remained to the aztecs, whose populationstill large after all its losseswas crowded into a compass that would hardly have afforded accommodation for a third of their numbers. chapter viii [1521] dreadful sufferings of the besiegedspirit of guatemozin murderous assaultcapture of guatemozin termination of the siegereflections there was no occasion to resort to artificial means to precipitate the ruin of the azecs. it was accelerated every hour by causes more potent than those arising from mere human agency. there they were,pent up in their close and suffocating quarters, nobles, commoners, and slaves, men, women, and children, some in houses, more frequently in hovels,for this part of the city was not the best,others in the open air in canoes, or in the streets, shivering in the cold rains of night, and scorched by the burning heat of day. the ordinary means of sustaining life were long since gone. they wandered about in search of anything, however unwholesome or revolting, that might mitigate the fierce gnawings of hunger. some hunted for insects and worms on the borders of the lake, or gathered the salt weeds and moss from its bottom, while at times they might be seen casting a wistful look at the hills beyond, which many of them had left to share the fate of their brethren in the capital. to their credit, it is said by the spanish writers, that they were not driven in their extremity to violate the laws of nature by feeding on one another. but unhappily this is contradicted by the indian authorities, who state that many a mother, in her agony, devoured the offspring which she had no longer the means of supporting. this is recorded of more than one siege in history; and it is the more probable here, where the sensibilities must have been blunted by familiarity with the brutal practices of the national superstition. but all was not sufficient, and hundreds of famished wretches died every day from extremity of suffering. some dragged themselves into the houses, and drew their last breath alone, and in silence. others sank down in the public streets. wherever they died, there they were left. there was no one to bury or to remove them. familiarity with the spectacle made men indifferent to it. they looked on in dumb despair, waiting for their own turn. there was no complaint, no lamentation, but deep, unutterable woe. if in other quarters of the town the corpses might be seen scattered over the streets, here they were gathered in heaps. "they lay so thick," says bernal diaz, "that one could not tread except among the bodies." "a man could not set his foot down," says cortes, yet more strongly, "unless on the corpse of an indian!" they were piled one upon another, the living mingled with the dead. they stretched themselves on the bodies of their friends, and lay down to sleep there. death was everywhere. the city was a vast charnel-house, in which all was hastening to decay and decomposition. a poisonous steam arose from the mass of putrefaction, under the action of alternate rain and heat, which so tainted the whole atmosphere, that the spaniards, including the general himself, in their brief visits to the quarter, were made ill by it, and it bred a pestilence that swept off even greater numbers than the famine. in the midst of these awful scenes, the young emperor of the aztecs remained, according to all accounts, calm and courageous. with his fair capital laid in ruins before his eyes, his nobles and faithful subjects dying around him, his territory rent away, foot by foot, till scarce enough remained for him to stand on, he rejected every invitation to capitulate, and showed the same indomitable spirit as at the commencement of the siege. when cortes, in the hope that the extremities of the besieged would incline them to listen to an accommodation, persuaded a noble prisoner to bear to guatemozin his proposals to that effect, the fierce young monarch, according to the general, ordered him at once to be sacrificed. it is a spaniard, we must remember, who tells the story. cortes, who had suspended hostilities for several days, in the vain hope that the distresses of the mexicans would bend them to submission, now determined to drive them to it by a general assault. cooped up, as they were, within a narrow quarter of the city, their position favoured such an attempt. he commanded alvarado to hold himself in readiness, and directed sandoval-who, besides the causeway, had charge of the fleet, which lay off the tlatelolcan district,to support the attack by a cannonade on the houses near the water. he then led his forces into the city, or rather across the horrid waste that now encircled it. on entering the indian precincts, he was met by several of the chiefs, who, stretching forth their emaciated arms, exclaimed, "you are the children of the sun. but the sun is swift in his course. why are you, then, so tardy? why do you delay so long to put an end to our miseries? rather kill us at once, that we may go to our god huitzilopochtli, who waits for us in heaven to give us rest from our sufferings!" cortes was moved by their piteous appeal, and answered, that he desired not their death, but their submission. "why does your master refuse to treat with me," he said, "when a single hour will suffice for me to crush him and all his people?" he then urged them to request guatemozin to confer with him, with the assurance that he might do it in safety, as his person should not be molested. the nobles, after some persuasion, undertook the mission; and it was received by the young monarch in a manner which showedif the anecdote before related of him be truethat misfortune had, at length, asserted some power over his haughty spirit. he consented to the interview, though not to have it take place on that day, but the following, in the great square of tlatelolco. cortes, well satisfied, immediately withdrew from the city, and resumed his position on the causeway. the next morning he presented himself at the place appointed, having previously stationed alvarado there with a strong corps of infantry to guard against treachery. the stone platform in the centre of the square was covered with mats and carpets, and a banquet was prepared to refresh the famished monarch and his nobles. having made these arrangements, he awaited the hour of the interview. but guatemozin, instead of appearing himself, sent his nobles, the same who had brought to him the general's invitation, and who now excused their master's absence on the plea of illness. cortes, though disappointed, gave a courteous reception to the envoys, considering that it might still afford the means of opening a communication with the emperor. he persuaded them without much entreaty to partake of the good cheer spread before them, which they did with a voracity that told how severe had been their abstinence. he then dismissed them with a seasonable supply of provisions for their master, pressing him to consent to an interview, without which it was impossible their differences could be adjusted. the indian envoys returned in a short time, bearing with them a present of fine cotton fabrics, of no great value, from guatemozin, who still declined to meet the spanish general. cortes, though deeply chagrined, was unwilling to give up the point. "he will surely come," he said to the envoys, "when he sees that i suffer you to go and come unharmed, you who have been my steady enemies, no less than himself, throughout the war. he has nothing to fear from me." he again parted with them, promising to receive their answer the following day. on the next morning, the aztec chiefs, entering the christian quarters, announced to cortes that guatemozin would confer with him at noon in the market-place. the general was punctual at the hour; but without success. neither monarch nor ministers appeared there. it was plain that the indian prince did not care to trust the promises of his enemy. a thought of montezuma may have passed across his mind. after he had waited three hours, the general's patience was exhausted, and, as he learned that the mexicans were busy in preparations for defence, he made immediate dispositions for the assault. the confederates had been left without the walls, for he did not care to bring them in sight of the quarry, before he was ready to slip the leash. he now ordered them to join him; and, supported by alvarado's division, marched at once into the enemy's quarters. he found them prepared to receive him. their most able-bodied warriors were thrown into the van, covering their feeble and crippled comrades. women were seen occasionally mingling in the ranks, and, as well as children, thronged the azoteas, where, with famine-stricken visages and haggard eyes, they scowled defiance and hatred on their invaders. as the spaniards advanced, the mexicans set up a fierce war-cry, and sent off clouds of arrows with their accustomed spirit, while the women and boys rained down darts and stones from their elevated position on the terraces. but the missiles were sent by hands too feeble to do much damage; and, when the squadrons closed, the loss of strength became still more sensible in the aztecs. their blows fell feebly and with doubtful aim; though some, it is true, of stronger constitution, or gathering strength from despair, maintained to the last a desperate fight. the arquebusiers now poured in a deadly fire. the brigantines replied by successive volleys in the opposite quarter. the besieged, hemmed in, like deer surrounded by the huntsmen, were brought down on every side. the carnage was horrible. the ground was heaped up with slain, until the maddened combatants were obliged to climb over the human mounds to get at one another. the miry soil was saturated with blood, which ran off like water, and dyed the canals themselves with crimson. all was uproar and terrible confusion. the hideous yells of the barbarians; the oaths and execrations of the spaniards; the cries of the wounded; the shrieks of women and children; the heavy blows of the conquerors; the deathstruggle of their victims; the rapid, reverberating echoes of musketry; the hissing of innumerable missiles; the crash and crackling of blazing buildings, crushing hundreds in their ruins; the blinding volumes of dust and sulphurous smoke shrouding all in their gloomy canopy,made a scene appalling even to the soldiers of cortes, steeled as they were by many a rough passage of war, and by long familiarity with blood and violence. "the piteous cries of the women and children, in particular," says the general, "were enough to break one's heart." he commanded that they should be spared, and that all, who asked it, should receive quarter. he particularly urged this on the confederates, and placed men among them to restrain their violence. but he had set an engine in motion too terrible to be controlled. it were as easy to curb the hurricane in its fury, as the passions of an infuriated horde of savages. "never did i see so pitiless a race," he exclaims, "or any thing wearing the form of man so destitute of humanity." they made no distinction of sex or age, and in this hour of vengeance seemed to be requiting the hoarded wrongs of a century. at length, sated with slaughter, the spanish commander sounded a retreat. it was full time, if, according to his own statement,we may hope it is an exaggeration,forty thousand souls had perished! yet their fate was to be envied, in comparison with that of those who survived. through the long night which followed, no movement was perceptible in the aztec quarter. no light was seen there, no sound was heard, save the low moaning of some wounded or dying wretch, writhing in his agony. all was dark and silent,the darkness of the grave. the last blow seemed to have completely stunned them. they had parted with hope, and sat in sullen despair, like men waiting in silence the stroke of the executioner. yet, for all this, they showed no disposition to submit. every new injury had sunk deeper into their souls, and filled them with a deeper hatred of their enemy. fortune, friends, kindred, home,all were gone. they were content to throw away life itself, now that they had nothing more to live for. far different was the scene in the christian camp, where, elated with their recent successes, all was alive with bustle, and preparation for the morrow. bonfires were seen blazing along the causeways, lights gleamed from tents and barracks, and the sounds of music and merriment, borne over the waters, proclaimed the joy of the soldiers at the prospect of so soon terminating their wearisome campaign. on the following morning the spanish commander again mustered his forces, having decided to follow up the blow of the preceding day before the enemy should have time to rally, and at once to put an end to the war. he had arranged with alvarado, on the evening previous, to occupy the market-place of tlatelolco; and the discharge of an arquebuse was to be the signal for a simultaneous assault. sandoval was to hold the northern causeway, and, with the fleet, to watch the movements of the indian emperor, and to intercept the flight to the main land, which cortes knew he meditated. to allow him to effect this, would be to leave a formidable enemy in his own neighbourhood, who might at any time kindle the flame of insurrection throughout the country. he ordered sandoval, however, to do no harm to the royal person, and not to fire on the enemy at all, except in self-defence. it was on the memorable 13th of august, 1521, that cortes led his warlike array for the last time across the black and blasted environs which lay around the indian capital. on entering the aztec precincts, he paused, willing to afford its wretched inmates one more chance of escape, before striking the fatal blow. he obtained an interview with some of the principal chiefs, and expostulated with them on the conduct of their prince. "he surely will not," said the general, "see you all perish, when he can so easily save you." he then urged them to prevail on guatemozin to hold a conference with him, repeating the assurances of his personal safety. the messengers went on their mission, and soon returned with the cihuacoatl at their head, a magistrate of high authority among the mexicans. he said, with a melancholy air, in which his own disappointment was visible, that "guatemozin was ready to die where he was, but would hold no interview with the spanish commander"; adding in a tone of resignation, "it is for you to work your pleasure." "go, then," replied the stern conqueror, "and prepare your countrymen for death. their hour is come." he still postponed the assault for several hours. but the impatience of his troops at this delay was heightened by the rumor that guatemozin and his nobles were preparing to escape with their effects in the piraguas and canoes which were moored on the margin of the lake. convinced of the fruitlessness and impolicy of further procrastination, cortes made his final dispositions for the attack, and took his own station on an azotea, which commanded the theatre of operations. when the assailants came into presence of the enemy, they found them huddled together in the utmost confusion, all ages and sexes, in masses so dense that they nearly forced one another over the brink of the causeways into the water below. some had climbed on the terraces, others feebly supported themselves against the wars of the buildings. their squalid and tattered garments gave a wildness to their appearance, which still further heightened the ferocity of their expressions, as they glared on their enemy with eyes in which hate was mingled with despair. when the spaniards had approached within bowshot, the aztecs let off a flight of impotent missiles, showing to the last the resolute spirit, though they had lost the strength, of their better days. the fatal signal was then given by the discharge of an arquebuse,speedily followed by peals of heavy ordnance, the rattle of firearms, and the hellish shouts of the confederates, as they sprang upon their victims. it is unnecessary to stain the page with a repetition of the horrors of the preceding day. some of the wretched aztecs threw themselves into the water, and were picked up by the canoes. others sunk and were suffocated in the canals. the number of these became so great, that a bridge was made of their dead bodies, over which the assailants could climb to the opposite banks. others again, especially the women, begged for mercy, which, as the chroniclers assure us, was everywhere granted by the spaniards, and, contrary to the instructions and entreaties of cortes, everywhere refused by the confederates. while this work of butchery was going on, numbers were observed pushing off in the barks that lined the shore, and making the best of their way across the lake. they were constantly intercepted by the brigantines, which broke through the flimsy array of boats; sending off their volleys to the right and left, as the crews of the latter hotly assailed them. the battle raged as fiercely on the lake as on the land. many of the indian vessels were shattered and overturned. some few, however, under cover of the smoke, which rolled darkly over the waters, succeeded in clearing themselves of the turmoil, and were fast nearing the opposite shore. sandoval had particularly charged his captains to keep an eye on the movements of any vessel in which it was at all probable that guatemozin might be concealed. at this crisis, three or four of the largest piraguas were seen skimming over the water, and making their way rapidly across the lake. a captain named garci holguin, who had command of one of the best sailers in the fleet, instantly gave them chase. the wind was favourable, and every moment he gained on the fugitives, who pulled their oars with a vigour that despair alone could have given. but it was in vain; and, after a short race, holguin, coming alongside of one of the piraguas, which, whether from its appearance, or from information he had received, he conjectured might bear the indian emperor, ordered his men to level their crossbows at the boat. but, before they could discharge them, a cry arose from those on it, that their lord was on board. at the same moment, a young warrior, armed with buckler and maquahuitl, rose up, as if to beat off the assailants. but, as the spanish captain ordered his men not to shoot, he dropped his weapons, and exclaimed, "i am guatemozin; lead me to malinche, i am his prisoner; but let no harm come to my wife and my followers." holguin assured him that his wishes should be respected, and assisted him to get on board the brigantine, followed by his wife and attendants. these were twenty in number, consisting of coanaco, the deposed lord of tezcuco, the lord of tlacopan, and several other caciques and dignitaries, whose rank, probably, had secured them some exemption from the general calamities of the siege. when the captives were seated on the deck of his vessel, holguin requested the aztec prince to put an end to the combat by commanding his people in the other canoes to surrender. but, with a dejected air, he replied, "it is not necessary. they will fight no longer, when they see that their prince is taken." he spoke truth. the news of guatemozin's capture spread rapidly through the fleet, and on shore, where the mexicans were still engaged in conflict with their enemies. it ceased, however, at once. they made no further resistance; and those on the water quickly followed the brigantines, which conveyed their captive monarch to land. meanwhile sandoval, on receiving tidings of the capture, brought his own brigantine alongside of holguin's, and demanded the royal prisoner to be surrendered to him. but his captain claimed him as his prize. a dispute arose between the parties, each anxious to have the glory of the deed, and perhaps the privilege of commemorating it on his escutcheon. the controversy continued so long that it reached the ears of cortes, who, in his station on the azotea, had learned, with no little satisfaction, the capture of his enemy. he instantly sent orders to his wrangling officers to bring guatemozin before him, that he might adjust the difference between them. he charged them, at the same time, to treat their prisoner with respect. he then made preparations for the interview; caused the terrace to be carpeted with crimson cloth and matting, and a table to be spread with provisions, of which the unhappy aztecs stood so much in need. his lovely indian mistress, dona marina, was present to act as interpreter. she had stood by his side through all the troubled scenes of the conquest, and she was there now to witness its triumphant termination. guatemozin, on landing, was escorted by a company of infantry to the presence of the spanish commander. he mounted the azotea with a calm and steady step, and was easily to be distinguished from his attendant nobles, though his full, dark eye was no longer lighted up with its accustomed fire, and his features wore an expression of passive resignation, that told little of the fierce and fiery spirit that burned within. his head was large, his limbs well proportioned, his complexion fairer than those of his bronze-coloured nation, and his whole deportment singularly mild and engaging. cortes came forward with a dignified and studied courtesy to receive him. the aztec monarch probably knew the person of his conqueror, for he first broke silence by saying, "i have done all that i could, to defend myself and my people. i am now reduced to this state. you will deal with me, malinche, as you list." then, laying his hand on the hilt of a poniard, stuck in the general's belt, he added, with vehemence, "better despatch me with this, and rid me of life at once." cortes was filled with admiration at the proud bearing of the young barbarian, showing in his reverses a spirit worthy of an ancient roman. "fear not," he replied, "you shall be treated with all honour. you have defended your capital like a brave warrior. a spaniard knows how to respect valour even in an enemy." he then inquired of him, where he had left the princess, his wife; and, being informed that she still remained under protection of a spanish guard on board the brigantine, the general sent to have her escorted to his presence. she was the youngest daughter of montezuma; and was hardly yet on the verge of womanhood. on the accession of her cousin, guatemozin, to the throne, she had been wedded to him as his lawful wife. she was kindly received by cortes, who showed her the respectful attentions suited to her rank. her birth, no doubt, gave her an additional interest in his eyes, and he may have felt some touch of compunction, as he gazed on the daughter of the unfortunate montezuma. he invited his royal captives to partake of the refreshments which their exhausted condition rendered so necessary. meanwhile the spanish commander made his dispositions for the night, ordering sandoval to escort the prisoners to cojohuacan, whither he proposed himself immediately to follow. the other captains, and alvarado, were to draw off their forces to their respective quarters. it was impossible for them to continue in the capital, where the poisonous effluvia from the unburied carcasses loaded the air with infection. a small guard only was stationed to keep order in the wasted suburbs.it was the hour of vespers when guatemozin surrendered, and the siege might be considered as then concluded. thus, after a siege of nearly three months' duration, unmatched in history for the constancy and courage of the besieged, seldom surpassed for the severity of its sufferings, fell the renowned capital of the aztecs. unmatched, it may be truly said, for constancy and courage, when we recollect that the door of capitulation on the most honourable terms was left open to them throughout the whole blockade, and that, sternly rejecting every proposal of their enemy, they, to a man, preferred to die rather than surrender. more than three centuries had elapsed since the aztecs, a poor and wandering tribe from the far north-west, had come on the plateau. there they built their miserable collection of huts on the spotas tradition tells usprescribed by the oracle. their conquests, at first confined to their immediate neighbourhood, gradually covered the valley, then crossing the mountains, swept over the broad extent of the tableland, descended its precipitous sides, and rolled onwards to the mexican gulf, and the distant confines of central america. their wretched capital, meanwhile, keeping pace with the enlargement of territory, had grown into a flourishing city, filled with buildings, monuments of art, and a numerous population, that gave it the first rank among the capitals of the western world. at this crisis, came over another race from the remote east, strangers like themselves, whose coming had also been predicted by the oracle, and, appearing on the plateau, assailed them in the very zenith of their prosperity, and blotted them out from the map of nations for ever! the whole story has the air of fable rather than of history! a legend of romance,a tale of the genii! yet we cannot regret the fall of an empire which did so little to promote the happiness of its subjects, or the real interests of humanity. notwithstanding the lustre thrown over its latter days by the glorious defence of its capital, by the mild munificence of montezuma, by the dauntless heroism of guatemozin, the aztecs were emphatically a fierce and brutal race, little calculated, in their best aspects, to excite our sympathy and regard. their civilisation, such as it was, was not their own, but reflected, perhaps imperfectly, from a race whom they had succeeded in the land. it was, in respect to the aztecs, a generous graft on a vicious stock, and could have brought no fruit to perfection. they ruled over their wide domains with a sword, instead of a sceptre. they did nothing to ameliorate the condition, or in any way promote the progress, of their vassals. their vassals were serfs, used only to minister to their pleasure, held in awe by armed garrisons, ground to the dust by imposts in peace, by military conscriptions in war. they did not, like the romans, whom they resembled in the nature of their conquests, extend the rights of citizenship to the conquered. they did not amalgamate them into one great nation, with common rights and interests. they held them as aliens,even those who in the valley were gathered round the very walls of the capital. the aztec metropolis, the heart of the monarchy, had not a sympathy, not a pulsation, in common with the rest of the body politic. it was a stranger in its own land. the aztecs not only did not advance the condition of their vassals, but morally speaking, they did much to degrade it. how can a nation, where human sacrifices prevail, and especially when combined with cannibalism, further the march of civilisation? how can the interests of humanity be consulted where man is levelled to the rank of the brutes that perish? the influence of the aztecs introduced their gloomy superstition into lands before unacquainted with it, or where, at least, it was not established in any great strength. the example of the capital was contagious. as the latter increased in opulence, the religious celebrations were conducted with still more terrible magnificence. in the same manner as the gladiatorial shows of the romans increased in pomp with the increasing splendour of the capital, men became familiar with scenes of horror and the most loathsome abominations; women and childrenthe whole nation became familiar with, and assisted at them. the heart was hardened, the manners were made ferocious, the feeble light of civilisation, transmitted from a milder race, was growing fainter and fainter, as thousands and thousands of miserable victims throughout the empire were yearly fattened in its cages, sacrificed on its altars, dressed and served at its banquets! the whole land was converted into a vast human shambles! the empire of the aztecs did not fall before its time. whether these unparalleled outrages furnish a sufficient plea to the spaniards for their invasion, whether, with the protestant, we are content to find a warrant for it in the natural rights and demands of civilisation, or, with the roman catholic, in the good pleasure of the pope,on the one or other of which grounds, the conquests by most christian nations in the east and the west have been defended,it is unnecessary to discuss, as it has already been considered in a former chapter. it is more material to inquire, whether, assuming the right, the conquest of mexico was conducted with a proper regard to the claims of humanity. and here we must admit that, with all allowance for the ferocity of the age and the laxity of its principles, there are passages which every spaniard, who cherishes the fame of his countrymen, would be glad to see expunged from their history; passages not to be vindicated on the score of self-defence, or of necessity of any kind, and which must forever leave a dark spot on the annals of the conquest. and yet, taken as a whole, the invasion, up to the capture of the capital, was conducted on principles less revolting to humanity than most, perhaps than any, of the other conquests of the castilian crown in the new world. it may seem slight praise to say that the followers of cortes used no blood-hounds to hunt down their wretched victims, as in some other parts of the continent, nor exterminated a peaceful and submissive population in mere wantonness of cruelty, as in the islands. yet it is something that they were not so far infected by the spirit of the age, and that their swords were rarely stained with blood unless it was indispensable to the success of their enterprise. even in the last siege of the capital, the sufferings of the aztecs, terrible as they were, do not imply any unusual cruelty in the victors; they were not greater than those inflicted on their own countrymen at home, in many a memorable instance, by the most polished nations, not merely of ancient times but of our own. they were the inevitable consequences which follow from war, when, instead of being confined to its legitimate field, it is brought home to the hearthstone, to the peaceful community of the city,its burghers untrained to arms, its women and children yet more defenceless. in the present instance, indeed, the sufferings of the besieged were in a great degree to be charged on themselves,on their patriotic, but desperate, self-devotion. it was not the desire, as certainly it was not the interest, of the spaniards to destroy the capital, or its inhabitants. when any of these fell into their hands, they were kindly entertained, their wants supplied, and every means taken to infuse into them a spirit of conciliation; and this, too, it should be remembered, in despite of the dreadful doom to which they consigned their christian captives. the gates of a fair capitulation were kept open, though unavailingly, to the last hour. the right of conquest necessarily implies that of using whatever force may be necessary for overcoming resistance to the assertion of that right. for the spaniards to have done otherwise than they did, would have been to abandon the siege, and, with it, the conquest of the country. to have suffered the inhabitants, with their high-spirited monarch, to escape, would but have prolonged the miseries of war by transferring it to another and more inaccessible quarter. they literally, as far as the success of the expedition was concerned, had no choice. if our imagination is struck with the amount of suffering in this, and in similar scenes of the conquest, it should be borne in mind, that it is a natural result of the great masses of men engaged in the conflict. the amount of suffering does not in itself show the amount of cruelty which caused it; and it is but justice to the conquerors of mexico to say that the very brilliancy and importance of their exploits have given a melancholy celebrity to their misdeeds, and thrown them into somewhat bolder relief than strictly belongs to them. it is proper that thus much should be stated, not to excuse their excesses, but that we may be enabled to make a more impartial estimate of their conduct, as compared with that of other nations under similar circumstances, and that we may not visit them with peculiar obloquy for evils which necessarily flow from the condition of war.* * by none has this obloquy been poured with such unsparing hand on the heads of the old conquerors as by their own descendants, the modern mexicans. ixtlilxochitl's editor, bustamante, concludes an animated invective against the invaders with recommending that a monument should be raised on the spot,now dry land,where guatemozin was taken, which, as the proposed inscription itself intimates, should "devote to eternal execration the detested memory of these banditti!" (venida de los esp., p. 52, nota.) one would suppose that the pure aztec blood, uncontaminated by a drop of castilian, flowed in the veins of the indignant editor and his compatriots; or, at least, that their sympathies for the conquered race would make them anxious to reinstate them in their ancient rights. notwithstanding these bursts of generous indignation, however, which plentifully season the writings of the mexicans of our day, we do not find that the revolution, or any of its numerous brood of pronunciamientos, has resulted in restoring them to an acre of their ancient territory. whatever may be thought of the conquest in a moral view, regarded as a military achievement, it must fill us with astonishment. that a handful of adventurers, indifferently armed and equipped, should have landed on the shores of a powerful empire, inhabited by a fierce and warlike race, and in defiance of the reiterated prohibitions of its sovereign, have forced their way into the interior;that they should have done this, without knowledge of the language or the land, without chart or compass to guide them, without any idea of the difficulties they were to encounter, totally uncertain whether the next step might bring them on a hostile nation, or on a desert, feeling their way along in the dark, as it were;that though nearly overwhelmed by their first encounter with the inhabitants, they should have still pressed on to the capital of the empire, and, having reached it, thrown themselves unhesitatingly into the midst of their enemies;that, so far from being daunted by the extraordinary spectacle there exhibited of power and civilisation, they should have been but the more confirmed in their original design;that they should have seized the monarch, have executed his ministers before the eyes of his subjects, and, when driven forth with ruin from the gates, have gathered their scattered wreck together, and, after a system of operations pursued with consummate policy and daring, have succeeded in overturning the capital, and establishing their sway over the country;that all this should have been so effected by a mere handful of indigent adventurers, is in fact little short of the miraculous, too startling for the probabilities demanded by fiction, and without a parallel in the pages of history. yet this must not be understood too literally; for it would be unjust to the aztecs themselves, at least to their military prowess, to regard the conquest as directly achieved by the spaniards alone. the indian empire was in a manner conquered by indians. the aztec monarchy fell by the hands of its own subjects, under the direction of european sagacity and science. had it been united, it might have bidden defiance to the invaders. as it was, the capital was dissevered from the rest of the country; and the bolt, which might have passed off comparatively harmless, had the empire been cemented by a common principle of loyalty and patriotism, now found its way into every crack and crevice of the ill-compacted fabric, and buried it in its own ruins. its fate may serve as a striking proof, that a government, which does not rest on the sympathies of its subjects, cannot long abide; that human institutions, when not connected with human prosperity and progress, must fall, if not before the increasing light of civilisation, by the hand of violence; by violence from within, if not from without. and who shall lament their fall? book vii: conclusion subsequent career of cortes chapter i [1521-1522] torture of guatemozinsubmission of the country rebuilding of the capitalmission to castile complaints against corteshe is confirmed in his authority the history of the conquest of mexico terminates with the surrender of the capital. but the history of the conquest is so intimately blended with that of the extraordinary man who achieved it, that there would seem to be an incompleteness in the narrative, if it were not continued to the close of his personal career. the first ebullition of triumph was succeeded in the army by very different feelings, as they beheld the scanty spoil gleaned from the conquered city, and as they brooded over the inadequate compensation they were to receive for all their toils and sufferings. some of the soldiers of narvaez, with feelings of bitter disappointment, absolutely declined to accept their shares. some murmured audibly against the general, and others against guatemozin, who, they said, could reveal, if he chose, the place where the treasures were secreted. the white walls of the barracks were covered with epigrams and pasquinades levelled at cortes, whom they accused of taking "one fifth of the booty as commander-in-chief, and another fifth as king." as guatemozin refused to make any revelation in respect to the treasure, or rather declared there was none to make, the soldiers loudly insisted on his being put to the torture. but for this act of violence, so contrary to the promise of protection recently made to the indian prince, cortes was not prepared; and he resisted the demand, until the men, instigated, it is said, by the royal treasurer, alderete, accused the general of a secret understanding with guatemozin, and of a design to defraud the spanish sovereigns and themselves. these unmerited taunts stung cortes to the quick, and in an evil hour he delivered the aztec prince into the hands of his enemies to work their pleasure on him. but the hero, who had braved death in its most awful forms, was not to be intimidated by bodily suffering. when his companion, the cacique of tacuba, who was put to the torture with him, testified his anguish by his groans, guatemozin coldly rebuked him by exclaiming, "and do you think i, then, am taking my pleasure in my bath?" at length cortes, ashamed of the base part he was led to play, rescued the aztec prince from his tormentors before it was too late;not, however, before it was too late for his own honour, which has suffered an indelible stain from this treatment of his royal prisoner. all that could be wrung from guatemozin by the extremity of his sufferings was the confession that much gold had been thrown into the water. but, although the best divers were employed, under the eye of cortes himself, to search the oozy bed of the lake, only a few articles of inconsiderable value were drawn from it. they had better fortune in searching a pond in guatemozin's gardens, where a sun, as it is called, probably one of the aztec calendarwheels, made of pure gold, of great size and thickness, was discovered. the tidings of the fall of mexico were borne on the wings of the wind over the plateau, and down the broad sides of the cordilleras. many an envoy made his appearance from the remote indian tribes, anxious to learn the truth of the astounding intelligence, and to gaze with their own eyes on the ruins of the detested city. among these were ambassadors from the kingdom of mechoacan, a powerful and independent state, inhabited by one of the kindred nahuatlac races, and lying between the mexican valley and the pacific. his example was followed by ambassadors from the remote regions which had never yet had intercourse with the spaniards. cortes, who saw the boundaries of his empire thus rapidly enlarging, availed himself of the favourable dispositions of the natives to ascertain the products and resources of their several countries. two small detachments were sent into the friendly state of mechoacan, through which country they penetrated to the borders of the great southern ocean. no european had as yet descended on its shores so far north of the equator. the spaniards eagerly advanced into its waters, erected a cross on the sandy margin, and took possession of it, with all the usual formalities, in the name of their most catholic majesties. on their return, they visited some of the rich districts towards the north, since celebrated for their mineral treasures, and brought back samples of gold and californian pearls, with an account of their discovery of the ocean. the imagination of cortes was kindled, and his soul swelled with exultation at the splendid prospects which their discoveries unfolded. "most of all," he writes to the emperor, "do i exult in the tidings brought me of the great ocean. for in it, as cosmographers, and those learned men who know most about the indies, inform us, are scattered the rich isles teeming with gold and spices and precious stones." he at once sought a favourable spot for a colony on the shores of the pacific, and made arrangements for the construction of four vessels to explore the mysteries of these unknown seas. this was the beginning of his noble enterprises for discovery in the gulf of california. although the greater part of anahuac, overawed by the successes of the spaniards, had tendered their allegiance, there were some, especially on the southern slopes of the cordilleras, who showed a less submissive disposition. cortes instantly sent out strong detachments under sandoval and alvarado to reduce the enemy and establish colonies in the conquered provinces. the highly coloured reports which alvarado, who had a quick scent for gold, gave of the mineral wealth of oaxaca, no doubt operated with cortes in determining him to select this region for his own particular domain. cortes did not immediately decide in what quarter of the valley to establish the new capital which was to take the place of the ancient tenochtitlan. the situation of the latter, surrounded by water and exposed to occasional inundations, had some obvious disadvantages. but there was no doubt that in some part of the elevated and central plateau of the valley the new metropolis should be built, to which both european and indian might look up as to the head of the colonial empire of spain. at length he decided on retaining the site of the ancient city, moved to it, as he says, "by its past renown, and the memory"not an enviable one, surely"in which it was held among the nations"; and he made preparations for the reconstruction of the capital which should, in his own language, "raise her to the rank of queen of the surrounding provinces, in the same manner as she had been of yore." the labour was to be performed by the indian population, drawn from all quarters of the valley, and including the mexicans themselves, great numbers of whom still lingered in the neighbourhood of their ancient residence. at first they showed reluctance, and even symptoms of hostility, when called to this work of humiliation by their conquerors. but cortes had the address to secure some of the principal chiefs in his interests, and, under their authority and direction, the labour of their countrymen was conducted. the deep groves of the valley and the forests of the neighbouring hills supplied cedar, cypress, and other durable woods, for the interior of the buildings, and the quarries of tetzontli and the ruins of the ancient edifices furnished abundance of stone. as there were no beasts of draught employed by the aztecs, an immense number of hands was necessarily required for the work. all within the immediate control of cortes were pressed into the service. the spot so recently deserted now swarmed with multitudes of indians of various tribes, and with europeans, the latter directing, while the others laboured. the prophecy of the aztecs was accomplished. the work of reconstruction went forward rapidly. yet the condition of cortes, notwithstanding the success of his arms, suggested many causes of anxiety. he had not received a word of encouragement from home,not a word, indeed, of encouragement or censure. in what light his irregular course was regarded by the government or the nation was still matter of painful uncertainty. he now prepared another letter to the emperor, the third in the published series, written in the same simple and energetic style which has entitled his commentaries, as they may be called, to a comparison with those of caesar. it was dated at cojohuacan, 15th of may, 1522; and in it he recapitulated the events of the final siege of the capital, and his subsequent operations, accompanied by many sagacious reflections, as usual, on the character and resources of the country. with this letter he purposed to send the royal fifth of the spoils of mexico, and a rich collection of fabrics, especially of gold and jewellery wrought into many rare and fanciful forms. one of the jewels was an emerald, cut in a pyramidal shape, of so extraordinary a size, that the base was as broad as the palm of the hand! the collection was still further augmented by specimens of many of the natural products, as well as of animals peculiar to the country. the army wrote a letter to accompany that of cortes, in which they expatiated on his manifold services, and besought the emperor to ratify his proceedings and confirm him in his present authority. the important mission was intrusted to two of the general's confidential officers, quinones and avila. it proved to be unfortunate. the agents touched at the azores, where quinones lost his life in a brawl. avila, resuming his voyage, was captured by a french privateer, and the rich spoils of the aztecs went into the treasury of his most christian majesty. francis the first gazed with pardonable envy on the treasures which his imperial rival drew from his colonial domains; and he intimated his discontent by peevishly expressing a desire "to see the clause in adam's testament which entitled his brothers of castile and portugal to divide the new world between them." avila found means, through a private hand, of transmitting his letters, the most important part of his charge, to spain, where they reached the court in safety. while these events were passing, affairs in spain had been taking an unfavourable turn for cortes. it may seem strange, that the brilliant exploits of the conqueror of mexico should have attracted so little notice from the government at home. but the country was at that time distracted by the dismal feuds of the comunidades. the sovereign was in germany, too much engrossed by the cares of the empire to allow leisure for those of his own kingdom. the reins of government were in the hands of adrian, charles's preceptor; a man whose ascetic and studious habits better qualified him to preside over a college of monks, than to fill, as he successively did, the most important posts in christendom,first as regent of castile, afterwards as head of the church. yet the slow and hesitating adrian could not have so long passed over in silence the important services of cortes, but for the hostile interference of velasquez, the governor of cuba, sustained by fonseca, bishop of burgos, the chief person in the spanish colonial department. this prelate, from his elevated station, possessed paramount authority in all matters relating to the indies, and he had exerted it from the first, as we have already seen, in a manner most prejudicial to the interests of cortes. he had now the address to obtain a warrant from the regent which was designed to ruin the conqueror at the very moment when his great enterprise had been crowned with success. the instrument, after recapitulating the offences of cortes, in regard to velasquez, appoints a commisioner with full powers to visit the country, to institute an inquiry into the general's conduct, to suspend him from his functions, and even to seize his person and sequestrate his property, until the pleasure of the castilian court could be known. the warrant was signed by adrian, at burgos, on the 11th of april, 1521, and countersigned by fonseca. the individual selected for the delicate task of apprehending cortes, and bringing him to trial, on the theatre of his own discoveries and in the heart of his own camp, was named christoval de tapia, veedor, or inspector of the gold foundries in st. domingo. he was a feeble, vacillating man, as little competent to cope with cortes's in civil matters, as narvaez had shown himself to be in military. the commissioner, clothed in his brief authority, landed in december, at villa rica. but he was coldly received by the magistrates of the city. his credentials were disputed, on the ground of some technical informality. it was objected, moreover, that his commission was founded on obvious misrepresentations to the government; and, notwithstanding a most courteous and complimentary epistle which he received from cortes, congratulating him, as old friend, on his arrival, the veedor soon found that he was neither to be permitted to penetrate far into the country, nor to exercise any control there. he loved money, and, as cortes knew the weak side of his "old friend," he proposed to purchase his horses, slaves, and equipage, at a tempting price. the dreams of disappointed ambition were gradually succeeded by those of avarice; and the discomfited commissioner consented to re-embark for cuba, well freighted with gold if not with glory. thus left in undisputed possession of authority, the spanish commander went forward with vigour in his plans for the settlement of his conquests. the panuchese, a fierce people, on the borders of the panuco, on the atlantic coast, had taken up arms against the spaniards. cortes marched at the head of a considerable force into their country, defeated them in two pitched battles, and after a severe campaign, reduced the warlike tribe to subjection. during this interval, the great question in respect to cortes and the colony had been brought to a decisive issue. the general must have succumbed under the insidious and implacable attacks of his enemies, but for the sturdy opposition of a few powerful friends zealously devoted to his interests. among them may be mentioned his own father, don martin cortes, a discreet and efficient person, and the duke de bejar, a powerful nobleman, who from an early period had warmly espoused the cause of cortes. by their representations the timid regent was at length convinced that the measures of fonseca were prejudicial to the interests of the crown, and an order was issued interdicting him from further interference in any matters in which cortes was concerned. while the exasperated prelate was chafing under this affront, both the commissioners tapia and narvaez arrived in castile. the latted had been ordered to cojohuacan after the surrender of the capital, where his cringing demeanour formed a striking contrast to the swaggering port which he had assumed on first entering the country. when brought into the presence of cortes, he knelt down and would have kissed his hand, but the latter raised him from the ground, and, during his residence in his quarters, treated him with every mark of respect. the general soon afterwards permitted his unfortunate rival to return to spain, where he proved, as might have been anticipated, a most bitter and implacable enemy. these two personages, reinforced by the discontented prelate, brought forward their several charges against cortes with all the acrimony which mortified vanity and the thirst of vengeance could inspire. adrian was no longer in spain, having been called to the chair of st. peter; but charles the fifth, after his long absence, had returned to his dominions, in july, 1522. the royal ear was instantly assailed with accusations of cortes on the one hand and his vindication on the other, till the young monarch, perplexed, and unable to decide on the merits of the question, referred the whole subject to the decision of a board selected for the purpose. it was drawn partly from the members of his privy council, and partly from the indian department, with the grand chancellor of naples as its president; and constituted altogether a tribunal of the highest respectability for integrity and wisdom. by this learned body a patient and temperate hearing was given to the parties. the enemies of cortes accused him of having seized and finally destroyed the fleet intrusted to him by velasquez, and fitted out at the governor's expense; of having afterwards usurped powers in contempt of the royal prerogative; of the unjustifiable treatment of narvaez and tapia, when they had been lawfully commissioned to supersede him; of cruelty to the natives, and especially to guatemozin; of embezzling the royal treasures, and remitting but a small part of its dues to the crown; of squandering the revenues of the conquered countries in useless and wasteful schemes, and particularly in rebuilding the capital on a plan of unprecedented extravagance; of pursuing, in short, a system of violence and extortion, without respect to the public interest, or any other end than his own selfish aggrandisement. in answer to these grave charges, the friends of cortes adduced evidence to show that he had defrayed with his own funds two-thirds of the cost of the expedition. the powers of velasquez extended only to traffic, not to establish a colony. yet the interests of the crown required the latter. the army had therefore necessarily assumed this power to themselves; but, having done so, they had sent intelligence of their proceedings to the emperor and solicited his confirmation of them. the rupture with narvaez was that commander's own fault; since cortes would have met him amicably, had not the violent measures of his rival, threatening the ruin of the expedition, compelled him to an opposite course. the treatment of tapia was vindicated on the grounds alleged to that officer by the municipality at cempoalla. the violence to guatemozin was laid at the door of alderete, the royal treasurer, who had instigated the soldiers to demand it. the remittances to the crown, it was clearly proved, so far from falling short of the legitimate fifth, had considerably exceeded it. if the general had expended the revenues of the country on costly enterprises and public works, it was for the interest of the country that he did so, and he had incurred a heavy debt by straining his own credit to the utmost for the same great objects. neither did they deny, that, in the same spirit, he was now rebuilding mexico on a scale which should be suited to the metropolis of a vast and opulent empire. they enlarged on the opposition he had experienced, throughout his whole career, from the governor of cuba, and still more from the bishop of burgos, which latter functionary, instead of affording him the aid to have been expected, had discouraged recruits, stopped his supplies, sequestered such property as, from time to time, he had sent to spain, and falsely represented his remittances to the crown, as coming from the governor of cuba. in short, such and so numerous were the obstacles thrown in his path, that cortes had been heard to say, "he had found it more difficult to contend against his own countrymen than against the aztecs." they concluded with expatiating on the brilliant results of his expedition, and asked if the council were prepared to dishonour the man who, in the face of such obstacles, and with scarcely other resources than what he found in himself, had won an empire for castile, such as was possessed by no european potentate! this last appeal was irresistible. however irregular had been the manner of proceeding, no one could deny the grandeur of the results. there was not a spaniard that could be insensible to such services, or that would not have cried out "shame!" at an ungenerous requital of them. there were three flemings in the council; but there seems to have been no difference of opinion in the body. it was decided, that neither velasquez nor fonseca should interfere further in the concerns of new spain. the difficulties of the former with cortes were regarded in the nature of a private suit; and, as such, redress must be sought by the regular course of law. the acts of cortes were confirmed in their full extent. he was constituted governor, captain general, and chief justice of new spain, with power to appoint to all offices, civil and military, and to order any person to leave the country whose residence there he might deem prejudicial to the interests of the crown. this judgment of the council was ratified by charles the fifth, and the commission investing cortes with these ample powers was signed by the emperor at valladolid, 15th of october, 1522. a liberal salary was provided, to enable the governor of new spain to maintain his office with suitable dignity. the principal officers were recompensed with honours and substantial emoluments; and the troops, together with some privileges, grateful to the vanity of the soldier, received the promise of liberal grants of land. the emperor still further complimented them by a letter written to the army with his own hand, in which he acknowledged its services in the fullest manner. chapter ii [1522-1524] modern mexicosettlement of the country condition of the nativeschristian missionaries cultivation of the soilvoyages and expeditions in less than four years from the destruction of mexico, a new city had risen on its ruins, which, if inferior to the ancient capital in extent, surpassed it in magnificence and strength. it occupied so exactly the same site as its predecessor that the plaza mayor, or great square, was the same spot which had been covered by the huge teocalli and the palace of montezuma; while the principal streets took their departure as before from this central point, and passing through the whole length of the city, terminated at the principal causeways. great alteration, however, took place in the fashion of the architecture. the streets were widened, many of the canals were filled up, and the edifices were constructed on a plan better accommodated to european taste and the wants of a european population. on the site of the temple of the aztec war-god rose the stately cathedral dedicated to st. francis; and, as if to complete the triumphs of the cross, the foundations were laid with the broken images of the aztec gods. in a corner of the square, on the ground once covered by the house of birds, stood a franciscan convent, a magnificent pile, erected a few years after the conquest by a lay brother, pedro de gante, a natural son, it is said, of charles the fifth. in an opposite quarter of the same square, cortes caused his own palace to be constructed. it was built of hewn stone, and seven thousand cedar beams are said to have been used for the interior. the government afterwards appropriated it to the residence of the viceroys; and the conqueror's descendants, the dukes of monteleone, were allowed to erect a new mansion in another part of the plaza, on the spot which, by an ominous coincidence, had been covered by the palace of montezuma. the general's next care was to provide a population for the capital. he invited the spaniards thither by grants of lands and houses, while the indians, with politic liberality, were permitted to live under their own chiefs as before, and to enjoy various immunities. with this encouragement, the spanish quarter of the city in the neighbourhood of the great square could boast in a few years two thousand families; while the indian district of tlatelolco included no less than thirty thousand. the various trades and occupations were resumed; the canals were again covered with barges; two vast markets in the respective quarters of the capital displayed all the different products and manufactures of the surrounding country; and the city swarmed with a busy, industrious population, in which the white man and the indian, the conqueror and the conquered, mingled together promiscuously in peaceful and picturesque confusion. not twenty years had elapsed since the conquest, when a missionary who visited it had the confidence, or the credulity, to assert, that "europe could not boast a single city so fair and opulent as mexico." cortes stimulated the settlement of his several colonies by liberal grants of land and municipal privileges. the great difficulty was to induce women to reside in the country, and without them he felt that the colonies, like a tree without roots, must soon perish. by a singular provision, he required every settler, if a married man, to bring over his wife within eighteen months, on pain of forfeiting his estate. if he were too poor to do this himself, the government would assist him. another law imposed the same penalty on all bachelors who did not provide themselves with wives within the same period! the general seems to have considered celibacy as too great a luxury for a young country. his own wife, dona catalina xuarez, was among those who came over from the islands to new spain. according to bernal diaz, her coming gave him no particular satisfaction. it is possible; since his marriage with her seems to have been entered into with reluctance, and her lowly condition and connections stood somewhat in the way of his future advancement. yet they lived happily together for several years, according to the testimony of las casas; and whatever he may have felt, he had the generosity, or the prudence not to betray his feelings to the world. on landing, dona catalina was escorted by sandoval to the capital, where she was kindly received by her husband, and all the respect paid to her to which she was entitled by her elevated rank. but the climate of the tableland was not suited to her constitution, and she died in three months after her arrival. an event so auspicious to his worldly prospects did not fail, as we shall see hereafter, to provoke the tongue of scandal to the most malicious, but is scarcely necessary to say, unfounded inferences. in the distribution of the soil among the conquerors, cortes adopted the vicious system of repartimientos, universally practised among his countrymen. in a letter to the emperor, he states, that the superior capacity of the indians in new spain had made him regard it as a grievous thing to condemn them to servitude, as had been done in the islands. but, on further trial, he had found the spaniards so much harassed and impoverished, that they could not hope to maintain themselves in the land without enforcing the services of the natives, and for this reason he had at length waived his own scruples in compliance with their repeated remonstrances. this was the wretched pretext used on the like occasions by his countrymen to cover up this flagrant act of injustice. the crown, however, in its instructions to the general, disavowed the act and annulled the repartimientos. it was all in vain. the necessities, or rather the cupidity, of the colonists, easily evaded the royal ordinances. the colonial legislation of spain shows, in the repetition of enactments against slavery, the perpetual struggle that subsisted between the crown and the colonists, and the impotence of the former to enforce measures repugnant to the interests, at all events to the avarice, of the latter. the tlascalans, in gratitude for their signal services, were exempted, at the recommendation of cortes, from the doom of slavery. it should be added, that the general, in granting the repartimientos, made many humane regulations for limiting the power of the master, and for securing as many privileges to the native as were compatible with any degree of compulsory service. these limitations, it is true, were too often disregarded; and in the mining districts in particular the situation of the poor indian was often deplorable. yet the indian population, clustering together in their own villages, and living under their own magistrates, have continued to prove by their numbers, fallen as these have below their primitive amount, how far superior was their condition to that in most other parts of the vast colonial empire of spain. whatever disregard he may have shown to the political rights of the natives, cortes manifested a commendable solicitude for their spiritual welfare. he requested the emperor to send out holy men to the country; not bishops and pampered prelates, who too often squandered the substance of the church in riotous living, but godly persons, members of religious fraternities, whose lives might be a fitting commentary on their teaching. thus only, he adds,and the remark is worthy of note,can they exercise any influence over the natives, who have been accustomed to see the least departure from morals in their own priesthood punished with the utmost rigour of the law. in obedience to these suggestions, twelve franciscan friars embarked for new spain, which they reached early in 1524. they were men of unblemished purity of life, nourished with the learning of the cloister, and, like many others whom the romish church has sent forth on such apostolic missions, counted all personal sacrifices as little in the cause to which they were devoted. the conquerors settled in such parts of the country as best suited their inclinations. many occupied the south-eastern slopes of the cordilleras towards the rich valley of oaxaca. many more spread themselves over the broad surface of the tableland, which, from its elevated position; reminded them of the plateau of their own castiles. here, too, they were in the range of those inexhaustible mines which have since poured their silver deluge over europe. the mineral resources of the land were not, indeed, fully explored, or comprehended till at a much later period; but some few, as the mines of zacatecas, guanaxuato, and tasco,the last of which was also known in montezuma's time,had begun to be wrought within a generation after the conquest. but the best wealth of the first settlers was in the vegetable products of the soil, whether indigenous, or introduced from abroad by the wise economy of cortes. he had earnestly recommended the crown to require all vessels coming to the country, to bring over a certain quantity of seeds and plants. he made it a condition of the grants of land on the plateau, that the proprietor of every estate should plant a specified number of vines in it. he further stipulated, that no one should get a clear title to his estate until he had occupied it eight years. he knew that permanent residence could alone create that interest in the soil which would lead to its efficient culture; and that the opposite system had caused the impoverishment of the best plantations in the islands. while thus occupied with the internal economy of the country, cortes was still bent on his great schemes of discovery and conquest. in the preceding chapter we have seen him fitting out a little fleet at zacatula, to explore the shores of the pacific. it was burnt in the dock-yard, when nearly completed. this was a serious calamity, as most of the materials were to be transported across the country from villa rica. cortes, however, with his usual promptness, took measures to repair the loss. he writes to the emperor, that another squadron will soon be got ready at the same port. a principal object of this squadron was the discovery of a strait which should connect the atlantic with the pacific. another squadron, consisting of five vessels, was fitted out in the gulf of mexico, to take the direction of florida, with the same view of detecting a strait. for cortes trustedwe, at this day, may smile at the illusionthat one might be found in that direction, which should conduct the navigator to those waters which had been traversed by the keels of magellan! the discovery of a strait was the great object to which nautical enterprise in that day was directed, as it had been ever since the time of columbus. it was in the sixteenth century what the discovery of the north-west passage has been in our own age; the great ignis fatuus of navigators. the vast extent of the american continent had been ascertained by the voyages of cabot in the north, and of magellan very recently in the south. the proximity, in certain quarters, of the two great oceans that washed its eastern and western shores had been settled by the discoveries both of balboa and of cortes. european scholars could not believe, that nature had worked on a plan so repugnant to the interests of humanity, as to interpose, through the whole length of the great continent, such a barrier to communication between the adjacent waters. it was partly with the same view, that the general caused a considerable armament to be equipped and placed under the command of christoval de olid, the brave officer who, as the reader will remember, had charge of one of the great divisions of the besieging army. he was to steer for honduras, and plant a colony on its northern coast. a detachment of olid's squadron was afterwards to cruise along its southern shore towards darien in search of the mysterious strait. the country was reported to be full of gold; so full, that "the fishermen used gold weights for their nets." the life of the spanish discoverers was one long day-dream. illusion after illusion chased one another like the bubbles which the child throws off from his pipe, as bright, as beautiful, and as empty. they lived in a world of enchantment. together with these maritime expeditions cortes fitted out a powerful expedition by land. it was intrusted to alvarado, who, with a large force of spaniards and indians, was to descend the southern slant of the cordilleras, and penetrate into the countries that lay beyond the rich valley of oaxaca. the campaigns of this bold and rapacious chief terminated in the important conquest of guatemala. in the prosecution of his great enterprises, cortes, within three short years after the conquest, had reduced under the dominion of castile an extent of country more than four hundred leagues in length, as he affirms, on the atlantic coast, and more than five hundred on the pacific; and, with the exception of a few interior provinces of no great importance, had brought them to a condition of entire tranquillity. in accomplishing this, he had freely expended the revenues of the crown, drawn from tributes similar to those which had been anciently paid by the natives to their own sovereigns; and he had, moreover, incurred a large debt on his own account, for which he demanded remuneration from government. the celebrity of his name, and the dazzling reports of the conquered countries, drew crowds of adventurers to new spain, who furnished the general with recruits for his various enterprises. whoever would form a just estimate of this remarkable man, must not confine himself to the history of the conquest. his military career, indeed, places him on a level with the greatest captains of his age. but the period subsequent to the conquest affords different, and in some respects nobler, points of view for the study of his character. for we then see him devising a system of government for the motley and antagonist races, so to speak, now first brought under a common dominion; repairing the mischiefs of war; and employing his efforts to detect the latent resources of the country, and to stimulate it to its highest power of production. the narration may seem tame after the recital of exploits as bold and adventurous as those of a paladin of romance. but it is only by the perusal of this narrative that we can form an adequate conception of the acute and comprehensive geinus of cortes. chapter iii [1524-1526] defection of oliddreadful march to honduras execution of guatemozindona marinaarrival at honduras in the last chapter we have seen that christoval de olid was sent by cortes to plant a colony in honduras. the expedition was attended with consequences which had not been foreseen. made giddy by the possession of power, olid, when he had reached his place of destination, determined to assert an independent jurisdiction for himself. his distance from mexico, he flattered himself, might enable him to do so with impunity. he misunderstood the character of cortes, when he supposed that any distance would be great enough to shield a rebel from his vengeance. it was long before the general received tidings of olid's defection. but no sooner was he satisfied of this, than he despatched to honduras a trusty captain and kinsman, francisco de las casas, with directions to arrest his disobedient officer. las casas was wrecked on the coast, and fell into olid's hands; but eventually succeeded in raising an insurrection in the settlement, seized the person of olid, and beheaded that unhappy delinquent in the market-place of naco. of these proceedings cortes learned only what related to the shipwreck of his lieutenant. he saw all the mischievous consequences than must arise from olid's example, especially if his defection were to go unpunished. he determined to take the affair into his own hands, and to lead an expedition in person to honduras. he would thus, moreover, be enabled to ascertain from personal inspection the resources of the country, which were reputed great on the score of mineral wealth; and would, perhaps, detect the point of communication between the great oceans, which had so long eluded the efforts of the spanish discoverers. he was still further urged to this step by the uncomfortable position in which he had found himself of late in the capital. several functionaries had recently been sent from the mother country for the ostensible purpose of administering the colonial revenues. but they served as spies on the general's conduct, caused him many petty annoyances and sent back to court the most malicious reports of his purposes and proceedings. cortes, in short, now that he was made governor general of the country, had less real power than when he held no legal commission at all. the spanish force which he took with him did not probably exceed a hundred horse and forty or perhaps fifty foot; to which were added about three thousand indian auxiliaries. among them were guatemozin and the cacique of tacuba, with a few others of highest rank, whose consideration with their countrymen would make them an obvious nucleus, round which disaffection might gather. the general's personal retinue consisted of several pages, young men of good family, and among them montejo, the future conqueror of yucatan; a butler and steward; several musicians, dancers, jugglers, and buffoons, showing, it might seem, more of the effeminacy of the oriental satrap, than the hardy valour of a spanish cavalier. yet the imputation of effeminacy is sufficiently disproved by the terrible march which he accomplished. on the 12th of october, 1524, cortes commenced his march. as he descended the sides of the cordilleras, he was met by many of his old companions in arms, who greeted their commander with a hearty welcome, and some of them left their estates to join the expedition. he halted in the province of coatzacualco (huasacualco), until he could receive intelligence respecting his route from the natives of tabasco. they furnished him with a map, exhibiting the principal places whither the indian traders, who wandered over these wild regions, were in the habit of resorting. with the aid of this map, a compass, and such guides as from time to time he could pick up on his journey, he proposed to traverse that broad and level tract which forms the base of yucatan, and spreads from the coatzacualco river to the head of the gulf of honduras. "i shall give your majesty," he begins his celebrated letter to the emperor, describing this expedition, "an account, as usual, of the most remarkable events of my journey, every one of which might form the subject of a separate narration." cortes did not exaggerate. the beginning of the march lay across a low and marshy level, intersected by numerous little streams, which form the head waters of the rio de tabasco, and of the other rivers that discharge themselves to the north, into the mexican gulf. the smaller streams they forded, or passed in canoes, suffering their horses to swim across as they held them by the bridle. rivers of more formidable size they crossed on floating bridges. it gives one some idea of the difficulties they had to encounter in this way, when it is stated, that the spaniards were obliged to construct no less than fifty of these bridges in a distance of less than a hundred miles. one of them was more than nine hundred paces in length. their troubles were much augmented by the difficulty of obtaining subsistence, as the natives frequently set fire to the villages on their approach, leaving to the wayworn adventurers only a pile of smoking ruins. the first considerable place which they reached was iztapan, pleasantly situated in the midst of a fruitful region, on the banks of the tributaries of the rio de tabasco. such was the extremity to which the spaniards had already, in the course of a few weeks, been reduced by hunger and fatigue, that the sight of a village in these dreary solitudes was welcomed by his followers, says cortes, "with a shout of joy that was echoed back from all the surrounding woods." the army was now at no great distance from the ancient city of palenque, the subject of so much speculation in our time. the village of las tres cruzes, indeed, situated between twenty and thirty miles from palenque, is said still to commemorate the passage of the conquerors by the existence of three crosses which they left there. yet no allusion is made to the ancient capital. was it then the abode of a populous and flourishing community, such as once occupied it, to judge from the extent and magnificence of its remains? or was it, even then, a heap of mouldering ruins, buried in a wilderness of vegetation, and thus hidden from the knowledge of the surrounding country? if the former, the silence of cortes is not easy to be explained. on quitting iztapan, the spaniards struck across a country having the same character of a low and marshy soil, chequered by occasional patches of cultivation, and covered with forests of cedar and brazil-wood, which seemed absolutely interminable. the overhanging foliage threw so deep a shade, that as cortes says, the soldiers could not see where to set their feet. to add to their perplexity, their guides deserted them; and when they climbed to the summits of the tallest trees, they could see only the same cheerless, interminable line of waving woods. the compass and the map furnished the only clue to extricate them from this gloomy labyrinth; and cortes and his officers, among whom was the constant sandoval, spreading out their chart on the ground, anxiously studied the probable direction of their route. their scanty supplies meanwhile had entirely failed them, and they appeased the cravings of appetite by such roots as they dug out of the earth, or by the nuts and berries that grew wild in the woods. numbers fell sick, and many of the indians sank by the way, and died of absolute starvation. when at length the troops emerged from these dismal forests, their path was crossed by a river of great depth, and far wider than any which they had hitherto traversed. the soldiers, disheartened, broke out into murmurs against their leader, who was plunging them deeper and deeper in a boundless wilderness, where they must lay their bones. it was in vain that cortes encouraged them to construct a floating bridge, which might take them to the opposite bank of the river. it seemed a work of appalling magnitude, to which their wasted strength was unequal. he was more succesful in his appeal to the indian auxiliaries, till his own men, put to shame by the ready obedience of the latter, engaged in the work with a hearty good will, which enabled them, although ready to drop from fatigue, to accomplish it at the end of four days. it was, indeed, the only expedient by which they could hope to extricate themselves from their perilous situation. the bridge consisted of one thousand pieces of timber, each of the thickness of a man's body and full sixty feet long. when we consider that the timber was all standing in the forest at the commencement of the labour, it must be admitted to have been an achievement worthy of the spaniards. the arrival of the army on the opposite bank of the river involved them in new difficulties. the ground was so soft and saturated with water, that the horses floundered up to their girths, and, sometimes plunging into quagmires, were nearly buried in the mud. it was with the greatest difficulty that they could be extricated by covering the wet soil with the foliage and the boughs of trees, when a stream of water, which forced its way through the heart of the morass, furnished the jaded animals with the means of effecting their escape by swimming. as the spaniards emerged from these slimy depths, they came on a broad and rising ground, which by its cultivated fields teeming with maize, agi, or pepper of the country, and the yuca plant, intimated their approach to the capital of the fruitful province of aculan. it was the beginning of lent, 1525, a period memorable for an event of which i shall give the particulars from the narrative of cortes. the general at this place was informed by one of the indian converts in his train, that a conspiracy had been set on foot by guatemozin, with the cacique of tacuba, and some other of the principal indian nobles, to massacre the spaniards. they would seize the moment when the army should be entangled in the passage of some defile, or some frightful morass like that from which it had just escaped, where, taken at disadvantage, it could be easily overpowered by the superior number of the mexicans. after the slaughter of the troops, the indians would continue their march to honduras, and cut off the spanish settlements there. their success would lead to a rising in the capital, and throughout the land, until every spaniard should be exterminated, and vessels in the ports be seized, and secured from carrying the tidings across the waters. no sooner had cortes learned the particulars of this formidable plot, than he arrested guatemozin, and the principal aztec lords in his train. the latter admitted the fact of the conspiracy, but alleged, that it had been planned by guatemozin, and that they had refused to come into it. guatemozin and the chief of tacuba neither admitted nor denied the truth of the accusation, but maintained a dogged silence.such is the statement of cortes. bernal diaz, however, who was present at the expedition, assures us, that both guatemozin and the cacique of tacuba avowed their innocence. they had, indeed, they said, talked more than once together of the sufferings they were then enduring, and had said that death was preferable to seeing so many of their poor followers dying daily around them. they admitted, also, that a project for rising on the spaniards had been discussed by some of the aztecs; but guatemozin had discouraged it from the first, and no scheme of the kind could have been put into execution without his knowledge and consent. these protestations did not avail the unfortunate princes; and cortes, having satisfied, or affected to satisfy, himself of their guilt, ordered them to immediate execution. when brought to the fatal tree, guatemozin displayed the intrepid spirit worthy of his better days. "i knew what it was," said he, "to trust to your false promises, malinche; i knew that you had destined me to this fate, since i did not fall by my own hand when you entered my city of tenochtitlan. why do you slay me so unjustly? god will demand it of you!" the cacique of tacuba, protesting his innocence, declared that he desired no better lot than to die by the side of his lord. the unfortunate princes, with one or more inferior nobles (for the number is uncertain), were then executed by being hung from the huge branches of a ceiba tree, which overshadowed the road. in reviewing the circumstances of guatemozin's death, one cannot attach much weight to the charge of conspiracy brought against him. that the indians, brooding over their wrongs and present sufferings, should have sometimes talked of revenge, would not be surprising. but that any chimerical scheme of an insurrection, like that above mentioned, should have been set on foot, or even sanctioned by guatemozin, is altogether improbable. that prince's explanation of the affair, as given by diaz, is, to say the least, quite as deserving of credit as the accusation of the indian informer. the defect of testimony and the distance of time make it difficult for us, at the present day, to decide the question. we have a surer criterion of the truth in the opinion of those who were eyewitnesses of the transaction. it is given in the words of the old chronicler, so often quoted. "the execution of guatemozin," says diaz, "was most unjust; and was thought wrong by all of us." the most probable explanation of the affair seems to be, that guatemozin was a troublesome, and, indeed, formidable captive. thus much is intimated by cortes himself in his letter to the emperor. the spaniards, during the first years after the conquest, lived in constant apprehension of a rising of the aztecs. this is evident from numerous passages in the writings of the time. it was under the same apprehension that cortes consented to embarrass himself with his royal captive on this dreary expedition. the forlorn condition of the spaniards on the present march, which exposed them to any sudden assault from their wily indian vassals, increased the suspicions of cortes. thus predisposed to think ill of guatemozin, the general lent a ready ear to the first accusation against him. charges were converted into proofs, and condemnation followed close upon the charges. by a single blow he proposed to rid himself and the state for ever of a dangerous enemy. had he but consulted his own honour and his good name, guatemozin's head should have been the last on which he should have suffered an injury to fall. it was not long after the sad scene of guatemozin's execution, that the wearied troops entered the head town of the great province of aculan; a thriving community of traders, who carried on a profitable traffic with the furthest quarters of central america. cortes notices in general terms the excellence and beauty of the buildings, and the hospitable reception which he experienced from the inhabitants. after renewing their strength in these comfortable quarters, the spaniards left the capital of aculan, the name of which is to be found on no map, and held on their toilsome way in the direction of what is now called the lake of peten. it was then the property of an emigrant tribe of the hardy maya family, and their capital stood on an island in the lake, "with its houses and lofty teocallis glistening in the sun," says bernal diaz, "so that it might be seen for the distance of two leagues." these edifices, built by one of the races of yucatan. displayed, doubtless, the same peculiarities of construction as the remains still to be seen in that remarkable peninsula. but, whatever may have been their architectural merits, they are disposed of in a brief sentence by the conquerors. the inhabitants of the island showed a friendly spirit, and a docility unlike the warlike temper of their countrymen of yucatan. they willingly listened to the spanish missionaries who accompanied the expedition, as they expounded the christian doctrines through the intervention of marina. the indian interpreter was present throughout this long march, the last in which she remained at the side of cortes. as this, too, is the last occasion on which she will appear in these pages, i will mention, before parting with her, an interesting circumstance that occurred when the army was traversing the province of coatzacualco. this, it may be remembered, was the native country of marina, where her infamous mother sold her, when a child, to some foreign traders, in order to secure her inheritance to a younger brother. cortes halted for some days at this place, to hold a conference with the surrounding caciques on matters of government and religion. among those summoned to this meeting was marina's mother, who came attended by her son. no sooner did they make their appearance than all were struck with the great resemblance of the cacique to her daughter. the two parties recognised each other, though they had not met since their separation. the mother, greatly terrified, fancied that she had been decoyed into a snare, in order to punish her inhuman conduct. but marina instantly ran up to her, and endeavoured to allay her fears, assuring her that she should receive no harm, and, addressing the bystanders, said, "that she was sure her mother knew not what she did, when she sold her to the traders, and that she forgave her." then tenderly embracing her unnatural parent, she gave her such jewels and other little ornaments as she wore about her own person, to win back, as it would seem, her lost affection. marina added, that "she felt much happier than before, now that she had been instructed in the christian faith, and given up the bloody worship of the aztecs." in the course of the expedition to honduras, cortes gave marina away to a castilian knight, don juan xamarillo, to whom she was wedded as his lawful wife. she had estates assigned to her in her native province, where she probably passed the remainder of her days. from this time the name of marina disappears from the page of history. but it has been always held in grateful remembrance by the spaniards, for the important aid which she gave them in effecting the conquest, and by the natives, for the kindness and sympathy which she showed them in their misfortunes. by the conqueror, marina left one son, don martin cortes. he rose to high consideration, and was made a comendador of the order of st. jago. he was subsequently suspected of treasonable designs against the government; and neither his parents' extraordinary services, nor his own deserts, could protect him from a cruel persecution; and in 1568, the son of hernando cortes was shamefully subjected to the torture in the very capital which his father had acquired for the castilian crown! at length the shattered train drew near the golfo dolce, at the head of the bay of honduras. their route could not have been far from the site of copan, the celebrated city whose architectural ruins have furnished such noble illustrations for the pencil of catherwood. but the spaniards passed on in silence. nor, indeed, can we wonder that, at this stage of the enterprise, they should have passed on without heeding the vicinity of a city in the wilderness, though it were as glorious as the capital of zenobia; for they were arrived almost within view of the spanish settlements, the object of their long and wearisome pilgrimage. the place which they were now approaching was naco, or san gil de buena vista, a spanish settlement on the golfo dolce. cortes advanced cautiously, prepared to fall on the town by surprise. he had held on his way with the undeviating step of the north american indian, who, traversing morass and mountain and the most intricate forests, guided by the instinct of revenge, presses straight towards the mark, and, when he has reached it, springs at once on his unsuspecting victim. before cortes made his assault, his scouts fortunately fell in with some of the inhabitants of the place, from whom they received tidings of the death of olid, and of the reestablishment of his own authority. cortes, therefore, entered the place like a friend, and was cordially welcomed by his countrymen, greatly astonished, says diaz, "by the presence among them of the general so renowned throughout these countries." the colony was at this time sorely suffering from famine; and to such extremity was it soon reduced, that the troops would probably have found a grave in the very spot to which they had looked forward as the goal of their labours, but for the seasonable arrival of a vessel with supplies from cuba. after he had restored the strength and spirits of his men, the indefatigable commander prepared for a new expedition, the object of which was to explore and to reduce the extensive province of nicaragua. one may well feel astonished at the adventurous spirit of the man, who, unsubdued by the terrible sufferings of his recent march, should so soon be prepared for another enterprise equally appalling. it is difficult, in this age of sober sense, to conceive the character of a castilian cavalier of the sixteenth century, a true counterpart of which it would not have been easy to find in any other nation, even at that time,or anywhere, indeed, save in those tales of chivalry, which, however wild and extravagant they may seem, were much more true to character than to situation. the mere excitement of exploring the strange and unknown was a sufficient compensation to the spanish adventurer for all his toils and trials. yet cortes, though filled with this spirit, proposed nobler ends to himself than those of the mere vulgar adventurer. in the expedition to nicaragua, he designed, as he had done in that to honduras, to ascertain the resources of the country in general, and, above all, the existence of any means of communication between the great oceans on its borders. if none such existed, it would at least establish this fact, the knowledge of which, to borrow his own language, was scarcely less important. the general proposed to himself the further object of enlarging the colonial empire of castile. the conquest of mexico was but the commencement of a series of conquests. to the warrior who had achieved this, nothing seemed impracticable; and scarcely would anything have been so, had he been properly sustained. but from these dreams of ambition cortes was suddenly aroused by such tidings as convinced him, that his absence from mexico was already too far prolonged, and that he must return without delay, if he would save the capital or the country. chapter iv [1526-1530] disturbances in mexicoreturn of cortesdistrust of the court his return to spaindeath of sandoval brilliant reception of corteshonours conferred on him the intelligence alluded to in the preceding chapter was conveyed in a letter to cortes from the licentiate zuazo, one of the functionaries to whom the general had committed the administration of the country during his absence. it contained full particulars of the tumultuous proceedings in the capital. no sooner had cortes quitted it, than dissensions broke out among the different members of the provisional government. the misrule increased as his absence was prolonged. at length tidings were received, that cortes with his whole army had perished in the morasses of chiapa. the members of the government showed no reluctance to credit this story. they now openly paraded their own authority; proclaimed the general's death; caused funeral ceremonies to be performed in his honour; took possession of his property wherever they could meet with it, piously devoting a small part of the proceeds to purchasing masses for his soul, while the remainder was appropriated to pay off what was called his debt to the state. they seized, in like manner, the property of other individuals engaged in the expedition. from these outrages they proceeded to others against the spanish residents in the city, until the franciscan missionaries left the capital in disgust, while the indian population were so sorely oppressed, that great apprehensions were entertained of a general rising. zuazo, who communicated these tidings, implored cortes to quicken his return. he was a temperate man, and the opposition which he had made to the tyrannical measures of his comrades had been rewarded with exile. the general, greatly alarmed by this account, saw that no alternative was left but to abandon all further schemes of conquest, and to return at once, if he would secure the preservation of the empire which he had won. he accordingly made the necessary arrangements for settling the administration of the colonies at honduras, and embarked with a small number of followers for mexico. he had not been long at sea, when he encountered such a terrible tempest as seriously damaged his vessel, and compelled him to return to port and refit. a second attempt proved equally unsuccessful; and cortes, feeling that his good star had deserted him, saw, in this repeated disaster, an intimation from heaven that he was not to return. he contented himself, therefore, with sending a trusty messenger to advise his friends of his personal safety in honduras. he then instituted processions and public prayers to ascertain the will of heaven, and to deprecate its anger. his health now showed the effects of his recent sufferings, and declined under a wasting fever. his spirits sank with it, and he fell into a state of gloomy despondency. bernal diaz, speaking of him at this time, says, that nothing could be more wan and emaciated than his person, and that so strongly was he possessed with the idea of his approaching end, that he procured a franciscan habit,for it was common to be laid out in the habit of some one or other of the monastic orders,in which to be carried to the grave. from this deplorable apathy cortes was roused by fresh advices urging his presence in mexico, and by the judicious efforts of his good friend sandoval, who had lately returned, himself, from an excursion into the interior. by his persuasion, the general again consented to try his fortunes on the seas. he embarked on board of a brigantine, with a few followers, and bade adieu to the disastrous shores of honduras, 25th of april, 1526. he had nearly made the coast of new spain, when a heavy gale threw him off his course, and drove him to the island of cuba. after staying there some time to recruit his exhausted strength, he again put to sea on the 16th of may, and in eight days landed near san juan de ulua, whence he proceeded about five leagues on foot to medellin. cortes was so much changed by disease, that his person was not easily recognised. but no sooner was it known that the general had returned, than crowds of people, white men and natives, thronged from all the neighbouring country to welcome him. the tidings spread on the wings of the wind and his progress was a triumphal procession. at all the great towns where he halted he was sumptuously entertained. triumphal arches were thrown across the road, and the streets were strewed with flowers as he passed. after a night's repose at tezcuco, he made his entrance in great state into the capital. the municipality came out to welcome him, and a brilliant cavalcade of armed citizens formed his escort; while the lake was covered with barges of the indians, all fancifully decorated with their gala dresses, as on the day of his first arrival among them. the streets echoed to music, and dancing, and sounds of jubilee, as the procession held on its way to the great convent of st. francis, where thanksgivings were offered up for the safe return of the general, who then proceeded to take up his quarters once more in his own princely residence.it was in june, 1526, when cortes re-entered mexico; nearly two years had elapsed since he had left it, on his difficult march to honduras, a march which led to no important results, but which consumed nearly as much time, and was attended with sufferings as severe, as the conquest of mexico itself. cortes did not abuse his present advantage. he, indeed, instituted proceedings against his enemies; but he followed them up so languidly as to incur the imputation of weakness, the only instance in which he has been so accused. he was not permitted long to enjoy the sweets of triumph. in the month of july, he received advices of the arrival of a juez de residencia on the coast, sent by the court of madrid to supersede him temporarily in the government. the crown of castile, as its colonial empire extended, became less and less capable of watching over its administration. it was therefore obliged to place vast powers in the hands of its viceroys; and, as suspicion naturally accompanies weakness, it was ever prompt to listen to accusations against these powerful vassals. in such cases the government adopted the expedient of sending out a commissioner, or juez de residencia, with authority to investigate the conduct of the accused, to suspend him in the meanwhile from his office, and, after a judicial examination, to reinstate him in it, or to remove him altogether, according to the issue of the trial. the enemies of cortes had been, for a long time, busy in undermining his influence at court, and in infusing suspicions of his loyalty in the bosom of the emperor. since his elevation to the government of the country, they had redoubled their mischievous activity, and they assailed his character with the foulest imputations. they charged him with appropriating to his own use the gold which belonged to the crown, and especially with secreting the treasures of montezuma. he was said to have made false reports of the provinces he had conquered, that he might defraud the exchequer of its lawful revenues. he had distributed the principal offices among his own creatures; and had acquired an unbounded influence, not only over the spaniards, but the natives, who were all ready to do his bidding. he had expended large sums in fortifying both the capital and his own palace; and it was evident from the magnitude of his schemes and his preparations, that he designed to shake off his allegiance, and to establish an independent sovereignty in new spain. the government, greatly alarmed by these formidable charges, the probability of which they could not estimate, appointed a commissioner with full powers to investigate the matter. the person selected for this delicate office was luis ponce de leon, a man of high family, young for such a post, but of a mature judgment, and distinguished for his moderation and equity. the nomination of such a minister gave assurance that the crown meant to do justly by cortes. the emperor wrote at the same time with his own hand to the general, advising him of this step, and assuring him that it was taken, not from distrust of his integrity, but to afford him the opportunity of placing that integrity in a clear light before the world. ponce de leon reached mexico in july, 1526. he was received with all respect by cortes and the municipality of the capital; and the two parties interchanged those courtesies with each other, which gave augury that the future proceedings would be conducted in a spirit of harmony. unfortunately, this fair beginning was blasted by the death of the commissioner in a few weeks after his arrival, a circumstance which did not fail to afford another item in the loathsome mass of accusation heaped upon cortes. the commissioner fell the victim of a malignant fever, which carried off a number of those who had come over in the vessel with him. on his death-bed, ponce de leon delegated his authority to an infirm old man, who survived but a few months, and transmitted the reins of government to a person named estrada or strada, the royal treasurer, one of the officers sent from spain to take charge of the finances, and who was personally hostile to cortes. the spanish residents would have persuaded cortes to assert for himself at least an equal share of the authority, to which they considered estrada as having no sufficient title. but the general, with singular moderation, declined a competition in this matter, and determined to abide a more decided expression of his sovereign's will. to his mortification, the nomination of estrada was confirmed, and this dignitary soon contrived to inflict on his rival all those annoyances by which a little mind, in possession of unexpected power, endeavours to make his superiority felt over a great one. the recommendations of cortes were disregarded; his friends mortified and insulted; his attendants outraged by injuries. one of the domestics of his friend sandoval, for some slight offence, was sentenced to lose his hand; and when the general remonstrated against these acts of violence, he was peremptorily commanded to leave the city! the spaniards, indignant at this outrage, would have taken up arms in his defence; but cortes would allow no resistance, and, simply remarking, "that it was well, that those, who at the price of their blood, had won the capital, should not be allowed a footing in it," withdrew to his favourite villa of cojohuacan, a few miles distant, to wait there the result of these strange proceedings. the suspicions of the court of madrid, meanwhile, fanned by the breath of calumny, had reached the most preposterous height. one might have supposed, that it fancied the general was organising a revolt throughout the colonies, and meditated nothing less than an invasion of the mother country. intelligence having been received, that a vessel might speedily be expected from new spain, orders were sent to the different ports of the kingdom, and even to portugal, to sequestrate the cargo, under the expectation that it contained remittances to the general's family, which belonged to the crown; while his letters, affording the most luminous account of all his proceedings and discoveries, were forbidden to be printed. fortunately, three letters, forming the most important part of the conqueror's correspondence, had already been given to the world by the indefatigable press of seville. the court, moreover, made aware of the incompetency of the treasurer, estrada, to the present delicate conjuncture, now intrusted the whole affair of the inquiry to a commission dignified with the title of the royal audience of new spain. this body was clothed with full powers to examine into the charges against cortes, with instructions to send him back, as a preliminary measure, to castile,peacefully if they could, but forcibly if necessary. still afraid that its belligerent vassal might defy the authority of this tribunal, the government resorted to artifice to effect his return. the president of the indian council was commanded to write to him, urging his presence in spain to vindicate himself from the charges of his enemies, and offering his personal co-operation in his defence. the emperor further wrote a letter to the audience, containing his commands for cortes to return, as the government wished to consult him on matters relating to the indies, and to bestow on him a recompense suited to his high deserts. this letter was intended to be shown to cortes. but it was superfluous to put in motion all this complicated machinery to effect a measure on which cortes was himself resolved. proudly conscious of his own unswerving loyalty, and of the benefits he had rendered to his country, he felt deeply sensible to this unworthy requital of them, especially on the very theatre of his achievements. he determined to abide no longer where he was exposed to such indignities; but to proceed at once to spain, present himself before his sovereign, boldly assert his innocence, and claim redress for his wrongs, and a just reward for his services. in the close of his letter to the emperor, detailing the painful expedition to honduras, after enlarging on the magnificent schemes he had entertained of discovery in the south sea, and vindicating himself from the charge of a too lavish expenditure, he concludes with the lofty, yet touching, declaration, "that he trusts his majesty will in time acknowledge his deserts; but, if that unhappily shall not be, the world at least will be assured of his loyalty, and he himself shall have the conviction of having done his duty; and no better inheritance than this shall he ask for his children." no sooner was the intention of cortes made known, than it excited a general sensation through the country. even estrada relented; he felt that he had gone too far, and that it was not his policy to drive his noble enemy to take refuge in his own land. negotiations were opened, and an attempt at a reconciliation was made through the bishop of tlascala. cortes received these overtures in a courteous spirit, but his resolution was unshaken. having made the necessary arrangements, therefore, in mexico, he left the valley, and proceeded at once to the coast. had he entertained the criminal ambition imputed to him by his enemies, he might have been sorely tempted by the repeated offers of support which were made to him, whether in good or in bad faith, on the journey, if he would but re-assume the government, and assert his independence of castile. on his arrival at villa rica, he received the painful tidings of the death of his father, don martin cortes, whom he had hoped so soon to embrace, after his long and eventful absence. having celebrated his obsequies with every mark of filial respect, he made preparations for his speedy departure. two of the best vessels in the port were got ready and provided with everything requisite for a long voyage. he was attended by his friend, the faithful sandoval, by tapia, and some other cavaliers, most attached to his person. he also took with him several aztec and tlascalan chiefs, and among them a son of montezuma, and another of maxixca, the friendly old tlascalan lord, both of whom were desirous to accompany the general to castile. he carried home a large collection of plants and minerals, as specimens of the natural resources of the country; several wild animals and birds of gaudy plumage; various fabrics of delicate workmanship, especially the gorgeous feather-work; and a number of jugglers, dancers, and buffoons, who greatly astonished the europeans by the marvellous facility of their performances, and were thought a suitable present for his holiness, the pope. lastly, cortes displayed his magnificence in a rich treasure of jewels, among which were emeralds of extraordinary size and lustre, gold to the amount of two hundred thousand pesos de oro, and fifteen hundred marks of silver. after a brief and prosperous voyage, cortes came in sight once more of his native shores, and crossing the bar of saltes, entered the little port of palos in may, 1528,the same spot where columbus had landed five and thirty years before on his return from the discovery of the western world. cortes was not greeted with the enthusiasm and public rejoicings which welcomed the great navigator; and, indeed, the inhabitants were not prepared for his arrival. from palos he soon proceeded to the convent of la rabida, the same place, also, within the hospitable walls of which columbus had found a shelter. an interesting circumstance is mentioned by historians, connected with his short stay at palos. francisco pizarro, the conqueror of peru, had arrived there, having come to spain to solicit aid for his great enterprise. he was then in the commencement of his brilliant career, as cortes might be said to be at the close of his. he was an old acquaintance, and a kinsman, as is affirmed, of the general, whose mother was a pizarro. the meeting of these two extraordinary men, the conquerors of the north and of the south, in the new world, as they set foot, after their eventful absence, on the shores of their native land, and that, too, on the spot consecrated by the presence of columbus, has something in it striking to the imagination. while reposing from the fatigues of his voyage at la rabida, an event occurred which afflicted cortes deeply, and which threw a dark cloud over his return. this was the death of gonzalo de sandoval, his trusty friend, and so long the companion of his fortunes. he was taken ill in a wretched inn at palos, soon after landing; and his malady gained ground so rapidly, that it was evident his constitution, impaired, probably, by the extraordinary fatigues he had of late years undergone, would be unable to resist it. cortes was instantly sent for, and arrived in time to administer the last consolations of friendship to the dying cavalier. sandoval met his approaching end with composure, and, having given the attention, which the short interval allowed, to the settlement of both his temporal and spiritual concerns, he breathed his last in the arms of his commander. before departing from la rabida, cortes had written to the court, informing it of his arrival in the country. great was the sensation caused there by the intelligence; the greater, that the late reports of his treasonable practices had made it wholly unexpected. his arrival produced an immediate change of feeling. all cause of jealousy was now removed; and, as the clouds which had so long settled over the royal mind were dispelled, the emperor seemed only anxious to show his sense of the distinguished services of his so dreaded vassal. orders were sent to different places on the route to provide him with suitable accommodations, and preparations were made to give him a brilliant reception in the capital. the tidings of his arrival had by this time spread far and wide throughout the country; and, as he resumed his journey, the roads presented a spectacle such as had not been seen since the return of columbus. cortes did not usually effect an ostentation of dress, though he loved to display the pomp of a great lord in the number and magnificence of his retainers. his train was now swelled by the indian chieftains, who, by the splendours of their barbaric finery, gave additional brilliancy, as well as novelty, to the pageant. but his own person was the object of general curiosity. the houses and the streets of the great towns and villages were thronged with spectators, eager to look on the hero, who, with his single arm, as it were, had won an empire for castile, and who, to borrow the language of an old historian, "came in the pomp and glory, not so much of a great vassal, as of an independent monarch." as he approached toledo, then the rival of madrid, the press of the multitude increased, till he was met by the duke de bejar, the count de aguilar, and others of his steady friends, who, at the head of a large body of the principal nobility and cavaliers of the city, came out to receive him, and attended him to the quarters prepared for his residence. it was a proud moment for cortes; and distrusting, as he well might, his reception by his countrymen, it afforded him a greater satisfaction than the brilliant entrance, which, a few years previous, he had made into the capital of mexico. the following day he was admitted to an audience by the emperor; and cortes, gracefully kneeling to kiss the hand of his sovereign, presented to him a memorial which succinctly recounted his services and the requital he had received for them. the emperor graciously raised him, and put many questions to him respecting the countries he had conquered. charles was pleased with the general's answers, and his intelligent mind took great satisfaction in inspecting the curious specimens of indian ingenuity which his vassal had brought with him from new spain. in subsequent conversations the emperor repeatedly consulted cortes on the best mode of administering the government of the colonies; and by his advice introduced some important regulations, especially for ameliorating the condition of the natives, and for encouraging domestic industry. the monarch took frequent opportunity to show the confidence which he now reposed in cortes. on all public occasions he appeared with him by his side; and once, when the general lay ill of a fever, charles paid him a visit in person, and remained some time in the apartment of the invalid. this was an extraordinary mark of condescension in the haughty court of castile; and it is dwelt upon with becoming emphasis by the historians of the time, who seem to regard it as an ample compensation for all the sufferings and services of cortes. the latter had now fairly triumphed over opposition. the courtiers, with that ready instinct which belongs to the tribe, imitated the example of their master; and even envy was silent, amidst the general homage that was paid to the man who had so lately been a mark for the most envenomed calumny. cortes, without a title, without a name but what he had created for himself, was, at once, as it were, raised to a level with the proudest nobles in the land. he was so still more effectually by the substantial honours which were accorded to him by his sovereign in the course of the following year. by an instrument, dated 6th july, 1529, the emperor raised him to the dignity of the marquess of the valley of oaxaca. two other instruments, dated in the same month of july, assigned to cortes a vast tract of land in the rich province of oaxaca, together with large estates in the city of mexico and other places in the valley. the princely domain thus granted comprehended more than twenty large towns and villages, and twenty-three thousand vassals. the language in which the gift was made greatly enhanced its value. the unequivocal testimony thus borne by his sovereign to his unwavering loyalty was most gratifying to cortes;how gratifying, every generous soul, who has been the subject of suspicion undeserved, will readily estimate. yet there was one degree in the scale, above which the royal gratitude would not rise. neither the solicitations of cortes, nor those of the duke de bejar, and his other powerful friends, could prevail on the emperor to reinstate him in the government of mexico. the country reduced to tranquillity had no longer need of his commanding genius to control it; and charles did not care to place again his formidable vassal in a situation which might revive the dormant spark of jealousy and distrust. it was the policy of the crown to employ one class of its subjects to effect its conquests, and another class to rule over them. for the latter it selected men in whom the fire of ambition was tempered by a cooler judgment naturally, or by the sober influence of age. even columbus, notwithstanding the terms of his original "capitulation" with the crown, had not been permitted to preside over the colonies; and still less likely would it be concede this power to one possessed of the aspiring temper of cortes. but although the emperor refused to commit the civil government of the colony into his hands, he reinstated him in his military command. by a royal ordinance, dated also in july, 1529, the marquess of the valley was named captain-general of new spain, and of the coasts of the south sea. he was empowered to make discoveries in the southern ocean, with the right to rule over such lands as he should colonise, and by a subsequent grant he was to become proprietor of one-twelfth of all his discoveries. the government had no design to relinquish the services of so able a commander. but it warily endeavoured to withdraw him from the scene of his former triumphs, and to throw open a new career of ambition, that might stimulate him still further to enlarge the dominions of the crown. thus gilded by the sunshine of royal favour, with brilliant manners, and a person, which, although it showed the effects of hard service, had not yet lost all the attractions of youth, cortes might now be regarded as offering an enviable alliance for the best houses in castile. it was not long before he paid his addresses, which were favourably received, to a member of that noble house which had so steadily supported him in the dark hour of his fortunes. the lady's name was dona juana de zuniga, daughter of the second count de aguilar, and niece of the duke de bejar. she was much younger than himself, beautiful, and, as event showed, not without spirit. one of his presents to his youthful bride excited the admiration and envy of the fairer part of the court. this was five emeralds, of wonderful size and brilliancy. these jewels had been cut by the aztecs into the shapes of flowers, fishes, and into other fanciful forms, with an exquisite style of workmanship which enhanced their original value. they were, not improbably, part of the treasure of the unfortunate montezuma, and, being easily portable, may have escaped the general wreck of the noche triste. the queen of charles the fifth, it is said,it may be the idle gossip of a court,had intimated a willingness to become proprietor of some of these magnificent baubles; and the preference which cortes gave to his fair bride caused some feelings of estrangement in the royal bosom, which had an unfavourable influence on the future fortunes of the marquess. late in the summer of 1529, charles the fifth left his spanish dominions for italy. cortes accompanied him on his way, probably to the place of embarkation: and in the capital of aragon we find him, according to the national historian, exciting the same general interest and admiration among the people as he had done in castile. on his return, there seemed no occasion for him to protract his stay longer in the country. he was weary of the life of idle luxury which he had been leading for the last year, and which was so foreign to his active habits and the stirring scenes to which he had been accustomed. he determined, therefore, to return to mexico, where his extensive property required his presence, and where a new field was now opened to him for honourable enterprise. chapter v [1530-1547] cortes revisits mexicoretires to his estates his voyages of discoveryfinal return to castile cold receptiondeath of corteshis character early in the spring of 1530, cortes embarked for new spain. he was accompanied by the marchioness, his wife, together with his aged mother (who had the good fortune to live to see her son's elevation), and by a magnificent retinue of pages and attendants, such as belonged to the household of a powerful noble. how different from the forlorn condition in which, twenty-six years before, he had been cast loose, as a wild adventurer, to seek his bread upon the waters! the first point of his destination was hispaniola, where he was to remain until he received tidings of the organisation of the new government that was to take charge of mexico. in the preceding chapter it was stated that the administration of the country had been intrusted to a body called the royal audience; one of whose first duties it was to investigate the charges brought against cortes. nunez de guzman, his avowed enemy, was placed at the head of this board; and the investigation was conducted with all the rancour of personal hostility. a remarkable document still exists, called the pesquisa secreta, or "secret inquiry," which contains a record of the proceedings against cortes. the charges are eight in number; involving, among other crimes, that of a deliberate design to cast off his allegiance to the crown; that of the murder of two of the commissioners who had been sent out to supersede him; of the murder of his own wife, catalina xuarez; of extortion, and of licentious practices,of offences, in short, which, from their private nature, would seem to have little to do with his conduct as a public man. the testimony is vague and often contradictory; the witnesses are, for the most part, obscure individuals, and the few persons of consideration among them appear to have been taken from the ranks of his decided enemies. when it is considered that the inquiry was conducted in the absence of cortes, before a court, the members of which were personally unfriendly to him, and that he was furnished with no specification of the charges and had no opportunity of disproving them, it is impossible, at this distance of time, to attach any importance to this paper as a legal document. when it is added, that no action was taken on it by the government to whom it was sent, we may be disposed to regard it as a monument of the malice of his enemies. the high-handed measures of the audience and the oppressive conduct of guzman, especially towards the indians, excited general indignation in the colony, and led to serious apprehensions of an insurrection. it became necessary to supersede an administration so reckless and unprincipled. but cortes was detained two months at the island, by the slow movements of the castilian court, before tidings reached him of the appointment of a new audience for the government of the country. the person selected to preside over it was the bishop of st. domingo, a prelate whose acknowledged wisdom and virtue gave favourable augury for the conduct of his administration. after this, cortes resumed his voyage, and landed at villa rica on the 15th of july, 1530. an edict, issued by the empress during her husband's absence, had interdicted cortes from approaching within ten leagues of the mexican capital, while the present authorities were there. the empress was afraid of a collision between the parties. cortes, however, took up his residence on the opposite side of the lake, at tezcuco. no sooner was his arrival there known in the metropolis, than multitudes, both of spaniards and natives, crossed the lake to pay their respects to their old commander, to offer him their services, and to complain of their manifold grievances. it seemed as if the whole population of the capital was pouring into the neighbouring city, where the marquess maintained the state of an independent potentate. the members of the audience, indignant at the mortifying contrast which their own diminished court presented, imposed heavy penalties on such of the natives as should be found in tezcuco; and, affecting to consider themselves in danger, made preparations for the defence of the city. but these belligerent movements were terminated by the arrival of the new audience; though guzman had the address to maintain his hold on a northern province, where he earned a reputation for cruelty and extortion unrivalled even in the annals of the new world. everything seemed now to assure a tranquil residence to cortes. the new magistrates treated him with marked respect, and took his advice on the most important measures of government. unhappily, this state of things did not long continue; and a misunderstanding arose between the parties, in respect to the enumeration of the vassals assigned by the crown to cortes, which the marquess thought was made on principles prejudicial to his interests, and repugnant to the intentions of the grant. he was still further displeased by finding that the audience were intrusted, by their commission, with a concurrent jurisdiction with himself in military affairs. this led, occasionally, to an interference, which the proud spirit of cortes, so long accustomed to independent rule, could ill brook. after submitting to it for a time, he left the capital in disgust, no more to return there, and took up his residence in his city of cuernavaca. it was the place won by his own sword from the aztecs, previous to the siege of mexico. it stood on the southern slope of the cordilleras, and overlooked a wide expanse of country, the fairest and most flourishing portion of his own domain. he had erected a stately palace on the spot, and henceforth made this city his favourite residence. it was well situated for superintending his vast estates, and he now devoted himself to bringing them into proper cultivation. he introduced the sugar cane from cuba, and it grew luxuriantly in the rich soil of the neighbouring lowlands. he imported large numbers of merino sheep and other cattle, which found abundant pastures in the country around tehuantepec. his lands were thickly sprinkled with groves of mulberry trees, which furnished nourishment for the silk-worm. he encouraged the cultivation of hemp and flax, and, by his judicious and enterprising husbandry, showed the capacity of the soil for the culture of valuable products before unknown in the land; and he turned these products to the best account, by the erection of sugar-mills, and other works for the manufacture of the raw material. he thus laid the foundation of an opulence for his family, as substantial, if not as speedy, as that derived from the mines. yet this latter source of wealth was not neglected by him; and he drew gold from the region of tehuantepec, and silver from that of zacatecas. the amount derived from these mines was not so abundant as at a later day. but the expense of working them was much less in the earlier stages of the operation, when the metal lay so much nearer the surface. but this tranquil way of life did not long content his restless and adventurous spirit; and it sought a vent by availing itself of his new charter of discovery to explore the mysteries of the great southern ocean. in 1527, two years before his return to spain, he had sent a little squadron to the moluccas. cortes was preparing to send another squadron of four vessels in the same direction, when his plans were interrupted by his visit to spain; and his unfinished little navy, owing to the malice of the royal audience, who drew off the hands employed in building it, went to pieces on the stocks. two other squadrons were now fitted out by cortes, in the years 1532 and 1533, and sent on a voyage of discovery to the north-west. they were unfortunate, though, in the latter expedition, the californian peninsula was reached, and a landing effected on its southern extremity at santa cruz, probably the modern port la paz. one of the vessels, thrown on the coast of new galicia, was seized by guzman, the old enemy of cortes, who ruled over that territory, the crew were plundered, and the ship was detained as a lawful prize. cortes, indignant at the outrage, demanded justice from the royal audience; and, as that body was too feeble to enforce its own decrees in his favour, he took redress into his own hands. he made a rapid but difficult march on chiametla, the scene of guzman's spoliation; and as the latter did not care to face his incensed antagonist, cortes recovered his vessel, though not the cargo. he was then joined by the little squadron which he had fitted out from his own port of tehuantepec,a port which, in the sixteenth century, promised to hold the place since occupied by that of acapulco. the vessels were provided with everything requisite for planting a colony in the newly discovered region, and transported four hundred spaniards and three hundred negro slaves, which cortes had assembled for that purpose. with this intention he crossed the gulf, the adriaticto which an old writer compares itof the western world. our limits will not allow us to go into the details of this disastrous expedition, which was attended with no important results either to its projector or to science. it may suffice to say, that, in the prosecution of it, cortes and his followers were driven to the last extremity by famine; that he again crossed the gulf, was tossed about by terrible tempests, without a pilot to guide him, was thrown upon the rocks, where his shattered vessel nearly went to pieces, and, after a succession of dangers and disasters as formidable as any which he had ever encountered on land, succeeded, by means of his indomitable energy, in bringing his crazy bark safe into the same port of santa cruz from which he had started. while these occurrences were passing, the new royal audience, after a faithful discharge of its commission, had been superseded by the arrival of a viceroy, the first ever sent to new spain. cortes, though invested with similar powers, had the title only of governor. this was the commencement of the system afterwards pursued by the crown, of intrusting the colonial administration to some individual, whose high rank and personal consideration might make him the fitting representative of majesty. the jealousy of the court did not allow the subject clothed with such ample authority to remain long enough in the same station to form dangerous schemes of ambition, but at the expiration of a few years he was usually recalled, or transferred to some other province of the vast colonial empire. the person now sent to mexico was don antonio de mendoza, a man of moderation and practical good sense, and one of that illustrious family who in the preceding reign furnished so many distinguished ornaments to the church, to the camp, and to letters. the long absence of cortes had caused the deepest anxiety in the mind of his wife, the marchioness of the valley. she wrote to the viceroy immediately on his arrival, beseeching him to ascertain, if possible, the fate of her husband, and, if he could be found, to urge his return. the viceroy, in consequence, despatched two ships in search of cortes, but whether they reached him before his departure from santa cruz is doubtful. it is certain that he returned safe, after his long absence, to acapulco, and was soon followed by the survivors of his wretched colony. undismayed by these repeated reverses, cortes, still bent on some discovery worthy of his reputation, fitted out three more vessels, and placed them under the command of an officer named ulloa. this expedition, which took its departure in july, 1539, was attended with more important results. ulloa penetrated to the head of the gulf; then, returning and winding round the coast of the peninsula, doubled its southern point, and ascended as high as the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth degree of north latitude on its western borders. after this, sending home one of the squadron, the bold navigator held on his course to the north, but was never more heard of. thus ended the maritime enterprises of cortes; sufficiently disastrous in a pecuniary point of view, since they cost him three hundred thousand castellanos of gold, without the return of a ducat. he was even obliged to borrow money, and to pawn his wife's jewels, to procure funds for the last enterprise; thus incurring a debt which, increased by the great charges of his princely establishment, hung about him during the remainder of his life. but, though disastrous in an economical view, his generous efforts added important contributions to science. in the course of these expeditions, and those undertaken by cortes previous to his visit to spain, the pacific had been coasted from the bay of panama to the rio colorado. the great peninsula of california had been circumnavigated as far as to the isle of cedros or cerros, into which the name has since been corrupted. this vast tract, which had been supposed to be an archipelago of islands, was now discovered to be a part of the continent; and its general outline, as appears from the maps of the time, was nearly as well understood as at the present day. lastly, the navigator had explored the recesses of the californian gulf, or sea of cortes, as, in honour, of the great discoverer, it is with more propriety named by the spaniards; and he had ascertained that, instead of the outlet before supposed to exist towards the north, this unknown ocean was locked up within the arms of the mighty continent. these were results that might have made the glory and satisfied the ambition of a common man; but they are lost in the brilliant renown of the former achievements of cortes. notwithstanding the embarrassments of the marquess of the valley, he still made new efforts to enlarge the limits of discovery, and prepared to fit out another squadron of five vessels, which he proposed to place under the command of a natural son, don luis. but the viceroy mendoza, whose imagination had been inflamed by the reports of an itinerant monk respecting an el dorado in the north, claimed the right of discovery in that direction. cortes protested against this, as an unwarrantable interference with his own powers. other subjects of collision arose between them; till the marquess, disgusted with this perpetual check on his authority and his enterprises, applied for redress to castile. he finally determined to go there to support his claims in person, and to obtain, if possible, renumeration for the heavy charges he had incurred by his maritime expeditions, as well as for the spoliation of his property by the royal audience, during his absence from the country; and, lastly, to procure an assignment of his vassals on principles more comformable to the original intentions of the grant. with these objects in view, he bade adieu to his family, and, taking with him his eldest son and heir, don martin, then only eight years of age, he embarked from mexico, in 1540, and, after a favourable voyage, again set foot on the shores of his native land. the emperor was absent from the country. but cortes was honourably received in the capital, where ample accommodations were provided for him and his retinue. when he attended the royal council of the indies to urge his suit, he was distinguished by uncommon marks of respect. the president went to the door of the hall to receive him, and a seat was provided for him among the members of the council. but all evaporated in this barren show of courtesy. justice, proverbially slow in spain, did not mend her gait for cortes; and at the expiration of a year, he found himself no nearer the attainment of his object than on the first week after his arrival in the capital. in the following year, 1541, we find the marquess of the valley embarked as a volunteer in the memorable expedition against algiers. charles the fifth, on his return to his dominions, laid siege to that stronghold of the mediterranean corsairs. cortes accompanied the forces destined to meet the emperor, and embarked on board the vessel of the admiral of castile. but a furious tempest scattered the navy, and the admiral's ship was driven a wreck upon the coast. cortes and his son escaped by swimming; but the former, in the confusion of the scene, lost the inestimable set of jewels noticed in the preceding chapter. on arriving in castile, cortes lost no time in laying his suit before the emperor. his applications were received by the monarch with civility,a cold civility, which carried no conviction of its sincerity. his position was materially changed since his former visit to the country. more than ten years had elapsed, and he was now too well advanced in years to give promise of serviceable enterprise in future. indeed his undertakings of late had been singularly unfortunate. even his former successes suffered the disparagement natural to a man of declining fortunes. they were already eclipsed by the magnificent achievements in peru, which had poured a golden tide into the country, that formed a striking contrast to the streams of wealth that, as yet, had flowed in but scantily from the silver mines of mexico. cortes had to learn that the gratitude of a court has reference to the future much more than to the past. he stood in the position of an importunate suitor, whose claims, however just, are too large to be readily allowed. he found, like columbus, that it was possible to deserve too greatly. in the month of february, 1544, he addressed a letter to the emperor,it was the last he ever wrote him,soliciting his attention to his suit. he begins by proudly alluding to his past services to the crown and beseeching his sovereign to "order the council of the indies, with the other tribunals which had cognisance of his suits, to come to a decision; since he was too old to wander about like a vagrant, but ought rather, during the brief remainder of his life, to stay at home and settle his account with heaven, occupied with the concerns of his soul, rather than with his substance." this appeal to his sovereign, which has something in it touching from a man of the haughty spirit of cortes, had not the effect to quicken the determination of his suit. he still lingered at the court from week to week, and from month to month, beguiled by the deceitful hopes of the litigant, tasting all that bitterness of the soul which arises from hope deferred. after three years more, passed in this unprofitable and humiliating occupation, he resolved to leave his ungrateful country and return to mexico. he had proceeded as far as seville, accompanied by his son, when he fell ill of an indigestion, caused, probably, by irritation and trouble of mind. this terminated in dysentery, and his strength sank so rapidly under the disease, that it was apparent his mortal career was drawing towards its close. he prepared for it by making the necessary arrangements for the settlement of his affairs. he had made his will some time before; and he now executed it. it is a very long document, and in some respects a remarkable one. the bulk of his property was entailed to his son, don martin, then fifteen years of age. in the testament he fixes his majority at twenty-five; but at twenty his guardians were to allow him his full income, to maintain the state becoming his rank. in a paper accompanying the will, cortes specified the names of the agents to whom he had committed the management of his vast estates scattered over many different provinces; and he requests his executors to confirm the nomination, as these agents have been selected by him from a knowledge of their peculiar qualifications. nothing can better show the thorough supervision which, in the midst of pressing public concerns, he had given to the details of his widely extended property. he makes a liberal provision for his other children, and a generous allowance to several old domesties and retainers in his household. by another clause he gives away considerable sums in charity, and he applies the revenues of his estates in the city of mexico to establish and permanently endow three public institutions,a hospital in the capital, which was to be dedicated to our lady of the conception, a college in cojohuacan for the education of missionaries to preach the gospel among the natives, and a convent, in the same place, for nuns. to the chapel of this convent, situated in his favourite town, he orders that his own body shall be transported for burial, in whatever quarter of the world he may happen to die. after declaring that he has taken all possible care to ascertain the amount of tributes formerly paid by his indian vassals to their native sovereigns, he enjoins on his heir, that, in case those which they have hitherto paid shall be found to exceed the right valuation, he shall restore them a full equivalent. in another clause, he expresses a doubt whether it is right to exact personal service from the natives; and commands that strict inquiry shall be made into the nature and value of such services as he had received, and, that, in all cases, a fair compensation shall be allowed for them. lastly, he makes this remarkable declaration: "it has long been a question, whether one can conscientiously hold property in indian slaves. since this point has not yet been determined, i enjoin it on my son martin and his heirs, that they spare no pains to come to an exact knowledge of the truth; as a matter which deeply concerns the conscience of each of them, no less than mine." cortes names, as his executors, and as guardians of his children, the duke of medina sidonia, the marquess of astorga, and the count of aguilar. for his executors in mexico, he appoints his wife, the marchioness, the archbishop of toledo, and two other prelates. the will was executed at seville, 11th of october, 1547. finding himself much incommoded, as he grew weaker, by the presence of visitors, to which he was necessarily exposed at seville, he withdrew to the neighbouring village of castilleja de la cuesta, attended by his son, who watched over his dying parent with filial solicitude. cortes seems to have contemplated his approaching end with the composure not always to be found in those who have faced death with indifference on the field of battle. at length, having devoutly confessed his sins and received the sacrament, he expired on the 2nd of december, 1547, in the sixty-third year of his age. the inhabitants of the neighbouring country were desirous to show every mark of respect to the memory of cortes. his funeral obsequies were celebrated with due solemnity by a long train of andalusian nobles and of the citizens of seville, and his body was transported to the chapel of the monastery, san isidro, in that city, where it was laid in the family vault of the duke of medina sidonia. in the year 1562, it was removed, by order of his son, don martin, to new spain, not as directed by his will, to cojohuacan, but to the monastery of st. francis, in tezcuco, where it was laid by the side of a daughter, and of his mother, dona catalina pizarro. in 1629, the remains of cortes were again removed; and on the death of don pedro, fourth marquess of the valley, it was decided by the authorities of mexico to transfer them to the church of st. francis, in that capital. yet his bones were not permitted to rest here undisturbed; and in 1794, they were removed to the hospital of jesus of nazareth. it was a more fitting place, since it was the same institution which, under the name of "our lady of the conception," had been founded and endowed by cortes, and which, with a fate not too frequent in similar charities, has been administered to this day on the noble principles of its foundation. the mouldering relics of the warrior, now deposited in a crystal coffin secured by bars and plates of silver, were laid in the chapel, and over them was raised a simple monument, displaying the arms of the family, and surmounted by a bust of the conqueror, executed in bronze, by tolsa, a sculptor worthy of the best period of the arts. unfortunately for mexico, the tale does not stop here. in 1823, the patriot mob of the capital, in their zeal to commemorate the era of the national independence, and their detestation of the "old spaniards," prepared to break open the tomb which held the ashes of cortes, and to scatter them to the winds! the authorities declined to interfere on the occasion; but the friends of the family, as is commonly reported, entered the vault by night, and secretly removing the relics, prevented the commission of a sacrilege which must have left a stain, not easy to be effaced, on the scutcheon of the fair city of mexico. cortes had no children by his first marriage. by his second he left four; a son, don martin,the heir of his honours,and three daughters, who formed splendid alliances. he left, also, several natural children, whom he particularly mentions in his testament and honourably provides for. two of these, don martin, the son of marina, and don luis cortes, attained considerable distinction, and were created comendadores of the order of st. jago. the male line of the marquess of the valley became extinct in the fourth generation. the title and estates descended to a female, and by her marriage were united with those of the house of terranova, descendants of the "great captain" gonsalvo de cordova. by a subsequent marriage they were carried into the family of the duke of monteleone, a neapolitan noble. the present proprietor of these princely honours and of vast domains, both in the old and the new world, dwells in sicily, and boasts a descentsuch as few princes can boastfrom two of the most illustrious commanders of the sixteenth century, the "great captain," and the conqueror of mexico. the personal history of cortes has been so minutely detailed in the preceding narrative, that it will be only necessary to touch on the more prominent features of his character. indeed, the history of the conquest, as i have already had occasion to remark, is necessarily that of cortes, who is, if i may so say, not merely the soul, but the body, of the enterprise, present everywhere in person, in the thick of the fight, or in the building of the works, with his sword or with his musket, sometimes leading his soldiers, and sometimes directing his little navy. the negotiations, intrigues, correspondence, are all conducted by him; and, like caesar, he wrote his own commentaries in the heat of the stirring scenes which form the subject of them. his character is marked with the most opposite traits, embracing qualities apparently the most incompatible. he was avaricious, yet liberal; bold to desperation, yet cautious and calculating in his plans; magnanimous, yet very cunning; courteous and affable in his deportment, yet inexorably stern; lax in his notions of morality, yet (not uncommon) a sad bigot. the great feature in his character was constancy of purpose; a constancy not to be daunted by danger, nor baffled by disappointment, nor wearied out by impediments and delays. he was a knight-errant, in the literal sense of the word. of all the band of adventurous cavaliers whom spain, in the sixteenth century, sent forth on the career of discovery and conquest, there was none more deeply filled with the spirit of romantic enterprise than hernando cortes. dangers and difficulties, instead of deterring, seemed to have a charm in his eyes. they were necessary to rouse him to a full consciousness of his powers. he grappled with them at the outset, and, if i may so express myself, seemed to prefer to take his enterprises by the most difficult side. he conceived, at the first moment of his landing in mexico, the design of its conquest. when he saw the strength of its civilisation, he was not turned from his purpose. when he was assailed by the superior force of narvaez, he still persisted in it; and, when he was driven in ruin from the capital, he still cherished his original idea. how successfully he carried it into execution, we have seen. after the few years of repose which succeeded the conquest, his adventurous spirit impelled him to that dreary march across the marshes of chiapa; and, after another interval, to seek his fortunes on the stormy californian gulf. when he found that no other continent remained for him to conquer, he made serious proposals to the emperor to equip a fleet at his own expense, with which he would sail to the moluccas, and subdue the spice islands for the crown of castile! this spirit of knight-errantry might lead us to undervalue his talents as a general, and to regard him merely in the light of a lucky adventurer. but this would be doing him injustice; for cortes was certainly a great general, if that man be one, who performs great achievements with the resources which his own genius has created. there is probably no instance in history where so vast an enterprise has been achieved by means apparently so inadequate. he may be truly said to have effected the conquest by his own resources. if he was indebted for his success to the co-operation of the indian tribes, it was the force of his genius that obtained command of such materials. he arrested the arm that was lifted to smite him, and made it do battle in his behalf. he beat the tlascalans, and made them his staunch allies. he beat the soldiers of narvaez, and doubled his effective force by it. when his own men deserted him, he did not desert himself. he drew them back by degrees, and compelled them to act by his will, till they were all as one man. he brought together the most miscellaneous collection of mercenaries who ever fought under one standard; adventurers from cuba and the isles, craving for gold; hidalgos, who came from the old country to win laurels; broken-down cavaliers, who hoped to mend their fortunes in the new world; vagabonds flying from justice; the grasping followers of narvaez, and his own reckless veterans,men with hardly a common tie, and burning with the spirit of jealousy and faction; wild tribes of the natives from all parts of the country, who had been sworn enemies from their cradles, and who had met only to cut one another's throats, and to procure victims for sacrifice; men, in short, differing in race, in language, and in interests, with scarcely anything in common among them. yet this motley congregation was assembled in one camp, compelled to bend to the will of one man, to consort together in harmony, to breathe, as it were, one spirit, and to move on a common principle of action! it is in this wonderful power over the discordant masses thus gathered under his banner, that we recognise the genius of the great commander, no less than in the skill of his military operations. cortes was not a vulgar conqueror. he did not conquer from the mere ambition of conquest. if he destroyed the ancient capital of the aztecs, it was to build up a more magnificent capital on its ruins. if he desolated the land and broke up its existing institutions, he employed the short period of his administration in digesting schemes for introducing there a more improved culture and a higher civilisation. in all his expeditions he was careful to study the resources of the country, its social organisation, and its physical capacities. he enjoined it on his captains to attend particularly to these objects. if he was greedy of gold, like most of the spanish cavaliers in the new world, it was not to hoard it, nor merely to lavish it in the support of a princely establishment, but to secure funds for prosecuting his glorious discoveries. witness his costly expeditions to the gulf of california. his enterprises were not undertaken solely for mercenary objects; as is shown by the various expeditions he set on foot for the discovery of a communication between the atlantic and the pacific. in his schemes of ambition he showed a respect for the interests of science, to be referred partly to the natural superiority of his mind, but partly, no doubt, to the influence of early education. it is, indeed, hardly possible that a person of his wayward and mercurial temper should have improved his advantages at the university, but he brought away from it a tincture of scholarship, seldom found among the cavaliers of the period, and which had its influence in enlarging his own conceptions. his celebrated letters are written with a simple elegance, that, as i have already had occasion to remark, have caused them to be compared to the military narrative of caesar. it will not be easy to find in the chronicles of the period a more concise, yet comprehensive, statement, not only of the events of his campaigns, but of the circumstances most worthy of notice in the character of the conquered countries. in private life he seems to have had the power of attaching to himself, warmly, those who were near his person. the influence of this attachment is shown in every page of bernal diaz, though his work was written to vindicate the claims of the soldiers, in opposition to those of the general. he seems to have led a happy life with his first wife, in their humble retirement in cuba; and regarded the second, to judge from the expressions in his testament, with confidence and love. yet he cannot be acquitted of the charge of those licentious gallantries which entered too generally into the character of the military adventurer of that day. he would seem, also, by the frequent suits in which he was involved, to have been of an irritable and contentious spirit. but much allowance must be made for the irritability of a man who had been too long accustomed to independent sway, patiently to endure the checks and control of the petty spirits who were incapable of comprehending the noble character of his enterprises. "he thought," says an eminent writer, "to silence his enemies by the brilliancy of the new career on which he had entered. he did not reflect, that these enemies had been raised by the very grandeur and rapidity of his success." he was rewarded for his efforts by the misinterpretation of his motives; by the calumnious charges of squandering the public revenues, and of aspiring to independent sovereignty. but, although we may admit the foundation of many of the grievances alleged by cortes, yet, when we consider the querulous tone of his correspondence and the frequency of his litigation, we may feel a natural suspicion that his proud spirit was too sensitive to petty slights, and too jealous of imaginary wrongs. in the earlier part of the history, i have given a description of the person of cortes. it may be well to close this review of his character by the account of his manners and personal habits left us by bernal diaz, the old chronicler, who has accompanied us through the whole course of our narrative, and who may now fitly furnish the conclusion of it. no man knew his commander better; and, if the avowed object of his work might naturally lead to a disparagement of cortes, this is more than counterbalanced by the warmth of his personal attachment, and by that esprit de corps which leads him to take a pride in the renown of his general. "in his whole appearance and presence," says diaz, "in his discourse, his table, his dress, in everything, in short, he had the air of a great lord. his clothes were in the fashion of the time; he set little value on silk, damask, or velvet, but dressed plainly and exceedingly neat; nor did he wear massy chains of gold, but simply a fine one of exquisite workmanship, from which was suspended a jewel having the figure of our lady the virgin and her precious son, with a latin motto cut upon it. on his finger he wore a splendid diamond ring; and from his cap, which, according to the fashion of that day, was of velvet, hung a medal, the device of which i do not remember. he was magnificently attended, as became a man of his rank, with chamberlains and major-domos and many pages; and the service of his table was splendid, with a quantity of both gold and silver plate. at noon he dined heartily, drinking about a pint of wine mixed with water. he supped well, though he was not dainty in regard to his food, caring little for the delicacies of the table, unless, indeed, on such occasions as made attention to these matters of some consequence. "he was acquainted with latin, and, as i have understood, was made bachelor of laws; and, when he conversed with learned men who addressed him in latin, he answered them in the same language. he was also something of a poet; his conversation was agreeable, and he had a pleasant elocution. in his attendance on the services of the church he was most punctual, devout in his manner, and charitable to the poor. "when he swore, he used to say, 'on my conscience'; and when he was vexed with any one, 'evil betide you.' with his men he was very patient; and they were sometimes impertinent, and even insolent. when very angry, the veins in his throat and forehead would swell, but he uttered no reproaches against either officer or soldier. "he was fond of cards and dice, and, when he played, was always in good humour, indulging freely in jests and repartees. he was affable with his followers, especially with those who came over with him from cuba. in his campaigns he paid strict attention to discipline, frequently going the rounds himself during the night, and seeing that the sentinels did their duty. he entered the quarters of his soldiers without ceremony, and chided those whom he found without their arms and accoutrements, saying, 'it was a bad sheep that could not carry its own wool.' on the expedition to honduras, he acquired the habit of sleeping after his meals, feeling unwell if he omitted it; and, however sultry or stormy the weather, he caused a carpet or his cloak to be thrown under a tree, and slept soundly for some time. he was frank and exceedingly liberal in his disposition, until the last few years of his life, when he was accused of parsimony. but we should consider, that his funds were employed on great and costly enterprises; and that none of these, after the conquest, neither his expedition to honduras, nor his voyages to california, were crowned with success. it was perhaps intended that he should receive his recompense in a better world; and i fully believe it; for he was a good cavalier, most true in his devotions to the virgin, to the apostle st. peter, and to all the other saints." such is the portrait, which has been left to us by the faithful hand most competent to trace it, of hernando cortes, the conqueror of mexico. the end . at the foot of the rainbow, by gene stratton-porter. digitized by cardinalis etext press, c.e.k. posted to wiretap in july 1993, as rainbow.gsp. italics are indicated as _italics_. this text is in the public domain. at the foot of the rainbow gene stratton-porter author of "freckles," "the song of the cardinal," etc. copyright 1907 by outing publishing company "and the bow shall be set in the cloud; and i will look upon it, that i may remember the everlasting covenant between god and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth." --genesis, ix-16. books by gene stratton-porter __________________________ the song of the cardinal freckles what i have done with birds at the foot of the rainbow a girl of the limberlost birds of bible the harvester laddie moths of the limberlost music of the wild michael o'halloran contents gene stratton-porter. a little story of her life and work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (copyright 1916, by doubleday, page & company) i. the rat-catchers of the wabash . . . . . . . . . . . . ii. ruben o'khayam and the milk pail. . . . . . . . . . . . iii. the fifty coons of the canoper. . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. when the kingfisher and the black bass came home. . . . v. when the rainbow set its arch in the sky. . . . . . . . vi. the heart of mary malone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii. the apple of discord becomes a jointed rod. . . . . . . viii. when the black bass struck. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix. when jimmy malone came to confession. . . . . . . . . . x. dannie's renunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi. the pot of gold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . gene stratton-porter a little story of her life and work for several years doubleday, page & company have been receiving repeated requests for information about the life and books of gene stratton-porter. her fascinating nature work with bird, flower, and moth, and the natural wonders of the limberlost swamp, made famous as the scene of her nature romances, all have stirred much curiosity among readers everywhere. mrs. porter did not possess what has been called "an aptitude for personal publicity." indeed, up to the present, she has discouraged quite successfully any attempt to stress the personal note. it is practically impossible, however, to do the kind of work she has done--to make genuine contributions to natural science by her wonderful field work among birds, insects, and flowers, and then, through her romances, to bring several hundred thousands of people to love and understand nature in a way they never did before-without arousing a legitimate interest in her own history, her ideals, her methods of work, and all that underlies the structure of her unusual achievement. her publishers have felt the pressure of this growing interest and it was at their request that she furnished the data for a biographical sketch that was to be written of her. but when this actually came to hand, the present compiler found that the author had told a story so much more interesting than anything he could write of her, that it became merely a question of how little need be added. the following pages are therefore adapted from what might be styled the personal record of gene stratton-porter. this will account for the very intimate picture of family life in the middle west for some years following the civil war. mark stratton, the father of gene stratton-porter, described his wife, at the time of their marriage, as a "ninety-pound bit of pink porcelain, pink as a wild rose, plump as a partridge, having a big rope of bright brown hair, never ill a day in her life, and bearing the loveliest name ever given a woman--mary." he further added that "god fashioned her heart to be gracious, her body to be the mother of children, and as her especial gift of grace, he put flower magic into her fingers." mary stratton was the mother of twelve lusty babies, all of whom she reared past eight years of age, losing two a little over that, through an attack of scarlet fever with whooping cough; too ugly a combination for even such a wonderful mother as she. with this brood on her hands she found time to keep an immaculate house, to set a table renowned in her part of the state, to entertain with unfailing hospitality all who came to her door, to beautify her home with such means as she could command, to embroider and fashion clothing by hand for her children; but her great gift was conceded by all to be the making of things to grow. at that she was wonderful. she started dainty little vines and climbing plants from tiny seeds she found in rice and coffee. rooted things she soaked in water, rolled in fine sand, planted according to habit, and they almost never failed to justify her expectations. she even grew trees and shrubs from slips and cuttings no one else would have thought of trying to cultivate, her last resort being to cut a slip diagonally, insert the lower end in a small potato, and plant as if rooted. and it nearly always grew! there is a shaft of white stone standing at her head in a cemetery that belonged to her on a corner of her husband's land; but to mrs. porter's mind her mother's real monument is a cedar of lebanon which she set in the manner described above. the cedar tops the brow of a little hill crossing the grounds. she carried two slips from ohio, where they were given to her by a man who had brought the trees as tiny things from the holy land. she planted both in this way, one in her dooryard and one in her cemetery. the tree on the hill stands thirty feet tall now, topping all others, and has a trunk two feet in circumference. mrs. porter's mother was of dutch extraction, and like all dutch women she worked her special magic with bulbs, which she favoured above other flowers. tulips, daffodils, star flowers, lilies, dahlias, little bright hyacinths, that she called "blue bells," she dearly loved. from these she distilled exquisite perfume by putting clusters, & time of perfect bloom, in bowls lined with freshly made, unsalted butter, covering them closely, and cutting the few drops of extract thus obtained with alcohol. "she could do more different things," says the author, "and finish them all in a greater degree of perfection than any other woman i have ever known. if i were limited to one adjective in describing her, `capable' would be the word." the author's father was descended from a long line of ancestors of british blood. he was named for, and traced his origin to, that first mark stratton who lived in new york, married the famous beauty, anne hutchinson, and settled on stratton island, afterward corrupted to staten, according to family tradition. from that point back for generations across the sea he followed his line to the family of strattons of which the earl of northbrooke is the present head. to his british traditions and the customs of his family, mark stratton clung with rigid tenacity, never swerving from his course a particle under the influence of environment or association. all his ideas were clear-cut; no man could influence him against his better judgment. he believed in god, in courtesy, in honour, and cleanliness, in beauty, and in education. he used to say that he would rather see a child of his the author of a book of which he could be proud, than on the throne of england, which was the strongest way he knew to express himself. his very first earnings he spent for a book; when other men rested, he read; all his life he was a student of extraordinarily tenacious memory. he especially loved history: rollands, wilson's outlines, hume, macauley, gibbon, prescott, and bancroft, he could quote from all of them paragraphs at a time contrasting the views of different writers on a given event, and remembering dates with unfailing accuracy. "he could repeat the entire bible," says mrs. stratton-porter, "giving chapters and verses, save the books of generations; these he said `were a waste of gray matter to learn.' i never knew him to fail in telling where any verse quoted to him was to be found in the bible." and she adds: "i was almost afraid to make these statements, although there are many living who can corroborate them, until john muir published the story of his boyhood days, and in it i found the history of such rearing as was my father's, told of as the customary thing among the children of muir's time; and i have referred many inquirers as to whether this feat were possible, to the muir book." all his life, with no thought of fatigue or of inconvenience to himself, mark stratton travelled miles uncounted to share what he had learned with those less fortunately situated, by delivering sermons, lectures, talks on civic improvement and politics. to him the love of god could be shown so genuinely in no other way as in the love of his fellowmen. he worshipped beauty: beautiful faces, souls, hearts, beautiful landscapes, trees, animals, flowers. he loved colour: rich, bright colour, and every variation down to the faintest shadings. he was especially fond of red, and the author carefully keeps a cardinal silk handkerchief that he was carrying when stricken with apoplexy at the age of seventy-eight. "it was so like him," she comments, "to have that scrap of vivid colour in his pocket. he never was too busy to fertilize a flower bed or to dig holes for the setting of a tree or bush. a word constantly on his lips was `tidy.' it applied equally to a woman, a house, a field, or a barn lot. he had a streak of genius in his make-up: the genius of large appreciation. over inspired biblical passages, over great books, over sunlit landscapes, over a white violet abloom in deep shade, over a heroic deed of man, i have seen his brow light up, his eyes shine." mrs. porter tells us that her father was constantly reading aloud to his children and to visitors descriptions of the great deeds of men. two "hair-raisers" she especially remembers with increased heart-beats to this day were the story of john maynard, who piloted a burning boat to safety while he slowly roasted at the wheel. she says the old thrill comes back when she recalls the inflection of her father's voice as he would cry in imitation of the captain: "john maynard!" and then give the reply. "aye, aye, sir!" his other until it sank to a mere gasp: favourite was the story of clemanthe, and her lover's immortal answer to her question: "shall we meet again?" to this mother at forty-six, and this father at fifty, each at intellectual top-notch, every faculty having been stirred for years by the dire stress of civil war, and the period immediately following, the author was born. from childhood she recalls "thinking things which she felt should be saved," and frequently tugging at her mother's skirts and begging her to "set down" what the child considered stories and poems. most of these were some big fact in nature that thrilled her, usually expressed in biblical terms; for the bible was read twice a day before the family and helpers, and an average of three services were attended on sunday. mrs. porter says that her first all-alone effort was printed in wabbly letters on the fly-leaf of an old grammar. it was entitled: "ode to the moon." "not," she comments, "that i had an idea what an `ode' was, other than that i had heard it discussed in the family together with different forms of poetic expression. the spelling must have been by proxy: but i did know the words i used, what they meant, and the idea i was trying to convey. "no other farm was ever quite so lovely as the one on which i was born after this father and mother had spent twenty-five years beautifying it," says the author. it was called "hopewell" after the home of some of her father's british ancestors. the natural location was perfect, the land rolling and hilly, with several flowing springs and little streams crossing it in three directions, while plenty of forest still remained. the days of pioneer struggles were past. the roads were smooth and level as floors, the house and barn commodious; the family rode abroad in a double carriage trimmed in patent leather, drawn by a matched team of gray horses, and sometimes the father "speeded a little" for the delight of the children. "we had comfortable clothing," says mrs. porter, "and were getting our joy from life without that pinch of anxiety which must have existed in the beginning, although i know that father and mother always held steady, and took a large measure of joy from life in passing." her mother's health, which always had been perfect, broke about the time of the author's first remembrance due to typhoid fever contracted after nursing three of her children through it. she lived for several years, but with continual suffering, amounting at times to positive torture. so it happened, that led by impulse and aided by an escape from the training given her sisters, instead of "sitting on a cushion and sewing a fine seam"--the threads of the fabric had to be counted and just so many allowed to each stitch!--this youngest child of a numerous household spent her waking hours with the wild. she followed her father and the boys afield, and when tired out slept on their coats in fence corners, often awaking with shy creatures peering into her face. she wandered where she pleased, amusing herself with birds, flowers, insects, and plays she invented. "by the day," writes the author, "i trotted from one object which attracted me to another, singing a little song of made-up phrases about everything i saw while i waded catching fish, chasing butterflies over clover fields, or following a bird with a hair in its beak; much of the time i carried the inevitable baby for a woman-child, frequently improvised from an ear of corn in the silk, wrapped in catalpa leaf blankets." she had a corner of the garden under a big bartlett pear tree for her very own, and each spring she began by planting radishes and lettuce when the gardening was done; and before these had time to sprout she set the same beds full of spring flowers, and so followed out the season. she made special pets of the birds, locating nest after nest, and immediately projecting herself into the daily life of the occupants. "no one," she says, "ever taught me more than that the birds were useful, a gift of god for our protection from insect pests on fruit and crops; and a gift of grace in their beauty and music, things to be rigidly protected. from this cue i evolved the idea myself that i must be extremely careful, for had not my father tied a 'kerchief over my mouth when he lifted me for a peep into the nest of the humming-bird, and did he not walk softly and whisper when he approached the spot? so i stepped lightly, made no noise, and watched until i knew what a mother bird fed her young before i began dropping bugs, worms, crumbs, and fruit into little red mouths that opened at my tap on the nest quite as readily as at the touch of the feet of the mother bird." in the nature of this child of the out-of-doors there ran a fibre of care for wild things. it was instinct with her to go slowly, to touch lightly, to deal lovingly with every living thing: flower, moth, bird, or animal. she never gathered great handfuls of frail wild flowers, carried them an hour and threw them away. if she picked any, she took only a few, mostly to lay on her mother's pillow--for she had a habit of drawing comfort from a cinnamon pink or a trillium laid where its delicate fragrance reached her with every breath. "i am quite sure," mrs. porter writes, "that i never in my life, in picking flowers, dragged up the plant by the roots, as i frequently saw other people do. i was taught from infancy to cut a bloom i wanted. my regular habit was to lift one plant of each kind, especially if it were a species new to me, and set it in my wild-flower garden." to the birds and flowers the child added moths and butterflies, because she saw them so frequently, the brilliance of colour in yard and garden attracting more than could be found elsewhere. so she grew with the wild, loving, studying, giving all her time. "i fed butterflies sweetened water and rose leaves inside the screen of a cellar window," mrs. porter tells us; "doctored all the sick and wounded birds and animals the men brought me from afield; made pets of the baby squirrels and rabbits they carried in for my amusement; collected wild flowers; and as i grew older, gathered arrow points and goose quills for sale in fort wayne. so i had the first money i ever earned." her father and mother had strong artistic tendencies, although they would have scoffed at the idea themselves, yet the manner in which they laid off their fields, the home they built, the growing things they preserved, the way they planted, the life they led, all go to prove exactly that thing. their bush--and vine-covered fences crept around the acres they owned in a strip of gaudy colour; their orchard lay in a valley, a square of apple trees in the centre widely bordered by peach, so that it appeared at bloom time like a great pink-bordered white blanket on the face of earth. swale they might have drained, and would not, made sheets of blue flag, marigold and buttercups. from the home you could not look in any direction without seeing a picture of beauty. "last spring," the author writes in a recent letter, "i went back with my mind fully made up to buy that land at any reasonable price, restore it to the exact condition in which i knew it as a child, and finish my life there. i found that the house had been burned, killing all the big trees set by my mother's hands immediately surrounding it. the hills were shorn and ploughed down, filling and obliterating the creeks and springs. most of the forest had been cut, and stood in corn. my old catalpa in the fence corner beside the road and the bartlett pear under which i had my wild-flower garden were all that was left of the dooryard, while a few gnarled apple trees remained of the orchard, which had been reset in another place. the garden had been moved, also the lanes; the one creek remaining out of three crossed the meadow at the foot of the orchard. it flowed a sickly current over a dredged bed between bare, straight banks. the whole place seemed worse than a dilapidated graveyard to me. all my love and ten times the money i had at command never could have put back the face of nature as i knew it on that land." as a child the author had very few books, only three of her own outside of school books. "the markets did not afford the miracles common with the children of today," she adds. "books are now so numerous, so cheap, and so bewildering in colour and make-up, that i sometimes think our children are losing their perspective and caring for none of them as i loved my few plain little ones filled with short story and poem, almost no illustration. i had a treasure house in the school books of my elders, especially the mcguffey series of readers from one to six. for pictures i was driven to the bible, dictionary, historical works read by my father, agricultural papers, and medical books about cattle and sheep. "near the time of my mother's passing we moved from hopewell to the city of wabash in order that she might have constant medical attention, and the younger children better opportunities for schooling. here we had magazines and more books in which i was interested. the one volume in which my heart was enwrapt was a collection of masterpieces of fiction belonging to my eldest sister. it contained `paul and virginia,' `undine,' `picciola,' `the vicar of wakefield,' `pilgrim's progress,' and several others i soon learned by heart, and the reading and rereading of those exquisitely expressed and conceived stories may have done much in forming high conceptions of what really constitutes literature and in furthering the lofty ideals instilled by my parents. one of these stories formed the basis of my first publicly recognized literary effort." reared by people who constantly pointed out every natural beauty, using it wherever possible to drive home a precept, the child lived out-of-doors with the wild almost entirely. if she reported promptly three times a day when the bell rang at meal time, with enough clothing to constitute a decent covering, nothing more was asked until the sabbath. to be taken from such freedom, her feet shod, her body restricted by as much clothing as ever had been worn on sunday, shut up in a schoolroom, and set to droning over books, most of which she detested, was the worst punishment ever inflicted upon her she declares. she hated mathematics in any form and spent all her time on natural science, language, and literature. "friday afternoon," writes mrs. porter, "was always taken up with an exercise called `rhetoricals,' a misnomer as a rule, but let that pass. each week pupils of one of the four years furnished entertainment for the assembled high school and faculty. our subjects were always assigned, and we cordially disliked them. this particular day i was to have a paper on `mathematical law.' "i put off the work until my paper had been called for several times, and so came to thursday night with excuses and not a line. i was told to bring my work the next morning without fail. i went home in hot anger. why in all this beautiful world, would they not allow me to do something i could do, and let any one of four members of my class who revelled in mathematics do my subject? that evening i was distracted. `i can't do a paper on mathematics, and i won't!' i said stoutly; `but i'll do such a paper on a subject i can write about as will open their foolish eyes and make them see how wrong they are.'" before me on the table lay the book i loved, the most wonderful story in which was `picciola' by saintine. instantly i began to write. breathlessly i wrote for hours. i exceeded our limit ten times over. the poor italian count, the victim of political offences, shut by napoleon from the wonderful grounds, mansion, and life that were his, restricted to the bare prison walls of fenestrella, deprived of books and writing material, his one interest in life became a sprout of green, sprung, no doubt, from a seed dropped by a passing bird, between the stone flagging of the prison yard before his window. with him i had watched over it through all the years since i first had access to the book; with him i had prayed for it. i had broken into a cold sweat of fear when the jailer first menaced it; i had hated the wind that bent it roughly, and implored the sun. i had sung a paean of joy at its budding, and worshipped in awe before its thirty perfect blossoms. the count had named it `picciola'--the little one--to me also it was a personal possession. that night we lived the life of our `little one' over again, the count and i, and never were our anxieties and our joys more poignant. "next morning," says mrs. porter, "i dared my crowd to see how long they could remain on the grounds, and yet reach the assembly room before the last toll of the bell. this scheme worked. coming in so late the principal opened exercises without remembering my paper. again, at noon, i was as late as i dared be, and i escaped until near the close of the exercises, through which i sat in cold fear. when my name was reached at last the principal looked at me inquiringly and then announced my inspiring mathematical subject. i arose, walked to the front, and made my best bow. then i said: `i waited until yesterday because i knew absolutely nothing about my subject'--the audience laughed--`and i could find nothing either here or in the library at home, so last night i reviewed saintine's masterpiece, "picciola."' "then instantly i began to read. i was almost paralyzed at my audacity, and with each word i expected to hear a terse little interruption. imagine my amazement when i heard at the end of the first page: `wait a minute!' of course i waited, and the principal left the room. a moment later she reappeared accompanied by the superintendent of the city schools. `begin again,' she said. `take your time.' "i was too amazed to speak. then thought came in a rush. my paper was good. it was as good as i had believed it. it was better than i had known. i did go on! we took that assembly room and the corps of teachers into our confidence, the count and i, and told them all that was in our hearts about a little flower that sprang between the paving stones of a prison yard. the count and i were free spirits. from the book i had learned that. he got into political trouble through it, and i had got into mathematical trouble, and we told our troubles. one instant the room was in laughter, the next the boys bowed their heads, and the girls who had forgotten their handkerchiefs cried in their aprons. for almost sixteen big foolscap pages i held them, and i was eager to go on and tell them more about it when i reached the last line. never again was a subject forced upon me." after this incident of her schooldays, what had been inclination before was aroused to determination and the child neglected her lessons to write. a volume of crude verse fashioned after the metre of meredith's "lucile," a romantic book in rhyme, and two novels were the fruits of this youthful ardour. through the sickness and death of a sister, the author missed the last three months of school, but, she remarks, "unlike my schoolmates, i studied harder after leaving school than ever before and in a manner that did me real good. the most that can be said of what education i have is that it is the very best kind in the world for me; the only possible kind that would not ruin a person of my inclinations. the others of my family had been to college; i always have been too thankful for words that circumstances intervened which saved my brain from being run through a groove in company with dozens of others of widely different tastes and mentality. what small measure of success i have had has come through preserving my individual point of view, method of expression, and following in after life the spartan regulations of my girlhood home. whatever i have been able to do, has been done through the line of education my father saw fit to give me, and through his and my mother's methods of rearing me. "my mother went out too soon to know, and my father never saw one of the books; but he knew i was boiling and bubbling like a yeast jar in july over some literary work, and if i timidly slipped to him with a composition, or a faulty poem, he saw good in it, and made suggestions for its betterment. when i wanted to express something in colour, he went to an artist, sketched a design for an easel, personally superintended the carpenter who built it, and provided tuition. on that same easel i painted the water colours for `moths of the limberlost,' and one of the most poignant regrets of my life is that he was not there to see them, and to know that the easel which he built through his faith in me was finally used in illustrating a book. "if i thought it was music through which i could express myself, he paid for lessons and detected hidden ability that should be developed. through the days of struggle he stood fast; firm in his belief in me. he was half the battle. it was he who demanded a physical standard that developed strength to endure the rigours of scientific field and darkroom work, and the building of ten books in ten years, five of which were on nature subjects, having my own illustrations, and five novels, literally teeming with natural history, true to nature. it was he who demanded of me from birth the finishing of any task i attempted and who taught me to cultivate patience to watch and wait, even years, if necessary, to find and secure material i wanted. it was he who daily lived before me the life of exactly such a man as i portrayed in `the harvester,' and who constantly used every atom of brain and body power to help and to encourage all men to do the same." marriage, a home of her own, and a daughter for a time filled the author's hands, but never her whole heart and brain. the book fever lay dormant a while, and then it became a compelling influence. it dominated the life she lived, the cabin she designed for their home, and the books she read. when her daughter was old enough to go to school, mrs. porter's time came. speaking of this period, she says: "i could not afford a maid, but i was very strong, vital to the marrow, and i knew how to manage life to make it meet my needs, thanks to even the small amount i had seen of my mother. i kept a cabin of fourteen rooms, and kept it immaculate. i made most of my daughter's clothes, i kept a conservatory in which there bloomed from three to six hundred bulbs every winter, tended a house of canaries and linnets, and cooked and washed dishes besides three times a day. in my spare time (mark the word, there was time to spare else the books never would have been written and the pictures made) i mastered photography to such a degree that the manufacturers of one of our finest brands of print paper once sent the manager of their factory to me to learn how i handled it. he frankly said that they could obtain no such results with it as i did. he wanted to see my darkroom, examine my paraphernalia, and have me tell him exactly how i worked. as i was using the family bathroom for a darkroom and washing negatives and prints on turkey platters in the kitchen, i was rather put to it when it came to giving an exhibition. it was scarcely my fault if men could not handle the paper they manufactured so that it produced the results that i obtained, so i said i thought the difference might lie in the chemical properties of the water, and sent this man on his way satisfied. possibly it did. but i have a shrewd suspicion it lay in high-grade plates, a careful exposure, judicious development, with self-compounded chemicals straight from the factory, and c. p. i think plates swabbed with wet cotton before development, intensified if of short exposure, and thoroughly swabbed again before drying, had much to do with it; and paper handled in the same painstaking manner had more. i have hundreds of negatives in my closet made twelve years ago, in perfect condition for printing from to-day, and i never have lost a plate through fog from imperfect development and hasty washing; so my little mother's rule of `whatsoever thy hands find to do, do it with thy might,' held good in photography." thus had mrs. porter made time to study and to write, and editors began to accept what she sent them with little if any changes. she began by sending photographic and natural history hints to ~recreation, and with the first installment was asked to take charge of the department and furnish material each month for which she was to be paid at current prices in high-grade photographic material. we can form some idea of the work she did under this arrangement from the fact that she had over one thousand dollars' worth of equipment at the end of the first year. the second year she increased this by five hundred, and then accepted a place on the natural history staff of ~outing, working closely with mr. casper whitney. after a year of this helpful experience mrs. porter began to turn her attention to what she calls "nature studies sugar coated with fiction." mixing some childhood fact with a large degree of grown-up fiction, she wrote a little story entitled "laddie, the princess, and the pie." "i was abnormally sensitive," says the author, "about trying to accomplish any given thing and failing. i had been taught in my home that it was black disgrace to undertake anything and fail. my husband owned a drug and book store that carried magazines, and it was not possible to conduct departments in any of them and not have it known; but only a few people in our locality read these publications, none of them were interested in nature photography, or natural science, so what i was trying to do was not realized even by my own family. "with them i was much more timid than with the neighbours. least of all did i want to fail before my man person and my daughter and our respective families; so i worked in secret, sent in my material, and kept as quiet about it as possible. on ~outing i had graduated from the camera department to an illustrated article each month, and as this kept up the year round, and few illustrations could be made in winter, it meant that i must secure enough photographs of wild life in summer to last during the part of the year when few were to be had. "every fair day i spent afield, and my little black horse and load of cameras, ropes, and ladders became a familiar sight to the country folk of the limberlost, in rainbow bottom, the canoper, on the banks of the wabash, in woods and thickets and beside the roads; but few people understood what i was trying to do, none of them what it would mean were i to succeed. being so afraid of failure and the inevitable ridicule in a community where i was already severly criticised on account of my ideas of housekeeping, dress, and social customs, i purposely kept everything i did as quiet as possible. it had to be known that i was interested in everything afield, and making pictures; also that i was writing field sketches for nature publications, but little was thought of it, save as one more, peculiarity, in me. so when my little story was finished i went to our store and looked over the magazines. i chose one to which we did not subscribe, having an attractive cover, good type, and paper, and on the back of an old envelope, behind the counter, i scribbled: perriton maxwell, 116 nassau street, new york, and sent my story on its way. "then i took a bold step, the first in my self-emancipation. money was beginning to come in, and i had some in my purse of my very own that i had earned when no one even knew i was working. i argued that if i kept my family so comfortable that they missed nothing from their usual routine, it was my right to do what i could toward furthering my personal ambitions in what time i could save from my housework. and until i could earn enough to hire capable people to take my place, i held rigidly to that rule. i who waded morass, fought quicksands, crept, worked from ladders high in air, and crossed water on improvised rafts without a tremor, slipped with many misgivings into the postoffice and rented a box for myself, so that if i met with failure my husband and the men in the bank need not know what i had attempted. that was early may; all summer i waited. i had heard that it required a long time for an editor to read and to pass on matter sent him; but my waiting did seem out of all reason. i was too busy keeping my cabin and doing field work to repine; but i decided in my own mind that mr. maxwell was a `mean old thing' to throw away my story and keep the return postage. besides, i was deeply chagrined, for i had thought quite well of my effort myself, and this seemed to prove that i did not know even the first principles of what would be considered an interesting story. "then one day in september i went into our store on an errand and the manager said to me: `i read your story in the ~metropolitan last night. it was great! did you ever write any fiction before?' "my head whirled, but i had learned to keep my own counsels, so i said as lightly as i could, while my heart beat until i feared he could hear it: `no. just a simple little thing! have you any spare copies? my sister might want one.' "he supplied me, so i hurried home, and shutting myself in the library, i sat down to look my first attempt at fiction in the face. i quite agreed with the manager that it was `great.' then i wrote mr. maxwell a note telling him that i had seen my story in his magazine, and saying that i was glad he liked it enough to use it. i had not known a letter could reach new york and bring a reply so quickly as his answer came. it was a letter that warmed the deep of my heart. mr. maxwell wrote that he liked my story very much, but the office boy had lost or destroyed my address with the wrappings, so after waiting a reasonable length of time to hear from me, he had illustrated it the best he could, and printed it. he wrote that so many people had spoken to him of a new, fresh note in it, that he wished me to consider doing him another in a similar vein for a christmas leader and he enclosed my very first check for fiction. "so i wrote: `how laddie and the princess spelled down at the christmas bee.' mr. maxwell was pleased to accept that also, with what i considered high praise, and to ask me to furnish the illustrations. he specified that he wanted a frontispiece, head and tail pieces, and six or seven other illustrations. counting out the time for his letter to reach me, and the material to return, i was left with just ~one day in which to secure the pictures. they had to be of people costumed in the time of the early seventies and i was short of print paper and chemicals. first, i telephoned to fort wayne for the material i wanted to be sent without fail on the afternoon train. then i drove to the homes of the people i wished to use for subjects and made appointments for sittings, and ransacked the cabin for costumes. the letter came on the eight a.m. train. at ten o'clock i was photographing colonel lupton beside my dining-room fireplace for the father in the story. at eleven i was dressing and posing miss lizzie huart for the princess. at twelve i was picturing in one of my bed rooms a child who served finely for little sister, and an hour later the same child in a cemetery three miles in the country where i used mounted butterflies from my cases, and potted plants carried from my conservatory, for a graveyard scene. the time was early november, but god granted sunshine that day, and short focus blurred the background. at four o'clock i was at the schoolhouse, and in the best-lighted room with five or six models, i was working on the spelling bee scenes. by six i was in the darkroom developing and drying these plates, every one of which was good enough to use. i did my best work with printing-out paper, but i was compelled to use a developing paper in this extremity, because it could be worked with much more speed, dried a little between blotters, and mounted. at three o'clock in the morning i was typing the quotations for the pictures, at four the parcel stood in the hall for the six o'clock train, and i realized that i wanted a drink, food, and sleep, for i had not stopped a second for anything from the time of reading mr. maxwell's letter until his order was ready to mail. for the following ten years i was equally prompt in doing all work i undertook, whether pictures or manuscript, without a thought of consideration for self; and i disappointed the confident expectations of my nearest and dearest by remaining sane, normal, and almost without exception the healthiest woman they knew." this story and its pictures were much praised, and in the following year the author was asked for several stories, and even used bird pictures and natural history sketches, quite an innovation for a magazine at that time. with this encouragement she wrote and illustrated a short story of about ten thousand words, and sent it to the century. richard watson gilder advised mrs. porter to enlarge it to book size, which she did. this book is "the cardinal." following mr. gilder's advice, she recast the tale and, stating with the mangled body of a cardinal some marksman had left in the road she was travelling, in a fervour of love for the birds and indignation at the hunter, she told the cardinal's life history in these pages. the story was promptly accepted and the book was published with very beautiful half-tones, and cardinal buckram cover. incidentally, neither the author's husband nor daughter had the slightest idea she was attempting to write a book until work had progressed to that stage where she could not make a legal contract without her husband's signature. during the ten years of its life this book has gone through eight different editions, varying in form and make-up from the birds in exquisite colour, as colour work advanced and became feasible, to a binding of beautiful red morocco, a number of editions of differing design intervening. one was tried in gray binding, the colour of the female cardinal, with the red male used as an inset. another was woodsgreen with the red male, and another red with a wild rose design stamped in. there is a british edition published by hodder and stoughton. all of these had the author's own illustrations which authorities agree are the most complete studies of the home life and relations of a pair of birds ever published. the story of these illustrations in "the cardinal" and how the author got them will be a revelation to most readers. mrs. porter set out to make this the most complete set of bird illustrations ever secured, in an effort to awaken people to the wonder and beauty and value of the birds. she had worked around half a dozen nests for two years and had carried a lemon tree from her conservatory to the location of one nest, buried the tub, and introduced the branches among those the birds used in approaching their home that she might secure proper illustrations for the opening chapter, which was placed in the south. when the complete bird series was finished, the difficult work over, and there remained only a few characteristic wabash river studies of flowers, vines, and bushes for chapter tail pieces to be secured, the author "met her jonah," and her escape was little short of a miracle. after a particularly strenuous spring afield, one teeming day in early august she spent the morning in the river bottom beside the wabash. a heavy rain followed by august sun soon had her dripping while she made several studies of wild morning glories, but she was particularly careful to wrap up and drive slowly going home, so that she would not chill. in the afternoon the author went to the river northeast of town to secure mallow pictures for another chapter, and after working in burning sun on the river bank until exhausted, she several times waded the river to examine bushes on the opposite bank. on the way home she had a severe chill, and for the following three weeks lay twisted in the convulsions of congestion, insensible most of the time. skilled doctors and nurses did their best, which they admitted would have availed nothing if the patient had not had a constitution without a flaw upon which to work. "this is the history," said mrs. porter, "of one little tail piece among the pictures. there were about thirty others, none so strenuous, but none easy, each having a living, fighting history for me. if i were to give in detail the story of the two years' work required to secure the set of bird studies illustrating `the cardinal,' it would make a much larger book than the life of the bird." "the cardinal" was published in june of 1903. on the 20th of october, 1904, "freckles" appeared. mrs. porter had been delving afield with all her heart and strength for several years, and in the course of her work had spent every other day for three months in the limberlost swamp, making a series of studies of the nest of a black vulture. early in her married life she had met a scotch lumberman, who told her of the swamp and of securing fine timber there for canadian shipbuilders, and later when she had moved to within less than a mile of its northern boundary, she met a man who was buying curly maple, black walnut, golden oak, wild cherry, and other wood extremely valuable for a big furniture factory in grand rapids. there was one particular woman, of all those the author worked among, who exercised herself most concerning her. she never failed to come out if she saw her driving down the lane to the woods, and caution her to be careful. if she felt that mrs. porter had become interested and forgotten that it was long past meal time, she would send out food and water or buttermilk to refresh her. she had her family posted, and if any of them saw a bird with a straw or a hair in its beak, they followed until they found its location. it was her husband who drove the stake and ploughed around the killdeer nest in the cornfield to save it for the author; and he did many other acts of kindness without understanding exactly what he was doing or why. "merely that i wanted certain things was enough for those people," writes mrs. porter. "without question they helped me in every way their big hearts could suggest to them, because they loved to be kind, and to be generous was natural with them. the woman was busy keeping house and mothering a big brood, and every living creature that came her way, besides. she took me in, and i put her soul, body, red head, and all, into sarah duncan. the lumber and furniture man i combined in mclean. freckles was a composite of certain ideals and my own field experiences, merged with those of mr. bob burdette black, who, at the expense of much time and careful work, had done more for me than any other ten men afield. the angel was an idealized picture of my daughter. "i dedicated the book to my husband, mr. charles darwin porter, for several reasons, the chiefest being that he deserved it. when word was brought me by lumbermen of the nest of the black vulture in the limberlost, i hastened to tell my husband the wonderful story of the big black bird, the downy white baby, the pale blue egg, and to beg back a rashly made promise not to work in the limberlost. being a natural history enthusiast himself, he agreed that i must go; but he qualified the assent with the proviso that no one less careful of me than he, might accompany me there. his business had forced him to allow me to work alone, with hired guides or the help of oilmen and farmers elsewhere; but a limberlost trip at that time was not to be joked about. it had not been shorn, branded, and tamed. there were most excellent reasons why i should not go there. much of it was impenetrable. only a few trees had been taken out; oilmen were just invading it. in its physical aspect it was a treacherous swamp and quagmire filled with every plant, animal, and human danger known in the worst of such locations in the central states. "a rod inside the swamp on a road leading to an oil well we mired to the carriage hubs. i shielded my camera in my arms and before we reached the well i thought the conveyance would be torn to pieces and the horse stalled. at the well we started on foot, mr. porter in kneeboots, i in waist-high waders. the time was late june; we forced our way between steaming, fetid pools, through swarms of gnats, flies, mosquitoes, poisonous insects, keeping a sharp watch for rattlesnakes. we sank ankle deep at every step, and logs we thought solid broke under us. our progress was a steady succession of prying and pulling each other to the surface. our clothing was wringing wet, and the exposed parts of our bodies lumpy with bites and stings. my husband found the tree, cleared the opening to the great prostrate log, traversed its unspeakable odours for nearly forty feet to its farthest recess, and brought the baby and egg to the light in his leaf-lined hat. "we could endure the location only by dipping napkins in deodorant and binding them over our mouths and nostrils. every third day for almost three months we made this trip, until little chicken was able to take wing. of course we soon made a road to the tree, grew accustomed to the disagreeable features of the swamp and contemptuously familiar with its dangers, so that i worked anywhere in it i chose with other assistance; but no trip was so hard and disagreeable as the first. mr. porter insisted upon finishing the little chicken series, so that `deserve' is a poor word for any honour that might accrue to him for his part in the book." this was the nucleus of the book, but the story itself originated from the fact that one day, while leaving the swamp, a big feather with a shaft over twenty inches long came spinning and swirling earthward and fell in the author's path. instantly she looked upward to locate the bird, which from the size and formation of the quill could have been nothing but an eagle; her eyes, well trained and fairly keen though they were, could not see the bird, which must have been soaring above range. familiar with the life of the vulture family, the author changed the bird from which the feather fell to that described in "freckles." mrs. porter had the old swamp at that time practically untouched, and all its traditions to work upon and stores of natural history material. this falling feather began the book which in a few days she had definitely planned and in six months completely written. her title for it was "the falling feather," that tangible thing which came drifting down from nowhere, just as the boy came, and she has always regretted the change to "freckles." john murray publishes a british edition of this book which is even better liked in ireland and scotland than in england. as "the cardinal" was published originally not by doubleday, page & company, but by another firm, the author had talked over with the latter house the scheme of "freckles" and it had been agreed to publish the story as soon as mrs. porter was ready. how the book finally came to doubleday, page & company she recounts as follows: "by the time `freckles' was finished, i had exercised my woman's prerogative and `changed my mind'; so i sent the manuscript to doubleday, page & company, who accepted it. they liked it well enough to take a special interest in it and to bring it out with greater expense than it was at all customary to put upon a novel at that time; and this in face of the fact that they had repeatedly warned me that the nature work in it would kill fully half its chances with the public. mr. f. n. doubleday, stating on a trip to the bahamas, remarked that he would like to take a manuscript with him to read, and the office force decided to put `freckles' into his grip. the story of the plucky young chap won his way to the heart of the publishers, under a silk cotton tree, 'neath bright southern skies, and made such a friend of him that through the years of its book-life it has been the object of special attention. mr. george doran gave me a photograph which mr. horace macfarland made of mr. doubleday during this reading of the mss. of `freckles' which is especially interesting." that more than 2,000,000 readers have found pleasure and profit in mrs. porter's books is a cause for particular gratification. these stories all have, as a fundamental reason of their existence, the author's great love of nature. to have imparted this love to others--to have inspired many hundreds of thousands to look for the first time with seeing eyes at the pageant of the out-of-doors--is a satisfaction that must endure. for the part of the publishers, they began their business by issuing "nature books" at a time when the sale of such works was problematical. as their tastes and inclinations were along the same lines which mrs. porter loved to follow, it gave them great pleasure to be associated with her books which opened the eyes of so great a public to new and worthy fields of enjoyment. the history of "freckles" is unique. the publishers had inserted marginal drawings on many pages, but these, instead of attracting attention to the nature charm of the book, seemed to have exactly a contrary effect. the public wanted a novel. the illustrations made it appear to be a nature book, and it required three long slow years for "freckles" to pass from hand to hand and prove that there really was a novel between the covers, but that it was a story that took its own time and wound slowly toward its end, stopping its leisurely course for bird, flower, lichen face, blue sky, perfumed wind, and the closest intimacies of the daily life of common folk. ten years have wrought a great change in the sentiment against nature work and the interest in it. thousands who then looked upon the world with unobserving eyes are now straining every nerve to accumulate enough to be able to end life where they may have bird, flower, and tree for daily companions. mrs. porter's account of the advice she received at this time is particularly interesting. three editors who read "freckles" before it was published offered to produce it, but all of them expressed precisely the same opinion: "the book will never sell well as it is. if you want to live from the proceeds of your work, if you want to sell even moderately, you must ~cut out the nature stuff." "now to put in the nature stuff," continues the author, "was the express purpose for which the book had been written. i had had one year's experience with `the song of the cardinal,' frankly a nature book, and from the start i realized that i never could reach the audience i wanted with a book on nature alone. to spend time writing a book based wholly upon human passion and its outworking i would not. so i compromised on a book into which i put all the nature work that came naturally within its scope, and seasoned it with little bits of imagination and straight copy from the lives of men and women i had known intimately, folk who lived in a simple, common way with which i was familiar. so i said to my publishers: `i will write the books exactly as they take shape in my mind. you publish them. i know they will sell enough that you will not lose. if i do not make over six hundred dollars on a book i shall never utter a complaint. make up my work as i think it should be and leave it to the people as to what kind of book they will take into their hearts and homes.' i altered `freckles' slightly, but from that time on we worked on this agreement. "my years of nature work have not been without considerable insight into human nature, as well," continues mrs. porter. "i know its failings, its inborn tendencies, its weaknesses, its failures, its depth of crime; and the people who feel called upon to spend their time analyzing, digging into, and uncovering these sources of depravity have that privilege, more's the pity! if i had my way about it, this is a privilege no one could have in books intended for indiscriminate circulation. i stand squarely for book censorship, and i firmly believe that with a few more years of such books, as half a dozen i could mention, public opinion will demand this very thing. my life has been fortunate in one glad way: i have lived mostly in the country and worked in the woods. for every bad man and woman i have ever known, i have met, lived with, and am intimately acquainted with an overwhelming number of thoroughly clean and decent people who still believe in god and cherish high ideals, and it is ~upon the lives of these that _i_ base what _i_ write. to contend that this does not produce a picture true to life is idiocy. it does. it produces a picture true to ideal life; to the best that good men and good women can do at level best. "i care very little for the magazine or newspaper critics who proclaim that there is no such thing as a moral man, and that my pictures of life are sentimental and idealized. they are! and i glory in them! they are straight, living pictures from the lives of men and women of morals, honour, and loving kindness. they form `idealized pictures of life' because they are copies from life where it touches religion, chastity, love, home, and hope of heaven ultimately. none of these roads leads to publicity and the divorce court. they all end in the shelter and seclusion of a home. "such a big majority of book critics and authors have begun to teach, whether they really believe it or not, that no book is true to life unless it is true to the worst in life, that the idea has infected even the women." in 1906, having seen a few of mrs. porter's studies of bird life, mr. edward bok telegraphed the author asking to meet him in chicago. she had a big portfolio of fine prints from plates for which she had gone to the last extremity of painstaking care, and the result was an order from mr. bok for a six months' series in the ladies' home journal of the author's best bird studies accompanied by descriptions of how she secured them. this material was later put in book form under the title, "what i have done with birds," and is regarded as authoritative on the subject of bird photography and bird life, for in truth it covers every phase of the life of the birds described, and contains much of other nature subjects. by this time mrs. porter had made a contract with her publishers to alternate her books. she agreed to do a nature book for love, and then, by way of compromise, a piece of nature work spiced with enough fiction to tempt her class of readers. in this way she hoped that they would absorb enough of the nature work while reading the fiction to send them afield, and at the same time keep in their minds her picture of what she considers the only life worth living. she was still assured that only a straight novel would "pay," but she was living, meeting all her expenses, giving her family many luxuries, and saving a little sum for a rainy day she foresaw on her horoscope. to be comfortably clothed and fed, to have time and tools for her work, is all she ever has asked of life. among mrs. porter's readers "at the foot of the rainbow" stands as perhaps the author's strongest piece of fiction. in august of 1909 two books on which the author had been working for years culminated at the same time: a nature novel, and a straight nature book. the novel was, in a way, a continuation of "freckles," filled as usual with wood lore, but more concerned with moths than birds. mrs. porter had been finding and picturing exquisite big night flyers during several years of field work among the birds, and from what she could have readily done with them she saw how it would be possible for a girl rightly constituted and environed to make a living, and a good one, at such work. so was conceived "a girl of the limberlost." "this comes fairly close to my idea of a good book," she writes. "no possible harm can be done any one in reading it. the book can, and does, present a hundred pictures that will draw any reader in closer touch with nature and the almighty, my primal object in each line i write. the human side of the book is as close a character study as i am capable of making. i regard the character of mrs. comstock as the best thought-out and the cleanest-cut study of human nature i have so far been able to do. perhaps the best justification of my idea of this book came to me recently when i received an application from the president for permission to translate it into arabic, as the first book to be used in an effort to introduce our methods of nature study into the college of cairo." hodder and stoughton of london published the british edition of this work. at the same time that "a girl of the limberlost" was published there appeared the book called "birds of the bible." this volume took shape slowly. the author made a long search for each bird mentioned in the bible, how often, where, why; each quotation concerning it in the whole book, every abstract reference, why made, by whom, and what it meant. then slowly dawned the sane and true things said of birds in the bible compared with the amazing statements of aristotle, aristophanes, pliny, and other writers of about the same period in pagan nations. this led to a search for the dawn of bird history and for the very first pictures preserved of them. on this book the author expended more work than on any other she has ever written. in 1911 two more books for which mrs. porter had gathered material for long periods came to a conclusion on the same date: "music of the wild" and "the harvester." the latter of these was a nature novel; the other a frank nature book, filled with all outdoors--a special study of the sounds one hears in fields and forests, and photographic reproductions of the musicians and their instruments. the idea of "the harvester" was suggested to the author by an editor who wanted a magazine article, with human interest in it, about the ginseng diggers in her part of the country. mr. porter had bought ginseng for years for a drug store he owned; there were several people he knew still gathering it for market, and growing it was becoming a good business all over the country. mrs. porter learned from the united states pharmacopaeia and from various other sources that the drug was used mostly by the chinese, and with a wholly mistaken idea of its properties. the strongest thing any medical work will say for ginseng is that it is "~a very mild and soothing drug." it seems that the chinese buy and use it in enormous quantities, in the belief that it is a remedy for almost every disease to which humanity is heir; that it will prolong life, and that it is a wonderful stimulant. ancient medical works make this statement, laying special emphasis upon its stimulating qualities. the drug does none of these things. instead of being a stimulant, it comes closer to a sedative. this investigation set the author on the search for other herbs that now are or might be grown as an occupation. then came the idea of a man who should grow these drugs professionally, and of the sick girl healed by them. "i could have gone to work and started a drug farm myself," remarks mrs. porter, "with exactly the same profit and success as the harvester. i wrote primarily to state that to my personal knowledge, clean, loving men still exist in this world, and that no man is forced to endure the grind of city life if he wills otherwise. any one who likes, with even such simple means as herbs he can dig from fence corners, may start a drug farm that in a short time will yield him delightful work and independence. _i_ wrote the book as _i_ thought it should be written, to prove my points and establish my contentions. i think it did. men the globe around promptly wrote me that they always had observed the moral code; others that the subject never in all their lives had been presented to them from my point of view, but now that it had been, they would change and do what they could to influence all men to do the same" messrs. hodder and stoughton publish a british edition of "the harvester," there is an edition in scandinavian, it was running serially in a german magazine, but for a time at least the german and french editions that were arranged will be stopped by this war, as there was a french edition of "the song of the cardinal." after a short rest, the author began putting into shape a book for which she had been compiling material since the beginning of field work. from the first study she made of an exquisite big night moth, mrs. porter used every opportunity to secure more and representative studies of each family in her territory, and eventually found the work so fascinating that she began hunting cocoons and raising caterpillars in order to secure life histories and make illustrations with fidelity to life. "it seems," comments the author, "that scientists and lepidopterists from the beginning have had no hesitation in describing and using mounted moth and butterfly specimens for book text and illustration, despite the fact that their colours fade rapidly, that the wings are always in unnatural positions, and the bodies shrivelled. i would quite as soon accept the mummy of any particular member of the rameses family as a fair representation of the living man, as a mounted moth for a live one." when she failed to secure the moth she wanted in a living and perfect specimen for her studies, the author set out to raise one, making photographic studies from the eggs through the entire life process. there was one june during which she scarcely slept for more than a few hours of daytime the entire month. she turned her bedroom into a hatchery, where were stored the most precious cocoons; and if she lay down at night it was with those she thought would produce moths before morning on her pillow, where she could not fail to hear them emerging. at the first sound she would be up with notebook in hand, and by dawn, busy with cameras. then she would be forced to hurry to the darkroom and develop her plates in order to be sure that she had a perfect likeness, before releasing the specimen, for she did release all she produced except one pair of each kind, never having sold a moth, personally. often where the markings were wonderful and complicated, as soon as the wings were fully developed mrs. porter copied the living specimen in water colours for her illustrations, frequently making several copies in order to be sure that she laid on the colour enough brighter than her subject so that when it died it would be exactly the same shade. "never in all my life," writes the author, "have i had such exquisite joy in work as i had in painting the illustrations for this volume of `moths of the limberlost.' colour work had advanced to such a stage that i knew from the beautiful reproductions in arthur rackham's `rheingold and valkyrie' and several other books on the market, that time so spent would not be lost. mr. doubleday had assured me personally that i might count on exact reproduction, and such details of type and paper as i chose to select. i used the easel made for me when a girl, under the supervision of my father, and i threw my whole heart into the work of copying each line and delicate shading on those wonderful wings, `all diamonded with panes of quaint device, innumerable stains and splendid dyes,' as one poet describes them. there were times, when in working a mist of colour over another background, i cut a brush down to three hairs. some of these illustrations i sent back six and seven times, to be worked over before the illustration plates were exact duplicates of the originals, and my heart ached for the engravers, who must have had job-like patience; but it did not ache enough to stop me until i felt the reproduction exact. this book tells its own story of long and patient waiting for a specimen, of watching, of disappointments, and triumphs. i love it especially among my book children because it represents my highest ideals in the making of a nature book, and i can take any skeptic afield and prove the truth of the natural history it contains." in august of 1913 the author's novel "laddie" was published in new york, london, sydney and toronto simultaneously. this book contains the same mixture of romance and nature interest as the others, and is modelled on the same plan of introducing nature objects peculiar to the location, and characters, many of whom are from life, typical of the locality at a given period. the first thing many critics said of it was that "no such people ever existed, and no such life was ever lived." in reply to this the author said: "of a truth, the home i described in this book i knew to the last grain of wood in the doors, and i painted, it with absolute accuracy; and many of the people i described i knew more intimately than i ever have known any others. ~taken as a whole it represents a perfectly faithful picture of home life, in a family who were reared and educated exactly as this book indicates. there was such a man as laddie, and he was as much bigger and better than my description of him as a real thing is always better than its presentment. the only difference, barring the nature work, between my books and those of many other writers, is that i prefer to describe and to perpetuate the ~best i have known in life; whereas many authors seem to feel that they have no hope of achieving a high literary standing unless they delve in and reproduce the ~worst. "to deny that wrong and pitiful things exist in life is folly, but to believe that these things are made better by promiscuous discussion at the hands of writers who ~fail to prove by their books that their viewpoint is either right, clean, or helpful, is close to insanity. if there is to be any error on either side in a book, then god knows it is far better that it should be upon the side of pure sentiment and high ideals than upon that of a too loose discussion of subjects which often open to a large part of the world their first knowledge of such forms of sin, profligate expenditure, and waste of life's best opportunities. there is one great beauty in idealized romance: reading it can make no one worse than he is, while it may help thousands to a cleaner life and higher inspiration than they ever before have known." mrs. porter has written ten books, and it is not out of place here to express her attitude toward them. each was written, she says, from her heart's best impulses. they are as clean and helpful as she knew how to make them, as beautiful and interesting. she has never spared herself in the least degree, mind or body, when it came to giving her best, and she has never considered money in relation to what she was writing. during the hard work and exposure of those early years, during rainy days and many nights in the darkroom, she went straight ahead with field work, sending around the globe for books and delving to secure material for such books as "birds of the bible," "music of the wild," and "moths of the limberlost." every day devoted to such work was "commercially" lost, as publishers did not fail to tell her. but that was the work she could do, and do with exceeding joy. she could do it better pictorially, on account of her lifelong knowledge of living things afield, than any other woman had as yet had the strength and nerve to do it. it was work in which she gloried, and she persisted. "had i been working for money," comments the author, "not one of these nature books ever would have been written, or an illustration made." when the public had discovered her and given generous approval to "a girl of the limberlost," when "the harvester" had established a new record, that would have been the time for the author to prove her commercialism by dropping nature work, and plunging headlong into books it would pay to write, and for which many publishers were offering alluring sums. mrs. porter's answer was the issuing of such books as "music of the wild" and "moths of the limberlost." no argument is necessary. mr. edward shuman, formerly critic of the chicago record-herald, was impressed by this method of work and pointed it out in a review. it appealed to mr. shuman, when "moths of the limberlost" came in for review, following the tremendous success of "the harvester," that had the author been working for money, she could have written half a dozen more "harvesters" while putting seven years of field work, on a scientific subject, into a personally illustrated work. in an interesting passage dealing with her books, mrs. porter writes: "i have done three times the work on my books of fiction that i see other writers putting into a novel, in order to make all natural history allusions accurate and to write them in such fashion that they will meet with the commendation of high schools, colleges, and universities using what i write as text books, and for the homes that place them in their libraries. i am perfectly willing to let time and the hearts of the people set my work in its ultimate place. i have no delusions concerning it. "to my way of thinking and working the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. if in one small degree it shows him where he can be a gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier man, it is a wonder-working book. if it opens his eyes to one beauty in nature he never saw for himself, and leads him one step toward the god of the universe, it is a beneficial book, for one step into the miracles of nature leads to that long walk, the glories of which so strengthen even a boy who thinks he is dying, that he faces his struggle like a gladiator." during the past ten years thousands of people have sent the author word that through her books they have been led afield and to their first realization of the beauties of nature her mail brings an average of ten such letters a day, mostly from students, teachers, and professional people of our largest cities. it can probably be said in all truth of her nature books and nature novels, that in the past ten years they have sent more people afield than all the scientific writings of the same period. that is a big statement, but it is very likely pretty close to the truth. mrs. porter has been asked by two london and one edinburgh publishers for the privilege of bringing out complete sets of her nature books, but as yet she has not felt ready to do this. in bringing this sketch of gene stratton-porter to a close it will be interesting to quote the author's own words describing the limberlost swamp, its gradual disappearance under the encroachments of business, and her removal to a new field even richer in natural beauties. she says: "in the beginning of the end a great swamp region lay in northeastern indiana. its head was in what is now noble and dekalb counties; its body in allen and wells, and its feet in southern adams and northern jay the limberlost lies at the foot and was, when i settled near it, ~exactly as described in my books. the process of dismantling it was told in, freckles, to start with, carried on in `a girl of the limberlost,' and finished in `moths of the limberlost.' now it has so completely fallen prey to commercialism through the devastation of lumbermen, oilmen, and farmers, that i have been forced to move my working territory and build a new cabin about seventy miles north, at the head of the swamp in noble county, where there are many lakes, miles of unbroken marsh, and a far greater wealth of plant and animal life than existed during my time in the southern part. at the north end every bird that frequents the central states is to be found. here grow in profusion many orchids, fringed gentians, cardinal flowers, turtle heads, starry campions, purple gerardias, and grass of parnassus. in one season i have located here almost every flower named in the botanies as native to these regions and several that i can find in no book in my library. "but this change of territory involves the purchase of fifteen acres of forest and orchard land, on a lake shore in marsh country. it means the building of a permanent, all-year-round home, which will provide the comforts of life for my family and furnish a workshop consisting of a library, a photographic darkroom and negative closet, and a printing room for me. i could live in such a home as i could provide on the income from my nature work alone; but when my working grounds were cleared, drained and ploughed up, literally wiped from the face of the earth, i never could have moved to new country had it not been for the earnings of the novels, which i now spend, and always have spent, in great part ~upon my nature work. based on this plan of work and life i have written ten books, and `please god i live so long,' i shall write ten more. possibly every one of them will be located in northern indiana. each one will be filled with all the field and woods legitimately falling to its location and peopled with the best men and women i have known." chapter 1 the rat-catchers of the wabash "hey, you swate-scented little heart-warmer!" cried jimmy malone, as he lifted his tenth trap, weighted with a struggling muskrat, from the wabash. "varmint you may be to all the rist of creation, but you mane a night at casey's to me." jimmy whistled softly as he reset the trap. for the moment he forgot that he was five miles from home, that it was a mile farther to the end of his line at the lower curve of horseshoe bend, that his feet and fingers were almost freezing, and that every rat of the ten now in the bag on his back had made him thirstier. he shivered as the cold wind sweeping the curves of the river struck him; but when an unusually heavy gust dropped the ice and snow from a branch above him on the back of his head, he laughed, as he ducked and cried: "kape your snowballing till the fourth of july, will you!" "chick-a-dee-dee-dee!" remarked a tiny gray bird on the tree above him. jimmy glanced up. "chickie, chickie, chickie," he said. "i can't till by your dress whether you are a hin or a rooster. but i can till by your employmint that you are working for grub. have to hustle lively for every worm you find, don't you, chickie? now me, i'm hustlin' lively for a drink, and i be domn if it seems nicessary with a whole river of drinkin' stuff flowin' right under me feet. but the old wabash ain't runnin "wine and milk and honey" not by the jug-full. it seems to be compounded of aquil parts of mud, crude ile, and rain water. if 'twas only runnin' melwood, be gorry, chickie, you'd see a mermaid named jimmy malone sittin' on the kingfisher stump, combin' its auburn hair with a breeze, and scoopin' whiskey down its gullet with its tail fin. no, hold on, chickie, you wouldn't either. i'm too flat-chisted for a mermaid, and i'd have no time to lave off gurglin' for the hair-combin' act, which, chickie, to me notion is as issential to a mermaid as the curves. i'd be a sucker, the biggest sucker in the gar-hole, chickie bird. i'd be an all-day sucker, be gobs; yis, and an allnight sucker, too. come to think of it, chickie, be domn if i'd be a sucker at all. look at the mouths of thim! puckered up with a drawstring! oh, hell on the wabash, chickie, think of jimmy malone lyin' at the bottom of a river flowin' with melwood, and a puckerin'-string mouth! wouldn't that break the heart of you? i know what i'd be. i'd be the black bass of horseshoe bend, chickie, and i'd locate just below the shoals headin' up stream, and i'd hold me mouth wide open till i paralyzed me jaws so i couldn't shut thim. i'd just let the pure stuff wash over me gills constant, world without end. good-by, chickie. hope you got your grub, and pretty soon i'll have enough drink to make me feel like i was the bass for one night, anyway." jimmy hurried to his next trap, which was empty, but the one after that contained a rat, and there were footprints in the snow. "that's where the porrage-heart of the scotchman comes in," said jimmy, as he held up the rat by one foot, and gave it a sharp rap over the head with the trap to make sure it was dead. "dannie could no more hear a rat fast in one of me traps and not come over and put it out of its misery, than he could dance a hornpipe. and him only sicond hand from hornpipe land, too! but his feet's like lead. poor dannie! he gets just about half the rats i do. he niver did have luck." jimmy's gay face clouded for an instant. the twinkle faded from his eyes, and a look of unrest swept into them. he muttered something, and catching up his bag, shoved in the rat. as he reset the trap, a big crow dropped from branch to branch on a sycamore above him, and his back scarcely was turned before it alighted on the ice, and ravenously picked at three drops of blood purpling there. away down the ice-sheeted river led dannie's trail, showing plainly across the snow blanket. the wind raved through the trees, and around the curves of the river. the dark earth of the banks peeping from under overhanging ice and snow, looked like the entrance to deep mysterious caves. jimmy's superstitious soul readily peopled them with goblins and devils. he shuddered, and began to talk aloud to cheer himself. "elivin muskrat skins, times fifteen cints apiece, one dollar sixty-five. that will buy more than i can hold. hagginy! won't i be takin' one long fine gurgle of the pure stuff! and there's the boys! i might do the grand for once. one on me for the house! and i might pay something on my back score, but first i'll drink till i swell like a poisoned pup. and i ought to get mary that milk pail she's been kickin' for this last month. women and cows are always kickin'! if the blarsted cow hadn't kicked a hole in the pail, there'd be no need of mary kicking for a new one. but dough is dubious soldering. mary says it's bad enough on the dish pan, but it positively ain't hilthy about the milk pail, and she is right. we ought to have a new pail. i guess i'll get it first, and fill up on what's left. one for a quarter will do. and i've several traps yet, i may get a few more rats." the virtuous resolve to buy a milk pail before he quenched the thirst which burned him, so elated jimmy with good opinion of himself that he began whistling gayly as he strode toward his next trap. and by that token, dannie macnoun, resetting an empty trap a quarter of a mile below, knew that jimmy was coming, and that as usual luck was with him. catching his blood and water dripping bag, dannie dodged a rotten branch that came crashing down under the weight of its icy load, and stepping out on the river, he pulled on his patched wool-lined mittens as he waited for jimmy. "how many, dannie?" called jimmy from afar. "seven," answered dannie. "what for ye?" "elivin," replied jimmy, with a bit of unconscious swagger. "i am havin' poor luck to-day." "how mony wad satisfy ye?" asked dannie sarcastically. "ain't got time to figure that," answered jimmy, working in a double shuffle as he walked. "thrash around a little, dannie. it will warm you up." "i am no cauld," answered dannie. "no cauld!" imitated jimmy. "no cauld! come to observe you closer, i do detect symptoms of sunstroke in the ridness of your face, and the whiteness about your mouth; but the frost on your neck scarf, and the icicles fistooned around the tail of your coat, tell a different story. "dannie, you remind me of the baptizin' of pete cox last winter. pete's nothin' but skin and bone, and he niver had a square meal in his life to warm him. it took pushin' and pullin' to get him in the water, and a scum froze over while he was under. pete came up shakin' like the feeder on a thrashin' machine, and whin he could spake at all, `bless jasus,' says he, `i'm jist as wa-wa-warm as i wa-wa-want to be.' so are you, dannie, but there's a difference in how warm folks want to be. for meself, now, i could aisily bear a little more hate." "it's honest, i'm no cauld," insisted dannie; and he might have added that if jimmy would not fill his system with casey's poisons, that degree of cold would not chill and pinch him either. but being dannie, he neither thought nor said it. `"why, i'm frozen to me sowl!" cried jimmy, as he changed the rat bag to his other hand, and beat the empty one against his leg." say, dannie, where do you think the kingfisher is wintering?" "and the black bass," answered dannie. "where do ye suppose the black bass is noo?" "strange you should mintion the black bass," said jimmy. "i was just havin' a little talk about him with a frind of mine named chickie-dom, no, chickie-dee, who works a grub stake back there. the bass might be lyin' in the river bed right under our feet. don't you remimber the time whin i put on three big cut-worms, and skittered thim beyond the log that lays across here, and he lept from the water till we both saw him the best we ever did, and nothin' but my old rotten line ever saved him? or he might be where it slumps off just below the kingfisher stump. but i know where he is all right. he's down in the gar-hole, and he'll come back here spawning time, and chase minnows when the kingfisher comes home. but, dannie, where the nation do you suppose the kingfisher is?" "no' so far away as ye might think," replied dannie. "doc hues told me that coming on the train frae indianapolis on the fifteenth of december, he saw one fly across a little pond juist below winchester. i believe they go south slowly, as the cold drives them, and stop near as they can find guid fishing. dinna that stump look lonely wi'out him?" "and sound lonely without the bass slashing around! i am going to have that bass this summer if i don't do a thing but fish!" vowed jimmy. "i'll surely have a try at him," answered dannie, with a twinkle in his gray eyes. "we've caught most everything else in the wabash, and our reputation fra taking guid fish is ahead of any one on the river, except the kingfisher. why the diel dinna one of us haul out that bass?" "ain't i just told you that i am going to hook him this summer?" shivered jimmy. "dinna ye hear me mention that i intended to take a try at him mysel'?" questioned dannie. "have ye forgotten that i know how to fish?" "'nough breeze to-day without starting a highlander," interposed jimmy hastily. "i believe i hear a rat in my next trap. that will make me twilve, and it's good and glad of it i am for i've to walk to town when my line is reset. there's something mary wants." "if mary wants ye to go to town, why dinna ye leave me to finish your traps, and start now?" asked dannie. "it's getting dark, and if ye are so late ye canna see the drifts, ye never can cut across the fields; fra the snow is piled waist high, and it's a mile farther by the road." "i got to skin my rats first, or i'll be havin' to ask credit again," replied jimmy. "that's easy," answered dannie." turn your rats over to me richt noo. i'll give ye market price fra them in cash." "but the skinnin' of them," objected jimmy for decency sake, though his eyes were beginning to shine and his fingers to tremble. "never ye mind about that," retorted dannie. " i like to take my time to it, and fix them up nice. elivin, did ye say?" "elivin," answered jimmy, breaking into a jig, supposedly to keep his feet warm, in reality because he could not stand quietly while dannie pulled off his mittens, got out and unstrapped his wallet, and carefully counted out the money. "is that all ye need?" he asked. for an instant jimmy hesitated. missing a chance to get even a few cents more meant a little shorter time at casey's. "that's enough, i think," he said. "i wish i'd staid out of matrimony, and then maybe i could iver have a cint of me own. you ought to be glad you haven't a woman to consume ivery penny you earn before it reaches your pockets, dannie micnoun." "i hae never seen mary consume much but calico and food," dannie said dryly. "oh, it ain't so much what a woman really spinds," said jimmy, peevishly, as he shoved the money into his pocket, and pulled on his mittens. "it's what you know she would spind if she had the chance." "i dinna think ye'll break up on that," laughed dannie. and that was what jimmy wanted. so long as he could set dannie laughing, he could mold him. "no, but i'll break down," lamented jimmy in sore self-pity, as he remembered the quarter sacred to the purchase of the milk pail. "ye go on, and hurry," urged dannie. "if ye dinna start home by seven, i'll be combing the drifts fra ye before morning." "anything i can do for you?" asked jimmy, tightening his old red neck scarf. "yes," answered dannie. "do your errand and start straight home, your teeth are chattering noo. a little more exposure, and the rheumatism will be grinding ye again. ye will hurry, jimmy?" "sure!" cried jimmy, ducking under a snow slide, and breaking into a whistle as he turned toward the road. dannie's gaze followed jimmy's retreating figure until he climbed the bank, and was lost in the woods, and the light in his eyes was the light of love. he glanced at the sky, and hurried down the river. first across to jimmy's side to gather his rats and reset his traps, then to his own. but luck seemed to have turned, for all the rest of dannie's were full, and all of jimmy's were empty. but as he was gone, it was not necessary for dannie to slip across and fill them, as was his custom when they worked together. he would divide the rats at skinning time, so that jimmy would have just twice as many as he, because jimmy had a wife to support. the last trap of the line lay a little below the curve of horseshoe bend, and there dannie twisted the tops of the bags together, climbed the bank, and struck across rainbow bottom. he settled his load to his shoulders, and glanced ahead to choose the shortest route. he stopped suddenly with a quick intake of breath. "god!" he cried reverently. "hoo beautifu' are thy works." the ice-covered wabash circled rainbow bottom like a broad white frame, and inside it was a perfect picture wrought in crystal white and snow shadows. the blanket on the earth lay smoothly in even places, rose with knolls, fell with valleys, curved over prostrate logs, heaped in mounds where bushes grew thickly, and piled high in drifts where the wind blew free. in the shelter of the bottom the wind had not stripped the trees of their loads as it had those along the river. the willows, maples, and soft woods bent almost to earth with their shining burden; but the stout, stiffly upstanding trees, the oaks, elms, and cottonwoods defied the elements to bow their proud heads. while the three mighty trunks of the great sycamore in the middle looked white as the snow, and dwarfed its companions as it never had in summer; its wide-spreading branches were sharply cut against the blue background, and they tossed their frosted balls in the face of heaven. the giant of rainbow bottom might be broken, but it never would bend. every clambering vine, every weed and dried leaf wore a coat of lace-webbed frostwork. the wind swept a mist of tiny crystals through the air, and from the shelter of the deep woods across the river a cardinal whistled gayly. the bird of good cheer, whistling no doubt on an empty crop, made dannie think of jimmy, and his unfailing fountain of mirth. dear jimmy! would he ever take life seriously? how good he was to tramp to town and back after five miles on the ice. he thought of mary with almost a touch of impatience. what did the woman want that was so necessary as to send a man to town after a day on the ice? jimmy would be dog tired when he got home. dannie decided to hurry, and do the feeding and get in the wood before he began to skin the rats. he found walking uncertain. he plunged into unsuspected hollows, and waded drifts, so that he was panting when he reached the lane. from there he caught the gray curl of smoke against the sky from one of two log cabins side by side at the top of the embankment, and he almost ran toward them. mary might think they were late at the traps, and be out doing the feeding, and it would be cold for a woman. on reaching his own door, he dropped the rat bags inside, and then hurried to the yard of the other cabin. he gathered a big load of wood in his arms, and stamping the snow from his feet, called "open!" at the door. dannie stepped inside and filled the empty box. with smiling eyes he turned to mary, as he brushed the snow and moss from his sleeves. "nothing but luck to-day," he said. "jimmy took elivin fine skins frae his traps before he started to town, and i got five more that are his, and i hae eight o' my own." mary looked such a dream to dannie, standing there all pink and warm and tidy in her fresh blue dress, that he blinked and smiled, half bewildered. "what did jimmy go to town for?" she asked. "whatever it was ye wanted," answered dannie. "what was it i wanted?" persisted mary. "he dinna tell me," replied dannie, and the smile wavered. "me, either," said mary, and she stooped and picked up her sewing. dannie went out and gently closed the door. he stood for a second on the step, forcing himself to take an inventory of the work. there were the chickens to feed, and the cows to milk, feed, and water. both the teams must be fed and bedded, a fire in his own house made, and two dozen rats skinned, and the skins put to stretch and cure. and at the end of it all, instead of a bed and rest, there was every probability that he must drive to town after jimmy; for jimmy could get helpless enough to freeze in a drift on a dollar sixty-five. "oh, jimmy, jimmy!" muttered dannie." i wish ye wadna." and he was not thinking of himself, but of the eyes of the woman inside. so dannie did all the work, and cooked his supper, because he never ate in jimmy's cabin when jimmy was not there. then he skinned rats, and watched the clock, because if jimmy did not come by eleven, it meant he must drive to town and bring him home. no wonder jimmy chilled at the trapping when he kept his blood on fire with whiskey. at half-past ten, dannie, with scarcely half the rats finished, went out into the storm and hitched to the single buggy. then he tapped at mary malone's door, quite softly, so that he would not disturb her if she had gone to bed. she was not sleeping, however, and the loneliness of her slight figure, as she stood with the lighted room behind her, struck dannie forcibly, so that his voice trembled with pity as he said: "mary, i've run out o' my curing compound juist in the midst of skinning the finest bunch o' rats we've taken frae the traps this winter. i am going to drive to town fra some more before the stores close, and we will be back in less than an hour. i thought i'd tell ye, so if ye wanted me ye wad know why i dinna answer. ye winna be afraid, will ye?" "no," replied mary, " i won't be afraid." "bolt the doors, and pile on plenty of wood to keep ye warm," said dannie as he turned away. just for a minute mary stared out into the storm. then a gust of wind nearly swept her from her feet, and she pushed the door shut, and slid the heavy bolt into place. for a little while she leaned and listened to the storm outside. she was a clean, neat, beautiful irish woman. her eyes were wide and blue, her cheeks pink, and her hair black and softly curling about her face and neck. the room in which she stood was neat as its keeper. the walls were whitewashed, and covered with prints, pictures, and some small tanned skins. dried grasses and flowers filled the vases on the mantle. the floor was neatly carpeted with a striped rag carpet, and in the big open fireplace a wood fire roared. in an opposite corner stood a modern cooking stove, the pipe passing through a hole in the wall, and a door led into a sleeping room beyond. as her eyes swept the room they rested finally on a framed lithograph of the virgin, with the infant in her arms. slowly mary advanced, her gaze fast on the serene pictured face of the mother clasping her child. before it she stood staring. suddenly her breast began to heave, and the big tears brimmed from her eyes and slid down her cheeks. "since you look so wise, why don't you tell me why?" she demanded. "oh, if you have any mercy, tell me why!" then before the steady look in the calm eyes, she hastily made the sign of the cross, and slipping to the floor, she laid her head on a chair, and sobbed aloud. chapter ii ruben o'khayam and the milk pail jimmy malone, carrying a shinning tin milk pail, stepped into casey's saloon and closed the door behind him. "e' much as wine has played the infidel, and robbed me of my robe of honor--well, i wonder what the vinters buy one-half so precious as the stuff they sell." jimmy stared at the back of a man leaning against the bar, and gazing lovingly at a glass of red wine, as he recited in mellow, swinging tones. gripping the milk pail, jimmy advanced a step. the man stuck a thumb in the belt of his norfolk jacket, and the verses flowed on: "the grape that can with logic absolute the two and seventy jarring sects confute: the sovereign alchemist that in a trice life's leaden metal into gold transmute." jimmy's mouth fell open, and he slowly nodded indorsement of the sentiment. the man lifted his glass. "ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, before we too into the dust descend; yesterday this day's madness did prepare; to-morrow's silence, triumph, or despair: drink! for you know not whence you came nor why: drink! for you know not why you go nor where." jimmy set the milk pail on the bar and faced the man. "'fore god, that's the only sensible word i ever heard on my side of the quistion in all me life. and to think that it should come from the mouth of a man wearing such a go-to-hell coat!" jimmy shoved the milk pail in front of the stranger. "in the name of humanity, impty yourself of that," he said. "fill me pail with the stuff and let me take it home to mary. she's always got the bist of the argumint, but i'm thinkin' that would cork her. you won't?" questioned jimmy resentfully. "kape it to yoursilf, thin, like you did your wine." he shoved the bucket toward the barkeeper, and emptied his pocket on the bar. "there, casey, you be the sovereign alchemist, and transmute that metal into melwood pretty quick, for i've not wet me whistle in three days, and the belly of me is filled with burnin' autumn leaves. gimme a loving cup, and come on boys, this is on me while it lasts." the barkeeper swept the coin into the till, picked up the bucket, and started back toward a beer keg. "oh, no you don't!" cried jimmy. "come back here and count that `leaden metal,' and then be transmutin' it into whiskey straight, the purest gold you got. you don't drown out a three-days' thirst with beer. you ought to give me 'most two quarts for that." the barkeeper was wise. he knew that what jimmy started would go on with men who could pay, and he filled the order generously. jimmy picked up the pail. he dipped a small glass in the liquor, and held near an ounce aloft. "i wonder what the vinters buy one-half so precious as the stuff they sell?" he quoted. "down goes!" and he emptied the glass at a draft. then he walked to the group at the stove, and began dipping a drink for each. when jimmy came to a gray-haired man, with a high forehead and an intellectual face, he whispered: "take your full time, cap. who's the rhymin' inkybator?" "thread man, boston," mouthed the captain, as he reached for the glass with trembling fingers. jimmy held on. "do you know that stuff he's giving off?" the captain nodded, and rose to his feet. he always declared he could feel it farther if he drank standing. "what's his name?" whispered jimmy, releasing the glass. "rubaiyat, omar khayyam," panted the captain, and was lost. jimmy finished the round of his friends, and then approached the bar. his voice was softening. "mister ruben o'khayam," he said, "it's me private opinion that ye nade lace-trimmed pantalettes and a sash to complate your costume, but barrin' clothes, i'm entangled in the thrid of your discourse. bein' a boston man meself, it appeals to me, that i detict the refinemint of the east in yer voice. now these, me frinds, that i've just been tratin', are men of these parts; but we of the middle east don't set up to equal the culture of the extreme east. so, mr. o'khayam, solely for the benefit you might be to us, i'm askin' you to join me and me frinds in the momenchous initiation of me new milk pail." jimmy lifted a brimming glass, and offered it to the thread man. "do you transmute?" he asked. now if the boston man had looked jimmy in the eye, and said "i do," this book would not have been written. but he did not. he looked at the milk pail, and the glass, which had passed through the hands of a dozen men in a little country saloon away out in the wilds of indiana, and said: "i do not care to partake of further refreshment; if i can be of intellectual benefit, i might remain for a time." for a flash jimmy lifted the five feet ten of his height to six; but in another he shrank below normal. what appeared to the thread man to be a humble, deferential seeker after wisdom, led him to one of the chairs around the big coal base burner. but the boys who knew jimmy were watching the whites of his eyes, as they drank the second round. at this stage jimmy was on velvet. how long he remained there depended on the depth of melwood in the milk pail between his knees. he smiled winningly on the thread man. "ye know, mister o'khayam," he said, "at the present time you are located in one of the wooliest parts of the wild east. i don't suppose anything woolier could be found on the plains of nebraska where i am reliably informed they've stuck up a pole and labeled it the cinter of the united states. being a thousand miles closer that pole than you are in boston, naturally we come by that distance closer to the great wool industry. most of our wool here grows on our tongues, and we shear it by this transmutin' process, concerning which you have discoursed so beautiful. but barrin' the shearin' of our wool, we are the mildest, most sheepish fellows you could imagine. i don't reckon now there is a man among us who could be induced to blat or to butt, under the most tryin' circumstances. my mary's got a little lamb, and all the rist of the boys are lambs. but all the lambs are waned, and clusterin' round the milk pail. ain't that touchin'? come on, now, ruben, ile up and edify us some more!" "on what point do you seek enlightenment?" inquired the thread man. jimmy stretched his long legs, and spat against the stove in pure delight. "oh, you might loosen up on the work of a man," he suggested. "these lambs of casey's fold may larn things from you to help thim in the striss of life. now here's jones, for instance, he's holdin' togither a gang of sixty gibbering atalyans; any wan of thim would cut his throat and skip in the night for a dollar, but he kapes the beast in thim under, and they're gettin' out gravel for the bed of a railway. bingham there is oil. he's punchin' the earth full of wan thousand foot holes, and sendin' off two hundred quarts of nitroglycerine at the bottom of them, and pumpin' the accumulation across continents to furnish folks light and hate. york here is runnin' a field railway between bluffton and celina, so that i can get to the river and the resurvoir to fish without walkin'. haines is bossin' a crew of forty canadians and he's takin' the timber from the woods hereabouts, and sending it to be made into boats to carry stuff across sea. meself, and me partner, dannie micnoun, are the lady-likest lambs in the bunch. we grow grub to feed folks in summer and trap for skins to cover 'em in winter. corn is our great commodity. plowin' and hoein' it in summer, and huskin' it in the fall is sich lamb-like work. but don't mintion it in the same brith with tendin' our four dozen fur traps on a twenty-below-zero day. freezing hands and fate, and fallin' into air bubbles, and building fires to thaw out our frozen grub. now here among us poor little, transmutin', lambs you come, a raging lion, ripresentin' the cultour and rayfinement of the far east. by the pleats on your breast you show us the style. by the thrid case in your hand you furnish us material so that our women can tuck their petticoats so fancy, and by the book in your head you teach us your sooperiority. by the same token, i wish i had that book in me head, for i could just squelch dannie and mary with it complate. say, mister o'khayam, next time you come this way bring me a copy. i'm wantin' it bad. i got what you gave off all secure, but i take it there's more. no man goin' at that clip could shut off with thim few lines. do you know the rist?" the thread man knew the most of it, and although he was very uncomfortable, he did not know just how to get away, so he recited it. the milk pail was empty now, and jimmy had almost forgotten that it was a milk pail, and seemed inclined to resent the fact that it had gone empty. he beat time on the bottom of it, and frequently interrupted the thread man to repeat a couplet which particularly suited him. by and by he got to his feet and began stepping off a slow dance to a sing-song repetition of lines that sounded musical to him, all the time marking the measures vigorously on the pail. when he tired of a couplet, he pounded the pail over the bar, stove, or chairs in encore, until the thread man could think up another to which he could dance. "wine! wine! wine! red wine! the nightingale cried to the rose," chanted jimmy, thumping the pail in time, and stepping off the measures with feet that scarcely seemed to touch the floor. he flung his hat to the barkeeper, and his coat on a chair, ruffled his fingers through his thick auburn hair, and holding the pail under one arm, he paused, panting for breath and begging for more. the thread man sat on the edge of his chair, and the eyes he fastened on jimmy were beginning to fill with interest. "come fill the cup and in the fire of spring your winter-garment of repentance fling. the bird of time has but a little way to flutter and the bird is on the wing." smash came the milk pail across the bar. "hooray!" shouted jimmy. "besht yet!" bang! bang! he was off." bird ish on the wing," he chanted, and his feet flew. "come fill the cup, and in the firesh of spring--firesh of spring, bird ish on the wing!" between the music of the milk pail, the brogue of the panted verses, and the grace of jimmy's flying feet, the thread man was almost prostrate. it suddenly came to him that here might be a chance to have a great time. "more!" gasped jimmy. "me some more!" the thread man wiped his eyes. "wether the cup with sweet or bitter run, the wine of life keeps oozing drop by drop, the leaves of life keep falling one by one." away went jimmy. "swate or bitter run, laves of life kape falling one by one." bang! bang! sounded a new improvision on the sadly battered pail, and to a new step jimmy flashed back and forth the length of the saloon. at last he paused to rest a second. "one more! just one more!" he begged. "a book of verses underneath the bough, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou beside me singing in the wilderness. oh, wilderness were paradise enough!" jimmy's head dropped an instant. his feet slowly shuffled in improvising a new step, and then he moved away, thumping the milk pail and chanting: "a couple of fish poles underneath a tree, a bottle of rye and dannie beside me a fishing in the wabash. were the wabash paradise? ~hully gee! "tired out, he dropped across a chair facing the back and folded his arms. he regained breath to ask the thread man: "did you iver have a frind?" he had reached the confidential stage. the boston man was struggling to regain his dignity. he retained the impression that at the wildest of the dance he had yelled and patted time for jimmy. "i hope i have a host of friends," he said, settling his pleated coat. "damn hosht!" said jimmy. "jisht in way. now i got one frind, hosht all by himself. be here pretty soon now. alwaysh comesh nights like thish." "comes here?" inquired the thread man. "am i to meet another interesting character?" "yesh, comesh here. comesh after me. comesh like the clock sthriking twelve. don't he, boys?" inquired jimmy. "but he ain't no interesting character. jisht common man, dannie is. honest man. never told a lie in his life. yesh, he did, too. i forgot. he liesh for me. jish liesh and liesh. liesh to mary. tells her any old liesh to keep me out of schrape. you ever have frind hish up and drive ten milesh for you night like thish, and liesh to get you out of schrape?" "i never needed any one to lie and get me out of a scrape," answered the thread man. jimmy sat straight and solemnly batted his eyes. "gee! you musht misshed mosht the fun!" he said. "me, i ain't ever misshed any. always in schrape. but dannie getsh me out. good old dannie. jish like dog. take care me all me life. see? old folks come on same boat. women get thick. shettle beside. build cabinsh together. work together, and domn if they didn't get shmall pox and die together. left me and dannie. so we work together jish shame, and we fallsh in love with the shame girl. dannie too slow. i got her." jimmy wiped away great tears. "how did you get her, jimmy?" asked a man who remembered a story. "how the nation did i get her?" jimmy scratched his head, and appealed to the thread man. "dannie besht man. milesh besht man! never lie--'cept for me. never drink--'cept for me. alwaysh save his money--'cept for me. milesh besht man! isn't he besht man, spooley?" "ain't it true that you served dannie a mean little trick?" asked the man who remembered. jimmy wasn't quite drunk enough, and the violent exercise of the dance somewhat sobered him. he glared at the man. "whatsh you talkin' about?" he demanded. "i'm just asking you," said the man, "why, if you played straight with dannie about the girl, you never have had the face to go to confession since you married her." "alwaysh send my wife," said jimmy grandly. "domsh any woman that can't confiss enough for two!" then he hitched his chair closer to the thread man, and grew more confidential. "shee here," he said. "firsht i see your pleated coat, didn't like. but head's all right. great head! sthuck on frillsh there! want to be let in on something? got enough city, clubsh, an' all that? want to taste real thing? lesh go coon huntin'. theysh tree down canoper, jish short pleashant walk, got fify coons in it! nobody knowsh the tree but me, shee? been good to ush boys. sat on same kind of chairs we do. educate ush up lot. know mosht that poetry till i die, shee? `wonner wash vinters buy, halfsh precious ash sthuff shell,' shee? i got it! let you in on real thing. take grand big coon skinch back to boston with you. ringsh on tail. make wife fine muff, or fur trimmingsh. good to till boysh at club about, shee?" "are you asking me to go on a coon hunt with you?" demanded the thread man. "when? where?" "corshally invited," answered jimmy. "to-morrow night. canoper. show you plashe. bill duke's dogs. my gunsh. moonsh shinin'. dogs howlin'. shnow flying! fify coonsh rollin' out one hole! shoot all dead! take your pick! tan skin for you myself! roaring big firesh warm by. bag finesh sandwiches ever tasted. milk pail pure gold drink. no stop, slop out going over bridge. take jug. big jug. toss her up an' let her gurgle. dogsh bark. fire pop. guns bang. fifty coons drop. boysh all go. want to get more education. takes culture to get woolsh off. shay, will you go? " "i wouldn't miss it for a thousand dollars," said the thread man. "but what will i say to my house for being a day late?" "shay gotter grip," suggested jimmy. "never too late to getter grip. will you all go, boysh?" there were not three men in the saloon who knew of a tree that had contained a coon that winter, but jimmy was jimmy, and to be trusted for an expedition of that sort; and all of them agreed to be at the saloon ready for the hunt at nine o'clock the next night. the thread man felt that he was going to see life. he immediately invited the boys to the bar to drink to the success of the hunt. "you shoot own coon yourself," offered the magnanimous jimmy. "you may carrysh my gunsh, take first shot. first shot to missher o'khayam, boysh, 'member that. shay, can you hit anything? take a try now." jimmy reached behind him, and shoved a big revolver into the hand of the thread man. "whersh target?" he demanded. as he turned from the bar, the milk pail which he still carried under his arm caught on an iron rod. jimmy gave it a jerk, and ripped the rim from the bottom. "thish do," he said. "splendid marksh. shinesh jish like coon's eyesh in torch light." he carried the pail to the back wall and hung it over a nail. the nail was straight, and the pail flaring. the pail fell. jimmy kicked it across the room, and then gathered it up, and drove a dent in it with his heel that would hold over the nail. then he went back to the thread man." theresh mark, ruben. blash away!" he said. the boston man hesitated. "whatsh the matter? cansh shoot off nothing but your mouth?" demanded jimmy. he caught the revolver and fired three shots so rapidly that the sounds came almost as one. two bullets pierced the bottom of the pail, and the other the side as it fell. the door opened, and with the rush of cold air jimmy gave just one glance toward it, and slid the revolver into his pocket, reached for his hat, and started in the direction of his coat. "glad to see you, micnoun," he said. "if you are goingsh home, i'll jish ride out with you. good night, boysh. don't forgetsh the coon hunt," and jimmy was gone. a minute later the door opened again, and this time a man of nearly forty stepped inside. he had a manly form, and a manly face, was above the average in looks, and spoke with a slight scotch accent. "do any of ye boys happen to know what it was jimmy had with him when he came in here?" a roar of laughter greeted the query. the thread man picked up the pail. as he handed it to dannie, he said: "mr. malone said he was initiating a new milk pail, but i am afraid he has overdone the job." "thank ye," said dannie, and taking the battered thing, he went out into the night. jimmy was asleep when he reached the buggy. dannie had long since found it convenient to have no fence about his dooryard. he drove to the door, dragged jimmy from the buggy, and stabled the horse. by hard work he removed jimmy's coat and boots, laid him across the bed, and covered him. then he grimly looked at the light in the next cabin. "why doesna she go to bed?" he said. he summoned courage, and crossing the space between the two buildings, he tapped on the window. "it's me, mary," he called. "the skins are only half done, and jimmy is going to help me finish. he will come over in the morning. ye go to bed. ye needna be afraid. we will hear ye if ye even snore." there was no answer, but by a movement in the cabin dannie knew that mary was still dressed and waiting. he started back, but for an instant, heedless of the scurrying snow and biting cold, he faced the sky. "i wonder if ye have na found a glib tongue and light feet the least part o' matrimony," he said. "why in god's name couldna ye have married me? i'd like to know why." as he closed the door, the cold air roused jimmy. "dannie," he said, "donsh forget the milk pail. all 'niciate good now." chapter iii the fifty coons of the canoper near noon of the next day, jimmy opened his eyes and stretched himself on dannie's bed. it did not occur to him that he was sprawled across it in such a fashion that if dannie had any sleep that night, he had taken it on chairs before the fireplace. at first jimmy decided that he had a head on him, and would turn over and go back where he came from. then he thought of the coon hunt, and sitting on the edge of the bed he laughed, as he looked about for his boots. "i am glad ye are feeling so fine," said dannie at the door, in a relieved voice. "i had a notion that ye wad be crosser than a badger when ye came to." jimmy laughed on. "what's the fun?" inquired dannie. jimmy thought hard a minute. here was one instance where the truth would serve better than any invention, so he virtuously told dannie all about it. dannie thought of the lonely little woman next door, and rebelled. "but, jimmy!" he cried, "ye canna be gone all nicht again. it's too lonely fra mary, and there's always a chance i might sleep sound and wadna hear if she should be sick or need ye." "then she can just yell louder, or come after you, or get well, for i am going, see? he was a thrid peddler in a dinky little pleated coat, dannie. he laid up against the counter with his feet crossed at a dancing-girl angle. but i will say for him that he was running at the mouth with the finest flow of language i iver heard. i learned a lot of it, and cap knows the stuff, and i'm goin' to have him get you the book. but, dannie, he wouldn't drink with us, but he stayed to iducate us up a little. that little spool man, dannie, iducatin' jones of the gravel gang, and bingham of the standard, and york of the 'lectric railway, and haines of the timber gang, not to mintion the champeen rat-catcher of the wabash." jimmy hugged himself, and rocked on the edge of the bed. "oh, i can just see it, dannie," he cried. "i can just see it now! i was pretty drunk, but i wasn't too drunk to think of it, and it came to me sudden like." dannie stared at jimmy wide-eyed, while he explained the details, and then he too began to laugh, and the longer he laughed the funnier it grew. "i've got to start," said jimmy. "i've an awful afternoon's work. i must find him some rubber boots. he's to have the inestimable privilege of carryin' me gun, dannie, and have the first shot at the coons, fifty, i'm thinkin' i said. and if i don't put some frills on his cute little coat! oh, dannie, it will break the heart of me if he don't wear that pleated coat!" dannie wiped his eyes. "come on to the kitchen," he said, "i've something ready fra ye to eat. wash, while i dish it." "i wish to heaven you were a woman, dannie," said jimmy. "a fellow could fall in love with you, and marry you with some satisfaction. crimminy, but i'm hungry!" jimmy ate greedily, and dannie stepped about setting the cabin to rights. it lacked many feminine touches that distinguished jimmy's as the abode of a woman; but it was neat and clean, and there seemed to be a place where everything belonged. "now, i'm off," said jimmy, rising. "i'll take your gun, because i ain't goin' to see mary till i get back." "oh, jimmy, dinna do that!" pleaded dannie. i want my gun. go and get your own, and tell her where ye are going and what ye are going to do. she'd feel less lonely." "i know how she would feel better than you do," retorted jimmy. "i am not going. if you won't give me your gun, i'll borrow one; or have all my fun spoiled." dannie took down the shining gun and passed it over. jimmy instantly relented. he smiled an old boyish smile, that always caught dannie in his softest spot. "you are the bist frind i have on earth, dannie," he said winsomely. "you are a man worth tying to. by gum, there's ~nothing i wouldn't do for you! now go on, like the good fellow you are, and fix it up with mary." so dannie started for the wood pile. in summer he could stand outside and speak through the screen. in winter he had to enter the cabin for errands like this, and as jimmy's wood box was as heavily weighted on his mind as his own, there was nothing unnatural in his stamping snow on jimmy's back stoop, and calling." open!" to mary at any hour of the day he happened to be passing the wood pile. he stood at a distance, and patiently waited until a gray and black nut-hatch that foraged on the wood covered all the new territory discovered by the last disturbance of the pile. from loosened bark dannie watched the bird take several good-sized white worms and a few dormant ants. as it flew away he gathered an armload of wood. he was very careful to clean his feet on the stoop, place the wood without tearing the neat covering of wall paper, and brush from his coat the snow and moss so that it fell in the box. he had heard mary tell the careless jimmy to do all these things, and dannie knew that they saved her work. there was a whiteness on her face that morning that startled him, and long after the last particle of moss was cleaned from his sleeve he bent over the box trying to get something said. the cleaning took such a length of time that the glint of a smile crept into the grave eyes of the woman, and the grim line of her lips softened. "don't be feeling so badly about it, dannie," she said. "i could have told you when you went after him last night that he would go back as soon as he wakened to-day. i know he is gone. i watched him lave." dannie brushed the other sleeve, on which there had been nothing at the start, and answered: "noo, dinna ye misjudge him, mary. he's goin' to a coon hunt to-nicht. dinna ye see him take my gun?" this evidence so bolstered dannie that he faced mary with confidence. "there's a traveling man frae boston in town, mary, and he was edifying the boys a little, and jimmy dinna like it. he's going to show him a little country sport to-nicht to edify him." dannie outlined the plan of jimmy's campaign. despite disapproval, and a sore heart, mary malone had to smile--perhaps as much over dannie's eagerness in telling what was contemplated as anything. "why don't you take jimmy's gun and go yoursilf?" she asked. "you haven't had a day off since fishing was over." "but i have the work to do," replied dannie, "and i couldna leave--" he broke off abruptly, but the woman supplied the word. "why can't you lave me, if jimmy can? i'm not afraid. the snow and the cold will furnish me protiction to-night. there'll be no one to fear. why should you do jimmy's work, and miss the sport, to guard the thing he holds so lightly?" the red flushed dannie's cheeks. mary never before had spoken like that. he had to say something for jimmy quickly, and quickness was not his forte. his lips opened, but nothing came; for as jimmy had boasted, dannie never lied, except for him, and at those times he had careful preparation before he faced mary. now, he was overtaken unawares. he looked so boyish in his confusion, the mother in mary's heart was touched. "i'll till you what we'll do, dannie," she said. "you tind the stock, and get in wood enough so that things won't be frazin' here; and then you hitch up and i'll go with you to town, and stay all night with mrs. dolan. you can put the horse in my sister's stable, and whin you and jimmy get back, you'll be tired enough that you'll be glad to ride home. a visit with katie will be good for me; i have been blue the last few days, and i can see you are just aching to go with the boys. isn't that a fine plan?" "i should say that is a guid plan," answered the delighted dannie. anything to save mary another night alone was good, and then--that coon hunt did sound alluring. and that was how it happened that at nine o'clock that night, just as arrangements were being completed at casey's, dannie macnoun stepped into the group and said to the astonished. jimmy. "mary wanted to come to her sister's over nicht, so i fixed everything, and i'm going to the coon hunt, too, if you boys want me." the crowd closed around dannie, patted his back and cheered him, and he was introduced to mister o'khayam, of boston, who tried to drown the clamor enough to tell what his name really was, "in case of accident"; but he couldn't be heard for jimmy yelling that a good old irish name like o'khayam couldn't be beat in case of anything. and dannie took a hasty glance at the thread man, to see if he wore that hated pleated coat, which lay at the bottom of jimmy's anger. then they started. casey's wife was to be left in charge of the saloon, and the thread man half angered casey by a whispered conversation with her in a corner. jimmy cut his crowd as low as he possibly could, but it numbered fifteen men, and no one counted the dogs. jimmy led the way, the thread man beside him, and the crowd followed. the walking would be best to follow the railroad to the canoper, and also they could cross the railroad bridge over the river and save quite a distance. jimmy helped the thread man into a borrowed overcoat and mittens, and loaded him with a twelve-pound gun, and they started. jimmy carried a torch, and as torch bearer he was a rank failure, for he had a careless way of turning it and flashing it into people's faces that compelled them to jump to save themselves. where the track lay clear and straight ahead the torch seemed to light it like day; but in dark places it was suddenly lowered or wavering somewhere else. it was through this carelessness of jimmy's that at the first cattle-guard north of the village the torch flickered backward, ostensibly to locate dannie, and the thread man went crashing down between the iron bars, and across the gun. instantly jimmy sprawled on top of him, and the next two men followed suit. the torch plowed into the snow and went out, and the yells of jimmy alarmed the adjoining village. he was hurt the worst of all, and the busiest getting in marching order again. "howly smoke!" he panted. "i was havin' the time of me life, and plum forgot that cow-kitcher. thought it was a quarter of a mile away yet. and liked to killed meself with me carelessness. but that's always the way in true sport. you got to take the knocks with the fun." no one asked the thread man if he was hurt, and he did not like to seem unmanly by mentioning a skinned shin, when jimmy malone seemed to have bursted most of his inside; so he shouldered his gun and limped along, now slightly in the rear of jimmy. the river bridge was a serious matter with its icy coat, and danger of specials, and the torches suddenly flashed out from all sides; and the thread man gave thanks for dannie macnoun, who reached him a steady hand across the ties. the walk was three miles, and the railroad lay at from twenty to thirty feet elevation along the river and through the bottom land. the boston man would have been thankful for the light, but as the last man stepped from the ties of the bridge all the torches went out save one. jimmy explained they simply had to save them so that they could see where the coon fell when they began to shake the coon tree. just beside the water tank, and where the embankment was twenty feet sheer, jimmy was cautioning the boston man to look out, when the hunter next behind him gave a wild yell and plunged into his back. jimmy's grab for him seemed more a push than a pull, and the three rolled to the bottom, and half way across the flooded ditch. the ditch was frozen over, but they were shaken, and smothered in snow. the whole howling party came streaming down the embankment. dannie held aloft his torch and discovered jimmy lying face down in a drift, making no effort to rise, and the thread man feebly tugging at him and imploring some one to come and help get malone out. then dannie slunk behind the others and yelled until he was tired. by and by jimmy allowed himself to be dragged out. "who the thunder was that come buttin' into us?" he blustered. "i don't allow no man to butt into me when i'm on an imbankmint. send the fool back here till i kill him." the thread man was pulling at jimmy's arm. "don't mind, jimmy," he gasped. "it was an accident! the man slipped. this is an awful place. i will be glad when we reach the woods. i'll feel safer with ground that's holding up trees under my feet. come on, now! are we not almost there? should we not keep quiet from now on? will we not alarm the coons?" "sure," said jimmy. "boys, don't hollo so much. every blamed coon will be scared out of its hollow!" "amazing!" said the thread man. "how clever! came on the spur of the moment. i must remember that to tel the club. do not hollo. scare the coon out of its hollow!" "oh, i do miles of things like that," said jimmy dryly, "and mostly i have to do thim before the spur of the moment; because our moments go so domn fast out here mighty few of thim have time to grow their spurs before they are gone. here's where we turn. now, boys, they've been trying to get this biler across the tracks here, and they've broke the ice. the water in this ditch is three feet deep and freezing cold. they've stuck getting the biler over, but i wonder if we can't cross on it, and hit the wood beyond. maybe we can walk it." jimmy set a foot on the ice-covered boiler, howled, and fell back on the men behind him. "jimminy crickets, we niver can do that!" he yelled. "it's a glare of ice and roundin'. let's crawl through it! the rist of you can get through if i can. we'd better take off our overcoats, to make us smaller. we can roll thim into a bundle, and the last man can pull it through behind him." jimmy threw off his coat and entered the wrecked oil engine. he knew how to hobble through on his toes, but the pleated coat of the boston man, who tried to pass through by stooping, got almost all jimmy had in store for it. jimmy came out all right with a shout. the thread man did not step half so far, and landed knee deep in the icy oil-covered slush of the ditch. that threw him off his balance, and jimmy let him sink one arm in the pool, and then grabbed him, and scooped oil on his back with the other hand as he pulled. during the excitement and struggles of jimmy and the thread man, the rest of the party jumped the ditch and gathered about, rubbing soot and oil on the boston man, and he did not see how they crossed. jimmy continued to rub oil and soot into the hated coat industriously. the dogs leaped the ditch, and the instant they struck the woods broke away baying over fresh tracks. the men yelled like mad. jimmy struggled into his overcoat, and helped the almost insane boston man into his and then they hurried after the dogs. the scent was so new and clear the dogs simply raged. the thread man was wild, jimmy was wilder, and the thirteen contributed all they could for laughing. dannie forgot to be ashamed of himself and followed the example of the crowd. deeper and deeper into the wild, swampy canoper led the chase. with a man on either side to guide him into the deepest holes and to shove him into bushy thickets, the skinned, soot-covered, oil-coated boston man toiled and sweated. he had no time to think, the excitement was so intense. he scrambled out of each pitfall set for him, and plunged into the next with such uncomplaining bravery that dannie very shortly grew ashamed, and crowding up beside him he took the heavy gun and tried to protect him all he could without falling under the eye of jimmy, who was keeping close watch on the boston man. wild yelling told that the dogs had treed, and with shaking fingers the thread man pulled off the big mittens he wore and tried to lift the gun. jimmy flashed a torch, and sure enough, in the top of a medium hickory tree, the light was reflected in streams from the big shining eyes of a coon. "treed!" yelled jimmy frantically." treed! and big as an elephant. company's first shot. here, mister o'khayam, here's a good place to stand. gee, what luck! coon in sight first thing, and mellen's food coon at that! shoot, mister o'khayam, shoot!" the thread man lifted the wavering gun, but it was no use. "tell you what, ruben," said jimmy. "you are too tired to shoot straight. let's take a rist, and ate our lunch. then we'll cut down the tree and let the dogs get cooney. that way there won't be any shot marks in his skin. what do you say? is that a good plan?" they all said that was the proper course, so they built a fire, and placed the thread man where he could see the gleaming eyes of the frightened coon, and where all of them could feast on his soot and oil-covered face. then they opened the bag and passed the sandwiches. "i really am hungry," said the weary thread man, biting into his with great relish. his jaws moved once or twice experimentally, and then he lifted his handkerchief to his lips. "i wish 'twas as big as me head," said jimmy, taking a great bite, and then he began to curse uproariously. "what ails the things?" inquired dannie, ejecting a mouthful. and then all of them began to spit birdshot, and started an inquest simultaneously. jimmy raged. he swore some enemy had secured the bag and mined the feast; but the boys who knew him laughed until it seemed the thread man must suspect. he indignantly declared it was a dirty trick. by the light of the fire he knelt and tried to free one of the sandwiches from its sprinkling of birdshot, so that it would be fit for poor jimmy, who had worked so hard to lead them there and tree the coon. for the first time jimmy looked thoughtful. but the sight of the thread man was too much for him, and a second later he was thrusting an ax into the hands accustomed to handling a thread case. then he led the way to the tree, and began chopping at the green hickory. it was slow work, and soon the perspiration streamed. jimmy pulled off his coat and threw it aside. he assisted the thread man out of his and tossed it behind him. the coat alighted in the fire, and was badly scorched before it was rescued. but the thread man was game. fifty times that night it had been said that he was to have the first coon, of course he should work for it. so with the ax with which casey chopped ice for his refrigerator, the boston man banged against the hickory, and swore to himself because he could not make the chips fly as jimmy did. "iverybody clear out!" cried jimmy. "number one is coming down. get the coffee sack ready. baste cooney over the head and shove him in before the dogs tear the skin. we want a dandy big pelt out of this!" there was a crack, and the tree fell with a crash. all the boston man could see was that from a tumbled pile of branches, dogs, and men, some one at last stepped back, gripping a sack, and cried: "got it all right, and it's a buster." "now for the other forty-nine!" shouted jimmy, straining into his coat. "come on, boys, we must secure a coon for every one," cried the thread man, heartily as any member of the party might have said it. but the rest of the boys suddenly grew tired. they did not want any coons, and after some persuasion the party agreed to go back to casey's to warm up. the thread man got into his scorched, besooted, oil-smeared coat, and the overcoat which had been loaned him, and shouldered the gun. jimmy hesitated. but dannie came up to the boston man and said: "there's a place in my shoulder that gun juist fits, and it's lonesome without it. pass it over." only the sorely bruised and strained thread man knew how glad he was to let it go. it was dannie, too, who whispered to the thread man to keep close behind him; and when the party trudged back to casey's it was so surprising how much better he knew the way going back than jimmy had known it coming out, that the thread man did remark about it. but jimmy explained that after one had been out a few hours their eyes became accustomed to the darkness and they could see better. that was reasonable, for the thread man knew it was true in his own experience. so they got back to casey's, and found a long table set, and a steaming big oyster supper ready for them; and that explained the thread man's conference with mrs. casey. he took the head of the table, with his back to the wall, and placed jimmy on his right and dannie on his left. mrs. casey had furnished soap and towels, and at least part of the boston man's face was clean. the oysters were fine, and well cooked. the thread man recited more of the wonderful poem for dannie's benefit, and told jokes and stories. they laughed until they were so weak they could only pound the table to indicate how funny it was. and at the close, just as they were making a movement to rise, casey proposed that he bring in the coon, and let all of them get a good look at their night's work. the thread man applauded, and casey brought in the bag and shook it bottom up over the floor. therefrom there issued a poor, frightened, maltreated little pet coon of mrs. casey's, and it dexterously ran up casey's trouser leg and hid its nose in his collar, its chain dragging behind. and that was so funny the boys doubled over the table, and laughed and screamed until a sudden movement brought them to their senses. the thread man was on his feet, and his eyes were no laughing matter. he gripped his chair back, and leaned toward jimmy. "you walked me into that cattle-guard on purpose!" he cried. silence. "you led me into that boiler, and fixed the oil at the end!" no answer. "you mauled me all over the woods, and loaded those sandwiches yourself, and sored me for a week trying to chop down a tree with a pet coon chained in it! you----! you----! what had i done to you?" "you wouldn't drink with me, and i didn't like the domned, dinky, little pleated coat you wore," answered jimmy. one instant amazement held sway on the thread man's face; the next, "and damned if i like yours!" he cried, and catching up a bowl half filled with broth he flung it squarely into jimmy's face. jimmy, with a great oath, sprang at the boston man. but once in his life dannie was quick. for the only time on record he was ahead of jimmy, and he caught the uplifted fist in a grip that jimmy's use of whiskey and suffering from rheumatism had made his master. "steady--jimmy, wait a minute," panted dannie. "this mon is na even wi' ye yet. when every muscle in your body is strained, and every inch of it bruised, and ye are daubed wi' soot, and bedraggled in oil, and he's made ye the laughin' stock fra strangers by the hour, ye will be juist even, and ready to talk to him. every minute of the nicht he's proved himself a mon, and right now he's showed he's na coward. it's up to ye, jimmy. do it royal. be as much of a mon as he is. say ye are sorry!" one tense instant the two friends faced each other. then jimmy's fist unclenched, and his arms dropped. dannie stepped back, trying to breathe lightly, and it was between jimmy and the thread man. "i am sorry," said jimmy. "i carried my objictions to your wardrobe too far. if you'll let me, i'll clean you up. if you'll take it, i'll raise you the price of a new coat, but i'll be domn if i'll hilp put such a man as you are into another of the fiminine ginder." the thread man laughed, and shook jimmy's hand; and then jimmy proved why every one liked him by turning to dannie and taking his hand. "thank you, dannie," he said. "you sure hilped me to mesilf that time. if i'd hit him, i couldn't have hild up me head in the morning." chapter iv when the kingfisher and the black bass came home crimminy, but you are slow." jimmy made the statement, not as one voices a newly discovered fact, but as one iterates a time-worn truism. he sat on a girder of the limberlost bridge, and scraped the black muck from his boots in a little heap. then he twisted a stick into the top of his rat sack, preparatory to his walk home. the ice had broken on the river, and now the partners had to separate at the bridge, each following his own line of traps to the last one, and return to the bridge so that jimmy could cross to reach home. jimmy was always waiting, after the river opened, and it was a remarkable fact to him that as soon as the ice was gone his luck failed him. this evening the bag at his feet proved by its bulk that it contained just about one-half the rats dannie carried. "i must set my traps in my own way," answered dannie calmly. "if i stuck them into the water ony way and went on, so would the rats. a trap is no a trap unless it is concealed." "that's it! go on and give me a sarmon!" urged jimmy derisively. "who's got the bulk of the rats all winter? the truth is that my side of the river is the best catching in the extrame cold, and you get the most after the thaws begin to come. the rats seem to have a lot of burrows and shift around among thim. one time i'm ahead, and the nixt day they go to you: but it don't mane that you are any better ~trapper than i am. i only got siven to-night. that's a sweet day's work for a whole man. fifteen cints apace for sivin rats. i've a big notion to cut the rat business, and compete with rocky in ile." dannie laughed. "let's hurry home, and get the skinning over before nicht," he said. "i think the days are growing a little longer. i seem to scent spring in the air to-day." jimmy looked at dannie's mud-covered, wet clothing, his bloodstained mittens and coat back, and the dripping bag he had rested on the bridge. "i've got some music in me head, and some action in me feet," he said, "but i guess god forgot to put much sintimint into me heart. the breath of spring niver got so strong with me that i could smell it above a bag of muskrats and me trappin' clothes." he arose, swung his bag to his shoulder, and together they left the bridge, and struck the road leading to rainbow bottom. it was late february. the air was raw,and the walking heavy. jimmy saw little around him, and there was little dannie did not see. to him, his farm, the river, and the cabins in rainbow bottom meant all there was of life, for all he loved on earth was there. but loafing in town on rainy days, when dannie sat with a book; hearing the talk at casey's, at the hotel, and on the streets, had given jimmy different views of life, and made his lot seem paltry compared with that of men who had greater possessions. on days when jimmy's luck was bad, or when a fever of thirst burned him, he usually discoursed on some sort of intangible experience that men had, which he called "seeing life." his rat bag was unusually light that night, and in a vague way he connected it with the breaking up of the ice. when the river lay solid he usually carried home just twice the rats dannie had, and as he had patronized dannie all his life, it fretted jimmy to be behind even one day at the traps. "be jasus, i get tired of this!" he said. "always and foriver the same thing. i kape goin' this trail so much that i've got a speakin' acquaintance with meself. some of these days i'm goin' to take a trip, and have a little change. i'd like to see chicago, and as far west as the middle, anyway." "well, ye canna go," said dannie. "ye mind the time when ye were married, and i thought i'd be best away, and packed my trunk? when ye and mary caught me, ye got mad as fire, and she cried, and i had to stay. just ye try going, and i'll get mad, and mary will cry, and ye will stay at home, juist like i did." there was a fear deep in dannie's soul that some day jimmy would fulfill this long-time threat of his. "i dinna think there is ony place in all the world so guid as the place ye own," dannie said earnestly. "i dinna care a penny what anybody else has, probably they have what they want. what _i_ want is the land that my feyther owned before me, and the house that my mither kept. and they'll have to show me the place they call eden before i'll give up that it beats rainbow bottom--summer, autumn, or winter. i dinna give twa hoops fra the palaces men rig up, or the thing they call `landscape gardening'. when did men ever compete with the work of god? all the men that have peopled the earth since time began could have their brains rolled into one, and he would stand helpless before the anatomy of one of the rats in these bags. the thing god does is guid enough fra me." "why don't you take a short cut to the matin'-house?" inquired jimmy. "because i wad have nothing to say when i got there," retorted dannie. "i've a meetin'-house of my ain, and it juist suits me; and i've a god, too, and whether he is spirit or essence, he suits me. i dinna want to be held to sharper account than he faces me up to, when i hold communion with mesel'. i dinna want any better meetin'house than rainbow bottom. i dinna care for better talkin' than the `tongues in the trees'; sounder preachin' than the `sermons in the stones'; finer readin' than the books in the river; no, nor better music than the choir o' the birds, each singin' in its ain way fit to burst its leetle throat about the mate it won, the nest they built, and the babies they are raising. that's what i call the music o' god, spontaneous, and the soul o' joy. give it me every time compared with notes frae a book. and all the fine places that the wealth o' men ever evolved winna begin to compare with the work o' god, and i've got that around me every day." "but i want to see life," wailed jimmy. "then open your eyes, mon, fra the love o' mercy, open your eyes! there's life sailing over your heid in that flock o' crows going home fra the night. why dinna ye, or some other mon, fly like that? there's living roots, and seeds, and insects, and worms by the million wherever ye are setting foot. why dinna ye creep into the earth and sleep through the winter, and renew your life with the spring? the trouble with ye, jimmy, is that ye've always followed your heels. if ye'd stayed by the books, as i begged ye, there now would be that in your heid that would teach ye that the old story of the rainbow is true. there is a pot of gold, of the purest gold ever smelted, at its foot, and we've been born, and own a good living richt there. an' the gold is there; that i know, wealth to shame any bilious millionaire, and both of us missing the pot when we hold the location. ye've the first chance, mon, fra in your life is the great prize mine will forever lack. i canna get to the bottom of the pot, but i'm going to come close to it as i can; and as for ye, empty it! take it all! it's yours! it's fra the mon who finds it, and we own the location." "aha! we own the location," repeated jimmy. "i should say we do! behold our hotbed of riches! i often lay awake nights thinkin' about my attachmint to the place. "how dear to me heart are the scanes of me childhood, fondly gaze on the cabin where i'm doomed to dwell, those chicken-coop, thim pig-pen, these highly piled-wood around which i've always raised hell." jimmy turned in at his own gate, while dannie passed to the cabin beyond. he entered, set the dripping rat bag in a tub, raked open the buried fire and threw on a log. he always ate at jimmy's when jimmy was at home, so there was no supper to get. he went out to the barn, wading mud ankle deep, fed and bedded his horses, and then went over to jimmy's barn, and completed his work up to milking. jimmy came out with the pail, and a very large hole in the bottom of it was covered with dried dough. jimmy looked at it disapprovingly. "i bought a new milk pail the other night. i know i did," he said. "mary was kicking for one a month ago, and i went after it the night i met ruben o'khayam. now what the nation did i do with that pail?" "i have wondered mysel'," answered dannie, as he leaned over and lifted a strange looking object from a barrel. "this is what ye brought home, jimmy." jimmy stared at the shining, battered, bullet-punctured pail in amazement. slowly he turned it over and around, and then he lifted bewildered eyes to dannie. "are you foolin'?" he asked. "did i bring that thing home in that shape?" "honest!" said dannie. "i remember buyin' it," said jimmy slowly. "i remember hanging on to it like grim death, for it was the wan excuse i had for goin', but i don't just know how--!" slowly he revolved the pail, and then he rolled over in the hay and laughed until he was tired. then he sat up and wiped his eyes. "great day! what a lot of fun i must have had before i got that milk pail into that shape," he said. "domned if i don't go straight to town and buy another one; yes, bedad! i'll buy two!" in the meantime dannie milked, fed and watered the cattle, and jimmy picked up the pail of milk and carried it to the house. dannie came by the wood pile and brought in a heavy load. then they washed, and sat down to supper. "seems to me you look unusually perky," said jimmy to his wife. "had any good news?" "splendid!" said mary. "i am so glad! and i don't belave you two stupids know!" "you niver can tell by lookin' at me what i know," said jimmy. "whin i look the wisest i know the least. whin i look like a fool, i'm thinkin' like a philosopher." "give it up," said dannie promptly. you would not catch him knowing anything it would make mary's eyes shine to tell. "sap is running!" announced mary. "the divil you say!" cried jimmy. "it is!" beamed mary. "it will be full in three days. didn't you notice how green the maples are? i took a little walk down to the bottom to-day. i niver in all my life was so tired of winter, and the first thing i saw was that wet look on the maples, and on the low land, where they are sheltered and yet get the sun, several of them are oozing!" "grand!" cried dannie. "jimmy, we must peel those rats in a hurry, and then clean the spiles, and see how mony new ones we will need. to-morrow we must come frae the traps early and look up our troughs." "oh, for pity sake, don't pile up work enough to kill a horse," cried jimmy. "ain't you ever happy unless you are workin'?" "yes," said dannie. "sometimes i find a book that suits me, and sometimes the fish bite, and sometimes it's in the air." "git the condinser" said jimmy. "and that reminds me, mary, dannie smelled spring in the air to-day." "well, what if he did?" questioned mary. "i can always smell it. a little later, when the sap begins to run in all the trees, and the buds swell, and the ice breaks up, and the wild geese go over, i always scent spring; and when the catkins bloom, then it comes strong, and i just love it. spring is my happiest time. i have more news, too!" "don't spring so much at wance!" cried jimmy, "you'll spoil my appetite." "i guess there's no danger," replied mary. "there is," said jimmy. "at laste in the fore siction. `appe' is frinch, and manes atin'. `tite' is irish, and manes drinkin'. appetite manes atin' and drinkin' togither. `tite' manes drinkin' without atin', see?" "i was just goin' to mintion it meself," said mary, "it's where you come in strong. there's no danger of anybody spoilin' your drinkin', if they could interfere with your atin'. you guess, dannie." "the dominick hen is setting," ventured dannie, and mary's face showed that he had blundered on the truth. "she is," affirmed mary, pouring the tea, "but it is real mane of you to guess it, when i've so few new things to tell. she has been setting two days, and she went over fifteen fresh eggs to-day. in just twinty-one days i will have fiftane the cunningest little chickens you ever saw, and there is more yet. i found the nest of the gray goose, and there are three big eggs in it, all buried in feathers. she must have stripped her breast almost bare to cover them. and i'm the happiest i've been all winter. i hate the long, lonely, shut-in time. i am going on a delightful spree. i shall help boil down sugar-water and make maple syrup. i shall set hins, and geese, and turkeys. i shall make soap, and clane house, and plant seed, and all my flowers will bloom again. goody for summer; it can't come too soon to suit me." "lord! i don't see what there is in any of those things," said jimmy. "i've got just one sign of spring that interests me. if you want to see me caper, somebody mention to me the first rattle of the kingfisher. whin he comes home, and house cleans in his tunnel in the embankment, and takes possession of his stump in the river, the nixt day the black bass locates in the deep water below the shoals. ~thin you can count me in. there is where business begins for jimmy boy. i am going to have that bass this summer, if i don't plant an acre of corn." "i bet you that's the truth!" said mary, so quickly that both men laughed. "ahem!" said dannie. "then i will have to do my plowing by a heidlicht, so i can fish as much as ye do in the day time. i hereby make, enact, and enforce a law that neither of us is to fish in the bass hole when the other is not there to fish also. that is the only fair way. i've as much richt to him as ye have." "of course!" said mary. "that is a fair way. make that a rule, and kape it. if you both fish at once, it's got to be a fair catch for the one that lands it; but whoever catches it, _i_ shall ate it, so it don't much matter to me." "you ate it!" howled jimnmy. "i guess not. not a taste of that fish, when he's teased me for years? he's as big as a whale. if jonah had had the good fortune of falling in the wabash, and being swallowed by the black bass, he could have ridden from peru to terre haute, and suffered no inconvanience makin' a landin'. siven pounds he'll weigh by the steelyard i'll wager you." "five, jimmy, five," corrected dannie. "siven!" shouted jimmy. " ain't i hooked him repeated? ain't i seen him broadside? i wonder if thim domn lines of mine have gone and rotted." he left his supper, carrying his chair, and standing on it he began rummaging the top shelf of the cupboard for his box of tackle. he knocked a bottle from the shelf, but caught it in mid-air with a dexterous sweep. "spirits are movin'," cried jimmy, as he restored the camphor to its place. he carried the box to the window, and became so deeply engrossed in its contents that he did not notice when dannie picked up his rat bag and told him to come on and help skin their day's catch. mary tried to send him, and he was going in a minute, but the minute stretched and stretched, and both of them were surprised when the door opened and dannie entered with an armload of spiles, and the rat-skinning was all over. so jimmy went on unwinding lines, and sharpening hooks, and talking fish; while dannie and mary cleaned the spiles, and figured on how many new elders must be cut and prepared for more on the morrow; and planned the sugar making. when it was bedtime, and dannie had gone an jimmy and mary closed their cabin for the night, mary stepped to the window that looked on dannie's home to see if his light was burning. it was, and clear in its rays stood dannie, stripping yard after yard of fine line through his fingers, and carefully examining it. jimmy came and stood beside her as she wondered. "why, the domn son of the rainbow," he cried, "if he ain't testing his fish lines!" the next day mary malone was rejoicing when the men returned from trapping, and gathering and cleaning the sugar-water troughs. there had been a robin at the well. "kape your eye on, mary" advised jimmy. "if she ain't watched close from this time on, she'll be settin' hins in snowdrifts, and pouring biling water on the daffodils to sprout them." on the first of march, five killdeers flew over in a flock, and a half hour later one straggler crying piteously followed in their wake. "oh, the mane things!" almost sobbed mary. "why don't they wait for it?" she stood by a big kettle of boiling syrup at the sugar camp, almost helpless in jimmy's boots and dannie's great coat. jimmy cut and carried wood, and dannie hauled sap. all the woods were stirred by the smell of the curling smoke and the odor of the boiling sap, fine as the fragrance of flowers. bright-eyed deer mice peeped at her from under old logs, the chickadees, nuthatches, and jays started an investigating committee to learn if anything interesting to them was occurring. one gayly-dressed little sapsucker hammered a tree near by and scolded vigorously. "right you are!" said mary. "it's a pity you're not big enough to drive us from the woods, for into one kittle goes enough sap to last you a lifetime." the squirrels were sure it was an intrusion, and raced among the branches overhead, barking loud defiance. at night the three rode home on the sled, with the syrup jugs beside them, and mary's apron was filled with big green rolls of pungent woolly-dog moss. jimmy built the fires, dannie fed the stock, and mary cooked the supper. when it was over, while the men warmed chilled feet and fingers by the fire, mary poured some syrup into a kettle, and just as it "sugared off" she dipped streams of the amber sweetness into cups of water. all of them ate it like big children, and oh, but it was good! two days more of the same work ended sugar making, but for the next three days dannie gathered the rapidly diminishing sap for the vinegar barrel. then there were more hens ready to set, water must be poured hourly into the ash hopper to start the flow of lye for soap making, and the smoke house must be gotten ready to cure the hams and pickled meats, so that they would keep during warm weather. the bluebells were pushing through the sod in a race with the easter and star flowers. one morning mary aroused jimmy with a pull at his arm. "jimmy, jimmy," she cried. "wake up!" "do you mane, wake up, or get up?" asked jimmy sleepily. "both," cried mary. "the larks are here!" a little later jimmy shouted from the back door to the barn: "dannie, do you hear the larks?" "ye bet i do," answered dannie. "heard ane goin' over in the nicht. how long is it now till the kingfisher comes?" "just a little while," said jimmy. "if only these march storms would let up 'stid of down! he can't come until he can fish, you know. he's got to have crabs and minnies to live on." a few days later the green hylas began to pipe in the swamps, the bullfrogs drummed among the pools in the bottom, the doves cooed in the thickets, and the breath of spring was in the nostrils of all creation, for the wind was heavy with the pungent odor of catkin pollen. the spring flowers were two inches high. the peonies and rhubarb were pushing bright yellow and red cones through the earth. the old gander, leading his flock along the wabash, had hailed passing flocks bound northward until he was hoarse; and the brahma rooster had threshed the yellow dorkin until he took refuge under the pig pen, and dare not stick out his unprotected head. the doors had stood open at supper time, and dannie staid up late, mending and oiling the harness. jimmy sat by cleaning his gun, for to his mortification he had that day missed killing a crow which stole from the ash hopper the egg with which mary tested the strength of the lye. in a basket behind the kitchen stove fifteen newly hatched yellow chickens, with brown stripes on their backs, were peeping and nestling; and on wing the killdeers cried half the night. at two o'clock in the morning came a tap on the malone's bedroom window. "dannie?" questioned mary, half startled. "tell jimmy!" cried dannie's breathless voice outside. "tell him the kingfisher has juist struck the river!" jimmy sat straight up in bed. "then glory be!" he cried. "to-morrow the black bass comes home!" chapter v when the rainbow set its arch in the sky where did jimmy go?" asked mary. jimmy had been up in time to feed the chickens and carry in the milk, but he disappeared shortly after breakfast. dannie almost blushed as he answered: "he went to take a peep at the river. it's going down fast. when it gets into its regular channel, spawning will be over and the fish will come back to their old places. we figure that the black bass will be home to-day." "when you go digging for bait," said mary, "i wonder if the two of you could make it convanient to spade an onion bed. if i had it spaded i could stick the sets mesilf." "now, that amna fair, mary," said dannie. "we never went fishing till the garden was made, and the crops at least wouldna suffer. we'll make the beds, of course, juist as soon as they can be spaded, and plant the seed, too." "i want to plant the seeds mesilf," said mary. "and we dinna want ye should," replied dannie. "all we want ye to do, is to boss." "but i'm going to do the planting mesilf," mary was emphatic. "it will be good for me to be in the sunshine, and i do enjoy working in the dirt, so that for a little while i'm happy." "if ye want to put the onions in the highest place, i should think i could spade ane bed now, and enough fra lettuce and radishes." dannie went after a spade, and mary malone laughed softly as she saw that he also carried an old tin can. he tested the earth in several places, and then called to her:" all right, mary! ground in prime shape. turns up dry and mellow. we will have the garden started in no time." he had spaded but a minute when mary saw him run past the window, leap the fence, and go hurrying down the path to the river. she went to the door. at the head of the lane stood jimmy, waving his hat, and the fresh morning air carried his cry clearly: " gee, dannie! come hear him splash!" just why that cry, and the sight of dannie macnoun racing toward the river, his spade lying on the upturned earth of her scarcely begun onion bed, should have made her angry, it would be hard to explain. he had no tackle or bait, and reason easily could have told her that he would return shortly, and finish anything she wanted done; but when was a lonely, disappointed woman ever reasonable? she set the dish water on the stove, wiped her hands on her apron, and walking to the garden, picked up the spade and began turning great pieces of earth. she had never done rough farm work, such as women all about her did; she had little exercise during the long, cold winter, and the first half dozen spadefuls tired her until the tears of self-pity rolled. "i wish there was a turtle as big as a wash tub in the river" she sobbed, "and i wish it would eat that old black bass to the last scale. and i'm going to take the shotgun, and go over to the embankment, and poke it into the tunnel, and blow the old kingfisher through into the cornfield. then maybe dannie won't go off too and leave me. i want this onion bed spaded right away, so i do." "drop that! idjit! what you doing?" yelled jimmy. "mary, ye goose!" panted dannie, as he came hurrying across the yard. "wha' do ye mean? ye knew i'd be back in a minute! jimmy juist called me to hear the bass splash. i was comin' back. mary, this amna fair." dannie took the spade from her hand, and mary fled sobbing to the house. "what's the row?" demanded jimmy of the suffering dannie. "i'd juist started spadin' this onion bed," explained dannie. "of course, she thought we were going to stay all day." "with no poles, and no bait, and no grub? she didn't think any such a domn thing," said jimmy. "you don't know women! she just got to the place where it's her time to spill brine, and raise a rumpus about something, and aisy brathin' would start her. just let her bawl it out, and thin--we'll get something dacent for dinner." dannie turned a spadeful of earth and broke it open, and jimmy squatted by the can, and began picking out the angle worms. "i see where we dinna fish much this summer," said dannie, as he waited. "and where we fish close home when we do, and where all the work is done before we go." "aha, borrow me rose-colored specks!" cried jimmy. "i don't see anything but what i've always seen. i'll come and go as i please, and mary can do the same. i don't throw no `jeminy fit' every time a woman acts the fool a little, and if you'd lived with one fiftane years you wouldn't either. of course we'll make the garden. wish to goodness it was a beer garden! wouldn't i like to plant a lot of hop seed and see rows of little green beer bottles humpin' up the dirt. oh, my! what all does she want done?" dannie turned another spadeful of earth and studied the premises, while jimmy gathered the worms. "palins all on the fence?" asked dannie. "yep," said jimmy. "well, the yard is to be raked." "yep." "the flooer beds spaded." "yep." "stones around the peonies, phlox, and hollyhocks raised and manure worked in. all the trees must be pruned, the bushes and vines trimmed, and the gooseberries, currants, and raspberries thinned. the strawberry bed must be fixed up, and the rhubarb and asparagus spaded around and manured. this whole garden must be made----" "and the road swept, and the gate sandpapered, and the barn whitewashed! return to grazing, nebuchadnezzar," said jimmy. "we do what's raisonable, and then we go fishin'. see?" three beds spaded, squared, and ready for seeding lay in the warm spring sunshine before noon. jimmy raked the yard, and dannie trimmed the gooseberries. then he wheeled a barrel of swamp loam for a flower bed by the cabin wall, and listened intently between each shovelful he threw. he could not hear a sound. what was more, he could not bear it. he went to jimmy. "say, jimmy," he said. "dinna ye have to gae in fra a drink?" "house or town?" inquired jimmy sweetly. "the house!" exploded dannie. "i dinna hear a sound yet. ye gae in fra a drink, and tell mary i want to know where she'd like the new flooer bed she's been talking about." jimmy leaned the rake against a tree, and started. "and jimmy," said dannie. "if she's quit crying, ask her what was the matter. i want to know." jimmy vanished. presently he passed dannie where he worked. "come on," whispered jimmy. the bewildered dannie followed. jimmy passed the wood pile, and pig pen, and slunk around behind the barn, where he leaned against the logs and held his sides. dannie stared at him. "she says," wheezed jimmy, "that she guesses ~she wanted to go and hear the bass splash, too!" dannie's mouth fell open, and then closed with a snap. "us fra the fool killer!" he said. "ye dinna let her see ye laugh?" "let her see me laugh!" cried jimmy." let her see me laugh! i told her she wasn't to go for a few days yet, because we were sawin' the kingfisher's stump up into a rustic sate for her, and we were goin' to carry her out to it, and she was to sit there and sew, and umpire the fishin', and whichiver bait she told the bass to take, that one of us would be gettin' it. and she was pleased as anything, me lad, and now it's up to us to rig up some sort of a dacint sate, and tag a woman along half the time. you thick-tongued descindint of a bagpipe baboon, what did you sind me in there for?" "maybe a little of it will tire her," groaned dannie. "it will if she undertakes to follow me," jimmy said. "i know where horse-weeds grow giraffe high." then they went back to work, and presently many savory odors began to steal from the cabin. whereat jimmy looked at dannie, and winked an `i-told-you-so' wink. a garden grows fast under the hands of two strong men really working, and by the time the first slice of sugar-cured ham from the smoke house for that season struck the sizzling skillet, and mary very meekly called from the back door to know if one of them wanted to dig a little horse radish, the garden was almost ready for planting. then they went into the cabin and ate fragrant, thick slices of juicy fried ham, seasoned with horse radish; fried eggs, freckled with the ham fat in which they were cooked; fluffy mashed potatoes, with a little well of melted butter in the center of the mound overflowing the sides; raisin pie, soda biscuit, and their own maple syrup. "ohumahoh!" said jimmy. "i don't know as i hanker for city life so much as i sometimes think i do. what do you suppose the adulterated stuff we read about in papers tastes like?" "i've often wondered," answered dannie. "look at some of the hogs and cattle that we see shipped from here to city markets. the folks that sell them would starve before they'd eat a bit o' them, yet somebody eats them, and what do ye suppose maple syrup made from hickory bark and brown sugar tastes like?" "and cold-storage eggs, and cotton-seed butter, and even horse radish half turnip," added mary. "bate up the cream a little before you put it in your coffee, or it will be in lumps. whin the cattle are on clover it raises so thick." jimmy speared a piece of salt-rising bread crust soaked in ham gravy made with cream, and said: "i wish i could bring that thrid man home with me to one meal of the real thing nixt time he strikes town. i belave he would injoy it. may i, mary?" mary's face flushed slightly. "depends on whin he comes, she said. "of course, if i am cleaning house, or busy with something i can't put off----" "sure!" cried jimmy. "i'd ask you before i brought him, because i'd want him to have something spicial. some of this ham, and horse radish, and maple syrup to begin with, and thin your fried spring chicken and your stewed squirrel is a drame, mary. nobody iver makes turtle soup half so rich as yours, and your green peas in cream, and asparagus on toast is a rivilation--don't you rimimber 'twas father michael that said it? i ought to be able to find mushrooms in a few weeks, and i can taste your rhubarb pie over from last year. gee! but i wish he'd come in strawberrying! berries from the vines, butter in the crust, crame you have to bate to make it smooth--talk about shortcake!" "what's wrong wi' cherry cobbler?" asked dannie. "or blackberry pie?" "or greens cooked wi' bacon?" "or chicken pie?" "or catfish, rolled in cornmeal and fried in ham fat?" "or guineas stewed in cream, with hard-boiled eggs in the gravy?" "oh, stop!" cried the delighted mary. "it makes me dead tired thinkin' how i'll iver be cookin' all you'll want. sure, have him come, and both of you can pick out the things you like the best, and i'll fix thim for him. pure, fresh stuff might be a trate to a city man. when dolan took sister katie to new york with him, his boss sent them to a five-dollar-a-day house, and they thought they was some up. by the third day poor katie was cryin' for a square male. she couldn't touch the butter, the eggs made her sick, and the cold-storage meat and chicken never got nearer her stomach than her nose. so she just ate fish, because they were fresh, and she ate, and she ate, till if you mintion new york to poor katie she turns pale, and tastes fish. she vows and declares that she feeds her chickens and hogs better food twice a day than people fed her in new york." "i'll bet my new milk pail the grub we eat ivery day would be a trate that would raise him," said jimmy. "provided his taste ain't so depraved with saltpeter and chalk he don't know fresh, pure food whin he tastes it. i understand some of the victims really don't." "your new milk pail?" questioned mary. "that's what!" said jimmy." the next time i go to town i'm goin' to get you two." "but i only need one," protested mary. "instead of two, get me a new dishpan. mine leaks, and smears the stove and table." "be gorry!" sighed jimmy. "there goes me tongue, lettin' me in for it again. i'll look over the skins, and if any of thim are ripe, i'll get you a milk pail and a dishpan the nixt time i go to town. and, by gee! if that dandy big coon hide i got last fall looks good, i'm going to comb it up, and work the skin fine, and send it to the thrid man, with me complimints. i don't feel right about him yet. wonder what his name railly is, and where he lives, or whether i killed him complate." "any dry goods man in town can tell ye," said dannie. "ask the clerk in the hotel," suggested mary. "you've said it," cried jimmy. "that's the stuff! and i can find out whin he will be here again." two hours more they faithfully worked on the garden, and then jimmy began to grow restless. "ah, go on!" cried mary. "you have done all that is needed just now, and more too. there won't any fish bite to-day, but you can have the pleasure of stringin' thim poor sufferin' worms on a hook and soaking thim in the river." "`sufferin' worms!' sufferin' job!" cried jimmy. "what nixt? go on, dannie, get your pole!" dannie went. as he came back jimmy was sprinkling a thin layer of earth over the bait in the can. "why not come along, mary?" he suggested." i'm not done planting my seeds," she answered. "i'll be tired when i am, and i thought that place wasn't fixed for me yet." "we can't fix that till a little later," said jimmy. "we can't tell where it's going to be grassy and shady yet, and the wood is too wet to fix a sate." "any kind of a sate will do," said mary. "i guess you better not try to make one out of the kingfisher stump. if you take it out it may change the pool and drive away the bass." "sure!" cried jimmy. "what a head you've got! we'll have to find some other stump for a sate." "i don't want to go until it gets dry under foot, and warmer" said mary. "you boys go on. i'll till you whin i am riddy to go." "there!" said jimmy, when well on the way to the river. "what did i tell you? won't go if she has the chance! jist wants to be ~asked." "i dinna pretend to know women," said dannie gravely. "but whatever mary does is all richt with me." "so i've obsarved," remarked jimmy. "now, how will we get at this fishin' to be parfectly fair?" "tell ye what i think," said dannie. "i think we ought to pick out the twa best places about the black bass pool, and ye take ane fra yours and i'll take the ither fra mine, and then we'll each fish from his own place." "nothing fair about that," answered jimmy. "you might just happen to strike the bed where he lays most, and be gettin' bites all the time, and me none; or i might strike it and you be left out. and thin there's days whin the wind has to do, and the light. we ought to change places ivery hour." "there's nothing fair in that either," broke in dannie. "i might have him tolled up to my place, and juist be feedin' him my bait, and here you'd come along and prove by your watch that my time was up, and take him when i had him all ready to bite." "that's so for you!" hurried in jimmy. "i'll be hanged if i'd leave a place by the watch whin i had a strike!" "me either," said dannie. "'tis past human nature to ask it. i'll tell ye what we'll do. we'll go to work and rig up a sort of a bridge where it's so narrow and shallow, juist above kingfisher shoals, and then we'll toss up fra sides. then each will keep to his side. with a decent pole either of us can throw across the pool, and both of us can fish as we please. then each fellow can pick his bait, and cast or fish deep as he thinks best. what d'ye say to that?" "i don't see how anything could be fairer than that," said jimmy. "i don't want to fish for anything but the bass. i'm goin' back and get our rubber boots, and you be rollin' logs, and we'll build that crossing right now." "all richt," said dannie. so they laid aside their poles and tackle, and dannie rolled logs and gathered material for the bridge, while jimmy went back after their boots. then both of them entered the water and began clearing away drift and laying the foundations. as the first log of the crossing lifted above the water dannie paused. "how about the kingfisher?" he asked. "winna this scare him away?" "not if he ain't a domn fool," said jimmy; "and if he is, let him go!" "seems like the river would no be juist richt without him," said dannie, breaking off a spice limb and nibbling the fragrant buds. "let's only use what we bare need to get across. and where will we fix fra mary?" "oh, git out!" said jimmy. "i ain't goin' to fool with that." "well, we best fix a place. then we can tell her we fixed it, and it's all ready." "sure!" cried jimmy. "you are catchin' it from your neighbor. till her a place is all fixed and watin', and you couldn't drag her here with a team of oxen. till her you are ~going to fix it soon, and she'll come to see if you've done it, if she has to be carried on a stritcher." so they selected a spot that they thought would be all right for mary, and not close enough to disturb the bass and the kingfisher, rolled two logs, and fished a board that had been carried by a freshet from the water and laid it across them, and decided that would have to serve until they could do better. then they sat astride the board, dannie drew out a coin, and they tossed it to see which was heads and tails. dannie won heads. then they tossed to see which bank was heads or tails, and the right, which was on rainbow side, came heads. so jimmy was to use the bridge. then they went home, and began the night work. the first thing jimmy espied was the barrel containing the milk pail. he fished out the pail, and while dannie fed the stock, shoveled manure, and milked, jimmy pounded out the dents, closed the bullet holes, emptied the bait into it, half filled it with mellow earth, and went to mary for some corn meal to sprinkle on the top to feed the worms. at four o'clock the next morning, dannie was up feeding, milking, scraping plows, and setting bolts. after breakfast they piled their implements on a mudboat, which dannie drove, while jimmy rode one of his team, and led the other, and opened the gates. they began on dannie's field, because it was closest, and for the next two weeks, unless it were too rainy to work, they plowed, harrowed, lined off, and planted the seed. the blackbirds followed along the furrows picking up grubs, the crows cawed from high tree tops, the bluebirds twittered about hollow stumps and fence rails, the wood thrushes sang out their souls in the thickets across the river, and the king cardinal of rainbow bottom whistled to split his throat from the giant sycamore. tender greens were showing along the river and in the fields, and the purple of red-bud mingled with the white of wild plum all along the wabash. the sunny side of the hill that sloped down to rainbow bottom was a mass of spring beauties, anemones, and violets; thread-like ramps rose rank to the scent among them, and round ginger leaves were thrusting their folded heads through the mold. the kingfisher was cleaning his house and fishing from his favorite stump in the river, while near him, at the fall of every luckless worm that missed its hold on a blossom-whitened thorn tree, came the splash of the great black bass. every morning the bass took a trip around horseshoe bend food hunting, and the small fry raced for life before his big, shear-like jaws. during the heat of noon he lay in the deep pool below the stump, and rested; but when evening came he set out in search of supper, and frequently he felt so good that he leaped clear of the water, and fell back with a splash that threw shining spray about him, or lashed out with his tail and sent widening circles of waves rolling from his lurking place. then the kingfisher rattled with all his might, and flew for the tunnel in the embankment. some of these days the air was still, the earth warmed in the golden sunshine, and murmured a low song of sleepy content. some days the wind raised, whirling dead leaves before it, and covering the earth with drifts of plum, cherry, and apple bloom, like late falling snow. then great black clouds came sweeping across the sky, and massed above rainbow bottom. the lightning flashed as if the heavens were being cracked open, and the rolling thunder sent terror to the hearts of man and beast. when the birds flew for shelter, dannie and jimmy unhitched their horses, and raced for the stables to escape the storm, and to be with mary, whom electricity made nervous. they would sit on the little front porch, and watch the greedy earth drink the downpour. they could almost see the grass and flowers grow. when the clouds scattered, the thunder grew fainter; and the sun shone again between light sprinkles of rain. then a great, glittering rainbow set its arch in the sky, and it planted one of its feet in horseshoe bend, and the other so far away they could not even guess where. if it rained lightly, in a little while dannie and jimmy could go back to their work afield. if the downpour was heavy, and made plowing impossible, they pulled weeds, and hoed in the garden. dannie discoursed on the wholesome freshness of the earth, and jimmy ever waited a chance to twist his words, and ring in a laugh on him. he usually found it. sometimes, after a rain, they took their bait cans, and rods, and went down to the river to fish. if one could not go, the other religiously refrained from casting bait into the pool where the black bass lay. once, when they were fishing together, the bass rose to a white moth, skittered over the surface by dannie late in the evening, and twice jimmy had strikes which he averred had taken the arm almost off him, but neither really had the bass on his hook. they kept to their own land, and fished when they pleased, for game laws and wardens were unknown to them. truth to tell, neither of them really hoped to get the bass before fall. the water was too high in the spring. minnows were plentiful, and as jimmy said, "it seemed as if the domn plum tree just rained caterpillars." so they bided their time, and the signs prohibiting trespass on all sides of their land were many and emphatic, and mary had instructions to ring the dinner bell if she caught sight of any strangers. the days grew longer, and the sun was insistent. untold miles they trudged back and forth across their land, guiding their horses, jerked about with plows, their feet weighted with the damp, clinging earth, and their clothing pasted to their wet bodies. jimmy was growing restless. never in all his life had he worked so faithfully as that spring, and never had his visits to casey's so told on him. no matter where they started, or how hard they worked, dannie was across the middle of the field, and helping jimmy before the finish. it was always dannie who plowed on, while jimmy rode to town for the missing bolt or buckle, and he generally rolled from his horse into a fence corner, and slept the remainder of the day on his return. the work and heat were beginning to tire him, and his trips to casey's had been much less frequent than he desired. he grew to feel that between them dannie and mary were driving him, and a desire to balk at slight cause, gathered in his breast. he deliberately tied his team in a fence corner, lay down, and fell asleep. the clanging of the supper bell aroused him. he opened his eyes, and as he rose, found that dannie had been to the barn, and brought a horse blanket to cover him. well as he knew anything, jimmy knew that he had no business sleeping in fence corners so early in the season. with candor he would have admitted to himself that a part of his brittle temper came from aching bones and rheumatic twinges. some way, the sight of dannie swinging across the field, looking as fresh as in the early morning, and the fact that he had carried a blanket to cover him, and the further fact that he was wild for drink, and could think of no excuse on earth for going to town, brought him to a fighting crisis. dannie turned his horses at jimmy's feet. "come on, jimmy, supper bell has rung," he cried. "we mustn't keep mary waiting. she wants us to help her plant the sweet potatoes to-nicht." jimmy rose, and his joints almost creaked. the pain angered him. he leaned forward and glared at dannie. "is there one minute of the day whin you ain't thinkin' about my wife?" he demanded, oh, so slowly, and so ugly! dannie met his hateful gaze squarely. "na a minute," he answered, "excepting when i am thinking about ye." "the hell you say!" exploded the astonished jimmy. dannie stepped out of the furrow, and came closer. "see here, jimmy malone," he said. "ye ain't forgot the nicht when i told ye i loved mary, with all my heart, and that i'd never love another woman. i sent ye to tell her fra me, and to ask if i might come to her. and ye brought me her answer. it's na your fault that she preferred ye. everybody did. but it ~is your fault that i've stayed on here. i tried to go, and ye wouldna let me. so for fifteen years, ye have lain with the woman i love, and i have lain alone in a few rods of ye. if that ain't man-hell, try some other on me, and see if it will touch me! i sent ye to tell her that i loved her; have i ever sent ye to tell her that i've quit? i should think you'd know, by this time, that i'm na quitter. love her! why, i love her till i can see her standin' plain before me, when i know she's a mile away. love her! why, i can smell her any place i am, sweeter than any flower i ever held to my face. love her! till the day i dee i'll love her. but it ain't any fault of yours, and if ye've come to the place where i worry ye, that's the place where i go, as i wanted to on the same day ye brought mary to rainbow bottom." jimmy's gray jaws fell open. jimmy's sullen eyes cleared. he caught dannie by the arm. "for the love of hivin, what did i say, dannie?" he panted. "i must have been half asleep. go! you go! you leave rainbow bottom! thin, by god, i go too! i won't stay here without you, not a day. if i had to take my choice between you, i'd give up mary before i'd give up the best frind i iver had. go! i guess not, unless i go with you! she can go to----" "jimmy! jimmy!" cautioned dannie. "i mane ivery domn word of it," said jimmy. "i think more of you, than i iver did of any woman." dannie drew a deep breath. "then why in the name of god did ye ~say that thing to me? i have na betrayed your trust in me, not ever, jimmy, and ye know it. what's the matter with ye?" jimmy heaved a deep sigh, and rubbed his hands across his hot, angry face. "oh, i'm just so domn sore!" he said. "some days i get about wild. things haven't come out like i thought they would." "jimmy, if ye are in trouble, why do ye na tell me? canna i help ye? have'nt i always helped ye if i could?" "yes, you have," said jimmy. "always, been a thousand times too good to me. but you can't help here. i'm up agin it alone, but put this in your pipe, and smoke it good and brown, if you go, i go. i don't stay here without you." "then it's up to ye na to make it impossible for me to stay," said dannie. "after this, i'll try to be carefu'. i've had no guard on my lips. i've said whatever came into my heid." the supper bell clanged sharply a second time. "that manes more hivin on the wabash," said jimmy. "wish i had a bracer before i face it." "how long has it been, jimmy?" asked dannie. "etarnity!" replied jimmy briefly. dannie stood thinking, and then light broke. jimmy was always short of money in summer. when trapping was over, and before any crops were ready, he was usually out of funds. dannie hesitated, and then he said, "would a small loan be what ye need, jimmy?" jimmy's eyes gleamed. "it would put new life into me," he cried. "forgive me, dannie. i am almost crazy." dannie handed over a coin, and after supper jimmy went to town. then dannie saw his mistake. he had purchased peace for himself, but what about mary? chapter vi the heart of mary malone "this is the job that was done with the reaper, if we hustle we can do it ourselves, thus securing to us a little cheaper, the bread and pie upon our pantry shelves. eat this wheat, by and by, on this beautiful wabash shore, drink this rye, by and by, eat and drink on this beautiful shore." so sang jimmy as he drove through the wheat, oats and rye accompanied by the clacking machinery. dannie stopped stacking sheaves to mop his warm, perspiring face and to listen. jimmy always with an eye to the effect he was producing immediately broke into wilder parody: "drive this mower, a little slower, on this beautiful wabash shore, cuttin' wheat to buy our meat, cuttin' oats, to buy our coats, also pants, if we get the chance. by and by, we'll cut the rye, but i bet my hat i drink that, i drink that. drive this mower a little slower, in this wheat, in this wheat, by and by." the larks scolded, fluttering over head, for at times the reaper overtook their belated broods. the bobolinks danced and chattered on stumps and fences, in an agony of suspense, when their nests were approached, and cried pitifully if they were destroyed. the chewinks flashed from the ground to the fences and trees, and back, crying "che-wink?" "che-wee!" to each other, in such excitement that they appeared to be in danger of flirting off their long tails. the quail ran about the shorn fields, and excitedly called from fence riders to draw their flocks into the security of rainbow bottom. frightened hares bounded through the wheat, and if the cruel blade sheared into their nests, dannie gathered the wounded and helpless of the scattered broods in his hat, and carried them to mary. then came threshing, which was a busy time, but after that, through the long hot days of late july and august, there was little to do afield, and fishing was impossible. dannie grubbed fence corners, mended fences, chopped and corded wood for winter, and in spare time read his books. for the most part jimmy kept close to dannie. jimmy's temper never had been so variable. dannie was greatly troubled, for despite jimmy's protests of devotion, he flared at a word, and sometimes at no word at all. the only thing in which he really seemed interested was the coon skin he was dressing to send to boston. over that he worked by the hour, sometimes with earnest face, and sometimes he raised his head, and let out a whoop that almost frightened mary. at such times he was sure to go on and give her some new detail of the hunt for the fifty coons, that he had forgotten to tell her before. he had been to the hotel, and learned the thread man's name and address, and found that he did not come regularly, and no one knew when to expect him; so when he had combed and brushed the fur to its finest point, and worked the skin until it was velvet soft, and bleached it until it was muslin white, he made it into a neat package and sent it with his compliments to the boston man. after he had waited for a week, he began going to town every day to the post office for the letter he expected, and coming home much worse for a visit to casey's. since plowing time he had asked dannie for money as he wanted it, telling him to keep an account, and he would pay him in the fall. he seemed to forget or not to know how fast his bills grew. then came a week in august when the heat invaded even the cool retreat along the river. out on the highway passing wheels rolled back the dust like water, and raised it in clouds after them. the rag weeds hung wilted heads along the road. the goldenrod and purple ironwort were dust-colored and dust-choked. the trees were thirsty, and their leaves shriveling. the river bed was bare its width in places, and while the kingfisher made merry with his family, and rattled, feasting from abram johnson's to the gar-hole, the black bass sought its deep pool, and lay still. it was a rare thing to hear it splash in those days. the prickly heat burned until the souls of men were tried. mary slipped listlessly about or lay much of the time on a couch beside a window, where a breath of air stirred. despite the good beginning he had made in the spring, jimmy slumped with the heat and exposures he had risked, and was hard to live with. dannie was not having a good time himself. since jimmy's wedding, life had been all grind to dannie, but he kept his reason, accepted his lot, and ground his grist with patience and such cheer as few men could have summoned to the aid of so poor a cause. had there been any one to notice it, dannie was tired and heat-ridden also, but as always, dannie sank self, and labored uncomplainingly with jimmy's problems. on a burning august morning dannie went to breakfast, and found mary white and nervous, little prepared to eat, and no sign of jimmy. "jimmy sleeping?" he asked. "i don't know where jimmy is," mary answered coldly. "since when?" asked dannie, gulping coffee, and taking hasty bites, for he had begun his breakfast supposing that jimmy would come presently. "he left as soon as you went home last night," she said, "and he has not come back yet." dannie did not know what to say. loyal to the bone to jimmy, loving each hair on the head of mary malone, and she worn and neglected; the problem was heartbreaking in any solution he attempted, and he felt none too well himself. he arose hastily, muttering something about getting the work done. he brought in wood and water, and asked if there was anything more he could do. "sure!" said mary, in a calm, even voice. "go to the barn, and shovel manure for jimmy malone, and do all the work he shirks, before you do anything for yoursilf." dannie always had admitted that he did not understand women, but he understood a plain danger signal, and he almost ran from the cabin. in the fear that mary might think he had heeded her hasty words, he went to his own barn first, just to show her that he did not do jimmy's work. the flies and mosquitoes were so bad he kept his horses stabled through the day, and turned them to pasture at night. so their stalls were to be cleaned, and he set to work. when he had finished his own barn, as he had nothing else to do, he went on to jimmy's. he had finished the stalls, and was sweeping when he heard a sound at the back door, and turning saw jimmy clinging to the casing, unable to stand longer. dannie sprang to him, and helped him inside. jimmy sank to the floor. dannie caught up several empty grain sacks, folded them, and pushed them under jimmy's head for a pillow. "dannish, didsh shay y'r nash'nal flowerish wash shisle?" asked jimmy. "yes," said dannie, lifting the heavy auburn head to smooth the folds from the sacks. "whysh like me?" "i dinna," answered dannie wearily. "awful jagsh on," murmured jimmy, sighed heavily, and was off. his clothing was torn and dust-covered, his face was purple and bloated, and his hair was dusty and disordered. he was a repulsive sight. as dannie straightened jimmy's limbs he thought he heard a step. he lifted his head and leaned forward to listen. "dannie micnoun?" called the same even, cold voice he had heard at breakfast. "have you left me, too?" dannie sprang for a manger. he caught a great armload of hay, and threw it over jimmy. he gave one hurried toss to scatter it, for mary was in the barn. as he turned to interpose his body between her and the manger, which partially screened jimmy, his heart sickened. he was too late. she hid seen. frightened to the soul, he stared at her. she came a step closer, and with her foot gave a hand of jimmy's that lay exposed a contemptuous shove. "you didn't get him complately covered," she said. "how long have you had him here?" dannie was frightened into speech. "na a minute, mary; he juist came in when i heard ye. i was trying to spare ye." "him, you mane," she said, in that same strange voice. "i suppose you give him money, and he has a bottle, and he's been here all night." "mary," said dannie, "that's na true. i have furnished him money. he'd mortgage the farm, or do something worse if i didna; but i dinna ~where he has been all nicht, and in trying to cover him, my only thought was to save ye pain." "and whin you let him spind money you know you'll never get back, and loaf while you do his work, and when you lie mountain high, times without number, who is it for?" then fifteen years' restraint slid from dannie like a cloak, and in the torture of his soul his slow tongue outran all its previous history. "ye!" he shouted. "it's fra jimmy, too, but ye first. always ye first!" mary began to tremble. her white cheeks burned red. her figure straightened, and her hands clenched. "on the cross! will you swear it?" she cried. "on the sacred body of jesus himself, if i could face him," answered dannie. "anything! everything is fra ye first, mary!" "then why?" she panted between gasps for breath. "tell me why? if you have cared for me enough to stay here all these years and see that i had the bist tratemint you could get for me, why didn't you care for me enough more to save me this? oh, dannie, tell me why?" and then she shook with strangled sobs until she scarce could stand alone. dannie macnoun cleared the space between them and took her in his arms. her trembling hands clung to him, her head dropped on his breast, and the perfume of her hair in his nostrils drove him mad. then the tense bulk of her body struck against him, and horror filled his soul. one second he held her, the next, jimmy smothering under the hay, threw up an arm, and called like a petulant child, "dannie! make shun quit shinish my fashe!" and dannie awoke to the realization that mary was another man's, and that man, one who trusted him completely. the problem was so much too big for poor dannie that reason kindly slipped a cog. he broke from the grasp of the woman, fled through the back door, and took to the woods. he ran as if fiends were after him, and he ran and ran. and when he could run no longer, he walked, but he went on. just on and on. he crossed forests and fields, orchards and highways, streams and rivers, deep woods and swamps, and on, and on he went. he felt nothing, and saw nothing, and thought nothing, save to go on, always on. in the dark he stumbled on and through the day he staggered on, and he stopped for nothing, save at times to lift water to his parched lips. the bushes took his hat, the thorns ripped his shirt, the water soaked his shoes and they spread and his feet came through and the stones cut them until they bled. leaves and twigs stuck in his hair, and his eyes grew bloodshot, his lips and tongue swollen, and when he could go no further on his feet, he crawled on his knees, until at last he pitched forward on his face and lay still. the tumult was over and mother nature set to work to see about repairing damages. dannie was so badly damaged, soul, heart, and body, that she never would have been equal to the task, but another woman happened that way and she helped. dannie was carried to a house and a doctor dressed his hurts. when the physician got down to first principles, and found a big, white-bodied, fine-faced scotchman in the heart of the wreck, he was amazed. a wild man, but not a whiskey bloat. a crazy man, but not a maniac. he stood long beside dannie as he lay unconscious. "i'll take oath that man has wronged no one," he said. "what in the name of god has some woman been doing to him?" he took money from dannie's wallet and bought clothing to replace the rags he had burned. he filled dannie with nourishment, and told the woman who found him that when he awoke, if he did not remember, to tell him that his name was dannie macnoun, and that he lived in rainbow bottom, adams county. because just at that time dannie was halfway across the state. a day later he awoke, in a strange room and among strange faces. he took up life exactly where he left off. and in his ears, as he remembered his flight, rang the awful cry uttered by mary malone, and not until then did there come to dannie the realization that she had been driven to seek him for help, because her woman's hour was upon her. cold fear froze dannie's soul. he went back by railway and walked the train most of the way. he dropped from the cars at the water tank and struck across country, and again he ran. but this time it was no headlong flight. straight as a homing bird went dannie with all speed, toward the foot of the rainbow and mary malone. the kingfisher sped rattling down the river when dannie came crashing along the bank. "oh, god, let her be alive!" prayed dannie as he leaned panting against a tree for an instant, because he was very close now and sickeningly afraid. then he ran on. in a minute it would be over. at the next turn he could see the cabins. as he dashed along, jimmy malone rose from a log and faced him. a white jimmy, with blackringed eyes and shaking hands. "where the hell have you been?" jimmy demanded. "is she dead?" cried dannie." the doctor is talking scare," said jimmy. "but i don't scare so easy. she's never been sick in her life, and she has lived through it twice before, why should she die now? of course the kid is dead again," he added angrily. dannie shut his eyes and stood still. he had helped plant starflowers on two tiny cross-marked mounds at five mile hill. now, there were three. jimmy had worn out her love for him, that was plain. "why should she die now?" to dannie it seemed that question should have been, "why should she live?" jimmy eyed him belligerently. "why in the name of sinse did you cut out whin i was off me pins?" he growled. "of course i don't blame you for cutting that kind of a party, me for the woods, all right, but what i can't see is why you couldn't have gone for the doctor and waited until i'd slept it off before you wint." "i dinna know she was sick," answered dannie. "i deserve anything ony ane can say to me, and it's all my fault if she dees, but this ane thing ye got to say ye know richt noo, jimmy. ye got to say ye know that i dinna understand mary was sick when i went." "sure! i've said that all the time," agreed jimmy. "but what i don't understand is, ~why you went! i guess she thinks it was her fault. i came out here to try to study it out. the nurse-woman, domn pretty girl, says if you don't get back before midnight, it's all up. you're just on time, dannie. the talk in the house is that she'll wink out if you don't prove to her that she didn't drive you away. she is about crazy over it. what did she do to you?" "nothing!" exclaimed dannie." she was so deathly sick she dinna what she was doing. i can see it noo, but i dinna understand then." "that's all right," said jimmy. "she didn't! she kapes moaning over and over "what did i do? you hustle in and fix it up with her. i'm getting tired of all this racket." all dannie heard was that he was to go to mary. he went up the lane, across the garden, and stepped in at the back door. beside the table stood a comely young woman, dressed in blue and white stripes. she was doing something with eggs and milk. she glanced at dannie, and finished filling a glass. as she held it to the light, "is your name macnoun?" she inquired. "yes," said dannie. "dannie macnoun?" she asked. "yes," said dannie. "then you are the medicine needed here just now," she said, as if that were the most natural statement in the world. "mrs. malone seems to have an idea that she offended you, and drove you from home, just prior to her illness, and as she has been very sick, she is in no condition to bear other trouble. you understand?" "do ye understand that i couldna have gone if i had known she was ill?" asked dannie in turn. "from what she has said in delirium i have been sure of that," replied the nurse. "it seems you have been the stay of the family for years. i have a very high opinion of you, mr. macnoun. wait until i speak to her." the nurse vanished, presently returned, and as dannie passed through the door, she closed it after him, and he stood still, trying to see in the dim light. that great snowy stretch, that must be the bed. that tumbled dark circle, that must be mary's hair. that dead white thing beneath it, that must be mary's face. those burning lights, flaming on him, those must be mary's eyes. dannie stepped softly across the room, and bent over the bed. he tried hard to speak naturally. "mary" he said, "oh, mary, i dinna know ye were ill! oh, believe me, i dinna realize ye were suffering pain." she smiled faintly, and her lips moved. dannie bent lower. "promise," she panted. "promise you will stay now." her hand fumbled at her breast, and then she slipped on the white cover a little black cross. dannie knew what she meant. he laid his hand on the emblem precious to her, and said softly, "i swear i never will leave ye again, mary malone." a great light swept into her face, and she smiled happily. "now ye," said dannie. he slipped the cross into her hand. "repeat after me," he said. "i promise i will get well, dannie." "i promise i will get well, dannie, if i can," said mary. "na," said dannie. "that winna do. repeat what i said, and remember it is on the cross. life hasna been richt for ye, mary, but if ye will get well, before the lord in some way we will make it happier. ye will get well?" "i promise i will get well, dannie," said mary malone, and dannie softly left the room. outside he said to the nurse, "what can i do?" she told him everything of which she could think that would be of benefit. "now tell me all ye know of what happened," commanded dannie. "after you left," said the nurse, "she was in labor, and she could not waken her husband, and she grew frightened and screamed. there were men passing out on the road. they heard her, and came to see what was the matter." "strangers?" shuddered dannie, with dry lips. "no, neighbors. one man went for the nearest woman, and the other drove to town for a doctor. they had help here almost as soon as you could. but, of course, the shock was a very dreadful thing, and the heat of the past few weeks has been enervating." "ane thing more," questioned dannie. "why do her children dee?" "i don't know about the others," answered the nurse. "this one simply couldn't be made to breathe. it was a strange thing. it was a fine big baby, a boy, and it seemed perfect, but we couldn't save it. i never worked harder. they told me she had lost two others, and we tried everything of which we could think. it just seemed as if it had grown a lump of flesh, with no vital spark in it." dannie turned, went out of the door, and back along the lane to the river where he had left jimmy. "`a lump of flesh with na vital spark in it,'" he kept repeating. "i dinna but that is the secret. she is almost numb with misery. all these days when she's been without hope, and these awful nichts, when she's watched and feared alone, she has no wished to perpetuate him in children who might be like him, and so at their coming the `vital spark' is na in them. oh, jimmy, jimmy, have ye mary's happiness and those three little graves to answer for?" he found jimmy asleep where he had left him. dannie shook him awake. "i want to talk with ye," he said. jimmy sat up, and looked into dannie's face. he had a complaint on his lips but it died there. he tried to apologize. "i am almost dead for sleep," he said. "there has been no rest for anyone here. what do you think?" "i think she will live," said dannie dryly. "in spite of your neglect, and my cowardice, i think she will live to suffer more frae us." jimmy's mouth opened, but for once no sound issued. the drops of perspiration raised on his forehead. dannie sat down, and staring at him jimmy saw that there were patches of white hair at his temples that had been brown a week before; his colorless face was sunken almost to the bone, and there was a peculiar twist about his mouth. jimmy's heart weighed heavily, his tongue stood still, and he was afraid to the marrow in his bones. "i think she will live," repeated dannie. "and about the suffering more, we will face that like men, and see what can be done about it. this makes three little graves on the hill, jimmy, what do they mean to ye?" "domn bad luck," said jimmy promptly. "nothing more?" asked dannie. "na responsibility at all. ye are the father of those children. have ye never been to the doctor, and asked why ye lost them?" "no, i haven't," said jimmy. "that is ane thing we will do now," said dannie, "and then we will do more, much more." "what are you driving at?" asked jimmy. "the secret of mary's heart," said dannie. the cold sweat ran from the pores of jimmy's body. he licked his dry lips, and pulled his hat over his eyes, that he might watch dannie from under the brim. "we are twa big, strong men," said dannie. "for fifteen years we have lived here wi' mary. the night ye married her, the licht of happiness went out for me. but i shut my mouth, and shouldered my burden, and went on with my best foot first; because if she had na refused me, i should have married her, and then ye would have been the one to suffer. if she had chosen me, i should have married her, juist as ye did. oh, i've never forgotten that! so i have na been a happy mon, jimmy. we winna go into that any further, we've been over it once. it seems to be a form of torture especially designed fra me, though at times i must confess, it seems rough, and i canna see why, but we'll cut that off with this: life has been hell's hottest sweat-box fra me these fifteen years." jimmy groaned aloud. dannie's keen gray eyes seemed boring into the soul of the man before him, as he went on. "now how about ye? ye got the girl ye wanted. ye own a guid farm that would make ye a living, and save ye money every year. ye have done juist what ye pleased, and as far as i could, i have helped ye. i've had my eye on ye pretty close, jimmy, and if ~ye are a happy mon, i dinna but i'm content as i am. what's your trouble? did ye find ye dinna love mary after ye won her? did ye murder your mither or blacken your soul with some deadly sin? mon! if i had in my life what ye every day neglect and torture, heaven would come doon, and locate at the foot of the rainbow fra me. but, ye are no happy, jimmy. let's get at the root of the matter. while ye are unhappy, mary will be also. we are responsible to god for her, and between us, she is empty armed, near to death, and almost dumb with misery. i have juist sworn to her on the cross she loves that if she will make ane more effort, and get well, we will make her happy. now, how are we going to do it?" another great groan burst from jimmy, and he shivered as if with a chill. "let us look ourselves in the face," dannie went on, "and see what we lack. what can we do fra her? what will bring a song to her lips, licht to her beautiful eyes, love to her heart, and a living child to her arms? wake up, mon! by god, if ye dinna set to work with me and solve this problem, i'll shake a solution out of ye! what i must suffer is my own, but what's the matter with ye, and why, when she loved and married ye, are ye breakin' mary's heart? answer me, mon!" dannie reached over and snatched the hat from jimmy's forehead, and stared at an inert heap. jimmy lay senseless, and he looked like death. dannie rushed down to the water with the hat, and splashed drops into jimmy's face until he gasped for breath. when he recovered a little, he shrank from dannie, and began to sob, as if he were a sick ten-year-old child. "i knew you'd go back on me, dannie," he wavered. "i've lost the only frind i've got, and i wish i was dead." "i havena gone back on ye," persisted dannie, bathing jimmy's face. "life means nothing to me, save as i can use it fra mary, and fra ye. be quiet, and sit up here, and help me work this thing out. why are ye a discontented mon, always wishing fra any place save home? why do ye spend all ye earn foolishly, so that ye are always hard up, when ye might have affluence? why does mary lose her children, and why does she noo wish she had na married ye?" "who said she wished she hadn't married me?" cried jimmy. "do ye mean to say ye think she doesn't?" blazed dannie. "i ain't said anything!" exclaimed jimmy. "na, and i seem to have damn poor luck gettin' ye ~to say anything. i dinna ask fra tears, nor faintin' like a woman. be a mon, and let me into the secret of this muddle. there is a secret, and ye know it. what is it? why are ye breaking the heart o' mary malone? answer me, or 'fore god i'll wring the answer fra your body!" and jimmy keeled over again. this time he was gone so far that dannie was frightened into a panic, and called the doctor coming up the lane to jimmy before he had time to see mary. the doctor soon brought jimmy around, prescribed quiet and sleep; talked about heart trouble developing, and symptoms of tremens, and dannie poured on water, and gritted his teeth. and it ended by jimmy being helped to dannie's cabin, undressed, and put into bed, and then dannie went over to see what he could do for the nurse. she looked at him searchingly. "mr. macnoun, when were you last asleep?" she asked. "i forget," answered dannie." when did you last have a good hot meal?" "i dinna know," replied dannie." drink that," said the nurse, handing him the bowl of broth she carried, and going back to the stove for another. "when i have finished making mrs. malone comfortable, i'm going to get you something to eat, and you are going to eat it. then you are going to lie down on that cot where i can call you if i need you, and sleep six hours, and then you're going to wake up and watch by this door while i sleep my six. even nurses must have some rest, you know." "ye first," said dannie. "i'll be all richt when i get food. since ye mention it, i believe i am almost mad with hunger." the nurse handed him another bowl of broth. "just drink that, and drink slowly," she said, as she left the room. dannie could hear her speaking softly to mary, and then all was quiet, and the girl came out and closed the door. she deftly prepared food for dannie, and he ate all she would allow him, and begged for more; but she firmly told him her hands were full now, and she had no one to depend on but him to watch after the turn of the night. so dannie lay down on the cot. he had barely touched it when he thought of jimmy, so he got up quietly and started home. he had almost reached his back door when it opened, and jimmy came out. dannie paused, amazed at jimmy's wild face and staring eyes. "don't you begin your cursed gibberish again," cried jimmy, at sight of him. "i'm burning in all the tortures of fire now, and i'll have a drink if i smash down casey's and steal it." dannie jumped for him, and jimmy evaded him and fled. dannie started after. he had reached the barn before he began to think. "i depend on you," the nurse had said. "jimmy, wait!" he called. "jimmy, have ye any money?" jimmy was running along the path toward town. dannie stopped. he stood staring after jimmy for a second, and then he deliberately turned, went back, and lay down on the cot, where the nurse expected to find him when she wanted him to watch by the door of mary malone. chapter vii the apple of discord becomes a jointed rod what do you think about fishing, dannie?" asked jimmy malone. there was a licht frost last nicht," said dannie. "it begins to look that way. i should think a week more, especially if there should come a guid rain." jimmy looked disappointed. his last trip to town had ended in a sodden week in the barn, and at dannie's cabin. for the first time he had carried whiskey home with him. he had insisted on dannie drinking with him, and wanted to fight when he would not. he addressed the bottle, and dannie, as the sovereign alchemist by turns, and "transmuted the leaden metal of life into pure gold" of a glorious drunk, until his craving was satisfied. then he came back to work and reason one morning, and by the time mary was about enough to notice him, he was jimmy at his level best, and doing more than he had in years to try to interest and please her. mary had fully recovered, and appeared as strong as she ever had been, but there was a noticeable change in her. she talked and laughed with a gayety that seemed forced, and in the midst of it her tongue turned bitter, and jimmy and dannie fled before it. the gray hairs multiplied on dannie's head with rapidity. he had gone to the doctor, and to mary's sister, and learned nothing more than the nurse could tell him. dannie was willing to undertake anything in the world for mary, but just how to furnish the "vital spark," to an unborn babe, was too big a problem for him. and jimmy malone was growing to be another. heretofore, dannie had borne the brunt of the work, and all of the worry. he had let jimmy feel that his was the guiding hand. jimmy's plans were followed whenever it was possible, and when it was not, dannie started jimmy's way, and gradually worked around to his own. but, there never had been a time between them, when things really came to a crisis, and dannie took the lead, and said matters must go a certain way, that jimmy had not acceded. in reality, dannie always had been master. now he was not. where he lost control he did not know. he had tried several times to return to the subject of how to bring back happiness to mary, and jimmy immediately developed symptoms of another attack of heart disease, a tendency to start for town, or openly defied him by walking away. yet, jimmy stuck to him closer than he ever had, and absolutely refused to go anywhere, or to do the smallest piece of work alone. sometimes he grew sullen and morose when he was not drinking, and that was very unlike the gay jimmy. sometimes he grew wildly hilarious, as if he were bound to make such a racket that he could hear no sound save his own voice. so long as he stayed at home, helped with the work, and made an effort to please mary, dannie hoped for the best, but his hopes never grew so bright that they shut out an awful fear that was beginning to loom in the future. but he tried in every way to encourage jimmy, and help him in the struggle he did not understand, so when he saw that jimmy was disappointed about the fishing, he suggested that he should go alone. "i guess not!" said jimmy. "i'd rather go to confission than to go alone. what's the fun of fishin' alone? all the fun there is to fishin' is to watch the other fellow's eyes when you pull in a big one, and try to hide yours from him when he gets it. i guess not! what have we got to do?" "finish cutting the corn, and get in the pumpkins before there comes frost enough to hurt them." "well, come along!" said jimmy. "let's get it over. i'm going to begin fishing for that bass the morning after the first black frost, if i do go alone. i mean it!" "but ye said--" began dannie. "hagginy!" cried jimmy. "what a lot of time you've wasted if you've been kaping account of all the things i've said. haven't you learned by this time that i lie twice to the truth once?" dannie laughed. "dinna say such things, jimmy. i hate to hear ye. of course, i know about the fifty coons of the canoper, and things like that; honest, i dinna believe ye can help it. but na man need lie about a serious matter, and when he knows he is deceiving another who trusts him." jimmy became so white that he felt the color receding, and turned to hide his face. "of course, about those fifty coons noo, what was the harm in that? nobody believed it. that wasna deceiving any ane." "yes, but it was," answered jimmy. "the boston man belaved it, and i guiss he hasn't forgiven me, if he did take my hand, and drink with me. you know i haven't had a word from him about that coon skin. i worked awful hard on that skin. some way, i tried to make it say to him again that i was sorry for that night's work. sometimes i am a fraid i killed the fellow." "o-ho!" scoffed dannie. "men ain't so easy killed. i been thinkin' about it, too, and i'll tell ye what i think. i think he goes on long trips, and only gets home every four or five months. the package would have to wait. his folks wouldna try to send it after him. he was a monly fellow, all richt, and ye will hear fra him yet." "i'd like to," said jimmy, absently, beating across his palm a spray of goldenrod he had broken. "just a line to tell me that he don't bear malice." "ye will get it," said dannie. "have a little patience. but that's your greatest fault, jimmy. ye never did have ony patience." "for god's sake, don't begin on me faults again," snapped jimmy. "i reckon i know me faults about as well as the nixt fellow. i'm so domn full of faults that i've thought a lot lately about fillin' up, and takin' a sleep on the railroad." a new fear wrung dannie's soul. "ye never would, jimmy," he implored. "sure not!" cried jimmy. "i'm no good catholic livin', but if it come to dyin', bedad i niver could face it without first confissin' to the praste, and that would give the game away. let's cut out dyin', and cut corn!" "that's richt," agreed dannie. "and let's work like men, and then fish fra a week or so, before ice and trapping time comes again. i'll wager i can beat ye the first row." "bate!" scoffed jimmy. "bate! with them club-footed fingers of yours? you couldn't bate an egg. just watch me! if you are enough of a watch to keep your hands runnin' at the same time." jimmy worked feverishly for an hour, and then he straightened and looked about him. on the left lay the river, its shores bordered with trees and bushes. behind them was deep wood. before them lay their open fields, sloping down to the bottom, the cabins on one side, and the kingfisher embankment on the other. there was a smoky haze in the air. as always the blackbirds clamored along the river. some crows followed the workers at a distance, hunting for grains of corn, and over in the woods, a chewink scratched and rustled among the deep leaves as it searched for grubs. from time to time a flock of quail arose before them with a whirr and scattered down the fields, reassembling later at the call of their leader, from a rider of the snake fence, which inclosed the field. "bob, bob white," whistled dannie. "bob, bob white," answered the quail. "i got my eye on that fellow," said jimmy. "when he gets a little larger, i'm going after him." "seems an awful pity to kill him," said dannie. "people rave over the lark, but i vow i'd miss the quail most if they were both gone. they are getting scarce." "well, i didn't say i was going to kill the whole flock," said jimmy. "i was just going to kill a few for mary, and if i don't, somebody else will." "mary dinna need onything better than ane of her own fried chickens," said dannie. "and its no true about hunters. we've the river on ane side, and the bluff on the other. if we keep up our fishing signs, and add hunting to them, and juist shut the other fellows out, the birds will come here like everything wild gathers in national park, out west. ye bet things know where they are taken care of, well enough." jimmy snipped a spray of purple ironwort with his corn-cutter, and stuck it through his suspender buckle. "i think that would be more fun than killin' them. if you're a dacint shot, and your gun is clane" (jimmy remembered the crow that had escaped with the eggs at soap-making), "you pretty well know you're goin' to bring down anything you aim at. but it would be a dandy joke to shell a little corn as we husk it, and toll all the quail into rainbow bottom, and then kape the other fellows out. bedad! let's do it." jimmy addressed the quail: "quailie, quailie on the fince, we think your singin's just imminse. stay right here, and live with us, and the fellow that shoots you will strike a fuss." "we can protect them all richt enough," laughed dannie. "and when the snow comes we can feed cardinals like cheekens. wish when we threshed, we'd saved a few sheaves of wheat. they do that in germany, ye know. the last sheaf of the harvest they put up on a long pole at christmas, as a thank-offering to the birds fra their care of the crops. my father often told of it." "that would be great," said jimmy. "now look how domn slow you are! why didn't you mintion it at harvest? i'd like things comin' for me to take care of them. gee! makes me feel important just to think about it. next year we'll do it, sure. they'd be a lot of company. a man could work in this field to-day, with all the flowers around him, and the colors of the leaves like a garden, and a lot of birds talkin' to him, and not feel afraid of being alone." "afraid?" quoted dannie, in amazement. for an instant jimmy looked startled. then his love of proving his point arose. "yes, afraid!" he repeated stubbornly. "afraid of being away from the sound of a human voice, because whin you are, the voices of the black divils of conscience come twistin' up from the ground in a little wiry whisper, and moanin' among the trees, and whistlin' in the wind, and rollin' in the thunder, and above all in the dark they screech, and shout, and roar,`we're after you, jimmy malone! we've almost got you, jimmy malone! you're going to burn in hell, jimmy malone!'" jimmy leaned toward dannie, and began in a low voice, but he grew so excited as he tried to picture the thing that he ended in a scream, and even then dannie's horrified eyes failed to recall him. jimmy straightened, stared wildly behind him, and over the open, hazy field, where flowers bloomed, and birds called, and the long rows of shocks stood unconscious auditors of the strange scene. he lifted his hat, and wiped the perspiration from his dripping face with the sleeve of his shirt, and as he raised his arm, the corncutter flashed in the light. "my god, it's awful, dannie! it's so awful, i can't begin to tell you!" dannie's face was ashen. "jimmy, dear auld fellow," he said, "how long has this been going on?" "a million years," said jimmy, shifting the corn-cutter to the hand that held his hat, that he might moisten his fingers with saliva and rub it across his parched lips. "jimmy, dear," dannie's hand was on jimmy's sleeve. "have ye been to town in the nicht, or anything like that lately?" "no, dannie, dear, i ain't," sneered jimmy, setting his hat on the back of his head and testing the corn-cutter with his thumb. "this ain't casey's, me lad. i've no more call there, at this minute, than you have." "it is casey's, juist the same," said dannie bitterly. "dinna ye know the end of this sort of thing?" "no, bedad, i don't!" said jimmy. "if i knew any way to ind it, you can bet i've had enough. i'd ind it quick enough, if i knew how. but the railroad wouldn't be the ind. that would just be the beginnin'. keep close to me, dannie, and talk, for mercy sake, talk! do you think we could finish the corn by noon?" "let's try!" said dannie, as he squared his shoulders to adjust them to his new load. "then we'll get in the pumpkins this afternoon, and bury the potatoes, and the cabbage and turnips, and then we're aboot fixed fra winter." "we must take one day, and gather our nuts," suggested jimmy, struggling to make his voice sound natural, "and you forgot the apples. we must bury thim too." "that's so," said dannie, "and when that's over, we'll hae nothing left to do but catch the bass, and say farewell to the kingfisher." "i've already told you that i would relave you of all responsibility about the bass," said jimmy, "and when i do, you won't need trouble to make your adieus to the kingfisher of the wabash. he'll be one bird that won't be migrating this winter." dannie tried to laugh. "i'd like fall as much as any season of the year," he said, "if it wasna for winter coming next." "i thought you liked winter, and the trampin' in the white woods, and trappin', and the long evenings with a book." "i do," said dannie. "i must have been thinkin' of mary. she hated last winter so. of course, i had to go home when ye were away, and the nichts were so long, and so cold, and mony of them alone. i wonder if we canna arrange fra one of her sister's girls to stay with her this winter?" "what's the matter with me?" asked jimmy. "nothing, if only ye'd stay," answered dannie. "all i'll be out of nights, you could put in one eye," said jimmy. "i went last winter, and before, because whin they clamored too loud, i could be drivin' out the divils that way, for a while, and you always came for me, but even that won't be stopping it now. i wouldn't stick my head out alone after dark, not if i was dying!" "jimmy, ye never felt that way before," said dannie. "tell me what happened this summer to start ye." "i've done a domn sight of faleing that you didn't know anything about," answered jimmy. "i could work it off at casey's for a while, but this summer things sort of came to a head, and i saw meself for fair, and before god, dannie, i didn't like me looks." "well, then, i like your looks," said dannie. "ye are the best company i ever was in. ye are the only mon i ever knew that i cared fra, and i care fra ye so much, i havna the way to tell ye how much. you're possessed with a damn fool idea, jimmy, and ye got to shake it off. such a great-hearted, big mon as ye! i winna have it! there's the dinner bell, and richt glad i am of it!" that afternoon when pumpkin gathering was over and jimmy had invited mary out to separate the "punk" from the pumpkins, there was a wagon-load of good ones above what they would need for their use. dannie proposed to take them to town and sell them. to his amazement jimmy refused to go along. "i told you this morning that casey wasn't calling me at prisent," he said, "and whin i am not called i'd best not answer. i have promised mary to top the onions and bury the cilery, and murder the bates." "do what wi' the beets?" inquired the puzzled dannie. "kill thim! kill thim stone dead. i'm too tinder-hearted to be burying anything but a dead bate, dannie. that's a thousand years old, but laugh, like i knew you would, old ramphirinkus! no, thank you, i don't go to town!" then dannie was scared. "he's going to be dreadfully seek or go mad," he said. so he drove to the village, sold the pumpkins, filled mary's order for groceries, and then went to the doctor, and told him of jimmy's latest developments. "it is the drink," said that worthy disciple of esculapius. "it's the drink! in time it makes a fool sodden and a bright man mad. few men have sufficient brains to go crazy. jimmy has. he must stop the drink." on the street, dannie encountered father michael. the priest stopped him to shake hands." how's mary malone?" he asked. "she is quite well noo," answered dannie, "but she is na happy. i live so close, and see so much, i know. i've thought of ye lately. i have thought of coming to see ye. i'm na of your religion, but mary is, and what suits her is guid enough for me. i've tried to think of everything under the sun that might help, and among other things i've thought of ye. jimmy was confirmed in your church, and he was more or less regular up to his marriage." "less, mr. macnoun, much less!" said the priest. "since, not at all. why do you ask?" "he is sick," said dannie. "he drinks a guid deal. he has been reckless about sleeping on the ground, and noo, if ye will make this confidential?"-the priest nodded-"he is talking aboot sleeping on the railroad, and he's having delusions. there are devils after him. he is the finest fellow ye ever knew, father michael. we've been friends all our lives. ye have had much experience with men, and it ought to count fra something. from all ye know, and what i've told ye, could his trouble be cured as the doctor suggests?" the priest did a queer thing. "you know him as no living man, dannie," he said. "what do you think?" dannie's big hands slowly opened and closed. then he fell to polishing the nails of one hand on the palm of the other. at last he answered, "if ye'd asked me that this time last year, i'd have said `it's the drink,' at a jump. but times this summer, this morning, for instance, when he hadna a drop in three weeks, and dinna want ane, when he could have come wi' me to town, and wouldna, and there were devils calling him from the ground, and the trees, and the sky, out in the open cornfield, it looked bad." the priest's eyes were boring into dannie's sick face. "how did it look?" he asked briefly. "it looked," said dannie, and his voice dropped to a whisper, "it looked like he might carry a damned ugly secret, that it would be better fra him if ye, at least, knew." "and the nature of that secret?" dannie shook his head. "couldna give a guess at it! known him all his life. my only friend. always been togither. square a mon as god ever made. there's na fault in him, if he'd let drink alone. got more faith in him than any ane i ever knew. i wouldna trust mon on god's footstool, if i had to lose faith in jimmy. come to think of it, that `secret' business is all old woman's scare. the drink is telling on him. if only he could be cured of that awful weakness, all heaven would come down and settle in rainbow bottom." they shook hands and parted without dannie realizing that he had told all he knew and learned nothing. then he entered the post office for the weekly mail. he called for malone's papers also, and with them came a slip from the express office notifying jimmy that there was a package for him. dannie went to see if they would let him have it, and as jimmy lived in the country, and as he and dannie were known to be partners, he was allowed to sign the book, and carry away a long, slender, wooden box, with a boston tag. the thread man had sent jimmy a present, and from the appearance of the box, dannie made up his mind that it was a cane. straightway he drove home at a scandalous rate of speed, and on the way, he dressed jimmy in a broadcloth suit, patent leathers, and a silk hat. then he took him to a gold cure, where he learned to abhor whiskey in a week, and then to the priest, to whom he confessed that he had lied about the number of coons in the canoper. and so peace brooded in rainbow bottom, and all of them were happy again. for with the passing of summer, dannie had learned that heretofore there had been happiness of a sort, for them, and that if they could all get back to the old footing it would be well, or at least far better than it was at present. with mary's tongue dripping gall, and her sweet face souring, and jimmy hearing devils, no wonder poor dannie overheated his team in a race to carry a package that promised to furnish some diversion. jimmy and mary heard the racket, and standing on the celery hill, they saw dannie come clattering up the lane, and as he saw them, he stood in the wagon, and waved the package over his head. jimmy straightened with a flourish, stuck the spade in the celery hill, and descended with great deliberation. "i mintioned to dannie this morning," he said "that it was about time i was hearin' from the thrid man." "oh! do you suppose it is something from boston?" the eagerness in mary's voice made it sound almost girlish again. "hunt the hatchet!" hissed jimmy, and walked very leisurely into the cabin. dannie was visibly excited as he entered. "i think ye have heard from the thread mon," he said, handing jimmy the package. jimmy took it, and examined it carefully. he never before in his life had an express package, the contents of which he did not know. it behooved him to get all there was out of the pride and the joy of it. mary laid down the hatchet so close that it touched jimmy's hand, to remind him. "now what do you suppose he has sent you?" she inquired eagerly, her hand straying toward the packages. jimmy tested the box. "it don't weigh much," he said, "but one end of it's the heaviest." he set the hatchet in a tiny crack, and with one rip, stripped off the cover. inside lay a long, brown leather case, with small buckles, and in one end a little leather case, flat on one side, rounding on the other, and it, too, fastened with a buckle. jimmy caught sight of a paper book folded in the bottom of the box, as he lifted the case. with trembling fingers he unfastened the buckles, the whole thing unrolled, and disclosed a case of leather, sewn in four divisions, from top to bottom, and from the largest of these protruded a shining object. jimmy caught this, and began to draw, and the shine began to lengthen. "just what i thought!" exclaimed dannie. "he's sent ye a fine cane." "a hint to kape out of the small of his back the nixt time he goes promenadin' on a cow-kitcher! the divil!" exploded jimmy. his quick eyes had caught a word on the cover of the little book in the bottom of the box. "a cane! a cane! look at that, will ye?" he flashed six inches of grooved silvery handle before their faces, and three feet of shining black steel, scarcely thicker than a lead pencil. "cane!" he cried scornfully. then he picked up the box, and opening it drew out a little machine that shone like a silver watch, and setting it against the handle, slipped a small slide over each end, and it held firmly, and shone bravely. "oh, jimmy, what is it?" cried mary. "me cane!" answered jimmy. "me new cane from boston. didn't you hear dannie sayin' what it was? this little arrangemint is my cicly-meter, like they put on wheels, and buggies now, to tell how far you've traveled. the way this works, i just tie this silk thrid to me door knob and off i walks, it a reeling out behind, and whin i turn back it takes up as i come, and whin i get home i take the yardstick and measure me string, and be the same token, it tells me how far i've traveled." as he talked he drew out another shining length and added it to the first, and then another and a last, fine as a wheat straw. "these last jints i'm adding," he explained to mary, "are so that if i have me cane whin i'm riding i can stritch it out and touch up me horses with it. and betimes, if i should iver break me old cane fish pole, i could take this down to the river, and there, the books call it `whipping the water.' see! cane, be jasus! it's the jim-dandiest little fishing rod anybody in these parts iver set eyes on. lord! what a beauty!" he turned to dannie and shook the shining, slender thing before his envious eyes. "who gets the black bass now?" he triumphed in tones of utter conviction. there is no use in taking time to explain to any fisherman who has read thus far that dannie, the patient; dannie, the long-suffering, felt abused. how would you feel yourself? "the thread man might have sent twa," was his thought. "the only decent treatment he got that nicht was frae me, and if i'd let jimmy hit him, he'd gone through the wall. but there never is anything fra me!" and that was true. there never was. aloud he said, "dinna bother to hunt the steelyards, mary. we winna weigh it until he brings it home." "yes, and by gum, i'll bring it with this! look, here is a picture of a man in a boat, pullin' in a whale with a pole just like this," bragged jimmy. "yes," said dannie. "that's what it's made for. a boat and open water. if ye are going to fish wi' that thing along the river we'll have to cut doon all the trees, and that will dry up the water. that's na for river fishing." jimmy was intently studying the book. mary tried to take the rod from his hand. "let be!" he cried, hanging on. "you'll break it!" "i guess steel don't break so easy," she said aggrievedly. "i just wanted to `heft' it." "light as a feather," boasted jimmy. "fish all day and it won't tire a man at all. done--unjoint it and put it in its case, and not go dragging up everything along the bank like a living stump-puller. this book says this line will bear twinty pounds pressure, and sometimes it's takin' an hour to tire out a fish, if it's a fighter. i bet you the black bass is a fighter, from what we know of him." "ye can watch me land him and see what ye think about it," suggested dannie. jimmy held the book with one hand and lightly waved the rod with the other, in a way that would have developed nerves in an indian. he laughed absently. "with me shootin' bait all over his pool with.this?" he asked. "i guess not!" "but you can't fish for the bass with that, jimmy malone," cried mary hotly. "you agreed to fish fair for the bass, and it wouldn't be fair for you to use that, whin dannie only has his old cane pole. dannie, get you a steel pole, too," she begged. "if jimmy is going to fish with that, there will be all the more glory in taking the bass from him with the pole i have," answered dannie. "you keep out," cried jimmy angrily to mary. "it was a fair bargain. he made it himself. each man was to fish surface or deep, and with his own pole and bait. i guess this ~is my pole, ain't it?" "yes," said mary. "but it wasn't yours whin you made that agreemint. you very well know dannie expected you to fish with the same kind of pole and bait that he did; didn't you, dannie?" "yes," said dannie, "i did. because i never dreamed of him havin' any other. but since he has it, i think he's in his rights if he fishes with it. i dinna care. in the first place he will only scare the bass away from him with the racket that reel will make, and in the second, if he tries to land it with that thing, he will smash it, and lose the fish. there's a longhandled net to land things with that goes with those rods. he'd better sent ye one. now you'll have to jump into the river and land a fish by hand if ye hook it." "that's true!" cried mary. "here's one in a picture." she had snatched the book from jimmy. he snatched it back. "be careful, you'll tear that!" he cried. "i was just going to say that i would get some fine wire or mosquito bar and make one." dannie's fingers were itching to take the rod, if only for an instant. he looked at it longingly. but jimmy was impervious. he whipped it softly about and eagerly read from the book. "tells here about a man takin' a fish that weighed forty pounds with a pole just like this," he announced. "scat! jumpin' jehosophat! what do you think of that!" "couldn't you fish turn about with it?" inquired mary. "na, we couldna fish turn about with it," answered dannie. "na with that pole. jimmy would throw a fit if anybody else touched it. and he's welcome to it. he never in this world will catch the black bass with it. if i only had some way to put juist fifteen feet more line on my pole, i'd show him how to take the bass to-morrow. the way we always have come to lose it is with too short lines. we have to try to land it before it's tired out and it's strong enough to break and tear away. it must have ragged jaws and a dozen pieces of line hanging to it, fra both of us have hooked it time and again. when it strikes me, if i only could give it fifteen feet more line, i could land it." "can't you fix some way?" asked mary. "i'll try," answered dannie. "and in the manetime, i'd just be givin' it twinty off me dandy little reel, and away goes me with mr. bass," said jimmy. "i must take it to town and have its picture took to sind the thrid man." and that was the last straw. dannie had given up being allowed to touch the rod, and was on his way to unhitch his team and do the evening work. the day had been trying and just for the moment he forgot everything save that his longing fingers had not touched that beautiful little fishing rod. "the boston man forgot another thing," he said. "the dude who shindys 'round with those things in pictures, wears a damn, dinky, little pleated coat!" chapter viii when the black bass struck "lots of fish down in the brook, all you need is a rod, and a line, and a hook," hummed jimmy, still lovingly fingering his possessions. "did dannie iver say a thing like that to you before?" asked mary. "oh, he's dead sore," explained jimmy. "he thinks he should have had a jinted rod, too." "and so he had," replied mary. "you said yoursilf that you might have killed that man if dannie hadn't showed you that you were wrong." "you must think stuff like this is got at the tin-cint store," said jimmy. "oh, no i don't!" said mary. "i expect it cost three or four dollars." "three or four dollars," sneered jimmy. "all the sinse a woman has! feast your eyes on this book and rade that just this little reel alone cost fifteen, and there's no telling what the rod is worth. why it's turned right out of pure steel, same as if it were wood. look for yoursilf." "thanks, no! i'm afraid to touch it," said mary. "oh, you are sore too!" laughed jimmy. "with all that money in it, i should think you could see why i wouldn't want it broke." "you've sat there and whipped it around for an hour. would it break it for me or dannie to do the same thing? if it had been his, you'd have had a worm on it and been down to the river trying it for him by now." "worm!" scoffed jimmy. "a worm! that's a good one! idjit! you don't fish with worms with a jinted rod." "well what do you fish with? humming birds?" "no. you fish with--" jimmy stopped and eyed mary dubiously. "you fish with a lot of things," he continued. "some of thim come in little books and they look like moths, and some like snake-faders, and some of them are buck-tail and bits of tin, painted to look shiny. once there was a man in town who had a minnie made of rubber and all painted up just like life. there were hooks on its head, and on its back, and its belly, and its tail, so's that if a fish snapped at it anywhere it got hooked." "i should say so!" exclaimed mary. "it's no fair way to fish, to use more than one hook. you might just as well take a net and wade in and seine out the fish as to take a lot of hooks and rake thim out." "well, who's going to take a lot of hooks and rake thim out?" "i didn't say anybody was. i was just saying it wouldn't be fair to the fish if they did." "course i wouldn't fish with no riggin' like that, when dannie only has one old hook. whin we fish for the bass, i won't use but one hook either. all the same, i'm going to have some of those fancy baits. i'm going to get jim skeels at the drug store to order thim for me. i know just how you do," said jimmy flourishing the rod. "you put on your bait and quite a heavy sinker, and you wind it up to the ind of your rod, and thin you stand up in your boat----" "stand up in your boat!" "i wish you'd let me finish!--or on the bank, and you take this little whipper-snapper, and you touch the spot on the reel that relases the thrid, and you give the rod a little toss, aisy as throwin' away chips, and off maybe fifty feet your bait hits the water, `spat!' and `snap!' goes mr. bass, and `stick!' goes the hook. see?" "what i see is that if you want to fish that way in the wabash, you'll have to wait until the dredge goes through and they make a canal out of it; for be the time you'd throwed fifty feet, and your fish had run another fifty, there'd be just one hundred snags, and logs, and stumps between you; one for every foot of the way. it must look pretty on deep water, where it can be done right, but i bet anything that if you go to fooling with that on our river, dannie gets the bass." "not much, dannie don't `gets the bass,'" said jimmy confidently. "just you come out here and let me show you how this works. now you see, i put me sinker on the ind of the thrid, no hook of course, for practice, and i touch this little spring here, and give me little rod a whip and away goes me bait, slick as grase. mr. bass is layin' in thim bass weeds right out there, foreninst the pieplant bed, and the bait strikes the water at the idge, see! and `snap,' he takes it and sails off slow, to swally it at leisure. here's where i don't pull a morsel. jist let him rin and swally, and whin me line is well out and he has me bait all digistid, `yank,' i give him the round-up, and ~thin, the fun begins. he leps clear of the water and i see he's tin pound. if he rins from me, i give him rope, and if he rins to, i dig in, workin' me little machane for dear life to take up the thrid before it slacks. whin he sees me, he makes a dash back, and i just got to relase me line and let him go, because he'd bust this little silk thrid all to thunder if i tried to force him onpleasant to his intintions, and so we kape it up until he's plum wore out and comes a promenadin' up to me boat, bank i mane, and i scoops him in, and that's sport, mary! that's ~man's fishin'! now watch! he's in thim bass weeds before the pie-plant, like i said, and i'm here on the bank, and i ~think he's there, so i give me little jinted rod a whip and a swing----" jimmy gave the rod a whip and a swing. the sinker shot in air, struck the limb of an apple tree and wound a dozen times around it. jimmy said things and mary giggled. she also noticed that dannie had stopped work and was standing in the barn door watching intently. jimmy climbed the tree, unwound the line and tried again. "i didn't notice that domn apple limb stickin' out there," he said. "now you watch! right out there among the bass weeds foreninst the pie-plant" to avoid another limb, jimmy aimed too low and the sinker shot under the well platform not ten feet from him. "lucky you didn't get fast in the bass weeds," said mary as jimmy reeled in. "will, i got to get me range," explained jimmy. "this time----" jimmy swung too high. the spring slipped from under his unaccustomed thumb. the sinker shot above and behind him and became entangled in the eaves, while yards of the fine silk line flew off the spinning reel and dropped in tangled masses at his feet, and in an effort to do something jimmy reversed the reel and it wound back on tangles and all until it became completely clogged. mary had sat down on the back steps to watch the exhibition. now, she stood up to laugh. "and ~that's just what will happen to you at the river," she said. "while you are foolin' with that thing, which ain't for rivers, and which you don't know beans about handlin', dannie will haul in the bass, and serve you right, too!" "mary," said jimmy, "i niver struck ye in all me life, but if ye don't go in the house, and shut up, i'll knock the head off ye!" "i wouldn't be advisin' you to," she said. "dannie is watching you." jimmy glanced toward the barn in time to see dannie's shaking shoulders as he turned from the door. with unexpected patience, he firmly closed his lips and went after a ladder. by the time he had the sinker loose and the line untangled, supper was ready. by the time he had mastered the reel, and could land the sinker accurately in front of various imaginary beds of bass weeds, dannie had finished the night work in both stables and gone home. but his back door stood open and therefrom there protruded the point of a long, heavy cane fish pole. by the light of a lamp on his table, dannie could be seen working with pincers and a ball of wire. "i wonder what he thinks he can do?" said jimmy. "i suppose he is trying to fix some way to get that fifteen feet more line he needs," replied mary. when they went to bed the light still burned and the broad shoulders of dannie bent over the pole. mary had fallen asleep, but she was awakened by jimmy slipping from the bed. he went to the window and looked toward dannie's cabin. then he left the bedroom and she could hear him crossing to the back window of the next room. then came a smothered laugh and he softly called her. she went to him. dannie's figure stood out clear and strong in the moonlight, in his wood-yard. his black outline looked unusually powerful in the silvery whiteness surrounding it. he held his fishing pole in both hands and swept a circle about him that would have required considerable space on lake michigan, and made a cast toward the barn. the line ran out smoothly and evenly, and through the gloom mary saw jimmy's figure straighten and his lips close in surprise. then dannie began taking in line. that process was so slow, jimmy doubled up and laughed again. "be lookin' at that, will ye?" he heaved. "what does the domn fool think the black bass will be doin' while he is takin' in line on that young windlass?" "there'd be no room on the river to do that," answered mary serenely. "dannie wouldn't be so foolish as to try. all he wants now is to see if his line will run, and it will. whin he gets to the river, he'll swing his bait where he wants it with his pole, like he always does, and whin the bass strikes he'll give it the extra fifteen feet more line he said he needed, and thin he'll have a pole and line with which he can land it." "not on your life he won't!" said jimmy. he opened the back door and stepped out just as dannie raised the pole again. "hey, you! quit raisin' cain out there!" yelled jimmy. "i want to get some sleep." across the night, tinged neither with chagrin nor rancor, boomed the big voice of dannie. "believe i have my extra line fixed so it works all right," he said. "awful sorry if i waked you. thought i was quiet." "how much did you make off that?" inquired mary. "two points," answered jimmy. "found out that dannie ain't sore at me any longer and that you are." next morning was no sort of angler's weather, but the afternoon gave promise of being good fishing by the morrow. dannie worked about the farms, preparing for winter; jimmy worked with him until mid-afternoon, then he hailed a boy passing, and they went away together. at supper time jimmy had not returned. mary came to where dannie worked. "where's jimmy?" she asked. "i dinna, know" said dannie. "he went away a while ago with some boy, i didna notice who." "and he didn't tell you where he was going?" "no." "and he didn't take either of his fish poles?" "no." mary's lips thinned to a mere line. "then it's casey's," she said, and turned away. dannie was silent. presently mary came back. "if jimmy don't come till morning," she asked, "or comes in shape that he can't fish, will you go without him?" "to-morrow was the day we agreed on," answered dannie. "will you go without him?" persisted mary. "what would ~he do if it were me?" asked dannie. "when have you iver done to jimmy malone what he would do if he were you?" "is there any reason why ye na want me to land the black bass, mary?" "there is a particular reason why i don't want your living with jimmy to make you like him," answered mary. "my timper is being wined, and i can see where it's beginning to show on you. whativer you do, don't do what he would." "dinna be hard on him, mary. he doesna think," urged dannie. "you niver said twer words. he don't think. he niver thought about anybody in his life except himself, and he niver will." "maybe he didna go to town!" "maybe the sun won't rise in the morning, and it will always be dark after this! come in and get your supper." "i'd best pick up something to eat at home," said dannie. "i have some good food cooked, and it's a pity to be throwin' it away. what's the use? you've done a long day's work, more for us than yoursilf, as usual; come along and get your supper." dannie went, and as he was washing at the back door, jimmy came through the barn, and up the walk. he was fresh, and in fine spirits, and where ever he had been, it was a sure thing that it was nowhere near casey's. "where have you been?" asked mary wonderingly. "robbin' graves," answered jimmy promptly. "i needed a few stiffs in me business so i just went out to five mile and got them." "what are ye going to do with them, jimmy?" chuckled dannie. "use thim for bass bait! now rattle, old snake!" replied jimmy. after supper dannie went to the barn for the shovel to dig worms for bait, and noticed that jimmy's rubber waders hanging on the wall were covered almost to the top with fresh mud and water stains, and dannie's wonder grew. early the next morning they started for the river. as usual jimmy led the way. he proudly carried his new rod. dannie followed with a basket of lunch mary had insisted on packing, his big cane pole, a can of worms, and a shovel, in case they ran out of bait. dannie had recovered his temper, and was just great-hearted, big dannie again. he talked about the south wind, and shivered with the frost, and listened for the splash of the bass. jimmy had little to say. he seemed to be thinking deeply. no doubt he felt in his soul that they should settle the question of who landed the bass with the same rods they had used when the contest was proposed, and that was not all. when they came to the temporary bridge, jimmy started across it, and dannie called to him to wait, he was forgetting his worms. "i don't want any worms," answered jimmy briefly. he walked on. dannie stood staring after him, for he did not understand that. then he went slowly to his side of the river, and deposited his load under a tree where it would be out of the way. he lay down his pole, took a rude wooden spool of heavy fish cord from his pocket, and passed the line through the loop next the handle and so on the length of the rod to the point. then he wired on a sharp bass hook, and wound the wire far up the doubled line. as he worked, he kept an eye on jimmy. he was doing practically the same thing. but just as dannie had fastened on a light lead to carry his line, a souse in the river opposite attracted his attention. jimmy hauled from the water a minnow bucket, and opening it, took out a live minnow, and placed it on his hook. "riddy," he called, as he resank the bucket, and stood on the bank, holding his line in his fingers, and watching the minnow play at his feet. the fact that dannie was a scotchman, and unusually slow and patient, did not alter the fact that he was just a common human being. the lump that rose in his throat was so big, and so hard, he did not try to swallow it. he hurried back into rainbow bottom. the first log he came across he kicked over, and grovelling in the rotten wood and loose earth with his hands, he brought up a half dozen bluish-white grubs. he tore up the ground for the length of the log, and then he went to others, cramming the worms and dirt with them into his pockets. when he had enough, he went back, and with extreme care placed three of them on his hook. he tried to see how jimmy was going to fish, but he could not tell. so dannie decided that he would cast in the morning, fish deep at noon, and cast again toward evening. he rose, turned to the river, and lifted his rod. as he stood looking over the channel, and the pool where the bass homed, the kingfisher came rattling down the river, and as if in answer to its cry, the black bass gave a leap, that sent the water flying. "ready!" cried dannie, swinging his pole over the water. as the word left his lips, "whizz," jimmy's minnow landed in the middle of the circles widening about the rise of the bass. there was a rush and a snap, and dannie saw the jaws of the big fellow close within an inch of the minnow, and he swam after it for a yard, as jimmy slowly reeled in. dannie waited a second, and then softly dropped his grubs on the water just before where he figured the bass would be. he could hear jimmy smothering oaths. dannie said something himself as his untouched bait neared the bank. he lifted it, swung it out, and slowly trailed it in again. "spat!" came jimmy's minnow almost at his feet, and again the bass leaped for it. again he missed. as the minnow reeled away the second time, dannie swung his grubs higher, and struck the water "spat," as the minnow had done. "snap," went the bass. one instant the line strained, the next the hook came up stripped clean of bait. then dannie and jimmy really went at it, and they were strangers. not a word of friendly banter crossed the river. they cast until the bass grew suspicious, and would not rise to the bait; then they fished deep. then they cast again. if jimmy fell into trouble with his reel, dannie had the honesty to stop fishing until it worked again, but he spent the time burrowing for grubs until his hands resembled the claws of an animal. sometimes they sat, and stillfished. sometimes, they warily slipped along the bank, trailing bait a few inches under water. then they would cast and skitter by turns. the kingfisher struck his stump, and tilted on again. his mate, and their family of six followed in his lead, so that their rattle was almost constant. a fussy little red-eyed vireo asked questions, first of jimmy, and then crossing the river besieged dannie, but neither of the stern-faced fishermen paid it any heed. the blackbirds swung on the rushes, and talked over the season. as always, a few crows cawed above the deep woods, and the chewinks threshed about among the dry leaves. a band of larks were gathering for migration, and the frosty air was vibrant with their calls to each other. killdeers were circling above them in flocks. a half dozen robins gathered over a wild grapevine, and chirped cheerfully, as they pecked at the frosted fruit. at times, the pointed nose of a muskrat wove its way across the river, leaving a shining ripple in its wake. in the deep woods squirrels barked and chattered. frostloosened crimson leaves came whirling down, settling in a bright blanket that covered the water several feet from the bank, and unfortunate bees that had fallen into the river struggled frantically to gain a footing on them. water beetles shot over the surface in small shining parties, and schools of tiny minnows played along the banks. once a black ant assassinated an enemy on dannie's shoe, by creeping up behind it and puncturing its abdomen. noon came, and neither of the fishermen spoke or moved from their work. the lunch mary had prepared with such care they had forgotten. a little after noon, dannie got another strike, deep fishing. mid-afternoon found them still even, and patiently fishing. then it was not so long until supper time, and the air was steadily growing colder. the south wind had veered to the west, and signs of a black frost were in the air. about this time the larks arose as with one accord, and with a whirr of wings that proved how large the flock was, they sailed straight south. jimmy hauled his minnow bucket from the river, poured the water from it, and picked his last minnow, a dead one, from the grass. dannie was watching him, and rightly guessed that he would fish deep. so dannie scooped the remaining dirt from his pockets, and found three grubs. he placed them on his hook, lightened his sinker, and prepared to skitter once more. jimmy dropped his minnow beside the kingfisher stump, and let it sink. dannie hit the water at the base of the stump, where it had not been disturbed for a long time, a sharp "spat," with his worms. something seized his bait, and was gone. dannie planted his feet firmly, squared his jaws, gripped his rod, and loosened his line. as his eye followed it, he saw to his amazement that jimmy's line was sailing off down the river beside his, and heard the reel singing. dannie was soon close to the end of his line. he threw his weight into a jerk enough to have torn the head from a fish, and down the river the black bass leaped clear of the water, doubled, and with a mighty shake tried to throw the hook from his mouth. "got him fast, by god!" screamed jimmy in triumph. straight toward them rushed the fish. jimmy reeled wildly; dannie gathered in his line by yard lengths, and grasped it with the hand that held the rod. near them the bass leaped again, and sped back down the river. jimmy's reel sang, and dannie's line jerked through his fingers. back came the fish. again dannie gathered in line, and jimmy reeled frantically. then dannie, relying on the strength of his line thought he could land the fish, and steadily drew it toward him. jimmy's reel began to sing louder, and his line followed dannie's. instantly jimmy went wild. "stop pullin' me little silk thrid!" he yelled. "i've got the black bass hooked fast as a rock, and your domn clothes line is sawin' across me. cut there! cut that domn rope! quick!" "he's mine, and i'll land him!" roared dannie. "cut yoursel', and let me get my fish!" so it happened, that when mary malone, tired of waiting for the boys to come, and anxious as to the day's outcome, slipped down to the wabash to see what they were doing, she heard sounds that almost paralyzed her. shaking with fear, she ran toward the river, and paused at a little thicket behind dannie. jimmy danced and raged on the opposite bank. "cut!" he yelled. "cut that domn cable, and let me bass loose! cut your line, i say!" dannie stood with his feet planted wide apart, and his jaws set. he drew his line steadily toward him, and jimmy's followed. "ye see!" exulted dannie. "ye're across me. the bass is mine! reel out your line till i land him, if ye dinna want it broken." "if you don't cut your domn line, i will!" raved jimmy. "cut nothin'!" cried dannie. "let's see ye try to touch it!" into the river went jimmy; splash went dannie from his bank. he was nearer the tangled lines, but the water was deepest on his side, and the mud of the bed held his feet. jimmy reached the crossed lines, knife in hand, by the time dannie was there. "will you cut?" cried jimmy. "na!" bellowed dannie. "i've give up every damn thing to ye all my life, but i'll no give up the black bass. he's mine, and i'll land him!" jimmy made a lunge for the lines. dannie swung his pole backward drawing them his way. jimmy slashed again. dannie dropped his pole, and with a sweep, caught the twisted lines in his fingers. "noo, let's see ye cut my line! babby!" he jeered. jimmy's fist flew straight, and the blood streamed from dannie's nose. dannie dropped the lines, and straightened. "you--" he panted. "you--" and no other words came. if jimmy had been possessed of any small particle of reason, he lost it at the sight of blood on dannie's face. "you're a domn fish thief!" he screamed. "ye lie!" breathed dannie, but his hand did not lift. "you are a coward! you're afraid to strike like a man! hit me! you don't dare hit me!" "ye lie!" repeated dannie. "you're a dog!" panted jimmy. "i've used you to wait on me all me life!" "~that's the god's truth!" cried dannie. but he made no movement to strike. jimmy leaned forward with a distorted, insane face. "that time you sint me to mary for you, i lied to her, and married her meself. ~now, will you fight like a man?" dannie made a spring, and jimmy crumpled up in his grasp. "noo, i will choke the miserable tongue out of your heid, and twist the heid off your body, and tear the body to mince-meat," raved dannie, and he promptly began the job. with one awful effort jimmy tore the gripping hands from his throat a little. "lie!" he gasped. "it's all a lie!" "it's the truth! before god it's the truth!" mary malone tried to scream behind them. "it's the truth! it's the truth!" and her ears told her that she was making no sound as with dry lips she mouthed it over and over. and then she fainted, and sank down in the bushes. dannie's hands relaxed a little, he lifted the weight of jimmy's body by his throat, and set him on his feet. "i'll give ye juist ane chance," he said. "~is that the truth?" jimmy's awful eyes were bulging from his head, his hands were clawing at dannie's on his throat, and his swollen lips repeated it over and over as breath came, "it's a lie! it's a lie!" "i think so myself," said dannie. "ye never would have dared. ye'd have known that i'd find out some day, and on that day, i'd kill ye as i would a copperhead." "a lie!" panted jimmy. "then ~why did ye tell it?" and dannie's fingers threatened to renew their grip. "i thought if i could make you strike back," gasped jimmy, "my hittin' you wouldn't same so bad." then dannie's hands relaxed. "oh, jimmy! jimmy!" he cried. "was there ever any other mon like ye?" then he remembered the cause of their trouble. "but, i'm everlastingly damned," dannie went on, "if i'll gi'e up the black bass to ye, unless it's on your line. get yourself up there on your bank!" the shove he gave jimmy almost upset him, and jimmy waded back, and as he climbed the bank, dannie was behind him. after him he dragged a tangled mass of lines and poles, and at the last up the bank, and on the grass, two big fish; one, the great black bass of horseshoe bend; and the other nearly as large, a channel catfish; undoubtedly, one of those which had escaped into the wabash in an overflow of the celina reservoir that spring. "~noo, i'll cut," said dannie. "keep your eye on me sharp. see me cut my line at the end o' my pole." he snipped the line in two. "noo watch," he cautioned," i dinna want contra deection about this!" he picked up the bass, and taking the line by which it was fast at its mouth, he slowly drew it through his fingers. the wiry silk line slipped away, and the heavy cord whipped out free. "is this my line?" asked dannie, holding it up. jimmy nodded. "is the black bass my fish? speak up!" cried dannie, dangling the fish from the line. "it's yours," admitted jimmy. "then i'll be damned if i dinna do what i please wi' my own!" cried dannie. with trembling fingers he extracted the hook, and dropped it. he took the gasping big fish in both hands, and tested its weight. "almost seex," he said. "michty near seex!" and he tossed the black bass back into the wabash. then he stooped, and gathered up his pole and line. with one foot he kicked the catfish, the tangled silk line, and the jointed rod, toward jimmy. "take your fish!" he said. he turned and plunged into the river, recrossed it as he came, gathered up the dinner pail and shovel, passed mary malone, a tumbled heap in the bushes, and started toward his cabin. the black bass struck the water with a splash, and sank to the mud of the bottom, where he lay joyfully soaking his dry gills, parched tongue, and glazed eyes. he scooped water with his tail, and poured it over his torn jaw. and then he said to his progeny, "children, let this be a warning to you. never rise to but one grub at a time. three is too good to be true! there is always a stinger in their midst." and the black bass ruefully shook his sore head and scooped more water. chapter ix when jimmy malone came to confession dannie never before had known such anger as possessed him when he trudged homeward across rainbow bottom. his brain whirled in a tumult of conflicting passions, and his heart pained worse than his swelling face. in one instant the knowledge that jimmy had struck him, possessed him with a desire to turn back and do murder. in the next, a sense of profound scorn for the cowardly lie which had driven him to the rage that kills encompassed him, and then in a surge came compassion for jimmy, at the remberence of the excuse he had offered for saying that thing. how childish! but how like jimmy! what was the use in trying to deal with him as if he were a man? a great spoiled, selfish baby was all he ever would be. the fallen leaves rustled about dannie's feet. the blackbirds above him in chattering debate discussed migration. a stiff breeze swept the fields, topped the embankment, and rushed down circling about dannie, and setting his teeth chattering, for he was almost as wet as if he had been completely immersed. as the chill struck in, from force of habit he thought of jimmy. if he was ever going to learn how to take care of himself, a man past thirty-five should know. would he come home and put on dry clothing? but when had jimmy taken care of himself? dannie felt that he should go back, bring him home, and make him dress quickly. a sharp pain shot across dannie's swollen face. his lips shut firmly. no! jimmy had struck him. and jimmy was in the wrong. the fish was his, and he had a right to it. no man living would have given it up to jimmy, after he had changed poles. and slipped away with a boy and gotten those minnows, too! and wouldn't offer him even one. much good they had done him. caught a catfish on a dead one! wonder if he would take the catfish to town and have its picture taken! mighty fine fish, too, that channel cat! if it hadn't been for the black bass, they would have wondered and exclaimed over it, and carefully weighed it, and commented on the gamy fight it made. just the same he was glad, that he landed the bass. and he got it fairly. if jimmy's old catfish mixed up with his line, he could not help that. he baited, hooked, played, and landed the bass all right, and without any minnows either. when he reached the top of the hill he realized that he was going to look back. in spite of jimmy's selfishness, in spite of the blow, in spite of the ugly lie, jimmy had been his lifelong partner, and his only friend, and stiffen his neck as he would, dannie felt his head turning. he deliberately swung his fish pole into the bushes, and when it caught, as he knew it would, he set down his load, and turned as if to release it. not a sight of jimmy anywhere! dannie started on. "we are after you, jimmy malone!" a thin, little, wiry thread of a cry, that seemed to come twisting as if wrung from the chill air about him, whispered in his ear, and dannie jumped, dropped his load, and ran for the river. he couldn't see a sign of jimmy. he hurried over the shaky little bridge they had built. the catfish lay gasping on the grass, the case and jointed rod lay on a log, but jimmy was gone. dannie gave the catfish a shove that sent it well into the river, and ran for the shoals at the lower curve of horseshoe bend. the tracks of jimmy's crossing were plain, and after him hurried dannie. he ran up the hill, and as he reached the top he saw jimmy climb on a wagon out on the road. dannie called, but the farmer touched up his horses and trotted away without hearing him. "the fool! to ride!" thought dannie. "noo he will chill to the bone!". dannie cut across the fields to the lane and gathered up his load. with the knowledge that jimmy had started for town came the thought of mary. what was he going to say to her? he would have to make a clean breast of it, and he did not like the showing. in fact, he simply could not make a clean breast of it. tell her? he could not tell her. he would lie to her once more, this one time for himself. he would tell her he fell in the river to account for his wet clothing and bruised face, and wait until jimmy came home and see what he told her. he went to the cabin and tapped at the door; there was no answer, so he opened it and set the lunch basket inside. then he hurried home, built a fire, bathed, and put on dry clothing. he wondered where mary was. he was ravenously hungry now. he did all the evening work, and as she still did not come, he concluded that she had gone to town, and that jimmy knew she was there. of course, that was it! jimmy could get dry clothing of his brother-in-law. to be sure, mary had gone to town. that was why jimmy went. and he was right. mary had gone to town. when sense slowly returned to her she sat up in the bushes and stared about her. then she arose and looked toward the river. the men were gone. mary guessed the situation rightly. they were too much of river men to drown in a few feet of water; they scarcely would kill each other. they had fought, and dannie had gone home, and jimmy to the consolation of casey's. ~where should she go? mary malone's lips set in a firm line. "it's the truth! it's the truth!" she panted over and over, and now that there was no one to hear, she found that she could say it quite plainly. as the sense of her outraged womanhood swept over her she grew almost delirious. "i hope you killed him, dannie micnoun," she raved. "i hope you killed him, for if you didn't, i will. oh! oh!" she was almost suffocating with rage. the only thing clear to her was that she never again would live an hour with jimmy malone. he might have gone home. probably he did go for dry clothing. she would go to her sister. she hurried across the bottom, with wavering knees she climbed the embankment, then skirting the fields, she half walked, half ran to the village, and selecting back streets and alleys, tumbled, half distracted, into the home of her sister. "holy vargin!" screamed katy dolan. "whativer do be ailin' you, mary malone?" "jimmy! jimmy!" sobbed the shivering mary. "i knew it! i knew it! i've ixpicted it for years!" cried katy. "they've had a fight----" "just what i looked for! i always told you they were too thick to last!" "and jimmy told dannie he'd lied to me and married me himsilf----" "he did! i saw him do it!" screamed katy. "and dannie tried to kill him----" "i hope to hivin he got it done, for if any man iver naded killin'! a carpse named jimmy malone would a looked good to me any time these fiftane years. i always said----" "and he took it back----" "just like the rid divil! i knew he'd do it! and of course that mutton-head of a dannie micnoun belaved him, whativer he said" "of course he did!" "i knew it! didn't i say so first?" "and i tried to scrame and me tongue stuck----" "sure! you poor lamb! my tongue always sticks! just what i ixpicted!" "and me head just went round and i keeled over in the bushes----" "i've told dolan a thousand times! i knew it! it's no news to me!" "and whin i came to, they were gone, and i don't know where, and i don't care! but i won't go back! i won't go back! i'll not live with him another day. oh, katy! think how you'd feel if some one had siparated you and dolan before you'd iver been togither!" katie dolan gathered her sister into her arms. "you poor lamb," she wailed. "i've known ivery word of this for fiftane years, and if i'd had the laste idea 'twas so, i'd a busted jimmy malone to smithereens before it iver happened!" "i won't go back! i won't go back!" raved mary. "i guess you won't go back," cried katy, patting every available spot on mary, or making dashes at her own eyes to stop the flow of tears. "i guess you won't go back! you'll stay right here with me. i've always wanted you! i always said i'd love to have you! i've told thim from the start there was something wrong out there! i've ixpicted you ivry day for years, and i niver was so surprised in all me life as whin you came! now, don't you shed another tear. the lord knows this is enough, for anybody. none at all would be too many for jimmy malone. you get right into bid, and i'll make you a cup of rid-pipper tay to take the chill out of you. and if jimmy malone comes around this house i'll lav him out with the poker, and if dannie micnoun comes saft-saddering after him i'll stritch him out too; yis, and if dolan's got anything to say, he can take his midicine like the rist. the min are all of a pace anyhow! i've always said it! if i wouldn't like to get me fingers on that haythen; never goin' to confission, spindin' ivrything on himself you naded for dacent livin'! lit him come! just lit him come!" thus forestalled with knowledge, and overwhelmed with kindness, mary malone cuddled up in bed and sobbed herself to sleep, and katy dolan assured her, as long as she was conscious, that she always had known it, and if jimmy malone came near, she had the poker ready. dannie did the evening work. when he milked he drank most of it, but that only made him hungrier, so he ate the lunch he had brought back from the river, as he sat before a roaring fire. his heart warmed with his body. irresponsible jimmy always had aroused something of the paternal instinct in dannie. some one had to be responsible, so dannie had been. some way he felt responsible now. with another man like himself, it would have been man to man, but he always had spoiled jimmy; now who was to blame that he was spoiled? dannie was very tired, his face throbbed and ached painfully, and it was a sight to see. his bed never had looked so inviting, and never had the chance to sleep been further away. with a sigh, he buttoned his coat, twisted an old scarf around his neck, and started for the barn. there was going to be a black frost. the cold seemed to pierce him. he hitched to the single buggy, and drove to town. he went to casey's, and asked for jimmy. "he isn't here," said casey." has he been here?" asked dannie. casey hesitated, and then blurted out, "he said you wasn't his keeper, and if you came after him, to tell you to go to hell." then dannie was sure that jimmy was in the back room, drying his clothing. so he drove to mrs. dolan's, and asked if mary were there for the night. mrs. dolan said she was, and she was going to stay, and he might tell jimmy malone that he need not come near them, unless he wanted his head laid open. she shut the door forcibly. dannie waited until casey closed at eleven, and to his astonishment jimmy was not among the men who came out. that meant that he had drank lightly after all, slipped from the back door, and gone home. and yet, would he do it, after what he had said about being afraid? if he had not drank heavily, he would not go into the night alone, when he had been afraid in the daytime. dannie climbed from the buggy once more, and patiently searched the alley and the street leading to the footpath across farms. no jimmy. then dannie drove home, stabled his horse, and tried jimmy's back door. it was unlocked. if jimmy were there, he probably would be lying across the bed in his clothing, and dannie knew that mary was in town. he made a light, and cautiously entered the sleeping room, intending to undress and cover jimmy, but jimmy was not there. dannie's mouth fell open. he put out the light, and stood on the back steps. the frost had settled in a silver sheen over the roofs of the barns and the sheds, and a scum of ice had frozen over a tub of drippings at the well. dannie was bitterly cold. he went home, and hunted out his winter overcoat, lighted his lantern, picked up a heavy cudgel in the corner, and started to town on foot over the path that lay across the fields. he followed it to casey's back door. he went to mrs. dolan's again, but everything was black and silent there. there had been evening trains. he thought of jimmy's frequent threat to go away. he dismissed that thought grimly. there had been no talk of going away lately, and he knew that jimmy had little money. dannie started for home, and for a rod on either side he searched the path. as he came to the back of the barns, he rated himself for not thinking of them first. he searched both of them, and all around them, and then wholly tired, and greatly disgusted, he went home and to bed. he decided that jimmy ~had gone to mrs. dolan's and that kindly woman had relented and taken him in. of course that was where he was. dannie was up early in the morning. he wanted to have the work done before mary and jimmy came home. he fed the stock, milked, built a fire, and began cleaning the stables. as he wheeled the first barrow of manure to the heap, he noticed a rooster giving danger signals behind the straw-stack. at the second load it was still there, and dannie went to see what alarmed it. jimmy lay behind the stack, where he had fallen face down, and as dannie tried to lift him he saw that he would have to cut him loose, for he had frozen fast in the muck of the barnyard. he had pitched forward among the rough cattle and horse tracks and fallen within a few feet of the entrance to a deep hollow eaten out of the straw by the cattle. had he reached that shelter he would have been warm enough and safe for the night. horrified, dannie whipped out his knife, cut jimmy's clothing loose and carried him to his bed. he covered him, and hitching up drove at top speed for a doctor. he sent the physician ahead and then rushed to mrs. dolan's. she saw him drive up and came to the door. "send mary home and ye come too," dannie called before she had time to speak. "jimmy lay oot all last nicht, and i'm afraid he's dead." mrs. dolan hurried in and repeated the message to mary. she sat speechless while her sister bustled about putting on her wraps. "i ain't goin'," she said shortly. "if i got sight of him, i'd kill him if he wasn't dead." "oh, yis you are goin'," said katy dolan. "if he's dead, you know, it will save you being hanged for killing him. get on these things of mine and hurry. you got to go for decency sake; and kape a still tongue in your head. dannie micnoun is waiting for us." together they went out and climbed into the carriage. mary said nothing, but dannie was too miserable to notice. "you didn't find him thin, last night?" asked mrs. dolan. "na!" shivered dannie. "i was in town twice. i hunted almost all nicht. at last i made sure you had taken him in and i went to bed. it was three o'clock then. i must have passed often, wi'in a few yards of him." "where was he?" asked katy. "behind the straw-stack," replied dannie. "do you think he will die?" "dee!" cried dannie. "jimmy dee! oh, my god! we mauna let him!" mrs. dolan took a furtive peep at mary, who, dry-eyed and white, was staring straight ahead. she was trembling and very pale, but if katy dolan knew anything she knew that her sister's face was unforgiving and she did not in the least blame her. dannie reached home as soon as the horse could take them, and under the doctor's directions all of them began work. mary did what she was told, but she did it deliberately, and if dannie had taken time to notice her he would have seen anything but his idea of a woman facing death for any one she ever had loved. mary's hurt went so deep, mrs. dolan had trouble to keep it covered. some of the neighbors said mary was cold-hearted, and some of them that she was stupefied with grief. without stopping for food or sleep, dannie nursed jimmy. he rubbed, he bathed, he poulticed, he badgered the doctor and cursed his inability to do some good. to every one except dannie, jimmy's case was hopeless from the first. he developed double pneumonia in its worst form and he was in no condition to endure it in the lightest. his labored breathing could be heard all over the cabin, and he could speak only in gasps. on the third day he seemed a little better, and when dannie asked what he could do for him, "father michael," jimmy panted, and clung to dannie's hand. dannie sent a man and remained with jimmy. he made no offer to go when the priest came. "this is probably in the nature of a last confession," said father michael to dannie, "i shall have to ask you to leave us alone." dannie felt the hand that clung to him relax, and the perspiration broke on his temples. "shall i go, jimmy?" he asked. jimmy nodded. dannie arose heavily and left the room. he sat down outside the door and rested his head in his hands. the priest stood beside jimmy. "the doctor tells me it is difficult for you to speak," he said, "i will help you all i can. i will ask questions and you need only assent with your head or hand. do you wish the last sacrament administered, jimmy malone?" the sweat rolled off jimmy's brow. he assented. "do you wish to make final confession?" a great groan shook jimmy. the priest remembered a gay, laughing boy, flinging back a shock of auburn hair, his feet twinkling in the lead of the dance. here was ruin to make the heart of compassion ache. the father bent and clasped the hand of jimmy firmly. the question he asked was between jimmy malone and his god. the answer almost strangled him. "can you confess that mortal sin, jimmy?" asked the priest. the drops on jimmy's face merged in one bath of agony. his hands clenched and his breath seemed to go no lower than his throat. "lied--dannie," he rattled. "sip-rate him--and mary." "are you trying to confess that you betrayed a confidence of dannie macnoun and married the girl who belonged to him, yourself?" jimmy assented. his horrified eyes hung on the priest's face and saw it turn cold and stern. always the thing he had done had tormented him; but not until the past summer had he begun to realize the depth of it, and it had almost unseated his reason. but not until now had come fullest appreciation, and jimmy read it in the eyes filled with repulsion above him. "and with that sin on your soul, you ask the last sacrament and the seal of forgiveness! you have not wronged god and the holy catholic church as you have this man, with whom you have lived for years, while you possessed his rightful wife. now he is here, in deathless devotion, fighting to save you. you may confess to him. if he will forgive you, god and the church will ratify it, and set the seal on your brow. if not, you die unshriven! i will call dannie macnoun." one gurgling howl broke from the swollen lips of jimmy. as dannie entered the room, the priest spoke a few words to him, stepped out and closed the door. dannie hurried to jimmy's side. "he said ye wanted to tell me something," said dannie. "what is it? do you want me to do anything for you?" suddenly jimmy struggled to a sitting posture. his popping eyes almost burst from their sockets as he clutched dannie with both hands. the perspiration poured in little streams down his dreadful face. "mary," the next word was lost in a strangled gasp. then came "yours" and then a queer rattle. something seemed to give way. "the divils!" he shrieked. "the divils have got me!" snap! his heart failed, and jimmy malone went out to face his record, unforgiven by man, and unshriven by priest. chapter x dannie's renunciation so they stretched jimmy's length on five mile hill beside the three babies that had lacked the "vital spark." mary went to the dolans for the winter and dannie was left, sole occupant of rainbow bottom. because so much fruit and food that would freeze were stored there, he was even asked to live in jimmy's cabin. dannie began the winter stolidly. all day long and as far as he could find anything to do in the night, he worked. he mended everything about both farms, rebuilt all the fences and as a neverfailing resource, he cut wood. he cut so much that he began to realize that it would get too dry and the burning of it would become extravagant, so he stopped that and began making some changes he had long contemplated. during fur time he set his line of traps on his side of the river and on the other he religiously set jimmy's. but he divided the proceeds from the skins exactly in half, no matter whose traps caught them, and with jimmy's share of the money he started a bank account for mary. as he could not use all of them he sold jimmy's horses, cattle and pigs. with half the stock gone he needed only half the hay and grain stored for feeding. he disposed of the chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese that mary wanted sold, and placed the money to her credit. he sent her a beautiful little red bank book and an explanation of all these transactions by dolan. mary threw the book across the room because she wanted dannie to keep her money himself, and then cried herself to sleep that night, because dannie had sent the book instead of bringing it. but when she fully understood the transactions and realized that if she chose she could spend several hundred dollars, she grew very proud of that book. about the empty cabins and the barns, working on the farms, wading the mud and water of the river bank, or tingling with cold on the ice went two dannies. the one a dull, listless man, mechanically forcing a tired, overworked body to action, and the other a selfaccused murderer. "i am responsible for the whole thing," he told himself many times a day. "i always humored jimmy. i always took the muddy side of the road, and the big end of the log, and the hard part of the work, and filled his traps wi' rats from my own; why in god's name did i let the deil o' stubbornness in me drive him to his death. noo? why didna i let him have the black bass? why didna i make him come home and put on dry clothes? i killed him, juist as sure as if i'd taken an ax and broken his heid." through every minute of the exposure of winter outdoors and the torment of it inside, dannie tortured himself. of mary he seldom thought at all. she was safe with her sister, and although dannie did not know when or how it happened, he awoke one day to the realization that he had renounced her. he had killed jimmy; he could not take his wife and his farm. and dannie was so numb with long-suffering, that he did not much care. there come times when troubles pile so deep that the edge of human feeling is dulled. he would take care of mary, yes, she was as much jimmy's as his farm, but he did not want her for himself now. if he had to kill his only friend, he would not complete his downfall by trying to win his wife. so through that winter mary got very little consideration in the remorseful soul of dannie, and jimmy grew, as the dead grow, by leaps and bounds, until by spring dannie had him well-nigh canonized. when winter broke, dannie had his future well mapped out. and that future was devotion to jimmy's memory, with no more of mary in it than was possible to keep out. he told himself that he was glad she was away and he did not care to have her return. deep in his soul he harbored the feeling that he had killed jimmy to make himself look victor in her eyes in such a small matter as taking a fish. and deeper yet a feeling that, everything considered, still she might mourn jimmy more than she did. so dannie definitely settled that he always would live alone on the farms. mary should remain with her sister, and at his death, everything should be hers. the night he finally reached that decision, the kingfisher came home. dannie heard his rattle of exultation as he struck the embankment and the suffering man turned his face to the wall and sobbed aloud, so that for a little time he stifled jimmy's dying gasps that in wakeful night hours sounded in his ears. early the next morning he drove through the village on his way to the county seat, with a load of grain. dolan saw him and running home he told mary. "he will be gone all day. now is your chance!" he said. mary sprang to her feet, "hurry!" she panted, "hurry!" an hour later a loaded wagon, a man and three women drew up before the cabins in rainbow bottom. mary, her sister, dolan, and a scrub woman entered. mary pointed out the objects which she wished removed, and dolan carried them out. they took up the carpets, swept down the walls, and washed the windows. they hung pictures, prints, and lithographs, and curtained the windows in dainty white. they covered the floors with bright carpets, and placed new ornaments on the mantle, and comfortable furniture in the rooms. there was a white iron bed, and several rocking chairs, and a shelf across the window filled with potted hyacinths in bloom. among them stood a glass bowl, containing three wonderful little gold fish, and from the top casing hung a brass cage, from which a green linnet sang an exultant song. you should have seen mary malone! when everything was finished, she was changed the most of all. she was so sure of dannie, that while the winter had brought annoyance that he did not come, it really had been one long, glorious rest. she laughed and sang, and grew younger with every passing day. as youth surged back, with it returned roundness of form, freshness of face, and that bred the desire to be daintily dressed. so of pretty light fabrics she made many summer dresses, for wear mourning she would not. when calmness returned to mary, she had told the dolans the whole story." now do you ixpict me to grieve for the man?" she asked." fiftane years with him, through his lying tongue, whin by ivery right of our souls and our bodies, dannie micnoun and i belanged to each other. mourn for him! i'm glad he's dead! glad! glad! if he had not died, i should have killed him, if dannie did not! it was a happy thing that he died. his death saved me mortal sin. i'm glad, i tell you, and i do not forgive him, and i niver will, and i hope he will burn----" katy dolan clapped her hand over mary's mouth. "for the love of marcy, don't say that!" she cried." you will have to confiss it, and you'd be ashamed to face the praste." "i would not," cried mary. "father michael knows i'm just an ordinary woman, he don't ixpict me to be an angel." but she left the sentence unfinished. after mary's cabin was arranged to her satisfaction, they attacked dannie's; emptying it, cleaning it completely, and refurnishing it from the best of the things that had been in both. then mary added some new touches. a comfortable big chair was placed by his fire, new books on his mantle, a flower in his window, and new covers on his bed. while the women worked, dolan raked the yards, and freshened matters outside as best he could. when everything they had planned to do was accomplished, the wagon, loaded with the ugly old things mary despised, drove back to the village, and she, with little tilly dolan for company, remained. mary was tense with excitement. all the woman in her had yearned for these few pretty things she wanted for her home throughout the years that she had been compelled to live in crude, ugly surroundings; because every cent above plainest clothing and food, went for drink for jimmy, and treats for his friends. now she danced and sang, and flew about trying a chair here, and another there, to get the best effect. every little while she slipped into her bedroom, stood before a real dresser, and pulled out its trays to make sure that her fresh, light dresses were really there. she shook out the dainty curtains repeatedly, watered the flowers, and fed the fish when they did not need it. she babbled incessantly to the green linnet, which with swollen throat rejoiced with her, and occasionally she looked in the mirror. she lighted the fire, and put food to cook. she covered a new table, with a new cloth, and set it with new dishes, and placed a jar of her flowers in the center. what a supper she did cook! when she had waited until she was near crazed with nervousness, she heard the wagon coming up the lane. peeping from the window, she saw dannie stop the horses short, and sit staring at the cabins, and she realized that smoke would be curling from the chimney, and the flowers and curtains would change the shining windows outside. she trembled with excitement, and than a great yearning seized her, as he slowly drove closer, for his brown hair was almost white, and the lines on his face seemed indelibly stamped. and then hot anger shook her. fifteen years of her life wrecked, and look at dannie! that was jimmy malone's work. over and over, throughout the winter, she had planned this homecoming as a surprise to dannie. book-fine were the things she intended to say to him. when he opened the door, and stared at her and about the altered room, she swiftly went to him, and took the bundles he carried from his arms. "hurry up, and unhitch, dannie," she said. "your supper is waiting." and dannie turned and stolidly walked back to his team, without uttering a word. "uncle dannie!" cried a child's voice. "please let me ride to the barn with you!" a winsome little maid came rushing to dannie, threw her arms about his neck, and hugged him tight, as he stooped to lift her. her yellow curls were against his cheek, and her breath was flowersweet in his face. "why didn't you kiss aunt mary?" she demanded." daddy dolan always kisses mammy when he comes from all day gone. aunt mary's worked so hard to please you. and daddie worked, and mammy worked, and another woman. you are pleased, ain't you, uncle dannie?" "who told ye to call me uncle?" asked dannie, with unsteady lips. "she did!" announced the little woman, flourishing the whip in the direction of the cabin. dannie climbed down to unhitch. "you are goin' to be my uncle, ain't you, as soon as it's a little over a year, so folks won't talk?" "who told ye that?" panted dannie, hiding behind a horse. "nobody told me! mammy just ~said it to daddy, and i heard," answered the little maid. "and i'm glad of it, and so are all of us glad. mammy said she'd just love to come here now, whin things would be like white folks. mammy said aunt mary had suffered a lot more'n her share. say, you won't make her suffer any more, will you?" "no," moaned dannie, and staggered into the barn with the horses. he leaned against a stall, and shut his eyes. he could see the bright room, plainer than ever, and that little singing bird sounded loud as any thunder in his ears. and whether closed or open, he could see mary, never in all her life so beautiful, never so sweet; flesh and blood mary, in a dainty dress, with the shining, unafraid eyes of girlhood. it was that thing which struck dannie first, and hit him hardest. mary was a careless girl again. when before had he seen her with neither trouble, anxiety or, worse yet, ~fear, in her beautiful eyes? and she had come to stay. she would not have refurnished her cabin otherwise. dannie took hold of the manger with both hands, because his sinking knees needed bracing. "dannie," called mary's voice in the doorway, "has my spickled hin showed any signs of setting yet?" "she's been over twa weeks," answered dannie. "she's in that barrel there in the corner." mary entered the barn, removed the prop, lowered the board, and kneeling, stroked the hen, and talked softly to her. she slipped a hand under the hen, and lifted her to see the eggs. dannie staring at mary noted closer the fresh, cleared skin, the glossy hair, the delicately colored cheeks, and the plumpness of the bare arms. one little wisp of curl lay against the curve of her neck, just where it showed rose-pink, and looked honey sweet. and in one great surge, the repressed stream of passion in the strong man broke, and dannie swayed against his horse. his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he caught at the harness to steady himself, while he strove to grow accustomed to the fact that hell had opened in a new form for him. the old heart hunger for mary malone was back in stronger force than ever before; and because of him jimmy lay stretched on five mile hill. "dannie, you are just fine!" said mary. " i've been almost wild to get home, because i thought iverything would be ruined, and instid of that it's all ixactly the way i do it. do hurry, and get riddy for supper. oh, it's so good to be home again! i want to make garden, and fix my flowers, and get some little chickens and turkeys into my fingers." "i have to go home, and wash, and spruce up a bit, for ladies," said dannie, leaving the barn. mary made no reply, and it came to him that she expected it. "damned if i will!" he said, as he started home. "if she wants to come here, and force herself on me, she can, but she canna mak' me" just then dannie stepped in his door, and slowly gazed about him. in a way his home was as completely transformed as hers. he washed his face and hands, and started for a better coat. his sleeping room shone with clean windows, curtained in snowy white. a freshly ironed suit of underclothing and a shirt lay on his bed. dannie stared at them. "she think's i'll tog up in them, and come courtin'" he growled. "i'll show her if i do! i winna touch them!" to prove that he would not, dannie caught them up in a wad, and threw them into a corner. that showed a clean sheet, fresh pillow, and new covers, invitingly spread back. dannie turned as white as the pillow at which he stared. "that's a damn plain insinuation that i'm to get into ye," he said to the bed, "and go on living here. i dinna know as that child's jabber counts. for all i know, mary may already have picked out some town dude to bring here and farm out on me, and they'll live with the bird cage. and i can go on climbin' into ye alone." here was a new thought. mary might mean only kindness to him again, as she had sent word by jimmy she meant years ago. he might lose her for the second time. and again a wave of desire struck dannie, and left him staggering. "ain't you comin', uncle dannie?" called the child's voice at the back door. "what's your name, little lass?" inquired dannie. "tilly," answered the little girl promptly. well, tilly, ye go tell your aunt mary i have been in an eelevator handlin' grain, and i'm covered wi' fine dust and chaff that sticks me. i canna come until i've had a bath, and put on clean clothing. tell her to go ahead." the child vanished. in a second she was back. "she said she won't do it, and take all the time you want. but i wish you'd hurry, for she won't let me either." dannie hurried. but the hasty bath and the fresh clothing felt so good he was in a softened mood when he approached mary's door again. tilly was waiting on the step, and ran to meet him. tilly was a dream. almost, dannie understood why mary had brought her. tilly led him to the table, and pulled back a chair for him, and he lifted her into hers, and as mary set dish after dish of food on the table, tilly filled in every pause that threatened to grow awkward with her chatter. dannie had been a very lonely man, and he did love mary's cooking. until then he had not realized how sore a trial six months of his own had been. "if i was a praying mon, i'd ask a blessing, and thank god fra this food," said dannie. "what's the matter with me?" asked mary. "i have never yet found anything," answered dannie. "and i do thank ye fra everything. i believe i'm most thankful of all fra the clean clothes and the clean bed. i'm afraid i was neglectin' myself, mary." "will, you'll not be neglected any more," said mary. "things have turned over a new leaf here. for all you give, you get some return, after this. we are going to do business in a businesslike way, and divide even. i liked that bank account, pretty will, dannie. thank you, for that. and don't think i spint all of it. i didn't spind a hundred dollars all togither. not the price of one horse! but it made me so happy i could fly. home again, and the things i've always wanted, and nothing to fear. oh, dannie, you don't know what it manes to a woman to be always afraid! my heart is almost jumping out of my body, just with pure joy that the old fear is gone." "i know what it means to a mon to be afraid," said dannie. and vividly before him loomed the awful, distorted, dying face of jimmy. mary guessed, and her bright face clouded. "some day, dannie, we must have a little talk," she said, "and clear up a few things neither of us understand. 'til thin we will just farm, and be partners, and be as happy as iver we can. i don't know as you mean to, but if you do, i warn you right now that you need niver mintion the name of jimmy malone to me again, for any reason." dannie left the cabin abruptly. "now you gone and made him mad!" reproached tilly. during the past winter mary had lived with other married people for the first time, and she had imbibed some of mrs. dolan's philosophy. "whin he smells the biscuit i mane to make for breakfast, he'll get glad again," she said, and he did. but first he went home, and tried to learn where he stood. ~was he truly responsible for jimmy's death? yes. if he had acted like a man, he could have saved jimmy. he was responsible. did he want to marry mary? did he? dannie reached empty arms to empty space, and groaned aloud. would she marry him? well, now, would she? after years of neglect and sorrow, dannie knew that mary had learned to prefer him to jimmy. but almost any man would have been preferable to a woman, to jimmy. jimmy was distinctly a man's man. a jolly good fellow, but he would not deny himself anything, no matter what it cost his wife, and he had been very hard to live with. dannie admitted that. so mary had come to prefer him to jimmy, that was sure; but it was not a question between him and jimmy, now. it was between him, and any marriageable man that mary might fancy. he had grown old, and gray, and wrinkled, though he was under forty. mary had grown round, and young, and he had never seen her looking so beautiful. surely she would want a man now as young, and as fresh as herself; and she might want to live in town after a while, if she grew tired of the country. could he remember jimmy's dreadful death, realize that he was responsible for it, and make love to his wife? no, she was sacred to jimmy. could he live beside her, and lose her to another man for the second time? no, she belonged to him. it was almost daybreak when dannie remembered the fresh bed, and lay down for a few hours' rest. but there was no rest for dannie, and after tossing about until dawn he began his work. when he carried the milk into the cabin, and smelled the biscuit, he fulfilled mary's prophecy, got glad again, and came to breakfast. then he went about his work. but as the day wore on, he repeatedly heard the voice of the woman and the child, combining in a chorus of laughter. from the little front porch, the green bird warbled and trilled. neighbors who had heard of her return came up the lane to welcome a happy mary malone. the dead dreariness of winter melted before the spring sun, and in dannie's veins the warm blood swept up, as the sap flooded the trees, and in spite of himself he grew gladder and yet gladder. he now knew how he had missed mary. how he had loathed that empty, silent cabin. how remorse and heart hunger had gnawed at his vitals, and he decided that he would go on just as mary had said, and let things drift; and when she was ready to have the talk with him she had mentioned, he would hear what she had to say. and as he thought over these things, he caught himself watching for furrows that jimmy was not making on the other side of the field. he tried to talk to the robins and blackbirds instead of jimmy, but they were not such good company. and when the day was over, he tried not to be glad that he was going to the shining eyes of mary malone, a good supper, and a clean bed, and it was not in the heart of man to do it. the summer wore on, autumn came, and the year tilly had spoken of was over. dannie went his way, doing the work of two men, thinking of everything, planning for everything, and he was all the heart of mary malone could desire, save her lover. by little mary pieced it out. dannie never mentioned fishing; he had lost his love for the river. she knew that he frequently took walks to five mile hill. his devotion to jimmy's memory was unswerving. and at last it came to her, that in death as in life, jimmy malone was separating them. she began to realize that there might be things she did not know. what had jimmy told the priest? why had father michael refused to confess jimmy until he sent dannie to him? what had passed between them? if it was what she had thought all year, why did it not free dannie to her? if there was something more, what was it? surely dannie loved her. much as he had cared for jimmy, he had vowed that everything was for her first. she was eager to be his wife, and something bound him. one day, she decided to ask him. the next, she shrank in burning confusion, for when jimmy malone had asked for her love, she had admitted to him that she loved dannie, and jimmy had told her that it was no use, dannie did not care for girls, and that he had said he wished she would not thrust herself upon him. on the strength of that statement mary married jimmy inside five weeks, and spent years in bitter repentance. that was the thing which held her now. if dannie knew what she did, and did not care to marry her, how could she mention it? mary began to grow pale, and lose sleep, and dannie said the heat of the summer had tired her, and suggested that she go to mrs. dolan's for a weeks rest. the fact that he was willing, and possibly anxious to send her away for a whole week, angered mary. she went. chapter xi the pot of gold mary had not been in the dolan home an hour until katy knew all she could tell of her trouble. mrs. dolan was practical. "go to see father michael," she said. "what's he for but to hilp us. go ask him what jimmy told him. till him how you feel and what you know. he can till you what dannie knows and thin you will understand where you are at." mary was on the way before mrs. dolan fully finished. she went to the priest's residence and asked his housekeeper to inquire if he would see her. he would, and mary entered his presence strangely calm and self-possessed. this was the last fight she knew of that she could make for happiness, and if she lost, happiness was over for her. she had need of all her wit and she knew it. father michael began laughing as he shook hands. "now look here, mary," he said, "i've been expecting you. i warn you before you begin that i cannot sanction your marriage to a protestant." "oh, but i'm going to convart him!" cried mary so quickly that the priest laughed harder than ever. "so that's the lay of the land!" he chuckled. "well, if you'll guarantee that, i'll give in. when shall i read the banns?" "not until we get dannie's consint," answered mary, and for the first her voice wavered. father michael looked his surprise. "tut! tut!" he said. "and is dannie dilatory?" "dannie is the finest man that will ever live in this world," said mary, "but he don't want to marry me." "to my certain knowledge dannie has loved you all your life," said father michael. "he wants nothing here or hereafter as he wants to marry you." "thin why don't he till me so?" sobbed mary, burying her burning face in her hands. "has he said nothing to you?" gravely inquired the priest. "no, he hasn't and i don't belave he intinds to," answered mary, wiping her eyes and trying to be composed. "there is something about jimmy that is holding him back. mrs. dolan thought you'd help me." "what do you want me to do, mary?" asked father michael. "two things," answered mary promptly. "i want you to tell me what jimmy confissed to you before he died, and then i want you to talk to dannie and show him that he is free from any promise that jimmy might have got out of him. will you?" "a dying confession--" began the priest. "yes, but i know--" broke in mary. "i saw them fight, and i heard jimmy till dannie that he'd lied to him to separate us, but he turned right around and took it back and i knew dannie belaved him thin; but he can't after jimmy confissed it again to both of you." "what do you mean by `saw them fight?'" father michael was leaning toward mary anxiously. mary told him. "then that is the explanation to the whole thing," said the priest. "dannie did believe jimmy when he took it back, and he died before he could repeat to dannie what he had told me. and i have had the feeling that dannie thought himself in a way to blame for jimmy's death." "he was not! oh, he was not!" cried mary malone. "didn't i live there with them all those years? dannie always was good as gold to jimmy. it was shameful the way jimmy imposed on him, and spint his money, and took me from him. it was shameful! shameful!" "be calm! be calm!" cautioned father michael. "i agree with you. i am only trying to arrive at dannie's point of view. he well might feel that he was responsible, if after humoring jimmy like a child all his life, he at last lost his temper and dealt with him as if he were a man. if that is the case, he is of honor so fine, that he would hesitate to speak to you, no matter what he suffered. and then it is clear to me that he does not understand how jimmy separated you in the first place." "and lied me into marrying him, whin i told him over and over how i loved dannie. jimmy malone took iverything i had to give, and he left me alone for fiftane years, with my three little dead babies, that died because i'd no heart to desire life for thim, and he took my youth, and he took my womanhood, and he took my man--" mary arose in primitive rage. "you naden't bother!" she said. "i'm going straight to dannie meself." "don't!" said father michael softly. "don't do that, mary! it isn't the accepted way. there is a better! let him come to you." "but he won't come! he don't know! he's in jimmy's grip tighter in death than he was in life." mary began to sob again. "he will come," said father michael. "be calm! wait a little, my child. after all these years, don't spoil a love that has been almost unequaled in holiness and beauty, by anger at the dead. let me go to dannie. we are good friends. i can tell him jimmy made a confession to me, that he was trying to repeat to him, when punishment, far more awful than anything you have suffered, overtook him. always remember, mary, he died unshriven!" mary began to shiver. "your suffering is over," continued the priest. "you have many good years yet that you may spend with dannie; god will give you living children, i am sure. think of the years jimmy's secret has hounded and driven him! think of the penalty he must pay before he gets a glimpse of paradise, if he be not eternally lost!" "i have!" exclaimed mary. "and it is nothing to the fact that he took dannie from me, and yet kept him in my home while he possessed me himsilf for years. may he burn----" "mary! let that suffice!" cried the priest. "he will! the question now is, shall i go to dannie?" "will you till him just what jimmy told you? will you till him that i have loved him always?" "yes," said father michael. "will you go now?" "i cannot! i have work. i will come early in the morning." "you will till him ivirything?" she repeated. "i will," promised father michael. mary went back to mrs. dolan's comforted. she was anxious to return home at once, but at last consented to spend the day. now that she was sure dannie did not know the truth, her heart warmed toward him. she was anxious to comfort and help him in the long struggle which she saw that he must have endured. by late afternoon she could bear it no longer and started back to rainbow bottom in time to prepare supper. for the first hour after mary had gone dannie whistled to keep up his courage. by the second he had no courage to keep. by the third he was indulging in the worst fit of despondency he ever had known. he had told her to stay a week. a week! it would be an eternity! there alone again! could he bear it? he got through to midafternoon some way, and then in jealous fear and foreboding he became almost frantic. one way or the other, this thing must be settled. fiercer raged the storm within him and at last toward evening it became unendurable. at its height the curling smoke from the chimney told him that mary had come home. an unreasoning joy seized him. he went to the barn and listened. he could hear her moving about preparing supper. as he watched she came to the well for water and before she returned to the cabin she stood looking over the fields as if trying to locate him. dannie's blood ran hotly and his pulses were leaping. "go to her! go to her now!" demanded passion, struggling to break leash. "you killed jimmy! you murdered your friend!" cried conscience, with unyielding insistence. poor dannie gave one last glance at mary, and then turned, and for the second time he ran from her as if pursued by demons. but this time he went straight to five mile hill, and the grave of jimmy malone. he sat down on it, and within a few feet of jimmy's bones, dannie took his tired head in his hands, and tried to think, and for the life of him, he could think but two things. that he had killed jimmy, and that to live longer without mary would kill him. hour after hour he fought with his lifelong love for jimmy and his lifelong love for mary. night came on, the frost bit, the wind chilled, and the little brown owls screeched among the gravestones, and dannie battled on. morning came, the sun arose, and shone on dannie, sitting numb with drawn face and bleeding heart. mary prepared a fine supper the night before, and patiently waited, and when dannie did not come, she concluded that he had gone to town, without knowing that she had returned. tilly grew sleepy, so she put the child to bed, and presently she went herself. father michael would make everything right in the morning. but in the morning dannie was not there, and had not been. mary became alarmed. she was very nervous by the time father michael arrived. he decided to go to the nearest neighbor, and ask when dannie had been seen last. as he turned from the lane into the road a man of that neighborhood was passing on his wagon, and the priest hailed him, and asked if he knew where dannie macnoun was. "back in five mile hill, a man with his head on his knees, is asettin' on the grave of jimmy malone, and i allow that would be dannie macnoun, the damn fool!" he said. father michael went back to the cabin, and told mary he had learned where dannie was, and to have no uneasiness, and he would go to see him immediately. "and first of all you'll tell him how jimmy lied to him?" "i will!" said the priest. he entered the cemetery, and walked slowly to the grave of jimmy malone. dannie lifted his head, and stared at him. "i saw you," said father michael, "and i came in to speak with you." he took dannie's hand. "you are here at this hour to my surprise." "i dinna know that ye should be surprised at my comin' to sit by jimmy at ony time," coldly replied dannie. "he was my only friend in life, and another mon so fine i'll never know. i often come here." the priest shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and then he sat down on a grave near dannie. "for a year i have been waiting to talk with you," he said. dannie wiped his face, and lifting his hat, ran his fingers through his hair, as if to arouse himself. his eyes were dull and listless." i am afraid i am no fit to talk sensibly," he said. "i am much troubled. some other time----" "could you tell me your trouble?" asked father michael. dannie shook his head. "i have known mary malone all her life," said the priest softly, "and been her confessor. i have known jimmy malone all his life, and heard his dying confession. i know what it was he was trying to tell you when he died. think again!" dannie macnoun stood up. he looked at the priest intently. "did ye come here purposely to find me?" "yes." "what do ye want?" "to clear your mind of all trouble, and fill your heart with love, and great peace, and rest. our heavenly father knows that you need peace of heart, and rest, dannie." "to fill my heart wi' peace, ye will have to prove to me that i'm no responsible fra the death of jimmy malone; and to give it rest, ye will have to prove to me that i'm free to marry his wife. ye can do neither of those things." "i can do both," said the priest calmly. "my son, that is what i came to do." dannie's face grew whiter and whiter, as the blood receded, and his big hands gripped at his sides. "aye, but ye canna!" he cried desperately. "ye canna!" "i can," said the priest. "listen to me! did jimmy get anything at all said to you?" "he said, `mary,' then he choked on the next word, then he gasped out `yours,' and it was over." "have you any idea what he was trying to tell you?" "na!" answered dannie. "he was mortal sick, and half delirious, and i paid little heed. if he lived, he would tell me when he was better. if he died, nothing mattered, fra i was responsible, and better friend mon never had. there was nothing on earth jimmy would na have done for me. he was so big hearted, so generous! my god, how i have missed him! how i have missed him!" "your faith in jimmy is strong," ventured the bewildered priest, for he did not see his way. dannie lifted his head. the sunshine was warming him, and his thoughts were beginning to clear. "my faith in jimmy malone is so strong," he said, "that if i lost it, i never should trust another living mon. he had his faults to others, i admit that, but he never had ony to me. he was my friend, and above my life i loved him. i wad gladly have died to save him." "and yet you say you are responsible for his death!" "let me tell ye!" cried dannie eagerly, and began on the story the priest wanted to hear from him. as he finished father michael's face lighted. "what folly!" he said, "that a man of your intelligence should torture yourself with the thought of responsibility in a case like that. any one would have claimed the fish in those circumstances. priest that i am, i would have had it, even if i fought for it. any man would! and as for what followed, it was bound to come! he was a tortured man, and a broken one. if he had not lain out that night, he would a few nights later. it was not in your power to save him. no man can be saved from himself, dannie. did what he said make no impression on you?" "enough that i would have killed him with my naked hands if he had na taken it back. of course he had to retract! if i believed that of jimmy, after the life we lived together, i would curse god and mon, and break fra the woods, and live and dee there alone." "then what was he trying to tell you when he died?" asked the bewildered priest. "to take care of mary, i judge." "not to marry her; and take her for your own?" dannie began to tremble. "remember, i talked with him first," said father michael, "and what he confessed to me, he knew was final. he died before he could talk to you, but i think it is time to tell you what he wanted to say. he--he--was trying--trying to tell you, that there was nothing but love in his heart for you. that he did not in any way blame you. that--that mary was yours. that you were free to take her. that----" "what!" cried dannie wildly. "are ye sure? oh, my god!" "perfectly sure!" answered father michael. "jimmy knew how long and faithfully you had loved mary, and she had loved you----" "mary had loved me? carefu', mon! are ye sure?" "i know," said father michael convincingly. "i give you my priestly word, i know, and jimmy knew, and was altogether willing. he loved you deeply, as he could love any one, dannie, and he blamed you for nothing at all. the only thing that would have brought jimmy any comfort in dying, was to know that you would end your life with mary, and not hate his memory." "hate!" cried dannie. "hate! father michael, if ye have come to tell me that jimmy na held me responsible fra his death, and was willing fra me to have mary, your face looks like the face of god to me!" dannie gripped the priest's hand. "are ye sure? are ye sure, mon?" he almost lifted father michael from the ground. "i tell you, i know! go and be happy!" "some ither day i will try to thank ye," said dannie, turning away. "noo, i'm in a little of a hurry." he was half way to the gate when he turned back. "does mary know this?" he asked. "she does," said the priest. "you are one good man, dannie, go and be happy, and may the blessing of god go with you." dannie lifted his hat. "and jimmy, too," he said, "put jimmy in, father michael." "may the peace of god rest the troubled soul of jimmy malone," said father michael, and not being a catholic, dannie did not know that from the blessing for which he asked. he hurried away with the brightness of dawn on his lined face, which looked almost boyish under his whitening hair. mary malone was at the window, and turmoil and bitterness were beginning to burn in her heart again. maybe the priest had not found dannie. maybe he was not coming. maybe a thousand things. then he ~was coming. coming straight and sure. coming across the fields, and leaping fences at a bound. coming with such speed and force as comes the strong man, fifteen years denied. mary's heart began to jar, and thump, and waves of happiness surged over her. and then she saw that look of dawn, of serene delight on the face of the man, and she stood aghast. dannie threw wide the door, and crossed her threshold with outstretched arms. "is it true?" he panted. "that thing father michael told me, is it true? will ye be mine, mary malone? at last will you be mine? oh, my girl, is the beautiful thing that the priest told me true?" "~the beautiful thing that the priest told him!" mary malone swung a chair before her, and stepped back. "wait!" she cried sharply. "there must be some mistake. till me ixactly what father michael told you?" "he told me that jimmy na held me responsible fra his death. that he loved me when he died. that he was willing i should have ye! oh, mary, wasna that splendid of him. wasna he a grand mon? mary, come to me. say that it's true! tell me, if ye love me." mary malone stared wide-eyed at dannie, and gasped for breath. dannie came closer. at last he had found his tongue. "fra the love of mercy, if ye are comin' to me, come noo "mary" he begged." my arms will split if they dinna get round ye soon, dear. jimmy told ye fra me, sixteen years ago, how i loved ye, and he told me when he came back how sorry ye were fra me, and he--he almost cried when he told me. i never saw a mon feel so. grand old jimmy! no other mon like him!" mary drew back in desperation. "you see here, dannie micnoun!" she screamed. "you see here----" "i do," broke in dannie. "i'm lookin'! all i ever saw, or see now, or shall see till i dee is `here,' when `here' is ye, mary malone. oh! if a woman ever could understand what passion means to a mon! if ye knew what i have suffered through all these years, you'd end it, mary malone." mary gave the chair a shove. "come here, dannie," she said. dannie cleared the space between them. mary set her hands against his breast. "one minute," she panted. "just one! i have loved you all me life, me man. i niver loved any one but you. i niver wanted any one but you. i niver hoped for any hivin better than i knew i'd find in your arms. there was a mistake. there was an awful mistake, when i married jimmy. i'm not tillin' you now, and i niver will, but you must realize that! do you understand me?" "hardly," breathed dannie. "hardly!" "will, you can take your time if you want to think it out, because that's all i'll iver till you. there was a horrible mistake. it was ~you i loved, and wanted to marry. now bend down to me, dannie micnoun, because i'm going to take your head on me breast and kiss your dear face until i'm tired," said mary malone. an hour later father michael came leisurely down the lane, and the peace of god was with him. a radiant mary went out to meet him. "you didn't till him!" she cried accusingly. "you didn't till him!" the priest laid a hand on her head. "mary, the greatest thing in the whole world is self-sacrifice," he said. "the pot at the foot of the rainbow is just now running over with the pure gold of perfect contentment. but had you and i done such a dreadful thing as to destroy the confidence of a good man in his friend, your heart never could know such joy as it now knows in this sacrifice of yours; and no such blessed, shining light could illumine your face. that is what i wanted to see. i said to myself as i came along, `she will try, but she will learn, as i did, that she cannot look in his eyes and undeceive him. and when she becomes reconciled, her face will be so good to see.' and it is. you did not tell him either, mary malone!" [end.] 1845 the facts in the case of m. valdemar by edgar allan poe of course i shall not pretend to consider it any matter for wonder, that the extraordinary case of m. valdemar has excited discussion. it would have been a miracle had it not-especially under the circumstances. through the desire of all parties concerned, to keep the affair from the public, at least for the present, or until we had farther opportunities for investigation --through our endeavors to effect this --a garbled or exaggerated account made its way into society, and became the source of many unpleasant misrepresentations, and, very naturally, of a great deal of disbelief. it is now rendered necessary that i give the facts --as far as i comprehend them myself. they are, succinctly, these: my attention, for the last three years, had been repeatedly drawn to the subject of mesmerism; and, about nine months ago it occurred to me, quite suddenly, that in the series of experiments made hitherto, there had been a very remarkable and most unaccountable omission: --no person had as yet been mesmerized in articulo mortis. it remained to be seen, first, whether, in such condition, there existed in the patient any susceptibility to the magnetic influence; secondly, whether, if any existed, it was impaired or increased by the condition; thirdly, to what extent, or for how long a period, the encroachments of death might be arrested by the process. there were other points to be ascertained, but these most excited my curiosity --the last in especial, from the immensely important character of its consequences. in looking around me for some subject by whose means i might test these particulars, i was brought to think of my friend, m. ernest valdemar, the well-known compiler of the "bibliotheca forensica," and author (under the nom de plume of issachar marx) of the polish versions of "wallenstein" and "gargantua." m. valdemar, who has resided principally at harlaem, n.y., since the year 1839, is (or was) particularly noticeable for the extreme spareness of his person --his lower limbs much resembling those of john randolph; and, also, for the whiteness of his whiskers, in violent contrast to the blackness of his hair --the latter, in consequence, being very generally mistaken for a wig. his temperament was markedly nervous, and rendered him a good subject for mesmeric experiment. on two or three occasions i had put him to sleep with little difficulty, but was disappointed in other results which his peculiar constitution had naturally led me to anticipate. his will was at no period positively, or thoroughly, under my control, and in regard to clairvoyance, i could accomplish with him nothing to be relied upon. i always attributed my failure at these points to the disordered state of his health. for some months previous to my becoming acquainted with him, his physicians had declared him in a confirmed phthisis. it was his custom, indeed, to speak calmly of his approaching dissolution, as of a matter neither to be avoided nor regretted. when the ideas to which i have alluded first occurred to me, it was of course very natural that i should think of m. valdemar. i knew the steady philosophy of the man too well to apprehend any scruples from him; and he had no relatives in america who would be likely to interfere. i spoke to him frankly upon the subject; and, to my surprise, his interest seemed vividly excited. i say to my surprise, for, although he had always yielded his person freely to my experiments, he had never before given me any tokens of sympathy with what i did. his disease was if that character which would admit of exact calculation in respect to the epoch of its termination in death; and it was finally arranged between us that he would send for me about twenty-four hours before the period announced by his physicians as that of his decease. it is now rather more than seven months since i received, from m. valdemar himself, the subjoined note: my dear p--, you may as well come now. d-and f-are agreed that i cannot hold out beyond to-morrow midnight; and i think they have hit the time very nearly. valdemar i received this note within half an hour after it was written, and in fifteen minutes more i was in the dying man's chamber. i had not seen him for ten days, and was appalled by the fearful alteration which the brief interval had wrought in him. his face wore a leaden hue; the eyes were utterly lustreless; and the emaciation was so extreme that the skin had been broken through by the cheek-bones. his expectoration was excessive. the pulse was barely perceptible. he retained, nevertheless, in a very remarkable manner, both his mental power and a certain degree of physical strength. he spoke with distinctness --took some palliative medicines without aid --and, when i entered the room, was occupied in penciling memoranda in a pocket-book. he was propped up in the bed by pillows. doctors d-and f-were in attendance. after pressing valdemar's hand, i took these gentlemen aside, and obtained from them a minute account of the patient's condition. the left lung had been for eighteen months in a semi-osseous or cartilaginous state, and was, of course, entirely useless for all purposes of vitality. the right, in its upper portion, was also partially, if not thoroughly, ossified, while the lower region was merely a mass of purulent tubercles, running one into another. several extensive perforations existed; and, at one point, permanent adhesion to the ribs had taken place. these appearances in the right lobe were of comparatively recent date. the ossification had proceeded with very unusual rapidity; no sign of it had discovered a month before, and the adhesion had only been observed during the three previous days. independently of the phthisis, the patient was suspected of aneurism of the aorta; but on this point the osseous symptoms rendered an exact diagnosis impossible. it was the opinion of both physicians that m. valdemar would die about midnight on the morrow (sunday). it was then seven o'clock on saturday evening. on quitting the invalid's bed-side to hold conversation with myself, doctors d-and f-had bidden him a final farewell. it had not been their intention to return; but, at my request, they agreed to look in upon the patient about ten the next night. when they had gone, i spoke freely with m. valdemar on the subject of his approaching dissolution, as well as, more particularly, of the experiment proposed. he still professed himself quite willing and even anxious to have it made, and urged me to commence it at once. a male and a female nurse were in attendance; but i did not feel myself altogether at liberty to engage in a task of this character with no more reliable witnesses than these people, in case of sudden accident, might prove. i therefore postponed operations until about eight the next night, when the arrival of a medical student with whom i had some acquaintance, (mr. theodore l--l,) relieved me from farther embarrassment. it had been my design, originally, to wait for the physicians; but i was induced to proceed, first, by the urgent entreaties of m. valdemar, and secondly, by my conviction that i had not a moment to lose, as he was evidently sinking fast. mr. l--l was so kind as to accede to my desire that he would take notes of all that occurred, and it is from his memoranda that what i now have to relate is, for the most part, either condensed or copied verbatim. it wanted about five minutes of eight when, taking the patient's hand, i begged him to state, as distinctly as he could, to mr. l--l, whether he (m. valdemar) was entirely willing that i should make the experiment of mesmerizing him in his then condition. he replied feebly, yet quite audibly, "yes, i wish to be "i fear you have mesmerized" --adding immediately afterwards, deferred it too long." while he spoke thus, i commenced the passes which i had already found most effectual in subduing him. he was evidently influenced with the first lateral stroke of my hand across his forehead; but although i exerted all my powers, no farther perceptible effect was induced until some minutes after ten o'clock, when doctors d-and f-called, according to appointment. i explained to them, in a few words, what i designed, and as they opposed no objection, saying that the patient was already in the death agony, i proceeded without hesitation --exchanging, however, the lateral passes for downward ones, and directing my gaze entirely into the right eye of the sufferer. by this time his pulse was imperceptible and his breathing was stertorous, and at intervals of half a minute. this condition was nearly unaltered for a quarter of an hour. at the expiration of this period, however, a natural although a very deep sigh escaped the bosom of the dying man, and the stertorous breathing ceased --that is to say, its stertorousness was no longer apparent; the intervals were undiminished. the patient's extremities were of an icy coldness. at five minutes before eleven i perceived unequivocal signs of the mesmeric influence. the glassy roll of the eye was changed for that expression of uneasy inward examination which is never seen except in cases of sleep-waking, and which it is quite impossible to mistake. with a few rapid lateral passes i made the lids quiver, as in incipient sleep, and with a few more i closed them altogether. i was not satisfied, however, with this, but continued the manipulations vigorously, and with the fullest exertion of the will, until i had completely stiffened the limbs of the slumberer, after placing them in a seemingly easy position. the legs were at full length; the arms were nearly so, and reposed on the bed at a moderate distance from the loin. the head was very slightly elevated. when i had accomplished this, it was fully midnight, and i requested the gentlemen present to examine m. valdemar's condition. after a few experiments, they admitted him to be an unusually perfect state of mesmeric trance. the curiosity of both the physicians was greatly excited. dr. d-resolved at once to remain with the patient all night, while dr. f-took leave with a promise to return at daybreak. mr. l--l and the nurses remained. we left m. valdemar entirely undisturbed until about three o'clock in the morning, when i approached him and found him in precisely the same condition as when dr. f-went away --that is to say, he lay in the same position; the pulse was imperceptible; the breathing was gentle (scarcely noticeable, unless through the application of a mirror to the lips); the eyes were closed naturally; and the limbs were as rigid and as cold as marble. still, the general appearance was certainly not that of death. as i approached m. valdemar i made a kind of half effort to influence his right arm into pursuit of my own, as i passed the latter gently to and fro above his person. in such experiments with this patient had never perfectly succeeded before, and assuredly i had little thought of succeeding now; but to my astonishment, his arm very readily, although feebly, followed every direction i assigned it with mine. i determined to hazard a few words of conversation. "m. valdemar," i said, "are you asleep?" he made no answer, but i perceived a tremor about the lips, and was thus induced to repeat the question, again and again. at its third repetition, his whole frame was agitated by a very slight shivering; the eyelids unclosed themselves so far as to display a white line of the ball; the lips moved sluggishly, and from between them, in a barely audible whisper, issued the words: "yes; --asleep now. do not wake me! --let me die so!" i here felt the limbs and found them as rigid as ever. the right arm, as before, obeyed the direction of my hand. i questioned the sleep-waker again: "do you still feel pain in the breast, m. valdemar?" the answer now was immediate, but even less audible than before: "no pain --i am dying." i did not think it advisable to disturb him farther just then, and nothing more was said or done until the arrival of dr. f--, who came a little before sunrise, and expressed unbounded astonishment at finding the patient still alive. after feeling the pulse and applying a mirror to the lips, he requested me to speak to the sleep-waker again. i did so, saying: "m. valdemar, do you still sleep?" as before, some minutes elapsed ere a reply was made; and during the interval the dying man seemed to be collecting his energies to speak. at my fourth repetition of the question, he said very faintly, almost inaudibly: "yes; still asleep --dying." it was now the opinion, or rather the wish, of the physicians, that m. valdemar should be suffered to remain undisturbed in his present apparently tranquil condition, until death should supervene --and this, it was generally agreed, must now take place within a few minutes. i concluded, however, to speak to him once more, and merely repeated my previous question. while i spoke, there came a marked change over the countenance of the sleep-waker. the eyes rolled themselves slowly open, the pupils disappearing upwardly; the skin generally assumed a cadaverous hue, resembling not so much parchment as white paper; and the circular hectic spots which, hitherto, had been strongly defined in the centre of each cheek, went out at once. i use this expression, because the suddenness of their departure put me in mind of nothing so much as the extinguishment of a candle by a puff of the breath. the upper lip, at the same time, writhed itself away from the teeth, which it had previously covered completely; while the lower jaw fell with an audible jerk, leaving the mouth widely extended, and disclosing in full view the swollen and blackened tongue. i presume that no member of the party then present had been unaccustomed to death-bed horrors; but so hideous beyond conception was the appearance of m. valdemar at this moment, that there was a general shrinking back from the region of the bed. i now feel that i have reached a point of this narrative at which every reader will be startled into positive disbelief. it is my business, however, simply to proceed. there was no longer the faintest sign of vitality in m. valdemar; and concluding him to be dead, we were consigning him to the charge of the nurses, when a strong vibratory motion was observable in the tongue. this continued for perhaps a minute. at the expiration of this period, there issued from the distended and motionless jaws a voice --such as it would be madness in me to attempt describing. there are, indeed, two or three epithets which might be considered as applicable to it in part; i might say, for example, that the sound was harsh, and broken and hollow; but the hideous whole is indescribable, for the simple reason that no similar sounds have ever jarred upon the ear of humanity. there were two particulars, nevertheless, which i thought then, and still think, might fairly be stated as characteristic of the intonation --as well adapted to convey some idea of its unearthly peculiarity. in the first place, the voice seemed to reach our ears --at least mine --from a vast distance, or from some deep cavern within the earth. in the second place, it impressed me (i fear, indeed, that it will be impossible to make myself comprehended) as gelatinous or glutinous matters impress the sense of touch. i have spoken both of "sound" and of "voice." i mean to say that the sound was one of distinct --of even wonderfully, thrillingly distinct --syllabification. m. valdemar spoke --obviously in reply to the question i had propounded to him a few minutes before. i had asked him, it will be remembered, if he still slept. he now said: "yes; --no; --i have been sleeping --and now --now --i am dead. no person present even affected to deny, or attempted to repress, the unutterable, shuddering horror which these few words, thus uttered, were so well calculated to convey. mr. l--l (the student) swooned. the nurses immediately left the chamber, and could not be induced to return. my own impressions i would not pretend to render intelligible to the reader. for nearly an hour, we busied ourselves, silently --without the utterance of a word --in endeavors to revive mr. l--l. when he came to himself, we addressed ourselves again to an investigation of m. valdemar's condition. it remained in all respects as i have last described it, with the exception that the mirror no longer afforded evidence of respiration. an attempt to draw blood from the arm failed. i should mention, too, that this limb was no farther subject to my will. i endeavored in vain to make it follow the direction of my hand. the only real indication, indeed, of the mesmeric influence, was now found in the vibratory movement of the tongue, whenever i addressed m. valdemar a question. he seemed to be making an effort to reply, but had no longer sufficient volition. to queries put to him by any other person than myself he seemed utterly insensible --although i endeavored to place each member of the company in mesmeric rapport with him. i believe that i have now related all that is necessary to an understanding of the sleep-waker's state at this epoch. other nurses were procured; and at ten o'clock i left the house in company with the two physicians and mr. l--l. in the afternoon we all called again to see the patient. his condition remained precisely the same. we had now some discussion as to the propriety and feasibility of awakening him; but we had little difficulty in agreeing that no good purpose would be served by so doing. it was evident that, so far, death (or what is usually termed death) had been arrested by the mesmeric process. it seemed clear to us all that to awaken m. valdemar would be merely to insure his instant, or at least his speedy dissolution. from this period until the close of last week --an interval of nearly seven months --we continued to make daily calls at m. valdemar's house, accompanied, now and then, by medical and other friends. all this time the sleeper-waker remained exactly as i have last described him. the nurses' attentions were continual. it was on friday last that we finally resolved to make the experiment of awakening or attempting to awaken him; and it is the (perhaps) unfortunate result of this latter experiment which has given rise to so much discussion in private circles --to so much of what i cannot help thinking unwarranted popular feeling. for the purpose of relieving m. valdemar from the mesmeric trance, i made use of the customary passes. these, for a time, were unsuccessful. the first indication of revival was afforded by a partial descent of the iris. it was observed, as especially remarkable, that this lowering of the pupil was accompanied by the profuse out-flowing of a yellowish ichor (from beneath the lids) of a pungent and highly offensive odor. it was now suggested that i should attempt to influence the patient's arm, as heretofore. i made the attempt and failed. dr. f-then intimated a desire to have me put a question. i did so, as follows: "m. valdemar, can you explain to us what are your feelings or wishes now?" there was an instant return of the hectic circles on the cheeks; the tongue quivered, or rather rolled violently in the mouth (although the jaws and lips remained rigid as before;) and at length the same hideous voice which i have already described, broke forth: "for god's sake! --quick! --quick! --put me to sleep --or, quick! --waken me! --quick! --i say to you that i am dead!" i was thoroughly unnerved, and for an instant remained undecided what to do. at first i made an endeavor to re-compose the patient; but, failing in this through total abeyance of the will, i retraced my steps and as earnestly struggled to awaken him. in this attempt i soon saw that i should be successful --or at least i soon fancied that my success would be complete --and i am sure that all in the room were prepared to see the patient awaken. for what really occurred, however, it is quite impossible that any human being could have been prepared. as i rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of "dead! dead!" absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the lips of the sufferer, his whole frame at once --within the space of a single minute, or even less, shrunk --crumbled --absolutely rotted away beneath my hands. upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome --of detestable putridity. -the end. 1830 to - by edgar allan poe the bowers whereat, in dreams, i see the wantonest singing birds, are lipsand all thy melody of lip-begotten words thine eyes, in heaven of heart enshrined, then desolately fall, o god! on my funereal mind like starlight on a pall thy heartthy heart!i wake and sigh, and sleep to dream till day of the truth that gold can never buy of the baubles that it may. -the end. 1782 the confessions of jean-jacques rousseau by jean-jacques rousseau translated by w. conyngham mallory book i [1712-1728] i have begun on a work which is without precedent, whose accomplishment will have no imitator. i propose to set before my fellow-mortals a man in all the truth of nature; and this man shall be myself. i have studied mankind and know my heart; i am not made like any one i have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, i at least claim originality, and whether nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destroying the mold in which she cast me, can only be decided after i have been read. i will present myself, whenever the last trumpet shall sound, before the sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, "thus have i acted; these were my thoughts; such was i. with equal freedom and veracity have i related what was laudable or wicked, i have concealed no crimes, added no virtues; and if i have sometimes introduced superfluous ornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory: i may have supposed that certain, which i only knew to be probable, but have never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. such as i was, i have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous, and sublime; even as thou hast read my inmost soul: power eternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and if he dare, aver, i was better than that man." i was born at geneva, in 1712, son of isaac rousseau and susannah bernard, citizens. my father's share of a moderate competency, which was divided among fifteen children, being very trivial, his business of a watchmaker (in which he had the reputation of great ingenuity) was his only dependence. my mother's circumstances were more affluent; she was daughter of a mons. bernard, minister, and possessed a considerable share of modesty and beauty; indeed, my father found some difficulty in obtaining her hand. the affection they entertained for each other was almost as early as their existence; at eight or nine years old they walked together every evening on the banks of the treille, and before they were ten, could not support the idea of separation. a natural sympathy of soul confined those sentiments of predilection which habit at first produced; born with minds susceptible of the most exquisite sensibility and tenderness, it was only necessary to encounter similar dispositions; that moment fortunately presented itself, and each surrendered a willing heart. the obstacles that opposed served only to give a degree of vivacity to their affection, and the young lover, not being able to obtain his mistress, was overwhelmed with sorrow and despair. she advised him to travelto forget her. he consentedhe traveled but returned more passionate than ever, and had the happiness to find her equally constant, equally tender. after this proof of mutual affection, what could they resolve?to dedicate their future lives to love! the resolution was ratified with a vow, on which heaven shed its benediction. fortunately, my mother's brother, gabriel bernard, fell in love with one of my father's sisters: she had no objection to the match, but made the marriage of his sister with her brother an indispensable preliminary. love soon removed every obstacle, and the two weddings were celebrated the same day: thus my uncle became the husband of my aunt, and their children were doubly cousins german. before a year was expired, both had the happiness to become fathers, but were soon after obliged to submit to a separation. my uncle bernard, who was an engineer, went to serve in the empire and hungary, under prince eugene, and distinguished himself both at the siege and battle of belgrade. my father, after the birth of my only brother, set off, on recommendation, for constantinople, and was appointed watchmaker to the seraglio. during his absence, the beauty, wit, and accomplishments* of my mother attracted a number of admirers, among whom mons. de la closure, resident of france, was the most assiduous in his attentions. his passion must have been extremely violent, since after a period of thirty years i have seen him affected at the very mention of her name. my mother had a defense more powerful even than her virtue; she tenderly loved my father, and conjured him to return; his inclination seconding his request, he gave up every prospect of emolument, and hastened to geneva. * they were too brilliant for her situation, the minister, her father, having bestowed great pains on her education. she was taught drawing, singing, and to play on the theorbo; had learning, and wrote very agreeable verses. the following is an extempore piece which she composed in the absence of her husband and brother, in a conversation with some person relative to them, while walking with her sister-in-law, and their two children: ces deux messieurs, qui sont absens, nous sont chers de bien des manieres; ce sont nos amis, nos amans, ce sont nos maris et nos freres, et les peres de ces enfans. these absent ones, who justly claim our hearts, by every tender name, to whom each wish extends: our husbands and our brothers are, the fathers of this blooming pair, our lovers and our friends. i was the unfortunate fruit of this return, being born ten months after, in a very weakly and infirm state; my birth cost my mother her life, and was the first of my misfortunes. i am ignorant how my father supported her loss at that time, but i know he was ever after inconsolable. in me he still thought he saw her he so tenderly lamented, but could never forget that i had been the innocent cause of his misfortune, nor did he over embrace me, but his sighs, the convulsive pressure of his arms, witnessed that a bitter regret mingled itself with his caresses, though, as may be supposed, they were not on this account less ardent. when he said to me, "jean jacques, let us talk of your mother," my usual reply was, "yes, father, but then, you know, we shall cry," and immediately the tears started from his eyes. "ah!" exclaimed he, with agitation, "give me back my wife; at least console me for her loss; fill up, dear boy, the void she has left in my soul. could i love thee thus wert thou only my son?" forty years after this loss he expired in the arms of a second wife, but the name of the first still vibrated on his lips, still was her image engraved on his heart. such were the authors of my being: of all the gifts it had pleased heaven to bestow on them, a feeling heart was the only one that descended to me; this had been the source of their felicity, it was the foundation of all my misfortunes. i came into the world with so few signs of life, that they entertained but little hope of preserving me, with the seeds of a disorder that has gathered strength with years, and from which i am now relieved at intervals, only to suffer a different, though more intolerable evil. i owed my preservation to one of my father's sisters, an amiable and virtuous girl, who took the most tender care of me; she is yet living, nursing, at the age of fourscore, a husband younger than herself, but worn out with excessive drinking. dear aunt! i freely forgive your having preserved my life, and only lament that it is not in my power to bestow on the decline of your days the tender solicitude and care you lavished on the first dawn of mine. my nurse, jaqueline, is likewise living, and in good healththe hands that opened my eyes to the light of this world may close them at my death. we suffer before we think; it is the common lot of humanity. i experienced more than my proportion of it. i have no knowledge of what passed prior to my fifth or sixth year; i recollect nothing of learning to read, i only remember what effect the first considerable exercise of it produced on my mind; and from that moment i date an uninterrupted knowledge of myself. every night, after supper, we read some part of a small collection of romances which had been my mother's. my father's design was only to improve me in reading, and he thought these entertaining works were calculated to give me a fondness for it; but we soon found ourselves so interested in the adventures they contained, that we alternately read whole nights together, and could not bear to give over until at the conclusion of a volume. sometimes, in a morning, on hearing the swallows at our window, my father, quite ashamed of this weakness, would cry, "come, come, let us go to bed; i am more a child than thou art." i soon acquired, by this dangerous custom, not only an extreme facility in reading and comprehending, but, for my age, a too intimate acquaintance with the passions. an infinity of sensations were familiar to me, without possessing any precise idea of the objects to which they relatedi had conceived nothingi had felt the whole. this confused succession of emotions did not retard the future efforts of my reason, though they added an extravagant, romantic notion of human life, which experience and reflection have never been able to eradicate. my romance reading concluded with the summer of 1719, the following winter was differently employed. my mother's library being quite exhausted, we had recourse to that part of her father's which had devolved to us; here we happily found some valuable books, which was by no means extraordinary, having been selected by a minister that truly deserved that title, in whom learning (which was the rage of the times) was but a secondary commendation, his taste and good sense being most conspicuous. the history of the church and empire by le sueur, bossuett's discourses on universal history, plutarch's lives, the history of venice by nani, ovid's metamorphoses, la bruyere, fontenelle's world, his dialogues of the dead, and a few volumes of moliere, were soon ranged in my father's closet, where, during the hours he was employed in his business, i daily read them, with an avidity and taste uncommon, perhaps unprecedented at my age. plutarch presently became my greatest favorite. the satisfaction i derived from the repeated readings i gave this author, extinguished my passion for romances, and i shortly preferred agesilaus, brutus, and aristides, to orondates, artemenes, and juba. these interesting studies, seconded by the conversations they frequently occasioned with my father, produced that republican spirit and love of liberty, that haughty and invincible turn of mind, which rendered me impatient of restraint or servitude, and became the torment of my life, as i continually found myself in situations incompatible with these sentiments. incessantly occupied with rome and athens, conversing, if i may so express myself, with their illustrious heroes; born the citizen of a republic, of a father whose ruling passion was the love of his country, i was fired with these examples; could fancy myself a greek or roman, and readily give into the character of the personage whose life i read; transported by the recital of any extraordinary instance of fortitude or intrepidity, animation flashed from my eyes, and gave my voice additional strength and energy. one day, at table, while relating the fortitude of scoevola, they were terrified at seeing me start from my seat and hold my hand over a hot chafing-dish, to represent more forcibly the action of that determined roman. my brother, who was seven years older than myself, was brought up to my father's profession. the extraordinary affection they lavished on me might be the reason he was too much neglected: this certainly was a fault which cannot be justified. his education and morals suffered by this neglect, and he acquired the habits of a libertine before he arrived at an age to be really one. my father tried what effect placing him with a master would produce, but he still persisted in the same ill conduct. though i saw him so seldom that it could hardly be said we were acquainted, i loved him tenderly, and believe he had as strong an affection for me as a youth of his dissipated turn of mind could be supposed capable of. one day, i remember, when my father was correcting him severely, i threw myself between them, embracing my brother, whom i covered with my body, receiving the strokes designed for him; i persisted so obstinately in my protection, that either softened by my cries and tears, or fearing to hurt me most, his anger subsided, and he pardoned his fault. in the end, my brother's conduct became so bad that he suddenly disappeared, and we learned some time after that he was in germany, but he never wrote to us, and from that day we heard no news of him: thus i became an only son. if this poor lad was neglected, it was quite different with his brother, for the children of a king could not be treated with more attention and tenderness than were bestowed on my infancy, being the darling of the family; and what is rather uncommon, though treated as a beloved, never a spoiled child; was never permitted, while under paternal inspection, to play in the street with other children; never had any occasion to contradict or indulge those fantastical humors which are usually attributed to nature, but are in reality the effects of an injudicious education. i had the faults common to my age, was talkative, a glutton, and sometimes a liar; made no scruple of stealing sweetmeats, fruits, or, indeed, any kind of eatables; but never took delight in mischievous waste, in accusing others, or tormenting harmless animals. i recollect, indeed, that one day, while madam clot, a neighbor of ours, was gone to church, i made water in her kettle; the remembrance even now makes me smile, for madam clot (though, if you please, a good sort of creature) was one of the most tedious grumbling old women i ever knew. thus have i given a brief, but faithful, history of my childish transgressions. how could i become cruel or vicious, when i had before my eyes only examples of mildness, and was surrounded by some of the best people in the world? my father, my aunt, my nurse, my relations, our friends, our neighbors, all i had any connections with, did not obey me, it is true, but loved me tenderly, and i returned their affection. i found so little to excite my desires, and those i had were so seldom contradicted, that i was hardly sensible of possessing any, and can solemnly aver i was an absolute stranger to caprice until after i had experienced the authority of a master. those hours that were not employed in reading or writing with my father, or walking with my governess, jaqueline, i spent with my aunt; and whether seeing her embroider, or hearing her sing, whether sitting or standing by her side, i was ever happy. her tenderness and unaffected gayety, the charms of her figure and countenance, have left such indelible impressions on my mind, that her manner, look, and attitude, are still before my eyes; i recollect a thousand little caressing questions; could describe her clothes, her head-dress, nor have the two curls of fine black hair which hung on her temples, according to the mode of that time, escaped my memory. though my taste, or rather passion, for music, did not show itself until a considerable time after, i am fully persuaded it is to her i am indebted for it. she knew a great number of songs, which she sung with great sweetness and melody. the serenity and cheerfulness which were conspicuous in this lovely girl, banished melancholy, and made all round her happy. the charms of her voice had such an affect on me, that not only several of her songs have ever since remained on my memory, but some i have not thought of from my infancy, as i grow old, return upon my mind with a charm altogether inexpressible. would any one believe that an old dotard like me, worn out with care and infirmity, should sometime surprise himself weeping like a child, and in a voice querulous, and broken by age, muttering out one of those airs which were the favorites of my infancy? there is one song in particular, whose tune i perfectly recollect, but the words that compose the latter half of it constantly refuse every effort to recall them, though i have a confused idea of the rhymes. the beginning, with what i have been able to recollect of the remainder, is as follows: tircis, je n'ose ecouter ton chalumeau sous l' ormeau; car on en cause deja dans notre hameau. -- -- -- -un berger s'engager sans danger, et toujours l'epine est sous la rose. i have endeavored to account for the invincible charm my heart feels on the recollection of this fragment, but it is altogether inexplicable. i only know, that before i get to the end of it, i always find my voice interrupted by tenderness, and my eyes suffused with tears. i have a hundred times formed the resolution of writing to paris for the remainder of these words, if any one should chance to know them: but i am almost certain the pleasure i take in the recollection would be greatly diminished was i assured any one but my poor aunt susan had sung them. such were my affections on entering this life. thus began to form and demonstrate itself a heart at once haughty and tender, a character effeminate, yet invincible; which, fluctuating between weakness and courage, luxury and virtue, has ever set me in contradiction to myself; causing abstinence and enjoyment, pleasure and prudence, equally to shun me. this course of education was interrupted by an accident, whose consequences influenced the rest of my life. my father had a quarrel ungenerous man, happening to bleed at the nose, in order to be revenged, accused my father of having drawn his sword on him in the city, and in consequence of this charge they were about to conduct him to prison. he insisted (according to the law of this republic) that the accuser should be confined at the same time; and, not being able to obtain this, preferred a voluntary banishment for the remainder of his life, to giving up a point by which he must sacrifice his honor and liberty. i remained under the tuition of my uncle bernard, who was at that time employed in the fortifications of geneva. he had lost his eldest daughter, but had a son about my own age, and we were sent together to bossey, to board with the minister lambercier. here we were to learn latin, with all the insignificant trash that has obtained the name of education. two years spent in this village softened, in some degree, my roman fierceness, and again reduced me to a state of childhood. at geneva, where nothing was exacted, i loved reading, which was, indeed, my principal amusement; but, at bossey, where application was expected, i was fond of play as a relaxation. the country was so new, so charming in my idea, that it seemed impossible to find satiety in its enjoyments, and i conceived a passion for rural life, which time has not been able to extinguish; nor have i ever ceased to regret the pure and tranquil pleasures i enjoyed at this place in my childhood; the remembrance having followed me through every age, even to that in which i am hastening again towards it. m. lambercier was a worthy, sensible man, who, without neglecting our instruction, never made our acquisitions burthensome, or tasks tedious. what convinces me of the rectitude of his method is, that notwithstanding my extreme aversion to restraint, the recollection of my studies is never attended with disgust; and, if my improvement was trivial, it was obtained with ease, and has never escaped memory. the simplicity of this rural life was of infinite advantage in opening my heart to the reception of true friendship. the sentiments i had hitherto formed on this subject were extremely elevated, but altogether imaginary. the habit of living in this peaceful manner soon united me tenderly to my cousin bernard; my affection was more ardent than that i had felt for my brother, nor has time ever been able to efface it. he was a tall, lank, weakly boy, with a mind as mild as his body was feeble, and who did not wrong the good opinion they were disposed to entertain for the son of my guardian. our studies, amusements, and tasks, were the same; we were alone; each wanted a playmate; to separate would, in some measure, have been to annihilate us. though we had not many opportunities of demonstrating our attachment to each other, it was certainly extreme; and so far from enduring the thought of separation, we could not even form an idea that we should ever be able to submit to it. each of a disposition to be won by kindness, and complaisant, when not soured by contradiction, we agreed in every particular. if, by the favor of those who governed us he had the ascendant while in their presence, i was sure to acquire it when we were alone, and this preserved the equilibrium so necessary in friendship. if he hesitated in repeating his task, i prompted him; when my exercises were finished, i helped to write his; and, in our amusements, my disposition being most active, ever had the lead. in a word, our characters accorded so well, and the friendship that subsisted between us was so cordial, that during the five years we were at bossey and geneva we were inseparable: we often fought, it is true, but there never was any occasion to separate us. no one of our quarrels lasted more than a quarter of an hour, and never in our lives did we make any complaint of each other. it may be said, these remarks are frivolous; but, perhaps, a similar example among children can hardly be produced. the manner in which i passed my time at bossey was so agreeable to my disposition, that it only required a longer duration absolutely to have fixed my character, which would have had only peaceable, affectionate, benevolent sentiments for its basis. i believe no individual of our kind ever possessed less natural vanity than myself. at intervals, by an extraordinary effort, i arrived at sublime ideas, but presently sunk again into my original languor. to be beloved by every one who knew me was my most ardent wish. i was naturally mild, my cousin was equally so, and those who had the care of us were of similar dispositions. everything contributed to strengthen those propensities which nature had implanted in my breast, and during the two years i was neither the victim nor witness of any violent emotions. i knew nothing so delightful as to see every one content; not only with me, but all that concerned them. when repeating our catechism at church, nothing could give me greater vexation, on being obliged to hesitate, than to see miss lambercier's countenance express disapprobation and uneasiness. this alone was more afflicting to me than the shame of faltering before so many witnesses, which, notwithstanding, was sufficiently painful; for though not over-solicitous of praise, i was feelingly alive to shame; yet i can truly affirm, the dread of being reprimanded by miss lambercier alarmed me less than the thought of making her uneasy. neither she nor her brother were deficient in a reasonable severity, but as this was scarce ever exerted without just cause, i was more afflicted at their disapprobation than the punishment. certainly the method of treating youth would be altered if the distant effects, this indiscriminate, and frequently indiscreet method produces, were more conspicuous. i would willingly excuse myself from a further explanation, did not the lesson this example conveys (which points out an evil as frequent as it is pernicious) forbid my silence. as miss lambercier felt a mother's affection, she sometimes exerted a mother's authority, even to inflicting on us, when we deserved it, the punishment of infants. she had often threatened it, and this threat of a treatment entirely new, appeared to me extremely dreadful; but i found the reality much less terrible than the idea, and what is still more unaccountable, this punishment increased my affection for the person who had inflicted it. all this affection, aided by my natural mildness, was scarcely sufficient to prevent my seeking, by fresh offenses, a return of the same chastisement; for a degree of sensuality had mingled with the smart and shame, which left more desire than fear of a repetition. i was well convinced the same discipline from her brother would have produced a quite contradictory effect; but from a man of his disposition this was not probable, and if i abstained from meriting correction, it was merely from a fear of offending miss lambercier, for benevolence, aided by the passions, has ever maintained an empire over me which has given law to my heart. this event, which, though desirable, i had not endeavored to accelerate, arrived without my fault; i should say, without my seeking; and i profited by it with a safe conscience; but this second, was also the last time, for miss lambercier, who doubtless had some reason to imagine this chastisement did not produce the desired effect, declared it was too fatiguing, and that she renounced it for the future. till now we had slept in her chamber, and during the winter, even in her bed; but two days after another room was prepared for us. who would believe this childish discipline, received at eight years old, from the hand of a woman of thirty, should influence my propensities, my desires, my passions, for the rest of my life, and that in quite a contrary sense from what might naturally have been expected? the very incident that inflamed my senses, gave my desires such an extraordinary turn, that, confined to what i had already experienced, i sought no further, and, with blood boiling with sensuality almost from my birth, preserved my purity beyond the age when the coldest constitutions lose their sensibility; long tormented, without knowing by what, i gazed on every handsome woman with delight; imagination incessantly brought their charms to my remembrance, only to transform them into so many miss lamberciers. even after having attained the marriageable age this odd taste still continued and drove me nearly to depravity and madness. if ever education was perfectly chaste, it certainly that i received; my three aunts were of exemplary prudence. my father, it is true, loved pleasure, but his gallantry was rather of the last than the present century. at m. lambercier's a good maidservant was discharged for having once made use of an expression before us which was thought to contain some degree of indelicacy. i entertained a particular aversion for courtesans, nor could i look on a rake without a degree of disdain mingled with terror. my aversion for lewdness went so far, since one day i walked through a hollow in the road at petit sacconez; i saw on both sides cavities in the earth and was told that it was there the people did their pairing. when i thought of it, it came to my mind, that i had seen dogs in a similar situation, and my heart revolted at the remembrance. these prejudices of education, proper in themselves to retard the first explosions of a combustible constitution, were strengthened, as i have already hinted, by the effect the first moments of sensuality produced in me, for notwithstanding the troublesome ebullition of my blood, i was satisfied with the species of voluptuousness i had already been acquainted with, and sought no further. i never went to the other species of voluptuousness and had no suspicion that i was so near it. in my crazy fancies during my erotic passions and while i was committing extravagant acts, i borrowed the help of the other sex in my imagination. thus i passed the age of puberty, with a constitution extremely ardent, without knowing or even wishing for any other gratification of the passions than what miss lambercier had innocently given me an idea of; and when i became a man, that childish taste, instead of vanishing, only associated with the other that i never could remove from my sensual desires. this folly, joined to a natural timidity, has always prevented my being very enterprising with women, so that i have passed my days in languishing in silence for those i most admired, without daring to disclose my wishes. to fall at the feet of an imperious mistress, obey her mandates, or implore pardon, were for me the most exquisite enjoyments, and the more my blood was inflamed by the efforts of a lively imagination the more i acquired the appearance of a whining lover. it will be readily conceived that this mode of making love is not attended with a rapid progress or imminent danger to the virtue of its object; yet, though i have few favors to boast of i have not been excluded from enjoyment, however imaginary. thus the senses, in concurrence with a mind equally timid and romantic, have preserved my morals chaste, and feelings uncorrupted, with precisely the same inclinations, which, seconded with a moderate portion of effrontery, might have plunged me into the most unwarrantable excesses. i have made the first, most difficult step, in the obscure and painful maze of my confessions. we never feel so great a degree of repugnance in divulging what is really criminal, as what is merely ridiculous. i am now assured of my resolution, for after what i have dared disclose, nothing can have power to deter me. the difficulty attending these acknowledgments will be readily conceived, when i declare, that during the whole of my life, though frequently laboring under the most violent agitation, being hurried away with the impetuosity of passion i could never, in the course of the most unbounded familiarity, acquire sufficient courage to declare my folly, and implore the only favor that remained to bestow. that has only once happened, when a child, with a girl of my own age; even then it was she who first proposed it. in thus investigating the first traces of my sensible existence, i find elements, which, though seemingly incompatible, have united to produce a simple and uniform effect; while others, apparently the same, have, by the concurrence of certain circumstances, formed such different combinations, that it would never be imagined they had any affinity; who would believe, for example, that one of the most vigorous springs of my soul was tempered in the identical source from whence luxury and ease mingled with my constitution and circulated in my veins? before i quit this subject, i will add a striking instance of the different effects they produced. one day, while i was studying in a chamber contiguous to the kitchen, the maid set some of miss lambercier's combs to dry by the fire, and on coming to fetch them some time after, was surprised to find the teeth of one of them broken off. who could be suspected of this mischief? no one but myself had entered the room: i was questioned, but denied having any knowledge of it. mr. and miss lambercier consult, exhort, threaten, but all to no purpose; i obstinately persist in the denial; and, though this was the first time i had been detected in a confirmed falsehood, appearances were so strong that they overthrew all my protestations. this affair was thought serious; the mischief, the lie, the obstinacy, were considered equally deserving of punishment, which was not now to be administered by miss lambercier. my uncle bernard was written to; he arrived; and my poor cousin being charged with a crime no less serious, we were conducted to the same execution, which was inflicted with great severity. if finding a remedy in the evil itself, they had sought ever to allay my depraved desires, they could not have chosen a shorter method to accomplish their designs, and, i can assure my readers, i was for a long time freed from the dominion of them. as this severity could not draw from me the expected acknowledgment, which obstinacy brought on several repetitions, and reduced me to a deplorable situation, yet i was immovable, and resolutely determined to suffer death rather than submit. force, at length, was obliged to yield to the diabolical infatuation of a child, for no better name was bestowed on my constancy, and i came out of this dreadful trial, torn, it is true, but triumphant. fifty years have expired since this adventurethe fear of punishment is no more. well, then, i aver, in the face of heaven, i was absolutely innocent: and, so far from breaking, or even touching the comb, never came near the fire. it will be asked, how did this mischief happen? i can form no conception of it, i only know my own innocence. let any one figure to himself a character whose leading traits were docility and timidity, but haughty, ardent, and invincible, in its passions; a child, hitherto governed by the voice of reason, treated with mildness, equity, and complaisance, who could not even support the idea of injustice, experiencing, for the first time, so violent an instance of it, inflicted by those he most loved and respected. what perversion of ideas! what confusion in the heart, the brain, in all my little being, intelligent and moral!let any one, i say, if possible, imagine all this, for i am incapable of giving the least idea of what passed in my mind at that period. my reason was not sufficiently established to enable me to put myself in the place of others, and judge how much appearances condemned me, i only beheld the rigor of a dreadful chastisement, inflicted for a crime i had not committed; yet i can truly affirm, the smart i suffered, though violent, was inconsiderable to what i felt from indignation, rage, and despair. my cousin, who was almost in similar circumstances, having been punished for an involuntary fault, as guilty of a premeditated crime, became furious by my example. both in the same bed, we embraced each other with convulsive transport; we were almost suffocated; and when our young hearts found sufficient relief to breathe out our indignation, we sat up in the bed, and with all our force, repeated a hundred times, carnifex! carnifex! carnifex! executioner, tormentor. even while i write this i feel my pulse quicken, and should i live a hundred thousand years, the agitation of that moment would still be fresh in my memory. the first instance of violence and oppression is so deeply engraven on my soul, that every relative idea renews my emotion: the sentiment of indignation, which in its origin had reference only to myself, has acquired such strength, and is at present so completely detached from personal motives, that my heart is as much inflamed at the sight or relation of any act of injustice (whatever may be the object, or wheresoever it may be perpetrated) as if i was the immediate sufferer. when i read the history of a merciless tyrant, or the dark and the subtle machination of a knavish designing priest, i could on the instant set off to stab the miscreants, though i was certain to perish in the attempt. i have frequently fatigued myself by running after and stoning a cock, a cow, a dog, or any animal i saw tormenting another, only because it was conscious of possessing superior strength. this may be natural to me, and i am inclined to believe it is, though the lively impression of the first injustice i became the victim of was too long and too powerfully remembered not to have added considerable force to it. this occurrence terminated my infantine serenity; from that moment i ceased to enjoy a pure unadulterated happiness, and on a retrospection of the pleasures of my childhood, i yet feel they ended here. we continued at bossey some months after this event, but were like our first parents in the garden of eden after they had lost their innocence; in appearance our situation was the same, in effect it was totally different. affection, respect, intimacy, confidence, no longer attached the pupils to their guides; we beheld them no longer as divinities, who could read the secrets of our hearts; we were less ashamed of committing faults, more afraid of being accused of them: we learned to dissemble, to rebel, to lie: all the vices common to our years began to corrupt our happy innocence, mingle with our sports, and embitter our amusements. the country itself, losing those sweet and simple charms which captivate the heart, appeared a gloomy desert, or covered with a veil that concealed its beauties. we cultivated our little gardens no more: our flowers were neglected. we no longer scratched away the mold, and broke out into exclamations of delight, on discovering that the grain we had sown began to shoot. we were disgusted with our situation; our preceptors were weary of us. in a word, my uncle wrote for our return, and we left mr. and miss lambercier without feeling any regret at the separation. near thirty years passed away from my leaving bossey, without once recalling the place to my mind with any degree of satisfaction; but after having passed the prime of life, as i decline into old age (while more recent occurrences are wearing out apace) i feel these remembrances revive and imprint themselves on my heart, with a force and charm that every day acquires fresh strength; as if, feeling life flee from me, i endeavored to catch it again by its commencement. the most trifling incidents of those happy days delight me, for no other reason than being of those days, i recall every circumstance of time, place, and persons; i see the maid or footman busy in the chamber, a swallow entering the window, a fly settling on my hand while repeating my lesson. i see the whole economy of the apartment; on the right hand mr. lambercier's closet, with a print representing all the popes, a barometer, a large almanac, the windows of the house (which stood in a hollow at the bottom of the garden) shaded by raspberry shrubs, whose shoots sometimes found entrance; i am sensible the reader has no occasion to know all this, but i feel a kind of necessity for relating it. why am i not permitted to recount all the little anecdotes of that thrice happy age, at the recollection of whose joys i even tremble with delight? five or six particularlylet us compromise the matteri will give up five, but then i must have one, and only one, provided i may draw it out to its utmost length, in order to prolong my satisfaction. if i only sought yours, i should choose that of miss lambercier's backside, which, by an unlucky fall at the bottom of the meadow, was exposed to the view of the king of sardinia, who happened to be passing by; but that of the walnut tree on the terrace is more amusing to me, since here i was an actor, whereas, in the above-mentioned scene i was only a spectator, and i must confess i see nothing that should occasion risibility in an accident, which, however laughable in itself, alarmed me for a person i loved as a mother, or perhaps something more. ye curious readers, whose expectations are already on the stretch for the noble history of the terrace, listen to the tragedy, and abstain from trembling, if you can, at the horrible catastrophe. at the outside of the courtyard door, on the left hand, was a terrace; here they often sat after dinner; but it was subject to one inconvenience, being too much exposed to the rays of the sun; to obviate this defect, mr. lambercier had a walnut tree set there, the planting of which was attended with great solemnity. the two boarders were godfathers, and while the earth was replacing round the root, each held the tree with one hand, singing songs of triumph. in order to water it with more effect, they formed a kind of luson around its foot: myself and cousin, who were every day ardent spectators of this watering, confirmed each other in the very natural idea, that it was nobler to plant trees on the terrace than colors on a breach, and this glory we were resolved to procure without dividing it with any one. in pursuance of this resolution, we cut a slip off a willow, and planted it on the terrace, at about eight or ten feet distance from the august walnut tree. we did not forget to make a hollow round it, but the difficulty was how to procure a supply of water, which was brought from a considerable distance, and we not permitted to fetch it: but water was absolutely necessary for our willow, and we made use of every stratagem to obtain it. for a few days everything succeeded so well that it began to bud, and throw out small leaves, which we hourly measured, convinced (though now scarce a foot from the ground) it would soon afford us a refreshing shade. this unfortunate willow, by engrossing our whole time, rendered us incapable of application to any other study, and the cause of our inattention not being known, we were kept closer than before. the fatal moment approached when water must fail, and we were already afflicted with the idea that our tree must perish with drought. at length necessity, the parent of industry, suggested an invention, by which we might save our tree from death, and ourselves from despair; it was to make a furrow underground, which would privately conduct a part of the water from the walnut tree to our willow. this undertaking was executed with ardor, but did not immediately succeedour descent was not skillfully plannedthe water did not run, the earth falling in and stopping up the burrow; yet, though all went contrary, nothing discouraged us, labor omnia vincit labor improbus. we made the basin deeper, to give the water a more sensible descent; we cut the bottom of a box into narrow planks; increased the channel from the walnut tree to our willow, and laying a row flat at the bottom, set two others inclining towards each other, so as to form a triangular channel; we formed a king of grating with small sticks at the end next the walnut tree, to prevent the earth and stones from stopping it up, and having carefully covered our work with well-trodden earth, in a transport of hope and fear attended the hour of watering. after an interval which seemed an age of expectation, this hour arrived. mr. lambercier, as usual, assisted at the operation; we contrived to get between him and our tree, towards which he fortunately turned his back. they no sooner began to pour the first pail of water, than we perceived it running to the willow; this sight was too much for our prudence, and we involuntarily expressed our transport by a shout of joy. the sudden exclamation made mr. lambercier turn about, though at that instant he was delighted to observe how greedily the earth, which surrounded the root of his walnut tree, imbibed the water. surprised at seeing two trenches partake of it, he shouted in his turn, examines, perceives the roguery, and, sending instantly for a pick axe, at one fatal blow makes two or three of our planks fly, crying out meantime with all his strength an aqueduct! an aqueduct! his strokes redoubled, every one of which made an impression on our hearts; in a moment the planks, the channel, the basin, even our favorite willow, all were plowed up, nor was one word pronounced during this terrible transaction, except the above-mentioned exclamation. an aqueduct! repeated he, while destroying all our hopes, an aqueduct! an aqueduct! it may be supposed this adventure had a still more melancholy end for the young architects; this, however, was not the case; the affair ended here. mr. lambercier never reproached us on this account nor was his countenance clouded with a frown; we even heard him mention the circumstance to his sister with loud bursts of laughter. the laugh of mr. lambercier might be heard to a considerable distance. but what is still more surprising, after the first transport of sorrow had subsided, we did not find ourselves violently afflicted; we planted a tree in another spot, and frequently recollected the catastrophe of the former, repeating with a significant emphasis, an aqueduct! an aqueduct! till then, at intervals, i had fits of ambition, and could fancy myself brutus or aristides, but this was the first visible effect of my vanity. to have constructed an aqueduct with our own hands, to have set a slip of willow in competition with a flourishing tree, appeared to me a supreme degree of glory! i had a juster conception of it at ten, than caesar entertained at thirty. the idea of this walnut tree, with the little anecdotes it gave rise to, have so well continued, or returned to my memory, that the design which conveyed the most pleasing sensations, during my journey to geneva, in the year 1754, was visiting bossey, and reviewing the monuments of my infantine amusement, above all, the beloved walnut tree, whose age at that time must have been verging on a third of a century, but i was so beset with company, that i could not find a moment to accomplish my design. there is little appearance now of the occasion being renewed; but should i ever return to that charming spot, and find my favorite walnut tree still existing, i am convinced i should water it with my tears. on my return to geneva, i passed two or three years at my uncle's, expecting the determination of my friends respecting my future establishment. his own son being devoted to engineering, was taught drawing, and instructed by his father in the elements of euclid: i partook of these instructions, but was principally fond of drawing. meantime they were irresolute, whether to make me a watchmaker, a lawyer, or a minister. i should have preferred being a minister, as i thought it must be a charming thing to preach, but the trifling income which had been my mother's, and was to be divided between my brother and myself, was too inconsiderable to defray the expense attending the prosecution of my studies. as my age did not render the choice very pressing, i remained with my uncle, passing my time with very little improvement, and paying pretty dear, though not unreasonably, for my board. my uncle, like my father, was a man of pleasure, but had not learned, like him, to abridge his amusements for the sake of instructing his family, consequently our education was neglected. my aunt was a devotee, who loved singing psalms better than thinking of our improvement, so that we were left entirely to ourselves, which liberty we never abused. ever inseparable, we were all the world to each other; and, feeling no inclination to frequent the company of a number of disorderly lads of our own age, we learned none of those habits of libertinism to which our idle life exposed us. perhaps i am wrong in charging myself and cousin with idleness at this time, for, in our lives, we were never less so; and what was extremely fortunate, so incessantly occupied with our amusements, that we found no temptation to spend any part of our time in the streets. we made cages, pipes, kites, drums, houses, ships, and bows; spoiled the tools of my good old grandfather by endeavoring to make watches in imitation of him; but our favorite amusement was wasting paper, in drawing, washing, coloring, etc. there came an italian mountebank to geneva, called gamber-corta, who had an exhibition of puppets, that he made play a kind of comedy. we went once to see them, but could not spare time to go again, being busily employed in making puppets of our own, and inventing comedies, which we immediately set about making them perform, mimicking to the best of our abilities the uncouth voice of punch; and, to complete the business, my good aunt and uncle bernard had the patience to see and listen to our imitations; but my uncle, having one day read an elaborate discourse to his family, we instantly gave up our comedies, and began composing sermons. these details, i confess, are not very amusing, but they serve to demonstrate that the former part of our education was well directed, since being, at such an early age, the absolute masters of our time, we found no inclination to abuse it; and so little in want of other companions, that we constantly neglected every occasion of seeking them. when taking our walks together, we observed their diversions without feeling any inclination to partake of them. friendship so entirely occupied our hearts, that, pleased with each other's company, the simplest pastimes were sufficient to delight us. we were soon remarked for being thus inseparable: and what rendered us more conspicuous, my cousin was very tall, myself extremely short, so that we exhibited a very whimsical contrast. this meager figure, small, sallow countenance, heavy air, and supine gait, excited the ridicule of the children, who, in the gibberish of the country, nicknamed him barna bredanna; and we no sooner got out of doors than our ears were assailed with a repetition of "barna bredanna." he bore this indignity with tolerable patience, but i was instantly for fighting. this was what the young rogues aimed at. i engaged accordingly, and was beat. my poor cousin did all in his power to assist me, but he was weak, and a single stroke brought him to the ground. i then became furious, and received several smart blows, some of which were aimed at barna bredanna. this quarrel so far increased the evil, that, to avoid their insults, we could only show ourselves in the streets while they were employed at school. i had already become a redresser of grievances; there only wanted a lady in the way to be a knight-errant in form. this defect was soon supplied; i presently had two. i frequently went to see my father at nion, a small city in the vaudois country, where he was now settled. being universally respected, the affection entertained for him extended to me; and, during my visits, the question seemed to be, who should show me most kindness. a madam de vulson, in particular, loaded me with caresses; and, to complete all, her daughter made me her gallant. i need not explain what kind of gallant a boy of eleven must be to a girl of two and twenty; the artful hussies know how to set these puppets up in front, to conceal more serious engagements. on my part, i saw no inequality between myself and miss vulson, was flattered by the circumstance, and went into it with my whole heart, or rather my whole head, for this passion certainly reached no further, though it transported me almost to madness, and frequently produced scenes sufficient to make even a cynic expire with laughter. i have experienced two kinds of love, equally real, which have scarce any affinity, yet each differing materially from tender friendship. my whole life has been divided between these affections, and i have frequently felt the power of both at the same instant. for example, at the very time i so publicly and tyrannically claimed miss vulson, that i could not suffer any other of my sex to approach her, i had short, but passionate, assignations with a miss goton, who thought proper to act the schoolmistress with me. our meetings, though absolutely childish, afforded me the height of happiness. i felt the whole charm of mystery, and repaid miss vulson in kind, when she least expected it, the use she made of me in concealing her amours. to my great mortification, this secret was soon discovered, and i presently lost my young schoolmistress. miss goton was, in fact, a singular personage. she was not handsome, yet there was a certain something in her figure which could not easily be forgotten, and this for an old fool, i am too often convinced of. her eyes, in particular, neither corresponded with her age, her height, nor her manner; she had a lofty imposing air which agreed extremely well with the character she assumed, but the most extraordinary part of her composition was a mixture of forwardness and reserve difficult to be conceived; and while she took the greatest liberties with me, would never permit any to be taken with her in return, treating me precisely like a child. this makes me suppose she had either ceased herself to be one, or was yet sufficiently so to behold us play the danger to which this folly exposed her. i was so absolutely in the power of both these mistresses, that when in the presence of either, i never thought of her who was absent; in other respects, the effects they produced on me bore no affinity. i could have passed my whole life with miss vulson, without forming a wish to quit her; but then, my satisfaction was attended with a pleasing serenity; and, in numerous companies, i was particularly charmed with her. the sprightly sallies of her wit, the arch glance of her eye, even jealousy itself, strengthened my attachment, and i triumphed in the preference she seemed to bestow on me, while addressed by more powerful rivals; applause, encouragement, and smiles, gave animation to my happiness. surrounded by a throng of observers, i felt the whole force of lovei was passionate, transported; in a tete-a-tete, i should have been constrained, thoughtful, perhaps unhappy. if miss vulson was ill, i suffered with her; would willingly have given up my own health to establish hers (and, observe, i knew the want of it from experience); if absent, she employed my thoughts, i felt the want of her; when present, her caresses came with warmth and rapture to my heart, though my senses were unaffected. the familiarities she bestowed on me i could not have supported the idea of her granting to another; i loved her with a brother's affection only, but experienced all the jealousy of a lover. with miss goton this passion might have acquired a degree of fury; i should have been a turk, a tiger, had i once imagined she bestowed her favors on any but myself. the pleasure i felt on approaching miss vulson was sufficiently ardent, though unattended with uneasy sensations; but at sight of miss goton, i felt myself bewilderedevery sense was absorbed in ecstasy. i believe it would have been impossible to have remained long with her; i must have been suffocated with the violence of my palpitations. i equally dreaded giving either of them displeasure; with one i was more complaisant; with the other, more submissive. i would not have offended miss vulson for the world; but if miss goton had commanded me to throw myself into the flames, i think i should have instantly obeyed her. happily, both for her and myself, our amours, or rather rendezvous, were not of long duration: and though my connection with miss vulson was less dangerous, after a continuance of some greater length, that likewise had its catastrophe; indeed the termination of a love affair is good for nothing, unless it partakes of the romantic, and can furnish out at least an exclamation. though my correspondence with miss vulson was less animated, it was perhaps more endearing; we never separated without tears, and it can hardly be conceived what a void i felt in my heart. i could neither think nor speak of anything but her. these romantic sorrows were not affected, though i am inclined to believe they did not absolutely center in her, for i am persuaded (though i did not perceive it at that time) being deprived of amusement bore a considerable share in them. to soften the rigor of absence, we agreed to correspond with each other, and the pathetic expressions these letters contained were sufficient to have split a rock. in a word, i had the honor of her not being able to endure the pain of separation. she came to see me at geneva. my head was now completely turned; and during the two days she remained here, i was intoxicated with delight. at her departure, i would have thrown myself into the water after her, and absolutely rent the air with my cries. the week following she sent me sweetmeats, gloves, etc. this certainly would have appeared extremely gallant, had i not been informed of her marriage at the same instant, and that the journey i had thought proper to give myself the honor of, was only to buy her wedding suit. my indignation may easily be conceived; i shall not attempt to describe it. in this heroic fury, i swore never more to see the perfidious girl, supposing it the greatest punishment that could be inflicted on her. this, however, did not occasion her death, for twenty years after while on a visit to my father, being on the lake, i asked who those ladies were in a boat not far from ours. "what!" said my father, smiling, "does not your heart inform you? it is your former flame, it is madam christin, or, if you please, miss vulson." i started at the almost forgotten name, and instantly ordered the waterman to turn off, not judging it worth while to be perjured, however favorable the opportunity for revenge, in renewing a dispute of twenty years past, with a woman of forty. thus, before my future destination was determined, did i fool away the most precious moments of my youth. after deliberating a long time on the bent of my natural inclination, they resolved to dispose of me in a manner the most repugnant to them. i was sent to mr. masseron, the city register, to learn (according to the expression of my uncle bernard) the thriving occupation of a scraper. this nickname was inconceivably displeasing to me, and i promised myself but little satisfaction in the prospect of heaping up money by a mean employment. the assiduity and subjection required completed my disgust, and i never set foot in the office without feeling a kind of horror, which every day gained fresh strength. mr. masseron, who was not better pleased with my abilities than i was with the employment, treated me with disdain, incessantly upbraiding me with being a fool and blockhead, not forgetting to repeat, that my uncle had assured him i was a knowing one, though he could not find that i knew anything. that he had promised to furnish him with a sprightly boy, but had, in truth, sent him an ass. to conclude, i was turned out of the registry, with the additional ignominy of being pronounced a fool by all mr. masseron's clerks, and fit only to handle a file. my vocation thus determined, i was bound apprentice; not, however, to a watchmaker, but to an engraver, and i had been so completely humiliated by the contempt of the register, that i submitted without a murmur. my master, whose name was m. ducommon, was a young man of a very violent and boorish character, who contrived in a short time to tarnish all the amiable qualities of my childhood, to stupefy a disposition naturally sprightly, and reduce my feelings, as well as my condition, to an absolute state of servitude. i forgot my latin, history, and antiquities; i could hardly recollect whether such people as romans ever existed. when i visited my father, he no longer beheld his idol, nor could the ladies recognize the gallant jean jacques; nay, i was so well convinced that mr. and miss lambercier would scarce receive me as their pupil, that i endeavored to avoid their company, and from that time have never seen them. the vilest inclinations, the basest actions, succeeded my amiable amusements, and even obliterated the very remembrance of them. i must have had, in spite of my good education, a great propensity to degenerate, else the declension could not have followed with such ease and rapidity, for never did so promising a caesar so quickly become a laradon. the art itself did not displease me. i had a lively taste for drawing. there was nothing displeasing in the exercise of the graver; and as it required no very extraordinary abilities to attain perfection as a watchcase engraver, i hoped to arrive at it. perhaps i should have accomplished my design, if unreasonable restraint, added to the brutality of my master, had not rendered my business disgusting. i wasted his time, and employed myself in engraving medals, which served me and my companions as a kind of insignia for a new invented order of chivalry, and though this differed very little from my usual employ, i considered it as a relaxation. unfortunately, my master caught me at this contraband labor, and a severe beating was the consequence. he reproached me at the same time with attempting to make counterfeit money, because our medals bore the arms of the republic, though, i can truly aver, i had no conception of false money, and very little of the true, knowing better how to make a roman as than one of our threepenny pieces. my master's tyranny rendered insupportable that labor i should otherwise have loved, and drove me to vices i naturally despised, such as falsehood, idleness, and theft. nothing ever gave me a clearer demonstration of the difference between filial dependence and abject slavery, than the remembrance of the change produced in me at that period. hitherto i had enjoyed a reasonable liberty; this i had suddenly lost. i was enterprising at my father's, free at m. lambercier's, discreet at my uncle's; but, with my master, i became fearful and from that moment my mind was vitiated. accustomed to live on terms of perfect equality, to be witness of no pleasures i could not command, to see no dish i was not to partake of, or be sensible of a desire i might not express; to be able to bring every wish of my heart to my lipswhat a transition!at my master's i was scarce allowed to speak, was forced to quit the table without tasting what i most longed for, and the room when i had nothing particular to do there; was incessantly confined to my work, while the liberty my master and his journeymen enjoyed, served only to increase the weight of my subjection. when disputes happened to arise, though conscious that i understood the subject better than any of them, i dared not offer my opinion; in a word, everything i saw became an object of desire, for no other reason than because i was not permitted to enjoy anything. farewell gayety, ease, those happy turns of expression, which formerly even made my faults escape correction. i recollect, with pleasure, a circumstance that happened at my father's, which even now makes me smile. being for some fault ordered to bed without my supper, as i was passing through the kitchen, with my poor morsel of bread in my hand, i saw the meat turning on the spit; my father and the rest were round the fire; i must bow to every one as i passed. when i had gone through this ceremony, leering with a wishful eye at the roast meat, which looked so inviting, and smelt so savory, i could not abstain from making that a bow likewise, adding in a pitiful tone, good-by, roast meat! this unpremeditated pleasantry put them in such good humor, that i was permitted to stay, and partake of it. perhaps the same thing might have produced a similar effect at my master's, but such a thought could never have occurred to me, or, if it had, i should not have had courage to express it. thus i learned to covet, dissemble, lie, and, at length, to steal, a propensity i never felt the least idea of before, though since that time i have never been able entirely to divest myself of it. desire and inability united naturally led to this vice, which is the reason pilfering is so common among footmen and apprentices, though the latter, as they grow up, and find themselves in a situation where everything is at their command, lose this shameful propensity. as i never experienced the advantage, i never enjoyed the benefit. good sentiments, ill directed, frequently lead children into vice. notwithstanding my continual wants and temptations, it was more than a year before i could resolve to take even eatables. my first theft was occasioned by complaisance, but it was productive of others which had not so plausible an excuse. my master had a journeyman named verrat, whose mother lived in the neighborhood, and had a garden at a considerable distance from the house, which produced excellent asparagus. this verrat, who had no great plenty of money, took it in his head to rob her of the most early production of her garden, and by the sale of it procure those indulgences he could not otherwise afford himself; not being very nimble, he did not care to run the hazard of a surprise. after some preliminary flattery, which i did not comprehend the meaning of, he proposed this expedition to me, as an idea which had that moment struck him. at first i would not listen to the proposal; but he persisted in his solicitation, and as i could never resist the attacks of flattery, at length prevailed. in pursuance of this virtuous resolution, i every morning repaired to the garden, gathered the best of the asparagus, and took it to the molard where some good old women, who guessed how i came by it, wishing to diminish the price, made no secret of their suspicions; this produced the desired effect, for, being alarmed, i took whatever they offered, which being taken to mr. verrat, was presently metamorphosed into a breakfast, and divided with a companion of his; for, though i procured it, i never partook of their good cheer, being fully satisfied with an inconsiderable bribe. i executed my roguery with the greatest fidelity, seeking only to please my employer; and several days passed before it came into my head to rob the robber, and tithe mr. verrat's harvest. i never considered the hazard i run in these expeditions, not only of a torrent of abuse, but what i should have been still more sensible of, a hearty beating; for the miscreant, who received the whole benefit, would certainly have denied all knowledge of the fact, and i should only have received a double portion of punishment for daring to accuse him, since being only an apprentice, i stood no chance of being believed in opposition to a journeyman. thus in every situation, powerful rogues know how to save themselves at the expense of the feeble. this practice taught me it was not so terrible to thieve as i had imagined; i took care to make this discovery turn to some account, helping myself to everything within my reach, that i conceived an inclination for. i was not absolutely ill-fed at my master's, and temperance was only painful to me by comparing it with the luxury he enjoyed. the custom of sending young people from table precisely when those things are served up which seem most tempting, is calculated to increase their longing, and induces them to steal what they conceive to be so delicious. it may be supposed i was not backward in this particular: in general my knavery succeeded pretty well. though quite the reverse when i happened to be detected. i recollect an attempt to procure some apples, which was attended with circumstances that make me smile and shudder even at this instant. the fruit was standing in a pantry, which by a lattice at a considerable height received light from the kitchen. one day, being alone in the house, i climbed up to see these precious apples, which, being out of my reach, made this pantry appear the garden of hesperides. i fetched the spittried if it would reach themit was too shorti lengthened it with a small one which was used for game,my master being very fond of hunting, darted at them several times without success; at length was more fortunate; being transported to find i was bringing up an apple, i drew it gently to the latticewas going to seize it, when (who can express my grief and astonishment!) i found it would not pass throughit was too large. i tried every expedient to accomplish my design, sought supporters to keep the spits in the same position, a knife to divide the apple, and a lath to hold it with; at length, i so far succeeded as to effect the division, and made no doubt of drawing the pieces through; but it was scarcely separated (compassionate reader, sympathize with my affliction) when both pieces fell into the pantry. though i lost time by this experiment, i did not lose courage, but, dreading a surprise, i put off the attempt till next day, when i hoped to be more successful, and returned to my work as if nothing had happened, without once thinking of what the two obvious witnesses i had left in the pantry deposed against me. the next day (a fine opportunity offering) i renew the trial. i fasten the spits together: get on the stool; take aim; am just going to dart at my preyunfortunately the dragon did not sleep; the pantry door opens, my master makes his appearance, and, looking up, exclaims, "bravo!"the horror of that moment returnsthe pen drops from my hand. a continual repetition of ill treatment rendered me callous; it seemed a kind of composition for my crimes, which authorized me to continue them, and, instead of looking back at the punishment, i looked forward to revenge. being beat like a slave, i judged i had a right to all the vices of one. i was convinced that to rob and be punished were inseparable, and constituted, if i may so express myself, a kind of traffic, in which, if i perform my part of the bargain, my master would take care not to be deficient in his; that preliminary settled, i applied myself to thieving with great tranquility, and whenever this interrogatory occurred to my mind, "what will be the consequence?" the reply was ready, "i know the worst, i shall be beat; no matter, i was made for it." i love good eating; am sensual, but not greedy; i have such a variety of inclinations to gratify, that this can never predominate; and unless my heart is unoccupied, which very rarely happens, i pay but little attention to my appetite: to purloining eatables, but extended this propensity to everything i wished to possess, and if i did not become a robber in form, it was only because money never tempted me. my master had a closet in the workshop, which he kept locked; this i contrived to open and shut as often as i pleased, and laid his best tools, fine drawings, impressions, in a word, everything he wished to keep from me, under contribution. these thefts were so far innocent, that they were always employed in his service, but i was transported at having the trifles in my possession, and imagined i stole the art with its productions. besides what i have mentioned, his boxes contained threads of gold and silver, a number of small jewels, valuable medals, and money; yet, though i seldom had five sous in my pocket, i do not recollect ever having cast a wishful look at them; on the contrary, i beheld these valuables rather with terror than delight. i am convinced the dread of taking money was, in a great measure, the effect of education. there was mingled with the idea of it the fear of infamy, a prison, punishment, and death: had i even felt the temptation, these objects would have made me tremble; whereas my failings appeared a species of waggery, and, in truth, they were little else; they could but occasion a good trimming, and this i was already prepared for. a sheet of fine drawing-paper was a greater temptation than money sufficient to have purchased a ream. this unreasonable caprice is connected with one of the most striking singularities of my character, and has so far influenced my conduct, that it requires a particular explanation. my passions are extremely violent; while under their influence, nothing can equal my impetuosity; i am an absolute stranger to discretion, respect, fear, or decorum; rude, saucy, violent, and intrepid: no shame can stop, no danger intimidate me. my mind is frequently so engrossed by a single object, that beyond it the whole world is not worth a thought; this is the enthusiasm of a moment, the next, perhaps, i am plunged in a state of annihilation. take me in my moments of tranquility, i am indolence and timidity itself; a word to speak, the least trifle to perform, appear an intolerable labor; everything alarms and terrifies me; the very buzzing of a fly will make me shudder: i am so subdued by fear and shame, that i would gladly shield myself from mortal view. when obliged to exert myself, i am ignorant what to do! when forced to speak, i am at a loss for words; and if any one looks at me, i am instantly out of countenance. if animated with my subject, i express my thoughts with ease, but, in ordinary conversations, i can say nothingabsolutely nothing; and, being obliged to speak, renders them insupportable. i may add, that none of my predominant inclinations center in those pleasures which are to be purchased: money empoisons my delights; i must have them unadulterated; i love those of the table, for instance, but cannot endure the restraints of good company, or the intemperance of taverns; i can enjoy them only with a friend, for alone it is equally impossible; my imagination is then so occupied with other things, that i find no pleasure in eating. women who are to be purchased have no charms for me; my beating heart cannot be satisfied without affection; it is the same with every other enjoyment, if not truly disinterested, they are absolutely insipid; in a word, i am fond of those things which are only estimable to minds formed for the peculiar enjoyment of them. i never thought money so desirable as it is usually imagined; if you would enjoy, you must transform it; and this transformation is frequently attended with inconvenience: you must bargain, purchase, pay dear, be badly served, and often duped. i buy an egg, am assured it is new-laidi find it stale; fruit in its utmost perfection'tis absolutely green; a girl, and she is tainted. i love good wine, but where shall i get it? not at my wine merchant'she will certainly poison me. i wish to be universally respected; how shall i compass my design? i must make friends, send messages, come, go, wait, and be frequently deceived. money is the perpetual source of uneasiness; i fear it more than i love good wine. a thousand times, both during and since my apprenticeship, have i gone out to purchase some nicety, i approach the pastry-cook's, perceive some women at the counter, and imagine they are laughing at me. i pass a fruit shop, see some fine pears, their appearance tempts me; but then two or three young people are near, or a man i am acquainted with is standing at the door; i take all that pass for persons i have some knowledge of, and my near sight contributes to deceive me; i am everywhere intimidated, restrained by some obstacle, and with money in my pocket return as i went, for want of resolution to purchase what i long for. i should enter into the most insipid details was i to relate the trouble, shame, repugnance, and inconvenience of all kinds which i have experienced in parting with my money, whether in my own person, or by the agency of others; as i proceed, the reader will get acquainted with my disposition, and perceive all this without my troubling him with the recital. this once comprehended, one of my apparent contradictions will be easily accounted for, and the most sordid avarice reconciled with the greatest contempt of money. it is a movable which i consider of so little value, that, when destitute of it, i never wish to acquire any; and when i have a sum i keep it by me, for want of knowing how to dispose of it to my satisfaction; but let an agreeable and convenient opportunity present itself, and i empty my purse with the utmost freedom; not that i would have the reader imagine i am extravagant from a motive of ostentation, quite the reverse: it was ever in subservience to my pleasures, and, instead of glorying in expense, i endeavor to conceal it. i so well perceive that money is not made to answer my purposes, that i am almost ashamed to have any, and, still more, to make use of it. had i ever possessed a moderate independence, i am convinced i should have had no propensity to become avaricious. i should have required no more, and cheerfully lived up to my income; but my precarious situation has constantly and necessarily kept me in fear. i love liberty, and i loathe constraint, dependence, and all their kindred annoyances. as long as my purse contains money it secures my independence, and exempts me from the trouble of seeking other money, a trouble of which i have always had a perfect horror; and the dread of seeing the end of my independence, makes me proportionately unwilling to part with my money. the money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery. thence it is that i hold fast to aught that i have, and yet covet nothing more. my disinterestedness, then, is in reality only idleness, the pleasure of possessing is not in my estimation worth the trouble of acquiring: and my dissipation is only another form of idleness; when we have an opportunity of disbursing pleasantly we should make the best possible use of it. i am less tempted by money than by other objects, because between the moment of possessing the money and that of using it to obtain the desired object there is always an interval, however short; whereas to possess the thing is to enjoy it. i see a thing, and it tempts me; but if i see not the thing itself but only the means of acquiring it, i am not tempted. therefore it is that i have been a pilferer, and am so even now, in the way of mere trifles to which i take a fancy, and which i find it easier to take than to ask for; but i never in my life recollect having taken a farthing from any one, except about fifteen years ago, when i stole seven francs and ten sous. the story is worth recounting, as it exhibits a concurrence of ignorance and stupidity i should scarcely credit, did it relate to any but myself. it was in paris: i was walking with m. de franceul at the palais royal: he pulled out his watch, he looked at it, and said to me, "suppose we go to the opera?""with all my heart." we go; he takes two box tickets, gives me one, and enters himself with the other; i follow, find the door crowded; and, looking in, see every one standing; judging, therefore, that m. de franceul might suppose me concealed by the company, i go out, ask for my ticket, and, getting the money returned, leave the house, without considering, that by then i had reached the door every one would be seated, and m. de franceul might readily perceive i was not there. as nothing could be more opposite to my natural inclination than this abominable meanness, i note it, to show there are moments of delirium when men ought not to be judged by their actions: this was not stealing the money, it was only stealing the use of it, and was the more infamous for wanting the excuse of a temptation. i should never end these accounts, was i to describe all the gradations through which i passed, during my apprenticeship, from the sublimity of a hero to the baseness of a villain. though i entered into most of the vices of my situation, i had no relish for its pleasures: the amusements of my companions were displeasing, and when too much restraint had made my business wearisome, i had nothing to amuse me. this renewed my taste for reading which had long been neglected. i thus committed a fresh offense, books made me neglect my work, and brought on additional punishment, while inclination, strengthened by constraint, became an unconquerable passion. la tribu, a well-known librarian, furnished me with all kinds: good or bad, i perused them with avidity, and without discrimination. it will be said, "at length, then, money became necessary"true; but this happened at a time when a taste for study had deprived me both of resolution and activity: totally occupied by this new inclination, i only wished to read, i robbed no longer. this is another of my peculiarities; a mere nothing frequently calls me off from what i appear the most attached to; i give in to the new idea; it becomes a passion, and immediately every former desire is forgotten. reading was my new hobby; my heart beat with impatience to run over the new book i carried in my pocket; the first moment i was alone, i seized the opportunity to draw it out, and thought no longer of rummaging my master's closet. i was even ashamed to think i had been guilty of such meanness; and had my amusements been more expensive, i no longer felt an inclination to continue it. la tribu gave me credit, and when once i had the book in my possession, i thought no more of the trifle i was to pay for it; as money came it naturally passed to this woman; and when she chanced to be pressing, nothing was so conveniently at hand as my own effects; to steal in advance required foresight, and robbing to pay was no temptation. the frequent blows i received from my master, with my private and ill-chosen studies, rendered me reserved, unsociable, and almost deranged my reason. though my taste had not preserved me from silly unmeaning books, by good fortune i was a stranger to licentious or obscene ones: not that la tribu (who was very accommodating) made any scruple of lending these, on the contrary, to enhance their worth, she spoke of them with an air of mystery; this produced an effect she had not foreseen, for both shame and disgust made me constantly refuse them. chance so well seconded my bashful disposition, that i was past the age of thirty before i saw any of those dangerous compositions. in less than a year i had exhausted la tribu's scanty library, and was unhappy for want of further amusement. my reading, though frequently bad, had worn off my childish follies, and brought back my heart to nobler sentiments than my condition had inspired; meantime, disgusted with all within my reach, and thinking everything charming that was out of it, my present situation appeared extremely miserable. my passions began to acquire strength, i felt their influence, without knowing whither they would conduct me. i was as far removed from actual enjoyment as if sexless. sometimes i thought of former follies, but sought no further. at this time my imagination took a turn which helped to calm my increasing emotions; it was, to contemplate those situations in the books i had read, which produced the most striking effect on my mind; to recall, combine, and apply them to myself in such a manner, as to become one of the personages my recollection presented, and be continually in those fancied circumstances which were most agreeable to my inclinations; in a word, by contriving to place myself in these fictitious situations, the idea of my real one was in a great measure obliterated. this fondness for imaginary objects, and the facility with which i could gain possession of them, completed my disgust for everything around me, and fixed that inclination for solitude which has ever since been predominant. we shall have more than once occasion to remark the effects of a disposition, misanthropic and melancholy in appearance, but which proceed, in fact, from a heart too affectionate, too ardent, which, for want of similar dispositions, is constrained to content itself with nonentities, and be satisfied with fiction. it is sufficient, at present, to have traced the origin of a propensity which has modified my passions, set bounds to each, and by giving too much ardor to my wishes, has ever rendered me too indolent to obtain them. thus i attained my sixteenth year, uneasy, discontented with myself and everything that surrounded me; displeased with my occupation, without enjoying the pleasures common to my age, weeping without a cause, sighing i knew not why, and fond of my chimerical ideas for want of more valuable realities. every sunday, after sermon-time, my companions came to fetch me out, wishing me to partake of their diversions. i would willingly have been excused, but when once engaged in amusement, i was more animated and enterprising than any of them; it was equally difficult to engage or restrain me: indeed, this was ever a leading trait in my character. in our country walks i was ever foremost, and never thought of returning till reminded by some of my companions. i was twice obliged to be from my master's the whole night, the city gates having been shut before i could reach them. the reader may imagine what treatment this procured me the following mornings; but i was promised such a reception for the third, that i made a firm resolution never to expose myself to the danger of it. notwithstanding my determination, i repeated this dreaded transgression, my vigilance having been rendered useless by a cursed captain, named m. minutoli, who, when on guard, always shut the gate he had charge of an hour before the usual time. i was returning home with my two companions, and had got within half a league of the city, when i heard them beat the tattoo; i redouble my pace, i run with my utmost speed, i approach the bridge, see the soldiers already at their posts i call out to them in a suffocated voiceit is too late; i am twenty paces from the guard, the first bridge is already drawn up, and i tremble to see those terrible horns advanced in the air which announce the fatal and inevitable destiny, which from this moment began to pursue me. i threw myself on the glacis in a transport of despair, while my companions, who only laughed at the accident, immediately determined what to do. my resolution, though different from theirs, was equally sudden: on the spot, i swore never to return to my master's, and the next morning, when my companions entered the city, i bade them an eternal adieu, conjuring them at the same time to inform my cousin bernard of my resolution, and the place where he might see me for the last time. from the commencement of my apprenticeship i had seldom seen him; at first, indeed, we saw each other on sundays, but each acquiring different habits, our meetings were less frequent. i am persuaded his mother contributed greatly towards this change; he was to consider himself as a person of consequence, i was a pitiful apprentice; notwithstanding our relationship, equality no longer subsisted between us, and it was degrading himself to frequent my company. as he had a natural good heart his mother's lessons did not take an immediate effect, and for some time he continued to visit me. having learned my resolution, he hastened to the spot i had appointed, not, however, to dissuade me from it, but to render my flight agreeable, by some trifling presents, as my own resources would not have carried me far. he gave me, among other things, a small sword, which i was very proud of, and took with me as far as turin, where absolute want constrained me to dispose of it. the more i reflect on his behavior at this critical moment, the more i am persuaded he followed the instructions of his mother, and perhaps his father likewise; for, had he been left to his own feelings, he would have endeavored to retain, or have been tempted to accompany me; on the contrary, he encouraged the design, and when he saw me resolutely determined to pursue it, without seeming much affected, left me to my fate. we never saw or wrote to each other from that time: i cannot but regret this loss, for his heart was essentially good, and we seemed formed for a more lasting friendship. before i abandon myself to the fatality of my destiny, let me contemplate for a moment the prospect that awaited me had i fallen into the hands of a better master. nothing could have been more agreeable to my disposition, or more likely to confer happiness, than the peaceful condition of a good artificer, in so respectable a line as engravers are considered at geneva. i could have obtained an easy subsistence, if not a fortune; this would have bounded my ambition; i should have had means to indulge in moderate pleasures, and should have continued in my natural sphere, without meeting with any temptation to go beyond it. having an imagination sufficiently fertile to embellish with its chimeras every situation, and powerful enough to transport me from one to another, it was immaterial in which i was fixed; that was best adapted to me, which, requiring the least care or exertion, left the mind most at liberty; and this happiness i should have enjoyed. in my native country, in the bosom of my religion, family, and friends, i should have passed a calm and peaceful life in the uniformity of a pleasing occupation, and among connections dear to my heart. i should have been a good christian, a good citizen, a good friend, a good man. i should have relished my condition, perhaps have been an honor to it, and after having passed a life of happy obscurity, surrounded by my family, i should have died at peace. soon it may be forgotten, but while remembered it would have been with tenderness and regret. instead of thiswhat a picture am i about to draw!alas! why should i anticipate the miseries i have endured? the reader will have but too much of the melancholy subject. book ii [1728-1731] however mournful the moment which suggested flight, it did not seem more terrible than that wherein i put my design in execution appeared delightful. to leave my relations, my resources, while yet a child, in the midst of my apprenticeship, before i had learned enough of my business to obtain a subsistence; to run on inevitable misery and danger: to expose myself in that age of weakness and innocence to all the temptations of vice and despair; to set out in search of errors, misfortunes, snares, slavery, and death; to endure more intolerable evils than those i meant to shun, was the picture i should have drawn, the natural consequence of my hazardous enterprise. how different was the idea i entertained of it!the independence i seemed to possess was the sole object of my contemplation; having obtained my liberty, i thought everything attainable: i entered with confidence on the vast theater of the world, which my merit was to captivate: at every step i expected to find amusements, treasures, and adventures: friends ready to serve, and mistresses eager to please me; i had but to show myself, and the whole universe would be interested in my concerns; not but i could have been content with something less; a charming society, with sufficient means, might have satisfied me. my moderation was such, that the sphere in which i proposed to shine was rather circumscribed, but then it was to possess the very quintessence of enjoyment, and myself the principal object. a single castle, for instance, might have bounded my ambition; could i have been the favorite of the lord and lady, the daughter's lover, the son's friend, and protector of the neighbors, i might have been tolerably content, and sought no further. in expectation of this modest fortune, i passed a few days in the environs of the city, with some country people of my acquaintance, who received me with more kindness than i should have met with in town; they welcomed, lodged, and fed me cheerfully; i could not be said to live on charity, these favors were not conferred with a sufficient appearance of superiority to furnish out the idea. i rambled about in this manner till i got to confignon, in savoy, at about two leagues distance from geneva. the vicar was called m. de pontverre: this name, so famous in the history of the republic, caught my attention; i was curious to see what appearance the descendants of the gentlemen of the spoon exhibited: i went, therefore, to visit this m. de pontverre, and was received with great civility. he spoke of the heresy of geneva, declaimed on the authority of holy mother church, and then invited me to dinner. i had little to object to arguments which had so desirable a conclusion, and was inclined to believe that priests, who gave such excellent dinners, might be as good as our ministers. notwithstanding m. de pontverre's pedigree, i certainly possessed most learning; but i rather sought to be a good companion than an expert theologian; and his frangi wine, which i thought delicious, argued so powerfully on his side, that i should have blushed at silencing so kind a host; i, therefore, yielded him the victory, or rather declined the contest. any one who had observed my precaution, would certainly have pronounced me a dissembler, though, in fact, i was only courteous. flattery, or rather condescension, is not always a vice in young people; 'tis oftener a virtue. when treated with kindness, it is natural to feel an attachment for the person who confers the obligation: we do not acquiesce because we wish to deceive, but from dread of giving uneasiness, or because we wish to avoid the ingratitude of rendering evil for good. what interest had m. de pontverre in entertaining, treating with respect, and endeavoring to convince me? none but mine; my young heart told me this, and i was penetrated with gratitude and respect for the generous priest; i was sensible of my superiority, but scorned to repay his hospitality by taking advantage of it. i had no conception of hypocrisy in this forbearance, or thought of changing my religion, nay, so far was the idea from being familiar to me, that i looked on it with a degree of horror which seemed to exclude the possibility of such an event; i only wished to avoid giving offense to those i was sensible caressed me from that motive; i wished to cultivate their good opinion, and meantime leave them the hope of success by seeming less on my guard than i really was. my conduct in this particular resembled the coquetry of some very honest women, who, to obtain their wishes, without permitting or promising anything, sometimes encourage hopes they never mean to realize. reason, piety, and love of order, certainly demanded that instead of being encouraged in my folly, i should have been dissuaded from the ruin i was courting, and sent back to my family; and this conduct any one that was actuated by genuine virtue would have pursued; but it should be observed that though m. de pontverre was a religious man, he was not a virtuous one, but a bigot, who knew no virtue except worshiping images and telling his beads; in a word, a kind of missionary, who thought the height of merit consisted in writing libels against the ministers of geneva. far from wishing to send me back, he endeavored to favor my escape, and put it out of my power to return even had i been so disposed. it was a thousand to one but he was sending me to perish with hunger, or become a villain; but all this was foreign to his purpose; he saw a soul snatched from heresy, and restored to the bosom of the church: whether i was an honest man or a knave was very immaterial, provided i went to mass. this ridiculous mode of thinking is not peculiar to catholics, it is the voice of every dogmatical persuasion where merit consists in belief, and not in virtue. "you are called by the almighty," said m. de pontverre; "go to annecy, where you will find a good and charitable lady, whom the bounty of the king enables to turn souls from those errors she has haply renounced." he spoke of a madam de warrens, a new convert, to whom the priests contrived to send those wretches who were disposed to sell their faith, and with these she was in a manner constrained to share a pension of two thousand francs bestowed on her by the king of sardinia. i felt myself extremely humiliated at being supposed to want the assistance of a good and charitable lady. i had no objection to be accommodated with everything i stood in need of, but did not wish to receive it on the footing of charity, and to owe this obligation to a devotee was still worse: notwithstanding my scruples the persuasions of m. de pontverre, the dread of perishing with hunger, the pleasures i promised myself from the journey, and hope of obtaining some desirable situation, determined me; and i set out, though reluctantly, for annecy. i could easily have reached it in a day, but being in no great haste to arrive there, it took me three. my head was filled with the idea of adventures, and i approached every country-seat i saw in my way, in expectation of having them realized. i had too much timidity to knock at the doors, or even enter if i saw them open, but i did what i daredwhich was to sing under those windows that i thought had the most favorable appearance; and was very much disconcerted to find i wasted my breath to no purpose, and that neither young nor old ladies were attracted by the melody of my voice, or the wit of my poetry, though some songs my companions had taught me i thought excellent, and that i sung them incomparably. at length i arrived at annecy, and saw madam de warrens. as this period of my life, in a great measure, determined my character, i could not resolve to pass it lightly over. i was in the middle of my sixteenth year, and though i could not be called handsome, was well made for my height; i had a good foot, a well turned leg, and animated countenance; a well proportioned mouth, black hair and eyebrows, and my eyes, though small and rather too far in my head, sparkling with vivacity, darted that innate fire which inflamed my blood; unfortunately for me, i knew nothing of all this, never having bestowed a single thought on my person till it was too late to be of any service to me. the timidity common to my age was heightened by a natural benevolence, which made me dread the idea of giving pain. though my mind had received some cultivation, having seen nothing of the world, i was an absolute stranger to polite address, and my mental acquisitions, so far from supplying this defect, only served to increase my embarrassment, by making me sensible of every deficiency. depending little, therefore, on external appearances, i had recourse to other expedients: i wrote a most elaborate letter, where, mingling all the flowers of rhetoric which i had borrowed from books with the phrases of an apprentice, i endeavored to strike the attention, and insure the good will of madam de warrens. i enclosed m. de pontverre's letter in my own, and waited on the lady with a heart palpitating with fear and expectation. it was palm sunday, of the year 1728; i was informed she was that moment gone to church: i hasten after her, overtake, and speak to her.the place is yet fresh in my memoryhow can it be otherwise? often have i moistened it with my tears and covered it with kisses.why cannot i enclose with gold the happy spot, and render it the object of universal veneration? whoever wishes to honor monuments of human salvation would only approach it on their knees. it was a passage at the back of the house, bordered on the right hand by a little rivulet, which separated it from the garden, and, on the right, by the courtyard wall; at the end was a private door, which opened into the church of the cordeliers. madam de warrens was just passing this door; but, on hearing my voice, instantly turned about. what an effect did the sight of her produce! i expected to see a devout, forbidding old woman; m. de pontverre's pious and worthy lady could be no other in my conception: instead of which, i see a face beaming with charms, fine blue eyes full of sweetness, a complexion whose whiteness dazzled the sight, the form of an enchanting neck, nothing escaped the eager eye of the young proselyte; for that instant i was hers!a religion preached by such missionaries must lead to paradise! my letter was presented with a trembling hand; she took it with a smileopened it, glanced an eye over m. de pontverre's and again returned to mine, which she read through, and would have read again, had not her footman that instant informed her that service was beginning"child," said she, in a tone of voice which made every nerve vibrate, "you are wandering about at an early ageit is really a pity!"and, without waiting for an answer, added"go to my house, bid them give you something for breakfast, after mass i will speak to you." louisa-eleanora de warrens was of the noble and ancient family of la tour de pit, of vevay, a city in the country of the vaudois. she was married very young to a m. de warrens, of the house of loys, eldest son of m. de villardin, of lausanne: there were no children by this marriage, which was far from being a happy one. some domestic uneasiness made madam de warrens take the resolution of crossing the lake, and throwing herself at the feet of victor amadeus, who was then at evian; thus abandoning her husband, family, and country by a giddiness similar to mine, which precipitation she, too, has found sufficient time and reason to lament. the king, who was fond of appearing a zealous promoter of the catholic faith, took her under his protection, and complimented her with a pension of fifteen hundred livres of piedmont, which was a considerable appointment for a prince who never had the character of being generous; but finding his liberality made some conjecture he had an affection for the lady, he sent her to annecy, escorted by a detachment of his guards, where, under the direction of michael gabriel de bernex, titular bishop of geneva, she abjured her former religion at the convent of the visitation. i came to annecy just six years after this event; madam de warrens was then eight-and-twenty, being born with the century. her beauty, consisting more in the expressive animation of the countenance than a set of features, was in its meridian; her manner, soothing and tender; an angelic smile played about her mouth, which was small and delicate; she wore her hair (which was of an ash color, and uncommonly beautiful) with an air of negligence that made her appear still more interesting; she was short, and rather thick for her height, though by no means disagreeably so; but there could not be a more lovely face, a finer neck, or hands and arms more exquisitely formed. her education had been derived from such a variety of sources, that it formed an extraordinary assemblage. like me, she had lost her mother at her birth, and had received instruction as it chanced to present itself: she had learned something of her governess, something of her father, a little of her masters, but copiously from her lovers; particularly a m. de tavel, who, possessing both taste and information, endeavored to adorn with them the mind of her he loved. these various instructions, not being properly arranged, tended to impede each other, and she did not acquire that degree of improvement her natural good sense was capable of receiving; she knew something of philosophy and physic, but not enough to eradicate the fondness she had imbibed from her father for empiricism and alchemy; she made elixirs, tinctures, balsams, pretended to secrets, and prepared magestry; while quacks and pretenders, profiting by her weakness, destroyed her property among furnaces, and minerals, diminishing those charms and accomplishments which might have been the delight of the most elegant circles. but though these interested wretches took advantage of her ill-applied education to obscure her good sense, her excellent heart retained its her amiable mildness, sensibility for the unfortunate, inexhaustible bounty, and open, cheerful frankness, knew no variation; even at the approach of old age, when attacked by various calamities, rendered more cutting by indigence, the serenity of her disposition preserved to the end of her life the pleasing gayety of her happiest days. her errors proceeded from an inexhaustible fund of activity, which demanded perpetual employment. she found no satisfaction in the customary intrigues of her sex, but, being formed for vast designs, sought the direction of important enterprises and discoveries. in her place madam de longueville would have been a mere trifler, in madam de longueville's situation she would have governed the state. her talents did not accord with her fortune; what would have gained her distinction in a more elevated sphere, became her ruin. in enterprises which suited her disposition, she arranged the plan in her imagination, which was ever carried to its utmost extent, and the means she employed being proportioned rather to her ideas than abilities, she failed by the mismanagement of those on whom she depended, and was ruined where another would scarce have been a loser. this active disposition, which involved her in so many difficulties, was at least productive of one benefit as it prevented her from passing the remainder of her life in the monastic asylum she had chosen, which she had some thought of. the simple and uniform life of a nun, and the little cabals and gossipings of their parlor, were not adapted to a mind vigorous and active, which, every day forming new systems, had occasion for liberty to attempt their completion. the good bishop of bernex, with less wit than francis of sales, resembled him in many particulars, and madam de warrens, whom he loved to call his daughter, and who was like madam de chantel in several respects, might have increased the resemblance by retiring like her from the world, had she not been disgusted with the idle trifling of a convent. it was not want of zeal prevented this amiable woman from giving those proofs of devotion which might have been expected from a new convert, under the immediate direction of a prelate. whatever might have influenced her to change her religion, she was certainly sincere in that she had embraced; she might find sufficient occasion to repent having abjured her former faith, but no inclination to return to it. she not only died a good catholic, but truly lived one; nay, i dare affirm (and i think i have had the opportunity to read the secrets of her heart) that it was only her aversion to singularity that prevented her acting the devotee in public; in a word, her piety was too sincere to give way to any affectation of it. but this is not the place to enlarge on her principles; i shall find other occasions to speak of them. let those who deny the existence of a sympathy of souls, explain, if they know how, why the first glance, the first word of madam de warrens inspired me, not only with a lively attachment, but with the most unbounded confidence, which has since known no abatement. say this was love (which will at least appear doubtful to those who read the sequel of our attachment) how could this passion be attended with sentiments which scarce ever accompany its commencement, such as peace, serenity, security, and confidence. how, when making application to an amiable and polished woman, whose situation in life was so superior to mine, so far above any i had yet approached, on whom, in a great measure, depended my future fortune, by the degree of interest she might take in it; how, i say, with so many reasons to depress me, did i feel myself as free, as much at my ease, as if i had been perfectly secure of pleasing her! why did i not experience a moment of embarrassment, timidity, or restraint? naturally bashful, easily confused, having seen nothing of the world, could i, the first time, the first moment i beheld her, adopt caressing language, and a familiar tone, as readily as after ten years' intimacy had rendered these freedoms natural? is it possible to possess love, i will not say without desires, for i certainly had them, but without inquietude, without jealousy? can we avoid feeling an anxious wish at least, to know whether our affection is returned? yet such a question never entered my imagination: i should as soon have inquired, do i love myself; nor did she ever express a greater degree of curiosity; there was, certainly, something extraordinary in my attachment to this charming woman, and it will be found in the sequel, that some extravagances, which cannot be foreseen, attended it. what could be done for me, was the present question, and in order to discuss the point with greater freedom, she made me dine with her. this was the first meal in my life where i had experienced a want of appetite, and her woman, who waited, observed it was the first time she had seen a traveler of my age and appearance deficient in that particular: this remark, which did me no injury in the opinion of her mistress, fell hard on an overgrown clown, who was my fellow guest, and devoured sufficient to have served at least six moderate feeders. for me, i was too much charmed to think of eating; my heart began to imbibe a delicious sensation, which engrossed my whole being, and left no room for other objects. madam de warrens wished to hear the particulars of my little historyall the vivacity i had lost during my servitude returned and assisted the recital. in proportion to the interest this excellent woman took in my story, did she lament the fate to which i had exposed myself; compassion was painted on her features, and expressed by every action. she could not exhort me to return to geneva, being too well aware that her words and actions were strictly scrutinized, and that such advice would be thought high treason against catholicism, but she spoke so feelingly of the affliction i must give my father, that it was easy to perceive she would have approved my returning to console him. alas! she little thought how powerfully this pleaded against herself; the more eloquently persuasive she appeared, the less could i resolve to tear myself from her. i knew that returning to geneva would be putting an insuperable barrier between us, unless i repeated the expedient which had brought me here, and it was certainly better to preserve than expose myself to the danger of a relapse; besides all this, my conduct was predetermined, i was resolved not to return. madam de warrens, seeing her endeavors would be fruitless, became less explicit, and only added, with an air of commiseration, "poor child! thou must go where providence directs thee, but one day thou wilt think of me."i believe she had no conception at that time how fatally her prediction would be verified. the difficulty still remained how i was to gain a subsistence? i have already observed that i knew too little of engraving for that to furnish my resource, and had i been more expert, savoy was too poor a country to give much encouragement to the arts. the above-mentioned glutton, who ate for us as well as himself, being obliged to pause in order to gain some relaxation from the fatigue of it, imparted a piece of advice, which, according to him, came express from heaven: though to judge by its effects it appeared to have been dictated from a direct contrary quarter: this was that i should go to turin, where, in a hospital instituted for the instruction of catechumens, i should find food, both spiritual and temporal, be reconciled to the bosom of the church, and meet with some charitable christians, who would make it a point to procure me a situation that would turn to my advantage. "in regard to the expenses of the journey," continued our adviser, "his grace, my lord bishop, will not be backward, when once madam has proposed this holy work, to offer his charitable donation, and madam the baroness, whose charity is so well known," once more addressing himself to the continuation of his meal, "will certainly contribute." i was by no means pleased with all these charities; i said nothing, but my heart was ready to burst with vexation. madam de warrens, who did not seem to think so highly of this expedient as the projector pretended to do, contented herself by saying, every one should endeavor to promote good actions, and that she would mention it to his lordship; but the meddling devil, who had some private interest in this affair, and questioned whether she would urge it to his satisfaction, took care to acquaint the almoners with my story, and so far influenced those good priests, that when madam de warrens, who disliked the journey on my account, mentioned it to the bishop, she found it so far concluded on, that he immediately put into her hands the money designed for my little viaticum. she dared not advance anything against it; i was approaching an age when a woman like her could not, with any propriety, appear anxious to retain me. my departure being thus determined by those who undertook the management of my concerns, i had only to submit; and i did it without much repugnance. though turin was at a greater distance from madam de warrens' than geneva, yet being the capital of the country i was now in, it seemed to have more connection with annecy than a city under a different government and of a contrary religion; besides, as i undertook this journey in obedience to her, i considered myself as living under her direction, which was more flattering than barely to continue in the neighborhood; to sum up all, the idea of a long journey coincided with my insurmountable passion for rambling, which already began to demonstrate itself. to pass the mountains, to my eye appeared delightful; how charming the reflection of elevating myself above my companions by the whole height of the alps! to see the world is an almost irresistible temptation to a genevan, accordingly i gave my consent. he who suggested the journey was to set off in two days with his wife. i was recommended to their care; they were likewise made my purse-bearers, which had been augmented by madam de warrens, who, not contented with these kindnesses, added secretly a pecuniary reinforcement, attended with the most ample instructions, and we departed on the wednesday before easter. the day following, my father arrived at annecy, accompanied by his friend, a mr. rival, who was likewise a watchmaker; he was a man of sense and letters, who wrote better verses than la motte, and spoke almost as well; what is still more to his praise, he was a man of the strictest integrity, but whose taste for literature only served to make one of his sons a comedian. having traced me to the house of madam de warrens, they contented themselves with lamenting, like her, my fate, instead of overtaking me, which (as they were on horseback and i on foot) they might have accomplished with the greatest ease. my uncle bernard did the same thing, he arrived at consignon, received information that i was gone to annecy, and immediately returned back to geneva thus my nearest relations seemed to have conspired with my adverse stars to consign me to misery and ruin. by a similar negligence, my brother was so entirely lost, that it was never known what was become of him. my father was not only a man of honor but of the strictest probity, and endued with that magnanimity which frequently produces the most shining virtues: i may add, he was a good father, particularly to me whom he tenderly loved; but he likewise loved his pleasures, and since we had been separated other connections had weakened his paternal affection. he had married again at nion, and though his second wife was too old to expect children, she had relations; my father was united to another family, surrounded by other objects, and a variety of cares prevented my returning to his remembrance. he was in the decline of life and had nothing to support the inconveniences of old age; my mother's property devolved to me and my brother, but, during our absence, the interest of it was enjoyed by my father: i do not mean to infer that this consideration had an immediate effect on his conduct, but it had an imperceptible one, and prevented him making use of that exertion to regain me which he would otherwise have employed; and this, i think, was the reason that having traced me as far as annecy, he stopped short, without proceeding to chambery, where he was almost certain i should be found; and likewise accounts why, on visiting him several times since my flight, he always received me with great kindness, but never made any efforts to retain me. this conduct in a father, whose affection and virtue i was so well convinced of, has given birth to reflections on the regulation of my own conduct, which have greatly contributed to preserve the integrity of my heart. it has taught me this great lesson of morality, perhaps the only one that can have any conspicuous influence on our actions, that we should ever carefully avoid putting our interest in competition with our duty, or promise ourselves felicity from the misfortunes of others; certain that in such circumstances, however sincere our love of virtue may be, sooner or later it will give way, and we shall imperceptibly become unjust and wicked, in fact, however upright in our intentions. this maxim, strongly imprinted on my mind, and reduced, though rather too late, to practice, has given my conduct an appearance of folly and whimsicality, not only in public, but still more among my acquaintances: it has been said, i affected originality, and sought to act different from other people; the truth is, i neither endeavor to conform or be singular, i desired only to act virtuously and avoid situations, which, by setting my interest in opposition to that of another person's, might inspire me with a secret, though involuntary, wish to his disadvantage. two years ago, my lord marshal would have put my name in his will, which i took every method to prevent, assuring him i would not for the world know myself in the will of any one, much less in his; he gave up the idea; but insisted, in return, that i should accept an annuity on his life; this i consented to. it will be said, i find my account in the alteration; perhaps i may: but oh, my benefactor! my father, i am now sensible that, should i have the misfortune to survive thee, i should have everything to lose, nothing to gain. this, in my idea, is true philosophy, the surest bulwark of human rectitude; every day do i receive fresh conviction of its profound solidity. i have endeavored to recommend it in all my latter writings, but the multitude read too superficially to have made the remark. if i survive my present undertaking, and am able to begin another, i mean, in a continuation of emilius, to give such a lively and marking example of this maxim as cannot fail to strike attention. but i have made reflections enough for a traveler, it is time to continue my journey. it turned out more agreeable than i expected: my clownish conductor was not so morose as he appeared to be. he was a middle-aged man, wore his black, grizzly hair, in a queue, had a martial air, a strong voice, was tolerably cheerful, and to make up for not having been taught any trade, could turn his hand to every one. having proposed to establish some kind of manufactory at annecy, he had consulted madam de warrens, who immediately gave in to the project, and he was now going to turin to lay the plan before the minister and get his approbation, for which journey he took care to be well rewarded. this drole had the art of ingratiating himself with the priests, whom he ever appeared eager to serve; he adopted a certain jargon which he had learned by frequenting their company, and thought himself a notable preacher; he could even repeat one passage from the bible in latin, and it answered his purpose as well as if, he had known a thousand, for he repeated it a thousand times a day. he was seldom at a loss for money when he knew what purse contained it; yet, was rather artful than knavish, and when dealing out in an affected tone his unmeaning discourses, resembled peter the hermit, preaching up the crusade with a saber by his side. madam sabran, his wife, was a tolerable good sort of woman; more peaceable by day than by night; as i slept in the same chamber i was frequently disturbed by her wakefulness, and should have been more so had i comprehended the cause of it, but in this matter i was so stupid that nature alone could further instruct me. i went on gayly with my pious guide and his hopeful companion, no sinister accident impeding our journey. i was in the happiest circumstances both of mind and body that i ever recollect having experienced; young, full of health and security, placing unbounded confidence in myself and others; in that short but charming moment of human life, whose expansive energy carries, if i may so express myself, our being to the utmost extent of our sensations, embellishing all nature with an inexpressible charm, flowing from the conscious and rising enjoyment of our existence. my pleasing inquietudes became less wandering: i had now an object on which imagination could fix. i looked on myself as the work, the pupil, the friend, almost the lover of madam de warrens; the obliging things she had said, the caresses she had bestowed on me; the tender interest she seemed to take in everything that concerned me; those charming looks, which seemed replete with love, because they so powerfully inspired it, every consideration flattered my ideas during this journey, and furnished the most delicious reveries, which, no doubt, no fear of my future condition arose to embitter. in sending me to turin, i thought they engaged to find me an agreeable subsistence there; thus eased of every care i passed lightly on, while young desires, enchanting hopes, and brilliant prospects employed my mind; each object that presented itself seemed to insure my approaching felicity. i imagined that every house was filled with joyous festivity, the meadows resounded with sports and revelry, the rivers offered refreshing baths, delicious fish wantoned in their streams, and how delightful was it to ramble along the flowery banks! the trees were loaded with the choicest fruits, while their shade afforded the most charming and voluptuous retreats to happy lovers; the mountains abounded with milk and cream, peace and leisure, simplicity and joy, mingled with the charm of going i knew not whither, and everything i saw carried to my heart some new cause for rapture. the grandeur, variety, and real beauty of the scene, in some measure rendered the charm reasonable, in which vanity came in for its share; to go so young to italy, view such an extent of country, and pursue the route of hannibal over the alps, appeared a glory beyond my age; add to all this our frequent and agreeable halts, with a good appetite and plenty to satisfy it; for in truth it was not worth while to be sparing; at m. sabran's table what i eat could scarce be missed. in the whole course of my life i cannot recollect an interval more perfectly exempt from care, than the seven or eight days i was passing from annecy to turin. as we were obliged to walk madam sabran's pace, it rather appeared an agreeable jaunt than a fatiguing journey; there still remains the most pleasing impressions of it on my mind, and the idea of a pedestrian excursion, particularly among the mountains, has from this time seemed delightful. it was only in my happiest days that i traveled on foot, and ever with the most unbounded satisfaction; afterwards, occupied with business and encumbered with baggage, i was forced to act the gentleman and employ a carriage, where care, embarrassment, and restraint, were sure to be my companions, and instead of being delighted with the journey, i only wished to arrive at the place of destination. i was a long time at paris, wishing to meet with two companions of similar dispositions, who would each agree to appropriate fifty guineas of his property and a year of his time to making the tour of italy on foot, with no other attendance than a young fellow to carry our necessaries i have met with many who seemed enchanted with the project, but considered it only as a visionary scheme, which served well enough to talk of, without any design of putting it in execution. one day, speaking with enthusiasm of this project to diderot and grimm, they gave in to the proposal with such warmth that i thought the matter concluded on; but it only turned out a journey on paper, in which grimm thought nothing so pleasing as making diderot commit a number of impieties, and shutting me up in the inquisition for them, instead of him. my regret at arriving so soon at turin was compensated by the pleasure of viewing a large city, and the hope of figuring there in a conspicuous character, for my brain already began to be intoxicated with the fumes of ambition; my present situation appeared infinitely above that of an apprentice, and i was far from foreseeing how soon i should be much below it. before i proceed, i ought to offer an excuse, or justification to the reader, for the great number of unentertaining particulars i am necessitated to repeat. in pursuance of the resolution i have formed to enter on this public exhibition of myself, it is necessary that nothing should bear the appearance of obscurity or concealment. i should be continually under the eye of the reader, he should be enabled to follow me in all the wanderings of my heart, through every intricacy of my adventures; he must find no void or chasm in my relation, nor lose sight of me in an instant, lest he should find occasion to say, what was he doing at this time; and suspect me of not having dared to reveal the whole: i give sufficient scope to malignity in what i say; it is unnecessary i should furnish still more by my silence. my money was all gone, even that i had secretly received from madam de warrens: i had been so indiscreet as to divulge this secret, and my conductors had taken care to profit by it. madam sabran found means to deprive me of everything i had, even to a ribbon embroidered with silver, with which madam de warrens had adorned the hilt of my sword; this i regretted more than all the rest; indeed the sword itself would have gone the same way, had i been less obstinately bent on retaining it. they had, it is true, supported me during the journey, but left me nothing at the end of it, and i arrived at turin without money, clothes, or linen, being precisely in the situation to owe to my merit alone the whole honor of that fortune i was about to acquire. i took care in the first place to deliver the letters i was charged with, and was presently conducted to the hospital of the catechumens, to be instructed in that religion, for which, in return, i was to receive subsistence. on entering, i passed an iron-barred gate, which was immediately double-locked on me; this beginning was by no means calculated to give me a favorable opinion of my situation. i was then conducted to a large apartment, whose furniture consisted of a wooden altar at the farther end, on which was a large crucifix, and round it several indifferent chairs, of the same materials. in this hall of audience were assembled four or five ill-looking banditti, my comrades in instruction, who would rather have been taken for trusty servants of the devil than candidates for the kingdom of heaven. two of these fellows were sclavonians, but gave out they were african jews, and (as they assured me) had run through spain and italy, embracing the christian faith, and being baptized wherever they thought it worth their labor. soon after they opened another iron gate, which divided a large balcony that overlooked a courtyard, and by this avenue entered our sister catechumens, who, like me, were going to be regenerated, not by baptism but a solemn abjuration. a viler set of idle, dirty, abandoned harlots, never disgraced any persuasion: one among them, however, appeared pretty and interesting; she might be about my own age, perhaps a year or two older, and had a pair of roguish eyes, which frequently encountered mine; this was enough to inspire me with the desire of becoming acquainted with her, but she had been so strongly recommended to the care of the old governess of this respectable sisterhood, and was so narrowly watched by the pious missionary, who labored for her conversion with more zeal than diligence, that during the two months we remained together in this house (where she had already been three) i found it absolutely impossible to exchange a word with her. she must have been extremely stupid, though she had not the appearance of it, for never was a longer course of instruction; the holy man could never bring her to a state of mind fit for abjuration; meantime she became weary of her cloister, declaring that, christian or not, she would stay there no longer; and they were obliged to take her at her. word, lest she should grow refractory, and insist on departing as great a sinner as she came. this hopeful community were assembled in honor of the new-comer; when our guides made us a short exhortation: i was conjured to be obedient to the grace that heaven had bestowed on me; the rest were admonished to assist me with their prayers, and give me edification by their good example. our virgins then retired to another apartment, and i was left to contemplate, at leisure, that wherein i found myself. the next morning we were again assembled for instruction: i now began to reflect, for the first time, on the step i was about to take, and the circumstances which had led me to it. i repeat, and shall perhaps repeat again, an assertion i have already advanced, and of whose truth i every day receive fresh conviction, which is, that if ever child received a reasonable and virtuous education, it was myself. born in a family of unexceptionable morals, every lesson i received was replete with maxims of prudence and virtue. my father (though fond of gallantry) not only possessed distinguished probity, but much religion; in the world he appeared a man of pleasure, in his family he was a christian, and implanted early in my mind those sentiments he felt the force of. my three aunts were women of virtue and piety; the two eldest were professed devotees, and the third, who united all the graces of wit and good sense, was, perhaps, more truly religious than either, though with less ostentation. from the bosom of this amiable family i was transplanted to m. lambercier's, a man dedicated to the ministry, who believed the doctrine he taught, and acted up to its precepts. he and his sister matured by their instructions those principles of judicious piety i had already imbibed, and the means employed by these worthy people were so well adapted to the effect they meant to produce, that so far from being fatigued, i scarce ever listened to their admonitions without finding myself sensibly affected, and forming resolutions to live virtuously, from which, except in moments of forgetfulness, i seldom swerved. at my uncle's, religion was rather more tiresome, because they made it an employment; with my master i thought no more of it, though my sentiments continued the same: i had no companions to vitiate my morals: i became idle, careless, and obstinate, but my principles were not impaired. i possessed as much religion, therefore, as a child could be supposed capable of acquiring. why should i now disguise my thoughts? i am persuaded i had more. in my childhood, i was not a child; i felt, i thought as a man: as i advanced in years, i mingled with the ordinary class; in my infancy i was distinguished from it. i shall doubtless incur ridicule by thus modestly holding myself up for a prodigyi am content. let those who find themselves disposed to it, laugh their fill; afterward, let them find a child that at six years old is delighted, interested, affected with romances, even to the shedding floods of tears; i shall then feel my ridiculous vanity, and acknowledge myself in an error. thus when i said we should not converse with children on religion, if we wished them ever to possess any; when i asserted they were incapable of communion with the supreme being, even in our confined degree, i drew my conclusions from general observation; i knew they were not applicable to particular instances: find j. j. rousseaus of six years old, converse with them on religious subjects at seven, and i will be answerable that the experiment will be attended with no danger. it is understood, i believe, that a child, or even a man, is likely to be most sincere while persevering in that religion in whose belief he was born and educated; we frequently detract from, seldom make any additions to it: dogmatical faith is the effect of education. in addition to this general principle, which attached me to the religion of my forefathers, i had that particular aversion our city entertains for catholicism, which is represented there as the most monstrous idolatry, and whose clergy are painted in the blackest colors. this sentiment was so firmly imprinted on my mind, that i never dared to look into their churchesi could not bear to meet a priest in his surplice, and never did i hear the bells of a procession sound without shuddering with horror; these sensations soon wore off in great cities, but frequently returned in country parishes, which bore more similarity to the spot where i first experienced them; meantime this dislike was singularly contrasted by the remembrance of those caresses which priests in the neighborhood of geneva are fond of bestowing on the children of that city. if the bells of the viaticum alarmed me, the chiming for mass or vespers called me to a breakfast, a collation, to the pleasure of regaling on fresh butter, fruits, or milk; the good cheer of m. de pontverre had produced a considerable effect on me; my former abhorrence began to diminish, and looking on popery through the medium of amusement and good living, i easily reconciled myself to the idea of enduring, though i never entertained but a very transient and distant idea of making a solemn profession of it. at this moment such a transaction appeared in all its horrors; i shuddered at the engagement i had entered into, and its inevitable consequences. the future neophytes with which i was surrounded were not calculated to sustain my courage by their example, and i could not help considering the holy work i was about to perform as the action of a villain. though young, i was sufficiently convinced, that whatever religion might be the true one, i was about to sell mine; and even should i chance to choose the best, i lied to the holy ghost, and merited the disdain of every good man. the more i considered, the more i despised myself, and trembled at the fate which had led me into such a predicament, as if my present situation had not been of my own seeking. there were moments when these compunctions were so strong, that had i found the door open but for an instant, i should certainly have made my escape; but this was impossible, nor was the resolution of any long duration, being combated by too many secret motives to stand any chance of gaining the victory. my fixed determination not to return to geneva, the shame that would attend it, the difficulty of repassing the mountains, at a distance from my country, without friends, and without resources, everything concurred to make me consider my remorse of conscience, as a too late repentance. i affected to reproach myself for what i had done, to seek excuses for that i intended to do, and by aggravating the errors of the past, looked on the future as an inevitable consequence. i did not say, nothing is yet done, and you may be innocent if you please; but i said, tremble at the crime thou hast committed, which hath reduced thee to the necessity of filling up the measure of thine iniquities. it required more resolution than was natural to my age to revoke those expectations which i had given them reason to entertain, break those chains with which i was enthralled, and resolutely declare i would continue in the religion of my forefathers, whatever might be the consequence. the affair was already too far advanced, and spite of all my efforts they would have made a point of bringing it to a conclusion. the sophism which ruined me has had a similar effect on the greater part of mankind, who lament the want of resolution when the opportunity for exercising it is over. the practice of virtue is only difficult from our own negligence; were we always discreet, we should seldom have occasion for any painful exertion of it; we are captivated by desires we might readily surmount, give in to temptations that might easily be resisted, and insensibly get into embarrassing, perilous situations, from which we cannot extricate ourselves but with the utmost difficulty; intimidated by the effort, we fall into the abyss, saying to the almighty, why hast thou made us such weak creatures? but, notwithstanding our vain pretexts, he replies, by our consciences, i formed ye too weak to get out of the gulf, because i gave ye sufficient strength not to have fallen into it. i was not absolutely resolved to become a catholic, but, as it was not necessary to declare my intentions immediately, i gradually accustomed myself to the idea; hoping, meantime, that some unforeseen event would extricate me from my embarrassment. in order to gain time, i resolved to make the best defense i possibly could in favor of my own opinion; but my vanity soon rendered this resolution unnecessary, for on finding i frequently embarrassed those who had the care of my instruction, i wished to heighten my triumph by giving them a complete overthrow, i zealously pursued my plan, not without the ridiculous hope of being able to convert my convertors; for i was simple enough to believe, that could i convince them of their errors, they would become protestants; they did not find, therefore, that facility in the work which they had expected, as i differed both in regard to will and knowledge from the opinion they had entertained of me. protestants, in general, are better instructed in the principles of their religion than catholics; the reason is obvious, the doctrine of the former requires discussion, of the latter a blind submission; the catholic must content himself with the decision of others, the protestant must learn to decide for himself; they were not ignorant of this, but neither my age nor appearance promised much difficulty to men so accustomed to disputation. they knew, likewise, that i had not received my first communion, nor the instructions which accompany it; but, on the other hand, they had no idea of the information i received with m. lambercier, or that i had learned the history of the church and empire almost by heart at my father's; and though, since that time, nearly forgot, when warmed by the dispute (very unfortunately for these gentlemen), it again returned to my memory. a little old priest, but tolerably venerable, held the first conference; at which we were all convened. on the part of my comrades, it was rather a catechism than a controversy, and he found more pains in giving them instruction than answering their objections; hilt when it came to my turn, it was a different matter; i stopped him at every article, and did not spare a single remark that i thought would create a difficulty: this rendered the conference long and extremely tiresome to the assistants. my old priest talked a great deal, was very warm, frequently rambled from the subject, and extricated himself from difficulties by saying he was not sufficiently versed in the french language. the next day, lest my indiscreet objections should injure the minds of those who were better disposed, i was led into a separate chamber, and put under the care of a younger priest, a fine speaker; that is, one who was fond of long perplexed sentences, and proud of his own abilities, if ever doctor was. i did not, however, suffer myself to be intimidated by his overbearing looks: and being sensible that i could maintain my ground, i combated his assertions, exposed his mistakes, and laid about me in the best manner i was able. he thought to silence me at once with st. augustin, st. gregory, and the rest of the fathers, but found, to his ineffable surprise, that i could handle these almost as dexterously as himself; not that i had ever read them, or he either, perhaps, but i retained a number of passages taken from my le sueur, and when he bore hard on me with one citation, without standing to dispute, i parried it with another, which method embarrassed him extremely. at length, however, he got the better of me for two very potent reasons; in the first place, he was of the strongest side; young as i was, i thought it might be dangerous to drive him to extremities, for i plainly saw the old priest was neither satisfied with me nor my erudition. in the next place, he had studied, i had not; this gave a degree of method to his arguments which i could not follow; and whenever he found himself pressed by an unforeseen objection he put it off to the next conference, pretending i rambled from the question in dispute. sometimes he even rejected all my quotations, maintaining they were false, and, offering to fetch the book, defied me to find them. he knew he ran very little risk, and that, with all my borrowed learning, i was not sufficiently accustomed to books, and too poor a latinist to find a passage in a large volume, had i been ever so well assured it was there. i even suspected him of having been guilty of a perfidy with which he accused our ministers, and that he fabricated passages sometimes in order to evade an objection that incommoded him. meanwhile the hospital became every day more disagreeable to me, and seeing but one way to get out of it, i endeavored to hasten my abjuration with as much eagerness as i had hitherto sought to retard it. the two africans had been baptized with great ceremony; they were habited in white from head to foot, to signify the purity of their regenerated souls. my turn came a month after; for all this time was thought necessary by the directors, that they might have the honor of a difficult conversion, and every dogma of their faith was recapitulated, in order to triumph the more completely over my new docility. at length, sufficiently instructed and disposed to the will of my masters, i was led in procession to the metropolitan church of st. john, to make a solemn abjuration, and undergo a ceremony made use of on these occasions, which, though not baptism, is very similar, and serves to persuade the people that protestants are not christians. i was clothed in a kind of gray robe, decorated with white brandenburgs. two men, one behind, the other before me, carried copper basins which they kept striking with a key, and in which those who were charitably disposed put their alms, according as they found themselves influenced by religion or good will for the new convert; in a word, nothing of catholic pageantry was omitted that could render the solemnity edifying to the populace, or humiliating to me. the white dress might have been serviceable, but as i had not the honor to be either moor or jew, they did not think fit to compliment me with it. the affair did not end here; i must now go to the inquisition to be absolved from the dreadful sin of heresy, and return to the bosom of the church with the same ceremony to which henry the fourth was subjected by his ambassador. the air and manner of the right reverend father inquisitor was by no means calculated to dissipate the secret horror that seized my spirits on entering this holy mansion. after several questions relative to my faith, situation, and family, he asked me bluntly if my mother was damned? terror repressed the first gust of indignation; this gave me time to recollect myself, and i answered, i hoped not, for god might have enlightened her last moments. the monk made no reply, but his silence was attended with a look by no means expressive of approbation. all these ceremonies ended, the very moment i flattered myself i should be plentifully provided for, they exhorted me to continue a good christian, and live in obedience to the grace i had received; then wishing me good fortune, with rather more than twenty francs of small money in my pocket, the produce of the above-mentioned collection, turned me out, shut the door on me, and i saw no more of them! thus, in a moment, all my flattering expectations were at an end; and nothing remained from my interested conversion but the remembrance of having been made both a dupe and an apostate. it is easy to imagine what a sudden revolution was produced in my ideas, when every brilliant expectation of making a fortune terminated by seeing myself plunged in the completest misery. in the morning i was deliberating what palace i should inhabit, before night i was reduced to seek my lodging in the street. it may be supposed that i gave myself up to the most violent transports of despair, rendered more bitter by a consciousness that my own folly had reduced me to these extremities; but the truth is, i experienced none of these disagreeable sensations. i had passed two months in absolute confinement; this was new to me; i was now emancipated, and the sentiment i felt most forcibly, was joy at my recovered liberty. after a slavery which had appeared tedious, i was again master of my time and actions, in a great city, abundant in resources, crowded with people of fortune, to whom my merit and talents could not fail to recommend me. i had sufficient time before me to expect this good fortune, for my twenty livres seemed an inexhaustible treasure, which i might dispose of without rendering an account of to any one. it was the first time i had found myself so rich, and far from giving way to melancholy reflections i only adopted other hopes, in which self-love was by no means a loser. never did i feel so great a degree of confidence and security; i looked on my fortune as already made, and was pleased to think i should have no one but myself to thank for the acquisition of it. the first thing i did, was to satisfy my curiosity by rambling all over the city, and i seemed to consider it as a confirmation of my liberty; i went to see the soldiers mount guard, and was delighted with their military accouterments; i followed processions, and was pleased with the solemn music of the priests; i next went to see the, king's palace, which i approached with awe, but seeing others enter, i followed their example, and no one prevented me; perhaps i owed this favor to the small parcel i carried under my arm; be that as it may, i conceived a high opinion of my consequence from this circumstance, and already thought myself an inhabitant there. the weather was hot; i had walked about till i was both fatigued and hungry; wishing for some refreshment, i went into a milk-house; they brought me some cream-cheese, curds and whey, with two slices of that excellent piedmont bread, which i prefer to any other; and for five or six sous i had one of the most delicious meals i ever recollect to have made. it was time to seek a lodging: as i already knew enough of the piedmontese language to make myself understood, this was a work of no great difficulty; and i had so much prudence, that i wished to adapt it rather to the state of my purse than the bent of my inclination. in the course of my inquiries, i was informed that a soldier's wife, in po-street, furnished lodgings to servants out of place at only one sou a night, and finding one of her poor beds disengaged, i took possession of it. she was young and newly married, though she already had five or six children. mother, children, and lodgers, all slept in the same chamber, and it continued thus while i remained there. she was good-natured, swore like a carman, and wore neither cap nor handkerchief; but she had a gentle heart, was officious, and to me both kind and serviceable. for several days i gave myself up to the pleasures of independence and curiosity; i continued wandering about the city and its environs, examining every object that seemed curious or new; and, indeed, most things had that appearance to a young novice. i never omitted visiting the court, and assisted regularly every morning at the king's mass. i thought it a great honor to be in the same chapel with this prince and his retinue; but my passion for music, which now began to make its appearance, was a greater incentive than the splendor of the court, which, soon seen and always the same, presently lost its attraction. the king of sardinia had at that time the best music in europe; somis, desjardins, and the bezuzzis shone there alternately: all these were not necessary to fascinate a youth whom the sound of the most simple instrument, provided it was just, transported with joy. magnificence only produced a stupid admiration, without any violent desire to partake of it; my thoughts were principally employed in observing whether any young princess was present that merited my homage, and whom i could make the heroine of a romance. meantime, i was on the point of beginning one; in a less elevated sphere, it is true, but where, could i have brought it to a conclusion, i should have found pleasures a thousand times more delicious. though i lived with the strictest economy, my purse insensibly grew lighter. this economy was, however, less the effect of prudence than that love of simplicity, which, even to this day, the use of the most expensive tables has not been able to vitiate. nothing in my idea, either at that time or since, could exceed a rustic repast; give me milk, vegetables, eggs, and brown bread, with tolerable wine, and i shall always think myself sumptuously regaled; a good appetite will furnish out the rest, if the maitre d'hotel, with a number of unnecessary footmen, do not satiate me with their important attentions. six or seven sous would then procure me a more agreeable meal than as many francs would have done since; i was abstemious, therefore, for want of a temptation to be otherwise; though i do not know but i am wrong to call this abstinence, for with my pears, new cheese, bread, and some glasses of montferrat wine, which you might have cut with a knife, i was the greatest of epicures. notwithstanding my expenses were very moderate, it was possible to see the end of twenty francs; i was every day more convinced of this, and, spite of the giddiness of youth, my apprehensions for the future amounted almost to terror. all my castles in the air were vanished, and i became sensible of the necessity of seeking some occupation that would procure me a subsistence. even this was a work of difficulty: i thought of my engraving, but knew too little of it to be employed as a journeyman, nor do masters abound at turin; i resolved, therefore, till something better presented itself, to go from shop to shop, offering to engrave ciphers, or coats of arms, on pieces of plate, etc., and hoped to get employment by working at a low price, or taking what they chose to give me. even this expedient did not answer my expectation; almost all my applications were ineffectual, the little i procured being hardly sufficient to produce a few scanty meals. walking one morning pretty early in the contranova, i saw a young tradeswoman behind a counter, whose looks were so charmingly attractive that, notwithstanding my timidity with the ladies, i entered the shop without hesitation, offered my service as usual, and had the happiness to have it accepted. she made me sit down and relate my little history; pitied my forlorn situation; bade me be cheerful, and endeavored to make me so by an assurance that every good christian would give me assistance; then (while she sent to a goldsmith's in the neighborhood for some tools i had occasion for) she went up stairs and fetched me something for breakfast. this seemed a promising beginning, nor was what followed less flattering: she was satisfied with my work, and, when i had a little recovered myself, still more with my discourse. she was rather elegantly dressed, and notwithstanding her gentle looks this appearance of gayety had disconcerted me; but her good nature, the compassionate tone of her voice, with her gentle and caressing manner, soon set me at ease with myself: i saw my endeavors to please were crowned with success, and this assurance made me succeed the more. though an italian, and too pretty to be entirely devoid of coquetry, she had so much modesty, and i so great a share of timidity, that our adventure was not likely to be brought to a very speedy conclusion, nor did they give us time to make any good of it. i cannot recall the few short moments i passed with this lovely woman without being sensible of an inexpressible charm, and can yet say, it was there i tasted in their utmost perfection the most delightful, as well as the purest, pleasures of love. she was a lively pleasing brunette, and the good nature that was painted on her lovely face rendered her vivacity more interesting. she was called madam basile; her husband, who was considerably older than herself, consigned her, during his absence, to the care of a clerk, too disagreeable to be thought dangerous; but who, notwithstanding, had pretensions that he seldom showed any signs of, except of ill-humors, a good share of which he bestowed on me; though i was pleased to hear him play the flute, on which he was a tolerable musician. this second egistus was sure to grumble whenever he saw me go into his mistress' apartment, treating me with a degree of disdain which she took care to repay him with interest; seeming pleased to caress me in his presence, on purpose to torment him. this kind of revenge, though perfectly to my taste, would have been still more charming in a tete-a-tete, but she did not proceed so far; at least there was a difference in the expression of her kindness. whether she thought me too young, that it was my place to make advances, or that she was seriously resolved to be virtuous, she had at such times a kind of reserve, which though not absolutely discouraging, kept my passion within bounds. i did not feel the same real and tender respect for her as i did for madam de warrens: i was embarrassed, agitated, feared to look, and hardly dared to breathe in her presence, yet to have left her would have been worse than death. how fondly did my eyes devour whatever they could gaze on without being perceived! the flowers on her gown, the point of her pretty foot, the interval of a round white arm that appeared between her glove and ruffle, the least part of her neck, each object increased the force of all the rest, and added to the infatuation. gazing thus on what was to be seen, and even more than was to be seen, my sight became confused, my chest seemed contracted, respiration was every moment more painful. i had the utmost difficulty to hide my agitation, to prevent my sighs from being heard, and this difficulty was increased by the silence in which we were frequently plunged. happily, madam basile, busy at her work, saw nothing of all this, or seemed not to see it; yet i sometimes observed a kind of sympathy, especially by the frequent rising of her handkerchief, and this dangerous sight almost mastered every effort; but when on the point of giving way to my transports, she spoke a few words to me with an air of tranquillity, and in an instant the agitation subsided. i saw her several times in this manner without a word, a gesture, or even a look, too expressive, making the least intelligence between us. this situation was both my torment and delight, for hardly in the simplicity of my heart, could i imagine the cause of my uneasiness. i should suppose these tete-a-tetes could not be displeasing to her, at least, she sought frequent occasions to renew them; this was a very disinterested labor, certainly, as appeared by the use she made, or ever suffered me to make of them. being, one day, wearied with the clerk's discourse, she had retired to her chamber; i made haste to finish what i had to do in the back shop, and followed her: the door was half open, and i entered without being perceived. she was embroidering near a window on the opposite side of the room; she could not see me, and the carts in the streets made too much noise for me to be heard. she was always well dressed, but this day her attire bordered on coquetry. her attitude was graceful, her head leaning gently forward, discovered a small circle of her neck; her hair, elegantly dressed, was ornamented with flowers; her figure was universally charming, and i had an uninterrupted opportunity to admire it. i was absolutely in a state of ecstasy, and, involuntarily, sinking on my knees, i passionately extended my arms towards her, certain she could not hear, and having no conception that she could see me; but there was a chimney glass at the end of the room that betrayed all my proceedings. i am ignorant what effect this transport produced on her; she did not speak, she did not look on me; but, partly turning her head, with the movement of her finger only, she pointed to the mat which was at her feetto start up, with an articulate cry of joy, and occupy the place she had indicated, was the work of a moment; but it will hardly be believed i dared attempt no more, not even to speak, raise my eyes to hers, or rest an instant on her knees, though in an attitude which seemed to render such a support necessary. i was dumb, immovable, but far enough from a state of tranquillity; agitation, joy, gratitude, ardent indefinite wishes, restrained by the fear of giving displeasure, which my unpractised heart too much dreaded, were sufficiently discernible. she neither appeared more tranquil, nor less intimidated than myselfuneasy at my present situation, confounded at having brought me there, beginning to tremble for the effects of a sign which she had made without reflecting on the consequences, neither giving encouragement, nor expressing disapprobation, with her eyes fixed on her work, she endeavored to appear unconscious of everything that passed; but all my stupidity could not hinder me from concluding that she partook of my embarrassment, perhaps, my transports, and was only restrained by a bashfulness like mine, without even that supposition giving me power to surmount it. five or six years older than myself, every advance, according to my idea, should have been made by her, and, since she did nothing to encourage mine, i concluded they would offend her. even at this time, i am inclined to believe i thought right; she certainly had wit enough to perceive that a novice like me had occasion, not only for encouragement, but instruction. i am ignorant how this animated, though dumb scene would have ended, or how long i should have continued immovable in this ridiculous, though delicious, situation, had we not been interruptedin the height of my agitation, i heard the kitchen door open, which joined madam basile's chamber; who, being alarmed, said, with a quick voice and action, "get up!here's rosina!" rising hastily i seized one of her hands, which she held out to me, and gave it two eager kisses; at the second i felt this charming hand press gently on my lips. never in my life did i enjoy so sweet a moment; but the occasion i had lost returned no more, this being the conclusion of our amours. this may be the reason that her image yet remains imprinted on my heart in such charming colors, which have even acquired fresh luster since i became acquainted with the world and women. had she been. mistress of the least degree of experience, she would have taken other measures to animate so youthful a lover; but if her heart was weak, it was virtuous, and only suffered itself to be borne away by a powerful though involuntary inclination. this was, apparently, her first infidelity, and i should perhaps, have found more difficulty in vanquishing her scruples than my own: but, without proceeding so far, i experienced in her company the most inexpressible delights. never did i taste with any other woman pleasures equal to those two minutes which i passed at the feet of madam basile without even daring to touch her gown. i am convinced no satisfaction can be compared to that we feel with a virtuous woman we esteem; all is transport!a sign with the finger, a hand lightly pressed against my lips, were the only favors i ever received from madam basile, yet the bare remembrance of these trifling condescensions continues to transport me. it was in vain i watched the two following days for another tete-a-tete; it was impossible to find an opportunity; nor could i perceive on her part any desire to forward it; her behavior was not colder, but more distant than usual, and i believe she avoided my looks for fear of not being able sufficiently to govern her own. the cursed clerk was more vexatious than ever; he even became a wit, telling me, with a satirical sneer, that i should unquestionably make my way among the ladies. i trembled lest i should have been guilty of some indiscretion, and looking on myself as already engaged in an intrigue, endeavored to cover with an air of mystery an inclination which hitherto certainly had no great need of it; this made me more circumspect in my choice of opportunities, and by resolving only to seize such as should be absolutely free from the danger of a surprise, i met with none. another romantic folly, which i could never overcome, and which, joined to my natural timidity, tended directly to contradict the clerk's predictions, is, i always loved too sincerely, too perfectly, i may say, to find happiness easily attainable. never were passions at the same time more lively and pure than mine; never was love more tender, more true, or more disinterested; freely would i have sacrificed my own happiness to that of the object of my affection; her reputation was dearer than my life, and i could promise myself no happiness for which i would have exposed her peace of mind for a moment. this disposition has ever made me employ so much care, use so many precautions, such secrecy in my adventures, that all of them have failed; in a word, my want of success with the women has ever proceeded from having loved them too well. to return to our egistus, the fluter; it was remarkable that in becoming more insupportable, the traitor put on the appearance of complaisance. from the first day madam basile had taken me under her protection, she had endeavored to make me serviceable in the warehouse; and, finding i understood arithmetic tolerably well, she proposed his teaching me to keep the books; a proposition that was but indifferently received by this humorist, who might, perhaps, be fearful of being supplanted. as this failed, my whole employ, besides what engraving i had to do, was to transcribe some bills and accounts, to write several books over fair, and translate commercial letters from italian into french. all at once he thought fit to accept the before rejected proposal, saying he would teach me bookkeeping by double-entry, and put me in a situation to offer my services to m. basile on his return; but there was something so false, malicious, and ironical, in his air and manner, that it was by no means calculated to inspire me with confidence. madam basile, replied archly, that i was much obliged to him for his kind offer, but she hoped fortune would be more favorable to my merits, for it would be a great misfortune, with so much sense, that i should only be a pitiful clerk. she often said, she would procure me some acquaintance that might be useful; she doubtless felt the necessity of parting with me, and had prudently resolved on it. our mute declaration had been made on a thursday, the sunday following she gave a dinner. a jacobin of good appearance was among the guests, to whom she did me the honor to present me. the monk treated me very affectionately, congratulated me on my late conversion, mentioned several particulars of my story, which plainly showed he had been made acquainted with it, then, tapping me familiarly on the cheek, bade me be good, to keep up my spirits, and come to see him at his convent where he should have more opportunity to talk with me. i judged him to be a person of some consequence by the deference that was paid him; and by the paternal tone he assumed with madam basile, to be her confessor. i likewise remember that his decent familiarity was attended with an appearance of esteem, and even respect for his fair penitent, which then made less impression on me than at present. had i possessed more experience, how should i have congratulated myself on having touched the heart of a young woman respected by her confessor! the table not being large enough to accommodate all the company, a small one was prepared, where i had the satisfaction of dining with our agreeable clerk; but i lost nothing with regard to attention and good cheer, for several plates were sent to the side-table which were certainly not intended for him. thus far all went well; the ladies were in good spirits, and the gentlemen very gallant, while madam basile did the honors of the table with peculiar grace. in the midst of the dinner we heard a chaise stop at the door, and presently some one coming up stairsit was m. basile. methinks i now see him entering, in his scarlet coat with gold buttonsfrom that day i have held the color in abhorrence. m. basile was a tall handsome man, of good address: he entered with a consequential look and an air of taking his family unawares, though none but friends were present. his wife ran to meet him, threw her arms about his neck, and gave him a thousand caresses, which he received with the utmost indifference; and without making any return saluted the company and took his place at table. they were just beginning to speak of his journey, when casting his eye on the small table he asked in a sharp tone, what lad that was? madam basile answered ingenuously. he then inquired whether i lodged in the house; and was answered in the negative. "why not?" replied he, rudely, "since he stays here all day, he might as well remain all night too." the monk now interfered, with a serious and true eulogium on madam basile: in a few words he made mine also, adding, that so far from blaming, he ought to further the pious charity of his wife, since it was evident she had not passed the bounds of discretion. the husband answered with an air of petulance, which (restrained by the presence of the monk) he endeavored to stifle; it was, however, sufficient to let me understand he had already received information of me, and that our worthy clerk had rendered me an ill office. we had hardly risen from table, when the latter came in triumph from his employer, to inform me, i must leave the house that instant, and never more during my life dare to set foot there. he took care to aggravate this commission by everything that could render it cruel and insulting. i departed without a word, my heart overwhelmed with sorrow, less for being obliged to quit this amiable woman, than at the thought of leaving her to the brutality of such a husband. he was certainly right to wish her faithful; but though prudent and well-born, she was an italian, that is to say, tender and vindictive; which made me think, he was extremely imprudent in using means the most likely in the world to draw on himself the very evil he so much dreaded. such was the success of my first adventure. i walked several times up and down the street, wishing to get a sight of what my heart incessantly regretted; but i could only discover her husband, or the vigilant clerk, who, perceiving me, made a sign with the ell they used in the shop, which was more expressive than alluring: finding, therefore, that i was so completely watched, my courage failed, and i went no more. i wished, at least, to find out the patron she had provided me, but, unfortunately, i did not know his name. i ranged several times round the convent, endeavoring in vain to meet with him. at length, other events banished the delightful remembrance of madam basile; and in a short time i so far forgot her, that i remained as simple, as much a novice as ever, nor did my penchant for pretty women even receive any sensible augmentation. her liberality had, however, increased my little wardrobe, though she had done this with precaution and prudence, regarding neatness more than decoration, and to make me comfortable rather than brilliant. the coat i had brought from geneva was yet wearable, she only added a hat and some linen. i had no ruffles, nor would she give me any, not but i felt a great inclination for them. she was satisfied with having put it in my power to keep myself clean, though a charge to do this was unnecessary while i was to appear before her. a few days after this catastrophe, my hostess, who, as i have already observed, was very friendly, with great satisfaction informed me she had heard of a situation, and that a lady of rank desired to see me. i immediately thought myself in the road to great adventures; that being the point to which all my ideas tended: this, however, did not prove so brilliant as i had conceived it. i waited on the lady with the servant who had mentioned me: she asked a number of questions, and my answers not displeasing her, i immediately entered into her service; not indeed in the quality of favorite, but as a footman. i was clothed like the rest of her people, the only difference being, they wore a shoulder-knot, which i had not, and, as there was no lace on her livery, it appeared merely a tradesman's suit. this was the unforeseen conclusion of all my great expectancies! the countess of vercellis, with whom i now lived, was a widow without children; her husband was a piedmontese, but i always believed her to be a savoyard, as i could have no conception that a native of piedmont could speak such good french, and with so pure an accent. she was a middle-aged woman, of a noble appearance and cultivated understanding, being fond of french literature, in which she was well versed. her letters had the expression, and almost the elegance of madam de sevigne's; some of them might have been taken for hers. my principal employ, which was by no means displeasing to me, was to write from her dictating; a cancer in the breast, from which she suffered extremely, not permitting her to write herself. madam de vercellis not only possessed a good understanding, but a strong and elevated soul. i was with her during her last illness, and saw her suffer and die, without showing an instant of weakness, or the least effort of constraint; still retaining her feminine manners, without entertaining an idea that such fortitude gave her any claim to philosophy; a word which was not yet in fashion, nor comprehended by her in the sense it is held at present. this strength of disposition sometimes extended almost to apathy, ever appearing to feel as little for others as herself; and when she relieved the unfortunate, it was rather for the sake of acting right, than from a principle of real commiseration. i have frequently experienced this insensibility, in some measure during the three months i remained with her. it would have been natural to have had an esteem for a young man of some abilities, who was incessantly under her observation, and that she should think, as she felt her dissolution approaching, that after her death he would have occasion for assistance and support: but whether she judged me unworthy of particular attention, or that those who narrowly watched all her motions, gave her no opportunity to think of any but themselves, she did nothing for me. i very well recollect that she showed some curiosity to know my story, frequently questioning me, and appearing pleased when i showed her the letters i wrote to madam de warrens, or explained my sentiments; but as she never discovered her own, she certainly did not take the right means to come at them. my heart, naturally communicative, loved to display its feelings, whenever i encountered a similar disposition; but dry, cold interrogatories, without any sign of blame or approbation on my answers, gave me no confidence. not being able to determine whether my discourse was agreeable or displeasing, i was ever in fear, and thought less of expressing my ideas, than of being careful not to say anything that might seem to my disadvantage. i have since remarked that this dry method of questioning themselves into people's characters is a common trick among women who pride themselves on superior understanding. these imagine, that by concealing their own sentiments, they shall the more easily penetrate into those of others; ant. that this method destroys the confidence so necessary to make us reveal them. a man, on being questioned, is immediately on his guard: and if once he supposes that, without any interest in his concerns, you only wish to set him a-talking, either he entertains you with lies, is silent, or, examining every word before he utters it, rather chooses to pass for a fool, than to be the dupe of your curiosity. in short, it is ever a bad method to attempt to read the hearts of others by endeavoring to conceal our own. madam de vercellis never addressed a word to me which seemed to express affection, pity, or benevolence. she interrogated me coldly, and my answers were uttered with so much timidity, that she doubtless entertained but a mean opinion of my intellects, for latterly she never asked me any questions, nor said anything but what was absolutely necessary for her service. she drew her judgment less from what i really was, than from what she had made me, and by considering me as a footman prevented my appearing otherwise. i am inclined to think i suffered at that time by the same interested game of concealed maneuver, which has counteracted me throughout my life, and given me a very natural aversion for everything that has the least appearance of it. madam de vercellis having no children, her nephew, the count de la roque, was her heir, and paid his court assiduously, as did her principal domestics, who, seeing her end approaching, endeavored to take care of themselves; in short, so many were busy about her, that she could hardly have found time to think of me. at the head of her household was a m. lorenzy, an artful genius, with a still more artful wife; who had so far insinuated herself into the good graces of her mistress, that she was rather on the footing of a friend than a servant. she had introduced a niece of hers as lady's maid: her name was mademoiselle pontal; a cunning gypsy, that gave herself all the airs of a waiting-woman, and assisted her aunt so well in besetting the countess, that she only saw with their eyes, and acted through their hands. i had not the happiness to please this worthy triumvirate; i obeyed, but did not wait on them, not conceiving that my duty to our general mistress required me to be a servant to her servants. besides this, i was a person that gave them some inquietude; they saw i was not in my proper situation, and feared the countess would discover it likewise, and by placing me in it, decrease their portions; for such sort of people, too greedy to be just, look on every legacy given to others as a diminution of their own wealth; they endeavored, therefore, to keep me as much out of her sight as possible. she loved to write letters, in her situation, but they contrived to give her a distaste to it; persuading her, by the aid of the doctor, that it was too fatiguing; and, under pretense that i did not understand how to wait on her, they employed two great lubberly chairmen for that purpose; in a word, they managed the affair so well, that for eight days before she made her will, i had not been permitted to enter the chamber. afterwards i went in as usual, and was even more assiduous than any one, being afflicted at the sufferings of the unhappy lady, whom i truly respected and beloved for the calmness and fortitude with which she bore her illness, and often did i shed tears of real sorrow without being perceived by any one. at length i saw her expire. she had lived like a woman of sense and virtue, her death was that of a philosopher. she was naturally serious, but towards the end of her illness she possessed a kind of gayety, too regular to be assumed, which served as a counterpoise to the melancholy of her situation. she only kept her bed two days, continuing to discourse cheerfully with those about her to the very last. at last, when she could hardly speak, and in her death agony, she let a big wind escape. "well!" said she, turning around, "a woman that can f... is not yet dead!" these were her last words. she had bequeathed a year's wages to all the under servants, but, not being on the household list, i had nothing: the count de la roque, however, ordered me thirty livres, and the new coat i had on, which m. lorenzy would certainly have taken from me. he even promised to procure me a place; giving me permission to wait on him as often as i pleased. accordingly, i went two or three times, without being able to speak to him, and as i was easily repulsed, returned no more; whether i did wrong will be seen hereafter. would i had finished what i have to say of my living at madame de vercellis's. though my situation apparently remained the same, i did not leave her house as i had entered it: i carried with me the long and painful remembrance of a crime; an insupportable weight of remorse which yet hangs on my conscience, and whose bitter recollection, far from weakening, during a period of forty years, seems to gather strength as i grow old. who would believe, that a childish fault should be productive of such melancholy consequences? but it is for the more than probable effects that my heart cannot be consoled. i have, perhaps, caused an amiable, honest, estimable girl, who surely merited a better fate than myself, to perish with shame and misery. though it is very difficult to break up housekeeping without confusion, and the loss of some property; yet such was the fidelity of the domestics, and the vigilance of m. and madam lorenzy, that no article of the inventory was found wanting; in short, nothing was missing but a pink and silver ribbon, which had been worn, and belonged to mademoiselle pontal. though several things of more value were in my reach, this ribbon alone tempted me, and accordingly i stole it. as i took no great pains to conceal the bauble, it was soon discovered; they immediately insisted on knowing from whence i had taken it; this perplexed mei hesitated, and at length said, with confusion, that marion gave it me. marion was a young mauriennese, and had been cook to madam de vercellis ever since she left off giving entertainments, for being sensible she had more need of good broths than fine ragouts, she had discharged her former one. marion was not only pretty, but had that freshness of color only to be found among the mountains, and above all, an air of modesty and sweetness, which made it impossible to see her without affection; she was besides a good girl, virtuous, and of such strict fidelity, that every one was surprised at hearing her named. they had not less confidence in me, and judged it necessary to certify which of us was the thief. marion was sent for; a great number of people were present, among whom was the count de la roque: she arrives; they show her the ribbon; i accuse her boldly; she remains confused and speechless, casting a look on me that would have disarmed a demon, but which my barbarous heart resisted. at length, she denied it with firmness, but without anger, exhorting me to return to myself, and not injure an innocent girl who had never wronged me. with infernal impudence, i confirmed my accusation, and to her face maintained she had given me the ribbon: on which, the poor girl, bursting into tears, said these words"ah, rousseau! i thought you a good dispositionyou render me very unhappy, but i would not be in your situation." she continued to defend herself with as much innocence as firmness, but without uttering the least invective against me. her moderation, compared to my positive tone, did her an injury; as it did not appear natural to suppose, on one side such diabolical assurance; on the other, such angelic mildness. the affair could not be absolutely decided, but the presumption was in my favor; and the count de la roque, in sending us both away, contented himself with saying, "the conscience of the guilty would revenge the innocent." his prediction was true, and is being daily verified. i am ignorant what became of the victim of my calumny, but there is little probability of her having been able to place herself agreeably after this, as she labored under an imputation cruel to her character in every respect. the theft was a trifle, yet it was a theft, and, what was worse, employed to seduce a boy; while the lie and obstinacy left nothing to hope from a person in whom so many vices were united. i do not even look on the misery and disgrace in which i plunged her as the greatest evil: who knows, at her age, whither contempt and disregarded innocence might have led her?alas! if remorse for having made her unhappy is insupportable, what must i have suffered at the thought of rendering her even worse than myself. the cruel remembrance of this transaction, sometimes so troubles and disorders me, that, in my disturbed slumbers, i imagine i see this poor girl enter and reproach me with my crime, as though i had committed it but yesterday. while in easy tranquil circumstances, i was less miserable on this account, but, during a troubled agitated life, it has robbed me of the sweet consolation of persecuted innocence, and made me woefully experience, what, i think, i have remarked in some of my works, that remorse sleeps in the calm sunshine of prosperity, but wakes amid the storms of adversity. i could never take on me to discharge my heart of this weight in the bosom of a friend; nor could the closest intimacy ever encourage me to it, even with madam de warrens; all i could do, was to own i had to accuse myself of an atrocious crime, but never said in what it consisted. the weight, therefore, has remained heavy on my conscience to this day; and i can truly own the desire of relieving myself, in some measure, from it, contributed greatly to the resolution of writing my confessions. i have proceeded truly in that i have just made, and it will certainly be thought i have not sought to palliate the turpitude of my offense; but i should not fulfill the purpose of this undertaking, did i not, at the same time, divulge my interior disposition, and excuse myself as far as is conformable with truth. never was wickedness further from my thoughts, than in that cruel moment; and when i accused the unhappy girl, it is strange, but strictly true, that my friendship for her was the immediate cause of it. she was present to my thoughts; i formed my excuse from the first object that presented itself; i accused her with doing what i meant to have done, and as i designed to have given her the ribbon, asserted she had given it to me. when she appeared, my heart was agonized, but the presence of so many people was more powerful than my compunction. i did not fear punishment, but i dreaded shame: i dreaded it more than death, more than the crime, more than all the world. i would have hid myself in the center of the earth: invincible shame bore down every other sentiment; shame alone caused all my impudence, and in proportion as i became criminal, the fear of discovery rendered me intrepid. i felt no dread but that of being detected, of being publicly, and to my face, declared a thief, liar, and calumniator; an unconquerable fear of this overcame every other sensation. had i been left to myself, i should infallibly have declared the truth. or if m. de la roque had taken me aside, and said"do not injure this poor girl; if you are guilty own it,"i am convinced i should instantly have thrown myself at his feet; but they intimidated, instead of encouraging me. i was hardly out of my childhood, or rather, was yet in it. it is also just to make some allowance for my age. in youth, dark, premeditated villany is more criminal. than in a riper age, but weaknesses are much less so; my fault was truly nothing more; and i am less afflicted at the deed itself than for its consequences. it had one good effect, however, in preserving me through the rest of my life from any criminal action, from the terrible impression that has remained from the only one i ever committed; and i think my aversion for lying proceeds in a great measure from regret at having been guilty of so black a one. if it is a crime that can be expiated, as i dare believe, forty years of uprightness and honor on various difficult occasions, with the many misfortunes that have overwhelmed my latter years, may have completed it. poor marion has found so many avengers in this world, that however great my offense towards her, i do not fear to bear the guilt with me. thus have i disclosed what i had to say on this painful subject; may i be permitted never to mention it again. book iii [1728-1731] having left the service of madam de vercellis nearly as i had entered it, i returned to my former hostess, and remained there five or six weeks; during which time health, youth, and laziness, frequently rendered my temperament importunate. i was restless, absent, and thoughtful: i wept and sighed for a happiness i had no idea of, though at the same time highly sensible of some deficiency. this situation is indescribable, few men can even form any conception of it, because, in general, they have prevented that plenitude of life, at once tormenting and delicious. my thoughts were incessantly occupied with girls and women, but in a manner peculiar to myself: these ideas kept my senses in a perpetual and disagreeable activity, though, fortunately, they did not point out the means of deliverance. i would have given my life to have met with a miss goton, if only for a quarter of an hour, but the time was past in which the play of infancy predominated; increase of years had introduced shame, the inseparable companion of a conscious deviation from rectitude, which so confirmed my natural timidity as to render it invincible; and never, either at that time or since, could i prevail on myself to offer a proposition favorable to my wishes (unless in a manner constrained to it by previous advances) even with those whose scruples i had no cause to dread, and that i felt assured were ready to take me at my word. my stay at madam de vercellis's had procured me some acquaintance, which i wished to retain. among others, i sometimes visited a savoyard abbe, m. gaime, who was tutor to the count of melarede's children. he was young, and not much known, but possessed an excellent cultivated understanding, with great probity, and was, altogether, one of the best men i ever knew. he was incapable of doing me the service i then stood most in need of, not having sufficient interest to procure me a situation, but from him i reaped advantages far more precious, which have been useful to me through life, lessons of pure morality, and maxims of sound judgment. in the successive order of my inclinations and ideas, i had ever been too high or too low. achilles or thersites; sometimes a hero, at others a villain. m. gaime took pains to make me properly acquainted with myself, without sparing or giving me too much discouragement. he spoke in advantageous terms of my disposition and talents, adding, that he foresaw obstacles which would prevent my profiting by them; thus, according to him, they were to serve less as steps by which i should mount to fortune, than as resources which might enable me to exist without one. he gave me a true picture of human life, of which, hitherto, i had formed but a very erroneous idea, teaching me, that a man of understanding, though destined to experience adverse fortune, might, by skillful management, arrive at happiness; that there was no true felicity without virtue, which was practicable in every situation. he greatly diminished my admiration of grandeur, by proving that those in a superior situation are neither better nor happier than those they command. one of his maxims has frequently returned to my memory: it was, that if we could truly read the hearts of others we should feel more inclination to descend than rise: this reflection, the truth of which is striking without extravagance, i have found of great utility, in the various exigences of my life, as it tended to make me satisfied with my condition. he gave me the first just conception of relative duties, which my high-flown imagination had ever pictured in extremes, making me sensible that the enthusiasm of sublime virtues is of little use in society; that while endeavoring to rise too high we are in danger of falling; and that a virtuous and uniform discharge of little duties requires as great a degree of fortitude as actions which are called heroic, and would at the same time procure more honor and happiness. that it was infinitely more desirably to possess the lasting esteem of those about us, than at intervals to attract admiration. in properly arranging the various duties between man and man, it was necessary to ascend to principles; the step i had recently taken, and of which my present situation was the consequence, naturally led us to speak of religion. it will easily be conceived that the honest m. gaime was, in a great measure, the original of the savoyard vicar: prudence only obliging him to deliver his sentiments, on certain points, with more caution and reserve, and explain himself with less freedom; but his sentiments and councils were the same, not even excepting his advice to return to my country; all was precisely as i have since given it to the public. dwelling no longer, therefore, on conversations which every one may see the substance of, i shall only add, that these wise instructions (though they did not produce an immediate effect) were as so many seeds of virtue and religion in my heart which were never rooted out, and only required the fostering cares of friendship to bring to maturity. though my conversion was not very sincere, i was affected by his discourses, and far from being weary, was pleased with them on account of their clearness and simplicity, but above all because his heart seemed interested in what he said. my disposition is naturally tender, i have ever been less attached to people for the good they have really done me than for that they designed to do, and my feelings in this particular have seldom misled me: thus i truly esteemed m. gaime. i was in a manner his second disciple, which even at that time was of inestimable service in turning me from a propensity to vice into which my idleness was leading me. one day, when i least expected it, i was sent for by the count de la roque. having frequently called at his house, without being able to speak with him, i grew weary, and supposing he had either forgot me retained some unfavorable impression of me, returned no more: but i was mistaken in both these conjectures. he had more than once witnessed the pleasure i took in fulfilling my duty to his aunt: he had even mentioned it to her, and afterwards spoke of it, when i no longer thought of it myself. he received me graciously, saying that instead of amusing me with useless promises, he had sought to place me to advantage; that he had succeeded, and would put me in a way to better my situation, but the rest must depend on myself. that the family into which he should introduce me being both powerful and esteemed, i should need no other patrons; and though at first on the footing of a servant, i might be assured, that if my conduct and sentiments were found above that station, i should not long remain in it. the end of this discourse cruelly disappointed the brilliant hopes the beginning had inspired. "what! forever a footman?" said i to myself, with a bitterness which confidence presently effaced, for i felt myself too superior to that situation to fear long remaining there. he took me to the count de gauvon, master of the horse to the queen, and chief of the illustrious house of solar. the air of dignity conspicuous in this respectable old man, rendered the affability with which he received me yet more interesting. he questioned me with evident interest, and i replied with sincerity. he then told the count de la roque, that my features were agreeable, and promised intellect, which he believed i was not deficient in; but that was not enough, and time must show the rest; after which, turning to me, he said, "child, almost all situations are attended with difficulties in the beginning; yours, however, shall not have too great a portion of them; be prudent, and endeavor to please every one, that will be almost your only employment; for the rest fear nothing, you shall be taken care of." immediately after he went to the marchioness de breil, his daughter-in-law, to whom he presented me, and then to the abbe de gauvon, his son. i was elated with this beginning, as i knew enough of the world already to conclude, that so much ceremony is not generally used at the reception of a footman. in fact, i was not treated like one. i dined at the steward's table; did not wear a livery; and the count de favria (a giddy youth) having commanded me to get behind his coach, his grandfather ordered that i should get behind no coach, nor follow any one out of the house. meantime, i waited at table, and did, within doors, the business of a footman; but i did it, as it were, of my own free will, without being appointed to any particular service; and except writing some letters, which were dictated to me, and cutting out some ornaments for the count de favria, i was almost the absolute master of my time. this trial of my discretion, which i did not then perceive, was certainly very dangerous, and not very humane; for in this state of idleness i might have contracted vices which i should not otherwise have given in to. fortunately, it did not produce that effect; my memory retained the lessons of m. gaime, they had made an impression on my heart, and i sometimes escaped from the house of my patron to obtain a repetition of them. i believe those who saw me going out, apparently by stealth, had no conception of my business. nothing could be more prudent than the advice he gave me respecting my conduct. my beginning was admirable; so much attention, assiduity, and zeal, had charmed every one. the abbe gaime advised me to moderate this first ardor, lest i should relax, and that relaxation should be considered as neglect. "your setting out," said he, "is the rule of what will be expected of you; endeavor gradually to increase your attentions, but be cautious how you diminish them." as they paid but little attention to my trifling talents, and supposed i possessed no more than nature had given me, there was no appearance (notwithstanding the promises of count de gauvon) of my meeting with any particular consideration. some objects of more consequence had intervened. the marquis de breil, son of the count de gauvon, was then ambassador at vienna; some circumstances had occurred at that court which for some weeks kept the family in continual agitation, and left them no time to think of me. meantime, i had relaxed but little in my attentions, though one object in the family did me both good and harm, making me more secure from exterior dissipation, but less attentive to my duty. mademoiselle de breil was about my own age, tolerably handsome and very fair complexioned, with black hair, which, notwithstanding, gave to her features that air of softness so natural to the flaxen, and which my heart could never resist. the court dress, so favorable to youth, showed her fine neck and shape to advantage, and the mourning, which was then worn, seemed to add to her beauty. it will be said, a domestic should not take notice of these things; i was certainly to blame, yet i perceived all this, nor was i the only one; the maitre d'hotel and valet de chambre spoke of her sometimes at table with a vulgarity that pained me extremely. my head, however, was not sufficiently turned to allow of my being entirely in love; i did not forget myself, or my situation. i loved to see mademoiselle de breil; to hear her utter anything that marked wit, sense, or good humor; my ambition, confined to a desire of waiting on her, never exceeded its just rights. at table i was ever attentive to make the most of them; if her footman quitted her chair, i instantly supplied his place; in default of this, i stood facing her, seeking in her eyes what she was about to ask for, and watching the moment to change her plate. what would i not have given to hear her command, to have her look at, or speak the smallest word to me! but no, i had the mortification to be beneath her regard; she did not even perceive i was there. her brother, who frequently spoke to me while at table, having one day said something which i did not consider obliging, i made him so arch and well-turned an answer, that it drew her attention; she cast her eyes upon me, and this glance was sufficient to fill me transport. the next day, a second occasion presented itself, which i fortunately made use of. a great dinner was given; and i saw, with astonishment, for the first time, the maitre d'hotel waiting at table, with a sword by his side, and hat on his head. by chance, the discourse turned on the motto of the house of solar, which was, with the arms, worked in the tapestry: tel fiert qui ne tue pas. as the piedmontese are not in general very perfect in the french language, they found fault with the orthography, saying, that in the word fiert there should be no t. the old count de gauvon was going to reply, when happening to cast his eyes on me, he perceived i smiled without daring to say anything; he immediately ordered me to speak my opinion. i then said, i did not think the t superfluous, fiert being an old french word, not derived from the noun ferus, proud, threatening; but from the verb fierit, he strikes, he wounds; the motto, therefore, did not appear to mean, some threat, but, some strike who do not kill. the whole company fixed their eyes on me, then on each other, without speaking a word; never was a greater degree of astonishment; but what most flattered me, was an air of satisfaction which i perceived on the countenance of mademoiselle de breil. this scornful lady deigned to cast on me a second look at least as valuable as the former, and turning to her grandfather, appeared to wait with impatience for the praise that was due to me, and which he fully bestowed, with such apparent satisfaction, that it was eagerly chorused by the whole table. this interval was short, but delightful in many respects; it was one of those moments so rarely met with, which place things in their natural order, and revenge depressed merit for the injuries of fortune. some minutes after mademoiselle de breil again raised her eyes, desiring me with a voice of timid affability to give her some drink. it will easily be supposed i did not let her wait, but advancing towards her, i was seized with such a trembling, that having filled the glass too full, i spilled some of the water on her plate, and even on herself. her brother asked me, giddily, why i trembled thus? this question increased my confusion, while the face of mademoiselle de breil was suffused with a crimson blush. here ended the romance; where it may be remarked (as with madam basile, and others in the continuation of my life) that i was not fortunate in the conclusion of my amours. in vain i placed myself in the antechamber of madam de breil. i could not obtain one mark of attention from her daughter; she went in and out without looking at me, nor had i the confidence to raise my eyes to her; i was even so foolishly stupid, that one day, on dropping her gloves as she passed, instead of seizing and covering it with kisses, as i would gladly have done, i did not dare to quit my place, but suffered it to be taken up by a great booby of a footman, whom i could willingly have knocked down for his officiousness. to complete my timidity, i perceived i had not the good fortune to please madam de breil; she not only never but even rejected, my services; and having twice found me in her antechamber, asked me, dryly, "if i had nothing to do?" i was obliged, therefore, to renounce this dear antechamber; as first it caused me some uneasiness, but other things intervening, i presently thought no more of it. the disdain of madam de breil was fully compensated by the kindness of her father-in-law, who at length began to think of me. the evening after the entertainment, i have already mentioned, he had a conversation with me that lasted half an hour, which appeared to satisfy him, and absolutely enchanted me. this good man had less sense than madam de vercellis, but possessed more feeling; i therefore succeeded much better with him. he bade me attach myself to his son, the abbe gauvon, who had an esteem for me, which, if i took care to cultivate, might be serviceable in furnishing me with what was necessary to complete their views for my future establishment. the next morning i flew to m. the abbe, who did not receive me as a servant, but made me sit by his fireside, and questioned me with great affability. he soon found that my education, which had attempted many things, had completed none; but observing that i understood something of latin, he undertook to teach me more, and appointed me to attend him every morning. thus, by one of the whimsicalities which have marked the whole course of my life, at once above and below my natural situation, i was pupil and in footman in the same house; and though in servitude, had a preceptor whose birth entitled him to supply that place only to the children of kings. the abbe de gauvon was a younger son, and designed by his family for a bishopric, for which reason his studies had been pursued further than is usual with people of quality. he had been sent to the university of sienna, where he had resided some years, and from whence he had brought a good portion of cruscantism, designing to be that at turin which the abbe de dangeau was formerly at paris. being disgusted with theology, he gave in to the belles-lettres, which is very frequent in italy with those who have entered the career of prelacy. he had studied the poets, and wrote tolerable latin and italian verses; in a word, his taste was calculated to form mine, and give some order to that chaos of insignificant trash with which my brain was encumbered; but whether my prating had misled him, or that he could not support the trouble of teaching the elementary parts of latin, he put me at first too high; and i had scarcely translated a few fables of phoedrus before he put me into virgil, where i could hardly understand anything. it will be seen hereafter that i was destined frequently to learn latin, but never to attain it. i labored with assiduity, and the abbe bestowed his attention with a degree of kindness, the remembrance of which, even at this time, both interests and softens me. i passed the greater part of the morning with him as much for my own instruction as his service; not that he ever permitted me to perform any menial office, but to copy, or write form his dictating; and my employment of secretary was more useful than that of scholar, and by this means i not only learned the italian in its utmost purity, but also acquired a taste for literature, and some discernment of composition, which could not have been at la tribu's, and which was useful to me when i afterwards wrote alone. at this period of my life, without being romantic, i might reasonably have indulged the hope of preferment. the abbe, thoroughly pleased with me, expressed his satisfaction to every one, while his father had such a singular affection for me, that i was assured by the count de favria, that he had spoken of me to the king; even madam de breil had laid aside her disdainful looks; in short i was a general favorite, which gave great jealousy to the other servants, who, seeing me honored by the instructions of their master's son, were persuaded i should not remain their equal. as far as i could judge by some words dropped at random, and which i reflected on afterwards, it appeared to me, that the house of solar, wishing to run the career of embassies, and hoping perhaps in time to arrive at the ministry, wished to provide themselves with a person of merit and talents, who depending entirely on them, might obtain their confidence, and be of essential service. this project of the count de gauvon was judicious, magnanimous, and truly worthy of a powerful nobleman, equally provident and generous; but besides my not seeing, at that time, its full extent, it was far too rational for my brain, and required too much confinement. my ridiculous ambition sought for fortune in the midst of brilliant adventures, and not finding one woman in all this scheme, it appeared tedious, painful, and melancholy; though i should rather have thought it more honorable on this account, as the species of merit generally patronized by women is certainly less worthy than that which i was supposed to possess. everything succeeded to my wish: i had obtained, almost forced, the esteem of all; the trial was over, and i was universally considered as a young man with flattering prospects, who was not at present in his proper sphere, but was expected soon to reach it; but my place was not assigned me by man, and i was to reach it by very different paths. i now come to one of those characteristic traits, which are so natural to me, and which, indeed, the reader, might have observed without this reflection. there were at turin several new converts of my own stamp, whom i neither liked nor wished to see; but i had met with some genevese who were not of this description, and among others, a m. mussard, nicknamed wryneck, a miniature painter, and a distant relation. this m. mussard, having learned my situation at the count de gauvon's, came to see me, with another genevese, named bacle, who had been my comrade during my apprenticeship. this bacle was a very sprightly, amusing young fellow, full of lively sallies, which at his time of life appeared extremely agreeable. at once, then, behold me delighted with m. bacle; charmed to such a degree, that i found it impossible to quit him. he was shortly to depart for geneva; what a loss had i to sustain! i felt the whole force of it, and resolving to make the best use of this precious interval, i determined not to leave him, or, rather, he never quitted me, for my head was not yet sufficiently turned to think of quitting the house without leave; but it was soon perceived that he engrossed my whole time, and he was accordingly forbid the house. this so incensed me, that forgetting everything but my friend bacle, i went neither to the abbe nor the count, and was no longer to be found at home. i paid no attention to repeated reprimands, and at length was threatened with dismissal. this threat was my ruin, as it suggested the idea that it was absolutely necessary that bacle should depart alone. from that moment i could think of no other pleasure, no other situation or happiness than taking this journey. to render the felicity still more complete, at the end of it (though at an immense distance) i pictured to myself madam de warrens; for as to returning to geneva, it never entered into my imagination. the hills, fields, brooks, and villages, incessantly succeeded each other with new charms, and this delightful jaunt seemed worthy to absorb my whole existence. memory recalled, with inexpressible pleasure, how charming the country had appeared in coming to turin; what then must it be, when, to the pleasure of independence, should be added the company of a good-humored comrade of my own age and disposition, without any constraint or obligation, but free to go or stay as we pleased? would it not be madness to sacrifice the prospect of so much felicity to projects of ambition, slow and difficult in their execution, and uncertain in their event? but even supposing them realized, and in their utmost splendor, they were not worth one quarter of an hour of the sweet pleasure and liberty of youth. full of these wise conclusions, i conducted myself so improperly, that (not indeed without some trouble) i got myself dismissed; for on my return one night the maitre d'hotel gave me warning on the part of the count. this was exactly what i wanted; for feeling, in spite of myself, the extravagance of my conduct, i wished to excuse it by the addition of injustice and ingratitude, by throwing the blame on others, and sheltering myself under the idea of necessity. i was told the count de favria wished to speak with me the next morning before my departure; but, being sensible that my head was so far turned as to render it possible for me to disobey the injunction, maitre d'hotel declined paying the money designed me, and which certainly i had very ill earned, till after this visit; for my kind patrons being unwilling to place me in the situation of a footman, i had not any fixed wages. the count de favria, though young and giddy, talked to me on this occasion in the most sensible and serious manner: i might add, if it would not be thought vain, with the utmost tenderness. he reminded me, in the most flattering terms, of the cares of his uncle, and intentions of his grandfather; after having drawn in lively colors what i was sacrificing to ruin, he offered to make my peace, without stipulating any conditions, but that i should no more see the worthless fellow who had seduced me. it was so apparent that he did not say all this of himself, that notwithstanding my blind stupidity, i powerfully felt the kindness of my good old master; but the dear journey was too firmly printed on my imagination for any consideration to balance the charm. bereft of understanding, firm to my purpose, i hardened myself against conviction, and arrogantly answered, that as they had thought fit to give me warning, i had resolved to take it, and conceived it was now too late to retract, since, whatever might happen to me, i was fully resolved not to be driven a second time from the same house. the count, justly irritated, bestowed on me some names which i deserved, and putting me out of his apartment by the shoulders, shut the door on me. i departed triumphant, as if i had gained the greatest victory, and fearful of sustaining a second combat even had the ingratitude to leave the house without thanking the abbe for his kindness. to form a just conception of my delirium at that moment, the excess to which my heart is subject to be heated by the most trifling incidents, and the ardor with which my imagination seizes on the most attractive objects should be conceived. at these times, plans the most ridiculous, childish, and void of sense, flatter my favorite idea, and persuade me that it is reasonable to sacrifice everything to the possession of it. would it be believed, that when near nineteen, any one could be so stupid as to build his hopes of future subsistence on an empty phial? for example: the abbe de gauvon had made me a present, some weeks before, of a very pretty heron fountain, with which i was highly delighted. playing with this toy, and speaking of our departure, the sage bacle and myself thought it might be of infinite advantage, and enable us to lengthen our journey. what in the world was so curious as a heron fountain? this idea was the foundation on which we built our future fortune: we were to assemble the country people in every village we might pass through, and delight them with the sight of it, when feasting and good cheer would be sure to pour on us abundantly; for we were both firmly persuaded, that provisions could cost nothing to those who grew and gathered them, and if they did not stuff travelers, it was downright ill-nature. we pictured in all parts entertainments and weddings, reckoning that without any expense but wind from our lungs, and the water of our fountain, we should be maintained through piedmont, savoy, france, and, indeed, all the world over. there was no end to our projected travels, and we immediately directed our course northward, rather for the pleasure of crossing the alps, than from a supposed necessity of being obliged to stop at any place. such was the plan on which i set out, abandoning without regret, my preceptors, studies, and hopes, with the almost certain attainment of a fortune, to lead the life of a real vagabond. farewell to the capital; adieu to the court, ambition, love, the fair, and all the great adventures into which hope had led me during the preceding year! i departed with my fountain and my friend bacle, a purse lightly furnished, but a heart overflowing with pleasure, and only thinking how to enjoy the extensive felicity which i supposed my project encircled. this extravagant journey was performed almost as agreeably as i had expected, though not exactly on the same plan; not but our fountain highly amused the hostess and servants for some minutes at all the alehouses where we halted, yet we found it equally necessary to pay on our departure; but that gave us no concern, as we never thought of depending on it entirely until our money should be expended. an accident spared us that trouble, our fountain was broken near bramant, and in good time, for we both felt (though without daring to own it to each other) that we began to be weary of it. this misfortune rendered us gayer than ever; we laughed heartily at our giddiness in having forgotten that our clothes and shoes would wear out, or trusting to renew them by the play of our fountain. we continued our journey as merrily as we had begun it, only drawing faster towards that termination where our drained purses made it necessary for us to arrive. at chambery i became pensive; not for the folly i had committed, for never did any one think less of the past, but on account of the reception i should meet with from madam de warrens; for i looked on her house as my paternal home. i had written her an account of my reception at the count de gauvon's; she knew my expectancies, and, in congratulating me on my good fortune, had added some wise lessons on the return i ought to make for the kindness with which they treated me. she looked on my fortune as already made, if not destroyed by my own negligence; what then would she say on my arrival? for it never entered my mind that she might shut the door against me, but i dreaded the uneasiness i might give her; i dreaded her reproaches, to me more wounding than want; i resolved to bear all in silence, and, if possible, to appease her. i now saw nothing but madam de warrens in the whole universe, and to live in disgrace with her was impossible. i was most concerned about my companion, whom i did not wish to offend, and feared i should not easily get rid of. i prefaced this separation by an affected coldness during the last day's journey. the drole understood me perfectly; in fact, he was rather giddy than deficient in point of sensei expected he would have been hurt at my inconstancy, but i was quite mistaken; nothing affected my friend bacle, for hardly had we set foot in town, on our arrival in annecy, before he said, "you are now at home"embracedbade me adieuturned on his heel, and disappeared; nor have i ever heard of him since. how did my heart beat as i approached the habitation of madam de warrens! my legs trembled under me, my eyes were clouded with a mist, i neither saw, heard, nor recollected any one, and was obliged frequently to stop that i might draw breath, and recall my bewildered senses. was it fear of not obtaining that succor i stood in need of, which agitated me to this degree? at the age i then was, does the fear of perishing with hunger give such alarms? no: i declare with as much truth as pride, that it was not in the power of interest or indigence, at any period of my life, to expand or contract my heart. in the course of a painful life, memorable for its vicissitudes, frequently destitute of an asylum, and without bread, i have contemplated with equal indifference, both opulence and misery. in want i might have begged or stolen, as others have done, but never could feel distress at being reduced to such necessities. few men have grieved more than myself, few have shed so many tears; yet never did poverty, or the fear of falling into it, make me heave a sigh or moisten my eyelids. my soul, in despite of fortune, has only been sensible of real good and evil, which did not depend on her; and frequently, when in possession of everything that could make life pleasing, i have been the most miserable of mortals. the first glance of madam de warrens banished all my fearsmy heart leaped at the sound of her voice; i threw myself at her feet, and in transports of the most lively joy, pressed my lips upon her hand. i am ignorant whether she had received any recent information of me. i discovered but little surprise on her countenance, and no sorrow. "poor child!" said she, in an affectionate tone, "art thou here again? i knew you were too young for this journey; i am very glad, however, that it did not turn out so bad as i apprehended." she then made me recount my history; it was not long, and i did it faithfully: suppressing only some trifling circumstances, but on the whole neither sparing nor excusing myself. the question was, where i could lodge: she consulted her maid on this pointi hardly dared to breathe during the deliberation; but when i heard i was to sleep in the house, i could scarce contain my joy; and saw the little bundle i brought with me carried into my destined apartment with much the same sensations as st. preux saw his chaise put up at madam de wolmar's. to complete all, i had the satisfaction to find that this favor was not to be transitory; for at a moment when they thought me attentive to something else, i heard madam de warrens say, "they may talk as they please, but since providence has sent him back, i am determined not to abandon him." behold me, then, established at her house; not, however, that i date the happiest days of my life from this period, but this served to prepare me for them. though that sensibility of heart, which enables us truly to enjoy our being, is the work of nature, and perhaps a mere effect of organization, yet it requires situations to unfold itself, and without a certain concurrence of favorable circumstances, a man born with the most acute sensibility may go out of the world without ever having been acquainted with his own temperament. this was my case till that time, and such perhaps it might have remained had i never known madam de warrens, or even having known her, had i not remained with her long enough to contract that pleasing habit of affectionate sentiments with which she inspired me. i dare affirm, that those who only love, do not feel the most charming sensations we are capable of: i am acquainted with another sentiment, less impetuous, but a thousand times more delightful; sometimes joined with love, but frequently separated from it. this feeling is not simply friendship; it is more enchanting, more tender; nor do i imagine it can exist between persons of the same sex; at least i have been truly a friend, if ever a man was, and yet never experienced it in that kind. this distinction is not sufficiently clear, but will become so hereafter: sentiments are only distinguishable by their effects. madam de warrens inhabited an old house, but large enough to have a handsome spare apartment, which she made her drawing-room. i now occupied this chamber, which was in the passage i have before mentioned as the place of our first meeting. beyond the brook and gardens was a prospect of the country, which was by no means uninteresting to the young inhabitant, being the first time, since my residence at bossey, that i had seen anything before my windows but walls, roofs, or the dirty street. how pleasing then was this novelty! it helped to increase the tenderness of my disposition, for i looked on this charming landscape as the gift of my dear patroness, who i could almost fancy had placed it there on purpose for me. peaceably seated, my eyes pursued her amidst the flowers and the verdure; her charms seemed to me confounded with those of the spring; my heart, till now contracted, here found means to expand itself, and my sighs exhaled freely in this charming retreat. the magnificence i had been accustomed to at turin was not to be found at madam de warrens', but in lieu of it there was neatness, regularity, and a patriarchal abundance, which is seldom attached to pompous ostentation. she had very little plate, no china, no game in her kitchen, or foreign wines in her cellar, but both were well furnished, and at every one's service; and her coffee, though served in earthenware cups, was excellent. whoever came to her house was invited to dine there, and never did laborer, messenger, or traveler, depart without refreshment. her family consisted of a pretty chambermaid from fribourg, named merceret; a valet from her own country called claude anet (of whom i shall speak hereafter), a cook, and two hired chairmen when she visited, which seldom happened. this was a great deal to be done out of two thousand livres a year; yet, with good management, it might have been sufficient, in a country where land is extremely good, and money very scarce. unfortunately, economy was never her favorite virtue; she contracted debtspaid themthus her money passed from hand to hand like a weaver's shuttle, and quickly disappeared. the arrangement of her housekeeping was exactly what i should have chosen, and i shared it with satisfaction. i was least pleased with the necessity of remaining too long at table. madam de warrens was so much incommoded with the first smell of soup or meat, as almost to occasion fainting; from this she slowly recovered, talking meantime, and never attempting to eat for the first half hour. i could have dined thrice in the time, and had ever finished my meal long before she began; i then ate again for company; and though by this means i usually dined twice, felt no inconvenience from it. in short, i was perfectly at my ease, and the happier as my situation required no care. not being at this time instructed in the state of her finances, i supposed her means were adequate to her expense; and though i afterwards found the same abundance, yet when instructed in her real situation, finding her pension ever anticipated, prevented me from enjoying the same tranquility. foresight with me has always embittered enjoyment; in vain i saw the approach of misfortunes, i was never the more likely to avoid them. from the first moment of our meeting, the softest familiarity was established between us, and in the same degree it continued during the rest of her life. child was my name, mamma was hers, and child and mamma we have ever continued, even after a number of years had almost effaced the apparent difference of age between us. i think those names convey an exact idea of our behavior, the simplicity of our manners, and, above all, the similarity of our dispositions. to me she was the tenderest of mothers, ever preferring my welfare to her own pleasure; and if my own satisfaction found some interest in my attachment to her, it was not to change its nature, but only to render it more exquisite, and infatuate me with the charm of having a mother young and handsome, whom i was delighted to caress: i say literally, to caress, for never did it enter into her imagination to deny me the tenderest maternal kisses and endearments, or into my heart to abuse them. it will be said, our connection was of a different kind: i confess it; but have patience, that will come in its turn. the sudden sight of her, on our first interview, was the only truly passionate moment she ever inspired me with; and even that was principally the work of surprise. my indiscreet glances never went searching beneath her neckerchief, although the ill-concealed plumpness was quite attractive for them. with her i had neither transports nor desires, but remained in a ravishing calm, sensible of a happiness i could not define. she was the only person with whom i never experienced that want of conversation, which to me is so painful to endure. our tete-a-tetes were rather an inexhaustible chat than conversation, which could only conclude from interruption. so far from finding discourse difficult, i rather thought it a hardship to be silent; unless, when contemplating her projects, she sank into a reverie; when i silently let her meditate, and gazing on her, was the happiest of men. i had another singular fancy, which was that without pretending to the favor of a tete-a-tete, i was perpetually seeking occasion to form them, enjoying such opportunities with rapture; and when importunate visitors broke in upon us, no matter whether it was man or woman, i went out murmuring, not being able to remain a secondary object in her company; then, counting the minutes in her antechamber, i used to curse these eternal visitors, thinking it inconceivable how they could find so much to say, because i had still more. if ever i felt the full force of my attachment, it was when i did not see her. when in her presence, i was only content; when absent, my uneasiness reached almost to melancholy, and a wish to live with her gave me emotions of tenderness even to tears. never shall i forget one great holiday, while she was at vespers, when i took a walk out of the city, my heart full of her image, and the ardent wish to pass my life with her. i could easily enough see that at present this was impossible; that the happiness i enjoyed would be of short duration, and this idea gave to my contemplations a tincture of melancholy, which, however, was not gloomy, but tempered with a flattering hope. the ringing of bells, which ever particularly affects me, the singing of birds, the fineness of the day, the beauty of the landscape, the scattered country houses, among which in idea i placed our future dwelling, altogether struck me with an impression so lively, tender, melancholy, and powerful, that i saw myself in ecstasy transported into that happy time and abode, where my heart, possessing all the felicity it could desire, might taste it with raptures inexpressible. i never recollect to have enjoyed the future with such force of illusion as at that time; and what has particularly struck me in the recollection of this reverie is that, when realized, i found my situation exactly as i had imagined it. if ever waking dream had an appearance of a prophetic vision, it was assuredly this; i was only deceived in its imaginary duration, for days, years, and life itself, passed ideally in perfect tranquility, while the reality lasted but a moment. alas! my most durable happiness was but as a dream, which i had no sooner had a glimpse of, than i instantly awoke. i know not when i should have done, if i was to enter into a detail of all the follies that affection for my dear madam de warrens made me commit. when absent from her, how often have i kissed the bed on a supposition that she had slept there; the curtains and all the furniture of my chamber, on recollecting they were hers, and that her charming hands had touched them; nay, the floor itself, when i considered she had walked there. sometimes even in her presence extravagancies escaped me, which only the most violent passions seemed capable of inspiring; in a word, there was but one essential difference to distinguish me from an absolute lover, and that particular renders my situation almost inconceivable. i had returned from italy, not absolutely as i went there, but as no one of my age, perhaps, ever did before, being equally unacquainted with women. my ardent constitution had found resources in those means by which youth of my disposition sometimes preserve their purity at the expense of health, vigor, and frequently of life itself. my local situation should likewise be consideredliving with a pretty woman, cherishing her image in the bottom of my heart, seeing her during the whole day, at night surrounded with objects that recalled her incessantly to my remembrance, and sleeping in the bed where i knew she had slept. what a situation! who can read this without supposing me on the brink of the grave? but quite the contrary; that which might have ruined me, acted as a preservative, at least for a time. intoxicated with the charm of living with her, with the ardent desire of passing my life there, absent or present i saw in her a tender mother, an amiable sister, a respected friend, but nothing more; meantime, her image filled my heart, and left room for no other object. the extreme tenderness with which she inspired me excluded every other woman from my consideration, and preserved me from the whole sex: in a word, i was virtuous, because i loved her. let these particulars, which i recount but indifferently, be considered, and then let any one judge what kind of attachment i had for her: for my part, all i can say, is, that if it hitherto appears extraordinary, it will appear much more so in the sequel. my time passed in the most agreeable manner, though occupied in a way which was by no means calculated to please me; such as having projects to digest, bills to write fair, receipts to transcribe, herbs to pick, drugs to pound, or distillations to attend; and in the midst of all this, came crowds of travelers, beggars, and visitors of all denominations. sometimes it was necessary to converse at the same time with a soldier, an apothecary, a prebendary, a fine lady, and a lay brother. i grumbled, swore, and wished all this troublesome medley at the devil, while she seemed to enjoy it, laughing at my chagrin till the tears ran down her cheeks. what excited her mirth still more, was to see that my anger was increased by not being able myself to refrain from laughter. these little intervals, in which i enjoyed the pleasure of grumbling, were charming; and if, during the dispute, another importunate visitor arrived, she would add to her amusement by maliciously prolonging the visit, meantime casting glances at me for which i could almost have beat her; nor could she without difficulty refrain from laughter on seeing my constrained politeness, though every moment glancing at her the look of a fury, while, even in spite of myself, i thought the scene truly diverting. all this, without being pleasing in itself, contributed to amuse, because it made up a part of a life which i thought delightful. nothing that was performed around me, nothing that i was obliged to do, suited my taste, but everything suited my heart; and i believe, at length, i should have liked the study of medicine, had not my natural distaste to it perpetually engaged us in whimsical scenes, that prevented my thinking of it in a serious light. it was, perhaps, the first time that this art produced mirth. i pretended to distinguish a physical book by its smell, and what was more diverting, was seldom mistaken. madam de warrens made me taste the most nauseous drugs; in vain i ran, or endeavored to defend myself; spite of resistance or wry faces, spite of my struggles, or even of my teeth, when i saw her charming fingers approach my lips, i was obliged to give up the contest. when shut up in an apartment with all her medical apparatus, any one to have heard us running and shouting amidst peals of laughter would rather have imagined we had been acting a farce than preparing opiates or elixirs. my time, however, was not entirely passed in these fooleries; in the apartment which i occupied i found a few books: there was the spectator, puffendorf, st. evremond, and the henriade. though i had not my old passion for books, yet i amused myself with reading a part of them. the spectator was particularly pleasing and serviceable to me. the abbe de gauvon. had taught me to read less eagerly, and with a greater degree of attention, which rendered my studies more serviceable. i accustomed myself to reflect on elocution and the elegance of composition; exercising myself in discerning pure french from my provincial idiom. for example, i corrected an orthographical fault (which i had in common with all genevese) by these two lines of the henriade: soit qu'un ancient respect pour le sang de leurs maitres, parlat encore pour lui dans le coeur de ces traitres. i was struck with the word parlat, and found a 't' was necessary to form the third person of the subjunctive, whereas i had always written and pronounced it parla, as in the present of the indicative. sometimes my studies were the subject of conversation with madam de warrens; sometimes i read to her, in which i found great satisfaction; and as i endeavored to read well, it was extremely serviceable to me. i have already observed that her mind was cultivated; her understanding was at this time in its meridian. several people of learning having been assiduous to ingratiate themselves, had taught her to distinguish works of merit; but her taste (if i may so express myself) was rather protestant; ever speaking warmly of bayle, and highly esteeming st. evremond, though long since almost forgotten in france: but this did not prevent her having a taste for literature, or expressing her thoughts with elegance. she had been brought up with polite company, and coming young to savoy, by associating with people of the best fashion, had lost the affected manners of her own country, where the ladies mistake wit for sense, and only speak in epigram. though she had seen the court but superficially, that glance was sufficient to give her a competent idea of it; and notwithstanding secret jealousies and the murmurs excited by her conduct and running in debt, she ever preserved friends there, and never lost her pension. she knew the world, and was possessed of sense and reflection to make her experience useful. this was her favorite theme in our conversations, and was directly opposite to my chimerical ideas, though the kind of instruction i particularly had occasion for. we read bruyere together; he pleased her more than rochefoucault, who is a dull, melancholy author, particularly to youth, who are not fond of contemplating man as he really is. in moralizing she sometimes bewildered herself by the length of her discourse; but by kissing her lips or hand from time to time i was easily consoled, and never found them wearisome. this life was too delightful to be lasting; i felt this, and the uneasiness that thought gave me was the only thing that disturbed my enjoyment. even in playfulness she studied my disposition, observed and interrogated me, forming projects for my future fortune, which i could readily have dispensed with. happily it was not sufficient to know my disposition, inclinations, and talents; it was likewise necessary to find a situation in which they would be useful, and this was not the work of a day. even the prejudices this good woman had conceived in favor of my merit put off the time of calling it into action, by rendering her more difficult in the choice of means: thus (thanks to the good opinion she entertained of me), everything answered to my wish; but a change soon happened which put a period to my tranquility. a relation of madam de warrens, named m. d'aubonne, came to see her: a man of great understanding and intrigue, being, like her, fond of projects, though careful not to ruin himself by them. he had offered cardinal fleury a very compact plan for a lottery, which, however, had not been approved of, and he was now going to propose it to the court of turin, where it was accepted and put into execution. he remained some time at annecy, where he fell in love with the intendant's lady, who was very amiable, much to my taste, and the only person i saw with pleasure at the house of madam de warrens. m. d'aubonne saw me, i was strongly recommended by his relation; he promised, therefore, to question and see what i was fit for, and, if he found me capable to seek me a situation. madam de warrens sent me to him two or three mornings, under pretense of messages, without acquainting me with her real intention. he spoke to me gayly, on various subjects, without any appearance of observation; his familiarity presently set me talking, which by his cheerful and jesting manner he encouraged without restrainti was absolutely charmed with him. the result of his observations was, that withstanding the animation of my countenance, and promising exterior, if not absolutely silly, i was a lad of very little sense, and without ideas of learning; in fine, very ignorant in all respects, and if i could arrive at being curate of some village, it was the utmost honor i ought ever to aspire to. such was the account he gave of me to madam de warrens. this was not the first time such an opinion had been formed of me, neither was it the last; the judgment of m. masseron having been repeatedly confirmed. the cause of these opinions is too much connected with my character not to need a particular explanation; for it will not be supposed that i can in conscience subscribe to them: and with all possible impartiality, whatever m. masseron, m. d'aubonne and many others may have said, i cannot help thinking them mistaken. two things, very opposite, unite in me, and in a manner which i cannot myself conceive. my disposition is extremely ardent, my passions lively and impetuous, yet my ideas are produced slowly, with great embarrassment and after much afterthought. it might be said my heart and understanding do not belong to the same individual. a sentiment takes possession of my soul with the rapidity of lightning, but instead of illuminating, it dazzles and confounds me; i feel all, but see nothing; i am warm, but stupid; to think i must be cool. what is astonishing, my conception is clear and penetrating, if not hurried: i can make excellent impromptus at leisure, but on the instant, could never say or do anything worth notice. i could hold a tolerable conversation by the post, as they say the spaniards play at chess, and when i read that anecdote of a duke of savoy, who turned himself round, while on a journey, to cry out a votre gorge, marchand de paris! i said, "here is a trait of my character!" this slowness of thought, joined to vivacity of feeling, i am not only sensible of in conversation, but even alone. when i write, my ideas are arranged with the utmost difficulty. they glance on my imagination and ferment till they discompose, heat, and bring on a palpitation; during this state of agitation, i see nothing properly, cannot write a single word, and must wait till it is over. insensibly the agitation subsides, the chaos acquires form, and each circumstance takes its proper place. have you never seen an opera in italy? where during the change of scene everything is in confusion, the decorations are intermingled, and any one would suppose that all would be overthrown; yet by little and little, everything is arranged, nothing appears wanting, and we feel surprised to see the tumult succeeded by the most delightful spectacle. this is a resemblance of what passes in my brain when i attempt to write; had i always waited till that confusion was past, and then pointed, in their natural beauties, the objects that had presented themselves, few authors would have surpassed me. thence arises the extreme difficulty i find in writing my manuscripts, blotted scratched, and scarcely legible, attest the trouble they cost me; nor is there one of them but i have been obliged to transcribe four or five times before it went to press. never could i do anything when placed at a table, pen in hand; it must be walking among the rocks, or in the woods; it is at night in my bed, during my wakeful hours, that i compose; it may be judged how slowly, particularly for a man who has not the advantage of verbal memory, and never in his life could retain by heart six verses. some of my periods i have turned and returned in my head five or six nights before they were fit to be put to paper: thus it is that i succeed better in works that require laborious attention, than those that appear more trivial, such as letters, in which i could never succeed, and being obliged to write one is to me a serious punishment; nor can i express my thoughts on the most trivial subjects without it costing me hours of fatigue. if i write immediately what strikes me, my letter is a long, confused, unconnected string of expressions, which, when read, can hardly be understood. it is not only painful to me to give language to my ideas, but even to receive them. i have studied mankind, and think myself a tolerable observer, yet i know nothing from what i see, but all from what i remember, nor have i understanding except in my recollections. from all that is said, from all that passes in my presence, i feel nothing, conceive nothing, the exterior sign being all that strikes me; afterwards it returns to my remembrance; i recollect the place, the time, the manner, the look, and gesture, not a circumstance escapes me; it is, then, from what has been done or said, that i imagine what has been thought, and i have rarely found myself mistaken. so little master of my understanding when alone, let any one judge what i must be in conversation, where to speak with any degree of ease you must think of a thousand things at the same time: the bare idea that i should forget something material would be sufficient to intimidate me. nor can i comprehend how people can have the confidence to converse in large companies, where each word must pass in review before so many, and where it would be requisite to know their several characters and histories to avoid saying what might give offense. in this particular, those who frequent the world would have a great advantage, as they know better where to be silent, and can speak with greater confidence; yet even they sometimes let fall absurdities; in what predicament then must he be who drops as it were from the clouds? it is almost impossible he should speak ten minutes with impunity. in a tete-a-tete there is a still worse inconvenience; that is, the necessity of talking perpetually, at least, the necessity of answering when spoken to, and keeping up the conversation when the other is silent. this insupportable constraint is alone sufficient to disgust me with society, for i cannot form an idea of a greater torment than being obliged to speak continually without time for recollection. i know not whether it proceeds from my mortal hatred to all constraint; but if i am obliged to speak, i infallibly talk nonsense. what is still worse, instead of learning how to be silent when i have absolutely nothing to say, it is generally at such times that i have a violent inclination; and, endeavoring to pay my debt of conversation as speedily as possible, i hastily gabble a number of words without ideas, happy when they only chance to mean nothing: thus endeavoring to conquer or hide my incapacity, i rarely fail to show it. i think i have said enough to show that, though not a fool, i have frequently passed for one, even among people capable of judging; this was the more vexatious, as my physiognomy and eyes promised otherwise, and expectation being frustrated, my stupidity appeared the more shocking. this detail, which a particular occasion gave birth to, will not be useless in the sequel, being a key to many of my actions which might otherwise appear unaccountable; and have been attributed to a savage humor i do not possess. i love society as much as any man, was i not certain to exhibit myself in it, not only disadvantageously, but totally different from what i really am. the plan i have adopted of writing and retirement, is what exactly suits me. had i been present, my worth would never have been known, no one would even have suspected it; thus it was with madam dupin, a woman of sense, in whose house i lived for several years; indeed, she has often since owned it to me: though on the whole this rule may be subject to some exceptions. i shall now return to my history. the estimate of my talents thus fixed, the situation i was capable of premised, the question only remained how to render me capable of fulfilling my destined vocation. the principal difficulty was, i did not know latin enough for a priest. madam de warrens determined to have me taught for some time at the seminary, and accordingly spoke of it to the superior, who was a lazarist, called m. gros, a good-natured little fellow, half blind, meager, gray-haired, insensible, and the least pedantic of any lazarist i ever knew; which, in fact, is saying no great matter. he frequently visited madam de warrens, who entertained, caressed, and made much of him, letting him sometimes lace her stays, an office he was willing enough to perform. while thus employed, she would run about the room, this way or that, as occasion happened to call her. drawn by the lace, monsieur the superior followed, grumbling, repeating at every moment, "pray, madam, do stand still;" the whole forming a scene truly diverting. m. gros willingly assented to the project of madam de warrens, and, for a very moderate pension, charged himself with the care of instructing me. the consent of the bishop was all that remained necessary, who not only granted it, but offered to pay the pension, permitting me to retain the secular habit till they could judge by a trial what success they might have in my improvement. what a change! but i was obliged to submit; though i went to the seminary with about the same spirits as if they had been taking me to execution. what a melancholy abode! especially for one who left the house of a pretty woman. i carried one book with me, that i had borrowed of madam de warrens, and found it a capital resource! it will not be easily conjectured what kind of book this wasit was a music book. among the talents she had cultivated, music was not forgotten; she had a tolerably good voice, sang agreeably, and played on the harpsichord. she had taken the pains to give me some lessons in singing, though before i was very uninformed in that respect, hardly knowing the music of our. psalms. eight or ten interrupted lessons, far from putting me in a condition to improve myself, did not teach me half the notes; notwithstanding, i had such a passion for the art, that i determined to exercise myself alone. the book i took was not of the most easy kind; it was the cantatas of clerambault. it may be conceived with what attention and perseverance i studied, when i inform my reader, that without knowing anything of transposition or quantity, i contrived to sing, with tolerable correctness, the first recitative and air in the cantata of alpheus and arethusa: it is true this air is so justly set, that it is only necessary to recite the verses in their just measure to catch the music. there was at the seminary a curst lazarist, who by undertaking to teach me latin made me detest it. his hair was coarse, black, and greasy, his face like those formed in gingerbread; he had the voice of a buffalo, the countenance of an owl, and the bristles of a boar in lieu of a beard; his smile was sardonic, and his limbs played like those of a puppet moved by wires. i have forgotten his odious name, but the remembrance of his frightful precise countenance remains with me, though hardly can i recollect it without trembling; especially when i call to mind our meeting in the gallery, when he graciously advanced his filthy square cap as a sign for me to enter his apartment, which appeared more dismal in my apprehension than a dungeon. let any one judge the contrast between my present master and the elegant abbe de gauvon. had i remained two months at the mercy of this monster, i am certain my head could not have sustained it; but the good m. gros, perceiving i was melancholy, grew thin, and did not eat my victuals, guessed the cause of my uneasiness (which indeed was not very difficult) and taking me from the claws of this beast, by another yet more striking contrast, placed me with the gentlest of men, a young faucigneran abbe, named m. gatier, who studied at the seminary, and out of complaisance for m. gros, and humanity to myself, spared some time from the prosecution of his own studies in order to direct mine. never did i see a more pleasing countenance than that of m. gatier. he was fair complexioned, his beard rather inclined to red; his behavior, like that of the generality of his countrymen (who under a coarseness of countenance conceal much understanding), marked in him a truly sensible and affectionate soul. in his large blue eyes there was a mixture of softness, tenderness, and melancholy, which made it impossible to see him without feeling one's self interested. from the looks and manner of this young abbe he might have been supposed to have foreseen his destiny, and that he was born to be unhappy. his disposition did not belie his physiognomy: full of patience and complaisance, he rather appeared to study with than instruct me. so much was not necessary to make me love him, his predecessor having rendered that very easy; yet, notwithstanding all the time he bestowed on me, notwithstanding our mutual good inclinations, and that his plan of teaching was excellent, with much labor, i made little progress. it is very singular, that with a clear conception i could never learn much from masters except my father and m. lambercier; the little i know besides i have learned alone, as will be seen hereafter. my spirit, impatient of every species of constraint, cannot submit to the law of the moment; even the fear of not learning prevents my being attentive, and a dread of wearying those who teach, makes me feign to understand them; thus they proceed faster than i can comprehend, and the conclusion is i learn nothing. my understanding must take its own time and cannot submit to that of another. the time of ordination being arrived, m. gatier returned to his province as deacon, leaving me with gratitude, attachment, and sorrow for his loss. the vows i made for him were no more answered than those i offered for myself. some years after, i learned, that being vicar of a parish, a young girl was with child by him, being the only one (though he possessed a very tender heart) with whom he was ever in love. this was a dreadful scandal in a diocese severely governed, where the priests (being under good regulation) ought never to have childrenexcept by married women. having infringed this politic law, he was put in prison, defamed, and driven from his benefice. i know not whether it was ever after in his power to reestablish his affairs; but the remembrance of his misfortunes, which were deeply engraven on my heart, struck me when i wrote emilius, and uniting m. gatier with m. gaime, i formed from these two worthy priests the character of the savoyard vicar, and flatter myself the imitation has not dishonored the originals. while i was at the seminary, m. d'aubonne was obliged to quit annecy, moultou being displeased that he made love to his wife, which was acting like a dog in the manger, for though madam moultou was extremely amiable, he lived very ill with her, treating her with such brutality that a separation was talked of. moultou, by repeated oppressions, at length procured a dismissal from his employment: he was a disagreeable man; a mole could not be blacker, nor an owl more knavish. it is said the provincials revenge themselves on their enemies by songs; m. d'aubonne revenged himself on his by a comedy, which he sent to madam de warrens, who showed it to me. i was pleased with it, and immediately conceived the idea of writing one, to try whether i was so silly as the author had pronounced me. this project was not executed till i went to chambery, where i wrote the lover of himself. thus when i said in the preface to that piece, "it was written at eighteen," i cut off a few years. nearly about this time an event happened, not very important in itself, but whose consequence affected me, and made a noise in the world when i had forgotten it. once a week i was permitted to go out; it is not necessary to say what use i made of this liberty. being one sunday at madam de warrens', a building belonging to the cordeliers, which joined her house, took fire; this building which contained their oven, being full of dry fagots, blazed violently and greatly endangered the house; for the wind happening to drive the flames that way, it was covered with them. the furniture, therefore, was hastily got out and carried into the garden which fronted the windows, on the other side the before-mentioned brook. i was so alarmed that i threw indiscriminately everything that came to hand out of the window, even to a large stone mortar, which at another time i should have found it difficult to remove, and should have thrown a handsome looking-glass after it had not some one prevented me. the good bishop, who that day was visiting madam de warrens, did not remain idle; he took her into the garden, where they went to prayers with the rest that were assembled there, and where, some time afterwards, i found them on their knees, and presently joined them. while the good man was at his devotions the wind changed, so suddenly and critically that the flames, which had covered the house and began to enter the windows, were carried to the other side of the court, and the house received no damage. two years after, monsieur de berner being dead, the antoines, his former brethren, began to collect anecdotes which might serve as arguments of his beatification; at the desire of father baudet, i joined to these an attestation of what i had just related, in doing which, though i attested no more than the truth, i certainly acted ill, as it tended to make an indifferent occurrence pass for a miracle. i had seen the bishop in prayer, and had likewise seen the wind change during that prayer, and even much to the purpose, all this i could certify truly; but that one of these facts was the cause of the other, i ought not to have attested, because it is what i could not possibly be assured of. thus much i may say, that as far as i can recollect what my ideas were at that time, i was sincerely, and in good earnest, a catholic. love of the marvelous is natural to the human heart; my veneration for the virtuous prelate, and secret pride in having, perhaps, contributed to the event in question, all helped to seduce me; and certainly, if this miracle was the effect of ardent prayer, i had a right to claim a share of the merit. more than thirty years after, when i published the lettres de la montagne, m. freron (i know not by what means) discovered this attestation, and made use of it in his paper. i must confess the discovery was very critically timed, and appeared very diverting, even to me. i was destined to be the outcast of every condition; for notwithstanding m. gatier gave the most favorable account he possibly could of my studies, they plainly saw the improvement i received bore no proportion to the pains taken to instruct me, which was no encouragement to continue them: the bishop and superior, therefore, were disheartened, and i was sent back to madam de warrens, as a subject not even fit to make a priest of; but as they allowed, at the same time, that i was a tolerably good lad, and far from being vicious, this account counterbalanced the former, and determined her not to abandon me. i carried back in triumph the dear music book, which had been so useful to me, the air of alpheus and arethusa being almost all i had learned at the seminary. my predilection for this art started the idea of making a musician of me. a convenient opportunity offered: once a week, at least, she had a concert at her house, and the music-master from the cathedral, who directed this little band, came frequently to see her. this was a parisian, named m. le maitre, a good composer, very lively, gay, young, well made, of little understanding, but, upon the whole, a good sort of man. madam de warrens made us acquainted; i attached myself to him, and he seemed not displeased with me. a pension was talked of, and agreed on; in short, i went home with him, and passed the winter the more agreeably at his chambers, as they were not above twenty paces distance from madam de warrens', where we frequently supped together. it may easily be supposed that this situation, ever gay, and singing with the musicians and children of the choir, was more pleasing to me than the seminary and fathers of st. lazarus. this life, though free, was regular; here i learned to prize independence, but never to abuse it. for six whole months i never once went out except to see madam de warrens, or to church, nor had i any inclination to it. this interval is one of those in which i enjoyed the greatest satisfaction, and which i have ever recollected with pleasure. among the various situations i have been placed in, some were marked with such an idea of virtuous satisfaction, that the bare remembrance affects me as if they were yet present. i vividly recollect the time, the place, the persons, and even the temperature of the air, while the lively idea of a certain local impression peculiar to those times, transports me back again to the very spot; for example, all that was repeated at our meetings, all that was sung in the choir, everything that passed there; the beautiful and noble habits of the canons, the chasubles of the priests, the miters of the singers, the persons of the musicians; an old lame carpenter who played the counter-bass, a little fair abbe who performed on the violin, the ragged cassock which m. le maitre, after taking off his sword, used to put over his secular habit, and the fine surplice with which he covered the rags of the former, when he went to the choir; the pride with which i held my little flute to my lips, and seated myself in the orchestra, to assist in a recitative which m. le maitre had composed on purpose for me; the good dinner that afterwards awaited us, and the good appetites we carried to it. this concourse of objects, strongly retraced in my memory, has charmed me a hundred times as much, or perhaps more, than ever the reality had done. i have always preserved an effection for a certain air of the conditor alme syderum, because one sunday in advent i heard that hymn sung on the steps of the cathedral (according to the custom of that place) as i lay in bed before daybreak. mademoiselle merceret, madam de warrens' chambermaid, knew something of music; i shall never forget a little piece that m. le maitre made me sing with her, and which her mistress listened to with great satisfaction. in a word, every particular, even down to the servant perrine, whom the boys of the choir took such delight in teasing. the remembrance of these times of happiness and innocence frequently returning to my mind, both ravish and affect me. i lived at annecy during a year without the least reproach, giving universal satisfaction. since my departure from turin, i had been guilty of no folly, committed none while under the eye of madam de warrens. she was my conductor, and ever led me right; my attachment for her became my only passion, and what proves it was not a giddy one, my heart and understanding were in unison. it is true that a single sentiment, absorbing all my faculties, put me out of a capacity of learning even music: but this was not my fault, since to the strongest inclination, i added the utmost assiduity. i was inattentive and thoughtful; what could i do? nothing was wanting towards my progress that depended on me; meantime, it only required a subject that might inspire me to occasion the commission of new follies: that subject presented itself, chance arranged it, and (as will be seen hereafter) my inconsiderate head gave in to it. one evening, in the month of february, when it was very cold, being all sat round the fire, we heard some one knock at the street door. perrine took a light, went down and opened it: a young man entering, came upstairs, presented himself with an easy air, and making m. le maitre a short but well-turned compliment, announced himself as a french musician, constrained by the state of his finances to take this liberty. the heart of the good le maitre leaped at the name of a french musician, for he passionately loved both his country and profession; he therefore offered the young traveler his service and use of his apartment, which he appeared to stand much in need of, and which he accepted without much ceremony. i observed him while he was chatting and warming himself before supper; he was short and thick, some fault in his shape, though without any particular deformity; he had (if i may so express myself) an appearance of being hunchbacked, with flat shoulders, and i think he limped. he wore a black coat, rather worn than old, which hung in tatters, a very fine but dirty shirt, frayed ruffles; a pair of splatter-dashes so large that he could have put both legs into either of them, and, to secure himself from the snow, a little hat, only fit to be carried under the arm. with this whimsical equipage he had, however, something elegant in his manners and conversation; his countenance was expressive and agreeable, and he spoke with facility if not with modesty; in short, everything about him bore the marks of a young debauchee, who did not crave assistance like a beggar, but as a thoughtless madcap. he told us his name was venture de villeneuve, that he came from paris, had lost his way, and seeming to forget that he had announced himself for a musician, added that he was going to grenoble to see a relation that was a member of parliament. during supper we talked of music, on which subject he spoke well: he knew all the great virtuosi, all the celebrated works, all the actors, actresses, pretty women, and powerful lords; in short nothing was mentioned but what he seemed thoroughly acquainted with. though no sooner was any topic started, than by some drollery, which set every one a-laughing, he made them forget what had been said. this was on a saturday; the next day there was to be music at the cathedral: m. le maitre asked if he would sing there"very willingly.""what part would he choose?""the counter-tenor:" and immediately began speaking of other things. before he went to church they offered him his part to peruse, but he did not even look at it. this gasconade surprised le maitre"you'll see," said he, whispering to me, "that he does not know a single note."i replied, "i am very much afraid of him." i followed them into the church; but was extremely uneasy, and when they began, my heart beat violently, so much was i interested in his behalf. i was presently out of pain: he sung his two recitatives with all imaginable taste and judgment; and what was yet more, with a very agreeable voice. i never enjoyed a more pleasing surprise. after mass, m. venture received the highest compliments from the canons and musicians, which he answered jokingly, though with great grace. m. le maitre embraced him heartily; i did the same; he saw i was rejoiced at his success, and appeared pleased at my satisfaction. the reader will assuredly agree with me, that after having been delighted with m. bacle, who had little to attract my admiration, i should be infatuated with m. venture, who had education, wit, talents, and a knowledge of the world, and might be called an agreeable rake. it is true, he boasted of many things he did not understand, but of those he knew (which were very numerous) he said nothing, patiently waiting some occasion to display them, which he then did with ease, though without forwardness, and thus gave them more effect. playful, giddy, inexhaustible, seducing in conversation, ever smiling, but never laughing, and repeating the rudest things in the most elegant manner. even the most modest women were astonished at what they endured from him: it was in vain for them to determine to be angry; they could not assume the appearance of it. he only wished abandoned women, and i do not believe he was capable of having good luck with women, but could only add an infinite charm to the society of people who had his luck. it was extraordinary that with so many agreeable talents, in a country where they are so well understood, and so much admired, he so long remained only a musician. my attachment to m. venture, more reasonable in its cause, was also less extravagant in its effects though more lively and durable than that i had conceived for m. bacle. i loved to see him, to hear him, all his actions appeared charming, everything he said was an oracle to me, but the enchantment did not extend far enough to disable me from quitting him. i had a preservative against this excess near me. i found besides, that his maxims were very good for him, but felt that i had no use for them; i needed another kind of voluptuousness, of which he had no idea, and of which i not even dared speak, as i was sure, he would only make fun of me. still i would unite this attachment to the one that governed me. i spoke of him with transport to madam de warrens, le maitre likewise spoke in his praise, and she consented we should bring him to her house. this interview did not succeed; he thought her affected she found him a libertine, and, alarmed that i had formed such an ill acquaintance, not only forbade me bringing him there again, but likewise painted so strongly the danger i ran with this young man, that i became a little more circumspect in giving in to the attachment; and very happily, both for my manners and wits, we were soon separated. m. le maitre, like most of his profession, loved good wine; at table he was moderate, but when busy in his closet he must drink. his maid was so well acquainted with this humor that no sooner had he prepared his paper to compose, and taken his violoncello, than the bottle and glass arrived, and was replenished from time to time: thus, without being ever absolutely intoxicated, he was usually in a state of elevation. this was really unfortunate, for he had a good heart, and was so playful that madam de warrens used to call him the kitten. unhappily, he loved his profession, labored much and drank proportionally, which injured his health, and at length soured his temper. sometimes he was gloomy and easily offended, though incapable of rudeness, or giving offense to any one, for never did he utter a harsh word, even to the boys of the choir: on the other hand, he would not suffer another to offend him, which was but just: the misfortune was, having little understanding, he did not properly discriminate, and was often angry without cause. the chapter of geneva, where so many princes and bishops formerly thought it an honor to be seated, though in exile it lost its ancient splendor, retained (without any diminution) its pride. to be admitted, you must either be a gentleman or doctor of sorbonne. if there is a pardonable pride, after that derived from personal merit, it is doubtless that arising from birth, though, in general, priests having laymen in their service treat them with sufficient haughtiness, and thus the canons behaved to poor le maitre. the chanter, in particular, who was called the abbe de vidonne, in other respects a well-behaved man, but too full of his nobility, did not always show him the attention his talents merited. m. le maitre could not bear these indignities patiently; and this year, during passion week, they had a more serious dispute than ordinary. at an institution dinner that the bishop gave the canons, and to which le maitre was always invited, the abbe failed in some formality, adding, at the same time, some harsh words, which the other could not digest; he instantly formed the resolution to quit them the following night; nor could any consideration make him give up his design, though madam de warrens (whom he went to take leave of) spared no pains to appease him. he could not relinquish the pleasure of leaving his tyrants embarrassed for the easter feast, at which time he knew they stood in greatest need of him. he was most concerned about his music, which he wished to take with him; but this could not easily be accomplished, as it filled a large case, and was very heavy, and could not be carried under the arms. madam de warrens did what i should have done in her situation; and indeed, what i should yet do: after many useless efforts to retain him, seeing he was resolved to depart, whatever might be the event, she formed the resolution to give him every possible assistance. i must confess le maitre deserved it of her, for he was (if i may use the expression) dedicated to her service, in whatever appertained to either his art or knowledge, and the readiness with which he obliged gave a double value to his complaisance: thus she only paid back, on an essential occasion, the many favors he had been long conferring on her; though i should observe, she possessed a soul that, to fulfill such duties, had no occasion to be reminded of previous obligation. accordingly she ordered me to follow le maitre to lyons, and continue with him as long as he might have occasion for my services. she has since avowed, that a desire of detaching me from venture had a great hand in this arrangement. she consulted claude anet about the conveyance of the above-mentioned case. he advised, that instead of hiring a beast of annecy, which would infallibly discover us, it would be better, at night, to take it to some neighboring village, and there hire an ass to carry it to seyssel, which being in the french dominions, we should have nothing to fear. this plan was adopted; we departed the same night at seven, and madam de warrens, under pretense of paying my expenses, increased the purse of poor le maitre by an addition that was very acceptable. claude anet, the gardener, and myself, carried the case to the first village, then hired an ass, and the same night reached seyssel. i think i have already remarked that there are times in which i am so unlike myself that i might be taken for a man of a direct opposite disposition; i shall now give an example of this. m. reydelet, curate of seyssel, was canon of st. peter's, consequently known to m. le maitre, and one of the people from whom he should have taken most pains to conceal himself; my advice, on the contrary, was to present ourselves to him, and, under some pretext, entreat entertainment as if we visited him by consent of the chapter. le maitre adopted this idea, which seemed to give his revenge an appearance of satire and waggery; in short, we went boldly to reydelet, who received us very kindly. le maitre told him he was going to bellay by desire of the bishop, that he might superintend the music during the easter holidays, and that he proposed returning that way in a few days. to support this tale, i told a hundred others, so naturally that m. reydelet thought me a very agreeable youth, and treated me with great friendship and civility. we were well regaled and well lodged: m. reydelet scarcely knew how to make enough of us; and we parted the best friends in the world, with a promise to stop longer on our return. we found it difficult to refrain form laughter, or wait till we were alone to give free vent to our mirth: indeed, even now, the bare recollection of it forces a smile, for never was waggery better or more fortunately maintained. this would have made us merry during the remainder of our journey, if m. le maitre (who did not cease drinking) had not been two or three times attacked with a complaint that he afterwards became very subject to, and which resembled an epilepsy. these fits threw me into the most fearful embarrassments, from which i resolved to extricate myself with the first opportunity. according to the information given to m. reydelet, we passed our easter holidays at bellay, and though not expected there, were received by the music-master, and welcomed by every one with great pleasure. m. le maitre was of considerable note in his profession, and, indeed, merited that distinction. the music-master of bellay (who was fond of his own works) endeavored to obtain the approbation of so good a judge; for besides being a connoisseur, m. le maitre was equitable, neither a jealous, ill-natured critic, nor a servile flatterer. he was so superior to the generality of country music-masters, and they were so sensible of it, that they treated him rather as their chief than a brother musician. having passed four or five days very agreeably at bellay, we departed, and continuing our journey without meeting with any accidents, except those i have just spoken of, arrived at lyons, and were lodged at notre dame de pitie. while we waited for the arrival of the before-mentioned case (which by the assistance of another lie, and the care of our good patron, m. reydelet, we had embarked on the rhone) m. le maitre went to visit his acquaintance, and among others father caton, a cordelier, who will be spoken of hereafter, and the abbe dortan, count of lyons, both of whom received him well, but afterwards betrayed him, as will be seen presently; indeed, his good fortune terminated with m. reydelet. two days after our arrival at lyons, as we passed a little street not far from our inn, le maitre was attacked by one of his fits; but it was now so violent as to give me the utmost alarm. i screamed with terror, called for help, and naming our inn, entreated some one to bear him to it; then (while the people were assembled, and busy round a man that had fallen senseless in the street) he was abandoned by the only friend on whom he could have any reasonable dependence; i seized the instant when no one heeded me, turned the corner of the street and disappeared. thanks to heaven, i have made my third painful confession; if many such remained, i should certainly abandon the work i have undertaken. of all the incidents i have yet related, a few traces are remaining in the places where i then lived; but what i have to relate in the following book is almost entirely unknown; these are the greatest extravagancies of my life, and it is happy they had not a worse conclusion. my head (if i may use the simile) screwed up to the pitch of an instrument it did not naturally accord with, had lost its diapason; in time it returned to it again, when i discontinued my follies, or at least gave in to those more consonant to my disposition. this epoch of my youth i am least able to recollect, nothing having passed sufficiently interesting to influence my heart, or make me clearly retrace the remembrance. in so many successive changes, it is difficult not to make some transpositions of time or place. i write absolutely from memory, without notes or materials to help my recollection. some events are as fresh in my idea as if they had recently happened, but there are certain chasms which i cannot fill up but by the aid of recital, as confused as the remaining traces of those to which they refer. it is impossible, therefore, that i may have erred in trifles, and perhaps shall again, but in every matter of importance i can answer that the account is faithfully exact, and with the same veracity the reader may depend i shall be careful to continue it. my resolution was soon taken after quitting le maitre; i set out immediately for annecy. the cause and mystery of our departure had interested me for the security of our retreat: this interest, which entirely employed my thoughts for some days, had banished every other idea; but no sooner was i secure and in tranquility, than my predominant sentiment regained its place. nothing flattered, nothing tempted me, i had no wish but to return to madam de warrens; the tenderness and truth of my attachment to her had rooted from my heart all the follies of ambition; i conceived no happiness but living near her, nor could i take a step without feeling that the distance between us was increased. i returned, therefore, as soon as possible, with such speed, and with my spirits in such a state of agitation, that though i recall with pleasure all my other travels, i have not the least recollection of this, only remembering my leaving lyons and reaching annecy. let any one judge whether this last event can have slipped my memory, when informed that on my arrival i found madam de warrens was not there, having set out for paris. i was never well informed of the motives of this journey. i am certain she would have told me had i asked her, but never was man less curious to learn the secrets of his friend. my heart is ever so entirely filled with the present, or with past pleasures, which become a principal part of my enjoyment, that there is not a chink or corner for curiosity to enter. all that i conceive from what i heard of it, is, that in the revolution caused at turin by the abdication of the king of sardinia, she feared being forgotten, and was willing by favor of the intrigues of m. d'aubonne to seek the same advantage in the court of france, where she has often told me she should have preferred it, as the multiplicity of business there prevents your conduct from being so closely inspected. if this was her business, it is astonishing that on her return she was not ill received; be that as it will, she continued to enjoy her allowance without any interruption. many people imagined she was charged with some secret commission, either by the bishop, who then had business at the court of france, where he himself was soon after obliged to go, or some one yet more powerful, who knew how to insure her a gracious reception at her return. if this was the case, it is certain the ambassadress was not ill chosen, since being young and handsome, she had all the necessary qualifications to succeed in a negotiation. book iv [1731-1732] let any one judge my surprise and grief at not finding her on my arrival. i now felt regret at having abandoned m. le maitre, and my uneasiness increased when i learned the misfortunes that had befallen him. his box of music, containing all his fortune, that precious box, preserved with so much care and fatigue, had been seized on at lyons by means of count dortan, who had received information from the chapter of our having absconded with it. in vain did le maitre reclaim his property, his means of existence, the labor of his life; his right to the music in question was at least subject to litigation, but even that liberty was not allowed him, the affair being instantly decided on the principle of superior strength. thus poor le maitre lost the fruit of his talents, the labor of his youth, and principal dependence for the support of old age. nothing was wanting to render the news i had received truly afflicting, but i was at an age when even the greatest calamities are to be sustained; accordingly i soon found consolation. i expected shortly to hear news of madam de warrens, though i was ignorant of the address, and she knew nothing of my return. as to my desertion of le maitre (all things considered) i did not find it so very culpable. i had been serviceable to him in his retreat; it was not in my power to give him any further assistance. had i remained with him in france it would not have cured his complaint. i could not have saved his music, and should only have doubled his expense: in this point of view i then saw my conduct; i see it otherwise now. it frequently happens that a villainous action does not torment us at the instant we commit it, but on recollection, and sometimes even after a number of years have elapsed, for the remembrance of crimes is not to be extinguished. the only means i had to obtain news of madam de warrens was to remain at annecy. where should i seek her at paris? or how bear the expense of such a journey? sooner or later, there was no place where i could be so certain to hear of her as that i was now at; this consideration determined me to remain there, though my conduct was but indifferent. i did not go to the bishop, who had already befriended me, and might continue to do so: my patroness was not present, and i feared his reprimands on the subject of our flight; neither did i go to the seminary; m. gros was no longer there; in short, i went to none of my acquaintance. i would gladly have visited the intendant's lady, but did not dare; i did worse, i sought out m. venture, whom (notwithstanding my enthusiasm) i had never thought of since my departure. i found him quite gay, in high spirits, and the universal favorite of the ladies of annecy. this success completed my infatuation; i saw nothing but m. venture; he almost made me forget even madam de warrens. that i might profit more at ease by his instructions and example, i proposed to share his lodging, to which he readily consented. it was at a shoemaker's; a pleasant, jovial fellow, who, in his country dialect, called his wife nothing but trollop; an appellation which she certainly merited. venture took care to augment their differences, though under an appearance of doing the direct contrary, throwing out in a distant manner, and provincial accent, hints that produced the utmost effect, and furnished such scenes as were sufficient to make any one die with laughter. thus the mornings passed without our thinking of them; at two or three o'clock we took some refreshment. venture then went to his various engagements, where he supped, while i walked alone, meditating on his great merit, coveting and admiring his rare talents, and cursing my own unlucky stars, that did not call me to so happy a life. how little did i then know of myself! mine had been a hundred times more delightful, had i not been such a fool, or known better how to enjoy it. madam de warrens had taken no one with her but anet: merceret, her chambermaid, whom i have before mentioned, still remained in the house. merceret was something older than myself, not pretty, but tolerably agreeable; good-natured, free from malice, having no fault to my knowledge but being a little refractory with her mistress. i often went to see her; she was an old acquaintance, who recalled to my remembrance one more beloved, and this made her dear to me. she had several friends, and among others one mademoiselle giraud, a genevese, who, for the punishment of my sins, took it in her head to have an inclination for me, always pressing merceret, when she returned her visits, to bring me with her. as i liked merceret, i felt no disinclination to accompany her; besides, i met there with other young people whose company pleased me. for mademoiselle giraud, who offered every kind of enticement, nothing could increase the aversion i had for her. when she drew near me, with her dried black snout, smeared with spanish snuff, it was with the utmost difficulty that i could refrain from expressing my distaste; but, being pleased with her visitors, i took patience. among these were two girls who (either to pay their court to mademoiselle giraud or myself) paid me every possible attention. i conceived this to be only friendship; but have since thought it depended only on myself to have discovered something more, though i did not even think of it at the time. there was another reason for my stupidity. seamstresses, chambermaids, or milliners, never tempted me; i sighed for ladies! every one has his peculiar taste, this has ever been mine; being in this particular of a different opinion from horace. yet it is not vanity of riches or rank that attracts me; it is a well-preserved complexion, fine hands, elegance of ornaments, an air of delicacy and neatness throughout the whole person: more in taste, in the manner of expressing themselves, a finer or better made gown, a well-turned ankle, small foot, ribbons, lace, and well-dressed hair: i even prefer those who have less natural beauty, provided they are elegantly decorated. i freely confess this preference is very ridiculous; yet my heart gives in to it spite of my understanding. well, even this advantage presented itself, and it only depended on my own resolution to have seized the opportunity. how do i love, from time to time, to return to those moments of my youth, which were so charmingly delightful; so short, so scarce, and enjoyed at so cheap a rate!how fondly do i wish to dwell on them! even yet the remembrance of these scenes warms my heart with a chaste rapture, which appears necessary to reanimate my drooping courage, and enable me to sustain the weariness of my latter days. the appearance of aurora seemed so delightful one morning that, putting on my clothes, i hastened into the country, to see the rising of the sun. i enjoyed that pleasure in its utmost extent; it was one week after midsummer; the earth was covered with verdure and flowers, the nightingales, whose soft warblings were almost concluded, seemed to vie with each other, and in concert with birds of various kinds to bid adieu to spring, and hail the approach of a beautiful summer's day: one of those lovely days that are no longer to be enjoyed at my age, and which have never been seen on the melancholy soil i now inhabit. i had rambled insensibly, to a considerable distance the townthe heat augmentedi was walking in the shade along a valley, by the side of a brook, i heard behind me the step of horses, and the voice of some females who, though they seemed embarrassed, did not laugh the less heartily on that account. i turn round, hear myself called by name, and approaching, find two young people of my acquaintance, excellent horsewomen, could not make their horses cross the rivulet. having been sent from that country for some youthful folly, had imitated madam de warrens, at whose house i had sometimes seen her; but not having, like her, a pension, she had been fortunate in this attachment to mademoiselle galley, who had prevailed on her mother to engage her young friend as a companion, till she could be otherwise provided for. mademoiselle galley was one year younger than her friend, handsomer, more delicate, more ingenious, and, to complete all, extremely well made. they loved each other tenderly, and the good disposition of both could not fail to render their union durable, if some lover did not derange it. they informed me they were going to toune, an old castle belonging to madam galley, and implored my assistance to make their horses cross the stream, not being able to compass it themselves. i would have given each a cut or two with the whip, but they feared i might be kicked, and themselves thrown; i therefore had recourse to another expedient, i took hold of mademoiselle galley's horse and led him through the brook, the water reaching half-way up my legs. the other followed without any difficulty. this done, i would have paid my compliments to the ladies, and walked off like a great booby as i was, but after whispering escape thus; you have got wet in our service, and we ought in conscience to take care and dry you. if you please you must go with us, you are now our prisoner." my heart began to beati looked at mademoiselle galley"yes, yes," added she, laughing at my fearful look, "our prisoner of war; come, get up behind her, we shall give a good account of you." "but, mademoiselle," continued i, "i have not the honor to be acquainted with your mother; what will she say on my toune, we are alone, we shall return at night, and you shall come back with us." the stroke of electricity has not a more instantaneous effect than trembled with joy, and when it became necessary to clasp her in order to hold myself on, my heart beat so violently that she perceived it, and told me hers beat also from a fear of falling. in my present posture, i might naturally have considered this an invitation to satisfy myself of the truth of her assertion, yet i did not dare, and during the whole way my arms served as a girdle (a very close one. i must confess), without being a moment displaced. some women that may read this would be for giving me a box on the ear, and, truly, i deserved it. the gayety of the journey, and the chat of these girls, so enlivened me, that during the whole time we passed together we never ceased talking a moment. they had set me so thoroughly at ease, that my tongue spoke as fast as my eyes, though not exactly the same things. some minutes, indeed, when i was left alone with either, the conversation became a little embarrassed, but neither of them was absent long enough to allow time for explaining the cause. arrived at toune, and myself well dried, we breakfasted together; after which it was necessary to settle the important business of preparing dinner. the young ladies cooked, kissing from time to time the farmer's children, while the poor scullion looked on grumbling. provisions had been sent for from town, and there was everything necessary for a good dinner, but unhappily they had forgotten wine; this forgetfulness was by no means astonishing in girls who seldom drank any, but i was sorry for the omission, as i had reckoned on its help, thinking it might add to my confidence. they were sorry likewise, and perhaps from the same motive; though i had no reason to say this, for their lively and charming gayety was innocence itself; besides, there were two of them, what could they expect from me? they went everywhere about the neighborhood to seek for wine, but none could be procured, so pure and sober are the peasants in those parts. as they were expressing their concern, i begged them not to give themselves any uneasiness on my account, for while with them i had no occasion for wine to intoxicate me. this was the only gallantry i ventured at during the whole of the day, and i believe the sly rogues saw well enough that i said nothing but the truth. we dined in the kitchen: the two friends were seated on the benches, one on each side the long table, and their guest at the end, between them, on a three-legged stool. what a dinner! how charming the remembrance! while we can enjoy, at so small an expense, such pure, such true delights, why should we be solicitous for others? never did those petite soupers, so celebrated in paris, equal this; i do not only say for real pleasure and gayety, but even for sensuality. after dinner, we were economical; instead of drinking the coffee we had reserved at breakfast, we kept it for an afternoon collation, with cream, and some cakes they had brought with them. to keep our appetites in play, we went into the orchard, meaning to finish our dessert with cherries. i got into a tree, throwing them down bunches, from which they returned the stones through the branches. one time, mademoiselle galley, holding out her apron, and drawing back her head, stood so fair, and i took such good aim, that i dropped a bunch into her bosom. on her laughing, i said to myself, "why are not my lips cherries? how gladly would i throw them there likewise!" thus the day passed with the greatest freedom, yet with the utmost decency; not a single equivocal word, not one attempt at double-meaning pleasantry; yet this delicacy was not affected, we only performed the parts our hearts dictated; in short, my modesty, some will say my folly, was such that the greatest familiarity that escaped me was once kissing the hand of mademoiselle galley; it is true, the attending circumstances helped to stamp a value on this trifling favor; we were alone, i was embarrassed, her eyes were fixed on the ground, and my lips, instead of uttering words, were pressed on her hand, which she drew gently back after the salute, without any appearance of displeasure. i know not what i should have said to her, but her friend entered, and at that moment i thought her ugly. at length, they bethought themselves, that they must return to town before night; even now we had but just time to reach it by daylight; and we hastened our departure in the same order we came. had i pleased myself, i should certainly have reversed this order, for the glance of mademoiselle galley had reached my heart, but i dared not mention it, and the proposal could not reasonably come from her. on the way, we expressed our sorrow that the day was over, but far from complaining of the shortness of its duration, we were conscious of having prolonged it by every possible amusement. i quitted them in nearly the same spot where i had taken them up. with what regret did we part! with what pleasure did we form projects to renew our meeting! delightful hours, which we passed innocently together, ye were worth ages of familiarity! the sweet remembrance of this day cost those amiable girls nothing; the tender union which reigned among us equaled more lively pleasure, with which it could not have existed. we loved each other without shame or mystery, and wished to continue our reciprocal affection. there is a species of enjoyment connected with innocence of manners which is superior to any other, because it has no interval; for myself, the remembrance of such a day touches me nearer, delights me more, and returns with greater rapture to my heart, than any other pleasures i ever tasted. i hardly knew what i wished with those charming girls. i do not say, that had the arrangement been in my power, i should have divided my heart between them; i certainly felt some degree of preference: though i should have been happy to have had mademoiselle better as a confidante; be that as it may, i felt on leaving them as though i could not live without either. who would have thought that i should never see them more; and that here our ephemeral amours must end? those who read this will not fail to laugh at my gallantries, and remark, that after very promising preliminaries, my most forward adventures concluded by a kiss of the hand: yet be not mistaken, reader, in your estimate of my enjoyments; i have, perhaps, tasted more real pleasure in my amours, which concluded by a kiss of the hand, than you will ever have in yours, which, at least, begin there. venture, who had gone to bed late the night before, came in soon after me. i did not now see him with my usual satisfaction, and took care not to inform him how i had passed the day. the ladies had spoken of him slightingly, and appeared discontented at finding me in such bad hands; this hurt him in my esteem; besides, whatever diverted my ideas from them was at this time disagreeable. however, he soon brought me back to him and myself, by speaking of the situation of my affairs, which was too critical to last; for, though i spent very little, my slender finances were almost exhausted. i was without resource; no news of madam de warrens; not knowing what would become of me, and feeling a cruel pang at heart to see the friend of mademoiselle galley reduced to beggary. i now learned from venture that he had spoken of me to the judge major, and would take me next day to dine with him; that he was a man who by means of his friends might render me essential service. in other respects he was a desirable acquaintance, being a man of wit and letters, of agreeable conversation, one who possessed talents and loved them in others. after this discourse (mingling the most serious concerns with the most trifling frivolity) he showed me a pretty couplet, which came from paris, on an air in one of mouret's operas, which was then playing. monsieur simon (the judge major) was so pleased with this couplet, that he determined to make another in answer to it, on the same air. he had desired venture to write one, and he wished me to make a third, that, as he expressed it, they might see couplets start up next day like incidents in a comic romance. in the night (not being able to sleep) i composed a couplet, as my first essay in poetry. it was passable; better, or at least composed with more taste, than it would have been the preceding night, the subject being tenderness, to which my heart was now entirely disposed. in the morning i showed my performance to venture, who, being pleased with the couplet, put it in his pocket, without informing me whether he had made his. we dined with m. simon, who treated us very politely. the conversation was agreeable; indeed it could not be otherwise between two men of natural good sense, improved by reading. for me, i acted my proper part, which was to listen without attempting to join in the conversation. neither of them mentioned the couplet, nor do i know that it ever passed for mine. m. simon appeared satisfied with my behavior; indeed, it was almost all he saw of me in this interview. we had often met at madam de warrens', but he had never paid much attention to me; it is from this dinner, therefore, that i date our acquaintance, which, though of no use in regard to the object i then had in view, was afterwards productive of advantages which make me recollect it with pleasure. i should be wrong not to give some account of his person, since from his office of magistrate, and the reputation of wit on which he piqued himself, no idea could be formed of it. the judge major, simon, certainly was not two feet high; his legs spare, straight, and tolerably long, would have added something to his stature had they been vertical, but they stood in the direction of an open pair of compasses. his body was not only short, but thin, being in every respect of most inconceivable smallnesswhen naked he must have appeared like a grasshopper. his head was of the common size, to which appertained a well-formed face, a noble look, and tolerably fine eyes; in short, it appeared a borrowed head, stuck on a miserable stump. he might very well have dispensed with dress, for his large wig alone covered him from head to foot. he had two voices, perfectly different, which intermingled perpetually in his conversation, forming at first a diverting, but afterwards a very disagreeable contrast. one grave and sonorous, was, if i may hazard the expression, the voice of his head: the other, clear, sharp, and piercing, the voice of his body. when he paid particular attention, and spoke leisurely, so as to preserve his breath, he could continue his deep tone; but if he was the least animated, or attempted a lively accent, his voice sounded like the whistling of a key, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he could return to the bass. with the figure i have just described, and which is by no means overcharged, m. simon was gallant, ever entertaining the ladies with soft tales, and carrying the decoration of his person even to foppery. willing to make use of every advantage he, during the morning, gave audience in bed, for when a handsome head was discovered on the pillow no one could have imagined what belonged to it. this circumstance gave birth to scenes, which i am certain are yet remembered by all annecy. one morning, when he expected to give audience in bed, or rather on the bed, having on a handsome night-cap ornamented with rose-colored ribbon, a countryman arriving knocked at the door; the maid happened to be out; the judge, therefore, hearing the knock repeated, cried "come in," and, as he spoke rather loud, it was in his shrill tone. the man entered, looked about, endeavoring to discover whence the female voice proceeded, and at length seeing a handsome head-dress set off with ribbons, was about to leave the room, making the supposed lady a hundred apologies. m. simon, in a rage, screamed the more; and the countryman, yet more confirmed in his opinion, conceiving himself to be insulted, began railing in his turn, saying that, "apparently, she was nothing better than a common street-walker, and that the judge major should be ashamed of setting such ill examples." the enraged magistrate, having no other weapon than the jorden under his bed, was just going to throw it at the poor fellow's head as his servant returned. this dwarf, ill-used by nature as to his person, was recompensed by possessing an understanding naturally agreeable, and which he had been careful to cultivate. though he was esteemed a good lawyer, he did not like his profession, delighting more in the finer parts of literature, which he studied with success: above all, he possessed that superficial brilliancy, the art of pleasing in conversation, even with the ladies. he knew by heart a number of little stories, which he perfectly well knew how to make the most of; relating with an air of secrecy, and as an anecdote of yesterday, what happened sixty years before. he understood music, and could sing agreeably; in short, for a magistrate, he had many pleasing talents. by flattering the ladies of annecy, he became fashionable among them, appearing continually in their train. he even pretended to favors, at which they were much amused. a madam d'epigny used to say "the greatest favor he could aspire to, was to kiss a lady on her knees." as he was well read, and spoke fluently, his conversation was both amusing and instructive. when i afterwards took a taste for study, i cultivated his acquaintance, and found my account in it: when at chambery, i frequently went from thence to see him. his praises increased my emulation, to which he added some good advice respecting the prosecution of my studies, which i found useful. unhappily, this weakly body contained a very feeling soul. some years after, he was chagrined by i know not what unlucky affair, but it cost him his life. this was really unfortunate, for he was a good little man, whom at a first acquaintance one laughed at, but afterwards loved. though our situations in life were very little connected with each other, as i received some useful lessons from him, i thought gratitude demanded that i should dedicate a few sentences to his memory. as soon as i found myself at liberty, i ran into the street where mademoiselle galley lived, flattering myself that i should see some one go in or out, or at least open a window, but i was mistaken, not even a cat appeared, the house remaining as close all the time as if it had been uninhabited. the street was small and lonely, any one loitering about was, consequently, more likely to be noticed; from time to time people passed in and out of the neighborhood; i was much embarrassed, thinking my person might be known, and the cause that brought me there conjectured; this idea tortured me, for i have ever preferred the honor and happiness of those i love to my own pleasures. at length, weary of playing the spanish lover, and having no guitar, i determined to write to mademoiselle de graffenried. i should have preferred writing to her friend, but did not dare take that liberty, as it appeared more proper to begin with her to whom i owed the acquaintance, and with whom i was most familiar. having written my letter, i took it to mademoiselle giraud, as the young ladies had agreed at parting, they having furnished me with this expedient. mademoiselle giraud was a quilter, and sometimes worked at madam galley's, which procured her free admission to the house. i must confess, i was not thoroughly satisfied with this messenger, but was cautious of starting difficulties, fearing that if i objected to her no other might be named, and it was impossible to intimate that she had an inclination to me herself. i even felt humiliated that she should think i could imagine her of the same sex as those young ladies: in a word, i accepted her agency rather than none, and availed myself of it at all events. at the very first word, giraud discovered me. i must own this was not a difficult matter, for if sending a letter to young girls had not spoken sufficiently plain, my foolish embarrassed air would have betrayed me. it will easily be supposed that the employment gave her little satisfaction, she undertook it, however, and performed it faithfully. the next morning i ran to her house and found an answer ready for me. how did i hurry away that i might have an opportunity to read and kiss it alone! though this need not be told, but the plan adopted by mademoiselle giraud (and in which i found more delicacy and moderation than i had expected) should. she had sense enough to conclude, that her thirty-seven years, hare's eyes, daubed nose, shrill voice, and black skin, stood no chance against two elegant young girls, in all the height and bloom of beauty; she resolved, therefore, neither to betray nor assist them, choosing rather to lose me entirely than entertain me for them. as merceret had not heard from her mistress for some time, she thought of returning to fribourg, and the persuasions of giraud determined her; nay more, she intimated it was proper some one should conduct her to her father's, and proposed me. as i happened to be agreeable to little merceret, she approved the idea, and the same day they mentioned it to me as a fixed point. finding nothing displeasing in the manner they had disposed of me, i consented, thinking it could not be above a week's journey at most; but giraud, who had arranged the whole affair, thought otherwise. it was necessary to avow the state of my finances, and the conclusion was, that merceret should defray my expenses; but to retrench on one hand what was expended on the older, i advised that her little baggage should be sent on before, and that we should proceed by easy journeys on foot. i am sorry to have so many girls in love with me, but as there is nothing to be very vain of in the success of these amours, i think i may tell the truth without scruple. merceret, younger and less artful than giraud, never made me so many advances, but she imitated my manners, my actions repeated my words, and showed me all those little attentions i ought to have had for her. being very timorous, she took great care that we should both sleep in the same chamber; a circumstance that usually produces some consequences between a lad of twenty and a girl of twenty-five. for once, however, it went no further; my simplicity being such, that though merceret was by no means a disagreeable girl, an idea of gallantry never entered my head, and even if it had, i was too great a novice to have profited by it. i could not imagine how two young persons could bring themselves to sleep together, thinking that such familiarity must require an age of preparation. if poor merceret paid my expenses in hopes of any return, she was terribly cheated, for we arrived at fribourg exactly as we had quitted annecy. i passed through geneva without visiting any one. while going over the bridges, i found myself so affected that i could scarcely proceed. never could i see the walls of that city, never could i enter it, without feeling my heart sink from excess of tenderness, at the same time that the image of liberty elevated my soul. the ideas of equality, union, and gentleness of manners, touched me even to tears, and inspired me with a lively regret at having forfeited all these advantages. what an error was i in! but yet how natural! i imagined i saw all this in my native country, because i bore it in my heart. it was necessary to pass through nion: could i do this without seeing my good father? had i resolved on doing so, i must afterwards have died with regret. i left merceret at the inn, and ventured to his house. how wrong was i to fear him! on seeing me, his soul gave way to the parental tenderness with which it was filled. what tears were mingled with our embraces! he thought i was returned to him: i related my history, and informed him of my resolution. he opposed it feebly, mentioning the dangers to which i exposed myself, and telling me the shortest follies were best, but did not attempt to keep me by force, in which particular i think he acted right; but it is certain he did not do everything in his power to retain me, even by fair means. whether after the step i had taken, he thought i ought not to return, or was puzzled at my age to know what to do with mei have since found that he conceived a very unjust opinion of my traveling companion. my step-mother, a good woman, a little coaxingly put on an appearance of wishing me to stay and sup; i did not, however, comply, but told them i proposed remaining longer with them on my return; leaving as a deposit my little packet, that had come by water, and would have been an incumbrance, had i taken it with me. i continued my journey the next morning, well satisfied that i had seen my father, and had taken courage to do my duty. we arrived without any accident at fribourg. towards the conclusion of the journey, the politeness of mademoiselle merceret rather diminished, and, after our arrival, she treated me even with coldness. her father, who was not in the best circumstances, did not show me much attention, and i was obliged to lodge at an ale-house. i went to see them the next morning, and received an invitation to dine there, which i accepted. we separated without tears at night; i returned to my paltry lodging, and departed the second day after my arrival, almost without knowing whither to go to. this was a circumstance of my life in which providence offered me precisely what was necessary to make my days pass happily. merceret was a good girl, neither witty, handsome, nor ugly; not very lively, but tolerably rational, except while under the influence of some little humors, which usually evaporated in tears, without any violent outbreak of temper. she had a real inclination for me; i might have married her without difficulty, and followed her father's business. my taste for music would have made me love her; i should have settled at fribourg, a small town, not pretty, but inhabited by very worthy peoplei should certainly have missed great pleasures, but should have lived in peace to my last hour, and i must know best what i should have gained by such a step. i did not return to nion, but to lausanne, wishing to gratify myself with a view of that beautiful lake which is seen there in its utmost extent. the greater part of my secret motives have not been so reasonable. distant expectation has rarely strength enough to influence my actions; the uncertainty of the future ever making me regard projects whose execution requires a length of time as deceitful lures. i give in to visionary scenes of hope as well as others, provided they cost nothing, but if attended with any trouble, i have done with them. the smallest, the most trifling pleasure that is conveniently within my reach, tempts me more than all the joys of paradise. i must except, however, those pleasures which are necessarily followed by pain; i only love those enjoyments which are unadulterated, which can never be the case where we are conscious they must be followed by repentance. it was necessary i should arrive at some place, and the nearest was best; for having lost my way on the road, i found myself in the evening at moudon, where i spent all that remained of my little stock except ten creuzers, which served to purchase my next day's dinner. arriving in the evening at lausanne, i went into an ale-house, without a penny in my pocket to pay for my lodging, or knowing what would become of me. i found myself extremely hungrysetting, therefore, a good face on the matter, i ordered supper, made my meal, went to bed without thought and slept with great composure. in the morning, having breakfasted and reckoned with my host, i offered to leave my waistcoat in pledge for seven batz, which was the amount of my expenses. the honest man refused this, saying, thank heaven, he had never stripped any one, and would not now begin for seven batz; adding i should keep my waistcoat and pay him when i could. i was affected with this unexpected kindness, but felt it less than i ought to have done, or have since experienced on the remembrance of it. i did not fail sending him his money, with thanks, by one i could depend on. fifteen years after, passing lausanne, on my return from italy, i felt a sensible regret at having forgotten the name of the landlord and house. i wished to see him, and should have felt real pleasure in recalling to his memory that worthy action. services, which doubtless have been much more important, but rendered with ostentation, have not appeared to me so worthy of gratitude as the simple unaffected humanity of this honest man. as i approached lausanne, i thought of my distress, and the means of extricating myself, without appearing in want to my step-mother. i compared myself, in this walking pilgrimage, to my friend venture, on his arrival at annecy, and was so warmed with the ideal that without recollecting that i had neither his gentility nor his talents, i determined to act the part of little venture at lausanne, to teach music, which i did not understand, and say i came from paris, where i had never been. in consequence of this noble project (as there was no company where i could introduce myself without expense, and not choosing to venture among professional people), i inquired for some little inn, where i could lodge cheap, and was directed to one named perrotet, who took in boarders. this perrotet, who was one of the best men in the world, received me very kindly, and after having heard my feigned story and profession, promised to speak of me, and endeavored to procure me scholars, saying he could not expect any money till i had earned it. his price for board, though moderate in itself, was a great deal to me; he advised me, therefore, to begin with half board, which consisted of good soup only for dinner, but a plentiful supper at night. i closed with this proposition, and the poor perrotet trusted me with great cheerfulness, sparing, meantime, no trouble to be useful to me. having found so many good people in my youth, why do i find so few in my age? is their race extinct? no; but i do not seek them in the same situation i did formerly, among the commonalty, where violent passions predominate only at intervals, and where nature speaks her genuine sentiments. in more elevated stations they are entirely smothered, and under the mask of sentiment, only interest or vanity is heard. having written to my father from lausanne, he sent my packet and some excellent advice, of which i should have profited better. i have already observed that i have moments of inconceivable delirium, in which i am entirely out of myself. the adventure i am about to relate is an instance of this: to comprehend how completely my brain was turned, and to what degree i had venturised (if i may be allowed the expression), the many extravagancies i ran into at the same time should be considered. behold me, then, a singing master, without knowing how to note a common song; for if the five or six months passed with le maitre had improved me, they could not be supposed sufficient to qualify me for such an undertaking; besides, being taught by a master was enough (as i have before observed) to make me learn ill. being a parisian from geneva, and a catholic in a protestant country, i thought i should change my name with my an y religion and country. he called himself venture de villeneuve. i changed, by anagram, the name rousseau into that of vaussore, calling myself monsieur vaussore de villeneuve. venture was a good composer, though he had not said so; without knowing anything of the art, i boasted of my skill to every one. this was not all: being presented to monsieur de freytorens, professor of law, who loved music, and who gave concerts at his house, nothing would do but i must give him a proof of my talents, and accordingly i set about composing a piece for his concerts, as boldly as if i had really understood the science. i tacked a pretty minuet to the end of it, that was played about the streets, and which many may remember from these words, so well known at that time: quelle caprice! quelle injustice! quoi! ta clarice trahiriait tes feux! etc. venture had taught me this air with the bass, set to other words, by the help of which i had retained it: thus at the end of my composition, i put this minuet and his bass, suppressing the words, and uttering it for my own as confidently as if i had been speaking to the inhabitants of the moon. they assemble to perform my piece; i explain to each the movement, taste of execution, and references to his parti was fully occupied. they were five or six minutes preparing, which were for me so many ages: at length, everything is adjusted, myself in a conspicuous situation, a fine roll of paper in my hand, gravely preparing to beat time. i gave four or five strokes with my paper, attending with "attention!" they beginno, never since french operas existed was there such a confused discord! the musicians could not keep from laughing; the audience opened their eyes wide and would like to shut their ears, but that was impossible. the musicians made merry and scraped their violins enough to burst your eardrums. i had the constancy to go through the performance, but large drops of perspiration were standing on my forehead, and it was only shame that prevented me from running away. i heard the assistants whisper to each other or rather to me: "it is pretty hard to stand!" poor jean-jacques, in this cruel moment you little thought, that one day, in the presence of the king of france and his whole court, your sounds should produce murmurs of surprise and applaud, and that lovely women in the boxes should tell each other in a whisper: "what charming music! what beautiful sounds!" next day, one of the musicians, named lutold, came to see me and was kind enough to congratulate me on my success. the profound conviction of my folly, shame, regret, and the state of despair to which i was reduced, with the impossibility of concealing the cruel agitation of my heart, made me open it to him; giving, therefore, a, loose to my tears, not content with owning my ignorance, i told all, conjuring him to secrecy; he kept his word, as every one will suppose. the same evening, all lausanne knew who i was, but what is remarkable, no one seemed to know, not even the good perrotet, who (notwithstanding what had happened) continued to lodge and board me. i led a melancholy life here; the consequences of such an essay had not rendered lausanne a very agreeable residence. scholars did not present themselves in crowds, not a single female, and no person of the city. i had only two or three great dunces, as stupid as i was ignorant, who fatigued me to death, and in my hands were not likely to edify much. at length, i was sent for to a house, where a little serpent of a girl amused herself by showing me a parcel of music that i could not read a note of, and which she had the malice to sing before her master, to teach him how it should be executed; for i was so unable to read an air at first sight, that in the charming concert i have just described, i could not possibly follow the execution a moment, or know whether they played truly what lay before them, and i myself had composed. in the midst of so many humiliating circumstances, i had the pleasing consolation, from time to time, of receiving letters from my two charming friends. i have ever found the utmost consolatory virtue in the fair; when in disgrace, nothing softens my affliction more than to be sensible that an amiable woman is interested for me. this correspondence ceased soon after, and was never renewed: indeed it was my own fault, for in changing situations i neglected sending my address, and forced by necessity to think perpetually of myself, i soon forgot them. it is a long time since i mentioned madam de warrens, but it should not be supposed i had forgotten her; never was she a moment absent from my thoughts. i anxiously wished to find her, not merely because she was necessary to my subsistence, but because she was infinitely more necessary to my heart. my attachment to her (though lively and tender, as it really was) did not prevent my loving others, but then it was not in the same manner. all equally claimed my tenderness for their charms, but it was those charms alone i loved, my passion would not have survived them, while madam de warrens might have become old or ugly without my loving her the less tenderly. my heart had entirely transmitted to herself the homage it first paid to her beauty, and whatever change she might experience, while she remained herself, my sentiments could not change. i was sensible how much gratitude i owed to her, but in truth, i never thought of it, and whether she served me or not, it would ever have been the same thing. i loved her neither from duty, interest, nor convenience; i loved her because i was born to love her. during my attachment to another, i own this affection was in some measure deranged; i did not think so frequently of her, but still with the same pleasure, and never, in love or otherwise, did i think of her without feeling that i could expect no true happiness in life while in a state of separation. though in so long a time i had received no news from madam de warrens, i never imagined i had entirely lost her, or that she could have forgotten me. i said to myself, she will know sooner or later that i am wandering about, and will find some means to inform me of her situation: i am certain i shall find her. in the meantime, it was a pleasure to live in her native country, to walk in the streets where she had walked, and before the houses that she had lived in; yet all this was the work of conjecture, for one of my foolish peculiarities was, not daring to inquire after her, or even pronounce her name without the most absolute necessity. it seemed in speaking of her that i declared all i felt, that my lips revealed the secrets of my heart, and in some degree injured the object of my affection. i believe fear was likewise mingled with this idea; i dreaded to hear ill of her. her management had been much spoken of, and some little of her conduct in other respects; fearing, therefore, that something might be said which i did not wish to hear, i preferred being silent on the subject. as my scholars did not take up much of my time, and the town where she was born was not above four leagues from lausanne, i made it a walk of three or four days; during which time a most pleasant emotion never left me. a view of the lake of geneva and its admirable banks, had ever, in my idea, a particular attraction which i cannot describe; not arising merely from the beauty of the prospect, but something else, i know not why, more interesting, which affects and softens me. every time i have approached the vaudois country i have experienced an impression composed of the remembrance of madam de warrens, who was born there; of my father, who lived there; of miss vulson, who had been my first love, and of several pleasant journeys i had made there in my childhood, mingled with some nameless charm, more powerfully attractive than all the rest. when that ardent desire for a life of happiness and tranquility (which ever follows me, and for which i was born) inflames my mind, 'tis ever to the country of vaud, near the lake, in those charming plains, that imagination leads me. an orchard on the banks of that lake, and no other, is absolutely necessary; a firm friend, an amiable woman, a cow, and a little boat; nor could i enjoy perfect happiness on earth without these concomitants. i laugh at the simplicity with which i have several times gone into that country for the sole purpose of seeking this imaginary happiness when i was ever surprised to find the inhabitants, particularly the women, of a quite different disposition to what i sought. how strange did this appear to me! the country and people who inhabit it, were never, in my idea, formed for each other. walking along these beautiful banks, on my way to vevay, i gave myself up to the soft melancholy; my heart rushed with ardor into a thousand innocent felicities; melting to tenderness, i sighed and wept like a child. how often, stopping to weep more at my ease, and seated on a large stone, did i amuse myself with seeing my tears drop into the water. on my arrival at vevay, i lodged at the key, and during the two days i remained there, without any acquaintance, conceived a love for that city, which has followed me through all my travels, and was finally the cause that i fixed on this spot, in the novel i afterwards wrote, for the residence of my hero and heroines. i would say to any one who has taste and feeling, go to vevay, visit the surrounding country, examine the prospects, go on the lake and then say, whether nature has not designed this country for a julia, a clara, and a st. preux; but do not seek them there. i now return to my story. giving myself out for a catholic, i followed without mystery or scruple the religion i had embraced. on a sunday, if the weather was fine, i went to hear mass at assans, a place two leagues distant from lausanne, and generally in company with other catholics, particularly a parisian embroiderer, whose name i have forgotten. not such a parisian as myself, but a real native of paris, an arch-parisian from his maker, yet honest as a peasant. he loved his country so well, that he would not doubt my being his countrymen, for fear he should not have so much occasion to speak of it. the lieutenant-governor, m. de crouzas, had a gardener, who was likewise from paris, but not so complaisant; he thought the glory of his country concerned, when any one claimed that honor who was not really entitled to it; he put questions to me, therefore, with an air and tone, as if certain to detect me in a falsehood, and once, smiling malignantly, asked what was remarkable in the marcheneuf? it may be supposed i asked the question; but i have since passed twenty years at paris, and certainly know that city, yet was the same question repeated at this day, i should be equally embarrassed to answer it, and from this embarrassment it might be concluded i had never been there: thus, even when we meet with truths, we are subject to build our opinions on circumstances, which may easily deceive us. i formed no ideas, while at lausanne, that were worth recollecting, nor can i say exactly how long i remained there; i only know that not finding sufficient to subsist on, i went from thence to neufchatel, where i passed the winter. here i succeeded better, i got some scholars, and saved enough to pay my good friend perrotet, who had faithfully sent my baggage, though at that time i was considerably in his debt. by continuing to teach music, i insensibly gained some knowledge of it. the life i led was sufficiently agreeable, and any reasonable man might have been satisfied, but my unsettled heart demanded something more. on sundays, or whenever i had leisure, i wandered, sighing and thoughtful, about the adjoining woods, and when once out of the city never returned before night. one day, being at boudry, i went to dine at a public-house, where i saw a man with a long beard, dressed in a violet-colored grecian habit, with a fur cap, and whose air and manner were rather noble. this person found some difficulty in making himself understood, speaking only an unintelligible jargon, which bore more resemblance to italian than any other language. i understood almost all he said, and i was the only person present who could do so, for he was obliged to make his request known to the landlord and others about him by signs. on my speaking a few words in italian, which he perfectly understood, he got up and embraced me with rapture; a connection was soon formed, and from that moment, i became his interpreter. his dinner was excellent, mine rather worse than indifferent; he gave me an invitation to dine with him, which i accepted without much ceremony. drinking and chatting soon rendered us familiar, and by the end of the repast we had all the disposition in the world to become inseparable companions. he informed me he was a greek prelate, and archimandrite of jerusalem; that he had undertaken to make a gathering in europe for the reestablishment of the holy sepulcher, and showed me some very fine patents from the czarina, the emperor, and several other sovereigns. he was tolerably content with what he had collected hitherto, though he had experienced inconceivable difficulties in germany; for not understanding a word of german, latin, or french, he had been obliged to have recourse to his greek, turkish, and the lingua franca, which did not procure him much in the country he was traveling through; his proposal, therefore, to me was, that i should accompany him in the quality of secretary and interpreter. in spite of my violet-colored coat, which accorded well enough with the proposed employment, he guessed from my meager appearance, that i should easily be gained; and he was not mistaken. the bargain was soon made, i demanded nothing, and he promised liberally; thus, without any security or knowledge of the person i was about to serve, i gave myself up entirely to his conduct, and the next day behold me on an expedition to jerusalem. we began our expedition unsuccessfully by the canton of fribourg. episcopal dignity would not suffer him to play the beggar, or solicit help from private individuals; but we presented his commission to the senate, who gave him a trifling sum. from thence we went to berne, where we lodged at the falcon, then a good inn, and frequented by respectable company; the public table being well supplied and numerously attended. i had fared indifferently so long, that i was glad to make myself amends, therefore took care to profit by the present occasion. my lord, the archimandrite, was himself an excellent companion, loved good cheer, was gay, spoke well for those who understood him, and knew perfectly well how to make the most of his grecian erudition. one day, at dessert, while cracking nuts, he cut his finger pretty deeply, and as it bled freely showed it to the company, saying with a laugh, "mirate, signori; questo e sangue pelasgo." at berne, i was not useless to him, nor was my performance so bad as i had feared: i certainly spoke better and with more confidence than i could have done for myself. matters were not conducted here with the same simplicity as at fribourg; long and frequent conferences were necessary with the premiers of the state, and the examination of his titles was not the work of a day; at length, everything being adjusted, he was admitted to an audience by the senate; i entered with him as interpreter, and was ordered to speak. i expected nothing less, for it never entered my mind, that after such long and frequent conferences with the members, it was necessary to address the assembly collectively, as if nothing had been said. judge my embarrassment!a man so bashful to speak, not only in public, but before the whole of the senate of berne! to speak impromptu, without a single moment for recollection; it was enough to annihilate mei was not even intimidated. i described distinctly and clearly the commission of the archimandrite; extolled the piety of those princes who had contributed, and to heighten that of their excellencies by emulation, added that less could not be expected from their well-known munificence; then, endeavored to prove that this good work was equally interesting to all christians, without distinction of sect; and concluded by promising the benediction of heaven to all those who took part in it. i will not say that my discourse was the cause of our success, but it was certainly well received; and on our quitting the archimandrite was gratified by a very genteel present, to which some very handsome compliments were added on the understanding of his secretary; these i had the agreeable office of interpreting, but could not take courage to render them literally. this was the only time in my life that i spoke in public, and before a sovereign; and the only time, perhaps, that i spoke boldly and well. what difference in the disposition of the same person. three years ago, having been to see my old friend, m. roguin, at yverdon, i received a deputation to thank me for some books i had presented to the library of that city; the swiss are great speakers; these gentlemen, accordingly, made me a long harangue, which i thought myself obliged in honor to answer, but so embarrassed myself in the attempt, that my head became confused, i stopped short, and was laughed at. though naturally timid, i have sometimes acted with confidence in my youth, but never in my advanced age: the more i have seen of the world the less i have been able to adopt its manners. on leaving berne, we went to soleure; the archimandrite designing to reenter germany, and return through hungary or poland to his own country. this would have been a prodigious tour; but as the contents of his purse rather increased than diminished during his journey, he was in no haste to return. for me, who was almost as much pleased on horseback as on foot, i would have desired no better than to have traveled thus during my whole life; but it was preordained that my journey should soon end. the first thing we did after our arrival at soleure, was to pay our respects to the french ambassador there. unfortunately for my bishop, this chanced to be the marquis de bonac, who had been ambassador at the porte, and consequently was acquainted with every particular relative to the holy sepulcher. the archimandrite had an audience that lasted about a quarter of an hour, to which i was not admitted, as the ambassador spoke the lingua franca and italian at least as well as myself. on my grecian's retiring, i was prepared to follow him, but was detained; it was now my turn. having called myself a parisian, as such, i was under the jurisdiction of his excellency: he therefore asked me who i was? exhorting me to tell the truth; this i promised to do, but entreated a private audience, which was immediately granted. the ambassador took me to his closet, and shut the door; there, throwing myself at his feet, i kept my word, nor should i have said less, had i promised nothing, for a continual wish to unbosom myself, puts my heart perpetually upon my lips. after having disclosed myself without reserve to the musician lutold, there was no occasion to attempt acting the mysterious with the marquis de bonac, who was so well pleased with my little history, and the ingenuousness with which i had related it, that he led me to the ambassadress, and presented me, with an abridgment of my recital. madam de bonac received me kindly, saying, i must not be suffered to follow that greek monk. it was accordingly resolved that i should remain at their hotel till something better could be done for me. i wished to bid adieu to my poor archimandrite, for whom i had conceived an attachment, but was not permitted: they sent him word that i was to be detained there, and in quarter of an hour after, i saw my little bundle arrive. m. de la martiniere, secretary to the embassy, had in a manner the care of me; while following him to the chamber appropriated to my use, he said, "this apartment was occupied under the count de luc, by a celebrated man of the same name as yourself; it is in your power to succeed him in every respect, and cause it to be said hereafter, rousseau the first, rousseau the second." this similarity, which i did not then expect, would have been less flattering to my wishes could i have foreseen at what price i should one day purchase the distinction. what m. de la martiniere had said excited my curiosity; i read the works of the person whose chamber i occupied, and on the strength of the compliment that had been paid me (imagining i had a taste for poetry) made my first essay in a cantata in praise of madam de bonac. this inclination was not permanent, though from time to time i have composed tolerable verses. i think it is a good exercise to teach elegant turns of expression, and to write well in prose, but could never find attractions enough in french poetry to give entirely into it. m. de la martiniere wished to see my style, and asked me to write the detail i had before made the ambassador; accordingly i wrote him a long letter, which i have since been informed was preserved by m. de marianne, who had been long attached to the marquis de bonac, and has since succeeded m. de la martiniere as secretary to the embassy of m. de courteillies. the experience i began to acquire tended to moderate my romantic projects: for example, i did not fall in love with madam de bonac, but also felt i did not stand much chance of succeeding in the service of her husband. m. de la martiniere was already in the only place that could have satisfied my ambition, and m. de marianne in expectancy: thus my utmost hopes could only aspire to the office of under secretary, which did not infinitely tempt me; this was the reason that when consulted on the situation i should like to be placed in, i expressed a great desire to go to paris. the ambassador readily gave in to the idea, which at least tended to disembarrass him of me. m. de merveilleux interpreting secretary to the embassy, said, that his friend, m. godard, a swiss colonel, in the service of france, wanted a person to be with his nephew, who had entered very young into the service, and made no doubt that i should suit him. on this idea, so lightly formed, my departure was determined; and i, who saw a long journey to perform, with paris at the end of it, was enraptured with the project. they gave me several letters, a hundred livres to defray the expenses of my journey, accompanied with some good advice, and thus equipped i departed. i was a fortnight making this journey, which i may reckon among the happiest days of my life. i was young, in perfect health, with plenty of money, and the most brilliant hopes: add to this, i was on foot, and alone. it may appear strange i should mention the latter circumstance as advantageous, if my peculiarity of temper is not already familiar to the reader. i was continually occupied with a variety of pleasing chimeras, and never did the warmth of my imagination produce more magnificent ones. when offered an empty place in a carriage, or any person accosted me on the road, how vexed was i to see that fortune overthrown, whose edifice, while walking, i had taker, such pains to rear. for once, my ideas were all martial: i was going to live with a military man; nay, to become one, for it was concluded i should begin with being a cadet. i already fancied myself in regimentals, with a fine white feather nodding on my hat, and my heart was inflamed by the noble idea. i had some smattering of geometry and fortification; my uncle was an engineer; i was in a manner a soldier by inheritance. my short sight, indeed, presented some little obstacle, but did not by any means discourage me, as i reckoned to supply that defect by coolness and intrepidity. i had read, too, that marshal schomberg was remarkably short-sighted, and why might not marshal rousseau be the same? my imagination was so warm by these follies, that it presented nothing but troops, ramparts, gabions, batteries, and myself in the midst of fire and smoke, an eye-glass in hand, commanding with the utmost tranquility. notwithstanding, when the country presented a delightful prospect, when i saw charming groves and rivulets, the pleasing sight made me sigh with regret, and feel, in the midst of all this glory. that my heart was not formed for such havoc; and soon without knowing how, i found my thoughts wandering among my dear sheepfolds, renouncing forever the labors of mars. how much did paris disappoint the idea i had formed of it! the exterior decorations i had seen at turin, the beauty of the streets, the symmetry and regularity of the houses, contributed to this disappointment, since i concluded that paris must be infinitely superior. i had figured to myself a splendid city, beautiful as large, of the most commanding aspect, whose streets were ranges of magnificent palaces, composed of marble and gold. on entering the faubourg st. marceau, i saw nothing but dirty stinking streets, filthy black houses, an air of slovenliness and poverty, beggars, carters, butchers, cries of diet-drink and old hats. this struck me so forcibly, that all i have since seen of real magnificence in paris could never erase this first impression, which has ever given me a particular disgust to residing in that capital; and i may say, the whole time i remained there afterwards was employed in seeking resources which might enable me to live at a distance from it. this is the consequence of too lively imagination, which exaggerates even beyond the voice of fame, and ever expects more than is told. i had heard paris so flatteringly described, that i pictured it like the ancient babylon, which, perhaps, had i seen, i might have found equally faulty, and unlike that idea the account had conveyed. the same thing happened at the opera-house, to which i hastened the day after my arrival! i was sensible of the same deficiency at versailles! and some time after on viewing the sea. i am convinced this would ever be the consequence of a too flattering description of any object; for it is impossible for man, and difficult even for nature herself, to surpass the riches of my imagination. by the reception i met with from all those to whom my letters were addressed, i thought my fortune was certainly made. the person who received me the least kindly was m. de surbeck, to whom i had the warmest recommendation. he had retired from the service, and lived philosophically at bagneux, where i waited on him several times without his offering me even a glass of water. i was better received by madam de merveilleux, sister-in-law to the interpreter, and by his nephew, who was an officer in the guards. the mother and son not only received me kindly, but offered me the use of their table, which favor i frequently accepted during my stay at paris. madam de merveilleux appeared to have been handsome; her hair was of a fine black, which, according to the old mode, she wore curled on the temples. she still retained (what do not perish with a set of features) the beauties of an amiable mind. she appeared satisfied with mine, and did all she could to render me service; but no one seconded her endeavors, and i was presently undeceived in the great interest they had seemed to take in my affairs. i must, however, do the french nation the justice to say, they do not so exhaust themselves with protestations, as some have represented, and that those they make are usually sincere; but they have a manner of appearing interested in your affairs, which is more deceiving than words. the gross compliments of the swiss can only impose upon fools; the manners of the french are more seducing, and at the same time so simple, that you are persuaded they do not express all they mean to do for you, in order that you may be the more agreeably surprised. i will say more; they are not false in their protestations, being naturally zealous to oblige, humane, benevolent, and even (whatever may be said to the country) more sincere than any other nation; but they are too flighty: in effect they feel the sentiments they profess for you, but that sentiment flies off as instantaneously as it was formed. in speaking to you, their whole attention is employed on you alone, when absent you are forgotten. nothing is permanent in their hearts, all is the work of the moment. thus i was greatly flattered, but received little service. colonel godard, for whose nephew i was recommended, proved to be an avaricious old wretch, who, on seeing my distress (though he was immensely rich), wished to have my services for nothing, meaning to place me with his nephew, rather as a valet without wages than a tutor. he represented that as i was to be continually engaged with him, i should be excused from duty, and might live on my cadet's allowance; that is to say, on the pay of a soldier: hardly would he consent to give me a uniform, thinking the clothing of the army might serve. madam de merveilleux, provoked at his proposals, persuaded me not to accept them; her son was of the same opinion; something else was to be thought on, but no situation was procured. meantime, i began to be necessitated; for the hundred livres with which i had commenced my journey could not last much longer; happily, i received a small remittance from the ambassador, which was very serviceable, nor do i think he would have abandoned me had i possessed more patience; but languishing, waiting, soliciting, are to me impossible: i was disheartened, displeased, and thus all my brilliant expectations came once more to nothing. i had not all this time forgotten my dear madam de warrens, but how was i to find her? where should i seek her?madam de merveilleux, who knew my story, assisted me in the search, but for a long time unavailingly; at length, she informed me that madam de warrens had set out from paris about two months before, but it was not known whether for savoy or turin, and that some conjectured she had gone to switzerland. nothing further was necessary to fix my determination to follow her, certain that wherever she might be, i stood more chance of finding her at those places than i could possibly do at paris. before my departure, i exercised my new poetical talent in an epistle to colonel godard, whom i ridiculed to the utmost of my abilities. i showed this scribble to madam de merveilleux, who, instead of discouraging me, as she ought to have done, laughed heartily at my sarcasms, as well as her son, who, i believe, did not like m. godard; indeed, it must be confessed, he was a man not calculated to obtain affection. i was tempted to send him my verses, and they encouraged me in it; accordingly i made them up in a parcel directed to him, and there being no post then at paris by which i could conveniently send this, i put it in my pocket, and sent it to him from auxerre, as i passed through that place. i laugh, even yet, sometimes, at the grimaces i fancy he made on reading this panegyric, where he was certainly drawn to the life; it began thus: tu croyois, vieux penard, qu'une folle manie d'elever ton neveu m'inspirerait l'envie. this little piece, which, it is true, was but indifferently written, did not want for salt, and announced a turn for satire; it is, notwithstanding, the only satirical writing that ever came from my pen. i have too little hatred in my heart to take advantage of such a talent; but i believe it may be judged from those controversies, in which from time to time i have been engaged in my own defense, that had i been of a vindictive disposition, my adversaries would rarely have had the laughter on their side. what i most regret, is not having kept a journal of my travels, being conscious that a number of interesting details have slipped my memory; for never did i exist so completely, never live so thoroughly, never was so much myself, if i dare use the expression, as in those journeys made on foot. walking animates and enlivens my spirits; i can hardly think when in a state of inactivity; my body must be exercised to make my judgment active. the view of a fine country, a succession of agreeable prospects, a free air, a good appetite, and the health i gain by walking; the freedom of inns, and the distance from everything that can make me recollect the dependence of my situation, conspire to free my soul, and give boldness to my thoughts, throwing me, in a manner, into the immensity of beings, where i combine, choose, and appropriate them to my fancy, without constraint or fear. i dispose of all nature as i please; my heart wandering from object to object, approximates and unites with those that please it, is surrounded by charming images, and becomes intoxicated with delicious sensations. if, attempting to render these permanent, i am amused in describing to myself, what glow of coloring, what energy of expression, do i give them!it has been said, that all these are to be found in my works, though written in the decline of life. oh! had those of my early youth been seen, those made during my travels, composed, but never written!why did i not write them? will be asked; and why should i have written them? i may answer. why deprive myself of the actual charm of my enjoyments to inform others what i enjoyed? what to me were readers, the public, or all the world, while i was mounting the empyrean. besides, did i carry pens, paper, and ink with me? had i recollected all not a thought would have occurred worth preserving. i do not foresee when i shall have ideas; they come when they please, and not when i call for them; either they avoid me altogether, or rushing in crowds, overwhelm me with their force and number. ten volumes a day would not suffice barely to enumerate my thoughts; how then should i find time to write them? in stopping, i thought of nothing but a hearty dinner; on departing, of nothing but a charming walk; i felt that a new paradise awaited me at the door, and eagerly leaped forward to enjoy it. never did i experience this so feelingly as in the perambulation i am now describing. on coming to paris, i had confined myself to ideas which related to the situation i expected to occupy there. i had rushed into the career i was about to run, and should have completed it with tolerable eclat, but it was not that my heart adhered to. some real beings obscured my imagined onescolonel godard and his nephew could not keep pace with a hero of my disposition. thank heaven, i was soon delivered from all these obstacles, and could enter at pleasure into the wilderness of chimeras, for that alone remained before me, and i wandered in it so completely that i several times lost my way; but this was no misfortune, i would not have shortened it, for, feeling with regret, as i approached lyons, that i must again return to the material world, i should have been glad never to have arrived there. one day, among others, having purposely gone out of my way to take a nearer view of a spot that appeared delightful, i was so charmed with it, and wandered round it so often, that at length i completely lost myself, and after several hours' useless walking, weary, fainting with hunger and thirst, i entered a peasant's hut, which had not indeed a very promising appearance, but was the only one i could discover near me. i thought it was here, as at geneva, or in switzerland, where the inhabitants, living at ease, have it in their power to exercise hospitality. i entreated the countryman to give me some dinner, offering to pay for it: on which he presented me with some skimmed milk and coarse barley-bread, saying it was all he had. i drank the milk with pleasure, and ate the bread, chaff and all; but it was not very restorative to a man sinking with fatigue. the countryman judged the truth of my story by my appetite, and presently after (having said that he plainly saw i was an honest, good-natured young man,* and did not come to betray him) opened a trap door by the side of his kitchen, went down, and returned with a good brown loaf of pure wheat, the remains of a ham, and a bottle of wine: he then prepared a good thick omelet, and i made such a dinner as none but a walking traveler ever enjoyed. * at that time my features did not resemble later portraits. when i again offered to pay, his inquietude and fears returned; he not only would have no money, but refused it with the most evident emotion; and what made this scene more amusing, i could not imagine the motive of his fear. at length, he pronounced tremblingly those terrible words, "commissioners," and "cellar-rats," which he explained by giving me to understand that he concealed his wine because of the excise, and his bread on account of the tax imposed on it; adding, he should be an undone man, if it was suspected he was not almost perishing with want. what he said to me on this subject (of which i had not the smallest idea) made an impression on my mind that can never be effaced, sowing seeds of that inextinguishable hatred which has since grown up in my heart against the vexations these unhappy people suffer, and against their oppressors. this man, though in easy circumstances, dare not eat the bread gained by the sweat of his brow, and could only escape destruction by exhibiting an outward appearance of misery!i left his cottage with as much indignation as concern, deploring the fate of those beautiful countries, where nature has been prodigal of her gifts, only that they may become the prey of barbarous exactors. the incident which i have just related, is the only one i have a distinct remembrance of during this journey: i recollect, indeed, that on approaching lyons, i wished to prolong it by going to see the banks of the lignon; for among the romances i had read with my father, astrea was not forgotten, and returned more frequently to my thoughts than any other. stopping for some refreshment (while chatting with my hostess), i inquired the way to forez, and was informed that country was an excellent place for mechanics, as there were many forges, and much iron work done there. this eulogium instantly calmed my romantic curiosity, for i felt no inclination to seek dianas and sylvanders among a generation of blacksmiths. the good woman who encouraged me with this piece of information certainly thought i was a journeyman locksmith. i had some view in going to lyons: on my arrival, i went to the chasattes, to see mademoiselle du chatelet, a friend of madam de warrens, for whom i had brought a letter when i came there with m. le maitre, so that it was an acquaintance already formed. mademoiselle du chatelet informed me her friend had passed through lyons, but could not tell whether she had gone on to piedmont, being uncertain at her departure whether it would not be necessary to stop in savoy; but if i choose, she would immediately write for information, and thought my best plan would be to remain at lyons till she received it. i accepted this offer, but did not tell mademoiselle du chatelet how much i was pressed for an answer and that my exhausted purse would not permit me to wait long. it was not an appearance of coolness that withheld me, on the contrary, i was very kindly received, treated on the footing of equality, and this took from me the resolution of explaining my circumstances, for i could not bear to descend from a companion to a miserable beggar. i seem to have retained a very connecting remembrance of that part of my life contained in this book; yet i think i remember, about the same period, another journey to lyons (the particulars of which i cannot recollect) where i found myself much straitened, and a confused remembrance of the extremities to which i was reduced does not contribute to recall the idea agreeably. had i been like many others, had i possessed the talent of borrowing and running in debt at every ale-house i came to, i might have fared better; but in that my incapacity equaled my repugnance, and to demonstrate the prevalence of both, it will be sufficient to say, that though i have passed almost my whole life in different circumstances, and frequently have been near wanting bread, i was never once asked for money by a creditor without having it in my power to pay it instantly; i could never bear to contract clamorous debts, and have ever preferred suffering to owing. being reduced to pass my nights in the streets, may certainly be called suffering, and this was several times the case at lyons, having preferred buying bread with the few pence i had remaining, to bestowing them on a lodging; as i was convinced there was less danger of dying for want of sleep than of hunger. what is astonishing, while in this unhappy situation, i took no care for the future, was neither uneasy nor melancholy, but patiently waited an answer to mademoiselle du chatelet's letter, and lying in the open air, stretched on the earth, or on a bench, slept as soundly as if reposing on a bed of roses. i remember, particularly, to have passed a most delightful night at some distance from the city, in a road which had the rhone, or soane, i cannot recollect which, on the one side, and a range of raised gardens, with terraces, on the other. it had been a very hot day, the evening was delightful, the dew moistened the fading grass, no wind was stirring, the air was fresh without chillness, the setting sun had tinged the clouds with a beautiful crimson, which was again reflected by the water, and the trees that bordered the terrace were filled with nightingales who were continually answering each other's songs. i walked along in a kind of ecstasy, giving up my heart and senses to the enjoyment of so many delights, and sighing only from a regret of enjoying them alone. absorbed in this pleasing reverie, i lengthened my walk till it grew very late, without perceiving i was tired; at length, however, i discovered it, and threw myself on the step of a kind of niche, or false door, in the terrace wall. how charming was the couch! the trees formed a stately canopy, a nightingale sat directly over me, and with his soft notes lulled me to rest: how pleasing my repose; my awaking more so. it was broad day; on opening my eyes i saw the water, the verdure, and the admirable landscape before me. i arose, shook off the remains of drowsiness, and finding i was hungry, retook the way to the city, resolving, with inexpressible gayety, to spend the two pieces of six blancs i had yet remaining in a good breakfast. i found myself so cheerful that i went all the way singing; i even remember i sang a cantata of batistin's called the baths of thomery, which i knew by heart. may a blessing light on the good batistin and his good cantata, which procured me a better breakfast than i had expected, and a still better dinner, which i did not expect at all! in the midst of my singing, i heard some one behind me, and turning round perceived an antonine, who followed after and seemed to listen with pleasure to my song. at length accosting me, he asked, if i understood music. i answered, "a little," but in a manner to have it understood i knew a great deal, and as he continued questioning of me, related a part of my story. he asked me, if i had ever copied music? i replied, "often," which was true: i had learned most by copying. "well," continued he, "come with me, i can employ you for a few days, during which time you shall want for nothing; provided you consent not to quit my room." i acquiesced very willingly, and followed him. this antonine was called m. rolichon; he loved music, understood it, and sang in some little concerts with his friends; thus far all was innocent and right, but apparently this taste had become a furor, part of which he was obliged to conceal. he conducted me into a chamber, where i found a great quantity of music: he gave me some to copy, particularly the cantata he had heard me singing, and which he was shortly to sing himself. i remained here three or four days, copying all the time i did not eat, for never in my life was i so hungry, or better fed. m. rolichon brought my provisions himself from the kitchen, and it appeared that these good priests lived well, at least if every one fared as i did. in my life, i never took such pleasure in eating, and it must be owned this good cheer came very opportunely, for i was almost exhausted. i worked as heartily as i ate, which is saying a great deal; 'tis true i was not as correct as diligent, for some days after, meeting m. rolichon in the street, he informed me there were so many omissions, repetitions, and transpositions, in the parts i had copied, that they could not be performed. it must be owned, that in choosing the profession of music, i hit on that i was least calculated for; yet my voice was good and i copied neatly; but the fatigue of long works bewilders me so much, that i spend more time in altering and scratching out than in pricking down, and if i do not employ the strictest attention in comparing the several parts, they are sure to fail in the execution. thus, through endeavoring to do well, my performance was very faulty; for aiming at expedition, i did all amiss. this did not prevent m. rolichon from treating me well to the last, and giving me half-a-crown at my departure, which i certainly did not deserve, and which completely set me up, for a few days after i received news from madam de warrens, who was at chambery, with money to defray the expenses of my journey to her, which i performed with rapture. since then my finances have frequently been very low, but never at such an ebb as to reduce me to fasting, and i mark this period with a heart fully alive to the bounty of providence, as the last of my life in which i sustained poverty and hunger. i remained at lyons seven or eight days to wait for some little commissions with which madam de warrens had charged mademoiselle du chatelet, whom during this interval i visited more assiduously than before, having the pleasure of talking with her of her friend, and being no longer disturbed by the cruel remembrance of my situation, or painful endeavors to conceal it. mademoiselle du chatelet was neither young nor handsome, but did not want for elegance; she was easy and obliging, while her understanding gave price to her familiarity. she had a taste for that kind of moral observation which leads to the knowledge of mankind, and from her originated that study in myself. she was fond of the works of le sage, particularly gil blas, which she lent me, and recommended to my perusal. i read this performance with pleasure, but my judgment was not yet ripe enough to relish that sort of reading. i liked romances which abounded with high-flown sentiments. thus did i pass my time at the grate of mademoiselle du chatelet, with as much profit as pleasure. it is certain that the interesting and sensible conversation of a deserving woman is more proper to form the understanding of a young man than all the pedantic philosophy of books. i got acquainted at the chasattes with some other boarders and their friends, and among the rest, with a young person of fourteen, called mademoiselle serre, whom i did not much notice at that time, though i was in love with her eight or nine years afterwards, and with great reason, for she was a most charming girl. i was fully occupied with the idea of seeing madam de warrens, and this gave some respite to my chimeras, for finding happiness in real objects i was the less inclined to seek it in nonentities. i had not only found her, but also by her means, and near her, an agreeable situation, having received word that she had procured one that would suit me, and by which i should not be obliged to quit her. i exhausted all my conjectures in guessing what this occupation could be, but i must have possessed the art of divination to have hit it on the right. i had money sufficient to make my journey agreeable: mademoiselle du chatelet persuaded me to hire a horse, but this i could not consent to, and i was certainly right, for by so doing i should have lost the pleasure of the last pedestrian expedition i ever made; for i cannot give that name to those excursions i have frequently taken about my own neighborhood, while i lived at motiers. it is very singular that my imagination never rises so high as when my situation, is least agreeable or cheerful. when everything smiles around me, i am least amused; my heart cannot confine itself to realities, cannot embellish, but must create. real objects strike me as they really are, my imagination can only decorate ideal ones. if i would paint the spring, it must be in winter; if describe a beautiful landscape, it must be while surrounded with walls; and i have said a hundred times, that were i confined in the bastile, i could draw the most enchanting picture of liberty. on my departure from lyons, i saw nothing but an agreeable future, the content i now with reason enjoyed was as great as my discontent had been at leaving paris, notwithstanding, i had not during this journey any of those delightful reveries i then enjoyed. my mind was serene, and that was all; i drew near the excellent friend i was going to see, my heart overflowing with tenderness, enjoying in advance, but without intoxication, the pleasure of living near her; i had always expected this, and it was as if nothing new had happened. meantime, i was anxious about the employment madam de warrens had procured me, as if that alone had been material. my ideas were calm and peaceable, not ravishing and celestial; every object struck my sight in its natural form; i observed the surrounding landscape, remarked the trees, the houses, the springs, deliberated on the cross-roads, was fearful of losing myself, yet did not do so; in a word, i was no longer in the empyrean, but precisely where i found myself, or sometimes perhaps at the end of my journey, never farther. i am in recounting my travels, as i was in making them, loath to arrive at the conclusion. my heart beat with joy as i approached my dear madam de warrens, but i went no faster on that account. i love to walk at my ease, and stop at leisure; a strolling life is necessary to me: traveling on foot, in a fine country, with fine weather, and having an agreeable object to terminate my journey, is the manner of living of all others most suited to my taste. it is already understood what i mean by a fine country; never can a flat one, though ever so beautiful, appear such in my eyes: i must have torrents, fir trees, black woods, mountains to climb or descend, and rugged roads with precipices on either side to alarm me. i experienced this pleasure in its utmost extent as i approached chambery, not far from a mountain which is called pas de l'echelle. above the main road, which is hewn through the rock, a small river runs and rushes into fearful chasms, which it appears to have been millions of ages in forming. the road has been hedged by a parapet to prevent accidents, which enabled me to contemplate the whole descent, and gain vertigoes at pleasure; for a great part of my amusement in these steep rocks, is, they cause a giddiness and swimming in my head, which i am particularly fond of, provided i am in safety; leaning, therefore, over the parapet, i remained whole hours, catching, from time to time, a glance of the froth and blue water, whose rushing caught my ear, mingled with the cries of ravens, and other birds of prey that flew from rock to rock, and bush to bush, at six hundred feet below me. in places where the slope was tolerably regular, and clear enough from bushes to let stones roll freely, i went a considerable way to gather them, bringing those i could but just carry, which i piled on the parapet, and then threw down one after the other, being transported at seeing them roll, rebound, and fly into a thousand pieces, before they reached the bottom of the precipice. near chambery i enjoyed an equal pleasing spectacle, though of a different kind; the road passing near the foot of the most charming cascade i ever saw. the water, which is very rapid, shoots from the top of an excessively steep mountain, falling at such a distance from its base that you may walk between the cascade and the rock without any inconvenience; but if not particularly careful it is easy to be deceived as i was, for the water, falling from such an immense height, separates, and descends in a rain as fine as dust, and on approaching too near this cloud, without perceiving it, you may be wet through in an instant. at length i arrived at madam de warrens'; she was not alone, the intendant-general was with her. without speaking a word to me, she caught my hand, and presenting me to him with that natural grace which charmed all hearts, said: "this, sir, is the poor young man i mentioned; deign to protect him as long as he deserves it, and i shall feel no concern for the remainder of his life." then added, addressing herself to me, "child, you now belong to the king, thank monsieur the intendant, who furnishes you with the means of existence." i stared without answering, without knowing what to think of all this; rising ambition almost turned my head; i was already prepared to act the intendant myself. my fortune, however, was not so brilliant as i had imagined, but it was sufficient to maintain me, which, as i was situated, was a capital acquisition. i shall now explain the nature of my employment. king victor amadeus, judging by the event of preceding wars, and the situation of the ancient patrimony of his fathers, that he should not long be able to maintain it, wished to drain it beforehand. resolving, therefore, to tax the nobility, he ordered a general survey of the whole country, in order that it might be rendered more equal and productive. this scheme, which was begun under the father, was completed by the son: two or three hundred men, part surveyors, who were called geometricians, and part writers, who were called secretaries, were employed in this work: among those of the latter description madam de warrens had got me appointed. this post, without being very lucrative, furnished the means of living eligibly in that country; the misfortune was, this employment could not be of any great duration, but it put me in train to procure something better, as by this means she hoped to insure the particular protection of the intendant, who might find me some more settled occupation before this was concluded. i entered on my new employment a few days after my arrival, and as there was no great difficulty in the business, soon understood it; thus, after four or five years of unsettled life, folly, and suffering, since my departure from geneva, i began, for the first time, to gain my bread with credit. these long details of my early youth must have appeared trifling, and i am sorry for it: though born a man, in a variety of instances, i was long a child, and am so yet in many particulars. i did not promise the public a great personage: i promised to describe myself as i am, and to know me in my advanced age it was necessary to have known me in my youth. as, in general, objects that are present make less impression on me than the bare remembrance of them (my ideas being all from recollection), the first traits which were engraven on my mind have distinctly remained: those which have since been imprinted there have rather combined with the former than effaced them. there is a certain, yet varied succession of affections and ideas, which continue to regulate those that follow them, and this progression must be known in order to judge rightly of those they have influenced. i have studied to develop the first causes, the better to show the concatenation of effects. i would be able by some means to render my soul transparent to the eyes of the reader, and for this purpose endeavor to show it in every possible point of view, to give him every insight, and act in such a manner, that not a motion should escape him, as by this means he may form a judgment of the principles that produce them. did i take upon myself to decide, and say to the reader, "such is my character," he might think that if i did not endeavor to deceive him, i at least deceived myself; but in recounting simply all that has happened to me, all my actions, thoughts, and feelings, i cannot lead him into an error, unless i do it willfully) which by this means i could not easily effect, since it is his province to compare the elements, and judge of the being they compose: thus the result must be his work, and if he is then deceived the error will be his own. it is not sufficient for this purpose that my recitals should be merely faithful, they must also be minute; it is not for me to judge of the importance of facts, i ought to declare them simply as they are, and leave the estimate that is to be formed of them to him. i have adhered to this principle hitherto, with the most scrupulous exactitude, and shall not depart from it in the continuation; but the impressions of age are less lively than those of youth; i began by delineating the latter: should i recollect the rest with the same precision, the reader may, perhaps, become weary and impatient, but i shall not be dissatisfied with my labor. i have but one thing to apprehend in this undertaking: i do not dread saying too much, or advancing falsities, but i am fearful of not saying enough, or concealing truths. book v [1732-1736] i think it was in 1732, that i arrived at chambery, as already related, and began my employment of registering land for the king. i was almost twenty-one, my mind well enough formed for my age, with respect to sense, but very deficient in point of judgment, and needing every instruction from those into whose hands i fell, to make me conduct myself with propriety; for a few years' experience had not been able to cure me radically of my romantic ideas; and notwithstanding the ills i had sustained, i knew as little of the world, of mankind, as if i had never purchased instruction. i slept at home, that is, at the house of madam de warrens; but it was not as at annecy: here were no gardens, no brook, no landscape; the house was dark and dismal, and my apartment the most gloomy of the whole. the prospect a dead wall, an alley instead of a street, confined air, bad light, small rooms, iron bars, rats, and a rotten floor; an assemblage of circumstances that do not constitute a very agreeable habitation; but i was in the same house with my best friend, incessantly near her, at my desk or in her chamber, so that i could not perceive the gloominess of my own, or have time to think of it. it may appear whimsical that she should reside at chambery on purpose to live in this disagreeable house; but it was a trait of contrivance which i ought not to pass over in silence. she had no great inclination for a journey to turin, fearing that after the recent revolutions, and the agitation in which the court yet was, she should not be very favorably received there; but her affairs seemed to demand her presence, as she feared being forgotten or ill-treated, particularly as the count de saint-laurent, intendant-general of the finances, was not in her interest. he had an old house at chambery, ill-built, and standing in so disagreeable a situation that it was always untenanted; she hired, and settled in this house; a plan that succeeded much better than a journey to turin would have done, for her pension was not suppressed, and the count de saint-laurent was ever after one of her best friends. her household was much on the old footing; the faithful claude anet still remained with her. he was, as i have before mentioned, a peasant of moutru, who in his childhood had gathered herbs in jura for the purpose of making swiss tea; she had taken him into her service for his knowledge of drugs, finding it convenient to have a herbalist among her domestics. passionately fond of the study of plants, he became a real botanist, and had he not died young, might have acquired as much fame in that science as he deserved for being an honest man. serious even to gravity, and older than myself, he was to me a kind of tutor, commanding respect, and preserving me from a number of follies, for i dared not forget myself before him. he commanded it likewise from his mistress, who knew his understanding, uprightness, and inviolable attachment to herself, and returned it. claude anet was of an uncommon temper. i never encountered a similar disposition: he was slow, deliberate, and circumspect in his conduct; cold in his manner; laconic and sententious in discourse; yet of an impetuosity in his passions, which (though careful to conceal) preyed upon him inwardly, and urged him to the only folly he ever committed; that folly, indeed was terrible, it was poisoning himself. this tragic scene passed soon after my arrival, and opened my eyes to the intimacy that subsisted between claude anet and his mistress, for had not the information come from her, i should never have suspected it; yet, surely, if attachment, fidelity, and zeal, could merit such a recompense, it was due to him, and what further proves him worthy such a distinction, he never once abused her confidence. they seldom disputed, and their disagreements ever ended amicably; one, indeed, was not so fortunate; his mistress, in a passion, said something affronting, which not being able to digest, he consulted only with despair, and finding a bottle of laudanum at hand, drank it off; then went peaceably to bed, expecting to awake no more. madam de warrens herself was uneasy, agitated. wandering about the house, and happily, finding the phial empty, guessed the rest. her screams while flying to his assistance, alarmed me; she confessed all, implored my help, and was fortunate enough, after repeated efforts, to make him throw up the laudanum. witness of this scene, i could not but wonder at my stupidity in never having suspected the connection; but claude anet was so discreet, that a more penetrating observer might have been deceived. their reconciliation affected me, and added respect to the esteem i before felt for him. from this time i became, in some measure, his pupil, nor did i find myself the worse for his instruction. i could not learn, without pain, that she lived in greater intimacy with another than with myself: it was a situation i had not even thought of, but (which was very natural) it hurt me to see another in possession of it. nevertheless, instead of feeling any aversion to the person who had this advantage over me, i found the attachment i felt for her, actually extend to him. i desired her happiness above all things, and since he was concerned in her plan of felicity, i was content he should be happy likewise. meantime he perfectly entered into the views of his mistress; conceived a sincere friendship for me, and without affecting the authority his situation might have entitled him to, he naturally possessed that which his superior judgment gave him over mine. i dared do nothing he disapproved of, but he was sure to disapprove only what merited disapprobation: thus we lived in an union which rendered us mutually happy, and which death alone could dissolve. one proof of the excellence of this amiable woman's character, is, that all those who loved her, loved each other; even jealousy and rivalship submitting to the more powerful sentiment with which she inspired them, and i never saw any of those who surrounded her entertain the least ill will among themselves. let the reader pause a moment on this encomium, and if he can recollect any other woman who deserves it, let him attach himself to her, if he would obtain happiness. from my arrival at chambery to my departure for paris, 1741, included an interval of eight or nine years, during which time i have few adventures to relate; my life being as simple as it was agreeable. this uniformity was precisely what was most wanting to complete the formation of my character, which continual troubles had prevented from acquiring any degree of stability. it was during this pleasing interval, that my unconnected, unfinished education, gained consistence, and made me what i have unalterably remained amid the storms with which i have since been surrounded. the progress was slow, almost imperceptible, and attended by few memorable circumstances; yet it deserves to be followed and investigated. at first, i was wholly occupied with my business, the constraint of a desk left little opportunity for other thoughts, the small portion of time i was at liberty was passed with my dear madam de warrens, and not having leisure to read, i felt no inclination for it; but when my business (by daily repetition) became familiar, and my mind was less occupied, study again became necessary, and (as my desires were ever irritated by any difficulty that opposed the indulgence of them) might once more have become a passion, as at my master's, had not other inclinations interposed and diverted it. though our occupation did not demand a very profound skill in arithmetic, it sometimes required enough to puzzle me. to conquer this difficulty, i purchased books which treated on that science, and learned well, for i now studied alone. practical arithmetic extends further than is usually supposed, if you would attain exact precision. there are operations of extreme length in which i have sometimes seen good geometricians lose themselves. reflection, assisted by practice, gives clear ideas, and enables you to devise shorter methods, these inventions flatter our self-complacency, while their exactitude satisfies our understanding, and renders a study pleasant, which is, of itself, heavy and unentertaining. at length i became so expert as not to be puzzled by any question that was solvable by arithmetical calculation; and even now, while everything i formerly knew fades daily on my memory, this acquirement, in a great measure remains, through an interval of thirty years. a few days ago, in a journey i made to davenport, being with my host at an arithmetical lesson given his children, i did (with pleasure, and without errors) a most complicated work. while setting down my figures, methought i was still at chambery, still in my days of happinesshow far i had to look back for them! the colored plans of our geometricians had given me a taste for drawing: accordingly i bought colors, and began by attempting flowers and landscapes. it was unfortunate that i had not talents for this art, for my inclination was much disposed to it, and while surrounded with crayons, pencils, and colors, i could have passed whole months without wishing to leave them. this amusement engaged me so much, that they were obliged to force me from it; and thus it is with every inclination i give in to, it continues to augment, till at length it becomes so powerful, that i lose sight of everything except the favorite amusement. years have not been able to cure me of that fault, nay, have not even diminished it; for while i am writing this, behold me, like an old dotard, infatuated with another, to me useless study, which i do not understand, and which even those who have devoted their youthful days to the acquisition of, are constrained to abandon, at the age i am beginning with it. at that time, the study i am now speaking of would have been well placed, the opportunity was good, and i had some temptation to profit by it; for the satisfaction i saw in the eyes of anet, when he came home loaded with new discovered plants, set me two or three times on the point of going to herbalize with him, and i am almost certain that had i gone once, i should have been caught, and perhaps at this day might have been an excellent botanist, for i know no study more congenial to my natural inclination, than that of plants; the life i have led for these ten years past, in the country, being little more than a continual herbalizing, though i must confess, without object, and without improvement; but at the time i am now speaking of i had no inclination for botany, nay, i even despised, and was disgusted at the idea, considering it only as a fit study for an apothecary. madam de warrens was fond of it merely for this purpose, seeking none but common plants to use in her medical preparations; thus botany, chemistry, and anatomy were confounded in my idea under the general denomination of medicine, and served to furnish me with pleasant sarcasms the whole day, which procured me, from time to time, a box on the ear, applied by madam de warrens. besides this, a very contrary taste grew up with me, and by degrees absorbed all others; this was music. i was certainly born for that science, i loved it from my infancy, and it was the only inclination i have constantly adhered to; but it is astonishing that what nature seemed to have designed me for should have cost me so much pains to learn, and that i should acquire it so slowly, that after a whole life spent in the practice of this art, i could never attain to sing with any certainty at sight. what rendered the study of music more agreeable to me at that time, was, being able to practice it with madam de warrens. in other respects our tastes were widely different: this was a point of coincidence, which i loved to avail myself of. she had no more objection to this than myself: i knew at that time almost as much of it as she did, and after two or three efforts, we could make shift to decipher an air. sometimes, when i saw her busy at her furnace, i have said, "here now is a charming duet, which seems made for the very purpose of spoiling your drugs;" her answer would be, "if you make me burn them, i'll make you eat them:" thus disputing, i drew her to the harpsichord; the furnace was presently forgotten, the extract of juniper or wormwood calcined (which i cannot recollect without transport), and these scenes usually ended by her smearing my face with the remains of them. it may easily be conjectured that i had plenty of employment to fill up my leisure hours; one amusement, however, found room, that was well worth all the rest. we lived in such a confined dungeon, that it was necessary sometimes to breathe the open air; anet, therefore, engaged madam de warrens to hire a garden in the suburbs, both for this purpose and the convenience of rearing plants, etc.; to this garden was added a summer-house, which was furnished in the customary manner; we sometimes dined, and i frequently slept, there. insensibly i became attached to this little retreat, decorated it with books and prints, spending part of my time in ornamenting it during the absence of madam de warrens, that i might surprise her the more agreeably on her return. sometimes i quitted this dear friend, that i might enjoy the uninterrupted pleasure of thinking on her; this was a caprice i can neither excuse nor fully explain, i only know this really was the case, and therefore i avow it. i remember madam de luxembourg told me one day in raillery, of a man who used to leave his mistress that he might enjoy the satisfaction of writing to her; i answered, i could have been this man; i might have added, that i had done the very same. i did not, however, find it necessary to leave madam de warrens that i might love her the more ardently, for i was ever as perfectly free with her as when alone; an advantage i never enjoyed with any other person, man or woman, however i might be attached to them; but she was so often surrounded by company who were far from pleasing me, that spite and weariness drove me to this asylum, where i could indulge her idea, without danger of being interrupted by impertinence. thus, my time being divided between business, pleasure, and instruction, my life passed in the most absolute serenity. europe was not equally tranquil: france and the emperor had mutually declared war, the king of sardinia had entered into the quarrel, and a french army had filed off into piedmont to awe the milanese. our division passed through chambery, and, among others, the regiment of champaigne, whose colonel was the duke de la trimouille, to whom i was presented. he promised many things, but doubtless never more thought of me. our little garden was exactly at the end of the suburb by which the troops entered, so that i could fully satisfy my curiosity in seeing them pass, and i became as anxious for the success of the war as if it had nearly concerned me. till now i had never troubled myself about politics, for the first time i began reading the gazettes, but with so much partiality on the side of france, that my heart beat with rapture on its most trifling advantages, and i was as much afflicted on a reverse of fortune, as if i had been particularly concerned. had this folly been transient, i should not, perhaps, have mentioned it, but it took such root in my heart (without any reasonable cause) that when i afterwards acted the anti-despot and proud republican at paris, in spite of myself, i felt a secret predilection for the nation i declared servile, and for that government i affected to oppose. the pleasantest of all was that, ashamed of an inclination so contrary to my professed maxims, i dared not own it to any one, but rallied the french on their defeats, while my heart was more wounded than their own. i am certainly the first man, that, living with a people who treated him well, and whom he almost adored, put on, even in their own country, a borrowed air of despising them; yet my original inclination is so powerful, constant, disinterested, and invincible, that even since my quitting that kingdom, since its government, magistrates, and authors, have outvied each other in rancor against me, since it has become fashionable to load me with injustice and abuse, i have not been able to get rid of this folly, but notwithstanding their ill-treatment, love them in spite of myself. i long sought the cause of this partiality, but was never able to find any, except in the occasion that gave it birth. a rising taste for literature attached me to french books, to their authors, and their country: at the very moment the french troops were passing chambery, i was reading brantome's celebrated captains; my head was full of the clissons, bayards, lautrecs, colignys, montmorencys, and trimouilles and i loved their descendants as the heirs of their merit and courage. in each regiment that passed by methought i saw those famous black bands who had formerly done so many noble exploits in piedmont; in fine, i applied to these all the ideas i had gathered from books; my reading continued, which, still drawn from the same nation, nourished my affection for that country, till, at length, it became a blind passion, which nothing could overcome. i have had occasion to remark several times in the course of my travels, that this impression was not peculiar to me for france, but was more or less active in every country, for that part of the nation who were fond of literature, and cultivated learning, and it was this consideration that balanced in my mind the general hatred which the conceited air of the french is so apt to inspire. their romances, more than their men, attract the women of all countries, and the celebrated dramatic pieces of france create a fondness in youth for their theaters; the reputation which that of paris in particular has acquired, draws to it crowds of strangers, who return enthusiasts to their own country: in short, the excellence of their literature captivates the senses, and in the unfortunate war just ended, i have seen their authors and philosophers maintain the glory of france, so tarnished by its warriors. i was, therefore, an ardent frenchman; this rendered me a politician, and i attended in the public square, amid a throng of news-mongers, the arrival of the post, and, sillier than the ass in the fable, was very uneasy to know whose packsaddle i should next have the honor to carry, for it was then supposed we should belong to france, and that savoy would be exchanged for milan. i must confess, however, that i experienced some uneasiness, for had this war terminated unfortunately for the allies, the pension of madam de warrens would have been in a dangerous situation; nevertheless, i had great confidence in my good friends, the french, and for once (in spite of the surprise of m. de broglio) my confidence was not ill-foundedthanks to the king of sardinia, whom i had never thought of. while we were fighting in italy, they were singing in france: the operas of rameau began to make a noise there, and once more raise the credit of his theoretic works, which, from their obscurity, were within the compass of very few understandings. by chance i heard of his treatise on harmony, and had no rest till i purchased it. by another chance i fell sick; my illness was inflammatory, short and violent, but my convalescence was tedious, for i was unable to go abroad for a whole month. during this time i eagerly ran over my treatise on harmony, but it was so long, so diffuse, and so badly disposed, that i found it would require a considerable time to unravel it: accordingly i suspended my inclination, and recreated my sight with music. the cantatas of bernier were what i principally exercised myself with. these were never out of my mind; i learned four or five by heart, and among the rest, the sleeping cupids, which i have never seen since that time, though i still retain it almost entirely; as well as cupid stung by a bee, a very pretty cantata by clerambault, which i learned about the same time. to complete me, there arrived a young organist from valdost, called the abbe palais, a good musician and an agreeable companion, who performed very well on the harpsichord; i got acquainted with him, and we soon became inseparable. he had been brought up by an italian monk, who was a capital organist. he explained to me his principles of music, which i compared with rameau; my head was filled with accompaniments, concords and harmony, but as it was necessary to accustom the ear to all this, i proposed to madam de warrens having a little concert once a month, to which she consented. behold me then so full of this concert, that night or day i could think of nothing else, and it actually employed a great part of my time to select the music, assemble the musicians, look to the instruments, and write out the several parts. madam de warrens sang; father cato (whom i have before mentioned, and shall have occasion to speak of again) sang likewise; a dancing-master named roche, and his son, played on the violin; canavas, a piedmontese musician (who was employed like myself in the survey, and has since married at paris), played on the violoncello; the abbe palais performed on the harpsichord, and i had the honor to conduct the whole. it may be supposed all this was charming: i cannot say it equaled my concert at monsieur de tretoren's, but certainly it was not far behind it. this little concert, given by madam de warrens, the new convert, who lived (it was expressed) on the king's charity, made the whole tribe of devotees murmur, but was a very agreeable amusement to several worthy people, at the head of whom it would not be easily surmised that i should place a monk; yet, though a monk, a man of considerable merit, and even of a very amiable disposition, whose subsequent misfortunes gave me the most lively concern, and whose idea, attached to that of my happy days, is yet dear to my memory. i speak of father cato, a cordelier, who, in conjunction with the count d'ortan, had caused the music of poor le maitre to be seized at lyons; which action was far from being the brightest trait in his history. he was a bachelor of sorbonne; had lived long in paris among the great world, and was particularly caressed by the marquis d'antremont, then ambassador from sardinia. he was tall and well made; full faced, with very fine eyes, and black hair, which formed natural curls on each side of his forehead. his manner was at once noble, open, and modest; he presented himself with ease and good manners, having neither the hypocritical nor impudent behavior of a monk, or the forward assurance of a fashionable coxcomb, but the manners of a well-bred man, who, without blushing for his habit, set a value on himself, and ever felt in his proper situation when in good company. though father cato was not deeply studied for a doctor, he was much so for a man of the world, and not being compelled to show his talents, he brought them forward so advantageously that they appeared greater than they really were. having lived much in the world, he had rather attached himself to agreeable acquirements than to solid learning; had sense, made verses, spoke well, sang better, and aided his good voice by playing on the organ and harpsichord. so many pleasing qualities were not necessary to make his company sought after, and, accordingly, it was very much so, but this did not make him neglect the duties of his function: he was chosen (in spite of his jealous competitors) definitor of his province, or, according to them, one of the greatest pillars of their order. father cato became acquainted with madam de warrens at the marquis of antremont's; he had heard of her concerts, wished to assist at them, and by his company rendered our meetings truly agreeable. we were soon attached to each other by our mutual taste for music, which in both was a most lively passion, with this difference, that he was really a musician, and myself a bungler. sometimes assisted by canavas and the abbe palais, we had music in his apartment, or on holidays at his organ, and frequently dined with him; for, what was very astonishing in a monk, he was generous, profuse, and loved good cheer, without the least tincture of greediness. after our concerts, he always used to stay to supper, and these evenings passed with the greatest gayety and good-humor; we conversed with the utmost freedom, and sang duets; i was perfectly at my ease, had sallies of wit and merriment; father cato was charming, madam de warrens adorable, and the abbe palais, with his rough voice, was the butt of the company. pleasing moments of sportive youth, how long since have ye fled! as i shall have no more occasion to speak of poor father cato, i will here conclude in a few words his melancholy history. his brother monks, jealous, or rather exasperated to discover in him a merit and elegance of manners which favored nothing monastic stupidity, conceived the most violent hatred to him, because he was not as despicable as themselves; the chiefs, therefore, combined against this worthy man, and set on the envious rabble of monks, who otherwise, would not have dared to hazard the attack. he received a thousand indignities; they degraded him from his office, took away the apartment which he had furnished with elegant simplicity, and, at length, banished him, i know not whither: in short these wretches overwhelmed him with so many evils, that his honest and proud soul sank under the pressure, and, after having been the delight of the most amiable societies, he died of grief, on a wretched bed, hid in some cell or dungeon, lamented by all worthy people of his acquaintance, who could find no fault in him, except his being a monk. accustomed to this manner of life for some time, i became so entirely attached to music that i could think of nothing else. i went to my business with disgust, the necessary confinement and assiduity appeared an insupportable punishment, which i at length wished to relinquish, that i might give myself up without reserve to my favorite amusement. it will be readily believed that this folly met with some opposition, to give up a creditable employment and fixed salary to run after uncertain scholars was too giddy a plan to be approved of by madam de warrens, and even supposing my future success should prove as great as i flattered myself, it was fixing very humble limits to my ambition to think of reducing myself for life to the condition of a music-master. she, who formed for me the brightest projects, and no longer trusted implicitly to the judgment of m. d'aubonne, seeing with concern that i was so seriously occupied by a talent which she thought frivolous, frequently repeated to me that provincial proverb, which does not hold quite so good in paris, qui bien chante et bien danse, fait un metier qui peu avance.* on the other hand, she saw me hurried away by this irresistible passion, my taste for music having become a furor, and it was much to be feared that my employment, suffering by my distraction, might draw on me a discharge, which would be worse than a voluntary resignation. i represented to her, that this employment could not last long, that it was necessary i should have some permanent means of subsistence, and that it would be much better to complete by practice the acquisition of that art to which my inclination led me than to make fresh essays, which possibly might not succeed, since by this means, having passed the age most proper for improvement, i might be left without a single resource for gaining a livelihood: in short, i extorted her consent more by importunity and caresses than by any satisfactory reasons. proud of my success, i immediately ran to thank m. coccelli, director-general of the survey, as though i had performed the most heroic action, and quitted my employment without cause, reason, or pretext, with as much pleasure as i had accepted it two years before. * he who can sweetly sing and featly dance, his interests right little shall advance. this step, ridiculous as it may appear, procured me a kind of consideration, which i found extremely useful. some supposed i had resources which i did not possess; others, seeing me totally given up to music, judged of my abilities by the sacrifice i had made, and concluded that with such a passion for the art, i must possess it in a superior degree. in a nation of blind men, those with one eye are kings. i passed here for an excellent master, because all the rest were very bad ones. possessing taste in singing, and being favored by my age and figure, i soon procured more scholars than were sufficient to compensate for the loss of my secretary's pay. it is certain, that had it been reasonable to consider the pleasure of my situation only, it was impossible to pass more speedily from one extreme to the other. at our measuring, i was confined eight hours in the day to the most unentertaining employment, with yet more disagreeable company. shut up in a melancholy counting-house, empoisoned by the smell and respiration of a number of clowns, the major part of whom were ill-combed and very dirty, what with attention, bad air, constraint, and weariness, i was sometimes so far overcome as to occasion a vertigo. instead of this, behold me admitted into the fashionable world, sought after in the first houses, and everywhere received with an air of satisfaction; amiable and gay young ladies awaiting my arrival, and welcoming me with pleasure; i see nothing but charming objects, smell nothing but roses and orange flowers; singing, chatting, laughter, and amusements, perpetually succeed each other. it must be allowed, that reckoning all these advantages, no hesitation was necessary in the choice; in fact, i was so content with mine, that i never once repented it; nor do i even now, when, free from the irrational motives that influenced me at that time, i weigh in the scale of reason every action of my life. this is, perhaps, the only time that, listening to inclination, i was not deceived in my expectations. the easy access, obliging temper, and free humor of this country, rendered a commerce with the world agreeable, and the inclination i then felt for it, proves to me, that if i have a dislike for society, it is more their fault than mine. it is a pity the savoyards are not rich: though, perhaps, it would be a still greater pity if they were so, for altogether they are the best, the most sociable people that i know, and if there is a little city in the world where the pleasures of life are experienced in an agreeable and friendly commerce, it is at chambery. the gentry of the province who assemble there have only sufficient wealth to live and not enough to spoil them; they cannot give way to ambition, but follow, through necessity, the counsel of cyneas, devoting their youth to a military employment, and returning home to grow old in peace; an arrangement over which honor and reason equally preside. the women are handsome, yet do not stand in need of beauty, since they possess all those qualifications which enhance its value and even supply the want of it. it is remarkable, that being obliged by my profession to see a number of young girls, i do not recollect one at chambery but what was charming: it will be said i was disposed to find them so, and perhaps there may be some truth in the surmise. i cannot remember my young scholars without pleasure. why, in naming the most amiable, cannot i recall them and myself also to that happy age in which our moments, pleasing as innocent, were passed with such happiness together? the first was mademoiselle de mallarede, my neighbor, and sister to a pupil of monsieur gaime. she was a fine clear brunette, lively and graceful, without giddiness; thin as girls of that age usually are; but her bright eyes, fine shape, and easy air, rendered her sufficiently pleasing with that degree of plumpness which would have given a heightening to her charms. i went there of mornings, when she was usually in her dishabille, her hair carelessly turned up, and, on my arrival, ornamented with a flower, which was taken off at my departure for her hair to be dressed. there is nothing i fear so much as a pretty woman in an elegant dishabille; i should dread them a hundred times less in full dress. mademoiselle de menthon, whom i attended in the afternoon, was ever so. she made an equally pleasing, but quite different impression on me. her hair was flaxen, her person delicate, she was very timid and extremely fair, had a clear voice, capable of just modulation, but which she had not courage to employ to its full extent. she had the mark of a scald on her bosom, which a scanty piece of blue chenille did not entirely cover, this scar sometimes drew my attention, though not absolutely on its own account. mademoiselle des challes, another of my neighbors, was a woman grown, tall, well-formed, jolly, very pleasing though not a beauty, and might be quoted for her gracefulness, equal temper, and good humor. her sister, madam de charley, the handsomest woman of chambery, did not learn music, but i taught her daughter, who was yet young, but whose growing beauty promised to equal her mother's, if she had not unfortunately been a little red-haired. i had likewise among my scholars a little french lady, whose name i have forgotten, but who merits a place in my list of preferences. she had adopted the slow drawling tone of the nuns, in which voice she would utter some very keen things, which did not in the least appear to correspond with her manner; but she was indolent, and could not generally take pains to show her wit, that being a favor she did not grant to every one. when with my scholars, i was fond enough of teaching, but could not bear the idea of being obliged to attend at a particular hour; constraint and subjection in every shape are to me insupportable, and alone sufficient to make me hate even pleasure itself. i am told that it is custom among the mohammedans to have a man pass through the streets at daybreak, and cry out: "husbands, do your duty to your wives." i should only make a poor turk at this particular hour. among other scholars which i had, there was one who was the indirect cause of a change of relationship, which i must relate in its place. she was the daughter of a grocer, and was called mademoiselle de larnage, a perfect model for a grecian statue, and whom i should quote for the handsomest girl i have ever seen, if true beauty could exist without life or soul. her indolence, reserve, and insensibility were inconceivable; it was equally impossible to please or make her angry, and i am convinced that had any one formed a design upon her virtue, he might have succeeded, not through her inclination, but from her stupidity. her mother, who would run no risk of this, did not leave her a single moment. in having her taught to sing and providing a young master, she had hoped to enliven her, but it all proved ineffectual. while the master was admiring the daughter, the mother was admiring the master, but this was equally lost labor. madam de larnage added to her natural vivacity that portion of sprightliness which should have belonged to the daughter. she was a little, ugly, lively trollop, with small twinkling ferret eyes, and marked with smallpox. on my arrival in the morning, i always found my coffee and cream ready, and the mother never failed to welcome me with a kiss on the lips, which i would willingly have returned the daughter, to see how she would have received it. all this was done with such an air of carelessness and simplicity, that even when m. de larnage was present, her kisses and caresses were not omitted. he was a good quiet fellow, the true original of his daughter; nor did his wife endeavor to deceive him, because there was absolutely no occasion for it. i received all these caresses with my usual stupidity, taking them only for marks of pure friendship, though they were sometimes troublesome; for the lively madam lard was displeased, if, during the day, i passed the shop without calling; it became necessary, therefore (when i had no time to spare), to go out of my way through another street, well knowing it was not so easy to quit her house as to enter it. madam lard thought so much of me, that i could not avoid thinking something of her. her attentions affected me greatly, and i spoke of them to madam de warrens, without supposing any mystery in the matter, but had there been one i should equally have divulged it, for to have kept a secret of any kind from her would have been impossible. my heart lay as open to madam de warrens as to heaven. she did not understand the matter quite so simply as i had done, but saw advances where i only discovered friendship. she concluded that madam lard would make a point of not leaving me as great a fool as she found me, and, some way or other, contrive to make herself understood; but exclusive of the consideration that it was not just that another should undertake the instruction of her pupil, she had motives more worthy of her, wishing to guard me against the snares to which my youth and inexperience exposed me. meantime, a more dangerous temptation offered which i likewise escaped, but which proved to her that such a succession of dangers required every preservative she could possibly apply. the countess of menthon, mother to one of my scholars, was a woman of great wit, and reckoned to possess, at least, an equal share of mischief, having (as was reported) caused a number of quarrels, and, among others, one that terminated fatally for the house of d'antremont. madam de warrens had seen enough of her to know her character: for having (very innocently) pleased some person to whom madam de menthon had pretensions, she found her guilty of the crime of this preference, though madam de warrens had neither sought after nor accepted it, and from that moment endeavored to play her rival a number of ill turns, none of which succeeded. i shall relate one of the most whimsical, by way of specimen. they were together in the country, with several gentlemen of the neighborhood, and among the rest the lover in question. madam de menthon took an opportunity to say to one of these gentlemen, that madam de warrens was a prude, that she dressed ill, and particularly, that she covered her neck like a tradeswoman. "o, for that matter" replied the person she was speaking to (who was fond of a joke), "she has good reason, for i know she is marked with a great ugly rat on the bosom, so naturally, that it even appears to be running." hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous. madam de menthon resolved to make use of this discovery, and one day, while madam de warrens was at cards with this lady's ungrateful favorite, she contrived, in passing behind her rival, almost to overset the chair she sat on, and at the same instant, very dexterously displaced her handkerchief; but instead of this hideous rat, the gentleman beheld a far different object, which it was not more easy to forget than to obtain a sight of, and which by no means answered the intentions of the lady. i was not calculated to engross the attention of madam de menthon, who loved to be surrounded by brilliant company; notwithstanding she bestowed some attention on me, not for the sake of my person, which she certainly did not regard, but for the reputation of wit which i had acquired, and which might have rendered me convenient to her predominant inclination. she had a very lively passion for ridicule, and loved to write songs and lampoons on those who displeased her: had she found me possessed of sufficient talents to aid the fabrication of her verses, and complaisance enough to do so, we should presently have turned chambery upside down; these libels would have been traced to their source, madam de menthon would have saved herself by sacrificing me, and i should have been cooped up in prison, perhaps, for the rest of my life, as a recompense for having figured away as the apollo of the ladies. fortunately, nothing of this kind happened; madam de menthon made me stay for dinner two or three days, to chat with me, and soon found i was too dull for her purpose. i felt this myself, and was humiliated at the discovery, envying the talents of my friend venture; though i should rather have been obliged to my stupidity for keeping me out of the reach of danger. i remained, therefore, madam de menthon's daughter's singing-master, and nothing more! but i lived happily, and was ever well received at chambery, which was a thousand times more desirable than passing for a wit with her, and for a serpent with everybody else. however this might be, madam de warrens conceived it necessary to guard me from the perils of youth by treating me as a man: this she immediately set about, but in the most extraordinary manner that any woman, in similar circumstances, ever devised. i all at once observed that her manner was graver, and her discourse more moral than usual. to the playful gayety with which she used to intermingle her instructions suddenly succeeded an uniformity of manner, neither familiar nor severe, but which seemed to prepare me for some explanation. after having vainly racked my brain for the reason of this change, i mentioned it to her; this she had expected and immediately proposed a walk to our garden the next day. accordingly we went there the next morning; she had contrived that we should remain alone the whole day, which she employed in preparing me for those favors she meant to bestow; not as another woman would have done, by toying and folly, but by discourses full of sentiment and reason, rather tending to instruct than seduce, and which spoke more to my heart than to my senses. meantime, however excellent and to the purpose these discourses might be, and though far enough from coldness or melancholy, i did not listen to them with all the attention they merited, nor fix them in my memory as i should have done at any other time. that air of preparation which she had adopted gave me a degree of inquietude; while she spoke (in spite of myself) i was thoughtful and absent, attending less to what she said than curious to know what she aimed at; and no sooner had i comprehended her design (which i could not easily do) than the novelty of the idea, which, during all the years i had passed with her, had never once entered my imagination, took such entire possession of me that i was no longer capable of minding what she said! i only thought of her; i heard her no longer. thinking to render young minds attentive to reason by proposing some highly interesting object as the result of it, is an error instructors frequently run into, and one which i have not avoided in my emilius. the young pupil, struck with the object presented to him, is occupied only with that, and leaping lightly over your preliminary discourses, lights at once on the point, to which, in his idea, you lead him too tediously. to render him attentive, he must be prevented from seeing the whole of your design; and, in this particular, madam de warrens did not act with sufficient precaution. by a singularity of her systematic disposition, she took the vain precaution of proposing conditions; but the moment i knew the price, i no longer even heard them, but consented to everything, and i doubt whether there is a man on the whole earth who would have been sincere or courageous enough to dispute terms, or one single woman who would have pardoned such a dispute. by the same whimsicality, she attached a number of the gravest formalities to the acquisition of her favors, and gave me eight days to think of them, which i assured her i had no need of, though far from a truth; i was very glad to have this intermission; so much had the novelty of these ideas struck me, and such disorder did i feel in mine, that it required time to arrange them. it will be supposed, that these eight days appeared to me as many ages; on the contrary, i should have been very glad had the time been lengthened. i found myself in a strange state; it was a strange chaos of fear and impatience, dreading what i desired, and studying some pretext to evade my happiness. let the warmth of my constitution be remembered, my age, and my heart intoxicated with love; think of my strength, my health, my blood on fire; that in this state, burning with thirst for women, i had never yet approached one; that imagination, necessity, vanity and curiosity combined to excite in me the most ardent desire to be a man and to prove myself to be one, let my tender attachment to her be supposed, which far from having diminished, had daily gained additional strength; i was only happy when with her, that my heart was full, not only of her bounty, of her amiable disposition, but of her shape, of her sex, of her person, of her self; in a word, conceive me united to her by every affinity that could possibly render her dear; nor let it be supposed, that, being ten or twelve years older than myself, she began to grow an old woman, or was so in my opinion. the first sight of her had made such an impression on me, she had really altered very little. to me she was ever charming. she had got something jollier, but had the same fine eyes, the same complexion, the same bosom, the same gayety, and even the same voice. naturally, what i most should have feared in waiting for the possession of a woman i loved so dearly, was to anticipate it, and not being strong enough to control my desires and my imagination sufficiently not to forget myself. it will be seen, that in a more advanced age, the bare idea of some trifling favors i had to expect from the person i loved, inflamed me so far that i could not support, with any degree of patience, the time necessary to traverse the short space that separated us; how then, by what miracle, when in the flower of my youth, had i so little impatience for a happiness i had never tasted but in idea? why, instead of transports that should have intoxicated me with their deliciousness, did i experience only fears and repugnance? i have no doubt that if i could have avoided this happiness with any degree of decency, i should have relinquished it with all my heart. i have promised a number of extravagancies in the history of my attachment to her; this certainly is one that no idea could be formed of. the reader supposes, that being in the situation i have before described with claude anet, she was already degraded in my opinion by this participation of her favors, and that a sentiment of disesteem weakened those she had before inspired me with; but he is mistaken. i never loved her more tenderly than when i felt so little propensity to avail myself of her condescension. the gratification of the senses had no influence over her; i was well convinced that her only motive was to guard me from dangers, which appeared otherwise inevitable, by this extraordinary favor, which she did not consider in the same light that women usually do; as will presently be explained. i pitied her, and i pitied myself. i would like to tell her: no, mama, it is not necessary; you can rely upon me without this. but i dared not; in the first place it was a thing i hardly could tell her, and next, because i felt innermost, that it was not the truth, and that in reality there was only one woman who could shield me from other women and strengthen me against temptations. without desiring to possess her; knew well enough that she deprived me of the desire to possess others; to such a degree i considered anything a misfortune that might separate me from her. the habit of living a long time innocently together far from weakening the first sentiments i felt for her, had contributed to strengthen them, giving a more lively, a more tender, but at the same time a less sensual, turn to my affection. having ever accustomed myself to call her mama and enjoying the familiarity of a son, it became natural to consider myself as such, and i am inclined to think this was the true reason of that insensibility with a person i so tenderly loved; for i can perfectly recollect that my emotions on first seeing her, though not more lively, were more voluptuous: at annecy i was intoxicated, at chambery i possessed my reason. i always loved her as passionately as possible, but i now loved her more for herself and less on my own account; or, at least, i rather sought for happiness than pleasure in her company. she was more to me than a sister, a mother, a friend, or even than a mistress, and for this very reason she was not a mistress; in a word, i loved her too much to desire her. the day, more dreaded than hoped for, at length arrived. i have before observed, that i promised everything that was required of me, and i kept my word: my heart confirmed my engagements without desiring the fruits, though at length i obtained them. for the first time i found myself in the arms of a woman, and a woman whom i adored. was i happy? no: i felt i know not what invincible sadness which empoisoned my happiness: it seemed that i had committed an incest, and two or three times, pressing her eagerly in my arms, i deluged her bosom with my tears. as to her, she was neither sad nor glad, she was caressing and calm. as she was not of a sensual nature and had not sought voluptuousness, she did not feel the delight of it, nor the stings of remorse. i repeat it, all her failings were the effect of her errors, never of her passions. she was well born, her heart was pure, her manners noble, her desires regular and virtuous, her taste delicate: she seemed formed for that elegant purity of manners which she ever loved, but never practiced, because instead of listening to the dictates of her heart, she followed those of her reason, which led her astray: for when once corrupted by false principles it will ever run counter to its natural sentiments. unhappily, she piqued herself on philosophy, and the morals she drew thence clouded the purity of her heart. m. de tavel, her first lover, was also her instructor in this philosophy, and the principles he instilled into her mind were such as tended to seduce her. finding her firmly attached to her husband and her duty, he attacked her by sophisms, endeavoring to prove that the list of duties she thought so sacred, was but a sort of catechism, fit only for children. that the connection of the sexes which she thought so terrible, was, in itself, absolutely indifferent; that all the morality of conjugal faith consisted in opinion, the contentment of husbands being the only reasonable rule of duty in wives; consequently that concealed infidelities, doing no injury, could be no crimes; in a word, he persuaded her that the sin consisted only in the scandal, that woman being really virtuous who took care to appear so. thus the deceiver obtained his end in subverting the reason of a girl, whose heart he found it impossible to corrupt, and received his punishment in a devouring jealousy, being persuaded she would treat him as she had treated her husband. i don't know whether he was mistaken in this respect: the minister perret passed for his successor; all i know, is, that the coldness of temperament which it might have been supposed would have kept her from embracing this system, in the end prevented her from renouncing it. she could not conceive how so much importance should be given to what seemed to have none for her; nor could she honor with the name of virtue, an abstinence which would have cost her little. she did not, therefore, give in to this false principle on her own account, but for the sake of others; and that from another maxim almost as false as the former, but more consonant to the generosity of her disposition. she was persuaded that nothing could attach a man so truly to any woman as an unbounded freedom, and though she was only susceptible of friendship, this friendship was so tender, that she made use of every means which depended on her to secure the objects of it, and, which is very extraordinary, almost always succeeded: for she was so truly amiable, that an increase of intimacy was sure to discover additional reasons to love and respect her. another thing worthy of remark is, that after her first folly, she only favored the unfortunate. lovers in a more brilliant station lost their labor with her, but the man who at first attracted her pity, must have possessed very few good qualities if in the end he did not obtain her affection. even when she made an unworthy choice, far from proceeding from base inclinations (which were strangers to her noble heart) it was the effect of a disposition too generous, humane, compassionate, and sensible, which she did not always govern with sufficient discernment. if some false principles misled her, how many admirable ones did she not possess, which never forsook her! by how many virtues did she atone for her failings! if we can call by that name errors in which the senses had so little share. the man who in one particular deceived her so completely, had given her excellent instructions in a thousand others; and her passions, being far from turbulent, permitted her to follow the dictates. she ever acted wisely when her sophisms did not intervene, and her designs were laudable even in her failings. false principles might lead her to do ill, but she never did anything which she conceived to be wrong. she abhorred lying and duplicity, was just, equitable, humane, disinterested, true to her word, her friends, and those duties which she conceived to be such; incapable of hatred or revenge, and not even conceiving that there was a merit in pardoning; in fine (to return to those qualities which were less excusable), though she did not properly value, she never made a vile commerce of her favors; she lavished, but never sold them, though continually reduced to expedients for a subsistence: and i dare assert, that if socrates could esteem aspasia, he would have respected madam de warrens. i am well aware that ascribing sensibility of heart with coldness of temperament to the same person, i shall generally, and with great appearance of reason, be accused of a contradiction. perhaps nature sported or blundered, and this combination ought not to have existed; i only know it did exist. all those who know madam de warrens (a great number of whom are yet living) have had opportunities of knowing this was a fact; i dare even aver she had but one pleasure in the world, which was serving those she loved. let every one argue on the point as he pleases, and gravely prove that this cannot be; my business is to declare the truth, and not to enforce a belief of it. i became acquainted with the particulars i have just related, in those conversations which succeeded our union, and alone rendered it delicious. she was right when she concluded her complaisance would be useful to me; i derived great advantages from it in point of useful instruction. hitherto she had used me as a child, she now began to treat me as a man, and entertain me with accounts of herself. everything she said was so interesting, and i was so sensibly touched with it, that, reasoning with myself, i applied these confidential relations to my own improvement and received more instruction from them than from her teaching. when we truly feel that the heart speaks, our own opens to receive its instructions, nor can all the pompous morality of a pedagogue have half the effect that is produced by the tender, affectionate, and artless conversation of a sensible woman, on him who loves her. the intimacy in which i lived with madam de warrens, having placed me more advantageously in her opinion than formerly, she began to think (notwithstanding my awkward manner) that i deserved cultivation for the polite world, and that if i could one day show myself there in an eligible situation, i should soon be able to make my way. in consequence of this idea, she set about forming not only my judgment, but my address, endeavoring to render me amiable, as well as estimable; and if it is true that success in this world is consistent with strict virtue (which, for my part, i do not believe), i am certain there is no other road than that she had taken, and wished to point out to me. for madam de warrens knew mankind, and understood exquisitely well the art of treating all ranks, without falsehood, and without imprudence, neither deceiving nor provoking them; but this art was rather in her disposition than her precepts, she knew better how to practice than explain it, and i was of all the world the least calculated to become master of such an attainment; accordingly, the means employed for this purpose were nearly lost labor, as well as the pains she took to procure me a fencing and a dancing master. though very well made, i could never learn to dance a minuet; for being plagued with corns, i had acquired a habit of walking on my heels, which roche, the dancing master, could never break me of. it was still worse at the fencing-school, where, after three months' practice, i made but very little progress, and could never attempt fencing with any but my master. my wrist was not supple enough, nor my arm sufficiently firm to retain the foil, whenever he chose to make it fly out of my hand. add to this, i had a mortal aversion both to the art itself and to the person who undertook to teach it to me, nor should i ever have imagined, that any one could have been so proud of the science of sending men out of the world. to bring his vast genius within the compass of my comprehension, he explained himself by comparisons drawn from music, which he understood nothing of. he found striking analogies between a hit in quarte or tierce with the intervals of music which bear those names: when he made a feint, he cried out, "take care of this diesis," because anciently they called the diesis a feint: and when he had made the foil fly from my hand, he would add, with a sneer, that this was a pause: in a word, i never in my life saw a more insupportable pedant. i made, therefore, but little progress in my exercises, which i presently quitted from pure disgust; but i succeeded better in an art of a thousand times more value, namely, that of being content with my situation, and not desiring one more brilliant, for which i began to be persuaded that nature had not designed me. given up to the endeavor of rendering madam de warrens happy, i was ever best pleased when in her company, and, notwithstanding my fondness for music, began to grudge the time i employed in giving lessons to my scholars. i am ignorant whether anet perceived the full extent of our union; but i am inclined to think he was no stranger to it. he was a young man of great penetration, and still greater discretion; who never belied his sentiments, but did not always speak them: without giving me the least hint that he was acquainted with our intimacy, he appeared by his conduct to be so; nor did this moderation proceed from baseness of soul, but, having entered entirely into the principles of his mistress, he could not reasonably disapprove of the natural consequences of them. though as young as herself, he was so grave and thoughtful, that he looked on us as two children who required indulgence, and we regarded him as a respectable man, whose esteem we had to preserve. it was not until after she was unfaithful to anet, that i learned the strength of her attachment to him. she was fully sensible that i only thought, felt, or lived for her; she let me see, therefore, how much she loved anet, that i might love him likewise, and dwelt less on her friendship, than on her esteem, for him, because this was the sentiment that i could most fully partake of. how often has she affected our hearts and made us embrace with tears, by assuring us that we were both necessary to her happiness! let not women read this with an ill-natured smile; with the temperament she possessed, this necessity was not equivocal, it was only that of the heart. thus there was established, among us three, a union without example, perhaps, on the face of the earth. all our wishes, our cares, our very hearts, were for each other, and absolutely confined to this little. circle. the habit of living together, and living exclusively from the rest of the world, became so strong, that if at our repasts one of the three was wanting, or a fourth person came in, everything seemed deranged; and, notwithstanding our particular attachments, even our tete-a-tetes were less agreeable than our reunion. what banished every species of constraint from our little community, was a lively reciprocal confidence, and dullness or insipidity could find no place among us, because we were always fully employed. madam de warrens, always projecting, always busy, left us no time for idleness, though, indeed, we had each sufficient employment on our own account. it is my maxim, that idleness is as much the pest of society as of solitude. nothing more contracts. the mind, or engenders more tales, mischief, gossiping, and lies, than for people to be eternally shut up in the same apartment together, and reduced, from the want of employment, to the necessity of an incessant chat. when every one is busy (unless you have really something to say), you may continue silent; but if you have nothing to do, you must absolutely speak continually, and this, in my mind, is the most burdensome and the most dangerous constraint. i will go further, and maintain, that to render company harmless, as well as agreeable, it is necessary, not only that they should have something to do; but something that requires a degree of attention. knitting, for instance, is absolutely as bad as doing nothing; you must take as much pains to amuse a woman whose fingers are thus employed, as if she sat with her arms across; but let her embroider, and it is a different matter; she is then so far busied, that a few intervals of silence may be borne with. what is most disgusting and ridiculous, during these intermissions of conversation, is to see, perhaps, a dozen overgrown fellows, get up, sit down again, walk backwards and forwards, turn on their heels, play with the chimney ornaments, and rack their brains to maintain an inexhaustible chain of words: what a charming occupation! such people, wherever they go, must be troublesome both to others and themselves. when i was at motiers, i used to employ myself in making laces with my neighbors, and were i again to mix with the world, i would always carry a cup-and-ball in my pocket; i would sometimes play with it the whole day, that i might not be constrained to speak when i had nothing to discourse about; and i am persuaded, that if every one would do the same, mankind would be less mischievous, their company would become more rational, and, in my opinion, a vast deal more agreeable: in a word, let wits laugh if they please, but i maintain, that the only practical lesson of morality within the reach of the present age, is that of the cup-and-ball. at chambery they did not give us the trouble of studying expedients to avoid weariness when by ourselves, for a troop of importunate visitors gave us too much by their company, to feel any when alone. the annoyance they formerly gave me had not diminished; all the difference was, that i now found less opportunity to abandon myself to my dissatisfaction. poor madam de warrens had not lost her old predilection for schemes and systems; on the contrary, the more she felt the pressure of her domestic necessities, the more she endeavored to extricate herself from them by visionary projects; and, in proportion to the decrease of her present resources, she contrived to enlarge, in idea, those of the future. increase of years only strengthened this folly: as she lost her relish for the pleasures of the world and youth, she replaced it by an additional fondness for secrets and projects: her house was never clear of quacks, contrivers of new manufactures, alchemists, projects of all kinds and of all descriptions, whose discourses began by a distribution of millions and concluded by giving you to understand that they were in want of a crown-piece. no one went from her empty-handed; and what astonished me most was, how she could so long support such profusion, without exhausting the source or wearying her creditors. her principal project at the time i am now speaking of, was that of establishing a royal physical garden at chambery, with a demonstrator attached to it; it will be unnecessary to add for whom this office was designed. the situation of this city, in the midst of the alps, was extremely favorable to botany, and as madam de warrens was always for helping out one project with another, a college of pharmacy was to be added, which really would have been a very useful foundation in so poor a country, where apothecaries are almost the only medical practitioners. the retreat of the chief physician, grossi, to chambery, on the demise of king victor, seemed to favor this idea, or perhaps, first suggested it; however this may be, by flattery and attention she set about managing grossi, who, in fact, was not very manageable, being the most caustic and brutal, for a man who had any pretensions to the quality of a gentleman, that ever i knew. the reader may judge for himself by two or three traits of character, which i shall add by way of specimen. he assisted one day at a consultation with some other doctors, and among the rest, a young gentleman from annecy, who was physician in ordinary to the sick person. this young man, being but indifferently taught for a doctor, was bold enough to differ in opinion from m. grossi, who only answered him by asking him when he should return, which way he meant to take, and what conveyance he should make use of? the other, having satisfied grossi in these particulars, asked him if there was anything he could serve him in? "nothing, nothing," answered he, "only i shall place myself at a window in your way, that i may have the pleasure of seeing an ass ride on horseback." his avarice equaled his riches and want of feeling. one of his friends wanted to borrow some money of him, on good security. "my friend," answered he, shaking him by the arm, and grinding his teeth, "should st. peter descend from heaven to borrow ten pistoles of me, and offer the trinity as sureties, i would not lend them." one day, being invited to dinner with count picon, governor of savoy, who was very religious, he arrived before it was ready, and found his excellency busy at his devotions, who proposed to him the same employment: not knowing how to refuse, he knelt down with a frightful grimace, but had hardly recited two ave-marias, when, not able to contain himself any longer, he rose hastily, snatched his hat and cane, and, without speaking a word, was making towards the door; count picon ran after him, crying, "monsieur grossi! monsieur grossi! stop, there's a most excellent ortolan on the spit for you." "monsieur le count," replied the other, turning his head, "though you should give me a roasted angel, i would not stay." such was m. grossi, whom madam de warrens undertook and succeeded in civilizing. though his time was very much occupied, he accustomed himself to come frequently to her house, conceived a friendship for anet, seemed to think him intelligent, spoke of him with esteem, and, what would not have been expected from such a brute, affected to treat him with respect, wishing to efface the impressions of the past; for though anet was no longer on the footing of a domestic, it was known that he had been one, and nothing less than the countenance and example of the chief physician was necessary to set an example of respect which would not otherwise have been paid him. thus claude anet, with a black coat, a well-dressed wig, a grave, decent behavior, a circumspect conduct, and a tolerable knowledge in medical and botanical matters, might reasonably have hoped to fill, with universal satisfaction, the place of public demonstrator, had the proposed establishment taken place. grossi highly approved the plan, and only waited an opportunity to propose it to the administration, whenever a return of peace should permit them to think of useful institutions, and enable them to spare the necessary pecuniary supplies. but this project, whose execution would probably have plunged me into botanical studies, for which i am inclined to think nature designed me, failed through one of those unexpected strokes which frequently overthrow the best concerted plans. i was destined to become an example of human misery; and it might be said that providence, who called me by degrees to these extraordinary trials, disconcerted every opportunity that could prevent my encountering them. in an excursion which anet made to the top of the mountain to seek for genipi, a scarce plant that grows only on the alps, and which monsieur grossi had occasion for, unfortunately he heated himself so much, that he was seized with a pleurisy, which the genipi could not relieve, though said to be specific in that disorder; and, notwithstanding all the art of grossi (who certainly was very skillful), and all the care of his good mistress and myself, he died the fifth day of his disorder, in the most cruel agonies. during his illness he had no exhortations but mine, bestowed with such transports of grief and zeal that, had he been in a state to understand them, they must have been some consolation to him. thus i lost the firmest friend i ever had; a man estimable and extraordinary; in whom nature supplied the defects of education, and who (though in a state of servitude) possessed all the virtues necessary to form a great man, which, perhaps, he would have shown himself, and been acknowledged, had he lived to fill the situation he seemed so perfectly adapted to. the next day i spoke of him to madam de warrens with the most sincere and lively affection; when, suddenly, in the midst of our conversation, the vile, ungrateful thought occurred, that i should inherit his wardrobe, and particularly a handsome black coat, which i thought very becoming. as i thought this, i consequently uttered it; for when with her, to think and to speak was the same thing. nothing could have made her feel more forcibly the loss she had sustained, than this unworthy and odious observation; disinterestedness and greatness of soul being qualities which poor anet had eminently possessed. the generous madam de warrens turned from me, and (without any reply) burst into tears. dear and precious tears! your reprehension was fully felt; ye ran into my very heart, washing from thence even the smallest traces of such despicable and unworthy sentiments, never to return. this loss caused madam de warrens as much inconvenience as sorrow, since from this moment her affairs were still more deranged. anet was extremely exact, and kept everything in order: his vigilance was universally feared, and this set some bounds to that profusion they were too apt to run into; even madam de warrens, to avoid his censure, kept her dissipation within bounds; his attachment was not sufficient, she wished to preserve his esteem, and avoid the just remonstrances he sometimes took the liberty to make her, by representing that she squandered the property of others as well as her own. i thought as he did, nay, i even sometimes expressed myself to the same effect, but had not an equal ascendancy over her, and my advice did not make the same impression. on his decease, i was obliged to occupy his place, for which i had as little inclination as abilities, and therefore filled it ill. i was not sufficiently careful, and so very timid, that though i frequently found fault to myself, i saw ill-management without taking courage to oppose it; besides, though i acquired an equal share of respect, i had not the same authority. i saw the disorder that prevailed, trembled at it, sometimes complained, but was never attended to. i was too young and lively to have any pretension to the exercise of reason, and when i would have acted the reformer, madam de warrens, calling me her little mentor, with two or three playful slaps on the cheek, reduced me to my natural thoughtlessness. notwithstanding, an idea of the certain distress in which her ill-regulated expenses, sooner or later, must necessarily plunge her, made a stronger impression on me since i had become the inspector of her household, and had a better opportunity of calculating the inequality that subsisted between her income and her expenses. i even date from this period the beginning of that inclination to avarice which i have ever since been sensible of. i was never foolishly prodigal, except by intervals; but till then i was never concerned whether i had much or little money. i now began to pay more attention to this circumstance, taking care of my purse, and becoming mean from a laudable motive; for i only sought to insure madam de warrens some resource against that catastrophe which i dreaded the approach of. i feared her creditors would seize her pension, or that it might be discontinued and she reduced to want, when i foolishly imagined that the trifle i could save might be of essential service to her; but to accomplish this, it was necessary i should conceal what i meant to make a reserve of; for it would have been an awkward circumstance, while she was perpetually driven to expedients, to have her know that i hoarded money. accordingly, i sought out some hiding places, where i laid up a few louis, resolving to augment this stock from time to time, till a convenient opportunity to lay it at her feet; but i was so incautious in the choice of my repositories, that she always discovered them, and, to convince me that she did so, changed the louis i had concealed for a larger sum in different pieces of coin. ashamed of these discoveries, i brought back to the common purse my little treasure, which she never failed to lay out in clothes, or other things for my use, such as a silver hilted sword, watch, etc. being convinced that i should never succeed in accumulating money, and that what i could save would furnish but a very slender resource against the misfortune i dreaded, made me wish to place myself in such a situation that i might be enabled to provide for her, whenever she might chance to be reduced to want. unhappily, seeking these resources on the side of my inclinations, i foolishly determined to consider music as my principal dependence; and ideas of harmony rising in my brain, i imagined, that if placed in a proper situation to profit by them, i should acquire celebrity, and presently become a modern orpheus, whose mystic sounds would attract all the riches of peru. as i began to read music tolerably well, the question was, how i should learn composition? the difficulty lay in meeting with a good master, for, with the assistance of my rameau alone, i despaired of ever being able to accomplish it; and, since the departure of m. le maitre, there was nobody in savoy that understood anything of the principles of harmony. i am now about to relate another of those inconsequences, which my life is full of, and which have so frequently carried me directly from my designs, even when i thought myself immediately within reach of them. venture had spoken to me in very high terms of the abbe blanchard, who had taught him composition; a deserving man, possessed of great talents, who was music-master to the cathedral at besancon, and is now in that capacity at the chapel of versailles. i therefore determined to go to besancon, and take some lessons from the abbe blanchard, and the idea appeared so rational to me, that i soon made madam de warrens of the same opinion, who immediately set about the preparations for my journey, in the same style of profusion with which all her plans were executed. thus this project for preventing a bankruptcy, and repairing in future the waste of dissipation, began by causing her to expend eight hundred livres; her ruin being accelerated that i might be put in a condition to prevent it. foolish as this conduct may appear, the illusion was complete on my part, and even on hers, for i was persuaded i should labor for her emolument, and she thought she was highly promoting mine. i expected to find venture still at annecy, and promised myself to obtain a recommendatory letter from him to the abbe blanchard; but he had left that place, and i was obliged to content myself, in the room of it, with a mass in four parts, of his composition, which he had left with me. with this slender recommendation i set out for besancon by the way of geneva, where i saw my relations; and through nion, where i saw my father, who received me in his usual manner, and promised to forward my portmanteau, which, as i traveled on horseback, came after me. i arrived at besancon, and was kindly received by the abbe blanchard, who promised me his instruction, and offered his services in any other particular. we had just set about our music, when i received a letter from my father, informing me that my portmanteau had been seized and confiscated at rousses, a french barrier on the side of switzerland. alarmed at the news, i employed the acquaintance i had formed at besancon, to learn the motive of this confiscation. being certain there was nothing contraband among my baggage, i could not conceive on what pretext it could have been seized on; at length, however, i learned the rights of the story, which (as it is a very curious one) must not be omitted. i became acquainted at chambery with a very worthy old man, from lyons, named monsieur duvivier, who had been employed at the visa, under the regency, and for want of other business, now assisted at the survey. he had lived in the polite world, possessed talents, was good-humored, and understood music. as we both wrote in the same chamber, we preferred each other's acquaintance to that of the unlicked cubs that surrounded us. he had some correspondents at paris, who furnished him with those little nothings, those daily novelties, which circulate one knows not why, and die one cares not when, without any one thinking of them longer than they are heard. as i sometimes took him to dine with madam de warrens, he in some measure treated me with respect, and (wishing to render himself agreeable) endeavored to make me fond of these trifles, for which i naturally had such a distaste, that i never in my life read any of them. unhappily one of these cursed papers happened to be in the waistcoat pocket of a new suit, which i had only worn two or three times to prevent its being seized by the commissioners of the customs. this paper contained an insipid jansenist parody on that beautiful scene in racine's mithridates: i had not read ten lines of it, but by forgetfulness left it in my pocket, and this caused all my necessaries to be confiscated. the commissioners at the head of the inventory of my portmanteau, set a most pompous verbal process, in which it was taken for granted that this most terrible writing came from geneva for the sole purpose of being printed and distributed in france, and then ran into holy invectives against the enemies of god and the church, and praised the pious vigilance of those who had prevented the execution of these most infernal machinations. they doubtless found also that my shirts smelt of heresy, for on the strength of this dreadful paper, they were all seized, and from that time i never received any account of my unfortunate portmanteau. the revenue officers whom i applied to for this purpose required so many instructions, informations, certificates, memorials, etc., etc., that, lost a thousand times in the perplexing labyrinth, i was glad to abandon them entirely. i feel a real regret for not having preserved this verbal process from the office of rousses, for it was a piece calculated to hold a distinguished rank in the collection which is to accompany this work. the loss of my necessaries immediately brought me back to chambery, without having learned anything of the abbe blanchard. reasoning with myself on the events of this journey, and seeing that misfortunes attended all my enterprises, i resolved to attach myself entirely to madam de warrens, to share her fortune, and distress myself no longer about future events, which i could not regulate. she received me as if i had brought back treasures, replaced by degrees my little wardrobe, and though this misfortune fell heavy enough on us both, it was forgotten almost as suddenly as it arrived. though this mischance had rather damped my musical ardor, i did not leave off studying my rameau, and, by repeated efforts, was at length able to understand it, and to make some little attempts at composition, the success of which encouraged me to proceed. the count de bellegarde, son to the marquis of antremont, had returned from dresden after the death of king augustus. having long resided at paris, he was fond of music, and particularly that of rameau. his brother, the count of nangis, played on the violin; the countess de la tour, their sister sung tolerably; this rendered music the fashion at chambery, and a kind of public concert was established there, the direction of which was at first designed for me, but they soon discovered i was not competent to the undertaking, and it was otherwise arranged. notwithstanding this, i continued writing a number of little pieces, in my own way, and, among others, a cantata, which gained great approbation; it could not, indeed, be called a finished piece, but the airs were written in a style of novelty, and produced a good effect, which was not expected from me. these gentlemen could not believe that, reading music so indifferently, it was possible i should compose any that was passable, and made no doubt that i had taken to myself the credit of some other person's labors. monsieur de nangis, wishing to be assured of this, called on me one morning with a cantata of clerambault's which he had transposed, as he said, to suit his voice, and to which another bass was necessary, the transposition having rendered that of clerambault impracticable. i answered, it required considerable labor, and could not be done on the spot. being convinced i only sought an excuse, he pressed me to write at least the bass to a recitative: i did so, not well, doubtless, because to attempt anything with success i must have both time and freedom, but i did it at least according to rule, and he being present, could not doubt but i understood the elements of composition. i did not, therefore, lose my scholars, though it hurt my pride that there should be a concert at chambery in which i was not necessary. about this time, peace being concluded, the french army repassed the alps. several officers came to visit madam de warrens, and among others the count de lautrec, colonel of the regiment of orleans, since plenipotentiary of geneva, and afterwards marshal of france, to whom she presented me. on her recommendation, he appeared to interest himself greatly in my behalf, promising a great deal, which he never remembered till the last year of his life, when no longer stood in need of his assistance. the young marquis of sennecterre, whose father was then ambassador at turin, passed through chambery at the same time, and dined one day at madam de menthon's, when i happened to be among the guests. after dinner, the discourse turned on music, which the marquis understood extremely well. the opera of jephtha was then new; he mentioned this piece, it was brought him, and he made me tremble by proposing to execute it between us. he opened the book at that celebrated double chorus, la terre, l' enfer, le ciel meme tout tremble devant le seigneur.* * the earth, and hell, and heaven itself, tremble before the lord. he said, "how many parts will you take? i will do these six." i had not yet been accustomed to this trait of french vivacity, and though acquainted with divisions, could not comprehend how one man could undertake to perform six, or even two parts at the same time. nothing has cost me more trouble in music than to skip lightly from one part to another, and have the eye at once on a whole division. by the manner in which i evaded this trial, he must have been inclined to believe i did not understand music, and perhaps it was to satisfy himself in this particular that he proposed my noting a song for mademoiselle de menthon, in such a manner that i could not avoid it. he sang this song, and i wrote from his voice, without giving him much trouble to repeat it. when finished he read my performance, and said (which was very true) that it was very correctly noted. he had observed my embarrassment, and now seemed to enhance the merit of this little success. in reality, i then understood music very well, and only wanted that quickness at first sight which i possess in no one particular, and which is only to be acquired in this art by long and constant practice. be that as it may, i was fully sensible of his kindness in endeavoring to efface from the minds of others, and even from my own, the embarrassment i had experienced on this occasion. twelve or fifteen years afterwards, meeting this gentleman at several houses in paris, i was tempted to make him recollect this anecdote, and show him i still remembered it; but he had lost his sight since that time; i feared to give him pain by recalling to his memory how useful it formerly had been to him, and was therefore silent on that subject. i now touch on the moment that binds my past existence to the present, some friendships of that period, prolonged to the present time, being very dear to me, have frequently made me regret that happy obscurity, when those who called themselves my friends were really so; loved me for myself, through pure good will, and not from the vanity of being acquainted with a conspicuous character, perhaps for the secret purpose of finding more occasions to injure him. from this time i date my first acquaintance with my old friend gauffecourt, who, notwithstanding every effort to disunite us, has still remained so.still remained so!no, alas! i have just lost him!but his affection terminated only with his lifedeath alone could put a period to our friendship. monsieur de gauffecourt was one of the most amiable men that ever existed; it was impossible to see him without affection, or to live with him without feeling a sincere attachment. in my life i never saw features more expressive of goodness and serenity, or that marked more feeling, more understanding, or inspired greater confidence. however reserved one might be, it was impossible even at first sight to avoid being as free with him as if he had been an acquaintance of twenty years; for myself, who find so much difficulty to be at ease among new faces, i was familiar with him in a moment. his manner, accent, and conversation, perfectly suited his features: the sound of his voice was clear, full and musical; it was an agreeable and expressive bass, which satisfied the ear, and sounded full upon the heart. it was impossible to possess a more equal and pleasing vivacity, or more real and unaffected gracefulness, more natural talents, or cultivated with greater taste; join to all these good qualities an affectionate heart, but loving rather too diffusively, and bestowing his favors with too little caution; serving his friends with zeal, or rather making himself the friend of every one he could serve, yet contriving very dexterously to manage his own affairs, while warmly pursuing the interest of others. gauffecourt was the son of a clock-maker, and would have been a clock-maker himself had not his person and desert called him to a superior situation. he became acquainted with m. de la closure, the french resident at geneva, who conceived a friendship for him, and procured him some connections at paris, which were useful, and through whose influence he obtained the privilege of furnishing the salts of valais, which was worth twenty thousand livres a year. this very amply satisfied his wishes with respect to fortune, but with regard to women he was more difficult; he had to provide for his own happiness, and did what he supposed most conducive to it. what renders his character most remarkable, and does him the greatest honor, is, that though connected with all conditions, he was universally esteemed and sought after without being envied or hated by any one, and i really believe he passed through life without a single enemy.happy man! he went every year to the baths of aix, where the best company from the neighboring countries resorted, and being on terms of friendship with all the nobility of savoy, came from aix to chambery to see the young count de bellegarde and his father the marquis of antremont. it was here madam de warrens introduced me to him, and this acquaintance, which appeared at that time to end in nothing, after many years had elapsed, was renewed on an occasion which i should relate, when it became a real friendship. i apprehend i am sufficiently authorized in speaking of a man to whom i was so firmly attached, but i had no personal interest in what concerned him; he was so truly amiable, and born with so many natural good qualities, that, for the honor of human nature, i should think it necessary to preserve his memory. this man, estimable as he certainly was, had, like other mortals, some failings, as will be seen hereafter; perhaps had it not been so, he would have been less amiable, since, to render him as interesting as possible, it was necessary he should sometimes act. in such a manner as to require a small portion of indulgence. another connection of the same time, that is not yet extinguished, and continues to flatter me with the idea of temporal happiness, which is so difficult to obliterate from the human heart, is monsieur de conzie, a savoyard gentleman, then young and amiable, who had a fancy to learn music, or rather to be acquainted with the person who taught it. with great understanding and taste for polite acquirements, m. de conzie possessed a mildness of disposition which rendered him extremely attractive, and my temper being somewhat similar, when it found a counterpart, our friendship was soon formed. the seeds of literature and philosophy, which began to ferment in my brain, and only waited for culture and emulation to spring up, found in him exactly what was wanting to render them prolific. m. de conzie had no great inclination to music, and even this was useful to me, for the hours destined for lessons were passed anyhow rather than musically; we breakfasted, chatted, and read new publications, but not a word of music. the correspondence between voltaire and the prince royal of prussia then made a noise in the world, and these celebrated men were frequently the subject of our conversation, one of whom recently seated on a throne, already indicated what he would prove himself hereafter, while the other, as much disgraced as he is now admired, made us sincerely lament the misfortunes that seemed to pursue him, and which are so frequently the appendage of superior talents. the prince of prussia had not been happy in his youth, and it appeared that voltaire was formed never to be so. the interest we took in both parties extended to all that concerned them, and nothing that voltaire wrote escaped us. the inclination i felt for these performances inspired me with a desire to write elegantly, and caused me to endeavor to imitate the coloring of that author, with whom i was so much enchanted. some time after, his philosophical letters (though certainly not his best work) greatly augmented my fondness for study; it was a rising inclination, which, from that time, has never been extinguished. but the moment was not yet arrived when i should give in to it entirely; my rambling disposition (rather contracted than eradicated) being kept alive by our manner of living at madam de warrens', which was too unsettled for one of my solitary temper. the crowd of strangers who daily swarmed about her from all parts, and the certainty i was in that these people sought only to dupe her, each in his particular mode, rendered home disagreeable. since i had succeeded anet in the confidence of his mistress, i had strictly examined her circumstances, and saw their evil tendency with horror. i had remonstrated a hundred times, prayed, argued, conjured, but all to no purpose. i had thrown myself at her feet, and strongly represented the catastrophe that threatened her, had earnestly entreated that she would reform her expenses, and begin with myself, representing that it was better to suffer something while she was yet young, than by multiplying her debts and creditors, expose her old age to vexation and misery. sensible of the sincerity of my zeal, she was frequently affected, and would then make the finest promises in the world: but only let an artful schemer arrive, and in an instant all her good resolutions were forgotten. after a thousand proofs of the inefficacy of my remonstrances, what remained but to turn away my eyes from the ruin i could not prevent; and fly myself from the door i could not guard! i made therefore little journeys to nion, to geneva and lyons, which diverted my mind in some measure from this secret uneasiness, though it increased the cause by these additional expenses. i can truly aver that i should have acquiesced with pleasure in every retrenchment, had madam de warrens really profited by it, but being persuaded that what i might refuse myself would be distributed among a set of interested villains, i took advantage of her easiness to partake with them, and, like the dog returning from the shambles, carried off a portion of that morsel which i could not protect. pretenses were not wanting for all these journeys; even madam de warrens would alone have supplied me with more than were necessary, having plenty of connections, negotiations, affairs, and commissions, which she wished to have executed by some trusty hand. in these cases she usually applied to me; i was always willing to go, and consequently found occasions enough to furnish out a rambling kind of life. these excursions procured me some good connections, which have since been agreeable or useful to me. among others, i met at lyons, with m. perrichon, whose friendship i accuse myself with not having sufficiently cultivated, considering the kindness he had for me; and that of the good parisot, which i shall speak of in its place; at grenoble, that of madam deybens and madam la presidente de bardonanche, a woman of great understanding, and who would have entertained a friendship for me had it been in my power to have seen her oftener; at geneva, that of m. de la closure, the french resident, who often spoke to me of my mother, the remembrance of whom neither death nor time had erased from his heart; likewise those of the two barillots, the father, who was very amiable, a good companion, and one of the most worthy men i ever met, calling me his grandson. during the troubles of the republic, these two citizens took contrary sides, the son siding with the people, the father with the magistrates. when they took up arms in 1737, i was at geneva, and saw the father and son quit the same house armed, the one going to the town-house, the other to his quarters, almost certain to meet face to face in the course of two hours, and prepared to give or receive death from each other. this unnatural sight made so lively an impression on me, that i solemnly vowed never to interfere in any civil war, nor assist in deciding our internal dispute by arms, either personally or by my influence, should i ever enter into my rights as a citizen. i can bring proofs of having kept this oath on a very delicate occasion, and it will be confessed (at least i should suppose so) that this moderation was of some worth. but i had not yet arrived at that fermentation of patriotism which the first sight of geneva in arms has since excited in my heart, as may be conjectured by a very grave fact that will not tell to my advantage, which i forgot to put in its proper place, but which ought not to be omitted. my uncle bernard died at carolina, where he had been employed some years in the building of charles town, which he had formed the plan of. my poor cousin, too, died in the prussian service; thus my aunt lost, nearly at the same period, her son and husband. these losses reanimated in some measure her affection for the nearest relative she had remaining, which was myself. when i went to geneva, i reckoned her house my home, and amused myself with rummaging and turning over the books and papers my uncle had left. among them i found some curious ones, and some letters which they certainly little thought of. my aunt, who set no store by these dusty papers, would willingly have given the whole to me, but i contented myself with two or three books, with notes written by the minister bernard, my grandfather, and among the rest, the posthumous works of rohault in quarto, the margins of which were full of excellent commentaries, which gave me an inclination to the mathematics. this book remained among those of madam de warrens', and i have since lamented that i did not preserve it. to these i added five or six memorials in manuscript, and a printed one, composed by the famous micheli ducret, a man of considerable talents, being both learned and enlightened, but too much, perhaps, inclined to sedition, for which he was cruelly treated by the magistrates of geneva, and lately died in the fortress of arberg, where he had been confined many years, for being, as it was said, concerned in the conspiracy of berne. this memorial was a judicious critique on the extensive but ridiculous plan of fortification, which had been adopted at geneva, though censured by every person of judgment in the art, who was unacquainted with the secret motives of the council, in the execution of this magnificent enterprise. monsieur de micheli, who had been excluded from the committee of fortification for having condemned this plan, thought that, as a citizen, and a member of the two hundred, he might give his advice at large, and therefore, did so in this memorial, which he was imprudent enough to have printed, though he never published it, having only those copies struck off which were meant for the two hundred, and which were all intercepted at the post-house by order of the senate.* i found this memorial among my uncle's papers, with the answer he had been ordered to make to it, and took both. this was soon after i had left my place at the survey, and i yet remained on good terms with the counselor de coccelli, who had the management of it. some time after, the director of the custom-house entreated me to stand godfather to his child, with madam coccelli, who was to be godmother: proud of being placed on such terms of equality with the counselor, i wished to assume importance, and show myself worthy of that honor. * the grand council of geneva, in december, 1728, pronounced this paper highly disrespectful to the councils, and injurious to the committee of fortification. full of this idea, i thought i could do nothing better than show him micheli's memorial, which was really a scarce piece, and would prove i was connected with people of consequence in geneva, who were intrusted with the secrets of the state, yet by a kind of reserve which i should find it difficult to account for, i did not show him my uncle's answer, perhaps, because it was manuscript, and nothing less than print was worthy to approach the counselor. he understood, however, so well the importance of this paper, which i had the folly to put into his hands, that i could never after get it into my possession, and being convinced that every effort for that purpose would be ineffectual, i made a merit of my forbearance, transforming the theft into a present. i made no doubt that this writing (more curious, however, than useful) answered his purpose at the court of turin, where probably he took care to be reimbursed in some way or other for the expense which the acquisition of it might be supposed to have cost him. happily, of all future contingencies, the least probable, is, that the king of sardinia ever should besiege geneva, but as that event is not absolutely impossible, i shall ever reproach my foolish vanity with having been the means of pointing out the greatest defects of that city to its most ancient enemy. i passed two or three years in this manner, between music, magistery, projects, and journeys, floating incessantly from one object to another, and wishing to fix though i knew not on what, but insensibly inclining towards study. i was acquainted with men of letters, i heard them speak of literature, and sometimes mingled in the conversation, yet rather adopted the jargon of books, than the knowledge contained. in my excursions, i frequently called on my good old friend monsieur simon, who greatly promoted my rising emulation by fresh news from the republic of letters, extracted from baillet or colomies. i frequently saw too, at chambery, a jacobin professor of physic, a good kind of friar, who often made little chemical experiments which greatly amused me. in imitation of him, i attempted to make some sympathetic ink, and having for that purpose more than half filled a bottle with quicklime, orpiment, and water, the effervescence immediately became extremely violent; i ran to unstop the bottle, but had not time to effect it, for, during the attempt, it burst in my face like a bomb, and i swallowed so much of the orpiment and lime, that it nearly cost me my life. i remained blind for six weeks, and by the event of this experiment learned to meddle no more with experimental chemistry while the elements were unknown to me. this adventure happened very unluckily for my health, which, for some time past, had been visibly on the decline. this was rather extraordinary, as i was guilty of no kind of excess; nor could it have been expected from my make, for my chest, being well formed and rather capacious, seemed to give my lungs full liberty to play; yet i was short breathed, felt a very sensible oppression, sighed involuntarily, had palpitations of the heart, and spitting of blood, accompanied with a lingering fever, which i have never since entirely overcome. how is it possible to fall into such a state in the flower of one's age, without any inward decay, or without having done anything to destroy health? it is sometimes said, "the sword wears out the scabbard," this was truly the case with me: the violence of my passions both kept me alive and hastened my dissolution. what passions? will be asked: mere nothings: the most trivial objects in nature, but which affected me as forcibly as if the acquisition of a helen, or the throne of the universe were at stake. in the first placewomen, when i possessed one my senses, for instance, were at ease with one woman, but my heart never was, and the necessities of love consumed me in the very bosom of happiness. i had a tender, respected and lovely friend, but i sighed for a mistress; my prolific fancy painted her as such, and gave her a thousand forms, for had i conceived that my endearments had been lavished on madam de warrens, they would not have been less tender, though infinitely more tranquil. if i had believed that i held madam de warrens in my arms, when i held her there, my embraces would not have been less spirited, but all my desires would have been extinguished; i should have sobbed from love, but i should not have enjoyed it. enjoyment! can ever man be so happy? ah! if only once in my life i had tasted all the delights of love in their fullness, i imagine that my frail body would be inadequate, and i should have died on the spot. but is it possible for man to taste, in their utmost extent, the delights of love? i cannot tell, but i am persuaded my frail existence would have sunk under the weight of them. i was, therefore, dying for love without an object, and this state, is of all others, the most dangerous. i was tormented at the bad state of poor madam de warrens' circumstances, and the imprudence of her conduct, which could not fail to bring to her total ruin. music was a passion less turbulent, but not less consuming, from the ardor with which i attached myself to it, by the obstinate study of the obscure books of rameau; by an invincible resolution to charge my memory with rules it could not contain; by continual application, and by long and immense compilations which i frequently passed whole nights in copying: but why dwell on these particularly, while every folly that took possession of my wandering brain, the most transient ideas of a single day, a journey, a concert, a supper, a walk, a novel to read, a play to see, things in the world the least premeditated in my pleasures or occupation became for me the most violent passions, which by their ridiculous impetuosity conveyed the most serious torments; even the imaginary misfortunes of, cleveland, read with avidity and frequent interruption, have, i am persuaded, disordered me more than my own. there was a genevese, named bagueret, who had been employed under peter the great, of the court of russia, one of the most worthless, senseless fellows i ever met with, full of projects as foolish as himself, which were to rain down millions on those who took part in them. this man, having come to chambery on account of some suit depending before the senate, immediately got acquainted with madam de warrens, and with great reason on his side, since for those imaginary treasures that cost him nothing, and which he bestowed with the utmost prodigality, he gained, in exchange, the unfortunate crown pieces one by one out of her pocket. i did not like him, and he plainly perceived this, for with me it is not a very difficult discovery, nor did he spare any sort of meanness to gain my good will, and among other things proposed teaching me to play at chess, which game he understood something of. i made an attempt, though almost against my inclination, and after several efforts, having learned the moves, my progress was so rapid, that before the end of the first sitting i gave him the rook, which in the beginning he had given me. nothing more was necessary; behold me fascinated with chess! i buy a chess-board and a "calabrois," and shutting myself up in my chamber pass whole days and nights in studying all the varieties of the game, being determined by playing alone, without end or relaxation, to drive them into my head, right or wrong. after incredible efforts, during two or three months passed in this curious employment, i go to the coffee-house, thin, sallow, and almost stupid; i seat myself, and again attack m. bagueret: he beats me, once, twice, twenty times; so many combinations were fermenting in my head, and my imagination was so stupefied, that all appeared confusion. i tried to exercise myself with philidor's or stamma's book of instructions, but i was still equally perplexed, and, after having exhausted myself with fatigue, was further to seek than ever, and whether i abandoned my chess for a time, or resolved to surmount every difficulty by unremitted practice, it was the same thing. i could never advance one step beyond the improvement of the first sitting, nay, i am convinced that had i studied it a thousand ages, i should have ended by being able to give bagueret the rook and nothing more. it will be said my time was well employed, and not a little of it passed in this occupation, nor did i quit my first essay till unable to persist in it, for on leaving my apartment i had the appearance of a corpse, and had i continued this course much longer i should certainly have been one. any one will allow that it would have been extraordinary, especially in the ardor of youth, that such a head should suffer the body to enjoy continued health; the alteration of mine had an effect on my temper, moderating the ardor of my chimerical fancies, for as i grew weaker they became more tranquil, and i even lost, in some measure, my rage for traveling. i was not seized with heaviness, but melancholy; vapors succeeded passions, languor became sorrow: i wept and sighed without cause, and felt my life ebbing away before i had enjoyed it. i only trembled to think of the situation in which i should leave my dear madam de warrens; and i can truly say, that quitting her, and leaving her in these melancholy circumstances, was my only concern. at length i fell quite ill, and was nursed by her as never mother nursed a child. the care she took of me was of real utility to her affairs, since it diverted her mind from schemes, and kept projectors at a distance. how pleasing would death have been at that time, when, if i had not tasted many of the pleasures of life, i had felt but few of its misfortunes. my tranquil soul would have taken her flight, without having experienced those cruel ideas of the injustice of mankind which embitters both life and death. i should have enjoyed the sweet consolation that i still survived in the dearer part of myself: in the situation i then was, it could hardly be called death; and had i been divested of my uneasiness on her account, it would have appeared but a gentle sleep; yet even these disquietudes had such an affectionate and tender turn, that their bitterness was tempered by a pleasing sensibility. i said to her, "you are the depository of my whole being, act so that i may be happy." two or three times, when my disorder was most violent, i crept to her apartment to give her my advice respecting her future conduct and i dare affirm these admonitions were both wise and equitable, in which the interest i took in her future concerns were strongly marked. as if tears had been both nourishment and medicine, i found myself the better for those i shed with her, while seated on her bed-side, and holding her hands between mine. the hours crept insensibly away in these nocturnal discourses; i returned to my chamber better than i had quitted it, being content and calmed by the promises she made, and the hopes with which she had inspired me: i slept on them with my heart at peace, and fully resigned to the dispensations of providence. god grant, that after having had so many reasons to hate life, after being agitated with so many storms, after it has even become a burden, that death, which must terminate all, may be no more terrible than it would have been at that moment! by inconceivable care and vigilance, she saved my life; and i am convinced she alone could have done this. i have little faith in the skill of physicians, but depend greatly on the assistance of real friends, and am persuaded that being easy in those particulars on which our happiness depends, is more salutary than any other application. if there is a sensation in life peculiarly delightful, we experienced it in being restored to each other; our mutual attachment did not increase, for that was impossible, but it became, i know not how, more exquisitely tender, fresh softness being added to its former simplicity. i became in a manner her work; we got into the habit, though without design, of being continually with each other, and enjoying, in some measure, our whole existence together, feeling reciprocally that we were not only necessary, but entirely sufficient for each other's happiness. accustomed to think of no subject foreign to ourselves, our happiness and all our desires were confined to that pleasing and singular union, which, perhaps, had no equal, which is not, as i have before observed, love, but a sentiment inexpressibly more intimate, neither depending on the senses, sex, age, nor figure, but an assemblage of every endearing sensation that composes our rational existence and which can cease only with our being. how was it that this delightful crisis did not secure our mutual felicity for the remainder of her life and mine? i have the consoling conviction that it was not my fault; nay, i am persuaded, she did not willfully destroy it; the invincible peculiarity of my disposition was doomed soon to regain its empire; but this fatal return was not suddenly accomplished, there was, thank heaven, a short but precious interval, that did not conclude by my fault, and which i cannot reproach myself with having employed amiss. though recovered from my dangerous illness, i did not regain my strength; my chest was weak, some remains of the fever kept me in a languishing condition, and the only inclination i was sensible of, was to end my days near one so truly dear to me; to confirm her in those good resolutions she had formed; to convince her in what consisted the real charms of a happy life, and, as far as depended on me, to render hers so; but i foresaw that in a gloomy, melancholy house, the continual solitude of our tete-a-tetes would at length become too dull and monotonous: a remedy presented itself: madam de warrens had prescribed milk for me, and insisted that i should take it in the country; i consented, provided she would accompany me; nothing more was necessary to gain her compliance, and whither we should go was all that remained to be determined on. our garden (which i have before mentioned) was not properly in the country, being surrounded by houses and other gardens, and possessing none of those attractions so desirable in a rural retreat; besides, after the death of anet, we had given up this place from economical principles, feeling no longer a desire to rear plants, and other views making us not regret the loss of that little retreat. improving the distaste i found she began to imbibe for the town, i proposed to abandon it entirely, and settle ourselves in an agreeable solitude, in some small house, distant enough from the city to avoid the perpetual intrusion of her hangers-on. she followed my advice, and this plan, which her good angel and mine suggested, might fully have secured our happiness and tranquility till death had divided usbut this was not the state we were appointed to; madam de warrens was destined to endure all the sorrows of indigence and poverty, after having passed the former part of her life in abundance, that she might learn to quit it with the less regret; and myself, by an assemblage of misfortunes of all kinds, was to become a striking example to those, who, inspired with a love of justice and the public good, and trusting too implicitly to their own innocence, shall openly dare to assert truth to mankind, unsupported by cabals, or without having previously formed parties to protect them. an unhappy fear furnished some objections to our plan: she did not dare to quit her ill-contrived house, for fear of displeasing the proprietor. "your proposed retirement is charming," said she, "and much to my taste, but we are necessitated to remain here, for, on quitting this dungeon, i hazard losing the very means of life, and when these fail us in the woods, we must again return to seek them in the city. that we may have the least possible cause for being reduced to this necessity, let us not leave this house entirely, but pay a small pension to the count of saint-laurent, that he may continue mine. let us seek some little habitation, far enough from the town to be at peace, yet near enough to return when it may appear convenient." this mode was finally adopted; and after some small search, we fixed at charmettes, on an estate belonging to m. de conzie, at a very small distance from chambery; but as retired and solitary as if it had been a hundred leagues off. the spot we had concluded on was a valley between two tolerably high hills, which ran north and south; at the bottom, among the trees and pebbles, ran a rivulet, and above the declivity, on either side, were scattered a number of houses, forming altogether a beautiful retreat for those who love a peaceful romantic asylum. after having examined two or three of these houses, we chose that which we thought the most pleasing, which was the property of a gentleman of the army, called m. noiret. this house was in good condition, before it a garden, forming a terrace; below that on the declivity an orchard, and on the ascent, behind the house, a vineyard: a little wood of chestnut trees opposite; a fountain just by, and higher up the hill, meadows for the cattle; in short, all that could be thought necessary for the country retirement we proposed to establish. to the best of my remembrance, we took possession of it towards the latter end of the summer of 1736. i was delighted on going to sleep there"oh!" said i, to this dear friend, embracing her with tears of tenderness and delight, "this is the abode of happiness and innocence; if we do not find them here together it will be in vain to seek them elsewhere." book vi [1736] hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ita magnus hortus ubi, et tecto vicinus jugis aquae fons; et paulum sylvae super his foret. i cannot add: auctius atque di melius fecere. but no matter, the former is enough for my purpose; i had no occasion to have any property there, it was sufficient that i enjoyed it; for i have long since both said and felt, that the proprietor and possessor are two very different people, even leaving husbands and lovers out of the question. at this moment began the short happiness of my life, those peaceful and rapid moments, which have given me a right to say, i have lived. precious and ever-regretted moments! ah! recommence your delightful course; pass more slowly through my memory, if possible, than you actually did in your fugitive succession. how shall i prolong, according to my inclination, this recital at once so pleasing and simple? how shall i continue to relate the same occurrences, without wearying my readers with the repetition, any more than i was satiated with the enjoyment? again, if all this consisted of facts, actions, or words, i could somehow or other convey an idea of it; but how shall i describe what was neither said nor done, nor even thought, but enjoyed, felt, without being able to particularize any other object of my happiness than the bare idea? i rose with the sun, and was happy; i walked, and was happy; i saw madam de warrens, and was happy; i quitted her, and still was happy!whether i rambled through the woods, over the hills, or strolled along the valley; read, was idle, worked in the garden, or gathered fruits, happiness continually accompanied me; it was fixed on no particular object, it was within me, nor could i depart from it a single moment. nothing that passed during that charming epocha, nothing that i did, said, or thought, has escaped my memory. the time that preceded or followed it, i only recollect by intervals, unequally and confused; but here i remember all as distinctly as if it existed at this moment. imagination, which in my youth was perpetually anticipating the future, but now takes a retrograde course, makes some amends by these charming recollections for the deprivation of hope, which i have lost forever. i no longer see anything in the future that can tempt my wishes, it is a recollection of the past alone that can flatter me, and the remembrance of the period i am now describing is so true and lively, that it sometimes makes me happy, even in spite of my misfortunes. of these recollections i shall relate one example, which may give some idea of their force and precision. the first day we went to sleep at charmettes, the way being up-hill, and madam de warrens rather heavy, she was carried in a chair, while i followed on foot. fearing the chairmen would be fatigued, she got out about half-way, designing to walk the rest of it. as we passed along, she saw something blue in the hedge, and said, "there's some periwinkle in flower yet!" i had never seen any before, nor did i stop to examine this: my sight is too short to distinguish plants on the ground, and i only cast a look at this as i passed: an interval of near thirty years had elapsed before i saw any more periwinkle, at least before i observed it, when being at cressier, in 1764, with my friend, m. du peyrou, we went up a small mountain, on the summit of which there is a level spot, called with reason, belle-vue; i was then beginning to herbalize;walking and looking among the bushes, i exclaimed with rapture, "ah, there's some periwinkle!" du peyrou, who perceived my transport, was ignorant of the cause, but will some day be informed, i hope, on reading this. the reader may judge by this impression, made by so small an incident, what an effect must have been produced by every occurrence of that time. meantime, the air of the country did not restore my health; i was languishing and became more so; i could not endure milk, and was obliged to discontinue the use of it. water was at this time the fashionable remedy for every complaint; accordingly i entered on a course of it, and so indiscreetly, that it almost released me, not only from my illness but also from my life. every morning i went to the fountain and drank about two bottles, while i walked. i stopped drinking wine at meals. the water was rather hard and difficult to pass, as water from mountains generally is; in two months i ruined my stomach, which had been very good, and no longer digested anything properly. at this time an accident happened, as singular in itself as in its subsequent consequences, which can only terminate with my existence. one morning, being no worse than usual, while putting up the leaf of a small table, i felt a sudden and almost inconceivable revolution throughout my whole frame. i know not how to describe it better than as a kind of tempest, which suddenly rose in my blood, and spread in a moment over every part of my body. my arteries began beating so violently that i not only felt their motion, but even heard it, particularly that of the carotids, attended by a loud noise in my ears, which was of three, or rather four, distinct kinds. for instance, first a grave hollow buzzing; then a more distinct murmur, like the running of water; then an extremely sharp hissing, attended by the beating i before mentioned, and whose throbs i could easily count, without feeling my pulse, or putting a hand to any part of my body. this internal tumult was so violent that it has injured my auricular organs, and rendered me, from that time, not entirely deaf, but hard of hearing. my surprise and fear may easily be conceived; imagining it was the stroke of death, i went to bed, and the physician being sent for, trembling with apprehension, i related my case, judging it past all cure. i believe the doctor was of the same opinion; however he performed his office, running over a long string of causes and effects beyond my comprehension, after which, in consequence of this sublime theory, he set about, in anima vili, the experimental part of his art, but the means he was pleased to adopt in order to effect a cure were so troublesome, disgusting, and followed by so little effect, that i soon discontinued it, and after some weeks, finding i was neither better nor worse, left my bed, and returned to my usual method of living but the beating of my arteries and the buzzing in my ears, has never quitted me a moment during the thirty years which has elapsed since that time. till now, i had been a great sleeper, but a total privation of repose, with other alarming symptoms which have accompanied it, even to this time, persuaded me i had but a short time to live. this idea tranquillized me for a time: i became less anxious about a cure, and being persuaded i could not prolong life, determined to employ the remainder of it as usefully as possible. this was practicable by a particular indulgence of nature, which, in this melancholy state, exempted me from sufferings which it might have been supposed i should have experienced. i was incommoded by the noise, but felt no pain, nor was it accompanied by any habitual inconvenience, except nocturnal wakefulness, and at all times a shortness of breath, which is not violent enough to be called an asthma, but was troublesome when i attempted to run, or use any degree of exertion. this accident, which seemed to threaten the dissolution of my body, only killed my passions, and i have reason to thank heaven for the happy effect produced by it on my soul. i can truly say, i only began to live when i considered myself as entering the grave; for, estimating at their real value those things, was quitting, i began to employ myself on nobler objects, namely by anticipating those i hoped shortly to have the contemplation of, and which i had hitherto too much neglected. i had often made light of religion, but was never totally devoid of it; consequently, it cost me less pain to employ my thoughts on that subject, which is generally thought melancholy, though highly pleasing to those who make it an object of hope and consolation; madam de warrens, therefore, was more useful to me on this occasion than all the theologians in the world would have been. she, who brought everything into a system, had not failed to do as much by religion; and this system was composed of ideas that bore no affinity to each other. some were extremely good, and others very ridiculous, being made up of sentiments proceeding from her disposition, and prejudices derived from education. men, in general, make god like themselves; the virtuous make him good, and the profligate make him wicked; ill-tempered and bilious devotees see nothing but hell, because they would willingly damn all mankind; while loving and gentle souls disbelieve it altogether; and one of the astonishments i could never overcome, is to see the good fenelon speak of it in his telemachus as if he really gave credit to it; but i hope he lied in that particular for however strict he might be in regard to truth, a bishop absolutely must lie sometimes. madam de warrens spoke truth with me, and that soul, made up without gall, who could not imagine a revengeful and ever angry god, saw only clemency and forgiveness, where devotees bestowed inflexible justice, and eternal punishment. she frequently said there would be no justice in the supreme being should he be strictly just to us; because, not having bestowed what was necessary to render us essentially good, it would be requiring more than he had given. the most whimsical idea was, that not believing in hell, she was firmly persuaded of the reality of purgatory. this arose from her not knowing what to do with the wicked, being loath to damn them utterly, nor yet caring to place them with the good till they had become so; and we must really allow, that both in this world and the next, the wicked are very troublesome company. it is clearly seen that the doctrine of original sin and the redemption of mankind is destroyed by this system; consequently that the basis of the christian dispensation, as generally received, is shaken, and that the catholic faith cannot subsist with these principles; madam de warrens, notwithstanding, was a good catholic, or at least pretended to be one, and certainly desired to become such, but it appeared to her that the scriptures were too literally and harshly explained, supposing that all we read of everlasting torments were figurative threatenings, and the death of jesus christ an example of charity, truly divine, which should. teach mankind to love god and each other; in a word, faithful to the religion she had embraced, she acquiesced in all its professions of faith, but on a discussion of each particular article, it was plain she thought diametrically opposite to that church whose doctrines she professed to believe. in these cases, she exhibited simplicity of art, a frankness more eloquent than sophistry, which frequently embarrassed her confessor; for she disguised nothing from him. "i am a good catholic," she would say, "and will ever remain so; i adopt with all the powers of my soul the decisions of our holy mother church; i am not mistress of my faith, but i am of my will, which i submit to you without reserve; i will endeavor to believe all,what can you require more?" had there been no christian morality established, i am persuaded she would have lived as if regulated by its principles, so perfectly did they seem to accord with her disposition. she did everything that was required; and she would have done the same had there been no such requisition: but all this morality was subordinate to the principles of m. tavel, or rather she pretended to see nothing in religion that contradicted them; thus she would have favored twenty lovers in a day, without any idea of a crime, her conscience being no more moved in that particular than her passions. i know that a number of devotees are not more scrupulous, but the difference is, they are seduced by constitution, she was blinded by her sophisms. in the midst of conversations the most affecting, i might say the most edifying, she would touch on this subject without any change of air or manner, and without being sensible of any contradiction in her opinions; so much was she persuaded that our restrictions on that head are merely political, and that any person of sense might interpret, apply, or make exceptions to them, without any danger of offending the almighty. though i was far enough from being of the same opinion in this particular, i confess i dared not combat hers; indeed, as i was situated, it would have been putting myself in rather awkward circumstances, since i could only have sought to establish my opinion for others, myself being an exception. besides, i entertained but little hopes of making her alter hers, which never had any great influence on her conduct, and at the time i am speaking of none; but i have promised faithfully to describe her principles, and i will perform my engagementi now return to myself. finding in, her all those ideas i had occasion for, to secure me from the fears of death and its future consequences, i drew confidence and security from this source; my attachment became warmer than ever, and i would willingly have transmitted to her my whole existence, which seemed ready to abandon me. from this redoubled attachment, a persuasion that i had but a short time to live, and profound security on my future state, arose an habitual and even pleasing serenity, which, calming every passion that extends our hopes and fears, made me enjoy without inquietude or concern the few days which i imagined remained for me. what contributed to render them still more agreeable was an endeavor to encourage her rising taste for the country, by every amusement i could possibly devise, wishing to attach her to her garden, poultry, pigeons, and cows: i amused myself with them and these little occupations, which employed my time without injuring my tranquility, were more serviceable than a milk diet, or all the remedies bestowed on my poor shattered machine, even to effecting the utmost possible reestablishment of it. the vintage and gathering in our fruit employed the remainder of the year; we became more and more attached to a rustic life, and the society of our honest neighbors. we saw the approach of winter with regret, and returned to the city as if going into exile. to me this return was particularly gloomy, who never expected to see the return of spring, and thought i took an everlasting leave of charmettes. i did not quit it without kissing the very earth and trees, casting back many a wishful look as i went towards chambery. having left my scholars for so long a time, and lost my relish for the amusements of the town, i seldom went out, conversing only with madam de warrens and a monsieur salomon, who had lately become our physician. he was an honest man, of good understanding, a great cartesian, spoke tolerably well on the system of the world, and his agreeable and instructive conversations were more serviceable than his prescriptions. i could never bear that foolish trivial mode of conversation which is so generally adopted; but useful instructive discourse has always given me great pleasure, nor was i ever backward to join in it. i was much pleased with that of m. salomon; it appeared to me, that when in his company, i anticipated the acquisition of that sublime knowledge which my soul would enjoy when freed from its mortal fetters. the inclination i had for him extended to the subject which he treated on, and i began to look after books which might better enable me to understand his discourse. those which mingled devotion with science were most agreeable to me, particularly the oratory and port-royal, and i began to read or rather to devour them. one fell into my hands written by father lami, called entretiens sur les sciences, which was a kind of introduction to the knowledge of those books it treated of. i read it over a hundred times, and resolved to make this my guide; in short, i found (notwithstanding my ill state of health) that i was irresistibly drawn towards study, and though looking on each day as the last of my life, read with as much avidity as if certain i was to live forever. i was assured that reading would injure me; but on the contrary, i am rather inclined to think it was serviceable, not only to my soul, but also to my body; for this application, which soon became delightful, diverted my thoughts from my disorders, and i soon found myself much less affected by them. it is certain, however, that nothing gave me absolute ease, but having no longer any acute pain, i became accustomed to languishment and wakefulness; to thinking instead of acting; in short, i looked on the gradual and slow decay of my body as inevitably progressive and only to be terminated by death. this opinion not only detached me from all the vain cares of life, but delivered me from the importunity of medicine, to which hitherto, i had been forced to submit, though contrary to my inclination. salomon, convinced that his drugs were unavailing, spared me the disagreeable task of taking them, and contented himself with amusing the grief of my poor madam de warrens by some of those harmless preparations, which serve to flatter the hopes of the patient and keep up the credit of the doctor. i discontinued the strict regimen i had latterly observed, resumed the use of wine, and lived in every respect like a man in perfect health, as far as my strength would permit, only being careful to run into no excess; i even began to go out and visit my acquaintance, particularly m. de conzie, whose conversation was extremely pleasing to me. whether it struck me as heroic to study to my last hour, or that some hopes of life yet lingered in the bottom of my heart, i cannot tell, but the apparent certainty of death, far from relaxing my inclination for improvement, seemed to animate it, and i hastened to acquire knowledge for the other world, as if convinced i should only possess that portion i could carry with me. i took a liking to the shop of a bookseller, whose name was bouchard, which was frequented by some men of letters, and as the spring (whose return i had never expected to see again) was approaching, furnished myself with some books for charmettes, in case i should have the happiness to return there. i had that happiness, and enjoyed it to the utmost extent. the rapture with which i saw the trees put out their first bud, is inexpressible! the return of spring seemed to me like rising from the grave into paradise. the snow was hardly off the ground when we left our dungeon and returned to charmettes, to enjoy the first warblings of the nightingale. i now thought no more of dying, and it is really singular, that from this time i never experienced any dangerous illness in the country. i have suffered greatly, but never kept my bed, and have often said to those about me, on finding myself worse than ordinary, "should you see me at the point of death, carry me under the shade of an oak, and i promise you i shall recover." though weak, i resumed my country occupations, as far as my strength would permit, and conceived a real grief at not being able to manage our garden without help; for i could not take five or six strokes with the spade without being out of breath and overcome with perspiration: when i stooped the beating redoubled, and the blood flew with such violence to my head, that i was instantly obliged to stand upright. being therefore confined to less fatiguing employments, i busied myself about the dove-house, and was so pleased with it, that i sometimes passed several hours there without feeling a moment's weariness. the pigeon is very timid and difficult to tame, yet i inspired mine with so much confidence that they followed me everywhere, letting me catch them at pleasure, nor could i appear in the garden without having two or three on my arms or head in an instant, and notwithstanding the pleasure i took in them, their company became so troublesome that i was obliged to lessen the familiarity. i have ever taken great pleasure in taming animals, particularly those that are wild and fearful. it appeared delightful to me, to inspire them with a confidence which i took care never to abuse, wishing them to love me freely. i have already mentioned that i purchased some books: i did not forget to read them, but in a manner more proper to fatigue than instruct me. i imagined that to read a book profitably, it was necessary to be acquainted with every branch of knowledge it even mentioned; far from thinking that the author did not do this himself, but drew assistance from other books, as he might see occasion. full of this silly idea, i was stopped every moment, obliged to run from one book to another, and sometimes, before i could reach the tenth page of that i was studying, found it necessary to turn over a whole library. i was so attached to this ridiculous method, that i lost a prodigious deal of time, and had bewildered my head to such a degree, that i was hardly capable of doing, seeing, or comprehending anything. i fortunately perceived, at length, that i was in the wrong road, which would entangle me in an inextricable labyrinth, and quitted it before i was irrevocably lost. when a person has any real taste for the sciences, the first thing he perceives in the pursuit of them is that connection by which they mutually attract, assist, and enlighten each other, and that it is impossible to attain one without the assistance of the rest. though the human understanding cannot grasp all, and one must ever be regarded as the principal object, yet if the rest are totally neglected, the favorite study is generally obscure. i was convinced that my resolution to improve was good and useful in itself, but that it was necessary i should change my method; i, therefore, had recourse to the encyclopaedia. i began by a distribution of the general mass of human knowledge into its various branches, but soon discovered that i must pursue a contrary course, that i must take each separately, and trace it to that point where it united with the rest; thus i returned to the general synthetical method, but returned thither with a conviction that i was going right. meditation supplied the want of knowledge, and a very natural reflection gave strength to my resolutions, which was, that whether i lived or died, i had no time to lose; for having learned but little before the age of five-and-twenty, and then resolving to learn everything, was engaging to employ the future time profitably. i was ignorant at what point accident or death might put a period to my endeavors, and resolved at all events to acquire with the utmost expedition some idea of every species of knowledge, as well to try my natural disposition as to judge for myself what most deserved cultivation. in the execution of my plan, i experienced another advantage which i had never thought of; this was, spending a great deal of time profitably. nature certainly never meant me for study, since attentive application fatigues me so much that i find it impossible to employ myself half an hour together intently on any one subject; particularly while following another person's ideas, for it has frequently happened that i have pursued my own for a much longer period with success. after reading a few pages of an author with close application, my understanding is bewildered, and should i obstinately continue, i tire myself to no purpose, a stupefaction seizes me, and i am no longer conscious of what i read; but in a succession of various subjects, one relieves me from the fatigue of the other, and without finding respite necessary, i can follow then with pleasure. i took advantage of this observation in the plan of my studies, taking care to intermingle them in such a manner that i was never weary: it is true that domestic and rural concerns furnished many pleasing relaxations; but as my eagerness for improvement increased, i contrived to find opportunities for my studies, frequently employing myself about two things at the same time, without reflecting that both were consequently neglected. in relating so many trifling details, which delight me, but frequently tire my reader, i make use of the caution to suppress a great number, though, perhaps, he would have no idea of this, if i did not take care to inform him of it: for example, i recollect with pleasure all the different methods i adopted for the distribution of my time, in such a manner as to produce the utmost profit and pleasure. i may say, that the portion of my life which i passed in this retirement, though in continual ill-health, was that in which i was least idle and least wearied. two or three months were thus employed in discovering the bent of my genius; meantime, i enjoyed, in the finest season of the year, and in a spot it rendered delightful, the charms of a life whose worth i was so highly sensible of, in such a society, as. free as it was charming; if a union so perfect, and the extensive knowledge i purposed to acquire, can be called society. it seemed to me as if i already possessed the improvements i was only in pursuit of: or rather better, since the pleasure of learning constituted a great part of my happiness. i must pass over these particulars, which were to me the height of enjoyment, but are too trivial to bear repeating: indeed, true happiness is indescribable, it is only to be felt, and this consciousness of felicity is proportionably more, the less able we are to describe it; because it does not absolutely result from a concurse of favorable incidents, but is an affection of the mind itself. i am frequently guilty of repetitions, but should be infinitely more so, did i repeat the same thing as often as it recurs with pleasure to my mind. when, at length, my variable mode of life was reduced to a more uniform course, the, following was nearly the distribution of time which i adopted: i rose every morning before the sun, and passed through a neighboring orchard into a pleasant path, which, running by a vineyard, led towards chambery. while walking, i offered up my prayers, not by a vain motion of the lips, but a sincere elevation of my heart, to the great author of delightful nature, whose beauties were so charmingly spread out before me! i never love to pray in a chamber; it seems to me that the walls and all the little workmanship of man interposed between god and myself: i love to contemplate him in his works which elevate my soul, and raise my thoughts to him. my prayers were pure, i can affirm it, and therefore worthy to be heard:i asked for myself and her from whom my thoughts were never divided, only an innocent and quiet life, exempt from vice, sorrow, and want; i prayed that we might die the death of the just, and partake their lot hereafter: for the rest, it was rather admiration and contemplation than request, being satisfied that the best means to obtain what is necessary from the giver of every perfect good, is rather to deserve than to solicit. returning from my walk, i lengthened the way by taking a roundabout path, still contemplating with earnestness and delight the beautiful scenes with which i was surrounded, those objects only that never fatigue either the eye or the heart. as i approached our habitation, i looked forward to see if madam de warrens was stirring, and when i perceived her shutters open, i even ran with joy towards the house: if they were yet shut i went into the garden to wait their opening, amusing myself, meantime, by a retrospection of what i had read the preceding evening, or in gardening. the moment the shutter drew back i hastened to embrace her, frequently half asleep, in her bed; and this salute, pure as it was affectionate, even from its innocence, possessed a charm which the senses can never bestow. we usually breakfasted on milk-coffee; this was the time of day when we had most leisure, and when we chatted with the greatest freedom. these sittings, which were usually pretty long, have given me a fondness for breakfasts, and i infinitely prefer those of england, or switzerland, which are considered as a meal, at which all the family assemble, than those of france, where they breakfast alone in their several apartments, or more frequently have none at all. after an hour or two passed in discourse, i went to my study till dinner; beginning with some philosophical work, such as the logic of port-royal, locke's essays, mallebranche, leibnitz, descartes, etc. i soon found that these authors perpetually contradict each other, and formed the chimerical project of reconciling them which cost me much labor and loss of time, bewildering my head without any profit. at length (renouncing this idea) i adopted one infinitely more profitable, to which i attribute all the progress i have since made, notwithstanding the defects of my capacity; for 'tis certain i had very little for study. on reading each author, i acquired a habit of following all his ideas, without suffering my own or those of any other writer to interfere with them, or entering into any dispute on their utility. i said to myself, "i will begin by laying up a stock of ideas, true or false, but clearly conceived, till my understanding shall be sufficiently furnished to enable me to compare and make choice of those that are most estimable." i am sensible this method is not without its inconveniences, but it succeeded in furnishing me with a fund of instruction. having passed some years in thinking after others, without reflection, and almost without reasoning, i found myself possessed of sufficient materials to set about thinking on my own account, and when journeys or business deprived me of the opportunities of consulting books, i amused myself with recollecting and comparing what i had read, weighing every opinion on the balance of reason, and frequently judging my masters. though it was late before i began to exercise my judicial faculties, i have not discovered that they had lost their vigor, and on publishing my own ideas, have never been accused of being a servile disciple or of swearing in verba magistri. from these studies i passed to the elements of geometry, for i never went further, forcing my weak memory to retain them by going the same ground a hundred and a hundred times over. i did not admire euclid, who rather seeks a chain of demonstration than a connection of ideas: i preferred the geometry of father lama, who from that time became one of my favorite authors, and whose works i yet read with pleasure. algebra followed, and father lama was still my guide: when i made some progress, i perused father reynaud's science of calculation, and then his analysis demonstrated; but i never went far enough thoroughly to understand the application of algebra to geometry. i was not pleased with this method of performing operations by rule without knowing what i was about: resolving geometrical problems by the help of equations seemed like playing a tune by turning round a handle. the first time i found by calculation that the square of a binocular figure was composed of the square of each of its parts, and double the product of one by the other; though convinced that my multiplication was right, i could not be satisfied till i had made and examined the figure: not but i admire algebra when applied to abstract quantities, but when used to demonstrate dimensions, i wished to see the operation, and unless explained by lines, could not rightly comprehend it. after this came latin, in which i never made great progress. i began by port-royal's rudiments, but without success. these barbarous verses gave a pain to my heart and could not find a place in my ears. i lost myself in a crowd of rules; and in studying the last forgot all that preceded it. a study of words is not calculated for a man without memory, and it was principally an endeavor to make my memory more retentive, that urged me obstinately to persist in this study, which at length i was obliged to relinquish. as i understood enough to read an easy author by the aid of a dictionary, i followed that method, and found it succeeded tolerably well. i likewise applied myself to translation, not by writing, but mentally, and by exercise and perseverance attained to read latin authors easily, but have never been able to speak or write that language, which has frequently embarrassed me when i have found myself (i know not by what means) enrolled among men of letters. another inconvenience that arose from this manner of learning is, that i never understood prosody, much less the rules of versification; yet, anxious to understand the harmony of the language, both in prose and verse, i have made many efforts to obtain it, but am convinced, that without a master it is almost impossible. having learned the composition of the hexameter, which is the easiest of all verses, i had the patience to measure out the greater part of virgil into feet and quantity, and whenever i was dubious whether a syllable was long or short, immediately consulted my virgil. it may easily be conceived that i ran into many errors in consequence of those licenses permitted by the rules of versification; and it is certain, that if there is an advantage in studying alone, there are also great inconveniences and inconceivable labor, as i have experienced more than any one. at twelve, i quitted my books, and if dinner was not ready, paid my friends, the pigeons, a visit, or worked in the garden till it was, and when i heard myself called, ran very willingly, and with a good appetite to partake of it, for it is very remarkable, that let me be ever so indisposed my appetite never fails. we dined very agreeably, chatting till madam de warrens could eat. two or three times a week, when it was fine, we drank our coffee in a cool shady arbor behind the house, that i had decorated with hops, and which was very refreshing during the heat; we usually passed an hour in viewing our flowers and vegetables, or in conversation relative to our manner of life, which greatly increased the pleasure of it. i had another little family at the end of the garden; these were several hives of bees, which i never failed to visit once a day, and was frequently accompanied by madam de warrens. i was greatly interested in their labor, and amused myself seeing them return to the hives, their little thighs so loaded with the precious store than they could hardly walk. at first, curiosity made me indiscreet, and they stung me several times, but afterwards, we were so well acquainted, that let me approach as near as i would, they never molested me, though the hives were full and the bees ready to swarm. at these times i have been surrounded, having them on my hands and face without apprehending any danger. all animals are distrustful of man, and with reason, but when once assured he does not mean to injure them, their confidence becomes so great that he must be worse than a barbarian who abuses it. after this i returned to my books; but my afternoon employment ought rather to bear the name of recreation and amusement, than labor or study. i have never been able to bear application after dinner, and in general any kind of attention is painful to me during the heat of the day. i employed myself, 'tis true, but without restraint or rule, and read without studying. what i most attended to at these times, was history and geography, and as these did not require intense application, made as much progress in them as my weak memory would permit. i had an inclination to study father petau, and launched into the gloom of chronology, but was disgusted at the critical part, which i found had neither bottom nor banks; this made me prefer the more exact measurement of time by the course of the celestial bodies. i should even have contracted a fondness for astronomy, had i been in possession of instruments, but was obliged to content myself with some of the elements of that art, learned from books, and a few rude observations made with a telescope, sufficient only to give me a general idea of the situation of the heavenly bodies; for my short sight is insufficient to distinguish the stars without the help of a glass. i recollect an adventure on this subject, the remembrance of which has often diverted me. i had bought a celestial planisphere to study the constellations by, and, having fixed it on a frame, when the nights were fine and the sky clear, i went into the garden; and fixing the frame on four sticks, something higher than myself, which i drove into the ground, turned the planisphere downwards, and contrived to light it by means of a candle (which i put in a pail to prevent the wind from blowing it out) and then placed in the center of the above-mentioned four supporters; this done, i examined the stars with my glass, and, from time to time referring to my planisphere, endeavored to distinguish the various constellations. i think i have before observed that m. noiret's garden was on a terrace, and lay open to the road. one night, some country people passing very late, saw me in a most grotesque habit, busily employed in these observations: the light, which struck directly on the planisphere, proceeding from a cause they could not divinethe candle being concealed by the sides of the pail), the four stakes supporting a large paper, marked over with various uncouth figures, with the motion of the telescope, which they saw turning backwards and forwards, gave the whole an air of conjuration that struck them with horror and amazement. my figure was by no means calculated to dispel their fears; a flapped hat put on over my night-cap, and a short cloak about my shoulder (which madam de warrens had obliged me to put on presented in their idea the image of a real sorcerer. being near midnight, they made no doubt but this was the beginning of some diabolical assembly, and having no curiosity to pry further into these mysteries, they fled with all possible speed, awakened their neighbors, and described this most dreadful vision. the story spread so fast that the next day the whole neighborhood was informed that a nocturnal assembly of witches was held in the garden that belonged to monsieur noiret, and i am ignorant what might have been the consequence of this rumor if one of the countrymen who had been witness to my conjurations had not the same day carried his complaint to two jesuits, who frequently came to visit us, and who, without knowing the foundation of the story, undeceived and satisfied them. these jesuits told us the whole affair, and i acquainted them with the cause of it, which altogether furnished us with a hearty laugh. however, i resolved for the future to make my observations without light, and consult my planisphere in the house. those who have read venetian magic, in the letters from the mountain, may find that i long since had the reputation of being a conjurer. such was the life i led at charmettes when i had no rural employments, for they ever had the preference, and in those that did not exceed my strength, i worked like a peasant; but my extreme weakness left me little except the will; besides, as i have before observed, i wished to do two things at once, and therefore did neither well. i obstinately persisted in forcing my memory to retain a great deal by heart, and, for that purpose, i always carried some book with me, which, while at work, i studied with inconceivable labor. i was continually repeating something, and am really amazed that the fatigue of these vain and continual efforts did not render me entirely stupid. i must have learned and relearned the eclogues of virgil twenty times over, though at this time i cannot recollect a single line of them. i have lost or spoiled a great number of books by a custom i had of carrying them with me into the dove-house, the garden, orchard, or vineyard, when, being busy about something else, i laid my book at the foot of a tree, on the hedge, or the first place that came to hand, and frequently left them there, finding them a fortnight after, perhaps, rotted to pieces, or eaten by the ants or snails; and this ardor for learning became so far a madness that it rendered me almost stupid, and i was perpetually muttering some passage or other to myself. the writings of port-royal, and those of the oratory, being what i most read, had made me half a jansenist, and, notwithstanding all my confidence, their harsh theology sometimes alarmed me. a dread of hell, which till then i had never much apprehended, by little and little disturbed my security, and had not madam de warrens tranquilized my soul, would at length have been too much for me. my confessor, who was hers likewise, contributed all in his power to keep up my hopes. this was a jesuit, named father hemet; a good and wise old man, whose memory i shall ever hold in veneration. though a jesuit, he had the simplicity of a child, and his manners, less relaxed than gentle, were precisely what was necessary to balance the melancholy impressions made on me by jansenism. this good man and his companion, father coppier, came frequently to visit us at charmettes, though the road was very rough and tedious for men of their age. these visits were very comfortable to me, which may the almighty return to their souls, for they were so old that i cannot suppose them yet living. i sometimes went to see them at chambery, became acquainted at their convent, and had free access to the library. the remembrance of that happy time is so connected with the idea of those jesuits, that i love one on account of the other, and though i have ever thought their doctrines dangerous, could never find myself in a disposition to hate them cordially. i should like to know whether there ever passed such childish notions in the hearts of other men as sometimes do in mine. in the midst of my studies, and of a life as innocent as man could lead, notwithstanding every persuasion to the contrary, the dread of hell frequently tormented me. i asked myself, "what state am i in? should i die at this instant, must i be damned?" according to my jansenists the matter was indubitable, but according to my conscience it appeared quite the contrary: terrified and floating in this cruel uncertainty, i had recourse to the most laughable expedient to resolve my doubts, for which i would willingly shut up any man as a lunatic should i see him practice the same folly. one day, meditating on this melancholy subject, i exercised myself in throwing stones at the trunks of trees, with my usual dexterity, that is to say, without hitting any of them. in the height of this charming exercise, it entered my mind to make a kind of prognostic, that might calm my inquietude; i said, "i will throw this stone at the tree facing me; if i hit my mark, i will consider it as a sign of salvation; if i miss, as a token of damnation." while i said this, i threw the stone with a trembling hand and beating breast but so happily that it struck the body of the tree, which truly was not a difficult matter, for i had taken care to choose one that was very large and very near me. from that moment i never doubted my salvation: i know not on recollecting this trait, whether i ought to laugh or shudder at myself. ye great geniuses, who surely laugh at my folly, congratulate yourselves on your superior wisdom, but insult not my unhappiness, for i swear to you that i feel it most sensibly. these troubles, these alarms, inseparable, perhaps, from devotion, were only at intervals; in general i was tranquil, and the impression made on my soul by the idea of approaching death, was less that of melancholy than a peaceful languor, which even had its pleasures. i have found among my old papers a kind of congratulation and exhortation which i made to myself on dying at an age when i had the courage to meet death with serenity, without having experienced any great evils, either of body or mind. how much justice was there in the thought! a preconception of what i had to suffer made me fear to live, and it seemed that i dreaded the fate which must attend my future days. i have never been so near wisdom as during this period, when i felt no great remorse for the past, nor tormenting fear for the future; the reigning sentiment of my soul being the enjoyment of the present. serious people usually possess a lively sensuality, which makes them highly enjoy those innocent pleasures that are allowed them. worldlings (i know not why) impute this to them as a crime: or rather, i well know the cause of this imputation, it is because they envy others the enjoyment of those simple and pure delights which they have lost the relish of. i had these inclinations, and found it charming to gratify them in security of conscience. my yet inexperienced heart gave in to all with the calm happiness of a child, or rather (if i dare use the expression) with the raptures of an angel; for in reality these pure delights are as serene as those of paradise. dinners on the grass at montagnole, suppers in our arbor, gathering in the fruits, the vintage, a social meeting with our neighbors; all these were so many holidays, in which madam de warrens took as much pleasure as myself. solitary walks afforded yet purer pleasure, because in them our hearts expanded with greater freedom. one particularly remains in my memory; it was on a st. louis' day, whose name madam de warrens bore: we set out together early and unattended, after having heard a mass at break of day in a chapel adjoining our house, from a carmelite, who attended for that purpose. as i proposed walking over the hills opposite our dwelling, which we had not yet visited, we sent our provisions on before; the excursion being to last the whole day. madam de warrens, though rather corpulent, did not walk ill, and we rambled from hill to hill and wood to wood, sometimes in the sun, but oftener in the shade, resting from time to time, and regardless how the hours stole away; speaking of ourselves, of our union, of the gentleness of our fate, and offering up prayers for its duration, which were never heard. everything conspired to augment our happiness: it had rained for several days previous to this, there was no dust, the brooks were full and rapid, a gentle breeze agitated the leaves, the air was pure, the horizon free from clouds, serenity reigned in the sky as in our hearts. our dinner was prepared at a peasant's house, and shared with him and his family, whose benedictions we received. these poor savoyards are the worthiest of people! after dinner we regained the shade, and while i was picking up bits of dried sticks, to boil our coffee, madam de warrens amused herself with herbalizing among the bushes, and with the flowers i had gathered for her in my way. she made me remark in their construction a thousand natural beauties, which greatly amused me, and which ought to have given me a taste for botany; but the time was not yet come, and my attention was arrested by too many other studies. besides this, an idea struck me, which diverted my thoughts from flowers and plants: the situation of my mind at that moment, all that we had said or done that day, every object that had struck me, brought to my remembrance the kind of waking dream i had at annecy seven or eight years before, and which i have given an account of in its place. the similarity was so striking that it affected me even to tears: in a transport of tenderness i embraced madam de warrens. "my dearest friend," said i, "this day has long since been promised me: i can see nothing beyond it: my happiness, by your means, is at its height; may it never decrease; may it continue as long as i am sensible of its valuethen it can only finish with my life." thus happily passed my days, and the more happily as i perceived nothing that could disturb or bring them to a conclusion; not that the cause of my former uneasiness had absolutely ceased, but i saw it take another course, which i directed with my utmost care to useful objects, that the remedy might accompany the evil. madam de warrens naturally loved the country, and this taste did not cool while with me. by little and little she contracted a fondness for rustic employments, wished to make the most of her land, and had in that particular a knowledge which she practiced with pleasure. not satisfied with what belonged to the house, she hired first a field, then a meadow, transferring her enterprising humor to the objects of agriculture, and instead of remaining unemployed in the house, was in the way of becoming a complete farmer. i was not greatly pleased to see this passion increase, and endeavored all i could to oppose it; for i was certain she would be deceived, and that her liberal extravagant disposition would infallibly carry her expenses beyond her profits; however, i consoled myself by thinking the produce could not be useless, and would at least help her to live. of all the projects she could form, this appeared the least ruinous: without regarding it, therefore, in the light she did, as a profitable scheme, i considered it as a perpetual employment, which would keep her from more ruinous enterprises, and out of the reach of impostors. with this idea, i ardently wished to recover my health and strength, that i might superintend her affairs, overlook her laborers, or, rather, be the principal one myself. the exercise this naturally obliged me to take, with the relaxation it procured me from books and study, was serviceable to my health. the winter following, barillot returning from italy, brought me some books; and among others, the bontempi and la cartella per musica, of father banchieri; these gave me a taste for the history of music and for the theoretical researches of that pleasing art. barillot remained some time with us, and, as i had been of age some months, i determined to go to geneva the following spring, and demand my mother's inheritance, or, at least that part which belonged to me, till it could be ascertained what had become of my brother. this plan was executed as it had been resolved: i went to geneva; my father met me there, for he had occasionally visited geneva a long time since, without its being particularly noticed, though the decree that had been pronounced against him had never been reversed; but being esteemed for his courage, and respected for his probity, the situation of his affairs was pretended to be forgotten; or perhaps, the magistrates, employed with the great project that broke out some little time after, were not willing to alarm the citizens by recalling to their memory, at an improper time, this instance of their former partiality. i apprehended that i should meet with difficulties, on account of having changed my religion, but none occurred; the laws of geneva being less harsh in that particular than those of berne, where, whoever changes his religion, not only loses his freedom, but his property. my rights, however, were not disputed, but i found my patrimony, i know not how, reduced to very little, and though it was known almost to a certainty that my brother was dead, yet, as there was no legal proof, i could not lay claim to his share, which i left without regret to my father, who enjoyed it as long as he lived. no sooner were the necessary formalities adjusted, and i had received my money, some of which i expended in books, than i flew with the remainder to madam de warrens. my heart beat with joy during the journey, and the moment in which i gave the money into her hands, was to me a thousand times more delightful than that which gave it into mine. she received this with a simplicity common to great souls, who, doing similar actions without effort, see them without admiration; indeed it was almost all expended for my use, for it would have been employed in the same manner had it come from any other quarter. my health was not yet reestablished; i decayed visibly, was pale as death, and reduced to an absolute skeleton; the beating of my arteries was extreme, my palpitations were frequent: i was sensible of a continual oppression, and my weakness became at length so great, that i could scarcely move or step without danger of suffocation, stoop without vertigoes, or lift even the smallest weight, which reduced me to the most tormenting inaction for a man so naturally stirring as myself. it is certain my disorder was in a great measure hypochondriacal. the vapors is a malady common to people in fortunate situations: the tears i frequently shed, without reason; the lively alarms i felt on the falling of a leaf, or the fluttering of a bird; inequality of humor in the calm of a most pleasing life; lassitude which made me weary even of happiness, and carried sensibility to extravagance, were an instance of this. we are so little formed for felicity, that when the soul and body do not suffer together, they must necessarily endure separate inconveniences, the good state of the one being almost always injurious to the happiness of the other. had all the pleasure of life courted me, my weakened frame would not have permitted the enjoyment of them, without my being able to particularize the real seat of my complaint; yet in the decline of life, after having encountered very serious and real evils, my body seemed to regain its strength, as if on purpose to encounter additional misfortunes; and, at the moment i write this, though infirm, near sixty, and overwhelmed with every kind of sorrow, i feel more ability to suffer than i ever possessed for enjoyment, when in the very flower of my age, and in the bosom of real happiness. to complete me, i had mingled a little physiology among my other readings: i set about studying anatomy, and considering the multitude, movement, and wonderful construction of the various parts that compose the human machine; my apprehensions were instantly increased, i expected to feel mine deranged twenty times a day, and far from being surprised to find myself dying, was astonished that i yet existed! i could not read the description of any malady without thinking it mine, and, had i not been already indisposed, i am certain i should have become so from this study. finding in every disease symptoms similar to mine, i fancied i had them all, and, at length, gained one more troublesome than any i yet suffered, which i had thought myself delivered from; this was, a violent inclination to seek a cure; which it is very difficult to suppress, when once a person begins reading physical books. by searching, reflecting, and comparing, i became persuaded that the foundation of my complaint was a polypus at the heart, and doctor salomon appeared to coincide with the idea. reasonably this opinion should have confirmed my former resolution of considering myself past cure; this, however, was not the case; on the contrary, i exerted every power of my understanding in search of a remedy for a polypus, resolving to undertake this marvelous cure. in a journey which anet had made to montpellier, to see the physical garden there, and visit monsieur sauvages, the demonstrator, he had been informed that monsieur fizes had cured a polypus similar to that i fancied myself afflicted with. madam de warrens, recollecting this circumstance, mentioned it to me, and nothing more was necessary to inspire me with a desire to consult monsieur fizes. the hope of recovery gave me courage and strength to undertake the journey; the money from geneva furnished the means; madam de warrens, far from dissuading, entreated me to go: behold me, therefore, without further ceremony, set out for montpellier!but it was not necessary to go so far to find the cure i was in search of. finding the motion of the horse too fatiguing, i had hired a chaise at grenoble, and on entering moirans, five or six other chaises arrived in a rank after mine. the greater part of these were in the train of a new married lady called madam du colombier; with her was a madam de larnage, not so young or handsome as the former, yet not less amiable. the bride was to stop at romans, but the other lady was to pursue her route as far as saint-andiol, near the bridge du st. esprit. with my natural timidity it will not be conjectured that i was very ready at forming an acquaintance with these fine ladies, and the company that attended them; but traveling the same road, lodging at the same inns, and being obliged to eat at the same table, the acquaintance seemed unavoidable, as any backwardness on my part would have got me the character of a very unsociable being: it was formed then, and even sooner than i desired, for all this bustle was by no means convenient to a person in ill health, particularly to one of my humor. curiosity renders these vixens extremely insinuating; they accomplish their design of becoming acquainted with a man by endeavoring to turn his brain, and this was precisely what happened to me. madam du colombier was too much surrounded by her young gallants to have any opportunity of paying much attention to me; beside, it was not worth while, as we were to separate in so short a time; but madam de larnage (less attended to than her young friend) had to provide herself for the remainder of the journey. behold me, then, attacked by madam de larnage, and adieu to poor jean jacques, or rather farewell to fever, vapors, and polypus; all completely vanished when in her presence. the ill state of my health was the first subject of our conversation; they saw i was indisposed, knew i was going to montpellier, but my air and manner certainly did not exhibit the appearance of a libertine, since it was clear by what followed they did not suspect i was going there for a trip to the stewing-pan (to be placed in a vapor-bath, a cure for a dangerous venereal disease). though a man's sick condition is no great recommendation for him among women, still it made me an object of interest for them in this case. once (according to my praiseworthy custom of speaking without thought) i replied, "i did not know," which answer naturally made them conclude i was a fool; but on questioning me further, the examination turned out so far to my advantage, that i rather rose in their opinion, and i once heard madam du colombier say to her friend, "he is amiable, but not sufficiently acquainted with the world." as we became more familiar, it was natural to give each other some little account of whence we came and who we were: this embarrassed me greatly, for i was sensible that in good company and among women of spirit, the very name of a new convert would utterly undo me. i know not by what whimsicality i resolved to pass for an englishman; however, in consequence of that determination i gave myself out for a jacobite, and was readily believed. they called me monsieur dudding, which was the name i assumed with my new character, and a cursed marquis torignan, who was one of the company, an invalid like myself, and both old and ill-tempered, took it in his head to begin a long conversation with me. he spoke of king james, of the pretender, and the old court of st. germain's; i sat on thorns the whole time, for i was totally unacquainted with all these except what little i had picked up in the account of earl hamilton, and from the gazettes; however, i made such fortunate use of the little i did know, as to extricate myself from this dilemma, happy in not being questioned on the english language, which i did not know a single word of. the company were all very agreeable; we looked forward to the moment of separation with regret, and therefore made snails' journeys. we arrived one sunday at st. marcellin's. madam de larnage would go to mass; i accompanied her, and had nearly ruined all my affairs, for by my modest reserved countenance during the service, she concluded me a bigot, and conceived a very indifferent opinion of me, as i learned from her own account two days after. it required a great deal of gallantry on my part to efface this ill impression, or rather madam de larnage (who was not easily disheartened) determined to risk the first advances, and see how i should behave. she made several, but far from being presuming on my figure, i thought she was making sport of me: full of this ridiculous idea there was no folly i was not guilty of. madam de larnage persisted in such caressing behavior, that a much wiser man than myself could hardly have taken it seriously. the more obvious her advances were, the more i was confirmed in my mistake, and what increased my torment, i found i was really in love with her. i frequently said to myself, and sometimes to her, sighing, "ah! why is not all this real? then should i be the most fortunate of men." i am inclined to think my stupidity did but increase her resolution, and make her determine to get the better of it. we left madam du colombier at romans; after which madam de larnage, the marquis de torignan, and myself continued our route slowly, and in the most agreeable manner. the marquis, though indisposed, and rather ill-humored, was an agreeable companion, but was not best pleased at seeing the lady bestow all her attentions on me, while he passed unregarded; for madam de larnage took so little care to conceal her inclination, that he perceived it sooner than i did, and his sarcasms must have given me that confidence i could not presume to take from the kindness of the lady, if by a surmise, which no one but myself could have blundered on, i had not imagined they perfectly understood each other, and were agreed to turn my passion into ridicule. this foolish idea completed my stupidity, making me act the most ridiculous part, while, had i listened to the feelings of my heart, i might have been performing one far more brilliant. i am astonished that madam de larnage was not disgusted, and did not discard me with disdain; but she plainly perceived there was more bashfulness than indifference in my composition. she at last succeeded in making me understand her; but it was not easy for her. we arrived at valence to dinner, and according to our usual custom passed the remainder of the day there. we lodged out of the city, at the st. james, an inn i shall never forget. after dinner, madam de larnage proposed a walk; she knew the marquis was no walker, consequently, this was an excellent plan for a tete-a-tete, which she was pre-determined to make the most of. while we were walking round the city by the side of the moats, i entered on a long history of my complaint, to which she answered in so tender an accent, frequently pressing my arm, which she held to her heart, that it required all my stupidity not to be convinced of the sincerity of her attachment. i have already observed that she was amiable, love rendered her charming, adding all the loveliness of youth; and she managed her advances with so much art, that they were sufficient to have seduced the most insensible: i was, therefore, in very uneasy circumstances, and frequently on the point of making a declaration; but the dread of offending her, and the still greater of being laughed at, ridiculed, made table-talk, and complimented on my enterprise by the satirical marquis, had such unconquerable power over me, that, though ashamed of my ridiculous bashfulness, i could not take courage to surmount it. i had ended the history of my complaints, which i felt the ridiculousness of at this time; and not knowing how to look, or what to say, continued silent, giving the finest opportunity in the world for that ridicule i so much dreaded. happily, madam de larnage took a more favorable resolution, and suddenly interrupted this silence by throwing her arm round my neck, while, at the same instant, her lips spoke too plainly on mine to be any longer misunderstood. this was reposing that confidence in me the want of which has almost always prevented me from appearing myself: for once i was at ease, my heart, eyes, and tongue, spoke freely what i felt; never did i make better reparation for my mistakes, and if this little conquest had cost madam de larnage some difficulties, i have reason to believe she did not regret them. was i to live a hundred years, i should never forget this charming woman. it was possible to see her without falling in love, but those she favored could not fail to adore her; which proves, in my opinion, that she was not generally so prodigal of her favors. it is true, her inclination for me was so sudden and lively, that it scarce appears excusable; though from the short, but charming interval i passed with her, i have reason to think her heart was more influenced than her passions, and during the short and delightful time i was with her, i undoubtedly believe that she showed me a consideration that was not natural to her, as she was sensual and voluptuous; but she preferred my health for her own pleasure. our good intelligence did not escape the penetration of the marquis; not that he discontinued his usual raillery; on the contrary, he treated me as a sighing, hopeless swain, languishing under the rigors of his mistress; not a word, smile, or look escaped him by. which i could imagine he suspected my happiness; and i should have thought him completely deceived, had not madam de larnage, who was more clear-sighted than myself, assured me of the contrary; but he was a well-bred man, and it was impossible to behave with more attention, or greater civility, than he constantly paid me (notwithstanding his satirical sallies), especially after my success, which, as he was unacquainted with my stupidity, he perhaps gave me the honor of achieving. it has already been seen that he was mistaken in this particular; but no matter, i profited by his error, for being conscious that the laugh was on my side, i took all his sallies in good part, and sometimes parried them with tolerable success; for, proud of the reputation of wit which madam de larnage had thought fit to discover in me, i no longer appeared the same man. we were both in a country and season of plenty, and had everywhere excellent cheer, thanks to the good cares of the marquis; though i would willingly have relinquished this advantage to have been more satisfied with the situation of our chambers; but he always sent his footman on to provide them; and whether of his own accord, or by the order of his master, the rogue always took care that the marquis' chamber should be close by madam de larnage's, while mine was at the further end of the house: but that made no great difference, or perhaps it rendered our rendezvous the more charming; this happiness lasted four or five days, during which time i was intoxicated with delight, which i tasted pure and serene without any alloy; an advantage i could never boast before; and, i may add, it is owing to madam de larnage that i did not go out of the world without having tasted real pleasure. if the sentiment i felt for her was not precisely love, it was at least a very tender return of that she testified for me; our meetings were so delightful, that they possessed all the sweets of love; without that kind of delirium which affects the brain, and even tends to diminish our happiness. i never experienced true love but once in my life, and that was not with madam de larnage, neither did i feel that affection for her which i had been sensible of and yet continued to possess, for madam de warrens; but for this very reason, our tete-a-tetes were a hundred times more delightful. when with madam de warrens, my felicity was always disturbed by a secret sadness, a compunction of heart, which i found it impossible to surmount. instead of being delighted at the acquisition of so much happiness, i could not help reproaching myself for contributing to render her i loved unworthy: on the contrary, with madam de larnage, i was proud to be a man and happy; i gave way to my sensual impulses confidently; i took part in the impressions i made on hers; i contemplated my triumph with as much vanity as voluptuousness, and was doubly proud. i do not recollect exactly where we quitted the marquis, who resided in this country, but i know we were alone on our arrival at montelimar, where madam de larnage made her chambermaid get into my chaise, and accommodate me with a seat in hers. it will easily be believed, that traveling in this manner was by no means displeasing to me, and that i should be very much puzzled to give any account of the country we passed through. she had some business at montelimar, which detained her there two or three days; during this time she quitted me but one-quarter of an hour, for a visit she could not avoid. we walked together every day, in the most charming country, and under the finest sky imaginable. oh! these three days! what reason have i to regret them! never did such happiness return again. the amours of a journey cannot be very durable: it was necessary we should part, and i must confess it was almost time; not that i was weary of my happiness, or nearly so; i became every day more attached to her; but notwithstanding all the consideration the lady had shown me, there was nothing left me but the good will. we endeavored to comfort each other for the pain of parting, by forming plans for our reunion; and it was concluded, that after staying five or six weeks at montpellier (which would give madam de larnage time to prepare for my reception in such a manner as to prevent scandal) i should return to saint-andiol, and spend the winter under her direction. she gave me ample instruction on what it was necessary i should know, on what it would be proper to say, and how i should conduct myself. she wished me to correspond with her, and spoke much and earnestly on the care of my health, conjured me to consult skillful physicians, and be attentive and exact in following their prescriptions whatever they might happen to be. i believe her concern was sincere, for she loved me, and gave a thousand proofs of her affection less equivocal than the prodigality of her favors; for judging by my mode of traveling, that i was not in very affluent circumstances (though not rich herself), on our paring, she would have had me share the contents of her purse, which she had brought pretty well furnished from grenoble, and it was with great difficulty i could make her put up with a denial. in a word, we parted; my heart full of her idea, and leaving in hers (if i am not mistaken) a firm attachment to me. while pursuing the remainder of my journey, remembrance ran over everything that had passed from the commencement of it, and i was well satisfied at finding myself alone in a comfortable chaise, where i could ruminate at ease on the pleasures i had enjoyed, and those which awaited my return. i only thought of saint-andiol of the life i was to lead there; i saw nothing but madam de larnage, or what related to her; the whole universe besides was nothing to meeven madam de warrens was forgotten!i set about combining all the details by which madam de larnage had endeavored to give me in advance an idea of her house, of the neighborhood, of her connections, and manner of life, finding everything charming. she had a daughter, whom she had often described in the warmest terms of maternal affection: this daughter was fifteen, lively, charming, and of an amiable disposition. madam de larnage promised me her friendship; i had not forgotten that promise, and was curious to know how mademoiselle de larnage would treat her mother's bon ami. these were the subjects of my reveries from the bridge of st. esprit to remoulin: i had been advised to visit the pont-du-gard; i did not fail to do so. after a breakfast of excellent figs, i took a guide and went to the pont-du-gard. hitherto i had seen none of the remaining monuments of roman magnificence, and i expected to find this worthy the hands by which it was constructed; for once, the reality surpassed my expectation; this was the only time in my life it ever did so, and the romans alone could have produced that effect. the view of this noble and sublime work struck me the more forcibly, from being in the midst of a desert, where silence and solitude render the majestic edifice more striking, and admiration more lively, for though called a bridge it is nothing more than an aqueduct. one cannot help exclaiming, what strength could have transported these enormous stones so far from any quarry? and what motive could have united the labors of so many millions of men, in a place that no one inhabited? i went through the three stories of this superb edifice. i hardly dared to put my feet on these old stones, i reverenced them so much. i remained here whole hours, in the most ravishing contemplation, and returned, pensive and thoughtful to my inn. this reverie was by no means favorable to madam de larnage; she had taken care to forewarn me against the girls of montpellier, but not against the pont-du-gardit is impossible to provide for every contingency. on my arrival at nimes, i went to see the amphitheater, which is a far more magnificent work than even the pont-du-gard, yet it made a much less impression on me, perhaps, because my admiration had been already exhausted on the former object; or that the situation of the latter, in the midst of a city, was less proper to excite it. the amphitheater at verona is a vast deal smaller, and less beautiful than that at nimes, but preserved with all possible care and neatness, by which means alone it made a much stronger and more agreeable impression on me. the french pay no regard to these things, respect no monument of antiquity; ever eager to undertake, they never finish, nor preserve anything that is already finished to their hands. i was so much better, and had gained such an appetite by exercise, that i flopped a whole day at pont-de-lunel, for the sake of good entertainment and company, this being deservedly esteemed at that time the best inn in europe; for those who kept it, knowing how to make its fortunate situation turn to advantage, took care to provide both abundance and variety. it was really curious to find in a lonely country-house, in the middle of the campagna, a table every day furnished with sea and fresh-water fish, excellent game, and choice wines, served up with all the attention and care, which are only to be expected among the great or opulent, and all this for thirty-five sous each person: but the pont-du-lunel did not long remain on this footing, for the proprietor, presuming too much on its reputation, at length lost it entirely. during this journey, i really forgot my complaints, but recollected them again on my arrival at montpellier. my vapors were absolutely gone, but every other complaint remained, and though custom had rendered them less troublesome, they were still sufficient to make any one who had been suddenly seized with them, suppose himself attacked by some mortal disease. in effect, they were rather alarming than painful, and made the mind suffer more than the body, though it apparently threatened the latter with destruction. while my attention was called off by the vivacity of my passions, i paid no attention to my health; but as my complaints were not altogether imaginary, i thought of them seriously when the tumult had subsided. recollecting the salutary advice of madam de larnage, and the cause of my journey, i consulted the most famous practitioners, particularly monsieur fizes; and through superabundance of precaution boarded at a doctor's, who was an irishman, and named fitz-morris. this person boarded a number of young gentlemen who were studying physic; and what rendered his house very commodious for an invalid, he contented himself with a moderate pension for provision, lodging, etc., and took nothing of his boarders for attendance as a physician. he even undertook to execute the orders of m. fizes, and endeavor to reestablish my health. he certainly acquitted himself very well in this employment; as to regimen, indigestions were not to be gained at his table; and though i am not much hurt at privations of that kind, the objects of comparison were so near, that i could not help thinking with myself sometimes, that m. de torignan was a much better provider than m. fitz-morris; notwithstanding, as there was no danger of dying with hunger, and all the youths were gay and good-humored, i believe this manner of living was really serviceable, and prevented my falling into those languors i had latterly been so subject to. i passed the morning in taking medicines, particularly, i know not what kind of waters, but believe they were those of vals, and in writing to madam de larnage; for the correspondence was regularly kept up, and rousseau kindly undertook to receive these letters for his good friend dudding. at noon i took a walk to the canourgue, with some of our young boarders, who were all very good lads; after this we assembled for dinner; when this was over, an affair of importance employed the greater part of us till night; this was, going a little way out of town to take our afternoon's collation, and make up two or three parties at mall, or mallet. as i had neither strength nor skill, i did not play myself, but i betted on the game, and, interested for the success of my wager, followed the players and their balls over the rough and stony roads, procuring by this means both an agreeable and salutary exercise. we took our afternoon's refreshment at an inn out of the city. i need not observe that these meetings were extremely merry, but should not omit that they were equally innocent, though the girls of the house were very pretty. m. fitz-morris (who was a great mall player himself) was our president; and i must observe, notwithstanding the imputation of wildness that is generally bestowed on students, that i found more virtuous dispositions among these youths than could easily be found among an equal number of men: they were rather noisy than fond of wine, and more merry than libertine. i accustomed myself so much to this mode of life, and it accorded so entirely with my humor, that i should have been very well content with a continuance of it. several of my fellow-boarders were irish, from whom i endeavored to learn some english words, as a precaution for saint-andiol. the time now drew near for my departure; every letter madam de larnage wrote, she entreated me not to delay it, and at length i prepared to obey her. i was convinced that the physicians (who understood nothing of my disorder) looked on my complaint as imaginary, and treated me accordingly, with their waters and whey. in this respect physicians and philosophers differ widely from theologians; admitting the truth only of what they can explain, and making their knowledge the measure of possibilities. these gentlemen understood nothing of my illness, therefore concluded i could not be ill; and who would presume to doubt the profound skill of a physician? i plainly saw they only meant to amuse, and make me swallow my money; and judging their substitute at saint-andiol would do me quite as much service, and be infinitely more agreeable, i resolved to give her the preference; full, therefore, of this wise resolution, i quitted montpellier. i set off towards the end of november, after a stay of six weeks or two months in that city, where i left a dozen louis, without either my health or understanding being the better for it, except from a short course of anatomy begun under m. fitz-morris, which i was soon obliged to abandon, from the horrible stench of the bodies he dissected, which i found it impossible to endure. not thoroughly satisfied in my own mind on the rectitude of this expedition, as i advanced towards the bridge of st. esprit (which was equally the road to saint-andiol and to chambery) i began to reflect on madam de warrens, the remembrance of whose letters, though less frequent than those from madam de larnage, awakened in my heart a remorse that passion had stifled in the first part of my journey, but which became so lively on my return, that, setting just estimate on the love of pleasure, i found myself in such a situation of mind that i could listen wholly to the voice of reason. besides, in continuing to act the part of an adventurer, i might be less fortunate than i had been in the beginning; for it was only necessary that in all saint-andiol there should be one person who had been in england, or who knew the english, or anything of their language, to prove me an impostor. the family of madam de larnage might not be pleased with me, and would, perhaps, treat me unpolitely; her daughter too made me uneasy, for, spite of myself, i thought more of her than was necessary. i trembled left i should fall in love with this girl, and that very fear had already half done the business. was i going, in return for the mother's kindness, to seek the ruin of the daughter? to sow dissension, dishonor, scandal, and hell itself, in her family? the very idea struck me with horror, and i took the firmest resolution to combat and vanquish this unhappy attachment, should i be so unfortunate as to experience it. but why expose myself to this danger? how miserable must the situation be to live with the mother, whom i should be weary of, and sigh for the daughter, without daring to make known my affection! what necessity was there to seek this situation, and expose myself to misfortunes, affronts and remorse, for the sake of pleasures whose greatest charm was already exhausted? for i was sensible this attachment had lost its first vivacity. with these thoughts were mingled reflections relative to my situation and duty to that good and generous friend, who already loaded with debts, would become more so from the foolish expenses i was running into, and whom i was deceiving so unworthily. this reproach at length became so keen that it triumphed over every temptation, and on approaching the bridge of st. esprit i formed the resolution to burn my whole magazine of letters from saint-andiol, and continue my journey right forward to chambery. i executed this resolution courageously, with some sighs i confess, but with the heart-felt satisfaction, which i enjoyed for the first time in my life, of saying, "i merit my own esteem, and know how to prefer duty to pleasure." this was the first real obligation i owed my books, since these had taught me to reflect and compare. after the virtuous principles i had so lately adopted, after all the rules of wisdom and honor i had proposed to myself, and felt so proud to follow, the shame of possessing so little stability, and contradicting so egregiously my own maxims, triumphed over the allurements of pleasure. perhaps, after all, pride had as much share in my resolution as virtue; but if this pride is not virtue itself, its effects are so similar that we are pardonable in deceiving ourselves. one advantage resulting from good actions is that they elevate the soul to a disposition of attempting still better; for such is human weakness, that we must place among our good deeds an abstinence from those crimes we are tempted to commit. no sooner was my resolution confirmed than i became another man, or rather, i became what i was before i had erred, and saw in its true colors what the intoxication of the moment had either concealed or disguised. full of worthy sentiments and wise resolutions, i continued my journey, intending to regulate my future conduct by the laws of virtue, and dedicate myself without reserve to that best of friends, to whom i vowed as much fidelity in future as i felt real attachment. the sincerity of this return to virtue appeared to promise a better destiny; but mine, alas! was fixed, and already begun: even at the very moment when my heart, full of good and virtuous sentiments, was contemplating only innocence and happiness through life, i touched on the fatal period that was to draw after it the long chain of my misfortunes! my impatience to arrive at chambery had made me use more diligence than i meant to do. i had sent a letter from valence, mentioning the day and hour i should arrive, but i had gained half a day on this calculation, which time i passed at chaparillan, that i might arrive exactly at the time i mentioned. i wished to enjoy to its full extent the pleasure of seeing her, and preferred deferring this happiness a little, that expectancy might increase the value of it. this precaution had always succeeded; hitherto my arrival had caused a little holiday; i expected no less this time, and these preparations, so dear to me, would have been well worth the trouble of contriving them. i arrived then exactly at the hour, and while at a considerable distance, looked forward with an expectancy of seeing her on the road to meet me. the beating of my heart increased as i drew near the house; at length i arrived, quite out of breath; for i had left my chaise in the town. i see no one in the garden, at the door, or at the windows; i am seized with terror, fearful that some accident has happened. i enter; all is quiet; the laborers are eating their luncheon in the kitchen, and far from observing any preparation, the servant seems surprised to see me, not knowing i was expected. i go up-stairs, at length i see her!that dear friend! so tenderly, truly, and entirely beloved. i instantly ran towards her, and threw myself at her feet. "ah! child!" said she, "art thou returned then!" embracing me at the same time. "have you had a good journey? how do you do?" this reception amused me for some moments, i then asked, whether she had received my letter? she answered, "yes." "i should have thought not," replied i; and the information concluded there. a young man was with her at this time. i recollected having seen him in the house before my departure, but at present he seemed established there; in short, he was so; i found my place already supplied! this young man came from the country of vaud; his father, named vintzenried, was keeper of the prison, or, as he expressed himself, captain of the castle of chillon. this son of the captain was a journeyman peruke-maker, and gained his living in that capacity when he first presented himself to madam de warrens, who received him kindly, as she did all comers, particularly those from her own country. he was a tall, fair, silly youth; well enough made, with an unmeaning face, and a mind of the same description, speaking always like the beau in a comedy, and mingling the manners and customs of his former situation with a long history of his gallantry and success; naming, according to his account, not above half the marchionesses he had slept with, and pretending never to have dressed the head of a pretty woman, without having likewise decorated her husband's; vain, foolish, ignorant and insolent; such was the worthy substitute taken in my absence, and the companion offered me on my return! o! if souls disengaged from their terrestrial bonds, yet view from the bosom of eternal light what passes here below, pardon, dear and respectable shade, that i show no more favor to your failings than my own, but equally unveil both. i ought and will be just to you as to myself; but how much less will you lose by this resolution than i shall! how much do your amiable and gentle disposition, your inexhaustible goodness of heart, your frankness and other amiable virtues, compensate for your foibles, if a subversion of reason alone can be called such. you had errors, but not vices; your conduct was reprehensible, but your heart was ever pure. the new-comer had shown himself zealous and exact in all her little commissions, which were ever numerous, and he diligently overlooked the laborers. as noisy and insolent as i was quiet and forbearing, he was seen or rather heard at the plow, in the hayloft, wood-house, stable, farm-yard, at the same instant. he neglected the gardening, this labor being too peaceful and moderate; his chief pleasure was to load or drive the cart, to saw or cleave wood; he was never seen without a hatchet or pick-ax in his hand, running, knocking and hallooing with all his might. i know not how many men's labor he performed, but he certainly made noise enough for ten or a dozen at least. all this bustle imposed on poor madam de warrens; she thought this young man a treasure, and, willing to attach him to herself, employed the means she imagined necessary for that purpose, not forgetting what she most depended on, the surrender of her person. those who have thus far read this work should be able to form some judgment of my heart; its sentiments were the most constant and sincere, particularly those which had brought me back to chambery; what a sudden and complete overthrow was this to my whole being! but to judge fully of this, the reader must place himself for a moment in my situation. saw all the future felicity i had promised myself vanish in a moment; all the charming ideas i had indulged so affectionately, disappear entirely; and i, who even from childhood had not been able to consider my existence for a moment as separate from hers, for the first time, saw myself utterly alone. this moment was dreadful, and those that succeeded it were ever gloomy. i was yet young, but the pleasing sentiments of enjoyment and hope, which enliven youth, were extinguished. from that hour my existence seemed half annihilated. i contemplated in advance the melancholy remains of an insipid life, and if at any time an image of happiness glanced through my mind, it was not that which appeared natural to me, and i felt that even should i obtain it i must still be wretched. i was so dull of apprehension, and my confidence in her was so great, that, notwithstanding the familiar tone of the new-comer, which i looked on as an effect of the easy disposition of madam de warrens, which rendered her free with every one, i never should have suspected his real situation had not she herself informed me of it; but she hastened to make this avowal with a freedom calculated to inflame me with resentment, could my heart have turned to that point. speaking of this connection as quite immaterial with respect to herself, she reproached me with negligence in the care of the family, and mentioned my frequent absence, as though she had been in haste to supply my place. "ah!" said i, my heart bursting with the most poignant grief, "what do you dare to inform me of? is this the reward of an attachment like mine? have you so many times preserved my life, for the sole purpose of taking from me all that could render it desirable? your infidelity will bring me to the grave, but you will regret my loss!" she answered with a tranquility sufficient to distract me, that i talked like a child; that people did not die from such slight causes; that our friendship need be no less sincere, nor we any less intimate, for that her tender attachment to me could neither diminish nor end but with herself; in a word she gave me to understand that my happiness need not suffer any decrease from the good fortune of this new favorite. never did the purity, truth and force of my attachment to her appear more evident; never did i feel the sincerity and honesty of my soul more forcibly, than at that moment. i threw myself at her feet, embracing her knees with torrents of tears. "no, madam," replied i, with the most violent agitation, "i love you too much to disgrace you thus far, and too truly to share you; the regret that accompanied the first acquisition of your favors has continued to increase with my affection. i cannot preserve them by so violent an augmentation of it. you shall ever have my adoration: be worthy of it; to me that is more necessary than all you can bestow. it is to you, o my dearest friend! that i resign my rights; it is to the union of our hearts that i sacrifice my pleasure; rather would i perish a thousand times than thus degrade her i love." i preserved this resolution with a constancy worthy, i may say, of the sentiment that gave it birth. from this moment i saw this beloved woman but with the eyes of a real son. it should be remarked here, that this resolve did not meet her private approbation, as i too well perceived; yet she never employed the least art to make me renounce it either by insinuating proposals, caresses, or any of those means which women so well know how to employ without exposing themselves to violent censure, and which seldom fail to succeed. reduced to seek a fate independent of hers, and not able to devise one, i passed to the other extreme, placing my happiness so absolutely in her, that i became almost regardless of myself. the ardent desire to see her happy, at any rate, absorbed all my affections; it was in vain she endeavored to separate her felicity from mine, i felt i had a part in it, spite of every impediment. thus those virtues whose seeds in my heart begun to spring up with my misfortunes: they had been cultivated by study, and only waited the fermentation of adversity to become prolific. the first-fruit of this disinterested disposition was to put from my heart every sentiment of hatred and envy against him who had supplanted me. i even sincerely wished to attach myself to this young man; to form and educate him; to make him sensible of his happiness, and, if possible, render him worthy of it; in a word, to do for him what anet had formerly done for me. but the similarity of dispositions was wanting. more insinuating and enlightened than anet, i possessed neither his coolness, fortitude, nor commanding strength of character, which i must have had in order to succeed. neither did the young man possess those qualities which anet found in me; such as gentleness, gratitude, and above all, the knowledge of a want of his instructions, and an ardent desire to render them useful. all these were wanting; the person i wished to improve, saw in me nothing but an importunate, chattering pedant: while on the contrary he admired his own importance in the house, measuring the services he thought he rendered by the noise he made, and looking on his saws, hatchets, and pick-axes, as infinitely more useful than all my old books: and, perhaps, in this particular, he might not be altogether blamable; but he gave himself a number of airs sufficient to make any one die with laughter. with the peasants he assumed the airs of a country gentleman; presently he did as much with me, and at length with madam de warrens herself. his name, vintzenried, did not appear noble enough, he therefore changed it to that of monsieur de courtilles, and by the latter appellation he was known at chambery, and in maurienne, where he married. at length this illustrious personage gave himself such airs of consequence, that he was everything in the house, and myself nothing. when i had the misfortune to displease him, he scolded madam de warrens, and a fear of exposing her to his brutality rendered me subservient to all his whims, so that every time he cleaved wood (an office which he performed with singular pride) it was necessary i should be an idle spectator and admirer of his prowess. this lad was not, however, of a bad disposition; he loved madam de warrens, indeed it was impossible to do otherwise; nor had he any aversion even to me, and when he happened to be out of his airs would listen to our admonitions, and frankly own he was a fool; yet notwithstanding these acknowledgments his follies continued in the same proportion. his knowledge was so contracted, and his inclinations so mean, that it was useless to reason, and almost impossible to be pleased with him. not content with a most charming woman, he amused himself with an old red-haired, toothless waiting-maid, whose unwelcome service madam de warrens had the patience to endure, though it was absolutely disgusting. i soon perceived this new inclination, and was exasperated at it; but i saw something else, which affected me yet more, and made a deeper impression on me than anything had hitherto done; this was a visible coldness in the behavior of madam de warrens towards me. the privation i had imposed on myself, and which she affected to approve, is one of those affronts which women scarcely ever forgive. take the most sensible, the most philosophic female, one the least attached to pleasure, and slighting her favors, if within your reach, will be found the most unpardonable crime, even though she may care nothing for the man. this rule is certainly without exception; since a sympathy so natural and ardent was impaired in her, by an abstinence founded only on virtue, attachment, and esteem, i no longer found with her that union of hearts which constituted all the happiness of mine; she seldom sought me but when we had occasion to complain of this new-comer, for when they were agreed, i enjoyed but little of her confidence, and, at length, was scarcely ever consulted in her affairs. she seemed pleased, indeed, with my company, but had i passed whole days without seeing her she would hardly have missed me. insensibly, i found myself desolate and alone in that house where i had formerly been the very soul; where, if i may so express myself, i had enjoyed a double life, and, by degrees, i accustomed myself to disregard everything that passed, and even those who dwelt there. to avoid continual mortifications, i shut myself up with my books, or else wept and sighed unnoticed in the woods. this life soon became insupportable; i felt that the presence of a woman so dear to me, while estranged from her heart, increased my unhappiness, and was persuaded, that, ceasing to see her, i should feel myself less cruelly separated. i resolved, therefore, to quit the house, mentioned it to her, and she, far from opposing my resolution, approved it. she had an acquaintance at grenoble, called madam de deybens, whose husband was on terms of friendship with monsieur mably, chief provost of lyons. m. deybens proposed my educating m. mably's children; i accepted this offer, and departed for lyons, without causing, and almost without feeling, the least regret at a separation, the bare idea of which, a few months before, would have given us both the most excruciating torments. i had almost as much knowledge as was necessary for a tutor, and flattered myself that my method would be unexceptionable; but the year i passed at m. mably's, was sufficient to undeceive me in that particular. the natural gentleness of my disposition seemed calculated for the employment, if hastiness had not been mingled with it. while things went favorably, and i saw the pains (which i did not spare) succeed, i was an angel; but a devil when they went contrary. if my pupils did not understand me, i was hasty, and when they showed any symptoms of an untoward disposition, i was so provoked that i could have killed them; which behavior was not likely to render them either good or wise. i had two under my care, and they were of very different tempers. ste.-marie, who was between eight and nine years old, had a good person and quick apprehension, was giddy, lively, playful and mischievous; but his mischief was ever good-humored. the younger one, named condillac, appeared stupid and fretful, was headstrong as a mule, and seemed incapable of instruction. it may be supposed that between both i did not want employment, yet with patience and temper i might have succeeded; but wanting both, i did nothing worth mentioning, and my pupils profited very little. i could only make use of three means, which are very weak, and often pernicious with children; namely, sentiment, reasoning, passion. i sometimes exerted myself so much with ste.-marie, that i could not refrain from tears, and wished to excite similar sensations in him; as if it was reasonable to suppose a child could be susceptible of such emotions. sometimes i exhausted myself in reasoning, as if persuaded he could comprehend me; and as he frequently formed very subtle arguments, concluded he must be reasonable, because he bade fair to be so good a logician. the little condillac was still more embarrassing; for he neither understood, answered, nor was concerned at anything; he was of an obstinacy beyond belief, and was never happier than when he had succeeded in putting me in a rage, then, indeed, he was the philosopher, and i the child. i was conscious of all my faults, studied the tempers of my pupils, and became acquainted with them; but where was the use of seeing the evil, without being able to apply a remedy? my penetration was unavailing, since it never prevented any mischief; and everything i undertook failed, because all i did to effect my designs was precisely what i ought not to have done. i was not more fortunate in what had only reference to myself, than in what concerned my pupils. madam deybens, in recommending me to her friend madam de mably, had requested her to form my manners, and endeavor to give me an air of the world. she took some pains on this account, wishing to teach me how to do the honors of the house; but i was so awkward, bashful, and stupid, that she found it necessary to stop there. this, however, did not prevent me from falling in love with her, according to my usual custom; i even behaved in such a manner, that she could not avoid observing it; but i never durst declare my passion; and as the lady never seemed in a humor to make advances, i soon became weary of my sighs and ogling, being convinced they answered no manner of purpose. i had quite lost my inclination for little thieveries while with madam de warrens; indeed, as everything belonged to me, there was nothing to steal; besides, the elevated notions i had imbibed ought to have rendered me in future above such meanness, and generally speaking they certainly did so; but this rather proceeded from my having learned to conquer temptations, than have succeeded in rooting out the propensity, and i should even now greatly dread stealing, as in my infancy, were i yet subject to the same inclinations. i had a proof of this at m. mably's, where, though surrounded by a number of little things that i could easily have pilfered, and which appeared no temptation, i took it into my head to covet some white arbois wine, some glasses of which i had drank at table, and thought delicious. it happened to be rather thick, and as i fancied myself an excellent finer of wine, i mentioned my skill, and this was accordingly trusted to my care, but in attempting to mend, i spoiled it, though to the sight only, for it remained equally agreeable to the taste. profiting by this opportunity, i furnished myself from time to time with a few bottles to drink in my own apartment; but unluckily, i could never drink without eating; the difficulty lay therefore, in procuring bread. it was impossible to make a reserve of this article, and to have it brought by the footman was discovering myself, and insulting the master of the house; i could not bear to purchase it myself; how could a fine gentleman, with a sword by his side, enter a baker's shop to buy a small loaf of bread?it was utterly impossible. at length i recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "then let them eat pastry!" yet even this resource was attended with a difficulty. i sometimes went out alone for this very purpose, running over the whole city, and passing thirty pastry cook's shops without daring to enter any one of them. in the first place, it was necessary there should be only one person in the shop, and that person's physiognomy must be so encouraging as to give me confidence to pass the threshold; but when once the dear little cake was procured, and i shut up in my chamber with that and a bottle of wine, taken cautiously from the bottom of a cupboard, how much did i enjoy drinking my wine, and reading a few pages of a novel; for when i have no company i always wish to read while eating; it seems a substitute for society, and i dispatch alternately a page and a morsel; 'tis indeed as if my book dined with me. i was neither dissolute nor sottish, never in my whole life having been intoxicated with liquor; my little thefts were not very indiscreet, yet they were discovered; the bottles betrayed me, and though no notice was taken of it, i had no longer the management of the cellar. in all this monsieur mably conducted himself with prudence and politeness, being really a very deserving man, who, under a manner as harsh as his employment, concealed a real gentleness of disposition and uncommon goodness of heart: he was judicious, equitable, and (what would not be expected from an officer of the marechausse) very humane. sensible of his indulgence, i became greatly attached to him, which made my stay at lyons longer than it would otherwise have been; but at length, disgusted with an employment which i was not calculated for, and a situation of great confinement, consequently disagreeable to me, after a year's trial, during which time i spared no pains to fulfill my engagement, i determined to quit my pupils; being convinced i should never succeed in educating them properly. monsieur mably saw this as clearly as myself, though i am inclined to think he would never have dismissed me had i not spared him the trouble, which was an excess of condescension in this particular, that i certainly cannot justify. what rendered my situation yet more insupportable was the comparison i was continually drawing between the life i now led and that which i had quitted; the remembrance of my dear charmettes, my garden, trees, fountain and orchard, but above all, the company of her who was born to give life and soul to every other enjoyment. on calling to mind our pleasures and innocent life, i was seized with such oppressions and heaviness of heart, as deprived me of the power of performing anything as it should be. a hundred times was i tempted instantly to set off on foot to my dear madam de warrens, being persuaded that could i once more see her, i should be content to die that moment: in fine, i could no longer resist the tender emotions which recalled me back to her, whatever it might cost me. i accused myself of not having been sufficiently patient, complaisant and kind; concluding i might yet live happily with her on the terms of tender friendship, and by showing more for her than i had hitherto done. i formed the finest projects in the world, burned to execute them, left all, renounced everything, departed, fled, and arriving in all the transports of my early youth, found myself once more at her feet. alas! i should have died there with joy, and i found in her reception, in her embrace, or in her heart, one-quarter of what i had formerly found there, and which i yet felt the undiminished warmth of. fearful illusion of transitory things, how often dost thou torment us in vain! she received me with that excellence of heart which could only die with her; but i sought the influence there which could never be recalled, and had hardly been half an hour with her before i was once more convinced that my former happiness had vanished forever, and that i was in the same melancholy situation which i had been obliged to fly from; yet without being able to accuse any person with my unhappiness, for courtilles really was not to blame, appearing to see my return with more pleasure than dissatisfaction. but how could i bear to be a secondary person with her to whom i had been everything, and who could never cease being such to me? how could i live an alien in that house where i had been the child? the sight of every object that had been witness to my former happiness, rendered the comparison yet more distressing; i should have suffered less in any other habitation, for this incessantly recalled such pleasing remembrances, that it was irritating the recollection of my loss. consumed with vain regrets, given up to the most gloomy melancholy, i resumed the custom of remaining alone, except at meals: shut up with my books, i sought to give some useful diversion to my ideas, and feeling the imminent danger of want, which i had so long dreaded, i sought means to prepare for and receive it, when madam de warrens should have no other resource. i had placed her household on a footing not to become worse; but since my departure everything had been altered. he who now managed her affairs was a spendthrift, and wished to make a great appearance; such as keeping a good horse with elegant trappings; loved to appear gay in the eyes of the neighbors, and was perpetually undertaking something he did not understand. her pension was taken up in advance, her rent was in arrears, debts of every kind continued to accumulate; i could plainly foresee that her pension would soon be seized, and perhaps suppressed; in short, i expected nothing but ruin and misfortune, and the moment appeared to approach so rapidly that i already felt all its horrors. my closet was my only amusement, and after a tedious search for remedies for the sufferings of my mind, i determined to seek some against the evil of distressing circumstances, which i daily expected would fall upon us, and returning to my old chimeras, behold me once more building castles in the air to relieve this dear friend from the cruel extremities into which i saw her ready to fall. i did not believe myself wise enough to shine in the republic of letters, or to stand any chance of making a fortune by that means; a new idea, therefore, inspired me with that confidence, which the mediocrity of my talents could not impart. in ceasing to teach music i had not abandoned the thoughts of it; on the contrary, i had studied the theory sufficiently to consider myself well informed on the subject. when reflecting on the trouble it had cost me to read music, and the great difficulty i yet experienced in singing at sight, i began to think the fault might as well arise from the manner of noting as from my own dullness, being sensible it was an art which most people find difficult to understand. by examining the formation of the signs, i was convinced they were frequently very ill devised. i had before thought of marking the gamut by figures, to prevent the trouble of having lines to draw, on noting the plainest air; but had been stopped by the difficulty of the octaves, and by the distinction of measure and quantity: this idea returned again to my mind, and on a careful revision of it, i found the difficulties were by no means insurmountable. i pursued it successfully, and was at length able to note any music whatever by figures, with the greatest exactitude and simplicity. from this moment i supposed my fortune made, and in the ardor of sharing it with her to whom i owed everything, thought only of going to paris, not doubting that on presenting my project to the academy, it would be adopted with rapture. i had brought some money from lyons; i augmented this stock by the sale of my books, and in the course of a fortnight my resolution was both formed and executed: in short, full of the magnificent ideas it had inspired, and which were common to me on every occasion, i departed from savoy with my new system of music, as i had formerly done from turin with my heron-fountain. such have been the errors and faults of my youth: i have related the history of them with a fidelity which my heart approves; if my riper years were dignified with some virtues, i should have related them with the same frankness; it was my intention to have done this, but i must forego that pleasing task and stop here. time, which renders justice to the characters of most men, may withdraw the veil; and should my memory reach posterity, they may one day discover what i had to saythey will then understand why i am now silent. book vii [1741] after two years silence and patience, and notwithstanding my resolutions, i again take up my pen. reader, suspend your judgment as to the reasons which force me to such a step: of these you can be no judge until you shall have read my book. you have seen my youth pass away calmly without any great disappointments or remarkable prosperity. this was mostly owing to my ardent yet feeble nature, less prompt in undertaking than easy to discourage: quitting repose by violent agitations, but returning to it from lassitude and inclinations, and which, placing me in an idle and tranquil state for which alone i felt i was born, at a distance from the paths of great virtues and still further from those of great vices. the first part of my confessions was written entirely from memory, and is consequently full of errors. as i am obliged to write the second part from memory also, the errors in it will probably be still more numerous. the remembrance of the finest portion of my years, passed with so much tranquility and innocence, has left in my heart a thousand charming impressions which i love to call to my recollection. far from increasing that of my situation by these sorrowful reflections, i repel them as much as possible, and in this endeavor often succeed so well as to be unable to find them at will. this facility of forgetting my misfortunes is a consolation which heaven has reserved to me in the midst of those which fate has one day to accumulate upon my head. my memory, which presents to me no objects but such as are agreeable, is the happy counterpoise of my terrified imagination, by which i foresee nothing but a cruel futurity. all the papers i had collected to aid my recollection, and guide me in this undertaking, are no longer in my possession, nor can i ever again hope to regain them. i have but one faithful guide on which i can depend: this is the chain of the sentiments by which the succession of my existence has been marked, and by these the events which have been either the cause or the effect of the manner of it. i easily forget my misfortunes, but i cannot forget my faults, and still less my virtuous sentiments. the remembrance of these is too dear to me ever to suffer them to be effaced from my mind. i may omit facts, transpose events, and fall into some errors of dates; but i cannot be deceived in what i have felt, nor in that which from sentiment i have done; and to relate this is the chief end of my present work. the real object of my confessions is to communicate an exact knowledge of what i interiorly am and have been in every situation of my life. i have promised the history of my mind, and to write it faithfully i have no need of other memoirs: to enter into my own heart, as i have hitherto done, will alone be sufficient. there is, however, and very happily, an interval of six or seven years, relative to which i have exact references, in a collection of letters copied from the originals, in the hands of m. du peyrou. this collection, which concludes in 1760, comprehends the whole time of my residence at the hermitage, and my great quarrel with those who called themselves my friends; that memorable epocha of my life, and the source of all my other misfortunes. with respect to more recent original letters which may remain in my possession, and are but few in number, instead of transcribing them at the end of this collection, too voluminous to enable me to deceive the vigilance of my arguses, i will copy them into the work whenever they appear to furnish any explanation, be this either for or against myself; for i am not under the least apprehension lest the reader should forget i make my confession, and be induced to believe i make my apology; but he cannot expect i shall conceal the truth when it testifies in my favor. this second part, it is likewise to be remembered, contains nothing in common with the first, except truth; nor has any other advantage over it, but the importance of the facts; in everything else, it is inferior to the former. i wrote the first with pleasure, with satisfaction, and at my ease, at wootton, or in the castle of trye: everything i had to recollect was a new enjoyment. i returned to my closet with an increased pleasure, and, without constraint, gave that turn to my descriptions which most flatters my imagination. at present my head and memory are become so weak as to render me almost incapable of every kind of application: my present undertaking is the result of constraint, and a heart full of sorrow. i have nothing to treat of but misfortunes, treacheries, perfidies, and circumstances equally afflicting. i would give the world, could i bury in the obscurity of time, everything i have to say, and which, in spite of myself, i am obliged to relate. i am, at the same time, under the necessity of being mysterious and subtle, of endeavoring to impose and of descending to things the most foreign to my nature. the ceiling under which i write has eyes; the walls of my chamber have ears. surrounded by spies and by vigilant and malevolent inspectors, disturbed, and my attention diverted, i hastily commit to paper a few broken sentences, which i have scarcely time to read, and still less to correct. i know that, notwithstanding the barriers which are multiplied around me, my enemies are afraid truth should escape by some little opening. what means can i take to introduce it to the world? this, however, i attempt with but few hopes of success. the reader will judge whether or not such a situation furnishes the means of agreeable descriptions, or of giving them a seductive coloring! i therefore inform such as may undertake to read this work, that nothing can secure them from weariness in the prosecution of their task, unless it be the desire of becoming more fully acquainted with a man whom they already know, and a sincere love of justice and truth. in my first part i brought down my narrative to my departure with infinite regret from paris, leaving my heart at charmettes, and, there building my last castle in the air, intending some day to return to the feet of mama, restored to herself, with the treasures i should have acquired, and depending upon my system of music as upon a certain fortune. i made some stay at lyons to visit my acquaintance, procure letters of recommendation to paris, and to sell my books of geometry which i had brought with me. i was well received by all whom i knew. m. and madam de mably seemed pleased to see me again, and several times invited me to dinner. at their house i became acquainted with the abbe de mably, as i had already done with the abbe de condillac, both of whom were on a visit to their brother. the abbe de mably gave me letters to paris; among others, one to m. de fontenelle, and another to the comte de caylus. these were very agreeable acquaintances, especially the first, to whose friendship for me his death only put a period, and from whom, in our private conversations, i received advice which i ought to have more exactly followed. i likewise saw m. bordes, with whom i had been long acquainted and who had frequently obliged me with the greatest cordiality and the most real pleasure. he it was who enabled me to sell my books; and he also gave me from himself good recommendations to paris. i again saw the intendant for whose acquaintance i was indebted to m. bordes, and who introduced me to the duke de richelieu, who was then passing through lyons. m. pallu presented me. the duke received me well, and invited me to come and see him at paris; i did so several times; although this great acquaintance, of which i shall frequently have occasion to speak, was never of the most trifling utility to me. i visited the musician david, who, in one of my former journeys, and in my distress, had rendered me service. he had either lent or given me a cap and a pair of stockings, which i have never returned, nor has he ever asked me for them, although we have since that time frequently seen each other. i, however, made him a present, something like an equivalent. i would say more upon this subject, were what i have owed in question; but i have to speak of what i have done, which, unfortunately, is far from being the same thing. i also saw the noble and generous perrichon, and not without feeling the effects of his accustomed munificence; for he made me the same present he had previously done to "gentil-bernard," by paying for my place in the diligence. i visited the surgeon parisot, the best and most benevolent of men; as also his beloved godefroi, who had lived with him ten years, and whose merit chiefly consisted in her gentle manners and goodness of heart. it was impossible to see this woman without pleasure, or to leave her without regret. nothing better shows the inclinations of a man, than the nature of his attachments* those who had once seen the gentle godefroi, immediately knew the good and amiable parisot. * unless he be deceived in his choice, or that she, to whom he attaches himself, changes her character by an extraordinary concurrence of causes, which is not absolutely impossible. were this consequence to be admitted without modification, socrates must be judged by his wife xantippe, and dion by his friend calippus, which would be the most false and iniquitous judgment ever made. however, let no injurious application be here made to my wife. she is weak and more easily deceived than i at first imagined, but by her pure and excellent character she is worthy of all my esteem. i was much obliged to all these good people, but i afterwards neglected them all; not from ingratitude, but from that invincible indolence which so often assumes its appearance. the remembrance of their services, has never been effaced from my mind, nor the impression they made, from my heart; but i could more easily have proved my gratitude, than assiduously have shown them the exterior of that sentiment. exactitude in correspondence is what i never could observe; the moment i begin to relax, the shame and embarrassment of repairing my fault make me aggravate it, and i entirely desist from writing; i have, therefore, been silent, and appeared to forget them. parisot and perrichon took not the least notice of my negligence, and i ever found them the same. but, twenty years afterwards it will be seen, in m. bordes, to what a degree the self-love of a wit can make him carry his vengeance when he feels himself neglected. before i leave lyons, i must not forget an amiable person, whom i again saw with more pleasure than ever, and who left in my heart the most tender remembrance. this was mademoiselle serre, of whom i have spoken in my first part; i renewed my acquaintance with her whilst i was at m. de mably's. being this time more at leisure, i saw her more frequently, and she made the most sensible impressions on my heart. i had some reason to believe her own was not unfavorable to my pretensions; but she honored me with her confidence so far as to remove from me all temptation to allure her partiality. she had no fortune, and in this respect exactly resembled myself; our situations were too similar to permit us to become united; and with the views i then had, i was far from thinking of marriage. she gave me to understand that a young merchant, one m. geneve, seemed to wish to obtain her hand. i saw him once or twice at her lodgings; he appeared to me to be an honest man, and this was his general character. persuaded she would be happy with him, i was desirous he should marry her, which he afterwards did; and that i might not disturb their innocent love, i hastened my departure; offering up, for the happiness of that charming woman, prayers, which, here below, were not long heard. alas! her time was very short, for i afterwards heard she died in the second or third year after her marriage. my mind, during the journey, was wholly absorbed in tender regret. i felt, and since that time, when these circumstances have been present to my recollection, have frequently done the same; that although the sacrifices made to virtue and our duty may sometimes be painful, we are well rewarded by the agreeable remembrance they leave deeply engraven in our hearts. i this time saw paris in as favorable a point of views as it had appeared to me in an unfavorable one at my first journey; not that my ideas of its brilliancy arose from the splendor of my lodgings: for in consequence of an address given me by m. bordes, i resided at the hotel st. quentin, rue des cordiers, near the sorbonne; a vile street, a miserable hotel, and a wretched apartment: but nevertheless a house in which several men of merit, such as gresset, bordes, abbe mably, condillac, and several others, of whom unfortunately i found not one, had taken up their quarters: but i there met with m. bonnefond, a man unacquainted with the world, lame, litigious, and who affected to be a purist. to him i owe the acquaintance of m. roguin, at present the oldest friend i have, and by whose means i became acquainted with diderot, of whom i shall soon have occasion to say a good deal. i arrived at paris in the autumn of 1741, with fifteen louis in my purse, and with my comedy of narcissus and my musical project in my pocket. these composed my whole stock, consequently, i had not much time to lose before i attempted to turn the latter to some advantage. i therefore immediately thought of making use of my recommendations. a young man who arrives at paris, with a tolerable figure, and announces himself by his talents, is sure to be well received. this was my good fortune, which procured me some pleasures without leading to anything solid. of all persons to whom i was recommended, three only were useful to me. m. damesin, a gentleman of savoy, at that time equerry, and i believe favorite, of the princess of carignan; m. de boze, secretary to the academy of inscriptions, and keeper of the medals of the king's cabinet; and father castle, a jesuit, author of the clavecin oculaire.* * an effort to produce sensations of melody by combinations of colors. all these recommendations, except that to m. damesin, were given me by the abbe de mably. m. damesin provided me with that which was most needful, by means of two persons with whom he brought me acquainted. one was m. gasc, president a mortier of the parliament of bordeaux, and who played very well upon the violin; the other, the abbe de leon, who then lodged in the sorbonne, a young nobleman, extremely amiable, who died in the flower of his age, after having, for a few moments, made a figure in the world under the name of the chevalier de rohan. both these gentlemen had an inclination to learn composition. in this i gave them lessons for a few months, by which means my decreasing purse received some little aid. the abbe de leon conceived a friendship for me, and wished me to become his secretary; but he was far from being rich, and all the salary he could offer me was eight hundred livres, which, with infinite regret, i refused; since it was insufficient to defray the expenses of my lodging, food and clothing. i was well received by m. de boze. he had a thirst for knowledge, of which he possessed not a little, but was somewhat pedantic. madam de boze much resembled him; she was lively and affected. i sometimes dined with them, and it is impossible to be more awkward than i was in her presence. her easy manner intimidated me, and rendered mine more remarkable. when she presented me a plate, i modestly put forward my fork to take one of the least bits of what she offered me, which made her give the plate to her servant, turning her head aside that i might not see her laugh. she had not the least suspicion that in the head of the rustic with whom she was so diverted there was some small portion of wit. m. de boze presented me to m. de reaumur, his friend, who came to dine with him every friday, the day on which the academy of sciences met. he mentioned to him my project, and the desire i had of having it examined by the academy. m. de reaumur consented to make the proposal, and his offer was accepted. on the day appointed i was introduced and presented by m. de reaumur, and on the same day, august 22d, 1742, i had the honor to read to the academy the memoir i had prepared for that purpose. although this illustrious assembly might certainly well be expected to inspire me with awe, i was less intimidated on this occasion than i had been in the presence of madam de boze, and i got tolerably well through my reading and the answers i was obliged to give. the memoir was well received, and acquired me some compliments by which i was equally surprised and flattered, imagining that before such an assembly, whoever was not a member of it could not have common-sense. the persons appointed to examine my system were m. mairan, m. hellot, and m. de fouchy, all three men of merit, but not one of them understood music, at least not enough of composition to enable them to judge of my project. during my conference with these gentlemen, i was convinced with no less certainty than surprise, that if men of learning have sometimes fewer prejudices than others, they more tenaciously retain those they have. however weak or false most of their objections were, and although i answered them with great timidity, and i confess, in bad terms, yet with decisive reasons, i never once made myself understood, or gave them any explanation in the least satisfactory. i was constantly surprised at the facility with which, by the aid of a few sonorous phrases, they refuted, without having comprehended me. they had learned, i know not where, that a monk of the name of souhaitti had formerly invented a mode of noting the gamut by ciphers: a sufficient proof that my system was not new. this might, perhaps, be the case; for although i had never heard of father souhaitti, and notwithstanding his manner of writing the seven notes without attending to the octaves was not, under any point of view, worthy of entering into competition with my simple and commodious invention for easily noting by ciphers every possible kind of music, keys, rests, octaves, measure, time, and length of note; things on which souhaitti had never thought: it was nevertheless true, that with respect to the elementary expression of the seven notes, he was the first inventor. but besides their giving to this primitive invention more importance than was due to it, they went still further, and, whenever they spoke of the fundamental principles of the system, talked nonsense. the greatest advantage of my scheme was to supersede transpositions and keys, so that the same piece of music was noted and transposed at will by means of the change of a single initial letter at the head of the air. these gentlemen had heard from the music-masters of paris that the method of executing by transposition was a bad one; and on this authority converted the most evident advantage of my system into an invincible objection against it, and affirmed that my mode of notation was good for vocal music, but bad for instrumental; instead of concluding as they ought to have done, that it was good for vocal, and still better for instrumental. on their report the academy granted me a certificate full of fine compliments, amidst which it appeared that in reality it judged my system to be neither new nor useful. i did not think proper to ornament with such a paper the work entitled, dissertation sur la musique moderne,* by which i appealed to the public. * dissertation on modern music. i had reason to remark on this occasion that, even with a narrow understanding, the sole but profound knowledge of a thing is preferable for the purpose of judging of it, to all the lights resulting from a cultivation of the sciences, when to these particular study of that in question has not been joined. the only solid objection to my system was made by rameau. i had scarcely explained it to him before he discovered its weak part. "your signs," said he, "are very good, inasmuch as they clearly and simply determine the length of notes, exactly represent intervals, and show the simple in the double note, which the common notation does not do; but they are objectionable on account of their requiring an operation of the mind, which cannot always accompany the rapidity of execution. the position of our notes," continued he, "is described to the eye without the concurrence of this operation. if two notes, one very high and the other very low, be joined by a series of intermediate ones, i see at the first glance the progress from one to the other by conjoined degrees; but in your system, to perceive this series, i must necessarily run over your ciphers one after the other; the glance of the eye is here useless." the objection appeared to me insurmountable, and i instantly assented to it. although it be simple and striking, nothing can suggest it but great knowledge and practice of the art, and it is by no means astonishing that not one of the academicians should have thought of it. but what creates much surprise is, that these men of great learning, and who are supposed to possess so much knowledge, should so little know that each ought to confine his judgment to that which relates to the study with which he has been conversant. my frequent visits to the literati appointed to examine my system and the other academicians gave me an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the most distinguished men of letters in paris, and by this means the acquaintance that would have been the consequence of my sudden admission amongst them which afterwards came to pass, was already established. with respect to the present moment, absorbed in my new system of music, i obstinately adhered to my intention of effecting a revolution in the art, and by that means of acquiring a celebrity which, in the fine arts, is in paris mostly accompanied by fortune. i shut myself in my chamber and labored three or four months with inexpressible ardor, in forming into a work for the public eye, the memoir i had read before the academy. the difficulty was to find a bookseller to take my manuscript; and this on account of the necessary expenses for new characters, and because booksellers give not their money by handfuls to young authors; although to me it seemed but just my work should render me the bread i had eaten while employed in its composition. bonnefond introduced me to quillau the father, with whom i agreed to divide the profits, without reckoning the privilege, of which i paid the whole expense. such were the future proceedings of this quillau that i lost the expenses of my privilege, never having received a farthing from that edition; which, probably, had but very middling success, although the abbe des fontaines promised to give it celebrity, and, notwithstanding the other journalists, had spoken of it very favorably. the greatest obstacle to making the experiment of my system was the fear, in case of its not being received, of losing the time necessary to learn it. to this i answered, that my notes rendered the ideas so clear, that to learn music by means of the ordinary characters, time would be gained by beginning with mine. to prove this by experience, i taught music gratis to a young american lady, mademoiselle des roulins, with whom m. roguin had brought me acquainted. in three months she read every kind of music, by means of my notation, and sung at sight better than i did myself, any piece that was not too difficult. this success was convincing, but not known; any other person would have filled the journals with the detail, but with some talents for discovering useful things, i never have possessed that of setting them off to advantage. thus was my heron-fountain again broken; but this time i was thirty years of age, and in paris, where it is impossible to live for a trifle. the resolution i took upon this occasion will astonish none, but those by whom the first part of these memoirs has not been read with attention. i had just made great and fruitless efforts, and was in need of relaxation. instead of sinking with despair i gave myself up quietly to my indolence and to the care of providence; and the better to wait for its assistance with patience, i laid down a frugal plan for the slow expenditure of a few louis, which still remained in my possession, regulating the expense of my supine pleasures without retrenching it; going to the coffee-house but every other day, and to the theater but twice a week. with respect to the expenses of girls of easy virtue, i had no retrenchment to make; never having in the whole course of my life applied so much as a farthing to that use except once, of which i shall soon have occasion to speak. the security, voluptuousness, and confidence with which i gave myself up to this indolent and solitary life, which i had not the means of continuing for three months, is one of the singularities of my life, and the oddities of my disposition. the extreme desire i had the public should think of me was precisely what discouraged me from showing myself; and the necessity of paying visits rendered them to such a degree insupportable, that i ceased visiting the academicians and other men of letters, with whom i had cultivated an acquaintance. marivaux, the abbe mably, and fontenelle, were almost the only persons whom i sometimes went to see. to the first i showed my comedy of narcissus. he was pleased with it, and had the goodness to make in it some improvements. diderot, younger than these, was much about my own age. he was fond of music, and knew it theoretically; we conversed together, and he communicated to me some of his literary projects. this soon formed betwixt us a more intimate connection which lasted fifteen years, and which probably would still exist were not i, unfortunately, and by his own fault, of the same profession with himself. it would be impossible to imagine in what manner i employed this short and precious interval which still remained to me, before circumstances forced me to beg my bread:in learning by memory passages from the poets which i had learned and forgotten a hundred times. every morning, at ten o'clock, i went to walk in the luxembourg with a virgil and a rousseau in my pocket, and there, until the hour of dinner, i passed away the time in restoring to my memory a sacred ode or a bucolic, without being discouraged by forgetting, by the study of the morning, what i had learned the evening before. i recollected that after the defeat of nicias at syracuse the captive athenians obtained a livelihood by reciting the poems of homer. the use i made of this erudition to ward off misery was to exercise my happy memory by learning all the poets by rote. i had another expedient, not less solid, in the game of chess, to which i regularly dedicated, at maugis's, the evenings on which i did not go to the theater. i became acquainted with m. de legal, m. husson, philidor, and all the great chess players of the day, without making the least improvement in the game. however, i had no doubt but, in the end, i should become superior to them all, and this, in my own opinion, was a sufficient resource. the same manner of reasoning served me in every folly to which i felt myself inclined. i said to myself: whoever excels in anything is sure to acquire a distinguished reception in society. let us therefore excel, no matter in what, i shall certainly be sought after; opportunities will present themselves, and my own merit will do the rest. this childishness was not the sophism of my reason; it was that of my indolence. dismayed at the great and rapid efforts which would have been necessary to call forth my endeavors, i strove to flatter my idleness, and by arguments suitable to the purpose, veiled from my own eyes the shame of such a state. i thus calmly waited for the moment when i was to be without money; and had not father castel, whom i sometimes went to see in my way to the coffee-house, roused me from my lethargy, i believe i should have seen myself reduced to my last farthing without the least emotion. father castel was a madman, but a good man upon the whole; he was sorry to see me thus impoverish myself to no purpose. "since musicians and the learned," said he, "do not sing by your scale, change the string, and apply to the women. you will perhaps succeed better with them. i have spoken of you to madam de beuzenval; go to her from me; she is a good woman who will be glad to see the countryman of her son and husband. you will find at her house madam de broglie, her daughter, who is a woman of wit. madam dupin is another to whom i also have mentioned you; carry her your work; she is desirous of seeing you, and will receive you well. nothing is done in paris without the women. they are the curves, of which the wise are the asymptotes; they incessantly approach each other, but never touch." after having from day to day delayed these very disagreeable steps, i at length took courage, and called upon madam de beuzenval. she received me with kindness; and madam de broglie entering the chamber, she said to her: "daughter, this is m. rousseau, of whom father castel has spoken to us." madam de broglie complimented me upon my work, and going to her harpsichord proved to me she had already given it some attention. perceiving it to be about one o'clock, i prepared to take my leave. madam de beuzenval said to me: "you are at a great distance from the quarter of the town in which you reside; stay and dine here." i did not want asking a second time. a quarter of an hour afterwards, i understood, by a word, that the dinner to which she had invited me was that of her servants' hall. madam de beuzenval was a very good kind of woman, but of a confined understanding, and too full of her illustrious polish nobility: she had no idea of the respect due to talents. on this occasion, likewise, she judged me by my manner rather than by my dress, which, although very plain, was very neat, and by no means announced a man to dine with servants. i had too long forgotten the way to the place where they eat to be inclined to take it again. without suffering my anger to appear, i told madam de beuzenval that i had an affair of a trifling nature which i had just recollected obliged me to return home, and i immediately prepared to depart. madam de broglie approached her mother, and whispered in her ear a few words which had their effect. madam de beuzenval rose to prevent me from going, and said "i expect that you will do us the honor to dine with us." in this case i thought to show pride would be a mark of folly, and i determined to stay. the goodness of madam de broglie had besides made an impression upon me, and rendered her interesting in my eyes. i was very glad to dine with her, and hoped, that when she knew me better, she would not regret having procured me that honor. the president de lamoignon, very intimate in the family, dined there also. he, as well as madam de broglie, was a master of all the modish and fashionable small talk jargon of paris. poor jean-jacques was unable to make a figure in this way. i had sense enough not to pretend to it, and was silent. happy would it have been for me, had i always possessed the same wisdom; i should not be in the abyss into which i am now fallen. i was vexed at my own stupidity, and at being unable to justify to madam de broglie what she had done in my favor. after dinner i thought of my ordinary resource. i had in my pocket an espistle in verse, written to parisot during my residence at lyons. this fragment was not without some fire, which i increased by my manner of reading, and made them all three shed tears. whether it was vanity, or really the truth, i thought the eyes of madam de broglie seemed to say to her mother: "well, mamma, was i wrong in telling you this man was fitter to dine with us than with your women?" until then my heart had been rather burdened, but after this revenge i felt myself satisfied. madam de broglie, carrying her favorable opinion of me rather too far, thought i should immediately acquire fame in paris, and become a favorite with fine ladies. to guide my inexperience she gave me the of which you will stand in need in the great world. you will do well by sometimes consulting it." i kept the book upwards of twenty years with a sentiment of gratitude to her from whose hand i had received it, although i frequently laughed at the opinion the lady seemed to have of my merit in gallantry. from the moment i had read the work, i was desirous of acquiring the friendship of the author. my inclination led me right; he is the only real friend i ever possessed amongst men of letters.* * i have so long been of the same opinion, and so perfectly convinced of its being well founded, that since my return to paris i confided to him the manuscript of my confessions. the suspicious j. j. never suspected perfidy and falsehood until he had been their victim. from this time i thought i might depend on the services of madam the baroness of beuzenval, and the marchioness of broglie, and that they would not long leave me without resource. in this i was not deceived. but i must now speak of my first visit to madam dupin, which produced more lasting consequences. madam dupin was, as every one in paris knows, the daughter of samuel bernard and madam fontaine. there were three sisters, who might be called the three graces. madam de la touche who played a little prank, and went to england with the duke of kingston. madam d'arty, the eldest of the three; the friend, the only sincere friend of the prince of conti, an adorable woman, as well by her sweetness and the goodness of her charming character, as by her agreeable wit and incessant cheerfulness. lastly, madam dupin, more beautiful than either of her sisters, and the only one who has not been reproached with some levity of conduct. she was the reward of the hospitality of madam dupin, to whom her mother gave her in marriage with the place of farmer-general and an immense fortune, in return for the good reception he had given her in his province. when i saw her for the first time, she was still one of the finest women in paris. she received me at her toilette, her arms were uncovered, her hair disheveled, and her combing-cloth ill-arranged. this scene was new to me; it was too powerful for my poor head, i became confused, my senses wandered; in short, i was violently smitten by madam dupin. my confusion was not prejudicial to me; she did not perceive it. she kindly received the book and the author; spoke with information of my plan, sung, accompanied herself on the harpsichord, kept me to dinner, and placed me at table by her side. less than this would have turned my brain; i became mad. she permitted me to visit her, and i abused the permission. i went to see her almost every day, and dined with her twice or thrice a week. i burned with inclination to speak, but never dared attempt it. several circumstances increased my natural timidity. permission to visit in an opulent family was a door open to fortune, and in my situation i was unwilling to run the risk of shutting it against myself. madam dupin, amiable as she was, was serious and unanimated; i found nothing in her manners sufficiently alluring to embolden me. her house, at that time, as brilliant as any other in paris, was frequented by societies the less numerous, as the persons by whom they were composed were chosen on account of some distinguished merit. she was fond of seeing every one who had claims to a marked superiority; the great men of letters, and fine women. no person was seen in her circle but dukes, ambassadors, and blue ribbons. the princess of rohan, the countess of forcalquier, madam de mirepoix, madam de brignole, and lady hervey, passed for her intimate friends. the abbe's de fontenelle, de saint-pierre, and sallier, m. de fourmont, m. de bernis, m. de buffon, and m. de voltaire, were of her circle and her dinners. if her reserved manner did not attract many young people, her society inspired the greater awe, as it was composed of graver persons, and the poor jean-jacques had no reason to flatter himself he should be able to take a distinguished part in the midst of such superior talents. i therefore had not courage to speak; but no longer able to contain myself, i took a resolution to write. for the first two days she said not a word to me upon the subject. on the third day, she returned me my letter, accompanying it with a few exhortations which froze my blood. i attempted to speak, but my words expired upon my lips; my sudden passion was extinguished with my hopes, and after a declaration in form i continued to live with her upon the same terms as before, without so much as speaking to her even by the language of the eyes. i thought my folly was forgotten, but i was deceived. m. de francueil, son to m. dupin, and son-in-law to madam dupin, was much the same with herself and me. he had wit, a good person, and might have pretensions. this was said to be the case, and probably proceeded from his mother-in-law's having given him an ugly wife of a mild disposition, with whom, as well as with her husband, she lived upon the best of terms. m. de francueil was fond of talents in others, and cultivated those he possessed. music, which he understood very well, was a means of producing a connection between us. i frequently saw him, and he soon gained my friendship. he, however, suddenly gave me to understand that madam dupin thought my visits too frequent, and begged me to discontinue them. such a compliment would have been proper when she returned my letter; but eight or ten days afterwards, and without any new cause, it appeared to me ill-timed. this rendered my situation the more singular, as m. and madam de francueil still continued to give me the same good reception as before. i however made the intervals between my visits longer, and i should entirely have ceased calling on them, had not madam dupin, by another unexpected caprice, sent to desire i would for a few days take care of her son, who, changing his preceptor, remained alone during that interval. i passed eight days in such torments as nothing but the pleasure of obeying madam dupin could render supportable: for poor chenonceaux already displayed the evil disposition which nearly brought dishonor on his family, and caused his death in the isle de bourton. as long as i was with him i prevented him from doing harm to himself or others, and that was all; besides it was no easy task, and i would not have undertaken to pass eight other days like them had madam dupin given me herself for the recompense. m. de francueil conceived a friendship for me, and i studied with him. we began together a course of chemistry at rouelles. that i might be nearer at hand, i left my hotel st. quentin, and went to lodge at the tennis court, rue verdelet, which leads into the rue platiere, where m. dupin lived. there, in consequence of a cold neglected, i contracted an inflammation of the lungs that had like to have carried me off. in my younger days i frequently suffered from inflammatory disorders, pleurisies, and especially quinsies, to which i was very subject, and which frequently brought me near enough to death to familiarize me to its image. the evening preceding the day on which i was taken ill, i went to an opera by royer; the name i have forgotten. notwithstanding my prejudice in favor of the talents of others, which has ever made me distrustful of my own, i still thought the music feeble, and devoid of animation and invention. i sometimes had the vanity to flatter myself: i think i could do better than that. but the terrible idea i had formed of the composition of an opera, and the importance i heard men of the profession affix to such an undertaking, instantly discouraged me, and made me blush at having so much as thought of it. besides, where was i to find a person to write the words, and one who would give himself the trouble of turning the poetry to my liking? these ideas of music and the opera had possession of my mind during my illness, and in the delirium of my fever i composed songs, duets, and choruses. i am certain i composed two or three little pieces, di prima intenzione,* perhaps worthy of the admiration of masters, could they have heard them executed. oh, could an account be taken of the dreams of a man in a fever, what great and sublime things would sometimes proceed from his delirium! * off-hand. these subjects of music and opera still engaged my attention during my convalescence, but my ideas were less energetic. long and frequent meditations, and which were often involuntary, and made such an impression upon my mind that i resolved to attempt both words and music. this was not the first time i had undertaken so difficult a task. whilst i was at chambery i had composed an opera entitled iphis and anaxarete, which i had the good sense to throw into the fire. at lyons i had composed another, entitled la decouverte du nouveau monde,* which, after having read it to m. bordes, the abbe's mably, trublet, and others, had met the same fate, notwithstanding i had set the prologue and the first act to music, and although david, after examining the composition, had told me there were passages in it worthy of buononcini. * the discovery of the new world. before i began the work i took time to consider of my plan. in a heroic ballet i proposed three different subjects, in three acts, detached from each other, set to music of a different character, taking for each subject the amours of a poet. i entitled this opera les muses galantes. my first act, in music strongly characterized, was tasso; the second in tender harmony, ovid; and the third, entitled anacreon, was to partake of the gayety of the dithyrambus. i tried my skill on the first act, and applied to it with an ardor which, for the first time, made me feel the delightful sensation produced by the creative power of composition. one evening, as i entered the opera, feeling myself strongly incited and overpowered by my ideas, i put my money again into my pocket, returned to my apartment, locked the door, and, having close drawn all the curtains, that every ray of light might be excluded, i went to bed, abandoning myself entirely to this musical and poetical aestrum, and in seven or eight hours rapidly composed the greatest part of an act. i can truly say my love for the princess of ferrara (for i was tasso for the moment) and my noble and lofty sentiment with respect to her unjust brother, procured me a night a hundred times more delicious than one passed in the arms of the princess would have been. in the morning but a very little of what i had done remained in my head, but this little, almost effaced by sleep and lassitude, still sufficiently evinced the energy of the pieces of which it was the scattered remains. i this time did not proceed far with my undertaking, being interrupted by other affairs. whilst i attached myself to the family of dupin, madam de beuzenval and madam de broglie, whom i continued to visit, had not forgotten me. the count de montaigu, captain in the guards, had just been appointed ambassador to venice. he was an ambassador made by barjac, to whom he assiduously paid his court. his brother, the chevalier de montaigu, gentilhomme de la manche to the dauphin, was acquainted with these ladies, and with the abbe alary of the french academy, whom i sometimes visited. madam de broglie, having heard the ambassador was seeking a secretary, proposed me to him. a conference was opened between us. i asked a salary of fifty guineas, a trifle for an employment which required me to make some appearance. the ambassador was unwilling to give more than a thousand livres, leaving me to make the journey at my own expense. the proposal was ridiculous. we could not agree, and m. de francueil, who used all his efforts to prevent my departure, prevailed. i stayed, and m. de montaigu set out on his journey, taking with him another secretary, one m. follau, who had been recommended to him by the office for foreign affairs. they no sooner arrived at venice than they quarreled. follau perceiving he had to do with a madman, left him there, and m. de montaigu having nobody with him, except a young abbe of the name of binis, who wrote under the secretary, and was unfit to succeed him, had recourse to me. the chevalier, his brother, a man of wit, by giving me to understand there were advantages annexed to the place of secretary, prevailed upon me to accept the thousand livres. i was paid twenty louis in advance for my journey, and immediately departed. at lyons i would most willing have taken the route by mount cenis, to see my poor mamma. but i went down the rhone, and embarked at toulon, as well on account of the war, and from a motive of economy, as to obtain a passport from m. de mirepoix, who then commanded in provence, and to whom i was recommended. m. de montaigu not being able to do without me, wrote letter after letter, desiring i would hasten my journey; this, however, an accident considerably prolonged. it was at the time of the plague at messina, and the english fleet had anchored there, and visited the felucca, on board of which i was, and this circumstance subjected us, on our arrival at genoa, after a long and difficult voyage, to a quarantine of one-and-twenty days. the passengers had the choice of performing it on board or in the lazaretto, which we were told was not yet furnished. they all chose the felucca. the insupportable heat, the closeness of the vessel, the impossibility of walking in it, and the vermin with which it swarmed, made me at all risks prefer the lazaretto. i was therefore conducted to a large building of two stories, quite empty, in which i found neither window, bed, table, nor chair, not so much as even a joint-stool or bundle of straw. my night sack and my two trunks being brought me, i was shut in by great doors with huge locks, and remained at full liberty to walk at my ease from chamber to chamber and story to story, everywhere finding the same solitude and nakedness. this, however, did not induce me to repent that i had preferred the lazaretto to the felucca; and, like another robinson crusoe, i began to arrange myself for my one-and-twenty days, just as i should have done for my whole life. in the first place, i had the amusement of destroying the vermin i had caught in the felucca. as soon as i had got clear of these, by means of changing my clothes and linen, i proceeded to furnish the chamber i had chosen. i made a good mattress with my waistcoats and shirts; my napkins i converted, by sewing them together, into sheets; my robe de chamber into a counterpane; and my cloak into a pillow. i made myself a seat with one of my trunks laid flat, and a table with the other. i took out some writing paper and an inkstand, and distributed, in the manner of a library, a dozen books which i had with me. in a word, i so well arranged my few movables, that, except curtains and windows, i was almost as commodiously lodged in this lazaretto, absolutely empty as it was, as i had been at the tennis court in the rue verdelet. my dinners were served with no small degree of pomp; they were escorted by two grenadiers with bayonets fixed; the staircase was my dining-room, the landing-place my table, and the step served me for a seat; and as soon as my dinner was served up a little bell was rung to inform me i might sit down to table. between my repasts, when i did not either read or write or work at the furnishing of my apartment, i went to walk in the burying-ground of the protestants, which served me as a courtyard. from this place i ascended to a lanthorn which looked into the harbor, and from which i could see the ships come in and go out. in this manner i passed fourteen days, and should have thus passed the whole time of the quarantine without the least weariness had not m. jonville, envoy from france, to whom i found means to send a letter, vinegared, perfumed and half burnt, procured eight days of the time to be taken off: these i went and spent at his house, where i confess i found myself better lodged than in the lazaretto. he was extremely civil to me. dupont, his secretary, was, good creature: he introduced me, as well at genoa as in the country, to several families, the company of which i found very entertaining and agreeable; and i formed with him an. acquaintance and a correspondence which we kept up for a considerable length of time. i continued my journey, very agreeably, through lombardy. i saw milan, verona, brescia, and padua, and at length arrived at venice, where i was impatiently expected by the ambassador. i found there piles of despatches, from the court and from other ambassadors, the ciphered part of which he had not been able to read, although he had all the ciphers necessary for that purpose, never having been employed in any office, nor even seen the cipher of a minister. i was at first apprehensive of meeting with some embarrassment; but i found nothing could be more easy, and in less than a week i had deciphered the whole, which certainly was not worth the trouble; for not to mention the little activity required in the embassy of venice, it was not to such a man as m. de montaigu that government would confide a negotiation of even the most trifling importance. until my arrival he had been much embarrassed, neither knowing how to dictate nor to write legibly. i was very useful to him, of which he was sensible; and he treated me well. to this he was also induced by another motive. since the time of m. de froulay, his predecessor, whose head became deranged, the consul from france, m. le blond, had been charged with the affairs of the embassy, and after the arrival of m. de montaigu continued to manage them until he had put him into the track. m. de montaigu, hurt at this discharge of his duty by another, although he himself was incapable of it, became disgusted with the consul, and as soon as i arrived deprived him of the functions of secretary to the embassy to give them to me. they were inseparable from the title, and he told me to take it. as long as i remained with him he never sent any person except myself under this title to the senate, or to conference, and upon the whole it was natural enough he should prefer having for secretary to the embassy a man attached to him, to a consul or a clerk of office named by the court. this rendered my situation very agreeable, and prevented his gentlemen, who were italians, as well as his pages, and most of his suite from disputing precedence with me in his house. i made an advantageous use of the authority annexed to the title he had conferred upon me, by maintaining his right of protection, that is, the freedom of his neighborhood, against the attempts several times made to infringe it; a privilege which his venetian officers took no care to defend. but i never permitted banditti to take refuge there, although this would have produced me advantages of which his excellency would not have disdained to partake. he thought proper, however, to claim a part of those of the secretaryship, which is called the chancery. it was in time of war, and there were many passports issued. for each of these passports a sequin was paid to the secretary who made it out and countersigned it. all my predecessors had been paid this sequin by frenchmen and others without distinction. i thought this unjust, and although i was not a frenchman, i abolished it in favor of the french; but i so rigorously demanded my right from persons of every other nation, that the marquis de scotti, brother to the favorite of the queen of spain, having asked for a passport without taking notice of the sequin, i sent to demand it; a boldness which the vindictive italian did not forget. as soon as the new regulation i had made, relative to passports, was known, none but pretended frenchmen, who in a gibberish the most mispronounced, called themselves provencals, picards, or burgundians, came to demand them. my ear being very fine, i was not thus made a dupe, and i am almost persuaded that not a single italian ever cheated me of my sequin, and that not one frenchmen ever paid it. i was foolish enough to tell m. de montaigu, who was ignorant of everything that passed, what i had done. the word sequin made him open his ears, and without giving me his opinion of the abolition of that tax upon the french, he pretended i ought to account with him for the others, promising me at the same time equivalent advantages. more filled with indignation at this meanness, than concerned for my own interest, i rejected his proposal. he insisted, and i grew warm. "no, sir," said i, with some heat, "your excellency may keep what belongs to you, but do not take from me that which is mine; i will not suffer you to touch a penny of the perquisites arising from passports." perceiving he could gain nothing by these means he had recourse to others, and blushed not to tell me that since i had appropriated to myself the profits of the chancery, it was but just i should pay the expenses. i was unwilling to dispute upon this subject, and from that time i furnished at my own expense, ink, paper, wax, wax-candle, tape, and even a new seal, for which he never reimbursed me to the amount of a farthing. this, however, did not prevent my giving a small part of the produce of the passports to the abbe de binis, a good creature, and who was far from pretending to have the least right to any such right. if he was obliging to me my politeness to him was an equivalent, and we always lived together on the best of terms. on the first trial i made of his talents in my official functions, i found him less troublesome than i expected he would have been, considering he was a man without experience, in the service of an ambassador who possessed no more than himself, and whose ignorance and obstinacy constantly counteracted everything with which common-sense and some information inspired me for his service and that of the king. the next thing the ambassador did was to connect himself with the marquis mari, ambassador from spain, an ingenious and artful man, who, had he wished so to do, might have led him by the nose, yet on account of the union of the interests of the two crowns he generally gave him good advice, which might have been of essential service, had not the other, by joining his own opinion, counteracted it in the execution. the only business they had to conduct in concert with each other was to engage the venetians to maintain their neutrality. these did not neglect to give the strongest assurances of their fidelity to their engagement at the same time that they publicly furnished ammunition to the austrian troops, and even recruits under pretense of desertion. m. de montaigu, who i believed wished to render himself agreeable to the republic, failed not on his part, notwithstanding my representations, to make me assure the government in all my despatches, that the venetians would never violate an article of the neutrality. the obstinacy and stupidity of this poor wretch made me write and act extravagantly: i was obliged to be the agent of his folly, because he would have it so, but he sometimes rendered my employment insupportable and the functions of it almost impracticable. for example, he insisted on the greatest part of his despatches to the king, and of those to the minister, being written in cipher, although neither of them contained anything that required that precaution. i represented to him that between the friday, the day the despatches from the court arrived, and saturday, on which ours were sent off, there was not sufficient time to write so much in cipher, and carry on the considerable correspondence with which i was charged for the same courier. he found an admirable expedient, which was to prepare on thursday the answer to the despatches we were expected to receive on the next day. this appeared to him so happily imagined, that notwithstanding all i could say on the impossibility of the thing, and the absurdity of attempting its execution, i was obliged to comply during the whole time i afterwards remained with him, after having made notes of the few loose words he spoke to me in the course of the week, and of some trivial circumstances which i collected by hurrying from place to place. provided with these materials i never once failed carrying to him on the thursday morning a rough draft of the despatches which were to be sent off on saturday, excepting the few additions and corrections i hastily made in answer to the letters which arrived on the friday, and to which ours served for answer. he had another custom, diverting enough, and which made his correspondence ridiculous beyond imagination. he sent back all information to its respective source, instead of making it follow its course. to m. amelot he transmitted the news of the court; to m. maurepas, that of paris; to m. d'havrincourt, the news from sweden; to m. de chetardie, that from petersbourg; and sometimes to each of those the news they had respectively sent to him, and which i was employed to dress up in terms different from those in which it was conveyed to us. as he read nothing of what i laid before him, except the despatches for the court, and signed those to other ambassadors without reading them, this left me more at liberty to give what turn i thought proper to the latter, and in these, therefore, i made the articles of information cross each other. but it was impossible for me to do the same by despatches of importance; and i thought myself happy when m. de montaigu did not take it into his head to cram into them an impromptu of a few lines after his manner. this obliged me to return, and hastily transcribe the whole despatch decorated with his new nonsense, and honor it with the cipher, without which he would have refused his signature. i was frequently almost tempted, for the sake of his reputation, to cipher something different from what he had written, but feeling that nothing could authorize such a deception, i left him to answer for his own folly, satisfying myself with having spoken to him with freedom, and discharged at my own peril the duties of my station. this is what i always did with an uprightness, a zeal and courage, which merited on his part a very different recompense from that which in the end i received from him. it was time i should once be what heaven, which had endowed me with a happy disposition, what the education that had been given me by the best of women, and that i had given myself, had prepared me for, and i became so. left to my own reflections, without a friend or advice, without experience, and in a foreign country, in the service of a foreign nation, surrounded by a crowd of knaves, who, for their own interest, and to avoid the scandal of good example, endeavored to prevail upon me to imitate them; far from yielding to their solicitations, i served france well, to which i owed nothing, and the ambassador still better, as it was right and just i should do to the utmost of my power. irreproachable in a post, sufficiently exposed to censure, i merited and obtained the esteem of the republic, that of all the ambassadors with whom we were in correspondence, and the affection of the french who resided at venice, not even excepting the consul, whom with regret i supplanted in the functions which i knew belonged to him, and which occasioned me more embarrassment than they afforded me satisfaction. m. de montaigu, confiding without reserve to the marquis mari, who did not thoroughly understand his duty, neglected it to such a degree that without me the french who were at venice would not have perceived that an ambassador from their nation resided there. always put off without being heard when they stood in need of his protection, they became disgusted and no longer appeared in his company or at his table, to which indeed he never invited them. i frequently did from myself what it was his duty to have done; i rendered to the french, who applied to me, all the services in my power. in any other country i should have done more, but, on account of my employment, not being able to see persons in place, i was often obliged to apply to the consul, and the consul, who was settled in the country with his family, had many persons to oblige, which prevented him from acting as he otherwise would have done. however, perceiving him unwilling and afraid to speak, i ventured hazardous measures, which sometimes succeeded. i recollect one which still makes me laugh. no person would suspect it was to me the lovers of the theater at paris owe coralline and her sister camille; nothing, however, can be more true. veronese, their father, had engaged himself with his children in the italian company, and after having received two thousand livres for the expenses of his journey, instead of setting out for france, quietly continued at venice, and accepted an engagement in the theater of saint luke,* to which coralline, a child as she still was, drew great numbers of people. the duke de gesvres, as first gentleman of the chamber, wrote to the ambassador to claim the father and the daughter. m. de montaigu when he gave me the letter, confined his instructions to saying, voyez cela, without giving me further details. i went to m. blond to beg he would speak to the patrician, to whom the theater belonged, and who, i believe, was named zustinian, that he might discharge veronese, who had engaged in the name of the king. le blond, to whom the commission was not very agreeable, executed it badly. * i doubt if it was st. samuel; proper names absolutely escape my memory. zustinian answered vaguely, and veronese was not discharged. i was piqued at this. it was during the carnival, and having taken the bahute and a mask, i set out for the palace zustinian. those who saw my gondola arrive with the livery of the ambassador, were lost in astonishment. venice had never seen such a thing. i entered, and announced myself as una siora maschera (a lady in a mask). as soon as i was introduced i took off my mask and told my name. the senator turned pale and appeared stupefied with surprise. "sir," said i to him in venetian, "it is with much regret i importune your excellency with this visit; but you have in your theater of saint luke, a man of the name of veronese, who is engaged in the service of the king, and whom you have been requested, but in vain, to give up: i come to claim him in the name of his majesty." my short harangue was effectual. i had no sooner left the palace than zustinian ran to communicate the adventure to the state inquisitors, by whom he was severely reprehended. veronese was discharged the same day. i sent him word that if he did not set off within a week i would have him arrested. he did not wait for my giving him this intimation a second time. on another occasion i relieved from difficulty solely by my own means, and almost without the assistance of any other person, the captain of a merchant-ship. this was one captain olivet, from marseilles; the name of the vessel i have forgotten. his men had quarreled with the sclavonians in the service of the republic, some violence had been committed, and the vessel was under so severe an embargo that nobody except the master was suffered to go on board or leave it without permission. he applied to the ambassador, who would hear nothing he had to say. he afterwards went to the consul, who told him it was not an affair of commerce, and that he could not interfere in it. not knowing what further steps to take he applied to me. i told m. de montaigu he ought to permit me to lay before the senate a memoir on the subject. i do not recollect whether or not he consented, or that i presented the memoir; but i perfectly remember that if i did it was ineffectual, and the embargo still continuing, i took another method, which succeeded. i inserted a relation of the affairs in one of our letters to m. de maurepas, though i had difficulty in prevailing upon m. de montaigu to suffer the article to pass. i knew that our despatches, although their contents were insignificant, were opened at venice. of this i had a proof by finding the articles they contained verbatim in the gazette, a treachery of which i had in vain attempted to prevail upon the ambassador to complain. my object in speaking of the affair in the letter was to turn the curiosity of the ministers of the republic to advantage, to inspire them with some apprehensions, and to induce the state to release the vessel: for had it been necessary to this effect to wait for an answer from the court, the captain would have been ruined before it could have arrived. i did still more, i went alongside the vessel to make inquiries of the ship's company. i took with me the abbe patizel, chancellor of the consulship, who would rather have been excused, so much were these poor creatures afraid of displeasing the senate. as i could not go on board, on account of the order from the states, i remained in my gondola, and there took the depositions successively, interrogating each of the mariners, and directing my questions in such a manner as to produce answers which might be to their advantage. i wished to prevail upon patizel to put the questions and take depositions himself, which in fact was more his business than mine; but to this he would not consent; he never once opened his mouth and refused to sign the depositions after me. this step, somewhat bold, was, however, successful, and the vessel was released long before an answer came from the minister. the captain wished to make me a present; but without being angry with him on that account, i tapped him on the shoulder, saying, "captain olivet, can you imagine that he who does not receive from the french his perquisite for passports, which he found his established right, is a man likely to sell them the king's protection?" he, however, insisted on giving me a dinner on board his vessel, which i accepted, and took with me the secretary to the spanish embassy, m. carrio, a man of wit and amiable manners, to partake of it: he has since been secretary to the spanish embassy at paris and charge des affaires. i had formed an intimate connection with him after the example of our ambassadors. happy should i have been, if, when in the most disinterested manner i did all the service i could, i had known how to introduce sufficient order into all these little details, that i might not have served others at my own expense. but in employments similar to that i held, in which the most trifling faults are of consequence, my whole attention was engaged in avoiding all such mistakes as might be detrimental to my service. i conducted, till the last moment, everything relative to my immediate duty, with the greatest order and exactness. excepting a few errors which a forced precipitation made me commit in ciphering, and of which the clerks of m. amelot once complained, neither the ambassador nor any other person had ever the least reason to reproach me with negligence in any one of my functions. this is remarkable in a man so negligent as i am. but my memory sometimes failed me, and i was not sufficiently careful in the private affairs with which i was charged; however, a love of justice always made me take the loss on myself, and this voluntarily, before anybody thought of complaining. i will mention but one circumstance of this nature; it relates to my departure from venice, and i afterwards felt the effects of it in paris. our cook, whose name was rousselot, had brought from france an old note for two hundred livres, which a hair-dresser, a friend of his, had received from a noble venetian of the name of zanetto nani, who had had wigs of him to that amount. rousselot brought me the note, begging i would endeavor to obtain payment of some part of it, by way of accommodation. i knew, and he knew it also, that the constant custom of noble venetians was, when once returned to their country, never to pay the debts they had contracted abroad. when means are taken to force them to payment, the wretched creditor finds so many delays, and incurs such enormous expenses, that he becomes disgusted and concludes by giving up his debt or accepting the most trifling composition. i begged m. le blond to speak to zanetto. the venetion acknowledged the note, but did not agree to payment. after a long dispute he at length promised three sequins; but when le blond carried him the note even these were not ready, and it was necessary to wait. in this interval happened my quarrel with the ambassador and i quitted his service. i had left the papers of the embassy in the greatest order, but the note of rousselot was not to be found. m. le blond assured me he had given me it back. i knew him to be too honest a man to have the least doubt of the matter; but it was impossible for me to recollect what i had done with it. as zanetto had acknowledged the debt, i desired m. le blond to endeavor to obtain from him the three sequins on giving him a receipt for the amount, or to prevail upon him to renew the note by way of duplicate. zanetto, knowing the note to be lost, would not agree to either. i offered rousselot the three sequins from my own purse, as a discharge of the debt. he refused them, and said i might settle the matter with the creditor at paris, of whom he gave me the address. the hair-dresser, having been informed of what had passed, would either have his note or the whole sum for which it was given. what, in my indignation, would i have given to have found this vexatious paper! i paid the two hundred livres, and that in my greatest distress. in this manner the loss of the note produced to the creditor the payment of the whole sum, whereas had it, unfortunately for him, been found, he would have had some difficulty in recovering even the ten crowns, which his excellency, zanetto nani, had promised to pay. the talents i thought i felt in myself for my employment made me discharge the functions of it with satisfaction, and except the society of my friend de carrio, that of the virtuous altuna, of whom i shall soon have an occasion to speak, the innocent recreations of the place saint mark, of the theater, and of a few visits which we, for the most part, made together, my only pleasure was in the duties of my station. although these were not considerable, especially with the aid of the abbe de binis, yet as the correspondence was very extensive and there was a war, i was a good deal employed. i applied to business the greatest part of every morning, and on the days previous to the departure of the courier, in the evenings, and sometimes till midnight. the rest of my time i gave to the study of the political professions i had entered upon, and in which i hoped, from my successful beginning, to be advantageously employed. in fact i was in favor with every one; the ambassador himself spoke highly of my services, and never complained of anything i did for him; his dissatisfaction proceeded from my having insisted on quitting him, in consequence of the useless complaints i had frequently made on several occasions. the ambassadors and ministers of the king with whom we were in correspondence complimented him on the merit of his secretary, in a manner by which he ought to have been flattered, but which in his poor head produced quite a contrary effect. he received one in particular relative to an affair of importance, for which he never pardoned me. he was so incapable of bearing the least constraint, that on the saturday, the day of the despatches for most of the courts, he could not contain himself, and wait till the business was done before he went out, and incessantly pressing me to hasten the despatches to the king and ministers, he signed them with precipitation, and immediately went i know not where, leaving most of the other letters without signing; this obliged me, when these contained nothing but news, to convert them into journals; but when affairs which related to the king were in question it was necessary somebody should sign, and i did it. this once happened relative to some important advice we had just received from m. vincent, charge des affaires from the king, at vienna. the prince lobkowitz was then marching to naples, and count gages had just made the most memorable retreat, the finest military maneuver of the whole century, of which europe has not sufficiently spoken. the despatch informed us that a man, whose person m. vincent described, had set out from vienna, and was to pass by venice, on his way into abruzzo, where he was secretly to stir up the people at the approach of the austrians. in the absence of m. le comte de montaigu, who did not give himself the least concern about anything, i forwarded this advice to the marquis de l'hopital, so apropos, that it is perhaps to the poor jean-jacques, so abused and laughed at, that the house of bourbon owes the preservation of the kingdom of naples. the marquis de l'hopital, when he thanked his colleague, as it was proper he should do, spoke to him of his secretary, and mentioned the service he had just rendered to the common cause. the comte de montaigu, who in that affair had to reproach himself with negligence, thought he perceived in the compliment paid him by m. de l'hopital, something like a reproach, and spoke of it to me with signs of ill-humor. i found it necessary to act in the same manner with the count de castellane, ambassador at constantinople, as i had done with the marquis de l'hopital although in things of less importance. as there was no other conveyance to constantinople than by couriers, sent from time to time by the senate to its bailli, advice of their departure was given to the ambassador of france, that he might write by them to his colleague, if he thought proper so to do. this advice was commonly sent a day or two beforehand; but m. de montaigu was held in so little respect, that merely for the sake of form he was sent to a couple of hours before the couriers set off. this frequently obliged me to write the dispatch in his absence. m. de castellane in his answer made honorable mention of me; m. de jonville, at genoa, did the same, and these instances of their regard and esteem became new grievances. i acknowledge i did not neglect any opportunity of making myself known; but i never sought one improperly, and in serving well i thought i had a right to aspire to the natural return for essential services; the esteem of those capable of judging of, and rewarding them. i will not say whether or not my exactness in discharging the duties of my employment was a just subject of complaint from the ambassador; but i cannot refrain from declaring that it was the sole grievance he ever mentioned previous to our separation. his house, which he had never put on a good footing, was constantly filled with rabble; the french were ill-treated in it, and the ascendancy was given to the italians; of these even, the more honest part, they who had long been in the service of the embassy, were indecently discharged, his first gentleman in particular, whom he had taken from the comte de froulay, and who, if i remember right, was called comte de peati, or something very like that name. the second gentleman, chosen by m. de montaigu, was an outlawed highwayman from mantua, called dominic vitali, to whom the ambassador intrusted the care of his house, and who had by means of flattery and sordid economy, obtained his confidence, and became his favorite to the great prejudice of the few honest people he still had about him, and of the secretary who was at their head. the countenance of an upright man always gives inquietude to knaves. nothing more was necessary to make vitali conceive a hatred against me: but for this sentiment there was still another cause which rendered it more cruel. of this i must give an account, that i may be condemned if i am found in the wrong. the ambassador had, according to custom, a box at each of the theaters. every day at dinner he named the theater to which it was his intention to go: i chose after him, and the gentlemen disposed of the other boxes. when i went out i took the key of the box i had chosen. one day, vitali not being in the way, i ordered the footman who attended on me, to bring me the key to a house which i named to him. vitali, instead of sending the key, said he had disposed of it. i was the more enraged at this as the footman delivered his message in public. in the evening vitali wished to make me some apology, to which however i would not listen. "to-morrow," said i to him, "you will come at such an hour and apologize to me in the house where i received the affront, and in the presence of the persons who were witnesses to it; or after to-morrow, whatever may be the consequence, either you or i will leave the house." this firmness intimidated him. he came to the house at the hour appointed, and made me a public apology, with a meanness worthy of himself. but he afterwards took his measures at leisure, and, at the same time that he cringed to me in public, he secretly acted in so vile a manner, that, although unable to prevail on the ambassador to give me my dismission, he laid me under the necessity of resolving to leave him. a wretch like him, certainly, could not know me, but he knew enough of my character to make it serviceable to his purposes. he knew i was mild to an excess, and patient in bearing involuntary wrongs; but haughty and impatient when insulted with premeditated offenses; loving decency and dignity in things in which these were requisite, and not more exact in requiring the respect due to myself than attentive in rendering that which i owed to others. in this he undertook to disgust me, and in this he succeeded. he turned the house upside down, and destroyed the order and subordination i had endeavored to establish in it. a house without a woman stands in need of rather a severe discipline to preserve that modesty which is inseparable from dignity. he soon converted ours into a place of filthy debauch and scandalous licentiousness, the haunt of knaves and debauchees. he procured for second gentlemen to his excellency, in the place of him whom he got discharged, another pimp like himself, who kept a house of ill-fame, at the cross of malta; and the indecency of these two rascals was equaled by nothing but their insolence. except the bed-chamber of the ambassador, which, however, was not in very good order, there was not a corner in the whole house supportable to a modest man. as his excellency did not sup, the gentleman and myself had a private table, at which the abbe de binis and the pages also eat. in the most paltry alehouse people are served with more cleanliness and decency, have cleaner linen, and a table better supplied. we had but one little and very filthy candle, pewter plates, and iron forks. i could have overlooked what passed in secret, but i was deprived of my gondola. i was the only secretary to an ambassador, who was obliged to hire one or go on foot, and the livery of his excellency no longer accompanied me, except when i went to the senate. besides, everything which passed in the house was known in the city. all those who were in the service of the other ambassadors loudly exclaimed; dominic, the only cause of all, exclaimed louder than anybody, well knowing the indecency with which we were treated was more affecting to me than to any other person. though i was the only one in the house who said nothing of the matter abroad, i complained loudly of it to the ambassador, as well as of himself, who, secretly excited by the wretch, entirely devoted to his will, daily made me suffer some new affront. obliged to expend a good deal to keep up a footing with those in the same situation with myself, and to make an appearance proper to my employment, i could not touch a farthing of my salary, and when i asked him for money, he spoke of his esteem for me, and his confidence, as if either of these could have filled my purse, and provided for everything. these two banditti at length quite turned the head of their master, who naturally had not a good one, and ruined him by a continual traffic, and by bargains, of which he was the dupe, whilst they persuaded him they were greatly in his favor. they persuaded him to take, upon the brenta, a palazzo at twice the rent it was worth, and divided the surplus with the proprietor. the apartments were inlaid with mosaic, and ornamented with columns and pilasters, in the taste of the country. m. de montaigu, had all these superbly masked by fir wainscoting, for no other reason than because at paris apartments were thus fitted up. it was for a similar reason that he only, of all the ambassadors who were at venice, took from his pages their swords, and from his footmen their canes. such was the man, who, perhaps from the same motive, took a dislike to me on account of my serving him faithfully. i patiently endured his disdain, his brutality, and ill-treatment, as long as, perceiving them accompanied by ill-humor, i thought they had in them no portion of hatred; but the moment i saw the design formed of depriving me of the honor i merited by my faithful services, i resolved to resign my employment. the first mark i received of his ill will was relative to a dinner he was to give to the duke of modena and his family, who were at venice, and at which he signified to me i should not be present. i answered, piqued, but not angry, that having the honor daily to dine at his table, if the duke of modena, when he came, required i should not appear at it, my duty as well as the dignity of his excellency would not suffer me to consent to such a request. "how," said he, passionately, "my secretary, who is not a gentleman, pretends to dine with a sovereign when my gentlemen do not!" "yes, sir," replied i, "the post with which your excellency has honored me, as long as i discharge the functions of it, so far ennobles me that my rank is superior to that of your gentlemen or of the persons calling themselves such; and i am admitted where they cannot appear. you cannot but know that on the day on which you shall make your public entry, i am called to the ceremony by etiquette; and by an immemorial custom, to follow you in a dress of ceremony, and afterwards to dine with you at the palace of saint mark; and i know not why a man who has a right and is to eat in public with the doge and the senate of venice should not eat in private with the duke of modena." though this argument was unanswerable, it did not convince the ambassador; but we had no occasion to renew the dispute, as the duke of modena did not come to dine with him. from that moment he did everything in his power to make things disagreeable to me; and endeavored unjustly to deprive me of my right, by taking from me the pecuniary advantages annexed to my employment, to give them to his dear vitali; and i am convinced that had he dared to send him to the senate, in my place, he would have done it. he commonly employed the abbe binis in his closet, to write his private letters: he made use of him to write to m. de maurepas an account of the affair of captain olivet, in which, far from taking the least notice of me, the only person who gave himself any concern about the matter, he deprived me of the honor of the depositions, of which he sent him a duplicate, for the purpose of attributing them to patizel, who had not opened his mouth. he wished to mortify me, and please his favorite; but had no desire to dismiss me his service. he perceived it would be more difficult to find me a successor, than m. follau, who had already made him known to the world. an italian secretary was absolutely necessary to him, on account of the answers from the senate; one who could write all his despatches, and conduct his affairs, without his giving himself the least trouble about anything; a person who, to the merit of serving him well, could join the baseness of being the toad-eater of his gentlemen, without honor, merit, or principles. he wished to retain, and humble me, by keeping me far from my country, and his own, without money to return to either, and in which he would, perhaps, have succeeded, had he begun with more moderation: but vitali, who had other views, and wished to force me to extremities, carried his point. the moment i perceived, i lost all my trouble, that the ambassador imputed to me my services as so many crimes, instead of being satisfied with them; that with him i had nothing to expect, but things disagreeable at home, and injustice abroad; and that, in the general disesteem into which he was fallen, his ill offices might be prejudicial to me, without the possibility of my being served by his good ones; i took my resolution, and asked him for my dismission, leaving him sufficient time to provide himself with another secretary. without answering yes or no, he continued to treat me in the same manner, as if nothing had been said. perceiving things to remain in the same state, and that he took no measures to procure himself a new secretary, i wrote to his brother, and, explaining to him my motives, begged he would obtain my dismission from his excellency, adding that whether i received it or not, i could not possibly remain with him. i waited a long time without any answer, and began to be embarrassed: but at length the ambassador received a letter from his brother, which must have remonstrated with him in very plain terms; for although he was extremely subject to ferocious rage, i never saw him so violent as on this occasion. after torrents of unsufferable reproaches, not knowing what more to say, he accused me of having sold his ciphers. i burst into a loud laughter, and asking him, in a sneering manner, if he thought there was in venice a man who would be fool enough to give half a crown for them all. he threatened to call his servants to throw me out of the window. until then i had been very composed; but on this threat, anger and indignation seized me in my turn. i sprang to the door, and after having turned a button which fastened it within: "no, count," said i, returning to him with a grave step, "your servants shall have nothing to do with this affair; please to let it be settled between ourselves." my action and manner instantly made him calm; fear and surprise were marked in his countenance. the moment i saw his fury abated, i bid him adieu in a very few words, and without waiting for his answer, went to the door, opened it, and passed slowly across the antechamber, through the midst of his people, who rose according to custom, and who, i am of opinion, would rather have lent their assistance against him than me. without going back to my apartment, i descended the stairs, and immediately went out of the palace never more to enter it. i hastened immediately to m. le blond and related to him what had happened. knowing the man, he was but little surprised. he kept me to dinner. this dinner, although without preparation, was splendid. all the french of consequence, who were at venice, partook of it. the ambassador had not a single person. the consul related my case to the company. the cry was general, and by no means in favor of his excellency. he had not settled my account, nor paid me a farthing, and being reduced to the few louis i had in my pocket, i was extremely embarrassed about my return to france. every purse was opened to me. i took twenty sequins from that of m. le blond, and as many from that of m. st. cyr, with whom, next to m. le blond, i was the most intimately connected. i returned thanks to the rest; and, till my departure, went to lodge at the house of the chancellor of the consulship, to prove to the public, the nation was not an accomplice in the injustice of the ambassador. his excellency, furious at seeing me taken notice of in my misfortune, at the same time that, notwithstanding his being an ambassador, nobody went near his house, quite lost his senses and behaved like a madman. he forgot himself so far as to present a memoir to the senate to get me arrested. on being informed of this by the abbe de binis, i resolved to remain a fortnight longer, instead of setting off the next day as i had intended. my conduct had been known and approved of by everybody; i was universally esteemed. the senate did not deign to return an answer to the extravagant memoir of the ambassador, but sent me word i might remain in venice as long as i thought proper, without making myself uneasy about the attempts of a madman. i continued to see my friends: i went to take leave of the ambassador from spain, who received me well, and of the comte de finochietti, minister from naples, whom i did not find at home. i wrote him a letter and received from his excellency the most polite and obliging answer. at length i took my departure, leaving behind me, notwithstanding my embarrassment, no other debts than the two sums i had borrowed, and of which i have just spoken; and an account of fifty crowns with a shopkeeper, of the name of morandi, which carrio promised to pay, and which i have never reimbursed him, although we have frequently met since that time; but with respect to the two sums of money, i returned them very exactly the moment i had it in my power. i cannot take leave of venice without saying something of the celebrated amusements of that city, or at least of the little part of them of which i partook during my residence there. it has been seen how little in my youth i ran after the pleasures of that age, or those that are so called. my inclinations did not change at venice, but my occupations, which moreover would have prevented this, rendered more agreeable to me the simple recreations i permitted myself. the first and most pleasing of all was the society of men of merit. m. le blond, de st. cyr, carrio altuna, and a porlinian gentleman, whose name i am very sorry to have forgotten, and whom i never call to my recollection without emotion: he was the man of all i ever knew whose heart most resembled my own. we were connected with two or three englishmen of great wit and information, and, like ourselves, passionately fond of music. all these gentlemen had their wives, female friends, or mistresses: the latter were most of them women of talents, at whose apartments there were balls and concerts. there was but little play; a lively turn, talents, and the theaters rendered this amusement insipid. play is the resource of none but men whose time hangs heavy on their hands. i had brought with me from paris the prejudice of that city against italian music; but i had also received from nature a sensibility and niceness of the distinction which prejudice cannot withstand. i soon contracted that passion for italian music with which it inspires all those who are capable of feeling its excellence. in listening to barcaroles, i found i had not yet known what singing was, and i soon became so fond of the opera that, tired of babbling, eating, and playing in the boxes when i wished to listen, i frequently withdrew from the company to another part of the theater. there, quite alone, shut up in my box, i abandoned myself, notwithstanding the length of the representation, to the pleasure of enjoying it at ease unto the conclusion. one evening at the theater of saint chrysostom, i fell into a more profound sleep than i should have done in my bed. the loud and brilliant airs did not disturb my repose. but who can explain the delicious sensations given me by the soft harmony of the angelic music, by which i was charmed from sleep; what an awaking! what ravishment! what ecstasy, when at the same instant i opened my ears and eyes! my first idea was to believe i was in paradise. the ravishing air, which i still recollect and shall never forget, began with these words: conservami la bella, che si m'accende il cor. i was desirous of having it; i had and kept it for a time; but it was not the same thing upon paper as in my head. the notes were the same but the thing was different. this divine composition can never be executed but in my mind, in the same manner as it was the evening on which it awoke me from sleep. a kind of music far superior, in my opinion, to that of operas, and which in all italy has not its equal, nor perhaps in the whole world, is that of the scuole. the scuole are houses of charity, established for the education of young girls without fortune, to whom the republic afterwards gives a portion either in marriage or for the cloister. amongst talents cultivated in these young girls, music is in the first rank. every sunday at the church of each of the four scuole, during vespers, motettos or anthems with full choruses, accompanied by a great orchestra, and composed and directed by the best masters in italy, are sung in the galleries by girls only; not one of whom is more than twenty years of age. i have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music; the richness of the art, the exquisite taste of the vocal part, the excellence of the voices, the justness of the execution, everything in these delightful concerts concurs to produce an impression which certainly is not the mode, but from which i am of opinion no heart is secure. carrio and i never failed being present at these vespers of the mendicanti, and we were not alone. the church was always full of the lovers of the art, and even the actors of the opera came there to form their tastes after these excellent models. what vexed me was the iron grate, which suffered nothing to escape but sounds, and concealed from me the angels of which they were worthy. i talked of nothing else. one day i spoke of it at le blond's: "if you are so desirous," said he, "to see those little girls, it will be an easy matter to satisfy your wishes. i am one of the administrators of the house, i will give you a collation with them." i did not let him rest until he had fulfilled his promise. i entering the saloon, which contained these beauties i so much sighed to see, i felt a trembling of love which i had never before experienced m. le blond presented to me, one after the other, these celebrated female singers, of whom the names and voices were all with which i was acquainted. come, sophia,she was horrid. come, cattina,she had but one eye. come, bettina,the small-pox had entirely disfigured her. scarcely one of them was without some striking defect. le blond laughed at my surprise; however, two or three of them appeared tolerable; these never sung but in the choruses; i was almost in despair. during the collation we endeavored to excite them, and they soon became enlivened; ugliness does not exclude the graces, and i found they possessed them. i said to myself, they cannot sing in this manner without intelligence and sensibility, they must have both; in fine, my manner of seeing them changed to such a degree that i left the house almost in love with each of these ugly faces. i had scarcely courage enough to return to vespers. but after having seen the girls, the danger was lessened. i still found their singing delightful; and their voices so much embellished their persons that, in spite of my eyes, i obstinately continued to think them beautiful. music in italy is accompanied with so trifling an expense, that it is not worth while for such as have a taste for it to deny themselves the pleasure it affords. i hired a harpsichord, and, for half a crown, i had at my apartment four or five symphonists, with whom i practiced once a week in executing such airs, etc., as had given me most pleasure at the opera. i also had some symphonies performed from my muses galantes. whether these pleased the performers, or the ballet-master of st. john chrysostom wished to flatter me, he desired to have two of them; and i had afterwards the pleasure of hearing these executed by that admirable orchestra. they were danced to by a little bettina, pretty and amiable, and kept by a spaniard, m. fagoaga, a friend of ours with whom we often went to spend the evening. but apropos of girls of easy virtue: it is not in venice that a man abstains from them. have you nothing to confess, somebody will ask me, upon this subject? yes: i have something to say upon it, and i will proceed to this confession with the same ingenuousness with which i have made all my former ones. i always had a disinclination to common prostitutes, but at venice those were all i had within my reach; most of the houses being shut against me on account of my place. the daughters of m. le blond were very amiable, but difficult of access; and i had too much respect for the father and mother ever once to have the least desire for them. i should have had a much stronger inclination to a young lady named mademoiselle de cataneo, daughter to the agent from the king of prussia, but carrio was in love with her: there was even between them some question of marriage. he was in easy circumstances, and i had no fortune: his salary was a hundred louis (guineas) a year, and mine amounted to no more than a thousand livres (about forty pounds sterling): and, besides, my being unwilling to oppose a friend, i knew that in all places, and especially at venice, with a purse so ill furnished as mine was, gallantry was out of the question. i had not lost the pernicious custom of deceiving my wants. too busily employed forcibly to feel those proceeding from the climate, i lived upwards of a year in that city as chastely as i had done in paris, and at the end of eighteen months i quitted it without having approached the sex, except twice by means of the singular opportunities of which i am going to speak. the first was procured me by that honest gentleman, vitali, some time after the formal apology i obliged him to make me. the conversation at the table turned on the amusements of venice. these gentlemen reproached me with my indifference with regard to the most delightful of them all; at the same time extolling the gracefulness and elegant manners of the women of easy virtue of venice; and adding that they were superior to all others of the same description in any other part of the world. dominic said i must make the acquaintance of the most amiable of them all; and he offered to take me to her apartments, assuring me i should be pleased with her. i laughed at this obliging offer: and count peati, a man in years and venerable, observed to me, with more candor than i should have expected from an italian, that he thought me too prudent to suffer myself to be taken to such a place by my enemy. in fact i had no inclination to do it: but notwithstanding this, by an incoherence i cannot myself comprehend, i at length was prevailed upon to go, contrary to my inclination, the sentiment of my heart, my reason, and even my will; solely from weakness, and being ashamed to show an appearance to the lead mistrust; and besides, as the expression of the country is, per non parer troppo coglione.* the padoana whom we went to visit was pretty, she was even handsome, but her beauty was not of that kind which pleased me. dominic left me with her, i sent for sorbetti, and asked her to sing. in about half an hour i wished to take my leave, after having put a ducat on the table, but this by a singular scruple she refused until she had deserved it, and i from as singular a folly consented to remove her doubts. i returned to the palace so fully persuaded that i should feel the consequences of this step, that the first thing i did was to send for the king's surgeon to ask him for ptisans. nothing can equal the uneasiness of mind i suffered for three weeks, without its being justified by any real inconvenience or apparent sign. i could not believe it was possible to withdraw with impunity from the arms of the padoana. the surgeon himself had the greatest difficulty in removing my apprehensions; nor could he do this by any other means than by persuading me i was formed in such a manner as not to be easily infected: and although in the experiment i exposed myself less than any other man would have done, my health in that respect never having suffered the least inconvenience, is in my opinion a proof the surgeon was right. however, this has never made me imprudent, and if in fact i have received such an advantage from nature i can safely assert i have never abused it. * not to appear too great a blockhead. my second adventure, although likewise with a common girl, was of a nature very different, as well in its origin as in its effects. i have already said that captain olivet gave me a dinner on board his vessel, and that i took with me the secretary of the spanish embassy. i expected a salute of cannon. the ship's company was drawn up to receive us, but not so much as a priming was burnt, at which i was mortified, on account of carrio, whom i perceived to be rather piqued at the neglect. a salute of cannon was given on board merchantships to people of less consequence than we were; i besides thought i deserved some distinguished mark of respect from the captain. i could not conceal my thoughts, because this at all times was impossible to me, and although the dinner was a very good one, and olivet did the honors of it perfectly well, i began it in an ill humor, eating but little, and speaking still less. at the first health, at least, i expected a volley;nothing. carrio, who read what passed within me, laughed at hearing me grumble like a child. before dinner was half over i saw a gondola approach the vessel. "bless me, sir," said the captain, "take care of yourself, the enemy approaches." i asked him what he meant, and he answered jocosely. the gondola made the ship's side, and i observed a gay young damsel come on board very lightly, and coquettishly dressed, and who at three steps was in the cabin, seated by my side, before i had time to perceive a cover was laid for her. she was equally charming and lively, a brunette, not more than twenty years of age. she spoke nothing but italian, and her accent alone was sufficient to turn my head. as she ate and chattered she cast her eyes upon me; steadfastly looked at me for a moment, and then exclaimed, "good virgin! ah, my dear bremond, what an age it is since i saw thee!" then she threw herself into my arms, sealed her lips to mine, and pressed me almost to strangling. her large black eyes, like those of the beauties of the east, darted fiery shafts into my heart, and although the surprise at first stupefied my senses, voluptuousness made a rapid progress within, and this to such a degree that the beautiful seducer herself was, notwithstanding the spectators, obliged to restrain my ardor, for i was intoxicated, or rather become furious. when she perceived she had made the impression she desired, she became more moderate in her caresses, but not in her vivacity, and when she thought proper to explain to us the real or false cause of all her petulance, she said i resembled m. de bremond, director of the customs of tuscany, to such a degree as to be mistaken for him; that she had turned this m. de bremond's head, and would do it again; that she had quitted him because he was a fool; that she took me in his place; that she would love me because it pleased her so to do, for which reason i must love her as long as it was agreeable to her, and when she thought proper to send me about my business, i must be patient as her dear bremond had been. what was said was done. she took possession of me as of a man that belonged to her, gave me her gloves to keep, her fan, her cinda, and her coif, and ordered me to go here or there, to do this or that, and i instantly obeyed her. she told me to go and send away her gondola, because she chose to make use of mine, and i immediately sent it away; she bid me to move from my place, and prey carrio to sit down in it, because she had something to say to him; and i did as she desired. they chatted a good while together, but spoke low, and i did not interrupt them. she called me, and i approached her. "hark thee, zanetto," said she to me, "i will not be loved in the french manner; this indeed will not be well. in the first moment of lassitude, get thee gone: but stay not by the way, i caution thee." after dinner we went to see the glass manufactory at murano. she bought a great number of little curiosities; for which she left me to pay without the least ceremony. but she everywhere gave away little trinkets to a much greater amount than of the things we had purchased. by the indifference with which she threw away her money, i perceived she annexed to it but little value. when she insisted upon a payment, i am of opinion it was more from a motive of vanity than avarice. she was flattered by the price her admirers set upon her favors. in the evening we conducted her to her apartments. as we conversed together, i perceived a couple of pistols upon her toilette. "ah! ah!" said i, taking one of them up, "this is a patch-box of a new construction: may i ask what, is its use? i know you have other arms which give more fire than those upon your table." after a few pleasantries of the same kind, she said to us, with an ingenuousness which rendered her still more charming, "when i am complaisant to persons whom i do not love, i make them pay for the weariness they cause me; nothing can be more just; but if i suffer their caresses, i will not bear their insults; nor miss the first who shall be wanting to me in respect." at taking leave of her, i made another appointment for the next day. i did not make her wait. i found her in vestito di confidenza, in an undress more than wanton, unknown to northern countries, and which i will not amuse myself in describing, although i recollect it perfectly well. i shall only remark that her ruffles and collar were edged with silk network ornamented with rose-colored pompons. this, in my eyes, much enlivened a beautiful complexion. i afterwards found it to be the mode at venice, and the effect is so charming that i am surprised it has never been introduced in france. i had no idea of the transports which awaited me. i have spoken of madam de larnage with the transport which the remembrance of her still sometimes gives me; but how old, ugly and cold she appeared, compared with my zulietta! do not attempt to form to yourself an idea of the charms and graces of this enchanting girl, you will be far too short of truth. young virgins in cloisters are not so fresh: the beauties of the seraglio are less animated: the houris of paradise less engaging. never was so sweet an enjoyment offered to the heart and senses of a mortal. ah! had i at least been capable of fully tasting of it for a single moment!i had tasted of it, but without a charm. i enfeebled all its delights: i destroyed them as at will. no; nature has not made me capable of enjoyment. she has infused into my wretched head the poison of that ineffable happiness, the desire of which she first placed in my heart. if there be a circumstance in my life, which describes my nature, it is that which i am going to relate. the forcible manner in which i at this moment recollect the object of my book, will here make me hold in contempt the false delicacy which would prevent me from fulfilling it. whoever you may be who are desirous of knowing a man, have the courage to read the two or three following pages, and you will become fully acquainted with j. j. rousseau. i entered the room of a courtesan as if it had been the sanctuary of love and beauty: and in her person, i thought i saw the divinity. i should have been inclined to think that without respect and esteem it was impossible to feel anything like that which she made me experience. scarcely had i, in her first familiarities, discovered the force of her charms and caresses, before i wished, for fear of losing the fruit of them, to gather it beforehand. suddenly, instead of the flame which consumed me, i felt a mortal cold run through all my veins; my legs failed me; and ready to faint away, i sat down and wept like a child. who would guess the cause of my tears, and what, at this moment, passed within me? i said to myself: the object in my power is the masterpiece of love; her wit and person equally approach perfection; she is as good and generous as she is amiable and beautiful. yet she is a miserable prostitute, abandoned to the public. the captain of a merchantship disposed of her at will; she has thrown herself into my arms, although she knows i have nothing; and my merit with which she cannot be acquainted, can be to her no inducement. in this there is something inconceivable. either my heart deceives me, fascinates my senses, and makes me the dupe of an unworthy slut, or some secret defect, of which i am ignorant, destroys the effect of her charms, and renders her odious in the eyes of those by whom her charms would otherwise be disputed. i endeavored, by an extraordinary effort of mind, to discover this defect, but it did not so much as strike me that even the consequences to be apprehended, might possibly have some influence. the clearness of her skin, the brilliancy of her complexion, her white teeth, sweet breath, and the appearance of neatness about her person, so far removed from me this idea, that still in doubt relative to my situation after the affair of the padoana, i rather apprehended i was not sufficiently in health for her: and i am firmly persuaded i was not deceived in my opinion. these reflections, so apropos, agitated me to such a degree as to make me shed tears. zulietta, to whom the scene was quite novel, was struck speechless for a moment. but having made a turn in her chamber, and passing before her glass, she comprehended, and my eyes confirmed her opinion, that disgust had no part in what had happened. it was not difficult for her to recover me and dispel this shamefacedness. but, at the moment in which i was ready to faint upon a bosom, which for the first time seemed to suffer the impression of the hand and lips of a man, i perceived she had a withered teton. i struck my forehead: i examined, and thought i perceived this teton was not formed like the other. i immediately began to consider how it was possible to have such a defect, and persuaded of its proceeding from some great natural vice, i was clearly convinced, that, instead of the most charming person of whom i could form to myself an idea, i had in my arms a species of a monster, the refuse of nature, of men and of love. i carried my stupidity so far as to speak to her of the discovery i had made. she, at first, took what i said jocosely; and in her frolicsome humor, did and said things which made me die of love. but perceiving an inquietude i could not conceal she at length reddened, adjusted her dress, raised herself up, and, without saying a word, went and placed herself at a window. i attempted to place myself by her side: she withdrew to a sofa, rose from it the next moment, and fanning herself as she walked about the chamber, said to me in a reserved and disdainful tone of voice, "zanetto, lascia le donne, e studia la matematica."* * leave women, and study the mathematics. before i took leave i requested her to appoint another rendezvous for the next day, which she postponed for three days, adding, with a satirical smile, that i must needs be in want of repose. i was very ill at ease during the interval; my heart was full of her charms and graces; i felt my extravagance, and reproached myself with it, regretting the loss of the moments i had so ill employed, and which, had i chosen, i might have rendered more agreeable than any in my whole life; waiting with the most burning impatience for the moment in which i might repair the loss, and yet, notwithstanding all my reasoning upon what i had discovered, anxious to reconcile the perfections of this adorable girl with the indignity of her situation. i ran, i flew to her apartment at the hour appointed. i know not whether or not her ardor would have been more satisfied with this visit, her pride at least would have been flattered by it, and i already rejoiced at the idea of my convincing her, in every respect, that i knew how to repair the wrongs i had done. she spared me this justification. the gondolier whom i had sent to her apartment brought me for answer that she had set off, the evening before, for florence. if i had not felt all the love i had for her person when this was in my possession, i felt it in the most cruel manner on losing her. amiable and charming as she was in my eyes, i could have consoled myself for the loss of her; but this i have never been able to do relative to the contemptuous idea which at her departure she must have had of me. these are my two adventures. the eighteen months i passed at venice furnished me with no other of the same kind, except a simple prospect at most. carrio was a gallant. tired of visiting girls engaged to others, he took a fancy to have one to himself, and, as we were inseparable, he proposed to me an arrangement common enough at venice, which was to keep one girl for us both. to this i consented. the question was, to find one who was safe. he was so industrious in his researches that he found out a little girl of from eleven to twelve years of age, whom her infamous mother was endeavoring to sell, and i went with carrio to see her. the sight of the child moved me to the most lively compassion. she was fair and as gentle as a lamb. nobody would have taken her for an italian. living is very cheap at venice; we gave a little money to the mother and provided for the subsistence of her daughter. she had a voice, and to procure her some resource we gave her a spinnet, and a singing-master. all these expenses did not cost each of us more than two sequins a month, and we contrived to save a much greater sum in other matters; but as we were obliged to wait until she became of a riper age, this was sowing a long time before we could possibly reap. however, satisfied with passing our evenings, chatting and innocently playing with the child, we perhaps enjoyed greater pleasure than if we had received the last favors. so true is it that men are more attached to women by a certain pleasure they have in living with them, than by any kind of libertinism. my heart became insensibly attached to the little anzoletta, but my attachment was paternal, in which the senses had so little share, that in proportion as the former increased, to have connected it with the latter would have been less possible; and i felt i should have experienced, at approaching this little creature when become nubile, the same horror with which the abominable crime of incest would have inspired me. i perceived the sentiments of carrio take, unobserved by himself, exactly the same turn. we thus prepared for ourselves, without intending it, pleasure not less delicious, but very different from that of which we first had an idea; and i am fully persuaded that however beautiful the poor child might have become, far from being the corrupters of her innocence we should have been the protectors of it. the circumstance which shortly afterwards befell me deprived me of the happiness of taking part in this good work, and my only merit in the affair was the inclination of my heart. i will now return to my journey. my first intention after leaving m. de montaigu, was to retire to geneva, until time and more favorable circumstances should have removed the obstacles which prevented my union with my poor mamma; but the quarrel between me and m. de montaigu being become public, and he having had the folly to write about it to the court, i resolved to go there to give an account of my conduct and complain of that of a madman. i communicated my intention, from venice, to m. du theil, charged per interim with foreign affairs after the death of m. amelot. i set off as soon as my letter, and took my route through bergamo, como, and duomo d'ossola, and crossing the simplon. at sion, m. de chaignon, charge des affaires from france, showed me great civility; at geneva m. de la closure treated me with the same polite attention. i there renewed my acquaintance with m. de gauffecourt from whom i had some money to receive. i had passed through nyon without going to see my father; not that this was a matter of indifference to me, but because i was unwilling to appear before my mother-in-law, after the disaster which had befallen me, certain of being condemned by her without being heard. the bookseller, du villard, an old friend of my father's, reproached me severely with this neglect. i gave him my reasons for it, and to repair my fault, without exposing myself to meet my mother-in-law, i took a chaise and we went together to nyon and stopped at a public house. du villard went to fetch my father, who came running to embrace me. we supped together, and, after passing an evening very agreeable to the wishes of my heart, i returned the next morning to geneva with du villard, for whom i have ever since retained a sentiment of gratitude in return for the service he did me on this occasion. lyons was a little out of my direct road, but i was determined to pass through that city in order to convince myself of a knavish trick played me by m. de montaigu. i had sent me from paris a little box containing a waistcoat, embroidered with gold, a few pairs of ruffles, and six pairs of white silk stockings; nothing more. upon a proposition made me by m. de montaigu, i ordered this box to be added to his baggage. in the apothecary's bill he offered me in payment of my salary, and which he wrote out himself, he stated the weight of this box, which he called a bale, at eleven hundred pounds, and charged me with the carriage of it at an enormous rate. by the cares of m. boy de la tour, to whom i was recommended by m. roguin, his uncle, it was proved from the registers of the customs of lyons and marseilles, that the said bale weighed no more than forty-five pounds, and had paid carriage according to that weight. i joined this authentic extract to the memoir of m. de montaigu, and provided with these papers and others containing stronger facts, i returned to paris, very impatient to make use of them. during the whole of this long journey i had little adventures: at como, in valais, and elsewhere. i there saw many curious things, amongst others the borromean islands, which are worthy of being described. but i am pressed by time, and surrounded by spies. i am obliged to write in haste, and very imperfectly, a work which requires the leisure and tranquility i do not enjoy. if ever providence in its goodness grants me days more calm, i shall destine them to new modeling this work, should i be able to do it, or at least to give a supplement, of which i perceive it stands in the greatest need.* * i have given up this project. the news of my quarrel had reached paris before me, and on my arrival i found the people in all the offices, and the public in general, scandalized at the follies of the ambassador. notwithstanding this, the public talk of venice, and the unanswerable proof i exhibited, i could not obtain even the shadow of justice. far from obtaining satisfaction or reparation, i was left at the discretion of the ambassador for my salary, and this for no other reason than because, not being a frenchman, i had no right to national protection, and that it was a private affair between him and myself. everybody agreed i was insulted, injured, and unfortunate; that the ambassador was mad, cruel, and iniquitous, and that the whole of the affair dishonored him forever. but what of this! he was the ambassador, and i was nothing more than the secretary. order, or that which is so called, was in opposition to my obtaining justice, and of this the least shadow was not granted me. i supposed that, by loudly complaining, and by publicly treating this madman in the manner he deserved, i should at length be told to hold my tongue; this was what i wished for, and i was fully determined not to obey until i had obtained redress. but at that time there was no minister for foreign affairs. i was suffered to exclaim, nay, even encouraged to do it, and joined with; but the affair still remained in the same state, until, tired of being in the right without obtaining justice, my courage at length failed me, and let the whole drop. the only person by whom i was ill received, and from whom i should have least expected such an injustice, was madam de beuzenval. full of the prerogatives of rank and nobility, she could not conceive it was possible an ambassador could ever be in the wrong with respect to his secretary. the reception she, gave me was conformable to this prejudice. i was so piqued at it that, immediately after leaving her, i wrote her perhaps one of the strongest and most violent letters that ever came from my pen, and since that time i never once returned to her house. i was better received by father castel; but, in the midst of his jesuitical wheedling i perceived him faithfully to follow one of the great maxims of his society, which is to sacrifice the weak to the powerful. the strong conviction i felt of the justice of my cause, and my natural greatness of mind did not suffer me patiently to endure this partiality. i ceased visiting father castel, and on that account, going to the college of the jesuits, where i knew nobody but himself. besides the intriguing and tyrannical spirit of his brethren, so different from the cordiality of the good father hemet, gave me such a disgust to their conversation that i have never since been acquainted with, nor seen any one of them except father berthier, whom i saw twice or thrice at m. dupin's, in conjunction with whom he labored with all his might at the refutation of montesquieu. that i may not return to the subject, i will conclude what i have to say of m. de montaigu. i had told him in our quarrels that a secretary was not what he wanted, but an attorney's clerk. he took the hint, and the person whom he procured to succeed me was a real attorney, who in less than a year robbed him of twenty or thirty thousand livres. he discharged him, and sent him to prison, dismissed his gentleman with disgrace, and, in wretchedness, got himself everywhere into quarrels, received affronts which a footman would not have put up with, and, after numerous follies, was recalled, and sent from the capital. it is very probable that among the reprimands he received at court, his affair with me was not forgotten. at least, a little time after his return he sent his maitre d'hotel, to settle my account, and give me some money. i was in want of it at that moment; my debts at venice, debts of honor, if ever there were any, lay heavy upon my mind. i made use of the means which offered to discharge them, as well as the note of zanetto nani. i received what was offered me, paid all my debts, and remained as before, without a farthing in my pocket, but relieved from a weight which had become insupportable. from that time i never heard speak of m. de montaigu until his death, with which i became acquainted by means of the gazette. the peace of god be with that poor man! he was as fit for the functions of an ambassador as in my infancy i had been for those of grapignan.* however, it was in his power to have honorably supported himself by my services, and at the same time to have rapidly advanced me in a career to which the comte de gauvon had destined me in my youth, and of the functions of which i had in a more advanced age rendered myself capable. * term of disparagement for an attorney.la rousse. the justice and inutility of my complaints left in my mind seeds of indignation against our foolish civil institutions, by which the welfare of the public and real justice are always sacrificed to i know not what appearance of order, and which does nothing more, than add the sanction of public authority to the oppression of the weak, and the iniquity of the powerful. two things prevented these seeds from putting forth at that time as they afterwards did: one was, myself being in question in the affair, and private interest, whence nothing great or noble ever proceeded, could not draw from my heart the divine soarings, which the most pure love, only of that which is just. and sublime, can produce. the other was the charm of friendship which tempered and calmed my wrath by the ascendancy of a more pleasing sentiment. i had become acquainted at venice with a biscayan, a friend of my friend carrio's, and worthy of being that of every honest man. this amiable young man, born with every talent and virtue, had just made the tour of italy to gain a taste for the fine arts, and, imagining he had nothing more to acquire, intended to return by the most direct road to his own country. i told him the arts were nothing more than a relaxation to a genius like his, fit to cultivate the sciences; and to give him a taste for these, i advised him to make a journey to paris and reside there for six months. he took my advice, and went to paris. he was there and expected me when i arrived. his lodging was too considerable for him, and he offered me the half of it, which i instantly accepted. i found him absorbed in the study of the sublimest sciences. nothing was above his reach. he digested everything with a prodigious rapidity. how cordially did he thank me for having procured him this food for his mind, which was tormented by a thirst after knowledge, without his being aware of it! what a treasure of light and virtue i found in the vigorous mind of this young man! i felt he was the friend i wanted. we soon became intimate. our tastes were not the same, and we constantly disputed. both opinionated, we never could agree about anything. nevertheless we could not separate; and, notwithstanding our reciprocal and incessant contradiction, we neither of us wished the other to be different from what he was. ignacio emmanuel de altuna was one of those rare beings whom only spain produces, and of whom she produces too few for her glory. he had not the violent national passions common in his own country. the idea of vengeance could no more enter his head, than the desire of it could proceed from his heart. his mind was too great to be vindictive, and i have frequently heard him say, with the greatest coolness, that no mortal could offend him. he was gallant, without being tender. he played with women as with so many pretty children. he amused himself with the mistresses of his friends, but i never knew him to have one of his own, nor the least desire for it. the emanations from the virtue with which his heart was stored never permitted the fire of the passions to excite sensual desires. after his travels he married, died young, and left children; and, i am as convinced as of my existence, that his wife was the first and only woman with whom he ever tasted of the pleasures of love. externally he was devout, like a spaniard, but in his heart he had the piety of an angel. except myself, he is the only man i ever saw whose principles were not intolerant. he never in his life asked any person his opinion in matters of religion. it was not of the least consequence to him whether his friend was a jew, a protestant, a turk, a bigot, or an atheist, provided he was an honest man. obstinate and headstrong in matters of indifference, but the moment religion was in question, even the moral part, he collected himself, was silent, or simply said: "i am charged with the care of myself only." it is astonishing so much elevation of mind should be compatible with a spirit of detail carried to minuteness. he previously divided the employment of the day by hours, quarters and minutes; and so scrupulously adhered to this distribution, that had the clock struck while he was reading a phrase, he would have shut his book without finishing it. his portions of time thus laid out, were some of them set apart to studies of one kind, and others to those of another: he had some for reflection, conversation divine service, the reading of locke, for his rosary, for visits, music and painting; and neither pleasure, temptation, nor complaisance, could interrupt this order: a duty he might have had to discharge was the only thing that could have done it. when he gave me a list of his distribution, that i might conform myself thereto, i first laughed, and then shed tears of admiration. he never constrained anybody nor suffered constraint: he was rather rough with people, who from politeness attempted to put it upon it. he was passionate without being sullen. i have often seen him warm, but never saw him really angry with any person. nothing could be more cheerful than his temper: he knew how to pass and receive a joke; raillery was one of his distinguished talents, and with which he possessed that of pointed wit and repartee. when he was animated, he was noisy and heard at a great distance; but whilst he loudly inveighed, a smile was spread over his countenance, and in the midst of his warmth he used some diverting expression which made all his hearers break out into a loud laugh. he had no more of the spanish complexion than of the phlegm of that country. his skin was white, his cheeks finely colored, and his hair of a light chestnut. he was tall and well made: his body was well formed for the residence of his mind. this wise-hearted, as well as wise-headed man, knew mankind, and was my friend; this is my only answer to such as are not so. we were so intimately united, that our intention was to pass our days together. in a few years i was to go to ascoytia to live with him at his estate; every part of the project was arranged the eve of his departure; nothing was left undetermined, except that which depends not upon men in the best concerted plans, posterior events. my disasters, his marriage, and finally, his death, separated us forever. some men would be tempted to say, that nothing succeeds except the dark conspiracies of the wicked, and that the innocent intentions of the good are seldom or never accomplished. i had felt the inconvenience of dependence, and took a resolution never again to expose myself to it; having seen the projects of ambition, which circumstances had induced me to form, overturned in their birth. discouraged in the career i had so well begun, from which, however, i had just been expelled, i resolved never more to attach myself to any person, but to remain in an independent state, turning my talents to the best advantage: of these i at length began to feel the extent, and that i had hitherto had too modest an opinion of them. i again took up my opera, which i had laid aside to go to venice; and, that i might be less interrupted after the departure of altuna, i returned to my old hotel st. quentin; which, in a solitary part of the town, and not far from the luxembourg, was more proper for my purpose than noisy rue st. honore. there the only consolation which heaven suffered me to taste in my misery, and the only one which rendered it supportable, awaited me. this was not a transient acquaintance; i must enter into some detail relative to the manner in which it was made. we had a new landlady from orleans; to help her with the linen, she had a young girl from her own country, of between twenty-two and twenty-three years of age, and who, as well as the hostess, ate at our table. this girl, named theresa le vasseur, was of a good family; her father was an officer in the mint of orleans, and her mother a shopkeeper; they had many children. the function of the mint of orleans being suppressed, the father found himself without employment; and the mother having suffered losses, was reduced to narrow circumstances. she quitted her business and came to paris with her husband and daughter, who, by her industry, maintained all the three. the first time i saw this girl at table, i was struck with her modesty; and still more so with her lively, yet charming look; which, with respect to the impression it made upon me, was never equaled. beside m. de bonnefond, the company was composed of several irish priests, gascons, and others of much the same description. our hostess herself had not made the best possible use of her time, and i was the only person at the table who spoke and behaved with decency. allurements were thrown out to the young girl. i took her part, and the joke was then turned against me. had i had no natural inclination to the poor girl, compassion and contradiction would have produced it in me: i was always a great friend to decency in manners and conversation, especially in the fair sex. i openly declared myself her champion, and perceived she was not insensible of my attention; her looks, animated by the gratitude she dared not express by words, were for this reason still more penetrating. she was very timid, and i was as much so as herself. the connection which this disposition common to both seemed to remove to a distance, was however rapidly formed. our landlady perceiving its progress, became furious, and her brutality forwarded my affair with the young girl, who, having no person in the house except myself to give her the least support, was sorry to see me go from home, and sighed for the return of her protector. the affinity our hearts bore to each other, and the similarity of our dispositions, had soon their ordinary effect. she thought she saw in me an honest man, and in this she was not deceived. i thought i perceived in her a woman of great sensibility, simple in her manners, and devoid of all coquetry:i was no more deceived in her than she in me. i began by declaring to her that i would never either abandon or marry her. love, esteem, artless sincerity were the ministers of my triumph, and it was because her heart was tender and virtuous, that i was happy without being presuming. the apprehensions she was under of my not finding in her that for which i sought, retarded my happiness more than every other circumstance. i perceived her disconcerted and confused before she yielded her consent, wishing to be understood and not daring to explain herself. far from suspecting the real cause of her embarrassment, i falsely imagined it to proceed from another motive, a supposition highly insulting to her morals, and thinking she gave me to understand my health might be exposed to danger, i fell into so perplexed a state that, although it was no restraint upon me, it poisoned my happiness during several days. as we did not understand each other, our conversations upon this subject were so many enigmas more than ridiculous. she was upon the point of believing i was absolutely mad; and i on my part was as near not knowing what else to think of her. at last we came to an explanation; she confessed to me with tears the only fault of the kind of her whole life, immediately after she became nubile; the fruit of her ignorance and the address of her seducer. the moment i comprehended what she meant, i gave a shout of joy. "virginity!" exclaimed i; "sought for at paris, and at twenty years of age! ah, my theresa! i am happy in possessing thee, virtuous and healthy as thou art, and in not finding that for which i never sought." at first, amusement was my only object; i perceived i had gone further, and had given myself a companion. a little intimate connection with this excellent girl, and a few reflections upon my situation, made me discover that, while thinking of nothing more than my pleasures, i had done a great deal towards my happiness. in the place of extinguished ambition, a lively sentiment, which had entire possession of my heart, was necessary to me. in a word, i wanted a successor to mamma: since i was never again to live with her, it was necessary some person should live with her pupil, and a person, too, in whom i might find that simplicity and docility of mind and heart which she had found in me. it was, moreover, necessary that the happiness of domestic life should indemnify me for the splendid career i had just renounced. when i was quite alone there was a void in my heart, which wanted nothing more than another heart to fill it up. fate had deprived me of this, or at least in part alienated me from that for which by nature i was formed. from that moment i was alone, for there never was for me the least thing intermediate between everything and nothing. i found in theresa the supplement of which i stood in need; by means of her i lived as happily as i possibly could do, according to the course of events. i first attempted to improve her mind. in this my pains were useless. her mind is as nature formed it; it was not susceptible of cultivation. i do not blush in acknowledging she never knew how to read well, although she writes tolerably. when i went to lodge in the rue neuve-des-petits-champs, opposite to my windows at the hotel de pontchartrain, there was a sun-dial, on which for a whole month i used all my efforts to teach her to know the hours; yet, she scarcely knows them at present. she never could enumerate the twelve months of the year in order, and cannot distinguish one numeral from another, notwithstanding all the trouble i took endeavoring to teach them to her. she neither knows how to count money, nor to reckon the price of anything. the word which when she speaks, presents itself to her mind, is frequently opposite to that of which she means to make use. i formerly made a dictionary of her phrases, to amuse m. de luxembourg, and her qui pro quos often became celebrated among those with whom i was most intimate. but this person, so confined in her intellects, and, if the world pleases, so stupid, can give excellent advice in cases of difficulty. in switzerland, in england, and in france, she frequently saw what i had not myself perceived; she has often given me the best advice i could possibly follow; she has rescued me from dangers into which i had blindly precipitated myself, and in the presence of princes and the great, her sentiments, good sense, answers, and conduct have acquired her universal esteem, and myself the most sincere congratulations on her merit. with persons whom we love, sentiment fortifies the mind as well as the heart; and they who are thus attached, have little need of searching for ideas elsewhere. i lived with my theresa as agreeably as with the finest genius in the world. her mother, proud of having been brought up under the marchioness of monpipeau, attempted to be witty, wished to direct the judgment of her daughter, and by her knavish cunning destroyed the simplicity of our intercourse. the fatigue of this importunity made me in some degree surmount the foolish shame which prevented me from appearing with theresa in public; and we took short country walks, tete-a-tete, and partook of little collations, which, to me, were delicious. i perceived she loved me sincerely, and this increased my tenderness. this charming intimacy left me nothing to wish; futurity no longer gave me the least concern, or at most appeared only as the present moment prolonged: i had no other desire than that of insuring its duration. this attachment rendered all other dissipation superfluous and insipid to me. i never went but for the purpose of going to the apartment of theresa, her place of residence almost became my own. my retirement was so favorable to the work i had undertaken, that, in less than three months, my opera was entirely finished, both words and music, except a few accompaniments, and fillings up which still remained to be added. this maneuvring business was very fatiguing to me. i proposed it to philidor, offering him at the same time a part of the profits. he came twice, and did something to the middle parts in the act of ovid; but he could not confine himself to an assiduous application by the allurement of advantages which were distant and uncertain. he did not come a third time, and i finished the work myself. my opera completed, the next thing was to make something of it: this was by much the more difficult task of the two. a man living in solitude in paris will never succeed in anything. i was on the point of making my way by means of m. de la popliniere, to whom gauffecourt, at my return to geneva, had introduced me. m. de la popliniere was the mecaenas of rameau. madam de la popliniere his very humble scholar. rameau was said to govern in that house. judging that he would with pleasure protect the work of one of his disciples, i wished to show him what i had done. he refused to examine it; saying he could not read score, it was too fatiguing to him. m. de la popliniere, to obviate this difficulty, said he might hear it; and offered me to send for musicians to execute certain detached pieces. i wished for nothing better. rameau consented with an ill grace, incessantly repeating that the composition of a man not regularly bred to the science, and who had learned music without a master, must certainly be very fine! i hastened to copy into parts five or six select passages. ten symphonies were procured, and albert, berard, and mademoiselle bourdonnais undertook the vocal part. rameau, the moment he heard the overture, was purposely extravagant in his eulogium, by which he intended it should be understood it could not be my composition. he showed signs of impatience at every passage: but after a counter tenor song, the air of which was noble and harmonious, with a brilliant accompaniment, he could no longer contain himself; he apostrophized me with a brutality at which everybody was shocked, maintaining that a part of what he had heard was by a man experienced in the art, and the rest by some ignorant person who did not so much as understand music. it is true my composition, unequal and without rule, was sometimes sublime, and at others insipid, as that of a person who forms himself in an art by the soarings of his own genius, unsupported by science, must necessarily be. rameau pretended to see nothing in me but a contemptible pilferer, without talents or taste. the rest of the company, among whom i must distinguish the master of the house, were of a different opinion. m. de richelieu, who at that time frequently visited m. and madam de la popliniere, heard them speak of my work, and wished to hear the whole of it, with an intention, if it pleased him, to have it performed at court. the opera was executed with full choruses, and by a great orchestra, at the expense of the king, at m. de bonneval's, intendant of the menus; francoeur directed the band. the effect was surprising: the duke never ceased to exclaim and applaud; and, at the end of one of the choruses, in the act of tasso, he arose and came to me, and pressing my hand, said: "m. rousseau, this is transporting harmony. i never heard anything finer. i will get this performed at versailles." madam de la popliniere, who was present, said not a word. rameau, although invited, refused to come. the next day, madam de la popliniere received me at her toilette very ungraciously, affected to undervalue my piece, and told me, that although a little false glitter had at first dazzled m. de richelieu, he had recovered from his error, and she advised me not to place the least dependence upon my opera. the duke arrived soon after, and spoke to me in quite a different language. he said very flattering things my talents, and seemed as much disposed as ever to have my composition performed before the king. "there is nothing," said he, "but the act of tasso which cannot pass at court: you must write another." upon this single word i shut myself up in my apartment; and in three weeks produced, in the place of tasso, another act, the subject of which was hesiod inspired by the muses. in this i found the secret of introducing a part of the history of my talents, and of the jealousy with which rameau had been pleased to honor me. there was in the new act an elevation less gigantic and better supported than in the act of tasso. the music was as noble and the composition better; and had the other two acts been equal to this, the whole piece would have supported a representation to advantage. but whilst i was endeavoring to give it the last finishing, another undertaking suspended the completion of that i had in my hand. in the winter which succeeded the battle of fontenoi, there were many galas at versailles, and several operas performed at the theater of the little stables. among the number of the latter was the dramatic piece of voltaire, entitled la princess de navarre, the music by rameau, the name of which had just been changed to that of the fetes de ramire. this new subject required several changes to be made in the divertissements, as well in the poetry as in the music. a person capable of both was now sought after. voltaire was in lorraine, and rameau also; both of whom were employed on the opera of the temple of glory, and could not give their attention to this. m. de richelieu thought of me, and sent to desire i would undertake the alterations; and, that i might the better examine what there was to do, he gave me separately the poem and the music. in the first place, i would not touch the words without the consent of the author, to whom i wrote upon the subject a very polite and respectful letter, such a one as was proper; and received from him the following answer: "december 15th, 1745. "sir: in you two talents, which hitherto have always been separate, are united. these are two good reasons for me to esteem and to endeavor to love you. i am sorry, on your account, you should employ these talents in a work which is so little worthy of them. a few months ago the duke de richelieu commanded me to make, absolutely in the twinkling of an eye, a little and bad sketch of a few insipid and imperfect scenes to be adapted to divertissements which are not of a nature to be joined with them. i obeyed with the greatest exactness. i wrote very fast, and very ill. i sent this wretched production to m. de richelieu, imagining he would make no use of it, or that i should have it again to make the necessary corrections. happily it is in your hands, and you are at full liberty to do with it whatever you please: i have entirely lost sight of the thing. i doubt not but you will have corrected all the faults which cannot but abound in so hasty a composition of such a very simple sketch, and am persuaded you will have supplied whatever was wanting. "i remember that, among other stupid inattentions, no account is given in the scenes which connect the divertissements of the manner in which the princess grenadine immediately passes from a prison to a garden or palace. as it is not a magician but a spanish nobleman who gives her the gala, i am of opinion nothing should be effected by enchantment. "i beg, sir, you will examine this part, of which i have but a confused idea. "you will likewise consider, whether or not it be necessary the prison should be opened, and the princess conveyed from it to a fine palace, gilt and varnished, and prepared for her. i know all this is wretched, and that it is beneath a thinking being to make a serious affair of such trifles; but, since we must displease as little as possible, it is necessary we should conform to reason, even in a bad divertissement of an opera. "i depend wholly upon you and m. ballod, and soon expect to have the honor of returning you my thanks, and assuring you how much i am, etc." * * * * * there is nothing surprising in the great politeness of this letter, compared with the almost rude ones which he has since written to me. he thought i was in great favor with madam richelieu; and the courtly suppleness, which every one knows to be the character of this author, obliged him to be extremely polite to a new-comer, until he became better acquainted with the measure of the favor and patronage he enjoyed. authorized by m. de voltaire, and not under the necessity of giving myself the least concern about m. rameau, who endeavored to injure me, i set to work, and in two months my undertaking was finished. with respect to the poetry, it was confined to a mere trifle; i aimed at nothing more than to prevent the difference of style from being perceived, and had the vanity to think i had succeeded. the musical part was longer and more laborious. besides my having to compose several preparatory pieces, and, amongst others, the overture, all the recitative, with which i was charged, was extremely difficult on account of the necessity there was of connecting, in a few verses, and by very rapid modulations, symphonies and choruses, in keys very different from each other; for i was determined neither to change nor transpose any of the airs, that rameau might not accuse me of having disfigured them. i succeeded in the recitative; it was well accented, full of energy and excellent modulation. the idea of two men of superior talents, with whom i was associated, had elevated my genius, and i can assert, that in this barren and inglorious task, of which the public could have no knowledge, i was for the most part equal to my models. the piece, in the date to which i had brought it, was rehearsed in the great theater of the opera. of the three authors who had contributed to the production, i was the only one present. voltaire was not in paris, and rameau either did not come, or concealed himself. the words of the first monologue were very mournful; they began with: o mort! viens terminer les malheurs de ma vie.* * o death! hasten to terminate the misfortunes of my life. to these, suitable music was necessary. it was, however, upon this that madam de la popliniere founded her censure; accusing me, with much bitterness, of having composed a funeral anthem. m. de richelieu very judiciously began by informing himself who was the author of the poetry of this monologue; i presented him the manuscript he had sent me, which proved it was by voltaire. "in that case," said the duke, "voltaire alone is to blame." during the rehearsal, everything i had done was disapproved by madam de la popliniere, and approved of by m. de richelieu; but i had afterwards to do with too powerful an adversary. it was signified to me that several parts of my composition wanted revising, and that on this it was necessary i should consult m. rameau; my heart was wounded by such a conclusion, instead of the eulogium i expected, and which certainly i merited, and i returned to my apartment overwhelmed with grief, exhausted with fatigue, and consumed by chagrin. i was immediately taken ill, and confined to my chamber for upwards of six weeks. rameau, who was charged with the alterations indicated by madam de la popliniere, sent to ask me for the overture of my great opera, to substitute it for that i had just composed. happily i perceived the trick he intended to play me, and refused him the overture. as the performance was to be in five or six days, he had not time to make one, and was obliged to leave that i had prepared. it was in the italian taste, and in a style at that time quite new in france. it gave satisfaction, and i learned from m. de valmalette, maitre d'hotel to the king, and son-in-law to m. mussard, my relation and friend, that the connoisseurs were highly satisfied with my work, and that the public had not distinguished it from that of rameau. however, he and madam de la popliniere took measures to prevent any person from knowing i had any concern in the matter. in the books distributed to the audience, and in which the authors are always named, voltaire was the only person mentioned, and rameau preferred the suppression of his own name to seeing it associated with mine. as soon as i was in a situation to leave my room, i wished to wait upon m. de richelieu, but it was too late; he had just set off from dunkirk, where he was to command the expedition destined to scotland. at his return, said i to myself, to authorize my idleness, it will be too late for my purpose, not having seen him since that time. i lost the honor of my work and the emoluments it should have produced me, besides considering my time, trouble, grief, and vexation, my illness, and the money this cost me, without ever receiving the least benefit, or, rather, recompense. however, i always thought m. de richelieu was disposed to serve me, and that he had a favorable opinion of my talents; but my misfortune, and madam de la popliniere, prevented the effect of his good wishes. i could not divine the reason of the aversion this lady had to me. i had always endeavored to make myself agreeable to her, and regularly paid her my court. gauffecourt explained to me the causes of her dislike: "the first," said he, "is her friendship for rameau, of whom she is the declared panegyrist, and who will not suffer a competitor; the next is an original sin, which ruins you in her estimation, and which she will never forgive; you are a genevese." upon this he told me the abbe hubert, who was from the same city, and the sincere friend of m. de la popliniere, had used all his efforts to prevent him from marrying this lady, with whose character and temper he was very well acquainted; and that after the marriage she had vowed him an implacable hatred, as well as all the genevese. "although la popliniere has a friendship for you, do not," said he, "depend upon his protection: he is still in love with his wife: she hates you, and is vindictive and artful; you will never do anything in that house." all this i took for granted. the same gauffecourt rendered me much about this time a service of which i stood in the greatest need. i had just lost my virtuous father, who was about sixty years of age. i felt this loss less severely than i should have done at any other time, when the embarrassments of my situation had less engaged my attention. during his life-time i had never claimed what remained of the property of my mother, and of which he received the little interest. his death removed all my scruples upon this subject. but the want of a legal proof of the death of my brother created a difficulty which gauffecourt undertook to remove, and this he effected by means of the good offices of the advocate de lolme. as i stood in need of the little resource, and the event being doubtful, i waited for a definitive account with the greatest anxiety. one evening on entering my apartment i found a letter, which i knew to contain the information i wanted, and i took it up with an impatient trembling, of which i was inwardly ashamed. what? said i to myself, with disdain, shall jean-jacques thus suffer himself to be subdued by interest and curiosity? i immediately laid the letter again upon the chimney-piece. i undressed myself, went to bed with great composure, slept better than ordinary, and rose in the morning at a late hour, without thinking more of my letter. as i dressed myself, it caught my eye; i broke the seal very leisurely, and found under the envelope a bill of exchange. i felt a variety of pleasing sensations at the same time: but i can assert, upon my honor, that the most lively of them all was that proceeding from having known how to be master of myself. i could mention twenty such circumstances in my life, but i am too much pressed for time to say everything. i sent a small part of this money to my poor mamma; regretting, with my eyes suffused with tears, the happy time when i should have laid it all at her feet. all her letters contained evident marks of her distress. she sent me piles of recipes, and numerous secrets, with which she pretended i might make my fortune and her own. the idea of her wretchedness already affected her heart and contracted her mind. the little i sent her fell a prey to the knaves by whom she was surrounded; she received not the least advantage from anything. the idea of dividing what was necessary to my own subsistence with these wretches disgusted me, especially after the vain attempt i had made to deliver her from them, and of which i shall have occasion to speak. time slipped away, and with it the little money i had; we were two, or indeed, four persons; or, to speak still more correctly, seven or eight. although theresa was disinterested to a degree of which there are but few examples, her mother was not so. she was no sooner a little relieved from her necessities by my care, than she sent for her whole family to partake of the fruits of them. her sisters, sons, daughters, all, except her eldest daughter, married to the director of the coaches of angers, came to paris. everything i did for theresa her mother diverted from its original destination in favor of these people who were starving. i had not to do with an avaricious person; and, not being under the influence of an unruly passion, i was not guilty of follies. satisfied with genteelly supporting theresa without luxury, and unexposed to pressing wants, i readily consented to let all the earnings of her industry go to the profit of her mother; and to this even i did not confine myself; but, by a fatality by which i was pursued, whilst mamma was a prey to the rascals about her, theresa was the same to her family; and i could not do anything on either side for the benefit of her to whom the succor i gave was destined. it was odd enough the youngest child of m. de la vasseur, the only one who had not received a marriage portion from her parents, should provide for their subsistence; and that, after having a long time been beaten by her brothers, sisters, and even her nieces, the poor girl should be plundered by them all, without being more able to defend herself from their thefts than from their blows. one of her nieces, named goton le duc, was of a mild and amiable character; although spoiled by the lessons and examples of the others. as i frequently saw them together, i gave them names, which they afterwards gave to each other; i called the niece my niece, and the aunt my aunt; they both called me uncle. hence the name of aunt, by which i continued to call theresa, and which my friends sometimes jocosely repeated. it will be judged that in such a situation i had not a moment to lose, before i attempted to extricate myself. imagining m. de richelieu had forgotten me, and, having no more hopes from the court, i made some attempts to get my opera brought out at paris; but i met with difficulties which could not immediately be removed, and my situation became daily more painful. i presented my little comedy of narcisse to the italians; it was received, and i had the freedom of the theater, which gave much pleasure. but this was all; i could never get my piece performed, and, tired of paying my court to players, i gave myself no more trouble about them. at length i had recourse to the last expedient which remained to me, and the only one of which i ought to have made use. while frequenting the house of m. de la popliniere, i had neglected the family of dupin. the two ladies, although related, were not upon good terms, and never saw each other. there was not the least intercourse between the two families, and thieriot was the only person who visited both. he was desired to endeavor to bring me again to m. dupin's. m. de francueil was then studying natural history and chemistry, and collecting a cabinet. i believe he aspired to become a member of the academy of sciences; to this effect he intended to write a book, and judged i might be of use to him in the undertaking. madam de dupin, who, on her part, had another work in contemplation, had much the same views with respect to me. they wished to have me in common as a kind of secretary, and this was the reason of the invitations of thieriot. i required that m. de francueil should previously employ his interest with that of jelyote to get my work rehearsed at the opera-house; to this he consented. the muses galantes were several times rehearsed, first at the magazin, and afterwards in the grand theatre. the audience was very numerous at the great rehearsal, and several parts of the composition were highly applauded. however, during this rehearsal, very ill-conducted by rebel, i felt the piece would not be received; and that, before it could appear, great alterations were necessary. i therefore withdrew it without saving a word, or exposing myself to a refusal; but i plainly perceived, by several indications, that the work, had it been perfect, could not have succeeded. m. de francueil had promised me to get it rehearsed, but not that it should be received. he exactly kept his word. i thought i perceived on this occasion, as well as many others, that neither madam dupin nor himself were willing i should acquire a certain reputation in the world, lest, after the publication of their books, it should be supposed they had grafted their talents upon mine. yet as madam dupin always supposed those i had to be very moderate, and never employed me except it was to write what she dictated, or in researches of pure erudition, the reproach, with respect to her, would have been unjust. this last failure of success completed my discouragement, i abandoned every prospect of fame and advancement; and, without further troubling my head about real or imaginary talents, with which i had so little success, i dedicated my whole time and cares to procure myself and theresa a subsistence in the manner most pleasing to those to whom it should be agreeable to provide for it. i therefore entirely attached myself to madam dupin and m. de francueil. this did not place me in a very opulent situation; for with eight or nine hundred livres, which i had the first two years, i had scarcely enough to provide for my primary wants; being obliged to live in their neighborhood, a dear part of the town, in a furnished lodging, and having to pay for another lodging at the extremity of paris, at the very top of the rue saint-jacques, to which, let the weather be as it would, i went almost every evening to supper. i soon got into the track of my new occupations, and conceived a taste for them. i attached myself to the study of chemistry, and attended several courses of it with m. de francueil at m. rouelle's, and we began to scribble over paper upon that science, of which we scarcely possessed the elements. in 1747, we went to pass the autumn in touraine, at the castle of chenonceaux, a royal mansion upon the cher, built by henry the ii., for diana of poitiers, of whom the ciphers are still seen, and which is now in the possession of m. dupin, a farmer-general. we amused ourselves very agreeably in this beautiful place, and lived very well: i became as fat there as a monk. music was a favorite relaxation. i composed several trios full of harmony, and of which i may perhaps speak in my supplement if ever i should write one. theatrical performances were another resource. i wrote a comedy in fifteen days, entitled l'engagement temeraire,* which will be found amongst my papers; it has no other merit than that of being lively. i composed several other little things: amongst others a poem entitled, l'allee de sylvie,*(2) from the name of an alley in the park upon the bank of the cher; and this without discontinuing my chemical studies, or interrupting what i had to do for madam dupin. * the rash engagement. *(2) the alley of sylvia. whilst i was increasing my corpulency at chenonceaux, that of my poor theresa was augmented at paris in another manner, and at my return i found the work i had put upon the frame in greater forwardness than i had expected. this, on account of my situation, would have thrown me into the greatest embarrassment, had not one of my messmates furnished me with the only resource which could relieve me from it. this is one of those essential narratives which i cannot give with too much simplicity; because, in making an improper use of their names, i should either excuse or inculpate myself, both of which in this place are entirely out of the question. during the residence of altuna at paris, instead of going to eat at a troiteurs, he and i commonly ate in the neighborhood, almost opposite the cul-de-sac of the opera, at the house of a madam la selle, the wife of a tailor, who gave but very ordinary dinners, but whose table was much frequented on account of the safe company which generally resorted to it; no person was received without being introduced by one of those who used the house. the commander, de graville, an old debauchee, with much wit and politeness, but obscene in conversation, lodged at the house, and brought to it a set of riotous and extravagant young men; officers in the guards and mousquetaires. the commander de nonant, chevalier to all the girls of the opera, was the daily oracle, who conveyed to us the news of this motley crew. m. du plessis, a lieutenant-colonel, retired from the service, an old man of great goodness and wisdom; and m. ancelet,* an officer in the mousquetaires kept the young people in a certain kind of order. this table was also frequented by commercial people, financiers and contractors, but extremely polite, and such as were distinguished amongst those of the same profession. m. de besse, m. de forcade, and others whose names i have forgotten, in short, well-dressed people of every description were seen there; except abbe's and men of the long robe, not one of whom i ever met in the house, and it was agreed not to introduce men of either of these professions. this table, sufficiently resorted to, was very cheerful without being noisy, and many of the guests were waggish, without descending to vulgarity. the old commander with all his smutty stories, with respect to the substance, never lost sight of the politeness of the old court; nor did any indecent expression, which even women would not have pardoned him, escape his lips. his manner served as a rule to every person at table; all the young men related their adventures of gallantry with equal grace and freedom, and these narratives were the more complete, as the seraglio was at the door; the entry which led to it was the same; for there was a communication between this and the shop of la duchapt, a celebrated milliner, who at that time had several very pretty girls, with whom our young people went to chat before or after dinner. i should thus have amused myself as well as the rest, had i been less modest; i had only to go in as they did, but this i never had courage enough to do. with respect to madam de selle, i often went to eat at her house after the departure of altuna. i learned a great number of amusing anecdotes and by degrees i adopted, thank god, not the morals, but the maxims i found to be established there. honest men injured, husbands deceived, women seduced, secret accouchements, were the most ordinary topics, and he who had best filled the foundling hospital was always the most applauded. i caught the manners i daily had before my eyes: i formed my manner of thinking upon that i observed to be the reigning one amongst amiable, and upon the whole, very honest people. i said to myself, since it is the custom of the country, they who live here may adopt it; this is the expedient for which i sought. i cheerfully determined upon it without the least scruple, and the only one i had to overcome was that of theresa, whom, with the greatest imaginable difficulty, i persuaded to adopt this only means of saving her honor. her mother, who was moreover apprehensive of a new embarrassment by an increase of family, came to my aid, and she at length suffered herself to be prevailed upon. we made choice of a midwife, a safe and prudent woman, mademoiselle gouin, who lived at the pointe saint-eustache, and when the time came, theresa was conducted to her house by her mother. * it was to this m. ancelet i gave a little comedy, after my own manner entitled "les prisonniers de guerre," (the prisoners of war), which i wrote after the disasters of the french in bavaria and bohemia: i dared not either avow this comedy or show it, and this for the singular reason that neither the king of france nor the french were ever better spoken of nor praised with more sincerity of heart than in my piece; though written by a professed republican, i dared not declare myself the panegyrist of a nation, whose maxims were exactly the reverse of my own. more grieved at the misfortunes of france than the french themselves, i was afraid the public would construe into flattery and mean complaisance the marks of a sincere attachment, of which in my first part i have mentioned the date and the cause, and which i was ashamed to show. i went thither several times to see her, and gave her a cipher which i had made double upon two cards; one of them was put into the linen of the child, and by the midwife deposited with the infant in the office of the foundling hospital according to the customary form. the year following, a similar inconvenience was remedied by the same expedient, excepting the cipher, which was forgotten: no more reflection on my part, nor approbation on that of the mother; she obeyed with trembling. all the vicissitudes which this fatal conduct has produced in my manner of thinking, as well as in my destiny, will be successively seen. for the present, we will confine ourselves to this first period; its cruel and unforeseen consequences will but too frequently oblige me to refer to it. i here mark that of my first acquaintance with madam d'epinay, whose name will frequently appear in these memoirs. she was a mademoiselle d'esclavelles, and had lately been married to m. d'epinay, son to m. de lalive de bellegarde, a farmer general. she understood music, and a passion for the art produced between these three persons the greatest intimacy. madam francueil introduced me to madam d'epinay, and we sometimes supped together at her house. she was amiable, had wit and talent, and was certainly a desirable acquaintance; but she had a female friend, a mademoiselle d'ette, who was said to have much malignancy in her disposition; she lived with the chevalier de valory, whose temper was far from being one of the best. i am of opinion, an acquaintance with these two persons was prejudicial to madam d'epinay, to whom, with a disposition which required the greatest attention from those about her, nature had given very excellent qualities to regulate or counterbalance her extravagant pretensions. m. de francueil inspired her with a part of the friendship he had conceived for me, and told me of the connection between them, of which, for that reason, i would not now speak, were it not become so public as not to be concealed from m. d'epinay himself. m. de francueil confided to me secrets of a very singular nature relative to this lady, of which she herself never spoke to me, nor so much as suspected my having a knowledge; for i never opened my lips to her upon the subject, nor will i ever do it to any person. the confidence all parties had in my prudence rendered my situation very embarrassing, especially with madam de francueil, whose knowledge of me was sufficient to remove from her all suspicion on my account, although i was connected with her rival. i did everything i could to console this poor woman, whose husband certainly did not return the affection she had for him. i listened to these three persons separately; i kept all their secrets so faithfully that not one of the three ever drew from me those of the two others, and this, without concealing from either of the women my attachment to each of them. madam de francueil, who frequently wished to make me an agent, received refusals in form, and madam d'epinay, once desiring me to charge myself with a letter to m. de francueil received the same mortification, accompanied by a very express declaration, that if ever she wished to drive me forever from the house, she had only a second time to make me a like proposition. in justice to madam d'epinay, i must say, that far from being offended with me she spoke of my conduct to m. de francueil in terms of the highest approbation, and continued to receive me as well, and as politely as ever. it was thus, amidst the heart-burnings of three persons to whom i was obliged to behave with the greatest circumspection, on whom i in some measure depended, and for whom i had conceived an attachment, that by conducting myself with mildness and complaisance, although accompanied with the greatest firmness, i preserved unto the last not only their friendship, but their esteem and confidence. notwithstanding my absurdities and awkwardness, madam d'epinay would have me make one of the party to the chevrette, a country-house, near saint denis, belonging to m. de bellegarde. there was a theater, in which performances were not unfrequent. i had a part given me, which i studied for six months without intermission, and in which, on the evening of the representation, i was obliged to be prompted from the beginning to the end. after this experiment no second proposal of the kind was ever made to me. my acquaintance with m. d'epinay procured me that of her sister-in-law, mademoiselle de bellegarde, who soon afterwards became countess of houdetot. the first time i saw her she was upon the point of marriage; when she conversed with me a long time, with that charming familiarity which was natural to her. i thought her very amiable, but i was far from perceiving that this young person would lead me, although innocently, into the abyss in which i still remain. although i have not spoken of diderot since my return from venice, no more than of my friend m. roguin, i did not neglect either of them, especially the former, with whom i daily became more intimate. he had a nanette, as well as i a theresa; this was between us another conformity of circumstances. but my theresa, as fine a woman as his nanette, was of a mild and amiable character, which might gain and fix the affections of a worthy man; whereas nanette was a vixen, a troublesome prater, and had no qualities in the eyes of others which in any measure compensated for her want of education. however he married her, which was well done of him, if he had given a promise to that effect. i, for my part, not having entered into any such engagement, was not in the least haste to imitate him. i was also connected with the abbe de condillac, who had acquired no more literary fame than myself, but in whom there was every appearance of his becoming what he now is. i was perhaps the first who discovered the extent of his abilities, and esteemed them as they deserved. he on his part seemed satisfied with me, and, whilst shut up in my chamber in the rue jean st. denis, near the opera-house, i composed my act of hesiod, he sometimes came to dine with me tete-a-tete. we sent for our dinner, and paid share and share alike. he was at that time employed on his essay on the origin of human knowledge, which was his first work. when this was finished, the difficulty was to find a bookseller who would take it. the booksellers of paris are shy of every author at his beginning, and metaphysics, not much then in vogue, were no very inviting subject. i spoke to diderot of condillac and his work, and i afterwards brought them acquainted with each other. they were worthy of each other's esteem, and were presently on the most friendly terms. diderot persuaded. the bookseller, durant, to take the manuscript from the abbe, and this great metaphysician received for his first work, and almost as a favor, a hundred crowns, which perhaps he would not have obtained without my assistance. as we lived in a quarter of the town very distant from each other, we all assembled once a week at the palais-royal, and went to dine at the hotel du panier fleuri. these little weekly dinners must have been extremely pleasing to diderot; for he who failed in almost all his appointments never missed one of these. at our little meeting i formed the plan of a periodical paper, entitled le persifleur,* which diderot and i were alternately to write. i sketched out the first sheet, and this brought me acquainted with d'alembert, to whom diderot had mentioned it. unforeseen events frustrated our intention, and the project was carried no further. * the jeerer. these two authors had just undertaken the dictionnaire encyclopedique, which at first was intended to be nothing more than a kind of translation of chambers', something like that of the medical dictionary of james, which diderot had just finished. diderot was desirous i should do something in this second undertaking, and proposed to me the musical part, which i accepted. this i executed in great haste, and consequently very ill, in the three months he had given me, as well as all the authors who were engaged in the work. but i was the only person in readiness at the time prescribed. i gave him my manuscript, which i had copied by a lackey, belonging to m. de francueil of the name of dupont, who wrote very well. i paid him ten crowns out of my own pocket, and these have never been reimbursed me. diderot had promised me a retribution on the part of the booksellers, of which he has never since spoken to me nor i to him. this undertaking of the encyclopedie was interrupted by his imprisonment. the penses philosophiquies,* drew upon him some temporary inconvenience which had no disagreeable consequences. he did not come off so easily on account of the lettre sur les aveugles,*(2) in which there was nothing reprehensible, but some personal attacks with which madam du pre st. maur, and m. de reaumur were displeased: for this he was confined in the dungeon of vincennes. nothing can describe the anguish i felt on account of the misfortune of my friend. my wretched imagination, which always sees everything in the worst light, was terrified. i imagined him to be confined for the remainder of his life: i was almost distracted with the thought. i wrote to madam de pompadour, beseeching her to release him or obtain an order to shut me up in the same dungeon. i received no answer to my letter: this was too reasonable to be efficacious, and i do not flatter myself that it contributed to the alleviation which, some time afterwards, was granted to the severities of the confinement of poor diderot. had this continued for any length of time with the same rigor, i verily believe i should have died in despair at the foot of the hated dungeon. however, if my letter produced but little effect, i did not on account of it attribute to myself much merit, for i mentioned it but to very few people, and never to diderot himself. * philosophical thoughts. *(2) letter concerning blind persons. book viii [1749] i have been obliged to pause at the end of the preceding book. with this begins the long chain of my misfortunes deduced from their origin. having lived in the two most splendid houses in paris, i had, notwithstanding my candor and modesty, made some acquaintance. amongst others at dupin's, that of the young hereditary prince of saxe-gotha, and of the baron de thun, his governor; at the house of m. de le popliniere, that of m. seguy, friend to the baron de thun, and known in the literary world by his beautiful edition of rousseau.* the baron invited m. seguy and myself to go and pass a day or two at fontenai-sous-bois, where the prince had a house. as i passed vincennes, at the sight of the dungeon, my feelings were acute; the effect of which the baron perceived on my countenance. at supper the prince mentioned the confinement of diderot. the baron, to hear what i had to say, accused the prisoner of imprudence; and i showed not a little of the same in the impetuous manner in which i defended him. there were present two germans in the service of the prince. m. klupffel, a man of great wit, his chaplain, and who afterwards, having supplanted the baron, became his governor. the other was a young man named m. grimm, who served him as a reader until he could obtain some place, and whose indifferent appearance sufficiently proved the pressing necessity he was under of immediately finding one. from this very evening klupffel and i began an acquaintance which soon led to friendship. that with the sieur grimm did not make quite so rapid a progress: he made but few advances, and was far from having that haughty presumption which prosperity afterwards gave him. the next day at dinner, the conversation turned upon music: he spoke well on the subject. i was transported with joy when i learned from him he could play an accompaniment on the harpsichord. after dinner was over music was introduced, and we amused ourselves the rest of the afternoon on the harpsichord of the prince. thus began that friendship which, at first, was so agreeable to me, afterwards so fatal, and of which i shall hereafter have so much to say. * jean baptiste rousseau, the poet. on my return to paris, i learned the agreeable news that diderot was released from the dungeon, and that he had on his parole the castle and park of vincennes for a prison, with permission to see his friends. how painful was it to me not to be able instantly to fly to him! but i was detained two or three days at madam dupin's by indispensable business. after ages of impatience, i flew to the arms of my friend. he was not alone: d'alembert and the treasurer of the sainte chapelle were with him. as i entered i saw nobody but himself, i made but one step, one cry: i riveted my face to his: i pressed him in my arms, without speaking to him, except by tears and sighs: i stifled him with my affection and joy. the first thing he did, after quitting my arms, was to turn himself towards the ecclesiastic, and say: "you see, sir, how much i am beloved by my friends." my emotion was so great, that it was then impossible for me to reflect upon this manner of turning it to advantage; but i have since thought that, had i been in the place of diderot, the idea he manifested would not have been the first that would have occurred to me. i found him much affected by his imprisonment. the dungeon had made a terrible impression upon his mind, and, although he was very agreeably situated in the castle, and at liberty to walk where he pleased in the park, which was not inclosed even by a wall, he wanted the society of his friends to prevent him from yielding to melancholy. as i was the person most concerned for his sufferings, i imagined i should also be the friend, the sight of whom would give him consolation; on which account, notwithstanding very pressing occupations, i went every two days at farthest, either alone, or accompanied by his wife, to pass the afternoon with him. the heat of the summer was this year (1749) excessive. vincennes is two leagues from paris. the state of my finances not permitting me to pay for hackney coaches, at two o'clock in the afternoon, i went on foot, when alone, and walked as fast as possible, that i might arrive the sooner. the trees by the side of the road, always lopped, according to the custom of the country, afforded but little shade, and, exhausted by fatigue, i frequently threw myself on the ground, being unable to proceed any further. i thought a book in my hand might make me moderate my pace. one day i took the mercure de france, and as i walked and read, i came to the following question proposed by the academy of dijon, for the premium of the ensuing year, has the progress of sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or purify morals? the moment i had read this, i seemed to behold another world, and became a different man. although i have a lively remembrance of the impression it made upon me, the detail has escaped my mind, since i communicated it to m. de malesherbes in one of my four letters to him. this is one of the singularities of my memory which merits to be remarked. it serves me in proportion to my dependence upon it; the moment i have committed to paper that with which it was charged, it forsakes me, and i have no sooner written a thing than i have forgotten it entirely. this singularity is the same with respect to music. before i learned the use of notes i knew a great number of songs; the moment i had made a sufficient progress to sing an air set to music, i could not recollect any one of them; and, at present, i much doubt whether i should be able entirely to go through one of those of which i was the most fond. all i distinctly recollect upon this occasion is, that on my arrival at vincennes, i was in an agitation which approached a delirium. diderot perceived it; i told him the cause, and read to him the prosopopoeia of fabricius, written with a pencil under a tree. he encouraged me to pursue my ideas, and to become a competitor for the premium. i did so, and from that moment i was ruined. all the rest of my misfortunes during my life were the inevitable effect of this moment of error. my sentiments became elevated with the most inconceivable rapidity to the level of my ideas. all my little passions were stifled by the enthusiasm of truth, liberty, and virtue; and, what is most astonishing, this effervescence continued in my mind upwards of five years, to as great a degree perhaps as it has ever done in that of any other man. i composed the discourse in a very singular manner, and in that which i have always followed in all my other works. i dedicated to it the hours of the night in which sleep deserted me, i meditated in my bed with my eyes closed, and in my mind turned over and over again my periods with incredible labor and care; the moment they were finished to my satisfaction, i deposited them in my memory, until i had an opportunity of committing them to paper; but the time of rising and putting on my clothes made me lose everything, and when i took up my pen i recollected but little of what i had composed. i made madam le vasseur my secretary; i had lodged her with her daughter, and husband, nearer to myself; and she, to save me the expense of a servant, came every morning to make my fire, and to do such other little things as were necessary. as soon as she arrived i dictated to her while in bed what i had composed in the night, and this method, which for a long time i observed, preserved me many things i should otherwise have forgotten. as soon as the discourse was finished, i showed it to diderot. he was satisfied with the production, and pointed out some corrections he thought necessary to be made. however, this composition, full of force and fire, absolutely wants logic and order; of all the works i ever wrote, this is the weakest in reasoning, and the most devoid of number and harmony. with whatever talent a man may be born, the art of writing is not easily learned. i sent off this piece without mentioning it to anybody, except, i think, to grimm, with whom, after his going to live with the comte de friese, i began to be upon the most intimate footing. his harpsichord served as a rendezvous, and i passed with him at it all the moments i had to spare, in singing italian airs, and barcarolles; sometimes without intermission, from morning till night, or rather from night until morning; and when i was not to be found at madam dupin's, everybody concluded i was with grimm at his apartment, the public walk, or the theater. i left off going to the comedie italienne, of which i was free, to go with him, and pay, to the comedie francaise, of which he was passionately fond. in short, so powerful an attraction connected me with this young man, and i became so inseparable from him, that the poor aunt herself was rather neglected, that is, i saw her less frequently; for in no moment of my life has my attachment to her been diminished. this impossibility of dividing, in favor of my inclinations, the little time i had to myself, renewed more strongly than ever the desire i had long entertained of having but one home for theresa and myself; but the embarrassment of her numerous family, and especially the want of money to purchase furniture, had hitherto withheld me from accomplishing it. an opportunity to endeavor at it presented itself, and of this i took advantage. m. de francueil and madam dupin, clearly perceiving that eight or nine hundred livres a year were unequal to my wants, increased of their own accord, my salary to fifty guineas; and madam dupin, having heard i wished to furnish myself lodgings, assisted me with some articles for that purpose. with this furniture and that theresa already had, we made one common stock, and, having an apartment in the hotel de languedoc, rue de grenelle st.-honore, kept by very honest people, we arranged ourselves in the best manner we could, and lived there peaceably and agreeably during seven years, at the end of which i removed to go and live at the hermitage. theresa's father was a good old man, very mild in his disposition, and much afraid of his wife; for this reason he had given her the surname of criminal-lieutenant, which grimm, jocosely, afterwards transferred to the daughter. madam le vasseur did not want sense, that is address; and pretended to the politeness and airs of the first circles; but she had a mysterious wheedling, which to me was insupportable, gave bad advice to her daughter, endeavored to make her dissemble with me, and separately, cajoled my friends at my expense, and that of each other; excepting these circumstances, she was a tolerably good mother, because she found her account in being so, and concealed the faults of her daughter to turn them to her own advantage. this woman, who had so much of my care and attention, to whom i made so many little presents, and by whom i had it extremely at heart to make myself beloved, was, from the impossibility of my succeeding in this wish, the only cause of the uneasiness i suffered in my little establishment. except the effects of this cause i enjoyed, during these six or seven years, the most perfect domestic happiness of which human weakness is capable. the heart of my theresa was that of an angel; our attachment increased with our intimacy, and we were more and more daily convinced how much we were made for each other. could our pleasures be described, their simplicity would cause laughter. our walks, tete-a-tete, on the outside of the city, where i magnificently spent eight or ten sols in each guinguette.* our little suppers at my window, seated opposite to each other upon two little chairs, placed upon a trunk, which filled up the space of the embrasure. in this situation the window served us as a table, we breathed the fresh air, enjoyed the prospect of the environs and the people who passed; and, although upon the fourth story, looked down into the street as we ate. * ale-house. who can describe, and how few can feel, the charms of these repasts, consisting of a quartern loaf, a few cherries, a morsel of cheese, and half-a-pint of wine which we drank between us? friendship, confidence, intimacy, sweetness of disposition, how delicious are your reasonings! we sometimes remained in this situation until midnight, and never thought of the hour, unless informed of it by the old lady. but let us quit these details, which are either insipid or laughable; i have always said and felt that real enjoyment was not to be described. much about the same time i indulged in one not so delicate, and the last of the kind with which i have to reproach myself. i have observed that the minister klupffel was an amiable man; my connections with him were almost as intimate as those i had with grimm, and in the end became as familiar; grim and he sometimes ate at my apartment. these repasts, a little more than simple, were enlivened by the witty and extravagant wantonness of expression of klupffel, and the diverting germanicisms of grimm, who was not yet become a purist. sensuality did not preside at our little orgies, but joy, which was preferable, reigned in them all, and we enjoyed ourselves so well together that we knew not how to separate. klupffel had furnished a lodging for a little girl, who, notwithstanding this, was at the service of anybody, because he could not support her entirely himself. one evening as we were going into the coffee-house, we met him coming out to go and sup with her. we rallied him; he revenged himself gallantly, by inviting us to the same supper, and there rallying us in our turn. the poor young creature appeared to be of a good disposition, mild and little fitted to the way of life to which an old hag she had with her, prepared her in the best manner she could. wine and conversation enlivened us to such a degree that we forgot ourselves. the amiable klupffel was unwilling to do the honors of his table by halves, and we all three successively took a view of the next chamber, in company with his little friend, who knew not whether she should laugh or cry. grimm has always maintained that he never touched her; it was therefore to amuse himself with our impatience, that he remained so long in the other chamber, and if he abstained, there is not much probability of his having done so from scruple, because previous of his going to live with the comte de friese, he lodged with girls of the town in the same quarter of st. roch. i left the rue des moineaux, where this girl lodged, as much ashamed as saint-preux left the house in which he had become intoxicated, and when i wrote his story i well remembered my own. theresa perceived by some sign, and especially by my confusion, i had something with which i reproached myself; i relieved my mind by my free and immediate confession. i did well, for the next day grimm came in triumph to relate to her my crime with aggravation, and since that time he has never failed maliciously to recall it to her recollection; in this he was the more culpable, since i had freely and voluntarily given him my confidence, and had a right to expect he would not make me repent of it. i never had a more convincing proof than on this occasion, of the goodness of my theresa's heart; she was more shocked at the behavior of grimm than at my infidelity, and i received nothing from her but tender reproaches, in which there was not the least appearance of anger. the simplicity of mind of this excellent girl was equal to her goodness of heart; and this is saying everything: but one instance of it, which is present to my recollection, is worthy of being related. i had told her klupffel was a minister, and chaplain to the prince of saxe-gotha. a minister was to her so singular a man, that oddly confounding the most dissimilar ideas, she took it into her head to take klupffel for the pope. i thought her mad the first time she told me when i came in, that the pope had called to see me. i made her explain herself and lost not a moment in going to relate the story to grimm and klupffel, who amongst ourselves never lost the name of pope. we gave to the girl in the rue des moineaux the name of pope joan. our laughter was incessant; it almost stifled us. they, who in a letter which it hath pleased them to attribute to me, have made me say i never laughed but twice in my life, did not know me at this period, nor in my younger days; for if they had, the idea could never have entered into their heads. the year following (1750), i learned that my discourse, of which i had not thought any more, gained the premium at dijon. this news awakened all the ideas which had dictated it to me, gave them new animation, and completed the fermentation of my heart of that first leaven of heroism and virtue which my father, my country, and plutarch had inspired in my infancy. nothing now appeared great in my eyes but to be free and virtuous, superior to fortune and opinion, and independent of all exterior circumstance. although a false shame, and the fear of disapprobation at first prevented me from conducting myself according to these principles, and from suddenly quarreling with the maxims of the age in which i lived, i from that moment took a decided resolution to do it.* * and of this i purposely delayed the execution, that irritated by contradiction, it might be rendered triumphant. while i was philosophizing upon the duties of man, an event happened which made me better reflect upon my own. theresa became pregnant for the third time. too sincere with myself, too haughty in my mind to contradict my principles by my actions, i began, examine the destination of my children, and my connections with the mother, according to the laws of nature, justice, and reason, and those of that religion, pure, holy, and eternal, like its author, which men have polluted while they pretended to purify it, and which by their formularies they have reduced to a religion of words, since the difficulty of prescribing impossibilities is but trifling to those by whom they are not practiced. if i deceived myself in my conclusions, nothing can be more astonishing than the security with which i depended upon them. were i one of those men unfortunately born deaf to the voice of nature, in whom no sentiment of justice or humanity ever took the least root, this obduracy would be natural. but that warmth of heart, strong sensibility, and facility of forming attachments; the force with which they subdue me; my cruel sufferings when obliged to break them; the innate benevolence i cherish towards my fellow-creatures; the ardent love i bear to great virtues, to truth and justice, the horror in which i hold evil of every kind; the impossibility of hating, of injuring or wishing to injure any one; the soft and lively emotion i feel at the sight of whatever is virtuous, generous and amiable; can these meet in the same mind with the depravity which without scruple treads under foot the most pleasing of all our duties? no, i feel, and openly declare this to be impossible. never in his whole life could j. j. be a man without sentiment or an unnatural father. i may have been deceived, but it is impossible i should have lost the least of my feelings. were i to give my reasons, i should say too much; since they have seduced me, they would seduce many others. i will not therefore expose those young persons by whom i may be read to the same danger. i will satisfy myself by observing that my error was such, that in abandoning my children to public education for want of the means of bringing them up myself; in destining them to become workmen and peasants, rather than adventurers and fortune-hunters, i thought i acted like an honest citizen, and a good father, and considered myself as a member of the republic of plato. since that time the regrets of my heart have more than once told me i was deceived; but my reason was so far from giving me the same intimation, that i have frequently returned thanks to heaven for having by this means preserved them from the fate of their father, and that by which they were threatened the moment i should have been under the necessity of leaving them. had i left them to madam d'epinay, or madam de luxembourg, who, from friendship, generosity, or some other motive, offered to take care of them in due time, would they have been more happy, better brought up, or honester men? to this i cannot answer; but i am certain they would have been taught to hate and perhaps betray their parents: it is much better that they have never known them. my third child was therefore carried to the foundling hospital as well as the two former, and the next two were disposed of in the same manner; for i have had five children in all. this arrangement seemed to me to be so good, reasonable and lawful, that if i did not publicly boast of it, the motive by which i was withheld was merely my regard for their mother: but i mentioned it to all those to whom i had declared our connection, to diderot, to grimm, afterwards to m. d'epinay, and after another interval, to madam de luxembourg; and this freely and voluntarily, without being under the least necessity of doing it, having it in my power to conceal the step from all the world: for la gouin was an honest woman, very discreet, and a person on whom i had the greatest reliance. the only one of my friends to whom it was in some measure my interest to open myself, was thierry the physician, who had the care of my poor aunt in one of her lyings in, in which she was very ill. in a word, there was no mystery in my conduct, not only on account of my never having concealed anything from my friends, but because i never found any harm in it. everything considered, i chose the best destination for my children, or that which i thought to be such. i could have wished, and still should be glad, had i been brought up as they have been. whilst i was thus communicating what i had done, madam le vasseur did the same thing amongst her acquaintance, but with less disinterested views. i introduced her and her daughter to madam dupin, who, from friendship to me, showed them the greatest kindness. the mother confided to her the secret of the daughter. madam dupin, who is generous and kind, and to whom she never told how attentive i was to her, notwithstanding my moderate resources, in providing for everything, provided on her part for what was necessary, with a liberality which, by order of her mother, the daughter concealed from me during my residence at paris, nor ever mentioned it until we were at the hermitage, when she informed me of it, after having disclosed to me several other secrets of her heart. i did not know madam dupin, who never took the least notice to me of the matter, was so well informed: i know not yet whether madam de chenonceaux, her daughter-in-law, was as much in the secret: but madam de francueil knew the whole and could not refrain from prattling. she spoke of it to me the following year, after i had left her house. this induced me to write her a letter upon the subject, which will be found in my collections, and wherein i gave such of my reasons as i could make public, without exposing madam le vasseur and her family; the most determinative of them came from that quarter, and these i kept profoundly secret. i can rely upon the discretion of madam dupin, and the friendship of madam de chenonceaux; i had the same dependence upon that of madam de francueil, who, however, was long dead before my secret made its way into the world. this it could never have done except by means of the persons to whom i intrusted it, nor did it until after my rupture with them. by this single fact they are judged: without exculpating myself from the blame i deserve, i prefer it to that resulting from their malignity. my fault is great, but it was an error. i have neglected my duty, but the desire of doing an injury never entered my heart; and the feelings of a father were never more eloquent in favor of children whom he never saw. but betraying the confidence of friendship, violating the most sacred of all engagements, publishing secrets confided to us, and wantonly dishonoring the friend we have deceived, and who in detaching himself from our society still respects us, are not faults, but baseness of mind, and the last degree of heinousness. i have promised my confession and not my justification; on which account i shall stop here. it is my duty faithfully to relate the truth, that of the reader to be just; more than this i never shall require of him. the marriage of m. de chenonceaux rendered his mother's house still more agreeable to me, by the wit and merit of the new bride, a very amiable young person, who seemed to distinguish me amongst the scribes of m. dupin. she was the only daughter of the viscomtesse de rochechouart, a great friend of the comte de friese, and consequently of grimm's, who was very attentive to her. however, it was i who introduced him to her daughter; but their characters not suiting each other, this connection was not of long duration; and grimm, who from that time aimed at what was solid, preferred the mother, a woman of the world, to the daughter who wished for steady friends, such as were agreeable to her, without troubling her head about the least intrigue, or making any interest amongst the great. madam dupin no longer finding in madam de chenonceaux all the docility she expected, made her house very disagreeable to her, and madam de chenonceaux, having a great opinion of her own merit, and, perhaps, of her birth, chose rather to give up the pleasures of society, and remain almost alone in her apartment, than to submit to a yoke she was not disposed to bear. this species of exile increased my attachment to her, by that natural inclination which excites me to approach the wretched. i found her mind metaphysical. and reflective, although at times a little sophistical; her conversation, which was by no means that of a young woman coming from a convent, had for me the greatest attractions; yet she was not twenty years of age. her complexion was seducingly fair; her figure would have been majestic had she held herself more upright. her hair, which was fair, bordering upon ash color, and uncommonly beautiful, called to my recollection that of my poor mamma in the flower of her age, and strongly agitated my heart. but the severe principles i had just laid down for myself, by which at all events i was determined to be guided, secured me from the danger of her and her charms. during a whole summer i passed three or four hours a day in a tete-a-tete conversation with her, teaching her arithmetic, and fatiguing her with my innumerable ciphers, without uttering a single word of gallantry, or even once glancing my eyes upon her. five or six years later i should not have had so much wisdom or folly; but it was decreed i was never to love but once in my life, and that another person was to have the first and last sighs of my heart. since i had lived in the house of madam dupin, i had always been satisfied with my situation, without showing the least sign of a desire to improve it. the addition which, in conjunction with m. de francueil, she had made to my salary, was entirely of their own accord. this year m. de francueil, whose friendship for me daily increased, had it in his thoughts to place me more at ease, and in a less precarious situation. he was receiver-general of finance. m. dudoyer, his cash-keeper, was old and rich, and wished to retire. m. de francueil offered me this place, and to prepare myself for it, i went, during a few weeks, to m. dudoyer, to take the necessary instructions. but whether my talents were ill-suited to the employment, or that dudoyer, who i thought wished to procure his place for another, was not in earnest in the instructions he gave me, i acquired by slow degrees, and very imperfectly, the knowledge i was in want of, and could never understand the nature of accounts, rendered intricate, perhaps designedly. however, without having possessed myself of the whole scope of the business, i learned enough of the method to pursue it without the least difficulty; i even entered on my new office; i kept the cashbook and the cash; i paid and received money, took and gave receipts; and although this business was so ill suited to my inclinations as to my abilities, maturity of years beginning to render me sedate, i was determined to conquer my disgust, and entirely devote myself to my new employment. unfortunately for me, i had no sooner begun to proceed without difficulty, than m. de francueil took a little journey, during which i remained intrusted with the cash, which, at that time, did not amount to more than twenty-five to thirty thousand francs. the anxiety of mind this sum of money occasioned me, made me perceive i was very unfit to be a cash-keeper, and i have no doubt but my uneasy situation, during his absence, contributed to the illness with which i was seized after his return. i have observed in my first part that i was born in a dying state. a defect in the bladder caused me, during my early years, to suffer an almost continual retention of urine; and my aunt suson, to whose care i was intrusted, had inconceivable difficulty in preserving me. however, she succeeded, and my robust constitution at length got the better of all my weakness, and my health became so well established that except the illness from languor, of which i have given an account, and frequent heats in the bladder which the least heating of the blood rendered troublesome, i arrived at the age of thirty almost without feeling my original infirmity. the first time this happened was upon my arrival at venice. the fatigue of the voyage, and the extreme heat i had suffered, renewed the burnings, and gave me a pain in the loins, which continued until the beginning of winter. after having seen padoana, i thought myself near the end of my career, but i suffered not the least inconvenience. after exhausting my imagination more than my body for my zulietta, i enjoyed better health than ever. it was not until after the imprisonment of diderot that the heat of blood, brought on by my journeys to vincennes during the terrible heat of that summer, gave me a violent nephritic colic, since which i have never recovered my primitive good state of health. at the time of which i speak, having perhaps fatigued myself too much in the filthy work of the cursed receiver-general's office, i fell into a worse state than ever, and remained five or six weeks in my bed in the most melancholy state imaginable. madam dupin sent me the celebrated morand who, notwithstanding his address and the delicacy of his touch, made me suffer the greatest torments. he advised me to have recourse to daran, who managed to introduce his bougies: but morand, when he gave madam dupin an account of the state i was in, declared to her i should not be alive in six months. this afterwards came to my ear, and made me reflect seriously on my situation and the folly of sacrificing the repose of the few days i had to live to the slavery of an employment for which i felt nothing but disgust. besides, how was it possible to reconcile the severe principles i had just adopted to a situation with which they had so little relation? should not i, the cash-keeper of a receiver-general of finances, have preached poverty and disinterestedness with a very ill grace? these ideas fermented so powerfully in my mind with the fever, and were so strongly impressed, that from that time nothing could remove them; and, during my convalescence, i confirmed myself with the greatest coolness in the resolutions i had taken during my delirium. i forever abandoned all projects of fortune and advancement, resolved to pass in independence and poverty the little time i had to exist. i made every effort of which my mind was capable to break the fetters of prejudice, and courageously to do everything that was right without giving myself the least concern about the judgment of others. the obstacles i had to combat, and the efforts i made to triumph over them, are inconceivable. i succeeded as much as it was possible i should, and to a greater degree than i myself had hoped for. had i at the same time shaken off the yoke of friendship as well as that of prejudice, my design would have been accomplished, perhaps the greatest, at least the most useful one to virtue, that mortal ever conceived; but whilst i despised the foolish judgments of the vulgar tribe called great and wise, i suffered myself to be influenced and led by persons who called themselves my friends. these, hurt at seeing me walk alone in a new path, while i seemed to take measures for my happiness, used all their endeavors to render me ridiculous, and that they might afterwards defame me, first strove to make me contemptible. it was less my literary fame than my personal reformation, of which i here state the period, that drew upon me their jealousy; they perhaps might have pardoned me for having distinguished myself in the art of writing; but they could never forgive my setting them, by my conduct, an example, which, in their eyes, seemed to reflect on themselves. i was born for friendship; my mind and easy disposition nourished it without difficulty. as long as i lived unknown to the public i was beloved by all my private acquaintance, and i had not a single enemy. but the moment i acquired literary fame, i had no longer a friend. this was a great misfortune; but a still greater was that of being surrounded by people who called themselves my friends, and used the rights attached to that sacred name to lead me on to destruction. the succeeding part of these memoirs will explain this odious conspiracy. i here speak of its origin, and the manner of the first intrigue will shortly appear. in the independence in which i lived, it was, however, necessary to subsist. to this effect i thought of very simple means: which were copying music at so much a page. if any employment more solid would have fulfilled the same end i would have taken it up; but this occupation being to my taste, and the only one which, without personal attendance, could procure me daily bread, i adopted it. thinking i had no longer need of foresight, and, stifling the vanity of cash-keeper to a financier, i made myself a copyist of music. i thought i had made an advantageous choice, and of this i so little repented, that i never quitted my new profession until i was forced to do it, after taking a fixed resolution to return to it as soon as possible. the success of my first discourse rendered the execution of this resolution more easy. as soon as it had gained the premium, diderot undertook to get it printed. whilst i was in my bed, he wrote me a note informing me of the publication and effect: "it is praised," said he, "beyond the clouds; never was there an instance of a like success." this favor of the public, by no means solicited, and to an unknown author, gave me the first real assurance of my talents, of which, notwithstanding an internal sentiment, i had always had my doubts. i conceived the great advantage to be drawn from it in favor of the way of life i had determined to pursue; and was of opinion, that a copyist of some celebrity in the republic of letters was not likely to want employment. the moment my resolution was confirmed, i wrote a note to m. de francueil, communicating to him my intentions, thanking him and madam dupin for all goodness, and offering them my services in the way of my new profession. francueil did not understand my note, and, thinking i was still in the delirium of fever, hastened to my apartment; but he found me so determined, that all he could say to me was without the least effect. he went to madam dupin, and told her and everybody he met, that i was become insane. i let him say what he pleased, and pursued the plan i had conceived. i began the change in my dress; i quitted laced cloaths and white stockings; i put on a round wig, laid aside my sword, and sold my watch; saying to myself, with inexpressible pleasure: "thank heaven! i shall no longer want to know the hour!" m. de francueil had the goodness to wait a considerable time before he disposed of my place. at length, perceiving me inflexibly resolved, he gave it to m. d'alibard, formerly tutor to the young chenonceaux, and known as a botanist by his flora parisiensis.* * i doubt not but these circumstances are now differently related by m. francueil and his consorts; hut i appeal to what he said of them at the time, and long afterwards, to everybody he knew, until the forming of the conspiracy, and of which, men of common sense and honor, must have preserved a remembrance. however austere my sumptuary reform might be, i did not at first extend it to my linen, which was fine and in great quantity, the remainder of my stock when at venice, and to which i was particularly attached. i had made it so much an object of cleanliness, that it became one of luxury, which was rather expensive. some person, however, did me the favor to deliver me from this servitude. on christmas eve, whilst the women-folk were at vespers, and i was at the spiritual concert, the door of a garret, in which all our linen was hung up after being washed, was broken open. everything was stolen; and amongst other things, forty-two of my shirts, of very fine linen, and which were the principal part of my stock. by the manner in which the neighbors described a man whom they had seen come out of the hotel with several parcels whilst we were all absent, theresa and myself suspected her brother, whom we knew to be a worthless man. the mother strongly endeavored to remove this suspicion, but so many circumstances concurred to prove it to be well founded, that, notwithstanding all she could say, our opinions remained still the same: i dared not make a strict search for fear of finding more than i wished to do. the brother never returned to the place where i lived, and, at length, was no more heard of by any of us. i was much grieved theresa and myself should be connected with such a family, and i exhorted her more than ever to shake off so dangerous a yoke. this adventure cured me of my inclination for fine linen, and since that time all i have had has been very common, and more suitable to the rest of my dress. having thus completed the change of that which related to my person, all my cares tended to render it solid and lasting, by striving to root out from my heart everything susceptible of receiving an impression from the judgment of men, or which, from the fear of blame, might turn me aside from anything good and reasonable in itself. in consequence of the success of my work, my resolution made some noise in the world also, and procured me employment; so that i began my new profession with great appearance of success. however, several causes prevented me from succeeding in it to the same degree i should under any other circumstances have done. in the first place my ill state of health. the attack i had just had, brought on consequences which prevented my ever being so well as i was before; and i am of opinion, the physicians, to whose care i intrusted myself, did me as much harm as my illness. i was successively under the hands of morand, daran, helvetius, malouin, and thierry: men able in their profession, and all of them my friends, who treated me each according to his own manner, without giving me the least relief, and weakened me considerably. the more i submitted to their direction, the yellower, thinner, and weaker i became. my imagination, which they terrified, judging of my situation by the effect of their drugs, presented to me, on this side of the tomb, nothing but continued sufferings from the gravel, stone, and retention of urine. everything which gave relief to others, ptisans, baths, and bleeding, increased my tortures. perceiving the bougies of daran, the only ones that had any favorable effect, and without which i thought i could no longer exist, to give me a momentary relief, i procured a prodigious number of them, that, in case of daran's death, i might never be at a loss. during the eight or ten years in which i made such frequent use of these, they must, with what i had left, cost me fifty louis. it will easily be judged, that such expensive and painful means did not permit me to work without interruption; and that a dying man is not ardently industrious in the business by which he gains his daily bread. literary occupations caused another interruption not less prejudicial to my daily employment. my discourse had no sooner appeared, than the defenders of letters fell upon me as if they had agreed with each to do it. my indignation was so raised at seeing so many blockheads, who did not understand the question, attempt to decide upon it imperiously, that in my answer i gave some of them the worst of it. one m. gautier, of nancy, the first who fell under the lash of my pen, was very roughly treated in a letter to m. grimm. the second was king stanislaus, himself, who did not disdain to enter the lists with me. the honor he did me, obliged me to change my manner in combating his opinions; i made use of a graver style, but not less nervous; and without failing in respect to the author, i completely refuted his work. i knew a jesuit, father de menou, had been concerned in it. i depended on my judgment to distinguish what was written by the prince, from the production of the monk, and falling without mercy upon all the jesuitical phrases, i remarked, as i went along, an anachronism which i thought could come from nobody but the priest. this composition, which, for what reason i knew not, has been less spoken of than any of my other writings, is the only one of its kind. i seized the opportunity which offered of showing to the public in what manner an individual may defend the cause of truth even against a sovereign. it is difficult to adopt a more dignified and respectful manner than that in which i answered him. i had the happiness to have to do with an adversary to whom, without adulation, i could show every mark of the esteem of which my heart was full; and this i did with success and a proper dignity. my friends, concerned for my safety, imagined they already saw me in the bastile. this apprehension never once entered my head, and i was right in not being afraid. the good prince, after reading my answer, said: "i have enough of it; i will not return to the charge." i have, since that time, received from him different marks of esteem and benevolence, some of which i shall have occasion to speak of; and what i had written was read in france, and throughout europe, without meeting the least censure. in a little time i had another adversary whom i had not expected; this was the same m. bordes, of lyons, who ten years before had shown me much friendship, and from whom i had received several services. i had not forgotten him, but had neglected him from idleness, and had not sent him my writings for want of an opportunity, without seeking for it, to get them conveyed to his hands. i was therefore in the wrong, and he attacked me; this, however, he did politely, and i answered in the same manner. he replied more decidedly. this produced my last answer; after which i heard no more from him upon the subject; but he became my most violent enemy, took the advantage of the time of my misfortunes, to publish against me the most indecent libels, and made a journey to london on purpose to do me an injury. all this controversy employed me a good deal, and caused me a great loss of my time in my copying, without much contributing to the progress of truth, or the good of my purse. pissot, at that time my bookseller, gave me but little for my pamphlets, frequently nothing at all, and i never received a farthing for my first discourse. diderot gave it him. i was obliged to wait a long time for the little he gave me, and to take it from him in the most trifling sums. notwithstanding this, my copying went on but slowly. i had two things together upon my hands, which was the most likely means of doing them both ill. they were very opposite to each other in their effects by the different manners of living to which they rendered me subject. the success of my first writings had given me celebrity. my new situation excited curiosity. everybody wished to know that whimsical, man who sought not the acquaintance of any one, and whose only desire was to live free and happy in the manner he had chosen; this was sufficient to make the thing impossible to me. my apartment was continually full of people, who, under different pretenses, came to take up my time. the women employed a thousand artifices to engage me to dinner. the more unpolite i was with people, the more obstinate they became. i could not refuse everybody. while i made myself a thousand enemies by my refusals, i was incessantly a slave to my complaisance, and, in whatever manner i made my engagements, i had not an hour in a day to myself. i then perceived it was not so easy to be poor and independent, as i had imagined. i wished to live by my profession: the public would not suffer me to do it. a thousand means were thought of to indemnify me for the time i lost. the next thing would have been showing myself like punch, at so much each person. i knew no dependence more cruel and degrading than this. i saw no other method of putting an end to it than refusing all kinds of presents, great and small, let them come from whom they would. this had no other effect than to increase the number of givers, who wished to have the honor of overcoming my resistance, and to force me, in spite of myself, to be under an obligation to them. many who would not have given me half-a-crown had i asked it for them, incessantly importuned me with their offers, and, in revenge for my refusal, taxed me with arrogance and ostentation. it will naturally be conceived that the resolution i had taken, and the system i wished to follow, were not agreeable to madam le vasseur. all the disinterestedness of the daughter did not prevent her from following the directions of her mother; and the governesses, as gauffecourt called them, were not always so steady in their refusals as i was. although many things were concealed from me, i perceived so many as were necessary to enable me to judge that i did not see all, and this tormented me less by the accusation of connivance, which it was so easy for me to foresee, than by the cruel idea of never being master in my own apartments, nor even of my own person. i prayed, conjured, and became angry, all to no purpose; the mother made me pass for an eternal grumbler, and a man who was peevish and ungovernable. she held perpetual whisperings with my friends; everything in my little family was mysterious and a secret to me; and, that i might not incessantly expose myself to noisy quarreling, i no longer dared to take notice of what passed in it. a firmness of which i was not capable, would have been necessary to withdraw me from this domestic strife. i knew how to complain, but not how to act: they suffered me to say what i pleased, and continued to act as they thought proper. this constant teasing, and the daily importunities to which i was subject, rendered the house, and my residence at paris, disagreeable to me. when my indisposition permitted me to go out, and i did not suffer myself to be led by my acquaintance first to one place and then to another, i took a walk, alone, and reflected on my grand system, something of which i committed to paper, bound up between two covers, which, with a pencil, i always had in my pocket. in this manner, the unforeseen disagreeableness of a situation i had chosen entirely led me back to literature, to which unsuspectedly i had recourse as a means of relieving my mind, and thus, in the first works i wrote, i introduced the peevishness and ill-humor which were the cause of my undertaking them. there was another circumstance which contributed not a little to this: thrown into the world in despite of myself, without having the manners of it, or being in a situation to adopt and conform myself to them, i took it into my head to adopt others of my own, to enable me to dispense with those of society. my foolish timidity, which i could not conquer, having for principle the fear of being wanting in the common forms, i took, by way of encouraging myself, a resolution to tread them under foot. i became sour and a cynic from shame, and affected to despise the politeness which i knew not how to practice. this austerity, conformable to my new principles, i must confess, seemed to ennoble itself in my mind; it assumed in my eyes the form of the intrepidity of virtue, and i dare assert it to be upon this noble basis, that it supported itself longer and better than could have been expected from anything so contrary to my nature. yet, notwithstanding, i had, the name of a misanthrope, which my exterior appearance and some happy expressions had given me in the world: it is certain i did not support the character well in private, that my friends and acquaintance led this untractable bear about like a lamb, and that, confining my sarcasms to severe but general truths, i was never capable of saying an uncivil thing to any person whatsoever. the devin du village brought me completely into vogue, and presently after there was not a man in paris whose company was more sought after than mine. the history of this piece, which is a kind of era in my life, is joined with that of the connections i had at that time. i must enter a little into particulars to make what is to follow the better understood. i had a numerous acquaintance, yet no more than two friends: diderot and grimm. by an effect of the desire i have ever felt to unite everything that is dear to me, i was too much a friend to both not to make them shortly become so to each other. i connected them: they agreed well together, and shortly became more intimate with each other than with me. diderot had a numerous acquaintance, but grimm, a stranger and a new-comer, had his to procure, and with the greatest pleasure i procured him all i could. i had already given him diderot. i afterwards brought him acquainted with gauffecourt. i introduced him to madam chenonceaux, madam d'epinay, and the baron d'holbach; with whom i had become connected almost in spite of myself. all my friends became his: this was natural: but not one of his ever became mine; which was inclining to the contrary. whilst he yet lodged at the house of the comte de friese, he frequently gave us dinners in his apartment, but i never received the least mark of friendship from the comte de friese, comte de schomberg, his relation, very familiar with grimm, nor from any other person, man or woman, with whom grimm, by their means, had any connection. i except the abbe raynal, who, although his friend, gave proofs of his being mine; and, in cases of need, offered me his purse with a generosity not very common. but i knew the abbe raynal long before grimm had any acquaintance with him, and had entertained a great regard for him on account of his delicate and honorable behavior to me upon a slight occasion, which i shall never forget. the abbe raynal is certainly a warm friend; of this i saw a proof, much about the time of which i speak, with respect to grimm himself, with whom he was very intimate. grimm, after having been some time on a footing of friendship with mademoiselle fel, fell violently in love with her, and wished to supplant cahusac. the young lady, piquing herself on her constancy, refused her new admirer. he took this so much to heart, that the appearances of his affliction became tragical. he suddenly fell into the strangest state imaginable. he passed days and nights in a continued lethargy. he lay with his eyes open; and although his pulse continued to beat regularly, without speaking, eating, or stirring, yet sometimes seeming to hear what was said to him, but never answering, not even by a sign, and remaining almost as immovable as if he had been dead, yet without agitation, pain, or fever. the abbe raynal and myself watched over him; the abbe, more robust, and in better health than i was, by night, and i by day, without ever both being absent at one time. the comte de friese was alarmed, and brought to him senac, who, after having examined the state in which he was, said there was nothing to apprehend, and took his leave without giving a prescription. my fears for my friend made me carefully observe the countenance of the physician, and i perceived him smile as he went away. however, the patient remained several days almost motionless, without taking anything except a few preserved cherries, which from time to time i put upon his tongue, and which he swallowed without difficulty. at length he, one morning, rose, dressed himself, and returned to his usual way of life, without either at that time or afterwards speaking to me or the abbe raynal, at least that i know of, or to any other person, of this singular lethargy, or the care we had taken of him during the time it lasted. the affair made a noise, and it would really have been a wonderful circumstance had the cruelty of an opera girl made a man die of despair. this strong passion brought grimm into vogue; he was soon considered as a prodigy in love, friendship, and attachments of every kind. such an opinion made his company sought after, and procured him a good reception in the first circles; by which means he separated from me, with whom he was never inclined to associate when he could do it with anybody else. i perceived him to be on the point of breaking with me entirely; for the lively and ardent sentiments, of which he made a parade, were those which, with less noise and pretension, i had really conceived for him. i was glad he succeeded in the world; but i did not wish him to do this by forgetting his friend. i one day said to him: "grimm, you neglect me, and i forgive you for it. when the first intoxication of your success is over, and you begin to perceive a void in your enjoyments, i hope you will return to your friend, whom you will always find in the same sentiments: at present do not constrain yourself, i leave you at liberty to act as you please, and wait your leisure." he said i was right, made his arrangements in consequence, and shook off all restraint, so that i saw no more of him except in company with our common friends. our chief rendezvous, before he was connected with madam d'epinay as he afterwards became, was at the house of baron d'holbach. this said baron was the son of a man who had raised himself from obscurity. his fortune was considerable, and he used it nobly, receiving at his house men of letters and merit: and, by the knowledge he himself had acquired, was very worthy of holding a place amongst them. having been long attached to diderot, he endeavored to become acquainted with me by his means, even before my name was known to the world. a natural repugnancy prevented me a long time from answering his advances. one day, when he asked me the reason of my unwillingness, i told him he was too rich. he was, however, resolved to carry his point, and at length succeeded. my greatest misfortune proceeded from my being unable to resist the force of marked attention. i have ever had reason to repent of having yielded to it. another acquaintance which, as soon as i had any pretensions to it, was converted into friendship, was that of m. duclos. i had several years before seen him, for the first time, at the chevrette, at the house of madam d'epinay, with whom he was upon very good terms. on that day we only dined together, and he returned to town in the afternoon. but we had a conversation of a few moments after dinner. madam d'epinay had mentioned me to him, and my opera of the muses gallantes. duclos, endowed with too great talents not to be a friend to those in whom the like were found, was prepossessed in my favor, and invited me to go and see him. notwithstanding my former wish, increased by an acquaintance, i was withheld by my timidity and indolence, as long as i had no other passport to him than his complaisance. but encouraged by my first success, and by his eulogiums, which reached my ears, i went to see him; he returned my visit, and thus began the connection, between us, which will ever render him dear to me. by him, as well as from the testimony of my own heart, i learned that uprightness and probity may sometimes be connected with the cultivation of letters. many other connections less solid, and which i shall not here particularize, were the effects of my first success, and lasted until curiosity was satisfied. i was a man so easily known, that on the next day nothing new was to be discovered in me. however, a woman, who at that time was desirous of my acquaintance, became much more solidly attached to me than any of those whose curiosity i had excited: this was the marchioness of crequi, niece to m. le bailli de froulay, ambassador from malta, whose brother had preceded m. de montaigu in the embassay to venice, and whom i had gone to see on my return from that city. madam de crequi wrote to me: i visited her: she received me into her friendship. i sometimes dined with her. i met at her table several men of letters, amongst others m. saurin, the author of spartacus, barnevelt, etc., since become my implacable enemy; for no other reason, at least that i can imagine, than my bearing the name of a man whom his father has cruelly persecuted. it will appear that for a copyist, who ought to be employed in his business from morning till night, i had many interruptions, which rendered my days not very lucrative and prevented me from being sufficiently attentive to what i did to do it well; for which reason, half the time i had to myself was lost in erasing errors or beginning my sheet anew. this daily importunity rendered paris more unsupportable, and made me ardently wish to be in the country. i several times went to pass a few days at marcoussis, the vicar of which was known to madam le vasseur, and with whom we all arranged ourselves in such a manner as not to make things disagreeable to him. grimm once went thither with us.* the vicar had a tolerable voice, sung well, and, although he did not read music, learned his part with great facility and precision. we passed our time in singing the trios i had composed at chenonceaux. to these i added two or three new ones, to the words grimm and the vicar wrote, well or ill. i cannot refrain from regretting these trios composed and sung in moments of pure joy, and which i left at wootton, with all my music. mademoiselle davenport has perhaps curled her hair with them; but they are worthy of being preserved, and are, for the most part, of very good counterpoint. it was after one of these little excursions in which i had the pleasure of seeing the aunt at her ease and very cheerful, and in which my spirits were much enlivened, that i wrote to the vicar very rapidly and very ill, an epistle in verse which will be found amongst my papers. * since i have neglected to relate here a trifling, hut memorable adventure i had with the said grimm one day, on which we were to dine at the fountain of st. vandrille, i will let it pass: hut when i thought of it afterwards, i concluded that he was brooding in his heart the conspiracy he has, with so much success, since carried into execution. i had nearer to paris another station much to my liking with m. mussard, my countryman, relation, and friend, who at passy had made himself a charming retreat, where i have passed some very peaceful moments. m. mussard was a jeweler, a man of good sense, who, after having acquired a genteel fortune, had given his only daughter in marriage to m. de valmalette, the son of an exchange broker, and maitre d'hotel to the king, took the wise resolution to quit business in his declining years, and to place an interval, of repose and enjoyment between the hurry and the end of life. the good man mussard, a real philosopher in practice, lived without care, in a very pleasant house which he himself had built in a very pretty garden, laid out with his own hands. in digging the terraces of this garden he found fossil shells, and in such great quantities that his lively imagination saw nothing but shells in nature. he really thought the universe was composed of shells and the remains of shells and that the whole earth was only the sand of these in different stratae. his attention thus constantly engaged with his singular discoveries, his imagination became so heated with the ideas they gave him, that, in his head, they would soon have been converted into a system, that is into folly, if, happily for his reason, but unfortunately for his friends, to whom he was dear, and to whom his house was an agreeable asylum, a most cruel and extraordinary disease had not put an end to his existence. a constantly increasing tumor in his stomach prevented him from eating, long before the cause of it was discovered, and, after several years of suffering, absolutely occasioned him to die of hunger. i can never, without the greatest affliction of mind, call to my recollection the last moments of this worthy man, who still received with so much pleasure, leneips and myself, the only friends whom the sight of his sufferings did not separate from him until his last hour, when he was reduced to devouring with his eyes the repasts he had placed before us, scarcely having the power of swallowing a few drops of weak tea, which came up again a moment afterwards. but before these days of sorrow, how many have i passed at his house, with the chosen friends he had made himself! at the head of the list i place the abbe prevot, a very amiable man, and very sincere, whose heart vivified his writings, worthy of immortality, and who, neither in his disposition nor in society, had the least of the melancholy coloring he gave to his works: procope, the physician, a little aesop, a favorite with the ladies; boulanger, the celebrated posthumous author of despotisme oriental, and who, i am of opinion, extended the systems of mussard on the duration of the world. the female part of his friends consisted of madam denis, niece to voltaire, who, at that time, was nothing more than a good kind of woman, and pretended not to wit: madam vanloo, certainly not handsome, but charming, and who sang like an angel: madam de valmalette, herself, who sang also, and who, although very thin, would have been very amiable had she had fewer pretensions. such, or very nearly such, was the society of m. mussard, with which i should have been much pleased, had not his conchyliomania more engaged my attention; and i can say, with great truth, that, for upwards of six months, i worked with him in his cabinet with as much pleasure as he felt himself. he had long insisted upon the virtue of the waters of passy, that they were proper in my case, and recommended me to come to his house to drink them. to withdraw myself from the tumult of the city, i at length consented, and went to pass eight or ten days at passy, which, on account of my being in the country, were of more service to me than the waters i drank during my stay there. mussard played the violoncello, and was passionately fond of italian music. this was the subject of a long conversation we had one evening after supper, particularly the opere-buffe we had both seen in italy, and with which we were highly delighted. my sleep having forsaken me in the night, i considered in what manner it would be possible to give in france an idea of this kind of drama. the amours de ragonde did not in the least resemble it. in the morning, whilst i took my walk and drank the waters, i hastily threw together a few couplets to which i adapted such airs as occurred to me at the moments. i scribbled over what i had composed, in a kind of vaulted saloon at the end of the garden, and at tea. i could not refrain from showing the airs to mussard and to mademoiselle du vernois, his gouvernante, who was a very good and amiable girl. three pieces of composition i had sketched out were the first monologue: j'ai perdu mon serviteur; the air of the devin; l'amour croit s'il s'inquiete; and the last duo: a jamais, colin, je t'engage, etc. i was so far from thinking it worth while to continue what i had begun, that, had it not been for the applause and encouragement i received from both mussard and mademoiselle, i should have thrown my papers into the fire and thought no more of their contents, as i had frequently done by things of much the same merit; but i was so animated by the encomiums i received, that in six days, my drama, excepting a few couplets, was written. the music also was so far sketched out, that all i had further to do to it, after my return from paris, was to compose a little of the recitative, and to add the middle parts, the whole of which i finished with so much rapidity, that in three weeks my work was ready for representation. the only thing now wanting, was the divertissement, which was not composed until a long time afterwards. my imagination was so warmed by the composition of this work that i had the strongest desire to hear it performed, and would have given anything to have seen and heard the whole in the manner i should have chosen, which would have been that of lully, who is said to have had armide performed for himself only. as it was not possible i should hear the performance unaccompanied by the public, i could not see the effect of my piece without getting it received at the opera. unfortunately it was quite a new species of composition, to which the ears of the public were not accustomed; and besides the ill success of the muses gallantes gave too much reason to fear for the devin, if i presented it in my own name. duclos relieved me from this difficulty, and engaged to get the piece rehearsed without mentioning the author. that i might not discover myself, i did not go to the rehearsal, and the petits violons,* by whom it was directed, knew not who the author was until after a general plaudit had borne the testimony of the work. everybody present was so delighted with it, that, on the next day, nothing else was spoken of in the different companies. m. de cury, intendant des menus, who was present at the rehearsal, demanded the piece to have it performed at court. duclos, who knew my intentions, and thought i should be less master of my work at the court than at paris, refused to give it. cury claimed it authoritatively. duclos persisted in his refusal, and the dispute between them was carried to such a length, that one day they would have left the opera-house together to fight a duel, had they not been separated. m. de cury applied to me, and i referred him to duclos. this made it necessary to return to the latter. the duke d'aumont interfered; and at length duclos thought proper to yield to authority, and the piece was given to be played at fontainebleau. * rebel and francoeur, who, when they were very young, went together from house to house playing on the violin, were so called. the part to which i had been most attentive, and in which i had kept at the greatest distance from the common track, was the recitative. mine was accented in a manner entirely new, and accompanied the utterance of the word. the directors dared not suffer this horrid innovation to pass, lest it should shock the ears of persons who never judge for themselves. another recitative was proposed by francueil and jelyotte, to which i consented; but refused at the same time to have anything to do with it myself. when everything was ready and the day of performance fixed, a proposition was made me to go to fontainebleau, that i might at least be at the last rehearsal. i went with mademoiselle fel, grimm, and i think the abbe raynal, in one of the stages to the court. the rehearsal was tolerable: i was more satisfied with it than i expected to have been. the orchestra was numerous, composed of the orchestras of the opera and the king's band. jelyotte played colin, mademoiselle fel, colette, cuvillier the devin: the choruses were those of the opera. i said but little; jelyotte had prepared everything; i was unwilling either to approve of or censure what he had done; and notwithstanding i had assumed the air of an old roman, i was, in the midst of so many people, as bashful as a schoolboy. the next morning, the day of performance, i went to breakfast at the coffee-house du grand commun, where i found a great number of people. the rehearsal of the preceding evening, and the difficulty of getting into the theater, were the subjects of conversation. an officer present said he entered with the greatest ease, gave a long account of what had passed, described the author, and related what he had said and done; but what astonished me most in this long narrative given with as much assurance as simplicity, was that it did not contain a syllable of truth. it was clear to me that he who spoke so positively of the rehearsal had not been at it, because, without knowing him, he had before his eyes that author whom he said he had seen and examined so minutely. however, what was more singular still in this scene, was its effect upon me. the officer was a man rather in years; he had nothing of the appearance of a coxcomb; his features appeared to announce a man of merit; and his cross of saint louis an officer of long standing. he interested me, notwithstanding his impudence. whilst he uttered his lies, i blushed, looked down, and was upon thorns; i, for some time, endeavored within myself to find the means of believing him to be in an involuntary error. at length, trembling lest some person should know me, and by this means confound him, i hastily drank my chocolate, without saying a word, and, holding down my head, i passed before him, got out of the coffee-house as soon as possible, whilst the company were making their remarks upon the relation that had been given. i was no sooner in the street than i was in a perspiration, and had anybody known and named me before i left the room, i am certain all the shame and embarrassment of a guilty person would have appeared in my countenance, proceeding from what i felt the poor man would have had to have suffered had his lie been discovered. i come to one of the critical moments of my life, in which it is difficult to do anything more than to relate, because it is almost impossible that even narrative should not carry with it the marks of censure or apology. i will, however, endeavor to relate how and upon what motives i acted, without adding either approbation or censure. i was on that day in the same careless undress as usual; with a long beard and wig badly combed. considering this want of decency as an act of courage, i entered the theater wherein the king, queen, the royal family, and the whole court were to enter immediately after. i was conducted to a box by m. de cury, and which belonged to him. it was very spacious, upon the stage and opposite to a lesser, but more elevated one, in which the king sat with madam de pompadour. as i was surrounded by women, and the only man in front of the box, i had no doubt of my having been placed there purposely to be exposed to view. as soon as the theater was lighted up, finding i was in the midst of people all extremely well dressed, i began to be less at my ease, and asked myself if i was in my place? whether or not i was properly dressed? after a few minutes of inquietude: "yes," replied i, with an intrepidity which perhaps proceeded more from the impossibility of retracting than the force of all my reasoning, "i am in my place, because i am going to see my own piece performed to which i have been invited, for which reason only i am come here; and after all, no person has a greater right than i have to reap the fruit of my labor and talents; i am dressed as usual, neither better nor worse; and if i once begin to subject myself to public opinion, i shall shortly become a slave to it in everything. to be always consistent with myself, i ought not to blush, in any place whatever, at being dressed in a manner suitable to the state i have chosen. my exterior appearance is simple, but neither dirty nor slovenly; nor is a beard either of these in itself, because it is given us by nature, and according to time, place and custom, is sometimes an ornament. people think i am ridiculous, nay, even absurd; but what signifies this to me? i ought to know how to bear censure and ridicule, provided i do not deserve them." after this little soliloquy i became so firm that, had it been necessary, i could have been intrepid. but whether it was the effect of the presence of his majesty, or the natural disposition of those about me, i perceived nothing but what was civil and obliging in the curiosity of which i was the object. this so much affected me that i began to be uneasy for myself, and the fate of my piece; fearing i should efface the favorable prejudices which seemed to lead to nothing but applause. i was armed against raillery; but, so far overcome by the flattering and obliging treatment i had not expected, that i trembled like a child when the performance was begun. i had soon sufficient reason to be encouraged. the piece was very ill played with respect to the actors, but the musical part was well sung and executed. during the first scene, which was really of a delightful simplicity, i heard in the boxes a murmur of surprise and applause, which, relative to pieces of the same kind, had never yet happened. the fermentation was soon increased to such a degree as to be perceptible through the whole audience, and of which, to speak after the manner of montesquieu, the effect was augmented by itself. in the scene between the two good little folks, this effect was complete. there is no clapping of hands before the king; therefore everything was heard, which was advantageous to the author and the piece. i heard about me a whispering of women, who appeared as beautiful as angels. they said to each other in a low voice: "this is charming: that is ravishing: there is not a sound which does not go to the heart." the pleasure of giving this emotion to so many amiable persons moved me to tears; and these i could not contain in the first duo, when i remarked that i was not the only person who wept. i collected myself for a moment, on recollecting the concert of m. de treytorens. this reminiscence had the effect of the slave who held the crown over the head of the general, who triumphed, but my reflection was short, and i soon abandoned myself without interruption to the pleasure of enjoying my success. however, i am certain the voluptuousness of the sex was more predominant than the vanity of the author, and had none but men been present, i certainly should not have had the incessant desire i felt of catching on my lips the delicious tears i had caused to flow. i have known pieces excite more lively admiration, but i never saw so complete, delightful, and affecting an intoxication of the senses reign, during a whole representation, especially at court, and at a first performance. they who saw this must recollect it, for it has never yet been equaled. the same evening the duke d'aumont sent to desire me to be at the palace the next day at eleven o'clock, when he would present me to the king. m. de cury, who delivered me the message, added that he thought a pension was intended, and that his majesty wished to announce it to me himself. will it be believed that the night of so brilliant a day was for me a night of anguish and perplexity? my first idea, after that of being presented, was that of my frequently wanting to retire; this had made me suffer very considerably at the theater, and might torment me the next day when i should be in the gallery, or in the king's apartment, amongst all the great, waiting for the passing of his majesty. my infirmity was the principal cause which prevented me from mixing in polite companies, and enjoying the conversation of the fair. the idea alone of the situation in which this want might place me, was sufficient to produce it to such a degree as to make me faint away, or to recur to means to which, in my opinion, death was much preferable. none but persons who are acquainted with this situation can judge of the horror which being exposed to the risk of it inspires. i then supposed myself before the king, presented to his majesty, who deigned to stop and speak to me. in this situation, justness of expression and presence of mind were peculiarly necessary in answering. would my timidity, which disconcerts me in presence of any stranger whatever, have been shaken off in presence of the king of france; or would it have suffered me instantly to make choice of proper expressions? i wished, without laying aside the austere manner i had adopted, to show myself sensible of the honor done me by so great a monarch, and in a handsome and merited eulogium to convey some great and useful truth. i could not prepare a suitable answer without exactly knowing what his majesty was to say to me; and had this been the case, i was certain that, in his presence, i should not recollect a word of what i had previously meditated. "what," said i, "will become of me in this moment, and before the whole court, if in my confusion, any of my stupid expressions should escape me?" this danger alarmed and terrified me. i trembled to such a degree that at all events i was determined not to expose myself to it. i lost, it is true, the pension which in some measure was offered me; but i at the same time exempted myself from the yoke it would have imposed. adieu, truth, liberty, and courage! how should i afterwards have dared to speak of disinterestedness and independence? had i received the pension i must either have become a flatterer or remained silent; and moreover, who would have insured to me the payment of it! what steps should i have been under the necessity of taking! how many people must i have solicited! i should have had more trouble and anxious cares in preserving than in doing without it. therefore, i thought i acted according to my principles by refusing, and sacrificing appearances to reality. i communicated my resolution to grimm, who said nothing against it. to others i alleged my ill state of health, and left the court in the morning. my departure made some noise, and was generally condemned. my reasons could not be known to everybody, it was therefore easy to accuse me of foolish pride, and thus not irritate the jealousy of such as felt they would not have acted as i had done. the next day jelyotte wrote me a note, in which he stated the success of my piece, and the pleasure it had afforded the king. "all day long," said he, "his majesty sings, with the worst voice in his kingdom: j'ai perdu mon serviteur: j'ai perdu tout mon bonheur." he likewise added, that in a fortnight the devin was to be performed a second time; which confirmed in the eyes of the public the complete success of the first. two days afterwards, about nine o'clock in the evening, as i was going to sup with madam d'epinay, i perceived a hackney-coach pass by the door. somebody within made a sign to me to approach. i did so, and got into it, and found the person to be diderot. he spoke of the pension with more warmth than, upon such a subject, i should have expected from a philosopher. he did not blame me for having been unwilling to be presented to the king, but severely reproached me with my indifference about the pension. he observed that although on my own account i might be disinterested, i ought not to be so on that of madam vasseur and her daughter; that it was my duty to seize every means of providing for their subsistence; and that as, after all, it could not be said i had refused the pension, he maintained i ought, since the king seemed disposed to grant it to me, to solicit and obtain it by one means or another. although i was obliged to him for his good wishes, i could not relish his maxims, which produced a warm dispute, the first i ever had with him. all our disputes were of this kind, he prescribing to me what he pretended i ought do, and i defending myself because i was of a different opinion. it was late when we parted. i would have taken him to supper at madam d'epinay's, but he refused to go; and, notwithstanding all the efforts which at different times the desire of uniting those i love induced me to make, to prevail upon him to see her, even that of conducting her to his door which he kept shut against us, he constantly refused to do it, and never spoke of her but with the utmost contempt. it was not until after i had quarreled with both that they became acquainted and that he began to speak honorably of her. from this time diderot and grimm seemed to have undertaken to alienate from me the governesses, by giving them to understand that if they were not in easy circumstances the fault was my own, and that they never would be so with me. they endeavored to prevail on them to leave me, promising them the privilege for retailing salt, a snuff shop, and i know not what other advantages by means of the influence of madam d'epinay. they likewise wished to gain over duclos and d'holbach, but the former constantly refused their proposals. i had at the time some intimation of what was going forward, but i was not fully acquainted with the whole until long afterwards; and i frequently had reason to lament the effects of the blind and indiscreet zeal of my friends, who, in my ill state of health, striving to reduce me to the most melancholy solitude, endeavored, as they imagined, to render me happy by the means which, of all others, were the most proper to make me miserable. in the carnival following the conclusion of the year 1753, the devin was performed at paris, and in this interval i had sufficient time to compose the overture and divertissement. this divertissement, such as it stands engraved, was to be in action from the beginning to the end, and in a continued subject, which in my opinion, afforded very agreeable representations. but when i proposed this idea at the opera-house, nobody would so much as hearken to me, and i was obliged to tack together music and dances in the usual manner: on this account the divertissement, although full of charming ideas which do not diminish the beauty of scenes, succeeded but very middlingly. i suppressed the recitative of jelyotte, and substituted my own, such as i had first composed it, and as it is now engraved; and this recitative a little after the french manner, i confess, drawled out, instead of pronounced by the actors, far from shocking the ears of any person, equally succeeded with the airs, and seemed in the judgment of the public to possess as much musical merit. i dedicated my piece to duclos, who had given it his protection, and declared it should be my only dedication. i have, however, with his consent, written a second; but he must have thought himself more honored by the exception, than if i had not written a dedication to any person. i could relate many anecdotes concerning this piece, but things of greater importance prevent me from entering into a detail of them at present. i shall perhaps resume the subject in a supplement. there is however one which i cannot omit, as it relates to the greater part of what is to follow. i one day examined the music of d'holbach, in his closet. after having looked over many different kinds, he said, showing me a collection of pieces for the harpsichord: "these were composed for me; they are full of taste and harmony, and unknown to everybody but myself. you ought to make a selection from them for your divertissement." having in my head more subjects of airs and symphonies than i could make use of, i was not the least anxious to have any of his. however, he pressed me so much, that, from a motive of complaisance, i chose a pastoral, which i abridged and converted into a trio, for the entry of the companions of colette. some months afterwards, and whilst the devin still continued to be performed, going into grimm's i found several people about his harpsichord, whence he hastily rose on my arrival. as i accidentally looked towards his music stand, i there saw the same collection of the baron d'holbach, opened precisely at the piece he had prevailed upon me to take, assuring me at the same time that it should never go out of his hands. some time afterwards, i again saw the collection open on the harpsichord of m. d'epinay, one day when he gave a little concert. neither grimm, nor anybody else, ever spoke to me of the air, and my reason for mentioning it here is that some time afterwards, a rumor was spread that i was not the author of devin. as i never made a great progress in the practical part, i am persuaded that had it not been for my dictionary of music, it would in the end have been said i did not understand composition.* * i little suspected this would be said of me, notwithstanding my dictionary. sometime before the devin du village was performed, a company of italian bouffons had arrived at paris, and were ordered to perform at the opera-house, without the effect they would produce there being foreseen. although they were detestable, and the orchestra, at that time very ignorant, mutilated at will the pieces they gave, they did the french opera an injury that will never be repaired. the comparison of these two kinds of music, heard the same evening in the same theater, opened the ears of the french; nobody could endure their languid music after the marked and lively accents of italian composition; and the moment the bouffons had done, everybody went away. the managers were obliged to change the order of representation, and let the performance of the bouffons be the last. egle, pigmalion and le sylphe were successively given: nothing could bear the comparison. the devin du village was the only piece that did it, and this was still relished after la serva padrona. when i composed my interlude, my head was filled with these pieces, and they gave me the first idea of it: i was, however, far from imagining they would one day be passed in review by the side of my composition. had i been a plagiarist, how many pilferings would have been manifest, and what care would have been taken to point them out to the public! but i had done nothing of the kind. all attempts to discover any such thing were fruitless: nothing was found in my music which led to the recollection of that of any other person; and my whole composition compared with the pretended original, was found to be as new as the musical characters i had invented. had mondonville or rameau undergone the same ordeal, they would have lost much of their substance. the bouffons acquired for italian music very warm partisans. all paris was divided into two parties, the violence of which was greater than if an affair of state or religion had been in question. one them, the most powerful and numerous, composed of the great, of men of fortune, and the ladies, supported french music; the other, more lively and haughty, and fuller of enthusiasm, was composed of real connoisseurs, and men of talents and genius. this little group assembled at the opera-house, under the box belonging to the queen. the other party filled up the rest of the pit and the theater; but the heads were mostly assembled under the box of his majesty. hence the party names of coin du roi, coin de la reine,* then in great celebrity. the dispute, as it became more animated, produced several pamphlets. the king's corner aimed at pleasantry; it was laughed at by the petit prophete. it attempted to reason; the lettre sur la musique francaise refuted its reasoning. these two little productions, the former of which was by grimm, the latter by myself, are the only ones which have outlived the quarrel; all the rest are long since forgotten. * king's corner,queen's corner. but the petit prophete, which, notwithstanding all i could say, was for a long time attributed to me, was considered as a pleasantry, and did not produce the least inconvenience to the author: whereas the letter on music was taken seriously, and incensed against me the whole nation, which thought itself offended by this attack on its music. the description of the incredible effect of this pamphlet would be worthy of the pen of tacitus. the great quarrel between the parliament and the clergy was then at its height. the parliament had just been exiled; the fermentation was general; everything announced an approaching insurrection. the pamphlet appeared: from that moment every other quarrel was forgotten; the perilous state of french music was the only thing by which the attention of the public was engaged, and the only insurrection was against myself. this was so general that it has never since been totally calmed. at court, the bastile or banishment was absolutely determined on, and a lettre de cachet would have been issued had not m. de voyer set forth in the most forcible manner that such a step would be ridiculous. were i to say this pamphlet probably prevented a revolution, the reader would imagine i was in a dream. it is, however, a fact, the truth of which all paris can attest, it being no more than fifteen years since the date of this singular fad. although no attempts were made on my liberty, i suffered numerous insults; and even my life was in danger. the musicians of the opera orchestra humanely resolved to murder me as i went out of the theater. of this i received information; but the only effect it produced on me was to make me more assiduously attend the opera; and i did not learn, until a considerable time afterwards, that m. ancelot, officer in the mousquetaires, and who had a friendship for me, had prevented the effect of this conspiracy by giving me an escort, which, unknown to myself, accompanied me until i was out of danger. the direction of the opera-house had just been given to the hotel de ville. the first exploit performed by the prevot des marchands, was to take from me my freedom of the theater, and this in the most uncivil manner possible. admission was publicly refused me on my presenting myself, so that i was obliged to take a ticket that i might not that evening have the mortification to return as i had come. this injustice was the more shameful, as the only price i had set on my piece when i gave it to the managers was a perpetual freedom of the house; for although this was a right common to every author, and which i enjoyed under a double tide, i expressly stipulated for it in presence of m. duclos. it is true, the treasurer brought me fifty louis, for which i had not asked; but, besides the smallness of the sum compared with that which, according to the rules established in such cases, was due to me, this payment had nothing in common with the right of entry formally granted, and which was entirely independent of it. there was in this behavior such a complication of iniquity and brutality, that the public, notwithstanding its animosity against me, which was then at its highest, was universally shocked at it, and many persons who insulted me the preceding evening, the next day exclaimed in the open theater, that it was shameful thus to deprive an author of his right of entry; and particularly one who had so well deserved it, and was entitled to claim it for himself and another person. so true is the italian proverb: ch'ognun un ama la giustizia in casa d'altrui.* * every one loves justice in the affairs of another. in this situation the only thing i had to do was to demand my work, since the price i had agreed to receive for it was refused me. for this purpose i wrote to m. d'argenson, who had the department of the opera. i likewise inclosed to him a memoir which was unanswerable; but this, as well as my letter, was ineffectual, and i received no answer to either. the silence of that unjust man hurt me extremely, and did not contribute to increase the very moderate good opinion i always had of his character and abilities. it was in this manner the managers kept my piece while they deprived me of that for which i had given it them. from the weak to the strong, such an act would be a theft: from the strong to the weak, it is nothing more than an appropriation of property, without a right. with respect to the pecuniary advantages of the work, although it did not produce me a fourth part of the sum it would have done to any other person, they were considerable enough to enable me to subsist several years, and to make amends for the ill success of copying, which went on but very slowly. i received a hundred louis from the king; fifty from madam de pompadour, for the performance at bellevue, where she herself played the part of colin; fifty from the opera; and five hundred livres from pissot, for the engraving: so that this interlude, which cost me no more than five or six weeks' application, produced, notwithstanding the ill treatment i received from the managers and my stupidity at court, almost as much money as my emilius, which had cost me twenty years' meditation, and three years' labor. but i paid dearly for the pecuniary ease i received from the piece, by the infinite vexations it brought upon me. it was the germ of the secret jealousies which did not appear until a long time afterwards. after its success i did not remark, either in grimm, diderot, or any of the men of letters, with whom i was acquainted, the same cordiality and frankness, nor that pleasure in seeing me, i had previously experienced. the moment i appeared at the baron's, the conversation was no longer general; the company divided into small parties; whispered into each other's ears; and i remained alone, without knowing to whom to address myself. i endured for a long time this mortifying neglect; and, perceiving that madam d'holbach, who was mild and amiable, still received me well, i bore with the vulgarity of her husband as long as it was possible. but he one day attacked me without reason or pretense, and with such brutality, in presence of diderot, who said not a word, and margency, who since that time has often told me how much he admired the moderation and mildness of my answers, that, at length driven from his house, by this unworthy treatment, i took leave with a resolution never to enter it again. this did not, however, prevent me from speaking honorably of him and his house, whilst he continually expressed himself relative to me in the most insulting terms, calling me that petit cuistre: the little college pedant, or servitor in a college; without, however, being able to charge me with having done either to himself or any person to whom he was attached the most trifling injury. in this manner he verified my fears and predictions. i am of opinion my pretended friends would have pardoned me for having written books, and even excellent ones, because this merit was not foreign to themselves; but that they could not forgive my writing an opera, nor the brilliant success it had; because there was not one amongst them capable of the same, nor in a situation to aspire to like honors. duclos, the only person superior to jealousy, seemed to become more attached to me: he introduced me to mademoiselle quinault, in whose house i received polite attention, and civility to as great an extreme, as i had found a want of it in that of m. d'holbach. whilst the performance of the devin du village was continued at the opera-house, the author of it had advantageous negotiation with the managers of the french comedy. not having, during seven or eight years, been able to get my narcissus performed at the italian theater, i had, by the bad performance in french of the actors, become disgusted with it, and should rather have had my piece received at the french theater than by them. i mentioned this to la noue, the comedian, with whom i had become acquainted, and who, as everybody knows, was a man of merit and an author. he was pleased with the piece, and promised to get it performed without suffering the name of the author to be known; and in the meantime procured me the freedom of the theater, which was extremely agreeable to me, for i always preferred it to the two others. the piece was favorably received, and without the author's name being mentioned; but i have reason to believe it was known to the actors and actresses, and many other persons. mademoiselles gaussin and grandval played the amorous parts; and although the whole performance was, in my opinion, injudicious, the piece could not be said to be absolutely ill played. the indulgence of the public, for which i felt gratitude, surprised me; the audience had the patience to listen to it from the beginning to the end, and to permit a second representation without showing the least sign of disapprobation. for my part, i was so wearied with the first, that i could not hold out to the end; and the moment i left the theater, i went into the cafe de procope, where i found boissi, and others of my acquaintance, who had probably been as much fatigued as myself. i there humbly or haughtily avowed myself the author of the piece, judging it as everybody else had done. this public avowal of an author of a piece which had not succeeded, was much admired, and was by no means painful to myself. my self-love was flattered by the courage with which i made it: and i am of opinion, that, on this occasion, there was more pride in speaking, than there would have been foolish shame in being silent. however, as it was certain the piece, although insipid in the performance, would bear to be read, i had it printed: and in the preface, which is one of the best things i ever wrote, i began to make my principles more public than i had before done. i soon had an opportunity to explain them entirely in a work of the greatest importance: for it was, i think, this year, 1753, that the programme of the academy of dijon upon the origin of the inequality of mankind made its appearance. struck with this great question, i was surprised the academy had dared to propose it: but since it had shown sufficient courage to do it, i thought i might venture to treat it, and immediately undertook the discussion. that i might consider this grand subject more at my ease, i went to st. germain for seven or eight days with theresa, our hostess, who was a good kind of woman, and one of her friends. i consider this walk as one of the most agreeable ones i ever took. the weather was very fine. these good women took upon themselves all the care and expense. theresa amused herself with them; and i, free from all domestic concerns, diverted myself, without restraint, at the hours of dinner and supper. all the rest of the day wandering in the forest, i sought for and found there the image of the primitive ages of which i boldly traced the history. i confounded the pitiful lies of men; i dared to unveil their nature; to follow the progress of time, and the things by which it has been disfigured; and comparing the man of art with the natural man, to show them, in their pretended improvement, the real source of all their misery. my mind, elevated by these contemplations, ascended to the divinity, and thence, seeing my fellow creatures follow in the blind track of their prejudices that of their errors and misfortunes, i cried out to them, in a feeble voice, which they could not hear: "madmen! know that all your evils proceed from yourselves!" from these meditations resulted the discourse on inequality, a work more to the taste of diderot than any of my other writings, and in which his advice was of the greatest service to me.* it was, however, understood but by few readers, and not one of these would ever speak of it. i had written it to become a competitor for the premium, and sent it away fully persuaded it would not obtain it; well convinced it was not for productions of this nature that academies were founded. * at the time i wrote this i had not the least suspicion of the grand conspiracy of diderot and grimm, otherwise i should easily have discovered how much the former abused my confidence, by giving to my writings that severity and melancholy which were not to be found in them from the moments he ceased to direct me. the passage of the philosopher, who argues with himself, and stops his ears against the complaints of a man in distress, is after his manner: and he gave me others still more extraordinary, which i could never resolve to make use of. but, attributing this melancholy to that he had acquired in the dungeon of vincennes, and of which there is a very sufficient dose in his clairval, i never once suspected the least unfriendly dealing. this excursion and this occupation enlivened my spirits and was of service to my health. several years before, tormented by my disorder, i had entirely given myself up to the care of physicians, who, without alleviating my sufferings, exhausted my strength and destroyed my constitution. at my return from st. germain, i found myself stronger and perceived my health to be improved. i followed this indication, and determined to cure myself or die without the aid of physicians and medicine. i bade them forever adieu, and lived from day to day, keeping close when i found myself indisposed, and going abroad the moment i had sufficient strength to do it. the manner of living in paris amidst people of pretensions was so little to my liking; the cabals of men of letters, their little candor in their writings, and the air of importance they gave themselves in the world, were so odious to me; i found so little mildness, openness of heart and frankness in the intercourse even of my friends; that, disgusted with this life of tumult, i began ardently to wish to reside in the country, and not perceiving that my occupations permitted me to do it, i went to pass there all the time i had to spare. for several months i went after dinner to walk alone in the bois de boulogne, meditating on subjects for future works, and not returning until evening. gauffecourt, with whom i was at that time extremely intimate, being on account of his employment obliged to go to geneva, proposed to me the journey, to which i consented. the state of my health was such as to require the cares of the governess; it was therefore decided she should accompany us, and that her mother should remain in the house. after thus having made our arrangements, we set off on the first of june, 1754. this was the period when at the age of forty-two, i for the first time in my life felt a diminution of my natural confidence, to which i had abandoned myself without reserve or inconvenience. we had a private carriage, in which with the same horses we traveled very slowly. i frequently got out and walked. we had scarcely performed half our journey when theresa showed the greatest uneasiness at being left in the carriage with gauffecourt, and when, notwithstanding her remonstrances, i would get out as usual, she insisted upon doing the same, and walking with me. i chid her for this caprice, and so strongly opposed it, that at length she found herself obliged to declare to me the cause whence it proceeded. i thought i was in a dream; my astonishment was beyond expression, when i learned that my friend m. de gauffecourt, upwards of sixty years of age, crippled by the gout, impotent and exhausted by pleasures, had, since our departure, incessantly endeavored to corrupt a person who belonged to his friend, and was no longer young nor handsome, by the most base and shameful means, such as presenting to her a purse, attempting to inflame her imagination by the reading of an abominable book, and by the sight of infamous figures, with which it was filled. theresa, full of indignation, once threw his scandalous book out of the carriage; and i learned that on the. first evening of our journey, a violent headache having obliged me to retire to bed before supper, he had employed the whole time of this tete-a-tete in actions more worthy of a satyr than a man of worth and honor, to whom i thought i had intrusted my companion and myself. what astonishment and grief of heart for me! i, who until then had believed friendship to be inseparable from every amiable and noble sentiment which constitutes all its charm, for the first time in my life found myself under the necessity of connecting it with disdain, and of withdrawing my confidence from a man for whom i had an affection, and by whom i imagined myself beloved! the wretch concealed from me his turpitude; and that i might not expose theresa, i was obliged to conceal from him my contempt, and secretly to harbor in my heart such sentiments as were foreign to its nature. sweet and sacred illusion of friendship! gauffecourt first took the veil from before my eyes. what cruel hands have since that time prevented it from again being drawn over them! at lyons i quitted gauffecourt to take the road to savoy, being unable to be so near to mamma without seeing her. i saw hergood god, in what a situation! how contemptible! what remained to her of primitive virtue? was it the same madam de warrens, formerly so gay and lively, to whom the vicar of pontverre had given me recommendations? how my heart was wounded! the only resource i saw for her was to quit the country. i earnestly but vainly repeated the invitation i had several times given her in my letters to come and live peacefully with me, assuring her i would dedicate the rest of my life, and that of theresa, to render hers happy. attached to her pension, from which, although it was regularly paid, she had not for a long time received the least advantage, my offers were lost upon her. i again gave her a trifling part of the contents of my purse, much less than i ought to have done, and considerably less than i should have offered her had not i been certain of its not being of the least service to herself. during my residence at geneva, she made a journey into chablais, and came to see me at grange-canal. she was in want of money to continue her journey: what i had in my pocket was insufficient to this purpose, but an hour afterwards i sent it her by theresa. poor mamma! i must relate this proof of the goodness of her heart. a little diamond ring was the last jewel she had left. she took it from her finger to put it upon that of theresa, who instantly replaced it upon that whence it had been taken, kissing the generous hand which she bathed with her tears. ah! this was the proper moment to discharge my debt! i should have abandoned everything to follow her, and share her fate, let it be what it would. i did nothing of the kind. my attention was engaged by another attachment, and i perceived the attachment i had to her was abated by the slender hopes there were of rendering it useful to either of us. i sighed after her, my heart was grieved at her situation, but i did not follow her. of all the remorse i felt this was the strongest and most lasting. i merited the terrible chastisement with which i have since that time incessantly been overwhelmed: may this have expiated my ingratitude! of this i appear guilty in my conduct, but my heart has been too much distressed by what i did ever to have been that of an ungrateful man. before my departure from paris i had sketched out the dedication of my discourse on the inequality of mankind. i finished it at chambery, and dated it from that place, thinking that, to avoid all chicane, it was better not to date it either from france or geneva. the moment i arrived in that city i abandoned myself to the republican enthusiasm which had brought me to it. this was augmented by the reception i there met with. kindly treated by persons of every description, i entirely gave myself up to a patriotic zeal, and mortified at being excluded from the rights of a citizen by the possession of a religion different from that of my forefathers, i resolved openly to return to the latter. i thought the gospel being the same for every christian, and the only difference in religious opinions the result of the explanations given by men to that which they did not understand, it was the exclusive right of the sovereign power in every country to fix the mode of worship, and these unintelligible opinions; and that consequently it was the duty of a citizen to admit the one, and conform to the other in the manner prescribed by the law. the conversation of the encyclopaedists, far from staggering my faith, gave it new strength by my natural aversion to disputes and party. the study of man and the universe had everywhere shown me the final causes and the wisdom by which they were directed. the reading of the bible, and especially that of the new testament, to which i had for several years past applied myself, had given me a sovereign contempt for the base and stupid interpretations given to the words of jesus christ by persons the least worthy of understanding his divine doctrine. in a word, philosophy, while it attached me to the essential part of religion, had detached me from the trash of the little formularies with which men had rendered it obscure. judging that for a reasonable man there were not two ways of being a christian, i was also of opinion that in each country everything relative to form and discipline was within the jurisdiction of the laws. from this principle, so social and pacific, and which has brought upon me such cruel persecutions, it followed that, if i wished to be a citizen of geneva, i must become a protestant, and conform to the mode of worship established in my country. this i resolved upon; i moreover put myself under the instructions of the pastor of the parish in which i lived, and which was without the city. all i desired was not to appear at the consistory. however, the ecclesiastical edict was expressly to that effect; but it was agreed upon to dispense with it in my favor, and a commission of five or six members was named to receive my profession of faith. unfortunately, the minister perdriau, a mild and an amiable man, took it into his head to tell me the members were rejoiced at the thoughts of hearing me speak in the little assembly. this expectation alarmed me to such a degree that having night and day during three weeks studied a little discourse i had prepared, i was so confused when i ought to have pronounced it that i could not utter a single word, and during the conference i had the appearance of the most stupid schoolboy. the persons deputed spoke for me, and i answered yes and no, like a block-head; i was afterwards admitted to the communion, and reinstated in my rights as a citizen. i was enrolled as such in the list of guards, paid by none but citizens and burgesses, and i attended at a council-general extraordinary to receive the oath from the syndic mussard. i was so impressed with the kindness shown me on this occasion by the council and the consistory, and by the great civility and obliging behavior of the magistrates, ministers and citizens, that, pressed by the worthy de luc, who was incessant in his persuasions, and still more so by my own inclination, i did not think of going back to paris for any other purpose than to break up housekeeping, find a situation for m. and madam le vasseur, or provide for their subsistence, and then return with theresa to geneva, there to settle for the rest of my days. after taking this resolution i suspended all serious affairs the better to enjoy the company of my friends until the time of my departure. of all the amusements of which i partook, that with which i was most pleased, was sailing round the lake in a boat, with de luc, the father, his daughter-in-law, his two sons, and my theresa. we gave seven days to this excursion in the finest weather possible. i preserved a lively remembrance of the situation which struck me at the other extremity of the lake, and of which i, some years afterwards, gave a description in my nouvelle heloise. the principal connections i made at geneva, besides the de lucs, of which i have spoken, were the young vernes, with whom i had already been acquainted at paris, and of whom i then formed a better opinion than i afterwards had of him; m. perdriau, then a country pastor, now professor of belles-lettres, whose mild and agreeable society will ever make me regret the loss of it, although he has since thought proper to detach himself from me; m. jalabert, at that time professor of natural philosophy, since become counselor and syndic, to whom i read my discourse upon inequality (but not the dedication), with which he seemed to be delighted; the professor lullin, with whom i maintained a correspondence until his death, and who gave me a commission to purchase books for the library; the professor vernet, who, like most other people, turned his back upon me after i had given him proofs of attachment and confidence of which he ought to have been sensible, if a theologian can be affected by anything; chappins, clerk and successor to gauffecourt, whom he wished to supplant, and who, soon afterwards, was himself supplanted; marcet de mezieres, an old friend of my father's, and who had also shown himself to be mine: after having well deserved of his country, he became a dramatic author, and, pretending to be of the council of two hundred, changed his principles, and, before he died, became ridiculous. but he from whom i expected most was m. moultout, a very promising young man by his talents and his brilliant imagination, whom i have always loved, although his conduct with respect to me was frequently equivocal, and, notwithstanding his being connected with my most cruel enemies, whom i cannot but look upon as destined to become the defender of my memory and the avenger of his friend. in the midst of these dissipations, i neither lost the taste for my solitary excursions, nor the habit of them; i frequently made long ones upon the banks of the lake, during which my mind, accustomed to reflection, did not remain idle; i digested the plan already formed of my political institutions, of which i shall shortly have to speak; i meditated a history of the valais; the plan of a tragedy in prose, the subject of which, nothing less than lucretia, did not deprive me of the hope of succeeding, although i had dared again to exhibit that unfortunate heroine, when she could no longer be suffered upon any french stage. i at that time tried my abilities with tacitus, and translated the first books of his history, which will, be found amongst my papers. after a residence of four months at geneva, i returned in the month of october to paris; and avoided passing through lyons that i might not again have to travel with gauffecourt. as the arrangement i had made did not require my being at geneva until the spring following, i returned, during the winter, to my habits and occupations; the principal of the latter was examining the proof sheets of my discourse on the inequality of mankind, which i had procured to be printed in holland, by the bookseller rey, with whom i had just become acquainted at geneva. this work was dedicated to the republic; but as the publication might be unpleasing to the council, i wished to wait until it had taken its effect at geneva before i returned thither. this effect was not favorable to me; and the dedication, which the most pure patriotism had dictated, created me enemies in the council, and inspired even many of the burgesses with jealousy. m. chouet, at that time first syndic, wrote me a polite but very cold letter, which will be found amongst my papers. i received from private persons, amongst others from de luc and de jalabert, a few compliments, and these were all. i did not perceive that a single genevese was pleased with the hearty zeal found in the work. this indifference shocked all those by whom it was remarked. i remember that dining one day at clichy, at madam dupin's, with crommelin, resident from the republic, and m. de mairan, the latter openly declared the council owed me a present and public honors for the work, and that it would dishonor itself if it failed in either. crommelin, who was a black and mischievous little man, dared not reply in my presence, but he made a frightful grimace, which however forced a smile from madam dupin. the only advantage this work procured me, besides that resulting from the satisfaction of my own heart, was the title of citizen given me by my friends, afterwards by the public after their example, and which i afterwards lost by having too well merited. this ill success would not, however, have prevented my retiring to geneva, had not more powerful motives tended to the same effect. m. d'epinay, wishing to add a wing which was wanting to the chateau of the chevrette, was at an immense expense in completing it. going one day with madam d'epinay to see the building, we continued our walk a quarter of a league further to the reservoir of the waters of the park which joined the forest of montmorency, and where there was a handsome kitchen garden, with a little lodge, much out of repair, called the hermitage. this solitary and very agreeable place had struck me when i saw it for the first time before my journey to geneva. i had exclaimed in my transport: "ah, madam, what a delightful habitation! this asylum was purposely prepared for me." madam d'epinay did not pay much attention to what i said; but at this second journey i was quite surprised to find, instead of the old decayed building, a little house almost entirely new, well laid out, and very habitable for a little family of three persons. madam d'epinay had caused this to be done in silence, and at a very small expense, by detaching a few materials and some of the workmen from the castle. she now said to me, on remarking my surprise: "my dear, here behold your asylum: it is you who have chosen it; friendship offers it to you. i hope this will remove from you the cruel idea of separating from me." i do not think i was ever in my life more strongly or more deliciously affected. i bathed with tears the beneficent hand of my friend; and if i were not conquered from that very instant even, i was extremely staggered. madam d'epinay, who would not be denied, became so pressing, employed so many means, so many people to circumvent me, proceeding even so far as to gain over madam le vasseur and her daughter, that at length she triumphed over all my resolutions. renouncing the idea of residing in my own country, i resolved, i promised, to inhabit the hermitage; and, whilst the building was drying, madam d'epinay took care to prepare furniture, so that everything was ready the following spring. one thing which greatly aided me in determining, was the residence voltaire had chosen near geneva; i easily comprehended this man would cause a revolution there, and that i should find in my country the manners, which drove me from paris; that i should be under the necessity of incessantly struggling hard, and have no other alternative than that of being an unsupportable pedant, a poltroon, or a bad citizen. the letter voltaire wrote me on my last work, induced me to insinuate my fears in my answer; and the effect this produced confirmed them. from that moment i considered geneva as lost, and i was not deceived. i perhaps ought to have met the storm, had i thought myself capable of resisting it. but what could i have done alone, timid, and speaking badly, against a man, arrogant, opulent, supported by the credit of the great, eloquent, and already the idol of the women and young men? i was afraid of uselessly exposing myself to danger to no purpose. i listened to nothing but my peaceful disposition, to my love of repose, which, if it then deceived me, still continues to deceive me on the same subject. by retiring to geneva, i should have avoided great misfortunes; but i have my doubts whether, with all my ardent and patriotic zeal, i should have been able to effect anything great and useful for my country. tronchin, who about the same time went to reside at geneva, came afterwards to paris and brought with him treasures. at his arrival he came to see me, with the chevalier jaucourt. madam d'epinay had a strong desire to consult him in private, but this it was not easy to do. she addressed herself to me, and i engaged tronchin to go and see her. thus under my auspices they began a connection, which was afterwards increased at my expense. such has ever been my destiny: the moment i had united two friends who were separately mine, they never failed to combine against me. although, in the conspiracy then formed by the tronchins, they must all have borne me a mortal hatred. the doctor still continued friendly to me: he even wrote me a letter after his return to geneva, to propose to me the place of honorary librarian. but i had taken my resolution, and the offer did not tempt me to depart from it. about this time i again visited m. d'holbach. my visit was occasioned by the death of his wife, which, as well as that of madam francueil, happened whilst i was at geneva. diderot, when he communicated to me these melancholy events, spoke of the deep affliction of the husband. his grief affected my heart. i myself was grieved for the loss of that excellent woman, and wrote to m. d'holbach a letter of condolence. i forgot all the wrongs he had done me, and at my return from geneva, and after he had made the tour of france with grimm and other friends to alleviate his affliction, i went to see him, and continued my visits until my departure for the hermitage. as soon as it was known in his circle that madam d'epinay was preparing me a habitation there, innumerable sarcasms, founded upon the want i must feel of the flattery and amusements of the city, and the supposition of my not being able to support the solitude for a fortnight, were uttered against me. feeling within myself how i stood affected, i left him and his friends to say what they pleased, and pursued my intention. m. d'holbach rendered me some services* in finding a place for the old le vasseur, who was eighty years of age, and a burden to his wife, from which she begged me to relieve her. he was put into a house of charity, where, almost as soon as he arrived there, age and the grief of finding himself removed from his family sent him to the grave. his wife and all his children, except theresa, did not much regret his loss. but she, who loved him tenderly, has ever since been inconsolable, and never forgiven herself for having suffered him, at so advanced at age, to end his days in any other house than her own. * this is an instance of the treachery of my memory. a long time after i had written what i have stated above, i learned, in conversing with my wife, that it was not m. d'holbach, but m. de chenonceaux, then one of the administrators of the hotel dieu, who procured this place for her father. i had so totally forgotten the circumstance, and the idea of m. d'holbach's having done it was so strong in my mind that i would have sworn it had been him. much about the same time i received a visit i little expected, although it was from a very old acquaintance. my friend venture, accompanied by another man, came upon me one morning by surprise. what a change did i discover in his person! instead of his former gracefulness, he appeared sottish and vulgar, which made me extremely reserved with him. my eyes deceived me, or either debauchery had stupefied his mind, or all his first splendor was the effect of his youth which was past. i saw him almost with indifference, and we parted rather coolly. but when he was gone, the remembrance of our former connection so strongly called to my recollection that of my younger days, so charmingly, so prudently dedicated to that angelic woman (madam de warrens) who was not much less changed than himself; the little anecdotes of that happy time, the romantic day at toune passed with so much innocence and enjoyment between those two charming girls, from whom a kiss of the hand was the only favor, and which, notwithstanding its being so trifling, had left me such lively, affecting and lasting regrets; and the ravishing delirium of a young heart, which i had just felt in all its force, and of which i thought the season forever past for me. the tender remembrance of these delightful circumstances made me shed tears over my faded youth and its transports forever lost to me. ah! how many tears should i have shed over their tardy and fatal return had i foreseen the evils i had yet to suffer from them. before i left paris, i enjoyed during the winter which preceded my retreat, a pleasure after my own heart, and of which i tasted in all its purity. palissot, academician of nancy, known by a few dramatic compositions, had just had one of them performed at luneville before the king of poland. he perhaps thought to make his court by representing in his piece a man who dared to enter into a literary dispute with the king. stanislaus, who was generous, and did not like satire, was filled with indignation at the author's daring to be personal in his presence. the comte de tressan, by order of the prince, wrote to m. d'alembert, as well as to myself, to inform me that it was the intention of his majesty to have palissot expelled his academy. my answer was a strong solicitation in favor of palissot, begging m. de tressan to intercede with the king in his behalf. his pardon was granted, and m. de tressan, when he communicated to me the information in the name of the monarch, added that the whole of what had passed should be inserted in the register of the academy. i replied that this was less granting a pardon than perpetuating a punishment. at length, after repeated solicitations, i obtained a promise, that nothing relative to the affair should be inserted in the register, and that no public trace should remain of it. the promise was accompanied, as well on the part of the king as on that of m. de tressan, with assurance of esteem and respect, with which i was extremely flattered; and i felt on this occasion that the esteem of men who are themselves worthy of it, produced in the mind a sentiment infinitely more noble and pleasing than that of vanity. i have transcribed into my collection the letters of m. de tressan, with my answers to them; and the original of the former will be found amongst my other papers. i am perfectly aware that if ever these memoirs become public, i here perpetuate the remembrance of a fact which i would wish to efface every trace; but i transmit many others as much against my inclination. the grand object of my undertaking, constantly before my eyes, and the indispensable duty of fulfilling it to its utmost extent, will not permit me to be turned aside by trifling considerations which would lead me from my purpose. in my strange and unparalleled situation i owe too much to truth to be further than this indebted to any person whatever. they who wish to know me well must be acquainted with me in every point of view, in every relative situation, both good and bad. my confessions are necessarily connected with those of many other people: i write both with the same frankness in everything that relates to that which has befallen me; and am not obliged to spare any person more than myself, although it is my wish to do it. i am determined always to be just and true, to say of others all the good i can, never speaking of evil except when it relates to my own conduct, and there is a necessity for my so doing. who, in the situation in which the world has placed me, has a right to require more at my hands? my confessions are not intended to appear during my lifetime, nor that of those they may disagreeably affect. were i master of my own destiny, and that of the book i am now writing, it should never be made public until after my death and theirs. but the efforts which the dread of truth obliges my powerful enemies to make to destroy every trace of it, render it necessary for me to do everything, which the strictest right, and the most severe justice, will permit, to preserve what i have written. were the remembrance of me to be lost at my dissolution, rather than expose any person alive, i would without a murmur suffer an unjust and momentary reproach. but since my name is to live, it is my duty to endeavor to transmit with it to posterity the remembrance of the unfortunate man by whom it was borne, such as he really was, and not such as his unjust enemies incessantly endeavored to describe him. book ix [1756] i was so impatient to take up my abode in hermitage that i could not wait for the return of fine weather; the moment my lodging was prepared i hastened to take possession of it, to the great amusement of the coterie holbachique, which publicly predicted i should not be able to support solitude for three months, and that i should unsuccessfully return to paris, and live there as they did. for my part, having for fifteen years been out of my element, finding myself upon the eve of returning to it, i paid no attention to their pleasantries. since, contrary to my inclinations, i have again entered the world, i have incessantly regretted my dear charmettes, and the agreeable life i led there. i felt a natural inclination to retirement and the country: it was impossible for me to live happily elsewhere. at venice, in the train of public affairs, in the dignity of a kind of representation, in the pride of projects of advancement; at paris, in the vortex of the great world, in the luxury of suppers, in the brilliancy of spectacles, in the rays of splendor; my groves, rivulets, and solitary walks, constantly presented themselves to my recollection, interrupted my thought, rendered me melancholy and made me sigh with desire. all the labor to which i had subjected myself, every project of ambition which by fits had animated my ardor, all had for object this happy country retirement, which i now thought near at hand. without having acquired a genteel independence, which i had judged to be the only means of accomplishing my views, i imagined myself, in my particular situation, to be able to do without it, and that i could obtain the same end by a means quite opposite. i had no regular income; but i possessed some talents, and had acquired a name. my wants were few, and i had freed myself from all those which were most expensive, and which merely depended on prejudice and opinion. besides this, although naturally indolent, i was laborious when i chose to be so, and my idleness was less that of an indolent man, than that of an independent one who applies to business when it pleases him. my profession of a copyist of music was neither splendid nor lucrative, but it was certain. the world gave me credit for the courage i had shown in making choice of it. i might depend upon having sufficient employment to enable me to live. two thousand livres which remained of the produce of the devin du village, and my other writings, were a sum which kept me from being straitened, and several works i had upon the stocks promised me, without extorting money from the booksellers, supplies sufficient to enable me to work at my ease without exhausting myself, even by turning to advantage the leisure of my walks. my little family, consisting of three persons, all of whom were usefully employed, was not expensive to support. finally, from my resources, proportioned to my wants and desires, i might reasonably expect a happy and permanent existence, in that manner of life which my inclination had induced me to adopt. i might have taken the interested side of the question, and, instead of subjecting my pen to copying, entirely devoted it to works which, from the elevation to which i had soared, and at which i found myself capable of continuing, might have enabled me to live in the midst of abundance, nay, even of opulence, had i been the least disposed to join the maneuvers of an author to the care of publishing a good book. but i felt that writing for bread would soon have extinguished my genius, and destroyed my talents, which were less in my pen than in my heart, and solely proceeded from an elevated and noble manner of thinking, by which alone they could be cherished and preserved. nothing vigorous or great can come from a pen totally venal. necessity, nay, even avarice, perhaps, would have made me write rather rapidly than well. if the desire of success had not led me into cabals, it might have made me endeavor to publish fewer true and useful works than those which might be pleasing to the multitude; and instead of a distinguished author, which i might possibly become, i should have been nothing more than a scribbler. no: i have always felt that the profession of letters was illustrious in proportion as it was less a trade. it is too difficult to think nobly when we think for a livelihood. to be able to dare even to speak great truths, an author must be independent of success. i gave my books to the public with a certainty of having written for the general good of mankind, without giving myself the least concern about what was to follow. if the work was thrown aside, so much the worse for such as did not choose to profit by it. their approbation was not necessary to enable me to live, my profession was sufficient to maintain me had not my works had a sale, for which reason alone they all sold. it was on the ninth of august, 1756, that i left cities, never to reside in them again: for i do not call a residence the few days i afterwards remained in paris, london, or other cities, always on the wing, or contrary to my inclinations. madam d'epinay came and took us all three in her coach; her farmer carted away my little baggage, and i was put into possession the same day. i found my little retreat simply furnished, but neatly, and with some taste. the hand which had lent its aid in this furnishing rendered it inestimable in my eyes, and i thought it charming to be the guest of my female friend in a house i had made choice of, and which she had caused to be built purposely for me. although the weather was cold, and the ground lightly covered with snow, the earth began to vegetate: violets and primroses already made their appearance, the trees began to bud, and the evening of my arrival was distinguished by the song of the nightingale, which was heard almost under my window, in a wood adjoining the house. after a light sleep, forgetting when i awoke my change of abode, i still thought myself in the rue grenelle, when suddenly this warbling made me give a start, and i exclaimed in my transport: "at length, all my wishes are accomplished!" the first thing i did was abandon myself to the impression of the rural objects with which i was surrounded. instead of beginning to set things in order in my new habitation, i began by doing it for my walks, and there was not a path, a copse, a grove, nor a corner in the environs of my place of residence that i did not visit the next day. the more i examined this charming retreat, the more i found it to my wishes. this solitary, rather than savage, spot transported me in idea to the end of the world. it had striking beauties which are but seldom found near cities, and never, if suddenly transported thither, could any person have imagined himself within four leagues of paris. after abandoning myself for a few days to this rural delirium, i began to arrange my papers, and regulate my occupations. i set apart, as i had always done, my mornings to copying, and my afternoons to walking, provided with my little paper book and a pencil, for never having been able to write and think at my ease except sub dio, i had no inclination to depart from this method, and i was persuaded the forest of montmorency, which was almost at my door, would in future be my closet and study. i had several works begun; these i cast my eye over. my mind was indeed fertile in great projects, but in the noise of the city the execution of them had gone on but slowly. i proposed to myself to use more diligence when i should be less interrupted. i am of opinion i have sufficiently fulfilled this intention; and for a man frequently ill, often at la chevrette, at epinay, at eaubonne, at the castle of montmorency, at other times interrupted by the indolent and curious, and always employed half the day in copying, if what i produced during the six years i passed at the hermitage and at montmorency be considered, i am persuaded it will appear that if, in this interval, i lost my time, it was not in idleness. of the different works i had upon the stocks, that i had longest resolved in my mind, which was most to my taste, to which i destined a certain portion of my life, and which, in my opinion, was to confirm the reputation i had acquired, was my institutions politiques.* i had, fourteen years before, when at venice, where i had an opportunity of remarking the defects of that government so much boasted of, conceived the first idea of them. since that time my views had become much more extended by the historical study of morality. i had perceived everything to be radically connected with politics, and that, upon whatever principles these were founded, a people would never be more than that which the nature of the government made them; therefore the great question of the best government possible appeared to me to be reduced to this: what is the nature of a government the most proper to form the most virtuous and enlightened, the wisest and best people, taking the last epithet in its most extensive meaning? i thought this question was much if not quite of the same nature with that which follows: what government is that which, by its nature, always maintains itself nearest to the laws, or least deviates from the laws.*(2) hence, what is the law? and a series of questions of similar importance. i perceived these led to great truths, useful to the happiness of mankind, but more especially to that of my country, wherein, in the journey i had just made to it, i had not found notions of laws and liberty either sufficiently just or clear. i had thought this indirect manner of communicating these to my fellow-citizens would be least mortifying to their pride, and might obtain me forgiveness for having seen a little further than themselves. * political institutions. *(2) quel est le gouvernement qui par sa nature se tient toujours le plus pres de la loi? although i had already labored five or six years at the work, the progress i had made in it was not considerable. writings of this kind require meditation, leisure, and tranquillity. i had besides written the institutions politiques, as the expression is, en bonne fortune, and had not communicated my project to any person, not even to diderot. i was afraid it would be thought too daring for the age and country in which i wrote, and that the fears of my friends would restrain me from carrying it into execution.* i did not yet know that it would be finished in time, and in such a manner as to appear before my decease. i wished fearlessly to give to my subject everything it required; fully persuaded that not being of a satirical turn, and never wishing to be personal, i should in equity always be judged irreprehensible. i undoubtedly wished fully to enjoy the right of thinking which i had by birth; but still respecting the government under which i lived, without ever disobeying its laws, and very attentive not to violate the rights of persons, i would not from fear renounce its advantages. * it was more especially the wise severity of duclos which inspired me with this fear; as for diderot, i know not by what means all my conferences with him tended to make me more satirical than my natural disposition inclined me to be. this prevented me from consulting him upon an undertaking, in which i wished to introduce nothing but the force of reasoning, without the least appearance of ill humor or partiality. the manner of this work may be judged of by that of the contrat social, (social contract), which is taken from it. i confess even that, as a stranger, and living in france, i found my situation very favorable in daring to speak the truth; well knowing that continuing, as i was determined to do, not to print anything in the kingdom without permission, i was not obliged to give to any person in it an account of my maxims nor of their publication elsewhere. i should have been less independent even at geneva, where, in whatever place my books might have been printed, the magistrate had a right to criticise their contents. this consideration had greatly contributed to make me yield to the solicitations of madam d'epinay, and abandon the project of fixing my residence at geneva. i felt, as i have remarked in my emilius, that unless an author be a man of intrigue, when he wishes to render his works really useful to any country whatsoever, he must compose them in some other. what made me find my situation still more happy, was my being persuaded that the government of france would, perhaps, without looking upon me with a very favorable eye, make it a point to protect me, or at least not to disturb my tranquillity. it appeared to me a stroke of simple, yet dexterous policy, to make a merit of tolerating that which there was no means of preventing; since, had i been driven from france, which was all government had the right to do, my work would still have been written, and perhaps with less reserve; whereas if i were left undisturbed, the author remained to answer for what he wrote, and a prejudice, general throughout all europe, would be destroyed by acquiring the reputation of observing a proper respect for the rights of persons. they who, by the event, shall judge i was deceived, may perhaps be deceived in their turn. in the storm which has since broken over my head, my books served as a pretense, but it was against my person that every shaft was directed. my persecutors gave themselves but little concern about the author, but they wished to ruin jean-jacques; and the greatest evil they found in my writings was the honor they might possibly do me. let us not encroach upon the future. i do not know that this mystery, which is still one to me, will hereafter be cleared up to my readers; but had my avowed principles been of a nature to bring upon me the treatment i received, i should sooner have become their victim, since the work in which these principles are manifested with most courage, not to call it audacity, seemed to have had its effect previous to my retreat to the hermitage, without i will not only say my having received the least censure, but without any steps having been taken to prevent the publication of it in france, where it was sold as publicly as in holland. the new eloisa afterwards appeared with the same facility, i dare add, with the same applause; and, what seems incredible, the profession of faith of this eloisa at the point of death is exactly similar to that of the savoyard vicar. every strong idea in the social contract had been before published in the discourse on inequality; and every bold opinion in emilius previously found in eloisa. this unrestrained freedom did not excite the least murmur against the first two works; therefore it was not that which gave cause to it against the latter. another undertaking much of the same kind, but of which the project was more recent, then engaged my attention: this was the extract of the works of the abbe de saint pierre, of which, having been led away by the thread of my narrative, i have not hitherto been able to speak. the idea was suggested to me, after my return from geneva, by the abbe mably, not immediately from himself, but by the interposition of madam dupin, who had some interest in engaging me to adopt it. she was one of the three or four pretty women of paris, of whom the abbe de saint pierre had been the spoiled child, and although she had not decidedly had the preference, she had at least partaken of it with madam d'aiguillon. she preserved for the memory of the good man a respect and an affection which did honor to them both; and her self-love would have been flattered by seeing the stillborn works of her friend brought to life by her secretary. these works contained excellent things, but so badly told that the reading of them was almost insupportable; and it is astonishing the abbe de saint pierre, who looked upon his readers as schoolboys, should nevertheless have spoken to them as men, by the little care he took to induce them to give him a hearing. it was for this purpose that the work was proposed to me as useful in itself, and very proper for a man laborious in maneuver, but idle as an author, who finding the trouble of thinking very fatiguing, preferred, in things which pleased him, throwing a light upon and extending the ideas of others, to producing any himself. besides, not being confined to the function of a translator, i was at liberty sometimes to think for myself; and i had it in my power to give such a form to my work, that many important truths would pass in it under the name of the abbe de saint pierre, much more safely than under mine. the undertaking also was not trifling; the business was nothing less than to read and meditate twenty-three volumes, diffuse, confused, full of long narrations and periods, repetitions, and false or little views, from amongst which it was necessary to select some few that were great and useful, and sufficiently encouraging to enable me to support the painful labor. i frequently wished to have given it up, and should have done so, could i have got it off my hands with a good grace; but when i received the manuscripts of the abbe, which were given me by his nephew, the comte de saint pierre, i had, by the solicitation of st. lambert, in some measure engaged to make use of them, which i must either have done, or have given them back. it was with the former intention i had taken the manuscripts to the hermitage, and this was the first work to which i proposed to dedicate my leisure hours. i had likewise in my own mind projected a third, the idea of which i owed to the observations i had made upon myself and i felt the more disposed to undertake this work, as i had reason to hope i could make it a truly useful one, and perhaps, the most so of any that could be offered to the world, were the execution equal to the plan i had laid down. it has been remarked that most men are in the course of their lives frequently unlike themselves, and seem to be transformed into others very different from what they were. it was not to establish a thing so generally known that i wished to write a book; i had a newer and more important object. this was to search for the causes of these variations, and, by confining my observations to those which depend on ourselves, to demonstrate in what manner it might be possible to direct them, in order to render us better and more certain of our dispositions. for it is undoubtedly more painful to an honest man to resist desires already formed, and which it is his duty to subdue, than to prevent, change, or modify the same desires in their source, were he capable of tracing them to it. a man under temptation resists once because he has strength of mind, he yields another time because this is overcome; had it been the same as before he would again have triumphed. by examining within myself, and searching in others what could be the cause of these different manners of being, i discovered that, in a great measure they depended on the anterior impression of external objects; and that, continually modified by our senses and organs, we, without knowing it, bore in our ideas, sentiments, and even actions, the effect of these modifications. the striking and numerous observations i had collected were beyond all manner of dispute, and by their natural principle seemed proper to furnish and exterior regimen, which, varied according to circumstances, might place and support the mind in the state most favorable to virtue. from how many mistakes would reason be preserved, how many vices would be stifled in their birth, were it possible to force animal economy to favor moral order, which it so frequently disturbs! climates, seasons, sounds, colors, light, darkness, the elements, aliments, noise, silence, motion, rest, all act on the animal machine, and consequently on the mind; all offer us a thousand means, almost certain of directing in their origin the sentiments by which we suffer ourselves to be governed. such was the fundamental idea of which i had already made a sketch upon paper, and whence i hoped for an effect the more certain, in favor of persons well disposed, who, sincerely loving virtue, were afraid of their own weakness, as it appeared to me easy to make of it a book as agreeable to read as it was to compose. i have, however, applied myself but very little to this work, the title of which was to have been morale sensitive ou le materialisme du sage.* interruptions, the cause of which will soon appear, prevented me from continuing it, and the fate of the sketch, which is more connected with my own than it may appear to be, will hereafter be seen. * sensitive morality, or the materialism of the sage. besides this, i had for some time meditated a system of education, of which madam de chenonceaux, alarmed for her son by that of her husband, had desired me to consider. the authority of friendship placed this object, although loss in itself to my taste, nearer to my heart than any other. on which account this subject, of all, those of which i have just spoken, is the only one i carried to its utmost extent. the end i proposed to myself in treating of it should, i think, have procured the author a better fate. but i will not here anticipate this melancholy subject. i shall have too much reason to speak of it in the course of my work. these different objects offered me subjects of meditation for my walks; for, as i believe i have already observed, i am unable to reflect when i am not walking: the moment i stop, i think no more, and as soon as i am again in motion my head resumes its workings. i had, however, provided myself with a work for the closet upon rainy days. this was my dictionary of music, which my scattered, mutilated, and unshapen materials made it necessary to rewrite almost entirely. i had with me some books necessary to this purpose; i had spent two months in making extracts from others, which i had borrowed from the king's library, whence i was permitted to take several to the hermitage. i was thus provided with materials for composing in my apartment when the weather did not permit me to go out, and my copying fatigued me. this arrangement was so convenient that it made it turn to advantage as well at the hermitage as at montmorency, and afterwards even at motiers, where i completed the work whilst i was engaged in others, and constantly found a change of occupation to be a real relaxation. during a considerable time i exactly followed the distribution i had prescribed myself, and found it very agreeable; but as soon as the fine weather brought madam d'epinay more frequently to epinay, or to the chevrette, i found that attentions, in the first instance natural to me, but which i had not considered in my scheme, considerably deranged my projects. i have already observed that madam d'epinay had many amiable qualities; she sincerely loved her friends; served them with zeal; and, not sparing for them either time or pains, certainly deserved on their part every attention in return. i had hitherto discharged this duty without considering it as one; but at length i found that i had given myself a chain of which nothing but friendship prevented me from feeling the weight, and this was still aggravated by my dislike to numerous societies. madam d'epinay took advantage of these circumstances to make me a proposition seemingly agreeable to me, but which was more so to herself; this was to let me know when she was alone, or had but little company. i consented, without perceiving to what a degree i engaged myself. the consequence was that i no longer visited her at my own hour but at hers, and that i never was certain of being master of myself for a day together. this constraint considerably diminished the pleasure i had in going to see her. i found the liberty she had so frequently promised was given me upon no other condition than that of my never enjoying it; and once or twice when i wished to do this there were so many messages, notes, and alarms relative to my health, that i perceived i could have no excuse but being confined to my bed, for not immediately running to her upon the first intimation. it was necessary i should submit to this yoke, and i did it, even more voluntarily than could be expected from so great an enemy to dependence: the sincere attachment i had to madam d'epinay preventing me, in a great measure, from feeling the inconvenience with which it was accompanied. she, on her part, filled up, well or ill, the void which the absence of her usual circle left in her amusements. this for her was but a very slender supplement, although preferable to absolute solitude, which she could not support. she had the means of doing it much more at her ease after she began with literature, and at all events to write novels, letters, comedies, tales, and other trash of the same kind. but she was not so much amused in writing these as in reading them; and she never scribbled over two or three pages at one sitting, without being previously assured of having, at least, two or three benevolent auditors at the end of so much labor. i seldom had the honor of being the one of the chosen few except by means of another. when alone, i was, for the most part, considered as a cipher in everything; and this not only in the company of madam d'epinay, but in that of m. d'holbach, and in every place where grimm gave the ton. this nullity was very convenient to me, except in a tete-a-tete, when i knew not what countenance to put on, not daring to speak of literature, of which it was not for me to say a word; nor of gallantry, being too timid, and fearing, more than death, the ridiculousness of an old gallant; besides that, i never had such an idea when in the company of madam d'epinay, and that it perhaps would never have occurred to me, had i passed my whole life with her; not that her person was in the least disagreeable to me; on the contrary, i loved her perhaps too much as a friend to do it as a lover. i felt a pleasure in seeing and speaking to her. her conversation, although agreeable enough in a mixed company, was uninteresting in private; mine, not more elegant or entertaining than her own, was no great amusement to her. ashamed of being long silent, i endeavored to enliven our tete-a-tete and, although this frequently fatigued me, i was never disgusted with it. i was happy to show her little attentions, and gave her little fraternal kisses, which seemed not to be more sensual to herself; these were all. she was very thin, very pale, and had a bosom which resembled the back of her hand. this defect alone would have been sufficient to moderate my most ardent desires; my heart never could distinguish a woman in a person who had it; and, besides, other causes, useless to mention, always made me forget the sex of this lady. having resolved to conform to an assiduity which was necessary, i immediately and voluntarily entered upon it, and for the first year at least, found it less burthensome than i could have expected. madam d'epinay, who commonly passed the summer in the country, continued there but a part of this; whether she was more detained by her affairs at paris, or that the absence of grimm rendered the residence of the chevrette less agreeable to her, i know not. i took the advantage of the intervals of her absence, or when the company with her was numerous, to enjoy my solitude with my good theresa and her mother, in such a manner as to taste all its charms. although i had for several years past been frequently in the country, i seldom had enjoyed much of its pleasures; and these excursions, always made in company with people who considered themselves as persons of consequence, and rendered insipid by constraint, served to increase in me the natural desire i had for rustic pleasures. the want of these was the more sensible to me as i had the image of them immediately before my eyes. i was so tired of saloons, jets-d'eau, groves, parterres, and of the more fatiguing persons by whom they were shown; so exhausted with pamphlets, harpsichords, trios, unravelings of plots, stupid bon mots, insipid affectations, pitiful story-tellers, and great suppers; that when i gave a side glance at a poor simple hawthorn bush, a hedge, a barn, or a meadow; when, in passing through a hamlet, i scented a good chervil omelette, and heard at a distance the burden of the rustic song of the bisquieres; i wished all rouge, furbelows and ambergris at the devil, and envying the dinner of the good housewife, and the wine of her own vineyard, i heartily wished to give a slap on the chaps to monsieur le chef and monsieur le maitre, who made me dine at the hour of supper, and sup when i should have been asleep, but especially to messieurs the lackeys, who devoured with their eyes the morsel i put into my mouth, and, upon pain of my dying with thirst, sold me the adulterated wine of their master, ten times dearer than that of a better quality would have cost me at a public house. at length i was settled in an agreeable and solitary asylum, at liberty to pass there the remainder of my days, in that peaceful, equal and independent life for which felt myself born. before i relate the effects this situation, so new to me, had upon my heart, it is proper i should recapitulate its secret affections, that the reader may better follow in their causes the progress of these new modifications. i have always considered the day on which i was united to theresa as that which fixed my moral existence. an attachment was necessary for me, since that which should have been sufficient to my heart had been so cruelly broken. the thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man. mamma was advancing into years, and dishonored herself! i had proofs that she could never more be happy here below; it therefore remained to me to seek my own happiness, having lost all hopes of partaking of hers. i was sometimes irresolute, and fluctuated from one idea to another, and from project to project. my journey to venice would have thrown me into public life, had the man with whom, almost against my inclination, i was connected there had common sense. i was easily discouraged, especially in undertakings of length and difficulty. the ill success of this disgusted me with every other; and, according to my old maxims, considering distant objects as deceitful allurements i resolved in future to provide for immediate wants, seeing nothing in life which could tempt me to make extraordinary efforts. it was precisely at this time we became acquainted. the mild character of the good theresa seemed so fitted to my own, that i united myself to her with an attachment which neither time nor injuries have been able to impair, and which has constantly been increased by everything by which it might have been expected to be diminished. the force of this sentiment will hereafter appear when i come to speak of the wounds she has given my heart in the height of my misery, without my ever having, until this moment, once uttered a word of complaint to any person whatever. when it shall be known, that after having done everything, braved everything, not to separate from her; that after passing with her twenty years in despite of fate and men; i have in my old age made her my wife, without the least expectation or solicitation on her part, or promise or engagement on mine, the world will think that love bordering upon madness, having from the first moment turned my head, led me by degrees to the last act of extravagance; and this will no longer appear doubtful when the strong and particular reasons which should forever have prevented me from taking such a step are made known. what, therefore, will the reader think when i shall have told him, with all the truth he has ever found in me, that, from the first moment in which i saw her, until that wherein i write, i have never felt the least love for her, that i never desired to possess her more than i did to possess madam de warrens, and that the physical wants which were satisfied with her person were, for me, solely those of the sex, and by no means proceeding from the individual? he will think that, being of a constitution different from that of other men, i was incapable of love, since this was not one of the sentiments which attached me to women the most dear to my heart. patience, o my dear reader! the fatal moment approaches in which you will be but too much undeceived. i fall into repetitions; i know it; and these are necessary. the first of my wants, the greatest, strongest, and most insatiable, was wholly in my heart; the want of an intimate connection, and as intimate as it could possibly be: for this reason especially, a woman was more necessary to me than a man, a female rather than a male friend. this singular want was such that the closest corporal union was not sufficient: two souls would have been necessary to me in the same body, without which i always felt a void. i thought i was upon the point of filling it up forever. this young person, amiable by a thousand excellent qualities, and at that time by her form, without the shadow of art or coquetry, would have confined within herself my whole existence, could hers, as i had hoped it would have been totally confined to me. i had nothing to fear from men; i am certain of being the only man she ever really loved, and her moderate passions seldom wanted another, not even after i ceased in this respect to be one to her. i had no family; she had one; and this family was composed of individuals whose dispositions were so different from mine, that i could never make it my own. this was the first cause of my unhappiness. what would i not have given to be the child of her mother? i did everything in my power to become so, but could never succeed. i in vain attempted to unite all our interests: this was impossible. she always created herself one different from mine, contrary to it, and to that even of her daughter, which already was no longer separated from it. she, her other children, and grand-children, became so many leeches, and the least evil these did to theresa was robbing her. the poor girl, accustomed to submit, even to her nieces, suffered herself to be pilfered and governed without saying a word; and i perceived with grief that by exhausting my purse, and giving her advice, i did nothing that could be of any real advantage to her. i endeavored to detach her from her mother; but she constantly resisted such a proposal. i could not but respect her resistance, and esteemed her the more for it; but her refusal was not on this account less to the prejudice of us both. abandoned to her mother and the rest of her family, she was more their companion than mine, and rather at their command than mistress of herself. their avarice was less ruinous than their advice was pernicious to her; in fact, if, on account of the love she had for me, added to her good natural disposition, she was not quite their slave, she was enough so to prevent in a great measure the effect of the good maxims i endeavored to instill into her, and, notwithstanding all my efforts, to prevent our being united. thus was it, that notwithstanding a sincere and reciprocal attachment, in which i had lavished all the tenderness of my heart, the void in that heart was never completely filled. children, by whom this effect should have been produced, were brought into the world, but these only made things worse. i trembled at the thought of intrusting them to a family ill brought up, to be still worse educated. the risk of the education of the foundling hospital was much less. this reason for the resolution i took, much stronger than all those i stated in my letter to madam de francueil, was, however, the only one with which i dared not make her acquainted; i chose rather to appear less excusable than expose to reproach the family of a person i loved. but by the conduct of her wretched brother, notwithstanding all that can be said in his defense, it will be judged whether or not i ought to have exposed my children to an education similar to his. not having it in my power to taste in all its plenitude the charms of that intimate connection of which i felt the want, i sought for substitutes which did not fill up the void, yet they made it less sensible. not having a friend entirely devoted to me, i wanted others, whose impulse should overcome my indolence; for this reason i cultivated and strengthened my connections with diderot and the abbe de condillac, formed with grimm a new one still more intimate, till at length, by the unfortunate discourse, of which i have related some particulars, i unexpectedly found myself thrown back into a literary circle which i thought i had quitted forever. my first steps conducted me by a new path to another intellectual world, the simple and noble economy of which i cannot contemplate without enthusiasm. i reflected so much on the subject that i soon saw nothing but error and folly in the doctrine of our sages, and oppression and misery in our social order. in the illusion of my foolish pride, i thought myself capable of destroying all imposture; and thinking that, to make myself listened to, it was necessary my conduct should agree with my principles, i adopted the singular manner of life which i have not been permitted to continue, the example of which my pretended friends have never forgiven me, which at first made me ridiculous, and would at length have rendered me respectable, had it been possible for me to persevere. until then i had been good; from that moment i became virtuous, or at least infatuated with virtue. this infatuation had begun in my head, but afterwards passed into my heart. the most noble pride there took root amongst the ruins of extirpated vanity. i affected nothing; i became what i appeared to be, and during four years at least, whilst this effervescence continued at its greatest height, there is nothing great and good that can enter the heart of man, of which i was not capable between heaven and myself. hence flowed my sudden eloquence; hence, in my first writings, that fire really celestial, which consumed me, and whence during forty years not a single spark had escaped, because it was not yet lighted up. i was really transformed; my friends and acquaintance scarcely knew me. i was no longer that timid, and rather bashful than modest man, who neither dared to present himself, nor utter a word; whom a single pleasantry disconcerted, and whose face was covered with a blush the moment his eyes met those of a woman. i became bold, haughty, intrepid, with a confidence the more firm, as it was simple, and resided in my soul rather than in my manner. the contempt with which my profound meditations had inspired me for the manners, maxims and prejudices of the age in which i lived, rendered me proof against the raillery of those by whom they were possessed, and i crushed their little pleasantries with a sentence, as i would have crushed an insect with my fingers. what a change! all paris repeated the severe and acute sarcasms of the same man who, two years before, and ten years afterwards, knew not how to find what he had to say, nor the word he ought to employ. let the situation in the world the most contrary to my natural disposition be sought after, and this will be found. let one of the short moments of my life in which i became another man, and ceased to be myself, be recollected, this also will be found in the time of which i speak; but, instead of continuing only six days, or six weeks, it lasted almost six years, and would perhaps still continue, but for the particular circumstances which caused it to cease, and restored me to nature, above which i had wished to soar. the beginning of this change took place as soon as i had quitted paris, and the sight of the vices of that city no longer kept up the indignation with which it had inspired me. i no sooner had lost sight of men than i ceased to despise them, and once removed from those who designed me evil, my hatred against them no longer existed. my heart, little fitted for hatred, pitied their misery, and even their wickedness. this situation, more pleasing but less sublime, soon allayed the ardent enthusiasm by which i had so long been transported; and i insensibly, almost to myself even, again became fearful, complaisant and timid; in a word, the same jean-jacques i before had been. had this resolution gone no further than restoring me to myself, all would have been well; but unfortunately it rapidly carried me away to the other extreme. from that moment my mind in agitation passed the line of repose, and its oscillations, continually renewed, have never permitted it to remain here. i must enter into some detail of this second revolution; terrible and fatal era, of a fate unparalleled amongst mortals. we were but three persons in our retirement; it was therefore natural our intimacy should be increased by leisure and solitude. this was the case between theresa and myself. we passed in conversations in the shade the most charming and delightful hours, more so than any i had hitherto enjoyed. she seemed to taste of this sweet intercourse more than i had until then observed her to do; she opened her heart, and communicated to me, relative to her mother and family, things she had had resolution enough to conceal for a great length of time. both had received from madam dupin numerous presents, made them on my account, and mostly for me, but which the cunning old woman, to prevent my being angry, had appropriated to her own use and that of her other children, without suffering theresa to have the least share, strongly forbidding her to say a word to me of the matter: an order the poor girl had obeyed with an incredible exactness. but another thing which surprised me more than this had done, was the discovery that besides the private conversations diderot and grimm had frequently had with both to endeavor to detach them from me, in which, by means of the resistance of theresa, they had not been able to succeed, they had afterwards had frequent conferences with the mother, the subject of which was a secret to the daughter. however, she knew little presents had been made, and that there were mysterious goings backward and forward, the motive of which was entirely unknown to her. when we left paris, madam le vasseur had long been in the habit of going to see grimm twice or thrice a month, and continuing with him for hours together, in conversation so secret that the servant was always sent out of the room. i judged this motive to be of the same nature with the project into which they had attempted to make the daughter enter, by promising to procure her and her mother, by means of madam d'epinay, a salt huckster's license, or a snuff-shop; in a word, by tempting her with the allurements of gain. they had been told that, as i was not in a situation to do anything for them, i could not, on their account, do anything for myself. as in all this i saw nothing but good intentions, i was not absolutely displeased with them for it. the mystery was the only thing which gave me pain, especially on the part of the old woman, who moreover daily became more parasitical and flattering towards me. this, however, did not prevent her from reproaching her daughter in private with telling me everything, and loving me too much, observing to her she was a fool and would at length be made a dupe. this woman possessed, to a supreme degree, the art of multiplying the presents made her, by concealing from one what she received from another, and from me what she received from all. i could have pardoned her avarice, but it was impossible i should forgive her dissimulation. what could she have to conceal from me whose happiness she knew principally consisted in that of herself and her daughter? what i had done for the daughter i had done for myself, but the services i rendered the mother merited on her part some acknowledgement. she ought, at least, to have thought herself obliged for them to her daughter, and to have loved me for the sake of her by whom i was already beloved. i had raised her from the lowest state of wretchedness; she received from my hands the means of subsistence, and was indebted to me for her acquaintance with the persons from whom she found means to reap considerable benefit. theresa had long supported her by her industry, and now maintained her with my bread. she owed everything to this daughter, for whom she had done nothing, and her other children, to whom she had given marriage portions, and on whose account she had ruined herself, far from giving her the least aid, devoured her substance and mine. i thought that in such a situation she ought to consider me as her only friend and most sure protector, and that, far from making of my own affairs a secret to me, and conspiring against me in my house, it was her duty faithfully to acquaint me with everything in which i was interested, when this came to her knowledge before it did to mine. in what light, therefore, could i consider her false and mysterious conduct? what could i think of the sentiments with which she endeavored to inspire her daughter? what monstrous ingratitude was hers, to endeavor to instill it into her from whom i expected my greatest consolation? these reflections at length alienated my affections from this woman, and to such a degree that i could no longer look upon her but with contempt. i nevertheless continued to treat with respect the mother of the friend of my bosom, and in everything to show her almost the reverence of a son; but i must confess i could not remain long with her without pain, and that i never knew how to bear constraint. this is another short moment of my life, in which i approached near to happiness without being able to attain it, and this by no fault of my own. had the mother been of a good disposition we all three should have been happy to the end of our days; the longest liver only would have been to be pitied. instead of which, the reader will see the course things took, and judge whether or not it was in my power to change it. madam de vasseur, who perceived i had got more full possession of the heart of theresa, and that she had lost ground with her, endeavored to regain it; and, instead of striving to restore herself to my good opinion by the mediation of her daughter, attempted to alienate her affections from me. one of the means she employed was to call her family to her aid. i had begged theresa not to invite any of her relations to the hermitage, and she had promised me she would not. these were sent for in my absence, without consulting her, and she was afterwards prevailed upon to promise not to say anything of the matter. after the first step was taken all the rest were easy. when once we make a secret of anything to the person we love, we soon make little scruple of doing it in everything; the moment i was at the chevrette the hermitage was full of people who sufficiently amused themselves. a mother has always great power over a daughter of a mild disposition; yet notwithstanding all the old woman could do, she was never able to prevail upon theresa to enter into her views, nor to persuade her to join in the league against me. for her part, she resolved upon doing it forever, and seeing on one side her daughter and myself, who were in a situation to live, and that was all; on the other, diderot, grimm, d'holbach and madam d'epinay, who promised great things, and gave some little ones, she could not conceive it was possible to be in the wrong with the wife of a farmer-general and a baron. had i been more clear sighted, i should from this moment have perceived i nourished a serpent in my bosom. but my blind confidence, which nothing had yet diminished, was such that i could not imagine she wished to injure the person she ought to love. though i saw numerous conspiracies formed on every side, all i complain of was the tyranny of persons who called themselves my friends, and who, as it seemed, would force me to be happy in the manner they should point out, and not in that i had chosen for myself. although theresa refused to join in the confederacy with her mother, she afterwards kept her secret. for this her motive was commendable, although i will not determine whether she did it well or ill. two women, who have secrets between them, love to prattle together; this attracted them towards each other, and theresa, by dividing herself, sometimes let me feet i was alone; for i could no tonger consider as a society that which we all three formed. i now felt the neglect i had been guilty of during the first years of our connection, in not taking advantage of the docility with which her love inspired her, to improve her talents and give her knowledge, which, by more closely connecting us in our retirement would agreeably have filled up her time and my own, without once suffering us to perceive the length of a private conversation. not that this was ever exhausted between us, or that she seemed disgusted with our walks; but we had not a sufficient number of ideas common to both to make ourselves a great store, and we could not incessantly talk of our future projects which were confined to those of enjoying the pleasure of life. the objects around us inspired me with reflections beyond the reach of her comprehension. an attachment of twelve years' standing had no longer need of words: we were too well acquainted with each other to have any new knowledge to acquire in that respect. the resource of puns, jests, gossiping and scandal, was all that remained. in solitude especially is it, that the advantage of living with a person who knows how to think is particularly felt. i wanted not this resource to amuse myself with her; but she would have stood in need of it to have always found amusement with me. the worst of all was our being obliged to hold our conversations when we could; her mother, who become importunate, obliged me to watch for opportunities to do it. i was under constraint in my own house: this is saying everything; the air of love was prejudicial to good friendship. we had an intimate intercourse without living in intimacy. the moment i thought i perceived that theresa sometimes sought for a pretext to elude the walks i proposed to her, i ceased to invite her to accompany me, without being displeased with her for not finding in them so much amusement as i did. pleasure is not a thing which depends upon the will. i was sure of her heart, and the possession of this was all i desired. as long as my pleasures were hers, i tasted of them with her; when this ceased to be the case i preferred her contentment to my own. in this manner it was that, half deceived in my expectation, leading a life after my own heart, in a residence i had chosen with a person who was dear to me, i at length found myself almost alone. what i still wanted prevented me from enjoying what i had. with respect to happiness and enjoyment, everything or nothing, was what was necessary to me. the reason of these observations will hereafter appear. at present i return to the thread of my narrative. i imagined that i possessed treasures in the manuscripts given me by the comte de saint-pierre. on examination i found they were a little more than the collection of the printed works of his uncle, with notes and corrections by his own hand, and a few other trifling fragments which had not yet been published. i confirmed myself by these moral writings in the idea i had conceived from some of his letters, shown me by madam de crequi, that he had more sense and ingenuity than at first i had imagined; but after a careful examination of his political works, i discerned nothing but superficial notions, and projects that were useful but impracticable, in consequence of the idea from which the author never could depart, that men conducted themselves by their sagacity rather than by their passions. the high opinion he had of the knowledge of the moderns had made him adopt this false principle of improved reason, the basis of all the institutions he proposed, and the source of his political sophisms. this extraordinary man, an honor to the age in which he lived, and to the human species, and perhaps the only person, since the creation of mankind, whose sole passion was that of reason, wandered in all his systems from error to error, by attempting to make men like himself, instead of taking them as they were, are, and will continue to be. he labored for imaginary beings, while he thought himself employed for the benefit of his contemporaries. all these things considered, i was rather embarrassed as to the form i should give to my work. to suffer the author's visions to pass was doing nothing useful; fully to refute them would have been unpolite, as the care of revising and publishing his manuscripts, which i had accepted, and even requested, had been intrusted to me; this trust had imposed on me the obligation of treating the author honorably. i at length concluded upon that which to me appeared the most decent, judicious, and useful. this was to give separately my own ideas and those of the author, and, for this purpose, to enter into his views, to set them in a new light, to amplify, extend them, and spare nothing which might contribute to present them in all their excellence. my work therefore was to be composed of two parts absolutely distinct: one, to explain, in the manner i have just mentioned, the different projects of the author; in the other, which was not to appear until the first had had its effect, i should have given my opinion upon these projects which i confess might sometimes have exposed them to the fate of the sonnet of the misanthrope. at the head of the whole was to have been the life of the author. for this i had collected some good materials, and which i flattered myself i should not spoil in making use of them. i had been a little acquainted with the abbe de saint-pierre, in his old age, and the veneration i had for his memory warranted to me, upon the whole, that the comte would not be dissatisfied with the manner in which i should have treated his relation. i made my first essay on the perpetual peace, the greatest and most elaborate of all the works which composed the collection; and before i abandoned myself to my reflections i had the courage to read everything the abbe had written upon this fine subject, without once suffering myself to be disgusted either by his slowness or repetitions. the public has seen the extract, on which account i have nothing to say upon the subject. my opinion of it has been printed, nor do i know that it ever will be; however, it was written at the same time the extract was made. from this i passed to the polysynodie, or plurality of councils; a work written under the regent to favor the administration he had chosen, and which caused the abbe de saint pierre to be expelled from the academy, on account of some remarks unfavorable to the preceding administration, and with which the duchess of maine and the cardinal de polignac were displeased. i completed this work as i did the former, with an extract and remarks; but i stopped here without intending to continue the undertaking which i ought never to have begun. the reflection which induced me to give it up naturally presents itself, and it was astonishing i had not made it sooner. most of the writings of the abbe de saint pierre were either observations, or contained observations, on some parts of the government of france, and several of these were of so free a nature, that it was happy for him he had made them with impunity. but in the offices of all the ministers of state the abbe de saint pierre had ever been considered as a kind of preacher rather than a real politician, and he was suffered to say what he pleased, because it appeared that nobody listened to him. had i procured him readers the case would have been different. he was a frenchman, and i was not one; and by repeating his censures, although in his own name. i exposed myself to be asked, rather rudely, but without injustice, what it was with which i meddled. happily before i proceeded any further, i perceived the hold i was about to give the government against me, and i immediately withdrew. i knew that, living alone in the midst of men more powerful than myself, i never could by any means whatever be sheltered from the injury they chose to do me. there was but one thing which depended upon my own efforts: this was, to observe such a line of conduct that whenever they chose to make me feel the weight of authority they could not do it without being unjust. the maxim which induced me to decline proceeding with the works of the abbe de saint pierre, has frequently made me give up projects i had much more at heart. people who are always ready to construe adversity into a crime, would be much surprised were they to know the pains i have taken, that during my misfortunes it might never with truth be said of me, thou hast well deserved them. after having given up the manuscript, i remained some time without determining upon the work which should succeed it, and this interval of inactivity was destructive, by permitting me to turn my reflections on myself, for want of another object to engage my attention. i had no project for the future which could amuse my imagination. it was not even possible to form any, as my situation was precisely that in which all my desires were united. i had not another to conceive, and yet there was a void in my heart. this state was the more cruel, as i saw no other that was to be preferred to it. i had fixed my most tender affections upon a person who made me a return of her own. i lived with her without constraint, and, so to speak, at discretion. notwithstanding this, a secret grief of mind never quitted me for a moment, either when she was present or absent. in possessing theresa, i still perceived she wanted something to her happiness; and the sole idea of my not being everything to her had such an effect upon my mind that she was next to nothing to me. i had friends of both sexes, to whom i was attached by the purest friendship and most perfect esteem; i depended upon a real return on their part, and a doubt of their sincerity never entered my mind; yet this friendship was more tormenting than agreeable to me, by their obstinate perseverance, and even by their affectation, in opposing my taste, inclinations, and manner of living; and this to such a degree, that the moment i seemed to desire a thing which interested myself only, and depended not upon them, they immediately joined their efforts to oblige me to renounce it. this continued desire to control me in all my wishes, the more unjust, as i did not so much as make myself acquainted with theirs, became so cruelly oppressive, that i never received one of their letters without feeling a certain terror as i opened it, and which was but too well justified by the contents. i thought being treated like a child by persons younger than myself, and who, of themselves, stood in great need of the advice they so prodigally bestowed on me was too much: "love me," said i to them, "as i love you, but, in every other respect, let my affairs be as indifferent to you, as yours are to me: this is all i ask." if they granted me one of these two requests, it was not the latter. i had a retired residence in a charming solitude, was master of my own house, and could live in it in the manner i thought proper, without being controlled by any person. this habitation imposed on me duties agreeable to discharge, but which were indispensable. my liberty was precarious. in a greater state of subjection than a person at the command of another, it was my duty to be so by inclination. when i arose in the morning, i never could say to myself, i will employ this day as i think proper. and, moreover, besides my being subject to obey the call of madam d'epinay, i was exposed to the still more disagreeable importunities of the public and chance comers. the distance i was at from paris did not prevent crowds of idlers, not knowing how to spend their time, from daily breaking in upon me, and, without the least scruple, freely disposing of mine. when i least expected visitors i was unmercifully assailed by them, and i seldom made a plan for the agreeable employment of the day that was not counteracted by the arrival of some stranger. in short, finding no real enjoyment in the midst of the pleasures i had been most desirous to obtain, i, by sudden mental transitions, returned in imagination to the serene days of my youth, and sometimes exclaimed with a sigh: "ah! this is not les charmettes!" the recollection of the different periods of my life led me to reflect upon that at which i was arrived, and i found i was already on the decline, a prey to painful disorders, and imagined i was approaching the end of my days without having tasted, in all its plenitude, scarcely any one of the pleasures after which my heart had so much thirsted, or having given scope to the lively sentiments i felt it had in reserve. i had not favored even that intoxicating voluptuousness with which my mind was richly stored, and which, for want of an object, was always compressed, and never exhaled but by signs. how was it possible that, with a mind naturally expansive, i, with whom to live was to love, should not hitherto have found a friend entirely devoted to me; a real friend: i who felt myself so capable of being such a friend to another? how can it be accounted for that with such warm affections, such combustible senses, and a heart wholly made up of love, i had not once, at least, felt its flame for a determinate object? tormented by the want of loving, without ever having been able to satisfy it, i perceived myself approaching the eve of old age, and hastening on to death without having lived. these melancholy but affecting recollections led me to others which, although accompanied with regret, were not wholly unsatisfactory. i thought something i had not yet received was still due to me from destiny. to what end was i born with exquisite faculties? to suffer them to remain unemployed? the sentiment of conscious merit, which made me consider myself as suffering injustice, was some kind of reparation, and caused me to shed tears which with pleasure i suffered to flow. these were my meditations during the finest season of the year, in the month of june, in cool shades, to the songs of the nightingale, and the warbling of brooks. everything concurred in plunging me into that too seducing state of indolence for which i was born, but from which my austere manner, proceeding from a long effervescence, should forever have delivered me. i unfortunately recollected the dinner of the chateau de toune, and my meeting with the two charming girls in the same season, in places much resembling that in which i then was. the remembrance of these circumstances, which the innocence that accompanied them rendered to me still more dear, brought several others of the nature to my recollection. i presently saw myself surrounded by all the objects which, in my youth, had given me emotion. mademoiselle galley, mademoiselle de graffenried, mademoiselle de breil, madam basile, madam de larnage, my pretty scholars, and even the bewitching zulietta, whom my heart could not forget. i found myself in the midst of a seraglio of houris of my old acquaintance, for whom the most lively inclination was not new to me. my blood became inflamed, my head turned, notwithstanding my hair was almost gray, and the grave citizen of geneva, the austere jean-jacques, at forty-five years of age, again became the fond shepherd. the intoxication, with which my mind was seized, although sudden and extravagant, was so strong and lasting, that, to enable me to recover from it, nothing less than the unforeseen and terrible crisis it brought on was necessary. this intoxication, to whatever degree it was carried, went not so far as to make me forget my age and situation, to flatter me that i could still inspire love, nor to make me attempt to communicate the devouring flame by which ever since my youth i had felt my heart in vain consumed. for this i did not hope; i did not even desire it. i knew the season of love was past; i knew too well in what contempt the ridiculous pretensions of superannuated gallants were held, ever to add one to the number, and i was not a man to become an impudent coxcomb in the decline of life, after having been so little such during the flower of my age. besides, as a friend to peace, i should have been apprehensive of domestic dissensions; and i too sincerely loved theresa to expose her to the mortification of seeing me entertain for others more lively sentiments than those with which she inspired me for herself. what step did i take upon this occasion? my reader will already have guessed it, if he has taken the trouble to pay the least attention to my narrative. the impossibility of attaining real beings threw me into the regions of chimera, and seeing nothing in existence worthy of my delirium, i sought food for it in the ideal world, which my imagination quickly peopled with beings after my own heart. this resource never came more apropos, nor was it ever so fertile. in my continual ecstasy i intoxicated my mind with the most delicious sentiments that ever entered the heart of man. entirely forgetting the human species, i formed to myself societies of perfect beings, whose virtues were as celestial as their beauty, tender and faithful friends, such as i never found here below. i became so fond of soaring in the empyrean, in the midst of the charming objects with which i was surrounded, that i thus passed hours and days without perceiving it; and, losing the remembrance of all other things, i scarcely had eaten a morsel in haste before i was impatient to make my escape and run to regain my groves. when ready to depart for the enchanted world, i saw arrive wretched mortals who came to detain me upon earth, i could neither conceal nor moderate my vexation; and no longer master of myself, i gave them so uncivil a reception, that it might justly be termed brutal. this tended to confirm my reputation as a misanthrope, from the very cause which, could the world have read my heart, should have acquired me one of a nature directly opposite. in the midst of my exaltation i was pulled down like a paper kite, and restored to my proper place by means of a smart attack of my disorder. i recurred to the only means that had before given me relief, and thus made a truce with my angelic amours; for besides that it seldom happens that a man is amorous when he suffers, my imagination, which is animated in the country and beneath the shade of trees, languishes and becomes extinguished in a chamber, and under the joists of a ceiling. i frequently regretted that there existed no dryads; it would certainly have been amongst these that i should have fixed my attachment. other domestic broils came at the same time to increase my chagrin. madam le vasseur, while making me the finest compliments in the world, alienated from me her daughter as much as she possibly could. i received letters from my late neighborhood, informing me that the good old lady had secretly contracted several debts in the name of theresa, to whom these became known, but of which she had never mentioned to me a word. the debts to be paid hurt me much less than the secret that had been made of them. how could she, from whom i had never had a secret, have one from me? is it possible to dissimulate with persons whom we love? the coterie holbachique, who found i never made a journey to paris, began seriously to be afraid i was happy and satisfied in the country, and madman enough to reside there. hence the cabals by which attempts were made to recall me indirectly to the city. diderot, who did not immediately wish to show himself, began by detaching from me de leyre, whom i had brought acquainted with him, and who received and transmitted to me the impressions diderot chose to give without suspecting to what end they were directed. everything seemed to concur in withdrawing me from my charming and mad reverie. i was not recovered from the late attack i had when i received the copy of the poem on the destruction of lisbon, which i imagined to be sent by the author. this made it necessary i should write to him and speak of his composition. i did so, and my letter was a long time afterwards printed without my consent, as i shall hereafter have occasion to remark. struck by seeing this poor man overwhelmed, if i may so speak, with prosperity and honor, bitterly exclaiming against the miseries of this life, and finding everything to be wrong, i formed the mad project of making him turn his attention to himself, and of proving to him that everything was right. voltaire, while he appeared to believe in god, never really believed in anything but the devil; since his pretended deity is a malicious being, who, according to him, had no pleasure but in evil. the glaring absurdity of this doctrine is particularly disgusting from a man enjoying the greatest prosperity; who, from the bosom of happiness, endeavors, by the frightful and cruel image of all the calamities from which he is exempt, to reduce his fellow creatures to despair. i, who had a better right than he to calculate and weigh all the evils of human life, impartially examined them, and proved to him that of all possible evils there was not one to be attributed to providence, and which had not its source rather in the abusive use man made of his faculties than in nature. i treated him, in this letter, with the greatest respect and delicacy possible. yet, knowing his self-love to be extremely irritable, i did not send the letter immediately to himself, but to doctor tronchin, his physician and friend, with full power either to give it him or destroy it. voltaire informed me in a few lines that being ill, having likewise the care of a sick person, he postponed his answer until some future day, and said not a word upon the subject. tronchin, when he sent me the letter, inclosed it in another, in which he expressed but very little esteem for the person from whom he received it. i have never published, nor even shown, either of these two letters, not liking to make a parade of such little triumphs; but the originals are in my collections. since that time voltaire has published the answer he promised me, but which i never received. this is the novel of candide, of which i cannot speak because i have not read it. all these interruptions ought to have cured me of my fantastic amours, and they were perhaps the means offered me by heaven to prevent their destructive consequences; but my evil genius prevailed, and i had scarcely begun to go out before my heart, my head, and my feet returned to the same paths. i say the same in certain respects; for my ideas, rather less exalted, remained this time upon earth, but yet were busied in making so exquisite a choice of all that was to be found there amiable of every kind, that it was not much less chimerical than the imaginary world i had abandoned. i figured to myself love and friendship, the two idols of my heart, under the most ravishing images. i amused myself in adorning them with all the charms of the sex i had always adored. i imagined two female friends rather than two of my own sex, because, although the example be more rare, it is also more amiable. i endowed them with different characters, but analogous to their connection, with two faces, not perfectly beautiful, but according to my taste, and animated with benevolence and sensibility. i made one brown and the other fair, one lively and the other languishing, one wise and the other weak, but of so amiable a weakness that it seemed to add a charm to virtue. i gave to one of the two a lover, of whom the other was the tender friend, and even something more, but i did not admit either rivalry, quarrels, or jealousy: because every painful sentiment is painful to me to imagine, and i was unwilling to tarnish this delightful picture by anything which was degrading to nature. smitten with my two charming models, i drew my own portrait in the lover and the friend, as much as it was possible to do it; but i made him young and amiable, giving him, at the same time, the virtues and the defects which i felt in myself. that i might place my characters in a residence proper for them, i successively passed in review the most beautiful places i had seen in my travels. but i found no grove sufficiently delightful, no landscape that pleased me. the valleys of thessaly would have satisfied me had i but once had a sight of them; but my imagination, fatigued with invention, wished for some real place which might serve it as a point to rest upon, and create in me an illusion with respect to the real existence of the inhabitants i intended to place there. i thought a good while upon the borromean islands, the delightful prospect of which had transported me, but i found in them too much art and ornament for my lovers. i however wanted a lake, and i concluded by making choice of that about which my heart has never ceased to wander. i fixed myself upon that part of the banks of this lake where my wishes have long since placed my residence in the imaginary happiness to which fate has confined me. the native place of my poor mamma had still for me a charm. the contrast of the situations, the richness and variety of the sites, the magnificence, the majesty of the whole, which ravishes the senses, affects the heart, and elevates the mind, determined me to give it the preference, and i placed my young pupils at vervey. this is what i imagined at the first sketch; the rest was not added until afterwards. i for a long time confined myself to this vague plan, because it was sufficient to fill my imagination with agreeable objects, and my heart with sentiments in which it delighted. these fictions, by frequently presenting themselves, at length gained a consistence, and took in my mind a determined form. i then had an inclination to express upon paper some of the situations fancy presented to me, and, recollecting everything i had felt during my youth, thus, in some measure, gave an object to that desire of loving, which i had never been able to satisfy, and by which i felt myself consumed. i first wrote a few incoherent letters, and when i afterwards wished to give them connection, i frequently found a difficulty in doing it. what is scarcely credible, although most strictly true, is my having written the first two parts almost wholly in this manner, without having any plan formed, and not foreseeing i should one day be tempted to make it a regular work. for this reason the two parts afterwards formed of materials not prepared for the place in which they are disposed, are full of unmeaning expressions not found in the others. in the midst of my reveries i had a visit from madam d'houdetot, the first she had ever made me, but which unfortunately was not the last, as will hereafter appear. the comtesse d'houdetot was the daughter of the late m. de bellegarde, a farmer-general, sister to m. d'epinay, and messieurs de lalive and de la briche, both of whom have since been introductors to ambassadors. i have spoken of the acquaintance i made with her before she was married: since that event i had not seen her, except at the fetes of la chevrette, with madam d'epinay, her sister-in-law. having frequently passed several days with her, both at la chevrette and epinay, i always thought her amiable, and that she seemed to be my well-wisher. she was fond of walking with me; we were both good walkers, and the conversation between us was inexhaustible. however, i never went to see her in paris, although she had several times requested and solicited me to do it. her connections with m. de st. lambert, with whom i began to be intimate, rendered her more interesting to me, and it was to bring me some account of that friend who was, i believe, then at mahon, that she came to see me at the hermitage. this visit had something of the appearance of the beginning of a romance. she lost her way. her coachman, quitting the road, which turned to the right, attempted to cross straight over from the mill of clairveaux to the hermitage: her carriage struck in a quagmire in the bottom of the valley, and she got out and walked the rest of the road. her delicate shoes were soon worn through; she sank into the dirt, her servants had the greatest difficulty in extricating her, and she at length arrived at the hermitage in boots, making the place resound with her laughter, in which i most heartily joined. she had to change everything. theresa provided her with what was necessary, and i prevailed upon her to forget her dignity and partake of a rustic coalition, with which she seemed highly satisfied. it was late, and her stay was short; but the interview was so mirthful that it pleased her, and she seemed disposed to return. she did not however put this project into execution until the next year: but, alas! the delay was not favorable to me in anything. i passed the autumn in an employment no person would suspect me of undertaking: this was guarding the fruit of m. d'epinay. the hermitage was the reservoir of the waters of the park of the chevrette; there was a garden walled round and planted with espaliers and other trees, which produced m. d'epinay more fruit than his kitchen-garden at the chevrette, although three-fourths of it were stolen from him. that i might not be a guest entirely useless, i took upon myself the direction of the garden and the inspection of the conduct of the gardener. everything went on well until the fruit season, but as this became ripe, i observed that it disappeared without knowing in what manner it was disposed of. the gardener assured me it was the dormice which ate it all. i destroyed a great number of these animals, notwithstanding which the fruit still diminished. i watched the gardener's motions so narrowly, that i found he was the great dormouse. he lodged at montmorency, whence he came in the night with his wife and children to take away the fruit he had concealed in the daytime, and which he sold in the market at paris as publicly as if he had brought it from a garden of his own. this wretch whom i loaded with kindness, whose children were clothed by theresa, and whose father, who was a beggar, i almost supported, robbed us with as much ease as effrontery, not one of the three being sufficiently vigilant to prevent him: and one night he emptied my cellar. whilst he seemed to address himself to me only i suffered everything, but being desirous of giving an account of the fruit, i was obliged to declare by whom a great part of it had been stolen. madam d'epinay desired me to pay and discharge him, and look out for another; i did so. as this rascal rambled about the hermitage in the night, armed with a thick club staff with an iron ferrule, and accompanied by other villains like himself, to relieve the governesses from their fears, i made his successor sleep in the house with us; and this not being sufficient to remove their apprehensions, i sent to ask m. d'epinay for a musket, which i kept in the chamber of the gardener, with a charge not to make use of it except an attempt was made to break open the door or scale the walls of the garden, and to fire nothing but powder, meaning only to frighten the thieves. this was certainly the least precaution a man indisposed could take for the common safety of himself and family, having to pass the winter in the midst of a wood, with two timid women. i also procured a little dog to serve as a sentinel. de leyre coming to see me about this time, i related to him my situation, and we laughed together at my military apparatus. at his return to paris he wished to amuse diderot with the story, and by this means the coterie d'holbachique learned that i was seriously resolved to pass the winter at the hermitage. this perseverance, of which they had not imagined me to be capable, disconcerted them, and, until they could think of some other means of making my residence disagreeable to me, they sent back, by means of diderot, the same de leyre, who, though at first he had thought my precautions quite natural, now pretended to discover that they were inconsistent with my principles, and styled them more than ridiculous in his letters, in which he overwhelmed me with pleasantries sufficiently bitter and satirical to offend me had i been the least disposed to take offense. but at that time being full of tender and affectionate sentiments, and not suspectible of any other, i perceived in his biting sarcasms nothing more than a jest, and believed him only jocose when others would have thought him mad. by my care and vigilance i guarded the garden so well, that, although there had been but little fruit that year the produce was triple that of the preceding years; it is true, i spared no pains to preserve it, and i went so far as to escort what i sent to the chevrette and to epinay, and to carry baskets of it myself. the "aunt" and i carried one of these, which was so heavy that we were obliged to rest at every dozen steps, and when we arrived with it we were quite wet with perspiration. as soon as the bad season began to confine me to the house, i wished to return to my indolent amusements, but this i found impossible. i had everywhere two charming female friends before my eyes, their friend, everything by which they were surrounded, the country they inhabited, and the objects created or embellished for them by my imagination. i was no longer myself for a moment, my delirium never left me. after many useless efforts to banish all fictions from my mind, they at length seduced me, and my future endeavors were confined to giving them order and coherence, for the purpose of converting them into a species of novel. what embarrassed me most was, that i had contradicted myself so openly and fully. after the severe principles i had just so publicly asserted, after the austere maxims i had so loudly preached, and my violent invectives against books, which breathed nothing but effeminacy and love, could anything be less expected or more extraordinary, than to see me, with my own hand, write my name in the list of authors of those books, i had so severely censured? i felt this incoherence in all its extent. i reproached myself with it, i blushed at it and was vexed; but all this could not bring me back to reason. completely overcome, i was at all risks obliged to submit, and to resolve to brave the what will the world say of it? except only deliberating afterwards whether or not i should show my work, for i did not yet suppose should ever determine to publish it. this resolution taken, i entirely abandoned myself to my reveries, and, by frequently resolving these in my mind, formed with them the kind of plan of which the execution has been seen. this was certainly the greatest advantage that could be drawn from my follies; the love of good which has never once been effaced from my heart, turned them towards useful objects, the moral of which might have produced its good effects. my voluptuous descriptions would have lost all their graces, had they been devoid of the coloring of innocence. a weak girl is an object of pity, whom love may render interesting, and who frequently is not therefore the less amiable; but who can see without indignation the manners of the age; and what is more disgusting than the pride of an unchaste wife, who, openly treading under foot every duty, pretends that her husband ought to be grateful for her unwillingness to suffer herself to be taken in the fact? perfect beings are not in nature, and their examples are not near enough to us. but whoever says that the description of a young person born with good dispositions, and a heart equally tender and virtuous, who suffers herself, when a girl, to be overcome by love, and when a woman, has resolution enough to conquer in her turn, is upon the whole scandalous and useless, is a liar and a hypocrite; hearken not to him. besides this object of morality and conjugal chastity which is radically connected with all social order, i had in view one more secret in behalf of concord and public peace, a greater, and perhaps more important object in itself, at least for the moment for which it was created. the storm brought on by the encyclopedie, far from being appeased, was at this time at its height. two parties exasperated against each other to the last degree of fury soon resembled enraged wolves, set on for their mutual destruction, rather than christians and philosophers, who had a reciprocal wish to enlighten and convince each other, and lead their brethren to the way of truth. perhaps nothing more was wanting to each party than a few turbulent chiefs, who possessed a little power, to make this quarrel terminate in a civil war; and god only knows what a civil war of religion founded on each side upon the most cruel intolerance would have produced. naturally an enemy to all spirit of party, i had freely spoken severe truths to each, of which they had not listened. i thought of another expedient, which, in my simplicity, appeared to me admirable: this was to abate their reciprocal hatred by destroying their prejudices, and showing to each party the virtue and merit which in the other was worthy of public esteem and respect. this project, little remarkable for its wisdom, which supported sincerity in mankind, and whereby i fell into the error with which i reproached the abbe de saint-pierre, had the success that was to be expected from it: it drew together and united the parties for no other purpose than that of crushing the author. until experience made me discover my folly, i gave my attention to it with a zeal worthy of the motive by which i was inspired; and i imagined the two characters of wolmar and julia in an ecstasy, which made me hope to render them both amiable, and, what is still more, by means of each other. satisfied with having made a rough sketch of my plan, i returned to the situations in detail, which i had marked out; and from the arrangement i gave them resulted the first two parts of the eloisa, which i finished during the winter with inexpressible pleasure, procuring gilt paper to receive a fair copy of them, azure and silver powder to dry the writing, and blue narrow ribbon to tack my sheets together; in a word, i thought nothing sufficiently elegant and delicate for my two charming girls, of whom, like another pygmalion, i became madly enamoured. every evening, by the fireside, i read the two parts to the governesses. the daughter, without saying a word, was like myself moved to tenderness, and we mingled our sighs; her mother, finding there were no compliments, understood nothing of the matter, remained unmoved, and at the intervals when i was silent always repeated: "sir, that is very fine." madam d'epinay, uneasy at my being alone, in winter, in a solitary house, in the midst of woods, often sent to inquire after my health. i never had such real proofs of her friendship for me, to which mine never more fully answered. it would be wrong in me were not i, among these proofs, to make special mention of her portrait, which she sent me, at the same time requesting instructions from me in what manner she might have mine, painted by la tour, and which had been shown at the exhibition. i ought equally to speak of another proof of her attention to me, which, although it be laughable, is a feature in the history of my character, on account of the impression received from it. one day when it froze to an extreme degree, in opening a packet she had sent me of several things i had desired her to purchase for me, i found a little under-petticoat of english flannel, which she told me she had worn, and desired i would make of it an under-waistcoat. this care, more than friendly, appeared to me so tender, and as if she had stripped herself to clothe me, that in my emotion i repeatedly kissed, shedding tears at the same time, both the note and the petticoat. theresa thought me mad. it is singular that of all the marks of friendship madam d'epinay ever showed me this touched me the most, and that ever since our rupture i have never recollected it without being very sensibly affected. i for a long time preserved her little note, and it would still have been in my possession had not it shared the fate of my other notes received at the same period. although my disorder then gave me but little respite in winter, and a part of the interval was employed in seeking relief from pain, this was still upon the whole the season which since my residence in france i had passed with most pleasure and tranquillity. during four or five months, whilst the bad weather sheltered me from the interruptions of importunate visits, i tasted to a greater degree than i had ever yet or have since done, of that equally simple and independent life, the enjoyment of which still made it more desirable to me; without any other company than the two governesses in reality, and the two female cousins in idea. it was then especially that i daily congratulated myself upon the resolution i had had the good sense to take, unmindful of the clamors of my friends, who were vexed at seeing me delivered from their tyranny; and when i heard of the attempt of a madman, when de leyre and madam d'epinay spoke to me in letters of the trouble and agitation which reigned in paris, how thankful was i to heaven for having placed me at a distance from all such spectacles of horror and guilt. these would have continued and increased the bilious humor which the sight of public disorders had given me; whilst seeing nothing around me in my retirement but gay and pleasing objects my heart was wholly abandoned to sentiments which were amiable. i remark here with pleasure the course of the last peaceful moments that were left me. the spring succeeding to this winter, which had been so calm, developed the germ of the misfortunes i have yet to describe; in the tissue of which, a like interval, wherein i had leisure to respite, will not be found. i think however, i recollect, that during this interval of peace, and in the bosom of my solitude, i was not quite undisturbed by the holbachiens. diderot stirred me up some strife, and i am much deceived if it was not in the course of this winter that the fils naturel,* of which i shall soon have occasion to speak, made its appearance. independently of the causes which left me but few papers relative to that period, those even which i have been able to preserve are not very exact with respect to dates. diderot never dated his letters. madam d'epinay and madam d'houdetot seldom dated theirs, except the day of the week, and de leyre mostly confined himself to the same rules. when i was desirous of putting these letters in order i was obliged to supply what was wanting by guessing at dates, so uncertain that i cannot depend upon them. unable therefore to fix with certainty the beginning of these quarrels, i prefer relating in one subsequent article everything i can recollect concerning them. * natural son; a comedy, by diderot. the return of spring had increased my amorous delirium, and in my melancholy, occasioned by the excess of my transports, i had composed for the last parts of eloisa several letters, wherein evident marks of the rapture in which i wrote them are found. amongst others i may quote those from the elysium, and the excursion upon the lake, which, if my memory does not deceive me, are at the end of the fourth part. whoever, in reading these letters, does not feel his heart soften and melt into the tenderness by which they were dictated, ought to lay down the book: nature has refused him the means of judging of sentiment. precisely at the same time i received a second unforeseen visit from madam d'houdetot, in the absence of her husband, who was captain of the gendarmarie, and of her lover, who was also in the service. she had come to eaubonne, in the middle of the valley of montmorency, where she had taken a pretty house, from thence she made a new excursion to the hermitage. she came on horseback, and dressed in men's clothes. although i am not very fond of this kind of masquerade, i was struck with the romantic appearance she made, and, for once, it was with love. as this was the first and only time in all my life, the consequence of which will forever render it terrible to my remembrance, i must take the permission to enter into some particulars on the subject. the countess d'houdetot was nearly thirty years of age, and not handsome; her face was marked with the smallpox, her complexion coarse, she was short-sighted, and her eyes were rather round; but she had fine long black hair, which hung down in natural curls below her waist; her figure was agreeable, and she was at once both awkward and graceful in her motions; her wit was natural and pleasing; to this gayety, heedlessness and ingenuousness were perfectly suited: she abounded in charming sallies, after which she so little sought, that they sometimes escaped her lips in spite of herself. she possessed several agreeable talents, played the harpsichord, danced well, and wrote pleasing poetry. her character was angelicthis was founded upon a sweetness of mind, and except prudence and fortitude, contained in it every virtue. she was besides so much to be depended upon in all intercourse, so faithful in society, even her enemies were not under the necessity of concealing from her their secrets. i mean by her enemies the men, or rather the women, by whom she was not beloved; for as to herself she had not a heart capable of hatred, and i am of opinion this conformity with mine greatly contributed towards inspiring me with a passion for her. in confidence of the most intimate friendship, i never heard her speak ill of persons who were absent, nor even of her sister-in-law. she could neither conceal her thoughts for any one, nor disguise any of her sentiments, and i am persuaded she spoke of her lover to her husband, as she spoke of him to her friends and acquaintance, and to everybody without distinction of persons. what proved, beyond all manner of doubt, the purity and sincerity of her nature was, that subject to very extraordinary absences of mind, and the most laughable inconsiderateness, she was often guilty of some very imprudent ones with respect to herself, but never in the least offensive to any person whatsoever. she had been married very young and against her inclinations to the comte d'houdetot, a man of fashion, and a good officer; but a man who loved play and chicane, who was not very amiable, and whom she never loved. she found in m. de saint lambert all the merit of her husband, with more agreeable qualities of mind, joined with virtue and talents. if anything in the manners of the age can be pardoned, it is an attachment which duration renders more pure, to which its effects do honor, and which becomes cemented by reciprocal esteem. it was a little from inclination, as i am disposed to think, but much more to please saint lambert, that she came to see me. he had requested her to do it, and there was reason to believe the friendship which began to be established between us would render this society agreeable to all three. she knew i was acquainted with their connection, and as she could speak to me without restraint, it was natural she should find my conversation agreeable. she came; i saw her; i was intoxicated with love without an object; this intoxication fascinated my eyes; the object fixed itself upon her. i saw my julia in madam d'houdetot, and i soon saw nothing but madam d'houdetot, but with all the perfections with which i had just adorned the idol of my heart. to complete my delirium she spoke to me of saint lambert with a fondness of a passionate lover. contagious force of love! while listening to her, and finding myself near her, i was seized with a delicious trembling which i had never before experienced when near to any person whatsoever. she spoke, and i felt myself affected; i thought i was nothing more than interested by her sentiments, when i perceived i possessed those which were similar; i drank freely of the poisoned cup, of which i yet tasted nothing more than the sweetness. finally, imperceptibly to us both, she inspired me for herself with all she expressed for her lover. alas! it was very late in life, and cruel was it to consume with a passion not less violent than unfortunate for a woman whose heart was already in the possession of another. notwithstanding the extraordinary emotions i had felt when near to her, i did not at first perceive what had happened to me; it was not until after her departure that, wishing to think of julia, i was struck with surprise at being unable to think of anything but madam d'houdetot. then was it my eyes were opened: i felt my misfortune, and lamented what had happened, but i did not foresee the consequences. i hesitated a long time on the manner in which i should conduct myself towards her, as if real love left behind it sufficient reason to deliberate and act accordingly. i had not yet determined upon this when she unexpectedly returned and found me unprovided. it was this time, perfectly acquainted with my situation, shame, the companion of evil, rendered me dumb, and made me tremble in her presence; i neither dared to open my mouth nor raise my eyes; i was in an inexpressible confusion which it was impossible she should not perceive. i resolved to confess to her my troubled state of mind, and left her to guess the cause whence it proceeded: this was telling her in terms sufficiently clear. had i been young and amiable, and madam d'houdetot, afterwards weak, i should here blame her conduct; but this was not the case, and i am obliged to applaud and admire it. the resolution she took was equally prudent and generous. she could not suddenly break with me without giving her reasons for it to saint lambert, who himself had desired her to come and see me; this would have exposed two friends to a rupture, and perhaps a public one, which she wished to avoid. she had for me esteem and good wishes; she pitied my folly without encouraging it, and endeavored to restore me to reason. she was glad to preserve to her lover and herself a friend for whom she had some respect; and she spoke of nothing with more pleasure than the intimate and agreeable society we might form between us three the moment i should become reasonable. she did not always confine herself to these friendly exhortations, and, in case of need, did not spare me more severe reproaches, which i had richly deserved. i spared myself still less: the moment i was alone i began to recover; i was more calm after my declarationlove, known to the person by whom it is inspired, becomes more supportable. the forcible manner in which i approached myself with mine ought to have cured me of it had the thing been possible. what powerful motives did i not call to my aid to stifle it? my morals, sentiments and principles; the shame, the treachery and crime, of abusing what was confided to friendship, and the ridiculousness of burning, at my age, with the most extravagant passion for an object whose heart was pre-engaged, and who could neither make me a return, nor least hope; moreover with a passion which, far from having anything to gain by constancy, daily became less sufferable. we would imagine that the last consideration which ought to have added weight to all the others, was that whereby i eluded them! what scruple, thought i, ought i to make of a folly prejudicial to nobody but myself? am i then a young man of whom madam d'houdetot ought to be afraid? would not it be said by my presumptive remorse that, by my gallantry, manner and dress, i was going to seduce her? poor jean-jacques, love on at thy ease, in all safety of conscience, and be not afraid that thy sighs will be prejudicial to saint lambert. it has been seen that i never was a coxcomb, not even in my youth. the manner of thinking, of which i have spoken, was according to my turn of mind, it flattered my passion; this was sufficient to induce me to abandon myself to it without reserve, and to laugh even at the impertinent scruple i thought i had made from vanity, rather than from reason. this is a great lesson for virtuous minds, which vice never attacks openly; it finds means to surprise them by masking itself with sophisms, and not unfrequently with a virtue. guilty without remorse, i soon became so without measure; and i entreat it may be observed in what manner my passion followed my nature, at length to plunge me into an abyss. in the first place, it assumed an air of humility to encourage me; and to render me intrepid it carried this humility even to mistrust. madam d'houdetot incessantly putting me in mind of my duty, without once for a single moment flattering my folly, treated me with the greatest mildness, and remained with me upon the footing of the most tender friendship. this friendship would, i protest, have satisfied my wishes, had i thought it sincere; but finding it too strong to be real, i took it into my head that love, so ill-suited to my age and appearance, had rendered me contemptible in the eyes of madam d'houdetot; that this young mad creature only wished to divert herself with me and my superannuated passion; that she had communicated this to saint-lambert; and that the indignation caused by my breach of friendship, having made her lover enter into her views, they were agreed to turn my head and then to laugh at me. this folly, which at twenty-six years of age, had made me guilty of some extravagant behavior to madam de larnage, whom i did not know, would have been pardonable in me at forty-five with madam d'houdetot had not i known that she and her lover were persons of too much uprightness to indulge themselves in such a barbarous amusement. madam d'houdetot continued her visits, which i delayed not to return. she, as well as myself, was fond of walking, and we took long walks in an enchanting country. satisfied with loving and daring to say i loved, i should have been in the most agreeable situation had not my extravagance spoiled all the charm of it. she, at first, could not comprehend the foolish pettishness with which i received her attentions; but my heart, incapable of concealing what passed in it, did not long leave her ignorant of my suspicions; she endeavored to laugh at them, but this expedient did not succeed; transports of rage would have been the consequence, and she changed her tone. her compassionate gentleness was invincible; she made me reproaches, which penetrated my heart; she expressed an inquietude at my unjust fears, of which i took advantage. i required proofs of her being in earnest. she perceived there was no other means of relieving me from my apprehensions. i became pressing: the step was delicate. it is astonishing, and perhaps without example, that a woman having suffered herself to be brought to hesitate should have got herself off so well. she refused me nothing the most tender friendship could grant; yet she granted me nothing that rendered her unfaithful, and i had the mortification to see that the disorder into which her most trifling favors had thrown all my senses had not the least affect upon hers. i have somewhere said, that nothing should be granted to the senses, when we wish to refuse them anything. to prove how false this maxim was relative to madam d'houdetot and how far she was right to depend upon her own strength of mind, it would be necessary to enter into the detail of our long and frequent conversations, and follow them, in all, their liveliness, during the four months we passed together in an intimacy almost without example between two friends of different sexes who contain themselves within the bounds which we never exceeded. ah! if i had lived so long without feeling the power of real love, my heart and senses abundantly paid the arrears. what, therefore, are the transports we feel with the object of our affections by whom we are beloved, since the passions of which my idol did not partake inspired such as i felt? but i am wrong in saying madam d'houdetot did not partake of the passion of love; that which i felt was in some measure confined to myself; yet love was equal on both sides, but not reciprocal. we were both intoxicated with the passion, she for her lover, and i for herself; our sighs and delicious tears were mingled together. tender confidants of the secrets of each other, there was so great a similarity in our sentiments that it was impossible they should not find some common point of union. in the midst of this delicious intoxication, she never forgot herself for a moment, and i solemnly protest that, if ever, led away by my senses, i have attempted to render her unfaithful, i was never really desirous of succeeding. the vehemence itself of my passion restrained it within bounds. the duty of self-denial had elevated my mind. the luster of every virtue adorned in my eyes the idol of my heart; to have soiled their divine image would have been to destroy it. i might have committed the crime; it has been a hundred times committed in my heart; but to dishonor my sophia! ah! was this ever possible? no! i have told her a hundred times it was not. had i had it in my power to satisfy my desires, had she consented to commit herself to my discretion, i should, except in a few moments of delirium, have refused to be happy at the price of her honor. i loved her too well to wish to possess her. the distance from the hermitage to eaubonne is almost a league; in my frequent excursions to it i have sometimes slept there. one evening after having supped tete-a-tete we went to walk in the garden by a fine moonlight. at the bottom of the garden is a considerable copse, through which we passed on our way to a pretty grove ornamented with a cascade, of which i had given her the idea, and she had procured it to be executed accordingly. eternal remembrance of innocence and enjoyment! it was in this grove that, seated by her side upon a seat of turf under an acacia in full bloom, i found for the emotions of my heart a language worthy of them. it was the first and only time of my life; but i was sublime: if everything amiable and seducing with which the most tender and ardent love can inspire the heart of man can be so called. what intoxicating tears did i shed upon her knees! how many did i make her to shed involuntarily! at length in an involuntary transport she exclaimed: "no, never was man so amiable, nor ever was there one who loved like you! but your friend saint lambert hears us, and my heart is incapable of loving twice." i exhausted myself with sighs; i embraced herwhat an embrace! but this was all. she had lived alone for the last six months, that is absent from her husband and lover; i had seen her almost every day during three months, and love seldom failed to make a third. we had supped tete-a-tete, we were alone, in the grove by moonlight, and after two hours of the most lively and tender conversation, she left this grove at midnight, and the arms of her lover, as morally and physically pure as she had entered it. reader, weigh all these circumstances; i will add nothing more. do not, however, imagine that in this situation my passions left me as undisturbed as i was with theresa and mamma. i have already observed i was this time inspired not only with love, but with love and all its energy and fury. i will not describe either the agitations, tremblings, palpitations, convulsionary emotions, nor faintings of the heart, i continually experienced; these may be judged of by the effect her image alone made upon me. i have observed the distance from the hermitage to eaubonne was considerable; i went by the hills of andilly, which are delightful; i mused, as i walked, on her whom i was going to see, the charming reception she would give me, and upon the kiss which awaited me at my arrival. this single kiss, this pernicious embrace, even before i received it, inflamed my blood to such a degree as to affect my head, my eyes were dazzled, my knees trembled, and unable to support me; and i was obliged to stop and sit down; my whole frame was in inconceivable disorder, and i was upon the point of fainting. knowing the danger, i endeavored at setting out to divert my attention from the object, and think of something else. i had not proceeded twenty steps before the same recollection, and all that was the consequence of it, assailed me in such a manner that it was impossible to avoid them, and in spite of all my efforts i do not believe i ever made this little excursion alone with impunity. i arrived at eaubonne, weak, exhausted, and scarcely able to support myself. the moment i saw her everything was repaired; all i felt in her presence was the importunity of an inexhaustible and useless ardor. upon the road to eaubonne there was a pleasant terrace, called mont olympe, at which we sometimes met. i arrived first, it was proper i should wait for her; but how dear this waiting cost me! to divert my attention, i endeavored to write with my pencil billets, which i could have written with the purest drops of my blood; i never could finish one which was eligible. when she found a note in the niche upon which we had agreed, all she learned from the contents was the deplorable state in which i was when i wrote it. this state and its continuation, during three months of irritation and self-denial, so exhausted me, that i was several years before i recovered from it, and at the end of these it left me an ailment which i shall carry with me, or which will carry me to the grave. such was the sole enjoyment of a man of the most combustible constitution, but who was, at the same time, perhaps, one of the most timid mortals nature ever produced. such were the last happy days i can reckon upon earth; at the end of these began the long train of evils, in which there will be found but little interruption. it has been seen that, during the whole course of my life, my heart, as transparent as crystal, has never been capable of concealing for the space of a moment any sentiment in the least lively which had taken refuge in it. it will therefore be judged whether or not it was possible for me long to conceal my affection for madam d'houdetot. our intimacy struck the eyes of everybody, we did not make of it either a secret or a mystery. it was not of a nature to require any such precaution, and as madam d'houdetot had for me the most tender friendship with which she did not reproach herself, and i for her an esteem with the justice of which nobody was better acquainted than myself; she frank, absent, heedless; i true, awkward, haughty, impatient and choleric; we exposed ourselves more in deceitful security than we should have done had we been culpable. we both went to the chevrette; we sometimes met there by appointment. we lived there according to our accustomed manner; walking together every day talking of our amours, our duties, our friend, and our innocent projects: all this in the park opposite the apartment of madam d'epinay, under her windows, whence incessantly examining us, and thinking herself braved, she by her eyes filled her heart with rage and indignation. women have the art of concealing their anger, especially when it is great. madam d'epinay, violent but deliberate, possessed this art to an eminent degree. she feigned not to see or suspect anything, and at the same time that she doubled towards me her cares, attention, and allurements, she affected to load her sister-in-law with incivilities and marks of disdain, which she seemingly wished to communicate to me. it will easily be imagined she did not succeed; but i was on the rack. torn by opposite passions, at the same time that i was sensible of her caresses, i could scarcely contain my anger when i saw her wanting in good manners to madam d'houdetot. the angelic sweetness of this lady made her endure everything without a complaint, or even without being offended. she was, in fact, so absent, and always so little attentive to these things, that half the time she did not perceive them. i was so taken up with my passion, that, seeing nothing but sophia (one of the names of madam. d'houdetot), i did not perceive that i was become the laughing stock of the whole house, and all those who came to it. the baron d'holbach, who never, as i heard of, had been at the chevrette, was one of the latter. had i at that time been as mistrusful as i am since become, i should strongly have suspected madam d'epinay to have contrived this journey to give the baron the amusing spectacle of the amorous citizen. but i was then so stupid that i saw not that even which was glaring to everybody. my stupidity did not, however, prevent me from finding in the baron a more jovial and satisfied appearance than ordinary. instead of looking upon me with his usual moroseness, he said to me a hundred jocose things without my knowing what he meant. surprise was painted in my countenance, but i answered not a word: madam d'epinay shook her sides with laughing; i knew not what possessed them. as nothing yet passed the bounds of pleasantry, the best thing i could have done, had i been in the secret, would have been to have humored the joke. it is true, i perceived amid the rallying gayety of the baron, that his eyes sparkled with a malicious joy, which could have given me pain had i then remarked it to the degree it has since occurred to my recollection. one day when i went to see madam d'houdetot, at eaubonne, after her return from one of her journeys to paris, i found her melancholy, and observed that she had been weeping. i was obliged to put a restraint on myself, because madam de blainville, sister to her husband, was present; but the moment i found an opportunity, i expressed to her my uneasiness. "ah," said she, with a sigh, "i am much afraid your follies will cost me the repose of the rest of my days. st. lambert has been informed of what has passed, and ill informed of it. he does me justice, but he is vexed; and what is still worse, he conceals from me a part of his vexation. fortunately i have not concealed from him anything relative to our connection which was formed under his auspices. my letters, like my heart, were full of yourself; i made him acquainted with everything, except your extravagant passion, of which i hoped to cure you, and which he imputes to me as a crime. somebody has done us ill offices. i have been injured, but what does this signify? either let us entirely break with each other, or do you be what you ought to be. i will not in future have anything to conceal from my lover." this was the first moment in which i was sensible of the shame of feeling myself humbled by the sentiment of my fault, in presence of a young woman of whose just reproaches i approved, and to whom i ought to have been a mentor. the indignation i felt against myself would, perhaps, have been sufficient to overcome my weakness, had not the tender passion inspired me by the victim of it again softened my heart. alas! was this a moment to harden it when it was overflowed by the tears which penetrated it in every part? this tenderness was soon changed into rage against the vile informers, who had seen nothing but the evil of a criminal but involuntary sentiment, without believing or even imagining the sincere uprightness of heart by which it was counteracted. we did not remain long in doubt about the hand by which the blow was directed. we both knew that madam d'epinay corresponded with st. lambert. this was not the first storm she had raised up against madam d'houdetot, from whom she had made a thousand efforts to detach her lover, the success of some of which made the consequences to be dreaded. besides, grimm, who, i think, had accompanied m. de castries to the army, was in westphalia, as well as saint lambert; they sometimes visited. grimm had made some attempts on madam d'houdetot, which had not succeeded, and being extremely piqued, suddenly discontinued his visits to her. let it be judged with what calmness, modest as he is known to be, he supposed she preferred to him a man older than himself, and of whom, since he had frequented the great, he had never spoken but as a person whom he patronized. my suspicions of madam d'epinay were changed into a certainty the moment i heard what had passed in my own house. when i was at the chevrette, theresa frequently came there, either to bring me letters or to pay me that attention which my ill state of health rendered necessary. madam d'epinay had asked her if madam d'houdetot and i did not write to each other. upon her answering in the affirmative, madam d'epinay pressed her to give her the letters of madam d'houdetot, assuring her she would reseal them in such a manner as it should never be known. theresa without showing how much she was shocked at the proposition, and without even putting me upon my guard, did nothing more than seal the letters she brought me more carefully; a lucky precaution, for madam d'epinay had her watched when she arrived, and, waiting for her in the passage, several times carried her audaciousness as far as to examine her tucker. she did more even than this: having one day invited herself with m. de margency to dinner at the hermitage, for the first time since i had resided there, she seized the moment i was walking with margency to go into my closet with the mother and daughter, and to press them to show her the letters of madam d'houdetot. had the mother known where the letters were, they would have been given to her; but, fortunately, the daughter was the only person who was in the secret, and denied my having preserved any one of them. a virtuous, faithful and generous falsehood; whilst truth would have been a perfidy. madam d'epinay, perceiving theresa was not to be seduced, endeavored to irritate her by jealousy, reproaching her with her easy temper and blindness. "how is it possible," said she to her, "you cannot perceive there is a criminal intercourse between them? if besides what strikes your eyes you stand in need of other proofs, lend your assistance to obtain that which may furnish them; you say he tears the letters from madam d'houdetot as soon as he has read them. well, carefully gather up the pieces and give them to me; i will take upon myself to put them together." such were the lessons my friend gave to the partner of my bed. theresa had the discretion to conceal from me, for a considerable time, all these attempts; but perceiving how much i was perplexed, she thought herself obliged to inform me of everything, to the end that knowing with whom i had to do, i might take my measures accordingly. my rage and indignation are not to be described. instead of dissembling with madam d'epinay, according to her own example, and making use of counterplots, i abandoned myself without reserve to the natural impetuosity of my temper; and with my accustomed inconsiderateness came to an open rupture. my imprudence will be judged of by the following letters, which sufficiently show the manner of proceeding of both parties on this occasion. note from madam d'epinay. packet a, no. 44. "why, my dear friend, do i not see you? you make me uneasy. you have so often promised me to do nothing but go and come between this place and the hermitage! in this i have left you at liberty; and you have suffered a week to pass without coming. had not i been told you were well i should have imagined the contrary. i expected you either the day before yesterday, or yesterday, but found myself disappointed. my god, what is the matter with you? you have no business, nor can you have any uneasiness; for had this been the case, i flatter myself you would have come and communicated it to me. you are, therefore, ill! relieve me, i beseech you, speedily from my fears. adieu, my dear friend: let this adieu produce me a good-morning from you." answer. wednesday morning. "i cannot yet say anything to you. i wait to be better informed, and this i shall be sooner or later. in the meantime be persuaded that innocence will find a defender sufficiently powerful to cause some repentance in the slanderers, be they who they may." second note from the same. packet a, no. 45. "do you know that your letter frightens me? what does it mean? i have read it twenty times. in truth i do not understand what it means. all i can perceive is, that you are uneasy and tormented, and that you wait until you are no longer so before you speak to me upon the subject. is this, my dear friend, what we agreed upon? what then is become of that friendship and confidence, and by what means have i lost them? is it with me or for me that you are angry? however this may be, come to me this evening i conjure you; remember you promised me no longer than a week ago to let nothing remain upon your mind, but immediately to communicate to me whatever might make it uneasy. my dear friend, i live in that confidencetherei have just read your letter again; i do not understand the contents better, but they make me tremble. you seem to be cruelly agitated. i could wish to calm your mind, but as i am ignorant of the cause whence your uneasiness arises, i know not what to say, except that i am as wretched as yourself, and shall remain so until we meet. if you are not here this evening at six o'clock, i set off to-morrow for the hermitage, let the weather be how it will, and in whatever state of health i may be; for i can no longer support the inquietude i now feel. good day, my dear friend, at all risks i take the liberty to tell you, without knowing whether or not you are in need of such advice, to endeavor to stop the progress uneasiness makes in solitude. a fly becomes a monster. i have frequently experienced it." answer. wednesday evening. "i can neither come to see you nor receive your visit so long as my present inquietude continues. the confidence of which you speak no longer exists, and it will be easy for you to recover it. i see nothing more in your present anxiety than the desire of drawing from the confessions of others some advantage agreeable to your views; and my heart, so ready to pour its overflowings into another which opens itself to receive them, is shut against trick and cunning. i distinguish your ordinary address in the difficulty you find in understanding my note. do you think me dupe enough to believe you have not comprehended what it meant? no: but i shall know how to overcome your subtleties by my frankness. i will explain myself more clearly, that you may understand me still less. "two lovers closely united and worthy of each other's love are dear to me; i expect you will not know who i mean unless i name them. i presume attempts have been made to disunite them, and that i have been made use of to inspire one of the two with jealousy. the choice was not judicious, but it appeared convenient to the purposes of malice, and of this malice it is you whom i suspect to be guilty. i hope this becomes more clear. "thus the woman whom i most esteem would, with my knowledge, have been loaded with the infamy of dividing her heart and person between two lovers, and i with that of being one of these wretches. if i knew that, for a single moment in your life, you ever had thought this, either of her or myself, i should hate you until my last hour. but it is with having said, and not with having thought it, that i charge you. in this case, i cannot comprehend which of the three you wished to injure; but, if you love peace of mind, tremble lest you should have succeeded. i have not concealed either from you or her all the ill i think of certain connections, but i wish these to end by a means as virtuous as their cause, and that an illegitimate love may be changed into an eternal friendship. should i, who never do ill to any person, be the innocent means of doing it to my friends? no, i should never forgive you; i should become your irreconcilable enemy. your secrets are all i should respect; for i will never be a man without honor. "i do not apprehend my present perplexity will continue a long time. i shall soon know whether or not i am deceived; i shall then perhaps have great injuries to repair, which i will do with as much cheerfulness as that with which the most agreeable act of my life has been accompanied. but do you know in what manner i will make amends for my faults during the short space of time i have to remain near to you? by doing what nobody but myself would do; by telling you freely what the world thinks of you, and the breaches you have to repair in your reputation. notwithstanding all the pretended friends by whom you are surrounded, the moment you see me depart you may bid adieu to truth, you will no longer find any person who will tell it to you." third letter from the same. packet a, no. 46. "i did not understand your letter of this morning; this i told you because it was the case. i understand that of this evening; do not imagine i shall, ever return an answer to it; i am too anxious to forget what it contains; and although you excite my pity, i am not proof against the bitterness with which it has filled my mind. i! descend to trick and cunning with you! i! accused of the blackest of all infamies! adieu, i regret your having theadieu. i know not what i sayadieu: i shall be very anxious to forgive you. you will come when you please; you will be better received than your suspicions deserve. all i have to desire of you is not to trouble yourself about my reputation. the opinion of the world concerning me is of but little importance in my esteem. my conduct is good, and this is sufficient for me. besides, i am ignorant of what has happened to the two persons who are dear to me as they are to you. this last letter extricated me from a terrible embarrassment, and threw me into another of almost the same magnitude. although these letters and answers were sent and returned the same day with an extreme rapidity, the interval had been sufficient to place another between my rage and transport, and to give me time to reflect on the enormity of my imprudence. madam d'houdetot had not recommended to me anything so much as to remain quiet, to leave her the care of extricating herself, and to avoid, especially at that moment, all noise and rupture; and i, by the most open and atrocious insults, took the properest means of carrying rage to its greatest height in the heart of a woman who was already but too well disposed to it. i now could naturally expect nothing from her but an answer so haughty, disdainful, and expressive of contempt, that i could not, without the utmost meanness, do otherwise than immediately quit her house. happily she, more adroit than i was furious, avoided, by the manner of her answer, reducing me to that extremity. but it was necessary either to quit or immediately go and see her; the alternative was inevitable; i resolved on the latter, though i foresaw how much i must be embarrassed in the explanation. for how was i to get through it without exposing either madam d'houdetot or theresa? and woe to her whom i should have named! there was nothing that the vengeance of an implacable and an intriguing woman did not make me fear for the person who should be the object of it. it was to prevent this misfortune that in my letter i had spoken of nothing but suspicions, that i might not be under the necessity of producing my proofs. this, it is true, rendered my transports less excusable; no simple suspicions being sufficient to authorize me to treat a woman, and especially a friend, in the manner i had treated madam d'epinay. but here begins the noble task i worthily fulfilled of expiating my faults and secret weaknesses by charging myself with such of the former as i was incapable of committing, and which i never did commit. i had not to bear the attack i had expected, and fear was the greatest evil i received from it. at my approach, madam d'epinay threw her arms about my neck, bursting into tears. this unexpected reception, and by an old friend, extremely affected me; i also shed many tears. i said to her a few words which had not much meaning; she uttered others with still less, and everything ended here. supper was served; we sat down to table, where, in expectation of the explanation i imagined to be deferred until supper was over, i made a very poor figure; for i am so overpowered by the most trifling inquietude of mind that i cannot conceal it from persons the least clear-sighted. my embarrassed appearance must have given her courage, yet she did not risk anything upon that foundation. there was no more explanation after than before supper: none took place on the next day, and our little tete-a-tete conversations consisted of indifferent things, or some complimentary words on my part, by which, while i informed her i could not say more relative to my suspicions, i asserted, with the greatest truth, that, if they were ill-founded, my whole life should be employed in repairing the injustice. she did not show the least curiosity to know precisely what they were, nor for what reason i had formed them, and all our peacemaking consisted, on her part as well as on mine, in the embrace at our first meeting. since madam d'epinay was the only person offended, at least in form, i thought it was not for me to strive to bring about an eclaircissement for which she herself did not seem anxious, and i returned as i had come; continuing, besides, to live with her upon the same footing as before, i soon almost entirely forgot the quarrel, and foolishly believed she had done the same, because she seemed not to remember what had passed. this, as it will soon appear, was not the only vexation caused me by weakness; but i had others not less disagreeable, which i had not brought upon myself. the only cause of these was a desire of forcing me from my solitude,* by means of tormenting me. these originated from diderot and the d'holbachiens. since i had resided at the hermitage, diderot incessantly harassed me, either himself or by means of de leyre, and i soon perceived from the pleasantries of the latter upon my ramblings in the groves, with what pleasure he had travestied the hermit into the gallant shepherd. but this was not the question in my quarrels with diderot; the causes of these were more serious. after the publication of the fils naturel he had sent me a copy of it, which i had read with the interest and attention i ever bestowed on the works of a friend. in reading the kind of poem annexed to it, i was surprised and rather grieved to find in it, amongst several things, disobliging but supportable against men in solitude, this bitter and severe sentence without the least softening: il n'y a que le mechant qui foit seul.*(2) this sentence is equivocal, and seems to present a double meaning; the one true, the other false, since it is impossible that a man who is determined to remain alone can do the least harm to anybody, and consequently he cannot be wicked. the sentence in itself therefore required an interpretation; the more so from an author who, when he sent it to the press, had a friend retired from the world. it appeared to me shocking and uncivil, either to have forgotten that solitary friend, or, in remembering him, not to have made from the general maxim the honorable and just exception which he owed, not only to his friend, but to so many respectable sages, who, in all ages, have sought for peace and tranquillity in retirement, and of whom, for the first time since the creation of the world, a writer took it into his head indiscriminately to make so many villains. * that is to take from it the old woman who was wanted in the conspiracy. it is astonishing that, during this long quarrel, my stupid confidence prevented me from comprehending that it was not me but her whom they wanted at paris. *(2) the wicked only are alone. i had a great affection and the most sincere esteem for diderot, and fully depended upon his having the same sentiments for me. but tired with his indefatigable obstinacy in continually opposing my inclinations, taste, and manner of living, and everything which related to no person but myself; shocked at seeing a man younger than i was wish, at all events, to govern me like a child; disgusted with his facility in promising, and his negligence in performing; weary of so many appointments given by himself, and capriciously broken, while new ones were again given only to be again broken; displeased at uselessly waiting for him three or four times a month on the days he had assigned, and in dining alone at night after having gone to saint denis to meet him, and waited the whole day for his coming; my heart was already full of these multiplied injuries. this last appeared to me still more serious, and gave me infinite pain. i wrote to complain of it, but in so mild and tender a manner that i moistened my paper with my tears, and my letter was sufficiently affecting to have drawn others from himself. it would be impossible to guess his answer on this subject: it was literally as follows: "i am glad my work has pleased and affected you. you are not of my opinion relative to hermits. say as much good of them as you please, you will be the only one in the world of whom i shall think well: even on this there would be much to say were it possible to speak to you without giving you offense. a woman eighty years of age! etc. a phrase of a letter from the son of madam d'epinay which, if i know you well, must have given you much pain, has been mentioned to me." the last two expressions of this letter want explanation. soon after i went to reside at the hermitage, madam le vasseur seemed dissatisfied with her situation, and to think the habitation too retired. having heard she had expressed her dislike to the place, i offered to send her back to paris, if that were more agreeable to her; to pay her lodging, and to have the same care taken of her as if she remained with me. she rejected my offer, assured me she was very well satisfied with the hermitage, and that the country air was of service to her. this was evident, for, if i may so speak, she seemed to become young again, and enjoyed better health than at paris. her daughter told me her mother would, on the whole, have been very sorry to quit the hermitage, which was really a very delightful abode, being fond of the little amusements of the garden and the care of the fruit of which she had the handling, but that she had said, what she had been desired to say, to induce me to return to paris. failing in this attempt they endeavored to obtain by a scruple the effect which complaisance had not produced, and construed into a crime my keeping the old woman at a distance from the succors of which, at her age, she might be in need. they did not recollect that she, and many other old people, whose lives were prolonged by the air of the country, might obtain these succors at montmorency, near to which i lived; as if there were no old people, except in paris, and that it was impossible for them to live in any other place. madam le vasseur, who ate a great deal, and with extreme voracity, was subject to overflowings of bile and to strong diarrhoeas, which lasted several days, and served her instead of clysters. at paris she neither did nor took anything for them, but left nature to itself. she observed the same rule at the hermitage, knowing it was the best thing she could do. no matter, since there were not in the country either physicians or apothecaries, keeping her there must, no doubt, be with the desire of putting an end to her existence, although she was in perfect health. diderot should have determined at what age, under pain of being punished for homicide, it is no longer permitted to let old people remain out of paris. this was one of the atrocious accusations from which he did not except me in his remark; that none but the wicked were alone: and the meaning of his pathetic exclamation with the et caetera, which he had benignantly added: a woman of eighty years of age, etc. i thought the best answer that could be given to this reproach would be from madam le vasseur herself. i desired her to write freely and naturally her sentiments to madam d'epinay. to relieve her from all constraint i would not see her letter. i showed her that which i am going to transcribe. i wrote it to madam d'epinay upon the subject of an answer i wished to return to a letter still more severe from diderot, and which she had prevented me from sending. thursday. "my good friend. madam le vasseur is to write to you: i have desired her to tell you sincerely what she thinks. to remove from her all constraint, i have intimated to her that i will not see what she writes and i beg of you not to communicate to me any part of the contents of her letter. "i will not send my letter because you do not choose i should; but, feeling myself grievously offended, it would be baseness and falsehood, of either of which it is impossible for me to be guilty, to acknowledge myself in the wrong. holy writ commands him to whom a blow is given, to turn the other cheek, but not to ask pardon. do you remember the man in comedy who exclaims, while he is giving another blows with his staff, 'this is the part of a philosopher!' "do not flatter yourself that he will be prevented from coming by the bad weather we now have. his rage will give him the time and strength which friendship refuses him, and it will be the first time in his life he ever came upon the day he had appointed. "he will neglect nothing to come and repeat to me verbally the injuries with which he loads me in his letters; i will endure them all with patience. he will return to paris to be ill again; and, according to custom, i shall be a very hateful man. what is to be done? endure it all. "but do not you admire the wisdom of the man who would absolutely come to saint denis in a hackney-coach to dine there, bring me home in a hackney-coach, and whose finances, eight days afterwards, obliges him to come to the hermitage on foot? it is not possible, to speak his own language, that this should be the style of sincerity. but were this the case, strange changes of fortune must have happened in the course of a week. "i join in your affliction for the illness of madam, your mother, but you will perceive your grief is not equal to mine. we suffer less by seeing the persons we love ill than when they are unjust and cruel. "adieu, my good friend, i shall never again mention to you this unhappy affair. you speak of going to paris with an unconcern, which, at any other time, would give me pleasure." i wrote to diderot, telling him what i had done, relative to madam le vasseur, upon the proposal of madam d'epinay herself; and madam le vasseur having, as it may be imagined, chosen to remain at the hermitage, where she enjoyed a good state of health, always had company, and lived very agreeably, diderot, not knowing what else to attribute to me as a crime, construed my precaution into one, and discovered another in madam le vasseur continuing to reside at the hermitage, although this was by her own choice; and though her going to paris had depended, and still depended upon herself, where she would continue to receive the same succors from me as i gave to her in my house. this is the explanation of the first reproach in the letter of diderot. that of the second is in the letter which follows: "the learned man (a name given in a joke by grimm to the son of madam d'epinay) must have informed you there were upon the rampart twenty poor persons who were dying with cold and hunger, and waiting for the farthing you customarily gave them. this is a specimen of our little babbling.... and if you understand the rest it would amuse you perhap." my answer to this terrible argument, of which diderot seemed so proud, was in the following words: "i think i answered the learned man; that is, the farmer-general, that i did not pity the poor whom he had seen upon the rampart, waiting for my farthing; that he had probably amply made it up to them; that i appointed him my substitute, that the poor of paris would have reason to complain of the change; and that i should not easily find so good a one for the poor of montmorency, who were in much greater need of assistance. here is a good and respectable old man, who, after having worked hard all his lifetime, no longer being able to continue his labors, is in his old days dying with hunger. my conscience is more satisfied with the two sols i give him every monday, than with the hundred farthings i should have distributed amongst all the beggars on the rampart. you are pleasant men, you philosophers, while you consider the inhabitants of cities as the only persons whom you ought to befriend. it is in the country men learn how to love and serve humanity; all they learn in cities is to despise it." such were the singular scruples on which a man of sense had the folly to attribute to me as a crime my retiring from paris, and pretended to prove to me by my own example, that it was not possible to live out of the capital without becoming a bad man. i cannot at present conceive how i could be guilty of the folly of answering him, and of suffering myself to be angry instead of laughing in his face. however, the decisions of madam d'epinay and the clamors of the coterie holbachique had so far operated in her favor, that i was generally thought to be in the wrong; and the d'houdetot herself, very partial to diderot, insisted upon my going to see him at paris, and making all the advances towards an accommodation, which, full and sincere as it was on my part, was not of long duration. the victorious argument by which she subdued my heart was, that at that moment diderot was in distress. besides the storm excited against the encyclopedie, he had then another violent one to make head against, relative to his piece, which, notwithstanding the short history he had printed at the head of it, he was accused of having entirely taken from goldoni. diderot, more wounded by criticisms than voltaire, was overwhelmed by them. madam de grasigny had been malicious enough to spread a report that i had broken with him on this account. i thought it would be just and generous publicly to prove the contrary, and i went to pass two days, not only with him, but at his lodgings. this, since i had taken up my abode at the hermitage, was my second journey to paris. i had made the first to run to poor gauffecourt, who had had a stroke of apoplexy, from which he has never perfectly recovered: i did not quit the side of his pillow until he was so far restored as to have no further need of my assistance. diderot received me well. how many wrongs are effaced by the embraces of a friend! after these, what resentment can remain in the heart? we came to but little explanation. this is needless for reciprocal invectives. the only thing necessary is to know how to forget them. there had been no underhand proceedings, none at least that had come to my knowledge: the case was not the same with madam d'epinay. he showed me the plan of the pere de famille.* "this," said i to him, "is the best defense of the fils naturel. be silent, give your attention to this piece, and then throw it at the heads of your enemies as the only answer you think proper to make them." he did so, and was satisfied with what he had done. i had six months before sent him the first two parts of my eloisa to have his opinion upon them. he had not yet read the work over. we read a part of it together. he found this feuillet, that was his term, by which he meant loaded with words and redundancies. i myself had already perceived it; but it was the babbling of the fever: i have never been able to correct it. the last parts are not the same. the fourth especially, and the sixth, are masterpieces of diction. * father of the family; a comedy by diderot. the second day after my arrival, he would absolutely take me to sup with m. d'holbach. we were far from agreeing upon this point; for i wished even to get rid of the bargain for the manuscript on chemistry, for which i was enraged to be obliged to that man. diderot carried all before him. he swore d'holbach loved me with all his heart, said i must forgive him his manner, which was the same to everybody, and more disagreeable to his friends than to others. he observed to me that, refusing the produce of this manuscript, after having accepted it two years before, was an affront to the donor which he had not deserved, and that my refusal might be interpreted into a secret reproach, for having waited so long to conclude the bargain. "i see," added he, "d'holbach every day, and know better than you do the nature of his disposition. had you reason to be dissatisfied with him, do you think your friend capable of advising you to do a mean thing?" in short, with my accustomed weakness, i suffered myself to be prevailed upon, and we went to sup with the baron, who received me as he usually had done. but his wife received me coldly and almost uncivilly. i saw nothing in her which resembled the amiable caroline, who, when a maid, expressed for me so many good wishes. i thought i had already perceived that since grimm had frequented the house of d'aine, i had not met there so friendly a reception. whilst i was at paris, saint lambert arrived there from the army. as i was not acquainted with his arrival, i did not see him until after my return to the country, first at the chevrette, and afterwards at the hermitage; to which he came with madam d'houdetot, and invited himself to dinner with me. it may be judged whether or not i received him with pleasure! but i felt one still greater at seeing the good understanding between my guests. satisfied with not having disturbed their happiness, i myself was happy in being a witness to it, and i can safely assert that, during the whole of my mad passion, and especially at the moment of which i speak, had it been in my power to take from him madam d'houdetot i would not have done it, nor should i have so much as been tempted to undertake it. i found her so amiable in her passion for saint lambert, that i could scarcely imagine she would have been as much so had she loved me instead of him; and without wishing to disturb their union, all i really desired of her was to permit herself to be loved. finally, however violent my passion may have been for this lady, i found it as agreeable to be the confidant, as the object of her amours, and i never for a moment considered her lover as a rival, but always as my friend. it will be said this was not love: be it so, but it was something more. as for saint lambert, he behaved like an honest and judicious man: as i was the only person culpable, so was i the only one who was punished; this, however, was with the greatest indulgence. he treated me severely, but in a friendly manner, and i perceived i had lost something in his esteem, but not the least part of his friendship. for this i consoled myself, knowing it would be much more easy to me to recover the one than the other, and that he had too much sense to confound an involuntary weakness and a passion with a vice of character. if even i were in fault in all that had passed, i was but very little so. had i first sought after his mistress? had not he himself sent her to me? did not she come in search of me? could. i avoid receiving her? what could i do? they themselves had done the evil, and i was the person on whom it fell. in my situation they would have done as much as i did, and perhaps more: for, however estimable and faithful madam d'houdetot might be, she was still a woman; her lover was absent; opportunities were frequent; temptations strong; and it would have been very difficult for her always to have defended herself with the same success against a more enterprising man. we certainly had done a great deal in our situation, in placing boundaries beyond which we never permitted ourselves to pass. although at the bottom of my heart i found evidence sufficiently honorable in my favor, so many appearances were against me, that the invincible shame, always predominant in me, gave me in his presence the appearance of guilt, and of this he took advantage for the purpose of humbling me: a single circumstance will describe this reciprocal situation. i read to him, after dinner, the letter i had written the preceding year to voltaire, and of which saint lambert had heard speak. whilst i was reading he fell asleep, and i, lately so haughty, at present so foolish, dared not stop, and continued to read whilst he continued to snore. such were my indignities and such his revenge; but his generosity never permitted him to exercise them, except between ourselves. after his return to the army, i found madam d'houdetot greatly changed in her manner with me. at first i was as much surprised as if it had not been what i ought to have expected; it affected me more than it ought to have done, and did me considerable harm. it seemed that everything from which i expected a cure, still plunged deeper into my heart the dart, which i at length broke in rather than drew out. i was quite determined to conquer myself, and leave no means untried to change my foolish passion into a pure and lasting friendship. for this purpose i had formed the finest projects in the world; for the execution of which the concurrence of madam d'houdetot was necessary. when i wished to speak to her i found her absent and embarrassed; i perceived i was no longer agreeable to her, and that something had passed which she would not communicate to me, and which i have never yet known. this change, and the impossibility of knowing the reason of it, grieved me to the heart. she asked me for her letters; these i returned her with a fidelity of which she did me the insult to doubt for a moment. this doubt was another wound given to my heart, with which she must have been so well acquainted. she did me justice, but not immediately: i understood that an examination of the packet i had sent her, made her perceive her error: i saw she reproached herself with it, by which i was a gainer of something. she could not take back her letters without returning me mine. she told me she had burnt them: of this i dared to doubt in my turn, and i confess i doubt of it at this moment. no, such letters as mine to her were, are never thrown into the fire. those of eloisa have been found ardent. heavens! what would have been said of these? no, no, she who can inspire a like passion, will never have the courage to burn the proofs of it. but i am not afraid of her having made a bad use of them: of this i do not think her capable; and besides i had taken proper measures to prevent it. the foolish, but strong apprehension of raillery, had made me begin this correspondence in a manner to secure my letters from all communication. i carried the familiarity i permitted myself with her in my intoxication so far as to speak to her in the singular number: but what theeing and thouing! she certainly could not be offended with it. yet she several times complained, but this was always useless: her complaints had no other effect than that of awakening my fears, and i besides could not suffer myself to lose ground. if these letters be not yet destroyed, and should they ever be made public, the world will see in what manner i have loved. the grief caused me by the coldness of madam d'houdetot, and the certainty of not having merited it, made me take the singular resolution to complain of it to saint lambert himself. while waiting the effect of the letter i wrote to him, i sought dissipations to which i ought sooner to have had recourse. fetes were given at the chevrette for which i composed music. the pleasure of honoring myself in the eyes of madam d'houdetot by a talent she loved, warmed my imagination, and another object still contributed to give it animation, this was the desire the author of the devin du village had of showing he understood music; for i had perceived some persons had, for a considerable time past, endeavored to render this doubtful, at least with respect to composition. my beginning at paris, the ordeal through which i had several times passed there, both at the house of m. dupin and that of m. de la popliniere; the quantity of music i had composed during fourteen years in the midst of the most celebrated masters and before their eyes:finally, the opera of the muses gallantes, and that even of the devin; a motet i had composed for mademoiselle fel, and which she had sung at the spiritual concert; the frequent conferences i had had upon this fine art with the first composers, all seemed to prevent or dissipate a doubt of such a nature. this however existed even at the chevrette, and in the mind of m. d'epinay himself. without appearing to observe it, i undertook to compose him a motet for the dedication of the chapel of the chevrette, and i begged him to make choice of the words. he directed de linant, the tutor to his son, to furnish me with these. de linant gave me words proper to the subject, and in a week after i had received them the motet was finished. this time, spite was my apollo, and never did better music come from my hand. the words began with: ecce sedes hic tonantis. (i have since learned these were by santeuil, and that m. de linant had without scruple appropriated them to himself.) the grandeur of the opening is suitable to the words, and the rest of the motet is so elegantly harmonious that every one was struck with it. i had composed it for a great orchestra. d'epinay procured the best performers. madam bruna, an italian singer, sung the motet, and was well accompanied. the composition succeeded so well that it was afterwards performed at the spiritual concert, where, in spite of secret cabals, and notwithstanding it was badly executed, it was twice generally applauded. i gave for the birthday of m. d'epinay the idea of a kind of piece half dramatic and half pantomimical, of which i also composed the music. grimm, on his arrival, heard speak of my musical success. an hour afterwards not a word more was said upon the subject; but there no longer remained a doubt, not at least that i know of, of my knowledge of composition. grimm was scarcely arrived at the chevrette, where i already did not much amuse myself, before he made it insupportable to me by airs i never before saw in any person, and of which i had no idea. the evening before he came, i was dislodged from the chamber of favor, contiguous to that of madam d'epinay; it was prepared for grimm, and instead of it, i was put into another further off. "in this manner," said i, laughingly, to madam d'epinay, "new-comers displace those which are established." she seemed embarrassed. i was better acquainted the same evening with the reason for the change, in learning that between her chamber and that i had quitted there was a private door which she had thought needless to show me. her intercourse with grimm was not a secret either in her own house or to the public, not even to her husband; yet, far from confessing it to me, the confidant of secrets more important to her, and which was sure would be faithfully kept, she constantly denied it in the strongest manner. i comprehended this reserve proceeded from grimm, who, though intrusted with all my secrets, did not choose i should be with any of his. however prejudiced i was in favor of this man by former sentiments, which were not extinguished, and by the real merit he had, all was not proof against the cares he took to destroy it. he received me like the comte de tuffiere; he scarcely deigned to return my salute; he never once spoke to me, and prevented my speaking to him by not making me any answer; he everywhere passed first, and took the first place without ever paying me the least attention. all this would have been supportable had he not accompanied it with a shocking affectation, which may be judged of by one example taken from a hundred. one evening madam d'epinay, finding herself a little indisposed, ordered something for her supper to be carried into her chamber, and went up stairs to sup by the side of the fire. she asked me to go with her, which i did. grimm came afterwards. the little table was already placed, and there were but two covers. supper was served: madam d'epinay took her place on one side of the fire, grimm took an armed chair, seated himself at the other, drew the little table between them, opened his napkin, and prepared himself for eating without speaking to me a single word. madam d'epinay blushed at his behavior, and, to induce him to repair his rudeness, offered me her place. he said nothing, nor did he ever look at me. not being able to approach the fire, i walked about the chamber until a cover was brought. indisposed as i was, older than himself, longer acquainted in the house than he had been, the person who had introduced him there, and to whom as favorite of the lady he ought to have done the honors of it, he suffered me to sup at the end of the table, at a distance from the fire, without showing me the least civility. his whole behavior to me corresponded with this example of it. he did not treat me precisely as his inferior, but he looked upon me as a cipher. i could scarcely recognize the same grimm, who, to the house of the prince de saxe-gotha, thought himself honored when i cast my eyes upon him. i had still more difficulty in reconciling this profound silence and insulting haughtiness with the tender friendship he possessed for me to those whom he knew to be real friends. it is true the only proofs he gave of it was pitying my wretched fortune, of which i did not complain; compassionating my sad fate, with which i was satisfied; and lamenting to see me obstinately refuse the benevolent services, he said, he wished to render me. thus was it he artfully made the world admire his affectionate generosity, blame my ungrateful misanthropy, and insensibly accustomed people to imagine there was nothing more between a protector like him and a wretch like myself, than a connection founded upon benefactions on one part and obligations on the other, without once thinking of a friendship between equals. for my part, i have vainly sought to discover in what i was under an obligation to this new protector. i had lent him money, he had never lent me any; i had attended him in his illness, he scarcely came to see me in mine; i had given him all my friends, he never had given me any of his; i had said everything i could in his favor, and if ever he has spoken of me it has been less publicly and in another manner. he has never either rendered or offered me the least service of any kind. how, therefore, was he my mecaenas? in what manner was i protected by him? this was incomprehensible to me, and still remains so. it is true he was more or less arrogant with everybody, but i was the only person with whom he was brutally so. i remember saint lambert once ready to throw a plate at his head, upon his, in some measure, giving him the lie at table by vulgarly saying, "that is not true." with his naturally imperious manner he had the self-sufficiency of an upstart, and became ridiculous by being extravagantly impertinent. an intercourse with the great had so far intoxicated him that he gave himself airs which none but the contemptible part of them ever assume. he never called his lackey but by "eh!" as if amongst the number of his servants my lord had not known which was in waiting. when he sent him to buy anything, he threw the money upon the ground instead of putting it into his hand. in short, entirely forgetting he was a man, he treated him with such shocking contempt, and so cruel a disdain in everything, that the poor lad, a very good creature, whom madam d'epinay had recommended, quitted his service without any other complaint than that of the impossibility of enduring such treatment. this was the la fleur of this new presuming upstart. all these things were nothing more than ridiculous, but quite opposite to my character, they contributed to render him suspicious to me. i could easily imagine that a man whose head was so much deranged could not have a heart well placed. he piqued himself upon nothing so much as upon sentiments. how could this agree with defects which are peculiar to little minds? how can the continued overflowings of a susceptible heart suffer it to be incessantly employed in so many little cares relative to the person? he who feels his heart inflamed with this celestial fire strives to diffuse it, and wishes to show what he internally is. he would wish to place his heart in his countenance, and thinks not of other paint for his cheeks. i remember the summary of his morality which madam d'epinay had mentioned to me and adopted. this consisted in one single article; that the sole duty of man is to follow all the inclinations of his heart. this morality, when i heard it mentioned, gave me great matter of reflection, although i at first considered it solely as a play of wit. but i soon perceived it was a principle really the rule of his conduct, and of which i afterwards had, at my own expense, but too many convincing proofs. it is the interior doctrine diderot has so frequently intimated to me, but which i never heard him explain. i remember having several years before been frequently told that grimm was false, that he had nothing more than the appearance of sentiment, and particularly that he did love me. i recollected several little anecdotes which i had heard of him by m. de francueil and madam de chenonceaux, neither of whom esteemed him, and to whom he must have been known, as madam de chenonceaux was daughter to madam de rochechouart, the intimate friend of the late comte de friese, and that m. de francueil, at that time very intimate with the viscount de polignac, had lived a good deal at the palais-royal precisely when grimm began to introduce himself there. all paris heard of his despair after the death of the comte de friese. it was necessary to support the reputation he had acquired after the rigors of mademoiselle fel, and of which i, more than any other person, should have seen the imposture, had i been less blind. he was obliged to be dragged to the hotel de castries where he worthily played his part, abandoned to the most mortal affliction. there, he every morning went into the garden to weep at his ease, holding before his eyes his handkerchief moistened with tears, as long as he was in sight of the hotel, but at the turning of a certain alley, people, of whom he little thought, saw him instantly put his handkerchief in his pocket and take out of it a book. this observation, which was repeatedly made, soon became public in paris, and was almost as soon forgotten. i myself had forgotten it; a circumstance in which i was concerned brought it to my recollection. i was at the point of death in my bed, in the rue de grenelle, grimm was in the country; he came one morning, quite out of breath, to see me, saying, he had arrived in town that very instant; and a moment afterwards i learned he had arrived the evening before, and had been seen at the theater. i heard many things of the same kind; but an observation which i was surprised not to have made sooner, struck me more than everything else. i had given to grimm all my friends without exception, they were become his. i was so inseparable from him, that i should have had some difficulty in continuing to visit at a house where he was not received. madam de crequi was the only person who refused to admit him into her company, and whom for that reason i have seldom since seen. grimm on his part made himself other friends, as well by his own means, as by those of the comte de friese. of all these not one of them ever became my friend: he never said a word to induce me even to become acquainted with them, and not one of those i sometimes met at his apartments ever showed me the least good will; the comte de friese, in whose house he lived, and with whom it consequently would have been agreeable to me to form some connection, not excepted, nor the comte de schomberg, his relation, with whom grimm was still more intimate. add to this, my own friends, whom i made his, and who were all tenderly attached to me before this acquaintance, were no longer so the moment it was made. he never gave me one of his; i gave him all mine, and these he has taken from me. if these be the effects of friendship, what are those of enmity? diderot himself told me several times at the beginning that grimm in whom i had so much confidence, was not my friend. he changed his language the moment he was no longer so himself. the manner in which i had disposed of my children wanted not the concurrence of any person. yet i informed some of my friends of it, solely to make it known to them, and that i might not in their eyes appear better than i was. these friends were three in number: diderot, grimm, and madam d'epinay. duclos, the most worthy of my confidence, was the only real friend whom i did not inform of it. he nevertheless knew what i had done. by whom? this i know not. it is not very probable the perfidy came from madam d'epinay, who knew that by following her example, had i been capable of doing it, i had in my power the means of a cruel revenge. it remains therefore between grimm and diderot, then so much united, especially against me, and it is probable this crime was common to them both. i would lay a wager that duclos, to whom i never told my secret, and who consequently was at liberty to make what use he pleased of his information, is the only person who has not spoken of it again. grimm and diderot, in their project to take from me the governesses, had used the greatest efforts to make duclos enter into their views; but this he refused to do with disdain. it was not until some time afterwards that i learned from him what had passed between them on the subject; but i learned at the time from theresa enough to perceive there was some secret design, and that they wished to dispose of me, if not against my own consent, at least without my knowledge, or had an intention of making these two persons serve as instruments of some project they had in view. this was far from upright conduct. the opposition of duclos is a convincing proof of it. they who think proper may believe it to be friendship. this pretended friendship was as fatal to me at home as it was abroad. the long and frequent conversations with madam le vasseur, for several years past, had made a sensible change in this woman's behavior to me, and the change was far from being in my favor. what was the subject of these singular conversations? why such a profound mystery? was the conversation of that old woman agreeable enough to take her into favor, and of sufficient importance to make of it so great a secret? during the two or three years these colloquies had, from time to time, been continued, they had appeared to me ridiculous; but when i thought of them again, they began to astonish me. this astonishment would have been carried to inquietude had i then known what the old creature was preparing for me. notwithstanding the pretended zeal for my welfare of which grimm made such a public boast, difficult to reconcile with the airs he gave himself when we were together, i heard nothing of him from any quarter the least to my advantage, and his feigned commiseration tended less to do me service than to render me contemptible. he deprived me as much as he possibly could of the resource i found in the employment i had chosen, by decrying me as a bad copyist. i confess he spoke the truth; but in this case it was not for him to do it. he proved himself in earnest by employing another copyist, and prevailing upon everybody he could, by whom i was engaged, to do the same. his intention might have been supposed to be that of reducing me to a dependence upon him and his credit for a subsistence, and to cut off the latter until i was brought to that degree of distress. all things considered, my reason imposed silence upon my former prejudice, which still pleaded in his favor. i judged his character to be at least suspicious, and with respect to his friendship i positively decided it to be false. i then resolved to see him no more, and informed madam d'epinay of the resolution i had taken, supporting it with several unanswerable facts, but which i have now forgotten. she strongly combated my resolution without knowing how to reply to the reasons on which it was founded. she had not concerted with him; but the next day, instead of explaining herself verbally, she, with great address, gave me a letter they had drawn up together, and by which, without entering into a detail of facts, she justified him by his concentrated character, attributed to me as a crime my having suspected him of perfidy towards his friend, and exhorted me to come to an accommodation with him. this letter staggered me. in a conversation we afterwards had together, and in which i found her better prepared than she had been the first time, i suffered myself to be quite prevailed upon, and was inclined to believe i might have judged erroneously. in this case i thought i really had done a friend a very serious injury, which it was my duty to repair. in short, as i had already done several times with diderot, and the baron d'holbach, half from inclination, and half from weakness, i made all the advances i had a right to require; i went to m. grimm, like another george dandin, to make him my apologies for the offense he had given me; still in the false persuasion, which, in the course of my life has made me guilty of a thousand meannesses to my pretended friends, that there is no hatred which may not be disarmed by mildness and proper behavior; whereas, on the contrary, the hatred of the wicked becomes still more envenomed by the impossibility of finding anything to found it upon, and the sentiment of their own injustice is another cause of offense against the person who is the object of it. i have, without going further than my own history, a strong proof of this maxim in grimm, and in tronchin; both become my implacable enemies from inclination, pleasure and fancy, without having been able to charge me with having done either of them the most trifling injury,* and whose rage, like that of tigers, becomes daily more fierce by the facility of satiating it. * i did not give the surname of jongleur only to the latter until a long time alter his enmity had been declared, and the persecutions he brought upon me at geneva and elsewhere. i soon suppressed the name the moment i perceived i was entirely his victim. mean vengeance is unworthy of my heart, and hatred never takes the least root in it. i expected that grimm, confused by my condescension and advances, would receive me with open arms, and the most tender friendship. he received me as a roman emperor would have done, and with a haughtiness i never saw in any person but himself. i was by no means prepared for such a reception. when, in the embarrassment of the part i had to act, and which was so unworthy of me, i had, in a few words and with a timid air, fulfilled the object which had brought me to him; before he received me into favor, he pronounced, with a deal of majesty, an harangue he had prepared, and which contained a long enumeration of his rare virtues, and especially those connected with friendship. he laid great stress upon a thing which at first struck me a good deal: this was his having always preserved the same friends. whilst he was yet speaking, i said to myself, it would be cruel for me to be the only exception to this rule. he returned to the subject so frequently, and with such emphasis, that i thought, if in this he followed nothing but the sentiments of his heart, he would be less struck with the maxim, and that he made of it an art useful to his views by procuring the means of accomplishing them. until then i had been in the same situation; i had preserved all my first friends, those even from my tenderest infancy, without having lost one of them except by death, and yet i had never before made the reflection: it was not a maxim i had prescribed myself. since, therefore, the advantage was common to both, why did he boast of it in preference, if he had not previously intended to deprive me of the merit? he afterwards endeavored to humble me by proofs of the preference our common friends gave to me. with this i was as well acquainted as himself; the question was, by what means he had obtained it? whether it was by merit or address? by exalting himself, or endeavoring to abase me? at last, when he had placed between us all the distance that he could add to the value of the favor he was about to confer, he granted me the kiss of peace, in a slight embrace which resembled the accolade which the king gives to new-made knights. i was stupefied with surprise: i knew not what to say; not a word could i utter. this whole scene had the appearance of the reprimand a preceptor gives to his pupil while he graciously spares inflicting the rod. i never think of it without perceiving to what degree judgments, founded upon appearances to which the vulgar give so much weight, are deceitful, and how frequently audaciousness and pride are found in the guilty, and shame and embarrassment in the innocent. we were reconciled: this was a relief to my heart, which every kind of quarrel fills with anguish. it will naturally be supposed that a like reconciliation changed nothing in his manners; all it effected was to deprive me of the right of complaining of them. for this reason i took a resolution to endure everything, and for the future to say not a word. so many successive vexations overwhelmed me to such a degree as to leave me but little power over my mind. receiving no answer from saint lambert, neglected by madam d'houdetot, and no longer daring to open my heart to any person, i began to be afraid that by making friendship my idol, i should sacrifice my whole life to chimeras. after putting all those with whom i had been acquainted to the test, there remained but two who had preserved my esteem, and in whom my heart could confide: duclos, of whom since my retreat to the hermitage i had lost sight, and saint lambert. i thought the only means of repairing the wrongs i had done the latter, was to open myself to him without reserve, and resolved to confess to him everything by which his mistress should not be exposed. i have no doubt but this was another snare of my passion to keep me nearer to her person; but i should certainly have had no reserve with her lover, entirely submitting to his direction, and carrying sincerity as far as it was possible to do it. i was upon the point of writing to him a second letter, to which i was certain he would have returned an answer, when i learned the melancholy cause of his silence relative to the first. he had been unable to support until the end the fatigues of the campaign. madam d'epinay informed me he had had an attack of the palsy, and madam d'houdetot, ill from affliction, wrote me two or three days afterwards from paris, that he was going to aix-la-chapelle to take the benefit of the waters. i will not say this melancholy circumstance afflicted me as it did her; but i am of opinion my grief of heart was painful as her tears. the pain of knowing him to be in such a state, increased by the fear least inquietude should have contributed to occasion it, affected me more than anything that had yet happened, and i felt most cruelly a want of fortitude, which in my estimation was necessary to enable me to support so many misfortunes. happily this generous friend did not long leave me so overwhelmed with affliction; he did not forget me, notwithstanding his attack; and i soon learned from himself that i had ill judged his sentiments, and been too much alarmed for his situation. it is now time i should come to the grand revolution of my destiny, to the catastrophe which has divided my life in two parts so different from each other, and, from a very trifling cause, produced such terrible effects. one day, little thinking of what was to happen, madam d'epinay sent for me to the chevrette. the moment i saw her i perceived in her eyes and whole countenance an appearance of uneasiness, which struck me the more, as this was not customary, nobody knowing better than she did how to govern her features and their movements. "my friend," said she to me, "i am immediately going to set off for geneva; my chest is in a bad state, and my health so deranged that i must go and consult tronchin." i was the more astonished at this resolution so suddenly taken, and at the beginning of the bad season of the year, as thirty-six hours before she had not, when i left her, so much as thought of it. i asked her who she would take with her. she said her son and m. de linant; and afterwards carelessly added, "and you, bear, will not you go also?" as i did not think she spoke seriously, knowing that at the season of the year i was scarcely in a situation to go to my chamber, i joked upon the utility of the company, of one sick person to another. she herself had not seemed to make the proposition seriously, and here the matter dropped. the rest of our conversation ran upon the necessary preparations for her journey, about which she immediately gave orders, being determined to set off within a fortnight. she lost nothing by my refusal, having prevailed upon her husband to accompany her. a few days afterwards i received from diderot the note i am going to transcribe. this note, simply doubled up, so that the contents were easily read, was addressed to me at madam d'epinay's, and sent to m. de linant, tutor to the son, and confidant to the mother. note from diderot. packet a, no. 52. "i am naturally disposed to love you, and am born to give you trouble. i am informed madam d'epinay is going to geneva, and do not hear you are to accompany her. my friend, you are satisfied with madam d'epinay, you must go with her; if dissatisfied you ought still less to hesitate. do you find the weight of the obligations you are under to her uneasy to you? this is an opportunity of discharging a part of them, and relieving your mind. do you ever expect another opportunity like the present one, of giving her proofs of your gratitude? she is going to a country where she will be quite a stranger. she is ill, and will stand in need of amusement and dissipation. the winter season too! consider, my friend. your ill state of health may be a much greater objection than i think it is; but are you now more indisposed than you were a month ago, or than you will be at the beginning of spring? will you three months hence be in a situation to perform the journey more at your ease than at present? for my part i cannot but observe to you that were i unable to bear the shaking of the carriage i would take my staff and follow her. have you no fears lest your conduct should be misinterpreted? you will be suspected of ingratitude or of a secret motive. i well know that let you do as you will you will have in your favor the testimony of your conscience, but will this alone be sufficient, and is it permitted to neglect to a certain degree that which is necessary to acquire the approbation of others? what i now write, my good friend, is to acquit myself of what i think i owe to us both. should my letter displease you, throw it into the fire and let it be forgotten. i salute, love, and embrace you." * * * * * although trembling, and almost blind with rage whilst i read this epistle, i remarked the address with which diderot affected a milder and more polite language than he had done in his former ones, wherein he never went further than "my dear," without ever deigning to add the name of friend. i easily discovered the second-hand means by which the letter was conveyed to me; the superscription, manner and form awkwardly betrayed the maneuver; for we commonly wrote to each other by post, or the messenger of montmorency, and this was the first and only time he sent me his letter by any other conveyance. as soon as the first transports of my indignation permitted me to write, i, with great precipitation, wrote him the following answer, which i immediately carried from the hermitage, where i then was, to the chevrette, to show it to madam d'epinay, to whom, in my blind rage, i read the contents, as well as the letter from diderot: * * * * * "you cannot, my dear friend, either know the magnitude of the obligations i am under to madam d'epinay, to what a degree i am bound by them, whether or not she is desirous of my accompanying her, that this is possible, or the reasons i may have for my non-compliance. i have no objection to discuss all these points with you; but you will in the meantime confess that prescribing to me so positively what i ought to do, without first enabling yourself to judge of the matter, is, my dear philosopher, acting very inconsiderately. what is still worse, i perceive the opinion you give comes not from yourself. besides my being but little disposed to suffer myself to be led by the nose under your name by any third or fourth person, i observe in this secondary advice certain underhand dealing, which ill agrees with your candor, and from which you will on your account, as well as mine, do well in future to abstain. "you are afraid my conduct should be misinterpreted; but i defy a heart like yours to think ill of mine. others would perhaps speak better of me if i resembled them more. god preserve me from gaining their approbation! let the vile and wicked watch over my conduct and misinterpret my actions, rousseau is not a man to be afraid of them, nor is diderot to be prevailed upon to hearken to what they say. "if i am displeased with your letter, you wish me to throw it into the fire, and pay no attention to the contents. do you imagine that anything coming from you can be forgotten in such a manner? you hold, my dear friend, my tears as cheap in the pain you give me, as you do my life and health, in the cares you exhort me to take. could you but break yourself of this, your friendship would be more pleasing to me, and i should be less to be pitied." * * * * * on entering the chamber of madam d'epinay i found grimm with her, with which i was highly delighted. i read to them, in a loud and clear voice, the two letters, with an intrepidity of which i should not have thought myself capable, and concluded with a few observations not in the least derogatory to it. at this unexpected audacity in a man generally timid, they were struck dumb with surprise; i perceived that arrogant man look down upon the ground, not daring to meet my eyes, which sparkled with indignation; but in the bottom of his heart he from that instant resolved upon my destruction, and, with madam d'epinay, i am certain concerted measures to that effect before they separated. it was much about this time that i at length received, by madam d'houdetot, the answer from saint lambert, dated from wolfenbuttle, a few days after the accident that happened to him, to my letter which had been long delayed upon the road. this answer gave me the consolation of which i then flood so much in need; it was full of assurance of esteem and friendship, and these gave me strength and courage to deserve them. from that moment i did my duty, but had saint lambert been less reasonable, generous, and honest, i was inevitably lost. the season became bad, and people began to quit the country. madam d'houdetot informed me of the day on which she intended to come and bid adieu to the valley, and gave me a rendezvous at eaubonne. this happened to be the same day on which madam d'epinay left the chevrette to go to paris for the purpose of completing the preparations for her journey. fortunately she set off in the morning, and i had still time to go and dine with her sister-in-law. i had the letter from saint lambert in my pocket, and read it over several times as i walked along. this letter served me as a shield against my weakness. i made and kept to the resolution of seeing nothing in madam d'houdetot but my friend and the mistress of saint lambert; and i passed with her a tete-a-tete of four hours in a most delicious calm, infinitely preferable, even with respect to enjoyment, to the paroxysms of a burning fever, which, always, until that moment, i had had when in her presence. as she too well knew my heart not to be changed, she was sensible of the efforts i made to conquer myself, and esteemed me the more for them, and i had the pleasure of perceiving that her friendship for me was not extinguished. she announced to me the approaching return of saint lambert, who, although well enough recovered from his attack, was unable to bear the fatigues of war, and was quitting the service to come and live in peace with her. we formed the charming project of an intimate connection between us three, and had reason to hope it would be lasting, since it was founded upon every sentiment by which honest and susceptible hearts could be united; and we had moreover amongst us all the knowledge and talents necessary to be sufficient to ourselves, without the aid of any foreign supplement. alas! in abandoning myself to the hope of so agreeable a life i little suspected that which awaited me. we afterwards spoke of my situation with madam d'epinay. i showed her the letter from diderot, with my answer to it; i related to her everything that had passed upon the subject, and declared to her my resolution of quitting the hermitage. this she vehemently opposed, and by reasons all powerful over my heart. she expressed to me how much she could have wished i had been of the party to geneva, foreseeing she should inevitably be considered as having caused the refusal, which the letter of diderot seemed previously to announce. however, as she was acquainted with my reasons, she did not insist upon this point, but conjured me to avoid coming to an open rupture let it cost me what mortification it would, and to palliate my refusal by reasons sufficiently plausible to put away all unjust suspicions of her having been the cause of it. i told her the task she imposed on me was not easy; but that, resolved to expiate my faults at the expense of my reputation, i would give the preference to hers in everything that honor permitted me to suffer. it will soon be seen whether or not i fulfilled this engagement. my passion was so far from having lost any part of its force that i never in my life loved my sophia so ardently and tenderly as on that day, but such was the impression made upon me by the letter of saint lambert, the sentiment of my duty, and the horror in which i held perfidy, that during the whole time of the interview my senses left me in peace, and i was not so much as tempted to kiss her hand. at parting she embraced me before her servants. this embrace, so different from those i had sometimes stolen from her under the foliage, proved i was become master of myself; and i am certain that had my mind, undisturbed, had time to acquire more firmness, three months would have cured me radically. here ends my personal connections with madam d'houdetot; connections of which each has been able to judge by appearance according to the disposition of his own heart, but in which the passion inspired me by that amiable woman, the most lively passion, perhaps, man ever felt, will be honorable in our own eyes by the rare and painful sacrifice we both made to duty, honor, love, and friendship. we each had too high an opinion of the other easily to suffer ourselves to do anything derogatory to our dignity. we must have been unworthy of all esteem had we not set a proper value upon one like this, and the energy of my sentiments which have rendered us culpable, was that which prevented us from becoming so. thus after a long friendship for one of these women, and the strongest affection for the other, i bade them both adieu the same day, to one never to see her more, to the other to see her again twice, upon occasions of which i shall hereafter speak. after their departure, i found myself much embarrassed to fulfill so many pressing and contradictory duties, the consequences of my imprudence; had i been in my natural situation, after the proposition and refusal of the journey to geneva, i had only to remain quiet, and everything was as it should be. but i had foolishly made of it an affair which could not remain in the state it was, and an explanation was absolutely necessary, unless i quitted the hermitage, which i had just promised madam d'houdetot not to do, at least for the present. moreover she had required me to make known the reasons for my refusal to my pretended friends, that it might not be imputed to her. yet i could not state the true reason without doing an outrage to madam d'epinay, who certainly had a right to my gratitude for what she had done for me. everything well considered, i found myself reduced to the severe but indispensable necessity of failing in respect, either to madam d'epinay, madam d'houdetot or to myself; and it was the last i resolved to make my victim. this i did without hesitation, openly and fully, and with so much generosity as to make the act worthy of expiating the faults which had reduced me to such an extremity. this sacrifice, taken advantage of by my enemies, and which they, perhaps, did not expect, has ruined my reputation, and by their assiduity, deprived me of the esteem of the public; but it has restored to me my own, and given me consolation in my misfortune. this, as it will hereafter appear, is not the last time i made such a sacrifice, nor that advantages were taken of it to do me an injury. grimm was the only person who appeared to have taken no part in the affair, and it was to him i determined to address myself. i wrote him a long letter, in which i set forth the ridiculousness of considering it as my duty to accompany madam d'epinay to geneva, the inutility of the measure, and the embarrassment even it would have caused her, besides the inconvenience to myself. i could not resist the temptation of letting him perceive in this letter how fully i was informed in what manner things were arranged, and that to me it appeared singular i should be expected to undertake the journey whilst he himself dispensed with it, and that his name was never mentioned. this letter, wherein, on account of my not being able clearly to state my reasons, i was often obliged to wander from the text, would have rendered me culpable in the eyes of the public, but it was a model of reservedness and discretion for the people who, like grimm, were fully acquainted with the things i forbore to mention, and which justified my conduct. i did not even hesitate to raise another prejudice against myself in attributing the advice of diderot to my other friends. this i did to insinuate that madam d'houdetot had been in the same opinion as she really was, and in not mentioning that, upon the reasons i gave her, she thought differently, i could not better remove the suspicion of her having connived at my proceedings than by appearing dissatisfied with her behavior. this letter was concluded by an act of confidence which would have had an effect upon any other man; for, in desiring grimm to weigh my reasons and afterwards to give me his opinion, i informed him that, let this be what it would, i should act accordingly, and such was my intention had he even thought i ought to set off; for m. d'epinay having appointed himself the conductor of his wife, my going with them would then have had a different appearance; whereas it was i who, in the first place, was asked to take upon me that employment, and he was out of the question until after my refusal. the answer from grimm was slow in coming: it was singular enough, on which account i will here transcribe it. (see packet a, no. 59.) * * * * * "the departure of madam d'epinay is postponed: her son is ill, and it is necessary to wait until his health is reestablished. i will consider the contents of your letter. remain quiet at your hermitage. i will send you my opinion as soon as this shall be necessary. as she will certainly not set off for some days, there is no immediate occasion for it. in the meantime you may, if you think proper, make her your offers, although this to me seems a matter of indifference. for, knowing your situation as well as you do yourself, i doubt not of her returning to your offers such an answer as she ought to do; and all the advantage which, in my opinion, can result from this, will be your having it in your power to say to those by whom you may be importuned, that your not being of the traveling party was not for want of having made your offers to that effect. moreover, i do not see why you will absolutely have it that the philosopher is the speaking-trumpet of all the world, nor because he is of opinion you ought to go, why you should imagine all your friends think as he does? if you write to madam d'epinay, her answer will be yours to all your friends, since you have it so much at heart to give them all an answer. adieu. i embrace madam le vasseur and the criminal."* * m. le vasseur, whose wife governed him rather rudely, called her the lieutenant criminal. grimm in a joke gave the same name to the daughter, and by way of abridgment was pleased to retrench the first word. struck with astonishment at reading this letter i vainly endeavored to find out what it meant. how! instead of answering me, with simplicity, he took time to consider of what i had written, as if the time he had already taken was not sufficient! he intimates even the state of suspense in which he wishes to keep me, as if a profound problem was to be resolved, or that it was of importance to his views to deprive me of every means of comprehending his intentions until the moment he should think proper to make them known. what therefore did he mean by these pre, cautions, delays, and mysteries? was this manner of acting consistent with honor and uprightness? i vainly sought for some favorable interpretation of his conduct; it was impossible to find one. whatever his design might be, were this inimical to me, his situation facilitated the execution of it without its being possible for me in mine to oppose the least obstacle. in favor, in the house of a great prince, having an extensive acquaintance, and giving the tone to common circles of which he was the oracle, he had it in his power, with his usual address, to dispose everything in his favor; and i, alone in my hermitage, far removed from all society, without the benefit of advice, and having no communication with the world, had nothing to do but to remain in peace. all i did was to write to madam d'epinay upon the illness of her son, as polite a letter as could be written, but in which i did not fall into the snare of offering to accompany her to geneva. after waiting for a long time in the most cruel uncertainty, into which that barbarous man had plunged me, i learned, at the expiration of eight or ten days, that madam d'epinay was set off, and received from him a second letter. it contained not more than seven or eight lines which i did not entirely read. it was a rupture, but in such terms as the most infernal hatred only can dictate, and these became unmeaning by the excessive degree of acrimony with which he wished to charge them. he forbade me his presence as he would have forbidden me his states. all that was wanting to his letter to make it laughable, was to be read over with coolness. without taking a copy of it, or reading the whole of the contents, i returned it him immediately, accompanied by the following note: * * * * * "i refused to admit the force of the just reasons i had of suspicion: i now, when it is too late, am become sufficiently acquainted with your character. "this then is the letter upon which you took time to meditate: i return it to you, it is not for me. you may show mine to the whole world and hate me openly; this on your part will be a falsehood the less." * * * * * my telling he might show my preceding letter related to an article in his by which his profound address throughout the whole affair will be judged of. i have observed that my letter might inculpate me in the eyes of persons unacquainted with the particulars of what had passed. this he was delighted to discover; but how was he to take advantage of it without exposing himself? by showing the letter he ran the risk of being reproached with abusing the confidence of his friend. to relieve himself from this embarrassment he resolved to break with me in the most violent manner possible, and to set forth in his letter the favor he did me in not showing mine. he was certain that in my indignation and anger i should refuse his feigned discretion, and permit him to show my letter to everybody; this was what he wished for, and everything turned out as he had expected it would. he sent my letter all over paris, with his own commentaries upon it." which, however, were not so successful as he had expected them to be. it was not judged that the permission he had extorted to make my letter public exempted him from the blame of having so lightly taken me at my word to do me an injury. people continually asked what personal complaints he had against me to authorize so violent a hatred. finally, it was thought that if even my behavior had been such as to authorize him to break with me, friendship, although extinguished, had rights which he ought to have respected. but unfortunately the inhabitants of paris are frivolous; remarks of the moment are soon forgotten; the absent and unfortunate are neglected; the man who prospers secures favor by his presence; the intriguing and malicious support each other, renew their vile efforts, and the effects of these, incessantly succeeding each other, efface everything by which they were preceded. thus, after having so long deceived me, this man threw aside his mask; convinced that, in the state to which he had brought things, he no longer flood in need of it. relieved from the fear of being unjust towards the wretch, i left him to his reflections, and thought no more of him. a week afterwards i received an answer from madam d'epinay, dated from geneva. i understood from the manner of her letter, in which, for the first time in her life, she put on airs of state with me, that both depending but little upon the success of their measures, and considering me as a man inevitably lost, their intentions were to give themselves the pleasure of completing my destruction. in fact, my situation was deplorable. i perceived all my friends withdrew themselves from me without knowing how or for why. diderot, who boasted of, the continuation of his attachment, and who, for three months past, had promised me a visit, did not come. the winter began to make its appearance, and brought with it my habitual disorders. my constitution, although vigorous, had been unequal to the combat of so many opposite passions. i was so exhausted that i had neither strength nor courage sufficient to resist the most trifling indisposition. had my engagements, and the continued remonstrances of diderot and madam d'houdetot then permitted me to quit the hermitage, i knew not where to go, nor in what manner. to drag myself along. i remained stupid and immovable. the idea alone of a step to take, a letter to write, or a word to say, made me tremble. i could not however do otherwise than reply to the letter of madam d'epinay without acknowledging myself to be worthy of the treatment with which she and her friend overwhelmed me. i determined upon notifying to her my sentiments and resolutions, not doubting a moment that from humanity, generosity, propriety, and the good manner of thinking, i imagined i had observed in her, notwithstanding her bad one, she would immediately subscribe to them. my letter was as follows: hermitage, 23d nov., 1757. "were it possible to die of grief i should not now be alive. but i have at length determined to triumph over everything. friendship, madam, is extinguished between us, but that which no longer exists still has its rights, and i respect them. i have not forgotten your goodness to me, and you may, on my part, expect as much gratitude as it is possible to have towards a person i no longer can love. all further explanation would be useless. i have in my favor my own conscience, and i return you your letter. "i wished to quit the hermitage, and i ought to have done it. my friends pretend i must stay there until spring; and since my friends desire it i will remain there until that season if you will consent to my stay." after writing and despatching this letter all i thought of was remaining quiet at the hermitage and taking care of my health; of endeavoring to recover my strength, and taking measures to remove in the spring without noise or making the rupture public. but these were not the intentions either of grimm or madam d'epinay, as it will presently appear. a few days afterwards, i had the pleasure of receiving from diderot the visit he had so frequently promised, and in which he had as constantly failed. he could not have come more opportunely; he was my oldest friend; almost the only one who remained to me; the pleasure i felt in seeing him, as things were circumstanced, may easily be imagined. my heart was full, and i disclosed it to him. i explained to him several facts which either had not come, to his knowledge, or had been disguised or supposed. i informed him, as far as i could do it with propriety, of all that had passed. i did not affect to conceal from him that with which he was but too well acquainted, that a passion, equally unreasonable and unfortunate, had been the cause of my destruction; but i never acknowledged that madam d'houdetot had been made acquainted with it, or at least that i had declared it to her. i mentioned to him the unworthy maneuvers of madam d'epinay to intercept the innocent letters her sister-in-law wrote to me. i was determined he should hear the particulars from the mouth of the persons whom she had attempted to seduce. theresa related them with great precision; but what was my astonishment when the mother came to speak, and i heard her declare and maintain that nothing of this had come to her knowledge? these were her words from which she would never depart. not four days before she herself had recited to me all the particulars theresa had just stated, and in presence of my friend she contradicted me to my face. this, to me, was decisive, and i then clearly saw my imprudence in having so long a time kept such a woman near me. i made no use of invective; i scarcely deigned to speak to her a few words of contempt. i felt what i owed to the daughter, whose steadfast uprightness was a perfect contrast to the base maneuvers of the mother. but from that instant my resolution was taken relative to the old woman, and i waited for nothing but the moment to put it into execution. this presented itself sooner than i expected. on the 10th of december i received from madam d'epinay the following answer to my preceding letter: geneva, 1st december, 1757. "after having for several years given you every possible mark of friendship all i can now do is to pity you. you are very unhappy. i wish your conscience may be as calm as mine. this may be necessary to the repose of your whole life. "since you are determined to quit the hermitage, and are persuaded that you ought to do it, i am astonished your friends have prevailed upon you to stay there. for my part i never consult mine upon my duty, and i have nothing further to say to you upon your own." such an unforeseen dismission, and so fully pronounced, left me not a moment to hesitate. it was necessary to quit immediately, let the weather and my health be in what state they might, although i were to sleep in the woods and upon the snow, with which the ground was then covered, and in defiance of everything madam d'houdetot might say; for i was willing to do everything to please her except render myself infamous. i never had been so embarrassed in my whole life as i then was; but my resolution was taken. i swore, let what would happen, not to sleep at the hermitage on the night of that day week. i began to prepare for sending away my effects, resolving to leave them in the open field rather than not give up the key in the course of the week: for i was determined everything should be done before a letter could be written to geneva, and an answer to it received. i never felt myself so inspired with courage: i had recovered all my strength. honor and indignation, upon which madam d'epinay had not calculated, contributed to restore me to vigor. fortune aided my audacity. m. mathas, fiscal procuror, heard of my embarrassment. he sent to offer me a little house he had in his garden of mont-louis, at montmorency. i accepted it with eagerness and gratitude. the bargain was soon concluded: i immediately sent to purchase a little furniture to add to that we already had. my effects i had carted away with a deal of trouble, and at a great expense: notwithstanding the ice and snow my removal was completed in a couple of days, and on the fifteenth of december, i gave up the keys of the hermitage, after having paid the wages of the gardener, not being able to pay my rent. with respect to madam le vasseur, i told her we must part; her daughter attempted to make me renounce my resolution, but i was inflexible. i sent her off to paris in the carriage of the messenger with all the furniture and effects she and her daughter had in common. i gave her some money, and engaged to pay her lodging with her children, or elsewhere to provide for her subsistence as much as it should be possible for me to do it, and never to let her want bread as long as i should have it myself. finally the day after my arrival at mont-louis, i wrote to madam d'epinay the following letter: montmorency, 17th december, 1757. "nothing, madam, is so natural and necessary as to leave your house the moment you no longer approve of my remaining there. upon your refusing your consent to my passing the rest of the winter at the hermitage i quitted it on the fifteenth of december. my destiny was to enter it in spite of myself and to leave it the same. i thank you for the residence you prevailed upon me to make there, and i would thank you still more had i paid for it less dear. you are right in believing me unhappy; nobody upon earth knows better than yourself to what a degree i trust be so. if being deceived in the choice of our friends be a misfortune, it is another not less cruel to recover from so pleasing an error." such is the faithful narration of my residence at the hermitage, and of the reasons which obliged me to leave it. i could not break off the recital, it was necessary to continue it with the greatest exactness; this epoch of my life having had upon the rest of it an influence which will extend to my latest remembrance. book x [1758] the extraordinary degree of strength a momentary effervescence had given me to quit the hermitage, left me the moment i was out of it. i was scarcely established in my new habitation before i frequently suffered from retentions, which were accompanied by a new complaint; that of a rupture, from which i had for some time, without knowing what it was, felt great inconvenience. i soon was reduced to the most cruel state. the physician thierry, my old friend, came to see me, and made me acquainted with my situation. the sight of all the apparatus of the infirmities of years, made me severely feel that when the body is no longer young, the heart is not so with impunity. the fine season did not restore me, and i passed the whole year, 1758, in a state of languor, which made me think i was almost at the end of my career. i saw, with impatience, the closing scene approach. recovered from the chimeras of friendship, and detached from everything which had rendered life desirable to me, i saw nothing more in it that could make it agreeable; all i perceived was wretchedness and misery, which prevented me from enjoying myself. i sighed after the moment when i was to be free and escape from my enemies. but i must follow the order of events. it appears my retreat to montmorency disconcerted madam d'epinay; probably she did not expect it. my melancholy situation, the severity of the season, the general dereliction of me by my friends, all made her and grimm believe, that by driving me to the last extremity, they should oblige me to implore mercy, and thus, by vile meanness, render myself contemptible, to be suffered to remain in an asylum which honor commanded me to leave. i left it so suddenly that they had not time to prevent the step from being taken, and they were reduced to the alternative of double or quit, to endeavor to ruin me entirely, or to prevail upon me to return. grimm chose the former; but i am of opinion madam d'epinay would have preferred the latter, and this from her answer to my last letter, in which she seemed to have laid aside the airs she had given herself in the preceding ones, and to give an opening to an accommodation. the long delay of this answer, for which she made me wait a whole month, sufficiently indicates the difficulty she found in giving it a proper turn, and the deliberations by which it was preceded. she could not make any further advances without exposing herself; but after her former letters, and my sudden retreat from her house, it is impossible not to be struck with the care she takes in this letter not to suffer an offensive expression to escape her. i will copy it at length to enable my reader to judge of what she wrote (packet b, no. 23): geneva, january 17, 1758. "sir: i did not receive your letter of the 17th of december until yesterday. it was sent me in a box filled with different things, and which has been all this time upon the road. i shall answer only the postscript. you may recollect, sir, that we agreed the wages of the gardener of the hermitage should pass through your hands, the better to make him feel that he depended upon you, and to avoid the ridiculous and indecent scenes which happened in the time of his predecessor. as a proof of this, the first quarter of his wages were given to you, and a few days before my departure we agreed i should reimburse you what you had advanced. i know that of this you, at first, made some difficulty; but i had desired you to make these advances; it was natural i should acquit myself towards you, and this we concluded upon. cahouet informs me that you refused to receive the money. there is certainly some mistake in the matter. i have given orders that it may again be offered to you, and i see no reason for your wishing to pay my gardener, notwithstanding our conventions, and beyond the term even of your inhabiting the hermitage. i therefore expect, sir, that recollecting everything i have the honor to state, you will not refuse to be reimbursed for the sums you have been pleased to advance for me." after what had passed, not having the least confidence in madam d'epinay, i was unwilling to renew my connection with her; i returned no answer to this letter and there our correspondence ended. perceiving i had taken my resolution, she took hers; and, entering into all the views of grimm and the coterie holbachique, she united her efforts with theirs to accomplish my destruction. whilst they maneuvered at paris, she did the same at geneva. grimm, who afterwards went to her there, completed what she had begun. tronchin, whom they had no difficulty in gaining over, seconded them powerfully, and became the most violent of my persecutors, without having against me, any more than grimm had, the lead subject of complaint. they all three spread in silence that of which the effects were seen there four years afterwards. they had more trouble at paris, where i was better known to the citizens, whose hearts, less disposed to hatred, less easily received its impressions. the better to direct their blow, they began by giving out that it was i who had left them. thence, still feigning to be my friends, they dexterously spread their malignant accusations by complaining of the injustice of their friend. their auditors, thus thrown off their guard, listened more attentively to what was said of me, and were inclined to blame my conduct. the secret accusations of perfidy and ingratitude were made with greater precaution, and by that means with greater effect. i knew they imputed to me the most atrocious crimes without being able to learn in what these consisted. all i could infer from public rumor was that this was founded upon the four following capital offenses: my retiring to the country; my passion for madam d'houdetot; my refusing to accompany madam d'epinay to geneva, and my leaving the hermitage. if to these they added other griefs, they took their measures so well that it has hitherto been impossible for me to learn the subject of them. it is therefore at this period that i think i may fix the establishment of a system, since adopted by those by whom my fate has been determined, and which has made such a progress as will seem miraculous to persons who know not with what facility everything which favors the malignity of man is established. i will endeavor to explain in a few words what to me appeared visible in this profound and obscure system. with a name already distinguished and known throughout all europe, i had still preserved my primitive simplicity. my mortal aversion to all party faction and cabal had kept me free and independent, without any other chain than the attachments of my heart. alone, a stranger, without family or fortune, and unconnected with everything except my principles and duties, i intrepidly followed the paths of uprightness, never flattering or favoring any person at the expense of truth and justice. besides, having lived for two years past in solitude, without observing the course of events, i was unconnected with the affairs of the world, and not informed of what passed, nor desirous of being acquainted with it. i lived four leagues from paris as much separated from that capital by my negligence as i should have been in the island of tinian by the sea. grimm, diderot and d'holbach were, on the contrary, in the center of the vortex, lived in the great world, and divided amongst them almost all the spheres of it. the great wits, men of letters, men of long robe, and women, all listened to them when they chose to act in concert. the advantage three men in this situation united must have over a fourth in mine, cannot but already appear. it is true diderot and d'holbach were incapable, at least i think so, of forming black conspiracies; one of them was not base enough, nor the other sufficiently able; but it was for this reason that the party was more united. grimm alone formed his plan in his own mind, and discovered more of it than was necessary to induce his associates to concur in the execution. the ascendency he had gained over them made this quite easy, and the effect of the whole answered to the superiority of his talents. it was with these, which were of a superior kind, that, perceiving the advantage he might acquire from our respective situations, he conceived the project of overturning my reputation, and, without exposing himself, of giving me one of a nature quite opposite, by raising up about me an edifice of obscurity which it was impossible for me to penetrate, and by that means throw a light upon his maneuvers and unmask him. this enterprise was difficult, because it was necessary to palliate the iniquity in the eyes of those of whose assistance he stood in need. he had honest men to deceive, to alienate from me the good opinion of everybody, and to deprive me of all my friends. what say i? he had to cut off all communication with me, that not a single word of truth might reach my ears. had a single man of generosity come and said to me, "you assume the appearance of virtue, yet this is the manner in which you are treated, and these the circumstances by which you are judged; what have you to say?" truth would have triumphed and grimm have been undone. of this he was fully convinced; but he had examined his own heart and estimated men according to their merit. i am sorry, for the honor of humanity, that he judged with so much truth. in these dark and crooked paths his steps to be the more sure were necessarily slow. he has for twelve years pursued his plan, and the most difficult part of the execution of it is still to come; this is to deceive the public entirely. he is afraid of this public, and dares not lay his conspiracy open.* but he has found the easy means of accompanying it with power, and this power has the disposal of me. thus supported he advances with less danger. the agents of power piquing themselves but little on uprightness, and still less on candor, he has no longer the indiscretion of any honest man to fear. his safety is in my being enveloped in an impenetrable obscurity, and in concealing from me his conspiracy, well knowing that with whatever art he may have formed it, i could by a single glance of the eye discover the whole. his great address consists in appearing to favor whilst he defames me, and in giving to his perfidy an air of generosity. * since this was written he has made the dangerous step with the fullest and most inconceivable success. i am of opinion it was tronchin who inspired him with courage, and supplied him with the means. i felt the first effects of this system by the secret accusations of the coterie holbachique without its being possible for me to know in what the accusations consisted, or to form a probable conjecture as to the nature of them. de leyre informed me in his letters that heinous things were attributed to me. diderot more mysteriously told me the same thing, and when i came to an explanation with both, the whole was reduced to the heads of accusation of which i have already spoken. i perceived a gradual increase of coolness in the letters from madam d'houdetot. this i could not attribute to saint lambert; he continued to write to me with the same friendship, and came to see me after his return. it was also impossible to think myself the cause of it, as we had separated well satisfied with each other, and nothing since that time had happened on my part, except my departure from the hermitage, of which she felt the necessity. therefore, not knowing whence this coolness, which she refused to acknowledge, although my heart was not to be deceived, could proceed, i was uneasy upon every account. i knew she greatly favored her sister-in-law and grimm, in consequence of their connections with saint lambert; and i was afraid of their machinations. this agitation opened my wounds, and rendered my correspondence so disagreeable as quite to disgust her with it. i saw, as at a distance, a thousand cruel circumstances, without discovering anything distinctly. i was in a situation the most insupportable to a man whose imagination is easily heated. had i been quite retired from the world, and known nothing of the matter, i should have become more calm; but my heart still clung to attachments, by means of which my enemies had great advantages over me; and the feeble rays which penetrated my asylum conveyed to me nothing more than a knowledge of the blackness of the mysteries which were concealed from my eyes. i should have sunk, i have not a doubt of it, under these torments, too cruel and insupportable to my open disposition, which, by the impossibility of concealing my sentiments, makes me fear everything from those concealed from me, if fortunately objects sufficiently interesting to my heart to divert it from others with which, in spite of myself, my imagination was filled, had not presented themselves. in the last visit diderot paid me, at the hermitage, he had spoken of the article geneva, which d'alembert had inserted in the encyclopedie; he had informed me that this article, concerted with people of the first consideration, had for object the establishment of a theater at geneva, that measures had been taken accordingly, and that the establishment would soon take place. as diderot seemed to think all this very proper, and did not doubt of the success of the measure, and as i had besides to speak to him upon too many other subjects to touch upon that article, i made him no answer; but scandalized at these preparatives to corruption and licentiousness in my country, i waited with impatience for the volume of the encyclopedie, in which the article was inserted, to see whether or not it would be possible to give an answer which might ward off the blow. i received the volume soon after my establishment at mont louis, and found the articles to be written with much art and address, and worthy of the pen whence it proceeded. this, however, did not abate my desire to answer it, and notwithstanding the dejection of spirits i then labored under, my griefs and pains, the severity of the season, and the inconvenience of my new abode, in which i had not yet had time to arrange myself, i set to work with a zeal which surmounted every obstacle. in a severe winter, in the month of february, and in the situation i have described, i went every day, morning and evening, to pass a couple of hours in an open alcove which was at the bottom of the garden in which my habitation stood. this alcove, which terminated an alley of a terrace, looked upon the valley and the pond of montmorency, and presented to me, as the closing point of a prospect, the plain but respectable castle of st. gratien, the retreat of the virtuous catinat. it was in this place, then, exposed to freezing cold, that without being sheltered from the wind and snow, and having no other fire than that in my heart, i composed, in the space of three weeks, my letter to d'alembert on theaters. it was in this, for my eloisa was not then half written, that i found charms in philosophical labor. until then virtuous indignation had been a substitute to apollo, tenderness and a gentleness of mind now became so. the injustice i had been witness to had irritated me, that of which i became the object rendered me melancholy; and this melancholy without bitterness was that of a heart too tender and affectionate, and which, deceived by those in whom it had confided, was obliged to remain concentered. full of that which had befallen me, and still affected by so many violent emotions, my heart added the sentiment of its sufferings to the ideas with which a meditation on my subject had inspired me: what i wrote bore evident marks of this mixture. without perceiving it i described the situation i was then in, gave portraits of grimm, madam d'epinay, madam d'houdetot, saint lambert and myself. what delicious tears did i shed as i wrote. alas! in these descriptions there are proofs but too evident that love, the fatal love of which i made such efforts to cure myself, still remained in my heart. with all this there was a certain sentiment of tenderness relative to myself: i thought i was dying, and imagined i bid the public my last adieu. far from fearing death, i joyfully saw it approach; but i felt some regret at leaving my fellow creatures without their having perceived my real merit, and being convinced how much i should have deserved their esteem had they known me better. these are the secret causes of the singular manner in which this work, opposite to that of the work by which it was preceded,* is written. * discours sur l'inegalite.discourse on the inequality of mankind. i corrected and copied the letter, and was preparing to print it when, after a long silence, i received one from madam d'houdetot, which brought upon me a new affliction more painful than any i had yet suffered. she informed me that my passion for her was known to all paris, that i had spoken of it to persons who had made it public, that this rumor, having reached the ears of her lover, had nearly cost him his life; yet he did her justice and peace was restored between them; but on his account, as well as on hers, and for the sake of her reputation, she thought it her duty to break off all correspondence with me, at the same time assuring me that she and her friend were both interested in my welfare, that they would defend me to the public, and that she herself would from time to time send to inquire after my health. "and thou also, diderot," exclaimed i, "unworthy friend!"i could not, however, yet resolve to condemn him. my weakness was known to others who might have spoken of it. i wished to doubt, but this was soon out of my power. saint lambert shortly after performed an action worthy of himself. knowing my manner of thinking, he judged of the state in which i must be; betrayed by one part of my friends and forsaken by the other. he came to see me. the first time he had not many moments to spare. he came again. unfortunately, not expecting him, i was not at home. theresa had with him a conversation of upwards of two hours, in which they informed each other of facts of great importance to us all. the surprise with which i learned that nobody doubted of my having lived with madam d'epinay, as grimm then did, cannot be equaled, except by that of saint lambert, when he was convinced that the rumor was false. he, to the great dissatisfaction of the lady, was in the same situation with myself, and the eclaircissements resulting from the conversation removed from me all regret, on account of my having broken with her forever. relative to madam d'houdetot, he mentioned several circumstances with which neither theresa nor madam d'houdetot herself were acquainted; these were known to me only in the first instance, and i had never mentioned them except to diderot, under the seal of friendship; and it was to saint lambert himself to whom he had chosen to communicate them. this last step was sufficient to determine me. i resolved to break with diderot forever, and this without further deliberation, except on the manner of doing it; for i had perceived secret ruptures turned to my prejudice, because they left the mask of friendship in possession of my most cruel enemies. the rules of good breeding, established in the world on this head, seem to have been dictated by a spirit of treachery and falsehood. to appear the friend of a man when in reality we are no longer so, is to reserve to ourselves the means of doing him an injury by surprising honest men into an error. i recollected that when the illustrious montesquieu broke with father de tournemine, he immediately said to everybody: "listen neither to father tournemine nor myself, when we speak of each other, for we are no longer friends." this open and generous proceeding was universally applauded. i resolved to follow the example with diderot; but what method was i to take to publish the rupture authentically from my retreat, and yet without scandal? i concluded on inserting in the form of a note, in my work, a passage from the book of ecclesiasticus, which declared the rupture and even the subject of it, in terms sufficiently clear to such as were acquainted with the previous circumstances, but could signify nothing to the rest of the world. i determined not to speak, in my work of the friend whom i renounced, except with the honor always due to extinguished friendship. the whole may be seen in the work itself. there is nothing in this world but time and misfortune, and every act of courage seems to be a crime in adversity. for that which had been admired in montesquieu, i received only blame and reproach. as soon as my work was printed, and i had copies of it, i sent one to saint lambert, who, the evening before, had written to me in his own name and that of madam d'houdetot, a note expressive of the most tender friendship. the following is the letter he wrote to me when he returned the copy i had sent him. (packet b, no. 38.) eaubonne, 10th october, 1758. "indeed, sir, i cannot accept the present you have just made me. in that part of your preface where, relative to diderot, you quote a passage from ecclesiastes (he mistakes, it is from ecclesiasticus) the book dropped from my hand. in the conversations we had together in the summer, you seemed to be persuaded diderot was not guilty of the pretended indiscretions you had imputed to him. you may, for aught i know to the contrary, have reason to complain of him, but this does not give you a right to insult him publicly. you are not unacquainted with the nature of the persecutions he suffers, and you join the voice of an old friend to that of envy. i cannot refrain from telling you, sir, how much this heinous act of yours has shocked me. i am not acquainted with diderot, but i honor him, and i have a lively sense of the pain you give to a man, whom, at least not in my hearing, you have never reproached with anything more than a trifling weakness. you and i, sir, differ too much in our principles ever to be agreeable to each other. forget that i exist; this you will easily do. i have never done to men either good or evil of a nature to be long remembered. i promise you, sir, to forget your person and to remember nothing relative to you but your talents." this letter filled me with indignation and affliction; and, in the excess of my pangs, feeling my pride wounded, i answered him by the following note: montmorency, 11th october, 1758. "sir: while reading your letter, i did you the honor to be surprised at it, and had the weakness to suffer it to affect me; but i find it unworthy of an answer. "i will no longer continue the copies of madam d'houdetot. if it be not agreeable to her to keep that she has, she may send it me back and i will return her money. if she keeps it, she must still send for the rest of her paper and the money; and at the same time i beg she will return me the prospectus which she has in her possession. adieu, sir." courage under misfortune irritates the hearts of cowards, but it is pleasing to generous minds. this note seemed to make saint lambert reflect with himself and to regret his having been so violent; but too haughty in his turn to make open advances, he seized and perhaps prepared, the opportunity of palliating what he had done. a fortnight afterwards i received from madam d'epinay the following letter (packet b, no. 10): thursday, 26th. "sir: i received the book you had the goodness to send me, and which i have read with much pleasure. i have always experienced the same sentiment in reading all the works which have come from your pen. receive my thanks for the whole. i should have returned you these in person had my affairs permitted me to remain any time in your neighborhood; but i was not this year long at the chevrette. m. and madam dupin came here on sunday to dinner. i expect m. de saint lambert, m. de francueil, and madam d'houdetot will be of the party; you will do me much pleasure by making one also. all the persons who are to dine with me, desire, and will, as well as myself, be delighted to pass with you a part of the day. i have the honor to be with the most perfect consideration," etc. this letter made my heart beat violently: after having for a year past been the subject of conversation of all paris, the idea of presenting myself as a spectacle before madam d'houdetot, made me tremble, and i had much difficulty to find sufficient courage to support that ceremony. yet as she and saint lambert were desirous of it, and madam d'epinay spoke in the name of her guests without naming one whom i should not be glad to see, i did not think i should expose myself accepting a dinner to which i was in some degree invited by all the persons who with myself were to partake of it. i therefore promised to go: on sunday the weather was bad, and madam d'epinay sent me her carriage. my arrival caused a sensation. i never met a better reception. an observer would have thought the whole company felt how much i stood in need of encouragement. none but french hearts are susceptible of this kind of delicacy. however, i found more people than i expected to see. amongst others the comte d'houdetot, whom i did not know, and his sister madam de blainville, without whose company i should have been as well pleased. she had the year before come several times to eaubonne, and her sister-in-law had left her in our solitary walks to wait until she thought proper to suffer her to join us. she had harbored a resentment against me, which during this dinner she gratified at her ease. the presence of the comte d'houdetot and saint lambert did not give me the laugh on my side, and it may be judged that a man embarrassed in the most common conversations was not very brilliant in that which then took place. i never suffered so much, appeared so awkward, or received more unexpected mortifications. as soon as we had risen from table, i withdrew from that wicked woman; i had the pleasure of seeing saint lambert and madam d'houdetot approach me, and we conversed together a part of the afternoon, upon things very indifferent it is true, but with the same familiarity as before my involuntary error. this friendly attention was not lost upon my heart, and could saint lambert have read what passed there, he certainly would have been satisfied with it. i can safely assert that although on my arrival the presence of madam d'houdetot gave me the most violent palpitations, on returning from the house i scarcely thought of her; my mind was entirely taken up with saint lambert. notwithstanding the malignant sarcasms of madam de blainville, the dinner was of great service to me, and i congratulated myself upon not having refused the invitation. i not only discovered that the intrigues of grimm and the holbachiens had not deprived me of my old acquaintance,* but, what flattered me still more, that madam d'houdetot and saint lambert were less changed than i had imagined, and i at length understood that his keeping her at a distance from me proceeded more from jealousy than from disesteem. this was a consolation to me, and calmed my mind. certain of not being an object of contempt in the eyes of persons whom i esteemed, i worked upon my own heart with greater courage and success. if i did not quite extinguish in it a guilty and an unhappy passion, i at least so well regulated the remains of it that they have never since that moment led me into the most trifling error. the copies of madam d'houdetot, which she prevailed upon me to take again, and my works, which i continued to send her as soon as they appeared, produced me from her a few notes and messages, indifferent but obliging. she did still more, as will hereafter appear, and the reciprocal conduct of her lover and myself, after our intercourse had ceased may serve as an example of the manner in which persons of honor separate when it is no longer agreeable to them to associate with each other. * such in the simplicity of my heart was my opinion when i wrote these confessions. another advantage this dinner procured me was its being spoken of in paris, where it served as a refutation of the rumor spread by my enemies, that i had quarreled with every person who partook of it, and especially with m. d'epinay. when i left the hermitage i had written him a very polite letter of thanks, to which he answered not less politely, and mutual civilities had continued, as well between us as between me and m. de la lalive, his brother-in-law, who even came to see me at montmorency, and sent me some of his engravings. excepting the two sisters-in-law of madam d'houdetot, i have never been on bad terms with any person of the family. my letter to d'alembert had great success. all my works had been very well received, but this was more favorable to me. it taught the public to guard against the insinuations of the coterie holbachique. when i went to the hermitage, this coterie predicted with its usual sufficiency, that i should not remain there three months. when i had stayed there twenty months, and was obliged to leave it, i still fixed my residence in the country. the coterie insisted this was from a motive of pure obstinacy, and that i was weary even to death of my retirement; but that, eaten up with pride, i chose rather to become a victim to my stubbornness than to recover from it and return to paris. the letter to d'alembert breathed a gentleness of mind which every one perceived not to be affected. had i been dissatisfied with my retreat, my style and manner would have borne evident marks of my ill-humor. this reigned in all the works i had written at paris; but in the first i wrote in the country not the least appearance of it was to be found. to persons who knew how to distinguish, this remark was decisive. they perceived i was returned to my element. yet the same work, notwithstanding all the mildness it breathed, made me by a mistake of my own and my usual ill-luck, another enemy amongst men of letters. i had become acquainted with marmontel at the house of m. de la popliniere, and this acquaintance had been continued at that of the baron. marmontel at that time wrote the mercure de france. as i had too much pride to send my works to the authors of periodical publications, and wishing to send him this without his imagining it was in consequence of that title, or being desirous he should speak of it in the mercure, i wrote upon the book that it was not for the author of the mercure, but for m. marmontel. i thought i paid him a fine compliment; he mistook it for a cruel offense, and became my irreconcilable enemy. he wrote against the letter with politeness, it is true, but with a bitterness easily perceptible, and since that time has never lost an opportunity of injuring me in society, and of indirectly ill-treating me in his works. such difficulty is there in managing the irritable self-love of men of letters, and so careful ought every person to be not to leave anything equivocal in the compliments they pay them. having nothing more to disturb me, i took advantage of my leisure and independence to continue my literary pursuits with more coherence. i this winter finished my eloisa, and sent it to rey, who had it printed the year following. i was, however, interrupted in my projects by a circumstance sufficiently disagreeable. i heard new preparations were making at the opera-house to give the devin du village. enraged at seeing these people arrogantly dispose of my property, i again took up the memoir i had sent to m. d'argenson, to which no answer had been returned, and having made some trifling alterations in it, i sent the manuscript by m. sellon, resident from geneva, and a letter with which he was pleased to charge himself, to the comte de st. florentin, who had succeeded m. d'argenson in the opera department. duclos, to whom i communicated what i had done, mentioned it to the petits violons, who offered to restore me, not my opera, but my freedom of the theater, which i was no longer in a situation to enjoy. perceiving i had not from any quarter the least justice to expect, i gave up the affair; and the directors of the opera, without either answering or listening to my reasons, have continued to dispose as of their own property, and to turn to their profit, the devin du village, which incontestably belongs to nobody but myself.* * it now belongs to them by virtue of an agreement made to that effect. since i had shaken off the yoke of my tyrants, i led a life sufficiently agreeable and peaceful; deprived of the charm of too strong attachments i was delivered from the weight of their chains. disgusted with the friends who pretended to be my protectors, and wished absolutely to dispose of me at will, and in spite of myself, to subject me to their pretended good services, i resolved in future to have no other connections than those of simple benevolence. these, without the least constraint upon liberty, constitute the pleasure of society, of which equality is the basis. i had of them as many as were necessary to enable me to taste of the charms of liberty without being subject to the dependence of it; and as soon as i had made an experiment of this manner of life, i felt it was the most proper to my age, to end my days in peace, far removed from the agitations, quarrels and cavillings, in which i had just been half submerged. during my residence at the hermitage, and after my settlement at montmorency, i had made in the neighborhood some agreeable acquaintance, and which did not subject me to any inconvenience. the principal of these was young loyseau de mauleon, who, then beginning to plead at the bar, did not yet know what rank he would one day hold there. i for my part was not in the least doubt about the matter. i soon pointed out to him the illustrious career in the midst of which he is now seen, and predicted that, if he laid down to himself rigid rules for the choice of causes, and never became the defender of anything but virtue and justice, his genius, elevated by this sublime sentiment, would be equal to that of the greatest orators. he followed my advice, and now feels the good effects of it. his defense of m. de portes is worthy of demosthenes. he came every year within a quarter of a league of the hermitage to pass the vacation at st. brice, in the fief of mauleon, belonging to his mother, and where the great bossuet had formerly lodged. this is a fief, of which a like succession of proprietors would render nobility difficult to support. i had also for a neighbor in the same village of st. brice, the bookseller guerin, a man of wit, learning, of an amiable disposition, and one of the first in his profession. he brought me acquainted with jean neaulme, bookseller of amsterdam, his friend and correspondent, who afterwards printed emile. i had another acquaintance still nearer than st. brice, this was m. maltor, vicar of groslay, a man better adapted for the functions of a statesman and a minister, than for those of the vicar of a village, and to whom a diocese at least would have been given to govern if talents decided the disposal of places. he had been secretary to the comte du luc, and was formerly intimately acquainted with jean-baptiste rousseau. holding in as much esteem the memory of that illustrious exile, as he held the villain who ruined him in horror; he possessed curious anecdotes of both, which seguy had not inserted in the life, still in manuscript, of the former, and he assured me that the comte du luc, far from ever having had reason to complain of his conduct, had until his last moment preserved for him the warmest friendship. m. maltor, to whom m. de vintimille gave this retreat after the death of his patron, had formerly been employed in many affairs of which, although far advanced in years, he still preserved a distinct remembrance, and reasoned upon them tolerably well. his conversation, equally amusing and instructive, had nothing in it resembling that of a village pastor: he joined the manners of a man of the world to the knowledge of one who passes his life in study. he, of all my permanent neighbors, was the person whose society was the most agreeable to me. i was also acquainted at montmorency with several fathers of the oratory, and amongst others father berthier, professor of natural philosophy; to whom, notwithstanding some little tincture of pedantry, i become attached on account of a certain air of cordial good nature which i observed in him. i had, however, some difficulty to reconcile this great simplicity with the desire and the art he had of everywhere thrusting himself into the company of the great, as well as that of the women, devotees, and philosophers. he knew how to accommodate himself to every one. i was greatly pleased with the man, and spoke of my satisfaction to all my other acquaintances. apparently what i said of him came to his ear. he one day thanked me for having thought him a good-natured man. i observed something in his forced smile which, in my eyes, totally changed his physiognomy, and which has since frequently occurred to my mind. i cannot better compare this smile than to that of panurge purchasing the sheep of dindenaut. our acquaintance had begun a little time after my arrival at the hermitage, to which place he frequently came to see me. i was already settled at montmorency when he left it to go and reside at paris. he often saw madam le vasseur there. one day, when i least expected anything of the kind, he wrote to me in behalf of that woman, informing me that grimm offered to maintain her, and to ask my permission to accept the offer. this i understood consisted in a pension of three hundred livres, and that madam le vasseur was to come and live at deuil, between the chevrette and montmorency. i will not say what impression the application made on me. it would have been less surprising had grimm had ten thousand livres a year, or any relation more easy to comprehend with that woman, and had not such a crime been made of my taking her to the country, where, as if she had become younger, he was now pleased to think of placing her. i perceived the good old lady had no other reason for asking my permission, which she might easily have done without, but the fear of losing what i already gave her, should i think ill of the step she took. although this charity appeared to be very extraordinary, it did not strike me so much then as afterwards. but had i known even everything i have since discovered, i would still as readily have given my consent as i did and was obliged to do, unless i had exceeded the offer of m. grimm. father berthier afterwards cured me a little of my opinion of his good nature and cordiality with which i had so unthinkingly charged him. this same father berthier was acquainted with two men, who, for what reason i know not, were to become so with me; there was but little similarity between their taste and mine. they were the children of melchisedec, of whom neither the country nor the family was known, no more than, in all probability, the real name. they were jansenists, and passed for priests in disguise, perhaps on account of their ridiculous manner of wearing long swords, to which they appeared to have been fastened. the prodigious mystery in all their proceedings gave them the appearance of the heads of a party, and i never had the lead doubt of their being the authors of the gazette ecclesiastique. the one, tall, smooth-tongued, and sharping, was named ferrand; the other, short, squat, a sneerer, and punctilious, was a m. minard. they called each other cousin. they lodged at paris with d'alembert, in the house of his nurse named madam rousseau, and had taken at montmorency a little apartment to pass the summers there. they did everything for themselves, and had neither a servant nor runner; each had his turn weekly to purchase provisions, do the business of the kitchen, and sweep the house. they managed tolerably well, and we sometimes ate with each other. i know not for what reason they gave themselves any concern about me: for my part, my only motive for beginning an acquaintance with them was their playing at chess, and to make a poor little party i suffered four hours' fatigue. as they thrust themselves into all companies, and wished to intermeddle in everything, theresa called them the gossips, and by this name they were long known at montmorency. such, with my host m. mathas, who was a good man, were my principal country acquaintance. i still had a sufficient number at paris to live there agreeably whenever i chose it, out of the sphere of men of letters, amongst whom duclos was the only friend i reckoned: for de leyre was still too young, and although, after having been a witness to the maneuvers of the philosophical tribe against me, he had withdrawn from it, at least i thought so, i could not yet forget the facility with which he made himself the mouthpiece of all the people of that description. in the first place i had my old and respectable friend rougin. this was a good old-fashioned friend for whom i was not indebted to my writings but to myself, and whom for that reason i have always preserved. i had the good lenieps, my countryman, and his daughter, then alive, madam lambert. i had a young genevese, named coindet, a good creature, careful, officious, zealous, who came to see me soon after i had gone to reside at the hermitage, and, without any other introducer than himself, had made his way into my good graces. he had a taste for drawing, and was acquainted with artists. he was of service to me relative to the engravings of the new eloisa; he undertook the direction of the drawings and the plates, and acquitted himself well of the commission. i had free access to the house of m. dupin which, less brilliant than in the young days of madam dupin, was still, by the merit of the heads of the family, and the choice of company which assembled there, one of the best houses in paris. as i had not preferred anybody to them, and had separated myself from their society to live free and independent, they had always received me in a friendly manner, and i was always certain of being well received by madam dupin. i might even have counted her amongst my country neighbors after her establishment at clichy, to which place i sometimes went to pass a day or two, and where i should have been more frequently had madam dupin and madam de chenonceaux been upon better terms. but the difficulty of dividing my time in the same house between two women whose manner of thinking was unfavorable to each other, made this disagreeable: however i had the pleasure of seeing her more at my ease at deuil, where, at a trifling distance from me, she had taken a small house, and even at my own habitation, where she often came to see me. i had likewise for a friend madam de crequi, who, having become devout, no longer received d'alembert, marmontel, nor a single man of letters, except, i believe, the abbe trublet, half a hypocrite, of whom she was weary. i, whose acquaintance she had sought, lost neither her good wishes nor intercourse. she sent me young fat pullets from mans, and her intention was to come and see me the year following had not a journey, upon which madam de luxembourg determined, prevented her. i here owe her a place apart; she will always hold a distinguished one in my remembrance. in this list i should also place a man whom, except roguin, i ought to have mentioned as the first upon it: my old friend and brother politician, de carrio, formerly titulary secretary to the embassy from spain to venice, afterwards in sweden, where he was charge des affaires, and at length really secretary to the embassy from spain at paris. he came and surprised me at montmorency when i least expected him. he was decorated with the insignia of a spanish order, the name of which i have forgotten, with a fine cross in jewelry. he had been obliged, in his proofs of nobility, to add a letter to his name, and to bear that of the chevalier de carrion. i found him still the same man, possessing the same excellent heart, and his mind daily improving, and becoming more and more amiable. we should have renewed our former intimacy had not coindet interposed according to custom, taken advantage of the distance i was at from town to insinuate himself into my place, and, in my name, into his confidence, and supplant me by the excess of his zeal to render me services. the remembrance of carrion makes me recollect one of my country neighbors, of whom i should be inexcusable not to speak, as i have to make confession of an unpardonable neglect of which i was guilty towards him: this was the honest m. le blond, who had done me a service at venice, and, having made an excursion to france with his family, had taken a house in the country, at briche, not far from montmorency.* as soon as i heard he was my neighbor, i, in the joy of my heart, and making it more a pleasure than a duty, went to pay him a visit. i set off upon this errand the next day. i was met by people who were coming to see me, and with whom i was obliged to return. two days afterwards i set off again for the same purpose: he had dined at paris with all his family. a third time he was at home: i heard the voice of women, and saw, at the door, a coach which alarmed me. i wished to see him, at least for the first time, quite at my ease, that we might talk over what had passed during our former connection. * when i wrote this, full of my blind confidence, i was far from suspecting the real motive and the effect of this journey to paris. in fine, i so often postponed my visit from day to day, that the shame of discharging a like duty so late prevented me from doing it at all; after having dared to wait so long, i no longer dared to present myself. this negligence, at which m. le blond could not but be justly offended, gave, relative to him, the appearance of ingratitude to my indolence, and yet i felt my heart so little culpable that, had it been in my power to do m. le blond the least service, even unknown to himself, i am certain he would not have found me idle. but indolence, negligence and delay in little duties to be fulfilled have been more prejudicial to me than great vices. my greatest faults have been omissions: i have seldom done what i ought not to have done, and unfortunately it has still more rarely happened that i have done what i ought. since i am now upon the subject of my venetian acquaintance, i must not forget one which i still preserved for a considerable time after my intercourse with the rest had ceased. this was m. de joinville, who continued after his return from genoa to show me much friendship. he was fond of seeing me and of conversing with me upon the affairs of italy, and the follies of m. de montaigu, of whom he of himself knew many anecdotes, by means of his acquaintance in the office for foreign affairs in which he was much connected. i had also the pleasure of seeing at my house my old comrade, dupont, who had purchased a place in the province of which he was, and whose affairs had brought him to paris. m. de joinville became by degrees so desirous of seeing me, that he in some measure laid me under constraint; and, although our places of residence were at a great distance from each other, we had a friendly quarrel when i let a week pass without going to dine with him. when he went to joinville he was always desirous of my accompanying him; but having once been there to pass a week i had not the least desire to return. m. de joinville was certainly an honest man, and even amiable in certain respects, but his understanding was beneath mediocrity; he was handsome, rather fond of his person and tolerably fatiguing. he had one of the most singular collections perhaps in the world, to which he gave much of his attention, and endeavored to acquire it that of his friends, to whom it sometimes afforded less amusement than it did to himself. this was a complete collection of songs of the court and paris for upwards of fifty years past, in which many anecdotes were to be found that would have been sought for in vain elsewhere. these are memoirs for the history of france, which would scarcely be thought of in any other country. one day, whilst we were still upon the very best terms, he received me so coldly and in a manner so different from that which was customary to him, that after having given him an opportunity to explain, and even having begged him to do it, i left his house with a resolution, in which i have persevered, never to return to it again; for i am seldom seen where i have been once ill received, and in this case there was no diderot who pleaded for m. de joinville. i vainly endeavored to discover what i had done to offend him; i could not recollect a circumstance at which he could possibly have taken offense. i was certain of never having spoken of him or his in any other than in the most honorable manner; for he had acquired my friendship, and besides my having nothing but favorable things to say of him, my most inviolable maxim has been that of never speaking but in an honorable manner of the houses i frequented. at length, by continually ruminating, i formed the following conjecture: the last time we had seen each other, i had supped with him at the apartment of some girls of his acquaintance, in company with two or three clerks in the office of foreign affairs, very amiable men, and who had neither the manner nor appearance of libertines; and on my part, i can assert that the whole evening passed in making melancholy reflections on the wretched fate of the creatures with whom we were. i did not pay anything, as m. de joinville gave the supper, nor did i make the girls the least present, because i gave them not the opportunity i had done to the padonana of establishing a claim to the trifle i might have offered. we all came away together, cheerfully and upon very good terms. without having made a second visit to the girls, i went three or four days afterwards to dine with m. de joinville, whom i had not seen during that interval, and who gave me the reception of which i have spoken. unable to suppose any other cause for it than some misunderstanding relative to the supper, and perceiving he had no inclination to explain, i resolved to visit him no longer, but i still continued to send him my works: he frequently sent me his compliments, and one evening, meeting him in the green-room of the french theater, he obligingly reproached me with not having called to see him, which, however, did not induce me to depart from my resolution. therefore this affair had rather the appearance of a coolness than a rupture. however, not having heard of nor seen him since that time, it would have been too late after an absence of several years, to renew my acquaintance with him. it is for this reason m. de joinville is not named in my list, although i had for a considerable time frequented his house. i will not swell my catalogue with the names of many other persons with whom i was or had become less intimate, although i sometimes saw them in the country, either at my own house or that of some neighbor, such for instance as the abbes de condillac and de mably, m. de mairan, de la lalive, de boisgelou, vatelet, ancelet, and others. i will also pass lightly over that of m. de margency, gentleman in ordinary of the king, an ancient member of the coterie holbachique, which he had quitted as well as myself, and the old friend of madam d'epinay from whom he had separated as i had done; i likewise consider that of m. desmahis, his friend, the celebrated but short-lived author of the comedy of l'impertinent, of much the same importance. the first was my neighbor in the country, his estate at margency being near to montmorency. we were old acquaintances, but the neighborhood and a certain conformity of experience connected us still more. the last died soon afterwards. he had merit and even wit, but he was in some degree the original of his comedy, and a little of a coxcomb with women, by whom he was not much regretted. i cannot, however, omit taking notice of a new correspondence i entered into at this period, which has had too much influence over the rest of my life not to make it necessary for me to mark its origin. the person in question is de lamoignon de malesherbes of the cour des aides, then censor of books, which office he exercised with equal intelligence and mildness, to the great satisfaction of men of letters. i had not once been to see him at paris; yet i had never received from him any other than the most obliging condescensions relative to the censorship, and i knew that he had more than once very severely reprimanded persons who had written against me. i had new proofs of his goodness upon the subject of the edition of julie. the proofs of so great a work being very expensive from amsterdam by post, he, to whom all letters were free, permitted these to be addressed to him, and sent them to me under the countersign of the chancellor his father. when the work was printed he did not permit the sale of it in the kingdom until, contrary to my wishes, an edition had been sold for my benefit. as the profit of this would on my part have been a theft committed upon rey, to whom i had sold the manuscript, i not only refused to accept the present intended me, without his consent, which he very generously gave, but insisted upon dividing with him the hundred pistoles (a thousand livresforty pounds), the amount of it, but of which he would not receive anything. for these hundred pistoles i had the mortification, against which m. de malesherbes had not guarded me, of seeing my work horribly mutilated, and the sale of the good edition stopped until the bad one was entirely disposed of. i have always considered m. de malesherbes as a man whose uprightness was proof against every temptation. nothing that has happened has even made me doubt for a moment of his probity; but, as weak as he is polite, he sometimes injures those he wishes to serve by the excess of his zeal to preserve them from evil. he not only retrenched a hundred pages in the edition of paris, but he made another retrenchment, which no person but the author could permit himself to do, in the copy of the good edition he sent to madam de pompadour. it is somewhere said in that work that the wife of a coal-heaver is more respectable than the mistress of a prince. this phrase had occurred to me in the warmth of composition without any application. in reading over the work i perceived it would be applied, yet in consequence of the very imprudent maxim i had adopted of not suppressing anything, on account of the application which might be made, when my conscience bore witness to me that i had not made them at the time i wrote, i determined not to expunge the phrase, and contented myself with substituting the word prince to king, which i had first written. this softening did not seem sufficient to m. de malesherbes; he retrenched the whole expression in a new sheet which he had printed on purpose and stuck in between the other with as much exactness as possible in the copy of madam de pompadour. she was not ignorant of this maneuver. some good-natured people took the trouble to inform her of it. for my part it was not until a long time afterwards, and when i began to feel the consequences of it, that the matter came to my knowledge. is not this the origin of the concealed but implacable hatred of another lady who was in a like situation, without my knowing it or even being acquainted with her person when i wrote the passage? when the book was published the acquaintance was made, and i was very uneasy. i mentioned this to the chevalier de lorenzi, who laughed at me, and said the lady was so little offended that she had not even taken notice of the matter. i believed him, perhaps rather too lightly, and made myself easy when there was much reason for my being otherwise. at the beginning of the winter i received an additional mark of the goodness of m. de malesherbes of which i was very sensible, although i did not think proper to take advantage of it. a place was vacant in the journal des savants. margency wrote to me, proposing to me the place, as from himself. but i easily perceived from the manner of the letter that he was dictated to and authorized; he afterwards told me he had been desired to make me the offer. the occupations of this place were but trifling. all i should have had to do would have been to make two extracts a month, from the books brought to me for that purpose, without being under the necessity of going once to paris, not even to pay the magistrate a visit of thanks. by this employment i should have entered a society of men of letters of the first merit; m. de mairan, clairaut, de guignes and the abbe barthelemi, with the first two of whom i had already made an acquaintance, and that of the two others was very desirable. in fine, for this trifling employment, the duties of which i might so commodiously have discharged, there was a salary of eight hundred francs per annum. i was for a few hours undecided, and this from a fear of making margency angry and displeasing m. de malesherbes. but at length the insupportable constraint of not having it in my power to work when i thought proper, and to be commanded by time; and moreover the certainty of badly performing the functions with which i was to charge myself, prevailed over everything, and determined me to refuse a place for which i was unfit. i knew that my whole talent consisted in a certain warmth of mind with respect to the subjects of which i had to treat, and that nothing but the love of that which was great, beautiful and sublime, could animate my genius. what would the subjects of the extracts i should have had to make from books, or even the books themselves, have signified to me? my indifference about them would have frozen my pen, and stupefied my mind. people thought i could make a trade of writing, as most of the other men of letters did, instead of which i never could write but from the warmth of imagination. this certainly was not necessary for the journal des savants. i therefore wrote to margency a letter of thanks in the politest terms possible, and so well explained to him my reasons, that it was not possible that either he or m. de malesherbes could imagine there was pride or ill-humor in my refusal. they both approved of it without receiving me less politely, and the secret was so well kept that it was never known to the public. the proposition did not come in a favorable moment. i had some time before this formed the project of quitting literature, and especially the trade of an author. i had been disgusted with men of letters by everything that had lately befallen me, and had learned from experience that it was impossible to proceed in the same track without having some connections with them. i was not much less dissatisfied with men of the world, and in general with the mixed life i had lately led, half to myself and half devoted to societies for which i was unfit. i felt more than ever, and by constant experience, that every unequal association is disadvantageous to the weaker person. living with opulent people, and in a situation different from that i had chosen, without keeping a house as they did, i was obliged to imitate them in many things; and little expenses, which were nothing to their fortunes, were for me not less ruinous than indispensable. if another man goes to the country-house of a friend, he is served by his own servant, as well at table as in his chamber; he sends him to seek for everything he wants; having nothing directly to do with the servants of the house, not even seeing them, he gives them what he pleases, and when he thinks proper; but i, alone, and without a servant, was at the mercy of the servants of the house, of whom it was necessary to gain the good graces, that i might not have much to suffer; and being treated as the equal of their master, i was obliged to treat them accordingly, and better than another would have done, because, in fact, i stood in greater need of their services. this, where there are but few domestics, may be complied with; but in the houses i frequented there were a great number, and the knaves so well understood their interests that they knew how to make me want the services of them all successively. the women of paris, who have so much wit, have no just idea of this inconvenience, and in their zeal to economize my purse they ruined me. if i supped in town, at any considerable distance from my lodgings, instead of permitting me to send for a hackney-coach, the mistress of the house ordered her horses to be put to and sent me home in her carriage; she was very glad to save me the twenty-four sous for the fiacre, but never thought of the ecus i gave to her coachman and footman. if a lady wrote to me from paris to the hermitage or to montmorency, she regretted the four sous the postage of the letter would have cost me, and sent it by one of her servants, who came sweating on foot, and to whom i gave a dinner and half an ecu, which he certainly had well earned. if she proposed to me to pass with her a week or a fortnight at her country-house, she still said to herself, "it will be a saving to the poor man; during that time his eating will cost him nothing." she never recollected that i was the whole time idle, that the expenses of my family, my rent, linen and clothes were still going on, that i paid my barber double, that it cost me more being in her house than in my own, and although i confined my little largesses to the house in which i customarily lived, that these were still ruinous to me. i am certain i have paid upwards of twenty-five ecus in the house of madam d'houdetot, at eaubonne, where i never slept more than four or five times, and upwards of a thousand pistoles as well at epinay as at the chevrette, during the five or six years i was most assiduous there. these expenses are inevitable to a man like me, who knows not how to provide anything for himself, and cannot support the sight of a lackey who grumbles and serves him with a sour look. with madam dupin, even where i was one of the family, and in whose house i rendered many services to the servants, i never received theirs but for my money. in course of time it was necessary to renounce these little liberalities, which my situation no longer permitted me to bestow, and i felt still more severely the inconvenience of associating with people in a situation different from my own. had this manner of life been to my taste, i should have been consoled for a heavy expense, which i dedicated to my pleasures; but to ruin myself at the same time that i fatigued my mind, was insupportable, and i had so felt the weight of this, that, profiting by the interval of liberty i then had, i was determined to perpetuate it, and entirely to renounce great companies, the composition of books, and all literary concerns, and for the remainder of my days to confine myself to the narrow and peaceful sphere in which i felt i was born to move. the product of this letter to d'alembert, and of the nouvelle heloise, had a little improved the state of my finances, which had been considerably exhausted at the hermitage. emile, to which, after i had finished heloise, i had given great application, was in forwardness, and the product of this could not be less than the sum of which i was already in possession. i intended to place this money in such a manner as to produce me a little annual income, which, with my copying, might be sufficient to my wants without writing any more. i had two other works upon the stocks. the first of these was my institutions politiques.* i examined the state of this work, and found it required several years' labor. i had not courage enough to continue it, and to wait until it was finished before i carried my intentions into execution. therefore, laying the book aside, i determined to take from it all i could, and to burn the rest; and continuing this with zeal without interrupting emile, i finished the contrat social.*(2) * political institutions. *(2) social contract. the dictionary of music now remained. this was mechanical, and might be taken up at any time; the object of it was entirely pecuniary. i reserved to myself the liberty of laying it aside, or of finishing it at my ease, according as my other resources collected should render this necessary or superfluous. with respect to the morale sensitive,* of which i had made nothing more than a sketch, i entirely gave it up. * sensitive morality. as my last project, if i found i could not entirely do without copying, was that of removing from paris, where the affluence of my visitors rendered my housekeeping expensive, and deprived me of the time i should have turned to advantage to provide for it; to prevent in my retirement the state of lassitude into which an author is said to fall when he has laid down his pen, i reserved to myself an occupation which might fill up the void in my solitude without tempting me to print anything more. i know not for what reason they had long tormented me to write the memoirs of my life. although these were not until that time interesting as to the facts, i felt they might become so by the candor with which i was capable of giving them, and i determined to make of these the only work of the kind, by an unexampled veracity, that, for once at least, the world might see a man such as he internally was. i had always laughed at the false ingenuousness of montagne, who, feigning to confess his faults, takes great care not to give himself any, except such as are amiable; whilst i, who have ever thought, and still think myself, considering everything, the best of men, felt there is no human being, however pure he may be, who does not internally conceal some odious vice. i knew i was described to the public very different from what i really was, and so opposite, that notwithstanding my faults, all of which i was determined to relate, i could not but be a gainer by showing myself in my proper colors. this, besides, not being to be done without setting forth others also in theirs, and the work for the same reason not being of a nature to appear during my lifetime, and that of several other persons, i was the more encouraged to make my confession, at which i should never have to blush before any person. i therefore resolved to dedicate my leisure to the execution of this undertaking, and immediately began to collect such letters and papers as might guide or assist my memory, greatly regretting the loss of all i had burned, mislaid and destroyed. the project of absolute retirement, one of the most reasonable i had ever formed, was strongly impressed upon my mind, and for the execution of it i was already taking measures, when heaven, which prepared me a different destiny, plunged me into another vortex. montmorency, the ancient and fine patrimony of the illustrious family of that name, was taken from it by confiscation. it passed by the sister of duc henri, to the house of conde, which has changed the name of montmorency to that of enghien, and the duchy has no other castle than an old tower, where the archives are kept, and to which the vassals come to do homage. but at montmorency, or enghien, there is a private house, built by crosat, called le pauvre, which having the magnificence of the most superb chateaux, deserves and bears the name of a castle. the majestic appearance of this noble edifice, the view from it, not equaled perhaps in any country; the spacious saloon, painted by the hand of a master; the garden, planted by the celebrated le nostre; all combined to form a whole strikingly majestic, in which there is still a simplicity that enforces admiration. the marechal duc de luxembourg, who then inhabited this house, came every year into the neighborhood where formerly his ancestors were the masters, to pass, at least, five or six weeks as a private inhabitant, but with a splendor which did not degenerate from the ancient luster of his family. on the first journey he made to it after my residing at montmorency, he and his lady sent to me a valet de chamber, with their compliments, inviting me to sup with them as often as it should be agreeable to me; and at each time of their coming they never failed to reiterate the same compliments and invitation. this called to my recollection madam beuzenval sending me to dine in the servants' hall. times were changed; but i was still the same man. i did not choose to be sent to dine in the servants' hall, and was but little desirous of appearing at the table of the great; i should have been much better pleased had they left me as i was, without caressing me and rendering me ridiculous. i answered politely and respectfully to monsieur and madam de luxembourg, but i did not accept their offers, and my indisposition and timidity, with my embarrassment in speaking, making me tremble at the idea alone of appearing in an assembly of people of the court. i did not even go to the castle to pay a visit of thanks, although i sufficiently comprehended this was all they desired, and that their eager politeness was rather a matter of curiosity than benevolence. however, advances still were made, and even became more pressing. the comtesse de boufflers, who was very intimate with the lady of the marechal, sent to inquire after my health, and to beg i would go and see her. i returned her a proper answer, but did not stir from my house. at the journey of easter, the year following, 1759, the chevalier de lorenzy, who belonged to the court of the prince of conti, and was intimate with madam de luxembourg, came several times to see me, and we became acquainted; he pressed me to go to the castle, but i refused to comply. at length, one afternoon, when i least expected anything of the kind, i saw coming up to the house the marechal de luxembourg, followed by five or six persons. there was now no longer any means of defense; and i could not, without being arrogant and unmannerly, do otherwise than return this visit, and make my court to madam la marechale, from whom the marshall had been the bearer of the most obliging compliments to me. thus, under unfortunate auspices, began the connections from which i could no longer preserve myself, although a too well-founded foresight made me afraid of them until they were made. i was excessively afraid of madam de luxembourg. i knew she was amiable as to manner. i had seen her several times at the theater, and with the duchess of boufflers, and in the bloom of her beauty; but she was said to be malignant; and this in a woman of her rank made me tremble. i had scarcely seen her before i was subjugated. i thought her charming with that charm proof against time and which had the most powerful action upon my heart. i expected to find her conversation satirical and full of pleasantries and points. it was not so; it was much better. the conversation of madam de luxembourg is not remarkably full of wit; it has no sallies, nor even finesse; it is exquisitely delicate, never striking, but always pleasing. her flattery is the more intoxicating as it is natural; it seems to escape her involuntarily, and her heart to overflow because it is too full. i thought i perceived, on my first visit, that notwithstanding my awkward manner and embarrassed expression, i was not displeasing to her. all the women of the court know how to persuade us of this when they please, whether it be true or not, but they do not all, like madam de luxembourg, possess the art of rendering that persuasion so agreeable that we are no longer disposed ever to have a doubt remaining. from the first day my confidence in her would have been as full as it soon afterwards became, had not the duchess of montmorency, her daughter-in-law, young, giddy, and malicious also, taken it into her head to attack me, and in the midst of the eulogiums of her mamma, and feigned allurements on her own account, made me suspect i was only considered by them as a subject of ridicule. it would perhaps have been difficult to relieve me from this fear with these two ladies had not the extreme goodness of the marechal confirmed me in the belief that theirs was not real. nothing is more surprising, considering my timidity, than the promptitude with which i took him at his word on the footing of equality to which he would absolutely reduce himself with me, except it be that with which he took me at mine with respect to the absolute independence in which i was determined to live. both persuaded i had reason to be content with my situation, and that i was unwilling to change it, neither he nor madam de luxembourg seemed to think a moment of my purse or fortune; although i can have no doubt of the tender concern they had for me, they never proposed to me a place nor offered me their interest, except it were once, when madam de luxembourg seemed to wish me to become a member of the french academy. i alleged my religion; this she told me was no obstacle, or if it was one she engaged to remove it. i answered, that however great the honor of becoming a member of so illustrious a body might be, having refused m. de tressan, and, in some measure, the king of poland, to become a member of the academy at nancy, i could not with propriety enter into any other. madam de luxembourg did not insist, and nothing more was said upon the subject. this simplicity of intercourse with persons of such rank, and who had the power of doing anything in my favor, m. de luxembourg being, and highly deserving to be, the particular friend of the king, affords a singular contrast with the continual cares, equally importunate and officious, of the friends and protectors from whom i had just separated, and who endeavored less to serve me than to render me contemptible. when the marechal came to see me at mont-louis, was uneasy at receiving him and his retinue in my only chamber; not because i was obliged to make them all sit down in the midst of my dirty plates and broken pots, but on account of the state of the floor, which was rotten and falling to ruin, and i was afraid the weight of his attendants would entirely sink it. less concerned on account of my own danger than for that to which the affability of the marechal exposed him, i hastened to remove him from it by conducting him, notwithstanding the coldness of the weather, to my alcove, which was quite open to the air, and had no chimney. when he was there i told him my reason for having brought him to it; he told it to his lady, and they both pressed me to accept, until the floor was repaired, a lodging at the castle; or, if i preferred it, in a separate edifice called the little castle, which was in the middle of the park. this delightful abode deserves to be spoken of. the park or garden of montmorency is not a plain, like that of the chevrette. it is uneven, mountainous, raised by little hills and valleys, of which the able artist has taken advantage, and thereby varied his groves, ornaments, waters, and points of view, and, if i may so speak, multiplied by art and genius a space in itself rather narrow. this park is terminated at the top by a terrace and the castle; at bottom it forms a narrow passage which opens and becomes wider towards the valley, the angle of which is filled up with a large piece of water. between the orangery, which is in this widening, and the piece of water, the banks of which are agreeably decorated, stands the little castle, of which i have spoken. this edifice, and the ground about it, formerly belonged to the celebrated le brun, who amused himself in building and decorating it in the exquisite taste of architectural ornaments which that great painter had formed to himself. the castle has since been rebuilt, but still according to the plan and design of its first master. it is little and simple, but elegant. as it stands in a hollow between the orangery and the large piece of water, and consequently is liable to be damp, it is open in the middle by a peristyle between two rows of columns, by which means the air circulating throughout the whole edifice keeps it dry, notwithstanding its unfavorable situation. when the building, is seen from the opposite elevation, which is a point of view it appears absolutely surrounded with water, and we imagine we have before our eyes an enchanted island, or the most beautiful of the three borromeans, called isola bella, in the greater lake. in this solitary edifice i was offered the choice of four complete apartments it contains, besides the ground-floor, consisting of a dancing room, billiard room and a kitchen. i chose the smallest over the kitchen, which also i had with it. it was charmingly neat, with blue and white furniture. in this profound and delicious solitude, in the midst of woods, the singing of birds of every kind, and the perfume of orange flowers, i composed, in a continual ecstasy, the fifth book of emile, the coloring of which i owed in a great measure to the lively impression i received from the place i inhabited. with what eagerness did i run every morning at sunrise to respire the perfumed air in the peristyle! what excellent coffee i took there tete-a-tete with my theresa. my cat and dog were our company. this retinue alone would have been sufficient for me during my whole life, in which i should not have had one weary moment. i was there in a terrestrial paradise; i lived in innocence and tasted of happiness. at the journey of july, m. and madam de luxembourg showed me so much attention, and were so extremely kind, that, lodged in their house, and overwhelmed with their goodness, i could not do less than make them a proper return in assiduous respect near their persons; i scarcely quitted them; i went in the morning to pay my court to madam la marechale; after dinner i walked with the marechal; but did not sup at the castle on account of the numerous guests, and because they supped too late for me. thus far everything was as it should be, and no harm would have been done could i have remained at this point. but i have never known how to preserve a medium in my attachments, and simply fulfill the duties of society. i have ever been everything or nothing. i was soon everything; and receiving the most polite attention from persons of the highest rank, i passed the proper bounds, and conceived for them a friendship not permitted except among equals. of these i had all the familiarity in my manners, whilst they still preserved in theirs the same politeness to which they had accustomed me. yet i was never quite at my ease with madam de luxembourg. although i was not quite relieved from my fears relative to her character, i apprehended less danger from it than from her wit. it was by this especially that she impressed me with awe. i knew she was difficult as to conversation, and she had a right to be so. i knew women, especially those of her rank, would absolutely be amused, that it was better to offend than to weary them, and i judged by her commentaries upon what the people who went away had said what she must think of my blunders. i thought of an expedient to spare me with her the embarrassment of speaking; this was reading. she had heard of my heloise, and knew it was in the press; she expressed a desire to see the work; i offered to read it to her, and she accepted my offer. i went to her every morning at ten o'clock; m. de luxembourg was present, and the door was shut. i read by the side of her bed, and so well proportioned my readings that there would have been sufficient for the whole time she had to stay, had they even not been interrupted.* the success of this expedient surpassed my expectation. madam de luxembourg took a great liking to julia and the author; she spoke of nothing but me, thought of nothing else, said civil things to me from morning till night, and embraced me ten times a day. she insisted on me always having my place by her side at table, and when any great lords wished to take it she told them it was mine, and made them sit down somewhere else. the impression these charming manners made upon me, who was subjugated by the least mark of affection, may easily be judged of. i became really attached to her in proportion to the attachment she showed me. all my fear in perceiving this infatuation, and feeling the want of agreeableness in myself to support it, was that it would be changed into disgust; and unfortunately this fear was but too well founded. * the loss of a great battle, which much afflicted the king, obliged m. de luxembourg precipitately to return to court. there must have been a natural opposition between her turn of mind and mine, since, independently of the numerous stupid things which at every instant escaped me in conversation, and even in my letters, and when i was upon the best terms with her, there were certain other things with which she was displeased without my being able to imagine the reason. i will quote one instance from among twenty. she knew i was writing for madam d'houdetot a copy of the nouvelle heloise. she was desirous to have one on the same terms. i promised to do so; and entering her name as one of my customers, i wrote her a polite letter of thanks, at least such was my intention. her answer, which was as follows, stupefied me with surprise. (packet c, no. 43.) versailles, tuesday. "i am ravished, i am satisfied: your letter has given me infinite pleasure, and i take the earliest moment to acquaint you with, and thank you for it. "these are the exact words of your letter: although you are certainly a very good customer, i have some pain in receiving your money: according to regular order i ought to pay for the pleasure i should have in working for you. i will not mention the subject again. i have to complain of your not speaking of your state of health: nothing interests me more. i love you with all my heart; and be assured that i write this to you in a very melancholy mood, for i should have much pleasure in telling it you myself. m. de luxembourg loves and embraces you with all his heart." on receiving the letter i hastened to answer it, reserving to myself more fully to examine the matter, protesting against all disobliging interpretation, and after having given several days to this examination with an inquietude which may easily be conceived, and still without being able to discover in what i could have erred, what follows was my final answer on the subject. montmorency, 8th december, 1759. "since my last letter i have examined a hundred times the passage in question. i have considered it in its proper and natural meaning, as well as in every other which may be given to it, and i confess to you, madam, that i know not whether it be i who owe to you excuses, or you from whom they are due to me." it is now ten years since these letters were written. i have since that time frequently thought of the subject of them; and such is still my stupidity that i have hitherto been unable to discover what in the passage, quoted from my letter, she could find offensive, or even displeasing. i must here mention, relative to the manuscript copy of heloise madam de luxembourg wished to have, in what manner i thought to give it some marked advantage which should distinguish it from all others. i had written separately the adventures of lord edward, and had long been undetermined whether i should insert them wholly, or in extracts, in the work in which they seemed to be wanting. i at length determined to retrench them entirely, because, not being in the manner of the rest, they would have spoiled the interesting simplicity, which was its principal merit. i had still a stronger reason when i came to know madam de luxembourg. there was in these adventures a roman marchioness, of a bad character, some parts of which, without being applicable, might have been applied to her by those to whom she was not particularly known. i was therefore, highly pleased with the determination to which i had come, and resolved to abide by it. but in the ardent desire to enrich her copy with something which was not in the other, what should i fall upon but these unfortunate adventures, and i concluded on making an extract from them to add to the work; a project dictated by madness, of which the extravagance is inexplicable, except by the blind fatality which led me on to destruction. quos vult perdere jupiter dementat. i was stupid enough to make this extract with the greatest care and pains, and to send it her as the finest thing in the world; it is true, i at the same time informed her the original was burned, which was really the case, that the extract was for her alone, and would never be seen, except by herself, unless she chose to show it; which, far from proving to her my prudence and discretion, as it was my intention to do, clearly intimated what i thought of the application by which she might be offended. my stupidity was such, that i had no doubt of her being delighted with what i had done. she did not make me the compliment upon it which i expected, and, to my great surprise, never once mentioned the paper i had sent her. i was so satisfied with myself, that it was not until a long time afterwards, i judged, from other indications, of the effect it had produced. i had still, in favor of her manuscript, another idea more reasonable, but which, by more distant effects, has not been much less prejudicial to me; so much does everything concur with the work of destiny, when that hurries on a man to misfortune. i thought of ornamenting the manuscript with the engravings of the new eloisa, which were of the same size. i asked coindet for these engravings, which belonged to me by every kind of title, and the more so as i had given him the produce of the plates, which had a considerable sale. coindet is as cunning as i am the contrary. by frequently asking him for the engravings he came to the knowledge of the use i intended to make of them. he then, under pretense of adding some new ornament, still kept them from me, and at length presented them himself. ego versiculos feci: tulit alter honores. this gave him an introduction upon a certain footing to the hotel de luxembourg. after my establishment at the little castle he came rather frequently to see me, and always in the morning, especially when m. and madam de luxembourg were at montmorency. therefore that i might pass the day with him, i did not go to the castle. reproaches were made me on account of my absence; i told the reason of them. i was desired to bring with me m. coindet; i did so. this was what he had sought after. therefore, thanks to the excessive goodness m. and madam de luxembourg had for me, a clerk to m. trelusson, who was sometimes pleased to give him his table when he had nobody else to dine with him, was suddenly placed at that of a marechal of france, with princes, duchesses, and persons of the highest rank at court. i shall never forget, that one day being obliged to return early to paris, the marechal said, after dinner, to the company, "let us take a walk upon the road to st. denis, and we will accompany m. coindet." this was too much for the poor man; his head was quite turned. for my part my heart was so affected that i could not say a word. i followed the company, weeping like a child, and having the strongest desire to kiss the foot of the good marechal but the continuation of the history of the manuscript has made me anticipate. i will go a little back, and, as far as my memory will permit, mark each event in its proper order. as soon as the little house of mont-louis was ready, i had it neatly furnished and again established myself there. i could not break through the resolution i had made on quitting the hermitage of always having my apartment to myself; but i found a difficulty in resolving to quit the little castle. i kept the key of it, and being delighted with the charming breakfasts of the peristyle, frequently went to the castle to sleep, and stayed three or four days as at a country-house, i was at that time perhaps better and more agreeably lodged than any private individual in europe. my host, m. mathas, one of the best men in the world, had left me the absolute direction of the repairs at mont-louis, and insisted upon my disposing of his workmen without his interference. i found the means of making a single chamber upon the first story, into a complete set of apartments, consisting of a chamber, ante-chamber, and a water-closet. upon the ground-floor was the kitchen and the chamber of theresa. the alcove served me for a closet by means of a glazed partition and a chimney i had made there. after my return to this habitation, i amused myself in decorating the terrace, which was already shaded by two rows of linden trees; i added two others to make a cabinet of verdure, and placed in it a table and stone benches; i surrounded it with lilacs, seringa and honeysuckle, and had a beautiful border of flowers parallel with the two rows of trees. this terrace, more elevated than that of the castle, from which the view was at least as fine, and where i had tamed a great number of birds, was my drawing-room, in which i received m. and madam de luxembourg, the duke of villeroy, the prince of tingry, the marquis of armentieres, the duchess of montmorency, the duchess of boufflers, the countess of valentinois, the countess of boufflers, and other persons of the first rank; who, from the castle, disdained not to make, over a very fatiguing mountain, the pilgrimage of mont-louis. i owed all these visits to the favor of m. and madam de luxembourg; this i felt, and my heart on that account did them all due homage. it was with the same sentiment that i once said to m. de luxembourg, embracing him: "ah! monsieur le marechal, i hated the great before i knew you, and i have hated them still more since you have shown me with what ease they might acquire universal respect." further than this, i defy any person with whom i was then acquainted, to say i was ever dazzled for an instant with splendor, or that the vapor of the incense i received ever affected my head; that i was less uniform in my manner, less plain in my dress, less easy of access to people of the lowest rank, less familiar with neighbors, or less ready to render service to every person when i had it in my power so to do, without ever once being discouraged by the numerous and frequently unreasonable importunities with which i was incessantly assailed. although my heart led me to the castle of montmorency, by my sincere attachment to those by whom it was inhabited, it by the same means drew me back to the neighborhood of it, there to taste the sweets of the equal and simple life, in which my only happiness consisted. theresa had contracted a friendship with the daughter of one of my neighbors, a mason of the name of pilleu; i did the same with the father, and after having dined at the castle, not without some constraint, to please madam de luxembourg, with what eagerness did i return in the evening to sup with the good man pilleu and his family, sometimes at his own house and at others at mine! besides my two lodgings in the country, i soon had a third at the hotel de luxembourg, the proprietors of which pressed me so much to go and see them there that i consented, notwithstanding my aversion to paris, where, since my retiring to the hermitage, i had been but twice, upon the two occasions of which i have spoken. i did not now go there except on the days agreed upon, solely to supper, and the next morning i returned to the country. i entered and came out by the garden which faces the boulevard, so that i could with the greatest truth, say i had not set my foot upon the stones of paris. in the midst of this transient prosperity, a catastrophe, which was to be the conclusion of it, was preparing at a distance. a short time after my return to mont-louis, i made there, and as it was customary, against my inclination, a new acquaintance, which makes another era in my private history. whether this be favorable or unfavorable, the reader will hereafter be able to judge. the person with whom i became acquainted was the marchioness of verdelin, my neighbor, whose husband had just bought a country-house at soisy, near montmorency. mademoiselle d'ars, daughter to the comte d'ars, a man of fashion, but poor, had married m. de verdelin, old, ugly, deaf, uncouth, brutal, jealous, with gashes in his face, and blind of one eye, but, upon the whole, a good man when properly managed, and in possession of a fortune of from fifteen to twenty thousand a year. this charming object, swearing, roaring, scolding, storming, and making his wife cry all day long, ended by doing whatever she thought proper, and this to set her in a rage, because she knew how to persuade him that it was he who would, and she who would not have it so. m. de margency, of whom i have spoken, was the friend of madam, and became that of monsieur. he had a few years before let them his castle of margency, near eaubonne and andilly, and they resided there precisely at the time of my passion for madam d'houdetot. madam d'houdetot and madam de verdelin became acquainted with each other, by means of madam d'aubeterre their common friend; and as the garden of margency was in the road by which madam d'houdetot went to mont olympe, her favorite walk, madam de verdelin gave her a key that she might pass through it. by means of this key i crossed it several times with her; but i did not like unexpected meetings, and when madam de verdelin was by chance upon our way i left them together without speaking to her, and went on before. this want of gallantry must have made on her an impression unfavorable to me. yet when she was at soisy she was anxious to have my company. she came several times to see me at mont-louis, without finding me at home, and perceiving i did not return her visit, took it into her head, as a means of forcing me to do it, to send me pots of flowers for my terrace. i was under the necessity of going to thank her; this was all she wanted, and we thus became acquainted. this connection, like every other i formed, or was led into contrary to my inclination, began rather boisterously. there never reigned in it a real calm. the turn of mind of madam de verdelin was too opposite to me. malignant expressions and pointed sarcasms came from her with so much simplicity, that a continual attention too fatiguing for me was necessary to perceive she was turning into ridicule the person to whom she spoke. one trivial circumstance which occurs to my recollection will be sufficient to give an idea of her manner. her brother had just obtained the command of a frigate cruising against the english. i spoke of the manner of fitting out this frigate without diminishing its swiftness of sailing. "yes," replied she, in the most natural tone of voice, "no more cannon are taken than are necessary for fighting." i seldom have heard her speak well of any of her absent friends without letting slip something to their prejudice. what she did not see with an evil eye she looked upon with one of ridicule, and her friend margency was not excepted. what i found most insupportable in her was the perpetual constraint proceeding from her little messages, presents and billets, to which it was a labor for me to answer, and i had continual embarrassments either in thanking or refusing. however, by frequently seeing this lady i became attached to her. she had her troubles as well as i had mine. reciprocal confidence rendered our conversations interesting. nothing so cordially attaches two persons as the satisfaction of weeping together. we sought the company of each other for our reciprocal consolation, and the want of this has frequently made me pass over many things. i had been so severe in my frankness with her, that after having sometimes shown so little esteem for her character, a great deal was necessary to be able to believe she could sincerely forgive me. the following letter is a specimen of the epistles i sometimes wrote to her, and it is to be remarked that she never once in any of her answers to them seemed to be in the least degree piqued. montmorency, 5th november, 1760. "you tell me, madam, you have not well explained yourself, in order to make me understand i have explained myself ill. you speak of your pretended stupidity for the purpose of making me feel my own. you boast of being nothing more than a good kind of woman, as if you were afraid to be taken at your word, and you make me apologies to tell me i owe them to you. yes, madam, i know it; it is i who am a fool, a good kind of man; and, if it be possible, worse than all this; it is i who make a bad choice of my expressions in the opinion of a fine french lady, who pays as much attention to words, and speaks as well as you do. but consider that i take them in the common meaning of the language without knowing or troubling my head about the polite acceptations in which they are taken in the virtuous societies of paris. if my expressions are sometimes equivocal, i endeavored by my conduct to determine their meaning," etc. the rest of the letter is much the same. coindet, enterprising, bold, even to effrontery, and who was upon the watch after all my friends, soon introduced himself in my name to the house of madam de verdelin, and, unknown to me, shortly became there more familiar than myself. this coindet was an extraordinary man. he presented himself in my name in the houses of all my acquaintance, gained a footing in them, and ate there without ceremony. transported with zeal to do me service, he never mentioned my name without his eyes being suffused with tears; but, when he came to see me, he kept the most profound silence on the subject of all these connections, and especially on that in which he knew i must be interested. instead of telling me what he had heard, said, or seen, relative to my affairs, he waited for my speaking to him, and even interrogated me. he never knew anything of what passed in paris, except that which i told him: finally, although everybody spoke to me of him, he never once spoke to me of any person; he was secret and mysterious with his friend only; but i will for the present leave coindet and madam de verdelin, and return to them at a proper time. sometime after my return to mont-louis, la tour, the painter, came to see me, and brought with him my portrait in crayons, which a few years before he had exhibited at the saloon. he wished to give me this portrait, which i did not choose to accept. but madam d'epinay, who had given me hers, and would have had this, prevailed upon me to ask him for it. he had taken some time to retouch the features. in the interval happened my rupture with madam d'epinay; i returned her her portrait; and giving her mine being no longer in question, i put it into my chamber, in the castle. m. de luxembourg saw it there, and found it a good one; i offered it him, he accepted it, and i sent it to the castle he and his lady comprehended i should be very. glad to have theirs. they had them taken in miniature by a very skillful hand, set in a box of rock crystal, mounted with gold, and in a very handsome manner, with which i was delighted, made me a present of both. madam de luxembourg would never consent that her portrait should be on the upper part of the box. she had reproached me several times with loving m. de luxembourg better than i did her; i had not denied it because it was true. by this manner of placing her portrait she showed very politely, but very clearly, she had not forgotten the preference. much about this time i was guilty of a folly which did not contribute to preserve to me her good graces. although i had no knowledge of m. de silhouette, and was not much disposed to like him, i had a great opinion of his administration. when he began to let his hand fall rather heavily upon financiers, i perceived he did not begin his operation in a favorable moment, but he had my warmest wishes for his success; and as soon as i heard he was displaced i wrote to him, in my intrepid, heedless manner, the following letter, which i certainly do not undertake to justify. montmorency, 2d december, 1769. "vouchsafe, sir, to receive the homage of a solitary man, who is not known to you, but who esteems you for your talents, respects you for your administration, and who did you the honor to believe you would not long remain in it. unable to save the state, except at the expense of the capital by which it has been ruined, you have braved the clamors of the gainers of money. when i saw you crush these wretches, i envied you your place; and at seeing you quit it without departing from your system, i admire you. be satisfied with yourself, sir; the step you have taken will leave you an honor you will long enjoy without a competitor. the malediction of knaves is the glory of an honest man." madam de luxembourg, who knew i had written this letter, spoke to me of it when she came into the country at easter. i showed it to her and she was desirous of a copy; this i gave her, but when i did it i did not know she was interested in under-farms, and the displacing of m. de silhouette. by my numerous follies any person would have imagined i willfully endeavored to bring on myself the hatred of an amiable woman who had power, and to whom, in truth, i daily became more attached, and was far from wishing to occasion her displeasure, although by my awkward manner of proceeding, i did everything proper for that purpose. i think it superfluous to remark here, that it is to her the history of the opiate of m. tronchin, of which i have spoken in the first part of my memoirs, relates; the other lady was madam de mirepoix. they have never mentioned to me the circumstance, nor has either of them, in the least, seemed to have preserved a remembrance of it; but to presume that madam de luxembourg can possibly have forgotten it appears to me very difficult, and would still remain so, even were the subsequent events entirely unknown. for my part, i fell into a deceitful security relative to the effects of my stupid mistakes, by an internal evidence of my not having taken any step with an intention to offend; as if a woman could ever forgive what i had done, although she might be certain the will had not the least part in the matter. although she seemed not to see or feel anything, and that i did not immediately find either her warmth of friendship diminished or the least change in her manner, the continuation and even increase of a too well founded foreboding made me incessantly tremble, lest disgust should succeed to infatuation. was it possible for me to expect in a lady of such high rank, a constancy proof against my want of address to support it? i was unable to conceal from her this secret foreboding, which made me uneasy, and rendered me still more disagreeable. this will be judged of by the following letter, which contains a very singular prediction. n. b. this letter, without date in my rough copy, was written in october, 1760, at latest. "how cruel is your goodness! why disturb the peace of a solitary mortal who had renounced the pleasures of life, that he might no longer suffer the fatigues of them? i have passed my days in vainly searching for solid attachments. i have not been able to form any in the ranks to which i was equal; is it in yours that i ought to seek for them? neither ambition nor interest can tempt me; i am not vain, but little fearful; i can resist everything except caresses. why do you both attack me by a weakness which i must overcome, because in the distance by which we are separated, the overflowings of susceptible hearts cannot bring mine near to you? will gratitude be sufficient for a heart which knows not two manners of bestowing its affections, and feels itself incapable of everything except friendship? of friendship, madam la marechale! ah! there is my misfortune! it is good in you and the marechal to make use of this expression; but i am mad when i take you at your word. you amuse yourselves, and i become attached; and the end of this prepares for me new regrets. how do i hate all your titles, and pity you on account of your being obliged to bear them! you seem to me to be so worthy of tasting the charms of private life! why do not you reside at clarens? i would go there in search of happiness; but the castle of montmorency, and the hotel de luxembourg! is it in these places jean-jacques ought to be seen? is it there a friend to equality ought to carry the affections of a sensible heart, and who thus paying the esteem in which he is held, thinks he returns as much as he receives? you are good and susceptible also: this i know and have seen; i am sorry i was not sooner convinced of it; but in the rank you hold, in your manner of living, nothing can make a lasting impression; a succession of new objects efface each other so that not one of them remains. you will forget me, madam, after having made it impossible for me to imitate you. you have done a great deal to render me unhappy, to be inexcusable." i joined with her the marechal, to render the compliment less severe; for i was moreover so sure of him, that i never had a doubt in my mind of the continuation of his friendship. nothing that intimidated me in madam la marechale, ever for a moment extended to him. i never have had the least mistrust relative to his character, which i knew to be feeble, but constant. i no more feared a coldness on his part than i expected from him an heroic attachment. the simplicity and familiarity of our manners with each other proved how far dependence was reciprocal. we were both always right: i shall ever honor and hold dear the memory of this worthy man, and, notwithstanding everything that was done to detach him from me, i am as certain of his having died my friend as if i had been present in his last moments. at the second journey to montmorency, in the year 1760, the reading of eloisa being finished, i had recourse to that of emile, to support myself in the good graces of madam de luxembourg; but this, whether the subject was less to her taste, or that so much reading at length fatigued her, did not succeed so well. however, as she reproached me with suffering myself to be the dupe of booksellers, she wished me to leave to her care the printing the work, that i might reap from it a greater advantage. i consented to her doing it, on the express condition of its not being printed in france, on which we had a long dispute; i affirming that it was impossible to obtain, and even imprudent to solicit, a tacit permission; and being unwilling to permit the impression upon any other terms in the kingdom; she, that the censor could not make the least difficulty, according to the system government had adopted. she found means to make m. de malesherbes enter into her views. he wrote to me on the subject a long letter with his own hand, to prove the profession of faith of the savoyard vicar to be a composition which must everywhere gain the approbation of its readers and that of the court, as things were then circumstanced. i was surprised to see this magistrate, always so prudent, become so smooth in the business, as the printing of a book was by that alone legal, i had no longer any objection to make to that of the work. yet, by an extraordinary scruple, i still required it should be printed in holland, and by the bookseller neaulme, whom, not satisfied with indicating him, i informed of my wishes, consenting the edition should be brought out for the profit of a french bookseller, and that as soon as it was ready it should be sold at paris, or wherever else it might be thought proper, as with this i had no manner of concern. this is exactly what was agreed upon between madam de luxembourg and myself, after which i gave her my manuscript. madam de luxembourg was this time accompanied by her granddaughter mademoiselle de boufflers, now duchess of lauzun. her name was amelie. she was a charming girl. she really had a maiden beauty, mildness and timidity. nothing could be more lovely than her person, nothing more chaste and tender than the sentiments she inspired. she was, besides, still a child under eleven years of age. madam de luxembourg, who thought her too timid, used every endeavor to animate her. she permitted me several times to give her a kiss, which i did with my usual awkwardness. instead of saying flattering things to her, as any other person would have done, i remained silent and disconcerted, and i know not which of the two, the little girl or myself, was most ashamed. i met her one day alone in the staircase of the little castle. she had been to see theresa, with whom her governess still was. not knowing what else to say, i proposed to her a kiss, which, in the innocence of her heart, she did not refuse; having in the morning received one from me by order of her grandmother, and in her presence. the next day, while reading emilie by the side of the bed of madam de luxembourg, i came to a passage in which i justly censure that which i had done the preceding evening. she thought the reflection extremely just, and said some very sensible things upon the subject which made me blush. how was i enraged at my incredible stupidity, which has frequently given me the appearance of guilt when i was nothing more than a fool and embarrassed! a stupidity, which in a man known to be endowed with some wit, is considered as a false excuse. i can safely swear that in this kiss, as well as in the others, the heart and thoughts of mademoiselle amelie were not more pure than my own, and that if i could have avoided meeting her i should have done it; not that i had not great pleasure in seeing her, but from the embarrassment of not finding a word proper to say. whence comes it that even a child can intimidate a man, whom the power of kings has never inspired with fear? what is to be done? how, without presence of mind, am i to act? if i strive to speak to the persons i meet, i certainly say some stupid thing to them: if i remain silent, i am a misanthrope, an unsociable animal, a bear. total imbecility would have been more favorable to me; but the talents which i have failed to improve in the world have become the instruments of my destruction, and of that of the talents i possessed. at the latter end of this journey, madam de luxembourg did a good action in which i had some share. diderot having very imprudently offended the princess of robeck, daughter of m. de luxembourg, palissot, whom she protected, took up the quarrel, and revenged her by the comedy of the philosophers, in which i was ridiculed, and diderot very roughly handled. the author treated me with more gentleness, less, i am of opinion, on account of the obligation he was under to me, than from the fear of displeasing the father of his protectress, by whom he knew i was beloved. the bookseller duchesne, with whom i was not at that time acquainted, sent me the comedy when it was printed, and this i suspect was by the order of palissot, who,. perhaps, thought i should have a pleasure in seeing a man with whom i was no longer connected defamed. he was greatly deceived. when i broke with diderot, whom i thought less ill-natured than weak and indiscreet, i still always preserved for his person an attachment, an esteem even, and a respect for our ancient friendship, which i know was for a long time as sincere on his part as on mine. the case was quite different with grimm; a man false by nature, who never loved me, who is not even capable of friendship, and a person who, without the least subject of complaint, and solely to satisfy his gloomy jealousy, became, under the mask of friendship, my most cruel calumniator. this man is to me a cipher; the other will always be my old friend. my very bowels yearned at the sight of this odious piece: the reading of it was insupportable to me, and, without going through the whole, i returned the copy to duchesne with the following letter: montmorency, 21st may, 1760. "in casting my eye over the piece you sent me, i trembled at seeing myself well spoken of in it. i do not accept the horrid present. i am persuaded that in sending it me, you did not intend an insult; but you do not know, or have forgotten, that i have the honor to be the friend of a respectable man, who is shamefully defamed and calumniated in this libel." duchesne showed the letter. diderot, upon whom it ought to have had an effect quite contrary, was vexed at it. his pride could not forgive me the superiority of a generous action, and i was informed his wife everywhere inveighed against me with a bitterness with which i was not in the least affected, as i knew she was known to everybody to be a noisy babbler. diderot in his turn found an avenger in the abbe morrellet, who wrote against palissot a little work, imitated from the petit prophete, and entitled the vision. in this production he very imprudently offended madam de robeck, whose friends got him sent to the bastile; though she, not naturally vindictive, and at that time in a dying state, i am certain had nothing to do in the affair. d'alembert, who was very intimately connected with morrellet, wrote me a letter, desiring i would beg of madam de luxembourg to solicit his liberty, promising her in return encomiums in the encyclopedie; my answer to his letter was as follows: "i did not wait the receipt of your letter before i expressed to madam de luxembourg the pain the confinement of the abbe morrellet gave me. she knows my concern, and shall be made acquainted with yours, and her knowing that the abbe is a man of merit will be sufficient to make her interest herself in his behalf. however, although she and the marechal honor me with a benevolence which is my greatest consolation, and that the name of your friend be to them a recommendation in favor of the abbe morrellet, i know not how far, on this occasion, it may be proper for them to employ the credit attached to the rank they hold, and the consideration due to their persons. i am not even convinced that the vengeance in question relates to the princess of robeck so much as you seem to imagine; and were this even the case, we must not suppose that the pleasure of vengeance belongs to philosophers exclusively, and that when they choose to become women, women will become philosophers. "i will communicate to you whatever madam de luxembourg may say to me after having shown her your letter. in the meantime, i think i know her well enough to assure you that, should she have the pleasure of contributing to the enlargement of the abbe morrellet, she will not accept the tribute of acknowledgment you promise her in the encyclopedie, although she might think herself honored by it, because she does not do good in the expectation of praise, but from the dictates of her heart." i made every effort to excite the zeal and commiseration of madame de luxembourg in favor of the poor captive, and succeeded to my wishes. she went to versailles on purpose to speak to m. de st. florentin, and this journey shortened the residence at montmorency, which the marechal was obliged to quit at the same time to go to rouen, whither the king sent him as governor of normandy, on account of the motions of the parliament, which government wished to keep within bounds. madame de luxembourg wrote me the following letter the day after her departure (packet d, no. 23): versailles, wednesday. "m. de luxembourg set off yesterday morning at six o'clock. i do not yet know that i shall follow him. i wait until he writes to me, as he is not yet certain of the stay it will be necessary for him to make. i have seen m. de st. florentin, who is as favorably disposed as possible towards the abbe morrellet; but he finds some obstacles to his wishes, which, however, he is in hopes of removing the first time he has to do business with the king, which will be next week. i have also desired as a favor that he might not be exiled, because this was intended; he was to be sent to nancy. this, sir, is what i have been able to obtain; but i promise you i will not let m. de st. florentin rest until the affair is terminated in the manner you desire. let me now express to you how sorry i am on account of my being obliged to leave you so soon, of which i flatter myself you have not the least doubt. i love you with all my heart, and shall do so for my whole life." a few days afterwards i received the following note from d'alembert, which gave me real joy. (packet d, no. 26.) august 1st. "thanks to your cares, my, dear philosopher, the abbe has left the bastile, and his imprisonment will have no other consequence. he is setting off for the country, and, as well as myself, returns you a thousand thanks and compliments. vale et me ama." the abbe also wrote to me a few days afterwards a letter of thanks, which did not, in my opinion, seem to breathe a certain effusion of the heart, and in which he seemed in some measure to extenuate the service i had rendered him. some time afterwards, i found that he and d'alembert had, to a certain degree, i will not say supplanted, but succeeded me in the good graces of madam de luxembourg, and that i had lost in them all they had gained. however, i am far from suspecting the abbe morrellet of having contributed to my disgrace; i have too much esteem for him to harbor any such suspicion. with respect to d'alembert, i shall at present leave him out of the question, and hereafter say of him what may seem necessary. i had, at the same time, another affair which occasioned the last letter i wrote to voltaire; a letter against which he vehemently exclaimed, as an abominable insult, although he never showed it to any person. i will here supply the want of that which he refused to do. the abbe trublet, with whom i had a slight acquaintance, but whom i had but seldom seen, wrote to me on the 13th of june, 1760, informing me that m. formey, his friend and correspondent, had printed in his journal my letter to voltaire upon the disaster at lisbon. the abbe wished to know how the letter came to be printed, and, in his jesuitical manner, asked me my opinion, without giving me his own oh the necessity of reprinting it. as i most sovereignly hate this kind of artifice and stratagem, i returned such thanks as were proper, but in a manner so reserved as to make him feet it, although this did not prevent him from wheedling me in two or three other letters until he had gathered all he wished to know. i clearly understood that, notwithstanding all trublet could say, formey had not found the letter printed, and that the first impression of it came from himself. i knew him to be an impudent pilferer, who, without ceremony, made himself a revenue by the works of others. although he had not yet had the incredible effrontery to take from a book already published the name of the author, to put his own in the place of it, and to sell the book for his own profit.* but by what means had this manuscript fallen into his hands? that was a question not easy to resolve, but by which i had the weakness to be embarrassed. although voltaire was excessively honored by the letter, as in fact, notwithstanding his rude proceedings, he would have had a right to complain had i had it printed without his consent, i resolved to write to him upon the subject. the second letter was as follows, to which he returned no answer, and, giving greater scope to his brutality, he feigned to be irritated to fury. * in this manner he afterwards appropriated to himself emile. montmorency, 17th june, 1760. sir: i never thought i should ever have occasion to correspond with you. but learning the letter i wrote to you in 1756 has been printed at berlin, i owe you an account of my conduct in that respect, and will fulfill, this duty with truth and simplicity. "the letter having really been addressed to you was not intended to be printed. i communicated the contents of it, on certain conditions, to three persons, to whom the rights of friendship did not permit me to refuse anything of the kind, and whom the same rights still less permitted to abuse my confidence by betraying their promise. these persons are madam de chenonceaux, daughter-in-law to madam dupin, the comtesse d'houdetot, and a german of the name of grimm. madam de chenonceaux was desirous the letter should be printed, and asked my consent. i told her that depended upon yours. this was asked of you, which you refused, and the matter dropped. "however, the abbe trublet, with whom i have not the least connection, has just written to me from a motive of the most polite attention, that having received the papers of the journal of m. formey, he found in them this same letter with an advertisement, dated on the 23d of october, 1759, in which the editor states that he had a few weeks before found it in the shops of the booksellers of berlin, and, as it is one of those loose sheets which shortly disappear, he thought proper to give it a place in his journal. "this, sir, is all i know of the matter. it is certain the letter had not until lately been heard of at paris. it is also as certain that the copy, either in manuscript or print, fallen into the hands of m. de formey, could never have reached them except by your means (which is not probable) or of those of one of the three persons i have mentioned. finally, it is well known the two ladies are incapable of such a perfidy. i cannot, in my retirement, learn more relative to the affair. you have a correspondence by means of which you may, if you think it worth the trouble, go back to the source and verify the fact. "in the same letter the abbe trublet informs me that he keeps the paper in reserve, and will not lend it without my consent, which most assuredly i will not give. but it is possible this copy may not be the only one in paris. i wish, sir, the letter may not be printed there, and i will do all in my power to prevent this from happening; but if i cannot succeed, and that, timely perceiving it, i can have the preference, i will not then hesitate to have it immediately printed. this to me appears just and natural. "with respect to your answer to the same letter, it has not been communicated to any one, and you may be assured it shall not be printed without your consent, which i certainly shall not be indiscreet enough to ask of you, well knowing that what one man writes to another is not written to the public. but should you choose to write one you wish to have published and address it to me, i promise you faithfully to add to it my letter and not to make to it a single word of reply. "i love you not, sir; you have done me, your disciple and enthusiastic admirer, injuries that might have caused me the most exquisite pain. you have ruined geneva, in return for the asylum it has afforded you; you have alienated from me my fellow-citizens, in return for the eulogiums i made of you amongst them; it is you who render to me the residence of my own country insupportable; it is you who will oblige me to die in a foreign land, deprived of all the consolations usually administered to a dying person; and cause me, instead of receiving funeral rites, to be thrown to the dogs, whilst all the honors a man can expect will accompany you in my country. finally i hate you because you have been desirous i should; but i hate you as a man more worthy of loving you had you chosen it. of all the sentiments with which my heart was penetrated for you, admiration, which cannot be refused your fine genius, and a partiality to your writings, are those you have not effaced. if i can honor nothing in you except your talents, the fault is not mine. i shall never be wanting in the respect due to them, nor in that which this respect requires." in the midst of these little literary cavillings, which still fortified my resolution, i received the greatest honor letters ever acquired me, and of which i was the most sensible, in the two visits the prince of conti deigned to make to me, one at the little castle and the other at mont-louis. he chose the time for both these when m. de luxembourg was not at montmorency, in order to render it more manifest that he came there solely on my account. i have never had a doubt of my owing the first condescensions of this prince to madam de luxembourg and madam de boufflers; but i am of opinion i owe to his own sentiments and to myself those with which he has since that time continually honored me.* * remark the perseverance of this blind and stupid confidence in the midst of all the treatment which should soonest have undeceived me. it continued until my return to paris in 1770. my apartments at mont-louis being small, and the situation of the alcove charming, i conducted the prince to it, where, to complete the condescension he was pleased to show me, he chose i should have the honor of playing with him a game at chess. i knew he beat the chevalier de lorenzi, who played better than i did. however, notwithstanding the signs and grimace of the chevalier and the spectators, which i feigned not to see, i won the two games we played. when they were ended, i said to him in a respectful but very grave manner: "my lord, i honor your serene highness too much not to beat you always at chess." this great prince, who had real wit, sense, and knowledge, and so was worthy not to be treated with mean adulation, felt in fact, at least i think so, that i was the only person present who treated him like a man, and i have every reason to believe he was not displeased with me for it. had this even been the case, i should not have reproached myself with having been unwilling to deceive him in anything, and i certainly cannot do it with having in my heart made an ill return for his goodness, but solely with having sometimes done it with an ill grace, whilst he himself accompanied with infinite gracefulness, the manner in which he showed me the marks of it. a few days afterwards he ordered a hamper of game to be sent me, which i received as i ought. this in a little time was succeeded by another, and one of his gamekeepers wrote me, by order of his highness, that the game it contained had been shot by the prince himself. i received this second hamper, but i wrote to madam de boufflers that i would not receive a third. this letter was generally blamed, and deservedly so. refusing to accept presents of game from a prince of the blood, who moreover sends it in so polite a manner, is less the delicacy of a haughty man, who wishes to preserve his independence, than the rusticity of a clown, who does not know himself. i have never read this letter in my collection without blushing and reproaching myself for having written it. but i have not undertaken my confession with an intention of concealing my faults, and that of which i have just spoken is too shocking in my own eyes to suffer me to pass it over in silence. if i were not guilty of the offense of becoming his rival i was very near doing it; for madam de boufflers was still his mistress, and i knew nothing of the matter. she came rather frequently to see me with the chevalier de lorenzi. she was yet young and beautiful, affected to be whimsical, and my mind was always romantic, which was much of the same nature. i was near being laid hold of; i believe she perceived it. the chevalier saw it also, at least he spoke to me upon the subject, and in a manner not discouraging. but i was this time reasonable, and at the age of fifty it was time i should be so. full of the doctrine i had just preached to graybeards in my letter to d'alembert, i should have been ashamed of not profiting by it myself; besides, coming to the knowledge of that of which i had been ignorant, i must have been mad to have carried my pretensions so far as to expose myself to such an illustrious rivalry. finally, ill cured perhaps of my passion for madam d'houdetot, i felt nothing could replace it in my heart, and i bade adieu to love for the rest of my life. i have this moment just withstood the dangerous allurements of a young woman who had her views; but if she feigned to forget my sixty years, i remembered them. after having thus withdrawn myself from danger, i am no longer afraid of a fall, and i answer for myself for the rest of my days. madam de boufflers, perceiving the emotion she caused in me, might also observe i had triumphed over it. i am neither mad nor vain enough to believe i was at my age capable of inspiring her with the same feelings; but, from certain words which she let drop to theresa, i thought i had inspired her with a curiosity; if this be the case, and that she has not forgiven me the disappointment she met with, it must be confessed i was born to be the victim of my weaknesses, since triumphant love was so prejudicial to me, and love triumphed over not less so. here finishes the collection of letters which has served me as a guide in the last two books. my steps will in future be directed by memory only; but this is of such a nature, relative to the period to which i am now come, and the strong impression of objects has remained so perfectly upon my mind, that lost in the immense sea of my misfortunes, i cannot forget the detail of my first shipwreck, although the consequences present to me but a confused remembrance. i therefore shall be able to proceed in the succeeding book with sufficient confidence. if i go further it will be groping in the dark. book xi [1761] although julie, which for a long time had been in the press, was not yet published at the end of the year 1760, the work already began to make a great noise. madam de luxembourg had spoken of it at court, and madam d'houdetot at paris. the latter had obtained from me permission for saint lambert to read the manuscript to the king of poland, who had been delighted with it. duclos, to whom i had also given the perusal of the work, had spoken of it at the academy. all paris was impatient to see the novel; the booksellers of the rue saint-jacques, and that of the palais-royal, were beset with people who came to inquire when it was to be published. it was at length brought out, and the success it had answered, contrary to custom, to the impatience with which it had been expected. the dauphiness, who was one of the first who read it, spoke of it to m. de luxembourg as a ravishing performance. the opinions of men of letters differed from each other, but in those of every other class approbation was general, especially with the women, who became so intoxicated with the book and the author, that there was not one in high life with whom i might not have succeeded had i undertaken to do it. of this i have such proofs as i will not commit to paper, and which without the aid of experience, authorized my opinion. it is singular that the book should have succeeded better in france than in the rest of europe, although the french, both men and women, are severely treated in it. contrary to my expectation it was least successful in switzerland, and most so in paris. do friendship, love and virtue reign in this capital more than elsewhere? certainly not; but there reigns in it an exquisite sensibility which transports the heart to their image, and makes us cherish in others the pure, tender and virtuous sentiments we no longer possess. corruption is everywhere the same; virtue and morality no longer exist in europe; but if the least love of them still remains, it is in paris that this will be found.* * i wrote this in 1769. in the midst of so many prejudices and feigned passions, the real sentiments of nature are not to be distinguished from others, unless we well know to analyze the human heart. a very nice discrimination, not to be acquired except by the education of the world, is necessary to feel the finesses of the heart, if i dare use the expression, with which this work abounds. i do not hesitate to place the fourth part of it upon an equality with the princess of cleves; nor to assert that had these two works been read nowhere but in the provinces, their merit would never have been discovered. it must not, therefore, be considered as a matter of astonishment, that the greatest success of my work was at court. it abounds with lively but veiled touches of the pencil; which could not but give pleasure there, because the persons who frequent it are more accustomed than others to discover them. a distinction must, however, be made. the work is by no means proper for the species of men of wit who gave nothing but cunning, who possess no other kind of discernment than that which penetrates evil, and see nothing where good only is to be found. if, for instance, julie had been published in a certain country which i have in my mind, i am convinced it would not have been read through by a single person, and the work would have been stifled in its birth. i have collected most of the letters written to me on the subject of this publication, and deposited them, tied up together, in the hands of madam de nadillac. should this collection ever be given to the world, very singular things will be seen, and an opposition of opinion, which shows what it is to have to do with the public. the thing least kept in view, and which will ever distinguish it from every other work, is the simplicity of the subject and the continuation of the interest, which, confined to three persons, is kept up throughout six volumes, without episode, romantic adventure, or anything malicious either in the persons or actions. diderot complimented richardson on the prodigious variety of his portraits and the multiplicity of his persons. in fact, richardson has the merit of having well characterized them all; but with respect to their number, he has that in common with the most insipid writers of novels, who attempt to make up for the sterility of their ideas by multiplying persons and adventures. it is easy to awaken the attention by incessantly presenting unheard of adventures and new faces, which pass before the imagination as the figures in a magic lanthorn do before the eye; but to keep up that attention to the same objects, and without the aid of the wonderful, is certainly more difficult; and if, everything else being equal, the simplicity of the subject adds to the beauty of the work, the novels of richardson, superior in so many other respects, cannot in this be compared to mine. i know it is already forgotten, and the cause of its being so; but it will be taken up again. all my fear was that, by an extreme simplicity, the narrative would be fatiguing, and that it was not sufficiently interesting to engage the attention throughout the whole. i was relieved from this apprehension by a circumstance which alone was more flattering to my pride than all the compliments made me upon the work. it appeared at the beginning of the carnival. a hawker carried it to the princess of talmont,* on the evening of a ball night at the opera. after supper the princess dressed herself for the ball, and until the hour of going there, took up the new novel. at midnight she ordered the horses to be put into the carriage, and continued to read. the servant returned to tell her the horses were put to; she made no answer. her people perceiving she forgot herself, came to tell her it was two o'clock. "there is yet no hurry," replied the princess, still reading on. some time afterwards her watch having stopped, she rang to know the hour. she was told it was four o'clock. "that being the case," she said, "it is too late to go to the ball; let the horses be taken off." she undressed herself and passed the rest of the night in reading. * it was not the princess, but some other lady, whose name i do not know, but i have been assured of the fact. ever since i came to the knowledge of this circumstance, i have had a constant desire to see the lady, not only to know from herself whether or not what i have related be exactly true, but because i have always thought it impossible to be interested in so lively a manner in the happiness of julia, without having that sixth and moral sense with which so few hearts are endowed, and without which no person whatever can understand the sentiments of mine. what rendered the women so favorable to me was, their being persuaded that i had written my own history, and was myself the hero of the romance. this opinion was so firmly established that madam de polignac wrote to madam de verdelin, begging she would prevail upon me to show her the portrait of julia. everybody thought it was impossible so strongly to express sentiments without having felt them, or thus to describe the transports of love, unless immediately from the feelings of the heart. this was true, and i certainly wrote the novel during the time my imagination was inflamed to ecstasy; but they who thought real objects necessary to this effect were deceived, and far from conceiving to what a degree i can at will produce it for imaginary beings. without madam d'houdetot, and the recollection of a few circumstances in my youth, the amours i have felt and described would have been with fairy nymphs. i was unwilling either to confirm or destroy an error which was advantageous to me. the reader may see in the preface a dialogue, which i had printed separately, in what manner i left the public in suspense. rigorous people say, i ought to have explicitly declared the truth. for my part i see no reason for this, nor anything that could oblige me to it, and am of opinion there would have been more folly than candor in the declaration without necessity. much about the same time the paix perpetuelle* made its appearance, of this i had the year before given the manuscript to a certain m. de bastide, the author of a journal called le monde,*(2) into which he would at all events cram all my manuscripts. he was known to m. duclos, and came in his name to beg i would help him to fill the monde. he had heard speak of julie, and would have me put this into his journal; he was also desirous of making the same use of emile; he would have asked me for the contrat social, for the same purpose, had he suspected it to be written. at length, fatigued with his importunities, i resolved upon letting him have the paix perpetuelle, which i gave him for twelve louis. our agreement was, that he should print it in his journal; but as soon as he became the proprietor of the manuscript, he thought proper to print it separately, with a few retrenchments, which the censor required him to make. what would have happened had i joined to the work my opinion of it, which fortunately i did not communicate to m. de bastide, nor was it comprehended in our agreement? this remains still in manuscript amongst my papers. if ever it be made public, the world will see how much the pleasantries and self-sufficient manner of m. de voltaire on the subject must have made me, who was so well acquainted with the short-sightedness of this poor man in political matters, of which he took it into his head to speak, shake my sides with laughter. * perpetual peace. *(2) the world. in the midst of my success with the women and the public, i felt i lost ground at the hotel de luxembourg, not with the marechal, whose goodness to me seemed daily to increase, but with his lady. since i had had nothing more to read to her, the door of her apartment was not so frequently open to me, and during her stay at montmorency, although i regularly presented myself, i seldom saw her except at table. my place even there was not distinctly marked out as usual. as she no longer offered me that by her side, and spoke to me but seldom, not having on my part much to say to her, i was as well satisfied with another, where i was more at my ease, especially in the evening; for i mechanically contracted the habit of placing myself nearer and nearer to the marechal. apropos of the evening: i recollect having said i did not sup at the castle, and this was true, at the beginning of my acquaintance there; but as m. de luxembourg did not dine, nor even sit down to table, it happened that i was for several months, and already very familiar in the family, without ever having eaten with him. this he had the goodness to remark upon, when i determined to sup there from time to time, when the company was not numerous; i did so, and found the suppers very agreeable, as the dinners were taken almost standing; whereas the former were long, everybody remaining seated with pleasure after a long walk; and very good and agreeable, because m. de luxembourg loved good eating, and the honors of them were done in a charming manner by madam la marechale. without this explanation it would be difficult to understand the end of a letter from m. de luxembourg, in which he says he recollects our walks with the greatest pleasure; especially, adds he, when in the evening we entered the court and did not find there the traces of carriages. the rake being every morning drawn over the gravel to efface the marks left by the coach wheels, i judged by the number of ruts of that of the persons who had arrived in the afternoon. this year, 1761, completed the heavy losses this good man had suffered since i had had the honor of being known to him. as if it had been ordained that the evils prepared for me by destiny should begin by the man to whom i was most attached, and who was the most worthy of esteem. the first year he lost his sister, the duchess of villeroy; the second, his daughter, the princess of robeck; the third, he lost in the duke of montmorency his only son; and in the comte de luxembourg, his grandson, the last two supporters of the branch of which he was, and of his name. he supported all these losses with apparent courage, but his heart incessantly bled in secret during the rest of his life, and his health was ever after upon the decline. the unexpected and tragical death of his son must have afflicted him the more, as it happened immediately after the king had granted him for this child, and given him in promise for his grandson, the reversion of the commission he himself then held of the captain of the gardes du corps. he had the mortification to see the last, a most promising young man, perish by degrees, from the blind confidence of the mother in the physician, who giving the unhappy youth medicines for food, suffered him to die of inanition. alas! had my advice been taken, the grandfather and the grandson would both still have been alive. what did not i say and write to the marechal, what remonstrances did i make to madam de montmorency, upon the more than severe regimen, which, upon the faith of physicians, she made her son observe! madam de luxembourg, who thought as i did, would not usurp the authority of the mother; m. de luxembourg, a man of a mild and easy character, did not like to contradict her. madam de montmorency had in bordeu a confidence to which her son at length became a victim. how delighted was the poor creature when he could obtain permission to come to mont-louis with madam de boufflers, to ask theresa for some victuals for his famished stomach! how did i secretly deplore the miseries of greatness in seeing this only heir to an immense fortune, a great name, and so many dignified titles, devour with the greediness of a beggar a wretched morsel of bread! at length, notwithstanding all i could say and do, the physician triumphed, and the child died of hunger. the same confidence in quacks, which destroyed the grandson, hastened the dissolution of the grandfather, and to this he added the pusillanimity of wishing to dissimulate the infirmities of age. m. de luxembourg had at intervals a pain in the great toe; he was seized with it at montmorency, which deprived him of sleep, and brought on slight fever. i had courage enough to pronounce the word "gout." madam de luxembourg gave me a reprimand. the surgeon, valet de chambre of the marechal, maintained it was not the gout, and dressed the suffering part with baume tranquille. unfortunately the pain subsided, and when it returned the same remedy was had recourse to. the constitution of the marechal was weakened, and his disorder increased, as did his remedies in the same proportion. madam de luxembourg, who at length perceived the primary disorder to be the gout, objected to the dangerous manner of treating it. things were afterwards concealed from her, and m. de luxembourg in a few years lost his life in consequence of his obstinate adherence to what he imagined to be a method of cure. but let me not anticipate misfortune: how many others have i to relate before i come to this! it is singular with what fatality everything i could say and do seemed of a nature to displease madam de luxembourg, even when i had it most at heart to preserve her friendship. the repeated afflictions which fell upon m. de luxembourg still attached me to him the more, and consequently to madam de luxembourg; for they always seemed to me to be so sincerely united, that the sentiments in favor of the one necessarily extended to the other. the marechal grew old. his assiduity at court, the cares this brought on, continually hunting, fatigue, and especially that of the service during the quarter he was in waiting, required the vigor of a young man, and i did not perceive anything that could support him in that course of life; since, besides after his death, his dignities were to be dispersed and his name extinct, it was by no means necessary for him to continue a laborious life of which the principal object had been to dispose the prince favorably to his children. one day when we three were together, and he complained of the fatigues of the court, as a man who had been discouraged by his losses, i took the liberty to speak of retirement, and to give him the advice cyneas gave to pyrrhus. he sighed, and returned no positive answer. but the moment madam de luxembourg found me alone she reprimanded me severely for what i had said, at which she seemed to be alarmed. she made a remark of which i so strongly felt the justness that i determined never again to touch upon the subject: this was, that the long habit of living at court made that life necessary, that it was become a matter of amusement for m. de luxembourg, and that the retirement i proposed to him would be less a relaxation from care than an exile, in which inactivity, weariness and melancholy would soon put an end to his existence. although she must have perceived i was convinced, and ought to have relied upon the promise i made her, and which i faithfully kept, she still seemed to doubt of it; and i recollect that the conversations i afterwards had with the marechal were less frequent and almost always interrupted. whilst my stupidity and awkwardness injured me in her opinion, persons whom she frequently saw and most loved, were far from being disposed to aid me in gaining what i had lost. the abbe de boufflers especially, a young man as lofty as it was possible for a man to be, never seemed well disposed towards me; and besides his being the only person of the society of madam de luxembourg who never showed me the least attention, i thought i perceived i lost something with her every time he came to the castle. it is true that without his wishing this to be the case, his presence alone was sufficient to produce the effect: so much did his graceful and elegant manner render still more dull my stupid spropositi. during the first two years he seldom came to montmorency, and by the indulgence of madam de luxembourg i had tolerably supported myself, but as soon as his visits began to be regular i was irretrievably lost. i wished to take refuge under his wing, and gain his friendship; but the same awkwardness which made it necessary i should please him prevented me from succeeding in the attempt i made to do it, and what i did with that intention entirely lost me with madam de luxembourg, without being of the least service to me with the abbe. with his understanding he might have succeeded in anything, but the impossibility of applying himself, and his turn for dissipation, prevented his acquiring a perfect knowledge of any subject. his talents are however various, and this is sufficient for the circles in which he wishes to distinguish himself. he writes light poetry and fashionable letters, strums on the cithern, and pretends to draw with crayons. he took it into his head to attempt the portrait of madam de luxembourg: the sketch he produced was horrid. she said it did not in the least resemble her, and this was true. the traitorous abbe consulted me, and i, like a fool and a liar, said there was a likeness. i wished to flatter the abbe, but i did not please the lady, who noted down what i had said, and the abbe, having obtained what he wanted, laughed at me in his turn. i perceived by the ill success of this my late beginning the necessity of never making another attempt to flatter invita minerva. my talent was that of telling men useful but severe truths with energy and courage; to this it was necessary to confine myself. not only i was not born to flatter, but i knew not how to commend. the awkwardness of the manner in which i have sometimes bestowed eulogium has done me more harm than the severity of my censure. of this i have to adduce one terrible instance, the consequences of which have not only fixed my fate for the rest of my life, but will perhaps decide on my reputation throughout all posterity. during the residence of m. de luxembourg at montmorency, m. de choiseul sometimes came to supper at the castle. he arrived there one day after i had left it. my name was mentioned, and m. de luxembourg related to him what had happened at venice between me and m. de montaigu. m. de choiseul said it was a pity i had quitted that track, and that if i chose to enter it again he would most willingly give me employment. m. de luxembourg told me what had passed. of this i was the more sensible as i was not accustomed to be spoiled by ministers, and had i been in a better state of health it is not certain that i should not have been guilty of a new folly. ambition never had power over my mind except during the short intervals in which every other passion left me at liberty; but one of these intervals would have been sufficient to determine me. this good intention of m. de choiseul gained him my attachment and increased the esteem which, in consequence of some operations in his administration, i had conceived for his talents; and the family compact in particular had appeared to me to evince a statesman of the first order. he moreover gained ground in my estimation by the little respect i entertained for his predecessors, not even excepting madam de pompadour, whom i considered as a species of prime minister, and when it was reported that one of these two would expel the other, i thought i offered up prayers for the honor of france when i wished that m. de choiseul might triumph. i had always felt an antipathy to madam de pompadour, even before her preferment; i had seen her with madam de la popliniere when her name was still madam d'etioles. i was afterwards dissatisfied with her silence on the subject of diderot, and with her proceedings relative to myself, as well on the subject of the fetes de raniere and the muses galantes, as on that of the devin du village, which had not in any manner produced me advantages proportioned to its success; and on all occasions i had found her but little disposed to serve me. this however did not prevent the chevalier de lorenzi from proposing to me to write something in praise of that lady, insinuating that i might acquire some advantage by it. the proposition excited my indignation, the more as i perceived it did not come from himself, knowing that, passive as he was, he thought and acted according to the impulsion he received. i am so little accustomed to constraint that it was impossible for me to conceal from him my disdain, nor from anybody the moderate opinion i had of the favorite; this i am sure she knew, and thus my own interest was added to my natural inclination in the wishes i formed for m. de choiseul. having a great esteem for his talents, which was all i knew of him, full of gratitude for his kind intentions, and moreover unacquainted in my retirement with his taste and manner of living, i already considered him as the avenger of the public and myself; and being at that time writing the conclusion of my contrat social, i stated in it, in a single passage, what i thought of preceding ministers, and of him by whom they began to be eclipsed. on this occasion i acted contrary to my most constant maxim; and besides, i did not recollect that, in bestowing praise and strongly censuring in the same article, without naming the persons, the language must be so appropriated to those to whom it is applicable, that the most ticklish pride cannot find in it the least thing equivocal. i was in this respect in such an imprudent security, that i never once thought it was possible any one should make a false application. one of my misfortunes was always to be connected with some female author. this i thought i might avoid amongst the great. i was deceived; it still pursued me. madam de luxembourg was not, however, at least that i know of, attacked with the mania of writing; but madam de boufflers was. she wrote a tragedy in prose, which, in the first place, was read, handed about, and highly spoken of in the society of the prince of conti, and upon which, not satisfied with the encomiums she received, she would absolutely consult me for the purpose of having mine. this she obtained, but with that moderation which the work deserved. she besides, had with it the information i thought it my duty to give her, that her piece, entitled l'esclave genereux, greatly resembled the english tragedy of oroonoko, but little known in france, although translated into the french language. madam de boufflers thanked me for the remark, but, however, assured me there was not the least resemblance between her piece and the other. i never spoke of the plagiarism except to herself, and i did it to discharge a duty she had imposed on me; but this has not since prevented me from frequently recollecting the consequences of the sincerity of gil blas to the preaching archbishop. besides the abbe de boufflers, by whom i was not beloved, and madam de boufflers, in whose opinion i was guilty of that which neither women nor authors ever pardon, the other friends of madam de luxembourg never seemed much disposed to become mine, particularly the president henault, who, enrolled amongst authors, was not exempt from their weaknesses; also madam du deffand and mademoiselle de lespinasse, both intimate with voltaire and the friends of d'alembert, with whom the latter at length. lived; however upon an honorable footing, for it cannot be understood i mean otherwise. i first began to interest myself for madam du deffand, whom the loss of her eyes made an object of commiseration in mine; but her manner of living, so contrary to my own, that her hour of going to bed was almost mine for rising; her unbounded passion for low wit, the importance she gave to every kind of printed trash, either complimentary or abusive, the despotism and transports of her oracles, her excessive admiration or dislike of everything, which did not permit her to speak upon any subject without convulsions, her inconceivable prejudices, invincible obstinacy, and the enthusiasm of folly to which this carried her in her passionate judgments; all disgusted me and diminished the attention i wished to pay her. i neglected her and she perceived it; this was enough to set her in a rage, and, although i was sufficiently aware how much a woman of her character was to be feared, i preferred exposing myself to the scourge of her hatred rather than to that of her friendship. my having so few friends in the society of madam de luxembourg would not have been in the least dangerous had i had no enemies in her family. of these i had but one, who, in my then situation, was as powerful as a hundred. it certainly was not m. de villeroy, her brother; for he not only came to see me, but had several times invited me to villeroy; and as i had answered to the invitation with all possible politeness and respect, he had taken my vague manner of doing it as a consent, and arranged with madam de luxembourg a journey of a fortnight, in which it was proposed to me to make one of the party. as the cares my health then required did not permit me to go from home without risk, i prayed madam de luxembourg to have the goodness to make my apologies. her answer proves this was done with all possible ease, and m. de villeroy still continued to show me his usual marks of goodness. his nephew and heir, the young marquis of villeroy, had not for me the same benevolence, nor had i for him the respect i had for his uncle. his hare-brained manner rendered him insupportable to me, and my coldness drew upon me his aversion. he insultingly attacked me one evening at table, and i had the worst of it because i am a fool, without presence of mind; and because anger, instead of rendering my wit more poignant, deprives me of the little i have. i had a dog which had been given me when he was quite young, soon after my arrival at the hermitage, and which i had called duke. this dog, not handsome, but rare of his kind, of which i had made my companion and friend, a title he certainly merited much more than most of the persons by whom it was taken, became in great request at the castle of montmorency for his good nature and fondness, and the attachment we had to each other; but from a foolish pusillanimity i had changed his name to turk, as if there were not many dogs called marquis, without giving the least offense to any marquis whatsoever. the marquis de villeroy, who knew of this change of name, attacked me in such a manner that i was obliged openly at table to relate what i had done. whatever there might be offensive in the name of duke, it was not in my having given, but in my having taken it away. the worst of it all was, there were many dukes present, amongst others m. de luxembourg and his son; and the marquis de villeroy, who was one day to have, and now has that tide, enjoyed in the most cruel manner the embarrassment into which he had thrown me. i was told the next day his aunt had severely reprimanded him, and it may be judged whether or not, supposing her to have been serious, this put me upon better terms with him. to enable me to support his enmity i had no person, neither at the hotel de luxembourg nor at the temple, except the chevalier de lorenzi, who professed himself my friend; but he was more that of d'alembert, under whose protection he passed with women for a great geometrician. he was moreover the cicisbeo, or rather the complaisant chevalier of the countess of boufflers, a great friend also to d'alembert, and the chevalier de lorenzi was the most passive instrument in her hands. thus, far from having in that circle any counterbalance to my inaptitude, to keep me in the good graces of madam de luxembourg, everybody who approached her seemed to concur in adjuring me in her opinion. yet, besides emile, with which she charged herself, she gave me at the same time another mark of her benevolence, which made me imagine that, although wearied with my conversation, she would still preserve for me the friendship she had so many times promised me for life. as soon as i thought i could depend upon this, i began to ease my heart, by confessing to her all my faults, having made it an inviolable maxim to show myself to my friends such as i really was, neither better nor worse. i had declared to her my connection with theresa, and everything that had resulted from it, without concealing the manner in which i had disposed of my children. she had received my confessions favorably, and even too much so, since she spared me the censures i so much merited; and what made the greatest impression upon me was her goodness to theresa, making her presents, sending for her, and begging her to come and see her, receiving her with caresses, and often embracing her in public. this poor girl was in transports of joy and gratitude, of which i certainly partook; the friendship madam de luxembourg showed me in her condescensions to theresa affected me much more than if they had been made immediately to myself. things remained in this state for a considerable time; but at length madam de luxembourg carried her goodness so far as to have a desire to take one of my children from the hospital. she knew i had put a cipher into the swaddling clothes of the eldest; she asked me for the counterpart of the cipher, and i gave it her. in this research she employed la roche, her valet de chamber and confidential servant, who made vain inquiries, although after only about twelve or fourteen years, had the registers of the foundling hospital been in order, or the search properly made, the original cipher ought to have been found. however this may be, i was less sorry for his want of success than i should have been had i from time to time continued to see the child from his birth until that moment. if by the aid of the indications given, another child had been presented as my own, the doubt of its being so in fact, and the fear of having one thus substituted for it, would have contracted my affections, and i should not have tasted of the charm of the real sentiment of nature. this during infancy stands in need of being supported by habit. the long absence of a child whom the father has seen but for an instant, weakens, and at length annihilates paternal sentiment, and parents will never love a child sent to nurse, like that which is brought up under their eyes. this reflection may extenuate my faults in their effects, but it must aggravate them in their source. it may not perhaps be useless to remark that by the means of theresa, the same la roche became acquainted with madam de vasseur, whom grimm still kept at deuil, near la chevrette, and not far from montmorency. after my departure it was by means of la roche that i continued to send this woman the money i had constantly sent her at stated times, and i am of opinion he often carried her presents from madam de luxembourg; therefore she certainly was not to be pitied, although she constantly complained. with respect to grimm, as i am not fond of speaking of persons whom i ought to hate, i never mentioned his name to madam de luxembourg, except when i could not avoid it; but she frequently made him the subject of conversation, without telling me what she thought of the man, or letting me discover whether or not he was of her acquaintance. reserve with people i love and who are open with me being contrary to my nature, especially in things relating to themselves, i have since that time frequently thought of that of madam de luxembourg; but never, except when other events rendered the recollection natural. having waited a long time without hearing speak of emile, after i had given it to madam de luxembourg, i at last heard the agreement was made at paris, with the bookseller duchesne, and by him with neaulme, of amsterdam. madam de luxembourg sent me the original, and the duplicate of my agreement with duchesne, that i might sign them. i discovered the writing to be by the same hand as that of the letters of m. de malesherbes, which he himself did not write. the certainty that my agreement was made by the consent, and under the eye of that magistrate, made me sign without hesitation. duchesne gave me for the manuscript six thousand livres, half down, and one or two hundred copies. after having signed the two documents, i sent them both to madam de luxembourg, according to her desire; she gave one to duchesne, and instead of returning the other kept it herself, so that i never saw it afterwards. my acquaintance with m. and madam de luxembourg, though it diverted me a little from my plan of retirement, did not make me entirely renounce it. even at the time i was most in favor with madam de luxembourg, i always felt that nothing but my sincere attachment to the marechal and herself could render to me supportable the people with whom they were connected, and all the difficulty i had was in conciliating this attachment with a manner of life more agreeable to my inclination, and less contrary to my health, which constraint and late suppers continually deranged, notwithstanding all the care taken to prevent it; for in this, as in everything else, attention was carried as far as possible; thus, for instance, every evening after supper the marechal, who went early to bed, never failed, notwithstanding everything that could be said to the contrary, to make me withdraw at the same time. it was not until some little time before my catastrophe that, for what reason i know not, he ceased to pay me that attention. before i perceived the coolness of madam de luxembourg, i was desirous, that i might not expose myself to it, to execute my old project; but not having the means to that effect, i was obliged to wait for the conclusion of the agreement for emile, and in the time i finished the contrat social, and sent it to rey, fixing the price of the manuscript at a thousand livres, which he paid me. i ought not perhaps to omit a trifling circumstance relative to this manuscript. i gave it, well sealed up, to du voisin, a minister in the pays de vaud and chaplain at the hotel de hollande, who sometimes came to see me, and took upon himself to send the packet to rey, with whom he was connected. the manuscript, written in a very small hand, was but very trifling, and did not fill his pocket. yet, in passing the barriere, the packet fell, i know not by what means, into the hands of the commis, who opened and examined it, and afterwards returned it to him, when he had reclaimed it in the name of the ambassador. this gave him an opportunity of reading it himself, which he ingenuously wrote me he had done, speaking highly of the work, without suffering a word of criticism or censure to escape him; undoubtedly reserving to himself to become the avenger of christianity as soon as the work should appear. he sealed the packet and sent it to rey. such is the substance of his narrative in the letter in which he gave an account of the affair, and is all i ever knew of the matter. besides these two books and my dictionary of music, at which i still did something as opportunity offered, i had other works of less importance ready to make their appearance, and which i proposed to publish either separately or in my general collection, should i ever undertake it. the principal of these works, most of which are still in manuscript in the hands of de peyrou, was an essay on the origin of languages, which i had read to m. de malesherbes and the chevalier de lorenzi, who spoke favorably of it. i expected all the productions together would produce me a net capital of from eight to ten thousand livres, which i intended to sink in annuities for my life and that of theresa; after which, our design, as i have already mentioned, was to go and live together in the midst of some province, without further troubling the public about me, or myself with any other project than that of peacefully ending my days, and still continuing to do in my neighborhood all the good in my power, and to write at leisure the memoirs which i meditated. such was my intention, and the execution of it was facilitated by an act of generosity in rey, upon which i cannot be silent. this bookseller, of whom so many unfavorable things were told me in paris, is, notwithstanding, the only one with whom i have always had reason to be satisfied. it is true, we frequently disagreed as to the execution of my works; he was heedless and i was choleric but in matters of interest which related to them, although i never made with him an agreement in form, i always found in him great exactness and probity. he is also the only person of his profession who frankly confessed to me he gained largely by my means; and he frequently, when he offered me a part of his fortune, told me i was the author of it all. not finding the means of exercising his gratitude immediately upon myself, he wished at least to give me proofs of it in the person of my governante, upon whom he settled an annuity of three hundred livres, expressing in the deed that it was an acknowledgment for the advantages i had procured him. this he did between himself and me, without ostentation, pretension, or noise, and had not i spoken of it to everybody, not a single person would ever have known anything of the matter. i was so pleased with this action that i became attached to rey, and conceived for him a real friendship. sometime afterwards he desired i would become godfather to one of his children; i consented, and a part of my regret in the situation to which i am reduced, is my being deprived of the means of rendering in future my attachment to my goddaughter useful to her and her parents. why am i, who am so sensible of the modest generosity of this bookseller, so little so of the noisy eagerness of many persons of the highest rank, who pompously fill the world with accounts of the services they say they wished to render me, but the good effects of which i never felt? is it their fault or mine? are they nothing more than vain; is my insensibility purely ingratitude? intelligent reader, weigh and determine; for my part i say no more. this pension was a great resource to theresa and a considerable alleviation to me, although i was far from receiving from it a direct advantage, any more than from the presents that were made her. she herself has always disposed of everything. when i kept her money i gave her a faithful account of it without ever applying any part of the deposit to our common expenses, not even when she was richer than myself. "what is mine is ours," said i to her; "and what is thine is thine." i never departed from this maxim. they who have had the baseness to accuse me of receiving by her hands that which i refused to take with mine, undoubtedly judged of my heart by their own, and knew but little of me. i would willingly eat with her the bread she should have earned, but not that she should have had given her. for a proof of this i appeal to herself, both now and hereafter, when, according to the course of nature, she shall have survived me. unfortunately, she understands but little of economy in any respect, and is, besides, careless and extravagant, not from vanity nor gluttony, but solely from negligence. no creature is perfect here below, and since her excellent qualities must be accompanied with some defects, i prefer these to vices; although her defects are more prejudicial to us both. the efforts i have made, as formerly i did for mamma, to accumulate something in advance which might some day be to her a never-failing resource, are not to be conceived; but my cares were always ineffectual. neither of these women ever called themselves to an account, and, notwithstanding all my efforts, everything i acquired was dissipated as fast as it came. notwithstanding the great simplicity of theresa's dress, the pension from rey has never been sufficient to buy her clothes, and i have every year been under the necessity of adding something to it for that purpose. we are neither of us born to be rich, and this i certainly do not reckon amongst our misfortunes. the contrat social was soon printed. this was not the case with emile, for the publication of which i waited to go into the retirement i meditated. duchesne, from time to time, sent me specimens of impression to choose from; when i had made my choice, instead of beginning he sent me others. when, at length, we were fully determined on the size and letter, and several sheets were already printed off, on some trifling alteration i made in a proof, he began the whole again, and at the end of six months we were in less forwardness than on the first day. during all these experiments i clearly perceived the work was printing in france as well as in holland, and that two editions of it were preparing at the same time. what could i do? the manuscript was no longer mine. far from having anything to do with the edition in france i was always against it; but since, at length, this was preparing in spite of all opposition, and was to serve as a model to the other, it was necessary i should cast my eyes over it and examine the proofs, that my work might not be mutilated. it was, besides, printed so much by the consent of the magistrate, that it was he who in some measure, directed the undertaking; he likewise wrote to me frequently, and once came to see me and converse on the subject upon an occasion of which i am going to speak. whilst duchesne crept like a snail, neaulme, whom he withheld, scarcely moved at all. the sheets were not regularly sent him as they were printed. he thought there was some trick in the maneuver of duchesne, that is, of guy who acted for him; and perceiving the terms of the agreement to be departed from, he wrote me letter after letter full of complaints, and it was less possible for me to remove the subject of them than that of those i myself had to make. his friend, guerin, who at that time came frequently to see my house, never ceased speaking to me about the work, but always with the greatest reserve. he knew and he did not know that it was printing in france, and that the magistrate had a hand in it. in expressing his concern for my embarrassment, he seemed to accuse me of imprudence without ever saying in what this consisted; he incessantly equivocated, and seemed to speak for no other purpose than to hear what i had to say. i thought myself so secure that i laughed at his mystery and circumspection as at a habit he had contracted with ministers and magistrates whose offices he much frequented. certain of having conformed to every rule with the work, and strongly persuaded that i had not only the consent and protection of the magistrate, but that the book merited and had obtained the favor of the minister, i congratulated myself upon my courage in doing good, and laughed at my pusillanimous friends who seemed uneasy on my account. duclos was one of these, and i confess my confidence in his understanding and uprightness might have alarmed me, had i had less in the utility of the work and in the probity of those by whom it was patronized. he came from the house of m. baille to see me whilst emile was in the press; he spoke to me concerning it; i read to him the profession of faith of the savoyard vicar, to which he listened attentively and, as it seemed to me, with pleasure. when i had finished he said: "what! citizen, this is a part of a work now printing at paris?" "yes," answered i, "and it ought to be printed at the louvre by order of the king." "i confess it," replied he; "but pray do not mention to anybody your having read to me this fragment." this striking manner of expressing himself surprised without alarming me. i knew duclos was intimate with m. de malesherbes, and i could not conceive how it was possible he should think so differently from him upon the same subject. i had lived at montmorency for the last four years without ever having had there one day of good health. although the air is excellent, the water is bad, and this may possibly be one of the causes which contributed to increase my habitual complaints. towards the end of the autumn of 1761, i fell quite ill, and passed the whole winter in suffering almost without intermission. the physical ill, augmented by a thousand inquietudes, rendered these terrible. for some time past my mind had been disturbed by melancholy forebodings, without my knowing to what these directly tended. i received anonymous letters of an extraordinary nature, and others, that were signed, much of the same import. i received one from a counselor of the parliament of paris, who, dissatisfied with the present constitution of things, and foreseeing nothing but disagreeable events, consulted me upon the choice of an asylum at geneva or in switzerland, to retire this parliament, which was then at variance with the court, memoirs and remonstrances, and offering to furnish me with all the documents and materials necessary to that purpose. when i suffer i am subject to ill humor. this was the case when i received these letters, and my answers to them, in which i flatly refused everything that was asked of me, bore strong marks of the effect they had had upon my mind. i do not however reproach myself with this refusal, as the letters might be so many snares laid by my enemies,* and what was required of me was contrary to the principles from which i was less willing than ever to swerve. but having it in my power to refuse with politeness i did it with rudeness, and in this consists my error. the encyclopedists and the holbachiens. the two letters of which i have just spoken will be found amongst my papers. the letter from the chancellor did not absolutely surprise me, because i agreed with him in opinion, and with many others, that the declining constitution of france threatened an approaching destruction. the disasters of an unsuccessful war, all of which proceeded from a fault in the government; the incredible confusion in the finances; the perpetual drawings upon the treasury by the administration, which was then divided between two or three ministers, amongst whom reigned nothing but discord, and who, to counteract the operations of each other, let the kingdom go to ruin; the discontent of the people, and of every other rank of subjects; the obstinacy of a woman who, constantly sacrificing her judgment, if she indeed possessed any, to her inclinations, kept from public employment persons capable of discharging the duties of them, to place in them such as pleased her best; everything concurred in justifying the foresight of the counselor, that of the public, and my own. this made me several times consider whether or not i myself should seek an asylum out of the kingdom before it was torn by the dissensions by which it seemed to be threatened; but relieved from my fears by my insignificance, and the peacefulness of my disposition, i thought, that in the state of solitude in which i was determined to live, no public commotion could reach me. i was sorry only that, in this state of things, m. de luxembourg should accept commissions which tended to injure him in the opinion of the persons of the place of which he was governor. i could have wished he had prepared himself a retreat there, in case the great machine had fallen in pieces, which seemed much to be apprehended; and it still appears to me beyond a doubt, that if the reins of government had not fallen into a single hand, the french monarchy would now be at the last gasp. whilst my situation became worse the printing of emile went on more slowly, and was at length suspended without my being able to learn the reason why; guy did not deign to answer my letter of inquiry, and i could obtain no information from any person of what was going forward; m. de malesherbes being then in the country. a misfortune never makes me uneasy provided i know in what it consists; but it is my nature to be afraid of darkness, i tremble at the appearance of it; mystery always gives me inquietude, it is too opposite to my natural disposition, in which there is an openness bordering on imprudence. the sight of the most hideous monster would, i am of opinion, alarm me but little; but if by night i were to see a figure in a white sheet i should be afraid of it. my imagination, wrought upon by this long silence, was now employed in creating phantoms. i tormented myself the more in endeavoring to discover the impediment to the printing of my last and best production, as i had the publication of it much at heart; and as i always carried everything to an extreme, i imagined that i perceived in the suspension the suppression of the work. yet, being unable to discover either the cause or manner of it, i remained in the most cruel state of suspense. i wrote letter after letter to guy, to m. de malesherbes and to madam de luxembourg, and not receiving answers, at least when i expected them, my head became so affected that i was not far from a delirium. i unfortunately heard that father griffet, a jesuit, had spoken of emile and repeated from it some passages. my imagination instantly unveiled to me the mystery of iniquity; i saw the whole progress of it as clearly as if it had been revealed to me. i figured to myself that the jesuits, furious on account of the contemptuous manner in which i had spoken of colleges, were in possession of my work; that it was they who had delayed the publication; that, informed by their friend guerin of my situation, and foreseeing my approaching dissolution, of which i myself had no manner of doubt, they wished to delay the appearance of the work until after that event, with an intention to curtail and mutilate it, and in favor of their own views, to attribute to me sentiment not my own. the number of facts and circumstances which occurred to my mind, in confirmation of this silly proposition, and gave it an appearance of truth supported by evidence and demonstration, is astonishing. i knew guerin to be entirely in the interest of the jesuits. i attributed to them all the friendly advances he had made me; i was persuaded he had, by their entreaties, pressed me to engage with neaulme, who had given them the first sheets of my work; that they had afterwards found means to stop the printing of it by duchesne, and perhaps to get possession of the manuscript to make such alterations in it as they should think proper, that after my death they might publish it disguised in their own manner. i had always perceived, notwithstanding the wheedling of father berthier, that the jesuits did not like me, not only as an encyclopedist, but because all my principles were more in opposition to their maxims and influence than the incredulity of my colleagues, since atheistical and devout fanaticism, approaching each other by their common enmity to toleration, may become united; a proof of which is seen in china, and in the cabal against myself; whereas religion, both reasonable and moral, taking away all power over the conscience, deprives those who assume that power of every resource. i knew the chancellor was a great friend to the jesuits, and i had my fears lest the son, intimidated by the father, should find himself under the necessity of abandoning the work he had protected. i besides imagined that i perceived this to be the case in the chicanery employed against me relative to the first two volumes, in which alterations were required for reasons of which i could not feel the force; whilst the other two volumes were known to contain things of such a nature as, had the censor objected to them in the manner he did to the passages he thought exceptionable in the others, would have required their being entirely written over again. i also understood, and m. de malesherbes himself told me of it, that the abbe de grave, whom he had charged with the inspection of this edition, was another partisan of the jesuits. i saw nothing but jesuits, without considering that, upon the point of being suppressed, and wholly taken up in making their defense, they had something which interested them much more than the cavilings relative to a work in which they were not in question. i am wrong, however, in saying this did not occur to me; for i really thought of it, and m. de malesherbes took care to make the observation to me the moment he heard of my extravagant suspicions. but by another of those absurdities of a man who, from the bosom of obscurity, will absolutely judge of the secret of great affairs, with which he is totally unacquainted, i never could bring myself to believe the jesuits were in danger, and i considered the rumor of their suppression as an artful maneuver of their own to deceive their adversaries. their past successes, which had been uninterrupted, gave me so terrible an idea of their power, that i already was grieved at the overthrow of the parliament. i knew m. de choiseul had prosecuted his studies under the jesuits, that madam de pompadour was not upon bad terms with them, and that their league with favorites and ministers had constantly appeared advantageous to their order against their common enemies. the court seemed to remain neuter, and persuaded as i was that should the society receive a severe check it would not come from the parliament, i saw in the inaction of government the ground of their confidence and the omen of their triumph. in fine, perceiving in the rumors of the day nothing more than art and dissimulation on their part, and thinking they, in their state of security, had time to watch over all their interests, i had had not the least doubt of their shortly crushing jansenism, the parliament and the encyclopedists, with every other association which should not submit to their yoke; and that if they ever suffered my work to appear, this would not happen until it should be so transformed as to favor their pretensions, and thus make use of my name the better to deceive my readers. i felt my health and strength decline; and such was the horror with which my mind was filled, at the idea of dishonor to my memory in the work most worthy of myself, that i am surprised so many extravagant ideas did not occasion a speedy end to my existence. i never was so much afraid of death as at this time, and had i died with the apprehensions i then had upon my mind, i should have died in despair. at present, although i perceived no obstacle to the execution of the blackest and most dreadful conspiracy ever formed against the memory of a man, i shall die much more in peace, certain of leaving in my writings a testimony in my favor, and one which, sooner or later, will triumph over the calumnies of mankind. m. de malesherbes, who discovered the agitation of my mind, and to whom i acknowledged it, used such endeavors to restore me to tranquillity as proved his excessive goodness of heart. madam de luxembourg aided him in this good work, and several times went to duchesne to know in what state the edition was. at length the impression was again begun, and the progress of it became more rapid than ever, without my knowing for what reason it had been suspended. m. de malesherbes took the trouble to come to montmorency to calm my mind; in this he succeeded, and the full confidence i had in his uprightness having overcome the derangement of my poor head, gave efficacy to the endeavors he made to restore it. after what he had seen of my anguish and delirium, it was natural he should think i was to be pitied; and he really commiserated my situation. the expressions, incessantly repeated, of the philosophical cabal by which he was surrounded, occurred to his memory. when i went to live at the hermitage, they, as i have already remarked, said i should not remain there long. when they saw i persevered, they charged me with obstinacy and pride, proceeding from a want of courage to retract, and insisted that my life was there a burden to me; in short, that i was very wretched. m. de malesherbes believed this really to be the case, and wrote to me upon the subject. this error in a man for whom i had so much esteem gave me some pain, and i wrote to him four letters successively, in which i stated the real motives of my conduct, and made him fully acquainted with my taste, inclination and character, and with the most interior sentiments of my heart. these letters, written hastily, almost without taking pen from paper, and which i neither copied, corrected, nor even read, are perhaps, the only things i ever wrote with facility, which, in the midst of my sufferings, was, i think, astonishing. i sighed, as i felt myself declining, at the thought of leaving in the midst of honest men an opinion of me so far from truth; and by the sketch hastily given in my four letters, i endeavored, in some measure, to substitute them to the memoirs i had proposed to write. they are expressive of my grief to m. de malesherbes, who showed them in paris, and are, besides, a kind of summary of what i here give in detail, and, on this account, merit preservation. the copy i begged of them some years afterwards will be found amongst my papers. the only thing which continued to give me pain, in the idea of my approaching dissolution, was my not having a man of letters for a friend, to whom i could confide my papers, that after my death he might take a proper choice of such as were worthy of publication. after my journey to geneva, i conceived a friendship for moultou; this young man pleased me, and i could have wished him to receive my last breath. i expressed to him this desire, and am of opinion he would readily have complied with it, had not his affairs prevented him from so doing. deprived of this consolation i still wished to give him a mark of my confidence by sending him the profession of faith of the savoyard vicar before it was published. he was pleased with the work, but did not in his answer seem so fully to expect from it the effect of which i had but little doubt. he wished to receive from me some fragment which i had not given to anybody else. i sent him the funeral oration of the late duke of orleans; this i had written for the abbe darty, who had not pronounced it, because, contrary to his expectation, another person was appointed to perform that ceremony. the printing of emile, after having been again taken in hand, was continued and completed without much difficulty; and i remarked this singularity, that after the curtailings so much insisted upon in the first two volumes, the last two were passed over without an objection, and their contents did not delay the publication for a moment. i had, however, some uneasiness which i must not pass over in silence. after having been afraid of the jesuits, i began to fear the jansenists and philosophers. an enemy to party, faction and cabal, i never heard the least good of persons concerned in them. the gossips had quitted their old abode, and taken up their residence by the side of me, so that in their chamber, everything said in mine, and upon the terrace, was distinctly heard; and from their garden it would have been easy to scald the low wall by which it was separated from my alcove. this was become my study; my table was covered with proof-sheets of emile and the contrat social, and stitching these sheets as they were sent to me, i had all my volumes a long time before they were published. my negligence and the confidence i had in m. mathas, in whose garden i was shut up, frequently made me forget to lock the door at night, and in the morning i several times found it wide open: this, however, would not have given me the least inquietude had i not thought my papers seemed to have been deranged. after having several times made the same remark, i became more careful, and locked the door. the lock was a bad one, and the key turned in it no more than half round. as i became more attentive, i found my papers in a much greater confusion than they were when i left everything open. at length i missed one of my volumes without knowing what was become of it until the morning of the third day, when i again found it upon the table. i never suspected either m. mathas or his nephew m. du moulin, knowing myself to be beloved by both, and my confidence in them was unbounded. that i had in the gossips began to diminish. although they were jansenists, i knew them to have some connection with d'alembert, and moreover they all three lodged in the same house. this gave me some uneasiness, and put me more upon my guard. i removed my papers from the alcove to my chamber, and dropped my acquaintance with these people, having learned they had shown in several houses the first volume of emilius, which i had been imprudent enough to lend them. although they continued until my departure to be my neighbors, i never, after my first suspicions, had the least communication with them. the contrat social appeared a month or two before emile. rey, whom i had desired never secretly to introduced into france any of my books, applied to the magistrate for leave to send this book by rouen, to which place he sent his package by sea. he received no answer, and his bales, after remaining at rouen several months, were returned to him, but not until an attempt had been made to confiscate them; this, probably, would have been done had not he made a great clamor. several persons, whose curiosity the work had excited, sent to amsterdam for copies, which were circulated without being much noticed. maulion, who had heard of this, and had, i believe, seen the work, spoke to me on the subject with an air of mystery which surprised me, and would likewise have made me uneasy if, certain of having conformed to every rule, i had not by virtue of my grand maxim, kept my mind calm. i moreover had no doubt but m. de choiseul, already well disposed towards me, and sensible of the eulogium of his administration, which my esteem for him had induced me to make in the work, would support me against the malevolence of madam de pompadour. i certainly had then as much reason as ever to hope for the goodness of m. de luxembourg, and even for his assistance in case of need; for he never at any time had given me more frequent or more pointed marks of his friendship. at the journey of easter, my melancholy state no longer permitting me to go to the castle, he never suffered a day to pass without coming to see me, and at length, perceiving my sufferings to be incessant, he prevailed upon me to determine to see friar come. he immediately sent for him, came with him, and had the courage, uncommon in a man of his rank, to remain with me during the operation which was cruel and tedious. upon the first examination, come thought he found a great stone, and told me so; at the second, he could not find it again. after having made a third attempt with so much care and circumspection that i thought the time long, he declared there was no stone, but that the prostate gland was schirrous and considerably thickened. he besides added, that i had a great deal to suffer, and should live a long time. should the second prediction be as fully accomplished as the first, my sufferings are far from being at an end. it was thus i learned, after having been so many years treated for disorders which i never had, that my incurable disease, without being mortal, would last as long as myself. my imagination, repressed by this information, no longer presented to me in perspective a cruel death in the agonies of the stone. delivered from imaginary evils, more cruel to me than those which were real, i more patiently suffered the latter. it is certain i have since suffered less from my disorder than i had done before, and every time i recollect that i owe this alleviation to m. de luxembourg, his memory becomes more dear to me. restored, as i may say, to life, and more than ever occupied with the plan according to which i was determined to pass the rest of my days, all the obstacle to the immediate execution of my design was the publication of emile. i thought of touraine where i had already been and which pleased me much, as well on account of the mildness of the climate, as on that of the character of the inhabitants. la terra molle lieta e dilettosa simile a se gli abitator produce. i had already spoken of my project to m. de luxembourg, who endeavored to dissuade me from it; i mentioned it to him a second time as a thing resolved upon. he then offered me the castle of merlou, fifteen leagues from paris, as an asylum which might be agreeable to me, and where he and madam de luxembourg would have a real pleasure in seeing me settled. the proposition made a pleasing impression on my mind. but the first thing necessary was to see the place, and we agreed upon a day when the marechal was to send his valet de chamber with a carriage to take me to it. on the day appointed, i was much indisposed; the journey was postponed, and different circumstances prevented me from ever making it. i have since learned the estate of merlou did not belong to the marechal but to his lady, on which account i was the less sorry i had not gone to live there. emile was at length given to the public, without my having heard further of retrenchments or difficulties. previous to the publication, the marechal asked me for all the letters m. de malesherbes had written to me on the subject of the work. my great confidence in both, and the perfect security in which i felt myself, prevented me from reflecting upon this extraordinary and even alarming request. i returned all the letters, excepting one or two which, from inattention, were left between the leaves of a book. a little time before this, m. de malesherbes told me he should withdraw the letters i had written to duchesne during my alarm relative to the jesuits, and, it must be confessed, these letters did no great honor to my reason. but in my answer i assured him i would not in anything pass for being better than i was, and that he might have the letters where they were. i know not what he resolved upon. the publication of this work was not succeeded by the applause which had followed that of all my other writings. no work was ever more highly spoken of in private, nor had any literary production ever had less public approbation. what was said and written to me upon the subject by persons most capable of judging, confirmed me in my opinion that it was the best, as well as the most important of all the works i had produced. but everything favorable was said with an air of the most extraordinary mystery, as if there had been a necessity of keeping it a secret. madam de boufflers, who wrote to me that the author of the work merited a statue, and the homage of mankind, at the end of her letter desired it might be returned to her. d'alembert, who in his note said the work. gave me a decided superiority, and ought to place me at the head of men of letters, did not sign what he wrote, although he had signed every note i had before received from him. duclos, a sure friend, a man of veracity, but circumspect, although he had a good opinion of the work, avoided mentioning it in his letters to me. la condomine fell upon the profession of faith, and wandered from the subject. clairaut confined himself to the same part; but he was not afraid of expressing to me the emotion which the reading of it had caused in him, and in the most direct terms wrote to me that it had warmed his old imagination: of all those to whom i had sent my book, he was the only person who spoke freely what he thought of it. mathas, to whom also i had given a copy before the publication, lent it to m. de blaire, counselor in the parliament of strasbourg. m. de blaire had a country-house at st. gratien, and mathas, his old acquaintance, sometimes went to see him there. he made him read emile before it was published. when he returned it to him, m. de blaire expressed himself in the following terms, which were repeated to me the same day: "m. mathas, this is a very fine work, but it will in a short time be spoken of more than, for the author, might be wished." i laughed at the prediction, and saw in it nothing more than the importance of a man of the robe, who treats everything with an air of mystery. all the alarming observations repeated to me made no impression upon my mind, and, far from foreseeing the catastrophe so near at hand, certain of the utility and excellence of my work, and that i had in every respect conformed to established rules; convinced, as i thought i was that i should be supported by all the credit of m. de luxembourg and the favor of the ministry, i was satisfied with myself for the resolution i had taken to retire in the midst of my triumphs, and at my return to crush those by whom was envied. one thing in the publication of the work alarmed me, less on account of my safety than for the unburdening of my mind. at the hermitage and at montmorency i had seen with indignation the vexations which the jealous care of the pleasures of princes causes to be exercised upon wretched peasants, forced to suffer the havoc made by game in their fields, without daring to take any other measure to prevent this devastation than that of making a noise, passing the night amongst the beans and peas, with drums, kettles and bells, to keep off the wild boars. as i had been a witness to the barbarous cruelty with which the comte de charolois treated these poor people, i had towards the end of emile exclaimed against it. this was another infraction of my maxims, which has not remained unpunished. i was informed that the people of the prince of conti were but little less severe upon his estates; i trembled lest that prince, for whom i was penetrated with respect and gratitude, should take to his own account what shocked humanity had made me say on that of others, and feel himself offended. yet, as my conscience fully acquitted me upon this article, i made myself easy, and by so doing acted wisely: at least i have not heard that this great prince took notice of the passage, which, besides, was written long before i had the honor of being known to him. a few days either before or after the publication of my work, for i do not exactly recollect the time, there appeared another work upon the same subject, taken verbatim from my first volume, except a few stupid things which were joined to the extract. the book bore the name of a genevese, one balexsert, and, according to the title-page, had gained the premium in the academy of harlem. i easily imagined the academy and the premium to be newly founded, the better to conceal the plagiarism from the eyes of the public; but i further perceived there was some prior intrigue which i could not unravel; either by the lending of my manuscript, without which the theft could not have been committed, or for the purpose of forging the story of the pretended premium, to which it was necessary to give some foundation. it was not until several years afterwards, that by a word which escaped d'ivernois, i penetrated the mystery, and discovered those by whom balexsert had been brought forward. the low murmurings which precede a storm began to be heard, and men of penetration clearly saw there was something gathering, relative to me and my book, which would shortly break over my head. for my part my stupidity was such, that, far from foreseeing my misfortune, i did not suspect even the cause of it after i had felt its effect. it was artfully given out that while the jesuits were treated with severity, no indulgence could be shown to books nor the authors of them in which religion was attacked. i was reproached with having put my name to emilius, as if i had not put it to all my other works of which nothing was said. government seemed to fear it should be obliged to take some steps which circumstances rendered necessary on account of my imprudence. rumors to this effect reached my ears, but gave me not much uneasiness: it never even came into my head, that there could be the least thing in the whole affair which related to me personally, so perfectly irreproachable and well supported did i think myself; having besides conformed to every ministerial regulation, i did not apprehend madam de luxembourg would leave me in difficulties for an error, which, if it existed, proceeded entirely from herself. but knowing the manner of proceeding in like cases, and that it was customary to punish booksellers while authors were favored, i had some uneasiness on the account of poor duchesne, whom i saw exposed to danger, should m. de malesherbes abandon him. my tranquillity still continued. rumors increased and soon changed their nature. the public and especially the parliament, seemed irritated by my composure. in a few days the fermentation became terrible, and the object of the menaces being changed, these were immediately addressed to me. the parliamentarians were heard to declare that burning books was of. no effect, the authors also should be burned with them; not a word was said of the booksellers. the first time these expressions, more worthy of an inquisitor of goa than a senator, were related to me, i had no doubt of their coming from the holbachiques with an intention to alarm me and drive me from france. i laughed at their puerile maneuver, and said they would, had they known the real state of things, have thought of some other means of inspiring me with fear: but the rumor at length became such that i perceived the matter was serious. m. and madam de luxembourg had this year come to montmorency in the month of june, which, for their second journey, was more early than common. i heard but little there of my new books, notwithstanding the noise they made at paris; neither the marechal nor his lady said a single word to me on the subject. however, one morning, when m. de luxembourg and i were together, he asked me if, in the contrat social, i had spoken ill of m. de choiseul. "i?" said i, retreating a few steps with surprise; "no, i swear to you i have not; but, on the contrary, i have made on him, and with a pen not given to praise, the finest eulogium a minister ever received." i then showed him the passage. "and in emile?" replied he. "not a word," said i; "there is not in it a single word which relates to him." "ah!" said he, with more vivacity than was common to him, "you should have taken the same care in the other book, or have expressed yourself more clearly!" "i thought," replied i, "what i wrote could not be misconstrued; my esteem for him was such as to make me extremely cautious not to be equivocal." he was again going to speak; i perceived him ready to open his mind: he stopped short and held his tongue. wretched policy of a courtier, which, in the best of hearts, subjugates friendship itself! this conversation, although short, explained to me my situation, at least in certain respects, and gave me to understand that it was against myself the anger of administration was raised. the unheard-of fatality, which turned to my prejudice all the good i did and wrote, afflicted my heart. yet, feeling myself shielded in this affair by madam de luxembourg and m. de malesherbes, i did not perceive in what my persecutors could deprive me of their protection. however, i, from that moment, was convinced equity and justice were no longer in question, and that no pains would be spared in examining whether or not i was culpable. the storm became still more menacing. neaulme himself expressed to me, in the excess of his babbling, how much he repented having had anything to do in the business, and his certainty of the fate with which the book and the author were threatened. one thing, however, alleviated my fears: madam de luxembourg was so calm, satisfied and cheerful, that i concluded she must necessarily be certain of the sufficiency of her credit, especially if she did not seem to have the least apprehension on my account; moreover, she said not to me a word either of consolation or apology, and saw the turn the affair took with as much unconcern as if she had nothing to do with it or anything else that related to me. what surprised me most was her silence. i thought she should have said something on the subject. madam de boufflers seemed rather uneasy. she appeared agitated, strained herself a good deal, assured me the prince of conti was taking great pains to ward off the blow about to be directed against my person, and which she attributed to the nature of present circumstances, in which it was of importance to the parliament not to leave the jesuits an opening whereby they might bring an accusation against it as being indifferent with respect to religion. she did not, however, seem to depend much either upon the success of her own efforts or even those of the prince. her conversations, more alarming than consolatory, all tended to persuade me to leave the kingdom and go to england, where she offered me an introduction to many of her friends, amongst others one to the celebrated hume, with whom she had long been upon a footing of intimate friendship. seeing me still unshaken, she had recourse to other arguments more capable of disturbing my tranquillity. she intimated that, in case i was arrested and interrogated, i should be under the necessity of naming madam de luxembourg, and that her friendship for me required, on my part, such precautions as were necessary to prevent her being exposed. my answer was, that should what she seemed to apprehend come to pass, she need not be alarmed; that i should do nothing by which the lady she mentioned might become a sufferer. she said such a resolution was more easily taken than adhered to, and in this she was right, especially with respect to me, determined as i always have been neither to prejudice myself nor lie before judges, whatever danger there might be in speaking the truth. perceiving this observation had made some impression upon my mind, without however inducing me to resolve upon evasion, she spoke of the bastile for a few weeks, as a means of placing me beyond the reach of the jurisdiction of the parliament, which has nothing to do with prisoners of state. i had no objection to this singular favor, provided it were not solicited in my name. as she never spoke of it a second time, i afterwards thought her proposition was made to sound me, and that the party did not think proper to have recourse to an expedient which would have put an end to everything. a few days afterwards the marechal received from the cure of deuil, the friend of grimm and madam d'epinay, a letter informing him, as from good authority, that the parliament was to proceed against me with the greatest severity, and that, on a day which he mentioned, an order was to be given to arrest me. i imagined this was fabricated by the holbachiques; i knew the parliament to be very attentive to forms, and that on this occasion, beginning by arresting me before it was juridically known i avowed myself the author of the book was violating them all. i observed to madam de boufflers that none but persons accused of crimes which tend to endanger the public safety were, on a simple information, ordered to be arrested lest they should escape punishment. but when government wish to punish a crime like mine, which merits honor and recompense, the proceedings are directed against the book, and the author is as much as possible left out of the question. upon this she made some subtle distinction, which i have forgotten, to prove that ordering me to be arrested instead of summoning me to be heard, was a matter of favor. the next day i received a letter from guy, who informed me that having in the morning been with the attorney-general, he had seen in his office a rough draft of a requisition against emile and the author. guy, it is to be remembered, was the partner of duchesne, who had printed the work, and without apprehensions on his own account, charitably gave this information to the author. the credit i gave to him may be judged of. it was, no doubt, a very probable story, that a bookseller, admitted to an audience by the attorney-general, should read at ease scattered rough drafts in the office of that magistrate! madam de boufflers and others confirmed what he had said. by the absurdities which were incessantly rung in my ears, i was almost tempted to believe that everybody i heard speak had lost their senses. clearly perceiving that there was some mystery, which no one thought proper to explain to me, i patiently awaited the event, depending upon my integrity and innocence, and thinking myself happy, let the persecution which awaited me be what it would, to be called to the honor of suffering in the cause of truth. far from being afraid and concealing myself, i went every day to the castle, and in the afternoon took my usual walk. on the eighth of june, the evening before the order was concluded on, i walked in company with two professors of the oratory, father alamanni and father mandard. we carried to champeaux a little collation, which we ate with a keen appetite. we had forgotten to bring glasses, and supplied the want of them by stalks of rye, through which we sucked up the wine from the bottle, piquing ourselves upon the choice of large tubes to vie with each other in pumping up what we drank. i never was more cheerful in my life. i have related in what manner i lost my sleep during my youth. i had since that time contracted a habit of reading every night in my bed, until i found my eyes begin to grow heavy. i then extinguished my wax taper, and endeavored to slumber for a few moments, which were in general very short. the book i commonly read at night was the bible, which, in this manner, i read five or six times from the beginning to the end. this evening, finding myself less disposed to sleep than ordinary, i continued my reading beyond the usual hour, and read the whole book which finishes at the levite of ephraim, the book of judges, if i mistake not, for since that time i have never once seen it. this history affected me exceedingly, and, in a kind of dream, my imagination still ran on it, when suddenly i was roused from my stupor by a noise and light. theresa, carrying a candle, lighted m. la roche, who perceiving me hastily raise myself up, said: "do not be alarmed; i come from madam de luxembourg, who, in her letter, incloses you another from the prince of conti." in fact, in the letter of madam de luxembourg i found another, which an express from the prince had brought her, stating that, notwithstanding all his efforts, it was determined to proceed against me with the utmost rigor. "the fermentation," said he, "is extreme; nothing can ward off the blow; the court requires it, and the parliament will absolutely proceed; at seven o'clock in the morning an order will be made to arrest him, and persons will immediately be sent to execute it. i have obtained a promise that he shall not be pursued if he makes his escape; but if he persists in exposing himself to be taken this will immediately happen." la roche conjured me in behalf of madam de luxembourg to rise and go and speak to her. it was two o'clock, and she had just retired to bed. "she expects you," added he, "and will not go to sleep without speaking to you." i dressed myself in haste and ran to her. she appeared to be agitated; this was for the first time. her distress affected me. in this moment of surprise and in the night, i myself was not free from emotion; but on seeing her i forgot my own situation, and thought of nothing but the melancholy part she would have to act should i suffer myself to be arrested; for feeling i had sufficient courage strictly to adhere to truth, although i might be certain of its being prejudicial or even destructive to me, i was convinced i had not presence of mind, address, nor perhaps firmness enough, not to expose her should i be closely pressed. this determined me to sacrifice my reputation to her tranquillity, and to do for her that which nothing could have prevailed upon me to do for myself. the moment i had come to this resolution, i declared it, wishing not to diminish the magnitude of the sacrifice by giving her the least trouble to obtain it. i am sure she could not mistake my motive, although she said not a word, which proved to me she was sensible of it. i was so much shocked at her indifference that i, for a moment, thought of retracting; but the marechal came in, and madam de boufflers arrived from paris a few moments afterwards. they did what madam de luxembourg ought to have done. i suffered myself to be flattered; i was ashamed to retract; and the only thing that remained to be determined upon was the place of my retreat and the time of my departure. m. de luxembourg proposed to me to remain incognito a few days at the castle, that we might deliberate at leisure, and take such measures as should seem most proper; to this i would not consent, no more than to go secretly to the temple. i was determined to set off the same day rather than remain concealed in any place whatever. knowing i had secret and powerful enemies in the kingdom, i thought, notwithstanding my attachment to france, i ought to quit it, the better to insure my future tranquillity. my first intention was to retire to geneva, but a moment of reflection was sufficient to dissuade me from committing that act of folly; i knew the ministry of france, more powerful at geneva than at paris, would not leave me more at peace in one of these cities than in the other, were a resolution taken to torment me. i was also convinced the discourse upon inequality had excited against me in the council a hatred the more dangerous as the council dared not make it manifest. i had also learned, that when the nouvelle heloise appeared, the same council had immediately forbidden the sale of that work, upon the solicitation of doctor tronchin; but, perceiving the example not to be imitated, even in paris, the members were ashamed of what they had done, and withdrew the prohibition. i had no doubt that, finding in the present case a more favorable opportunity, they would be very careful to take advantage of it. notwithstanding exterior appearances, i knew there reigned against me in the heart of every genevese a secret jealousy, which, in the first favorable moment, would publicly show itself. nevertheless, the love of my country called me to it, and could i have flattered myself i should there have lived in peace, i should not have hesitated; but neither honor nor reason permitting me to take refuge as a fugitive in a place of which i was a citizen, i resolved to approach it only, and to wait in switzerland until something relative to me should be determined upon in geneva. this state of uncertainty did not, as it will soon appear, continue long. madam de boufflers highly disapproved this resolution, and renewed her efforts to induce me to go to england, but all she could say was of no effect; i have never loved england nor the english, and the eloquence of madam de boufflers, far from conquering my repugnancy, seemed to increase it without my knowing why. determined to set off the same day, i was from the morning inaccessible to everybody, and la roche, whom i sent to fetch my papers, would not tell theresa whether or not i was gone. since i had determined to write my own memoirs, i had collected a great number of letters and other papers, so that he was obliged to return several times. a part of these papers, already selected, were laid aside, and i employed the morning in sorting the rest, that i might take with me such only as were necessary and destroy what remained. m. de luxembourg was kind enough to assist me in this business, which we could not finish before it was necessary i should set off, and i had not time to burn a single paper. the marechal offered to take upon himself to sort what i should leave behind me, and throw into the fire every sheet that he found useless, without trusting to any person whomsoever, and to send me those of which he should make choice. i accepted his offer, very glad to be delivered from that care, that i might pass the few hours i had to remain with persons so dear to me, from whom i was going to separate forever. he took the key of the chamber in which i had left these papers; and, at my earnest solicitation, sent for my poor "aunt," who, not knowing what was become of me, or what was to become of herself, and in momentary expectation of the arrival of the officers of justice, without knowing how to act or what to answer them, was miserable to an extreme. la roche accompanied her to the castle in silence; she thought i was already far from montmorency; on perceiving me, she made the place resound with her cries, and threw herself into my arms. oh, friendship, affinity of sentiment, habit and intimacy. in this pleasing yet cruel moment, the remembrance of so many days of happiness, tenderness, and peace passed together, augmented the grief of a first separation after an union of seventeen years, during which we had scarcely lost sight of each other for a single day. the marechal, who saw this embrace, could not suppress his tears. he withdrew. theresa determined never more to leave me out of her sight. i made her feel the inconvenience of accompanying me at that moment, and the necessity of her remaining to take care of my effects and collect my money. when an order is made to arrest a man, it is customary to seize his papers and put a seal upon his effects, or to make an inventory of them and appoint a guardian to whose care they are intrusted. it was necessary theresa should remain to observe what passed, and get everything settled in the most advantageous manner possible. i promised her she should shortly come to me; the marechal confirmed my promise; but i did not choose to tell her to what place i was going, that, in case of being interrogated by the persons who came to take me into custody, she might with truth plead ignorance upon that head. in embracing her the moment before we separated i felt within me a most extraordinary emotion, and i said to her with an agitation which, alas! was but too prophetic: "my dear girl, you must arm yourself with courage. you have partaken of my prosperity; it now remains to you, since you have chosen it, to partake of my misery. expect nothing in future but insult and calamity in following me. the destiny begun for me by this melancholy day will pursue me until my latest hour." i had now nothing to think of but my departure. the officers were to arrive at ten o'clock. it was four in the afternoon when i set off, and they were not yet come. it was determined i should take post. i had no carriage. the marechal made me a present of a cabriolet, and lent me horses and a postillion the first stage, where, in consequence of the measures he had taken, i had no difficulty in procuring others. as i had not dined at table, nor made my appearance in the castle, the ladies came to bid me adieu in the entresol where i had passed the day. madam de luxembourg embraced me several times with a melancholy air; but i did not in these embraces feel the pressing i had done in those she had lavished upon me two or three years before. madam de boufflers also embraced me, and said to me many civil things. an embrace which surprised me more than all the rest had done was one from madam de mirepoix, for she also was at the castle. madam la marechale de mirepoix is a person extremely cold, decent, and reserved, and did not, at least as she appeared to me, seem quite exempt from the natural haughtiness of the house of lorraine. she had never shown me much attention. whether, flattered by an honor i had not expected, i endeavored to enhance the value of it; or that there really was in the embrace a little of that commiseration natural to generous hearts, i found in her manner and look something energetical which penetrated me. i have since that time frequently thought that, acquainted with my destiny, she could not refrain from a momentary concern for my fate. the marechal did not open his mouth; he was as pale as death. he would absolutely accompany me to the carriage which waited at the watering place. we crossed the garden without uttering a single word. i had a key of the park with which i opened the gate, and instead of putting it again into my pocket, i held it out to the marechal without saying a word. he took it with a vivacity which surprised me, and which has since frequently intruded itself upon my thoughts. i have not in my whole life had a more bitter moment than that of this separation. our embrace was long and silent: we both felt that this was our last adieu. between la barre and montmorency i met, in a hired carriage, four men in black, who saluted me smiling. according to what theresa has since told me of the officers of justice, the hour of their arrival and their manner of behavior, i have no doubt, that they were the persons i met, especially as the order to arrest me, instead of being made out at seven o'clock, as i had been told it would, had not been given till noon. i had to go through paris. a person in a cabriolet is not much concealed. i saw several persons in the streets who saluted me with an air of familiarity, but i did not know one of them. the same evening i changed my route to pass villeroy. at lyons the couriers were conducted to the commandant. this might have been embarrassing to a man unwilling either to lie or change his name. i went with a letter from madam de luxembourg to beg m. de villeroy would spare me this disagreeable ceremony. m. de villeroy gave me a letter of which i made no use, because i did not go through lyons. this letter still remains seated up amongst my papers. the duke pressed me to sleep at villeroy, but i preferred returning to the great road, which i did, arid traveled two more stages the same evening. my carriage was inconvenient and uncomfortable, and i was too much indisposed to go far in a day. my appearance besides was not sufficiently distinguished for me to be well served, and in france post-horses feel the whip in proportion to the favorable opinion the postillion has of his temporary master. by paying the guides generously i thought i should make up for my shabby appearance: this was still worse. they took me for a worthless fellow who was carrying orders, and, for the first time in my life, traveling post. from that moment i had nothing but worn-out hacks, and i became the sport of the postillions. i ended as i should have begun by being patient, holding my tongue, and suffering myself to be driven as my conductors thought proper. i had sufficient matter of reflection to prevent me from being weary on the road, employing myself in the recollection of that which had just happened; but this was neither my turn of mind nor the inclination of my heart. the facility with which i forget past evils, however recent they may be, is astonishing. the remembrance of them becomes feeble, and, sooner or later, effaced, in the inverse proportion to the greater degree of fear with which the approach of them inspires me. my cruel imagination, incessantly tormented by the apprehension of evils still at a distance, diverts my attention, and prevents me from recollecting those which are past. caution is needless after the evil has happened, and it is time lost to give it a thought. i, in some measure, put a period to my misfortunes before they happen: the more i have suffered at their approach the greater is the facility with which i forget them; whilst, on the contrary, incessantly recollecting my past happiness, i, if i may so speak, enjoy it a second time at pleasure. it is to this happy disposition i am indebted for an exemption from that ill humor which ferments in a vindictive mind, by the continual remembrance of injuries received, and torments it with all the evil it wishes to do its enemy. naturally choleric, i have felt all the force of anger, which in the first moments has sometimes been carried to fury, but a desire of vengeance never took root within me. i think too little of the offense to give myself much trouble about the offender. i think of the injury i have received from him on account of that he may do me a second time, but were i certain he would never do me another the first would be instantly forgotten. pardon of offenses is continually preached to us. i knew not whether or not my heart would be capable of overcoming its hatred, for it never yet felt that passion, and i give myself too little concern about my enemies to have the merit of pardoning them. i will not say to what a degree, in order to torment me, they torment themselves. i am at their mercy, they have unbounded power, and make of it what use they please. there is but one thing in which i set them at defiance: which is in tormenting themselves about me, to force me to give myself the least trouble about them. the day after my departure i had so perfectly forgotten what had passed, the parliament, madam de pompadour, m. de choiseul, grimm, and d'alembert, with their conspiracies, that, had not it been for the necessary precautions during the journey i should have thought no more of them. the remembrance of one thing which supplied the place of all these was what i had read the evening before my departure. i recollect, also, the pastorals of gessner, which his translator hubert had sent me a little time before. these two ideas occurred to me so strongly, and were connected in such a manner in my mind, that i was determined to endeavor to unite them by treating after the manner of gessner the subject of the levite of ephraim. his pastoral and simple style appeared to me but little fitted to so horrid a subject, and it was not to be presumed the situation i was then in would furnish me with such ideas as would enliven it. however, i attempted the thing, solely to amuse myself in my cabriolet, and without the least hope of success. i had no sooner begun than i was astonished at the liveliness of my ideas, and the facility with which i expressed them. in three days i composed the first three cantos of the little poem which i finished at motiers, and i am certain of not having done anything in my life in which there is a more interesting mildness of manners, a greater brilliancy of coloring, more simple delineations, greater exactness of proportion, or more antique simplicity in general, notwithstanding the horror of the subject which in itself is abominable, so that besides every other merit i had still that of a difficulty conquered. if the levite of ephraim be not the best of my works, it will ever be that most esteemed. i have never read, nor shall i ever read it again without feeling interiorly the applause of a heart without acrimony, which, far from being embittered by misfortunes, is susceptible of consolation in the midst of them, and finds within itself a resource by which they are counterbalanced. assemble the great philosophers, so superior in their books to adversity which, they do not suffer, place them in a situation similar to mine, and, in the first moments of the indignation of their injured honor, give them a like work to compose, and it will be seen in what manner they will acquit themselves of the task. when i set off from montmorency to go into switzerland, i had resolved to stop at yverdon, at the house of my old friend roguin, who had several years before retired to that place, and had invited me to go and see him. i was told lyons was not the direct road, for which reason i avoided going through it. but i was obliged to pass through besancon, a fortified town, and consequently subject to the same inconvenience. i took it into my head to turn about and to go to salins, under the pretense of going to see m. de mairan, the nephew of m. dupin, who had an employment at the salt-works, and formerly had given me many invitations to his house. the expedient succeeded: m. de mairan was not in the way, and, happily, not being obliged to stop, i continued my journey without being spoken to by anybody. the moment i was within the territory of berne, i ordered the postillion to stop; i got out of my carriage, prostrated myself, kissed the ground, and exclaimed in a transport of joy: "heaven, the protector of virtue, be praised, i touch a land of liberty!" thus, blind and unsuspecting in my hopes, have i ever been passionately attached to that which was to make me unhappy. the man thought me mad. i got into the carriage, and a few hours afterwards i had the pure and lively satisfaction of feeling myself pressed within the arms of the respectable roguin. ah! let me breathe for a moment with this worthy host! it is necessary i should gain strength and courage before i proceed further. i shall soon find that in my way which will give employment to them both. it is not without reason that i have been diffuse in the recital of all the circumstances i have been able to recollect. although they may seem uninteresting, yet, when once the thread of the conspiracy is got hold of, they may throw some light upon the progress of it; and, for instance, without giving the first idea of the problem i am going to propose, afford some aid in resolving it. suppose that, for the execution of the conspiracy of which i was the object, my absence was absolutely necessary, everything tending to that effect could not have happened otherwise than it did; but if without suffering myself to be alarmed by the nocturnal embassy of madam de luxembourg, i had continued to hold out, and, instead of remaining at the castle, had returned to my bed and quietly slept until morning, should i have equally had an order of arrest made out against me? this is a great question upon which the solution of many others depends, and for the examination of it, the hour of the comminatory decree of arrest, and that of the real decree may be remarked to advantage. a rude but sensible example of the importance of the least detail in the exposition of facts, of which the secret causes are sought for to discover them by induction. book xii [1762] here commences the work of darkness, in which i have for the last eight years been enveloped, though it has not by any means been possible for me to penetrate the dreadful obscurity. in the abyss of evil into which i am plunged, i feel the blows reach me, without perceiving the hand by which they are directed or the means it employs. shame and misfortune seem of themselves to fall upon me. when in the affliction of my heart i suffer a groan to escape me, i have the appearance of a man who complains without reason, and the authors of my ruin have the inconceivable art of rendering the public, unknown to itself, or without its perceiving the effects of it, accomplice in their conspiracy. therefore, in my narrative of circumstances relative to myself, of the treatment i have received, and all that has happened to me, i shall not be able to indicate the hand by which the whole has been directed, nor assign the causes, while i state the effect. the primitive causes are all given in the preceding books; and everything in which i am interested, and all the secret motives pointed out. but it is impossible for me to explain, even by conjecture, that in which the different causes are combined to operate the strange events of my life. if amongst my readers one even of them should be generous enough to wish to examine the mystery to the bottom, and discover the truth, let him carefully read over a second time the three preceding books, afterwards at each fact he shall find stated in the books which follow, let him gain such information as is within his reach, and go back from intrigue to intrigue, and from agent to agent, until he comes to the first mover of all. i know where his researches will terminate; but in the meantime i lose myself in the crooked and obscure subterraneous path through which his steps must be directed. during my stay at yverdon, i became acquainted with all the family of my friend roguin, and amongst others with his niece, madam boy de la tour, and her daughters, whose father, as i think i have already observed, i formerly knew at lyons. she was at yverdon, upon a visit to her uncle and his sister; her eldest daughter, about fifteen years of age, delighted me by her fine understanding and excellent disposition. i conceived the most tender friendship for the mother and the daughter. the latter was destined by m. roguin to the colonel, his nephew, a man already verging towards the decline of life, and who showed me marks of great esteem and affection; but although the heart of the uncle was set upon this marriage, which was much wished for by the nephew also, and i was greatly desirous to promote the satisfaction of both, the great disproportion of age, and the extreme repugnancy of the young lady, made me join with the mother in postponing the ceremony, and the affair was at length broken off. the colonel has since married mademoiselle dillan, his relation, beautiful, and amiable as my heart could wish, and who has made him the happiest of husbands and fathers. however, m. roguin has not yet forgotten my opposition to his wishes. my consolation is in the certainty of having discharged to him, and his family, the duty of the most pure friendship, which does not always consist in being agreeable, but in advising for the best. i did not remain long in doubt about the reception which awaited me at geneva, had i chosen to return to that city. my book was burned there, and on the 18th of june, nine days after an order to arrest me had been given at paris, another to the same effect was determined upon by the republic. so many incredible absurdities were stated in this second decree, in which the ecclesiastical edict was formally violated, that i refused to believe the first accounts i heard of it, and when these were well confirmed, i trembled lest so manifest an infraction of every law, beginning with that of common-sense, should create the greatest confusion in the city. i was, however, relieved from my fears; everything remained quiet. if there was any rumor amongst the populace, it was unfavorable to me, and i was publicly treated by all the gossips and pedants like a scholar threatened with a flogging for not having said his catechism. these two decrees were the signal for the cry of malediction, raised against me with unexampled fury in every part of europe. all the gazettes, journals, and pamphlets, rang the alarm-bell. the french especially, that mild, generous, and polished people, who so much pique themselves upon their attention and proper condescension to the unfortunate, instantly forgetting their favorite virtues, signalized themselves by the number and violence of the outrages with which, while each seemed to strive who should afflict me most, they overwhelmed me. i was impious, an atheist, a madman, a wild beast, a wolf. the continuator of the journal of trevoux was guilty of a piece of extravagance in attacking my pretended lycanthropy, which was no mean proof of his own. a stranger would have thought an author in paris was afraid of incurring the animadversion of the police, by publishing a work of any kind without cramming into it some insult to me. i sought in vain the cause of this unanimous animosity, and was almost tempted to believe the world was gone mad. what! said i to myself, the editor of the paix perpetuelle, spread discord; the publisher of the vicaire savoyard, impious; the writer of the nouvelle heloise, a wolf; the author of emile, a madman! gracious god! what then should i have been had i published the treatise of l'esprit, or any similar work? and yet, in the storm raised against the author of that book, the public, far from joining the cry of his persecutors, revenged him of them by eulogium. let his book and mine, the receptions the two works met with, and the treatment of the two authors in the different countries of europe, be compared; and for the difference let causes satisfactory to a man of sense be found, and i will ask no more. i found the residence of yverdon so agreeable that i resolved to yield to the solicitations of m. roguin and his family, who were desirous of keeping me there. m. de moiry de gingin, bailiff of that city, encouraged me by his goodness to remain within his jurisdiction. the colonel pressed me so much to accept for my habitation a little pavilion he had in his house between the court and the garden, that i complied with his request, and he immediately furnished it with everything necessary for my little household establishment. the banneret roguin, one of the persons who showed me the most assiduous attention, did not leave me for an instant during the whole day. i was much flattered by his civilities, but they sometimes importuned me. the day on which i was to take possession of my new habitation was already fixed, and i had written to theresa to come to me, when suddenly a storm was raised against me in berne, which was attributed to the devotees, but i have never been able to learn the cause of it. the senate, excited against me, without my knowing by whom, did not seem disposed to suffer me to remain undisturbed in my retreat. the moment the bailiff was informed of the new fermentation, he wrote in my favor to several of the members of the government, reproaching them with their blind intolerance, and telling them it was shameful to refuse to a man of merit, under oppression, the asylum which such a numerous banditti found in their states. sensible people were of opinion the warmth of his reproaches had rather embittered than softened the minds of the magistrates. however this may be, neither his influence nor eloquence could ward off the blow. having received an intimation of the order he was to signify to me, he gave me a previous communication of it; and that i might wait its arrival, i resolved to set off the next day. the difficulty was to know where to go, finding myself shut out from geneva and all france, and foreseeing that in this affair each state would be anxious to imitate its neighbor. madam boy de la tour proposed to me to go and reside in an uninhabited but completely furnished house, which belonged to her son in the village of motiers, in the val-de-travers, in the county of neuchatel. i had only a mountain to cross to arrive at it. the offer came the more opportunely, as in the states of the king of prussia i should naturally be sheltered from all persecution, at least religion could not serve as a pretext for it. but a secret difficulty, improper for me at that moment to divulge, had in it that which was very sufficient to make me hesitate. the innate love of justice, to which my heart was constantly subject, added to my secret inclination to france, had inspired me with an aversion to the king of prussia, who, by his maxims and conduct, seemed to tread under foot all respect for natural law and every duty of humanity. amongst the framed engravings, with which i had decorated my alcove at montmorency, was a portrait of this prince, and under it a distich, the last line of which was as follows: il pense en philosophe, et se conduit en roi.* * he thinks like a philosopher, and acts like a king. this verse, which from any other pen would have been a fine eulogium, from mine had an unequivocal meaning, and too clearly explained the verse by which it was preceded. the distich had been read by everybody who came to see me, and my visitors were numerous. the chevalier de lorenzi had even written it down to give it to d'alembert, and i had no doubt but d'alembert had taken care to make my court with it to the prince. i had also aggravated this first fault by a passage in emilius, where, under the name of adrastus, king of the daunians, it was clearly seen whom i had in view, and the remark had not escaped critics, because madam de boufflers had several times mentioned the subject to me. i was, therefore, certain of being inscribed in red ink in the registers of the king of prussia, and besides, supposing his majesty to have the principles i had dared to attribute to him, he, for that reason, could not but be displeased with my writings and their author; for everybody knows the worthless part of mankind, and tyrants have never failed to conceive the most mortal hatred against me, solely on reading my works, without being acquainted with my person. however, i had presumption enough to depend upon his mercy, and was far from thinking i ran much risk. i knew none but weak men were slaves to the base passions, and that these had but little power over strong minds, such as i had always thought his to be. according to his art of reigning, i thought he could not but show himself magnanimous on this occasion, and that being so in fact was not above his character. i thought a mean and easy vengeance would not for a moment counterbalance his love of glory, and putting myself in his place, his taking advantage of circumstances to overwhelm with the weight of his generosity a man who had dared to think ill of him, did not appear to me impossible. i therefore went to settle at motiers, with a confidence of which i imagined he would feel all the value, and said to myself: when jean-jacques rises to the elevation of coriolanus, will frederic sink below the general of the volsci? colonel roguin insisted on crossing the mountain with me, and installing me at motiers. a sister-in-law to madam boy de la tour, named madam girardier, to whom the house in which i was going to live was very convenient, did not see me arrive there with pleasure; however, she with a good grace put me in possession of my lodging, and i ate with her until theresa came, and my little establishment was formed. perceiving at my departure from montmorency i should in future be a fugitive upon the earth, i hesitated about permitting her to come to me and partake of the wandering life to which i saw myself condemned. i felt the nature of our relation to each other was about to change, and that what until then had on my part been favor and friendship, would in future become so on hers. if her attachment was proof against my misfortunes, to this i knew she must become a victim, and that her grief would add to my pain. should my disgrace weaken her affections, she would make me consider her constancy as a sacrifice, and instead of feeling the pleasure i had in dividing with her my last morsel of bread, she would see nothing but her own merit in following me wherever i was driven by fate. i must say everything; i have never concealed the vices either of my poor mamma or myself; i cannot be more favorable to theresa, and whatever pleasure i may have in doing honor to a person who is dear to me, i will not disguise the truth, although it may discover in her an error, if an involuntary change of the affections of the heart be one. i had long perceived hers to grow cooler towards me, and that she was no longer for me what she had been in our younger days. of this i was the more sensible, as for her i was what i had always been. i fell into the same inconvenience as that of which i had felt the effect with mamma, and this effect was the same now i was with theresa. let us not seek for perfection, which nature never produces; it would be the same thing with any other woman. the manner in which i had disposed of my children, however reasonable it had appeared to me, had not always left my heart at ease. while writing my traite de l'education, i felt i had neglected duties with which it was not possible to dispense. remorse at length became so strong that it almost forced from me a public confession of my fault at the beginning of my emilius, and the passage is so clear, that it is astonishing any person should, after reading it, have had the courage to reproach me with my error. my situation was however still the same, or something worse, by the animosity of my enemies, who sought to find me in a fault. i feared a relapse, and unwilling to run the risk, i preferred abstinence to exposing theresa to a similar mortification. i had besides remarked that a connection with women was prejudicial to my health; this double reason made me form resolutions to which i had sometimes but badly kept, but for the last three or four years i had more constantly adhered to them. it was in this interval i had remarked theresa's coolness; she had the same attachment to me from duty, but not the least from love. our intercourse naturally became less agreeable, and i imagined that, certain of the continuation of my cares wherever she might be, she would choose to stay at paris rather than to wander with me. yet she had given such signs of grief at our parting, had required of me such positive promises that we should meet again, and, since my departure, had expressed to the prince de conti and m. de luxembourg so strong a desire of it, that, far from having the courage to speak to her of separation, i scarcely had enough to think of it myself; and after having felt in my heart how impossible it was for me to do without her, all i thought of afterwards was to recall her to me as soon as possible. i wrote to her to this effect, and she came. it was scarcely two months since i had quitted her; but it was our first separation after an union of so many years. we had both of us felt it most cruelly. what emotion in our first embrace! o how delightful are the tears of tenderness and joy! how does my heart drink them up! why have not i had reason to shed them more frequently? on my arrivel at motiers i had written to lord keith, marshal of scotland, and governor of neuchatel, informing him of my retreat into the states of his prussian majesty, and requesting of him his protection. he answered me with his well-known generosity, and in the manner i had expected from him. he invited me to his house. i went with m. martinet, lord of the manor of val-de-travers, who was in great favor with his excellency. the venerable appearance of this illustrious and virtuous scotchman, powerfully affected my heart, and from that instant began between him and me the strong attachment, which on my part still remains the same, and would be so on his, had not the traitors, who have deprived me of all the consolations of life, taken advantage of my absence to deceive his old age and depreciate me in his esteem. george keith, hereditary marshal of scotland, and brother to the famous general keith, who lived gloriously and died in the bed of honor, had quitted his country at a very early age, and was proscribed on account of his attachment to the house of stuart. with that house, however, he soon became disgusted by the unjust and tyrannical spirit he remarked in the ruling character of the stuart family. he lived a long time in spain, the climate of which pleased him exceedingly, and at length attached himself, as his brother had done, to the service of the king of prussia, who knew men and gave them the reception they merited. his majesty received a great return for this reception, in the services rendered him by marshal keith, and by what was infinitely more precious, the sincere friendship of his lordship. the great mind of this worthy man, haughty and republican, could stoop to no other yoke than that of friendship, but to this it was so obedient, that with very different maxims he saw nothing but frederic the moment he became attached to him. the king charged the marshal with affairs of importance, sent him to paris, to spain, and at length, seeing he was already advanced in years, let him retire with the government of neuchatel, and the delightful employment of passing there the remainder of his life in rendering the inhabitants happy. the people of neuchatel, whose manners are trivial, know not how to distinguish solid merit, and suppose wit to consist in long discourses. when they saw a sedate man of simple manners appear amongst them, they mistook his simplicity for haughtiness, his candor for rusticity, his laconism for stupidity, and rejected his benevolent cares, because, wishing to be useful, and not being a sycophant, he knew not how to flatter people he did not esteem. in the ridiculous affair of the minister petitpierre, who was displaced by his colleagues, for having been unwilling they should be eternally damned, my lord, opposing the usurpations of the ministers, saw the whole country of which he took the part, rise up against him, and when i arrived there the stupid murmur had not entirely subsided. he passed for a man influenced by the prejudices with which he was inspired by others, and of all the imputations brought against him it was the most devoid of truth. my first sentiment on seeing this venerable old man, was that of tender commiseration, on account of his extreme leanness of body, years having already left him little else but skin and bone; but when i raised my eyes to his animated, open, noble countenance, i felt a respect, mingled with confidence, which absorbed every other sentiment. he answered the very short compliment i made him when first i came into his presence by speaking of something else, as if i had already been a week in his house. he did not bid us sit down. the stupid chatelain, the lord of the manor, remained standing. for my part i at first sight saw in the fine and piercing eye of his lordship something so conciliating that, feeling myself entirely at ease, i without ceremony, took my seat by his side upon the sofa. by the familiarity of his manner i immediately perceived the liberty i took gave him pleasure, and that he said to himself: this is not a neuchatelois. singular effect of the similarity of characters! at an age when the heart loses its natural warmth, that of this good old man grew warm by his attachment to me to a degree which surprised everybody. he came to see me at motiers under the pretense of quail shooting, and stayed there two days without touching a gun. we conceived such a friendship for each other that we knew not how to live separate; the castle of colombier, where he passed the summer, was six leagues from motiers; i went there at least once a fortnight, and made a stay of twenty-four hours, and then returned like a pilgrim with my heart full of affection for my host. the emotion i had formerly experienced in my journeys from the hermitage to eaubonne was certainly very different, but it was not more pleasing than that with which i approached colombier. what tears of tenderness have i shed when on the road to it, while thinking of the paternal goodness, amiable virtues, and charming philosophy of this respectable old man! i called him father, and he called me son. these affectionate names give, in some measure, an idea of the attachment by which we were united, but by no means that of the want we felt of each other, nor of our continual desire to be together. he would absolutely give me an apartment at the castle of colombier, and for a long time pressed me to take up my residence in that in which i lodged during my visits. i at length told him i was more free and at my ease in my own house, and that i had rather continue until the end of my life to come and see him. he approved of my candor, and never afterwards spoke to me on the subject. oh, my good lord! oh, my worthy father! how is my heart still moved when i think of your goodness? ah, barbarous wretches! how deeply did they wound me when they deprived me of your friendship! but no, great man, you are and will ever be the same for me, who am still the same. you have been deceived, but you are not changed. my lord marechal is not without faults; he is a man of wisdom, but he is still a man. with the greatest penetration, the nicest discrimination, and the most profound knowledge of men, he sometimes suffers himself to be deceived, and never recovers his error. his temper is very singular and foreign to his general turn of mind. he seems to forget the people he sees every day, and thinks of them in a moment when they least expect it; his attention seems ill-timed; his presents are dictated by caprice and not by propriety. he gives or sends in an instant whatever comes into his head, be the value of it ever so small. a young genevese, desirous of entering into the service of prussia, made a personal application to him; his lordship, instead of giving him a letter, gave him a little bag of peas, which he desired him to carry to the king. on receiving this singular recommendation his majesty gave a commission to the bearer of it. these elevated geniuses have between themselves a language which the vulgar will never understand. the whimsical manner of my lord marechal, something like the caprice of a fine woman, rendered him still more interesting to me. i was certain, and afterwards had proofs, that it had not the least influence over his sentiments, nor did it affect the cares prescribed by friendship on serious occasions, yet in his manner of obliging there is the same singularity as in his manners in general. of this i will give one instance relative to a matter of no great importance. the journey from motiers to colombier being too long for me to perform in one day, i commonly divided it by setting off after dinner and sleeping at brot, which is half way. the landlord of the house where i stopped, named sandoz, having to solicit at berlin a favor of importance to him, begged i would request his excellency to ask it in his behalf. "most willingly," said i, and took him with me. i left him in the antechamber, and mentioned the matter to his lordship, who returned me no answer. after passing with him the whole morning, i saw as i crossed the hall to go to dinner, poor sandoz, who was fatigued to death with waiting. thinking the governor had forgotten what i had said to him, i again spoke of the business before we sat down to table, but still received no answer. i thought this manner of making me feel i was importunate rather severe, and, pitying the poor man in waiting, held my tongue. on my return the next day i was much surprised at the thanks he returned me for the good dinner his excellency had given him after receiving his paper. three weeks afterwards his lordship sent him the rescript he had solicited, dispatched by the minister, and signed by the king, and this without having said a word either to myself or sandoz concerning the business, about which i thought he did not choose to give himself the least concern. i could wish incessantly to speak of george keith; from him proceeds my recollection of the last happy moments i have enjoyed; the rest of my life, since our separation, has been passed in affliction and grief of heart. the remembrance of this is so melancholy and confused that it was impossible for me to observe the least order in what i write, so that in future i shall be under the necessity of stating facts without giving them a regular arrangement. i was soon relieved from my inquietude arising from the uncertainty of my asylum, by the answer from his majesty to the lord marshal, in whom, as it will readily be believed, i had found an able advocate. the king not only approved of what he had done, but desired him, for i must relate everything, to give me twelve louis. the good old man, rather embarrassed by the commission, and not knowing how to execute it properly, endeavored to soften the insult by transforming the money into provisions, and writing to me that he had received orders to furnish me with wood and coal to begin my little establishment; he moreover added, and perhaps from himself, that his majesty would willingly build me a little house, such a one as i should choose to have, provided i would fix upon the ground. i was extremely sensible of the kindness of the last offer, which made me forget the weakness of the other. without accepting either, i considered frederic as my benefactor and protector, and became so sincerely attached to him, that from that moment i interested myself as much in his glory as until then i had thought his successes unjust. at the peace he made soon after, i expressed my joy by an illumination in a very good taste: it was a string of garlands, with which i decorated the house i inhabited, and in which, it is true, i had the vindictive haughtiness to spend almost as much money as he had wished to give me. the peace ratified, i thought as he was at the highest pinnacle of military and political fame, he would think of acquiring that of another nature, by reanimating his states, encouraging in them commerce and agriculture, creating a new soil, covering it with a new people, maintaining peace amongst his neighbors, and becoming the arbitrator, after having been the terror, of europe. he was in a situation to sheath his sword without danger, certain that no sovereign would oblige him again to draw it. perceiving he did not disarm, i was afraid he would profit but little by the advantages he had gained, and that he would be great only by halves. i dared to write to him upon the subject, and with a familiarity of a nature to please men of his character, conveying to him the sacred voice of truth, which but few kings are worthy to hear. the liberty i took was a secret between him and myself. i did not communicate it even to the lord marshal, to whom i sent my letter to the king sealed up. his lordship forwarded my dispatch without asking what it contained. his majesty returned me no answer, and the marshal going soon after to berlin, the king told him he had received from me a scolding. by this i understood my letter had been ill received, and that the frankness of my zeal had been mistaken for the rusticity of a pedant. in fact, this might possibly be the case; perhaps i did not say what was necessary, nor in the manner proper to the occasion. all i can answer for is the sentiment which induced me to take up my pen. shortly after my establishment at motiers, travers having every possible assurance that i should be suffered to remain there in peace, i took the armenian habit. this was not the first time i had thought of doing it. i had formerly had the same intention, particularly at montmorency, where the frequent use of probes often obliging me to keep my chamber, made me more clearly perceive the advantages of a long robe. the convenience of an armenian tailor, who frequently came to see a relation he had at montmorency, almost tempted me to determine on taking this new dress, troubling myself but little about what the world would say of it. yet, before i concluded upon the matter, i wished to take the opinion of m. de luxembourg, who immediately advised me to follow my inclination. i therefore procured a little armenian wardrobe, but on account of the storm raised against me, i was induced to postpone making use of it until i should enjoy tranquillity, and it was not until some months afterwards that, forced by new attacks of my disorder, i thought i could properly, and without the least risk, put on my new dress at motiers, especially after having consulted the pastor of the place, who told me i might wear it even in the temple without indecency. i then adopted the waistcoat, caffetan, fur bonnet, and girdle; and after having in this dress attended divine service, i saw no impropriety in going in it to visit his lordship. his excellency, on seeing me clothed in this manner, made me no other compliment than that which consisted in saying "salaam alek," i.e., "peace be with you;" the common turkish salutation; after which nothing more was said upon the subject, and i continued to wear my new dress. having quite abandoned literature, all i now thought of was leading a quiet life, and one as agreeable as i could make it. when alone, i have never felt weariness of mind, not even in complete inaction; my imagination filling up every void, was sufficient to keep up my attention. the inactive babbling of a private circle, where, seated opposite to each other, they who speak move nothing but the tongue, is the only thing i have ever been unable to support. when walking and rambling about there is some satisfaction in conversation; the feet and eyes do something; but to hear people with their arms across speak of the weather, of the biting of flies, or what is still worse, compliment each other, is to me an insupportable torment. that i might not live like a savage, i took it into my head to learn to make laces. like the women, i carried my cushion with me when i went to make visits, or sat down to work at my door, and chatted with passers-by. this made me the better support the emptiness of babbling, and enabled me to pass my time with my female neighbors without weariness. several of these were very amiable and not devoid of wit. one in particular, isabelle d'yvernois, daughter of the attorney-general of neuchatel, i found so estimable as to induce me to enter with her into terms of particular friendship, from which she derived some advantage by the useful advice i gave her, and the services she received from me on occasions of importance, so that now a worthy and virtuous mother of a family, she is perhaps indebted to me for her reason, her husband, her life, and happiness. on my part, i received from her gentle consolation, particularly during a melancholy winter, throughout the whole of which, when my sufferings were most cruel, she came to pass with theresa and me long evenings, which she made very short to us by her agreeable conversation, and our mutual openness of heart. she called me papa, and i called her daughter, and these names, which we still give to each other, will, i hope, continue to be as dear to her as they are to me. that my laces might be of some utility, i gave them to my young female friends at their marriages, upon condition of their suckling their children; isabella's eldest sister had one upon these terms, and well deserved it by her observance of them; isabella herself also received another, which, by intention, she as fully merited. she has not been happy enough to be able to pursue her inclination. when i sent the laces to the two sisters, i wrote each of them a letter; the first has been shown about in the world; the second has not the same celebrity: friendship proceeds with less noise. amongst the connections i made in my neighborhood, of which i will not enter into a detail, i must mention that with colonel pury, who had a house upon the mountain, where he came to pass the summer. i was not anxious to become acquainted with him, because i knew he was upon bad terms at court, and with the lord marshal, whom he did not visit. yet, as he came to see me, and showed me much attention, i was under the necessity of returning his visit; this was repeated, and we sometimes dined with each other. at his house i became acquainted with m. du perou, and afterwards too intimately connected with him to pass his name over in silence. m. du perou was an american, son to a commandant of surinam, whose successor, m. le chambrier, of neuchatel, married his widow. left a widow a second time, she came with her son to live in the country of her second husband. du perou, an only son, very rich, and tenderly beloved by his mother, had been carefully brought up, and his education was not lost upon him. he had acquired much knowledge, a taste for the arts, and piqued himself upon his having cultivated his rational faculty: his dutch appearance, yellow complexion, and silent and close disposition, favored this opinion. although young, he was already deaf and gouty. this rendered his motions deliberate and very grave, and although he was fond of disputing, he in general spoke but little because his hearing was bad. i was struck with his exterior, and said to myself, this is a thinker, a man of wisdom, such a one as anybody would be happy to have for a friend. he frequently addressed himself to me without paying the least compliment, and this strengthened the favorable opinion i had already formed of him. he said but little to me of myself or my books, and still less of himself; he was not destitute of ideas, and what he said was just. this justness and equality attracted my regard. he had neither the elevation of mind, nor the discrimination of the lord marshal, but he had all his simplicity; this was still representing him in something. i did not become infatuated with him, but he acquired my attachment from esteem; and by degrees this esteem led to friendship, and i totally forgot the objection i made to the baron holbach: that he was too rich. for a long time i saw but little of du perou, because i did not go to neuchatel, and he came but once a year to the mountain of colonel pury. why did not i go to neuchatel? this proceeded from a childishness upon which i must not be silent. although protected by the king of prussia and the lord marshal, while i avoided persecution in my asylum, i did not avoid the murmurs of the public, of municipal magistrates and ministers. after what had happened in france it became fashionable to insult me; these people would have been afraid to seem to disapprove of what my persecutors had done by not imitating them. the classe of neuchatel, that is, the ministers of that city, gave the impulse, by endeavoring to move the council of state against me. this attempt not having succeeded, the ministers addressed themselves to the municipal magistrate, who immediately prohibited my book, treating me on all occasions with but little civility, and saying, that had j. wished to reside in the city i should not have been suffered to do it. they filled their mercury with absurdities and the most stupid hypocrisy, which, although it made every man of sense laugh, animated the people against me. this, however, did not prevent them from setting forth that i ought to be very grateful for their permitting me to live at motiers, where they had no authority; they would willingly have measured me the air by the pint, provided i had paid for it a dear price. they would have it that i was obliged to them for the protection the king granted me in spite of the efforts they incessantly made to deprive me of it. finally, failing of success, after having done me all the injury they could, and defamed me to the utmost of their power, they made a merit of their impotence, by boasting of their goodness in suffering me to stay in their country. i ought to have laughed at their vain efforts, but i was foolish enough to be vexed at them, and had the weakness to be unwilling to go to neuchatel, to which i yielded for almost two years, as if it was not doing too much honor to such wretches, to pay attention to their proceedings, which, good or bad, could not be imputed to them, because they never act but from a foreign impulse. besides, minds without sense or knowledge, whose objects of esteem are influence, power, and money, are far from imagining even that some respect is due to talents, and that it is dishonorable to injure and insult them. a certain mayor of a village, who for sundry malversations, had been deprived of his office, said to the lieutenant of valde-travers, the husband of isabella: "i am told this rousseau has great wit; bring him to me that i may see whether he has or not." the disapprobation of such a man ought certainly to have no effect upon those on whom it falls. after the treatment i had received at paris, geneva, berne, and even at neuchatel, i expected no favor from the pastor of this place. i had, however, been recommended to him by madam boy de la tour, and he had given me a good reception; but in that country where every new-comer is indiscriminately flattered, civilities signify but little. yet, after my solemn union with the reformed church, and living in a protestant country, i could not, without failing in my engagements, as well as in the duty of a citizen neglect the public profession of the religion into which i had entered; i therefore attended divine service. on the other hand, had i gone to the holy table, i was afraid of exposing myself to a refusal, and it was by no means probable, that after the tumult excited at geneva by the council, and at neuchatel by the classe (the ministers), he would, without difficulty, administer to me the sacrament in his church. the time of communion approaching, i wrote to m. de montmollin, the minister, to prove to him my desire of communicating, and declaring myself heartily united to the protestant church; i also told him, in order to avoid disputing upon articles of faith, that i would not hearken to any particular explanation of the point of doctrine. after taking these steps, i made myself easy, not doubting but m. de montmollin would refuse to admit me without the preliminary discussion to which i refused to consent, and that in this manner everything would be at an end without any fault of mine. i was deceived: when i least expected anything of the kind, m. de montmollin came to declare to me not only that he admitted me to the communion under the condition which i had proposed, but that he and the elders thought themselves much honored by my being one of their flock. i never in my whole life felt greater surprise or received from it more consolation. living always alone and unconnected, appeared to me a melancholy destiny, especially in adversity. in the midst of so many proscriptions and persecutions, i found it extremely agreeable to be able to say to myself: i am at least amongst my brethren; and i went to the communion with an emotion of heart, and my eyes suffused with tears of tenderness, which perhaps were the most agreeable preparation to him to, whose table i was drawing near. sometime afterwards his lordship sent me a letter from madam de boufflers, which he had received, at least i presumed so, by means of d'alembert, who was acquainted with the marechal. in this letter, the first that lady had written to me after my departure from montmorency, she rebuked me severely for having written to m. de montmollin, and especially for having communicated. i the less understood what she meant by her reproof, as after my journey to geneva, i had constantly declared myself a protestant, and had gone publicly to the hotel de hollande without incurring the least censure from anybody. it appeared to me diverting enough, that madam de boufflers should wish to direct my conscience in matters of religion. however, as i had no doubt of the purity of her intention, i was not offended by this singular sally, and i answered her without anger, stating to her my reasons. calumnies in print were still industriously circulated, and their benign authors reproached the different powers with treating me too mildly. for my part, i let them say and write what they pleased, without giving myself the least concern about the matter. i was told there was a censure from the sorbonne, but this i could not believe. what could the sorbonne have to do in the matter? did the doctors wish to know to a certainty that i was not a catholic? everybody already knew i was not one. were they desirous of proving i was not a good calvinist? of what consequence was this to them? it was taking upon themselves a singular care, and becoming the substitutes of our ministers. before i saw this publication i thought it was distributed in the name of the sorbonne, by way of mockery: and when i had read it i was convinced this was the case. but when at length there was not a doubt of its authenticity, all i could bring myself to believe was, that the learned doctors would have been better placed in a madhouse than they were in the college. i was more affected by another publication, because it came from a man for whom i always had an esteem, and whose constancy i admired, though i pitied his blindness. i mean the mandatory letter against me by the archbishop of paris. i thought to return an answer to it was a duty i owed myself. this i felt i could do without derogating from my dignity; the case was something similar to that of the king of poland. i have always detested brutal disputes, after the manner of voltaire. i never combat but with dignity, and before i deign to defend myself i must be certain that he by whom i am attacked will not dishonor my retort. i had no doubt but this letter was fabricated by the jesuits, and although they were at that time in distress, i discovered in it their old principle of crushing the wretched. i was therefore at liberty to follow my ancient maxim, by honoring the titulary author, and refuting the work, which i think i did completely. i found my residence at motiers very agreeable, and nothing was wanting to determine me to end my days there, but a certainty of the means of subsistence. living is dear in that neighborhood, and all my old projects had been overturned by the dissolution of my household arrangements at montmorency, the establishment of others, the sale or squandering of my furniture, and the expenses incurred since my departure. the little capital which remained to me daily diminished. two or three years were sufficient to consume the remainder without my having the means of renewing it, except by again engaging in literary pursuits: a pernicious profession which i had already abandoned. persuaded that everything which concerned me would change, and that the public, recovered from its frenzy, would make my persecutors blush, all my endeavors tended to prolong my resources until this happy revolution should take place, after which i should more at my ease choose a resource from amongst those which might offer themselves. to this effect i took up my dictionary of music, which ten years' labor had so far advanced as to leave nothing wanting to it but the last corrections. my books, which i had lately received, enabled me to finish this work; my papers sent me by the same conveyance, furnished me with the means of beginning my memoirs to which i was determined to give my whole attention. i began by transcribing the letters into a book, by which my memory might be guided in the order of facts and time. i had already selected those i intended to keep for this purpose, and for ten years the series was not interrupted. however, in preparing them for copying i found an interruption at which i was surprised. this was for almost six months, from october, 1756, to march following. i recollected having put into my selection a number of letters from diderot, de leyre, madam d'epinay, madam de chenonceaux, etc., which filled up the void and were missing. what was become of them? had any persons laid their hands upon my papers whilst they remained in the hotel de luxembourg? this was not conceivable, and i had seen m. de luxembourg take the key of the chamber in which i had deposited them. many letters from different ladies, and all those from diderot, were without date, on which account i had been under the necessity of dating them from memory before they could be put in order, and thinking i might have committed errors, i again looked them over for the purpose of seeing whether or not i could find those which ought to fill up the void. this experiment did not succeed. i perceived the vacancy to be real, and that the letters had certainly been taken away. by whom and for what purpose? this was what i could not comprehend. these letters, written prior to my great quarrels, and at the time of my first enthusiasm in the composition of heloise, could not be interesting to any person. they containing nothing more than cavilings by diderot, jeerings from de leyre, assurances of friendship from m. de chenonceaux, and even madam d'epinay, with whom i was then upon the best of terms. to whom were these letters of consequence? to what use were they to be put? it was not until seven years afterwards that i suspected the nature of the theft. the deficiency being no longer doubtful, i looked over my rough drafts to see whether or not it was the only one. i found several, which on account of the badness of my memory, made me suppose others in the multitude of my papers. those i remarked were that of the morale sensitive, and the extract of the adventures of lord edward. the last, i confess, made me suspect madam de luxembourg. la roche, her valet de chambre, had sent me the papers, and i could think of nobody but herself to whom this fragment could be of consequence; but what concern could the other give her, any more than the rest of the letters missing, with which, even with evil intentions, nothing to my prejudice could be done, unless they were falsified? as for the marechal, with whose real friendship for me, and invariable integrity, i was perfectly acquainted, i never could suspect him for a moment. the most reasonable supposition, after long tormenting my mind in endeavoring to discover the author of the theft, that which imputed it to d'alembert, who, having thrust himself into the company of madam de luxembourg, might have found means to turn over these papers, and take from amongst them such manuscripts and letters as he might have thought proper, either for the purpose of endeavoring to embroil me with the writer of them, or to appropriate those he should find useful to his own private purposes. i imagined that, deceived by the title of morale sensitive, he might have supposed it to be the plan of a real treatise upon materialism, with which he would have armed himself against me in a manner easy to be imagined. certain that he would soon be undeceived by reading the sketch, and determined to quit all literary pursuits, these larcenies gave me but little concern. they besides were not the first the same hand had committed* upon me without having complained of these pilferings. in a very little time i thought no more of the trick that had been played me than if nothing had happened, and began to collect the materials i had left for the purpose of undertaking my projected confessions. * i had found in his elemens de musique (elements of music) several things taken from what i had written for the encyclopedie, and which were given to him several years before the publication of his elements. i know not what he may have had to do with a book entitled dictionaire des beaux arts (dictionary of the fine arts), but i found in it articles transcribed word for word from mine, and this long before the same articles were printed in the encyclopedie. i had long thought the company of ministers, or at least the citizens and burgesses of geneva, would remonstrate against the infraction of the edict in the decree made against me. everything remained quiet, at least to all exterior appearance; for discontent was general, and ready, on the first opportunity, openly to manifest itself. my friends, or persons calling themselves such, wrote letter after letter exhorting me to come and put myself at their head, assuring me of public separation from the council. the fear of the disturbance and troubles which might be caused by my presence, prevented me from acquiescing with their desires, and, faithful to the oath i had formerly made, never to take the least part in any civil dissension in my country, i chose rather to let the offense remain as it was, and banish myself forever from the country, than to return to it by means which were violent and dangerous. it is true, i expected the burgesses would make legal remonstrances against an infraction in which their interests were deeply concerned; but no such steps were taken. they who conducted the body of citizens sought less the real redress of grievances than an opportunity to render themselves necessary. they caballed but were silent, and suffered me to be bespattered by the gossips and hypocrites set on to render me odious in the eyes of the populace, and pass upon them their boistering for a zeal in favor of religion. after having, during a whole year, vainly expected that some one would remonstrate against an illegal proceeding, and seeing myself abandoned by my fellow-citizens, i determined to renounce my ungrateful country in which i never had lived, from which i had not received either inheritance or services, and by which, in return for the honor i had endeavored to do it, i saw myself so unworthily treated by unanimous consent, since they, who should have spoken, had remained silent. i therefore wrote to the first syndic for that year, to mr. favre, if i remember right, a letter in which i solemnly gave up my freedom of the city of geneva, carefully observing in it, however, that decency and moderation, from which i have never departed in the acts of haughtiness which, in my misfortunes, the cruelty of my enemies have frequently forced from me. this step opened the eyes of the citizens, who feeling they had neglected their own interests by abandoning my defense, took my part when it was too late. they had wrongs of their own which they joined to mine, and made these the subject of several well-reasoned representations, which they strengthened and extended, as the refusal of the council, supported by the ministry of france, made them more clearly perceive the project formed to impose on them a yoke. these altercations produced several pamphlets which were indecisive, until that appeared entitled lettres ecrites de la campagne,* a work written in favor of the council, with infinite art, and by which the remonstrating party, reduced to silence, was crushed for a time. this production, a lasting monument of the rare talents of its author, came from the attorney-general tronchin, a man of wit and an enlightened understanding, well versed in the laws and government of the republic. siluit terra. * letters written from the country. the remonstrators, recovered from their first overthrow, undertook to give an answer, and in time produced one which brought them off tolerably well. but they all looked to me, as the only person capable of combating a like adversary with hope of success. i confess i was of their opinion, and excited by my former fellow-citizens, who thought it was my duty to aid them with my pen, as i had been the cause of their embarrassment, i undertook to refute the lettres ecrites de la campagne, and parodied the title of them by that of lettres ecrites de la montagne,* which i gave to mine. i wrote this answer so secretly, that at a meeting i had at thonon, with the chiefs of the malcontents to talk of their affairs, and where they showed me a sketch of their answer, i said not a word of mine, which was quite ready, fearing obstacles might arise relative to the impression of it, should the magistrate or my enemies hear of what i had done. this work was, however, known in france before the publication; but government chose rather to let it appear, than to suffer me to guess at the means by which my secret had been discovered. concerning this i will state what i know, which is but trifling: what i have conjectured shall remain with myself. * letters written from the mountain. i received, at motiers, almost as many visits as at the hermitage and montmorency; but these, for the most part, were a different kind. they who had formerly come to see me were people who, having taste, talents, and principles, something similar to mine, alleged them as the causes of their visits, and introduced subjects on which i could converse. at motiers the case was different, especially with the visitors who came from france. they were officers, or other persons who had no taste for literature, nor had many of them read my works, although, according to their own accounts, they had traveled thirty, forty, sixty, and even a hundred leagues to come and see me, and admire the illustrious man, the very celebrated, the great man, etc. for from the time of my settling at motiers, i received the most impudent flattery, from which the esteem of those with whom i associated had formerly sheltered me. as but few of my new visitors deigned to tell me who or what they were, and as they had neither read nor cast their eye over my works, nor had their researches and mine been directed to the same objects, i knew not what to speak to them upon: i waited for what they had to say, because it was for them to know and tell me the purpose of their visit. it will naturally be imagined this did not produce conversations very interesting to me, although they, perhaps, were so to my visitors, according to the information they might wish to acquire; for as i was without suspicion, i answered, without reserve, to every question they thought proper to ask me, and they commonly went away as well informed as myself of the particulars of my situation. i was, for example, visited in this manner by m. de feins, equerry to the queen, and captain of cavalry, who had the patience to pass several days at motiers, and to follow me on foot even to la ferriere, leading his horse by the bridle, without having with me any point of union, except our acquaintance with mademoiselle fel, and that we both played at bilboquet.* * a kind of cup and ball. before this i had received another visit much more extraordinary. two men arrived on foot, each leading a mule loaded with his little baggage, lodging at the inn, taking care of their mules and asking to see me. by the equipage of these muleteers they were taken for smugglers, and the news that smugglers were come to see me was instantly spread. their manner of addressing me sufficiently showed they were persons of another description; but without being smugglers they might be adventurers, and this doubt kept me for some time on my guard. they soon removed my apprehensions. one was m. de montauban, who had the title of comte de la tour-du-pin, gentleman to the dauphin; the other, m. dastier de carpentras, an old officer, who had his cross of st. louis in his pocket, because he could not display it. these gentlemen, both very amiable, were men of sense, and their manner of traveling, so much to my own taste, and but little like that of french gentlemen, in some measure, gained them my attachment, which an intercourse with them served to improve. our acquaintance did not end with the visit; it is still kept up, and they have since been several times to see me, not on foot, that was very well for the first time; but the more i have seen of these gentlemen the less similarity have i found between their taste and mine; i have not discovered their maxims to be such as i have ever observed, that my writings are familiar to them, or that there is any real sympathy between them and myself. what, therefore, did they want with me? why came they to see me with, such an equipage? why repeat their visit? why were they so desirous of having me for their host? i did not at the time propose to myself these questions; but they have sometimes occurred to me since. won by their advances, my heart abandoned itself without reserve, especially to m. dastier, with whose open countenance i was more particularly pleased. i even corresponded with him, and when i determined to print the letters from the mountain, i thought of addressing myself to him, to deceive those by whom my packet was waited for upon the road to holland. he had spoken to me a good deal, and perhaps purposely, upon the liberty of the press at avignon; he offered me his services should i have anything to print there: i took advantage of the offer and sent him successively by the post my first sheets. after having kept these for some time, he sent them back to me, "because," said he, "no bookseller dared to undertake them;" and i was obliged to have recourse to rey, taking care to send my papers, one after the other, and not to part with those which succeeded until i had advice of the reception of those already sent. before the work was published, i found it had been seen in the office of the ministers, and d'escherny, of neuchatel, spoke to me of a book, entitled, de l'homme de la montagne,* which d'holbach had told him was by me. i assured him, and it was true, that i never had written a book which bore that tide. when the letters appeared he became furious, and accused me of falsehood, although i had told him truth. by this means i was certain my manuscript had been read; as i could not doubt the fidelity of rey, the most rational conjecture seemed to be, that my packets had been opened at the post-house. * of the man of the mountain. another acquaintance i made much about the same time, but which was begun by letters, was that with m. laliaud of nimes, who wrote to me from paris, begging i would send him my profile; he said he was in want of it for my bust in marble, which le moine was making for him to be placed in his library. if this was a pretense invented to deceive me, it fully succeeded. i imagined that a man who wished to have my bust in marble in his library had his head full of my works, consequently of my principles, and that he loved me because his mind was in unison with mine. it was natural this idea should seduce me. i have since seen m. laliaud. i found him very ready to render me many trifling services, and to concern himself in my little affairs, but i have my doubts of his having, in the few books he ever read, fallen upon any one of those i have written. i do not know that he has a library, or that such a thing is of any use to him; and for the bust he has a bad figure in plaster, by le moine, from which has been engraved a hideous portrait that bears my name, as if it bore to me some resemblance. the only frenchman who seemed to come to see me, on account of my sentiments, and his taste for my works, was a young officer of the regiment of limousin, named seguier de st. brisson. he made a figure in paris, where he still perhaps distinguishes himself by his pleasing talents and wit. he came once to montmorency, the winter which preceded my catastrophe. i was pleased with his vivacity. he afterwards wrote to me at motiers, and whether he wished to flatter me, or that his head was turned with emile, he informed me he was about to quit the service to live independently, and had begun to learn the trade of a carpenter. he had an elder brother, a captain in the same regiment, the favorite of the mother, who, a devotee to excess, and directed by i know not what hypocrite, did not treat the youngest son well, accusing him of irreligion, and what was still worse, of the unpardonable crime of being connected with me. these were the grievances, on account of which he was determined to break with his mother, and adopt the manner of life of which i have just spoken, all to play the part of the young emile. alarmed at this petulance, i immediately wrote to him, endeavoring to make him change his resolution, and my exhortations were as strong as i could make them. they had their effect. he returned to his duty, to his mother, and took back the resignation he had given to the colonel, who had been prudent enough to make no use of it, that the young man might have time to reflect upon what he had done. st. brisson, cured of these follies, was guilty of another less alarming, but, to me, not less disagreeable than the rest: he became an author. he successively published two or three pamphlets which announced a man not devoid of talents, but i have not to reproach myself with having encouraged him by my praises to continue to write. some time afterwards he came to see me, and we made together a pilgrimage to the island of st. pierre. during this journey i found him different from what i saw of him at montmorency. he had, in his manner, something affected, which at first did not much disgust me, although i have since thought of it to his disadvantage. he once visited me at the hotel de st. simon, as i passed through paris on my way to england. land. learned there what he had not told me, that he lived in the great world, and often visited madam de luxembourg. whilst i was at trie, i never heard from him, nor did he so much as make inquiry after me, by means of his relation mademoiselle seguier, my neighbor. this lady never seemed favorably disposed towards me. in a word, the infatuation of m. de st. brisson ended suddenly, like the connection of m. de feins: but this man owed me nothing, and the former was under obligations to me, unless the follies i prevented him from committing were nothing more than affectation; which might very possibly be the case. i had visits from geneva also. the delucs, father and son, successively chose me for their attendant in sickness. the father was taken ill on the road, the son was already sick when he left geneva; they both came to my house. ministers, relations, hypocrites, and persons of every description came from geneva and switzerland, not like those from france, to laugh at and admire me, but to rebuke and catechise me. the only person amongst them, who gave me pleasure, was moultou, who passed with me three or four days, and whom i wished to retain much longer; the most persevering of all, the most obstinate, and who conquered me by importunity, was a m. d'ivernois, a merchant at geneva, a french refugee, and related to the attorney-general of neuchatel. this man came from geneva to motiers twice a year, on purpose to see me, remained with me several days together from morning to night, accompanied me in my walks, brought me a thousand little presents, insinuated himself in spite of me into my confidence, and intermeddled in all my affairs, notwithstanding there was not between him and myself the least similarity of ideas, inclination, sentiment, or knowledge. i do not believe he ever read a book of any kind throughout, or that he knows upon what subject mine are written. when i began to herbalize, he followed me in my botanical rambles, without taste for that amusement, or having anything to say to me or i to him. he had the patience to pass with me three days in a public house at goumoins, whence, by wearying him and making him feel how much he wearied me, i was in hopes of driving him. i could not, however, shake his incredible perseverance, nor by any means discover the motive of it. amongst these connections, made and continued by force, i must not omit the only one that was agreeable to me, and in which my heart was really interested: this was that i had with a young hungarian who came to live at neuchatel, and from that place to motiers, a few months after i had taken up my residence there. he was called by the people of the country the baron de sauttern, by which name he had been recommended from zurich. he was tall, well made, had an agreeable countenance, and mild and social qualities. he told everybody, and gave me also to understand, that he came to neuchatel for no other purpose, than that of forming his youth to virtue, by his intercourse with me. his physiognomy, manner, and behavior, seemed well suited to his conversation, and i should have thought i failed in one of the greatest duties had i turned my back upon a young man in whom i perceived nothing but what was amiable, and who sought my acquaintance from so respectable a motive. my heart knows not how to connect itself by halves. he soon acquired my friendship, and all my confidence, and we were presently inseparable. he accompanied me in all my walks, and became fond of them. i took him to the marechal, who received him with the utmost kindness. as he was yet unable to explain himself in french, he spoke and wrote to me in latin, i answered in french, and this mingling of the two languages did not make our conversations either less smooth or lively. he spoke of his family, his affairs, his adventures, and of the court of vienna, with the domestic details of which he seemed well acquainted. in fine, during two years which we passed in the greatest intimacy, i found in him a mildness of character proof against everything, manners not only polite but elegant, great neatness of person, an extreme decency in his conversation, in a word, all the marks of a man born and educated a gentleman, and which rendered him in my eyes too estimable not to make him dear to me. at the time we were upon the most intimate and friendly terms, d'ivernois wrote to me from geneva, putting me upon my guard against the young hungarian who had taken up his residence in my neighborhood; telling me he was a spy whom the minister of france had appointed to watch my proceedings. this information was of a nature to alarm me the more, as everybody advised me to guard against the machinations of persons who were employed to keep an eye upon my actions, and to entice me into france for the purpose of betraying me. to shut the mouths, once for all, of these foolish advisers, i proposed to sauttern, without giving him the least intimation of the information i had received, a journey on foot to pontarlier, to which he consented. as soon as we arrived there i put the letter from d'ivernois into his hands, and after giving him an ardent embrace, i said: "sauttern has no need of a proof of my confidence in him, but it is necessary i should prove to the public that i know in whom to place it." this embrace was accompanied with a pleasure which persecutors can neither feel themselves, nor take away from the oppressed. i will never believe sauttern was a spy, nor that he betrayed me; but i was deceived by him. when i opened to him my heart without reserve, he constantly kept his own shut, and abused me by lies. he invented i know not what kind of story, to prove to me his presence was necessary in his own country. i exhorted him to return to it as soon as possible. he set off, and when i thought he was in hungary, i learned he was at strasbourgh. this was not the first time he had been there. he had caused some disorder in a family in that city; and the husband knowing i received him in my house, wrote to me. i used every effort to bring the young woman back to the paths of virtue, and sauttern to his duty. when i thought they were perfectly detached from each other, they renewed their acquaintance, and the husband had the complaisance to receive the young man at his house; from that moment i had nothing more to say. i found the pretended baron had imposed upon me by a great number of lies. his name was not sauttern, but sauttersheim. with respect to the title of baron, given him in switzerland, i could not reproach him with the impropriety, because he had never taken it; but i have not a doubt of his being a gentleman, and the marshal, who knew mankind, and had been in hungary, always considered and treated him as such. he had no sooner left my neighborhood, than the girl at the inn where he ate, at motiers, declared herself with child by him. she was so dirty a creature, and sauttern, generally esteemed in the country for his conduct and purity of morals, piqued himself so much upon cleanliness, that everybody was shocked at this impudent pretension. the most amiable women of the country, who had vainly displayed to him their charms, were furious: i myself was almost choked with indignation. i used every effort to get the tongue of this impudent woman stopped, offering to pay all expenses, and to give security for sauttersheim. i wrote to him in the fullest persuasion, not only that this pregnancy could not relate to him, but it was feigned, and the whole a machination of his enemies and mine. i wished him to return and confound the strumpet, and those by whom she was dictated to. the pusillanimity of his answer surprised me. he wrote to the master of the parish to which the creature belonged, and endeavored to stifle the matter. perceiving this, i concerned myself no more about it, but i was astonished that a man who could stoop so low should have been sufficiently master of himself to deceive me by his reserve in the closest familiarity. from strasbourgh, sauttersheim went to seek his fortune in paris, and found there nothing but misery. he wrote to me, acknowledging his error. my compassion was excited by the recollection of our former friendship, and i sent him a sum of money. the year following, as i passed through paris, i saw him much in the same situation; but he was the intimate friend of m. de laliaud, and i could not learn by what means he had formed this acquaintance, or whether it was recent or of long standing. two years afterwards sauttersheim returned to strasbourgh, whence he wrote to me and where he died. this, in a few words, is the history of our connection, and what i know of his adventures; but while i mourn the fate of the unhappy young man, i still, and ever shall, believe he was the son of people of distinction, and that the impropriety of his conduct was the effect of the situations to which he was reduced. such were the connections and acquaintance i acquired at motiers. how many of these would have been necessary to compensate the cruel losses i suffered at the same time! the first of these was that of m. de luxembourg, who, after having been long tormented by the physicians, at length became their victim, by being treated for the gout, which they would not acknowledge him to have, as for a disorder they thought they could cure. according to what la roche, the confidential servant of madam de luxembourg, wrote to me relative to what had happened, it is by this cruel and memorable example that the miseries of greatness are to be deplored. the loss of this good nobleman afflicted me the more, as he was the only real friend i had in france, and the mildness of his character was such as to make me quite forget his rank, and attach myself to him as my equal. our connection was not broken off on account of my having quitted the kingdom; he continued to write to me as usual. i nevertheless thought i perceived that absence, or my misfortune, had cooled his affection for me. it is difficult to a courtier to preserve the same attachment to a person whom he knows to be in disgrace with courts. i moreover suspected the great ascendancy madam de luxembourg had over his mind had been unfavorable to me, and that she had taken advantage of our separation to injure me in his esteem. for her part, notwithstanding a few affected marks of regard, which daily became less frequent, she less concealed the change in her friendship. she wrote to me four or five times into switzerland, after which she never wrote to me again, and nothing but my prejudice, confidence, and blindness could have prevented my discovering in her something more than a coolness towards me. guy the bookseller, partner with duchesne, who, after i had left montmorency, frequently went to the hotel de luxembourg, wrote to me that my name was in the will of the marechal. there was nothing in this either incredible or extraordinary, on which account i had no doubt of the truth of the information. i deliberated within myself whether or not i should receive the legacy. everything well considered, i determined to accept it, whatever it might be, and to do that honor to the memory of an honest man, who, in a rank in which friendship is seldom found, had had a real one for me. i had not this duty to fulfill. i heard no more of the legacy, whether it were true or false; and in truth i should have felt some pain in offending against one of the great maxims of my system of morality, in profiting by anything at the death of a person whom i had once held dear. during the last illness of our friend mussard, leneips proposed to me to take advantage of the grateful sense he expressed for our cares, to insinuate to him dispositions in our favor. "ah! my dear leneips," said i, "let us not pollute by interested ideas the sad but sacred duties we discharge towards our dying friend. i hope my name will never be found in the testament of any person, at least not in that of a friend." it was about this time that my lord marshal spoke to me of his, of what he intended to do in it for me, and that i made him the answer of which i have spoken in the first part of my memoirs. my second loss, still more afflicting and irreparable, was that of the best of women and mothers, who, already weighed down with years, and overburthened with infirmities and misery, quitted this vale of tears for the abode of the blessed, where the amiable remembrance of the good we have done here below is the eternal reward of our benevolence. go, gentle and beneficient shade, to those of fenelon, bernex, catinat, and others, who in a more humble state have, like them, opened their hearts to true charity; go and taste of the fruit of your own benevolence, and prepare for your son the place he hopes to fill by your side. happy in your misfortunes that heaven, in putting to them a period, has spared you the cruel spectacle of his! fearing, lest i should fill her heart with sorrow by the recital of my first disasters, i had not written to her since my arrival in switzerland; but i wrote to m. de conzie, to inquire after her situation, and it was from him i learned she had ceased to alleviate the sufferings of the afflicted and that her own were at an end. i myself shall not suffer long; but if i thought i should not see her again in the life to come, my feeble imagination would less delight in the idea of the perfect happiness which i there hope to enjoy. my third and last loss, for since that time i have not had a friend to lose, was that of the lord marshal. he did not die, but tired of serving the ungrateful, he left neuchatel, and i have never seen him since. he still lives, and will, i hope, survive me: he is alive, and thanks to him, all my attachments on earth are not destroyed. there is one man still worthy of my friendship; for the real value of this consists more in what we feel than in that which we inspire; but i have lost the pleasure i enjoyed in his, and can rank him in the number of those only whom i love, but with whom i am no longer connected. he went to england to receive the pardon of the king, and acquired the possession of the property which formerly had been confiscated. we did not separate without an intention of again being united, the idea of which seemed to give him as much pleasure as i received from it. he determined to reside at keith hall, near aberdeen, and i was to join him as soon as he was settled there: but this project was too flattering to my hopes to give me any of its success. he did not remain in scotland. the affectionate solicitations of the king of prussia induced him to return to berlin, and the reason of my not going to him there will presently appear. before this departure, foreseeing the storm which my enemies began to raise against me, he of his own accord sent me letters of naturalization, which seemed to be a certain means of preventing me from being driven from the country. the community of the convent of val de travers followed the example of the governor, and gave me letters of communion, gratis, as they were the first. thus, in every respect, become a citizen, i was sheltered from legal expulsion, even by the prince; but it has never been by legitimate means, that the man who, of all others, has shown the greatest respect for the laws, has been persecuted. i do not think i ought to enumerate, amongst the number of my losses at this time, that of the abbe mably. having lived some time at the house of his mother, i have been acquainted with the abbe, but not very intimately, and i have reason to believe the nature of his sentiments with respect to me changed after i required a greater celebrity than he already had. but the first time i discovered his insincerity was immediately after the publication of the letters from the mountain. a letter attributed to him, addressed to madam saladin, was handed about in geneva, in which he spoke of this work as the seditious clamors of a furious demagogue. the esteem i had for the abbe mably, and my great opinion of his understanding, did not permit me to believe this extravagant letter was written by him. i acted in this business with my usual candor. i sent him a copy of the letter, informing him he was said to be the author of it. he returned me no answer. this silence astonished me: but what was my surprise when by a letter i received from madam de chenonceaux, i learned the abbe was really the author of that which was attributed to him, and found himself greatly embarrassed by mine. for even supposing for a moment that what he stated was true, how could he justify so public an attack, wantonly made, without obligation or necessity, for the sole purpose of overwhelming, in the midst of his greatest misfortunes, a man to whom he had shown himself a well-wisher, and who had not done anything that could excite his enmity? in a short time afterwards the dialogues of phocion, in which i perceived nothing but a compilation, without shame or restraint, from my writings, made their appearance. in reading this book i perceived the author had not the least regard for me, and that in future i must number him among my most bitter enemies. i do not believe he has ever pardoned me for the social contract, far superior to his abilities, or the perpetual peace; and i am, besides, of opinion that the desire he expressed that i should make an extract from the abbe de st. pierre, proceeded from a supposition in him that i should not acquit myself of it so well. the further i advanced in my narrative, the less order i feel myself capable of observing. the agitation of the rest of my life has deranged in my ideas the succession of events. these are too numerous, confused, and disagreeable to be recited in due order. the only strong impression they have left upon my mind is that of the horrid mystery by which the cause of them is concealed, and of the deplorable state to which they have reduced me. my narrative will in future be irregular, and according to the events which, without order, may occur to my recollection. i remember about the time to which i refer, full of the idea of my confessions, i very imprudently spoke of them to everybody, never imagining it could be the wish or interest, much less within the power of any person whatsoever, to throw an obstacle in the way of this undertaking, and had i suspected it, even this would not have rendered me more discreet, as from the nature of my disposition it is totally impossible for me to conceal either my thoughts or feelings. the knowledge of this enterprise was, as far as i can judge, the cause of the storm that was raised to drive me from switzerland, and deliver me into the hands of those by whom i might be prevented from executing it. i had another project in contemplation which was not looked upon with a more favorable eye by those who were afraid of the first: this was a general edition of my works. i thought this edition of them necessary to ascertain what books, amongst those to which my name was affixed, were really written by me, and to furnish the public with the means of distinguishing them from the writings falsely attributed to me by my enemies, to bring me to dishonor and contempt. this was besides a simple and an honorable means of insuring to myself a livelihood, and the only one that remained to me. as i had renounced the profession of an author, my memoirs not being of a nature to appear during my lifetime; and as i no longer gained a farthing in any manner whatsoever, and constantly lived at a certain expense, i saw the end of my resources in that of the produce of the last things i had written. this reason had induced me to hasten the finishing of my dictionary of music, which still was incomplete. i had received for it a hundred louis and a life annuity of three hundred livres; but a hundred louis could not last long in the hands of a man who annually expended upwards of sixty, and three hundred livres a year was but a trifling sum to one upon whom parasites and beggarly visitors lighted like a swarm of flies. a company of merchants from neuchatel came to undertake the general edition, and a printer or bookseller of the name of reguillat, from lyons, thrust himself, i know not by what means, amongst them to direct it. the agreement was made upon reasonable terms, and sufficient to accomplish my object. i had in print and manuscript, matter for six volumes in quarto. i moreover agreed to give my assistance in bringing out the edition. the merchants were, on their part, to pay me a thousand crowns down, and to assign me an annuity of sixteen hundred livres for life. the agreement was concluded but not signed, when the letters from the mountain appeared. the terrible explosion caused by this infernal work, and its abominable author, terrified the company, and the undertaking was at an end. i would compare the effect of this last production to that of the letter on french music, had not that letter, while it brought upon me hatred, and exposed me to danger, acquired me respect and esteem. but after the appearance of the last work, it was matter of astonishment at geneva and versailles, that such a monster as the author of it should be suffered to exist. the little council, excited by resident de france, and directed by the attorney-general, made a declaration against my work, by which, in the most severe terms, it was declared to be unworthy of being burned by the hands of the hangman, adding, with an address which bordered upon the burlesque, there was no possibility of speaking of or answering it without dishonor. i would here transcribe the curious piece of composition, but unfortunately i have it not by me. i ardently wish some of my readers, animated by the zeal of truth and equity, would read over the letters from the mountain: they will, i dare hope, feel the stoical moderation which reigns throughout the whole, after all the cruel outrages with which the author was loaded. but unable to answer the abuse, because no part of it could be called by that name, nor to the reasons because these were unanswerable, my enemies pretended to appear too much enraged to reply: and it is true, if they took the invincible arguments it contains for abuse, they must have felt themselves roughly treated. the remonstrating party, far from complaining of the odious declaration, acted according to the spirit of it, and instead of making a trophy of the letters from the mountain, which they veiled to make them serve as a shield, were pusillanimous enough not to do justice or honor to that work, written to defend them, and at their own solicitation. they did not either quote or mention the letters, although they tacitly drew from them all their arguments, and by exactly following the advice with which they conclude, made them the sole cause of their safety and triumph. they had imposed on me this duty: i had fulfilled it, and unto the end had served their cause and the country. i begged of them to abandon me, and in their quarrels to think of nobody but themselves. they took me at my word, and i concerned myself no more about their affairs, further than constantly to exhort them to peace, not doubting, should they continue to be obstinate, of their being crushed by france; this however did not happen; i know the reason why it did not, but this is not the place to explain what i mean. the effect produced at neuchatel by the letters from the mountain was at first very mild. i sent a copy of them to m. de montmollin, who received it favorably, and read it without making any objection. he was ill as well as myself; as soon as he recovered he came in a friendly manner to see me, and conversed on general subjects. a rumor was however begun: the book was burned i know not where. from geneva, berne, and perhaps from versailles, the effervescence quickly passed to neuchatel, and especially to val de travers, where, before even the ministers had taken any apparent steps, an attempt was secretly made to stir up the people. i ought, i dare assert, to have been beloved by the people of that country in which i have lived, giving alms in abundance, not leaving about me an indigent person without assistance, never refusing to do any service in my power, and which was consistent with justice, making myself perhaps too familiar with everybody, and avoiding, as far as it was possible for me to do it, all distinction which might excite the least jealousy. this, however, did not prevent the populace, secretly stirred up against me by i know not whom, from being by degrees irritated against me, even to fury, nor from publicly insulting me, not only in the country and upon the road, but in the street. those to whom i had rendered the greatest services became most irritated against me, and even people who still continued to receive my benefactions, not daring to appear, excited others, and seemed to wish thus to be revenged of me for their humiliation, by the obligations they were under for the favors i had conferred upon them. montmollin seemed to pay no attention to what was passing, and did not yet come forward. but as the time of communion approached, he came to advise me not to present myself at the holy table, assuring me, however, he was not my enemy, and that he would leave me undisturbed. i found this compliment whimsical enough; it brought to my recollection the letter from madam de boufflers, and i could not conceive to whom it could be a matter of such importance whether i communicated or not. considering this condescension on my part as an act of cowardice, and moreover, being unwilling to give to the people a new pretense under which they might charge me with impiety, i refused the request of the minister, and he went away dissatisfied, giving me to understand i should repent of my obstinacy. he could not of his own authority forbid me the communion: that of the consistory, by which i had been admitted to it, was necessary, and as long as there was no objection from that body i might present myself without the fear of being refused. montmollin procured from the classe (the ministers) a commission to summon me to the consistory, there to give an account of the articles of my faith, and to excommunicate me should i refuse to comply. this excommunication could not be pronounced without the aid of the consistory also, and a majority of the voices. but the peasants, who under the appellation of elders, composed this assembly, presided over and governed by their minister, might naturally be expected to adopt his opinion, especially in matters of the clergy, which they still less understood than he did. i was therefore summoned, and i resolved to appear. what a happy circumstance and triumph would this have been to me could i have spoken, and had i, if i may so speak, had my pen in my mouth! with what superiority, with what facility even, should i have overthrown this poor minister in the midst of his six peasants! the thirst after power having made the protestant clergy forget all the principles of the reformation, all i had to do to recall these to their recollection and reduce them to silence, was to make comments upon my first letters from the mountain, upon which they had the folly to animadvert. my text was ready, and i had only to enlarge on it, and my adversary was confounded. i should not have been weak enough to remain on the defensive; it was easy to me to become an assailant without his even perceiving it, or being able to shelter himself from my attack. the contemptible priests of the classe, equally careless and ignorant, had of themselves placed me in the most favorable situation i could desire to crush them at pleasure. but what of this? it was necessary i should speak without hesitation, and find ideas, turn of expression, and words at will, preserving a presence of mind, and keeping myself collected, without once suffering even a momentary confusion. for what could i hope, feeling, as i did, my want of aptitude to express myself with ease? i had been reduced to the most mortifying silence at geneva, before an assembly which was favorable to me, and previously resolved to approve of everything i should say. here, on the contrary, i had to do with a caviller who, substituting cunning to knowledge, would spread for me a hundred snares before i could perceive one of them, and was resolutely determined to catch me in an error let the consequence be what it would. the more i examined the situation in which i stood, the greater danger i perceived myself exposed to, and feeling the impossibility of successfully withdrawing from it, i thought of another expedient. i meditated a discourse which i intended to pronounce before the consistory, to exempt myself from the necessity of answering. the thing was easy. i wrote the discourse and began to learn it by memory, with an inconceivable ardor. theresa laughed at hearing me mutter and incessantly repeat the same phrases, while endeavoring to cram them into my head. i hoped, at length, to remember what i had written: i knew the chatelain, as an officer attached to the service of the prince, would be present at the consistory, and that notwithstanding the maneuvers and bottles of montmollin, most of the elders were well disposed towards me. i had, moreover, in my favor, reason, truth, and justice, with the protection of the king, the authority of the council of state, and the good wishes of every real patriot, to whom the establishment of this inquisition was threatening. in fine, everything contributed to encourage me. on the eve of the day appointed, i had my discourse by rote, and recited it without missing a word. i had it in my head all night: in the morning i had forgotten it. i hesitated at every word, thought myself before the assembly, became confused, stammered, and lost my presence of mind. in fine, when the time to make my appearance was almost at hand, my courage totally failed me. i remained at home and wrote to the consistory, hastily stating my reasons, and pleaded my disorder, which really, in the state to which apprehension had reduced me, would scarcely have permitted me to stay out the whole sitting. the minister, embarrassed by my letter, adjourned the consistory. in the interval, he, of himself, and by his creatures, made a thousand efforts to seduce the elders, who, following the dictates of their consciences, rather than those they received from him, did not vote according to his wishes, or those of the class. whatever power his arguments drawn from his cellar might have over these kind of people, he could not gain one of them, more than the two or three who were already devoted to his will, and who were called his ames damnees.* the officer of the prince, and the colonel pury, who, in this affair, acted with great zeal, kept the rest to their duty, and when montmollin wished to proceed to excommunication, his consistory, by a majority of voices, flatly refused to authorize him to do it. thus reduced to the last expedient, that of stirring up the people against me, he, his colleagues, and other persons, set about it openly, and were so successful, that notwithstanding the strong and frequent rescripts of the king, and the orders of the council of state, i was at length obliged to quit the country, that i might not expose the officer of the king to be himself assassinated while he protected me. * damned souls. the recollection of the whole of this affair is so confused, that it is impossible for me to reduce to or conned the circumstances of it. i remember a kind of negotiation had been entered into with the class, in which montmollin was the mediator. he feigned to believe it was feared i should, by my writings, disturb the peace of the country, in which case, the liberty i had of writing would be blamed. he had given me to understand that if i consented to lay down my pen, what was past would be forgotten. i had already entered into this engagement with myself, and did not hesitate in doing it with the class, but conditionally and solely in matters of religion. he found means to have a duplicate of the agreement upon some change necessary to be made in it, the condition having been rejected by the class; i demanded back the writing, which was returned to me, but he kept the duplicate, pretending it was lost. after this, the people, openly excited by the ministers, laughed at the rescripts of the king, and the orders of the council of state, and shook off all restraint. i was declaimed against from the pulpit, called antichrist, and pursued in the country like a mad wolf. my armenian dress discovered me to the populace; of this i felt the cruel inconvenience, but to quit it in such circumstances, appeared to me an act of cowardice. i could not prevail upon myself to do it, and i quietly walked through the country with my caffetan and fur bonnet in the midst of the hootings of the dregs of the people, and sometimes through a shower of stones. several times as i passed before houses, i heard those by whom they were inhabited call out: "bring me my gun, that i may fire at him." as i did not on this account hasten my pace, my calmness increased their fury, but they never went further than threats, at least with respect to fire-arms. during this fermentation i received from two circumstances the most sensible pleasure. the first was my having it in my power to prove my gratitude by means of the lord marshal. the honest part of the inhabitants of neuchatel, full of indignation at the treatment i received, and the maneuvers of which i was the victim, held the ministers in execration, clearly perceiving they were obedient to a foreign impulse, and the vile agents of people, who, in making them act, kept themselves concealed; they were moreover afraid my case would have dangerous consequences, and be made a precedent for the purpose of establishing a real inquisition. the magistrates, and especially m. meuron, who had succeeded m. d'ivernois in the office of attorney-general, made every effort to defend me. colonel pury, although a private individual, did more, and succeeded better. it was the colonel who found means to make montmollin submit in his consistory, by keeping the elders to their duty. he had credit, and employed it to stop the sedition; but he had nothing more than the authority of the laws, and the aid of justice and reason, to oppose to that of money and wine: the combat was unequal, and in this point montmollin was triumphant. however, thankful for his zeal and cares, i wished to have it in my power to make him a return of good offices, and in some measure discharge a part of the obligations i was under to him. i knew he was very desirous of being named a counselor of state; but having displeased the court by his conduct in the affair of the minister petitpierre, he was in disgrace with the prince and governor. i however undertook, at all risks, to write to the lord marshal in his favor: i went so far as even to mention the employment of which he was desirous, and my application was so well received that, contrary to the expectations of his most ardent well wishers, it was almost instantly conferred upon him by the king. in this manner fate, which has constantly raised me to too great an elevation, or plunged me into an abyss of adversity, continued to toss me from one extreme to another, and whilst the populace covered me with mud i was able to make a counselor of state. the other pleasing circumstance was a visit i received from madam de verdelin with her daughter, with whom she had been at the baths of bourbonne, whence they came to motiers and stayed with me two or three days. by her attention and cares, she at length conquered my long repugnancy; and my heart, won by her endearing manner, made her a return of all the friendship of which she had long given me proofs. this journey made me extremely sensible of her kindness: my situation rendered the consolations of friendship highly necessary to support me under my sufferings. i was afraid she would be too much affected by the insults i received from the populace, and could have wished to conceal them from her that her feelings might not be hurt, but this was impossible; and although her presence was some check upon the insolent populace in our walks, she saw enough of their brutality to enable her to judge of what passed when i was alone. during the short residence she made at motiers, i was still attacked in my habitation. one morning her chambermaid found my window blocked up with stones, which had been thrown at it during the night. a very heavy bench placed in the street by the side of the house, and strongly fastened down, was taken up and reared against the door in such a manner as, had it not been perceived from the window, to have knocked down the first person who should have opened the door to go out. madam de verdelin was acquainted with everything that passed; for, besides what she herself was witness to, her confidential servant went into many houses in the village, spoke to everybody, and was seen in conversation with montmollin. she did not, however, seem to pay the least attention to that which happened to me, nor never mentioned montmollin nor any other person, and answered in a few words to what i said to her of him. persuaded that a residence in england would be more agreeable to me than any other, she frequently spoke of mr. hume, who was then at paris, of his friendship for me, and the desire he had of being of service to me in his own country. it is time i should say something of hume. he had acquired a great reputation in france amongst the encyclopedists by his essays on commerce and politics, and in the last place by his history of the house of stuart, the only one of his writings of which i had read a part, in the translation of the abbe prevot. for want of being acquainted with his other works, i was persuaded, according to what i heard of him, that mr. hume joined a very republican mind to the english paradoxes in favor of luxury. in this opinion i considered his whole apology of charles i. as a prodigy of impartiality, and i had as great an idea of his virtue as of his genius. the desire of being acquainted with this great man, and of obtaining his friendship, had greatly strengthened the inclination i felt to go to england, induced by the solicitations of madam de boufflers, the intimate friend of hume. after my arrival in switzerland, i received from him, by means of this lady, a letter extremely flattering; in which, to the highest encomiums on my genius, he subjoined a pressing invitation to induce me to go to england, and the offer of all his interest, and that of his friends, to make my residence there agreeable. i found in the country to which i had retired, the lord marshal, the countryman and friend of hume, who confirmed my good opinion of him, and from whom i learned a literary anecdote, which did him great honor in the opinion of his lordship and had the same effect in mine. wallace, who had written against hume upon the subject of the population of the ancients, was absent whilst his work was in the press. hume took upon himself to examine the proofs, and to do the needful to the edition. this manner of acting was according to my own way of thinking. i had sold at six sols (three pence) a piece, the copies of a song written against myself. i was, therefore, strongly prejudiced in favor of hume, when madam de verdelin came and mentioned the lively friendship he expressed for me, and his anxiety to do me the honors of england; such was her expression, she pressed me a good deal to take advantage of this zeal and to write to him. as i had not naturally an inclination to england, and did not intend to go there until the last extremity, i refused to write or make any promise; but i left her at liberty to do whatever she should think necessary to keep mr. hume favorably disposed towards me. when she went from motiers, she left me in the persuasion, by everything she had said to me of that illustrious man, that he was my friend, and she herself still more his. after her departure, montmollin carried on his maneuvers with more vigor, and the populace threw off all restraint. yet i still continued to walk quietly amidst the hootings of the vulgar; and a taste for botany, which i had begun to contract with doctor d'ivernois, making my rambling more amusing, i went through the country herbalizing, without being affected by the clamors of this scum of the earth, whose fury was still augmented by my calmness. what affected me most was, seeing families of my friends,* or of persons who gave themselves that name, openly join the league of my persecutors; such as the d'ivernois, without excepting the father and brother of my isabelle boy de la tour, a relation to the friend in whose house i lodged, and madam girardier, her sister-in-law. this peter boy was such a brute; so stupid, and behaved so uncouthly, that, to prevent my mind from being disturbed, i took the liberty to ridicule him; and, after the manner of the petit prophete, i wrote a pamphlet of a few pages, entitled, la vision de pierre de la montagne dit let voyant,*(2) in which i found means to be diverting enough on the miracles which then served as the great pretext for my persecution. du peyrou had this scrap printed at geneva, but its success in the country was but moderate; the neuchatelois, with all their wit, taste but weakly attic salt or pleasantry when these are a little refined. * this fatality had begun with my residence at yverdon: the banneret roguin dying a year or two after my departure from that city, the old papa roguin had the candor to inform me with grief, as he said, that in the papers of his relation, proofs had been found of his having been concerned in the conspiracy to expel me from yverdon and the state of berne. this clearly proved the conspiracy not to be, as some persons pretended to believe, an affair of hypocrisy; since the banneret, far from being a devotee, carried materialism and incredulity to intolerance and fanaticism. besides, nobody at yverdon had shown me more constant attention, nor had so prodigally bestowed upon me praises and flattery as this banneret. he faithfully followed the favorite plan of my persecutors. *(2) the vision of peter of the mountain, called the seer. in the midst of decrees and persecutions, the genevese had distinguished themselves by setting up a hue and cry with all their might; and my friend vernes amongst others, with an heroical generosity, chose that moment precisely, to publish against me letters in which he pretended to prove i was not a christian. these letters, written with an air of self-sufficiency, were not the better for it, although it was positively said the celebrated bonnet had given them some correction: for this man, although a materialist, has an intolerant orthodoxy the moment i am in question. there certainly was nothing in this work which could tempt me to answer it; but having an opportunity of saying a few words upon it in my letters from the mountain, i inserted in them a short note sufficiently expressive of disdain to render vernes furious. he filled geneva with his furious exclamations, and d'ivernois wrote me word he had quite lost his senses. sometime afterwards appeared an anonymous sheet, which instead of ink seemed to be written with the water of phelethon. in this letter i was accused of having exposed my children in the streets, of taking about with me a soldier's trull, of being worn out with debaucheries, and other fine things of a like nature. it was not difficult for me to discover the author. my first idea on reading this libel, was to reduce to its real value everything the world calls fame and reputation amongst men; seeing thus a man who was never in a brothel in his life, and whose greatest defect was his being as timid and shy as a virgin, treated as a frequenter of places of that description; and in finding myself charged with being eaten up by the pox. i, who not only never had the least taint of any venereal disease, but, according to the faculty, was so constructed as to make it almost impossible for me to contract it. everything well considered, i thought i could not better refute this libel than by having it printed in the city in which i longest resided, and with this intention i sent it to duchesne to print it as it was with an advertisement, in which i named m. vernes and a few short notes by way of eclaircissement. not satisfied with printing it only, i sent copies to several persons, and amongst others one copy to the prince louis of wirtemberg, who had made me polite advances, and with whom i was in correspondence. the prince, du peyrou, and others, seemed to have their doubts about the author of the libel, and blamed me for having named vernes upon so slight a foundation. their remarks produced in me some scruples, and i wrote to duchesne to suppress the paper. guy wrote to me he had suppressed it: this may or may not be the case; i have been deceived on so many occasions that there would be nothing extraordinary in my being so on this, and, from the time of which i speak, was so enveloped in profound darkness that it was impossible for me to come at any kind of truth. m. vernes bore the imputation with a moderation more than astonishing in a man who was supposed not to have deserved it, and after the fury with which he was seized on former occasions. he wrote me two or three letters in very guarded terms with a view, as it appeared to me, to endeavor by my answers to discover how far i was certain of his being the author of the paper, and whether or not i had any proofs against him. i wrote him two short answers, severe in the sense, but politely expressed, and with which he was not displeased. to this third letter, perceiving he wished to form with me a kind of correspondence, i returned no answer, and he got d'ivernois to speak to me. madam cramer wrote to du peyrou, telling him she was certain the libel was not by vernes. this however did not make me change my opinion. but as it was possible i might be deceived, and as it is certain that if i were, i owed vernes an explicit reparation, i sent him word by d'ivernois that i would make him such a one as he should think proper, provided he would name to me the real author of the libel, or at least prove that he himself was not so. i went further: feeling that, after all, were he not culpable, i had no right to call upon him for proofs of any kind, i stated, in a memoir of considerable length, the reasons whence i had inferred my conclusion, and determined to submit them to the judgment of an arbitrator, against whom vernes could not except. but few people would guess the arbitrator of whom i made choice. i declared at the end of the memoir, that if, after having examined it, and made such inquiries as should seem necessary, the council pronounced m. vernes not to be the author of the libel, from that moment i should be fully persuaded he was not, and would immediately go and throw myself at his feet, and ask his pardon until i had obtained it. i can say with the greatest truth that my ardent zeal for equity, the uprightness and generosity of my heart, and my confidence in the love of justice innate in every mind, never appeared more fully and perceptible than in this wise and interesting memoir, in which i took, without hesitating, my most implacable enemies for arbitrators between a calumniator and myself. i read to du peyrou what i had written: he advised me to suppress it, and i did so. he wished me to wait for the proofs vernes promised, and i am still waiting for them; he thought it best i should in the meantime be silent, and i held my tongue, and shall do so the rest of my life, censured as i am for having brought against vernes a heavy imputation, false and unsupported by proof, although i am still fully persuaded, nay, as convinced as i am of my existence, that he is the author of the libel. my memoir is in the hands of du peyrou. should it ever be published my reasons will be found in it, and the heart of jean-jacques, with which my contemporaries would not be acquainted, will i hope be known. i have now to proceed to my catastrophe at motiers, and to my departure from val de travers, after a residence of two years and a half, and an eight months suffering with unshaken constancy of the most unworthy treatment. it is impossible for me clearly to recollect the circumstances of this disagreeable period, but a detail of them will be found in a publication to that effect by du peyrou, of which i shall hereafter have occasion to speak. after the departure of madam de verdelin the fermentation increased, and, notwithstanding the reiterated rescripts of the king, the frequent orders of the council of state, and the cares of the chatelain and magistrates of the place, the people, seriously considering me as antichrist, and perceiving all their clamors to be of no effect, seemed at length determined to proceed to violence; stones were already thrown after me in the roads, but i was however in general at too great a distance to receive any harm from them. at last, in the night of the fair of motiers, which is in the beginning of september, i was attacked in my habitation in such a manner as to endanger the lives of everybody in the house. at midnight i heard a great noise in the gallery which ran along the back part of the house. a shower of stones thrown against the window and the door which opened to the gallery fell into it with so much noise and violence, that my dog, which usually slept there, and had begun to bark, ceased from fright, and ran into a corner gnawing and scratching the planks to endeavor to make his escape. i immediately rose, and was preparing to go from my chamber into the kitchen, when a stone thrown by a vigorous arm crossed the latter, after having broken the window, forced open the door of my chamber, and fell at my feet, so that had i been a moment sooner upon the floor i should have had the stone against my stomach. i judged the noise had been made to bring me to the door, and the stone thrown to receive me as i went out. i ran into the kitchen, where i found theresa, who also had risen, and was tremblingly making her way to me as fast as she could. we placed ourselves against the wall out of the direction of the window to avoid the stones, and deliberated upon what was best to be done; for going out to call assistance was the certain means of getting ourselves knocked on the head. fortunately the maid-servant of an old man who lodged under me was waked by the noise, and got up and ran to call the chatelain, whose house was next to mine. he jumped from his bed, put on his robe de chambre, and instantly came to me with the guard, which, on account of the fair, went the round that night, and was just at hand. the chatelain was so alarmed at the sight of the effects of what had happened that he turned pale, and on seeing the stones in the gallery, exclaimed, "good god! it is a regular quarry!" on examining below stairs, the door of a little court was found to have been forced, and there was an appearance of an attempt having been made to get into the house by the gallery. on inquiring the reason why the guard had neither prevented nor perceived the disturbance, it came out that the guards of motiers had insisted upon doing duty that night, although it was the turn of those of another village. the next day the chatelain sent his report to the council of state, which two days afterwards sent an order to inquire into the affair, to promise a reward and secrecy to those who should impeach such as were guilty, and in the meantime to place, at the expense of the king, guards about my house, and that of the chatelain, which joined to it. the day after the disturbance, colonel pury, the attorney-general meuron, the chatelain martinet, the receiver guyenet, the treasurer d'ivernois and his father, in a word, every person of consequence in the country, came to see me, and united their solicitations to persuade me to yield to the storm, and leave, at least for a time, a place in which i could no longer live in safety nor with honor. i perceived that even the chatelain was frightened at the fury of the people, and apprehending it might extend to himself, would be glad to see me depart as soon as possible, that he might no longer have the trouble of protecting me there, and be able to quit the parish, which he did after my departure. i therefore yielded to their solicitations, and this with but little pain, for the hatred of the people so afflicted my heart that i was no longer able to support it. i had a choice of places to retire to. after madam de verdelin returned to paris, she had, in several letters, mentioned a mr. walpole, whom she called my lord, who, having a strong desire to serve me, proposed to me an asylum at one of his country houses, of the situation of which she gave me the most agreeable description; entering, relative to lodging and subsistence, into a detail which proved she and lord walpole had held particular consultations upon the project. my lord marshal had always advised me to go to england or scotland, and in case of my determining upon the latter, offered me there an asylum. but he offered me another at potsdam, near to his person, and which tempted me more than all the rest. he had just communicated to me what the king had said to him upon my going there, which was a kind of invitation to me from that monarch, and the duchess of saxe-gotha depended so much upon my taking the journey that she wrote to me, desiring i would go to see her in my way to the court of prussia, and stay some time before i proceeded farther; but i was so attached to switzerland that i could not resolve to quit it so long as it was possible for me to live there, and i seized this opportunity to execute a project of which i had for several months conceived the idea, and of which i have deferred speaking, that i might not interrupt my narrative. this project consisted in going to reside in the island of st. pierre, an estate belonging to the hospital of berne, in the middle of the lake of bienne. in a pedestrian pilgrimage i had made the preceding year with du peyrou we had visited this isle, with which i was so much delighted that i had since that time incessantly thought of the means of making it my place of residence. the greatest obstacle to my wishes arose from the property of the island being vested in the people of berne, who three years before had driven me from amongst them; and besides the mortification of returning to live with people who had given me so unfavorable a reception, i had reason to fear they would leave me no more peace in the island than they had done at yverdon. i had consulted the lord marshal upon the subject, who thinking as i did, that the people of berne would be glad to see me banished to the island, and to keep me there as a hostage for the works i might be tempted to write, had founded their dispositions by means of m. sturler, his old neighbor at colombier. m. sturler addressed himself to the chiefs of the state, and, according to their answer, assured the marshal the bernois, sorry for their past behavior, wished to see me settled in the island of st. pierre, and to leave me there at peace. as an additional precaution, before i determined to reside there, i desired the colonel chaillet to make new inquiries. he confirmed what i had already heard, and the receiver of the island having obtained from his superiors permission to lodge me in it, i thought i might without danger go to the house, with the tacit consent of the sovereign and the proprietors; for i could not expect the people of berne would openly acknowledge the injustice they had done me, and thus act contrary to the most inviolable maxim of all sovereigns. the island of st. pierre, called at neuchatel the island of la motte, in the middle of the lake of bienne, is half a league in circumference; but in this little space all the chief productions necessary to subsistence are found. the island has fields, meadows, orchards, woods, and vineyards, and all these, favored by variegated and mountainous situations, form a distribution of the more agreeable, as the parts, not being discovered all at once, are seen successively to advantage, and make the island appear greater than it really is. a very elevated terrace forms the western part of it, and commands gleresse and neuveville. this terrace is planted with trees which form a long alley, interrupted in the middle by a great saloon, in which, during the vintage, the people from the neighboring shores assemble and divert themselves. there is but one house in the whole island, but that is very spacious and convenient, inhabited by the receiver, and situated in a hollow by which it is sheltered from the winds. five or six hundred paces to the south of the island of st. pierre is another island, considerably less than the former, wild and uncultivated, which appears to have been detached from the greater isle by storms: its gravelly soil produces nothing but willows and persicaria, but there is in it a high hill well covered with greensward and very pleasant. the form of the lake is an almost regular oval. the banks, less rich than a those of the lake of geneva and neuchatel, form a beautiful decoration, especially towards the western part, which is well peopled, and edged with vineyards at the foot of a chain of mountains, something like those of cote-rotie, but which produce not such excellent wine. the bailiwick of st. jean, neuveville, berne, and bienne, lie in a line from the south to the north, to the extremity of the lake, the whole interspersed with very agreeable villages. such was the asylum i had prepared for myself, and to which i was determined to retire after quitting val de travers.* this choice was so agreeable to my peaceful inclinations, and my solitary and indolent disposition, that i consider it as one of the pleasing reveries, of which i became the most passionately fond. i thought i should in that island be more separated from men, more sheltered from their outrages, and sooner forgotten by mankind: in a word, more abandoned to the delightful pleasures of the inaction of a contemplative life. i could have wished to have been confined in it in such a manner as to have had no intercourse with mortals, and i certainly took every measure i could imagine to relieve me from the necessity of troubling my head about them. * it may perhaps be necessary to remark that i left there an enemy in m. du teneaux, mayor of verrieres, not much esteemed in the country, but who has a brother, said to be an honest man, in the office of m. de st. florentin. the mayor had been to see him sometime before my adventure. little remarks of this kind, though of no consequence in themselves, may lead to the discovery of many underhand dealings. the great question was that of subsistence, and by the dearness of provisions, and the difficulty of carriage, this is expensive in the island; the inhabitants are besides at the mercy of the receiver. this difficulty was removed by an arrangement which du peyrou made with me, in becoming a substitute to the company which had undertaken and abandoned my general edition. i gave him all the materials necessary, and made the proper arrangement and distribution. to the engagement between us i added that of giving him the memoirs of my life, and made him the general depositary of all my papers, under the express condition of making no use of them until after my death, having it at heart quietly to end my days without doing anything which should again bring me back to the recollection of the public. the life annuity he undertook to pay me was sufficient to my subsistence. my lord marshal having recovered all his property, had offered me twelve hundred livres a year, half of which i accepted. he wished to send me the principal, but this i refused on account of the difficulty of placing it. he then sent the amount to du peyrou, in whose hands it remained, and who pays me the annuity according to the terms agreed upon with his lordship. adding therefore to the result of my agreement with du peyrou, the annuity of the marshal, two-thirds of which were reversible to theresa after my death, and the annuity of three hundred livres from duchesne, i was assured of a genteel subsistence for myself, and after me for theresa, to whom i left seven hundred livres a year, from the annuities paid me by rey and the lord marshal; i had therefore no longer to fear a want of bread. but it was ordained that honor should oblige me to reject all these resources which fortune and my labors placed within my reach, and that i should die as poor as i had lived. it will be seen whether or not, without reducing myself to the last degree of infamy, i could abide by the engagements which care has always been taken to render ignominious, by depriving me of every other resource to force me to consent to my own dishonor. how was it possible anybody could doubt of the choice i should make in such an alternative? others have judged of my heart by their own. my mind at ease relative to subsistence was without care upon every other subject. although i left in the world the field open to my enemies, there remained in the noble enthusiasm by which my writings were dictated, and in the constant uniformity of my principles, an evidence of the uprightness of my heart, which answered to that deducible from my conduct in favor of my natural disposition. i had no need of any other defense against my calumniators. they might under my name describe another man, but it was impossible they should deceive such as were unwilling to be imposed upon. i could have given them my whole life to animadvert upon, with a certainty, notwithstanding all my faults and weaknesses, and my want of aptitude to support the lightest yoke, of their finding me in every situation a just and good man, without bitterness, hatred, or jealousy, ready to acknowledge my errors, and still more prompt to forget the injuries i received from others; seeking all my happiness in love, friendship, and affection, and in everything carrying my sincerity even to imprudence and the most incredible disinterestedness. i therefore in some measure took leave of the age in which i lived and my contemporaries, and bade adieu to the world, with an intention to confine myself for the rest of my days to that island; such was my resolution, and it was there i hoped to execute the great project of the indolent life to which i had until then consecrated the little activity with which heaven had endowed me. the island was to become to me that of papimanie, that happy country where the inhabitants sleep ou l'on fait plus, ou l'on fait nulle chose.* * where they do more: where they do nothing. this more was everything for me, for i never much regretted sleep; indolence is sufficient to my happiness, and provided i do nothing, i had rather dream waking than asleep. being past the age of romantic projects, and having been more stunned than flattered by the trumpet of fame, my only hope was that of living at ease, and constantly at leisure. this is the life of the blessed in the world to come, and for the rest of mine here below i made it my supreme happiness. they who reproach me with so many contradictions will not fail here to add another to the number. i have observed the indolence of great companies made them unsupportable to me, and i am now seeking solitude for the sole purpose of abandoning myself to inaction. this however is my disposition; if there be in it a contradiction, it proceeds from nature and not from me; but there is so little that it is precisely on that account that i am always consistent. the indolence of company is burdensome because it is forced. that of solitude is charming because it is free, and depends upon the will. in company i suffer cruelly by inaction, because this is of necessity. i must there remain nailed to my chair, or stand upright like a picket, without stirring hand or foot, not daring to run, jump, sing, exclaim, nor gesticulate when i please, not allowed even to dream, suffering at the same time the fatigue of inaction and all the torment of constraint; obliged to pay attention to every foolish thin uttered, and to all the idle compliments paid, and constantly to keep my mind upon the rack that i may not fail to introduce in my turn my jest or my lie. and this is called idleness! it is the labor of a galley slave. the indolence i love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts, but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject. i love to amuse myself with trifles, by beginning a hundred things and never finishing one of them, by going and coming as i take either into my head, by changing my project at every instant, by following a fly through all its windings, in wishing to overturn a rock to see what is under it, by undertaking with ardor the work of ten years, and abandoning it without regret at the end of ten minutes; finally, in musing from morning until night without order or coherence, and in following in everything the caprice of a moment. botany, such as i have always considered it, and of which after my own manner i began to become passionately fond, was precisely an idle study, proper to fill up the void of my leisure, without leaving room for the delirium of imagination or the weariness of total inaction. carelessly wandering in the woods and the country, mechanically gathering here a flower and there a branch; eating my morsel almost by chance, observing a thousand and a thousand times the same things, and always with the same interest, because i always forgot them, were to me the means of passing an eternity without a weary moment. however elegant, admirable, and variegated the structure of plants may be, it does not strike an ignorant eye sufficiently to fix the attention. the constant analogy, with, at the same time, the prodigious variety which reigns in their conformation, gives pleasure to those only who have already some idea of the vegetable system. others at the sight of these treasures of nature feel nothing more than a stupid and monotonous admiration. they see nothing in detail because they know not for what to look, nor do they perceive the whole, having no idea of the chain of connection and combinations which overwhelms with its wonders the mind of the observer. i was arrived at that happy point of knowledge, and my want of memory was such as constantly to keep me there, that i knew little enough to make the whole new to me, and yet everything that was necessary to make me sensible of the beauties of all the parts. the different soils into which the island, although little, was divided, offered a sufficient variety of plants, for the study and amusement of my whole life. i was determined not to leave a blade of grass without analyzing it, and i began already to take measures for making, with an immense collection of observations, the flora petrinsularis. i sent for theresa, who brought with her my books and effects. we boarded with the receiver of the island. his wife had sisters at nidau, who by turns came to see her, and were company for theresa. i here made the experiment of the agreeable life which i could have wished to continue to the end of my days, and the pleasure i found in it only served to make me feel to a greater degree the bitterness of that by which it was shortly to be succeeded. i have ever been passionately fond of water, and the sight of it throws me into a delightful reverie, although frequently without a determinate object. immediately after i rose from my bed i never failed, if the weather was fine, to run to the terrace to respire the fresh and salubrious air of the morning, and glide my eye over the horizon of the lake, bounded by banks and mountains, delightful to the view. i know no homage more worthy of the divinity than the silent admiration excited by the contemplation of his works, and which is not externally expressed. i can easily comprehend the reason why the inhabitants of great cities, who see nothing but walls, and streets, have but little faith; but not whence it happens that people in the country, and especially such as live in solitude, can possibly be without it. how comes it to pass that these do not a hundred times a day elevate their minds in ecstasy to the author of the wonders which strike their senses? for my part, it is especially at rising, wearied by a want of sleep, that long habit inclines me to this elevation which imposes not the fatigue of thinking. but to this effect my eyes must be struck with the ravishing beauties of nature. in my chamber i pray less frequently, and not so fervently; but at the view of a fine landscape i feel myself moved, but by what i am unable to tell. i have somewhere read of a wise bishop who in a visit to his diocese found an old woman whose only prayer consisted in the single interjection "oh!" "good mother," said he to her, "continue to pray in this manner; your prayer is better than ours." this better prayer is mine also. after breakfast, i hastened, with a frown on my brow, to write a few pitiful letters, longing ardently for the moment after which i should have no more to write. i busied myself for a few minutes about my books and papers, to unpack and arrange them, rather than to read what they contained; and this arrangement, which to me became the work of penelope, gave me the pleasure of musing for a while. i then grew weary, and quitted my books to spend the three or four hours which remained to me of the morning in the study of botany, and especially of the system of linnaeus, of which i became so passionately fond, that, after having felt how useless my attachment to it was, i yet could not entirely shake it off. this great observer is, in my opinion, the only one who, with ludwig, has hitherto considered botany as a naturalist and a philosopher; but he has too much studied it in herbals and gardens, and not sufficiently in nature herself. for my part, whose garden was always the whole island, the moment i wanted to make or verity an observation, i ran into the woods or meadows with my book under my arm, and there laid myself upon the ground near the plant in question, to examine it at my ease as it stood. this method was of great service to me in gaining a knowledge of vegetables in their natural state, before they had been cultivated and changed in their nature by the hands of men. fagon, first physician to louis xiv., and who named and perfectly knew all the plants in the royal garden, is said to have been so ignorant in the country as not to know how to distinguish the same plants. i am precisely the contrary. i know something of the work of nature, but nothing of that of the gardener. i gave every afternoon totally up to my indolent and careless disposition, and to following without regularity the impulse of the moment. when the weather was calm, i frequent went immediately after i rose from dinner, and alone got into the boat. the receiver had taught me to row with one oar; i rowed out into the middle of the lake. the moment i withdrew from the bank, i felt a secret joy which almost made me leap, and of which it is impossible for me to tell or even comprehend the cause, if it were not a secret congratulation on my being out of the reach of the wicked. i afterwards rowed about the lake, sometimes approaching the opposite bank, but never touching at it. i often let my boat float at the mercy of the wind and water, abandoning myself to reveries without object, and which were not the less agreeable for their stupidity. i sometimes exclaimed, "o nature! o my mother! i am here under thy guardianship alone; here is no deceitful and cunning mortal to interfere between thee and me." in this manner i withdrew half a league from land; i could have wished the lake had been the ocean. however, to please my poor dog, who was not so fond as i was of such a long stay on the water, i commonly followed one constant course: this was going to land at the little island where i walked an hour or two, or laid myself down on the grass on the summit of the hill, there to satiate myself with the pleasure of admiring the lake and its environs, to examine and dissect all the herbs within my reach, and, like another robinson crusoe, build myself an imaginary place of residence in the island. i became very much attached to this eminence. when i brought theresa, with the wife of the receiver and her sisters, to walk there, how proud was i to be their pilot and guide! we took there rabbits to stock it. this was another source of pleasure to jean-jacques. these animals rendered the island still more interesting to me. i afterwards went to it more frequently, and with greater pleasure, to observe the progress of the new inhabitants. to these amusements i added one which recalled to my recollection the delightful life i led at the charmettes, and to which the season particularly invited me. this was assisting in the rustic labors of gathering of roots and fruits, of which theresa and i made it a pleasure to partake, with the wife of the receiver and his family. i remember a bernois, one m. kirkeberguer, coming to see me, found me perched upon a tree with a sack fastened to my waist, and already so full of apples that i could not stir from the branch on which i stood. i was not sorry to be caught in this and similar situations. i hoped the people of berne, witnesses to the employment of my leisure, would no longer think of disturbing my tranquillity but leave me at peace in my solitude. i should have preferred being confined there by their desire: this would have rendered the continuation of my repose more certain. this is another declaration upon which i am previously certain of the incredulity of many of my readers, who obstinately continue to judge of me by themselves, although they cannot but have seen, in the course of my life, a thousand internal affections which bore no resemblance to any of theirs. but what is still more extraordinary is, that they refuse me every sentiment, good or indifferent, which they have not, and are constantly ready to attribute to me such bad ones as cannot enter the heart of man: in this case they find it easy to set me in opposition to nature, and to make of me such a monster as cannot in reality exist. nothing absurd appears to them incredible, the moment it has a tendency to blacken me, and nothing in the least extraordinary seem to them possible, if it tends to do me honor. but, notwithstanding what they may think or say, i will still continue faithfully to state what j. j. rousseau was, did, and thought; without explaining, or justifying, the singularity of his sentiments and ideas, or endeavoring to discover whether or others have thought as he did. i became so delighted with the island of st. pierre, and my residence there was so agreeable to me that, by concentrating all my desires within it, i formed the wish that i might stay there to the end of my life. the visits i had to return in the neighborhood, the journeys i should be under the necessity of making to neuchatel, bienne, yverdon, and nidau, already fatigued my imagination. a day passed out of the island seemed to me a loss of so much happiness, and to go beyond the bounds of the lake was to go out of my element. past experience had besides rendered me apprehensive. the very satisfaction that i received from anything whatever was sufficient to make me fear the loss of it, and the ardent desire i had to end my days in that island, was inseparable from the apprehension of being obliged to leave it. i had contracted a habit of going in the evening to sit upon the sandy shore, especially when the lake was agitated. i felt a singular pleasure in seeing the waves break at my feet. i formed of them in my imagination the image of the tumult of the world contrasted with the peace of my habitation; and this pleasing idea sometimes softened me even to tears. the repose i enjoyed with ecstasy was disturbed by nothing but the fear of being deprived of it, but this inquietude was accompanied with some bitterness. i felt my situation so precarious as not to dare to depend upon its continuance. "ah! how willingly," said i to myself, "would i renounce the liberty of quitting this place, for which i have no desire, for the assurance of always remaining in it. instead of being permitted to stay here by favor, why am i not detained by force! they who suffer me to remain may in a moment drive me away, and can i hope my persecutors, seeing me happy, will leave me here to continue to be so? permitting me to live in the island is but a trifling favor. i could wish to be condemned to do it, and constrained to remain here that i may not be obliged to go elsewhere." i cast an envious eye upon micheli du cret, who, quiet in the castle of arbourg, had only to determine to be happy to become so. in fine, by abandoning myself to these reflections, and the alarming apprehensions of new storms always ready to break over my head, i wished for them with an incredible ardor, and that instead of suffering me to reside in the island, the bernois would give it me for a perpetual prison: and i can assert that had it depended upon me to get myself condemned to this, i would most joyfully have done it, preferring a thousand times the necessity of passing my life there to the danger of being driven to another place. this fear did not long remain on my mind. when i least expected what was to happen, i received a letter from the bailiff of nidau, within whose jurisdiction the island of st. peter was; by his letter he announced to me from their excellencies an order to quit the island and their states. i thought myself in a dream. nothing could be less natural, reasonable, or foreseen than such an order: for i had considered my apprehensions as the result of inquietude in a man whose imagination was disturbed by his misfortunes, and not to proceed from a foresight which could have the least foundation. the measures i had taken to insure myself the tacit consent of the sovereign, the tranquillity with which i had been left to make my establishment, the visits of several people from berne, and that of the bailiff himself, who had shown me such friendship and attention, and the rigor of the season in which it was barbarous to expel a man who was sickly and infirm, all these circumstances made me and many people believe that there was some mistake in the order, and that ill-disposed people had purposely chosen the time of the vintage and the vacation of the senate suddenly to do me an injury. had i yielded to the first impulse of my indignation, i should immediately have departed. but to what place was i to go? what was to become of me at the beginning of the winter, without object, preparation, guide, or carriage? not to leave my papers and effects at the mercy of the first comer, time was necessary to make proper arrangements, and it was not stated in the order whether or not this would be granted me. the continuance of misfortune began to weigh down my courage. for the first time in my life i felt my natural haughtiness stoop to the yoke of necessity, and, notwithstanding the murmurs of my heart, i was obliged to demean myself by asking for a delay. i applied to m. de graffenried, who had sent me the order, for an explanation of it. his letter, conceived in the strongest terms of disapprobation of the step that had been taken, assured me it was with the greatest regret he communicated to me the nature of it, and the expressions of grief and esteem it contained seemed so many gentle invitations to open to him my heart: i did so. i had no doubt but my letter would open the eyes of my persecutors, and that if so cruel an order was not revoked, at least a reasonable delay, perhaps the whole winter, to make the necessary preparations for my retreat, and to choose a place of abode, would be granted me. whilst i waited for an answer, i reflected upon my situation, and deliberated upon the steps i had to take. i perceived so many difficulties on all sides, the vexation i had suffered had so strongly affected me, and my health was then in such a bad state, that i was quite overcome, and the effect of my discouragement was to deprive me of the little resource which remained in my mind, by which i might, as well as it was possible to do it, have withdrawn myself from my melancholy situation. in whatever asylum i should take refuge, it appeared impossible to avoid either of the two means made use of to expel me. one of which was to stir up against me the populace by secret maneuvers; and the other to drive me away by open force, without giving a reason for so doing. i could not, therefore, depend upon a safe retreat, unless i went in search of it farther than my strength and the season seemed likely to permit. these circumstances again bringing to my recollection the ideas which had lately occurred to me, i wished my persecutors to condemn me to perpetual imprisonment rather than oblige me incessantly to wander upon the earth, by successively expelling me from the asylums of which i should make choice; and to this effect i made them a proposal. two days after my first letter to m. de graffenried, i wrote him a second, desiring he would state what i had proposed to their excellencies. the answer from berne to both was an order, conceived in the most formal and severe terms, to go out of the island, and leave every territory, mediate and immediate of the republic, within the space of twenty-four hours, and never to enter them again under the most grievous penalties. this was a terrible moment. i have since that time felt greater anguish, but never have i been more embarrassed. what afflicted me most was being forced to abandon the project which had made me desirous to pass the winter in the island. it is now time i should relate the fatal anecdote which completed my disasters, and involved in my ruin an unfortunate people whose rising virtues already promised to equal those of rome and sparta. i had spoken of the corsicans in the contrat social as a new people, the only nation in europe not too worn out for legislation, and had expressed the great hope there was of such a people if it were fortunate enough to have a wise legislator. my work was read by some of the corsicans, who were sensible of the honorable manner in which i had spoken of them; and the necessity under which they found themselves of endeavoring to establish their republic, made their chiefs think of asking me for my ideas upon the subject. m. buttafuoco, of one of the first families in the country, and captain in france, in the royal italians, wrote to me to that effect, and sent me several papers for which i had asked to make myself acquainted with the history of the nation and the state of the country. m. paoli, also, wrote to me several times, and though i felt such an undertaking to be superior to my abilities, i thought i could not refuse to give my assistance in so great and noble a work, the moment i should have acquired all the necessary information. it was to this effect i answered both these gentlemen, and the correspondence lasted until my departure. precisely at the same time, i heard that france was sending troops to corsica, and that she had entered into a treaty with the genoese. this treaty and sending of troops gave me uneasiness, and, without imagining i had any further relation with the business, i thought it impossible and the attempt ridiculous, to labor at an undertaking which required such undisturbed tranquillity as the political institution of a people in the moment when perhaps they were upon the point of being subjugated. i did not conceal my fears from m. buttafuoco, who rather relieved me from them by the assurance that, were there in the treaty things contrary to the liberty of his country, a good citizen like himself would not remain as he did in the service of france. in fact, his zeal for the legislation of the corsicans, and his connections with m. paoli, could not leave a doubt on my mind respecting him; and when i heard he made frequent journeys to versailles and fontainebleau, and had conversations with m. de choiseul, all i concluded from the whole was, that with respect to the real intentions of france he had assurances which he gave me to understand, but concerning which he did not choose openly to explain himself by letter. this removed a part of my apprehensions. yet, as i could not comprehend the meaning of the transportation of troops from france, nor reasonably suppose they were sent to corsica to protect the liberty of the inhabitants, which they themselves were very well able to defend against the genoese, i could neither make myself perfectly easy, nor seriously undertake the plan of the proposed legislation, until i had solid proofs that the whole was serious, and that the parties meant not to trifle with me. i much wished for an interview with m. buttafuoco, as that was certainly the best means of coming at the explanation i wished. of this he gave me hopes, and i waited for it with the greatest impatience. i know not whether he really intended me any interview or not; but had this even been the case, my misfortunes would have prevented me from profiting by it. the more i considered the proposed undertaking, and the further i advanced in the examination of the papers i had in my hands, the greater i found the necessity of studying, in the country, the people for whom institutions were to be made, the soil they inhabited, and all the relative circumstances by which it was necessary to appropriate to them that institution. i daily perceived more clearly the impossibility of acquiring at a distance all the information necessary to guide me. this i wrote to m. buttafuoco, and he felt it as i did. although i did not form the precise resolution of going to corsica, i considered a good deal of the means necessary to make that voyage. i mentioned it to m. dastier, who having formerly served in the island under m. de maillebois, was necessarily acquainted with it. he used every effort to dissuade me from this intention, and i confess the frightful description he gave me of the corsicans and their country, considerably abated the desire i had of going to live amongst them. but when the persecutions of motiers made me think of quitting switzerland, this desire was again strengthened by the hope of at length finding amongst these islanders the repose refused me in every other place. one thing only alarmed me, which was my unfitness for the active life to which i was going to be condemned, and the aversion i had always had to it. my disposition, proper for meditating at leisure and in solitude, was not so for speaking and acting, and treating of affairs with men. nature, which had endowed me with the first talent, had refused me the last. yet i felt that, even without taking a direct and active part in public affairs, i should as soon as i was in corsica, be under the necessity of yielding to the desires of the people, and of frequently conferring with the chiefs. the object even of the voyage required that, instead of seeking retirement, i should in the heart of the country endeavor to gain the information of which i stood in need. it was certain that i should no longer be master of my own time, and that, in spite of myself, precipitated into the vortex in which i was not born to move, i should there lead a life contrary to my inclination, and never appear but to disadvantage. i foresaw, that, ill supporting by my presence the opinion my books might have given the corsicans of my capacity, i should lose my reputation amongst them, and, as much to their prejudice as my own, be deprived of the confidence they had in me, without which, however, i could not successfully produce the work they expected from my pen. i was certain that, by thus going out of my sphere, i should become useless to the inhabitants, and render myself unhappy. tormented, beaten by storms from every quarter, and, for several years past, fatigued by journeys and persecution, i strongly felt a want of the repose of which my barbarous enemies wantonly deprived me: i sighed more than ever after that delicious indolence, that soft tranquillity of body and mind, which i had so much desired, and to which, now that i had recovered from the chimeras of love and friendship, my heart limited its supreme felicity. i viewed with terror the work i was about to undertake; the tumultuous life into which i was to enter made me tremble, and if the grandeur, beauty, and utility of the object animated my courage, the impossibility of conquering so many difficulties entirely deprived me of it. twenty years of profound meditation in solitude would have been less painful to me than an active life of six months in the midst of men and public affairs, with a certainty of not succeeding in my undertaking. i thought of an expedient which seemed proper to obviate every difficulty. pursued by the underhand dealings of my secret persecutors to every place in which i took refuge, and seeing no other except corsica where i could in my old days hope for the repose i had until then been everywhere deprived of, i resolved to go there with the directions of m. buttafuoco as soon as this was possible, but to live there in tranquillity; renouncing, in appearance, everything relative to legislation, and, in some measure to make my hosts a return for their hospitality, to confine myself to writing in the country the history of the corsicans, with a reserve in my own mind of the intention of secretly acquiring the necessary information to become more useful to them should i see a probability of success. in this manner, by not entering into an engagement, i hoped to be enabled better to meditate in secret and more at my ease, a plan which might be useful to their purpose, and this without much breaking in upon my dearly beloved solitude, or submitting to a kind of life which i had ever found insupportable. but the journey was not, in my situation, a thing so easy to get over. according to what m. dastier had told me of corsica, i could not expect to find there the most simple conveniences of life, except such as i should take with me; linen, clothes, plate, kitchen furniture, and books, all were to be conveyed thither. to get there myself with my gouvernante, i had the alps to cross, and in a journey of two hundred leagues to drag after me all my baggage; i had also to pass through the states of several sovereigns, and according to the example set to all europe, i had, after what had befallen me, naturally to expect to find obstacles in every quarter, and that each sovereign would think he did himself honor by overwhelming me with some new insult, and violating in my person all the rights of persons and humanity. the immense expense, fatigue, and risk of such a journey made a previous consideration of them, and weighing every difficulty, the first step necessary. the idea of being alone, and, at my age, without resource, far removed from all my acquaintance, and at the mercy of these semi-barbarous and ferocious people, such as m. dastier had described them to me, was sufficient to make me deliberate before i resolved to expose myself to such dangers. i ardently wished for the interview for which m. buttafuoco had given me reason to hope, and i waited the result of it to guide me in my determination. whilst i thus hesitated came on the persecutions of motiers, which obliged me to retire. i was not prepared for a long journey, especially to corsica. i expected to hear from buttafuoco; i took refuge in the island of st. pierre, whence i was driven at the beginning of winter, as i have already stated. the alps, covered with snow, then rendered my emigration impracticable, especially with the promptitude required from me. it is true, the extravagant severity of a like order rendered the execution of it almost impossible; for, in the midst of that concentered solitude, surrounded by water, and having but twenty-four hours after receiving the order to prepare for my departure, and find a boat and carriages to get out of the island and the territory, had i had wings, i should scarcely have been able to pay obedience to it. this i wrote to the bailiff of nidau, in answer to his letter, and hastened to take my departure from a country of iniquity. in this manner was i obliged to abandon my favorite project, for which reason, not having in my oppression been able to prevail upon my persecutors to dispose of me otherwise, i determined, in consequence of the invitation of my lord marshal, upon journey to berlin, leaving theresa to pass the winter in the island of st. pierre, with my books and effects, and depositing my papers in the hands of m. du peyrou. i used so much diligence that the next morning i left the island and arrived at bienne before noon. an accident, which i cannot pass over in silence, had here well nigh put an end to my journey. as soon as the news of my having received an order to quit my asylum was circulated, i received a great number of visits from the neighborhood, and especially from the bernois, who came with the most detestable falsehood to flatter and soothe me, protesting that my persecutors had seized the moment of the vacation of the senate to obtain and send me the order, which, said they, had excited the indignation of the two hundred. some of these comforters came from the city of bienne, a little free state within that of berne, and amongst others a young man of the name of wildremet, whose family was of the first rank, and had the greatest credit in that little city. wildremet strongly solicited me in the name of his fellow-citizens to choose my retreat amongst them, assuring me that they were anxiously desirous of it, and that they would think it an honor and their duty to make me forget the persecutions i had suffered! that with them i had nothing to fear from the influence of the bernois, that bienne was a free city, governed by its own laws, and that the citizens were unanimously resolved not to hearken to any solicitation which should be unfavorable to me. wildremet perceiving all he could say to be ineffectual, brought to his aid several other persons, as well from bienne and the environs as from berne; even, and amongst others, the same kirkeberguer, of whom i have spoken, who, after my retreat to switzerland had endeavored to obtain my esteem, and by his talents and principles had interested me in his favor. but i received much less expected and more weighty solicitations from m. barthes, secretary to the embassy from france, who came with wildremet to see me, exhorted me to accept his invitation, and surprised me by the lively and tender concern he seemed to feel for my situation. i did not know m. barthes; however i perceived in what he said the warmth and zeal of friendship, and that he had it at heart to persuade me to fix my residence at bienne. he made the most pompous eulogium of the city and its inhabitants, with whom he showed himself so intimately connected as to call them several times in my presence his patrons and fathers. this from barthes bewildered me in my conjectures. i had always suspected m. de choiseul to be the secret author of all the persecutions i suffered in switzerland. the conduct of the resident of geneva, and that of the ambassador at soleure but too much confirmed my suspicion; i perceived the secret influence of france in everything that happened to me at berne, geneva, and neuchatel, and i did not think i had any powerful enemy in that kingdom, except the duke de choiseul. what therefore could i think of the visit of barthes and the tender concern he showed for my welfare? my misfortunes had not yet destroyed the confidence natural to my heart, and i had still to learn from experience to discern snares under the appearance of friendship. i sought with surprise the reason of the benevolence of m. barthes; i was not weak enough to believe he had acted from himself; there was in his manner something ostentatious, an affectation even, which declared a concealed intention, and i was far from having found in any of these little subaltern agents that generous intrepidity which, when i was in a similar employment, had often caused a fermentation in my heart. i had formerly known something of the chevalier beauteville, at the castle of montmorency; he had shown me marks of esteem; since his appointment to the embassy he had given me proofs of his not having entirely forgotten me, accompanied with an invitation to go and see him at soleure. though i did not accept this invitation, i was extremely sensible of his civility, not having been accustomed to be treated with such kindness by people in the place. i presumed m. de beauteville, obliged to follow his instructions in what related to the affairs of geneva, yet pitying me under my misfortunes, had by his private cares prepared for me the asylum of bienne, that i might live there in peace under his auspices. i was properly sensible of his attention, but without wishing to profit by it, and quite determined upon the journey to berlin, i sighed after the moment in which i was to see my lord marshal, persuaded i should in future find real repose and lasting happiness nowhere but near his person. on my departure from the island, kirkeberguer accompanied me to bienne. i found wildremet and other biennois, who, by the water side, waited my getting out of the boat. we all dined together at the inn, and on my arrived there my first care was to provide a chaise, being determined to set off the next morning. whilst we were at dinner, these gentlemen repeated their solicitations to prevail upon me to stay with them, and this with such warmth and obliging protestations, that notwithstanding all my resolutions, my heart, which has never been able to resist friendly attentions, received an impression from theirs; the moment they perceived i was shaken they redoubled their efforts with so much effect that i was at length overcome, and consented to remain at bienne, at least until the spring. wildremet immediately set about providing me with a lodging, and boasted, as of a fortunate discovery, of a dirty little chamber in the back of the house, on the third story, looking into a courtyard, where i had for a view the display of the stinking skins of a dresser of chamois leather. my host was a man of a mean appearance, and a good deal of a rascal; the next day after i went to his house i heard that he was a debauchee, a gamester, and in bad credit in the neighborhood. he had neither wife, children, nor servants, and shut up in my solitary chamber, i was in the midst of one of the most agreeable countries in europe, lodged in a manner to make me die of melancholy in the course of a few days. what affected me most was, that, notwithstanding what i had heard of the anxious wish of the inhabitants to receive me amongst them, i had not perceived, as i passed through the streets, anything polite towards me in their manners, or obliging in their looks. i was, however, determined to remain there; but i learned, saw, and felt, the day after, that there was in the city a terrible fermentation, of which i was the cause. several persons hastened obligingly to inform me that on the next day i was to receive an order, conceived in most severe terms, immediately to quit the state, that is the city. i had nobody in whom i could confide; they who had detained me were dispersed. wildremet had disappeared; i heard no more of barthes, and it did not appear that his recommendation had brought me into great favor with those whom he had styled his patrons and fathers. one m. de van travers, a bernois, who had an agreeable house not far from the city, offered it me for my asylum, hoping, as he said, that i might there avoid being stoned. the advantage this offer held out was not sufficiently flattering to tempt me to prolong my abode with these hospitable people. yet, having lost three days by the delay, i had greatly exceeded the twenty-four hours the bernois had given me to quit their states, and knowing their severity, i was not without apprehensions as to the manner in which they would suffer me to cross them, when the bailiff of nidau came opportunely and relieved me from my embarrassment. as he had highly disapproved of the violent proceedings of their excellencies, he thought, in his generosity, he owed me some public proof of his taking no part in them, and had courage to leave his bailiwick to come and pay me a visit at bienne. he did me this favor the evening before my departure, and far from being incognito he affected ceremony, coming in fiocchi in his coach with his secretary, and brought me a passport in his own name that i might cross the state of berne at my ease, and without fear of molestation. i was more flattered by the visit than by the passport, and should have been as sensible of the merit of it, had it had for object any other person whatsoever. nothing makes a greater impression upon my heart than a well-timed act of courage in favor of the weak unjustly oppressed. at length, after having with difficulty procured a chaise, i next morning left this barbarous country, before the arrival of the deputation with which i was to be honored, and even before i had seen theresa, to whom i had written to come to me, when i thought i should remain at bienne, and whom i had scarcely time to countermand by a short letter, informing her of my new disaster. in the third part of my memoirs, if ever i be able to write them, i shall state in what manner, thinking to set off for berlin, i really took my departure for england, and the means by which the two ladies who wished to dispose of my person, after having by their maneuvers driven me from switzerland, where i was not sufficiently in their power, at last delivered me into the hands of their friends. [i added what follows on reading my memoirs to m. and madam, the countess of egmont, the prince pignatelli, the marchioness of mesme, and the marquis of juigne. "i have written the truth: if any person has heard of things contrary to those i have just stated, were they a thousand times proved, he has heard calumny and falsehood; and if he refuses thoroughly to examine and compare them with me whilst i am alive, he is not a friend either to justice or truth. for my part, i openly, and without the least fear declare, that whoever, even without having read my works, shall have examined with his own eyes my disposition, character, manners, inclinations, pleasures, and habits, and pronounce me a dishonest man, is himself one who deserves a gibbet." thus i concluded, and every person was silent; madam d'egmont was the only person who seemed affected: she visibly trembled, but soon recovered herself, and was silent like the rest of the company. such were the fruits of my reading and declaration.] the end . 1850 the power of words by edgar allan poe oinos. pardon, agathos, the weakness of a spirit new-fledged with immortality! agathos. you have spoken nothing, my oinos, for which pardon is to be demanded. not even here is knowledge thing of intuition. for wisdom, ask of the angels freely, that it may be given! oinos. but in this existence, i dreamed that i should be at once cognizant of all things, and thus at once be happy in being cognizant of all. agathos. ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! in for ever knowing, we are for ever blessed; but to know all were the curse of a fiend. oinos. but does not the most high know all? agathos. that (since he is the most happy) must be still the one thing unknown even to him. oinos. but, since we grow hourly in knowledge, must not at last all things be known? agathos. look down into the abysmal distances!attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them thusand thusand thus! even the spiritual vision, is it not at all points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe?the walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has appeared to blend into unity? oinos. i clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream. agathos. there are no dreams in aidennbut it is here whispered that, of this infinity of matter, the sole purpose is to afford infinite springs, at which the soul may allay the thirst to know, which is for ever unquenchable within itsince to quench it, would be to extinguish the soul's self. question me then, my oinos, freely and without fear. come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the pleiades, and swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond orion, where, for pansies and violets, and heart'sease, are the beds of the triplicate and tripletinted suns. oinos. and now, agathos, as we proceed, instruct me!speak to me in the earth's familiar tones. i understand not what you hinted to me, just now, of the modes or of the method of what, during mortality, we were accustomed to call creation. do you mean to say that the creator is not god? agathos. i mean to say that the deity does not create. oinos. explain. agathos. in the beginning only, he created. the seeming creatures which are now, throughout the universe, so perpetually springing into being, can only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct or immediate results of the divine creative power. oinos. among men, my agathos, this idea would be considered heretical in the extreme. agathos. among angels, my oinos, it is seen to be simply true. oinos. i can comprehend you thus farthat certain operations of what we term nature, or the natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise to that which has all the appearance of creation. shortly before the final overthrow of the earth, there were, i well remember, many very successful experiments in what some philosophers were weak enough to denominate the creation of animalculae. agathos. the cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the secondary creationand of the only species of creation which has ever been, since the first word spoke into existence the first law. oinos. are not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of nonentity, burst hourly forth into the heavensare not these stars, agathos, the immediate handiwork of the king? agathos. let me endeavor, my oinos, to lead you, step by step, to the conception i intend. you are well aware that, as no thought can perish, so no act is without infinite result. we moved our hands, for example, when we were dwellers on the earth, and, in so doing, gave vibration to the atmosphere which engirdled it. this vibration was indefinitely extended, till it gave impulse to every particle of the earth's air, which thenceforward, and for ever, was actuated by the one movement of the hand. this fact the mathematicians of our globe well knew. they made the special effects, indeed, wrought in the fluid by special impulses, the subject of exact calculationso that it became easy to determine in what precise period an impulse of given extent would engirdle the orb, and impress (for ever) every atom of the atmosphere circumambient. retrograding, they found no difficulty, from a given effect, under given conditions, in determining the value of the original impulse. now the mathematicians who saw that the results of any given impulse were absolutely endlessand who saw that a portion of these results were accurately traceable through the agency of algebraic analysiswho saw, too, the facility of the retrogradationthese men saw, at the same time, that this species of analysis itself, had within itself a capacity for indefinite progressthat there were no bounds conceivable to its advancement and applicability, except within the intellect of him who advanced or applied it. but at this point our mathematicians paused. oinos. and why, agathos, should they have proceeded? agathos. because there were some considerations of deep interest beyond. it was deducible from what they knew, that to a being of infinite understandingone to whom the perfection of the algebraic analysis lay unfoldedthere could be no difficulty in tracing every impulse given the airand the ether through the airto the remotest consequences at any even infinitely remote epoch of time. it is indeed demonstrable that every such impulse given the air, must, in the end, impress every individual thing that exists within the universe;and the being of infinite understandingthe being whom we have imaginedmight trace the remote undulations of the impulsetrace them upward and onward in their influences upon all particles of an matterupward and onward for ever in their modifications of old formsor, in other words, in their creation of newuntil he found them reflectedunimpressive at lastback from the throne of the godhead. and not only could such a thing do this, but at any epoch, should a given result be afforded himshould one of these numberless comets, for example, be presented to his inspectionhe could have no difficulty in determining, by the analytic retrogradation, to what original impulse it was due. this power of retrogradation in its absolute fulness and perfectionthis faculty of referring at all epochs, all effects to all causesis of course the prerogative of the deity alonebut in every variety of degree, short of the absolute perfection, is the power itself exercised by the whole host of the angelic intelligences. oinos. but you speak merely of impulses upon the air. agathos. in speaking of the air, i referred only to the earth; but the general proposition has reference to impulses upon the etherwhich, since it pervades, and alone pervades all space, is thus the great medium of creation. oinos. then all motion, of whatever nature, creates? agathos. it must: but a true philosophy has long taught that the source of all motion is thoughtand the source of all thought is oinos. god. agathos. i have spoken to you, oinos, as to a child of the fair earth which lately perishedof impulses upon the atmosphere of the earth. oinos. you did. agathos. and while i thus spoke, did there not cross your mind some thought of the physical power of words? is not every word an impulse on the air? oinos. but why, agathos, do you weepand why, oh why do your wings droop as we hover above this fair starwhich is the greenest and yet most terrible of all we have encountered in our flight? its brilliant flowers look like a fairy dreambut its fierce volcanoes like the passions of a turbulent heart. agathos. they are!they are! this wild starit is now three centuries since, with clasped hands, and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my belovedi spoke itwith a few passionate sentencesinto birth. its brilliant flowers are the dearest of all unfulfilled dreams, and its raging volcanoes are the passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed of hearts. the end . walter scott: ivanhoe =============================== a machine-readable transcription version 1.0: 1993-06-08 this text is in the public domain. this machine-readable transcription of ivanhoe is based on the text printed as volumes 16 and 17 of the waverley novels published by archibald constable and company in 1895. the order of the files in this distribution is as follows: introduction dedicatory.epistle chapter.01-09 chapter.10-19 chapter.20-29 chapter.30-39 chapter.40-44 notes changes to the text =================== page-breaks have been removed, along with page numbers and column titles. end-of-line hyphenations have been removed, and the de-hyphenated word has been brought up to the first of the two lines. the text itself has been the main guide for keeping or removing hyphens; in some cases the centenary edition of the waverley novels has been consulted. small capitals in names have been replaced by lower-case letters. in those cases small caps are used to denote extra emphasis, they have been marked up accordingly. text in (? blackletter) used mainly for song titles has been changed to ordinary text, except in one case -see markup conventions below. in the text, endnotes appeared immediately after each chapter. in this edition, all endnotes have been collected and placed at the end of the 'book'. also, the pages references of the notes have been replaced by letter references, after the same pattern used in the centenary edition. the following changes have been made to the text: dedicatory epistle: p. xliii (footnote): it was written. i mention (missing period) ch. 2, p. 20: an || athletic figure (althetic) ch. 6, p. 82: the approaching tourney (tournay) ch. 10, p. 159: there is a dead loss too (to) ch. 14, p. 215: house of anjou (anjo<u`>) ch. 18, p. 265: john of anjou (anjo<u`>) ch. 20, p. 292: hermit,'' replied the knight ('' missing) ch. 20, p. 295: called cedric the saxon (cedric and saxon) ch. 21, p. 301: ``that concerns thee (`that) ch. 21, p. 325: ``thy daughter!'' (`thy) (add 23 to get 'real' chapter numbers) ch. 2, p. 33: their || own.'' (own,'') ch. 3, p. 64: athelstane: ``deal with (missing ``) ch. 3, p. ???: of anjou confer not (anjo<u`>) ch. 8, p. 127: my own trysting-tree (trysting-tree) ch. 8, p. 138: he of the fetterlock (fetterlock) ch. 8, p. 144: had not gotten to horse (gotton) ch. 10, p. 172: allan-a-dale (dale) ch. 11, p. 200: must be met withal.'' (missing '') ch. 15, p. 266: doth deny || the same; (den-) ch. 16, p. 280: to the ocean. the (oceean, the) ch. 17, p. 301: jaws of the brethren (brethern) ch. 17, p. 301: toothache (toothach) ch. 18, p. 338 (notes): irre-||gular form, stands (form. stands) ch. 20, p. 364: ashby-de-la-zouche.'' (de-la-zouch.'') ch. 20, p. 367: brian de bois-guilbert (brian-de-bois-guilbert) ch. 20, p. 373: had ap-||peared to do. (do.'') further oddities ================ the word anjou was spelled anjo<u`> in three places. could the anjou spelling be a editorial change that wasn't present in the original text? in the dedicatory epistle, scott writes: my honest and neglected friend, ingulphus, has furnished me with many a valuable hint; there is no obvious indication to what or who ingulphus refers to. there is, though, a mention of a purported work by dr dryasdust about king ulphus earlier in the epistle. i suspect that ingulphus is a misprint for king ulphus. however, the same error (if it indeed is one) occurs in the centenary edition, so i have not made any attempts at correction. markup conventions ================== first line in each paragraph is indented two spaces. _ _ placed around italicized text = = placed around extra emphasized text small caps in the text { } placed around `the wardour manuscript', which according to the text should be in `some emphatic mode of printing'. <ae> the ae ligature <a^> a circumflex <e^> e circumflex <e'> e acute <oe> the oe ligature footnotes footnotes in the text were placed at the foot of the page; in this edition they have been placed immediately after the line in which they are referenced. the footnote callout is always an asterisk,* and the text of the footnote has been * like this placed, slightly indented, between two empty lines, with an asterisk in the left margin as illustrated above. if the footnote comes at the end of a paragraph, the first line of the following paragraph is indented two spaces, as usual. in chapter 29 an additional note to a footnote was placed at the end of the chapter. this note-note has been kept where it occurred, but the reference to the original page has been replaced by **. (in the centenary edition both the notenote and the note to which it refers were placed as end-notes.) the transcription and proofreading was done by anders thulin, rydsvagen 288, s-582 50 linkoping, sweden. email address: ath@linkoping.trab.se i'd be glad to learn of any errors that you may find in the text. ivanhoe; a romance. now fitted the halter, now traversed the cart, and often took leave,----but seemed loath to depart!* * the motto alludes to the author returning to the stage repeatedly * after having taken leave. prior. introduction to ivanhoe. the author of the waverley novels had hitherto proceeded in an unabated course of popularity, and might, in his peculiar district of literature, have been termed _l'enfant g<a^>t<e'> of success. it was plain, however, that frequent publication must finally wear out the public favour, unless some mode could be devised to give an appearance of novelty to subsequent productions. scottish manners, scottish dialect, and scottish characters of note, being those with which the author was most intimately, and familiarly acquainted, were the groundwork upon which he had hitherto relied for giving effect to his narrative. it was, however, obvious, that this kind of interest must in the end occasion a degree of sameness and repetition, if exclusively resorted to, and that the reader was likely at length to adopt the language of edwin, in parnell's tale:-- ------`` `reverse the spell,' he cries, 'and let it fairly now suffice, the gambol has been shown.' '' nothing can be more dangerous for the fame of a professor of the fine arts, than to permit (if he can possibly prevent it) the character of a mannerist to be attached to him, or that he should be supposed capable of success only in a particular and limited style. the public are, in general, very ready to adopt the opinion, that he who has pleased them in one peculiar mode of composition, is, by means of that very talent, rendered incapable of venturing upon other subjects. the effect of this disinclination, on the part of the public, towards the artificers of their pleasures, when they attempt to enlarge their means of amusing, may be seen in the censures usually passed by vulgar criticism upon actors or artists who venture to change the character of their efforts, that, in so doing, they may enlarge the scale of their art. there is some justice in this opinion, as there always is in such as attain general currency. it may often happen on the stage, that an actor, by possessing in a preeminent degree the external qualities necessary to give effect to comedy, may be deprived of the right to aspire to tragic excellence; and in painting or literary composition, an artist or poet may be master exclusively of modes of thought, and powers of expression, which confine him to a single course of subjects. but much more frequently the same capacity which carries a man to popularity in one department will obtain for him success in another, and that must be more particularly the case in literary composition, than either in acting or painting, because the adventurer in that department is not impeded in his exertions by any peculiarity of features, or conformation of person, proper for particular parts, or, by any peculiar mechanical habits of using the pencil, limited to a particular class of subjects. whether this reasoning be correct or otherwise, the present author felt, that, in confining himself to subjects purely scottish, he was not only likely to weary out the indulgence of his readers, but also greatly to limit his own power of affording them pleasure. in a highly polished country, where so much genius is monthly employed in catering for public amusement, a fresh topic, such as he had himself had the happiness to light upon, is the untasted spring of the desert;-- ``men bless their stars and call it luxury.'' but when men and horses, cattle, camels, and dromedaries, have poached the spring into mud, it becomes loathsome to those who at first drank of it with rapture; and he who had the merit of discovering it, if he would preserve his reputation with the tribe, must display his talent by a fresh discovery of untasted fountains. if the author, who finds himself limited to a particular class of subjects, endeavours to sustain his reputation by striving to add a novelty of attraction to themes of the same character which have been formerly successful under his management, there are manifest reasons why, after a certain point, he is likely to fail. if the mine be not wrought out, the strength and capacity of the miner become necessarily exhausted. if he closely imitates the narratives which he has before rendered successful, he is doomed to ``wonder that they please no more.'' if he struggles to take a different view of the same class of subjects, he speedily discovers that what is obvious, graceful, and natural, has been exhausted; and, in order to obtain the indispensable charm of novelty, he is forced upon caricature, and, to avoid being trite, must become extravagant. it is not, perhaps, necessary to enumerate so many reasons why the author of the scottish novels, as they were then exclusively termed, should be desirous to make an experiment on a subject purely english. it was his purpose, at the same time, to have rendered the experiment as complete as possible, by bringing the intended work before the public as the effort of a new candidate for their favour, in order that no degree of prejudice, whether favourable or the reverse, might attach to it, as a new production of the author of waverley; but this intention was afterwards departed from, for reasons to be hereafter mentioned. the period of the narrative adopted was the reign of richard i., not only as abounding with characters whose very names were sure to attract general attention, but as affording a striking contrast betwixt the saxons, by whom the soil was cultivated, and the normans, who still reigned in it as conquerors, reluctant to mix with the vanquished, or acknowledge themselves of the same stock. the idea of this contrast was taken from the ingenious and unfortunate logan's tragedy of runnamede, in which, about the same period of history, the author had seen the saxon and norman barons opposed to each other on different sides of the stage. he does not recollect that there was any attempt to contrast the two races in their habits and sentiments; and indeed it was obvious, that history was violated by introducing the saxons still existing as a high-minded and martial race of nobles. they did, however, survive as a people, and some of the ancient saxon families possessed wealth and power, although they were exceptions to the humble condition of the race in general. it seemed to the author, that the existence of the two races in the same country, the vanquished distinguished by their plain, homely, blunt manners, and the free spirit infused by their ancient institutions and laws; the victors, by the high spirit of military fame, personal adventure, and whatever could distinguish them as the flower of chivalry, might, intermixed with other characters belonging to the same time and country, interest the reader by the contrast, if the author should not fail on his part. scotland, however, had been of late used so exclusively as the scene of what is called historical romance, that the preliminary letter of mr laurence templeton became in some measure necessary. to this, as to an introduction, the reader is referred, as expressing author's purpose and opinions in undertaking this species of composition, under the necessary reservation, that he is far from thinking he has attained the point at which he aimed. it is scarcely necessary to add, that there was no idea or wish to pass off the supposed mr templeton as a real person. but a kind of continuation of the tales of my landlord had been recently attempted by a stranger, and it was supposed this dedicatory epistle might pass for some imitation of the same kind, and thus putting enquirers upon a false scent, induce them to believe they had before them the work of some new candidate for their favour. after a considerable part of the work had been finished and printed, the publishers, who pretended to discern in it a germ of popularity, remonstrated strenuously against its appearing as an absolutely anonymous production, and contended that it should have the advantage of being announced as by the author of waverley. the author did not make any obstinate opposition, for he began to be of opinion with dr wheeler, in miss edgeworth's excellent tale of ``man<oe>uvring,'' that ``trick upon trick'' might be too much for the patience of an indulgent public, and might be reasonably considered as trifling with their favour. the book, therefore, appeared as an avowed continuation of the waverley novels; and it would be ungrateful not to acknowledge, that it met with the same favourable reception as its predecessors. such annotations as may be useful to assist the reader in comprehending the characters of the jew, the templar, the captain of the mercenaries, or free companions, as they were called, and others proper to the period, are added, but with a sparing hand, since sufficient information on these subjects is to be found in general history. an incident in the tale, which had the good fortune to find favour in the eyes of many readers, is more directly borrowed from the stores of old romance. i mean the meeting of the king with friar tuck at the cell of that buxom hermit. the general tone of the story belongs to all ranks and all countries, which emulate each other in describing the rambles of a disguised sovereign, who, going in search of information or amusement, into the lower ranks of life, meets with adventures diverting to the reader or hearer, from the contrast betwixt the monarch's outward appearance, and his real character. the eastern tale-teller has for his theme the disguised expeditions of haroun alraschid with his faithful attendants, mesrour and giafar, through the midnight streets of bagdad; and scottish tradition dwells upon the similar exploits of james v., distinguished during such excursions by the travelling name of the goodman of ballengeigh, as the commander of the faithful, when he desired to be incognito, was known by that of il bondocani. the french minstrels are not silent on so popular a theme. there must have been a norman original of the scottish metrical romance of rauf colziar, in which charlemagne is introduced as the unknown guest of a charcoal-man.* * this very curious poem, long a _desideratum_ in scottish literature, * and given up as irrecoverably lost, was lately brought * to light by the researches of dr irvine of the advocates' library, * and has been reprinted by mr david laing, edinburgh. it seems to have been the original of other poems of the kind. in merry england there is no end of popular ballads on this theme. the poem of john the reeve, or steward, mentioned by bishop percy, in the reliques of english poetry,* is * vol. ii. p. 167. said to have turned on such an incident; and we have besides, the king and the tanner of tamworth, the king and the miller of mansfield, and others on the same topic. but the peculiar tale of this nature to which the author of ivanhoe has to acknowledge an obligation, is more ancient by two centuries than any of these last mentioned. it was first communicated to the public in that curious record of ancient literature, which has been accumulated by the combined exertions of sir egerton brydges. and mr hazlewood, in the periodical work entitled the british bibliographer. from thence it has been transferred by the reverend charles henry hartsborne, m.a., editor of a very curious volume, entitled ``ancient metrical tales, printed chiefly from original sources, 1829.'' mr hartshorne gives no other authority for the present fragment, except the article in the bibliographer, where it is entitled the kyng and the hermite. a short abstract of its contents will show its similarity to the meeting of king richard and friar tuck. king edward (we are not told which among the monarchs of that name, but, from his temper and habits, we may suppose edward iv.) sets forth with his court to a gallant hunting-match in sherwood forest, in which, as is not unusual for princes in romance, he falls in with a deer of extraordinary size and swiftness, and pursues it closely, till he has outstripped his whole retinue, tired out hounds and horse, and finds himself alone under the gloom of an extensive forest, upon which night is descending. under the apprehensions natural to a situation so uncomfortable, the king recollects that he has heard how poor men, when apprehensive of a bad nights lodging, pray to saint julian, who, in the romish calendar, stands quarter-master-general to all forlorn travellers that render him due homage. edward puts up his orisons accordingly, and by the guidance, doubtless, of the good saint, reaches a small path, conducting him to a chapel in the forest, having a hermit's cell in its close vicinity. the king hears the reverend man, with a companion of his solitude, telling his beads within, and meekly requests of him quarters for the night. ``i have no accommodation for such a lord as ye be,'' said the hermit. ``i live here in the wilderness upon roots and rinds, and may not receive into my dwelling even the poorest wretch that lives, unless it were to save his life.'' the king enquires the way to the next town, and, understanding it is by a road which he cannot find without difficulty, even if he had daylight to befriend him, he declares, that with or without the hermits consent, he is determined to be his guest that night. he is admitted accordingly, not without a hint from the recluse, that were he himself out of his priestly weeds, he would care little for his threats of using violence, and that he gives way to him not out of intimidation, but simply to avoid scandal. the king is admitted into the cell---two bundles of straw are shaken down for his accommodation, and he comforts himself that he is now under shelter, and that ``a night will soon be gone.'' other wants, however, arise. the guest becomes clamorous for supper, observing, ``for certainly, as i you say, i ne had never so sorry a day, that i ne had a merry night.'' but this indication of his taste for good cheer, joined to the annunciation of his being a follower of the court, who had lost himself at the great hunting-match, cannot induce the niggard hermit to produce better fare than bread and cheese, for which his guest showed little appetite; and ``thin drink,'' which was even less acceptable. at length the king presses his host on a point to which he had more than once alluded, without obtaining a satisfactory reply: ``then said the king, `by godys grace, thou wert in a merry place, to shoot should thou lere when the foresters go to rest, sometyme thou might have of the best, all of the wild deer; i wold hold it for no scathe, though thou hadst bow and arrows baith, althoff thou best a frere.' '' the hermit, in return, expresses his apprehension that his guest means to drag him into some confession of offence against the forest laws, which, being betrayed to the king, might cost him his life. edward answers by fresh assurances of secrecy, and again urges on him the necessity of procuring some venison. the hermit replies, by once more insisting on the duties incumbent upon him as a churchman, and continues to affirm himself free from all such breaches of order:-- ``many day i have here been, and flesh-meat i eat never, but milk of the kye; warm thee well, and go to sleep, and i will lap thee with my cope, softly to lye.'' it would seem that the manuscript is here imperfect, for we do not find the reasons which finally induce the curtal friar to amend the king's cheer. but acknowledging his guest to be such a ``good fellow'' as has seldom graced his board, the holy man at length produces the best his cell affords. two candles are placed on a table, white bread and baked pasties are displayed by the light, besides choice of venison, both salt and fresh, from which they select collops. ``i might have eaten my bread dry,'' said the king, ``had i not pressed thee on the score of archery, but now have i dined like a prince---if we had but drink enow.'' this too is afforded by the hospitable anchorite, who dispatches an assistant to fetch a pot of four gallons from a secret corner near his bed, and the whole three set in to serious drinking. this amusement is superintended by the friar, according to the recurrence of certain fustian words, to be repeated by every compotator in turn before he drank---a species of high jinks, as it were, by which they regulated their potations, as toasts were given in latter times. the one toper says _fusty bandias_, to which the other is obliged to reply, _strike pantnere_, and the friar passes many jests on the king's want of memory, who sometimes forgets the words of action. the night is spent in this jolly pastime. before his departure in the morning, the king invites his reverend host to court, promises, at least, to requite his hospitality, and expresses himself much pleased with his entertainment. the jolly hermit at length agrees to venture thither, and to enquire for jack fletcher, which is the name assumed by the king. after the hermit has shown edward some feats of archery, the joyous pair separate. the king rides home, and rejoins his retinue. as the romance is imperfect, we are not acquainted how the discovery takes place; but it is probably much in the same manner as in other narratives turning on the same subject, where the host, apprehensive of death for having trespassed on the respect due to his sovereign, while incognito, is agreeably surprised by receiving honours and reward. in mr hartshorne's collection, there is a romance on the same foundation, called king edward and the shepherd,* which, considered * like the hermit, the shepherd makes havock amongst the * king's game; but by means of a sling, not of a bow; like the * hermit, too, he has his peculiar phrases of compotation, the * sign and countersign being passelodion and berafriend. one * can scarce conceive what humour our ancestors found in this * species of gibberish; but * ``i warrant it proved an excuse for the glass.'' as illustrating manners, is still more curious than the king and the hermit; but it is foreign to the present purpose. the reader has here the original legend from which the incident in the romance is derived; and the identifying the irregular eremite with the friar tuck of robin hood's story, was an obvious expedient. the name of ivanhoe was suggested by an old rhyme. all novelists have had occasion at some time or other to wish with falstaff, that they knew where a commodity of good names was to be had. on such an occasion the author chanced to call to memory a rhyme recording three names of the manors forfeited by the ancestor of the celebrated hampden, for striking the black prince a blow with his racket, when they quarrelled at tennis;-- ``tring, wing, and ivanhoe, for striking of a blow, hampden did forego, and glad he could escape so.'' the word suited the author's purpose in two material respects,---for, first, it had an ancient english sound; and secondly, it conveyed no indication whatever of the nature of the story. he presumes to hold this last quality to be of no small importance. what is called a taking title, serves the direct interest of the bookseller or publisher, who by this means sometimes sells an edition while it is yet passing the press. but if the author permits an over degree of attention to be drawn to his work ere it has appeared, he places himself in the embarrassing condition of having excited a degree of expectation which, if he proves unable to satisfy, is an error fatal to his literary reputation. besides, when we meet such a title as the gunpowder plot, or any other connected with general history, each reader, before he has seen the book, has formed to himself some particular idea of the sort of manner in which the story is to be conducted, and the nature of the amusement which he is to derive from it. in this he is probably disappointed, and in that case may be naturally disposed to visit upon the author or the work, the unpleasant feelings thus excited. in such a case the literary adventurer is censured, not for having missed the mark at which he himself aimed, but for not having shot off his shaft in a direction he never thought of. on the footing of unreserved communication which the author has established with the reader, he may here add the trifling circumstance, that a roll of norman warriors, occurring in the auchinleck manuscript, gave him the formidable name of front-de-b<oe>uf. ivanhoe was highly successful upon its appearance, and may be said to have procured for its author the freedom of the rules, since he has ever since been permitted to exercise his powers of fictitious composition in england, as well as scotland. the character of the fair jewess found so much favour in the eyes of some fair readers, that the writer was censured, because, when arranging the fates of the characters of the drama, he had not assigned the hand of wilfred to rebecca, rather than the less interesting rowena. but, not to mention that the prejudices of the age rendered such an union almost impossible, the author may, in passing, observe, that he thinks a character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp, is degraded rather than exalted by an attempt to reward virtue with temporal prosperity. such is not the recompense which providence has deemed worthy of suffering merit, and it is a dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young persons, the most common readers of romance, that rectitude of conduct and of principle are either naturally allied with, or adequately rewarded by, the gratification of our passions, or attainment of our wishes. in a word, if a virtuous and self-denied character is dismissed with temporal wealth, greatness, rank, or the indulgence of such a rashly formed or ill assorted passion as that of rebecca for ivanhoe, the reader will be apt to say, verily virtue has had its reward. but a glance on the great picture of life will show, that the duties of self-denial, and the sacrifice of passion to principle, are seldom thus remunerated; and that the internal consciousness of their high-minded discharge of duty, produces on their own reflections a more adequate recompense, in the form of that peace which the world cannot give or take away. abbotsford, 1st september, 1830. dedicatory epistle to the rev. dr dryasdust, f.a.s. residing in the castle-gate, york. much esteemed and dear sir, it is scarcely necessary to mention the various and concurring reasons which induce me to place your name at the head of the following work. yet the chief of these reasons may perhaps be refuted by the imperfections of the performance. could i have hoped to render it worthy of your patronage, the public would at once have seen the propriety of inscribing a work designed to illustrate the domestic antiquities of england, and particularly of our saxon forefathers, to the learned author of the essays upon the horn of king ulphus, and on the lands bestowed by him upon the patrimony of st peter. i am conscious, however, that the slight, unsatisfactory, and trivial manner, in which the result of my antiquarian researches has been recorded in the following pages, takes the work from under that class which bears the proud motto, _detur digniori_. on the contrary, i fear i shall incur the censure of presumption in placing the venerable name of dr jonas dryasdust at the head of a publication, which the more grave antiquary will perhaps class with the idle novels and romances of the day. i am anxious to vindicate myself from such a charge; for although i might trust to your friendship for an apology in your eyes, yet i would not willingly stand conviction in those of the public of so grave a crime, as my fears lead me to anticipate my being charged with. i must therefore remind you, that when we first talked over together that class of productions, in one of which the private and family affairs of your learned northern friend, mr oldbuck of monkbarns, were so unjustifiably exposed to the public, some discussion occurred between us concerning the cause of the popularity these works have attained in this idle age, which, whatever other merit they possess, must be admitted to be hastily written, and in violation of every rule assigned to the epopeia. it seemed then to be your opinion, that the charm lay entirely in the art with which the unknown author had availed himself, like a second m`pherson, of the antiquarian stores which lay scattered around him, supplying his own indolence or poverty of invention, by the incidents which had actually taken place in his country at no distant period, by introducing real characters, and scarcely suppressing real names. it was not above sixty or seventy years, you observed, since the whole north of scotland was under a state of government nearly as simple and as patriarchal as those of our good allies the mohawks and iroquois. admitting that the author cannot himself be supposed to have witnessed those times, he must have lived, you observed, among persons who had acted and suffered in them; and even within these thirty years, such an infinite change has taken place in the manners of scotland, that men look back upon the habits of society proper to their immediate ancestors, as we do on those of the reign of queen anne, or even the period of the revolution. having thus materials of every kind lying strewed around him, there was little, you observed, to embarrass the author, but the difficulty of choice. it was no wonder, therefore, that, having begun to work a mine so plentiful, he should have derived from his works fully more credit and profit than the facility of his labours merited. admitting (as i could not deny) the general truth of these conclusions, i cannot but think it strange that no attempt has been made to excite an interest for the traditions and manners of old england, similiar to that which has been obtained in behalf of those of our poorer and less celebrated neighbours. the kendal green, though its date is more ancient, ought surely to be as dear to our feelings, as the variegated tartans of the north. the name of robin hood, if duly conjured with, should raise a spirit as soon as that of rob roy; and the patriots of england deserve no less their renown in our modern circles, than the bruces and wallaces of caledonia. if the scenery of the south be less romantic and sublime than that of the northern mountains, it must be allowed to possess in the same proportion superior softness and beauty; and upon the whole, we feel ourselves entitled to exclaim with the patriotic syrian---``are not pharphar and abana, rivers of damascus, better than all the rivers of israel?'' your objections to such an attempt, my dear doctor, were, you may remember, two-fold. you insisted upon the advantages which the scotsman possessed, from the very recent existence of that state of society in which his scene was to be laid. many now alive, you remarked, well remembered persons who had not only seen the celebrated roy m`gregor, but had feasted, and even fought with him. all those minute circumstances belonging to private life and domestic character, all that gives verisimilitude to a narrative, and individuality to the persons introduced, is still known and remembered in scotland; whereas in england, civilisation has been so long complete, that our ideas of our ancestors are only to be gleaned from musty records and chronicles, the authors of which seem perversely to have conspired to suppress in their narratives all interesting details, in order to find room for flowers of monkish eloquence, or trite reflections upon morals. to match an english and a scottish author in the rival task of embodying and reviving the traditions of their respective countries, would be, you alleged, in the highest degree unequal and unjust. the scottish magician, you said, was, like lucan's witch, at liberty to walk over the recent field of battle, and to select for the subject of resuscitation by his sorceries, a body whose limbs had recently quivered with existence, and whose throat had but just uttered the last note of agony. such a subject even the powerful erictho was compelled to select, as alone capable of being reanimated even by _her_ potent magic-- ------gelidas leto scrutata medullas, pulmonis rigidi stantes sine vulnere fibras invenit, et vocem defuncto in corpore qu<ae>rit. the english author, on the other hand, without supposing him less of a conjuror than the northern warlock, can, you observed, only have the liberty of selecting his subject amidst the dust of antiquity, where nothing was to be found but dry, sapless, mouldering, and disjointed bones, such as those which filled the valley of jehoshaphat. you expressed, besides, your apprehension, that the unpatriotic prejudices of my countrymen would not allow fair play to such a work as that of which i endeavoured to demonstrate the probable success. and this, you said, was not entirely owing to the more general prejudice in favour of that which is foreign, but that it rested partly upon improbabilities, arising out of the circumstances in which the english reader is placed. if you describe to him a set of wild manners, and a state of primitive society existing in the highlands of scotland, he is much disposed to acquiesce in the truth of what is asserted. and reason good. if he be of the ordinary class of readers, he has either never seen those remote districts at all, or he has wandered through those desolate regions in the course of a summer tour, eating bad dinners, sleeping on truckle beds, stalking from desolation to desolation, and fully prepared to believe the strangest things that could be told him of a people, wild and extravagant enough to be attached to scenery so extraordinary. but the same worthy person, when placed in his own snug parlour, and surrounded by all the comforts of an englishman's fireside, is not half so much disposed to believe that his own ancestors led a very different life from himself; that the shattered tower, which now forms a vista from his window, once held a baron who would have hung him up at his own door without any form of trial; that the hinds, by whom his little pet-farm is managed, a few centuries ago would have been his slaves; and that the complete influence of feudal tyranny once extended over the neighbouring village, where the attorney is now a man of more importance than the lord of the manor. while i own the force of these objections, i must confess, at the same time, that they do not appear to me to be altogether insurmountable. the scantiness of materials is indeed a formidable difficulty; but no one knows better than dr dryasdust, that to those deeply read in antiquity, hints concerning the private life of our ancestors lie scattered through the pages of our various historians, bearing, indeed, a slender proportion to the other matters of which they treat, but still, when collected together, sufficient to throw considerable light upon the _vie priv<e'>e_ of our forefathers; indeed, i am convinced, that however i myself may fail in the ensuing attempt, yet, with more labour in collecting, or more skill in using, the materials within his reach, illustrated as they have been by the labours of dr henry, of the late mr strutt, and, above all, of mr sharon turner, an abler hand would have been successful; and therefore i protest, beforehand, against any argument which may be founded on the failure of the present experiment. on the other hand, i have already said, that if any thing like a true picture of old english manners could be drawn, i would trust to the good-nature and good sense of my countrymen for insuring its favourable reception. having thus replied, to the best of my power, to the first class of your objections, or at least having shown my resolution to overleap the barriers which your prudence has raised, i will be brief in noticing that which is more peculiar to myself. it seems to be your opinion, that the very office of an antiquary, employed in grave, and, as the vulgar will sometimes allege, in toilsome and minute research, must be considered as incapacitating him from successfully compounding a tale of this sort. but permit me to say, my dear doctor, that this objection is rather formal than substantial. it is true, that such slight compositions might not suit the severer genius of our friend mr oldbuck. yet horace walpole wrote a goblin tale which has thrilled through many a bosom; and george ellis could transfer all the playful fascination of a humour, as delightful as it was uncommon, into his abridgement of the ancient metrical romances. so that, however i may have occasion to rue my present audacity, i have at least the most respectable precedents in my favour. still the severer antiquary may think, that, by thus intermingling fiction with truth, i am polluting the well of history with modern inventions, and impressing upon the rising generation false ideas of the age which i describe. i cannot but in some sense admit the force of this reasoning, which i yet hope to traverse by the following considerations. it is true, that i neither can, nor do pretend, to the observation of complete accuracy, even in matters of outward costume, much less in the more important points of language and manners. but the same motive which prevents my writing the dialogue of the piece in anglo-saxon or in norman-french, and which prohibits my sending forth to the public this essay printed with the types of caxton or wynken de worde, prevents my attempting to confine myself within the limits of the period in which my story is laid. it is necessary, for exciting interest of any kind, that the subject assumed should be, as it were, translated into the manners, as well as the language, of the age we live in. no fascination has ever been attached to oriental literature, equal to that produced by mr galland's first translation of the arabian tales; in which, retaining on the one hand the splendour of eastern costume, and on the other the wildness of eastern fiction, he mixed these with just so much ordinary feeling and expression, as rendered them interesting and intelligible, while he abridged the long-winded narratives, curtailed the monotonous reflections, and rejected the endless repetitions of the arabian original. the tales, therefore, though less purely oriental than in their first concoction, were eminently better fitted for the european market, and obtained an unrivalled degree of public favour, which they certainly would never have gained had not the manners and style been in some degree familiarized to the feelings and habits of the western reader. in point of justice, therefore, to the multitudes who will, i trust, devour this book with avidity, i have so far explained our ancient manners in modern language, and so far detailed the characters and sentiments of my persons, that the modern reader will not find himself, i should hope, much trammelled by the repulsive dryness of mere antiquity. in this, i respectfully contend, i have in no respect exceeded the fair license due to the author of a fictitious composition. the late ingenious mr strutt, in his romance of queen-hoo-hall,* * the author had revised this posthumous work of mr strutt. * see general preface to the present edition, vol i. p. 65. acted upon another principle; and in distinguishing between what was ancient and modern, forgot, as it appears to me, that extensive neutral ground, the large proportion, that is, of manners and sentiments which are common to us and to our ancestors, having been handed down unaltered from them to us, or which, arising out of the principles of our common nature, must have existed alike in either state of society. in this manner, a man of talent, and of great antiquarian erudition, limited the popularity of his work, by excluding from it every thing which was not sufficiently obsolete to be altogether forgotten and unintelligible. the license which i would here vindicate, is so necessary to the execution of my plan, that i will crave your patience while i illustrate my argument a little farther. he who first opens chaucer, or any other ancient poet, is so much struck with the obsolete spelling, multiplied consonants, and antiquated appearance of the language, that he is apt to lay the work down in despair, as encrusted too deep with the rust of antiquity, to permit his judging of its merits or tasting its beauties. but if some intelligent and accomplished friend points out to him, that the difficulties by which he is startled are more in appearance than reality, if, by reading aloud to him, or by reducing the ordinary words to the modern orthography, he satisfies his proselyte that only about one-tenth part of the words employed are in fact obsolete, the novice may be easily persuaded to approach the ``well of english undefiled,'' with the certainty that a slender degree of patience will enable him to enjoy both the humour and the pathos with which old geoffrey delighted the age of cressy and of poictiers. to pursue this a little farther. if our neophyte, strong in the new-born love of antiquity, were to undertake to imitate what he had learnt to admire, it must be allowed he would act very injudiciously, if he were to select from the glossary the obsolete words which it contains, and employ those exclusively of all phrases and vocables retained in modern days. this was the error of the unfortunate chatterton. in order to give his language the appearance of antiquity, he rejected every word that was modern, and produced a dialect entirely different from any that had ever been spoken in great britain. he who would imitate an ancient language with success, must attend rather to its grammatical character, turn of expression, and mode of arrangement, than labour to collect extraordinary and antiquated terms, which, as i have already averred, do not in ancient authors approach the number of words still in use, though perhaps somewhat altered in sense and spelling, in the proportion of one to ten. what i have applied to language, is still more justly applicable to sentiments and manners. the passions, the sources from which these must spring in all their modifications, are generally the same in all ranks and conditions, all countries and ages; and it follows, as a matter of course, that the opinions, habits of thinking, and actions, however influenced by the peculiar state of society, must still, upon the whole, bear a strong resemblance to each other. our ancestors were not more distinct from us, surely, than jews are from christians; they had ``eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions;'' were ``fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer,'' as ourselves. the tenor, therefore, of their affections and feelings, must have borne the same general proportion to our own. it follows, therefore, that of the materials which an author has to use in a romance, or fictitious composition, such as i have ventured to attempt, he will find that a great proportion, both of language and manners, is as proper to the present time as to those in which he has laid his time of action. the freedom of choice which this allows him, is therefore much greater, and the difficulty of his task much more diminished, than at first appears. to take an illustration from a sister art, the antiquarian details may be said to represent the peculiar features of a landscape under delineation of the pencil. his feudal tower must arise in due majesty; the figures which he introduces must have the costume and character of their age; the piece must represent the peculiar features of the scene which he has chosen for his subject, with all its appropriate elevation of rock, or precipitate descent of cataract. his general colouring, too, must be copied from nature: the sky must be clouded or serene, according to the climate, and the general tints must be those which prevail in a natural landscape. so far the painter is bound down by the rules of his art, to a precise imitation of the features of nature; but it is not required that he should descend to copy all her more minute features, or represent with absolute exactness the very herbs, flowers, and trees, with which the spot is decorated. these, as well as all the more minute points of light and shadow, are attributes proper to scenery in general, natural to each situation, and subject to the artist's disposal, as his taste or pleasure may dictate. it is true, that this license is confined in either case within legitimate bounds. the painter must introduce no ornament inconsistent with the climate or country of his landscape; he must not plant cypress trees upon inch-merrin, or scottish firs among the ruins of persepolis; and the author lies under a corresponding restraint. however far he may venture in a more full detail of passions and feelings, than is to be found in the ancient compositions which he imitates, he must introduce nothing inconsistent with the manners of the age; his knights, squires, grooms, and yeomen, may be more fully drawn than in the hard, dry delineations of an ancient illuminated manuscript, but the character and costume of the age must remain inviolate; they must be the same figures, drawn by a better pencil, or, to speak more modestly, executed in an age when the principles of art were better understood. his language must not be exclusively obsolete and unintelligible; but he should admit, if possible, no word or turn of phraseology betraying an origin directly modern. it is one thing to make use of the language and sentiments which are common to ourselves and our forefathers, and it is another to invest them with the sentiments and dialect exclusively proper to their descendants. this, my dear friend, i have found the most difficult part of my task; and, to speak frankly, i hardly expect to satisfy your less partial judgment, and more extensive knowledge of such subjects, since i have hardly been able to please my own. i am conscious that i shall be found still more faulty in the tone of keeping and costume, by those who may be disposed rigidly to examine my tale, with reference to the manners of the exact period in which my actors flourished: it may be, that i have introduced little which can positively be termed modern; but, on the other hand, it is extremely probable that i may have confused the manners of two or three centuries, and introduced, during the reign of richard the first, circumstances appropriated to a period either considerably earlier, or a good deal later than that era. it is my comfort, that errors of this kind will escape the general class of readers, and that i may share in the ill-deserved applause of those architects, who, in their modern gothic, do not hesitate to introduce, without rule or method, ornaments proper to different styles and to different periods of the art. those whose extensive researches have given them the means of judging my backslidings with more severity, will probably be lenient in proportion to their knowledge of the difficulty of my task. my honest and neglected friend, ingulphus, has furnished me with many a valuable hint; but the light afforded by the monk of croydon, and geoffrey de vinsauff, is dimmed by such a conglomeration of uninteresting and unintelligible matter, that we gladly fly for relief to the delightful pages of the gallant froissart, although he flourished at a period so much more remote from the date of my history. if, therefore, my dear friend, you have generosity enough to pardon the presumptuous attempt, to frame for myself a minstrel coronet, partly out of the pearls of pure antiquity, and partly from the bristol stones and paste, with which i have endeavoured to imitate them, i am convinced your opinion of the difficulty of the task will reconcile you to the imperfect manner of its execution. of my materials i have but little to say they may be chiefly found in the singular anglo-norman ms., which sir arthur wardour preserves with such jealous care in the third drawer of his oaken cabinet, scarcely allowing any one to touch it, and being himself not able to read one syllable of its contents. i should never have got his consent, on my visit to scotland, to read in those precious pages for so many hours, had i not promised to designate it by some emphatic mode of printing, as {the wardour manuscript}; giving it, thereby, an individuality as important as the bannatyne ms., the auchinleck ms., and any other monument of the patience of a gothic scrivener. i have sent, for your private consideration, a list of the contents of this curious piece, which i shall perhaps subjoin, with your approbation, to the third volume of my tale, in case the printer's devil should continue impatient for copy, when the whole of my narrative has been imposed. adieu, my dear friend; i have said enough to explain, if not to vindicate, the attempt which i have made, and which, in spite of your doubts, and my own incapacity, i am still willing to believe has not been altogether made in vain. i hope you are now well recovered from your spring fit of the gout, and shall be happy if the advice of your learned physician should recommend a tour to these parts. several curiosities have been lately dug up near the wall, as well as at the ancient station of habitancum. talking of the latter, i suppose you have long since heard the news, that a sulky churlish boor has destroyed the ancient statue, or rather bas-relief, popularly called robin of redesdale. it seems robin's fame attracted more visitants than was consistent with the growth of the heather, upon a moor worth a shilling an acre. reverend as you write yourself, be revengeful for once, and pray with me that he may be visited with such a fit of the stone, as if he had all the fragments of poor robin in that region of his viscera where the disease holds its seat. tell this not in gath, lest the scots rejoice that they have at length found a parallel instance among their neighbours, to that barbarous deed which demolished arthur's oven. but there is no end to lamentation, when we betake ourselves to such subjects. my respectful compliments attend miss dryasdust; i endeavoured to match the spectacles agreeable to her commission, during my late journey to london, and hope she has received them safe, and found them satisfactory. i send this by the blind carrier, so that probably it may be some time upon its journey.* * this anticipation proved but too true, as my learned correspondent * did not receive my letter until a twelvemonth after * it was written. i mention this circumstance, that a gentleman * attached to the cause of learning, who now holds the principal * control of the post-office, may consider whether by some mitigation * of the present enormous rates, some favour might not be * shown to the correspondents of the principal literary and antiquarian * societies. i understand, indeed, that this experiment * was once tried, but that the mail-coach having broke down under * the weight of packages addressed to members of the society * of antiquaries, it was relinquished as a hazardous experiment. * surely, however it would be possible to build these vehicles in a * form more substantial, stronger in the perch, and broader in the * wheels, so as to support the weight of antiquarian learning; * when, if they should be found to travel more slowly, they would * be not the less agreeable to quiet travellers like myself.---l. t. the last news which i hear from edinburgh is, that the gentleman who fills the situation of secretary to the society of antiquaries of scotland,* is the best amateur draftsman * mr skene of rubislaw is here intimated, to whose taste * and skill the author is indebted for a series of etchings, exhibiting * the various localities alluded to in these novels. in that kingdom, and that much is expected from his skill and zeal in delineating those specimens of national antiquity, which are either mouldering under the slow touch of time, or swept away by modern taste, with the same besom of destruction which john knox used at the reformation. once more adieu; _vale tandem, non immemor mei_. believe me to be, reverend, and very dear sir, your most faithful humble servant. laurence templeton. toppingwold, near egremont, cumberland, nov. 17, 1817. ivanhoe. chapter i. thus communed these; while to their lowly dome, the full-fed swine return'd with evening home; compell'd, reluctant, to the several sties, with din obstreperous, and ungrateful cries. pope's _odyssey_. in that pleasant district of merry england which is watered by the river don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between sheffield and the pleasant town of doncaster. the remains of this extensive wood are still to be seen at the noble seats of wentworth, of warncliffe park, and around rotherham. here haunted of yore the fabulous dragon of wantley; here were fought many of the most desperate battles during the civil wars of the roses; and here also flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in english song. such being our chief scene, the date of our story refers to a period towards the end of the reign of richard i., when his return from his long captivity had become an event rather wished than hoped for by his despairing subjects, who were in the meantime subjected to every species of subordinate oppression. the nobles, whose power had become exorbitant during the reign of stephen, and whom the prudence of henry the second had scarce reduced to some degree of subjection to the crown, had now resumed their ancient license in its utmost extent; despising the feeble interference of the english council of state, fortifying their castles, increasing the number of their dependants, reducing all around them to a state of vassalage, and striving by every means in their power, to place themselves each at the head of such forces as might enable him to make a figure in the national convulsions which appeared to be impending. the situation of the inferior gentry, or franklins, as they were called, who, by the law and spirit of the english constitution, were entitled to hold themselves independent of feudal tyranny, became now unusually precarious. if, as was most generally the case, they placed themselves under the protection of any of the petty kings in their vicinity, accepted of feudal offices in his household, or bound themselves by mutual treaties of alliance and protection, to support him in his enterprises, they might indeed purchase temporary repose; but it must be with the sacrifice of that independence which was so dear to every english bosom, and at the certain hazard of being involved as a party in whatever rash expedition the ambition of their protector might lead him to undertake. on the other hand, such and so multiplied were the means of vexation and oppression possessed by the great barons, that they never wanted the pretext, and seldom the will, to harass and pursue, even to the very edge of destruction, any of their less powerful neighbours, who attempted to separate themselves from their authority, and to trust for their protection, during the dangers of the times, to their own inoffensive conduct, and to the laws of the land. a circumstance which greatly tended to enhance the tyranny of the nobility, and the sufferings of the inferior classes, arose from the consequences of the conquest by duke william of normandy. four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the normans and anglo-saxons, or to unite, by common language and mutual interests, two hostile races, one of which still felt the elation of triumph, while the other groaned under all the consequences of defeat. the power bad been completely placed in the hands of the norman nobility, by the event of the battle of hastings, and it had been used, as our histories assure us, with no moderate hand. the whole race of saxon princes and nobles had been extirpated or disinherited, with few or no exceptions; nor were the numbers great who possessed land in the country of their fathers, even as proprietors of the second, or of yet inferior classes. the royal policy had long been to weaken, by every means, legal or illegal, the strength of a part of the population which was justly considered as nourishing the most inveterate antipathy to their victor. all the monarchs of the norman race had shown the most marked predilection for their norman subjects; the laws of the chase, and many others equally unknown to the milder and more free spirit of the saxon constitution, had been fixed upon the necks of the subjugated inhabitants, to add weight, as it were, to the feudal chains with which they were loaded. at court, and in the castles of the great nobles, where the pomp and state of a court was emulated, norman-french was the only language employed; in courts of law, the pleadings and judgments were delivered in the same tongue. in short, french was the language of honour, of chivalry, and even of justice, while the far more manly and expressive anglo-saxon was abandoned to the use of rustics and hinds, who knew no other. still, however, the necessary intercourse between the lords of the soil, and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that soil was cultivated, occasioned the gradual formation of a dialect, compounded betwixt the french and the anglo-saxon, in which they could render themselves mutually intelligible to each other; and from this necessity arose by degrees the structure of our present english language, in which the speech of the victors and the vanquished have been so happily blended together; and which has since been so richly improved by importations from the classical languages, and from those spoken by the southern nations of europe. this state of things i have thought it necessary to premise for the information of the general reader, who might be apt to forget, that, although no great historical events, such as war or insurrection, mark the existence of the anglo-saxons as a separate people subsequent to the reign of william the second; yet the great national distinctions betwixt them and their conquerors, the recollection of what they had formerly been, and to what they were now reduced, continued down to the reign of edward the third, to keep open the wounds which the conquest had inflicted, and to maintain a line of separation betwixt the descendants of the victor normans and the vanquished saxons. - the sun was setting upon one of the rich grassy glades of that forest, which we have mentioned in the beginning of the chapter. hundreds of broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched oaks, which had witnessed perhaps the stately march of the roman soldiery, flung their gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the most delicious green sward; in some places they were intermingled with beeches, hollies, and copsewood of various descriptions, so closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking sun; in others they receded from each other, forming those long sweeping vistas, in the intricacy of which the eye delights to lose itself, while imagination considers them as the paths to yet wilder scenes of silvan solitude. here the red rays of the sun shot a broken and discoloured light, that partially hung upon the shattered boughs and mossy trunks of the trees, and there they illuminated in brilliant patches the portions of turf to which they made their way. a considerable open space, in the midst of this glade, seemed formerly to have been dedicated to the rites of druidical superstition; for, on the summit of a hillock, so regular as to seem artificial, there still remained part of a circle of rough unhewn stones, of large dimensions. seven stood upright; the rest had been dislodged from their places, probably by the zeal of some convert to christianity, and lay, some prostrate near their former site, and others on the side of the hill. one large stone only had found its way to the bottom, and in stopping the course of a small brook, which glided smoothly round the foot of the eminence, gave, by its opposition, a feeble voice of murmur to the placid and elsewhere silent streamlet. the human figures which completed this landscape, were in number two, partaking, in their dress and appearance, of that wild and rustic character, which belonged to the woodlands of the west-riding of yorkshire at that early period. the eldest of these men had a stern, savage, and wild aspect. his garment was of the simplest form imaginable, being a close jacket with sleeves, composed of the tanned skin of some animal, on which the hair had been originally left, but which had been worn of in so many places, that it would have been difficult to distinguish from the patches that remained, to what creature the fur had belonged. this primeval vestment reached from the throat to the knees, and served at once all the usual purposes of body-clothing; there was no wider opening at the collar, than was necessary to admit the passage of the head, from which it may be inferred, that it was put on by slipping it over the head and shoulders, in the manner of a modern shirt, or ancient hauberk. sandals, bound with thongs made of boars' hide, protected the feet, and a roll of thin leather was twined artificially round the legs, and, ascending above the calf, left the knees bare, like those of a scottish highlander. to make the jacket sit yet more close to the body, it was gathered at the middle by a broad leathern belt, secured by a brass buckle; to one side of which was attached a sort of scrip, and to the other a ram's horn, accoutred with a mouthpiece, for the purpose of blowing. in the same belt was stuck one of those long, broad, sharp-pointed, and two-edged knives, with a buck's-horn handle, which were fabricated in the neigbbourhood, and bore even at this early period the name of a sheffield whittle. the man had no covering upon his head, which was only defended by his own thick hair, matted and twisted together, and scorched by the influence of the sun into a rusty dark-red colour, forming a contrast with the overgrown beard upon his cheeks, which was rather of a yellow or amber hue. one part of his dress only remains, but it is too remarkable to be suppressed; it was a brass ring, resembling a dog's collar, but without any opening, and soldered fast round his neck, so loose as to form no impediment to his breathing, yet so tight as to be incapable of being removed, excepting by the use of the file. on this singular gorget was engraved, in saxon characters, an inscription of the following purport:---``gurth, the son of beowulph, is the born thrall of cedric of rotherwood.'' beside the swine-herd, for such was gurth's occupation, was seated, upon one of the fallen druidical monuments, a person about ten years younger in appearance, and whose dress, though resembling his companion's in form, was of better materials, and of a more fantastic appearance. his jacket had been stained of a bright purple hue, upon which there had been some attempt to paint grotesque ornaments in different colours. to the jacket he added a short cloak, which scarcely reached half way down his thigh; it was of crimson cloth, though a good deal soiled, lined with bright yellow; and as he could transfer it from one shoulder to the other, or at his pleasure draw it all around him, its width, contrasted with its want of longitude, formed a fantastic piece of drapery. he had thin silver bracelets upon his arms, and on his neck a collar of the same metal bearing the inscription, ``wamba, the son of witless, is the thrall of cedric of rotherwood.'' this personage had the same sort of sandals with his companion, but instead of the roll of leather thong, his legs were cased in a sort of gaiters, of which one was red and the other yellow. he was provided also with a cap, having around it more than one bell, about the size of those attached to hawks, which jingled as he turned his head to one side or other; and as he seldom remained a minute in the same posture, the sound might be considered as incessant. around the edge of this cap was a stiff bandeau of leather, cut at the top into open work, resembling a coronet, while a prolonged bag arose from within it, and fell down on one shoulder like an old-fashioned nightcap, or a jelly-bag, or the head-gear of a modern hussar. it was to this part of the cap that the bells were attached; which circumstance, as well as the shape of his head-dress, and his own half-crazed, half-cunning expression of countenance, sufficiently pointed him out as belonging to the race of domestic clowns or jesters, maintained in the houses of the wealthy, to help away the tedium of those lingering hours which they were obliged to spend within doors. he bore, like his companion, a scrip, attached to his belt, but had neither horn nor knife, being probably considered as belonging to a class whom it is esteemed dangerous to intrust with edge-tools. in place of these, he was equipped with a sword of lath, resembling that with which harlequin operates his wonders upon the modern stage. the outward appearance of these two men formed scarce a stronger contrast than their look and demeanour. that of the serf, or bondsman, was sad and sullen; his aspect was bent on the ground with an appearance of deep dejection, which might be almost construed into apathy, had not the fire which occasionally sparkled in his red eye manifested that there slumbered, under the appearance of sullen despondency, a sense of oppression, and a disposition to resistance. the looks of wamba, on the other hand, indicated, as usual with his class, a sort of vacant curiosity, and fidgetty impatience of any posture of repose, together with the utmost self-satisfaction respecting his own situation, and the appearance which he made. the dialogue which they maintained between them, was carried on in anglo-saxon, which, as we said before, was universally spoken by the inferior classes, excepting the norman soldiers, and the immediate personal dependants of the great feudal nobles. but to give their conversation in the original would convey but little information to the modern reader, for whose benefit we beg to offer the following translation: ``the curse of st withold upon these infernal porkers!'' said the swine-herd, after blowing his horn obstreperously, to collect together the scattered herd of swine, which, answering his call with notes equally melodious, made, however, no haste to remove themselves from the luxurious banquet of beech-mast and acorns on which they had fattened, or to forsake the marshy banks of the rivulet, where several of them, half plunged in mud, lay stretched at their ease, altogether regardless of the voice of their keeper. ``the curse of st withold upon them and upon me!'' said gurth; ``if the two-legged wolf snap not up some of them ere nightfall, i am no true man. here, fangs! fangs!'' he ejaculated at the top of his voice to a ragged wolfish-looking dog, a sort of lurcher, half mastiff, half greyhound, which ran limping about as if with the purpose of seconding his master in collecting the refractory grunters; but which, in fact, from misapprehension of the swine-herd's signals, ignorance of his own duty, or malice prepense, only drove them hither and thither, and increased the evil which he seemed to design to remedy. ``a devil draw the teeth of him,'' said gurth, ``and the mother of mischief confound the ranger of the forest, that cuts the foreclaws off our dogs, and makes them unfit for their trade!* wamba, up and help me an thou * note a. the ranger of the forest, that cuts the fore-claws * off our dogs. beest a man; take a turn round the back o' the hill to gain the wind on them; and when thous't got the weather-gage, thou mayst drive them before thee as gently as so many innocent lambs.'' ``truly,'' said wamba, without stirring from the spot, ``i have consulted my legs upon this matter, and they are altogether of opinion, that to carry my gay garments through these sloughs, would be an act of unfriendship to my sovereign person and royal wardrobe; wherefore, gurth, i advise thee to call off fangs, and leave the herd to their destiny, which, whether they meet with bands of travelling soldiers, or of outlaws, or of wandering pilgrims, can be little else than to be converted into normans before morning, to thy no small ease and comfort.'' ``the swine turned normans to my comfort!'' quoth gurth; ``expound that to me, wamba, for my brain is too dull, and my mind too vexed, to read riddles.'' ``why, how call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?'' demanded wamba. ``swine, fool, swine,'' said the herd, ``every fool knows that.'' ``and swine is good saxon,'' said the jester; ``but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?'' ``pork,'' answered the swine-herd. ``i am very glad every fool knows that too,'' said wamba, ``and pork, i think, is good norman-french; and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a saxon slave, she goes by her saxon name; but becomes a norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the castle-hall to feast among the nobles what dost thou think of this, friend gurth, ha?'' ``it is but too true doctrine, friend wamba, however it got into thy fool's pate.'' ``nay, i can tell you more,'' said wamba, in the same tone; ``there is old alderman ox continues to hold his saxon epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes beef, a fiery french gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. mynheer calf, too, becomes monsieur de veau in the like manner; he is saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment.'' ``by st dunstan,'' answered gurth, ``thou speakest but sad truths; little is left to us but the air we breathe, and that appears to have been reserved with much hesitation, solely for the purpose of enabling us to endure the tasks they lay upon our shoulders. the finest and the fattest is for their board; the loveliest is for their couch; the best and bravest supply their foreign masters with soldiers, and whiten distant lands with their bones, leaving few here who have either will or the power to protect the unfortunate saxon. god's blessing on our master cedric, he hath done the work of a man in standing in the gap; but reginald front-de-b<oe>uf is coming down to this country in person, and we shall soon see how little cedric's trouble will avail him.---here, here,'' he exclaimed again, raising his voice, ``so ho! so ho! well done, fangs! thou hast them all before thee now, and bring'st them on bravely, lad.'' ``gurth,'' said the jester, ``i know thou thinkest me a fool, or thou wouldst not be so rash in putting thy head into my mouth. one word to reginald front-de-b<oe>uf, or philip de malvoisin, that thou hast spoken treason against the norman, ---and thou art but a cast-away swineherd,---thou wouldst waver on one of these trees as a terror to all evil speakers against dignities.'' ``dog, thou wouldst not betray me,'' said gurth, ``after having led me on to speak so much at disadvantage?'' ``betray thee!'' answered the jester; ``no, that were the trick of a wise man; a fool cannot half so well help himself---but soft, whom have we here?'' he said, listening to the trampling of several horses which became then audible. ``never mind whom,'' answered gurth, who had now got his herd before him, and, with the aid of fangs, was driving them down one of the long dim vistas which we have endeavoured to describe. ``nay, but i must see the riders,'' answered wamba; ``perhaps they are come from fairy-land with a message from king oberon.'' ``a murrain take thee,'' rejoined the swine-herd; ``wilt thou talk of such things, while a terrible storm of thunder and lightning is raging within a few miles of us? hark, how the thunder rumbles! and for summer rain, i never saw such broad downright flat drops fall out of the clouds; the oaks, too, notwithstanding the calm weather, sob and creak with their great boughs as if announcing a tempest. thou canst play the rational if thou wilt; credit me for once, and let us home ere the storm begins to rage, for the night will be fearful.'' wamba seemed to feel the force of this appeal, and accompanied his companion, who began his journey after catching up a long quarter-staff which lay upon the grass beside him. this second eum<ae>us strode hastily down the forest glade, driving before him, with the assistance of fangs, the whole herd of his inharmonious charge. chapter ii. a monk there was, a fayre for the maistrie, an outrider that loved venerie; a manly man, to be an abbot able, full many a daintie horse had he in stable: and whan he rode, men might his bridle hear gingeling in a whistling wind as dear, and eke as loud, as doth the chapell bell, there as this lord was keeper of the cen. chaucer. notwithstanding the occasional exhortation and chiding of his companion, the noise of the horsemen's feet continuing to approach, wamba could not be prevented from lingering occasionally on the road, upon every pretence which occurred; now catching from the hazel a cluster of half-ripe nuts, and now turning his head to leer after a cottage maiden who crossed their path. the horsemen, therefore, soon overtook them on the road. their numbers amounted to ten men, of whom the two who rode foremost seemed to be persons of considerable importance, and the others their attendants. it was not difficult to ascertain the condition and character of one of these personages. he was obviously an ecclesiastic of high rank; his dress was that of a cistercian monk, but composed of materials much finer than those which the rule of that order admitted. his mantle and hood were of the best flanders cloth, and fell in ample, and not ungraceful folds, around a handsome, though somewhat corpulent person. his countenance bore as little the marks of self-denial, as his habit indicated contempt of worldly splendour. his features might have been called good, had there not lurked under the pent-house of his eye, that sly epicurean twinkle which indicates the cautious voluptuary. in other respects, his profession and situation had taught him a ready command over his countenance, which he could contract at pleasure into solemnity, although its natural expression was that of good-humoured social indulgence. in defiance of conventual rules, and the edicts of popes and councils, the sleeves of this dignitary were lined and turned up with rich furs, his mantle secured at the throat with a golden clasp, and the whole dress proper to his order as much refined upon and ornamented, as that of a quaker beauty of the present day, who, while she retains the garb and costume of her sect continues to give to its simplicity, by the choice of materials and the mode of disposing them, a certain air of coquettish attraction, savouring but too much of the vanities of the world. this worthy churchman rode upon a well-fed ambling mule, whose furniture was highly decorated, and whose bridle, according to the fashion of the day, was ornamented with silver bells. in his seat he had nothing of the awkwardness of the convent, but displayed the easy and habitual grace of a well-trained horseman. indeed, it seemed that so humble a conveyance as a mule, in however good case, and however well broken to a pleasant and accommodating amble, was only used by the gallant monk for travelling on the road. a lay brother, one of those who followed in the train, had, for his use on other occasions, one of the most handsome spanish jennets ever bred at andalusia, which merchants used at that time to import, with great trouble and risk, for the use of persons of wealth and distinction. the saddle and housings of this superb palfrey were covered by a long foot-cloth, which reached nearly to the ground, and on which were richly embroidered, mitres, crosses, and other ecclesiastical emblems. another lay brother led a sumpter mule, loaded probably with his superior's baggage; and two monks of his own order, of inferior station, rode together in the rear, laughing and conversing with each other, without taking much notice of the other members of the cavalcade. the companion of the church dignitary was a man past forty, thin, strong, tall, and muscular; an athletic figure, which long fatigue and constant exercise seemed to have left none of the softer part of the human form, having reduced the whole to brawn, bones, and sinews, which had sustained a thousand toils, and were ready to dare a thousand more. his head was covered with a scarlet cap, faced with fur---of that kind which the french call _mortier_, from its resemblance to the shape of an inverted mortar. his countenance was therefore fully displayed, and its expression was calculated to impress a degree of awe, if not of fear, upon strangers. high features, naturally strong and powerfully expressive, had been burnt almost into negro blackness by constant exposure to the tropical sun, and might, in their ordinary state, be said to slumber after the storm of passion had passed away; but the projection of the veins of the forehead, the readiness with which the upper lip and its thick black moustaches quivered upon the slightest emotion, plainly intimated that the tempest might be again and easily awakened. his keen, piercing, dark eyes, told in every glance a history of difficulties subdued, and dangers dared, and seemed to challenge opposition to his wishes, for the pleasure of sweeping it from his road by a determined exertion of courage and of will; a deep scar on his brow gave additional sternness to his countenance, and a sinister expression to one of his eyes, which had been slightly injured on the same occasion, and of which the vision, though perfect, was in a slight and partial degree distorted. the upper dress of this personage resembled that of his companion in shape, being a long monastic mantle; but the colour, being scarlet, showed that he did not belong to any of the four regular orders of monks. on the right shoulder of the mantle there was cut, in white cloth, a cross of a peculiar form. this upper robe concealed what at first view seemed rather inconsistent with its form, a shirt, namely, of linked mail, with sleeves and gloves of the same, curiously plaited and interwoven, as flexible to the body as those which are now wrought in the stocking-loom, out of less obdurate materials. the fore-part of his thighs, where the folds of his mantle permitted them to be seen, were also covered with linked mail; the knees and feet were defended by splints, or thin plates of steel, ingeniously jointed upon each other; and mail hose, reaching from the ankle to the knee, effectually protected the legs, and completed the rider's defensive armour. in his girdle he wore a long and double-edged dagger, which was the only offensive weapon about his person. he rode, not a mule, like his companion, but a strong hackney for the road, to save his gallant war-horse, which a squire led behind, fully accoutred for battle, with a chamfrom or plaited head-piece upon his bead, having a short spike projecting from the front. on one side of the saddle hung a short battle-axe, richly inlaid with damascene carving; on the other the rider's plumed head-piece and hood of mail, with a long two-handed sword, used by the chivalry of the period. a second squire held aloft his master's lance, from the extremity of which fluttered a small banderole, or streamer, bearing a cross of the same form with that embroidered upon his cloak. he also carried his small triangular shield, broad enough at the top to protect the breast, and from thence diminishing to a point. it was covered with a scarlet cloth, which prevented the device from being seen. these two squires were followed by two attendants, whose dark visages, white turbans, and the oriental form of their garments, showed them to be natives of some distant eastern country.* the * note b. negro slaves. whole appearance of this warrior and his retinue was wild and outlandish; the dress of his squires was gorgeous, and his eastern attendants wore silver collars round their throats, and bracelets of the same metal upon their swarthy arms and legs, of which the former were naked from the elbow, and the latter from mid-leg to ankle. silk and embroidery distinguished their dresses, and marked the wealth and importance of their master; forming, at the same time, a striking contrast with the martial simplicity of his own attire. they were armed with crooked sabres, having the hilt and baldric inlaid with gold, and matched with turkish daggers of yet more costly workmanship. each of them bore at his saddle-bow a bundle of darts or javelins, about four feet in length, having sharp steel heads, a weapon much in use among the saracens, and of which the memory is yet preserved in the martial exercise called _el jerrid_, still practised in the eastern countries. the steeds of these attendants were in appearance as foreign as their riders. they were of saracen origin, and consequently of arabian descent; and their fine slender limbs, small fetlocks, thin manes, and easy springy motion, formed a marked contrast with the large-jointed heavy horses, of which the race was cultivated in flanders and in normandy, for mounting the men-at-arms of the period in all the panoply of plate and mail; and which, placed by the side of those eastern coursers, might have passed for a personification of substance and of shadow. the singular appearance of this cavalcade not only attracted the curiosity of wamba, but excited even that of his less volatile companion. the monk he instantly knew to be the prior of jorvaulx abbey, well known for many miles around as a lover of the chase, of the banquet, and, if fame did him not wrong, of other worldly pleasures still more inconsistent with his monastic vows. yet so loose were the ideas of the times respecting the conduct of the clergy, whether secular or regular, that the prior aymer maintained a fair character in the neighbourhood of his abbey. his free and jovial temper, and the readiness with which he granted absolution from all ordinary delinquencies, rendered him a favourite among the nobility and principal gentry, to several of whom he was allied by birth, being of a distinguished norman family. the ladies, in particular, were not disposed to scan too nicely the morals of a man who was a professed admirer of their sex, and who possessed many means of dispelling the ennui which was too apt to intrude upon the halls and bowers of an ancient feudal castle. the prior mingled in the sports of the field with more than due eagerness, and was allowed to possess the best-trained hawks, and the fleetest greyhounds in the north riding; circumstances which strongly recommended him to the youthful gentry. with the old, be had another part to play, which, when needful, he could sustain with great decorum. his knowledge of books, however superficial, was sufficient to impress upon their ignorance respect for his supposed learning; and the gravity of his deportment and language, with the high tone which he exerted in setting forth the authority of the church and of the priesthood, impressed them no less with an opinion of his sanctity. even the common people, the severest critics of the conduct of their betters, had commiseration with the follies of prior aymer. he was generous; and charity, as it is well known, covereth a multitude of sins, in another sense than that in which it is said to do so in scripture. the revenues of the monastery, of which a large part was at his disposal, while they gave him the means of supplying his own very considerable expenses, afforded also those largesses which he bestowed among the peasantry, and with which he frequently relieved the distresses of the oppressed. if prior aymer rode hard in the chase, or remained long at the banquet,---if prior aymer was seen, at the early peep of dawn, to enter the postern of the abbey, as he glided home from some rendezvous which had occupied the hours of darkness, men only shrugged up their shoulders, and reconciled themselves to his irregularities, by recollecting that the same were practised by many of his brethren who had no redeeming qualities whatsoever to atone for them. prior aymer, therefore, and his character, were well known to our saxon serfs, who made their rude obeisance, and received his ``_benedicite, mes filz_," in return. but the singular appearance of his companion and his attendants, arrested their attention and excited their wonder, and they could scarcely attend to the prior of jorvaulx' question, when he demanded if they knew of any place of harbourage in the vicinity; so much were they surprised at the half monastic, half military appearance of the swarthy stranger, and at the uncouth dress and arms of his eastern attendants. it is probable, too, that the language in which the benediction was conferred, and the information asked, sounded ungracious, though not probably unintelligible, in the ears of the saxon peasants. ``i asked you, my children,'' said the prior, raising his voice, and using the lingua franca, or mixed language, in which the norman and saxon races conversed with each other, ``if there be in this neighbourhood any good man, who, for the love of god, and devotion to mother church, will give two of her humblest servants, with their train, a night's hospitality and refreshment?'' this he spoke with a tone of conscious importance, which formed a strong contrast to the modest terms which he thought it proper to employ. ``two of the humblest servants of mother church!'' repeated wamba to himself,---but, fool as he was, taking care not to make his observation audible; ``i should like to see her seneschals, her chief butlers, and other principal domestics!'' after this internal commentary on the prior's speech, he raised his eyes, and replied to the question which had been put. ``if the reverend fathers,'' he said, ``loved good cheer and soft lodging, few miles of riding would carry them to the priory of brinxworth, where their quality could not but secure them the most honourable reception; or if they preferred spending a penitential evening, they might turn down yonder wild glade, which would bring them to the hermitage of copmanhurst, where a pious anchoret would make them sharers for the night of the shelter of his roof and the benefit of his prayers.'' the prior shook his head at both proposals. ``mine honest friend,'' said he, ``if the jangling of thy bells bad not dizzied thine understanding, thou mightst know _clericus clericum non decimat_; that is to say, we churchmen do not exhaust each other's hospitality, but rather require that of the laity, giving them thus an opportunity to serve god in honouring and relieving his appointed servants.'' ``it is true,'' replied wamba, ``that i, being but an ass, am, nevertheless, honoured to hear the bells as well as your reverence's mule; notwithstanding, i did conceive that the charity of mother church and her servants might be said, with other charity, to begin at home.'' ``a truce to thine insolence, fellow,'' said the armed rider, breaking in on his prattle with a high and stern voice, ``and tell us, if thou canst, the road to---how call'd you your franklin, prior aymer?'' ``cedric,'' answered the prior; ``cedric the saxon. ---tell me, good fellow, are we near his dwelling, and can you show us the road?'' ``the road will be uneasy to find,'' answered gurth, who broke silence for the first time, d`` and the family of cedric retire early to rest.'' ``tush, tell not me, fellow,'' said the military rider; ``'tis easy for them to arise and supply the wants of travellers such as we are, who will not stoop to beg the hospitality which we have a right to command.'' ``i know not,'' said gurth, sullenly, ``if i should show the way to my master's house, to those who demand as a right, the shelter which most are fain to ask as a favour.'' ``do you dispute with me, slave!'' said the soldier; and, setting spurs to his horse, he caused him make a demivolte across the path, raising at the same time the riding rod which he held in his hand, with a purpose of chastising what he considered as the insolence of the peasant. gurth darted at him a savage and revengeful scowl, and with a fierce, yet hesitating motion, laid his hand on the haft of his knife; but the interference of prior aymer, who pushed his mule betwixt his companion and the swineherd, prevented the meditated violence. ``nay, by st mary, brother brian, you must not think you are now in palestine, predominating over heathen turks and infidel saracens; we islanders love not blows, save those of holy church, who chasteneth whom she loveth.---tell me, good fellow,'' said he to wamba, and seconded his speech by a small piece of silver coin, ``the way to cedric the saxon's; you cannot be ignorant of it, and it is your duty to direct the wanderer even when his character is less sanctified than ours.'' ``in truth, venerable father,'' answered the jester, ``the saracen head of your right reverend companion has frightened out of mine the way home---i am not sure i shall get there to-night myself.'' ``tush,'' said the abbot, ``thou canst tell us if thou wilt. this reverend brother has been all his life engaged in fighting among the saracens for the recovery of the holy sepulchre; he is of the order of knights templars, whom you may have heard of; he is half a monk, half a soldier.'' ``if he is but half a monk,'' said the jester, ``he should not be wholly unreasonable with those whom he meets upon the road, even if they should be in no hurry to answer questions that no way concern them.'' ``i forgive thy wit,'' replied the abbot, ``on condition thou wilt show me the way to cedric's mansion.'' ``well, then,'' answered wamba, ``your reverences must hold on this path till you come to a sunken cross, of which scarce a cubit's length remains above ground; then take the path to the left, for there are four which meet at sunken cross, and i trust your reverences will obtain shelter before the storm comes on.'' the abbot thanked his sage adviser; and the cavalcade, setting spurs to their horses, rode on as men do who wish to reach their inn before the bursting of a night-storm. as their horses' hoofs died away, gurth said to his companion, ``if they follow thy wise direction, the reverend fathers will hardly reach rotherwood this night.'' ``no,'' said the jester, grinning, ``but they may reach sheffield if they have good luck, and that is as fit a place for them. i am not so bad a woodsman as to show the dog where the deer lies, if i have no mind he should chase him.'' ``thou art right,'' said gurth; ``it were ill that aymer saw the lady rowena; and it were worse, it may be, for cedric to quarrel, as is most likely he would, with this military monk. but, like good servants let us hear and see, and say nothing.'' we return to the riders, who had soon left the bondsmen far behind them, and who maintained the following conversation in the norman-french language, usually employed by the superior classes, with the exception of the few who were still inclined to boast their saxon descent. ``what mean these fellows by their capricious insolence?'' said the templar to the benedictine, ``and why did you prevent me from chastising it?'' ``marry, brother brian,'' replied the prior, ``touching the one of them, it were hard for me to render a reason for a fool speaking according to his folly; and the other churl is of that savage, fierce, intractable race, some of whom, as i have often told you, are still to be found among the descendants of the conquered saxons, and whose supreme pleasure it is to testify, by all means in their power, their aversion to their conquerors.'' ``i would soon have beat him into courtesy,'' observed brian; ``i am accustomed to deal with such spirits: our turkish captives are as fierce and intractable as odin himself could have been; yet two months in my household, under the management of my master of the slaves, has made them humble, submissive, serviceable, and observant of your will. marry, sir, you must beware of the poison and the dagger; for they use either with free will when you give them the slightest opportunity.'' ``ay, but,'' answered prior aymer, ``every land has its own manners and fashions; and, besides that beating this fellow could procure us no information respecting the road to cedric's house, it would have been sure to have established a quarrel betwixt you and him had we found our way thither. remember what i told you; this wealthy franklin is proud, fierce, jealous, and irritable; a withstander of the nobility, and even of his neighbours, reginald front-de-b<oe>uf, and philip malvoisin, who are no babes to strive with. he stands up so sternly for the privileges of his race, and is so proud of his uninterrupted descent from hereward, a renowned champion of the heptarchy, that he is universally called cedric the saxon; and makes a boast of his belonging to a people from whom many others endeavour to hide their descent, lest they should encounter a share of the _vae victis_, or severities imposed upon the vanquished.'' ``prior aymer,'' said the templar, ``you are a man of gallantry, learned in the study of beauty, and as expert as a troubadour in all matters concerning the arrets of love; but i shall expect much beauty in this celebrated rowena, to counterbalance the self-denial and forbearance which i must exert, if i am to court the favour of such a seditious churl as you have described her father cedric.'' ``cedric is not her father,'' replied the prior, ``and is but of remote relation; she is descended from higher blood than even he pretends to, and is but distantly connected with him by birth. her guardian, however, he is, self-constitued as i believe; but his ward is as dear to him as if she were his own child. of her beauty you shall soon be judge; and if the purity of her complexion, and the majestic, yet soft expression of a mild blue eye, do not chase from your memory the black-tressed girls of palestine, ay, or the houris of old mahound's paradise, i am an infidel, and no true son of the church.'' ``should your boasted beauty,'' said the templar, ``be weighed in the balance and found wanting, you know our wager?'' ``my gold collar,'' answered the prior, ``against ten buts of chian wine;---they are mine as securely as if they were already in the convent vaults, under the key of old dennis the cellarer.'' ``and i am myself to be judge,'' said the templar, ``and am only to be convicted on my own admission, that i have seen no maiden so beautiful since pentecost was a twelvemonth. ran it not so?---prior, your collar is in danger; i will wear it over my gorget in the lists of ashby-de-la-zouche.'' ``win it fairly,'' said the prior, ``and wear it as ye will; i will trust your giving true response, on your word as a knight and as a churchman. yet, brother, take my advice, and file your tongue to a little more courtesy than your habits of predominating over infidel captives and eastern bondsmen have accustomed you. cedric the saxon, if offended,---and he is noway slack in taking offence, ---is a man who, without respect to your knighthood, my high office, or the sanctity of either, would clear his house of us, and send us to lodge with the larks, though the hour were midnight. and be careful how you look on rowena, whom he cherishes with the most jealous care; an he take the least alarm in that quarter we are but lost men. it is said he banished his only son from his family for lifting his eyes in the way of affection towards this beauty, who may be worshipped, it seems, at a distance, but is not to be approached with other thoughts than such as we bring to the shrine of the blessed virgin.'' ``well, you have said enough,'' answered the templar; ``i will for a night put on the needful restraint, and deport me as meekly as a maiden; but as for the fear of his expelling us by violence, myself and squires, with hamet and abdalla, will warrant you against that disgrace. doubt not that we shall be strong enough to make good our quarters.'' ``we must not let it come so far,'' answered the prior; ``but here is the clown's sunken cross, and the night is so dark that we can hardly see which of the roads we are to follow. he bid us turn, i think to the left.'' ``to the right,'' said brian, ``to the best of my remembrance.'' ``to the left, certainly, the left; i remember his pointing with his wooden sword.'' ``ay, but he held his sword in his left hand, and so pointed across his body with it,'' said the templar. each maintained his opinion with sufficient obstinacy, as is usual in all such cases; the attendants were appealed to, but they had not been near enough to hear wamba's directions. at length brian remarked, what had at first escaped him in the twilight; ``here is some one either asleep, or lying dead at the foot of this cross---hugo, stir him with the but-end of thy lance.'' this was no sooner done than the figure arose, exclaiming in good french, ``whosoever thou art, it is discourteous in you to disturb my thoughts.'' ``we did but wish to ask you,'' said the prior, ``the road to rotherwood, the abode of cedric the saxon.'' ``i myself am bound thither,'' replied the stranger; ``and if i had a horse, i would be your guide, for the way is somewhat intricate, though perfectly well known to me.'' ``thou shalt have both thanks and reward, my friend,'' said the prior, ``if thou wilt bring us to cedric's in safety.'' and he caused one of his attendants to mount his own led horse, and give that upon which he had hitherto ridden to the stranger, who was to serve for a guide. their conductor pursued an opposite road from that which wamba had recommended, for the purpose of misleading them. the path soon led deeper into the woodland, and crossed more than one brook, the approach to which was rendered perilous by the marshes through which it flowed; but the stranger seemed to know, as if by instinct, the soundest ground and the safest points of passage; and by dint of caution and attention, brought the party safely into a wilder avenue than any they had yet seen; and, pointing to a large low irregular building at the upper extremity, he said to the prior, ``yonder is rotherwood, the dwelling of cedric the saxon.'' this was a joyful intimation to aymer, whose nerves were none of the strongest, and who had suffered such agitation and alarm in the course of passing through the dangerous bogs, that he had not yet had the curiosity to ask his guide a single question. finding himself now at his ease and near shelter, his curiosity began to awake, and he demanded of the guide who and what he was. ``a palmer, just returned from the holy land,'' was the answer. ``you had better have tarried there to fight for the recovery of the holy sepulchre,'' said the templar. ``true, reverend sir knight,'' answered the palmer, to whom the appearance of the templar seemed perfectly familiar; ``but when those who are under oath to recover the holy city, are found travelling at such a distance from the scene of their duties, can you wonder that a peaceful peasant like me should decline the task which they have abandoned?'' the templar would have made an angry reply, but was interrupted by the prior, who again expressed his astonishment, that their guide, after such long absence, should be so perfectly acquainted with the passes of the forest. ``i was born a native of these parts,'' answered their guide, and as he made the reply they stood before the mansion of cedric;---a low irregular building, containing several court-yards or enclosures, extending over a considerable space of ground, and which, though its size argued the inhabitant to be a person of wealth, differed entirely from the tall, turretted, and castellated buildings in which the norman nobility resided, and which had become the universal style of architecture throughout england. rotherwood was not, however, without defences; no habitation, in that disturbed period, could have been so, without the risk of being plundered and burnt before the next morning. a deep fosse, or ditch, was drawn round the whole building, and filled with water from a neighbouring stream. a double stockade, or palisade, composed of pointed beams, which the adjacent forest supplied, defended the outer and inner bank of the trench. there was an entrance from the west through the outer stockade, which communicated by a drawbridge, with a similar opening in the interior defences. some precautions had been taken to place those entrances under the protection of projecting angles, by which they might be flanked in case of need by archers or slingers. before this entrance the templar wound his horn loudly; for the rain, which had long threatened, began now to descend with great violence. chapter iii. then (sad relief!) from the bleak coast that hears the german ocean roar, deep-blooming, strong, and yellow hair'd, the blue-eyed saxon came. thomson's _liberty_. in a hall, the height of which was greatly disproportioned to its extreme length and width, a long oaken table, formed of planks rough-hewn from the forest, and which had scarcely received any polish, stood ready prepared for the evening meal of cedric the saxon. the roof, composed of beams and rafters, had nothing to divide the apartment from the sky excepting the planking and thatch; there was a huge fireplace at either end of the hall, but as the chimneys were constructed in a very clumsy manner, at least as much of the smoke found its way into the apartment as escaped by the proper vent. the constant vapour which this occasioned, had polished the rafters and beams of the low-browed hall, by encrusting them with a black varnish of soot. on the sides of the apartment hung implements of war and of the chase, and there were at each corner folding doors, which gave access to other parts of the extensive building. the other appointments of the mansion partook of the rude simplicity of the saxon period, which cedric piqued himself upon maintaining. the floor was composed of earth mixe with lime, trodden into a hard substance, such as is often employed in flooring our modern barns. for about one quarter of the length of the apartment, the floor was raised by a step, and this space, which was called the dais, was occupied only by the principal members of the family, and visitors of distinction. for this purpose, a table richly covered with scarlet cloth was placed transversely across the platform, from the middle of which ran the longer and lower board, at which the domestics and inferior persons fed, down towards the bottom of the hall. the whole resembled the form of the letter t, or some of those ancient dinner-tables, which, arranged on the same principles, may be still seen in the antique colleges of oxford or cambridge. massive chairs and settles of carved oak were placed upon the dais, and over these seats and the more elevated table was fastened a canopy of cloth, which served in some degree to protect the dignitaries who occupied that distinguished station from the weather, and especially from the rain, which in some places found its way through the ill-constructed roof. the walls of this upper end of the hall, as far as the dais extended, were covered with hangings or curtains, and upon the floor there was a carpet, both of which were adorned with some attempts at tapestry, or embroidery, executed with brilliant or rather gaudy colouring. over the lower range of table, the roof, as we have noticed, had no covering; the rough plastered walls were left bare, and the rude earthen floor was uncarpeted; the board was uncovered by a cloth, and rude massive benches supplied the place of chairs. in the centre of the upper table, were placed two chairs more elevated than the rest, for the master and mistress of the family, who presided over the scene of hospitality, and from doing so derived their saxon title of honour, which signifies ``the dividers of bread.'' to each of these chairs was added a footstool, curiously carved and inlaid with ivory, which mark of distinction was peculiar to them. one of these seats was at present occupied by cedric the saxon, who, though but in rank a thane, or, as the normans called him, a franklin, felt, at the delay of his evening meal, an irritable impatience, which might have become an alderman, whether of ancient or of modern times. it appeared, indeed, from the countenance of this proprietor, that he was of a frank, but hasty and choleric temper. he was not above the middle stature, but broad-shouldered, long-armed, and powerfully made, like one accustomed to endure the fatigue of war or of the chase; his face was broad, with large blue eyes, open and frank features, fine teeth, and a well formed head, altogether expressive of that sort of good-humour which often lodges with a sudden and hasty temper. pride and jealousy there was in his eye, for his life had been spent in asserting rights which were constantly liable to invasion; and the prompt, fiery, and resolute disposition of the man, had been kept constantly upon the alert by the circumstances of his situation. his long yellow hair was equally divided on the top of his head and upon his brow, and combed down on each side to the length of his shoulders; it had but little tendency to grey, although cedric was approaching to his sixtieth year. his dress was a tunic of forest green, furred at the throat and cuffs with what was called minever; a kind of fur inferior in quality to ermine, and formed, it is believed, of the skin of the grey squirrel. this doublet hung unbuttoned over a close dress of scarlet which sate tight to his body; he had breeches of the same, but they did not reach below the lower part of the thigh, leaving the knee exposed. his feet had sandals of the same fashion with the peasants, but of finer materials, and secured in the front with golden clasps. he had bracelets of gold upon his arms, and a broad collar of the same precious metal around his neck. about his waist he wore a richly-studded belt, in which was stuck a short straight two-edged sword, with a sharp point, so disposed as to hang almost perpendicularly by his side. behind his seat was hung a scarlet cloth cloak lined with fur, and a cap of the same materials richly embroidered, which completed the dress of the opulent landholder when he chose to go forth. a short boar-spear, with a broad and bright steel head, also reclined against the back of his chair, which served him, when he walked abroad, for the purposes of a staff or of a weapon, as chance might require. several domestics, whose dress held various proportions betwixt the richness of their master's, and the coarse and simple attire of gurth the swine-herd, watched the looks and waited the commands of the saxon dignitary. two or three servants of a superior order stood behind their master upon the dais; the rest occupied the lower part of the hall. other attendants there were of a different description; two or three large and shaggy greyhounds, such as were then employed in hunting the stag and wolf; as many slow-hounds of a large bony breed, with thick necks, large beads, and long ears; and one or two of the smaller dogs, now called terriers, which waited with impatience the arrival of the supper; but, with the sagacious knowledge of physiognomy peculiar to their race, forbore to intrude upon the moody silence of their master, apprehensive probably of a small white truncheon which lay by cedric's trencher, for the purpose of repelling the advances of his four-legged dependants. one grisly old wolf-dog alone, with the liberty of an indulged favourite, had planted himself close by the chair of state, and occasionally ventured to solicit notice by putting his large hairy head upon his master's knee, or pushing his nose into his hand. even he was repelled by the stem command, ``down, balder, down! i am not in the humour for foolery.'' in fact, cedric, as we have observed, was in no very placid state of mind. the lady rowena, who had been absent to attend an evening mass at a distant church, had but just returned, and was changing her garments, which had been wetted by the storm. there were as yet no tidings of gurth and his charge, which should long since have been driven home from the forest and such was the insecurity of the period, as to render it probable that the delay might be explained by some depreciation of the outlaws, with whom the adjacent forest abounded, or by the violence of some neighbouring baron, whose consciousness of strength made him equally negligent of the laws of property. the matter was of consequence, for great part of the domestic wealth of the saxon proprietors consisted in numerous herds of swine, especially in forest-land, where those animals easily found their food. besides these subjects of anxiety, the saxon thane was impatient for the presence of his favourite clown wamba, whose jests, such as they were, served for a sort of seasoning to his evening meal, and to the deep draughts of ale and wine with which he was in the habit of accompanying it. add to all this, cedric had fasted since noon, and his usual supper hour was long past, a cause of irritation common to country squires, both in ancient and modern times. his displeasure was expressed in broken sentences, partly muttered to himself, partly addressed to the domestics who stood around; and particularly to his cupbearer, who offered him from time to time, as a sedative, a silver goblet filled with wine---``why tarries the lady rowena?'' ``she is but changing her head-gear,'' replied a female attendant, with as much confidence as the favourite lady's-maid usually answers the master of a modern family; ``you would not wish her to sit down to the banquet in her hood and kirtle? and no lady within the shire can be quicker in arraying herself than my mistress.'' this undeniable argument produced a sort of acquiescent umph! on the part of the saxon, with the addition, ``i wish her devotion may choose fair weather for the next visit to st john's kirk;--but what, in the name of ten devils,'' continued he, turning to the cupbearer, and raising his voice as if happy to have found a channel into which he might divert his indignation without fear or control--``what, in the name of ten devils, keeps gurth so long afield? i suppose we shall have an evil account of the herd; he was wont to be a faithful and cautious drudge, and i had destined him for something better; perchance i might even have made him one of my warders.''* * the original has _cnichts_, by which the saxons seem to * have designated a class of military attendants, sometimes free, * sometimes bondsmen, but always ranking above an ordinary * domestic, whether in the royal household or in those of the * aldermen and thanes. but the term cnicht, now spelt knight, * having been received into the english language as equivalent * to the norman word chevalier, i have avoided using it in its * more ancient sense, to prevent confusion. l. t. oswald the cupbearer modestly suggested, ``that it was scarce an hour since the tolling of the curfew;'' an ill-chosen apology, since it turned upon a topic so harsh to saxon ears. ``the foul fiend,'' exclaimed cedric, ``take the curfew-bell, and the tyrannical bastard by whom it was devised, and the heartless slave who names it with a saxon tongue to a saxon ear! the curfew!'' he added, pausing, ``ay, the curfew; which compels true men to extinguish their lights, that thieves and robbers may work their deeds in darkness!--ay, the curfew;---reginald front-de-b<oe>uf and philip de malvoisin know the use of the curfew as well as william the bastard himself, or e'er a norman adventurer that fought at hastings. i shall hear, i guess, that my property has been swept off to save from starving the hungry banditti, whom they cannot support but by theft and robbery. my faithful slave is murdered, and my goods are taken for a prey---and wamba---where is wamba? said not some one he had gone forth with gurth?'' oswald replied in the affirmative. `` ay? why this is better and better! he is carried off too, the saxon fool, to serve the norman lord. fools are we all indeed that serve them, and fitter subjects for their scorn and laughter, than if we were born with but half our wits. but i will be avenged,'' he added, starting from his char in impatience at the supposed injury, and catching hold of his boar-spear; ``i will go with my complaint to the great council; i have friends, i have followers---man to man will i appeal the norman to the lists; let him come in his plate and his mail, and all that can render cowardice bold; i have sent such a javelin as this through a stronger fence than three of their war shields!---haply they think me old; but they shall find, alone and childless as i am, the blood of hereward is in the veins of cedric. ---ah, wilfred, wilfred!'' he exclaimed in a lower tone, ``couldst thou have ruled thine unreasonable passion, thy father had not been left in his age like the solitary oak that throws out its shattered and unprotected branches against the full sweep of the tempest!'' the reflection seemed to conjure into sadness his irritated feelings. replacing his javelin, he resumed his seat, bent his looks downward, and appeared to be absorbed in melancholy reflection. from his musing, cedric was suddenly awakened by the blast of a born, which was replied to by the clamorous yells and barking of all the dogs in the hall, and some twenty or thirty which were quartered in other parts of the building. it cost some exercise of the white truncheon, well seconded by the exertions of the domestics, to silence this canine clamour. ``to the gate, knaves!'' said the saxon, hastily, as soon as the tumult was so much appeased that the dependants could hear his voice. ``see what tidings that horn tells us of---to announce, i ween, some hership* and robbery which has been done * pillage. upon my lands.'' returning in less than three minutes, a warder announced ``that the prior aymer of jorvaulx, and the good knight brian de bois-guilbert, commander of the valiant and venerable order of knights templars, with a small retinue, requested hospitality and lodging for the night, being on their way to a tournament which was to be held not far from ashby-de-la-zouche, on the second day from the present.'' ``aymer, the prior aymer? brian de bois-guilbert?'' ---muttered cedric; ``normans both;--but norman or saxon, the hospitality of rotherwood must not be impeached; they are welcome, since they have chosen to halt---more welcome would they have been to have ridden further on their way---but it were unworthy to murmur for a night's lodging and a night's food; in the quality of guests, at least, even normans must suppress their insolence.---go, hundebert,'' he added, to a sort of major-domo who stood behind him with a white wand; ``take six of the attendants, and introduce the strangers to the guests' lodging. look after their horses and mules, and see their train lack nothing. let them have change of vestments if they require it, and fire, and water to wash, and wine and ale; and bid the cooks add what they hastily can to our evening meal; and let it be put on the board when those strangers are ready to share it. say to them, hundebert, that cedric would himself bid them welcome, but he is under a vow never to step more than three steps from the dais of his own hall to meet any who shares not the blood of saxon royalty. begone! see them carefully tended; let them not say in their pride, the saxon churl has shown at once his poverty and his avarice.'' the major-domo departed with several attendants, to execute his master's commands. ``the prior aymer!'' repeated cedric, looking to oswald, ``the brother, if i mistake not, of giles de mauleverer, now lord of middleham?'' oswald made a respectful sign of assent. ``his brother sits in the seat, and usurps the patrimony, of a better race, the race of ulfgar of middleham; but what norman lord doth not the same? this prior is, they say, a free and jovial priest, who loves the wine-cup and the bugle-horn better than bell and book: good; let him come, he shall be welcome. how named ye the templar?'' ``brian de bois-guilbert.'' ``bois-guilbert,'' said cedric, still in the musing, half-arguing tone, which the habit of living among dependants had accustomed him to employ, and which resembled a man who talks to himself rather than to those around him---``bois-guilbert? that name has been spread wide both for good and evil. they say he is valiant as the bravest of his order; but stained with their usual vices, pride, arrogance, cruelty, and voluptuousness; a hard-hearted man, who knows neither fear of earth, nor awe of heaven. so say the few warriors who have returned from palestine.---well; it is but for one night; he shall be welcome too.---oswald, broach the oldest wine-cask; place the best mead, the mightiest ale, the richest morat, the most sparkling cider, the most odoriferous pigments, upon the board; fill the largest horns*---templars and abbots * these were drinks used by the saxons, as we are informed * by mr turner: morat was made of honey flavoured with the * juice of mulberries; pigment was a sweet and rich liquor, composed * of wine highly spiced, and sweetened also with honey; * the other liquors need no explanation. l. t. love good wines and good measure.---elgitha, let thy lady rowena, know we shall not this night expect her in the hall, unless such be her especial pleasure.'' ``but it will be her especial pleasure,'' answered elgitha, with great readiness, ``for she is ever desirous to hear the latest news from palestine.'' cedric darted at the forward damsel a glance of hasty resentment; but rowena, and whatever belonged to her, were privileged and secure from his anger. he only replied, ``silence, maiden; thy tongue outruns thy discretion. say my message to thy mistress, and let her do her pleasure. here, at least, the descendant of alfred still reigns a princess.'' elgitha left the apartment. ``palestine!'' repeated the saxon; ``palestine! how many ears are turned to the tales which dissolute crusaders, or hypocritical pilgrims, bring from that fatal land! i too might ask---i too might enquire--i too might listen with a beating heart to fables which the wily strollers devise to cheat us into hospitality---but no---the son who has disobeyed me is no longer mine; nor will i concern myself more for his fate than for that of the most worthless among the millions that ever shaped the cross on their shoulder, rushed into excess and blood-guiltiness, and called it an accomplishment of the will of god.'' he knit his brows, and fixed his eyes for an instant on the ground; as he raised them, the folding doors at the bottom of the hall were cast wide, and, preceded by the major-domo with his wand, and four domestics bearing blazing torches, the guests of the evening entered the apartment. chapter iv. with sheep and shaggy goats the porkers bled, and the proud steer was on the marble spread; with fire prepared, they deal the morsels round, wine rosy bright the brimming goblets crown'd. disposed apart, ulysses shares the treat; a trivet table and ignobler seat, the prince assigns-- _odyssey, book_ 21. the prior aymer had taken the opportunity afforded him, of changing his riding robe for one of yet more costly materials, over which he wore a cope curiously embroidered. besides the massive golden signet ring, which marked his ecclesiastical dignity, his fingers, though contrary to the canon, were loaded with precious gems; his sandals were of the finest leather which was imported from spain; his beard trimmed to as small dimensions as his order would possibly permit, and his shaven crown concealed by a scarlet cap richly embroidered. the appearance of the knight templar was also changed; and, though less studiously bedecked with ornament, his dress was as rich, and his appearance far more commanding, than that of his companion. he had exchanged his shirt of mail for an under tunic of dark purple silk, garnished with furs, over which flowed his long robe of spotless white, in ample folds. the eight-pointed cross of his order was cut on the shoulder of his mantle in black velvet. the high cap no longer invested his brows, which were only shaded by short and thick curled hair of a raven blackness, corresponding to his unusually swart complexion. nothing could be more gracefully majestic than his step and manner, had they not been marked by a predominant air of haughtiness, easily acquired by the exercise of unresisted authority. these two dignified persons were followed by their respective attendants, and at a more humble distance by their guide, whose figure had nothing more remarkable than it derived from the usual weeds of a pilgrim. a cloak or mantle of coarse black serge, enveloped his whole body. it was in shape something like the cloak of a modern hussar, having similar flaps for covering the arms, and was called a _sclaveyn_, or _sclavonian_. coarse sandals, bound with thongs, on his bare feet; a broad and shadowy hat, with cockle-shells stitched on its brim, and a long staff shod with iron, to the upper end of which was attached a branch of palm, completed the palmer's attire. he followed modestly the last of the train which entered the hall, and, observing that the lower table scarce afforded room sufficient for the domestics of cedric and the retinue of his guests, he withdrew to a settle placed beside and almost under one of the large chimneys, and seemed to employ himself in drying his garments, until the retreat of some one should make room at the board, or the hospitality of the steward should supply him with refreshments in the place he had chosen apart. cedric rose to receive his guests with an air of dignified hospitality, and, descending from the dais, or elevated part of his hall, made three steps towards them, and then awaited their approach. ``i grieve,'' he said, ``reverend prior, that my vow binds me to advance no farther upon this floor of my fathers, even to receive such guests as you, and this valiant knight of the holy temple. but my steward has expounded to you the cause of my seeming discourtesy. let me also pray, that you will excuse my speaking to you in my native language, and that you will reply in the same if your knowledge of it permits; if not, i sufficiently understand norman to follow your meaning.'' ``vows,'' said the abbot, ``must be unloosed, worthy franklin, or permit me rather to say, worthy thane, though the title is antiquated. vows are the knots which tie us to heaven---they are the cords which bind the sacrifice to the horns of the altar,---and are therefore,---as i said before,---to be unloosened and discharged, unless our holy mother church shall pronounce the contrary. and respecting language, i willingly hold communication in that spoken by my respected grandmother, hilda of middleham, who died in odour of sanctity, little short, if we may presume to say so, of her glorious namesake, the blessed saint hilda of whitby, god be gracious to her soul!'' when the prior had ceased what he meant as a conciliatory harangue, his companion said briefly and emphatically, ``i speak ever french, the language of king richard and his nobles; but i understand english sufficiently to communicate with the natives of the country.'' cedric darted at the speaker one of those hasty and impatient glances, which comparisons between the two rival nations seldom failed to call forth; but, recollecting the duties of hospitality, he suppressed further show of resentment, and, motioning with his hand, caused his guests to assume two seats a little lower than his own, but placed close beside him, and gave a signal that the evening meal should be placed upon the board. while the attendants hastened to obey cedric's commands, his eye distinguished gurth the swineherd, who, with his companion wamba, had just entered the hall. ``send these loitering knaves up hither,'' said the saxon, impatiently. and when the culprits came before the dais,---``how comes it, villains! that you have loitered abroad so late as this? hast thou brought home thy charge, sirrah gurth, or hast thou left them to robbers and marauders?'' ``the herd is safe, so please ye,'' said gurth. ``but it does not please me, thou knave,'' said cedric, ``that i should be made to suppose otherwise for two hours, and sit here devising vengeance against my neighbours for wrongs they have not done me. i tell thee, shackles and the prison-house shall punish the next offence of this kind.'' gurth, knowing his master's irritable temper, attempted no exculpation; but the jester, who could presume upon cedric's tolerance, by virtue of his privileges as a fool, replied for them both; ``in troth, uncle cedric, you are neither wise nor reasonable to-night.'' ``how, sir?'' said his master; ``you shall to the porter's lodge, and taste of the discipline there, if you give your foolery such license.'' ``first let your wisdom tell me,'' said wamba, ``is it just and reasonable to punish one person for the fault of another?'' ``certainly not, fool,'' answered cedric. ``then why should you shackle poor gurth, uncle, for the fault of his dog fangs? for i dare be sworn we lost not a minute by the way, when we had got our herd together, which fangs did not manage until we heard the vesper-bell.'' ``then hang up fangs,'' said cedric, turning hastily towards the swineherd, ``if the fault is his, and get thee another dog.'' ``under favour, uncle,'' said the jester, ``that were still somewhat on the bow-hand of fair justice; for it was no fault of fangs that he was lame and could not gather the herd, but the fault of those that struck off two of his fore-claws, an operation for which, if the poor fellow had been consulted, he would scarce have given his voice.'' ``and who dared to lame an animal which belonged to my bondsman?'' said the saxon, kindling in wrath. ``marry, that did old hubert,'' said wamba, ``sir philip de malvoisin's keeper of the chase. he caught fangs strolling in the forest, and said he chased the deer contrary to his master's right, as warden of the walk.'' ``the foul fiend take malvoisin,'' answered the saxon, ``and his keeper both! i will teach them that the wood was disforested in terms of the great forest charter. but enough of this. go to, knave, go to thy place---and thou, gurth, get thee another dog, and should the keeper dare to touch it, i will mar his archery; the curse of a coward on my head, if i strike not off the forefinger of his right hand! ---he shall draw bowstring no more.---i crave your pardon, my worthy guests. i am beset here with neighbours that match your infidels, sir knight, in holy land. but your homely fare is before you; feed, and let welcome make amends for hard fare.'' the feast, however, which was spread upon the board, needed no apologies from the lord of the mansion. swine's flesh, dressed in several modes, appeared on the lower part of the board, as also that of fowls, deer, goats, and hares, and various kinds of fish, together with huge loaves and cakes of bread, and sundry confections made of fruits and honey. the smaller sorts of wild-fowl, of which there was abundance, were not served up in platters, but brought in upon small wooden spits or broaches, and offered by the pages and domestics who bore them, to each guest in succession, who cut from them such a portion as he pleased. beside each person of rank was placed a goblet of silver; the lower board was accommodated with large drinking horns. when the repast was about to commence, the major-domo, or steward, suddenly raising his wand, said aloud,---``forbear!---place for the lady rowena.'' a side-door at the upper end of the hali now opened behind the banquet table, and rowena, followed by four female attendants, entered the apartment. cedric, though surprised, and perhaps not altogether agreeably so, at his ward appearing in public on this occasion, hastened to meet her, and to conduct her, with respectful ceremony, to the elevated seat at his own right hand, appropriated to the lady of the mansion. all stood up to receive her; and, replying to their courtesy by a mute gesture of salutation, she moved gracefully forward to assume her place at the board. ere she had time to do so, the templar whispered to the prior, ``i shall wear no collar of gold of yours at the tournament. the chian wine is your own.'' ``said i not so?'' answered the prior; ``but check your raptures, the franklin observes you.'' unheeding this remonstrance, and accustomed only to act upon the immediate impulse of his own wishes, brian de bois-guilbert kept his eyes riveted on the saxon beauty, more striking perhaps to his imagination, because differing widely from those of the eastern sultanas. formed in the best proportions of her sex, rowena was tall in stature, yet not so much so as to attract observation on account of superior height. her complexion was exquisitely fair, but the noble cast of her head and features prevented the insipidity which sometimes attaches to fair beauties. her clear blue eye, which sate enshrined beneath a graceful eyebrow of brown sufficiently marked to give expression to the forehead, seemed capable to kindle as well as melt, to command as well as to beseech. if mildness were the more natural expression of such a combination of features, it was plain, that in the present instance, the exercise of habitual superiority, and the reception of general homage, had given to the saxon lady a loftier character, which mingled with and qualified that bestowed by nature. her profuse hair, of a colour betwixt brown and flaxen, was arranged in a fanciful and graceful manner in numerous ringlets, to form which art had probably aided nature. these locks were braided with gems, and, being worn at full length, intimated the noble birth and free-born condition of the maiden. a golden chain, to which was attached a small reliquary of the same metal, hung round her neck. she wore bracelets on her arms, which were bare. her dress was an under-gown and kirtle of pale sea-green silk, over which hung a long loose robe, which reached to the ground, having very wide sleeves, which came down, however, very little below the elbow. this robe was crimson, and manufactured out of the very finest wool. a veil of silk, interwoven with gold, was attached to the upper part of it, which could be, at the wearer's pleasure, either drawn over the face and bosom after the spanish fashion, or disposed as a sort of drapery round the shoulders. when rowena perceived the knight templar's eyes bent on her with an ardour, that, compared with the dark caverns under which they moved, gave them the effect of lighted charcoal, she drew with dignity the veil around her face, as an intimation that the determined freedom of his glance was disagreeable. cedric saw the motion and its cause. ``sir templar,'' said he, ``the cheeks of our saxon maidens have seen too little of the sun to enable them to bear the fixed glance of a crusader.'' ``if i have offended,'' replied sir brian, ``i crave your pardon,---that is, i crave the lady rowena's pardon,---for my humility will carry me no lower.'' ``the lady rowena,'' said the prior, ``has punished us all, in chastising the boldness of my friend. let me hope she will be less cruel to the splendid train which are to meet at the tournament.'' ``our going thither,'' said cedric, ``is uncertain. i love not these vanities, which were unknown to my fathers when england was free.'' ``let us hope, nevertheless,'' said the prior, ``our company may determine you to travel thitherward; when the roads are so unsafe, the escort of sir brian de bois-guilbert is not to be despised.'' ``sir prior,'' answered the saxon, ``wheresoever i have travelled in this land, i have hitherto found myself, with the assistance of my good sword and faithful followers, in no respect needful of other aid. at present, if we indeed journey to ashby-de-la-zouche, we do so with my noble neighbour and countryman athelstane of coningsburgh, and with such a train as would set outlaws and feudal enemies at defiance.---i drink to you, sir prior, in this cup of wine, which i trust your taste will approve, and i thank you for your courtesy. should you be so rigid in adhering to monastic rule,'' he added, ``as to prefer your acid preparation of milk, i hope you will not strain courtesy to do me reason.'' ``nay,'' said the priest, laughing, ``it is only in our abbey that we confine ourselves to the _lac dulce_ or the _lac acidum_ either. conversing with, the world, we use the world's fashions, and therefore i answer your pledge in this honest wine, and leave the weaker liquor to my lay-brother.'' ``and i,'' said the templar, filling his goblet, ``drink wassail to the fair rowena; for since her namesake introduced the word into england, has never been one more worthy of such a tribute. by my faith, i could pardon the unhappy vortigern, had he half the cause that we now witness, for making shipwreck of his honour and his kingdom.'' ``i will spare your courtesy, sir knight,'' said rowena with dignity, and without unveiling herself; ``or rather i will tax it so far as to require of you the latest news from palestine, a theme more agreeable to our english ears than the compliments which your french breeding teaches.'' ``i have little of importance to say, lady,'' answered sir brian de bois-guilbert, ``excepting the confirmed tidings of a truce with saladin.'' he was interrupted by wamba, who had taken his appropriated seat upon a chair, the back of which was decorated with two ass's ears, and which was placed about two steps behind that of his master, who, from time to time, supplied him with victuals from his own trencher; a favour, however, which the jester shared with the favourite dogs, of whom, as we have already noticed, there were several in attendance. here sat wamba, with a small table before him, his heels tucked up against the bar of the chair, his cheeks sucked up so as to make his jaws resemble a pair of nut-crackers, and his eyes half-shut, yet watching with alertness every opportunity to exercise his licensed foolery. ``these truces with the infidels,'' he exclaimed, without caring how suddenly he interrupted the stately templar, ``make an old man of me!'' ``go to, knave, how so?'' said cedric, his features prepared to receive favourably the expected jest. ``because,'' answered wamba, ``i remember three of them in my day, each of which was to endure for the course of fifty years; so that, by computation, i must be at least a hundred and fifty years old.'' ``i will warrant you against dying of old age, however,'' said the templar, who now recognised his friend of the forest; ``i will assure you from all deaths but a violent one, if you give such directions to wayfarers, as you did this night to the prior and me.'' ``how, sirrah!'' said cedric, ``misdirect travellers? we must have you whipt; you are at least as much rogue as fool.'' ``i pray thee, uncle,'' answered the jester, ``let my folly, for once, protect my roguery. i did but make a mistake between my right hand and my left; and he might have pardoned a greater, who took a fool for his counsellor and guide.'' conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of the porter's page, who announced that there was a stranger at the gate, imploring admittance and hospitality, ``admit him,'' said cedric, ``be he who or what he may;---a night like that which roars without, compels even wild animals to herd with tame, and to seek the protection of man, their mortal foe, rather than perish by the elements. let his wants be ministered to with all care---look to it, oswald.'' and the steward left the banqueting hall to see the commands of his patron obeyed. chapter v. hath not a jew eyes? hath not a jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a christian is? _merchant of venice_. oswald, returning, whispered into the ear of his master, ``it is a jew, who calls himself isaac of york; is it fit i should marshall him into the hall?'' ``let gurth do thine office, oswald,'' said wamba with his usual effrontery; ``the swineherd will be a fit usher to the jew.'' ``st mary,'' said the abbot, crossing himself, ``an unbelieving jew, and admitted into this presence!'' ``a dog jew,'' echoed the templar, ``to approach a defender of the holy sepulchre?'' ``by my faith,'' said wamba, ``it would seem the templars love the jews' inheritance better than they do their company.'' ``peace, my worthy guests,'' said cedric; ``my hospitality must not be bounded by your dislikes. if heaven bore with the whole nation of stiff-necked unbelievers for more years than a layman can number, we may endure the presence of one jew for a few hours. but i constrain no man to converse or to feed with him.---let him have a board and a morsel apart,---unless,'' he said smiling, ``these turban'd strangers will admit his society.'' ``sir franklin,'' answered the templar, ``my saracen slaves are true moslems, and scorn as much as any christian to hold intercourse with a jew.'' ``now, in faith,'' said wamba, ``i cannot see that the worshippers of mahound and termagaunt have so greatly the advantage over the people once chosen of heaven.'' ``he shall sit with thee, wamba,'' said cedric; ``the fool and the knave will be well met.'' ``the fool,'' answered wamba, raising the relics of a gammon of bacon, ``will take care to erect a bulwark against the knave.'' ``hush,'' said cedric, ``for here he comes.'' introduced with little ceremony, and advancing with fear and hesitation, and many a bow of deep humility, a tall thin old man, who, however, had lost by the habit of stooping much of his actual height, approached the lower end of the board. his features, keen and regular, with an aquiline nose, and piercing black eyes; his high and wrinkled forehead, and long grey hair and beard, would have been considered as handsome, had they not been the marks of a physiognomy peculiar to a race, which, during those dark ages, was alike detested by the credulous and prejudiced vulgar, and persecuted by the greedy and rapacious nobility, and who, perhaps, owing to that very hatred and persecution, had adopted a national character, in which there was much, to say the least, mean and unamiable. the jew's dress, which appeared to have suffered considerably from the storm, was a plain russet cloak of many folds, covering a dark purple tunic. he had large boots lined with fur, and a belt around his waist, which sustained a small knife, together with a case for writing materials, but no weapon. he wore a high square yellow cap of a peculiar fashion, assigned to his nation to distinguish them from christians, and which he doffed with great humility at the door of the hall. the reception of this person in the ball of cedric the saxon, was such as might have satisfied the most prejudiced enemy of the tribes of israel. cedric himself coldly nodded in answer to the jew's repeated salutations, and signed to him to take place at the lower end of the table, where, however, no one offered to make room for him. on the contrary, as he passed along the file, casting a timid supplicating glance, and turning towards each of those who occupied the lower end of the board, the saxon domestics squared their shoulders, and continued to devour their supper with great perseverance, paying not the least attention to the wants of the new guest. the attendants of the abbot crossed themselves, with looks of pious horror, and the very heathen saracens, as isaac drew near them, curled up their whiskers with indignation, and laid their hands on their poniards, as if ready to rid themselves by the most desperate means from the apprehended contamination of his nearer approach. probably the same motives which induced cedric to open his hall to this son of a rejected people, would have made him insist on his attendants receiving isaac with more courtesy. but the abbot had, at this moment, engaged him in a most interesting discussion on the breed and character of his favourite hounds, which he would not have interrupted for matters of much greater importance than that of a jew going to bed supperless. while isaac thus stood an outcast in the present society, like his people among the nations, looking in vain for welcome or resting place, the pilgrim who sat by the chimney took compassion upon him, and resigned his seat, saying briefly, ``old man, my garments are dried, my hunger is appeased, thou art both wet and fasting.'' so saying, he gathered together, and brought to a flame, the decaying brands which lay scattered on the ample hearth; took from the larger board a mess of pottage and seethed kid, placed it upon the small table at which he had himself supped, and, without waiting the jew's thanks, went to the other side of the hall;---whether from unwillingness to hold more close communication with the object of his benevolence, or from a wish to draw near to the upper end of the table, seemed uncertain. had there been painters in those days capable to execute such a subject, the jew, as he bent his withered form, and expanded his chilled and trembling hands over the fire, would have formed no bad emblematical personification of the winter season. having dispelled the cold, he turned eagerly to the smoking mess which was placed before him, and ate with a haste and an apparent relish, that seemed to betoken long abstinence from food. meanwhile the abbot and cedric continued their discourse upon hunting; the lady rowena seemed engaged in conversation with one of her attendant females; and the haughty templar, whose eye wandered from the jew to the saxon beauty, revolved in his mind thoughts which appeared deeply to interest him. ``i marvel, worthy cedric,'' said the abbot, as their discourse proceeded, ``that, great as your predilection is for your own manly language, you do not receive the norman-french into your favour, so far at least as the mystery of wood-craft and hunting is concerned. surely no tongue is so rich in the various phrases which the field-sports demand, or furnishes means to the experienced woodman so well to express his jovial art.'' `good father aymer,'' said the saxon, ``be it known to you, i care not for those over-sea refinements, without which i can well enough take my pleasure in the woods. i can wind my horn, though i call not the blast either a _recheate_ or a _morte_---i can cheer my dogs on the prey, and i can flay and quarter the animal when it is brought down, without using the newfangled jargon of _curee, arbor, nombles_, and all the babble of the fabulous sir tristrem.''* * there was no language which the normans more formally * separated from that of common life than the terms of the chase. * the objects of their pursuit, whether bird or animal, changed * their name each year, and there were a hundred conventional * terms, to be ignorant of which was to be without one of the distinguishing * marks of a gentleman. the reader may consult dame * juliana berners' book on the subject. the origin of this science * was imputed to the celebrated sir tristrem, famous for his tragic * intrigue with the beautiful ysolte. as the normans reserved * the amusement of hunting strictly to themselves, the terms * of this formal jargon were all taken from the french language. ``the french,'' said the templar, raising his voice with the presumptuous and authoritative tone which he used upon all occasions, ``is not only the natural language of the chase, but that of love and of war, in which ladies should be won and enemies defied.'' ``pledge me in a cup of wine, sir templar,'' said cedric, ``and fill another to the abbot, while i look back some thirty years to tell you another tale. as cedric the saxon then was, his plain english tale needed no garnish from french troubadours, when it was told in the ear of beauty; and the field of northallerton, upon the day of the holy standard, could tell whether the saxon war-cry was not heard as far within the ranks of the scottish host as the _cri de guerre_ of the boldest norman baron. to the memory of the brave who fought there!--pledge me, my guests.'' he drank deep, and went on with increasing warmth. ``ay, that was a day of cleaving of shields, when a hundred banners were bent forwards over the heads of the valiant, and blood flowed round like water, and death was held better than flight. a saxon bard had called it a feast of the swords---a gathering of the eagles to the prey---the clashing of bills upon shield and helmet, the shouting of battle more joyful than the clamour of a bridal. but our bards are no more,'' he said; ``our deeds are lost in those of another race---our language---our very name---is hastening to decay, and none mourns for it save one solitary old man---cupbearer! knave, fill the goblets---to the strong in arms, sir templar, be their race or language what it will, who now bear them best in palestine among the champions of the cross!'' ``it becomes not one wearing this badge to answer,'' said sir brian de bois-guilbert; ``yet to whom, besides the sworn champions of the holy sepulchre, can the palm be assigned among the champions of the cross?'' ``to the knights hospitallers,'' said the abbot; ``i have a brother of their order.'' ``i impeach not their fame,'' said the templar; ``nevertheless------'' ``i think, friend cedric,'' said wamba, interfering, ``that had richard of the lion's heart been wise enough to have taken a fool's advice, he might have staid at home with his merry englishmen, and left the recovery of jerusalem to those same knights who had most to do with the loss of it.'' ``were there, then, none in the english army,'' said the lady rowena, ``whose names are worthy to be mentioned with the knights of the temple, and of st john?'' `` forgive me, lady,'' replied de bois-guilbert; ``the english monarch did, indeed, bring to palestine a host of gallant warriors, second only to those whose breasts have been the unceasing bulwark of that blessed land.'' ``second to =none=,'' said the pilgrim, who had stood near enough to hear, and had listened to this conversation with marked impatience. all turned toward the spot from whence this unexpected asseveration was heard. ``i say,'' repeated the pilgrim in a firm and strong voice, ``that the english chivalry were second to =none= who ever drew sword in defence of the holy land. i say besides, for i saw it, that king richard himself, and five of his knights, held a tournament after the taking of st john-de-acre, as challengers against all comers. i say that, on that day, each knight ran three courses, and cast to the ground three antagonists. i add, that seven of these assailants were knights of the temple---and sir brian de bois-guilbert well knows the truth of what i tell you.'' it is impossible for language to describe the bitter scowl of rage which rendered yet darker the swarthy countenance of the templar. in the extremity of his resentment and confusion, his quivering fingers griped towards the handle of his sword, and perhaps only withdrew, from the consciousness that no act of violence could be safely executed in that place and presence. cedric, whose feelings were all of a right onward and simple kind, and were seldom occupied by more than one object at once, omitted, in the joyous glee with which be heard of the glory of his countrymen, to remark the angry confusion of his guest; ``i would give thee this golden bracelet, pilgrim,'' he said, ``couldst thou tell me the names of those knights who upheld so gallantly the renown of merry england.'' ``that will i do blithely,'' replied the pilgrim, ``and without guerdon; my oath, for a time, prohibits me from touching gold.'' ``i will wear the bracelet for you, if you will, friend palmer,'' said wamba. ``the first in honour as in arms, in renown as in place,'' said the pilgrim, ``was the brave richard, king of england.'' ``i forgive him,'' said cedric; ``i forgive him his descent from the tyrant duke william.'' ``the earl of leicester was the second,'' continued the pilgrim; ``sir thomas multon of gilsland was the third.'' ``of saxon descent, he at least,'' said cedric, with exultation. ``sir foulk doilly the fourth,'' proceeded the pilgrim. ``saxon also, at least by the mother's side,'' continued cedric, who listened with the utmost eagerness, and forgot, in part at least, his hatred to the normans, in the common triumph of the king of england and his islanders. ``and who was the fifth?'' he demanded. ``the fifth was sir edwin turneham.'' ``genuine saxon, by the soul of hengist!'' shouted cedric---``and the sixth?'' he continued with eagerness---``how name you the sixth?'' ``the sixth,'' said the palmer, after a pause, in which he seemed to recollect himself, ``was a young knight of lesser renown and lower rank, assumed into that honourable company, less to aid their enterprise than to make up their number---his name dwells not in my memory.'' ``sir palmer,'' said sir brian de bois-guilbert scornfully, ``this assumed forgetfulness, after so much has been remembered, comes too late to serve your purpose. i will myself tell the name of the knight before whose lance fortune and my horse's fault occasioned my falling---it was the knight of ivanhoe; nor was there one of the six that, for his years, had more renown in arms.---yet this will i say, and loudly---that were he in england, and durst repeat, in this week's tournament, the challenge of st john-de-acre, i, mounted and armed as i now am, would give him every advantage of weapons, and abide the result.'' ``your challenge would soon be answered,'' replied the palmer, ``were your antagonist near you. as the matter is, disturb not the peaceful hall with vaunts of the issue of the conflict, which you well know cannot take place. if ivanhoe ever returns from palestine, i will be his surety that he meets you.'' ``a goodly security!'' said the knight templar; ``and what do you proffer as a pledge?'' ``this reliquary,'' said the palmer, taking a small ivory box from his bosom, and crossing himself, ``containing a portion of the true cross, brought from the monastery of mount carmel.'' the prior of jorvaulx crossed himself and repeated a pater noster, in which all devoutly joined, excepting the jew, the mahomedans, and the templar; the latter of whom, without vailing his bonnet, or testifying any reverence for the alleged sanctity of the relic, took from his neck a gold chain, which he flung on the board, saying---``let prior aymer hold my pledge and that of this nameless vagrant, in token that when the knight of ivanhoe comes within the four seas of britain, he underlies the challenge of brian de bois-guilbert, which, if he answer not, i will proclaim him as a coward on the walls of every temple court in europe.'' ``it will not need,'' said the lady rowena, breaking silence; ``my voice shall be heard, if no other in this hall is raised in behalf of the absent ivanhoe. i affirm he will meet fairly every honourable challenge. could my weak warrant add security to the inestimable pledge of this holy pilgrim, i would pledge name and fame that ivanhoe gives this proud knight the meeting he desires.'' a crowd of conflicting emotions seemed to have occupied cedric, and kept him silent during this discussion. gratified pride, resentment, embarrassment, chased each other over his broad and open brow, like the shadow of clouds drifting over a harvest-field; while his attendants, on whom the name of the sixth knight seemed to produce an effect almost electrical, hung in suspense upon their master's looks. but when rowena spoke, the sound of her voice seemed to startle him from his silence. ``lady,'' said cedric, ``this beseems not; were further pledge necessary, i myself, offended, and justly offended, as i am, would yet gage my honour for the honour of ivanhoe. but the wager of battle is complete, even according to the fantastic fashions of norman chivalry---is it not, father aymer?'' ``it is,'' replied the prior; ``and the blessed relic and rich chain will i bestow safely in the treasury of our convent, until the decision of this, warlike challenge.'' having thus spoken, he crossed himself again and again, and after many genuflections and muttered prayers, he delivered the reliquary to brother ambrose, his attendant monk, while he himself swept up with less ceremony, but perhaps with no less internal satisfaction, the golden chain, and bestowed it in a pouch lined with perfumed leather, which opened under his arm. ``and now, sir cedric,'' he said, ``my ears are chiming vespers with the strength of your good wine---permit us another pledge to the welfare of the lady rowena, and indulge us with liberty to pass to our repose.'' ``by the rood of bromholme,'' said the saxon, ``you do but small credit to your fame, sir prior! report speaks you a bonny monk, that would hear the matin chime ere he quitted his bowl; and, old as i am, i feared to have shame in encountering you. but, by my faith, a saxon boy of twelve, in my time, would not so soon have relinquished his goblet.'' the prior had his own reasons, however, for persevering in the course of temperance which he had adopted. he was not only a professional peacemaker, but from practice a hater of all feuds and brawls. it was not altogether from a love to his neighbour, or to himself, or from a mixture of both. on the present occasion, he had an instinctive apprehension of the fiery temper of the saxon, and saw the danger that the reckless and presumptuous spirit, of which his companion had already given so many proofs, might at length produce some disagreeable explosion. he therefore gently insinuated the incapacity of the native of any other country to engage in the genial conflict of the bowl with the hardy and strong-headed saxons; something he mentioned, but slightly, about his own holy character, and ended by pressing his proposal to depart to repose. the grace-cup was accordingly served round, and the guests, after making deep obeisance to their landlord and to the lady rowena, arose and mingled in the hall, while the heads of the family, by separate doors, retired with their attendants. ``unbelieving dog,'' said the templar to isaac the jew, as he passed him in the throng, ``dost thou bend thy course to the tournament?'' ``i do so propose,'' replied isaac, bowing in all humility, ``if it please your reverend valour.'' ``ay,'' said the knight, ``to gnaw the bowels of our nobles with usury, and to gull women and boys with gauds and toys---i warrant thee store of shekels in thy jewish scrap.'' ``not a shekel, not a silver penny, not a halfling--so help me the god of abraham!'' said the jew, clasping his hands; ``i go but to seek the assistance of some brethren of my tribe to aid me to pay the fine which the exchequer of the jews* * in those days the jews were subjected to an exchequer, * specially dedicated to that purpose, and which laid them under * the most exorbitant impositions.---l. t. have imposed upon me---father jacob be my speed! i am an impoverished wretch---the very gaberdine i wear is borrowed from reuben of tadcaster.'' the templar smiled sourly as he replied, ``beshrew thee for a false-hearted liar!'' and passing onward, as if disdaining farther conference, he communed with his moslem slaves in a language unknown to the bystanders. the poor israelite seemed so staggered by the address of the military monk, that the templar had passed on to the extremity of the hall ere he raised his head from the humble posture which he had assumed, so far as to be sensible of his departure. and when he did look around, it was with the astonished air of one at whose feet a thunderbolt has just burst, and who hears still the astounding report ringing in his ears. the templar and prior were shortly after marshalled to their sleeping apartments by the steward and the cupbearer, each attended by two torchbearers and two servants carrying refreshments, while servants of inferior condition indicated to their retinue and to the other guests their respective places of repose. chapter vi. to buy his favour i extend this friendship: if he will take it, so; if not, adieu; and, for my love, i pray you wrong me not. _merchant of venice_. as the palmer, lighted by a domestic with a torch, past through the intricate combination of apartments of this large and irregular mansion, the cupbearer coming behind him whispered in his ear, that if he had no objection to a cup of good mead in his apartment, there were many domestics in that family who would gladly hear the news he had brought from the holy land, and particularly that which concerned the knight of ivanhoe. wamba presently appeared to urge the same request, observing that a cup after midnight was worth three after curfew. without disputing a maxim urged by such grave authority, the palmer thanked them for their courtesy, but observed that he had included in his religious vow, an obligation never to speak in the kitchen on matters which were prohibited in the hall. ``that vow,'' said wamba to the cupbearer, ``would scarce suit a serving-man.'' the cupbearer shrugged up his shoulders in displeasure. ``i thought to have lodged him in the solere chamber,'' said he; ``but since he is so unsocial to christians, e'en let him take the next stall to isaac the jew's.---anwold,'' said he to the torchbearer, ``carry the pilgrim to the southern cell.--i give you good-night,'' he added, ``sir palmer, with small thanks for short courtesy.'' ``good-night, and our lady's benison,'' said the palmer, with composure; and his guide moved forward. in a small antechamber, into which several doors opened, and which was lighted by a small iron lamp, they met a second interruption from the waiting-maid of rowena, who, saying in a tone of authority, that her mistress desired to speak with the palmer, took the torch from the hand of anwold, and, bidding him await her return, made a sign to the palmer to follow. apparently he did not think it proper to decline this invitation as he had done the former; for, though his gesture indicated some surprise at the summons, he obeyed it without answer or remonstrance. a short passage, and an ascent of seven steps, each of which was composed of a solid beam of oak, led him to the apartment of the lady rowena, the rude magnificence of which corresponded to the respect which was paid to her by the lord of the mansion. the walls were covered with embroidered hangings, on which different-coloured silks, interwoven with gold and silver threads, had been employed with all the art of which the age was capable, to represent the sports of hunting and hawking. the bed was adorned with the same rich tapestry, and surrounded with curtains dyed with purple. the seats had also their stained coverings, and one, which was higher than the rest, was accommodated with a footstool of ivory, curiously carved. no fewer than four silver candelabras, holding great waxen torches, served to illuminate this apartment. yet let not modern beauty envy the magnificence of a saxon princess. the walls of the apartment were so ill finished and so full of crevices, that the rich hangings shook in the night blast, and, in despite of a sort of screen intended to protect them from the wind, the flame of the torches streamed sideways into the air, like the unfurled pennon of a chieftain. magnificence there was, with some rude attempt at taste; but of comfort there was little, and, being unknown, it was unmissed. the lady rowena, with three of her attendants standing at her back, and arranging her hair ere she lay down to rest, was seated in the sort of throne already mentioned, and looked as if born to exact general homage. the pilgrim acknowledged her claim to it by a low genuflection. ``rise, palmer,'' said she graciously. ``the defender of the absent has a right to favourable reception from all who value truth, and honour manhood.'' she then said to her train, ``retire, excepting only elgitha; i would speak with this holy pilgrim.'' the maidens, without leaving the apartment, retired to its further extremity, and sat down on a small bench against the wall, where they remained mute as statues, though at such a distance that their whispers could not have interrupted the conversation of their mistress. ``pilgrim,'' said the lady, after a moment's pause, during which she seemed uncertain how to address him, ``you this night mentioned a name---i mean,'' she said, with a degree of effort, ``the name of ivanhoe, in the halls where by nature and kindred it should have sounded most acceptably; and yet, such is the perverse course of fate, that of many whose hearts must have throbbed at the sound, i, only, dare ask you where, and in what condition, you left him of whom you spoke?---we heard, that, having remained in palestine, on account of his impaired health, after the departure of the english army, he had experienced the persecution of the french faction, to whom the templars are known to be attached.'' ``i know little of the knight of ivanhoe,'' answered the palmer, with a troubled voice. ``i would i knew him better, since you, lady, are interested in his fate. he hath, i believe, surmounted the persecution of his enemies in palestine, and is on the eve of returning to england, where you, lady, must know better than i, what is his chance of happiness.'' the lady rowena sighed deeply, and asked more particularly when the knight of ivanhoe might be expected in his native country, and whether he would not be exposed to great dangers by the road. on the first point, the palmer professed ignorance; on the second, he said that the voyage might be safely made by the way of venice and genoa, and from thence through france to england. ``ivanhoe,'' he said, ``was so well acquainted with the language and manners of the french, that there was no fear of his incurring any hazard during that part of his travels.'' ``would to god,'' said the lady rowena, ``he were here safely arrived, and able to bear arms in the approaching tourney, in which the chivalry of this land are expected to display their address and valour. should athelstane of coningsburgh obtain the prize, ivanhoe is like to hear evil tidings when he reaches england.---how looked he, stranger, when you last saw him? had disease laid her hand heavy upon his strength and comeliness?'' ``he was darker,'' said the palmer, ``and thinner, than when he came from cyprus in the train of c<oe>ur-de-lion, and care seemed to sit heavy on his brow; but i approached not his presence, because he is unknown to me.'' ``he will,'' said the lady, ``i fear, find little in his native land to clear those clouds from his countenance. thanks, good pilgrim, for your information concerning the companion of my childhood. ---maidens,'' she said, ``draw near---offer the sleeping cup to this holy man, whom i will no longer detain from repose.'' one of the maidens presented a silver cup, containing a rich mixture of wine and spice, which rowena barely put to her lips. it was then offered to the palmer, who, after a low obeisance, tasted a few drops. ``accept this alms, friend,'' continued the lady, offering a piece of gold, ``in acknowledgment of thy painful travail, and of the shrines thou hast visited.'' the palmer received the boon with another low reverence, and followed edwina out of the apartment. in the anteroom he found his attendant anwold, who, taking the torch from the hand of the waiting-maid, conducted him with more haste than ceremony to an exterior and ignoble part of the building, where a number of small apartments, or rather cells, served for sleeping places to the lower order of domestics, and to strangers of mean degree. ``in which of these sleeps the jew?'' said the pilgrim. ``the unbelieving dog,'' answered anwold, kennels in the cell next your holiness.---st dunstan, how it must be scraped and cleansed ere it be again fit for a christian!'' ``and where sleeps gurth the swineherd?'' said the stranger. ``gurth,'' replied the bondsman, ``sleeps in the cell on your right, as the jew on that to your left; you serve to keep the child of circumcision separate from the abomination of his tribe. you might have occupied a more honourable place had you accepted of oswald's invitation.'' ``it is as well as it is,'' said the palmer; ``the company, even of a jew, can hardly spread contamination through an oaken partition.'' so saying, he entered the cabin allotted to him, and taking the torch from the domestic's hand, thanked him, and wished him good-night. having shut the door of his cell, he placed the torch in a candlestick made of wood, and looked around his sleeping apartment, the furniture of which was of the most simple kind. it consisted of a rude wooden stool, and still ruder hutch or bed-frame, stuffed with clean straw, and accommodated with two or three sheepskins by way of bed-clothes. the palmer, having extinguished his torch, threw himself, without taking off any part of his clothes, on this rude couch, and slept, or at least retained his recumbent posture, till the earliest sunbeams found their way through the little grated window, which served at once to admit both air and light to his uncomfortable cell. he then started up, and after repeating his matins, and adjusting his dress, he left it, and entered that of isaac the jew, lifting the latch as gently as he could. the inmate was lying in troubled slumber upon a couch similar to that on which the palmer himself had passed the night. such parts of his dress as the jew had laid aside on the preceding evening, were disposed carefully around his person, as if to prevent the hazard of their being carried off during his slumbers. there was a trouble on his brow amounting almost to agony. his hands and arms moved convulsively, as if struggling with the nightmare; and besides several ejaculations in hebrew, the following were distinctly heard in the norman-english, or mixed language of the country: ``for the sake of the god of abraham, spare an unhappy old man! i am poor, i am penniless ---should your irons wrench my limbs asunder, i could not gratify you!'' the palmer awaited not the end of the jew's vision, but stirred him with his pilgrim's staff. the touch probably associated, as is usual, with some of the apprehensions excited by his dream; for the old man started up, his grey hair standing almost erect upon his head, and huddling some part of his garments about him, while he held the detached pieces with the tenacious grasp of a falcon, he fixed upon the palmer his keen black eyes, expressive of wild surprise and of bodily apprehension. ``fear nothing from me, isaac,'' said the palmer, ``i come as your friend.'' ``the god of israel requite you,'' said the jew, greatly relieved; ``i dreamed---but father abraham be praised, it was but a dream.'' then, collecting himself, he added in his usual tone, ``and what may it be your pleasure to want at so early an hour with the poor jew?'' ``it is to tell you,'' said the palmer, ``that if you leave not this mansion instantly, and travel not with some haste, your journey may prove a dangerous one.'' ``holy father!'' said the jew, ``whom could it interest to endanger so poor a wretch as i am?'' ``the purpose you can best guess,'' said the pilgrim; ``but rely on this, that when the templar crossed the hall yesternight, he spoke to his mussulman slaves in the saracen language, which i well understand, and charged them this morning to watch the journey of the jew, to seize upon him when at a convenient distance from the mansion, and to conduct him to the castle of philip de malvoisin, or to that of reginald front-de-b<oe>uf.'' it is impossible to describe the extremity of terror which seized upon the jew at this information, and seemed at once to overpower his whole faculties. his arms fell down to his sides, and his head drooped on his breast, his knees bent under his weight, every nerve and muscle of his frame seemed to collapse and lose its energy, and he sunk at the foot of the palmer, not in the fashion of one who intentionally stoops, kneels, or prostrates himself to excite compassion, but like a man borne down on all sides by the pressure of some invisible force, which crushes him to the earth without the power of resistance. ``holy god of abraham!'' was his first exclamation, folding and elevating his wrinkled hands, but without raising his grey head from the pavement; ``oh, holy moses! o, blessed aaron! the dream is not dreamed for nought, and the vision cometh not in vain! i feel their irons already tear my sinews! i feel the rack pass over my body like the saws, and harrows, and axes of iron over the men of rabbah, and of the cities of the children of ammon!'' ``stand up, isaac, and hearken to me,'' said the palmer, who viewed the extremity of his distress with a compassion in which contempt was largely mingled; ``you have cause for your terror, considering how your brethren have been used, in order to extort from them their hoards, both by princes and nobles; but stand up, i say, and i will point out to you the means of escape. leave this mansion instantly, while its inmates sleep sound after the last night's revel. i will guide you by the secret paths of the forest, known as well to me as to any forester that ranges it, and i will not leave you till you are under safe conduct of some chief or baron going to the tournament, whose good-will you have probably the means of securing.'' as the ears of isaac received the hopes of escape which this speech intimated, he began gradually, and inch by inch, as it were, to raise himself up from the ground, until he fairly rested upon his knees, throwing back his long grey hair and beard, and fixing his keen black eyes upon the palmer's face, with a look expressive at once of hope and fear, not unmingled with suspicion. but when he heard the concluding part of the sentence, his original terror appeared to revive in full force, and he dropt once more on his face, exclaiming, ``_i_ possess the means of securing good-will! alas! there is but one road to the favour of a christian, and how can the poor jew find it, whom extortions have already reduced to the misery of lazarus?'' then, as if suspicion had overpowered his other feelings, he suddenly exclaimed, ``for the love of god, young man, betray me not---for the sake of the great father who made us all, jew as well as gentile, israelite and ishmaelite---do me no treason! i have not means to secure the good-will of a christian beggar, were he rating it at a single penny.'' as he spoke these last words, he raised himself, and grasped the palmer's mantle with a look of the most earnest entreaty. the pilgrim extricated himself, as if there were contamination in the touch. ``wert thou loaded with all the wealth of thy tribe,'' he said, ``what interest have i to injure thee?---in this dress i am vowed to poverty, nor do i change it for aught save a horse and a coat of mail. yet think not that i care for thy company, or propose myself advantage by it; remain here if thou wilt---cedric the saxon may protect thee.'' ``alas!'' said the jew, ``he will not let me travel in his train---saxon or norman will be equally ashamed of the poor israelite; and to travel by myself through the domains of philip de malvoisin and reginald front-de-b<oe>uf---good youth, i will go with you!---let us haste---let us gird up our loins---let us flee!---here is thy staff, why wilt thou tarry?'' ``i tarry not,'' said the pilgrim, giving way to the urgency of his companion; ``but i must secure the means of leaving this place---follow me.'' he led the way to the adjoining cell, which, as the reader is apprised, was occupied by gurth the swineherd.---``arise, gurth,'' said the pilgrim, ``arise quickly. undo the postern gate, and let out the jew and me.'' gurth, whose occupation, though now held so mean, gave him as much consequence in saxon england as that of eumaeus in ithaca, was offended at the familiar and commanding tone assumed by the palmer. ``the jew leaving rotherwood,'' said he, raising himself on his elbow, and looking superciliously at him without quitting his pallet, ``and travelling in company with the palmer to boot---'' ``i should as soon have dreamt,'' said wamba, who entered the apartment at the instant, ``of his stealing away with a gammon of bacon.'' ``nevertheless,'' said gurth, again laying down his head on the wooden log which served him for a pillow, ``both jew and gentile must be content to abide the opening of the great gate---we suffer no visitors to depart by stealth at these unseasonable hours.'' ``nevertheless,'' said the pilgrim, in a commanding tone, ``you will not, i think, refuse me that favour.'' so saying, he stooped over the bed of the recumbent swineherd, and whispered something in his ear in saxon. gurth started up as if electrified. the pilgrim, raising his finger in an attitude as if to express caution, added, ``gurth, beware---thou are wont to be prudent. i say, undo the postern--thou shalt know more anon.'' with hasty alacrity gurth obeyed him, while and the jew followed, both wondering at the sudden change in the swineherd's demeanour. ``my mule, my mule!'' said the jew, as soon as they stood without the postern. ``fetch him his mule,'' said the pilgrim; ``and, hearest thou,---let me have another, that i may bear him company till he is beyond these parts---i will return it safely to some of cedric's train at ashby. and do thou''---he whispered the rest in gurth's ear. ``willingly, most willingly shall it be done,'' said gurth, and instantly departed to execute the commission. ``i wish i knew,'' said wamba, when his comrade's back was turned, ``what you palmers learn in the holy land.'' ``to say our orisons, fool,'' answered the pilgrim, ``to repent our sins, and to mortify ourselves with fastings, vigils, and long prayers.'' ``something more potent than that,'' answered the jester; ``for when would repentance or prayer make gurth do a courtesy, or fasting or vigil persuade him to lend you a mule?---l trow you might as well have told his favourite black boar of thy vigils and penance, and wouldst have gotten as civil an answer.'' ``go to,'' said the pilgrim, ``thou art but a saxon fool.'' ``thou sayst well.'' said the jester; ``had i been born a norman, as i think thou art, i would have had luck on my side, and been next door to a wise man.'' at this moment gurth appeared on the opposite side of the moat with the mules. the travellers crossed the ditch upon a drawbridge of only two planks breadth, the narrowness of which was matched with the straitness of the postern, and with a little wicket in the exterior palisade, which gave access to the forest. no sooner had they reached the mules, than the jew, with hasty and trembling hands, secured behind the saddle a small bag of blue buckram, which he took from under his cloak, containing, as be muttered, ``a change of raiment ---only a change of raiment.'' then getting upon the animal with more alacrity and haste than could have been anticipated from his years, he lost no time in so disposing of the skirts of his gabardine as to conceal completely from observation the burden which he had thus deposited _en croupe_. the pilgrim mounted with more deliberation, reaching, as he departed, his hand to gurth, who kissed it with the utmost possible veneration. the swineherd stood gazing after the travellers until they were lost under the boughs of the forest path, when he was disturbed from his reverie by the voice of wamba. ``knowest thou,'' said the jester, ``my good friend gurth, that thou art strangely courteous and most unwontedly pious on this summer morning? i would i were a black prior or a barefoot palmer, to avail myself of thy unwonted zeal and courtesy ---certes, i would make more out of it than a kiss of the hand.'' ``thou art no fool thus far, wamba,'' answered gurth, ``though thou arguest from appearances, and the wisest of us can do no more---but it is time to look after my charge.'' so saying, he turned back to the mansion, attended by the jester. meanwhile the travellers continued to press on their journey with a dispatch which argued the extremity of the jew's fears, since persons at his age are seldom fond of rapid motion, the palmer, to whom every path and outlet in the wood appeared to be familiar, led the way through the most devious paths, and more than once excited anew the suspicion of the israelite, that he intended to betray him into some ambuscade of his enemies. his doubts might have been indeed pardoned; for, except perhaps the flying fish, there was no race existing on the earth, in the air, or the waters, who were the object of such an unintermitting, general, and relentless persecution as the jews of this period. upon the slightest and most unreasonable pretences, as well as upon accusations the most absurd and groundless, their persons and property were exposed to every turn of popular fury; for norman, saxon, dane, and briton, however adverse these races were to each other, contended which should look with greatest detestation upon a people, whom it was accounted a point of religion to hate, to revile, to despise, to plunder, and to persecute. the kings of the norman race, and the independent nobles, who followed their example in all acts of tyranny, maintained against this devoted people a persecution of a more regular, calculated, and self-interested kind. it is a well-known story of king john, that he confined a wealthy jew in one of the royal castles, and daily caused one of his teeth to be torn out, until, when the jaw of the unhappy israelite was half disfurnished, he consented to pay a large sum, which it was the tyrant's object to extort from him. the little ready money which was in the country was chiefly in possession of this persecuted people, and the nobility hesitated not to follow the example of their sovereign, in wringing it from them by every species of oppression, and even personal torture. yet the passive courage inspired by the love of gain, induced the jews to dare the various evils to which they were subjected, in consideration of the immense profits which they were enabled to realize in a country naturally so wealthy as england. in spite of every kind of discouragement, and even of the special court of taxations already mentioned, called the jews' exchequer, erected for the very purpose of despoiling and distressing them, the jews increased, multiplied, and accumulated huge sums, which they transferred from one hand to another by means of bills of exchange---an invention for which commerce is said to be indebted to them, and which enabled them to transfer their wealth from land to land, that when threatened with oppression in one country, their treasure might be secured in another. the obstinacy and avarice of the jews being thus in a measure placed in opposition to the fanaticism that tyranny of those under whom they lived, seemed to increase in proportion to the persecution with which they were visited; and the immense wealth they usually acquired in commerce, while it frequently placed them in danger, was at other times used to extend their influence, and to secure to them a certain degree of protection. on these terms they lived; and their character, influenced accordingly, was watchful, suspicious, and timid--yet obstinate, uncomplying, and skilful in evading the dangers to which they were exposed. when the travellers had pushed on at a rapid rate through many devious paths, the palmer at length broke silence. ``that large decayed oak,'' he said, ``marks the boundaries over which front-de-b<oe>uf claims authority--we are long since far from those of malvoisin. there is now no fear of pursuit.'' ``may the wheels of their chariots be taken off,'' said the jew, ``like those of the host of pharaoh, that they may drive heavily!---but leave me not, good pilgrim---think but of that fierce and savage templar, with his saracen slaves---they will regard neither territory, nor manor, nor lordship.'' ``our road,'' said the palmer, ``should here separate; for it beseems not men of my character and thine to travel together longer than needs must be. besides, what succour couldst thou have from me, a peaceful pilgrim, against two armed heathens?'' ``o good youth,'' answered the jew, ``thou canst defend me, and i know thou wouldst. poor as i am, i will requite it---not with money, for money, so help me my father abraham, i have none---but------'' ``money and recompense,'' said the palmer, interrupting him, ``i have already said i require not of thee. guide thee i can; and, it may be, even in some sort defend thee; since to protect a jew against a saracen, can scarce be accounted unworthy of a christian. therefore, jew, i will see thee safe under some fitting escort. we are now not far from the town of sheffield, where thou mayest easily find many of thy tribe with whom to take refuge.'' ``the blessing of jacob be upon thee, good youth!'' said the jew; ``in sheffield i can harbour with my kinsman zareth, and find some means of travelling forth with safety.'' ``be it so,'' said the palmer; ``at sheffield then we part, and half-an-hour's riding will bring us in sight of that town.'' the half hour was spent in perfect silence on both parts; the pilgrim perhaps disdaining to address the jew, except in case of absolute necessity, and the jew not presuming to force a conversation with a person whose journey to the holy sepulchre gave a sort of sanctity to his character. they paused on the top of a gently rising bank, and the pilgrim, pointing to the town of sheffield, which lay beneath them, repeated the words, ``here, then, we part.'' ``not till you have had the poor jew's thanks,'' said isaac; ``for i presume not to ask you to go with me to my kinsman zareth's, who might aid me with some means of repaying your good offices.'' ``i have already said,'' answered the pilgrim, ``that i desire no recompense. if among the huge list of thy debtors, thou wilt, for my sake, spare the gyves and the dungeon to some unhappy christian who stands in thy danger, i shall hold this morning's service to thee well bestowed.'' ``stay, stay,'' said the jew, laying hold of his garment; ``something would i do more than this, something for thyself.---god knows the jew is poor ---yes, isaac is the beggar of his tribe---but forgive me should i guess what thou most lackest at this moment.'' ``if thou wert to guess truly,'' said the palmer, ``it is what thou canst not supply, wert thou as wealthy as thou sayst thou art poor.' ``as i say?'' echoed the jew; ``o! believe it, i say but the truth; i am a plundered, indebted, distressed man. hard hands have wrung from me my goods, my money, my ships, and all that i possessed--yet i can tell thee what thou lackest, and, it may be, supply it too. thy wish even now is for a horse and armour.'' the palmer started, and turned suddenly towards the jew:---``what fiend prompted that guess?'' said he, hastily. ``no matter,'' said the jew, smiling, ``so that it be a true one---and, as i can guess thy want, so i can supply it.'' ``but consider,'' said the palmer, ``my character, my dress, my vow.'' ``i know you christians,'' replied the jew, ``and that the noblest of you will take the staff and sandal in superstitious penance, and walk afoot to visit the graves of dead men.'' ``blaspheme not, jew,'' said the pilgrim, sternly. ``forgive me,'' said the jew; ``i spoke rashly. but there dropt words from you last night and this morning, that, like sparks from flint, showed the metal within; and in the bosom of that palmer's gown, is hidden a knight's chain and spurs of gold. they glanced as you stooped over my bed in the morning.'' the pilgrim could not forbear smiling. ``were thy garments searched by as curious an eye, isaac,'' said he, ``what discoveries might not be made?'' ``no more of that,'' said the jew, changing colour; and drawing forth his writing materials in haste, as if to stop the conversation, he began to write upon a piece of paper which he supported on the top of his yellow cap, without dismounting from his mule. when he had finished, he delivered the scroll, which was in the hebrew character, to the pilgrim, saying, ``in the town of leicester all men know the rich jew, kirjath jairam of lombardy; give him this scroll---he hath on sale six milan harnesses, the worst would suit a crowned head---ten goodly steeds, the worst might mount a king, were he to do battle for his throne. of these he will give thee thy choice, with every thing else that can furnish thee forth for the tournament: when it is over, thou wilt return them safely---unless thou shouldst have wherewith to pay their value to the owner.'' ``but, isaac,'' said the pilgrim, smiling, ``dost thou know that in these sports, the arms and steed of the knight who is unhorsed are forfeit to his victor? now i may be unfortunate, and so lose what i cannot replace or repay.'' the jew looked somewhat astounded at this possibility; but collecting his courage, he replied hastily. ``no---no---no---it is impossible---i will not think so. the blessing of our father will be upon thee. thy lance will be powerful as the rod of moses.'' so saying, he was turning his mule's head away, when the palmer, in his turn, took hold of his gaberdine. ``nay, but isaac, thou knowest not all the risk. the steed may be slain, the armour injured--for i will spare neither horse nor man. besides, those of thy tribe give nothing for nothing; something there must be paid for their use.'' the jew twisted himself in the saddle, like a man in a fit of the colic; but his better feelings predominated over those which were most familiar to him. ``i care not,'' he said, ``i care not---let me go. if there is damage, it will cost you nothing--if there is usage money, kirjath jairam will forgive it for the sake of his kinsman isaac. fare thee well!---yet hark thee, good youth,'' said he, turning about, ``thrust thyself not too forward into this vain hurly-burly---i speak not for endangering the steed, and coat of armour, but for the sake of thine own life and limbs.'' ``gramercy for thy caution,'' said the palmer, again smiling; ``i will use thy courtesy frankly, and it will go hard with me but i will requite it.'' they parted, and took different roads for the town of sheffield. chapter vii. knights, with a long retinue of their squires, in gaudy liveries march and quaint attires; one laced the helm, another held the lance, a third the shining buckler did advance. the courser paw'd the ground with restless feet, and snorting foam'd and champ'd the golden bit. the smiths and armourers on palfreys ride, files in their hands, and hammers at their side; and nails for loosen'd spears, and thongs for shields provide. the yeomen guard the streets in seemly bands; and clowns come crowding on, with cudgels in their hands. _palamon and arcite_. the condition of the english nation was at this time sufficiently miserable. king richard was absent a prisoner, and in the power of the perfidious and cruel duke of austria. even the very place of his captivity was uncertain, and his fate but very imperfectly known to the generality of his subjects, who were, in the meantime, a prey to every species of subaltern oppression. prince john, in league with philip of france, c<oe>ur-de-lion's mortal enemy, was using every species of influence with the duke of austria, to prolong the captivity of his brother richard, to whom he stood indebted for so many favours. in the meantime, he was strengthening his own faction in the kingdom, of which he proposed to dispute the succession, in case of the king's death, with the legitimate heir, arthur duke of brittany, son of geoffrey plantagenet, the elder brother of john. this usurpation, it is well known, he afterwards effected. his own character being light, profligate, and perfidious, john easily attached to his person and faction, not only all who had reason to dread the resentment of richard for criminal proceedings during his absence, but also the numerous class of ``lawless resolutes,'' whom the crusades had turned back on their country, accomplished in the vices of the east, impoverished in substance, and hardened in character, and who placed their hopes of harvest in civil commotion. to these causes of public distress and apprehension, must be added, the multitude of outlaws, who, driven to despair by the oppression of the feudal nobility, and the severe exercise of the forest laws, banded together in large gangs, and, keeping possession of the forests and the wastes, set at defiance the justice and magistracy of the country. the nobles themselves, each fortified within his own castle, and playing the petty sovereign over his own dominions, were the leaders of bands scarce less lawless and oppressive than those of the avowed depredators. to maintain these retainers, and to support the extravagance and magnificence which their pride induced them to affect, the nobility borrowed sums of money from the jews at the most usurious interest, which gnawed into their estates like consuming cankers, scarce to be cured unless when circumstances gave them an opportunity of getting free, by exercising upon their creditors some act of unprincipled violence. under the various burdens imposed by this unhappy state of affairs, the people of england suffered deeply for the present, and had yet more dreadful cause to fear for the future. to augment their misery, a contagious disorder of a dangerous nature spread through the land; and, rendered more virulent by the uncleanness, the indifferent food, and the wretched lodging of the lower classes, swept off many whose fate the survivors were tempted to envy, as exempting them from the evils which were to come. yet amid these accumulated distresses, the poor as well as the rich, the vulgar as well as the noble, in the event of a tournament, which was the grand spectacle of that age, felt as much interested as the half-starved citizen of madrid, who has not a real left to buy provisions for his family, feels in the issue of a bull-feast. neither duty nor infirmity could keep youth or age from such exhibitions. the passage of arms, as it was called, which was to take place at ashby, in the county of leicester, as champions of the first renown were to take the field in the presence of prince john himself, who was expected to grace the lists, had attracted universal attention, and an immense confluence of persons of all ranks hastened upon the appointed morning to the place of combat. the scene was singularly romantic. on the verge of a wood, which approached to within a mile of the town of ashby, was an extensive meadow, of the finest and most beautiful green turf, surrounded on one side by the forest, and fringed on the other by straggling oak-trees, some of which had grown to an immense size. the ground, as if fashioned on purpose for the martial display which was intended, sloped gradually down on all sides to a level bottom, which was enclosed for the lists with strong palisades, forming a space of a quarter of a mile in length, and about half as broad. the form of the enclosure was an oblong square, save that the corners were considerably rounded off, in order to afford more convenience for the spectators. the openings for the entry of the combatants were at the northern and southern extremities of the lists, accessible by strong wooden gates, each wide enough to admit two horsemen riding abreast. at each of these portals were stationed two heralds, attended by six trumpets, as many pursuivants, and a strong body of men-at-arms for maintaining order, and ascertaining the quality of the knights who proposed to engage in this martial game. on a platform beyond the southern entrance, formed by a natural elevation of the ground, were pitched five magnificent pavilions, adorned with pennons of russet and black, the chosen colours of the five knights challengers. the cords of the tents were of the same colour. before each pavilion was suspended the shield of the knight by whom it was occupied, and beside it stood his squire, quaintly disguised as a salvage or silvan man, or in some other fantastic dress, according to the taste of his master, and the character he was pleased to assume daring the game.* the central pavilion, as the * this sort of masquerade is supposed to have occasioned the * introduction of supporters into the science of heraldry. place of honour, had been assigned to brian be bois-guilbert, whose renown in all games of chivalry, no less than his connexions with the knights who had undertaken this passage of arms, had occasioned him to be eagerly received into the company of the challengers, and even adopted as their chief and leader, though he had so recently joined them. on one side of his tent were pitched those of reginald front-de-b<oe>uf and richard de malvoisin, and on the other was the pavilion of hugh de grantmesnil, a noble baron in the vicinity, whose ancestor had been lord high steward of england in the time of the conqueror, and his son william rufus. ralph de vipont, a knight of st john of jerusalem, who had some ancient possessions at a place called heather, near ashby-de-la-zouche, occupied the fifth pavilion. from the entrance into the lists, a gently sloping passage, ten yards in breadth, led up to the platform on which the tents were pitched. it was strongly secured by a palisade on each side, as was the esplanade in front of the pavilions, and the whole was guarded by men-at-arms. the northern access to the lists terminated in a similar entrance of thirty feet in breadth, at the extremity of which was a large enclosed space for such knights as might be disposed to enter the lists with the challengers, behind which were placed tents containing refreshments of every kind for their accommodation, with armourers, tarriers, and other attendants, in readiness to give their services wherever they might be necessary. the exterior of the lists was in part occupied by temporary galleries, spread with tapestry and carpets, and accommodated with cushions for the convenience of those ladies and nobles who were expected to attend the tournament. a narrow space, betwixt these galleries and the lists, gave accommodation for yeomanry and spectators of a better degree than the mere vulgar, and might be compared to the pit of a theatre. the promiscuous multitude arranged themselves upon large banks of turf prepared for the purpose, which, aided by the natural elevation of the ground, enabled them to overlook the galleries, and obtain a fair view into the lists. besides the accommodation which these stations afforded, many hundreds had perched themselves on the branches of the trees which surrounded the meadow; and even the steeple of a country church, at some distance, was crowded with spectators. it only remains to notice respecting the general arrangement, that one gallery in the very centre of the eastern side of the lists, and consequently exactly opposite to the spot where the shock of the combat was to take place, was raised higher than the others, more richly decorated, and graced by a sort of throne and canopy, on which the royal arms were emblazoned. squires, pages, and yeomen in rich liveries, waited around this place of honour, which was designed for prince john and his attendants. opposite to this royal gallery was another, elevated to the same height, on the western side of the lists; and more gaily, if less sumptuously decorated, than that destined for the prince himself. a train of pages and of young maidens, the most beautiful who could be selected, gaily dressed in fancy habits of green and pink, surrounded a throne decorated in the same colours. among pennons and flags bearing wounded hearts, burning hearts, bleeding hearts, bows and quivers, and all the commonplace emblems of the triumphs of cupid, a blazoned inscription informed the spectators, that this seat of honour was designed for _la royne de la beault<e'> et des amours_. but who was to represent the queen of beauty and of love on the present occasion no one was prepared to guess. meanwhile, spectators of every description thronged forward to occupy their respective stations, and not without many quarrels concerning those which they were entitled to hold. some of these were settled by the men-at-arms with brief ceremony; the shafts of their battle-axes, and pummels of their swords, being readily employed as arguments to convince the more refractory. others, which involved the rival claims of more elevated persons, were determined by the heralds, or by the two marshals of the field, william de wyvil, and stephen de martival, who, armed at all points, rode up and down the lists to enforce and preserve good order among the spectators. gradually the galleries became filled with knights and nobles, in their robes of peace, whose long and rich-tinted mantles were contrasted with the gayer and more splendid habits of the ladies, who, in a greater proportion than even the men themselves, thronged to witness a sport, which one would have thought too bloody and dangerous to afford their sex much pleasure. the lower and interior space was soon filled by substantial yeomen and burghers, and such of the lesser gentry, as, from modesty, poverty, or dubious title, durst not assume any higher place. it was of course amongst these that the most frequent disputes for precedence occurred. ``dog of an unbeliever,'' said an old man, whose threadbare tunic bore witness to his poverty, as his sword, and dagger, and golden chain intimated his pretensions to rank,---``whelp of a she-wolf ! darest thou press upon a christian, and a norman gentleman of the blood of montdidier ?'' this rough expostulation was addressed to no other than our acquaintance isaac, who, richly and even magnificently dressed in a gaberdine ornamented with lace and lined with fur, was endeavouring to make place in the foremost row beneath the gallery for his daughter, the beautiful rebecca, who had joined him at ashby, and who was now hanging on her father's arm, not a little terrified by the popular displeasure which seemed generally excited by her parent's presumption. but isaac, though we have seen him sufficiently timid on other occasions, knew well that at present he had nothing to fear. it was not in places of general resort, or where their equals were assembled, that any avaricious or malevolent noble durst offer him injury. at such meetings the jews were under the protection of the general law; and if that proved a weak assurance, it usually happened that there were among the persons assembled some barons, who, for their own interested motives, were ready to act as their protectors. on the present occasion, isaac felt more than usually confident, being aware that prince john was even then in the very act of negotiating a large loan from the jews of york, to be secured upon certain jewels and lands. isaac's own share in this transaction was considerable, and he well knew that the prince's eager desire to bring it to a conclusion would ensure him his protection in the dilemma in which he stood. emboldened by these considerations, the jew pursued his point, and jostled the norman christian, without respect either to his descent, quality, or religion. the complaints of the old man, however, excited the indignation of the bystanders. one of these, a stout well-set yeoman, arrayed in lincoln green, having twelve arrows stuck in his belt, with a baldric and badge of silver, and a bow of six feet length in his hand, turned short round, and while his countenance, which his constant exposure to weather had rendered brown as a hazel nut, grew darker with anger, he advised the jew to remember that all the wealth he had acquired by sucking the blood of his miserable victims had but swelled him like a bloated spider, which might be overlooked while he kept in a comer, but would be crushed if it ventured into the light. this intimation, delivered in norman-english with a firm voice and a stern aspect, made the jew shrink back; and he would have probably withdrawn himself altogether from a vicinity so dangerous, had not the attention of every one been called to the sudden entrance of prince john, who at that moment entered the lists, attended by a numerous and gay train, consisting partly of laymen, partly of churchmen, as light in their dress, and as gay in their demeanour, as their companions. among the latter was the prior of jorvaulx, in the most gallant trim which a dignitary of the church could venture to exhibit. fur and gold were not spared in his garments; and the points of his boots, out-heroding the preposterous fashion of the time, turned up so very far, as to be attached, not to his knees merely, but to his very girdle, and effectually prevented him from putting his foot into the stirrup. this, however, was a slight inconvenience to the gallant abbot, who, perhaps, even rejoicing in the opportunity to display his accomplished horsemanship before so many spectators, especially of the fair sex, dispensed with the use of these supports to a timid rider. the rest of prince john's retinue consisted of the favourite leaders of his mercenary troops, some marauding barons and profligate attendants upon the court, with several knights templars and knights of st john. it may be here remarked, that the knights of these two orders were accounted hostile to king richard, having adopted the side of philip of france in the long train of disputes which took place in palestine betwixt that monarch and the lion-hearted king of england. it was the well-known consequence of this discord that richard's repeated victories had been rendered fruitless, his romantic attempts to besiege jerusalem disappointed, and the fruit of all the glory which he had acquired had dwindled into an uncertain truce with the sultan saladin. with the same policy which had dictated the conduct of their brethren in the holy land, the templars and hospitallers in england and normandy attached themselves to the faction of prince john, having little reason to desire the return of richard to england, or the succession of arthur, his legitimate heir. for the opposite reason, prince john hated and contemned the few saxon families of consequence which subsisted in england, and omitted no opportunity of mortifying and affronting them; being conscious that his person and pretensions were disliked by them, as well as by the greater part of the english commons, who feared farther innovation upon their rights and liberties, from a sovereign of john's licentious and tyrannical disposition. attended by this gallant equipage, himself well mounted, and splendidly dressed in crimson and in gold, bearing upon his hand a falcon, and having his head covered by a rich fur bonnet, adorned with a circle of precious stones, from which his long curled hair escaped and overspread his shoulders, prince john, upon a grey and high-mettled palfrey, caracoled within the lists at the head of his jovial party, laughing loud with his train, and eyeing with all the boldness of royal criticism the beauties who adorned the lofty galleries. those who remarked in the physiognomy of the prince a dissolute audacity, mingled with extreme haughtiness and indifference to, the feelings of others could not yet deny to his countenance that sort of comeliness which belongs to an open set of features, well formed by nature, modelled by art to the usual rules of courtesy, yet so far frank and honest, that they seemed as if they disclaimed to conceal the natural workings of the soul. such an expression is often mistaken for manly frankness, when in truth it arises from the reckless indifference of a libertine disposition, conscious of superiority of birth, of wealth, or of some other adventitious advantage, totally unconnected with personal merit. to those who did not think so deeply, and they were the greater number by a hundred to one, the splendour of prince john's _rheno_, (_i.e_. fur tippet,) the richness of his cloak, lined with the most costly sables, his maroquin boots and golden spurs, together with the grace with which he managed his palfrey, were sufficient to merit clamorous applause. in his joyous caracole round the lists, the attention of the prince was called by the commotion, not yet subsided, which had attended the ambitious movement of isaac towards the higher places of the assembly. the quick eye of prince john instantly recognised the jew, but was much more agreeably attracted by the beautiful daughter of zion, who, terrified by the tumult, clung close to the arm of her aged father. the figure of rebecca might indeed have compared with the proudest beauties of england, even though it had been judged by as shrewd a connoisseur as prince john. her form was exquisitely symmetrical, and was shown to advantage by a sort of eastern dress, which she wore according to the fashion of the females of her nation. her turban of yellow silk suited well with the darkness of her complexion. the brilliancy of her eyes, the superb arch of her eyebrows, her well-formed aquiline nose, her teeth as white as pearl, and the profusion of her sable tresses, which, each arranged in its own little spiral of twisted curls, fell down upon as much of a lovely neck and bosom as a simarre of the richest persian silk, exhibiting flowers in their natural colours embossed upon a purple ground, permitted to be visible---all these constituted a combination of loveliness, which yielded not to the most beautiful of the maidens who surrounded her. it is true, that of the golden and pearl-studded clasps, which closed her vest from the throat to the waist, the three uppermost were left unfastened on account of the heat, which something enlarged the prospect to which we allude. a diamond necklace, with pendants of inestimable value, were by this means also made more conspicuous. the feather of an ostrich, fastened in her turban by an agraffe set with brilliants, was another distinction of the beautiful jewess, scoffed and sneered at by the proud dames who sat above her, but secretly envied by those who affected to deride them. ``by the bald scalp of abraham,'' said prince john, ``yonder jewess must be the very model of that perfection, whose charms drove frantic the wisest king that ever lived ! what sayest thou, prior aymer?---by the temple of that wise king, which our wiser brother richard proved unable to recover, she is the very bride of the canticles !'' ``the rose of sharon and the lily of the valley,'' ---answered the prior, in a sort of snuffling tone; ``but your grace must remember she is still but a jewess.'' ``ay!'' added prince john, without heeding him, ``and there is my mammon of unrighteousness too---the marquis of marks, the baron of byzants, contesting for place with penniless dogs, whose threadbare cloaks have not a single cross in their pouches to keep the devil from dancing there. by the body of st mark, my prince of supplies, with his lovely jewess, shall have a place in the gallery!---what is she,isaac? thy wife or thy daughter, that eastern houri that thou lockest under thy arm as thou wouldst thy treasure-casket?'' ``my daughter rebecca, so please your grace,'' answered isaac, with a low congee, nothing embarrassed by the prince's salutation, in which, however, there was at least as much mockery as courtesy. ``the wiser man thou,'' said john, with a peal of laughter, in which his gay followers obsequiously joined. ``but, daughter or wife, she should be preferred according to her beauty and thy merits. ---who sits above there?'' he continued, bending his eye on the gallery. ``saxon churls, lolling at their lazy length!---out upon them!---let them sit close, and make room for my prince of usurers and his lovely daughter. i'll make the hinds know they must share the high places of the synagogue with those whom the synagogue properly belongs to.'' those who occupied the gallery to whom this injurious and unpolite speech was addressed, were the family of cedric the saxon, with that of his ally and kinsman, athelstane of coningsburgh, a personage, who, on account of his descent from the last saxon monarchs of england, was held in the highest respect by all the saxon natives of the north of england. but with the blood of this ancient royal race, many of their infirmities had descended to athelstane. he was comely in countenance, bulky and strong in person, and in the flower of his age---yet inanimate in expression, dull-eyed, heavy-browed, inactive and sluggish in all his motions, and so slow in resolution, that the soubriquet of one of his ancestors was conferred upon him, and he was very generally called athelstane the unready. his friends, and he had many, who, as well as cedric, were passionately attached to him, contended that this sluggish temper arose not from want of courage, but from mere want of decision; others alleged that his hereditary vice of drunkenness had obscured his faculties, never of a very acute order, and that the passive courage and meek good-nature which remained behind, were merely the dregs of a character that might have been deserving of praise, but of which all the valuable parts had flown off in the progress of a long course of brutal debauchery. it was to this person, such as we have described him, that the prince addressed his imperious command to make place for isaac and rebecca. athelstane, utterly confounded at an order which the manners and feelings of the times rendered so injuriously insulting, unwilling to obey, yet undetermined how to resist, opposed only the _vis inerti<ae>_ to the will of john; and, without stirring or making any motion whatever of obedience, opened his large grey eyes, and stared at the prince with an astonishment which had in it something extremely ludicrous. but the impatient john regarded it in no such light. ``the saxon porker,'' he said, ``is either asleep or minds me not---prick him with your lance, de bracy,'' speaking to a knight who rode near him, the leader of a band of free companions, or condottieri; that is, of mercenaries belonging to no particular nation, but attached for the time to any prince by whom they were paid. there was a murmur even among the attendants of prince john; but de bracy, whose profession freed him from all scruples, extended his long lance over the space which separated the gallery from the lists, and would have executed the commands of the prince before athelstane the unready had recovered presence of mind sufficient even to draw back his person from the weapon, had not cedric, as prompt as his companion was tardy, unsheathed, with the speed of lightning, the short sword which he wore, and at a single blow severed the point of the lance from the handle. the blood rushed into the countenance of prince john. he swore one of his deepest oaths, and was about to utter some threat corresponding in violence, when he was diverted from his purpose, partly by his own attendants, who gathered around him conjuring him to be patient, partly by a general exclamation of the crowd, uttered in loud applause of the spirited conduct of cedric. the prince rolled his eyes in indignation, as if to collect some safe and easy victim; and chancing to encounter the firm glance of the same archer whom we have already noticed, and who seemed to persist in his gesture of applause, in spite of the frowning aspect which the prince bent upon him, he demanded his reason for clamouring thus. ``i always add my hollo,'' said the yeoman, ``when i see a good shot, or a gallant blow.'' ``sayst thou?'' answered the prince; ``then thou canst hit the white thyself, i'll warrant.'' ``a woodsman's mark, and at woodsman's distance, i can hit,'' answered the yeoman. ``and wat tyrrel's mark, at a hundred yards,'' said a voice from behind, but by whom uttered could not be discerned. this allusion to the fate of william rufus, his relative, at once incensed and alarmed prince john. he satisfied himself, however, with commanding the men-at-arms, who surrounded the lists, to keep an eye on the braggart, pointing to the yeoman. ``by st grizzel,'' he added, ``we will try his own skill, who is so ready to give his voice to the feats of others!'' ``i shall not fly the trial,'' said the yeoman, with the composure which marked his whole deportment. ``meanwhile, stand up, ye saxon churls,'' said the fiery prince; ``for, by the light of heaven, since i have said it, the jew shall have his seat amongst ye!'' ``by no means, an it please your grace!---it is not fit for such as we to sit with the rulers of the land,'' said the jew; whose ambition for precedence though it had led him to dispute place with the extenuated and impoverished descendant of the line of montdidier, by no means stimulated him to an intrusion upon the privileges of the wealthy saxons. ``up, infidel dog when i command you,'' said prince john, ``or i will have thy swarthy hide stript off, and tanned for horse-furniture.'' thus urged, the jew began to ascend the steep and narrow steps which led up to the gallery. ``let me see,'' said the prince, ``who dare stop him,'' fixing his eye on cedric, whose attitude intimated his intention to hurl the jew down headlong. the catastrophe was prevented by the clown wamba, who, springing betwixt his master and isaac, and exclaiming, in answer to the prince's defiance, ``marry, that will i!'' opposed to the beard of the jew a shield of brawn, which he plucked from beneath his cloak, and with which, doubtless, he had furnished himself, lest the tournament should have proved longer than his appetite could endure abstinence. finding the abomination of his tribe opposed to his very nose, while the jester, at the same time, flourished his wooden sword above his head, the jew recoiled, missed his footing, and rolled down the steps,---an excellent jest to the spectators, who set up a loud laughter, in which prince john and his attendants heartily joined. ``deal me the prize, cousin prince,'' said wamba; ``i have vanquished my foe in fair fight with sword and shield,'' he added, brandishing the brawn in one hand and the wooden sword in the other. ``who, and what art thou, noble champion?'' said prince john, still laughing. ``a fool by right of descent,'' answered the jester; ``i am wamba, the son of witless, who was the son of weatherbrain, who was the son of an alderman.'' ``make room for the jew in front of the lower ring,'' said prince john, not unwilling perhaps to, seize an apology to desist from his original purpose; ``to place the vanquished beside the victor were false heraldry.'' ``knave upon fool were worse,'' answered the jester, ``and jew upon bacon worst of all.'' ``gramercy! good fellow,'' cried prince john, ``thou pleasest me---here, isaac, lend me a handful of byzants.'' as the jew, stunned by the request, afraid to refuse, and unwilling to comply, fumbled in the furred bag which hung by his girdle, and was perhaps endeavouring to ascertain how few coins might pass for a handful, the prince stooped from his jennet and settled isaac's doubts by snatching the pouch itself from his side; and flinging to wamba a couple of the gold pieces which it contained, he pursued his career round the lists, leaving the jew to the derision of those around him, and himself receiving as much applause from the spectators as if he had done some honest and honourable action. chapter viii. at this the challenger with fierce defy his trumpet sounds; the challenged makes reply: with clangour rings the field, resounds the vaulted sky. their visors closed, their lances in the rest, or at the helmet pointed or the crest, they vanish from the barrier, speed the race, and spurring see decrease the middle space. _ palamon and arcite_. in the midst of prince john's cavalcade, he suddenly stopt, and appealing to the prior of jorvaulx, declared the principal business of the day had been forgotten. ``by my halidom,'' said he, ``we have forgotten, sir prior, to name the fair sovereign of love and of beauty, by whose white hand the palm is to be distributed. for my part, i am liberal in my ideas, and i care not if i give my vote for the black-eyed rebecca.'' ``holy virgin,'' answered the prior, turning up his eyes in horror, ``a jewess!---we should deserve to be stoned out of the lists; and i am not yet old enough to be a martyr. besides, i swear by my patron saint, that she is far inferior to the lovely saxon, rowena.'' ``saxon or jew,'' answered the prince, ``saxon or jew, dog or hog, what matters it? i say, name rebecca, were it only to mortify the saxon churls.'' a murmur arose even among his own immediate attendants. ``this passes a jest, my lord,'' said de bracy; ``no knight here will lay lance in rest if such an insult is attempted.'' ``it is the mere wantonness of insult,'' said one of the oldest and most important of prince john's followers, waldemar fitzurse, ``and if your grace attempt it, cannot but prove ruinous to your projects.'' ``i entertained you, sir,'' said john, reining up his palfrey haughtily, ``for my follower, but not for my counsellor.'' ``those who follow your grace in the paths which you tread,'' said waldemar, but speaking in a low voice, ``acquire the right of counsellors; for your interest and safety are not more deeply gaged than their own.'' from the tone in which this was spoken, john saw the necessity of acquiescence ``i did but jest,'' he said; ``and you turn upon me like so many adders! name whom you will, in the fiend's name, and please yourselves.'' ``nay, nay,'' said de bracy, ``let the fair sovereign's throne remain unoccupied, until the conqueror shall be named, and then let him choose the lady by whom it shall be filled. it will add another grace to his triumph, and teach fair ladies to prize the love of valiant knights, who can exalt them to such distinction.'' ``if brian de bois-guilbert gain the prize,'' said the prior, `` i will gage my rosary that i name the sovereign of love and beauty.'' ``bois-guilbert,'' answered de bracy, ``is a good lance; but there are others around these lists, sir prior, who will not fear to encounter him.'' ``silence, sirs,'' said waldemar, ``and let the prince assume his seat. the knights and spectators are alike impatient, the time advances, and highly fit it is that the sports should commence.'' prince john, though not yet a monarch, had in waldemar fitzurse all the inconveniences of a favourite minister, who, in serving his sovereign, must always do so in his own way. the prince acquiesced, however, although his disposition was precisely of that kind which is apt to be obstinate upon trifles, and, assuming his throne, and being surrounded by his followers, gave signal to the heralds to proclaim the laws of the tournament, which were briefly as follows: first, the five challengers were to undertake all comers. secondly, any knight proposing to combat, might, if he pleased, select a special antagonist from among the challengers, by touching his shield. if he did so with the reverse of his lance, the trial of skill was made with what were called the arms of courtesy, that is, with lances at whose extremity a piece of round flat board was fixed, so that no danger was encountered, save from the shock of the horses and riders. but if the shield was touched with the sharp end of the lance, the combat was understood to be at _outrance_, that is, the knights were to fight with sharp weapons, as in actual battle. thirdly, when the knights present had accomplished their vow, by each of them breaking five lances, the prince was to declare the victor in the first day's tourney, who should receive as prize a warhorse of exquisite beauty and matchless strength; and in addition to this reward of valour, it was now declared, he should have the peculiar honour of naming the queen of love and beauty, by whom the prize should be given on the ensuing day. fourthly, it was announced, that, on the second day, there should be a general tournament, in which all the knights present, who were desirous to win praise, might take part; and being divided into two bands of equal numbers, might fight it out manfully, until the signal was given by prince john to cease the combat. the elected queen of love and beauty was then to crown the knight whom the prince should adjudge to have borne himself best in this second day, with a coronet composed of thin gold plate, cut into the shape of a laurel crown. on this second day the knightly games ceased. but on that which was to follow, feats of archery, of bull-baiting, and other popular amusements, were to be practised, for the more immediate amusement of the populace. in this manner did prince john endeavour to lay the foundation of a popularity, which he was perpetually throwing down by some inconsiderate act of wanton aggression upon the feelings and prejudices of the people. the lists now presented a most splendid spectacle. the sloping galleries were crowded with all that was noble, great, wealthy, and beautiful in the northern and midland parts of england; and the contrast of the various dresses of these dignified spectators, rendered the view as gay as it was rich, while the interior and lower space, filled with the substantial burgesses and yeomen of merry england, formed, in their more plain attire, a dark fringe, or border, around this circle of brilliant embroidery, relieving, and, at the same time, setting off its splendour. the heralds finished their proclamation with their usual cry of ``largesse, largesse, gallant knights!'' and gold and silver pieces were showered on them from the galleries, it being a high point of chivalry to exhibit liberality towards those whom the age accounted at once the secretaries and the historians of honour. the bounty of the spectators was acknowledged by the customary shouts of ``love of ladies---death of champions---honour to the generous--glory to the brave!'' to which the more humble spectators added their acclamations, and a numerous band of trumpeters the flourish of their martial instruments. when these sounds had ceased, the heralds withdrew from the lists in gay and glittering procession, and none remained within them save the marshals of the field, who, armed cap-a-pie, sat on horseback, motionless as statues, at the opposite ends of the lists. meantime, the enclosed space at the northern extremity of the lists, large as it was, was now completely crowded with knights desirous to prove their skill against the challengers, and, when viewed from the galleries, presented the appearance of a sea of waving plumage, intermixed with glistening helmets, and tall lances, to the extremities of which were, in many cases, attached small pennons of about a span's breadth, which, fluttering in the air as the breeze caught them, joined with the restless motion of the feathers to add liveliness to the scene. at length the barriers were opened, and five knights, chosen by lot, advanced slowly into the area; a single champion riding in front, and the other four following in pairs. all were splendidly armed, and my saxon authority (in the wardour manuscript) records at great length their devices, their colours, and the embroidery of their horse trappings. it is unnecessary to be particular on these subjects. to borrow lines from a contemporary poet, who has written but too little-- ``the knights are dust, and their good swords are rust, their souls are with the saints, we trust.''* * these lines are part of an unpublished poem. by coleridge, * whose muse so often tantalizes with fragments which indicate * her powers, while the manner in which she flings them from * her betrays her caprice, yet whose unfinished sketches display * more talent than the laboured masterpieces of others. their escutcheons have long mouldered from the walls of their castles. their castles themselves are but green mounds and shattered ruins---the place that once knew them, knows them no more---nay, many a race since theirs has died out and been forgotten in the very land which they occupied, with all the authority of feudal proprietors and feudal lords. what, then, would it avail the reader to know their names, or the evanescent symbols of their martial rank! now, however, no whit anticipating the oblivion which awaited their names and feats, the champions advanced through the lists, restraining their fiery steeds, and compelling them to move slowly, while, at the same time, they exhibited their paces, together with the grace and dexterity of the riders. as the procession entered the lists, the sound of a wild barbaric music was heard from behind the tents of the challengers, where the performers were concealed. it was of eastern origin, having been brought from the holy land; and the mixture of the cymbals and bells seemed to bid welcome at once, and defiance, to the knights as they advanced. with the eyes of an immense concourse of spectators fixed upon them, the five knights advanced up the platform upon which the tents of the challengers stood, and there separating themselves, each touched slightly, and with the reverse of his lance, the shield of the antagonist to whom he wished to oppose himself. the lower orders of spectators in general---nay, many of the higher class, and it is even said several of the ladies, were rather disappointed at the champions choosing the arms of courtesy. for the same sort of persons, who, in the present day, applaud most highly the deepest tragedies, were then interested in a tournament exactly in proportion to the danger incurred by the champions engaged. having intimated their more pacific purpose, the champions retreated to the extremity of the lists, where they remained drawn up in a line; while the challengers, sallying each from his pavilion, mounted their horses, and, headed by brian de bois-guilbert, descended from the platform, and opposed themselves individually to the knights who had touched their respective shields. at the flourish of clarions and trumpets, they started out against each other at full gallop; and such was the superior dexterity or good fortune of the challengers, that those opposed to bois-guilbert, malvoisin, and front-de-b<oe>uf, rolled on the ground. the antagonist of grantmesnil, instead of bearing his lance-point fair against the crest or the shield of his enemy, swerved so much from the direct line as to break the weapon athwart the person of his opponent---a circumstance which was accounted more disgraceful than that of being actually unhorsed; because the latter might happen from accident, whereas the former evinced awkwardness and want of management of the weapon and of the horse. the fifth knight alone maintained the honour of his party, and parted fairly with the knight of st john, both splintering their lances without advantage on either side. the shouts of the multitude, together with the acclamations of the heralds, and the clangour of the trumpets, announced the triumph of the victors and the defeat of the vanquished. the former retreated to their pavilions, and the latter, gathering themselves up as they could, withdrew from the lists in disgrace and dejection, to agree with their victors concerning the redemption of their arms and their horses, which, according to the laws of the tournament, they had forfeited. the fifth of their number alone tarried in the lists long enough to be greeted by the applauses of the spectators, amongst whom he retreated, to the aggravation, doubtless, of his companions' mortification. a second and a third party of knights took the field; and although they had various success, yet, upon the whole, the advantage decidedly remained with the challengers, not one of whom lost his seat or swerved from his charge---misfortunes which befell one or two of their antagonists in each encounter. the spirits, therefore, of those opposed to them, seemed to be considerably damped by their continued success. three knights only appeared on the fourth entry, who, avoiding the shields of bois-guilbert and front-de-b<oe>uf, contented themselves with touching those of the three other knights, who had not altogether manifested the same strength and dexterity. this politic selection did not alter the fortune of the field, the challengers were still successful: one of their antagonists was overthrown, and both the others failed in the _attaint_,* that is, * this term of chivalry, transferred to the law, gives the * phrase of being attainted of treason. in striking the helmet and shield of their antagonist firmly and strongly, with the lance held in a direct line, so that the weapon might break unless the champion was overthrown. after this fourth encounter, there was a considerable pause; nor did it appear that any one was very desirous of renewing the contest the spectators murmured among themselves; for, among the challengers, malvoisin and front-de-b<oe>uf were unpopular from their characters, and the others, except grantmesnil, were disliked as strangers and foreigners. but none shared the general feeling of dissatisfaction so keenly as cedric the saxon, who saw, in each advantage gained by the norman challengers, a repeated triumph over the honour of england. his own education had taught him no skill in the games of chivalry, although, with the arms of his saxon ancestors, he had manifested himself, on many occasions, a brave and determined soldier. he looked anxiously to athelstane, who had learned the accomplishments of the age, as if desiring that he should make some personal effort to recover the victory which was passing into the hands of the templar and his associates. but, though both stout of heart, and strong of person, athelstane had a disposition too inert and unambitious to make the exertions which cedric seemed to expect from him. ``the day is against england, my lord,'' said cedric, in a marked tone; ``are you not tempted to take the lance?'' ``i shall tilt to-morrow" answered athelstane, ``in the _m<e^>l<e'>e_; it is not worth while for me to arm myself to-day.'' two things displeased cedric in this speech. it contained the norman word _me<e^>l<e'>e_, (to express the general conflict,) and it evinced some indifference to the honour of the country; but it was spoken by athelstane, whom he held in such profound respect, that he would not trust himself to canvass his motives or his foibles. moreover, he had no time to make any remark, for wamba thrust in his word, observing, ``it was better, though scarce easier, to be the best man among a hundred, than the best man of two.'' athelstane took the observation as a serious compliment; but cedric, who better understood the jester's meaning, darted at him a severe and menacing look; and lucky it was for wamba, perhaps, that the time and place prevented his receiving, notwithstanding his place and service, more sensible marks of his master's resentment. the pause in the tournament was still uninterrupted, excepting by the voices of the heralds exclaiming--``love of ladies, splintering of lances! stand forth gallant knights, fair eyes look upon your deeds!'' the music also of the challengers breathed from time to time wild bursts expressive of triumph or defiance, while the clowns grudged a holiday which seemed to pass away in inactivity; and old knights and nobles lamented in whispers the decay of martial spirit, spoke of the triumphs of their younger days, but agreed that the land did not now supply dames of such transcendent beauty as had animated the jousts of former times. prince john began to talk to his attendants about making ready the banquet, and the necessity of adjudging the prize to brian de bois-guilbert, who had, with a single spear, overthrown two knights, and foiled a third. at length, as the saracenic music of the challengers concluded one of those long and high flourishes with which they had broken the silence of the lists, it was answered by a solitary trumpet, which breathed a note of defiance from the northern extremity. all eyes were turned to see the new champion which these sounds announced, and no sooner were the barriers opened than he paced into the lists. as far as could be judged of a man sheathed in armour, the new adventurer did not greatly exceed the middle size, and seemed to be rather slender than strongly made. his suit of armour was formed of steel, richly inlaid with gold, and the device on his shield was a young oak-tree pulled up by the roots, with the spanish word desdichado, signifying disinherited. he was mounted on a gallant black horse, and as he passed through the lists he gracefully saluted the prince and the ladies by lowering his lance. the dexterity with which he managed his steed, and something of youthful grace which he displayed in his manner, won him the favour of the multitude, which some of the lower classes expressed by calling out, ``touch ralph de vipont's shield---touch the hospitallers shield; he has the least sure seat, he is your cheapest bargain.'' the champion, moving onward amid these well-meant hints, ascended the platform by the sloping alley which led to it from the lists, and, to the astonishment of all present, riding straight up to the central pavilion, struck with the sharp end of his spear the shield of brian de bois-guilbert until it rung again. all stood astonished at his presumption, but none more than the redoubted knight whom he had thus defied to mortal combat, and who, little expecting so rude a challenge, was standing carelessly at the door of the pavilion. ``have you confessed yourself, brother,'' said the templar, ``and have you heard mass this morning, that you peril your life so frankly?'' ``i am fitter to meet death than thou art,'' answered the disinherited knight; for by this name the stranger had recorded himself in the books of the tourney. ``then take your place in the lists,'' said bois-guilbert, ``and look your last upon the sun; for this night thou shalt sleep in paradise.'' ``gramercy for thy courtesy,'' replied the disinherited knight, ``and to requite it, i advise thee to take a fresh horse and a new lance, for by my honour you will need both.'' having expressed himself thus confidently, he reined his horse backward down the slope which he had ascended, and compelled him in the same manner to move backward through the lists, till he reached the northern extremity, where he remained stationary, in expectation of his antagonist. this feat of horsemanship again attracted the applause of the multitude. however incensed at his adversary for the precautions which he recommended, brian de bois-guilbert did not neglect his advice; for his honour was too nearly concerned, to permit his neglecting any means which might ensure victory over his presumptuous opponent. he changed his horse for a proved and fresh one of great strength and spirit. he chose a new and a tough spear, lest the wood of the former might have been strained in the previous encounters he had sustained. lastly, he laid aside his shield, which had received some little damage, and received another from his squires. his first had only borne the general device of his rider, representing two knights riding upon one horse, an emblem expressive of the original humility and poverty of the templars, qualities which they had since exchanged for the arrogance and wealth that finally occasioned their suppression. bois-guilbert's new shield bore a raven in full flight, holding in its claws a skull, and bearing the motto, _gare le corbeau_. when the two champions stood opposed to each other at the two extremities of the lists, the public expectation was strained to the highest pitch. few augured the possibility that the encounter could terminate well for the disinherited knight, yet his courage and gallantry secured the general good wishes of the spectators. the trumpets had no sooner given the signal, than the champions vanished from their posts with the speed of lightning, and closed in the centre of the lists with the shock of a thunderbolt. the lances burst into shivers up to the very grasp, and it seemed at the moment that both knights had fallen, for the shock had made each horse recoil backwards upon its haunches. the address of the riders recovered their steeds by use of the bridle and spur; and having glared on each other for an instant with eyes which seemed to flash fire through the bars of their visors, each made a demi-volte, and, retiring to the extremity of the lists, received a fresh lance from the attendants. a loud shout from the spectators, waving of scarfs and handkerchiefs, and general acclamations, attested the interest taken by the spectators in this encounter; the most equal, as well as the best performed, which had graced the day. but no sooner had the knights resumed their station, than the clamour of applause was hushed into a silence, so deep and so dead, that it seemed the multitude wem afraid even to breathe. a few minutes pause having been allowed, that the combatants and their horses might recover breath, prince john with his truncheon signed to the trumpets to sound the onset. the champions a second time sprung from their stations, and closed in the centre of the lists, with the same speed, the same dexterity, the same violence, but not the same equal fortune as before. in this second encounter, the templar aimed at the centre of his antagonist's shield, and struck it so fair and forcibly, that his spear went to shivers, and the disinherited knight reeled in his saddle. on the other hand, that champion had, in the beginning of his career, directed the point of his lance towards bois-guilbert's shield, but, changing his aim almost in the moment of encounter, he addressed it to the helmet, a mark more difficult to hit, but which, if attained, rendered the shock more irresistible. fair and true he hit the norman on the visor, where his lance's point kept hold of the bars. yet, even at this disadvantage, the templar sustained his high reputation; and had not the girths of his saddle burst, he might not have been unhorsed. as it chanced, however, saddle, horse, and man, rolled on the ground under a cloud of dust. to extricate himself from the stirrups and fallen steed, was to the templar scarce the work of a moment; and, stung with madness, both at his disgrace and at the acclamations with which it was hailed by the spectators, he drew his sword and waved it in defiance of his conqueror. the disinherited knight sprung from his steed, and also unsheathed his sword. the marshals of the field, however, spurred their horses between them, and reminded them, that the laws of the tournament did not, on the present occasion, permit this species of encounter. ``we shall meet again, i trust,'' said the templar, casting a resentful glance at his antagonist; ``and where there are none to separate us.'' ``if we do not,'' said the disinherited knight, ``the fault shall not be mine. on foot or horseback, with spear, with axe, or with sword, i am alike ready to encounter thee.'' more and angrier words would have been exchanged, but the marshals, crossing their lances betwixt them, compelled them to separate. the disinherited knight returned to his first station, and bois-guilbert to his tent, where he remained for the rest of the day in an agony of despair. without alighting from his horse, the conqueror called for a bowl of wine, and opening the beaver, or lower part of his helmet, announced that he quaffed it, ``to all true english hearts, and to the confusion of foreign tyrants.'' he then commanded his trumpet to sound a defiance to the challengers, and desired a herald to announce to them, that he should make no election, but was willing to encounter them in the order in which they pleased to advance against him. the gigantic front-de-b<oe>uf, armed in sable armour, was the first who took the field. he bore on a white shield a black bull's head, half defaced by the numerous encounters which he had undergone, and bearing the arrogant motto, _cave, adsum_. over this champion the disinherited knight obtained a slight but decisive advantage. both knights broke their lances fairly, but front-de-b<oe>uf, who lost a stirrup in the encounter, was adjudged to have the disadvantage. in the stranger's third encounter with sir philip malvoisin, he was equally successful; striking that baron so forcibly on the casque, that the laces of the helmet broke, and malvoisin, only saved from falling by being unhelmeted, was declared vanquished like his companions. in his fourth combat with de grantmesnil, the disinherited knight showed as much courtesy as he had hitherto evinced courage and dexterity. de grantmesnil's horse, which was young and violent, reared and plunged in the course of the career so as to disturb the rider's aim, and the stranger, declining to take the advantage which this accident afforded him, raised his lance, and passing his antagonist without touching him, wheeled his horse and rode back again to his own end of the lists, offering his antagonist, by a herald, the chance of a second encounter. this de grantmesnil declined, avowing himself vanquished as much by the courtesy as by the address of his opponent. ralph de vipont summed up the list of the stranger's triumphs, being hurled to the ground with such force, that the blood gushed from his nose and his mouth, and he was borne senseless from the lists. the acclamations of thousands applauded the unanimous award of the prince and marshals, announcing that day's honours to the disinherited knight. chapter ix. --------in the midst was seen a lady of a more majestic mien, by stature and by beauty mark'd their sovereign queen. * * * * * * and as in beauty she surpass'd the choir, so nobler than the rest was her attire; a crown of ruddy gold enclosed her brow, plain without pomp, and rich without a show; a branch of agnus castus in her hand, she bore aloft her symbol of command. _the flower and the leaf_. william de wyvil and stephen de martival, the marshals of the field, were the first to offer their congratulations to the victor, praying him, at the same time, to suffer his helmet to be unlaced, or, at least, that he would raise his visor ere they conducted him to receive the prize of the day's tourney from the hands of prince john. the disinherited knight, with all knightly courtesy, declined their request, alleging, that he could not at this time suffer his face to be seen, for reasons which he had assigned to the heralds when he entered the lists. the marshals were perfectly satisfied by this reply; for amidst the frequent and capricious vows by which knights were accustomed to bind themselves in the days of chivalry, there were none more common than those by which they engaged to remain incognito for a certain space, or until some particular adventure was achieved. the marshals, therefore, pressed no farther into the mystery of the disinherited knight, but, announcing to prince john the conqueror's desire to remain unknown, they requested permission to bring him before his grace, in order that he might receive the reward of his valour. john's curiosity was excited by the mystery observed by the stranger; and, being already displeased with the issue of the tournament, in which the challengers whom he favoured had been successively defeated by one knight, he answered haughtily to the marshals, ``by the light of our lady's brow, this same knight hath been disinherited as well of his courtesy as of his lands, since he desires to appear before us without uncovering his face.---wot ye, my lords,'' be said, turning round to his train, ``who this gallant can be, that bears himself thus proudly?'' ``i cannot guess,'' answered de bracy, ``nor did i think there had been within the four seas that girth britain a champion that could bear down these five knights in one day's jousting. by my faith, i shall never forget the force with which he shocked de vipont. the poor hospitaller was hurled from his saddle like a stone from a sling.'' ``boast not of that,'' said a knight of st john, who was present; ``your temple champion had no better luck. i saw your brave lance, bois-guilbert, roll thrice over, grasping his hands full of sand at every turn. de bracy, being attached to the templars, would have replied, but was prevented by prince john. ``silence, sirs!'' he said; ``what unprofitable debate have we here?'' ``the victor,'' said de wyvil, ``still waits the pleasure of your highness.'' ``it is our pleasure,'' answered john, ``that he do so wait until we learn whether there is not some one who can at least guess at his name and quality. should he remain there till night-fall, he has had work enough to keep him warm.'' ``your grace,'' said waldemar fitzurse, ``will do less than due honour to the victor, if you compel him to wait till we tell your highness that which we cannot know; at least i can form no guess--unless he be one of the good lances who accompanied king richard to palestine, and who are now straggling homeward from the holy land.'' ``it may be the earl of salisbury,'' said de bracy; ``he is about the same pitch.'' ``sir thomas de multon, the knight of gilsland, rather,'' said fitzurse; ``salisbury is bigger in the bones.'' a whisper arose among the train, but by whom first suggested could not be ascertained. ``it might be the king---it might be richard c<oe>ur-de-lion himself!'' ``over god's forbode!'' said prince john, involuntarily turning at the same time as pale as death, and shrinking as if blighted by a flash of lightning; ``waldemar!---de bracy! brave knights and gentlemen, remember your promises, and stand truly by me!'' ``here is no danger impending,'' said waldemar fitzurse; ``are you so little acquainted with the gigantic limbs of your father's son, as to think they can be held within the circumference of yonder suit of armour?---de wyvil and martival, you will best serve the prince by bringing forward the victor to the throne, and ending an error that has conjured all the blood from his cheeks.---look at him more closely,'' he continued, ``your highness will see that he wants three inches of king richard's height, and twice as much of his shoulder-breadth. the very horse he backs, could not have carried the ponderous weight of king richard through a single course.'' while he was yet speaking, the marshals brought forward the disinherited knight to the foot of a wooden flight of steps, which formed the ascent from the lists to prince john's throne. still discomposed with the idea that his brother, so much injured, and to whom he was so much indebted, had suddenly arrived in his native kingdom, even the distinctions pointed out by fitzurse did not altogether remove the prince's apprehensions; and while, with a short and embarrassed eulogy upon his valour, he caused to be delivered to him the war-horse assigned as the prize, he trembled lest from the barred visor of the mailed form before him, an answer might be returned, in the deep and awful accents of richard the lion-hearted. but the disinherited knight spoke not a word in reply to the compliment of the prince, which he only acknowledged with a profound obeisance. the horse was led into the lists by two grooms richly dressed, the animal itself being fully accoutred with the richest war-furniture; which, however, scarcely added to the value of the noble creature in the eyes of those who were judges. laying one hand upon the pommel of the saddle, the disinherited knight vaulted at once upon the back of the steed without making use of the stirrup, and, brandishing aloft his lance, rode twice around the lists, exhibiting the points and paces of the horse with the skill of a perfect horseman the appearance of vanity, which might otherwise have been attributed to this display, was removed by the propriety shown in exhibiting to the best advantage the princely reward with which he had been just honoured, and the knight was again greeted by the acclamations of all present. in the meanwhile, the bustling prior of jorvaulx had reminded prince john, in a whisper, that the victor must now display his good judgment, instead of his valour, by selecting from among the beauties who graced the galleries a lady, who should fill the throne of the queen of beauty and of love, and deliver the prize of the tourney upon the ensuing day. the prince accordingly made a sign with his truncheon, as the knight passed him in his second career around the lists. the knight turned towards the throne, and, sinking his lance, until the point was within a foot of the ground, remained motionless, as if expecting john's commands; while all admired the sudden dexterity with which he instantly reduced his fiery steed from a state of violent emotion and high excitation to the stillness of an equestrian statue, ``sir disinherited knight,'' said prince john, ``since that is the only title by which we can address you, it is now your duty, as well as privilege, to name the fair lady, who, as queen of honour and of love, is to preside over next day's festival. if, as a stranger in our land, you should require the aid of other judgment to guide your own, we can only say that alicia, the daughter of our gallant knight waldemar fitzurse, has at our court been long held the first in beauty as in place. nevertheless, it is your undoubted prerogative to confer on whom you please this crown, by the delivery of which to the lady of your choice, the election of to-morrow's queen will be formal and complete.--raise your lance.'' the knight obeyed; and prince john placed upon its point a coronet of green satin, having around its edge a circlet of gold, the upper edge of which was relieved by arrow-points and hearts placed interchangeably, like the strawberry leaves and balls upon a ducal crown. in the broad hint which he dropped respecting the daughter of waldemar fitzurse, john had more than one motive, each the offspring of a mind, which was a strange mixture of carelessness and presumption with low artifice and cunning. he wished to banish from the minds of the chivalry around him his own indecent and unacceptable jest respecting the jewess rebecca; he was desirous of conciliating alicia's father waldemar, of whom he stood in awe, and who had more than once shown himself dissatisfied during the course of the day's proceedings. he had also a wish to establish himself in the good graces of the lady; for john was at least as licentious in his pleasures as profligate in his ambition. but besides all these reasons, he was desirous to raise up against the disinherited knight (towards whom he already entertained a strong dislike) a powerful enemy in the person of waldemar fitzurse, who was likely, he thought, highly to resent the injury done to his daughter, in case, as was not unlikely, the victor should make another choice. and so indeed it proved. for the disinherited knight passed the gallery close to that of the prince, in which the lady alicia was seated in the full pride of triumphant beauty, and, pacing forwards as slowly as he had hitherto rode swiftly around the lists, he seemed to exercise his right of examining the numerous fair faces which adorned that splendid circle. it was worth while to see the different conduct of the beauties who underwent this examination, during the time it was proceeding. some blushed, some assumed an air of pride and dignity, some looked straight forward, and essayed to seem utterly unconscious of what was going on, some drew back in alarm, which was perhaps affected, some endeavoured to forbear smiling, and there were two or three who laughed outright. there were also some who dropped their veils over their charms; but, as the wardour manuscript says these were fair ones of ten years standing, it may be supposed that, having had their full share of such vanities, they were willing to withdraw their claim, in order to give a fair chance to the rising beauties of the age. at length the champion paused beneath the balcony in which the lady rowena was placed, and the expectation of the spectators was excited to the utmost. it must be owned, that if an interest displayed in his success could have bribed the disinherited knight, the part of the lists before which he paused had merited his predilection. cedric the saxon, overjoyed at the discomfiture of the templar, and still more so at the, miscarriage of his two malevolent neighbours, front-de-b<oe>uf and malvoisin, had, with his body half stretched over the balcony, accompanied the victor in each course, not with his eyes only, but with his whole heart and soul. the lady rowena had watched the progress of the day with equal attention, though without openly betraying the same intense interest. even the unmoved athelstane had shown symptoms of shaking off his apathy, when, calling for a huge goblet of muscadine, he quaffed it to the health of the disinherited knight. another group, stationed under the gallery occupied by the saxons, had shown no less interest in the fate of the day. ``father abraham!'' said isaac of york, when the first course was run betwixt the templar and the disinherited knight, ``how fiercely that gentile rides! ah, the good horse that was brought all the long way from barbary, he takes no more care of him than if he were a wild ass's colt---and the noble armour, that was worth so many zecchins to joseph pareira, the armourer of milan, besides seventy in the hundred of profits, he cares for it as little as if he had found it in the highways!'' ``if he risks his own person and limbs, father,'' said rebecca, ``in doing such a dreadful battle, he can scarce be expected to spare his horse and armour.'' ``child!'' replied isaac, somewhat heated, ``thou knowest not what thou speakest---his neck and limbs are his own, but his horse and armour belong to---holy jacob! what was i about to say!--nevertheless, it is a good youth---see, rebecca! see, he is again about to go up to battle against the philistine---pray, child---pray for the safety of the good youth,---and of the speedy horse, and the rich armour.---god of my fathers!'' he again exclaimed, ``he hath conquered, and the uncircumcised philistine hath fallen before his lance,---even as og the king of bashan, and sihon, king of the amorites, fell before the sword of our fathers!---surely he shall take their gold and their silver, and their war-horses, and their armour of brass and of steel, for a prey and for a spoil.'' the same anxiety did the worthy jew display during every course that was run, seldom failing to hazard a hasty calculation concerning the value of the horse and armour which was forfeited to the champion upon each new success. there had been therefore no small interest taken in the success of the disinherited knight, by those who occupied the part of the lists before which he now paused. whether from indecision, or some other motive of hesitation, the champion of the day remained stationary for more than a minute, while the eyes of the silent audience were riveted upon his motions; and then, gradually and gracefully sinking the point of his lance, he deposited the coronet which it supported at the feet of the fair rowena. the trumpets instantly sounded, while the heralds proclaimed the lady rowena the queen of beauty and of love for the ensuing day, menacing with suitable penalties those who should be disobedient to her authority. they then repeated their cry of largesse, to which cedric, in the height of his joy, replied by an ample donative, and to which athelstane, though less promptly, added one equally large. there was some murmuring among the damsels of norman descent, who were as much unused to see the preference given to a saxon beauty, as the norman nobles were to sustain defeat in the games of chivalry which they themselves had introduced. but these sounds of disaffection were drowned by the popular shout of ``long live the lady rowena, the chosen and lawful queen of love and of beauty!'' to which many in the lower area added, ``long live the saxon princess! long live the race of the immortal alfred!'' however unacceptable these sounds might be to prince john, and to those around him, he saw himself nevertheless obliged to confirm the nomination of the victor, and accordingly calling to horse, he left his throne; and mounting his jennet, accompanied by his train, he again entered the lists. the prince paused a moment beneath the gallery of the lady alicia, to whom he paid his compliments, observing, at the same time, to those around him---``by my halidome, sirs! if the knight's feats in arms have shown that he hath limbs and sinews, his choice hath no less proved that his eyes are none of the clearest.'' it was on this occasion, as during his whole life, john's misfortune, not perfectly to understand the characters of those whom he wished to conciliate. waldemar fitzurse was rather offended than pleased at the prince stating thus broadly an opinion, that his daughter had been slighted. ``i know no right of chivalry,'' he said, ``more precious or inalienable than that of each free knight to choose his lady-love by his own judgment. my daughter courts distinction from no one; and in her own character, and in her own sphere, will never fail to receive the full proportion of that which is her due.'' prince john replied not; but, spurring his horse, as if to give vent to his vexation, he made the animal bound forward to the gallery where rowena was seated, with the crown still at her feet. ``assume,'' he said, ``fair lady, the mark of your sovereignty, to which none vows homage more sincerely than ourself, john of anjou; and if it please you to-day, with your noble sire and friends, to grace our banquet in the castle of ashby, we shall learn to know the empress to whose service we devote to-morrow.'' rowena remained silent, and cedric answered for her in his native saxon. ``the lady rowena,'' he said, ``possesses not the language in which to reply to your courtesy, or to sustain her part in your festival. i also, and the noble athelstane of coningsburgh, speak only the language, and practise only the manners, of our fathers. we therefore decline with thanks your highness's courteous invitation to the banquet. to-morrow, the lady rowena will take upon her the state to which she has been called by the free election of the victor knight, confirmed by the acclamations of the people.'' so saying, he lifted the coronet, and placed it upon rowena's head, in token of her acceptance of the temporary authority assigned to her. ``what says he?'' said prince john, affecting not to understand the saxon language, in which, however, he was well skilled. the purport of cedric's speech was repeated to him in french. ``it is well,'' he said; ``to-morrow we will ourself conduct this mute sovereign to her seat of dignity.-you, at least, sir knight,'' he added, turning to the victor, who had remained near the gallery, ``will this day share our banquet?'' the knight, speaking for the first time, in a low and hurried voice, excused himself by pleading fatigue, and the necessity of preparing for to-morrow's encounter. ``it is well,'' said prince john, haughtily; ``although unused to such refusals, we will endeavour to digest our banquet as we may, though ungraced by the most successful in arms, and his elected queen of beauty.'' so saying, he prepared to leave the lists with his glittering train, and his turning his steed for that purpose, was the signal for the breaking up and dispersion of the spectators. yet, with the vindictive memory proper to offended pride, especially when combined with conscious want of desert, john had hardly proceeded three paces, ere again, turning around, he fixed an eye of stern resentment upon the yeoman who had displeased him in the early part of the day, and issued his commands to the men-at-arms who stood near---``on your life, suffer not that fellow to escape.'' the yeoman stood the angry glance of the prince with the same unvaried steadiness which had marked his former deportment, saying, with a smile, ``i have no intention to leave ashby until the day after to-morrow---i must see how staffordshire and leicestershire can draw their bows---the forests of needwood and charnwood must rear good archers.'' ``l,'' said prince john to his attendants, but not in direct reply,---``i will see how he can draw his own; and woe betide him unless his skill should prove some apology for his insolence!'' ``it is full time,'' said de bracy, ``that the _outrecuidance_* * presumption, insolence. of these peasants should be restrained by some striking example.'' waldemar fitzurse, who probably thought his patron was not taking the readiest road to popularity, shrugged up his shoulders and was silent. prince john resumed his retreat from the lists, and the dispersion of the multitude became general. in various routes, according to the different quarters from which they came, and in groups of various numbers, the spectators were seen retiring over the plain. by far the most numerous part streamed towards the town of ashby, where many of the distinguished persons were lodged in the castle, and where others found accommodation in the town itself. among these were most of the knights who had already appeared in the tournament, or who proposed to fight there the ensuing day, and who, as they rode slowly along, talking over the events of the day, were greeted with loud shouts by the populace. the same acclamations were bestowed upon prince john, although he was indebted for them rather to the splendour of his appearance and train, than to the popularity of his character. a more sincere and more general, as well as a better-merited acclamation, attended the victor of the day, until, anxious to withdraw himself from popular notice, he accepted the accommodation of one of those pavilions pitched at the extremities of the lists, the use of which was courteously tendered him by the marshals of the field. on his retiring to his tent, many who had lingered in the lists, to look upon and form conjectures concerning him, also dispersed. the signs and sounds of a tumultuous concourse of men lately crowded together in one place, and agitated by the same passing events, were now exchanged for the distant hum of voices of different groups retreating in all directions, and these speedily died away in silence. no other sounds were heard save the voices of the menials who stripped the galleries of their cushions and tapestry, in order to put them in safety for the night, and wrangled among themselves for the half-used bottles of wine and relics of the refreshment which had been served round to the spectators. beyond the precincts of the lists more than one forge was erected; and these now began to glimmer through the twilight, announcing the toil of the armourers, which was to continue through the whole night, in order to repair or alter the suits of armour to be used again on the morrow. a strong guard of men-at-arms, renewed at intervals, from two hours to two hours, surrounded the lists, and kept watch during the night. chapter x. thus, like the sad presaging raven, that tolls the sick man's passport in her hollow beak, and in the shadow of the silent night doth shake contagion from her sable wings; vex'd and tormented, runs poor barrabas, with fatal curses towards these christians. _jew of malta_. the disinherited knight had no sooner reached his pavilion, than squires and pages in abundance tendered their services to disarm him, to bring fresh attire, and to offer him the refreshment of the bath. their zeal on this occasion was perhaps sharpened by curiosity, since every one desired to know who the knight was that had gained so many laurels, yet had refused, even at the command of prince john, to lift his visor or to name his name. but their officious inquisitiveness was not gratified. the disinherited knight refused all other assistance save that of his own squire, or rather yeoman---a clownish-looking man, who, wrapt in a cloak of dark-coloured felt, and having his head and face half-buried in a norman bonnet made of black fur, seemed to affect the incognito as much as his master. all others being excluded from the tent, this attendant relieved his master from the more burdensome parts of his armour, and placed food and wine before him, which the exertions of the day rendered very acceptable. the knight had scarcely finished a hasty meal, ere his menial announced to him that five men, each leading a barbed steed, desired to speak with him. the disinherited knight had exchanged his armour for the long robe usually worn by those of his condition, which, being furnished with a hood, concealed the features, when such was the pleasure of the wearer, almost as completely as the visor of the helmet itself, but the twilight, which was now fast darkening, would of itself have rendered a disguise unnecessary, unless to persons to whom the face of an individual chanced to be particularly well known. the disinherited knight, therefore, stept boldly forth to the front of his tent, and found in attendance the squires of the challengers, whom he easily knew by their russet and black dresses, each of whom led his master's charger, loaded with the armour in which he had that day fought. ``according to the laws of chivalry,'' said the foremost of these men, ``i, baldwin de oyley, squire to the redoubted knight brian de bois-guilbert, make offer to you, styling yourself, for the present, the disinherited knight, of the horse and armour used by the said brian de bois-guilbert in this day's passage of arms, leaving it with your nobleness to retain or to ransom the same, according to your pleasure; for such is the law of arms.'' the other squires repeated nearly the same formula, and then stood to await the decision of the disinherited knight. ``to you four, sirs,'' replied the knight, addressing those who had last spoken, ``and to your honourable and valiant masters, i have one common reply. commend me to the noble knights, your masters, and say, i should do ill to deprive them of steeds and arms which can never be used by braver cavaliers.---i would i could here end my message to these gallant knights; but being, as i term myself, in truth and earnest, the disinherited, i must be thus far bound to your masters, that they will, of their courtesy, be pleased to ransom their steeds and armour, since that which i wear i can hardly term mine own.'' ``we stand commissioned, each of us,'' answered the squire of reginald front-de-b<oe>uf, ``to offer a hundred zecchins in ransom of these horses and suits of armour.'' ``it is sufficient,'' said the disinherited knight. ``half the sum my present necessities compel me to accept; of the remaining half, distribute one moiety among yourselves, sir squires, and divide the other half betwixt the heralds and the pursuivants, and minstrels, and attendants.'' the squires, with cap in hand, and low reverences, expressed their deep sense of a courtesy and generosity not often practised, at least upon a scale so extensive. the disinherited knight then addressed his discourse to baldwin, the squire of brian de bois-guilbert. ``from your master,'' said he, ``i will accept neither arms nor ransom. say to him in my name, that our strife is not ended---no, not till we have fought as well with swords as with lances---as well on foot as on horseback. to this mortal quarrel he has himself defied me, and i shall not forget the challenge.---meantime, let him be assured, that i hold him not as one of his companions, with whom i can with pleasure exchange courtesies; but rather as one with whom i stand upon terms of mortal defiance.'' ``my master,'' answered baldwin, ``knows how to requite scorn with scorn, and blows with blows, as well as courtesy with courtesy, since you disdain to accept from him any share of the ransom at which you have rated the arms of the other knights, i must leave his armour and his horse here, being well assured that he will never deign to mount the one nor wear the other.'' ``you have spoken well, good squire,'' said the disinherited knight, ``well and boldly, as it beseemeth him to speak who answers for an absent master. leave not, however, the horse and armour here. restore them to thy master; or, if he scorns to accept them, retain them, good friend, for thine own use. so far as they are mine, i bestow them upon you freely.'' baldwin made a deep obeisance, and retired with his companions; and the disinherited knight entered the pavilion. ``thus far, gurth,'' said he, addressing his attendant, ``the reputation of english chivalry hath not suffered in my hands.'' ``and i,'' said gurth, ``for a saxon swineherd, have not ill played the personage of a norman squire-at-arms.'' ``yea, but,'' answered the disinherited knight, thou hast ever kept me in anxiety lest thy clownish bearing should discover thee.'' ``tush!'' said gurth, ``i fear discovery from none, saving my playfellow, wamba the jester, of whom i could never discover whether he were most knave or fool. yet i could scarce choose but laugh, when my old master passed so near to me, dreaming all the while that gurth was keeping his porkers many a mile off, in the thickets and swamps of rotherwood. if i am discovered------'' ``enough,'' said the disinherited knight, ``thou knowest my promise.'' ``nay, for that matter,'' said gurth, ``i will never fail my friend for fear of my skin-cutting. i have a tough hide, that will bear knife or scourge as well as any boar's hide in my herd.'' ``trust me, i will requite the risk you run for my love, gurth,'' said the knight. ``meanwhile, i pray you to accept these ten pieces of gold.'' ``i am richer,'' said gurth, putting them into his pouch, ``than ever was swineherd or bondsman.'' ``take this bag of gold to ashby,'' continued his master, ``and find out isaac the jew of york, and let him pay himself for the horse and arms with which his credit supplied me.'' ``nay, by st dunstan,'' replied gurth, ``that i will not do.'' ``how, knave,'' replied his master, ``wilt thou not obey my commands?'' ``so they be honest, reasonable, and christian commands,'' replied gurth; ``but this is none of these. to suffer the jew to pay himself would be dishonest, for it would be cheating my master; and unreasonable, for it were the part of a fool; and unchristian, since it would be plundering a believer to enrich an infidel.'' ``see him contented, however, thou stubborn varlet,'' said the disinherited knight. ``i will do so,'' said gurth, taking the bag under his cloak, and leaving the apartment; ``and it will go hard,'' he muttered, ``but i content him with one-half of his own asking.'' so saying, he departed, and left the disinherited knight to his own perplexed ruminations; which, upon more accounts than it is now possible to communicate to the reader, were of a nature peculiarly agitating and painful. we must now change the scene to the village of ashby, or rather to a country house in its vicinity belonging to a wealthy israelite, with whom isaac, his daughter, and retinue, had taken up their quarters; the jews, it is well known, being as liberal in exercising the duties of hospitality and charity among their own people, as they were alleged to be reluctant and churlish in extending them to those whom they termed gentiles, and whose treatment of them certainly merited little hospitality at their hand. in an apartment, small indeed, but richly furnished with decorations of an oriental taste, rebecca was seated on a heap of embroidered cushions, which, piled along a low platform that surrounded the chamber, served, like the estrada of the spaniards, instead of chairs and stools. she was watching the motions of her father with a look of anxious and filial affection, while he paced the apartment with a dejected mien and disordered step; sometimes clasping his hands together---sometimes casting his eyes to the roof of the apartment, as one who laboured under great mental tribulation. ``o, jacob!'' he exclaimed---``o, all ye twelve holy fathers of our tribe! what a losing venture is this for one who hath duly kept every jot and tittle of the law of moses---fifty zecchins wrenched from me at one clutch, and by the talons of a tyrant!'' ``but, father,'' said rebecca, ``you seemed to give the gold to prince john willingly.'' ``willingly? the blotch of egypt upon him!--willingly, saidst thou?---ay, as willingly as when, in the gulf of lyons, i flung over my merchandise to lighten the ship, while she laboured in the tempest---robed the seething billows in my choice silks---perfumed their briny foam with myrrh and aloes---enriched their caverns with gold and silver work! and was not that an hour of unutterable misery, though my own hands made the sacrifice?'' ``but it was a sacrifice which heaven exacted to save our lives,'' answered rebecca, ``and the god of our fathers has since blessed your store and your gettings.'' ``ay,'' answered isaac, ``but if the tyrant lays hold on them as he did to-day, and compels me to smile while he is robbing me?---o, daughter, disinherited and wandering as we are, the worst evil which befalls our race is, that when we are wronged and plundered, all the world laughs around, and we are compelled to suppress our sense of injury, and to smile tamely, when we would revenge bravely.'' ``think not thus of it, my father,'' said rebecca; ``we also have advantages. these gentiles, cruel and oppressive as they are, are in some sort dependent on the dispersed children of zion, whom they despise and persecute. without the aid of our wealth, they could neither furnish forth their hosts in war, nor their triumphs in peace, and the gold which we lend them returns with increase to our coffers. we are like the herb which flourisheth most when it is most trampled on. even this day's pageant had not proceeded without the consent of the despised jew, who furnished the means.'' ``daughter,'' said isaac, ``thou hast harped upon another string of sorrow. the goodly steed and the rich armour, equal to the full profit of my adventure with our kirjath jairam of leicester--there is a dead loss too---ay, a loss which swallows up the gains of a week; ay, of the space between two sabaoths---and yet it may end better than i now think, for 'tis a good youth.'' ``assuredly,'' said rebecca, ``you shall not repent you of requiting the good deed received of the stranger knight.'' ``i trust so, daughter,'' said isaac, ``and i trust too in the rebuilding of zion; but as well do i hope with my own bodily eyes to see the walls and battlements of the new temple, as to see a christian, yea, the very best of christains, repay a debt to a jew, unless under the awe of the judge and jailor.'' so saying, he resumed his discontented walk through the apartment; and rebecca, perceiving that her attempts at consolation only served to awaken new subjects of complaint, wisely desisted from her unavailing efforts---a prudential line of conduct, and we recommend to all who set up for comforters and advisers, to follow it in the like circumstances. the evening was now becoming dark, when a jewish servant entered the apartment, and placed upon the table two silver lamps, fed with perfumed oil; the richest wines, and the most delicate refreshments, were at the same time displayed by another israelitish domestic on a small ebony table, inlaid with silver; for, in the interior of their houses, the jews refused themselves no expensive indulgences. at the same time the servant informed isaac, that a nazarene (so they termed christians, while conversing among themselves) desired to speak with him. he that would live by traffic, must hold himself at the disposal of every one claiming business with him. isaac at once replaced on the table the untasted glass of greek wine which he had just raised to his lips, and saying hastily to his daughter, ``rebecca, veil thyself,'' commanded the stranger to be admitted. just as rebecca had dropped over her fine features a screen of silver gauze which reached to her feet, the door opened, and gurth entered, wrapt in the ample folds of his norman mantle. his appearance was rather suspicious than prepossessing, especially as, instead of doffing his bonnet, he pulled it still deeper over his rugged brow. ``art thou isaac the jew of york?'' said gurth, in saxon. ``i am,'' replied isaac, in the same language, (for his traffic had rendered every tongue spoken in britain familiar to him)---``and who art thou?'' ``that is not to the purpose,'' answered gurth. ``as much as my name is to thee,'' replied isaac; ``for without knowing thine, how can i hold intercourse with thee?'' ``easily,'' answered gurth; ``i, being to pay money, must know that i deliver it to the right person; thou, who are to receive it, will not, i think, care very greatly by whose hands it is delivered.'' ``o,'' said the jew, ``you are come to pay moneys? ---holy father abraham! that altereth our relation to each other. and from whom dost thou bring it?'' ``from the disinherited knight,'' said gurth, ``victor in this day's tournament. it is the price of the armour supplied to him by kirjath jairam of leicester, on thy recommendation. the steed is restored to thy stable. i desire to know the amount of the sum which i am to pay for the armour.'' ``i said he was a good youth!'' exclaimed isaac with joyful exultation. ``a cup of wine will do thee no harm,'' he added, filling and handing to the swineherd a richer drought than gurth had ever before tasted. "and how much money,'' continued isaac, ``has thou brought with thee?'' ``holy virgin!'' said gurth, setting down the cup, ``what nectar these unbelieving dogs drink, while true christians are fain to quaff ale as muddy and thick as the draff we give to hogs!---what money have i brought with me?'' continued the saxon, when he had finished this uncivil ejaculation, ``even but a small sum; something in hand the whilst. what, isaac! thou must bear a conscience, though it be a jewish one.'' ``nay, but,'' said isaac, ``thy master has won goodly steeds and rich armours with the strength of his lance, and of his right hand---but 'tis a good youth---the jew will take these in present payment, and render him back the surplus.'' ``my master has disposed of them already,'' said gurth. ``ah! that was wrong,'' said the jew, ``that was the part of a fool. no christians here could buy so many horses and armour---no jew except myself would give him half the values. but thou hast a hundred zecchins with thee in that bag,'' said isaac, prying under gurth's cloak, ``it is a heavy one.'' ``i have heads for cross-bow bolts in it,'' said gurth, readily. ``well, then''---said isaac, panting and hesitating between habitual love of gain and a new-born desire to be liberal in the present instance, ``if i should say that i would take eighty zecchins for the good steed and the rich armour, which leaves me not a guilder's profit, have you money to pay me?'' ``barely,'' said gurth, though the sum demanded was more reasonable than he expected, ``and it will leave my master nigh penniless. nevertheless, if such be your least offer, i must be content.'' ``fill thyself another goblet of wine,'' said the jew. ``ah! eighty zeechins is too little. it leaveth no profit for the usages of the moneys; and, besides, the good horse may have suffered wrong in this day's encounter. o, it was a hard and a dangerous meeting! man and steed rushing on each other like wild bulls of bashan! the horse cannot but have had wrong.'' ``and i say,'' replied gurth, ``he is sound, wind and limb; and you may see him now, in your stable. and i say, over and above, that seventy zecchins is enough for the armour, and i hope a christian's word is as good as a jew's. if you will not take seventy, i will carry this bag'' (and he shook it till the contents jingled) ``back to my master.'' ``nay, nay!'' said isaac; ``lay down the talents ---the shekels---the eighty zecchins, and thou shalt see i will consider thee liberally.'' gurth at length complied; and telling out eighty zecehins upon the table, the jew delivered out to him an acquittance for the horse and suit of armour. the jew's hand trembled for joy as he wrapped up the first seventy pieces of gold. the last ten he told over with much deliberation, pausing, and saying something as he took each piece from the table, and dropt it into his purse. it seemed as if his avarice were struggling with his better nature, and compelling him to pouch zecchin after zecchin while his generosity urged him to restore some part at least to his benefactor, or as a donation to his agent. his whole speech ran nearly thus: ``seventy-one---seventy-two; thy master is a good youth---seventy-three, an excellent youth--seventy-four---that piece hath been clipt within the ring---seventy-five---and that looketh light of weight ---seventy-six---when thy master wants money, let him come to isaac of york---seventy-seven---that is, with reasonable security.'' here he made a considerable pause, and gurth had good hope that the last three pieces might escape the fate of their comrades; but the enumeration proceeded.---``seventy-eight--thou art a good fellow---seventy-nine--and deservest something for thyself------'' here the jew paused again, and looked at the last zecchin, intending, doubtless, to bestow it upon gurth. he weighed it upon the tip of his finger, and made it ring by dropping it upon the table. had it rung too flat, or had it felt a hair's breadth too light, generosity had carried the day; but, unhappily for gurth, the chime was full and true, the zecchin plump, newly coined, and a grain above weight. isaac could not find in his heart to part with it, so dropt it into his purse as if in absence of mind, with the words, ``eighty completes the tale, and i trust thy master will reward thee handsomely. ---surely,'' he added, looking earnestly at the bag, ``thou hast more coins in that pouch?'' gurth grinned, which was his nearest approach to a laugh, as he replied, ``about the same quantity which thou hast just told over so carefully.'' he then folded the quittance, and put it under his cap, adding,---``peril of thy heard, jew, see that this be full and ample!'' he filled himself unbidden, a third goblet of wine, and left the apartment without ceremony. ``rebecca,'' said the jew, ``that ishmaelite hath gone somewhat beyond me. nevertheless his master is a good youth---ay, and i am well pleased that he hath gained shekels of gold and shekels of silver, even by the speed of his horse and by the strength of his lance, which, like that of goliath the philistine, might vie with a weaver's beam.'' as he turned to receive rebecca's answer, he observed, that during his chattering with gurth, she had left the apartment unperceived. in the meanwhile, gurth had descended the stair, and, having reached the dark antechamber or hall, was puzzling about to discover the entrance, when a figure in white, shown by a small silver lamp which she held in her hand, beckoned him into a side apartment. gurth had some reluctance to obey the summons. rough and impetuous as a wild boar, where only earthly force was to be apprehended, he had all the characteristic terrors of a saxon respecting fawns, forest-fiends, white women, and the whole of the superstitions which his ancestors had brought with them from the wilds of germany. he remembered, moreover, that he was in the house of a jew, a people who, besides the other unamiable qualities wbich popular report ascribed to them, were supposed to be profound necromancers and cabalists. nevertheless, after a moment's pause, he obeyed the beckoning summons of the apparition, and followed her into the apartment which she indicated, where he found to his joyful surprise that his fair guide was the beautiful jewess whom he had seen at the tournament, and a short time in her father's apartment. she asked him the particulars of his transaction with isaac, which he detailed accurately. ``my father did but jest with thee, good fellow,'' said rebecca; ``he owes thy master deeper kindness than these arms and steed could pay, were their value tenfold. what sum didst thou pay my father even now?'' ``eighty zecchins,'' said gurth, surprised at the question. ``in this purse,'' said rebecca, ``thou wilt find a hundred. restore to thy master that which is his due, and enrich thyself with the remainder. haste ---begone---stay not to render thanks! and beware how you pass through this crowded town, where thou mayst easily lose both thy burden and thy life.---reuben,'' she added, clapping her hands together, ``light forth this stranger, and fail not to draw lock and bar behind him.'' reuben, a dark-brow'd and black-bearded israelite, obeyed her summons, with a torch in his hand; undid the outward door of the house, and conducting gurth across a paved court, let him out through a wicket in the entrance-gate, which he closed behind him with such bolts and chains as would well have become that of a prison. ``by st dunstan,'' said gurth, as he stumbled up the dark avenue, ``this is no jewess, but an angel from heaven! ten zecchins from my brave young master---twenty from this pearl of zion---oh, happy day!---such another, gurth, will redeem thy bondage, and make thee a brother as free of thy guild as the best. and then do i lay down my swineherd's horn and staff, and take the freeman's sword and buckler, and follow my voung master to the death, without hiding either my face or my name.'' chapter xi. _1st outlaw_. stand, sir, and throw us that you have about you; if not, we'll make you sit, and rifle you. _speed_. sir, we are undone! these are the villains that all the travellers do fear so much. _val_. my friends,-- _1st out_. that's not so, sir, we are your enemies. _2d out_. peace! we'll hear him. _3d out_. ay, by my beard, will we; for he's a proper man. _two gentlemen of verona_. the nocturnal adventures of gurth were not yet concluded; indeed he himself became partly of that mind, when, after passing one or two straggling houses which stood in the outskirts of the village, he found himself in a deep lane, running between two banks overgrown with hazel and holly, while here and there a dwarf oak flung its arms altogether across the path. the lane was moreover much rutted and broken up by the carriages which had recently transported articles of various kinds to the tournament; and it was dark, for the banks and bushes intercepted the light of the harvest moon. from the village were heard the distant sounds of revelry, mixed occasionally with loud laughter, sometimes broken by screams, and sometimes by wild strains of distant music. all these sounds, intimating the disorderly state of the town, crowded with military nobles and their dissolute attendants, gave gurth some uneasiness. ``the jewess was right,'' he said to himself. ``by heaven and st dunstan, i would i were safe at my journey's end with all this treasure! here are such numbers, i will not say of arrant thieves, but of errant knights and errant squires, errant monks and errant minstrels, errant jugglers and errant jesters, that a man with a single merk would be in danger, much more a poor swineherd with a whole bagful of zecchins. would i were out of the shade of these infernal bushes, that i might at least see any of st nicholas's clerks before they spring on my shoulders.'' gurth accordingly hastened his pace, in order to gain the open common to which the lane led, but was not so fortunate as to accomplish his object. just as he had attained the upper end of the lane, where the underwood was thickest, four men sprung upon him, even as his fears anticipated, two from each side of the road, and seized him so fast, that resistance, if at first practicable, would have been now too late.---``surrender your charge,'' said one of them; ``we are the deliverers of the commonwealth, who ease every man of his burden.'' ``you should not ease me of mine so lightly,'' muttered gurth, whose surly honesty could not be tamed even by the pressure of immediate violence, ---``had i it but in my power to give three strokes in its defence.'' ``we shall see that presently,'' said the robber; and, speaking to his companions, he added, ``bring along the knave. i see he would have his head broken, as well as his purse cut, and so be let blood in two veins at once.'' gurth was hurried along agreeably to this mandate, and having been dragged somewhat roughly over the bank, on the left-hand side of the lane, found himself in a straggling thicket, which lay betwixt it and the open common. he was compelled to follow his rough conductors into the very depth of this cover, where they stopt unexpectedly in an irregular open space, free in a great measure from trees, and on which, therefore, the beams of the moon fell without much interruption from boughs and leaves. here his captors were joined by two other persons, apparently belonging to the gang. they had short swords by their sides, and quarter-staves in their hands, and gurth could now observe that all six wore visors, which rendered their occupation a matter of no question, even had their former proceedings left it in doubt. ``what money hast thou, churl?'' said one of the thieves. ``thirty zecchins of my own property,'' answered gurth, doggedly. ``a forfeit---a forfeit,'' shouted the robbers; ``a saxon hath thirty zecchins, and returns sober from a village! an undeniable and unredeemable forfeit of all he hath about him.'' ``i hoarded it to purchase my freedom,'' said gurth. ``thou art an ass,'' replied one of the thieves ``three quarts of double ale had rendered thee as free as thy master, ay, and freer too, if he be a saxon like thyself.'' ``a sad truth,'' replied gurth; ``but if these same thirty zecchins will buy my freedom from you, unloose my hands, and i will pay them to you.'' ``hold,'' said one who seemed to exercise some authority over the others; ``this bag which thou bearest, as i can feel through thy cloak, contains more coin than thou hast told us of.'' ``it is the good knight my master's,'' answered gurth, ``of which, assuredly, i would not have spoken a word, had you been satisfied with working your will upon mine own property.'' ``thou art an honest fellow,'' replied the robber, ``i warrant thee; and we worship not st nicholas so devoutly but what thy thirty zecchins may yet escape, if thou deal uprightly with us. meantime render up thy trust for a time.'' so saying, he took from gurth's breast the large leathern pouch, in which the purse given him by rebecca was enclosed, as well as the rest of the zecchins, and then continued his interrogation.---``who is thy master?'' ``the disinherited knight,'' said gurth. ``whose good lance,'' replied the robber, ``won the prize in to-day's tourney? what is his name and lineage?'' ``it is his pleasure,'' answered gurth, ``that they be concealed; and from me, assuredly, you will learn nought of them.'' ``what is thine own name and lineage?'' ``to tell that,'' said gurth, ``might reveal my master's.'' ``thou art a saucy groom,'' said the robber, ``but of that anon. how comes thy master by this gold? is it of his inheritance, or by what means hath it accrued to him?'' ``by his good lance,'' answered gurth.---``these bags contain the ransom of four good horses, and four good suits of armour.'' ``how much is there?'' demanded the robber. ``two hundred zecchins.'' ``only two hundred zecchins!'' said the bandit; ``your master hath dealt liberally by the vanquished, and put them to a cheap ransom. name those who paid the gold.'' gurth did so. ``the armour and horse of the templar brian de bois-guilbert, at what ransom were they held? ---thou seest thou canst not deceive me.'' ``my master,'' replied gurth, ``will take nought from the templar save his life's-blood. they are on terms of mortal defiance, and cannot hold courteous intercourse together.'' ``indeed!''---repeated the robber, and paused after he had said the word. ``and what wert thou now doing at ashby with such a charge in thy custody?'' ``i went thither to render to isaac the jew of york,'' replied gurth, ``the price of a suit of armour with which he fitted my master for this tournament.'' ``and how much didst thou pay to isaac?--methinks, to judge by weight, there is still two hundred zecchins in this pouch.'' ``i paid to isaac,'' said the saxon, ``eighty zecchins, and he restored me a hundred in lieu thereof.'' ``how! what!'' exclaimed all the robbers at once; ``darest thou trifle with us, that thou tellest such improbable lies?'' ``what i tell you,'' said gurth, ``is as true as the moon is in heaven. you will find the just sum in a silken purse within the leathern pouch, and separate from the rest of the gold.'' ``bethink thee, man,'' said the captain, ``thou speakest of a jew---of an israelite,---as unapt to restore gold, as the dry sand of his deserts to return the cup of water which the pilgrim spills upon them.'' ``there is no more mercy in them,'' said another of the banditti, ``than in an unbribed sheriffs officer.'' ``it is, however, as i say,'' said gurth. ``strike a light instantly,'' said the captain; ``i will examine this said purse; and if it be as this fellow says, the jew's bounty is little less miraculous than the stream which relieved his fathers in the wilderness.'' a light was procured accordingly, and the robber proceeded to examine the purse. the others crowded around him, and even two who had hold of gurth relaxed their grasp while they stretched their necks to see the issue of the search. availing himself of their negligence, by a sudden exertion of strength and activity, gurth shook himself free of their hold, and might have escaped, could he have resolved to leave his master's property behind him. but such was no part of his intention. he wrenched a quarter-staff from one of the fellows, struck down the captain, who was altogether unaware of his purpose, and had wellnigh repossessed himself of the pouch and treasure. the thieves, however, were too nimble for him, and again secured both the bag and the trusty gurth. ``knave!'' said the captain, getting up, ``thou hast broken my head; and with other men of our sort thou wouldst fare the worse for thy insolence. but thou shalt know thy fate instantly. first let us speak of thy master; the knight's matters must go before the squire's, according to the due order of chivalry. stand thou fast in the meantime--if thou stir again, thou shalt have that will make thee quiet for thy life---comrades!'' he then said, addressing his gang, ``this purse is embroidered with hebrew characters, and i well believe the yeoman's tale is true. the errant knight, his master, must needs pass us toll-free. he is too like ourselves for us to make booty of him, since dogs should not worry dogs where wolves and foxes are to be found in abundance.'' ``like us?'' answered one of the gang; ``i should like to hear how that is made good.'' ``why, thou fool,'' answered the captain, ``is he not poor and disinherited as we are?---doth he not win his substance at the sword's point as we do?---hath he not beaten front-de-b<oe>uf and malvoisin, even as we would beat them if we could? is he not the enemy to life and death of brian de bois-guilbert, whom we have so much reason to fear? and were all this otherwise, wouldst thou have us show a worse conscience than an unbeliever, a hebrew jew?'' ``nay, that were a shame,'' muttered the other fellow; ``and yet, when i served in the band of stout old gandelyn, we had no such scruples of conscience. and this insolent peasant,---he too, i warrant me, is to be dismissed scatheless?'' ``not if _thou_ canst scathe him,'' replied the captain. ---``here, fellow,'' continued he, addressing gurth, ``canst thou use the staff, that thou starts to it so readily?'' ``i think,'' said gurth, ``thou shouldst be best able to reply to that question.'' ``nay, by my troth, thou gavest me a round knock,'' replied the captain; ``do as much for this fellow, and thou shalt pass scot-free; and if thou dost not---why, by my faith, as thou art such a sturdy knave, i think i must pay thy ransom myself. ---take thy staff, miller,'' he added, ``and keep thy head; and do you others let the fellow go, and give him a staff---there is light enough to lay on load by.'' the two champions being alike armed with quarter-staves, stepped forward into the centre of the open space, in order to have the full benefit of the moonlight; the thieves in the meantime laughing, and crying to their comrade, ``miller! beware thy toll-dish.'' the miller, on the other hand, holding his quarter-staff by the middle, and making it flourish round his head after the fashion which the french call _faire le moulinet_, exclaimed boastfully, ``come on, churl, an thou darest: thou shalt feel the strength of a miller's thumb!'' ``if thou best a miller,'' answered gurth, undauntedly, making his weapon play around his head with equal dexterity, ``thou art doubly a thief, and i, as a true man, bid thee defiance.'' so saying, the two champions closed together, and for a few minutes they displayed great equality in strength, courage, and skill, intercepting and returning the blows of their adversary with the most rapid dexterity, while, from the continued clatter of their weapons, a person at a distance might have supposed that there were at least six persons engaged on each side. less obstinate, and even less dangerous combats, have been described in good heroic verse; but that of gurth and the miller must remain unsung, for want of a sacred poet to do justice to its eventful progress. yet, though quarter-staff play be out of date, what we can in prose we will do for these bold champions. long they fought equally, until the miller began to lose temper at finding himself so stoutly opposed, and at hearing the laughter of his companions, who, as usual in such cases, enjoyed his vexation. this was not a state of mind favourable to the noble game of quarter-staff, in which, as in ordinary cudgel-playing, the utmost coolness is requisite; and it gave gurth, whose temper was steady, though surly, the opportunity of acquiring a decided advantage, in availing himself of which he displayed great mastery. the miller pressed furiously forward, dealing blows with either end of his weapon altemately, and striving to come to half-staff distance, while gurth defended himself against the attack, keeping his hands about a yard asunder, and covering himself by shifting his weapon with great celerity, so as to protect his head and body. thus did he maintain the defensive, making his eye, foot, and hand keep true time, until, observing his antagonist to lose wind, he darted the staff at his face with his left hand; and, as the miller endeavoured to parry the thrust, he slid his right hand down to his left, and with the full swing of the weapon struck his opponent on the left side of the head, who instantly measured his length upon the green sward. ``well and yeomanly done!'' shouted the robbers; ``fair play and old england for ever! the saxon hath saved both his purse and his hide, and the miller has met his match.'' ``thou mayst go thy ways, my friend,'' said the captain, addressing gurth, in special confirmation of the general voice, ``and i will cause two of my comrades to guide thee by the best way to thy master's pavilion, and to guard thee from night-walkers that might have less tender consciences than ours; for there is many one of them upon the amble in such a night as this. take heed, however,'' he added sternly; ``remember thou hast refused to tell thy name---ask not after ours, nor endeavour to discover who or what we are; for, if thou makest such an attempt, thou wilt come by worse fortune than has yet befallen thee.'' gurth thanked the captain for his courtesy, and promised to attend to his recommendation. two of the outlaws, taking up their quarter-staves, and desiring gurth to follow close in the rear, walked roundly forward along a by-path, which traversed the thicket and the broken ground adjacent to it. on the very verge of the thicket two men spoke to his conductors, and receiving an answer in a whisper, withdrew into the wood, and suffered them to pass unmolested. this circumstance induced gurth to believe both that the gang was strong in numbers, and that they kept regular guards around their place of rendezvous. when they arrived on the open heath, where gurth might have had some trouble in finding his road, the thieves guided him straight forward to the top of a little eminence, whence he could see, spread beneath him in the moonlight, the palisades of the lists, the glimmering pavilions pitched at either end, with the pennons which adorned them fluttering in the moonbeams, and from which could be heard the hum of the song with which the sentinels were beguiling their night-watch. here the thieves stopt. ``we go with you no farther,'' said they; ``it were not safe that we should do so.---remember the warning you have received---keep secret what has this night befallen you, and you will have no room to repent it---neglect what is now told you, and the tower of london shall not protect you against our revenge.'' ``good night to you, kind sirs,'' said gurth; ``i shall remember your orders, and trust that there is no offence in wishing you a safer and an honester trade.'' thus they parted, the outlaws returning in the direction from whence they had come, and gurth proceeding to the tent of his master, to whom, notwithstanding the injunction he had received, he communicated the whole adventures of the evening. the disinherited knight was filled with astonishment, no less at the generosity of rebecca, by which, however, he resolved he would not profit, than that of the robbers, to whose profession such a quality seemed totally foreign. his course of reflections upon these singular circumstances was, however, interrupted by the necessity for taking repose, which the fatigue of the preceding day, and the propriety of refreshing himself for the morrow's encounter, rendered alike indispensable. the knight, therefore, stretched himself for repose upon a rich couch with which the tent was provided; and the faithful gurth, extending his hardy limbs upon a bear-skin which formed a sort of carpet to the pavilion, laid himself across the opening of the tent, so that no one could enter without awakening him. chapter xii. the heralds left their pricking up and down, now ringen trumpets loud and clarion. there is no more to say, but east and west, in go the speares sadly in the rest, in goth the sharp spur into the side, there see men who can just and who can ride; there shiver shaftes upon shieldes thick, he feeleth through the heart-spone the prick; up springen speares, twenty feet in height, out go the swordes to the silver bright; the helms they to-hewn and to-sbred; out burst the blood with stern streames red. chaucer. morning arose in unclouded splendour, and ere the sun was much above the horizon, the idlest or the most eager of the spectators appeared on the common, moving to the lists as to a general centre, in order to secure a favourable situation for viewing the continuation of the expected games. the marshals and their attendants appeared next on the field, together with the heralds, for the purpose of receiving the names of the knights who intended to joust, with the side which each chose to espouse. this was a necessary precaution, in order to secure equality betwixt the two bodies who should be opposed to each other. according to due formality, the disinherited knight was to be considered as leader of the one body, while brian de bois-guilbert, who had been rated as having done second-best in the preceding day, was named first champion of the other band. those who had concurred in the challenge adhered to his party of course, excepting only ralph de vipont, whom his fall had rendered unfit so soon to put on his armour. there was no want of distinguished and noble candidates to fill up the ranks on either side. in fact, although the general tournament, in which all knights fought at once, was more dangerous than single encounters, they were, nevertheless, more frequented and practised by the chivalry of the age. many knights, who had not sufficient confidence in their own skill to defy a single adversary of high reputation, were, nevertheless, desirous of displaying their valour in the general combat, where they might meet others with whom they were more upon an equality. on the present occasion, about fifty knights were inscribed as desirous of combating upon each side, when the marshals declared that no more could be admitted, to the disappointment of several who were too late in preferring their claim to be included. about the hour of ten o'clock, the whole plain was crowded with horsemen, horsewomen, and foot-passengers, hastening to the tournament; and shortly after, a grand flourish of trumpets announced prince john and his retinue, attended by many of those knights who meant to take share in the game, as well as others who had no such intention. about the same time arrived cedric the saxon, with the lady rowena, unattended, however, by athelstane. this saxon lord had arrayed his tall and strong person in armour, in order to take his place among the combatants; and, considerably to the surprise of cedric, had chosen to enlist himself on the part of the knight templar. the saxon, indeed, had remonstrated strongly with his friend upon the injudicious choice he had made of his party; but he had only received that sort of answer usually given by those who are more obstinate in following their own course, than strong in justifying it. his best, if not his only reason, for adhering to the party of brian de bois-guilbert, athelstane had the prudence to keep to himself. though his apathy of disposition prevented his taking any means to recommend himself to the lady rowena, he was, nevertheless, by no means insensible to her charms, and considered his union with her as a matter already fixed beyond doubt, by the assent of cedric and her other friends. it had therefore been with smothered displeasure that the proud though indolent lord of coningsburgh beheld the victor of the preceding day select rowena as the object of that honour which it became his privilege to confer. in order to punish him for a preference which seemed to interfere with his own suit, athelstane, confident of his strength, and to whom his flatterers, at least, ascribed great skill in arms, had determined not only to deprive the disinherited knight of his powerful succour, but, if an opportunity should occur, to make him feel the weight of his battle-axe. de bracy, and other knights attached to prince john, in obedience to a hint from him, had joined the party of the challengers, john being desirous to secure, if possible, the victory to that side. on the other hand, many other knights, both english and norman, natives and strangers, took part against the challengers, the more readily that the opposite band was to be led by so distinguished a champion as the disinherited knight had approved himself. as soon as prince john observed that the destined queen of the day had arrived upon the field, assuming that air of courtesy which sat well upon him when he was pleased to exhibit it, he rode forward to meet her, doffed his bonnet, and, alighting from his horse, assisted the lady rowena from her saddle, while his followers uncovered at the same time, and one of the most distinguished dismounted to hold her palfrey. ``it is thus,'' said prince john, ``that we set the dutiful example of loyalty to the queen of love and beauty, and are ourselves her guide to the throne which she must this day occupy.---ladies,'' he said, ``attend your queen, as you wish in your turn to be distinguished by like honours.'' so saying, the prince marshalled rowena to the seat of honour opposite his own, while the fairest and most distinguished ladies present crowded after her to obtain places as near as possible to their temporary sovereign. no sooner was rowena seated, than a burst of music, half-drowned by the shouts of the multitude, greeted her new dignity. meantime, the sun shone fierce and bright upon the polished arms of the knights of either side, who crowded the opposite extremities of the lists, and held eager conference together concerning the best mode of arranging their line of battle, and supporting the conflict. the heralds then proclaimed silence until the laws of the tourney should be rehearsed. these were calculated in some degree to abate the dangers of the day; a precaution the more necessary, as the conflict was to be maintained with sharp swords and pointed lances. the champions were therefore prohibited to thrust with the sword, and were confined to striking. a knight, it was announced, might use a mace or battle-axe at pleasure, but the dagger was a prohibited weapon. a knight unhorsed might renew the fight on foot with any other on the opposite side in the same predicament; but mounted horsemen were in that case forbidden to assail him. when any knight could force his antagonist to the extremity of the lists, so as to touch the palisade with his person or arms, such opponent was obliged to yield himself vanquished, and his armour and horse were placed at the disposal of the conqueror. a knight thus overcome was not permitted to take farther share in the combat. if any combatant was struck down, and unable to recover his feet, his squire or page might enter the lists, and drag his master out of the press; but in that case the knight was adjudged vanquished, and his arms and horse declared forfeited. the combat was to cease as soon as prince john should throw down his leading staff, or truncheon; another precaution usually taken to prevent the unnecessary effusion of blood by the too long endurance of a sport so desperate. any knight breaking the rules of the tournament, or otherwise transgressing the rules of honourable chivalry, was liable to be stript of his arms, and, having his shield reversed to be placed in that posture astride upon the bars of the palisade, and exposed to public derision, in punishment of his unknightly conduct. having announced these precautions, the heralds concluded with an exhortation to each good knight to do his duty, and to merit favour from the queen of beauty and of love. this proclamation having been made, the heralds withdrew to their stations. the knights, entering at either end of the lists in long procession, arranged themselves in a double file, precisely opposite to each other, the leader of each party being in the centre of the foremost rank, a post which he did not occupy until each had carefully marshalled the ranks of his party, and stationed every one in his place. it was a goodly, and at the same time an anxious, sight, to behold so many gallant champions, mounted bravely, and armed richly, stand ready prepared for an encounter so formidable, seated on their war-saddles like so many pillars of iron, and awaiting the signal of encounter with the same ardour as their generous steeds, which, by neighing and pawing the ground, gave signal of their impatience. as yet the knights held their long lances upright, their bright points glancing to the sun, and the streamers with which they were decorated fluttering over the plumage of the helmets. thus they remained while the marshals of the field surveyed their ranks with the utmost exactness, lest either party had more or fewer than the appointed number. the tale was found exactly complete. the marshals then withdrew from the lists, and william de wyvil, with a voice of thunder, pronounced the signal words---_laissez aller_! the trumpets sounded as he spoke---the spears of the champions were at once lowered and placed in the rests---the spurs were dashed into the flanks of the horses, and the two foremost ranks of either party rushed upon each other in full gallop, and met in the middle of the lists with a shock, the sound of which was heard at a mile's distance. the rear rank of each party advanced at a slower pace to sustain the defeated, and follow up the success of the victors of their party. the consequences of the encounter were not instantly seen, for the dust raised by the trampling of so many steeds darkened the air, and it was a minute ere the anxious spectator could see the fate of the encounter. when the fight became visible, half the knights on each side were dismounted, some by the dexterity of their adversary's lance,--some by the superior weight and strength of opponents, which had borne down both horse and man,---some lay stretched on earth as if never more to rise,---some had already gained their feet, and were closing hand to hand with those of their antagonists who were in the same predicament,---and several on both sides, who had received wounds by which they were disabled, were stopping their blood by their scarfs, and endeavouring to extricate themselves from the tumult. the mounted knights, whose lances had been almost all broken by the fury of the encounter, were now closely engaged with their swords, shouting their war-cries, and exchanging buffets, as if honour and life depended on the issue of the combat. the tumult was presently increased by the advance of the second rank on either side, which, acting as a reserve, now rushed on to aid their companions. the followers of brian de bois-guilbert shouted ---``_ha! beau-seant! beau-seant!_ * --for * _beau-seant_ was the name of the templars' banner, which * was half black, half white, to intimate, it is said, that they were * candid and fair towards christians, but black and terrible towards * infidels. the temple---for the temple!'' the opposite party shouted in answer---``_desdichado! desdichado!_'' ---which watch-word they took from the motto upon their leader's shield. the champions thus encountering each other with the utmost fury, and with alternate success, the tide of battle seemed to flow now toward the southern, now toward the northern extremity of the lists, as the one or the other party prevailed. meantime the clang of the blows, and the shouts of the combatants, mixed fearfully with the sound of the trumpets, and drowned the groans of those who fell, and lay rolling defenceless beneath the feet of the horses. the splendid armour of the combatants was now defaced with dust and blood, and gave way at every stroke of the sword and battle-axe. the gay plumage, shorn from the crests, drifted upon the breeze like snow-flakes. all that was beautiful and graceful in the martial array had disappeared, and what was now visible was only calculated to awake terror or compassion. yet such is the force of habit, that not only the vulgar spectators, who are naturally attracted by sights of horror, but even the ladies of distinction who crowded the galleries, saw the conflict with a thrilling interest certainly, but without a wish to withdraw their eyes from a sight so terrible. here and there, indeed, a fair cheek might turn pale, or a faint scream might be heard, as a lover, a brother, or a husband, was struck from his horse. but, in general, the ladies around encouraged the combatants, not only by clapping their hands and waving their veils and kerchiefs, but even by exclaiming, ``brave lance! good sword!'' when any successful thrust or blow took place under their observation. such being the interest taken by the fair sex in this bloody game, that of the men is the more easily understood. it showed itself in loud acclamations upon every change of fortune, while all eyes were so riveted on the lists, that the speetators seemed as if they themselves had dealt and received the blows which were there so freely bestowed. and between every pause was heard the voice of the heralds, exclaiming, ``fight on, brave knights! man dies, but glory lives!---fight on---death is better than defeat!---fight on, brave knights!--for bright eyes behold your deeds!'' amid the varied fortunes of the combat, the eyes of all endeavoured to discover the leaders of each band, who, mingling in the thick of the fight, encouraged their companions both by voice and example. both displayed great feats of gallantry, nor did either bois-guilbert or the disinherited knight find in the ranks opposed to them a champion who could be termed their unquestioned match. they repeatedly endeavoured to single out each other, spurred by mutual animosity, and aware that the fall of either leader might be considered as decisive of victory. such, however, was the crowd and confusion, that, during the earlier part of the conflict, their efforts to meet were unavailing, and they were repeatedly separated by the eagerness of their followers, each of whom was anxious to win honour, by measuring his strength against the leader of the opposite party. but when the field became thin by the numbers on either side who had yielded themselves vanquished, had been compelled to the extremity of the lists, or been otherwise rendered incapable of continuing the strife, the templar and the disinherited knight at length encountered hand to hand, with all the fury that mortal animosity, joined to rivalry of honour, could inspire. such was the address of each in parrying and striking, that the spectators broke forth into a unanimous and involuntary shout, expressive of their delight and admiration. but at this moment the party of the disinherited knight had the worst; the gigantic arm of front-de-b<oe>uf on the one flank, and the ponderous strength of athelstane on the other, bearing down and dispersing those immediately exposed to them. finding themselves freed from their immediate antagonists, it seems to have occurred to both these knights at the same instant, that they would render the most decisive advantage to their party, by aiding the templar in his contest with his rival. turning their horses, therefore, at the same moment, the norman spurred against the disinherited knight on the one side, and the saxon on the other. it was utterly impossible that the object of this unequal and unexpected assault could have sustained it, had he not been warned by a general cry from the spectators, who could not but take interest in one exposed to such disadvantage. ``beware! beware! sir disinherited!'' was shouted so universally, that the knight became aware of his danger; and, striking a full blow at the templar, he reined back his steed in the same moment, so as to escape the charge of athelstane and front-de-b<oe>uf. these knights, therefore, their aim being thus eluded, rushed from opposite sides betwixt the object of their attack and the templar, almost running their horses against each other ere they could stop their career. recovering their horses however, and wheeling them round, the whole three pursued their united purpose of bearing to the earth the disinherited knight. nothing could have saved him, except the remarkable strength and activity of the noble horse which he had won on the preceding day. this stood him in the more stead, as the horse of bois-guilbert was wounded, and those of front-de-b<oe>uf and athelstane were both tired with the weight of their gigantic masters, clad in complete armour, and with the preceding exertions of the day. the masterly horsemanship of the disinherited knight, and the activity of the noble animal which he mounted, enabled him for a few minutes to keep at sword's point his three antagonists, turning and wheeling with the agility of a hawk upon the wing, keeping his enemies as far separate as he could, and rushing now against the one, now against the other, dealing sweeping blows with his sword, without waiting to receive those which were aimed at him in return. but although the lists rang with the applauses of his dexterity, it was evident that he must at last be overpowered; and the nobles around prince john implored him with one voice to throw down his warder, and to save so brave a knight from the disgrace of being overcome by odds. ``not i, by the light of heaven!'' answered prince john; ``this same springal, who conceals his name, and despises our proffered hospitality, hath already gained one prize, and may now afford to let others have their turn.'' as he spoke thus, an unexpected incident changed the fortune of the day. there was among the ranks of the disinherited knight a champion in black armour, mounted on a black horse, large of size, tall, and to all appearance powerful and strong, like the rider by whom he was mounted, this knight, who bore on his shield no device of any kind, had hitherto evinced very little interest in the event of the fight, beating off with seeming case those combatants who attacked him, but neither pursuing his advantages, nor himself assailing any one. in short, he had hitherto acted the part rather of a spectator than of a party in the tournament, a circumstance which procured him among the spectators the name of _le noir faineant_, or the black sluggard. at once this knight seemed to throw aside his apathy, when he discovered the leader of his party so hard bestead; for, setting spurs to his horse, which was quite fresh, he came to his assistance like a thunderbolt, exclaiming, in a voice like a trumpet-call, ``_desdichado_, to the rescue!'' it was high time; for, while the disinherited knight was pressing upon the templar, front-de-b<oe>uf had got nigh to him with his uplifted sword; but ere the blow could descend, the sable knight dealt a stroke on his head, which, glancing from the polished helmet, lighted with violence scarcely abated on the _chamfron_ of the steed, and front-de-b<oe>uf rolled on the ground, both horse and man equally stunned by the fury of the blow. _le noir faineant_ then turned his horse upon athelstane of coningsburgh; and his own sword having been broken in his encounter with front-de-b<oe>uf, he wrenched from the hand of the bulky saxon the battle-axe which he wielded, and, like one familiar with the use of the weapon, bestowed him such a blow upon the crest, that athelstane also lay senseless on the field. having achieved this double feat, for which he was the more highly applauded that it was totally unexpected from him, the knight seemed to resume the sluggishness of his character, returning calmly to the northern extremity of the lists, leaving his leader to cope as he best could with brian de bois-guilbert. this was no longer matter of so much difficulty as formerly. the templars horse had bled much, and gave way under the shock of the disinherited knight's charge. brian de bois-guilbert rolled on the field, encumbered with the stirrup, from which he was unable to draw his foot. his antagonist sprung from horseback, waved his fatal sword over the head of his adversary, and commanded him to yield himself; when prince john, more moved by the templars dangerous situation than he had been by that of his rival, saved him the mortification of confessing himself vanquished, by casting down his warder, and putting an end to the conflict. it was, indeed, only the relics and embers of the fight which continued to burn; for of the few knights who still continued in the lists, the greater part had, by tacit consent, forborne the conflict for some time, leaving it to be determined by the strife of the leaders. the squires, who had found it a matter of danger and difficulty to attend their masters during the engagement, now thronged into the lists to pay their dutiful attendance to the wounded, who were removed with the utmost care and attention to the neighbouring pavilions, or to the quarters prepared for them in the adjoining village. thus ended the memorable field of ashby-de-la-zouche, one of the most gallantly contested tournaments of that age; for although only four knights, including one who was smothered by the heat of his armour, had died upon the field, yet upwards of thirty were desperately wounded, four or five of whom never recovered. several more were disabled for life; and those who escaped best carried the marks of the conflict to the grave with them. hence it is always mentioned in the old records, as the gentle and joyous passage of arms of ashby. it being now the duty of prince john to name the knight who had done best, he determined that the honour of the day remained with the knight whom the popular voice had termed _le noir faineant_. it was pointed out to the prince, in impeachment of this decree, that the victory had been in fact won by the disinherited knight, who, in the course of the day, had overcome six champions with his own hand, and who had finally unhorsed and struck down the leader of the opposite party. but prince john adhered to his own opinion, on the ground that the disinherited knight and his party had lost the day, but for the powerful assistance of the knight of the black armour, to whom, therefore, he persisted in awarding the prize. to the surprise of all present, however, the knight thus preferred was nowhere to be found. he had left the lists immediately when the conflict ceased, and had been observed by some spectators to move down one of the forest glades with the same slow pace and listless and indifferent manner which had procured him the epithet of the black sluggard. after he had been summoned twice by sound of trumpet, and proclamation of the heralds, it became necessary to name another to receive the honours which had been assigned to him. prince john had now no further excuse for resisting the claim of the disinherited knight, whom, therefore, he named the champion of the day. through a field slippery with blood, and encumbered with broken armour and the bodies of slain and wounded horses, the marshals of the lists again conducted the victor to the foot of prince john's throne. ``disinherited knight,'' said prince john, ``since by that title only you will consent to be known to us, we a second time award to you the honours of this tournament, and announce to you your right to claim and receive from the hands of the queen of love and beauty, the chaplet of honour which your valour has justly deserved.'' the knight bowed low and gracefully, but returned no answer. while the trumpets sounded, wbile the heralds strained their voices in proclaiming honour to the brave and glory to the victor---while ladies waved their silken kerchiefs and embroidered veils, and while all ranks joined in a clamorous shout of exultation, the marshals conducted the disinherited knight across the lists to the foot of that throne of honour which was occupied by the lady rowena. on the lower step of this throne the champion was made to kneel down. indeed his whole action since the fight had ended, seemed rather to have been upon the impulse of those around him than from his own free will; and it was observed that he tottered as they guided him the second time across the lists. rowena, descending from her station with a graceful and dignified step, was about to place the chaplet which she held in her hand upon the helmet of the champion, when the marshals exclaimed with one voice, ``it must not be thus---his head must be bare.'' the knight muttered faintly a few words, which were lost in the hollow of his helmet, but their purport seemed to be a desire that his casque might not be removed. whether from love of form, or from curiosity, the marshals paid no attention to his expressions of reluctance, but unhelmed him by cutting the laces of his casque, and undoing the fastening of his gorget. when the helmet was removed, the well-formed, yet sun-burnt features of a young man of twenty-five were seen, amidst a profusion of short fair hair. his countenance was as pale as death, and marked in one or two places with streaks of blood. rowena had no sooner beheld him than she uttered a faint shriek; but at once summoning up the energy of her disposition, and compelling herself, as it were, to proceed, while her frame yet trembled with the violence of sudden emotion, she placed upon the drooping head of the victor the splendid chaplet which was the destined reward of the day, and pronounced, in a clear and distinct tone, these words: ``i bestow on thee this chaplet, sir knight, as the meed of valour assigned to this day's victor:'' here she paused a moment, and then firmly added, ``and upon brows more worthy could a wreath of chivalry never be placed!'' the knight stooped his head, and kissed the hand of the lovely sovereign by whom his valour had been rewarded; and then, sinking yet farther forward, lay prostrate at her feet. there was a general consternation. cedric, who had been struck mute by the sudden appearance of his banished son, now rushed forward, as if to separate him from rowena. but this had been already accomplished by the marshals of the field, who, guessing the cause of ivanhoe's swoon, had hastened to undo his armour, and found that the head of a lance had penetrated his breastplate, and inflicted a wound in his side. chapter xiii. ``heroes, approach!'' atrides thus aloud, ``stand forth distinguish'd from the circling crowd, ye who by skill or manly force may claim, your rivals to surpass and merit fame. this cow, worth twenty oxen, is decreed, for him who farthest sends the winged reed.'' _iliad_. the name of ivanhoe was no sooner pronounced than it flew from mouth to mouth, with all the celerity with which eagerness could convey and curiosity receive it. it was not long ere it reached the circle of the prince, whose brow darkened as he heard the news. looking around him, however, with an air of scorn, ``my lords,'' said he, ``and especially you, sir prior, what think ye of the doctrine the learned tell us, concerning innate attractions and antipathies? methinks that i felt the presence of my brother's minion, even when i least guessed whom yonder suit of armour enclosed.'' ``front-de-b<oe>uf must prepare to restore his fief of ivanhoe,'' said de bracy, who, having discharged his part honourably in the tournament, had laid his shield and helmet aside, and again mingled with the prince's retinue. ``ay,'' answered waldemar fitzurse, ``this gallant is likely to reclaim the castle and manor which richard assigned to him, and which your highness's generosity has since given to front-de-b<oe>uf.'' ``front-de-b<oe>uf,'' replied john, ``is a man more willing to swallow three manors such as ivanhoe, than to disgorge one of them. for the rest, sirs, i hope none here will deny my right to confer the fiefs of the crown upon the faithful followers who are around me, and ready to perform the usual military service, in the room of those who have wandered to foreign countries, and can neither render homage nor service when called upon.'' the audience were too much interested in the question not to pronounce the prince's assumed right altogether indubitable. ``a generous prince! ---a most noble lord, who thus takes upon himself the task of rewarding his faithful followers!'' such were the words which burst from the train, expectants all of them of similar grants at the expense of king richard's followers and favourites, if indeed they had not as yet received such. prior aymer also assented to the general proposition, observing, however, ``that the blessed jerusalem could not indeed be termed a foreign country. she was _communis mater_---the mother of all christians. but he saw not,'' he declared, ``how the knight of ivanhoe could plead any advantage from this, since he'' (the prior) ``was assured that the crusaders, under richard, had never proceeded much farther than askalon, which, as all the world knew, was a town of the philistines, and entitled to none of the privileges of the holy city.'' waldemar, whose curiosity had led him towards the place where ivanhoe had fallen to the ground, now returned. ``the gallant,'' said he, ``is likely to give your highness little disturbance, and to leave front-de-b<oe>uf in the quiet possession of his gains--he is severely wounded.'' ``whatever becomes of him,'' said prince john, ``he is victor of the day; and were he tenfold our enemy, or the devoted friend of our brother, which is perhaps the same, his wounds must be looked to ---our own physician shall attend him.'' a stern smile curled the prince's lip as he spoke. waldemar fitzurse hastened to reply, that ivanhoe was already removed from the lists, and in the custody of his friends. ``i was somewhat afflicted,'' he said, ``to see the grief of the queen of love and beauty, whose sovereignty of a day this event has changed into mourning. i am not a man to be moved by a woman's lament for her lover, but this same lady rowena suppressed her sorrow with such dignity of manner, that it could only be discovered by her folded hands, and her tearless eye, which trembled as it remained fixed on the lifeless form before her.'' ``who is this lady rowena,'' said prince john, ``of whom we have heard so much?'' ``a saxon heiress of large possessions,'' replied the prior aymer; ``a rose of loveliness, and a jewel of wealth; the fairest among a thousand, a bundle of myrrh, and a cluster of camphire.'' ``we shall cheer her sorrows,'' said prince john, ``and amend her blood, by wedding her to a norman. she seems a minor, and must therefore be at our royal disposal in marriage.---how sayst thou, de bracy? what thinkst thou of gaining fair lands and livings, by wedding a saxon, after the fashion of the followers of the conqueror?'' ``if the lands are to my liking, my lord,'' answered de bracy, ``it will be hard to displease me with a bride; and deeply will i hold myself bound to your highness for a good deed, which will fulfil all promises made in favour of your servant and vassal.'' ``we will not forget it,'' said prince john; ``and that we may instantly go to work, command our seneschal presently to order the attendance of the lady rowena and her company---that is, the rude churl her guardian, and the saxon ox whom the black knight struck down in the tournament, upon this evening's banquet.---de bigot,'' he added to his seneschal, ``thou wilt word this our second summons so courteously, as to gratify the pride of these saxons, and make it impossible for them again to refuse; although, by the bones of becket, courtesy to them is casting pearls before swine.'' prince john had proceeded thus far, and was about to give the signal for retiring from the lists, when a small billet was put into his hand. ``from whence?'' said prince john, looking at the person by whom it was delivered. ``from foreign parts, my lord, but from whence i know not'' replied his attendant. ``a frenchman brought it hither, who said, he had ridden night and day to put it into the hands of your highness.'' the prince looked narrowly at the superscription, and then at the seal, placed so as to secure the flex-silk with which the billet was surrounded, and which bore the impression of three fleurs-de-lis. john then opened the billet with apparent agitation, which visibly and greatly increased when he had perused the contents, which were expressed in these words-- ``_take heed to ourse for the devil is unchained!_'' the prince turned as pale as death, looked first on the earth, and then up to heaven, like a man who has received news that sentence of execution has been passed upon him. recovering from the first effects of his surprise, he took waldemar fitzurse and de bracy aside, and put the billet into their hands successively. ``it means,'' he added, in a faltering voice, ``that my brother richard has obtained his freedom.'' ``this may be a false alarm, or a forged letter,'' said de bracy. ``it is france's own hand and seal,'' replied prince john. ``it is time, then,'' said fitzurse, ``to draw our party to a head, either at york, or some other centrical place. a few days later, and it will be indeed too late. your highness must break short this present mummery.'' ``the yeomen and commons,'' said de bracy, ``must not be dismissed discontented, for lack of their share in the sports.'' ``the day,'' said waldemar, ``is not yet very far spent---let the archer's shoot a few rounds at the target, and the prize be adjudged. this will be an abundant fulfilment of the prince's promises, so far as this herd of saxon serfs is concerned.'' ``i thank thee, waldemar,'' said the prince; ``thou remindest me, too, that i have a debt to pay to that insolent peasant who yesterday insulted our person. our banquet also shall go forward to-night as we proposed. were this my last hour of power, it should be an hour sacred to revenge and to pleasure--let new cares come with to-morrow's new day.'' the sound of the trumpets soon recalled those spectators who had already begun to leave the field; and proclamation was made that prince john, suddenly called by high and peremptory public duties, held himself obliged to discontinue the entertainments of to-morrow's festival: nevertheless, that, unwilling so many good yeoman should depart without a trial of skill, he was pleased to appoint them, before leaving the ground, presently to execute the competition of archery intended for the morrow. to the best archer a prize was to be awarded, being a bugle-horn, mounted with silver, and a silken baldric richly ornamented with a medallion of st hubert, the patron of silvan sport. more than thirty yeomen at first presented themselves as competitors, several of whom were rangers and under-keepers in the royal forests of needwood and charnwood. when, however, the archers understood with whom they were to be matched, up wards of twenty withdrew themselves from the contest, unwilling to encounter the dishonour of almost certain defeat. for in those days the skill of each celebrated marksman was as well known for many miles round him, as the qualities of a horse trained at newmarket are familiar to those who frequent that well-known meeting. the diminished list of competitors for silvan fame still amounted to eight. prince john stepped from his royal seat to view more nearly the persons of these chosen yeomen, several of whom wore the royal livery. having satisfied his curiosity by this investigation, he looked for the object of his resentment, whom he observed standing on the same spot, and with the same composed countenance which he had exhibited upon the preceding day. ``fellow,'' said prince john, ``i guessed by thy insolent babble that thou wert no true lover of the longbow, and i see thou darest not adventure thy skill among such merry-men as stand yonder.'' ``under favour, sir,'' replied the yeoman, ``i have another reason for refraining to shoot, besides the fearing discomfiture and disgrace.'' ``and what is thy other reason?'' said prince john, who, for some cause which perhaps he could not himself have explained, felt a painful curiosity respecting this individual. ``because,'' replied the woodsman, ``i know not if these yeomen and i are used to shoot at the same marks; and because, moreover, i know not how your grace might relish the winning of a third prize by one who has unwittingly fallen under your displeasure.'' prince john coloured as he put the question, ``what is thy name, yeoman?'' ``locksley,'' answered the yeoman. ``then, locksley,'' said prince john, ``thou shalt shoot in thy turn, when these yeomen have displayed their skill. if thou carriest the prize, i will add to it twenty nobles; but if thou losest it, thou shalt be stript of thy lincoln green, and scourged out of the lists with bowstrings, for a wordy and insolent braggart.'' ``and how if i refuse to shoot on such a wager?'' said the yeoman.---``your grace's power, supported, as it is, by so many men-at-arms, may indeed easily strip and scourge me, but cannot compel me to bend or to draw my bow.'' ``if thou refusest my fair proffer,'' said the prince, ``the provost of the lists shall cut thy bowstring, break thy bow and arrows, and expel thee from the presence as a faint-hearted craven.'' ``this is no fair chance you put on me, proud prince,'' said the yeoman, ``to compel me to peril myself against the best archers of leicester and staffordshire, under the penalty of infamy if they should overshoot me. nevertheless, i will obey your pleasure.'' ``look to him close, men-at-arms,'' said prince john, ``his heart is sinking; i am jealous lest he attempt to escape the trial.---and do you, good fellows, shoot boldly round; a buck and a butt of wine are ready for your refreshment in yonder tent, when the prize is won.'' a target was placed at the upper end of the southern avenue which led to the lists. the contending archers took their station in turn, at the bottom of the southern access, the distance between that station and the mark allowing full distance for what was called a shot at rovers. the archers, having previously determined by lot their order of precedence, were to shoot each three shafts in succession. the sports were regulated by an officer of inferior rank, termed the provost of the games; for the high rank of the marshals of the lists would have been held degraded, had they condescended to superintend the sports of the yeomanry. one by one the archers, stepping forward, delivered their shafts yeomanlike and bravely. of twenty-four arrows, shot in succession, ten were fixed in the target, and the others ranged so near it, that, considering the distance of the mark, it was accounted good archery. of the ten shafts which hit the target, two within the inner ring were shot by hubert, a forester in the service of malvoisin, who was accordingly pronounced victorious. ``now, locksley,'' said prince john to the bold yeoman, with a bitter smile, ``wilt thou try conclusions with hubert, or wilt thou yield up bow, baldric, and quiver, to the provost of the sports?'' ``sith it be no better,'' said locksley, ``i am content to try my fortune; on condition that when i have shot two shafts at yonder mark of hubert's, he shall be bound to shoot one at that which i shall propose.'' ``that is but fair,'' answered prince john, ``and it shall not be refused thee.---if thou dost beat this braggart, hubert, i will fill the bugle with silver-pennies for thee.'' ``a man can do but his best,'' answered hubert; ``but my grandsire drew a good long bow at hastings, and i trust not to dishonour his memory.'' the former target was now removed, and a fresh one of the same size placed in its room. hubert, who, as victor in the first trial of skill, had the right to shoot first, took his aim with great deliberation, long measuring the distance with his eye, while he held in his hand his bended bow, with the arrow placed on the string. at length he made a step forward, and raising the bow at the full stretch of his left arm, till the centre or grasping-place was nigh level with his face, he drew his bowstring to his ear. the arrow whistled through the air, and lighted within the inner ring of the target, but not exactly in the centre. ``you have not allowed for the wind, hubert,'' said his antagonist, bending his bow, ``or that had been a better shot.'' so saying, and without showing the least anxiety to pause upon his aim, locksley stept to the appointed station, and shot his arrow as carelessly in appearance as if he had not even looked at the mark. he was speaking almost at the instant that the shaft left the bowstring, yet it alighted in the target two inches nearer to the white spot which marked the centre than that of hubert. ``by the light of heaven!'' said prince john to hubert, ``an thou suffer that runagate knave to overcome thee, thou art worthy of the gallows!'' hubert had but one set speech for all occasions. ``an your highness were to hang me,'' he said, `` a man can but do his best. nevertheless, my grandsire drew a good bow---'' ``the foul fiend on thy grandsire and all his generation!'' interrupted john , ``shoot, knave, and shoot thy best, or it shall be the worse for thee!'' thus exhorted, hubert resumed his place, and not neglecting the caution which he had received from his adversary, he made the necessary allowance for a very light air of wind, wbich had just arisen, and shot so successfully that his arrow alighted in the very centre of the target. ``a hubert! a hubert!'' shouted the populace, more interested in a known person than in a stranger. ``in the clout!---in the clout!---a hubert for ever!'' ``thou canst not mend that shot, locksley,'' said the prince, with an insulting smile. ``i will notch his shaft for him, however,'' replied locksley. and letting fly his arrow with a little more precaution than before, it lighted right upon that of his competitor, which it split to shivers. the people who stood around were so astonished at his wonderful dexterity, that they could not even give vent to their surprise in their usual clamour. ``this must be the devil, and no man of flesh and blood,'' whispered the yeoman to eaeh other; ``such archery was never seen since a bow was first bent in britain.'' ``and now,'' said locksley, ``i will crave your grace's permission to plant such a mark as is used in the north country; and welcome every brave yeoman who shall try a shot at it to win a smile from the bonny lass he loves best.'' he then turned to leave the lists. ``let your guards attend me,'' he said, ``if you please---i go but to cut a rod from the next willow-bush.'' prince john made a signal that some attendants should follow him in case of his escape: but the cry of ``shame! shame!'' which burst from the multitude, induced him to alter his ungenerous purpose. locksley returned almost instantly with a willow wand about six feet in length, perfectly straight, and rather thicker than a man's thumb. he began to peel this with great composure, observing at the same time, that to ask a good woodsman to shoot at a target so broad as had hitherto been used, was to put shame upon his skill. ``for his own part,'' he said, ``and in the land where he was bred, men would as soon take for their mark king arthur's round-table, which held sixty knights around it. a child of seven years old,'' he said, `` might hit yonder target with a headless shaft; but,'' added he, walking deliberately to the other end of the lists, and sticking the willow wand upright in the ground, ``he that hits that rod at five-score yards, i call him an archer fit to bear both bow and quiver before a king, an it were the stout king richard himself.'' ``my grandsire,'' said hubert, ``drew a good bow at the battle of hastings, and never shot at such a mark in his life---and neither will i. if this yeoman can cleave that rod, i give him the bucklers--or rather, i yield to the devil that is in his jerkin, and not to any human skill; a man can but do his best, and i will not shoot where i am sure to miss. i might as well shoot at the edge of our parson's whittle, or at a wheat straw, or at a sunbeam, as at a twinkling white streak which i can hardly see.'' ``cowardly dog!'' said prince john.---``sirrah locksley, do thou shoot; but, if thou hittest such a mark, i will say thou art the first man ever did so. however it be, thou shalt not crow over us with a mere show of superior skill.'' ``i will do my best, as hubert says,'' answered locksley; ``no man can do more.'' so saying, he again bent his bow, but on the present occasion looked with attention to his weapon, and changed the string, which he thought was no longer truly round, having been a little frayed by the two former shots. he then took his aim with some deliberation, and the multitude awaited the event in breathless silence. the archer vindicated their opinion of his skill: his arrow split the willow rod against which it was aimed. a jubilee of acclamations followed; and even prince john, in admiration of locksley's skill, lost for an instant his dislike to his person. ``these twenty nobles,'' he said, ``which, with the bugle, thou hast fairly won, are thine own; we will make them fifty, if thou wilt take livery and service with us as a yeoman of our body guard, and be near to our person. for never did so strong a hand bend a bow, or so true an eye direct a shaft.'' ``pardon me, noble prince,'' said locksley; ``but i have vowed, that if ever i take service, it should be with your royal brother king richard. these twenty nobles i leave to hubert, who has this day drawn as brave a bow as his grandsire did at hastings. had his modesty not refused the trial, he would have hit the wand as well i.'' hubert shook his head as he received with reluctance the bounty of the stranger, and locksley, anxious to escape further observation, mixed with the crowd, and was seen no more. the victorious archer would not perhaps have escaped john's attention so easily, had not that prince had other subjects of anxious and more important meditation pressing upon his mind at that instant. he called upon his chamberlain as he gave the signal for retiring from the lists, and commanded him instantly to gallop to ashby, and seek out isaac the jew. ``tell the dog,'' he said, ``to send me, before sun-down, two thousand crowns. he knows the security; but thou mayst show him this ring for a token. the rest of the money must be paid at york within six days. if he neglects, i will have the unbelieving villain's head. look that thou pass him not on the way; for the circumcised slave was displaying his stolen finery amongst us.'' so saying, the prince resumed his horse, and returned to ashby, the whole crowd breaking up and dispersing upon his retreat. chapter xiv. in rough magnificence array'd, when ancient chivalry display'd the pomp of her heroic games, and crested chiefs and tissued dames assembled, at the clarion's call, in some proud castle's high arch'd hall. warton. prince john held his high festival in the castle of ashby. this was not the same building of which the stately ruins still interest the traveller, and which was erected at a later period by the lord hastings, high chamberlain of england, one of the first victims of the tyranny of richard the third, and yet better known as one of shakspeare's characters than by his historical fame. the castle and town of ashby, at this time, belonged to roger de quincy, earl of winchester, who, during the period of our history, was absent in the holy land. prince john, in the meanwhile, occupied his castle, and disposed of his domains without scruple; and seeking at present to dazzle men's eyes by his hospitality and magnificence, had given orders for great preparations, in order to render the banquet as splendid as possible. the purveyors of the prince, who exercised on this and other occasions the full authority of royalty, had swept the country of all that could be collected which was esteemed fit for their master's table. guests also were invited in great numbers; and in the necessity in which he then found himself of courting popularity, prince john had extended his invitation to a few distinguished saxon and danish families, as well as to the norman nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood. however despised and degraded on ordinary occasions, the great numbers of the anglo-saxons must necessarily render them formidable in the civil commotions which seemed approaching, and it was an obvious point of policy to secure popularity with their leaders. it was accordingly the prince's intention, which he for some time maintained, to treat these unwonted guests with a courtesy to which they had been little accustomed. but although no man with less scruple made his ordinary habits and feelings bend to his interest, it was the misfortune of this prince, that his levity and petulance were perpetually breaking out, and undoing all that had been gained by his previous dissimulation. of this fickle temper he gave a memorable example in ireland, when sent thither by his father, henry the second, with the purpose of buying golden opinions of the inhabitants of that new and important acquisition to the english crown. upon this occasion the irish chieftains contended which should first offer to the young prince their loyal homage and the kiss of peace. but, instead of receiving their salutations with courtesy, john and his petulant attendants could not resist the temptation of pulling the long beards of the irish chieftains; a conduct which, as might have been expected, was highly resented by these insulted dignitaries, and produced fatal consequences to the english domination in ireland. it is necessary to keep these inconsistencies of john's character in view, that the reader may understand his conduct during the present evening. in execution of the resolution which he had formed during his cooler moments, prince john received cedric and athelstane with distinguished courtesy, and expressed his disappointment, without resentment, when the indisposition of rowena was alleged by the former as a reason for her not attending upon his gracious summons. cedric and athelstane were both dressed in the ancient saxon garb, which, although not unhandsome in itself, and in the present instance composed of costly materials, was so remote in shape and appearance from that of the other guests, that prince john took great credit to himself with waldemar fitzurse for refraining from laughter at a sight which the fashion of the day rendered ridiculous. yet, in the eye of sober judgment, the short close tunic and long mantle of the saxons was a more graceful, as well as a more convenient dress, than the garb of the normans, whose under garment was a long doublet, so loose as to resemble a shirt or waggoner's frock, covered by a cloak of scanty dimensions, neither fit to defend the wearer from cold or from rain, and the only purpose of which appeared to be to display as much fur, embroidery, and jewellery work, as the ingenuity of the tailor could contrive to lay upon it. the emperor charlemagne, in whose reign they were first introduced, seems to have been very sensible of the inconveniences arising from the fashion of this garment. ``in heaven's name,'' said hie, ``to what purpose serve these abridged cloaks? if we are in bed they are no cover, on horseback they are no protection from the wind and rain, and when seated, they do not guard our legs from the damp or the frost.'' nevertheless, spite of this imperial objurgation, the short cloaks continued in fashion down to the time of which we treat, and particularly among the princes of the house of anjou. they were therefore in universal use among prince john's courtiers; and the long mantle, which formed the upper garment of the saxons, was held in proportional derision. the guests were seated at a table which groaned under the quantity of good cheer. the numerous cooks who attended on the prince's progress, having exerted all their art in varying the forms in which the ordinary provisions were served up, had succeeded almost as well as the modern professors of the culinary art in rendering them perfectly unlike their natural appearance. besides these dishes of domestic origin, there were various delicacies brought from foreign parts, and a quantity of rich pastry, as well as of the simnel-bread and wastle cakes, which were only used at the tables of the highest nobility. the banquet was crowned with the richest wines, both foreign and domestic. but, though luxurious, the norman nobles were not generally speaking an intemperate race. while indulging themselves in the pleasures of the table, they aimed at delicacy, but avoided excess, and were apt to attribute gluttony and drunkenness to the vanquished saxons, as vices peculiar to their inferior station. prince john, indeed, and those who courted his pleasure by imitating his foibles, were apt to indulge to excess in the pleasures of the trencher and the goblet; and indeed it is well known that his death was occasioned by a surfeit upon peaches and new ale. his conduct, however, was an exception to the general manners of his countrymen. with sly gravity, interrupted only by private signs to each other, the norman knights and nobles beheld the ruder demeanour of athelstane and cedric at a banquet, to the form and fashion of which they were unaccustomed. and while their manners were thus the subject of sarcastic observation, the untaught saxons unwittingly transgressed several of the arbitrary rules established for the regulation of society. now, it is well known, that a man may with more impunity be guilty of an actual breach either of real good breeding or of good morals, than appear ignorant of the most minute point of fashionable etiquette. thus cedric, who dried his hands with a towel, instead of suffering the moisture to exhale by waving them gracefully in the air, incurred more ridicule than his companion athelstane, when he swallowed to his own single share the whole of a large pasty composed of the most exquisite foreign delicacies, and termed at that time a _karum-pie_. when, however, it was discovered, by a serious cross-examination, that the thane of coningsburgh (or franklin, as the normans termed him) had no idea what he had been devouring, and that he had taken the contents of the karum-pie for larks and pigeons, whereas they were in fact beccaficoes and nightingales, his ignorance brought him in for an ample share of the ridicule which would have been more justly bestowed on his gluttony. the long feast had at length its end; and, while the goblet circulated freely, men talked of the feats of the preceding tournament,---of the unknown victor in the archery games, of the black knight, whose self-denial had induced him to withdraw from the honours he had won,---and of the gallant ivanhoe, who had so dearly bought the honours of the day. the topics were treated with military frankness, and the jest and laugh went round the hall. the brow of prince john alone was overclouded during these discussions; some overpowering care seemed agitating his mind, and it was only when he received occasional hints from his attendants, that he seemed to take interest in what was passing around him. on such occasions he would start up, quaff a cup of wine as if to raise his spirits, and then mingle in the conversation by some observation made abruptly or at random. ``we drink this beaker,'' said he, ``to the health of wilfred of ivanhoe, champion of this passage of arms, and grieve that his wound renders him absent from our board---let all fill to the pledge, and especially cedric of rotherwood, the worthy father of a son so promising.'' ``no, my lord,'' replied cedric, standing up, and placing on the table his untasted cup, ``i yield not the name of son to the disobedient youth, who at once despises my commands, and relinquishes the manners and customs of his fathers.'' ``'tis impossible,'' cried prince john, with well-feigned astonishment, ``that so gallant a knight should be an unworthy or disobedient son!'' ``yet, my lord,'' answered cedric, ``so it is with this wilfred. he left my homely dwelling to mingle with the gay nobility of your brother's court, where he learned to do those tricks of horsemanship which you prize so highly. he left it contrary to my wish and command; and in the days of alfred that would have been termed disobedience--ay, and a crime severely punishable.'' ``alas!'' replied prince john, with a deep sigh of affected sympathy, ``since your son was a follower of my unhappy brother, it need not be enquired where or from whom he learned the lesson of filial disobedience.'' thus spake prince john, wilfully forgetting, that of all the sons of henry the second, though no one was free from the charge, he himself had been most distinguished for rebellion and ingratitude to his father. ``i think,'' said be, after a moment's pause, ``that my brother proposed to confer upon his favourite the rich manor of ivanhoe.'' ``he did endow him with it,'' answered cedric; ``nor is it my least quarrel with my son, that he stooped to hold, as a feudal vassal, the very domains which his fathers possessed in free and independent right.'' ``we shall then have your willing sanction, good cedric,'' said prince john, ``to confer this fief upon a person whose dignity will not be diminished by holding land of the british crown.---sir reginald front-de-b<oe>uf,'' he said, turning towards that baron, ``i trust you will so keep the goodly barony of ivanhoe, that sir wilfred shall not incur his father's farther displeasure by again entering upon that fief.'' ``by st anthony!'' answered the black-brow'd giant, ``i will consent that your highness shall hold me a saxon, if either cedric or wilfred, or the best that ever bore english blood, shall wrench from me the gift with which your highness has graced me.'' ``whoever shall call thee saxon, sir baron,'' replied cedric, offended at a mode of expression by which the normans frequently expressed their habitual contempt of the english, ``will do thee an honour as great as it is undeserved.'' front-de-b<oe>uf would have replied, but prince john's petulance and levity got the start. ``assuredly,'' said be, ``my lords, the noble cedric speaks truth; and his race may claim precedence over us as much in the length of their pedigrees as in the longitude of their cloaks.'' ``they go before us indeed in the field---as deer before dogs,'' said malvoisin. ``and with good right may they go before us--forget not,'' said the prior aymer, ``the superior decency and decorum of their manners.'' ``their singular abstemiousness and temperance,'' said de bracy, forgetting the plan which promised him a saxon bride. ``together with the courage and conduct,'' said brian de bois-guilbert, ``by which they distinguished themselves at hastings and elsewhere.'' while, with smooth and smiling cheek, the courtiers, each in turn, followed their prince's example, and aimed a shaft of ridicule at cedric, the face of the saxon became inflamed with passion, and he glanced his eyes fiercely from one to another, as if the quick succession of so many injuries had prevented his replying to them in turn; or, like a baited bull, who, surrounded by his tormentors, is at a loss to choose from among them the immediate object of his revenge. at length he spoke, in a voice half choked with passion; and, addressing himself to prince john as the head and front of the offence which he had received, ``whatever,'' he said, ``have been the follies and vices of our race, a saxon would have been held _nidering_,'' * (the most emphatic * there was nothing accounted so ignominious among the * saxons as to merit this disgraceful epithet. even william the * conqueror, hated as he was by them, continued to draw a considerable * army of anglo-saxons to his standard, by threatening * to stigmatize those who staid at home, as nidering. bartholinus, * i think, mentions a similar phrase which had like influence on * the danes. l. t. term for abject worthlessness,) ``who should in his own hall, and while his own wine-cup passed, have treated, or suffered to be treated, an unoffending guest as your highness has this day beheld me used; and whatever was the misfortune of our fathers on the field of hastings, those may at least be silent,'' here he looked at front-de-b<oe>uf and the templar, ``who have within these few hours once and again lost saddle and stirrup before the lance of a saxon.'' ``by my faith, a biting jest!'' said prince john. ``how like you it, sirs?---our saxon subjects rise in spirit and courage; become shrewd in wit, and bold in bearing, in these unsettled times---what say ye, my lords?---by this good light, i hold it best to take our galleys, and return to normandy in time.'' ``for fear of the saxons?'' said de bracy, laughing; ``we should need no weapon but our hunting spears to bring these boars to bay.'' ``a truce with your raillery, sir knights,'' said fitzurse;---``and it were well,'' he added, addressing the prince, ``that your highness should assure the worthy cedric there is no insult intended him by jests, which must sound but harshly in the ear of a stranger.'' ``insult?'' answered prince john, resuming his courtesy of demeanour; ``i trust it will not be thought that i could mean, or permit any, to be offered in my presence. here! i fill my cup to cedric himself, since he refuses to pledge his son's health.'' the cup went round amid the well-dissembled applause of the courtiers, which, however, failed to make the impression on the mind of the saxon that had been designed. he was not naturally acute of perception, but those too much undervalued his understanding who deemed that this flattering compliment would obliterate the sense of the prior insult. he was silent, however, when the royal pledge again passed round, ``to sir athelstane of coningsburgh.'' the knight made his obeisance, and showed his sense of the honour by draining a huge goblet in answer to it. ``and now, sirs,'' said prince john, who began to be warmed with the wine which he had drank, ``having done justice to our saxon guests, we will pray of them some requital to our courtesy.---worthy thane,'' he continued, addressing cedric, ``may we pray you to name to us some norman whose mention may least sully your mouth, and to wash down with a goblet of wine all bitterness which the sound may leave behind it?'' fitzurse arose while prince john spoke, and gliding behind the seat of the saxon, whispered to him not to omit the opportunity of putting an end to unkindness betwixt the two races, by naming prince john. the saxon replied not to this politic insinuation, but, rising up, and filling his cup to the brim, be addressed prince john in these words: ``your highness has required that i should name a norman deserving to be remembered at our banquet. this, perchance, is a hard task, since it calls on the slave to sing the praises of the master--upon the vanquished, while pressed by all the evils of conquest, to sing the praises of the conqueror. yet i will name a norman---the first in arms and in place---the best and the noblest of his race. and the lips that shall refuse to pledge me to his well-earned fame, i term false and dishonoured, and will so maintain them with my life.---i quaff this goblet to the health of richard the lion-hearted!'' prince john, who had expected that his own name would have closed the saxon's speech, started when that of his injured brother was so unexpectedly introduced. he raised mechanically the wine-cup to his lips, then instantly set it down, to view the demeanour of the company at this unexpected proposal, which many of them felt it as unsafe to oppose as to comply with. some of them, ancient and experienced courtiers, closely imitated the example of the prince himself, raising the goblet to their lips, and again replacing it before them. there were many who, with a more generous feeling, exclaimed, ``long live king richard! and may he be speedily restored to us!'' and some few, among whom were front-de-b<oe>uf and the templar, in sullen disdain suffered their goblets to stand untasted before them. but no man ventured directly to gainsay a pledge filled to the health of the reigning monarch. having enjoyed his triumph for about a minute, cedric said to his companion, ``up, noble athelstane! we have remained here long enough, since we have requited the hospitable courtesy of prince john's banquet. those who wish to know further of our rude saxon manners must henceforth seek us in the homes of our fathers, since we have seen enough of royal banquets, and enough of norman courtesy.'' so saying, he arose and left the banqueting room, followed by athelstane, and by several other guests, who, partaking of the saxon lineage, held themselves insulted by the sarcasms of prince john and his courtiers. ``by the bones of st thomas,'' said prince john, as they retreated, ``the saxon churls have borne off the best of the day, and have retreated with triumph!'' ``_conclamatum est, poculatum est_,'' said prior aymer; ``we have drunk and we have shouted,--it were time we left our wine flagons.'' ``the monk hath some fair penitent to shrive to-night, that he is in such a hurry to depart,'' said de bracy. ``not so, sir knight,'' replied the abbot; ``but i must move several miles forward this evening upon my homeward journey.'' ``they are breaking up,'' said the prince in a whisper to fitzurse; ``their fears anticipate the event, and this coward prior is the first to shrink from me.'' ``fear not, my lord,'' said waldemar; ``i will show him such reasons as shall induce him to join us when we hold our meeting at york.---sir prior,'' he said, ``i must speak with you in private, before you mount your palfrey.'' the other guests were now fast dispersing, with the exception of those immediately attached to, prince john's faction, and his retinue. ``this, then, is the result of your advice,'' said the prince, turning an angry countenance upon fitzurse; ``that i should be bearded at my own board by a drunken saxon churl, and that, on the mere sound of my brother's name, men should fall off from me as if i had the leprosy?'' ``have patience, sir,'' replied his counsellor; ``i might retort your accusation, and blame the inconsiderate levity which foiled my design, and misled your own better judgment. but this is no time for recrimination. de bracy and i will instantly go among these shuffling cowards, and convince them they have gone too far to recede.'' ``it will be in vain,'' said prince john, pacing the apartment with disordered steps, and expressing himself with an agitation to which the wine he had drank partly contributed---``it will be in vain --they have seen the handwriting on the wall--they have marked the paw of the lion in the sand ---they have heard his approaching roar shake the wood---nothing will reanimate their courage.'' ``would to god,'' said fitzurse to de bracy, ``that aught could reanimate his own! his brother's very name is an ague to him. unhappy are the counsellors of a prince, who wants fortitude and perseverance alike in good and in evil!'' chapter xv. and yet he thinks,---ha, ha, ha, ha,---he thinks i am the tool and servant of his will. well, let it be; through all the maze of trouble his plots and base oppression must create, i'll shape myself a way to higher things, and who will say 'tis wrong? _basil, a tragedy_. no spider ever took more pains to repair the shattered meshes of his web, than did waldemar fitzurse to reunite and combine the scattered members of prince john's cabal. few of these were attached to him from inclination, and none from personal regard. it was therefore necessary, that fitzurse should open to them new prospects of advantage, and remind them of those which they at present enjoyed. to the young and wild nobles, he held out the prospect of unpunished license and uncontrolled revelry; to the ambitious, that of power, and to the covetous, that of increased wealth and extended domains. the leaders of the mercenaries received a donation in gold; an argument the most persuasive to their minds, and without which all others would have proved in vain. promises were still more liberally distributed than money by this active agent; and, in fine, nothing was left undone that could determine the wavering, or animate the disheartened. the return of king richard he spoke of as an event altogether beyond the reach of probability; yet, when he observed, from the doubtful looks and uncertain answers which he received, that this was the apprehension by which the minds of his accomplices were most haunted, he boldly treated that event, should it really take place, as one which ought not to alter their political calculations. ``if richard returns,'' said fitzurse, ``he returns to enrich his needy and impoverished crusaders at the expense of those who did not follow him to the holy land. he returns to call to a fearful reckoning, those who, during his absence, have done aught that can be construed offence or encroachment upon either the laws of the land or the privileges of the crown. he returns to avenge upon the orders of the temple and the hospital, the preference which they showed to philip of france during the wars in the holy land. he returns, in fine, to punish as a rebel every adherent of his brother prince john. are ye afraid of his power?'' continued the artful confident of that prince, ``we acknowledge him a strong and valiant knight; but these are not the days of king arthur, when a champion could encounter an army. if richard indeed comes back, it must be alone,---unfollowed ---unfriended. the bones of his gallant army have whitened the sands of palestine. the few of his followers who have returned have straggled hither like this wilfred of ivanhoe, beggared and broken men.---and what talk ye of richard's right of birth?'' he proceeded, in answer to those who objected scruples on that head. ``is richard's title of primogeniture more decidedly certain than that of duke robert of normandy, the conqueror's eldest son? and yet william the red, and henry, his second and third brothers, were successively preferred to him by the voice of the nation, robert had every merit which can be pleaded for richard; he was a bold knight, a good leader, generous to his friends and to the church, and, to crown the whole, a crusader and a conqueror of the holy sepulchre; and yet he died a blind and miserable prisoner in the castle of cardiff, because he opposed himself to the will of the people, who chose that he should not rule over them. it is our right,'' he said, `` to choose from the blood royal the prince who is best qualified to hold the supreme power--that is,'' said he, correcting himself, ``him whose election will best promote the interests of the nobility. in personal qualifications,'' he added, ``it was possible that prince john might be inferior to his brother richard; but when it was considered that the latter returned with the sword of vengeance in his hand, while the former held out rewards, immunities, privileges, wealth, and honours, it could not be doubted which was the king whom in wisdom the nobility were called on to support.'' these, and many more arguments, some adapted to the peculiar circumstances of those whom he addressed, had the expected weight with the nobles of prince john's faction. most of them consented to attend the proposed meeting at york, for the purpose of making general arrangements for placing the crown upon the head of prince john. it was late at night, when, worn out and exhausted with his various exertions, however gratified with the result, fitzurse, returning to the castle of ashby, met with de bracy, who had exchanged his banqueting garments for a short green kittle, with hose of the same cloth and colour, a leathern cap or head-piece, a short sword, a horn slung over his shoulder, a long bow in his hand, and a bundle of arrows stuck in his belt. had fitzurse met this figure in an outer apartment, he would have passed him without notice, as one of the yeomen of the guard; but finding him in the inner hall, he looked at him with more attention, and recognised the norman knight in the dress of an english yeoman. ``what mummery is this, de bracy?'' said fitzurse, somewhat angrily; ``is this a time for christmas gambols and quaint maskings, when the fate of our master, prince john, is on the very verge of decision? why hast thou not been, like me, among these heartless cravens, whom the very name of king richard terrifies, as it is said to do the children of the saracens?' ``i have been attending to mine own business,'' answered de bracy calmly, ``as you, fitzurse, have been minding yours.'' ``i minding mine own business!'' echoed waldemar; ``i have been engaged in that of prince john, our joint patron.'' ``as if thou hadst any other reason for that, waldemar,'' said de bracy, ``than the promotion of thine own individual interest? come, fitzurse, we know each other---ambition is thy pursuit, pleasure is mine, and they become our different ages. of prince john thou thinkest as i do; that he is too weak to be a determined monarch, too tyrannical to be an easy monarch, too insolent and presumptuous to be a popular monarch, and too fickle and timid to be long a monarch of any kind. but he is a monarch by whom fitzurse and de bracy hope to rise and thrive; and therefore you aid him with your policy, and i with the lances of my free companions.'' ``a hopeful auxiliary,'' said fitzurse impatiently; ``playing the fool in the very moment of utter necessity.---what on earth dost thou purpose by this absurd disguise at a moment so urgent?'' ``to get me a wife,'' answered de bracy coolly, ``after the manner of the tribe of benjamin.'' ``the tribe of benjamin?'' said fitzurse; ``i comprehend thee not.'' ``wert thou not in presence yester-even,'' said de bracy, ``when we heard the prior aymer tell us a tale in reply to the romance which was sung by the minstrel?---he told how, long since in palestine, a deadly feud arose between the tribe of benjamin and the rest of the israelitish nation; and how they cut to pieces wellnigh all the chivalry of that tribe; and how they swore by our blessed lady, that they would not permit those who remained to marry in their lineage; and how they became grieved for their vow, and sent to consult his holiness the pope how they might be absolved from it; and how, by the advice of the holy father, the youth of the tribe of benjamin carried off from a superb tournament all the ladies who were there present, and thus won them wives without the consent either of their brides or their brides' families.'' ``i have heard the story,'' said fitzurse, ``though either the prior or thou has made some singular alterations in date and circumstances.'' ``i tell thee,'' said de bracy, ``that i mean to purvey me a wife after the fashion of the tribe of benjamin; which is as much as to say, that in this same equipment i will fall upon that herd of saxon bullocks, who have this night left the castle, and carry off from them the lovely rowena.'' ``art thou mad, de bracy?'' said fitzurse. ``bethink thee that, though the men be saxons, they are rich and powerful, and regarded with the more respect by their countrymen, that wealth and honour are but the lot of few of saxon descent.'' ``and should belong to none,'' said de bracy; ``the work of the conquest should be completed.'' ``this is no time for it at least,'' said fitzurse ``the approaching crisis renders the favour of the multitude indispensable, and prince john cannot refuse justice to any one who injures their favourites.'' ``let him grant it, if he dare,'' said de bracy; ``he will soon see the difference betwixt the support of such a lusty lot of spears as mine, and that of a heartless mob of saxon churls. yet i mean no immediate discovery of myself. seem i not in this garb as bold a forester as ever blew horn? the blame of the violence shall rest with the outlaws of the yorkshire forests. i have sure spies on the saxon's motions---to-night they sleep in the convent of saint wittol, or withold, or whatever they call that churl of a saxon saint at burton-on-trent. next day's march brings them within our reach, and, falcon-ways, we swoop on them at once. presently after i will appear in mine own shape, play the courteous knight, rescue the unfortunate and afflicted fair one from the hands of the rude ravishers, conduct her to front-de-b<oe>uf's castle, or to normandy, if it should be necessary, and produce her not again to her kindred until she be the bride and dame of maurice de bracy.'' ``a marvellously sage plan,'' said fitzurse, ``and, as i think, not entirely of thine own device.---come, be frank, de bracy, who aided thee in the invention? and who is to assist in the execution? for, as i think, thine own band lies as far of as york.'' ``marry, if thou must needs know,'' said de bracy, ``it was the templar brian de bois-guilbert that shaped out the enterprise, which the adventure of the men of benjamin suggested to me. he is to aid me in the onslaught, and he and his followers will personate the outlaws, from whom iny valorous arm is, after changing my garb, to rescue the lady.'' ``by my halidome,'' said fitzurse, ``the plan was worthy of your united wisdom! and thy prudence, de bracy, is most especially manifested in the project of leaving the lady in the hands of thy worthy confederate. thou mayst, i think, succeed in taking her from her saxon friends, but how thou wilt rescue her afterwards from the clutches of bois-guilbert seems considerably more doubtful ---he is a falcon well accustomed to pounce on a partridge, and to hold his prey fast.'' ``he is a templar,'' said de bracy, ``and cannot therefore rival me in my plan of wedding this heiress;---and to attempt aught dishonourable against the intended bride of de bracy---by heaven! were he a whole chapter of his order in his single person, he dared not do me such an injury!'' ``then since nought that i can say,'' said fitzurse, ``will put this folly from thy imagination, (for well i know the obstinacy of thy disposition,) at least waste as little time as possible---let not thy folly be lasting as well as untimely.'' ``i tell thee,'' answered de bracy, ``that it will be the work of a few hours, and i shall be at york--at the head of my daring and valorous fellows, as ready to support any bold design as thy policy can be to form one.---but i hear my comrades assembling, and the steeds stamping and neighing in the outer court.---farewell.---i go, like a true knight, to win the smiles of beauty.'' ``like a true knigbt?'' repeated fitzurse, looking after him; ``like a fool, i should say, or like a child, who will leave the most serious and needful occupation, to chase the down of the thistle that drives past him.---but it is with such tools that i must work;---and for whose advantage?---for that of a prince as unwise as he is profligate, and as likely to be an ungrateful master as he has already proved a rebellious son and an unnatural brother. ---but he---he, too, is but one of the tools with which i labour; and, proud as he is, should he presume to separate his interest from mine, this is a secret which he shall soon learn.'' the meditations of the statesman were here interrupted by the voice of the prince from an interior apartment, calling out, ``noble waldemar fitzurse!'' and, with bonnet doffed, the future chancellor (for to such high preferment did the wily norman aspire) hastened to receive the orders of the future sovereign. chapter xvi. far in a wild, unknown to public view, from youth to age a reverend hermit grew; the moss his bed, the cave his humble cell, his food the fruits, his drink the crystal well remote from man, with god he pass'd his days, prayer all his business---all his pleasure praise. _parnell._ the reader cannot have forgotten that the event of the tournament was decided by the exertions of an unknown knight, whom, on account of the passive and indifferent conduct which he had manifested on the former part of the day, the spectators had entitled, _le noir faineant_. this knight had left the field abruptly when the victory was achieved; and when he was called upon to receive the reward of his valour, he was nowhere to be found. in the meantime, while summoned by heralds and by trumpets, the knight was holding his course northward, avoiding all frequented paths, and taking the shortest road through the woodlands. he paused for the night at a small hostelry lying out of the ordinary route, where, however, he obtained from a wandering minstrel news of the event of the tourney. on the next morning the knight departed early, with the intention of making a long journey; the condition of his horse, which he had carefully spared during the preceding morning, being such as enabled him to travel far without the necessity of much repose. yet his purpose was baffled by the devious paths through which he rode, so that when evening closed upon him, he only found himself on the frontiers of the west riding of yorkshire. by this time both horse and man required refreshment, and it became necessary, moreover, to look out for some place in which they might spend the night, which was now fast approaching. the place where the traveller found himself seemed unpropitious for obtaining either shelter or refreshment, and he was likely to be reduced to the usual expedient of knights-errant, who, on such occasions, turned their horses to graze, and laid themselves down to meditate on their lady-mistress, with an oak-tree for a canopy. but the black knight either had no mistress to meditate upon, or, being as indifferent in love as he seemed to be in war, was not sufficiently occupied by passionate reflections upon her beauty and cruelty, to be able to parry the effects of fatigue and hunger, and suffer love to act as a substitute for the solid comforts of a bed and supper. he felt dissatisfied, therefore, when, looking around, he found himself deeply involved in woods, through which indeed there were many open glades, and some paths, but such as seemed only formed by the numerous herds of cattle which grazed in the forest, or by the animals of chase, and the hunters who made prey of them. the sun, by which the knight had chiefly directed his course, had now sunk behind the derbyshire hills on his left, and every effort which he might make to pursue his journey was as likely to lead him out of his road as to advance him on his route. after having in vain endeavoured to select the most beaten path, in hopes it might lead to the cottage of some herdsman, or the silvan lodge of a forester, and having repeatedly found himself totally unable to determine on a choice, the knight resolved to trust to the sagacity of his horse; experience having, on former occasions, made him acquainted with the wonderful talent possessed by these animals for extricating themselves and their riders on such emergencies. the good steed, grievously fatigued with so long a day's journey under a rider cased in mail, had no sooner found, by the slackened reins, that he was abandoned to his own guidance, than he seemed to assume new strength and spirit; and whereas, formerly he had scarce replied to the spur, otherwise than by a groan, he now, as if proud of the confidence reposed in him, pricked up his ears, and assumed, of his own accord, a more lively motion. the path which the animal adopted rather turned off from the course pursued by the knight during the day; but as the horse seemed confident in his choice, the rider abandoned himself to his discretion. he was justified by the event; for the footpath soon after appeared a little wider and more worn, and the tinkle of a small bell gave the knight to understand that he was in the vicinity of some chapel or hermitage. accordingly, he soon reached an open plat of turf, on the opposite side of which, a rock, rising abruptly from a gently sloping plain, offered its grey and weatherbeaten front to the traveller. ivy mantled its sides in some places, and in others oaks and holly bushes, whose roots found nourishment in the cliffs of the crag, waved over the precipices below, like the plumage of the warrior over his steel helmet, giving grace to that whose chief expression was terror. at the bottom of the rock, and leaning, as it were, against it, was constructed a rude hut, built chiefly of the trunks of trees felled in the neighbouring forest, and secured against the weather by having its crevices stuffed with moss mingled with clay. the stem of a young fir-tree lopped of its branches, with a piece of wood tied across near the top, was planted upright by the door, as a rude emblem of the holy cross. at a little distance on the right hand, a fountain of the purest water trickled out of the rock, and was received in a hollow stone, which labour had formed into a rustic basin. escaping from thence, the stream murmured down the descent by a channel which its course had long worn, and so wandered through the little plain to lose itself in the neighbouring wood. beside this fountain were the ruins of a very small chapel, of which the roof had partly fallen in. the building, when entire, had never been above sixteen feet long by twelve feet in breadth, and the roof, low in proportion, rested upon four concentric arches which sprung from the four corners of the building, each supported upon a short and heavy pillar. the ribs of two of these arches remained, though the roof had fallen down betwixt them; over the others it remained entire. the entrance to this ancient place of devotion was under a very low round arch, ornamented by several courses of that zig-zag moulding, resembling shark's teeth, which appears so often in the more ancient saxon architecture. a belfry rose above the porch on four small pillars, within which hung the green and weatherbeaten bell, the feeble sounds of which had been some time before heard by the black knight. the whole peaceful and quiet scene lay glimmering in twilight before the eyes of the traveller, giving him good assurance of lodging for the night; since it was a special duty of those hermits who dwelt in the woods, to exercise hospitality towards benighted or bewildered passengers. accordingly, the knight took no time to consider minutely the particulars which we have detailed, but thanking saint julian (the patron of travellers) who had sent him good harbourage, he leaped from his horse and assailed the door of the hermitage with the butt of his lance, in order to arouse attention and gain admittance. it was some time before he obtained any answer, and the reply, when made, was unpropitious. ``pass on, whosoever thou art,'' was the answer given by a deep hoarse voice from within the hut, ``and disturb not the servant of god and st dunstan in his evening devotions.'' ``worthy father,'' answered the knight, ``here is a poor wanderer bewildered in these woods, who gives thee the opportunity of exercising thy charity and hospitality.'' ``good brother,'' replied the inhabitant of the hermitage, ``it has pleased our lady and st dunstan to destine me for the object of those virtues, instead of the exercise thereof. i have no provisions here which even a dog would share with me, and a horse of any tenderness of nurture would despise my couch---pass therefore on thy way, and god speed thee.'' ``but how,'' replied the knight, ``is it possible for me to find my way through such a wood as this, when darkness is coming on? i pray you, reverend father as you are a christian, to undo your door, and at least point out to me my road.'' ``and i pray you, good christian brother,'' replied the anchorite, ``to disturb me no more. you have already interrupted one _pater_, two _aves_, and a _credo_, which i, miserable sinner that i am, should, according to my vow, have said before moonrise.'' ``the road---the road!'' vociferated the knight, ``give me directions for the road, if i am to expect no more from thee.'' ``the road,'' replied the hermit, ``is easy to hit. the path from the wood leads to a morass, and from thence to a ford, which, as the rains have abated, may now be passable. when thou hast crossed the ford, thou wilt take care of thy footing up the left bank, as it is somewhat precipitous; and the path, which hangs over the river, has lately, as i learn, (for i seldom leave the duties of my chapel,) given way in sundry places. thou wilt then keep straight forward'' ``a broken path---a precipice---a ford, and a morass!'' said the knight interrupting him,---``sir hermit, if you were the holiest that ever wore beard or told bead, you shall scarce prevail on me to hold this road to-night. i tell thee, that thou, who livest by the charity of the country---ill deserved, as i doubt it is---hast no right to refuse shelter to the wayfarer when in distress. either open the door quickly, or, by the rood, i will beat it down and make entry for myself.'' ``friend wayfarer,'' replied the hermit, ``be not importunate; if thou puttest me to use the carnal weapon in mine own defence, it will be e'en the worse for you.'' at this moment a distant noise of barking and growling, which the traveller had for some time heard, became extremely loud and furious, and made the knight suppose that the hermit, alarmed by his threat of making forcible entry, had called the dogs who made this clamour to aid him in his defence, out of some inner recess in which they had been kennelled. incensed at this preparation on the hermit's part for making good his inhospitable purpose, the knight struck the door so furiously with his foot, that posts as well as staples shook with violence. the anchorite, not caring again to expose his door to a similar shock, now called out aloud, ``patience, patience---spare thy strength, good traveller, and i will presently undo the door, though, it may be, my doing so will be little to thy pleasure.'' the door accordingly was opened; and the hermit, a large, strong-built man, in his sackcloth gown and hood, girt with a rope of rushes, stood before the knight. he had in one hand a lighted torch, or link, and in the other a baton of crab-tree, so thick and heavy, that it might well be termed a club. two large shaggy dogs, half greyhound half mastiff, stood ready to rush upon the traveller as soon as the door should be opened. but when the torch glanced upon the lofty crest and golden spurs of the knight, who stood without, the hermit, altering probably his original intentions, repressed the rage of his auxiliaries, and, changing his tone to a sort of churlish courtesy, invited the knight to enter his hut, making excuse for his unwillingness to open his lodge after sunset, by alleging the multitude of robbers and outlaws who were abroad, and who gave no honour to our lady or st dunstan, nor to those holy men who spent life in their service. ``the poverty of your cell, good father,'' said the knight, looking around him, and seeing nothing but a bed of leaves, a crucifix rudely carved in oak, a missal, with a rough-hewn table and two stools, and one or two clumsy articles of furniture---``the poverty of your cell should seem a sufficient defence against any risk of thieves, not to mention the aid of two trusty dogs, large and strong enough, i think, to pull down a stag, and of course, to match with most men.'' ``the good keeper of the forest,'' said the hermit, ``hath allowed me the use of these animals, to protect my solitude until the times shall mend.'' having said this, he fixed his torch in a twisted branch of iron which served for a candlestick; and, placing the oaken trivet before the embers of the fire, which he refreshed with some dry wood, he placed a stool upon one side of the table, and beckoned to the knight to do the same upon the other. they sat down, and gazed with great gravity at each other, each thinking in his heart that he had seldom seen a stronger or more athletic figure than was placed opposite to him. ``reverend hermit,'' said the knight, after looking long and fixedly at his host, ``were it not to interrupt your devout meditations, i would pray to know three things of your holiness; first, where i am to put my horse?---secondly, what i can have for supper?---thirdly, where i am to take up my couch for the night?'' ``i will reply to you,'' said the hermit, ``with my finger, it being against my rule to speak by words where signs can answer the purpose.'' so saying, he pointed successively to two corners of the hut. ``your stable,'' said he, ``is there---your bed there; and,'' reaching down a platter with two handfuls of parched pease upon it from the neighbouring shelf, and placing it upon the table, he added, ``your supper is here.'' the knight shrugged his shoulders, and leaving the hut, brought in his horse, (which in the interim he had fastened to a tree,) unsaddled him with much attention, and spread upon the steed's weary back his own mantle. the hermit was apparently somewhat moved to compassion by the anxiety as well as address which the stranger displayed in tending his horse; for, muttering something about provender left for the keeper's palfrey, he dragged out of a recess a bundle of forage, which he spread before the knight's charger, and immediately afterwards shook down a quantity of dried fern in the corner which he had assigned for the rider's couch. the knight returned him thanks for his courtesy; and, this duty done, both resumed their seats by the table, whereon stood the trencher of pease placed between them. the hermit, after a long grace, which had once been latin, but of which original language few traces remained, excepting here and there the long rolling termination of some word or phrase, set example to his guest, by modestly putting into a very large mouth, furnished with teeth which might have ranked with those of a boar both in sharpness and whiteness, some three or four dried pease, a miserable grist as it seemed for so large and able a mill. the knight, in order to follow so laudable an example, laid aside his helmet, his corslet, and the greater part of his armour, and showed to the hermit a head thick-curled with yellow hair, high features, blue eyes, remarkably bright and sparkling, a mouth well formed, having an upper lip clothed with mustachoes darker than his hair, and bearing altogether the look of a bold, daring, and enterprising man, with which his strong form well corresponded. the hermit, as if wishing to answer to the confidence of his guest, threw back his cowl, and showed a round bullet head belonging to a man in the prime of life. his close-shaven crown, surrounded by a circle of stiff curled black hair, had something the appearance of a parish pinfold begirt by its high hedge. the features expressed nothing of monastic austerity, or of ascetic privations; on the contrary, it was a bold bluff countenance, with broad black eyebrows, a well-turned forehead, and cheeks as round and vermilion as those of a trumpeter, from which descended a long and curly black beard. such. a visage, joined to the brawny form of the holy man, spoke rather of sirloins and haunches, than of pease and pulse. this incongruity did not escape the guest. after he had with great difficulty accomplished the mastication of a mouthful of the dried pease, he found it absolutely necessary to request his pious entertainer to furnish him with some liquor; who replied to his request by placing before him a large can of the purest water from the fountain. ``it is from the well of st dunstan,'' said he, ``in which, betwixt sun and sun, he baptized five hundred heathen danes and britons---blessed be his name!'' and applying his black beard to the pitcher, he took a draught much more moderate in quantity than his encomium seemed to warrant. ``it seems to me, reverend father,'' said the knight, ``that the small morsels which you eat, together with this holy, but somewhat thin beverage, have thriven with you marvellously. you appear a man more fit to win the ram at a wrestling match, or the ring at a bout at quarter-staff, or the bucklers at a sword-play, than to linger out your time in this desolate wilderness, saying masses, and living upon parched pease and cold water.'' ``sir knight,'' answered the hermit, ``your thoughts, like those of the ignorant laity, are according to the flesh. it has pleased our lady and my patron saint to bless the pittance to which i restrain myself, even as the pulse and water was blessed to the children shadrach, meshech, and abednego, who drank the same rather than defile themselves with the wine and meats which were appointed them by the king of the saracens.'' ``holy father,'' said the knight, ``upon whose countenance it hath pleased heaven to work such a miracle, permit a sinful layman to crave thy name?'' ``thou mayst call me,'' answered the hermit, ``the clerk of copmanhurst, for so i am termed in these parts---they add, it is true, the epithet holy, but i stand not upon that, as being unworthy of such addition.---and now, valiant knight, may i pray ye for the name of my honourable guest?'' ``truly,'' said the knight, ``holy clerk of copmanhurst, men call me in these parts the black knight,---many, sir, add to it the epithet of sluggard, whereby i am no way ambitious to be distinguished.'' the hermit could scarcely forbear from smiling at his guest's reply. ``i see,'' said he, ``sir sluggish knight, that thou art a man of prudence and of counsel; and moreover, i see that my poor monastic fare likes thee not, accustomed, perhaps, as thou hast been, to the license of courts and of camps, and the luxuries of cities; and now i bethink me, sir sluggard, that when the charitable keeper of this forest-walk left those dogs for my protection, and also those bundles of forage, he left me also some food, which, being unfit for my use, the very recollection of it had escaped me amid my more weighty meditations.'' ``i dare be sworn he did so,'' said the knight; ``i was convinced that there was better food in the cell, holy clerk, since you first doffed your cowl.---your keeper is ever a jovial fellow; and none who beheld thy grinders contending with these pease, and thy throat flooded with this ungenial element, could see thee doomed to such horse-provender and horse-beverage,'' (pointing to the provisions upon the table,) `` and refrain from mending thy cheer. let us see the keeper's bounty, therefore, without delay.'' the hermit cast a wistful look upon the knight, in which there was a sort of comic expression of hesitation, as if uncertain how far be should act prudently in trusting his guest. there was, however, as much of bold frankness in the knight's countenance as was possible to be expressed by features. his smile, too, had something in it irresistibly comic, and gave an assurance of faith and loyalty, with which his host could not refrain from sympathizing. after exchanging a mute glance or two, the hermit went to the further side of the hut, and opened a hutch, which was concealed with great care and some ingenuity. out of the recesses of a dark closet, into which this aperture gave admittance, he brought a large pasty, baked in a pewter platter of unusual dimensions. this mighty dish he placed before his guest, who, using his poniard to cut it open, lost no time in making himself acquainted with its contents. ``how long is it since the good keeper has been here?'' said the knight to his host, after having swallowed several hasty morsels of this reinforcement to the hermit's good cheer. ``about two months,'' answered the father hastily. ``by the true lord,'' answered the knight, ``every thing in your hermitage is miraculous, holy clerk! for i would have been sworn that the fat buck which furnished this venison had been running on foot within the week.'' the hermit was somewhat discountenanced by this observation; and, moreover, he made but a poor figure while gazing on the diminution of the pasty, on which his guest was making desperate inroads; a warfare in which his previous profession of abstinence left him no pretext for joining. ``i have been in palestine, sir clerk,'' said the knight, stopping short of a sudden, ``and i bethink me it is a custom there that every host who entertains a guest shall assure him of the wholesomeness of his food, by partaking of it along with him. far be it from me to suspect so holy a man of aught inhospitable; nevertheless i will be highly bound to you would you comply with this eastern custom.'' ``to ease your unnecessary scruples, sir knight, i will for once depart from my rule,'' replied the hermit. and as there were no forks in those days, his clutches were instantly in the bowels of the pasty. the ice of ceremony being once broken, it seemed matter of rivalry between the guest and the entertainer which should display the best appetite; and although the former had probably fasted lonest, yet the hermit fairly surpassed him. ``holy clerk,'' said the knight, when his hunger was appeased, ``i would gage my good horse yonder against a zeechin, that that same honest keeper to whom we are obliged for the venison has left thee a stoup of wine, or a reinlet of canary, or some such trifle, by way of ally to this noble pasty. this would be a circumstance, doubtless, totally unworthy to dwell in the memory of so rigid an anchorite; yet, i think, were you to search yonder crypt once more, you would find that i am right in my conjecture.'' the hermit only replied by a grin; and returning to the hutch, he produced a leathern bottle, which might contain about four quarts. he also brought forth two large drinking cups, made out of the horn of the urus, and hooped with silver. having made this goodly provision for washing down the supper, he seemed to think no farther ceremonious scruple necessary on his part; but filling both cups, and saying, in the saxon fashion, ``_waes hael_, sir sluggish knight!'' he emptied his own at a draught. ``_drink hael_, holy clerk of copmanhurst!'' answered the warrior, and did his host reason in a similar brimmer. ``holy clerk,'' said the stranger, after the first cup was thus swallowed, ``i cannot but marvel that a man possessed of such thews and sinews as thine, and who therewithal shows the talent of so goodly a trencher-man, should think of abiding by himself in this wilderness. in my judgment, you are fitter to keep a castle or a fort, eating of the fat and drinking of the strong, than to live here upon pulse and water, or even upon the charity of the keeper. at least, were i as thou, i should find myself both disport and plenty out of the king's deer. there is many a goodly herd in these forests, and a buck will never be missed that goes to the use of saint dunstan's chaplain.'' ``sir sluggish knight,'' replied the clerk, ``these are dangerous words, and i pray you to forbear them. i am true hermit to the king and law, and were i to spoil my liege's game, i should be sure of the prison, and, an my gown saved me not, were in some peril of hanging.'' ``nevertheless, were i as thou,'' said the knight, ``i would take my walk by moonlight, when foresters and keepers were warm in bed, and ever and anon,---as i pattered my prayers,---i would let fly a shaft among the herds of dun deer that feed in the glades---resolve me, holy clerk, hast thou never practised such a pastime?'' ``friend sluggard,'' answered the hermit, ``thou hast seen all that can concern thee of my housekeeping, and something more than he deserves who takes up his quarters by violence. credit me, it is better to enjoy the good which god sends thee, than to be impertinently curious how it comes. fill thy cup, and welcome; and do not, i pray thee, by further impertinent enquiries, put me to show that thou couldst hardly have made good thy lodging had i been earnest to oppose thee.'' ``by my faith,'' said the knight, ``thou makest me more curious than ever! thou art the most mysterious hermit i ever met; and i will know more of thee ere we part. as for thy threats, know, holy man, thou speakest to one whose trade it is to find out danger wherever it is to be met with.'' `sir sluggish knight, i drink to thee,'' said the hermit; ``respecting thy valour much, but deeming wondrous slightly of thy discretion. if thou wilt take equal arms with me, i will give thee, in all friendship and brotherly love, such sufficing penance and complete absolution, that thou shalt not for the next twelve months sin the sin of excess of curiosity.'' the knight pledged him, and desired him to name his weapons. ``there is none,'' replied the hermit, ``from the scissors of delilah, and the tenpenny nail of jael, to the scimitar of goliath, at which i am not a match for thee---but, if i am to make the election, what sayst thou, good friend, to these trinkets?'' thus speaking, he opened another hutch, and took out from it a couple of broadswords and bucklers, such as were used by the yeomanry of the period. the knight, who watched his motions, observed that this second place of concealment was furnished with two or three good long-bows, a cross-bow, a bundle of bolts for the latter, and half-a-dozen sheaves of arrows for the former. a harp, and other matters of a very uncanonical appearance, were also visible when this dark recess was opened. ``i promise thee, brother clerk,'' said he, ``i will ask thee no more offensive questions. the contents of that cupboard are an answer to all my enquiries; and i see a weapon there'' (here be stooped and took out the harp) ``on which i would more gladly prove my skill with thee, than at the sword and buckler.'' ``i hope, sir knight,'' said the hermit, ``thou hast given no good reason for thy surname of the sluggard. i do promise thee i suspect thee grievously. nevertheless, thou art my guest, and i will not put thy manhood to the proof without thine own free will. sit thee down, then, and fill thy cup; let us drink, sing, and be merry. if thou knowest ever a good lay, thou shalt be welcome to a nook of pasty at copmanhurst so long as i serve the chapel of st dunstan, which, please god, shall be till i change my grey covering for one of green turf. but come, fill a flagon, for it will crave some time to tune the harp; and nought pitches the voice and sharpens the car like a cup of wine. for my part, i love to feel the grape at my very finger-ends before they make the harp-strings tinkle.''* * the jolly hermit.---all readers, however slightly acquainted * with black letter, must recognise in the clerk of copmanhurst, * friar tuck, the buxom confessor of robin hood's * gang, the curtal friar of fountain's abbey. chapter xvii. at eve, within yon studious nook, i ope my brass-embossed book, portray'd with many a holy deed of martyrs crown'd with heavenly meed; then, as my taper waxes dim, chant, ere i sleep, my measured hymn. * * * * who but would cast his pomp away, to take my staff and amice grey, and to the world's tumultuous stage, prefer the peaceful hermitage? warton notwithstanding the prescription of the genial hermit, with which his guest willingly complied, he found it no easy matter to bring the harp to harmony. ``methinks, holy father,'' said he, ``the instrument wants one string, and the rest have been somewhat misused.'' ``ay, mark'st thou that?'' replied the hermit; ``that shows thee a master of the craft. wine and wassail,'' he added, gravely casting up his eyes--``all the fault of wine and wassail!---i told allan a-dale, the northern minstrel, that he would damage the harp if he touched it after the seventh cup, but he would not be controlled---friend, i drink to thy successful performance.'' so saying, he took off his cup with much gravity, at the same time shaking his head at the intemperance of the scottish harper. the knight in the meantime, had brought the strings into some order, and after a short prelude, asked his host whether he would choose a _sirvente_ in the language of _oc_, or a _lai_ in the language of _oui_, or a _virelai_, or a ballad in the vulgar english.* * note c. minstrelsy. ``a ballad, a ballad,'' said the hermit, ``against all the _ocs_ and _ouis_ of france. downright english am i, sir knight, and downright english was my patron st dunstan, and scorned _oc_ and _oui_, as he would have scorned the parings of the devil's hoof---downright english alone shall be sung in this cell.'' ``i will assay, then,'' said the knight, ``a ballad composed by a saxon glee-man, whom i knew in holy land.'' it speedily appeared, that if the knight was not a complete master of the minstrel art, his taste for it had at least been cultivated under the best instructors. art had taught him to soften the faults of a voice which had little compass, and was naturally rough rather than mellow, and, in short, had done all that culture can do in supplying natural deficiencies. his performance, therefore, might have been termed very respectable by abler judges than the hermit, especially as the knight threw into the notes now a degree of spirit, and now of plaintive enthusiasm, which gave force and energy to the verses which he sung. the crusader's return. 1. high deeds achieved of knightly fame, from palestine the champion came; the cross upon his shoulders borne, battle and blast had dimm'd and torn. each dint upon his batter'd shield was token of a foughten field; and thus, beneath his lady's bower, he sung as fell the twilight hour:-- 2. ``joy to the fair!---thy knight behold, return'd from yonder land of gold; no wealth he brings, nor wealth can need, save his good arms and battle-steed his spurs, to dash against a foe, his lance and sword to lay him low; such all the trophies of his toil, such---and the hope of tekla's smile! 3. ``joy to the fair! whose constant knight her favour fired to feats of might; unnoted shall she not remain, where meet the bright and noble train; minstrel shall sing and herald tell-- `mark yonder maid of beauty well, 'tis she for whose bright eyes were won the listed field at askalon! 4. `` `note well her smile!---it edged the blade which fifty wives to widows made, when, vain his strength and mahound's spell, iconium's turban'd soldan fell. seest thou her locks, whose sunny glow half shows, half shades, her neck of snow? twines not of them one golden thread, but for its sake a paynim bled.' 5. ``joy to the fair!---my name unknown, each deed, and all its praise thine own then, oh! unbar this churlish gate, the night dew falls, the hour is late. inured to syria's glowing breath, i feel the north breeze chill as death; let grateful love quell maiden shame, and grant him bliss who brings thee fame.'' during this performance, the hermit demeaned himself much like a first-rate critic of the present day at a new opera. he reclined back upon his seat, with his eyes half shut; now, folding his hands and twisting his thumbs, he seemed absorbed in attention, and anon, balancing his expanded palms, he gently flourished them in time to the music. at one or two favourite cadences, he threw in a little assistance of his own, where the knight's voice seemed unable to carry the air so high as his worshipful taste approved. when the song was ended, the anchorite emphatically declared it a good one, and well sung. ``and yet,'' said he, ``i think my saxon countrymen had herded long enough with the normans, to fall into the tone of their melancholy ditties. what took the honest knight from home? or what could he expect but to find his mistress agreeably engaged with a rival on his return, and his serenade, as they call it, as little regarded as the caterwauling of a cat in the gutter? nevertheless, sir knight, i drink this cup to thee, to the success of all true lovers---i fear you are none,'' he added, on observing that the knight (whose brain began to be heated with these repeated draughts) qualified his flagon from the water pitcher. ``why,'' said the knight, ``did you not tell me that this water was from the well of your blessed patron, st dunstan?'' ``ay, truly,'' said the hermit, ``and many a hundred of pagans did he baptize there, but i never heard that he drank any of it. every thing should be put to its proper use in this world. st dunstan knew, as well as any one, the prerogatives of a jovial friar.'' and so saying, he reached the harp, and entertained his guest with the following characteristic song, to a sort of derry-down chorus, appropriate to an old english ditty.* * it may be proper to remind the reader, that the chorus of * ``derry down'' is supposed to be as ancient, not only as the times * of the heptarchy, but as those of the druids, and to have furnished * the chorus to the hymns of those venerable persons when * they went to the wood to gather mistletoe. the barefooted friar. 1. i'll give thee, good fellow, a twelvemonth or twain, to search europe through, from byzantium to spain; but ne'er shall you find, should you search till you tire, so happy a man as the barefooted friar. 2. your knight for his lady pricks forth in career, and is brought home at even-song prick'd through with a spear; i confess him in haste---for his lady desires no comfort on earth save the barefooted friar's. 3. your monarch?---pshaw! many a prince has been known to barter his robes for our cowl and our gown, but which of us e'er felt the idle desire to exchange for a crown the grey hood of a friar! 4. the friar has walk'd out, and where'er he has gone, the land and its fatness is mark'd for his own; he can roam where he lists, he can stop when he tires, for every man's house is the barefooted friar's. 5. he's expected at noon, and no wight till he comes may profane the great chair, or the porridge of plums for the best of the cheer, and the seat by the fire, is the undenied right of the barefooted friar. 6. he's expected at night, and the pasty's made hot, they broach the brown ale, and they fill the black pot, and the goodwife would wish the goodman in the mire, ere he lack'd a soft pillow, the barefooted friar. 7. long flourish the sandal, the cord, and the cope, the dread of the devil and trust of the pope; for to gather life's roses, unscathed by the briar, is granted alone to the barefooted friar. ``by my troth,'' said the knight, ``thou hast sung well and lustily, and in high praise of thine order. and, talking of the devil, holy clerk, are you not afraid that he may pay you a visit daring some of your uncanonical pastimes?'' ``i uncanonical!'' answered the hermit; ``i scorn the charge---i scorn it with my heels!---i serve the duty of my chapel duly and truly---two masses daily, morning and evening, primes, noons, and vespers, _aves, credos, paters_------'' ``excepting moonlight nights, when the venison is in season,'' said his guest. ``_exceptis excipiendis_,'' replied the hermit, ``as our old abbot taught me to say, when impertinent laymen should ask me if i kept every punctilio of mine order.'' ``true, holy father,'' said the knight; ``but the devil is apt to keep an eye on such exceptions; he goes about, thou knowest, like a roaring lion.'' ``let him roar here if he dares,'' said the friar; ``a touch of my cord will make him roar as loud as the tongs of st dunstan himself did. i never feared man, and i as little fear the devil and his imps. saint dunstan, saint dubric, saint winibald, saint winifred, saint swibert, saint willick, not forgetting saint thomas a kent, and my own poor merits to speed, i defy every devil of them, come cut and long tail.---but to let you into a secret, i never speak upon such subjects, my friend, until after morning vespers.'' he changed the conversation; fast and furious grew the mirth of the parties, and many a song was exchanged betwixt them, when their revels were interrupted by a loud knocking at the door of the hermitage. the occasion of this interruption we can only explain by resuming the adventures of another set of our characters; for, like old ariosto, we do not pique ourselves upon continuing uniformly to keep company with any one personage of our drama. chapter xviii. away! our journey lies through dell and dingle, where the blithe fawn trips by its timid mother, where the broad oak, with intercepting boughs, chequers the sunbeam in the green-sward alley-- up and away!---for lovely paths are these to tread, when the glad sun is on his throne less pleasant, and less safe, when cynthia's lamp with doubtful glimmer lights the dreary forest. _ettrick forest._ when cedric the saxon saw his son drop down senseless in the lists at ashby, his first impulse was to order him into the custody and care of his own attendants, but the words choked in his throat. he could not bring himself to acknowledge, in presence of such an assembly, the son whom he had renounced and disinherited. he ordered, however, oswald to keep an eye upon him; and directed that officer, with two of his serfs, to convey ivanhoe to ashby as soon as the crowd had dispersed. oswald, however, was anticipated in this good office. the crowd dispersed, indeed, but the knight was nowhere to be seen. it was in vain that cedric's cupbearer looked around for his young master---he saw the bloody spot on which he had lately sunk down, but himself he saw no longer; it seemed as if the fairies had conveyed him from the spot. perhaps oswald (for the saxons were very superstitious) might have adopted some such hypothesis, to account for ivanhoe's disappearance, had he not suddenly cast his eye upon a person attired like a squire, in whom he recognised the features of his fellow-servant gurth. anxious concerning his master's fate, and in despair at his sudden disappearance, the translated swineherd was searching for him everywhere, and had neglected, in doing so, the concealment on which his own safety depended. oswald deemed it his duty to secure gurth, as a fugitive of whose fate his master was to judge. renewing his enquiries concerning the fate of ivanhoe, the only information which the cupbearer could collect from the bystanders was, that the knight had been raised with care by certain well-attired grooms, and placed in a litter belonging to a lady among the spectators, which had immediately transported him out of the press. oswald, on receiving this intelligence, resolved to return to his master for farther instructions, carrying along with him gurth, whom he considered in some sort as a deserter from the service of cedric. the saxon had been under very intense and agonizing apprehensions concerning his son; for nature had asserted her rights, in spite of the patriotic stoicism which laboured to disown her. but no sooner was he informed that ivanhoe was in careful, and probably in friendly hands, than the paternal anxiety which had been excited by the dubiety of his fate, gave way anew to the feeling of injured pride and resentment, at what he termed wilfred's filial disobedience. ``let him wander his way,'' said he---``let those leech his wounds for whose sake he encountered them. he is fitter to do the juggling tricks of the norman chivalry than to maintain the fame and honour of his english ancestry with the glaive and brown-bill, the good old weapons of his country.'' ``if to maintain the honour of ancestry,'' said rowena, who was present, ``it is sufficient to be wise in council and brave in execution---to be boldest among the bold, and gentlest among the gentle, i know no voice, save his father's------'' ``be silent, lady rowena!---on this subject only i hear you not. prepare yourself for the prince's festival: we have been summoned thither with unwonted circumstance of honour and of courtesy, such as the haughty normans have rarely used to our race since the fatal day of hastings. thither will i go, were it only to show these proud normans how little the fate of a son, who could defeat their bravest, can affect a saxon.'' ``thither,'' said rowena, ``do i =not= go; and i pray you to beware, lest what you mean for courage and constancy, shall be accounted hardness of heart.'' ``remain at home, then, ungrateful lady,'' answered cedric; ``thine is the hard heart, which can sacrifice the weal of an oppressed people to an idle and unauthorized attachment. i seek the noble athelstane, and with him attend the banquet of john of anjou.'' he went accordingly to the banquet, of which we have already mentioned the principal events. immediately upon retiring from the castle, the saxon thanes, with their attendants, took horse; and it was during the bustle which attended their doing so, that cedric, for the first time, cast his eyes upon the deserter gurth. the noble saxon had returned from the banquet, as we have seen, in no very placid humour, and wanted but a pretext for wreaking his anger upon some one. ``the gyves!'' he said, ``the gyves!---oswald---hundibert!--dogs and villains!---why leave ye the knave unfettered?'' without daring to remonstrate, the companions of gurth bound him with a halter, as the readiest cord which occurred. he submitted to the operation without remonstance, except that, darting a reproachful look at his master, he said, ``this comes of loving your flesh and blood better than mine own.'' ``to horse, and forward!'' said cedric. ``it is indeed full time,'' said the noble athelstane; ``for, if we ride not the faster, the worthy abbot waltheoff's preparations for a rere-supper* * a rere-supper was a night-meal, and sometimes signified a * collation, which was given at a late hour, after the regular supper * had made its appearance. l. t. will be altogether spoiled.'' the travellers, however, used such speed as to reach the convent of st withold's before the apprehended evil took place. the abbot, himself of ancient saxon descent, received the noble saxons with the profuse and exuberant hospitality of their nation, wherein they indulged to a late, or rather an early hour; nor did they take leave of their reverend host the next morning until they had shared with him a sumptuous refection. as the cavalcade left the court of the monastery, an incident happened somewhat alarming to, the saxons, who, of all people of europe, were most addicted to a superstitious observance of omens, and to whose opinions can be traced most of those notions upon such subjects, still to be found among our popular antiquities. for the normans being a mixed race, and better informed according to the information of the times, had lost most of the superstitious prejudices which their ancestors had brought from scandinavia, and piqued themselves upon thinking freely on such topics. in the present instance, the apprehension of impending evil was inspired by no less respectable a prophet than a large lean black dog, which, sitting upright, howled most piteously as the foremost riders left the gate, and presently afterwards, barking wildly, and jumping to and fro, seemed bent upon attaching itself to the party. ``i like not that music, father cedric,'' said athelstane; for by this title of respect he was accustomed to address him. ``nor i either, uncle,'' said wamba; ``i greatly fear we shall have to pay the piper.'' ``in my mind,'' said athelstane, upon whose memory the abbot's good ale (for burton was already famous for that genial liquor) had made a favourable impression,---``in my mind we had better turn back, and abide with the abbot until the afternoon. it is unlucky to travel where your path is crossed by a monk, a hare, or a howling dog, until you have eaten your next meal.'' ``away!'' said cedric, impatiently; ``the day is already too short for our journey. for the dog, i know it to be the cur of the runaway slave gurth, a useless fugitive like its master.'' so saying, and rising at the same time in his stirrups, impatient at the interruption of his journey, he launched his javelin at poor fangs---for fangs it was, who, having traced his master thus far upon his stolen expedition, had here lost him, and was now, in his uncouth way, rejoicing at his reappearance. the javelin inflicted a wound upon the animal's shoulder, and narrowly missed pinning him to the earth; and fangs fled howling from the presence of the enraged thane. gurth's heart swelled within him; for he felt this meditated slaughter of his faithful adherent in a degree much deeper than the harsh treatment he had himself received. having in vain attempted to raise his hand to his eyes, he said to wamba, who, seeing his master's ill humour had prudently retreated to the rear, ``i pray thee, do me the kindness to wipe my eyes with the skirt of thy mantle; the dust offends me, and these bonds will not let me help myself one way or another.'' wamba did him the service he required, and they rode side by side for some time, during which gurth maintained a moody silence. at length he could repress his feelings no longer. ``friend wamba,'' said he, ``of all those who are fools enough to serve cedric, thou alone hast dexterity enough to make thy folly acceptable to him. go to him, therefore, and tell him that neither for love nor fear will gurth serve him longer. he may strike the head from me---he may scourge me---he may load me with irons---but henceforth he shall never compel me either to love or to obey him. go to him, then, and tell him that gurth the son of beowulph renounces his service.'' ``assuredly,'' said wamba, ``fool as i am, i shall not do your fool's errand. cedric hath another javelin stuck into his girdle, and thou knowest he does not always miss his mark.'' ``i care not,'' replied gurth, ``how soon he makes a mark of me. yesterday he left wilfred, my young master, in his blood. to-day he has striven to kill before my face the only other living creature that ever showed me kindness. by st edmund, st dunstan, st withold, st edward the confessor, and every other saxon saint in the calendar,'' (for cedric never swore by any that was not of saxon lineage, and all his household had the same limited devotion,) ``i will never forgive him!'' ``to my thinking now,'' said the jester, who was frequently wont to act as peace-maker in the family, ``our master did not propose to hurt fangs, but only to affright him. for, if you observed, he rose in his stirrups, as thereby meaning to overcast the mark; and so he would have done, but fangs happening to bound up at the very moment, received a scratch, which i will be bound to heal with a penny's breadth of tar.'' ``if i thought so,'' said gurth---``if i could but think so---but no---i saw the javelin was well aimed--i heard it whizz through the air with all the wrathful malevolence of him who cast it, and it quivered after it had pitched in the ground, as if with regret for having missed its mark. by the hog dear to st anthony, i renounce him!'' and the indignant swineherd resumed his sullen silence, which no efforts of the jester could again induce him to break. meanwhile cedric and athelstane, the leaders of the troop, conversed together on the state of the land, on the dissensions of the royal family, on the feuds and quarrels among the norman nobles, and on the chance which there was that the oppressed saxons might be able to free themselves from the yoke of the normans, or at least to elevate themselves into national consequence and independence, during the civil convulsions which were likely to ensue. on this subject cedric was all animation. the restoration of the independence of his race was the idol of his heart, to which he had willingly sacrificed domestic happiness and the interests of his own son. but, in order to achieve this great revolution in favour of the native english, it was necessary that they should be united among themselves, and act under an acknowledged head. the necessity of choosing their chief from the saxon blood-royal was not only evident in itself, but had been made a solemn condition by those whom cedric had intrusted with his secret plans and hopes. athelstane had this quality at least; and though he had few mental accomplishments or talents to recommend him as a leader, he had still a goodly person, was no coward, had been accustomed to martial exercises, and seemed willing to defer to the advice of counsellors more wise than himself. above all, he was known to be liberal and hospitable, and believed to be good-natured. but whatever pretensions athelstane had to be considered as head of the saxon confederacy, many of that nation were disposed to prefer to his the title of the lady rowena, who drew her descent from alfred, and whose father having been a chief renowned for wisdom, courage, and generosity, his memory was highly honoured by his oppressed countrymen. it would have been no difficult thing for cedric, had he been so disposed, to have placed himself at the head of a third party, as formidable at least as any of the others. to counterbalance their royal descent, he had courage, activity, energy, and, above all, that devoted attachment to the cause which had procured him the epithet of the saxon, and his birth was inferior to none, excepting only that of athelstane and his ward. these qualities, however, were unalloyed by the slightest shade of selfishness; and, instead of dividing yet farther his weakened nation by forming a faction of his own, it was a leading part of cedric's plan to extinguish that which already existed, by promoting a marriage betwixt rowena and athelstane. an obstacle occurred to this his favourite project, in the mutual attachment of his ward and his son and hence the original cause of the banishment of wilfred from the house of his father. this stern measure cedric had adopted, in hopes that, during wilfred's absence, rowena might relinquish her preference, but in this hope he was disappointed; a disappointment which might be attributed in part to the mode in which his ward had been educated. cedric, to whom the name of alfred was as that of a deity, had treated the sole remaining scion of that great monarch with a degree of observance, such as, perhaps, was in those days scarce paid to an acknowledged princess. rowena's will had been in almost all cases a law to his household; and cedric himself, as if determined that her sovereignty should be fully acknowledged within that little circle at least, seemed to take a pride in acting as the first of her subjects. thus trained in the exercise not only of free will, but despotic authority, rowena was, by her previous education, disposed both to resist and to resent any attempt to control her affections, or dispose of her hand contrary to her inclinations, and to assert her independence in a case in which even those females who have been trained up to obedience and subjection, are not infrequently apt to dispute the authority of guardians and parents. the opinions which she felt strongly, she avowed boldly; and cedric, who could not free himself from his habitual deference to her opinions, felt totally at a loss how to enforce his authority of guardian. it was in vain that he attempted to dazzle her with the prospect of a visionary throne. rowena, who possessed strong sense, neither considered his plan as practicable, nor as desirable, so far as she was concerned, could it have been achieved. without attempting to conceal her avowed preference of wilfred of ivanhoe, she declared that, were that favoured knight out of question, she would rather take refuge in a convent, than share a throne with athelstane, whom, having always despised, she now began, on account of the trouble she received on his account, thoroughly to detest. nevertheless, cedric, whose opinions of women's constancy was far from strong, persisted in using every means in his power to bring about the proposed match, in which he conceived he was rendering an important service to the saxon cause. the sudden and romantic appearance of his son in the lists at ashby, he had justly regarded as almost a death's blow to his hopes. his paternal affection, it is true, had for an instant gained the victory over pride and patriotism; but both had returned in full force, and under their joint operation, he was now bent upon making a determined effort for the union of athelstane and rowena, together with expediting those other measures which seemed necessary to forward the restoration of saxon independence. on this last subject, he was now labouring with athelstane, not without having reason, every now and then, to lament, like hotspur, that he should have moved such a dish of skimmed milk to so honourable an action. athelstane, it is true, was vain enough, and loved to have his ears tickled with tales of his high descent, and of his right by inheritance to homage and sovereignty. but his petty vanity was sufficiently gratified by receiving this homage at the hands of his immediate attendants, and of the saxons who approached him. if he had the courage to encounter danger, he at least hated the trouble of going to seek it; and while he agreed in the general principles laid down by cedric concerning the claim of the saxons to independence, and was still more easily convinced of his own title to reign over them when that independence should be attained, yet when the means of asserting these rights came to be discussed, he was still ``athelstane the unready,'' slow, irresolute, procrastinating, and unenterprising. the warm and impassioned exhortations of cedric had as little effect upon his impassive temper, as red-hot balls alighting in the water, which produce a little sound and smoke, and are instantly extinguished. if, leaving this task, which might be compared to spurring a tired jade, or to hammering upon cold iron, cedric fell back to his ward rowena, he received little more satisfaction from conferring with her. for, as his presence interrupted the discourse between the lady and her favourite attendant upon the gallantry and fate of wilfred, elgitha, failed not to revenge both her mistress and herself, by recurring to the overthrow of athelstane in the lists, the most disagreeable subject which could greet the ears of cedric. to this sturdy saxon, therefore, the day's journey was fraught with all manner of displeasure and discomfort; so that he more than once internally cursed the tournament, and him who had proclaimed it, together with his own folly in ever thinking of going thither. at noon, upon the motion of athelstane, the travellers paused in a woodland shade by a fountain, to repose their horses and partake of some provisions, with which the hospitable abbot had loaded a sumpter mule. their repast was a pretty long one; and these several interruptions rendered it impossible for them to hope to reach rotherwood without travelling all night, a conviction which induced them to proceed on their way at a more hasty pace than they had hitherto used. chapter xix. a train of armed men, some noble dame escorting, (so their scatter'd words discover'd, as unperceived i hung upon their rear,) are close at hand, and mean to pass the night within the castle. _orra, a tragedy._ the travellers had now reached the verge of the wooded country, and were about to plunge into its recesses, held dangerous at that time from the number of outlaws whom oppression and poverty had driven to despair, and who occupied the forests in such large bands as could easily bid defiance to the feeble police of the period. from these rovers, however, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour cedric and athelstane accounted themselves secure, as they had in attendance ten servants, besides wamba and gurth, whose aid could not be counted upon, the one being a jester and the other a captive. it may be added, that in travelling thus late through the forest, cedric and athelstane relied on their descent and character, as well as their courage. the outlaws, whom the severity of the forest laws had reduced to this roving and desperate mode of life, were chiefly peasants and yeomen of saxon descent, and were generally supposed to respect the persons and property of their countrymen. as the travellers journeyed on their way, they were alarmed by repeated cries for assistance; and when they rode up to the place from whence they came, they were surprised to find a horse-litter placed upon the ground, beside which sat a young woman, richly dressed in the jewish fashion, while an old man, whose yellow cap proclaimed him to belong to the same nation, walked up and down with gestures expressive of the deepest despair, and wrung his hands, as if affected by some strange disaster. to the enquiries of athelstane and cedric, the old jew could for some time only answer by invoking the protection of all the patriarchs of the old testament successively against the sons of ishmael, who were coming to smite them, hip and thigh, with the edge of the sword. when he began to come to himself out of this agony of terror, isaac of york (for it was our old friend) was at length able to explain, that he had hired a body-guard of six men at ashby, together with mules for carrying the litter of a sick friend. this party had undertaken to escort him as far as doncaster. they had come thus far in safety; but having received information from a wood-cutter that there was a strong band of outlaws lying in wait in the woods before them, isaac's mercenaries had not only taken flight, but had carried off with them the horses which bore the litter and left the jew and his daughter without the means either of defence or of retreat, to be plundered, and probably murdered, by the banditti, who they expected every moment would bring down upon them. ``would it but please your valours,'' added isaac, in a tone of deep humiliation, ``to permit the poor jews to travel under your safeguard, i swear by the tables of our law, that never has favour been conferred upon a child of israel since the days of our captivity, which shall be more gratefully acknowledged.'' ``dog of a jew!'' said athelstane, whose memory was of that petty kind which stores up trifles of all kinds, but particularly trifling offences, ``dost not remember how thou didst beard us in the gallery at the tilt-yard? fight or flee, or compound with the outlaws as thou dost list, ask neither aid nor company from us; and if they rob only such as thee, who rob all the world, i, for mine own sbare, shall hold them right honest folk.'' cedric did not assent to the severe proposal of his companion. ``we shall do better,'' said be, ``to leave them two of our attendants and two horses to convey them back to the next village. it will diminish our strength but little; and with your good sword, noble athelstane, and the aid of those who remain, it will be light work for us to face twenty of those runagates.'' rowena, somewhat alarmed by the mention of outlaws in force, and so near them, strongly seconded the proposal of her guardian. but rebecca suddenly quitting her dejected posture, and making her way through the attendants to the palfrey of the saxon lady, knelt down, and, after the oriental fashion in addressing superiors, kissed the hem of rowena's garment. then rising, and throwing back her veil, she implored her in the great name of the god whom they both worshipped, and by that revelation of the law upon mount sinai, in which they both believed, that she would have compassion upon them, and suffer them to go forward under their safeguard. ``it is not for myself that i pray this favour,'' said rebecca; ``nor is it even for that poor old man. i know, that to wrong and to spoil our nation is a light fault, if not a merit, with the christians; and what is it to us whether it be done in the city, in the desert, or in the field? but it is in the name of one dear to many, and dear even to you, that i beseech you to let this sick person be transported with care and tenderness under your protection. for, if evil chance him, the last moment of your life would be embittered with regret for denying that which i ask of you.'' the noble and solemn air with which rebecca made this appeal, gave it double weight with the fair saxon. ``the man is old and feeble,'' she said to her guardian, ``the maiden young and beautiful, their friend sick and in peril of his life---jews though they be, we cannot as christians leave them in this extremity. let them unload two of the sumpter-mules, and put the baggage behind two of the serfs. the mules may transport the litter, and we have led horses for the old man and his daughter.'' cedric readily assented to what she proposed, and athelstane only added the condition, ``that they should travel in the rear of the whole party, where wamba,'' he said, ``might attend them with his shield of boar's brawn.'' ``i have left my shield in the tilt-yard,'' answered the jester, ``as has been the fate of many a better knight than myself.'' athelstane coloured deeply, for such had been his own fate on the last day of the tournament; while rowena, who was pleased in the same proportion, as if to make amends for the brutal jest of her unfeeling suitor, requested rebecca to ride by her side. ``it were not fit i should do so,'' answered rebecca, with proud humility, ``where my society might be held a disgrace to my protectress.'' by this time the change of baggage was hastily achieved; for the single word ``outlaws'' rendered every one sufficiently alert, and the approach of twilight made the sound yet more impressive. amid the bustle, gurth was taken from horseback, in the course of which removal he prevailed upon the jester to slack the cord with which his arms were bound. it was so negligently refastened, perhaps intentionally, on the part of wamba, that gurth found no difficulty in freeing his arms altogether from bondage, and then, gliding into the thicket, he made his escape from the party. the bustle had been considerable, and it was some time before gurth was missed; for, as he was to be placed for the rest of the journey behind a servant, every one supposed that some other of his companions had him under his custody, and when it began to be whispered among them that gurth had actually disappeared, they were under such immediate expectation of an attack from the outlaws, that it was not held convenient to pay much attention to the circumstance. the path upon which the party travelled was now so narrow, as not to admit, with any sort of convenience, above two riders abreast, and began to descend into a dingle, traversed by a brook whose banks were broken, swampy, and overgrown with dwarf willows. cedric and athelstane, who were at the head of their retinue, saw the risk of being attacked at this pass; but neither of them having had much practice in war, no better mode of preventing the danger occurred to them than that they should hasten through the defile as fast as possible. advancing, therefore, without much order, they had just crossed the brook with a part of their followers, when they were assailed in front, flank, and rear at once, with an impetuosity to which, in their confused and ill-prepared condition, it was impossible to offer effectual resistance. the shout of ``a white dragon!---a white dragon!---saint george for merry england!'' war-cries adopted by the assailants, as belonging to their assumed character of saxon outlaws, was heard on every side, and on every side enemies appeared with a rapidity of advance and attack which seemed to multiply their numbers. both the saxon chiefs were made prisoners at the same moment, and each under circumstances expressive of his character. cedric, the instant that an enemy appeared, launched at him his remaining javelin, which, taking better effect than that which he had hurled at fangs, nailed the man against an oak-tree that happened to be close behind him. thus far successful, cedric spurred his horse against a second, drawing his sword at the same time, and striking with such inconsiderate fury, that his weapon encountered a thick branch which hung over him, and he was disarmed by the violence of his own blow. he was instantly made prisoner, and pulled from his horse by two or three of the banditti who crowded around him. athelstane shared his captivity, his bridle having been seized, and he himself forcibly dismounted, long before he could draw his weapon, or assume any posture of effectual defence. the attendants, embarrassed with baggage, surprised and terrified at the fate of their masters, fell an easy prey to the assailants; while the lady rowena, in the centre of the cavalcade, and the jew and his daughter in the rear, experienced the same misfortune. of all the train none escaped except wamba, who showed upon the occasion much more courage than those who pretended to greater sense. he possessed himself of a sword belonging to one of the domestics, who was just drawing it with a tardy and irresolute hand, laid it about him like a lion, drove back several who approached him, and made a brave though ineffectual attempt to succour his master. finding himself overpowered, the jester at length threw himself from his horse, plunged into the thicket, and, favoured by the general confusion, escaped from the scene of action. yet the valiant jester, as soon as he found himself safe, hesitated more than once whether he should not turn back and share the captivity of a master to whom he was sincerely attached. ``i have heard men talk of the blessings of freedom,'' he said to himself, ``but i wish any wise man would teach me what use to make of it now that i have it.'' as he pronounced these words aloud, a voice very near him called out in a low and cautious tone, ``wamba!'' and, at the same time, a dog, which be recognised to be fangs, jumped up and fawned upon him. ``gurth!'' answered wamba, with the same caution, and the swineherd immediately stood before him. ``what is the matter?'' said he eagerly; ``what mean these cries, and that clashing of swords?'' ``only a trick of the times,'' said wamba; ``they are all prisoners.'' ``who are prisoners?'' exclaimed gurth, impatiently. ``my lord, and my lady, and athelstane, and hundibert, and oswald.'' ``in the name of god!'' said gurth, ``how came they prisoners?---and to whom?'' ``our master was too ready to fight,'' said the jester; ``and athelstane was not ready enough, and no other person was ready at all. and they are prisoners to green cassocks, and black visors. and they lie all tumbled about on the green, like the crab-apples that you shake down to your swine. and i would laugh at it,'' said the honest jester, ``if i could for weeping.'' and he shed tears of unfeigned sorrow. gurth's countenance kindled---``wamba,'' he said, ``thou hast a weapon, and thy heart was ever stronger than thy brain,---we are only two---but a sudden attack from men of resolution will do much ---follow me!'' ``whither?---and for what purpose?'' said the jester. ``to rescue cedric.'' ``but you have renounced his service but now,'' said wamba. ``that,'' said gurth, ``was but while he was fortunate--follow me!'' as the jester was about to obey, a third person suddenly made his appearance, and commanded them both to halt. from his dress and arms, wamba would have conjectured him to be one of those outlaws who had just assailed his master; but, besides that he wore no mask, the glittering baldric across his shoulder, with the rich bugle-horn which it supported, as well as the calm and commanding expression of his voice and manner, made him, notwithstanding the twilight, recognise locksley the yeoman, who had been victorious, under such disadvantageous circumstances, in the contest for the prize of archery. ``what is the meaning of all this,'' said he, ``or who is it that rifle, and ransom, and make prisoners, in these forests?'' ``you may look at their cassocks close by,'' said wamba, ``and see whether they be thy children's coats or no---for they are as like thine own, as one green pea-cod is to another.'' ``i will learn that presently,'' answered locksley; ``and i charge ye, on peril of your lives, not to stir from the place where ye stand, until i have returned. obey me, and it shall be the better for you and your masters.---yet stay, i must render myself as like these men as possible.'' so saying he unbuckled his baldric with the bugle, took a feather from his cap, and gave them to wamba; then drew a vizard from his pouch, and, repeating his charges to them to stand fast, went to execute his purposes of reconnoitring. ``shall we stand fast, gurth?'' said wamba; ``or shall we e'en give him leg-bail? in my foolish mind, he had all the equipage of a thief too much in readiness, to be himself a true man.'' ``let him be the devil,'' said gurth, ``an he will. we can be no worse of waiting his return. if he belong to that party, he must already have given them the alarm, and it will avail nothing either to fight or fly. besides, i have late experience, that errant thieves are not the worst men in the world to have to deal with.'' the yeoman returned in the course of a few minutes. ``friend gurth,'' he said, ``i have mingled among yon men, and have learnt to whom they belong, and whither they are bound. there is, i think, no chance that they will proceed to any actual violence against their prisoners. for three men to attempt them at this moment, were little else than madness; for they are good men of war, and have, as such, placed sentinels to give the alarm when any one approaches. but i trust soon to gather such a force, as may act in defiance of all their precautions; you are both servants, and, as i think, faithful servants, of cedric the saxon, the friend of the rights of englishmen. he shall not want english hands to help him in this extremity. come then with me, until i gather more aid.'' so saying, he walked through the wood at a great pace, followed by the jester and the swineherd. it was not consistent with wamba's humour to travel long in silence. ``i think,'' said he, looking at the baldric and bugle which he still carried, ``that i saw the arrow shot which won this gay prize, and that not so long since as christmas.'' ``and i,'' said gurth, ``could take it on my halidome, that i have heard the voice of the good yeoman who won it, by night as well as by day, and that the moon is not three days older since i did so.'' ``mine honest friends,'' replied the yeoman, ``who, or what i am, is little to the present purpose; should i free your master, you will have reason to think me the best friend you have ever had in your lives. and whether i am known by one name or another---or whether i can draw a bow as well or better than a cow-keeper, or whether it is my pleasure to walk in sunshine or by moonlight, are matters, which, as they do not concern you, so neither need ye busy yourselves respecting them.'' ``our heads are in the lion's mouth,'' said wamba, in a whisper to gurth, ``get them out how we can.'' ``hush---be silent,'' said gurth. ``offend him not by thy folly, and i trust sincerely that all will go well.'' chapter xx. when autumn nights were long and drear, and forest walks were dark and dim, how sweetly on the pilgrim's ear was wont to steal the hermit's hymn devotion borrows music's tone, and music took devotion's wing; and, like the bird that hails the sun, they soar to heaven, and soaring sing. _the hermit of st clement's well._ it was after three hours' good walking that the servants of cedric, with their mysterious guide, arrived at a small opening in the forest, in the centre of which grew an oak-tree of enormous magnitude, throwing its twisted branches in every direction. beneath this tree four or five yeomen lay stretched on the ground, while another, as sentinel, walked to and fro in the moonlight shade. upon hearing the sound of feet approaching, the watch instantly gave the alarm, and the sleepers as suddenly started up and bent their bows. six arrows placed on the string were pointed towards the quarter from which the travellers approached, when their guide, being recognised, was welcomed with every token of respect and attachment, and all signs and fears of a rough reception at once subsided. ``where is the miller?'' was his first question. ``on the road towards rotherham.'' ``with how many?'' demanded the leader, for such he seemed to be. ``with six men, and good hope of booty, if it please st nicholas.'' ``devoutly spoken,'' said locksley; ``and where is allan-a-dale ?'' ``walked up towards the watling-street, to watch for the prior of jorvaulx.'' ``that is well thought on also,'' replied the captain;--``and where is the friar ?'' ``in his cell.'' ``thither will i go,'' said locksley. ``disperse and seek your companions. collect what force you can, for there's game afoot that must be hunted hard, and will turn to bay. meet me here by daybreak. ---and stay,'' he added, ``i have forgotten what is most necessary of the whole---two of you take the road quickly towards torquilstone, the castle of front-de-b<oe>uf. a set of gallants, who have been masquerading in such guise as our own, are carrying a band of prisoners thither---watch them closely, for even if they reach the castle before we collect our force, our honour is concerned to punish them, and we will find means to do so. keep a close watch on them therefore; and dispatch one of your comrades, the lightest of foot, to bring the news of the yeomen thereabout.'' they promised implicit obedience, and departed with alacrity on their different errands. in the meanwhile, their leader and his two companions, who now looked upon him with great respect, as well as some fear, pursued their way to the chapel of copmanhurst. when they had reached the little moonlight glade, having in front the reverend, though ruinous chapel, and the rude hermitage, so well suited to ascetic devotion, wamba whispered to gurth, ``if this be the habitation of a thief, it makes good the old proverb, the nearer the church the farther from god.---and by my cockscomb,'' he added, ``i think it be even so---hearken but to the black sanctus which they are singing in the hermitage!'' in fact the anchorite and his guest were performing, at the full extent of their very powerful lungs, an old drinking song, of which this was the burden:-- ``come, trowl the brown bowl to me, bully boy, bully boy, come, trowl the brown bowl to me: ho! jolly jenkin, i spy a knave in drinking, come, trowl the brown bowl to me.'' ``now, that is not ill sung,'' said wamba, who had thrown in a few of his own flourishes to help out the chorus. ``but who, in the saint's name, ever expected to have heard such a jolly chant come from out a hermit's cell at midnight!'' ``marry, that should i,'' said gurth, ``for the jolly clerk of copmanhurst is a known man, and kills half the deer that are stolen in this walk. men say that the keeper has complained to his official, and that he will be stripped of his cowl and cope altogether, if he keeps not better order.'' while they were thus speaking, locksley's loud and repeated knocks had at length disturbed the anchorite and his guest. ``by my beads,'' said the hermit, stopping short in a grand flourish, ``here come more benighted guests. i would not for my cowl that they found us in this goodly exercise. all men have their enemies, good sir sluggard; and there be those malignant enough to construe the hospitable refreshment which i have been offering to you, a weary traveller, for the matter of three short hours, into sheer drunkenness and debauchery, vices alike alien to my profession and my disposition.'' ``base calumniators!'' replied the knight; ``i would i had the chastising of them. nevertheless, holy clerk, it is true that all have their enemies; and there be those in this very land whom i would rather speak to through the bars of my helmet than barefaced.'' ``get thine iron pot on thy head then, friend sluggard, as quickly as thy nature will permit,'' said the hermit, ``while i remove these pewter flagons, whose late contents run strangely in mine own pate; and to drown the clatter---for, in faith, i feel somewhat unsteady---strike into the tune which thou hearest me sing; it is no matter for the words---i scarce know them myself.'' so saying, he struck up a thundering _de profundis clamavi_, under cover of which he removed the apparatus of their banquet: while the knight, laughing heartily, and arming himself all the while, assisted his host with his voice from time to time as his mirth permitted. ``what devil's matins are you after at this hour?'' said a voice from without. ``heaven forgive you, sir traveller!'' said the hermit, whose own noise, and perhaps his nocturnal potations, prevented from recognising accents which were tolerably familiar to him---``wend on your way, in the name of god and saint dunstan, and disturb not the devotions of me and my holy brother.'' ``mad priest,'' answered the voice from without, ``open to locksley!'' ``all's safe---all's right,'' said the hermit to his companion. ``but who is he?'' said the black knight; ``it imports me much to know.'' ``who is he?'' answered the hermit; ``i tell thee he is a friend.'' ``but what friend?'' answered the knight; ``for he may be friend to thee and none of mine?'' ``what friend?'' replied the hermit; ``that, now, is one of the questions that is more easily asked than answered. what friend?---why, he is, now that i bethink me a little, the very same honest keeper i told thee of a while since.'' ``ay, as honest a keeper as thou art a pious hermit,'' replied the knight, ``i doubt it not. but undo the door to him before he beat it from its hinges.'' the dogs, in the meantime, which had made a dreadful baying at the commencement of the disturbance, seemed now to recognise the voice of him who stood without; for, totally changing their manner, they scratched and whined at the door, as if interceding for his admission. the hermit speedily unbolted his portal, and admitted locksley, with his two companions. ``why, hermit,'' was the yeoman's first question as soon as he beheld the knight, ``what boon companion hast thou here ?'' ``a brother of our order,'' replied the friar, shaking his head; ``we have been at our orisons all night.'' ``he is a monk of the church militant, i think,'' answered locksley; ``and there be more of them abroad. i tell thee, friar, thou must lay down the rosary and take up the quarter-staff; we shall need every one of our merry men, whether clerk or layman. ---but,'' he added, taking him a step aside, ``art thou mad? to give admittance to a knight thou dost not know? hast thou forgot our articles?'' ``not know him!'' replied the friar, boldly, ``i know him as well as the beggar knows his dish.'' ``and what is his name, then?'' demanded locksley. ``his name,'' said the hermit---``his name is sir anthony of scrabelstone---as if i would drink with a man, and did not know his name!'' ``thou hast been drinking more than enough, friar,'' said the woodsman, ``and, i fear, prating more than enough too.'' ``good yeoman,'' said the knight, coming forward, ``be not wroth with my merry host. he did but afford me the hospitality which i would have compelled from him if he had refused it.'' ``thou compel!'' said the friar; ``wait but till have changed this grey gown for a green cassock, and if i make not a quarter-staff ring twelve upon thy pate, i am neither true clerk nor good woodsman.'' while he spoke thus, he stript off his gown, and appeared in a close black buckram doublet and drawers, over which he speedily did on a cassock of green, and hose of the same colour. ``i pray thee truss my points,'' said he to wamba, ``and thou shalt have a cup of sack for thy labour.'' ``gramercy for thy sack,'' said wamba; ``but think'st thou it is lawful for me to aid you to transmew thyself from a holy hermit into a sinful forester?'' ``never fear,'' said the hermit; ``i will but confess the sins of my green cloak to my greyfriar's frock, and all shall be well again.'' ``amen!'' answered the jester; ``a broadcloth penitent should have a sackcloth confessor, and your frock may absolve my motley doublet into the bargain.'' so saying, he accommodated the friar with his assistance in tying the endless number of points, as the laces which attached the hose to the doublet were then termed. while they were thus employed, locksley led the knight a little apart, and addressed him thus:-- ``deny it not, sir knight---you are he who decided the victory to the advantage of the english against the strangers on the second day of the tournament at ashby.'' ``and what follows if you guess truly, good yeoman?'' replied the knight. ``i should in that case hold you,'' replied the yeoman, ``a friend to the weaker party.'' ``such is the duty of a true knight at least,'' replied the black champion; ``and i would not willingly that there were reason to think otherwise of me.'' ``but for my purpose,'' said the yeoman, ``thou shouldst be as well a good englishman as a good knight; for that, which i have to speak of, concerns, indeed, the duty of every honest man, but is more especially that of a true-born native of england.'' ``you can speak to no one,'' replied the knight, ``to whom england, and the life of every englishman, can be dearer than to me.'' ``i would willingly believe so,'' said the woodsman, ``for never had this country such need to be supported by those who love her. hear me, and i will tell thee of an enterprise, in which, if thou best really that which thou seemest, thou mayst take an honourable part. a band of villains, in the disguise of better men than themselves, have made themselves master of the person of a noble englishman, called cedric the saxon, together with his ward, and his friend athelstane of coningsburgh, and have transported them to a castle in this forest, called torquilstone. i ask of thee, as a good knight and a good englishman, wilt thou aid in their rescue?'' ``i am bound by my vow to do so,'' replied the knight; ``but i would willingly know who you are, who request my assistance in their behalf ?'' ``i am,'' said the forester, ``a nameless man; but i am the friend of my country, and of my country's friends---with this account of me you must for the present remain satisfied, the more especially since you yourself desire to continue unknown. believe, however, that my word, when pledged, is as inviolate as if i wore golden spurs.'' ``i willingly believe it,'' said the knight; ``i have been accustomed to study men's countenances, and i can read in thine honesty and resolution. i will, therefore, ask thee no further questions, but aid thee in setting at freedom these oppressed captives; which done, i trust we shall part better acquainted, and well satisfied with each other.'' ``so,'' said wamba to gurth,---for the friar being now fully equipped, the jester, having approached to the other side of the hut, had heard the conclusion of the conversation,---``so we have got a new ally ?---l trust the valour of the knight will be truer metal than the religion of the hermit, or the honesty of the yeoman; for this locksley looks like a born deer-stealer, and the priest like a lusty hypocrite.'' ``hold thy peace, wamba,'' said gurth; ``it may all be as thou dost guess; but were the horned devil to rise and proffer me his assistance to set at liberty cedric and the lady rowena, i fear i should hardly have religion enough to refuse the foul fiend's offer, and bid him get behind me.'' the friar was now completely accoutred as a yeoman, with sword and buckler, bow, and quiver, and a strong partisan over his shoulder. he left his cell at the head of the party, and, having carefully locked the door, deposited the key under the threshold. ``art thou in condition to do good service, friar,'' said locksley, ``or does the brown bowl still run in thy head ?'' ``not more than a drought of st dunstan's fountain will allay,'' answered the priest; ``something there is of a whizzing in my brain, and of instability in my legs, but you shall presently see both pass away.'' so saying, he stepped to the stone basin, in which the waters of the fountain as they fell formed bubbles which danced in the white moonlight, and took so long a drought as if he had meant to exhaust the spring. ``when didst thou drink as deep a drought of water before, holy clerk of copmanhurst?'' said the black knight. ``never since my wine-but leaked, and let out its liquor by an illegal vent,'' replied the friar, ``and so left me nothing to drink but my patron's bounty here.'' then plunging his hands and head into the fountain, he washed from them all marks of the midnight revel. thus refreshed and sobered, the jolly priest twirled his heavy partisan round his head with three fingers, as if he had been balancing a reed, exclaiming at the same time, ``where be those false ravishers, who carry off wenches against their will? may the foul fiend fly off with me, if i am not man enough for a dozen of them.'' ``swearest thou, holy clerk?'' said the black knight. ``clerk me no clerks,'' replied the transformed priest; ``by saint george and the dragon, i am no longer a shaveling than while my frock is on my back---when i am cased in my green cassock, i will drink, swear, and woo a lass, with any blithe forester in the west riding.'' ``come on, jack priest,'' said locksley, ``and be silent; thou art as noisy as a whole convent on a holy eve, when the father abbot has gone to bed. ---come on you, too, my masters, tarry not to talk of it---i say, come on, we must collect all our forces, and few enough we shall have, if we are to storm the castle of reginald front-de-b<oe>uf.'' ``what! is it front-de-b<oe>uf,'' said the black knight, ``who has stopt on the king's highway the king's liege subjects?---is he turned thief and oppressor?'' ``oppressor he ever was,'' said locksley. ``and for thief,'' said the priest, ``i doubt if ever he were even half so honest a man as many a thief of my acquaintance.'' ``move on, priest, and be silent,'' said the yeoman; ``it were better you led the way to the place of rendezvous, than say what should be left unsaid, both in decency and prudence.'' chapter xxi. alas, how many hours and years have past, since human forms have round this table sate, or lamp, or taper, on its surface gleam'd! methinks, i hear the sound of time long pass'd still murmuring o'er us, in the lofty void of these dark arches, like the ling'ring voices of those who long within their graves have slept. _orra, a tragedy._ while these measures were taking in behalf of cedric and his companions, the armed men by whom the latter had been seized, hurried their captives along towards the place of security, where they intended to imprison them. but darkness came on fast, and the paths of the wood seemed but imperfectly known to the marauders. they were compelled to make several long halts, and once or twice to return on their road to resume the direction which they wished to pursue. the summer morn had dawned upon them ere they could travel in full assurance that they held the right path. but confidence returned with light, and the cavalcade now moved rapidly forward. meanwhile, the following dialogue took place between the two leaders of the banditti. ``it is time thou shouldst leave us, sir maurice,'' said the templar to de bracy, ``in order to prepare the second part of thy mystery. thou art next, thou knowest, to act the knight deliverer.'' ``i have thought better of it,'' said de bracy; ``i will not leave thee till the prize is fairly deposited in front-de-b<oe>uf's castle. there will i appear before the lady rowena in mine own shape, and trust that she will set down to the vehemence of my passion the violence of which i have been guilty.'' ``and what has made thee change thy plan, de bracy?'' replied the knight templar. ``that concerns thee nothing,'' answered his companion. ``i would hope, however, sir knight,'' said the templar, ``that this alteration of measures arises from no suspicion of my honourable meaning, such as fitzurse endeavoured to instil into thee?'' ``my thoughts are my own,'' answered de bracy; ``the fiend laughs, they say, when one thief robs another; and we know, that were he to spit fire and brimstone instead, it would never prevent a templar from following his bent.'' ``or the leader of a free company,'' answered the templar, ``from dreading at the hands of a comrade and friend, the injustice he does to all mankind.'' ``this is unprofitable and perilous recrimination,'' answered de bracy; ``suffice it to say, i know the morals of the temple-order, and i will not give thee the power of cheating me out of the fair prey for which i have run such risks.'' ``psha,'' replied the templar, ``what hast thou to fear?---thou knowest the vows of our order.'' ``right well,'' said de bracy, ``and also how they are kept. come, sir templar, the laws of gallantry have a liberal interpretation in palestine, and this is a case in which i will trust nothing to your conscience.'' ``hear the truth, then,'' said the templar; ``i care not for your blue-eyed beauty. there is in that train one who will make me a better mate.'' ``what! wouldst thou stoop to the waiting damsel?'' said de bracy. ``no, sir knight,'' said the templar, haughtily. ``to the waiting-woman will i not stoop. i have a prize among the captives as lovely as thine own.'' ``by the mass, thou meanest the fair jewess!'' said de bracy. ``and if i do,'' said bois-guilbert, ``who shall gainsay me?'' ``no one that i know,'' said de bracy, ``unless it be your vow of celibacy, or a cheek of conscience for an intrigue with a jewess.'' ``for my vow,'' said the templar, ``our grand master hath granted me a dispensation. and for my conscience, a man that has slain three hundred saracens, need not reckon up every little failing, like a village girl at her first confession upon good friday eve.'' ``thou knowest best thine own privileges,'' said de bracy. ``yet, i would have sworn thy thought had been more on the old usurer's money bags, than on the black eyes of the daughter.'' ``i can admire both,'' answered the templar; ``besides, the old jew is but half-prize. i must share his spoils with front-de-b<oe>uf, who will not lend us the use of his castle for nothing. i must have something that i can term exclusively my own by this foray of ours, and i have fixed on the lovely jewess as my peculiar prize. but, now thou knowest my drift, thou wilt resume thine own original plan, wilt thou not?---thou hast nothing, thou seest, to fear from my interference.'' ``no,'' replied de bracy, ``i will remain beside my prize. what thou sayst is passing true, but i like not the privileges acquired by the dispensation of the grand master, and the merit acquired by the slaughter of three hundred saracens. you have too good a right to a free pardon, to render you very scrupulous about peccadilloes.'' while this dialogue was proceeding, cedric was endeavouring to wring out of those who guarded him an avowal of their character and purpose. ``you should be englishmen,'' said he; ``and yet, sacred heaven! you prey upon your countrymen as if you were very normans. you should be my neighbours, and, if so, my friends; for which of my english neighbours have reason to be otherwise? i tell ye, yeomen, that even those among ye who have been branded with outlawry have had from me protection; for i have pitied their miseries, and curst the oppression of their tyrannic nobles. what, then, would you have of me? or in what can this violence serve ye?---ye are worse than brute beasts in your actions, and will you imitate them in their very dumbness?'' it was in vain that cedric expostulated with his guards, who had too many good reasons for their silence to be induced to break it either by his wrath or his expostulations. they continued to hurry him along, travelling at a very rapid rate, until, at the end of an avenue of huge trees, arose torquilstone, now the hoary and ancient castle of reginald front-de-b<oe>uf. it was a fortress of no great size, consisting of a donjon, or large and high square tower, surrounded by buildings of inferior height, which were encircled by an inner court-yard. around the exterior wall was a deep moat, supplied with water from a neighbouring rivulet. front-de-b<oe>uf, whose character placed him often at feud with his enemies, had made considerable additions to the strength of his castle, by building towers upon the outward wall, so as to flank it at every angle. the access, as usual in castles of the period, lay through an arched barbican, or outwork, which was terminated and defended by a small turret at each corner. cedric no sooner saw the turrets of front-de-b<oe>uf's castle raise their grey and moss-grown battlements, glimmering in the morning sun above the wood by which they were surrounded, than he instantly augured more truly concerning the cause of his misfortune. ``i did injustice,'' he said, ``to the thieves and outlaws of these woods, when i supposed such banditti to belong to their bands; i might as justly have confounded the foxes of these brakes with the ravening wolves of france. tell me, dogs---is it my life or my wealth that your master aims at? is it too much that two saxons, myself and the noble athelstane, should hold land in the country which was once the patrimony of our race?---put us then to death, and complete your tyranny by taking our lives, as you began with our liberties. if the saxon cedric cannot rescue england, he is willing to die for her. tell your tyrannical master, i do only beseech him to dismiss the lady rowena in honour and safety. she is a woman, and he need not dread her; and with us will die all who dare fight in her cause.'' the attendants remained as mute to this address as to the former, and they now stood before the gate of the castle. de bracy winded his horn three times, and the archers and cross-bow men, who had manned the wall upon seeing their approach, hastened to lower the drawbridge, and admit them. the prisoners were compelled by their guards to alight, and were conducted to an apartment where a hasty repast was offered them, of which none but athelstane felt any inclination to partake. neither had the descendant of the confessor much time to do justice to the good cheer placed before them, for their guards gave him and cedric to understand that they were to be imprisoned in a chamber apart from rowena. resistance was vain; and they were compelled to follow to a large room, which, rising on clumsy saxon pillars, resembled those refectories and chapter-houses which may be still seen in the most ancient parts of our most ancient monasteries. the lady rowena was next separated from her train, and conducted, with courtesy, indeed, but still without consulting her inclination, to a distant apartment. the same alarming distinction was conferred on rebecca, in spite of her father's entreaties, who offered even money, in this extremity of distress, that she might be permitted to abide with him. ``base unbeliever,'' answered one of his guards, ``when thou hast seen thy lair, thou wilt not wish thy daughter to partake it.'' and, without farther discussion, the old jew was forcibly dragged off in a different direction from the other prisoners. the domestics, after being carefully searched and disarmed, were confined in another part of the castle; and rowena was refused even the comfort she might have derived from the attendance of her handmaiden elgitha. the apartment in which the saxon chiefs were confined, for to them we turn our first attention, although at present used as a sort of guard-room, had formerly been the great hall of the castle. it was now abandoned to meaner purposes, because the present lord, among other additions to the convenience, security, and beauty of his baronial residence, had erected a new and noble hall, whose vaulted roof was supported by lighter and more elegant pillars, and fitted up with that higher degree of ornament, which the normans had already introduced into architecture. cedric paced the apartment, filled with indignant reflections on the past and on the present, while the apathy of his companion served, instead of patience and philosophy, to defend him against every thing save the inconvenience of the present moment; and so little did he feel even this last, that he was only from time to time roused to a reply by cedric's animated and impassioned appeal to him. ``yes,'' said cedric, half speaking to himself, and half addressing himself to athelstane, ``it was in this very hall that my father feasted with torquil wolfganger, when he entertained the valiant and unfortunate harold, then advancing against the norwegians, who had united themselves to the rebel tosti. it was in this hall that harold returned the magnanimous answer to the ambassador of his rebel brother. oft have i heard my father kindle as he told the tale. the envoy of tosti was admitted, when this ample room could scarce contain the crowd of noble saxon leaders, who were quaffing the blood-red wine around their monarch.'' ``i hope,'' said athelstane, somewhat moved by this part of his friend's discourse, ``they will not forget to send us some wine and refactions at noon ---we had scarce a breathing-space allowed to break our fast, and i never have the benefit of my food when i eat immediately after dismounting from horseback, though the leeches recommend that practice.'' cedric went on with his story without noticing this interjectional observation of his friend. ``the envoy of tosti,'' he said, ``moved up the hall, undismayed by the frowning countenances of all around him, until he made his obeisance before the throne of king harold. `` `what terms,' he said, `lord king, hath thy brother tosti to hope, if he should lay down his arms, and crave peace at thy hands?' `` `a brother's love,' cried the generous harold, `and the fair earldom of northumberland.' `` `but should tosti accept these terms,' continued the envoy, ` what lands shall be assigned to his faithful ally, hardrada, king of norway?' `` `seven feet of english ground,' answered harold, fiercely, 'or, as hardrada is said to be a giant, perhaps we may allow him twelve inches more.' ``the hall rung with acclamations, and cup and horn was filled to the norwegian, who should be speedily in possession of his english territory.'' ``i could have pledged him with all my soul,'' said athelstane, ``for my tongue cleaves to my palate.'' ``the baffled envoy,'' continued cedric, pursuing with animation his tale, though it interested not the listener, ``retreated, to carry to tosti and his ally the ominous answer of his injured brother. it was then that the distant towers of york, and the bloody streams of the derwent,* beheld that direful * note d. battle of stamford. conflict, in which, after displaying the most undaunted valour, the king of norway, and tosti, both fell, with ten thousand of their bravest followers. who would have thought that upon the proud day when this battle was won, the very gale which waved the saxon banners in triumph, was filling the norman sails, and impelling them to the fatal shores of sussex?---who would have thought that harold, within a few brief days, would himself possess no more of his kingdom, than the share which he allotted in his wrath to the norwegian invader? ---who would have thought that you, noble athelstane--that you, descended of harold's blood, and that i, whose father was not the worst defender of the saxon crown, should be prisoners to a vile norman, in the very hall in which our ancestors held such high festival?'' ``it is sad enough,'' replied athelstane; ``but i trust they will hold us to a moderate ransom--at any rate it cannot be their purpose to starve us outright; and yet, although it is high noon, i see no preparations for serving dinner. look up at the window, noble cedric, and judge by the sunbeams if it is not on the verge of noon.'' ``it may be so,'' answered cedric; ``but i cannot look on that stained lattice without its awakening other reflections than those which concern the passing moment, or its privations. when that window was wrought, my noble friend, our hardy fathers knew not the art of making glass, or of staining it---the pride of wolfganger's father brought an artist from normandy to adorn his hall with this new species of emblazonment, that breaks the golden light of god's blessed day into so many fantastic hues. the foreigner came here poor, beggarly, cringing, and subservient, ready to doff his cap to the meanest native of the household. he returned pampered and proud, to tell his rapacious countrymen of the wealth and the simplicity of the saxon nobles---a folly, oh, athelstane, foreboded of old, as well as foreseen, by those descendants of hengist and his hardy tribes, who retained the simplicity of their manners. we made these strangers our bosom friends, our confidential servants; we borrowed their artists and their arts, and despised the honest simplicity and hardihood with which our brave ancestors supported themselves, and we became enervated by norman arts long ere we fell under norman arms. far better was our homely diet, eaten in peace and liberty, than the luxurious dainties, the love of which hath delivered us as bondsmen to the foreign conqueror!'' ``i should,'' replied athelstane, ``hold very humble diet a luxury at present; and it astonishes me, noble cedric, that you can bear so truly in mind the memory of past deeds, when it appeareth you forget the very hour of dinner.'' ``it is time lost,'' muttered cedric apart and impatiently, ``to speak to him of aught else but that which concerns his appetite! the soul of hardicanute hath taken possession of him, and he hath no pleasure save to fill, to swill, and to call for more. ---alas!'' said he, looking at athelstane with compassion, ``that so dull a spirit should be lodged in so goodly a form! alas! that such an enterprise as the regeneration of england should turn on a hinge so imperfect! wedded to rowena, indeed, her nobler and more generous soul may yet awake the better nature which is torpid within him. yet how should this be, while rowena, athelstane, and i myself, remain the prisoners of this brutal marauder and have been made so perhaps from a sense of the dangers which our liberty might bring to the usurped power of his nation?'' while the saxon was plunged in these painful reflections, the door of their prison opened, and gave entrance to a sewer, holding his white rod of office. this important person advanced into the chamber with a grave pace, followed by four attendants, bearing in a table covered with dishes, the sight and smell of which seemed to be an instant compensation to athelstane for all the inconvenience he had undergone. the persons who attended on the feast were masked and cloaked. ``what mummery is this?'' said cedric; ``think you that we are ignorant whose prisoners we are, when we are in the castle of your master? tell him,'' he continued, willing to use this opportunity to open a negotiation for his freedom,---``tell your master, reginald front-de-b<oe>uf, that we know no reason he can have for withholding our liberty, excepting his unlawful desire to enrich himself at our expense. tell him that we yield to his rapacity, as in similar circumstances we should do to that of a literal robber. let him name the ransom at which he rates our liberty, and it shall be paid, providing the exaction is suited to our means.'' the sewer made no answer, but bowed his head. ``and tell sir reginald front-de-b<oe>uf,'' said athelstane, ``that i send him my mortal defiance, and challenge him to combat with me, on foot or horseback, at any secure place, within eight days after our liberation; which, if he be a true knight, he will not, under these circumstances, venture to refuse or to delay.'' ``i shall deliver to the knight your defiance,'' answered the sewer; ``meanwhile i leave you to your food.'' the challenge of athelstane was delivered with no good grace; for a large mouthful, which required the exercise of both jaws at once, added to a natural hesitation, considerably damped the effect of the bold defiance it contained. still, however, his speech was hailed by cedric as an incontestible token of reviving spirit in his companion, whose previous indifference had begun, notwithstanding his respect for athelstane's descent, to wear out his patience. but he now cordially shook hands with him in token of his approbation, and was somewhat grieved when athelstane observed, ``that he would fight a dozen such men as front-de-b<oe>uf, if, by so doing, he could hasten his departure from a dungeon where they put so much garlic into their pottage.'' notwithstanding this intimation of a relapse into the apathy of sensuality, cedric placed himself opposite to athelstane, and soon showed, that if the distresses of his country could banish the recollection of food while the table was uncovered, yet no sooner were the victuals put there, than he proved that the appetite of his saxon ancestors had descended to him along with their other qualities. the captives had not long enjoyed their refreshment, however, ere their attention was disturbed even from this most serious occupation by the blast of a horn winded before the gate. it was repeated three times, with as much violence as if it had been blown before an enchanted castle by the destined knight, at whose summons halls and towers, barbican and battlement, were to roll off like a morning vapour. the saxons started from the table, and hastened to the window. but their curiosity was disappointed; for these outlets only looked upon the court of the castle, and the sound came from beyond its precincts. the summons, however, seemed of importance, for a considerable degree of bustle instantly took place in the castle. chapter xxii. my daughter---o my ducats---o my daughter! ------------o my christian ducats! justice---the law---my ducats, and my daughter! _merchant of venice._ leaving the saxon chiefs to return to their banquet as soon as their ungratified curiosity should permit them to attend to the calls of their half-satiated appetite, we have to look in upon the yet more severe imprisonment of isaac of york. the poor jew had been hastily thrust into a dungeon-vault of the castle, the floor of which was deep beneath the level of the ground, and very damp, being lower than even the moat itself. the only light was received through one or two loop-holes far above the reach of the captive's hand. these apertures admitted, even at mid-day, only a dim and uncertain light, which was changed for utter darkness long before the rest of the castle had lost the blessing of day. chains and shackles, which had been the portion of former captives, from whom active exertions to escape had been apprehended, hung rusted and empty on the walls of the prison, and in the rings of one of those sets of fetters there remained two mouldering bones, which seemed to have been once those of the human leg, as if some prisoner had been left not only to perish there, but to be consumed to a skeleton. at one end of this ghastly apartment was a large fire-grate, over the top of which were stretched some transverse iron bars, half devoured with rust. the whole appearance of the dungeon might have appalled a stouter heart than that of isaac, who, nevertheless, was more composed under the imminent pressure of danger, than he had seemed to be while affected by terrors, of which the cause was as yet remote and contingent. the lovers of the chase say that the hare feels more agony during the pursuit of the greyhounds, than when she is struggling in their fangs.* and thus it is probable, that * _nota bene._---we by no means warrant the accuracy of this * piece of natural history, which we give on the authority of the * wardour ms. l. t. the jews, by the very frequency of their fear on all occasions, had their minds in some degree prepared for every effort of tyranny which could be practised upon them; so that no aggression, when it had taken place, could bring with it that surprise which is the most disabling quality of terror. neither was it the first time that isaac had been placed in circumstances so dangerous. he had therefore experience to guide him, as well as hope, that he might again, as formerly, be delivered as a prey from the fowler. above all, he had upon his side the unyielding obstinacy of his nation, and that unbending resolution, with which israelites have been frequently known to submit to the uttermost evils which power and violence can inflict upon them, rather than gratify their oppressors by granting their demands. in this humour of passive resistance, and with his garment collected beneath him to keep his limbs from the wet pavement, isaac sat in a corner of his dungeon, where his folded hands, his dishevelled hair and beard, his furred cloak and high cap, seen by the wiry and broken light, would have afforded a study for rembrandt, had that celebrated painter existed at the period. the jew remained, without altering his position, for nearly three hours, at the expiry of which steps were heard on the dungeon stair. the bolts screamed as they were withdrawn ---the hinges creaked as the wicket opened, and reginald front-de-b<oe>uf, followed by the two saracen slaves of the templar, entered the prison. front-de-b<oe>uf, a tall and strong man, whose life had been spent in public war or in private feuds and broils, and who had hesitated at no means of extending his feudal power, had features corresponding to his character, and which strongly expressed the fiercer and more malignant passions of the mind. the scars with which his visage was seamed, would, on features of a different cast, have excited the sympathy and veneration due to the marks of honourable valour; but, in the peculiar case of front-de-b<oe>uf, they only added to the ferocity of his countenance, and to the dread which his presence inspired. this formidable baron was clad in a leathern doublet, fitted close to his body, which was frayed and soiled with the stains of his armour. he had no weapon, excepting a poniard at his belt, which served to counterbalance the weight of the bunch of rusty keys that hung at his right side. the black slaves who attended front-de-b<oe>uf were stripped of their gorgeous apparel, and attired in jerkins and trowsers of coarse linen, their sleeves being tucked up above the elbow, like those of butchers when about to exercise their function in the slaughter-house. each had in his hand a small pannier; and, when they entered the dungeon, they stopt at the door until front-de-b<oe>uf himself carefully locked and double-locked it. having taken this precaution, he advanced slowly up the apartment towards the jew, upon whom he kept his eye fixed, as if he wished to paralyze him with his glance, as some animals are said to fascinate their prey. it seemed indeed as if the sullen and malignant eye of front-de-b<oe>uf possessed some portion of that supposed power over his unfortunate prisoner. the jew sate with his mouth a-gape, and his eyes fixed on the savage baron with such earnestness of terror, that his frame seemed literally to shrink together, and to diminish in size while encountering the fierce norman's fixed and baleful gaze. the unhappy isaac was deprived not only of the power of rising to make the obeisance which his terror dictated, but he could not even doff his cap, or utter any word of supplication; so strongly was he agitated by the conviction that tortures and death were impending over him. on the other hand, the stately form of the norman appeared to dilate in magnitude, like that of the eagle, which ruffles up its plumage when about to pounce on its defenceless prey. he paused within three steps of the corner in which the unfortunate jew had now, as it were, coiled himself up into the smallest possible space, and made a sign for one of the slaves to approach. the black satellite came forward accordingly, and, producing from his basket a large pair of scales and several weights, he laid them at the feet of front-de-b<oe>uf, and again retired to the respectful distance, at which his companion had already taken his station. the motions of these men were slow and solemn, as if there impended over their souls some preconception of horror and of cruelty. front-de-b<oe>uf himself opened the scene by thus addressing his ill-fated captive. ``most accursed dog of an accursed race,'' he said, awaking with his deep and sullen voice the sullen echoes of his dungeon vault, ``seest thou these scales?'' the unhappy jew returned a feeble affirmative. ``in these very scales shalt thou weigh me out,'' said the relentless baron, ``a thousand silver pounds, after the just measure and weight of the tower of london.'' ``holy abraham!'' returned the jew, finding voice through the very extremity of his danger, ``heard man ever such a demand?---who ever heard, even in a minstrel's tale, of such a sum as a thousand pounds of silver?---what human sight was ever blessed with the vision of such a mass of treasure? ---not within the walls of york, ransack my house and that of all my tribe, wilt thou find the tithe of that huge sum of silver that thou speakest of.'' ``i am reasonable,'' answered front-de-b<oe>uf, ``and if silver be scant, i refuse not gold. at the rate of a mark of gold for each six pounds of silver, thou shalt free thy unbelieving carcass from such punishment as thy heart has never even conceived.'' ``have mercy on me, noble knight!'' exclaimed isaac; ``i am old, and poor, and helpless. it were unworthy to triumph over me---it is a poor deed to crush a worm.'' ``old thou mayst be,'' replied the knight; ``more shame to their folly who have suffered thee to grow grey in usury and knavery---feeble thou mayst be, for when had a jew either heart or hand---but rich it is well known thou art.'' ``i swear to you, noble knight,'' said the jew ``by all which i believe, and by all which we believe in common------'' ``perjure not thyself,'' said the norman, interrupting him, ``and let not thine obstinacy seal thy doom, until thou hast seen and well considered the fate that awaits thee. think not i speak to thee only to excite thy terror, and practise on the base cowardice thou hast derived from thy tribe. i swear to thee by that which thou dost =not= believe, by the gospel which our church teaches, and by the keys which are given her to bind and to loose, that my purpose is deep and peremptory. this dungeon is no place for trifling. prisoners ten thousand times more distinguished than thou have died within these walls, and their fate hath never been known! but for thee is reserved a long and lingering death, to which theirs were luxury.'' he again made a signal for the slaves to approach, and spoke to them apart, in their own language; for he also had been in palestine, where perhaps, he had learnt his lesson of cruelty. the saracens produced from their baskets a quantity of charcoal, a pair of bellows, and a flask of oil. while the one struck a light with a flint and steel, the other disposed the charcoal in the large rusty grate which we have already mentioned, and exercised the bellows until the fuel came to a red glow. ``seest thou, isaac,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``the range of iron bars above the glowing charcoal?*--* note e. the range of iron bars above that glowing * charcoal. on that warm couch thou shalt lie, stripped of thy clothes as if thou wert to rest on a bed of down. one of these slaves shall maintain the fire beneath thee, while the other shall anoint thy wretched limbs with oil, lest the roast should burn.---now, choose betwixt such a scorching bed and the payment of a thousand pounds of silver; for, by the head of my father, thou hast no other option.'' ``it is impossible,'' exclaimed the miserable jew ---``it is impossible that your purpose can be real! the good god of nature never made a heart capable of exercising such cruelty!'' ``trust not to that, isaac,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``it were a fatal error. dost thou think that i, who have seen a town sacked, in which thousands of my christian countrymen perished by sword, by flood, and by fire, will blench from my purpose for the outcries or screams of one single wretched jew?--or thinkest thou that these swarthy slaves, who have neither law, country, nor conscience, but their master's will---who use the poison, or the stake, or the poniard, or the cord, at his slightest wink--thinkest thou that _they_ will have mercy, who do not even understand the language in which it is asked?---be wise, old man; discharge thyself of a portion of thy superfluous wealth; repay to the hands of a christian a part of what thou hast acquired by the usury thou hast practised on those of his religion. thy cunning may soon swell out once more thy shrivelled purse, but neither leech nor medicine can restore thy scorched hide and flesh wert thou once stretched on these bars. tell down thy ransom, i say, and rejoice that at such rate thou canst redeem thee from a dungeon, the secrets of which few have returned to tell. i waste no more words with thee---choose between thy dross and thy flesh and blood, and as thou choosest, so shall it be.'' ``so may abraham, jacob, and all the fathers of our people assist me,'' said isaac, ``i cannot make the choice, because i have not the means of satisfying your exorbitant demand!'' ``seize him and strip him, slaves,'' said the knight, ``and let the fathers of his race assist him if they can.'' the assistants, taking their directions more from the baron's eye and his hand than his tongue, once more stepped forward, laid hands on the unfortunate isaac, plucked him up from the ground, and, holding him between them, waited the hard-hearted baron's farther signal. the unhappy jew eyed their countenances and that of front-de-b<oe>uf, in hope of discovering some symptoms of relenting; but that of the baron exhibited the same cold, half-sullen, half-sarcastic smile which had been the prelude to his cruelty; and the savage eyes of the saracens, rolling gloomily under their dark brows, acquiring a yet more sinister expression by the whiteness of the circle which surrounds the pupil, evinced rather the secret pleasure which they expected from the approaching scene, than any reluctance to be its directors or agents. the jew then looked at the glowing furnace, over which he was presently to be stretched, and seeing no chance of his tormentor's relenting, his resolution gave way. ``i will pay,'' he said, ``the thousand pounds of silver---that is,'' he added, after a moment's pause, ``i will pay it with the help of my brethren; for i must beg as a mendicant at the door of our synagogue ere i make up so unheard-of a sum.---when and where must it be delivered?'' ``here,'' replied front-de-b<oe>uf, ``here it must be delivered---weighed it must be---weighed and told down on this very dungeon floor.---thinkest thou i will part with thee until thy ransom is secure?'' ``and what is to be my surety,'' said the jew, ``that i shall be at liberty after this ransom is paid?'' ``the word of a norman noble, thou pawn-broking slave,'' answered front-de-b<oe>uf; ``the faith of a norman nobleman, more pure than the gold and silver of thee and all thy tribe.'' ``i crave pardon, noble lord,'' said isaac timidly, ``but wherefore should i rely wholly on the word of one who will trust nothing to mine?'' ``because thou canst not help it, jew,'' said the knight, sternly. ``wert thou now in thy treasure-chamber at york, and were i craving a loan of thy shekels, it would be thine to dictate the time of payment, and the pledge of security. this is _my_ treasure-chamber. here i have thee at advantage, nor will i again deign to repeat the terms on which i grant thee liberty.'' the jew groaned deeply.---``grant me,'' he said, ``at least with my own liberty, that of the companions with whom i travel. they scorned me as a jew, yet they pitied my desolation, and because they tarried to aid me by the way, a share of my evil hath come upon them; moreover, they may contribute in some sort to my ransom.'' ``if thou meanest yonder saxon churls,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``their ransom will depend upon other terms than thine. mind thine own concerns, jew, i warn thee, and meddle not with those of others.'' ``i am, then,'' said isaac, ``only to be set at liberty, together with mine wounded friend?'' ``shall i twice recommend it,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``to a son of israel, to meddle with his own concerns, and leave those of others alone?---since thou hast made thy choice, it remains but that thou payest down thy ransom, and that at a short day.'' ``yet hear me,'' said the jew---``for the sake of that very wealth which thou wouldst obtain at the expense of thy------'' here he stopt short, afraid of irritating the savage norman. but front-de-b<oe>uf only laughed, and himself filled up the blank at which the jew had hesitated. ``at the expense of my conscience, thou wouldst say, isaac; speak it out---i tell thee, i am reasonable. i can bear the reproaches of a loser, even when that loser is a jew. thou wert not so patient, isaac, when thou didst invoke justice against jacques fitzdotterel, for calling thee a usurious blood-sucker, when thy exactions had devoured his patrimony.'' ``i swear by the talmud,'' said the jew, ``that your valour has been misled in that matter. fitzdotterel drew his poniard upon me in mine own chamber, because i craved him for mine own silver. the term of payment was due at the passover.'' ``i care not what he did,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf; ``the question is, when shall i have mine own?--when shall i have the shekels, isaac?'' ``let my daughter rebecca go forth to york,'' answered isaac, ``with your safe conduct, noble knight, and so soon as man and horse can return, the treasure------'' here he groaned deeply, but added, after the pause of a few seconds,---``the treasure shall be told down on this very floor.'' ``thy daughter!'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, as if surprised,---``by heavens, isaac, i would i had known of this. i deemed that yonder black-browed girl had been thy concubine, and i gave her to be a handmaiden to sir brian de bois-guilbert, after the fashion of patriarchs and heroes of the days of old, who set us in these matters a wholesome example.'' the yell which isaac raised at this unfeeling communication made the very vault to ring, and astounded the two saracens so much that they let go their hold of the jew. he availed himself of his enlargement to throw himself on the pavement, and clasp the knees of front-de-b<oe>uf. ``take all that you have asked,'' said he, ``sir knight---take ten times more---reduce me to ruin and to beggary, if thou wilt,---nay, pierce me with thy poniard, broil me on that furnace, but spare my daughter, deliver her in safety and honour!--as thou art born of woman, spare the honour of a helpless maiden---she is the image of my deceased rachel, she is the last of six pledges of her love ---will you deprive a widowed husband of his sole remaining comfort?---will you reduce a father to wish that his only living child were laid beside her dead mother, in the tomb of our fathers?'' ``i would,'' said the norman, somewhat relenting, ``that i had known of this before. i thought your race had loved nothing save their moneybags.'' ``think not so vilely of us, jews though we be,'' said isaac, eager to improve the moment of apparent sympathy; ``the hunted fox, the tortured wildcat loves its young---the despised and persecuted race of abraham love their children!'' ``be it so,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf; ``i will believe it in future, isaac, for thy very sake---but it aids us not now, i cannot help what has happened, or what is to follow; my word is passed to my comrade in arms, nor would i break it for ten jews and jewesses to boot. besides, why shouldst thou think evil is to come to the girl, even if she became bois-guilbert's booty?'' ``there will, there must!'' exclaimed isaac, wringing his hands in agony; ``when did templars breathe aught but cruelty to men, and dishonour to women!'' ``dog of an infidel,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, with sparkling eyes, and not sorry, perhaps, to seize a pretext for working himself into a passion, ``blaspheme not the holy order of the temple of zion, but take thought instead to pay me the ransom thou hast promised, or woe betide thy jewish throat!'' ``robber and villain!'' said the jew, retorting the insults of his oppressor with passion, which, however impotent, he now found it impossible to bridle, ``i will pay thee nothing---not one silver penny will i pay thee, unless my daughter is delivered to me in safety and honour?'' ``art thou in thy senses, israelite?'' said the norman, sternly---``has thy flesh and blood a charm against heated iron and scalding oil?'' ``i care not!'' said the jew, rendered desperate by paternal affection; ``do thy worst. my daughter is my flesh and blood, dearer to me a thousand times than those limbs which thy cruelty threatens. no silver will i give thee, unless i were to pour it molten down thy avaricious throat---no, not a silver penny will i give thee, nazarene, were it to save thee from the deep damnation thy whole life has merited! take my life if thou wilt, and say, the jew, amidst his tortures, knew how to disappoint the christian.'' ``we shall see that,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf; ``for by the blessed rood, which is the abomination of thy accursed tribe, thou shalt feel the extremities of fire and steel!---strip him, slaves, and chain him down upon the bars.'' in spite of the feeble struggles of the old man, the saracens had already torn from him his upper garment, and were proceeding totally to disrobe him, when the sound of a bugle, twice winded without the castle, penetrated even to the recesses of the dungeon, and immediately after loud voices were heard calling for sir reginald front-de-b<oe>uf. unwilling to be found engaged in his hellish occupation, the savage baron gave the slaves a signal to restore isaac's garment, and, quitting the dungeon with his attendants, he left the jew to thank god for his own deliverance, or to lament over his daughter's captivity, and probable fate, as his personal or parental feelings might prove strongest. chapter xxiii. nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words can no way change you to a milder form, i'll woo you, like a soldier, at arms' end, and love you 'gainst the nature of love, force you. _two gentlemen of verona._ the apartment to which the lady rowena had been introduced was fitted up with some rude attempts at ornament and magnificence, and her being placed there might be considered as a peculiar mark of respect not offered to the other prisoners. but the wife of front-de-b<oe>uf, for whom it had been originally furnished, was long dead, and decay and neglect had impaired the few ornaments with which her taste had adorned it. the tapestry hung down from the walls in many places, and in others was tarnished and faded under the effects of the sun, or tattered and decayed by age. desolate, however, as it was, this was the apartment of the castle which had been judged most fitting for the accommodation of the saxon heiress; and here she was left to meditate upon her fate, until the actors in this nefarious drama had arranged the several parts which each of them was to perform. this had been settled in a council held by front-de-b<oe>uf, de bracy, and the templar, in which, after a long and warm debate concerning the several advantages which each insisted upon deriving from his peculiar share in this audacious enterprise, they had at length determined the fate of their unhappy prisoners. it was about the hour of noon, therefore, when de bracy, for whose advantage the expedition had been first planned, appeared to prosecute his views upon the hand and possessions of the lady rowena. the interval had not entirely been bestowed in holding council with his confederates, for de bracy had found leisure to decorate his person with all the foppery of the times. his green cassock and vizard were now flung aside. his long luxuriant hair was trained to flow in quaint tresses down his richly furred cloak. his beard was closely shaved, his doublet reached to the middle of his leg, and the girdle which secured it, and at the same time supported his ponderous sword, was embroidered and embossed with gold work. we have already noticed the extravagant fashion of the shoes at this period, and the points of maurice de bracy's might have challenged the prize of extravagance with the gayest, being turned up and twisted like the horns of a ram. such was the dress of a gallant of the period; and, in the present instance, that effect was aided by the handsome person and good demeanour of the wearer, whose manners partook alike of the grace of a courtier, and the frankness of a soldier. he saluted rowena by doffing his velvet bonnet, garnished with a golden broach, representing st michael trampling down the prince of evil. with this, he gently motioned the lady to a seat; and, as she still retained her standing posture, the knight ungloved his right hand, and motioned to conduct her thither. but rowena declined, by her gesture, the proffered compliment, and replied, ``if i be in the presence of my jailor, sir knight---nor will circumstances allow me to think otherwise---it best becomes his prisoner to remain standing till she learns her doom.'' ``alas! fair rowena,'' returned de bracy, ``you are in presence of your captive, not your jailor; and it is from your fair eyes that de bracy must receive that doom which you fondly expect from him.'' ``i know you not, sir,'' said the lady, drawing herself up with all the pride of offended rank and beauty; ``i know you not---and the insolent familiarity with which you apply to me the jargon of a troubadour, forms no apology for the violence of a robber.'' ``to thyself, fair maid,'' answered de bracy, in his former tone---``to thine own charms be ascribed whate'er i have done which passed the respect due to her, whom i have chosen queen of my heart, and loadstar of my eyes.'' ``i repeat to you, sir knight, that i know you not, and that no man wearing chain and spurs ought thus to intrude himself upon the presence of an unprotected lady.'' ``that i am unknown to you,'' said de bracy, ``is indeed my misfortune; yet let me hope that de bracy's name has not been always unspoken, when minstrels or heralds have praised deeds of chivalry, whether in the lists or in the battle-field.'' ``to heralds and to minstrels, then, leave thy praise, sir knight,'' replied rowena, ``more suiting for their mouths than for thine own; and tell me which of them shall record in song, or in book of tourney, the memorable conquest of this night, a conquest obtained over an old man, followed by a few timid hinds; and its booty, an unfortunate maiden, transported against her will to the castle of a robber?'' ``you are unjust, lady rowena,'' said the knight, biting his lips in some confusion, and speaking in a tone more natural to him than that of affected gallantry, which he had at first adopted; ``yourself free from passion, you can allow no excuse for the frenzy of another, although caused by your own beauty.'' ``i pray you, sir knight,'' said rowena, ``to cease a language so commonly used by strolling minstrels, that it becomes not the mouth of knights or nobles. certes, you constrain me to sit down, since you enter upon such commonplace terms, of which each vile crowder hath a stock that might last from hence to christmas.'' ``proud damsel,'' said de bracy, incensed at finding his gallant style procured him nothing but contempt---``proud damsel, thou shalt be as proudly encountered. know then, that i have supported my pretensions to your hand in the way that best suited thy character. it is meeter for thy humour to be wooed with bow and bill, than in set terms, and in courtly language.'' ``courtesy of tongue,'' said rowena, ``when it is used to veil churlishness of deed, is but a knight's girdle around the breast of a base clown. i wonder not that the restraint appears to gall you--more it were for your honour to have retained the dress and language of an outlaw, than to veil the deeds of one under an affectation of gentle language and demeanour.'' ``you counsel well, lady,'' said the norman; ``and in the bold language which best justifies bold action i tell thee, thou shalt never leave this castle, or thou shalt leave it as maurice de bracy's wife. i am not wont to be baffled in my enterprises, nor needs a norman noble scrupulously to vindicate his conduct to the saxon maiden whom be distinguishes by the offer of his hand. thou art proud, rowena, and thou art the fitter to be my wife. by what other means couldst thou be raised to high honour and to princely place, saving by my alliance? how else wouldst thou escape from the mean precincts of a country grange, where saxons herd with the swine which form their wealth, to take thy seat, honoured as thou shouldst be, and shalt be, amid all in england that is distinguished by beauty, or dignified by power?'' ``sir knight,'' replied rowena, ``the grange which you contemn hath been my shelter from infancy; and, trust me, when i leave it---should that day ever arrive---it shall be with one who has not learnt to despise the dwelling and manners in which i have been brought up.'' ``i guess your meaning, lady,'' said de bracy, ``though you may think it lies too obscure for my apprehension. but dream not, that richard c<oe>ur de lion will ever resume his throne, far less that wilfred of ivanhoe, his minion, will ever lead thee to his footstool, to be there welcomed as the bride of a favourite. another suitor might feel jealousy while he touched this string; but my firm purpose cannot be changed by a passion so childish and so hopeless. know, lady, that this rival is in my power, and that it rests but with me to betray the secret of his being within the castle to front-de-b<oe>uf, whose jealousy will be more fatal than mine.'' ``wilfred here?'' said rowena, in disdain; ``that is as true as that front-de-b<oe>uf is his rival.'' de bracy looked at her steadily for an instant. ``wert thou really ignorant of this?'' said he; ``didst thou not know that wilfred of ivanhoe travelled in the litter of the jew?---a meet conveyance for the crusader, whose doughty arm was to reconquer the holy sepulchre!'' and he laughed scornfully. ``and if he is here,'' said rowena, compelling herself to a tone of indifference, though trembling with an agony of apprehension which she could not suppress, ``in what is he the rival of front-de-b<oe>uf? or what has he to fear beyond a short imprisonment, and an honourable ransom, according to the use of chivalry?'' ``rowena,'' said de bracy, ``art thou, too, deceived by the common error of thy sex, who think there can be no rivalry but that respecting their own charms? knowest thou not there is a jealousy of ambition and of wealth, as well as of love; and that this our host, front-de-b<oe>uf, will push from his road him who opposes his claim to the fair barony of ivanhoe, as readily, eagerly, and unscrupulously, as if he were preferred to him by some blue-eyed damsel? but smile on my suit, lady, and the wounded champion shall have nothing to fear from front-de-b<oe>uf, whom else thou mayst mourn for, as in the hands of one who has never shown compassion.'' ``save him, for the love of heaven!'' said rowena, her firmness giving way under terror for her lover's impending fate. ``i can---i will---it is my purpose,'' said de bracy; `for, when rowena consents to be the bride of de bracy, who is it shall dare to put forth a violent hand upon her kinsman---the son of her guardian---the companion of her youth? but it is thy love must buy his protection. i am not romantic fool enough to further the fortune, or avert the fate, of one who is likely to be a successful obstacle between me and my wishes. use thine influence with me in his behalf, and he is safe,---refuse to employ it, wilfred dies, and thou thyself art not the nearer to freedom.'' ``thy language,'' answered rowena, ``hath in its indifferent bluntness something which cannot be reconciled with the horrors it seems to express. i believe not that thy purpose is so wicked, or thy power so great.'' ``flatter thyself, then, with that belief,'' said de bracy, ``until time shall prove it false. thy lover lies wounded in this castle---thy preferred lover. he is a bar betwixt front-de-b<oe>uf and that which front-de-b@uf loves better than either ambition or beauty. what will it cost beyond the blow of a poniard, or the thrust of a javelin, to silence his opposition for ever? nay, were front-de-b<oe>uf afraid to justify a deed so open, let the leech but give his patient a wrong draught---let the chamberlain, or the nurse who tends him, but pluck the pillow from his head, and wilfred in his present condition, is sped without the effusion of blood. cedric also---'' ``and cedric also,'' said rowena, repeating his words; ``my noble---my generous guardian! i deserved the evil i have encountered, for forgetting his fate even in that of his son!'' ``cedric's fate also depends upon thy determination,'' said de bracy; ``and i leave thee to form it.'' hitherto, rowena had sustained her part in this trying scene with undismayed courage, but it was because she had not considered the danger as serious and imminent. her disposition was naturally that which physiognomists consider as proper to fair complexions, mild, timid, and gentle; but it had been tempered, and, as it were, hardened, by the circumstances of her education. accustomed to see the will of all, even of cedric himself, (sufficiently arbitrary with others,) give way before her wishes, she had acquired that sort of courage and self-confidence which arises from the habitual and constant deference of the circle in which we move. she could scarce conceive the possibility of her will being opposed, far less that of its being treated with total disregard. her haughtiness and habit of domination was, therefore, a fictitious character, induced over that which was natural to her, and it deserted her when her eyes were opened to the extent of her own danger, as well as that of her lover and her guardian; and when she found her will, the slightest expression of which was wont to command respect and attention, now placed in opposition to that of a man of a strong, fierce, and determined mind, who possessed the advantage over her, and was resolved to use it, she quailed before him. after casting her eyes around, as if to look for the aid which was nowhere to be found, and after a few broken interjections, she raised her hands to heaven, and burst into a passion of uncontrolled vexation and sorrow. it was impossible to see so beautiful a creature in such extremity without feeling for her, and de bracy was not unmoved, though he was yet more embarrassed than touched. he had, in truth, gone too far to recede; and yet, in rowena's present condition, she could not be acted on either by argument or threats. he paced the apartment to and fro, now vainly exhorting the terrified maiden to compose herself, now hesitating concerning his own line of conduct. if, thought he, i should be moved by the tears and sorrow of this disconsolate damsel, what should i reap but the loss of these fair hopes for which i have encountered so much risk, and the ridicule of prince john and his jovial comrades? ``and yet,'' he said to himself, ``i feel myself ill framed for the part which i am playing. i cannot look on so fair a face while it is disturbed with agony, or on those eyes when they are drowned in tears. i would she had retained her original haughtiness of disposition, or that i had a larger share of front-de-b<oe>uf's thrice-tempered hardness of heart!'' agitated by these thoughts, he could only bid the unfortunate rowena be comforted, and assure her, that as yet she had no reason for the excess of despair to which she was now giving way. but in this task of consolation de bracy was interrupted by the horn, ``hoarse-winded blowing far and keen,'' which had at the same time alarmed the other inmates of the castle, and interrupted their several plans of avarice and of license. of them all, perhaps, de bracy least regretted the interruption; for his conference with the lady rowena had arrived at a point, where he found it equally difficult to prosecute or to resign his enterprise. and here we cannot but think it necessary to offer some better proof than the incidents of an idle tale, to vindicate the melancholy representation of manners which has been just laid before the reader. it is grievous to think that those valiant barons, to whose stand against the crown the liberties of england were indebted for their existence, should themselves have been such dreadful oppressors, and capable of excesses contrary not only to the laws of england, but to those of nature and humanity. but, alas! we have only to extract from the industrious henry one of those numerous passages which he has collected from contemporary historians, to prove that fiction itself can hardly reach the dark reality of the horrors of the period. the description given by the author of the saxon chronicle of the cruelties exercised in the reign of king stephen by the great barons and lords of castles, who were all normans, affords a strong proof of the excesses of which they were capable when their passions were inflamed. ``they grievously oppressed the poor people by building castles; and when they were built, they filled them with wicked men, or rather devils, who seized both men and women who they imagined had any money, threw them into prison, and put them to more cruel tortures than the martyrs ever endured. they suffocated some in mud, and suspended others by the feet, or the head, or the thumbs, kindling fires below them. they squeezed the heads of some with knotted cords till they pierced their brains, while they threw others into dungeons swarming with serpents, snakes, and toads.'' but it would be cruel to put the reader to the pain of perusing the remainder of this description.* * henry's hist. edit. 1805, vol. vii. p. .146. as another instance of these bitter fruits of conquest, and perhaps the strongest that can be quoted, we may mention, that the princess matilda, though a daughter of the king of scotland, and afterwards both queen of england, niece to edgar atheling, and mother to the empress of germany, the daughter, the wife, and the mother of monarchs, was obliged, during her early residence for education in england, to assume the veil of a nun, as the only means of escaping the licentious pursuit of the norman nobles. this excuse she stated before a great council of the clergy of england, as the sole reason for her having taken the religious habit. the assembled clergy admitted the validity of the plea,and the notoriety of the circumstances upon which it was founded; giving thus an indubitable and most remarkable testimony to the existence of that disgraceful license by which that age was stained. it was a matter of public knowledge, they said, that after the conquest of king william, his norman followers, elated by so great a victory, acknowledged no law but their own wicked pleasure, and not only despoiled the conquered saxons of their lands and their goods, but invaded the honour of their wives and of their daughters with the most unbridled license; and hence it was then common for matrons and maidens of noble families to assume the veil, and take shelter in convents, not as called thither by the vocation of god, but solely to preserve their honour from the unbridled wickedness of man. such and so licentious were the times, as announced by the public declaration of the assembled clergy, recorded by eadmer; and we need add nothing more to vindicate the probability of the scenes which we have detailed, and are about to detail, upon the more apocryphal authority of the wardour ms. chapter xxiv. i'll woo her as the lion woos his bride. _douglas._ while the scenes we have described were passing in other parts of the castle, the jewess rebecca awaited her fate in a distant and sequestered turret. hither she had been led by two of her disguised ravishers, and on being thrust into the little cell, she found herself in the presence of an old sibyl, who kept murmuring to herself a saxon rhyme, as if to beat time to the revolving dance which her spindle was performing upon the floor. the hag raised her head as rebecca entered, and scowled at the fair jewess with the malignant envy with which old age and ugliness, when united with evil conditions, are apt to look upon youth and beauty. ``thou must up and away, old house-cricket,'' said one of the men; ``our noble master commands it---thou must e'en leave this chamber to a fairer guest.'' ``ay,'' grumbled the hag, ``even thus is service requited. i have known when my bare word would have cast the best man-at-arms among ye out of saddle and out of service; and now must i up and away at the command of every groom such as thou.'' ``good dame urfried,'' said the other man, ``stand not to reason on it, but up and away. lords' hests must be listened to with a quick ear. thou hast had thy day, old dame, but thy sun has long been set. thou art now the very emblem of an old war-horse turned out on the barren heath--thou hast had thy paces in thy time, but now a broken amble is the best of them---come, amble off with thee.'' ``ill omens dog ye both!'' said the old woman; ``and a kennel be your burying-place! may the evil demon zernebock tear me limb from limb, if i leave my own cell ere i have spun out the hemp on my distaff!'' ``answer it to our lord, then, old housefiend,'' said the man, and retired; leaving rebecca in company with the old woman, upon whose presence she had been thus unwillingly forced. ``what devil's deed have they now in the wind?'' said the old hag, murmuring to herself, yet from time to time casting a sidelong and malignant glance at rebecca; ``but it is easy to guess--bright eyes, black locks, and a skin like paper, ere the priest stains it with his black unguent---ay, it is easy to guess why they send her to this lone turret, whence a shriek could no more be heard than at the depth of five hundred fathoms beneath the earth.---thou wilt have owls for thy neighbours, fair one; and their screams will be heard as far, and as much regarded, as thine own. outlandish, too,'' she said, marking the dress and turban of rebecca---``what country art thou of?---a saracen? or an egyptian?---why dost not answer?--thou canst weep, canst thou not speak?'' ``be not angry, good mother,'' said rebecca. ``thou needst say no more,'' replied urfried ``men know a fox by the train, and a jewess by her tongue.'' ``for the sake of mercy,'' said rebecca, ``tell me what i am to expect as the conclusion of the violence which hath dragged me hither! is it my life they seek, to atone for my religion? i will lay it down cheerfully.'' ``thy life, minion?'' answered the sibyl; ``what would taking thy life pleasure them?---trust me, thy life is in no peril. such usage shalt thou have as was once thought good enough for a noble saxon maiden. and shall a jewess, like thee, repine because she hath no better? look at me---i was as young and twice as fair as thou, when front-de-b<oe>uf, father of this reginald, and his normans, stormed this castle. my father and his seven sons defended their inheritance from story to story, from chamber to chamber---there was not a room, not a step of the stair, that was not slippery with their blood. they died---they died every man; and ere their bodies were cold, and ere their blood was dried, i had become the prey and the scorn of the conqueror!'' ``is there no help?---are there no means of escape?'' said rebecca---``richly, richly would i requite thine aid.'' ``think not of it,'' said the hag; ``from hence there is no escape but through the gates of death; and it is late, late,'' she added, shaking her grey head, ``ere these open to us---yet it is comfort to think that we leave behind us on earth those who shall be wretched as ourselves. fare thee well, jewess!---jew or gentile, thy fate would be the same; for thou hast to do with them that have neither scruple nor pity. fare thee well, i say. my thread is spun out---thy task is yet to begin.'' ``stay! stay! for heaven's sake!'' said rebecca; ``stay, though it be to curse and to revile me ---thy presence is yet some protection.'' ``the presence of the mother of god were no protection,'' answered the old woman. ``there she stands,'' pointing to a rude image of the virgin mary, ``see if she can avert the fate that awaits thee.'' she left the room as she spoke, her features writhed into a sort of sneering laugh, which made them seem even more hideous than their habitual frown. she locked the door behind her, and rebecca might hear her curse every step for its steepness, as slowly and with difficulty she descended the turret-stair. rebecca was now to expect a fate even more dreadful than that of rowena; for what probability was there that either softness or ceremony would be used towards one of her oppressed race, whatever shadow of these might be preserved towards a saxon heiress? yet had the jewess this advantage, that she was better prepared by habits of thought, and by natural strength of mind, to encounter the dangers to which she was exposed. of a strong and observing character, even from her earliest years, the pomp and wealth which her father displayed within his walls, or which she witnessed in the houses of other wealthy hebrews, had not been able to blind her to the precarious circumstances under which they were enjoyed. like damocles at his celebrated banquet, rebecca perpetually beheld, amid that gorgeous display, the sword which was suspended over the heads of her people by a single hair. these reflections had tamed and brought down to a pitch of sounder judgment a temper, which, under other circumstances, might have waxed haughty, supercilious, and obstinate. from her father's example and injunctions, rebecca had learnt to bear herself courteously towards all who approached her. she could not indeed imitate his excess of subservience, because she was a stranger to the meanness of mind, and to the constant state of timid apprehension, by which it was dictated; but she bore herself with a proud humility, as if submitting to the evil circumstances in which she was placed as the daughter of a despised race, while she felt in her mind the consciousness that she was entitled to hold a higher rank from her merit, than the arbitrary despotism of religious prejudice permitted her to aspire to. thus prepared to expect adverse circumstances, she had acquired the firmness necessary for acting under them. her present situation required all her presence of mind, and she summoned it up accordingly. her first care was to inspect the apartment; but it afforded few hopes either of escape or protection. it contained neither secret passage nor trap-door, and unless where the door by which she had entered joined the main building, seemed to be circumscribed by the round exterior wall of the turret. the door had no inside bolt or bar. the single window opened upon an embattled space surmounting the turret, which gave rebecca, at first sight, some hopes of escaping; but she soon found it had no communication with any other part of the battlements, being an isolated bartisan, or balcony, secured, as usual, by a parapet, with embrasures, at which a few archers might be stationed for defending the turret, and flanking with their shot the wall of the castle on that side. there was therefore no hope but in passive fortitude, and in that strong reliance on heaven natural to great and generous characters. rebecca, however erroneously taught to interpret the promises of scripture to the chosen people of heaven, did not err in supposing the present to be their hour of trial, or in trusting that the children of zion would be one day called in with the fulness of the gentiles. in the meanwhile, all around her showed that their present state was that of punishment and probation, and that it was their especial duty to suffer without sinning. thus prepared to consider herself as the victim of misfortune, rebecca had early reflected upon her own state, and schooled her mind to meet the dangers which she had probably to encounter. the prisoner trembled, however, and changed colour, when a step was heard on the stair, and the door of the turret-chamber slowly opened, and a tall man, dressed as one of those banditti to whom they owed their misfortune, slowly entered, and shut the door behind him; his cap, pulled down upon his brows, concealed the upper part of his face, and he held his mantle in such a manner as to muffle the rest. in this guise, as if prepared for the execution of some deed, at the thought of which he was himself ashamed, he stood before the affrighted prisoner; yet, ruffian as his dress bespoke him, he seemed at a loss to express what purpose had brought him thither, so that rebecca, making an effort upon herself, had time to anticipate his explanation. she had already unclasped two costly bracelets and a collar, which she hastened to proffer to the supposed outlaw, concluding naturally that to gratify his avarice was to bespeak his favour. ``take these,'' she said, ``good friend, and for god's sake be merciful to me and my aged father! these ornaments are of value, yet are they trifling to what he would bestow to obtain our dismissal from this castle, free and uninjured.'' ``fair flower of palestine,'' replied the outlaw, ``these pearls are orient, but they yield in whiteness to your teeth; the diamonds are brilliant, but they cannot match your eyes; and ever since i have taken up this wild trade, i have made a vow to prefer beauty to wealth.'' ``do not do yourself such wrong,'' said rebecca; ``take ransom, and have mercy!---gold will purchase you pleasure,---to misuse us, could only bring thee remorse. my father will willingly satiate thy utmost wishes; and if thou wilt act wisely, thou mayst purchase with our spoils thy restoration to civil society---mayst obtain pardon for past errors, and be placed beyond the necessity of committing more.'' ``it is well spoken,'' replied the outlaw in french, finding it difficult probably to sustain, in saxon, a conversation which rebecca had opened in that language; ``but know, bright lily of the vale of baca! that thy father is already in the hands of a powerful alchemist, who knows how to convert into gold and silver even the rusty bars of a dungeon grate. the venerable isaac is subjected to an alembic, which will distil from him all he holds dear, without any assistance from my requests or thy entreaty. the ransom must be paid by love and beauty, and in no other coin will i accept it.'' ``thou art no outlaw,'' said rebecca, in the same language in which he addressed her; ``no outlaw had refused such offers. no outlaw in this land uses the dialect in which thou hast spoken. thou art no outlaw, but a norman---a norman, noble perhaps in birth---o, be so in thy actions, and cast off this fearful mask of outrage and violence!'' ``and thou, who canst guess so truly,'' said brian de bois-guilbert, dropping the mantle from his face, ``art no true daughter of israel, but in all, save youth and beauty, a very witch of endor. i am not an outlaw, then, fair rose of sharon. and i am one who will be more prompt to hang thy neck and arms with pearls and diamonds, which so well become them, than to deprive thee of these ornaments.'' ``what wouldst thou have of me,'' said rebecca, ``if not my wealth?---we can have nought in common between us---you are a christian---i am a jewess.---our union were contrary to the laws, alike of the church and the synagogue.'' ``it were so, indeed,'' replied the templar, laughing; ``wed with a jewess? _despardieux!_---not if she were the queen of sheba! and know, besides, sweet daughter of zion, that were the most christian king to offer me his most christian daughter, with languedoc for a dowery, i could not wed her. it is against my vow to love any maiden, otherwise than _par amours_, as i will love thee. i am a templar. behold the cross of my holy order.'' ``darest thou appeal to it,'' said rebecca, ``on an occasion like the present?'' ``and if i do so,'' said the templar, ``it concerns not thee, who art no believer in the blessed sign of our salvation.'' ``i believe as my fathers taught,'' said rebecca; ``and may god forgive my belief if erroneous! but you, sir knight, what is yours, when you appeal without scruple to that which you deem most holy, even while you are about to transgress the most solemn of your vows as a knight, and as a man of religion?'' ``it is gravely and well preached, o daughter of sirach!'' answered the templar; ``but, gentle ecclesiastics, thy narrow jewish prejudices make thee blind to our high privilege. marriage were an enduring crime on the part of a templar; but what lesser folly i may practise, i shall speedily be absolved from at the next perceptory of our order. not the wisest of monarchs, not his father, whose examples you must needs allow are weighty, claimed wider privileges than we poor soldiers of the temple of zion have won by our zeal in its defence. the protectors of solomon's temple may claim license by the example of solomon.'' ``if thou readest the scripture,'' said the jewess, ``and the lives of the saints, only to justify thine own license and profligacy, thy crime is like that of him who extracts poison from the most healthful and necessary herbs.'' the eyes of the templar flashed fire at this reproof--``hearken,'' he said, ``rebecca; i have hitherto spoken mildly to thee, but now my language shall be that of a conqueror. thou art the captive of my bow and spear---subject to my will by the laws of all nations; nor will i abate an inch of my right, or abstain from taking by violence what thou refusest to entreaty or necessity.'' ``stand back,'' said rebecca---``stand back, and hear me ere thou offerest to commit a sin so deadly! my strength thou mayst indeed overpower for god made women weak, and trusted their defence to man's generosity. but i will proclaim thy villainy, templar, from one end of europe to the other. i will owe to the superstition of thy brethren what their compassion might refuse me, each preceptory---each chapter of thy order, shall learn, that, like a heretic, thou hast sinned with a jewess. those who tremble not at thy crime, will hold thee accursed for having so far dishonoured the cross thou wearest, as to follow a daughter of my people.'' ``thou art keen-witted, jewess,'' replied the templar, well aware of the truth of what she spoke, and that the rules of his order condemned in the most positive manner, and under high penalties, such intrigues as he now prosecuted, and that, in some instances, even degradation had followed upon it---``thou art sharp-witted,'' he said; ``but loud must be thy voice of complaint, if it is heard beyond the iron walls of this castle; within these, murmurs, laments, appeals to justice, and screams for help, die alike silent away. one thing only can save thee, rebecca. submit to thy fate---embrace our religion, and thou shalt go forth in such state, that many a norman lady shall yield as well in pomp as in beauty to the favourite of the best lance among the defenders of the temple.'' ``submit to my fate!'' said rebecca---``and, sacred heaven! to what fate?---embrace thy religion! and what religion can it be that harbours such a villain?---_thou_ the best lance of the templars! ---craven knight!---forsworn priest! i spit at thee, and i defy thee.---the god of abraham's promise hath opened an escape to his daughter--even from this abyss of infamy!'' as she spoke, she threw open the latticed window which led to the bartisan, and in an instant after, stood on the very verge of the parapet, with not the slightest screen between her and the tremendous depth below. unprepared for such a desperate effort, for she had hitherto stood perfectly motionless, bois-guilbert had neither time to intercept nor to stop her. as he offered to advance, she exclaimed, ``remain where thou art, proud templar, or at thy choice advance!---one foot nearer, and i plunge myself from the precipice; my body shall be crushed out of the very form of humanity upon the stones of that court-yard, ere it become the victim of thy brutality!'' as she spoke this, she clasped her hands and extended them towards heaven, as if imploring mercy on her soul before she made the final plunge. the templar hesitated, and a resolution which had never yielded to pity or distress, gave way to his admiration of her fortitude. ``come down,'' he said, ``rash girl!---i swear by earth, and sea, and sky, i will offer thee no offence.'' ``i will not trust thee, templar,'' said rebecca; thou hast taught me better how to estimate the virtues of thine order. the next preceptory would grant thee absolution for an oath, the keeping of which concerned nought but the honour or the dishonour of a miserable jewish maiden.'' ``you do me injustice,'' exclaimed the templar fervently; ``i swear to you by the name which i bear---by the cross on my bosom---by the sword on my side---by the ancient crest of my fathers do i swear, i will do thee no injury whatsoever! if not for thyself, yet for thy father's sake forbear! i will be his friend, and in this castle he will need a powerful one.'' ``alas!'' said rebecca, ``i know it but too well ---dare i trust thee?'' ``may my arms be reversed, and my name dishonoured,'' said brian de bois-guilbert, ``if thou shalt have reason to complain of me! many a law, many a commandment have i broken, but my word never.'' ``i will then trust thee,'' said rebecca, ``thus far;'' and she descended from the verge of the battlement, but remained standing close by one of the embrasures, or _machicolles_, as they were then called. ---``here,'' she said, ``i take my stand. remain where thou art, and if thou shalt attempt to diminish by one step the distance now between us, thou shalt see that the jewish maiden will rather trust her soul with god, than her honour to the templar!'' while rebecca spoke thus, her high and firm resolve, which corresponded so well with the expressive beauty of her countenance, gave to her looks, air, and manner, a dignity that seemed more than mortal. her glance quailed not, her cheek blanched not, for the fear of a fate so instant and so horrible; on the contrary, the thought that she had her fate at her command, and could escape at will from infamy to death, gave a yet deeper colour of carnation to her complexion, and a yet more brilliant fire to her eye. bois-guilbert, proud himself and high-spirited, thought he had never beheld beauty so animated and so commanding. ``let there be peace between us, rebecca,'' he said. ``peace, if thou wilt,'' answered rebecca---``peace ---but with this space between.'' ``thou needst no longer fear me,'' said bois-guilbert. ``i fear thee not,'' replied she; ``thanks to him that reared this dizzy tower so high, that nought could fall from it and live---thanks to him, and to the god of israel!---i fear thee not.'' ``thou dost me injustice,'' said the templar; ``by earth, sea, and sky, thou dost me injustice! i am not naturally that which you have seen me, hard, selfish, and relentless. it was woman that taught me cruelty, and on woman therefore i have exercised it; but not upon such as thou. hear me, rebecca---never did knight take lance in his hand with a heart more devoted to the lady of his love than brian de bois-guilbert. she, the daughter of a petty baron, who boasted for all his domains but a ruinous tower, and an unproductive vineyard, and some few leagues of the barren landes of bourdeaux, her name was known wherever deeds of arms were done, known wider than that of many a lady's that had a county for a dowery.---yes,'' he continued, pacing up and down the little platform, with an animation in which he seemed to lose all consciousness of rebecca's presence---``yes, my deeds, my danger, my blood, made the name of adelaide de montemare known from the court of castile to that of byzantium. and how was i requited? ---when i returned with my dear-bought honours, purchased by toil and blood, i found her wedded to a gascon squire, whose name was never heard beyond the limits of his own paltry domain! truly did i love her, and bitterly did i revenge me of her broken faith! but my vengeance has recoiled on myself. since that day i have separated myself from life and its ties---my manhood must know no domestic home---must be soothed by no affectionate wife---my age must know no kindly hearth--my grave must be solitary, and no offspring must outlive me, to bear the ancient name of bois-guilbert. at the feet of my superior i have laid down the right of self-action---the privilege of independence. the templar, a serf in all but the name, can possess neither lands nor goods, and lives, moves, and breathes, but at the will and pleasure of another.'' ``alas!'' said rebecca, ``what advantages could compensate for such an absolute sacrifice?'' ``the power of vengeance, rebecca,'' replied the templar, ``and the prospects of ambition.'' ``an evil recompense,'' said rebecca, ``for the surrender of the rights which are dearest to humanity.'' ``say not so, maiden,'' answered the templar; ``revenge is a feast for the gods! and if they have reserved it, as priests tell us, to themselves, it is because they hold it an enjoyment too precious for the possession of mere mortals.---and ambition? it is a temptation which could disturb even the bliss of heaven itself.''---he paused a moment, and then added, ``rebecca! she who could prefer death to dishonour, must have a proud and a powerful soul. mine thou must be!---nay, start not,'' he added, ``it must be with thine own consent, and on thine own terms. thou must consent to share with me hopes more extended than can be viewed from the throne of a monarch!---hear me ere you answer and judge ere you refuse.---the templar loses, as thou hast said, his social rights, his power of free agency, but he becomes a member and a limb of a mighty body, before which thrones already tremble,---even as the single drop of rain which mixes with the sea becomes an individual part of that resistless ocean, which undermines rocks and ingulfs royal armadas. such a swelling flood is that powerful league. of this mighty order i am no mean member, but already one of the chief commanders, and may well aspire one day to hold the batoon of grand master. the poor soldiers of the temple will not alone place their foot upon the necks of kings---a hemp-sandall'd monk can do that. our mailed step shall ascend their throne---our gauntlet shall wrench the sceptre from their gripe. not the reign of your vainly-expected messiah offers such power to your dispersed tribes as my ambition may aim at. i have sought but a kindred spirit to share it, and i have found such in thee.'' ``sayest thou this to one of my people?'' answered rebecca. ``bethink thee---'' ``answer me not,'' said the templar, ``by urging the difference of our creeds; within our secret conclaves we hold these nursery tales in derision. think not we long remained blind to the idiotical folly of our founders, who forswore every delight of life for the pleasure of dying martyrs by hunger, by thirst, and by pestilence, and by the swords of savages, while they vainly strove to defend a barren desert, valuable only in the eyes of superstition. our order soon adopted bolder and wider views, and found out a better indemnification for our sacrifices. our immense possessions in every kingdom of europe, our high military fame, which brings within our circle the flower of chivalry from every christian clime---these are dedicated to ends of which our pious founders little dreamed, and which are equally concealed from such weak spirits as embrace our order on the ancient principles, and whose superstition makes them our passive tools. but i will not further withdraw the veil of our mysteries. that bugle-sound announces something which may require my presence. think on what i have said.---farewell!---i do not say forgive me the violence i have threatened, for it was necessary to the display of thy character. gold can be only known by the application of the touchstone. i will soon return, and hold further conference with thee.'' he re-entered the turret-chamber, and descended the stair, leaving rebecca scarcely more terrified at the prospect of the death to which she had been so lately exposed, than at the furious ambition of the bold bad man in whose power she found herself so unhappily placed. when she entered the turret-chamber, her first duty was to return thanks to the god of jacob for the protection which he had afforded her, and to implore its continuance for her and for her father. another name glided into her petition---it was that of the wounded christian, whom fate had placed in the hands of bloodthirsty men, his avowed enemies. her heart indeed checked her, as if, even in communing with the deity in prayer, she mingled in her devotions the recollection of one with whose fate hers could have no alliance---a nazarene, and an enemy to her faith. but the petition was already breathed, nor could all the narrow prejudices of her sect induce rebecca to wish it recalled. -----@@@@---- chapter xxv. a damn'd cramp piece of penmanship as ever i saw in my life! _she stoops to conquer_. when the templar reached the hall of the castle, he found de bracy already there. ``your love-suit,'' said de bracy, ``hath, i suppose, been disturbed, like mine, by this obstreperous summons. but you have come later and more reluctantly, and therefore i presume your interview has proved more agreeable than mine.'' ``has your suit, then, been unsuccessfully paid to the saxon heiress?'' said the templar. ``by the bones of thomas a becket,'' answered de bracy, ``the lady rowena must have heard that i cannot endure the sight of women's tears.'' ``away!'' said the templar; ``thou a leader of a free company, and regard a woman's tears! a few drops sprinkled on the torch of love, make the flame blaze the brighter.'' ``gramercy for the few drops of thy sprinkling,'' replied de bracy; ``but this damsel hath wept enough to extinguish a beacon-light. never was such wringing of hands and such overflowing of eyes, since the days of st niobe, of whom prior aymer told us.* a water-fiend hath possessed the * i wish the prior had also informed them when niobe was * sainted. probably during that enlightened period when * * ``pan to moses lent his pagan horn.'' * l. t. fair saxon.'' ``a legion of fiends have occupied the bosom of the jewess,'' replied the templar; ``for, i think no single one, not even apollyon himself, could have inspired such indomitable pride and resolution. ---but where is front-de-b<oe>uf? that horn is sounded more and more clamorously.'' ``he is negotiating with the jew, i suppose,'' replied de bracy, coolly; ``probably the howls of isaac have drowned the blast of the bugle. thou mayst know, by experience, sir brian, that a jew parting with his treasures on such terms as our friend front-de-b<oe>uf is like to offer, will raise a clamour loud enough to be heard over twenty horns and trumpets to boot. but we will make the vassals call him.'' they were soon after joined by front-de-b<oe>uf, who had been disturbed in his tyrannic cruelty in the manner with which the reader is acquainted, and had only tarried to give some necessary directions. ``let us see the cause of this cursed clamour,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf---``here is a letter, and, if i mistake not, it is in saxon.'' he looked at it, turning it round and round as if he had had really some hopes of coming at the meaning by inverting the position of the paper, and then handed it to de bracy. ``it may be magic spells for aught i know,'' said de bracy, who possessed his full proportion of the ignorance which characterised the chivalry of the period. ``our chaplain attempted to teach me to write,'' he said, ``but all my letters were formed like spear-heads and sword-blades, and so the old shaveling gave up the task.'' ``give it me,'' said the templar. ``we have that of the priestly character, that we have some knowledge to enlighten our valour.'' ``let us profit by your most reverend knowledge, then,'' said de bracy; ``what says the scroll?'' ``it is a formal letter of defiance,'' answered the templar; ``but, by our lady of bethlehem, if it be not a foolish jest, it is the most extraordinary cartel that ever was sent across the drawbridge of a baronial castle.'' ``jest!'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``i would gladly know who dares jest with me in such a matter!--read it, sir brian.'' the templar accordingly read it as follows:-- ``i, wamba, the son of witless, jester to a noble and free-born man, cedric of rotherwood, called the saxon,---and i, gurth, the son of beowulph, the swineherd------'' ``thou art mad,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, interrupting the reader. ``by st luke, it is so set down,'' answered the templar. then resuming his task, he went on,--``i, gurth, the son of beowulph, swineherd unto the said cedric, with the assistance of our allies and confederates, who make common cause with us in this our feud, namely, the good knight, called for the present _le noir faineant_, and the stout yeoman, robert locksley, called cleave-the-wand, do you, reginald front de-b<oe>uf, and your allies and accomplices whomsoever, to wit, that whereas you have, without cause given or feud declared, wrongfully and by mastery seized upon the person of our lord and master the said cedric; also upon the person of a noble and freeborn damsel, the lady rowena of hargottstandstede; also upon the person of a noble and freeborn man, athelstane of coningsburgh; also upon the persons of certain freeborn men, their _cnichts_; also upon certain serfs, their born bondsmen; also upon a certain jew, named isaac of york, together with his daughter, a jewess, and certain horses and mules: which noble persons, with their _cnichts_ and slaves, and also with the horses and mules, jew and jewess beforesaid, were all in peace with his majesty, and travelling as liege subjects upon the king's highway; therefore we require and demand that the said noble persons, namely, cedric of rotherwood, rowena of hargottstandstede, athelstane of coningsburgh, with their servants, _cnichts_, and followers, also the horses and mules, jew and jewess aforesaid, together with all goods and chattels to them pertaining, be, within an hour after the delivery hereof, delivered to us, or to those whom we shall appoint to receive the same, and that untouched and unharmed in body and goods. failing of which, we do pronounce to you, that we hold ye as robbers and traitors, and will wager our bodies against ye in battle, siege, or otherwise, and do our utmost to your annoyance and destruction. wherefore may god have you in his keeping.---signed by us upon the eve of st withold's day, under the great trysting oak in the hart-hill walk, the above being written by a holy man, clerk to god, our lady, and st dunstan, in the chapel of copmanhurst.'' at the bottom of this document was scrawled, in the first place, a rude sketch of a cock's head and comb, with a legend expressing this hieroglyphic to be the sign-manual of wamba, son of witless. under this respectable emblem stood a cross, stated to be the mark of gurth, the son of beowulph. then was written, in rough bold characters, the words, _le noir faineant_. and, to conclude the whole, an arrow, neatly enough drawn, was described as the mark of the yeoman locksley. the knights heard this uncommon document read from end to end, and then gazed upon each other in silent amazement, as being utterly at a loss to know what it could portend. de bracy was the first to break silence by an uncontrollable fit of laughter, wherein he was joined, though with more moderation, by the templar. front-de-b<oe>uf, on the contrary, seemed impatient of their ill-timed jocularity. ``i give you plain warning,'' he said, ``fair sirs, that you had better consult how to bear yourselves under these circumstances, than give way to such misplaced merriment.'' ``front-de-b<oe>uf has not recovered his temper since his late overthrow,'' said de bracy to the templar; ``he is cowed at the very idea of a cartel, though it come but from a fool and a swineherd.'' ``by st michael,'' answered front-de-b<oe>uf, ``i would thou couldst stand the whole brunt of this adventure thyself, de bracy. these fellows dared not have acted with such inconceivable impudence, had they not been supported by some strong bands. there are enough of outlaws in this forest to resent my protecting the deer. i did but tie one fellow, who was taken redhanded and in the fact, to the horns of a wild stag, which gored him to death in five minutes, and i had as many arrows shot at me as there were launched against yonder target at ashby.---here, fellow,'' he added, to one of his attendants, ``hast thou sent out to see by what force this precious challenge is to be supported?'' ``there are at least two hundred men assembled in the woods,'' answered a squire who was in attendance. ``here is a proper matter!'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``this comes of lending you the use of my castle, that cannot manage your undertaking quietly, but you must bring this nest of hornets about my ears!'' ``of hornets?'' said de bracy; ``of stingless drones rather; a band of lazy knaves, who take to the wood, and destroy the venison rather than labour for their maintenance.'' ``stingless!'' replied front-de-b<oe>uf; ``fork-headed shafts of a cloth-yard in length, and these shot within the breadth of a french crown, are sting enough.'' ``for shame, sir knight!'' said the templar. ``let us summon our people, and sally forth upon them. one knight---ay, one man-at-arms, were enough for twenty such peasants.'' ``enough, and too much,'' said de bracy; ``i should only be ashamed to couch lance against them.'' ``true,'' answered front-de-b<oe>uf; ``were they black turks or moors, sir templar, or the craven peasants of france, most valiant de bracy; but these are english yeomen, over whom we shall have no advantage, save what we may derive from our arms and horses, which will avail us little in the glades of the forest. sally, saidst thou? we have scarce men enough to defend the castle. the best of mine are at york; so is all your band, de bracy; and we have scarcely twenty, besides the handful that were engaged in this mad business.'' ``thou dost not fear,'' said the templar, ``that they can assemble in force sufficient to attempt the castle?'' ``not so, sir brian,'' answered front-de-b<oe>uf. ``these outlaws have indeed a daring captain; but without machines, scaling ladders, and experienced leaders, my castle may defy them.'' ``send to thy neighbours,'' said the templar, ``let them assemble their people, and come to the rescue of three knights, besieged by a jester and a swineherd in the baronial castle of reginald front-de-b<oe>uf!'' ``you jest, sir knight,'' answered the baron; ``but to whom should i send?---malvoisin is by this time at york with his retainers, and so are my other allies; and so should i have been, but for this infernal enterprise.'' ``then send to york, and recall our people,'' said de bracy. ``if they abide the shaking of my standard, or the sight of my free companions, i will give them credit for the boldest outlaws ever bent bow in green-wood.'' ``and who shall bear such a message?'' said front-de-b<oe>uf; ``they will beset every path, and rip the errand out of his bosom.---i have it,'' he added, after pausing for a moment---``sir templar, thou canst write as well as read, and if we can but find the writing materials of my chaplain, who died a twelvemonth since in the midst of his christmas carousals---'' ``so please ye,'' said the squire, who was still in attendance, ``i think old urfried has them somewhere in keeping, for love of the confessor. he was the last man, i have heard her tell, who ever said aught to her, which man ought in courtesy to address to maid or matron.'' ``go, search them out, engelred,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf; ``and then, sir templar, thou shalt return an answer to this bold challenge.'' ``i would rather do it at the sword's point than at that of the pen,'' said bois-guilbert; ``but be it as you will.'' he sat down accordingly, and indited, in the french language, an epistle of the following tenor:-- ``sir reginald front-de-b<oe>uf, with his noble and knightly allies and confederates, receive no defiances at the bands of slaves, bondsmen, or fugitives. if the person calling himself the black knight have indeed a claim to the honours of chivalry, he ought to know that he stands degraded by his present association, and has no right to ask reckoning at the hands of good men of noble blood. touching the prisoners we have made, we do in christian charity require you to send a man of religion, to receive their confession, and reconcile them with god; since it is our fixed intention to execute them this morning before noon, so that their heads being placed on the battlements, shall show to all men how lightly we esteem those who have bestirred themselves in their rescue. wherefore, as above, we require you to send a priest to reconcile them to god, in doing which you shall render them the last earthly service.'' this letter being folded, was delivered to the squire, and by him to the messenger who waited without, as the answer to that which be had brought. the yeoman having thus accomplished his mission, returned to the head-quarters of the allies, which were for the present established under a venerable oak-tree, about three arrow-flights distant from the castle. here wamba and gurth, with their allies the black knight and locksley, and the jovial hermit, awaited with impatience an answer to their summons. around, and at a distance from them, were seen many a bold yeoman, whose silvan dress and weatherbeaten countenances showed the ordinary nature of their occupation. more than two hundred had already assembled, and others were fast coming in. those whom they obeyed as leaders were only distinguished from the others by a feather in the cap, their dress, arms, and equipments being in all other respects the same. besides these bands, a less orderly and a worse armed force, consisting of the saxon inhabitants of the neighbouring township, as well as many bondsmen and servants from cedric's extensive estate, had already arrived, for the purpose of assisting in his rescue. few of these were armed otherwise than with such rustic weapons as necessity sometimes converts to military purposes. boar-spears, scythes, flails, and the like, were their chief arms; for the normans, with the usual policy of conquerors, were jealous of permitting to the vanquished saxons the possession or the use of swords and spears. these circumstances rendered the assistance of the saxons far from being so formidable to the besieged, as the strength of the men themselves, their superior numbers, and the animation inspired by a just cause, might otherwise well have made them. it was to the leaders of this motley army that the letter of the templar was now delivered. reference was at first made to the chaplain for an exposition of its contents. ``by the crook of st dunstan,'' said that worthy ecclesiastic, ``which hath brought more sheep within the sheepfold than the crook of e'er another saint in paradise, i swear that i cannot expound unto you this jargon, which, whether it be french or arabic, is beyond my guess.'' he then gave the letter to gurth, who shook his head gruffly, and passed it to wamba. the jester looked at each of the four corners of the paper with such a grin of affected intelligence as a monkey is apt to assume upon similar occasions, then cut a caper, and gave the letter to locksley. ``if the long letters were bows, and the short letters broad arrows, i might know something of the matter,'' said the brave yeoman; ``but as the matter stands, the meaning is as safe, for me, as the stag that's at twelve miles distance.'' ``i must be clerk, then,'' said the black knight; and taking the letter from locksley, he first read it over to himself, and then explained the meaning in saxon to his confederates. ``execute the noble cedric!'' exclaimed wamba; ``by the rood, thou must be mistaken, sir knight.'' ``not i, my worthy friend,'' replied the knight, ``i have explained the words as they are here set down.'' ``then, by st thomas of canterbury,'' replied gurth, ``we will have the castle, should we tear it down with our hands!'' ``we have nothing else to tear it with,'' replied wamba; ``but mine are scarce fit to make mammocks of freestone and mortar.'' ``'tis but a contrivance to gain time,'' said locksley; ``they dare not do a deed for which i could exact a fearful penalty.'' ``i would,'' said the black knight, ``there were some one among us who could obtain admission into the castle, and discover how the case stands with the besieged. methinks, as they require a confessor to be sent, this holy hermit might at once exercise his pious vocation, and procure us the information we desire.'' ``a plague on thee, and thy advice!'' said the pious hermit; ``i tell thee, sir slothful knight, that when i doff my friar's frock, my priesthood, my sanctity, my very latin, are put off along with it; and when in my green jerkin, i can better kill twenty deer than confess one christian.'' ``i fear,'' said the black knight, ``i fear greatly, there is no one here that is qualified to take upon him, for the nonce, this same character of father confessor?'' all looked on each other, and were silent. ``i see,'' said wamba, after a short pause, ``that the fool must be still the fool, and put his neck in the venture which wise men shrink from. you must know, my dear cousins and countrymen, that i more russet before i wore motley, and was bred to be a friar, until a brain-fever came upon me and left me just wit enough to be a fool. i trust, with the assistance of the good hermit's frock, together with the priesthood, sanctity, and learning which are stitched into the cowl of it, i shall be found qualified to administer both worldly and ghostly comfort to our worthy master cedric, and his companions in adversity.'' ``hath he sense enough, thinkst thou?'' said the black knight, addressing gurth. ``i know not,'' said gurth; ``but if he hath not, it will be the first time he hath wanted wit to turn his folly to account.'' ``on with the frock, then, good fellow,'' quoth the knight, ``and let thy master send us an account of their situation within the castle. their numbers must be few, and it is five to one they may be accessible by a sudden and bold attack. time wears---away with thee.'' ``and, in the meantime,'' said locksley, ``we will beset the place so closely, that not so much as a fly shall carry news from thence. so that, my good friend,'' he continued, addressing wamba, ``thou mayst assure these tyrants, that whatever violence they exercise on the persons of their prisoners, shall be most severely repaid upon their own.'' ``_pax vobiscum_,'' said wamba, who was now muffled in his religious disguise. and so saying he imitated the solemn and stately deportment of a friar, and departed to execute his mission. chapter xxvi. the hottest horse will oft be cool, the dullest will show fire; the friar will often play the fool, the fool will play the friar. _old song_. when the jester, arrayed in the cowl and frock of the hermit, and having his knotted cord twisted round his middle, stood before the portal of the castle of front-de-b<oe>uf, the warder demanded of him his name and errand. ``_pax vobiscum_,'' answered the jester, ``i am a poor brother of the order of st francis, who come hither to do my office to certain unhappy prisoners now secured within this castle.'' ``thou art a bold friar,'' said the warder, ``to come hither, where, saving our own drunken confessor, a cock of thy feather hath not crowed these twenty years.'' ``yet i pray thee, do mine errand to the lord of the castle,'' answered the pretended friar; ``trust me it will find good acceptance with him, and the cock shall crow, that the whole castle shall hear him.'' ``gramercy,'' said the warder; ``but if i come to shame for leaving my post upon thine errand, i will try whether a friar's grey gown be proof against a grey-goose shaft.'' with this threat he left his turret, and carried to the hall of the castle his unwonted intelligence, that a holy friar stood before the gate and demanded instant admission. with no small wonder he received his master's commands to admit the holy man immediately; and, having previously manned the entrance to guard against surprise, he obeyed, without further scruple, the commands which he had received. the harebrained self-conceit which had emboldened wamba to undertake this dangerous office, was scarce sufficient to support him when he found himself in the presence of a man so dreadful, and so much dreaded, as reginald front-de-b<oe>uf, and he brought out his _pax vobiscum_, to which he, in a good measure, trusted for supporting his character, with more anxiety and hesitation than had hitherto accompanied it. but front-de-b<oe>uf was accustomed to see men of all ranks tremble in his presence, so that the timidity of the supposed father did not give him any cause of suspicion. ``who and whence art thou, priest?'' said he. ``_pax vobiscum_,'' reiterated the jester, ``i am a poor servant of st francis, who, travelling through this wilderness, have fallen among thieves, (as scripture hath it,) _quidam viator incidit in latrones_, which thieves have sent me unto this castle in order to do my ghostly office on two persons condemned by your honourable justice.'' ``ay, right,'' answered front-de-b<oe>uf; ``and canst thou tell me, holy father, the number of those banditti?'' ``gallant sir,'' answered the jester, ``_nomen illis legio_, their name is legion.'' ``tell me in plain terms what numbers there are, or, priest, thy cloak and cord will ill protect thee.'' ``alas!'' said the supposed friar, ``_cor meum eructavit_, that is to say, i was like to burst with fear! but i conceive they may be---what of yeomen ---what of commons, at least five hundred men.'' ``what!'' said the templar, who came into the hall that moment, ``muster the wasps so thick here? it is time to stifle such a mischievous brood.'' then taking front-de-b<oe>uf aside ``knowest thou the priest?'' ``he is a stranger from a distant convent,'' i said front-de-b<oe>uf; ``i know him not.'' ``then trust him not with thy purpose in words,'' answered the templar. ``let him carry a written order to de bracy's company of free companions, to repair instantly to their master's aid. in the meantime, and that the shaveling may suspect nothing, permit him to go freely about his task of preparing these saxon hogs for the slaughter-house.'' ``it shall be so,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf. and he forthwith appointed a domestic to conduct wamba to the apartment where cedric and athelstane were confined. the impatience of cedric had been rather enhanced than diminished by his confinement. he walked from one end of the hall to the other, with the attitude of one who advances to charge an enemy, or to storm the breach of a beleaguered place, sometimes ejaculating to himself, sometimes addressing athelstane, who stoutly and stoically awaited the issue of the adventure, digesting, in the meantime, with great composure, the liberal meal which he had made at noon, and not greatly interesting himself about the duration of his captivity, which he concluded, would, like all earthly evils, find an end in heaven's good time. ``_pax vobiscum_,'' said the jester, entering the apartment; ``the blessing of st dunstan, st dennis, st duthoc, and all other saints whatsoever, be upon ye and about ye.'' ``enter freely,'' answered cedric to the supposed friar; ``with what intent art thou come hither?'' ``to bid you prepare yourselves for death,'' answered the jester. ``it is impossible!'' replied cedric, starting. ``fearless and wicked as they are, they dare not attempt such open and gratuitous cruelty!'' ``alas!'' said the jester, ``to restrain them by their sense of humanity, is the same as to stop a runaway horse with a bridle of silk thread. bethink thee, therefore, noble cedric, and you also, gallant athelstane, what crimes you have committed in the flesh; for this very day will ye be called to answer at a higher tribunal.'' ``hearest thou this, athelstane?'' said cedric; ``we must rouse up our hearts to this last action, since better it is we should die like men, than live like slaves.'' ``i am ready,'' answered athelstane, ``to stand the worst of their malice, and shall walk to my death with as much composure as ever i did to my dinner.'' ``let us then unto our holy gear, father,'' said cedric. ``wait yet a moment, good uncle,'' said the jester, in his natural tone; ``better look long before you leap in the dark.'' ``by my faith,'' said cedric, ``i should know that voice!'' ``it is that of your trusty slave and jester,'' answered wamba, throwing back his cowl. ``had you taken a fool's advice formerly, you would not have been here at all. take a fool's advice now, and you will not be here long.'' ``how mean'st thou, knave?'' answered the saxon. ``even thus,'' replied wamba; ``take thou this frock and cord, which are all the orders i ever had, and march quietly out of the castle, leaving me your cloak and girdle to take the long leap in thy stead.'' ``leave thee in my stead!'' said cedric, astonished at the proposal; ``why, they would hang thee, my poor knave.'' ``e'en let them do as they are permitted,'' said wamba; ``i trust---no disparagement to your birth ---that the son of witless may hang in a chain with as much gravity as the chain hung upon his ancestor the alderman.'' ``well, wamba,'' answered cedric, ``for one thing will i grant thy request. and that is, if thou wilt make the exchange of garments with lord athelstane instead of me.'' ``no, by st dunstan,'' answered wamba; ``there were little reason in that. good right there is, that the son of witless should suffer to save the son of hereward; but little wisdom there were in his dying for the benefit of one whose fathers were strangers to his.'' ``villain,'' said cedric, ``the fathers of athelstane were monarchs of england!'' ``they might be whomsoever they pleased,'' replied wamba; ``but my neck stands too straight upon my shoulders to have it twisted for their sake. wherefore, good my master, either take my proffer yourself, or suffer me to leave this dungeon as free as i entered.'' ``let the old tree wither,'' continued cedric, ``so the stately hope of the forest be preserved. save the noble athelstane, my trusty wamba! it is the duty of each who has saxon blood in his veins. thou and i will abide together the utmost rage of our injurious oppressors, while he, free and safe, shall arouse the awakened spirits of our countrymen to avenge us.'' ``not so, father cedric,'' said athelstane, grasping his hand,---for, when roused to think or act, his deeds and sentiments were not unbecoming his high race---``not so,'' he continued; ``i would rather remain in this hall a week without food save the prisoner's stinted loaf, or drink save the prisoner's measure of water, than embrace the opportunity to escape which the slave's untaught kindness has purveyed for his master.'' ``you are called wise men, sirs,'' said the jester, ``and i a crazed fool; but, uncle cedric, and cousin athelstane, the fool shall decide this controversy for ye, and save ye the trouble of straining courtesies any farther. i am like john-a-duck's mare, that will let no man mount her but john-a-duck. i came to save my master, and if he will not consent--basta---i can but go away home again. kind service cannot be chucked from hand to hand like a shuttlecock or stool-ball. i'll hang for no man but my own born master.'' ``go, then, noble cedric,'' said athelstane, ``neglect not this opportunity. your presence without may encourage friends to our rescue---your remaining here would ruin us all.'' ``and is there any prospect, then, of rescue from without?'' said cedric, looking to the jester. ``prospect, indeed!'' echoed wamba; ``let me tell you, when you fill my cloak, you are wrapped in a general's cassock. five hundred men are there without, and i was this morning one of the chief leaders. my fool's cap was a casque, and my bauble a truncheon. well, we shall see what good they will make by exchanging a fool for a wise man. truly, i fear they will lose in valour what they may gain in discretion. and so farewell, master, and be kind to poor gurth and his dog fangs; and let my cockscomb hang in the hall at rotherwood, in memory that i flung away my life for my master, like a faithful------fool.'' the last word came out with a sort of double expression, betwixt jest and earnest. the tears stood in cedric's eyes. ``thy memory shall be preserved,'' he said, ``while fidelity and affection have honour upon earth! but that i trust i shall find the means of saving rowena, and thee, athelstane, and thee, also, my poor wamba, thou shouldst not overbear me in this matter.'' the exchange of dress was now accomplished, when a sudden doubt struck cedric. ``i know no language,'' he said, ``but my own, and a few words of their mincing norman. how shall i bear myself like a reverend brother?'' ``the spell lies in two words,'' replied wamba--``_pax vobiscum_ will answer all queries. if you go or come, eat or drink, bless or ban, _pax vobiscum_ carries you through it all. it is as useful to a friar as a broomstick to a witch, or a wand to a conjurer. speak it but thus, in a deep grave tone,---_pax vobiscum!_---it is irresistible---watch and ward, knight and squire, foot and horse, it acts as a charm upon them all. i think, if they bring me out to be hanged to-morrow, as is much to be doubted they may, i will try its weight upon the finisher of the sentence.'' ``if such prove the case,'' said the master, ``my religious orders are soon taken---_pax vobiscum_. i trust i shall remember the pass-word.---noble athelstane, farewell; and farewell, my poor boy, whose heart might make amends for a weaker head ---i will save you, or return and die with you. the royal blood of our saxon kings shall not be spilt while mine beats in my veins; nor shall one hair fall from the head of the kind knave who risked himself for his master, if cedric's peril can prevent it.---farewell.'' ``farewell, noble cedric,'' said athelstane; ``remember it is the true part of a friar to accept refreshment, if you are offered any.'' ``farewell, uncle,'' added wamba; ``and remember _pax vobiscum_.'' thus exhorted, cedric sallied forth upon his expedition; and it was not long ere he had occasion to try the force of that spell which his jester had recommended as omnipotent. in a low-arched and dusky passage, by which he endeavoured to work his way to the hall of the castle, he was interrupted by a female form. ``_pax vobiscum!_'' said the pseudo friar, and was endeavouring to hurry past, when a soft voice replied, ``_et vobis---quaso, domine reverendissime, pro misericordia vestra_.'' ``i am somewhat deaf,'' replied cedric, in good saxon, and at the same time muttered to himself, ``a curse on the fool and his _pax vobiscum!_ i have lost my javelin at the first cast.'' it was, however, no unusual thing for a priest of those days to be deaf of his latin ear, and this the person who now addressed cedric knew full well. ``i pray you of dear love, reverend father,'' she replied in his own language, ``that you will deign to visit with your ghostly comfort a wounded prisoner of this castle, and have such compassion upon him and us as thy holy office teaches---never shall good deed so highly advantage thy convent.'' ``daughter,'' answered cedric, much embarrassed, ``my time in this castle will not permit me to exercise the duties of mine office---i must presently forth---there is life and death upon my speed.'' ``yet, father, let me entreat you by the vow you have taken on you,'' replied the suppliant, ``not to leave the oppressed and endangered without counsel or succour.'' ``may the fiend fly away with me, and leave me in ifrin with the souls of odin and of thor!'' answered cedric impatiently, and would probably have proceeded in the same tone of total departure from his spiritual character, when the colloquy was interrupted by the harsh voice of urfried, the old crone of the turret. ``how, minion,'' said she to the female speaker, ``is this the manner in which you requite the kindness which permitted thee to leave thy prison-cell yonder?---puttest thou the reverend man to use ungracious language to free himself from the importunities of a jewess?'' ``a jewess!'' said cedric, availing himself of the information to get clear of their interruption,--``let me pass, woman! stop me not at your peril. i am fresh from my holy office, and would avoid pollution.'' ``come this way, father,'' said the old hag, ``thou art a stranger in this castle, and canst not leave it without a guide. come hither, for i would speak with thee.---and you, daughter of an accursed race, go to the sick man's chamber, and tend him until my return; and woe betide you if you again quit it without my permission!'' rebecca retreated. her importunities had prevailed upon urfried to suffer her to quit the turret, and urfried had employed her services where she herself would most gladly have paid them, by the bedside of the wounded ivanhoe. with an understanding awake to their dangerous situation, and prompt to avail herself of each means of safety which occurred, rebecca had hoped something from the presence of a man of religion, who, she learned from urfried, had penetrated into this godless castle. she watched the return of the supposed ecclesiastic, with the purpose of addressing him, and interesting him in favour of the prisoners; with what imperfect success the reader has been just acquainted. chapter xxvii. fond wretch! and what canst thou relate, but deeds of sorrow, shame, and sin? thy deeds are proved---thou know'st thy fate; but come, thy tale---begin---begin. but i have griefs of other kind, troubles and sorrows more severe; give me to ease my tortured mind, lend to my woes a patient ear; and let me, if i may not find a friend to help---find one to hear. _crabbe's hall of justice._ when urfried had with clamours and menaces driven rebecca back to the apartment from which she had sallied, she proceeded to conduct the unwilling cedric into a small apartment, the door of which she heedfully secured. then fetching from a cupboard a stoup of wine and two flagons, she placed them on the table, and said in a tone rather asserting a fact than asking a question, ``thou art saxon, father---deny it not,'' she continued, observing that cedric hastened not to reply; ``the sounds of my native language are sweet to mine ears, though seldom heard save from the tongues of the wretched and degraded serfs on whom the proud normans impose the meanest drudgery of this dwelling. thou art a saxon, father---a saxon, and, save as thou art a servant of god, a freeman. ---thine accents are sweet in mine ear.'' ``do not saxon priests visit this castle, then?'' replied cedric; ``it were, methinks, their duty to comfort the outcast and oppressed children of the soil.'' ``they come not---or if they come, they better love to revel at the boards of their conquerors,'' answered urfried, ``than to hear the groans of their countrymen---so, at least, report speaks of them--of myself i can say little. this castle, for ten years, has opened to no priest save the debauched norman chaplain who partook the nightly revels of front-de-b<oe>uf, and he has been long gone to render an account of his stewardship.---but thou art a saxon---a saxon priest, and i have one question to ask of thee.'' ``i am a saxon,'' answered cedric, ``but unworthy, surely, of the name of priest. let me begone on my way---i swear i will return, or send one of our fathers more worthy to hear your confession.'' ``stay yet a while,'' said urfried; ``the accents of the voice which thou hearest now will soon be choked with the cold earth, and i would not descend to it like the beast i have lived. but wine must give me strength to tell the horrors of my tale.'' she poured out a cup, and drank it with a frightful avidity, which seemed desirous of draining the last drop in the goblet. ``it stupifies,'' she said, looking upwards as she finished her drought, ``but it cannot cheer---partake it, father, if you would hear my tale without sinking down upon the pavement.'' cedric would have avoided pledging her in this ominous conviviality, but the sign which she made to him expressed impatience and despair. he complied with her request, and answered her challenge in a large wine-cup; she then proceeded with her story, as if appeased by his complaisance. ``i was not born,'' she said, ``father, the wretch that thou now seest me. i was free, was happy, was honoured, loved, and was beloved. i am now a slave, miserable and degraded---the sport of my masters' passions while i had yet beauty---the object of their contempt, scorn, and hatred, since it has passed away. dost thou wonder, father, that i should hate mankind, and, above all, the race that has wrought this change in me? can the wrinkled decrepit hag before thee, whose wrath must vent itself in impotent curses, forget she was once the daughter of the noble thane of torquilstone, before whose frown a thousand vassals trembled?'' ``thou the daughter of torquil wolfganger!'' said cedric, receding as he spoke; ``thou---thou--the daughter of that noble saxon, my father's friend and companion in arms!'' ``thy father's friend!'' echoed urfried; ``then cedric called the saxon stands before me, for the noble hereward of rotherwood had but one son, whose name is well known among his countrymen. but if thou art cedric of rotherwood, why this religious dress?---hast thou too despaired of saving thy country, and sought refuge from oppression in the shade of the convent?'' ``it matters not who i am,'' said cedric; ``proceed, unhappy woman, with thy tale of horror and guilt!---guilt there must be---there is guilt even in thy living to tell it.'' ``there is---there is,'' answered the wretched woman, ``deep, black, damning guilt,---guilt, that lies like a load at my breast---guilt, that all the penitential fires of hereafter cannot cleanse.---yes, in these halls, stained with the noble and pure blood of my father and my brethren---in these very halls, to have lived the paramour of their murderer, the slave at once and the partaker of his pleasures, was to render every breath which i drew of vital air, a crime and a curse.'' ``wretched woman!'' exclaimed cedric. ``and while the friends of thy father---while each true saxon heart, as it breathed a requiem for his soul, and those of his valiant sons, forgot not in their prayers the murdered ulrica---while all mourned and honoured the dead, thou hast lived to merit our hate and execration---lived to unite thyself with the vile tyrant who murdered thy nearest and dearest---who shed the blood of infancy, rather than a male of the noble house of torquil wolfganger should survive---with him hast thou lived to unite thyself, and in the hands of lawless love!'' ``in lawless hands, indeed, but not in those of love!'' answered the hag; ``love will sooner visit the regions of eternal doom, than those unhallowed vaults.---no, with that at least i cannot reproach myself---hatred to front-de-b<oe>uf and his race governed my soul most deeply, even in the hour of his guilty endearments.'' ``you hated him, and yet you lived,'' replied cedric; ``wretch! was there no poniard---no knife ---no bodkin!---well was it for thee, since thou didst prize such an existence, that the secrets of a norman castle are like those of the grave. for had i but dreamed of the daughter of torquil living in foul communion with the murderer of her father, the sword of a true saxon had found thee out even in the arms of thy paramour!'' ``wouldst thou indeed have done this justice to the name of torquil?'' said ulrica, for we may now lay aside her assumed name of urfried; ``thou art then the true saxon report speaks thee! for even within these accursed walls, where, as thou well sayest, guilt shrouds itself in inscrutable mystery, even there has the name of cedric been sounded--and i, wretched and degraded, have rejoiced to think that there yet breathed an avenger of our unhappy nation.---i also have had my hours of vengeance--i have fomented the quarrels of our foes, and heated drunken revelry into murderous broil ---i have seen their blood flow---i have heard their dying groans!---look on me, cedric---are there not still left on this foul and faded face some traces of the features of torquil?'' ``ask me not of them, ulrica,'' replied cedric, in a tone of grief mixed with abhorrence; ``these traces form such a resemblance as arises from the graves of the dead, when a fiend has animated the lifeless corpse.'' ``be it so,'' answered ulrica; ``yet wore these fiendish features the mask of a spirit of light when they were able to set at variance the elder front-de-b<oe>uf and his son reginald! the darkness of hell should hide what followed, but revenge must lift the veil, and darkly intimate what it would raise the dead to speak aloud. long had the smouldering fire of discord glowed between the tyrant father and his savage son---long had i nursed, in secret, the unnatural hatred---it blazed forth in an hour of drunken wassail, and at his own board fell my oppressor by the hand of his own son---such are the secrets these vaults conceal!---rend asunder, ye accursed arches,'' she added, looking up towards the roof, ``and bury in your fall all who are conscious of the hideous mystery!'' ``and thou, creature of guilt and misery,'' said cedric, ``what became thy lot on the death of thy ravisher?'' ``guess it, but ask it not.---here---here i dwelt, till age, premature age, has stamped its ghastly features on my countenance---scorned and insulted where i was once obeyed, and compelled to bound the revenge which had once such ample scope, to the efforts of petty malice of a discontented menial, or the vain or unheeded curses of an impotent hag---condemned to hear from my lonely turret the sounds of revelry in which i once partook, or the shrieks and groans of new victims of oppression.'' ``ulrica,'' said cedric, ``with a heart which still, i fear, regrets the lost reward of thy crimes, as much as the deeds by which thou didst acquire that meed, how didst thou dare to address thee to one who wears this robe? consider, unhappy woman, what could the sainted edward himself do for thee, were he here in bodily presence? the royal confessor was endowed by heaven with power to cleanse the ulcers of the body, but only god himself can cure the leprosy of the soul.'' ``yet, turn not from me, stern prophet of wrath,'' she exclaimed, ``but tell me, if thou canst, in what shall terminate these new and awful feelings that burst on my solitude---why do deeds, long since done, rise before me in new and irresistible horrors? what fate is prepared beyond the grave for her, to whom god has assigned on earth a lot of such unspeakable wretchedness? better had i turn to woden, hertha, and zernebock---to mista, and to skogula, the gods of our yet unbaptized ancestors, than endure the dreadful anticipations which have of late haunted my waking and my sleeping hours!'' ``i am no priest,'' said cedric, turning with disgust from this miserable picture of guilt, wretchedness, and despair; ``i am no priest, though i wear a priest's garment.'' ``priest or layman,'' answered ulrica, ``thou art the first i have seen for twenty years, by whom god was feared or man regarded; and dost thou bid me despair?'' ``i bid thee repent,'' said cedric. ``seek to prayer and penance, and mayest thou find acceptance! but i cannot, i will not, longer abide with thee.'' ``stay yet a moment!'' said ulrica; ``leave me not now, son of my father's friend, lest the demon who has governed my life should tempt me to avenge myself of thy hard-hearted scorn---thinkest thou, if front-de-b<oe>uf found cedric the saxon in his castle, in such a disguise, that thy life would be a long one?---already his eye has been upon thee like a falcon on his prey.'' ``and be it so,'' said cedric; ``and let him tear me with beak and talons, ere my tongue say one word which my heart doth not warrant. i will die a saxon---true in word, open in deed---i bid thee avaunt!---touch me not, stay me not!---the sight of front-de-b<oe>uf himself is less odious to me than thou, degraded and degenerate as thou art.'' ``be it so,'' said ulrica, no longer interrupting him; ``go thy way, and forget, in the insolence of thy superority, that the wretch before thee is the daughter of thy father's friend.---go thy way---if i am separated from mankind by my sufferings--separated from those whose aid i might most justly expect---not less will i be separated from them in my revenge!---no man shall aid me, but the ears of all men shall tingle to hear of the deed which i shall dare to do!---farewell!---thy scorn has burst the last tie which seemed yet to unite me to my kind---a thought that my woes might claim the compassion of my people.'' ``ulrica,'' said cedric, softened by this appeal, ``hast thou borne up and endured to live through so much guilt and so much misery, and wilt thou now yield to despair when thine eyes are opened to thy crimes, and when repentance were thy fitter occupation?'' ``cedric,'' answered ulrica, ``thou little knowest the human heart. to act as i have acted, to think as i have thought, requires the maddening love of pleasure, mingled with the keen appetite of revenge, the proud consciousness of power; droughts too intoxicating for the human heart to bear, and yet retain the power to prevent. their force has long passed away---age has no pleasures, wrinkles have no influence, revenge itself dies away in impotent curses. then comes remorse, with all its vipers, mixed with vain regrets for the past, and despair for the future!---then, when all other strong impulses have ceased, we become like the fiends in hell, who may feel remorse, but never repentance. ---but thy words have awakened a new soul within me---well hast thou said, all is possible for those who dare to die!---thou hast shown me the means of revenge, and be assured i will embrace them. it has hitherto shared this wasted bosom with other and with rival passions---henceforward it shall possess me wholly, and thou thyself shalt say, that, whatever was the life of ulrica, her death well became the daughter of the noble torquil. there is a force without beleaguering this accursed castle---hasten to lead them to the attack, and when thou shalt see a red flag wave from the turret on the eastern angle of the donjon, press the normans hard---they will then have enough to do within, and you may win the wall in spite both of bow and mangonel.---begone, i pray thee---follow thine own fate, and leave me to mine.'' cedric would have enquired farther into the purpose which she thus darkly announced, but the stern voice of front-de-b<oe>uf was heard, exclaiming, ``where tarries this loitering priest? by the scallop-shell of compostella, i will make a martyr of him, if he loiters here to hatch treason among my domestics!'' ``what a true prophet,'' said ulrica, ``is an evil conscience! but heed him not---out and to thy people---cry your saxon onslaught, and let them sing their war-song of rollo, if they will; vengeance shall bear a burden to it.'' as she thus spoke, she vanished through a private door, and reginald front-de-b<oe>uf entered the apartment. cedric, with some difficulty, compelled himself to make obeisance to the haughty baron, who returned his courtesy with a slight inclination of the head. ``thy penitents, father, have made a long shrift ---it is the better for them, since it is the last they shall ever make. hast thou prepared them for death?'' ``i found them,'' said cedric, in such french as he could command, ``expecting the worst, from the moment they knew into whose power they had fallen.'' ``how now, sir friar,'' replied front-de-b<oe>uf, ``thy speech, methinks, smacks of a saxon tongue?'' ``i was bred in the convent of st withold of burton,'' answered cedric. ``ay?'' said the baron; ``it had been better for thee to have been a norman, and better for my purpose too; but need has no choice of messengers. that st withold's of burton is a howlet's nest worth the harrying. the day will soon come that the frock shall protect the saxon as little as the mail-coat.'' ``god's will be done,'' said cedric, in a voice tremulous with passion, which front-de-b<oe>uf imputed to fear. ``i see,'' said he, ``thou dreamest already that our men-at-arms are in thy refectory and thy ale-vaults. but do me one cast of thy holy office, and, come what list of others, thou shalt sleep as safe in thy cell as a snail within his shell of proof.'' ``speak your commands,'' said cedric, with suppressed emotion. ``follow me through this passage, then, that i may dismiss thee by the postern.'' and as he strode on his way before the supposed friar, front-de-b<oe>uf thus schooled him in the part which he desired he should act. ``thou seest, sir friar, yon herd of saxon swine, who have dared to environ this castle of torquilstone--tell them whatever thou hast a mind of the weakness of this fortalice, or aught else that can detain them before it for twenty-four hours. meantime bear thou this scroll---but soft---canst read, sir priest?'' ``not a jot i,'' answered cedric, ``save on my breviary; and then i know the characters, because i have the holy service by heart, praised be our lady and st withold!'' ``the fitter messenger for my purpose.---carry thou this scroll to the castle of philip de malvoisin; say it cometh from me, and is written by the templar brian de bois-guilbert, and that i pray him to send it to york with all the speed man and horse can make. meanwhile, tell him to doubt nothing, he shall find us whole and sound behind our battlement---shame on it, that we should be compelled to hide thus by a pack of runagates, who are wont to fly even at the flash of our pennons and the tramp of our horses! i say to thee, priest, contrive some cast of thine art to keep the knaves where they are, until our friends bring up their lances. my vengeance is awake, and she is a falcon that slumbers not till she has been gorged.'' ``by my patron saint,'' said cedric, with deeper energy than became his character, ``and by every saint who has lived and died in england, your commands shall be obeyed! not a saxon shall stir from before these walls, if i have art and influence to detain them there.'' ``ha!'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``thou changest thy tone, sir priest, and speakest brief and bold, as if thy heart were in the slaughter of the saxon herd; and yet thou art thyself of kindred to the swine?'' cedric was no ready practiser of the art of dissimulation, and would at this moment have been much the better of a hint from wamba's more fertile brain. but necessity, according to the ancient proverb, sharpens invention, and he muttered something under his cowl concerning the men in question being excommunicated outlaws both to church and to kingdom. ``_despardieux_,'' answered front-de-b<oe>uf, ``thou hast spoken the very truth---i forgot that the knaves can strip a fat abbot, as well as if they had been born south of yonder salt channel. was it not he of st ives whom they tied to an oak-tree, and compelled to sing a mass while they were rifling his mails and his wallets?---no, by our lady---that jest was played by gualtier of middleton, one of our own companions-at-arms. but they were saxons who robbed the chapel at st bees of cup, candlestick and chalice, were they not?'' ``they were godless men,'' answered cedric. ``ay, and they drank out all the good wine and ale that lay in store for many a secret carousal, when ye pretend ye are but busied with vigils and primes!---priest, thou art bound to revenge such sacrilege.'' ``i am indeed bound to vengeance,'' murmured cedric; ``saint withold knows my heart.'' front-de-b<oe>uf, in the meanwhile, led the way to a postern, where, passing the moat on a single plank, they reached a small barbican, or exterior defence, which communicated with the open field by a well-fortified sallyport. ``begone, then; and if thou wilt do mine errand, and if thou return hither when it is done, thou shalt see saxon flesh cheap as ever was hog's in the shambles of sheffield. and, hark thee, thou seemest to be a jolly confessor---come hither after the onslaught, and thou shalt have as much malvoisie as would drench thy whole convent.'' ``assuredly we shall meet again,'' answered cedric. ``something in hand the whilst,'' continued the norman; and, as they parted at the postern door, he thrust into cedric's reluctant hand a gold byzant, adding, ``remember, i will fly off both cowl and skin, if thou failest in thy purpose.'' ``and full leave will i give thee to do both,'' answered cedric, leaving the postern, and striding forth over the free field with a joyful step, ``if, when we meet next, i deserve not better at thine hand.''---turning then back towards the castle, he threw the piece of gold towards the donor, exclaiming at the same time, ``false norman, thy money perish with thee!'' front-de-b<oe>uf heard the words imperfectly, but the action was suspicious---``archers,'' he called to the warders on the outward battlements, ``send me an arrow through yon monk's frock!---yet stay,'' he said, as his retainers were bending their bows, ``it avails not--we must thus far trust him since we have no better shift. i think he dares not betray me---at the worst i can but treat with these saxon dogs whom i have safe in kennel.---ho! giles jailor, let them bring cedric of rotherwood before me, and the other churl, his companion---him i mean of coningsburgh---athelstane there, or what call they him? their very names are an encumbrance to a norman knight's mouth, and have, as it were, a flavour of bacon---give me a stoup of wine, as jolly prince john said, that i may wash away the relish---place it in the armoury, and thither lead the prioners.'' his commands were obeyed; and, upon entering that gothic apartment, hung with many spoils won by his own valour and that of his father, he found a flagon of wine on the massive oaken table, and the two saxon captives under the guard of four of his dependants. front-de-b<oe>uf took a long drought of wine, and then addressed his prisoners; ---for the manner in which wamba drew the cap over his face, the change of dress, the gloomy and broken light, and the baron's imperfect acquaintance with the features of cedric, (who avoided his norman neighbours, and seldom stirred beyond his own domains,) prevented him from discovering that the most important of his captives had made his escape. ``gallants of england,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``how relish ye your entertainment at torquilstone? ---are ye yet aware what your _surquedy_ and _outrecuidance_* merit, for scoffing at the entertainment * _surquedy_ and _outrecuidance_---insolence and presumption. of a prince of the house of anjou?---have ye forgotten how ye requited the unmerited hospitality of the royal john? by god and st dennis, an ye pay not the richer ransom, i will hang ye up by the feet from the iron bars of these windows, till the kites and hooded crows have made skeletons of you!---speak out, ye saxon dogs--what bid ye for your worthless lives?---how say you, you of rotherwood? ``not a doit i,'' answered poor wamba---``and for hanging up by the feet, my brain has been topsy-turvy, they say, ever since the biggin was bound first round my head; so turning me upside down may peradventure restore it again.'' ``saint genevieve!'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``what have we got here?'' and with the back of his hand he struck cedric's cap from the head of the jester, and throwing open his collar, discovered the fatal badge of servitude, the silver collar round his neck. ``giles---clement---dogs and varlets!'' exclaimed the furious norman, ``what have you brought me here?'' ``i think i can tell you,'' said de bracy, who just entered the apartment. ``this is cedric's clown, who fought so manful a skirmish with isaac of york about a question of precedence.'' ``i shall settle it for them both,'' replied front-de-b<oe>uf; ``they shall hang on the same gallows, unless his master and this boar of coningsburgh will pay well for their lives. their wealth is the least they can surrender; they must also carry off with them the swarms that are besetting the castle, subscribe a surrender of their pretended immunities, and live under us as serfs and vassals; too happy if, in the new world that is about to begin, we leave them the breath of their nostrils.---go,'' said he to two of his attendants, ``fetch me the right cedric hither, and i pardon your error for once; the rather that you but mistook a fool for a saxon franklin.'' ``ay, but,'' said wamba, ``your chivalrous excellency will find there are more fools than franklins among us.'' ``what means the knave?'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, looking towards his followers, who, lingering and loath, faltered forth their belief, that if this were not cedric who was there in presence, they knew not what was become of him. ``saints of heaven!'' exclaimed de bracy, ``he must have escaped in the monk's garments!'' ``fiends of hell!'' echoed front-de-b<oe>uf, ``it was then the boar of rotherwood whom i ushered to the postern, and dismissed with my own hands! ---and thou,'' he said to wamba, ``whose folly could overreach the wisdom of idiots yet more gross than thyself---i will give thee holy orders---i will shave thy crown for thee!---here, let them tear the scalp from his head, and then pitch him headlong from the battlements---thy trade is to jest, canst thou jest now?'' ``you deal with me better than your word, noble knight,'' whimpered forth poor wamba, whose habits of buffoonery were not to be overcome even by the immediate prospect of death; ``if you give me the red cap you propose, out of a simple monk you will make a cardinal.'' ``the poor wretch,'' said de bracy, ``is resolved to die in his vocation.---front-de-b<oe>uf, you shall not slay him. give him to me to make sport for my free companions.---how sayst thou, knave? wilt thou take heart of grace, and go to the wars with me?'' ``ay, with my master's leave,'' said wamba; ``for, look you, i must not slip collar'' (and he touched that which he wore) ``without his permission.'' ``oh, a norman saw will soon cut a saxon collar.'' said de bracy. ``ay, noble sir,'' said wamba, ``and thence goes the proverb-- `norman saw on english oak, on english neck a norman yoke; norman spoon in english dish, and england ruled as normans wish; blithe world to england never will be more, till england's rid of all the four.' '' ``thou dost well, de bracy,' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``to stand there listening to a fool's jargon, when destruction is gaping for us! seest thou not we are overreached, and that our proposed mode of communicating with our friends without has been disconcerted by this same motley gentleman thou art so fond to brother? what views have we to expect but instant storm?'' ``to the battlements then,'' said de bracy; ``when didst thou ever see me the graver for the thoughts of battle? call the templar yonder, and let him fight but half so well for his life as he has done for his order---make thou to the walls thyself with thy huge body---let me do my poor endeavour in my own way, and i tell thee the saxon outlaws may as well attempt to scale the clouds, as the castle of torquilstone; or, if you will treat with the banditti, why not employ the mediation of this worthy franklin, who seems in such deep contemplation of the wine-flagon?---here, saxon,'' he continued, addressing athelstane, and handing the cup to him, ``rinse thy throat with that noble liquor, and rouse up thy soul to say what thou wilt do for thy liberty.'' ``what a man of mould may,'' answered athelstane, ``providing it be what a man of manhood ought.---dismiss me free, with my companions, and i will pay a ransom of a thousand marks.'' ``and wilt moreover assure us the retreat of that scum of mankind who are swarming around the castle, contrary to god's peace and the king's?'' said front-de-b<oe>uf. ``in so far as i can,'' answered athelstane, ``i will withdraw them; and i fear not but that my father cedric will do his best to assist me.'' ``we are agreed then,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf--``thou and they are to be set at freedom, and peace is to be on both sides, for payment of a thousand marks. it is a trifling ransom, saxon, and thou wilt owe gratitude to the moderation which accepts of it in exchange of your persons. but mark, this extends not to the jew isaac.'' ``nor to the jew isaac's daughter,'' said the templar, who had now joined them ``neither,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``belong to this saxon's company.'' ``i were unworthy to be called christian, if they did,'' replied athelstane: ``deal with the unbelievers as ye list.'' ``neither does the ransom include the lady rowena,'' said de bracy. ``it shall never be said i was scared out of a fair prize without striking a blow for it.'' ``neither,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``does our treaty refer to this wretched jester, whom i retain, that i may make him an example to every knave who turns jest into earnest.'' ``the lady rowena,'' answered athelstane, with the most steady countenance, ``is my affianced bride. i will be drawn by wild horses before i consent to part with her. the slave wamba has this day saved the life of my father cedric---i will lose mine ere a hair of his head be injured.'' ``thy affianced bride?---the lady rowena the affianced bride of a vassal like thee?'' said de bracy; ``saxon, thou dreamest that the days of thy seven kingdoms are returned again. i tell thee, the princes of the house of anjou confer not their wards on men of such lineage as thine.'' ``my lineage, proud norman,'' replied athelstane, ``is drawn from a source more pure and ancient than that of a beggarly frenchman, whose living is won by selling the blood of the thieves whom he assembles under his paltry standard. kings were my ancestors, strong in war and wise in council, who every day feasted in their hall more hundreds than thou canst number individual followers; whose names have been sung by minstrels, and their laws recorded by wittenagemotes; whose bones were interred amid the prayers of saints, and over whose tombs minsters have been builded.'' ``thou hast it, de bracy,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, well pleased with the rebuff which his companion had received; ``the saxon hath hit thee fairly.'' ``as fairly as a captive can strike,'' said de bracy, with apparent carelessness; ``for he whose hands are tied should have his tongue at freedom. ---but thy glibness of reply, comrade,'' rejoined he, speaking to athelstane, ``will not win the freedom of the lady rowena.'' to this athelstane, who had already made a longer speech than was his custom to do on any topic, however interesting, returned no answer. the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a menial, who announced that a monk demanded admittance at the postern gate. ``in the name of saint bennet, the prince of these bull-beggars,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``have we a real monk this time, or another impostor? search him, slaves---for an ye suffer a second impostor to be palmed upon you, i will have your eyes torn out, and hot coals put into the sockets.'' ``let me endure the extremity of your anger, my lord,'' said giles, ``if this be not a real shaveling. your squire jocelyn knows him well, and will vouch him to be brother ambrose, a monk in attendance upon the prior of jorvaulx.'' ``admit him,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf; ``most likely he brings us news from his jovial master. surely the devil keeps holiday, and the priests are relieved from duty, that they are strolling thus wildly through the country. remove these prisoners; and, saxon, think on what thou hast heard.'' ``i claim,'' said athelstane, ``an honourable imprisonment, with due care of my board and of my couch, as becomes my rank, and as is due to one who is in treaty for ransom. moreover, i hold him that deems himself the best of you, bound to answer to me with his body for this aggression on my freedom. this defiance hath already been sent to thee by thy sewer; thou underliest it, and art bound to answer me---there lies my glove.'' ``i answer not the challenge of my prisoner,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf; ``nor shalt thou, maurice de bracy.---giles,'' he continued, ``hang the franklin's glove upon the tine of yonder branched antlers: there shall it remain until he is a free man. should he then presume to demand it, or to affirm he was unlawfully made my prisoner, by the belt of saint christopher, he will speak to one who hath never refused to meet a foe on foot or on horseback, alone or with his vassals at his back!'' the saxon prisoners were accordingly removed, just as they introduced the monk ambrose, who appeared to be in great perturbation. ``this is the real _deus vobiscum_,'' said wamba, as he passed the reverend brother; ``the others were but counterfeits.'' ``holy mother,'' said the monk, as he addressed the assembled knights, ``i am at last safe and in christian keeping!'' ``safe thou art,'' replied de bracy; ``and for christianity, here is the stout baron reginald front-de-b<oe>uf, whose utter abomination is a jew; and the good knight templar, brian de bois-guilbert, whose trade is to slay saracens---if these are not good marks of christianity, i know no other which they bear about them.'' ``ye are friends and allies of our reverend father in god, aymer, prior of jorvaulx,'' said the monk, without noticing the tone of de bracy's reply; ``ye owe him aid both by knightly faith and holy charity; for what saith the blessed saint augustin, in his treatise _de civitate dei_------'' ``what saith the devil!'' interrupted front-de-b<oe>uf; ``or rather what dost thou say, sir priest? we have little time to hear texts from the holy fathers.'' ``_sancta maria!_'' ejaculated father ambrose, ``how prompt to ire are these unhallowed laymen! ---but be it known to you, brave knights, that certain murderous caitiffs, casting behind them fear of god, and reverence of his church, and not regarding the bull of the holy see, _si quis, suadende diabolo_------'' ``brother priest,'' said the templar, ``all this we know or guess at---tell us plainly, is thy master, the prior, made prisoner, and to whom?'' ``surely,'' said ambrose ``he is in the hands of the men of belial, infesters of these woods, and contemners of the holy text, `touch not mine annointed, and do my prophets naught of evil.' '' ``here is a new argument for our swords, sirs,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, turning to his companions; ``and so, instead of reaching us any assistance, the prior of jorvaulx requests aid at our hands? a man is well helped of these lazy churchmen when he hath most to do!---but speak out, priest, and say at once, what doth thy master expect from us?'' ``so please you,'' said ambrose, ``violent hands having been imposed on my reverend superior, contrary to the holy ordinance which i did already quote, and the men of belial having rifled his mails and budgets, and stripped him of two hundred marks of pure refined gold, they do yet demand of him a large sum beside, ere they will suffer him to depart from their uncircumcised hands. wherefore the reverend father in god prays you, as his dear friends, to rescue him, either by paying down the ransom at which they hold him, or by force of arms, at your best discretion.'' ``the foul fiend quell the prior!'' said front-de-b<oe>uf; ``his morning's drought has been a deep one. when did thy master hear of a norman baron unbuckling his purse to relieve a churchman, whose bags are ten times as weighty as ours?--and how can we do aught by valour to free him, that are cooped up here by ten times our number, and expect an assault every moment?'' ``and that was what i was about to tell you,'' said the monk, ``had your hastiness allowed me time. but, god help me, i am old, and these foul onslaughts distract an aged man's brain. nevertheless, it is of verity that they assemble a camp, and raise a bank against the walls of this castle.'' ``to the battlements!'' cried de bracy, ``and let us mark what these knaves do without;'' and so saying, he opened a latticed window which led to a sort of bartisan or projecting balcony, and immediately called from thence to those in the apartment--``saint dennis, but the old monk hath brought true tidings!---they bring forward mantelets and pavisses,* and the archers muster on the * mantelets were tenmporary and movable defences formed * of planks, under cover of which the assailants advanced to the * attack of fortified places of old. pavisses were a species of large * shields covering the whole person, employed on the same occasions. skirts of the wood like a dark cloud before a hailstorm.'' reginald front-de-b<oe>uf also looked out upon the field, and immediately snatched his bugle; and, after winding a long and loud blast, commanded his men to their posts on the walls. ``de bracy, look to the eastern side, where the walls are lowest---noble bois-guilbert, thy trade hath well taught thee how to attack and defend, look thou to the western side---i myself will take post at the barbican. yet, do not confine your exertions to any one spot, noble friends!---we must this day be everywhere, and multiply ourselves, were it possible, so as to carry by our presence succour and relief wherever the attack is hottest. our numbers are few, but activity and courage may supply that defect, since we have only to do with rascal clowns.'' ``but, noble knights,'' exclaimed father ambrose, amidst the bustle and confusion occasioned by the preparations for defence, ``will none of ye hear the message of the reverend father in god aymer, prior of jorvaulx?---i beseech thee to hear me, noble sir reginald!'' ``go patter thy petitions to heaven,'' said the fierce norman, ``for we on earth have no time to listen to them.---ho! there, anselm i see that seething pitch and oil are ready to pour on the heads of these audacious traitors---look that the cross-bowmen lack not bolts.*---fling abroad my banner with * the bolt was the arrow peculiarly fitted to the cross-bow, * as that of the long-bow was called a shaft. hence the english * proverb---``i will either make a shaft or bolt of it,'' signifying a * determination to make one use or other of the thing spoken of. the old bull's head---the knaves shall soon find with whom they have to do this day!'' ``but, noble sir,'' continued the monk, persevering in his endeavours to draw attention, ``consider my vow of obedience, and let me discharge myself of my superior's errand.'' ``away with this prating dotard,'' said front-de b<oe>uf, ``lock him up in the chapel, to tell his beads till the broil be over. it will be a new thing to the saints in torquilstone to hear aves and paters; they have not been so honoured, i trow, since they were cut out of stone.'' ``blaspheme not the holy saints, sir reginald,'' said de bracy, ``we shall have need of their aid to-day before yon rascal rout disband.'' ``i expect little aid from their hand,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``unless we were to hurl them from the battlements on the heads of the villains. there is a huge lumbering saint christopher yonder, sufficient to bear a whole company to the earth.'' the templar had in the meantime been looking out on the proceedings of the besiegers, with rather more attention than the brutal front-de-b<oe>uf or his giddy companion. ``by the faith of mine order,'' he said, ``these men approach with more touch of discipline than could have been judged, however they come by it. see ye how dexterously they avail themselves of every cover which a tree or bush afrords, and shun exposing themselves to the shot of our cross-bows? i spy neither banner nor pennon among them, and yet will i gage my golden chain, that they are led on by some noble knight or gentleman, skilful in the practice of wars.'' ``i espy him,'' said de bracy; ``i see the waving of a knight's crest, and the gleam of his armour. see yon tall man in the black mail, who is busied marshalling the farther troop of the rascaille yeomen---by saint dennis, i hold him to be the same whom we called _le noir faineant_, who overthrew thee, front-de-b<oe>uf, in the lists at ashby.'' ``so much the better,'' said front-de-b<oe>uf, ``that he comes here to give me my revenge. some hilding fellow he must be, who dared not stay to assert his claim to the tourney prize which chance had assigned him. i should in vain have sought for him where knights and nobles seek their foes, and right glad am i he hath here shown himself among yon villain yeomanry.'' the demonstrations of the enemy's immediate approach cut off all farther discourse. each knight repaired to his post, and at the head of the few followers whom they were able to muster, and who were in numbers inadequate to defend the whole extent of the walls, they awaited with calm determination the threatened assault. chapter xxviii. this wandering race, sever'd from other men, boast yet their intercourse with human arts; the seas, the woods, the deserts, which they haunt, find them acquainted with their secret treasures: and unregarded herbs, and flowers, and blossoms, display undreamt-of powers when gather'd by them. _the jew._ our history must needs retrograde for the space of a few pages, to inform the reader of certain passages material to his understanding the rest of this important narrative. his own intelligence may indeed have easily anticipated that, when ivanhoe sunk down, and seemed abandoned by all the world, it was the importunity of rebecca which prevailed on her father to have the gallant young warrior transported from the lists to the house which for the time the jews inhabited in the suburbs of ashby. it would not have been difficult to have persuaded isaac to this step in any other circumstances, for his disposition was kind and grateful. but he had also the prejudices and scrupulous timidity of his persecuted people, and those were to be conquered. ``holy abraham!'' he exclaimed, ``he is a good youth, and my heart bleeds to see the gore trickle down his rich embroidered hacqueton, and his corslet of goodly price---but to carry him to our house! ---damsel, hast thou well considered?---he is a christian, and by our law we may not deal with the stranger and gentile, save for the advantage of our commerce.'' ``speak not so, my dear father,'' replied rebecca; ``we may not indeed mix with them in banquet and in jollity; but in wounds and in misery, the gentile becometh the jew's brother.'' ``i would i knew what the rabbi jacob ben tudela would opine on it,'' replied isaac;---``nevertheless, the good youth must not bleed to death. let seth and reuben bear him to ashby.'' ``nay, let them place him in my litter,'' said rebecca; ``i will mount one of the palfreys.'' ``that were to expose thee to the gaze of those dogs of ishmael and of edom,'' whispered isaac, with a suspicious glance towards the crowd of knights and squires. but rebecca was already busied in carrying her charitable purpose into effect, and listed not what he said, until isaac, seizing the sleeve of her mantle, again exclaimed, in a hurried voice---``beard of aaron!---what if the youth perish! ---if he die in our custody, shall we not be held guilty of his blood, and be torn to pieces by the multitude?'' ``he will not die, my father,'' said rebecca, gently extricating herself from the grasp of isaac ``he will not die unless we abandon him; and if so, we are indeed answerable for his blood to god and to man.'' ``nay,'' said isaac, releasing his hold, ``it grieveth me as much to see the drops of his blood, as if they were so many golden byzants from mine own purse; and i well know, that the lessons of miriam, daughter of the rabbi manasses of byzantium whose soul is in paradise, have made thee skilful in the art of healing, and that thou knowest the craft of herbs, and the force of elixirs. therefore, do as thy mind giveth thee---thou art a good damsel, a blessing, and a crown, and a song of rejoicing unto me and unto my house, and unto the people of my fathers.'' the apprehensions of isaac, however, were not ill founded; and the generous and grateful benevolence of his daughter exposed her, on her return to ashby, to the unhallowed gaze of brian de bois-guilbert. the templar twice passed and repassed them on the road, fixing his bold and ardent look on the beautiful jewess; and we have already seen the consequences of the admiration which her charms excited when accident threw her into the power of that unprincipled voluptuary. rebecca lost no time in causing the patient to be transported to their temporary dwelling, and proceeded with her own hands to examine and to bind up his wounds. the youngest reader of romances and romantic ballads, must recollect how often the females, during the dark ages, as they are called, were initiated into the mysteries of surgery, and how frequently the gallant knight submitted the wounds of his person to her cure, whose eyes had yet more deeply penetrated his heart. but the jews, both male and female, possessed and practised the medical science in all its branches, and the monarchs and powerful barons of the time frequently committed themselves to the charge of some experienced sage among this despised people, when wounded or in sickness. the aid of the jewish physicians was not the less eagerly sought after, though a general belief prevailed among the christians, that the jewish rabbins were deeply acquainted with the occult sciences, and particularly with the cabalistical art, which had its name and origin in the studies of the sages of israel. neither did the rabbins disown such acquaintance with supernatural arts, which added nothing (for what could add aught?) to the hatred with which their nation was regarded, while it diminished the contempt with which that malevolence was mingled. a jewish magician might be the subject of equal abhorrence with a jewish usurer, but he could not be equally despised. it is besides probable, considering the wonderful cures they are said to have performed, that the jews possessed some secrets of the healing art peculiar to themselves, and which, with the exclusive spirit arising out of their condition, they took great care to conceal from the christians amongst whom they dwelt. the beautiful rebecca had been heedfully brought up in all the knowledge proper to her nation, which her apt and powerful mind had retained, arranged, and enlarged, in the course of a progress beyond her years, her sex, and even the age in which she lived. her knowledge of medicine and of the healing art had been acquired under an aged jewess, the daughter of one of their most celebrated doctors, who loved rebecca as her own child, and was believed to have communicated to her secrets, which had been left to herself by her sage father at the same time, and under the same circumstances. the fate of miriam had indeed been to fall a sacrifice to the fanaticism of the times; but her secrets had survived in her apt pupil. rebecca, thus endowed with knowledge as with beauty, was universally revered and admired by her own tribe, who almost regarded her as one of those gifted women mentioned in the sacred history. her father himself, out of reverence for her talents, which involuntarily mingled itself with his unbounded affection, permitted the maiden a greater liberty than was usually indulged to those of her sex by the habits of her people, and was, as we have just seen, frequently guided by her opinion, even in preference to his own. when ivanhoe reached the habitation of isaac, he was still in a state of unconsciousness, owing to the profuse loss of blood which had taken place during his exertions in the lists. rebecca examined the wound, and having applied to it such vulnerary remedies as her art prescribed, informed her father that if fever could be averted, of which the great bleeding rendered her little apprehensive, and if the healing balsam of miriam retained its virtue, there was nothing to fear for his guest's life, and that he might with safety travel to york with them on the ensuing day. isaac looked a little blank at this annunciation. his charity would willingly have stopped short at ashby, or at most would have left the wounded christian to be tended in the house where he was residing at present, with an assurance to the hebrew to whom it belonged, that all expenses should be duly discharged. to this, however, rebecca opposed many reasons, of which we shall only mention two that had peculiar weight with isaac. the one was, that she would on no account put the phial of precious balsam into the hands of another physician even of her own tribe, lest that valuable mystery should be discovered; the other, that this wounded knight, wilfred of ivanhoe, was an intimate favourite of richard c<oe>ur-de-lion, and that, in case the monarch should return, isaac, who had supplied his brother john with treasure to prosecute his rebellious purposes, would stand in no small need of a powerful protector who enjoyed richard's favour. ``thou art speaking but sooth, rebecca,'' said isaac, giving way to these weighty arguments---``it were an offending of heaven to betray the secrets of the blessed miriam; for the good which heaven giveth, is not rashly to be squandered upon others, whether it be talents of gold and shekels of silver, or whether it be the secret mysteries of a wise physician---assuredly they should be preserved to those to whom providence hath vouchsafed them. and him whom the nazarenes of england call the lion's heart, assuredly it were better for me to fall into the hands of a strong lion of idumea than into his, if he shall have got assurance of my deallng with his brother. wherefore i will lend ear to thy counsel, and this youth shall journey with us unto york, and our house shall be as a home to him until his wounds shall be healed. and if he of the lion heart shall return to the land, as is now noised abroad, then shall this wilfred of ivanhoe be unto me as a wall of defence, when the king's displeasure shall burn high against thy father. and if he doth not return, this wilfred may natheless repay us our charges when he shall gain treasure by the strength of his spear and of his sword, even as he did yesterday and this day also. for the youth is a good youth, and keepeth the day which he appointeth, and restoreth that which he borroweth, and succoureth the israelite, even the child of my father's house, when he is encompassed by strong thieves and sons of belial.'' it was not until evening was nearly closed that ivanhoe was restored to consciousness of his situation. he awoke from a broken slumber, under the confused impressions which are naturally attendant on the recovery from a state of insensibility. he was unable for some time to recall exactly to memory the circumstances which had preceded his fall in the lists, or to make out any connected chain of the events in which he had been engaged upon the yesterday. a sense of wounds and injury, joined to great weakness and exhaustion, was mingled with the recollection of blows dealt and received, of steeds rushing upon each other, overthrowing and overthrown---of shouts and clashing of arms, and all the heady tumult of a confused fight. an effort to draw aside the curtain of his conch was in some degree successful, although rendered difficult by the pain of his wound. to his great surprise he found himself in a room magnificently furnished, but having cushions instead of chairs to rest upon, and in other respects partaking so much of oriental costume, that he began to doubt whether he had not, during his sleep, been transported back again to the land of palestine. the impression was increased, when, the tapestry being drawn aside, a female form, dressed in a rich habit, which partook more of the eastern taste than that of europe, glided through the door which it concealed, and was followed by a swarthy domestic. as the wounded knight was about to address this fair apparition, she imposed silence by placing her slender finger upon her ruby lips, while the attendant, approaching him, proceeded to uncover ivanhoe's side, and the lovely jewess satisfied herself that the bandage was in its place, and the wound doing well. she performed her task with a graceful and dignified simplicity and modesty, which might, even in more civilized days, have served to redeem it from whatever might seem repugnant to female delicacy. the idea of so young and beautiful a person engaged in attendance on a sick-bed, or in dressing the wound of one of a different sex, was melted away and lost in that of a beneficent being contributing her effectual aid to relieve pain, and to avert the stroke of death. rebecca's few and brief directions were given in the hebrew language to the old domestic; and he, who had been frequently her assistant in similar cases, obeyed them without reply. the accents of an unknown tongue, however harsh they might have sounded when uttered by another, had, coming from the beautiful rebecca, the romantic and pleasing effect which fancy ascribes to the charms pronounced by some beneficent fairy, unintelligible, indeed, to the ear, but, from the sweetness of utterance, and benignity of aspect, which accompanied them, touching and affecting to the heart. without making an attempt at further question, ivanhoe suffered them in silence to take the measures they thought most proper for his recovery; and it was not until those were completed, and this kind physician about to retire. that his curiosity could no longer be suppressed.---``gentle maiden,'' be began in the arabian tongue, with which his eastern travels had rendered him familiar, and which he thought most likely to be understood by the turban'd and caftan'd damsel who stood before him---``i pray you, gentle maiden, of your courtesy------'' but here he was interrupted by his fair physician, a smile which she could scarce suppress dimpling for an instant a face, whose general expression was that of contemplative melancholy. ``i am of england, sir knight, and speak the english tongue, although my dress and my lineage belong to another climate.'' ``noble damsel,''---again the knight of ivanhoe began; and again rebecca hastened to interrupt him. ``bestow not on me, sir knight,'' she said, ``the epithet of noble. it is well you should speedily know that your handmaiden is a poor jewess, the daughter of that isaac of york, to whom you were so lately a good and kind lord. it well becomes him, and those of his household, to render to you such careful tendance as your present state necessarily demands.'' i know not whether the fair rowena would have been altogether satisfied with the species of emotion with which her devoted knight had hitherto gazed on the beautiful features, and fair form, and lustrous eyes, of the lovely rebecca; eyes whose brilliancy was shaded, and, as it were, mellowed, by the fringe of her long silken eyelashes, and which a minstrel would have compared to the evening star darting its rays through a bower of jessamine. but ivanhoe was too good a catholic to retain the same class of feelings towards a jewess. this rebecca had foreseen, and for this very purpose she had hastened to mention her father's name and lineage; yet---for the fair and wise daughter of isaac was not without a touch of female weakness---she could not but sigh internally when the glance of respectful admiration, not altogether unmixed with tenderness, with which ivanhoe had hitherto regarded his unknown benefactress, was exchanged at once for a manner cold, composed, and collected, and fraught with no deeper feeling than that which expressed a grateful sense of courtesy received from an unexpected quarter, and from one of an inferior race. it was not that ivanhoe's former carriage expressed more than that general devotional homage which youth always pays to beauty; yet it was mortifying that one word should operate as a spell to remove poor rebecca, who could not be supposed altogether ignorant of her title to such homage, into a degraded class, to whom it could not be honourably rendered. but the gentleness and candour of rebecca's nature imputed no fault to ivanhoe for sharing in the universal prejudices of his age and religion. on the contrary the fair jewess, though sensible her patient now regarded her as one of a race of reprobation, with whom it was disgraceful to hold any beyond the most necessary intercourse, ceased not to pay the same patient and devoted attention to his safety and convalescence. she informed him of the necessity they were under of removing to york, and of her father's resolution to transport him thither, and tend him in his own house until his health should be restored. ivanhoe expressed great repugnance to this plan, which he grounded on unwillingness to give farther trouble to his benefactors. ``was there not,'' he said, ``in ashby, or near it, some saxon franklin, or even some wealthy peasant, who would endure the burden of a wounded countryman's residence with him until he should be again able to bear his armour?---was there no convent of saxon endowment, where he could be received?---or could he not be transported as far as burton, where he was sure to find hospitality with waltheoff, the abbot of st withold's, to whom he was related?'' ``any, the worst of these harbourages,'' said rebecca, with a melancholy smile, ``would unquestionably be more fitting for your residence than the abode of a despised jew; yet, sir knight, unless you would dismiss your physician, you cannot change your lodging. our nation, as you well know, can cure wounds, though we deal not in inflicting them; and in our own family, in particular, are secrets which have been handed down since the days of solomon, and of which you have already experienced the advantages. no nazarene---i crave your forgiveness, sir knight---no christian leech, within the four seas of britain, could enable you to bear your corslet within a month.'' ``and how soon wilt thou enable me to brook it?'' said ivanhoe, impatiently. ``within eight days, if thou wilt be patient and conformable to my directions,'' replied rebecca. ``by our blessed lady,'' said wilfred, ``if it be not a sin to name her here, it is no time for me or any true knight to be bedridden; and if thou accomplish thy promise, maiden, i will pay thee with my casque full of crowns, come by them as i may.'' ``i will accomplish my promise,'' said rebecca, and thou shalt bear thine armour on the eighth day from hence, if thou will grant me but one boon in the stead of the silver thou dost promise me.'' `if it be within my power, and such as a true christian knight may yield to one of thy people,'' replied ivanhoe, ``i will grant thy boon blithely and thankfully.'' ``nay,'' answered rebecca, ``i will but pray of thee to believe henceforward that a jew may do good service to a christian, without desiring other guerdon than the blessing of the great father who made both jew and gentile.'' ``it were sin to doubt it, maiden,'' replied ivanhoe; ``and i repose myself on thy skill without further scruple or question, well trusting you will enable me to bear my corslet on the eighth day. and now, my kind leech, let me enquire of the news abroad. what of the noble saxon cedric and his household?---what of the lovely lady---'' he stopt, as if unwilling to speak rowena's name in the house of a jew---``of her, i mean, who was named queen of the tournament?'' ``and who was selected by you, sir knight, to hold that dignity, with judgment which was admired as much as your valour,'' replied rebecca. the blood which ivanhoe had lost did not prevent a flush from crossing his cheek, feeling that he had incautiously betrayed a deep interest in rowena by the awkward attempthbe had made to conceal it.'' ``it was less of her i would speak,'' said he, ``than of prince john; and i would fain know somewhat of a faithful squire, and why he now attends me not?'' ``let me use my authority as a leech,'' answered rebecca, ``and enjoin you to keep silence, and avoid agitating reflections, whilst i apprize you of what you desire to know. prince john hath broken off the tournament, and set forward in all haste towards york, with the nobles, knights, and churchmen of his party, after collecting such sums as they could wring, by fair means or foul, from those who are esteemed the wealthy of the land. it is said be designs to assume his brother's crown.'' ``not without a blow struck in its defence,'' said ivanhoe, raising himself upon the couch, ``if there were but one true subject in england i will fight for richard's title with the best of them--ay, one or two, in his just quarrel!'' ``but that you may be able to do so,'' said rebecca touching his shoulder with her hand, ``you must now observe my directions, and remain quiet.'' ``true, maiden,'' said ivanhoe, ``as quiet as these disquieted times will permit---and of cedric and his household?'' ``his steward came but brief while since,'' said the jewess, ``panting with haste, to ask my father for certain monies, the price of wool the growth of cedric's flocks, and from him i learned that cedric and athelstane of coningsburgh had left prince john's lodging in high displeasure, and were about to set forth on their return homeward.'' ``went any lady with them to the banquet?'' said wilfred. ``the lady rowena,'' said rebecca, answering the question with more precision than it had been asked---``the lady rowena went not to the prince's feast, and, as the steward reported to us, she is now on her journey back to rotherwood, with her guardian cedric. and touching your faithful squire gurth------'' ``ha!'' exclaimed the knight, ``knowest thou his name?---but thou dost,'' he immediately added, ``and well thou mayst, for it was from thy hand, and, as i am now convinced, from thine own generosity of spirit, that he received but yesterday a hundred zecchins.'' ``speak not of that,'' said rebecca, blushing deeply; ``i see how easy it is for the tongue to betray what the heart would gladly conceal.'' ``but this sum of gold,'' said ivanhoe, gravely, ``my honour is concerned in repaying it to your father.'' ``let it be as thou wilt,'' said rebecca, ``when eight days have passed away; but think not, and speak not now, of aught that may retard thy recovery.'' ``be it so, kind maiden,'' said ivanhoe; ``i were most ungrateful to dispute thy commands. but one word of the fate of poor gurth, and i have done with questioning thee.'' ``i grieve to tell thee, sir knight,'' answered the jewess, `` that he is in custody by the order of cedric.''---and then observing the distress which her communication gave to wilfred, she instantly added, ``but the steward oswald said, that if nothing occurred to renew his master's displeasure against him, he was sure that cedric would pardon gurth, a faithful serf, and one who stood high in favour, and who had but committed this error out of the love which he bore to cedric's son. and he said, moreover, that he and his comrades, and especially wamba the jester, were resolved to warn gurth to make his escape by the way, in case cedric's ire against him could not be mitigated.'' ``would to god they may keep their purpose!'' said ivanhoe; ``but it seems as if i were destined to bring ruin on whomsoever hath shown kindness to me. my king, by whom i was honoured and distinguished, thou seest that the brother most indebted to him is raising his arms to grasp his crown;---my regard hath brought restraint and trouble on the fairest of her sex;---and now my father in his mood may slay this poor bondsman but for his love and loyal service to me!---thou seest, maiden, what an ill-fated wretch thou dost labour to assist; be wise, and let me go, ere the misfortunes which track my footsteps like slot-hounds, shall involve thee also in their pursuit.'' ``nay,'' said rebecca, ``thy weakness and thy grief, sir knight, make thee miscalculate the purposes of heaven. thou hast been restored to thy country when it most needed the assistance of a strong hand and a true heart, and thou hast humbled the pride of thine enemies and those of thy king, when their horn was most highly exalted . and for the evil which thou hast sustained, seest thou not that heaven has raised thee a helper and a physician, even among the most despised of the land?---therefore, be of good courage, and trust that thou art preserved for some marvel which thine arm shall work before this people. adieu---and having taken the medicine which i shall send thee by the hand of reuben, compose thyself again to rest, that thou mayest be the more able to endure the journey on the succeeding day.'' ivanhoe was convinced by the reasoning, and obeyed the directions, of rebecca. the drought which reuben administered was of a sedative and narcotic quality, and secured the patient sound and undisturbed slumbers. in the morning his kind physician found him entirely free from feverish symptoms, and fit to undergo the fatigue of a journey. he was deposited in the horse-litter which had brought him from the lists, and every precaution taken for his travelling with ease. in one circumstance only even the entreaties of rebecca were unable to secure sufficient attention to the accommodation of the wounded knight. isaac, like the enriched traveller of juvenal's tenth satire, had ever the fear of robbery before his eyes, conscious that he would be alike accounted fair game by the marauding norman noble, and by the saxon outlaw. he therefore journeyed at a great rate, and made short halts, and shorter repasts, so that he passed by cedric and athelstane who had several hours the start of him, but who had been delayed by their protracted feasting at the convent of saint withold's. yet such was the virtue of miriam's balsam, or such the strength of ivanhoe's constitution, that he did not sustain from the hurried journey that inconvenience which his kind physician had apprehended. in another point of view, however, the jew's haste proved somewhat more than good speed. the rapidity with which he insisted on travelling, bred several disputes between him and the party whom he had hired to attend him as a guard. these men were saxons, and not free by any means from the national love of ease and good living which the normans stigmatized as laziness and gluttony. reversing shylock's position, they had accepted the employment in hopes of feeding upon the wealthy jew, and were very much displeased when they found themselves disappointed, by the rapidity with which he insisted on their proceeding. they remonstrated also upon the risk of damage to their horses by these forced marches. finally, there arose betwixt isaac and his satellites a deadly feud, concerning the quantity of wine and ale to be allowed for consumption at each meal. and thus it happened, that when the alarm of danger approached, and that which isaac feared was likely to come upon him, he was deserted by the discontented mercenaries on whose protection he had relied, without using the means necessary to secure their attachment. in this deplorable condition the jew, with his daughter and her wounded patient, were found by cedric, as has already been noticed, and soon afterwards fell into the power of de bracy and his confederates. little notice was at first taken of the horse-litter, and it might have remained behind but for the curiosity of de bracy, who looked into it under the impression that it might contain the object of his enterprise, for rowena had not unveiled herself. but de bracy's astonishment was considerable, when he discovered that the litter contained a wounded man, who, conceiving himself to have fallen into the power of saxon outlaws, with whom his name might be a protection for himself and his friends, frankly avowed himself to be wilfred of ivanhoe. the ideas of chivalrous honour, which, amidst his wildness and levity, never utterly abandoned de bracy, prohibited him from doing the knight any injury in his defenceless condition, and equally interdicted his betraying him to front-de-b<oe>uf, who would have had no scruples to put to death, under any circumstances, the rival claimant of the fief of ivanhoe. on the other hand, to liberate a suitor preferred by the lady rowena, as the events of the tournament, and indeed wilfred's previous banishment from his father's house, had made matter of notoriety, was a pitch far above the flight of de bracy's generosity. a middle course betwixt good and evil was all which he found himself capable of adopting, and he commanded two of his own squires to keep close by the litter, and to suffer no one to approach it. if questioned, they were directed by their master to say, that the empty litter of the lady rowena was employed to transport one of their comrades who had been wounded in the scuffle. on arriving at torquilstone, while the knight templar and the lord of that castle were each intent upon their own schemes, the one on the jew's treasure, and the other on his daughter, de bracy's squires conveyed ivanhoe, still under the name of a wounded comrade, to a distant apartment. this explanation was accordingly returned by these men to front-de-b<oe>uf, when he questioned them why they did not make for the battlements upon the alarm. ``a wounded companion!'' he replied in great wrath and astonishment. ``no wonder that churls and yeomen wax so presumptuous as even to lay leaguer before castles, and that clowns and swineherds send defiances to nobles, since men-at-arms have turned sick men's nurses, and free companions are grown keepers of dying folk's curtains, when the castle is about to be assailed.---to the battlements, ye loitering villains!'' he exclaimed, raising his stentorian voice till the arches around rung again, ``to the battlements, or i will splinter your bones with this truncheon!'' the men sulkily replied, ``that they desired nothing better than to go to the battlements, providing front-de-b<oe>uf would bear them out with their master, who had commanded them to tend the dying man.'' ``the dying man, knaves!'' rejoined the baron; ``i promise thee we shall all be dying men an we stand not to it the more stoutly. but i will relieve the guard upon this caitiff companion of yours.--here, urfried---hag---fiend of a saxon witch--hearest me not?---tend me this bedridden fellow since he must needs be tended, whilst these knaves use their weapons.---here be two arblasts, comrades, with windlaces and quarrells*---to the barbican with * the arblast was a cross-bow, the windlace the machine * used in bending that weapon, and the quarrell, so called from * its square or diamond-shaped head, was the bolt adapted to it. you, and see you drive each bolt through a saxon brain.'' the men, who, like most of their description, were fond of enterprise and detested inaction, went joyfully to the scene of danger as they were commanded, and thus the charge of ivanhoe was transferred to urfried, or ulrica. but she, whose brain was burning with remembrance of injuries and with hopes of vengeance, was readily induced to devolve upon rebecca the care of her patient. chapter xxix. ascend the watch-tower yonder, valiant soldier, look on the field, and say how goes the battle. schiller's _maid of orleans_. a moment of peril is often also a moment of open-hearted kindness and affection. we are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those, which, at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether suppress them. in finding herself once more by the side of ivanhoe, rebecca was astonished at the keen sensation of pleasure which she experienced, even at a time when all around them both was danger, if not despair. as she felt his pulse, and enquired after his health, there was a softness in her touch and in her accents implying a kinder interest than she would herself have been pleased to have voluntarily expressed. her voice faltered and her hand trembled, and it was only the cold question of ivanhoe, ``is it you, gentle maiden?'' which recalled her to herself, and reminded her the sensations which she felt were not and could not be mutual. a sigh escaped, but it was scarce audible; and the questions which she asked the knight concerning his state of health were put in the tone of calm friendship. ivanhoe answered her hastily that he was, in point of health, as well, and better than he could have expected--``thanks,'' he said, ``dear rebecca, to thy helpful skill.'' ``he calls me _dear_ rebecca,'' said the maiden to herself, ``but it is in the cold and careless tone which ill suits the word. his war-horse---his hunting hound, are dearer to him than the despised jewess!'' ``my mind, gentle maiden,'' continued ivanhoe, ``is more disturbed by anxiety, than my body with pain. from the speeches of those men who were my warders just now, i learn that i am a prisoner, and, if i judge aright of the loud hoarse voice which even now dispatched them hence on some military duty, i am in the castle of front-de-b<oe>uf---if so, how will this end, or how can i protect rowena and my father?'' ``he names not the jew or jewess,'' said rebecca internally; ``yet what is our portion in him, and how justly am i punished by heaven for letting my thoughts dwell upon him!'' she hastened after this brief self-accusation to give ivanhoe what information she could; but it amounted only to this, that the templar bois-guilbert, and the baron front-de-b<oe>uf, were commanders within the castle; that it was beleaguered from without, but by whom she knew not. she added, that there was a christian priest within the castle who might be possessed of more information. ``a christian priest!'' said the knight, joyfully; ``fetch him hither, rebecca, if thou canst---say a sick man desires his ghostly counsel---say what thou wilt, but bring him---something i must do or attempt, but how can i determine until i know how matters stand without?'' rebecca in compliance with the wishes of ivanhoe, made that attempt to bring cedric into the wounded knight's chamber, which was defeated as we have already seen by the interference of urfried, who had also been on the watch to intercept the supposed monk. rebecca retired to communicate to ivanhoe the result of her errand. they had not much leisure to regret the failure of this source of intelligence, or to contrive by what means it might be supplied; for the noise within the castle, occasioned by the defensive preparations which had been considerable for some time, now increased into tenfold bustle and clamour. the heavy, yet hasty step of the men-at-arms, traversed the battlements or resounded on the narrow and winding passages and stairs which led to the various bartisans and points of defence. the voices of the knights were heard, animating their followers, or directing means of defence, while their commands were often drowned in the clashing of armour, or the clamorous shouts of those whom they addressed. tremendous as these sounds were, and yet more terrible from the awful event which they presaged, there was a sublimity mixed with them, which rebecca's high-toned mind could feel even in that moment of terror. her eye kindled, although the blood fled from her cheeks; and there was a strong mixture of fear, and of a thrilling sense of the sublime, as she repeated, half whispering to herself, half speaking to her companion, the sacred text,--``the quiver rattleth---the glittering spear and the shield---the noise of the captains and the shouting!'' but ivanhoe was like the war-horse of that sublime passage, glowing with impatience at his inactivity, and with his ardent desire to mingle in the affray of which these sounds were the introduction. ``if i could but drag myself,'' he said, ``to yonder window, that i might see how this brave game is like to go---if i had but bow to shoot a shaft, or battle-axe to strike were it but a single blow for our deliverance!---it is in vain---it is in vain---i am alike nerveless and weaponless!'' ``fret not thyself, noble knight,'' answered rebecca, ``the sounds have ceased of a sudden---it may be they join not battle.'' ``thou knowest nought of it,'' said wilfred, impatiently; ``this dead pause only shows that the men are at their posts on the walls, and expecting an instant attack; what we have heard was but the instant muttering of the storm---it will burst anon in all its fury.---could i but reach yonder window!'' ``thou wilt but injure thyself by the attempt, noble knight,'' replied his attendant. observing his extreme solicitude, she firmly added, ``i myself will stand at the lattice, and describe to you as i can what passes without.'' ``you must not---you shall not!'' exclaimed ivanhoe; ``each lattice, each aperture, will be soon a mark for the archers; some random shaft---'' ``it shall be welcome!'' murmured rebecca, as with firm pace she ascended two or three steps, which led to the window of which they spoke. ``rebecca, dear rebecca!'' exclaimed ivanhoe, ``this is no maiden's pastime---do not expose thyself to wounds and death, and render me for ever miserable for having given the occasion; at least, cover thyself with yonder ancient buckler, and show as little of your person at the lattice as may be.'' following with wonderful promptitude the directions of ivanhoe, and availing herself of the protection of the large ancient shield, which she placed against the lower part of the window, rebecca, with tolerable security to herself, could witness part of what was passing without the castle, and report to ivanhoe the preparations which the assailants were making for the storm. indeed the situation which she thus obtained was peculiarly favourable for this purpose, because, being placed on an angle of the main building, rebecca could not only see what passed beyond the precincts of the castle, but also commanded a view of the outwork likely to be the first object of the meditated assault. it was an exterior fortification of no great height or strength, intended to protect the postern-gate, through which cedric had been recently dismissed by front-de-b<oe>uf. the castle moat divided this species of barbican from the rest of the fortress, so that, in case of its being taken, it was easy to cut off the communication with the main building, by withdrawing the temporary bridge. in the outwork was a sallyport corresponding to the postern of the castle, and the whole was surrounded by a strong palisade. rebecca could observe, from the number of men placed for the defence of this post, that the besieged entertained apprehensions for its safety; and from the mustering of the assailants in a direction nearly opposite to the outwork, it seemed no less plain that it had been selected as a vulnerable point of attack. these appearances she hastily communicated to ivanhoe, and added, ``the skirts of the wood seem lined with archers, although only a few are advanced from its dark shadow.'' ``under what banner?'' asked ivanhoe. ``under no ensign of war which i can observe,'' answered rebecca. ``a singular novelty,'' muttered the knight, ``to advance to storm such a castle without pennon or banner displayed!---seest thou who they be that act as leaders?'' ``a knight, clad in sable armour, is the most conspicuous,'' said the jewess; ``he alone is armed from head to heel, and seems to assume the direction of all around him.'' ``what device does he bear on his shield?'' replied ivanhoe. ``something resembling a bar of iron, and a padlock painted blue on the black shield.''* * the author has been here upbraided with false heraldry, as * having charged metal upon metal. it should be remembered, * however, that heraldry had only its first rude origin during the * crusades, and that all the minuti<ae> of its fantastic science were * the work of time, and introduced at a much later period. those * who think otherwise must suppose that the goddess of _armoirers_, * like the goddess of arms, sprung into the world completely * equipped in all the gaudy trappings of the department she * presides over. ``a fetterlock and shacklebolt azure,'' said ivanhoe; ``i know not who may bear the device, but well i ween it might now be mine own. canst thou not see the motto?'' ``scarce the device itself at this distance,'' replied rebecca; ``but when the sun glances fair upon his shield, it shows as i tell you.'' ``seem there no other leaders?'' exclaimed the anxious enquirer. ``none of mark and distinction that i can behold from this station,'' said rebecca; ``but, doubtless, the other side of the castle is also assailed. they appear even now preparing to advance---god of zion, protect us!---what a dreadful sight!---those who advance first bear huge shields and defences made of plank; the others follow, bending their bows as they come on.---they raise their bows!--god of moses, forgive the creatures thou hast made!'' her description was here suddenly interrupted by the signal for assault, which was given by the blast of a shrill bugle, and at once answered by a flourish of the norman trumpets from the battlements, which, mingled with the deep and hollow clang of the nakers, (a species of kettle-drum,) retorted in notes of defiance the challenge of the enemy. the shouts of both parties augmented the fearful din, the assailants crying, ``saint george for merry england!'' and the normans answering them with loud cries of ``_en avant de bracy! ---beauseant! beau-seant!---front-de-b<oe>uf <a`> la rescousse!'' according to the war-cries of their different commanders. it was not, however, by clamour that the contest was to be decided, and the desperate efforts of the assailants were met by an equally vigorous defence on the part of the besieged. the archers, trained by their woodland pastimes to the most effective use of the long-bow, shot, to use the appropriate phrase of the time, so ``wholly together,'' that no point at which a defender could show the least part of his person, escaped their cloth-yard shafts. by this heavy discharge, which continued as thick and sharp as hail, while, notwithstanding, every arrow had its individual aim, and flew by scores together against each embrasure and opening in the parapets, as well as at every window where a defender either occasionally had post, or might be suspected to be stationed,---by this sustained discharge, two or three of the arrison were slain, and several others wounded. but, confident in their armour of proof, and in the cover which their situation afforded, the followers of front-de-b<oe>uf, and his allies, showed an obstinacy in defence proportioned to the fury of the attack and replied with the discharge of their large cross-bows, as well as with their long-bows, slings, and other missile weapons, to the close and continued shower of arrows; and, as the assailants were necessarily but indifferently protected, did considerably more damage than they received at their hand. the whizzing of shafts and of missiles, on both sides, was only interrupted by the shouts which arose when either side inflicted or sustained some notable loss. ``and i must lie here like a bedridden monk,'' exclaimed ivanhoe, ``while the game that gives me freedom or death is played out by the hand of others!---look from the window once again, kind maiden, but beware that you are not marked by the archers beneath---look out once more, and tell me if they yet advance to the storm.'' with patient courage, strengthened by the interval which she had employed in mental devotion, rebecca again took post at the lattice, sheltering herself, however, so as not to be visible from beneath. ``what dost thou see, rebecca?'' again demanded the wounded knight. ``nothing but the cloud of arrows flying so thick as to dazzle mine eyes, and to hide the bowmen who shoot them.'' ``that cannot endure,'' said ivanhoe; ``if they press not right on to carry the castle by pure force of arms, the archery may avail but little against stone walls and bulwarks. look for the knight of the fetterlock, fair rebecca, and see how he bears himself; for as the leader is, so will his followers be.'' ``i see him not,'' said rebecca. ``foul craven!'' exclaimed ivanhoe; ``does he blench from the helm when the wind blows highest?'' ``he blenches not! he blenches not!'' said rebecca, ``i see him now; he leads a body of men close under the outer barrier of the barbican.*--* every gothic castle and city had, beyond the outer-walls, * a fortification composed of palisades, called the barriers, which * were often the scene of severe skirmishes, as these must necessarily * be carried before the walls themselves could be approached. * many of those valiant feats of arms which adorn the chivalrous * pages of froissart took place at the barriers of besieged * places. they pull down the piles and palisades; they hew down the barriers with axes.---his high black plume floats abroad over the throng, like a raven over the field of the slain.---they have made a breach in the barriers---they rush in---they are thrust back!--front-de-b<oe>uf heads the defenders; i see his gigantic form above the press. they throng again to the breach, and the pass is disputed hand to hand, and man to man. god of jacob! it is the meeting of two fierce tides---the conflict of two oceans moved by adverse winds!'' she turned her head from the lattice, as if unable longer to endure a sight so terrible. ``look forth again, rebecca,'' said ivanhoe, mistaking the cause of her retiring; ``the archery must in some degree have ceased, since they are now fighting hand to hand.---look again, there is now less danger.'' rebecca again looked forth, and almost immediately exclaimed, ``holy prophets of the law! front-de-b<oe>uf and the black knight fight hand to hand on the breach, amid the roar of their followers, who watch the progress of the strife---heaven strike with the cause of the oppressed and of the captive!'' she then uttered a loud shriek, and exclaimed, ``he is down!---he is down!'' ``who is down?'' cried ivanhoe; ``for our dear lady's sake, tell me which has fallen?'' ``the black knight,'' answered rebecca, faintly; then instantly again shouted with joyful eagerness--``but no---but no!---the name of the lord of hosts be blessed!---he is on foot again, and fights as if there were twenty men's strength in his single arm---his sword is broken---he snatches an axe from a yeoman---he presses front-de-b<oe>uf with blow on blow---the giant stoops and totters like an oak under the steel of the woodman---he falls---he falls!'' ``front-de-b<oe>uf?'' exclaimed ivanhoe. ``front-de-b<oe>uf!'' answered the jewess; ``his men rush to the rescue, headed by the haughty templar---their united force compels the champion to pause---they drag front-de-b<oe>uf within the walls.'' ``the assailants have won the barriers, have they not?'' said ivanhoe. ``they have---they have!'' exclaimed rebecca--``and they press the besieged hard upon the outer wall; some plant ladders, some swarm like bees, and endeavour to ascend upon the shoulders of each other---down go stones, beams, and trunks of trees upon their heads, and as fast as they bear the wounded to the rear, fresh men supply their places in the assault---great god! hast thou given men thine own image, that it should be thus cruelly defaced by the hands of their brethren!'' ``think not of that,'' said ivanhoe; ``this is no time for such thoughts---who yield?---who push their way?'' ``the ladders are thrown down,'' replied rebecca, shuddering; ``the soldiers lie grovelling under them like crushed reptiles---the besieged have the better.'' ``saint george strike for us!'' exclaimed the knight; ``do the false yeomen give way?'' ``no!'' exclaimed rebecca, ``they bear themselves right yeomanly---the black knight approaches the postern with his huge axe---the thundering blows which he deals, you may hear them above all the din and shouts of the battle---stones and beams are hailed down on the bold champion--he regards them no more than if they were thistle-down or feathers!'' ``by saint john of acre,'' said ivanhoe, raising himself joyfully on his couch, ``methought there was but one man in england that might do such a deed!'' ``the postern gate shakes,'' continued rebecca; ``it crashes---it is splintered by his blows---they rush in---the outwork is won---oh, god!---they hurl the defenders from the battlements---they throw them into the moat---o men, if ye be indeed men, spare them that can resist no longer!'' ``the bridge---the bridge which communicates with the castle---have they won that pass?'' exclaimed ivanhoe. ``no,'' replied rebecca, ``the templar has destroyed the plank on which they crossed---few of the defenders escaped with him into the castle--the shrieks and cries which you hear tell the fate of the others---alas!---i see it is still more difficult to look upon victory than upon battle.'' ``what do they now, maiden?'' said ivanhoe; ``look forth yet again---this is no time to faint at bloodshed.'' ``it is over for the time,'' answered rebecca; ``our friends strengthen themselves within the outwork which they have mastered, and it affords them so good a shelter from the foemen's shot, that the garrison only bestow a few bolts on it from interval to interval, as if rather to disquiet than effectually to injure them.'' ``our friends,'' said wilfred, ``will surely not abandon an enterprise so gloriously begun and so happily attained.---o no! i will put my faith in the good knight whose axe hath rent heart-of-oak and bars of iron.---singular,'' he again muttered to himself, ``if there be two who can do a deed of such _derring-do!_*---a fetterlock, and a shacklebolt on * _derring-do_---desperate courage. a field sable---what may that mean?---seest thou nought else, rebecca, by which the black knight may be distinguished?'' ``nothing,'' said the jewess; ``all about him is black as the wing of the night raven. nothing can i spy that can mark him further---but having once seen him put forth his strength in battle, methinks i could know him again among a thousand warriors. he rushes to the fray as if he were summoned to a banquet. there is more than mere strength, there seems as if the whole soul and spirit of the champion were given to every blow which he deals upon his enemies. god assoilzie him of the sin of bloodshed!---it is fearful, yet magnificent, to behold bow the arm and heart of one man can triumph over hundreds.'' ``rebecca,'' said ivanhoe, ``thou hast painted a hero; surely they rest but to refresh their force, or to provide the means of crossing the moat---under such a leader as thou hast spoken this knight to be, there are no craven fears, no cold-blooded delays, no yielding up a gallant emprize; since the difficulties which render it arduous render it also glorious. i swear by the honour of my house---i vow by the name of my bright lady-love, i would endure ten years' captivity to fight one day by that good knight's side in such a quarrel as this!'' ``alas,'' said rebecca, leaving her station at the window, and approaching the couch of the wounded knight, ``this impatient yearning after action--this struggling with and repining at your present weakness, will not fail to injure your returning health---how couldst thou hope to inflict wounds on others, ere that be healed which thou thyself hast received?'' ``rebecca,'' he replied, ``thou knowest not how impossible it is for one trained to actions of chivalry to remain passive as a priest, or a woman, when they are acting deeds of honour around him. the love of battle is the food upon which we live ---the dust of the _m<e^>l<e'>e_ is the breath of our nostrils! we live not---we wish not to live---longer than while we are victorious and renowned---such, maiden, are the laws of chivalry to which we are sworn, and to which we offer all that we hold dear.'' ``alas!'' said the fair jewess, ``and what is it, valiant knight, save an offering of sacrifice to a demon of vain glory, and a passing through the fire to moloch?---what remains to you as the prize of all the blood you have spilled---of all the travail and pain you have endured---of all the tears which your deeds have caused, when death hath broken the strong man's spear, and overtaken the speed of his war-horse?'' ``what remains?'' cried ivanhoe; ``glory, maiden, glory! which gilds our sepulchre and embalms our name.'' ``glory?'' continued rebecca; ``alas, is the rusted mail which hangs as a hatchment over the champion's dim and mouldering tomb---is the defaced sculpture of the inscription which the ignorant monk can hardly read to the enquiring pilgrim ---are these sufficient rewards for the sacrifice of every kindly affection, for a life spent miserably that ye may make others miserable? or is there such virtue in the rude rhymes of a wandering bard, that domestic love, kindly affection, peace and happiness, are so wildly bartered, to become the hero of those ballads which vagabond minstrels sing to drunken churls over their evening ale?'' ``by the soul of hereward?'' replied the knight impatiently, ``thou speakest, maiden, of thou knowest not what. thou wouldst quench the pure light of chivalry, which alone distinguishes the noble from the base, the gentle knight from the churl and the savage; which rates our life far, far beneath the pitch of our honour; raises us victorious over pain, toil, and suffering, and teaches us to fear no, evil but disgrace. thou art no christian, rebecca; and to thee are unknown those high feelings which swell the bosom of a noble maiden when her lover hath done some deed of emprize which sanctions his flame. chivalry!---why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection---the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant---nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.'' ``i am, indeed,'' said rebecca, ``sprung from a race whose courage was distinguished in the defence of their own land, but who warred not, even while yet a nation, save at the command of the deity, or in defending their country from oppression. the sound of the trumpet wakes judah no longer, and her despised children are now but the unresisting victims of hostile and military oppression. well hast thou spoken, sir knight,---until the god of jacob shall raise up for his chosen people a second gideon, or a new maccabeus, it ill beseemeth the jewish damsel to speak of battle or of war.'' the high-minded maiden concluded the argument in a tone of sorrow, which deeply expressed her sense of the degradation of her people, embittered perhaps by the idea that ivanhoe considered her as one not entitled to interfere in a case of honour, and incapable of entertaining or expressing sentiments of honour and generosity. ``how little he knows this bosom,'' she said, ``to imagine that cowardice or meanness of soul must needs be its guests, because i have censured the fantastic chivalry of the nazarenes! would to heaven that the shedding of mine own blood, drop by drop, could redeem the captivity of judah! nay, would to god it could avail to set free my father, and this his benefactor, from the chains of the oppressor! the proud christian should then see whether the daughter of god's chosen people dared not to die as bravely as the vainest nazarene maiden, that boasts her descent from some petty chieftain of the rude and frozen north!'' she then looked towards the couch of the wounded knight. ``he sleeps,'' she said; ``nature exhausted by sufferance and the waste of spirits, his wearied frame embraces the first moment of temporary relaxation to sink into slumber. alas! is it a crime that i should look upon him, when it may be for the last time?---when yet but a short space, and those fair features will be no longer animated by the bold and buoyant spirit which forsakes them not even in sleep!---when the nostril shall be distended, the mouth agape, the eyes fixed and bloodshot; and when the proud and noble knight may be trodden on by the lowest caitiff of this accursed castle, yet stir not when the heel is lifted up against him! ---and my father!---oh, my father! evil is it with his daughter, when his grey hairs are not remembered because of the golden locks of youth!--what know i but that these evils are the messengers of jehovah's wrath to the unnatural child, who thinks of a stranger's captivity before a parent's? who forgets the desolation of judah, and looks upon the comeliness of a gentile and a stranger?--but i will tear this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as i rend it away!'' she wrapped herself closely in her veil, and sat down at a distance from the couch of the wounded knight, with her back turned towards it, fortifying, or endeavouring to fortify her mind, not only against the impending evils from without, but also against those treacherous feelings which assailed her from within. addition to note attached to page **. in corroboration of what is above stated in note at page **, it may be observed, that the arms, which were assumed by godfrey of boulogne himself, after the conquest of jerusalem, was a cross counter patent cantoned with four little crosses or, upon a field azure, displaying thus metal upon metal. the heralds have tried to explain this undeniable fact in different modes--but ferne gallantly contends, that a prince of godfrey's qualities should not be bound by the ordinary rules. the scottish nisbet, and the same ferne, insist that the chiefs of the crusade must have assigned to godfrey this extraordinary and unwonted coat-of-arms, in order to induce those who should behold them to make enquiries; and hence give them the name of _arma inquirenda_. but with reverence to these grave authorities, it seems unlikely that the assembled princes of europe should have adjudged to godfrey a coat armorial so much contrary to the general rule, if such rule had then existed; at any rate, it proves that metal upon metal, now accounted a solecism in heraldry, was admitted in other cases similar to that in the text. see ferne's _blazon of gentrie_, p. 238. edition 1586. nisbet's _heraldry_, vol. i. p. 113. second edition. chapter xxx. approach the chamber, look upon his bed. his is the passing of no peaceful ghost, which, as the lark arises to the sky, 'mid morning's sweetest breeze and softest dew, is wing'd to heaven by good men's sighs and tears!-- anselm parts otherwise. _old play._ during the interval of quiet which followed the first success of the besiegers, while the one party was preparing to pursue their advantage, and the other to strengthen their means of defence, the templar and de bracy held brief council together in the hall of the castle. ``where is front-de-b<oe>uf?'' said the latter, who had superintended the defence of the fortress on the other side; ``men say he hath been slain.'' ``he lives,'' said the templar, coolly, ``lives as yet; but had he worn the bull's head of which he bears the name, and ten plates of iron to fence it withal, he must have gone down before yonder fatal axe. yet a few hours, and front-de-b<oe>uf is with his fathers---a powerful limb lopped off prince john's enterprise.'' ``and a brave addition to the kingdom of satan,'' said de bracy; ``this comes of reviling saints and angels, and ordering images of holy things and holy men to be flung down on the heads of these rascaille yeomen.'' ``go to---thou art a fool,'' said the templar; ``thy superstition is upon a level with front-de-b<oe>uf's want of faith; neither of you can render a reason for your belief or unbelief.'' ``benedicite, sir templar,'' replied de bracy, ``pray you to keep better rule with your tongue when i am the theme of it. by the mother of heaven, i am a better christian man than thou and thy fellowship; for the _bruit_ goeth shrewdly out, that the most holy order of the temple of zion nurseth not a few heretics within its bosom, and that sir brian de bois-guilbert is of the number.'' ``care not thou for such reports,'' said the templar; ``but let us think of making good the castle. ---how fought these villain yeomen on thy side?'' ``like fiends incarnate,'' said de bracy. ``they swanned close up to the walls, headed, as i think, by the knave who won the prize at the archery, for i knew his horn and baldric. and this is old fitzurse's boasted policy, encouraging these malapert knaves to rebel against us! had i not been armed in proof, the villain had marked me down seven times with as little remorse as if i had been a buck in season. he told every rivet on my armour with a cloth-yard shaft, that rapped against my ribs with as little compunction as if my bones had been of iron---but that i wore a shirt of spanish mail under my plate-coat, i had been fairly sped.'' ``but you maintained your post?'' said the templar. ``we lost the outwork on our part.'' ``that is a shrewd loss,'' said de bracy; ``the knaves will find cover there to assault the castle more closely, and may, if not well watched, gain some unguarded corner of a tower, or some forgotten window, and so break in upon us. our numbers are too few for the defence of every point, and the men complain that they can nowhere show themselves, but they are the mark for as many arrows as a parish-butt on a holyday even. front-de-b<oe>uf is dying too, so we shall receive no more aid from his bull's head and brutal strength. how think you, sir brian, were we not better make a virtue of necessity, and compound with the rogues by delivering up our prisoners?'' ``how?'' exclaimed the templar; ``deliver up our prisoners, and stand an object alike of ridicule and execration, as the doughty warriors who dared by a night-attack to possess themselves of the persons of a party of defenceless travellers, yet could not make good a strong castle against a vagabond troop of outlaws, led by swineherds, jesters, and the very refuse of mankind?---shame on thy counsel, maurice de bracy!---the ruins of this castle shall bury both my body and my shame, ere i consent to such base and dishonourable composition.'' ``let us to the walls, then,'' said de bracy, carelessly; ``that man never breathed, be he turk or templar, who held life at lighter rate than i do. but i trust there is no dishonour in wishing i had here some two scores of my gallant troop of free companions?---oh, my brave lances! if ye knew but how hard your captain were this day bested, how soon should i see my banner at the head of your clump of spears! and how short while would these rabble villains stand to endure your encounter!'' ``wish for whom thou wilt,'' said the templar, ``but let us make what defence we can with the soldiers who remain---they are chiefly front-de-b<oe>uf's followers, hated by the english for a thousand acts of insolence and oppression.'' ``the better,'' said de bracy; ``the rugged slaves will defend themselves to the last drop of their blood, ere they encounter the revenge of the peasants without. let us up and be doing, then, brian de bois-guilbert; and, live or die, thou shalt see maurice de bracy bear himself this day as a gentleman of blood and lineage.'' ``to the walls!'' answered the templar; and they both ascended the battlements to do all that skill could dictate, and manhood accomplish, in defence of the place. they readily agreed that the point of greatest danger was that opposite to the outwork of which the assailants had possessed themselves. the castle, indeed, was divided from that barbican by the moat, and it was impossible that the besiegers could assail the postern-door, with which the outwork corresponded, without surmounting that obstacle; but it was the opinion both of the templar and de bracy, that the besiegers, if governed by the same policy their leader had already displayed, would endeavour, by a formidable assault, to draw the chief part of the defenders' observation to this point, and take measures to avail themselves of every negligence which might take place in the defence elsewhere. to guard against such an evil, their numbers only permitted the knights to place sentinels from space to space along the walls in communication with each other, who might give the alarm whenever danger was threatened. meanwhile, they agreed that de bracy should command the defence at the postern, and the templar should keep with him a score of men or thereabouts as a body of reserve, ready to hasten to any other point which might be suddenly threatened. the loss of the barbican had also this unfortunate effect, that, notwithstanding the superior height of the castle walls, the besieged could not see from them, with the same precision as before, the operations of the enemy; for some straggling underwood approached so near the sallyport of the outwork, that the assailants might introduce into it whatever force they thought proper, not only under cover, but even without the knowledge of the defenders. utterly uncertain, therefore, upon what point the storm was to burst, de bracy and his companion were under the necessity of providing against every possible contingency, and their followers, however brave, experienced the anxious dejection of mind incident to men enclosed by enemies, who possessed the power of choosing their time and mode of attack. meanwhile, the lord of the beleaguered and endangered castle lay upon a bed of bodily pain and mental agony. he had not the usual resource of bigots in that superstitious period, most of whom were wont to atone for the crimes they were guilty of by liberality to the church, stupefying by this means their terrors by the idea of atonement and forgiveness; and although the refuge which success thus purchased, was no more like to the peace of mind which follows on sincere repentance, than the turbid stupefaction procured by opium resembles healthy and natural slumbers, it was still a state of mind preferable to the agonies of awakened remorse. but among the vices of front-de-b<oe>uf, a hard and griping man, avarice was predominant; and he preferred setting church and churchmen at defiance, to purchasing from them pardon and absolution at the price of treasure and of manors. nor did the templar, an infidel of another stamp, justly characterise his associate, when he said front-de-b<oe>uf could assign no cause for his unbelief and contempt for the established faith; for the baron would have alleged that the church sold her wares too dear, that the spiritual freedom which she put up to sale was only to be bought like that of the chief captain of jerusalem, ``with a great sum,'' and front-de-b<oe>uf preferred denying the virtue of the medicine, to paying the expense of the physician. but the moment had now arrived when earth and all his treasures were gliding from before his eyes, and when the savage baron's heart, though hard as a nether millstone, became appalled as he gazed forward into the waste darkness of futurity. the fever of his body aided the impatience and agony of his mind, and his death-bed exhibited a mixture of the newly awakened feelings of horror, combating with the fixed and inveterate obstinacy of his disposition; ---a fearful state of mind, only to be equalled in those tremendous regions, where there are complaints without hope, remorse without repentance, a dreadful sense of present agony, and a presentiment that it cannot cease or be diminished! ``where be these dog-priests now,'' growled the baron, ``who set such price on their ghostly mummery? ---where be all those unshod carmelites, for whom old front-de-b<oe>uf founded the convent of st anne, robbing his heir of many a fair rood of meadow, and many a fat field and close---where be the greedy hounds now?---swilling, i warrant me, at the ale, or playing their juggling tricks at the bedside of some miserly churl.---me, the heir of their founder---me, whom their foundation binds them to pray for---me---ungrateful villains as they are!---they suffer to die like the houseless dog on yonder common, unshriven and tinhouseled!---tell the templar to come hither---he is a priest, and may do something---but no!---as well confess myself to the devil as to brian de bois-guilbert, who recks neither of heaven nor of hell.---i have heard old men talk of prayer---prayer by their own voice ---such need not to court or to bribe the false priest ---but i---i dare not!'' ``lives reginald front-de-b<oe>uf,'' said a broken and shrill voice close by his bedside, ``to say there is that which he dares not!'' the evil conscience and the shaken nerves of front-de-b<oe>uf heard, in this strange interruption to his soliloquy, the voice of one of those demons, who, as the superstition of the times believed, beset the beds of dying men to distract their thoughts, and turn them from the meditations which concerned their eternal welfare. he shuddered and drew himself together; but, instantly summoning up his wonted resolution, he exclaimed, ``who is there?---what art thou, that darest to echo my words in a tone like that of the night-raven?--come before my couch that i may see thee.'' ``i am thine evil angel, reginald front-de-b<oe>uf,'' replied the voice. ``let me behold thee then in thy bodily shape, if thou best indeed a fiend,'' replied the dying knight; ``think not that i will blench from thee. ---by the eternal dungeon, could i but grapple with these horrors that hover round me, as i have done with mortal dangers, heaven or hell should never say that i shrunk from the conflict!'' ``think on thy sins, reginald front-de-b<oe>uf,'' said the almost unearthly voice, ``on rebellion, on rapine, on murder!---who stirred up the licentious john to war against his grey-headed father---against his generous brother?'' ``be thou fiend, priest, or devil,'' replied front-de-b<oe>uf, ``thou liest in thy throat!---not i stirred john to rebellion---not i alone---there were fifty knights and barons, the flower of the midland counties---better men never laid lance in rest---and must i answer for the fault done by fifty?---false fiend, i defy thee! depart, and haunt my couch no more---let me die in peace if thou be mortal--if thou be a demon, thy time is not yet come.'' ``in peace thou shalt =not= die,'' repeated the voice; ``even in death shalt thou think on thy murders ---on the groans which this castle has echoed--on the blood that is engrained in its floors!'' ``thou canst not shake me by thy petty malice,'' answered front-de-b<oe>uf, with a ghastly and constrained laugh. ``the infidel jew---it was merit with heaven to deal with him as i did, else wherefore are men canonized who dip their hands in the blood of saracens?---the saxon porkers, whom i have slain, they were the foes of my country, and of my lineage, and of my liege lord.---ho! ho! thou seest there is no crevice in my coat of plate--art thou fled?---art thou silenced?'' ``no, foul parricide!'' replied the voice; ``think of thy father!---think of his death!---think of his banquet-room flooded with his gore, and that poured forth by the hand of a son!'' ``ha!'' answered the baron, after a long pause, ``an thou knowest that, thou art indeed the author of evil, and as omniscient as the monks call thee! ---that secret i deemed locked in my own breast, and in that of one besides---the temptress, the partaker of my guilt.---go, leave me, fiend! and seek the saxon witch ulrica, who alone could tell thee what she and i alone witnessed.---go, i say, to her, who washed the wounds, and straighted the corpse, and gave to the slain man the outward show of one parted in time and in the course of nature---go to her, she was my temptress, the foul provoker, the more foul rewarder, of the deed---let her, as well as i, taste of the tortures which anticipate hell!'' ``she already tastes them,'' said ulrica, stepping before the couch of front-de-b<oe>uf; ``she hath long drunken of this cup, and its bitterness is now sweetened to see that thou dost partake it.---grind not thy teeth, front-de-b<oe>uf---roll not thine eyes ---clench not thine hand, nor shake it at me with that gesture of menace!---the hand which, like that of thy renowned ancestor who gained thy name, could have broken with one stroke the skull of a mountain-bull, is now unnerved and powerless as mine own!'' ``vile murderous hag!'' replied front-de-b<oe>uf; ``detestable screech-owl! it is then thou who art come to exult over the ruins thou hast assisted to lay low?'' ``ay, reginald front-de-b<oe>uf,'' answered she, ``it is ulrica!---it is the daughter of the murdered torquil wolfganger!---it is the sister of his slaughtered sons!---it is she who demands of thee, and of thy father's house, father and kindred, name and fame---all that she has lost by the name of front-de-b<oe>uf!---think of my wrongs, front-de-b<oe>uf, and answer me if i speak not truth. thou hast been my evil angel, and i will be thine---i will dog thee till the very instant of dissolution!'' ``detestable fury!'' exclaimed front-de-b<oe>uf, ``that moment shalt thou never witness---ho! giles, clement, and eustace! saint maur, and stephen! seize this damned witch, and hurl her from the battlements headlong---she has betrayed us to the saxon!---ho! saint maur! clement! false-hearted, knaves, where tarry ye?'' ``call on them again, valiant baron,'' said the hag, with a smile of grisly mockery; ``summon thy vassals around thee, doom them that loiter to the scourge and the dungeon---but know, mighty chief,'' she continued, suddenly changing her tone, ``thou shalt have neither answer, nor aid, nor obedience at their hands.---listen to these horrid sounds,'' for the din of the recommenced assault and defence now rung fearfully loud from the battlements of the castle; ``in that war-cry is the downfall of thy house---the blood-cemented fabric of front-de-b<oe>uf's power totters to the foundation, and before the foes he most despised!---the saxon, reginald! ---the scorned saxon assails thy walls!---why liest thou here, like a worn-out hind, when the saxon storms thy place of strength?'' ``gods and fiends!'' exclaimed the wounded knight; ``o, for one moment's strength, to drag myself to the _m<e^>l<e'>e_, and perish as becomes my name!'' ``think not of it, valiant warrior!'' replied she; ``thou shalt die no soldier's death, but perish like the fox in his den, when the peasants have set fire to the cover around it.'' ``hateful hag! thou liest!'' exclaimed front-de-b<oe>uf; ``my followers bear them bravely---my walls are strong and high---my comrades in arms fear not a whole host of saxons, were they headed by hengist and horsa!---the war-cry of the templar and of the free companions rises high over the conflict! and by mine honour, when we kindle the blazing beacon, for joy of our defence, it shall consume thee, body and bones; and i shall live to hear thou art gone from earthly fires to those of that hell, which never sent forth an incarnate fiend more utterly diabolical!'' ``hold thy belief,'' replied ulrica, ``till the proof reach thee---but, no!'' she said, interrupting herself, ``thou shalt know, even now, the doom, which all thy power, strength, and courage, is unable to avoid, though it is prepared for thee by this feeble band. markest thou the smouldering and suffocating vapour which already eddies in sable folds through the chamber?---didst thou think it was but the darkening of thy bursting eyes---the difficulty of thy cumbered breathing?---no! front-de-b<oe>uf, there is another cause---rememberest thou the magazine of fuel that is stored beneath these apartments?'' ``woman!'' he exclaimed with fury, ``thou hast not set fire to it?---by heaven, thou hast, and the castle is in flames!'' ``they are fast rising at least,'' said ulrica, with frightful composure; ``and a signal shall soon wave to warn the besiegers to press hard upon those who would extinguish them.---farewell, front-de-b<oe>uf! ---may mista, skogula, and zernebock, gods of the ancient saxons---fiends, as the priests now call them---supply the place of comforters at your dying bed, which ulrica now relinquishes!--but know, if it will give thee comfort to know it, that ulrica is bound to the same dark coast with thyself, the companion of thy punishment as the companion of thy guilt.---and now, parricide, farewell for ever!---may each stone of this vaulted roof find a tongue to echo that title into thine ear!'' so saying, she left the apartment; and front-de-b<oe>uf could hear the crash of the ponderous key, as she locked and double-locked the door behind her, thus cutting off the most slender chance of escape. in the extremity of agony he shouted upon his servants and allies--``stephen and saint maur! ---clement and giles!---i burn here unaided!--to the rescue---to the rescue, brave bois-guilbert, valiant de bracy!---it is front-de-b<oe>uf who calls! ---it is your master, ye traitor squires!---your ally ---your brother in arms, ye perjured and faithless knights!---all the curses due to traitors upon your recreant heads, do you abandon me to perish thus miserably!---they hear me not---they cannot hear me---my voice is lost in the din of battle.---the smoke rolls thicker and thicker---the fire has caught upon the floor below---o, for one drought of the air of heaven, were it to be purchased by instant annihilation!'' and in the mad frenzy of despair, the wretch now shouted with the shouts of the fighters, now muttered curses on himself, on mankind, and on heaven itself.---``the red fire flashes through the thick smoke!'' he exclaimed; ``the demon marches against me under the banner of his own element---foul spirit, avoid!---i go not with thee without my comrades---all, all are thine, that garrison these walls---thinkest thou front-de-b<oe>uf will be singled out to go alone?---no---the infidel templar---the licentious de bracy---ulrica, the foul murdering strumpet---the men who aided my enterprises---the dog saxons and accursed jews, who are my prisoners---all, all shall attend me---a goodly fellowship as ever took the downward road---ha, ha, ha!'' and he laughed in his frenzy till the vaulted roof rang again. ``who laughed there?'' exclaimed front-de-b<oe>uf, in altered mood, for the noise of the conflict did not prevent the echoes of his own mad laughter from returning upon his ear---``who laughed there?--ulrica, was it thou?---speak, witch, and i forgive thee---for, only thou or the fiend of hell himself could have laughed at such a moment. avaunt--avaunt!------'' but it were impious to trace any farther the picture of the blasphemer and parricide's deathbed. chapter xxxi. once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, or, close the wall up with our english dead. --------------and you, good yeomen, whose limbs were made in england, show us here the mettle of your pasture---let us swear that you are worth your breeding. _king henry v._ cedric, although not greatly confident in ulrica's message, omitted not to communicate her promise to the black knight and locksley. they were well pleased to find they had a friend within the place, who might, in the moment of need, be able to facilitate their entrance, and readily agreed with the saxon that a storm, under whatever disadvantages, ought to be attempted, as the only means of liberating the prisoners now in the hands of the cruel front-de-b<oe>uf. ``the royal blood of alfred is endangered,'' said cedric. ``the honour of a noble lady is in peril,'' said the black knight. ``and, by the saint christopher at my baldric,'' said the good yeoman, ``were there no other cause than the safety of that poor faithful knave, wamba, i would jeopard a joint ere a hair of his head were hurt.'' ``and so would i,'' said the friar; ``what, sirs! i trust well that a fool---i mean, d'ye see me, sirs, a fool that is free of his guild and master of his craft, and can give as much relish and flavour to a cup of wine as ever a flitch of bacon can---i say, brethren, such a fool shall never want a wise clerk to pray for or fight for him at a strait, while i can say a mass or flourish a partisan.'' and with that he made his heavy halberd to play around his head as a shepherd boy flourishes his light crook. ``true, holy clerk,'' said the black knight, ``true as if saint dunstan himself had said it.--and now, good locksley, were it not well that noble cedric should assume the direction of this assault?'' ``not a jot i,'' returned cedric; ``i have never been wont to study either how to take or how to hold out those abodes of tyrannic power, which the normans have erected in this groaning land. i will fight among the foremost; but my honest neighbours well know i am not a trained soldier in the discipline of wars, or the attack of strongholds.'' ``since it stands thus with noble cedric,'' said locksley, ``i am most willing to take on me the direction of the archery; and ye shall hang me up on my own trysting-tree, an the defenders be permitted to show themselves over the walls without being stuck with as many shafts as there are cloves in a gammon of bacon at christmas.'' ``well said, stout yeoman,'' answered the black knight; ``and if i be thought worthy to have a charge in these matters, and can find among these brave men as many as are willing to follow a true english knight, for so i may surely call myself, i am ready, with such skill as my experience has taught me, to lead them to the attack of these walls.'' the parts being thus distributed to the leaders, they commenced the first assault, of which the reader has already heard the issue. when the barbican was carried, the sable knight sent notice of the happy event to locksley, requesting him at the same time, to keep such a strict observation on the castle as might prevent the defenders from combining their force for a sudden sally, and recovering the outwork which they had lost. this the knight was chiefly desirous of avoiding, conscious that the men whom he led, being hasty and untrained volunteers, imperfectly armed and unaccustomed to discipline, must, upon any sudden attack, fight at great disadvantage with the veteran soldiers of the norman knights, who were well provided with arms both defensive and offensive; and who, to match the zeal and high spirit of the besiegers, had all the confidence which arises from perfect discipline and the habitual use of weapons. the knight employed the interval in causing to be constructed a sort of floating bridge, or long raft, by means of which he hoped to cross the moat in despite of the resistance of the enemy. this was a work of some time, which the leaders the less regretted, as it gave ulrica leisure to execute her plan of diversion in their favour, whatever that might be. when the raft was completed, the black knight addressed the besiegers:---``it avails not waiting here longer, my friends; the sun is descending to the west---and i have that upon my hands which will not permit me to tarry with you another day. besides, it will be a marvel if the horsemen come not upon us from york, unless we speedily accomplish our purpose. wherefore, one of ye go to locksley, and bid him commence a discharge of arrows on the opposite side of the castle, and move forward as if about to assault it; and you, true english hearts, stand by me, and be ready to thrust the raft endlong over the moat whenever the postern on our side is thrown open. follow me boldly across, and aid me to burst yon sallyport in the main wall of the castle. as many of you as like not this service, or are but ill armed to meet it, do you man the top of the outwork, draw your bow-strings to your ears, and mind you quell with your shot whatever shall appear to man the rampart--noble cedric, wilt thou take the direction of those which remain?'' ``not so, by the soul of hereward!'' said the saxon; ``lead i cannot; but may posterity curse me in my grave, if i follow not with the foremost wherever thou shalt point the way---the quarrel is mine, and well it becomes me to be in the van of the battle.'' ``yet, bethink thee, noble saxon,'' said the knight, ``thou hast neither hauberk, nor corslet, nor aught but that light helmet, target, and sword.'' ``the better!'' answered cedric; ``i shall be the lighter to climb these walls. and,---forgive the boast, sir knight,---thou shalt this day see the naked breast of a saxon as boldly presented to the battle as ever ye beheld the steel corslet of a norman.'' ``in the name of god, then,'' said the knight, ``fling open the door, and launch the floating bridge.'' the portal, which led from the inner-wall of the barbican to the moat, and which corresponded with a sallyport in the main wall of the castle, was now suddenly opened; the temporary bridge was then thrust forward, and soon flashed in the waters, extending its length between the castle and outwork, and forming a slippery and precarious passage for two men abreast to cross the moat. well aware of the importance of taking the foe by surprise, the black knight, closely followed by cedric, threw himself upon the bridge, and reached the opposite side. here he began to thunder with his axe upon the gate of the castle, protected in part from the shot and stones cast by the defenders by the ruins of the former drawbridge, which the templar had demolished in his retreat from the barbican, leaving the counterpoise still attached to the upper part of the portal. the followers of the knight had no such shelter; two were instantly shot with cross-bow bolts, and two more fell into the moat; the others retreated back into the barbican. the situation of cedric and of the black knight was now truly dangerous, and would have been still more so, but for the constancy of the archers in the barbican, who ceased not to shower their arrows upon the battlements, distracting the attention of those by whom they were manned, and thus affording a respite to their two chiefs from the storm of missiles which must otherwise have overwhelmed them. but their situation was eminently perilous, and was becoming more so with every moment. ``shame on ye all!'' cried de bracy to the soldiers around him; ``do ye call yourselves cross-bowmen, and let these two dogs keep their station under the walls of the castle?---heave over the coping stones from the battlements, an better may not be---get pick-axe and levers, and down with that huge pinnacle!'' pointing to a heavy piece of stone carved-work that projected from the parapet. at this moment the besiegers caught sight of the red flag upon the angle of the tower which ulrica had described to cedric. the stout yeoman locksley was the first who was aware of it, as he was hasting to the outwork, impatient to see the progress of the assault. ``saint george!'' he cried, ``merry saint george for england!---to the charge, bold yeomen!---why leave ye the good knight and noble cedric to storm the pass alone?---make in, mad priest, show thou canst fight for thy rosary,---make in, brave yeomen! ---the castle is ours, we have friends within---see yonder flag, it is the appointed signal---torquilstone is ours!---think of honour, think of spoil---one effort, and the place is ours!'' with that he bent his good bow, and sent a shaft right through the breast of one of the men-at-arms, who, under de bracy's direction, was loosening a fragment from one of the battlements to precipitate on the heads of cedric and the black knight. a second soldier caught from the hands of the dying man the iron crow, with which he heaved at and had loosened the stone pinnacle, when, receiving an arrow through his head-piece, he dropped from the battlements into the moat a dead man. the men-at-arms were daunted, for no armour seemed proof against the shot of this tremendous archer. ``do you give ground, base knaves!'' said de bracy; ``_mount joye saint dennis!_---give me the lever!'' and, snatching it up, he again assailed the loosened pinnacle, which was of weight enough, if thrown down, not only to have destroyed the remnant of the drawbridge, which sheltered the two foremost assailants, but also to have sunk the rude float of planks over which they had crossed. all saw the danger, and the boldest, even the stout friar himself, avoided setting foot on the raft. thrice did locksley bend his shaft against de bracy, and thrice did his arrow bound back from the knight's armour of proof. ``curse on thy spanish steel-coat!'' said locksley, ``had english smith forged it, these arrows had gone through, an as if it had been silk or sendal.'' he then began to call out, ``comrades! friends! noble cedric! bear back, and let the ruin fall.'' his warning voice was unheard, for the din which the knight himself occasioned by his strokes upon the postern would have drowned twenty war-trumpets. the faithful gurth indeed sprung forward on the planked bridge, to warn cedric of his impending fate, or to share it with him. but his warning would have come too late; the massive pinnacle already tottered, and de bracy, who still heaved at his task, would have accomplished it, had not the voice of the templar sounded close in his ears:-- ``all is lost, de bracy, the castle burns.'' ``thou art mad to say so!'' replied the knight. ``it is all in a light flame on the western side. i have striven in vain to extinguish it.'' with the stern coolness which formed the basis of his character, brian de bois-guilbert communicated this hideous intelligence, which was not so calmly received by his astonished comrade. ``saints of paradise!'' said de bracy; ``what is to be done? i vow to saint nicholas of limoges a candlestick of pure gold---'' ``spare thy vow,'' said the templar, ``and mark me. lead thy men down, as if to a sally; throw the postern-gate open---there are but two men who occupy the float, fling them into the moat, and push across for the barbican. i will charge from the main gate, and attack the barbican on the outside; and if we can regain that post, be assured we shall defend ourselves until we are relieved, or at least till they grant us fair quarter.'' ``it is well thought upon,'' said de bracy; ``i will play my part---templar, thou wilt not fail me?'' ``hand and glove, i will not!'' said bois-guilbert. ``but haste thee, in the name of god!'' de bracy hastily drew his men together, and rushed down to the postern-gate, which he caused instantly to be thrown open. but scarce was this done ere the portentous strength of the black knight forced his way inward in despite of de bracy and his followers. two of the foremost instantly fell, and the rest gave way notwithstanding all their leader's efforts to stop them. ``dogs!'' said de bracy, ``will ye let _two_ men win our only pass for safety?'' ``he is the devil!'' said a veteran man-at-arms, bearing back from the blows of their sable antagonist. ``and if he be the devil,'' replied de bracy, ``would you fly from him into the mouth of hell? ---the castle burns behind us, villains!---let despair give you courage, or let me forward! i will cope with this champion myself'' and well and chivalrous did de bracy that day maintain the fame he had acquired in the civil wars of that dreadful period. the vaulted passage to which the postern gave entrance, and in which these two redoubted champions were now fighting hand to hand, rung with the furious blows which they dealt each other, de bracy with his sword, the black knight with his ponderous axe. at length the norman received a blow, which, though its force was partly parried by his shield, for otherwise never more would de bracy have again moved limb, descended yet with such violence on his crest, that he measured his length on the paved floor. ``yield thee, de bracy,'' said the black champion, stooping over him, and holding against the bars of his helmet the fatal poniard with which the knights dispatched their enemies, (and which was called the dagger of mercy,)---``yield thee, maurice de bracy, rescue or no rescue, or thou art but a dead man.'' ``i will not yield,'' replied de bracy faintly, ``to an unknown conqueror. tell me thy name, or work thy pleasure on me---it shall never be said that maurice de bracy was prisoner to a nameless churl.'' the black knight whispered something into the ear of the vanquished. ``i yield me to be true prisoner, rescue or no rescue,'' answered the norman, exchanging his tone of stern and determined obstinacy for one of deep though sullen submission. ``go to the barbican,'' said the victor, in a tone of authority, ``and there wait my further orders.'' ``yet first, let me say,'' said de bracy, ``what it imports thee to know. wilfred of ivanhoe is wounded and a prisoner, and will perish in the burning castle without present help.'' ``wilfred of ivanhoe!'' exclaimed the black knight---``prisoner, and perish!---the life of every man in the castle shall answer it if a hair of his head be singed---show me his chamber!'' ``ascend yonder winding stair,'' said de bracy; ``it leads to his apartment---wilt thou not accept my guidance?'' he added, in a submissive voice. ``no. to the barbican, and there wait my orders. i trust thee not, de bracy.'' during this combat and the brief conversation which ensued, cedric, at the head of a body of men, among whom the friar was conspicuous, had pushed across the bridge as soon as they saw the postern open, and drove back the dispirited and despairing followers of de bracy, of whom some asked quarter, some offered vain resistance, and the greater part fled towards the court-yard. de bracy himself arose from the ground, and cast a sorrowful glance after his conqueror. ``he trusts me not!'' he repeated; ``but have i deserved his trust?'' he then lifted his sword from the floor, took off his helmet in token of submission, and, going to the barbican, gave up his sword to locksley, whom he met by the way. as the fire augmented, symptoms of it became soon apparent in the chamber, where ivanhoe was watched and tended by the jewess rebecca. he had been awakened from his brief slumber by the noise of the battle; and his attendant, who had, at his anxious desire, again placed herself at the window to watch and report to him the fate of the attack, was for some time prevented from observing either, by the increase of the smouldering and stifling vapour. at length the volumes of smoke which rolled into the apartment---the cries for water, which were heard even above the din of the battle made them sensible of the progress of this new danger. ``the castle burns,'' said rebecca; ``it burns! ---what can we do to save ourselves?'' ``fly, rebecca, and save thine own life,'' said ivanhoe, ``for no human aid can avail me.'' ``i will not fly,'' answered rebecca; ``we will be saved or perish together---and yet, great god! ---my father, my father---what will be his fate!'' at this moment the door of the apartment flew open, and the templar presented himself,---a ghastly figure, for his gilded armour was broken and bloody, and the plume was partly shorn away, partly burnt from his casque. ``i have found thee,'' said he to rebecca; ``thou shalt prove i will keep my word to share weal and woe with thee---there is but one path to safety, i have cut my way through fifty dangers to point it to thee ---up, and instantly follow me!''* * the author has some idea that this passage is imitated from * the appearance of philidaspes, before the divine mandane, when * the city of babylon is on fire, and he proposes to carry her from * the flames. but the theft, if there be one, would be rather too * severely punished by the penance of searching for the original * passage through the interminable volumes of the grand cyrus. ``alone,'' answered rebecca, ``i will not follow thee. if thou wert born of woman---if thou hast but a touch of human charity in thee---if thy heart be not hard as thy breastplate---save my aged father ---save this wounded knight!'' ``a knight,'' answered the templar, with his characteristic calmness, ``a knight, rebecca, must encounter his fate, whether it meet him in the shape of sword or flame---and who recks how or where a jew meets with his?'' ``savage warrior,'' said rebecca, ``rather will i perish in the flames than accept safety from thee!'' ``thou shalt not choose, rebecca---once didst thou foil me, but never mortal did so twice.'' so saying, he seized on the terrified maiden, who filled the air with her shrieks, and bore her out of the room in his arms in spite of her cries, and without regarding the menaces and defiance which ivanhoe thundered against him. ``hound of the temple---stain to thine order---set free the damsel! traitor of bois-guilbert, it is ivanhoe commands thee!---villain, i will have thy heart's blood!'' ``i had not found thee, wilfred,'' said the black knight, who at that instant entered the apartment, ``but for thy shouts.'' ``if thou best true knight,'' said wilfred, ``think not of me---pursue yon ravisher---save the lady rowena---look to the noble cedric!'' ``in their turn,'' answered he of the fetterlock, ``but thine is first.'' and seizing upon ivanhoe, he bore him off with as much ease as the templar had carried off rebecca, rushed with him to the postern, and having there delivered his burden to the care of two yeomen, he again entered the castle to assist in the rescue of the other prisoners. one turret was now in bright flames, which flashed out furiously from window and shot-hole. but in other parts, the great thickness of the walls and the vaulted roofs of the apartments, resisted the progress of the flames, and there the rage of man still triumphed, as the scarce more dreadful element held mastery elsewhere; for the besiegers pursued the defenders of the castle from chamber to chamber, and satiated in their blood the vengeance which had long animated them against the soldiers of the tyrant front-de-b<oe>uf. most of the garrison resisted to the uttermost---few of them asked quarter---none received it. the air was filled with groans and clashing of arms---the floors were slippery with the blood of despairing and expiring wretches. through this scene of confusion, cedric rushed in quest of rowena, while the faithful gurth, following him closely through the _me<e^>l<e'>e_, neglected his own safety while he strove to avert the blows that were aimed at his master. the noble saxon was so fortunate as to reach his ward's apartment just as she had abandoned all hope of safety, and, with a crucifix clasped in agony to her bosom, sat in expectation of instant death. he committed her to the charge of gurth, to be conducted in safety to the barbican, the road to which was now cleared of the enemy, and not yet interrupted by the flames. this accomplished, the loyal cedric hastened in quest of his friend athelstane, determined, at every risk to himself, to save that last scion of saxon royalty. but ere cedric penetrated as far as the old hall in which he had himself been a prisoner, the inventive genius of wamba had procured liberation for himself and his companion in adversity. when the noise of the conflict announced that it was at the hottest, the jester began to shout, with the utmost power of his lungs, ``saint george and the dragon!---bonny saint george for merry england!---the castle is won!'' and these sounds he rendered yet more fearful, by banging against each other two or three pieces of rusty armour which lay scattered around the hall. a guard, which had been stationed in the outer, or anteroom, and whose spirits were already in a state of alarm, took fright at wamba's clamour, and, leaving the door open behind them, ran to tell the templar that foemen had entered the old hall. meantime the prisoners found no difficulty in making their escape into the anteroom, and from thence into the court of the castle, which was now the last scene of contest. here sat the fierce templar, mounted on horseback, surrounded by several of the garrison both on horse and foot, who had united their strength to that of this renowned leader, in order to secure the last chance of safety and retreat which remained to them. the drawbridge had been lowered by his orders, but the passage was beset; for the archers, who had hitherto only annoyed the castle on that side by their missiles, no sooner saw the flames breaking out, and the bridge lowered, than they thronged to the entrance, as well to prevent the escape of the garrison, as to secure their own share of booty ere the castle should be burnt down. on the other hand, a party of the besiegers who had entered by the postern were now issuing out into the court-yard, and attacking with fury the remnant of the defenders who were thus assaulted on both sides at once. animated, however, by despair, and supported by the example of their indomitable leader, the remaining soldiers of the castle fought with the utmost valour; and, being well-armed, succeeded more than once in driving back the assailants, though much inferior in numbers. rebecca, placed on horseback before one of the templar's saracen slaves, was in the midst of the little party; and bois-guilbert, notwithstanding the confusion of the bloody fray, showed every attention to her safety. repeatedly he was by her side, and, neglecting his own defence, held before her the fence of his triangular steel-plated shield; and anon starting from his position by her, he cried his war-cry, dashed forward, struck to earth the most forward of the assailants, and was on the same instant once more at her bridle rein. athelstane, who, as the reader knows, was slothful, but not cowardly, beheld the female form whom the templar protected thus sedulously, and doubted not that it was rowena whom the knight was carrying off, in despite of all resistance which could be offered. ``by the soul of saint edward,'' he said, ``i will rescue her from yonder over-proud knight, and he shall die by my hand!'' ``think what you do!'' cried wamba; ``hasty hand catches frog for fish---by my bauble, yonder is none of my lady rowena---see but her long dark locks!---nay, an ye will not know black from white, ye may be leader, but i will be no follower ---no bones of mine shall be broken unless i know for whom.---and you without armour too!---bethink you, silk bonnet never kept out steel blade. ---nay, then, if wilful will to water, wilful must drench.---_deus vobiscum_, most doughty athelstane!'' ---he concluded, loosening the hold which he had hitherto kept upon the saxon's tunic. to snatch a mace from the pavement, on which it lay beside one whose dying grasp had just relinquished it---to rush on the templar's band, and to strike in quick succession to the right and left, levelling a warrior at each blow, was, for athelstane's great strength, now animated with unusual fury, but the work of a single moment; he was soon within two yards of bois-guilbert, whom he defied in his loudest tone. ``turn, false-hearted templar! let go her whom thou art unworthy to touch---turn, limb of a hand of murdering and hypocritical robbers!'' ``dog!'' said the templar, grinding his teeth, ``i will teach thee to blaspheme the holy order of the temple of zion;'' and with these words, half-wheeling his steed, he made a demi-courbette towards the saxon, and rising in the stirrups, so as to take full advantage of the descent of the horse, he discharged a fearful blow upon the head of athelstane. well said wamba, that silken bonnet keeps out no steel blade. so trenchant was the templar's weapon, that it shore asunder, as it had been a willow twig, the tough and plaited handle of the mace, which the ill-fated saxon reared to parry the blow, and, descending on his head, levelled him with the earth. ``_ha! beau-seant!_'' exclaimed bois-guilbert, ``thus be it to the maligners of the temple-knights!'' taking advantage of the dismay which was spread by the fall of athelstane, and calling aloud, ``those who would save themselves, follow me!'' he pushed across the drawbridge, dispersing the archers who would have intercepted them. he was followed by his saracens, and some five or six men-at-arms, who had mounted their horses. the templar's retreat was rendered perilous by the numbers of arrows shot off at him and his party; but this did not prevent him from galloping round to the barbican, of which, according to his previous plan, he supposed it possible de bracy might have been in possession. ``de bracy! de bracy!'' he shouted, ``art thou there?'' ``i am here,'' replied de bracy, ``but i am a prisoner.'' ``can i rescue thee?'' cried bois-guilbert. ``no,'' replied de bracy; ``i have rendered me, rescue or no rescue. i will be true prisoner. save thyself---there are hawks abroad---put the seas betwixt you and england---i dare not say more.'' ``well,'' answered the templar, ``an thou wilt tarry there, remember i have redeemed word and glove. be the hawks where they will, methinks the walls of the preceptory of templestowe will be cover sufficient, and thither will i, like heron to her haunt.'' having thus spoken, he galloped off with his followers. those of the castle who had not gotten to horse, still continued to fight desperately with the besiegers, after the departure of the templar, but rather in despair of quarter than that they entertained any hope of escape. the fire was spreading rapidly through all parts of the castle, when ulrica, who had first kindled it, appeared on a turret, in the guise of one of the ancient furies, yelling forth a war-song, such as was of yore raised on the field of battle by the scalds of the yet heathen saxons. her long dishevelled grey hair flew back from her uncovered head; the inebriating delight of gratified vengeance contended in her eyes with the fire of insanity; and she brandished the distaff which she held in her hand, as if she had been one of the fatal sisters, who spin and abridge the thread of human life. tradition has preserved some wild strophes of the barbarous hymn which she chanted wildly amid that scene of fire and of slaughter:-- 1. whet the bright steel, sons of the white dragon! kindle the torch, daughter of hengist! the steel glimmers not for the carving of the banquet, it is hard, broad, and sharply pointed; the torch goeth not to the bridal chamber, it steams and glitters blue with sulphur. whet the steel, the raven croaks! light the torch, zernebock is yelling! whet the steel, sons of the dragon! kindle the torch, daughter of hengist! 2. the black cloud is low over the thane's castle the eagle screams--he rides on its bosom. scream not, grey rider of the sable cloud, thy banquet is prepared! the maidens of valhalla look forth, the race of hengist will send them guests. shake your black tresses, maidens of valhalla! and strike your loud timbrels for joy! many a haughty step bends to your halls, many a helmed head. 3. dark sits the evening upon the thanes castle, the black clouds gather round; soon shall they be red as the blood of the valiant! the destroyer of forests shall shake his red crest against them. he, the bright consumer of palaces, broad waves he his blazing banner, red, wide and dusky, over the strife of the valiant: his joy is in the clashing swords and broken bucklers; he loves to lick the hissing blood as it bursts warm from the wound! 4. all must perish! the sword cleaveth the helmet; the strong armour is pierced by the lance; fire devoureth the dwelling of princes, engines break down the fences of the battle. all must perish! the race of hengist is gone-- the name of horsa is no more! shrink not then from your doom, sons of the sword! let your blades drink blood like wine; feast ye in the banquet of slaughter, by the light of the blazing halls! strong be your swords while your blood is warm, and spare neither for pity nor fear, for vengeance hath but an hour; strong hate itself shall expire i also must perish! * * note f. ulrica's death song the towering flames had now surmounted every obstruction, and rose to the evening skies one huge and burning beacon, seen far and wide through the adjacent country. tower after tower crashed down, with blazing roof and rafter; and the combatants were driven from the court-yard. the vanquished, of whom very few remained, scattered and escaped into the neighbouring wood. the victors, assembling in large bands, gazed with wonder, not unmixed with fear, upon the flames, in which their own ranks and arms glanced dusky red. the maniac figure of the saxon ulrica was for a long time visible on the lofty stand she had chosen, tossing her arms abroad with wild exultation, as if she reined empress of the conflagration which she had raised. at length, with a terrific crash, the whole turret gave way, and she perished in the flames which had consumed her tyrant. an awful pause of horror silenced each murmur of the armed spectators, who, for the space of several minutes, stirred not a finger, save to sign the cross. the voice of locksley was then heard, ``shout, yeomen!---the den of tyrants is no more! let each bring his spoil to our chosen place of rendezvous at the trysting-tree in the harthill-walk; for there at break of day will we make just partition among our own bands, together with our worthy allies in this great deed of vengeance.'' chapter xxxii. trust me each state must have its policies: kingdoms have edicts, cities have their charters; even the wild outlaw, in his forest-walk, keeps yet some touch of civil discipline; for not since adam wore his verdant apron, hath man with man in social union dwelt, but laws were made to draw that union closer. _old play._ the daylight had dawned upon the glades of the oak forest. the green boughs glittered with all their pearls of dew. the hind led her fawn from the covert of high fern to the more open walks of the greenwood, and no huntsman was there to watch or intercept the stately hart, as he paced at the head of the antler'd herd. the outlaws were all assembled around the trysting-tree in the harthill-walk, where they had spent the night in refreshing themselves after the fatigues of the siege, some with wine, some with slumber, many with hearing and recounting the events of the day, and computing the heaps of plunder which their success had placed at the disposal of their chief. the spoils were indeed very large; for, notwithstanding that much was consumed, a great deal of plate, rich armour, and splendid clothing, had been secured by the exertions of the dauntless outlaws, who could be appalled by no danger when such rewards were in view. yet so strict were the laws of their society, that no one ventured to appropriate any part of the booty, which was brought into one common mass, to be at the disposal of their leader. the place of rendezvous was an aged oak; not however the same to which locksley had conducted gurth and wamba in the earlier part of the story, but one which was the centre of a silvan amphitheatre, within half a mile of the demolished castle of torquilstone. here locksley assumed his seat---a throne of turf erected under the twisted branches of the huge oak, and the silvan followers were gathered around him. he assigned to the black knight a seat at his right hand, and to cedric a place upon his left. ``pardon my freedom, noble sirs,'' he said, ``but in these glades i am monarch---they are my kingdom; and these my wild subjects would reck but little of my power, were i, within my own dominions, to yield place to mortal man.---now, sirs, who hath seen our chaplain? where is our curtal friar? a mass amongst christian men best begins a busy morning.''---no one had seen the clerk of copmanhurst. ``over gods forbode!'' said the outlaw chief, ``i trust the jolly priest hath but abidden by the wine-pot a thought too late. who saw him since the castle was ta'en?'' ``i,'' quoth the miller, ``marked him busy about the door of a cellar, swearing by each saint in the calendar he would taste the smack of front-de-b<oe>uf's gascoigne wine.'' ``now, the saints, as many as there be of them,'' said the captain, ``forefend, lest he has drunk too deep of the wine-butts, and perished by the fall of the castle!---away, miller!---take with you enow of men, seek the place where you last saw him--throw water from the moat on the scorching ruins ---i will have them removed stone by stone ere i lose my curtal friar.'' the numbers who hastened to execute this duty, considering that an interesting division of spoil was about to take place, showed how much the troop had at heart the safety of their spiritual father. ``meanwhile, let us proceed,'' said locksley; ``for when this bold deed shall be sounded abroad, the bands of de bracy, of malvoisin, and other allies of front-de-b<oe>uf, will be in motion against us, and it were well for our safety that we retreat from the vicinity.---noble cedric,'' he said, turning to the saxon, ``that spoil is divided into two portions; do thou make choice of that which best suits thee, to recompense thy people who were partakers with us in this adventure.'' ``good yeoman,'' said cedric, ``my heart is oppressed with sadness. the noble athelstane of coningsburgh is no more---the last sprout of the sainted confessor! hopes have perished with him which can never return!---a sparkle hath been quenched by his blood, which no human breath can again rekindle! my people, save the few who are now with me, do but tarry my presence to transport his honoured remains to their last mansion. the lady rowena is desirous to return to rotherwood, and must be escorted by a sufficient force. i should, therefore, ere now, have left this place; and i waited---not to share the booty, for, so help me god and saint withold! as neither i nor any of mine will touch the value of a liard,---i waited but to render my thanks to thee and to thy bold yeomen, for the life and honour ye have saved.'' ``nay, but,'' said the chief outlaw, ``we did but half the work at most---take of the spoil what may reward your own neighbours and followers.'' ``i am rich enough to reward them from mine own wealth,'' answered cedric. ``and some,'' said wamba, ``have been wise enough to reward themselves; they do not march off empty-handed altogether. we do not all wear motley.'' ``they are welcome,'' said locksley; ``our laws bind none but ourselves.'' ``but, thou, my poor knave,'' said cedric, turning about and embracing his jester, ``how shall i reward thee, who feared not to give thy body to chains and death instead of mine!---all forsook me, when the poor fool was faithful!'' a tear stood in the eye of the rough thane as he spoke---a mark of feeling which even the death of athelstane had not extracted; but there was something in the half-instinctive attachment of his clown, that waked his nature more keenly than even grief itself. ``nay,'' said the jester, extricating himself from master's caress, ``if you pay my service with the water of your eye, the jester must weep for company, and then what becomes of his vocation? ---but, uncle, if you would indeed pleasure me, i pray you to pardon my playfellow gurth, who stole a week from your service to bestow it on your son.'' ``pardon him!'' exclaimed cedric; ``i will both pardon and reward him.---kneel down, gurth.''--the swineherd was in an instant at his master's feet---``=theow= and =esne=* art thou no longer,'' * thrall and bondsman. said cedric touching him with a wand; ``=folkfree= and =sacless=* art thou in town and from * a lawful freeman. town, in the forest as in the field. a hide of land i give to thee in my steads of walbrugham, from me and mine to thee and thine aye and for ever; and god's malison on his head who this gainsays!'' no longer a serf, but a freeman and a landholder, gurth sprung upon his feet, and twice bounded aloft to almost his own height from the ground. ``a smith and a file,'' he cried, ``to do away the collar from the neck of a freeman!---noble master! doubled is my strength by your gift, and doubly will i fight for you!---there is a free spirit in my breast---i am a man changed to myself and all around.---ha, fangs!'' he continued,---for that faithful cur, seeing his master thus transported, began to jump upon him, to express his sympathy,--``knowest thou thy master still?'' ``ay,'' said wamba, ``fangs and i still know thee, gurth, though we must needs abide by the collar; it is only thou art likely to forget both us and thyself.'' ``i shall forget myself indeed ere i forget thee, true comrade,'' said gurth; ``and were freedom fit for thee, wamba, the master would not let thee want it.'' ``nay,'' said wamba, ``never think i envy thee, brother gurth; the serf sits by the hall-fire when the freeman must forth to the field of battle---and what saith oldhelm of malmsbury---better a fool at a feast than a wise man at a fray.'' the tramp of horses was now heard, and the lady rowena appeared, surrounded by several riders, and a much stronger party of footmen, who joyfully shook their pikes and clashed their brown-bills for joy of her freedom. she herself, richly attired, and mounted on a dark chestnut palfrey, had recovered all the dignity of her manner, and only an unwonted degree of paleness showed the sufferings she had undergone. her lovely brow, though sorrowful, bore on it a cast of reviving hope for the future, as well as of grateful thankfulness for the past deliverance---she knew that ivanhoe was safe, and she knew that athelstane was dead. the former assurance filled her with the most sincere delight; and if she did not absolutely rejoice at the latter, she might be pardoned for feeling the full advantage of being freed from further persecution on the only subject in which she had ever been contradicted by her guardian cedric. as rowena bent her steed towards locksley's seat, that bold yeoman, with all his followers, rose to receive her, as if by a general instinct of courtesy. the blood rose to her cheeks, as, courteously waving her hand, and bending so low that her beautiful and loose tresses were for an instant mixed with the flowing mane of her palfrey, she expressed in few but apt words her obligations and her gratitude to locksley and her other deliverers. ---``god bless you, brave men,'' she concluded, ``god and our lady bless you and requite you for gallantly perilling yourselves in the cause of the oppressed!---if any of you should hunger, remember rowena has food---if you should thirst, she has many a butt of wine and brown ale---and if the normans drive ye from these walks, rowena has forests of her own, where her gallant deliverers may range at full freedom, and never ranger ask whose arrow hath struck down the deer.'' ``thanks, gentle lady,'' said locksley; ``thanks from my company and myself. but, to have saved you requites itself. we who walk the greenwood do many a wild deed, and the lady rowena's deliverance may be received as an atonement.'' again bowing from her palfrey, rowena turned to depart; but pausing a moment, while cedric, who was to attend her, was also taking his leave, she found herself unexpectedly close by the prisoner de bracy. he stood under a tree in deep meditation, his arms crossed upon his breast, and rowena was in hopes she might pass him unobserved. he looked up, however, and, when aware of her presence, a deep flush of shame suffused his handsome countenance. he stood a moment most irresolute; then, stepping forward, took her palfrey by the rein, and bent his knee before her. ``will the lady rowena deign to cast an eye ---on a captive knight---on a dishonoured soldier?'' ``sir knight,'' answered rowena, ``in enterprises such as yours, the real dishonour lies not in failure, but in success.'' ``conquest, lady, should soften the heart,'' answered de bracy; ``let me but know that the lady rowena forgives the violence occasioned by an ill-fated passion, and she shall soon learn that de bracy knows how to serve her in nobler ways.'' ``i forgive you, sir knight,'' said rowena, ``as a christian.'' ``that means,'' said wamba, ``that she does not forgive him at all.'' ``but i can never forgive the misery and desolation your madness has occasioned,'' continued rowena. ``unloose your hold on the lady's rein,'' said cedric, coming up. ``by the bright sun above us, but it were shame, i would pin thee to the earth with my javelin---but be well assured, thou shalt smart, maurice de bracy, for thy share in this foul deed.'' ``he threatens safely who threatens a prisoner,'' said de bracy; ``but when had a saxon any touch of courtesy?'' then retiring two steps backward, he permitted the lady to move on. cedric, ere they departed, expressed his peculiar gratitude to the black champion, and earnestly entreated him to accompany him to rotherwood. ``i know,'' he said, ``that ye errant knights desire to carry your fortunes on the point of your lance, and reck not of land or goods; but war is a changeful mistress, and a home is sometimes desirable even to the champion whose trade is wandering. thou hast earned one in the halls of rotherwood, noble knight. cedric has wealth enough to repair the injuries of fortune, and all he has is his deliverer's---come, therefore, to rotherwood, not as a guest, but as a son or brother.'' ``cedric has already made me rich,'' said the knight,---``he has taught me the value of saxon virtue. to rotherwood will i come, brave saxon, and that speedily; but, as now, pressing matters of moment detain me from your halls. peradventure when i come hither, i will ask such a boon as will put even thy generosity to the test.'' ``it is granted ere spoken out,'' said cedric, striking his ready hand into the gauntleted palm of the black knight,---``it is granted already, were it to affect half my fortune.'' ``gage not thy promise so lightly,'' said the knight of the fetterlock; ``yet well i hope to gain the boon i shall ask. meanwhile, adieu.'' ``i have but to say,'' added the saxon, ``that, during the funeral rites of the noble athelstane, i shall be an inhabitant of the halls of his castle of coninsburgh---they will be open to all who choose to partake of the funeral banqueting; and, i speak in name of the noble edith, mother of the fallen prince, they will never be shut against him who laboured so bravely, though unsuccessfully, to save athelstane from norman chains and norman steel.'' ``ay, ay,'' said wamba, who had resumed his attendance on his master, ``rare feeding there will be---pity that the noble athelstane cannot banquet at his own funeral.---but he,'' continued the jester, lifting up his eyes gravely, ``is supping in paradise, and doubtless does honour to the cheer.'' ``peace, and move on,'' said cedric, his anger at this untimely jest being checked by the recollection of wamba's recent services. rowena waved a graceful adieu to him of the fetterlock---the saxon bade god speed him, and on they moved through a wide glade of the forest. they had scarce departed, ere a sudden procession moved from under the greenwood branches, swept slowly round the silvan amphitheatre, and took the same direction with rowena and her followers. the priests of a neighbouring convent, in expectation of the ample donation, or _soul-scat_, which cedric had propined, attended upon the car in which the body of athelstane was laid, and sang hymns as it was sadly and slowly borne on the shoulders of his vassals to his castle of coningsburgh, to be there deposited in the grave of hengist, from whom the deceased derived his long descent. many of his vassals had assembled at the news of his death, and followed the bier with all the external marks, at least, of dejection and sorrow. again the outlaws arose, and paid the same rude and spontaneous homage to death, which they had so lately rendered to beauty---the slow chant and mournful step of the priests brought back to their remembrance such of their comrades as had fallen in the yesterday's array. but such recollections dwell not long with those who lead a life of danger and enterprise, and ere the sound of the death-hymn had died on the wind, the outlaws were again busied in the distribution of their spoil. ``valiant knight,'' said locksley to the black champion, ``without whose good heart and mighty arm our enterprise must altogether have failed, will it please you to take from that mass of spoil whatever may best serve to pleasure you, and to remind you of this my trysting-tree?'' ``i accept the offer,'' said the knight, ``as frankly as it is given; and i ask permission to dispose of sir maurice de bracy at my own pleasure.'' ``he is thine already,'' said locksley, ``and well for him! else the tyrant had graced the highest bough of this oak, with as many of his free-companions as we could gather, hanging thick as acorns around him.---but he is thy prisoner, and he is safe, though he had slain my father.'' ``de bracy,'' said the knight, ``thou art free--depart. he whose prisoner thou art scorns to take mean revenge for what is past. but beware of the future, lest a worse thing befall thee.---maurice de bracy, i say =beware=!'' de bracy bowed low and in silence, and was about to withdraw, when the yeomen burst at once into a shout of execration and derision. the proud knight instantly stopped, turned back, folded his arms, drew up his form to its full height, and exclaimed, ``peace, ye yelping curs! who open upon a cry which ye followed not when the stag was at bay---de bracy scorns your censure as he would disdain your applause. to your brakes and caves, ye outlawed thieves! and be silent when aught knightly or noble is but spoken within a league of your fox-earths.'' this ill-timed defiance might have procured for de bracy a volley of arrows, but for the hasty and imperative interference of the outlaw chief. meanwhile the knight caught a horse by the rein, for several which had been taken in the stables of front-de-b<oe>uf stood accoutred around, and were a valuable part of the booty. he threw himself upon the saddle, and galloped off through the wood. when the bustle occasioned by this incident was somewhat composed, the chief outlaw took from his neck the rich horn and baldric which he had recently gained at the strife of archery near ashby. ``noble knight.'' he said to him of the fetterlock, ``if you disdain not to grace by your acceptance a bugle which an english yeoman has once worn, this i will pray you to keep as a memorial of your gallant bearing---and if ye have aught to do, and, as happeneth oft to a gallant knight, ye chance to be hard bested in any forest between trent and tees, wind three mots* upon the horn thus, _wa-sa-hoa!_ * the notes upon the bugle were anciently called mots, and * are distinguished in the old treatises on hunting, not by musical * characters, but by written words. and it may well chance ye shall find helpers and rescue.'' he then gave breath to the bugle, and winded once and again the call which be described, until the knight had caught the notes. ``gramercy for the gift, bold yeoman,'' said the knight; ``and better help than thine and thy rangers would i never seek, were it at my utmost need.'' and then in his turn he winded the call till all the greenwood rang. ``well blown and clearly,'' said the yeoman; ``beshrew me an thou knowest not as much of woodcraft as of war!---thou hast been a striker of deer in thy day, i warrant.---comrades, mark these three mots---it is the call of the knight of the fetterlock; and he who hears it, and hastens not to serve him at his need, i will have him scourged out of our band with his own bowstring.'' ``long live our leader!'' shouted the yeomen, ``and long live the black knight of the fetterlock!--may he soon use our service, to prove how readily it will be paid.'' locksley now proceeded to the distribution of the spoil, which he performed with the most laudable impartiality. a tenth part of the whole was set apart for the church, and for pious uses; a portion was next allotted to a sort of public treasury; a part was assigned to the widows and children of those who had fallen, or to be expended in masses for the souls of such as had left no surviving family. the rest was divided amongst the outlaws, according to their rank and merit, and the judgment of the chief, on all such doubtful questions as occurred, was delivered with great shrewdness, and received with absolute submission. the black knight was not a little surprised to find that men, in a state so lawless, were nevertheless among themselves so regularly and equitably governed, and all that he observed added to his opinion of the justice and judgment of their leader. when each had taken his own proportion of the booty, and while the treasurer, accompanied by four tall yeomen, was transporting that belonging to the state to some place of concealment or of security, the portion devoted to the church still remained unappropriated. ``i would,'' said the leader, ``we could hear tidings of our joyous chaplain---he was never wont to be absent when meat was to be blessed, or spoil to be parted; and it is his duty to take care of these the tithes of our successful enterprise. it may be the office has helped to cover some of his canonical irregularities. also, i have a holy brother of his a prisoner at no great distance, and i would fain have the friar to help me to deal with him in due sort---i greatly misdoubt the safety of the bluff priest.'' ``i were right sorry for that,'' said the knight of the fetterlock, ``for i stand indebted to him for the joyous hospitality of a merry night in his cell. let us to the ruins of the castle; it may be we shall there learn some tidings of him.'' while they thus spoke, a loud shout among the yeomen announced the arrival of him for whom they feared, as they learned from the stentorian voice of the friar himself, long before they saw his burly person. ``make room, my merry-men!'' he exclaimed; ``room for your godly father and his prisoner--cry welcome once more.---i come, noble leader, like an eagle with my prey in my clutch.''---and making his way through the ring, amidst the laughter of all around, he appeared in majestic triumph, his huge partisan in one hand, and in the other a halter, one end of which was fastened to the neck of the unfortunate isaac of york, who, bent down by sorrow and terror, was dragged on by the victorious priest, who shouted aloud, ``where is allan-a-dale, to chronicle me in a ballad, or if it were but a lay?---by saint hermangild, the jingling crowder is ever out of the way where there is an apt theme for exalting valour!'' ``curtal priest,'' said the captain, ``thou hast been at a wet mass this morning, as early as it is. in the name of saint nicholas, whom hast thou got here?'' ``a captive to my sword and to my lance, noble captain,'' replied the clerk of copmanhurst; ``to my bow and to my halberd, i should rather say; and yet i have redeemed him by my divinity from a worse captivity. speak, jew---have i not ransomed thee from sathanas?---have i not taught thee thy _credo_, thy _pater_, and thine _ave maria_? ---did i not spend the whole night in drinking to thee, and in expounding of mysteries?'' ``for the love of god!'' ejaculated the poor jew, ``will no one take me out of the keeping of this mad---i mean this holy man?'' ``how's this, jew?'' said the friar, with a menacing aspect; ``dost thou recant, jew?---bethink thee, if thou dost relapse into thine infidelity, though thou are not so tender as a suckling pig--i would i had one to break my fast upon---thou art not too tough to be roasted! be conformable, isaac, and repeat the words after me. _ave maria_!---'' ``nay, we will have no profanation, mad priest,'' said locksley; ``let us rather hear where you found this prisoner of thine.'' ``by saint dunstan,'' said the friar, ``i found him where i sought for better ware! i did step into the cellarage to see what might be rescued there; for though a cup of burnt wine, with spice, be an evening's drought for an emperor, it were waste, methought, to let so much good liquor be mulled at once; and i had caught up one runlet of sack, and was coming to call more aid among these lazy knaves, who are ever to seek when a good deed is to be done, when i was avised of a strong door--aha! thought i, here is the choicest juice of all in this secret crypt; and the knave butler, being disturbed in his vocation, hath left the key in the door ---in therefore i went, and found just nought besides a commodity of rusted chains and this dog of a jew, who presently rendered himself my prisoner, rescue or no rescue. i did but refresh myself after the fatigue of the action, with the unbeliever, with one humming cup of sack, and was proceeding to lead forth my captive, when, crash after crash, as with wild thunder-dint and levin-fire, down toppled the masonry of an outer tower, (marry beshrew their hands that built it not the firmer!) and blocked up the passage. the roar of one falling tower followed another---i gave up thought of life; and deeming it a dishonour to one of my profession to pass out of this world in company with a jew, i heaved up my halberd to beat his brains out; but i took pity on his grey hairs, and judged it better to lay down the partisan, and take up my spiritual weapon for his conversion. and truly, by the blessing of saint dunstan, the seed has been sown in good soil; only that, with speaking to him of mysteries through the whole night, and being in a manner fasting, (for the few droughts of sack which i sharpened my wits with were not worth marking,) my head is wellnigh dizzied, i trow.---but i was clean exhausted.---gilbert and wibbald know in what state they found me---quite and clean exhausted.'' ``we can bear witness,'' said gilbert; ``for when we had cleared away the ruin, and by saint dunstan's help lighted upon the dungeon stair, we found the runlet of sack half empty, the jew half dead, and the friar more than half---exhausted, as he calls it.'' ``ye be knaves! ye lie!'' retorted the offended friar; ``it was you and your gormandizing companions that drank up the sack, and called it your morning draught---i am a pagan, an i kept it not for the captain's own throat. but what recks it? the jew is converted, and understands all i have told him, very nearly, if not altogether, as well as myself.'' ``jew,'' said the captain, ``is this true? hast thou renounced thine unbelief?'' ``may i so find mercy in your eyes,'' said the jew, ``as i know not one word which the reverend prelate spake to me all this fearful night. alas! i was so distraught with agony, and fear, and grief, that had our holy father abraham come to preach to me, he had found but a deaf listener.'' ``thou liest, jew, and thou knowest thou dost.'' said the friar; ``i will remind thee of but one word of our conference---thou didst promise to give all thy substance to our holy order.'' ``so help me the promise, fair sirs,'' said isaac, even more alarmed than before, ``as no such sounds ever crossed my lips! alas! i am an aged beggar'd man---i fear me a childless---have ruth on me, and let me go!'' ``nay,'' said the friar, ``if thou dost retract vows made in favour of holy church, thou must do penance.'' accordingly, he raised his halberd, and would have laid the staff of it lustily on the jew's shoulders, had not the black knight stopped the blow, and thereby transferred the holy clerk's resentment to himself. ``by saint thomas of kent,'' said he, ``an i buckle to my gear, i will teach thee, sir lazy lover, to mell with thine own matters, maugre thine iron case there!'' ``nay, be not wroth with me,'' said the knight; ``thou knowest i am thy sworn friend and comrade.'' ``i know no such thing,'' answered the friar; ``and defy thee for a meddling coxcomb!'' ``nay, but,'' said the knight, who seemed to take a pleasure in provoking his quondam host, ``hast thou forgotten how, that for my sake (for i say nothing of the temptation of the flagon and the pasty) thou didst break thy vow of fast and vigil?'' ``truly, friend,'' said the friar, clenching his huge fist, ``i will bestow a buffet on thee.'' ``i accept of no such presents,'' said the knight; ``i am content to take thy cuff* as a loan, but i will * note g. richard c<oe>ur-de-lion. repay thee with usury as deep as ever thy prisoner there exacted in his traffic.'' ``i will prove that presently,'' said the friar. ``hola!'' cried the captain, ``what art thou after, mad friar? brawling beneath our trysting-tree?'' ``no brawling,'' said the knight, ``it is but a friendly interchange of courtesy.---friar, strike an thou darest---i will stand thy blow, if thou wilt stand mine.'' ``thou hast the advantage with that iron pot on thy head,'' said the churchman; ``but have at thee---down thou goest, an thou wert goliath of gath in his brazen helmet.'' the friar bared his brawny arm up to the elbow, and putting his full strength to the blow, gave the knight a buffet that might have felled an ox. but his adversary stood firm as a rock. a loud shout was uttered by all the yeomen around; for the clerk's cuff was proverbial amongst them, and there were few who, in jest or earnest, had not had the occasion to know its vigour. ``now, priest,'' said, the knight, pulling off his gauntlet, ``if i had vantage on my head, i will have none on my hand---stand fast as a true man.'' ``_genam meam dedi vapulatori_---i have given my cheek to the smiter,'' said the priest; ``an thou canst stir me from the spot, fellow, i will freely bestow on thee the jew's ransom.'' so spoke the burly priest, assuming, on his part, high defiance. but who may resist his fate? the buffet of the knight was given with such strength and good-will, that the friar rolled head over heels upon the plain, to the great amazement of all the spectators. but he arose neither angry nor crestfallen. ``brother,'' said he to the knight, ``thou shouldst have used thy strength with more discretion. i had mumbled but a lame mass an thou hadst broken my jaw, for the piper plays ill that wants the nether chops. nevertheless, there is my hand, in friendly witness, that i will exchange no more cuffs with thee, having been a loser by the barter. end now all unkindness. let us put the jew to ransom, since the leopard will not change his spots, and a jew he will continue to be.'' ``the priest,'' said clement, ``is not have so confident of the jew's conversion, since he received that buffet on the ear.'' ``go to, knave, what pratest thou of conversions? ---what, is there no respect?---all masters and no men?---i tell thee, fellow, i was somewhat totty when i received the good knight's blow, or i had kept my ground under it. but an thou gibest more of it, thou shalt learn i can give as well as take.'' ``peace all!'' said the captain. ``and thou, jew, think of thy ransom; thou needest not to be told that thy race are held to be accursed in all christian communities, and trust me that we cannot endure thy presence among us. think, therefore, of an offer, while i examine a prisoner of another cast.'' ``were many of front-de-b<oe>uf's men taken?'' demanded the black knight. ``none of note enough to be put to ransom,'' answered the captain; ``a set of hilding fellows there were, whom we dismissed to find them a new master--enough had been done for revenge and profit; the bunch of them were not worth a cardecu. the prisoner i speak of is better booty---a jolly monk riding to visit his leman, an i may judge by his horse-gear and wearing apparel.---here cometh the worthy prelate, as pert as a pyet.'' and, between two yeomen, was brought before the silvan throne of the outlaw chief, our old friend, prior aymer of jorvaulx. chapter xxxiii. ---flower of warriors, how is't with titus lartius? _marcius_. as with a man busied about decrees, condemning some to death and some to exile, ransoming him or pitying, threatening the other. _coriolanus_ the captive abbot's features and manners exhibited a whimsical mixture of offended pride, and deranged foppery and bodily terror. ``why, how now, my masters?'' said he, with a voice in which all three emotions were blended. ``what order is this among ye? be ye turks or christians, that handle a churchman?---know ye what it is, _manus imponere in servos domini_? ye have plundered my mails---torn my cope of curious cut lace, which might have served a cardinal!--another in my place would have been at his _excommunicabo vos_; but i am placible, and if ye order forth my palfreys, release my brethren, and restore my mails, tell down with all speed an hundred crowns to be expended in masses at the high altar of jorvaulx abbey, and make your vow to eat no venison until next pentecost, it may be you shall hear little more of this mad frolic.'' ``holy father,'' said the chief outlaw, ``it grieves me to think that you have met with such usage from any of my followers, as calls for your fatherly reprehension.'' ``usage!'' echoed the priest, encouraged by the mild tone of the silvan leader; ``it were usage fit for no hound of good race---much less for a christian ---far less for a priest---and least of all for the prior of the holy community of jorvaulx. here is a profane and drunken minstrel, called allan-a-dale ---_nebulo quidam_---who has menaced me with corporal punishment---nay, with death itself, an i pay not down four hundred crowns of ransom, to the boot of all the treasure he hath already robbed me of---gold chains and gymmal rings to an unknown value; besides what is broken and spoiled among their rude hands, such as my pouncer-box and silver crisping-tongs.'' ``it is impossible that allan-a-dale can have thus treated a man of your reverend bearing,'' replied the captain. ``it is true as the gospel of saint nicodemus,'' said the prior; ``he swore, with many a cruel north-country oath, that he would hang me up on the highest tree in the greenwood.'' ``did he so in very deed? nay, then, reverend father, i think you had better comply with his demands ---for allan-a-dale is the very man to abide by his word when he has so pledged it.'' * * a commissary is said to have received similar consolation * from a certain commander-in-chief, to whom he complained * that a general officer had used some such threat towards him as * that in the text. ``you do but jest with me,'' said the astounded prior, with a forced laugh; ``and i love a good jest with all my heart. but, ha! ha! ha! when the mirth has lasted the livelong night, it is time to be grave in the morning.'' ``and i am as grave as a father confessor,'' replied the outlaw; ``you must pay a round ransom, sir prior, or your convent is likely to be called to a new election; for your place will know you no more.'' ``are ye christians,'' said the prior, ``and hold this language to a churchman?'' ``christians! ay, marry are we, and have divinity among us to boot,'' answered the outlaw. ``let our buxom chaplain stand forth, and expound to this reverend father the texts which concern this matter.'' the friar, half-drunk, half-sober, had huddled a friar's frock over his green cassock, and now summoning together whatever scraps of learning he had acquired by rote in former days, ``holy father,'' said he, ``_deus faciat salvam benignitatem vestram_--you are welcome to the greenwood.'' ``what profane mummery is this?'' said the prior. ``friend, if thou best indeed of the church, it were a better deed to show me how i may escape from these men's hands, than to stand ducking and grinning here like a morris-dancer.'' ``truly, reverend father,'' said the friar, ``i know but one mode in which thou mayst escape. this is saint andrew's day with us, we are taking our tithes.'' ``but not of the church, then, i trust, my good brother?'' said the prior. ``of church and lay,'' said the friar; ``and therefore, sir prior _facite vobis amicos de mammone iniquitatis_---make yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, for no other friendship is like to serve your turn.'' ``i love a jolly woodsman at heart,'' said the prior, softening his tone; ``come, ye must not deal too hard with me---i can well of woodcraft, and can wind a horn clear and lustily, and hollo till every oak rings again---come, ye must not deal too hard with me.'' ``give him a horn,'' said the outlaw; ``we will prove the skill he boasts of.'' the prior aymer winded a blast accordingly. the captain shook his head. ``sir prior,'' he said, ``thou blowest a merry note, but it may not ransom thee---we cannot afford, as the legend on a good knight's shield hath it, to set thee free for a blast. moreover, i have found thee---thou art one of those, who, with new french graces and tra-li-ras, disturb the ancient english bugle notes.---prior, that last flourish on the recheat hath added fifty crowns to thy ransom, for corrupting the true old manly blasts of venerie.'' ``well, friend,'' said the abbot, peevishly, ``thou art ill to please with thy woodcraft. i pray thee be more conformable in this matter of my ransom. at a word---since i must needs, for once, hold a candle to the devil---what ransom am i to pay for walking on watling-street, without having fifty men at my back?'' ``were it not well,'' said the lieutenant of the gang apart to the captain, ``that the prior should name the jew's ransom, and the jew name the prior's?'' ``thou art a mad knave,'' said the captain, ``but thy plan transcends!---here, jew, step forth--look at that holy father aymer, prior of the rich abbey of jorvaulx, and tell us at what ransom we should hold him?---thou knowest the income of his convent, i warrant thee.'' ``o, assuredly,'' said isaac. ``i have trafficked with the good fathers, and bought wheat and barley, and fruits of the earth, and also much wool. o, it is a rich abbey-stede, and they do live upon the fat, and drink the sweet wines upon the lees, these good fathers of jorvaulx. ah, if an outcast like me had such a home to go to, and such incomings by the year and by the month, i would pay much gold and silver to redeem my captivity.'' ``hound of a jew!'' exclaimed the prior, ``no one knows better than thy own cursed self, that our holy house of god is indebted for the finishing of our chancel---'' ``and for the storing of your cellars in the last season with the due allowance of gascon wine,'' interrupted the jew; ``but that---that is small matters.'' ``hear the infidel dog!'' said the churchman; he jangles as if our holy community did come under debts for the wines we have a license to drink, _propter necessitatem, et ad frigus depellendum_. the circumcised villain blasphemeth the holy church, and christian men listen and rebuke him not!'' ``all this helps nothing,'' said the leader. ---``isaac, pronounce what be may pay, without flaying both hide and hair.'' ``an six hundred crowns,'' said isaac, ``the good prior might well pay to your honoured valours, and never sit less soft in his stall.'' ``six hundred crowns,'' said the leader, gravely; ``i am contented---thou hast well spoken, isaac--six hundred crowns.---it is a sentence, sir prior.'' ``a sentence!---a sentence!'' exclaimed the band; ``solomon had not done it better.'' ``thou hearest thy doom, prior,'' said the leader. ``ye are mad, my masters,'' said the prior; ``where am i to find such a sum? if i sell the very pyx and candlesticks on the altar at jorvaulx, i shall scarce raise the half; and it will be necessary for that purpose that i go to jorvaulx myself; ye may retain as borrows* my two priests.'' * borghs, or borrows, signifies pledges. hence our word to * borrow, because we pledge ourselves to restore what is lent. ``that will be but blind trust,'' said the outlaw; ``we will retain thee, prior, and send them to fetch thy ransom. thou shalt not want a cup of wine and a collop of venison the while; and if thou lovest woodcraft, thou shalt see such as your north country never witnessed.'' ``or, if so please you,'' said isaac, willing to curry favour with the outlaws, ``i can send to york for the six hundred crowns, out of certain monies in my hands, if so be that the most reverend prior present will grant me a quittance.'' ``he shall grant thee whatever thou dost list, isaac,'' said the captain; ``and thou shalt lay down the redemption money for prior aymer as well as for thyself.'' ``for myself! ah, courageous sirs,'' said the jew, ``i am a broken and impoverished man; a beggar's staff must be my portion through life, supposing i were to pay you fifty crowns.'' ``the prior shall judge of that matter,'' replied the captain.---``how say you, father aymer? can the jew afford a good ransom?'' ``can he afford a ransom?'' answered the prior ``is he not isaac of york, rich enough to redeem the captivity of the ten tribes of israel, who were led into assyrian bondage?---i have seen but little of him myself, but our cellarer and treasurer have dealt largely with him, and report says that his house at york is so full of gold and silver as is a shame in any christian land. marvel it is to all living christian hearts that such gnawing adders should be suffered to eat into the bowels of the state, and even of the holy church herself, with foul usuries and extortions.'' ``hold, father,'' said the jew, ``mitigate and assuage your choler. i pray of your reverence to remember that i force my monies upon no one. but when churchman and layman, prince and prior, knight and priest, come knocking to isaac's door, they borrow not his shekels with these uncivil terms. it is then, friend isaac, will you pleasure us in this matter, and our day shall be truly kept, so god sa' me?---and kind isaac, if ever you served man, show yourself a friend in this need! and when the day comes, and i ask my own, then what hear i but damned jew, and the curse of egypt on your tribe, and all that may stir up the rude and uncivil populace against poor strangers! '' ``prior,'' said the captain, ``jew though be be, he hath in this spoken well. do thou, therefore, name his ransom, as he named thine, without farther rude terms.'' ``none but _latro famosus_---the interpretation whereof,'' said the prior, ``will i give at some other time and tide---would place a christian prelate and an unbaptized jew upon the same bench. but since ye require me to put a price upon this caitiff, i tell you openly that ye will wrong yourselves if you take from him a penny under a thousand crowns.'' ``a sentence!---a sentence!'' exclaimed the chief outlaw. ``a sentence!---a sentence!'' shouted his assessors; ``the christian has shown his good nurture, and dealt with us more generously than the jew.'' ``the god of my fathers help me!'' said the jew; ``will ye bear to the ground an impoverished creature?---i am this day childless, and will ye deprive me of the means of livelihood?'' ``thou wilt have the less to provide for, jew, if thou art childless,'' said aymer. ``alas! my lord,'' said isaac, ``your law permits you not to know how the child of our bosom is entwined with the strings of our heart---o rebecca! laughter of my beloved rachel! were each leaf on that tree a zecchin, and each zecchin mine own, all that mass of wealth would i give to know whether thou art alive, and escaped the hands of the nazarene!'' ``was not thy daughter dark-haired?'' said one of the outlaws; ``and wore she not a veil of twisted sendal, broidered with silver?'' ``she did!---she did!'' said the old man, trembling with eagerness, as formerly with fear. ``the blessing of jacob be upon thee! canst thou tell me aught of her safety?'' ``it was she, then,'' said the yeoman, ``who was carried off by the proud templar, when he broke through our ranks on yester-even. i had drawn my bow to send a shaft after him, but spared him even for the sake of the damsel, who i feared might take harm from the arrow.'' ``oh!'' answered the jew, ``i would to god thou hadst shot, though the arrow had pierced her bosom!---better the tomb of her fathers than the dishonourable couch of the licentious and savage templar. ichabod! ichabod! the glory hath departed from my house!'' ``friends,'' said the chief, looking round, ``the old man is but a jew, natheless his grief touches me.---deal uprightly with us, isaac---will paying this ransom of a thousand crowns leave thee altogether penniless?'' isaac, recalled to think of his worldly goods, the love of which, by dint of inveterate habit, contended even with his parental affection, grew pale, stammered, and could not deny there might be some small surplus. ``well---go to---what though there be,'' said the outlaw, ``we will not reckon with thee too closely. without treasure thou mayst as well hope to redeem thy child from the clutches of sir brian de bois-guilbert, as to shoot a stag-royal with a headless shaft.---we will take thee at the same ransom with prior aymer, or rather at one hundred crowns lower, which hundred crowns shall be mine own peculiar loss, and not light upon this worshipful community; and so we shall avoid the heinous offence of rating a jew merchant as high as a christian prelate, and thou wilt have six hundred crowns remaining to treat for thy daughter's ransom. templars love the glitter of silver shekels as well as the sparkle of black eyes.---hasten to make thy crowns chink in the ear of de bois-guilbert, ere worse comes of it. thou wilt find him, as our scouts have brought notice, at the next preceptory house of his order.---said i well, my merry mates?'' the yeomen expressed their wonted acquiescence in their leader's opinion; and isaac, relieved of one half of his apprehensions, by learning that his daughter lived, and might possibly be ransomed, threw himself at the feet of the generous outlaw, and, rubbing his beard against his buskins, sought to kiss the hem of his green cassock. the captain drew himself back, and extricated himself from the jew's grasp, not without some marks of contempt. ``nay, beshrew thee, man, up with thee! i am english born, and love no such eastern prostrations ---kneel to god, and not to a poor sinner, like me.'' ``ay, jew,'' said prior aymer; ``kneel to god, as represented in the servant of his altar, and who knows, with thy sincere repentance and due gifts to the shrine of saint robert, what grace thou mayst acquire for thyself and thy daughter rebecca? i grieve for the maiden, for she is of fair and comely countenance,---i beheld her in the lists of ashby. also brian de bois-guilbert is one with whom i may do much---bethink thee how thou mayst deserve my good word with him.'' ``alas! alas!'' said the jew, ``on every hand the spoilers arise against me---i am given as a prey unto the assyrian, and a prey unto him of egypt.'' ``and what else should be the lot of thy accursed race?'' answered the prior; ``for what saith holy writ, _verbum dominii projecterunt, et sapientia est nulla in eis_---they have cast forth the word of the lord, and there is no wisdom in them; _propterea dabo mulieres eorum exteris_---i will give their women to strangers, that is to the templar, as in the present matter; _et thesauros eorum h<ae>redibus alienis_, and their treasures to others---as in the present case to these honest gentlemen.'' isaac groaned deeply, and began to wring his hands, and to relapse into his state of desolation and despair. but the leader of the yeomen led him aside. ``advise thee well, isaac,'' said locksley, ``what thou wilt do in this matter; my counsel to thee is to make a friend of this churchman. he is vain, isaac, and he is covetous; at least he needs money to supply his profusion. thou canst easily gratify his greed; for think not that i am blinded by thy pretexts of poverty. i am intimately acquainted, isaac, with the very iron chest in which thou dost keep thy money-bags---what! know i not the great stone beneath the apple-tree, that leads into the vaulted chamber under thy garden at york?'' the jew grew as pale as death---``but fear nothing from me,'' continued the yeoman, ``for we are of old acquainted. dost thou not remember the sick yeoman whom thy fair daughter rebecca redeemed from the gyves at york, and kept him in thy house till his health was restored, when thou didst dismiss him recovered, and with a piece of money?---usurer as thou art, thou didst never place coin at better interest than that poor silver mark, for it has this day saved thee five hundred crowns.'' ``and thou art he whom we called diccon bend-the-bow?'' said isaac; ``i thought ever i knew the accent of thy voice.'' ``i am bend-the-bow,'' said the captain, ``and locksley, and have a good name besides all these.'' ``but thou art mistaken, good bend-the-bow, concerning that same vaulted apartment. so help me heaven, as there is nought in it but some merchandises which i will gladly part with to you--one hundred yards of lincoln green to make doublets to thy men, and a hundred staves of spanish yew to make bows, and a hundred silken bowstrings, tough, round, and sound---these will i send thee for thy good-will, honest diccon, an thou wilt keep silence about the vault, my good diccon.'' ``silent as a dormouse,'' said the outlaw; ``and never trust me but i am grieved for thy daughter. but i may not help it---the templars lances are too strong for my archery in the open field---they would scatter us like dust. had i but known it was rebecca when she was borne off, something might have been done; but now thou must needs proceed by policy. come, shall i treat for thee with the prior?'' ``in god's name, diccon, an thou canst, aid me to recover the child of my bosom!'' ``do not thou interrupt me with thine ill-timed avarice,'' said the outlaw, ``and i will deal with him in thy behalf.'' he then turned from the jew, who followed him, however, as closely as his shadow. ``prior aymer,'' said the captain, ``come apart with me under this tree. men say thou dost love wine, and a lady's smile, better than beseems thy order, sir priest; but with that i have nought to do. i have heard, too, thou dost love a brace of good dogs and a fleet horse, and it may well be that, loving things which are costly to come by, thou hatest not a purse of gold. but i have never heard that thou didst love oppression or cruelty.---now, here is isaac willing to give thee the means of pleasure and pastime in a bag containing one hundred marks of silver, if thy intercession with thine ally the templar shall avail to procure the freedom of his daughter.'' ``in safety and honour, as when taken from me,'' said the jew, ``otherwise it is no bargain.'' ``peace, isaac,'' said the outlaw, ``or i give up thine interest.---what say you to this my purpose, prior aymer?'' ``the matter,'' quoth the prior, ``is of a mixed condition; for, if i do a good deal on the one hand, yet, on the other, it goeth to the vantage of a jew, and in so much is against my conscience. yet, if the israelite will advantage the church by giving me somewhat over to the building of our dortour,* * _dortour_, or dormitory. i will take it on my conscience to aid him in the matter of his daughter.'' ``for a score of marks to the dortour,'' said the outlaw,---``be still, i say, isaac!---or for a brace of silver candlesticks to the altar, we will not stand with you.'' ``nay, but, good diccon bend-the-bow''---said isaac, endeavouring to interpose. ``good jew---good beast---good earthworm!'' said the yeoman, losing patience; ``an thou dost go on to put thy filthy lucre in the balance with thy daughter's life and honour, by heaven, i will strip thee of every maravedi thou hast in the world, before three days are out!'' isaac shrunk together, and was silent. ``and what pledge am i to have for all this?'' said the prior. ``when isaac returns successful through your mediation,'' said the outlaw, ``i swear by saint hubert, i will see that he pays thee the money in good silver, or i will reckon with him for it in such sort, he had better have paid twenty such sums.'' ``well then, jew,'' said aymer, ``since i must needs meddle in this matter, let me have the use of thy writing-tablets---though, hold---rather than use thy pen, i would fast for twenty-four hours, and where shall i find one?'' ``if your holy scruples can dispense with using the jew's tablets, for the pen i can find a remedy,'' said the yeoman; and, bending his bow, he aimed his shaft at a wild-goose which was soaring over their heads, the advanced-guard of a phalanx of his tribe, which were winging their way to the distant and solitary fens of holderness. the bird came fluttering down, transfixed with the arrow. ``there, prior,'' said the captain, ``are quills enow to supply all the monks of jorvaulx for the next hundred years, an they take not to writing chronicles.'' the prior sat down, and at great leisure indited an epistle to brian de bois-guilbert, and having carefully sealed up the tablets, delivered them to the jew, saying, ``this will be thy safe-conduct to the preceptory of templestowe, and, as i think, is most likely to accomplish the delivery of thy daughter, if it be well backed with proffers of advantage and commodity at thine own hand; for, trust me well, the good knight bois-guilbert is of their confraternity that do nought for nought.'' ``well, prior,'' said the outlaw, ``i will detain thee no longer here than to give the jew a quittance for the six hundred crowns at which thy ransom is fixed---i accept of him for my pay-master; and if i hear that ye boggle at allowing him in his accompts the sum so paid by him, saint mary refuse me, an i burn not the abbey over thine head, though i hang ten years the sooner!'' with a much worse grace than that wherewith he had penned the letter to bois-guilbert, the prior wrote an acquittance, discharging isaac of york of six hundred crowns, advanced to him in his need for acquittal of his ransom, and faithfully promising to hold true compt with him for that sum. ``and now,'' said prior aymer, ``i will pray you of restitution of my mules and palfreys, and the freedom of the reverend brethren attending upon me, and also of the gymmal rings, jewels, and fair vestures, of which i have been despoiled, having now satisfied you for my ransom as a true prisoner.'' ``touching your brethren, sir prior,'' said locksley, ``they shall have present freedom, it were unjust to detain them; touching your horses and mules, they shall also be restored, with such spending-money as may enable you to reach york, for it were cruel to deprive you of the means of journeying. ---but as concerning rings, jewels, chains, and what else, you must understand that we are men of tender consciences, and will not yield to a venerable man like yourself, who should be dead to the vanities of this life, the strong temptation to break the rule of his foundation, by wearing rings, chains, or other vain gauds.'' ``think what you do, my masters,'' said the prior, ``ere you put your hand on the church's patrimony ---these things are _inter res sacras_, and i wot not what judgment might ensue were they to be handled by laical hands.'' ``i will take care of that, reverend prior,'' said the hermit of copmanhurst; ``for i will wear them myself.'' ``friend, or brother,'' said the prior, in answer to this solution of his doubts, ``if thou hast really taken religious orders, i pray thee to look how thou wilt answer to thine official for the share thou hast taken in this day's work.'' ``friend prior,'' returned the hermit, ``you are to know that i belong to a little diocese, where i am my own diocesan, and care as little for the bishop of york as i do for the abbot of jorvaulx, the prior, and all the convent.'' ``thou art utterly irregular,'' said the prior; ``one of those disorderly men, who, taking on them the sacred character without due cause, profane the holy rites, and endanger the souls of those who take counsel at their hands; _lapides pro pane condonantes iis_, giving them stones instead of bread as the vulgate hath it.'' ``nay,'' said the friar, ``an my brain-pan could have been broken by latin, it had not held so long together.---i say, that easing a world of such misproud priests as thou art of their jewels and their gimcracks, is a lawful spoiling of the egyptians.'' ``thou be'st a hedge-priest,''* said the prior, in * note h. hedge-priests. great wrath, ``_excommuicabo vos_.'' ``thou best thyself more like a thief and a heretic,'' said the friar, equally indignant; ``i will pouch up no such affront before my parishioners, as thou thinkest it not shame to put upon me, although i be a reverend brother to thee. _ossa enis perfringam_, i will break your bones, as the vulgate hath it.'' ``hola!'' cried the captain, ``come the reverend brethren to such terms?---keep thine assurance of peace, friar.---prior, an thou hast not made thy peace perfect with god, provoke the friar no further. ---hermit, let the reverend father depart in peace, as a ransomed man.'' the yeomen separated the incensed priests, who continued to raise their voices, vituperating each other in bad latin, which the prior delivered the more fluently, and the hermit with the greater vehemence. the prior at length recollected himself sufficiently to be aware that he was compromising his dignity, by squabbling with such a hedge-priest as the outlaw's chaplain, and being joined by his attendants, rode off with considerably less pomp, and in a much more apostolical condition, so far as worldly matters were concerned, than he had exhibited before this rencounter. it remained that the jew should produce some security for the ransom which he was to pay on the prior's account, as well as upon his own. he gave, accordingly, an order sealed with his signet, to a brother of his tribe at york, requiring him to pay to the bearer the sum of a thousand crowns, and to deliver certain merchandises specified in the note. ``my brother sheva,'' he said, groaning deeply, ``hath the key of my warehouses.'' ``and of the vaulted chamber,'' whispered locksley. ``no, no---may heaven forefend!'' said isaac; ``evil is the hour that let any one whomsoever into that secret!'' ``it is safe with me,'' said the outlaw, ``so be that this thy scroll produce the sum therein nominated and set down.---but what now, isaac? art dead? art stupefied? hath the payment of a thousand crowns put thy daughter's peril out of thy mind?'' the jew started to his feet---``no, diccon, no ---i will presently set forth.---farewell, thou whom i may not call good, and dare not and will not call evil.'' yet ere isaac departed, the outlaw chief bestowed on him this parting advice:---``be liberal of thine offers, isaac, and spare not thy purse for thy daughter's safety. credit me, that the gold thou shalt spare in her cause, will hereafter give thee as much agony as if it were poured molten down thy throat.'' isaac acquiesced with a deep groan, and set forth on his journey, accompanied by two tall foresters, who were to be his guides, and at the same time his guards, through the wood. the black knight, who had seen with no small interest these various proceedings, now took his leave of the outlaw in turn; nor could he avoid expressing his surprise at having witnessed so much of civil policy amongst persons cast out from all the ordinary protection and influence of the laws. ``good fruit, sir knight,'' said the yeoman, ``will sometimes grow on a sorry tree; and evil times are not always productive of evil alone and unmixed. amongst those who are drawn into this lawless state, there are, doubtless, numbers who wish to exercise its license with some moderation, and some who regret, it may be, that they are obliged to follow such a trade at all.'' ``and to one of those,'' said the knight, ``i am now, i presume, speaking?'' ``sir knight,'' said the outlaw, ``we have each our secret. you are welcome to form your judgment of me, and i may use my conjectures touching you, though neither of our shafts may hit the mark they are shot at. but as i do not pray to be admitted into your mystery, be not offended that i preserve my own.'' ``i crave pardon, brave outlaw,'' said the knight, ``your reproof is just. but it may be we shall meet hereafter with less of concealment on either side.--meanwhile we part friends, do we not?'' ``there is my hand upon it,'' said locksley; ``and i will call it the hand of a true englishman, though an outlaw for the present.'' ``and there is mine in return,'' said the knight, ``and i hold it honoured by being clasped with yours. for he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears. fare thee well, gallant outlaw!'' thus parted that fair fellowship; and he of the fetterlock, mounting upon his strong war-horse, rode off through the forest. chapter xxxiv. _king john_. i'll tell thee what, my friend, he is a very serpent in my way; and wheresoe'er this foot of mine doth tread, he lies before me.---dost thou understand me? _king john._ there was brave feasting in the castle of york, to which prince john had invited those nobles, prelates, and leaders, by whose assistance he hoped to carry through his ambitious projects upon his brother's throne. waldemar fitzurse, his able and politic agent, was at secret work among them, tempering all to that pitch of courage which was necessary in making an open declaration of their purpose. but their enterprise was delayed by the absence of more than one main limb of the confederacy. the stubborn and daring, though brutal courage of front-de-b<oe>uf; the buoyant spirits and bold bearing of de bracy; the sagacity, martial experience, and renowned valour of brian de bois-guilbert, were important to the success of their conspiracy; and, while cursing in secret their unnecessary and unmeaning absence, neither john nor his adviser dared to proceed without them. isaac the jew also seemed to have vanished, and with him the hope of certain sums of money, making up the subsidy for which prince john had contracted with that israelite and his brethren. this deficiency was likely to prove perilous in an emergency so critical. it was on the morning after the fall of torquilstone, that a confused report began to spread abroad in the city of york, that de bracy and bois-guilbert, with their confederate front-de-b<oe>uf, had been taken or slain. waldemar brought the rumour to prince john, announcing, that he feared its truth the more that they had set out with a small attendance, for the purpose of committing an assault on the saxon cedric and his attendants. at another time the prince would have treated this deed of violence as a good jest; but now, that it interfered with and impeded his own plans, he exclaimed against the perpetrators, and spoke of the broken laws, and the infringement of public order and of private property, in a tone which might have become king alfred. ``the unprincipled marauders,'' he said---``were i ever to become monarch of england, i would hang such transgressors over the drawbridges of their own castles.'' ``but to become monarch of england,'' said his ahithophel coolly, ``it is necessary not only that your grace should endure the transgressions of these unprincipled marauders, but that you should afford them your protection, notwithstanding your laudable zeal for the laws they are in the habit of infringing. we shall be finely helped, if the churl saxons should have realized your grace's vision, of converting feudal drawbridges into gibbets; and yonder bold-spirited cedric seemeth one to whom such an imagination might occur. your grace is well aware, it will be dangerous to stir without front-de-b<oe>uf, de bracy, and the templar; and yet we have gone too far to recede with safety.'' prince john struck his forehead with impatience, and then began to stride up and down the apartent. ``the villains,'' he said, ``the base treacherous villains, to desert me at this pinch!'' ``nay, say rather the feather-pated giddy madmen,'' said waldemar, ``who must be toying with follies when such business was in hand.'' ``what is to be done?'' said the prince, stopping short before waldemar. ``i know nothing which can be done,'' answered his counsellor, ``save that which i have already taken order for.---i came not to bewail this evil chance with your grace, until i had done my best to remedy it.'' ``thou art ever my better angel, waldemar,'' said the prince; ``and when i have such a chancellor to advise withal, the reign of john will be renowned in our annals.---what hast thou commanded?'' ``i have ordered louis winkelbrand, de bracy's lieutenant, to cause his trumpet sound to horse, and to display his banner, and to set presently forth towards the castle of front-de-b<oe>uf, to do what yet may be done for the succour of our friends.'' prince john's face flushed with the pride of a spoilt child, who has undergone what it conceives to be an insult. ``by the face of god!'' he said, ``waldemar fitzurse, much hast thou taken upon thee! and over malapert thou wert to cause trumpet to blow, or banner to be raised, in a town where ourselves were in presence, without our express command.'' ``i crave your grace's pardon,'' said fitzurse, internally cursing the idle vanity of his patron; ``but when time pressed, and even the loss of minutes might be fatal, i judged it best to take this much burden upon me, in a matter of such importance to your grace's interest.'' ``thou art pardoned, fitzurse,'' said the prince, gravely; ``thy purpose hath atoned for thy hasty rashness.---but whom have we here?---de bracy himself, by the rood!---and in strange guise doth he come before us.'' it was indeed de bracy---``bloody with spurring, fiery red with speed.'' his armour bore all the marks of the late obstinate fray, being broken, defaced, and stained with blood in many places, and covered with clay and dust from the crest to the spur. undoing his helmet, he placed it on the table, and stood a moment as if to collect himself before be told his news. ``de bracy,'' said prince john, ``what means this?---speak, i charge thee!---are the saxons in rebellion?'' ``speak, de bracy,'' said fitzurse, almost in the same moment with his master, ``thou wert wont to be a man---where is the templar?---where front-de-b<oe>uf?'' ``the templar is fled,'' said de bracy; ``front-de-b<oe>uf you will never see more. he has found a red grave among the blazing rafters of his own castle and i alone am escaped to tell you.'' ``cold news,'' said waldemar, ``to us, though you speak of fire and conflagration.'' ``the worst news is not yet said,'' answered de bracy; and, coming up to prince john, he uttered in a low and emphatic tone---``richard is in england---i have seen and spoken with him.'' prince john turned pale, tottered, and caught at the back of an oaken bench to support himself ---much like to a man who receives an arrow in his bosom. ``thou ravest, de bracy,'' said fitzurse, ``it cannot be.'' ``it is as true as truth itself,'' said de bracy; ``i was his prisoner, and spoke with him.'' ``with richard plantagenet, sayest thou?'' continued fitzurse. ``with richard plantagenet,'' replied de bracy, with richard c<oe>ur-de-lion---with richard of england.'' ``and thou wert his prisoner?'' said waldemar; ``he is then at the head of a power?'' ``no---only a few outlawed yeomen were around him, and to these his person is unknown. i heard him say he was about to depart from them. he joined them only to assist at the storming of torquilstone.'' ``ay,'' said fitzurse, ``such is indeed the fashion of richard---a true knight-errant he, and will wander in wild adventure, trusting the prowess of his single arm, like any sir guy or sir bevis, while the weighty affairs of his kingdom slumber, and his own safety is endangered.---what dost thou propose to do de bracy?'' ``i?---i offered richard the service of my free lances, and he refused them---i will lead them to hull, seize on shipping, and embark for flanders; thanks to the bustling times, a man of action will always find employment. and thou, waldemar, wilt thou take lance and shield, and lay down thy policies, and wend along with me, and share the fate which god sends us?'' ``i am too old, maurice, and i have a daughter,'' answered waldemar. ``give her to me, fitzurse, and i will maintain her as fits her rank, with the help of lance and stirrup,'' said de bracy. ``not so,'' answered fitzurse; ``i will take sanctuary in this church of saint peter---the archbishop is my sworn brother.' during this discourse, prince john had gradually awakened from the stupor into which he had been thrown by the unexpected intelligence, and had been attentive to the conversation which passed betwixt his followers. ``they fall off from me,'' he said to himself, ``they hold no more by me than a withered leaf by the bough when a breeze blows on it?---hell and fiends! can i shape no means for myself when i am deserted by these cravens?''--he paused, and there was an expression of diabolical passion in the constrained laugh with which he at length broke in on their conversation. ``ha, ha, ha! my good lords, by the light of our lady's brow, i held ye sage men, bold men, ready-witted men; yet ye throw down wealth, honour, pleasure, all that our noble game promised you, at the moment it might be won by one bold cast!'' ``i understand you not,'' said de bracy. ``as soon as richard's return is blown abroad, he will be at the head of an army, and all is then over with us. i would counsel you, my lord, either to fly to france or take the protection of the queen mother.'' ``i seek no safety for myself,'' said prince john, haughtily; ``that i could secure by a word spoken to my brother. but although you, de bracy, and you, waldemar fitzurse, are so ready to abandon me, i should not greatly delight to see your heads blackening on clifford's gate yonder. thinkest thou, waldemar, that the wily archbishop will not suffer thee to be taken from the very horns of the altar, would it make his peace with king richard? and forgettest thou, de bracy, that robert estoteville lies betwixt thee and hull with all his forces, and that the earl of essex is gathering his followers? if we had reason to fear these levies even before richard's return, trowest thou there is any doubt now which party their leaders will take? trust me, estoteville alone has strength enough to drive all thy free lances into the humber.---'' waldemar fitzurse and de bracy looked in each other's faces with blank dismay.---``there is but one road to safety,'' continued the prince, and his brow grew black as midnight; ``this object of our terror journeys alone---he must be met withal.'' ``not by me,'' said de bracy, hastily; ``i was his prisoner, and he took me to mercy. i will not harm a feather in his crest.'' ``who spoke of harming him?'' said prince john, with a hardened laugh; ``the knave will say next that i meant he should slay him!---no--a prison were better; and whether in britain or austria, what matters it?---things will be but as they were when we commenced our enterprise--it was founded on the hope that richard would remain a captive in germany---our uncle robert lived and died in the castle of cardiffe.'' ``ay, but,'' said waldemar, ``your sire henry sate more firm in his seat than your grace can. i say the best prison is that which is made by the sexton---no dungeon like a church-vault! i have said my say.'' ``prison or tomb,'' said de bracy, ``i wash my hands of the whole matter.'' ``villain!'' said prince john, ``thou wouldst not bewray our counsel?'' ``counsel was never bewrayed by me,'' said de bracy, haughtily, ``nor must the name of villain be coupled with mine!'' ``peace, sir knight!'' said waldemar; ``and you, good my lord, forgive the scruples of valiant de bracy; i trust i shall soon remove them.'' ``that passes your eloquence, fitzurse,'' replied the knight. ``why, good sir maurice,'' rejoined the wily politician, ``start not aside like a scared steed, without, at least, considering the object of your terror. ---this richard---but a day since, and it would have been thy dearest wish to have met him hand to hand in the ranks of battle---a hundred times i have heard thee wish it.'' ``ay,'' said de bracy, ``but that was as thou sayest, hand to hand, and in the ranks of battle! thou never heardest me breathe a thought of assaulting him alone, and in a forest.'' ``thou art no good knight if thou dost scruple at it,'' said waldemar. ``was it in battle that lancelot de lac and sir tristram won renown? or was it not by encountering gigantic knights under the shade of deep and unknown forests?'' ``ay, but i promise you,'' said de bracy, ``that neither tristram nor lancelot would have been match, hand to hand, for richard plantagenet, and i think it was not their wont to take odds against a single man.'' ``thou art mad, de bracy---what is it we propose to thee, a hired and retained captain of free companions, whose swords are purchased for prince john's service? thou art apprized of our enemy, and then thou scruplest, though thy patron's fortunes, those of thy comrades, thine own, and the life and honour of every one amongst us, be at stake!'' ``i tell you,'' said de bracy, sullenly, ``that he gave me my life. true, he sent me from his presence, and refused my homage---so far i owe him neither favour nor allegiance---but i will not lift hand against him.'' ``it needs not---send louis winkelbrand and a score of thy lances.'' ``ye have sufficient ruffians of your own,'' said de bracy; ``not one of mine shall budge on such an errand.'' ``art thou so obstinate, de bracy?'' said prince john; ``and wilt thou forsake me, after so many protestations of zeal for my service?'' ``i mean it not,'' said de bracy; ``i will abide by you in aught that becomes a knight, whether in the lists or in the camp; but this highway practice comes not within my vow.'' ``come hither, waldemar,'' said prince john. ``an unhappy prince am i. my father, king henry, had faithful servants---he had but to say that he was plagued with a factious priest, and the blood of thomas-a-becket, saint though he was, stained the steps of his own altar.---tracy, morville, brito * loyal and daring subjects, your names, your * reginald fitzurse, william de tracy, hugh de morville, * and richard brito, were the gentlemen of henry the second's * household, who, instigated by some passionate expressions of * their sovereign, slew the celebrated thomas-a-becket. spirit, are extinct! and although reginald fitzurse hath left a son, he hath fallen off from his father's fidelity and courage.'' ``he has fallen off from neither,'' said waldemar fitzurse; ``and since it may not better be, i will take on me the conduct of this perilous enterprise. dearly, however, did my father purchase the praise of a zealous friend; and yet did his proof of loyalty to henry fall far short of what i am about to afford; for rather would i assail a whole calendar of saints, than put spear in rest against c<oe>ur-de-lion. ---de bracy, to thee i must trust to keep up the spirits of the doubtful, and to guard prince john's person. if you receive such news as i trust to send you, our enterprise will no longer wear a doubtful aspect.---page,'' he said, ``hie to my lodgings, and tell my armourer to be there in readiness; and bid stephen wetheral, broad thoresby, and the three spears of spyinghow, come to me instantly; and let the scout-master, hugh bardon, attend me also.---adieu, my prince, till better times.'' thus speaking, he left the apartment. ``he goes to make my brother prisoner,'' said prince john to de bracy, ``with as little touch of compunction, as if it but concerned the liberty of a saxon franklin. i trust he will observe our orders, and use our dear richard's person with all due respect.'' de bracy only answered by a smile. ``by the light of our lady's brow,'' said prince john, ``our orders to him were most precise--though it may be you heard them not, as we stood together in the oriel window---most clear and positive was our charge that richard's safety should be cared for, and woe to waldemar's head if he transgress it!'' ``i had better pass to his lodgings,'' said de bracy, ``and make him fully aware of your grace's pleasure; for, as it quite escaped my ear, it may not perchance have reached that of waldemar.'' ``nay, nay,'' said prince john, impatiently, ``i promise thee he heard me; and, besides, i have farther occupation for thee. maurice, come hither; let me lean on thy shoulder.'' they walked a turn through the hall in this familiar posture, and prince john, with an air of the most confidential intimacy, proceeded to say, ``what thinkest thou of this waldemar fitzurse, my de bracy?---he trusts to be our chancellor. surely we will pause ere we give an office so high to one who shows evidently how little he reverences our blood, by his so readily undertaking this enterprise against richard. thou dost think, i warrant, that thou hast lost somewhat of our regard, by thy boldly declining this unpleasing task---but no, maurice! i rather honour thee for thy virtuous constancy. there are things most necessary to be done, the perpetrator of which we neither love nor honour; and there may be refusals to serve us, which shall rather exalt in our estimation those who deny our request. the arrest of my unfortunate brother forms no such good title to the high office of chancellor, as thy chivalrous and courageous denial establishes in thee to the truncheon of high marshal. think of this, de bracy, and begone to thy charge.'' ``fickle tyrant!'' muttered de bracy, as he left the presence of the prince; ``evil luck have they who trust thee. thy chancellor, indeed!---he who hath the keeping of thy conscience shall have an easy charge, i trow. but high marshal of england! that,'' he said, extending his arm, as if to grasp the baton of office, and assuming a loftier stride along the antechamber, ``that is indeed a prize worth playing for!'' de bracy had no sooner left the apartment than prince john summoned an attendant. ``bid hugh bardon, our scout-master, come hither, as soon as he shall have spoken with waldemar fitzurse.'' the scout-master arrived after a brief delay, during which john traversed the apartment with, unequal and disordered steps. ``bardon,'' said he, ``what did waldemar desire of thee?'' ``two resolute men, well acquainted with these northern wilds, and skilful in tracking the tread of man and horse.'' ``and thou hast fitted him?'' ``let your grace never trust me else,'' answered the master of the spies. ``one is from hexamshire; he is wont to trace the tynedale and teviotdale thieves, as a bloodhound follows the slot of a hurt deer. the other is yorkshire bred, and has twanged his bowstring right oft in merry sherwood; he knows each glade and dingle, copse and high-wood, betwixt this and richmond.'' ``'tis well,'' said the prince.---``goes waldemar forth with them?'' ``instantly,'' said bardon. ``with what attendance?'' asked john, carelessly. ``broad thoresby goes with him, and wetheral, whom they call, for his cruelty, stephen steel-heart; and three northern men-at-arms that belonged to ralph middleton's gang---they are called the spears of spyinghow.'' ``'tis well,'' said prince john; then added, after a moment's pause, ``bardon, it imports our service that thou keep a strict watch on maurice de bracy ---so that he shall not observe it, however---and let us know of his motions from time to time--with whom he converses, what he proposeth. fail not in this, as thou wilt be answerable.'' hugh bardon bowed, and retired. ``if maurice betrays me,'' said prince john--``if he betrays me, as his bearing leads me to fear, i will have his head, were richard thundering at the gates of york.'' chapter xxxv. arouse the tiger of hyrcanian deserts, strive with the half-starved lion for his prey; lesser the risk, than rouse the slumbering fire of wild fanaticism. _anonymus_. our tale now returns to isaac of york.---mounted upon a mule, the gift of the outlaw, with two tall yeomen to act as his guard and guides, the jew had set out for the preceptory of templestowe, for the purpose of negotiating his daughter's redemption. the preceptory was but a day's journey from the demolished castle of torquilstone, and the jew had hoped to reach it before nightfall; accordingly, having dismissed his guides at the verge of the forest, and rewarded them with a piece of silver, he began to press on with such speed as his weariness permitted him to exert. but his strength failed him totally ere he had reached within four miles of the temple-court; racking pains shot along his back and through his limbs, and the excessive anguish which he felt at heart being now augmented by bodily suffering, he was rendered altogether incapable of proceeding farther than a small market-town, were dwelt a jewish rabbi of his tribe, eminent in the medical profession, and to whom isaac was well known. nathan ben israel received his suffering countryman with that kindness which the law prescribed, and which the jews practised to each other. he insisted on his betaking himself to repose, and used such remedies as were then in most repute to check the progress of the fever, which terror, fatigue, ill usage, and sorrow, had brought upon the poor old jew. on the morrow, when isaac proposed to arise and pursue his journey, nathan remonstrated against his purpose, both as his host and as his physician. it might cost him, he said, his life. but isaac replied, that more than life and death depended upon his going that morning to templestowe. ``to templestowe!'' said his host with surprise again felt his pulse, and then muttered to himself, ``his fever is abated, yet seems his mind somewhat alienated and disturbed.'' ``and why not to templestowe?'' answered his patient. ``i grant thee, nathan, that it is a dwelling of those to whom the despised children of the promise are a stumbling-block and an abomination; yet thou knowest that pressing affairs of traffic sometimes carry us among these bloodthirsty nazarene soldiers, and that we visit the preceptories of the templars, as well as the commanderies of the knights hospitallers, as they are called.'' * * the establishments of the knight templars were called * preceptories, and the title of those who presided in the order * was preceptor; as the principal knights of saint john were * termed commanders, and their houses commanderies. but * these terms were sometimes, it would seem, used indiscriminately. ``i know it well,'' said nathan; ``but wottest thou that lucas de beaumanoir, the chief of their order, and whom they term grand master, is now himself at templestowe?'' ``i know it not,'' said isaac; ``our last letters from our brethren at paris advised us that he was at that city, beseeching philip for aid against the sultan saladine.'' ``he hath since come to england, unexpected by his brethren,'' said ben israel; ``and he cometh among them with a strong and outstretched arm to correct and to punish. his countenance is kindled in anger against those who have departed from the vow which they have made, and great is the fear of those sons of belial. thou must have heard of his name?'' ``it is well known unto me,'' said isaac; ``the gentiles deliver this lucas beaumanoir as a man zealous to slaying for every point of the nazarene law; and our brethren have termed him a fierce destroyer of the saracens, and a cruel tyrant to the children of the promise.'' ``and truly have they termed him,'' said nathan the physician. ``other templars may be moved from the purpose of their heart by pleasure, or bribed by promise of gold and silver; but beaumanoir is of a different stamp---hating sensuality, despising treasure, and pressing forward to that which they call the crown of martyrdom---the god of jacob speedily send it unto him, and unto them all! specially hath this proud man extended his glove over the children of judah, as holy david over edom, holding the murder of a jew to be all offering of as sweet savour as the death of a saracen. impious and false things has he said even of the virtues of our medicines, as if they were the devices of satan---the lord rebuke him!'' ``nevertheless,'' said isaac, ``i must present myself at templestowe, though he hath made his face like unto a fiery furnace seven times heated.'' he then explained to nathan the pressing cause of his journey. the rabbi listened with interest, and testified his sympathy after the fashion of his people, rending his clothes, and saying, ``ah, my daughter!---ah, my daughter!---alas! for the beauty of zion!---alas! for the captivity of israel!'' ``thou seest,'' said isaac, ``how it stands with me, and that i may not tarry. peradventure, the presence of this lucas beaumanoir, being the chief man over them, may turn brian de bois-guilbert from the ill which he doth meditate, and that he may deliver to me my beloved daughter rebecca.'' ``go thou,'' said nathan ben israel, ``and be wise, for wisdom availed daniel in the den of lions into which he was cast; and may it go well with thee, even as thine heart wisheth. yet, if thou canst, keep thee from the presence of the grand master, for to do foul scorn to our people is his morning and evening delight. it may be if thou couldst speak with bois-guilbert in private, thou shalt the better prevail with him; for men say that these accursed nazarenes are not of one mind in the preceptory--may their counsels be confounded and brought to shame! but do thou, brother, return to me as if it were to the house of thy father, and bring me word how it has sped with thee; and well do i hope thou wilt bring with thee rebecca, even the scholar of the wise miriam, whose cures the gentiles slandered as if they had been wrought by necromancy.'' isaac accordingly bade his friend farewell, and about an hour's riding brought him before the preceptory of templestowe. this establishment of the templars was seated amidst fair meadows and pastures, which the devotion of the former preceptor had bestowed upon their order. it was strong and well fortified, a point never neglected by these knights, and which the disordered state of england rendered peculiarly necessary. two halberdiers, clad in black, guarded the drawbridge, and others, in the same sad livery, glided to and fro upon the walls with a funereal pace, resembling spectres more than soldiers. the inferior officers of the order were thus dressed, ever since their use of white garments, similar to those of the knights and esquires, had given rise to a combination of certain false brethren in the mountains of palestine, terming themselves templars, and bringing great dishonour on the order. a knight was now and then seen to cross the court in his long white cloak, his head depressed on his breast, and his arms folded. they passed each other, if they chanced to meet, with a slow, solemn, and mute greeting; for such was the rule of their order, quoting thereupon the holy texts, ``in many words thou shalt not avoid sin,'' and ``life and death are in the power of the tongue.'' in a word, the stern ascetic rigour of the temple discipline, which had been so long exchanged for prodigal and licentious indulgence, seemed at once to have revived at templestowe under the severe eye of lucas beaumanoir. isaac paused at the gate, to consider how he might seek entrance in the manner most likely to bespeak favour; for he was well aware, that to his unhappy race the reviving fanaticism of the order was not less dangerous than their unprincipled licentiousness; and that his religion would be the object of hate and persecution in the one case, as his wealth would have exposed him in the other to the extortions of unrelenting oppression. meantime lucas beaumanoir walked in a small garden belonging to the preceptory, included within the precincts of its exterior fortification, and held sad and confidential communication with a brother of his order, who had come in his company from palestine. the grand master was a man advanced in age, as was testified by his long grey beard, and the shaggy grey eyebrows overhanging eyes, of which, however, years had been unable to quench the fire. a formidable warrior, his thin and severe features retained the soldier's fierceness of expression; an ascetic bigot, they were no less marked by the emaciation of abstinence, and the spiritual pride of the self-satisfied devotee. yet with these severer traits of physiognomy, there was mixed somewhat striking and noble, arising, doubtless, from the great part which his high office called upon him to act among monarchs and princes, and from the habitual exercise of supreme authority over the valiant and high-born knights, who were united by the rules of the order. his stature was tall, and his gait, undepressed by age and toil, was erect and stately. his white mantle was shaped with severe regularity, according to the rule of saint bernard himself, being composed of what was then called burrel cloth, exactly fitted to the size of the wearer, and bearing on the left shoulder the octangular cross peculiar to the order, formed of red cloth. no vair or ermine decked this garment; but in respect of his age, the grand master, as permitted by the rules, wore his doublet lined and trimmed with the softest lambskin, dressed with the wool outwards, which was the nearest approach he could regularly make to the use of fur, then the greatest luxury of dress. in his hand he bore that singular _abacus_, or staff of office, with which templars are usually represented, having at the upper end a round plate, on which was engraved the cross of the order, inscribed within a circle or orle, as heralds term it. his companion, who attended on this great personage, had nearly the same dress in all respects, but his extreme deference towards his superior showed that no other equality subsisted between them. the preceptor, for such he was in rank, walked not in a line with the grand master, but just so far behind that beaumanoir could speak to him without turning round his head. ``conrade,'' said the grand master, ``dear companion of my battles and my toils, to thy faithful bosom alone i can confide my sorrows. to thee alone can i tell how oft, since i came to this kingdom, i have desired to be dissolved and to be with the just. not one object in england hath met mine eye which it could rest upon with pleasure, save the tombs of our brethren, beneath the massive roof of our temple church in yonder proud capital. o, valiant robert de ros! did i exclaim internally, as i gazed upon these good soldiers of the cross, where they lie sculptured on their sepulchres,---o, worthy william de mareschal! open your marble cells, and take to your repose a weary brother, who would rather strive with a hundred thousand pagans than witness the decay of our holy order!'' ``it is but true,'' answered conrade mont-fitchet; ``it is but too true; and the irregularities of our brethren in england are even more gross than those in france.'' ``because they are more wealthy,'' answered the grand master. ``bear with me, brother, although i should something vaunt myself. thou knowest the life i have led, keeping each point of my order, striving with devils embodied and disembodied, striking down the roaring lion, who goeth about seeking whom be may devour, like a good knight and devout priest, wheresoever i met with him--even as blessed saint bernard hath prescribed to us in the forty-fifth capital of our rule, _ut leo semper feriatur_.* but by the holy temple! the zeal * in the ordinances of the knights of the temple, this phrase * is repeated in a variety of forms, and occurs in almost every * chapter, as if it were the signal-word of the order; which may * account for its being so frequently put in the grand master's * month. which hath devoured my substance and my life, yea, the very nerves and marrow of my bones; by that very holy temple i swear to thee, that save thyself and some few that still retain the ancient severity of our order, i look upon no brethren whom i can bring my soul to embrace under that holy name. what say our statutes, and how do our brethren observe them? they should wear no vain or worldly ornament, no crest upon their helmet, no gold upon stirrup or bridle-bit; yet who now go pranked out so proudly and so gaily as the poor soldiers of the temple? they are forbidden by our statutes to take one bird by means of another, to shoot beasts with bow or arblast, to halloo to a hunting-horn, or to spur the horse after game. but now, at hunting and hawking, and each idle sport of wood and river, who so prompt as the templars in all these fond vanities? they are forbidden to read, save what their superior permitted, or listen to what is read, save such holy things as may be recited aloud during the hours of refaction; but lo! their ears are at the command of idle minstrels, and their eyes study empty romaunts. they were commanded to extirpate magic and heresy. lo! they are charged with studying the accursed cabalistical secrets of the jews, and the magic of the paynim saracens. simpleness of diet was prescribed to them, roots, pottage, gruels, eating flesh but thrice a-week, because the accustomed feeding on flesh is a dishonourable corruption of the body; and behold, their tables groan under delicate fare! their drink was to be water, and now, to drink like a templar, is the boast of each jolly boon companion! this very garden, filled as it is with curious herbs and trees sent from the eastern climes, better becomes the harem of an unbelieving emir, than the plot which christian monks should devote to raise their homely pot-herbs.---and o, conrade! well it were that the relaxation of discipline stopped even here!---well thou knowest that we were forbidden to receive those devout women, who at the beginning were associated as sisters of our order, because, saith the forty-sixth chapter, the ancient enemy hath, by female society, withdrawn many from the right path to paradise. nay, in the last capital, being, as it were, the cope-stone which our blessed founder placed on the pure and underled doctrine which he had enjoined, we are prohibited from offering, even to our sisters and our mothers, the kiss of affection--_-ut omnium mulierum fugiantur oscula_.---i shame to speak---i shame to think--of the corruptions which have rushed in upon us even like a flood. the souls of our pure founders, the spirits of hugh de payen and godfrey de saint omer, and of the blessed seven who first joined in dedicating their lives to the service of the temple, are disturbed even in the enjoyment of paradise itself. i have seen them, conrade, in the visions of the night---their sainted eyes shed tears for the sins and follies of their brethren, and for the foul and shameful luxury in which they wallow. beaumanoir, they say, thou slumberest---awake! there is a stain in the fabric of the temple, deep and foul as that left by the streaks of leprosy on the walls of the infected houses of old.* the soldiers of the * see the 13th chapter of leviticus. cross, who should shun the glance of a woman as the eye of a basilisk, live in open sin, not with the females of their own race only, but with the daughters of the accursed heathen, and more accursed jew. beaumanoir, thou sleepest; up, and avenge our cause!---slay the sinners, male and female!--take to thee the brand of phineas!---the vision fled, conrade, but as i awaked i could still hear the clank of their mail, and see the waving of their white mantles.---and i will do according to their word, i =will= purify the fabric of the temple! and the unclean stones in which the plague is, i will remove and cast out of the building.'' ``yet bethink thee, reverend father,'' said mont-fitchet, ``the stain hath become engrained by time and consuetude; let thy reformation be cautious, as it is just and wise.'' ``no, mont-fitchet,'' answered the stern old man---``it must be sharp and sudden---the order is on the crisis of its fate. the sobriety, self-devotion, and piety of our predecessors, made us powerful friends---our presumption, our wealth, our luxury, have raised up against us mighty enemies.---we must cast away these riches, which are a temptation to princes---we must lay down that presumption, which is an offence to them---we must reform that license of manners, which is a scandal to the whole christian world! or---mark my words---the order of the temple will be utterly demolished---and the place thereof shall no more be known among the nations.'' ``now may god avert such a calamity!'' said the preceptor. ``amen,'' said the grand master, with solemnity, ``but we must deserve his aid. i tell thee, conrade, that neither the powers in heaven, nor the powers on earth, will longer endure the wickedness of this generation---my intelligence is sure ---the ground on which our fabric is reared is already undermined, and each addition we make to the structure of our greatness will only sink it the sooner in the abyss. we must retrace our steps, and show ourselves the faithful champions of the cross, sacrificing to our calling, not alone our blood and our lives---not alone our lusts and our vices--but our ease, our comforts, and our natural affections, and act as men convinced that many a pleasure which may be lawful to others, is forbidden to the vowed soldier of the temple.'' at this moment a squire, clothed in a threadbare vestment, (for the aspirants after this holy order wore during their noviciate the cast-off garments of the knights,) entered the garden, and, bowing profoundly before the grand master, stood silent, awaiting his permission ere he presumed to tell his errand. ``is it not more seemly,'' said the grand master, ``to see this damian, clothed in the garments of christian humility, thus appear with reverend silence before his superior, than but two days since, when the fond fool was decked in a painted coat, and jangling as pert and as proud as any popinjay? ---speak, damian, we permit thee---what is thine errand?'' ``a jew stands without the gate, noble and reverend father,'' said the squire, ``who prays to speak with brother brian de bois-guilbert.'' ``thou wert right to give me knowledge of it,'' said the grand master; ``in our presence a preceptor is but as a common compeer of our order, who may not walk according to his own will, but to that of his master---even according to the text, `in the hearing of the ear he hath obeyed me.'--it imports us especially to know of this bois-guilbert's proceedings,'' said he, turning to his companion. ``report speaks him brave and valiant,'' said conrade. ``and truly is he so spoken of,'' said the grand master; ``in our valour only we are not degenerated from our predecessors, the heroes of the cross. but brother brian came into our order a moody and disappointed man, stirred, i doubt me, to take our vows and to renounce the world, not in sincerity of soul, but as one whom some touch of light discontent had driven into penitence. since then, he hath become an active and earnest agitator, a murmurer, and a machinator, and a leader amongst those who impugn our authority; not considering that the rule is given to the master even by the symbol of the staff and the rod---the staff to support the infirmities of the weak---the rod to correct the faults of delinquents.---damian,'' he continued, ``lead the jew to our presence.'' the squire departed with a profound reverence, and in a few minutes returned, marshalling in isaac of york. no naked slave, ushered into the presence of some mighty prince, could approach his judgment-seat with more profound reverence and terror than that with which the jew drew near to the presence of the grand master. when he had approached within the distance of three yards, beaumanoir made a sign with his staff that he should come no farther. the jew kneeled down on the earth which he kissed in token of reverence; then rising, stood before the templars, his hands folded on his bosom, his head bowed on his breast, in all the submission of oriental slavery. ``damian,'' said the grand master, ``retire, and have a guard ready to await our sudden call; and suffer no one to enter the garden until we shall leave it.''---the squire bowed and retreated.---``jew,'' continued the haughty old man, ``mark me. it suits not our condition to hold with thee long communication, nor do we waste words or time upon any one. wherefore be brief in thy answers to what questions i shall ask thee, and let thy words be of truth; for if thy tongue doubles with me, i will have it torn from thy misbelieving jaws.'' the jew was about to reply, but the grand master went on. ``peace, unbeliever!---not a word in our presence, save in answer to our questions.---what is thy business with our brother brian de bois-guilbert?'' isaac gasped with terror and uncertainty. to tell his tale might be interpreted into scandalizing the order; yet, unless he told it, what hope could he have of achieving his daughter's deliverance? beaumanoir saw his mortal apprehension, and condescended to give him some assurance. ``fear nothing,'' he said, ``for thy wretched person, jew, so thou dealest uprightly in this matter. i demand again to know from thee thy business with brian de bois-guilbert?'' ``i am bearer of a letter,'' stammered out the jew, ``so please your reverend valour, to that good knight, from prior aymer of the abbey of jorvaulx.'' ``said i not these were evil times, conrade?'' said the master. ``a cistertian prior sends a letter to a soldier of the temple, and can find no more fitting messenger than an unbelieving jew.---give me the letter.'' the jew, with trembling hands, undid the folds of his armenian cap, in which he had deposited the prior's tablets for the greater security, and was about to approach, with hand extended and body crouched, to place it within the reach of his grim interrogator. ``back, dog!'' said the grand master; ``i touch not misbelievers, save with the sword.---conrade, take thou the letter from the jew, and give it to me.'' beaumanoir, being thus possessed of the tablets, inspected the outside carefully, and then proceeded to undo the packthread which secured its folds. ``reverend father,'' said conrade, interposing, though with much deference, ``wilt thou break the seal?'' ``and will i not?'' said beaumanoir, with a frown. ``is it not written in the forty-second capital, _de lectione literarum_, that a templar shall not receive a letter, no not from his father, without communicating the same to the grand master, and reading it in his presence?'' he then perused the letter in haste, with an expression of surprise and horror; read it over again more slowly; then holding it out to conrade with one hand, and slightly striking it with the other, exclaimed---``here is goodly stuff for one christian man to write to another, and both members, and no inconsiderable members, of religious professions! when,'' said he solemnly, and looking upward, ``wilt thou come with thy fanners to purge the thrashing-floor?'' mont-fitchet took the letter from his superior, and was about to peruse it. ``read it aloud, conrade,'' said the grand master,---``and do thou'' (to isaac) ``attend to the purport of it, for we will question thee concerning it.'' conrade read the letter, which was in these words: ``aymer, by divine grace, prior of the cistertian house of saint mary's of jorvaulx, to sir brian de bois-guilbert, a knight of the holy order of the temple, wisheth health, with the bounties of king bacchus and of my lady venus. touching our present condition, dear brother, we are a captive in the hands of certain lawless and godless men, who have not feared to detain our person, and put us to ransom; whereby we have also learned of front-de-b<oe>uf's misfortune, and that thou hast escaped with that fair jewish sorceress, whose black eyes have bewitched thee. we are heartily rejoiced of thy safety; nevertheless, we pray thee to be on thy guard in the matter of this second witch of endor; for we are privately assured that your great master, who careth not a bean for cherry cheeks and black eyes, comes from normandy to diminish your mirth, and amend your misdoings. wherefore we pray you heartily to beware, and to be found watching, even as the holy text hath it, _invenientur vigilantes_. and the wealthy jew her father, isaac of york, having prayed of me letters in his behalf, i gave him these, earnestly advising, and in a sort entreating, that you do hold the damsel to ransom, seeing he will pay you from his bags as much as may find fifty damsels upon safer terms, whereof i trust to have my part when we make merry together, as true brothers, not forgetting the wine-cup. for what saith the text, _vinum l<ae>tificat cor hominis_; and again, _rex delectabitur pulchritudine tua_. ``till which merry meeting, we wish you farewell. given from this den of thieves, about the hour of matins, ``aymer pr. s. m. jorvolciencis. ``_postscriptum_. truly your golden chain hath not long abidden with me, and will now sustain, around the neck of an outlaw deer-stealer, the whistle wherewith he calleth on his hounds.'' ``what sayest thou to this, conrade?'' said the grand master---``den of thieves! and a fit residence is a den of thieves for such a prior. no wonder that the hand of god is upon us, and that in the holy land we lose place by place, foot by foot, before the infidels, when we have such churchmen as this aymer.---and what meaneth he, i trow, by this second witch of endor?'' said he to his confident, something apart. conrade was better acquainted (perhaps by practice) with the jargon of gallantry, than was his superior; and he expounded the passage which embarrassed the grand master, to be a sort of language used by worldly men towards those whom they loved _par amours_; but the explanation did not satisfy the bigoted beaumanoir. ``there is more in it than thou dost guess, conrade; thy simplicity is no match for this deep abyss of wickedness. this rebecca of york was a pupil of that miriam of whom thou hast heard. thou shalt hear the jew own it even now.'' then turning to isaac, he said aloud, ``thy daughter, then, is prisoner with brian de bois-guilbert?'' ``ay, reverend valorous sir,'' stammered poor isaac, ``and whatsoever ransom a poor man may pay for her deliverance------'' ``peace!'' said the grand master. ``this thy daughter hath practised the art of healing, hath she not?'' ``ay, gracious sir,'' answered the jew, with more confidence; ``and knight and yeoman, squire and vassal, may bless the goodly gift which heaven hath assigned to her. many a one can testify that she hath recovered them by her art, when every other human aid hath proved vain; but the blessing of the god of jacob was upon her.'' beaumanoir turned to mont-fitchet with a grim smile. ``see, brother,'' he said, ``the deceptions of the devouring enemy! behold the baits with which he fishes for souls, giving a poor space of earthly life in exchange for eternal happiness hereafter. well said our blessed rule, __semper percutiatur leo vorans_. ---up on the lion! down with the destroyer!'' said he, shaking aloft his mystic abacus, as if in defiance of the powers of darkness--``thy daughter worketh the cures, i doubt not,'' thus he went on to address the jew, ``by words and sighs, and periapts, and other cabalistical mysteries.'' ``nay, reverend and brave knight,'' answered isaac, ``but in chief measure by a balsam of marvellous virtue.'' ``where had she that secret?'' said beaumanoir. ``it was delivered to her,'' answered isaac, reluctantly, ``by miriam, a sage matron of our tribe.'' ``ah, false jew!'' said the grand master; ``was it not from that same witch miriam, the abomination of whose enchantments have been heard of throughout every christian land?'' exclaimed the grand master, crossing himself. ``her body was burnt at a stake, and her ashes were scattered to the four winds; and so be it with me and mine order, if i do not as much to her pupil, and more also! i will teach her to throw spell and incantation over the soldiers of the blessed temple.--there, damian, spurn this jew from the gate--shoot him dead if he oppose or turn again. with his daughter we will deal as the christian law and our own high office warrant.'' poor isaac was hurried off accordingly, and expelled from the preceptory; all his entreaties, and even his offers, unheard and disregarded. he could do not better than return to the house of the rabbi, and endeavour, through his means, to learn how his daughter was to be disposed of. he had hitherto feared for her honour, he was now to tremble for her life. meanwhile, the grand master ordered to his presence the preceptor of templestowe. chapter xxxvi. say not my art is fraud---all live by seeming. the beggar begs with it, and the gay courtier gains land and title, rank and rule, by seeming; the clergy scorn it not, and the bold soldier will eke with it his service.---all admit it, all practise it; and he who is content with showing what he is, shall have small credit in church, or camp, or state---so wags the world. _old play_. albert malvoisin, president, or, in the language of the order, preceptor of the establishment of templestowe, was brother to that philip malvoisin who has been already occasionally mentioned in this history, and was, like that baron, in close league with brian de bois-guilbert. amongst dissolute and unprincipled men, of whom the temple order included but too many, albert of templestowe might be distinguished; but with this difference from the audacious bois-guilbert, that he knew how to throw over his vices and his ambition the veil of hypocrisy, and to assume in his exterior the fanaticism which be internally despised. had not the arrival of the grand master been so unexpectedly sudden, he would have seen nothing at templestowe which might have appeared to argue any relaxation of discipline. and, even although surprised, and, to a certain extent, detected, albert malvoisin listened with such respect and apparent contrition to the rebuke of his superior, and made such haste to reform the particulars he censured,---succeeded, in fine, so well in giving an air of ascetic devotion to a family which had been lately devoted to license and pleasure, that lucas beaumanoir began to entertain a higher opinion of the preceptor's morals, than the first appearance of the establishment had inclined him to adopt. but these favourable sentiments on the part of the grand master were greatly shaken by the intelligence that albert had received within a house of religion the jewish captive, and, as was to be feared, the paramour of a brother of the order; and when albert appeared before him, be was regarded with unwonted sternness. ``there is in this mansion, dedicated to the purposes of the holy order of the temple,'' said the grand master, in a severe tone, ``a jewish woman, brought hither by a brother of religion, by your connivance, sir preceptor.'' albert malvoisin was overwhelmed with confusion; for the unfortunate rebecca had been confined in a remote and secret part of the building, and every precaution used to prevent her residence there from being known. he read in the looks of beaumanoir ruin to bois-guilbert and to himself, unless he should be able to avert the impending storm. ``why are you mute?'' continued the grand master. ``is it permitted to me to reply?'' answered the preceptor, in a tone of the deepest humility, although by the question he only meant to gain an instant's space for arranging his ideas. ``speak, you are permitted,'' said the grand master---``speak, and say, knowest thou the capital of our holy rule,---_de commilitonibus templi in sancta civitate, qui cun miserrimis mulieribus versantur, propter oblectationem carnis?''* * the edict which he quotes, is against communion with * women of light character. ``surely, most reverend father,'' answered the preceptor, ``i have not risen to this office in the order, being ignorant of one of its most important prohibitions.'' ``how comes it, then, i demand of thee once more, that thou hast suffered a brother to bring a paramour, and that paramour a jewish sorceress, into this holy place, to the stain and pollution thereof?'' ``a jewish sorceress!'' echoed albert malvoisin; ``good angels guard us!'' ``ay, brother, a jewish sorceress!'' said the grand master, sternly. ``i have said it. darest thou deny that this rebecca, the daughter of that wretched usurer isaac of york, and the pupil of the foul witch miriam, is now---shame to be thought or spoken!---lodged within this thy preceptory?'' ``your wisdom, reverend father,'' answered the preceptor, ``hath rolled away the darkness from my understanding. much did i wonder that so good a knight as brian de bois-guilbert seemed so fondly besotted on the charms of this female, whom i received into this house merely to place a bar betwixt their growing intimacy, which else might have been cemented at the expense of the fall of our valiant and religious brother.'' ``hath nothing, then, as yet passed betwixt them in breach of his vow?'' demanded the grand master. ``what! under this roof?'' said the preceptor, crossing himself; ``saint magdalene and the ten thousand virgins forbid!---no! if i have sinned in receiving her here, it was in the erring thought that i might thus break off our brother's besotted devotion to this jewess, which seemed to me so wild and unnatural, that i could not but ascribe it to some touch of insanity, more to be cured by pity than reproof. but since your reverend wisdom hath discovered this jewish quean to be a sorceress, perchance it may account fully for his enamoured folly.'' ``it doth!---it doth!'' said beaumanoir. ``see, brother conrade, the peril of yielding to the first devices and blandishments of satan! we look upon woman only to gratify the lust of the eye, and to take pleasure in what men call her beauty; and the ancient enemy, the devouring lion, obtains power over us, to complete, by talisman and spell, a work which was begun by idleness and folly. it may be that our brother bois-guilbert does in this matter deserve rather pity than severe chastisement; rather the support of the staff, than the strokes of the rod; and that our admonitions and prayers may turn him from his folly, and restore him to his brethren.'' ``it were deep pity,'' said conrade mont-fitchet, to lose to the order one of its best lances, when the holy community most requires the aid of its sons. three hundred saracens hath this brian de bois-guilbert slain with his own hand.'' ``the blood of these accursed dogs,'' said the grand master, ``shall be a sweet and acceptable offering to the saints and angels whom they despise and blaspheme; and with their aid will we counteract the spells and charms with which our brother is entwined as in a net. he shall burst the bands of this delilah, as sampson burst the two new cords with which the philistines had bound him, and shall slaughter the infidels, even heaps upon heaps. but concerning this foul witch, who hath flung her enchantments over a brother of the holy temple, assuredly she shall die the death.'' ``but the laws of england,''---said the preceptor, who, though delighted that the grand master's resentment, thus fortunately averted from himself and bois-guilbert, had taken another direction, began now to fear he was carrying it too far. ``the laws of england,'' interrupted beaumanoir, ``permit and enjoin each judge to execute justice within his own jurisdiction. the most petty baron may arrest, try, and condemn a witch found within his own domain. and shall that power be denied to the grand master of the temple within a preceptory of his order?---no!---we will judge and condemn. the witch shall be taken out of the land, and the wickedness thereof shall be forgiven. prepare the castle-hall for the trial of the sorceress.'' albert malvoisin bowed and retired,---not to give directions for preparing the hall, but to seek out brian de bois-guilbert, and communicate to him how matters were likely to terminate. it was not long ere he found him, foaming with indignation at a repulse he had anew sustained from the fair jewess. ``the unthinking,'' he said, ``the ungrateful, to scorn him who, amidst blood and flames, would have saved her life at the risk of his own! by heaven, malvoisin! i abode until roof and rafters crackled and crashed around me. i was the butt of a hundred arrows; they rattled on mine armour like hailstones against a latticed casement, and the only use i made of my shield was for her protection. this did i endure for her; and now the self-willed girl upbraids me that i did not leave her to perish, and refuses me not only the slightest proof of gratitude, but even the most distant hope that ever she will be brought to grant any. the devil, that possessed her race with obstinacy, has concentrated its full force in her single person!'' ``the devil,'' said the preceptor, ``i think, possessed you both. how oft have i preached to you caution, if not continence? did i not tell you that there were enough willing christian damsels to be met with, who would think it sin to refuse so brave a knight _le don d'amoureux merci_, and you must needs anchor your affection on a wilful, obstinate jewess! by the mass, i think old lucas beaumanoir guesses right, when he maintains she hath cast a spell over you.'' ``lucas beaumanoir!''---said bois-guilbert reproachfully ---``are these your precautions, malvoisin? hast thou suffered the dotard to learn that rebecca is in the preceptory?'' ``how could i help it?'' said the preceptor. ``i neglected nothing that could keep secret your mystery; but it is betrayed, and whether by the devil or no, the devil only can tell. but i have turned the matter as i could; you are safe if you renounce rebecca. you are pitied---the victim of magical delusion. she is a sorceress, and must suffer as such.'' ``she shall not, by heaven!'' said bois-guilbert. ``by heaven, she must and will!'' said malvoisin. ``neither you nor any one else can save her. lucas beaumanoir hath settled that the death of a jewess will be a sin-offering sufficient to atone for all the amorous indulgences of the knights templars; and thou knowest he hath both the power and will to execute so reasonable and pious a purpose.'' ``will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!'' said bois-guilbert, striding up and down the apartment. ``what they may believe, i know not,'' said malvoisin, calmly; ``but i know well, that in this our day, clergy and laymen, take ninety-nine to the hundred, will cry _amen_ to the grand master's sentence.'' ``i have it,'' said bois-guilbert. ``albert, thou art my friend. thou must connive at her escape, malvoisin, and i will transport her to some place of greater security and secrecy.'' ``i cannot, if i would,'' replied the preceptor; ``the mansion is filled with the attendants of the grand master, and others who are devoted to him. and, to be frank with you, brother, i would not embark with you in this matter, even if i could hope to bring my bark to haven. i have risked enough already for your sake. i have no mind to encounter a sentence of degradation, or even to lose my preceptory, for the sake of a painted piece of jewish flesh and blood. and you, if you will be guided by my counsel, will give up this wild-goose chase, and fly your hawk at some other game. think, bois-guilbert,---thy present rank, thy future honours, all depend on thy place in the order. shouldst thou adhere perversely to thy passion for this rebecca, thou wilt give beaumanoir the power of expelling thee, and he will not neglect it. he is jealous of the truncheon which he holds in his trembling gripe, and he knows thou stretchest thy bold hand towards it. doubt not he will ruin thee, if thou affordest him a pretext so fair as thy protection of a jewish sorceress. give him his scope in this matter, for thou canst not control him. when the staff is in thine own firm grasp, thou mayest caress the daughters of judah, or burn them, as may best suit thine own humour.'' ``malvoisin,'' said bois-guilbert, ``thou art a cold-blooded---'' ``friend,'' said the preceptor, hastening to fill up the blank, in which bois-guilbert would probably have placed a worse word,---``a cold-blooded friend i am, and therefore more fit to give thee advice. i tell thee once more, that thou canst not save rebecca. i tell thee once more, thou canst but perish with her. go hie thee to the grand master ---throw thyself it his feet and tell him---'' ``not at his feet, by heaven! but to the dotard's very beard will i say---'' ``say to him, then, to his beard,'' continued malvoisin, coolly, ``that you love this captive jewess to distraction; and the more thou dost enlarge on thy passion, the greater will be his haste to end it by the death of the fair enchantress; while thou, taken in flagrant delict by the avowal of a crime contrary to thine oath, canst hope no aid of thy brethren, and must exchange all thy brilliant visions of ambition and power, to lift perhaps a mercenary spear in some of the petty quarrels between flanders and burgundy.'' ``thou speakest the truth, malvoisin,'' said brian de bois-guilbert, after a moment's reflection. ``i will give the hoary bigot no advantage over me; and for rebecca, she hath not merited at my hand that i should expose rank and honour for her sake. i will cast her off---yes, i will leave her to her fate, unless---'' ``qualify not thy wise and necessary resolution,'' said malvoisin; ``women are but the toys which amuse our lighter hours---ambition is the serious business of life. perish a thousand such frail baubles as this jewess, before thy manly step pause in the brilliant career that lies stretched before thee! for the present we part, nor must we be seen to hold close conversation---i must order the hall for his judgment-seat.'' ``what!'' said bois-guilbert, ``so soon?'' ``ay,'' replied the preceptor, ``trial moves rapidly on when the judge has determined the sentence beforehand.'' ``rebecca,'' said bois-guilbert, when he was left alone, ``thou art like to cost me dear---why cannot i abandon thee to thy fate, as this calm hypocrite recommends?---one effort will i make to save thee---but beware of ingratitude! for if i am again repulsed, my vengeance shall equal my love. the life and honour of bois-guilbert must not be hazarded, where contempt and reproaches are his only reward.'' the preceptor had hardly given the necessary orders, when he was joined by conrade mont-fitchet, who acquainted him with the grand master's resolution to bring the jewess to instant trial for sorcery. ``it is surely a dream,'' said the preceptor; ``we have many jewish physicians, and we call them not wizards though they work wonderful cures.'' ``the grand master thinks otherwise,'' said mont-fitchet; ``and, albert, i will be upright with thee---wizard or not, it were better that this miserable damsel die, than that brian de bois-guilbert should be lost to the order, or the order divided by internal dissension. thou knowest his high rank, his fame in arms---thou knowest the zeal with which many of our brethren regard him ---but all this will not avail him with our grand master, should he consider brian as the accomplice, not the victim, of this jewess. were the souls of the twelve tribes in her single body, it were better she suffered alone, than that bois-guilbert were partner in her destruction.'' ``i have been working him even now to abandon her,'' said malvoisin; ``but still, are there grounds enough to condemn this rebecca for sorcery?--will not the grand master change his mind when he sees that the proofs are so weak?'' ``they must be strengthened, albert,'' replied mont-fitchet, ``they must be strengthened. dost thou understand me?'' ``i do,'' said the preceptor, ``nor do i scruple to do aught for advancement of the order---but there is little time to find engines fitting.'' ``malvoisin, they _must_ be found,'' said conrade; ``well will it advantage both the order and thee. this templestowe is a poor preceptory---that of maison-dieu is worth double its value---thou knowest my interest with our old chief---find those who can carry this matter through, and thou art preceptor of maison-dieu in the fertile kent--how sayst thou?'' ``there is,'' replied malvoisin, ``among those who came hither with bois-guilbert, two fellows whom i well know; servants they were to my brother philip de malvoisin,and passed from his service to that of front-de-b<oe>uf---it may be they know something of the witcheries of this woman.'' ``away, seek them out instantly---and hark thee, if a byzant or two will sharpen their memory, let them not be wanting.'' ``they would swear the mother that bore them a sorceress for a zecchin,'' said the preceptor. ``away, then,'' said mont-fitchet; ``at noon the affair will proceed. i have not seen our senior in such earnest preparation since he condemned to the stake hamet alfagi, a convert who relapsed to the moslem faith.'' the ponderous castle-bell had tolled the point of noon, when rebecca heard a trampling of feet upon the private stair which led to her place of confinement. the noise announced the arrival of several persons, and the circumstance rather gave her joy; for she was more afraid of the solitary visits of the fierce and passionate bois-guilbert than of any evil that could befall her besides. the door of the chamber was unlocked, and conrade and the preceptor malvoisin entered, attended by four warders clothed in black, and bearing halberds. ``daughter of an accursed race!'' said the preceptor, ``arise and follow us.'' ``whither,'' said rebecca, ``and for what purpose?'' ``damsel,'' answered conrade, ``it is not for thee to question, but to obey. nevertheless, be it known to thee, that thou art to be brought before the tribunal of the grand master of our holy order, there to answer for thine offences.'' ``may the god of abraham be praised!'' said rebecca, folding her hands devoutly; ``the name of a judge, though an enemy to my people, is to me as the name of a protector. most willingly do i follow thee---permit me only to wrap my veil around my head.'' they descended the stair with slow and solemn step, traversed a long gallery, and, by a pair of folding doors placed at the end, entered the great hall in which the grand master had for the time established his court of justice. the lower part of this ample apartment was filled with squires and yeomen, who made way not without some difficulty for rebecca, attended by the preceptor and mont-fitchet, and followed by the guard of halberdiers, to move forward to the seat appointed for her. as she passed through the crowd, her arms folded and her head depressed, a scrap of paper was thrust into her hand, which she received almost unconsciously, and continued to hold without examining its contents. the assurance that she possessed some friend in this awful assembly gave her courage to look around, and to mark into whose presence she had been conducted. she gazed, accordingly, upon the scene, which we shall endeavour to describe in the next chapter. chapter xxxvii. stern was the law which bade its vot'ries leave at human woes with human hearts to grieve; stern was the law, which at the winning wile of frank and harmless mirth forbade to smile; but sterner still, when high the iron-rod of tyrant power she shook, and call'd that power of god. _the middle ages._ the tribunal, erected for the trial of the innocent and unhappy rebecca, occupied the dais or elevated part of the upper end of the great hall--a platform, which we have already described as the place of honour, destined to be occupied by the most distinguished inhabitants or guests of an ancient mansion. on an elevated seat, directly before the accused, sat the grand master of the temple, in full and ample robes of flowing white, holding in his hand the mystic staff, which bore the symbol of the order. at his feet was placed a table, occupied by two scribes, chaplains of the order, whose duty it was to reduce to formal record the proceedings of the day. the black dresses, bare scalps, and demure looks of these church-men, formed a strong contrast to the warlike appearance of the knights who attended, either as residing in the preceptory, or as come thither to attend upon their grand master. the preceptors, of whom there were four present, occupied seats lower in height, and somewhat drawn back behind that of their superior; and the knights, who enjoyed no such rank in the order, were placed on benches still lower, and preserving the same distance from the preceptors as these from the grand master. behind them, but still upon the dais or elevated portion of the hall, stood the esquires of the order, in white dresses of an inferior quality. the whole assembly wore an aspect of the most profound gravity; and in the faces of the knights might be perceived traces of military daring, united with the solemn carriage becoming men of a religious profession, and which, in the presence of their grand master, failed not to sit upon every brow. the remaining and lower part of the hall was filled with guards, holding partisans, and with other attendants whom curiosity had drawn thither, to see at once a grand master and a jewish sorceress. by far the greater part of those inferior persons were, in one rank or other, connected with the order, and were accordingly distinguished by their black dresses. but peasants from the neighbouring country were not refused admittance; for it was the pride of beaumanoir to render the edifying spectacle of the justice which he administered as public as possible. his large blue eyes seemed to expand as be gazed around the assembly, and his countenance appeared elated by the conscious dignity, and imaginary merit, of the part which he was about to perform. a psalm, which he himself accompanied with a deep mellow voice, which age had not deprived of its powers, commenced the proceedings of the day; and the solemn sounds, _venite exultemus domino_, so often sung by the templars before engaging with earthly adversaries, was judged by lucas most appropriate to introduce the approaching triumph, for such he deemed it, over the powers of darkness. the deep prolonged notes, raised by a hundred masculine voices accustomed to combine in the choral chant, arose to the vaulted roof of the hill, and rolled on amongst its arches with the pleasing yet solemn sound of the rushing of mighty waters. when the sounds ceased, the grand master glanced his eye slowly around the circle, and observed that the seat of one of the preceptors was vacant. brian de bois-guilbert, by whom it had been occupied, had left his place, and was now standing near the extreme corner of one of the benches occupied by the knights companions of the temple, one hand extending his long mantle, so as in some degree to hide his face; while the other held his cross-handled sword, with the point of which, sheathed as it was, he was slowly drawing lines upon the oaken floor. ``unhappy man!'' said the grand master, after favouring him with a glance of compassion. ``thou seest, conrade, how this holy work distresses him. to this can the light look of woman, aided by the prince of the powers of this world, bring a valiant and worthy knight!---seest thou he cannot look upon us; he cannot look upon her; and who knows by what impulse from his tormentor his hand forms these cabalistic lines upon the floor?---it may be our life and safety are thus aimed at; but we spit at and defy the foul enemy. _semper leo percutiatur!'' this was communicated apart to his confidential follower, conrade mont-fitchet. the grand master then raised his voice, and addressed the assembly. ``reverend and valiant men, knights, preceptors, and companions of this holy order, my brethren and my children!---you also, well-born and pious esquires, who aspire to wear this holy cross! ---and you also, christian brethren, of every degree! ---be it known to you, that it is not defect of power in us which hath occasioned the assembling of this congregation; for, however unworthy in our person, yet to us is committed, with this batoon, full power to judge and to try all that regards the weal of this our holy order. holy saint bernard, in the rule of our knightly and religious profession, hath said, in the fifty-ninth capital,* * the reader is again referred to the rules of the poor military * brotherhood of the temple, which occur in the works of * st bernard.---l. t. that he would not that brethren be called together in council, save at the will and command of the master; leaving it free to us, as to those more worthy fathers who have preceded us in this our office, to judge, as well of the occasion as of the time and place in which a chapter of the whole order, or of any part thereof, may be convoked. also, in all such chapters, it is our duty to hear the advice of our brethren, and to proceed according to our own pleasure. but when the raging wolf hath made an inroad upon the flock, and carried off one member thereof, it is the duty of the kind shepherd to call his comrades together, that with bows and slings they may quell the invader, according to our well-known rule, that the lion is ever to be beaten down. we have therefore summoned to our presence a jewish woman, by name rebecca, daughter of isaac of york---a woman infamous for sortileges and for witcheries; whereby she hath maddened the blood, and besotted the brain, not of a churl, but of a knight---not of a secular knight, but of one devoted to the service of the holy temple---not of a knight companion, but of a preceptor of our order, first in honour as in place. our brother, brian de bois-guilbert, is well known to ourselves, and to all degrees who now hear me, as a true and zealous champion of the cross, by whose arm many deeds of valour have been wrought in the holy land, and the holy places purified from pollution by the blood of those infidels who defiled them. neither have our brother's sagacity and prudence been less in repute among his brethren than his valour and discipline; in so much, that knights, both in eastern and western lands, have named de bois-guilbert as one who may well be put in nomination as successor to this batoon, when it shall please heaven to release us from the toil of bearing it. if we were told that such a man, so honoured, and so honourable, suddenly casting away regard for his character, his vows, his brethren, and his prospects, had associated to himself a jewish damsel, wandered in this lewd company, through solitary places, defended her person in preference to his own, and, finally, was so utterly blinded and besotted by his folly, as to bring her even to one of our own preceptories, what should we say but that the noble knight was possessed by some evil demon, or influenced by some wicked spell?---if we could suppose it otherwise, think not rank, valour, high repute, or any earthly consideration, should prevent us from visiting him with punishment, that the evil thing might be removed, even according to the text, _auferte malum ex vobis_. for various and heinous are the acts of transgression against the rule of our blessed order in this lamentable history.---1st, he hath walked according to his proper will, contrary to capital 33, _quod nullus juxta propriam voluntatem incedat_. ---2d, he hath held communication with an excommunicated person, capital 57, _ut fratres non participent cum excommunicatis_, and therefore hath a portion in _anathema maranatha_.---3d, he hath conversed with strange women, contrary to the capital, _ut fratres non conversantur cum extraneis mulieribus. ---4th, he hath not avoided, nay, he hath, it is to be feared, solicited the kiss of woman; by which, saith the last rule of our renowned order, _ut fugiantur oscula_, the soldiers of the cross are brought into a snare. for which heinous and multiplied guilt, brian de bois-guilbert should be cut off and cast out from our congregation, were he the right hand and right eye thereof.'' he paused. a low murmur went through the assembly. some of the younger part, who had been inclined to smile at the statute _de osculis fugiendis_, became now grave enough, and anxiously waited what the grand master was next to propose. ``such,'' he said, ``and so great should indeed be the punishment of a knight templar, who wilfully offended against the rules of his order in such weighty points. but if, by means of charms and of spells, satan had obtained dominion over the knight, perchance because he cast his eyes too lightly upon a damsel's beauty, we are then rather to lament than chastise his backsliding; and, imposing on him only such penance as may purify him from his iniquity, we are to turn the full edge of our indignation upon the accursed instrument, which had so wellnigh occasioned his utter falling away. ---stand forth, therefore, and bear witness, ye who have witnessed these unhappy doings, that we may judge of the sum and bearing thereof; and judge whether our justice may be satisfied with the punishment of this infidel woman, or if we must go on, with a bleeding heart, to the further proceeding against our brother.'' several witnesses were called upon to prove the risks to which bois-guilbert exposed himself in endeavouring to save rebecca from the blazing castle, and his neglect of his personal defence in attending to her safety. the men gave these details with the exaggerations common to vulgar minds which have been strongly excited by any remarkable event, and their natural disposition to the marvellous was greatly increased by the satisfaction which their evidence seemed to afford to the eminent person for whose information it had been delivered. thus the dangers which bois-guilbert surmounted, in themselves sufficiently great, became portentous in their narrative. the devotion of the knight to rebecca's defence was exaggerated beyond the bounds, not only of discretion, but even of the most frantic excess of chivalrous zeal; and his deference to what she said, even although her language was often severe and upbraiding, was painted as carried to an excess, which, in a man of his haughty temper, seemed almost preternatural. the preceptor of templestowe was then called on to describe the manner in which bois-guilbert and the jewess arrived at the preceptory. the evidence of malvoisin was skilfully guarded. but while he apparently studied to spare the feelings of bois-guilbert, he threw in, from time to time, such hints, as seemed to infer that he laboured under some temporary alienation of mind, so deeply did he appear to be enamoured of the damsel whom he brought along with him. with sighs of penitence, the preceptor avowed his own contrition for having admitted rebecca and her lover within the walls of the preceptory---``but my defence,'' he concluded, ``has been made in my confession to our most reverend father the grand master; he knows my motives were not evil, though my conduct may have been irregular. joyfully will i submit to any penance he shall assign me.'' ``thou hast spoken well, brother albert,'' said beaumanoir; ``thy motives were good, since thou didst judge it right to arrest thine erring brother in his career of precipitate folly. but thy conduct was wrong; as he that would stop a runaway steed, and seizing by the stirrup instead of the bridle, receiveth injury himself, instead of accomplishing his purpose. thirteen paternosters are assigned by our pious founder for matins, and nine for vespers; be those services doubled by thee. thrice a-week are templars permitted the use of flesh; but do thou keep fast for all the seven days. this do for six weeks to come, and thy penance is accomplished.'' with a hypocritical look of the deepest submission, the preceptor of templestowe bowed to the ground before his superior, and resumed his seat. ``were it not well, brethren,'' said the grand master, ``that we examine something into the former life and conversation of this woman, specially that we may discover whether she be one likely to use magical charms and spells, since the truths which we have heard may well incline us to suppose, that in this unhappy course our erring brother has been acted upon by some infernal enticement and delusion?'' herman of goodalricke was the fourth preceptor present; the other three were conrade, malvoisin, and bois-guilbert himself. herman was an ancient warrior, whose face was marked with sears inflicted by the sabre of the moslemah, and had great rank and consideration among his brethren. he arose and bowed to the grand master, who instantly granted him license of speech. ``i would crave to know, most reverend father, of our valiant brother, brian de bois-guilbert, what he says to these wondrous accusations, and with what eye he himself now regards his unhappy intercourse with this jewish maiden?'' ``brian de bois-guilbert,'' said the grand master, ``thou hearest the question which our brother of goodalricke desirest thou shouldst answer. i command thee to reply to him.'' bois-guilbert turned his head towards the grand master when thus addressed, and remained silent. ``he is possessed by a dumb devil,'' said the grand master. ``avoid thee, sathanus!---speak, brian de bois-guilbert, i conjure thee, by this symbol of our holy order.'' bois-guilbert made an effort to suppress his rising scorn and indignation, the expression of which, he was well aware, would have little availed him. ``brian de bois-guilbert,'' he answered, ``replies not, most reverend father, to such wild and vague charges. if his honour be impeached, he will defend it with his body, and with that sword which has often fought for christendom.'' ``we forgive thee, brother brian,'' said the grand master; ``though that thou hast boasted thy warlike achievements before us, is a glorifying of thine own deeds, and cometh of the enemy, who tempteth us to exalt our own worship. but thou hast our pardon, judging thou speakest less of thine own suggestion than from the impulse of him whom by heaven's leave, we will quell and drive forth from our assembly.'' a glance of disdain flashed from the dark fierce eyes of bois-guilbert, but he made no reply.---``and now,'' pursued the grand master, ``since our brother of goodalricke's question has been thus imperfectly answered, pursue we our quest, brethren, and with our patron's assistance, we will search to the bottom this mystery of iniquity.---let those who have aught to witness of the life and conversation of this jewish woman, stand forth before us.'' there was a bustle in the lower part of the hall, and when the grand master enquired the reason, it was replied, there was in the crowd a bedridden man, whom the prisoner had restored to the perfect use of his limbs, by a miraculous balsam. the poor peasant, a saxon by birth, was dragged forward to the bar, terrified at the penal consequences which he might have incurred by the guilt of having been cured of the palsy by a jewish damsel. perfectly cured be certainly was not, for he supported himself forward on crutches to give evidence. most unwilling was his testimony, and given with many tears; but he admitted that two years since, when residing at york, he was suddenly afflicted with a sore disease, while labouring for isaac the rich jew, in his vocation of a joiner; that he had been unable to stir from his bed until the remedies applied by rebecca's directions, and especially a warming and spicy-smelling balsam, had in some degree restored him to the use of his limbs. moreover, he said, she had given him a pot of that precious ointment, and furnished him with a piece of money withal, to return to the house of his father, near to templestowe. ``and may it please your gracious reverence,'' said the man, ``i cannot think the damsel meant harm by me, though she hath the ill hap to be a jewess; for even when i used her remedy, i said the pater and the creed, and it never operated a whit less kindly---'' ``peace, slave,'' said the grand master, ``and begone! it well suits brutes like thee to be tampering and trinketing with hellish cures, and to be giving your labour to the sons of mischief. i tell thee, the fiend can impose diseases for the very purpose of removing them, in order to bring into credit some diabolical fashion of cure. hast thou that unguent of which thou speakest?'' the peasant, fumbling in his bosom with a trembling hand, produced a small box, bearing some hebrew characters on the lid, which was, with most of the audience, a sure proof that the devil had stood apothecary. beaumanoir, after crossing himself, took the box into his hand, and, learned in most of the eastern tongues, read with ease the motto on the lid,---_the lion of the tribe of judah hath conquered_. ``strange powers of sathanas.'' said he, ``which can convert scripture into blasphemy, mingling poison with our necessary food!---is there no leech here who can tell us the ingredients of this mystic unguent?'' two mediciners, as they called themselves, the one a monk, the other a barber, appeared, and avouched they knew nothing of the materials, excepting that they savoured of myrrh and camphire, which they took to be oriental herbs. but with the true professional hatred to a successful practitioner of their art, they insinuated that, since the medicine was beyond their own knowledge, it must necessarily have been compounded from an unlawful and magical pharmacopeia; since they themselves, though no conjurors, fully understood every branch of their art, so far as it might be exercised with the good faith of a christian. when this medical research was ended, the saxon peasant desired humbly to have back the medicine which he had found so salutary; but the grand master frowned severely at the request. ``what is thy name, fellow?'' said he to the cripple. ``higg, the son of snell,'' answered the peasant. ``then higg, son of snell,'' said the grand master, ``i tell thee it is better to be bedridden, than to accept the benefit of unbelievers' medicine that thou mayest arise and walk; better to despoil infidels of their treasure by the strong hand, than to accept of them benevolent gifts, or do them service for wages. go thou, and do as i have said.'' ``alack,'' said the peasant, ``an it shall not displease your reverence, the lesson comes too late for me, for i am but a maimed man; but i will tell my two brethren, who serve the rich rabbi nathan ben samuel, that your mastership says it is more lawful to rob him than to render him faithful service.'' ``out with the prating villain!'' said beaumanoir, who was not prepared to refute this practical application of his general maxim. higg, the son of snell, withdrew into the crowd, but, interested in the fate of his benefactress, lingered until he should learn her doom, even at the risk of again encountering the frown of that severe judge, the terror of which withered his very heart within him. at this period of the trial, the grand master commanded rebecca to unveil herself. opening her lips for the first time, she replied patiently, but with dignity,---``that it was not the wont of the daughters of her people to uncover their faces when alone in an assembly of strangers.'' the sweet tones. of her voice, and the softness of her reply, impressed on the audience a sentiment of pity and sympathy. but beaumanoir, in whose mind the suppression of each feeling of humanity which could interfere with his imagined duty, was a virtue of itself, repeated his commands that his victim should be unveiled. the guards were about to remove her veil accordingly, when she stood up before the grand master and said, ``nay, but for the love of your own daughters---alas,'' she said, recollecting herself, ``ye have no daughters!---yet for the remembrance of your mothers---for the love of your sisters, and of female decency, let me not be thus handled in your presence; it suits not a maiden to be disrobed by such rude grooms. i will obey you,'' she added, with an expression of patient sorrow in her voice, which had almost melted the heart of beaumanoir himself; ``ye are elders among your people, and at your command i will show the features of an ill-fated maiden.'' she withdrew her veil, and looked on them with a countenance in which bashfulness contended with dignity. her exceeding beauty excited a murmur of surprise, and the younger knights told each other with their eyes, in silent correspondence, that brian's best apology was in the power of her real charms, rather than of her imaginary witehcraft. but higg, the son of snell, felt most deeply the effect produced by the sight of the countenance of his benefactress. ``let me go forth,'' he said to the warders at the door of the hall,---``let me go forth!---to look at her again will kill me, for i have had a share in murdering her.'' ``peace, poor man,'' said rebecca, when she heard his exclamation; ``thou hast done me no harm by speaking the truth---thou canst not aid me by thy complaints or lamentations. peace, i pray thee---go home and save thyself.'' higg was about to be thrust out by the compassion of the warders, who were apprehensive lest his clamorous grief should draw upon them reprehension, and upon himself punishment. but he promised to be silent, and was permitted to remain. the two men-at-arms, with whom albert malvoisin had not failed to communicate upon the import of their testimony, were now called forward. though both were hardened and inflexible villains, the sight of the captive maiden, as well as her excelling beauty, at first appeared to stagger them; but an expressive glance from the preceptor of templestowe restored them to their dogged composure; and they delivered, with a precision which would have seemed suspicious to more impartial judges, circumstances either altogether fictitious or trivial, and natural in themselves, but rendered pregnant with suspicion by the exaggerated manner in which they were told, and the sinister commentary which the witnesses added to the facts. the circumstances of their evidence would have been, in modern days, divided into two classes---those which were immaterial, and those which were actually and physically impossible. but both were, in those ignorant and superstitions times, easily credited as proofs of guilt.---the first class set forth, that rebecca was heard to mutter to herself in an unknown tongue ---that the songs she sung by fits were of a strangely sweet sound, which made the ears of the hearer tingle, and his heart throb---that she spoke at times to herself, and seemed to look upward for a reply ---that her garments were of a strange and mystic form, unlike those of women of good repute---that she had rings impressed with cabalistical devices, and that strange characters were broidered on her veil. all these circumstances, so natural and so trivial, were gravely listened to as proofs, or, at least, as affording strong suspicions that rebecca had unlawful correspondence with mystical powers. but there was less equivocal testimony, which the credulity of the assembly, or of the greater part, greedily swallowed, however incredible. one of the soldiers had seen her work a cure upon a wounded man, brought with them to the castle of torquilstone. she did, he said, make certain signs upon the wound, and repeated certain mysterious words, which he blessed god he understood not, when the iron head of a square cross-bow bolt disengaged itself from the wound, the bleeding was stanched, the wound was closed, and the dying man was, within a quarter of an hour, walking upon the ramparts, and assisting the witness in managing a mangonel, or machine for hurling stones. this legend was probably founded upon the fact, that rebecca had attended on the wounded ivanhoe when in the castle of torquilstone. but it was the more difficult to dispute the accuracy of the witness, as, in order to produce real evidence in support of his verbal testimony, he drew from his pouch the very bolt-head, which, according to his story, had been miraculously extracted from the wound; and as the iron weighed a full ounce, it completely confirmed the tale, however marvellous. his comrade had been a witness from a neighbouring battlement of the scene betwixt rebecca and bois-guilbert, when she was upon the point of precipitating herself from the top of the tower. not to be behind his companion, this fellow stated, that he had seen rebecca perch herself upon the parapet of the turret, and there take the form of a milk-white swan, under which appearance she flitted three times round the castle of torquilstone; then again settle on the turret, and once more assume the female form. less than one half of this weighty evidence would have been sufficient to convict any old woman, poor and ugly, even though she had not been a jewess. united with that fatal circumstance, the body of proof was too weighty for rebecca's youth, though combined with the most exquisite beauty. the grand master had collected the suffrages, and now in a solemn tone demanded of rebecca what she had to say against the sentence of condemnation, which he was about to pronounce. ``to invoke your pity,'' said the lovely jewess, with a voice somewhat tremulous with emotion, ``would, i am aware, be as useless as i should hold it mean. to state that to relieve the sick and wounded of another religion, cannot be displeasing to the acknowledged founder of both our faiths, were also unavailing; to plead that many things which these men (whom may heaven pardon!) have spoken against me are impossible, would avail me but little, since you believe in their possibility; and still less would it advantage me to explain, that the peculiarities of my dress, language, and manners, are those of my people---i had wellnigh said of my country, but alas! we have no country. nor will i even vindicate myself at the expense of my oppressor, who stands there listening to the fictions and surmises which seem to convert the tyrant into the victim.---god be judge between him and me! but rather would i submit to ten such deaths as your pleasure may denounce against me, than listen to the suit which that man of belial has urged upon me---friendless, defenceless, and his prisoner. but he is of your own faith, and his lightest affirmance would weigh down the most solemn protestations of the distressed jewess. i will not therefore return to himself the charge brought against me---but to himself---yes, brian de bois-guilbert, to thyself i appeal, whether these accusations are not false? as monstrous and calumnious as they are deadly?'' there was a pause; all eyes turned to brain de bois-guilbert. he was silent. ``speak,'' she said, ``if thou art a man---if thou art a christian, speak!---i conjure thee, by the habit which thou dost wear, by the name thou dost inherit---by the knighthood thou dost vaunt---by the honour of thy mother---by the tomb and the bones of thy father---i conjure thee to say, are these things true?'' ``answer her, brother,'' said the grand master, ``if the enemy with whom thou dost wrestle will give thee power.'' in fact, bois-guilbert seemed agitated by contending passions, which almost convulsed his features, and it was with a constrained voice that at last he replied, looking to rebecca,---``the scroll! ---the scroll!'' ``ay,'' said beaumanoir, ``this is indeed testimony! the victim of her witcheries can only name the fatal scroll, the spell inscribed on which is, doubtless, the cause of his silence.'' but rebecca put another interpretation on the words extorted as it were from bois-guilbert, and glancing her eye upon the slip of parchment which she continued to hold in her hand, she read written thereupon in the arabian character, _demand a champion!_ the murmuring commentary which ran through the assembly at the strange reply of bois-guilbert, gave rebecca leisure to examine and instantly to destroy the scroll unobserved. when the whisper had ceased, the grand master spoke. ``rebecca, thou canst derive no benefit from the evidence of this unhappy knight, for whom, as we well perceive, the enemy is yet too powerful. hast thou aught else to say?'' ``there is yet one chance of life left to me,'' said rebecca, ``even by your own fierce laws. life has been miserable---miserable, at least, of late---but i will not cast away the gift of god, while he affords me the means of defending it. i deny this charge ---i maintain my innocence, and i declare the falsehood of this accusation---i challenge the privilege of trial by combat, and will appear by my champion.'' ``and who, rebecca,'' replied the grand master, ``will lay lance in rest for a sorceress? who will be the champion of a jewess?'' ``god will raise me up a champion,'' said rebecca--``it cannot be that in merry england---the hospitable, the generous, the free, where so many are ready to peril their lives for honour, there will not be found one to fight for justice. but it is enough that i challenge the trial by combat---there lies my gage.'' she took her embroidered glove from her hand, and flung it down before the grand master with an air of mingled simplicity and dignity, which excited universal surprise and admiration. chapter xxxviii. ------there i throw my gage, to prove it on thee to the extremest point of martial daring. _richard ii._ even lucas beaumanoir himself was affected by the mien and appearance of rebecca. he was not originally a cruel or even a severe man; but with passions by nature cold, and with a high, though mistaken, sense of duty, his heart had been gradually hardened by the ascetic life which he pursued, the supreme power which he enjoyed, and the supposed necessity of subduing infidelity and eradicating heresy, which he conceived peculiarly incumbent on him. his features relaxed in their usual severity as he gazed upon the beautiful creature before him, alone, unfriended, and defending herself with so much spirit and courage. he crossed himself twice, as doubting whence arose the unwonted softening of a heart, which on such occasions used to resemble in hardness the steel of his sword. at length he spoke. ``damsel,'' he said, ``if the pity i feel for thee arise from any practice thine evil arts have made on me, great is thy guilt. but i rather judge it the kinder feelings of nature, which grieves that so goodly a form should be a vessel of perdition. repent, my daughter---confess thy witchcrafts---turn thee from thine evil faith---embrace this holy emblem, and all shall yet be well with thee here and hereafter. in some sisterhood of the strictest order, shalt thou have time for prayer and fitting penance, and that repentence not to be repented of. this do and live---what has the law of moses done for thee that thou shouldest die for it?'' ``it was the law of my fathers,'' said rebecca; ``it was delivered in thunders and in storms upon the mountain of sinai, in cloud and in fire. this, if ye are christians, ye believe---it is, you say, recalled; but so my teachers have not taught me.'' ``let our chaplain,'' said beaumanoir, ``stand forth, and tell this obstinate infidel---'' ``forgive the interruption,'' said rebecca, meekly; ``i am a maiden, unskilled to dispute for my religion, but i can die for it, if it be god's will.--let me pray your answer to my demand of a champion.'' ``give me her glove,'' said beaumanoir. ``this is indeed,'' he continued, as he looked at the flimsy texture and slender fingers, ``a slight and frail gage for a purpose so deadly!---seest thou, rebecca, as this thin and light glove of thine is to one of our heavy steel gauntlets, so is thy cause to that of the temple, for it is our order which thou hast defied.'' ``cast my innocence into the scale,'' answered rebecca, ``and the glove of silk shall outweigh the glove of iron.'' ``then thou dost persist in thy refusal to confess thy guilt, and in that bold challenge which thou hast made?'' ``i do persist, noble sir,'' answered rebecca. ``so be it then, in the name of heaven,'' said the grand master; ``and may god show the right!'' ``amen,'' replied the preceptors around him, and the word was deeply echoed by the whole assembly. ``brethren,'' said beaumanoir, ``you are aware that we might well have refused to this woman the benefit of the trial by combat---but though a jewess and an unbeliever, she is also a stranger and defenceless, and god forbid that she should ask the benefit of our mild laws, and that it should be refused to her. moreover, we are knights and soldiers as well as men of religion, and shame it were to us upon any pretence, to refuse proffered combat. thus, therefore, stands the case. rebecca, the daughter of isaac of york, is, by many frequent and suspicious circumstances, defamed of sorcery practised on the person of a noble knight of our holy order, and hath challenged the combat in proof of her innocence. to whom, reverend brethren, is it your opinion that we should deliver the gage of battle, naming him, at the same time, to be our champion on the field?'' ``to brian de bois-guilbert, whom it chiefly concerns,'' said the preceptor of goodalricke, ``and who, moreover, best knows how the truth stands in this matter.'' ``but if,'' said the grand master, ``our brother brian be under the influence of a charm or a spell ---we speak but for the sake of precaution, for to the arm of none of our holy order would we more willingly confide this or a more weighty cause.'' ``reverend father,'' answered the preceptor of goodalricke, ``no spell can effect the champion who comes forward to fight for the judgment of god.'' ``thou sayest right, brother,'' said the grand master. ``albert malvoisin, give this gage of battle to brian de bois-guilbert.---it is our charge to thee, brother,'' he continued, addressing himself to bois-guilbert, ``that thou do thy battle manfully, nothing doubting that the good cause shall triumph. ---and do thou, rebecca, attend, that we assign thee the third day from the present to find a champion.'' ``that is but brief space,'' answered rebecca, ``for a stranger, who is also of another faith, to find one who will do battle, wagering life and honour for her cause, against a knight who is called an approved soldier.'' ``we may not extend it,'' answered the grand master; ``the field must be foughten in our own presence, and divers weighty causes call us on the fourth day from hence.'' ``god's will be done!'' said rebecca; ``i put my trust in him, to whom an instant is as effectual to save as a whole age.'' ``thou hast spoken well, damsel,'' said the grand master; ``but well know we who can array himself like an angel of light. it remains but to name a fitting place of combat, and, if it so hap, also of execution. ---where is the preceptor of this house?'' albert malvoisin, still holding rebecca's glove in his hand, was speaking to bois-guilbert very earnestly, but in a low voice. ``how!'' said the grand master, ``will he not receive the gage?'' ``he will---he doth, most reverend father,'' said malvoisin, slipping the glove under his own mantle. ``and for the place of combat, i hold the fittest to be the lists of saint george belonging to this preceptory, and used by us for military exercise.'' ``it is well,'' said the grand master.---``rebecca, in those lists shalt thou produce thy champion; and if thou failest to do so, or if thy champion shall be discomfited by the judgment of god, thou shalt then die the death of a sorceress, according to doom.---let this our judgment be recorded, and the record read aloud, that no one may pretend ignorance.'' one of the chaplains, who acted as clerks to the chapter, immediately engrossed the order in a huge volume, which contained the proceedings of the templar knights when solemnly assembled on such occasions; and when he had finished writing, the other read aloud the sentence of the grand master, which, when translated from the norman-french in which it was couched, was expressed as follows.-- ``rebecca, a jewess, daughter of isaac of york, being attainted of sorcery, seduction, and other damnable practices, practised on a knight of the most holy order of the temple of zion, doth deny the same; and saith, that the testimony delivered against her this day is false, wicked, and disloyal; and that by lawful _essoine_* of her body as being * _essoine_ signifies excuse, and here relates to the appellant's * privilege of appearing by her champion, in excuse of her own * person on account of her sex. unable to combat in her own behalf, she doth offer, by a champion instead thereof, to avouch her case, he performing his loyal _devoir_ in all knightly sort, with such arms as to gage of battle do fully appertain, and that at her peril and cost. and therewith she proffered her gage. and the gage having been delivered to the noble lord and knight, brian de bois-guilbert, of the holy order of the temple of zion, he was appointed to do this battle, in behalf of his order and himself, as injured and impaired by the practices of the appellant. wherefore the most reverend father and puissant lord, lucas marquis of beaumanoir, did allow of the said challenge, and of the said _essoine_ of the appellant's body, and assigned the third day for the said combat, the place being the enclosure called the lists of saint george, near to the preceptory of templestowe. and the grand master appoints the appellant to appear there by her champion, on pain of doom, as a person convicted of sorcery or seduction; and also the defendant so to appear, under the penalty of being held and adjudged recreant in case of default; and the noble lord and most reverend father aforesaid appointed the battle to be done in his own presence, and according to all that is commendable and profitable in such a case. and may god aid the just cause!'' ``amen!'' said the grand master; and the word was echoed by all around. rebecca spoke not, but she looked up to heaven, and, folding her hands, remained for a minute without change of attitude. she then modestly reminded the grand master, that she ought to be permitted some opportunity of free communication with her friends, for the purpose of making her condition known to them, and procuring, if possible, some champion to fight in her behalf. ``it is just and lawful,'' said the grand master; ``choose what messenger thou shalt trust, and he shall have free communication with thee in thy prison-chamber.'' ``is there,'' said rebecca, ``any one here, who, either for love of a good cause, or for ample hire, will do the errand of a distressed being?'' all were silent; for none thought it safe, in the presence of the grand master, to avow any interest in the calumniated prisoner, lest he should be suspected of leaning towards judaism. not even the prospect of reward, far less any feelings of compassion alone, could surmount this apprehension. rebecca stood for a few moments in indescribable anxiety, and then exclaimed, ``is it really thus? ---and, in english land, am i to be deprived of the poor chance of safety which remains to me, for want of an act of charity which would not be refused to the worst criminal?'' higg, the son of snell, at length replied, ``i am but a maimed man, but that i can at all stir or move was owing to her charitable assistance.---i will do thine errand,'' he added, addressing rebecca, ``as well as a crippled object can, and happy were my limbs fleet enough to repair the mischief done by my tongue. alas! when i boasted of thy charity, i little thought i was leading thee into danger!'' ``god,'' said rebecca, ``is the disposer of all. he can turn back the captivity of judah, even by the weakest instrument. to execute his message the snail is as sure a messenger as the falcon. seek out isaac of york---here is that will pay for horse and man---let him have this scroll.---i know not if it be of heaven the spirit which inspires me, but most truly do i judge that i am not to die this death, and that a champion will be raised up for me. farewell!---life and death are in thy haste.'' the peasant took the scroll, which contained only a few lines in hebrew. many of the crowd would have dissuaded him from touching a document so suspicious; but higg was resolute in the service of his benefactress. she had saved his body, he said, and he was confident she did not mean to peril his soul. ``i will get me,'' he said, ``my neighbour buthan's good capul,* and i will be at york within as * _capul_, i.e. horse; in a more limited sense, work-horse. brief space as man and beast may.'' but as it fortuned, he had no occasion to go so far, for within a quarter of a mile from the gate of the preceptory he met with two riders, whom, by their dress and their huge yellow caps, he knew to be jews; and, on approaching more nearly, discovered that one of them was his ancient employer, isaac of york. the other was the rabbi ben samuel; and both had approached as near to the preceptory as they dared, on hearing that the grand master had summoned a chapter for the trial of a sorceress. ``brother ben samuel,'' said isaac, ``my soul is disquieted, and i wot not why. this charge of necromancy is right often used for cloaking evil practices on our people.'' ``be of good comfort, brother,'' said the physician; ``thou canst deal with the nazarenes as one possessing the mammon of unrighteousness, and canst therefore purchase immunity at their hands ---it rules the savage minds of those ungodly men, even as the signet of the mighty solomon was said to command the evil genii.---but what poor wretch comes hither upon his crutches, desiring, as i think, some speech of me?---friend,'' continued the physician, addressing higg, the son of snell, ``i refuse thee not the aid of mine art, but i relieve not with one asper those who beg for alms upon the highway. out upon thee!---hast thou the palsy in thy legs? then let thy hands work for thy livelihood; for, albeit thou best unfit for a speedy post, or for a careful shepherd, or for the warfare, or for the service of a hasty master, yet there be occupations ---how now, brother?'' said he, interrupting his harangue to look towards isaac, who had but glanced at the scroll which higg offered, when, uttering a deep groan, he fell from his mule like a dying man, and lay for a minute insensible. the rabbi now dismounted in great alarm, and hastily applied the remedies which his art suggested for the recovery of his companion. he had even taken from his pocket a cupping apparatus, and was about to proceed to phlebotomy, when the object of his anxious solicitude suddenly revived; but it was to dash his cap from his head, and to throw dust on his grey hairs. the physician was at first inclined to ascribe this sudden and violent emotion to the effects of insanity; and, adhering to his original purpose, began once again to handle his implements. but isaac soon convinced him of his error. ``child of my sorrow,'' he said, ``well shouldst thou be called benoni, instead of rebecca! why should thy death bring down my grey hairs to the grave, till, in the bitterness of my heart, i curse god and die!'' ``brother,'' said the rabbi, in great surprise, ``art thou a father in israel, and dost thou utter words like unto these?---i trust that the child of thy house yet liveth?'' ``she liveth,'' answered isaac; ``but it is as daniel, who was called beltheshazzar, even when within the den of the lions. she is captive unto those men of belial, and they will wreak their cruelty upon her, sparing neither for her youth nor her comely favour. o! she was as a crown of green palms to my grey locks; and she must wither in a night, like the gourd of jonah!---child of my love! ---child of my old age!---oh, rebecca, daughter of rachel! the darkness of the shadow of death hath encompassed thee.'' ``yet read the scroll,'' said the rabbi; ``peradventure it may be that we may yet find out a way of deliverance.'' ``do thou read, brother,'' answered isaac, ``for mine eyes are as a fountain of water.'' the physician read, but in their native language, the following words:-- ``to isaac, the son of adonikam, whom the gentiles call isaac of york, peace and the blessing of the promise be multiplied unto thee!---my father, i am as one doomed to die for that which my soul knoweth not---even for the crime of witchcraft. my father, if a strong man can be found to do battle for my cause with sword and spear, according to the custom of the nazarenes, and that within the lists of templestowe, on the third day from this time, peradventure our fathers' god will give him strength to defend the innocent, and her who hath none to help her. but if this may not be, let the virgins of our people mourn for me as for one cast off, and for the hart that is stricken by the hunter, and for the flower which is cut down by the scythe of the mower. wherefore look now what thou doest, and whether there be any rescue. one nazarene warrior might indeed bear arms in my behalf, even wilfred, son of cedric, whom the gentiles call ivanhoe. but he may not yet endure the weight of his armour. nevertheless, send the tidings unto him, my father; for he hath favour among the strong men of his people, and as he was our companion in the house of bondage, he may find some one to do battle for my sake. and say unto him, even unto him, even unto wilfred, the son of cedric, that if rebecca live, or if rebecca die, she liveth or dieth wholly free of the guilt she is charged withal. and if it be the will of god that thou shalt be deprived of thy daughter, do not thou tarry, old man, in this land of bloodshed and cruelty; but betake thyself to cordova, where thy brother liveth in safety, under the shadow of the throne, even of the throne of boabdil the saracen; for less cruel are the cruelties of the moors unto the race of jacob, than the cruelties of the nazarenes of england.'' isaac listened with tolerable composure while ben samuel read the letter, and then again resumed the gestures and exclamations of oriental sorrow, tearing his garments, besprinkling his head with dust, and ejaculating, ``my daughter! my daughter! flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone!'' ``yet,'' said the rabbi, ``take courage, for this grief availeth nothing. gird up thy loins, and seek out this wilfred, the son of cedric. it may be he will help thee with counsel or with strength; for the youth hath favour in the eyes of richard, called of the nazarenes c<oe>ur-de-lion, and the tidings that he hath returned are constant in the land. it may be that be may obtain his letter, and his signet, commanding these men of blood, who take their name from the temple to the dishonour thereof, that they proceed not in their purposed wickedness.'' ``i will seek him out,'' said isaac, ``for he is a good youth, and hath compassion for the exile of jacob. but he cannot bear his armour, and what other christian shall do battle for the oppressed of zion?'' ``nay, but,'' said the rabbi, ``thou speakest as one that knoweth not the gentiles. with gold shalt thou buy their valour, even as with gold thou buyest thine own safety. be of good courage, and do thou set forward to find out this wilfred of ivanhoe. i will also up and be doing, for great sin it were to leave thee in thy calamity. i will hie me to the city of york, where many warriors and strong men are assembled, and doubt not i will find among them some one who will do battle for thy daughter; for gold is their god, and for riches will they pawn their lives as well as their lands.--thou wilt fulfil, my brother, such promise as i may make unto them in thy name?'' ``assuredly, brother,'' said isaac, ``and heaven be praised that raised me up a comforter in my misery. howbeit, grant them not their full demand at once, for thou shalt find it the quality of this accursed people that they will ask pounds, and peradventure accept of ounces---nevertheless, be it as thou willest, for i am distracted in this thing, and what would my gold avail me if the child of my love should perish!'' ``farewell,'' said the physician, ``and may it be to thee as thy heart desireth.'' they embraced accordingly, and departed on their several roads. the crippled peasant remained for some time looking after them. ``these dog-jews!'' said he; ``to take no more notice of a free guild-brother, than if i were a bond slave or a turk, or a circumcised hebrew like themselves! they might have flung me a mancus or two, however. i was not obliged to bring their unhallowed scrawls, and run the risk of being bewitched, as more folks than one told me. and what care i for the bit of gold that the wench gave me, if i am to come to harm from the priest next easter at confession, and be obliged to give him twice as much to make it up with him, and be called the jew's flying post all my life, as it may hap, into the bargain? i think i was bewitched in earnest when i was beside that girl!---but it was always so with jew or gentile, whosoever came near her---none could stay when she had an errand to go---and still, whenever i think of her, i would give shop and tools to save her life.'' chapter xxxix. o maid, unrelenting and cold as thou art, my bosom is proud as thine own. _seward_. it was in the twilight of the day when her trial, if it could be called such, had taken place, that a low knock was heard at the door of rebecca's prison-chamber. it disturbed not the inmate, who was then engaged in the evening prayer recommended by her religion, and which concluded with a hymn we have ventured thus to translate into english. when israel, of the lord beloved, out of the land of bondage came, her father's god before her moved, an awful guide, in smoke and flame. by day, along the astonish'd lands the cloudy pillar glided slow; by night, arabia's crimson'd sands return'd the fiery column's glow. there rose the choral hymn of praise, and trump and timbrel answer'd keen, and zion's daughters pour'd their lays, with priest's and warrior's voice between. no portents now our foes amaze, forsaken israel wanders lone; our fathers would not know =thy= ways, and =thou= hast left them to their own. but, present still, though now unseen; when brightly shines the prosperous day, be thoughts of =thee= a cloudy screen to temper the deceitful ray. and oh, when stoops on judah's path in shade and storm the frequent night, be =thou=, long-suffering, slow to wrath, a burning, and a shining light! our harps we left by babel's streams, the tyrant's jest, the gentile's scorn; no censer round our altar beams, and mute our timbrel, trump, and horn. but =thou= hast said, the blood of goat, the flesh of rams, i will not prize; a contrite heart, and humble thought, are mine accepted sacrifice. when the sounds of rebecca's devotional hymn had died away in silence, the low knock at the door was again renewed. ``enter,'' she said, ``if thou art a friend; and if a foe, i have not the means of refusing thy entrance.'' ``i am,'' said brian de bois-guilbert, entering the apartment, ``friend or foe, rebecca, as the event of this interview shall make me.'' alarmed at the sight of this man, whose licentious passion she considered as the root of her misfortunes, rebecca drew backward with a cautious and alarmed, yet not a timorous demeanour, into the farthest corner of the apartment, as if determined to retreat as far as she could, but to stand her ground when retreat became no longer possible. she drew herself into an attitude not of defiance, but of resolution, as one that would avoid provoking assault, yet was resolute to repel it, being offered, to the utmost of her power. ``you have no reason to fear me, rebecca,'' said the templar; ``or if i must so qualify my speech, you have at least _now_ no reason to fear me.'' ``i fear you not, sir knight,'' replied rebecca, although her short-drawn breath seemed to belie the heroism of her accents my trust is strong, and i fear thee not.'' ``you have no cause,'' answered bois-guilbert, gravely; ``my former frantic attempts you have not now to dread. within your call are guards, over whom i have no authority. they are designed to conduct you to death, rebecca, yet would not suffer you to be insulted by any one, even by me, were my frenzy---for frenzy it is---to urge me so far.'' ``may heaven be praised!'' said the jewess; ``death is the least of my apprehensions in this den of evil.'' ``ay,'' replied the templar, ``the idea of death is easily received by the courageous mind, when the road to it is sudden and open. a thrust with a lance, a stroke with a sword, were to me little--to you, a spring from a dizzy battlement, a stroke with a sharp poniard, has no terrors, compared with what either thinks disgrace. mark me---i say this---perhaps mine own sentiments of honour are not less fantastic, rebecca, than thine are; but we know alike how to die for them.'' ``unhappy man,'' said the jewess; ``and art thou condemned to expose thy life for principles, of which thy sober judgment does not acknowledge the solidity? surely this is a parting with your treasure for that which is not bread---but deem not so of me. thy resolution may fluctuate on the wild and changeful billows of human opinion, but mine is anchored on the rock of ages.'' ``silence, maiden,'' answered the templar; ``such discourse now avails but little. thou art condemned to die not a sudden and easy death, such as misery chooses, and despair welcomes, but a slow, wretched, protracted course of torture, suited to what the diabolical bigotry of these men calls thy crime.'' ``and to whom---if such my fate---to whom do i owe this?'' said rebecca ``surely only to him, who, for a most selfish and brutal cause, dragged me hither, and who now, for some unknown purpose of his own, strives to exaggerate the wretched fate to which he exposed me.'' ``think not,'' said the templar, ``that i have so exposed thee; i would have bucklered thee against such danger with my own bosom, as freely as ever i exposed it to the shafts which had otherwise reached thy life.'' ``had thy purpose been the honourable protection of the innocent,'' said rebecca, ``i had thanked thee for thy care---as it is, thou hast claimed merit for it so often, that i tell thee life is worth nothing to me, preserved at the price which thou wouldst exact for it.'' ``truce with thine upbraidings, rebecca,'' said the templar; ``i have my own cause of grief, and brook not that thy reproaches should add to it.'' ``what is thy purpose, then, sir knight?'' said the jewess; ``speak it briefly.---if thou hast aught to do, save to witness the misery thou hast caused, let me know it; and then, if so it please you, leave me to myself---the step between time and eternity is short but terrible, and i have few moments to prepare for it.'' ``i perceive, rebecca,'' said bois-guilbert, ``that thou dost continue to burden me with the charge of distresses, which most fain would i have prevented.'' ``sir knight,'' said rebecca, ``i would avoid reproaches---but what is more certain than that i owe my death to thine unbridled passion?'' ``you err---you err,''---said the templar, hastily, ``if you impute what i could neither foresee nor prevent to my purpose or agency.---could i guess the unexpected arrival of yon dotard, whom some flashes of frantic valour, and the praises yielded by fools to the stupid self-torments of an ascetic, have raised for the present above his own merits, above common sense, above me, and above the hundreds of our order, who think and feel as men free from such silly and fantastic prejudices as are the grounds of his opinions and actions?'' ``yet,'' said rebecca, ``you sate a judge upon me, innocent---most innocent---as you knew me to be---you concurred in my condemnation, and, if i aright understood, are yourself to appear in arms to assert my guilt, and assure my punishment.'' ``thy patience, maiden,'' replied the templar. ``no race knows so well as thine own tribes how to submit to the time, and so to trim their bark as to make advantage even of an adverse wind.'' ``lamented be the hour,'' said rebecca, ``that has taught such art to the house of israel! but adversity bends the heart as fire bends the stubborn steel, and those who are no longer their own governors, and the denizens of their own free independent state, must crouch before strangers. it is our curse, sir knight, deserved, doubtless, by our own misdeeds and those of our fathers; but you--you who boast your freedom as your birthright, how much deeper is your disgrace when you stoop to soothe the prejudices of others, and that against your own conviction?'' ``your words are bitter, rebecca,'' said bois-guilbert, pacing the apartment with impatience, ``but i came not hither to bandy reproaches with you.---know that bois-guilbert yields not to created man, although circumstances may for a time induce him to alter his plan. his will is the mountain stream, which may indeed be turned for a little space aside by the rock, but fails not to find its course to the ocean. that scroll which warned thee to demand a champion, from whom couldst thou think it came, if not from bois-guilbert? in whom else couldst thou have excited such interest?'' ``a brief respite from instant death,'' said rebecca, ``which will little avail me---was this all thou couldst do for one, on whose head thou hast heaped sorrow, and whom thou hast brought near even to the verge of the tomb?'' ``no maiden,'' said bois-guilbert, ``this was _not_ all that i purposed. had it not been for the accursed interference of yon fanatical dotard, and the fool of goodalricke, who, being a templar, affects to think and judge according to the ordinary rules of humanity, the office of the champion defender had devolved, not on a preceptor, but on a companion of the order. then i myself---such was my purpose---had, on the sounding of the trumpet, appeared in the lists as thy champion, disguised indeed in the fashion of a roving knight, who seeks adventures to prove his shield and spear; and then, let beaumanoir have chosen not one, but two or three of the brethren here assembled, i had not doubted to cast them out of the saddle with my single lance. thus, rebecca, should thine innocence have been avouched, and to thine own gratitude would i have trusted for the reward of my victory.'' ``this, sir knight,'' said rebecca, ``is but idle boasting---a brag of what you would have done had you not found it convenient to do otherwise. you received my glove, and my champion, if a creature so desolate can find one, must encounter your lance in the lists---yet you would assume the air of my friend and protector!'' ``thy friend and protector,'' said the templar, gravely, ``i will yet be---but mark at what risk, or rather at what certainty, of dishonour; and then blame me not if i make my stipulations, before i offer up all that i have hitherto held dear, to save the life of a jewish maiden.'' ``speak,'' said rebecca; ``i understand thee not.'' ``well, then,'' said bois-guilbert, ``i will speak as freely as ever did doting penitent to his ghostly father, when placed in the tricky confessional.--rebecca, if i appear not in these lists i lose fame and rank---lose that which is the breath of my nostrils, the esteem, i mean, in which i am held by my brethren, and the hopes i have of succeeding to that mighty authority, which is now wielded by the bigoted dotard lucas de beaumanoir, but of which i should make a different use. such is my certain doom, except i appear in arms against thy cause. accursed be he of goodalricke, who baited this trap for me! and doubly accursed albert de malvoisin, who withheld me from the resolution i had formed, of hurling back the glove at the face of the superstitious and superannuated fool, who listened to a charge so absurd, and against a creature so high in mind, and so lovely in form as thou art!'' ``and what now avails rant or flattery?'' answered rebecca. ``thou hast made thy choice between causing to be shed the blood of an innocent woman, or of endangering thine own earthly state and earthly hopes---what avails it to reckon together?---thy choice is made.'' ``no, rebecca,'' said the knight, in a softer tone, and drawing nearer towards her; ``my choice is =not= made---nay, mark, it is thine to make the election. if i appear in the lists, i must maintain my name in arms; and if i do so, championed or unchampioned, thou diest by the stake and faggot, for there lives not the knight who hath coped with me in arms on equal issue, or on terms of vantage, save richard c<oe>ur-de-lion, and his minion of ivanhoe. ivanhoe, as thou well knowest, is unable to bear his corslet, and richard is in a foreign prison. if i appear, then thou diest, even although thy charms should instigate some hot-headed youth to enter the lists in thy defence.'' ``and what avails repeating this so often?'' said rebecca. ``much,'' replied the templar; ``for thou must learn to look at thy fate on every side.'' ``well, then, turn the tapestry,'' said the jewess, ``and let me see the other side.'' ``if i appear,'' said bois-guilbert, ``in the fatal lists, thou diest by a slow and cruel death, in pain such as they say is destined to the guilty hereafter. but if i appear not, then am i a degraded and dishonoured knight, accused of witchcraft and of communion with infidels---the illustrious name which bas grown yet more so under my wearing, becomes a hissing and a reproach. i lose fame, i lose honour, i lose the prospect of such greatness as scarce emperors attain to---i sacrifice mighty ambition, i destroy schemes built as high as the mountains with which heathens say their heaven was once nearly scaled---and yet, rebecca,'' he added, throwing himself at her feet, ``this greatness will i sacrifice, this fame will i renounce, this power will i forego, even now when it is half within my grasp, if thou wilt say, bois-guilbert, i receive thee for my lover.'' ``think not of such foolishness, sir knight,'' answered rebecca, ``but hasten to the regent, the queen mother, and to prince john---they cannot, in honour to the english crown, allow of the proceedings of your grand master. so shall you give me protection without sacrifice on your part, or the pretext of requiring any requital from me.'' ``with these i deal not,'' he continued, holding the train of her robe---``it is thee only i address; and what can counterbalance thy choice? bethink thee, were i a fiend, yet death is a worse, and it is death who is my rival.'' ``i weigh not these evils,'' said rebecca, afraid to provoke the wild knight, yet equally determined neither to endure his passion, nor even feign to endure it. ``be a man, be a christian! if indeed thy faith recommends that mercy which rather your tongues than your actions pretend, save me from this dreadful death, without seeking a requital which would change thy magnanimity into base barter.'' ``no, damsel!'' said the proud templar, springing up, ``thou shalt not thus impose on me---if i renounce present fame and future ambition, i renounce it for thy sake, and we will escape in company. listen to me, rebecca,'' he said, again softening his tone; ``england,---europe,---is not the world. there are spheres in which we may act, ample enough even for my ambition. we will go to palestine, where conrade, marquis of montserrat, is my friend---a friend free as myself from the doting scruples which fetter our free-born reason ----rather with saladin will we league ourselves, than endure the scorn of the bigots whom we contemn. ---i will form new paths to greatness,'' he continued, again traversing the room with hasty strides ---``europe shall hear the loud step of him she has driven from her sons!---not the millions whom her crusaders send to slaughter, can do so much to defend palestine---not the sabres of the thousands and ten thousands of saracens can hew their way so deep into that land for which nations are striving, as the strength and policy of me and those brethren, who, in despite of yonder old bigot, will adhere to me in good and evil. thou shalt be a queen, rebecca---on mount carmel shall we pitch the throne which my valour will gain for you, and i will exchange my long-desired batoon for a sceptre!'' ``a dream,'' said rebecca; ``an empty vision of the night, which, were it a waking reality, affects me not. enough, that the power which thou mightest acquire, i will never share; nor hold i so light of country or religious faith, as to esteem him who is willing to barter these ties, and cast away the bonds of the order of which he is a sworn member, in order to gratify an unruly passion for the daughter of another people.---put not a price on my deliverance, sir knight---sell not a deed of generosity ---protect the oppressed for the sake of charity, and not for a selfish advantage---go to the throne of england; richard will listen to my appeal from these cruel men.'' ``never, rebecca!'' said the templar, fiercely. ``if i renounce my order, for thee alone will i renounce it---ambition shall remain mine, if thou refuse my love; i will not be fooled on all hands. ---stoop my crest to richard?---ask a boon of that heart of pride?---never, rebecca, will i place the order of the temple at his feet in my person. i may forsake the order, i never will degrade or betray it.'' ``now god be gracious to me,'' said rebecca, ``for the succour of man is wellnigh hopeless!'' ``it is indeed,'' said the templar; ``for, proud as thou art, thou hast in me found thy match. if i enter the lists with my spear in rest, think not any human consideration shall prevent my putting forth my strength; and think then upon thine own fate---to die the dreadful death of the worst of criminals ---to be consumed upon a blazing pile---dispersed to the elements of which our strange forms are so mystically composed---not a relic left of that graceful frame, from which we could say this lived and moved!---rebecca, it is not in woman to sustain this prospect---thou wilt yield to my suit.'' ``bois-guilbert,'' answered the jewess, ``thou knowest not the heart of woman, or hast only conversed with those who are lost to her best feelings. i tell thee, proud templar, that not in thy fiercest battles hast thou displayed more of thy vaunted courage, than has been shown by woman when called upon to suffer by affection or duty. i am myself a woman, tenderly nurtured, naturally fearful of danger, and impatient of pain---yet, when we enter those fatal lists, thou to fight and i to suffer, i feel the strong assurance within me, that my courage shall mount higher than thine. farewell ---i waste no more words on thee; the time that remains on earth to the daughter of jacob must be otherwise spent---she must seek the comforter, who may hide his face from his people, but who ever opens his ear to the cry of those who seek him in sincerity and in truth.'' ``we part then thus?'' said the templar, after a short pause; ``would to heaven that we had never met, or that thou hadst been noble in birth and christian in faith!---nay, by heaven! when i gaze on thee, and think when and how we are next to meet, i could even wish myself one of thine own degraded nation; my hand conversant with ingots and shekels, instead of spear and shield; my head bent down before each petty noble, and my look only terrible to the shivering and bankrupt debtor ---this could i wish, rebecca, to be near to thee in life, and to escape the fearful share i must have in thy death.'' ``thou hast spoken the jew,'' said rebecca, ``as the persecution of such as thou art has made him. heaven in ire has driven him from his country, but industry has opened to him the only road to power and to influence, which oppression has left unbarred. read the ancient history of the people of god, and tell me if those, by whom jehovah wrought such marvels among the nations, were then a people of misers and of usurers!---and know, proud knight, we number names amongst us to which your boasted northern nobility is as the gourd compared with the cedar---names that ascend far back to those high times when the divine presence shook the mercy-seat between the cherubim, and which derive their splendour from no earthly prince, but from the awful voice, which bade their fathers be nearest of the congregation to the vision---such were the princes of the house of jacob.'' rebecca's colour rose as she boasted the ancient glories of her race, but faded as she added, with at sigh, ``such _were_ the princes of judah, now such no more!---they are trampled down like the shorn grass, and mixed with the mire of the ways. yet are there those among them who shame not such high descent, and of such shall be the daughter of isaac the son of adonikam! farewell!---i envy not thy blood-won honours---i envy not thy barbarous descent from northern heathens---i envy thee not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth, but never in thy heart nor in thy practice.'' ``there is a spell on me, by heaven!'' said bois-guilbert. ``i almost think yon besotted skeleton spoke truth, and that the reluctance with which i part from thee hath something in it more than is natural.---fair creature!'' he said, approaching near her, but with great respect,---``so young, so beautiful, so fearless of death! and yet doomed to die, and with infamy and agony. who would not weep for thee?---the tear, that has been a stranger to these eyelids for twenty years, moistens them as i gaze on thee. but it must be---nothing may now save thy life. thou and i are but the blind instruments of some irresistible fatality, that hurries us along, like goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish. forgive me, then, and let us part at least as friends part. i have assailed thy resolution in vain, and mine own is fixed as the adamantine decrees of fate.'' ``thus,'' said rebecca, ``do men throw on fate the issue of their own wild passions. but i do forgive thee, bois-guilbert, though the author of my early death. there are noble things which cross over thy powerful mind; but it is the garden of the sluggard, and the weeds have rushed up, and conspired to choke the fair and wholesome blossom.'' ``yes,'' said the templar, ``i am, rebecca, as thou hast spoken me, untaught, untamed---and proud, that, amidst a shoal of empty fools and crafty bigots, i have retained the preeminent fortitude that places me above them. i have been a child of battle from my youth upward, high in my views, steady and inflexible in pursuing them. such must i remain---proud, inflexible, and unchanging; and of this the world shall have proof.---but thou forgivest me, rebecca?'' ``as freely as ever victim forgave her executioner.'' ``farewell, then,'' said the templar, and left the apartment. the preceptor albert waited impatiently in an adjacent chamber the return of bois-guilbert. ``thou hast tarried long,'' he said; ``i have been as if stretched on red-hot iron with very impatience. what if the grand master, or his spy conrade, had come hither? i had paid dear for my complaisance.---but what ails thee, brother?--thy step totters, thy brow is as black as night. art thou well, bois-guilbert?'' ``ay,'' answered the templar, ``as well as the wretch who is doomed to die within an hour.---nay, by the rood, not half so well---for there be those in such state, who can lay down life like a cast-off garment. by heaven, malvoisin, yonder girl hath wellnigh unmanned me. i am half resolved to go to the grand master, abjure the order to his very teeth, and refuse to act the brutality which his tyranny has imposed on me.'' ``thou art mad,'' answered malvoisin; ``thou mayst thus indeed utterly ruin thyself, but canst not even find a chance thereby to save the life of this jewess, which seems so precious in thine eyes. beaumanoir will name another of the order to defend his judgment in thy place, and the accused will as assuredly perish as if thou hadst taken the duty imposed on thee.'' ``'tis false---i will myself take arms in her behalf,'' answered the templar, haughtily; ``and, should i do so, i think, malvoisin, that thou knowest not one of the order, who will keep his saddle before the point of my lance.'' ``ay, but thou forgettest,'' said the wily adviser, ``thou wilt have neither leisure nor opportunity to execute this mad project. go to lucas beaumanoir, and say thou hast renounced thy vow of obedience, and see how long the despotic old man will leave thee in personal freedom. the words shall scarce have left thy lips, ere thou wilt either be an hundred feet under ground, in the dungeon of the preceptory, to abide trial as a recreant knight; or, if his opinion holds concerning thy possession, thou wilt be enjoying straw, darkness, and chains, in some distant convent cell, stunned with exorcisms, and drenched with holy water, to expel the foul fiend which hath obtained dominion over thee. thou must to the lists, brian, or thou art a lost and dishonoured man.'' ``i will break forth and fly,'' said bois-guilbert ---``fly to some distant land, to which folly and fanaticism have not yet found their way. no drop of the blood of this most excellent creature shall be spilled by my sanction.'' ``thou canst not fly,'' said the preceptor; ``thy ravings have excited suspicion, and thou wilt not be permitted to leave the preceptory. go and make the essay---present thyself before the gate, and command the bridge to be lowered, and mark what answer thou shalt receive.---thou are surprised and offended; but is it not the better for thee? wert thou to fly, what would ensue but the reversal of thy arms, the dishonour of thine ancestry, the degradation of thy rank?---think on it. where shall thine old companions in arms hide their heads when brian de bois-guilbert, the best lance of the templars, is proclaimed recreant, amid the hisses of the assembled people? what grief will be at the court of france! with what joy will the haughty richard hear the news, that the knight that set him hard in palestine, and well-nigh darkened his renown, has lost fame and honour for a jewish girl, whom he could not even save by so costly a sacrifice!'' ``malvoisin,'' said the knight, ``i thank thee--thou hast touched the string at which my heart most readily thrills!---come of it what may, recreant shall never be added to the name of bois-guilbert. would to god, richard, or any of his vaunting minions of england, would appear in these lists! but they will be empty---no one will risk to break a lance for the innocent, the forlorn.'' ``the better for thee, if it prove so,'' said the preceptor; ``if no champion appears, it is not by thy means that this unlucky damsel shall die, but by the doom of the grand master, with whom rests all the blame, and who will count that blame for praise and commendation.'' ``true,'' said bois-guilbert; ``if no champion appears, i am but a part of the pageant, sitting indeed on horseback in the lists, but having no part in what is to follow.'' ``none whatever,'' said malvoisin; ``no more than the armed image of saint george when it makes part of a procession.'' ``well, i will resume my resolution,'' replied the haughty templar. ``she has despised me--repulsed me---reviled me---and wherefore should i offer up for her whatever of estimation i have in the opinion of others? malvoisin, i will appear in the lists.'' he left the apartment hastily as he uttered these words, and the preceptor followed, to watch and confirm him in his resolution; for in bois-guilbert's fame he had himself a strong interest, expecting much advantage from his being one day at the head of the order, not to mention the preferment of which mont-fitchet had given him hopes, on condition he would forward the condemnation of the unfortunate rebecca. yet although, in combating his friend's better feelings, he possessed all the advantage which a wily, composed, selfish disposition has over a man agitated by strong and contending passions, it required all malvoisin's art to keep bois-guilbert steady to the purpose he had prevailed on him to adopt. he was obliged to watch him closely to prevent his resuming his purpose of flight, to intercept his communication with the grand master, lest he should come to an open rupture with his superior, and to renew, from time to time, the various arguments by which he endeavoured to show, that, in appearing as champion on this occasion, bois-guilbert, without either accelerating or ensuring the fate of rebecca, would follow the only course by which be could save himself from degradation and disgrace. chapter xl. shadows avaunt!---richard's himself again. _richard iii._ when the black knight---for it becomes necessary to resume the train of his adventures---left the trysting-tree of the generous outlaw, he held his way straight to a neighbouring religious house, of small extent and revenue, called the priory of saint botolph, to which the wounded ivanhoe had been removed when the castle was taken, under the guidance of the faithful gurth, and the magnanimous wamba. it is unnecessary at present to mention what took place in the interim betwixt wilfred and his deliverer; suffice it to say, that after long and grave communication, messengers were dispatched by the prior in several directions, and that on the succeeding morning the black knight was about to set forth on his journey, accompanied by the jester wamba, who attended as his guide. ``we will meet,'' he said to ivanhoe, ``at coningsburgh, the castle of the deceased athelstane, since there thy father cedric holds the funeral feast for his noble relation. i would see your saxon kindred together, sir wilfred, and become better acquainted with them than heretofore. thou also wilt meet me; and it shall be my task to reconcile thee to thy father.'' so saying, he took an affectionate farewell of ivanhoe, who expressed an anxious desire to attend upon his deliverer. but the black knight would not listen to the proposal. ``rest this day; thou wilt have scarce strength enough to travel on the next. i will have no guide with me but honest wamba, who can play priest or fool as i shall be most in the humour.'' ``and i,'' said wamba, ``will attend you with all my heart. i would fain see the feasting at the funeral of athelstane; for, if it be not full and frequent, he will rise from the dead to rebuke cook, sewer, and cupbearer; and that were a sight worth seeing. always, sir knight, i will trust your valour with making my excuse to my master cedric, in case mine own wit should fail.'' ``and how should my poor valour succeed, sir jester, when thy light wit halts?---resolve me that.'' ``wit, sir knight,'' replied the jester, ``may do much. he is a quick, apprehensive knave, who sees his neighbours blind side, and knows how to keep the lee-gage when his passions are blowing high. but valour is a sturdy fellow, that makes all split. he rows against both wind and tide, and makes way notwithstanding; and, therefore, good sir knight, while i take advantage of the fair weather in our noble master's temper, i will expect you to bestir yourself when it grows rough.'' ``sir knight of the fetterlock, since it is your pleasure so to be distinguished,'' said ivanhoe, ``i fear me you have chosen a talkative and a troublesome fool to be your guide. but he knows every path and alley in the woods as well as e'er a hunter who frequents them; and the poor knave, as thou hast partly seen, is as faithful as steel.'' ``nay,'' said the knight, ``an he have the gift of showing my road, i shall not grumble with him that he desires to make it pleasant.---fare thee well, kind wilfred---i charge thee not to attempt to travel till to-morrow at earliest.'' so saying, he extended his hand to ivanhoe, who pressed it to his lips, took leave of the prior, mounted his horse, and departed, with wamba for his companion. ivanhoe followed them with his eyes, until they were lost in the shades of the surrounding forest, and then returned into the convent. but shortly after matin-song, he requested to see the prior. the old man came in haste, and enquired anxiously after the state of his health. ``it is better,'' he said, ``than my fondest hope could have anticipated; either my wound has been slighter than the effusion of blood led me to suppose, or this balsam hath wrought a wonderful cure upon it. i feel already as if i could bear my corslet; and so much the better, for thoughts pass in my mind which render me unwilling to remain here longer in inactivity.'' ``now, the saints forbid,'' said the prior, ``that the son of the saxon cedric should leave our convent ere his wounds were healed! it were shame to our profession were we to suffer it.'' ``nor would i desire to leave your hospitable roof, venerable father,'' said ivanhoe, ``did i not feel myself able to endure the journey, and compelled to undertake it.'' ``and what can have urged you to so sudden a departure?'' said the prior. ``have you never, holy father,'' answered the knight, ``felt an apprehension of approaching evil, for which you in vain attempted to assign a cause? ---have you never found your mind darkened, like the sunny landscape, by the sudden cloud, which augurs a coming tempest?---and thinkest thou not that such impulses are deserving of attention, as being the hints of our guardian spirits, that danger is impending?'' ``i may not deny,'' said the prior, crossing himself, ``that such things have been, and have been of heaven; but then such communications have had a visibly useful scope and tendency. but thou, wounded as thou art, what avails it thou shouldst follow the steps of him whom thou couldst not aid, were he to be assaulted?'' ``prior,'' said ivanhoe, ``thou dost mistake---i am stout enough to exchange buffets with any who will challenge me to such a traffic---but were it otherwise, may i not aid him were he in danger, by other means than by force of arms? it is but too well known that the saxons love not the norman race, and who knows what may be the issue, if he break in upon them when their hearts are irritated by the death of athelstane, and their heads heated by the carousal in which they will indulge themselves? i hold his entrance among them at such a moment most perilous, and i am resolved to share or avert the danger; which, that i may the better do, i would crave of thee the use of some palfrey whose pace may be softer than that of my _destrier_.''* * _destrier_---war-horse. ``surely,'' said the worthy churchman; ``you shall have mine own ambling jennet, and i would it ambled as easy for your sake as that of the abbot of saint albans. yet this will i say for malkin, for so i call her, that unless you were to borrow a ride on the juggler's steed that paces a hornpipe amongst the eggs, you could not go a journey on a creature so gentle and smooth-paced. i have composed many a homily on her back, to the edification of my brethren of the convent, and many poor christian souls.'' ``i pray you, reverend father,'' said ivanhoe, ``let malkin be got ready instantly, and bid gurth attend me with mine arms.'' ``nay, but fair sir,'' said the prior, ``i pray you to remember that malkin hath as little skill in arms as her master, and that i warrant not her enduring the sight or weight of your full panoply. o, malkin, i promise you, is a beast of judgment, and will contend against any undue weight---i did but borrow the _fructus temporum_ from the priest of saint bees, and i promise you she would not stir from the gate until i had exchanged the huge volume for my little breviary.'' ``trust me, holy father,'' said ivanhoe, ``i will not distress her with too much weight; and if she calls a combat with me, it is odds but she has the worst.'' this reply was made while gurth was buckling on the, knight's heels a pair of large gilded spurs, capable of convincing any restive horse that his best safety lay in being conformable to the will of his rider. the deep and sharp rowels with which ivanhoe's. heels were now armed, began to make the worthy prior repent of his courtesy, and ejaculate,---``nay, but fair sir, now i bethink me, my malkin abideth not the spur---better it were that you tarry for the mare of our manciple down at the grange, which may be had in little more than an hour, and cannot but be tractable, in respect that she draweth much of our winter fire-wood, and eateth no corn.'' ``i thank you, reverend father, but will abide by your first offer, as i see malkin is already led forth to the gate. gurth shall carry mine armour; and for the rest, rely on it, that as i will not overload malkin's back, she shall not overcome my patience. and now, farewell!'' ivanhoe now descended the stairs more hastily and easily than his wound promised, and threw himself upon the jennet, eager to escape the importunity of the prior, who stuck as closely to his side as his age and fatness would permit, now singing the praises of malkin, now recommending caution to the knight in managing her. ``she is at the most dangerous period for maidens as well as mares,'' said the old man, laughing at his own jest, ``being barely in her fifteenth year.'' ivanhoe, who had other web to weave than to stand canvassing a palfrey's paces with its owner, lent but a deaf ear to the prior's grave advices and facetious jests, and having leapt on his mare, and commanded his squire (for such gurth now called himself) to keep close by his side, he followed the track of the black knight into the forest, while the prior stood at the gate of the convent looking after him, and ejaculating,---``saint mary! how prompt and fiery be these men of war! i would i had not trusted malkin to his keeping, for, crippled as i am with the cold rheum, i am undone if aught but good befalls her. and yet,'' said he, recollecting himself, ``as i would not spare my own old and disabled limbs in the good cause of old england, so malkin must e'en run her hazard on the same venture; and it may be they will think our poor house worthy of some munificent guerdon---or, it may be, they will send the old prior a pacing nag. and if they do none of these, as great men will forget little men's service, truly i shall hold me well repaid in having done that which is right. and it is now wellnigh the fitting time to summon the brethren to breakfast in the refectory---ah! i doubt they obey that call more cheerily than the bells for primes and matins.'' so the prior of saint botolph's hobbled back again into the refectory, to preside over the stockfish and ale, which was just serving out for the friars' breakfast. pursy and important, he sat him down at the table, and many a dark word he threw out, of benefits to be expected to the convent, and high deeds of service done by himself, which, at another season, would have attracted observation. but as the stockfish was highly salted, and the ale reasonably powerful, the jaws of the brethren were too anxiously employed to admit of their making much use of their ears; nor do we read of any of the fraternity, who was tempted to speculate upon the mysterious hints of their superior, except father diggory, who was severely afflicted by the toothache, so that be could only eat on one side of his jaws. in the meantime, the black champion and his guide were pacing at their leisure through the recesses of the forest; the good knight whiles humming to himself the lay of some enamoured troubadour, sometimes encouraging by questions the prating disposition of his attendant, so that their dialogue formed a whimsical mixture of song and jest, of which we would fain give our readers some idea. you are then to imagine this knight, such as we have already described him, strong of person, tall, broad-shouldered, and large of bone, mounted on his mighty black charger, which seemed made on purpose to bear his weight, so easily he paced forward under it, having the visor of his helmet raised, in order to admit freedom of breath, yet keeping the beaver, or under part, closed, so that his features could be but imperfectly distinguished. but his ruddy embrowned cheek-bones could be plainly seen, and the large and bright blue eyes, that flashed from under the dark shade of the raised visor; and the whole gesture and look of the champion expressed careless gaiety and fearless confidence--a mind which was unapt to apprehend danger, and prompt to defy it when most imminent--yet with whom danger was a familiar thought, as with one whose trade was war and adventure. the jester wore his usual fantastic habit, but late accidents had led him to adopt a good cutting falchion, instead of his wooden sword, with a targe to match it; of both which weapons he had, notwithstanding his profession, shown himself a skilful master during the storming of torquilstone. indeed, the infirmity of wamba's brain consisted chiefly in a kind of impatient irritability, which suffered him not long to remain quiet in any posture, or adhere to any certain train of ideas, although he was for a few minutes alert enough in performing any immediate task, or in apprehending any immediate topic. on horseback, therefore, he was perpetually swinging himself backwards and forwards, now on the horse's ears, then anon on the very rump of the animal,---now hanging both his legs on one side, and now sitting with his face to the tail, moping, mowing, and making a thousand apish gestures, until his palfrey took his freaks so much to heart, as fairly to lay him at his length on the green grass---an incident which greatly amused the knight, but compelled his companion to ride more steadily thereafter. at the point of their journey at which we take them up, this joyous pair were engaged in singing a virelai, as it was called, in which the clown bore a mellow burden, to the better instructed knight of the fetterlock. and thus run the ditty:-- anna-marie, love, up is the sun, anna-marie, love, morn is begun, mists are dispersing, love, birds singing free, up in the morning, love, anna-marie. anna-marie, love, up in the morn, the hunter is winding blithe sounds on his horn, the echo rings merry from rock and from tree, 'tis time to arouse thee, love, anna-marie. wamba. o tybalt, love, tybalt, awake me not yet, around my soft pillow while softer dreams flit, for what are the joys that in waking we prove, compared with these visions, o, tybalt, my love? let the birds to the rise of the mist carol shrill, let the hunter blow out his load horn on the hill, softer sounds, softer pleasures, in slumber i prove,-- but think not i dreamt of thee, tybalt, my love. ``a dainty song,'' said wamba, when they had finished their carol, ``and i swear by my bauble, a pretty moral!---i used to sing it with gurth, once my playfellow, and now, by the grace of god and his master, no less than a freemen; and we once came by the cudgel for being so entranced by the melody, that we lay in bed two hours after sunrise, singing the ditty betwixt sleeping and waking--my bones ache at thinking of the tune ever since. nevertheless, i have played the part of anna-marie, to please you, fair sir.'' the jester next struck into another carol, a sort of comic ditty, to which the knight, catching up the tune, replied in the like manner. knight and wamba. there came three merry men from south, west, and north, ever more sing the roundelay; to win the widow of wycombe forth, and where was the widow might say them nay? the first was a knight, and from tynedale he came, ever more sing the roundelay; and his fathers, god save us, were men of great faine, and where was the widow might say him nay? of his father the laird, of his uncle the squire, he boasted in rhyme and in roundelay; she bade him go bask by his sea-coal fire, for she was the widow would say him nay. wamba. the next that came forth, swore by blood and by nails, merrily sing the roundelay; hur's a gentleman, god wot, and hur's lineage was of wales, and where wall the widow might say him nay? sir david ap morgan ap griffith ap hugh ap tudor ap rhice, quoth his roundelay she said that one widow for so many was too few, and she bade the welshman wend his way. but then next came a yeoman, a yeoman of kent, jollily singing his roundelay; he spoke to the widow of living and rent, and where was the widow could say him nay? both. so the knight and the squire were both left in the mire, there for to sing their roundelay; for a yeoman of kent, with his yearly rent, there never was a widow could say him nay. ``i would, wamba,'' said the knight, ``that our host of the trysting-tree, or the jolly friar, his chaplain, heard this thy ditty in praise of our bluff yeoman.'' ``so would not i,'' said wamba---``but for the horn that hangs at your baldric.'' ``ay,'' said the knight,---``this is a pledge of locksley's good-will, though i am not like to need it. three mots on this bugle will, i am assured, bring round, at our need, a jolly band of yonder honest yeomen.'' ``i would say, heaven forefend,'' said the jester, ``were it not that that fair gift is a pledge they would let us pass peaceably.'' ``why, what meanest thou?'' said the knight; ``thinkest thou that but for this pledge of fellowship they would assault us?'' ``nay, for me i say nothing,'' said wamba; ``for green trees have ears as well as stone walls. but canst thou construe me this, sir knight---when is thy wine-pitcher and thy purse better empty than full?'' ``why, never, i think,'' replied the knight. ``thou never deservest to have a full one in thy hand, for so simple an answer! thou hadst best empty thy pitcher ere thou pass it to a saxon, and leave thy money at home ere thou walk in the greenwood.'' ``you hold our friends for robbers, then?'' said the knight of the fetterlock. ``you hear me not say so, fair sir,'' said wamba; ``it may relieve a man's steed to take of his mail when he hath a long journey to make; and, certes, it may do good to the rider's soul to ease him of that which is the root of evil; therefore will i give no hard names to those who do such services. only i would wish my mail at home, and my purse in my chamber, when i meet with these good fellows, because it might save them some trouble.'' ``_we_ are bound to pray for them, my friend, notwithstanding the fair character thou dost afford them.'' ``pray for them with all my heart,'' said wamba; ``but in the town, not in the greenwood, like the abbot of saint bees, whom they caused to say mass with an old hollow oak-tree for his stall.'' ``say as thou list, wamba,'' replied the knight, ``these yeomen did thy master cedric yeomanly service at torquilstone.'' ``ay, truly,'' answered wamba; ``but that was in the fashion of their trade with heaven.'' ``their trade, wamba! how mean you by that?'' replied his companion. ``marry, thus,'' said the jester. ``they make up a balanced account with heaven, as our old cellarer used to call his ciphering, as fair as isaac the jew keeps with his debtors, and, like him, give out a very little, and take large credit for doing so; reckoning, doubtless, on their own behalf the seven-fold usury which the blessed text hath promised to charitable loans.'' ``give me an example of your meaning, wamba, ---i know nothing of ciphers or rates of usage,'' answered the knight. ``why,'' said wamba, ``an your valour be so dull, you will please to learn that those honest fellows balance a good deed with one not quite so laudable; as a crown given to a begging friar with an hundred byzants taken from a fat abbot, or a wench kissed in the greenwood with the relief of a poor widow.'' ``which of these was the good deed, which was the felony?'' interrupted the knight. ``a good gibe! a good gibe!'' said wamba; ``keeping witty company sharpeneth the apprehension. you said nothing so well, sir knight, i will be sworn, when you held drunken vespers with the bluff hermit.---but to go on. the merry-men of the forest set off the building of a cottage with the burning of a castle,---the thatching of a choir against the robbing of a church,---the setting free a poor prisoner against the murder of a proud sheriff; or, to come nearer to our point, the deliverance of a saxon franklin against the burning alive of a norman baron. gentle thieves they are, in short, and courteous robbers; but it is ever the luckiest to meet with them when they are at the worst.'' ``how so, wamba?'' said the knight. ``why, then they have some compunction, and are for making up matters with heaven. but when they have struck an even balance, heaven help them with whom they next open the account! the travellers who first met them after their good service at torquilstone would have a woful flaying. ---and yet,'' said wamba, coming close up to the knight's side, ``there be companions who are far more dangerous for travellers to meet than yonder outlaws.'' ``and who may they be, for you have neither bears nor wolves, i trow?'' said the knight. ``marry, sir, but we have malvoisin's men-at-arms,'' said wamba; ``and let me tell you, that, in time of civil war, a halfscore of these is worth a band of wolves at any time. they are now expecting their harvest, and are reinforced with the soldiers that escaped from torquilstone. so that, should we meet with a band of them, we are like to pay for our feats of arms.---now, i pray you, sir knight, what would you do if we met two of them?'' ``pin the villains to the earth with my lance, wamba, if they offered us any impediment.'' ``but what if there were four of them?'' ``they should drink of the same cup,'' answered the knight. ``what if six,'' continued wamba, ``and we as we now are, barely two---would you not remember locksley's horn?'' ``what! sound for aid,'' exclaimed the knight, ``against a score of such rascaille as these, whom one good knight could drive before him, as the wind drives the withered leaves?'' ``nay, then,'' said wamba, ``i will pray you for a close sight of that same horn that hath so powerful a breath.'' the knight undid the clasp of the baldric, and indulged his fellow-traveller, who immediately hung the bugle round his own neck. ``tra-lira-la,'' said he, whistling the notes; ``nay, i know my gamut as well as another.'' ``how mean you, knave?'' said the knight; ``restore me the bugle.'' ``content you, sir knight, it is in safe keeping. when valour and folly travel, folly should bear the horn, because she can blow the best.'' ``nay but, rogue,'' said the black knight, ``this exceedeth thy license---beware ye tamper not with my patience.'' ``urge me not with violence, sir knight,'' said the jester, keeping at a distance from the impatient champion, ``or folly will show a clean pair of heels, and leave valour to find out his way through the wood as best he may.'' ``nay, thou hast hit me there,'' said the knight; ``and, sooth to say, i have little time to jangle with thee. keep the horn an thou wilt, but let us proceed on our journey.'' ``you will not harm me, then?'' said wamba. ``i tell thee no, thou knave!'' ``ay, but pledge me your knightly word for it,'' continued wamba, as he approached with great caution. ``my knightly word i pledge; only come on with thy foolish self.'' ``nay, then, valour and folly are once more boon companions,'' said the jester, coming up frankly to the knight's side; ``but, in truth, i love not such buffets as that you bestowed on the burly friar, when his holiness rolled on the green like a king of the nine-pins. and now that folly wears the horn, let valour rouse himself, and shake his mane; for, if i mistake not, there are company in yonder brake that are on the look-out for us.'' ``what makes thee judge so?'' said the knight. ``because i have twice or thrice noticed the glance of a motion from amongst the green leaves. had they been honest men, they had kept the path. but yonder thicket is a choice chapel for the clerks of saint nicholas.'' ``by my faith,'' said the knight, closing his visor, ``i think thou best in the right on't.'' and in good time did he close it, for three arrows, flew at the same instant from the suspected spot against his head and breast, one of which would have penetrated to the brain, had it not been turned aside by the steel visor. the other two were averted by the gorget, and by the shield which hung around his neck. ``thanks, trusty armourers,'' said the knight.--``wamba, let us close with them,''---and he rode straight to the thicket. he was met by six or seven men-at-arms, who ran against him with their lances at full career. three of the weapons struck against him, and splintered with as little effect as if they had been driven against a tower of steel. the black knight's eyes seemed to flash fire even through the aperture of his visor. he raised himself in his stirrups with an air of inexpressible dignity, and exclaimed, ``what means this, my masters!'' ---the men made no other reply than by drawing their swords and attacking him on every side, crying, ``die, tyrant!'' ``ha! saint edward! ha! saint george!'' said the black knight, striking down a man at every invocation; ``have we traitors here?'' his opponents, desperate as they were, bore back from an arm which carried death in every blow, and it seemed as if the terror of his single strength was about to gain the battle against such odds, when a knight, in blue armour, who had hitherto kept himself behind the other assailants, spurred forward with his lance, and taking aim, not at the rider but at the steed, wounded the noble animal mortally. ``that was a felon stroke!'' exclaimed the black knight, as the steed fell to the earth, bearing his rider along with him. and at this moment, wamba winded the bugle, for the whole had passed so speedily, that he had not time to do so sooner. the sudden sound made the murderers bear back once more, and wamba, though so imperfectly weaponed, did not hesitate to rush in and assist the black knight to rise. ``shame on ye, false cowards!'' exclaimed he in the blue harness, who seemed to lead the assailants, ``do ye fly from the empty blast of a horn blown by a jester?'' animated by his words, they attacked the black knight anew, whose best refuge was now to place his back against an oak, and defend himself with his sword. the felon knight, who had taken another spear, watching the moment when his formidable antagonist was most closely pressed, galloped against him in hopes to nail him with his lance against the tree, when his purpose was again intercepted by wamba. the jester, making up by agility the want of strength, and little noticed by the men-at-arms, who were busied in their more important object, hovered on the skirts of the fight, and effectually checked the fatal career of the blue knight, by hamstringing his horse with a stroke of his sword. horse and man went to the ground; yet the situation of the knight of the fetterlock continued very precarious, as he was pressed close by several men completely armed, and began to be fatigued by the violent exertions necessary to defend himself on so many points at nearly the same moment, when a grey-goose shaft suddenly stretched on the earth one of the most formidable of his assailants, and a band of yeomen broke forth from the glade, headed by locksley and the jovial friar, who, taking ready and effectual part in the fray, soon disposed of the ruffians, all of whom lay on the spot dead or mortally wounded. the black knight thanked his deliverers with a dignity they had not observed in his former bearing, which hitherto had seemed rather that of a blunt bold soldier, than of a person of exalted rank. ``it concerns me much,'' he said, ``even before i express my full gratitude to my ready friends, to discover, if i may, who have been my unprovoked enemies.---open the visor of that blue knight, wamba, who seems the chief of these villains.'' the jester instantly made up to the leader of the assassins, who, bruised by his fall, and entangled under the wounded steed, lay incapable either of flight or resistance. ``come, valiant sir,'' said wamba, ``i must be your armourer as well as your equerry---i have dismounted you, and now i will unhelm you.'' so saying, with no very gentle hand he undid the helmet of the blue knight, which, rolling to a distance on the grass, displayed to the knight of the fetterlock grizzled locks, and a countenance he did not expect to have seen under such circumstances. ``waldemar fitzurse!'' he said in astonishment; ``what could urge one of thy rank and seeming worth to so foul an undertaking? '' ``richard,'' said the captive knight, looking up to him, ``thou knowest little of mankind, if thou knowest not to what ambition and revenge can lead every child of adam.'' ``revenge?'' answered the black knight; ``i never wronged thee---on me thou hast nought to revenge.'' ``my daughter, richard, whose alliance thou didst scorn---was that no injury to a norman, whose blood is noble as thine own?'' ``thy daughter?'' replied the black knight; ``a proper cause of enmity, and followed up to a bloody issue!---stand back, my masters, i would speak to him alone.---and now, waldemar fitzurse, say me the truth---confess who set thee on this traitorous deed.'' ``thy father's son,'' answered waldemar, ``who, in so doing, did but avenge on thee thy disobedience to thy father.'' richard's eyes sparkled with indignation, but his better nature overcame it. he pressed his hand against his brow, and remained an instant gazing on the face of the humbled baron, in whose features pride was contending with shame. ``thou dost not ask thy life, waldemar,'' said the king. ``he that is in the lion's clutch,'' answered fitzurse, ``knows it were needless.'' ``take it, then, unasked,'' said richard; ``the lion preys not on prostrate carcasses.---take thy life, but with this condition, that in three days thou shalt leave england, and go to hide thine infamy in thy norman castle, and that thou wilt never mention the name of john of anjou as connected with thy felony. if thou art found on english ground after the space i have allotted thee, thou diest---or if thou breathest aught that can attaint the honour of my house, by saint george! not the altar itself shall be a sanctuary. i will hang thee out to feed the ravens, from the very pinnacle of thine own castle.---let this knight have a steed, locksley, for i see your yeomen have caught those which were running loose, and let him depart unharmed.'' ``but that i judge i listen to a voice whose behests must not be disputed,'' answered the yeoman, ``i would send a shaft after the skulking villain that should spare him the labour of a long journey.'' ``thou bearest an english heart, locksley,'' said the black knight, ``and well dost judge thou art the more bound to obey my behest---i am richard of england!'' at these words, pronounced in a tone of majesty suited to the high rank, and no less distinguished character of c<oe>ur-de-lion, the yeomen at once kneeled down before him, and at the same time tendered their allegiance, and implored pardon for their offences. ``rise, my friends,'' said richard, in a gracious tone, looking on them with a countenance in which his habitual good-humour had already conquered the blaze of hasty resentment, and whose features retained no mark of the late desperate conflict, excepting the flush arising from exertion,---``arise,'' he said, ``my friends!---your misdemeanours, whether in forest or field, have been atoned by the loyal services you rendered my distressed subjects before the walls of torquilstone, and the rescue you have this day afforded to your sovereign. arise, my liegemen, and be good subjects in future.---and thou, brave locksley---'' ``call me no longer locksley, my liege, but know me under the name, which, i fear, fame hath blown too widely not to have reached even your royal ears---i am robin hood of sherwood forest.''* * from the ballads of robin hood, we learn that this celebrated * outlaw, when in disguise, sometimes assumed the name of * locksley, from a village where he was born, but where situated * we are not distinctly told. ``king of outlaws, and prince of good fellows!'' said the king, ``who hath not heard a name that has been borne as far as palestine? but be assured, brave outlaw, that no deed done in our absence, and in the turbulent times to which it hath given rise, shall be remembered to thy disadvantage.'' ``true says the proverb,'' said wamba, interposing his word, but with some abatement of his usual petulance,-- `when the cat is away, the mice will play.' '' ``what, wamba, art thou there?'' said richard; ``i have been so long of hearing thy voice, i thought thou hadst taken flight.'' ``i take flight!'' said wamba; ``when do you ever find folly separated from valour? there lies the trophy of my sword, that good grey gelding, whom i heartily wish upon his legs again, conditioning his master lay there houghed in his place. it is true, i gave a little ground at first, for a motley jacket does not brook lance-heads, as a steel doublet will. but if i fought not at sword's point, you will grant me that i sounded the onset.'' ``and to good purpose, honest wamba,'' replied the king. ``thy good service shall not be forgotten.'' ``_confiteor! confiteor!_''---exclaimed, in a submissive tone, a voice near the king's side---``my latin will carry me no farther---but i confess my deadly treason, and pray leave to have absolution before i am led to execution!'' richard looked around, and beheld the jovial friar on his knees, telling his rosary, while his quarter-staff, which had not been idle during the skirmish, lay on the grass beside him. his countenance was gathered so as be thought might best express the most profound contrition, his eyes being turned up, and the corners of his mouth drawn down, as wamba expressed it, like the tassels at the mouth of a purse. yet this demure affectation of extreme penitence was whimsically belied by a ludicrous meaning which lurked in his huge features, and seemed to pronounce his fear and repentance alike hypocritical. ``for what art thou cast down, mad priest?'' said richard; ``art thou afraid thy diocesan should learn how truly thou dost serve our lady and saint dunstan?---tush, man! fear it not; richard of england betrays no secrets that pass over the flagon.'' ``nay, most gracious sovereign,'' answered the hermit, (well known to the curious in penny-histories of robin hood, by the name of friar tuck,) ``it is not the crosier i fear, but the sceptre.---alas! that my sacrilegious fist should ever have been applied to the ear of the lord's anointed!'' ``ha! ha!'' said richard, ``sits the wind there? ---in truth i had forgotten the buffet, though mine ear sung after it for a whole day. but if the cuff was fairly given, i will be judged by the good men around, if it was not as well repaid---or, if thou thinkest i still owe thee aught, and will stand forth for another counterbuff---'' ``by no means,'' replied friar tuck, ``i had mine own returned, and with usury---may your majesty ever pay your debts as fully!'' ``if i could do so with cuffs,'' said the king, ``my creditors should have little reason to complain of an empty exchequer.'' ``and yet,'' said the friar, resuming his demure hypocritical countenance, ``i know not what penance i ought to perform for that most sacrilegious blow!------'' ``speak no more of it, brother,'' said the king; ``after having stood so many cuffs from paynims and misbelievers, i were void of reason to quarrel with the buffet of a clerk so holy as he of copmanhurst. yet, mine honest friar, i think it would be best both for the church and thyself, that i should procure a license to unfrock thee, and retain thee as a yeoman of our guard, serving in care of our person, as formerly in attendance upon the altar of saint dunstan.'' ``my liege,'' said the friar, ``i humbly crave your pardon; and you would readily grant my excuse, did you but know how the sin of laziness has beset me. saint dunstan---may he be gracious to us!---stands quiet in his niche, though i should forget my orisons in killing a fat buck---i stay out of my cell sometimes a night, doing i wot not what---saint dunstan never complains---a quiet master he is, and a peaceful, as ever was made of wood.---but to be a yeoman in attendance on my sovereign the king---the honour is great, doubtless--yet, if i were but to step aside to comfort a widow in one corner, or to kill a deer in another, it would be, `where is the dog priest?' says one. `who has seen the accursed tuck?' says another. `the unfrocked villain destroys more venison than half the country besides,' says one keeper; `and is hunting after every shy doe in the country!' quoth a second.---in fine, good my liege, i pray you to leave me as you found me; or, if in aught you desire to extend your benevolence to me, that i may be considered as the poor clerk of saint dunstan's cell in copmanhurst, to whom any small donation will be most thankfully acceptable.'' ``i understand thee,'' said the king, ``and the holy clerk shall have a grant of vert and venison in my woods of warncliffe. mark, however, i will but assign thee three bucks every season; but if that do not prove an apology for thy slaying thirty, i am no christian knight nor true king.'' ``your grace may be well assured,'' said the friar, ``that, with the grace of saint dunstan, i shall find the way of multiplying your most bounteous gift.'' ``i nothing doubt it, good brother,'' said the king; ``and as venison is but dry food, our cellarer shall have orders to deliver to thee a butt of sack, a runlet of malvoisie, and three hogsheads of ale of the first strike, yearly---if that will not quench thy thirst, thou must come to court, and become acquainted with my butler.'' ``but for saint dunstan?'' said the friar-- ``a cope, a stole, and an altar-cloth shalt thou also have,'' continued the king, crossing himself---``but we may not turn our game into earnest, lest god punish us for thinking more on our follies than on his honour and worship.'' ``i will answer for my patron,'' said the priest, joyously. ``answer for thyself, friar,'' said king richard, something sternly; but immediately stretching out his hand to the hermit, the latter, somewhat abashed, bent his knee, and saluted it. ``thou dost less honour to my extended palm than to my clenched fist,'' said the monarch; ``thou didst only kneel to the one, and to the other didst prostrate thyself.'' but the friar, afraid perhaps of again giving offence by continuing the conversation in too jocose a style---a false step to be particularly guarded against by those who converse with monarchs--bowed profoundly, and fell into the rear. at the same time, two additional personages appeared on the scene. chapter xli. all hail to the lordlings of high degree, who live not more happy, though greater than we! our pastimes to see, under every green tree, in all the gay woodland, right welcome ye be. _macdonald_. the new comers were wilfred of ivanhoe, on the prior of botolph's palfrey, and gurth, who attended him, on the knight's own war-horse. the astonishment of ivanhoe was beyond bounds, when he saw his master besprinkled with blood, and six or seven dead bodies lying around in the little glade in which the battle had taken place. nor was he less surprised to see richard surrounded by so many silvan attendants, the outlaws, as they seemed to be, of the forest, and a perilous retinue therefore for a prince. he hesitated whether to address the king as the black knight-errant, or in what other manner to demean himself towards him. richard saw his embarrassment. ``fear not, wilfred,'' he said, ``to address richard plantagenet as himself, since thou seest him in the company of true english hearts, although it may be they have been urged a few steps aside by warm english blood.'' ``sir wilfred of ivanhoe,'' said the gallant outlaw, stepping forward, ``my assurances can add nothing to those of our sovereign; yet, let me say somewhat proudly, that of men who have suffered much, he hath not truer subjects than those who now stand around him.'' ``i cannot doubt it, brave man,'' said wilfred, ``since thou art of the number---but what mean these marks of death and danger? these slain men, and the bloody armour of my prince?'' ``treason hath been with us, ivanhoe,'' said the king; ``but, thanks to these brave men, treason hath met its meed---but, now i bethink me, thou too art a traitor,'' said richard, smiling; ``a most disobedient traitor; for were not our orders positive, that thou shouldst repose thyself at saint botolph's until thy wound was healed?'' ``it is healed,'' said ivanhoe; ``it is not of more consequence than the scratch of a bodkin. but why, oh why, noble prince, will you thus vex the hearts of your faithful servants, and expose your life by lonely journeys and rash adventures, as if it were of no more value than that of a mere knight-errant, who has no interest on earth but what lance and sword may procure him?'' ``and richard plantagenet,'' said the king, ``desires no more fame than his good lance and sword may acquire him---and richard plantagenet is prouder of achieving an adventure, with only his good sword, and his good arm to speed, than if he led to battle an host of an hundred thousand armed men.'' ``but your kingdom, my liege,'' said ivanhoe, ``your kingdom is threatened with dissolution and civil war---your subjects menaced with every species of evil, if deprived of their sovereign in some of those dangers which it is your daily pleasure to incur, and from which you have but this moment narrowly escaped.'' ``ho! ho! my kingdom and my subjects?'' answered richard, impatiently; ``i tell thee, sir wilfred, the best of them are most willing to repay my follies in kind---for example, my very faithful servant, wilfred of ivanhoe, will not obey my positive commands, and yet reads his king a homily, because he does not walk exactly by his advice. which of us has most reason to upbraid the other? ---yet forgive me, my faithful wilfred. the time i have spent, and am yet to spend in concealment, is, as i explained to thee at saint botolph's, necessary to give my friends and faithful nobles time to assemble their forces, that when richard's return is announced, he should be at the head of such a force as enemies shall tremble to face, and thus subdue the meditated treason, without even unsheathing a sword. estoteville and bohun will not be strong enough to move forward to york for twenty-four hours. i must have news of salisbury from the south; and of beauchamp, in warwickshire; and of multon and percy in the north. the chancellor must make sure of london. too sudden an appearance would subject me to dangers, other than my lance and sword, though backed by the bow of bold robin, or the quarter-staff of friar tuck, and the horn of the sage wamba, may be able to rescue me from.'' wilfred bowed in submission, well knowing how vain it was to contend with the wild spirit of chivalry which so often impelled his master upon dangers which he might easily have avoided, or rather, which it was unpardonable in him to have sought out. the young knight sighed, therefore, and held his peace; while richard, rejoiced at having silenced his counsellor, though his heart acknowledged the justice of the charge he had brought against him, went on in conversation with robin hood.---``king of outlaws,'' he said, ``have you no refreshment to offer to your brother sovereign? for these dead knaves have found me both in exercise and appetite.'' ``in troth,'' replied the outlaw, ``for i scorn to lie to your grace, our larder is chiefly supplied with---'' he stopped, and was somewhat embarrassed. ``with venison, i suppose?'' said richard, gaily; ``better food at need there can be none---and truly, if a king will not remain at home and slay his own game, methinks he should not brawl too loud if he finds it killed to his hand.'' ``if your grace, then,'' said robin, ``will again honour with your presence one of robin hood's places of rendezvous, the venison shall not be lacking; and a stoup of ale, and it may be a cup of reasonably good wine, to relish it withal.'' the outlaw accordingly led the way, followed by the buxom monarch, more happy, probably, in this chance meeting with robin hood and his foresters, than he would have been in again assuming his royal state, and presiding over a splendid circle of peers and nobles. novelty in society and adventure were the zest of life to richard c<oe>ur-de-lion, and it had its highest relish when enhanced by dangers encountered and surmounted. in the lion-hearted king, the brilliant, but useless character, of a knight of romance, was in a great measure realized and revived; and the personal glory which he acquired by his own deeds of arms, was far more dear to his excited imagination, than that which a course of policy and wisdom would have spread around his government. accordingly, his reign was like the course of a brilliant and rapid meteor, which shoots along the face of heaven, shedding around an unnecessary and portentous light, which is instantly swallowed up by universal darkness; his feats of chivalry furnishing themes for bards and minstrels, but affording none of those solid benefits to his country on which history loves to pause, and hold up as an example to posterity. but in his present company richard showed to the greatest imaginable advantage. he was gay, good-humoured, and fond of manhood in every rank of life. beneath a huge oak-tree the silvan repast was hastily prepared for the king of england, surrounded by men outlaws to his government, but who now formed his court and his guard. as the flagon went round, the rough foresters soon lost their awe for the presence of majesty. the song and the jest were exchanged---the stories of former deeds were told with advantage; and at length, and while boasting of their successful infraction of the laws, no one recollected they were speaking in presence of their natural guardian. the merry king, nothing heeding his dignity any more than his company, laughed, quaffed, and jested among the jolly band. the natural and rough sense of robin hood led him to be desirous that the scene should be closed ere any thing should occur to disturb its harmony, the more especially that he observed ivanhoe's brow clouded with anxiety. ``we are honoured,'' he said to ivanhoe, apart, ``by the presence of our gallant sovereign; yet i would not that he dallied with time, which the circumstances of his kingdom may render precious.'' ``it is well and wisely spoken, brave robin hood,'' said wilfred, apart; ``and know, moreover, that they who jest with majesty even in its gayest mood are but toying with the lion's whelp, which, on slight provocation, uses both fangs and claws.'' ``you have touched the very cause of my fear,'' said the outlaw; ``my men are rough by practice and nature, the king is hasty as well as good-humoured; nor know i how soon cause of offence may arise, or how warmly it may be received---it is time this revel were broken off.'' ``it must be by your management then, gallant yeoman,'' said ivanhoe; ``for each hint i have essayed to give him serves only to induce him to prolong it.'' ``must i so soon risk the pardon and favour of my sovereign?'' said robin hood, pausing for all instant; ``but by saint christopher, it shall be so. i were undeserving his grace did i not peril it for his good.---here, scathlock, get thee behind yonder thicket, and wind me a norman blast on thy bugle, and without an instant's delay on peril of your life.'' scathlock obeyed his captain, and in less than five minutes the revellers were startled by the sound of his horn. ``it is the bugle of malvoisin,'' said the miller, starting to his feet, and seizing his bow. the friar dropped the flagon, and grasped his quarter-staff wamba stopt short in the midst of a jest, and betook himself to sword and target. all the others stood to their weapons. men of their precarious course of life change readily from the banquet to the battle; and, to richard, the exchange seemed but a succession of pleasure. he called for his helmet and the most cumbrous parts of his armour, which he had laid aside; and while gurth was putting them on, he laid his strict injunctions on wilfred, under pain of his highest displeasure, not to engage in the skirmish which he supposed was approaching. ``thou hast fought for me an hundred times, wilfred,---and i have seen it. thou shalt this day look on, and see how richard will fight for his friend and liegeman.'' in the meantime, robin hood had sent off several of his followers in different directions, as if to reconnoitre the enemy; and when he saw the company effectually broken up, he approached richard, who was now completely armed, and, kneeling down on one knee, craved pardon of his sovereign. ``for what, good yeoman?'' said richard, somewhat impatiently. ``have we not already granted thee a full pardon for all transgressions? thinkest thou our word is a feather, to be blown backward and forward between us? thou canst not have had time to commit any new offence since that time?'' ``ay, but i have though,'' answered the yeoman, ``if it be an offence to deceive my prince for his own advantage. the bugle you have heard was none of malvoisin's, but blown by my direction, to break off the banquet, lest it trenched upon hours of dearer import than to be thus dallied with.'' he then rose from his knee, folded his arm on his bosom, and in a manner rather respectful than submissive, awaited the answer of the king,---like one who is conscious he may have given offence, yet is confident in the rectitude of his motive. the blood rushed in anger to the countenance of richard; but it was the first transient emotion, and his sense of justice instantly subdued it. ``the king of sherwood,'' he said, ``grudges his venison and his wine-flask to the king of england? it is well, bold robin!---but when you come to see me in merry london, i trust to be a less niggard host. thou art right, however, good fellow. let us therefore to horse and away---wilfred has been impatient this hour. tell me, bold robin, hast thou never a friend in thy band, who, not content with advising, will needs direct thy motions, and look miserable when thou dost presume to act for thyself?'' ``such a one,'' said robin, ``is my lieutenant, little john, who is even now absent on an expedition as far as the borders of scotland; and i will own to your majesty, that i am sometimes displeased by the freedom of his councils---but, when i think twice, i cannot be long angry with one who can have no motive for his anxiety save zeal for his master's service.'' ``thou art right, good yeoman,'' answered richard; ``and if i had ivanhoe, on the one hand, to give grave advice, and recommend it by the sad gravity of his brow, and thee, on the other, to trick me into what thou thinkest my own good, i should have as little the freedom of mine own will as any king in christendom or heathenesse.---but come, sirs, let us merrily on to coningsburgh, and think no more on't.'' robin hood assured them that he had detached a party in the direction of the road they were to pass, who would not fail to discover and apprize them of any secret ambuscade; and that he had little doubt they would find the ways secure, or, if otherwise, would receive such timely notice of the danger as would enable them to fall back on a strong troop of archers, with which he himself proposed to follow on the same route. the wise and attentive precautions adopted for his safety touched richard's feelings, and removed any slight grudge which he might retain on account of the deception the outlaw captain had practised upon him. he once more extended his hand to robin hood, assured him of his full pardon and future favour, as well as his firm resolution to restrain the tyrannical exercise of the forest rights and other oppressive laws, by which so many english yeomen were driven into a state of rebellion. but richard's good intentions towards the bold outlaw were frustrated by the king's untimely death; and the charter of the forest was extorted from the unwilling hands of king john when he succeeded to his heroic brother. as for the rest of robin hood's career, as well as the tale of his treacherous death, they are to be found in those black-letter garlands, once sold at the low and easy rate of one halfpenny, ``now cheaply purchased at their weight in gold.'' the outlaw's opinion proved true; and the king, attended by ivanhoe, gurth, and wamba, arrived, without any interruption, within view of the castle of coningsburgh, while the sun was yet in the horizon. there are few more beautiful or striking scenes in england, than are presented by the vicinity of this ancient saxon fortress. the soft and gentle river don sweeps through an amphitheatre, in which cultivation is richly blended with woodland, and on a mount, ascending from the river, well defended by walls and ditches, rises this ancient edifice, which, as its saxon name implies, was, previous to the conquest, a royal residence of the kings of england. the outer walls have probably been added by the normans, but the inner keep bears token of very great antiquity. it is situated on a mount at one angle of the inner court, and forms a complete circle of perhaps twenty-five feet in diameter. the wall is of immense thickness, and is propped or defended by six huge external buttresses which project from the circle, and rise up against the sides of the tower is if to strengthen or to support it. these massive buttresses are solid when they arise from the foundation, and a good way higher up; but are hollowed out towards the top, and terminate in a sort of turrets communicating with the interior of the keep itself. the distant appearance of this huge building, with these singular accompaniments, is as interesting to the lovers of the picturesque, as the interior of the castle is to the eager antiquary, whose imagination it carries back to the days of the heptarchy. a barrow, in the vicinity of the castle, is pointed out as the tomb of the memorable hengist; and various monuments, of great antiquity and curiosity, are shown in the neighbouring churchyard.* * note i. castle of coningsburgh. when c<oe>ur-de-lion and his retinue approached this rude yet stately building, it was not, as at present, surrounded by external fortifications. the saxon architect had exhausted his art in rendering the main keep defensible, and there was no other circumvallation than a rude barrier of palisades. a huge black banner, which floated from the top of the tower, announced that the obsequies of the late owner were still in the act of being solemnized. it bore no emblem of the deceased's birth or quality, for armorial bearings were then a novelty among the norman chivalry themselves and, were totally unknown to the saxons. but above the gate was another banner, on which the figure of a white horse, rudely painted, indicated the nation and rank of the deceased, by the well-known symbol of hengist and his saxon warriors. all around the castle was a scene of busy commotion; for such funeral banquets were times of general and profuse hospitality, which not only every one who could claim the most distant connexion with the deceased, but all passengers whatsoever, were invited to partake. the wealth and consequence of the deceased athelstane, occasioned this custom to be observed in the fullest extent. numerous parties, therefore, were seen ascending and descending the hill on which the castle was situated; and when the king and his attendants entered the open and unguarded gates of the external barrier, the space within presented a scene not easily reconciled with the cause of the assemblage. in one place cooks were toiling to roast huge oxen, and fat sheep; in another, hogsheads of ale were set abroach, to be drained at the freedom of all comers. groups of every description were to be seen devouring the food and swallowing the liquor thus abandoned to their discretion. the naked saxon serf was drowning the sense of his half-year's hunger and thirst, in one day of gluttony and drunkenness---the more pampered burgess and guild-brother was eating his morsel with gust, or curiously criticising the quantity of the malt and the skill of the brewer. some few of the poorer norman gentry might also be seen, distinguished by their shaven chins and short cloaks, and not less so by their keeping together, and looking with great scorn on the whole solemnity, even while condescending to avail themselves of the good cheer which was so liberally supplied. mendicants were of course assembled by the score, together with strolling soldiers returned from palestine, (according to their own account at least,) pedlars were displaying their wares, travelling mechanics were enquiring after employment, and wandering palmers, hedge-priests, saxon minstrels, and welsh bards, were muttering prayers, and extracting mistuned dirges from their harps, crowds, and rotes.* one sent forth the praises * the crowth, or crowd, was a species of violin. the rote a * sort of guitar, or rather hurdy-gurdy, the strings of which were * managed by a wheel, from which the instrument took its name. of athelstane in a doleful panegyric; another, in a saxon genealogical poem, rehearsed the uncouth and harsh names of his noble ancestry. jesters and jugglers were not awanting, nor was the occasion of the assembly supposed to render the exercise of their profession indecorous or improper. indeed the ideas of the saxons on these occasions were as natural as they were rude. if sorrow was thirsty, there was drink---if hungry, there was food ---if it sunk down upon and saddened the heart, here were the means supplied of mirth, or at least of amusement. nor did the assistants scorn to avail themselves of those means of consolation, although, every now and then, as if suddenly recollecting the cause which had brought them together, the men groaned in unison, while the females, of whom many were present, raised up their voices and shrieked for very woe. such was the scene in the castle-yard at coningsburgh when it was entered by richard and his followers. the seneschal or steward deigned not to take notice of the groups of inferior guests who were perpetually entering and withdrawing, unless so far as was necessary to preserve order; nevertheless he was struck by the good mien of the monarch and ivanhoe, more especially as he imagined the features of the latter were familiar to him. besides, the approach of two knights, for such their dress bespoke them, was a rare event at a saxon solemnity, and could not but be regarded as a sort of honour to the deceased and his family. and in his sable dress, and holding in his hand his white wand of office, this important personage made way through the miscellaneous assemblage of guests, thus conducting richard and ivanhoe to the entrance of the tower. gurth and wamba speedily found acquaintances in the court-yard, nor presumed to intrude themselves any farther until their presence should be required. chapter xlii. i find them winding of marcello's corpse. and there was such a solemn melody, 'twixt doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies,-- such as old grandames, watching by the dead, are wont to outwear the night with. _old play._ the mode of entering the great tower of coningsburgh castle is very peculiar, and partakes of the rude simplicity of the early times in which it was erected. a flight of steps, so deep and narrow as to be almost precipitous, leads up to a low portal in the south side of the tower, by which the adventurous antiquary may still, or at least could a few years since, gain access to a small stair within the thickness of the main wall of the tower, which leads up to the third story of the building,---the two lower being dungeons or vaults, which neither receive air nor light, save by a square hole in the third story, with which they seem to have communicated by a ladder. the access to the upper apartments in the tower which consist in all of four stories, is given by stairs which are carried up through the external buttresses. by this difficult and complicated entrance, the good king richard, followed by his faithful ivanhoe, was ushered into the round apartment which occupies the whole of the third story from the ground. wilfred, by the difficulties of the ascent, gained time to muffle his face in his mantle, as it had been held expedient that he should not present himself to his father until the king should give him the signal. there were assembled in this apartment, around a large oaken table, about a dozen of the most distinguished representatives of the saxon families in the adjacent counties. they were all old, or, at least, elderly men; for the younger race, to the great displeasure of the seniors, had, like ivanhoe, broken down many of the barriers which separated for half a century the norman victors from the vanquished saxons. the downcast and sorrowful looks of these venerable men, their silence and their mournful posture, formed a strong contrast to the levity of the revellers on the outside of the castle. their grey locks and long full beards, together with their antique tunics and loose black mantles, suited well with the singular and rude apartment in which they were seated, and gave the appearance of a band of ancient worshippers of woden, recalled to life to mourn over the decay of their national glory. cedric, seated in equal rank among his countrymen, seemed yet, by common consent, to act as chief of the assembly. upon the entrance of richard (only known to him as the valorous knight of the fetterlock) he arose gravely, and gave him welcome by the ordinary salutation, _waes hael_, raising at the same time a goblet to his head. the king, no stranger to the customs of his english subjects, returned the greeting with the appropriate words, _drinc hael_, and partook of a cup which was handed to him by the sewer. the same courtesy was offered to ivanhoe, who pledged his father in silence, supplying the usual speech by an inclination of his head, lest his voice should have been recognised. when this introductory ceremony was performed, cedric arose, and, extending his hand to richard, conducted him into a small and very rude chapel, which was excavated, as it were, out of one of the external buttresses. as there was no opening, saving a little narrow loop-hole, the place would have been nearly quite dark but for two flambeaux or torches, which showed, by a red and smoky light, the arched roof and naked walls, the rude altar of stone, and the crucifix of the same material. before this altar was placed a bier, and on each side of this bier kneeled three priests, who told their beads, and muttered their prayers, with the greatest signs of external devotion. for this service a splendid _soul-scat_ was paid to the convent of saint edmund's by the mother of the deceased; and, that it might be fully deserved, the whole brethren, saving the lame sacristan, had transferred themselves to coningsburgh, where, while six of their number were constantly on guard in the performance of divine rites by the bier of athelstane, the others failed not to take their share of the refreshments and amusements which went on at the castle. in maintaining this pious watch and ward, the good monks were particularly careful not to interrupt their hymns for an instant, lest zernebock, the ancient saxon apollyon, should lay his clutches on the departed athelstane. now were they less careful to prevent any unhallowed layman from touching the pall, which, having been that used at the funeral of saint edmund, was liable to be desecrated, if handled by the profane. if, in truth, these attentions could be of any use to the deceased, he had some right to expect them at the hands of the brethren of saint edmund's, since, besides a hundred mancuses of gold paid down as the soul-ransom, the mother of athelstane had announced her intention of endowing that foundation with the better part of the lands of the deceased, in order to maintain perpetual prayers for his soul, and that of her departed husband. richard and wilfred followed the saxon cedric into the apartment of death, where, as their guide pointed with solemn air to the untimely bier of athelstane, they followed his example in devoutly crossing themselves, and muttering a brief prayer for the weal of the departed soul. this act of pious charity performed, cedric again motioned them to follow him, gliding over the stone floor with a noiseless tread; and, after ascending a few steps, opened with great caution the door of a small oratory, which adjoined to the chapel. it was about eight feet square, hollowed, like the chapel itself, out of the thickness of the wall; and the loop-hole, which enlightened it, being to the west, and widening considerably as it sloped inward, a beam of the setting sun found its way into its dark recess, and showed a female of a dignified mien, and whose countenance retained the marked remains of majestic beauty. her long mourning robes and her flowing wimple of black cypress, enhanced the whiteness of her skin, and the beauty of her light-coloured and flowing tresses, which time had neither thinned nor mingled with silver. her countenance expressed the deepest sorrow that is consistent with resignation. on the stone table before her stood a crucifix of ivory, beside which was laid a missal, having its pages richly illuminated, and its boards adorned with clasps of gold, and bosses of the same precious metal. ``noble edith,'' said cedric, after having stood a moment silent, as if to give richard and wilfred time to look upon the lady of the mansion, ``these are worthy strangers, come to take a part in thy sorrows. and this, in especial, is the valiant knight who fought so bravely for the deliverance of him for whom we this day mourn.' ``his bravery has my thanks,'' returned the lady; ``although it be the will of heaven that it should be displayed in vain. i thank, too, his courtesy, and that of his companion, which hath brought them hither to behold the widow of adeling, the mother of athelstane, in her deep hour of sorrow and lamentation. to your care, kind kinsman, i intrust them, satisfied that they will want no hospitality which these sad walls can yet afford.'' the guests bowed deeply to the mourning parent, and withdrew from their hospitable guide. another winding stair conducted them to an apartment of the same size with that which they had first entered, occupying indeed the story immediately above. from this room, ere yet the door was opened, proceeded a low and melancholy strain of vocal music. when they entered, they found themselves in the presence of about twenty matrons and maidens of distinguished saxon lineage. four maidens, rowena leading the choir, raised a hymn for the soul of the deceased, of which we have only been able to decipher two or three stanzas:-- dust unto dust, to this all must; the tenant hath resign'd the faded form to waste and worm-- corruption claims her kind. through paths unknown thy soul hath flown, to seek the realms of woe, where fiery pain shall purge the stain of actions done below. in that sad place, by mary's grace, brief may thy dwelling be till prayers and alms, and holy psalms, shall set the captive free. while this dirge was sang, in a low and melancholy tone, by the female choristers, the others were divided into two bands, of which one was engaged in bedecking, with such embroidery as their skill and taste could compass, a large silken pall, destined to cover the bier of athelstane, while the others busied themselves in selecting, from baskets of flowers placed before them, garlands, which they intended for the same mournful purpose. the behaviour of the maidens was decorous, if not marked with deep affliction; but now and then a whisper or a smile called forth the rebuke of the severer matrons, and here and there might be seen a damsel more interested in endeavouring to find out how her mourning-robe became her, than in the dismal ceremony for which they were preparing. neither was this propensity (if we must needs confess the truth) at all diminished by the appearance of two strange knights, which occasioned some looking up, peeping, and whispering. rowena alone, too proud to be vain, paid her greeting to her deliverer with a graceful courtesy. her demeanour was serious, but not dejected; and it may be doubted whether thoughts of ivanhoe, and of the uncertainty of his fate, did not claim as great a share in her gravity as the death of her kinsman. to cedric, however, who, as we have observed, was not remarkably clear-sighted on such occasions, the sorrow of his ward seemed so much deeper than any of the other maidens, that he deemed it proper to whisper the explanation---``she was the affianced bride of the noble athelstane.''---it may be doubted whether this communication went a far way to increase wilfred's disposition to sympathize with the mourners of coningsburgh. having thus formally introduced the guests to the different chambers in which the obsequies of athelstane were celebrated under different forms, cedric conducted them into a small room, destined, as he informed them, for the exclusive accomodation of honourable guests, whose more slight connexion with the deceased might render them unwilling to join those who were immediately effected by the unhappy event. he assured them of every accommodation, and was about to withdraw when the black knight took his hand. ``i crave to remind you, noble thane,'' he said, that when we last parted, you promised, for the service i had the fortune to render you, to grant me a boon.'' ``it is granted ere named, noble knight,'' said cedric; ``yet, at this sad moment------'' ``of that also,'' said the king, ``i have bethought me---but my time is brief---neither does it seem to me unfit, that, when closing the grave on the noble athelstane, we should deposit therein certain prejudices and hasty opinions.'' ``sir knight of the fetterlock,'' said cedric, colouring, and interrupting the king in his turn, ``i trust your boon regards yourself and no other; for in that which concerns the honour of my house, it is scarce fitting that a stranger should mingle.'' ``nor do i wish to mingle,'' said the king, mildly, ``unless in so far as you will admit me to have an interest. as yet you have known me but as the black knight of the fetterlock---know me now as richard plantagenet.'' ``richard of anjou!'' exclaimed cedric, stepping backward with the utmost astonishment. ``no, noble cedric---richard of england!--whose deepest interest---whose deepest wish, is to see her sons united with each other.---and, how now, worthy thane! hast thou no knee for thy prince?'' ``to norman blood,'' said cedric, ``it hath never bended.'' ``reserve thine homage then,'' said the monarch, ``until i shall prove my right to it by my equal protection of normans and english.'' ``prince,'' answered cedric, ``i have ever done justice to thy bravery and thy worth---nor am i ignorant of thy claim to the crown through thy descent from matilda, niece to edgar atheling, and daughter to malcolm of scotland. but matilda, though of the royal saxon blood, was not the heir to the monarchy.'' ``i will not dispute my title with thee, noble thane,'' said richard, calmly; ``but i will bid thee look around thee, and see where thou wilt find another to be put into the scale against it.'' ``and hast thou wandered hither, prince, to tell me so?'' said cedric---``to upbraid me with the ruin of my race, ere the grave has closed o'er the last scion of saxon royalty?''---his countenance darkened as he spoke.---``it was boldly---it was rashly done!'' ``not so, by the holy rood!'' replied the king; ``it was done in the frank confidence which one brave man may repose in another, without a shadow of danger.'' ``thou sayest well, sir king---for king i own thou art, and wilt be, despite of my feeble opposition. ---i dare not take the only mode to prevent it, though thou hast placed the strong temptation within my reach!'' ``and now to my boon,'' said the king, ``which i ask not with one jot the loss confidence, that thou hast refused to acknowledge my lawful sovereignty. i require of thee, as a man of thy word, on pain of being held faithless, man-sworn, and _nidering_,* * infamous. to forgive and receive to thy paternal affection the good knight, wilfred of ivanhoe. in this reconciliation thou wilt own i have an interest--the happiness of my friend, and the quelling of dissension among my faithful people.'' ``and this is wilfred!'' said cedric, pointing to his son. ``my father!---my father!'' said ivanhoe, prostrating himself at cedric's feet, ``grant me thy forgiveness!'' ``thou hast it, my son,'' said cedric, raising him up. ``the son of hereward knows how to keep his word, even when it has been passed to a norman. but let me see thee use the dress and costume of thy english ancestry---no short cloaks, no gay bonnets, no fantastic plumage in my decent household. he that would be the son of cedric, must show himself of english ancestry.---thou art about to speak,'' he added, sternly, ``and i guess the topic. the lady rowena must complete two years' mourning, as for a betrothed husband---all our saxon ancestors would disown us were we to treat of a new union for her ere the grave of him she should have wedded--him, so much the most worthy of her hand by birth and ancestry---is yet closed. the ghost of athelstane himself would burst his bloody cerements and stand before us to forbid such dishonour to his memory.'' it seemed as if cedric's words had raised a spectre; for, scarce had he uttered them ere the door flew open, and athelstane, arrayed in the garments of the grave, stood before them, pale, haggard, and like something arisen from the dead! * * the resuscitation of athelstane has been much criticised, * as too violent a breach of probability, even for a work of such * fantastic character. it was a _tour-de-force_, to which the author * was compelled to have recourse, by the vehement entreaties of his * friend and printer, who was inconsolable on the saxon being * conveyed to the tomb. the effect of this apparition on the persons present was utterly appalling. cedric started back as far as the wall of the apartment would permit, and, leaning against it as one unable to support himself, gazed on the figure of his friend with eyes that seemed fixed, and a mouth which he appeared incapable of shutting. ivanhoe crossed himself, repeating prayers in saxon, latin, or norman-french, as they occurred to his memory, while richard alternately said, _benedicite_, and swore, _mort de ma vie!_ in the meantime, a horrible noise was heard below stairs, some crying, ``secure the treacherous monks!''---others, ``down with them into the dungeon!'' ---others, ``pitch them from the highest battlements!'' ``in the name of god!'' said cedric, addressing what seemed the spectre of his departed friend, ``if thou art mortal, speak!---if a departed spirit, say for what cause thou dost revisit us, or if i can do aught that can set thy spirit at repose.---living or dead, noble athelstane, speak to cedric!'' ``i will,'' said the spectre, very composedly, ``when i have collected breath, and when you give me time---alive, saidst thou?---i am as much alive as he can be who has fed on bread and water for three days, which seem three ages---yes, bread and water, father cedric! by heaven, and all saints in it, better food hath not passed my weasand for three livelong days, and by god's providence it is that i am now here to tell it.'' ``why, noble athelstane,'' said the black knight, ``i myself saw you struck down by the fierce templar towards the end of the storm at torquilstone, and as i thought, and wamba reported, your skull was cloven through the teeth.'' ``you thought amiss, sir knight,'' said athelstane, ``and wamba lied. my teeth are in good order, and that my supper shall presently find---no thanks to the templar though, whose sword turned in his hand, so that the blade struck me flatlings, being averted by the handle of the good mace with which i warded the blow; had my steel-cap been on, i had not valued it a rush, and had dealt him such a counter-buff as would have spoilt his retreat. but as it was, down i went, stunned, indeed, but unwounded. others, of both sides, were beaten down and slaughtered above me, so that i never recovered my senses until i found myself in a coffin ---(an open one, by good luck)---placed before the altar of the church of saint edmund's. i sneezed repeatedly---groaned---awakened and would have arisen, when the sacristan and abbot, full of terror, came running at the noise, surprised, doubtless, and no way pleased to find the man alive, whose heirs they had proposed themselves to be. i asked for wine---they gave me some, but it must have been highly medicated, for i slept yet more deeply than before, and wakened not for many hours. i found my arms swathed down---my feet tied so fast that mine ankles ache at the very remembrance--the place was utterly dark---the oubliette, as i suppose, of their accursed convent, and from the close, stifled, damp smell, i conceive it is also used for a place of sepulture. i had strange thoughts of what had befallen me, when the door of my dungeon creaked, and two villain monks entered. they would have persuaded me i was in purgatory, but i knew too well the pursy short-breathed voice of the father abbot.---saint jeremy! how different from that tone with which he used to ask me for another slice of the haunch!---the dog has feasted with me from christmas to twelfth-night.'' ``have patience, noble athelstane,'' said the king, ``take breath---tell your story at leisure--beshrew me but such a tale is as well worth listening to as a romance.'' ``ay but, by the rood of bromeholm, there was no romance in the matter!'' said athelstane.---``a barley loaf and a pitcher of water---that _they_ gave me, the niggardly traitors, whom my father, and i myself, had enriched, when their best resources were the flitches of bacon and measures of corn, out of which they wheedled poor serfs and bondsmen, in exchange for their prayers---the nest of foul ungrateful vipers---barley bread and ditch water to, such a patron as i had been! i will smoke them out of their nest, though i be excommunicated!'' ``but, in the name of our lady, noble athelstane,'' said cedric, grasping the hand of his friend, ``how didst thou escape this imminent danger--did their hearts relent?'' ``did their hearts relent!'' echoed athelstane. ---``do rocks melt with the sun? i should have been there still, had not some stir in the convent, which i find was their procession hitherward to eat my funeral feast, when they well knew how and where i had been buried alive, summoned the swarm out of their hive. i heard them droning out their death-psalms, little judging they were sung in respect for my soul by those who were thus famishing my body. they went, however, and i waited long for food---no wonder---the gouty sacristan was even too busy with his own provender to mind mine. at length down he came, with an unstable step and a strong flavour of wine and spices about his person. good cheer had opened his heart, for he left me a nook of pasty and a flask of wine, instead of my former fare. i ate, drank, and was invigorated; when, to add to my good luck, the sacristan, too totty to discharge his duty of turnkey fitly, locked the door beside the staple, so that it fell ajar. the light, the food, the wine, set my invention to work. the staple to which my chains were fixed, was more rusted than i or the villain abbot had supposed. even iron could not remain without consuming in the damps of that infernal dungeon.'' ``take breath, noble athelstane,' said richard, ``and partake of some refreshment, ere you proceed with a tale so dreadful.'' ``partake!'' quoth athelstane; ``i have been partaking five times to-day---and yet a morsel of that savoury ham were not altogether foreign to the matter; and i pray you, fair sir, to do me reason in a cup of wine.'' the guests, though still agape with astonishment, pledged their resuscitated landlord, who thus proceeded in his story:---he had indeed now many more auditors than those to whom it was commenced, for edith, having given certain necessary orders for arranging matters within the castle, had followed the dead-alive up to the stranger's apartment attended by as many of the guests, male and female, as could squeeze into the small room, while others, crowding the staircase, caught up an erroneous edition of the story, and transmitted it still more inaccurately to those beneath, who again sent it forth to the vulgar without, in a fashion totally irreconcilable to the real fact. athelstane, however, went on as follows, with the history of his escape:-- ``finding myself freed from the staple, i dragged myself up stairs as well as a man loaded with shackles, and emaciated with fasting, might; and after much groping about, i was at length directed, by the sound of a jolly roundelay, to the apartment where the worthy sacristan, an it so please ye, was holding a devil's mass with a huge beetle-browed, broad-shouldered brother of the grey-frock and cowl, who looked much more like a thief than a clergyman. i burst in upon them, and the fashion of my grave-clothes, as well as the clanking of my chains, made me more resemble an inhabitant of the other world than of this. both stood aghast; but when i knocked down the sacristan with my fist, the other fellow, his pot-companion, fetched a blow at me with a huge quarter-staff.'' ``this must be our friar tuck, for a count's ransom,'' said richard, looking at ivanhoe. ``he may be the devil, an he will,'' said athelstane. ``fortunately be missed the aim; and on my approaching to grapple with him, took to his heels and ran for it. i failed not to set my own heels at liberty by means of the fetter-key, which hung amongst others at the sexton's belt; and i had thoughts of beating out the knaves brains with the bunch of keys, but gratitude for the nook of pasty and the flask of wine which the rascal had imparted to my captivity, came over my heart; so, with a brace of hearty kicks, i left him on the floor, pouched some baked meat, and a leathern bottle of wine, with which the two venerable brethren had been regaling, went to the stable, and found in a private stall mine own best palfrey, which, doubtless, had been set apart for the holy father abbot's particular use. hither i came with all the speed the beast could compass---man and mother's son flying before me wherever i came, taking me for a spectre, the more especially as, to prevent my being recognised, i drew the corpse-hood over my face. i had not gained admittance into my own castle, had i not been supposed to be the attendant of a juggler who is making the people in the castle-yard very merry, considering they are assembled to celebrate their lord's funeral---i say the sewer thought i was dressed to bear a part in the tregetour's mummery, and so i got admission, and did but disclose myself to my mother, and eat a hasty morsel, ere i came in quest of you, my noble friend.'' ``and you have found me,'' said cedric, ``ready to resume our brave projects of honour and liberty. i tell thee, never will dawn a morrow so auspicious as the next, for the deliverance of the noble saxon race.'' ``talk not to me of delivering any one,'' said athelstane; ``it is well i am delivered myself. i am more intent on punishing that villain abbot. he shall hang on the top of this castle of coningsburgh, in his cope and stole; and if the stairs be too strait to admit his fat carcass, i will have him craned up from without.'' ``but, my son,'' said edith, ``consider his sacred office.'' ``consider my three days' fast,'' replied athelstane; ``i will have their blood every one of them. front-de-boeuf was burnt alive for a less matter, for he kept a good table for his prisoners, only put too much garlic in his last dish of pottage. but these hypocritical, ungrateful slaves, so often the self-invited flatterers at my board, who gave me neither pottage nor garlic, more or less, they die, by the soul of hengist!'' ``but the pope, my noble friend,''---said cedric-- ``but the devil, my noble friend,''---answered athelstane; ``they die, and no more of them. were they the best monks upon earth, the world would go on without them.'' ``for shame, noble athelstane,'' said cedric; ``forget such wretches in the career of glory which lies open before thee. tell this norman prince, richard of anjou, that, lion-hearted as he is, he shall not hold undisputed the throne of alfred, while a male descendant of the holy confessor lives to dispute it.'' ``how!'' said athelstane, ``is this the noble king richard?'' ``it is richard plantagenet himself,'' said cedric; ``yet i need not remind thee that, coming hither a guest of free-will, he may neither be injured nor detained prisoner---thou well knowest thy duty to him as his host.'' ``ay, by my faith!'' said athelstane; ``and my duty as a subject besides, for i here tender him my allegiance, heart and hand.'' ``my son,'' said edith, ``think on thy royal rights!'' ``think on the freedom of england, degenerate prince!'' said cedric. ``mother and friend,'' said athelstane, ``a truce to your upbraidings---bread and water and a dungeon are marvellous mortifiers of ambition, and i rise from the tomb a wiser man than i descended into it. one half of those vain follies were puffed into mine ear by that perfidious abbot wolfram, and you may now judge if he is a counsellor to be trusted. since these plots were set in agitation, i have had nothing but hurried journeys, indigestions, blows and bruises, imprisonments and starvation; besides that they can only end in the murder of some thousands of quiet folk. i tell you, i will be king in my own domains, and nowhere else; and my first act of dominion shall be to hang the abbot.'' ``and my ward rowena,'' said cedric---``i trust you intend not to desert her?'' ``father cedric,'' said athelstane, ``be reasonable. the lady rowena cares not for me---she loves the little finger of my kinsman wilfred's glove better than my whole person. there she stands to avouch it---nay, blush not, kinswoman, there is no shame in loving a courtly knight better than a country franklin---and do not laugh neither, rowena, for grave-clothes and a thin visage are, god knows, no matter of merriment---nay, an thou wilt needs laugh, i will find thee a better jest---give me thy hand, or rather lend it me, for i but ask it in the way of friendship.---here, cousin wilfred of ivanhoe, in thy favour i renounce and abjure-----hey! by saint dunstan, our cousin wilfred hath vanished!---yet, unless my eyes are still dazzled with the fasting i have undergone, i saw him stand there but even now.'' all now looked around and enquired for ivanhoe, but he had vanished. it was at length discovered that a jew had been to seek him; and that, after very brief conference, he had called for gurth and his armour, and had left the castle. ``fair cousin,'' said athelstane to rowena, ``could i think that this sudden disappearance of ivanhoe was occasioned by other than the weightiest reason, i would myself resume---'' but he had no sooner let go her hand, on first observing that ivanhoe had disappeared, than rowena, who had found her situation extremely embarrassing, had taken the first opportunity to escape from the apartment. ``certainly,'' quoth athelstane, ``women are the least to be trusted of all animals, monks and abbots excepted. i am an infidel, if i expected not thanks from her, and perhaps a kiss to boot---these cursed grave-clothes have surely a spell on them, every one flies from me.---to you i turn, noble king richard, with the vows of allegiance, which, as a liege-subject---'' but king richard was gone also, and no one knew whither. at length it was learned that be had hastened to the court-yard, summoned to his presence the jew who had spoken with ivanhoe, and after a moment's speech with him, had called vehemently to horse, thrown himself upon a steed, compelled the jew to mount another, and set off at a rate, which, according to wamba, rendered the old jew's neck not worth a penny's purchase. ``by my halidome!'' said athelstane, ``it is certain that zernebock hath possessed himself of my castle in my absence. i return in my grave-clothes, a pledge restored from the very sepulchre, and every one i speak to vanishes as soon as they hear my voice!---but it skills not talking of it. come, my friends---such of you as are left, follow me to the banquet-hall, lest any more of us disappear--it is, i trust, as yet tolerably furnished, as becomes the obsequies of an ancient saxon noble; and should we tarry any longer, who knows but the devil may fly off with the supper?'' chapter xliii. be mowbray's sins so heavy in his bosom, that they may break his foaming courser's back, and throw the rider headlong in the lists, a caitiff recreant! _richard ii_. our scene now returns to the exterior of the castle, or preceptory, of templestowe, about the hour when the bloody die was to be cast for the life or death of rebecca. it was a scene of bustle and life, as if the whole vicinity had poured forth its inhabitants to a village wake, or rural feast. but the earnest desire to look on blood and death, is not peculiar to those dark ages; though in the gladiatorial exercise of single combat and general tourney, they were habituated to the bloody spectacle of brave men failing by each other's hands. even in our own days, when morals are better understood, an execution, a bruising match, a riot, or a meeting of radical reformers, collects, at considerable hazard to themselves, immense crowds of spectators, otherwise little interested, except to see how matters are to be conducted, or whether the heroes of the day are, in the heroic language of insurgent tailors, flints or dunghills. the eyes, therefore, of a very considerable multitude, were bent on the gate of the preceptory of templestowe, with the purpose of witnessing the procession; while still greater numbers had already surrounded the tiltyard belonging to that establishment. this enclosure was formed on a piece of level ground adjoining to the preceptory, which had been levelled with care, for the exercise of military and chivalrous sports. it occupied the brow of a soft and gentle eminence, was carefully palisaded around, and, as the templars willingly invited spectators to be witnesses of their skill in feats of chivalry, was amply supplied with galleries and benches for their use. on the present occasion, a throne was erected for the grand master at the east end, surrounded with seats of distinction for the preceptors and knights of the order. over these floated the sacred standard, called _le beau-seant_, which was the ensign, as its name was the battle-cry, of the templars. at the opposite end of the lists was a pile of faggots, so arranged around a stake, deeply fixed in the ground, as to leave a space for the victim whom they were destined to consume, to enter within the fatal circle, in order to be chained to the stake by the fetters which hung ready for that purpose. beside this deadly apparatus stood four black slaves, whose colour and african features, then so little known in england, appalled the multitude, who gazed on them as on demons employed about their own diabolical exercises. these men stirred not, excepting now and then, under the direction of one who seemed their chief, to shift and replace the ready fuel. they looked not on the multitude. in fact, they seemed insensible of their presence, and of every thing save the discharge of their own horrible duty. and when, in speech with each other, they expanded their blubber lips, and showed their white fangs, as if they grinned at the thoughts of the expected tragedy, the startled commons could scarcely help believing that they were actually the familiar spirits with whom the witch had communed, and who, her time being out, stood ready to assist in her dreadful punishment. they whispered to each other, and communicated all the feats which satan had performed during that busy and unhappy period, not failing, of course, to give the devil rather more than his due. ``have you not heard, father dennet,'' quoth one boor to another advanced in years, ``that the devil has carried away bodily the great saxon thane, athelstane of coningsburgh?'' ``ay, but he brought him back though, by the blessing of god and saint dunstan.'' ``how's that?'' said a brisk young fellow, dressed in a green cassock embroidered with gold, and having at his heels a stout lad bearing a harp upon his back, which betrayed his vocation. the minstrel seemed of no vulgar rank; for, besides the splendour of his gayly braidered doublet, he wore around his neck a silver chain, by which hung the _wrest_, or key, with which he tuned his harp. on his right arm was a silver plate, which, instead of bearing, as usual, the cognizance or badge of the baron to whose family he belonged, had barely the word =sherwood= engraved upon it.---``how mean you by that?'' said the gay minstrel, mingling in the conversation of the peasants; ``i came to seek one subject for my rhyme, and, by'r lady, i were glad to find two.'' ``it is well avouched,'' said the elder peasant, ``that after athelstane of coningsburgh had been dead four weeks---'' ``that is impossible,'' said the minstrel; ``i saw him in life at the passage of arms at ashby-de-la-zouche.'' ``dead, however, he was, or else translated,'' said the younger peasant; ``for i heard the monks of saint edmund's singing the death's hymn for him; and, moreover, there was a rich death-meal and dole at the castle of coningsburgh, as right was; and thither had i gone, but for mabel parkins, who---'' ``ay, dead was athelstane,'' said the old man, shaking his head, ``and the more pity it was, for the old saxon blood---'' ``but, your story, my masters---your story,'' said the minstrel, somewhat impatiently. ``ay, ay---construe us the story,'' said a burly friar, who stood beside them, leaning on a pole that exhibited an appearance between a pilgrim's staff and a quarter-staff, and probably acted as either when occasion served,---``your story,'' said the stalwart churchman; ``burn not daylight about it---we have short time to spare.'' ``an please your reverence,'' said dennet, ``a drunken priest came to visit the sacristan at saint edmund's------'' ``it does not please my reverecne,'' answered the churchman, ``that there should be such an animal as a drunken priest, or, if there were, that a layman should so speak him. be mannerly, my friend, and conclude the holy man only wrapt in meditation, which makes the head dizzy and foot unsteady, as if the stomach were filled with new wine---i have felt it myself.'' ``well, then,'' answered father dennet, ``a holy brother came to visit the sacristan at saint edmund's---a sort of hedge-priest is the visitor, and kills half the deer that are stolen in the forest, who loves the tinkling of a pint-pot better than the sacring-bell, and deems a flitch of bacon worth ten of his breviary; for the rest, a good fellow and a merry, who will flourish a quarter-staff, draw a bow, and dance a cheshire round, with e'er a man in yorkshire.'' ``that last part of thy speech, dennet,'' said the minstrel, ``has saved thee a rib or twain.'' ``tush, man, i fear him not,'' said dennet; ``i am somewhat old and stiff, but when i fought for the bell and ram at doncaster---'' ``"but the story---the story, my friend,'' again said the minstrel. ``why, the tale is but this---athelstane of coningsburgh was buried at saint edmund's.'' ``that's a lie, and a loud one,'' said the friar, ``for i saw him borne to his own castle of coningsburgh.'' ``nay, then, e'en tell the story yourself, my masters,'' said dennet, turning sulky at these repeated contradictions; and it was with some difficulty that the boor could be prevailed on, by the request of his comrade and the minstrel, to renew his tale.--``these two _sober_ friars,'' said he at length, ``since this reverend man will needs have them such, had continued drinking good ale, and wine, and what not, for the best part for a summer's day, when they were aroused by a deep groan, and a clanking of chains, and the figure of the deceased athelstane entered the apartment, saying, `ye evil shep-herds!---' '' ``it is false,'' said the friar, hastily, ``he never spoke a word.'' ``so ho! friar tuck,'' said the minstrel, drawing him apart from the rustics; ``we have started a new hare, i find.'' ``i tell thee, allan-a-dale,'' said the hermit, ``i saw athelstane of coningsburgh as much as bodily eyes ever saw a living man. he had his shroud on, and all about him smelt of the sepulchre--a butt of sack will not wash it out of my memory.'' ``pshaw!'' answered the minstrel; ``thou dost but jest with me!'' ``never believe me,'' said the friar, ``an i fetched not a knock at him with my quarter-staff that would have felled an ox, and it glided through his body as it might through a pillar of smoke!'' ``by saint hubert,'' said the minstrel, ``but it is a wondrous tale, and fit to be put in metre to the ancient tune, `sorrow came to the old friar.' '' ``laugh, if ye list,'' said friar tuck; ``but an ye catch me singing on such a theme, may the next ghost or devil carry me off with him headlong! no, no---i instantly formed the purpose of assisting at some good work, such as the burning of a witch, a judicial combat, or the like matter of godly service, and therefore am i here.'' as they thus conversed, the heavy bell of the church of saint michael of templestowe, a venerable building, situated in a hamlet at some distance from the preceptory, broke short their argument. one by one the sullen sounds fell successively on the ear, leaving but sufficient space for each to die away in distant echo, ere the air was again filled by repetition of the iron knell. these sounds, the signal of the approaching ceremony, chilled with awe the hearts of the assembled multitude, whose eyes were now turned to the preceptory, expecting the approach of the grand master, the champion, and the criminal. at length the drawbridge fell, the gates opened, and a knight, bearing the great standard of the order, sallied from the castle, preceded by six trumpets, and followed by the knights preceptors, two and two, the grand master coming last, mounted on a stately horse, whose furniture was of the simplest kind. behind him came brian-de-bois-guilbert, armed cap-a-pie in bright armour, but without his lance, shield, and sword, which were borne by his two esquires behind him. his face, though partly hidden by a long plume which floated down from his barrel-cap, bore a strong and mingled expression of passion, in which pride seemed to contend with irresolution. he looked ghastly pale, as if he had not slept for several nights, yet reined his pawing war-horse with the habitual ease and grace proper to the best lance of the order of the temple. his general appearance was grand and commanding; but, looking at him with attention, men read that in his dark features, from which they willingly withdrew their eyes. on either side rode conrade of mont-fitchet, and albert de malvoisin, who acted as godfathers to the champion. they were in their robes of peace, the white dress of the order. behind them followed other companions of the temple, with a long train of esquires and pages clad in black, aspirants to the honour of being one day knights of the order. after these neophytes came a guard of warders on foot, in the same sable livery, amidst whose partisans might be seen the pale form of the accused, moving with a slow but undismayed step towards the scene of her fate. she was stript of all her ornaments, lest perchance there should be among them some of those amulets which satan was supposed to bestow upon his victims, to deprive them of the power of confession even when under the torture. a coarse white dress, of the simplest form, had been substituted for her oriental garments; yet there was such an exquisite mixture of courage and resignation in her look, that even in this garb, and with no other ornament than her long black tresses, each eye wept that looked upon her, and the most hardened bigot regretted the fate that had converted a creature so goodly into a vessel of wrath, and a waged slave of the devil. a crowd of inferior personages belonging to the preceptory followed the victim, all moving with the utmost order, with arms folded, and looks bent upon the ground. this slow procession moved up the gentle eminence, on the summit of which was the tiltyard, and, entering the lists, marched once around them from right to left, and when they had completed the circle, made a halt. there was then a momentary bustle, while the grand master and all his attendants, excepting the champion and his godfathers, dismounted from their horses, which were immediately removed out of the lists by the esquires, who were in attendance for that purpose. the unfortunate rebecca was conducted to the black chair placed near the pile. on her first glance at the terrible spot where preparations were making for a death alike dismaying to the mind and painful to the body, she was observed to shudder and shut her eyes, praying internally doubtless, for her lips moved though no speech was heard. in the space of a minute she opened her eyes, looked fixedly on the pile as if to familiarize her mind with the object, and then slowly and naturally turned away her head. meanwhile, the grand master had assumed his seat; and when the chivalry of his order was placed around and behind him, each in his due rank, a loud and long flourish of the trumpets announced that the court were seated for judgment. malvoisin, then, acting as godfather of the champion, stepped forward, and laid the glove of the jewess, which was the pledge of battle, at the feet of the grand master. ``valorous lord, and reverend father,'' said he, here standeth the good knight, brian de bois-guilbert, knight preceptor of the order of the temple, who, by accepting the pledge of battle which i now lay at your reverence's feet, hath become bound to do his devoir in combat this day, to maintain that this jewish maiden, by name rebecca, hath justly deserved the doom passed upon her in a chapter of this most holy order of the temple of zion, condemning her to die as a sorceress; ---here, i say, he standeth, such battle to do, knightly and honourable, if such be your noble and sanctified pleasure.'' ``hath he made oath,'' said the grand master, ``that his quarrel is just and honourable? bring forward the crucifix and the _te igitur_.'' ``sir, and most reverend father,'' answered malvoisin, readily, ``our brother here present hath already sworn to the truth of his accusation in the hand of the good knight conrade de mont-fitchet; and otherwise he ought not to be sworn, seeing that his adversary is an unbeliever, and may take no oath.'' this explanation was satisfactory, to albert's great joy; for the wily knight had foreseen the great difficulty, or rather impossibility, of prevailing upon brian de bois-guilbert to take such an oath before the assembly, and had invented this excuse to escape the necessity of his doing so. the grand master, having allowed the apology of albert malvoisin, commanded the herald to stand forth and do his devoir. the trumpets then again flourished, and a herald, stepping forward, proclaimed aloud,---``oyez, oyez, oyez.---here standeth the good knight, sir brian de bois-guilbert, ready to do battle with any knight of free blood, who will sustain the quarrel allowed and allotted to the jewess rebecca, to try by champion, in respect of lawful essoine of her own body; and to such champion the reverend and valorous grand master here present allows a fair field, and equal partition of sun and wind, and whatever else appertains to a fair combat.'' the trumpets again sounded, and there was a dead pause of many minutes. ``no champion appears for the appellant,'' said the grand master. ``go, herald, and ask her whether she expects any one to do battle for her in this her cause.'' the herald went to the chair in which rebecca was seated, and bois-guilbert suddenly turning his horse's head toward that end of the lists, in spite of hints on either side from malvoisin and mont-fitchet, was by the side of rebecca's chair as soon as the herald. ``is this regular, and according to the law of combat?'' said malvoisin, looking to the grand master. ``albert de malvoisin, it is,'' answered beaumanoir; ``for in this appeal to the judgment of god, we may not prohibit parties from having that communication with each other, which may best tend to bring forth the truth of the quarrel.'' in the meantime, the herald spoke to rebecca in these terms:---``damsel, the honourable and reverend the grand master demands of thee, if thou art prepared with a champion to do battle this day in thy behalf, or if thou dost yield thee as one justly condemned to a deserved doom?'' ``say to the grand master,'' replied rebecca, ``that i maintain my innocence, and do not yield me as justly condemned, lest i become guilty of mine own blood. say to him, that i challenge such delay as his forms will permit, to see if god, whose opportunity is in man's extremity, will raise me up a deliverer; and when such uttermost space is passed, may his holy will be done!'' the herald retired to carry this answer to the grand master. ``god forbid,'' said lucas beaumanoir, ``that jew or pagan should impeach us of injustice!--until the shadows be cast from the west to the eastward, will we wait to see if a champion shall appear for this unfortunate woman. when the day is so far passed, let her prepare for death.'' the herald communicated the words of the grand master to rebecca, who bowed her head submissively, folded her arms, and, looking up towards heaven, seemed to expect that aid from above which she could scarce promise herself from man. during this awful pause, the voice of bois-guilbert broke upon her ear---it was but a whisper, yet it startled her more than the summons of the herald had appeared to do. ``rebecca,'' said the templar, ``dost thou hear me?'' ``i have no portion in thee, cruel, hard-hearted man,'' said the unfortunate maiden. ``ay, but dost thou understand my words?'' said the templar; ``for the sound of my voice is frightful in mine own ears. i scarce know on what ground we stand, or for what purpose they have brought us hither.---this listed space---that chair ---these faggots---i know their purpose, and yet it appears to me like something unreal---the fearful picture of a vision, which appals my sense with hideous fantasies, but convinces not my reason.'' ``my mind and senses keep touch and time,'' answered rebecca, ``and tell me alike that these faggots are destined to consume my earthly body, and open a painful but a brief passage to a better world.'' ``dreams, rebecca,---dreams,'' answered the templar; ``idle visions, rejected by the wisdom of your own wiser sadducees. hear me, rebecca,'' he said, proceeding with animation; ``a better chance hast thou for life and liberty than yonder knaves and dotard dream of. mount thee behind me on my steed---on zamor, the gallant horse that never failed his rider. i won him in single fight from the soldan of trebizond---mount, i say, behind me ---in one short hour is pursuit and enquiry far behind ---a new world of pleasure opens to thee---to me a new career of fame. let them speak the doom which i despise, and erase the name of bois-guilbert from their list of monastic slaves! i will wash out with blood whatever blot they may dare to cast on my scutcheon.'' ``tempter,'' said rebecca, ``begone!---not in this last extremity canst thou move me one hair's-breadth from my resting place---surrounded as i am by foes, i hold thee as my worst and most deadly enemy---avoid thee, in the name of god!'' albert malvoisin, alarmed and impatient at the duration of their conference, now advanced to interrupt it. ``hath the maiden acknowledged her guilt?'' he demanded of bois-guilbert; ``or is she resolute in her denial?'' ``she is indeed resolute,'' said bois-guilbert. ``then,'' said malvoisin, ``must thou, noble brother, resume thy place to attend the issue---the shades are changing on the circle of the dial---come, brave bois-guilbert---come, thou hope of our holy order, and soon to be its head.'' as he spoke in this soothing tone, he laid his hand on the knight's bridle, as if to lead him back to his station. ``false villain! what meanest thou by thy hand on my rein?'' said sir brian, angrily. and shaking off his companion's grasp, he rode back to the upper end of the lists. ``there is yet spirit in him,'' said malvoisin apart to mont-fitchet, ``were it well directed---but, like the greek fire, it burns whatever approaches it.'' the judges had now been two hours in the lists, awaiting in vain the appearance of a champion. ``and reason good,'' said friar tuck, ``seeing she is a jewess---and yet, by mine order, it is hard that so young and beautiful a creature should perish without one blow being struck in her behalf! were she ten times a witch, provided she were but the least bit of a christian, my quarter-staff should ring noon on the steel cap of yonder fierce templar, ere he carried the matter off thus.'' it was, however, the general belief that no one could or would appear for a jewess, accused of sorcery; and the knights, instigated by malvoisin, whispered to each other, that it was time to declare the pledge of rebecca forfeited. at this instant a knight, urging his horse to speed, appeared on the plain advancing towards the lists. a hundred voices exclaimed, ``a champion! a champion!'' and despite the prepossessions and prejudices of the multitude, they shouted unanimously as the knight rode into the tiltyard, the second glance, however, served to destroy the hope that his timely arrival had excited. his horse, urged for many miles to its utmost speed, appeared to reel from fatigue, and the rider, however undauntedly he presented himself in the lists, either from weakness, weariness, or both, seemed scarce able to support himself in the saddle. to the summons of the herald, who demanded his rank, his name, and purpose, the stranger knight answered readily and boldly, ``i am a good knight and noble, come hither to sustain with lance and sword the just and lawful quarrel of this damsel, rebecca, daughter of isaac of york; to uphold the doom pronounced against her to be false and truthless, and to defy sir brian de bois-guilbert, as a traitor, murderer, and liar; as i will prove in this field with my body against his, by the aid of god, of our lady, and of monseigneur saint george, the good knight.'' ``the stranger must first show,'' said malvoisin, ``that he is good knight, and of honourable lineage. the temple sendeth not forth her champions against nameless men.'' ``my name,'' said the knight, raising his helmet, ``is better known, my lineage more pure, malvoisin, than thine own. i am wilfred of ivanhoe.'' ``i will not fight with thee at present,'' said the templar, in a changed and hollow voice. ``get thy wounds healed, purvey thee a better horse, and it may be i will hold it worth my while to scourge out of thee this boyish spirit of bravade.'' ``ha! proud templar,'' said ivanhoe, ``hast thou forgotten that twice didst thou fall before this lance? remember the lists at acre---remember the passage of arms at ashby---remember thy proud vaunt in the halls of rotherwood, and the gage of your gold chain against my reliquary, that thou wouldst do battle with wilfred of ivanhoe, and recover the honour thou hadst lost! by that reliquary and the holy relic it contains, i will proclaim thee, templar, a coward in every court in europe---in every preceptory of thine order--unless thou do battle without farther delay.'' bois-guilbert turned his countenance irresolutely towards rebecca, and then exclaimed, looking fiercely at ivanhoe, ``dog of a saxon! take thy lance, and prepare for the death thou hast drawn upon thee!'' ``does the grand master allow me the combat?'' said ivanhoe. ``i may not deny what thou hast challenged,'' said the grand master, ``provided the maiden accepts thee as her champion. yet i would thou wert in better plight to do battle. an enemy of our order hast thou ever been, yet would i have thee honourably met with.'' ``thus---thus as i am, and not otherwise,'' said ivanhoe; ``it is the judgment of god---to his keeping i commend myself.---rebecca,'' said he, riding up to the fatal chair, ``dost thou accept of me for thy champion?'' ``i do,'' she said---``i do,'' fluttered by an emotion which the fear of death had been unable to produce, ``i do accept thee as the champion whom heaven hath sent me. yet, no---no---thy wounds are uncured---meet not that proud man---why shouldst thou perish also?'' but ivanhoe was already at his post, and had closed his visor, and assumed his lance. bois-guilbert did the same; and his esquire remarked, as he clasped his visor, that his face, which had, notwithstanding the variety of emotions by which he had been agitated, continued during the whole morning of an ashy paleness, was now become suddenly very much flushed. the herald, then, seeing each champion in his place, uplifted his voice, repeating thrice---_faites vos devoirs, preux chevaliers!_ after the third cry, he withdrew to one side of the lists, and again proclaimed, that none, on peril of instant death, should dare, by word, cry, or action, to interfere with or disturb this fair field of combat. the grand master, who held in his hand the gage of battle, rebecca's glove, now threw it into the lists, and pronounced the fatal signal words, _laissez aller_. the trumpets sounded, and the knights charged each other in full career. the wearied horse of ivanhoe, and its no less exhausted rider, went down, as all had expected, before the well-aimed lance and vigorous steed of the templar. this issue of the combat all had foreseen; but although the spear of ivanhoe did but, in comparison, touch the shield of bois-guilbert, that champion, to the astonishment of all who beheld it reeled in his saddle, lost his stirrups, and fell in the lists. ivanhoe, extricating himself from his fallen horse, was soon on foot, hastening to mend his fortune with his sword; but his antagonist arose not. wilfred, placing his foot on his breast, and the sword's point to his throat, commanded him to yield him, or die on the spot. bois-guilbert returned no answer. ``slay him not, sir knight,'' cried the grand master, ``unshriven and unabsolved---kill not body and soul! we allow him vanquished.'' he descended into the lists, and commanded them to unhelm the conquered champion. his eyes were closed---the dark red flush was still on his brow. as they looked on him in astonishment, the eyes opened---but they were fixed and glazed. the flush passed from his brow, and gave way to the pallid hue of death. unscathed by the lance of his enemy, he had died a victim to the violence of his own contending passions. ``this is indeed the judgment of god,'' said the grand master, looking upwards---``_fiat voluntas tua!_'' chapter xliv. so! now 'tis ended, like an old wife's story. _webster_. when the first moments of surprise were over, wilfred of ivanhoe demanded of the grand master, as judge of the field, if he had manfully and rightfully done his duty in the combat? ``manfully and rightfully hath it been done,'' said the grand master. ``i pronounce the maiden free and guiltless---the arms and the body of the deceased knight are at the will of the victor.'' ``i will not despoil him of his weapons,'' said the knight of ivanhoe, ``nor condemn his corpse to shame---he hath fought for christendom---god's arm, no human hand, hath this day struck him down. but let his obsequies be private, as becomes those of a man who died in an unjust quarrel.---and for the maiden---'' he was interrupted by a clattering of horses' feet, advancing in such numbers, and so rapidly, as to shake the ground before them; and the black knight galloped into the lists. he was followed by a numerous band of men-at-arms, and several knights in complete armour. ``i am too late,'' he said, looking around him. ``i had doomed bois-guilbert for mine own property. ---ivanhoe, was this well, to take on thee such a venture, and thou scarce able to keep thy saddle?'' ``heaven, my liege,'' answered ivanhoe, ``hath taken this proud man for its victim. he was not to be honoured in dying as your will had designed.'' ``peace be with him,'' said richard, looking steadfastly on the corpse, ``if it may be so---he was a gallant knight, and has died in his steel harness full knightly. but we must waste no time---bohun, do thine office!'' a knight stepped forward from the king's attendants, and, laying his hand on the shoulder of albert de malvoisin, said, ``i arrest thee of high treason.'' the grand master had hitherto stood astonished at the appearance of so many warriors.---he now spoke. ``who dares to arrest a knight of the temple of zion, within the girth of his own preceptory, and in the presence of the grand master? and by whose authority is this bold outrage offered?'' ``i make the arrest,'' replied the knight---``i, henry bohun, earl of essex, lord high constable of england.'' ``and he arrests malvoisin,'' said the king, raising his visor, ``by the order of richard plantagenet, here present.---conrade mont-fitchet, it is well for thee thou art born no subject of mine.--but for thee, malvoisin, thou diest with thy brother philip, ere the world be a week older.'' ``i will resist thy doom,'' said the grand master. ``proud templar,'' said the king, ``thou canst not---look up, and behold the royal standard of england floats over thy towers instead of thy temple banner!---be wise, beaumanoir, and make no bootless opposition---thy hand is in the lion's mouth.'' ``i will appeal to rome against thee,'' said the grand master, ``for usurpation on the immunities and privileges of our order.'' ``be it so,'' said the king; ``but for thine own sake tax me not with usurpation now. dissolve thy chapter, and depart with thy followers to thy next preceptory, (if thou canst find one), which has not been made the scene of treasonable conspiracy against the king of england---or, if thou wilt, remain, to share our hospitality, and behold our justice.'' ``to be a guest in the house where i should command?'' said the templar; ``never!---chaplains, raise the psalm, _quare fremuerunt genies?_--knights, squires, and followers of the holy temple, prepare to follow the banner of _beau-seant!_'' the grand master spoke with a dignity which confronted even that of england's king himself, and inspired courage into his surprised and dismayed followers. they gathered around him like the sheep around the watch-dog, when they hear the baying of the wolf. but they evinced not the timidity of the scared flock---there were dark brows of defiance, and looks which menaced the hostility they dared not to proffer in words. they drew together in a dark line of spears, from which the white cloaks of the knights were visible among the dusky garments of their retainers, like the lighter-coloured edges of a sable cloud. the multitude, who had raised a clamorous shout of reprobation, paused and gazed in silence on the formidable and experienced body to which they had unwarily bade defiance, and shrunk back from their front. the earl of essex, when he beheld them pause in their assembled force, dashed the rowels into his charger's sides, and galloped backwards and forwards to array his followers, in opposition to a band so formidable. richard alone, as if he loved the danger his presence had provoked, rode slowly along the front of the templars, calling aloud, ``what, sirs! among so many gallant knights, will none dare splinter a spear with richard?---sirs of the temple! your ladies are but sun-burned, if they are not worth the shiver of a broken lance?'' ``the brethren of the temple,'' said the grand master, riding forward in advance of their body, ``fight not on such idle and profane quarrel---and not with thee, richard of england, shall a templar cross lance in my presence. the pope and princes of europe shall judge our quarrel, and whether a christian prince has done well in bucklering the cause which thou hast to-day adopted. if unassailed, we depart assailing no one. to thine honour we refer the armour and household goods of the order which we leave behind us, and on thy conscience we lay the scandal and offence thou hast this day given to christendom.'' with these words, and without waiting a reply, the grand master gave the signal of departure. their trumpets sounded a wild march, of an oriental character, which formed the usual signal for the templars to advance. they changed their array from a line to a column of march, and moved off as slowly as their horses could step, as if to show it was only the will of their grand master, and no fear of the opposing and superior force, which compelled them to withdraw. ``by the splendour of our lady's brow!'' said king richard, ``it is pity of their lives that these templars are not so trusty as they are disciplined and valiant.'' the multitude, like a timid cur which waits to bark till the object of its challenge has turned his back, raised a feeble shout as the rear of the squadron left the ground. during the tumult which attended the retreat of the templars, rebecca saw and heard nothing---she was locked in the arms of her aged father, giddy, and almost senseless, with the rapid change of circumstances around her. but one word from isaac at length recalled her scattered feelings. ``let us go,'' he said, ``my dear daughter, my recovered treasure---let us go to throw ourselves at the feet of the good youth.'' ``not so,'' said rebecca, ``o no---no---no---i must not at this moment dare to speak to him--alas! i should say more than---no, my father, let us instantly leave this evil place.'' ``but, my daughter,'' said isaac, ``to leave him who hath come forth like a strong man with his spear and shield, holding his life as nothing, so he might redeem thy captivity; and thou, too, the daughter of a people strange unto him and his--this is service to be thankfully acknowledged.'' ``it is---it is---most thankfully---most devoutly acknowledged,'' said rebecca---``it shall be still more so---but not now---for the sake of thy beloved rachel, father, grant my request---not now!'' ``nay, but,'' said isaac, insisting, ``they will deem us more thankless than mere dogs!'' ``but thou seest, my dear father, that king richard is in presence, and that------'' ``true, my best---my wisest rebecca!---let us hence---let us hence!---money he will lack, for he has just returned from palestine, and, as they say, from prison---and pretext for exacting it, should he need any, may arise out of my simple traffic with his brother john. away, away, let us hence!'' and hurrying his daughter in his turn, he conducted her from the lists, and by means of conveyance which he had provided, transported her safely to the house of the rabbi nathan. the jewess, whose fortunes had formed the principal interest of the day, having now retired unobserved, the attention of the populace was transferred to the black knight. they now filled the air with ``long life to richard with the lion's heart, and down with the usurping templars!'' ``notwithstanding all this lip-loyalty,'' said ivanhoe to the earl of essex, ``it was well the king took the precaution to bring thee with him, noble earl, and so many of thy trusty followers.'' the earl smiled and shook his head. ``gallant ivanhoe,'' said essex, ``dost thou know our master so well, and yet suspect him of taking so wise a precaution! i was drawing towards york having heard that prince john was making head there, when i met king richard, like a true knight-errant, galloping hither to achieve in his own person this adventure of the templar and the jewess, with his own single arm. i accompanied him with my band, almost maugre his consent.'' ``and what news from york, brave earl?'' said ivanhoe; ``will the rebels bide us there?'' ``no more than december's snow will bide july's sun,'' said the earl; ``they are dispersing; and who should come posting to bring us the news, but john himself!'' ``the traitor! the ungrateful insolent traitor!'' said ivanhoe; ``did not richard order him into confinement?'' ``o! he received him,'' answered the earl, ``as if they had met after a hunting party; and, pointing to me and our men-at-arms, said, `thou seest, brother, i have some angry men with me---thou wert best go to our mother, carry her my duteous affection, and abide with her until men's minds are pacified.' '' ``and this was all he said?'' enquired ivanhoe; ``would not any one say that this prince invites men to treason by his clemency?'' ``just,'' replied the earl, ``as the man may be said to invite death, who undertakes to fight a combat, having a dangerous wound unhealed.'' ``i forgive thee the jest, lord earl,'' said ivanhoe; ``but, remember, i hazarded but my own life ---richard, the welfare of his kingdom.'' ``those,'' replied essex, ``who are specially careless of their own welfare, are seldom remarkably attentive to that of others---but let us haste to the castle, for richard meditates punishing some of the subordinate members of the conspiracy, though he has pardoned their principal.'' from the judicial investigations which followed on this occasion, and which are given at length in the wardour manuscript, it appears that maurice de bracy escaped beyond seas, and went into the service of philip of france; while philip de malvoisin, and his brother albert, the preceptor of templestowe, were executed, although waldemar fitzurse, the soul of the conspiracy, escaped with banishment; and prince john, for whose behoof it was undertaken, was not even censured by his good-natured brother. no one, however, pitied the fate of the two malvoisins, who only suffered the death which they had both well deserved, by many acts of falsehood, cruelty, and oppression. briefly after the judicial combat, cedric the saxon was summoned to the court of richard, which, for the purpose of quieting the counties that had been disturbed by the ambition of his brother, was then held at york. cedric tushed and pshawed more than once at the message---but he refused not obedience. in fact, the return of richard had quenched every hope that he had entertained of restoring a saxon dynasty in england; for, whatever head the saxons might have made in the event of a civil war, it was plain that nothing could be done under the undisputed dominion of richard, popular as he was by his personal good qualities and military fame, although his administration was wilfully careless, now too indulgent, and now allied to despotism. but, moreover, it could not escape even cedric's reluctant observation, that his project for an absolute union among the saxons, by the marriage of rowena and athelstane, was now completely at an end, by the mutual dissent of both parties concerned. this was, indeed, an event which, in his ardour for the saxon cause, he could not have anticipated, and even when the disinclination of both was broadly and plainly manifested, he could scarce bring himself to believe that two saxons of royal descent should scruple, on personal grounds, at an alliance so necessary for the public weal of the nation. but it was not the less certain: rowena had always expressed her repugnance to athelstane, and now athelstane was no less plain and positive in proclaiming his resolution never to pursue his addresses to the lady rowena. even the natural obstinacy of cedric sunk beneath these obstacles, where he, remaining on the point of junction, had the task of dragging a reluctant pair up to it, one with each hand. he made, however, a last vigorous attack on athelstane, and he found that resuscitated sprout of saxon royalty engaged, like country squires of our own day, in a furious war with the clergy. it seems that, after all his deadly menaces against the abbot of saint edmund's, athelstane's spirit of revenge, what between the natural indolent kindness of his own disposition, what through the prayers of his mother edith, attached, like most ladies, (of the period,) to the clerical order, had terminated in his keeping the abbot and his monks in the dungeons of coningsburgh for three days on a meagre diet. for this atrocity the abbot menaced him with excommunication, and made out a dreadful list of complaints in the bowels and stomach, suffered by himself and his monks, in consequence of the tyrannical and unjust imprisonment they had sustained. with this controversy, and with the means he had adopted to counteract this clerical persecution, cedric found the mind of his friend athelstane so fully occupied, that it had no room for another idea. and when rowena's name was mentioned the noble athelstane prayed leave to quaff a full goblet to her health, and that she might soon be the bride of his kinsman wilfred. it was a desperate case therefore. there was obviously no more to be made of athelstane; or, as wamba expressed it, in a phrase which has descended from saxon times to ours, he was a cock that would not fight. there remained betwixt cedric and the determination which the lovers desired to come to, only two obstacles---his own obstinacy, and his dislike of the norman dynasty. the former feeling gradually gave way before the endearments of his ward, and the pride which he could not help nourishing in the fame of his son. besides, he was not insensible to the honour of allying his own line to that of alfred, when the superior claims of the descendant of edward the confessor were abandoned for ever. cedric's aversion to the norman race of kings was also much undermined,---first, by consideration of the impossibility of ridding england of the new dynasty, a feeling which goes far to create loyalty in the subject to the king _de facto_; and, secondly, by the personal attention of king richard, who delighted in the blunt humour of cedric, and, to use the language of the wardour manuscript, so dealt with the noble saxon, that, ere he had been a guest at court for seven days, he had given his consent to the marriage of his ward rowena and his son wilfred of ivanhoe. the nuptials of our hero, thus formally approved by his father, were celebrated in the most august of temples, the noble minster of york. the king himself attended, and from the countenance which he afforded on this and other occasions to the distressed and hitherto degraded saxons, gave them a safer and more certain prospect of attaining their just rights, than they could reasonably hope from the precarious chance of a civil war. the church gave her full solemnities, graced with all the splendour which she of rome knows how to apply with such brilliant effect. gurth, gallantly apparelled, attended as esquire upon his young master whom he had served so faithfully, and the magnanimous wamba, decorated with a new cap and a most gorgeous set of silver bells. sharers of wilfred's dangers and adversity, they remained, as they had a right to expect, the partakers of his more prosperous career. but besides this domestic retinue, these distinguished nuptials were celebrated by the attendance of the high-born normans, as well as saxons, joined with the universal jubilee of the lower orders, that marked the marriage of two individuals as a pledge of the future peace and harmony betwixt two races, which, since that period, have been so completely mingled, that the distinction has become wholly invisible. cedric lived to see this union approximate towards its completion; for as the two nations mixed in society and formed intermarriages with each other, the normans abated their scorn, and the saxons were refined from their rusticity. but it was not until the reign of edward the third that the mixed language, now termed english, was spoken at the court of london, and that the hostile distinction of norman and saxon seems entirely to have disappeared. it was upon the second morning after this happy bridal, that the lady rowena was made acquainted by her handmaid elgitha, that a damsel desired admission to her presence, and solicited that their parley might be without witness. rowena wondered, hesitated, became curious, and ended by commanding the damsel to be admitted, and her attendants to withdraw. she entered---a noble and commanding figure, the long white veil, in which she was shrouded, overshadowing rather than concealing the elegance and majesty of her shape. her demeanour was that of respect, unmingled by the least shade either of fear, or of a wish to propitiate favour. rowena was ever ready to acknowledge the claims, and attend to the feelings, of others. she arose, and would have conducted her lovely visitor to a seat; but the stranger looked at elgitha, and again intimated a wish to discourse with the lady rowena alone. elgitha had no sooner retired with unwilling steps, than, to the surprise of the lady of ivanhoe, her fair visitant kneeled on one knee, pressed her hands to her forehead, and bending her head to the ground, in spite of rowena's resistance, kissed the embroidered hem of her tunic. ``what means this, lady?'' said the surprised bride; ``or why do you offer to me a deference so unusual?'' ``because to you, lady of ivanhoe,'' said rebecca, rising up and resuming the usual quiet dignity of her manner, ``i may lawfully, and without rebuke, pay the debt of gratitude which i owe to wilfred of ivanhoe. i am---forgive the boldness which has offered to you the homage of my country ---i am the unhappy jewess, for whom your husband hazarded his life against such fearful odds in the tiltyard of templestowe.'' ``damsel,'' said rowena, ``wilfred of ivanhoe on that day rendered back but in slight measure your unceasing charity towards him in his wounds and misfortunes. speak, is there aught remains in which he or i can serve thee?'' ``nothing,'' said rebecca, calmly, ``unless you will transmit to him my grateful farewell.'' ``you leave england then?'' said rowena, scarce recovering the surprise of this extraordinary visit. ``i leave it, lady, ere this moon again changes. my father had a brother high in favour with mohammed boabdil, king of grenada---thither we go, secure of peace and protection, for the payment of such ransom as the moslem exact from our people.'' ``and are you not then as well protected in england?'' said rowena. ``my husband has favour with the king---the king himself is just and generous.'' ``lady,'' said rebecca, ``i doubt it not---but the people of england are a fierce race, quarrelling ever with their neighbours or among themselves, and ready to plunge the sword into the bowels of each other. such is no safe abode for the children of my people. ephraim is an heartless dove---issachar an over-laboured drudge, which stoops between two burdens. not in a land of war and blood, surrounded by hostile neighbours, and distracted by internal factions, can israel hope to rest during her wanderings.'' ``but you, maiden,'' said rowena---``you surely can have nothing to fear. she who nursed the sick-bed of ivanhoe,'' she continued, rising with enthusiasm ---``she can have nothing to fear in england, where saxon and norman will contend who shall most do her honour.'' ``thy speech is fair, lady,'' said rebecca, ``and thy purpose fairer; but it may not be---there is a gulf betwixt us. our breeding, our faith, alike forbid either to pass over it. farewell---yet, ere i go indulge me one request. the bridal-veil hangs over thy face; deign to raise it, and let me see the features of which fame speaks so highly.'' ``they are scarce worthy of being looked upon,'' said rowena; ``but, expecting the same from my visitant, i remove the veil.'' she took it off accordingly; and, partly from the consciousness of beauty, partly from bashfulness, she blushed so intensely, that cheek, brow, neck, and bosom, were suffused with crimson. rebecca blushed also, but it was a momentary feeling; and, mastered by higher emotions, past slowly from her features like the crimson cloud, which changes colour when the sun sinks beneath the horizon. ``lady,'' she said, ``the countenance you have deigned to show me will long dwell in my remembrance. there reigns in it gentleness and goodness; and if a tinge of the world's pride or vanities may mix with an expression so lovely, how should we chide that which is of earth for bearing some colour of its original? long, long will i remember your features, and bless god that i leave my noble deliverer united with---'' she stopped short---her eyes filled with tears. she hastily wiped them, and answered to the anxious enquiries of rowena---``i am well, lady--well. but my heart swells when i think of torquilstone and the lists of templestowe.---farewell. one, the most trifling part of my duty, remains undischarged. accept this casket---startle not at its contents.'' rowena opened the small silver-chased casket, and perceived a carcanet, or neck lace, with ear-jewels, of diamonds, which were obviously of immense value. ``it is impossible,'' she said, tendering back the casket. ``i dare not accept a gift of such consequence.'' ``yet keep it, lady,'' returned rebecca.---``you have power, rank, command, influence; we have wealth, the source both of our strength and weakness; the value of these toys, ten times multiplied, would not influence half so much as your slightest wish. to you, therefore, the gift is of little value, ---and to me, what i part with is of much less. let me not think you deem so wretchedly ill of my nation as your commons believe. think ye that i prize these sparkling fragments of stone above my liberty? or that my father values them in comparison to the honour of his only child? accept them, lady---to me they are valueless. i will never wear jewels more.'' ``you are then unhappy!'' said rowena, struck with the manner in which rebecca uttered the last words. ``o, remain with us---the counsel of holy men will wean you from your erring law, and i will be a sister to you.'' ``no, lady,'' answered rebecca, the same calm melancholy reigning in her soft voice and beautiful features---``that---may not be. i may not change the faith of my fathers like a garment unsuited to the climate in which i seek to dwell, and unhappy, lady, i will not be. he, to whom i dedicate my future life, will be my comforter, if i do his will.'' ``have you then convents, to one of which you mean to retire?'' asked rowena. ``no, lady,'' said the jewess; ``but among our people, since the time of abraham downwards, have been women who have devoted their thoughts to heaven, and their actions to works of kindness to men, tending the sick, feeding the hungry, and relieving the distressed. among these will rebecca be numbered. say this to thy lord, should he chance to enquire after the fate of her whose life he saved.'' there was an involuntary tremour on rebecca's voice, and a tenderness of accent, which perhaps betrayed more than she would willingly have expressed. she hastened to bid rowena adieu. ``farewell,'' she said. ``may he, who made both jew and christian, shower down on you his choicest blessings! the bark that waits us hence will be under weigh ere we can reach the port.'' she glided from the apartment, leaving rowena surprised as if a vision had passed before her. the fair saxon related the singular conference to her husband, on whose mind it made a deep impression. he lived long and happily with rowena, for they were attached to each other by the bonds of early affection, and they loved each other the more, from the recollection of the obstacles which had impeded their union. yet it would be enquiring too curiously to ask, whether the recollection of rebecca's beauty and magnanimity did not recur to his mind more frequently than the fair descendant of alfred might altogether have approved. ivanhoe distinguished himself in the service of richard, and was graced with farther marks of the royal favour. he might have risen still higher, but for the premature death of the heroic c<oe>ur-de-lion, before the castle of chaluz, near limoges. with the life of a generous, but rash and romantic monarch, perished all the projects which his ambition and his generosity had formed; to whom may be applied, with a slight alteration, the lines composed by johnson for charles of sweden-- his fate was destined to a foreign strand, a petty fortress and an ``humble'' hand; he left the name at which the world grew pale, to point a moral, or adorn a =tale=. note to chapter i. note a.---the ranger or the forest, that cuts the foreclaws off our dogs. a most sensible grievance of those aggrieved times were the forest laws. these oppressive enactments were the produce of the norman conquest, for the saxon laws of the chase were mild and humane; while those of william, enthusiastically attached to the exercise and its rights, were to the last degree tyrannical. the formation of the new forest, bears evidence to his passion for hunting, where he reduced many a happy village to the condition of that one commemorated by my friend, mr william stewart rose: ``amongst the ruins of the church the midnight raven found a perch, a melancholy place; the ruthless conqueror cast down, woe worth the deed, that little town, to lengthen out his chase.'' the disabling dogs, which might be necessary for keeping flocks and herds, from running at the deer, was called _lawing_, and was in general use. the charter of the forest designed to lessen those evils, declares that inquisition, or view, for lawing dogs, shall be made every third year, and shall be then done by the view and testimony of lawful men, not otherwise; and they whose dogs shall be then found unlawed, shall give three shillings for mercy, and for the future no man's ox shall be taken for lawing. such lawing also shall be done by the assize commonly used, and which is, that three claws shall be cut off without the ball of the right foot. see on this subject the historical essay on the magna charta of king john, (a most beautiful volume), by richard thomson. note to chapter ii. note b.---negro slaves. the severe accuracy of some critics has objected to the complexion of the slaves of brian de bois-guilbert, as being totally out of costume and propriety. i remember the same objection being made to a set of sable functionaries, whom my friend, mat lewis, introduced as the guards and mischief-doing satellites of the wicked baron, in his castle spectre. mat treated the objection with great contempt, and averred in reply, that he made the slaves black in order to obtain a striking effect of contrast, and that, could he have derived a similar advantage from making his heroine blue, blue she should have been. i do not pretend to plead the immunities of my order so highly as this; but neither will i allow that the author of a modern antique romance is obliged to confine himself to the introduction of those manners only which can be proved to have absolutely existed in the times he is depicting, so that he restrain himself to such as are plausible and natural, and contain no obvious anachronism. in this point of view, what can be more natural, than that the templars, who, we know, copied closely the luxuries of the asiatic warriors with whom they fought, should use the service of the enslaved africans, whom the fate of war transferred to new masters? i am sure, if there are no precise proofs of their having done so, there is nothing, on the other hand, that can entitle us positively to conclude that they never did. besides, there is an instance in romance. john of rampayne, an excellent juggler and minstrel, undertook to effect the escape of one audulf de bracy, by presenting himself in disguise at the court of the king, where he was confined. for this purpose, ``he stained his hair and his whole body entirely as black as jet, so that nothing was white but his teeth,'' and succeeded in imposing himself on the king, as an ethiopian minstrel. he effected, by stratagem, the escape of the prisoner. negroes, therefore, must have been known in england in the dark ages.* * dissertation on romance and minstrelsy, prefixed to ritson's ancient * metrical romances, p. clxxxvii. note to chapter xvii. note, c.---minstrelsy. the realm of france, it is well known, was divided betwixt the norman and teutonic race, who spoke the language in which the word yes is pronounced as _oui_, and the inhabitants of the southern regions, whose speech bearing some affinity to the italian, pronounced the same word _oc_. the poets of the former race were called _minstrels_, and their poems _lays_: those of the latter were termed _troubadours_, and their compositions called _sirventes_, and other names. richard, a professed admirer of the joyous science in all its branches, could imitate either the minstrel or troubadour. it is less likely that he should have been able to compose or sing an english ballad; yet so much do we wish to assimilate him of the lion heart to the band of warriors whom he led, that the anachronism, if there be one may readily be forgiven. note to chapter xxi. note d.---battle of stamford. a great topographical blunder occurred here in former editions. the bloody battle alluded to in the text, fought and won by king harold, over his brother the rebellious tosti, and an auxiliary force of danes or norsemen, was said, in the text, and a corresponding note, to have taken place at stamford, in leicestershire, and upon the river welland. this is a mistake, into which the author has been led by trusting to his memory, and so confounding two places of the same name. the stamford, strangford, or staneford, at which the battle really was fought, is a ford upon the river derwent, at the distance of about seven miles from york, and situated in that large and opulent county. a long wooden bridge over the derwent, the site of which, with one remaining buttress, is still shown to the curious traveller, was furiously contested. one norwegian long defended it by his single arm, and was at length pierced with a spear thrust through the planks of the bridge from a boat beneath. the neighbourhood of stamford, on the derwent, contains some memorials of the battle. horseshoes, swords, and the heads of halberds, or bills, are often found there ; one place is called the ``danes' well,'' another the ``battle flats.'' from a tradition that the weapon with which the norwegian champion was slain, resembled a pear, or, as others say, that the trough or boat in which the soldier floated under the bridge to strike the blow, had such a shape, the country people usually begin a great market, which is held at stamford, with an entertainment called the pear-pie feast, which after all may be a corruption of the spear-pie feast. for more particulars, drake's history of york may be referred to. the author's mistake was pointed out to him, in the most obliging manner, by robert belt, esq. of bossal house. the battle was fought in 1066. note to chapter xxii. note e.---the range of iron bars above that glowing charcoal. this horrid species of torture may remind the reader of that to which the spaniards subjected guatimozin, in order to extort a discovery of his concealed wealth. but, in fact, an instance of similar barbarity is to be found nearer home, and occurs in the annals of queen mary's time, containing so many other examples of atrocity. every reader must recollect, that after the fall of the catholic church, and the presbyterian church government had been established by law, the rank, and especially the wealth, of the bishops, abbots, priors, and so forth, were no longer vested in ecclesiastics, but in lay impropriators of the church revenues, or, as the scottish lawyers called them, titulars of the temporalities of the benefice, though having no claim to the spiritual character of their predecessors in office. of these laymen, who were thus invested with ecclesiastical revenues, some were men of high birth and rank, like the famous lord james stewart, the prior of st andrews, who did not fail to keep for their own use the rents, lands, and revenues of the church. but if, on the other hand, the titulars were men of inferior importance, who had been inducted into the office by the interest of some powerful person, it was generally understood that the new abbot should grant for his patron's benefit such leases and conveyances of the church lands and tithes as might afford their protector the lion's share of the booty. this was the origin of those who were wittily termed tulchan* * a _tulchan_ is a calfs skin stuffed, and placed before a cow who has * lost its calf, to induce the animal to part with her milk. the resemblance * between such a tulchan and a bishop named to transmit the temporalities * of a benefice to some powerful patron, is easily understood. bishops, being a sort of imaginary prelate, whose image was set up to enable his patron and principal to plunder the benefice under his name. there were other cases, however, in which men who had got grants of these secularised benefices, were desirous of retaining them for their own use, without having the influence sufficient to establish their purpose ; and these became frequently unable to protect themselves, however unwilling to submit to the exactions of the feudal tyrant of the district. bannatyne, secretary to john knox, recounts a singular course of oppression practised on one of those titulars abbots, by the earl of cassilis in ayrshire, whose extent of feudal influence was so wide that he was usually termed the king of carrick. we give the fact as it occurs in bannatyne's journal, only premising that the journalist held his master's opinions, both with respect to the earl of cassilis as an opposer of the king's party, and as being a detester of the practice of granting church revenues to titulars, instead of their being devoted to pious uses, such as the support of the clergy, expense of schools, and the relief of the national poor. he mingles in the narrative, therefore, a well deserved feeling of execration against the tyrant who employed the torture, which a tone of ridicule towards the patient, as if, after all, it had not been ill bestowed on such an equivocal and amphibious character as a titular abbot. he entitles his narrative, the earl of cassilis' tyranny against a quick (_i.e._ living) man. ``master allan stewart, friend to captain james stewart of cardonall, by means of the queen's corrupted court, obtained the abbey of crossraguel. the said earl thinking himself greater than any king in those quarters, determined to have that whole benefice (as he hath divers others) to pay at his pleasure ; and because he could not find sic security as his insatiable appetite required, this shift was devised. the said mr allan being in company with the laird of bargany, (also a kennedy,) was, by the earl and his friends, enticed to leave the safeguard which he had with the laird, and come to make good cheer with the said earl. the simplicity of the imprudent man was suddenly abused; and so he passed his time with them certain days, which he did in maybole with thomas kennedie, uncle to the said earl: after which the said mr allan passed, with quiet company, to visit the place and bounds of crossraguel, [his abbacy,] of which the said earl being surely advertised, determined to put in practice the tyranny which long before he had conceaved. and so, as king of the country, apprehended the said mr allan, and carried him to the house of denure, where for a season he was honourably treated, (gif a prisoner can think any entertainment pleasing;) but after that certain days were spent, and that the earl could not obtain the feus of crossraguel according to his awin appetite, he determined to prove gif a collation could work that which neither dinner nor supper could do for a long time. and so tho said mr allan was carried to a secret chamber: with him passed the honourable earl, his worshipful brother, and such as were appointed to be servants at that banquet. in the chamber there was a grit iron chimlay, under it a fire; other grit provision was not seen. the first course was,---`my lord abbot,' (said the earl,) `it will please you confess here, that with your own consent you remain in my company, because ye durst not commit yourself to the hands of others.' the abbot answered, `would you, my lord, that i should make a manifest lie for your pleasure ? the truth is, my lord, it is against my will that i am here; neither yet have i any pleasure in your company.' `but ye shall remain with me, nevertheless, at this time,' said the earl. `l am not able to resist your will and pleasure,' said the abbot, 'in this place.' `ye must then obey me,' said the earl,---and with that were presented unto him certain letters to subscribe, amongst which there was a five years' tack, and a nineteen years' tack, and a charter of feu of all the lands (of crossraguel, with all the clauses necessary for the earl to haste him to hell. for gif adultery, sacrilege, oppression, barbarous cruelty, and theft heaped upon theft, deserve hell, the great king of carrick can no more escape hell for ever, than the imprudent abbot escaped the fire for a season as follows. ``after that the earl spied repugnance, and saw that he could not come to his purpose by fair means, he commanded his cooks to prepare the banquet: and so first they flayed the sheep, that is, they took off the abbot's eloathes even to his skin, and next they bound him to the chimney---his legs to the one end, and his arms to the other; and so they began to beet [_i.e._ feed] the fire sometimes to his buttocks, sometimes to his legs, sometimes to his shoulders and arms; and that the roast might not burn, but that it might rest in soppe, they spared not flambing with oil, (basting as a cook bastes roasted meat); lord, look thou to sic cruelty! and that the crying of the miserable man should not be heard, they dosed his mouth that the voice might be stopped. it may be suspected that some partisan of the king's [darnley's] murder was there. in that torment they held the poor man, till that often he cried for god's sake to dispatch him; for he had as meikle gold in his awin purse as would buy powder enough to shorten his pain. the famous king of carrick and his cooks perceiving the roast to be aneuch, commanded it to be tane fra the fire, and the earl himself began the grace in this manner:---`_benedicite, jesus maria_, you are the most obstinate man that ever i saw; gif i had known that ye had been so stubborn, i would not for a thousand crowns have handled you so; i never did so to man before you.' and yet he returned to the same practice within two days, and ceased not till that he obtained his formost purpose, that is, that he had got all his pieces subscryvit alsweill as ane half-roasted hand could do it. the earl thinking himself sure enough so long as be had the half-roasted abbot in his awin keeping, and yet being ashamed of his presence by reason of his former cruelty, left the place of denure in the hands of certain of his servants, and the half-roasted abbot to be kept there as prisoner. the laird of bargany, out of whose company the said abbot had been enticed, understanding, (not the extremity,) but the retaining of the man, sent to the court, and raised letters of deliverance of the person of the man according to the order, which being disobeyed, the said earl for his contempt was denounced rebel, and put to the horne. but yet hope was there none, neither to the afflicted to be delivered, neither yet to the purchaser [_i.e._ procurer] of the letters to obtain any comfort thereby ; for in that time god was despised, and the lawful authority was contemned in scotland, in hope of the sudden return and regiment of that cruel murderer of her awin husband, of whose lords the said earl was called one; and yet, oftener than once, he was solemnly sworn to the king and to his regent.'' the journalist then recites the complaint of the injured allan stewart, commendator of crossraguel, to the regent and privy council, averring his having been carried, partly by flattery, partly by force, to the black vault of denure, a strong fortalice, built on a rock overhanging the irish channel, where to execute leases and conveyances of the whole churches and parsonages belonging to the abbey of crossraguel, which he utterly refused as an unreasonable demand, and the more so that he had already conveyed them to john stewart of cardonah, by whose interest he had been made commendator. the complainant proceeds to state, that he was, after many menaces, stript, bound, and his limbs exposed to fire in the manner already described, till, compelled by excess of agony, he subscribed the charter and leases presented to him, of the contents of which he was totally ignorant. a few days afterwards, being again required to execute a ratification of these deeds before a notary and witnesses, and refusing to do so, he was once more subjected to the same torture, until his agony was so excessive that he exclaimed, ``fye on you, why do you not strike your whingers into me, or blow me up with a barrel of powder, rather than torture me thus unmercifully?'' upon which the earl commanded alexander richard, one of his attendants, to stop the patient's mouth with a napkin, which was done accordingly. thus he was once more compelled to submit to their tyranny. the petition concluded with stating, that the earl, under pretence of the deeds thus iniquitously obtained, had taken possession of the whole place and living of crossraguel, and enjoyed the profits thereof for three years. the doom of the regent and council shows singularly the total interruption of justice at this calamitous period, even in the most clamant cases of oppression. the council declined interference with the course of the ordinary justice of the county, (which was completely under the said earl of cassilis' control,) and only enacted, that he should forbear molestation of the unfortunate comendator, under the surety of two thousand pounds scots. the earl was appointed also to keep the peace towards the celebrated george buchanan, who had a pension out of the same abbacy, to a similar extent, and under the like penalty. the consequences are thus described by the journalist already quoted. ``the said laird of bargany perceiving that the ordiner justice could neither help the oppressed, nor yet the afflicted, applied his mind to the next remedy, and in the end, by his servants, took the house of denure, where the poor abbot was kept prisoner. the bruit flew fra carrick to galloway, and so suddenly assembled herd and hyre-man that pertained to the band of the kennedies; and so within a few hours was the house of denure environed again. the master of cassilis was the frackast [_i.e._ the readiest or boldest) and would not stay, but in his heat would lay fire to the dungeon, with no small boasting that all enemies within the house should die. ``he was required and admonished by those that were within to be more moderate, and not to hazard himself so foolishly. but no admonition would help, till that the wind of an hacquebute blasted his shoulder, and then ceased he from further pursuit in fury. the laird of bargany had before purchest [obtained] of the authorities, letters, charging all faithfull subjects to the king's majesty, to assist him against that cruel tyrant and mansworn traitor, the earl of cassilis; which letters, with his private writings, he published, and shortly found sic concurrenee of kyle and cunyngbame with his other friends, that the carrick company drew back fra the house: and so the other approached, furnished the house with more men, delivered the said mr allan, and carried him to ayr, where, publicly at the market cross of the said town, he declared how cruelly he was entreated, and how the murdered king suffered not sic torment as he did, excepting only he escaped the death: and, therefore, publickly did revoke all things that were done in that extremity, and especially he revoked the subscription of the three writings, to wit, of a fyve yeir tack and nineteen year tack, and of a charter of feu. and so the house remained, and remains (till this day, the 7th of february, 1571,) in the custody of the said laird of bargany and of his servants. and so cruelty was disappointed of proffeit present, and shall be eternallie punished, unless he earnestly repent. and this far for the cruelty committed, to give occasion unto others, and to such as hate the monstrous dealing of degenerate nobility, to look more diligently upon their behaviuours, and to paint them forth unto the world, that they themselves may be ashamed of their own beastliness, and that the world may be advertised and admonished to abhor, detest, and avoid the company of all sic tyrants, who are not worthy of the society of men, but ought to be sent suddenly to the devil, with whom they must burn without end, for their contempt of god, and cruelty committed against his creatures. let cassilis and his brother be the first to be the example unto others. amen. amen.''* * bannatyne's journal. this extract has been somewhat amended or modernized in orthography, to render it more intelligible to the general reader. i have to add, that the kennedies of bargany, who interfered in behalf of the oppressed abbot, were themselves a younger branch of the cassilis family, but held different politics, and were powerful enough in this, and other instances, to bid them defiance. the ultimate issue of this affair does not appear; but as the house of cassilis are still in possession of the greater part of the feus and leases which belonged to crossraguel abbey, it is probable the talons of the king of carrick were strong enough, in those disorderly times, to retain the prey which they had so mercilessly fixed upon. i may also add, that it appears by some papers in my possession, that the officers or country keepers on the border, were accustomed to torment their prisoners by binding them to the iron bars of their chimneys, to extort confession. note to chapter xxxi note f.---ulrica's death song. it will readily occur to the antiquary, that these verses are intended to imitate the antique poetry of the scalds---the minstrels of the old scandinavians---the race, as the laureate so happily terms them, ``stern to inflict, and stubborn to endure, who smiled in death.'' the poetry of the anglo-saxons, after their civilisation and conversion, was of a different and softer character; but in the circumstances of ulrica, she may be not unnaturally supposed to return to the wild strains which animated her forefathers during the time of paganism and untamed ferocity. note to chapter xxxii note g.---richard c<oe>ur-de-lion. the interchange of a cuff with the jolly priest is not entirely out of character with richard i., if romances read him aright. in the very curious romance on the subject of his adventures in the holy land, and his return from thence, it is recorded how he exchanged a pugilistic favour of this nature, while a prisoner in germany. his opponent was the son of his principal warder, and was so imprudent as to give the challenge to this barter of buffets. the king stood forth like a true man, and received a blow which staggered him. in requital, having previously waxed his hand, a practice unknown, i believe, to the gentlemen of the modern fancy, he returned the box on the ear with such interest as to kill his antagonist on the spot.---_see, in ellis's specimens of english romance, that of c<oe>ur-de-lion_. note to chapter xxxiii note h.---hedge-priests. it is curious to observe, that in every state of society, some sort of ghostly consolation is provided for the members of the community, though assembled for purposes diametrically opposite to religion. a gang of beggars have their patrico, and the banditti of the apennines have among them persons acting as monks and priests, by whom they are confessed, and who perform mass before them. unquestionably, such reverend persons, in such a society, must accommodate their manners and their morals to the community in which they live; and if they can occasionally obtain a degree of reverence for their supposed spiritual gifts, are, on most occasions, loaded with unmerciful ridicule, as possessing a character inconsistent with all around them. hence the fighting parson in the old play of sir john oldcastle, and the famous friar of robin hood's band. nor were such characters ideal. there exists a monition of the bishop of durham against irregular churchmen of this class, who associated themselves with border robbers, and desecrated the holiest offices of the priestly function, by celebrating them for the benefit of thieves, robbers, and murderers, amongst ruins and in caverns of the earth, without regard to canonical form, and with torn and dirty attire, and maimed rites, altogether improper for the occasion. note to chapter xli. note i.---castle of coningsburgh. when i last saw this interesting ruin of ancient days, one of the very few remaining examples of saxon fortification, i was strongly impressed with the desire of tracing out a sort of theory on the subject, which, from some recent acquaintance with the architecture of the ancient scandinavians, seemed to me peculiarly interesting. i was, however, obliged by circumstances to proceed on my journey, without leisure to take more than a transient view of coningsburgh. yet the idea dwells so strongly in my mind, that i feel considerably tempted to write a page or two in detailing at least the outline of my hypothesis, leaving better antiquaries to correct or refute conclusions which are perhaps too hastily drawn. those who have visited the zetland islands, are familiar with the description of castles called by the inhabitants burghs; and by the highlanders---for they are also to be found both in the western isles and on the mainland---duns. pennant has engraved a view of the famous dun-dornadilla in glenelg; and there are many others, all of them built after a peculiar mode of architecture, which argues a people in the most primitive state of society. the most perfect specimen is that upon the island of mousa, near to the mainland of zetland, which is probably in the same state as when inhabited. it is a single round tower, the wall curving in slightly, and then turning outward again in the form of a dice-box, so that the defenders on the top might the better protect the base. it is formed of rough stones, selected with care, and laid in courses or circles, with much compactness, but without cement of any kind. the tower has never, to appearance, had roofing of any sort; a fire was made in the centre of the space which it encloses, and originally the building was probably little more than a wall drawn as a sort of screen around the great council fire of the tribe. but, although the means or ingenuity of the builders did not extend so far as to provide a roof, they supplied the want by constructing apartments in the interior of the walls of the tower itself. the circumvallation formed a double enclosure, the inner side of which was, in fact, two feet or three feet distant from the other, and connected by a concentric range of long flat stones, thus forming a series of concentric rings or stories of various heights, rising to the top of the tower. each of these stories or galleries has four windows, facing directly to the points of the compass, and rising of course regularly above each other. these four perpendicular ranges of windows admitted air, and, the fire being kindled, heat, or smoke at least, to each of the galleries. the access from gallery to gallery is equally primitive. a path, on the principle of an inclined plane, turns round and round the building like a screw, and gives access to the different stories, intersecting each of them in its turn, and thus gradually rising to the top of the wall of the tower. on the outside there are no windows ; and i may add, that an enclosure of a square, or sometimes a round form, gave the inhabitants of the burgh an opportunity to secure any sheep or cattle which they might possess. such is the general architecture of that very early period when the northmen swept the seas, and brought to their rude houses, such as i have described them, the plunder of polished nations. in zetland there are several scores of these burghs, occupying in every case, capes, headlands, islets, and similar places of advantage singularly well chosen. i remember the remains of one upon an island in a small lake near lerwick, which at high tide communicates with the sea, the access to which is very ingenious, by means of a causeway or dike, about three or four inches under the surface of the water. this causeway makes a sharp angle in its approach to the burgh. the inhabitants, doubtless, were well acquainted with this, but strangers, who might approach in a hostile manner, and were ignorant of the curve of the causeway, would probably plunge into the lake, which is six or seven feet in depth at the least. this must have been the device of some vauban or cohorn of those early times. the style of these buildings evinces that the architect possessed neither the art of using lime or cement of any kind, nor the skill to throw an arch, construct a roof, or erect a stair ; and yet, with all this ignorance, showed great ingenuity in selecting the situation of burghs, and regulating the access to them, as well as neatness and regularity in the erection, since the buildings themselves show a style of advance in the arts scarcely consistent with the ignorance of so many of the principal branches of architectural knowledge. i have always thought, that one of the most curious and valuable objects of antiquaries has been to trace the progress of society, by the efforts made in early ages to improve the rudeness of their first expedients, until they either approach excellence, or, as is more frequently the case, are supplied by new and fundamental discoveries, which supersede both the earlier and ruder system, and the improvements which have been ingrafted upon it. for example, if we conceive the recent discovery of gas to be so much improved and adapted to domestic use, as to supersede all other modes of producing domestic light; we can already suppose, some centuries afterwards, the heads of a whole society of antiquaries half turned by the discovery of a pair of patent snuffers, and by the learned theories which would be brought forward to account for the form and purpose of so singular an implement. following some such principle, i am inclined to regard the singular castle of coningsburgh---i mean the saxon part of it--as a step in advance from the rude architecture, if it deserves the name, which must have been common to the saxons as to other northmen. the builders had attained the art of using cement, and of roofing a building,---great improvements on the original burgh. but in the round keep, a shape only seen in the most ancient castles---the chambers excavated in the thickness of the walls and buttresses---the difficulty by which access is gained from one story to those above it, coningsburgh still retains the simplicity of its origin, and shows by what slow degrees man proceeded from occupying such rude and inconvenient lodgings, as were afforded by the galleries of the castle of mousa, to the more splendid accommodations of the norman castles, with all their stern and gothic graces. i am ignorant if these remarks are new, or if they will be confirmed by closer examination ; but i think, that, on a hasty observation, coningsburgh offers means of curious study to those who may wish to trace the history of architecture back to the times preceding the norman conquest. it would be highly desirable that a cork model should be taken of the castle of mousa, as it cannot be well understood by a plan. the castle of coningsburgh is thus described:-- ``the castle is large, the outer walls standing on a pleasant ascent from the river, but much overtopt by a high hill, on which the town stands, situated at the head of a rich and magnificent vale, formed by an amphitheatre of woody hills, in which flows the gentle don. near the castle is a barrow, said to be hengist's tomb. the entrance is flanked to the left by a round tower, with a sloping base, and there are several similar in the outer wall the entrance has piers of a gate, and on the east side the ditch and bank are double and very steep. on the top of the churchyard wall is a tombstone, on which are cut in high relief, two ravens, or such-like birds. on the south side of the churchyard lies an ancient stone, ridged like a coffin, on which is carved a man on horseback; and another man with a shield encountering a vast winged serpent, and a man bearing a shield behind him. it was probably one of the rude crosses not uncommon in churchyards in this county. see it engraved on the plate of crosses for this volume, plate 14. fig. 1. the name of coningsburgh, by which this castle goes in the old editions of the britannia, would lead one to suppose it the residence of the saxon kings. it afterwards belonged to king harold. the conqueror bestowed it on william de warren, with all its privileges and jurisdiction, which are said to have extended over twenty-eight towns. at the corner of the area, which is of an irregular form, stands the great tower, or keep, placed on a small hill of its own dimensions, on which lies six vast projecting buttresses, ascending in a steep direction to prop and support the building, and continued upwards up the side as turrets. the tower within forms a complete circle, twenty-one feet in diameter, the walls fourteen feet thick. the ascent into the tower is by an exceeding deep flight of steep steps, four feet and a half wide, on the south side leading to a low doorway, over which is a circular arch crossed by a great transom stone. within this door is the staircase which ascends straight through the thickness of the wall, not communicating with the room on the first floor, in whose centre is the opening to the dungeon. neither of these lower rooms is lighted except from a hole in the floor of the third story; the room in which, as well as in that above it, is finished with compact smooth stonework, both having chimney-pieces, with an arch resting on triple clustered pillars. in the third story, or guard-chamber, is a small recess with a loop-hole, probably a bedchamber, and in that floor above a niche for a saint or holy-water pot. mr king imagines this a saxon castle of the first ages of the heptarchy. mr watson thus describes it. from the first floor to the second story, (third from the ground,) is a way by a stair in the wall five feet wide. the next staircase is approached by a ladder, and ends at the fourth story from the ground. two yards from the door, at the head of this stair, is an opening nearly east, accessible by treading on the ledge of the wall, which diminishes eight inches each story ; and this last opening leads into a room or chapel ten feet by twelve, and fifteen or sixteen high, arched with free-stone, and supported by small circular columns of the same, the capitals and arches saxon. it has an east window, and on each side in the wall, about four feet from the ground, a stone basin with a hole and iron pipe to convey the water into or through the wall. this chapel is one of the buttresses, but no sign of it without, for even the window, though large within, is only a long narrow loop-hole, scarcely to be seen without. on the left side of this chapel is a small oratory, eight by six in the thickness of the wall, with a niche in the wall, and enlightened by a like loop-hole. the fourth stair from the ground, ten feet west from the chapel cloor, leads to the top of the tower through the thickness of the wall, which at top is but three yards. each story is about fifteen feet high, so that the tower will be seventy-five feet from the ground. the inside forms a circle, whose diameter may be about twelve feet. the well at the bottom of the dungeon is piled with stones.''---gough's _edition of camden's britannia_. second edition, vol. iii. p. 267. . 1776 an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations by adam smith introduction and plan of the work the annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. according therefore as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniences for which it has occasion. but this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. whatever be the soil, climate, or extent of territory of any particular nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must, in that particular situation, depend upon those two circumstances. the abundance or scantiness of this supply, too, seems to depend more upon the former of those two circumstances than upon the latter. among the savage nations of hunters and fishers, every individual who is able to work, is more or less employed in useful labour, and endeavours to provide, as well as he can, the necessaries and conveniences of life, for himself, or such of his family or tribe as are either too old, or too young, or too infirm to go a hunting and fishing. such nations, however, are so miserably poor that, from mere want, they are frequently reduced, or, at least, think themselves reduced, to the necessity sometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes of abandoning their infants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases, to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beasts. among civilised and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do not labour at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniences of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire. the causes of this improvement, in the productive powers of labour, and the order, according to which its produce is naturally distributed among the different ranks and conditions of men in the society, make the subject of the first book of this inquiry. whatever be the actual state of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which labour is applied in any nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must depend, during the continuance of that state, upon the proportion between the number of those who are annually employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. the number of useful and productive labourers, it will hereafter appear, is everywhere in proportion to the quantity of capital stock which is employed in setting them to work, and to the particular way in which it is so employed. the second book, therefore, treats of the nature of capital stock, of the manner in which it is gradually accumulated, and of the different quantities of labour which it puts into motion, according to the different ways in which it is employed. nations tolerably well advanced as to skill, dexterity, and judgment, in the application of labour, have followed very different plans in the general conduct or direction of it; those plans have not all been equally favourable to the greatness of its produce. the policy of some nations has given extraordinary encouragement to the industry of the country; that of others to the industry of towns. scarce any nation has dealt equally and impartially with every sort of industry. since the downfall of the roman empire, the policy of europe has been more favourable to arts, manufactures, and commerce, the industry of towns, than to agriculture, the industry of the country. the circumstances which seem to have introduced and established this policy are explained in the third book. though those different plans were, perhaps, first introduced by the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men, without any regard to, or foresight of, their consequences upon the general welfare of the society; yet they have given occasion to very different theories of political economy; of which some magnify the importance of that industry which is carried on in towns, others of that which is carried on in the country. those theories have had a considerable influence, not only upon the opinions of men of learning, but upon the public conduct of princes and sovereign states. i have endeavoured, in the fourth book, to explain, as fully and distinctly as i can, those different theories, and the principal effects which they have produced in different ages and nations. to explain in what has consisted the revenue of the great body of the people, or what has been the nature of those funds which, in different ages and nations, have supplied their annual consumption, is the object of these four first books. the fifth and last book treats of the revenue of the sovereign, or commonwealth. in this book i have endeavoured to show, first, what are the necessary expenses of the sovereign, or commonwealth; which of those expenses ought to be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society; and which of them by that of some particular part only, or of some particular members of it: secondly, what are the different methods in which the whole society may be made to contribute towards defraying the expenses incumbent on the whole society, and what are the principal advantages and inconveniences of each of those methods: and, thirdly and lastly, what are the reasons and causes which have induced almost all modern governments to mortgage some part of this revenue, or to contract debts, and what have been the effects of those debts upon the real wealth, the annual produce of the land and labour of the society. book one of the causes of improvement in the productive powers. of labour, and of the order according to which its. produce is naturally distributed among the different ranks of the people. chapter i of the division of labour the greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour. the effects of the division of labour, in the general business of society, will be more easily understood by considering in what manner it operates in some particular manufactures. it is commonly supposed to be carried furthest in some very trifling ones; not perhaps that it really is carried further in them than in others of more importance: but in those trifling manufactures which are destined to supply the small wants of but a small number of people, the whole number of workmen must necessarily be small; and those employed in every different branch of the work can often be collected into the same workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator. in those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so great a number of workmen that it is impossible to collect them all into the same workhouse. we can seldom see more, at one time, than those employed in one single branch. though in such manufactures, therefore, the work may really be divided into a much greater number of parts than in those of a more trifling nature, the division is not near so obvious, and has accordingly been much less observed. to take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. but in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. one man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving, the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. i have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. but though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. there are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. but if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations. in every other art and manufacture, the effects of the division of labour are similar to what they are in this very trifling one; though, in many of them, the labour can neither be so much subdivided, nor reduced to so great a simplicity of operation. the division of labour, however, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of the productive powers of labour. the separation of different trades and employments from one another seems to have taken place in consequence of this advantage. this separation, too, is generally called furthest in those countries which enjoy the highest degree of industry and improvement; what is the work of one man in a rude state of society being generally that of several in an improved one. in every improved society, the farmer is generally nothing but a farmer; the manufacturer, nothing but a manufacturer. the labour, too, which is necessary to produce any one complete manufacture is almost always divided among a great number of hands. how many different trades are employed in each branch of the linen and woollen manufactures from the growers of the flax and the wool, to the bleachers and smoothers of the linen, or to the dyers and dressers of the cloth! the nature of agriculture, indeed, does not admit of so many subdivisions of labour, nor of so complete a separation of one business from another, as manufactures. it is impossible to separate so entirely the business of the grazier from that of the corn-farmer as the trade of the carpenter is commonly separated from that of the smith. the spinner is almost always a distinct person from the weaver; but the ploughman, the harrower, the sower of the seed, and the reaper of the corn, are often the same. the occasions for those different sorts of labour returning with the different seasons of the year, it is impossible that one man should be constantly employed in any one of them. this impossibility of making so complete and entire a separation of all the different branches of labour employed in agriculture is perhaps the reason why the improvement of the productive powers of labour in this art does not always keep pace with their improvement in manufactures. the most opulent nations, indeed, generally excel all their neighbours in agriculture as well as in manufactures; but they are commonly more distinguished by their superiority in the latter than in the former. their lands are in general better cultivated, and having more labour and expense bestowed upon them, produce more in proportion to the extent and natural fertility of the ground. but this superiority of produce is seldom much more than in proportion to the superiority of labour and expense. in agriculture, the labour of the rich country is not always much more productive than that of the poor; or, at least, it is never so much more productive as it commonly is in manufactures. the corn of the rich country, therefore, will not always, in the same degree of goodness, come cheaper to market than that of the poor. the corn of poland, in the same degree of goodness, is as cheap as that of france, notwithstanding the superior opulence and improvement of the latter country. the corn of france is, in the corn provinces, fully as good, and in most years nearly about the same price with the corn of england, though, in opulence and improvement, france is perhaps inferior to england. the corn-lands of england, however, are better cultivated than those of france, and the corn-lands of france are said to be much better cultivated than those of poland. but though the poor country, notwithstanding the inferiority of its cultivation, can, in some measure, rival the rich in the cheapness and goodness of its corn, it can pretend to no such competition in its manufactures; at least if those manufactures suit the soil, climate, and situation of the rich country. the silks of france are better and cheaper than those of england, because the silk manufacture, at least under the present high duties upon the importation of raw silk, does not so well suit the climate of england as that of france. but the hardware and the coarse woollens of england are beyond all comparison superior to those of france, and much cheaper too in the same degree of goodness. in poland there are said to be scarce any manufactures of any kind, a few of those coarser household manufactures excepted, without which no country can well subsist. this great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many. first, the improvement of the dexterity of the workman necessarily increases the quantity of the work he can perform; and the division of labour, by reducing every man's business to some one simple operation, and by making this operation the sole employment of his life, necessarily increased very much dexterity of the workman. a common smith, who, though accustomed to handle the hammer, has never been used to make nails, if upon some particular occasion he is obliged to attempt it, will scarce, i am assured, be able to make above two or three hundred nails in a day, and those too very bad ones. a smith who has been accustomed to make nails, but whose sole or principal business has not been that of a nailer, can seldom with his utmost diligence make more than eight hundred or a thousand nails in a day. i have seen several boys under twenty years of age who had never exercised any other trade but that of making nails, and who, when they exerted themselves, could make, each of them, upwards of two thousand three hundred nails in a day. the making of a nail, however, is by no means one of the simplest operations. the same person blows the bellows, stirs or mends the fire as there is occasion, heats the iron, and forges every part of the nail: in forging the head too he is obliged to change his tools. the different operations into which the making of a pin, or of a metal button, is subdivided, are all of them much more simple, and the dexterity of the person, of whose life it has been the sole business to perform them, is usually much greater. the rapidity with which some of the operations of those manufacturers are performed, exceeds what the human hand could, by those who had never seen them, be supposed capable of acquiring. secondly, the advantage which is gained by saving the time commonly lost in passing from one sort of work to another is much greater than we should at first view be apt to imagine it. it is impossible to pass very quickly from one kind of work to another that is carried on in a different place and with quite different tools. a country weaver, who cultivates a small farm, must lose a good deal of time in passing from his loom to the field, and from the field to his loom. when the two trades can be carried on in the same workhouse, the loss of time is no doubt much less. it is even in this case, however, very considerable. a man commonly saunters a little in turning his hand from one sort of employment to another. when he first begins the new work he is seldom very keen and hearty; his mind, as they say, does not go to it, and for some time he rather trifles than applies to good purpose. the habit of sauntering and of indolent careless application, which is naturally, or rather necessarily acquired by every country workman who is obliged to change his work and his tools every half hour, and to apply his hand in twenty different ways almost every day of his life, renders him almost always slothful and lazy, and incapable of any vigorous application even on the most pressing occasions. independent, therefore, of his deficiency in point of dexterity, this cause alone must always reduce considerably the quantity of work which he is capable of performing. thirdly, and lastly, everybody must be sensible how much labour is facilitated and abridged by the application of proper machinery. it is unnecessary to give any example. i shall only observe, therefore, that the invention of all those machines by which labour is so much facilitated and abridged seems to have been originally owing to the division of labour. men are much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object when the whole attention of their minds is directed towards that single object than when it is dissipated among a great variety of things. but in consequence of the division of labour, the whole of every man's attention comes naturally to be directed towards some one very simple object. it is naturally to be expected, therefore, that some one or other of those who are employed in each particular branch of labour should soon find out easier and readier methods of performing their own particular work, wherever the nature of it admits of such improvement. a great part of the machines made use of in those manufactures in which labour is most subdivided, were originally the inventions of common workmen, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation, naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier methods of performing it. whoever has been much accustomed to visit such manufactures must frequently have been shown very pretty machines, which were the inventions of such workmen in order to facilitate and quicken their particular part of the work. in the first fire-engines, a boy was constantly employed to open and shut alternately the communication between the boiler and the cylinder, according as the piston either ascended or descended. one of those boys, who loved to play with his companions, observed that, by tying a string from the handle of the valve which opened this communication to another part of the machine, the valve would open and shut without his assistance, and leave him at liberty to divert himself with his playfellows. one of the greatest improvements that has been made upon this machine, since it was first invented, was in this manner the discovery of a boy who wanted to save his own labour. all the improvements in machinery, however, have by no means been the inventions of those who had occasion to use the machines. many improvements have been made by the ingenuity of the makers of the machines, when to make them became the business of a peculiar trade; and some by that of those who are called philosophers or men of speculation, whose trade it is not to do anything, but to observe everything; and who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar objects. in the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principal or sole trade and occupation of a particular class of citizens. like every other employment too, it is subdivided into a great number of different branches, each of which affords occupation to a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers; and this subdivision of employment in philosophy, as well as in every other business, improves dexterity, and saves time. each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity of science is considerably increased by it. it is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every other workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity, or, what comes to the same thing, for the price of a great quantity of theirs. he supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for, and they accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for, and a general plenty diffuses itself through all the different ranks of the society. observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day-labourer in a civilised and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of people of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation. the woollen coat, for example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen. the shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production. how many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the materials from some of those workmen to others who often live in a very distant part of the country! how much commerce and navigation in particular, how many ship-builders, sailors, sail-makers, rope-makers, must have been employed in order to bring together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come from the remotest corners of the world! what a variety of labour, too, is necessary in order to produce the tools of the meanest of those workmen! to say nothing of such complicated machines as the ship of the sailor, the mill of the fuller, or even the loom of the weaver, let us consider only what a variety of labour is requisite in order to form that very simple machine, the shears with which the shepherd clips the wool. the miner, the builder of the furnace for smelting the ore, the seller of the timber, the burner of the charcoal to be made use of in the smelting-house, the brickmaker, the brick-layer, the workmen who attend the furnace, the mill-wright, the forger, the smith, must all of them join their different arts in order to produce them. were we to examine, in the same manner, all the different parts of his dress and household furniture, the coarse linen shirt which he wears next his skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed which he lies on, and all the different parts which compose it, the kitchen-grate at which he prepares his victuals, the coals which he makes use of for that purpose, dug from the bowels of the earth, and brought to him perhaps by a long sea and a long land carriage, all the other utensils of his kitchen, all the furniture of his table, the knives and forks, the earthen or pewter plates upon which he serves up and divides his victuals, the different hands employed in preparing his bread and his beer, the glass window which lets in the heat and the light, and keeps out the wind and the rain, with all the knowledge and art requisite for preparing that beautiful and happy invention, without which these northern parts of the world could scarce have afforded a very comfortable habitation, together with the tools of all the different workmen employed in producing those different conveniences; if we examine, i say, all these things, and consider what a variety of labour is employed about each of them, we shall be sensible that, without the assistance and co-operation of many thousands, the very meanest person in a civilised country could not be provided, even according to what we very falsely imagine the easy and simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated. compared, indeed, with the more extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of a european prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an african king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages. chapter ii of the principle which gives occasion to the division of labour this division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. it is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature of which no further account can be given; or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to our present subject to inquire. it is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts. two greyhounds, in running down the same hare, have sometimes the appearance of acting in some sort of concert. each turns her towards his companion, or endeavours to intercept her when his companion turns her towards himself. this, however, is not the effect of any contract, but of the accidental concurrence of their passions in the same object at that particular time. nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; i am willing to give this for that. when an animal wants to obtain something either of a man or of another animal, it has no other means of persuasion but to gain the favour of those whose service it requires. a puppy fawns upon its dam, and a spaniel endeavours by a thousand attractions to engage the attention of its master who is at dinner, when it wants to be fed by him. man sometimes uses the same arts with his brethren, and when he has no other means of engaging them to act according to his inclinations, endeavours by every servile and fawning attention to obtain their good will. he has not time, however, to do this upon every occasion. in civilised society he stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. in almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. but man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. he will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. give me that which i want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. we address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely. the charity of well-disposed people, indeed, supplies him with the whole fund of his subsistence. but though this principle ultimately provides him with all the necessaries of life which he has occasion for, it neither does nor can provide him with them as he has occasion for them. the greater part of his occasional wants are supplied in the same manner as those of other people, by treaty, by barter, and by purchase. with the money which one man gives him he purchases food. the old clothes which another bestows upon him he exchanges for other old clothes which suit him better, or for lodging, or for food, or for money, with which he can buy either food, clothes, or lodging, as he has occasion. as it is by treaty, by barter, and by purchase that we obtain from one another the greater part of those mutual good offices which we stand in need of, so it is this same trucking disposition which originally gives occasion to the division of labour. in a tribe of hunters or shepherds a particular person makes bows and arrows, for example, with more readiness and dexterity than any other. he frequently exchanges them for cattle or for venison with his companions; and he finds at last that he can in this manner get more cattle and venison than if he himself went to the field to catch them. from a regard to his own interest, therefore, the making of bows and arrows grows to be his chief business, and he becomes a sort of armourer. another excels in making the frames and covers of their little huts or movable houses. he is accustomed to be of use in this way to his neighbours, who reward him in the same manner with cattle and with venison, till at last he finds it his interest to dedicate himself entirely to this employment, and to become a sort of house-carpenter. in the same manner a third becomes a smith or a brazier, a fourth a tanner or dresser of hides or skins, the principal part of the nothing of savages. and thus the certainty of being able to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he may have occasion for, encourages every man to apply himself to a particular occupation, and to cultivate and bring to perfection whatever talent or genius he may possess for that particular species of business. the difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause as the effect of the division of labour. the difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education. when they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were perhaps very much alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could perceive any remarkable difference. about that age, or soon after, they come to be employed in very different occupations. the difference of talents comes then to be taken notice of, and widens by degrees, till at last the vanity of the philosopher is willing to acknowledge scarce any resemblance. but without the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of life which he wanted. all must have had the same duties to perform, and the same work to do, and there could have been no such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to any great difference of talents. as it is this disposition which forms that difference of talents, so remarkable among men of different professions, so it is this same disposition which renders that difference useful. many tribes of animals acknowledged to be all of the same species derive from nature a much more remarkable distinction of genius, than what, antecedent to custom and education, appears to take place among men. by nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound, or a greyhound from a spaniel, or this last from a shepherd's dog. those different tribes of animals, however, though all of the same species, are of scarce any use to one another. the strength of the mastiff is not, in the least, supported either by the swiftness of the greyhound, or by the sagacity of the spaniel, or by the docility of the shepherd's dog. the effects of those different geniuses and talents, for want of the power or disposition to barter and exchange, cannot be brought into a common stock, and do not in the least contribute to the better accommodation ind conveniency of the species. each animal is still obliged to support and defend itself, separately and independently, and derives no sort of advantage from that variety of talents with which nature has distinguished its fellows. among men, on the contrary, the most dissimilar geniuses are of use to one another; the different produces of their respective talents, by the general disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, being brought, as it were, into a common stock, where every man may purchase whatever part of the produce of other men's talents he has occasion for. chapter iii that the division of labour is limited by the extent of the market as it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by the extent of the market. when the market is very small, no person can have any encouragement to dedicate himself entirely to one employment, for want of the power to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he has occasion for. there are some sorts of industry, even of the lowest kind, which can be carried on nowhere but in a great town. a porter, for example, can find employment and subsistence in no other place. a village is by much too narrow a sphere for him; even an ordinary market town is scarce large enough to afford him constant occupation. in the lone houses and very small villages which are scattered about in so desert a country as the highlands of scotland, every farmer must be butcher, baker and brewer for his own family. in such situations we can scarce expect to find even a smith, a carpenter, or a mason, within less than twenty miles of another of the same trade. the scattered families that live at eight or ten miles distance from the nearest of them must learn to perform themselves a great number of little pieces of work, for which, in more populous countries, they would call in the assistance of those workmen. country workmen are almost everywhere obliged to apply themselves to all the different branches of industry that have so much affinity to one another as to be employed about the same sort of materials. a country carpenter deals in every sort of work that is made of wood: a country smith in every sort of work that is made of iron. the former is not only a carpenter, but a joiner, a cabinet-maker, and even a carver in wood, as well as a wheel-wright, a plough-wright, a cart and waggon maker. the employments of the latter are still more various. it is impossible there should be such a trade as even that of a nailer in the remote and inland parts of the highlands of scotland. such a workman at the rate of a thousand nails a day, and three hundred working days in the year, will make three hundred thousand nails in the year. but in such a situation it would be impossible to dispose of one thousand, that is, of one day's work in the year. as by means of water-carriage a more extensive market is opened to every sort of industry than what land-carriage alone can afford it, so it is upon the sea-coast, and along the banks of navigable rivers, that industry of every kind naturally begins to subdivide and improve itself, and it is frequently not till a long time after that those improvements extend themselves to the inland parts of the country. a broad-wheeled waggon, attended by two men, and drawn by eight horses, in about six weeks' time carries and brings back between london and edinburgh near four ton weight of goods. in about the same time a ship navigated by six or eight men, and sailing between the ports of london and leith, frequently carries and brings back two hundred ton weight of goods. six or eight men, therefore, by the help of water-carriage, can carry and bring back in the same time the same quantity of goods between london and edinburgh, as fifty broad-wheeled waggons, attended by a hundred men, and drawn by four hundred horses. upon two hundred tons of goods, therefore, carried by the cheapest land-carriage from london to edinburgh, there must be charged the maintenance of a hundred men for three weeks, and both the maintenance, and, what is nearly equal to the maintenance, the wear and tear of four hundred horses as well as of fifty great waggons. whereas, upon the same quantity of goods carried by water, there is to be charged only the maintenance of six or eight men, and the wear and tear of a ship of two hundred tons burden, together with the value of the superior risk, or the difference of the insurance between land and water-carriage. were there no other communication between those two places, therefore, but by land-carriage, as no goods could be transported from the one to the other, except such whose price was very considerable in proportion to their weight, they could carry on but a small part of that commerce which at present subsists between them, and consequently could give but a small part of that encouragement which they at present mutually afford to each other's industry. there could be little or no commerce of any kind between the distant parts of the world. what goods could bear the expense of land-carriage between london and calcutta? or if there were any so precious as to be able to support this expense, with what safety could they be transported through the territories of so many barbarous nations? those two cities, however, at present carry on a very considerable commerce with each other, and by mutually affording a market, give a good deal of encouragement to each other's industry. since such, therefore, are the advantages of water-carriage, it is natural that the first improvements of art and industry should be made where this conveniency opens the whole world for a market to the produce of every sort of labour, and that they should always be much later in extending themselves into the inland parts of the country. the inland parts of the country can for a long time have no other market for the greater part of their goods, but the country which lies round about them, and separates them from the sea-coast, and the great navigable rivers. the extent of their market, therefore, must for a long time be in proportion to the riches and populousness of that country, and consequently their improvement must always be posterior to the improvement of that country. in our north american colonies the plantations have constantly followed either the sea-coast or the banks of the navigable rivers, and have scarce anywhere extended themselves to any considerable distance from both. the nations that, according to the best authenticated history, appear to have been first civilised, were those that dwelt round the coast of the mediterranean sea. that sea, by far the greatest inlet that is known in the world, having no tides, nor consequently any waves except such as are caused by the wind only, was, by the smoothness of its surface, as well as by the multitude of its islands, and the proximity of its neighbouring shores, extremely favourable to the infant navigation of the world; when, from their ignorance of the compass, men were afraid to quit the view of the coast, and from the imperfection of the art of shipbuilding, to abandon themselves to the boisterous waves of the ocean. to pass beyond the pillars of hercules, that is, to sail out of the straits of gibraltar, was, in the ancient world, long considered as a most wonderful and dangerous exploit of navigation. it was late before even the phoenicians and carthaginians, the most skilful navigators and ship-builders of those old times, attempted it, and they were for a long time the only nations that did attempt it. of all the countries on the coast of the mediterranean sea, egypt seems to have been the first in which either agriculture or manufactures were cultivated and improved to any considerable degree. upper egypt extends itself nowhere above a few miles from the nile, and in lower egypt that great river breaks itself into many different canals, which, with the assistance of a little art, seem to have afforded a communication by water-carriage, not only between all the great towns, but between all the considerable villages, and even to many farmhouses in the country; nearly in the same manner as the rhine and the maas do in holland at present. the extent and easiness of this inland navigation was probably one of the principal causes of the early improvement of egypt. the improvements in agriculture and manufactures seem likewise to have been of very great antiquity in the provinces of bengal, in the east indies, and in some of the eastern provinces of china; though the great extent of this antiquity is not authenticated by any histories of whose authority we, in this part of the world, are well assured. in bengal the ganges and several other great rivers form a great number of navigable canals in the same manner as the nile does in egypt. in the eastern provinces of china too, several great rivers form, by their different branches, a multitude of canals, and by communicating with one another afford an inland navigation much more extensive than that either of the nile or the ganges, or perhaps than both of them put together. it is remarkable that neither the ancient egyptians, nor the indians, nor the chinese, encouraged foreign commerce, but seem all to have derived their great opulence from this inland navigation. all the inland parts of africa, and all that part of asia which lies any considerable way north of the euxine and caspian seas, the ancient scythia, the modern tartary and siberia, seem in all ages of the world to have been in the same barbarous and uncivilised state in which we find them at present. the sea of tartary is the frozen ocean which admits of no navigation, and though some of the greatest rivers in the world run through that country, they are at too great a distance from one another to carry commerce and communication through the greater part of it. there are in africa none of those great inlets, such as the baltic and adriatic seas in europe, the mediterranean and euxine seas in both europe and asia, and the gulfs of arabia, persia, india, bengal, and siam, in asia, to carry maritime commerce into the interior parts of that great continent: and the great rivers of africa are at too great a distance from one another to give occasion to any considerable inland navigation. the commerce besides which any nation can carry on by means of a river which does not break itself into any great number of branches or canals, and which runs into another territory before it reaches the sea, can never be very considerable; because it is always in the power of the nations who possess that other territory to obstruct the communication between the upper country and the sea. the navigation of the danube is of very little use to the different states of bavaria, austria and hungary, in comparison of what it would be if any of them possessed the whole of its course till it falls into the black sea. chapter iv of the origin and use of money when the division of labour has been once thoroughly established, it is but a very small part of a man's wants which the produce of his own labour can supply. he supplies the far greater part of them by exchanging that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he has occasion for. every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society. but when the division of labour first began to take place, this power of exchanging must frequently have been very much clogged and embarrassed in its operations. one man, we shall suppose, has more of a certain commodity than he himself has occasion for, while another has less. the former consequently would be glad to dispose of, and the latter to purchase, a part of this superfluity. but if this latter should chance to have nothing that the former stands in need of, no exchange can be made between them. the butcher has more meat in his shop than he himself can consume, and the brewer and the baker would each of them be willing to purchase a part of it. but they have nothing to offer in exchange, except the different productions of their respective trades, and the butcher is already provided with all the bread and beer which he has immediate occasion for. no exchange can, in this case, be made between them. he cannot be their merchant, nor they his customers; and they are all of them thus mutually less serviceable to one another. in order to avoid the inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man in every period of society, after the first establishment of the division of labour, must naturally have endeavoured to manage his affairs in such a manner as to have at alltimes by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry. many different commodities, it is probable, were successively both thought of and employed for this purpose. in the rude ages of society, cattle are said to have been the common instrument of commerce; and, though they must have been a most inconvenient one, yet in old times we find things were frequently valued according to the number of cattle which had been given in exchange for them. the armour of diomede, says homer, cost only nine oxen; but that of glaucus cost an hundred oxen. salt is said to be the common instrument of commerce and exchanges in abyssinia; a species of shells in some parts of the coast of india; dried cod at newfoundland; tobacco in virginia; sugar in some of our west india colonies; hides or dressed leather in some other countries; and there is at this day a village in scotland where it is not uncommon, i am told, for a workman to carry nails instead of money to the baker's shop or the alehouse. in all countries, however, men seem at last to have been determined by irresistible reasons to give the preference, for this employment, to metals above every other commodity. metals can not only be kept with as little loss as any other commodity, scarce anything being less perishable than they are, but they can likewise, without any loss, be divided into any number of parts, as by fusion those parts can easily be reunited again; a quality which no other equally durable commodities possess, and which more than any other quality renders them fit to be the instruments of commerce and circulation. the man who wanted to buy salt, for example, and had nothing but cattle to give in exchange for it, must have been obliged to buy salt to the value of a whole ox, or a whole sheep at a time. he could seldom buy less than this, because what he was to give for it could seldom be divided without loss; and if he had a mind to buy more, he must, for the same reasons, have been obliged to buy double or triple the quantity, the value, to wit, of two or three oxen, or of two or three sheep. if, on the contrary, instead of sheep or oxen, he had metals to give in exchange for it, he could easily proportion the quantity of the metal to the precise quantity of the commodity which he had immediate occasion for. different metals have been made use of by different nations for this purpose. iron was the common instrument of commerce among the ancient spartans; copper among the ancient romans; and gold and silver among all rich and commercial nations. those metals seem originally to have been made use of for this purpose in rude bars, without any stamp or coinage. thus we are told by pliny, upon the authority of timaeus, an ancient historian, that, till the time of servius tullius, the romans had no coined money, but made use of unstamped bars of copper, to purchase whatever they had occasion for. these bars, therefore, performed at this time the function of money. the use of metals in this rude state was attended with two very considerable inconveniencies; first, with the trouble of weighing; and, secondly, with that of assaying them. in the precious metals, where a small difference in the quantity makes a great difference in the value, even the business of weighing, with proper exactness, requires at least very accurate weights and scales. the weighing of gold in particular is an operation of some nicety. in the coarser metals, indeed, where a small error would be of little consequence, less accuracy would, no doubt, be necessary. yet we should find it excessively troublesome, if every time a poor man had occasion either to buy or sell a farthing's worth of goods, he was obliged to weigh the farthing. the operation of assaying is still more difficult, still more tedious, and, unless a part of the metal is fairly melted in the crucible, with proper dissolvents, any conclusion that can be drawn from it, is extremely uncertain. before the institution of coined money, however, unless they went through this tedious and difficult operation, people must always have been liable to the grossest frauds and impositions, and instead of a pound weight of pure silver, or pure copper, might receive in exchange for their goods an adulterated composition of the coarsest and cheapest materials, which had, however, in their outward appearance, been made to resemble those metals. to prevent such abuses, to facilitate exchanges, and thereby to encourage all sorts of industry and commerce, it has been found necessary, in all countries that have made any considerable advances towards improvement, to affix a public stamp upon certain quantities of such particular metals as were in those countries commonly made use of to purchase goods. hence the origin of coined money, and of those public offices called mints; institutions exactly of the same nature with those of the aulnagers and stamp-masters of woolen and linen cloth. all of them are equally meant to ascertain, by means of a public stamp, the quantity and uniform goodness of those different commodities when brought to market. the first public stamps of this kind that were affixed to the current metals, seem in many cases to have been intended to ascertain, what it was both most difficult and most important to ascertain, the goodness or fineness of the metal, and to have resembled the sterling mark which is at present affixed to plate and bars of silver, or the spanish mark which is sometimes affixed to ingots of gold, and which being struck only upon one side of the piece, and not covering the whole surface, ascertains the fineness, but not the weight of the metal. abraham weighs to ephron the four hundred shekels of silver which he had agreed to pay for the field of machpelah. they are said, however, to be the current money of the merchant, and yet are received by weight and not by tale, in the same manner as ingots of gold and bars of silver are at present. the revenues of the ancient saxon kings of england are said to have been paid, not in money but in kind, that is, in victuals and provisions of all sorts. william the conqueror introduced the custom of paying them in money. this money, however, was, for a long time, received at the exchequer, by weight and not by tale. the inconveniency and difficulty of weighing those metals with exactness gave occasion to the institution of coins, of which the stamp, covering entirely both sides of the piece and sometimes the edges too, was supposed to ascertain not only the fineness, but the weight of the metal. such coins, therefore, were received by tale as at present, without the trouble of weighing. the denominations of those coins seem originally to have expressed the weight or quantity of metal contained in them. in the time of servius tullius, who first coined money at rome, the roman as or pondo contained a roman pound of good copper. it was divided in the same manner as our troyes pound, into twelve ounces, each of which contained a real ounce of good copper. the english pound sterling, in the time of edward i, contained a pound, tower weight, of silver, of a known fineness. the tower pound seems to have been something more than the roman pound, and something less than the troyes pound. this last was not introduced into the mint of england till the 18th of henry viii. the french livre contained in the time of charlemagne a pound, troyes weight, of silver of a known fineness. the fair of troyes in champaign was at that time frequented by all the nations of europe, and the weights and measures of so famous a market were generally known and esteemed. the scots money pound contained, from the time of alexander the first to that of robert bruce, a pound of silver of the same weight and fineness with the english pound sterling. english, french, and scots pennies, too, contained all of them originally a real pennyweight of silver, the twentieth part of an ounce, and the two-hundred-and-fortieth part of a pound. the shilling too seems originally to have been the denomination of a weight. when wheat is at twelve shillings the quarter, says an ancient statute of henry iii, then wastel bread of a farthing shall weigh eleven shillings and four pence. the proportion, however, between the shilling and either the penny on the one hand, or the pound on the other, seems not to have been so constant and uniform as that between the penny and the pound. during the first race of the kings of france, the french sou or shilling appears upon different occasions to have contained five, twelve, twenty, and forty pennies. among the ancient saxons a shilling appears at one time to have contained only five pennies, and it is not improbable that it may have been as variable among them as among their neighbours, the ancient franks. from the time of charlemagne among the french, and from that of william the conqueror among the english, the proportion between the pound, the shilling, and the penny, seems to have been uniformly the same as at present, though the value of each has been very different. for in every country of the world, i believe, the avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states, abusing the confidence of their subjects, have by degrees diminished the real quantity of metal, which had been originally contained in their coins. the roman as, in the latter ages of the republic, was reduced to the twenty-fourth part of its original value, and, instead of weighing a pound, came to weigh only half an ounce. the english pound and penny contain at present about a third only; the scots pound and penny about a thirty-sixth; and the french pound and penny about a sixty-sixth part of their original value. by means of those operations the princes and sovereign states which performed them were enabled, in appearance, to pay their debts and to fulfil their engagements with a smaller quantity of silver than would otherwise have been requisite. it was indeed in appearance only; for their creditors were really defrauded of a part of what was due to them. all other debtors in the state were allowed the same privilege, and might pay with the same nominal sum of the new and debased coin whatever they had borrowed in the old. such operations, therefore, have always proved favourable to the debtor, and ruinous to the creditor, and have sometimes produced a greater and more universal revolution in the fortunes of private persons, than could have been occasioned by a very great public calamity. it is in this manner that money has become in all civilised nations the universal instrument of commerce, by the intervention of which goods of all kinds are bought and sold, or exchanged for one another. what are the rules which men naturally observe in exchanging them either for money or for one another, i shall now proceed to examine. these rules determine what may be called the relative or exchangeable value of goods. the word value, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. the one may be called "value in use"; the other, "value in exchange." the things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; and, on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. a diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it. in order to investigate the principles which regulate the exchangeable value of commodities, i shall endeavour to show: first, what is the real measure of this exchangeable value; or, wherein consists the real price of all commodities. secondly, what are the different parts of which this real price is composed or made up. and, lastly, what are the different circumstances which sometimes raise some or all of these different parts of price above, and sometimes sink them below their natural or ordinary rate; or, what are the causes which sometimes hinder the market price, that is, the actual price of commodities, from coinciding exactly with what may be called their natural price. i shall endeavour to explain, as fully and distinctly as i can, those three subjects in the three following chapters, for which i must very earnestly entreat both the patience and attention of the reader: his patience in order to examine a detail which may perhaps in some places appear unnecessarily tedious; and his attention in order to understand what may, perhaps, after the fullest explication which i am capable of giving of it, appear still in some degree obscure. i am always willing to run some hazard of being tedious in order to be sure that i am perspicuous; and after taking the utmost pains that i can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject in its own nature extremely abstracted. chapter v of the real and nominal price of commodities, or their price in labour, and their price in money every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. but after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man's own labour can supply him. the far greater part of them he must derive from the labour of other people, and he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labour which he can command, or which he can afford to purchase. the value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. the real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. what everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. what is bought with money or with goods is purchased by labour as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. that money or those goods indeed save us this toil. they contain the value of a certain quantity of labour which we exchange for what is supposed at the time to contain the value of an equal quantity. labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. it was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command. wealth, as mr. hobbes says, is power. but the person who either acquires, or succeeds to a great fortune, does not necessarily acquire or succeed to any political power, either civil or military. his fortune may, perhaps, afford him the means of acquiring both, but the mere possession of that fortune does not necessarily convey to him either. the power which that possession immediately and directly conveys to him, is the power of purchasing; a certain command over all the labour, or over all the produce of labour, which is then in the market. his fortune is greater or less, precisely in proportion to the extent of this power; or to the quantity either of other men's labour, or, what is the same thing, of the produce of other men's labour, which it enables him to purchase or command. the exchangeable value of everything must always be precisely equal to the extent of this power which it conveys to its owner. but though labour be the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities, it is not that by which their value is commonly estimated. it is of difficult to ascertain the proportion between two different quantities of labour. the time spent in two different sorts of work will not always alone determine this proportion. the different degrees of hardship endured, and of ingenuity exercised, must likewise be taken into account. there may be more labour in an hour's hard work than in two hours' easy business; or in an hour's application to a trade which it cost ten years' labour to learn, than in a month's industry at an ordinary and obvious employment. but it is not easy to find any accurate measure either of hardship or ingenuity. in exchanging, indeed, the different productions of different sorts of labour for one another, some allowance is commonly made for both. it is adjusted, however, not by any accurate measure, but by the higgling and bargaining of the market, according to that sort of rough equality which, though not exact, is sufficient for carrying on the business of common life. every commodity, besides, is more frequently exchanged for, and thereby compared with, other commodities than with labour. it is more natural, therefore, to estimate its exchangeable value by the quantity of some other commodity than by that of the labour which it can purchase. the greater part of people, too, understand better what is meant by a quantity of a particular commodity than by a quantity of labour. the one is a plain palpable object; the other an abstract notion, which, though it can be made sufficiently intelligible, is not altogether so natural and obvious. but when barter ceases, and money has become the common instrument of commerce, every particular commodity is more frequently exchanged for money than for any other commodity. the butcher seldom carries his beef or his mutton to the baker, or the brewer, in order to exchange them for bread or for beer; but he carries them to the market, where he exchanges them for money, and afterwards exchanges that money for bread and for beer. the quantity of money which he gets for them regulates, too, the quantity of bread and beer which he can afterwards purchase. it is more natural and obvious to him, therefore, to estimate their value by the quantity of money, the commodity for which he immediately exchanges them, than by that of bread and beer, the commodities for which he can exchange them only by the intervention of another commodity; and rather to say that his butcher's meat is worth threepence or fourpence a pound, than that it is worth three or four pounds of bread, or three or four quarts of small beer. hence it comes to pass that the exchangeable value of every commodity is more frequently estimated by the quantity of money, than by the quantity either of labour or of any other commodity which can be had in exchange for it. gold and silver, however, like every other commodity, vary in their value, are sometimes cheaper and sometimes dearer, sometimes of easier and sometimes of more difficult purchase. the quantity of labour which any particular quantity of them can purchase or command, or the quantity of other goods which it will exchange for, depends always upon the fertility or barrenness of the mines which happen to be known about the time when such exchanges are made. the discovery of the abundant mines of america reduced, in the sixteenth century, the value of gold and silver in europe to about a third of what it had been before. as it costs less labour to bring those metals from the mine to the market, so when they were brought thither they could purchase or command less labour; and this revolution in their value, though perhaps the greatest, is by no means the only one of which history gives some account. but as a measure of quantity, such as the natural foot, fathom, or handful, which is continually varying in its own quantity, can never be an accurate measure of the quantity of other things; so a commodity which is itself continually varying in its own value, can never be an accurate measure of the value of other commodities. equal quantities of labour, at all times and places, may be said to be of equal value to the labourer. in his ordinary state of health, strength and spirits; in the ordinary degree of his skill and dexterity, he must always laydown the same portion of his ease, his liberty, and his happiness. the price which he pays must always be the same, whatever may be the quantity of goods which he receives in return for it. of these, indeed, it may sometimes purchase a greater and sometimes a smaller quantity; but it is their value which varies, not that of the labour which purchases them. at all times and places that is dear which it is difficult to come at, or which it costs much labour to acquire; and that cheap which is to be had easily, or with very little labour. labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. it is their real price; money is their nominal price only. but though equal quantities of labour are always of equal value to the labourer, yet to the person who employs him they appear sometimes to be of greater and sometimes of smaller value. he purchases them sometimes with a greater and sometimes with a smaller quantity of goods, and to him the price of labour seems to vary like that of all other things. it appears to him dear in the one case, and cheap in the other. in reality, however, it is the goods which are cheap in the one case, and dear in the other. in this popular sense, therefore, labour, like commodities, may be said to have a real and a nominal price. its real price may be said to consist in the quantity of the necessaries and conveniences of life which are given for it; its nominal price, in the quantity of money. the labourer is rich or poor, is well or ill rewarded, in proportion to the real, not to the nominal price of his labour. the distinction between the real and the nominal price of commodities and labour is not a matter of mere speculation, but may sometimes be of considerable use in practice. the same real price is always of the same value; but on account of the variations in the value of gold and silver, the same nominal price is sometimes of very different values. when a landed estate, therefore, is sold with a reservation of a perpetual rent, if it is intended that this rent should always be of the same value, it is of importance to the family in whose favour it is reserved that it should not consist in a particular sum of money. its value would in this case be liable to variations of two different kinds; first, to those which arise from the different quantities of gold and silver which are contained at different times in coin of the same denomination; and, secondly, to those which arise from the different values of equal quantities of gold and silver at different times. princes and sovereign states have frequently fancied that they had a temporary interest to diminish the quantity of pure metal contained in their coins; but they seldom have fancied that they had any to augment it. the quantity of metal contained in the coins, i believe of all nations, has, accordingly, been almost continually diminishing, and hardly ever augmenting. such variations, therefore, tend almost always to diminish the value of a money rent. the discovery of the mines of america diminished the value of gold and silver in europe. this diminution, it is commonly supposed, though i apprehend without any certain proof, is still going on gradually, and is likely to continue to do so for a long time. upon this supposition, therefore, such variations are more likely to diminish than to augment the value of a money rent, even though it should be stipulated to be paid, not in such a quantity of coined money of such a denomination (in so many pounds sterling, for example), but in so many ounces either of pure silver, or of silver of a certain standard. the rents which have been reserved in corn have preserved their value much better than those which have been reserved in money, even where the denomination of the coin has not been altered. by the 18th of elizabeth it was enacted that a third of the rent of all college leases should be reserved in corn, to be paid, either in kind, or according to the current prices at the nearest public market. the money arising from this corn rent, though originally but a third of the whole, is in the present times, according to dr. blackstone, commonly near double of what arises from the other two-thirds. the old money rents of colleges must, according to this account, have sunk almost to a fourth part of their ancient value; or are worth little more than a fourth part of the corn which they were formerly worth. but since the reign of philip and mary the denomination of the english coin has undergone little or no alteration, and the same number of pounds, shillings and pence have contained very nearly the same quantity of pure silver. this degradation, therefore, in the value of the money rents of colleges, has arisen altogether from the degradation in the value of silver. when the degradation in the value of silver is combined with the diminution of the quantity of it contained in the coin of the same denomination, the loss is frequently still greater. in scotland, where the denomination of the coin has undergone much greater alterations than it ever did in england, and in france, where it has undergone still greater than it ever did in scotland, some ancient rents, originally of considerable value, have in this manner been reduced almost to nothing. equal quantities of labour will at distant times be purchased more nearly with equal quantities of corn, the subsistence of the labourer, than with equal quantities of gold and silver, or perhaps of any other commodity. equal quantities of corn, therefore, will, at distant times, be more nearly of the same real value, or enable the possessor to purchase or command more nearly the same quantity of the labour of other people. they will do this, i say, more nearly than equal quantities of almost any other commodity; for even equal quantities of corn will not do it exactly. the subsistence of the labourer, or the real price of labour, as i shall endeavour to show hereafter, is very different upon different occasions; more liberal in a society advancing to opulence than in one that is standing still; and in one that is standing still than in one that is going backwards. every other commodity, however, will at any particular time purchase a greater or smaller quantity of labour in proportion to the quantity of subsistence which it can purchase at that time. a rent therefore reserved in corn is liable only to the variations in the quantity of labour which a certain quantity of corn can purchase. but a rent reserved in any other commodity is liable not only to the variations in the quantity of labour which any particular quantity of corn can purchase, but to the variations in the quantity of corn which can be purchased by any particular quantity of that commodity. though the real value of a corn rent, it is to be observed, however, varies much less from century to century than that of a money rent, it varies much more from year to year. the money price of labour, as i shall endeavour to show hereafter, does not fluctuate from year to year with the money price of corn, but seems to be everywhere accommodated, not to the temporary or occasional, but to the average or ordinary price of that necessary of life. the average or ordinary price of corn again is regulated, as i shall likewise endeavour to show hereafter, by the value of silver, by the richness or barrenness of the mines which supply the market with that metal, or by the quantity of labour which must be employed, and consequently of corn which must be consumed, in order to bring any particular quantity of silver from the mine to the market. but the value of silver, though it sometimes varies greatly from century to century, seldom varies much from year to year, but frequently continues the same, or very nearly the same, for half a century or a century together. the ordinary or average money price of corn, therefore, may, during so long a period, continue the same or very nearly the same too, and along with it the money price of labour, provided, at least, the society continues, in other respects, in the same or nearly in the same condition. in the meantime the temporary and occasional price of corn may frequently be double, one year, of what it had been the year before, or fluctuate, for example, from five and twenty to fifty shillings the quarter. but when corn is at the latter price, not only the nominal, but the real value of a corn rent will be double of what it is when at the former, or will command double the quantity either of labour or of the greater part of other commodities; the money price of labour, and along with it that of most other things, continuing the same during all these fluctuations. labour, therefore, it appears evidently, is the only universal, as well as the only accurate measure of value, or the only standard by which we can compare the values of different commodities at all times, and at all places. we cannot estimate, it is allowed, the real value of different commodities from century to century by the quantities of silver which were given for them. we cannot estimate it from year to year by the quantities of corn. by the quantities of labour we can, with the greatest accuracy, estimate it both from century to century and from year to year. from century to century, corn is a better measure than silver, because, from century to century, equal quantities of corn will command the same quantity of labour more nearly than equal quantities of silver. from year to year, on the contrary, silver is a better measure than corn, because equal quantities of it will more nearly command the same quantity of labour. but though in establishing perpetual rents, or even in letting very long leases, it may be of use to distinguish between real and nominal price; it is of none in buying and selling, the more common and ordinary transactions of human life. at the same time and place the real and the nominal price of all commodities are exactly in proportion to one another. the more or less money you get for any commodity, in the london market for example, the more or less labour it will at that time and place enable you to purchase or command. at the same time and place, therefore, money is the exact measure of the real exchangeable value of all commodities. it is so, however, at the same time and place only. though at distant places, there is no regular proportion between the real and the money price of commodities, yet the merchant who carries goods from the one to the other has nothing to consider but their money price, or the difference between the quantity of silver for which he buys them, and that for which he is likely to sell them. half an ounce of silver at canton in china may command a greater quantity both of labour and of the necessaries and conveniences of life than an ounce at london. a commodity, therefore, which sells for half an ounce of silver at canton may there be really dearer, of more real importance to the man who possesses it there, than a commodity which sells for an ounce at london is to the man who possesses it at london. if a london merchant, however, can buy at canton for half an ounce of silver, a commodity which he can afterwards sell at london for an ounce, he gains a hundred per cent by the bargain, just as much as if an ounce of silver was at london exactly of the same value as at canton. it is of no importance to him that half an ounce of silver at canton would have given him the command of more labour and of a greater quantity of the necessaries and conveniences of life than an ounce can do at london. an ounce at london will always give him the command of double the quantity of all these which half an ounce could have done there, and this is precisely what he wants. as it is the nominal or money price of goods, therefore, which finally determines the prudence or imprudence of all purchases and sales, and thereby regulates almost the whole business of common life in which price is concerned, we cannot wonder that it should have been so much more attended to than the real price. in such a work as this, however, it may sometimes be of use to compare the different real values of a particular commodity at different times and places, or the different degrees of power over the labour of other people which it may, upon different occasions, have given to those who possessed it. we must in this case compare, not so much the different quantities of silver for which it was commonly sold, as the different quantities of labour which those different quantities of silver could have purchased. but the current prices of labour at distant times and places can scarce ever be known with any degree of exactness. those of corn, though they have in few places been regularly recorded, are in general better known and have been more frequently taken notice of by historians and other writers. we must generally, therefore, content ourselves with them, not as being always exactly in the same proportion as the current prices of labour, but as being the nearest approximation which can commonly be had to that proportion. i shall hereafter have occasion to make several comparisons of this kind. in the progress of industry, commercial nations have found it convenient to coin several different metals into money; gold for larger payments, silver for purchases of moderate value, and copper, or some other coarse metal, for those of still smaller consideration. they have always, however, considered one of those metals as more peculiarly the measure of value than any of the other two; and this preference seems generally to have been given to the metal which they happened first to make use of as the instrument of commerce. having once begun to use it as their standard, which they must have done when they had no other money, they have generally continued to do so even when the necessity was not the same. the romans are said to have had nothing but copper money till within five years before the first punic war, when they first began to coin silver. copper, therefore, appears to have continued always the measure of value in that republic. at rome all accounts appear to have been kept, and the value of all estates to have been computed either in asses or in sestertii. the as was always the denomination of a copper coin. the word sestertius signifies two asses and a half. though the sestertius, therefore, was originally a silver coin, its value was estimated in copper. at rome, one who owed a great deal of money was said to have a great deal of other people's copper. the northern nations who established themselves upon the ruins of the roman empire, seem to have had silver money from the first beginning of their settlements, and not to have known either gold or copper coins for several ages thereafter. there were silver coins in england in the time of the saxons; but there was little gold coined till the time of edward iii nor any copper till that of james i of great britain. in england, therefore, and for the same reason, i believe, in all other modern nations of europe, all accounts are kept, and the value of all goods and of all estates is generally computed in silver: and when we mean to express the amount of a person's fortune, we seldom mention the number of guineas, but the number of pounds sterling which we suppose would be given for it. originally, in all countries, i believe, a legal tender of payment could be made only in the coin of that metal, which was peculiarly considered as the standard or measure of value. in england, gold was not considered as a legal tender for a long time after it was coined into money. the proportion between the values of gold and silver money was not fixed by any public law or proclamation; but was left to be settled by the market. if a debtor offered payment in gold, the creditor might either reject such payment altogether, or accept of it at such a valuation of the gold as he and his debtor could agree upon. copper is not at present a legal tender except in the change of the smaller silver coins. in this state of things the distinction between the metal which was the standard, and that which was not the standard, was something more than a nominal distinction. in process of time, and as people became gradually more familiar with the use of the different metals in coin, and consequently better acquainted with the proportion between their respective values, it has in most countries, i believe, been found convenient to ascertain this proportion, and to declare by a public law that a guinea, for example, of such a weight and fineness, should exchange for one-and-twenty shillings, or be a legal tender for a debt of that amount. in this state of things, and during the continuance of any one regulated proportion of this kind, the distinction between the metal which is the standard, and that which is not the standard, becomes little more than a nominal distinction. in consequence of any change, however, in this regulated proportion, this distinction becomes, or at least seems to become, something more than nominal again. if the regulated value of a guinea, for example, was either reduced to twenty, or raised to two-and-twenty shillings, all accounts being kept and almost all obligations for debt being expressed in silver money, the greater part of payments could in either case be made with the same quantity of silver money as before; but would require very different quantities of gold money; a greater in the one case, and a smaller in the other. silver would appear to be more invariable in its value than gold. silver would appear to measure the value of gold, and gold would not appear to measure the value of silver. the value of gold would seem to depend upon the quantity of silver which it would exchange for; and the value of silver would not seem to depend upon the quantity of gold which it would exchange for. this difference, however, would be altogether owing to the custom of keeping accounts, and of expressing the amount of all great and small sums rather in silver than in gold money. one of mr. drummond's notes for five-and-twenty or fifty guineas would, after an alteration of this kind, be still payable with five-and-twenty or fifty guineas in the same manner as before. it would, after such an alteration, be payable with the same quantity of gold as before, but with very different quantities of silver. in the payment of such a note, gold would appear to be more invariable in its value than silver. gold would appear to measure the value of silver, and silver would not appear to measure the value of gold. if the custom of keeping accounts, and of expressing promissory notes and other obligations for money in this manner, should ever become general, gold, and not silver, would be considered as the metal which was peculiarly the standard or measure of value. in reality, during the continuance of any one regulated proportion between the respective values of the different metals in coin, the value of the most precious metal regulates the value of the whole coin. twelve copper pence contain half a pound, avoirdupois, of copper, of not the best quality, which, before it is coined, is seldom worth sevenpence in silver. but as by the regulation twelve such pence are ordered to exchange for a shilling, they are in the market considered as worth a shilling, and a shilling can at any time be had for them. even before the late reformation of the gold coin of great britain, the gold, that part of it at least which circulated in london and its neighbourhood, was in general less degraded below its standard weight than the greater part of the silver. one-and-twenty worn and defaced shillings, however, were considered as equivalent to a guinea, which perhaps, indeed, was worn and defaced too, but seldom so much so. the late regulations have brought the gold coin as near perhaps to its standard weight as it is possible to bring the current coin of any nation; and the order, to receive no gold at the public offices but by weight, is likely to preserve it so, as long as that order is enforced. the silver coin still continues in the same worn and degraded state as before the reformation of the gold coin. in the market, however, one-and-twenty shillings of this degraded silver coin are still considered as worth a guinea of this excellent gold coin. the reformation of the gold coin has evidently raised the value of the silver coin which can be exchanged for it. in the english mint a pound weight of gold is coined into forty-four guineas and a half, which, at one-and-twenty shillings the guinea, is equal to forty-six pounds fourteen shillings and sixpence. an ounce of such gold coin, therefore, is worth l3 17s. 10 1/2d. in silver. in england no duty or seignorage is paid upon the coinage, and he who carries a pound weight or an ounce weight of standard gold bullion to the mint, gets back a pound weight or an ounce weight of gold in coin, without any deduction. three pounds seventeen shillings and tenpence halfpenny an ounce, therefore, is said to be the mint price of gold in england, or the quantity of gold coin which the mint gives in return for standard gold bullion. before the reformation of the gold coin, the price of standard gold bullion in the market had for many years been upwards of l3 18s. sometimes l3 19s. and very frequently l4 an ounce; that sum, it is probable, in the worn and degraded gold coin, seldom containing more than an ounce of standard gold. since the reformation of the gold coin, the market price of standard gold bullion seldom exceeds l3 17s. 7d. an ounce. before the reformation of the gold coin, the market price was always more or less above the mint price. since that reformation, the market price has been constantly below the mint price. but that market price is the same whether it is paid in gold or in silver coin. the late reformation of the gold coin, therefore, has raised not only the value of the gold coin, but likewise that of the silver coin in proportion to gold bullion, and probably, too, in proportion to all other commodities; through the price of the greater part of other commodities being influenced by so many other causes, the rise in the value either of gold or silver coin in proportion to them may not be so distinct and sensible. in the english mint a pound weight of standard silver bullion is coined into sixty-two shillings, containing, in the same manner, a pound weight of standard silver. five shillings and twopence an ounce, therefore, is said to be the mint price of silver in england, or the quantity of silver coin which the mint gives in return for standard silver bullion. before the reformation of the gold coin, the market price of standard silver bullion was, upon different occasions, five shillings and fourpence, five shillings and fivepence, five shillings and sixpence, five shillings and sevenpence, and very often five shillings and eightpence an ounce. five shillings and sevenpence, however, seems to have been the most common price. since the reformation of the gold coin, the market price of standard silver bullion has fallen occasionally to five shillings and threepence, five shillings and fourpence, and five shillings and fivepence an ounce, which last price it has scarce ever exceeded. though the market price of silver bullion has fallen considerably since the reformation of the gold coin, it has not fallen so low as the mint price. in the proportion between the different metals in the english coin, as copper is rated very much above its real value, so silver is rated somewhat below it. in the market of europe, in the french coin and in the dutch coin, an ounce of fine gold exchanges for about fourteen ounces of fine silver. in the english coin, it exchanges for about fifteen ounces, that is, for more silver than it is worth according to the common estimation of europe. but as the price of copper in bars is not, even in england, raised by the high price of copper in english coin, so the price of silver in bullion is not sunk by the low rate of silver in english coin. silver in bullion still preserves its proper proportion to gold; for the same reason that copper in bars preserves its proper proportion to silver. upon the reformation of the silver coin in the reign of william iii the price of silver bullion still continued to be somewhat above the mint price. mr. locke imputed this high price to the permission of exporting silver bullion, and to the prohibition of exporting silver coin. this permission of exporting, he said, rendered the demand for silver bullion greater than the demand for silver coin. but the number of people who want silver coin for the common uses of buying and selling at home, is surely much greater than that of those who want silver bullion either for the use of exportation or for any other use. there subsists at present a like permission of exporting gold bullion, and a like prohibition of exporting gold coin: and yet the price of gold bullion has fallen below the mint price. but in the english coin silver was then, in the same manner as now, under-rated in proportion to gold, and the gold coin (which at that time too was not supposed to require any reformation) regulated then, as well as now, the real value of the whole coin. as the reformation of the silver coin did not then reduce the price of silver bullion to the mint price, it is not very probable that a like reformation will do so now. were the silver coin brought back as near to its standard weight as the gold, a guinea, it is probable, would, according to the present proportion, exchange for more silver in coin than it would purchase in bullion. the silver coin containing its full standard weight, there would in this case be a profit in melting it down, in order, first, to sell the bullion for gold coin, and afterwards to exchange this gold coin for silver coin to be melted down in the same manner. some alteration in the present proportion seems to be the only method of preventing this inconveniency. the inconveniency perhaps would be less if silver was rated in the coin as much above its proper proportion to gold as it is at present rated below it; provided it was at the same time enacted that silver should not be a legal tender for more than the change of a guinea, in the same manner as copper is not a legal tender for more than the change of a shilling. no creditor could in this case be cheated in consequence of the high valuation of silver in coin; as no creditor can at present be cheated in consequence of the high valuation of copper. the bankers only would suffer by this regulation. when a run comes upon them they sometimes endeavour to gain time by paying in sixpences, and they would be precluded by this regulation from this discreditable method of evading immediate payment. they would be obliged in consequence to keep at all times in their coffers a greater quantity of cash than at present; and though this might no doubt be a considerable inconveniency to them, it would at the same time be a considerable security to their creditors. three pounds seventeen shillings and tenpence halfpenny (the mint price of gold) certainly does not contain, even in our present excellent gold coin, more than an ounce of standard gold, and it may be thought, therefore, should not purchase more standard bullion. but gold in coin is more convenient than gold in bullion, and though, in england, the coinage is free, yet the gold which is carried in bullion to the mint can seldom be returned in coin to the owner till after a delay of several weeks. in the present hurry of the mint, it could not be returned till after a delay of several months. this delay is equivalent to a small duty, and renders gold in coin somewhat more valuable than an equal quantity of gold in bullion. if in the english coin silver was rated according to it proper proportion to gold, the price of silver bullion would probably fall below the mint price even without any reformation of the silver coin; the value even of the present worn and defaced silver coin being regulated by the value of the excellent gold coin for which it can be changed. a small seignorage or duty upon the coinage of both gold and silver would probably increase still more the superiority of those metals in coin above an equal quantity of either of them in bullion. the coinage would in this case increase the value of the metal coined in proportion to the extent of this small duty; for the same reason that the fashion increases the value of plate in proportion to the price of that fashion. the superiority of coin above bullion would prevent the melting down of the coin, and would discourage its exportation. if upon any public exigency it should become necessary to export the coin, the greater part of it would soon return again of its own accord. abroad it could sell only for its weight in bullion. at home it would buy more than that weight. there would be a profit, therefore, in bringing it home again. in france a seignorage of about eight per cent is imposed upon the coinage, and the french coin, when exported, is said to return home again of its own accord. the occasional fluctuations in the market price of gold and silver bullion arise from the same causes as the like fluctuations in that of all other commodities. the frequent loss of those metals from various accidents by sea and by land, the continual waste of them in gilding and plating, in lace and embroidery, in the wear and tear of coin, and in that of plate; require, in all countries which possess no mines of their own, a continual importation, in order to repair this loss and this waste. the merchant importers, like all other merchants, we may believe, endeavour, as well as they can, to suit their occasional importations to what, they judge, is likely to be the immediate demand. with all their attention, however, they sometimes overdo the business, and sometimes underdo it. when they import more bullion than is wanted, rather than incur the risk and trouble of exporting it again, they are sometimes willing to sell a part of it for something less than the ordinary or average price. when, on the other hand, they import less than is wanted, they get something more than this price. but when, under all those occasional fluctuations, the market price either of gold or silver bullion continues for several years together steadily and constantly, either more or less above, or more or less below the mint price, we may be assured that this steady and constant, either superiority or inferiority of price, is the effect of something in the state of the coin, which, at that time, renders a certain quantity of coin either of more value or of less value than the precise quantity of bullion which it ought to contain. the constancy and steadiness of the effect supposes a proportionable constancy and steadiness in the cause. the money of any particular country is, at any particular time and place, more or less an accurate measure of value according as the current coin is more or less exactly agreeable to its standard, or contains more or less exactly the precise quantity of pure gold or pure silver which it ought to contain. if in england, for example, forty-four guineas and a half contained exactly a pound weight of standard gold, or eleven ounces of fine gold and one ounce of alloy, the gold coin of england would be as accurate a measure of the actual value of goods at any particular time and place as the nature of the thing would admit. but if, by rubbing and wearing, forty-four guineas and a half generally contain less than a pound weight of standard gold; the diminution, however, being greater in some pieces than in others; the measure of value comes to be liable to the same sort of uncertainty to which all other weights and measures are commonly exposed. as it rarely happens that these are exactly agreeable to their standard, the merchant adjusts the price of his goods, as well as he can, not to what those weights and measures ought to be, but to what, upon an average, he finds by experience they actually are. in consequence of a like disorder in the coin, the price of goods comes, in the same manner, to be adjusted, not to the quantity of pure gold or silver which the corn ought to contain, but to that which, upon an average, it is found by experience, it actually does contain. by the money-price of goods, it is to be observed, i understand always the quantity of pure gold or silver for which they are sold, without any regard to the denomination of the coin. six shillings and eightpence, for example, in the time of edward i, i consider as the same money-price with a pound sterling in the present times; because it contained, as nearly as we can judge, the same quantity of pure silver. chapter vi of the component parts of the price of commodities in that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of land, the proportion between the quantities of labour necessary for acquiring different objects seems to be the only circumstance which can afford any rule for exchanging them for one another. if among a nation of hunters, for example, it usually costs twice the labour to kill a beaver which it does to kill a deer, one beaver should naturally exchange for or be worth two deer. it is natural that what is usually the produce of two days' or two hours' labour, should be worth double of what is usually the produce of one day's or one hour's labour. if the one species of labour should be more severe than the other, some allowance will naturally be made for this superior hardship; and the produce of one hour's labour in the one way may frequently exchange for that of two hours' labour in the other. or if the one species of labour requires an uncommon degree of dexterity and ingenuity, the esteem which men have for such talents will naturally give a value to their produce, superior to what would be due to the time employed about it. such talents can seldom be acquired but in consequence of long application, and the superior value of their produce may frequently be no more than a reasonable compensation for the time and labour which must be spent in acquiring them. in the advanced state of society, allowances of this kind, for superior hardship and superior skill, are commonly made in the wages of labour; and something of the same kind must probably have taken place in its earliest and rudest period. in this state of things, the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer; and the quantity of labour commonly employed in acquiring or producing any commodity is the only circumstance which can regulate the quantity exchange for which it ought commonly to purchase, command, or exchange for. as soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious people, whom they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the materials. in exchanging the complete manufacture either for money, for labour, or for other goods, over and above what may be sufficient to pay the price of the materials, and the wages of the workmen, something must be given for the profits of the undertaker of the work who hazards his stock in this adventure. the value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this ease into two parts, of which the one pays their wages, the other the profits of their employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced. he could have no interest to employ them, unless he expected from the sale of their work something more than what was sufficient to replace his stock to him; and he could have no interest to employ a great stock rather than a small one, unless his profits were to bear some proportion to the extent of his stock. the profits of stock, it may perhaps be thought are only a different name for the wages of a particular sort of labour, the labour of inspection and direction. they are, however, altogether different, are regulated by quite different principles, and bear no proportion to the quantity, the hardship, or the ingenuity of this supposed labour of inspection and direction. they are regulated altogether by the value of the stock employed, and are greater or smaller in proportion to the extent of this stock. let us suppose, for example, that in some particular place, where the common annual profits of manufacturing stock are ten per cent, there are two different manufactures, in each of which twenty workmen are employed at the rate of fifteen pounds a year each, or at the expense of three hundred a year in each manufactory. let us suppose, too, that the coarse materials annually wrought up in the one cost only seven hundred pounds, while the finer materials in the other cost seven thousand. the capital annually employed in the one will in this case amount only to one thousand pounds; whereas that employed in the other will amount to seven thousand three hundred pounds. at the rate of ten per cent, therefore, the undertaker of the one will expect a yearly profit of about one hundred pounds only; while that of the other will expect about seven hundred and thirty pounds. but though their profits are so very different, their labour of inspection and direction may be either altogether or very nearly the same. in many great works almost the whole labour of this kind is committed to some principal clerk. his wages properly express the value of this labour of inspection and direction. though in settling them some regard is had commonly, not only to his labour and skill, but to the trust which is reposed in him, yet they never bear any regular proportion to the capital of which he oversees the management; and the owner of this capital, though he is thus discharged of almost all labour, still expects that his profits should bear a regular proportion to his capital. in the price of commodities, therefore, the profits of stock constitute a component part altogether different from the wages of labour, and regulated by quite different principles. in this state of things, the whole produce of labour does not always belong to the labourer. he must in most cases share it with the owner of the stock which employs him. neither is the quantity of labour commonly employed in acquiring or producing any commodity, the only circumstance which can regulate the quantity which it ought commonly to purchase, command, or exchange for. an additional quantity, it is evident, must be due for the profits of the stock which advanced the wages and furnished the materials of that labour. as soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. the wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. he must then pay for the licence to gather them; and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces. this portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land, and in the price of the greater part of commodities makes a third component part. the real value of all the different component parts of price, it must be observed, is measured by the quantity of labour which they can, each of them, purchase or command. labour measures the value not only of that part of price which resolves itself into labour, but of that which resolves itself into rent, and of that which resolves itself into profit. in every society the price of every commodity finally resolves itself into some one or other, or all of those three parts; and in every improved society, all the three enter more or less, as component parts, into the price of the far greater part of commodities. in the price of corn, for example, one part pays the rent of the landlord, another pays the wages or maintenance of the labourers and labouring cattle employed in producing it, and the third pays the profit of the farmer. these three parts seem either immediately or ultimately to make up the whole price of corn. a fourth part, it may perhaps be thought, is necessary for replacing the stock of the farmer, or for compensating the wear and tear of his labouring cattle, and other instruments of husbandry. but it must be considered that the price of any instrument of husbandry, such as a labouring horse, is itself made up of the same three parts; the rent of the land upon which he is reared, the labour of tending and rearing him, and the profits of the farmer who advances both the rent of this land, and the wages of this labour. though the price of the corn, therefore, may pay the price as well as the maintenance of the horse, the whole price still resolves itself either immediately or ultimately into the same three parts of rent, labour, and profit. in the price of flour or meal, we must add to the price of the corn, the profits of the miller, and the wages of his servants; in the price of bread, the profits of the baker, and the wages of his servants; and in the price of both, the labour of transporting the corn from the house of the farmer to that of the miller, and from that of the miner to that of the baker, together with the profits of those who advance the wages of that labour. the price of flax resolves itself into the same three parts as that of corn. in the price of linen we must add to this price the wages of the flaxdresser, of the spinner, of the weaver, of the bleacher, etc., together with the profits of their respective employers. as any particular commodity comes to be more manufactured, that part of the price which resolves itself into wages and profit comes to be greater in proportion to that which resolves itself into rent. in the progress of the manufacture, not only the number of profits increase, but every subsequent profit is greater than the foregoing; because the capital from which it is derived must always be greater. the capital which employs the weavers, for example, must be greater than that which employs the spinners; because it not only replaces that capital with its profits, but pays, besides, the wages of the weavers; and the profits must always bear some proportion to the capital. in the most improved societies, however, there are always a few commodities of which the price resolves itself into two parts only, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and a still smaller number, in which it consists altogether in the wages of labour. in the price of sea-fish, for example, one part pays the labour of the fishermen, and the other the profits of the capital employed in the fishery. rent very seldom makes any part of it, though it does sometimes, as i shall show hereafter. it is otherwise, at least through the greater part of europe, in river fisheries. a salmon fishery pays a rent, and rent, though it cannot well be called the rent of land, makes a part of the price of a salmon as well as wages and profit. in some parts of scotland a few poor people make a trade of gathering, along the sea-shore, those little variegated stones commonly known by the name of scotch pebbles. the price which is paid to them by the stone-cutter is altogether the wages of their labour; neither rent nor profit make any part of it. but the whole price of any commodity must still finally resolve itself into some one or other, or all of those three parts; as whatever part of it remains after paying the rent of the land, and the price of the whole labour employed in raising, manufacturing, and bringing it to market, must necessarily be profit to somebody. as the price or exchangeable value of every particular commodity, taken separately, resolves itself into some one or other or all of those three parts; so that of all the commodities which compose the whole annual produce of the labour of every country, taken complexly, must resolve itself into the same three parts, and be parcelled out among different inhabitants of the country, either as the wages of their labour, the profits of their stock, or the rent of their land. the whole of what is annually either collected or produced by the labour of every society, or what comes to the same thing, the whole price of it, is in this manner originally distributed among some of its different members. wages, profit, and rent, are the three original sources of all revenue as well as of all exchangeable value. all other revenue is ultimately derived from some one or other of these. whoever derives his revenue from a fund which is his own, must draw it either from his labour, from his stock, or from his land. the revenue derived from labour is called wages. that derived from stock, by the person who manages or employes it, is called profit. that derived from it by the person who does not employ it himself, but lends it to another, is called the interest or the use of money. it is the compensation which the borrower pays to the lender, for the profit which he has an opportunity of making by the use of the money. part of that profit naturally belongs to the borrower, who runs the risk and takes the trouble of employing it; and part to the lender, who affords him the opportunity of making this profit. the interest of money is always a derivative revenue, which, if it is not paid from the profit which is made by the use of the money, must be paid from some other source of revenue, unless perhaps the borrower is a spendthrift, who contracts a second debt in order to pay the interest of the first. the revenue which proceeds altogether from land, is called rent, and belongs to the landlord. the revenue of the farmer is derived partly from his labour, and partly from his stock. to him, land is only the instrument which enables him to earn the wages of this labour, and to make the profits of this stock. all taxes, and an the revenue which is founded upon them, all salaries, pensions, and annuities of every kind, are ultimately derived from some one or other of those three original sources of revenue, and are paid either immediately or mediately from the wages of labour, the profits of stock, or the rent of land. when those three different sorts of revenue belong to different persons, they are readily distinguished; but when they belong to the same they are sometimes confounded with one another, at least in common language. a gentleman who farms a part of his own estate, after paying the expense of cultivation, should gain both the rent of the landlord and the profit of the farmer. he is apt to denominate, however, his whole gain, profit, and thus confounds rent with profit, at least in common language. the greater part of our north american and west indian planters are in this situation. they farm, the greater part of them, their own estates, and accordingly we seldom hear of the rent of a plantation, but frequently of its profit. common farmers seldom employ any overseer to direct the general operations of the farm. they generally, too, work a good deal with their own hands, as ploughmen, harrowers, etc. what remains of the crop after paying the rent, therefore, should not only replace to them their stock employed in cultivation, together with its ordinary profits, but pay them the wages which are due to them, both as labourers and overseers. whatever remains, however, after paying the rent and keeping up the stock, is called profit. but wages evidently make a part of it. the farmer, by saving these wages, must necessarily gain them. wages, therefore, are in this case confounded with profit. an independent manufacturer, who has stock enough both to purchase materials, and to maintain himself till he can carry his work to market, should gain both the wages of a journeyman who works under a master, and the profit which that master makes by the sale of the journeyman's work. his whole gains, however, are commonly called profit, and wages are, in this case too, confounded with profit. a gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, unites in his own person the three different characters of landlord, farmer, and labourer. his produce, therefore, should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third. the whole, however, is commonly considered as the earnings of his labour. both rent and profit are, in this case, confounded with wages. as in a civilised country there are but few commodities of which the exchangeable value arises from labour only, rent and profit contributing largely to that of the far greater part of them, so the annual produce of its labour will always be sufficient to purchase or command a much greater quantity of labour than what employed in raising, preparing, and bringing that produce to market. if the society were annually to employ all the labour which it can annually purchase, as the quantity of labour would increase greatly every year, so the produce of every succeeding year would be of vastly greater value than that of the foregoing. but there is no country in which the whole annual produce is employed in maintaining the industrious. the idle everywhere consume a great part of it; and according to the different proportions in which it is annually divided between those two different orders of people, its ordinary or average value must either annually increase, or diminish, or continue the same from one year to another. chapter vii of the natural and market price of commodities there is in every society or neighbourhood an ordinary or average rate both of wages and profit in every different employment of labour and stock. this rate is naturally regulated, as i shall show hereafter, partly by the general circumstances of the society, their riches or poverty, their advancing, stationary, or declining condition; and partly by the particular nature of each employment. there is likewise in every society or neighbourhood an ordinary or average rate of rent, which is regulated too, as i shall show hereafter, partly by the general circumstances of the society or neighbourhood in which the land is situated, and partly by the natural or improved fertility of the land. these ordinary or average rates may be called the natural rates of wages, profit, and rent, at the time and place in which they commonly prevail. when the price of any commodity is neither more nor less than what is sufficient to pay the rent of the land, the wages of the labour, and the profits of the stock employed in raising, preparing, and bringing it to market, according to their natural rates, the commodity is then sold for what may be called its natural price. the commodity is then sold precisely for what it is worth, or for what it really costs the person who brings it to market; for though in common language what is called the prime cost of any commodity does not comprehend the profit of the person who is to sell it again, yet if he sell it at a price which does not allow him the ordinary rate of profit in his neighbourhood, he is evidently a loser by the trade; since by employing his stock in some other way he might have made that profit. his profit, besides, is his revenue, the proper fund of his subsistence. as, while he is preparing and bringing the goods to market, he advances to his workmen their wages, or their subsistence; so he advances to himself, in the same manner, his own subsistence, which is generally suitable to the profit which he may reasonably expect from the sale of his goods. unless they yield him this profit, therefore, they do not repay him what they may very properly be said to have really cost him. though the price, therefore, which leaves him this profit is not always the lowest at which a dealer may sometimes sell his goods, it is the lowest at which he is likely to sell them for any considerable time; at least where there is perfect liberty, or where he may change his trade as often as he pleases. the actual price at which any commodity is commonly sold is called its market price. it may either be above, or below, or exactly the same with its natural price. the market price of every particular commodity is regulated by the proportion between the quantity which is actually brought to market, and the demand of those who are willing to pay the natural price of the commodity, or the whole value of the rent, labour, and profit, which must be paid in order to bring it thither. such people may be called the effectual demanders, and their demand the effectual demand; since it may be sufficient to effectuate the bringing of the commodity to market. it is different from the absolute demand. a very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six; he might like to have it; but his demand is not an effectual demand, as the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it. when the quantity of any commodity which is brought to market falls short of the effectual demand, all those who are willing to pay the whole value of the rent, wages, and profit, which must be paid in order to bring it thither, cannot be supplied with the quantity which they want. rather than want it altogether, some of them will be willing to give more. a competition will immediately begin among them, and the market price will rise more or less above the natural price, according as either the greatness of the deficiency, or the wealth and wanton luxury of the competitors, happen to animate more or less the eagerness of the competition. among competitors of equal wealth and luxury the same deficiency will generally occasion a more or less eager competition, according as the acquisition of the commodity happens to be of more or less importance to them. hence the exorbitant price of the necessaries of life during the blockade of a town or in a famine. when the quantity brought to market exceeds the effectual demand, it cannot be all sold to those who are willing to pay the whole value of the rent, wages, and profit, which must be paid in order to bring it thither. some part must be sold to those who are willing to pay less, and the low price which they give for it must reduce the price of the whole. the market price will sink more or less below the natural price, according as the greatness of the excess increases more or less the competition of the sellers, or according as it happens to be more or less important to them to get immediately rid of the commodity. the same excess in the importation of perishable, will occasion a much greater competition than in that of durable commodities; in the importation of oranges, for example, than in that of old iron. when the quantity brought to market is just sufficient to supply the effectual demand, and no more, the market price naturally comes to be either exactly, or as nearly as can be judged of, the same with the natural price. the whole quantity upon hand can be disposed of for this price, and cannot be disposed of for more. the competition of the different dealers obliges them all to accept of this price, but does not oblige them to accept of less. the quantity of every commodity brought to market naturally suits itself to the effectual demand. it is the interest of all those who employ their land, labour, or stock, in bringing any commodity to market, that the quantity never should exceed the effectual demand; and it is the interest of all other people that it never should fall short of that demand. if at any time it exceeds the effectual demand, some of the component parts of its price must be paid below their natural rate. if it is rent, the interest of the landlords will immediately prompt them to withdraw a part of their land; and if it is wages or profit, the interest of the labourers in the one case, and of their employers in the other, will prompt them to withdraw a part of their labour or stock from this employment. the quantity brought to market will soon be no more than sufficient to supply the effectual demand. all the different parts of its price will rise to their natural rate, and the whole price to its natural price. if, on the contrary, the quantity brought to market should at any time fall short of the effectual demand, some of the component parts of its price must rise above their natural rate. if it is rent, the interest of all other landlords will naturally prompt them to prepare more land for the raising of this commodity; if it is wages or profit, the interest of all other labourers and dealers will soon prompt them to employ more labour and stock in preparing and bringing it to market. the quantity brought thither will soon be sufficient to supply the effectual demand. all the different parts of its price will soon sink to their natural rate, and the whole price to its natural price. the natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating. different accidents may sometimes keep them suspended a good deal above it, and sometimes force them down even somewhat below it. but whatever may be the obstacles which hinder them from settling in this centre of repose and continuance, they are constantly tending towards it. the whole quantity of industry annually employed in order to bring any commodity to market naturally suits itself in this manner to the effectual demand. it naturally aims at bringing always that precise quantity thither which may be sufficient to supply, and no more than supply, that demand. but in some employments the same quantity of industry will in different years produce very different quantities of commodities; while in others it will produce always the same, or very nearly the same. the same number of labourers in husbandry will, in different years, produce very different quantities of corn, wine, oil, hops, etc. but the same number of spinners and weavers will every year produce the same or very nearly the same quantity of linen and woollen cloth. it is only the average produce of the one species of industry which can be suited in any respect to the effectual demand; and as its actual produce is frequently much greater and frequently much less than its average produce, the quantity of the commodities brought to market will sometimes exceed a good deal, and sometimes fall short a good deal, of the effectual demand. even though that demand therefore should continue always the same, their market price will be liable to great fluctuations, will sometimes fall a good deal below, and sometimes rise a good deal above their natural price. in the other species of industry, the produce of equal quantities of labour being always the same, or very nearly the same, it can be more exactly suited to the effectual demand. while that demand continues the same, therefore, the market price of the commodities is likely to do so too, and to be either altogether, or as nearly as can be judged of, the same with the natural price. that the price of linen and woolen cloth is liable neither to such frequent nor to such great variations as the price of corn, every man's experience will inform him. the price of the one species of commodities varies only with the variations in the demand: that of the other varies, not only with the variations in the demand, but with the much greater and more frequent variations in the quantity of what is brought to market in order to supply that demand. the occasional and temporary fluctuations in the market price of any commodity fall chiefly upon those parts of its price which resolve themselves into wages and profit. that part which resolves itself into rent is less affected by them. a rent certain in money is not in the least affected by them either in its rate or in its value. a rent which consists either in a certain proportion or in a certain quantity of the rude produce, is no doubt affected in its yearly value by all the occasional and temporary fluctuations in the market price of that rude produce; but it is seldom affected by them in its yearly rate. in settling the terms of the lease, the landlord and farmer endeavour, according to their best judgment, to adjust that rate, not to the temporary and occasional, but to the average and ordinary price of the produce. such fluctuations affect both the value and the rate either of wages or of profit, according as the market happens to be either overstocked or understocked with commodities or with labour; with work done, or with work to be done. a public mourning raises the price of black cloth (with which the market is almost always understocked upon such occasions), and augments the profits of the merchants who possess any considerable quantity of it. it has no effect upon the wages of the weavers. the market is understocked with commodities, not with labour; with work done, not with work to be done. it raises the wages of journeymen tailors. the market is here understocked with labour. there is an effectual demand for more labour, for more work to be done than can be had. it sinks the price of coloured silks and cloths, and thereby reduces the profits of the merchants who have any considerable quantity of them upon hand. it sinks, too, the wages of the workmen employed in preparing such commodities, for which all demand is stopped for six months, perhaps for a twelvemonth. the market is here over-stocked both with commodities and with labour. but though the market price of every particular commodity is in this manner continually gravitating, if one may say so, towards the natural price, yet sometimes particular accidents, sometimes natural causes, and sometimes particular regulations of police, may, in many commodities, keep up the market price, for a long time together, a good deal above the natural price. when by an increase in the effectual demand, the market price of some particular commodity happens to rise a good deal above the natural price, those who employ their stocks in supplying that market are generally careful to conceal this change. if it was commonly known, their great profit would tempt so many new rivals to employ their stocks in the same way that, the effectual demand being fully supplied, the market price would soon be reduced to the natural price, and perhaps for some time even below it. if the market is at a great distance from the residence of those who supply it, they may sometimes be able to keep the secret for several years together, and may so long enjoy their extraordinary profits without any new rivals. secrets of this kind, however, it must be acknowledged, can seldom be long kept; and the extraordinary profit can last very little longer than they are kept. secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade. a dyer who has found the means of producing a particular colour with materials which cost only half the price of those commonly made use of, may, with good management, enjoy the advantage of his discovery as long as he lives, and even leave it as a legacy to his posterity. his extraordinary gains arise from the high price which is paid for his private labour. they properly consist in the high wages of that labour. but as they are repeated upon every part of his stock, and as their whole amount bears, upon that account, a regular proportion to it, they are commonly considered as extraordinary profits of stock. such enhancements of the market price are evidently the effects of particular accidents, of which, however, the operation may sometimes last for many years together. some natural productions require such a singularity of soil and situation that all the land in a great country, which is fit for producing them, may not be sufficient to supply the effectual demand. the whole quantity brought to market, therefore, may be disposed of to those who are willing to give more than what is sufficient to pay the rent of the land which produced them, together with the wages of the labour, and the profits of the stock which were employed in preparing and bringing them to market, according to their natural rates. such commodities may continue for whole centuries together to be sold at this high price; and that part of it which resolves itself into the rent of land is in this case the part which is generally paid above its natural rate. the rent of the land which affords such singular and esteemed productions, like the rent of some vineyards in france of a peculiarly happy soil and situation, bears no regular proportion to the rent of other equally fertile and equally well-cultivated land in its neighbourhood. the wages of the labour and the profits of the stock employed in bringing such commodities to market, on the contrary, are seldom out of their natural proportion to those of the other employments of labour and stock in their neighbourhood. such enhancements of the market price are evidently the effect of natural causes which may hinder the effectual demand from ever being fully supplied, and which may continue, therefore, to operate for ever. a monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures. the monopolists, by keeping the market constantly understocked, by never fully supplying the effectual demand, sell their commodities much above the natural price, and raise their emoluments, whether they consist in wages or profit, greatly above their natural rate. the price of monopoly is upon every occasion the highest which can be got. the natural price, or the price of free competition, on the contrary, is the lowest which can be taken, not upon every occasion, indeed, but for any considerable time together. the one is upon every occasion the highest which can be squeezed out of the buyers, or which, it is supposed, they will consent to give: the other is the lowest which the sellers can commonly afford to take, and at the same time continue their business. the exclusive privileges of corporations, statutes of apprenticeship, and all those laws which restrain, in particular employments, the competition to a smaller number than might otherwise go into them, have the same tendency, though in a less degree. they are a sort of enlarged monopolies, and may frequently, for ages together, and in whole classes of employments, keep up the market price of particular commodities above the natural price, and maintain both the wages of the labour and the profits of the stock employed about them somewhat above their natural rate. such enhancements of the market price may last as long as the regulations of police which give occasion to them. the market price of any particular commodity, though it may continue long above, can seldom continue long below its natural price. whatever part of it was paid below the natural rate, the persons whose interest it affected would immediately feel the loss, and would immediately withdraw either so much land, or so much labour, or so much stock, from being employed about it, that the quantity brought to market would soon be no more than sufficient to supply the effectual demand. its market price, therefore, would soon rise to the natural price. this at least would be the case where there was perfect liberty. the same statutes of apprenticeship and other corporation laws indeed, which, when a manufacture is in prosperity, enable the workman to raise his wages a good deal above their natural rate, sometimes oblige him, when it decays, to let them down a good deal below it. as in the one case they exclude many people from his employment, so in the other they exclude him from many employments. the effect of such regulations, however, is not near so durable in sinking the workman's wages below, as in raising them above their natural rate. their operation in the one way may endure for many centuries, but in the other it can last no longer than the lives of some of the workmen who were bred to the business in the time of its prosperity. when they are gone, the number of those who are afterwards educated to the trade will naturally suit itself to the effectual demand. the police must be as violent as that of indostan or ancient egypt (where every man was bound by a principle of religion to follow the occupation of his father, and was supposed to commit the most horrid sacrilege if he changed it for another), which can in any particular employment, and for several generations together, sink either the wages of labour or the profits of stock below their natural rate. this is all that i think necessary to be observed at present concerning the deviations, whether occasional or permanent, of the market price of commodities from the natural price. the natural price itself varies with the natural rate of each of its component parts, of wages, profit, and rent; and in every society this rate varies according to their circumstances, according to their riches or poverty, their advancing, stationary, or declining condition. i shall, in the four following chapters, endeavour to explain, as fully and distinctly as i can, the causes of those different variations. first, i shall endeavour to explain what are the circumstances which naturally determine the rate of wages, and in what manner those circumstances are affected by the riches or poverty, by the advancing, stationary, or declining state of the society. secondly, i shall endeavour to show what are the circumstances which naturally determine the rate of profit, and in what manner, too, those circumstances are affected by the like variations in the state of the society. though pecuniary wages and profit are very different in the different employments of labour and stock; yet a certain proportion seems commonly to take place between both the pecuniary wages in all the different employments of labour, and the pecuniary profits in all the different employments of stock. this proportion, it will appear hereafter, depends partly upon the nature of the different employments, and partly upon the different laws and policy of the society in which they are carried on. but though in many respects dependent upon the laws and policy, this proportion seems to be little affected by the riches or poverty of that society; by its advancing, stationary, or declining condition; but to remain the same or very nearly the same in all those different states. i shall, in the third place, endeavour to explain all the different circumstances which regulate this proportion. in the fourth and last place, i shall endeavour to show what are the circumstances which regulate the rent of land, and which either raise or lower the real price of all the different substances which it produces. chapter viii of the wages of labour the produce of labour constitutes the natural recompense or wages of labour. in that original state of things, which precedes both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer. he has neither landlord nor master to share with him. had this state continued, the wages of labour would have augmented with all those improvements in its productive powers to which the division of labour gives occasion. all things would gradually have become cheaper. they would have been produced by a smaller quantity of labour; and as the commodities produced by equal quantities of labour would naturally in this state of things be exchanged for one another, they would have been purchased likewise with the produce of a smaller quantity. but though all things would have become cheaper in reality, in appearance many things might have become dearer than before, or have been exchanged for a greater quantity of other goods. let us suppose, for example, that in the greater part of employments the productive powers of labour had been improved to ten fold, or that a day's labour could produce ten times the quantity of work which it had done originally; but that in a particular employment they had been improved, only to double, or that a day's labour could produce only twice the quantity of work which it had done before. in exchanging the produce of a day's labour in the greater part of employments for that of a day's labour in this particular one, ten times the original quantity of work in them would purchase only twice the original quantity in it. any particular quantity in it, therefore, a pound weight, for example, would appear to be five times dearer than before. in reality, however, it would be twice as cheap. though it required five times the quantity of other goods to purchase it, it would require only half the quantity of labour either to purchase or to produce it. the acquisition, therefore, would be twice as easy as before. but this original state of things, in which the labourer enjoyed the whole produce of his own labour, could not last beyond the first introduction of the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock. it was at an end, therefore, long before the most considerable improvements were made in the productive powers of labour, and it would be to no purpose to trace further what might have been its effects upon the recompense or wages of labour. as soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either raise, or collect from it. his rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land. it seldom happens that the person who tills the ground has wherewithal to maintain himself till he reaps the harvest. his maintenance is generally advanced to him from the stock of a master, the farmer who employs him, and who would have no interest to employ him, unless he was to share in the produce of his labour, or unless his stock was to be replaced to him with a profit. this profit, makes a second deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land. the produce of almost all other labour is liable to the like deduction of profit. in all arts and manufactures the greater part of the workmen stand in need of a master to advance them the materials of their work, and their wages and maintenance till it be completed. he shares in the produce of their labour, or in the value which it adds to the materials upon which it is bestowed; and in this share consists his profit. it sometimes happens, indeed, that a single independent workman has stock sufficient both to purchase the materials of his work, and to maintain himself till it be completed. he is both master and workman, and enjoys the whole produce of his own labour, or the whole value which it adds to the materials upon which it is bestowed. it includes what are usually two distinct revenues, belonging to two distinct persons, the profits of stock, and the wages of labour. such cases, however, are not very frequent, and in every part of europe, twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is independent; and the wages of labour are everywhere understood to be, what they usually are, when the labourer is one person, and the owner of the stock which employs him another. what are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. the workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. the former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour. it is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. the masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. we have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. in all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. a landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. in the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate. we rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. but whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. to violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. we seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. these are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of their labour. their usual pretences are, sometimes the high price of provisions; sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work. but whether their combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. in order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. they are desperate, and act with the folly and extravagance of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. the masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen. the workmen, accordingly, very seldom derive any advantage from the violence of those tumultuous combinations, which, partly from the interposition of the civil magistrate, partly from the necessity superior steadiness of the masters, partly from the necessity which the greater part of the workmen are under of submitting for the sake of present subsistence, generally end in nothing, but the punishment or ruin of the ringleaders. but though in disputes with their workmen, masters must generally have the advantage, there is, however, a certain rate below which it seems impossible to reduce, for any considerable time, the ordinary wages even of the lowest species of labour. a man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. they must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. mr. cantillon seems, upon this account, to suppose that the lowest species of common labourers must everywhere earn at least double their own maintenance, in order that one with another they may be enabled to bring up two children; the labour of the wife, on account of her necessary attendance on the children, being supposed no more than sufficient to provide for herself. but one half the children born, it is computed, die before the age of manhood. the poorest labourers, therefore, according to this account, must, one with another, attempt to rear at least four children, in order that two may have an equal chance of living to that age. but the necessary maintenance of four children, it is supposed, may be nearly equal to that of one man. the labour of an able-bodied slave, the same author adds, is computed to be worth double his maintenance; and that of the meanest labourer, he thinks, cannot be worth less than that of an ablebodied slave. thus far at least seems certain, that, in order to bring up a family, the labour of the husband and wife together must, even in the lowest species of common labour, be able to earn something more than what is precisely necessary for their own maintenance; but in what proportion, whether in that above mentioned, or in any other, i shall not take upon me to determine. there are certain circumstances, however, which sometimes give the labourers an advantage, and enable them to raise their wages considerably above this rate; evidently the lowest which is consistent with common humanity. when in any country the demand for those who live by wages, labourers, journeymen, servants of every kind, is continually increasing; when every year furnishes employment for a greater number than had been employed the year before, the workmen have no occasion to combine in order to raise their wages. the scarcity of hands occasions a competition among masters, who bid against one another, in order to get workmen, and thus voluntarily break through the natural combination of masters not to raise wages. the demand for those who live by wages, it is evident, cannot increase but in proportion to the increase of the funds which are destined for the payment of wages. these funds are of two kinds; first, revenue which is over and above what is necessary for the maintenance; and, secondly, the stock which is over and above what is necessary for the employment of their masters. when the landlord, annuitant, or monied man, has a greater revenue than what he judges sufficient to maintain his own family, he employs either the whole or a part of the surplus in maintaining one or more menial servants. increase this surplus, and he will naturally increase the number of those servants. when an independent workman, such as a weaver or shoemaker, has got more stock than what is sufficient to purchase the materials of his own work, and to maintain himself till he can dispose of it, he naturally employs one or more journeymen with the surplus, in order to make a profit by their work. increase this surplus, and he will naturally increase the number of his journeymen. the demand for those who live by wages, therefore, necessarily increases with the increase of the revenue and stock of every country, and cannot possibly increase without it. the increase of revenue and stock is the increase of national wealth. the demand for those who live by wages, therefore, naturally increases with the increase of national wealth, and cannot possibly increase without it. it is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labour. it is not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are highest. england is certainly, in the present times, a much richer country than any part of north america. the wages of labour, however, are much higher in north america than in any part of england. in the province of new york, common labourers earn three shillings and sixpence currency, equal to two shillings sterling, a day; ship carpenters, ten shillings and sixpence currency, with a pint of rum worth sixpence sterling, equal in all to six shillings and sixpence sterling; house carpenters and bricklayers, eight shillings currency, equal to four shillings and sixpence sterling; journeymen tailors, five shillings currency, equal to about two shillings and tenpence sterling. these prices are all above the london price; and wages are said to be as high in the other colonies as in new york. the price of provisions is everywhere in north america much lower than in england. a dearth has never been known there. in the worst seasons they have always had a sufficiency for themselves, though less for exportation. if the money price of labour, therefore, be higher than it is anywhere in the mother country, its real price, the real command of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it conveys to the labourer must be higher in a still greater proportion. but though north america is not yet so rich as england, it is much more thriving, and advancing with much greater rapidity to the further acquisition of riches. the most decisive mark of the prosperity of any country is the increase of the number of its inhabitants. in great britain, and most other european countries, they are not supposed to double in less than five hundred years. in the british colonies in north america, it has been found that they double in twenty or five-and-twenty years. nor in the present times is this increase principally owing to the continual importation of new inhabitants, but to the great multiplication of the species. those who live to old age, it is said, frequently see there from fifty to a hundred, and sometimes many more, descendants from their own body. labour is there so well rewarded that a numerous family of children, instead of being a burthen, is a source of opulence and prosperity to the parents. the labour of each child, before it can leave their house, is computed to be worth a hundred pounds clear gain to them. a young widow with four or five young children, who, among the middling or inferior ranks of people in europe, would have so little chance for a second husband, is there frequently courted as a sort of fortune. the value of children is the greatest of all encouragements to marriage. we cannot, therefore, wonder that the people in north america should generally marry very young. notwithstanding the great increase occasioned by such early marriages, there is a continual complaint of the scarcity of hands in north america. the demand for labourers, the funds destined for maintaining them, increase, it seems, still faster than they can find labourers to employ. though the wealth of a country should be very great, yet if it has been long stationary, we must not expect to find the wages of labour very high in it. the funds destined for the payment of wages, the revenue and stock of its inhabitants, may be of the greatest extent; but if they have continued for several centuries of the same, or very nearly of the same extent, the number of labourers employed every year could easily supply, and even more than supply, the number wanted the following year. there could seldom be any scarcity of hands, nor could the masters be obliged to bid against one another in order to get them. the hands, on the contrary, would, in this case, naturally multiply beyond their employment. there would be a constant scarcity of employment, and the labourers would be obliged to bid against one another in order to get it. if in such a country the wages of labour had ever been more than sufficient to maintain the labourer, and to enable him to bring up a family, the competition of the labourers and the interest of the masters would soon reduce them to this lowest rate which is consistent with common humanity. china has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in world. it seems, however, to have been long stationary. marco polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times. it had perhaps, even long before his time, acquired that full complement of riches which the nature of its laws and institutions permits it to acquire. the accounts of all travellers, inconsistent in many other respects, agree in the low wages of labour, and in the difficulty which a labourer finds in bringing up a family in china. if by digging the ground a whole day he can get what will purchase a small quantity of rice in the evening, he is contented. the condition of artificers is, if possible, still worse. instead of waiting indolently in their workhouses, for the calls of their customers, as in europe, they are continually running about the streets with the tools of their respective trades, offering their service, and as it were begging employment. the poverty of the lower ranks of people in china far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations in europe. in the neighbourhood of canton many hundred, it is commonly said, many thousand families have no habitation on the land, but live constantly in little fishing boats upon the rivers and canals. the subsistence which they find there is so scanty that they are eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard from any european ship. any carrion, the carcase of a dead dog or cat, for example, though half putrid and stinking, is as welcome to them as the most wholesome food to the people of other countries. marriage is encouraged in china, not by the profitableness of children, but by the liberty of destroying them. in all great towns several are every night exposed in the street, or drowned like puppies in the water. the performance of this horrid office is even said to be the avowed business by which some people earn their subsistence. china, however, though it may perhaps stand still, does not seem to go backwards. its towns are nowhere deserted by their inhabitants. the lands which had once been cultivated are nowhere neglected. the same or very nearly the same annual labour must therefore continue to be performed, and the funds destined for maintaining it must not, consequently, be sensibly diminished. the lowest class of labourers, therefore, notwithstanding their scanty subsistence, must some way or another make shift to continue their race so far as to keep up their usual numbers. but it would be otherwise in a country where the funds destined for the maintenance of labour were sensibly decaying. every year the demand for servants and labourers would, in all the different classes of employments, be less than it had been the year before. many who had been bred in the superior classes, not being able to find employment in their own business, would be glad to seek it in the lowest. the lowest class being not only overstocked with its own workmen, but with the overflowings of all the other classes, the competition for employment would be so great in it, as to reduce the wages of labour to the most miserable and scanty subsistence of the labourer. many would not be able to find employment even upon these hard terms, but would either starve, or be driven to seek a subsistence either by begging, or by the perpetration perhaps of the greatest enormities. want, famine, and mortality would immediately prevail in that class, and from thence extend themselves to all the superior classes, till the number of inhabitants in the country was reduced to what could easily be maintained by the revenue and stock which remained in it, and which had escaped either the tyranny or calamity which had destroyed the rest. this perhaps is nearly the present state of bengal, and of some other of the english settlements in the east indies. in a fertile country which had before been much depopulated, where subsistence, consequently, should not be very difficult, and where, notwithstanding, three or four hundred thousand people die of hunger in one year, we may be assured that the funds destined for the maintenance of the labouring poor are fast decaying. the difference between the genius of the british constitution which protects and governs north america, and that of the mercantile company which oppresses and domineers in the east indies, cannot perhaps be better illustrated than by the different state of those countries. the liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. the scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going fast backwards. in great britain the wages of labour seem, in the present times, to be evidently more than what is precisely necessary to enable the labourer to bring up a family. in order to satisfy ourselves upon this point it will not be necessary to enter into any tedious or doubtful calculation of what may be the lowest sum upon which it is possible to do this. there are many plain symptoms that the wages of labour are nowhere in this country regulated by this lowest rate which is consistent with common humanity. first, in almost every part of great britain there is a distinction, even in the lowest species of labour, between summer and winter wages. summer wages are always highest. but on account of the extraordinary expense of fuel, the maintenance of a family is most expensive in winter. wages, therefore, being highest when this expense is lowest, it seems evident that they are not regulated by what is necessary for this expense; but by the quantity and supposed value of the work. a labourer, it may be said indeed, ought to save part of his summer wages in order to defray his winter expense; and that through the whole year they do not exceed what is necessary to maintain his family through the whole year. a slave, however, or one absolutely dependent on us for immediate subsistence, would not be treated in this manner. his daily subsistence would be proportioned to his daily necessities. secondly, the wages of labour do not in great britain fluctuate with the price of provisions. these vary everywhere from year to year, frequently from month to month. but in many places the money price of labour remains uniformly the same sometimes for half a century together. if in these places, therefore, the labouring poor can maintain their families in dear years, they must be at their ease in times of moderate plenty, and in affluence in those of extraordinary cheapness. the high price of provisions during these ten years past has not in many parts of the kingdom been accompanied with any sensible rise in the money price of labour. it has, indeed, in some, owing probably more to the increase of the demand for labour than to that of the price of provisions. thirdly, as the price of provisions varies more from year to year than the wages of labour, so, on the other hand, the wages of labour vary more from place to place than the price of provisions. the prices of bread and butcher's meat are generally the same or very nearly the same through the greater part of the united kingdom. these and most other things which are sold by retail, the way in which the labouring poor buy all things, are generally fully as cheap or cheaper in great towns than in the remoter parts of the country, for reasons which i shall have occasion to explain hereafter. but the wages of labour in a great town and its neighbourhood are frequently a fourth or a fifth part, twenty or five-and-twenty per cent higher than at a few miles distance. eighteenpence a day may be reckoned the common price of labour in london and its neighbourhood. at a few miles distance it falls to fourteen and fifteenpence. tenpence may be reckoned its price in edinburgh and its neighbourhood. at a few miles distance it falls to eightpence, the usual price of common labour through the greater part of the low country of scotland, where it varies a good deal less than in england. such a difference of prices, which it seems is not always sufficient to transport a man from one parish to another, would necessarily occasion so great a transportation of the most bulky commodities, not only from one parish to another, but from one end of the kingdom, almost from one end of the world to the other, as would soon reduce them more nearly to a level. after all that has been said of the levity and inconstancy of human nature, it appears evidently from experience that a man is of all sorts of luggage the most difficult to be transported. if the labouring poor, therefore, can maintain their families in those parts of the kingdom where the price of labour is lowest, they must be in affluence where it is highest. fourthly, the variations in the price of labour not only do not correspond either in place or time with those in the price of provisions, but they are frequently quite opposite. grain, the food of the common people, is dearer in scotland than in england, whence scotland receives almost every year very large supplies. but english corn must be sold dearer in scotland, the country to which it is brought, than in england, the country from which it comes; and in proportion to its quality it cannot be sold dearer in scotland than the scotch corn that comes to the same market in competition with it. the quality of grain depends chiefly upon the quantity of flour or meal which it yields at the mill, and in this respect english grain is so much superior to the scotch that, though often dearer in appearance, or in proportion to the measure of its bulk, it is generally cheaper in reality, or in proportion to its quality, or even to the measure of its weight. the price of labour, on the contrary, is dearer in england than in scotland. if the labouring poor, therefore, can maintain their families in the one part of the united kingdom, they must be in affluence in the other. oatmeal indeed supplies the common people in scotland with the greatest and the best part of their food, which is in general much inferior to that of their neighbours of the same rank in england. this difference, however, in the mode of their subsistence is not the cause, but the effect of the difference in their wages; though, by a strange misapprehension, i have frequently heard it represented as the cause. it is not because one man keeps a coach while his neighbour walks afoot that the one is rich and the other poor; but because the one is rich he keeps a coach, and because the other is poor he walks afoot. during the course of the last century, taking one year with another, grain was dearer in both parts of the united kingdom than during that of the present. this is a matter of fact which cannot now admit of any reasonable doubt; and the proof of it is, if possible, still more decisive with regard to scotland than with regard to england. it is in scotland supported by the evidence of the public fiars, annual valuations made upon oath, according to the actual state of the markets, of all the different sorts of grain in every different county of scotland. if such direct proof could require any collateral evidence to confirm it, i would observe that this has likewise been the case in france, and probably in most other parts of europe. with regard to france there is the clearest proof. but though it is certain that in both parts of the united kingdom grain was somewhat dearer in the last century than in the present, it is equally certain that labour was much cheaper. if the labouring poor, therefore, could bring up their families then, they must be much more at their ease now. in the last century, the most usual day-wages of common labour through the greater part of scotland were sixpence in summer and fivepence in winter. three shillings a week, the same price very nearly, still continues to be paid in some parts of the highlands and western islands. through the greater part of the low country the most usual wages of common labour are now eightpence a day; tenpence, sometimes a shilling about edinburgh, in the counties which border upon england, probably on account of that neighbourhood, and in a few other places where there has lately been a considerable rise in the demand for labour, about glasgow, carron, ayrshire, etc. in england the improvements of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce began much earlier than in scotland. the demand for labour, and consequently its price, must necessarily have increased with those improvements. in the last century, accordingly, as well as in the present, the wages of labour were higher in england than in scotland. they have risen, too, considerably since that time, though, on account of the greater variety of wages paid there in different places, it is more difficult to ascertain how much. in 1614, the pay of a foot soldier was the same as in the present times, eightpence a day. when it was first established it would naturally be regulated by the usual wages of common labourers, the rank of people from which foot soldiers are commonly drawn. lord chief justice hales, who wrote in the time of charles ii, computes the necessary expense of a labourer's family, consisting of six persons, the father and mother, two children able to do something, and two not able, at ten shillings a week, or twenty-six pounds a year. if they cannot earn this by their labour, they must make it up, he supposes, either by begging or stealing. he appears to have inquired very carefully into this subject. in 1688, mr. gregory king, whose skill in political arithmetic is so much extolled by doctor davenant, computed the ordinary income of labourers and out-servants to be fifteen pounds a year to a family, which he supposed to consist, one with another, of three and a half persons. his calculation, therefore, though different in appearance, corresponds very nearly at bottom with that of judge hales. both suppose the weekly expense of such families to be about twenty pence a head. both the pecuniary income and expense of such families have increased considerably since that time through the greater part of the kingdom; in some places more, and in some less; though perhaps scarce anywhere so much as some exaggerated accounts of the present wages of labour have lately represented them to the public. the price of labour, it must be observed, cannot be ascertained very accurately anywhere, different prices being often paid at the same place and for the same sort of labour, not only according to the different abilities of the workmen, but according to the easiness or hardness of the masters. where wages are not regulated by law, all that we can pretend to determine is what are the most usual; and experience seems to show that law can never regulate them properly, though it has often pretended to do so. the real recompense of labour, the real quantity of the necessaries and conveniences of life which it can procure to the labourer, has, during the course of the present century, increased perhaps in a still greater proportion than its money price. not only grain has become somewhat cheaper, but many other things from which the industrious poor derive an agreeable and wholesome variety of food have become a great deal cheaper. potatoes, for example, do not at present, through the greater part of the kingdom, cost half the price which they used to do thirty or forty years ago. the same thing may be said of turnips, carrots, cabbages; things which were formerly never raised but by the spade, but which are now commonly raised by the plough. all sort of garden stuff, too, has become cheaper. the greater part of the apples and even of the onions consumed in great britain were in the last century imported from flanders. the great improvements in the coarser manufactures of both linen and woollen cloth furnish the labourers with cheaper and better clothing; and those in the manufactures of the coarser metals, with cheaper and better instruments of trade, as well as with many agreeable and convenient pieces of household furniture. soap, salt, candles, leather, and fermented liquors have, indeed, become a good deal dearer; chiefly from the taxes which have been laid upon them. the quantity of these, however, which the labouring poor are under any necessity of consuming, is so very small, that the increase in their price does not compensate the diminution in that of so many other things. the common complaint that luxury extends itself even to the lowest ranks of the people, and that the labouring poor will not now be contented with the same food, clothing, and lodging which satisfied them in former times, may convince us that it is not the money price of labour only, but its real recompense, which has augmented. is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society? the answer seems at first sight abundantly plain. servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. but what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. no society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. it is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged. poverty, though it no doubt discourages, does not always prevent marriage. it seems even to be favourable to generation. a half-starved highland woman frequently bears more than twenty children, while a pampered fine lady is often incapable of bearing any, and is generally exhausted by two or three. barrenness, so frequent among women of fashion, is very rare among those of inferior station. luxury in the fair sex, while it inflames perhaps the passion for enjoyment, seems always to weaken, and frequently to destroy altogether, the powers of generation. but poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. the tender plant is produced, but in so cold a soil and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies. it is not uncommon, i have been frequently told, in the highlands of scotland for a mother who has borne twenty children not to have two alive. several officers of great experience have assured me, that so far from recruiting their regiment, they have never been able to supply it with drums and fifes from all the soldiers' children that were born in it. a greater number of fine children, however, is seldom seen anywhere than about a barrack of soldiers. very few of them, it seems, arrive at the age of thirteen or fourteen. in some places one half the children born die before they are four years of age; in many places before they are seven; and in almost all places before they are nine or ten. this great mortality, however, will everywhere be found chiefly among the children of the common people, who cannot afford to tend them with the same care as those of better station. though their marriages are generally more fruitful than those of people of fashion, a smaller proportion of their children arrive at maturity. in foundling hospitals, and among the children brought up by parish charities, the mortality is still greater than among those of the common people. every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply beyond it. but in civilised society it is only among the inferior ranks of people that the scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the further multiplication of the human species; and it can do so in no other way than by destroying a great part of the children which their fruitful marriages produce. the liberal reward of labour, by enabling them to provide better for their children, and consequently to bring up a greater number, naturally tends to widen and extend those limits. it deserves to be remarked, too, that it necessarily does this as nearly as possible in the proportion which the demand for labour requires. if this demand is continually increasing, the reward of labour must necessarily encourage in such a manner the marriage and multiplication of labourers, as may enable them to supply that continually increasing demand by a continually increasing population. if the reward should at any time be less than what was requisite for this purpose, the deficiency of hands would soon raise it; and if it should at any time be more, their excessive multiplication would soon lower it to this necessary rate. the market would be so much understocked with labour in the one case, and so much overstocked in the other, as would soon force back its price to that proper rate which the circumstances of the society required. it is in this manner that the demand for men, like that for any other commodity, necessarily regulates the production of men; quickens it when it goes on too slowly, and stops it when it advances too fast. it is this demand which regulates and determines the state of propagation in all the different countries of the world, in north america, in europe, and in china; which renders it rapidly progressive in the first, slow and gradual in the second, and altogether stationary in the last. the wear and tear of a slave, it has been said, is at the expense of his master; but that of a free servant is at his own expense. the wear and tear of the latter, however, is, in reality, as much at the expense of his master as that of the former. the wages paid to journeymen and servants of every kind must be such as may enable them, one with another, to continue the race of journeymen and servants, according as the increasing, diminishing, or stationary demand of the society may happen to require. but though the wear and tear of a free servant be equally at the expense of his master, it generally costs him much less than that of a slave. the fund destined for replacing or repairing, if i may say so, the wear and tear of the slave, is commonly managed by a negligent master or careless overseer. that destined for performing the same office with regard to the free man, is managed by the free man himself. the disorders which generally prevail in the economy of the rich, naturally introduce themselves into the management of the former: the strict frugality and parsimonious attention of the poor as naturally establish themselves in that of the latter. under such different management, the same purpose must require very different degrees of expense to execute it. it appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, i believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves. it is found to do so even at boston, new york, and philadelphia, where the wages of common labour are so very high. the liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the effect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. to complain of it is to lament over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest public prosperity. it deserves to be remarked, perhaps, that it is in the progressive state, while the society is advancing to the further acquisition, rather than when it has acquired its full complement of riches, that the condition of the labouring poor, of the great body of the people, seems to be the happiest and the most comfortable. it is hard in the stationary, and miserable in the declining state. the progressive state is in reality the cheerful and the hearty state to all the different orders of the society. the stationary is dull; the declining, melancholy. the liberal reward of labour, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. the wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. a plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious than where they are low: in england, for example, than in scotland; in the neighbourhood of great towns than in remote country places. some workmen, indeed, when they can earn in four days what will maintain them through the week, will be idle the other three. this, however, is by no means the case with the greater part. workmen, on the contrary, when they are liberally paid by the piece, are very apt to overwork themselves, and to ruin their health and constitution in a few years. a carpenter in london, and in some other places, is not supposed to last in his utmost vigour above eight years. something of the same kind happens in many other trades, in which the workmen are paid by the piece, as they generally are in manufactures, and even in country labour, wherever wages are higher than ordinary. almost every class of artificers is subject to some peculiar infirmity occasioned by excessive application to their peculiar species of work. ramuzzini, an eminent italian physician, has written a particular book concerning such diseases. we do not reckon our soldiers the most industrious set of people among us. yet when soldiers have been employed in some particular sorts of work, and liberally paid by the piece, their officers have frequently been obliged to stipulate with the undertaker, that they should not be allowed to earn above a certain sum every day, according to the rate at which they were paid. till this stipulation was made, mutual emulation and the desire of greater gain frequently prompted them to overwork themselves, and to hurt their health by excessive labour. excessive application during four days of the week is frequently the real cause of the idleness of the other three, so much and so loudly complained of. great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together, is in most men naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. it is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but sometimes, too, of dissipation and diversion. if it is not complied with, the consequences are often dangerous, and sometimes fatal, and such as almost always, sooner or later, brings on the peculiar infirmity of the trade. if masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate than to animate the application of many of their workmen. it will be found, i believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately as to be able to work constantly not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work. in cheap years, it is pretended, workmen are generally more idle, and in dear ones more industrious than ordinary. a plentiful subsistence, therefore, it has been concluded, relaxes, and a scanty one quickens their industry. that a little more plenty than ordinary may render some workmen idle, cannot well be doubted; but that it should have this effect upon the greater part, or that men in general should work better when they are ill fed than when they are well fed, when they are disheartened than when they are in good spirits, when they are frequently sick than when they are generally in good health, seems not very probable. years of dearth, it is to be observed, are generally among the common people years of sickness and mortality, which cannot fail to diminish the produce of their industry. in years of plenty, servants frequently leave their masters, and trust their subsistence to what they can make by their own industry. but the same cheapness of provisions, by increasing the fund which is destined for the maintenance of servants, encourages masters, farmers especially, to employ a greater number. farmers upon such occasions expect more profit from their corn by maintaining a few more labouring servants than by selling it at a low price in the market. the demand for servants increases, while the number of those who offer to supply that demand diminishes. the price of labour, therefore, frequently rises in cheap years. in years of scarcity, the difficulty and uncertainty of subsistence make all such people eager to return to service. but the high price of provisions, by diminishing the funds destined for the maintenance of servants, disposes masters rather to diminish than to increase the number of those they have. in dear years, too, poor independent workmen frequently consume the little stocks with which they had used to supply themselves with the materials of their work, and are obliged to become journeymen for subsistence. more people want employment than can easily get it; many are willing to take it upon lower terms than ordinary, and the wages of both servants and journeymen frequently sink in dear years. masters of all sorts, therefore, frequently make better bargains with their servants in dear than in cheap years, and find them more humble and dependent in the former than in the latter. they naturally, therefore, commend the former as more favourable to industry. landlords and farmers, besides, two of the largest classes of masters, have another reason for being pleased with dear years. the rents of the one and the profits of the other depend very much upon the price of provisions. nothing can be more absurd, however, than to imagine that men in general should work less when they work for themselves, than when they work for other people. a poor independent workman will generally be more industrious than even a journeyman who works by the piece. the one enjoys the whole produce of his own industry; the other shares it with his master. the one, in his separate independent state, is less liable to the temptations of bad company, which in large manufactories so frequently ruin the morals of the other. the superiority of the independent workman over those servants who are hired by the month or by the year, and whose wages and maintenance are the same whether they do much or do little, is likely to be still greater. cheap years tend to increase the proportion of independent workmen to journeymen and servants of all kinds, and dear years to diminish it. a french author of great knowledge and ingenuity, mr. messance, receiver of the taillies in the election of st. etienne, endeavours to show that the poor do more work in cheap than in dear years, by comparing the quantity and value of the goods made upon those different occasions in three different manufactures; one of coarse woollens carried on at elbeuf; one of linen, and another of silk, both which extend through the whole generality of rouen. it appears from his account, which is copied from the registers of the public offices, that the quantity and value of the goods made in all those three manufactures has generally been greater in cheap than in dear years; and that it has always been greatest in the cheapest, and least in the dearest years. all the three seem to be stationary manufactures, or which, though their produce may vary somewhat from year to year, are upon the whole neither going backwards nor forwards. the manufacture of linen in scotland, and that of coarse woollens in the west riding of yorkshire, are growing manufactures, of which the produce is generally, though with some variations, increasing both in quantity and value. upon examining, however, the accounts which have been published of their annual produce, i have not been able to observe that its variations have had any sensible connection with the dearness or cheapness of the seasons. in 1740, a year of great scarcity, both manufactures, indeed, appear to have declined very considerably. but in 1756, another year of great scarcity, the scotch manufacture made more than ordinary advances. the yorkshire manufacture, indeed, declined, and its produce did not rise to what it had been in 1755 till 1766, after the repeal of the american stamp act. in that and the following year it greatly exceeded what it had ever been before, and it has continued to advance ever since. the produce of all great manufactures for distant sale must necessarily depend, not so much upon the dearness or cheapness of the seasons in the countries where they are carried on as upon the circumstances which affect the demand in the countries where they are consumed; upon peace or war, upon the prosperity or declension of other rival manufactures, and upon the good or bad humour of their principal customers. a great part of the extraordinary work, besides, which is probably done in cheap years, never enters the public registers of manufactures. the men servants who leave their masters become independent labourers. the women return to their parents, and commonly spin in order to make clothes for themselves and their families. even the independent workmen do not always work for public sale, but are employed by some of their neighbours in manufactures for family use. the produce of their labour, therefore, frequently makes no figure in those public registers of which the records are sometimes published with so much parade, and from which our merchants and manufacturers would often vainly pretend to announce the prosperity or declension of the greatest empires. though the variations in the price of labour not only do not always correspond with those in the price of provisions, but are frequently quite opposite, we must not, upon this account, imagine that the price of provisions has no influence upon that of labour. the money price of labour is necessarily regulated by two circumstances; the demand for labour, and the price of the necessaries and conveniences of life. the demand for labour, according as it happens to be increasing, stationary, or declining, or to require an increasing, stationary, or declining population, determines the quantity of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which must be given to the labourer; and the money price of labour is determined by what is requisite for purchasing this quantity. though the money price of labour, therefore, is sometimes high where the price of provisions is low, it would be still higher, the demand continuing the same, if the price of provisions was high. it is because the demand for labour increases in years of sudden and extraordinary plenty, and diminishes in those of sudden and extraordinary scarcity, that the money price of labour sometimes rises in the one and sinks in the other. in a year of sudden and extraordinary plenty, there are funds in the hands of many of the employers of industry sufficient to maintain and employ a greater number of industrious people than had been employed the year before; and this extraordinary number cannot always be had. those masters, therefore, who want more workmen bid against one another, in order to get them, which sometimes raises both the real and the money price of their labour. the contrary of this happens in a year of sudden and extraordinary scarcity. the funds destined for employing industry are less than they had been the year before. a considerable number of people are thrown out of employment, who bid against one another, in order to get it, which sometimes lowers both the real and the money price of labour. in 1740, a year of extraordinary scarcity, many people were willing to work for bare subsistence. in the succeeding years of plenty, it was more difficult to get labourers and servants. the scarcity of a dear year, by diminishing the demand for labour, tends to lower its price, as the high price of provisions tends to raise it. the plenty of a cheap year, on the contrary, by increasing the demand, tends to raise the price of labour, as the cheapness of provisions tends to lower it. in the ordinary variations of the price of provisions those two opposite causes seem to counterbalance one another, which is probably in part the reason why the wages of labour are everywhere so much more steady and permanent than the price of provisions. the increase in the wages of labour necessarily increases the price of many commodities, by increasing that part of it which resolves itself into wages, and so far tends to diminish their consumption both at home and abroad. the same cause, however, which raises the wages of labour, the increase of stock, tends to increase its productive powers, and to make a smaller quantity of labour produce a greater quantity of work. the owner of the stock which employs a great number of labourers, necessarily endeavours, for his own advantage, to make such a proper division and distribution of employment that they may be enabled to produce the greatest quantity of work possible. for the same reason, he endeavours to supply them with the best machinery which either he or they can think of. what takes place among the labourers in a particular workhouse takes place, for the same reason, among those of a great society. the greater their number, the more they naturally divide themselves into different classes and subdivisions of employment. more heads are occupied in inventing the most proper machinery for executing the work of each, and it is, therefore, more likely to be invented. there are many commodities, therefore, which, in consequence of these improvements, come to be produced by so much less labour than before that the increase of its price is more than compensated by the diminution of its quantity. chapter ix of the profits of stock the rise and fall in the profits of stock depend upon the same causes with the rise and fall in the wages of labour, the increasing or declining state of the wealth of the society; but those causes affect the one and the other very differently. the increase of stock, which raises wages, tends to lower profit. when the stocks of many rich merchants are turned into the same trade, their mutual competition naturally tends to lower its profit; and when there is a like increase of stock in all the different trades carried on in the same society, the same competition must produce the same effect in them all. it is not easy, it has already been observed, to ascertain what are the average wages of labour even in a particular place, and at a particular time. we can, even in this case, seldom determine more than what are the most usual wages. but even this can seldom be done with regard to the profits of stock. profit is so very fluctuating that the person who carries on a particular trade cannot always tell you himself what is the average of his annual profit. it is affected not only by every variation of price in the commodities which he deals in, but by the good or bad fortune both of his rivals and of his customers, and by a thousand other accidents to which goods when carried either by sea or by land, or even when stored in a warehouse, are liable. it varies, therefore, not only from year to year, but from day to day, and almost from hour to hour. to ascertain what is the average profit of all the different trades carried on in a great kingdom must be much more difficult; and to judge of what it may have been formerly, or in remote periods of time, with any degree of precision, must be altogether impossible. but though it may be impossible to determine, with any degree of precision, what are or were the average profits of stock, either in the present or in ancient times, some notion may be formed of them from the interest of money. it may be laid down as a maxim, that wherever a great deal can be made by the use of money, a great deal will commonly be given for the use of it; and that wherever little can be made by it, less will commonly be given for it. according, therefore, as the usual market rate of interest varies in any country, we may be assured that the ordinary profits of stock must vary with it, must sink as it sinks, and rise as it rises. the progress of interest, therefore, may lead us to form some notion of the progress of profit. by the 37th of henry viii all interest above ten per cent was declared unlawful. more, it seems, had sometimes been taken before that. in the reign of edward vi religious zeal prohibited all interest. this prohibition, however, like all others of the same kind, is said to have produced no effect, and probably rather increased than diminished the evil of usury. the statute of henry viii was revived by the 13th of elizabeth, c. 8, and ten per cent continued to be the legal rate of interest till the 21st of james i, when it was restricted to eight per cent. it was reduced to six per cent soon after the restoration, and by the 12th of queen anne to five per cent. all these different statutory regulations seem to have been made with great propriety. they seem to have followed and not to have gone before the market rate of interest, or the rate at which people of good credit usually borrowed. since the time of queen anne, five per cent seems to have been rather above than below the market rate. before the late war, the government borrowed at three per cent; and people of good credit in the capital, and in many other parts of the kingdom, at three and a half, four, and four and a half per cent. since the time of henry viii the wealth and revenue of the country have been continually advancing, and, in the course of their progress, their pace seems rather to have been gradually accelerated than retarded. they seem not only to have been going on, but to have been going on faster and faster. the wages of labour have been continually increasing during the same period, and in the greater part of the different branches of trade and manufactures the profits of stock have been diminishing. it generally requires a greater stock to carry on any sort of trade in a great town than in a country village. the great stocks employed in every branch of trade, and the number of rich competitors, generally reduce the rate of profit in the former below what it is in the latter but the wages of labour are generally higher in a great town than in a country village. in a thriving town the people who have great stocks to employ frequently cannot get the number of workmen they want, and therefore bid against one another in order to get as many as they can, which raises the wages of labour, and lowers the profits of stock. in the remote parts of the country there is frequently not stock sufficient to employ all the people, who therefore bid against one another in order to get employment, which lowers the wages of labour and raises the profits of stock. in scotland, though the legal rate of interest is the same as in england, the market rate is rather higher. people of the best credit there seldom borrow under five per cent. even private bankers in edinburgh give four per cent upon their promissory notes, of which payment either in whole or in part may be demanded at pleasure. private bankers in london give no interest for the money which is deposited with them. there are few trades which cannot be carried on with a smaller stock in scotland than in england. the common rate of profit, therefore, must be somewhat greater. the wages of labour, it has already been observed, are lower in scotland than in england. the country, too, is not only much poorer, but the steps by which it advances to a better condition, for it is evidently advancing, seem to be much slower and more tardy. the legal rate of interest in france has not, during the course of the present century, been always regulated by the market rate. in 1720 interest was reduced from the twentieth to the fiftieth penny, or from five to two per cent. in 1724 it was raised to the thirtieth penny, or to 3 1/3 per cent. in 1725 it was again raised to the twentieth penny, or to five per cent. in 1766, during the administration of mr. laverdy, it was reduced to the twenty-fifth penny, or to four per cent. the abbe terray raised it afterwards to the old rate of five per cent. the supposed purpose of many of those violent reductions of interest was to prepare the way for reducing that of the public debts; a purpose which has sometimes been executed. france is perhaps in the present times not so rich a country as england; and though the legal rate of interest has in france frequently been lower than in england, the market rate has generally been higher; for there, as in other countries, they have several very safe and easy methods of evading the law. the profits of trade, i have been assured by british merchants who had traded in both countries, are higher in france than in england; and it is no doubt upon this account that many british subjects choose rather to employ their capitals in a country where trade is in disgrace, than in one where it is highly respected. the wages of labour are lower in france than in england. when you go from scotland to england, the difference which you may remark between the dress and countenance of the common people in the one country and in the other sufficiently indicates the difference in their condition. the contrast is still greater when you return from france. france, though no doubt a richer country than scotland, seems not to be going forward so fast. it is a common and even a popular opinion in the country that it is going backwards; an opinion which, apprehend, is ill founded even with regard to france, but which nobody can possibly entertain with regard to scotland, who sees the country now, and who saw it twenty or thirty years ago. the province of holland, on the other hand, in proportion to the extent of its territory and the number of its people, is a richer country than england. the government there borrows at two per cent, and private people of good credit at three. the wages of labour are said to be higher in holland than in england, and the dutch, it is well known, trade upon lower profits than any people in europe. the trade of holland, it has been pretended by some people, is decaying, and it may perhaps be true some particular branches of it are so. but these symptoms seem to indicate sufficiently that there is no general decay. when profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before. during the late war the dutch gained the whole carrying trade of france, of which they still retain a very large share. the great property which they possess both in the french and english funds, about forty millions, it is said, in the latter (in which i suspect, however, there is a considerable exaggeration); the great sums which they lend to private people in countries where the rate of interest is higher than in their own, are circumstances which no doubt demonstrate the redundancy of their stock, or that it has increased beyond what they can employ with tolerable profit in the proper business of their own country: but they do not demonstrate that that has decreased. as the capital of a private man, though acquired by a particular trade, may increase beyond what he can employ in it, and yet that trade continue to increase too; so may likewise the capital of a great nation. in our north american and west indian colonies, not only the wages of labour, but the interest of money, and consequently the profits of stock, are higher than in england. in the different colonies both the legal and the market rate of interest run from six to eight per cent. high wages of labour and high profits of stock, however, are things, perhaps, which scarce ever go together, except in the peculiar circumstances of new colonies. a new colony must always for some time be more understocked in proportion to the extent of its territory, and more underpeopled in proportion to the extent of its stock, than the greater part of other countries. they have more land than they have stock to cultivate. what they have, therefore, is applied to the cultivation only of what is most fertile and most favourably situated, the land near the sea shore, and along the banks of navigable rivers. such land, too, is frequently purchased at a price below the value even of its natural produce. stock employed in the purchase and improvement of such lands must yield a very large profit, and consequently afford to pay a very large interest. its rapid accumulation in so profitable an employment enables the planter to increase the number of his hands faster than he can find them in a new settlement. those whom he can find, therefore, are very liberally rewarded. as the colony increases, the profits of stock gradually diminish. when the most fertile and best situated lands have been all occupied, less profit can be made by the cultivation of what is inferior both in soil and situation, and less interest can be afforded for the stock which is so employed. in the greater part of our colonies, accordingly, both the legal and the market rate of interest have been considerably reduced during the course of the present century. as riches, improvement, and population have increased, interest has declined. the wages of labour do not sink with the profits of stock. the demand for labour increases with the increase of stock whatever be its profits; and after these are diminished, stock may not only continue to increase, but to increase much faster than before. it is with industrious nations who are advancing in the acquisition of riches as with industrious individuals. a great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. money, says the proverb, makes money. when you have got a little, it is often easy to get more. the great difficulty is to get that little. the connection between the increase of stock and that of industry, or of the demand for useful labour, has partly been explained already, but will be explained more fully hereafter in treating of the accumulation of stock. the acquisition of new territory, or of new branches of trade, may sometimes raise the profits of stock, and with them the interest of money, even in a country which is fast advancing in the acquisition of riches. the stock of the country not being sufficient for the whole accession of business, which such acquisitions present to the different people among whom it is divided, is applied to those particular branches only which afford the greatest profit. part of what had before been employed in other trades is necessarily withdrawn from them, and turned into some of the new and more profitable ones. in all those old trades, therefore, the competition comes to be less than before. the market comes to be less fully supplied with many different sorts of goods. their price necessarily rises more or less, and yields a greater profit to those who deal in them, who can, therefore, afford to borrow at a higher interest. for some time after the conclusion of the late war, not only private people of the best credit, but some of the greatest companies in london, commonly borrowed at five per cent, who before that had not been used to pay more than four, and four and a half per cent. the great accession both of territory and trade, by our acquisitions in north america and the west indies, will sufficiently account for this, without supposing any diminution in the capital stock of the society. so great an accession of new business to be carried on by the old stock must necessarily have diminished the quantity employed in a great number of particular branches, in which the competition being less, the profits must have been greater. i shall hereafter have occasion to mention the reasons which dispose me to believe that the capital stock of great britain was not diminished even by the enormous expense of the late war. the diminution of the capital stock of the society, or of the funds destined for the maintenance of industry, however, as it lowers the wages of labour, so it raises the profits of stock, and consequently the interest of money. by the wages of labour being lowered, the owners of what stock remains in the society can bring their goods at less expense to market than before, and less stock being employed in supplying the market than before, they can sell them dearer. their goods cost them less, and they get more for them. their profits, therefore, being augmented at both ends, can well afford a large interest. the great fortunes so suddenly and so easily acquired in bengal and the other british settlements in the east indies may satisfy us that, as the wages of labour are very low, so the profits of stock are very high in those ruined countries. the interest of money is proportionably so. in bengal, money is frequently lent to the farmers at forty, fifty, and sixty per cent and the succeeding crop is mortgaged for the payment. as the profits which can afford such an interest must eat up almost the whole rent of the landlord, so such enormous usury must in its turn eat up the greater part of those profits. before the fall of the roman republic, a usury of the same kind seems to have been common in the provinces, under the ruinous administration of their proconsuls. the virtuous brutus lent money in cyprus at eight-and-forty per cent as we learn from the letters of cicero. in a country which had acquired that full complement of riches which the nature of its soil and climate, and its situation with respect to other countries, allowed it to acquire; which could, therefore, advance no further, and which was not going backwards, both the wages of labour and the profits of stock would probably be very low. in a country fully peopled in proportion to what either its territory could maintain or its stock employ, the competition for employment would necessarily be so great as to reduce the wages of labour to what was barely sufficient to keep up the number of labourers, and, the country being already fully peopled, that number could never be augmented. in a country fully stocked in proportion to all the business it had to transact, as great a quantity of stock would be employed in every particular branch as the nature and extent of the trade would admit. the competition, therefore, would everywhere be as great, and consequently the ordinary profit as low as possible. but perhaps no country has ever yet arrived at this degree of opulence. china seems to have been long stationary, and had probably long ago acquired that full complement of riches which is consistent with the nature of its laws and institutions. but this complement may be much inferior to what, with other laws and institutions, the nature of its soil, climate, and situation might admit of. a country which neglects or despises foreign commerce, and which admits the vessels of foreign nations into one or two of its ports only, cannot transact the same quantity of business which it might do with different laws and institutions. in a country too, where, though the rich or the owners of large capitals enjoy a good deal of security, the poor or the owners of small capitals enjoy scarce any, but are liable, under the pretence of justice, to be pillaged and plundered at any time by the inferior mandarins, the quantity of stock employed in all the different branches of business transacted within it can never be equal to what the nature and extent of that business might admit. in every different branch, the oppression of the poor must establish the monopoly of the rich, who, by engrossing the whole trade to themselves, will be able to make very large profits. twelve per cent accordingly is said to be the common interest of money in china, and the ordinary profits of stock must be sufficient to afford this large interest. a defect in the law may sometimes raise the rate of interest considerably above what the condition of the country, as to wealth or poverty, would require. when the law does not enforce the performance of contracts, it puts all borrowers nearly upon the same footing with bankrupts or people of doubtful credit in better regulated countries. the uncertainty of recovering his money makes the lender exact the same usurious interest which is usually required from bankrupts. among the barbarous nations who overran the western provinces of the roman empire, the performance of contracts was left for many ages to the faith of the contracting parties. the courts of justice of their kings seldom intermeddled in it. the high rate of interest which took place in those ancient times may perhaps be partly accounted for from this cause. when the law prohibits interest altogether, it does not prevent it. many people must borrow, and nobody will lend without such a consideration for the use of their money as is suitable not only to what can be made by the use of it, but to the difficulty and danger of evading the law. the high rate of interest among all mahometan nations is accounted for by mr. montesquieu, not from their poverty, but partly from this, and partly from the difficulty of recovering the money. the lowest ordinary rate of profit must always be something more than what is sufficient to compensate the occasional losses to which every employment of stock is exposed. it is this surplus only which is neat or clear profit. what is called gross profit comprehends frequently, not only this surplus, but what is retained for compensating such extraordinary losses. the interest which the borrower can afford to pay is in proportion to the clear profit only. the lowest ordinary rate of interest must, in the same manner, be something more than sufficient to compensate the occasional losses to which lending, even with tolerable prudence, is exposed. were it not more, charity or friendship could be the only motive for lending. in a country which had acquired its full complement of riches, where in every particular branch of business there was the greatest quantity of stock that could be employed in it, as the ordinary rate of clear profit would be very small, so the usual market rate of interest which could be afforded out of it would be so low as to render it impossible for any but the very wealthiest people to live upon the interest of their money. all people of small or middling fortunes would be obliged to superintend themselves the employment of their own stocks. it would be necessary that almost every man should be a man of business, or engage in some sort of trade. the province of holland seems to be approaching near to this state. it is there unfashionable not to be a man of business. necessity makes it usual for almost every man to be so, and custom everywhere regulates fashion. as it is ridiculous not to dress, so is it, in some measure, not to be employed, like other people. as a man of a civil profession seems awkward in a camp or a garrison, and is even in some danger of being despised there, so does an idle man among men of business. the highest ordinary rate of profit may be such as, in the price of the greater part of commodities, eats up the whole of what should go to the rent of the land, and leaves only what is sufficient to pay the labour of preparing and bringing them to market, according to the lowest rate at which labour can anywhere be paid, the bare subsistence of the labourer. the workman must always have been fed in some way or other while he was about the work; but the landlord may not always have been paid. the profits of the trade which the servants of the east india company carry on in bengal may not perhaps be very far from this rate. the proportion which the usual market rate of interest ought to bear to the ordinary rate of clear profit, necessarily varies as profit rises or falls. double interest is in great britain reckoned what the merchants call a good, moderate, reasonable profit; terms which i apprehend mean no more than a common and usual profit. in a country where the ordinary rate of clear profit is eight or ten per cent, it may be reasonable that one half of it should go to interest, wherever business is carried on with borrowed money. the stock is at the risk of the borrower, who, as it were, insures it to the lender; and four or five per cent may, in the greater part of trades, be both a sufficient profit upon the risk of this insurance, and a sufficient recompense for the trouble of employing the stock. but the proportion between interest and clear profit might not be the same in countries where the ordinary rate of profit was either a good deal lower, or a good deal higher. if it were a good deal lower, one half of it perhaps could not be afforded for interest; and more might be afforded if it were a good deal higher. in countries which are fast advancing to riches, the low rate of profit may, in the price of many commodities, compensate the high wages of labour, and enable those countries to sell as cheap as their less thriving neighbours, among whom the wages of labour may be lower. in reality high profits tend much more to raise the price of work than high wages. if in the linen manufacture, for example, the wages of the different working people, the flax-dressers, the spinners, the weavers, etc., should, all of them, be advanced twopence a day; it would be necessary to heighten the price of a piece of linen only by a number of twopences equal to the number of people that had been employed about it, multiplied by the number of days during which they had been so employed. that part of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into wages would, through all the different stages of the manufacture, rise only in arithmetical proportion to this rise of wages. but if the profits of all the different employers of those working people should be raised five per cent, that part of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into profit would, through all the different stages of the manufacture, rise in geometrical proportion to this rise of profit. the employer of the flaxdressers would in selling his flax require an additional five per cent upon the whole value of the materials and wages which he advanced to his workmen. the employer of the spinners would require an additional five per cent both upon the advanced price of the flax and upon the wages of the spinners. and the employer of the weavers would require a like five per cent both upon the advanced price of the linen yarn and upon the wages of the weavers. in raising the price of commodities the rise of wages operates in the same manner as simple interest does in the accumulation of debt. the rise of profit operates like compound interest. our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. they say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. they are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. they complain only of those of other people. chapter x of wages and profit in the different employments of labour and stock the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock must, in the same neighbourhood, be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality. if in the same neighbourhood, there was any employment evidently either more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so many would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other employments. this at least would be the case in a society where things were left to follow their natural course, where there was perfect liberty, and where every man was perfectly free both to choose what occupation he thought proper, and to change it as often as he thought proper. every man's interest would prompt him to seek the advantageous, and to shun the disadvantageous employment. pecuniary wages and profit, indeed, are everywhere in europe extremely different according to the different employments of labour and stock. but this difference arises partly from certain circumstances in the employments themselves, which, either really, or at least in the imaginations of men, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some, and counterbalance a great one in others; and partly from the policy of europe, which nowhere leaves things at perfect liberty. the particular consideration of those circumstances and of that policy will divide this chapter into two parts. part 1 inequalities arising from the nature of the employments themselves the five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as i have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others: first, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them. first, the wages of labour vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness of the employment. thus in most places, take the year round, a journeyman tailor earns less than a journeyman weaver. his work is much easier. a journeyman weaver earns less than a journeyman smith. his work is not always easier, but it is much cleanlier. a journeyman blacksmith, though an artificer, seldom earns so much in twelve hours as a collier, who is only a labourer, does in eight. his work is not quite so dirty, is less dangerous, and is carried on in daylight, and above ground. honour makes a great part of the reward of all honourable professions. in point of pecuniary gain, all things considered, they are generally under-recompensed, as i shall endeavour to show by and by. disgrace has the contrary effect. the trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business; but it is in most places more profitable than the greater part of common trades. the most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common trade whatever. hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in the rude state of society, become in its advanced state their most agreeable amusements, and they pursue for pleasure what they once followed from necessity. in the advanced state of society, therefore, they are all very poor people who follow as a trade what other people pursue as a pastime. fishermen have been so since the time of theocritus. a poacher is everywhere a very poor man in great britain. in countries where the rigour of the law suffers no poachers, the licensed hunter is not in a much better condition. the natural taste for those employments makes more people follow them than can live comfortably by them, and the produce of their labour, in proportion to its quantity, comes always too cheap to market to afford anything but the most scanty subsistence to the labourers. disagreeableness and disgrace affect the profits of stock in the same manner as the wages of labour. the keeper of an inn or tavern, who is never master of his own house, and who is exposed to the brutality of every drunkard, exercises neither a very agreeable nor a very creditable business. but there is scarce any common trade in which a small stock yields so great a profit. secondly, the wages of labour vary with the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning the business. when any expensive machine is erected, the extraordinary work to be performed by it before it is worn out, it must be expected, will replace the capital laid out upon it, with at least the ordinary profits. a man educated at the expense of much labour and time to any of those employments which require extraordinary dexterity and skill, may be compared to one of those expensive machines. the work which he learns to perform, it must be expected, over and above the usual wages of common labour, will replace to him the whole expense of his education, with at least the ordinary profits of an equally valuable capital. it must do this, too, in a reasonable time, regard being had to the very uncertain duration of human life, in the same manner as to the more certain duration of the machine. the difference between the wages of skilled labour and those of common labour is founded upon this principle. the policy of europe considers the labour of all mechanics, artificers, and manufacturers, as skilled labour; and that of all country labourers as common labour. it seems to suppose that of the former to be of a more nice and delicate nature than that of the latter. it is so perhaps in some cases; but in the greater part is it quite otherwise, as i shall endeavour to show by and by. the laws and customs of europe, therefore, in order to qualify any person for exercising the one species of labour, impose the necessity of an apprenticeship, though with different degrees of rigour in different places. they leave the other free and open to everybody. during the continuance of the apprenticeship, the whole labour of the apprentice belongs to his master. in the meantime he must, in many cases, be maintained by his parents or relations, and in almost all cases must be clothed by them. some money, too, is commonly given to the master for teaching him his trade. they who cannot give money give time, or become bound for more than the usual number of years; a consideration which, though it is not always advantageous to the master, on account of the usual idleness of apprentices, is always disadvantageous to the apprentice. in country labour, on the contrary, the labourer, while he is employed about the easier, learns the more difficult parts of his business, and his own labour maintains him through all the different stages of his employment. it is reasonable, therefore, that in europe the wages of mechanics, artificers, and manufacturers, should be somewhat higher than those of common labourers. they are so accordingly, and their superior gains make them in most places be considered as a superior rank of people. this superiority, however, is generally very small; the daily or weekly earnings of journeymen in the more common sorts of manufactures, such as those of plain linen and woollen cloth, computed at an average, are, in most places, very little more than the day wages of common labourers. their employment, indeed, is more steady and uniform, and the superiority of their earnings, taking the whole year together, may be somewhat greater. it seems evidently, however, to be no greater than what is sufficient to compensate the superior expense of their education. education in the ingenious arts and in the liberal professions is still more tedious and expensive. the pecuniary recompense, therefore, of painters and sculptors, of lawyers and physicians, ought to be much more liberal; and it is so accordingly. the profits of stock seem to be very little affected by the easiness or difficulty of learning the trade in which it is employed. all the different ways in which stock is commonly employed in great towns seem, in reality, to be almost equally easy and equally difficult to learn. one branch either of foreign or domestic trade cannot well be a much more intricate business than another. thirdly, the wages of labour in different occupations vary with the constancy or inconstancy of employment. employment is much more constant in some trades than in others. in the greater part of manufacturers, a journeyman may be pretty sure of employment almost every day in the year that he is able to work. a mason or bricklayer, on the contrary, can work neither in hard frost nor in foul weather, and his employment at all other times depends upon the occasional calls of his customers. he is liable, in consequence, to be frequently without any. what he earns, therefore, while he is employed, must not only maintain him while he is idle, but make him some compensation for those anxious and desponding moments which the thought of so precarious a situation must sometimes occasion. where the computed earnings of the greater part of manufacturers, accordingly, are nearly upon a level with the day wages of common labourers, those of masons and bricklayers are generally from one half more to double those wages. where common labourers earn four and five shillings a week, masons and bricklayers frequently earn seven and eight; where the former earn six, the latter often earn nine and ten; and where the former earn nine and ten, as in london, the latter commonly earn fifteen and eighteen. no species of skilled labour, however, seems more easy to learn than that of masons and bricklayers. chairmen in london, during the summer season, are said sometimes to be employed as bricklayers. the high wages of those workmen, therefore, are not so much the recompense of their skill, as the compensation for the inconstancy of their employment. a house carpenter seems to exercise rather a nicer and more ingenious trade than a mason. in most places, however, for it is not universally so, his day-wages are somewhat lower. his employment, though it depends much, does not depend so entirely upon the occasional calls of his customers; and it is not liable to be interrupted by the weather. when the trades which generally afford constant employment happen in a particular place not to do so, the wages of the workmen always rise a good deal above their ordinary proportion to those of common labour. in london almost all journeymen artificers are liable to be called upon and dismissed by their masters from day to day, and from week to week, in the same manner as day-labourers in other places. the lowest order of artificers, journeymen tailors, accordingly, earn there half a crown a-day, though eighteenpence may be reckoned the wages of common labour. in small towns and country villages, the wages of journeymen tailors frequently scarce equal those of common labour; but in london they are often many weeks without employment, particularly during the summer. when the inconstancy of employment is combined with the hardship, disagreeableness and dirtiness of the work, it sometimes raises the wages of the most common labour above those of the most skilful artificers. a collier working by the piece is supposed, at newcastle, to earn commonly about double, and in many parts of scotland about three times the wages of common labour. his high wages arise altogether from the hardship, disagreeableness, and dirtiness of his work. his employment may, upon most occasions, be as constant as he pleases. the coal-heavers in london exercise a trade which in hardship, dirtiness, and disagreeableness, almost equals that of colliers; and from the unavoidable irregularity in the arrivals of coal-ships, the employment of the greater part of them is necessarily very inconstant. if colliers, therefore, commonly earn double and triple the wages of common labour, it ought not to seem unreasonable that coal-heavers should sometimes earn four and five times those wages. in the inquiry made into their condition a few years ago, it was found that at the rate at which they were then paid, they could earn from six to ten shillings a day. six shillings are about four times the wages of common labour in london, and in every particular trade the lowest common earnings may always be considered as those of the far greater number. how extravagant soever those earnings may appear, if they were more than sufficient to compensate all the disagreeable circumstances of the business, there would soon be so great a number of competitors as, in a trade which has no exclusive privilege, would quickly reduce them to a lower rate. the constancy or inconstancy of employment cannot affect the ordinary profits of stock in any particular trade. whether the stock is or is not constantly employed depends. not upon the trade, but the trader. fourthly, the wages of labour vary accordingly to the small or great trust which must be reposed in the workmen. the wages of goldsmiths and jewellers are everywhere superior to those of many other workmen, not only of equal, but of much superior ingenuity, on account of the precious materials with which they are intrusted. we trust our health to the physician: our fortune and sometimes our life and reputation to the lawyer and attorney. such confidence could not safely be reposed in people of a very mean or low condition. their reward must be such, therefore, as may give them that rank in the society which so important a trust requires. the long time and the great expense which must be laid out in their education, when combined with this circumstance, necessarily enhance still further the price of their labour. when a person employs only his own stock in trade, there is no trust; and the credit which he may get from other people depends, not upon the nature of his trade, but upon their opinion of his fortune, probity, and prudence. the different rates of profit, therefore, in the different branches of trade, cannot arise from the different degrees of trust reposed in the traders. fifthly, the wages of labour in different. employments vary according to the probability or improbability of success in them. the probability that any particular person shall ever be qualified for the employment to which he is educated is very different in different occupations. in the greater part of mechanic trades, success is almost certain; but very uncertain in the liberal professions. put your son apprentice to a shoemaker, there is little doubt of his learning to make a pair of shoes; but send him to study the law, it is at least twenty to one if ever he makes such proficiency as will enable him to live by the business. in a perfectly fair lottery, those who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks. in a profession where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty. the counsellor-at-law who, perhaps, at near forty years of age, begins to make something by his profession, ought to receive the retribution, not only of his own so tedious and expensive education, but that of more than twenty others who are never likely to make anything by it. how extravagant soever the fees of counsellors-at-law may sometimes appear, their real retribution is never equal to this. compute in any particular place what is likely to be annually gained, and what is likely to be annually spent, by all the different workmen in any common trade, such as that of shoemakers or weavers, and you will find that the former sum will generally exceed the latter. but make the same computation with regard to all the counsellors and students of law, in all the different inns of court, and you will find that their annual gains bear but a very small proportion to their annual expense, even though you rate the former as high, and the latter as low, as can well be done. the lottery of the law, therefore, is very far from being a perfectly fair lottery; and that, as well as many other liberal and honourable professions, are, in point of pecuniary gain, evidently under-recompensed. those professions keep their level, however, with other occupations, and, notwithstanding these discouragements, all the most generous and liberal spirits are eager to crowd into them. two different causes contribute to recommend them. first, the desire of the reputation which attends upon superior excellence in any of them; and, secondly, the natural confidence which every man has more or less, not only in his own abilities, but in his own good fortune. to excel in any profession, in which but few arrive at mediocrity, is the most decisive mark of what is called genius or superior talents. the public admiration which attends upon such distinguished abilities makes always a part of their reward; a greater or smaller in proportion as it is higher or lower in degree. it makes a considerable part of that reward in the profession of physic; a still greater perhaps in that of law; in poetry and philosophy it makes almost the whole. there are some very agreeable and beautiful talents of which the possession commands a certain sort of admiration; but of which the exercise for the sake of gain is considered, whether from reason or prejudice, as a sort of public prostitution. the pecuniary recompense, therefore, of those who exercise them in this manner must be sufficient, not only to pay for the time, labour, and expense of acquiring the talents, but for the discredit which attends the employment of them as the means of subsistence. the exorbitant rewards of players, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc., are founded upon those two principles; the rarity and beauty of the talents, and the discredit of employing them in this manner. it seems absurd at first sight that we should despise their persons and yet reward their talents with the most profuse liberality. while we do the one, however, we must of necessity do the other. should the public opinion or prejudice ever alter with regard to such occupations, their pecuniary recompense would quickly diminish. more people would apply to them, and the competition would quickly reduce the price of their labour. such talents, though far from being common, are by no means so rare as is imagined. many people possess them in great perfection, who disdain to make this use of them; and many more are capable of acquiring them, if anything could be made honourably by them. the overweening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own abilities is an ancient evil remarked by the philosophers and moralists of all ages. their absurd presumption in their own good fortune has been less taken notice of. it is, however, if possible, still more universal. there is no man living who, when in tolerable health and spirits, has not some share of it. the chance of gain is by every man more or less overvalued, and the chance of loss is by most men undervalued, and by scarce any man, who is in tolerable health and spirits, valued more than it is worth. that the chance of gain is naturally overvalued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries. the world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery; or one in which the whole gain compensated the whole loss; because the undertaker could make nothing by it. in the state lotteries the tickets are really not worth the price which is paid by the original subscribers, and yet commonly sell in the market for twenty, thirty, and sometimes forty per cent advance. the vain hope of gaining some of the great prizes is the sole cause of this demand. the soberest people scarce look upon it as a folly to pay a small sum for the chance of gaining ten or twenty thousand pounds; though they know that even that small sum is perhaps twenty or thirty per cent more than the chance is worth. in a lottery in which no prize exceeded twenty pounds, though in other respects it approached much nearer to a perfectly fair one than the common state lotteries, there would not be the same demand for tickets. in order to have a better chance for some of the great prizes, some people purchase several tickets, and others, small share in a still greater number. there is not, however, a more certain proposition in mathematics than that the more tickets you adventure upon, the more likely you are to be a loser. adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer you approach to this certainty. that the chance of loss is frequently undervalued, and scarce ever valued more than it is worth, we may learn from a very moderate profit of insurers. in order to make insurance, either from fire or sea-risk, a trade at all, the common premium must be sufficient to compensate the common losses, to pay the expense of management, and to afford such a profit as might have been drawn from an equal capital employed in any common trade. the person who pays no more than this evidently pays no more than the real value of the risk, or the lowest price at which he can reasonably expect to insure it. but though many people have made a little money by insurance, very few have made a great fortune; and from this consideration alone, it seems evident enough that the ordinary balance of profit and loss is not more advantageous in this than in other common trades by which so many people make fortunes. moderate, however, as the premium of insurance commonly is, many people despise the risk too much to care to pay it. taking the whole kingdom at an average, nineteen houses in twenty, or rather perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred, are not insured from fire. sea risk is more alarming to the greater part of people, and the proportion of ships insured to those not insured is much greater. many fail, however, at all seasons, and even in time of war, without any insurance. this may sometimes perhaps be done without any imprudence. when a great company, or even a great merchant, has twenty or thirty ships at sea, they may, as it were, insure one another. the premium saved upon them all may more than compensate such losses as they are likely to meet with in the common course of chances. the neglect of insurance upon shipping, however, in the same manner as upon houses, is, in most cases, the effect of no such nice calculation, but of mere thoughtless rashness and presumptuous contempt of the risk. the contempt of risk and the presumptuous hope of success are in no period of life more active than at the age at which young people choose their professions. how little the fear of misfortune is then capable of balancing the hope of good luck appears still more evidently in the readiness of the common people to enlist as soldiers, or to go to sea, than in the eagerness of those of better fashion to enter into what are called the liberal professions. what a common soldier may lose is obvious enough. without regarding the danger, however, young volunteers never enlist so readily as at the beginning of a new war; and though they have scarce any chance of preferment, they figure to themselves, in their youthful fancies, a thousand occasions of acquiring honour and distinction which never occur. these romantic hopes make the whole price of their blood. their pay is less than that of common labourers, and in actual service their fatigues are much greater. the lottery of the sea is not altogether so disadvantageous as that of the army. the son of a creditable labourer or artificer may frequently go to sea with his father's consent; but if he enlists as a soldier, it is always without it. other people see some chance of his making something by the one trade: nobody but himself sees any of his making anything by the other. the great admiral is less the object of public admiration than the great general, and the highest success in the sea service promises a less brilliant fortune and reputation than equal success in the land. the same difference runs through all the inferior degrees of preferment in both. by the rules of precedency a captain in the navy ranks with a colonel in the army; but he does not rank with him in the common estimation. as the great prizes in the lottery are less, the smaller ones must be more numerous. common sailors, therefore, more frequently get some fortune and preferment than common soldiers; and the hope of those prizes is what principally recommends the trade. though their skill and dexterity are much superior to that of almost any artificers, and though their whole life is one continual scene of hardship and danger, yet for all this dexterity and skill, for all those hardships and dangers, while they remain in the condition of common sailors, they receive scarce any other recompense but the pleasure of exercising the one and of surmounting the other. their wages are not greater than those of common labourers at the port which regulates the rate of seamen's wages. as they are continually going from port to port, the monthly pay of those who sail from all the different ports of great britain is more nearly upon a level than that of any other workmen in those different places; and the rate of the port to and from which the greatest number sail, that is the port of london, regulates that of all the rest. at london the wages of the greater part of the different classes of workmen are about double those of the same classes at edinburgh. but the sailors who sail from the port of london seldom earn above three or four shillings a month more than those who sail from the port of leith, and the difference is frequently not so great. in time of peace, and in the merchant service, the london price is from a guinea to about seven-and-twenty shillings the calendar month. a common labourer in london, at the rate of nine or ten shillings a week, may earn in the calendar month from forty to five-and-forty shillings. the sailor, indeed, over and above his pay, is supplied with provisions. their value, however, may not perhaps always exceed the difference between his pay and that of the common labourer; and though it sometimes should, the excess will not be clear gain to the sailor, because he cannot share it with his wife and family, whom he must maintain out of his wages at home. the dangers and hairbreadth escapes of a life of adventures, instead of disheartening young people, seem frequently to recommend a trade to them. a tender mother, among the inferior ranks of people, is of afraid to send her son to school at a seaport town, lest the sight of the ships and the conversation and adventures of the sailors should entice him to go to sea. the distant prospect of hazards, from which we can hope to extricate ourselves by courage and address, is not disagreeable to us, and does not raise the wages of labour in any employment. it is otherwise with those in which courage and address can be of no avail. in trades which are known to be very unwholesome, the wages of labour are always remarkably high. unwholesomeness is a species of disagreeableness, and its effects upon the wages of labour are to be ranked under that general head. in all the different employments of stock, the ordinary rate of profit varies more or less with the certainty or uncertainty of the returns. these are in general less uncertain in the inland than in the foreign trade, and in some branches of foreign trade than in others; in the trade to north america, for example, than in that to jamaica. the ordinary rate of profit always rises more or less with the risk. it does not, however, seem to rise in proportion to it, or so as to compensate it completely. bankruptcies are most frequent in the most hazardous trades. the most hazardous of all trades, that of a smuggler, though when the adventure succeeds it is likewise the most profitable, is the infallible road to bankruptcy. the presumptuous hope of success seems to act here as upon all other occasions, and to entice so many adventurers into those hazardous trades, that their competition reduces their profit below what is sufficient to compensate the risk. to compensate it completely, the common returns ought, over and above the ordinary profits of stock, not only to make up for all occasional losses, but to afford a surplus profit to the adventurers of the same nature with the profit of insurers. but if the common returns were sufficient for all this, bankruptcies would not be more frequent in these than in other trades. of the five circumstances, therefore, which vary the wages of labour, two only affect the profits of stock; the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the business, and the risk or security with which it is attended. in point of agreeableness, there is little or no difference in the far greater part of the different employments of stock; but a great deal in those of labour; and the ordinary profit of stock, though it rises with the risk, does not always seem to rise in proportion to it. it should follow from all this, that, in the same society or neighbourhood, the average and ordinary rates of profit in the different employments of stock should be more nearly upon a level than the pecuniary wages of the different sorts of labour. they are so accordingly. the difference between the earnings of a common labourer and those of a well employed lawyer or physician, is evidently much greater than that between the ordinary profits in any two different branches of trade. the apparent difference, besides, in the profits of different trades, is generally a deception arising from our not always distinguishing what ought to be considered as wages, from what ought to be considered as profit. apothecaries' profit is become a bye-word, denoting something uncommonly extravagant. this great apparent profit, however, is frequently no more than the reasonable wages of labour. the skill of an apothecary is a much nicer and more delicate matter than that of any artificer whatever; and the trust which is reposed in him is of much greater importance. he is the physician of the poor in all cases, and of the rich when the distress or danger is not very great. his reward, therefore, ought to be suitable to his skill and his trust, and it arises generally from the price at which he sells his drugs. but the whole drugs which the best employed apothecary, in a large market town, will sell in a year, may not perhaps cost him above thirty or forty pounds. though he should sell them, therefore, for three or four hundred, or at a thousand per cent profit, this may frequently be no more than the reasonable wages of his labour charged, in the only way in which he can charge them, upon the price of his drugs. the greater part of the apparent profit is real wages disguised in the garb of profit. in a small seaport town, a little grocer will make forty or fifty per cent upon a stock of a single hundred pounds, while a considerable wholesale merchant in the same place will scarce make eight or ten per cent upon a stock of ten thousand. the trade of the grocer may be necessary for the conveniency of the inhabitants, and the narrowness of the market may not admit the employment of a larger capital in the business. the man, however, must not only live by his trade, but live by it suitably to the qualifications which it requires. besides possessing a little capital, he must be able to read, write, and account, and must be a tolerable judge too of, perhaps, fifty or sixty different sorts of goods, their prices, qualities, and the markets where they are to be had cheapest. he must have all the knowledge, in short, that is necessary for a great merchant, which nothing hinders him from becoming but the want of a sufficient capital. thirty or forty pounds a year cannot be considered as too great a recompense for the labour of a person so accomplished. deduct this from the seemingly great profits of his capital, and little more will remain, perhaps, than the ordinary profits of stock. the greater part of the apparent profit is, in this case too, real wages. the difference between the apparent profit of the retail and that of the wholesale trade, is much less in the capital than in small towns and country villages. where ten thousand pounds can be employed in the grocery trade, the wages of the grocer's labour make but a very trifling addition to the real profits of so great a stock. the apparent profits of the wealthy retailer, therefore, are there more nearly upon a level with those of the wholesale merchant. it is upon this account that goods sold by retail are generally as cheap and frequently much cheaper in the capital than in small towns and country villages. grocery goods, for example, are generally much cheaper; bread and butcher's meat frequently as cheap. it costs no more to bring grocery goods to the great town than to the country village; but it costs a great deal more to bring corn and cattle, as the greater part of them must be brought from a much greater distance. the prime cost of grocery goods, therefore, being the same in both places, they are cheapest where the least profit is charged upon them. the prime cost of bread and butcher's meat is greater in the great town than in the country village; and though the profit is less, therefore, they are not always cheaper there, but often equally cheap. in such articles as bread and butcher's meat, the same cause, which diminishes apparent profit, increases prime cost. the extent of the market, by giving employment to greater stocks, diminishes apparent profit; but by requiring supplies from a greater distance, it increases prime cost. this diminution of the one and increase of the other seem, in most cases, nearly to counterbalance one another, which is probably the reason that, though the prices of corn and cattle are commonly very different in different parts of the kingdom, those of bread and butcher's meat are generally very nearly the same through the greater part of it. though the profits of stock both in the wholesale and retail trade are generally less in the capital than in small towns and country villages, yet great fortunes are frequently acquired from small beginnings in the former, and scarce ever in the latter. in small towns and country villages, on account of the narrowness of the market, trade cannot always be extended as stock extends. in such places, therefore, though the rate of a particular person's profits may be very high, the sum or amount of them can never be very great, nor consequently that of his annual accumulation. in great towns, on the contrary, trade can be extended as stock increases, and the credit of a frugal and thriving man increases much faster than his stock. his trade is extended in proportion to the amount of both, and the sum or amount of his profits is in proportion to the extent of his trade, and his annual accumulation in proportion to the amount of his profits. it seldom happens, however, that great fortunes are made even in great towns by any one regular, established, and well-known branch of business, but in consequence of a long life of industry, frugality, and attention. sudden fortunes, indeed, are sometimes made in such places by what is called the trade of speculation. the speculative merchant exercises no one regular, established, or well-known branch of business. he is a corn merchant this year, and a wine merchant the next, and a sugar, tobacco, or tea merchant the year after. he enters into every trade when he foresees that it is likely to be more than commonly profitable, and he quits it when he foresees that its profits are likely to return to the level of other trades. his profits and losses, therefore, can bear no regular proportion to those of any one established and well-known branch of business. a bold adventurer may sometimes acquire a considerable fortune by two or three successful speculations; but is just as likely to lose one by two or three unsuccessful ones. this trade can be carried on nowhere but in great towns. it is only in places of the most extensive commerce and correspondence that the intelligence requisite for it can be had. the five circumstances above mentioned, though they occasion considerable inequalities in the wages of labour and profits of stock, occasion none in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages, real or imaginary, of the different employments of either. the nature of those circumstances is such that they make up for a small pecuniary gain in some, and counterbalance a great one in others. in order, however, that this equality may take place in the whole of their advantages or disadvantages, three things are requisite even where there is the most perfect freedom. first, the employments must be well known and long established in the neighbourhood; secondly, they must be in their ordinary, or what may be called their natural state; and, thirdly, they must be the sole or principal employments of those who occupy them. first, this equality can take place only in those employments which are well known, and have been long established in the neighbourhood. where all other circumstances are equal, wages are generally higher in new than in old trades. when a projector attempts to establish a new manufacture, he must at first entice his workmen from other employments by higher wages than they can either earn in their own trades, or than the nature of his work would otherwise require, and a considerable time must pass away before he can venture to reduce them to the common level. manufactures for which the demand arises altogether from fashion and fancy are continually changing, and seldom last long enough to be considered as old established manufactures. those, on the contrary, for which the demand arises chiefly from use or necessity, are less liable to change, and the same form or fabric may continue in demand for whole centuries together. the wages of labour, therefore, are likely to be higher in manufactures of the former than in those of the latter kind. birmingham deals chiefly in manufactures of the former kind; sheffield in those of the latter; and the wages of labour in those two different places are said to be suitable to this difference in the nature of their manufactures. the establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce, or of any new practice in agriculture, is always a speculation, from which the projector promises himself extraordinary profits. these profits sometimes are very great, and sometimes, more frequently, perhaps, they are quite otherwise; but in general they bear no regular proportion to those of other old trades in the neighbourhood. if the project succeeds, they are commonly at first very high. when the trade or practice becomes thoroughly established and well known, the competition reduces them to the level of other trades. secondly, this equality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock, can take place only in the ordinary, or what may be called the natural state of those employments. the demand for almost every different species of labour is sometimes greater and sometimes less than usual. in the one case the advantages of the employment rise above, in the other they fall below the common level. the demand for country labour is greater at hay-time and harvest than during the greater part of the year; and wages rise with the demand. in time of war, when forty or fifty thousand sailors are forced from the merchant service into that of the king, the demand for sailors to merchant ships necessarily rises with their scarcity, and their wages upon such occasions commonly rise from a guinea and seven-and-twenty shillings, to forty shillings and three pounds a month. in a decaying manufacture, on the contrary, many workmen, rather than quit their old trade, are contented with smaller wages than would otherwise be suitable to the nature of their employment. the profits of stock vary with the price of the commodities in which it is employed. as the price of any commodity rises above the ordinary or average rate, the profits of at least some part of the stock that is employed in bringing it to market, rise above their proper level, and as it falls they sink below it. all commodities are more or less liable to variations of price, but some are much more so than others. in all commodities which are produced by human industry, the quantity of industry annually employed is necessarily regulated by the annual demand, in such a manner that the average annual produce may, as nearly as possible, be equal to the average annual consumption. in some employments, it has already been observed, the same quantity of industry will always produce the same, or very nearly the same quantity of commodities. in the linen or woollen manufactures, for example, the same number of hands will annually work up very nearly the same quantity of linen and woollen cloth. the variations in the market price of such commodities, therefore, can arise only from some accidental variation in the demand. a public mourning raises the price of black cloth. but as the demand for most sorts of plain linen and woollen cloth is pretty uniform, so is likewise the price. but there are other employments in which the same quantity of industry will not always produce the same quantity of commodities. the same quantity of industry, for example, will, in different years, produce very different quantities of corn, wine, hops, sugar, tobacco, etc. the price of such commodities, therefore, varies not only with the variations of demand, but with the much greater and more frequent variations of quantity, and is consequently extremely fluctuating. but the profit of some of the dealers must necessarily fluctuate with the price of the commodities. the operations of the speculative merchant are principally employed about such commodities. he endeavours to buy them up when he foresees that their price is likely to rise, and to sell them when it is likely to fall. thirdly, this equality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock can take only in such as are the sole or principal employments of those who occupy them. when a person derives his subsistence from one employment, which does not occupy the greater part of his time, in the intervals of his leisure he is often willing to work as another for less wages than would otherwise suit the nature of the employment. there still subsists in many parts of scotland a set of people called cotters or cottagers, though they were more frequent some years ago than they are now. they are a sort of outservants of the landlords and farmers. the usual reward which they receive from their masters is a house, a small garden for pot-herbs, as much grass as will feed a cow, and, perhaps, an acre or two of bad arable land. when their master has occasion for their labour, he gives them, besides, two pecks of oatmeal a week, worth about sixteenpence sterling. during a great part of the year he has little or no occasion for their labour, and the cultivation of their own little possession is not sufficient to occupy the time which is left at their own disposal. when such occupiers were more numerous than they are at present, they are said to have been willing to give their spare time for a very small recompense to anybody, and to have wrought for less wages than other labourers. in ancient times they seem to have been common all over europe. in countries ill cultivated and worse inhabited, the greater part of landlords and farmers could not otherwise provide themselves with the extraordinary number of hands which country labour requires at certain season. the daily or weekly recompense which such labourers occasionally received from their masters was evidently not the whole price of their labour. their small tenement made a considerable part of it. this daily or weekly recompense, however, seems to have been considered as the whole of it, by many writers who have collected the prices of labour and provisions in ancient times, and who have taken pleasures in representing both as wonderfully low. the produce of such labour comes frequently cheaper to market than would otherwise suitable to its nature. stockings in many parts of scotland are knit much cheaper than they can anywhere be wrought upon the loom. they are the work of servants and labourers, who derive the principal part of their subsistence from some other employment. more than a thousand pair of shetland stockings are annually imported into leith, of which the price is from fivepence to sevenpence a pair. at lerwick, the small capital of the shetland islands, tenpence a day, i have been assured, is a common price of common labour. in the same islands they knit worsted stockings to the value of a guinea a pair and upwards. the spinning of linen yarn is carried on in scotland nearly in the same way as the knitting of stockings by servants, who are chiefly hired for other purposes. they earn but a very scanty subsistence, who endeavour to get their whole livelihood by either of those trades. in most parts of scotland she is a good spinner who can earn twentypence a week. in opulent countries the market is generally so extensive that any one trade is sufficient to employ the whole labour and stock of those who occupy it. instances of people's living by one employment, and at the same time deriving some little advantage from another, occur chiefly in poor countries. the following instance, however, of something of the same kind is to be found in the capital of a very rich one. there is no city in europe, i believe, in which house-rent is dearer than in london, and yet i know no capital in which a furnished apartment can be hired as cheap. lodging is not only much cheaper in london than in paris; it is much cheaper than in edinburgh of the same degree of goodness; and what may seem extraordinary, the dearness of house-rent is the cause of the cheapness of lodging. the dearness of house-rent in london arises not only from those causes which render it dear in all great capitals, the dearness of labour, the dearness of all the materials of building, which must generally be brought from a great distance, and above all the dearness of ground-rent, every landlord acting the part the part of a monopolist, and frequently exacting a higher rent for a single acre of bad land in a town than can be had for a hundred of the best in the country; but it arises in part from the peculiar manners and customs of the people, which oblige every master of a family to hire a whole house from top to bottom. a dwelling-house in england means everything that is contained under the same roof. in france, scotland, and many other parts of europe, it frequently means no more than a single story. a tradesman in london is obliged to hire a whole house in that part of the town where his customers live. his shop is upon the ground-floor, and he and his family sleep in the garret; and he endeavours to pay a part of his house-rent by letting the two middle stories to lodgers. he expects to maintain his family by his trade, and not by his lodgers. whereas, at paris and edinburgh, the people who let lodgings have commonly no other means of subsistence and the price of the lodging must pay, not only the rent of the house, but the whole expense of the family. part 2 inequalities by the policy of europe such are the inequalities in the whole of advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock, which the defect of any of the three requisites above mentioned must occasion, even where there is the most perfect liberty. but the policy of europe, by not leaving things at perfect liberty, occasions other inequalities of much greater importance. it does this chiefly in the three following ways. first, by restraining the competition in some employments to a smaller number than would otherwise be disposed to enter into them; secondly, by increasing it in others beyond what it naturally would be; and, thirdly, by obstructing the free circulation of labour and stock, both from employment to employment and from place to place. first, the policy of europe occasions a very important inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock, by restraining the competition in some employments to a smaller number than might otherwise be disposed to enter into them. the exclusive privileges of corporations are the principal means it makes use of for this purpose. the exclusive privilege of an incorporated trade necessarily restrains the competition, in the town where it is established, to those who are free of the trade. to have served an apprenticeship in the town, under a master properly qualified, is commonly the necessary requisite for obtaining this freedom. the bye laws of the corporation regulate sometimes the number of apprentices which any master is allowed to have, and almost always the number of years which each apprentice is obliged to serve. the intention of both regulations is to restrain the competition to a much smaller number than might otherwise be disposed to enter into the trade. the limitation of the number of apprentices restrains it directly. a long term of apprenticeship restrains it more indirectly, but as effectually, by increasing the expense of education. in sheffield no master cutler can have more than one apprentice at a time, by a bye law of the corporation. in norfolk and norwich no master weaver can have more than two apprentices, under pain of forfeiting five pounds a month to the king. no master hatter can have more than two apprentices anywhere in england, or in the english plantations, under pain of forfeiting five pounds a month, half to the king and half to him who shall sue in any court of record. both these regulations, though they have been confirmed by a public law of the kingdom, are evidently dictated by the same corporation spirit which enacted the bye-law of sheffield. the silk weavers in london had scarce been incorporated a year when they enacted a bye-law restraining any master from having more than two apprentices at a time. it required a particular act of parliament to rescind this bye law. seven years seem anciently to have been, all over europe, the usual term established for the duration of apprenticeships in the greater part of incorporated trades. all such incorporations were anciently called universities, which indeed is the proper latin name for any incorporation whatever. the university of smiths, the university of tailors, etc., are expressions which we commonly meet with in the old charters of ancient towns. when those particular incorporations which are now peculiarly called universities were first established, the term of years which it was necessary to study, in order to obtain the degree of master of arts, appears evidently to have been copied from the terms of apprenticeship in common trades, of which the incorporations were much more ancient. as to have wrought seven years under a master properly qualified was necessary in order to entitle any person to become a master, and to have himself apprenticed in a common trade; so to have studied seven years under a master properly qualified was necessary to entitle him to become a master, teacher, or doctor (words anciently synonymous) in the liberal arts, and to have scholars or apprentices (words likewise originally synonymous) to study under him. by the 5th of elizabeth, commonly called the statute of apprenticeship, it was enacted, that no person should for the future exercise any trade, craft, or mystery at that time exercised in england, unless he had previously served to it an apprenticeship of seven years at least; and what before had been the bye law of many particular corporations became in england the general and public law of all trades carried on in market towns. for though the words of the statute are very general, and seem plainly to include the whole kingdom, by interpretation its operation has been limited to market towns, it having been held that in country villages a person may exercise several different trades, though he has not served a seven years' apprenticeship to each, they being necessary for the conveniency of the inhabitants, and the number of people frequently not being sufficient to supply each with a particular set of hands. by a strict interpretation of the words, too, the operation of this statute has been limited to those trades which were established in england before the 5th of elizabeth, and has never been extended to such as have been introduced since that time. this limitation has given occasion to several distinctions which, considered as rules of police, appear as foolish as can well be imagined. it has been adjudged, for example, that a coachmaker can neither himself make nor employ journeymen to make his coach-wheels, but must buy them of a master wheel-wright; this latter trade having been exercised in england before the 5th of elizabeth. but a wheelwright, though he has never served an apprenticeship to a coachmaker, may either himself make or employ journeyman to make coaches; the trade of a coachmaker not being within the statute, because not exercised in england at the time when it was made. the manufactures of manchester, birmingham, and wolverhampton, are many of them, upon this account, not within the statute, not having been exercised in england before the 5th of elizabeth. in france, the duration of apprenticeships is different in different towns and in different trades. in paris, five years is the term required in a great number; but before any person can be qualified to exercise the trade as a master, he must, in many of them, serve five years more as a journeyman. during this latter term he is called the companion of his master, and the term itself is called his companionship. in scotland there is no general law which regulates universally the duration of apprenticeships. the term is different in different corporations. where it is long, a part of it may generally be redeemed by paying a small fine. in most towns, too, a very small fine is sufficient to purchase the freedom of any corporation. the weavers of linen and hempen cloth, the principal manufactures of the country, as well as all other artificers subservient to them, wheel-makers, reel-makers, etc., may exercise their trades in any town corporate without paying any fine. in all towns corporate all persons are free to sell butcher's meat upon any lawful day of the week. three years in scotland is a common term of apprenticeship, even in some very nice trades; and in general i know of no country in europe in which corporation laws are so little oppressive. the property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. the patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour is a plain violation of this most sacred property. it is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workman and of those who might be disposed to employ him. as it hinders the one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the others from employing whom they think proper. to judge whether he is fit to be employed may surely be trusted to the discretion of the employers whose interest it so much concerns. the affected anxiety of the law-giver lest they should employ an improper person is evidently as impertinent as it is oppressive. the institution of long apprenticeships can give no security that insufficient workmanship shall not frequently be exposed to public sale. when this is done it is generally the effect of fraud, and not of inability; and the longest apprenticeship can give no security against fraud. quite different regulations are necessary to prevent this abuse. the sterling mark upon plate, and the stamps upon linen and woollen cloth, give the purchaser much greater security than any statute of apprenticeship. he generally looks at these, but never thinks it worth while to inquire whether the workman had served a seven years' apprenticeship. the institution of long apprenticeships has no tendency to form a young people to industry. a journeyman who works by the piece is likely to be industrious, because he derives a benefit from every exertion of his industry. an apprentice is likely to be idle, and almost always is so, because he has no immediate interest to be otherwise. in the inferior employments, the sweets of labour consist altogether in the recompense of labour. they who are soonest in a condition to enjoy the sweets of it are likely soonest to conceive a relish for it, and to acquire the early habit of industry. a young man naturally conceives an aversion to labour when for a long time he receives no benefit from it. the boys who are put out apprentices from public charities are generally bound for more than the usual number of years, and they generally turn out very idle and worthless. apprenticeships were altogether unknown to the ancients. the reciprocal duties of master and apprentice make a considerable article in every modern code. the roman law is perfectly silent with regard to them. i know no greek or latin word (i might venture, i believe, to assert that there is none) which expresses the idea we now annex to the word apprentice, a servant bound to work at a particular trade for the benefit of a master, during a term of years, upon condition that the master shall teach him that trade. long apprenticeships are altogether unnecessary. the arts, which are much superior to common trades, such as those of making clocks and watches, contain no such mystery as to require a long course of instruction. the first invention of such beautiful machines, indeed, and even that of some of the instruments employed in making them, must, no doubt, have been the work of deep thought and long time, and may justly be considered as among the happiest efforts of human ingenuity. but when both have been fairly invented and are well understood, to explain to any young man, in the completest manner, how to apply the instruments and how to construct the machines, cannot well require more than the lessons of a few weeks: perhaps those of a few days might be sufficient. in the common mechanic trades, those of a few days might certainly be sufficient. the dexterity of hand, indeed, even in common trades, cannot be acquired without much practice and experience. but a young man would practice with much more diligence and attention, if from the beginning he wrought as a journeyman, being paid in proportion to the little work which he could execute, and paying in his turn for the materials which he might sometimes spoil through awkwardness and inexperience. his education would generally in this way be more effectual, and always less tedious and expensive. the master, indeed, would be a loser. he would lose all the wages of the apprentice, which he now saves, for seven years together. in the end, perhaps, the apprentice himself would be a loser. in a trade so easily learnt he would have more competitors, and his wages, when he came to be a complete workman, would be much less than at present. the same increase of competition would reduce the profits of the masters as well as the wages of the workmen. the trades, the crafts, the mysteries, would all be losers. but the public would be a gainer, the work of all artificers coming in this way much cheaper to market. it is to prevent this reduction of price, and consequently of wages and profit, by restraining that free competition which would most certainly occasion it, that all corporations, and the greater part of corporation laws, have been established. in order to erect a corporation, no other authority in ancient times was requisite in many parts of europe, but that of the town corporate in which it was established. in england, indeed, a charter from the king was likewise necessary. but this prerogative of the crown seems to have been reserved rather for extorting money from the subject than for the defence of the common liberty against such oppressive monopolies. upon paying a fine to the king, the charter seems generally to have been readily granted; and when any particular class of artificers or traders thought proper to act as a corporation without a charter, such adulterine guilds, as they were called, were not always disfranchised upon that account, but obliged to fine annually to the king for permission to exercise their usurped privileges. the immediate inspection of all corporations, and of the bye-laws which they might think proper to enact for their own government, belonged to the town corporate in which they were established; and whatever discipline was exercised over them proceeded commonly, not from the king, but from the greater incorporation of which those subordinate ones were only parts or members. the government of towns corporate was altogether in the hands of traders and artificers, and it was the manifest interest of every particular class of them to prevent the market from being overstocked, as they commonly express it, with their own particular species of industry, which is in reality to keep it always understocked. each class was eager to establish regulations proper for this purpose, and, provided it was allowed to do so, was willing to consent that every other class should do the same. in consequence of such regulations, indeed, each class was obliged to buy the goods they had occasion for from every other within the town, somewhat dearer than they otherwise might have done. but in recompense, they were enabled to sell their own just as much dearer; so that so far it was as broad as long, as they say; and in the dealings of the different classes within the town with one another, none of them were losers by these regulations. but in their dealings with the country they were all great gainers; and in these latter dealings consists the whole trade which supports and enriches every town. every town draws its whole subsistence, and all the materials of its industry, from the country. it pays for these chiefly in two ways: first, by sending back to the country a part of those materials wrought up and manufactured; in which case their price is augmented by the wages of the workmen, and the profits of their masters or immediate employers; secondly, by sending to it a part both of the rude and manufactured produce, either of other countries, or of distant parts of the same country, imported into the town; in which case, too, the original price of those goods is augmented by the wages of the carriers or sailors, and by the profits of the merchants who employ them. in what is gained upon the first of those two branches of commerce consists the advantage which the town makes by its manufactures; in what is gained upon the second, the advantage of its inland and foreign trade. the wages of the workmen, and the profits of their different employers, make up the whole of what is gained upon both. whatever regulations, therefore, tend to increase those wages and profits beyond what they otherwise would be, tend to enable the town to purchase, with a smaller quantity of its labour, the produce of a greater quantity of the labour of the country. they give the traders and artificers in the town an advantage over the landlords, farmers, and labourers in the country, and break down that natural equality which would otherwise take place in the commerce which is carried on between them. the whole annual produce of the labour of the society is annually divided between those two different sets of people. by means of those regulations a greater share of it is given to the inhabitants of the town than would otherwise fall to them; and a less to those of the country. the price which the town really pays for the provisions and materials annually imported into it is the quantity of manufactures and other goods annually exported from it. the dearer the latter are sold, the cheaper the former are bought. the industry of the town becomes more, and that of the country less advantageous. that the industry which is carried on in towns is, everywhere in europe, more advantageous than that which is carried on in the country, without entering into any very nice computations, we may satisfy ourselves by one very simple and obvious observation. in every country of europe we find, at least, a hundred people who have acquired great fortunes from small beginnings by trade and manufactures, the industry which properly belongs to towns, for one who has done so by that which properly belongs to the country, the raising of rude produce by the improvement and cultivation of land. industry, therefore, must be better rewarded, the wages of labour and the profits of stock must evidently be greater in the one situation than in the other. but stock and labour naturally seek the most advantageous employment. they naturally, therefore, resort as much as they can to the town, and desert the country. the inhabitants of a town, being collected into one place, can easily combine together. the most insignificant trades carried on in towns have accordingly, in some place or other, been incorporated, and even where they have never been incorporated, yet the corporation spirit, the jealousy of strangers, the aversion to take apprentices, or to communicate the secret of their trade, generally prevail in them, and often teach them, by voluntary associations and agreements, to prevent that free competition which they cannot prohibit by bye-laws. the trades which employ but a small number of hands run most easily into such combinations. half a dozen wool-combers, perhaps, are necessary to keep a thousand spinners and weavers at work. by combining not to take apprentices they can not only engross the employment, but reduce the whole manufacture into a sort of slavery to themselves, and raise the price of their labour much above what is due to the nature of their work. the inhabitants of the country, dispersed in distant places, cannot easily combine together. they have not only never been incorporated, but the corporation spirit never has prevailed among them. no apprenticeship has ever been thought necessary to qualify for husbandry, the great trade of the country. after what are called the fine arts, and the liberal professions, however, there is perhaps no trade which requires so great a variety of knowledge and experience. the innumerable volumes which have been written upon it in all languages may satisfy us that, among the wisest and most learned nations, it has never been regarded as a matter very easily understood. and from all those volumes we shall in vain attempt to collect that knowledge of its various and complicated operations, which is commonly possessed even by the common farmer; how contemptuously soever the very contemptible authors of some of them may sometimes affect to speak of him. there is scarce any common mechanic trade, on the contrary, of which all the operations may not be as completely and distinctly explained in a pamphlet of a very few pages, as it is possible for words illustrated by figures to explain them. in the history of the arts, now publishing by the french academy of sciences, several of them are actually explained in this manner. the direction of operations, besides, which must be varied with every change of the weather, as well as with many other accidents, requires much more judgment and discretion than that of those which are always the same or very nearly the same. not only the art of the farmer, the general direction of the operations of husbandry, but many inferior branches of country labour require much more skin and experience than the greater part of mechanic trades. the man who works upon brass and iron, works with instruments and upon materials of which the temper is always the same, or very nearly the same. but the man who ploughs the ground with a team of horses or oxen, works with instruments of which the health, strength, and temper, are very different upon different occasions. the condition of the materials which he works upon, too, is as variable as that of the instruments which he works with, and both require to be managed with much judgment and discretion. the common ploughman, though generally regarded as the pattern of stupidity and ignorance, is seldom defective in this judgment and discretion. he is less accustomed, indeed, to social intercourse than the mechanic who lives in a town. his voice and language are more uncouth and more difficult to be understood by those who are not used to them. his understanding, however, being accustomed to consider a greater variety of objects, is generally much superior to that of the other, whose whole attention from morning till night is commonly occupied in performing one or two very simple operations. how much the lower ranks of people in the country are really superior to those of the town is well known to every man whom either business or curiosity has led to converse much with both. in china and indostan accordingly both the rank and the wages of country labourers are said to be superior to those of the greater part of artificers and manufacturers. they would probably be so everywhere, if corporation laws and the corporation spirit did not prevent it. the superiority which the industry of the towns has everywhere in europe over that of the country is not altogether owing to corporations and corporation laws. it is supported by many other regulations. the high duties upon foreign manufactures and upon all goods imported by alien merchants, all tend to the same purpose. corporation laws enable the inhabitants of towns to raise their prices, without fearing to be undersold by the free competition of their own countrymen. those other regulations secure them equally against that of foreigners. the enhancement of price occasioned by both is everywhere finally paid by the landlords, farmers, and labourers of the country, who have seldom opposed the establishment of such monopolies. they have commonly neither inclination nor fitness to enter into combinations; and the clamour and sophistry of merchants and manufacturers easily persuade them that the private interest of a part, and of a subordinate part of the society, is the general interest of the whole. in great britain the superiority of the industry of the towns over that of the country seems to have been greater formerly than in the present times. the wages of country labour approach nearer to those of manufacturing labour, and the profits of stock employed in agriculture to those of trading and manufacturing stock, than they are said to have done in the last century, or in the beginning of the present. this change may be regarded as the necessary, though very late consequence of the extraordinary encouragement given to the industry of the towns. the stock accumulated in them comes in time to be so great that it can no longer be employed with the ancient profit in that species of industry which is peculiar to them. that industry has its limits like every other; and the increase of stock, by increasing the competition, necessarily reduces the profit. the lowering of profit in the town forces out stock to the country, where, by creating a new demand for country labour, it necessarily raises its wages. it then spreads itself, if i may say so, over the face of the land, and by being employed in agriculture is in part restored to the country, at the expense of which, in a great measure, it had originally been accumulated in the town. that everywhere in europe the greatest improvements of the country have been owing to such overflowings of the stock originally accumulated in the towns, i shall endeavour to show hereafter; and at the same time to demonstrate that, though some countries have by this course attained to a considerable degree of opulence, it is in itself necessarily slow, uncertain, liable to be disturbed and interrupted by innumerable accidents, and in every respect contrary to the order of nature and of reason. the interests, prejudices, laws and customs, which have given occasion to it, i shall endeavour to explain as fully and distinctly as i can in the third and fourth books of this inquiry. people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. it is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. but though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary. a regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies. it connects individuals who might never otherwise be known to one another, and gives every man of the trade a direction where to find every other man of it. a regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows and orphans, by giving them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies necessary. an incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding upon the whole. in a free trade an effectual combination cannot be established but by the unanimous consent of every single trader, and it cannot last longer than every single trader continues of the same mind. the majority of a corporation can enact a bye-law with proper penalties, which will limit the competition more effectually and more durably than any voluntary combination whatever. the pretence that corporations are necessary for the better government of the trade is without any foundation. the real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is not that of his corporation, but that of his customers. it is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence. an exclusive corporation necessarily weakens the force of this discipline. a particular set of workmen must then be employed, let them behave well or ill. it is upon this account that in many large incorporated towns no tolerable workmen are to be found, even in some of the most necessary trades. if you would have your work tolerably executed, it must be done in the suburbs, where the workmen, having no exclusive privilege, have nothing but their character to depend upon, and you must then smuggle it into the town as well as you can. it is in this manner that the policy of europe, by restraining the competition in some employments to a smaller number than would otherwise be disposed to enter into them, occasions a very important inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock. secondly, the policy of europe, by increasing the competition in some employments beyond what it naturally would be, occasions another inequality of an opposite kind in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock. it has been considered as of so much importance that a proper number of young people should be educated for certain professions, that sometimes the public and sometimes the piety of private founders have established many pensions, scholarships, exhibitions, bursaries, etc., for this purpose, which draw many more people into those trades than could otherwise pretend to follow them. in all christian countries, i believe, the education of the greater part of churchmen is paid for in this manner. very few of them are educated altogether at their own expense. the long, tedious, and expensive education, therefore, of those who are, will not always procure them a suitable reward, the church being crowded with people who, in order to get employment, are willing to accept of a much smaller recompense than what such an education would otherwise have entitled them to; and in this manner the competition of the poor takes away the reward of the rich. it would be indecent, no doubt, to compare either a curate or a chaplain with a journeyman in any common trade. the pay of a curate or chaplain, however, may very properly be considered as of the same nature with the wages of a journeyman. they are, all three, paid for their work according to the contract which they may happen to make with their respective superiors. till after the middle of the fourteenth century, five merks, containing about as much silver as ten pounds of our present money, was in england the usual pay of a curate or a stipendiary parish priest, as we find it regulated by the decrees of several different national councils. at the same period fourpence a day, containing the same quantity of silver as a shilling of our present money, was declared to be the pay of a master mason, and threepence a day, equal to ninepence of our present money, that of a journeyman mason. the wages of both these labourers, therefore, supposing them to have been constantly employed, were much superior to those of the curate. the wages of the master mason, supposing him to have been without employment one third of the year, would have fully equalled them. by the 12th of queen anne, c. 12, it is declared, "that whereas for want of sufficient maintenance and encouragement to curates, the cures have in several places been meanly supplied, the bishop is, therefore, empowered to appoint by writing under his band and seal a sufficient certain stipend or allowance, not exceeding fifty and not less than twenty pounds a year." forty pounds a year is reckoned at present very good pay for a curate, and notwithstanding this act of parliament there are many curacies under twenty pounds a year. there are journeymen shoemakers in london who earn forty pounds a year, and there is scarce an industrious workman of any kind in that metropolis who does not earn more than twenty. this last sum indeed does not exceed what is frequently earned by common labourers in many country parishes. whenever the law has attempted to regulate the wages of workmen, it has always been rather to lower them than to raise them. but the law has upon many occasions attempted to raise the wages of curates, and for the dignity of the church, to oblige the rectors of parishes to give them more than the wretched maintenance which they themselves might be willing to accept of. and in both cases the law seems to have been equally ineffectual, and has never either been able to raise the wages of curates, or to sink those of labourers to the degree that was intended; because it has never been able to hinder either the one from being willing to accept of less than the legal allowance, on account of the indigence of their situation and the multitude of their competitors; or the other from receiving more, on account of the contrary competition of those who expected to derive either profit or pleasure from employing them. the great benefices and other ecclesiastical dignities support the honour of the church, notwithstanding the mean circumstance of some of its inferior members. the respect paid to the profession, too, makes some compensation even to them for the meanness of their pecuniary recompense. in england, and in all roman catholic countries, the lottery of the church is in reality much more advantageous than is necessary. the example of the churches of scotland, of geneva, and of several other protestant churches, may satisfy us that in so creditable a profession, in which education is so easily procured, the hopes of much more moderate benefices will draw a sufficient number of learned, decent, and respectable men into holy orders. in professions in which there are no benefices, such as law and physic, if an equal proportion of people were educated at the public expense, the competition would soon be so great as to sink very much their pecuniary reward. it might then not be worth any man's while to educate his son to either of those professions at his own expense. they would be entirely abandoned to such as had been educated by those public charities, whose numbers and necessities would oblige them in general to content themselves with a very miserable recompense, to the entire degradation of the now respectable professions of law and physic. that unprosperous race of men commonly called men of letters are pretty much in the situation which lawyers and physicians probably would be in upon the foregoing supposition. in every part of europe the greater part of them have been educated for the church, but have been hindered by different reasons from entering into holy orders. they have generally, therefore, been educated at the public expense, and their numbers are everywhere so great as commonly to reduce the price of their labour to a very paltry recompense. before the invention of the art of printing, the only employment by which a man of letters could make anything by his talents was that of a public or private teacher, or by communicating to other people the curious and useful knowledge which he had acquired himself: and this is still surely a more honourable, a more useful, and in general even a more profitable employment than that other of writing for a bookseller, to which the art of printing has given occasion. the time and study, the genius, knowledge, and application requisite to qualify an eminent teacher of the sciences, are at least equal to what is necessary for the greatest practitioners in law and physic. but the usual reward of the eminent teacher bears no proportion to that of the lawyer or physician; because the trade of the one is crowded with indigent people who have been brought up to it at the public expense; whereas those of the other two are encumbered with very few who have not been educated at their own. the usual recompense, however, of public and private teachers, small as it may appear, would undoubtedly be less than it is, if the competition of those yet more indigent men of letters who write for bread was not taken out of the market. before the invention of the art of printing, a scholar and a beggar seem to have been terms very nearly synonymous. the different governors of the universities before that time appear to have often granted licences to their scholars to beg. in ancient times, before any charities of this kind had been established for the education of indigent people to the learned professions, the rewards of eminent teachers appear to have been much more considerable. isocrates, in what is called his discourse against the sophists, reproaches the teachers of his own times with inconsistency. "they make the most magnificent promises to their scholars," says he, "and undertake to teach them to be wise, to be happy, and to be just, and in return for so important a service they stipulate the paltry reward of four or five minae. they who teach wisdom," continues he, ought certainly to be wise themselves; but if any man were to sell such a bargain for such a price, he would be convicted of the most evident folly." he certainly does not mean here to exaggerate the reward, and we may be assured that it was not less than he represents it. four minae were equal to thirteen pounds six shillings and eightpence: five minae to sixteen pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence. something not less than the largest of those two sums, therefore, must at that time have been usually paid to the most eminent teachers at athens. isocrates himself demanded ten minae, or thirty-three pounds six shillings and eightpence, from each scholar. when he taught at athens, he is said to have had a hundred scholars. i understand this to be the number whom he taught at one time, or who attended what we could call one course of lectures, a number which will not appear extraordinary from so great a city to so famous a teacher, who taught, too, what was at that time the most fashionable of all sciences, rhetoric. he must have made, therefore, by each course of lectures, a thousand minae, or l3333 6s. 8d. a thousand minae, accordingly, is said by plutarch in another place, to have been his didactron, or usual price of teaching. many other eminent teachers in those times appear to have acquired great fortunes. gorgias made a present to the temple of delphi of his own statue in solid gold. we must not, i presume, suppose that it was as large as the life. his way of living, as well as that of hippias and protagoras, two other eminent teachers of those times, is represented by plato as splendid even to ostentation. plato himself is said to have lived with a good deal of magnificence. aristotle, after having been tutor to alexander, and most munificently rewarded, as it is universally agreed, both by him and his father philip, thought it worth while, notwithstanding, to return to athens, in order to resume the teaching of his school. teachers of the sciences were probably in those times less common than they came to be in an age or two afterwards, when the competition had probably somewhat reduced both the price of their labour and the admiration for their persons. the most eminent of them, however, appear always to have enjoyed a degree of consideration much superior to any of the like profession in the present times. the athenians sent carneades the academic, and diogenes the stoic, upon a solemn embassy to rome; and though their city had then declined from its former grandeur, it was still an independent and considerable republic. carneades, too, was a babylonian by birth, and as there never was a people more jealous of admitting foreigners to public offices than the athenians, their consideration for him must have been very great. this inequality is upon the whole, perhaps, rather advantageous than hurtful to the public. it may somewhat degrade the profession of a public teacher; but the cheapness of literary education is surely an advantage which greatly overbalances this trifling inconveniency. the public, too, might derive still greater benefit from it, if the constitution of those schools and colleges, in which education is carried on, was more reasonable than it is at present through the greater part of europe. thirdly, the policy of europe, by obstructing the free circulation of labour and stock both from employment to employment, and from place to place, occasions in some cases a very incovenient inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of their different employments. the statute of apprenticeship obstructs the free circulation of labour from one employment to another, even in the same place. the exclusive privileges of corporations obstruct it from one place to another, even in the same employment. it frequently happens that while high wages are given to the workmen in one manufacture, those in another are obliged to content themselves with bare subsistence. the one is in an advancing state, and has, therefore, a continual demand for new bands: the other is in a declining state, and the superabundance of hands is continually increasing. those two manufactures may sometimes be in the same town, and sometimes in the same neighbourhood, without being able to lend the least assistance to one another. the statute of apprenticeship may oppose it in the one case, and both that and an exclusive corporation in the other. in many different manufactures, however, the operations are so much alike, that the workmen could easily change trades with one another, if those absurd laws did not hinder them. the arts of weaving plain linen and plain silk, for example, are almost entirely the same. that of weaving plain woollen is somewhat different; but the difference is so insignificant that either a linen or a silk weaver might become a tolerable work in a very few days. if any of those three capital manufactures, therefore, were decaying, the workmen might find a resource in one of the other two which was in a more prosperous condition; and their wages would neither rise too high in the thriving, nor sink too low in the decaying manufacture. the linen manufacture indeed is, in england, by a particular statute, open to everybody; but as it is not much cultivated through the greater part of the country, it can afford no general resource to the workmen of other decaying manufactures, who, wherever the statute of apprenticeship takes place, have no other choice but either to come upon the parish, or to work as common labourers, for which, by their habits, they are much worse qualified than for any sort of manufacture that bears any resemblance to their own. they generally, therefore, choose to come upon the parish. whatever obstructs the free circulation of labour from one employment to another obstructs that of stock likewise; the quantity of stock which can be employed in any branch of business depending very much upon that of the labour which can be employed in it. corporation laws, however, give less obstruction to the free circulation of stock from one place to another than to that of labour. it is everywhere much easier for a wealthy merchant to obtain the privilege of trading in a town corporate, than for a poor artificer to obtain that of working in it. the obstruction which corporation laws give to the free circulation of labour is common, i believe, to every part of europe. that which is given to it by the poor laws is, so far as i know, peculiar to england. it consists in the difficulty which a poor man finds in obtaining a settlement, or even in being allowed to exercise his industry in any parish but that to which he belongs. it is the labour of artificers and manufacturers only of which the free circulation is obstructed by corporation laws. the difficulty of obtaining settlements obstructs even that of common labour. it may be worth while to give some account of the rise, progress, and present state of this disorder, the greatest perhaps of any in the police of england. when by the destruction of monasteries the poor had been deprived of the charity of those religious houses, after some other ineffectual attempts for their relief, it was enacted by the 43rd of elizabeth, c. 2, that every parish should be bound to provide for its own poor; and that overseers of the poor should be annually appointed, who, with the churchwardens, should raise by a parish rate competent sums for this purpose. by this statute the necessity of providing for their own poor was indispensably imposed upon every parish. who were to be considered as the poor of each parish became, therefore, a question of some importance. this question, after some variation, was at last determined by the 13th and 14th of charles ii when it was enacted, that forty days' undisturbed residence should gain any person a settlement in any parish; but that within that time it should be lawful for two justices of the peace, upon complaint made by the churchwardens or overseers of the poor, to remove any new inhabitant to the parish where he was last legally settled; unless he either rented a tenement of ten pounds a year, or could give such security for the discharge of the parish where he was then living, as those justices should judge sufficient. some frauds, it is said, were committed in consequence of this statute; parish officers sometimes bribing their own poor to go clandestinely to another parish, and by keeping themselves concealed for forty days to gain a settlement there, to the discharge of that to which they properly belonged. it was enacted, therefore, by the 1st of james ii that the forty days' undisturbed residence of any person necessary to gain a settlement should be accounted only from the time of his delivering notice in writing, of the place of his abode and the number of his family, to one of the churchwardens or overseers of the parish where he came to dwell. but parish officers, it seems, were not always more honest with regard to their own, than they had been with regard to other parishes, and sometimes connived at such intrusions, receiving the notice, and taking no proper steps in consequence of it. as every person in a parish, therefore, was supposed to have an interest to prevent as much as possible their being burdened by such intruders, it was further enacted by the 3rd of william iii that the forty days' residence should be accounted only from the publication of such notice in writing on sunday in the church, immediately after divine service. "after all," says doctor burn, "this kind of settlement, by continuing forty days after publication of notice in writing, is very seldom obtained; and the design of the acts is not so much for gaining of settlements, as for the avoiding of them, by persons coming into a parish clandestinely: for the giving of notice is only putting a force upon the parish to remove. but if a person's situation is such, that it is doubtful whether he is actually removable or not, he shall by giving of notice compel the parish either to allow him a settlement uncontested, by suffering him to continue forty days; or, by removing him, to try the right." this statute, therefore, rendered it almost impracticable for a poor man to gain a new settlement in the old way, by forty days' inhabitancy. but that it might not appear to preclude altogether the common people of one parish from ever establishing themselves with security in another, it appointed four other ways by which a settlement might be gained without any notice delivered or published. the first was, by being taxed to parish rates and paying them; the second, by being elected into an annual parish office, and serving in it a year; the third, by serving an apprenticeship in the parish; the fourth, by being hired into service there for a year, and continuing in the same service during the whole of it. nobody can gain a settlement by either of the two first ways, but by the public deed of the whole parish, who are too well aware of the consequences to adopt any new-comer who has nothing but his labour to support him, either by taxing him to parish rates, or by electing him into a parish office. no married man can well gain any settlement in either of the two last ways. an apprentice is scarce ever married; and it is expressly enacted that no married servant shall gain any settlement by being hired for a year. the principal effect of introducing settlement by service has been to put out in a great measure the old fashion of hiring for a year, which before had been so customary in england, that even at this day, if no particular term is agreed upon, the law intends that every servant is hired for a year. but masters are not always willing to give their servants a settlement by hiring them in this manner; and servants are not always willing to be so hired, because, as every last settlement discharges all the foregoing, they might thereby lose their original settlement in the places of their nativity, the habitation of their parents and relations. no independent workman, it is evident, whether labourer or artificer, is likely to gain any new settlement either by apprenticeship or by service. when such a person, therefore, carried his industry to a new parish, he was liable to be removed, how healthy and industrious soever, at the caprice of any churchwarden or overseer, unless he either rented a tenement of ten pounds a year, a thing impossible for one who has nothing but his labour to live by; or could give such security for the discharge of the parish as two justices of the peace should judge sufficient. what security they shall require, indeed, is left altogether to their discretion; but they cannot well require less than thirty pounds, it having been enacted that the purchase even of a freehold estate of less than thirty pounds' value shall not gain any person a settlement, as not being sufficient for the discharge of the parish. but this is a security which scarce any man who lives by labour can give; and much greater security is frequently demanded. in order to restore in some measure that free circulation of labour which those different statutes had almost entirely taken away, the invention of certificates was fallen upon. by the 8th and 9th of william iii it was enacted that if any person should bring a certificate from the parish where he was last legally settled, subscribed by the churchwardens and overseers of the poor, and allowed by two justices of the peace, that every other parish should be obliged to receive him; that he should not be removable merely upon account of his being likely to become chargeable, but only upon his becoming actually chargeable, and that then the parish which granted the certificate should be obliged to pay the expense both of his maintenance and of his removal. and in order to give the most perfect security to the parish where such certificated man should come to reside, it was further enacted by the same statute that he should gain no settlement there by any means whatever, except either by renting a tenement of ten pounds a year, or by serving upon his own account in an annual parish office for one whole year; and consequently neither by notice, nor by service, nor by apprenticeship, nor by paying parish rates. by the 12th of queen anne, too, stat. 1, c. 18, it was further enacted that neither the servants nor apprentices of such certificated man should gain any settlement in the parish where he resided under such certificate. how far this invention has restored that free circulation of labour which the preceding statutes had almost entirely taken away, we may learn from the following very judicious observation of doctor burn. "it is obvious," says he, "that there are divers good reasons for requiring certificates with persons coming to settle in any place; namely, that persons residing under them can gain no settlement, neither by apprenticeship, nor by service, nor by giving notice, nor by paying parish rates; that they can settle neither apprentices nor servants; that if they become chargeable, it is certainly known whither to remove them, and the parish shall be paid for the removal, and for their maintenance in the meantime; and that if they fall sick, and cannot be removed, the parish which gave the certificate must maintain them: none of all which can be without a certificate. which reasons will hold proportionably for parishes not granting certificates in ordinary cases; for it is far more than an equal chance, but that they will have the certificated persons again, and in a worse condition." the moral of this observation seems to be that certificates ought always to be required by the parish where any poor man comes to reside, and that they ought very seldom to be granted by that which he proposes to leave. "there is somewhat of hardship in this matter of certificates," says the same very intelligent author in his history of the poor laws, "by putting it in the power of a parish officer to imprison a man as it were for life; however inconvenient it may be for him to continue at that place where he has had the misfortune to acquire what is called a settlement, or whatever advantage he may propose to himself by living elsewhere." though a certificate carries along with it no testimonial of good behaviour, and certifies nothing but that the person belongs to the parish to which he really does belong, it is altogether discretionary in the parish officers either to grant or to refuse it. a mandamus was once moved for, says doctor burn, to compel the churchwardens and overseers to sign a certificate; but the court of king's bench rejected the motion as a very strange attempt. the very unequal price of labour which we frequently find in england in places at no great distance from one another is probably owing to the obstruction which the law of settlements gives to a poor man who would carry his industry from one parish to another without a certificate. a single man, indeed, who is healthy and industrious, may sometimes reside by sufferance without one; but a man with a wife and family who should attempt to do so would in most parishes be sure of being removed, and if the single man should afterwards marry, he would generally be removed likewise. the scarcity of hands in one parish, therefore, cannot always be relieved by their superabundance in another, as it is constantly in scotland, and, i believe, in all other countries where there is no difficulty of settlement. in such countries, though wages may sometimes rise a little in the neighbourhood of a great town, or wherever else there is an extraordinary demand for labour, and sink gradually as the distance from such places increases, till they fall back to the common rate of the country; yet we never meet with those sudden and unaccountable differences in the wages of neighbouring places which we sometimes find in england, where it is often more difficult for a poor man to pass the artificial boundary of a parish than an arm of the sea or a ridge of high mountains, natural boundaries which sometimes separate very distinctly different rates of wages in other countries. to remove a man who has committed no misdemeanour from the parish where he chooses to reside is an evident violation of natural liberty and justice. the common people of england, however, so jealous of their liberty, but like the common people of most other countries never rightly understanding wherein it consists, have now for more than a century together suffered themselves to be exposed to this oppression without a remedy. though men of reflection, too, have sometimes complained of the law of settlements as a public grievance; yet it has never been the object of any general popular clamour, such as that against general warrants, an abusive practice undoubtedly, but such a one as was not likely to occasion any general oppression. there is scarce a poor man in england of forty years of age, i will venture to say, who has not in some part of his life felt himself most cruelly oppressed by this illcontrived law of settlements. i shall conclude this long chapter with observing that, though anciently it was usual to rate wages, first by general laws extending over the whole kingdom, and afterwards by particular orders of the justices of peace in every particular county, both these practices have now gone entirely into disuse. "by the experience of above four hundred years," says doctor burn, "it seems time to lay aside all endeavours to bring under strict regulations, what in its own nature seems incapable of minute limitation; for if all persons in the same kind of work were to receive equal wages, there would be no emulation, and no room left for industry or ingenuity." particular acts of parliament, however, still attempt sometimes to regulate wages in particular trades and in particular places. thus the 8th of george iii prohibits under heavy penalties all master tailors in london, and five miles round it, from giving, and their workmen from accepting, more than two shillings and sevenpence halfpenny a day, except in the case of a general mourning. whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. when the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters. thus the law which obliges the masters in several different trades to pay their workmen in money and not in goods is quite just and equitable. it imposes no real hardship upon the masters. it only obliges them to pay that value in money, which they pretended to pay, but did not always really pay, in goods. this law is in favour of the workmen: but the 8th of george iii is in favour of the masters. when masters combine together in order to reduce the wages of their workmen, they commonly enter into a private bond or agreement not to give more than a certain wage under a certain penalty. were the workmen to enter into a contrary combination of the same kind, not to accept of a certain wage under a certain penalty, the law would punish them very severely; and if it dealt impartially, it would treat the masters in the same manner. but the 8th of george iii enforces by law that very regulation which masters sometimes attempt to establish by such combinations. the complaint of the workmen, that it puts the ablest and most industrious upon the same footing with an ordinary workman, seems perfectly well founded. in ancient times, too, it was usual to attempt to regulate the profits of merchants and other dealers, by rating the price both of provisions and other goods. the assize of bread is, so far as i know, the only remnant of this ancient usage. where there is an exclusive corporation, it may perhaps be proper to regulate the price of the first necessary of life. but where there is none, the competition will regulate it much better than any assize. the method of fixing the assize of bread established by the 31st of george ii could not be put in practice in scotland, on account of a defect in the law; its execution depending upon the office of a clerk of the market, which does not exist there. this defect was not remedied till the 3rd of george iii. the want of an assize occasioned no sensible inconveniency, and the establishment of one, in the few places where it has yet taken place, has produced no sensible advantage. in the greater part of the towns of scotland, however, there is an incorporation of bakers who claim exclusive privileges, though they are not very strictly guarded. the proportion between the different rates both of wages and profit in the different employments of labour and stock, seems not to be much affected, as has already been observed, by the riches or poverty, the advancing, stationary, or declining state of the society. such revolutions in the public welfare, though they affect the general rates both of wages and profit, must in the end affect them equally in all different employments. the proportion between them, therefore, must remain the same, and cannot well be altered, at least for any considerable time, by any such revolutions. chapter xi of the rent of land rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. in adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. this is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more. whatever part of the produce, or, what is the same thing, whatever part of its price is over and above this share, he naturally endeavours to reserve to himself as the rent of his land, which is evidently the highest the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. sometimes, indeed, the liberality, more frequently the ignorance, of the landlord, makes him accept of somewhat less than this portion; and sometimes too, though more rarely, the ignorance of the tenant makes him undertake to pay somewhat more, or to content himself with somewhat less than the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. this portion, however, may still be considered as the natural rent of land, or the rent for which it is naturally meant that land should for the most part be let. the rent of land, it may be thought, is frequently no more than a reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord upon its improvement. this, no doubt, may be partly the case upon some occasions; for it can scarce ever be more than partly the case. the landlord demands a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interest or profit upon the expense of improvement is generally an addition to this original rent. those improvements, besides, are not always made by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes by that of the tenant. when the lease comes to be renewed, however, the landlord commonly demands the same augmentation of rent as if they had been all made by his own. he sometimes demands rent for what is altogether incapable of human improvement. kelp is a species of sea-weed, which, when burnt, yields an alkaline salt, useful for making glass, soap, and for several other purposes. it grows in several parts of great britain, particularly in scotland, upon such rocks only as lie within the high water mark, which are twice every day covered with the sea, and of which the produce, therefore, was never augmented by human industry. the landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it as much as for his corn fields. the sea in the neighbourhood of the islands of shetland is more than commonly abundant in fish, which makes a great part of the subsistence of their inhabitants. but in order to profit by the produce of the water, they must have a habitation upon the neighbouring land. the rent of the landlord is in proportion, not to what the farmer can make by the land, but to what he can make both by the land and by the water. it is partly paid in sea-fish; and one of the very few instances in which rent makes a part of the price of that commodity is to be found in that country. the rent of the land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. it is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the farmer can afford to give. such parts only of the produce of land can commonly be brought to market of which the ordinary price is sufficient to replace the stock which must be employed in bringing them thither, together with its ordinary profits. if the ordinary price is more than this, the surplus part of it will naturally go to the rent of land. if it is not more, though the commodity may be brought to market, it can afford no rent to the landlord. whether the price is or is not more depends upon the demand. there are some parts of the produce of land for which the demand must always be such as to afford a greater price than what is sufficient to bring them to market; and there are others for which it either may or may not be such as to afford this greater price. the former must always afford a rent to the landlord. the latter sometimes may, and sometimes may not, according to different circumstances. rent, it is to be observed, therefore, enters into the composition of the price of commodities in a different way from wages and profit. high or low wages and profit are the causes of high or low price; high or low rent is the effect of it. it is because high or low wages and profit must be paid, in order to bring a particular commodity to market, that its price is high or low. but it is because its price is high or low; a great deal more, or very little more, or no more, than what is sufficient to pay those wages and profit, that it affords a high rent, or a low rent, or no rent at all. the particular consideration, first, of those parts of the produce of land which always afford some rent; secondly, of those which sometimes may and sometimes may not afford rent; and, thirdly, of the variations which, in the different periods of improvement, naturally take place in the relative value of those two different sorts of rude produce, when compared both with one another and with manufactured commodities, will divide this chapter into three parts. part 1 of the produce of land which always affords rent as men, like all other animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence, food is always, more or less, in demand. it can always purchase or command a greater or smaller quantity of labour, and somebody can always be found who is willing to do something in order to obtain it. the quantity of labour, indeed, which it can purchase is not always equal to what it could maintain, if managed in the most economical manner, on account of the high wages which are sometimes given to labour. but it can always purchase such a quantity of labour as it can maintain, according to the rate at which the sort of labour is commonly maintained in the neighbourhood. but land, in almost any situation, produces a greater quantity of food than what is sufficient to maintain all the labour necessary for bringing it to market in the most liberal way in which that labour is ever maintained. the surplus, too, is always more than sufficient to replace the stock which employed that labour, together with its profits. something, therefore, always remains for a rent to the landlord. the most desert moors in norway and scotland produce some sort of pasture for cattle, of which the milk and the increase are always more than sufficient, not only to maintain all the labour necessary for tending them, and to pay the ordinary profit to the farmer or owner of the herd or flock; but to afford some small rent to the landlord. the rent increases in proportion to the goodness of the pasture. the same extent of ground not only maintains a greater number of cattle, but as they are brought within a smaller compass, less labour becomes requisite to tend them, and to collect their produce. the landlord gains both ways, by the increase of the produce and by the diminution of the labour which must be maintained out of it. the rent of land not only varies with its fertility, whatever be its produce, but with its situation, whatever be its fertility. land in the neighbourhood of a town gives a greater rent than land equally fertile in a distant part of the country. though it may cost no more labour to cultivate the one than the other, it must always cost more to bring the produce of the distant land to market. a greater quantity of labour, therefore, must be maintained out of it; and the surplus, from which are drawn both the profit of the farmer and the rent of the landlord, must be diminished. but in remote parts of the country the rate of profits, as has already been shown, is generally higher than in the neighbourhood of a large town. a smaller proportion of this diminished surplus, therefore, must belong to the landlord. good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expense of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those in the neighbourhood of the town. they are upon that account the greatest of all improvements. they encourage the cultivation of the remote, which must always be the most extensive circle of the country. they are advantageous to the town, by breaking down the monopoly of the country in its neighbourhood. they are advantageous even to that part of the country. though they introduce some rival commodities into the old market, they open many new markets to its produce. monopoly, besides, is a great enemy to good management, which can never be universally established but in consequence of that free and universal competition which forces everybody to have recourse to it for the sake of self-defence. it is not more than fifty years ago that some of the counties in the neighbourhood of london petitioned the parliament against the extension of the turnpike roads into the remoter counties. those remoter counties, they pretended, from the cheapness of labour, would be able to sell their grass and corn cheaper in the london market than themselves, and would thereby reduce their rents, and ruin their cultivation. their rents, however, have risen, and their cultivation has been improved since that time. a cornfield of moderate fertility produces a much greater quantity of food for man than the best pasture of equal extent. though its cultivation requires much more labour, yet the surplus which remains after replacing the seed and maintaining all that labour, is likewise much greater. if a pound of butcher's meat, therefore, was never supposed to be worth more than a pound of bread, this greater surplus would everywhere be of greater value, and constitute a greater fund both for the profit of the farmer and the rent of the landlord. it seems to have done so universally in the rude beginnings of agriculture. but the relative values of those two different species of food, bread and butcher's meat, are very different in the different periods of agriculture. in its rude beginnings, the unimproved wilds, which then occupy the far greater part of the country, are all abandoned to cattle. there is more butcher's meat than bread, and bread, therefore, is the food for which there is the greatest competition, and which consequently brings the greatest price. at buenos ayres, we are told by ulloa, four reals, one-and-twenty pence halfpenny sterling, was, forty or fifty years ago, the ordinary price of an ox, chosen from a herd of two or three hundred. he says nothing of the price of bread, probably because he found nothing remarkable about it. an ox there, he says, cost little more than the labour of catching him. but corn can nowhere be raised without a great deal of labour, and in a country which lies upon the river plate, at that time the direct road from europe to the silver mines of potosi, the money price of labour could not be very cheap. it is otherwise when cultivation is extended over the greater part of the country. there is then more bread than butcher's meat. the competition changes its direction, and the price of butcher's meat becomes greater than the price of bread. by the extension besides of cultivation, the unimproved wilds become insufficient to supply the demand for butcher's meat. a great part of the cultivated lands must be employed in rearing and fattening cattle, of which the price, therefore, must be sufficient to pay, not only the labour necessary for tending them, but the rent which the landlord and the profit which the farmer could have drawn from such land employed in tillage. the cattle bred upon the most uncultivated moors, when brought to the same market, are, in proportion to their weight or goodness, sold at the same price as those which are reared upon the most improved land. the proprietors of those moors profit by it, and raise the rent of their land in proportion to the price of their cattle. it is not more than a century ago that in many parts of the highlands of scotland, butcher's meat was as cheap or cheaper than even bread made of oatmeal. the union opened the market of england to the highland cattle. their ordinary price is at present about three times greater than at the beginning of the century, and the rents of many highland estates have been tripled and quadrupled in the same time. in almost every part of great britain a pound of the best butcher's meat is, in the present times, generally worth more than two pounds of the best white bread; and in plentiful years it is sometimes worth three or four pounds. it is thus that in the progress of improvement the rent and profit of unimproved pasture come to be regulated in some measure by the rent and profit of what is improved, and these again by the rent and profit of corn. corn is an annual crop. butcher's meat, a crop which requires four or five years to grow. as an acre of land, therefore, will produce a much smaller quantity of the one species of food than of the other, the inferiority of the quantity must be compensated by the superiority of the price. if it was more than compensated, more corn land would be turned into pasture; and if it was not compensated, part of what was in pasture would be brought back into corn. this equality, however, between the rent and profit of grass and those of corn; of the land of which the immediate produce is food for cattle, and of that of which the immediate produce is food for men; must be understood to take place only through the greater part of the improved lands of a great country. in some particular local situations it is quite otherwise, and the rent and profit of grass are much superior to what can be made by corn. thus in the neighbourhood of a great town the demand for milk and for forage to horses frequently contribute, together with the high price of butcher's meat, to raise the value of grass above what may be called its natural proportion to that of corn. this local advantage, it is evident, cannot be communicated to the lands at a distance. particular circumstances have sometimes rendered some countries so populous that the whole territory, like the lands in the neighbourhood of a great town, has not been sufficient to produce both the grass and the corn necessary for the subsistence of their inhabitants. their lands, therefore, have been principally employed in the production of grass, the more bulky commodity, and which cannot be so easily brought from a great distance; and corn, the food of the great body of the people, has been chiefly imported from foreign countries. holland is at present in this situation, and a considerable part of ancient italy seems to have been so during the prosperity of the romans. to feed well, old cato said, as we are told by cicero, was the first and most profitable thing in the management of a private estate; to feed tolerably well, the second; and to feed ill, the third. to plough, he ranked only in the fourth place of profit and advantage. tillage, indeed, in that part of ancient italy which lay in the neighbourhood of rome, must have been very much discouraged by the distributions of corn which were frequently made to the people, either gratuitously, or at a very low price. this corn was brought from the conquered provinces, of which several, instead of taxes, were obliged to furnish a tenth part of their produce at a stated price, about sixpence a peck, to the republic. the low price at which this corn was distributed to the people must necessarily have sunk the price of what could be brought to the roman market from latium, or the ancient territory of rome, and must have discouraged its cultivation in that country. in an open country too, of which the principal produce is corn, a well-enclosed piece of grass will frequently rent higher than any corn field in its neighbourhood. it is convenient for the maintenance of the cattle employed in the cultivation of the corn, and its high rent is, in this case, not so properly paid from the value of its own produce as from that of the corn lands which are cultivated by means of it. it is likely to fall, if ever the neighbouring lands are completely enclosed. the present high rent of enclosed land in scotland seems owing to the scarcity of enclosure, and will probably last no longer than that scarcity. the advantage of enclosure is greater for pasture than for corn. it saves the labour of guarding the cattle, which feed better, too, when they are not liable to be disturbed by their keeper or his dog. but where there is no local advantage of this kind, the rent and profit of corn, or whatever else is the common vegetable food or the people, must naturally regulate, upon the land which is fit for producing it, the rent and profit of pasture. the use of the artificial grasses, of turnips, carrots, cabbages, and the other expedients which have been fallen upon to make an equal quantity of land feed a greater number of cattle than when in natural grass, should somewhat reduce, it might be expected, the superiority which, in an improved country, the price of butcher's meat naturally has over that of bread. it seems accordingly to have done so; and there is some reason for believing that, at least in the london market, the price of butcher's meat in proportion to the price of bread is a good deal lower in the present times than it was in the beginning of the last century. in the appendix to the life of prince henry, doctor birch has given us an account of the prices of butcher's meat as commonly paid by that prince. it is there said that the four quarters of an ox weighing six hundred pounds usually cost him nine pounds ten shillings, or thereabouts; that is, thirty-one shillings and eightpence per hundred pounds weight. prince henry died on the 6th of november 1612, in the nineteenth year of his age. in march 1764, there was a parliamentary inquiry into the causes of the high price of provisions at that time. it was then, among other proof to the same purpose, given in evidence by a virginia merchant, that in march 1763, he had victualled his ships for twenty-four or twenty-five shillings the hundredweight of beef, which he considered as the ordinary price; whereas, in that dear year, he had paid twenty-seven shillings for the same weight and sort. this high price in 1764 is, however, four shillings and eightpence cheaper than the ordinary price paid by prince henry; and it is the best beef only, it must be observed, which is fit to be salted for those distant voyages. the price paid by prince henry amounts to 3 3/4d. per pound weight of the whole carcase, coarse and choice pieces taken together; and at that rate the choice pieces could not have been sold by retail for less than 4 1/2d. or 5d. the pound. in the parliamentary inquiry in 1764, the witnesses stated the price of the choice pieces of the best beef to be to the consumer 4d. and 4 1/4d. the pound; and the coarse pieces in general to be from seven farthings to 2 1/2d. and this they said was in general one halfpenny dearer than the same sort of pieces had usually been sold in the month of march. but even this high price is still a good deal cheaper than what we can well suppose the ordinary retail price to have been the time of prince henry. during the twelve first years of the last century, the average price of the best wheat at the windsor market was l1 18s. 3 1/6d. the quarter of nine winchester bushels. but in the twelve years preceding 1764, including that year, the average price of the same measure of the best wheat at the same market was l2 1s. 9 1/2d. in the twelve first years of the last century, therefore, wheat appears to have been a good deal cheaper, and butcher's meat a good deal dearer, than in the twelve years preceding 1764, including that year. in all great countries the greater part of the cultivated lands are employed in producing either food for men or food for cattle. the rent and profit of these regulate the rent and profit of all other cultivated land. if any particular produce afforded less, the land would soon be turned into corn or pasture; and if any afforded more, some part of the lands in corn or pasture would soon be turned to that produce. those productions, indeed, which require either a greater original expense of improvement, or a greater annual expense of cultivation, in order to fit the land for them, appear commonly to afford, the one a greater rent, the other a greater profit than corn or pasture. this superiority, however, will seldom be found to amount to more than a reasonable interest or compensation for this superior expense. in a hop garden, a fruit garden, a kitchen garden, both the rent of the landlord, and the profit of the farmer, are generally greater than in a corn or grass field. but to bring the ground into this condition requires more expense. hence a greater rent becomes due to the landlord. it requires, too, a more attentive and skilful management. hence a greater profit becomes due to the farmer. the crop too, at least in the hop and fruit garden, is more precarious. its price, therefore, besides compensating all occasional losses, must afford something like the profit of insurance. the circumstances of gardeners, generally mean, and always moderate, may satisfy us that their great ingenuity is not commonly over-recompensed. their delightful art is practised by so many rich people for amusement, that little advantage is to be made by those who practise it for profit; because the persons who should naturally be their best customers supply themselves with all their most precious productions. the advantage which the landlord derives from such improvements seems at no time to have been greater than what was sufficient to compensate the original expense of making them. in the ancient husbandry, after the vineyard, a well-watered kitchen garden seems to have been the part of the farm which was supposed to yield the most valuable produce. but democritus, who wrote upon husbandry about two thousand years ago, and who was regarded by the ancients as one of the fathers of the art, thought they did not act wisely who enclosed a kitchen garden. the profit, he said, would not compensate the expense of a stone wall; and bricks (he meant, i suppose, bricks baked in the sun) mouldered with the rain, and the winter storm, and required continual repairs. columella, who reports this judgment of democritus, does not controvert it, but proposes a very frugal method of enclosing with a hedge of brambles and briars, which, he says, he had found by experience to be both a lasting and an impenetrable fence; but which, it seems, was not commonly known in the time of democritus. palladius adopts the opinion of columella, which had before been recommended by varro. in the judgment of those ancient improvers, the produce of a kitchen garden had, it seems, been little more than sufficient to pay the extraordinary culture and the expense of watering; for in countries so near the sun, it was thought proper, in those times as in the present, to have the command of a stream of water which could be conducted to every bed in the garden. through the greater part of europe a kitchen garden is not at present supposed to deserve a better enclosure than that recommended by columella. in great britain, and some other northern countries, the finer fruits cannot be brought to perfection but by the assistance of a wall. their price, therefore, in such countries must be sufficient to pay the expense of building and maintaining what they cannot be had without. the fruit-wall frequently surrounds the kitchen garden, which thus enjoys the benefit of an enclosure which its own produce could seldom pay for. that the vineyard, when properly planted and brought to perfection, was the most valuable part of the farm, seems to have been an undoubted maxim in the ancient agriculture, as it is in the modern through all the wine countries. but whether it was advantageous to plant a new vineyard was a matter of dispute among the ancient italian husbandmen, as we learn from columella. he decides, like a true lover of all curious cultivation, in favour of the vineyard, and endeavours to show, by a comparison of the profit and expense, that it was a most advantageous improvement. such comparisons, however, between the profit and expense of new projects are commonly very fallacious, and in nothing more so than in agriculture. had the gain actually made by such plantations been commonly as great as he imagined it might have been, there could have been no dispute about it. the same point is frequently at this day a matter of controversy in the wine countries. their writers on agriculture, indeed, the lovers and promoters of high cultivation, seem generally disposed to decide with columella in favour of the vineyard. in france the anxiety of the proprietors of the old vineyards to prevent the planting of any new ones, seems to favour their opinion, and to indicate a consciousness in those who must have the experience that this species of cultivation is at present in that country more profitable than any other. it seems at the same time, however, to indicate another opinion, that this superior profit can last no longer than the laws which at present restrain the free cultivation of the vine. in 1731, they obtained an order of council prohibiting both the planting of new vineyards and the renewal of those old ones, of which the cultivation had been interrupted for two years, without a particular permission from the king, to be granted only in consequence of an information from the intendant of the province, certifying that he had examined the land, and that it was incapable of any other culture. the pretence of this order was the scarcity of corn and pasture, and the superabundance of wine. but had this superabundance been real, it would, without any order of council, have effectually prevented the plantation of new vineyards, by reducing the profits of this species of cultivation below their natural proportion to those of corn and pasture. with regard to the supposed scarcity of corn, occasioned by the multiplication of vineyards, corn is nowhere in france more carefully cultivated than in the wine provinces, where the land is fit for producing it; as in burgundy, guienne, and the upper languedoc. the numerous hands employed in the one species of cultivation necessarily encourage the other, by affording a ready market for its produce. to diminish the number of those who are capable of paying for it is surely a most unpromising expedient for encouraging the cultivation of corn. it is like the policy which would promote agriculture by discouraging manufactures. the rent and profit of those productions, therefore, which require either a greater original expense of improvement in order to fit the land for them, or a greater annual expense of cultivation, though often much superior to those of corn and pasture, yet when they do no more than compensate such extraordinary expense, are in reality regulated by the rent and profit of those common crops. it sometimes happens, indeed, that the quantity of land, which can be fitted for some particular produce, is too small to supply the effectual demand. the whole produce can be disposed of to those who are willing to give somewhat more than what is sufficient to pay the whole rent, wages, and profit necessary for raising and bringing it to market, according to their natural rates, or according to the rates at which they are paid in the greater part of other cultivated land. the surplus part of the price which remains after defraying the whole expense of improvement and cultivation may commonly, in this case, and in this case only, bear no regular proportion to the like surplus in corn or pasture, but may exceed it in almost any degree; and the greater part of this excess naturally goes to the rent of the landlord. the usual and natural proportion, for example, between the rent and profit of wine and those of corn and pasture must be understood to take place only with regard to those vineyards which produce nothing but good common wine, such as can be raised almost anywhere, upon any light, gravelly, or sandy soil, and which has nothing to recommend it but its strength and wholesomeness. it is with such vineyards only that the common land of the country can be brought into competition; for with those of a peculiar quality it is evident that it cannot. the vine is more affected by the difference of soils than any other fruit tree. from some it derives a flavour which no culture or management can equal, it is supposed, upon any other. this flavour, real or imaginary, is sometimes peculiar to the produce of a few vineyards; sometimes it extends through the greater part of a small district, and sometimes through a considerable part of a large province. the whole quantity of such wines that is brought to market falls short of the effectual demand, or the demand of those who would be willing to pay the whole rent, profit, and wages, necessary for preparing and bringing them thither, according to the ordinary rate, or according to the rate at which they are paid in common vineyards. the whole quantity, therefore, can be disposed of to those who are willing to pay more, which necessarily raises the price above that of common wine. the difference is greater or less according as the fashionableness and scarcity of the wine render the competition of the buyers more or less eager. whatever it be, the greater part of it goes to the rent of the landlord. for though such vineyards are in general more carefully cultivated than most others, the high price of the wine seems to be not so much the effect as the cause of this careful cultivation. in so valuable a produce the loss occasioned by negligence is so great as to force even the most careless to attention. a small part of this high price, therefore, is sufficient to pay the wages of the extraordinary labour bestowed upon their cultivation, and the profits of the extraordinary stock which puts that labour into motion. the sugar colonies possessed by the european nations in the west indies may be compared to those precious vineyards. their whole produce falls short of the effectual demand of europe, and can be disposed of to those who are willing to give more than what is sufficient to pay the whole rent, profit, and wages necessary for preparing and bringing it to market, according to the rate at which they are commonly paid by any other produce. in cochin china the finest white sugar commonly sells for three piasters the quintal, about thirteen shillings and sixpence of our money, as we are told by mr. poivre, a very careful observer of the agriculture of that country. what is there called the quintal weighs from a hundred and fifty to two hundred paris pounds, or a hundred and seventy-five paris pounds at a medium, which reduces the price of the hundred-weight english to about eight shillings sterling, not a fourth part of what is commonly paid for the brown or muskavada sugars imported from our colonies, and not a sixth part of what is paid for the finest white sugar. the greater part of the cultivated lands in cochin china are employed in producing corn and rice, the food of the great body of the people. the respective prices of corn, rice, and sugar, are there probably in the natural proportion, or in that which naturally takes place in the different crops of the greater part of cultivated land, and which recompenses the landlord and farmer, as nearly as can be computed according to what is usually the original expense of improvement and the annual expense of cultivation. but in our sugar colonies the price of sugar bears no such proportion to that of the produce of a rice or corn field either in europe or in america. it is commonly said that a sugar planter expects that the rum and molasses should defray the whole expense of his cultivation, and that his sugar should be all clear profit. if this be true, for i pretend not to affirm it, it is as if a corn farmer expected to defray the expense of his cultivation with the chaff and the straw, and that the grain should be all clear profit. we see frequently societies of merchants in london and other trading town's purchase waste lands in our sugar colonies, which they expect to improve and cultivate with profit by means of factors and agents, notwithstanding the great distance and the uncertain returns from the defective administration of justice in those countries. nobody will attempt to improve and cultivate in the same manner the most fertile lands of scotland, ireland, or the corn provinces of north america, though from the more exact administration of justice in these countries more regular returns might be expected. in virginia and maryland the cultivation of tobacco is preferred, as more profitable, to that of corn. tobacco might be cultivated with advantage through the greater part of europe; but in almost every part of europe it has become a principal subject of taxation, and to collect a tax from every different farm in the country where this plant might happen to be cultivated would be more difficult, it has been supposed, than to levy one upon its importation at the custom-house. the cultivation of tobacco has upon this account been most absurdly prohibited through the greater part of europe, which necessarily gives a sort of monopoly to the countries where it is allowed; and as virginia and maryland produce the greatest quantity of it, they share largely, though with some competitors, in the advantage of this monopoly. the cultivation of tobacco, however, seems not to be so advantageous as that of sugar. i have never even heard of any tobacco plantation that was improved and cultivated by the capital of merchants who resided in great britain, and our tobacco colonies send us home no such wealthy planters as we see frequently arrive from our sugar islands. though from the preference given in those colonies to the cultivation of tobacco above that of corn, it would appear that the effectual demand of europe for tobacco is not completely supplied, it probably is more nearly so than that for sugar; and though the present price of tobacco is probably more than sufficient to pay the whole rent, wages, and profit necessary for preparing and bring it to market, according to the rate at which they are commonly paid in corn land, it must not be so much more as the present price of sugar. our tobacco planters, accordingly, have shown the same fear of the superabundance of tobacco which the proprietors of the old vineyards in france have of the superabundance of wine. by act of assembly they have restrained its cultivation to six thousand plants, supposed to yield a thousand weight of tobacco, for every negro between sixteen and sixty years of age. such a negro, over and above this quantity of tobacco, can manage, they reckon, four acres of indian corn. to prevent the market from being overstocked, too, they have sometimes, in plentiful years, we are told by dr. douglas (i suspect he has been ill informed), burnt a certain quantity of tobacco for every negro, in the same manner as the dutch are said to do of spices. if such violent methods are necessary to keep up the present price of tobacco, the superior advantage of its culture over that of corn, if it still has any, will not probably be of long continuance. it is in this manner that the rent of the cultivated land, of which the produce is human food, regulates the rent of the greater part of other cultivated land. no particular produce can long afford less; because the land would immediately be turned to another use. and if any particular produce commonly affords more, it is because the quantity of land which can be fitted for it is too small to supply the effectual demand. in europe, corn is the principal produce of land which serves immediately for human food. except in particular situations, therefore, the rent of corn land regulates in europe that of all other cultivated land. britain need envy neither the vineyards of france nor the olive plantations of italy. except in particular situations, the value of these is regulated by that of corn, in which the fertility of britain is not much inferior to that of either of those two countries. if in any country the common and favourite vegetable food of the people should be drawn from a plant of which the most common land, with the same or nearly the same culture, produced a much greater quantity than the most fertile does of corn, the rent of the landlord, or the surplus quantity of food which would remain to him, after paying the labour and replacing the stock of the farmer, together with its ordinary profits, would necessarily be much greater. whatever was the rate at which labour was commonly maintained in that country, this greater surplus could always maintain a greater quantity of it, and consequently enable the landlord to purchase or command a greater quantity of it. the real value of his rent, his real power and authority, his command of the necessaries and conveniencies of life with which the labour of other people could supply him, would necessarily be much greater. a rice field produces a much greater quantity of food than the most fertile corn field. two crops in the year from thirty to sixty bushels each, are said to be the ordinary produce of an acre. though its cultivation, therefore, requires more labour, a much greater surplus remains after maintaining all that labour. in those rice countries, therefore, where rice is the common and favourite vegetable food of the people, and where the cultivators are chiefly maintained with it, a greater share of this greater surplus should belong to the landlord than in corn countries. in carolina, where the planters, as in other british colonies, are generally both farmers and landlords, and where rent consequently is confounded with profit, the cultivation of rice is found to be more profitable than that of corn, though their fields produce only one crop in the year, and though, from the prevalence of the customs of europe, rice is not there the common and favourite vegetable food of the people. a good rice field is a bog at all seasons, and at one season a bog covered with water. it is unfit either for corn, or pasture, or vineyard, or, indeed, for any other vegetable produce that is very useful to men; and the lands which are fit for those purposes are not fit for rice. even in the rice countries, therefore, the rent of rice lands cannot regulate the rent of the other cultivated land, which can never be turned to that produce. the food produced by a field of potatoes is not inferior in quantity to that produced by a field of rice, and much superior to what is produced by a field of wheat. twelve thousand weight of potatoes from an acre of land is not a greater produce than two thousand weight of wheat. the food or solid nourishment, indeed, which can be drawn from each of those two plants, is not altogether in proportion to their weight, on account of the watery nature of potatoes. allowing, however, half the weight of this root to go to water, a very large allowance, such an acre of potatoes will still produce six thousand weight of solid nourishment, three times the quantity produced by the acre of wheat. an acre of potatoes is cultivated with less expense than an acre of wheat; the fallow, which generally precedes the sowing of wheat, more than compensating the hoeing and other extraordinary culture which is always given to potatoes. should this root ever become in any part of europe, like rice in some rice countries, the common and favourite vegetable food of the people, so as to occupy the same proportion of the lands in tillage which wheat and other sorts of grain for human food do at present, the same quantity of cultivated land would maintain a much greater number of people, and the labourers being generally fed with potatoes, a greater surplus would remain after replacing all the stock and maintaining all the labour employed in cultivation. a greater share of this surplus, too, would belong to the landlord. population would increase, and rents would rise much beyond what they are at present. the land which is fit for potatoes is fit for almost every other useful vegetable. if they occupied the same proportion of cultivated land which corn does at present, they would regulate, in the same manner, the rent of the greater part of other cultivated land. in some parts of lancashire it is pretended, i have been told, that bread of oatmeal is a heartier food for labouring people than wheaten bread, and i have frequently heard the same doctrine held in scotland. i am, however, somewhat doubtful of the truth of it. the common people in scotland, who are fed with oatmeal, are in general neither so strong, nor so handsome as the same rank of people in england who are fed with wheaten bread. they neither work so well, nor look so well; and as there is not the same difference between the people of fashion in the two countries, experience would seem to show that the food of the common people in scotland is not so suitable to the human constitution as that of their neighbours of the same rank in england. but it seems to be otherwise with potatoes. the chairmen, porters, and coalheavers in london, and those unfortunate women who live by prostitution, the strongest men and the most beautiful women perhaps in the british dominions, are said to be the greater part of them from the lowest rank of people in ireland, who are generally fed with this root. no food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its being peculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution. it is difficult to preserve potatoes through the year, and impossible to store them like corn, for two or three years together. the fear of not being able to sell them before they rot discourages their cultivation, and is, perhaps, the chief obstacle to their ever becoming in any great country, like bread, the principal vegetable food of all the different ranks of the people. part 2 of the produce of land which sometimes does, and sometimes does not, afford rent human food seems to be the only produce of land which always and necessarily affords some rent to the landlord. other sorts of produce sometimes may and sometimes may not, according to different circumstances. after food, clothing and lodging are the two great wants of mankind. land in its original rude state can afford the materials of clothing and lodging to a much greater number of people than it can feed. in its improved state it can sometimes feed a greater number of people than it can supply with those materials; at least in the way in which they require them, and are willing to pay for them. in the one state, therefore, there is always a superabundance of those materials, which are frequently, upon that account, of little or no value. in the other there is often a scarcity, which necessarily augments their value. in the one state a great part of them is thrown away as useless, and the price of what is used is considered as equal only to the labour and expense of fitting it for use, and can, therefore, afford no rent to the landlord. in the other they are all made use of, and there is frequently a demand for more than can be had. somebody is always willing to give more for every part of them than what is sufficient to pay the expense of bringing them to market. their price, therefore, can always afford some rent to the landlord. the skins of the larger animals were the original materials of clothing. among nations of hunters and shepherds, therefore, whose food consists chiefly in the flesh of those animals, every man, by providing himself with food, provides himself with the materials of more clothing than he can wear. if there was no foreign commerce, the greater part of them would be thrown away as things of no value. this was probably the case among the hunting nations of north america before their country was discovered by the europeans, with whom they now exchange their surplus peltry for blankets, fire-arms, and brandy, which gives it some value. in the present commercial state of the known world, the most barbarous nations, i believe, among whom land property is established, have some foreign commerce of this kind, and find among their wealthier neighbours such a demand for all the materials of clothing which their land produces, and which can neither be wrought up nor consumed at home, as raises their price above what it costs to send them to those wealthier neighbours. it affords, therefore, some rent to the landlord. when the greater part of the highland cattle were consumed on their own hills, the exportation of their hides made the most considerable article of the commerce of that country, and what they were exchanged for afforded some addition to the rent of the highland estates. the wool of england, which in old times could neither be consumed nor wrought up at home, found a market in the then wealthier and more industrious country of flanders, and its price afforded something to the rent of the land which produced it. in countries not better cultivated than england was then, or than the highlands of scotland are now, and which had no foreign commerce, the materials of clothing would evidently be so superabundant that a great part of them would be thrown away as useless, and no part could afford any rent to the landlord. the materials of lodging cannot always be transported to so great a distance as those of clothing, and do not so readily become an object of foreign commerce. when they are superabundant in the country which produces them, it frequently happens, even in the present commercial state of the world, that they are of no value to the landlord. a good stone quarry in the neighbourhood of london would afford a considerable rent. in many parts of scotland and wales it affords none. barren timber for building is of great value in a populous and well-cultivated country, and the land which produces it affords a considerable rent. but in many parts of north america the landlord would be much obliged to anybody who would carry away the greater part of his large trees. in some parts of the highlands of scotland the bark is the only part of the wood which, for want of roads and water-carriage, can be sent to market. the timber is left to rot upon the ground. when the materials of lodging are so superabundant, the part made use of is worth only the labour and expense of fitting it for that use. it affords no rent to the landlord, who generally grants the use of it to whoever takes the trouble of asking it. the demand of wealthier nations, however, sometimes enables him to get a rent for it. the paving of the streets of london has enabled the owners of some barren rocks on the coast of scotland to draw a rent from what never afforded any before. the woods of norway and of the coasts of the baltic find a market in many parts of great britain which they could not find at home, and thereby afford some rent to their proprietors. countries are populous not in proportion to the number of people whom their produce can clothe and lodge, but in proportion to that of those whom it can feed. when food is provided, it is easy to find the necessary clothing and lodging. but though these are at hand, it may often be difficult to find food. in some parts even of the british dominions what is called a house may be built by one day's labour of one man. the simplest species of clothing, the skins of animals, require somewhat more labour to dress and prepare them for use. they do not, however, require a great deal. among savage and barbarous nations, a hundredth or little more than a hundredth part of the labour of the whole year will be sufficient to provide them with such clothing and lodging as satisfy the greater part of the people. all the other ninety-nine parts are frequently no more than enough to provide them with food. but when by the improvement and cultivation of land the labour of one family can provide food for two, the labour of half the society becomes sufficient to provide food for the whole. the other half, therefore, or at least the greater part of them, can be employed in providing other things, or in satisfying the other wants and fancies of mankind. clothing and lodging, household furniture, and what is called equipage, are the principal objects of the greater part of those wants and fancies. the rich man consumes no more food than his poor neighbour. in quality it may be very different, and to select and prepare it may require more labour and art; but in quantity it is very nearly the same. but compare the spacious palace and great wardrobe of the one with the hovel and the few rags of the other, and you will be sensible that the difference between their clothing, lodging, and household furniture is almost as great in quantity as it is in quality. the desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniences and ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and household furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary. those, therefore, who have the command of more food than they themselves can consume, are always willing to exchange the surplus, or, what is the same thing, the price of it, for gratifications of this other kind. what is over and above satisfying the limited desire is given for the amusement of those desires which cannot be satisfied, but seem to be altogether endless. the poor, in order to obtain food, exert themselves to gratify those fancies of the rich, and to obtain it more certainly they vie with one another in the cheapness and perfection of their work. the number of workmen increases with the increasing quantity of food, or with the growing improvement and cultivation of the lands; and as the nature of their business admits of the utmost subdivisions of labour, the quantity of materials which they can work up increases in a much greater proportion than their numbers. hence arises a demand for every sort of material which human invention can employ, either usefully or ornamentally, in building, dress, equipage, or household furniture; for the fossils and minerals contained in the bowels of the earth; the precious metals, and the precious stones. food is in this manner not only the original source of rent, but every other part of the produce of land which afterwards affords rent derives that part of its value from the improvement of the powers of labour in producing food by means of the improvement and cultivation of land. those other parts of the produce of land, however, which afterwards afford rent, do not afford it always. even in improved and cultivated countries, the demand for them is not always such as to afford a greater price than what is sufficient to pay the labour, and replace, together with it ordinary profits, the stock which must be employed in bringing them to market. whether it is or is not such depends upon different circumstances. whether a coal-mine, for example, can afford any rent depends partly upon its fertility, and partly upon its situation. a mine of any kind may be said to be either fertile or barren, according as the quantity of mineral which can be brought from it by a certain quantity of labour is greater or less than what can be brought by an equal quantity from the greater part of other mines of the same kind. some coal-mines advantageously situated cannot be wrought on account of their barrenness. the produce does not pay the expense. they can afford neither profit nor rent. there are some of which the produce is barely sufficient to pay the labour, and replace, together with it ordinary profits, the stock employed in working them. they afford some profit to the undertaker of the work, but no rent to the landlord. they can be wrought advantageously by nobody but the landlord, who, being himself undertaker of the work, gets the ordinary profit of the capital which he employs in it. many coal-mines in scotland are wrought in this manner, and can be wrought in no other. the landlord will allow nobody else to work them without paying some rent, and nobody can afford to pay any. other coal-mines in the same country, sufficiently fertile, cannot be wrought on account of their situation. a quantity of mineral sufficient to defray the expense of working could be brought from the mine by the ordinary, or even less than the ordinary, quantity of labour; but in an inland country, thinly inhabited, and without either good roads or water-carriage, this quantity could not be sold. coals are a less agreeable fuel than wood: they are said, too, to be less wholesome. the expense of coals, therefore, at the place where they are consumed, must generally be somewhat less than that of wood. the price of wood again varies with the state of agriculture, nearly in the same manner, and exactly for the same reason, as the price of cattle. in its rude beginnings the greater part of every country is covered with wood, which is then a mere encumberance of no value to the landlord, who would gladly give it to anybody for the cutting. as agriculture advances, the woods are partly cleared by the progress of tillage, and partly go to decay in consequence of the increased number of cattle. these, though they do not increase in the same proportion as corn, which is altogether the acquisition of human industry, yet multiply under the care and protection of men, who store up in the season of plenty what may maintain them in that of scarcity, who through the whole year furnish them with a greater quantity of food than uncultivated nature provides for them, and who by destroying and extirpating their enemies, secure them in the free enjoyment of all that she provides. numerous herds of cattle, when allowed to wander through the woods, though they do not destroy the old trees, hinder any young ones from coming up so that in the course of a century or two the whole forest goes to ruin. the scarcity of wood then raises its price. it affords a good rent, and the landlord sometimes finds that he can scarce employ his best lands more advantageously than in growing barren timber, of which the greatness of the profit often compensates the lateness of the returns. this seems in the present times to be nearly the state of things in several parts of great britain, where the profit of planting is found to be equal to that of either corn or pasture. the advantage which the landlord derives from planting can nowhere exceed, at least for any considerable time, the rent which these could afford him; and in an inland country which is highly cultivated, it will frequently not fall much short of this rent. upon the sea-coast of a well improved country, indeed, if coals can conveniently be had for fuel, it may sometimes be cheaper to bring barren timber for building from less cultivated foreign countries than to raise it at home. in the new town of edinburgh, built within these few years, there is not, perhaps, a single stick of scotch timber. whatever may be the price of wood, if that of coals is such that the expense of a coal fire is nearly equal to that of a wood one, we may be assured that at that place, and in these circumstances, the price of coals is as high as it can be. it seems to be so in some of the inland parts of england, particularly in oxfordshire, where it is usual, even in the fires of the common people, to mix coals and wood together, and where the difference in the expense of those two sorts of fuel cannot, therefore, be very great. coals, in the coal countries, are everywhere much below this highest price. if they were not, they could not bear the expense of a distant carriage, either by land or by water. a small quantity only could be sold, and the coal masters and coal proprietors find it more for their interest to sell a great quantity at a price somewhat above the lowest, than a small quantity at the highest. the most fertile coal-mine, too, regulates the price of coals at all the other mines in its neighbourhood. both the proprietor and the undertaker of the work find, the one that he can get a greater rent, the other that he can get a greater profit, by somewhat underselling all their neighbours. their neighbours are soon obliged to sell at the same price, though they cannot so well afford it, and though it always diminishes, and sometimes takes away altogether both their rent and their profit. some works are abandoned altogether; others can afford no rent, and can be wrought only by the proprietor. the lowest price at which coals can be sold for any considerable time is, like that of all other commodities, the price which is barely sufficient to replace, together with its ordinary profits, the stock which must be employed in bringing them to market. at as coal-mine for which the landlord can get no rent, but which he must either work himself or let it alone altogether, the price of coals must generally be nearly about this price. rent, even where coals afford one, has generally a smaller share in their prices than in that of most other parts of the rude produce of land. the rent of an estate above ground commonly amounts to what is supposed to be a third of the gross produce; and it is generally a rent certain and independent of the occasional variations in the crop. in coal-mines a fifth of the gross produce is a very great rent; a tenth the common rent, and it is seldom a rent certain, but depends upon the occasional variations in the produce. these are so great that, in a country where thirty years' purchase is considered as a moderate price for the property of a landed estate, ten years' purchase is regarded as a good price for that of a coal-mine. the value of a coal-mine to the proprietor frequently depends as much upon its situation as upon its fertility. that of a metallic mine depends more upon its fertility, and less upon its situation. the coarse, and still more the precious metals, when separated from the ore, are so valuable that they can generally bear the expense of a very long land, and of the most distant sea carriage. their market is not confined to the countries in the neighbourhood of the mine, but extends to the whole world. the copper of japan makes an article of commerce in europe; the iron of spain in that of chili and peru. the silver of peru finds its way, not only to europe, but from europe to china. the price of coals in westmoreland or shropshire can have little effect on their price at newcastle; and their price in the lionnois can have none at all. the productions of such distant coal-mines can never be brought into competition with one another. but the productions of the most distant metallic mines frequently may, and in fact commonly are. the price, therefore, of the coarse, and still more that of the precious metals, at the most fertile mines in the world, must necessarily more or less affect their price at every other in it. the price of copper in japan must have some influence upon its price at the copper mines in europe. the price of silver in peru, or the quantity either of labour or of other goods which it will purchase there, must have some influence on its price, not only at the silver mines of europe, but at those of china. after the discovery of the mines of peru, the silver mines of europe were, the greater part of them, abandoned. the value of was so much reduced that their produce could no longer pay the expense of working them, or replace, with a profit, the food, clothes, lodging, and other necessaries which were consumed in that operation. this was the case, too, with the mines of cuba and st. domingo, and even with the ancient mines of peru, after the discovery of those of potosi. the price of every metal at every mine, therefore, being regulated in some measure by its price at the most fertile mine in the world that is actually wrought, it can at the greater part of mines do very little more than pay the expense of working, and can seldom afford a very high rent to the landlord. rent, accordingly, seems at the greater part of mines to have but a small share in the price of the coarse, and a still smaller in that of the precious metals. labour and profit make up the greater part of both. a sixth part of the gross produce may be reckoned the average rent of the tin mines of cornwall the most fertile that are known in the world, as we are told by the reverend mr. borlace, vice-warden of the stannaries. some, he says, afford more, and some do not afford so much. a sixth part of the gross produce is the rent, too, of several very fertile lead mines in scotland. in the silver mines of peru, we are told by frezier and ulloa, the proprietor frequently exacts no other acknowledgment from the undertaker of the mine, but that he will grind the ore at his mill, paying him the ordinary multure or price of grinding. till 1736, indeed, the tax of the king of spain amounted to one-fifth of the standard silver, which till then might be considered as the real rent of the greater part of the silver mines of peru, the richest which have been known in the world. if there had been no tax this fifth would naturally have belonged to the landlord, and many mines might have been wrought which could not then be wrought, because they could not afford this tax. the tax of the duke of cornwall upon tin is supposed to amount to more than five per cent or one-twentieth part of the value, and whatever may be his proportion, it would naturally, too, belong to the proprietor of the mine, if tin was duty free. but if you add one-twentieth to one-sixth, you will find that the whole average rent of the tin mines of cornwall was to the whole average rent of the silver mines of peru as thirteen to twelve. but the silver mines of peru are not now able to pay even this low rent, and the tax upon silver was, in 1736, reduced from one-fifth to one-tenth. even this tax upon silver, too, gives more temptation to smuggling than the tax of one-twentieth upon tin; and smuggling must be much easier in the precious than in the bulky commodity. the tax of the king of spain accordingly is said to be very ill paid, and that of the duke of cornwall very well. rent, therefore, it is probable, makes a greater part of the price of tin at the most fertile tin mines than it does of silver at the most fertile silver mines in the world. after replacing the stock employed in working those different mines, together with its ordinary profits, the residue which remains to the proprietor is greater, it seems, in the coarse than in the precious metal. neither are the profits of the undertakers of silver mines commonly very great in peru. the same most respectable and well-informed authors acquaint us, that when any person undertakes to work a new mine in peru, he is universally looked upon as a man destined to bankruptcy and ruin, and is upon that account shunned and avoided by everybody. mining, it seems, is considered there in the same light as here, as a lottery, in which the prizes do not compensate the blanks, though the greatness of some tempts many adventurers to throw away their fortunes in such unprosperous projects. as the sovereign, however, derives a considerable part of his revenue from the produce of silver mines, the law in peru gives every possible encouragement to the discovery and working of new ones. whoever discovers a new mine is entitled to measure off two hundred and forty-six feet in length, according to what he supposes to be the direction of the vein, and half as much in breadth. he becomes proprietor of this portion of the mine, and can work it without paying any acknowledgment to the landlord. the interest of the duke of cornwall has given occasion to a regulation nearly of the same kind in that ancient duchy. in waste and unenclosed lands any person who discovers a tin mine may mark its limits to a certain extent, which is called bounding a mine. the bounder becomes the real proprietor of the mine, and may either work it himself, or give it in lease to another, without the consent of the owner of the land, to whom, however, a very small acknowledgment must be paid upon working it. in both regulations the sacred rights of private property are sacrificed to the supposed interests of public revenue. the same encouragement is given in peru to the discovery and working of new gold mines; and in gold the king's tax amounts only to a twentieth part of the standard metal. it was once a fifth, and afterwards a tenth, as in silver; but it was found that the work could not bear even the lowest of these two taxes. if it is rare, however, say the same authors, frezier and ulloa, to find a person who has made his fortune by a silver, it is still much rarer to find one who has done so by a gold mine. this twentieth part seems to be the whole rent which is paid by the greater part of the gold mines in chili and peru. gold, too, is much more liable to be smuggled than even silver; not only on account of the superior value of the metal in proportion to its bulk, but on account of the peculiar way in which nature produces it. silver is very seldom found virgin, but, like most other metals, is generally mineralized with some other body, from which it is impossible to separate it in such quantities as will pay for the expense, but by a very laborious and tedious operation, which cannot well be carried on but in workhouses erected for the purpose, and therefore exposed to the inspection of the king's officers. gold, on the contrary, is almost always found virgin. it is sometimes found in pieces of some bulk; and even when mixed in small and almost insensible particles with sand, earth, and other extraneous bodies, it can be separated from them by a very short and simple operation, which can be carried on in any private house by anybody who is possessed of a small quantity of mercury. if the king's tax, therefore, is but ill paid upon silver, it is likely to be much worse paid upon gold; and rent, must make a much smaller part of the price of gold than even of that of silver. the lowest price at which the precious metals can be sold, or the smallest quantity of other goods for which they can be exchanged during any considerable time, is regulated by the same principles which fix the lowest ordinary price of all other goods. the stock which must commonly be employed, the food, the clothes, and lodging which must commonly be consumed in bringing them from the mine to the market, determine it. it must at least be sufficient to replace that stock, with the ordinary profits. their highest price, however, seems not to be necessarily determined by anything but the actual scarcity or plenty of those metals themselves. it is not determined by that of any other commodity, in the same manner as the price of coals is by that of wood, beyond which no scarcity can ever raise it. increase the scarcity of gold to a certain degree, and the smallest bit of it may become more precious than a diamond, and exchange for a greater quantity of other goods. the demand for those metals arises partly from their utility and partly from their beauty. if you except iron, they are more useful than, perhaps, any other metal. as they are less liable to rust and impurity, they can more easily be kept clean, and the utensils either of the table or the kitchen are often upon that account more agreeable when made of them. a silver boiler is more cleanly than a lead, copper, or tin one; and the same quality would render a gold boiler still better than a silver one. their principal merit, however, arises from their beauty, which renders them peculiarly fit for the ornaments of dress and furniture. no paint or dye can give so splendid a colour as gilding. the merit of their beauty is greatly enhanced by their scarcity. with the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves. in their eyes the merit of an object which is in any degree either useful or beautiful is greatly enhanced by its scarcity, or by the great labour which it requires to collect any considerable quantity of it, a labour which nobody can afford to pay but themselves. such objects they are willing to purchase at a higher price than things much more beautiful and useful, but more common. these qualities of utility, beauty, and scarcity, are the original foundation of the high price of those metals, or of the great quantity of other goods for which they can everywhere be exchanged. this value was antecedent to and independent of their being employed as coin, and was the quality which fitted them for that employment. that employment, however, by occasioning a new demand, and by diminishing the quantity which could be employed in any other way, may have afterwards contributed to keep up or increase their value. the demand for the precious stones arises altogether from their beauty. they are of no use but as ornaments; and the merit of their beauty is greatly enhanced by their scarcity, or by the difficulty and expense of getting them from the mine. wages and profit accordingly make up, upon most occasions, almost the whole of their high price. rent comes in but for a very small share; frequently for no share; and the most fertile mines only afford any considerable rent. when tavernier, a jeweller, visited the diamond mines of golconda and visiapour, he was informed that the sovereign of the country, for whose benefit they were wrought, had ordered all of them to be shut up, except those which yield the largest and finest stones. the others, it seems, were to the proprietor not worth the working. as the price both of the precious metals and of the precious stones is regulated all over the world by their price at the most fertile mine in it, the rent which a mine of either can afford to its proprietor is in proportion, not to its absolute, but to what may be called its relative fertility, or to its superiority over other mines of the same kind. if new mines were discovered as much superior to those of potosi as they were superior to those europe, the value of silver might be so much degraded as to render even the mines of potosi not worth the working. before the discovery of the spanish west indies, the most fertile mines in europe may have afforded as great a rent to their proprietor as the richest mines in peru do at present. though the quantity of silver was much less, it might have exchanged for an equal quantity of other goods, and the proprietor's share might have enabled him to purchase or command an equal quantity either of labour or of commodities. the value both of the produce and of the rent, the real revenue which they afforded both to the public and to the proprietor, might have been the same. the most abundant mines either of the precious metals or of the precious stones could add little to the wealth of the world. a produce of which the value is principally derived from its scarcity, is necessarily degraded by its abundance. a service of plate, and the other frivolous ornaments of dress and furniture, could be purchased for a smaller quantity of labour, or for a smaller quantity of commodities; and in this would consist the sole advantage which the world could derive from that abundance. it is otherwise in estates above ground. the value both of their produce and of their rent is in proportion to their absolute, and not to their relative fertility. the land which produces a certain quantity of food, clothes, and lodging, can always feed, clothe, and lodge a certain number of people; and whatever may be the proportion of the landlord, it will always give him a proportionable command of the labour of those people, and of the commodities with which that labour can supply him. the value of the most barren lands is not diminished by the neighbourhood of the most fertile. on the contrary, it is generally increased by it. the great number of people maintained by the fertile lands afford a market to many parts of the produce of the barren, which they could never have found among those whom their own produce could maintain. whatever increases the fertility of land in producing food increases not only the value of the lands upon which the improvement is bestowed, but contributes likewise to increase that of many other lands by creating a new demand for their produce. that abundance of food, of which, in consequence of the improvement of land, many people have the disposal beyond what they themselves can consume, is the great cause of the demand both for the precious metals and the precious stone, as well as for every other conveniency and ornament of dress, lodging, household furniture, and equipage. food not only constitutes the principal part of the riches of the world, but it is the abundance of food which gives the principal part of their value to many other sorts of riches. the poor inhabitants of cuba and st. domingo, when they were first discovered by the spaniards, used to wear little bits of gold as ornaments in their hair and other parts of their dress. they seemed to value them as we would do any little pebbles of somewhat more than ordinary beauty, and to consider them as just worth the picking up, but not worth the refusing to anybody who asked them. they gave them to their new guests at the first request, without seeming to think that they had made them any very valuable present. they were astonished to observe the rage of the spaniards to obtain them; and had no notion that there could anywhere be a country in which many people had the disposal of so great a superfluity of food, so scanty always among themselves, that for a very small quantity of those glittering baubles they would willingly give as much as might maintain a whole family for many years. could they have been made to understand this, the passion of the spaniards would not have surprised them. part 3 of the variations in the proportion between the respective values of that sort of produce which always affords rent, and of that which sometimes does and sometimes does not afford rent the increasing abundance of food, in consequence of increasing improvement and cultivation, must necessarily increase the demand for every part of the produce of land which is not food, and which can be applied either to use or to ornament. in the whole progress of improvement, it might therefore be expected, there should be only one variation in the comparative values of those two different sorts of produce. the value of that sort which sometimes does and sometimes does not afford rent, should constantly rise in proportion to that which always affords some rent. as art and industry advance, the materials of clothing and lodging, the useful fossils and minerals of the earth, the precious metals and the precious stones should gradually come to be more and more in demand, should gradually exchange for a greater and a greater quantity of food, or in other words, should gradually become dearer and dearer. this accordingly has been the case with most of these things upon most occasions, and would have been the case with all of them upon all occasions, if particular accidents had not upon some occasions increased the supply of some of them in a still greater proportion than the demand. the value of a free-stone quarry, for example, will necessarily increase with the increasing improvement and population of the country round about it, especially if it should be the only one in the neighbourhood. but the value of a silver mine, even though there should not be another within a thousand miles of it, will not necessarily increase with the improvement of the country in which it is situated. the market for the produce of a freestone quarry can seldom extend more than a few miles round about it, and the demand must generally be in proportion to the improvement and population of that small district. but the market for the produce of a silver mine may extend over the whole known world. unless the world in general, therefore, be advancing in improvement and population, the demand for silver might not be at all increased by the improvement even of a large country in the neighbourhood of the mine. even though the world in general were improving, yet if, in the course of its improvement, new mines should be discovered, much more fertile than any which had been known before, though the demand for silver would necessarily increase, yet the supply might increase in so much a greater proportion that the real price of that metal might gradually fall; that is, any given quantity, a pound weight of it, for example, might gradually purchase or command a smaller and a smaller quantity of labour, or exchange for a smaller and a smaller quantity of corn, the principal part of the subsistence of the labourer. the great market for silver is the commercial and civilised part of the world. if by the general progress of improvement the demand of this market should increase, while at the same time the supply did not increase in the same proportion, the value of silver would gradually rise in proportion to that of corn. any given quantity of silver would exchange for a greater and a greater quantity of corn; or, in other words, the average money price of corn would gradually become cheaper and cheaper. if, on the contrary, the supply by some accident should increase for many years together in a greater proportion than the demand, that metal would gradually become cheaper and cheaper; or, in other words, the average money price of corn would, in spite of all improvements, gradually become dearer and dearer. but if, on the other hand, the supply of the metal should increase nearly in the same proportion as the demand, it would continue to purchase or exchange for nearly the same quantity of corn, and the average money price of corn would, in spite of all improvements, continue very nearly the same. these three seem to exhaust all the possible combinations of events which can happen in the progress of improvement; and during the course of the four centuries preceding the present, if we may judge by what has happened both in france and great britain, each of those three different combinations seem to have taken place in the european market, and nearly in the same order, too, in which i have here set them down. digressions concerning the variations in the value of silver during the course of the four last centuries first period in 1350, and for some time before, the average price of the quarter of wheat in england seems not to have been estimated lower than four ounces of silver, tower weight, equal to about twenty shillings of our present money. from this price it seems to have fallen gradually to two ounces of silver, equal to about ten shillings of our present money, the price at which we find it estimated in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and at which it seems to have continued to be estimated till about 1570. in 1350, being the 25th of edward iii, was enacted what is called the statute of labourers. in the preamble it complains much of the insolence of servants, who endeavoured to raise their wages upon their masters. it therefore ordains that all servants and labourers should for the future be contented with the same wages and liveries (liveries in those times signified not only clothes but provisions) which they had been accustomed to receive in the 20th year of the king, and the four preceding years; that upon this account their livery wheat should nowhere be estimated higher than tenpence a bushel, and that it should always be in the option of the master to deliver them either the wheat or the money. tenpence a bushel, therefore, had, in the 25th of edward iii, been reckoned a very moderate price of wheat, since it required a particular statute to oblige servants to accept of it in exchange for their usual livery of provisions; and it had been reckoned a reasonable price ten years before that, or in the 16th year of the king, the term to which the statute refers. but in the 16th year of edward iii, tenpence contained about half an ounce of silver, tower weight, and was nearly equal to half-a-crown of our present money. four ounces of silver, tower weight, therefore, equal to six shillings and eightpence of the money of those times, and to near twenty shillings of that of the present, must have been reckoned a moderate price for the quarter of eight bushels. this statute is surely a better evidence of what was reckoned in those times a moderate price of grain than the prices of some particular years which have generally been recorded by historians and other writers on account of their extraordinary dearness or cheapness, and from which, therefore, it is difficult to form any judgment concerning what may have been the ordinary price. there are, besides, other reasons for believing that in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and for some time before, the common price of wheat was not less than four ounces of silver the quarter, and that of other grain in proportion. in 1309, ralph de born, prior of st. augustine's, canterbury, gave a feast upon his installation-day, of which william thorn has preserved not only the bill of fare but the prices of many particulars. in that feast were consumed, first, fifty-three quarters of wheat, which cost nineteen pounds, or seven shillings and twopence a quarter, equal to about one-and-twenty shillings and sixpence of our present money; secondly, fifty-eight quarters of malt, which cost seventeen pounds ten shillings, or six shillings a quarter, equal to about eighteen shillings of our present money; thirdly, twenty quarters of oats, which cost four pounds, or four shillings a quarter, equal to about twelve shillings of our present money. the prices of malt and oats seem here to be higher than their ordinary proportion to the price of wheat. these prices are not recorded on account of their extraordinary dearness or cheapness, but are mentioned accidentally as the prices actually paid for large quantities of grain consumed at a feast which was famous for its magnificence. in 1262, being the 51st of henry m, was revived an ancient statute called the assize of bread and ale, which the king says in the preamble had been made in the times of his progenitors, sometime kings of england. it is probably, therefore, as old at least as the time of his grandfather henry h, and may have been as old as the conquest. it regulates the price of bread according as the prices of wheat may happen to be, from one shilling to twenty shillings the quarter of the money of those times. but statutes of this kind are generally presumed to provide with equal care for all deviations from the middle price, for those below it as well as for those above it. ten shillings, therefore, containing six ounces of silver, tower weight, and equal to about thirty shillings of our present money, must, upon this supposition, have been reckoned the middle price of the quarter of wheat when this statute was first enacted, and must have continued to be so in the 51st of henry iii. we cannot therefore be very wrong in supposing that the middle price was not less than one-third of the highest price at which this statute regulates the price of bread, or than six shillings and eightpence of the money of those times, containing four ounces of silver, tower weight. from these different facts, therefore, we seem to have some reason to conclude that, about the middle of the fourteenth century, and for a considerable time before, the average or ordinary price of the quarter of wheat was not supposed to be less than four ounces of silver, tower weight. from about the middle of the fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century, what was reckoned the reasonable and moderate, that is the ordinary or average price of wheat, seems to have sunk gradually to about one-half of this price; so as at last to have fallen to about two ounces of silver, tower weight, equal to about ten shillings of our present money. it continued to be estimated at this price till about 1570. in the household book of henry, the fifth earl of northumberland, drawn up in 1512, there are two different estimations of wheat. in one of them it is computed at six shillings and eightpence the quarter, in the other at five shillings and eightpence only. in 1512, six shillings and eightpence contained only two ounces of silver, tower weight, and were equal to about ten shillings of our present money. from the 25th of edward iii to the beginning of the reign of elizabeth, during the space of more than two hundred years, six shillings and eightpence, it appears from several different statutes, had continued to be considered as what is called the moderate and reasonable, that is the ordinary or average price of wheat. the quantity of silver, however, contained in that nominal sum was, during the course of this period, continually diminishing, in consequence of some alterations which were made in the coin. but the increase of the value of silver had, it seems, so far compensated the diminution of the quantity of it contained in the same nominal sum that the legislature did not think it worth while to attend to this circumstance. thus in 1436 it was enacted that wheat might be exported without a licence when the price was so low as six shillings and eightpence; and in 1463 it was enacted that no wheat should be imported if the price was not above six shillings and eightpence the quarter. the legislature had imagined that when the price was so low there could be no inconveniency in exportation, but that when it rose higher it became prudent to allow importation. six shillings and eightpence, therefore, containing about the same quantity of silver as thirteen shillings and fourpence of our present money (one third part less than the same nominal sum contained in the time of edward iii), had in those times been considered as what is called the moderate and reasonable price of wheat. in 1554, by the 1st and 2nd of philip and mary; and in 1558, by the 1st of elizabeth, the exportation of wheat was in the same manner prohibited, whenever the price of the quarter should exceed six shillings and eightpence, which did not then contain two pennyworth more silver than the same nominal sum does at present. but it had soon been found that to restrain the exportation of wheat till the price was so very low was, in reality, to prohibit it altogether. in 1562, therefore, by the 5th of elizabeth, the exportation of wheat was allowed from certain ports whenever the price of the quarter should not exceed ten shillings, containing nearly the same quantity of silver as the like nominal sum does at present. this price had at this time, therefore, been considered as what is called the moderate and reasonable price of wheat. it agrees nearly with the estimation of the northumberland book in 1512. that in france the average price of grain was, in the same manner, much lower in the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century than in the two centuries preceding has been observed both by mr. dupre de st. maur, and by the elegant author of the essay on the police of grain. its price, during the same period, had probably sunk in the same manner through the greater part of europe. this rise in the value of silver in proportion to that of corn, may either have been owing altogether to the increase of the demand for that metal, in consequence of increasing improvement and cultivation, the supply in the meantime continuing the same as before; or, the demand continuing the same as before, it may have been owing altogether to the gradual diminution of the supply; the greater part of the mines which were then known in the world being much exhausted, and consequently the expense of working them much increased; or it may have been owing partly to the other of those two circumstances. in the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, the greater part of europe was approaching towards a more settled form of government than it had enjoyed for several ages before. the increase of security would naturally increase industry and improvement; and the demand for the precious metals, as well as for every other luxury and ornament, would naturally increase with the increase of riches. a greater annual produce would require a greater quantity of coin to circulate it; and a greater number of rich people would require a greater quantity of plate and other ornaments of silver. it is natural to suppose, too, that the greater part of the mines which then supplied the european market with silver might be a good deal exhausted, and have become more expensive in the working. they had been wrought many of them from the time of the romans. it has been the opinion, however, of the greater part of those who have written upon the price of commodities in ancient times that, from the conquest, perhaps from the invasion of julius caesar till the discovery of the mines of america, the value of silver was continually diminishing. this opinion they seem to have been led into, partly by the observations which they had occasion to make upon the prices both of corn and of some other parts of the rude produce of land; and partly by the popular notion that as the quantity of silver naturally increases in every country with the increase of wealth, so its value diminishes as its quantity increases. in their observations upon the prices of corn, three different circumstances seem frequently to have misled them. first, in ancient times almost all rents were paid in kind; in a certain quantity of corn, cattle, poultry, etc. it sometimes happened, however, that the landlord would stipulate that he should be at liberty to demand of the tenant, either the annual payment in kind, or a certain sum of money instead of it. the price at which the payment in kind was in this manner exchanged for a certain sum of money is in scotland called the conversion price. as the option is always in the landlord to take either the substance or the price, it is necessary for the safety of the tenant that the conversion price should rather be below than above the average market price. in many places, accordingly, it is not much above one-half of this price. through the greater part of scotland this custom still continues with regard to poultry, and in some places with regard to cattle. it might probably have continued to take place, too, with regard to corn, had not the institution of the public fiars put an end to it. these are annual valuations, according to the judgment of an assize, of the average price of all the different sorts of grain, and of all the different qualities of each, according to the actual market price in every different county. this institution rendered it sufficiently safe for the tenant, and much more convenient for the landlord, to convert, as they call it, the corn rent, rather at what should happen to be the price of the fiars of each year, than at any certain fixed price. but the writers who have collected the prices of corn in ancient times seem frequently to have mistaken what is called in scotland the conversion price for the actual market price. fleetwood acknowledges, upon one occasion, that he had made this mistake. as he wrote his book, however, for a particular purpose, he does not think proper to make this acknowledgment till after transcribing this conversion price fifteen times. the price is eight shillings the quarter of wheat. this sum in 1423, the year at which he begins with it, contained the same quantity of silver as sixteen shillings of our present money. but in 1562, the year at which he ends with it, it contained no more than the same nominal sum does at present. secondly, they have been misled by the slovenly manner in which some ancient statutes of assize had been sometimes transcribed by lazy copiers; and sometimes perhaps actually composed by the legislature. the ancient statutes of assize seem to have begun always with determining what ought to be the price of bread and ale when the price of wheat and barley were at the lowest, and to have proceeded gradually to determine what it ought to be, according as the prices of those two sorts of grain should gradually rise above this lowest price. but the transcribers of those statutes seem frequently to have thought it sufficient to copy the regulation as far as the three or four first and lowest prices, saving in this manner their own labour, and judging, i suppose, that this was enough to show what proportion ought to be observed in all higher prices. thus in the assize of bread and ale, of the 51st of henry iii, the price of bread was regulated according to the different prices of wheat, from one shilling to twenty shillings the quarter, of the money of those times. but in the manuscripts from which all the different editions of the statutes, preceding that of mr. ruffhead, were printed, the copiers had never transcribed this regulation beyond the price of twelve shillings. several writers, therefore, being misled by this faulty transcription, very naturally concluded that the middle price, or six shillings the quarter, equal to about eighteen shillings of our present money, was the ordinary or average price of wheat at that time. in the statute of tumbrel and pillory, enacted nearly about the same time, the price of ale is regulated according to every sixpence rise in the price of barley, from two shillings to four shillings the quarter. that four shillings, however, was not considered as the highest price to which barley might frequently rise in those times, and that these prices were only given as an example of the proportion which ought to be observed in all other prices, whether higher or lower, we may infer from the last words of the statute: et sic deinceps crescetur vel diminuetur per sex denarios. the expression is very slovenly, but the meaning is plain enough: "that the price of ale is in this manner to be increased or diminished according to every sixpence rise or fall in the price of barley." in the composition of this statute the legislature itself seems to have been as negligent as the copiers were in the transcription of the others. in an ancient manuscript of the regiam majestatem, an old scotch law book, there is a statute of assize in which the price of bread is regulated according to all the different prices of wheat, from tenpence to three shillings the scotch boll, equal to about half an english quarter. three shillings scotch, at the time when this assize is supposed to have been enacted were equal to about nine shillings sterling of our present money. mr. ruddiman seems to conclude from this, that three shillings was the highest price to which wheat ever rose in those times, and that tenpence, a shilling, or at most two shillings, were the ordinary prices. upon consulting the manuscript, however, it appears evidently that all these prices are only set down as examples of the proportion which ought to be observed between the respective prices of wheat and bread. the last words of the statute are: reliqua judicabis secundum proescripta habendo respectum ad pretium bladi. "you shall judge of the remaining cases according to what is above written, having a respect to the price of corn." thirdly, they seem to have been misled, too, by the very low price at which wheat was sometimes sold in very ancient times; and to have imagined that as its lowest price was then much lower than in later times, its ordinary price must likewise have been much lower. they might have found, however, that in those ancient times its highest price was fully as much above, as its lowest price was below anything that had even been known in later times. thus in 1270, fleetwood gives us two prices of the quarter of wheat. the one is four pounds sixteen shillings of the money of those times, equal to fourteen pounds eight shillings of that of the present; the other is six pounds eight shillings, equal to nineteen pounds four shillings of our present money. no price can be found in the end of the fifteenth, or beginning of the sixteenth century, which approaches to the extravagance of these. the price of corn, though at all times liable to variation, varies most in those turbulent and disorderly societies, in which the interruption of all commerce and communication hinders the plenty of one part of the country from relieving the scarcity of another. in the disorderly state of england under the plantagenets, who governed it from about the middle of the twelfth till towards the end of the fifteenth century, one district might be in plenty, while another at no great distance, by having its crop destroyed either by some accident of the seasons, or by the incursion of some neighbouring baron, might be suffering all the horrors of a famine; and yet if the lands of some hostile lord were interposed between them, the one might not be able to give the least assistance to the other. under the vigorous administration of the tudors, who governed england during the latter part of the fifteenth and through the whole of the sixteenth century, no baron was powerful enough to dare to disturb the public security. the reader will find at the end of this chapter all the prices of wheat which have been collected by fleetwood from 1202 to 1597, both inclusive, reduced to the money of the present times, and digested according to the order of time, into seven divisions of twelve years each. at the end of each division, too, he will find the average price of the twelve years of which it consists. in that long period of time, fleetwood has been able to collect the prices of no more than eighty years, so that four years are wanting to make out the last twelve years. i have added, therefore, from the accounts of eton college, the prices of 1598, 1599, 1600, and 1601. it is the only addition which i have made. the reader will see that from the beginning of the thirteenth till after the middle of the sixteenth century the average price of each twelve years grows gradually lower and lower; and that towards the end of the sixteenth century it begins to rise again. the prices, indeed, which fleetwood has been able to collect, seem to have been those chiefly which were remarkable for extraordinary dearness or cheapness; and i do not pretend that any very certain conclusion can be drawn from them. so far, however, as they prove anything at all, they confirm the account which i have been endeavouring to give. fleetwood himself, however, seems, with most other writers, to have believed that during all this period the value of silver, in consequence of its increasing abundance, was continually diminishing. the prices of corn which he himself has collected certainly do not agree with this opinion. they agree perfectly with that of mr. dupre de st. maur, and with that which i have been endeavouring to explain. bishop fleetwood and mr. dupre de st. maur are the two authors who seem to have collected, with the greatest diligence and fidelity, the prices of things in ancient times. it is somewhat curious that, though their opinions are so very different, their facts, so far as they relate to the price of corn at least, should coincide so very exactly. it is not, however, so much from the low price of corn as from that of some other parts of the rude produce of land that the most judicious writers have inferred the great value of silver in those very ancient times. corn, it has been said, being a sort of manufacture, was, in those rude ages, much dearer in proportion than the greater part of other commodities; it is meant, i suppose, than the greater part of unmanufactured commodities, such as cattle, poultry, game of all kinds, etc. that in those times of poverty and barbarism these were proportionably much cheaper than corn is undoubtedly true. but this cheapness was not the effect of the high value of silver, but of the low value of those commodities. it was not because silver would in such times purchase or represent a greater quantity of labour, but because such commodities would purchase or represent a much smaller quantity than in times of more opulence and improvement. silver must certainly be cheaper in spanish america than in europe; in the country where it is produced than in the country to which it is brought, at the expense of a long carriage both by land and by sea, of a freight and an insurance. one-and-twenty pence halfpenny sterling, however, we are told by ulloa, was, not many years ago, at buenos ayres, the price of an ox chosen from a herd of three or four hundred. sixteen shillings sterling, we are told by mr. byron was the price of a good horse in the capital of chili. in a country naturally fertile, but of which the far greater part is altogether uncultivated, cattle, poultry, game of all kinds, etc., as they can be acquired with a very small quantity of labour, so they will purchase or command but a very small quantity. the low money price for which they may be sold is no proof that the real value of silver is there very high, but that the real value of those commodities is very low. labour, it must always be remembered, and not any particular commodity or set of commodities, is the real measure of the value both of silver and of all other commodities. but in countries almost waste, or but thinly inhabited, cattle, poultry, game of all kinds, etc., as they are the spontaneous productions of nature, so she frequently produces them in much greater quantities than the consumption of the inhabitants requires. in such a state of things the supply commonly exceeds the demand. in different states of society, in different stages of improvement, therefore, such commodities will represent, or be equivalent to, very different quantities of labour. in every state of society, in every stage of improvement, corn is the production of human industry. but the average produce of every sort of industry is always suited, more or less exactly, to the average consumption; the average supply to the average demand. in every different stage of improvement, besides, the raising of equal quantities of corn in the same soil and climate will, at an average, require nearly equal quantities of labour; or what comes to the same thing, the price of nearly equal quantities; the continual increase of the productive powers of labour in an improving state of cultivation being more or less counterbalanced by the continually increasing price of cattle, the principal instruments of agriculture. upon all these accounts, therefore, we may rest assured that equal quantities of corn will, in every state of society, in every stage of improvement, more nearly represent, or be equivalent to, equal quantities of labour than equal quantities of any other part of the rude produce of land. corn, accordingly, it has already been observed, is, in all the different stages of wealth and improvement, a more accurate measure of value than any other commodity or set of commodities. in all those different stages, therefore, we can judge better of the real value of silver by comparing it with corn than by comparing it with any other commodity or set of commodities. corn, besides, or whatever else is the common and favourite vegetable food of the people, constitutes, in every civilised country, the principal part of the subsistence of the labourer. in consequence of the extension of agriculture, the land of every country produces a much greater quantity of vegetable than of animal food, and the labourer everywhere lives chiefly upon the wholesome food that is cheapest and most abundant. butcher's meat, except in the most thriving countries, or where labour is most highly rewarded, makes but an insignificant part of his subsistence; poultry makes a still smaller part of it, and game no part of it. in france, and even in scotland, where labour is somewhat better rewarded than in france, the labouring poor seldom eat butcher's meat, except upon holidays, and other extraordinary occasions. the money price of labour, therefore, depends much more upon the average money price of corn, the subsistence of the labourer, than upon that of butcher's meat, or of any other part of the rude produce of land. the real value of gold and silver, therefore, the real quantity of labour which they can purchase or command, depends much more upon the quantity of corn which they can purchase or command than upon that of butcher's meat, or any other part of the rude produce of land. such slight observations, however, upon the prices either of corn or of other commodities, would not probably have misled so many intelligent authors had they not been influenced, at the same time, by the popular notion, that as the quantity of silver naturally increases in every country with the increase of so its value diminishes as its quantity increases. this notion, however, seems to be altogether groundless. the quantity of the precious metals may increase in any country from two different causes; either, first, from the increased abundance of the mines which supply it; or, secondly, from the increased wealth of the people, from the increased produce of their annual labour. the first of these causes is no doubt necessarily connected with the diminution of the value of the precious metals, but the second is not. when more abundant mines are discovered, a greater quantity of the precious metals is brought to market, and the quantity of the necessaries and conveniencies of life for which they must be exchanged being the same as before, equal quantities of the metals must be exchanged for smaller quantities of commodities. so far, therefore, as the increase of the quantity of the precious metals in any country arises from the increased abundance of the mines, it is necessarily connected with some diminution of their value. when, on the contrary, the wealth of any country increases, when the annual produce of its labour becomes gradually greater and greater, a greater quantity of coin becomes necessary in order to circulate a greater quantity of commodities; and the people, as they can afford it, as they have more commodities to give for it, will naturally purchase a greater and a greater quantity of plate. the quantity of their coin will increase from necessity; the quantity of their plate from vanity and ostentation, or from the same reason that the quantity of fine statues, pictures, and of every other luxury and curiosity, is likely to increase among them. but as statuaries and painters are not likely to be worse rewarded in times of wealth and prosperity than in times of poverty and depression, so gold and silver are not likely to be worse paid for. the price of gold and silver, when the accidental discovery of more abundant mines does not keep it down, as it naturally rises with the wealth of every country, so, whatever be the state of the mines, it is at all times naturally higher in a rich than in a poor country. gold and silver, like all other commodities, naturally seek the market where the best price is given for them, and the best price is commonly given for every thing in the country which can best afford it. labour, it must be remembered, is the ultimate price which is paid for everything, and in countries where labour is equally well regarded, the money price of labour will be in proportion to that of the subsistence of the labourer. but gold and silver will naturally exchange for a greater quantity of subsistence in a rich than in a poor country, in a country which abounds with subsistence than in one which is but indifferently supplied with it. if the two countries are at a great distance, the difference may be very great; because though the metals naturally fly from the worse to the better market, yet it may be difficult to transport them in such quantities as to bring their price nearly to a level in both. if the countries are near, the difference will be smaller, and may sometimes be scarce perceptible; because in this case the transportation will be easy. china is a much richer country than any part of europe, and the difference between the price of subsistence in china and in europe is very great. rice in china is much cheaper than wheat is anywhere in europe. england is a much richer country than scotland; but the difference between the money-price of corn in those two countries is much smaller, and is but just perceptible. in proportion to the quantity or measure, scotch corn generally appears to be a good deal cheaper than english; but in proportion to its quality, it is certainly somewhat dearer. scotland receives almost every year very large supplies from england, and every commodity must commonly be somewhat dearer in the country to which it is brought than in that from which it comes. english corn, therefore, must be dearer in scotland than in england, and yet in proportion to its quality, or to the quantity and goodness of the flour or meal which can be made from it, it cannot commonly be sold higher there than the scotch corn which comes to market in competition with it. the difference between the money price of labour in china and in europe is still greater than that between the money price of subsistence; because the real recompense of labour is higher in europe than in china, the greater part of europe being in an improving state, while china seems to be standing still. the money price of labour is lower in scotland than in england because the real recompense of labour is much lower; scotland, though advancing to greater wealth, advancing much more slowly than england. the frequency of emigration from scotland, and the rarity of it from england, sufficiently prove that the demand for labour is very different in the two countries. the proportion between the real recompense of labour in different countries, it must be remembered, is naturally regulated not by their actual wealth or poverty, but by their advancing, stationary, or declining condition. gold and silver, as they are naturally of the greatest value among the richest, so they are naturally of the least value among the poorest nations. among savages, the poorest of all nations, they are of scarce any value. in great towns corn is always dearer than in remote parts of the country. this, however, is the effect, not of the real cheapness of silver, but of the real dearness of corn. it does not cost less labour to bring silver to the great town than to the remote parts of the country; but it costs a great deal more to bring corn. in some very rich and commercial countries, such as holland and the territory of genoa, corn is dear for the same reason that it is dear in great towns. they do not produce enough to maintain their inhabitants. they are rich in the industry and skill of their artificers and manufacturers; in every sort of machinery which can facilitate and abridge labour; in shipping, and in all the other instruments and means of carriage and commerce: but they are poor in corn, which, as it must be brought to them from distant countries, must, by an addition to its price, pay for the carriage from those countries. it does not cost less labour to bring silver to amsterdam than to dantzic; but it costs a great deal more to bring corn. the real cost of silver must be nearly the same in both places; but that of corn must be very different. diminish the real opulence either of holland or of the territory of genoa, while the number of their inhabitants remains the same: diminish their power of supplying themselves from distant countries; and the price of corn, instead of sinking with that diminution in the quantity of their silver, which must necessarily accompany this declension either as its cause or as its effect, will rise to the price of a famine. when we are in want of necessaries we must part with all superfluities, of which the value, as it rises in times of opulence and prosperity, so it sinks in times of poverty and distress. it is otherwise with necessaries. their real price, the quantity of labour which they can purchase or command, rises in times of poverty and distress, and sinks in times of opulence and prosperity, which are always times of great abundance; for they could not otherwise be times of opulence and prosperity. corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity. whatever, therefore, may have been the increase in the quantity of the precious metals, which, during the period between the middle of the fourteenth and that of the sixteenth century, arose from the increase of wealth and improvement, it could have no tendency to diminish their value either in great britain or in any other part of europe. if those who have collected the prices of things in ancient times, therefore, had, during this period, no reason to infer the diminution of the value of silver, from any observations which they had made upon the prices either of corn or of other commodities, they had still less reason to infer it from any supposed increase of wealth and improvement. second period but how various soever may have been the opinions of the learned concerning the progress of the value of silver during this first period, they are unanimous concerning it during the second. from about 1570 to about 1640, during a period of about seventy years, the variation in the proportion between the value of silver and that of corn held a quite opposite course. silver sunk in its real value, or would exchange for a smaller quantity of labour than before; and corn rose in its nominal price, and instead of being commonly sold for about two ounces of silver the quarter, or about ten shillings of our present money, came to be sold for six and eight ounces of silver the quarter, or about thirty and forty shillings of our present money. the discovery of the abundant mines of america seems to have been the sole cause of this diminution in the value of silver in proportion to that of corn. it is accounted for accordingly in the same manner by everybody; and there never has been any dispute either about the fact or about the cause of it. the greater part of europe was, during this period, advancing in industry and improvement, and the demand for silver must consequently have been increasing. but the increase of the supply had, it seems, so far exceeded that of the demand, that the value of that metal sunk considerably. the discovery of the mines of america, it is to be observed, does not seem to have had any very sensible effect upon the prices of things in england till after 1570; though even the mines of potosi had been discovered more than twenty years before. from 1595 to 1620, both inclusive, the average price of the quarter of nine bushels of the best wheat at windsor market appears, from the accounts of eton college, to have been l2 1s. 6 3/4d. from which sum, neglecting the fraction, and deducting a ninth, or 4s. 7 1\3d., the price of the quarter of eight bushels comes out to have been l1 16s. 10 2/3d. and from this sum, neglecting likewise the fraction, and deducting a ninth, or 4s. 1d., for the difference between the price of the best wheat and that of the middle wheat, the price of the middle wheat comes out to have been about l1 12s. 9d., or about six ounces and one-third of an ounce of silver. from 1621 to 1636, both inclusive, the average price of the same measure of the best wheat at the same market appears, from the same accounts, to have been l2 10s.; from which making the like deductions as in the foregoing case, the average price of the quarter of eight bushels of middle wheat comes out to have been l1 19s. 6d., or about seven ounces and two-thirds of an ounce of silver. third period between 1630 and 1640, or about 1636, the effect of the discovery of the mines of america in reducing the value of silver appears to have been completed, and the value of that metal seems never to have sunk lower in proportion to that of corn than it was about that time. it seems to have risen somewhat in the course of the present century, and it had probably begun to do so even some time before the end of the last. from 1637 to 1700, both inclusive, being the sixty-four last years of the last century, the average price of the quarter of nine bushels of the best wheat at windsor market appears, from the same accounts, to have been l2 11s. o 1\3d., which is only 1s o 1\3d. dearer than it had been during the sixteen years before. but in the course of these sixty-four years there happened two events which must have produced a much greater scarcity of corn than what the course of the seasons would otherwise have occasioned, and which, therefore, without supposing any further reduction in the value of silver, will much more than account for this very small enhancement of price. the first of these events was the civil war, which, by discouraging tillage and interrupting commerce, must have raised the price of corn much above what the course of the seasons would otherwise have occasioned. it must have had this effect more or less at all the different markets in the kingdom, but particularly at those in the neighbourhood of london, which require to be supplied from the greatest distance. in 1648, accordingly, the price of the best wheat at windsor market appears, from the same accounts, to have been l4 5s., and in 1649 to have been l4 the quarter of nine bushels. the excess of those two years above l2 10s. (the average price of the sixteen years preceding 1637) is l3 5s.; which divided among the sixty-four last years of the last century will alone very nearly account for that small enhancement of price which seems to have taken place in them. these, however, though the highest, are by no means the only high prices which seem to have been occasioned by the civil wars. the second event was the bounty upon the exportation of corn granted in 1688. the bounty, it has been thought by many people, by encouraging tillage, may, in a long course of years, have occasioned a greater abundance, and consequently a greater cheapness of corn in the home-market than what would otherwise have taken place there. how far the bounty could produce this effect at any time, i shall examine hereafter; i shall only observe at present that, between 1688 and 1700, it had not time to produce any such effect. during this short period its only effect must have been, by encouraging the exportation of the surplus produce of every year, and thereby hindering the abundance of one year from compensating the scarcity of another, to raise the price in the home-market. the scarcity which prevailed in england from 1693 to 1699, both inclusive, though no doubt principally owing to the badness of the seasons, and, therefore, extending through a considerable part of europe, must have been somewhat enhanced by the bounty. in 1699, accordingly, the further exportation of corn was prohibited for nine months. there was a third event which occurred in the course of the same period, and which, though it could not occasion any scarcity of corn, nor, perhaps, any augmentation in the real quantity of silver which was usually paid for it, must necessarily have occasioned some augmentation in the nominal sum. this event was the great debasement of the silver coin, by clipping and wearing. this evil had begun in the reign of charles ii and had gone on continually increasing till 1695; at which time, as we may learn from mr. lowndes, the current silver coin was, at an average, near five-and-twenty per cent below its standard value. but the nominal sum which constitutes the market price of every commodity is necessarily regulated, not so much by the quantity of silver, which, according to the standard, ought to be contained in it, as by that which, it is found by experience, actually is contained in it. this nominal sum, therefore, is necessarily higher when the coin is much debased by clipping and wearing than when near to its standard value. in the course of the present century, the silver coin has not at any time been more below its standard weight than it is at present. but though very much defaced, its value has been kept up by that of the gold coin for which it is exchanged. for though before the late recoinage, the gold coin was a good deal defaced too, it was less so than the silver. in 1695, on the contrary, the value of the silver coin was not kept up by the gold coin; a guinea then commonly exchanging for thirty shillings of the worn and clipt silver. before the late recoinage of the gold, the price of silver bullion was seldom higher than five shillings and sevenpence an ounce, which is but fivepence above the mint price. but in 1695, the common price of silver bullion was six shillings and fivepence an ounce, which is fifteenpence above the mint price. even before the late recoinage of the gold, therefore, the coin, gold and silver together, when compared with silver bullion, was not supposed to be more than eight per cent below its standard value. in 1695, on the contrary, it had been supposed to be near five-and-twenty per cent below that value. but in the beginning of the present century, that is, immediately after the great recoinage in king william's time. the greater part of the current silver coin must have been still nearer to its standard weight than it is at present. in the course of the present century, too, there has been no great public calamity, such as the civil war, which could either discourage tillage, or interrupt the interior commerce of the country. and though the bounty, which has taken place through the greater part of this century, must always raise the price of corn somewhat higher than it otherwise would be in the actual state of tillage; yet as, in the course of this century, the bounty has had full time to produce all the good effects commonly imputed to it, to encourage tillage, and thereby to increase the quantity of corn in the home market, it may, upon the principles of a system which i shall explain and examine hereafter, be supposed to have done something to lower the price of that commodity the one way, as well as to raise it the other. it is by many people supposed to have done more. in the sixty-four first years of the present century accordingly the average price of the quarter of nine bushels of the best wheat at windsor market appears, by the accounts of eton college, to have been l2 os. 6 1/2d., which is about ten shillings and sixpence, or more than five-and-twenty per cent, cheaper than it had been during the sixty-four last years of the last century; and about 9s. 6d. cheaper than it had been during the sixteen years preceding 1636, when the discovery of the abundant mines of america may be supposed to have produced its full effect; and about one shilling cheaper than it had been in the twenty-six years preceding 1620, before that discovery can well be supposed to have produced its full effect. according to this account, the average price of middle wheat, during these sixty-four first years of the present century, comes out to have been about thirty-two shillings the quarter of eight bushels. the value of silver, therefore, seems to have risen somewhat in proportion to that of corn during the course of the present century, and it had probably begun to do so even some time before the end of the last. in 1687, the price of the quarter of nine bushels of the best wheat at windsor market was l1 5s. 2d. the lowest price at which it had ever been from 1595. in 1688, mr. gregory king, a man famous for his knowledge in matters of this kind, estimated the average price of wheat in years of moderate plenty to be to the grower 3s. 6d. the bushel, or eight-and-twenty shillings the quarter. the grower's price i understand to be the same with what is sometimes called the contract price, or the price at which a farmer contracts for a certain number of years to deliver a certain quantity of corn to a dealer. as a contract of this kind saves the farmer the expense and trouble of marketing, the contract price is generally lower than what is supposed to be the average market price. mr. king had judged eight-and-twenty shillings the quarter to be at that time the ordinary contract price in years of moderate plenty. before the scarcity occasioned by the late extraordinary course of bad seasons, it was, i have been assured, the ordinary contract price in all common years. in 1688 was granted the parliamentary bounty upon the exportation of corn. the country gentlemen, who then composed a still greater proportion of the legislature than they do at present, had felt that the money price of corn was falling. the bounty was an expedient to raise it artificially to the high price at which it had frequently been sold in the times of charles i and iii. it was to take place, therefore, till wheat was so high as forty-eight shillings the quarter, that is, twenty shillings, or five-sevenths dearer than mr. king had in that very year estimated the grower's price to be in times of moderate plenty. if his calculations deserve any part of the reputation which they have obtained very universally, eight-and-forty shillings the quarter was a price which, without some such expedient as the bounty, could not at that time be expected, except in years of extraordinary scarcity. but the government of king william was not then fully settled. it was in no condition to refuse anything to the country gentlemen, from whom it was at that very time soliciting the first establishment of the annual land-tax. the value of silver, therefore, in proportion to that of corn, had probably risen somewhat before the end of the last century; and it seems to have continued to do so during the course of the greater part of the present; though the necessary operation of the bounty must have hindered that rise from being so sensible as it otherwise would have been in the actual state of tillage. in plentiful years the bounty, by occasioning an extraordinary exportation, necessarily raises the price of corn above what it otherwise would be in those years. to encourage tillage, by keeping up the price of corn even in the most plentiful years, was the avowed end of the institution. in years of great scarcity, indeed, the bounty has generally been suspended. it must, however, have had some effect even upon the prices of many of those years. by the extraordinary exportation which it occasions in years of plenty, it must frequently hinder the plenty of one year from compensating the scarcity of another. both in years of plenty and in years of scarcity, therefore, the bounty raises the price of corn above what it naturally would be in the actual state of tillage. if, during the sixty-four first years of the present century, therefore, the average price has been lower than during the sixty-four last years of the last century, it must, in the same state of tillage, have been much more so, had it not been for this operation of the bounty. but without the bounty, it may be said, the state of tillage would not have been the same. what may have been the effects of this institution upon the agriculture of the country, i shall endeavour to explain hereafter, when i come to treat particularly of bounties. i shall only observe at present that this rise in the value of silver, in proportion to that of corn, has not been peculiar to england. it has been observed to have taken place in france, during the same period, and nearly in the same proportion too, by three very faithful, diligent, and laborious collectors of the prices of corn, mr. dupre de st. maur, mr. messance, and the author of the essay on the police of grain. but in france, till 1764, the exportation of grain was by law prohibited; and it is somewhat difficult to suppose that nearly the same diminution of price which took place in one country, notwithstanding this prohibition, should in another be owing to the extraordinary encouragement given to exportation. it would be more proper, perhaps, to consider this variation in the average money price of corn as the effect rather of some gradual rise in the real value of silver in the european market than of any fall in the real average value of corn. corn, it has already been observed, is at distant periods of time a more accurate measure of value than either silver, or perhaps any other commodity. when, after the discovery of the abundant mines of america, corn rose to three and four times its former money price, this change was universally ascribed, not to any rise in the real value of corn, but to a fall in the real value of silver. if during the sixty-four first years of the present century, therefore, the average money price of corn has fallen somewhat below what it had been during the greater part of the last century, we should in the same manner impute this change, not to any fall in the real value of corn, but to some rise in the real value of silver in the european market. the high price of corn during these ten or twelve years past, indeed, has occasioned a suspicion that the real value of silver still continues to fall in the european market. this high price of corn, however, seems evidently to have been the effect of the extraordinary unfavourableness of the seasons, and ought therefore to be regarded, not as a permanent, but as a transitory and occasional event. the seasons for these ten or twelve years past have been unfavourable through the greater part of europe; and the disorders of poland have very much increased the scarcity in all those countries which, in dear years, used to be supplied from that market. so long a course of bad seasons, though not a very common event, is by no means a singular one; and whoever has inquired much into the history of the prices of corn in former times will be at no loss to recollect several other examples of the same kind. ten years of extraordinary scarcity, besides, are not more wonderful than ten years of extraordinary plenty. the low price of corn from 1741 to 1750, both inclusive, may very well be set in opposition to its high price during these last eight or ten years. from 1741 to 1750, the average price of the quarter of nine bushels of the best wheat at windsor market, it appears from the accounts of eton college, was only l1 13s. 9 1/2d., which is nearly 6s. 3d. below the average price of the sixty-four first years of the present century. the average price of the quarter of eight bushels of middle wheat comes out, according to this account, to have been, during these ten years, only 51 6s. 8d. between 1741 and 1750, however, the bounty must have hindered the price of corn from falling so low in the home market as it naturally would have done. during these ten years the quantity of all sorts of grain exported, it appears from the custom-house books, amounted to no less than eight millions twenty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty-six quarters one bushel. the bounty paid for this amounted to l1,514,962 17s. 4 1/2d. in 1749 accordingly, mr. pelham, at that time prime minister, observed to the house of commons that for the three years preceding a very extraordinary sum had been paid as bounty for the exportation of corn. he had good reason to make this observation, and in the following year he might have had still better. in that single year the bounty paid amounted to no less than l324,176 10s. 6d. it is unnecessary to observe how much this forced exportation must have raised the price of corn above what it otherwise would have been in the home market. at the end of the accounts annexed to this chapter the reader will find the particular account of those ten years separated from the rest. he will find there, too, the particular account of the preceding ten years, of which the average is likewise below, though not so much below, the general average of the sixty-four first years of the century. the year 1740, however, was a year of extraordinary scarcity. these twenty years preceding 1750 may very well be set in opposition to the twenty preceding 1770. as the former were a good deal below the general average of the century, notwithstanding the intervention of one or two dear years; so the latter have been a good deal above it, notwithstanding the intervention of one or two cheap ones, of 1759, for example. if the former have not been as much below the general average as the latter have been above it, we ought probably to impute it to the bounty. the change has evidently been too sudden to be ascribed to any change in the value of silver, which is always slow and gradual. the suddenness of the effect can be accounted for only by a cause which can operate suddenly, the accidental variation of the seasons. the money price of labour in great britain has, indeed, risen during the course of the present century. this, however, seems to be the effect, not so much of any diminution in the value of silver in the european market, as of an increase in the demand for labour in great britain, arising from the great, and almost universal prosperity of the country. in france, a country not altogether so prosperous, the money price of labour has, since the middle of the last century, been observed to sink gradually with the average money price of corn. both in the last century and in the present the day-wages of common labour are there said to have been pretty uniformly about the twentieth part of the average price of the septier of wheat, a measure which contains a little more than four winchester bushels. in great britain the real recompense of labour, it has already been shown, the real quantities of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which are given to the labourer, has increased considerably during the course of the present century. the rise in its money price seems to have been the effect, not of any diminution of the value of silver in the general market of europe, but of a rise in the real price of labour in the particular market of great britain, owing to the peculiarly happy circumstances of the country. for some time after the first discovery of america, silver would continue to sell at its former, or not much below its former price. the profits of mining would for some time be very great, and much above their natural rate. those who imported that metal into europe, however, would soon find that the whole annual importation could not be disposed of at this high price. silver would gradually exchange for a smaller and a smaller quantity of goods. its price would sink gradually lower and lower till it fell to its natural price, or to what was just sufficient to pay, according to their natural rates, the wages of the labour, the profits of the stock, and the rent of the land, which must be paid in order to bring it from the mine to the market. in the greater part of the silver mines of peru, the tax of the king of spain, amounting to a tenth of the gross produce, eats up, it has already been observed, the whole rent of the land. this tax was originally a half; it soon afterwards fell to a third, then to a fifth, and at last to a tenth, at which rate it still continues. in the greater part of the silver mines of peru this, it seems, is all that remains after replacing the stock of the undertaker of the work, together with its ordinary profits; and it seems to be universally acknowledged that these profits, which were once very high, are now as low as they can well be, consistently with carrying on their works. the tax of the king of spain was reduced to a fifth part of the registered silver in 1504, one-and-forty years before 1545, the date of the discovery of the mines of potosi. in the course of ninety years, or before 1636, these mines, the most fertile in all america, had time sufficient to produce their full effect, or to reduce the value of silver in the european market as low as it could well fall, while it continued to pay this tax to the king of spain. ninety years is time sufficient to reduce any commodity, of which there is no monopoly, to its natural price, or to the lowest price at which, while it pays a particular tax, it can continue to be sold for any considerable time together. the price of silver in the european market might perhaps have fallen still lower, and it might have become necessary either to reduce the tax upon it, not only to one tenth, as in 1736, but to one twentieth, in the same manner as that upon gold, or to give up working the greater part of the american mines which are now wrought. the gradual increase of the demand for silver, or the gradual enlargement of the market for the produce of the silver mines of america, is probably the cause which has prevented this from happening, and which has not only kept up the value of silver in the european market, but has perhaps even raised it somewhat higher than it was about the middle of the last century. since the first discovery of america, the market for the produce of its silver mines has been growing gradually more and more extensive. first, the market of europe has become gradually more and more extensive. since the discovery of america, the greater part of europe has been much improved. england, holland, france, and germany; even sweden, denmark, and russia, have all advanced considerably both in agriculture and in manufactures. italy seems not to have gone backwards. the fall of italy preceded the conquest of peru. since that time it seems rather to have recovered a little. spain and portugal, indeed, are supposed to have gone backwards. portugal, however, is but a very small part of europe, and the declension of spain is not, perhaps, so great as is commonly imagined. in the beginning of the sixteenth century, spain was a very poor country, even in comparison with france, which has been so much improved since that time. it was the well known remark of the emperor charles v, who had travelled so frequently through both countries, that everything abounded in france, but that everything was wanting in spain. the increasing produce of the agriculture and manufactures of europe must necessarily have required a gradual increase in the quantity of silver coin to circulate it; and the increasing number of wealthy individuals must have required the like increase in the quantity of their plate and other ornaments of silver. secondly, america is itself a new market for the produce of its own silver mines; and as its advances in agriculture, industry, and population are much more rapid than those of the most thriving countries in europe, its demand must increase much more rapidly. the english colonies are altogether a new market, which, partly for coin and partly for plate, requires a continually augmenting supply of silver through a great continent where there never was any demand before. the greater part, too, of the spanish and portuguese colonies are altogether new markets. new granada, the yucatan, paraguay, and the brazils were, before discovered by the europeans, inhabited by savage nations who had neither arts nor agriculture. a considerable degree of both has now been introduced into all of them. even mexico and peru, though they cannot be considered as altogether new markets, are certainly much more extensive ones than they ever were before. after all the wonderful tales which have been published concerning the splendid state of those countries in ancient times, whoever reads, with any degree of sober judgment, the history of their first discovery and conquest, will evidently discern that, in arts, agriculture, and commerce, their inhabitants were much more ignorant than the tartars of the ukraine are at present. even the peruvians, the more civilised nation of the two, though they made use of gold and silver as ornaments, had no coined money of any kind. their whole commerce was carried on by barter, and there was accordingly scarce any division of labour among them. those who cultivated the ground were obliged to build their own houses, to make their own household furniture, their own clothes, shoes, and instruments of agriculture. the few artificers among them are said to have been all maintained by the sovereign, the nobles, and the priests, and were probably their servants or slaves. all the ancient arts of mexico and peru have never furnished one single manufacture to europe. the spanish armies, though they scarce ever exceeded five hundred men, and frequently did not amount to half that number, found almost everywhere great difficulty in procuring subsistence. the famines which they are said to have occasioned almost wherever they went, in countries, too, which at the same time are represented as very populous and well cultivated, sufficiently demonstrate that the story of this populousness and high cultivation is in a great measure fabulous. the spanish colonies are under a government in many respects less favourable to agriculture, improvement, and population than that of the english colonies. they seem, however, to be advancing in all these much more rapidly than any country in europe. in a fertile soil and happy climate, the great abundance and cheapness of land, a circumstance common to all new colonies, is, it seems, so great an advantage as to compensate many defects in civil government. frezier, who visited peru in 1713, represents lima as containing between twenty-five and twenty-eight thousand inhabitants. ulloa, who resided in the same country between 1740 and 1746, represents it as containing more than fifty thousand. the difference in their accounts of the populousness of several other principal towns in chili and peru is nearly the same; and as there seems to be no reason to doubt of the good information of either, it marks an increase which is scarce inferior to that of the english colonies. america, therefore, is a new market for the produce of its own silver mines, of which the demand must increase much more rapidly than that of the most thriving country in europe. thirdly, the east indies is another market for the produce of the silver mines of america, and a market which, from the time of the first discovery of those mines, has been continually taking off a greater and a greater quantity of silver. since that time, the direct trade between america and the east indies, which is carried on by means of the acapulco ships, has been continually augmenting, and the indirect intercourse by the way of europe has been augmenting in a still greater proportion. during the sixteenth century, the portuguese were the only european nation who carried on any regular trade to the east indies. in the last years of that century the dutch begun to encroach upon this monopoly, and in a few years expelled them from their principal settlements in india. during the greater part of the last century those two nations divided the most considerable part of the east india trade between them; the trade of the dutch continually augmenting in a still greater proportion than that of the portuguese declined. the english and french carried on some trade with india in the last century, but it has been greatly augmented in the course of the present. the east india trade of the swedes and danes began in the course of the present century. even the muscovites now trade regularly with china by a sort of caravans which go overland through siberia and tartary to pekin. the east india trade of all these nations, if we except that of the french, which the last war had well nigh annihilated, had been almost continually augmenting. the increasing consumption of east india goods in europe is, it seems, so great as to afford a gradual increase of employment to them all. tea, for example, was a drug very little used in europe before the middle of the last century. at present the value of the tea annually imported by the english east india company, for the use of their own countrymen, amounts to more than a million and a half a year; and even this is not enough; a great deal more being constantly smuggled into the country from the ports of holland, from gottenburgh in sweden, and from the coast of france too, as long as the french east india company was in prosperity. the consumption of the porcelain of china, of the spiceries of the moluccas, of the piece goods of bengal, and of innumerable other articles, has increased very nearly in a like proportion. the tonnage accordingly of all the european shipping employed in the east india trade, at any one time during the last century, was not, perhaps, much greater than that of the english east india company before the late reduction of their shipping. but in the east indies, particularly in china and indostan, the value of the precious metals, when the europeans first began to trade to those countries, was much higher than in europe; and it still continues to be so. in rice countries, which generally yield two, sometimes three crops in the year, each of them more plentiful than any common crop of corn, the abundance of food must be much greater than in any corn country of equal extent. such countries are accordingly much more populous. in them, too, the rich, having a greater superabundance of food to dispose of beyond what they themselves can consume, have the means of purchasing a much greater quantity of the labour of other people. the retinue of a grandee in china or indostan accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects in europe. the same superabundance of food, of which they have the disposal, enables them to give a greater quantity of it for all those singular and rare productions which nature furnishes but in very small quantities; such as the precious metals and the precious stones, the great objects of the competition of the rich. though the mines, therefore, which supplied the indian market had been as abundant as those which supplied the european, such commodities would naturally exchange for a greater quantity of food in india than in europe. but the mines which supplied the indian market with the precious metals seem to have been a good deal less abundant, and those which supplied it with the precious stones a good deal more so, than the mines which supplied the european. the precious metals, therefore, would naturally exchange in india for somewhat a greater quantity of the precious stones, and for a much greater quantity of food than in europe. the money price of diamonds, the greatest of all superfluities, would be somewhat lower, and that of food, the first of all necessaries, a great deal lower in the one country than in the other. but the real price of labour, the real quantity of the necessaries of life which is given to the labourer, it has already been observed, is lower both in china and indostan, the two great markets of india, than it is through the greater part of europe. the wages of the labourer will there purchase a smaller quantity of food; and as the money price of food is much lower in india than in europe, the money price of labour is there lower upon a double account; upon account both of the small quantity of food which it will purchase, and of the low price of that food. but in countries of equal art and industry, the money price of the greater part of manufactures will be in proportion to the money price of labour; and in manufacturing art and industry, china and indostan, though inferior, seem not to be much inferior to any part of europe. the money price of the greater part of manufactures, therefore, will naturally be much lower in those great empires than it is anywhere in europe. through the greater part of europe, too, the expense of land-carriage increases very much both the real and nominal price of most manufactures. it costs more labour, and therefore more money, to bring first the materials, and afterwards the complete manufacture to market. in china and indostan the extent and variety of inland navigation save the greater part of this labour, and consequently of this money, and thereby reduce still lower both the real and the nominal price of the greater part of their manufactures. upon all those accounts the precious metals axe a commodity which it always has been, and still continues to be, extremely advantageous to carry from europe to india. there is scarce any commodity which brings a better price there; or which, in proportion to the quantity of labour and commodities which it costs in europe, will purchase or command a greater quantity of labour and commodities in india. it is more advantageous, too, to carry silver thither than gold; because in china, and the greater part of the other markets of india, the proportion between fine silver and fine gold is but as ten, or at most as twelve, to one; whereas in europe it is as fourteen or fifteen to one. in china, and the greater part of the other markets of india, ten, or at most twelve, ounces of silver will purchase an ounce of gold; in europe it requires from fourteen to fifteen ounces. in the cargoes, therefore, of the greater part of european ships which sail to india, silver has generally been one of the most valuable articles. it is the most valuable article in the acapulco ships which sail to manilla. the silver of the new continent seems in this manner to be one of the principal commodities by which the commerce between the two extremities of the old one is carried on, and it is by means of it, in a great measure, that those distant parts of the world are connected with one another. in order to supply so very widely extended a market, the quantity of silver annually brought from the mines must not only be sufficient to support that continual increase both of coin and of plate which is required in all thriving countries; but to repair that continual waste and consumption of silver which takes place in all countries where that metal is used. the continual consumption of the precious metals in coin by wearing, and in plate both by wearing and cleaning, is very sensible, and in commodities of which the use is so very widely extended, would alone require a very great annual supply. the consumption of those metals in some particular manufactures, though it may not perhaps be greater upon the whole than this gradual consumption, is, however, much more sensible, as it is much more rapid. in the manufactures of birmingham alone the quantity of gold and silver annually employed in gilding and plating, and thereby disqualified from ever afterwards appearing in the shape of those metals, is said to amount to more than fifty thousand pounds sterling. we may from thence form some notion how great must be the annual consumption in all the different parts of the world either in manufactures of the same kind with those of birmingham, or in laces, embroideries, gold and silver stuffs, the gilding of books, furniture, etc. a considerable quantity, too, must be annually lost in transporting those metals from one place to another both by sea and by land. in the greater part of the governments of asia, besides, the almost universal custom of concealing treasures in the bowels of the earth, of which the knowledge frequently dies with the person who makes the concealment, must occasion the loss of a still greater quantity. the quantity of gold and silver imported at both cadiz and lisbon (including not only what comes under register, but what may be supposed to be smuggled) amounts, according to the best accounts, to about six millions sterling a year. according to mr. meggens the annual importation of the precious metals into spain, at an average of six years, viz., from 1748 to 1753, both inclusive; and into portugal, at an average of seven years, viz., from 1747 to 1753, both inclusive, amounted in silver to 1,101,107 pounds weight; and in gold to 29,940 pounds weight. the silver, at sixty-two shillings the pound troy, amounts to l3,413,431 10s. sterling. the gold, at forty-four guineas and a half the pound troy, amounts to l2,333,446 14s. sterling. both together amount to l5,746,878 4s. sterling. the account of what was imported under register he assures us is exact. he gives us the detail of the particular places from which the gold and silver were brought, and of the particular quantity of each metal, which, according to the register, each of them afforded. he makes an allowance, too, for the quantity of each metal which he supposes may have been smuggled. the great experience of this judicious merchant renders his opinion of considerable weight. according to the eloquent and, sometimes, well-informed author of the philosophical and political history of the establishment of the europeans in the two indies, the annual importation of registered gold and silver into spain, at an average of eleven years, viz., from 1754 to 1764, both inclusive, amounted to 13,984,185 3/4 piastres of ten reals. on account of what may have been smuggled, however, the whole annual importation, he supposes, may have amounted to seventeen millions of piastres, which, at 4s. 6d. the piastre, is equal to l3,825,000 sterling. he gives the detail, too, of the particular places from which the gold and silver were brought, and of the particular quantities of each metal which, according to the register, each of them afforded. he informs us, too, that if we were to judge of the quantity of gold annually imported from the brazils into lisbon by the amount of the tax paid to the king of portugal, which it seems is one-fifth of the standard metal, we might value it at eighteen millions of cruzadoes, or forty-five millions of french livres, equal to about two millions sterling. on account of what may have been smuggled, however, we may safely, he says, add to the sum an eighth more, or l250,000 sterling, so that the whole will amount to l2,250,000 sterling. according to this account, therefore, the whole annual importation of the precious metals into both spain and portugal amounts to about l6,075,000 sterling. several other very well authenticated, though manuscript, accounts, i have been assured, agree in making this whole annual importation amount at an average to about six millions sterling; sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. the annual importation of the precious metals into cadiz and lisbon, indeed, is not equal to the whole annual produce of the mines of america. some part is sent annually by the acapulco ships to manilla; some part is employed in the contraband trade which the spanish colonies carry on with those of other european nations; and some part, no doubt remains in the country. the mines of america, besides, are by no means the only gold and silver mines in the world. they are, however, by far the most abundant. the produce of all the other mines which are known is insignificant, it is acknowledged, in comparison with theirs; and the far greater part of their produce, it is likewise acknowledged, is annually imported into cadiz and lisbon. but the consumption of birmingham alone, at the rate of fifty thousand pounds a year, is equal to the hundred-and-twentieth part of this annual importation at the rate of six millions a year. the whole annual consumption of gold and silver, therefore, in all the different countries of the world where those metals are used, may perhaps be nearly equal to the whole annual produce. the remainder may be no more than sufficient to supply the increasing demand of all thriving countries. it may even have fallen so far short of time demand as somewhat to raise the price of those metals in the european market. the quantity of brass and iron annually brought from the mine to the market is out of all proportion greater than that of gold and silver. we do not, however, upon this account, imagine that those coarse metals are likely to multiply beyond the demand, or to become gradually cheaper and cheaper. why should we imagine that the precious metals are likely to do so? the coarse metals, indeed, though harder, are put to much harder uses, and, as they are of less value, less care is employed in their preservation. the precious metals, however, are not necessarily immortal any more than they, but are liable, too, to be lost, wasted, and consumed in a great variety of ways. the price of all metals, though liable to slow and gradual variations, varies less from year to year than that of almost any other part of the rude produce of land; and the price of the precious metals is even less liable to sudden variations than that of the coarse ones. the durableness of metals is the foundation of this extraordinary steadiness of price. the corn which was brought to market last year will be all or almost all consumed long before the end of this year. but some part of the iron which was brought from the mine two or three hundred years ago may be still in use, and perhaps some part of the gold which was brought from it two or three thousand years ago. the different masses of corn which in different years must supply the consumption of the world will always be nearly in proportion to the respective produce of those different years. but the proportion between the different masses of iron which may be in use in two different years will be very little affected by any accidental difference in the produce of the iron mines of those two years; and the proportion between the masses of gold will be still less affected by any such difference in the produce of the gold mines. though the produce of the greater part of metallic mines, therefore, varies, perhaps, still more from year to year than that of the greater part of corn fields, those variations have not the same effect upon the price of the one species of commodities as upon that of the other. variations in the proportion between the respective values of gold and silver before the discovery of the mines of america, the value of fine gold to fine silver was regulated in the different mints of europe between the proportions of one to ten and one to twelve; that is, an ounce of fine gold was supposed to be worth from ten to twelve ounces of fine silver. about the middle of the last century it came to be regulated, between the proportions of one to fourteen and one to fifteen; that is, an ounce of fine gold came to be supposed to be worth between fourteen and fifteen ounces of fine silver. gold rose in its nominal value, or in the quantity of silver which was given for it. both metals sunk in their real value, or in the quantity of labour which they could purchase; but silver sunk more than gold. though both the gold and silver mines of america exceeded in fertility all those which had ever been known before, the fertility of the silver mines had, it seems, been proportionably still greater than that of the gold ones. the great quantities of silver carried annually from europe to india have, in some of the english settlements, gradually reduced the value of that metal in proportion to gold. in the mint of calcutta an ounce of fine gold is supposed to be worth fifteen ounces of fine silver, in the same manner as in europe. it is in the mint perhaps rated too high for the value which it bears in the market of bengal. in china, the proportion of gold to silver still continues as one to ten, or one to twelve. in japan it is said to be as one to eight. the proportion between the quantities of gold and silver annually imported into europe, according to mr. meggens's account, is as one to twenty-two nearly; that is, for one ounce of gold there are imported a little more than twenty-two ounces of silver. the great quantity of silver sent annually to the east indies reduces, he supposes, the quantities of those metals which remain in europe to the proportion of one to fourteen or fifteen, the proportion of their values. the proportion between their values, he seems to think, must necessarily be the same as that between their quantities, and would therefore be as one to twenty-two, were it not for this greater exportation of silver. but the ordinary proportion between the respective values of two commodities is not necessarily the same as that between the quantities of them which are commonly in the market. the price of an ox, reckoned at ten guineas, is about threescore times the price of a lamb, reckoned at 3s. 6d. it would be absurd, however, to infer from thence that there are commonly in the market threescore lambs for one ox: and it would be just as absurd to infer, because an ounce of gold will commonly purchase from fourteen to fifteen ounces of silver, that there are commonly in the market only fourteen or fifteen ounces of silver for one ounce of gold. the quantity of silver commonly in the market, it is probable is much greater in proportion to that of gold than the value of a certain quantity of gold is to that of an equal quantity of silver. the whole quantity of a cheap commodity brought to market is commonly not only greater, but of greater value, than the whole quantity of a dear one. the whole quantity of bread annually brought to market is not only greater, but of greater value than the whole quantity of butcher's meat; the whole quantity of butcher's meat, than the whole quantity of poultry; and the whole quantity of wild fowl. there are so many more purchasers for the cheap than for the dear commodity that not only a greater quantity of it, but a greater value, can commonly be disposed of. the whole quantity, therefore, of the cheap commodity must commonly be greater in proportion to the whole quantity of the dear one than the value of a certain quantity of the dear one is to the value of an equal quantity of the cheap one. when we compare the precious metals with one another, silver is a cheap and gold a dear commodity. we ought naturally to expect, therefore, that there should always be in the market not only a greater quantity, but a greater value of silver than of gold. let any man who has a little of both compare his own silver with his gold plate, and he will probably find that, not only the quantity, but the value of the former greatly exceeds that of the latter. many people, besides, have a good deal of silver who have no gold plate, which, even with those who have it, is generally confined to watchcases, snuff-boxes, and such like trinkets, of which the whole amount is seldom of great value. in the british coin, indeed, the value of the gold preponderates greatly, but it is not so in that of all countries. in the coin of some countries the value of the two metals is nearly equal. in the scotch coin, before the union with england, the gold preponderated very little, though it did somewhat, as it appears by the accounts of the mint. in the coin of many countries the silver preponderates. in france, the largest sums are commonly paid in that metal, and it is there difficult to get more gold than what is necessary to carry about in your pocket. the superior value, however, of the silver plate above that of the gold, which takes place in all countries, will much more than compensate the preponderancy of the gold coin above the silver, which takes place only in some countries. though, in one sense of the word, silver always has been, and probably always will be, much cheaper than gold; yet in another sense gold may, perhaps, in the present state of the spanish market, be said to be somewhat cheaper than silver. a commodity may be said to be dear or cheap, not only according to the absolute greatness or smallness of its usual price, but according as that price is more or less above the lowest for which it is possible to bring it to market for any considerable time together. this lowest price is that which barely replaces, with a moderate profit, the stock which must be employed in bringing the commodity thither. it is the price which affords nothing to the landlord, of which rent makes not any component part, but which resolves itself altogether into wages and profit. but, in the present state of the spanish market, gold is certainly somewhat nearer to this lowest price than silver. the tax of the king of spain upon gold is only one-twentieth part of the standard metal, or five per cent; whereas his tax upon silver amounts to one-tenth part of it, or to ten per cent. in these taxes too, it has already been observed, consists the whole rent of the greater part of the gold and silver mines of spanish america; and that upon gold is still worse paid than that upon silver. the profits of the undertakers of gold mines too, as they more rarely make a fortune, must, in general, be still more moderate than those of the undertakers of silver mines. the price of spanish gold, therefore, as it affords both less rent and less profit, must, in the spanish market, be somewhat nearer to the lowest price for which it is possible to bring it thither than the price of spanish silver. when all expenses are computed, the whole quantity of the one metal, it would seem, cannot, in the spanish market, be disposed of so advantageously as the whole quantity of the other. the tax, indeed, of the king of portugal upon the gold of the brazils is the same with the ancient tax of the king of spain upon the silver of mexico and peru; or one-fifth part of the standard metal. it may, therefore, be uncertain whether to the general market of europe the whole mass of american gold comes at a price nearer to the lowest for which it is possible to bring it thither than the whole mass of american silver. the price of diamonds and other precious stones may, perhaps, be still nearer to the lowest price at which it is possible to bring them to market than even the price of gold. though it is not very probable that any part of a tax, which is not only imposed upon one of the most proper subjects of taxation, a mere luxury and superfluity, but which affords so very important a revenue as the tax upon silver, will ever be given up as long as it is possible to pay it; yet the same impossibility of paying it, which in 1736 made it necessary to reduce it from one-fifth to one-tenth, may in time make it necessary to reduce it still further; in the same manner as it made it necessary to reduce the tax upon gold to one-twentieth. that the silver mines of spanish america, like all other mines, become gradually more expensive in the working, on account of the greater depths at which it is necessary to carry on the works, and of the greater expense of drawing out the water and of supplying them with fresh air at those depths, is acknowledged by everybody who has inquired into the state of those mines. these causes, which are equivalent to a growing scarcity of silver (for a commodity may be said to grow scarcer when it becomes more difficult and expensive to collect a certain quantity of it) must, in time, produce one or other of the three following events. the increase of the expense must either, first, be compensated altogether by a proportionable increase in the price of the metal; or, secondly, it must be compensated altogether by a proportionable diminution of the tax upon silver; or, thirdly, it must be compensated partly by the one, and partly by the other of those two expedients. this third event is very possible. as gold rose in its price in proportion to silver, notwithstanding a great diminution of the tax upon gold, so silver might rise in its price in proportion to labour and commodities, notwithstanding an equal diminution of the tax upon silver. such successive reductions of the tax, however, though they may not prevent altogether, must certainly retard, more or less, the rise of the value of silver in the european market. in consequence of such reductions many mines may be wrought which could not be wrought before, because they could not afford to pay the old tax; and the quantity of silver annually brought to market must always be somewhat greater, and, therefore, the value of any given quantity somewhat less, than it otherwise would have been. in consequence of the reduction in 1736, the value of silver in the european market, though it may not at this day be lower than before that reduction, is, probably, at least ten per cent lower than it would have been had the court of spain continued to exact the old tax. that, notwithstanding this reduction, the value of silver has, during the course of the present century, begun to rise somewhat in the european market, the facts and arguments which have been alleged above dispose me to believe, or more properly to suspect and conjecture; for the best opinion which i can form upon this subject scarce, perhaps, deserves the name of belief. the rise, indeed, supposing there has been any, has hitherto been so very small that after all that has been said it may, perhaps, appear to many people uncertain, not only whether this event has actually taken place; but whether the contrary may not have taken place, or whether the value of the silver may not still continue to fall in the european market. it must be observed, however, that whatever may be the supposed annual importation of gold and silver, there must be a certain period at which the annual consumption of those metals will be equal to that annual importation. their consumption must increase as their mass increases, or rather in a much greater proportion. as their mass increases, their value diminishes. they are more used and less cared for, and their consumption consequently increases in a greater proportion than their mass. after a certain period, therefore, the annual consumption of those metals must, in this manner, become equal to their annual importation, provided that importation is not continually increasing; which, in the present times, is not supposed to be the case. if, when the annual consumption has become equal to the annual importation, the annual importation should gradually diminish, the annual consumption may, for some time, exceed the annual importation. the mass of those metals may gradually and insensibly diminish, and their value gradually and insensibly rise, till the annual importation become again stationary, the annual consumption will gradually and insensibly accommodate itself to what that annual importation can maintain. grounds of the suspicion that the value of silver still continues to decrease the increase of the wealth of europe, and the popular notion that, as the quantity of the precious metals naturally increases with the increase of wealth so their value diminishes as their quantity increases, may, perhaps, dispose many people to believe that their value still continues to fall in the european market; and the still gradually increasing price of many parts of the rude produce of land may confirm them still further in this opinion. that that increase in the quantity of the precious metals, which arises in any country from the increase of wealth, has no tendency to diminish their value, i have endeavoured to show already. gold and silver naturally resort to a rich country, for the same reason that all sorts of luxuries and curiosities resort to it; not because they are cheaper there than in poorer countries, but because they are dearer, or because a better price is given for them. it is the superiority of price which attracts them, and as soon as that superiority ceases, they necessarily cease to go thither. if you except corn and such other vegetables as are raised altogether by human industry, that all other sorts of rude produce, cattle, poultry, game of all kinds, the useful fossils and minerals of the earth, etc., naturally grow dearer as the society advances in wealth and improvement, i have endeavoured to show already. though such commodities, therefore, come to exchange for a greater quantity of silver than before, it will not from thence follow that silver has become really cheaper, or will purchase less labour than before, but that such commodities have become really dearer, or will purchase more labour than before. it is not their nominal price only, but their real price which rises in the progress of improvement. the rise of their nominal price is the effect, not of any degradation of the value of silver, but of the rise in their real price. different effects of the progress of improvement upon three different sorts of rude produce these different sorts of rude produce may be divided into three classes. the first comprehends those which it is scarce in the power of human industry to multiply at all. the second, those which it can multiply in proportion to the demand. the third, those in which the efficacy of industry is either limited or uncertain. in the progress of wealth and improvement, the real price of the first may rise to any degree of extravagance, and seems not to be limited by any certain boundary. that of the second, though it may rise greatly, has, however, a certain boundary beyond which it cannot well pass for any considerable time together. that of the third, though its natural tendency is to rise in the progress of improvement, yet in the same degree of improvement it may sometimes happen even to fall, sometimes to continue the same, and sometimes to rise more or less, according as different accidents render the efforts of human industry, in multiplying this sort of rude produce, more or less successful. first sort the first sort of rude produce of which the price rises in the progress of improvement is that which it is scarce in the power of human industry to multiply at all. it consists in those things which nature produces only in certain quantities, and which, being of a very perishable nature, it is impossible to accumulate together the produce of many different seasons. such are the greater part of rare and singular birds and fishes, many different sorts of game, almost all wild-fowl, all birds of passage in particular, as well as many other things. when wealth and the luxury which accompanies it increase, the demand for these is likely to increase with them, and no effort of human industry may be able to increase the supply much beyond what it was before this increase of the demand. the quantity of such commodities, therefore, remaining the same, or nearly the same, while the competition to purchase them is continually increasing, their price may rise to any degree of extravagance, and seems not to be limited by any certain boundary. if woodcocks should become so fashionable as to sell for twenty guineas apiece, no effort of human industry could increase the number of those brought to market much beyond what it is at present. the high price paid by the romans, in the time of their greatest grandeur, for rare birds and fishes, may in this manner easily be accounted for. these prices were not the effects of the low value of silver in those times, but of the high value of such rarities and curiosities as human industry could not multiply at pleasure. the real value of silver was higher at rome, for some time before and after the fall of the republic, than it is through the greater part of europe at present. three sestertii, equal to about sixpence sterling, was the price which the republic paid for the modius or peck of the tithe wheat of sicily. this price, however, was probably below the average market price, the obligation to deliver their wheat at this rate being considered as a tax upon the sicilian farmers. when the romans, therefore, had occasion to order more corn than the tithe of wheat amounted to, they were bound by capitulation to pay for the surplus at the rate of four sestertii, or eightpence sterling, the peck; and this had probably been reckoned the moderate and reasonable, that is, the ordinary or average contract price of those times; it is equal to about one-and-twenty shillings the quarter. eight-and-twenty shillings the quarter was, before the late years of scarcity, the ordinary contract price of english wheat, which in quality is inferior to the sicilian, and generally sells for a lower price in the european market. the value of silver, therefore, in those ancient times, must have been to its value in the present as three to four inversely; that is, three ounces of silver would then have purchased the same quantity of labour and commodities which four ounces will do at present. when we read in pliny, therefore, that seius bought a white nightingale, as a present for the empress agrippina, at a price of six thousand sestertii, equal to about fifty pounds of our present money; and that asinius celer purchased a surmullet at the price of eight thousand sestertii, equal to about sixty-six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence of our present money, the extravagance of those prices, how much soever it may surprise us, is apt, notwithstanding, to appear to us about one-third less than it really was. their real price, the quantity of labour and subsistence which was given away for them, was about one-third more than their nominal price is apt to express to us in the present times. seius gave for the nightingale the command of a quantity of labour and subsistence equal to what l66 13s. 4d. would purchase in the present times; and asinius celer gave for the surmullet the command of a quantity equal to what l88 9 1/2d. would purchase. what occasioned the extravagance of those high prices was, not so much the abundance of silver as the abundance of labour and subsistence of which those romans had the disposal beyond what was necessary for their own use. the quantity of silver of which they had the disposal was a good deal less than what the command of the same quantity of labour and subsistence would have procured to them in the present times. second sort the second sort of rude procedure of which the price rises in the progress of improvement is that which human industry can multiply in proportion to the demand. it consists in those useful plants and animals which, in uncultivated countries, nature produces with such profuse abundance that they are of little or no value, and which, as cultivation advances are therefore forced to give place to some more profitable produce. during a long period in the progress of improvement, the quantity of these is continually diminishing, while at the same time the demand for them is continually increasing. their real value, therefore, the real quantity of labour which they will purchase or command, gradually rises, till at last it gets so high as to render them as profitable a produce as anything else which human industry can raise upon the most fertile and best cultivated land. when it has got so high it cannot well go higher. if it did, more land and more industry would soon be employed to increase their quantity. when the price of cattle, for example, rises so high that it is as profitable to cultivate land in order to raise food for them as in order to raise food for man, it cannot well go higher. if it did, more corn land would soon be turned into pasture. the extension of tillage, by diminishing the quantity of wild pasture, diminishes the quantity of butcher's meat which the country naturally produces without labour or cultivation, and by increasing the number of those who have either corn, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of corn, to give in exchange for it, increases the demand. the price of butcher's meat, therefore, and consequently of cattle, must gradually rise till it gets so high that it becomes as profitable to employ the most fertile and best cultivated lands in raising food for them as in raising corn. but it must always be late in the progress of improvement before tillage can be so far extended as to raise the price of cattle to this height; and till it has got to this height, if the country is advancing at all, their price must be continually rising. there are, perhaps, some parts of europe in which the price of cattle has not yet got to this height. it had not got to this height in any part of scotland before the union. had the scotch cattle been always confined to the market of scotland, in a country in which the quantity of land which can be applied to no other purpose but the feeding of cattle is so great in proportion to what can be applied to other purposes, it is scarce possible, perhaps, that their price could ever have risen so high as to render it profitable to cultivate land for the sake of feeding them. in england, the price of cattle, it has already been observed, seems, in the neighbourhood of london, to have got to this height about the beginning of the last century; but it was much later probably before it got to it through the greater part of the remoter counties; in some of which, perhaps, it may scarce yet have got to it. of all the different substances, however, which compose this second sort of rude produce, cattle is, perhaps, that of which the price, in the progress of improvement, first rises to this height. till the price of cattle, indeed, has got to this height, it seems scarce possible that the greater part, even of those lands which are capable of the highest cultivation, can be completely cultivated. in all farms too distant from any town to carry manure from it, that is, in the far greater part of those of every extensive country, the quantity of well-cultivated land must be in proportion to the quantity of manure which the farm itself produces; and this again must be in proportion to the stock of cattle which are maintained upon it. the land is manured either by pasturing the cattle upon it, or by feeding them in the stable, and from thence carrying out their dung to it. but unless the price of the cattle be sufficient to pay both the rent and profit of cultivated land, the farmer cannot afford to pasture them upon it; and he can still less afford to feed them in the stable. it is with the produce of improved and cultivated land only that cattle can be fed in the stable; because to collect the scanty and scattered produce of waste and unimproved lands would require too much labour and be too expensive. if the price of cattle, therefore, is not sufficient to pay for the produce of improved and cultivated land, when they are allowed to pasture it, that price will be still less sufficient to pay for that produce when it must be collected with a good deal of additional labour, and brought into the stable to them. in these circumstances, therefore, no more cattle can, with profit, be fed in the stable than what are necessary for tillage. but these can never afford manure enough for keeping constantly in good condition all the lands which they are capable of cultivating. what they afford being insufficient for the whole farm will naturally be reserved for the lands to which it can be most advantageously or conveniently applied; the most fertile, or those, perhaps, in the neighbourhood of the farmyard. these, therefore, will be kept constantly in good condition and fit for tillage. the rest will, the greater part of them, be allowed to lie waste, producing scarce anything but some miserable pasture, just sufficient to keep alive a few straggling, half-starved cattle; the farm, though much understocked in proportion to what would be necessary for its complete cultivation, being very frequently overstocked in proportion to its actual produce. a portion of this waste land, however, after having been pastured in this wretched manner for six or seven years together, may be ploughed up, when it will yield, perhaps, a poor crop or two of bad oats, or of some other coarse grain, and then, being entirely exhausted, it must be rested and pastured again as before and another portion ploughed up to be in the same manner exhausted and rested again in its turn. such accordingly was the general system of management all over the low country of scotland before the union. the lands which were kept constantly well manured and in good condition seldom exceeded a third or a fourth part of the whole farm, and sometimes did not amount to a fifth or a sixth part of it. the rest were never manured, but a certain portion of them was in its turn, notwithstanding, regularly cultivated and exhausted. under this system of management, it is evident, even that part of the land of scotland which is capable of good cultivation could produce but little in comparison of what it may be capable of producing. but how disadvantageous soever this system may appear, yet before the union the low price of cattle seems to have rendered it almost unavoidable. if, notwithstanding a great rise in their price, it still continues to prevail through a considerable part of the country, it is owing, in many places, no doubt, to ignorance and attachment to old customs, but in most places to the unavoidable obstructions which the natural course of things opposes to the immediate or speedy establishment of a better system: first, to the poverty of the tenants, to their not having yet had time to acquire a stock of cattle sufficient to cultivate their lands more completely, the same rise of price which would render it advantageous for them to maintain a greater stock rendering it more difficult for them to acquire it; and, secondly, to their not having yet had time to put their lands in condition to maintain this greater stock properly, supposing they were capable of acquiring it. the increase of stock and the improvement of land are two events which must go hand in hand, and of which the one can nowhere much outrun the other. without some increase of stock there can be scarce any improvement of land, but there can be no considerable increase of stock but in consequence of a considerable improvement of land; because otherwise the land could not maintain it. these natural obstructions to the establishment of a better system cannot be removed but by a long course of frugality and industry; and half a century or a century more, perhaps, must pass away before the old system, which is wearing out gradually, can be completely abolished through all the different parts of the country. of all the commercial advantages, however, which scotland has derived from the union with england, this rise in the price of cattle is, perhaps, the greatest. it has not only raised the value of all highland estates, but it has, perhaps, been the principal cause of the improvement of the low country. in all new colonies the great quantity of waste land, which can for many years be applied to no other purpose but the feeding of cattle, soon renders them extremely abundant, and in everything great cheapness is the necessary consequence of great abundance. though all the cattle of the european colonies in america were originally carried from europe, they soon multiplied so much there, and became of so little value that even horses were allowed to run wild in the woods without any owner thinking it worth while to claim them. it must be a long time, after the first establishment of such colonies, before it can become profitable to feed cattle upon the produce of cultivated land. the same causes, therefore, the want of manure, and the disproportion between the stock employed in cultivation, and the land which it is destined to cultivate, are likely to introduce there a system of husbandry not unlike that which still continues to take place in so many parts of scotland. mr. kalm, the swedish traveller, when he gives an account of the husbandry of some of the english colonies in north america, as he found it in 1749, observes, accordingly, that he can with difficulty discover there the character of the english nation, so well skilled in all the different branches of agriculture. they make scarce any manure for their corn fields, he says; but when one piece of ground has been exhausted by continual cropping, they clear and cultivate another piece of fresh land; and when that is exhausted, proceed to the third. their cattle are allowed to wander through the woods and other uncultivated grounds, where they are half-starved; having long ago extirpated almost all the annual grasses by cropping them too early in the spring, before they had time to form their flowers, or to shed their seeds. the annual grasses were, it seems, the best natural grasses in that part of north america; and when the europeans first settled there, they used to grow very thick, and to rise three or four feet high. a piece of ground which, when he wrote, could not maintain one cow, would in former times, he was assured, have maintained four, each of which would have given four times the quantity of milk which that one was capable of giving. the poorness of the pasture had, in his opinion, occasioned the degradation of their cattle, which degenerated sensibly from one generation to another. they were probably not unlike that stunted breed which was common all over scotland thirty or forty years ago, and which is now so much mended through the greater part of the low country, not so much by a change of the breed, though that expedient has been employed in some places, as by a more plentiful method of feeding them. though it is late, therefore, in the progress of improvement before cattle can bring such a price as to render it profitable to cultivate land for the sake of feeding them; yet of all the different parts which compose this second sort of rude produce, they are perhaps the first which bring this price; because till they bring it, it seems impossible that improvement can be brought near even to that degree of perfection to which it has arrived in many parts of europe. as cattle are among the first, so perhaps venison is among the last parts of this sort of rude produce which bring this price. the price of venison in great britain, how extravagant soever it may appear, is not near sufficient to compensate the expense of a deer park, as is well known to all those who have had any experience in the feeding of deer. if it was otherwise, the feeding of deer would soon become an article of common farming, in the same manner as the feeding of those small birds called turdi was among the ancient romans. varro and columella assure us that it was a most profitable article. the fattening of ortolans, birds of passage which arrive lean in the country, is said to be so in some parts of france. if venison continues in fashion, and the wealth and luxury of great britain increase as they have done for some time past, its price may very probably rise still higher than it is at present. between that period in the progress of improvement which brings to its height the price of so necessary an article as cattle, and that which brings to it the price of such a superfluity as venison, there is a very long interval, in the course of which many other sorts of rude produce gradually arrive at their highest price, some sooner and some later, according to different circumstances. thus in every farm the offals of the barn and stables will maintain a certain number of poultry. these, as they are fed with what would otherwise be lost, are a mere save-all; and as they cost the farmer scarce anything, so he can afford to sell them for very little. almost all that he gets is pure gain, and their price can scarce be so low as to discourage him from feeding this number. but in countries ill cultivated, and therefore but thinly inhabited, the poultry, which are thus raised without expense, are often fully sufficient to supply the whole demand. in this state of things, therefore, they are often as cheap as butcher's meat, or any other sort of animal food. but the whole quantity of poultry, which the farm in this manner produces without expense, must always be much smaller than the whole quantity of butcher's meat which is reared upon it; and in times of wealth and luxury what is rare, with only nearly equal merit, is always preferred to what is common. as wealth and luxury increase, therefore, in consequence of improvement and cultivation, the price of poultry gradually rises above that of butcher's meat, till at last it gets so high that it becomes profitable to cultivate land for the sake of feeding them. when it has got to this height it cannot well go higher. if it did, more land would soon be turned to this purpose. in several provinces of france, the feeding of poultry is considered as a very important article in rural economy, and sufficiently profitable to encourage the farmer to raise a considerable quantity of indian corn and buck-wheat for this purpose. a middling farmer will there sometimes have four hundred fowls in his yard. the feeding of poultry seems scarce yet to be generally considered as a matter of so much importance in england. they are certainly, however, dearer in england than in france, as england receives considerable supplies from france. in the progress of improvement, the period at which every particular sort of animal food is dearest must naturally be that which immediately precedes the general practice of cultivating land for the sake of raising it. for some time before this practice becomes general, the scarcity must necessarily raise the price. after it has become general, new methods of feeding are commonly fallen upon, which enable the farmer to raise upon the same quantity of ground a much greater quantity of that particular sort of animal food. the plenty not only obliges him to sell cheaper, but in consequence of these improvements he can afford to sell cheaper; for if he could not afford it, the plenty would not be of long continuance. it has been probably in this manner that the introduction of clover, turnips, carrots, cabbage, etc., has contributed to sink the common price of butcher's meat in the london market somewhat below what it was about the beginning of the last century. the hog, that finds his food among ordure and greedily devours many things rejected by every other useful animal, is, like poultry, originally kept as a save-all. as long as the number of such animals, which can thus be reared at little or no expense, is fully sufficient to supply the demand, this sort of butcher's meat comes to market at a much lower price than any other. but when the demand rises beyond what this quantity can supply, when it becomes necessary to raise food on purpose for feeding and fattening hogs, in the same manner as for feeding and fattening other cattle, the price necessarily rises, and becomes proportionably higher or lower than that of other butcher's meat, according as the nature of the country, and the state of its agriculture, happen to render the feeding of hogs more or less expensive than that of other cattle. in france, according to mr. buffon, the price of pork is nearly equal to that of beef. in most parts of great britain it is at present somewhat higher. the great rise in the price of both hogs and poultry has in great britain been frequently imputed to the diminution of the number of cottagers and other small occupiers of land; an event which has in every part of europe been the immediate forerunner of improvement and better cultivation, but which at the same time may have contributed to raise the price of those articles both somewhat sooner and somewhat faster than it would otherwise have risen. as the poorest family can often maintain a cat or a dog without any expense, so the poorest occupiers of land can commonly maintain a few poultry, or a sow and a few pigs, at very little. the little offals of their own table, their whey, skimmed milk, and buttermilk, supply those animals with a part of their food, and they find the rest in the neighbouring fields without doing any sensible damage to anybody. by diminishing the number of those small occupiers, therefore, the quantity of this sort of provisions, which is thus produced at little or no expense, must certainly have been a good deal diminished, and their price must consequently have been raised both sooner and faster than it would otherwise have risen. sooner or later, however, in the progress of improvement, it must at any rate have risen to the utmost height to which it is capable of rising; or to the price which pays the labour and expense of cultivating the land which furnishes them with food as well as these are paid upon the greater part of other cultivated land. the business of the dairy, like the feeding of hogs and poultry, is originally carried on as a save-all. the cattle necessarily kept upon the farm produce more milk than either the rearing of their own young or the consumption of the farmer's family requires; and they produce most at one particular season. but of all the productions of land, milk is perhaps the most perishable. in the warm season, when it is most abundant, it will scarce keep four-and-twenty hours. the farmer, by making it into fresh butter, stores a small part of it for a week: by making it into salt butter, for a year: and by making it into cheese, he stores a much greater part of it for several years. part of all these is reserved for the use of his own family. the rest goes to market, in order to find the best price which is to be had, and which can scarce be so low as to discourage him from sending thither whatever is over and above the use of his own family. if it is very low, indeed, he will be likely to manage his dairy in a very slovenly and dirty manner, and will scarce perhaps think it worth while to have a particular room or building on purpose for it, but will suffer the business to be carried on amidst the smoke, filth, and nastiness of his own kitchen; as was the case of almost all the farmers' dairies in scotland thirty or forty years ago, and as is the case of many of them still. the same causes which gradually raise the price of butcher's meat, the increase of the demand, and, in consequence of the improvement of the country, the diminution of the quantity which can be fed at little or no expense, raise, in the same manner, that of the produce of the dairy, of which the price naturally connects with that of butcher's meat, or with the expense of feeding cattle. the increase of price pays for more labour, care, and cleanliness. the dairy becomes more worthy of the farmer's attention, and the quality of its produce gradually improves. the price at last gets so high that it becomes worth while to employ some of the most fertile and best cultivated lands in feeding cattle merely for the purpose of the dairy; and when it has got to this height, it cannot well go higher. if it did, more land would soon be turned to this purpose. it seems to have got to this height through the greater part of england, where much good land is commonly employed in this manner. if you except the neighbourhood of a few considerable towns, it seems not yet to have got to this height anywhere in scotland, where common farmers seldom employ much good land in raising food for cattle merely for the purpose of the dairy. the price of the produce, though it has risen very considerably within these few years, is probably still too low to admit of it. the inferiority of the quality, indeed, compared with that of the produce of english dairies, is fully equal to that of the price. but this inferiority of quality is, perhaps, rather the effect of this lowness of price than the cause of it. though the quality was much better, the greater part of what is brought to market could not, i apprehend, in the present circumstances of the country, be disposed of at a much better price; and the present price, it is probable would not pay the expense of the land and labour necessary for producing a much better quality. though the greater part of england, notwithstanding the superiority of price, the dairy is not reckoned a more profitable employment of land than the raising of corn, or the fattening of cattle, the two great objects of agriculture. through the greater part of scotland, therefore, it cannot yet be even so profitable. the lands of no country, it is evident, can ever be completely cultivated and improved till once the price of every produce, which human industry is obliged to raise upon them, has got so high as to pay for the expense of complete improvement and cultivation. in order to do this, the price of each particular produce must be sufficient, first, to pay the rent of good corn land, as it is that which regulates the rent of the greater part of other cultivated land; and, secondly, to pay the labour and expense of the farmer as well as they are commonly paid upon good corn land; or, in other words, to replace with the ordinary profits the stock which he employs about it. this rise in the price of each particular produce must evidently be previous to the improvement and cultivation of the land which is destined for raising it. gain is the end of all improvement, and nothing could deserve that name of which loss was to be the necessary consequence. but loss must be the necessary consequence of improving land for the sake of a produce of which the price could never bring back the expense. if the complete improvement and cultivation of the country be, as it most certainly is, the greatest of all public advantages, this rise in the price of all those different sorts of rude produce, instead of being considered as a public calamity, ought to be regarded as the necessary forerunner and attendant of the greatest of all public advantages. this rise, too, in the nominal or money-price of all those different sorts of rude produce has been the effect, not of any degradation in the value of silver, but of a rise in their real price. they have become worth, not only a greater quantity of silver, but a greater quantity of labour and subsistence than before. as it costs a greater quantity of labour and subsistence to bring them to market, so when they are brought thither, they represent or are equivalent to a greater quantity. third sort the third and last sort of rude produce, of which the price naturally rises in the progress of improvement, is that in which the efficacy of human industry, in augmenting the quantity, is either limited or uncertain. though the real price of this sort of rude produce, therefore, naturally tends to rise in the progress of improvement, yet, according as different accidents happen to render the efforts of human industry more or less successful in augmenting the quantity, it may happen sometimes even to fall, sometimes to continue the same in very different periods of improvement, and sometimes to rise more or less in the same period. there are some sorts of rude produce which nature has rendered a kind of appendages to other sorts; so that the quantity of the one which any country can afford, is necessarily limited by that of the other. the quantity of wool or of raw hides, for example, which any country can afford is necessarily limited by the number of great and small cattle that are kept in it. the state of its improvement, and the nature of its agriculture, again necessarily determine this number. the same causes which, in the progress of improvement, gradually raise the price of butcher's meat, should have the same effect, it may be thought, upon the prices of wool and raw hides, and raise them, too, nearly in the same proportion. it probably would be so if, in the rude beginnings of improvement, the market for the latter commodities was confined within as narrow bounds as that for the former. but the extent of their respective markets is commonly extremely different. the market for butcher's meat is almost everywhere confined to the country which produces it. ireland, and some part of british america indeed, carry on a considerable trade in salt provisions; but they are, i believe, the only countries in the commercial world which do so, or which export to other countries any considerable part of their butcher's meat. the market for wool and raw hides, on the contrary, is in the rude beginnings of improvement very seldom confined to the country which produces them. they can easily be transported to distant countries, wool without any preparation, and raw hides with very little: and as they are the materials of many manufactures, the industry of other countries may occasion a demand for them, though that of the country which produces them might not occasion any. in countries ill cultivated, and therefore but thinly inhabited, the price of the wool and the hide bears always a much greater proportion to that of the whole beast than in countries where, improvement and population being further advanced, there is more demand for butcher's meat. mr. hume observes that in the saxon times the fleece was estimated at two-fifths of the value of the whole sheep, and that this was much above the proportion of its present estimation. in some provinces of spain, i have been assured, the sheep is frequently killed merely for the sake of the fleece and the tallow. the carcase is often left to rot upon the ground, or to be devoured by beasts and birds of prey. if this sometimes happens even in spain, it happens almost constantly in chili, at buenos ayres, and in many other parts of spanish america, where the horned cattle are almost constantly killed merely for the sake of the hide and the tallow. this, too, used to happen almost constantly in hispaniola, while it was infested by the buccaneers, and before the settlement, improvement, and populousness of the french plantations (which now extend round the coast of almost the whole western half of the island) had given some value to the cattle of the spaniards, who still continue to possess, not only the eastern part of the coast, but the whole inland and mountainous part of the country. though in the progress of improvement and population the price of the whole beast necessarily rises, yet the price of the carcase is likely to be much more affected by this rise than that of the wool and the hide. the market for the carcase, being in the rude state of society confined always to the country which produces it, must necessarily be extended in proportion to the improvement and population of that country. but the market for the wool and the hides even of a barbarous country often extending to the whole commercial world, it can very seldom be enlarged in the same proportion. the state of the whole commercial world can seldom be much affected by the improvement of any particular country; and the market for such commodities may remain the same or very nearly the same after such improvements as before. it should, however, in the natural course of things rather upon the whole be somewhat extended in consequence of them. if the manufactures, especially, of which those commodities are the materials should ever come to flourish in the country, the market, though it might not be much enlarged, would at least be brought much nearer to the place of growth than before; and the price of those materials might at least be increased by what had usually been the expense of transporting them to distant countries. though it might not rise therefore in the same proportion as that of butcher's meat, it ought naturally to rise somewhat, and it ought certainly not to fall. in england, however, notwithstanding the flourishing state of its woollen manufacture, the price of english wool has fallen very considerably since the time of edward iii. there are many authentic records which demonstrate that during the reign of that prince (towards the middle of the fourteenth century, or about 1339) what was reckoned the moderate and reasonable price of the tod, or twenty-eight pounds of english wool, was not less than ten shillings of the money of those times, containing at the rate of twentypence the ounce, six ounces of silver tower weight, equal to about thirty shillings of our present money. in the present times, one-and-twenty shillings the tod may be reckoned a good price for very good english wool. the money-price of wool, therefore, in the time of edward iii, was to its money-price in the present times as ten to seven. the superiority of its real price was still greater. at the rate of six shillings and eightpence the quarter, ten shillings was in those ancient times the price of twelve bushels of wheat. at the rate of twenty-eight shillings the quarter, one-and-twenty shillings is in the present times the price of six bushels only. the proportion between the real prices of ancient and modern times, therefore, is as twelve to six, or as two to one. in those ancient times a tod of wool would have purchased twice the quantity of subsistence which it will purchase at present; and consequently twice the quantity of labour, if the real recompense of labour had been the same in both periods. this degradation both in the real and nominal value of wool could never have happened in consequence of the natural course of things. it has accordingly been the effect of violence and artifice: first, of the absolute prohibition of exporting wool from england; secondly, of the permission of importing it from spain duty free; thirdly, of the prohibition of exporting it from ireland to any other country but england. in consequence of these regulations the market for english wool, instead of being somewhat extended in consequence of the improvement of england, has been confined to the home market, where the wool of several other countries is allowed to come into competition with it, and where that of ireland is forced into competition with it. as the woollen manufactures, too, of ireland are fully as much discouraged as is consistent with justice and fair dealing, the irish can work up but a small part of their own wool at home, and are, therefore, obliged to send a greater proportion of it to great britain, the only market they are allowed. i have not been able to find any such authentic records concerning the price of raw hides in ancient times. wool was commonly paid as a subsidy to the king, and its valuation in that subsidy ascertains, at least in some degree, what was its ordinary price. but this seems not to have been the case with raw hides. fleetwood, however, from an account in 1425, between the prior of burcester oxford and one of his canons, gives us their price, at least as it was stated upon that particular occasion, viz., five ox hides at twelve shillings; five cow hides at seven shillings and threepence; thirty-six sheep skins of two years old at nine shillings; sixteen calves skins at two shillings. in 1425, twelve shillings contained about the same quantity of silver as four-and-twenty shillings of our present money. an ox hide, therefore, was in this account valued at the same quantity of silver as 4s. four-fifths of our present money. its nominal price was a good deal lower than at present. but at the rate of six shillings and eightpence the quarter, twelve shillings would in those times have purchased fourteen bushels and four-fifths of a bushel of wheat, which, at three and sixpence the bushel, would in the present times cost 51s. 4d. an ox hide, therefore, would in those times have purchased as much corn as ten shillings and threepence would purchase at present. its real value was equal to ten shillings and threepence of our present money. in those ancient times, when the cattle were half starved during the greater part of the winter, we cannot suppose that they were of a very large size. an ox hide which weighs four stone of sixteen pounds avoirdupois is not in the present times reckoned a bad one; and in those ancient times would probably have been reckoned a very good one. but at half-a-crown the stone, which at this moment (february 1773) i understand to be the common price, such a hide would at present cost only ten shillings. though its nominal price, therefore, is higher in the present than it was in those ancient times, its real price, the real quantity of subsistence which it will purchase or command, is rather somewhat lower. the price of cow hides, as stated in the above account, is nearly in the common proportion to that of ox hides. that of sheep skins is a good deal above it. they had probably been sold with the wool. that of calves skins, on the contrary, is greatly below it. in countries where the price of cattle is very low, the calves, which are not intended to be reared in order to keep up the stock, are generally killed very young; as was the case in scotland twenty or thirty years ago. it saves the milk, which their price would not pay for. their skins, therefore, are commonly good for little. the price of raw hides is a good deal lower at present than it was a few years ago, owing probably to the taking off the duty upon sealskins, and to the allowing, for a limited time, the importation of raw hides from ireland and from the plantations duty free, which was done in 1769. take the whole of the present century at an average, their real price has probably been somewhat higher than it was in those ancient times. the nature of the commodity renders it not quite so proper for being transported to distant markets as wool. it suffers more by keeping. a salted hide is reckoned inferior to a fresh one, and sells for a lower price. this circumstance must necessarily have some tendency to sink the price of raw hides produced in a country which does not manufacture them, but is obliged to export them; and comparatively to raise that of those produced in a country which does manufacture them. it must have some tendency to sink their price in a barbarous, and to raise it in an improved and manufacturing country. it must have had some tendency, therefore, to sink it in ancient and to raise it in modern times. our tanners, besides, have not been quite so successful as our clothiers in convincing the wisdom of the nation that the safety of the commonwealth depends upon the prosperity of their particular manufacture. they have accordingly been much less favoured. the exportation of raw hides has, indeed, been prohibited, and declared a nuisance; but their importation from foreign countries has been subjected to a duty; and though this duty has been taken off from those of ireland and the plantations (for the limited time of five years only), yet ireland has not been confined to the market of great britain for the sale of its surplus hides, or of those which are not manufactured at home. the hides of common cattle have but within these few years been put among the enumerated commodities which the plantations can send nowhere but to the mother country; neither has the commerce of ireland been in this case oppressed hitherto in order to support the manufactures of great britain. whatever regulations tend to sink the price either of wool or of raw hides below what it naturally would be must, in an improved and cultivated country, have some tendency to raise the price of butcher's meat. the price both of the great and small cattle, which are fed on improved and cultivated land, must be sufficient to pay the rent which the landlord and the profit which the farmer has reason to expect from improved and cultivated land. if it is not, they will soon cease to feed them. whatever part of this price, therefore, is not paid by the wool and the hide must be paid by the carcase. the less there is paid for the one, the more must be paid for the other. in what manner this price is to be divided upon the different parts of the beast is indifferent to the landlords and farmers, provided it is all paid to them. in an improved and cultivated country, therefore, their interest as landlords and farmers cannot be much affected by such regulations, though their interest as consumers may, by the rise in the price of provisions. it would be quite otherwise, however, in an unimproved and uncultivated country, where the greater part of the lands could be applied to no other purpose but the feeding of cattle, and where the wool and the hide made the principal part of the value of those cattle. their interest as landlords and farmers would in this case be very deeply affected by such regulations, and their interest as consumers very little. the fall in the price of wool and the hide would not in this case raise the price of the carcase, because the greater part of the lands of the country being applicable to no other purpose but the feeding of cattle, the same number would still continue to be fed. the same quantity of butcher's meat would still come to market. the demand for it would be no greater than before. its price, therefore, would be the same as before. the whole price of cattle would fall, and along with it both the rent and the profit of all those lands of which cattle was the principal produce, that is, of the greater part of the lands of the country. the perpetual prohibition of the exportation of wool, which is commonly, but very falsely, ascribed to edward iii, would, in the then circumstances of the country, have been the most destructive regulation which could well have been thought of. it would not only have reduced the actual value of the greater part of the lands of the kingdom, but by reducing the price of the most important species of small cattle it would have retarded very much its subsequent improvement. the wool of scotland fell very considerably in its price in consequence of the union with england, by which it was excluded from the great market of europe, and confined to the narrow one of great britain. the value of the greater part of the lands in the southern counties of scotland, which are chiefly a sheep country, would have been very deeply affected by this event, had not the rise in the price of butcher's meat fully compensated the fall in the price of wool. as the efficacy of human industry, in increasing the quantity either of wool or of raw hides, is limited, so far as it depends upon the produce of the country where it is exerted; so it is uncertain so far as it depends upon the produce of other countries. it so far depends, not so much upon the quantity which they produce, as upon that which they do not manufacture; and upon the restraints which they may or may not think proper to impose upon the exportation of this sort of rude produce. these circumstances, as they are altogether independent of domestic industry, so they necessarily render the efficacy of its efforts more or less uncertain. in multiplying this sort of rude produce, therefore, the efficacy of human industry is not only limited, but uncertain. in multiplying another very important sort of rude produce, the quantity of fish that is brought to market, it is likewise both limited and uncertain. it is limited by the local situation of the country, by the proximity or distance of its different provinces from the sea, by the number of its lakes and rivers, and by what may be called the fertility or barrenness of those seas, lakes, and rivers, as to this sort of rude produce. as population increases, as the annual produce of the land and labour of the country grows greater and greater, there come to be more buyers of fish, and those buyers, too, have a greater quantity and variety of other goods, or, what is the same thing, the price of a greater quantity and variety of other goods to buy with. but it will generally be impossible to supply the great and extended market without employing a quantity of labour greater than in proportion to what had been requisite for supplying the narrow and confined one. a market which, from requiring only one thousand, comes to require annually ten thousand tons of fish, can seldom be supplied without employing more than ten times the quantity of labour which had before been sufficient to supply it. the fish must generally be fought for at a greater distance, larger vessels must be employed, and more expensive machinery of every kind made use of. the real price of this commodity, therefore, naturally rises in the progress of improvement. it has accordingly done so, i believe, more or less in every country. though the success of a particular day's fishing may be a very uncertain matter, yet, the local situation of the country being supposed, the general efficacy of industry in bringing a certain quantity of fish to market, taking the course of a year, or of several years together, it may perhaps be thought is certain enough; and it no doubt is so. as it depends more, however, upon the local situation of the country than upon the state of its wealth and industry; as upon this account it may in different countries be the same in very different periods of improvement, and very different in the same period; its connection with the state of improvement is uncertain, and it is of this sort of uncertainty that i am here speaking. in increasing the quantity of the different minerals and metals which are drawn from the bowels of the earth, that of the more precious ones particularly, the efficacy of human industry seems not to be limited, but to be altogether uncertain. the quantity of the precious metals which is to be found in any country is not limited by anything in its local situation, such as the fertility or barrenness of its own mines. those metals frequently abound in countries which possess no mines. their quantity in every particular country seems to depend upon two different circumstances; first, upon its power of purchasing, upon the state of its industry, upon the annual produce of its land and labour, in consequence of which it can afford to employ a greater or a smaller quantity of labour and subsistence in bringing or purchasing such superfluities as gold and silver, either from its own mines or from those of other countries; and, secondly, upon the fertility or barrenness of the mines which may happen at any particular time to supply the commercial world with those metals. the quantity of those metals in the countries most remote from the mines must be more or less affected by this fertility or barrenness, on account of the easy and cheap transportation of those metals, of their small bulk and great value. their quantity in china and indostan must have been more or less affected by the abundance of the mines of america. so far as their quantity in any particular country depends upon the former of those two circumstances (the power of purchasing), their real price, like that of all other luxuries and superfluities, is likely to rise with the wealth and improvement of the country, and to fall with its poverty and depression. countries which have a great quantity of labour and subsistence to spare can afford to purchase any particular quantity of those metals at the expense of a greater quantity of labour and subsistence than countries which have less to spare. so far as their quantity in any particular country depends upon the latter of those two circumstances (the fertility or barrenness of the mines which happen to supply the commercial world), their real price, the real quantity of labour and subsistence which they will purchase or exchange for, will, no doubt, sink more or less in proportion to the fertility, and rise in proportion to the barrenness of those mines. the fertility or barrenness of the mines, however, which may happen at any particular time to supply the commercial world, is a circumstance which, it is evident, may have no sort of connection with the state of industry in a particular country. it seems even to have no very necessary connection with that of the world in general. as arts and commerce, indeed, gradually spread themselves over a greater and a greater part of the earth, the search for new mines, being extended over a wider surface, may have somewhat a better chance for being successful than when confined within narrower bounds. the discovery of new mines, however, as the old ones come to be gradually exhausted, is a matter of the greatest uncertainty, and such as no human skill or industry can ensure. all indications, it is acknowledged, are doubtful, and the actual discovery and successful working of a new mine can alone ascertain the reality of its value, or even of its existence. in this search there seem to be no certain limits either to the possible success or to the possible disappointment of human industry. in the course of a century or two, it is possible that new mines may be discovered more fertile than any that have ever yet been known; and it is just equally possible the most fertile mine then known may be more barren than any that was wrought before the discovery of the mines of america. whether the one or the other of those two events may happen to take place is of very little importance to the real wealth and prosperity of the world, to the real value of the annual produce of the land and labour of mankind. its nominal value, the quantity of gold and silver by which this annual produce could be expressed or represented, would, no doubt, be very different; but its real value, the real quantity of labour which it could purchase or command, would be precisely the same. a shilling might in the one case represent no more labour than a penny does at present; and a penny in the other might represent as much as a shilling does now. but in the one case he who had a shilling in his pocket would be no richer than he who has a penny at present; and in the other he who had a penny would be just as rich as he who has a shilling now. the cheapness and abundance of gold and silver plate would be the sole advantage which the world could derive from the one event, and the dearness and scarcity of those trifling superfluities the only inconveniency it could suffer from the other. conclusion of the digression concerning the variations in the value of silver the greater part of the writers who have collected the money prices of things in ancient times seem to have considered the low money-price of corn, and of goods in general, or, in other words, the high value of gold and silver, as a proof, not only of the scarcity of those metals, but of the poverty and barbarism of the country at the time when it took place. this notion is connected with the system of political economy which represents national wealth as consisting in the abundance, and national poverty in the scarcity of gold and silver; a system which i shall endeavour to explain and examine at great length in the fourth book of this inquiry. i shall only observe at present that the high value of the precious metals can be no proof of the poverty or barbarism of any particular country at the time when it took place. it is a proof only of the barrenness of the mines which happened at that time to supply the commercial world. a poor country, as it cannot afford to buy more, so it can as little afford to pay dearer for gold and silver than a rich one; and the value of those metals, therefore, is not likely to be higher in the former than in the latter. in china, a country much richer than any part of europe, the value of the precious metals is much higher than in any part of europe. as the wealth of europe, indeed, has increased greatly since the discovery of the mines of america, so the value of gold and silver has gradually diminished. this diminution of their value, however, has not been owing to the increase of the real wealth of europe, of the annual produce of its land and labour, but to the accidental discovery of more abundant mines than any that were known before. the increase of the quantity of gold and silver in europe, and the increase of its manufactures and agriculture, are two events which, though they have happened nearly about the same time, yet have arisen from very different causes, and have scarce any natural connection with one another. the one has arisen from a mere accident, in which neither prudence nor policy either had or could have any share. the other from the fall of the feudal system, and from the establishment of a government which afforded to industry the only encouragement which it requires, some tolerable security that it shall enjoy the fruits of its own labour. poland, where the feudal system still continues to take place, is at this day as beggarly a country as it was before the discovery of america. the money price of corn, however, has risen; the real value of the precious metals has fallen in poland, in the same manner as in other parts of europe. their quantity, therefore, must have increased there as in other places, and nearly in the same proportion to the annual produce of its land and labour. this increase of the quantity of those metals, however, has not, it seems, increased that annual produce, has neither improved the manufactures and agriculture of the country, nor mended the circumstances of its inhabitants. spain and portugal, the countries which possess the mines, are, after poland, perhaps, the two most beggarly countries in europe. the value of the precious metals, however, must be lower in spain and portugal than in any other part of europe; as they come from those countries to all other parts of europe, loaded, not only with a freight and an insurance, but with the expense of smuggling, their exportation being either prohibited, or subjected to a duty. in proportion to the annual produce of the land and labour, therefore, their quantity must be greater in those countries than in any other part of europe. those countries, however, are poorer than the greater part of europe. though the feudal system has been abolished in spain and portugal, it has not been succeeded by a much better. as the low value of gold and silver, therefore, is no proof of the wealth and flourishing state of the country where it takes place; so neither is their high value, or the low money price either of goods in general, or of corn in particular, any proof of its poverty and barbarism. but though the low money price either of goods in general, or of corn in particular, be no proof of the poverty or barbarism of the times, the low money price of some particular sorts of goods, such as cattle, poultry, game of all kinds, etc., in proportion to that of corn, is a most decisive one. it clearly demonstrates, first, their great abundance in proportion to that of corn, and consequently the great extent of the land which they occupied in proportion to what was occupied by corn; and, secondly, the low value of this land in proportion to that of corn land, and consequently the uncultivated and unimproved state of the far greater part of the lands of the country. it clearly demonstrates that the stock and population of the country did not bear the same proportion to the extent of its territory which they commonly do in civilised countries, and that society was at that time, and in that country, but in its infancy. from the high or low money price either of goods in general, or of corn in particular, we can infer only that the mines which at that time happened to supply the commercial world with gold and silver were fertile or barren, not that the country was rich or poor. but from the high or low money price of some sorts of goods in proportion to that of others, we can infer, with a degree of probability that approaches almost to certainty, that it was rich or poor, that the greater part of its lands were improved or unimproved, and that it was either in a more or less barbarous state, or in a more or less civilised one. any rise in the money price of goods which proceeded altogether from the degradation of the value of silver would affect all sorts of goods equally, and raise their price universally a third, or a fourth, or a fifth part higher, according as silver happened to lose a third, or a fourth, or a fifth part of its former value. but the rise in the price of provisions, which has been the subject of so much reasoning and conversation, does not affect all sorts of provisions equally. taking the course of the present century at an average, the price of corn, it is acknowledged, even by those who account for this rise by the degradation of the value of silver, has risen much less than that of some other sorts of provisions. the rise in the price of those other sorts of provisions, therefore, cannot be owing altogether to the degradation of the value of silver. some other causes must be taken into the account, and those which have been above assigned will, perhaps, without having recourse to the supposed degradation of the value of silver, sufficiently explain this rise in those particular sorts of provisions of which the price has actually risen in proportion to that of corn. as to the price of corn itself, it has, during the sixty-four first years of the present century, and before the late extraordinary course of bad seasons, been somewhat lower than it was during the sixty-four last years of the preceding century. this fact is attested, not only by the accounts of windsor market, but by the public fiars of all the different counties of scotland, and by the accounts of several different markets in france, which have been collected with great diligence and fidelity by mr. messance and by mr. dupre de st. maur. the evidence is more complete than could well have been expected in a matter which is naturally so very difficult to be ascertained. as to the high price of corn during these last ten or twelve years, it can be sufficiently accounted for from the badness of the seasons, without supposing any degradation in the value of silver. the opinion, therefore, that silver is continually sinking in its value, seems not to be founded upon any good observations, either upon the prices of corn, or upon those of other provisions. the same quantity of silver, it may, perhaps, be said, will in the present times, even according to the account which has been here given, purchase a much smaller quantity of several sorts of provisions than it would have done during some part of the last century; and to ascertain whether this change be owing to a rise in the value of those goods, or to a fall in the value of silver, is only to establish a vain and useless distinction, which can be of no sort of service to the man who has only a certain quantity of silver to go to market with, or a certain fixed revenue in money. i certainly do not pretend that the knowledge of this distinction will enable him to buy cheaper. it may not, however, upon that account be altogether useless. it may be of some use to the public by affording an easy proof of the prosperous condition of the country. if the rise in the price of some sorts of provisions be owing altogether to a fall in the value of silver, it is owing to a circumstance from which nothing can be inferred but the fertility of the american mines. the real wealth of the country, the annual produce of its land and labour, may, notwithstanding this circumstance, be either gradually declining, as in portugal and poland; or gradually advancing, as in most other parts of europe. but if this rise in the price of some sorts of provisions be owing to a rise in the real value of the land which produces them, to its increased fertility, or, in consequence of more extended improvement and good cultivation, to its having been rendered fit for producing corn; it is owing to a circumstance which indicates in the clearest manner the prosperous and advancing state of the country. the land constitutes by far the greatest, the most important, and the most durable part of the wealth of every extensive country. it may surely be of some use, or, at least, it may give some satisfaction to the public, to have so decisive a proof of the increasing value of by far the greatest, the most important, and the most durable part of its wealth. it may, too, be of some use to the public in regulating the pecuniary reward of some of its inferior servants. if this rise in the price of some sorts of provisions be owing to a fall in the value of silver, their pecuniary reward, provided it was not too large before, ought certainly to be augmented in proportion to the extent of this fall. if it is not augmented, their real recompense will evidently be so much diminished. but if this rise of price is owing to the increased value, in consequence of the improved fertility of the land which produces such provisions, it becomes a much nicer matter to judge either in what proportion any pecuniary reward ought to be augmented, or whether it ought to be augmented at all. the extension of improvement and cultivation, as it necessarily raises more or less, in proportion to the price of corn, that of every sort of animal food, so it as necessarily lowers that of, i believe, every sort of vegetable food. it raises the price of animal food; because a great part of the land which produces it, being rendered fit for producing corn, must afford to the landlord and farmer the rent and profit of corn-land. it lowers the price of vegetable food; because, by increasing the fertility of the land, it increases its abundance. the improvements of agriculture, too, introduce many sorts of vegetable food, which, requiring less land and not more labour than corn, come much cheaper to market. such are potatoes and maize, or what is called indian corn, the two most important improvements which the agriculture of europe, perhaps, which europe itself has received from the great extension of its commerce and navigation. many sorts of vegetable food, besides, which in the rude state of agriculture are confined to the kitchen-garden, and raised only by the spade, come in its improved state to be introduced into common fields, and to be raised by the plough: such as turnips, carrots, cabbages, etc. if in the progress of improvement, therefore, the real price of one species of food necessarily rises, that of another as necessarily falls, and it becomes a matter of more nicety to judge how far the rise in the one may be compensated by the fall in the other. when the real price of butcher's meat has once got to its height (which, with regard to every sort, except, perhaps, that of hogs' flesh, it seems to have done through a great part of england more than a century ago), any rise which can afterwards happen in that of any other sort of animal food cannot much affect the circumstances of the inferior ranks of people. the circumstances of the poor through a great part of england cannot surely be so much distressed by any rise in the price of poultry, fish, wild-fowl, or venison, as they must be relieved by the fall in that of potatoes. in the present season of scarcity the high price of corn no doubt distresses the poor. but in times of moderate plenty, when corn is at its ordinary or average price, the natural rise in the price of any other sort of rude produce cannot much affect them. they suffer more, perhaps, by the artificial rise which has been occasioned by taxes in the price of some manufactured commodities; as of salt, soap, leather, candles, malt, beer, and ale, etc. effects of the progress of improvement upon the real price of manufactures it is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures. that of the manufacturing workmanship diminishes, perhaps, in all of them without exception. in consequence of better machinery, of greater dexterity, and of a more proper division and distribution of work, all of which are the natural effects of improvement, a much smaller quantity of labour becomes requisite for executing any particular piece of work, and though, in consequence of the flourishing circumstances of the society, the real price of labour should rise very considerably, yet the great diminution of the quantity will generally much more than compensate the greatest rise which can happen in the price. there are, indeed, a few manufactures in which the necessary rise in the real price of the rude materials will more than compensate all the advantages which improvement can introduce into the execution of the work. in carpenters' and joiners' work, and in the coarser sort of cabinet work, the necessary rise in the real price of barren timber, in consequence of the improvement of land, will more than compensate all the advantages which can be derived from the best machinery, the greatest dexterity, and the most proper division and distribution of work. but in all cases in which the real price of the rude materials either does not rise at all, or does not rise very much, that of the manufactured commodity sinks very considerably. this diminution of price has, in the course of the present and preceding century, been most remarkable in those manufactures of which the materials are the coarser metals. a better movement of a watch, that about the middle of the last century could have been bought for twenty pounds, may now perhaps be had for twenty shillings. in the work of cutiers and locksmiths, in all the toys which are made of the coarser metals, and in all those goods which are commonly known by the name of birmingham and sheffield ware, there has been, during the same period, a very great reduction of price, though not altogether so great as in watch-work. it has, however, been sufficient to astonish the workmen of every other part of europe, who in many cases acknowledge that they can produce no work of equal goodness for double, or even for triple the price. there are perhaps no manufactures in which the division of labour can be carried further, or in which the machinery employed admits of a greater variety of improvements, than those of which the materials are the coarser metals. in the clothing manufacture there has, during the same period, been no such sensible reduction of price. the price of superfine cloth, i have been assured, on the contrary, has, within these five-and-twenty or thirty years, risen somewhat in proportion to its quality; owing, it was said, to a considerable rise in the price of the material, which consists altogether of spanish wool. that of the yorkshire cloth, which is made altogether of english wool, is said indeed, during the course of the present century, to have fallen a good deal in proportion to its quality. quality, however, is so very disputable a matter that i look upon all information of this kind as somewhat uncertain. in the clothing manufacture, the division of labour is nearly the same now as it was a century ago, and the machinery employed is not very different. there may, however, have been some small improvements in both, which may have occasioned some reduction of price. but the reduction will appear much more sensible and undeniable if we compare the price of this manufacture in the present times with what it was in a much remoter period, towards the end of the fifteenth century, when the labour was probably much less subdivided, and the machinery employed much more imperfect, than it is at present. in 1487, being the 4th of henry vii, it was enacted that "whosoever shall sell by retail a broad yard of the finest scarlet grained, or of other grained cloth of the finest making, above sixteen shillings, shall forfeit forty shillings for every yard so sold." sixteen shillings, therefore, containing about the same quantity of silver as four-and-twenty shillings of our present money, was, at that time, reckoned not an unreasonable price for a yard of the finest cloth; and as this is a sumptuary law, such cloth, it is probable, had usually been sold somewhat dearer. a guinea may be reckoned the highest price in the present times. even though the quality of the cloths, therefore, should be supposed equal, and that of the present times is most probably much superior, yet, even upon this supposition, the money price of the finest cloth appears to have been considerably reduced since the end of the fifteenth century. but its real price has been much more reduced. six shillings and eightpence was then, and long afterwards, reckoned the average price of a quarter of wheat. sixteen shillings, therefore, was the price of two quarters and more than three bushels of wheat. valuing a quarter of wheat in the present times at eight-and-twenty shillings, the real price of a yard of fine cloth must, in those times, have been equal to at least three pounds six shillings and sixpence of our present money. the man who bought it must have parted with the command of a quantity of labour and subsistence equal to what that sum would purchase in the present times. the reduction in the real price of the coarse manufacture, though considerable, has not been so great as in that of the fine. in 1643, being the 3rd of edward iv, it was enacted that "no servant in husbandry, nor common labourer, nor servant to any artificer inhabiting out of a city or burgh shall use or wear in their clothing any cloth above two shillings the broad yard." in the 3rd of edward iv, two shillings contained very nearly the same quantity of silver as four of our present money. but the yorkshire cloth which is now sold at four shillings the yard is probably much superior to any that was then made for the wearing of the very poorest order of common servants. even the money price of their clothing, therefore, may, in proportion to the quality, be somewhat cheaper in the present than it was in those ancient times. the real price is certainly a good deal cheaper. tenpence was then reckoned what is called the moderate and reasonable price of a bushel of wheat. two shillings, therefore, was the price of two bushels and near two pecks of wheat, which in the present times, at three shillings and sixpence the bushel, would be worth eight shillings and ninepence. for a yard of this cloth the poor servant must have parted with the power of purchasing a quantity of subsistence equal to what eight shillings and ninepence would purchase in the present times. this is a sumptuary law too, restraining the luxury and extravagance of the poor. their clothing, therefore, had commonly been much more expensive. the same order of people are, by the same law, prohibited from wearing hose, of which the price should exceed fourteenpence the pair, equal to about eight-and-twentypence of our present money. but fourteenpence was in those times the price of a bushel and near two pecks of wheat, which, in the present times, at three and sixpence the bushel, would cost five shillings and threepence. we should in the present times consider this as a very high price for a pair of stockings, to a servant of the poorest and lowest order. he must, however, in those times have paid what was really equivalent to this price for them. in the time of edward iv the art of knitting stockings was probably not known in any part of europe. their hose were made of common cloth, which may have been one of the causes of their dearness. the first person that wore stockings in england is said to have been queen elizabeth. she received them as a present from the spanish ambassador. both in the coarse and in the fine woollen manufacture, the machinery employed was much more imperfect in those ancient than it is in the present times. it has since received three very capital improvements, besides, probably, many smaller ones of which it may be difficult to ascertain either the number or the importance. the three capital improvements are: first, the exchange of the rock and spindle for the spinning-wheel, which, with the same quantity of labour, will perform more than double the quantity of work. secondly, the use of several very ingenious machines which facilitate and abridge in a still greater proportion the winding of the worsted and woollen yarn, or the proper arrangement of the warp and woof before they are put into the loom; an operation which, previous to the invention of those machines, must have been extremely tedious and troublesome. thirdly, the employment of the fulling mill for thickening the cloth, instead of treading it in water. neither wind nor water mills of any kind were known in england so early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, nor, so far as i know, in any other part of europe north of the alps. they had been introduced into italy some time before. the consideration of these circumstances may, perhaps, in some measure explain to us why the real price both of the coarse and of the fine manufacture was so much higher in those ancient than it is in the present times. it cost a greater quantity of labour to bring the goods to market. when they were brought thither, therefore, they must have purchased or exchanged for the price of a greater quantity. the coarse manufacture probably was, in those ancient times, carried on in england, in the same manner as it always has been in countries where arts and manufactures are in their infancy. it was probably a household manufacture, in which every different part of the work was occasionally performed by all the different members of almost every private family; but so as to be their work only when they had nothing else to do, and not to be the principal business from which any of them derived the greater part of their subsistence. the work which is performed in this manner, it has already been observed, comes always much cheaper to market than that which is the principal or sole fund of the workman's subsistence. the fine manufacture, on the other hand, was not in those times carried on in england, but in the rich and commercial country of flanders; and it was probably conducted then, in the same manner as now, by people who derived the whole, or the principal part of their subsistence from it. it was, besides, a foreign manufacture, and must have paid some duty, the ancient custom of tonnage and poundage at least, to the king. this duty, indeed, would not probably be very great. it was not then the policy of europe to restrain, by high duties, the importation of foreign manufactures, but rather to encourage it, in order that merchants might be enabled to supply, at as easy a rate as possible, the great men with the conveniences and luxuries which they wanted, and which the industry of their own country could not afford them. the consideration of these circumstances may perhaps in some measure explain to us why, in those ancient times, the real price of the coarse manufacture was, in proportion to that of the fine, so much lower than in the present times. conclusion of the chapter i shall conclude this very long chapter with observing that every improvement in the circumstances of the society tends either directly or indirectly to raise the real rent of land, to increase the real wealth of the landlord, his power of purchasing the labour, or the produce of the labour of other people. the extension of improvement and cultivation tends to raise it directly. the landlord's share of the produce necessarily increases with the increase of the produce. that rise in the real price of those parts of the rude produce of land, which is first the effect of extended improvement and cultivation, and afterwards the cause of their being still further extended, the rise in the price of cattle, for example, tends too to raise the rent of land directly, and in a still greater proportion. the real value of the landlord's share, his real command of the labour of other people, not only rises with the real value of the produce, but the proportion of his share to the whole produce rises with it. that produce, after the rise in its real price, requires no more labour to collect it than before. a smaller proportion of it will, therefore, be sufficient to replace, with the ordinary profit, the stock which employs that labour. a greater proportion of it must, consequently, belong to the landlord. all those improvements in the productive powers of labour, which tend directly to reduce the real price of manufactures, tend indirectly to raise the real rent of land. the landlord exchanges that part of his rude produce, which is over and above his own consumption, or what comes to the same thing, the price of that part of it, for manufactured produce. whatever reduces the real price of the latter, raises that of the former. an equal quantity of the former becomes thereby equivalent to a greater quantity of the latter; and the landlord is enabled to purchase a greater quantity of the conveniences, ornaments, or luxuries, which he has occasion for. every increase in the real wealth of the society, every increase in the quantity of useful labour employed within it, tends indirectly to raise the real rent of land. a certain proportion of this labour naturally goes to the land. a greater number of men and cattle are employed in its cultivation, the produce increases with the increase of the stock which is thus employed in raising it, and the rent increases with the produce. the contrary circumstances, the neglect of cultivation and improvement, the fall in the real price of any part of the rude produce of land, the rise in the real price of manufactures from the decay of manufacturing art and industry, the declension of the real wealth of the society, all tend, on the other hand, to lower the real rent of land, to reduce the real wealth of the landlord, to diminish his power of purchasing either the labour, or the produce of the labour of other people. the whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country, or what comes to the same thing, the whole price of that annual produce, naturally divides itself, it has already been observed, into three parts; the rent of land, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and constitutes a revenue to three different orders of people; to those who live by rent, to those who live by wages, and to those who live by profit. these are the three great, original, and constituent orders of every civilised society, from whose revenue that of every other order is ultimately derived. the interest of the first of those three great orders, it appears from what has been just now said, is strictly and inseparably connected with the general interest of the society. whatever either promotes or obstructs the one, necessarily promotes or obstructs the other. when the public deliberates concerning any regulation of commerce or police, the proprietors of land never can mislead it, with a view to promote the interest of their own particular order; at least, if they have any tolerable knowledge of that interest. they are, indeed, too often defective in this tolerable knowledge. they are the only one of the three orders whose revenue costs them neither labour nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own accord, and independent of any plan or project of their own. that indolence, which is the natural effect of the ease and security of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, but incapable of that application of mind which is necessary in order to foresee and understand the consequences of any public regulation. the interest of the second order, that of those who live by wages, is as strictly connected with the interest of the society as that of the first. the wages of the labourer, it has already been shown, are never so high as when the demand for labour is continually rising, or when the quantity employed is every year increasing considerably. when this real wealth of the society becomes stationary, his wages are soon reduced to what is barely enough to enable him to bring up a family, or to continue the race of labourers. when the society declines, they fall even below this. the order of proprietors may, perhaps, gain more by the prosperity of the society than that of labourers: but there is no order that suffers so cruelly from its decline. but though the interest of the labourer is strictly connected with that of the society, he is incapable either of comprehending that interest or of understanding its connection with his own. his condition leaves him no time to receive the necessary information, and his education and habits are commonly such as to render him unfit to judge even though he was fully informed. in the public deliberations, therefore, his voice is little heard and less regarded, except upon some particular occasions, when his clamour is animated, set on and supported by his employers, not for his, but their own particular purposes. his employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. it is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society. the plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operations of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. but the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. on the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. the interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two. merchants and master manufacturers are, in this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the public consideration. as during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen. as their thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business, than about that of the society, their judgment, even when given with the greatest candour (which it has not been upon every occasion) is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects than with regard to the latter. their superiority over the country gentleman is not so much in their knowledge of the public interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. it is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. the interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. to widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. to widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. the proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. it comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it. tables referred to in chapter 11, part 3 price of the average of the average price quarter of the different of each year in years wheat prices of money of the xii each year the same year present times l s. d. l. s. d. l. s. d. 1202 12 1 16 1205 12 13 5 2 3 13 4 15 1223 12 1 16 1237 3 4 10 1243 2 6 1244 2 6 1246 16 2 8 1247 13 4 2 1257 1 4 3 12 1258 1 17 2 11 15 16 1270 4 16 5 12 16 16 6 8 1286 2 8 9 4 1 8 16 -------------- total l35 9 3 -------------- average price l2 19 1 1/4 price of the average of the average price quarter of the different of each year in years wheat prices of money of the xii each year the same year present times l s. d. l. s. d. l. s. d. 1287 3 4 10 1288 8 3 1/4 9 3/4 1 1 4 1 6 1 8 2 3 4 9 4 1289 12 10 1 3/4 1 10 4 1/2 6 2 10 8 1 1290 16 2 8 1294 16 2 8 1302 4 12 1309 7 2 1 1 6 1315 1 3 1316 1 1 10 6 4 11 6 1 10 1 12 2 1317 2 4 1 19 6 5 18 6 14 2 13 4 6 8 1336 2 6 1338 3 4 10 -------------- total l23 4 11 1/4 -------------- average price l1 18 8 price of the average of the average price quarter of the different of each year in years wheat prices of money of the xii each year the same year present times l s. d. l. s. d. l. s. d. 1339 9 1 7 1349 2 5 2 1359 1 6 8 3 2 2 1361 2 4 8 1363 15 1 15 1369 1 1 2 2 9 4 1 4 1379 4 9 4 1387 2 4 8 1390 13 4 14 5 1 13 7 14 16 1401 16 1 17 4 1407 4 4 3/4 3 10 8 11 3 4 1416 16 1 12 -------------- total l15 9 4 -------------- average price l1 5 9 1/3 price of the average of the average price quarter of the different of each year in years wheat prices of money of the xii each year the same year present times l s. d. l. s. d. l. s. d. 1423 8 16 1425 4 8 1434 1 6 8 2 13 4 1435 5 4 10 8 1439 1 1 3 4 2 6 8 1 6 8 1440 1 4 2 8 1444 4 4 4 2 8 4 4 1445 4 6 9 1447 8 16 1448 6 8 13 4 1449 5 10 1452 8 16 -------------- total l12 15 4 -------------- average price l1 1 3 1/2 price of the average of the average price quarter of the different of each year in years wheat prices of money of the xii each year the same year present times l s. d. l. s. d. l. s. d. 1453 5 4 10 8 1455 1 2 2 4 1457 7 8 15 4 1459 5 10 1460 8 16 1463 2 1 10 3 8 1 8 1464 6 8 10 1486 1 4 1 17 1491 14 8 1 2 1494 4 6 1495 3 4 5 1497 1 1 11 ------------- total l8 9 ------------- average price 14 1 price of the average of the average price quarter of the different of each year in years wheat prices of money of the xii each year the same year present times l s. d. l. s. d. l. s. d. 1499 4 6 1504 5 8 8 6 1521 1 1 10 1551 8 2 1553 8 8 1554 8 8 1555 8 8 1556 8 8 1557 4 17 8 1/2 17 8 1/2 5 8 2 13 4 1558 8 8 1559 8 8 1560 8 8 ------------- total l6 0 2 1/2 ------------- average price 10 5/12 price of the average of the average price quarter of the different of each year in years wheat prices of money of the xii each year the same year present times l s. d. l. s. d. l. s. d. 1561 8 8 1562 8 8 1574 2 16 2 2 1 4 1587 3 4 3 4 1594 2 16 2 16 1595 2 13 2 13 1596 4 4 1597 5 4 4 12 4 12 4 1598 2 16 8 2 16 8 1599 1 19 2 1 19 2 1600 1 17 8 1 17 8 1601 1 14 10 1 14 10 -------------- total l28 9 4 -------------- average price l2 7 5 1/3 prices of the quarter of nine bushels of the best or highest priced wheat at windsor market, on lady-day and michaelmas, from 1595 to 1764, both inclusive; the price of each year being the medium between the highest prices of those two market days. years years l. s. d. l. s. d. 1595 2 0 0 1621 1 10 4 1596 2 8 0 1622 2 18 8 1597 3 9 6 1623 2 12 0 1598 2 16 8 1624 2 8 0 1599 1 19 2 1625 2 12 0 1600 1 17 8 1626 2 9 4 1601 1 14 10 1627 1 16 0 1602 1 9 4 1628 1 8 0 1603 1 15 4 1629 2 2 0 1604 1 10 8 1630 2 15 8 1605 1 15 10 1631 3 8 0 1606 1 13 0 1632 2 13 4 1607 1 16 8 1633 2 18 0 1608 2 16 8 1634 2 16 0 1609 2 10 0 1635 2 16 0 1610 1 15 10 1636 2 16 8 1611 1 18 8 ------------- 1612 2 2 4 16) 40 0 0 1613 2 8 8 ------------- 1614 2 1 8 1/2 l2 10 0 1615 1 18 8 1616 2 0 4 1617 2 8 8 1618 2 6 8 1619 1 15 4 1620 1 10 4 ------------- 26) 54 0 6 1/2 ------------- l2 1 6 9/12 wheat per wheat per years quarter years quarter l. s. d. l. s. d. 1637 2 13 0 brought over 79 14 10 1638 2 17 4 1671 2 2 0 1639 2 4 10 1672 2 1 0 1640 2 4 8 1673 2 6 8 1641 2 8 0 1674 3 8 8 1642 0 0 0* 1675 3 4 8 1643 0 0 0 1676 1 18 0 1644 0 0 0 1677 2 2 0 1645 0 0 0 1678 2 19 0 1646 2 8 0 1679 3 0 0 1647 3 13 8 1680 2 5 0 1648 4 5 0 1681 2 6 8 1649 4 0 0 1682 2 4 0 1650 3 16 8 1683 2 0 0 1651 3 13 4 1684 2 4 0 1652 2 9 6 1685 2 6 8 1653 1 15 6 1686 1 14 0 1654 1 6 0 1687 1 5 2 1655 1 13 4 1688 2 6 0 1656 2 3 0 1689 1 10 0 1657 2 6 8 1690 1 14 8 1658 3 5 0 1691 1 14 0 1659 3 6 0 1692 2 6 8 1660 2 16 6 1693 3 7 8 1661 3 10 0 1694 3 4 0 1662 3 14 0 1695 2 13 0 1663 2 17 0 1696 3 11 0 1664 2 0 6 1697 3 0 0 1665 2 9 4 1698 3 8 4 1666 1 16 0 1699 3 4 0 1667 1 16 0 1700 2 0 0 1668 2 0 0 -------------- 1669 2 4 4 60) 153 1 8 1670 2 1 8 -------------- ------------- l2 11 0 1/3 carry over l79 14 10 *wanting in the account. the year 1646 supplied by bishop fleetwood. wheat per wheat per years quarter years quarter l. s. d. l. s. d. 1701 1 17 8 brought over 69 8 8 1702 1 9 6 1734 1 18 10 1703 1 16 0 1735 2 3 0 1704 2 6 6 1736 2 0 4 1705 1 10 0 1737 1 18 0 1706 1 6 0 1738 1 15 6 1707 1 8 6 1739 1 18 6 1708 2 1 6 1740 2 10 8 1709 3 18 6 1741 2 6 8 1710 3 18 0 1742 1 14 0 1711 2 14 0 1743 1 4 10 1712 2 6 4 1744 1 4 10 1713 2 11 0 1745 1 7 6 1714 2 10 4 1746 1 19 0 1715 2 3 0 1747 1 14 10 1716 2 8 0 1748 1 17 0 1717 2 5 8 1749 1 17 0 1718 1 18 10 1750 1 12 6 1719 1 15 0 1751 1 18 6 1720 1 17 0 1752 2 1 10 1721 1 17 6 1753 2 4 8 1722 1 16 0 1754 1 14 8 1723 1 14 8 1755 1 13 10 1724 1 17 0 1756 2 5 3 1725 2 8 6 1757 3 0 0 1726 2 6 0 1758 2 10 0 1727 2 2 0 1759 1 19 10 1728 2 14 6 1760 1 16 6 1729 2 6 10 1761 1 10 3 1730 1 16 6 1762 1 19 0 1731 1 12 10 1763 2 0 9 1732 1 6 8 1764 2 6 9 1733 1 8 4 -------------- ------------- 64) 129 13 6 carry over l69 8 8 -------------- l2 0 6 9/32 years years l. s. d. l. s. d. 1731 1 12 10 1741 2 6 8 1732 1 6 8 1742 1 14 0 1733 1 8 4 1743 1 4 10 1734 1 18 10 1744 1 4 10 1735 2 3 0 1745 1 7 6 1736 2 0 4 1746 1 19 0 1737 1 18 0 1747 1 14 10 1738 1 15 6 1748 1 17 0 1739 1 18 6 1749 1 17 0 1740 2 10 8 1750 1 12 6 ------------- ------------- 10) 18 12 8 10) 16 18 2 ------------- -------------- l1 17 3 1/5 l1 13 9 4/5 book two of the nature, accumulation, and employment of stock introduction in that rude state of society in which there is no division of labour, in which exchanges are seldom made, and in which every man provides everything for himself, it is not necessary that any stock should be accumulated or stored up beforehand in order to carry on the business of the society. every man endeavours to supply by his own industry his own occasional wants as they occur. when he is hungry, he goes to the forest to hunt; when his coat is worn out, he clothes himself with the skin of the first large animal he kills: and when his hut begins to go to ruin, he repairs it, as well as he can, with the trees and the turf that are nearest it. but when the division of labour has once been thoroughly introduced, the produce of a man's own labour can supply but a very small part of his occasional wants. the far greater part of them are supplied by the produce of other men's labour, which he purchases with the produce, or, what is the same thing, with the price of the produce of his own. but this purchase cannot be made till such time as the produce of his own labour has not only been completed, but sold. a stock of goods of different kinds, therefore, must be stored up somewhere sufficient to maintain him, and to supply him with the materials and tools of his work till such time, at least, as both these events can be brought about. a weaver cannot apply himself entirely to his peculiar business, unless there is beforehand stored up somewhere, either in his own possession or in that of some other person, a stock sufficient to maintain him, and to supply him with the materials and tools of his work, till he has not only completed, but sold his web. this accumulation must, evidently, be previous to his applying his industry for so long a time to such a peculiar business. as the accumulation of stock must, in the nature of things, be previous to the division of labour, so labour can be more and more subdivided in proportion only as stock is previously more and more accumulated. the quantity of materials which the same number of people can work up, increases in a great proportion as labour comes to be more and more subdivided; and as the operations of each workman are gradually reduced to a greater degree of simplicity, a variety of new machines come to be invented for facilitating and abridging those operations. as the division of labour advances, therefore, in order to give constant employment to an equal number of workmen, an equal stock of provisions, and a greater stock of materials and tools than what would have been necessary in a ruder state of things, must be accumulated beforehand. but the number of workmen in every branch of business generally increases with the division of labour in that branch, or rather it is the increase of their number which enables them to class and subdivide themselves in this manner. as the accumulation of stock is previously necessary for carrying on this great improvement in the productive powers of labour, so that accumulation naturally leads to this improvement. the person who employs his stock in maintaining labour, necessarily wishes to employ it in such a manner as to produce as great a quantity of work as possible. he endeavours, therefore, both to make among his workmen the most proper distribution of employment, and to furnish them with the best machines which he can either invent or afford to purchase. his abilities in both these respects are generally in proportion to the extent of his stock, or to the number of people whom it can employ. the quantity of industry, therefore, not only increases in every country with the increase of the stock which employs it, but, in consequence of that increase, the same quantity of industry produces a much greater quantity of work. such are in general the effects of the increase of stock upon industry and its productive powers. in the following book i have endeavoured to explain the nature of stock, the effects of its accumulation into capitals of different kinds, and the effects of the different employments of those capitals. this book is divided into five chapters. in the first chapter, i have endeavoured to show what are the different parts or branches into which the stock, either of an individual, or of a great society, naturally divides itself. in the second, i have endeavoured to explain the nature and operation of money considered as a particular branch of the general stock of the society. the stock which is accumulated into a capital, may either be employed by the person to whom it belongs, or it may be lent to some other person. in the third and fourth chapters, i have endeavoured to examine the manner in which it operates in both these situations. the fifth and last chapter treats of the different effects which the different employments of capital immediately produce upon the quantity both of national industry, and of the annual produce of land and labour. chapter i of the division of stock when the stock which a man possesses is no more than sufficient to maintain him for a few days or a few weeks, he seldom thinks of deriving any revenue from it. he consumes it as sparingly as he can, and endeavours by his labour to acquire something which may supply its place before it be consumed altogether. his revenue is, in this case, derived from his labour only. this is the state of the greater part of the labouring poor in all countries. but when he possesses stock sufficient to maintain him for months or years, he naturally endeavours to derive a revenue from the greater part of it; reserving only so much for his immediate consumption as may maintain him till this revenue begins to come in. his whole stock, therefore, is distinguished into two parts. that part which, he expects, is to afford him this revenue, is called his capital. the other is that which supplies his immediate consumption; and which consists either, first, in that portion of his whole stock which was originally reserved for this purpose; or, secondly, in his revenue, from whatever source derived, as it gradually comes in; or, thirdly, in such things as had been purchased by either of these in former years, and which are not yet entirely consumed; such as a stock of clothes, household furniture, and the like. in one, or other, or all of these three articles, consists the stock which men commonly reserve for their own immediate consumption. there are two different ways in which a capital may be employed so as to yield a revenue or profit to its employer. first, it may be employed in raising, manufacturing, or purchasing goods, and selling them again with a profit. the capital employed in this manner yields no revenue or profit to its employer, while it either remains in his possession, or continues in the same shape. the goods of the merchant yield him no revenue or profit till he sells them for money, and the money yields him as little till it is again exchanged for goods. his capital is continually going from him in one shape, and returning to him in another, and it is only by means of such circulation, or successive exchanges, that it can yield him any profit. such capitals, therefore, may very properly be called circulating capitals. secondly, it may be employed in the improvement of land, in the purchase of useful machines and instruments of trade, or in suchlike things as yield a revenue or profit without changing masters, or circulating any further. such capitals, therefore, may very properly be called fixed capitals. different occupations require very different proportions between the fixed and circulating capitals employed in them. the capital of a merchant, for example, is altogether a circulating capital. he has occasion for no machines or instruments of trade, unless his shop, or warehouse, be considered as such. some part of the capital of every master artificer or manufacturer must be fixed in the instruments of his trade. this part, however, is very small in some, and very great in others. a master tailor requires no other instruments of trade but a parcel of needles. those of the master shoemaker are a little, though but a very little, more expensive. those of the weaver rise a good deal above those of the shoemaker. the far greater part of the capital of all such master artificers, however, is circulated, either in the wages of their workmen, or in the price of their materials, and repaid with a profit by the price of the work. in other works a much greater fixed capital is required. in a great iron-work, for example, the furnace for melting the ore, the forge, the slitt-mill, are instruments of trade which cannot be erected without a very great expense. in coal-works and mines of every kind, the machinery necessary both for drawing out the water and for other purposes is frequently still more expensive. that part of the capital of the farmer which is employed in the instruments of agriculture is a fixed, that which is employed in the wages and maintenance of his labouring servants, is a circulating capital. he makes a profit of the one by keeping it in his own possession, and of the other by parting with it. the price or value of his labouring cattle is a fixed capital in the same manner as that of the instruments of husbandry. their maintenance is a circulating capital in the same manner as that of the labouring servants. the farmer makes his profit by keeping the labouring cattle, and by parting with their maintenance. both the price and the maintenance of the cattle which are brought in and fattened, not for labour, but for sale, are a circulating capital. the farmer makes his profit by parting with them. a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle that, in a breeding country, is bought in, neither for labour, nor for sale, but in order to make a profit by their wool, by their milk, and by their increase, is a fixed capital. the profit is made by keeping them. their maintenance is a circulating capital. the profit is made by parting with it; and it comes back with both its own profit and the profit upon the whole price of the cattle, in the price of the wool, the milk, and the increase. the whole value of the seed, too, is properly a fixed capital. though it goes backwards and forwards between the ground and the granary, it never changes masters, and therefore does not properly circulate. the farmer makes his profit, not by its sale, but by its increase. the general stock of any country or society is the same with that of all its inhabitants or members, and therefore naturally divides itself into the same three portions, each of which has a distinct function or office. the first is that portion which is reserved for immediate consumption, and of which the characteristic is, that it affords no revenue or profit. it consists in the stock of food, clothes, household furniture, etc., which have been purchased by their proper consumers, but which are not yet entirely consumed. the whole stock of mere dwelling-houses too, subsisting at any one time in the country, make a part of this first portion. the stock that is laid out in a house, if it is to be the dwellinghouse of the proprietor, ceases from that moment to serve in the function of a capital, or to afford any revenue to its owner. a dwellinghouse, as such, contributes nothing to the revenue of its inhabitant; and though it is, no doubt, extremely useful to him, it is as his clothes and household furniture are useful to him, which, however, makes a part of his expense, and not of his revenue. if it is to be let to a tenant for rent, as the house itself can produce nothing, the tenant must always pay the rent out of some other revenue which he derives either from labour, or stock, or land. though a house, therefore, may yield a revenue to its proprietor, and thereby serve in the function of a capital to him, it cannot yield any to the public, nor serve in the function of a capital to it, and the revenue of the whole body of the people can never be in the smallest degree increased by it. clothes, and household furniture, in the same manner, sometimes yield a revenue, and thereby serve in the function of a capital to particular persons. in countries where masquerades are common, it is a trade to let out masquerade dresses for a night. upholsterers frequently let furniture by the month or by the year. undertakers let the furniture of funerals by the day and by the week. many people let furnished houses, and get a rent, not only for the use of the house, but for that of the furniture. the revenue, however, which is derived from such things must always be ultimately drawn from some other source of revenue. of all parts of the stock, either of an individual, or of a society, reserved for immediate consumption, what is laid out in houses is most slowly consumed. a stock of clothes may last several years: a stock of furniture half a century or a century: but a stock of houses, well built and properly taken care of, may last many centuries. though the period of their total consumption, however, is more distant, they are still as really a stock reserved for immediate consumption as either clothes or household furniture. the second of the three portions into which the general stock of the society divides itself, is the fixed capital, of which the characteristic is, that it affords a revenue or profit without circulating or changing masters. it consists chiefly of the four following articles: first, of all useful machines and instruments of trade which facilitate and abridge labour: secondly, of all those profitable buildings which are the means of procuring a revenue, not only to their proprietor who lets them for a rent, but to the person who possesses them and pays that rent for them; such as shops, warehouses, workhouses, farmhouses, with all their necessary buildings; stables, granaries, etc. these are very different from mere dwelling houses. they are a sort of instruments of trade, and may be considered in the same light: thirdly, of the improvements of land, of what has been profitably laid out in clearing, draining, enclosing, manuring, and reducing it into the condition most proper for tillage and culture. an improved farm may very justly be regarded in the same light as those useful machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and by means of which an equal circulating capital can afford a much greater revenue to its employer. an improved farm is equally advantageous and more durable than any of those machines, frequently requiring no other repairs than the most profitable application of the farmer's capital employed in cultivating it: fourthly, of the acquired and useful abilities of all the inhabitants or members of the society. the acquisition of such talents, by the maintenance of the acquirer during his education, study, or apprenticeship, always costs a real expense, which is a capital fixed and realized, as it were, in his person. those talents, as they make a part of his fortune, so do they likewise of that of the society to which he belongs. the improved dexterity of a workman may be considered in the same light as a machine or instrument of trade which facilitates and abridges labour, and which, though it costs a certain expense, repays that expense with a profit. the third and last of the three portions into which the general stock of the society naturally divides itself, is the circulating capital; of which the characteristic is, that it affords a revenue only by circulating or changing masters. it is composed likewise of four parts: first, of the money by means of which all the other three are circulated and distributed to their proper consumers: secondly, of the stock of provisions which are in the possession of the butcher, the grazier, the farmer, the corn-merchant, the brewer, etc., and from the sale of which they expect to derive a profit: thirdly, of the materials, whether altogether rude, or more or less manufactured, of clothes, furniture, and building, which are not yet made up into any of those three shapes, but which remain in the hands of the growers, the manufacturers, the mercers and drapers, the timber merchants, the carpenters and joiners, the brickmakers, etc. fourthly, and lastly, of the work which is made up and completed, but which is still in the hands of the merchant or manufacturer, and not yet disposed of or distributed to the proper consumers; such as the finished work which we frequently find ready-made in the shops of the smith, the cabinet-maker, the goldsmith, the jeweller, the china-merchant, etc. the circulating capital consists in this manner, of the provisions, materials, and finished work of all kinds that are in the hands of their respective dealers, and of the money that is necessary for circulating and distributing them to those who are finally to use or to consume them. of these four parts, threeprovisions, materials, and finished workare, either annually, or in a longer or shorter period, regularly withdrawn from it, and placed either in the fixed capital or in the stock reserved for immediate consumption. every fixed capital is both originally derived from, and requires to be continually supported by a circulating capital. all useful machines and instruments of trade are originally derived from a circulating capital, which furnishes the materials of which they are made, and the maintenance of the workmen who make them. they require, too, a capital of the same kind to keep them in constant repair. no fixed capital can yield any revenue but by means of a circulating capital. the most useful machines and instruments of trade will produce nothing without the circulating capital which affords the materials they are employed upon, and the maintenance of the workmen who employ them. land, however improved, will yield no revenue without a circulating capital, which maintains the labourers who cultivate and collect its produce. to maintain and augment the stock which may be reserved for immediate consumption is the sole end and purpose both of the fixed and circulating capitals. it is this stock which feeds, clothes, and lodges the people. their riches or poverty depends upon the abundant or sparing supplies which those two capitals can afford to the stock reserved for immediate consumption. so great a part of the circulating capital being continually withdrawn from it, in order to be placed in the other two branches of the general stock of the society; it must in its turn require continual supplies, without which it would soon cease to exist. these supplies are principally drawn from three sources, the produce of land, of mines, and of fisheries. these afford continual supplies of provisions and materials, of which part is afterwards wrought up into finished work, and by which are replaced the provisions, materials, and finished work continually withdrawn from the circulating capital. from mines, too, is drawn what is necessary for maintaining and augmenting that part of it which consists in money. for though, in the ordinary course of business, this part is not, like the other three, necessarily withdrawn from it, in order to be placed in the other two branches of the general stock of the society, it must, however, like all other things, be wasted and worn out at last, and sometimes, too, be either lost or sent abroad, and must, therefore, require continual, though, no doubt, much smaller supplies. land, mines, and fisheries, require all both a fixed and a circulating capital to cultivate them; and their produce replaces with a profit, not only those capitals, but all the others in the society. thus the farmer annually replaces to the manufacturer the provisions which he had consumed and the materials which be had wrought up the year before; and the manufacturer replaces to the farmer the finished work which he had wasted and worn out in the same time. this is the real exchange that is annually made between those two orders of people, though it seldom happens that the rude produce of the one and the manufactured produce of the other, are directly bartered for one another; because it seldom happens that the farmer sells his corn and his cattle, his flax and his wool, to the very same person of whom he chooses to purchase the clothes, furniture, and instruments of trade which he wants. he sells, therefore, his rude produce for money, with which he can purchase, wherever it is to be had, the manufactured produce he has occasion for. land even replaces, in part at least, the capitals with which fisheries and mines are cultivated. it is the produce of land which draws the fish from the waters; and it is the produce of the surface of the earth which extracts the minerals from its bowels. the produce of land, mines, and fisheries, when their natural fertility is equal, is in proportion to the extent and proper application of the capitals employed about them. when the capitals are equal and equally well applied, it is in proportion to their natural fertility. in all countries where there is tolerable security, every man of common understanding will endeavour to employ whatever stock he can command in procuring either present enjoyment or future profit. if it is employed in procuring present enjoyment, it is a stock reserved for immediate consumption. if it is employed in procuring future profit, it must procure this profit either staying with him, or by going from him. in the one case it is fixed, in the other it is a circulating capital. a man must be perfectly crazy who, where there is tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands, whether be his own or borrowed of other people, in some one or other of those three ways. in those unfortunate countries, indeed, where men are continually afraid of the violence of their superiors, they frequently bury and conceal a great part of their stock, in order to have it always at hand to carry with them to some place of safety, in case of their being threatened with any of those disasters to which they consider themselves as at all times exposed. this is said to be a common practice in turkey, in indostan, and, i believe, in most other governments of asia. it seems to have been a common practice among our ancestors during the violence of the feudal government. treasure-trove was in those times considered as no contemptible part of the revenue of the greatest sovereigns in europe. it consisted in such treasure as was found concealed in the earth, and to which no particular person could prove any right. this was regarded in those times as so important an object, that it was always considered as belonging to the sovereign, and neither to the finder nor to the proprietor of the land, unless the right to it had been conveyed to the latter by an express clause in his charter. it was put upon the same footing with gold and silver mines, which, without a special clause in the charter, were never supposed to be comprehended in the general grant of the lands, though mines of lead, copper, tin, and coal were as things of smaller consequence. chapter ii of money considered as a particular branch of the general stock of the society, or of the expense of maintaining the national capital it has been shown in the first book, that the price of the greater part of commodities resolves itself into three parts, of which one pays the wages of the labour, another the profits of the stock, and a third the rent of the land which had been employed in producing and bringing them to market: that there are, indeed, some commodities of which the price is made up of two of those parts only, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock: and a very few in which it consists altogether in one, the wages of labour: but that the price of every commodity necessarily resolves itself into some one, or other, or all of these three parts; every part of it which goes neither to rent nor to wages, being necessarily profit to somebody. since this is the case, it has been observed, with regard to every particular commodity, taken separately, it must be so with regard to all the commodities which compose the whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country, taken complexly. the whole price or exchangeable value of that annual produce must resolve itself into the same three parts, and be parcelled out among the different inhabitants of the country, either as the wages of their labour, the profits of their stock, or the rent of their land. but though the whole value of the annual produce of the land and labour of every country is thus divided among and constitutes a revenue to its different inhabitants, yet as in the rent of a private estate we distinguish between the gross rent and the net rent, so may we likewise in the revenue of all the inhabitants of a great country. the gross rent of a private estate comprehends whatever is paid by the farmer; the net rent, what remains free to the landlord, after deducting the expense of management, of repairs, and all other necessary charges; or what, without hurting his estate, he can afford to place in his stock reserved for immediate consumption, or to spend upon his table, equipage, the ornaments of his house and furniture, his private enjoyments and amusements. his real wealth is in proportion, not to his gross, but to his net rent. the gross revenue of all the inhabitants of a great country comprehends the whole annual produce of their land and labour; the net revenue, what remains free to them after deducting the expense of maintainingfirst, their fixed, and, secondly, their circulating capital; or what, without encroaching upon their capital, they can place in their stock reserved for immediate consumption, or spend upon their subsistence, conveniencies, and amusements. their real wealth, too, is in proportion, not to their gross, but to their net revenue. the whole expense of maintaining the fixed capital must evidently be excluded from the net revenue of the society. neither the materials necessary for supporting their useful machines and instruments of trade, their profitable buildings, etc., nor the produce of the labour necessary for fashioning those materials into the proper form, can ever make any part of it. the price of that labour may indeed make a part of it; as the workmen so employed may place the whole value of their wages in their stock reserved for immediate consumption. but in other sorts of labour, both the price and the produce go to this stock, the price to that of the workmen, the produce to that of other people, whose subsistence, conveniences, and amusements, are augmented by the labour of those workmen. the intention of the fixed capital is to increase the productive powers of labour, or to enable the same number of labourers to perform a much greater quantity of work. in a farm where all the necessary buildings, fences, drains, communications, etc., are in the most perfect good order, the same number of labourers and labouring cattle will raise a much greater produce than in one of equal extent and equally good ground, but not furnished with equal conveniencies. in manufactures the same number of hands, assisted with the best machinery, will work up a much greater quantity of goods than with more imperfect instruments of trade. the expense which is properly laid out upon a fixed capital of any kind, is always repaid with great profit, and increases the annual produce by a much greater value than that of the support which such improvements require. this support, however, still requires a certain portion of that produce. a certain quantity of materials, and the labour of a certain number of workmen, both of which might have been immediately employed to augment the food, clothing and lodging, the subsistence and conveniencies of the society, are thus diverted to another employment, highly advantageous indeed, but still different from this one. it is upon this account that all such improvements in mechanics, as enable the same number of workmen to perform an equal quantity of work, with cheaper and simpler machinery than had been usual before, are always regarded as advantageous to every society. a certain quantity of materials, and the labour of a certain number of workmen, which had before been employed in supporting a more complex and expensive machinery, can afterwards be applied to augment the quantity of work which that or any other machinery is useful only for performing. the undertaker of some great manufactory who employs a thousand a year in the maintenance of his machinery, if he can reduce this expense to five hundred will naturally employ the other five hundred in purchasing an additional quantity of materials to be wrought up by an additional number of workmen. the quantity of that work, therefore, which his machinery was useful only for performing, will naturally be augmented, and with it all the advantage and conveniency which the society can derive from that work. the expense of maintaining the fixed capital in a great country may very properly be compared to that of repairs in a private estate. the expense of repairs may frequently be necessary for supporting the produce of the estate, and consequently both the gross and the net rent of the landlord. when by a more proper direction, however, it can be diminished without occasioning any diminution of produce, the gross rent remains at least the same as before, and the net rent is necessarily augmented. but though the whole expense of maintaining the fixed capital is thus necessarily excluded from the net revenue of the society, it is not the same case with that of maintaining the circulating capital. of the four parts of which this latter capital is composedmoney, provisions, materials, and finished workthe three last, it has already been observed, are regularly withdrawn from it, and placed either in the fixed capital of the society, or in their stock reserved for immediate consumption. whatever portion of those consumable goods is employed in maintaining the former, goes all to the latter, and makes a part of the net revenue of the society. the maintenance of those three parts of the circulating capital, therefore, withdraws no portion of the annual produce from the net revenue of the society, besides what is necessary for maintaining the fixed capital. the circulating capital of a society is in this respect different from that of an individual. that of an individual is totally excluded from making any part of his net revenue, which must consist altogether in his profits. but though the circulating capital of every individual makes a part of that of the society to which he belongs, it is not upon that account totally excluded from making a part likewise of their net revenue. though the whole goods in a merchant's shop must by no means be placed in his own stock reserved for immediate consumption, they may in that of other people, who, from a revenue derived from other funds, may regularly replace their value to him, together with its profits, without occasioning any diminution either of his capital or of theirs. money, therefore, is the only part of the circulating capital of a society, of which the maintenance can occasion any diminution in their net revenue. the fixed capital, and that part of the circulating capital which consists in money, so far as they affect the revenue of the society, bear a very great resemblance to one another. first, as those machines and instruments of trade, etc., require a certain expense, first to erect them, and afterwards to support them, both which expenses, though they make a part of the gross, are deductions from the net revenue of the society; so the stock of money which circulates in any country must require a certain expense, first to collect it, and afterwards to support it, both which expenses, though they make a part of the gross, are, in the same manner, deductions from the net revenue of the society. a certain quantity of very valuable materials, gold and silver, and of very curious labour, instead of augmenting the stock reserved for immediate consumption, the subsistence, conveniencies, and amusements of individuals, is employed in supporting that great but expensive instrument of commerce, by means of which every individual in the society has his subsistence, conveniencies, and amusements regularly distributed to him in their proper proportions. secondly, as the machines and instruments of a trade, etc., which compose the fixed capital either of an individual or of a society, make no part either of the gross or of the net revenue of either; so money, by means of which the whole revenue of the society is regularly distributed among all its different members, makes itself no part of that revenue. the great wheel of circulation is altogether different from the goods which are circulated by means of it. the revenue of the society consists altogether in those goods, and not in the wheel which circulates them. in computing either the gross or the net revenue of any society, we must always, from their whole annual circulation of money and goods, deduct the whole value of the money, of which not a single farthing can ever make any part of either. it is the ambiguity of language only which can make this proposition appear either doubtful or paradoxical. when properly explained and understood, it is almost self-evident. when we talk of any particular sum of money, we sometimes mean nothing but the metal pieces of which it is composed; and sometimes we include in our meaning some obscure reference to the goods which can be had in exchange for it, or to the power of purchasing which the possession of it conveys. thus when we say that the circulating money of england has been computed at eighteen millions, we mean only to express the amount of the metal pieces, which some writers have computed, or rather have supposed to circulate in that country. but when we say that a man is worth fifty or a hundred pounds a year, we mean commonly to express not only the amount of the metal pieces which are annually paid to him, but the value of the goods which he can annually purchase or consume. we mean commonly to ascertain what is or ought to be his way of living, or the quantity and quality of the necessaries and conveniencies of life in which he can with propriety indulge himself. when, by any particular sum of money, we mean not only to express the amount of the metal pieces of which it is composed, but to include in its signification some obscure reference to the goods which can be had in exchange for them, the wealth or revenue which it in this case denotes, is equal only to one of the two values which are thus intimated somewhat ambiguously by the same word, and to the latter more properly than to the former, to the money's worth more properly than to the money. thus if a guinea be the weekly pension of a particular person, he can in the course of the week purchase with it a certain quantity of subsistence, conveniencies, and amusements. in proportion as this quantity is great or small, so are his real riches, his real weekly revenue. his weekly revenue is certainly not equal both to the guinea, and to what can be purchased with it, but only to one or other of those two equal values; and to the latter more properly than to the former, to the guinea's worth rather than to the guinea. if the pension of such a person was paid to him, not in gold, but in a weekly bill for a guinea, his revenue surely would not so properly consist in the piece of paper, as in what he could get for it. a guinea may be considered as a bill for a certain quantity of necessaries and conveniencies upon all the tradesmen in the neighbourhood. the revenue of the person to whom it is paid, does not so properly consist in the piece of gold, as in what he can get for it, or in what he can exchange it for. if it could be exchanged for nothing, it would, like a bill upon a bankrupt, be of no more value than the most useless piece of paper. though the weekly or yearly revenue of all the different inhabitants of any country, in the same manner, may be, and in reality frequently is paid to them in money, their real riches, however, the real weekly or yearly revenue of all of them taken together, must always be great or small in proportion to the quantity of consumable goods which they can all of them purchase with this money. the whole revenue of all of them taken together is evidently not equal to both the money and the consumable goods; but only to one or other of those two values, and to the latter more properly than to the former. though we frequently, therefore, express a person's revenue by the metal pieces which are annually paid to him, it is because the amount of those pieces regulates the extent of his power of purchasing, or the value of the goods which he can annually afford to consume. we still consider his revenue as consisting in this power of purchasing or consuming, and not in the pieces which convey it. but if this is sufficiently evident even with regard to an individual, it is still more so with regard to a society. the amount of the metal pieces which are annually paid to an individual, is often precisely equal to his revenue, and is upon that account the shortest and best expression of its value. but the amount of the metal pieces which circulate in a society can never be equal to the revenue of all its members. as the same guinea which pays the weekly pension of one man to-day, may pay that of another to-morrow, and that of a third the day thereafter, the amount of the metal pieces which annually circulate in any country must always be of much less value than the whole money pensions annually paid with them. but the power of purchasing, or the goods which can successively be bought with the whole of those money pensions as they are successively paid, must always be precisely of the same value with those pensions; as must likewise be the revenue of the different persons to whom they are paid. that revenue, therefore, cannot consist in those metal pieces, of which the amount is so much inferior to its value, but in the power of purchasing, in the goods which can successively be bought with them as they circulate from hand to hand. money, therefore, the great wheel of circulation, the great instrument of commerce, like all other instruments of trade, though it makes a part and a very valuable part of the capital, makes no part of the revenue of the society to which it belongs; and though the metal pieces of which it is composed, in the course of their annual circulation, distribute to every man the revenue which properly belongs to him, they make themselves no part of that revenue. thirdly, and lastly, the machines and instruments of trade, etc., which compose the fixed capital, bear this further resemblance to that part of the circulating capital which consists in money; that as every saving in the expense of erecting and supporting those machines, which does not diminish the productive powers of labour, is an improvement of the net revenue of the society, so every saving in the expense of collecting and supporting that part of the circulating capital which consists in money, is an improvement of exactly the same kind. it is sufficiently obvious, and it has partly, too, been explained already, in what manner every saving in the expense of supporting the fixed capital is an improvement of the net revenue of the society. the whole capital of the undertaker of every work is necessarily divided between his fixed and his circulating capital. while his whole capital remains the same, the smaller the one part, the greater must necessarily be the other. it is the circulating capital which furnishes the materials and wages of labour, and puts industry into motion. every saving, therefore, in the expense of maintaining the fixed capital, which does not diminish the productive powers of labour, must increase the fund which puts industry into motion, and consequently the annual produce of land and labour, the real revenue of every society. the substitution of paper in the room of gold and silver money, replaces a very expensive instrument of commerce with one much less costly, and sometimes equally convenient. circulation comes to be carried on by a new wheel, which it costs less both to erect and to maintain than the old one. but in what manner this operation is performed, and in what manner it tends to increase either the gross or the net revenue of the society, is not altogether so obvious, and may therefore require some further explication. there are several different sorts of paper money; but the circulating notes of banks and bankers are the species which is best known, and which seems best adapted for this purpose. when the people of any particular country have such confidence in the fortune, probity, and prudence of a particular banker, as to believe that he is always ready to pay upon demand such of his promissory notes as are likely to be at any time presented to him; those notes come to have the same currency as gold and silver money, from the confidence that such money can at any time be had for them. a particular banker lends among his customers his own promissory notes, to the extent, we shall suppose, of a hundred thousand pounds. as those notes serve all the purposes of money, his debtors pay him the same interest as if he had lent them so much money. this interest is the source of his gain. though some of those notes are continually coming back upon him for payment, part of them continue to circulate for months and years together. though he has generally in circulation, therefore, notes to the extent of a hundred thousand pounds, twenty thousand pounds in gold and silver may frequently be a sufficient provision for answering occasional demands. by this operation, therefore, twenty thousand pounds in gold and silver perform all the functions which a hundred thousand could otherwise have performed. the same exchanges may be made, the same quantity of consumable goods may be circulated and distributed to their proper consumers, by means of his promissory notes, to the value of a hundred thousand pounds, as by an equal value of gold and silver money. eighty thousand pounds of gold and silver, therefore, can, in this manner, be spared from the circulation of the country; and if different operations of the same kind should, at the same time, be carried on by many different banks and bankers, the whole circulation may thus be conducted with a fifth part only of the gold and silver which would otherwise have been requisite. let us suppose, for example, that the whole circulating money of some particular country amounted, at a particular time, to one million sterling, that sum being then sufficient for circulating the whole annual produce of their land and labour. let us suppose, too, that some time thereafter, different banks and bankers issued promissory notes, payable to the bearer, to the extent of one million, reserving in their different coffers two hundred thousand pounds for answering occasional demands. there would remain, therefore, in circulation, eight hundred thousand pounds in gold and silver, and a million of bank notes, or eighteen hundred thousand pounds of paper and money together. but the annual produce of the land and labour of the country had before required only one million to circulate and distribute it to its proper consumers, and that annual produce cannot be immediately augmented by those operations of banking. one million, therefore, will be sufficient to circulate it after them. the goods to be bought and sold being precisely the same as before, the same quantity of money will be sufficient for buying and selling them. the channel of circulation, if i may be allowed such an expression, will remain precisely the same as before. one million we have supposed sufficient to fill that channel. whatever, therefore, is poured into it beyond this sum cannot run in it, but must overflow. one million eight hundred thousand pounds are poured into it. eight hundred thousand pounds, therefore, must overflow, that sum being over and above what can be employed in the circulation of the country. but though this sum cannot be employed at home, it is too valuable to be allowed to lie idle. it will, therefore, be sent abroad, in order to seek that profitable employment which it cannot find at home. but the paper cannot go abroad; because at a distance from the banks which issue it, and from the country in which payment of it can be exacted by law, it will not be received in common payments. gold and silver, therefore, to the amount of eight hundred thousand pounds will be sent abroad, and the channel of home circulation will remain filled with a million of paper, instead of the million of those metals which filled it before. but though so great a quantity of gold and silver is thus sent abroad, we must not imagine that it is sent abroad for nothing, or that its proprietors make a present of it to foreign nations. they will exchange it for foreign goods of some kind or another, in order to supply the consumption either of some other foreign country or of their own. if they employ it in purchasing goods in one foreign country in order to supply the consumption of another, or in what is called the carrying trade, whatever profit they make will be an addition to the net revenue of their own country. it is like a new fund, created for carrying on a new trade; domestic business being now transacted by paper, and the gold and silver being converted into a fund for this new trade. if they employ it in purchasing foreign goods for home consumption, they may either, first, purchase such goods as are likely to be consumed by idle people who produce nothing, such as foreign wines, foreign silks, etc.; or, secondly, they may purchase an additional stock of materials, tools, and provisions, in order to maintain and employ an additional number of industrious people, who reproduce, with a profit, the value of their annual consumption. so far as it is employed in the first way, it promotes prodigality, increases expense and consumption without increasing production, or establishing any permanent fund for supporting that expense, and is in every respect hurtful to the society. so far as it is employed in the second way, it promotes industry; and though it increases the consumption of the society, it provides a permanent fund for supporting that consumption, the people who consume reproducing, with a profit, the whole value of their annual consumption. the gross revenue of the society, the annual produce of their land and labour, is increased by the whole value which the labour of those workmen adds to the materials upon which they are employed; and their net revenue by what remains of this value, after deducting what is necessary for supporting the tools and instruments of their trade. that the greater part of the gold and silver which, being forced abroad by those operations of banking, is employed in purchasing foreign goods for home consumption, is and must be employed in purchasing those of this second kind, seems not only probable but almost unavoidable. though some particular men may sometimes increase their expense very considerably though their revenue does not increase at all, we may be assured that no class or order of men ever does so; because, though the principles of common prudence do not always govern the conduct of every individual, they always influence that of the majority of every class or order. but the revenue of idle people, considered as a class or order, cannot, in the smallest degree, be increased by those operations of banking. their expense in general, therefore, cannot be much increased by them, though that of a few individuals among them may, and in reality sometimes is. the demand of idle people, therefore, for foreign goods being the same, or very nearly the same, as before, a very small part of the money, which being forced abroad by those operations of banking, is employed in purchasing foreign goods for home consumption, is likely to be employed in purchasing those for their use. the greater part of it will naturally be destined for the employment of industry, and not for the maintenance of idleness. when we compute the quantity of industry which the circulating capital of any society can employ, we must always have regard to those parts of it only which consist in provisions, materials, and finished work: the other, which consists in money, and which serves only to circulate those three, must always be deducted. in order to put industry into motion, three things are requisite; materials to work upon, tools to work with, and the wages or recompense for the sake of which the work is done. money is neither a material to work upon, nor a tool to work with; and though the wages of the workman are commonly paid to him in money, his real revenue, like that of all other men, consists, not in money, but in the money's worth; not in the metal pieces, but in what can be got for them. the quantity of industry which any capital can employ must, evidently, be equal to the number of workmen whom it can supply with materials, tools, and a maintenance suitable to the nature of the work. money may be requisite for purchasing the materials and tools of the work, as well as the maintenance of the workmen. but the quantity of industry which the whole capital can employ is certainly not equal both to the money which purchases, and to the materials, tools, and maintenance, which are purchased with it; but only to one or other of those two values, and to the latter more properly than to the former. when paper is substituted in the room of gold and silver money, the quantity of the materials, tools, and maintenance, which the whole circulating capital can supply, may be increased by the whole value of gold and silver which used to be employed in purchasing them. the whole value of the great wheel of circulation and distribution is added to the goods which are circulated and distributed by means of it. the operation, in some measure, resembles that of the undertaker of some great work, who, in consequence of some improvement in mechanics, takes down his old machinery, and adds the difference between its price and that of the new to his circulating capital, to the fund from which he furnishes materials and wages to his workmen. what is the proportion which the circulating money of any country bears to the whole value of the annual produce circulated by means of it, it is, perhaps, impossible to determine. it has been computed by different authors at a fifth, at a tenth, at a twentieth, and at a thirtieth part of that value. but how small soever the proportion which the circulating money may bear to the whole value of the annual produce, as but a part, and frequently but a small part, of that produce, is ever destined for the maintenance of industry, it must always bear a very considerable proportion to that part. when, therefore, by the substitution of paper, the gold and silver necessary for circulation is reduced to, perhaps, a fifth part of the former quantity, if the value of only the greater part of the other four-fifths be added to the funds which are destined for the maintenance of industry, it must make a very considerable addition to the quantity of that industry, and, consequently, to the value of the annual produce of land and labour. an operation of this kind has, within these five-and-twenty or thirty years, been performed in scotland, by the erection of new banking companies in almost every considerable town, and even in some country villages. the effects of it have been precisely those above described. the business of the country is almost entirely carried on by means of the paper of those different banking companies, with which purchases and payments of kinds are commonly made. silver very seldom appears except in the change of a twenty shillings bank note, and gold still seldomer. but though the conduct of all those different companies has not been unexceptionable, and has accordingly required an act of parliament to regulate it, the country, notwithstanding, has evidently derived great benefit from their trade. i have heard it asserted, that the trade of the city of glasgow doubled in about fifteen years after the first erection of the banks there; and that the trade of scotland has more than quadrupled since the first erection of the two public banks at edinburgh, of which the one, called the bank of scotland, was established by act of parliament in 1695; the other, called the royal bank, by royal charter in 1727. whether the trade, either of scotland in general, or the city of glasgow in particular, has really increased in so great a proportion, during so short a period, i do not pretend to know. if either of them has increased in this proportion, it seems to be an effect too great to be accounted for by the sole operation of this cause. that the trade and industry of scotland, however, have increased very considerably during this period, and that the banks have contributed a good deal to this increase, cannot be doubted. the value of the silver money which circulated in scotland before the union, in 1707, and which, immediately after it, was brought into the bank of scotland in order to be recoined, amounted to l411,117 10s. 9d. sterling. no account has been got of the gold coin; but it appears from the ancient accounts of the mint of scotland, that the value of the gold annually coined somewhat exceeded that of the silver. there were a good many people, too, upon this occasion, who, from a diffidence of repayment, did not bring their silver into the bank of scotland: and there was, besides, some english coin which was not called in. the whole value of the gold and silver, therefore, which circulated in scotland before the union, cannot be estimated at less than a million sterling. it seems to have constituted almost the whole circulation of that country; for though the circulation of the bank of scotland, which had then no rival, was considerable, it seems to have made but a very small part of the whole. in the present times the whole circulation of scotland cannot be estimated at less than two millions, of which that part which consists in gold and silver most probably does not amount to half a million. but though the circulating gold and silver of scotland have suffered so great a diminution during this period, its real riches and prosperity do not appear to have suffered any. its agriculture, manufactures, and trade, on the contrary, the annual produce of its land and labour, have evidently been augmented. it is chiefly by discounting bills of exchange, that is, by advancing money upon them before they are due, that the greater part of banks and bankers issue their promissory notes. they deduct always, upon whatever sum they advance, the legal interest till the bill shall become due. the payment of the bill, when it becomes due, replaces to the bank the value of what had been advanced, together with a clear profit of the interest. the banker who advances to the merchant whose bill he discounts, not gold and silver, but his own promissory notes, has the advantage of being able to discount to a greater amount, by the whole value of his promissory notes, which he finds by experience are commonly in circulation. he is thereby enabled to make his clear gain of interest on so much a larger sum. the commerce of scotland, which at present is not very great, was still more inconsiderable when the two first banking companies were established, and those companies would have had but little trade had they confined their business to the discounting of bills of exchange. they invented, therefore, another method of issuing their promissory notes; by granting what they called cash accounts, that is by giving credit to the extent of a certain sum (two or three thousand pounds, for example) to any individual who could procure two persons of undoubted credit and good landed estate to become surety for him, that whatever money should be advanced to him, within the sum for which the credit had been given, should be repaid upon demand, together with the legal interest. credits of this kind are, i believe, commonly granted by banks and bankers in all different parts of the world. but the easy terms upon which the scotch banking companies accept of repayment are, so far as i know, peculiar to them, and have, perhaps, been the principal cause, both of the great trade of those companies and of the benefit which the country has received from it. whoever has a credit of this kind with one of those companies, and borrows a thousand pounds upon it, for example, may repay this sum piecemeal, by twenty and thirty pounds at a time, the company discounting a proportionable part of the interest of the great sum from the day on which each of those small sums is paid in till the whole be in this manner repaid. all merchants, therefore, and almost all men of business, find it convenient to keep such cash accounts with them, and are thereby interested to promote the trade of those companies, by readily receiving their notes in all payments, and by encouraging all those with whom they have any influence to do the same. the banks, when their customers apply to them for money, generally advance it to them in their own promissory notes. these the merchants pay away to the manufacturers for goods, the manufacturers to the farmers for materials and provisions, the farmers to their landlords for rent, the landlords repay them to the merchants for the conveniencies and luxuries with which they supply them, and the merchants again return them to the banks in order to balance their cash accounts, or to replace what they may have borrowed of them; and thus almost the whole money business of the country is transacted by means of them. hence the great trade of those companies. by means of those cash accounts every merchant can, without imprudence, carry on a greater trade than he otherwise could do. if there are two merchants, one in london and the other in edinburgh, who employ equal stocks in the same branch of trade, the edinburgh merchant can, without imprudence, carry on a greater trade and give employment to a greater number of people than the london merchant. the london merchant must always keep by him a considerable sum of money, either in his own coffers, or in those of his banker, who gives him no interest for it, in order to answer the demands continually coming upon him for payment of the goods which he purchases upon credit. let the ordinary amount of this sum be supposed five hundred pounds. the value of the goods in his warehouse must always be less by five hundred pounds than it would have been had he not been obliged to keep such a sum unemployed. let us suppose that he generally disposes of his whole stock upon hand, or of goods to the value of his whole stock upon hand, once in the year. by being obliged to keep so great a sum unemployed, he must sell in a year five hundred pounds' worth less goods than he might otherwise have done. his annual profits must be less by all that he could have made by the sale of five hundred pounds worth more goods; and the number of people employed in preparing his goods for the market must be less by all those that five hundred pounds more stock could have employed. the merchant in edinburgh, on the other hand, keeps no money unemployed for answering such occasional demands. when they actually come upon him, he satisfies them from his cash account with the bank, and gradually replaces the sum borrowed with the money or paper which comes in from the occasional sales of his goods. with the same stock, therefore, he can, without imprudence, have at all times in his warehouse a larger quantity of goods than the london merchant; and can thereby both make a greater profit himself, and give constant employment to a greater number of industrious people who prepare those goods for the market. hence the great benefit which the country has derived from this trade. the facility of discounting bills of exchange it may be thought indeed, gives the english merchants a conveniency equivalent to the cash accounts of the scotch merchants. but the scotch merchants, it must be remembered, can discount their bills of exchange as easily as the english merchants; and have, besides, the additional conveniency of their cash accounts. the whole paper money of every kind which can easily circulate in any country never can exceed the value of the gold and silver, of which it supplies the place, or which (the commerce being supposed the same) would circulate there, if there was no paper money. if twenty shilling notes, for example, are the lowest paper money current in scotland, the whole of that currency which can easily circulate there cannot exceed the sum of gold and silver which would be necessary for transacting the annual exchanges of twenty shillings value and upwards usually transacted within that country. should the circulating paper at any time exceed that sum, as the excess could neither be sent abroad nor be employed in the circulation of the country, it must immediately return upon the banks to be exchanged for gold and silver. many people would immediately perceive that they had more of this paper than was necessary for transacting their business at home, and as they could not send it abroad, they would immediately demand payment of it from the banks. when this superfluous paper was converted into gold and silver, they could easily find a use for it by sending it abroad; but they could find none while it remained in the shape of paper. there would immediately, therefore, be a run upon the banks to the whole extent of this superfluous paper, and, if they showed any difficulty or backwardness in payment, to a much greater extent; the alarm which this would occasion necessarily increasing the run. over and above the expenses which are common to every branch of trade; such as the expense of house-rent, the wages of servants, clerks, accountants, etc.; the expenses peculiar to a bank consist chiefly in two articles: first, in the expense of keeping at all times in its coffers, for answering the occasional demands of the holders of its notes, a large sum of money, of which it loses the interest; and, secondly, in the expense of replenishing those coffers as fast as they are emptied by answering such occasional demands. a banking company, which issues more paper than can be employed in the circulation of the country, and of which the excess is continually returning upon them for payment, ought to increase the quantity of gold and silver, which they keep at all times in their coffers, not only in proportion to this excessive increase of their circulation, but in a much greater proportion; their notes returning upon them much faster than in proportion to the excess of their quantity. such a company, therefore, ought to increase the first article of their expense, not only in proportion to this forced increase of their business, but in a much greater proportion. the coffers of such a company too, though they ought to be filled much fuller, yet must empty themselves much faster than if their business was confined within more reasonable bounds, and must require, not only a more violent, but a more constant and uninterrupted exertion of expense in order to replenish them. the coin too, which is thus continually drawn in such large quantities from their coffers, cannot be employed in the circulation of the country. it comes in place of a paper which is over and above what can be employed in that circulation, and is therefore over and above what can be employed in it too. but as that coin will not be allowed to lie idle, it must, in one shape or another, be sent abroad, in order to find that profitable employment which it cannot find at home; and this continual exportation of gold and silver, by enhancing the difficulty, must necessarily enhance still further the expense of the bank, in finding new gold and silver in order to replenish those coffers, which empty themselves so very rapidly. such a company, therefore, must, in proportion to this forced increase of their business, increase the second article of their expense still more than the first. let us suppose that all the paper of a particular bank, which the circulation of the country can easily absorb and employ, amounts exactly to forty thousand pounds; and that for answering occasional demands, this bank is obliged to keep at all times in its coffers ten thousand pounds in gold and silver. should this bank attempt to circulate forty-four thousand pounds, the four thousand pounds which are over and above what the circulation can easily absorb and employ, will return upon it almost as fast as they are issued. for answering occasional demands, therefore, this bank ought to keep at all times in its coffers, not eleven thousand pounds only, but fourteen thousand pounds. it will thus gain nothing by the interest of the four thousand pounds' excessive circulation; and it will lose the whole expense of continually collecting four thousand pounds in gold and silver, which will be continually going out of its coffers as fast as they are brought into them. had every particular banking company always understood and attended to its own particular interest, the circulation never could have been overstocked with paper money. but every particular banking company has not always understood or attended to its own particular interest, and the circulation has frequently been overstocked with paper money. by issuing too great a quantity of paper, of which the excess was continually returning, in order to be exchanged for gold and silver, the bank of england was for many years together obliged to coin gold to the extent of between eight hundred thousand pounds and a million a year; or at an average, about eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds. for this great coinage the bank (in consequence of the worn and degraded state into which the gold coin had fallen a few years ago) was frequently obliged to purchase gold bullion at the high price of four pounds an ounce, which it soon after issued in coin at 53 17s. 10 1/2d. an ounce, losing in this manner between two and a half and three per cent upon the coinage of so very large a sum. though the bank therefore paid no seignorage, though the government was properly at the expense of the coinage, this liberality of government did not prevent altogether the expense of the bank. the scotch banks, in consequence of an excess of the same kind, were all obliged to employ constantly agents at london to collect money for them, at an expense which was seldom below one and a half or two per cent. this money was sent down by the waggon, and insured by the carriers at an additional expense of three quarters per cent or fifteen shillings on the hundred pounds. those agents were not always able to replenish the coffers of their employers so fast as they were emptied. in this case the resource of the banks was to draw upon their correspondents in london bills of exchange to the extent of the sum which they wanted. when those correspondents afterwards drew upon them for the payment of this sum, together with the interest and a commission, sonic of those banks, from the distress into which their excessive circulation had thrown them, had sometimes no other means of satisfying this draught but by drawing a second set of bills either upon the same, or upon some other correspondents in london; and the same sum, or rather bills for the same sum, would in this manner make sometimes more than two or three journeys, the debtor, bank, paying always the interest and commission upon the whole accumulated sum. even those scotch banks which never distinguished themselves by their extreme imprudence, were sometimes obliged to employ this ruinous resource. the gold coin which was paid out either by the bank of england, or by the scotch banks, in exchange for that part of their paper which was over and above what could be employed in the circulation of the country, being likewise over and above what could be employed in that circulation, was sometimes sent abroad in the shape of coin, sometimes melted down and sent abroad in the shape of bullion, and sometimes melted down and sold to the bank of england at the high price of four pounds an ounce. it was the newest, the heaviest, and the best pieces only which were carefully picked out of the whole coin, and either sent abroad or melted down. at home, and while they remained in the shape of coin, those heavy pieces were of no more value than the light. but they were of more value abroad, or when melted down into bullion, at home. the bank of england, notwithstanding their great annual coinage, found to their astonishment that there was every year the same scarcity of coin as there had been the year before; and that notwithstanding the great quantity of good and new coin which was every year issued from the bank, the state of the coin, instead of growing better and better, became every year worse and worse. every year they found themselves under the necessity of coining nearly the same quantity of gold as they had coined the year before, and from the continual rise in the price of gold bullion, in consequence of the continual wearing and clipping of the coin, the expense of this great annual coinage became every year greater and greater. the bank of england, it is to be observed, by supplying its own coffers with coin, is indirectly obliged to supply the whole kingdom, into which coin is continually flowing from those coffers in a great variety of ways. whatever coin therefore was wanted to support this excessive circulation both of scotch and english paper money, whatever vacuities this excessive circulation occasioned in the necessary coin of the kingdom, the bank of england was obliged to supply them. the scotch banks, no doubt, paid all of them very dearly for their own imprudence and inattention. but the bank of england paid very dearly, not only for its own imprudence, but for the much greater imprudence of almost all the scotch banks. the overtrading of some bold projectors in both parts of the united kingdom was the original cause of this excessive circulation of paper money. what a bank can with propriety advance to a merchant or undertaker of any kind, is not either the whole capital with which he trades, or even any considerable part of that capital; but that part of it only which he would otherwise be obliged to keep by him unemployed, and in ready money for answering occasional demands. if the paper money which the bank advances never exceeds this value, it can never exceed the value of the gold and silver which would necessarily circulate in the country if there was no paper money; it can never exceed the quantity which the circulation of the country can easily absorb and employ. when a bank discounts to a merchant a real bill of exchange drawn by a real creditor upon a real debtor, and which, as soon as it becomes due, is really paid by that debtor, it only advances to him a part of the value which he would otherwise be obliged to keep by him unemployed and in ready money for answering occasional demands. the payment of the bill, when it becomes due, replaces to the bank the value of what it had advanced, together with the interest. the coffers of the bank, so far as its dealings are confined to such customers, resemble a water pond, from which, though a stream is continually running out, yet another is continually running in, fully equal to that which runs out; so that, without any further care or attention, the pond keeps always equally, or very near equally full. little or no expense can ever be necessary for replenishing the coffers of such a bank. a merchant, without overtrading, may frequently have occasion for a sum of ready money, even when he has no bills to discount. when a bank, besides discounting his bills, advances him likewise upon such occasions such sums upon his cash account, and accepts of a piecemeal repayment as the money comes in from the occasional sale of his goods, upon the easy terms of the banking companies of scotland; it dispenses him entirely from the necessity of keeping any part of his stock by him unemployed and in ready money for answering occasional demands. when such demands actually come upon him, he can answer them sufficiently from his cash account. the bank, however, in dealing with such customers, ought to observe with great attention, whether in the course of some short period (of four, five, six, or eight months for example) the sum of the repayments which it commonly receives from them is, or is not, fully equal to that of the advances which it commonly makes to them. if, within the course of such short periods, the sum of the repayments from certain customers is, upon most occasions, fully equal to that of the advances, it may safely continue to deal with such customers. though the stream which is in this case continually running out from its coffers may be very large, that which is continually running into them must be at least equally large; so that without any further care or attention those coffers are likely to be always equally or very near equally full; and scarce ever to require any extraordinary expense to replenish them. if, on the contrary, the sum of the repayments from certain other customers falls commonly very much short of the advances which it makes to them, it cannot with any safety continue to deal with such customers, at least if they continue to deal with it in this manner. the stream which is in this case continually running out from its coffers is necessarily much larger than that which is continually running in; so that, unless they are replenished by some great and continual effort of expense, those coffers must soon be exhausted altogether. the banking companies of scotland, accordingly, were for a long time very careful to require frequent and regular repayments from all their customers, and did not care to deal with any person, whatever might be his fortune or credit, who did not make, what they called, frequent and regular operations with them. by this attention, besides saving almost entirely the extraordinary expense of replenishing their coffers, they gained two other very considerable advantages. first, by this attention they were enabled to make some tolerable judgment concerning the thriving or declining circumstances of their debtors, without being obliged to look out for any other evidence besides what their own books afforded them; men being for the most part either regular or irregular in their repayments, according as their circumstances are either thriving or declining. a private man who lends out his money to perhaps half a dozen or a dozen of debtors, may, either by himself or his agents, observe and inquire both constantly and carefully into the conduct and situation of each of them. but a banking company, which lends money to perhaps five hundred different people, and of which the attention is continually occupied by objects of a very different kind, can have no regular information concerning the conduct and circumstances of the greater part of its debtors beyond what its own books afford it. in requiring frequent and regular repayments from all their customers, the banking companies of scotland had probably this advantage in view. secondly, by this attention they secured themselves from the possibility of issuing more paper money than what the circulation of the country could easily absorb and employ. when they observed that within moderate periods of time the repayments of a particular customer were upon most occasions fully equal to the advances which they had made to him, they might be assured that the paper money which they had advanced to him had not at any time exceeded the quantity of gold and silver which he would otherwise have been obliged to keep by him for answering occasional demands; and that, consequently, the paper money, which they had circulated by his means, had not at any time exceeded the quantity of gold and silver which would have circulated in the country had there been no paper money. the frequency, regularity, and amount of his repayments would sufficiently demonstrate that the amount of their advances had at no time exceeded that part of his capital which he would otherwise have been obliged to keep by him unemployed and in ready money for answering occasional demands; that is, for the purpose of keeping the rest of his capital in constant employment. it is this part of his capital only which, within moderate periods of time, is continually returning to every dealer in the shape of money, whether paper or coin, and continually going from him in the same shape. if the advances of the bank had commonly exceeded this part of his capital, the ordinary amount of his repayments could not, within moderate periods of time, have equalled the ordinary amount of its advances. the stream which, by means of his dealings, was continually running into the coffers of the bank, could not have been equal to the stream which, by means of the same dealings, was continually running out. the advances of the bank paper, by exceeding the quantity of gold and silver which, had there been no such advances, he would have been obliged to keep by him for answering occasional demands, might soon come to exceed the whole quantity of gold and silver which (the commerce being supposed the same) would have circulated in the country had there been no paper money; and consequently to exceed the quantity which the circulation of the country could easily absorb and employ; and the excess of this paper money would immediately have returned upon the bank in order to be exchanged for gold and silver. this second advantage, though equally real, was not perhaps so well understood by all the different banking companies of scotland as the first. when, partly by the conveniency of discounting bills, and partly by that of cash accounts, the creditable traders of any country can be dispensed from the necessity of keeping any part of their stock by them unemployed and in ready money for answering occasional demands, they can reasonably expect no farther assistance from banks and bankers, who, when they have gone thus far, cannot, consistently with their own interest and safety, go farther. a bank cannot, consistently with its own interest, advance to a trader the whole or even the greater part of the circulating capital with which he trades; because, though that capital is continually returning to him in the shape of money, and going from him in the same shape, yet the whole of the returns is too distant from the whole of the outgoings, and the sum of his repayments could not equal the sum of its advances within such moderate periods of time as suit the conveniency of a bank. still less, could a bank afford to advance him any considerable part of his fixed capital; of the capital which the undertaker of an iron forge, for example, employs in erecting his forge and smelting-house, his workhouses and warehouses, the dwelling-houses of his workmen, etc.; of the capital which the undertaker of a mine employs in sinking his shafts, in erecting engines for drawing out the water, in making roads and waggon-ways, etc.; of the capital which the person who undertakes to improve land employs in clearing, draining, enclosing, manuring, and ploughing waste and uncultivated fields, in building farm-houses, with all their necessary appendages of stables, granaries, etc. the returns of the fixed capital are in almost all cases much slower than those of the circulating capital; and such expenses, even when laid out with the greatest prudence and judgment, very seldom return to the undertaker till after a period of many years, a period by far too distant to suit the conveniency of a bank. traders and other undertakers may, no doubt, with great propriety, carry on a very considerable part of their projects with borrowed money. in justice to their creditors, however, their own capital ought, in this case, to be sufficient to ensure, if i may say so, the capital of those creditors; or to render it extremely improbable that those creditors should incur any loss, even though the success of the project should fall very much short of the expectation of the projectors. even with this precaution too, the money which is borrowed, and which it is meant should not be repaid till after a period of several years, ought not to be borrowed of a bank, but ought to be borrowed upon bond or mortgage of such private people as propose to live upon the interest of their money without taking the trouble themselves to employ the capital, and who are upon that account willing to lend that capital to such people of good credit as are likely to keep it for several years. a bank, indeed, which lends its money without the expense of stamped paper, or of attorneys' fees for drawing bonds and mortgages, and which accepts of repayment upon the easy terms of the banking companies of scotland, would, no doubt, be a very convenient creditor to such traders and undertakers. but such traders and undertakers would, surely, be most inconvenient debtors to such a bank. it is now more than five-and-twenty years since the paper money issued by the different banking companies of scotland was fully equal, or rather was somewhat more than fully equal, to what the circulation of the country could easily absorb and employ. those companies, therefore, had so long ago given all the assistance to the traders and other undertakers of scotland which it is possible for banks and bankers, consistently with their own interest, to give. they had even done somewhat more. they had overtraded a little, and had brought upon themselves that loss, or at least that diminution of profit, which in this particular business never fails to attend the smallest degree of overtrading. those traders and other undertakers, having got so much assistance from banks and bankers, wished to get still more. the banks, they seem to have thought, could extend their credits to whatever sum might be wanted, without incurring any other expense besides that of a few reams of paper. they complained of the contracted views and dastardly spirit of the directors of those banks, which did not, they said, extend their credits in proportion to the extension of the trade of the country; meaning, no doubt, by the extension of that trade the extension of their own projects beyond what they could carry on, either with their own capital, or with what they had credit to borrow of private people in the usual way of bond or mortgage. the banks, they seem to have thought, were in honour bound to supply the deficiency, and to provide them with all the capital which they wanted to trade with. the banks, however, were of a different opinion, and upon their refusing to extend their credits, some of those traders had recourse to an expedient which, for a time, served their purpose, though at a much greater expense, yet as effectually as the utmost extension of bank credits could have done. this expedient was no other than the well-known shift of drawing and redrawing; the shift to which unfortunate traders have sometimes recourse when they are upon the brink of bankruptcy. the practice of raising money in this manner had been long known in england, and during the course of the late war, when the high profits of trade afforded a great temptation to overtrading, is said to have carried on to a very great extent. from england it was brought into scotland, where, in proportion to the very limited commerce, and to the very moderate capital of the country, it was soon carried on to a much greater extent than it ever had been in england. the practice of drawing and redrawing is so well known to all men of business that it may perhaps be thought unnecessary to give an account of it. but as this book may come into the hands of many people who are not men of business, and as the effects of this practice upon the banking trade are not perhaps generally understood even by men of business themselves, i shall endeavour to explain it as distinctly as i can. the customs of merchants, which were established when the barbarous laws of europe did not enforce the performance of their contracts, and which during the course of the two last centuries have been adopted into the laws of all european nations, have given such extraordinary privileges to bills of exchange that money is more readily advanced upon them than upon any other species of obligation, especially when they are made payable within so short a period as two or three months after their date. if, when the bill becomes due, the acceptor does not pay it as soon as it is presented, he becomes from that moment a bankrupt. the bill is protested, and returns upon the drawer, who, if he does not immediately pay it, becomes likewise a bankrupt. if, before it came to the person who presents it to the acceptor for payment, it had passed through the hands of several other persons, who had successively advanced to one another the contents of it either in money or goods, and who to express that each of them had in his turn received those contents, had all of them in their order endorsed, that is, written their names upon the back of the bill; each endorser becomes in his turn liable to the owner of the bill for those contents, and, if he fails to pay, he becomes too from that moment a bankrupt. though the drawer, acceptor, and endorsers of the bill should, all of them, be persons of doubtful credit; yet still the shortness of the date gives some security to the owner of the bill. though all of them may be very likely to become bankrupts, it is a chance if they all become so in so short a time. the house is crazy, says a weary traveller to himself, and will not stand very long; but it is a chance if it falls to-night, and i will venture, therefore, to sleep in it to-night. the trader a in edinburgh, we shall suppose, draws a bill upon b in london, payable two months after date. in reality b in london owes nothing to a in edinburgh; but he agrees to accept of a's bill, upon condition that before the term of payment he shall redraw upon a in edinburgh for the same sum, together with the interest and a commission, another bill, payable likewise two months after date. b accordingly, before the expiration of the first two months, redraws this bill upon a in edinburgh; who again, before the expiration of the second two months, draws a second bill upon b in london, payable likewise two months after date; and before the expiration of the third two months, b in london redraws upon a in edinburgh another bill, payable also two months after date. this practice has sometimes gone on, not only for several months, but for several years together, the bill always returning upon a in edinburgh, with the accumulated interest and commission of all the former bills. the interest was five per cent in the year, and the commission was never less than one half per cent on each draft. this commission being repeated more than six times in the year, whatever money a might raise by this expedient must necessarily have, cost him something more than eight per cent in the year, and sometimes a great deal more; when either the price of the commission happened to rise, or when he was obliged to pay compound interest upon the interest and commission of former bills. this practice was called raising money by circulation. in a country where the ordinary profits of stock in the greater part of mercantile projects are supposed to run between six and ten per cent, it must have been a very fortunate speculation of which the returns could not only repay the enormous expense at which the money was thus borrowed for carrying it on; but afford, besides, a good surplus profit to the projector. many vast and extensive projects, however, were undertaken, and for several years carried on without any other fund to support them besides what was raised at this enormous expense. the projectors, no doubt, had in their golden dreams the most distinct vision of this great profit. upon their awaking, however, either at the end of their projects, or when they were no longer able to carry them on, they very seldom, i believe, had the good fortune to find it. the bills a in edinburgh drew upon b in london, he regularly discounted two months before they were due with some bank or banker in edinburgh; and the bills which b in london redrew upon a in edinburgh, he as regularly discounted either with the bank of england, or with some other bankers in london. whatever was advanced upon such circulating bills, was, in edinburgh, advanced in the paper of the scotch banks, and in london, when they were discounted at the bank of england, in the paper of that bank. though the bills upon which this paper had been advanced were all of them repaid in their turn as soon as they became due; yet the value which had been really advanced upon the first bill, was never really returned to the banks which advanced it; because, before each bill became due, another bill was always drawn to somewhat a greater amount than the bill which was soon to be paid; and the discounting of this other bill was essentially necessary towards the payment of that which was soon to be due. this payment, therefore, was altogether fictitious. the stream, which, by means of those circulating bills of exchange, had once been made to run out from the coffers of the banks, was never replaced by any stream which really run into them. the paper which was issued upon those circulating bills of exchange, amounted, upon many occasions, to the whole fund destined for carrying on some vast and extensive project of agriculture, commerce, or manufactures; and not merely to that part of it which, had there been no paper money, the projector would have been obliged to keep by him, unemployed and in ready money for answering occasional demands. the greater part of this paper was, consequently, over and above the value of the gold and silver which would have circulated in the country, had there been no paper money. it was over and above, therefore, what the circulation of the country could easily absorb and employ, and upon that account, immediately returned upon the banks in order to be exchanged for gold and silver, which they were to find as they could. it was a capital which those projectors had very artfully contrived to draw from those banks, not only without their knowledge or deliberate consent, but for some time, perhaps, without their having the most distant suspicion that they had really advanced it. when two people, who are continually drawing and redrawing upon one another, discount their bills always with the same banker, he must immediately discover what they are about, and see clearly that they are trading, not with any capital of their own, but with the capital which he advances to them. but this discovery is not altogether so easy when they discount their bills sometimes with one banker, and sometimes with another, and when the same two persons do not constantly draw and redraw upon one another, but occasionally run the round of a great circle of projectors, who find it for their interest to assist one another in this method of raising money, and to render it, upon that account, as difficult as possible to distinguish between a real and fictitious bill of exchange; between a bill drawn by a real creditor upon a real debtor, and a bill for which there was properly no real creditor but the bank which discounted it, nor any real debtor but the projector who made use of the money. when a banker had even made this discovery, he might sometimes make it too late, and might find that he had already discounted the bills of those projectors to so great an extent that, by refusing to discount any more, he would necessarily make them all bankrupts, and thus, by ruining them, might perhaps ruin himself. for his own interest and safety, therefore, he might find it necessary, in this very perilous situation, to go on for some time, endeavouring, however, to withdraw gradually, and upon that account making every day greater and greater difficulties about discounting, in order to force those projectors by degrees to have recourse, either to other bankers, or to other methods of raising money; so that he himself might, as soon as possible, get out of the circle. the difficulties, accordingly, which the bank of england, which the principal bankers in london, and which even the more prudent scotch banks began, after a certain time, and when all of them had already gone too far, to make about discounting, not only alarmed, but enraged in the highest degree those projectors. their own distress, of which this prudent and necessary reserve of the banks was, no doubt, the immediate occasion, they called the distress of the country; and this distress of the country, they said, was altogether owing to the ignorance, pusillanimity, and bad conduct of the banks, which did not give a sufficiently liberal aid to the spirited undertakings of those who exerted themselves in order to beautify, improve, and enrich the country. it was the duty of the banks, they seemed to think, to lend for as long a time, and to as great an extent as they might wish to borrow. the banks, however, by refusing in this manner to give more credit to those to whom they had already given a great deal too much, took the only method by which it was now possible to save either their own credit or the public credit of the country. in the midst of this clamour and distress, a new bank was established in scotland for the express purpose of relieving the distress of the country. the design was generous; but the execution was imprudent, and the nature and causes of the distress which it meant to relieve were not, perhaps, well understood. this bank was more liberal than any other had ever been, both in granting cash accounts, and in discounting bills of exchange. with regard to the latter, it seems to have made scarce any distinction between real and circulating bills, but to have discounted all equally. it was the avowed principle of this bank to advance, upon any reasonable security, the whole capital which was to be employed in those improvements of which the returns are the most slow and distant, such as the improvements of land. to promote such improvements was even said to be the chief of the public-spirited purposes for which it was instituted. by its liberality in granting cash accounts, and in discounting bills of exchange, it, no doubt, issued great quantities of its bank notes. but those bank notes being, the greater part of them, over and above what the circulation of the country could easily absorb and employ, returned upon it, in order to be exchanged for gold and silver as fast as they were issued. its coffers were never well filled. the capital which had been subscribed to this bank at two different subscriptions, amounted to one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, of which eighty per cent only was paid up. this sum ought to have been paid in at several different instalments. a great part of the proprietors, when they paid in their first instalment, opened a cash account with the bank; and the directors, thinking themselves obliged to treat their own proprietors with the same liberality with which they treated all other men, allowed many of them to borrow upon this cash account what they paid in upon all their subsequent instalments. such payments, therefore, only put into one coffer what had the moment before been taken out of another. but had the coffers of this bank been filled ever so well, its excessive circulation must have emptied them faster than they could have been replenished by any other expedient but the ruinous one of drawing upon london, and when the bill became due, paying it, together with interest and commission, by another draft upon the same place. its coffers having been filled so very ill, it is said to have been driven to this resource within a very few months after it began to do business. the estates of the proprietors of this bank were worth several millions, and by their subscription to the original bond or contract of the bank, were really pledged for answering all its engagements. by means of the great credit which so great a pledge necessarily gave it, it was, notwithstanding its too liberal conduct, enabled to carry on business for more than two years. when it was obliged to stop, it had in the circulation about two hundred thousand pounds in bank notes. in order to support the circulation of those notes which were continually returning upon it as fast they were issued, it had been constantly in the practice of drawing bills of exchange upon london, of which the number and value were continually increasing, and, when it stopped, amounted to upwards of six hundred thousand pounds. this bank, therefore, had, in little more than the course of two years, advanced to different people upwards of eight hundred thousand pounds at five per cent. upon the two hundred thousand pounds which it circulated in bank notes, this five per cent might, perhaps, be considered as clear gain, without any other deduction besides the expense of management. but upon upwards of six hundred thousand pounds, for which it was continually drawing bills of exchange upon london, it was paying, in the way of interest and commission, upwards of eight per cent, and was consequently losing more than three per cent upon more than three-fourths of all its dealings. the operations of this bank seem to have produced effects quite opposite to those which were intended by the particular persons who planned and directed it. they seem to have intended to support the spirited undertakings, for as such they considered them, which were at that time carrying on in different parts of the country; and at the same time, by drawing the whole banking business to themselves, to supplant all the other scotch banks, particularly those established in edinburgh, whose backwardness in discounting bills of exchange had given some offence. this bank, no doubt, gave some temporary relief to those projectors, and enabled them to carry on their projects for about two years longer than they could otherwise have done. but it thereby only enabled them to get so much deeper into debt, so that, when ruin came, it fell so much the heavier both upon them and upon their creditors. the operations of this bank, therefore, instead of relieving, in reality aggravated in the long-run the distress which those projectors had brought both upon themselves and upon their country. it would have been much better for themselves, their creditors, and their country, had the greater part of them been obliged to stop two years sooner than they actually did. the temporary relief, however, which this bank afforded to those projectors, proved a real and permanent relief to the other scotch banks. all the dealers in circulating bills of exchange, which those other banks had become so backward in discounting, had recourse to this new bank, where they were received with open arms. those other banks, therefore, were enabled to get very easily out of that fatal circle, from which they could not otherwise have disengaged themselves without incurring a considerable loss, and perhaps too even some degree of discredit. in the long-run, therefore, the operations of this bank increased the real distress of the country which it meant to relieve; and effectually relieved from a very great distress those rivals whom it meant to supplant. at the first setting out of this bank, it was the opinion of some people that how fast soever its coffers might be emptied, it might easily replenish them by raising money upon the securities of those to whom it had advanced its paper. experience, i believe, soon convinced them that this method of raising money was by much too slow to answer their purpose; and that coffers which originally were so ill filled, and which emptied themselves so very fast, could be replenished by no other expedient but the ruinous one of drawing bills upon london, and when they became due, paying them by other drafts upon the same place with accumulated interest and commission. but though they had been able by this method to raise money as fast as they wanted it, yet, instead of making a profit, they must have suffered a loss by every such operation; so that in the long-run they must have ruined themselves as a mercantile company, though, perhaps, not so soon as by the more expensive practice of drawing and redrawing. they could still have made nothing by the interest of the paper, which, being over and above what the circulation of the country could absorb and employ, returned upon them, in order to be exchanged for gold and silver, as fast as they issued it; and for the payment of which they were themselves continually obliged to borrow money. on the contrary, the whole expense of this borrowing, of employing agents to look out for people who had money to lend, of negotiating with those people, and of drawing the proper bond or assignment, must have fallen upon them, and have been so much clear loss upon the balance of their accounts. the project of replenishing their coffers in this manner may be compared to that of a man who had a water-pond from which a stream was continually running out, and into which no stream was continually running, but who proposed to keep it always equally full by employing a number of people to go continually with buckets to a well at some miles distance in order to bring water to replenish it. but though this operation had proved not only practicable but profitable to the bank as a mercantile company, yet the country could have derived no benefit from it; but, on the contrary, must have suffered a very considerable loss by it. this operation could not augment in the smallest degree the quantity of money to be lent. it could only have erected this bank into a sort of general loan office for the whole country. those who wanted to borrow must have applied to this bank instead of applying to the private persons who had lent it their money. but a bank which lends money perhaps to five hundred different people, the greater part of whom its directors can know very little about, is not likely to be more judicious in the choice of its debtors than a private person who lends out his money among a few people whom he knows, and in whose sober and frugal conduct he thinks he has good reason to confide. the debtors of such a bank as that whose conduct i have been giving some account of were likely, the greater part of them, to be chimerical projectors, the drawers and re-drawers of circulating bills of exchange, who would employ the money in extravagant undertakings, which, with all the assistance that could be given them, they would probably never be able to complete, and which, if they should be completed, would never repay the expense which they had really cost, would never afford a fund capable of maintaining a quantity of labour equal to that which had been employed about them. the sober and frugal debtors of private persons, on the contrary, would be more likely to employ the money borrowed in sober undertakings which were proportioned to their capitals, and which, though they might have less of the grand and the marvellous, would have more of the solid and the profitable, which would repay with a large profit whatever had been laid out upon them, and which would thus afford a fund capable of maintaining a much greater quantity of labour than that which had been employed about them. the success of this operation, therefore, without increasing in the smallest degree the capital of the country, would only have transferred a great part of it from prudent and profitable to imprudent and unprofitable undertakings. that the industry of scotland languished for want of money to employ it was the opinion of the famous mr. law. by establishing a bank of a particular kind, which he seems to have imagined might issue paper to the amount of the whole value of all the lands in the country, he proposed to remedy this want of money. the parliament of scotland, when he first proposed his project, did not think proper to adopt it. it was afterwards adopted, with some variations, by the duke of orleans, at that time regent of france. the idea of the possibility of multiplying paper to almost any extent was the real foundation of what is called the mississippi scheme, the most extravagant project both of banking and stock-jobbing that, perhaps, the world ever saw. the different operations of this scheme are explained so fully, so clearly, and with so much order and distinctness, by mr. du verney, in his examination of the political reflections upon commerce and finances of mr. du tot, that i shall not give any account of them. the principles upon which it was founded are explained by mr. law himself, in a discourse concerning money and trade, which he published in scotland when he first proposed his project. the splendid but visionary ideas which are set forth in that and some other works upon the same principles still continue to make an impression upon many people, and have, perhaps, in part, contributed to that excess of banking which has of late been complained of both in scotland and in other places. the bank of england is the greatest bank of circulation in europe. it was incorporated, in pursuance of an act of parliament, by a charter under the great seal, dated the 27th of july, 1694. it at that time advanced to government the sum of one million two hundred thousand pounds, for an annuity of one hundred thousand pounds; or for l96,000 a year interest, at the rate of eight per cent, and l4000 a year for the expense of management. the credit of the new government, established by the revolution, we may believe, must have been very low, when it was obliged to borrow at so high an interest. in 1697 the bank was allowed to enlarge its capital stock by an engraftment of l1,001,171 10s. its whole capital stock therefore, amounted at this time to l2,201,171 10s. this engraftment is said to have been for the support of public credit. in 1696, tallies had been at forty, and fifty, and sixty per cent discount, and bank notes at twenty per cent. during the great recoinage of the silver, which was going on at this time, the bank had thought proper to discontinue the payment of its notes, which necessarily occasioned their discredit. in pursuance of the 7th anne, c. 7, the bank advanced and paid into the exchequer the sum of l400,000; making in all the sum of l1,600,000 which it had advanced upon its original annuity of l96,000 interest and l4000 for expense of management. in 1708, therefore, the credit of government was as good as that of private persons, since it could borrow at six per cent interest the common legal and market rate of those times. in pursuance of the same act, the bank cancelled exchequer bills to the amount of l1,775,027 17s. 10 1/2d. at six per cent interest, and was at the same time allowed to take in subscriptions for doubling its capital. in 1708, therefore, the capital of the bank amounted to l4,402,343; and it had advanced to government the sum of l3,375,027 17s. 10 1/2d. by a call of fifteen per cent in 1709, there was paid in and made stock l656,204 is. 9d.; and by another of ten per cent in 1710, l501,448 12s. 11d. in consequence of those two calls, therefore, the bank capital amounted to l5,559,995 14s. 8d. in pursuance of the 3rd george i, c. 8, the bank delivered up two millions of exchequer bills to be cancelled. it had at this time, therefore, advanced to government 17s. 10d. in pursuance of the 8th george 1, c. 21, the bank purchased of the south sea company stock to the amount of 14,000,000; and in 1722, in consequence of the subscriptions which it had taken in for enabling it to make this purchase, its capital stock was increased by l3,400,000. at this time, therefore, the bank had advanced to the public l9,375,027 17s. 10 1/2d.; and its capital stock amounted only to l8,959,995 14s. 8d. it was upon this occasion that the sum which the bank had advanced to the public, and for which it received interest, began first to exceed its capital stock, or the sum for which it paid a dividend to the proprietors of bank stock; or, in other words, that the bank began to have an undivided capital, over and above its divided one. it has continued to have an undivided capital of the same kind ever since. in 1746, the bank had, upon different occasions, advanced to the public l11,686,800 and its divided capital had been raised by different calls and subscriptions to l10,780,000. the state of those two sums has continued to be the same ever since. in pursuance of the 4th of george iii, c. 25, the bank agreed to pay to government for the renewal of its charter l110,000 without interest or repayment. this sum, therefore, did not increase either of those two other sums. the dividend of the bank has varied according to the variations in the rate of the interest which it has, at different times, received for the money it had advanced to the public, as well as according to other circumstances. this rate of interest has gradually been reduced from eight to three per cent. for some years past the bank dividend has been at five and a half per cent. the stability of the bank of england is equal to that of the british government. all that it has advanced to the public must be lost before its creditors can sustain any loss. no other banking company in england can be established by act of parliament, or can consist of more than six members. it acts, not only as an ordinary bank, but as a great engine of state. it receives and pays the greater part of the annuities which are due to the creditors of the public, it circulates exchequer bills, and it advances to government the annual amount of the land and malt taxes, which are frequently not paid up till some years thereafter. in those different operations, its duty to the public may sometimes have obliged it, without any fault of its directors, to overstock the circulation with paper money. it likewise discounts merchants' bills, and has, upon several different occasions, supported the credit of the principal houses, not only of england, but of hamburg and holland. upon one occasion, in 1763, it is said to have advanced for this purpose, in one week, about l1,600,000, a great part of it in bullion. i do not, however, pretend to warrant either the greatness of the sum, or the shortness of the time. upon other occasions, this great company has been reduced to the necessity of paying in sixpences. it is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country. that part of his capital which a dealer is obliged to keep by him unemployed, and in ready money, for answering occasional demands, is so much dead stock, which, so long as it remains in this situation, produces nothing either to him or to his country. the judicious operations of banking enable him to convert this dead stock into active and productive stock; into materials to work upon, into tools to work with, and into provisions and subsistence to work for; into stock which produces something both to himself and to his country. the gold and silver money which circulates in any country, and by means of which the produce of its land and labour is annually circulated and distributed to the proper consumers, is, in the same manner as the ready money of the dealer, all dead stock. it is a very valuable part of the capital of the country, which produces nothing to the country. the judicious operations of banking, by substituting paper in the room of a great part of this gold and silver, enables the country to convert a great part of this dead stock into active and productive stock; into stock which produces something to the country. the gold and silver money which circulates in any country may very properly be compared to a highway, which, while it circulates and carries to market all the grass and corn of the country, produces itself not a single pile of either. the judicious operations of banking, by providing, if i may be allowed so violent a metaphor, a sort of waggon-way through the air, enable the country to convert, as it were, a great part of its highways into good pastures and corn-fields, and thereby to increase very considerably the annual produce of its land and labour. the commerce and industry of the country, however, it must be acknowledged, though they may be somewhat augmented, cannot be altogether so secure when they are thus, as it were, suspended upon the daedalian wings of paper money as when they travel about upon the solid ground of gold and silver. over and above the accidents to which they are exposed from the unskillfulness of the conductors of this paper money, they are liable to several others, from which no prudence or skill of those conductors can guard them. an unsuccessful war, for example, in which the enemy got possession of the capital, and consequently of that treasure which supported the credit of the paper money, would occasion a much greater confusion in a country where the whole circulation was carried on by paper, than in one where the greater part of it was carried on by gold and silver. the usual instrument of commerce having lost its value, no exchanges could be made but either by barter or upon credit. all taxes having been usually paid in paper money, the prince would not have wherewithal either to pay his troops, or to furnish his magazines; and the state of the country would be much more irretrievable than if the greater part of its circulation had consisted in gold and silver. a prince, anxious to maintain his dominions at all times in the state in which he can most easily defend them, ought, upon this account, to guard, not only against that excessive multiplication of paper money which ruins the very banks which issue it; but even against that multiplication of it which enables them to fill the greater part of the circulation of the country with it. the circulation of every country may be considered as divided into two different branches: the circulation of the dealers with one another, and the circulation between the dealers and the consumers. though the same pieces of money, whether paper or metal, may be employed sometimes in the one circulation and sometimes in the other, yet as both are constantly going on at the same time, each requires a certain stock of money of one kind or another to carry it on. the value of the goods circulated between the different dealers, never can exceed the value of those circulated between the dealers and the consumers; whatever is bought by the dealers, being ultimately destined to be sold to the consumers. the circulation between the dealers, as it is carried on by wholesale, requires generally a pretty large sum for every particular transaction. that between the dealers and the consumers, on the contrary, as it is generally carried on by retail, frequently requires but very small ones, a shilling, or even a halfpenny, being often sufficient. but small sums circulate much faster than large ones. a shilling changes masters more frequently than a guinea, and a halfpenny more frequently than a shilling. though the annual purchases of all the consumers, therefore, are at least equal in value to those of all the dealers, they can generally be transacted with a much smaller quantity of money; the same pieces, by a more rapid circulation, serving as the instrument of many more purchases of the one kind than of the other. paper money may be so regulated as either to confine itself very much to the circulation between the different dealers, or to extend itself likewise to a great part of that between the dealers and the consumers. where no bank notes are circulated under ten pounds value, as in london, paper money confines itself very much to the circulation between the dealers. when a ten pound bank note comes into the hands of a consumer, he is generally obliged to change it at the first shop where he has occasion to purchase five shillings' worth of goods, so that it often returns into the hands of a dealer before the consumer has spent the fortieth part of the money. where bank notes are issued for so small sums as twenty shillings, as in scotland, paper money extends itself to a considerable part of the circulation between dealers and consumers. before the act of parliament, which put a stop to the circulation of ten and five shilling notes, it filled a still greater part of that circulation. in the currencies of north america, paper was commonly issued for so small a sum as a shilling, and filled almost the whole of that circulation. in some paper currencies of yorkshire, it was issued even for so small a sum as a sixpence. where the issuing of bank notes for such very small sums is allowed and commonly practised, many mean people are both enabled and encouraged to become bankers. a person whose promissory note for five pounds, or even for twenty shillings, would be rejected by everybody, will get it to be received without scruple when it is issued for so small a sum as a sixpence. but the frequent bankruptcies to which such beggarly bankers must be liable may occasion a very considerable inconveniency, and sometimes even a very great calamity to many poor people who had received their notes in payment. it were better, perhaps, that no bank notes were issued in any part of the kingdom for a smaller sum than five pounds. paper money would then, probably, confine itself, in every part of the kingdom, to the circulation between the different dealers, as much as it does at present in london, where no bank notes are issued under ten pounds' value; five pounds being, in most parts of the kingdom, a sum which, though it will purchase, little more than half the quantity of goods, is as much considered, and is as seldom spent all at once, as ten pounds are amidst the profuse expense of london. where paper money, it is to be observed, is pretty much confined to the circulation between dealers and dealers, as at london, there is always plenty of gold and silver. where it extends itself to a considerable part of the circulation between dealers and consumers, as in scotland, and still more in north america, it banishes gold and silver almost entirely from the country; almost all the ordinary transactions of its interior commerce being thus carried on by paper. the suppression of ten and five shilling bank notes somewhat relieved the scarcity of gold and silver in scotland; and the suppression of twenty shilling notes would probably relieve it still more. those metals are said to have become more abundant in america since the suppression of some of their paper currencies. they are said, likewise, to have been more abundant before the institution of those currencies. though paper money should be pretty much confined to the circulation between dealers and dealers, yet banks and bankers might still be able to give nearly the same assistance to the industry and commerce of the country as they had done when paper money filled almost the whole circulation. the ready money which a dealer is obliged to keep by him, for answering occasional demands, is destined altogether for the circulation between himself and other dealers of whom he buys goods. he has no occasion to keep any by him for the circulation between himself and the consumers, who are his customers, and who bring ready money to him, instead of taking any from him. though no paper money, therefore, was allowed to be issued but for such sums as would confine it pretty much to the circulation between dealers and dealers, yet, partly by discounting real bills of exchange, and partly by lending upon cash accounts, banks and bankers might still be able to relieve the greater part of those dealers from the necessity of keeping any considerable part of their stock by them, unemployed and in ready money, for answering occasional demands. they might still be able to give the utmost assistance which banks and bankers can, with propriety, give to traders of every kind. to restrain private people, it may be said, from receiving in payment the promissory notes of a banker, for any sum whether great or small, when they themselves are willing to receive them, or to restrain a banker from issuing such notes, when all his neighbours are willing to accept of them, is a manifest violation of that natural liberty which it is the proper business of law not to infringe, but to support. such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respects a violation of natural liberty. but those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments, of the most free as well as of the most despotical. the obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed. a paper money consisting in bank notes, issued by people of undoubted credit, payable upon demand without any condition, and in fact always readily paid as soon as presented, is, in every respect, equal in value to gold and silver money; since gold and silver money can at any time be had for it. whatever is either bought or sold for such paper must necessarily be bought or sold as cheap as it could have been for gold and silver. the increase of paper money, it has been said, by augmenting the quantity, and consequently diminishing the value of the whole currency, necessarily augments the money price of commodities. but as the quantity of gold and silver, which is taken from the currency, is always equal to the quantity of paper which is added to it, paper money does not necessarily increase the quantity of the whole currency. from the beginning of the last century to the present time, provisions never were cheaper in scotland than in 1759, though, from the circulation of ten and five shilling bank notes, there was then more paper money in the country than at present. the proportion between the price of provisions in scotland and that in england is the same now as before the great multiplication of banking companies in scotland. corn is, upon most occasions, fully as cheap in england as in france; though there is a great deal of paper money in england, and scarce any in france. in 1751 and in 1752, when mr. hume published his political discourses, and soon after the great multiplication of paper money in scotland, there was a very sensible rise in the price of provisions, owing, probably, to the badness of the seasons, and not to the multiplication of paper money. it would be otherwise, indeed, with a paper money consisting in promissory notes, of which the immediate payment depended, in any respect, either upon the good will of those who issued them, or upon a condition which the holder of the notes might not always have it in his power to fulfil; or of which the payment was not exigible till after a certain number of years, and which in the meantime bore no interest. such a paper money would, no doubt, fall more or less below the value of gold and silver, according as the difficulty or uncertainty of obtaining immediate payment was supposed to be greater or less; or according to the greater or less distance of time at which payment was exigible. some years ago the different banking companies of scotland were in the practice of inserting into their bank notes, what they called an optional clause, by which they promised payment to the bearer, either as soon as the note should be presented, or, in the option of the directors, six months after such presentment, together with the legal interest for the said six months. the directors of some of those banks sometimes took advantage of this optional clause, and sometimes threatened those who demanded gold and silver in exchange for a considerable number of their notes that they would take advantage of it, unless such demanders would content themselves with a part of what they demanded. the promissory notes of those banking companies constituted at that time the far greater part of the currency of scotland, which this uncertainty of payment necessarily degraded below the value of gold and silver money. during the continuance of this abuse (which prevailed chiefly in 1762, 1763, and 1764), while the exchange between london and carlisle was at par, that between london and dumfries would sometimes be four per cent against dumfries, though this town is not thirty miles distant from carlisle. but at carlisle, bills were paid in gold and silver; whereas at dumfries they were paid in scotch bank notes, and the uncertainty of getting those bank notes exchanged for gold and silver coin had thus degraded them four per cent below the value of that coin. the same act of parliament which suppressed ten and five shilling bank notes suppressed likewise this optional clause, and thereby restored the exchange between england and scotland to its natural rate, or to what the course of trade and remittances might happen to make it. in the paper currencies of yorkshire, the payment of so small a sum as a sixpence sometimes depended upon the condition that the holder of the note should bring the change of a guinea to the person who issued it; a condition which the holders of such notes might frequently find it very difficult to fulfil, and which must have degraded this currency below the value of gold and silver money. an act of parliament accordingly declared all such clauses unlawful, and suppressed, in the same manner as in scotland, all promissory notes, payable to the bearer, under twenty shillings value. the paper currencies of north america consisted, not in bank notes payable to the bearer on demand, but in government paper, of which the payment was not exigible till several years after it was issued; and though the colony governments paid no interest to the holders of this paper, they declared it to be, and in fact rendered it, a legal tender of payment for the full value for which it was issued. but allowing the colony security to be perfectly good, a hundred pounds payable fifteen years hence, for example, in a country where interest at six per cent, is worth little more than forty pounds ready money. to oblige a creditor, therefore, to accept of this as full payment for a debt of a hundred pounds actually paid down in ready money was an act of such violent injustice as has scarce, perhaps, been attempted by the government of any other country which pretended to be free. it bears the evident marks of having originally been, what the honest and downright doctor douglas assures us it was, a scheme of fraudulent debtors to cheat their creditors. the government of pennsylvania, indeed, pretended, upon their first emission of paper money, in 1722, to render their paper of equal value with gold and silver by enacting penalties against all those who made any difference in the price of their goods when they sold them for a colony paper, and when they sold them for gold and silver; a regulation equally tyrannical, but much less effectual than that which it was meant to support. a positive law may render a shilling a legal tender for guinea, because it may direct the courts of justice to discharge the debtor who has made that tender. but no positive law can oblige a person who sells goods, and who is at liberty to sell or not to sell as he pleases, to accept of a shilling as equivalent to a guinea in the price of them. notwithstanding any regulation of this kind, it appeared by the course of exchange with great britain, that a hundred pounds sterling was occasionally considered as equivalent, in some of the colonies, to a hundred and thirty pounds, and in others to so great a sum as eleven hundred pounds currency; this difference in the value arising from the difference in the quantity of paper emitted in the different colonies, and in the distance and probability of the term of its final discharge and redemption. no law, therefore, could be more equitable than the act of parliament, so unjustly complained of in the colonies, which declared that no paper currency to be emitted there in time coming should be a legal tender of payment. pennsylvania was always more moderate in its emissions of paper money than any other of our colonies. its paper currency, accordingly, is said never to have sunk below the value of the gold and silver which was current in the colony before the first emission of its paper money. before that emission, the colony had raised the denomination of its coin, and had, by act of assembly, ordered five shillings sterling to pass in the colony for six and threepence, and afterwards for six and eightpence. a pound colony currency, therefore, even when that currency was gold and silver, was more than thirty per cent below the value of a pound sterling, and when that currency was turned into paper it was seldom much more than thirty per cent below that value. the pretence for raising the denomination of the coin, was to prevent the exportation of gold and silver, by making equal quantities of those metals pass for greater sums in the colony than they did in the mother country. it was found, however, that the price of all goods from the mother country rose exactly in proportion as they raised the denomination of their coin, so that their gold and silver were exported as fast as ever. the paper of each colony being received in the payment of the provincial taxes, for the full value for which it had been issued, it necessarily derived from this use some additional value over and above what it would have had from the real or supposed distance of the term of its final discharge and redemption. this additional value was greater or less, according as the quantity of paper issued was more or less above what could be employed in the payment of the taxes of the particular colony which issued it. it was in all the colonies very much above what could be employed in this manner. a prince who should enact that a certain proportion of his taxes should be paid in a paper money of a certain kind might thereby give a certain value to this paper money, even though the term of its final discharge and redemption should depend altogether upon the will of the prince. if the bank which issued this paper was careful to keep the quantity of it always somewhat below what could easily be employed in this manner, the demand for it might be such as to make it even bear a premium, or sell for somewhat more in the market than the quantity of gold or silver currency for which it was issued. some people account in this manner for what is called the agio of the bank of amsterdam, or for the superiority of bank money over current money; though this bank money, as they pretend, cannot be taken out of the bank at the will of the owner. the greater part of foreign bills of exchange must be paid in bank money, that is, by a transfer in the books of the bank; and the directors of the bank, they allege, are careful to keep the whole quantity of bank money always below what this use occasions a demand for. it is upon this account, they say, that bank money sells for a premium, or bears an agio of four or five per cent above the same nominal sum of the gold and silver currency of the country. this account of the bank of amsterdam, however, it will appear hereafter, is in a great measure chimerical. a paper currency which falls below the value of gold and silver coin does not thereby sink the value of those metals, or occasion equal quantities of them to exchange for a smaller quantity of goods of any other kind. the proportion between the value of gold and silver and that of goods of any other kind depends in all cases not upon the nature or quantity of any particular paper money, which may be current in any particular country, but upon the richness or poverty of the mines, which happen at any particular time to supply the great market of the commercial world with those metals. it depends upon the proportion between the quantity of labour which is necessary in order to bring a certain quantity of gold and silver to market, and that which is necessary in order to bring thither a certain quantity of any other sort of goods. if bankers are restrained from issuing any circulating bank notes, or notes payable to the bearer, for less than a certain sum, and if they are subjected to the obligation of an immediate and unconditional payment of such bank notes as soon as presented, their trade may, with safety to the public, be rendered in all other respects perfectly free. the late multiplication of banking companies in both parts of the united kingdom, an event by which many people have been much alarmed, instead of diminishing, increases the security of the public. it obliges all of them to be more circumspect in their conduct, and, by not extending their currency beyond its due proportion to their cash, to guard themselves against those malicious runs which the rivalship of so many competitors is always ready to bring upon them. it restrains the circulation of each particular company within a narrower circle, and reduces their circulating notes to a smaller number. by dividing the whole circulation into a greater number of parts, the failure of any one company, an accident which, in the course of things, must sometimes happen, becomes of less consequence to the public. this free competition, too, obliges all bankers to be more liberal in their dealings with their customers, lest their rivals should carry them away. in general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the public, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so. chapter iii of the accumulation of capital, or of productive and unproductive labour there is one sort of labour which adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed: there is another which has no such effect. the former, as it produces a value, may be called productive; the latter, unproductive labour. thus the labour of a manufacturer adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his master's profit. the labour of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing. though the manufacturer has his wages advanced to him by his master, he, in reality, costs him no expense, the value of those wages being generally restored, together with a profit, in the improved value of the subject upon which his labour is bestowed. but the maintenance of a menial servant never is restored. a man grows rich by employing a multitude of manufacturers: he grows poor by maintaining a multitude of menial servants. the labour of the latter, however, has its value, and deserves its reward as well as that of the former. but the labour of the manufacturer fixes and realizes itself in some particular subject or vendible commodity, which lasts for some time at least after that labour is past. it is, as it were, a certain quantity of labour stocked and stored up to be employed, if necessary, upon some other occasion. that subject, or what is the same thing, the price of that subject, can afterwards, if necessary, put into motion a quantity of labour equal to that which had originally produced it. the labour of the menial servant, on the contrary, does not fix or realize itself in any particular subject or vendible commodity. his services generally perish in the very instant of their performance, and seldom leave any trace or value behind them for which an equal quantity of service could afterwards be procured. the labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject; or vendible commodity, which endures after that labour is past, and for which an equal quantity of labour could afterwards be procured. the sovereign, for example, with all the officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers. they are the servants of the public, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people. their service, how honourable, how useful, or how necessary soever, produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be procured. the protection, security, and defence of the commonwealth, the effect of their labour this year will not purchase its protection, security, and defence for the year to come. in the same class must be ranked, some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous professions: churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc. the labour of the meanest of these has a certain value, regulated by the very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour; and that of the n oblest and most useful, 50 produces nothing which could afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity of labour. like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of them perishes in the very instant of its production. both productive and unproductive labourers, and those who do not labour at all, are all equally maintained by the annual produce of the land and labour of the country. this produce, how great soever, can never be infinite, but must have certain limits. according, therefore, as a smaller or greater proportion of it is in any one year employed in maintaining unproductive hands, the more in the one case and the less in the other will remain for the productive, and the next year's produce will be greater or smaller accordingly; the whole annual produce, if we except the spontaneous productions of the earth, being the effect of productive labour. though the whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country is, no doubt, ultimately destined for supplying the consumption of its inhabitants, and for procuring a revenue to them, yet when it first comes either from the ground, or from the hands of the productive labourers, it naturally divides itself into two parts. one of them, and frequently the largest, is, in the first place, destined for replacing a capital, or for renewing the provisions, materials, and finished work, which had been withdrawn from a capital; the other for constituting a revenue either to the owner of this capital, as the profit of his stock, or to some other person, as the rent of his land. thus, of the produce of land, one part replaces the capital of the farmer; the other pays his profit and the rent of the landlord; and thus constitutes a revenue both to the owner of this capital, as the profits of his stock; and to some other person, as the rent of his land. of the produce of a great manufactory, in the same manner, one part, and that always the largest, replaces the capital of the undertaker of the work; the other pays his profit, and thus constitutes a revenue to the owner of this capital. that part of the annual produce of the land and labour of any country which replaces a capital never is immediately employed to maintain any but productive hands. it pays the wages of productive labour only. that which is immediately destined for constituting a revenue, either as profit or as rent, may maintain indifferently either productive or unproductive hands. whatever part of his stock a man employs as a capital, he always expects is to be replaced to him with a profit. he employs it, therefore, in maintaining productive bands only; and after having served in the function of a capital to him, it constitutes a revenue to them. whenever he employs any part of it in maintaining unproductive hands of any kind, that part is, from that moment, withdrawn from his capital, and placed in his stock reserved for immediate consumption. unproductive labourers, and those who do not labour at all, are all maintained by revenue; either, first, by that part of the annual produce which is originally destined for constituting a revenue to some particular persons, either as the rent of land or as the profits of stock; or, secondly, by that part which, though originally destined for replacing a capital and for maintaining productive labourers only, yet when it comes into their hands whatever part of it is over and above their necessary subsistence may be employed in maintaining indifferently either productive or unproductive hands. thus, not only the great landlord or the rich merchant, but even the common workman, if his wages are considerable, may maintain a menial servant; or he may sometimes go to a play or a puppetshow, and so contribute his share towards maintaining one set of unproductive labourers; or he may pay some taxes, and thus help to maintain another set, more honourable and useful indeed, but equally unproductive. no part of the annual produce, however, which had been originally destined to replace a capital, is ever directed towards maintaining unproductive hands till after it has put into motion its full complement of productive labour, or all that it could put into motion in the way in which it was employed. the workman must have earned his wages by work done before he can employ any part of them in this manner. that part, too, is generally but a small one. it is his spare revenue only, of which productive labourers have seldom a great deal. they generally have some, however; and in the payment of taxes the greatness of their number may compensate, in some measure, the smallness of their contribution. the rent of land and the profits of stock are everywhere, therefore, the principal sources from which unproductive hands derive their subsistence. these are the two sorts of revenue of which the owners have generally most to spare. they might both maintain indifferently either productive or unproductive hands. they seem, however, to have some predilection for the latter. the expense of a great lord feeds generally more idle than industrious people. the rich merchant, though with his capital he maintains industrious people only, yet by his expense, that is, by the employment of his revenue, he feeds commonly the very same sort as the great lord. the proportion, therefore, between the productive and unproductive hands, depends very much in every country upon the proportion between that part of the annual produce, which, as soon as it comes either from the ground or from the hands of the productive labourers, is destined for replacing a capital, and that which is destined for constituting a revenue, either as rent or as profit. this proportion is very different in rich from what it is in poor countries. thus, at present, in the opulent countries of europe, a very large, frequently the largest portion of the produce of the land is destined for replacing the capital of the rich and independent farmer; the other for paying his profits and the rent of the landlord. but anciently, during the prevalency of the feudal government, a very small portion of the produce was sufficient to replace the capital employed in cultivation. it consisted commonly in a few wretched cattle, maintained altogether by the spontaneous produce of uncultivated land, and which might, therefore, be considered as a part of that spontaneous produce. it generally, too, belonged to the landlord, and was by him advanced to the occupiers of the land. all the rest of the produce properly belonged to him too, either as rent for his land, or as profit upon this paltry capital. the occupiers of land were generally bondmen, whose persons and effects were equally his property. those who were not bondmen were tenants at will, and though the rent which they paid was often nominally little more than a quit-rent, it really amounted to the whole produce of the land. their lord could at all times command their labour in peace and their service in war. though they lived at a distance from his house, they were equally dependent upon him as his retainers who lived in it. but the whole produce of the land undoubtedly belongs to him who can dispose of the labour and service of all those whom it maintains. in the present state of europe, the share of the landlord seldom exceeds a third, sometimes not a fourth part of the whole produce of the land. the rent of land, however, in all the improved parts of the country, has been tripled and quadrupled since those ancient times; and this third or fourth part of the annual produce is, it seems, three or four times greater than the whole had been before. in the progress of improvement, rent, though it increases in proportion to the extent, diminishes in proportion to the produce of the land. in the opulent countries of europe, great capitals are at present employed in trade and manufactures. in the ancient state, the little trade that was stirring, and the few homely and coarse manufactures that were carried on, required but very small capitals. these, however, must have yielded very large profits. the rate of interest was nowhere less than ten per cent, and their profits must have been sufficient to afford this great interest. at present the rate of interest, in the improved parts of europe, is nowhere higher than six per cent, and in some of the most improved it is so low as four, three, and two per cent. though that part of the revenue of the inhabitants which is derived from the profits of stock is always much greater in rich than in poor countries, it is because the stock is much greater: in proportion to the stock the profits are generally much less. that part of the annual produce, therefore, which, as soon as it comes either from the ground or from the hands of the productive labourers, is destined for replacing a capital, is not only much greater in rich than in poor countries, but bears a much greater proportion to that which is immediately destined for constituting a revenue either as rent or as profit. the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour are not only much greater in the former than in the latter, but bear a much greater proportion to those which, though they may be employed to maintain either productive or unproductive hands, have generally a predilection for the latter. the proportion between those different funds necessarily determines in every country the general character of the inhabitants as to industry or idleness. we are more industrious than our forefathers; because in the present times the funds destined for the maintenance of industry are much greater in proportion to those which are likely to be employed in the maintenance of idleness than they were two or three centuries ago. our ancestors were idle for want of a sufficient encouragement to industry. it is better, says the proverb, to play for nothing than to work for nothing. in mercantile and manufacturing towns, where the inferior ranks of people are chiefly maintained by the employment of capital, they are in general industrious, sober, and thriving; as in many english, and in most dutch towns. in those towns which are principally supported by the constant or occasional residence of a court, and in which the inferior ranks of people are chiefly maintained by the spending of revenue, they are in general idle, dissolute, and poor; as at rome, versailles, compiegne, and fontainebleu. if you except rouen and bordeaux, there is little trade or industry in any of the parliament towns of france; and the inferior ranks of people, being elderly maintained by the expense of the members of the courts of justice, and of those who come to plead before them, are in general idle and poor. the great trade of rouen and bordeaux seems to be altogether the effect of their situation. rouen is necessarily the entrepot of almost all the goods which are brought either from foreign countries, or from the maritime provinces of france, for the consumption of the great city of paris. bordeaux is in the same manner the entrepot of the wines which grow upon the banks of the garonne, and of the rivers which run into it, one of the richest wine countries in the world, and which seems to produce the wine fittest for exportation, or best suited to the taste of foreign nations. such advantageous situations necessarily attract a great capital by the great employment which they afford it; and the employment of this capital is the cause of the industry of those two cities. in the other parliament towns of france, very little more capital seems to be employed than what is necessary for supplying their own consumption; that is, little more than the smallest capital which can be employed in them. the same thing may be said of paris, madrid, and vienna. of those three cities, paris is by far the most industrious; but paris itself is the principal market of all the manufactures established at paris, and its own consumption is the principal object of all the trade which it carries on. london, lisbon, and copenhagen, are, perhaps, the only three cities in europe which are both the constant residence of a court, and can at the same time be considered as trading cities, or as cities which trade not only for their own consumption, but for that of other cities and countries. the situation of all the three is extremely advantageous, and naturally fits them to be the entrepots of a great part of the goods destined for the consumption of distant places. in a city where a great revenue is spent, to employ with advantage a capital for any other purpose than for supplying the consumption of that city is probably more difficult than in one in which the inferior ranks of people have no other maintenance but what they derive from the employment of such a capital. the idleness of the greater part of the people who are maintained by the expense of revenue corrupts, it is probable, the industry of those who ought to be maintained by the employment of capital, and renders it less advantageous to employ a capital there than in other places. there was little trade or industry in edinburgh before the union. when the scotch parliament was no longer to be assembled in it, when it ceased to be the necessary residence of the principal nobility and gentry of scotland, it became a city of some trade and industry. it still continues, however, to be the residence of the principal courts of justice in scotland, of the boards of customs and excise, etc. a considerable revenue, therefore, still continues to be spent in it. in trade and industry it is much inferior to glasgow, of which the inhabitants are chiefly maintained by the employment of capital. the inhabitants of a large village, it has sometimes been observed, after having made considerable progress in manufactures, have become idle and poor in consequence of a great lord having taken up his residence in their neighbourhood. the proportion between capital and revenue, therefore, seems everywhere to regulate the proportion between industry and idleness. wherever capital predominates, industry prevails: wherever revenue, idleness. every increase or diminution of capital, therefore, naturally tends to increase or diminish the real quantity of industry, the number of productive hands, and consequently the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, the real wealth and revenue of all its inhabitants. capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigality and misconduct. whatever a person saves from his revenue he adds to his capital, and either employs it himself in maintaining an additional number of productive hands, or enables some other person to do so, by lending it to him for an interest, that is, for a share of the profits. as the capital of an individual can be increased only by what he saves from his annual revenue or his annual gains, so the capital of a society, which is the same with that of all the individuals who compose it, can be increased only in the same manner. parsimony, and not industry, is the immediate cause of the increase of capital. industry, indeed, provides the subject which parsimony accumulates. but whatever industry might acquire, if parsimony did not save and store up, the capital would never be the greater. parsimony, by increasing the fund which is destined for the maintenance of productive hands, tends to increase the number of those hands whose labour adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed. it tends, therefore, to increase the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country. it puts into motion an additional quantity of industry, which gives an additional value to the annual produce. what is annually saved is as regularly consumed as what is annually spent, and nearly in the same time too; but it is consumed by a different set of people. that portion of his revenue which a rich man annually spends is in most cases consumed by idle guests and menial servants, who leave nothing behind them in return for their consumption. that portion which he annually saves, as for the sake of the profit it is immediately employed as a capital, is consumed in the same manner, and nearly in the same time too, but by a different set of people, by labourers, manufacturers, and artificers, who reproduce with a profit the value of their annual consumption. his revenue, we shall suppose, is paid him in money. had he spent the whole, the food, clothing, and lodging, which the whole could have purchased, would have been distributed among the former set of people. by saving a part of it, as that part is for the sake of the profit immediately employed as a capital either by himself or by some other person, the food, clothing, and lodging, which may be purchased with it, are necessarily reserved for the latter. the consumption is the same, but the consumers are different. by what a frugal man annually saves, he not only affords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands, for that or the ensuing year, but, like the founder of a public workhouse, he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come. the perpetual allotment and destination of this fund, indeed, is not always guarded by any positive law, by any trust-right or deed of mortmain. it is always guarded, however, by a very powerful principle, the plain and evident interest of every individual to whom any share of it shall ever belong. no part of it can ever afterwards be employed to maintain any but productive hands without an evident loss to the person who thus perverts it from its proper destination. the prodigal perverts it in this manner. by not confining his expense within his income, he encroaches upon his capital. like him who perverts the revenues of some pious foundation to profane purposes, he pays the wages of idleness with those funds which the frugality of his forefathers had, as it were, consecrated to the maintenance of industry. by diminishing the funds destined for the employment of productive labour, he necessarily diminishes, so far as it depends upon him, the quantity of that labour which adds a value to the subject upon which it is bestowed, and, consequently, the value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the whole country, the real wealth and revenue of its inhabitants. if the prodigality of some was not compensated by the frugality of others, the conduct of every prodigal, by feeding the idle with the bread of the industrious, tends not only to beggar himself, but to impoverish his country. though the expense of the prodigal should be altogether in home-made, and no part of it in foreign commodities, its effect upon the productive funds of the society would still be the same. every year there would still be a certain quantity of food and clothing, which ought to have maintained productive, employed in maintaining unproductive hands. every year, therefore, there would still be some diminution in what would otherwise have been the value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country. this expense, it may be said indeed, not being in foreign goods, and not occasioning any exportation of gold and silver, the same quantity of money would remain in the country as before. but if the quantity of food and clothing, which were thus consumed by unproductive, had been distributed among productive hands, they would have reproduced, together with a profit, the full value of their consumption. the same quantity of money would in this case equally have remained in the country, and there would besides have been a reproduction of an equal value of consumable goods. there would have been two values instead of one. the same quantity of money, besides, cannot long remain in any country in which the value of the annual produce diminishes. the sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods. by means of it, provisions, materials, and finished work, are bought and sold, and distributed to their proper consumers. the quantity of money, therefore, which can be annually employed in any country must be determined by the value of the consumable goods annually circulated within it. these must consist either in the immediate produce of the land and labour of the country itself, or in something which had been, purchased with some part of that produce. their value, therefore, must diminish as the value of that produce diminishes, and along with it the quantity of money which can be employed in circulating them. but the money which by this annual diminution of produce is annually thrown out of domestic circulation will not be allowed to lie idle. the interest of whoever possesses it requires that it should be employed. but having no employment at home, it will, in spite of all laws and prohibitions, be sent abroad, and employed in purchasing consumable goods which may be of some use at home. its annual exportation will in this manner continue for some time to add something to the annual consumption of the country beyond the value of its own annual produce. what in the days of its prosperity had been saved from that annual produce, and employed in purchasing gold and silver, will contribute for some little time to support its consumption in adversity. the exportation of gold and silver is, in this case, not the cause, but the effect of its declension, and may even, for some little time, alleviate the misery of that declension. the quantity of money, on the contrary, must in every country naturally increase as the value of the annual produce increases. the value of the consumable goods annually circulated within the society being greater will require a greater quantity of money to circulate them. a part of the increased produce, therefore, will naturally be employed in purchasing, wherever it is to be had, the additional quantity of gold and silver necessary for circulating the rest. the increase of those metals will in this case be the effect, not the cause, of the public prosperity. gold and silver are purchased everywhere in the same manner. the food, clothing, and lodging, the revenue and maintenance of all those whose labour or stock is employed in bringing them from the mine to the market, is the price paid for them in peru as well as in england. the country which has this price to pay will never be long without the quantity of those metals which it has occasion for; and no country will ever long retain a quantity which it has no occasion for. whatever, therefore, we may imagine the real wealth and revenue of a country to consist in, whether in the value of the annual produce of its land and labour, as plain reason seems to dictate; or in the quantity of the precious metals which circulate within it, as vulgar prejudices suppose; in either view of the matter, every prodigal appears to be a public enemy, and every frugal man a public benefactor. the effects of misconduct are often the same as those of prodigality. every injudicious and unsuccessful project in agriculture, mines, fisheries, trade, or manufactures, tends in the same manner to diminish the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour. in every such project, though the capital is consumed by productive hands only, yet, as by the injudicious manner in which they are employed they do not reproduce the full value of their consumption, there must always be some diminution in what would otherwise have been the productive funds of the society. it can seldom happen, indeed, that the circumstances of a great nation can be much affected either by the prodigality or misconduct of individuals; the profusion or imprudence of some being always more than compensated by the frugality and good conduct of others. with regard to profusion, the principle which prompts to expense is the passion for present enjoyment; which, though sometimes violent and very difficult to be restrained, is in general only momentary and occasional. but the principle which prompts to save is the desire of bettering our condition, a desire which, though generally calm and dispassionate, comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us till we go into the grave. in the whole interval which separates those two moments, there is scarce perhaps a single instant in which any man is so perfectly and completely satisfied with his situation as to be without any wish of alteration or improvement of any kind. an augmentation of fortune is the means by which the greater part of men propose and wish to better their condition. it is the means the most vulgar and the most obvious; and the most likely way of augmenting their fortune is to save and accumulate some part of what they acquire, either regularly and annually, or upon some extraordinary occasions. though the principle of expense, therefore, prevails in almost all men upon some occasions, and in some men upon almost all occasions, yet in the greater part of men, taking the whole course of their life at an average, the principle of frugality seems not only to predominate, but to predominate very greatly. with regard to misconduct, the number of prudent and successful undertakings is everywhere much greater than that of injudicious and unsuccessful ones. after all our complaints of the frequency of bankruptcies, the unhappy men who fall into this misfortune make but a very small part of the whole number engaged in trade, and all other sorts of business; not much more perhaps than one in a thousand. bankruptcy is perhaps the greatest and most humiliating calamity which can befall an innocent man. the greater part of men, therefore, are sufficiently careful to avoid it. some, indeed, do not avoid it; as some do not avoid the gallows. great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct. the whole, or almost the whole public revenue, is in most countries employed in maintaining unproductive hands. such are the people who compose a numerous and splendid court, a great ecclesiastical establishment, great fleets and armies, who in time of peace produce nothing, and in time of war acquire nothing which can compensate the expense of maintaining them, even while the war lasts. such people, as they themselves produce nothing, are all maintained by the produce of other men's labour. when multiplied, therefore, to an unnecessary number, they may in a particular year consume so great a share of this produce, as not to leave a sufficiency for maintaining the productive labourers, who should reproduce it next year. the next year's produce, therefore, will be less than that of the foregoing, and if the same disorder should continue, that of the third year will be still less than that of the second. those unproductive hands, who should be maintained by a part only of the spare revenue of the people, may consume so great a share of their whole revenue, and thereby oblige so great a number to encroach upon their capitals, upon the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour, that all the frugality and good conduct of individuals may not be able to compensate the waste and degradation of produce occasioned by this violent and forced encroachment. this frugality and good conduct, however, is upon most occasions, it appears from experience, sufficient to compensate, not only the private prodigality and misconduct of individuals, but the public extravagance of government. the uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition, the principle from which public and national, as well as private opulence is originally derived, is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things towards improvement, in spite both of the extravagance of government and of the greatest errors of administration. like the unknown principle of animal life, it frequently restores health and vigour to the constitution, in spite, not only of the disease, but of the absurd prescriptions of the doctor. the annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed. the number of its productive labourers, it is evident, can never be much increased, but in consequence of an increase of capital, or of the funds destined for maintaining them. the productive powers of the same number of labourers cannot be increased, but in consequence either of some addition and improvement to those machines and instruments which facilitate and abridge labour; or of a more proper division and distribution of employment. in either case an additional capital is almost always required. it is by means of an additional capital only that the undertaker of any work can either provide his workmen with better machinery or make a more proper distribution of employment among them. when the work to be done consists of a number of parts, to keep every man constantly employed in one way requires a much greater capital than where every man is occasionally employed in every different part of the work. when we compare, therefore, the state of a nation at two different periods, and find, that the annual produce of its land and labour is evidently greater at the latter than at the former, that its lands are better cultivated, its manufactures more numerous and more flourishing, and its trade more extensive, we may be assured that its capital must have increased during the interval between those two periods, and that more must have been added to it by the good conduct of some than had been taken from it either by the private misconduct of others or by the public extravagance of government. but we shall find this to have been the case of almost all nations, in all tolerably quiet and peaceable times, even of those who have not enjoyed the most prudent and parsimonious governments. to form a right judgment of it, indeed, we must compare the state of the country at periods somewhat distant from one another. the progress is frequently so gradual that, at near periods, the improvement is not only not sensible, but from the declension either of certain branches of industry, or of certain districts of the country, things which sometimes happen though the country in general be in great prosperity, there frequently arises a suspicion that the riches and industry of the whole are decaying. the annual produce of the land and labour of england, for example, is certainly much greater than it was, a little more than a century ago, at the restoration of charles ii. though, at present, few people, i believe, doubt of this, yet during this period, five years have seldom passed away in which some book or pamphlet has not been published, written, too, with such abilities as to gain some authority with the public, and pretending to demonstrate that the wealth of the nation was fast declining, that the country was depopulated, agriculture neglected, manufactures decaying, and trade undone. nor have these publications been all party pamphlets, the wretched offspring of falsehood and venality. many of them have been written by very candid and very intelligent people, who wrote nothing but what they believed, and for no other reason but because they believed it. the annual produce of the land and labour of england, again, was certainly much greater at the restoration, than we can suppose it to have been about an hundred years before, at the accession of elizabeth. at this period, too, we have all reason to believe, the country was much more advanced in improvement than it had been about a century before, towards the close of the dissensions between the houses of york and lancaster. even then it was, probably, in a better condition than it had been at the norman conquest, and at the norman conquest than during the confusion of the saxon heptarchy. even at this early period, it was certainly a more improved country than at the invasion of julius caesar, when its inhabitants were nearly in the same state with the savages in north america. in each of those periods, however, there was not only much private and public profusion, many expensive and unnecessary wars, great perversion of the annual produce from maintaining productive to maintain unproductive hands; but sometimes, in the confusion of civil discord, such absolute waste and destruction of stock, as might be supposed, not only to retard, as it certainly did, the natural accumulation of riches, but to have left the country, at the end of the period, poorer than at the beginning. thus, in the happiest and most fortunate period of them all, that which has passed since the restoration, how many disorders and misfortunes have occurred, which, could they have been foreseen, not only the impoverishment, but the total ruin of the country would have been expected from them? the fire and the plague of london, the two dutch wars, the disorders of the revolution, the war in ireland, the four expensive french wars of 1688, 1702, 1742, and 1756, together with the two rebellions of 1715 and 1745. in the course of the four french wars, the nation has contracted more than a hundred and forty-five millions of debt, over and above all the other extraordinary annual expense which they occasioned, so that the whole cannot be computed at less than two hundred millions. so great a share of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country has, since the revolution, been employed upon different occasions in maintaining an extraordinary number of unproductive hands. but had not those wars given this particular direction to so large a capital, the greater part of it would naturally have been employed in maintaining productive hands, whose labour would have replaced, with a profit, the whole value of their consumption. the value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country would have been considerably increased by it every year, and every year's increase would have augmented still more that of the following year. more houses would have been built, more lands would have been improved, and those which had been improved before would have been better cultivated, more manufactures would have been established. and those which had been established before would have been more extended; and to what height the real wealth and revenue of the country might, by this time, have been raised, it is not perhaps very easy even to imagine. but though the profusion of government must, undoubtedly, have retarded the natural progress of england towards wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it. the annual produce of its land and labour is, undoubtedly, much greater at present than it was either at the restoration or at the revolution. the capital, therefore, annually employed in cultivating this land, and in maintaining this labour, must likewise be much greater. in the midst of all the exactions of government, this capital has been silently and gradually accumulated by the private frugality and good conduct of individuals, by their universal, continual, and uninterrupted effort to better their own condition. it is this effort, protected by law and allowed by liberty to exert itself in the manner that is most advantageous, which has maintained the progress of england towards opulence and improvement in almost all former times, and which, it is to be hoped, will do so in all future times. england, however, as it has never been blessed with a very parsimonious government, so parsimony has at no time been the characteristical virtue of its inhabitants. it is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. they are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. if their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will. as frugality increases and prodigality diminishes the public capital, so the conduct of those whose expense just equals their revenue, without either accumulating or encroaching, neither increases nor diminishes it. some modes of expense, however, seem to contribute more to the growth of public opulence than others. the revenue of an individual may be spent either in things which are consumed immediately, and in which one day's expense can neither alleviate nor support that of another, or it may be spent in things more durable, which can therefore be accumulated, and in which every day's expense may, as he chooses, either alleviate or support and heighten the effect of that of the following day. a man of fortune, for example, may either spend his revenue in a profuse and sumptuous table, and in maintaining a great number of menial servants, and a multitude of dogs and horses; or contenting himself with a frugal table and few attendants, he may lay out the greater part of it in adorning his house or his country villa, in useful or ornamental buildings, in useful or ornamental furniture, in collecting books, statues, pictures; or in things more frivolous, jewels, baubles, ingenious trinkets of different kinds; or, what is most trifling of all, in amassing a great wardrobe of fine clothes, like the favourite and minister of a great prince who died a few years ago. were two men of equal fortune to spend their revenue, the one chiefly in the one way, the other in the other, the magnificence of the person whose expense had been chiefly in durable commodities, would be continually increasing, every day's expense contributing something to support and heighten the effect of that of the following day: that of the other, on the contrary, would be no greater at the end of the period than at the beginning. the former, too, would, at the end of the period, be the richer man of the two. he would have a stock of goods of some kind or other, which, though it might not be worth all that it cost, would always be worth something. no trace or vestige of the expense of the latter would remain, and the effects of ten or twenty years profusion would be as completely annihilated as if they had never existed. as the one mode of expense is more favourable than the other to the opulence of an individual, so is it likewise to that of a nation. the houses, the furniture, the clothing of the rich, in a little time, become useful to the inferior and middling ranks of people. they are able to purchase them when their superiors grow weary of them, and the general accommodation of the whole people is thus gradually improved, when this mode of expense becomes universal among men of fortune. in countries which have long been rich, you will frequently find the inferior ranks of people in possession both of houses and furniture perfectly good and entire, but of which neither the one could have been built, nor the other have been made for their use. what was formerly a seat of the family of seymour is now an inn upon the bath road. the marriage-bed of james the first of great britain, which his queen brought with her from denmark as a present fit for a sovereign to make to a sovereign, was, a few years ago, the ornament of an alehouse at dunfermline. in some ancient cities, which either have been long stationary, or have gone somewhat to decay, you will sometimes scarce find a single house which could have been built for its present inhabitants. if you go into those houses too, you will frequently find many excellent, though antiquated pieces of furniture, which are still very fit for use, and which could as little have been made for them. noble palaces, magnificent villas, great collections of books, statues, pictures and other curiosities, are frequently both an ornament and an honour, not only to the neighbourhood, but to the whole country to which they belong. versailles is an ornament and an honour to france, stowe and wilton to england. italy still continues to command some sort of veneration by the number of monuments of this kind which it possesses, though the wealth which produced them has decayed, and though the genius which planned them seems to be extinguished, perhaps from not having the same employment. the expense too, which is laid out in durable commodities, is favourable, not only to accumulation, but to frugality. if a person should at any time exceed in it, he can easily reform without exposing himself to the censure of the public. to reduce very much the number of his servants, to reform his table from great profusion to great frugality, to lay down his equipage after he has once set it up, are changes which cannot escape the observation of his neighbours, and which are supposed to imply some acknowledgment of preceding bad conduct. few, therefore, of those who have once been so unfortunate as to launch out too far into this sort of expense, have afterwards the courage to reform, till ruin and bankruptcy oblige them. but if a person has, at any time, been at too great an expense in building, in furniture, in books or pictures, no imprudence can be inferred from his changing his conduct. these are things in which further expense is frequently rendered unnecessary by former expense; and when a person stops short, he appears to do so, not because he has exceeded his fortune, but because he has satisfied his fancy. the expense, besides, that is laid out in durable commodities gives maintenance, commonly, to a greater number of people than that which is employed in the most profuse hospitality. of two or three hundredweight of provisions, which may sometimes be served up at a great festival, one half, perhaps, is thrown to the dunghill, and there is always a great deal wasted and abused. but if the expense of this entertainment had been employed in setting to work masons, carpenters, upholsterers, mechanics, etc., a quantity of provisions, of equal value, would have been distributed among a still greater number of people who would have bought them in pennyworths and pound weights, and not have lost or thrown away a single ounce of them. in the one way, besides, this expense maintains productive, in the other unproductive hands. in the one way, therefore, it increases, in the other, it does not increase, the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country. i would not, however, by all this be understood to mean that the one species of expense always betokens a more liberal or generous spirit than the other. when a man of fortune spends his revenue chiefly in hospitality, he shares the greater part of it with his friends and companions; but when he employs it in purchasing such durable commodities, he often spends the whole upon his own person, and gives nothing to anybody without an equivalent. the latter species of expense, therefore, especially when directed towards frivolous objects, the little ornaments of dress and furniture, jewels, trinkets, gewgaws, frequently indicates, not only a trifling, but a base and selfish disposition. all that i mean is, that the one sort of expense, as it always occasions some accumulation of valuable commodities, as it is more favourable to private frugality, and, consequently, to the increase of the public capital, and as it maintains productive, rather than unproductive hands, conduces more than the other to the growth of public opulence. chapter iv of stock lent at interest the stock which is lent at interest is always considered as a capital by the lender. he expects that in due time it is to be restored to him, and that in the meantime the borrower is to pay him a certain annual rent for the use of it. the borrower may use it either as a capital, or as a stock reserved for immediate consumption. if he uses it as a capital, he employs it in the maintenance of productive labourers, who reproduce the value with a profit. he can, in this case, both restore the capital and pay the interest without alienating or encroaching upon any other source of revenue. if he uses it as a stock reserved for immediate consumption, he acts the part of a prodigal, and dissipates in the maintenance of the idle what was destined for the support of the industrious. he can, in this case, neither restore the capital nor pay the interest without either alienating or encroaching upon some other source of revenue, such as the property or the rent of land. the stock which is lent at interest is, no doubt, occasionally employed in both these ways, but in the former much more frequently than in the latter. the man who borrows in order to spend will soon be ruined, and he who lends to him will generally have occasion to repent of his folly. to borrow or to lend for such a purpose, therefore, is in all cases, where gross usury is out of the question, contrary to the interest of both parties; and though it no doubt happens sometimes that people do both the one and the other; yet, from the regard that all men have for their own interest, we may be assured that it cannot happen so very frequently as we are sometimes apt to imagine. ask any rich man of common prudence to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employ it profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he will laugh at you for proposing the question. even among borrowers, therefore, not the people in the world most famous for frugality, the number of the frugal and industrious surpasses considerably that of the prodigal and idle. the only people to whom stock is commonly lent, without their being expected to make any very profitable use of it, are country gentlemen who borrow upon mortgage. even they scarce ever borrow merely to spend. what they borrow, one may say, is commonly spent before they borrow it. they have generally consumed so great a quantity of goods, advanced to them upon credit by shopkeepers and tradesmen, that they find it necessary to borrow at interest in order to pay the debt. the capital borrowed replaces the capitals of those shopkeepers and tradesmen, which the country gentlemen could not have replaced from the rents of their estates. it is not properly borrowed in order to be spent, but in order to replace a capital which had been spent before. almost all loans at interest are made in money, either of paper, or of gold and silver. but what the borrower really wants, and what the lender really supplies him with, is not the money, but the money's worth, or the goods which it can purchase. if he wants it as a stock for immediate consumption, it is those goods only which he can place in that stock. if he wants it as a capital for employing industry, it is from those goods only that the industrious can be furnished with the tools, materials, and maintenance necessary for carrying on their work. by means of the loan, the lender, as it were, assigns to the borrower his right to a certain portion of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country to be employed as the borrower pleases. the quantity of stock, therefore, or, as it is commonly expressed, of money which can be lent at interest in any country, is not regulated by the value of the money, whether paper or coin, which serves as the instrument of the different loans made in that country, but by the value of that part of the annual produce which, as soon as it comes either from the ground, or from the hands of the productive labourers, is destined not only for replacing a capital, but such a capital as the owner does not care to be at the trouble of employing himself. as such capitals are commonly lent out and paid back in money, they constitute what is called the monied interest. it is distinct, not only from the landed, but from the trading and manufacturing interests, as in these last the owners themselves employ their own capitals. even in the monied interest, however, the money is, as it were, but the deed of assignment, which conveys from one hand to another those capitals which the owners do not care to employ themselves. those capitals may be greater in almost any proportion than the amount of the money which serves as the instrument of their conveyance; the same pieces of money successively serving for many different loans, as well as for many different purchases. a, for example, lends to w a thousand pounds, with which w immediately purchases of b a thousand pounds' worth of goods. b having no occasion for the money himself, lends the identical pieces to x, with which x immediately purchases of c another thousand pounds' worth of goods. c in the same manner, and for the same reason, lends them to y, who again purchases goods with them of d. in this manner the same pieces, either of coin or paper, may in the course of a few days, serve as the instrument of three different loans, and of three different purchases, each of which is, in value, equal to the whole amount of those pieces. what the three monied men a, b, and c assign to the three borrowers, w, x, y, is the power of making those purchases. in this power consist both the value and the use of the loans. the stock lent by the three monied men is equal to the value of the goods which can be purchased with it, and is three times greater than that of the money with which the purchases are made. those loans however, may be all perfectly well secured, the goods purchased by the different debtors being so employed as, in due time, to bring back, with a profit, an equal value either of coin or of paper. and as the same pieces of money can thus serve as the instrument of different loans to three, or for the same reason, to thirty times their value, so they may likewise successively serve as the instrument of repayment. a capital lent at interest may, in this manner, be considered as an assignment from the lender to the borrowers of a certain considerable portion of the annual produce; upon condition that the borrower in return shall, during the continuance of the loan, annually assign to the lender a smaller portion, called the interest; and at the end of it a portion equally considerable with that which had originally been assigned to him, called the repayment. though money, either coin or paper, serves generally as the deed of assignment both to the smaller and to the more considerable portion, it is itself altogether different from what is assigned by it. in proportion as that share of the annual produce which, as soon as it comes either from the ground, or from the hands of the productive labourers, is destined for replacing a capital, increases in any country, what is called the monied interest naturally increases with it. the increase of those particular capitals from which the owners wish to derive a revenue, without being at the trouble of employing them themselves, naturally accompanies the general increase of capitals; or, in other words, as stock increases, the quantity of stock to be lent at interest grows gradually greater and greater. as the quantity of stock to be lent at interest increases, the interest, or the price which must be paid for the use of that stock, necessarily diminishes, not only from those general causes which make the market price of things commonly diminish as their quantity increases, but from other causes which are peculiar to this particular case. as capitals increase in any country, the profits which can be made by employing them necessarily diminish. it becomes gradually more and more difficult to find within the country a profitable method of employing any new capital. there arises in consequence a competition between different capitals, the owner of one endeavouring to get possession of that employment which is occupied by another. but upon most occasions he can hope to jostle that other out of this employment by no other means but by dealing upon more reasonable terms. he must not only sell what he deals in somewhat cheaper, but in order to get it to sell, he must sometimes, too, buy it dearer. the demand for productive labour, by the increase of the funds which are destined for maintaining it, grows every day greater and greater. labourers easily find employment, but the owners of capitals find it difficult to get labourers to employ. their competition raises the wages of labour and sinks the profits of stock. but when the profits which can be made by the use of a capital are in this manner diminished, as it were, at both ends, the price which can be paid for the use of it, that is, the rate of interest, must necessarily be diminished with them. mr. locke, mr. law, and mr. montesquieu, as well as many other writers, seem to have imagined that the increase of the quantity of gold and silver, in consequence of the discovery of the spanish west indies, was the real cause of the lowering of the rate of interest through the greater part of europe. those metals, they say, having become of less value themselves, the use of any particular portion of them necessarily became of less value too, and consequently the price which could be paid for it. this notion, which at first sight seems plausible, has been so fully exposed by mr. hume that it is, perhaps, unnecessary to say anything more about it. the following very short and plain argument, however, may serve to explain more distinctly the fallacy which seems to have misled those gentlemen. before the discovery of the spanish west indies, ten per cent seems to have been the common rate of interest through the greater part of europe. it has since that time in different countries sunk to six, five, four, and three per cent. let us suppose that in every particular country the value of silver has sunk precisely in the same proportion as the rate of interest; and that in those countries, for example, where interest has been reduced from ten to five per cent, the same quantity of silver can now purchase just half the quantity of goods which it could have purchased before. this supposition will not, i believe, be found anywhere agreeable to the truth, but it is the most favourable to the opinion which we are going to examine; and even upon this supposition it is utterly impossible that the lowering of the value of silver could have the smallest tendency to lower the rate of interest. if a hundred pounds are in those countries now of no more value than fifty pounds were then, ten pounds must now be of no more value than five pounds were then. whatever were the causes which lowered the value of the capital, the same must necessarily have lowered that of the interest, and exactly in the same proportion. the proportion between the value of the capital and that of the interest must have remained the same, though the rate had been altered. by altering the rate, on the contrary, the proportion between those two values is necessarily altered. if a hundred pounds now are worth no more than fifty were then, five pounds now can be worth no more than two pounds ten shillings were then. by reducing the rate of interest, therefore, from ten to five per cent, we give for the use of a capital, which is supposed to be equal to one half of its former value, an interest which is equal to one fourth only of the value of the former interest. any increase in the quantity of silver, while that of the commodities circulated by means of it remained the same, could have no other effect than to diminish the value of that metal. the nominal value of all sorts of goods would be greater, but their real value would be precisely the same as before. they would be exchanged for a greater number of pieces of silver; but the quantity of labour which they could command, the number of people whom they could maintain and employ, would be precisely the same. the capital of the country would be the same, though a greater number of pieces might be requisite for conveying any equal portion of it from one hand to another. the deeds of assignment, like the conveyances of a verbose attorney, would be more cumbersome, but the thing assigned would be precisely the same as before, and could produce only the same effects. the funds for maintaining productive labour being the same, the demand for it would be the same. its price or wages, therefore, though nominally greater, would really be the same. they would be paid in a greater number of pieces of silver; but they would purchase only the same quantity of goods. the profits of stock would be the same both nominally and really. the wages of labour are commonly computed by the quantity of silver which is paid to the labourer. when that is increased, therefore, his wages appear to be increased, though they may sometimes be no greater than before. but the profits of stock are not computed by the number of pieces of silver with which they are paid, but by the proportion which those pieces bear to the whole capital employed. thus in a particular country five shillings a week are said to be the common wages of labour, and ten per cent the common profits of stock. but the whole capital of the country being the same as before, the competition between the different capitals of individuals into which it was divided would likewise be the same. they would all trade with the same advantages and disadvantages. the common proportion between capital and profit, therefore, would be the same, and consequently the common interest of money; what can commonly be given for the use of money being necessarily regulated by what can commonly be made by the use of it. any increase in the quantity of commodities annually circulated within the country, while that of the money which circulated them remained the same, would, on the contrary, produce many other important effects, besides that of raising the value of the money. the capital of the country, though it might nominally be the same, would really be augmented. it might continue to be expressed by the same quantity of money, but it would command a greater quantity of labour. the quantity of productive labour which it could maintain and employ would be increased, and consequently the demand for that labour. its wages would naturally rise with the demand, and yet might appear to sink. they might be paid with a smaller quantity of money, but that smaller quantity might purchase a greater quantity of goods than a greater had done before. the profits of stock would be diminished both really and in appearance. the whole capital of the country being augmented, the competition between the different capitals of which it was composed would naturally be augmented along with it. the owners of those particular capitals would be obliged to content themselves with a smaller proportion of the produce of that labour which their respective capitals employed. the interest of money, keeping pace always with the profits of stock, might, in this manner, be greatly diminished, though the value of money, or the quantity of goods which any particular sum could purchase, was greatly augmented. in some countries the interest of money has been prohibited by law. but as something can everywhere be made by the use of money, something ought everywhere to be paid for the use of it. this regulation, instead of preventing, has been found from experience to increase the evil of usury; the debtor being obliged to pay, not only for the use of the money, but for the risk which his creditor runs by accepting a compensation for that use. he is obliged, if one may say so, to insure his creditor from the penalties of usury. in countries where interest is permitted, the law, in order to prevent the extortion of usury, generally fixes the highest rate which can be taken without incurring a penalty. this rate ought always to be somewhat above the lowest market price, or the price which is commonly paid for the use of money by those who can give the most undoubted security. if this legal rate should be fixed below the lowest market rate, the effects of this fixation must be nearly the same as those of a total prohibition of interest. the creditor will not lend his money for less than the use of it is worth, and the debtor must pay him for the risk which he runs by accepting the full value of that use. if it is fixed precisely at the lowest market price, it ruins with honest people, who respect the laws of their country, the credit of all those who cannot give the very best security, and obliges them to have recourse to exorbitant usurers. in a country, such as great britain, where money is lent to government at three per cent and to private people upon a good security at four and four and a half, the present legal rate, five per cent, is perhaps as proper as any. the legal rate, it is to be observed, though it ought to be somewhat above, ought not to be much above the lowest market rate. if the legal rate of interest in great britain, for example, was fixed so high as eight or ten per cent, the greater part of the money which was to be lent would be lent to prodigals and projectors, who alone would be willing to give this high interest. sober people, who will give for the use of money no more than a part of what they are likely to make by the use of it, would not venture into the competition. a great part of the capital of the country would thus be kept out of the hands which were most likely to make a profitable and advantageous use of it, and thrown into those which were most likely to waste and destroy it. where the legal rate of interest, on the contrary, is fixed but a very little above the lowest market rate, sober people are universally preferred, as borrowers, to prodigals and projectors. the person who lends money gets nearly as much interest from the former as he dares to take from the latter, and his money is much safer in the hands of the one set of people than in those of the other. a great part of the capital of the country is thus thrown into the hands in which it is most likely to be employed with advantage. no law can reduce the common rate of interest below the lowest ordinary market rate at the time when that law is made. notwithstanding the edict of 1766, by which the french king attempted to reduce the rate of interest from five to four per cent, money continued to be lent in france at five per cent, the law being evaded in several different ways. the ordinary market price of land, it is to be observed, depends everywhere upon the ordinary market rate of interest. the person who has a capital from which he wishes to derive a revenue, without taking the trouble to employ it himself, deliberates whether he should buy land with it or lend it out at interest. the superior security of land, together with some other advantages which almost everywhere attend upon this species of property, will generally dispose him to content himself with a smaller revenue from land than what he might have by lending out his money at interest. these advantages are sufficient to compensate a certain difference of revenue; but they will compensate a certain difference only; and if the rent of land should fall short of the interest of money by a greater difference, nobody would buy land, which would soon reduce its ordinary price. on the contrary, if the advantages should much more than compensate the difference, everybody would buy land, which again would soon raise its ordinary price. when interest was at ten per cent, land was commonly sold for ten and twelve years' purchase. as interest sunk to six, five, and four per cent, the price of land rose to twenty, five-and-twenty, and thirty years' purchase. the market rate of interest is higher in france than in england; and the common price of land is lower. in england it commonly sells at thirty, in france at twenty years' purchase. chapter v of the different employment of capitals though all capitals are destined for the maintenance of productive labour only, yet the quantity of that labour which equal capitals are capable of putting into motion varies extremely according to the diversity of their employment; as does likewise the value which that employment adds to the annual produce of the land and labour of the country. a capital may be employed in four different ways: either, first, in procuring the rude produce annually required for the use and consumption of the society; or, secondly, in manufacturing and preparing that rude produce for immediate use and consumption; or, thirdly, in transporting either the rude or manufactured produce from the places where they abound to those where they are wanted; or, lastly, in dividing particular portions of either into such small parcels as suit the occasional demands of those who want them. in the first way are employed the capitals of all those who undertake the improvement or cultivation of lands, mines, or fisheries; in the second, those of all master manufacturers; in the third, those of all wholesale merchants; and in the fourth, those of all retailers. it is difficult to conceive that a capital should be employed in any way which may not be classed under some one or other of those four. each of these four methods of employing a capital is essentially necessary either to the existence or extension of the other three, or to the general conveniency of the society. unless a capital was employed in furnishing rude produce to a certain degree of abundance, neither manufactures nor trade of any kind could exist. unless a capital was employed in manufacturing that part of the rude produce which requires a good deal of preparation before it can be fit for use and consumption, it either would never be produced, because there could be no demand for it; or if it was produced spontaneously, it would be of no value in exchange, and could add nothing to the wealth of the society. unless a capital was employed in transporting either the rude or manufactured produce from the places where it abounds to those where it is wanted, no more of either could be produced than was necessary for the consumption of the neighbourhood. the capital of the merchant exchanges the surplus produce of one place for that of another, and thus encourages the industry and increases the enjoyments of both. unless a capital was employed in breaking and dividing certain portions either of the rude or manufactured produce into such small parcels as suit the occasional demands of those who want them, every man would be obliged to purchase a greater quantity of the goods he wanted than his immediate occasions required. if there was no such trade as a butcher, for example, every man would be obliged to purchase a whole ox or a whole sheep at a time. this would generally be inconvenient to the rich, and much more so to the poor. if a poor workman was obliged to purchase a month's or six months' provisions at a time, a great part of the stock which he employs as a capital in the instruments of his trade, or in the furniture of his shop, and which yields him a revenue. he would be forced to place in that part of his stock which is reserved for immediate consumption, and which yields him no revenue. nothing can be more convenient for such a person than to be able to purchase his subsistence from day to day, or even from hour to hour, as he wants it. he is thereby enabled to employ almost his whole stock as a capital. he is thus enabled to furnish work to a greater value, and the profit, which he makes by it in this way, much more than compensates the additional price which the profit of the retailer imposes upon the goods. the prejudices of some political writers against shopkeepers and tradesmen are altogether without foundation. so far is it from being necessary either to tax them or to restrict their numbers that they can never be multiplied so as to hurt the public, though they may so as to hurt one another. the quantity of grocery goods, for example, which can be sold in a particular town is limited by the demand of that town and its neighbourhood. the capital, therefore, which can be employed in the grocery trade cannot exceed what is sufficient to purchase that quantity. if this capital is divided between two different grocers, their competition will tend to make both of them sell cheaper than if it were in the hands of one only; and if it were divided among twenty, their competition would be just so much the greater, and the chance of their combining together, in order to raise the price, just so much the less. their competition might perhaps ruin some of themselves; but to take care of this is the business of the parties concerned, and it may safely be trusted to their discretion. it can never hurt either the consumer or the producer; on the contrary, it must tend to make the retailers both sell cheaper and buy dearer than if the whole trade was monopolized by one or two persons. some of them, perhaps, may sometimes decoy a weak customer to buy what he has no occasion for. this evil, however, is of too little importance to deserve the public attention, nor would it necessarily be prevented by restricting their numbers. it is not the multitude of ale-houses, to give the most suspicious example, that occasions a general disposition to drunkenness among the common people; but that disposition arising from other causes necessarily gives employment to a multitude of ale-houses. the persons whose capitals are employed in any of those four ways are themselves productive labourers. their labour, when properly directed, fixes and realizes itself in the subject or vendible commodity upon which it is bestowed, and generally adds to its price the value at least of their own maintenance and consumption. the profits of the farmer, of the manufacturer, of the merchant, and retailer, are all drawn from the price of the goods which the two first produce, and the two last buy and sell. equal capitals, however, employed in each of those four different ways, will immediately put into motion very different quantities of productive labour, and augment, too, in very different proportions the value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the society to which they belong. the capital of the retailer replaces, together with its profits, that of the merchant of whom he purchases goods, and thereby enables him to continue his business. the retailer himself is the only productive labourer whom it immediately employs. in his profits consists the whole value which its employment adds to the annual produce of the land and labour of the society. the capital of the wholesale merchant replaces, together with their profits, the capitals of the farmers and manufacturers of whom he purchases the rude and manufactured produce which he deals in, and thereby enables them to continue their respective trades. it is by this service chiefly that he contributes indirectly to support the productive labour of the society, and to increase the value of its annual produce. his capital employs, too, the sailors and carriers who transport his goods from one place to another, and it augments the price of those goods by the value, not only of his profits, but of their wages. this is all the productive labour which it immediately puts into motion, and all the value which it immediately adds to the annual produce. its operation in both these respects is a good deal superior to that of the capital of the retailer. part of the capital of the master manufacturer is employed as a fixed capital in the instruments of his trade, and replaces, together with its profits, that of some other artificer of whom he purchases them. part of his circulating capital is employed in purchasing materials, and replaces, with their profits, the capitals of the farmers and miners of whom he purchases them. but a great part of it is always, either annually, or in a much shorter period, distributed among the different workmen whom he employs. it augments the value of those materials by their wages, and by their matters' profits upon the whole stock of wages, materials, and instruments of trade employed in the business. it puts immediately into motion, therefore, a much greater quantity of productive labour, and adds a much greater value to the annual produce of the land and labour of the society than an equal capital in the hands of any wholesale merchant. no equal capital puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour than that of the farmer. not only his labouring servants, but his labouring cattle, are productive labourers. in agriculture, too, nature labours along with man; and though her labour costs no expense, its produce has its value, as well as that of the most expensive workmen. the most important operations of agriculture seem intended not so much to increase, though they do that too, as to direct the fertility of nature towards the production of the plants most profitable to man. a field overgrown with briars and brambles may frequently produce as great a quantity of vegetables as the best cultivated vineyard or corn field. planting and tillage frequently regulate more than they animate the active fertility of nature; and after all their labour, a great part of the work always remains to be done by her. the labourers and labouring cattle, therefore, employed in agriculture, not only occasion, like the workmen in manufactures, the reproduction of a value equal to their own consumption, or to the capital which employs them, together with its owners' profits; but of a much greater value. over and above the capital of the farmer and all its profits, they regularly occasion the reproduction of the rent of the landlord. this rent may be considered as the produce of those powers of nature, the use of which the landlord lends to the farmer. it is greater or smaller according to the supposed extent of those powers, or in other words, according to the supposed natural or improved fertility of the land. it is the work of nature which remains after deducting or compensating everything which can be regarded as the work of man. it is seldom less than a fourth, and frequently more than a third of the whole produce. no equal quantity of productive labour employed in manufactures can ever occasion so great a reproduction. in them nature does nothing; man does all; and the reproduction must always be in proportion to the strength of the agents that occasion it. the capital employed in agriculture, therefore, not only puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour than any equal capital employed in manufactures, but in proportion, too, to the quantity of productive labour which it employs, it adds a much greater value to the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, to the real wealth and revenue of its inhabitants. of all the ways in which a capital can be employed, it is by far the most advantageous to the society. the capitals employed in the agriculture and in the retail trade of any society must always reside within that society. their employment is confined almost to a precise spot, to the farm and to the shop of the retailer. they must generally, too, though there are some exceptions to this, belong to resident members of the society. the capital of a wholesale merchant, on the contrary, seems to have no fixed or necessary residence anywhere, but may wander about from place to place, according as it can either buy cheap or sell dear. the capital of the manufacturer must no doubt reside where the manufacture is carried on; but where this shall be is not always necessarily determined. it may frequently be at a great distance both from the place where the materials grow, and from that where the complete manufacture is consumed. lyons is very distant both from the places which afford the materials of its manufactures, and from those which consume them. the people of fashion in sicily are clothed in silks made in other countries, from the materials which their own produces. part of the wool of spain is manufactured in great britain, and some part of that cloth is afterwards sent back to spain. whether the merchant whose capital exports the surplus produce of any society be a native or a foreigner is of very little importance. if he is a foreigner, the number of their productive labourers is necessarily less than if he had been a native by one man only, and the value of their annual produce by the profits of that one man. the sailors or carriers whom he employs may still belong indifferently either to his country or to their country, or to some third country, in the same manner as if he had been a native. the capital of a foreigner gives a value to their surplus produce equally with that of a native by exchanging it for something for which there is a demand at home. it as effectually replaces the capital of the person who produces that surplus, and as effectually enables him to continue his business; the service by which the capital of a wholesale merchant chiefly contributes to support the productive labour, and to augment the value of the annual produce of the society to which he belongs. it is of more consequence that the capital of the manufacturer should reside within the country. it necessarily puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour, and adds a greater value to the annual produce of the land and labour of the society. it may, however, be very useful to the country, though it should not reside within it. the capitals of the british manufacturers who work up the flax and hemp annually imported from the coasts of the baltic are surely very useful to the countries which produce them. those materials are a part of the surplus produce of those countries which, unless it was annually exchanged for something which is in demand there, would be of no value, and would soon cease to be produced. the merchants who export it replace the capitals of the people who produce it, and thereby encourage them to continue the production; and the british manufacturers replace the capitals of those merchants. a particular country, in the same manner as a particular person, may frequently not have capital sufficient both to improve and cultivate all its lands, to manufacture and prepare their whole rude produce for immediate use and consumption, and to transport the surplus part either of the rude or manufactured produce to those distant markets where it can be exchanged for something for which there is a demand at home. the inhabitants of many different parts of great britain have not capital sufficient to improve and cultivate all their lands. the wool of the southern counties of scotland is, a great part of it, after a long land carriage through very bad roads, manufactured in yorkshire, for want of capital to manufacture it at home. there are many little manufacturing towns in great britain, of which the inhabitants have not capital sufficient to transport the produce of their own industry to those distant markets where there is demand and consumption for it. if there are any merchants among them, they are properly only the agents of wealthier merchants who reside in some of the greater commercial cities. when the capital of any country is not sufficient for all those three purposes, in proportion as a greater share of it is employed in agriculture, the greater will be the quantity of productive labour which it puts into motion within the country; as will likewise be the value which its employment adds to the annual produce of the land and labour of the society. after agriculture, the capital employed in manufactures puts into motion the greatest quantity of productive labour, and adds the greatest value to the annual produce. that which is employed in the trade of exportation has the least effect of any of the three. the country, indeed, which has not capital sufficient for all those three purposes has not arrived at that degree of opulence for which it seems naturally destined. to attempt, however, prematurely and with an insufficient capital to do all the three is certainly not the shortest way for a society, no more than it would be for an individual, to acquire a sufficient one. the capital of all the individuals of a nation has its limits in the same manner as that of a single individual, and is capable of executing only certain purposes. the capital of all the individuals of a nation is increased in the same manner as that of a single individual by their continually accumulating and adding to it whatever they save out of their revenue. it is likely to increase the fastest, therefore, when it is employed in the way that affords the greatest revenue to all the inhabitants of the country, as they will thus be enabled to make the greatest savings. but the revenue of all the inhabitants of the country is necessarily in proportion to the value of the annual produce of their land and labour. it has been the principal cause of the rapid progress of our american colonies towards wealth and greatness that almost their whole capitals have hitherto been employed in agriculture. they have no manufactures, those household and courser manufactures excepted which necessarily accompany the progress of agriculture, and which are the work of the women and children in every private family. the greater part both of the exportation and coasting trade of america is carried on by the capitals of merchants who reside in great britain. even the stores and warehouses from which goods are retailed in some provinces, particularly in virginia and maryland, belong many of them to merchants who reside in the mother country, and afford one of the few instances of the retail trade of a society being carried on by the capitals of those who are not resident members of it. were the americans, either by combination or by any other sort of violence, to stop the importation of european manufactures, and, by thus giving a monopoly to such of their own countrymen as could manufacture the like goods, divert any considerable part of their capital into this employment, they would retard instead of accelerating the further increase in the value of their annual produce, and would obstruct instead of promoting the progress of their country towards real wealth and greatness. this would be still more the case were they to attempt, in the same manner, to monopolize to themselves their whole exportation trade. the course of human prosperity, indeed, seems scarce ever to have been of so long continuance as to enable any great country to acquire capital sufficient for all those three purposes; unless perhaps, we give credit to the wonderful accounts of the wealth and cultivation of china, of those of ancient egypt, and of the ancient state of indostan. even those three countries, the wealthiest, according to all accounts, that ever were in the world, are chiefly renowned for their superiority in agriculture and manufactures. they do not appear to have been eminent for foreign trade. the ancient egyptians had a superstitious antipathy to the sea; a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails among the indians; and the chinese have never excelled in foreign commerce. the greater part of the surplus produce of all those three countries seems to have been always exported by foreigners, who gave in exchange for it something else for which they found a demand there, frequently gold and silver. it is thus that the same capital will in any country put into motion a greater or smaller quantity of productive labour, and add a greater or smaller value to the annual produce of its land and labour, according to the different proportions in which it is employed in agriculture, manufactures, and wholesale trade. the difference, too, is very great, according to the different sorts of wholesale trade in which any part of it is employed. all wholesale trade, all buying in order to sell again by wholesale, may be reduced to three different sorts. the home trade, the foreign trade of consumption, and the carrying trade. the home trade is employed in purchasing in one part of the same country, and selling in another, the produce of the industry of that country. it comprehends both the inland and the coasting trade. the foreign trade of consumption is employed in purchasing foreign goods for home consumption. the carrying trade is employed in transacting the commerce of foreign countries, or in carrying the surplus produce of one to another. the capital which is employed in purchasing in one part of the country in order to sell in another the produce of the industry of that country, generally replaces by every such operation two distinct capitals that had both been employed in the agriculture or manufactures of that country, and thereby enables them to continue that employment. when it sends out from the residence of the merchant a certain value of commodities, it generally brings back in return at least an equal value of other commodities. when both are the produce of domestic industry, it necessarily replaces by every such operation two distinct capitals which had both been employed in supporting productive labour, and thereby enables them to continue that support. the capital which sends scotch manufactures to london, and brings back english corn and manufactures to edinburgh, necessarily replaces by every such operation, two british capitals which had both been employed in the agriculture or manufactures of great britain. the capital employed in purchasing foreign goods for home consumption, when this purchase is made with the produce of domestic industry, replaces too, by every such operation, two distinct capitals; but one of them only is employed in supporting domestic industry. the capital which sends british goods to portugal, and brings back portuguese goods to great britain, replaces by every such operation only one british capital. the other is a portuguese one. though the returns, therefore, of the foreign trade of consumption should be as quick as those of the home trade, the capital employed in it will give but one half the encouragement to the industry or productive labour of the country. but the returns of the foreign trade of consumption are very seldom so quick as those of the home trade. the returns of the home trade generally come in before the end of the year, and sometimes three or four times in the year. the returns of the foreign trade of consumption seldom come in before the end of the year, and sometimes not till after two or three years. a capital, therefore, employed in the home trade will sometimes make twelve operations, or be sent out and returned twelve times, before a capital employed in the foreign trade of consumption has made one. if the capitals are equal, therefore, the one will give four-and-twenty times more encouragement and support to the industry of the country than the other. the foreign goods for home consumption may sometimes be purchased, not with the produce of domestic industry, but with some other foreign goods. these last, however, must have been purchased either immediately with the produce of domestic industry, or with something else that had been purchased with it; for, the case of war and conquest excepted, foreign goods can ever be acquired but in exchange for something that had been produced at home, either immediately, or after two or more different exchanges. the effects, therefore, of a capital employed in such a roundabout foreign trade of consumption, are, in every respect, the same as those of one employed in the most direct trade of the same kind, except that the final returns are likely to be still more distant, as they must depend upon the returns of two or three distinct foreign trades. if the flax and hemp of riga are purchased with the tobacco of virginia, which had been purchased with british manufactures, the merchant must wait for the returns of two distinct foreign trades before he can employ the same capital in re-purchasing a like quantity of british manufactures. if the tobacco of virginia had been purchased, not with british manufactures, but with the sugar and rum of jamaica which had been purchased with those manufactures, he must wait for the returns of three. if those two or three distinct foreign trades should happen to be carried on by two or three distinct merchants, of whom the second buys the goods imported by the first, and the third buys those imported by the second, in order to export them again, each merchant indeed will in this case receive the returns of his own capital more quickly; but the final returns of the whole capital employed in the trade will be just as slow as ever. whether the whole capital employed in such a round-about trade belong to one merchant or to three can make no difference with regard to the country, though it may with regard to the particular merchants. three times a greater capital must in both cases be employed in order to exchange a certain value of british manufactures for a certain quantity of flax and hemp than would have been necessary had the manufactures and the flax and hemp been directly exchanged for one another. the whole capital employed, therefore, in such a round-about foreign trade of consumption will generally give less encouragement and support to the productive labour of the country than an equal capital employed in a more direct trade of the same kind. whatever be the foreign commodity with which the foreign goods for home consumption are purchased, it can occasion no essential difference either in the nature of the trade, or in the encouragement and support which it can give to the productive labour of the country from which it is carried on. if they are purchased with the gold of brazil, for example, or with the silver of peru, this gold and silver, like the tobacco of virginia, must have been purchased with something that either was the produce of the industry of the country, or that had been purchased with something else that was so. so far, therefore, as the productive labour of the country is concerned, the foreign trade of consumption which is carried on by means of gold and silver has all the advantages and all the inconveniences of any other equally round-about foreign trade of consumption, and will replace just as fast or just as slow the capital which is immediately employed in supporting that productive labour. it seems even to have one advantage over any other equally roundabout foreign trade. the transportation of those metals from one place to another, on account of their small bulk and great value, is less expensive than that of almost any other foreign goods of equal value. their freight is much less, and their insurance not greater; and no goods, besides, are less liable to suffer by the carriage. an equal quantity of foreign goods, therefore, may frequently be purchased with a smaller quantity of the produce of domestic industry, by the intervention of gold and silver, than by that of any other foreign goods. the demand of the country may frequently, in this manner, be supplied more completely and at a smaller expense than in any other. whether, by the continual exportation of those metals, a trade of this kind is likely to impoverish the country from which it is carried on, in any other way, i shall have occasion to examine at great length hereafter. that part of the capital of any country which is employed in the carrying trade is altogether withdrawn from supporting the productive labour of that particular country, to support that of some foreign countries. though it may replace by every operation two distinct capitals, yet neither of them belongs to that particular country. the capital of the dutch merchant, which carries the corn of poland to portugal, and brings back the fruits and wines of portugal to poland, replaces by every such operation two capitals, neither of which had been employed in supporting the productive labour of holland; but one of them in supporting that of poland, and the other that of portugal. the profits only return regularly to holland, and constitute the whole addition which this trade necessarily makes to the annual produce of the land and labour of that country. when, indeed, the carrying trade of any particular country is carried on with the ships and sailors of that country, that part of the capital employed in it which pays the freight is distributed among, and puts into motion, a certain number of productive labourers of that country. almost all nations that have had any considerable share of the carrying trade have, in fact, carried it on in this manner. the trade itself has probably derived its name from it, the people of such countries being the carriers to other countries. it does not, however, seem essential to the nature of the trade that it should be so. a dutch merchant may, for example, employ his capital in transacting the commerce of poland and portugal, by carrying part of the surplus produce of the one to the other, not in dutch, but in british bottoms. it may be presumed that he actually does so upon some particular occasions. it is upon this account, however, that the carrying trade has been supposed peculiarly advantageous to such a country as great britain, of which the defence and security depend upon the number of its sailors and shipping. but the same capital may employ as many sailors and shipping, either in the foreign trade of consumption, or even in the home trade, when carried on by coasting vessels, as it could in the carrying trade. the number of sailors and shipping which any particular capital can employ does not depend upon the nature of the trade, but partly upon the bulk of the goods in proportion to their value, and partly upon the distance of the ports between which they are to be carried; chiefly upon the former of those two circumstances. the coal trade from newcastle to london, for example, employs more shipping than all the carrying trade of england, though the ports are at no great distance. to force, therefore, by extraordinary encouragements, a larger share of the capital of any country into the carrying trade than what would naturally go to it will not always necessarily increase the shipping of that country. the capital, therefore, employed in the home trade of any country will generally give encouragement and support to a greater quantity of productive labour in that country, and increase the value of its annual produce more than an equal capital employed in the foreign trade of consumption: and the capital employed in this latter trade has in both these respects a still greater advantage over an equal capital employed in the carrying trade. the riches, and so far as power depends upon riches, the power of every country must always be in proportion to the value of its annual produce, the fund from which all taxes must ultimately be paid. but the great object of the political economy of every country is to increase the riches and power of that country. it ought, therefore, to give no preference nor superior encouragement to the foreign trade of consumption above the home trade, nor to the carrying trade above either of the other two. it ought neither to force nor to allure into either of those two channels a greater share of the capital of the country than what would naturally flow into them of its own accord. when the produce of any particular branch of industry exceeds what the demand of the country requires, the surplus must be sent abroad and exchanged for something for which there is a demand at home. without such exportation a part of the productive labour of the country must cease, and the value of its annual produce diminish. the land and labour of great britain produce generally more corn, woollens, and hardware than the demand of the home market requires. the surplus part of them, therefore, must be sent abroad, and exchanged for something for which there is a demand at home. it is only by means of such exportation that this surplus can acquire a value sufficient to compensate the labour and expense of producing it. the neighbourhood of the sea-coast, and the banks of all navigable rivers, are advantageous situations for industry, only because they facilitate the exportation and exchange of such surplus produce for something else which is more in demand there. when the foreign goods which are thus purchased with the surplus produce of domestic industry exceed the demand of the home market, the surplus part of them must be sent abroad again and exchanged for something more in demand at home. about ninety-six thousand hogsheads of tobacco are annually purchased in virginia and maryland with a part of the surplus produce of british industry. but the demand of great britain does not require, perhaps, more than fourteen thousand. if the remaining eighty-two thousand, therefore, could not be sent abroad and exchanged for something more in demand at home, the importation of them must cease immediately, and with it the productive labour of all those inhabitants of great britain, who are at present employed in preparing the goods with which these eighty-two thousand hogsheads are annually purchased. those goods, which are part of the produce of the land and labour of great britain, having no market at home, and being deprived of that which they had abroad, must cease to be produced. the most round-about foreign trade of consumption, therefore may, upon some occasions, be as necessary for supporting the productive labour of the country, and the value of its annual produce, as the most direct. when the capital stock of any country is increased to such a degree that it cannot be all employed in supplying the consumption and supporting the productive labour of that particular country, the surplus part of it naturally disgorges itself into the carrying trade, and is employed in performing the same offices to other countries. the carrying trade is the natural effect and symptom of great national wealth; but it does not seem to be the natural cause of it. those statesmen who have been disposed to favour it with particular encouragements seem to have mistaken the effect and symptom for the cause. holland, in proportion to the extent of the land and the number of its inhabitants, by far the richest country in europe, has, accordingly, the greatest share of the carrying trade of europe. england, perhaps the second richest country of europe, is likewise supposed to have a considerable share of it; though what commonly passes for the carrying trade of england will frequently, perhaps, be found to be no more than a round-about foreign trade of consumption. such are, in a great measure, the trades which carry the goods of the east and west indies, and of america, to different european markets. those goods are generally purchased either immediately with the produce of british industry, or with something else which had been purchased with that produce, and the final returns of those trades are generally used or consumed in great britain. the trade which is carried on in british bottoms between the different ports of the mediterranean, and some trade of the same kind carried on by british merchants between the different ports of india, make, perhaps, the principal branches of what is properly the carrying trade of great britain. the extent of the home trade and of the capital which can be employed in it, is necessarily limited by the value of the surplus produce of all those distant places within the country which have occasion to exchange their respective productions with another: that of the foreign trade of consumption, by the value of the surplus produce of the whole country and of what can be purchased with it: that of the carrying trade by the value of the surplus produce of all the different countries in the world. its possible extent, therefore, is in a manner infinite in comparison of that of the other two, and is capable of absorbing the greatest capitals. the consideration of his own private profit is the sole motive which determines the owner of any capital to employ it either in agriculture, in manufactures, or in some particular branch of the wholesale or retail trade. the different quantities of productive labour which it may put into motion, and the different values which it may add to the annual, produce of the land and labour of the society, according as it is employed in one or other of those different ways, never enter into his thoughts. in countries, therefore, where agriculture is the most profitable of all employments, and farming and improving the most direct roads to a splendid fortune, the capitals of individuals will naturally be employed in the manner most advantageous to the whole society. the profits of agriculture, however, seem to have no superiority over those of other employments in any part of europe. projectors, indeed, in every corner of it, have within these few years amused the public with most magnificent accounts of the profits to be made by the cultivation and improvement of land. without entering into any particular discussion of their calculations, a very simple observation may satisfy us that the result of them must be false. we see every day the most splendid fortunes that have been acquired in the course of a single life by trade and manufacturers, frequently from a very small capital, sometimes from no capital. a single instance of such a fortune acquired by agriculture in the same time, and from such a capital, has not, perhaps, occurred in europe during the course of the present century. in all the great countries of europe, however, much good land still remains uncultivated, and the greater part of what is cultivated is far from being improved to the degree of which it is capable. agriculture, therefore, is almost everywhere capable of absorbing a much greater capital than has ever yet been employed in it. what circumstances in the policy of europe have given the trades which are carried on in towns so great an advantage over that which is carried on in the country that private persons frequently find it more for their advantage to employ their capitals in the most distant carrying trades of asia and america than in the improvement and cultivation of the most fertile fields in their own neighbourhood, i shall endeavour to explain at full length in the two following books. book three of the different progress of opulence in different nations of the natural progress of opulence the great commerce of every civilised society is that carried on between the inhabitants of the town and those of the country. it consists in the exchange of rude for manufactured produce, either immediately, or by the intervention of money, or of some sort of paper which represents money. the country supplies the town with the means of subsistence and the materials of manufacture. the town repays this supply by sending back a part of the manufactured produce to the inhabitants of the country. the town, in which there neither is nor can be any reproduction of substances, may very properly be said to gain its whole wealth and subsistence from the country. we must not, however, upon this account, imagine that the gain of the town is the loss of the country. the gains of both are mutual and reciprocal, and the division of labour is in this, as in all other cases, advantageous to all the different persons employed in the various occupations into which it is subdivided. the inhabitants of the country purchase of the town a greater quantity of manufactured goods, with the produce of a much smaller quantity of their own labour, than they must have employed had they attempted to prepare them themselves. the town affords a market for the surplus produce of the country, or what is over and above the maintenance of the cultivators, and it is there that the inhabitants of the country exchange it for something else which is in demand among them. the greater the number and revenue of the inhabitants of the town, the more extensive is the market which it affords to those of the country; and the more extensive that market, it is always the more advantageous to a great number. the corn which grows within a mile of the town sells there for the same price with that which comes from twenty miles distance. but the price of the latter must generally not only pay the expense of raising and bringing it to market, but afford, too, the ordinary profits of agriculture to the farmer. the proprietors and cultivators of the country, therefore, which lies in the neighbourhood of the town, over and above the ordinary profits of agriculture, gain, in the price of what they sell, the whole value of the carriage of the like produce that is brought from more distant parts, and they have, besides, the whole value of this carriage in the price of what they buy. compare the cultivation of the lands in the neighbourhood of any considerable town with that of those which lie at some distance from it, and you will easily satisfy yourself how much the country is benefited by the commerce of the town. among all the absurd speculations that have been propagated concerning the balance of trade, it has never been pretended that either the country loses by its commerce with the town, or the town by that with the country which maintains it. as subsistence is, in the nature of things, prior to conveniency and luxury, so the industry which procures the former must necessarily be prior to that which ministers to the latter. the cultivation and improvement of the country, therefore, which affords subsistence, must, necessarily, be prior to the increase of the town, which furnishes only the means of conveniency and luxury. it is the surplus produce of the country only, or what is over and above the maintenance of the cultivators, that constitutes the subsistence of the town, which can therefore increase only with the increase of this surplus produce. the town, indeed, may not always derive its whole subsistence from the country in its neighbourhood, or even from the territory to which it belongs, but from very distant countries; and this, though it forms no exception from the general rule, has occasioned considerable variations in the progress of opulence in different ages and nations. that order of things which necessity imposes in general, though not in every particular country, is, in every particular country, promoted by the natural inclinations of man. if human institutions had never thwarted those natural inclinations, the towns could nowhere have increased beyond what the improvement and cultivation of the territory in which they were situated could support; till such time, at least, as the whole of that territory was completely cultivated and improved. upon equal, or nearly equal profits, most men will choose to employ their capitals rather in the improvement and cultivation of land than either in manufactures or in foreign trade. the man who employs his capital in land has it more under his view and command, and his fortune is much less liable to accidents than that of the trader, who is obliged frequently to commit it, not only to the winds and the waves, but to the more uncertain elements of human folly and injustice, by giving great credits in distant countries to men with whose character and situation he can seldom be thoroughly acquainted. the capital of the landlord, on the contrary, which is fixed in the improvement of his land, seems to be as well secured as the nature of human affairs can admit of. the beauty of the country besides, the pleasures of a country life, the tranquillity of mind which it promises, and wherever the injustice of human laws does not disturb it, the independency which it really affords, have charms that more or less attract everybody; and as to cultivate the ground was the original destination of man, so in every stage of his existence he seems to retain a predilection for this primitive employment. without the assistance of some artificers, indeed, the cultivation of land cannot be carried on but with great inconveniency and continual interruption. smiths, carpenters, wheelwrights, and ploughwrights, masons, and bricklayers, tanners, shoemakers, and tailors are people whose service the farmer has frequent occasion for. such artificers, too, stand occasionally in need of the assistance of one another; and as their residence is not, like that of the farmer, necessarily tied down to a precise spot, they naturally settle in the neighbourhood of one another, and thus form a small town or village. the butcher, the brewer, and the baker soon join them, together with many other artificers and retailers, necessary or useful for supplying their occasional wants, and who contribute still further to augment the town. the inhabitants of the town and those of the country are mutually the servants of one another. the town is a continual fair or market, to which the inhabitants of the country resort in order to exchange their rude for manufactured produce. it is this commerce which supplies the inhabitants of the town both with the materials of their work, and the means of their subsistence. the quantity of the finished work which they sell to the inhabitants of the country necessarily regulates the quantity of the materials and provisions which they buy. neither their employment nor subsistence, therefore, can augment but in proportion to the augmentation of the demand from the country for finished work; and this demand can augment only in proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation. had human institutions, therefore, never disturbed the natural course of things, the progressive wealth and increase of the towns would, in every political society, be consequential, and in proportion to the improvement and cultivation of the territory or country. in our north american colonies, where uncultivated land is still to be had upon easy terms, no manufactures for distant sale have ever yet been established in any of their towns. when an artificer has acquired a little more stock than is necessary for carrying on his own business in supplying the neighbouring country, he does not, in north america, attempt to establish with it a manufacture for more distant sale, but employs it in the purchase and improvement of uncultivated land. from artificer he becomes planter, and neither the large wages nor the easy subsistence which that country affords to artificers can bribe him rather to work for other people than for himself. he feels that an artificer is the servant of his customers, from whom he derives his subsistence; but that a planter who cultivates his own land, and derives his necessary subsistence from the labour of his own family, is really a master, and independent of all the world. in countries, on the contrary, where there is either no uncultivated land, or none that can be had upon easy terms, every artificer who has acquired more stock than he can employ in the occasional jobs of the neighbourhood endeavours to prepare work for more distant sale. the smith erects some sort of iron, the weaver some sort of linen or woollen manufactory. those different manufactures come, in process of time, to be gradually subdivided, and thereby improved and refined in a great variety of ways, which may easily be conceived, and which it is therefore unnecessary to explain any further. in seeking for employment to a capital, manufactures are, upon equal or nearly equal profits, naturally preferred to foreign commerce, for the same reason that agriculture is naturally preferred to manufactures. as the capital of the landlord or farmer is more secure than that of the manufacturer, so the capital of the manufacturer, being at all times more within his view and command, is more secure than that of the foreign merchant. in every period, indeed, of every society, the surplus part both of the rude and manufactured produce, or that for which there is no demand at home, must be sent abroad in order to be exchanged for something for which there is some demand at home. but whether the capital, which carries this surplus produce abroad, be a foreign or a domestic one is of very little importance. if the society has not acquired sufficient capital both to cultivate all its lands, and to manufacture in the completest manner the whole of its rude produce, there is even a considerable advantage that rude produce should be exported by a foreign capital, in order that the whole stock of the society may be employed in more useful purposes. the wealth of ancient egypt, that of china and indostan, sufficiently demonstrate that a nation may attain a very high degree of opulence though the greater part of its exportation trade be carried on by foreigners. the progress of our north american and west indian colonies would have been much less rapid had no capital but what belonged to themselves been employed in exporting their surplus produce. according to the natural course of things, therefore, the greater part of the capital of every growing society is, first, directed to agriculture, afterwards to manufactures, and last of all to foreign commerce. this order of things is so very natural that in every society that had any territory it has always, i believe, been in some degree observed. some of their lands must have been cultivated before any considerable towns could be established, and some sort of coarse industry of the manufacturing kind must have been carried on in those towns, before they could well think of employing themselves in foreign commerce. but though this natural order of things must have taken place in some degree in every such society, it has, in all the modern states of europe, been, in many respects, entirely inverted. the foreign commerce of some of their cities has introduced all their finer manufactures, or such as were fit for distant sale; and manufactures and foreign commerce together have given birth to the principal improvements of agriculture. the manners and customs which the nature of their original government introduced, and which remained after that government was greatly altered, necessarily forced them into this unnatural and retrograde order. chapter ii of the discouragement of agriculture in the ancient state of europe after the fall of the roman empire when the german and scythian nations overran the western provinces of the roman empire, the confusions which followed so great a revolution lasted for several centuries. the rapine and violence which the barbarians exercised against the ancient inhabitants interrupted the commerce between the towns and the country. the towns were deserted, and the country was left uncultivated, and the western provinces of europe, which had enjoyed a considerable degree of opulence under the roman empire, sunk into the lowest state of poverty and barbarism. during the continuance of those confusions, the chiefs and principal leaders of those nations acquired or usurped to themselves the greater part of the lands of those countries. a great part of them was uncultivated; but no part of them, whether cultivated or uncultivated, was left without a proprietor. all of them were engrossed, and the greater part by a few great proprietors. this original engrossing of uncultivated lands, though a great, might have been but a transitory evil. they might soon have been divided again, and broke into small parcels either by succession or by alienation. the law of primogeniture hindered them from being divided by succession: the introduction of entails prevented their being broke into small parcels by alienation. when land, like movables, is considered as the means only of subsistence and enjoyment, the natural law of succession divides it, like them, among all the children of the family; of an of whom the subsistence and enjoyment may be supposed equally dear to the father. this natural law of succession accordingly took place among the romans, who made no more distinction between elder and younger, between male and female, in the inheritance of lands than we do in the distribution of movables. but when land was considered as the means, not of subsistence merely, but of power and protection, it was thought better that it should descend undivided to one. in those disorderly times every great landlord was a sort of petty prince. his tenants were his subjects. he was their judge, and in some respects their legislator in peace, and their leader in war. he made war according to his own discretion, frequently against his neighbours, and sometimes against his sovereign. the security of a landed estate, therefore, the protection which its owner could afford to those who dwelt on it, depended upon its greatness. to divide it was to ruin it, and to expose every part of it to be oppressed and swallowed up by the incursions of its neighbours. the law of primogeniture, therefore, came to take place, not immediately, indeed, but in process of time, in the succession of landed estates, for the same reason that it has generally taken place in that of monarchies, though not always at their first institution. that the power, and consequently the security of the monarchy, may not be weakened by division, it must descend entire to one of the children. to which of them so important a preference shall be given must be determined by some general rule, founded not upon the doubtful distinctions of personal merit, but upon some plain and evident difference which can admit of no dispute. among the children of the same family, there can be no indisputable difference but that of sex, and that of age. the male sex is universally preferred to the female; and when all other things are equal, the elder everywhere takes place of the younger. hence the origin of the right of primogeniture, and of what is called lineal succession. laws frequently continue in force long after the circumstances which first gave occasion to them, and which could alone render them reasonable, are no more. in the present state of europe, the proprietor of a single acre of land is as perfectly secure of his possession as the proprietor of a hundred thousand. the right of primogeniture, however, still continues to be respected, and as of all institutions it is the fittest to support the pride of family distinctions, it is still likely to endure for many centuries. in every other respect, nothing can be more contrary to the real interest of a numerous family than a right which, in order to enrich one, beggars all the rest of the children. entails are the natural consequences of the law of primogeniture. they were introduced to preserve a certain lineal succession, of which the law of primogeniture first gave the idea, and to hinder any part of the original estate from being carried out of the proposed line either by gift, or devise, or alienation; either by the folly, or by the misfortune of any of its successive owners. they were altogether unknown to the romans. neither their substitutions nor fideicommisses bear any resemblance to entails, though some french lawyers have thought proper to dress the modern institution in the language and garb of those ancient ones. when great landed estates were a sort of principalities, entails might not be unreasonable. like what are called the fundamental laws of some monarchies, they might frequently hinder the security of thousands from being endangered by the caprice or extravagance of one man. but in the present state of europe, when small as well as great estates derive their security from the laws of their country, nothing can be more completely absurd. they are founded upon the most absurd of all suppositions, the supposition that every successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth, and to all that it possesses; but that the property of the present generation should be restrained and regulated according to the fancy of those who died perhaps five hundred years ago. entails, however, are still respected through the greater part of europe, in those countries particularly in which noble birth is a necessary qualification for the enjoyment either of civil or military honours. entails are thought necessary for maintaining this exclusive privilege of the nobility to the great offices and honours of their country; and that order having usurped one unjust advantage over the rest of their fellow citizens, lest their poverty should render it ridiculous, it is thought reasonable that they should have another. the common law of england, indeed, is said to abhor perpetuities, and they are accordingly more restricted there than in any other european monarchy; though even england is not altogether without them. in scotland more than one-fifth, perhaps more than one-third, part of the whole lands of the country are at present supposed to be under strict entail. great tracts of uncultivated land were, in this manner, not only engrossed by particular families, but the possibility of their being divided again was as much as possible precluded for ever. it seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver. in the disorderly times which gave birth to those barbarous institutions, the great proprietor was sufficiently employed in defending his own territories, or in extending his jurisdiction and authority over those of his neighbours. he had no leisure to attend to the cultivation and improvement of land. when the establishment of law and order afforded him this leisure, he often wanted the inclination, and almost always the requisite abilities. if the expense of his house and person either equalled or exceeded his revenue, as it did very frequently, he had no stock to employ in this manner. if he was an economist, he generally found it more profitable to employ his annual savings in new purchases than in the improvement of his old estate. to improve land with profit, like all other commercial projects, requires an exact attention to small savings and small gains, of which a man born to a great fortune, even though naturally frugal, is very seldom capable. the situation of such a person naturally disposes him to attend rather to ornament which pleases his fancy than to profit for which he has so little occasion. the elegance of his dress, of his equipage, of his house, and household furniture, are objects which from his infancy he has been accustomed to have some anxiety about. the turn of mind which this habit naturally forms follows him when he comes to think of the improvement of land. he embellishes perhaps four or five hundred acres in the neighbourhood of his house, at ten times the expense which the land is worth after all his improvements; and finds that if he was to improve his whole estate in the same manner, and he has little taste for any other, he would be a bankrupt before he had finished the tenth part of it. there still remain in both parts of the united kingdom some great estates which have continued without interruption in the hands of the same family since the times of feudal anarchy. compare the present condition of those estates with the possessions of the small proprietors in their neighbourhood, and you will require no other argument to convince you how unfavourable such extensive property is to improvement. if little improvement was to be expected from such great proprietors, still less was to be hoped for from those who occupied the land under them. in the ancient state of europe, the occupiers of land were all tenants at will. they were all or almost all slaves; but their slavery was of a milder kind than that known among the ancient greeks and romans, or even in our west indian colonies. they were supposed to belong more directly to the land than to their master. they could, therefore, be sold with it, but not separately. they could marry, provided it was with the consent of their master; and he could not afterwards dissolve the marriage by selling the man and wife to different persons. if he maimed or murdered any of them, he was liable to some penalty, though generally but to a small one. they were not, however, capable of acquiring property. whatever they acquired was acquired to their master, and he could take it from them at pleasure. whatever cultivation and improvement could be carried on by means of such slaves was properly carried on by their master. it was at his expense. the seed, the cattle, and the instruments of husbandry were all his. it was for his benefit. such slaves could acquire nothing but their daily maintenance. it was properly the proprietor himself, therefore, that, in this case, occupied his own lands, and cultivated them by his own bondmen. this species of slavery still subsists in russia, poland, hungary, bohemia, moravia, and other parts of germany. it is only in the western and southwestern provinces of europe that it has gradually been abolished altogether. but if great improvements are seldom to be expected from great proprietors, they are least of all to be expected when they employ slaves for their workmen. the experience of all ages and nations, i believe, demonstrates that the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any. a person who can acquire no property, can have no other interest but to eat as much, and to labour as little as possible. whatever work he does beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own. in ancient italy, how much the cultivation of corn degenerated, how unprofitable it became to the master when it fell under the management of slaves, is remarked by both pliny and columella. in the time of aristotle it had not been much better in ancient greece. speaking of the ideal republic described in the laws of plato, to maintain five thousand idle men (the number of warriors supposed necessary for its defence) together with their women and servants, would require, he says, a territory of boundless extent and fertility, like the plains of babylon. the pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. wherever the law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of freemen. the planting of sugar and tobacco can afford the expense of slave-cultivation. the raising of corn, it seems, in the present times, cannot. in the english colonies, of which the principal produce is corn, the far greater part of the work is done by freemen. the late resolution of the quakers in pennsylvania to set at liberty all their negro slaves may satisfy us that their number cannot be very great. had they made any considerable part of their property, such a resolution could never have been agreed to. in our sugar colonies, on the contrary, the whole work is done by slaves, and in our tobacco colonies a very great part of it. the profits of a sugar-plantation in any of our west indian colonies are generally much greater than those of any other cultivation that is known either in europe or america; and the profits of a tobacco plantation, though inferior to those of sugar, are superior to those of corn, as has already been observed. both can afford the expense of slave-cultivation, but sugar can afford it still better than tobacco. the number of negroes accordingly is much greater, in proportion to that of whites, in our sugar than in our tobacco colonies. to the slave cultivators of ancient times gradually succeeded a species of farmers known at present in france by the name of metayers. they are called in latin, coloni partiarii. they have been so long in disuse in england that at present i know no english name for them. the proprietor furnished them with the seed, cattle, and instruments of husbandry, the whole stock, in short, necessary for cultivating the farm. the produce was divided equally between the proprietor and the farmer, after setting aside what was judged necessary for keeping up the stock, which was restored to the proprietor when the farmer either quitted, or was turned out of the farm. land occupied by such tenants is properly cultivated at the expense of the proprietor as much as that occupied by slaves. there is, however, one very essential difference between them. such tenants, being freemen, are capable of acquiring property, and having a certain proportion of the produce of the land, they have a plain interest that the whole produce should be as great as possible, in order that their own proportion may be so. a slave, on the contrary, who can acquire nothing but his maintenance, consults his own ease by making the land produce as little as possible over and above that maintenance. it is probable that it was partly upon account of this advantage, and partly upon account of the encroachments which the sovereign, always jealous of the great lords, gradually encouraged their villains to make upon their authority, and which seem at last to have been such as rendered this species of servitude altogether inconvenient, that tenure in villanage gradually wore out through the greater part of europe. the time and manner, however, in which so important a revolution was brought about is one of the most obscure points in modern history. the church of rome claims great merit in it; and it is certain that so early as the twelfth century, alexander iii published a bull for the general emancipation of slaves. it seems, however, to have been rather a pious exhortation than a law to which exact obedience was required from the faithful. slavery continued to take place almost universally for several centuries afterwards, till it was gradually abolished by the joint operation of the two interests above mentioned, that of the proprietor on the one hand, and that of the sovereign on the other. a villain enfranchised, and at the same time allowed to continue in possession of the land, having no stock of his own, could cultivate it only by means of what the landlord advanced to him, and must, therefore, have been what the french called a metayer. it could never, however, be the interest even of this last species of cultivators to lay out, in the further improvement of the land, any part of the little stock which they might save from their own share of the produce, because the lord, who laid out nothing, was to get one half of whatever it produced. the tithe, which is but a tenth of the produce, is found to be a very great hindrance to improvement. a tax, therefore, which amounted to one half must have been an effectual bar to it. it might be the interest of a metayer to make the land produce as much as could be brought out of it by means of the stock furnished by the proprietor; but it could never be his interest to mix any part of his own with it. in france, where five parts out of six of the whole kingdom are said to be still occupied by this species of cultivators, the proprietors complain that their metayers take every opportunity of employing the master's cattle rather in carriage than in cultivation; because in the one case they get the whole profits to themselves, in the other they share them with their landlord. this species of tenants still subsists in some parts of scotland. they are called steel-bow tenants. those ancient english tenants, who are said by chief baron gilbert and doctor blackstone to have been rather bailiffs of the landlord than farmers properly so called, were probably of the same kind. to this species of tenancy succeeded, though by very slow degrees, farmers properly so called, who cultivated the land with their own stock, paying a rent certain to the landlord. when such farmers have a lease for a term of years, they may sometimes find it for their interest to lay out part of their capital in the further improvement of the farm; because they may sometimes expect to recover it, with a large profit, before the expiration of the lease. the possession even of such farmers, however, was long extremely precarious, and still is so in many parts of europe. they could before the expiration of their term be legally outed of their lease by a new purchaser; in england, even by the fictitious action of a common recovery. if they were turned out illegally by the violence of their master, the action by which they obtained redress was extremely imperfect. it did not always reinstate them in the possession of the land, but gave them damages which never amounted to the real loss. even in england, the country perhaps of europe where the yeomanry has always been most respected, it was not till about the 14th of henry vii that the action of ejectment was invented, by which the tenant recovers, not damages only but possession, and in which his claim is not necessarily concluded by the uncertain decision of a single assize. this action has been found so effectual a remedy that, in the modern practice, when the landlord has occasion to sue for the possession of the land, he seldom makes use of the actions which properly belong to him as landlord, the writ of right or the writ of entry, but sues in the name of his tenant by the writ of ejectment. in england, therefore, the security of the tenant is equal to that of the proprietor. in england, besides, a lease for life of forty shillings a year value is a freehold, and entitles the lessee to vote for a member of parliament; and as a great part of the yeomanry have freeholds of this kind, the whole order becomes respectable to their landlords on account of the political consideration which this gives them. there is, i believe, nowhere in europe, except in england, any instance of the tenant building upon the land of which he had no lease, and trusting that the honour of his landlord would take no advantage of so important an improvement. those laws and customs so favourable to the yeomanry have perhaps contributed more to the present grandeur of england than all their boasted regulations of commerce taken together. the law which secures the longest leases against successors of every kind is, so far as i know, peculiar to great britain. it was introduced into scotland so early as 1449, a law of james ii. its beneficial influence, however, has been much obstructed by entails; the heirs of entail being generally restrained from letting leases for any long term of years, frequently for more than one year. a late act of parliament has, in this respect, somewhat slackened their fetters, though they are still by much too strait. in scotland, besides, as no leasehold gives a vote for a member of parliament, the yeomanry are upon this account less respectable to their landlords than in england. in other parts of europe, after it was found convenient to secure tenants both against heirs and purchasers, the term of their security was still limited to a very short period; in france, for example, to nine years from the commencement of the lease. it has in that country, indeed, been lately extended to twenty-seven, a period still too short to encourage the tenant to make the most important improvements. the proprietors of land were anciently the legislators of every part of europe. the laws relating to land, therefore, were all calculated for what they supposed the interest of the proprietor. it was for his interest, they had imagined, that no lease granted by any of his predecessors should hinder him from enjoying, during a long term of years, the full value of his land. avarice and injustice are always short-sighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord. the farmers too, besides paying the rent, were anciently, it was supposed, bound to perform a great number of services to the landlord, which were seldom either specified in the lease, or regulated by any precise rule, but by the use and wont of the manor or barony. these services, therefore, being almost entirely arbitrary, subjected the tenant to many vexations. in scotland the abolition of all services not precisely stipulated in the lease has in the course of a few years very much altered for the better the condition of the yeomanry of that country. the public services to which the yeomanry were bound were not less arbitrary than the private ones. to make and maintain the high roads, a servitude which still subsists, i believe, everywhere, though with different degrees of oppression in different countries, was not the only one. when the king's troops, when his household or his officers of any kind passed through any part of the country, the yeomanry were bound to provide them with horses, carriages, and provisions, at a price regulated by the purveyor. great britain is, i believe, the only monarchy in europe where the oppression of purveyance has been entirely abolished. it still subsists in france and germany. the public taxes to which they were subject were as irregular and oppressive as the services. the ancient lords, though extremely unwilling to grant themselves any pecuniary aid to their sovereign, easily allowed him to tallage, as they called it their tenants, and had not knowledge enough to foresee how much this must in the end affect their own revenue. the taille, as it still subsists in france, may serve as an example of those ancient tallages. it is a tax upon the supposed profits of the farmer, which they estimate by the stock that he has upon the farm. it is his interest, therefore, to appear to have as little as possible, and consequently to employ as little as possible in its cultivation, and none in its improvement. should any stock happen to accumulate in the hands of a french farmer, the taille is almost equal to a prohibition of its ever being employed upon the land. this tax, besides, is supposed to dishonour whoever is subject to it, and to degrade him below, not only the rank of a gentleman, but that of a burgher, and whoever rents the lands of another becomes subject to it. no gentleman, nor even any burgher who has stock, will submit to this degradation. this tax, therefore, not only hinders the stock which accumulates upon the land from being employed in its improvement, but drives away an other stock from it. the ancient tenths and fifteenths, so usual in england in former times, seem, so far as they affected the land, to have been taxes of the same nature with the taille. under all these discouragements, little improvement could be expected from the occupiers of land. that order of people, with all the liberty and security which law can give, must always improve under great disadvantages. the farmer, compared with the proprietor, is as a merchant who trades with borrowed money compared with one who trades with his own. the stock of both may improve, but that of the one, with only equal good conduct, must always improve more slowly than that of the other, on account of the large share of the profits which is consumed by the interest of the loan. the lands cultivated by the farmer must, in the same manner, with only equal good conduct, be improved more slowly than those cultivated by the proprietor, on account of the large share of the produce which is consumed in the rent, and which, had the farmer been proprietor, he might have employed in the further improvement of the land. the station of a farmer besides is, from the nature of things, inferior to that of a proprietor. through the greater part of europe the yeomanry are regarded as an inferior rank of people, even to the better sort of tradesmen and mechanics, and in all parts of europe to the great merchants and master manufacturers. it can seldom happen, therefore, that a man of any considerable stock should quit the superior in order to place himself in an inferior station. even in the present state of europe, therefore, little stock is likely to go from any other profession to the improvement of land in the way of farming. more does perhaps in great britain than in any other country, though even there the great stocks which are, in some places, employed in farming have generally been acquired by farming, the trade, perhaps, in which of all others stock is commonly acquired most slowly. after small proprietors, however, rich and great farmers are, in every country, the principal improvers. there are more such perhaps in england than in any other european monarchy. in the republican governments of holland and of berne in switzerland, the farmers are said to be not inferior to those of england. the ancient policy of europe was, over and above all this, unfavourable to the improvement and cultivation of land, whether carried on by the proprietor or by the farmer; first, by the general prohibition of the exportation of corn without a special licence, which seems to have been a very universal regulation; and secondly, by the restraints which were laid upon the inland commerce, not only of corn, but of almost every other part of the produce of the farm by the absurd laws against engrossers, regrators, and forestallers, and by the privileges of fairs and markets. it has already been observed in what manner the prohibition of the exportation of corn, together with some encouragement given to the importation of foreign corn, obstructed the cultivation of ancient italy, naturally the most fertile country in europe, and at that time the seat of the greatest empire in the world. to what degree such restraints upon the inland commerce of this commodity, joined to the general prohibition of exportation, must have discouraged the cultivation of countries less fertile and less favourably circumstanced, it is not perhaps very easy to imagine. chapter iii of the rise and progress of cities and towns after the fall of the roman empire the inhabitants of cities and towns were, after the fall of the roman empire, not more favoured than those of the country. they consisted, indeed, of a very different order of people from the first inhabitants of the ancient republics of greece and italy. these last were composed chiefly of the proprietors of lands, among whom the public territory was originally divided, and who found it convenient to build their houses in the neighbourhood of one another, and to surround them with a wall, for the sake of common defence. after the fall of the roman empire, on the contrary, the proprietors of land seem generally to have lived in fortified castles on their own estates, and in the midst of their own tenants and dependants. the towns were chiefly inhabited by tradesmen and mechanics, who seem in those days to have been of servile, or very nearly of servile condition. the privileges which we find granted by ancient charters to the inhabitants of some of the principal towns in europe sufficiently show what they were before those grants. the people to whom it is granted as a privilege that they might give away their own daughters in marriage without the consent of their lord, that upon their death their own children, and not their lord, should succeed to their goods, and that they might dispose of their own effects by will, must, before those grants, have been either altogether or very nearly in the same state of villanage with the occupiers of land in the country. they seem, indeed, to have been a very poor, mean set of people, who used to travel about with their goods from place to place, and from fair to fair, like the hawkers and pedlars of the present times. in all the different countries of europe then, in the same manner as in several of the tartar governments of asia at present, taxes used to be levied upon the persons and goods of travellers when they passed through certain manors, when they went over certain bridges, when they carried about their goods from place to place in a fair, when they erected in it a booth or stall to sell them in. these different taxes were known in england by the names of passage, pontage, lastage, and stallage. sometimes the king, sometimes a great lord, who had, it seems, upon some occasions, authority to do this, would grant to particular traders, to such particularly as lived in their own demesnes, a general exemption from such taxes. such traders, though in other respects of servile, or very nearly of servile condition, were upon this account called free-traders. they in return usually paid to their protector a sort of annual poll-tax. in those days protection was seldom granted without a valuable consideration, and this tax might, perhaps, be considered as compensation for what their patrons might lose by their exemption from other taxes. at first, both those poll-taxes and those exemptions seem to have been altogether personal, and to have affected only particular individuals during either their lives or the pleasure of their protectors. in the very imperfect accounts which have been published from domesday book of several of the towns of england, mention is frequently made sometimes of the tax which particular burghers paid, each of them, either to the king or to some other great lord for this sort of protection; and sometimes of the general amount only of all those taxes. but how servile soever may have been originally the condition of the inhabitants of the towns, it appears evidently that they arrived at liberty and independency much earlier than the occupiers of land in the country. that part of the king's revenue which arose from such poll-taxes in any particular town used commonly to be let in farm during a term of years for a rent certain, sometimes to the sheriff of the county, and sometimes to other persons. the burghers themselves frequently got credit enough to be admitted to farm the revenues of this sort which arose out of their own town, they becoming jointly and severally answerable for the whole rent. to let a farm in this manner was quite agreeable to the usual economy of, i believe, the sovereigns of all the different countries of europe, who used frequently to let whole manors to all the tenants of those manors, they becoming jointly and severally answerable for the whole rent; but in return being allowed to collect it in their own way, and to pay it into the king's exchequer by the hands of their own bailiff, and being thus altogether freed from the insolence of the king's officersa circumstance in those days regarded as of the greatest importance. at first the farm of the town was probably let to the burghers, in the same manner as it had been to other farmers, for a term of years only. in process of time, however, it seems to have become the general practice to grant it to them in fee, that is for ever, reserving a rent certain never afterwards to be augmented. the payment having thus become perpetual, the exemptions, in return for which it was made, naturally became perpetual too. those exemptions, therefore, ceased to be personal, and could not afterwards be considered as belonging to individuals as individuals, but as burghers of a particular burgh, which, upon this account, was called a free burgh, for the same reason that they had been called free burghers or free traders. along with this grant, the important privileges above mentioned, that they might give away their own daughters in marriage, that their children should succeed to them, and that they might dispose of their own effects by will, were generally bestowed upon the burghers of the town to whom it was given. whether such privileges had before been usually granted along with the freedom of trade to particular burghers, as individuals, i know not. i reckon it not improbable that they were, though i cannot produce any direct evidence of it. but however this may have been, the principal attributes of villanage and slavery being thus taken away from them, they now, at least, became really free in our present sense of the word freedom. nor was this all. they were generally at the same time erected into a commonalty or corporation, with the privilege of having magistrates and a town council of their own, of making bye-laws for their own government, of building walls for their own defence, and of reducing all their inhabitants under a sort of military discipline by obliging them to watch and ward, that is, as anciently understood, to guard and defend those walls against all attacks and surprises by night as well as by day. in england they were generally exempted from suit to the hundred and county courts; and all such pleas as should arise among them, the pleas of the crown excepted, were left to the decision of their own magistrates. in other countries much greater and more extensive jurisdictions were frequently granted to them. it might, probably, be necessary to grant to such towns as were admitted to farm their own revenues some sort of compulsive jurisdiction to oblige their own citizens to make payment. in those disorderly times it might have been extremely inconvenient to have left them to seek this sort of justice from any other tribunal. but it must seem extraordinary that the sovereigns of all the different countries of europe should have exchanged in this manner for a rent certain, never more to be augmented, that branch of the revenue which was, perhaps, of all others the most likely to be improved by the natural course of things, without either expense or attention of their own: and that they should, besides, have in this manner voluntarily erected a sort of independent republics in the heart of their own dominions. in order to understand this, it must be remembered that in those days the sovereign of perhaps no country in europe was able to protect, through the whole extent of his dominions, the weaker part of his subjects from the oppression of the great lords. those whom the law could not protect, and who were not strong enough to defend themselves, were obliged either to have recourse to the protection of some great lord, and in order to obtain it to become either his slaves or vassals; or to enter into a league of mutual defence for the common protection of one another. the inhabitants of cities and burghs, considered as single individuals, had no power to defend themselves; but by entering into a league of mutual defence with their neighbours, they were capable of making no contemptible resistance. the lords despised the burghers, whom they considered not only as of a different order, but as a parcel of emancipated slaves, almost of a different species from themselves. the wealth of the burghers never failed to provoke their envy and indignation, and they plundered them upon every occasion without mercy or remorse. the burghers naturally hated and feared the lords. the king hated and feared them too; but though perhaps he might despise, he had no reason either to hate or fear the burghers. mutual interest, therefore, disposed them to support the king, and the king to support them against the lords. they were the enemies of his enemies, and it was his interest to render them as secure and independent of those enemies as he could. by granting them magistrates of their own, the privilege of making bye-laws for their own government, that of building walls for their own defence, and that of reducing all their inhabitants under a sort of military discipline, he gave them all the means of security and independency of the barons which it was in his power to bestow. without the establishment of some regular government of this kind, without some authority to compel their inhabitants to act according to some certain plan or system, no voluntary league of mutual defence could either have afforded them any permanent security, or have enabled them to give the king any considerable support. by granting them the farm of their town in fee, he took away from those whom he wished to have for his friends, and, if one may say so, for his allies, all ground of jealousy and suspicion that he was ever afterwards to oppress them, either by raising the farm rent of their town or by granting it to some other farmer. the princes who lived upon the worst terms with their barons seem accordingly to have been the most liberal in grants of this kind to their burghs. king john of england, for example, appears to have been a most munificent benefactor to his towns. philip the first of france lost all authority over his barons. towards the end of his reign, his son lewis, known afterwards by the name of lewis the fat, consulted, according to father daniel, with the bishops of the royal demesnes concerning the most proper means of restraining the violence of the great lords. their advice consisted of two different proposals. one was to erect a new order of jurisdiction, by establishing magistrates and a town council in every considerable town of his demesnes. the other was to form a new militia, by making the inhabitants of those towns, under the command of their own magistrates, march out upon proper occasions to the assistance of the king. it is from this period, according to the french antiquarians, that we are to date the institution of the magistrates and councils of cities in france. it was during the unprosperous reigns of the princes of the house of suabia that the greater part of the free towns of germany received the first grants of their privileges, and that the famous hanseatic league first became formidable. the militia of the cities seems, in those times, not to have been inferior to that of the country, and as they could be more readily assembled upon any sudden occasion, they frequently had the advantage in their disputes with the neighbouring lords. in countries, such as italy and switzerland, in which, on account either of their distance from the principal seat of government, of the natural strength of the country itself, or of some other reason, the sovereign came to lose the whole of his authority, the cities generally became independent republics, and conquered all the nobility in their neighbourhood, obliging them to pull down their castles in the country and to live, like other peaceable inhabitants, in the city. this is the short history of the republic of berne as well as of several other cities in switzerland. if you except venice, for of that city the history is somewhat different, it is the history of all the considerable italian republics, of which so great a number arose and perished between the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. in countries such as france or england, where the authority of the sovereign, though frequently very low, never was destroyed altogether, the cities had no opportunity of becoming entirely independent. they became, however, so considerable that the sovereign could impose no tax upon them, besides the stated farm-rent of the town, without their own consent. they were, therefore, called upon to send deputies to the general assembly of the states of the kingdom, where they might join with the clergy and the barons in granting, upon urgent occasions, some extraordinary aid to the king. being generally, too, more favourable to his power, their deputies seem, sometimes, to have been employed by him as a counterbalance in those assemblies to the authority of the great lords. hence the origin of the representation of burghs in the states-general of all the great monarchies in europe. order and good government, and along with them the liberty and security of individuals, were, in this manner, established in cities at a time when the occupiers of land in the country were exposed to every sort of violence. but men in this defenceless state naturally content themselves with their necessary subsistence, because to acquire more might only tempt the injustice of their oppressors. on the contrary, when they are secure of enjoying the fruits of their industry, they naturally exert it to better their condition, and to acquire not only the necessaries, but the conveniences and elegancies of life. that industry, therefore, which aims at something more than necessary subsistence, was established in cities long before it was commonly practised by the occupiers of land in the country. if in the hands of a poor cultivator, oppressed with the servitude of villanage, some little stock should accumulate, he would naturally conceal it with great care from his master, to whom it would otherwise have belonged, and take the first opportunity of running away to a town. the law was at that time so indulgent to the inhabitants of towns, and so desirous of diminishing the authority of the lords over those of the country, that if he could conceal himself there from the pursuit of his lord for a year, he was free for ever. whatever stock, therefore, accumulated in the hands of the industrious part of the inhabitants of the country naturally took refuge in cities as the only sanctuaries in which it could be secure to the person that acquired it. the inhabitants of a city, it is true, must always ultimately derive their subsistence, and the whole materials and means of their industry, from the country. but those of a city, situated near either the sea coast or the banks of a navigable river, are not necessarily confined to derive them from the country in their neighbourhood. they have a much wider range, and may draw them from the most remote corners of the world, either in exchange for the manufactured produce of their own industry, or by performing the office of carriers between distant countries and exchanging the produce of one for that of another. a city might in this manner grow up to great wealth and splendour, while not only the country in its neighbourhood, but all those to which it traded, were in poverty and wretchedness. each of those countries, perhaps, taken singly, could afford it but a small part either of its subsistence or of its employment, but all of them taken together could afford it both a great subsistence and a great employment. there were, however, within the narrow circle of the commerce of those times, some countries that were opulent and industrious. such was the greek empire as long as it subsisted, and that of the saracens during the reigns of the abassides. such too was egypt till it was conquered by the turks, some part of the coast of barbary, and all those provinces of spain which were under the government of the moors. the cities of italy seem to have been the first in europe which were raised by commerce to any considerable degree of opulence. italy lay in the centre of what was at that time the improved and civilised part of the world. the crusades too, though by the great waste of stock and destruction of inhabitants which they occasioned they must necessarily have retarded the progress of the greater part of europe, were extremely favourable to that of some italian cities. the great armies which marched from all parts to the conquest of the holy land gave extraordinary encouragement to the shipping of venice, genoa, and pisa, sometimes in transporting them thither, and always in supplying them with provisions. they were the commissaries, if one may say so, of those armies; and the most destructive frenzy that ever befell the european nations was a source of opulence to those republics. the inhabitants of trading cities, by importing the improved manufactures and expensive luxuries of richer countries, afforded some food to the vanity of the great proprietors, who eagerly purchased them with great quantities of the rude produce of their own lands. the commerce of a great part of europe in those times, accordingly, consisted chiefly in the exchange of their own rude for the, manufactured produce of more civilised nations. thus the wool of england used to be exchanged for the wines of france and the fine cloths of flanders, in the same manner as the corn in poland is at this day exchanged for the wines and brandies of france and for the silks and velvets of france and italy. a taste for the finer and more improved manufactures was in this manner introduced by foreign commerce into countries where no such works were carried on. but when this taste became so general as to occasion a considerable demand, the merchants, in order to save the expense of carriage, naturally endeavoured to establish some manufactures of the same kind in their own country. hence the origin of the first manufactures for distant sale that seem to have been established in the western provinces of europe after the fall of the roman empire. no large country, it must be observed, ever did or could subsist without some sort of manufactures being carried on in it; and when it is said of any such country that it has no manufactures, it must always be understood of the finer and more improved or of such as are fit for distant sale. in every large country both the clothing and household furniture of the far greater part of the people are the produce of their own industry. this is even more universally the case in those poor countries which are commonly said to have no manufactures than in those rich ones that are said to abound in them. in the latter, you will generally find, both in the clothes and household furniture of the lowest rank of people, a much greater proportion of foreign productions than in the former. those manufactures which are fit for distant sale seem to have been introduced into different countries in two different ways. sometimes they have been introduced, in the manner above mentioned, by the violent operation, if one may say so, of the stocks of particular merchants and undertakers, who established them in imitation of some foreign manufactures of the same kind. such manufactures, therefore, are the offspring of foreign commerce, and such seem to have been the ancient manufactures of silks, velvets, and brocades, which flourished in lucca during the thirteenth century. they were banished from thence by the tyranny of one of machiavel's heroes, castruccio castracani. in 1310, nine hundred families were driven out of lucca, of whom thirty-one retired to venice and offered to introduce there the silk manufacture. their offer was accepted; many privileges were conferred upon them, and they began the manufacture with three hundred workmen. such, too, seem to have been the manufactures of fine cloths that anciently flourished in flanders, and which were introduced into england in the beginning of the reign of elizabeth; and such are the present silk manufactures of lyons and spitalfields. manufactures introduced in this manner are generally employed upon foreign materials, being imitations of foreign manufactures. when the venetian manufacture was first established, the materials were all brought from sicily and the levant. the more ancient manufacture of lucca was likewise carried on with foreign materials. the cultivation of mulberry trees and the breeding of silk-worms seem not to have been common in the northern parts of italy before the sixteenth century. those arts were not introduced into france till the reign of charles ix. the manufactures of flanders were carried on chiefly with spanish and english wool. spanish wool was the material, not of the first woollen manufacture of england, but of the first that was fit for distant sale. more than one half the materials of the lyons manufacture is at this day, foreign silk; when it was first established, the whole or very nearly the whole was so. no part of the materials of the spitalfields manufacture is ever likely be the produce of england. the seat of such manufactures, as they are generally introduced by the scheme and project of a few individuals, is sometimes established in a maritime city, and sometimes in an inland town, according as their interest, judgment, or caprice happen to determine. at other times, manufactures for distant sale group up naturally, and as it were of their own accord, by the gradual refinement of those household and coarser manufactures which must at all times be carried on even in the poorest and rudest countries. such manufactures are generally employed upon the materials which the country produces, and they seem frequently to have been first refined and improved in such inland countries as were, not indeed at a very great, but at a considerable distance from the sea coast, and sometimes even from all water carriage. an inland country, naturally fertile and easily cultivated, produces a great surplus of provisions beyond what is necessary for maintaining the cultivators, and on account of the expense of land carriage, and inconveniency of river navigation, it may frequently be difficult to send this surplus abroad. abundance, therefore, renders provisions cheap, and encourages a great number of workmen to settle in the neighbourhood, who find that their industry can there procure them more of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than in other places. they work up the materials of manufacture which the land produces, and exchange their finished work, or what is the same thing the price of it, for more materials and provisions. they give a new value to the surplus part of the rude produce by saving the expense of carrying it to the water side or to some distant market; and they furnish the cultivators with something in exchange for it that is either useful or agreeable to them upon easier terms than they could have obtained it before. the cultivators get a better price for their surplus produce, and can purchase cheaper other conveniences which they have occasion for. they are thus both encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus produce by a further improvement and better cultivation of the land; and as the fertility of the land had given birth to the manufacture, so the progress of the manufacture reacts upon the land and increases still further its fertility. the manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood, and afterwards, as their work improves and refines, more distant markets. for though neither the rude produce nor even the coarse manufacture could, without the greatest difficulty, support the expense of a considerable land carriage, the refined and improved manufacture easily may. in a small bulk it frequently contains the price of a great quantity of rude produce. a piece of fine cloth, for example, which weighs only eighty pounds, contains in it, the price, not only of eighty pounds' weight of wool, but sometimes of several thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the different working people and of their immediate employers. the corn, which could with difficulty have been carried abroad in its own shape, is in this manner virtually exported in that of the complete manufacture, and may easily be sent to the remotest corners of the world. in this manner have grown up naturally, and as it were of their own accord, the manufactures of leeds, halifax, sheffield, birmingham, and wolverhampton. such manufactures are the offspring of agriculture. in the modern history of europe, their extension and improvement have generally been posterior to those which were the offspring of foreign commerce. england was noted for the manufacture of fine cloths made of spanish wool more than a century before any of those which now flourish in the places above mentioned were fit for foreign sale. the extension and improvement of these last could not take place but in consequence of the extension and improvement of agriculture the last and greatest effect of foreign commerce, and of the manufactures immediately introduced by it, and which i shall now proceed to explain. chapter iv how the commerce of the towns contributed to the improvement of the country the increase and riches of commercial and manufacturing towns contributed to the improvement and cultivation of the countries to which they belonged in three different ways. first, by affording a great and ready market for the rude produce of the country, they gave encouragement to its cultivation and further improvement. this benefit was not even confined to the countries in which they were situated, but extended more or less to all those with which they had any dealings. to all of them they afforded a market for some part either of their rude or manufactured produce, and consequently gave some encouragement to the industry and improvement of all. their own country, however, on account of its neighbourhood, necessarily derived the greatest benefit from this market. its rude produce being charged with less carriage, the traders could pay the growers a better price for it, and yet afford it as cheap to the consumers as that of more distant countries. secondly, the wealth acquired by the inhabitants of cities was frequently employed in purchasing such lands as were to be sold, of which a great part would frequently be uncultivated. merchants are commonly ambitious of becoming country gentlemen, and when they do, they are generally the best of all improvers. a merchant is accustomed to employ his money chiefly in profitable projects, whereas a mere country gentleman is accustomed to employ it chiefly in expense. the one often sees his money go from him and return to him again with a profit; the other, when once he parts with it, very seldom expects to see any more of it. those different habits naturally affect their temper and disposition in every sort of business. a merchant is commonly a bold, a country gentleman a timid undertaker. the one is not afraid to lay out at once a large capital upon the improvement of his land when he has a probable prospect of raising the value of it in proportion to the expense. the other, if he has any capital, which is not always the case, seldom ventures to employ it in this manner. if he improves at all, it is commonly not with a capital, but with what he can save out of his annual revenue. whoever has had the fortune to live in a mercantile town situated in an unimproved country must have frequently observed how much more spirited the operations of merchants were in this way than those of mere country gentlemen. the habits, besides, of order, economy, and attention, to which mercantile business naturally forms a merchant, render him much fitter to execute, with profit and success, any project of improvement. thirdly, and lastly, commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours and of servile dependency upon their superiors. this, though it has been the least observed, is by far the most important of all their effects. mr. hume is the only writer who, so far as i know, has hitherto taken notice of it. in a country which has neither foreign commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures, a great proprietor, having nothing for which he can exchange the greater part of the produce of his lands which is over and above the maintenance of the cultivators, consumes the whole in rustic hospitality at home. if this surplus produce is sufficient to maintain a hundred or a thousand men, he can make use of it in no other way than by maintaining a hundred or a thousand men. he is at all times, therefore, surrounded with a multitude of retainers and dependants, who, having no equivalent to give in return for their maintenance, but being fed entirely by his bounty, must obey him, for the same reason that soldiers must obey the prince who pays them. before the extension of commerce and manufacture in europe, the hospitality of the rich, and the great, from the sovereign down to the smallest baron, exceeded everything which in the present times we can easily form a notion of. westminster hall was the dining-room of william rufus, and might frequently, perhaps, not be too large for his company. it was reckoned a piece of magnificence in thomas becket that he strewed the floor of his hall with clean hay or rushes in the season, in order that the knights and squires who could not get seats might not spoil their fine clothes when they sat down on the floor to eat their dinner. the great earl of warwick is said to have entertained every day at his different manors thirty thousand people, and though the number here may have been exaggerated, it must, however, have been very great to admit of such exaggeration. a hospitality nearly of the same kind was exercised not many years ago in many different parts of the highlands of scotland. it seems to be common in all nations to whom commerce and manufactures are little known. "i have seen," says doctor pocock, "an arabian chief dine in the streets of a town where he had come to sell his cattle, and invite all passengers, even common beggars, to sit down with him and partake of his banquet." the occupiers of land were in every respect as dependent upon the great proprietor as his retainers. even such of them as were not in a state of villanage were tenants at will, who paid a rent in no respect equivalent to the subsistence which the land afforded them. a crown, half a crown, a sheep, a lamb, was some years ago in the highlands of scotland a common rent for lands which maintained a family. in some places it is so at this day; nor will money at present purchase a greater quantity of commodities there than in other places. in a country where the surplus produce of a large estate must be consumed upon the estate itself, it will frequently be more convenient for the proprietor that part of it be consumed at a distance from his own house provided they who consume it are as dependent upon him as either his retainers or his menial servants. he is thereby saved from the embarrassment of either too large a company or too large a family. a tenant at will, who possesses land sufficient to maintain his family for little more than a quit-rent, is as dependent upon the proprietor as any servant or retainer whatever and must obey him with as little reserve. such a proprietor, as he feeds his servants and retainers at his own house, so he feeds his tenants at their houses. the subsistence of both is derived from his bounty, and its continuance depends upon his good pleasure. upon the authority which the great proprietor necessarily had in such a state of things over their tenants and retainers was founded the power of the ancient barons. they necessarily became the judges in peace, and the leaders in war, of all who dwelt upon their estates. they could maintain order and execute the law within their respective demesnes, because each of them could there turn the whole force of all the inhabitants against the injustice of any one. no other persons had sufficient authority to do this. the king in particular had not. in those ancient times he was little more than the greatest proprietor in his dominions, to whom, for the sake of common defence against their common enemies, the other great proprietors paid certain respects. to have enforced payment of a small debt within the lands of a great proprietor, where all the inhabitants were armed and accustomed to stand by one another, would have cost the king, had he attempted it by his own authority, almost the same effort as to extinguish a civil war. he was, therefore, obliged to abandon the administration of justice through the greater part of the country to those who were capable of administering it; and for the same reason to leave the command of the country militia to those whom that militia would obey. it is a mistake to imagine that those territorial jurisdictions took their origin from the feudal law. not only the highest jurisdictions both civil and criminal, but the power of levying troops, of coining money, and even that of making bye-laws for the government of their own people, were all rights possessed allodially by the great proprietors of land several centuries before even the name of the feudal law was known in europe. the authority and jurisdiction of the saxon lords in england appear to have been as great before the conquest as that of any of the norman lords after it. but the feudal law is not supposed to have become the common law of england till after the conquest. that the most extensive authority and jurisdictions were possessed by the great lords in france allodially long before the feudal law was introduced into that country is a matter of fact that admits of no doubt. that authority and those jurisdictions all necessarily flowed from the state of property and manners just now described. without remounting to the remote antiquities of either the french or english monarchies, we may find in much later times many proofs that such effects must always flow from such causes. it is not thirty years ago since mr. cameron of lochiel, a gentleman of lochabar in scotland, without any legal warrant whatever, not being what was then called a lord of regality, nor even a tenant in chief, but a vassal of the duke of argyle, and without being so much as a justice of peace, used, notwithstanding, to exercise the highest criminal jurisdiction over his own people. he is said to have done so with great equity, though without any of the formalities of justice; and it is not improbable that the state of that part of the country at that time made it necessary for him to assume this authority in order to maintain the public peace. that gentleman, whose rent never exceeded five hundred pounds a year, carried, in 1745, eight hundred of his own people into the rebellion with him. the introduction of the feudal law, so far from extending, may be regarded as an attempt to moderate the authority of the great allodial lords. it established a regular subordination, accompanied with a long train of services and duties, from the king down to the smallest proprietor. during the minority of the proprietor, the rent, together with the management of his lands, fell into the hands of his immediate superior, and, consequently, those of all great proprietors into the hands of the king, who was charged with the maintenance and education of the pupil, and who, from his authority as guardian, was supposed to have a right of disposing of him in marriage, provided it was in a manner not unsuitable to his rank. but though this institution necessarily tended to strengthen the authority of the king, and to weaken that of the great proprietors, it could not do either sufficiently for establishing order and good government among the inhabitants of the country, because it could not alter sufficiently that state of property and manners from which the disorders arose. the authority of government still continued to be, as before, too weak in the head and too strong in the inferior members, and the excessive strength of the inferior members was the cause of the weakness of the head. after the institution of feudal subordination, the king was as incapable of restraining the violence of the great lords as before. they still continued to make war according to their own discretion, almost continually upon one another, and very frequently upon the king; and the open country still continued to be a scene of violence, rapine, and disorder. but what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about. these gradually furnished the great proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus produce of their lands, and which they could consume themselves without sharing it either with tenants or retainers. all for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. as soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons. for a pair of diamond buckles, perhaps, or for something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or what is the same thing, the price of the maintenance of a thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight and authority which it could give them. the buckles, however, were to be all their own, and no other human creature was to have any share of them; whereas in the more ancient method of expense they must have shared with at least a thousand people. with the judges that were to determine the preference this difference was perfectly decisive; and thus, for the gratification of the most childish, the meanest, and the most sordid of all vanities, they gradually bartered their whole power and authority. in a country where there is no foreign commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures, a man of ten thousand a year cannot well employ his revenue in any other way than in maintaining, perhaps, a thousand families, who are all of them necessarily at his command. in the present state of europe, a man of ten thousand a year can spend his whole revenue, and he generally does so, without directly maintaining twenty people, or being able to command more than ten footmen not worth the commanding. indirectly, perhaps, he maintains as great or even a greater number of people than he could have done by the ancient method of expense. for though the quantity of precious productions for which he exchanges his whole revenue be very small, the number of workmen employed in collecting and preparing it must necessarily have been very great. its great price generally arises from the wages of their labour, and the profits of all their immediate employers. by paying that price he indirectly pays all those wages and profits and thus indirectly contributes to the maintenance of all the workmen and their employers. he generally contributes, however, but a very small proportion to that of each, to very few perhaps a tenth, to many not a hundredth, and to some not a thousandth, nor even a ten-thousandth part of their whole annual maintenance. though he contributes, therefore, to the maintenance of them all, they are all more or less independent of him, because generally they can all be maintained without him. when the great proprietors of land spend their rents in maintaining their tenants and retainers, each of them maintains entirely all his own tenants and all his own retainers. but when they spend them in maintaining tradesmen and artificers, they may, all of them taken together, perhaps, maintain as great, or, on account of the waste which attends rustic hospitality, a greater number of people than before. each of them, however, taken singly, contributes often but a very small share to the maintenance of any individual of this greater number. each tradesman or artificer derives his subsistence from the employment, not of one, but of a hundred or a thousand different customers. though in some measure obliged to them all, therefore, he is not absolutely dependent upon any one of them. the personal expense of the great proprietors having in this manner gradually increased, it was impossible that the number of their retainers should not as gradually diminish till they were at last dismissed altogether. the same cause gradually led them to dismiss the unnecessary part of their tenants. farms were enlarged, and the occupiers of land, notwithstanding the complaints of depopulation, reduced to the number necessary for cultivating it, according to the imperfect state of cultivation and improvement in those times. by the removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by exacting from the farmer the full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or what is the same thing, the price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor, which the merchants and manufacturers soon furnished him with a method of spending upon his own person in the same manner as he had done the rest. the same cause continuing to operate, he was desirous to raise his rents above what his lands, in the actual state of their improvement, could afford. his tenants could agree to this upon one condition only, that they should be secured in their possession for such a term of years as might give them time to recover with profit whatever they should lay out in the further improvement of the land. the expensive vanity of the landlord made him willing to accept of this condition; and hence the origin of long leases. even a tenant at will, who pays the full value of the land, is not altogether dependent upon the landlord. the pecuniary advantages which they receive from one another are mutual and equal, and such a tenant will expose neither his life nor his fortune in the service of the proprietor. but if he has a lease for a long term of years, he is altogether independent; and his landlord must not expect from him the most trifling service beyond what is either expressly stipulated in the lease or imposed upon him by the common and known law of the country. the tenants having in this manner become independent, and the retainers being dismissed, the great proprietors were no longer capable of interrupting the regular execution of justice or of disturbing the peace of the country. having sold their birthright, not like esau for a mess of pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but in the wantonness of plenty, for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the playthings of children than the serious pursuits of men, they became as insignificant as any substantial burgher or tradesman in a city. a regular government was established in the country as well as in the city, nobody having sufficient power to disturb its operations in the one any more than in the other. it does not, perhaps, relate to the present subject, but i cannot help remarking it, that very old families, such as have possessed some considerable estate from father to son for many successive generations are very rare in commercial countries. in countries which have little commerce, on the contrary, such as wales or the highlands of scotland, they are very common. the arabian histories seem to be all full of genealogies, and there is a history written by a tartar khan, which has been translated into several european languages, and which contains scarce anything else; a proof that ancient families are very common among those nations. in countries where a rich man can spend his revenue in no other way than by maintaining as many people as it can maintain, he is not apt to run out, and his benevolence it seems is seldom so violent as to attempt to maintain more than he can afford. but where he can spend the greatest revenue upon his own person, he frequently has no bounds to his expense, because he frequently has no bounds to his vanity or to his affection for his own person. in commercial countries, therefore, riches, in spite of the most violent regulations of law to prevent their dissipation, very seldom remain long in the same family. among simple nations, on the contrary, they frequently do without any regulations of law, for among nations of shepherds, such as the tartars and arabs, the consumable nature of their property necessarily renders all such regulations impossible. a revolution of the greatest importance to the public happiness was in this manner brought about by two different orders of people who had not the least intention to serve the public. to gratify the most childish vanity was the sole motive of the great proprietors. the merchants and artificers, much less ridiculous, acted merely from a view to their own interest, and in pursuit of their own pedlar principle of turning a penny wherever a penny was to be got. neither of them had either knowledge or foresight of that great revolution which the folly of the one, and the industry of the other, was gradually bringing about. it is thus that through the greater part of europe the commerce and manufactures of cities, instead of being the effect, have been the cause and occasion of the improvement and cultivation of the country. this order, however, being contrary to the natural course of things, is necessarily both slow and uncertain. compare the slow progress of those european countries of which the wealth depends very much upon their commerce and manufactures with the rapid advances of our north american colonies, of which the wealth is founded altogether in agriculture. through the greater part of europe the number of inhabitants is not supposed to double in less than five hundred years. in several of our north american colonies, it is found to double in twenty or five-and-twenty years. in europe, the law of primogeniture and perpetuities of different kinds prevent the division of great estates, and thereby hinder the multiplication of small proprietors. a small proprietor, however, who knows every part of his little territory, who views it with all the affection which property, especially small property, naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes pleasure not only in cultivating but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful. the same regulations, besides, keep so much land out of the market that there are always more capitals to buy than there is land to sell, so that what is sold always sells at a monopoly price. the rent never pays the interest of the purchase-money, and is, besides, burdened with repairs and other occasional charges to which the interest of money is not liable. to purchase land is everywhere in europe a most unprofitable employment of a small capital. for the sake of the superior security, indeed, a man of moderate circumstances, when he retires from business, will sometimes choose to lay out his little capital in land. a man of profession too, whose revenue is derived from. another source, often loves to secure his savings in the same way. but a young man, who, instead of applying to trade or to some profession, should employ a capital of two or three thousand pounds in the purchase and cultivation of a small piece of land, might indeed expect to live very happily, and very independently, but must bid adieu forever to all hope of either great fortune or great illustration, which by a different employment of his stock he might have had the same chance of acquiring with other people. such a person too, though he cannot aspire at being a proprietor, will often disdain to be a farmer. the small quantity of land, therefore, which is brought to market, and the high price of what is brought thither, prevents a great number of capitals from being employed in its cultivation and improvement which would otherwise have taken that direction. in north america, on the contrary, fifty or sixty pounds is often found a sufficient stock to begin a plantation with. the purchase and improvement of uncultivated land is there the most profitable employment of the smallest as well as of the greatest capitals, and the most direct road to all the fortune and illustration which can be acquired in that country. such land, indeed, is in north america to be had almost for nothing, or at a price much below the value of the natural producea thing impossible in europe, or, indeed, in any country where all lands have long been private property. if landed estates, however, were divided equally among all the children upon the death of any proprietor who left a numerous family, the estate would generally be sold. so much land would come to market that it could no longer sell at a monopoly price. the free rent of the land would go nearer to pay the interest of the purchase-money, and a small capital might be employed in purchasing land as profitably as in any other way. england, on account of the natural fertility of the soil, of the great extent of the sea-coast in proportion to that of the whole country, and of the many navigable rivers which run through it and afford the conveniency of water carriage to some of the most inland parts of it, is perhaps as well fitted by nature as any large country in europe to be the seat of foreign commerce, of manufactures for distant sale, and of all the improvements which these can occasion. from the beginning of the reign of elizabeth too, the english legislature has been peculiarly attentive to the interests of commerce and manufactures, and in reality there is no country in europe, holland itself not excepted, of which the law is, upon the whole, more favourable to this sort of industry. commerce and manufactures have accordingly been continually advancing during all this period. the cultivation and improvement of the country has, no doubt, been gradually advancing too; but it seems to have followed slowly, and at a distance, the more rapid progress of commerce and manufactures. the greater part of the country must probably have been cultivated before the reign of elizabeth; and a very great part of it still remains uncultivated, and the cultivation of the far greater part much inferior to what it might be. the law of england, however, favours agriculture not only indirectly by the protection of commerce, but by several direct encouragements. except in times of scarcity, the exportation of corn is not only free, but encouraged by a bounty. in times of moderate plenty, the importation of foreign corn is loaded with duties that amount to a prohibition. the importation of live cattle, except from ireland, is prohibited at all times, and it is but of late that it was permitted from thence. those who cultivate the land, therefore, have a monopoly against their countrymen for the two greatest and most important articles of land produce, bread and butcher's meat. these encouragements, though at bottom, perhaps, as i shall endeavour to show hereafter, altogether illusory, sufficiently demonstrate at least the good intention of the legislature to favour agriculture. but what is of much more importance than all of them, the yeomanry of england are rendered as secure, as independent, and as respectable as law can make them. no country, therefore, in which the right of primogeniture takes place, which pays tithes, and where perpetuities, though contrary to the spirit of the law, are admitted in some cases, can give more encouragement to agriculture than england. such, however, notwithstanding, is the state of its cultivation. what would it have been had the law given no direct encouragement to agriculture besides what arises indirectly from the progress of commerce, and had left the yeomanry in the same condition as in most other countries of europe? it is now more than two hundred years since the beginning of the reign of elizabeth, a period as long as the course of human prosperity usually endures. france seems to have had a considerable share of foreign commerce near a century before england was distinguished as a commercial country. the marine of france was considerable, according to the notions of the times, before the expedition of charles viii to naples. the cultivation and improvement of france, however, is, upon the whole, inferior to that of england. the law of the country has never given the same direct encouragement to agriculture. the foreign commerce of spain and portugal to the other parts of europe, though chiefly carried on in foreign ships, is very considerable. that to their colonies is carried on in their own, and is much greater, on account of the great riches and extent of those colonies. but it has never introduced any considerable manufactures for distant sale into either of those countries, and the greater part of both still remains uncultivated. the foreign commerce of portugal is of older standing than that of any great country in europe, except italy. italy is the only great country of europe which seems to have been cultivated and improved in every part by means of foreign commerce and manufactures for distant sale. before the invasion of charles viii, italy according to guicciardin, was cultivated not less in the most mountainous and barren parts of the country than in the plainest and most fertile. the advantageous situation of the country, and the great number of independent states which at that time subsisted in it, probably contributed not a little to this general cultivation. it is not impossible too, notwithstanding this general expression of one of the most judicious and reserved of modern historians, that italy was not at that time better cultivated than england is at present. the capital, however, that is acquired to any country by commerce and manufactures is all a very precarious and uncertain possession till some part of it has been secured and realized in the cultivation and improvement of its lands. a merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country. it is in a great measure indifferent to him from what place he carries on his trade; and a very trifling disgust will make him remove his capital, and together with it all the industry which it supports, from one country to another. no part of it can be said to belong to any particular country, till it has been spread as it were over the face of that country, either in buildings or in the lasting improvement of lands. no vestige now remains of the great wealth said to have been possessed by the greater part of the hans towns except in the obscure histories of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. it is even uncertain where some of them were situated or to what towns in europe the latin names given to some of them belong. but though the misfortunes of italy in the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries greatly diminished the commerce and manufactures of the cities of lombardy and tuscany, those countries still continue to be among the most populous and best cultivated in europe. the civil wars of flanders, and the spanish government which succeeded them, chased away the great commerce of antwerp, ghent, and bruges. but flanders still continues to be one of the richest, best cultivated, and most populous provinces of europe. the ordinary revolutions of war and government easily dry up the sources of that wealth which arises from commerce only. that which arises from the more solid improvements of agriculture is much more durable and cannot be destroyed but by those more violent convulsions occasioned by the depredations of hostile and barbarous nations continued for a century or two together, such as those that happened for some time before and after the fall of the roman empire in the western provinces of europe. book four of systems of political economy introduction political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. it proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign. the different progress of opulence in different ages and nations has given occasion to two different systems of political economy with regard to enriching the people. the one may be called the system of commerce, the other that of agriculture. i shall endeavour to explain both as fully and distinctly as i can, and shall begin with the system of commerce. it is the modern system, and is best understood in our own country and in our own times. chapter i of the principle of the commercial, or mercantile system that wealth consists in money, or and silver, is a popular notion which naturally arises from the double function of money, as the instrument of commerce and as the measure of value. in consequence of its being the instrument of commerce, when we have money we can more readily obtain whatever else we have occasion for than by means of any other commodity. the great affair, we always find, is to get money. when that is obtained, there is no difficulty in making any subsequent purchase. in consequence of its being the measure of value, we estimate that of all other commodities by the quantity of money which they will exchange for. we say of a rich man that he is worth a great deal, and of a poor man that he is worth very little money. a frugal man, or a man eager to be rich, is said to love money; and a careless, a generous, or a profuse man, is said to be indifferent about it. to grow rich is to get money; and wealth and money, in short, are, in common language, considered as in every respect synonymous. a rich country, in the same manner as a rich man, is supposed to be a country abounding in money; and to heap up gold and saver in any country is supposed to be the readiest way to enrich it. for some time after the discovery of america, the first inquiry of the spaniards, when they arrived upon an unknown coast, used to be, if there was any gold or silver to be found in the neighbourhood. by the information which they received, they judged whether it was worth while to make a settlement there, or if the country was worth the conquering. plano carpino, a monk, sent ambassador from the king of france to one of the sons of the famous genghis khan, says that the tartars used frequently to ask him if there was plenty of sheep and oxen in the kingdom of france. their inquiry had the same object with that of the spaniards. they wanted to know if the country was rich enough to be worth the conquering. among the tartars, as among all other nations of shepherds, who are generally ignorant of the use of money, cattle are the instruments of commerce and the measures of value. wealth, therefore, according to them, consisted in cattle, as according to the spaniards it consisted in gold and silver. of the two, the tartar notion, perhaps, was the nearest to the truth. mr. locke remarks a distinction between money and other movable goods. all other movable goods, he says, are of so consumable a nature that the wealth which consists in them cannot be much depended on, and a nation which abounds in them one year may, without any exportation, but merely their own waste and extravagance, be in great want of them the next. money, on the contrary, is a steady friend, which, though it may travel about from hand to hand, yet if it can be kept from going out of the country, is not very liable to be wasted and consumed. gold and silver, therefore, are, according to him, the most solid and substantial part of the movable wealth of a nation, and to multiply those metals ought, he thinks, upon that account, to be the great object of its political economy. others admit that if a nation could be separated from all the world, it would be of no consequence how much, or how little money circulated in it. the consumable goods which were circulated by means of this money would only be exchanged for a greater or a smaller number of pieces; but the real wealth or poverty of the country, they allow, would depend altogether upon the abundance or scarcity of those consumable goods. but it is otherwise, they think, with countries which have connections with foreign nations, and which are obliged to carry on foreign wars, and to maintain fleets and armies in distant countries. this, they say, cannot be done but by sending abroad money to pay them with; and a nation cannot send much money abroad unless it has a good deal at home. every such nation, therefore, must endeavour in time of peace to accumulate gold and silver that, when occasion requires, it may have wherewithal to carry on foreign wars. in consequence of these popular notions, all the different nations of europe have studied, though to little purpose, every possible means of accumulating gold and silver in their respective countries. spain and portugal, the proprietors of the principal mines which supply europe with those metals, have either prohibited their exportation under the severest penalties, or subjected it to a considerable duty. the like prohibition seems anciently to have made a part of the policy of most other european nations. it is even to be found, where we should least of all expect to find it, in some old scotch acts of parliament, which forbid under heavy penalties the carrying gold or silver forth of the kingdom. the like policy anciently took place both in france and england. when those countries became commercial, the merchants found this prohibition, upon many occasions, extremely inconvenient. they could frequently buy more advantageously with gold and silver than with any other commodity the foreign goods which they wanted, either to import into their own, or to carry to some other foreign country. they remonstrated, therefore, against this prohibition as hurtful to trade. they represented, first, that the exportation of gold and silver in order to purchase foreign goods, did not always diminish the quantity of those metals in the kingdom. that, on the contrary, it might frequently increase that quantity; because, if the consumption of foreign goods was not thereby increased in the country, those goods might be re-exported to foreign countries, and, being there sold for a large profit, might bring back much more treasure than was originally sent out to purchase them. mr. mun compares this operation of foreign trade to the seed-time and harvest of agriculture. "if we only behold," says he, "the actions of the husbandman in the seed-time, when he casteth away much good corn into the ground, we shall account him rather a madman than a husbandman. but when we consider his labours in the harvest, which is the end of his endeavours, we shall find the worth and plentiful increase of his action." they represented, secondly, that this prohibition could not hinder the exportation of gold and silver, which, on account of the smallness of their bulk in proportion to their value, could easily be smuggled abroad. that this exportation could only be prevented by a proper attention to, what they called, the balance of trade. that when the country exported to a greater value than it imported, a balance became due to it from foreign nations, which was necessarily paid to it in gold and silver, and thereby increased the quantity of those metals in the kingdom. but that when it imported to a greater value than it exported, a contrary balance became due to foreign nations, which was necessarily paid to them in the same manner, and thereby diminished that quantity. that in this case to prohibit the exportation of those metals could not prevent it, but only, by making it more dangerous, render it more expensive. that the exchange was thereby turned more against the country which owed the balance than it otherwise might have been; the merchant who purchased a bill upon the foreign country being obliged to pay the banker who sold it, not only for the natural risk, trouble, and expense of sending the money thither, but for the extraordinary risk arising from the prohibition. but that the more the exchange was against any country, the more the balance of trade became necessarily against it; the money of that country becoming necessarily of so much less value in comparison with that of the country to which the balance was due. that if the exchange between england and holland, for example, was five per cent against england, it would require a hundred and five ounces of silver in england to purchase a bill for a hundred ounces of silver in holland: that a hundred and five ounces of silver in england, therefore, would be worth only a hundred ounces of silver in holland, and would purchase only a proportionable quantity of dutch goods; but that a hundred ounces of silver in holland, on the contrary, would be worth a hundred and five ounces in england, and would purchase a proportionable quantity of english goods: that the english goods which were sold to holland would be sold so much cheaper; and the dutch goods which were sold to england so much dearer by the difference of the exchange; that the one would draw so much less dutch money to england, and the other so much more english money to holland, as this difference amounted to: and that the balance of trade, therefore, would necessarily be so much more against england, and would require a greater balance of gold and silver to be exported to holland. those arguments were partly solid and partly sophistical. they were solid so far as they asserted that the exportation of gold and silver in trade might frequently be advantageous to the country. they were solid, too, in asserting that no prohibition could prevent their exportation when private people found any advantage in exporting them. but they were sophistical in supposing that either to preserve or to augment the quantity of those metals required more the attention of government than to preserve or to augment the quantity of any other useful commodities, which the freedom of trade, without any such attention, never fails to supply in the proper quantity. they were sophistical too, perhaps, in asserting that the high price of exchange necessarily increased what they called the unfavourable balance of trade, or occasioned the exportation of a greater quantity of gold and silver. that high price, indeed, was extremely disadvantageous to the merchants who had any money to pay in foreign countries. they paid so much dearer for the bills which their bankers granted them upon those countries. but though the risk arising from the prohibition might occasion some extraordinary expense to the bankers, it would not necessarily carry any more money out of the country. this expense would generally be all laid out in the country, in smuggling the money out of it, and could seldom occasion the exportation of a single sixpence beyond the precise sum drawn for. the high price of exchange too would naturally dispose the merchants to endeavour to make their exports nearly balance their imports, in order that they might have this high exchange to pay upon as small a sum as possible. the high price of exchange, besides, must necessarily have operated as a tax, in raising the price of foreign goods, and thereby diminishing their consumption. it would tend, therefore, not to increase but to diminish what they called the unfavourable balance of trade, and consequently the exportation of gold and silver. such as they were, however, those arguments convinced the people to whom they were addressed. they were addressed by merchants to parliaments and to the councils of princes, to nobles and to country gentlemen, by those who were supposed to understand trade to those who were conscious to themselves that they knew nothing about the matter. that foreign trade enriched the country, experience demonstrated to the nobles and country gentlemen as well as to the merchants; but how, or in what manner, none of them well knew. the merchants knew perfectly in what manner it enriched themselves. it was their business to know it. but to know in what manner it enriched the country was no part of their business. this subject never came into their consideration but when they had occasion to apply to their country for some change in the laws relating to foreign trade. it then became necessary to say something about the beneficial effects of foreign trade, and the manner in which those effects were obstructed by the laws as they then stood. to the judges who were to decide the business it appeared a most satisfactory account of the matter, when they were told that foreign trade brought money into the country, but that the laws in question hindered it from bringing so much as it otherwise would do. those arguments therefore produced the wished-for effect. the prohibition of exporting gold and silver was in france and england confined to the coin of those respective countries. the exportation of foreign coin and of bullion was made free. in holland, and in some other places, this liberty was extended even to the coin of the country. the attention of government was turned away from guarding against the exportation of gold and silver to watch over the balance of trade as the only cause which could occasion any augmentation or diminution of those metals. from one fruitless care it was turned away to another care much more intricate, much more embarrassing, and just equally fruitless. the title of mun's book, england's treasure in foreign trade, became a fundamental maxim in the political economy, not of england only, but of all other commercial countries. the inland or home trade, the most important of all, the trade in which an equal capital affords the greatest revenue, and creates the greatest employment to the people of the country, was considered as subsidiary only to foreign trade. it neither brought money into the country, it was said, nor carried any out of it. the country, therefore, could never become either richer or poorer by means of it, except so far as its prosperity or decay might indirectly influence the state of foreign trade. a country that has no mines of its own must undoubtedly draw its gold and silver from foreign countries in the same manner as one that has no vineyards of its own must draw its wines. it does not seem necessary, however, that the attention of government should be more turned towards the one than towards the other object. a country that has wherewithal to buy wine will always get the wine which it has occasion for; and a country that has wherewithal to buy gold and silver will never be in want of those metals. they are to be bought for a certain price like all other commodities, and as they are the price of all other commodities, so all other commodities are the price of those metals. we trust with perfect security that the freedom of trade, without any attention of government, will always supply us with the wine which we have occasion for: and we may trust with equal security that it will always supply us with all the gold and silver which we can afford to purchase or to employ, either in circulating our commodities, or in other uses. the quantity of every commodity which human industry can either purchase or produce naturally regulates itself in every country according to the effectual demand, or according to the demand of those who are willing to pay the whole rent, labour, and profits which must be paid in order to prepare and bring it to market. but no commodities regulate themselves more easily or more exactly according to this effectual demand than gold and silver; because, on account of the small bulk and great value of those metals, no commodities can be more easily transported from one place to another, from the places where they are cheap to those where they are dear, from the places where they exceed to those where they fall short of this effectual demand. if there were in england, for example, an effectual demand for an additional quantity of gold, a packet-boat could bring from lisbon, or from wherever else it was to be had, fifty tons of gold, which could be coined into more than five millions of guineas. but if there were an effectual demand for grain to the same value, to import it would require, at five guineas a ton, a million of tons of shipping, or a thousand ships of a thousand tons each. the navy of england would not be sufficient. when the quantity of gold and silver imported into any country exceeds the effectual demand, no vigilance of government can prevent their exportation. all the sanguinary laws of spain and portugal are not able to keep their gold and silver at home. the continual importations from peru and brazil exceed the effectual demand of those countries, and sink the price of those metals there below that in the neighbouring countries. if, on the contrary, in any particular country their quantity fell short of the effectual demand, so as to raise their price above that of the neighbouring countries, the government would have no occasion to take any pains to import them. if it were even to take pains to prevent their importation, it would not be able to effectuate it. those metals, when the spartans had got wherewithal to purchase them, broke through all the barriers which the laws of lycurgus opposed to their entrance into lacedemon. all the sanguinary laws of the customs are not able to prevent the importation of the teas of the dutch and gottenburgh east india companies, because somewhat cheaper than those of the british company. a pound of tea, however, is about a hundred times the bulk of one of the highest prices, sixteen shillings, that is commonly paid for it in silver, and more than two thousand times the bulk of the same price in gold, and consequently just so many times more difficult to smuggle. it is partly owing to the easy transportation of gold and silver from the places where they abound to those where they are wanted that the price of those metals does not fluctuate continually like that of the greater part of other commodities, which are hindered by their bulk from shifting their situation when the market happens to be either over or under-stocked with them. the. price of those metals, indeed, is not altogether exempted from variation, but the changes to which it is liable are generally slow, gradual and uniform. in europe, for example, it is supposed, without much foundation, perhaps, that during the course of the present and preceding century they have been constantly, but gradually, sinking in their value, on account of the continual importations from the spanish west indies. but to make any sudden change in the price of gold and silver, so as to raise or lower at once, sensibly and remarkably, the money price of all other commodities, requires such a revolution in commerce as that occasioned by the discovery of america. if, notwithstanding all this, gold and silver should at any time fall short in a country which has wherewithal to purchase them, there are more expedients for supplying their place than that of almost any other commodity. if the materials of manufacture are wanted, industry must stop. if provisions are wanted, the people must starve. but if money is wanted, barter will supply its place, though with a good deal of inconveniency. buying and selling upon credit, and the different dealers compensating their credits with one another, once a month or once a year, will supply it with less inconveniency. a well-regulated paper money will supply it, not only without any inconveniency, but, in some cases, with some advantages. upon every account, therefore, the attention of government never was so unnecessarily employed as when directed to watch over the preservation or increase of the quantity of money in any country. no complaint, however, is more common than that of a scarcity of money. money, like wine, must always be scarce with those who have neither wherewithal to buy it nor credit to borrow it. those who have either will seldom be in want either of the money or of the wine which they have occasion for. this complaint, however, of the scarcity of money is not always confined to improvident spendthrifts. it is sometimes general through a whole mercantile town and the country in its neighbourhood. overtrading is the common cause of it. sober men, whose projects have been disproportioned to their capitals, are as likely to have neither wherewithal to buy money nor credit to borrow it, as prodigals whose expense has been disproportioned to their revenue. before their projects can be brought to bear, their stock is gone, and their credit with it. they run about everywhere to borrow money, and everybody tells them that they have none to lend. even such general complaints of the scarcity of money do not always prove that the usual number of gold and silver pieces are not circulating in the country, but that many people want those pieces who have nothing to give for them. when the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, overtrading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers. they do not always send more money abroad than usual, but they buy upon credit, both at home and abroad, an unusual quantity of goods, which they send to some distant market in hopes that the returns will come in before the demand for payment. the demand comes before the returns, and they have nothing at hand with which they can either purchase money, or give solid security for borrowing. it is not any scarcity of gold and silver, but the difficulty which such people find in borrowing, and which their creditors find in getting payment, that occasions the general complaint of the scarcity of money. it would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. money, no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital; but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it. it is not because wealth consists more essentially in money than in goods that the merchant find it generally more easy to buy goods with money than to buy money with goods; but because money is the known and established instrument of commerce, for which everything is readily given in exchange, but which is not always with equal readiness to be got in exchange for everything. the greater part of goods, besides, are more perishable than money, and he may frequently sustain a much greater loss by keeping them. when his goods are upon hand, too, he is more liable to such demands for money as he may not be able to answer than when he has got their price in his coffers. over and above all this, his profit arises more directly from selling than from buying, and he is upon all these accounts generally much more anxious to exchange his goods for money than his money for goods. but though a particular merchant, with abundance of goods in his warehouse, may sometimes be ruined by not being able to sell them in time, a nation or country is not liable to the same accident. the whole capital of a merchant frequently consists in perish, able goods destined for purchasing money. but it is but a very small part of the annual produce of the land and labour of a country which can ever be destined for purchasing gold and silver from their neighbours. the far greater part is circulated and consumed among themselves; and even of the surplus which is sent abroad, the greater part is generally destined for the purchase of other foreign goods. though gold and silver, therefore, could not be had in exchange for the goods destined to purchase them, the nation would not be ruined. it might, indeed, suffer some loss and inconveniency, and be forced upon some of those expedients which are necessary for supplying the place of money. the annual produce of its land and labour, however, would be the same, or very nearly the same, as usual, because the same, or very nearly the same, consumable capital would be employed in maintaining it. and though goods do not always draw money so readily as money draws goods, in the long run they draw it more necessarily than even it draws them. goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods. money, therefore, necessarily runs after goods, but goods do not always or necessarily run after money. the man who buys does not always mean to sell again, but frequently to use or to consume; whereas he who sells always means to buy again. the one may frequently have done the whole, but the other can never have done more than the one-half of his business. it is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it. consumable commodities, it is said, are soon destroyed; whereas gold and silver are of a more durable nature, and, were it not for this continual exportation, might be accumulated for ages together, to the incredible augmentation of the real wealth of the country. nothing, therefore, it is pretended, can be more disadvantageous to any country than the trade which consists in the exchange of such lasting for such perishable commodities. we do not, however, reckon that trade disadvantageous which consists in the exchange of the hardware of england for the wines of france; and yet hardware is a very durable commodity, and were it not for this continual exportation might, too, be accumulated for ages together, to the incredible augmentation of the pots and pans of the country. but it readily occurs that the number of such utensils is in every country necessarily limited by the use which there is for them; that it would be absurd to have more pots and pans than were necessary for cooking the victuals usually consumed there; and that if the quantity of victuals were to increase, the number of pots and pans would readily increase along with it, a part of the increased quantity of victuals being employed in purchasing them, or in maintaining an additional number of workmen whose business it was to make them. it should as readily occur that the quantity of gold and silver is in every country limited by the use which there is for those metals; that their use consists in circulating commodities as coin, and in affording a species of household furniture as plate; that the quantity of coin in every country is regulated by the value of the commodities which are to be circulated by it: increase that value, and immediately a part of it will be sent abroad to purchase, wherever it is to be had, the additional quantity of coin requisite for circulating them: that the quantity of plate is regulated by the number and wealth of those private families who choose to indulge themselves in that sort of magnificence: increase the number and wealth of such families, and a part of this increased wealth will most probably be employed in purchasing, wherever it is to be found, an additional quantity of plate: that to attempt to increase the wealth of any country, either by introducing or by detaining in it an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver, is as absurd as it would be to attempt to increase the good cheer of private families by obliging them to keep an unnecessary number of kitchen utensils. as the expense of purchasing those unnecessary utensils would diminish instead of increasing either the quantity of goodness of the family provisions, so the expense of purchasing an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver must, in every country, as necessarily diminish the wealth which feeds, clothes, and lodges, which maintains and employs the people. gold and silver, whether in the shape of coin or of plate, are utensils, it must be remembered, as much as the furniture of the kitchen. increase the use for them, increase the consumable commodities which are to be circulated, managed, and prepared by means of them, and you will infallibly increase the quantity; but if you attempt, by extraordinary means, to increase the quantity, you will as infallibly diminish the use and even the quantity too, which in those metals can never be greater than what the use requires. were they ever to be accumulated beyond this quantity, their transportation is so easy, and the loss which attends their lying idle and unemployed so great, that no law could prevent their being immediately sent out of the country. it is not always necessary to accumulate gold and silver in order to enable a country to carry on foreign wars, and to maintain fleets and armies in distant countries. fleets and armies are maintained, not with gold and silver, but with consumable goods. the nation which, from the annual produce of its domestic industry, from the annual revenue arising out of its lands, labour, and consumable stock, has wherewithal to purchase those consumable goods in distant countries, can maintain foreign wars there. a nation may purchase the pay and provisions of an army in a distant country three different ways: by sending abroad either, first, some part of its accumulated gold and silver, or, secondly, some part of the annual produce of its manufactures; or, last of all, some part of its annual rude produce. the gold and silver which can properly be considered as accumulated or stored up in any country may be distinguished into three parts: first, the circulating money; secondly, the plate of private families; and, last of all, the money which may have been collected by many years' parsimony, and laid up in the treasury of the prince. it can seldom happen that much can be spared from the circulating money of the country; because in that there can seldom be much redundancy. the value of goods annually bought and sold in any country requires a certain quantity of money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consumers, and can give employment to no more. the channel of circulation necessarily draws to itself a sum sufficient to fill it, and never admits any more. something, however, is generally withdrawn from this channel in the case of foreign war. by the great number of people who are maintained abroad, fewer are maintained at home. fewer goods are circulated there, and less money becomes necessary to circulate them. an extraordinary quantity of paper money, of some sort or other, such as exchequer notes, navy bills, and bank bills in england, is generally issued upon such occasions, and by supplying the place of circulating gold and silver, gives an opportunity of sending a greater quantity of it abroad. all this, however, could afford but a poor resource for maintaining a foreign war of great expense and several years duration. the melting down the plate of private families has upon every occasion been found a still more insignificant one. the french, in the beginning of the last war, did not derive so much advantage from this expedient as to compensate the loss of the fashion. the accumulated treasures of the prince have, in former times, afforded a much greater and more lasting resource. in the present times, if you except the king of prussia, to accumulate treasure seems to be no part of the policy of european princes. the funds which maintained the foreign wars of the present century, the most expensive perhaps which history records, seem to have had little dependency upon the exportation either of the circulating money, or of the plate of private families, or of the treasure of the prince. the last french war cost great britain upwards of ninety millions, including not only the seventy-five millions of new debt that was contracted, but the additional two shillings in the pound land-tax, and what was annually borrowed of the sinking fund. more than two-thirds of this expense were laid out in distant countries; in germany, portugal, america, in the ports of the mediterranean, in the east and west indies. the kings of england had no accumulated treasure. we never heard of any extraordinary quantity of plate being melted down. the circulating gold and silver of the country had not been supposed to exceed eighteen millions. since the late recoinage of the gold, however, it is believed to have been a good deal under-rated. let us suppose, therefore, according to the most exaggerated computation which i remember to have either seen or heard of, that, gold and silver together, it amounted to thirty millions. had the war been carried on by means of our money, the whole of it must, even according to this computation, have been sent out and returned again at least twice in a period of between six and seven years. should this be supposed, it would afford the most decisive argument to demonstrate how unnecessary it is for government to watch over the preservation of money, since upon this supposition the whole money of the country must have gone from it and returned to it again, two different times in so short a period, without anybody's knowing anything of the matter. the channel of circulation, however, never appeared more empty than usual during any part of this period. few people wanted money who had wherewithal to pay for it. the profits of foreign trade, indeed, were greater than usual during the whole war; but especially towards the end of it. this occasioned, what it always occasions, a general overtrading in all the parts of great britain; and this again occasioned the usual complaint of the scarcity of money, which always follows overtrading. many people wanted it, who had neither wherewithal to buy it, nor credit to borrow it; and because the debtors found it difficult to borrow, the creditors found it difficult to get payment. gold and silver, however, were generally to be had for their value, by those who had that value to give for them. the enormous expense of the late war, therefore, must have been chiefly defrayed, not by the exportation of gold and silver, but by that of british commodities of some kind or other. when the government, or those who acted under them, contracted with a merchant for a remittance to some foreign country, he would naturally endeavour to pay his foreign correspondent, upon whom he had granted a bill, by sending abroad rather commodities than gold and silver. if the commodities of great britain were not in demand in that country, he would endeavour to send them to some other country, in which he could purchase a bill upon that country. the transportation of commodities, when properly suited to the market, is always attended with a considerable profit; whereas that of gold and silver is scarce ever attended with any. when those metals are sent abroad in order to purchase foreign commodities, the merchant's profit arises, not from the purchase, but from the sale of the returns. but when they are sent abroad merely to pay a debt, he gets no returns, and consequently no profit. he naturally, therefore, exerts his invention to find out a way of paying his foreign debts rather by the exportation of commodities than by that of gold and silver. the great quantity of british goods exported during the course of the late war, without bringing back any returns, is accordingly remarked by the author of the present state of the nation. besides the three sorts of gold and silver above mentioned, there is in all great commercial countries a good deal of bullion alternately imported and exported for the purposes of foreign trade. this bullion, as it circulates among different commercial countries in the same manner as the national coin circulates in every particular country, may be considered as the money of the great mercantile republic. the national coin receives its movement and direction from the commodities circulated within the precincts of each particular country: the money of the mercantile republic, from those circulated between different countries. both are employed in facilitating exchanges, the one between different individuals of the same, the other between those of different nations. part of this money of the great mercantile republic may have been, and probably was, employed in carrying on the late war. in time of a general war, it is natural to suppose that a movement and direction should be impressed upon it, different from what it usually follows in profound peace; that it should circulate more about the seat of the war, and be more employed in purchasing there, and in the neighbouring countries, the pay and provisions of the different armies. but whatever part of this money of the mercantile republic great britain may have annually employed in this manner, it must have been annually purchased, either with british commodities, or with something else that had been purchased with them; which still brings us back to commodities, to the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, as the ultimate resources which enabled us to carry on the war. it is natural indeed to suppose that so great an annual expense must have been defrayed from a great annual produce. the expense of 1761, for example, amounted to more than nineteen millions. no accumulation could have supported so great an annual profusion. there is no annual produce even of gold and silver which could have supported it. the whole gold and silver annually imported into both spain and portugal, according to the best accounts, does not commonly much exceed six millions sterling, which, in some years, would scarce have paid four month's expense of the late war. the commodities most proper for being transported to distant countries, in order to purchase there either the pay and provisions of an army, or some part of the money of the mercantile republic to be employed in purchasing them, seem to be the finer and more improved manufactures; such as contain a great value in a small bulk, and can, therefore, be exported to a great distance at little expense. a country whose industry produces a great annual surplus of such manufactures, which are usually exported to foreign countries, may carry on for many years a very expensive foreign war without either exporting any considerable quantity of gold and silver, or even having any such quantity to export. a considerable part of the annual surplus of its manufactures must, indeed, in this case be exported without bringing back any returns to the country, though it does to the merchant; the government purchasing of the merchant his bills upon foreign countries, in order to purchase there the pay and provisions of an army. some part of this surplus, however, may still continue to bring back a return. the manufacturers, during the war, will have a double demand upon them, and be called upon, first, to work up goods to be sent abroad, for paying the bills drawn upon foreign countries for the pay and provisions of the army; and, secondly, to work up such as are necessary for purchasing the common returns that had usually been consumed in the country. in the midst of the most destructive foreign war, therefore, the greater part of manufactures may frequently flourish greatly; and, on the contrary, they may decline on the return of the peace. they may flourish amidst the ruin of their country, and begin to decay upon the return of its prosperity. the different state of many different branches of the british manufactures during the late war, and for some time after the peace, may serve as an illustration of what has been just now said. no foreign war of great expense or duration could conveniently be carried on by the exportation of the rude produce of the soil. the expense of sending such a quantity of it to a foreign country as might purchase the pay and provisions of an army would be too great. few countries produce much more rude produce than what is sufficient for the subsistence of their own inhabitants. to send abroad any great quantity of it, therefore, would be to send abroad a part of the necessary subsistence of the people. it is otherwise with the exportation of manufactures. the maintenance of the people employed in them is kept at home, and only the surplus part of their work is exported. mr. hume frequently takes notice of the inability of the ancient kings of england to carry on, without interruption, any foreign war of long duration. the english, in those days, had nothing wherewithal to purchase the pay and provisions of their armies in foreign countries, but either the rude produce of the soil, of which no considerable part could be spared from the home consumption, or a few manufactures of the coarsest kind, of which, as well as of the rude produce, the transportation was too expensive. this inability did not arise from the want of money, but of the finer and more improved manufactures. buying and selling was transacted by means of money in england then as well as now. the quantity of circulating money must have borne the same proportion to the number and value of purchases and sales usually transacted at that time, which it does to those transacted at present; or rather it must have borne a greater proportion, because there was then no paper, which now occupies a great part of the employment of gold and silver. among nations to whom commerce and manufactures are little known, the sovereign, upon extraordinary occasions, can seldom draw any considerable aid from his subjects, for reasons which shall be explained hereafter. it is in such countries, therefore, that he generally endeavours to accumulate a treasure, as the only resource against such emergencies. independent of this necessity, he is in such a situation naturally disposed to the parsimony requisite for accumulation. in that simple state, the expense even of a sovereign is not directed by the vanity which delights in the gaudy finery of a court, but is employed in bounty to his tenants, and hospitality to his retainers. but bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does. every tartar chief, accordingly, has a treasure. the treasures of mazepa, chief of the cossacs in the ukraine, the famous ally of charles the xii, are said to have been very great. the french kings of the merovingian race all had treasures. when they divided their kingdom among their different children, they divided their treasure too. the saxon princes, and the first kings after the conquest, seem likewise to have accumulated treasures. the first exploit of every new reign was commonly to seize the treasure of the preceding king, as the most essential measure for securing the succession. the sovereigns of improved and commercial countries are not under the same necessity of accumulating treasures, because they can generally draw from their subjects extraordinary aids upon extraordinary occasions. they are likewise less disposed to do so. they naturally, perhaps necessarily, follow the mode of the times, and their expense comes to be regulated by the same extravagant vanity which directs that of all the other great proprietors in their dominions. the insignificant pageantry of their court becomes every day more brilliant, and the expense of it not only prevents accumulation, but frequently encroaches upon the funds destined for more necessary expenses. what dercyllidas said of the court of persia may be applied to that of several european princes, that he saw there much splendour but little strength, and many servants but few soldiers. the importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade. between whatever places foreign trade is carried on, they all of them derive two distinct benefits from it. it carries out that surplus part of the produce of their land and labour for which there is no demand among them, and brings back in return for it something else for which there is a demand. it gives a value to their superfluities, by exchanging them for something else, which may satisfy a part of their wants, and increase their enjoyments. by means of it the narrowness of the home market does not hinder the division of labour in any particular branch of art or manufacture from being carried to the highest perfection. by opening a more extensive market for whatever part of the produce of their labour may exceed the home consumption, it encourages them to improve its productive powers, and to augment its annual produce to the utmost, and thereby to increase the real revenue and wealth of the society. these great and important services foreign trade is continually occupied in performing to all the different countries between which it is carried on. they all derive great benefit from it, though that in which the merchant resides generally derives the greatest, as he is generally more employed in supplying the wants, and carrying out the superfluities of his own, than of any other particular country. to import the gold and silver which may be wanted into the countries which have no mines is, no doubt, a part of the business of foreign commerce. it is, however, a most insignificant part of it. a country which carried on foreign trade merely upon this account could scarce have occasion to freight a ship in a century. it is not by the importation of gold and silver that the discovery of america has enriched europe. by the abundance of the american mines, those metals have become cheaper. a service of plate can now be purchased for about a third part of the corn, or a third part of the labour, which it would have cost in the fifteenth century. with the same annual expense of labour and commodities, europe can annually purchase about three times the quantity of plate which it could have purchased at that time. but when a commodity comes to be sold for a third part of what had been its usual price, not only those who purchased it before can purchase three times their former quantity, but it is brought down to the level of a much greater number of purchasers, perhaps to more than ten, perhaps to more than twenty times the former number. so that there may be in europe at present not only more than three times, but more than twenty or thirty times the quantity of plate which would have been in it, even in its present state of improvement, had the discovery of the american mines never been made. so far europe has, no doubt, gained a real conveniency, though surely a very trifling one. the cheapness of gold and silver renders those metals rather less fit for the purposes of money than they were before. in order to make the same purchases, we must load ourselves with a greater quantity of them, and carry about a shilling in our pocket where a groat would have done before. it is difficult to say which is most trifling, this inconveniency or the opposite conveniency. neither the one nor the other could have made any very essential change in the state of europe. the discovery of america, however, certainly made a most essential one. by opening a new and inexhaustible market to all the commodities of europe, it gave occasion to new divisions of labour and improvements of art, which in the narrow circle of the ancient commerce, could never have taken place for want of a market to take off the greater part of their produce. the productive powers of labour were improved, and its produce increased in all the different countries of europe, and together with it the real revenue and wealth of the inhabitants. the commodities of europe were almost all new to america, and many of those of america were new to europe. a new set of exchanges, therefore, began to take place which had never been thought of before, and which should naturally have proved as advantageous to the new, as it certainly did to the old continent. the savage injustice of the europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries. the discovery of a passage to the east indies by the cape of good hope, which happened much about the same time, opened perhaps a still more extensive range to foreign commerce than even that of america, notwithstanding the greater distance. there were but two nations in america in any respect superior to savages, and these were destroyed almost as soon as discovered. the rest were mere savages. but the empires of china, indostan, japan, as well as several others in the east indies, without having richer mines of gold or silver, were in every other respect much richer, better cultivated, and more advanced in all arts and manufactures than either mexico or peru, even though we should credit, what plainly deserves no credit, the exaggerated accounts of the spanish writers concerning the ancient state of those empires. but rich and civilised nations can always exchange to a much greater value with one another than with savages and barbarians. europe, however, has hitherto derived much less advantage from its commerce with the east indies than from that with america. the portuguese monopolized the east india trade to themselves for about a century, and it was only indirectly and through them that the other nations of europe could either send out or receive any goods from that country. when the dutch, in the beginning of the last century, began to encroach upon them, they vested their whole east india commerce in an exclusive company. the english, french, swedes, and danes have all followed their example, so that no great nation in europe has ever yet had the benefit of a free commerce to the east indies. no other reason need be assigned why it has never been so advantageous as the trade to america, which, between almost every nation of europe and its own colonies, is free to all its subjects. the exclusive privileges of those east india companies, their great riches, the great favour and protection which these have procured them from their respective governments, have excited much envy against them. this envy has frequently represented their trade as altogether pernicious, on account of the great quantities of silver which it every year exports from the countries from which it is carried on. the parties concerned have replied that their trade, by this continual exportation of silver, might indeed tend to impoverish europe in general, but not the particular country from which it was carried on; because, by the exportation of a part of the returns to other european countries, it annually brought home a much greater quantity of that metal than it carried out. both the objection and the reply are founded in the popular notion which i have been just now examining. it is therefore unnecessary to say anything further about either. by the annual exportation of silver to the east indies, plate is probably somewhat dearer in europe than it otherwise might have been; and coined silver probably purchases a larger quantity both of labour and commodities. the former of these two effects is a very small loss, the latter a very small advantage; both too insignificant to deserve any part of the public attention. the trade to the east indies, by opening a market to the commodities of europe, or, what comes nearly to the same thing, to the gold and silver which is purchased with those commodities, must necessarily tend to increase the annual production of european commodities, and consequently the real wealth and revenue of europe. that it has hitherto increased them so little is probably owing to the restraints which it everywhere labours under. i thought it necessary, though at the hazard of being tedious, to examine at full length this popular notion that wealth consists in money, or in gold and silver. money in common language, as i have already observed, frequently signifies wealth, and this ambiguity of expression has rendered this popular notion so familiar to us that even they who are convinced of its absurdity are very apt to forget their own principles, and in the course of their reasonings to take it for granted as a certain and undeniable truth. some of the best english writers upon commerce set out with observing that the wealth of a country consists, not in its gold and silver only, but in its lands, houses, and consumable goods of all different kinds. in the course of their reasonings, however, the lands, houses, and consumable goods seem to slip out of their memory, and the strain of their argument frequently supposes that all wealth consists in gold and silver, and that to multiply those metals is the great object of national industry and commerce. the two principles being established, however, that wealth consisted in gold and silver, and that those metals could be brought into a country which had no mines only by the balance of trade, or by exporting to a greater value than it imported, it necessarily became the great object of political economy to diminish as much as possible the importation of foreign goods for home consumption, and to increase as much as possible the exportation of the produce of domestic industry. its two great engines for enriching the country, therefore, were restraints upon importation, and encouragements to exportation. the restraints upon importation were of two kinds. first, restraints upon the importation of such foreign goods for home consumption as could be produced at home, from whatever country they were imported. secondly, restraints upon the importation of goods of almost all kinds from those particular countries with which the balance of trade was supposed to be disadvantageous. those different restraints consisted sometimes in high duties, and sometimes in absolute prohibitions. exportation was encouraged sometimes by drawbacks, sometimes by bounties, sometimes by advantageous treaties of commerce with foreign states, and sometimes by the establishment of colonies in distant countries. drawbacks were given upon two different occasions. when the home manufactures were subject to any duty or excise, either the whole or a part of it was frequently drawn back upon their exportation; and when foreign goods liable to a duty were imported in order to be exported again, either the whole or a part of this duty was sometimes given back upon such exportation. bounties were given for the encouragement either of some beginning manufactures, or of such sorts of industry of other kinds as supposed to deserve particular favour. by advantageous treaties of commerce, particular privileges were procured in some foreign state for the goods and merchants of the country, beyond what were granted to those other countries. by established establishment of colonies in distant countries, not only particular privileges, but a monopoly was frequently procured for the goods and merchants of the country which established them. the two sorts of restraints upon importation above-mentioned, together with these four encouragements to exportation, constitute the six principal means by which the commercial system proposes to increase the quantity of gold and silver in any country by turning the balance of trade in its favour. i shall consider each of them in a particular chapter, and without taking much further notice of their supposed tendency to bring money into the country, i shall examine chiefly what are likely to be the effects of each of them upon the annual produce of its industry. according as they tend either to increase or diminish the value of this annual produce, they must evidently tend either to increase or diminish the real wealth and revenue of the country. chapter ii of restraints upon the importation from foreign countries of such goods as can be produced at home by restraining, either by high duties or by absolute prohibitions, the importation of such goods from foreign countries as can be produced at home, the monopoly of the home market is more or less secured to the domestic industry employed in producing them. thus the prohibition of importing either live cattle or salt provisions from foreign countries secures to the graziers of great britain the monopoly of the home market for butcher's meat. the high duties upon the importation of corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, give a like advantage to the growers of that commodity. the prohibition of the importation of foreign woollens is equally favourable to the woollen manufacturers. the silk manufacture, though altogether employed upon foreign materials, has lately obtained the same advantage. the linen manufacture has not yet obtained it, but is making great strides towards it. many other sorts of manufacturers have, in the same manner, obtained in great britain, either altogether or very nearly, a monopoly against their countrymen. the variety of goods of which the importation into great britain is prohibited, either absolutely, or under certain circumstances, greatly exceeds what can easily be suspected by those who are not well acquainted with the laws of the customs. that this monopoly of the home market frequently gives great encouragement to that particular species of industry which enjoys it, and frequently turns towards that employment a greater share of both the labour and stock of the society than would otherwise have gone to it, cannot be doubted. but whether it tends either to increase the general industry of the society, or to give it the most advantageous direction, is not, perhaps, altogether so evident. the general industry of the society never can exceed what the capital of the society can employ. as the number of workmen that can be kept in employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society must bear a certain proportion to the whole capital of that society, and never can exceed that proportion. no regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. it can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord. every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. it is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view. but the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society. first, every individual endeavours to employ his capital as near home as he can, and consequently as much as he can in the support of domestic industry; provided always that he can thereby obtain the ordinary, or not a great deal less than the ordinary profits of stock. thus, upon equal or nearly equal profits, every wholesale merchant naturally prefers the home trade to the foreign trade of consumption, and the foreign trade of consumption to the carrying trade. in the home trade his capital is never so long out of his sight as it frequently is in the foreign trade of consumption. he can know better the character and situation of the persons whom he trusts, and if he should happen to be deceived, he knows better the laws of the country from which he must seek redress. in the carrying trade, the capital of the merchant is, as it were, divided between two foreign countries, and no part of it is ever necessarily brought home, or placed under his own immediate view and command. the capital which an amsterdam merchant employs in carrying corn from konigsberg to lisbon, and fruit and wine from lisbon to konigsberg, must generally be the one half of it at konigsberg and the other half at lisbon. no part of it need ever come to amsterdam. the natural residence of such a merchant should either be at konigsberg or lisbon, and it can only be some very particular circumstances which can make him prefer the residence of amsterdam. the uneasiness, however, which he feels at being separated so far from his capital generally determines him to bring part both of the konigsberg goods which he destines for the market of lisbon, and of the lisbon goods which he destines for that of konigsberg, to amsterdam: and though this necessarily subjects him to a double charge of loading and unloading, as well as to the payment of some duties and customs, yet for the sake of having some part of his capital always under his own view and command, he willingly submits to this extraordinary charge; and it is in this manner that every country which has any considerable share of the carrying trade becomes always the emporium, or general market, for the goods of all the different countries whose trade it carries on. the merchant, in order to save a second loading and unloading, endeavours always to sell in the home market as much of the goods of all those different countries as he can, and thus, so far as he can, to convert his carrying trade into a foreign trade of consumption. a merchant, in the same manner, who is engaged in the foreign trade of consumption, when he collects goods for foreign markets, will always be glad, upon equal or nearly equal profits, to sell as great a part of them at home as he can. he saves himself the risk and trouble of exportation, when, so far as he can, he thus converts his foreign trade of consumption into a home trade. home is in this manner the centre, if i may say so, round which the capitals of the inhabitants of every country are continually circulating, and towards which they are always tending, though by particular causes they may sometimes be driven off and repelled from it towards more distant employments. but a capital employed in the home trade, it has already been shown, necessarily puts into motion a greater quantity of domestic industry, and gives revenue and employment to a greater number of the inhabitants of the country, than an equal capital employed in the foreign trade of consumption: and one employed in the foreign trade of consumption has the same advantage over an equal capital employed in the carrying trade. upon equal, or only nearly equal profits, therefore, every individual naturally inclines to employ his capital in the manner in which it is likely to afford the greatest support to domestic industry, and to give revenue and employment to the greatest number of people of his own country. secondly, every individual who employs his capital in the support of domestic industry, necessarily endeavours so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest possible value. the produce of industry is what it adds to the subject or materials upon which it is employed. in proportion as the value of this produce is great or small, so will likewise be the profits of the employer. but it is only for the sake of profit that any man employs a capital in the support of industry; and he will always, therefore, endeavour to employ it in the support of that industry of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, or to exchange for the greatest quantity either of money or of other goods. but the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value. as every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. he generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. by preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. by pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. i have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. it is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it. what is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. the statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. to give the monopoly of the home market to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation. if the produce of domestic can be brought there as cheap as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless. if it cannot, it must generally be hurtful. it is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. the tailor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker. the shoemaker does not attempt to make his own clothes, but employs a tailor. the farmer attempts to make neither the one nor the other, but employs those different artificers. all of them find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours, and to purchase with a part of its produce, or what is the same thing, with the price of a part of it, whatever else they have occasion for. what is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. if a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry employed in a way in which we have some advantage. the general industry of the country, being always in proportion to the capital which employs it, will not thereby be diminished, no more than that of the above-mentioned artificers; but only left to find out the way in which it can be employed with the greatest advantage. it is certainly not employed to the greatest advantage when it is thus directed towards an object which it can buy cheaper than it can make. the value of its annual produce is certainly more or less diminished when it is thus turned away from producing commodities evidently of more value than the commodity which it is directed to produce. according to the supposition, that commodity could be purchased from foreign countries cheaper than it can be made at home. it could, therefore, have been purchased with a part only of the commodities, or, what is the same thing, with a part only of the price of the commodities, which the industry employed by an equal capital would have produced at home, had it been left to follow its natural course. the industry of the country, therefore, is thus turned away from a more to a less advantageous employment, and the exchangeable value of its annual produce, instead of being increased, according to the intention of the lawgiver, must necessarily be diminished by every such regulation. by means of such regulations, indeed, a particular manufacture may sometimes be acquired sooner than it could have been otherwise, and after a certain time may be made at home as cheap or cheaper than in the foreign country. but though the industry of the society may be thus carried with advantage into a particular channel sooner than it could have been otherwise, it will by no means follow that the sum total, either of its industry, or of its revenue, can ever be augmented by any such regulation. the industry of the society can augment only in proportion as its capital augments, and its capital can augment only in proportion to what can be gradually saved out of its revenue. but the immediate effect of every such regulation is to diminish its revenue, and what diminishes its revenue is certainly not very likely to augment its capital faster than it would have augmented of its own accord had both capital and industry been left to find out their natural employments. though for want of such regulations the society should never acquire the proposed manufacture, it would not, upon that account, necessarily be the poorer in any one period of its duration. in every period of its duration its whole capital and industry might still have been employed, though upon different objects, in the manner that was most advantageous at the time. in every period its revenue might have been the greatest which its capital could afford, and both capital and revenue might have been augmented with the greatest possible rapidity. the natural advantages which one country has over another in producing particular commodities are sometimes so great that it is acknowledged by all the world to be in vain to struggle with them. by means of glasses, hotbeds, and hot walls, very good grapes can be raised in scotland, and very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in scotland? but if there would be a manifest absurdity in turning towards any employment thirty times more of the capital and industry of the country than would be necessary to purchase from foreign countries an equal quantity of the commodities wanted, there must be an absurdity, though not altogether so glaring, yet exactly of the same kind, in turning towards any such employment a thirtieth, or even a three-hundredth part more of either. whether the advantages which one country has over another be natural or acquired is in this respect of no consequence. as long as the one country has those advantages, and the other wants them, it will always be more advantageous for the latter rather to buy of the former than to make. it is an acquired advantage only, which one artificer has over his neighbour, who exercises another trade; and yet they both find it more advantageous to buy of one another than to make what does not belong to their particular trades. merchants and manufacturers are the people who derive the greatest advantage from this monopoly of the home market. the prohibition of the importation of foreign cattle, and of salt provisions, together with the high duties upon foreign corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, are not near so advantageous to the graziers and farmers of great britain as other regulations of the same kind are to its merchants and manufacturers. manufactures, those of the finer kind especially, are more easily transported from one country to another than corn or cattle. it is in the fetching and carrying manufactures, accordingly, that foreign trade is chiefly employed. in manufactures, a very small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in the home market. it will require a very great one to enable them to do so in the rude produce of the soil. if the free importation of foreign manufactures were permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether, and a considerable part of the stock and industry at present employed in them would be forced to find out some other employment. but the freest importation of the rude produce of the soil could have no such effect upon the agriculture of the country. if the importation of foreign cattle, for example, were made ever so free, so few could be imported that the grazing trade of great britain could be little affected by it. live cattle are, perhaps, the only commodity of which the transportation is more expensive by sea than by land. by land they carry themselves to market. by sea, not only the cattle, but their food and their water too, must be carried at no small expense and inconveniency. the short sea between ireland and great britain, indeed, renders the importation of irish cattle more easy. but though the free importation of them, which was lately permitted only for a limited time, were rendered perpetual, it could have no considerable effect upon the interest of the graziers of great britain. those parts of great britain which border upon the irish sea are all grazing countries. irish cattle could never be imported for their use, but must be driven through those very extensive countries, at no small expense and inconveniency, before they could arrive at their proper market. fat cattle could not be driven so far. lean cattle, therefore, only could be imported, and such importation could interfere, not with the interest of the feeding or fattening countries, to which, by reducing the price of lean cattle, it would rather be advantageous, but with that of the breeding countries only. the small number of irish cattle imported since their importation was permitted, together with the good price at which lean cattle still continue to sell, seem to demonstrate that even the breeding countries of great britain are never likely to be much affected by the free importation of irish cattle. the common people of ireland, indeed, are said to have sometimes opposed with violence the exportation of their cattle. but if the exporters had found any great advantage in continuing the trade, they could easily, when the law was on their side, have conquered this mobbish opposition. feeding and fattening countries, besides, must always be highly improved, whereas breeding countries are generally uncultivated. the high price of lean cattle, by augmenting the value of uncultivated land, is like a bounty against improvement. to any country which was highly improved throughout, it would be more advantageous to import its lean cattle than to breed them. the province of holland, accordingly, is said to follow this maxim at present. the mountains of scotland, wales, and northumberland, indeed, are countries not capable of much improvement, and seem destined by nature to be the breeding countries of great britain. the freest importation of foreign cattle could have no other effect than to hinder those breeding countries from taking advantage of the increasing population and improvement of the rest of the kingdom, from raising their price to an exorbitant height, and from laying a real tax upon all the more improved and cultivated parts of the country. the freest importation of salt provisions, in the same manner, could have as little effect upon the interest of the graziers of great britain as that of live cattle. salt provisions are not only a very bulky commodity, but when compared with fresh meat, they are a commodity both of worse quality, and as they cost more labour and expense, of higher price. they could never, therefore, come into competition with the fresh meat, though they might with the salt provisions of the country. they might be used for victualling ships for distant voyages and such like uses, but could never make any considerable part of the food of the people. the small quantity of salt provisions imported from ireland since their importation was rendered free is an experimental proof that our graziers have nothing to apprehend from it. it does not appear that the price of butcher's meat has ever been sensibly affected by it. even the free importation of foreign corn could very little affect the interest of the farmers of great britain. corn is a much more bulky commodity than butcher's meat. a pound of wheat at a penny is as dear as a pound of butcher's meat at fourpence. the small quantity of foreign corn imported even in times of the greatest scarcity may satisfy our farmers that they can have nothing to fear from the freest importation. the average quantity imported, one year with another, amounts only, according to the very well informed author of the tracts upon the corn trade, to twenty-three thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight quarters of all sorts of grain, and does not exceed the five hundred and seventy-first part of the annual consumption. but as the bounty upon corn occasions a greater exportation in years of plenty, so it must of consequence occasion a greater importation in years of scarcity than in the actual state of tillage would otherwise take place. by means of it the plenty of one year does not compensate the scarcity of another, and as the average quantity exported is necessarily augmented by it, so must likewise, in the actual state of tillage, the average quantity imported. if there were no bounty, as less corn would be exported, so it is probable that, one year with another, less would be imported than at present. the corn-merchants, the fetchers and carriers of corn between great britain and foreign countries would have much less employment, and might suffer considerably; but the country gentlemen and farmers could suffer very little. it is in the corn merchants accordingly, rather than in the country gentlemen and farmers, that i have observed the greatest anxiety for the renewal and continuation of the bounty. country gentlemen and farmers are, to their great honour, of all people, the least subject to the wretched spirit of monopoly. the undertaker of a great manufactory is sometimes alarmed if another work of the same kind is established within twenty miles of him. the dutch undertaker of the woollen manufacture at abbeville stipulated that no work of the same kind should be established within thirty leagues of that city. farmers and country gentlemen, on the contrary, are generally disposed rather to promote than to obstruct the cultivation and improvement of their neighbours' farms and estates. they have no secrets such as those of the greater part of manufacturers, but are generally rather fond of communicating to their neighbours and of extending as far as possible any new practice which they have found to be advantageous. pius questus, says old cato, stabilissimusque, minimeque invidiosus; minimeque male cogitantes sunt, qui in eo studio occupati sunt. country gentlemen and farmers, dispersed in different parts of the country, cannot so easily combine as merchants and manufacturers, who, being collected into towns, and accustomed to that exclusive corporation spirit which prevails in them, naturally endeavour to obtain against all their countrymen the same exclusive privilege which they generally possess against the inhabitants of their respective towns. they accordingly seem to have been the original inventors of those restraints upon the importation of foreign goods which secure to them the monopoly of the home market. it was probably in imitation of them, and to put themselves upon a level with those who, they found, were disposed to oppress them, that the country gentlemen and farmers of great britain in so far forgot the generosity which is natural to their station as to demand the exclusive privilege of supplying their countrymen with corn and butcher's meat. they did not perhaps take time to consider how much less their interest could be affected by the freedom of trade than that of the people whose example they followed. to prohibit by a perpetual law the importation of foreign corn and cattle is in reality to enact that the population and industry of the country shall at no time exceed what the rude produce of its own soil can maintain. there seem, however, to be two cases in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign for the encouragement of domestic industry. the first is, when some particular sort of industry is necessary for the defence of the country. the defence of great britain, for example, depends very much upon the number of its sailors and shipping. the act of navigation, therefore, very properly endeavours to give the sailors and shipping of great britain the monopoly of the trade of their own country in some cases by absolute prohibitions and in others by heavy burdens upon the shipping of foreign countries. the following are the principal dispositions of this act. first, all ships, of which the owners and three-fourths of the mariners are not british subjects, are prohibited, upon pain of forfeiting ship and cargo, from trading to the british settlements and plantations, or from being employed in the coasting trade of great britain. secondly, a great variety of the most bulky articles of importation can be brought into great britain only, either in such ships as are above described, or in ships of the country where those goods are purchased, and of which the owners, masters, and three-fourths of the mariners are of that particular country; and when imported even in ships of this latter kind, they are subject to double aliens' duty. if imported in ships of any other country, the penalty is forfeiture of ship and goods. when this act was made, the dutch were, what they still are, the great carriers of europe, and by this regulation they were entirely excluded from being the carriers to great britain, or from importing to us the goods of any other european country. thirdly, a great variety of the most bulky articles of importation are prohibited from being imported, even in british ships, from any country but that in which they are produced, under pains of forfeiting ship and cargo. this regulation, too, was probably intended against the dutch. holland was then, as now, the great emporium for all european goods, and by this regulation british ships were hindered from loading in holland the goods of any other european country. fourthly, salt fish of all kinds, whale-fins, whale-bone, oil, and blubber, not caught by and cured on board british vessels, when imported into great britain, are subjected to double aliens' duty. the dutch, as they are they the principal, were then the only fishers in europe that attempted to supply foreign nations with fish. by this regulation, a very heavy burden was laid upon their supplying great britain. when the act of navigation was made, though england and holland were not actually at war, the most violent animosity subsisted between the two nations. it had begun during the government of the long parliament, which first framed this act, and it broke out soon after in the dutch wars during that of the protector and of charles the second. it is not impossible, therefore, that some of the regulations of this famous act may have proceeded from national animosity. they are as wise, however, as if they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom. national animosity at that particular time aimed at the very same object which the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended, the diminution of the naval power of holland, the only naval power which could endanger the security of england. the act of navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it. the interest of a nation in its commercial relations to foreign nations is, like that of a merchant with regard to the different people with whom he deals, to buy as cheap and to sell as dear as possible. but it will be most likely to buy cheap, when by the most perfect freedom of trade it encourages all nations to bring to it the goods which it has occasion to purchase; and, for the same reason, it will be most likely to sell dear, when its markets are thus filled with the greatest number of buyers. the act of navigation, it is true, lays no burden upon foreign ships that come to export the produce of british industry. even the ancient aliens' duty, which used to be paid upon all goods exported as well as imported, has, by several subsequent acts, been taken off from the greater part of the articles of exportation. but if foreigners, either by prohibitions or high duties, are hindered from coming to sell, they cannot always afford to come to buy; because coming without a cargo, they must lose the freight from their own country to great britain. by diminishing the number of sellers, therefore, we necessarily diminish that of buyers, and are thus likely not only to buy foreign goods dearer, but to sell our own cheaper, than if there was a more perfect freedom of trade. as defence, however it is of much more importance than opulence, the act of navigation is, perhaps, the wisest of all the commercial regulations of england. the second case, in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign for the encouragement of domestic industry is, when some tax is imposed at home upon the produce of the latter. in this case, it seems reasonable that an equal tax should be imposed upon the like produce of the former. this would not give the monopoly of the home market to domestic industry, nor turn towards a particular employment a greater share of the stock and labour of the country than what would naturally go to it. it would only hinder any part of what would naturally go to it from being turned away by the tax into a less natural direction, and would leave the competition between foreign and domestic industry, after the tax, as nearly as possible upon the same footing as before it. in great britain, when any such tax is laid upon the produce of domestic industry, it is usual at the same time, in order to stop the clamorous complaints of our merchants and manufacturers that they will be undersold at home, to lay a much heavier duty upon the importation of all foreign goods of the same kind. this second limitation of the freedom of trade according to some people should, upon some occasions, be extended much farther than to the precise foreign commodities which could come into competition with those which had been taxed at home. when the necessaries of life have been taxed any country, it becomes proper, they pretend, to tax not only the like necessaries of life imported from other countries, but all sorts of foreign goods which can come into competition with anything that is the produce of domestic industry. subsistence, they say, becomes necessarily dearer in consequence of such taxes; and the price of labour must always rise with the price of the labourers' subsistence. every commodity, therefore, which is the produce of domestic industry, though not immediately taxed itself, becomes dearer in consequence of such taxes, because the labour which produces it becomes so. such taxes, therefore, are really equivalent, they say, to a tax upon every particular commodity produced at home. in order to put domestic upon the same footing with foreign industry, therefore, it becomes necessary, they think, to lay some duty upon every foreign commodity equal to this enhancement of the price of the home commodities with which it can come into competition. whether taxes upon the necessaries of life, such as those in great britain upon soap, salt, leather, candles, etc., necessarily raise the price of labour, and consequently that of all other commodities, i shall consider hereafter when i come to treat of taxes. supposing, however, in the meantime, that they have this effect, and they have it undoubtedly, this general enhancement of the price of all commodities, in consequence of that of labour, is a case which differs in the two following respects from that of a particular commodity of which the price was enhanced by a particular tax immediately imposed upon it. first, it might always be known with great exactness how far the price of such a commodity could be enhanced by such a tax: but how far the general enhancement of the price of labour might affect that of every different commodity about which labour was employed could never be known with any tolerable exactness. it would be impossible, therefore, to proportion with any tolerable exactness the tax upon every foreign to this enhancement of the price of every home commodity. secondly, taxes upon the necessaries of life have nearly the same effect upon the circumstances of the people as a poor soil and a bad climate. provisions are thereby rendered dearer in the same manner as if it required extraordinary labour and expense to raise them. as in the natural scarcity arising from soil and climate it would be absurd to direct the people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals and industry, so is it likewise in the artificial scarcity arising from such taxes. to be left to accommodate, as well as they could, their industry to their situation, and to find out those employments in which, notwithstanding their unfavourable circumstances, they might have some advantage either in the home or in the foreign market, is what in both cases would evidently be most for their advantage. to lay a new tax upon them, because they are already overburdened with taxes, and because they already pay too dear for the necessaries of life, to make them likewise pay too dear for the greater part of other commodities, is certainly a most absurd way of making amends. such taxes, when they have grown up to a certain height, are a curse equal to the barrenness of the earth and the inclemency of the heavens; and yet it is in the richest and most industrious countries that they have been most generally imposed. no other countries could support so great a disorder. as the strongest bodies only can live and enjoy health under an unwholesome regimen, so the nations only that in every sort of industry have the greatest natural and acquired advantages can subsist and prosper under such taxes. holland is the country in europe in which they abound most, and which from peculiar circumstances continues to prosper, not by means of them, as has been most absurdly supposed, but in spite of them. as there are two cases in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign for the encouragement of domestic industry, so there are two others in which it may sometimes be a matter of deliberation; in the one, how far it is proper to continue the free importation of certain foreign goods; and in the other, how far, or in what manner, it may be proper to restore that free importation after it has been for some time interrupted. the case in which it may sometimes be a matter of deliberation how far it is proper to continue the free importation of certain foreign goods is, when some foreign nation restrains by high duties or prohibitions the importation of some of our manufactures into their country. revenge in this case naturally dictates retaliation, and that we should impose the like duties and prohibitions upon the importation of some or all of their manufactures into ours. nations, accordingly, seldom fail to retaliate in this manner. the french have been particularly forward to favour their own manufactures by restraining the importation of such foreign goods as could come into competition with them. in this consisted a great part of the policy of mr. colbert, who, notwithstanding his great abilities, seems in this case to have been imposed upon by the sophistry of merchants and manufacturers, who are always demanding a monopoly against their countrymen. it is at present the opinion of the most intelligent men in france that his operations of this kind have not been beneficial to his country. that minister, by the tariff of 1667, imposed very high duties upon a great number of foreign manufactures. upon his refusing to moderate them in favour of the dutch, they in 1671 prohibited the importation of the wines, brandies, and manufactures of france. the war of 1672 seems to have been in part occasioned by this commercial dispute. the peace of nimeguen put an end to it in 1678 by moderating some of those duties in favour of the dutch, who in consequence took off their prohibition. it was about the same time that the french and english began mutually to oppress each other's industry by the like duties and prohibitions, of which the french, however, seem to have set the first example. the spirit of hostility which has subsisted between the two nations ever since has hitherto hindered them from being moderated on either side. in 1697 the english prohibited the importation of bonelace, the manufacture of flanders. the government of that country, at that time under the dominion of spain, prohibited in return the importation of english woollens. in 1700, the prohibition of importing bonelace into england was taken off upon condition that the importance of english woollens into flanders should be put on the same footing as before. there may be good policy in retaliations of this kind, when there is a probability that they will procure the repeal of the high duties or prohibitions complained of. the recovery of a great foreign market will generally more than compensate the transitory inconveniency of paying dearer during a short time for some sorts of goods. to judge whether such retaliations are likely to produce such an effect does not, perhaps, belong so much to the science of a legislator, whose deliberations ought to be governed by general principles which are always the same, as to the skill of that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs. when there is no probability that any such repeal can be procured, it seems a bad method of compensating the injury done to certain classes of our people to do another injury ourselves, not only to those classes, but to almost all the other classes of them. when our neighbours prohibit some manufacture of ours, we generally prohibit, not only the same, for that alone would seldom affect them considerably, but some other manufacture of theirs. this may no doubt give encouragement to some particular class of workmen among ourselves, and by excluding some of their rivals, may enable them to raise their price in the home market. those workmen, however, who suffered by our neighbours' prohibition will not be benefited by ours. on the contrary, they and almost all the other classes of our citizens will thereby be obliged to pay dearer than before for certain goods. every such law, therefore, imposes a real tax upon the whole country, not in favour of that particular class of workmen who were injured by our neighbours' prohibition, but of some other class. the case in which it may sometimes be a matter of deliberation, how far, or in what manner, it is proper to restore the free importation of foreign goods, after it has been for some time interrupted, is, when particular manufactures, by means of high duties or prohibitions upon all foreign goods which can come into competition with them, have been so far extended as to employ a great multitude of hands. humanity may in this case require that the freedom of trade should be restored only by slow gradations, and with a good deal of reserve and circumspection. were those high duties and prohibitions taken away all at once, cheaper foreign goods of the same kind might be poured so fast into the home market as to deprive all at once many thousands of our people of their ordinary employment and means of subsistence. the disorder which this would occasion might no doubt be very considerable. it would in all probability, however, be much less than is commonly imagined, for the two following reasons: first, all those manufactures, of which any part is commonly exported to other european countries without a bounty, could be very little affected by the freest importation of foreign goods. such manufactures must be sold as cheap abroad as any other foreign goods of the same quality and kind, and consequently must be sold cheaper at home. they would still, therefore, keep possession of the home market, and though a capricious man of fashion might sometimes prefer foreign wares, merely because they were foreign, to cheaper and better goods of the same kind that were made at home, this folly could, from the nature of things, extend to so few that it could make no sensible impression upon the general employment of the people. but a great part of all the different branches of our woollen manufacture, of our tanned leather, and of our hardware, are annually exported to other european countries without any bounty, and these are the manufactures which employ the greatest number of hands. the silk, perhaps, is the manufacture which would suffer the most by this freedom of trade, and after it the linen, though the latter much less than the former. secondly, though a great number of people should, by thus restoring the freedom of trade, be thrown all at once out of their ordinary employment and common method of subsistence, it would by no means follow that they would thereby be deprived either of employment or subsistence. by the reduction of the army and navy at the end of the late war, more than a hundred thousand soldiers and seamen, a number equal to what is employed in the greatest manufactures, were all at once thrown out of their ordinary employment; but, though they no doubt suffered some inconveniency, they were not thereby deprived of all employment and subsistence. the greater part of the seamen, it is probable, gradually betook themselves to the merchant-service as they could find occasion, and in the meantime both they and the soldiers were absorbed in the great mass of the people, and employed in a great variety of occupations. not only no great convulsion, but no sensible disorder arose from so great a change in the situation of more than a hundred thousand men, all accustomed to the use of arms, and many of them to rapine and plunder. the number of vagrants was scarce anywhere sensibly increased by it, even the wages of labour were not reduced by it in any occupation, so far as i have been able to learn, except in that of seamen in the merchant service. but if we compare together the habits of a soldier and of any sort of manufacturer, we shall find that those of the latter do not tend so much to disqualify him from being employed in a new trade, as those of the former from being employed in any. the manufacturer has always been accustomed to look for his subsistence from his labour only: the soldier to expect it from his pay. application and industry have been familiar to the one; idleness and dissipation to the other. but it is surely much easier to change the direction of industry from one sort of labour to another than to turn idleness and dissipation to any. to the greater part of manufactures besides, it has already been observed, there are other collateral manufactures of so similar a nature that a workman can easily transfer his industry from one of them to another. the greater part of such workmen too are occasionally employed in country labour. the stock which employed them in a particular manufacture before will still remain in the country to employ an equal number of people in some other way. the capital of the country remaining the same, the demand for labour will likewise be the same, or very nearly the same, though it may be exerted in different places and for different occupations. soldiers and seamen, indeed, when discharged from the king's service, are at liberty to exercise any trade, within any town or place of great britain or ireland. let the same natural liberty of exercising what species of industry they please, be restored to all his majesty's subjects, in the same manner as to soldiers and seamen; that is, break down the exclusive privileges of corporations, and repeal the statute of apprenticeship, both which are real encroachments upon natural liberty, and add to these the repeal of the law of settlements, so that a poor workman, when thrown out of employment either in one trade or in one place, may seek for it in another trade or in another place without the fear either of a prosecution or of a removal, and neither the public nor the individuals will suffer much more from the occasional disbanding some particular classes of manufacturers than from that of soldiers. our manufacturers have no doubt great merit with their country, but they cannot have more than those who defend it with their blood, nor deserve to be treated with more delicacy. to expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in great britain is as absurd as to expect that an oceana or utopia should ever be established in it. not only the prejudices of the public, but what is much more unconquerable, the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it. were the officers of the army to oppose with the same zeal and unanimity any reduction in the numbers of forces with which master manufacturers set themselves against every law that is likely to increase the number of their rivals in the home market; were the former to animate their soldiers in the same manner as the latter enflame their workmen to attack with violence and outrage the proposers of any such regulation, to attempt to reduce the army would be as dangerous as it has now become to attempt to diminish in any respect the monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained against us. this monopoly has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of them that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature. the member of parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance. if he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest public services can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists. the undertaker of a great manufacture, who, by the home markets being suddenly laid open to the competition of foreigners, should be obliged to abandon his trade, would no doubt suffer very considerably. that part of his capital which had usually been employed in purchasing materials and in paying his workmen might, without much difficulty, perhaps, find another employment. but that part of it which was fixed in workhouses, and in the instruments of trade, could scarce be disposed of without considerable loss. the equitable regard, therefore, to his interest requires that changes of this kind should never be introduced suddenly, but slowly, gradually, and after a very long warning. the legislature, were it possible that its deliberations could be always directed, not by the clamorous importunity of partial interests, but by an extensive view of the general good, ought upon this very account, perhaps, to be particularly careful neither to establish any new monopolies of this kind, nor to extend further those which are already established. every such regulation introduces some degree of real disorder into the constitution of the state, which it will be difficult afterwards to cure without occasioning another disorder. how far it may be proper to impose taxes upon the importation of foreign goods, in order not to prevent their importation but to raise a revenue for government, i shall consider hereafter when i come to treat of taxes. taxes imposed with a view to prevent, or even to diminish importation, are evidently as destructive of the revenue of the customs as of the freedom of trade. chapter iii of the extraordinary restraints upon the importation of goods of almost all kinds from those countries with which the balance is supposed to be disadvantageous part 1 of the unreasonableness of those restraints even upon the principles of the commercial system to lay extraordinary restraints upon the those particular countries with which the importation of goods of almost all kinds from balance of trade is supposed to be disadvantageous, is the second expedient by which the commercial system proposes to increase the quantity of gold and silver. thus in great britain, silesia lawns may be imported for home consumption upon paying certain duties. but french cambrics and lawns are prohibited to be imported, except into the port of london, there to be warehoused for exportation. higher duties are imposed upon the wines of france than upon those of portugal, or indeed of any other country. by what is called the impost 1692, a duty of five-and-twenty per cent of the rate or value was laid upon all french goods; while the goods of other nations were, the greater part of them, subjected to much lighter duties, seldom exceeding five per cent. the wine, brandy, salt and vinegar of france were indeed excepted; these commodities being subjected to other heavy duties, either by other laws, or by particular clauses of the same law. in 1696, a second duty of twenty-five per cent, the first not having been thought a sufficient discouragement, was imposed upon all french goods, except brandy; together with a new duty of five-and-twenty pounds upon the ton of french wine, and another of fifteen pounds upon the ton of french vinegar. french goods have never been omitted in any of those general subsidies, or duties of five per cent, which have been imposed upon all, or the greater part of the goods enumerated in the book of rates. if we count the one-third and two-third subsidies as making a complete subsidy between them, there have been five of these general subsidies; so that before the commencement of the present war seventy-five per cent may be considered as the lowest duty to which the greater part of the goods of the growth, produce, or manufacture of france were liable. but upon the greater part of goods, those duties are equivalent to a prohibition. the french in their turn have, i believe, treated our goods and manufactures just as hardly; though i am not so well acquainted with the particular hardships which they have imposed upon them. those mutual restraints have put an end to almost all fair commerce between the two nations, and smugglers are now the principal importers, either of british goods into france, or of french goods into great britain. the principles which i have been examining in the foregoing chapter took their origin from private interest and the spirit of monopoly; those which i am going to examine in this, from national prejudice and animosity. they are, accordingly, as might well be expected, still more unreasonable. they are so, even upon the principles of the commercial system. first, though it were certain that in the case of a free trade between france and england, for example, the balance would be in favour of france, it would by no means follow that such a trade would be disadvantageous to england, or that the general balance of its whole trade would thereby be turned more against it. if the wines of france are better and cheaper than those of portugal, or its linens than those of germany, it would be more advantageous for great britain to purchase both the wine and the foreign linen which it had occasion for of france than of portugal and germany. though the value of the annual importations from france would thereby be greatly augmented, the value of the whole annual importations would be diminished, in proportion as the french goods of the same quality were cheaper than those of the other two countries. this would be the case, even upon the supposition that the whole french goods imported were to be consumed in great britain. but, secondly, a great part of them might be re-exported to other countries, where, being sold with profit, they might bring back a return equal in value, perhaps, to the prime cost of the whole french goods imported. what has frequently been said of the east india trade might possibly be true of the french; that though the greater part of east india goods were bought with gold and silver, the re-exportation of a part of them to other countries brought back more gold and silver to that which carried on the trade than the prime cost of the whole amounted to. one of the most important branches of the dutch trade, at present, consists in the carriage of french goods to other european countries. some part even of the french wine drank in great britain is clandestinely imported from holland and zeeland. if there was either a free trade between france and england, or if french goods could be imported upon paying only the same duties as those of other european nations, to be drawn back upon exportation, england might have some share of a trade which is found so advantageous to holland. thirdly, and lastly, there is no certain criterion by which we can determine on which side what is called the balance between any two countries lies, or which of them exports to the greatest value. national prejudice and animosity, prompted always by the private interest of particular traders, are the principles which generally direct our judgment upon all questions concerning it. there are two criterions, however, which have frequently been appealed to upon such occasions, the customhouse books and the course of exchange. the custom-house books, i think, it is now generally acknowledged, are a very uncertain criterion, on account of the inaccuracy of the valuation at which the greater part of goods are rated in them. the course of exchange is, perhaps, almost equally so. when the exchange between two places, such as london and paris, is at par, it is said to be a sign that the debts due from london to paris are compensated by those due from paris to london. on the contrary, when a premium is paid at london for a bill upon paris, it is said to be a sign that the debts due from london to paris are not compensated by those due from paris to london, but that a balance in money must be sent out from the latter place; for the risk, trouble, and expense of exporting which, the premium is both demanded and given. but the ordinary state of debt and credit between those two cities must necessarily be regulated, it is said, by the ordinary course of their dealings with one another. when neither of them imports from the other to a greater amount than it exports to that other, the debts and credits of each may compensate one another. but when one of them imports from the other to a greater value than it exports to that other, the former necessarily becomes indebted to the latter in a greater sum than the latter becomes indebted to it; the debts and credits of each do not compensate one another, and money must be sent out from that place of which the debts overbalance the credits. the ordinary course of exchange, therefore, being an indication of the ordinary state of debt and credit between two places, must likewise be an indication of the ordinary course of their exports and imports, as these necessarily regulate that state. but though the ordinary course of exchange should be allowed to be a sufficient indication of the ordinary state of debt and credit between any two places, it would not from thence follow that the balance of trade was in favour of that place which had the ordinary state of debt and credit in its favour. the ordinary state of debt and credit between any two places is not always entirely regulated by the ordinary course of their dealings with one another; but is often influenced by that of the dealings of either with many other places. if it is usual, for example, for the merchants of england to pay for the goods which they buy of hamburg, danzig, riga, etc., by bills upon holland, the ordinary state of debt and credit between england and holland will not be regulated entirely by the ordinary course of the dealings of those two countries with one another, but will be influenced by that of the dealings of england with those other places. england may be obliged to send out every year money to holland, though its annual exports to that country may exceed very much the annual value of its imports from thence; and though what is called the balance of trade may be very much in favour of england. in the way, besides, in which the par of exchange has hitherto been computed, the ordinary course of exchange can afford no sufficient indication that the ordinary state of debt and credit is in favour of that country which seems to have, or which is supposed to have, the ordinary course of exchange in its favour: or, in other words, the real exchange may be, and, in fact, often is so very different from the computed one, that from the course of the latter no certain conclusion can, upon many occasions, be drawn concerning that of the former. when for a sum of money paid in england, containing, according to the standard of the english mint, a certain number of ounces of pure silver, you receive a bill for a sum of money to be paid in france, containing, according to the standard of the french mint, an equal number of ounces of pure silver, exchange is said to be at par between england and france. when you pay more, you are supposed to give a premium, and exchange is said to be against england and in favour of france. when you pay less, you are supposed to get a premium, and exchange is said to be against france and in favour of england. but, first, we cannot always judge of the value of the current money of different countries by the standard of their respective mints. in some it is more, in others it is less worn, clipt, and otherwise degenerated from that standard. but the value of the current coin of every country, compared with that of any other country, is in proportion not to the quantity of pure silver which it ought to contain, but to that which it actually does contain. before the reformation of the silver coin in king william's time, exchange between england and holland, computed in the usual manner according to the standard of their respective mints, was five-and-twenty per cent against england. but the value of the current coin of england, as we learn from mr. lowndes, was at that time rather more than five-and-twenty per cent below its standard value. the real exchange, therefore, may even at that time have been in favour of england, notwithstanding the computed exchange was so much against it; a smaller number of ounces of pure silver actually paid in england may have purchased a bill for a greater number of ounces of pure silver to be paid in holland, and the man who was supposed to give may in reality have got the premium. the french coin was, before the late reformation of the english gold coin, much less worn than the english, and was perhaps two or three per cent nearer its standard. if the computed exchange with france, therefore, was not more than two or three per cent against england, the real exchange might have been in its favour. since the reformation of the gold coin, the exchange has been constantly in favour of england, and against france. secondly, in some countries, the expense of coinage is defrayed by the government; in others, it is defrayed by the private people who carry their bullion to the mint, and the government even derives some revenue from the coinage. in england, it is defrayed by the government, and if you carry a pound weight of standard silver to the mint, you get back sixty-two shillings, containing a pound weight of the like standard silver. in france, a duty of eight per cent is deducted for the coinage, which not only defrays the expense of it, but affords a small revenue to the government. in england, as the coinage costs nothing; the current coin can never be much more valuable than the quantity of bullion which it actually contains. in france, the workmanship, as you pay for it, adds to the value in the same manner as to that of wrought plate. a sum of french money, therefore, containing a certain weight of pure silver, is more valuable than a sum of english money containing an equal weight of pure silver, and must require more bullion, or other commodities, to purchase it. though the current coin of the two countries, therefore, were equally near the standards of their respective mints, a sum of english money could not well purchase a sum of french money containing an equal number of ounces of pure silver, nor consequently a bill upon france for such a sum. if for such a bill no more additional money was paid than what was sufficient to compensate the expense of the french coinage, the real exchange might be at par between the two countries, their debts and credits might mutually compensate one another, while the computed exchange was considerably in favour of france. if less than this was paid, the real exchange might be in favour of england, while the computed was in favour of france. thirdly, and lastly, in some places, as at amsterdam, hamburg, venice, etc., foreign bills of exchange are paid in what they call bank money; while in others, as at london, lisbon, antwerp, leghorn, etc., they are paid in the common currency of the country. what is called bank money is always of more value than the same nominal sum of common currency. a thousand guilders in the bank of amsterdam, for example, are of more value than a thousand guilders of amsterdam currency. the difference between them is called the agio of the bank, which, at amsterdam, is generally about five per cent. supposing the current money of the two countries equally near to the standard of their respective mints, and that the one pays foreign bills in this common currency, while the other pays them in bank money, it is evident that the computed exchange may be in favour of that which pays in bank money, though the real exchange should be in favour of that which pays in current money; for the same reason that the computed exchange may be in favour of that which pays in better money, or in money nearer to its own standard, though the real exchange should be in favour of that which pays in worse. the computed exchange, before the late reformation of the gold coin, was generally against london with amsterdam, hamburg, venice, and, i believe, with all other places which pay in what is called bank money. it will by no means follow, however, that the real exchange was against it. since the reformation of the gold coin, it has been in favour of london even with those places. the computed exchange has generally been in favour of london with lisbon, antwerp, leghorn, and, if you except france, i believe, with most other parts of europe that pay in common currency; and it is not improbable that the real exchange was so too. digression concerning banks of deposit, particularly concerning that of amsterdam the currency of a great state, such as france or england, generally consists almost entirely of its own coin. should this currency, therefore, be at any time worn, clipt, or otherwise degraded below its standard value, the state by a reformation of its coin can effectually re-establish its currency. but the currency of a small state, such as genoa or hamburg, can seldom consist altogether in its own coin, but must be made up, in a great measure, of the coins of all the neighbouring states with which its inhabitants have a continual intercourse. such a state, therefore, by reforming its coin, will not always be able to reform its currency. if foreign bills of exchange are paid in this currency, the uncertain value of any sum, of what is in its own nature so uncertain, must render the exchange always very much against such a state, its currency being, in all foreign states, necessarily valued even below what it is worth. in order to remedy the inconvenience to which this disadvantageous exchange must have subjected their merchants, such small states, when they began to attend to the interest of trade, have frequently enacted, that foreign bills of exchange of a certain value should be paid not in common currency, but by an order upon, or by a transfer in the books of a certain bank, established upon the credit, and under the protection of the state; this bank being always obliged to pay, in good and true money, exactly according to the standard of the state. the banks of venice, genoa, amsterdam, hamburg, and nuremberg, seem to have been all originally established with this view, though some of them may have afterwards been made subservient to other purposes. the money of such banks being better than the common currency of the country, necessarily bore an agio, which was greater or smaller according as the currency was supposed to be more or less degraded below the standard of the state. the agio of the bank of hamburg, for example, which is said to be commonly about fourteen per cent is the supposed difference between the good standard money of the state, and the clipt, worn, and diminished currency poured into it from all the neighbouring states. before 1609 the great quantity of clipt and worn foreign coin, which the extensive trade of amsterdam brought from all parts of europe, reduced the value of its currency about nine per cent below that of good money fresh from the mint. such money no sooner appeared than it was melted down or carried away, as it always is in such circumstances. the merchants, with plenty of currency, could not always find a sufficient quantity of good money to pay their bills of exchange; and the value of those bills, in spite of several regulations which were made to prevent it, became in a great measure uncertain. in order to remedy these inconveniences, a bank was established in 1609 under the guarantee of the city. this bank received both foreign coin, and the light and worn coin of the country at its real intrinsic value in the good standard money of the country, deducting only so much as was necessary for defraying the expense of coinage, and the other necessary expense of management. for the value which remained, after this small deduction was made, it gave a credit in its books. this credit was called bank money, which, as it represented money exactly according to the standard of the mint, was always of the same real value, and intrinsically worth more than current money. it was at the same time enacted, that all bills drawn upon or negotiated at amsterdam of the value of six hundred guilders and upwards should be paid in bank money, which at once took away all uncertainty in the value of those bills. every merchant, in consequence of this regulation, was obliged to keep an account with the bank in order to pay his foreign bills of exchange, which necessarily occasioned a certain demand for bank money. bank money, over and above its intrinsic superiority to currency, and the additional value which this demand necessarily gives it, has likewise some other advantages. it is secure from fire, robbery, and other accidents; the city of amsterdam is bound for it; it can be paid away by a simple transfer, without the trouble of counting, or the risk of transporting it from one place to another. in consequence of those different advantages, it seems from the beginning to have borne agio, and it is generally believed that all the money originally deposited in the bank was allowed to remain there, nobody caring to demand payment of a debt which he could sell for a premium in the market. by demanding payment of the bank, the owner of a bank credit would lose this premium. as a shilling fresh from the mint will buy no more goods in the market than one of our common worn shillings, so the good and true money which might be brought from the coffers of the bank into those of a private person, being mixed and confounded with the common currency of the country, would be of no more value than that currency from which it could no longer be readily distinguished. while it remained in the coffers of the bank, its superiority was known and ascertained. when it had come into those of a private person, its superiority could not well be ascertained without more trouble than perhaps the difference was worth. by being brought from the coffers of the bank, besides, it lost all the other advantages of bank money; its security, its easy and safe transferability, its use in paying foreign bills of exchange. over and above all this, it could not be brought from those coffers, as it will appear by and by, without previously paying for the keeping. those deposits of coin, or those deposits which the bank was bound to restore in coin, constituted the original capital of the bank, or the whole value of what was represented by what is called bank money. at present they are supposed to constitute but a very small part of it. in order to facilitate the trade in bullion, the bank has been for these many years in the practice of giving credit in its books upon deposits of gold and silver bullion. this credit is generally about five per cent below the mint price of such bullion. the bank grants at the same time what is called a recipe or receipt, entitling the person who makes the deposit, or the bearer, to take out the bullion again at any time within six months, upon re-transferring to the bank a quantity of bank money equal to that for which credit had been given in its books when the deposit was made, and upon paying one-fourth per cent for the keeping, if the deposit was in silver; and one-half per cent if it was in gold; but at the same time declaring that, in default of such payment, and upon the expiration of this term, the deposit should belong to the bank at the price at which it had been received, or for which credit had been given in the transfer books. what is thus paid for the keeping of the deposit may be considered as a sort of warehouse rent; and why this warehouse rent should be so much dearer for gold than for silver, several different reasons have been assigned. the fineness of gold, it has been said, is more difficult to be ascertained than that of silver. frauds are more easily practised, and occasion a greater loss in the more precious metal. silver, besides, being the standard metal, the state, it has been said, wishes to encourage more the making of deposits of silver than those of gold. deposits of bullion are most commonly made when the price is somewhat lower than ordinary; and they are taken out again when it happens to rise. in holland the market price of bullion is generally above the mint price, for the same reason that it was so in england before the late reformation of the gold coin. the difference is said to be commonly from about six to sixteen stivers upon the mark, or eight ounces of silver of eleven parts fine and one part alloy. the bank price, or the credit which the bank gives for deposits of such silver (when made in foreign coin, of which the fineness is well known and ascertained, such as mexico dollars), is twenty-two guilders the mark; the mint price is about twenty-three guilders, and the market price is from twenty-three guilders six to twenty-three guilders sixteen stivers, or from two to three per cent above the mint price.* the proportions between the bank price, the mint price, and the market price of gold bullion are nearly the same. a person can generally sell his receipt for the difference between the mint price of bullion and the market price. a receipt for bullion is almost always worth something, and it very seldom happens, therefore, that anybody suffers his receipt to expire, or allows his bullion to fall to the bank at the price at which it had been received, either by not taking it out before the end of the six months, or by neglecting to pay the one-fourth or one-half per cent in order to obtain a new receipt for another six months. this, however, though it happens seldom, is said to happen sometimes, and more frequently with regard to gold than with regard to silver, on account of the higher warehouse-rent which is paid for the keeping of the more precious metal. * the following are the prices at which the bank of amsterdam at present (september, 1775) receives bullion and coin of different kind: silver mexico dollars guilders b-22 per mark french crowns guilders b-22 per mark english silver coin guilders b-22 per mark mexico dollars new coin 21 10 ducatoons 3 rix dollars 2 8 bar silver containing eleven-twelfths fine silver 21 per mark, and in this proportion down to 1/4 fine, on which 5 guilders are given. fine bars, 93 per mark. gold portugal coin b-310 per mark guineas b-310 per mark louis d'ors new b-310 per mark ditto old 300 new ducats 4 19 8 per ducat bar or ingot gold is received in proportion to its fineness compared with the above foreign gold coin. upon fine bars the bank gives 340 per mark. in general, however, something more is given upon coin of a known fineness, than upon gold and silver bars, of which the fineness cannot be ascertained but by a process of melting and assaying. the person who by making a deposit of bullion obtains both a bank credit and receipt, pays his bills of exchange as they become due with his bank credit; and either sells or keeps his receipt according as he judges that the price of bullion is likely to rise or to fall. the receipt and the bank credit seldom keep long together, and there is no occasion that they should. the person who has a receipt, and who wants to take out bullion, finds always plenty of bank credits, or bank money to buy at the ordinary price; and the person who has bank money, and wants to take out bullion, finds receipts always in equal abundance. the owners of bank credits, and the holders of receipts, constitute two different sorts of creditors against the bank. the holder of a receipt cannot draw out the bullion for which it is granted, without reassigning to the bank a sum of bank money equal to the price at which the bullion had been received. if he has no bank money of his own, he must purchase it of those who have it. the owner of bank money cannot draw out bullion without producing to the bank receipts for the quantity which he wants. if he has none of his own, he must buy them of those who have them. the holder of a receipt, when he purchases bank money, purchases the power of taking out a quantity of bullion, of which the mint price is five per cent above the bank price. the agio of five per cent therefore, which he commonly pays for it, is paid not for an imaginary but for a real value. the owner of bank money, when he purchases a receipt, purchases the power of taking out a quantity of bullion of which the market price is commonly from two to three per cent above the mint price. the price which he pays for it, therefore, is paid likewise for a real value. the price of the receipt, and the price of the bank money, compound or make up between them the full value or price of the bullion. upon deposits of the coin current in the country, the bank grants receipts likewise as well as bank credits; but those receipts are frequently of no value, and will bring no price in the market. upon ducatoons, for example, which in the currency pass for three guilders three stivers each, the bank gives a credit of three guilders only, or five per cent below their current value. it grants a receipt likewise entitling the bearer to take out the number of ducatoons deposited at any time within six months, upon paying one-fourth per cent for the keeping. this receipt will frequently bring no price in the market. three guilders bank money generally sell in the market for three guilders three stivers, the full value of the ducatoons, if they were taken out of the bank; and before they can be taken out, one-fourth per cent must be paid for the keeping, which would be mere loss to the holder of the receipt. if the agio of the bank, however, should at any time fall to three per cent such receipts might bring some price in the market, and might sell for one and three-fourths per cent. but the agio of the bank being now generally about five per cent such receipts are frequently allowed to expire, or as they express it, to fall to the bank. the receipts which are given for deposits of gold ducats fall to it yet more frequently, because a higher warehouse-rent, or one-half per cent must be paid for the keeping of them before they can be taken out again. the five per cent which the bank gains, when deposits either of coin or bullion are allowed to fall to it, may be considered as the warehouse-rent for the perpetual keeping of such deposits. the sum of bank money for which the receipts are expired must be very considerable. it must comprehend the whole original capital of the bank, which, it is generally supposed, has been allowed to remain there from the time it was first deposited, nobody caring either to renew his receipt or to take out his deposit, as, for the reasons already assigned, neither the one nor the other could be done without loss. but whatever may be the amount of this sum, the proportion which it bears to the whole mass of bank money is supposed to be very small. the bank of amsterdam has for these many years past been the great warehouse of europe for bullion, for which the receipts are very seldom allowed to expire, or, as they express it, to fall to the bank. far greater part of the bank money, or of the credits upon the books of the bank, is supposed to have been created, for these many years past, by such deposits which the dealers in bullion are continually both making and withdrawing. no demand can be made upon the bank but by means of a recipe or receipt. the smaller mass of bank money, for which the receipts are expired, is mixed and confounded with the much greater mass for which they are still in force; so that, though there may be a considerable sum of bank money for which there are no receipts, there is no specific sum or portion of it which may not at any time be demanded by one. the bank cannot be debtor to two persons for the same thing; and the owner of bank money who has no receipt cannot demand payment of the bank till he buys one. in ordinary and quiet times, he can find no difficulty in getting one to buy at the market price, which generally corresponds with the price at which he can sell the coin or bullion it entities him to take out of the bank. it might be otherwise during a public calamity; an invasion, for example, such as that of the french in 1672. the owners of bank money being then all eager to draw it out of the bank, in order to have it their own keeping, the demand for receipts might raise their price to an exorbitant height. the holders of them might form expectations, and, instead of two or three per cent, demand half the bank money for which credit had been given upon the deposits that the receipts had respectively been granted for. the enemy, informed of the constitution of the bank, might even buy them up, in order to prevent the carrying away of the treasure. in such emergencies, the bank, it is supposed, would break through its ordinary rule of making payment only to the holders of receipts. the holders of receipts, who had no bank money, must have received within two or three per cent of the value of the deposit for which their respective receipts had been granted. the bank, therefore, it is said, would in this case make no scruple of paying, either with money or bullion, the full value of what the owners of bank money who could get no receipts were credited for in its books; paying at the same time two or three per cent to such holders of receipts as had no bank money, that being the whole value which in this state of things could justly be supposed due to them. even in ordinary and quiet times it is the interest of the holders of receipts to depress the agio, in order either to buy bank money (and consequently the bullion, which their receipts would then enable them to take out of the bank) so much cheaper, or to sell their receipts to those who have bank money, and who want to take out bullion, so much dearer; the price of a receipt being generally equal to the difference between the market price of bank money, and that of the coin or bullion for which the receipt had been granted. it is the interest of the owners of bank money, on the contrary, to raise the agio, in order either to sell their bank money so much dearer, or to buy a receipt so much cheaper. to prevent the stock-jobbing tricks which those opposite interests might sometimes occasion, the bank has of late years come to the resolution to sell at all times bank money for currency, at five per cent agio, and to buy it in again at four per cent agio. in consequence of this resolution, the agio can never either rise above five or sink below four per cent, and the proportion between the market price of bank and that of current money is kept at all times very near to the proportion between their intrinsic values. before this resolution was taken, the market price of bank money used sometimes to rise so high as nine per cent agio, and sometimes to sink so low as par, according as opposite interests happened to influence the market. the bank of amsterdam professes to lend out no part of what is deposited with it, but, for every guilder for which it gives credit in its books, to keep in its repositories the value of a guilder either in money or bullion. that it keeps in its repositories all the money or bullion for which there are receipts in force, for which it is at all times liable to be called upon, and which, in reality, is continually going from it and returning to it again, cannot well be doubted. but whether it does so likewise with regard to that part of its capital, for which the receipts are long ago expired, for which in ordinary and quiet times it cannot be called upon, and which in reality is very likely to remain with it for ever, or as long as the states of the united provinces subsist, may perhaps appear more uncertain. at amsterdam, however, no point of faith is better established than that for every guilder, circulated as bank money, there is a correspondent guilder in gold or silver to be found in the treasure of the bank. the city is guarantee that it should be so. the bank is under the direction of the four reigning burgomasters who are changed every year. each new set of burgomasters visits the treasure, compares it with the books, receives it upon oath, and delivers it over, with the same awful solemnity, to the set which succeeds; and in that sober and religious country oaths are not yet disregarded. a rotation of this kind seems alone a sufficient security against any practices which cannot be avowed. amidst all the revolutions which faction has ever occasioned in the government of amsterdam, the prevailing party has at no time accused their predecessors of infidelity in the administration of the bank. no accusation could have affected more deeply the reputation and fortune of the disgraced party, and if such an accusation could have been supported, we may be assured that it would have been brought. in 1672, when the french king was at utrecht, the bank of amsterdam paid so readily as left no doubt of the fidelity with which it had observed its engagements. some of the pieces which were then brought from its repositories appeared to have been scorched with the fire which happened in the town-house soon after the bank was established. those pieces, therefore, must have lain there from that time. what may be the amount of the treasure in the bank is a question which has long employed speculations of the curious. nothing but conjecture can be offered concerning it. it is generally reckoned that there are about two thousand people who keep accounts with the bank, and allowing them to have, one with another, the value of fifteen hundred pounds sterling lying upon their respective accounts (a very large allowance), the whole quantity of bank money, and consequently of treasure in the bank, will amount to about three millions sterling, or, at eleven guilders the pound sterling, thirty-three millions of guildersa great sum, and sufficient to carry on a very extensive circulation, but vastly below the extravagant ideas which some people have formed of this treasure. the city of amsterdam derives a considerable revenue from the bank. besides what may be called the warehouse-rent above mentioned, each person, upon first opening an account with the bank, pays a fee of ten guilders; and for every new account three guilders three stivers; for every transfer two stivers; and if the transfer is for less than three hundred guilders, six stivers, in order to discourage the multiplicity of small transactions. the person who neglects to balance his account twice in the year forfeits twenty-five guilders. the person who orders a transfer for more than is upon his account, is obliged to pay three per cent for the sum overdrawn, and his order is set aside into the bargain. the bank is supposed, too, to make a considerable profit by the sale of the foreign coin or bullion which sometimes falls to it by the expiring of receipts, and which is always kept till it can be sold with advantage. it makes a profit likewise by selling bank money at five per cent agio, and buying it in at four. these different emoluments amount to a good deal more than what is necessary for paying the salaries of officers, and defraying the expense of management. what is paid for the keeping of bullion upon receipts is alone supposed to amount to a neat annual revenue of between one hundred and fifty thousand and two hundred thousand guilders. public utility, however, and not revenue, was the original object of this institution. its object was to relieve the merchants from the inconvenience of a disadvantageous exchange. the revenue which has arisen from it was unforeseen, and may be considered as accidental. but it is now time to return from this long digression, into which i have been insensibly led in endeavouring to explain the reasons why the exchange between the countries which pay in what is called bank money, and those which pay in common currency, should generally appear to be in favour of the former and against the latter. the former pay in a species of money of which the intrinsic value is always the same, and exactly agreeable to the standard of their respective mints; the latter is a species of money of which the intrinsic value is continually varying, and is almost always more or less below that standard. part 2 of the unreasonableness of those extraordinary restraints upon other principles in the foregoing part of this chapter i have endeavoured to show, even upon the principles of the commercial system, how unnecessary it is to lay extraordinary restraints upon the importation of goods from those countries with which the balance of trade is supposed to be disadvantageous. nothing, however, can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade, upon which, not only these restraints, but almost all the other regulations of commerce are founded. when two places trade with one another, this doctrine supposes that, if the balance be even, neither of them either loses or gains; but if it leans in any degree to one side, that one of them loses and the other gains in proportion to its declension from the exact equilibrium. both suppositions are false. a trade which is forced by means of bounties and monopolies may be and commonly is disadvantageous to the country in whose favour it is meant to be established, as i shall endeavour to show hereafter. but that trade which, without force or constraint, is naturally and regularly carried on between any two places is always advantageous, though not always equally so, to both. by advantage or gain, i understand not the increase of the quantity of gold and silver, but that of the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, or the increase of the annual revenue of its inhabitants. if the balance be even, and if the trade between the two places consist altogether in the exchange of their native commodities, they will, upon most occasions, not only both gain, but they will gain equally, or very near equally; each will in this case afford a market for a part of the surplus produce of the other; each will replace a capital which had been employed in raising and preparing for the market this part of the surplus produce of the other, and which had been distributed among, and given revenue and maintenance to a certain number of its inhabitants. some part of the inhabitants of each, therefore, will indirectly derive their revenue and maintenance from the other. as the commodities exchanged, too, are supposed to be of equal value, so the two capitals employed in the trade will, upon most occasions, be equal, or very nearly equal; and both being employed in raising the native commodities of the two countries, the revenue and maintenance which their distribution will afford to the inhabitants of each will be equal, or very nearly equal. this revenue and maintenance, thus mutually afforded, will be greater or smaller in proportion to the extent of their dealings. if these should annually amount to an hundred thousand pounds, for example, or to a million on each side, each of them would afford an annual revenue in the one case of an hundred thousand pounds, in the other of a million, to the inhabitants of the other. if their trade should be of such a nature that one of them exported to the other nothing but native commodities, while the returns of that other consisted altogether in foreign goods; the balance, in this case, would still be supposed even, commodities being paid for with commodities. they would, in this case too, both gain, but they would not gain equally; and the inhabitants of the country which exported nothing but native commodities would derive the greatest revenue from the trade. if england, for example, should import from france nothing but the native commodities of that country, and, not having such commodities of its own as were in demand there, should annually repay them by sending thither a large quantity of foreign goods, tobacco, we shall suppose, and east india goods; this trade, though it would give some revenue to the inhabitants of both countries, would give more to those of france than to those of england. the whole french capital annually employed in it would annually be distributed among the people of france. but that part of the english capital only which was employed in producing the english commodities with which those foreign goods were purchased would be annually distributed among the people of england. the greater part of it would replace the capitals which had been employed in virginia, indostan, and china, and which had given revenue and maintenance to the of those distant countries. if the capitals were equal, or nearly equal, therefore this employment of the french capital would augment much more the revenue of the people of france than that of the english capital would the revenue of the people of england. france would in this case carry on a direct foreign trade of consumption with england; whereas england would carry on a round-about trade of the same kind with france. the different effects of a capital employed in the direct and of one employed in the round-about foreign trade of consumption have already been fully explained. there is not, probably, between any two countries a trade which consists altogether in the exchange either of native commodities on both sides, or of native commodities on one side and of foreign goods on the other. almost all countries exchange with one another partly native and partly foreign goods. that country, however, in whose cargoes there is the greatest proportion of native, and the least of foreign goods, will always be the principal gainer. if it was not with tobacco and east india goods, but with gold and silver, that england paid for the commodities annually imported from france, the balance, in this case, would be supposed uneven, commodities not being paid for with commodities, but with gold and silver. the trade, however, would, in this case, as in the foregoing, give some revenue to the inhabitants of both countries, but more to those of france than to those of england. it would give some revenue to those of england. the capital which had been employed in producing the english goods that purchased this gold and silver, the capital which had been distributed among, and given revenue to, certain inhabitants of england, would thereby be replaced and enabled to continue that employment. the whole capital of england would no more be diminished by this exportation of gold and silver than by the exportation of an equal value of any other goods. on the contrary, it would in most cases be augmented. no goods are sent abroad but those for which the demand is supposed to be greater abroad than at home, and of which the returns consequently, it is expected, will be of more value at home than the commodities exported. if the tobacco which, in england, is worth only a hundred thousand pounds, when sent to france will purchase wine which is, in england, worth a hundred and ten thousand, this exchange will equally augment the capital of england by ten thousand pounds. if a hundred thousand pounds of english gold, in the same manner, purchase french wine which, in england, is worth a hundred and ten thousand, this exchange will equally augment the capital of england by ten thousand pounds. as a merchant who has a hundred and ten thousand pounds worth of wine in his cellar is a richer man than he who has only a hundred thousand pounds worth of tobacco in his warehouse, so is he likewise a richer man than he who has only a hundred thousand pounds worth of gold in his coffers. he can put into motion a greater quantity of industry, and give revenue, maintenance, and employment to a greater number of people than either of the other two. but the capital of the country is equal to the capitals of all its different inhabitants, and the quantity of industry which can be annually maintained in it is equal to what all those different capitals can maintain. both the capital of the country, therefore, and the quantity of industry which can be annually maintained in it, must generally be augmented by this exchange. it would, indeed, be more advantageous for england that it could purchase the wines of france with its own hardware and broadcloth than with either the tobacco of virginia or the gold and silver of brazil and peru. a direct foreign trade of consumption is always more advantageous than a roundabout one. but a round-about foreign trade of consumption, which is carried on with gold and silver, does not seem to be less advantageous than any other equally round-about one. neither is a country which has no mines more likely to be exhausted of gold and silver by this annual exportation of those metals than one which does not grow tobacco by the like annual exportation of that plant. as a country which has wherewithal to buy tobacco will never be long in want of it, so neither will one be long in want of gold and silver which has wherewithal to purchase those metals. it is a losing trade, it is said, which a workman carries on with the alehouse; and the trade which a manufacturing nation would naturally carry on with a wine country may be considered as a trade of the same nature. i answer, that the trade with the alehouse is not necessarily a losing trade. in its own nature it is just as advantageous as any other, though perhaps somewhat more liable to be abused. the employment of a brewer, and even that of a retailer of fermented liquors, are as necessary divisions of labour as any other. it will generally be more advantageous for a workman to buy of the brewer the quantity he has occasion for than to brew it himself, and if he is a poor workman, it will generally be more advantageous for him to buy it by little and little of the retailer than a large quantity of the brewer. he may no doubt buy too much of either, as he may of any other dealers in his neighbourhood, of the butcher, if he is a glutton, or of the draper, if he affects to be a beau among his companions. it is advantageous to the great body of workmen, notwithstanding, that all these trades should be free, though this freedom may be abused in all of them, and is more likely to be so, perhaps, in some than in others. though individuals, besides, may sometimes ruin their fortunes by an excessive consumption of fermented liquors, there seems to be no risk that a nation should do so. though in every country there are many people who spend upon such liquors more than they can afford, there are always many more who spend less. it deserves to be remarked too, that, if we consult experience, the cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. the inhabitants of the wine countries are in general the soberest people in europe; witness the spainards, the italians, and the inhabitants of the southern provinces of france. people are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare. nobody affects the character of liberality and good fellowship by being profuse of a liquor which is as cheap as small beer. on the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice, as among the northern nations, and all those who live between the tropics, the negroes, for example, on the coast of guinea. when a french regiment comes from some of the northern provinces of france, where wine is somewhat dear, to be quartered in the southern, where it is very cheap, the soldiers, i have frequently heard it observed are at first debauched by the cheapness and novelty of good wine; but after a few months' residence, the greater part of them become as sober as the rest of the inhabitants. were the duties upon foreign wines, and the excises upon malt, beer, and ale to be taken away all at once, it might, in the same manner, occasion in great britain a pretty general and temporary drunkenness among the middling and inferior ranks of people, which would probably be soon followed by a permanent and almost universal sobriety. at present drunkenness is by no means the vice of people of fashion, or of those who can easily afford the most expensive liquors. a gentleman drunk with ale has scarce ever been seen among us. the restraints upon the wine trade in great britain, besides, do not so much seem calculated to hinder the people from going, if i may say so, to the alehouse, as from going where they can buy the best and cheapest liquor. they favour the wine trade of portugal, and discourage that of france. the portugese, it is said, indeed, are better customers for our manufactures than the french, and should therefore be encouraged in preference to them. as they give us their custom, it is pretended, we should give them ours. the sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire: for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. a great trader purchases his goods always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind. by such maxims as these, however, nations have been taught that their interest consisted in beggaring all their neighbours. each nation has been made to look with an invidious eye upon the prosperity of all the nations with which it trades, and to consider their gain as its own loss. commerce, which ought naturally to be, among nations, as among individuals, a bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of discord and animosity. the capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of europe than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. the violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, i am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. but the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of anybody but themselves. that it was the spirit of monopoly which originally both invented and propagated this doctrine cannot be doubted; and they who first taught it were by no means such fools as they who believed it. in every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. the proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people. as it is the interest of the freemen of a corporation to hinder the rest of the inhabitants from employing any workmen but themselves, so it is the interest of the merchants and manufacturers of every country to secure to themselves the monopoly of the home market. hence in great britain, and in most other european countries, the extraordinary duties upon almost all goods imported by alien merchants. hence the high duties and prohibitions upon all those foreign manufactures which can come into competition with our own. hence, too, the extraordinary restraints upon the importation of almost all sorts of goods from those countries with which the balance of trade is supposed to be disadvantageous; that is, from those against whom national animosity happens to be most violently inflamed. the wealth of a neighbouring nation, however, though dangerous in war and politics, is certainly advantageous in trade. in a state of hostility it may enable our enemies to maintain fleets and armies superior to our own; but in a state of peace and commerce it must likewise enable them to exchange with us to a greater value, and to afford a better market, either for the immediate produce of our own industry, or for whatever is purchased with that produce. as a rich man is likely to be a better customer to the industrious people in his neighbourhood than a poor, so is likewise a rich nation. a rich man, indeed, who is himself a manufacturer, is a very dangerous neighbour to all those who deal in the same way. all the rest of the neighbourhood, however, by far the greatest number, profit by the good market which his expense affords them. they even profit by his underselling the poorer workmen who deal in the same way with him. the manufacturers of a rich nation, in the same manner, may no doubt be very dangerous rivals to those of their neighbours. this very competition, however, is advantageous to the great body of the people, who profit greatly besides by the good market which the great expense of such a nation affords them in every other way. private people who want to make a fortune never think of retiring to the remote and poor provinces of the country, but resort either to the capital, or to some of the great commercial towns. they know that where little wealth circulates there is little to be got, but that where a great deal is in motion, some share of it may fall to them. the same maxims which would in this manner direct the common sense of one, or ten, or twenty individuals, should regulate the judgment of one, or ten, or twenty millions, and should make a whole nation regard the riches of its neighbours as a probable cause and occasion for itself to acquire riches. a nation that would enrich itself by foreign trade is certainly most likely to do so when its neighbours are all rich, industrious, and commercial nations. a great nation surrounded on all sides by wandering savages and poor barbarians might, no doubt, acquire riches by the cultivation of its own lands, and by its own interior commerce, but not by foreign trade. it seems to have been in this manner that the ancient egyptians and the modern chinese acquired their great wealth. the ancient egyptians, it is said, neglected foreign commerce, and the modern chinese, it is known, bold it in the utmost contempt, and scarce deign to afford it the decent protection of the laws. the modern maxims of foreign commerce, by aiming at the impoverishment of all our neighbours, so far as they are capable of producing their intended effect, tend to render that very commerce insignificant and contemptible. it is in consequence of these maxims that the commerce between france and england has in both countries been subjected to so many discouragements and restraints. if those two countries, however, were to consider their real interest, without either mercantile jealousy or national animosity, the commerce of france might be more advantageous to great britain than that of any other country, and for the same reason that of great britain to france. france is the nearest neighbour to great britain. in the trade between the southern coast of england and the northern and north-western coasts of france, the returns might be expected, in the same manner as in the inland trade, four, five, or six times in the year. the capital, therefore, employed in this trade could in each of the two countries keep in motion four, five, or six times the quantity of industry, and afford employment and subsistence to four, five, or six times the number of people, which an equal capital could do in the greater part of the other branches of foreign trade. between the parts of france and great britain most remote from one another, the returns might be expected, at least, once in the year, and even this trade would so far be at least equally advantageous as the greater part of the other branches of our foreign european trade. it would be, at least, three times more advantageous than the boasted trade with our north american colonies, in which the returns were seldom made in less than three years, frequently not in less than four or five years. france, besides, is supposed to contain twenty-four millions of inhabitants. our north american colonies were never supposed to contain more than three millions; and france is a much richer country than north america; though, on account of the more unequal distribution of riches, there is much more poverty and beggary in the one country than in the other. france, therefore, could afford a market at least eight times more extensive, and, on account of the superior frequency of the returns, four-and-twenty times more advantageous than that which our north american colonies ever afforded. the trade of great britain would be just as advantageous to france, and, in proportion to the wealth, population, and proximity of the respective countries, would have the same superiority over that which france carries on with her own colonies. such is the very great difference between that trade, which the wisdom of both nations has thought proper to discourage, and that which it has favoured the most. but the very same circumstances which would have rendered an open and free commerce between the two countries so advantageous to both, have occasioned the principal obstructions to that commerce. being neighbours, they are necessarily enemies, and the wealth and power of each becomes, upon that account, more formidable to the other; and what would increase the advantage of national friendship serves only to inflame the violence of national animosity. they are both rich and industrious nations; and the merchants and manufacturers of each dread the competition of the skill and activity of those of the other. mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity; and the traders of both countries have announced, with all the passionate confidence of interested falsehood, the certain ruin of each, in consequence of that unfavourable balance of trade, which, they pretend, would be the infallible effect of an unrestrained commerce with the other. there is no commercial country in europe of which the approaching ruin has not frequently been foretold by the pretended doctors of this system from an unfavourable balance of trade. after all the anxiety, however, which they have excited about this, after all the vain attempts of almost all trading nations to turn that balance in their own favour and against their neighbours, it does not appear that any one nation in europe has been in any respect impoverished by this cause. every town and country, on the contrary, in proportion as they have opened their ports to all nations, instead of being ruined by this free trade, as the principles of the commercial system would lead us to expect, have been enriched by it. though there are in europe, indeed, a few towns which in some respects deserve the name of free ports, there is no country which does so. holland, perhaps, approaches the nearest to this character of any though still very remote from it; and holland, it is acknowledged, not only derives its whole wealth, but a great part of its necessary subsistence, from foreign trade. there is another balance, indeed, which has already been explained, very different from the balance of trade, and which, according as it happens to be either favourable or unfavourable, necessarily occasions the prosperity or decay of every nation. this is the balance of the annual produce and consumption. if the exchangeable value of the annual produce, it has already been observed, exceeds that of the annual consumption, the capital of the society must annually increase in proportion to this excess. the society in this case lives within its revenue, and what is annually saved out of its revenue is naturally added to its capital, and employed so as to increase still further the annual produce. if the exchangeable value of the annual produce, on the contrary, fail short of the annual consumption, the capital of the society must annually decay in proportion to this deficiency. the expense of the society in this case exceeds its revenue, and necessarily encroaches upon its capital. its capital, therefore, must necessarily decay, and together with it the exchangeable value of the annual produce of its industry. this balance of produce and consumption is entirely different from what is called the balance of trade. it might take place in a nation which had no foreign trade, but which was entirely separated from all the world. it may take place in the whole globe of the earth, of which the wealth, population, and improvement may be either gradually increasing or gradually decaying. the balance of produce and consumption may be constantly in favour of a nation, though what is called the balance of trade be generally against it. a nation may import to a greater value than it exports for half a century, perhaps, together; the gold and silver which comes into it during an this time may be all immediately sent out of it; its circulating coin may gradually decay, different sorts of paper money being substituted in its place, and even the debts, too, which it contracts in the principal nations with whom it deals, may be gradually increasing; and yet its real wealth, the exchangeable value of the annual produce of its lands and labour, may, during the same period, have been increasing in a much greater proportion. the state of our north american colonies, and of the trade which they carried on with great britain, before the commencement of the present disturbances, may serve as a proof that this is by no means an impossible supposition. chapter iv of drawbacks merchants and manufacturers are not contented with the monopoly of the home market, but desire likewise the most extensive foreign sale for their goods. their country has no jurisdiction in foreign nations, and therefore can seldom procure them any monopoly there. they are generally obliged, therefore, to content themselves with petitioning for certain encouragements to exportation. of these encouragements what are called drawbacks seem to be the most reasonable. to allow the merchant to draw back upon exportation, either the whole or a part of whatever excise or inland duty is imposed upon domestic industry, can never occasion the exportation of a greater quantity of goods than what would have been exported had no duty been imposed. such encouragements do not tend to turn towards any particular employment a greater share of the capital of the country than what would go to that employment of its own accord, but only to hinder the duty from driving away any part of that share to other employments. they tend not to overturn that balance which naturally establishes itself among all the various employments of the society; but to hinder it from being overturned by the duty. they tend not to destroy, but to preserve what it is in most cases advantageous to preserve, the natural division and distribution of labour in the society. the same thing may be said of the drawbacks upon the re-exportation of foreign goods imported, which in great britain generally amount to by much the largest part of the duty upon importation. by the second of the rules annexed to the act of parliament which imposed what is now called the old subsidy, every merchant, whether english or alien, was allowed to draw back half that duty upon exportation; the english merchant, provided the exportation took place within twelve months; the alien, provided it took place within nine months. wines, currants, and wrought silks were the only goods which did not fall within this rule, having other and more advantageous allowances. the duties imposed by this act of parliament were at that time the only duties upon the importation of foreign goods. the term within which this and all other drawbacks could be claimed was afterwards (by the 7th george i, c. 21, sect. 10) extended to three years. the duties which have been imposed since the old subsidy are, the greater part of them, wholly drawn back upon exportation. this general rule, however, is liable to a great number of exceptions, and the doctrine of drawbacks has become a much less simple matter than it was at their first institution. upon the exportation of some foreign goods, of which it was expected that the importation would greatly exceed what was necessary for the home consumption, the whole duties are drawn back, without retaining even half the old subsidy. before the revolt of our north american colonies, we had the monopoly of the tobacco of maryland and virginia. we imported about ninety-six thousand hogsheads, and the home consumption was not supposed to exceed fourteen thousand. to facilitate the great exportation which was necessary, in order to rid us of the rest, the whole duties were drawn back, provided the exportation took place within three years. we still have, though not altogether, yet very nearly, the monopoly of the sugars of our west indian islands. if sugars are exported within a year, therefore, all the duties upon importation are drawn back, and if exported within three years all the duties, except half the old subsidy, which still continues to be retained upon the exportation of the greater part of goods. though the importation of sugar exceeds, a good deal, what is necessary for the home consumption, the excess is inconsiderable in comparison of what it used to be in tobacco. some goods, the particular objects of the jealousy of our own manufacturers, are prohibited to be imported for home consumption. they may, however, upon paying certain duties, be imported and warehoused for exportation. but upon such exportation, no part of these duties are drawn back. our manufacturers are unwilling, it seems, that even this restricted importation should be encouraged, and are afraid lest some part of these goods should be stolen out of the warehouse, and thus come into competition with their own. it is under these regulations only that we can import wrought silks, french cambrics and lawns, calicoes painted, printed, stained or dyed, etc. we are unwilling even to be the carriers of french goods, and choose rather to forego a profit to ourselves than to suffer those, whom we consider as our enemies, to make any profit by our means. not only half the old subsidy, but the second twenty-five per cent, is retained upon the exportation of all french goods. by the fourth of the rules annexed to the old subsidy, the drawback allowed upon the exportation of all wines amounted to a great deal more than half the duties which were, at that time, paid upon their importation; and it seems, at that time, to have been the object of the legislature to give somewhat more than ordinary encouragement to the carrying trade in wine. several of the other duties too, which were imposed either at the same time, or subsequent to the old subsidywhat is called the additional duty, the new subsidy, the one-third and two-thirds subsidies, the impost 1692, the coinage on winewere allowed to be wholly drawn back upon exportation. all those duties, however, except the additional duty and impost 1692, being paid down in ready money, upon importation, the interest of so large a sum occasioned an expense, which made it unreasonable to expect any profitable carrying trade in this article. only a part, therefore, of the duty called the impost on wine, and no part of the twenty-five pounds the ton upon french wines, or of the duties imposed in 1745, in 1763, and in 1778, were allowed to be drawn back upon exportation. the two imposts of five per cent, imposed in 1779 and 1781, upon all the former duties of customs, being allowed to be wholly drawn back upon the exportation of all other goods, were likewise allowed to be drawn back upon that of wine. the last duty that has been particularly imposed upon wine, that of 1780, is allowed to be wholly drawn back, an indulgence which, when so many heavy duties are retained, most probably could never occasion the exportation of a single ton of wine. these rules take place with regard to all places of lawful exportation, except the british colonies in america. the 15th charles ii, c. 7, called an act for the encouragement of trade, had given great britain the monopoly of supplying the colonies with all the commodities of the growth or manufacture of europe; and consequently with wines. in a country of so extensive a coast as our north american and west indian colonies, where our authority was always so very slender, and where the inhabitants were allowed to carry out, in their own ships, their non-enumerated commodities, at first to all parts of europe, and afterwards to all parts of europe south of cape finisterre, it is not very probable that this monopoly could ever be much respected; and they probably, at all times, found means of bringing back some cargo from the countries to which they were allowed to carry out one. they seem, however, to have found some difficulty in importing european wines from the places of their growth, and they could not well import them from great britain where they were loaded with many heavy duties, of which a considerable part was not drawn back upon exportation. maderia wine, not being a european commodity, could be imported directly into america and the west indies, countries which, in all their non-enumerated commodities, enjoyed a free trade to the island of maderia. these circumstances had probably introduced that general taste for maderia wine, which our officers found established in all our colonies at the commencement of the war, which began in 1755, and which they brought back with them to the mother country, where that wine had not been much in fashion before. upon the conclusion of that war, in 1763 (by the 4th george iii, c. 15, sect. 12), all the duties, except l3 10s., were allowed to be drawn back upon the exportation to the colonies of all wines, except french wines, to the commerce and consumption of which national prejudice would allow no sort of encouragement. the period between the granting of this indulgence and the revolt of our north american colonies was probably too short to admit of any considerable change in the customs of those countries. the same act, which, in the drawback upon all wines, except french wines, thus favoured the colonies so much more than other countries; in those upon the greater part of other commodities favoured them much less. upon the exportation of the greater part of commodities to other countries, half the old subsidy was drawn back. but this law enacted that no part of that duty should be drawn back upon the exportation to the colonies of any commodities, of the growth or manufacture either of europe or the east indies, except wines, white calicoes, and muslins. drawbacks were, perhaps, originally granted for the encouragement of the carrying trade, which, as the freight of the ships is frequently paid by foreigners in money, was supposed to be peculiarly fitted for bringing gold and silver into the country. but though the carrying trade certainly deserves no peculiar encouragement, though the motive of the institution was perhaps abundantly foolish, the institution itself seems reasonable enough. such drawbacks cannot force into this trade a greater share of the capital of the country than what would have gone to it of its own accord had there been no duties upon importation. they only prevent its being excluded altogether by those duties. the carrying trade, though it deserves no preference, ought not to be precluded, but to be left free like all other trades. it is a necessary resource for those capitals which cannot find employment either in the agriculture or in the manufactures of the country, either in its home trade or in its foreign trade of consumption. the revenue of the customs, instead of suffering, profits from such drawbacks by that part of the duty which is retained. if the whole duties had been retained, the foreign goods upon which they are paid could seldom have been exported, nor consequently imported, for want of a market. the duties, therefore, of which a part is retained would never have been paid. these reasons seem sufficiently to justify drawbacks, and would justify them, though the whole duties, whether upon the produce of domestic industry, or upon foreign goods, were always drawn back upon exportation. the revenue of excise would in this case, indeed, suffer a little, and that of the customs a good deal more; but the natural balance of industry, the natural division and distribution of labour, which is always more or less disturbed by such duties, would be more nearly re-established by such a regulation. these reasons, however, will justify drawbacks only upon exporting goods to those countries which are altogether foreign and independent, not to those in which our merchants and manufacturers enjoy a monopoly. a drawback, for example, upon the exportation of european goods to our american colonies will not always occasion a greater exportation than what would have taken place without it. by means of the monopoly which our merchants and manufacturers enjoy there, the same quantity might frequently, perhaps, be sent thither, though the whole duties were retained. the drawback, therefore, may frequently be pure loss to the revenue of excise and customs, without altering the state of the trade, or rendering it in any respect more extensive. how far such drawbacks can be justified, as a proper encouragement to the industry of our colonies, or how far it is advantageous to the mother country, that they should be exempted from taxes which are paid by all the rest of their fellow subjects, will appear hereafter when i come to treat the colonies. drawbacks, however, it must always be understood, are useful only in those cases in which the goods for the exportation of which they are given are really exported to some foreign country; and not clandestinely re-imported into our own. that some drawbacks, particularly those upon tobacco, have frequently been abused in this manner, and have given occasion to many frauds equally hurtful both to the revenue and to the fair trader, is well known. chapter v of bounties bounties upon exportation are, in great britain, frequently petitioned for, and sometimes granted to the produce of particular branches of domestic industry. by means of them our merchants and manufacturers, it is pretended, will be enabled to sell their goods as cheap, or cheaper than their rivals in the foreign market. a greater quantity, it is said, will thus be exported, and the balance of trade consequently turned more in favour of our own country. we cannot give our workmen a monopoly in the foreign as we have done in the home market. we cannot force foreigners to buy their goods as we have done our own countrymen. the next best expedient, it has been thought, therefore, is to pay them for buying. it is in this manner that the mercantile system proposes to enrich the whole country, and to put money into all our pockets by means of the balance of trade. bounties, it is allowed, ought to be given to those branches of trade only which cannot be carried on without them. but every branch of trade in which the merchant can sell his goods for a price which replaces to him, with the ordinary profits of stock, the whole capital employed in preparing and sending them to market, can be carried on without a bounty. every such branch is evidently upon a level with all the other branches of trade which are carried on without bounties, and cannot therefore require one more than they. those trades only require bounties in which the merchant is obliged to sell his goods for a price which does not replace to him his capital, together with the ordinary profit; or in which he is obliged to sell them for less than it really costs him to send them to market. the bounty is given in order to make up this loss, and to encourage him to continue, or perhaps to begin, a trade of which the expense is supposed to be greater than the returns, of which every operation eats up a part of the capital employed in it, and which is of such a nature that, if all other trades resembled it, there would soon be no capital left in the country. the trades, it is to be observed, which are carried on by means of bounties, are the only ones which can be carried on between two nations for any considerable time together, in such a manner as that one of them shall always and regularly lose, or sell its goods for less than it really costs to send them to market. but if the bounty did not repay to the merchant what he would otherwise lose upon the price of his goods, his own interest would soon oblige him to employ his stock in another way, or to find out a trade in which the price of the goods would replace to him, with the ordinary profit, the capital employment in sending them to market. the effect of bounties, like that of all the other expedients of the mercantile system, can only be to force the trade of a country into a channel much less advantageous than that in which it would naturally run of its own accord. the ingenious and well-informed author of the tracts upon the corn trade has shown very clearly that, since the bounty upon the exportation of corn was first established, the price of the corn exported, valued moderately enough, has exceeded that of the corn imported, valued very high, by a much greater sum than the amount of the whole bounties which have been paid during that period. this, he imagines, upon the true principles of the mercantile system, is a clear proof that this forced corn trade is beneficial to the nation; the value of the exportation exceeding that of the importation by a much greater sum than the whole extraordinary expense which the public has been at in order to get it exported. he does not consider that this extraordinary expense, or the bounty, is the smallest part of the expense which the exportation of corn really costs the society. the capital which the farmer employed in raising it must likewise be taken into the account. unless the price of the corn when sold in the foreign markets replaces, not only the bounty, but this capital, together with the ordinary profits of stock, the society is a loser by the difference, or the national stock is so much diminished. but the very reason for which it has been thought necessary to grant a bounty is the supposed insufficiency of the price to do this. the average price of corn, it has been said, has fallen considerably since the establishment of the bounty. that the average price of corn began to fall somewhat towards the end of the last century, and has continued to do so during the course of the sixty-four first years of the present, i have already endeavoured to show. but this event, supposing it to be as real as i believe it to be, must have happened in spite of the bounty, and cannot possibly have happened in consequence of it. it has happened in france, as well as in england, though in france there was not only no bounty, but, till 1764, the exportation of corn was subjected to a general prohibition. this gradual fall in the average price of grain, it is probable, therefore, is ultimately owing neither to the one regulation nor to the other. but to that gradual and insensible rise in the real value of silver, which, in the first book in this discourse, i have endeavoured to show has taken place in the general market of europe during the course of the present century. it seems to be altogether impossible that the bounty could ever contribute to lower the price of grain. in years of plenty, it has already been observed, the bounty, by occasioning an extraordinary exportation, necessarily keeps up the price of corn in the home market above what it would naturally fall to. to do so was the avowed purpose of the institution. in years of scarcity, though the bounty is frequently suspended, yet the great exportation which it occasions in years of plenty must frequently hinder more or less the plenty of one year from relieving the scarcity of another. both in years of plenty and in years of scarcity, therefore, the bounty necessarily tends to raise the money price of corn somewhat higher than it otherwise would be in the home market. that, in the actual state of tillage, the bounty must necessarily have this tendency will not, i apprehend, be disputed by any reasonable person. but it has been thought by many people that it tends to encourage tillage, and that in two different ways; first, by opening a more extensive foreign market to the corn of the farmer, it tends, they imagine, to increase the demand for, and consequently the production of that commodity; and secondly, by securing to him a better price than he could otherwise expect in the actual state of tillage, it tends, they suppose, to encourage tillage. this double encouragement must, they imagine, in a long period of years, occasion such an increase in the production of corn as may lower its price in the home market much more than the bounty can raise it, in the actual state which tillage may, at the end of that period, happen to be in. i answer, that whatever extension of the foreign market can be occasioned by the bounty must, in every particular year, be altogether at the expense of the home market; as every bushel of corn which is exported by means of the bounty, and which would not have been exported without the bounty, would have remained in the home market to increase the consumption and to lower the price of that commodity. the corn bounty, it is to be observed, as well as every other bounty upon exportation, imposes two different taxes upon the people; first, the tax which they are obliged to contribute in order to pay the bounty; and secondly, the tax which arises from the advanced price of the commodity in the home market, and which, as the whole body of the people are purchasers of corn, must, in this particular commodity, be paid by the whole body of the people. in this particular commodity, therefore, this second tax is by much the heavier of the two. let us suppose that, taking one year with another, the bounty of five shillings upon the exportation of the quarter of wheat raises the price of that commodity in the home market only sixpence the bushel, or four shillings the quarter, higher than it otherwise would have been in the actual state of the crop. even upon this very moderate supposition, the great body of the people, over and above contributing the tax which pays the bounty of five shillings upon every quarter of wheat exported, must pay another of four shillings upon every quarter which they themselves consume. but, according to the very well informed author of the tracts upon the corn trade, the average proportion of the corn exported to that consumed at home is not more than that of one to thirty-one. for every five shillings, therefore, which they contribute to the payment of the first tax, they must contribute six pounds four shillings to the payment of the second. so very heavy a tax upon the first necessary of life must either reduce the subsistence of the labouring poor, or it must occasion some augmentation in their pecuniary wages proportionable to that in the pecuniary price of their subsistence. so far as it operates in the one way, it must reduce the ability of the labouring poor to educate and bring up their children, and must, so far, tend to restrain the population of the country. so far as it operates in the other, it must reduce the ability of the employers of the poor to employ so great a number as they otherwise might do, and must, so far, tend to restrain the industry of the country. the extraordinary exportation of corn, therefore, occasioned by the bounty, not only, in every particular year, diminishes the home, just as much as it extends the foreign, market and consumption, but, by restraining the population and industry of the country, its final tendency is to stunt and restrain the gradual extension of the home market; and thereby, in the long run, rather to diminish, than to augment, the whole market and consumption of corn. this enhancement of the money price of corn, however, it has been thought, by rendering that commodity more profitable to the farmer, must necessarily encourage its production. i answer, that this might be the case if the effect of the bounty was to raise the real price of corn, or to enable the farmer, with an equal quantity of it, to maintain a greater number of labourers in the same manner, whether liberal, moderate, or scanty, that other labourers are commonly maintained in his neighbourhood. but neither the bounty, it is evident, nor any other human institution can have any such effect. it is not the real, but the nominal price of corn, which can in any considerable degree be affected by the bounty. and though the tax which that institution imposes upon the whole body of the people may be very burdensome to those who pay it, it is of very little advantage to those who receive it. the real effect of the bounty is not so much to raise the real value of corn as to degrade the real value of silver, or to make an equal quantity of it exchange for a smaller quantity, not only of corn, but of all other homemade commodities: for the money price of corn regulates that of all other home-made commodities. it regulates the money price of labour, which must always be such as to enable the labourer to purchase a quantity of corn sufficient to maintain him and his family either in the liberal, moderate, or scanty manner in which the advancing, stationary, or declining circumstances of the society oblige his employers to maintain him. it regulates the money price of all the other parts of the rude produce of land, which, in every period of improvement, must bear a certain proportion to that of corn, though this proportion is different in different periods. it regulates, for example, the money price of grass and hay, of butcher's meat, of horses, and the maintenance of horses, of land carriage consequently, or of the greater part of the inland commerce of the country. by regulating the money price of all the other parts of the rude produce of land, it regulates that of the materials of almost all manufactures. by regulating the money price of labour, it regulates that of manufacturing art and industry. and by regulating both, it regulates that of the complete manufacture. the money price of labour, and of everything that is the produce either of land or labour, must necessarily either rise or fall in proportion to the money price of corn. though in consequence of the bounty, therefore, the farmer should be enabled to sell his corn for four shillings a bushel instead of three-and-sixpence, and to pay his landlord a money rent proportionable to this rise in the money price of his produce, yet if, in consequence of this rise in the price of corn, four shillings will purchase no more homemade goods of any other kind than three-and-sixpence would have done before, neither the circumstances of the farmer nor those of the landlord will be much mended by this change. the farmer will not be able to cultivate much better: the landlord will not be able to live much better. in the purchase of foreign commodities this enhancement in the price of corn may give them some little advantage. in that of home-made commodities it can give them none at all. and almost the whole expense of the farmer, and the far greater part even of that of the landlord, is in homemade commodities. that degradation in the value of silver which is the effect of the fertility of the mines, and which operates equally, or very near equally, through the greater part of the commercial world, is a matter of very little consequence to any particular country. the consequent rise of all money prices, though it does not make those who receive them really richer, does make them really poorer. a service of plate becomes really cheaper, and everything else remains precisely of the same real value as before. but that degradation in the value of silver which, being the effect either of the peculiar situation or of the political institutions of a particular country, takes place only in that country, is a matter of very great consequence, which, far from tending to make anybody really richer, tends to make everybody really poorer. the rise in the money price of all commodities, which is in this case peculiar to that country, tends to discourage more or less every sort of industry which is carried on within it, and to enable foreign nations, by furnishing almost all sorts of goods for a smaller quantity of silver than its own workmen can afford to do, to undersell them, not only in the foreign, but even in the home market. it is the peculiar situation of spain and portugal as proprietors of the mines to be the distributors of gold and silver to all the other countries of europe. those metals ought naturally, therefore, to be somewhat cheaper in spain and portugal than in any other part of europe. the difference, however, should be no more than the amount of the freight and insurance; and, on account of the great value and small bulk of those metals, their freight is no great matter, and their insurance is the same as that of any other goods of equal value. spain and portugal, therefore, could suffer very little from their peculiar situation, if they did not aggravate its disadvantages by their political institutions. spain by taxing, and portugal by prohibiting the exportation of gold and silver, load that exportation with the expense of smuggling, and raise the value of those metals in other countries so much more above what it is in their own by the whole amount of this expense. when you dam up a stream of water, as soon as the dam is full as much water must run over the dam-head as if there was no dam at all. the prohibition of exportation cannot detain a greater quantity of gold and silver in spain and portugal than what they can afford to employ, than what the annual produce of their land and labour will allow them to employ, in coin, plate, gilding, and other ornaments of gold and silver. when they have got this quantity the dam is full, and the whole stream which flows in afterwards must run over. the annual exportation of gold and silver from spain and portugal accordingly is, by all accounts, notwithstanding these restraints, very near equal to the whole annual importation. as the water, however, must always be deeper behind the dam-head than before it, so the quantity of gold and silver which these restraints detain in spain and portugal must, in proportion to the annual produce of their land and labour, be greater than what is to be found in other countries. the higher and stronger the dam-head, the greater must be the difference in the depth of water behind and before it. the higher the tax, the higher the penalties with which the prohibition is guarded, the more vigilant and severe the police which looks after the execution of the law, the greater must be the difference in the proportion of gold and silver to the annual produce of the land and labour of spain and portugal, and to that of other countries. it is said accordingly to be very considerable, and that you frequently find there a profusion of plate in houses where there is nothing else which would, in other countries, be thought suitable or correspondent to this sort of magnificence. the cheapness of gold and silver, or what is the same thing, the dearness of all commodities, which is the necessary effect of this redundancy of the precious metals, discourages both the agriculture and manufactures of spain and portugal, and enables foreign nations to supply them with many sorts of rude, and with almost all sorts of manufactured produce, for a smaller quantity of gold and silver than what they themselves can either raise or make them for at home. the tax and prohibition operate in two different ways. they not only lower very much the value of the precious metals in spain and portugal, but by detaining there a certain quantity of those metals which would otherwise flow over other countries, they keep up their value in those other countries somewhat above what it otherwise would be, and thereby give those countries a double advantage in their commerce with spain and portugal. open the flood-gates, and there will presently be less water above, and more below, the dam-head, and it will soon come to a level in both places. remove the tax and the prohibition, and as the quantity of gold and silver will diminish considerably in spain and portugal, so it will increase somewhat in other countries, and the value of those metals, their proportion to the annual produce of land and labour, will soon come to a level, or very near to a level, in all. the loss which spain and portugal could sustain by this exportation of their gold and silver would be altogether nominal and imaginary. the nominal value of their goods, and of the annual produce of their land and labour, would fall, and would be expressed or represented by a smaller quantity of silver than before; but their real value would be the same as before, and would be sufficient to maintain, command, and employ, the same quantity of labour. as the nominal value of their goods would fall, the real value of what remained of their gold and silver would rise, and a smaller quantity of those metals would answer all the same purposes of commerce and circulation which had employed a greater quantity before. the gold and silver which would go abroad would not go abroad for nothing, but would bring back an equal value of goods of some kind or another. those goods, too, would not be all matters of mere luxury and expense, to be consumed by idle people who produce nothing in return for their consumption. as the real wealth and revenue of idle people would not be augmented by this extraordinary exportation of gold and silver, so neither would their consumption be much augmented by it. those goods would, probably, the greater part of them, and certainly some part of them, consist in materials, tools, and provisions, for the employment and maintenance of industrious people, who would reproduce, with a profit, the full value of their consumption. a part of the dead stock of the society would thus be turned into active stock, and would put into motion a greater quantity of industry than had been employed before. the annual produce of their land and labour would immediately be augmented a little, and in a few years would, probably, be augmented a great deal; their industry being thus relieved from one of the most oppressive burdens which it at present labours under. the bounty upon the exportation of corn necessarily operates exactly in the same way as this absurd policy of spain and portugal. whatever be the actual state of tillage, it renders our corn somewhat dearer in the home market than it otherwise would be in that state, and somewhat cheaper in the foreign; and as the average money price of corn regulates more or less that of all other commodities, it lowers the value of silver considerably in the one, and tends to raise it a little in the other. it enables foreigners, the dutch in particular, not only to eat our corn cheaper than they otherwise could do, but sometimes to eat it cheaper than even our own people can do upon the same occasions, as we are assured by an excellent authority, that of sir matthew decker. it hinders our own workmen from furnishing their goods for so small a quantity of silver as they otherwise might do; and enables the dutch to furnish theirs for a smaller. it tends to render our manufactures somewhat dearer in every market, and theirs somewhat cheaper than they otherwise would be, and consequently to give their industry a double advantage over our own. the bounty, as it raises in the home market not so much the real as the nominal price of our corn, as it augments, not the quantity of labour which a certain quantity of corn can maintain and employ but only the quantity of silver which it will exchange for, it discourages our manufactures, without rendering any considerable service either to our farmers or country gentlemen. it puts, indeed, a little more money into the pockets of both, and it will perhaps be somewhat difficult to persuade the greater part of them that this is not rendering them a very considerable service. but if this money sinks in its value, in the quantity of labour, provisions, and homemade commodities of all different kinds which it is capable of purchasing as much as it rises in its quantity, the service will be little more than nominal and imaginary. there is, perhaps, but one set of men in the whole commonwealth to whom the bounty either was or could be essentially serviceable. these were the corn merchants, the exporters and importers of corn. in years of plenty the bounty necessarily occasioned a greater exportation than would otherwise have taken place; and by hindering the plenty of one year from relieving the scarcity of another, it occasioned in years of scarcity a greater importation than would otherwise have been necessary. it increased the business of the corn merchant in both; and in years of scarcity, it not only enabled him to import a greater quantity, but to sell it for a better price, and consequently with a greater profit than he could otherwise have made, if the plenty of one year had not been more or less hindered from relieving the scarcity of another. it is in this set of men, accordingly, that i have observed the greatest zeal for the continuance or renewal of the bounty. our country gentlemen, when they imposed the high duties upon the importation of foreign corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, and when they established the bounty, seem to have imitated the conduct of our manufacturers. by the one institution, they secured to themselves the monopoly of the home market, and by the other they endeavoured to prevent that market from ever being overstocked with their commodity. by both they endeavoured to raise its real value, in the same manner as our manufacturers had, by the like institutions, raised the real value of many different sorts of manufactured goods. they did not perhaps attend to the great and essential difference which nature has established between corn and almost every other sort of goods. when, either by the monopoly of the home market, or by a bounty upon exportation, you enable our woollen or linen manufacturers to sell their goods for somewhat a better price than they otherwise could get for them, you raise, not only the nominal, but the real price of those goods. you render them equivalent to a greater quantity of labour and subsistence, you increase not only the nominal, but the real profit, the real wealth and revenue of those manufacturers, and you enable them either to live better themselves, or to employ a greater quantity of labour in those particular manufactures. you really encourage those manufactures, and direct towards them a greater quantity of the industry of the country than what would probably go to them of its own accord. but when by the like institutions you raise the nominal or money-price of corn, you do not raise its real value. you do not increase the real wealth, the real revenue either of our farmers or country gentlemen. you do not encourage the growth of corn because you do not enable them to maintain and employ more labourers in raising it. the nature of things has stamped upon corn a real value which cannot be altered by merely altering its money price. no bounty upon exportation, no monopoly of the home market, can raise that value. the freest competition cannot lower it. through the world in general that value is equal to the quantity of labour which it can maintain, and in every particular place it is equal to the quantity of labour which it can maintain in the way, whether liberal, moderate, or scanty, in which labour is commonly maintained in that place. woollen or linen cloth are not the regulating commodities by which the real value of all other commodities must be finally measured and determined; corn is. the real value of every other commodity is finally measured and determined by the proportion which its average money price bears to the average money price of corn. the real value of corn does not vary with those variations in its average money price, which sometimes occur from one century to another. it is the real value of silver which varies with them. bounties upon the exportation of any homemade commodity are liable, first to that general objection which may be made to all the different expedients of the mercantile system; the objection of forcing some part of the industry of the country into a channel less advantageous than that in which it would run of its own accord: and, secondly, to the particular objection of forcing it, not only into a channel that is less advantageous, but into one that is actually disadvantageous; the trade which cannot be carried on but by means of a bounty being necessarily a losing trade. the bounty upon the exportation of corn is liable to this further objection, that it can in no respect promote the raising of that particular commodity of which it was meant to encourage the production. when our country gentlemen, therefore, demanded the establishment of the bounty, though they acted in imitation of our merchants and manufacturers, they did not act with that complete comprehension of their own interest which commonly directs the conduct of those two other orders of people. they loaded the public revenue with a very considerable expense; they imposed a very heavy tax upon the whole body of the people; but they did not, in any sensible degree, increase the real value of their own commodity; and by lowering somewhat the real value of silver, they discouraged in some degree, the general industry of the country, and, instead of advancing, retarded more or less the improvement of their own lands, which necessarily depends upon the general industry of the country. to encourage the production of any commodity, a bounty upon production, one should imagine, would have a more direct operation than one upon exportation. it would, besides, impose only one tax upon the people, that which they must contribute in order to pay the bounty. instead of raising, it would tend to lower the price of the commodity in the home market; and thereby, instead of imposing a second tax upon the people, it might, at least, in part, repay them for what they had contributed to the first. bounties upon production, however, have been very rarely granted. the prejudices established by the commercial system have taught us to believe that national wealth arises more immediately from exportation than from production. it has been more favoured accordingly, as the more immediate means of bringing money into the country. bounties upon production, it has been said too, have been found by experience more liable to frauds than those upon exportation. how far this is true, i know not. that bounties upon exportation have been abused to many fraudulent purposes is very well known. but it is not the interest of merchants and manufacturers, the great inventors of all these expedients, that the home market should be overstocked with their goods, an event which a bounty upon production might sometimes occasion. a bounty upon exportation, by enabling them to send abroad the surplus part, and to keep up the price of what remains in the home market, effectually prevents this. of all the expedients of the mercantile system, accordingly, it is the one of which they are the fondest. i have known the different undertakers of some particular works agree privately among themselves to give a bounty out of their own pockets upon the exportation of a certain proportion of the goods which they dealt in. this expedient succeeded so well that it more than doubled the price of their goods in the home market, notwithstanding a very considerable increase in the produce. the operation of the bounty upon corn must have been wonderfully different if it has lowered the money price of that commodity. something like a bounty upon production, however, has been granted upon some particular occasions. the tonnage bounties given to the white-herring and whale fisheries may, perhaps, be considered as somewhat of this nature. they tend directly, it may be supposed, to render the goods cheaper in the home market than they otherwise would be. in other respects their effects, it must be acknowledged, are the same as those of bounties upon exportation. by means of them a part of the capital of the country is employed in bringing goods to market, of which the price does not repay the cost together with the ordinary profits of stock. but though the tonnage bounties of those fisheries do not contribute to the opulence of the nation, it may perhaps be thought that they contribute to its defence by augmenting the number of its sailors and shipping. this, it may be alleged, may sometimes be done by means of such bounties at a much smaller expense than by keeping up a great standing navy, if i may use such an expression, in the same way as a standing army. notwithstanding these favourable allegations, however, the following considerations dispose me to believe that, in granting at least one of these bounties, the legislature has been very grossly imposed upon. first, the herring buss bounty seems too large. from the commencement of the winter fishing, 1771, to the end of the winter fishing, 1781, the tonnage bounty upon the herring buss fishery has been at thirty shillings the ton. during these eleven years the whole number of barrels caught by the herring buss fishery of scotland amounted to 378,347. the herrings caught and cured at sea are called sea-sticks. in order to render them what are called merchantable herrings, it is necessary to repack them with an additional quantity of salt; and in this case, it is reckoned that three barrels of sea-sticks are usually repacked into two barrels of merchantable herrings. the number of barrels of merchantable herrings, therefore, caught during these eleven years will amount only, according to this account, to 252,231 1/3. during these eleven years the tonnage bounties paid amounted to l155,463 11s. or to 8s. 2 1/4d. upon every barrel of seasticks, and to 12s. 3 3/4d. upon every barrel of merchantable herrings. the salt with which these herrings are cured is sometimes scotch and sometimes foreign salt, both which are delivered free of all excise duty to the fish-curers. the excise duty upon scotch salt is at present 1s. 6d., that upon foreign salt 10s. the bushel. a barrel of herrings is supposed to require about one bushel and one-fourth of a bushel foreign salt. two bushels are the supposed average of scotch salt. if the herrings are entered for exportation, no part of this duty is paid up; if entered for home consumption, whether the herrings were cured with foreign or with scotch salt, only one shilling the barrel is paid up. it was the old scotch duty upon a bushel of salt, the quantity which, at a low estimation, had been supposed necessary for curing a barrel of herrings. in scotland, foreign salt is very little used for any other purpose but the curing of fish. but from the 5th april 1771 to the 5th april 1782, the quantity of foreign salt imported amounted to 936,974 bushels, at eighty-four pounds the bushel: the quantity of scotch salt, delivered from the works to the fish-curers, to no more than 168,226, at fifty-six pounds the bushel only. it would appear, therefore, that it is principally foreign salt that is used in the fisheries. upon every barrel of herrings exported there is, besides, a bounty of 2s. 8d., and more than two-thirds of the buss caught herrings are exported. put all these things together and you will find that, during these eleven years, every barrel of buss caught herrings, cured with scotch salt when exported, has cost government l1 7s. 5 3/4d.; and when entered for home consumption 14s. 3 3/4d.; and that every barrel cured with foreign salt, when exported, has cost government l1 7s. 5 3/4d.; and when entered for home consumption l1. 3s. 9 3/4d. the price of a barrel of good merchantable herrings runs from seventeen and eighteen to four and five and twenty shillings, about a guinea at an average. secondly, the bounty to the white-herring fishery is a tonnage bounty; and is proportioned to the burden of the ship, not to her diligence or success in the fishery; and it has, i am afraid, been too common for vessels to fit out for the sole purpose of catching, not the fish, but the bounty. in the year 1759, when the bounty was at fifty shillings the ton, the whole buss fishery of scotland brought in only four barrels of sea-sticks. in that year each barrel of sea-sticks cost government in bounties alone l113 15s.; each barrel of merchantable herrings l159 7s. 6d. thirdly, the mode of fishing for which this tonnage bounty in the white-herring fishery has been given (by busses or decked vessels from twenty to eighty tons burthen), seems not so well adapted to the situation of scotland as to that of holland, from the practice of which country it appears to have been borrowed. holland lies at a great distance from the seas to which herrings are known principally to resort, and can, therefore, carry on that fishery only in decked vessels, which can carry water and provisions sufficient for a voyage to a distant sea. but the hebrides or western islands, the islands of shetland, and the northern and northwestern coasts of scotland, the countries in whose neighbourhood the herring fishery is principally carried on, are everywhere intersected by arms of the sea, which run up a considerable way into the land, and which, in the language of the country, are called sea-lochs. it is to these sea-lochs that the herrings principally resort during the seasons in which they visit those seas; for the visits of this and, i am assured, of many other sorts of fish are not quite regular and constant. a boat fishery, therefore, seems to be the mode of fishing best adapted to the peculiar situation of scotland, the fishers carrying the herrings on shore, as fast as they are taken, to be either cured or consumed fresh. but the great encouragement which a bounty of thirty shillings the ton gives to the buss fishery is necessarily a discouragement to the boat fishery, which, having no such bounty, cannot bring its cured fish to market upon the same terms as the buss fishery. the boat fishery, accordingly, which before the establishment of the buss bounty was very considerable, and is said have employed a number of seamen not inferior to what the buss fishery employs at present, is now gone almost entirely to decay. of the former extent, however, of this now ruined and abandoned fishery, i must acknowledge that i cannot pretend to speak with much precision. as no bounty was paid upon the outfit of the boat fishery, no account was taken of it by the officers of the customs or salt duties. fourthly, in many parts of scotland, during certain seasons of the year, herrings make no inconsiderable part of the food of the people. a bounty, which tended to lower their price in the home market, might contribute a good deal to the relief of a great number of our fellow-subjects, whose circumstances are by no means affluent. but the herring buss bounty contributes to no such good purpose. it has ruined the boat fishery, which is, by far, the best adapted for the supply of the home market, and the additional bounty of 2s. 8d. the barrel upon exportation carries the greater part, more than two-thirds, of the produce of the buss fishery abroad. between thirty and forty years ago, before the establishment of the buss bounty, fifteen shillings the barrel, i have been assured, was the common price of white herrings. between ten and fifteen years ago, before the boat fishery was entirely ruined, the price is said to have run from seventeen to twenty shillings the barrel. for these last five years, it has, at an average, been at twenty-five shillings the barrel. this high price, however, may have been owing to the real scarcity of the herrings upon the coast of scotland. i must observe, too, that the cask or barrel, which is usually sold with the herrings, and of which the price is included in all the foregoing prices, has, since the commencement of the american war, risen to about double its former price, or from about three shillings to about six shillings. i must likewise observe that the accounts i have received of the prices of former times have been by no means quite uniform and consistent; and an old man of great accuracy and experience has assured me that, more than fifty years ago, a guinea was the usual price of a barrel of good merchantable herrings; and this, i imagine, may still be looked upon as the average price. all accounts, however, i think, agree that the price has not been lowered in the home market in consequence of the buss bounty. when the undertakers of fisheries, after such liberal bounties have been bestowed upon them, continue to sell their commodity at the same, or even at a higher price than they were accustomed to do before, it might be expected that their profits should be very great; and it is not improbable that those of some individuals may have been so. in general, however, i have every reason to believe they have been quite otherwise. the usual effect of such bounties is to encourage rash undertakers to adventure in a business which they do not understand, and what they lose by their own negligence and ignorance more than compensates all that they can gain by the utmost liberality of government. in 1750, by the same act, which first gave the bounty of thirty shillings the ton for the encouragement of the white-herring fishery (the 23rd george ii, c. 24), a joint-stock company was erected, with a capital of five hundred thousand pounds, to which the subscribers (over and above all other encouragements, the tonnage bounty just now mentioned, the exportation bounty of two shillings and eightpence the barrel, the delivery of both british and foreign salt duty free) were, during the space of fourteen years, for every hundred pounds which they subscribed and paid in to the stock of the society, entitled to three pounds a year, to be paid by the receiver-general of the customs in equal half-yearly payments. besides this great company, the residence of whose governor and directors was to be in london, it was declared lawful to erect different fishing-chambers in all the different outports of the kingdom, provided a sum not less than ten thousand pounds was subscribed into the capital of each, to be managed at its own risk, and for its own profit and loss. the same annuity, and the same encouragements of all kinds, were given to the trade of those inferior chambers as to that of the great company. the subscription of the great company was soon filled up, and several different fishing-chambers were erected in the different outports of the kingdom. in spite of all these encouragements, almost all those different companies, both great and small, lost either the whole, or the greater part of their capitals; scarce a vestige now remains of any of them, and the white-herring fishery is now entirely, or almost entirely, carried on by private adventurers. if any particular manufacture was necessary, indeed, for the defence of the society, it might not always be prudent to depend upon our neighbours for the supply; and if such manufacture could not otherwise be supported at home, it might not be unreasonable that all the other branches of industry should be taxed in order to support it. the bounties upon the exportation of british-made sailcloth and british-made gunpowder may, perhaps, both be vindicated upon this principle. but though it can very seldom be reasonable to tax the industry of the great body of the people in order to support that of some particular class of manufacturers, yet in the wantonness of great prosperity, when the public enjoys a greater revenue than it knows well what to do with, to give such bounties to favourite manufactures may, perhaps, be as natural as to incur any other idle expense. in public as well as in private expenses, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly. but there must surely be something more than ordinary absurdity in continuing such profusion in times of general difficulty and distress. what is called a bounty is sometimes no more than a drawback, and consequently is not liable to the same objections as what is properly a bounty. the bounty, for example, upon refined sugar exported may be considered as a drawback of the duties upon the brown and muscovado sugars from which it is made. the bounty upon wrought silk exported, a drawback of the duties upon raw and thrown silk imported. the bounty upon gunpowder exported, a drawback of the duties upon brimstone and saltpetre imported. in the language of the customs those allowances only are called drawbacks which are given upon goods exported in the same form in which they are imported. when that form has been so altered by manufacture of any kind as to come under a new denomination, they are called bounties. premiums given by the public to artists and manufacturers who excel in their particular occupations are not liable to the same objections as bounties. by encouraging extraordinary dexterity and ingenuity, they serve to keep up the emulation of the workmen actually employed in those respective occupations, and are not considerable enough to turn towards any one of them a greater share of the capital of the country than what would go to it of its own accord. their tendency is not to overturn the natural balance of employments, but to render the work which is done in each as perfect and complete as possible. the expense of premiums, besides, is very trifling; that of bounties very great. the bounty upon corn alone has sometimes cost the public in one year more than three hundred thousand pounds. digression concerning the corn trade and corn laws i cannot conclude this chapter concerning bounties without observing that the praises which have been bestowed upon the law which establishes the bounty upon the exportation of corn, and upon that system of regulations which is connected with it, are altogether unmerited. a particular examination of the nature of the corn trade, and of the principal british laws which relate to it. will sufficiently demonstrate the truth of this assertion. the great importance of this subject must justify the length of the digression. the trade of the corn merchant is composed of four different branches, which, though they may sometimes be all carried on by the same person, are in their own nature four separate and distinct trades. these are, first, the trade of the inland dealer; secondly, that of the merchant importer for home consumption; thirdly, that of the merchant exporter of home produce for foreign consumption; and, fourthly, that of the merchant carrier, or of the importer of corn in order to export it again. i. the interest of the inland dealer, and that of the great body of the people, how opposite soever they may at first sight appear, are, even in years of the greatest scarcity, exactly the same. it is his interest to raise the price of his corn as high as the real scarcity of the season requires, and it can never be his interest to raise it higher. by raising the price he discourages the consumption, and puts everybody more or less, but particularly the inferior ranks of people, upon thrift and good management. if, by raising it too high, he discourages the consumption so much that the supply of the season is likely to go beyond the consumption of the season, and to last for some time after the next crop begins to come in, he runs the hazard, not only of losing a considerable part of his corn by natural causes, but of being obliged to sell what remains of it for much less than what he might have had for it several months before. if by not raising the price high enough he discourages the consumption so little that the supply of the season is likely to fall short of the consumption of the season, he not only loses a part of the profit which he might otherwise have made, but he exposes the people to suffer before the end of the season, instead of the hardships of a dearth, the dreadful horrors of a famine. it is the interest of the people that their daily, weekly, and monthly consumption should be proportioned as exactly as possible to the supply of the season. the interest of the inland corn dealer is the same. by supplying them, as nearly as he can judge, in this proportion, he is likely to sell all his corn for the highest price, and with the greatest profit; and his knowledge of the state of the crop, and of his daily, weekly, and monthly sales, enable him to judge, with more or less accuracy, how far they really are supplied in this manner. without intending the interest of the people, he is necessarily led, by a regard to his own interest, to treat them, even in years of scarcity, pretty much in the same manner as the prudent master of a vessel is sometimes obliged to treat his crew. when he foresees that provisions are likely to run short, he puts them upon short allowance. though from excess of caution he should sometimes do this without any real necessity, yet all the inconveniences which his crew can thereby suffer are inconsiderable in comparison of the danger, misery, and ruin to which they might sometimes be exposed by a less provident conduct. though from excess of avarice, in the same manner, the inland corn merchant should sometimes raise the price of his corn somewhat higher than the scarcity of the season requires, yet all the inconveniences which the people can suffer from this conduct, which effectually secures them from a famine in the end of the season, are inconsiderable in comparison of what they might have been exposed to by a more liberal way of dealing in the beginning of it. the corn merchant himself is likely to suffer the most by this excess of avarice; not only from the indignation which it generally excites against him, but, though he should escape the effects of this indignation, from the quantity of corn which it necessarily leaves upon his hands in the end of the season, and which, if the next season happens to prove favourable, he must always sell for a much lower price than he might otherwise have had. were it possible, indeed, for one great company of merchants to possess themselves of the whole crop of an extensive country, it might, perhaps, be their interest to deal with it as the dutch are said to do with the spiceries of the moluccas, to destroy or throw away a considerable part of it in order to keep up the price of the rest. but it is scarce possible, even by the violence of law, to establish such an extensive monopoly with regard to corn; and, wherever the law leaves the trade free, it is of all commodities the least liable to be engrossed or monopolized by the force of a few large capitals, which buy up the greater part of it. not only its value far exceeds what the capitals of a few private men are capable of purchasing, but, supposing they were capable of purchasing it, the manner in which it is produced renders this purchase practicable. as in every civilised country it is the commodity of which the annual consumption is the greatest, so a greater quantity of industry is annually employed in producing corn than in producing any other commodity. when it first comes from the ground, too, it is necessarily divided among a greater number of owners than any other commodity; and these owners can never be collected into one place like a number of independent manufacturers, but are necessarily scattered through all the different corners of the country. these first owners either immediately supply the consumers in their own neighbourhood, or they supply other inland dealers who supply those consumers. the inland dealers in corn, therefore, including both the farmer and the baker, are necessarily more numerous than the dealers in any other commodity, and their dispersed situation renders it altogether impossible for them to enter into any general combination. if in a year of scarcity, therefore, any of them should find that he had a good deal more corn upon hand than, at the current price, he could hope to dispose of before the end of the season, he would never think of keeping up this price to his own loss, and to the sole benefit of his rivals and competitors, but would immediately lower it, in order to get rid of his corn before the new crop began to come in. the same motives, the same interests, which would thus regulate the conduct of any one dealer, would regulate that of every other, and oblige them all in general to sell their corn at the price which, according to the best of their judgment, was most suitable to the scarcity or plenty of the season. whoever examines with attention the history of the dearths and famines which have afflicted any part of europe, during either the course of the present or that of the two preceding centuries, of several of which we have pretty exact accounts, will find, i believe, that a dearth never has arisen from any combination among the inland dealers in corn, nor from any other cause but a real scarcity, occasioned sometimes perhaps, and in some particular places, by the waste of war, but in by far the greatest number of cases by the fault of the seasons; and that a famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconveniences of a dearth. in an extensive corn country, between all the different parts of which there is a free commerce and communication, the scarcity occasioned by the most unfavourable seasons can never be so great as to produce a famine; and the scantiest crop, if managed with frugality and economy, will maintain through the year the same number of people that are commonly fed on a more affluent manner by one of moderate plenty. the seasons most unfavourable to the crop are those of excessive drought or excessive rain. but as corn grows equally upon high and low lands, upon grounds that are disposed to be too wet, and upon those that are disposed to be too dry, either the drought or the rain which is hurtful to one part of the country is favourable to another; and though both in the wet and in the dry season the crop is a good deal less than in one more properly tempered, yet in both what is lost in one part of the country is in some measure compensated by what is gained in the other. in rice countries, where the crop not only requires a very moist soil, but where in a certain period of its growing it must be laid under water, the effects of a drought are much more dismal. even in such countries, however, the drought is, perhaps, scarce ever so universal as necessarily to occasion a famine, if the government would allow a free trade. the drought in bengal, a few years ago, might probably have occasioned a very great dearth. some improper regulations, some injudicious restraints imposed by the servants of the east india company upon the rice trade, contributed, perhaps, to turn that dearth into a famine. when the government, in order to remedy the inconveniences of a dearth, orders all the dealers to sell their corn at what it supposes a reasonable price, it either hinders them from bringing it to market, which may sometimes produce a famine even in the beginning of the season; or if they bring it thither, it enables the people, and thereby encourages them to consume it so fast as must necessarily produce a famine before the end of the season. the unlimited, unrestrained freedom of the corn trade, as it is the only effectual preventative of the miseries of a famine, so it is the best palliative of the inconveniences of a dearth; for the inconveniences of a real scarcity cannot be remedied, they can only be palliated. no trade deserves more the full protection of the law, and no trade requires it so much, because no trade is so much exposed to popular odium. in years of scarcity the inferior ranks of people impute their distress to the avarice of the corn merchant, who becomes the object of their hatred and indignation. instead of making profit upon such occasions, therefore, he is often in danger of being utterly ruined, and of having his magazines plundered and destroyed by their violence. it is in years of scarcity, however, when prices are high, that the corn merchant expects to make his principal profit. he is generally in contract with some farmers to furnish him for a certain number of years with a certain quantity of corn at a certain price. this contract price is settled according to what is supposed to be the moderate and reasonable, that is, the ordinary or average price, which before the late years of scarcity was commonly about eight-and-twenty shillings for the quarter of wheat, and for that of other grain in proportion. in years of scarcity, therefore, the corn merchant buys a great part of his corn for the ordinary price, and sells it for a much higher. that this extraordinary profit, however, is no more than sufficient to put his trade upon a fair level with other trades, and to compensate the many losses which he sustains upon other occasions, both from the perishable nature of the commodity itself, and from the frequent and unforeseen fluctuations of its price, seems evident enough, from this single circumstance, that great fortunes are as seldom made in this as in any other trade. the popular odium, however, which attends it in years of scarcity, the only years in which it can be very profitable, renders people of character and fortune averse to enter into it. it is abandoned to an inferior set of dealers; and millers, bakers, mealmen, and meal factors, together with a number of wretched hucksters, are almost the only middle people that, in the home market, come between the grower and the consumer. the ancient policy of europe, instead of discountenancing this popular odium against a trade so beneficial to the public, seems, on the contrary, to have authorized and encouraged it. by the 5th and 6th of edward vi, c. 14, it was enacted that whoever should buy any corn or grain with intent to sell it again, should be reputed an unlawful engrosser, and should, for the first fault, suffer two months' imprisonment, and forfeit the value of the corn; for the second, suffer six months' imprisonment, and forfeit double the value; and for the third, be set in the pillory, suffer imprisonment during the king's pleasure, and forfeit all his goods and chattels. the ancient policy of most other parts of europe was no better than that of england. our ancestors seem to have imagined that the people would buy their corn cheaper of the farmer than of the corn merchant, who, they were afraid, would require, over and above the price which he paid to the farmer, an exorbitant profit to himself. they endeavoured, therefore, to annihilate his trade altogether. they even endeavoured to hinder as much as possible any middle man of any kind from coming in between the grower and the consumer; and this was the meaning of the many restraints which they imposed upon the trade of those whom they called kidders or carriers of corn, a trade which nobody was allowed to exercise without a licence ascertaining his qualifications as a man of probity and fair dealing. the authority of three justices of the peace was, by the statute of edward vi, necessary in order to grant this licence. but even this restraint was afterwards thought insufficient, and by a statute of elizabeth the privilege of granting it was confined to the quarter-sessions. the ancient policy of europe endeavoured in this manner to regulate agriculture, the great trade of the country, by maxims quite different from those which it established with regard to manufactures, the great trade of the towns. by leaving the farmer no other customers but either the consumers or their immediate factors, the kidders and carriers of corn, it endeavoured to force him to exercise the trade, not only of a farmer, but of a corn merchant or corn retailer. on the contrary, it in many cases prohibited the manufacturer from exercising the trade of a shopkeeper, or from selling his own goods by retail. it meant by the one law to promote the general interest of the country, or to render corn cheap, without, perhaps, its being well understood how this was to be done. by the other it meant to promote that of a particular order of men, the shopkeepers, who would be so much undersold by the manufacturer, it was supposed, that their trade would be ruined if he was allowed to retail at all. the manufacturer, however, though he had been allowed to keep a shop, and to sell his own goods by retail, could not have undersold the common shopkeeper. whatever part of his capital he might have placed in his shop, he must have withdrawn it from his manufacture. in order to carry on his business on a level with that of other people, as he must have had the profit of a manufacturer on the one part, so he must have had that of a shopkeeper upon the other. let us suppose, for example, that in the particular town where he lived, ten per cent was the ordinary profit both of manufacturing and shopkeeping stock; he must in this case have charged upon every piece of his own goods which he sold in his shop, a profit of twenty per cent. when he carried them from his workhouse to his shop, he must have valued them at the price for which he could have sold them to a dealer or shopkeeper, who would have bought them by wholesale. if he valued them lower, he lost a part of the profit of his manufacturing capital. when again he sold them from his shop, unless he got the same price at which a shopkeeper would have sold them, he lost a part of the profit of his shopkeeping capital. though he might appear, therefore, to make a double profit upon the same piece of goods, yet as these goods made successively a part of two distinct capitals, he made but a single profit upon the whole capital employed about them; and if he made less than his profit, he was a loser, or did not employ his whole capital with the same advantage as the greater part of his neighbours. what the manufacturer was prohibited to do, the farmer was in some measure enjoined to do; to divide his capital between two different employments; to keep one part of it in his granaries and stack yard, for supplying the occasional demands of the market; and to employ the other in the cultivation of his land. but as he could not afford to employ the latter for less than the ordinary profits of farming stock, so he could as little afford to employ the former for less than the ordinary profits of mercantile stock. whether the stock which really carried on the business of the corn merchant belonged to the person who was called a farmer, or to the person who was called a corn merchant, an equal profit was in both cases requisite in order to indemnify its owner for employing it in this manner; in order to put his business upon a level with other trades, and in order to hinder him from having an interest to change it as soon as possible for some other. the farmer, therefore, who was thus forced to exercise the trade of a corn merchant, could not afford to sell his corn cheaper than any other corn merchant would have been obliged to do in the case of a free competition. the dealer who can employ his whole stock in one single branch of business has an advantage of the same kind with the workman who can employ his whole labour in one single operation. as the latter acquires a dexterity which enables him, with the same two hands, to perform a much greater quantity of work; so the former acquires so easy and ready a method of transacting his business, of buying and disposing of his goods, that with the same capital he can transact a much greater quantity of business. as the one can commonly afford his work a good deal cheaper, so the other can commonly afford his goods somewhat cheaper than if his stock and attention were both employed about a greater variety of objects. the greater part of manufacturers could not afford to retail their own goods so cheap as a vigilant and active shopkeeper, whose sole business it was to buy them at wholesale and to retail them again. the greater part of farmers could still less afford to retail their own corn, to supply the inhabitants of a town, at perhaps four or five miles distance from the greater part of them, so cheap as a vigilant and active corn merchant, whose sole business it was to purchase corn by wholesale, to collect it into a great magazine, and to retail it again. the law which prohibited the manufacturer from exercising the trade of a shopkeeper endeavoured to force this division in the employment of stock to go on faster than it might otherwise have done. the law which obliged the farmer to exercise the trade of a corn merchant endeavoured to hinder it from going on so fast. both laws were evident violations of natural liberty, and therefore unjust; and they were both, too, as impolitic as they were unjust. it is the interest of every society that things of this kind should never either be forced or obstructed. the man who employs either his labour or his stock in a greater variety of ways than his situation renders necessary can never hurt his neighbour by underselling him. he may hurt himself, and he generally does so. jack of all trades will never be rich, says the proverb. but the law ought always to trust people with the care of their own interest, as in their local situations they must generally be able to judge better of it than the legislator can do. the law, however, which obliged the farmer to exercise the trade of a corn merchant was by far the most pernicious of the two. it obstructed not only that division in the employment of stock which is so advantageous to every society, but it obstructed likewise the improvement and cultivation of the land. by obliging the farmer to carry on two trades instead of one, it forced him to divide his capital into two parts, of which one only could be employed in cultivation. but if he had been at liberty to sell his whole crop to a corn merchant as fast as he could thresh it out, his whole capital might have returned immediately to the land, and have been employed in buying more cattle, and hiring more servants, in order to improve and cultivate it better. but by being obliged to sell his corn by retail, he was obliged to keep a great part of his capital in his granaries and stack yard through the year, and could not, therefore, cultivate so well as with the same capital he might otherwise have done. this law, therefore, necessarily obstructed the improvement of the land, and, instead of tending to render corn cheaper, must have tended to render it scarcer, and therefore dearer, than it would otherwise have been. after the business of the farmer, that of the corn merchant is in reality the trade which, if properly protected and encouraged, would contribute the most to the raising of corn. it would support the trade of the farmer in the same manner as the trade of the wholesale dealer supports that of the manufacturer. the wholesale dealer, by affording a ready market to the manufacturer, by taking his goods off his hand as fast as he can make their price to him before he has made them, enables him to keep his whole capital, and sometimes even more than his whole capital, constantly employed in manufacturing, and consequently to manufacture a much greater quantity of goods than if he was obliged to dispose of them himself to the immediate consumers, or even to the retailers. as the capital of the wholesale merchant, too, is generally sufficient to replace that of many manufacturers, this intercourse between him and them interests the owner of a large capital to support the owners of a great number of small ones, and to assist them in those losses and misfortunes which might otherwise prove ruinous to them. an intercourse of the same kind universally established between the farmers and the corn merchants would be attended with effects equally beneficial to the farmers. they would be enabled to keep their whole capitals, and even more than their whole capitals, constantly employed in cultivation. in case of any of those accidents, to which no trade is more liable than theirs, they would find in their ordinary customer, the wealthy corn merchant, a person who had both an interest to support them, and the ability to do it, and they would not, as at present, be entirely dependent upon the forbearance of their landlord, or the mercy of his steward. were it possible, as perhaps it is not, to establish this intercourse universally, and all at once, were it possible to turn all at once the whole farming stock of the kingdom to its proper business, the cultivation of land, withdrawing it from every other employment into which any part of it may be at present diverted, and were it possible, in order to support and assist upon occasion the operations of this great stock, to provide all at once another stock almost equally great, it is not perhaps very easy to imagine how great, how extensive, and how sudden would be the improvement which this change of circumstances would alone produce upon the whole face of the country. the statute of edward vi, therefore, by prohibiting as much as possible any middle man from coming between the grower and the consumer, endeavoured to annihilate a trade, of which the free exercise is not only the best palliative of the inconveniences of a dearth but the best preventative of that calamity: after the trade of the farmer, no trade contributing so much to the growing of corn as that of the corn merchant. the rigour of this law was afterwards softened by several subsequent statutes, which successively permitted the engrossing of corn when the price of wheat should not exceed twenty, twenty-four, thirty-two, and forty shillings the quarter. at last, by the 15th of charles ii, c. 7, the engrossing or buying of corn in order to sell it again, as long as the price of wheat did not exceed forty-eight shillings the quarter, and that of other grain in proportion, was declared lawful to all persons not being forestallers, that is, not selling again in the same market within three months. all the freedom which the trade of the inland corn dealer has ever yet enjoyed was bestowed upon it by this statute. the statute of the 12th of the present king, which repeals almost all the other ancient laws against engrossers and forestallers, does not repeal the restrictions of this particular statute, which therefore still continue in force. this statute, however, authorizes in some measure two very absurd popular prejudices. first, it supposes that when the price of wheat has risen so high as forty-eight shillings the quarter, and that of other grains in proportion, corn is likely to be so engrossed as to hurt the people. but from what has been already said, it seems evident enough that corn can at no price be so engrossed by the inland dealers as to hurt the people: and forty-eight shillings the quarter, besides, though it may be considered as a very high price, yet in years of scarcity it is a price which frequently takes place immediately after harvest, when scarce any part of the new crop can be sold off, and when it is impossible even for ignorance to suppose that any part of it can be so engrossed as to hurt the people. secondly, it supposes that there is a certain price at which corn is likely to be forestalled, that is, bought up in order to be sold again soon after in the same market, so as to hurt the people. but if a merchant ever buys up corn, either going to a particular market or in a particular market, in order to sell it again soon after in the same market, it must be because he judges that the market cannot be so liberally supplied through the whole season as upon that particular occasion, and that the price, therefore, must soon rise. if he judges wrong in this, and if the price does not rise, he not only loses the whole profit of the stock which he employs in this manner, but a part of the stock itself, by the expense and loss which necessarily attend the storing and keeping of corn. he hurts himself, therefore, much more essentially than he can hurt even the particular people whom he may hinder from supplying themselves upon that particular market day, because they may afterwards supply themselves just as cheap upon any other market day. if he judges right, instead of hurting the great body of the people, he renders them a most important service. by making them feel the inconveniencies of a dearth somewhat earlier than they otherwise might do, he prevents their feeling them afterwards so severely as they certainly would do, if the cheapness of price encouraged them to consume faster than suited the real scarcity of the season. when the scarcity is real, the best thing that can be done for the people is to divide the inconveniencies of it as equally as possible through all the different months, and weeks, and days of the year. the interest of the corn merchant makes him study to do this as exactly as he can: and as no other person can have either the same interest, or the same knowledge, or the same abilities to do it so exactly as he, this most important operation of commerce ought to be trusted entirely to him; or, in other words, the corn trade, so far at least as concerns the supply of the home market, ought to be left perfectly free. the popular fear of engrossing and forestalling may be compared to the popular terrors and suspicions of witchcraft. the unfortunate wretches accused of this latter crime were not more innocent of the misfortunes imputed to them than those who have been accused of the former. the law which put an end to all prosecutions against witchcraft, which put it out of any man's power to gratify his own malice by accusing his neighbour of that imaginary crime, seems effectually to have put an end to those fears and suspicions by taking away the great cause which encouraged and supported them. the law which should restore entire freedom to the inland trade of corn would probably prove as effectual to put an end to the popular fears of engrossing and forestalling. the 15th of charles ii, c. 7, however, with all its imperfections, has perhaps contributed more both to the plentiful supply of the home market, and to the increase of tillage, than any other law in the statute book. it is from this law that the inland corn trade has derived all the liberty and protection which it has ever yet enjoyed; and both the supply of the home market, and the interest of tillage, are much more effectually promoted by the inland than either by the importation or exportation trade. the proportion of the average quantity of all sorts of grain imported into great britain to that of all sorts of grain consumed, it has been computed by the author of the tracts upon the corn trade, does not exceed that of one to five hundred and seventy. for supplying the home market, therefore, the importance of the inland trade must be to that of the importation trade as five hundred and seventy to one. the average quantity of all sorts of grain exported from great britain does not, according to the same author, exceed the one-and-thirtieth part of the annual produce. for the encouragement of tillage, therefore, by providing a market for the home produce, the importance of the inland trade must be to that of the exportation. i have no great faith in political arithmetic, computations. i mention them only in order to show of how much less consequence, in the opinion of the most judicious and experienced persons, the foreign trade of corn is than the home trade. the great cheapness of corn in the years immediately preceding the establishment of the bounty may perhaps, with reason, be ascribed in some measure to the operation of this statute of charles ii, which had been enacted about five-and-twenty years before, and which had therefore full time to produce its effect. a very few words will sufficiently explain all that i have to say concerning the other three branches of the corn trade. ii. the trade of the merchant importer of foreign corn for home consumption evidently contributes to the immediate supply of the home market, and must so far be immediately beneficial to the great body of the people. it tends, indeed, to lower somewhat the average money price of corn, but not to diminish its real value, or the quantity of labour which it is capable of maintaining. if importation was at all times free, our farmers and country gentlemen would, probably, one year with another, get less money for their corn than they do at present, when importation is at most times in effect prohibited; but the money which they got would be of more value, would buy more goods of all other kinds, and would employ more labour. their real wealth, their real revenue, therefore, would be the same as at present, though it might be expressed by a smaller quantity of silver; and they would neither be disabled nor discouraged from cultivating corn as much as they do at present. on the contrary, as the rise in the real value of silver, in consequence of lowering the money price of corn, lowers somewhat the money price of all other commodities, it gives the industry of the country, where it takes place, some advantage in all foreign markets, and thereby tends to encourage and increase that industry. but the extent of the home market for corn must be in proportion to the general industry of the country where it grows, or to the number of those who produce something else, and therefore have something else, or what comes to the same thing, the price of something else, to give in exchange for corn. but in every country the home market, as it is the nearest and most convenient, so is it likewise the greatest and most important market for corn. that rise in the real value of silver, therefore, which is the effect of lowering the average money price of corn, tends to enlarge the greatest and most important market for corn, and thereby to encourage, instead of discouraging, its growth. by the 22nd of charles ii, c. 13, the importation of wheat, whenever the price in the home market did not exceed fifty-three shillings and fourpence the quarter, was subjected to a duty of sixteen shillings the quarter, and to a duty of eight shillings whenever the price did not exceed four pounds. the former of these two prices has, for more than a century past, taken place only in times of very great scarcity; and the latter has, so far as i know, not taken place at all. yet, till wheat had risen above this latter price, it was by this statute subjected to a very high duty; and, tin it had risen above the former, to a duty which amounted to a prohibition. the importation of other sorts of grain was restrained at rates, and by duties, in proportion to the value of the grain, almost equally high.* subsequent laws still further increased those duties. * before the 13th of the present king, the following were the duties payable upon the importation of the different sorts of grain: grain duties duties duties beans to 28s. per qr. 19s. 10d. after till 40s. 16s. 8d. then 12d. barley to 28s. 19s. 10d. 32s. 16s. 12d. malt is prohibited by the annual malt-tax bill. oats to 16s. 5s. 10d. after 9 1/2d. pease to 40s. 16s. 10d. after 9 3/4d. rye to 36s. 19s. 10d. till 40s. 16s. 8d. then 12d. wheat to 44s. 21s. 10d. till 53s. 4d. 17s. then 8s. till 4 l. and after that about 1s. 4d. buckwheat to 32s. per qr. to pay 16s. these different duties were imposed, partly by the 92nd of charles ii, in place of the old subsidy, partly by the new subsidy, by the one-third and two-thirds subsidy, and by the subsidy, 1747. the distress which, in years of scarcity, the strict execution of those laws might have brought upon the people, would probably have been very great. but, upon such occasions, its execution was generally suspended by temporary statutes, which permitted, for a limited time, the importation of foreign corn. the necessity of these temporary statutes sufficiently demonstrates the impropriety of this general one. these restraints upon importation, though prior to the establishment of the bounty, were dictated by the same spirit, by the same principles, which afterwards enacted that regulation. how hurtful soever in themselves, these or some other restraints upon importation became necessary in consequence of that regulation. if, when wheat was either below forty-eight shillings the quarter, or not much above it, foreign corn could have been imported either duty free, or upon paying only a small duty, it might have been exported again, with the benefit of the bounty, to the great loss of the public revenue, and to the entire perversion of the institution, of which the object was to extend the market for the home growth, not that for the growth of foreign countries. iii. the trade of the merchant exporter of corn for foreign consumption certainly does not contribute directly to the plentiful supply of the home market. it does so, however, indirectly. from whatever source this supply may be usually drawn, whether from home growth or from foreign importation, unless more corn is either usually grown, or usually imported into the country, than what is usually consumed in it, the supply of the home market can never be very plentiful. but unless the surplus can in all ordinary cases be exported, the growers will be careful never to grow more, and the importers never to import more, than what the bare consumption of the home market requires. that market will very seldom be overstocked; but it will generally be understocked, the people whose business it is to supply it being generally afraid lest their goods should be left upon their hands. the prohibition of exportation limits the improvement and cultivation of the country to what the supply of its own inhabitants requires. the freedom of exportation enables it to extend cultivation for the supply of foreign nations. by the 12th of charles ii, c. 4, the exportation of corn was permitted whenever the price of wheat did not exceed forty shillings the quarter, and that of other grain in proportion. by the 15th of the same prince, this liberty was extended till the price of wheat exceeded forty-eight shillings the quarter; and by the 22nd, to all higher prices. a poundage, indeed, was to be paid to the king upon such exportation. but all grain was rated so low in the book of rates that this poundage amounted only upon wheat to a shilling, upon oats to fourpence, and upon all other grain to sixpence the quarter. by the 1st of william and mary, the act which established the bounty, this small duty was virtually taken off whenever the price of wheat did not exceed, forty-eight shillings the quarter; and by the 11th and l2th of william iii, c. 20, it was expressly taken off at all higher prices. the trade of the merchant exporter was, in this manner, not only encouraged by a bounty, but rendered much more free than that of the inland dealer. by the last of these statutes, corn could be engrossed at any price for exportation, but it could not be engrossed for inland sale except when the price did not exceed forty-eight shillings the quarter. the interest of the inland dealer, however, it has already been shown, can never be opposite to that of the great body of the people. that of the merchant exporter may, and in fact sometimes is. if, while his own country labours under a dearth, a neighbouring country should be afflicted with a famine, it might be his interest to carry corn to the latter country in such quantities as might very much aggravate the calamities of the dearth. the plentiful supply of the home market was not the direct object of those statutes; but, under the pretence of encouraging agriculture, to raise the money price of corn as high as possible, and thereby to occasion, as much as possible, a constant dearth in the home market. by the discouragement of importation, the supply of that market, even in times of great scarcity, was confined to the home growth; and by the encouragement of exportation, when the price was so high as forty-eight shillings the quarter, that market was not, even in times of considerable scarcity, allowed to enjoy the whole of that growth. the temporary laws, prohibiting for a limited time the exportation of corn, and taking off for a limited time the duties upon its importation, expedients to which great britain has been obliged so frequently to have recourse, sufficiently demonstrate the impropriety of her general system. had that system been good, she would not so frequently have been reduced to the necessity of departing from it. were all nations to follow the liberal system of free exportation and free importation, the different states into which a great continent was divided would so far resemble the different provinces of a great empire. as among the different provinces of a great empire the freedom of the inland trade appears, both from reason and experience, not only the best palliative of a dearth, but the most effectual preventative of a famine; so would the freedom of the exportation and importation trade be among the different states into which a great continent was divided. the larger the continent, the easier the communication through all the different parts of it, both by land and by water, the less would any one particular part of it ever be exposed to either of these calamities, the scarcity of any one country being more likely to be relieved by the plenty of some other. but very few countries have entirely adopted this liberal system. the freedom of the corn trade is almost everywhere more or less restrained, and, in many countries, is confined by such absurd regulations as frequently aggravate the unavoidable misfortune of a dearth into the dreadful calamity of a famine. the demand of such countries for corn may frequently become so great and so urgent that a small state in their neighbourhood, which happened at the same time to be labouring under some degree of dearth, could not venture to supply them without exposing itself to the like dreadful calamity. the very bad policy of one country may thus render it in some measure dangerous and imprudent to establish what would otherwise be the best policy in another. the unlimited freedom of exportation, however, would be much less dangerous in great states, in which the growth being much greater, the supply could seldom be much affected by any quantity of corn that was likely to be exported. in a swiss canton, or in some of the little states of italy, it may perhaps sometimes be necessary to restrain the exportation of corn. in such great countries as france or england it scarce ever can. to hinder, besides, the farmer from sending his goods at all times to the best market is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state; an act of legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only in cases of the most urgent necessity. the price at which the exportation of corn is prohibited, if it is ever to be prohibited, ought always to be a very high price. the laws concerning corn may everywhere be compared to the laws concerning religion. the people feel themselves so much interested in what relates either of their subsistence in this life, or to their happiness in a life to come, that government must yield to their prejudices, and, in order to preserve the public tranquillity, establish that system which they approve of. it is upon this account, perhaps, that we so seldom find a reasonable system established with regard to either of those two capital objects. iv. the trade of the merchant carrier, or of the importer of foreign corn in order to export it again, contributes to the plentiful supply of the home market. it is not indeed the direct purpose of his trade to sell his corn there. but he will generally be willing to do so, and even for a good deal less money than he might expect in a foreign market; because he saves in this manner the expense of loading and unloading, of freight and insurance. the inhabitants of the country which, by means of the carrying trade, becomes the magazine and storehouse for the supply of other countries can very seldom be in want themselves. though the carrying trade might thus contribute to reduce the average money price of corn in the home market, it would not thereby lower its real value. it would only raise somewhat the real value of silver. the carrying trade was in effect prohibited in great britain, upon all ordinary occasions, by the high duties upon the importation of foreign corn, of the greater part of which there was no drawback; and upon extraordinary occasions, when a scarcity made it necessary to suspend those duties by temporary statutes, exportation was always prohibited. by this system of laws, therefore, the carrying trade was in effect prohibited upon all occasions. that system of laws, therefore, which is connected with the establishment of the bounty, seems to deserve no part of the praise which has been bestowed upon it. the improvement and prosperity of great britain, which has been so often ascribed to those laws, may very easily be accounted for by other causes. that security which the laws in great britain give to every man that he shall enjoy the fruits of his own labour is alone sufficient to make any country flourish, notwithstanding these and twenty other absurd regulations of commerce; and this security was perfected by the revolution much about the same time that the bounty was established. the natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security. in great britain industry is perfectly secure; and though it is far from being perfectly free, it is as free or freer than in any other part of europe. though the period of the greatest prosperity and improvement of great britain has been posterior to that system of laws which is connected with the bounty, we must not upon that account impute it to those laws. it has been posterior likewise to the national debt. but the national debt has most assuredly not been the cause of it. though the system of laws which is connected with the bounty has exactly the same tendency of tendency with the police of spain and portugal, to lower somewhat the value of the precious metals in the country where it takes place, yet great britain is certainly one of the richest countries in europe, while spain and portugal are perhaps among the most beggarly. this difference of situation, however, may easily be accounted for from two different causes. first, the tax of spain, the prohibition in portugal of exporting gold and silver, and the vigilant police which watches over the execution of those laws, must, in two very poor countries, which between them import annually upwards of six millions sterling, operate not only more directly but much more forcibly in reducing the value of those metals there than the corn laws can do in great britain. and, secondly, this bad policy is not in those countries counterbalanced by the general liberty and security of the people. industry is there neither free nor secure, and the civil and ecclesiastical governments of both spain and portugal are such as would alone be sufficient to perpetuate their present state of poverty, even though their regulations of commerce were as wise as the greater part of them are absurd and foolish. the 13th of the present king, c. 43, seems to have established a new system with regard to the corn laws in many respects better than the ancient one, but in one or two respects perhaps not quite so good. by this statute the high duties upon importations for home consumption are taken off so soon as the price of middling wheat rises to forty-eight shillings the quarter; that of middling rye, pease or beans, to thirty-two shillings; that of barley to twenty-four shillings; and that of oats to sixteen shillings; and instead of them a small duty is imposed of only sixpence upon the quarter of wheat, and upon that of other grain in proportion. with regard to all these different sorts of grain, but particularly with regard to wheat, the home market is thus opened to foreign supplies at prices considerably lower than before. by the same statute the old bounty of five shillings upon the exportation of wheat ceases so soon as the price rises to forty-four shillings the quarter, instead of forty-eight, the price at which it ceased before; that of two shillings and sixpence upon the exportation of barley ceases so soon as the price rises to twenty-two shillings, instead of twenty-four, the price at which it ceased before; that of two shillings and sixpence upon the exportation of oatmeal ceases so soon as the price rises to fourteen shillings, instead of fifteen, the price at which it ceased before. the bounty upon rye is reduced from three shillings and sixpence to three shillings, and it ceases so soon as the price rises to twenty-eight shillings instead of thirty-two, the price at which it ceased before. if bounties are as improper as i have endeavoured to prove them to be, the sooner they cease, and the lower they are, so much the better. the same statute permits, at the lowest prices, the importation of corn, in order to be exported again duty free, provided it is in the meantime lodged in a warehouse under the joint locks of the king and the importer. this liberty, indeed, extends to no more than twenty-five of the different ports of great britain. they are, however, the principal ones, and there may not, perhaps, be warehouses proper for this purpose in the greater part of the others. so far this law seems evidently an improvement upon the ancient system. but by the same law a bounty of two shillings the quarter is given for the exportation of oats whenever the price does not exceed fourteen shillings. no bounty had ever been given before for the exportation of this grain, no more than for that of pease or beans. by the same law, too, the exportation of wheat is prohibited so soon as the price rises to forty-four shillings the quarter; that of rye so soon as it rises to twenty-eight shillings; that of barley so soon as it rises to twenty-two shillings; and that of oats so soon as they rise to fourteen shillings. those several prices seem all of them a good deal too low, and there seems to be an impropriety, besides, in prohibiting exportation altogether at those precise prices at which that bounty, which was given in order to force it, is withdrawn. the bounty ought certainly either to have been withdrawn at a much lower price, or exportation ought to have been allowed at a much higher. so far, therefore, this law seems to be inferior to the ancient system. with all its imperfections, however, we may perhaps say of it what was said of the laws of solon, that, though not the best in itself, it is the best which the interests, prejudices, and temper of the times would admit of. it may perhaps in due time prepare the way for a better. chapter vi of treaties of commerce when a nation binds itself by treaty either to permit the entry of certain goods from one foreign country which it prohibits from all others, or to exempt the goods of one country from duties to which it subjects those of all others, the country, or at least the merchants and manufacturers of the country, whose commerce is so favoured, must necessarily derive great advantage from the treaty. those merchants and manufacturers enjoy a sort of monopoly in the country which is so indulgent to them. that country becomes a market both more extensive and more advantageous for their goods: more extensive, because the goods of other nations being either excluded or subjected to heavier duties, it takes off a greater quantity of theirs: more advantageous, because the merchants of the favoured country, enjoying a sort of monopoly there, will often sell their goods for a better price than if exposed to the free competition of all other nations. such treaties, however, though they may be advantageous to the merchants and manufacturers of the favoured, are necessarily disadvantageous to those of the favouring country. a monopoly is thus granted against them to a foreign nation; and they must frequently buy the foreign goods they have occasion for dearer than if the free competition of other nations was admitted. that part of its own produce with which such a nation purchases foreign goods must consequently be sold cheaper, because when two things are exchanged for one another, the cheapness of the one is a necessary consequence, or rather the same thing with the dearness of the other. the exchangeable value of its annual produce, therefore, is likely to be diminished by every such treaty. this diminution, however, can scarce amount to any positive loss, but only to a lessening of the gain which it might otherwise make. though it sells its goods cheaper than it otherwise might do, it will not probably sell them for less than they cost; nor, as in the case of bounties, for a price which will not replace the capital employed in bringing them to market, together with the ordinary profits of stock. the trade could not go on long if it did. even the favouring country, therefore, may still gain by the trade, though less than if there was a free competition. some treaties of commerce, however, have been supposed advantageous upon principles very different from these; and a commercial country has sometimes granted a monopoly of this kind against itself to certain goods of a foreign nation, because it expected that in the whole commerce between them, it would annually sell more than it would buy, and that a balance in gold and silver would be annually returned to it. it is upon this principle that the treaty of commerce between england and portugal, concluded in 1703 by mr. methuen, has been so much commended. the following is a literal translation of that treaty, which consists of three articles only. art. i. his sacred royal majesty of portugal promises, both in his own name, and that of his successors, to admit, for ever hereafter, into portugal, the woollen cloths, and the rest of the woollen manufactures of the british, as was accustomed, till they were prohibited by the law; nevertheless upon this condition: art. ii. that is to say, that her sacred royal majesty of great britain shall, in her own name, and that of her successors, be obliged, for ever hereafter, to admit the wines of the growth of portugal into britain; so that at no time, whether there shall be peace or war between the kingdoms of britain and france, anything more shall be demanded for these wines by the name of custom or duty, or by whatsoever other title, directly or indirectly, whether they shall be imported into great britain in or hogsheads, or other casks, than what shall be demanded for the like quantity or measure of french wine, deducting or abating a third part of the custom or duty. but if at any time this deduction or abatement of customs, which is to be made as aforesaid, shall in any manner be attempted and prejudiced, it shall be just and lawful for his sacred royal majesty of portugal, again to prohibit the woollen cloths, and the rest of the british woollen manufactures. art. iii. the most excellent lords the plenipotentiaries promise and take upon themselves, that their above named masters shall ratify this treaty; and within the space of two months the ratifications shall be exchanged. by this treaty the crown of portugal becomes bound to admit the english woollens upon the same footing as before the prohibition; that is, not to raise the duties which had been paid before that time. but it does not become bound to admit them upon any better terms than those of any other nation, of france or holland for example. the crown of great britain, on the contrary, becomes bound to admit the wines of portugal upon paying only two-thirds of the duty which is paid for those of france, the wines most likely to come into competition with them. so far this treaty, therefore, is evidently advantageous to portugal, and disadvantageous to great britain. it has been celebrated, however, as a masterpiece of the commercial policy of england. portugal receives annually from the brazils a greater quantity of gold than can be employed in its domestic commerce, whether in the shape of coin or of plate. the surplus is too valuable to be allowed to lie idle and locked up in coffers, and as it can find no advantageous market at home, it must, notwithstanding any prohibition, be sent abroad, and exchanged for something for which there is a more advantageous market at home. a large share of it comes annually to england, in return either for english goods, or for those of other european nations that receive their returns through england. mr. baretti was informed that the weekly packet-boat from lisbon brings, one week with another, more than fifty thousand pounds in gold to england. the sum had probably been exaggerated. it would amount to more than two millions six hundred thousand pounds a year, which is more than the brazils are supposed to afford. our merchants were some years ago out of humour with the crown of portugal. some privileges which had been granted them, not by treaty, but by the free grace of that crown, at the solicitation indeed, it is probable, and in return for much greater favours, defence and protection, from the crown of great britain had been either infringed or revoked. the people, therefore, usually most interested in celebrating the portugal trade were then rather disposed to represent it as less advantageous than it had commonly been imagined. the far greater part, almost the whole, they pretended, of this annual importation of gold, was not on account of great britain, but of other european nations; the fruits and wines of portugal annually imported into great britain nearly compensating the value of the british goods sent thither. let us suppose, however, that the whole was on account of great britain, and that it amounted to a still greater sum than mr. baretti seems to imagine; this trade would not, upon that account, be more advantageous than any other in which, for the same value sent out, we received an equal value of consumable goods in return. it is but a very small part of this importation which, it can be supposed, is employed as an annual addition either to the plate or to the coin of the kingdom. the rest must all be sent abroad and exchanged for consumable goods of some kind or other. but if those consumable goods were purchased directly with the produce of english industry, it would be more for the advantage of england than first to purchase with that produce the gold of portugal, and afterwards to purchase with that gold those consumable goods. a direct foreign trade of consumption is always more advantageous than a round-about one; and to bring the same value of foreign goods to the home market, requires a much smaller capital in the one way than in the other. if a smaller share of its industry, therefore, had been employed in producing goods fit for the portugal market, and a greater in producing those fit for the other markets, where those consumable goods for which there is a demand in great britain are to be had, it would have been more for the advantage of england. to procure both the gold, which it wants for its own use, and the consumable goods, would, in this way, employ a much smaller capital than at present. there would be a spare capital, therefore, to be employed for other purposes, in exciting an additional quantity of industry, and in raising a greater annual produce. though britain were entirely excluded from the portugal trade, it could find very little difficulty in procuring all the annual supplies of gold which it wants, either for the purposes of plate, or of coin, or of foreign trade. gold, like every other commodity, is always somewhere or another to be got for its value by those who have that value to give for it. the annual surplus of gold in portugal, besides, would still be sent abroad, and though not carried away by great britain, would be carried away by some other nation, which would be glad to sell it again for its price, in the same manner as great britain does at present. in buying gold of portugal, indeed, we buy it at the first hand; whereas, in buying it of any other nation, except spain, we should buy it at the second, and might pay somewhat dearer. this difference, however, would surely be too insignificant to deserve the public attention. almost all our gold, it is said, comes from portugal. with other nations the balance of trade is either against us, or not much in our favour. but we should remember that the more gold we import from one country, the less we must necessarily import from all others. the effectual demand for gold, like that for every other commodity, is in every country limited to a certain quantity. if nine-tenths of this quantity are imported from one country, there remains a tenth only to be imported from all others. the more gold besides that is annually imported from some particular countries, over and above what is requisite for plate and for coin, the more must necessarily be exported to some others; and the more that most insignificant object of modern policy, the balance of trade, appears to be in our favour with some particular countries, the more it must necessarily appear to be against us with many others. it was upon this silly notion, however, that england could not subsist without the portugal trade, that, towards the end of the late war, france and spain, without pretending either offence or provocation, required the king of portugal to exclude all british ships from his ports, and for the security of this exclusion, to receive into them french or spanish garrisons. had the king of portugal submitted to those ignominious terms which his brother-in-law the king of spain proposed to him, britain would have been freed from a much greater inconveniency than the loss of the portugal trade, the burden of supporting a very weak ally, so unprovided of everything for his own defence that the whole power of england, had it been directed to that single purpose, could scarce perhaps have defended him for another campaign. the loss of the portugal trade would, no doubt, have occasioned a considerable embarrassment to the merchants at that time engaged in it, who might not, perhaps, have found out, for a year or two, any other equally advantageous method of employing their capitals; and in this would probably have consisted all the inconveniency which england could have suffered from this notable piece of commercial policy. the great annual importation of gold and silver is neither for the purpose of plate nor of coin, but of foreign trade. a round-about foreign trade of consumption can be carried on more advantageously by means of these metals than of almost any other goods. as they are the universal instruments of commerce, they are more readily received in return for all commodities than any other goods; and on account of their small bulk and great value, it costs less to transport them backward and forward from one place to another than almost any other sort of merchandise, and they lose less of their value by being so transported. of all the commodities, therefore, which are bought in one foreign country, for no other purpose but to be sold or exchanged again for some other goods in another, there are none so convenient as gold and silver. in facilitating all the different round-about foreign trades of consumption which are carried on in great britain consists the principal advantage of the portugal trade; and though it is not a capital advantage, it is no doubt a considerable one. that any annual addition which, it can reasonably be supposed, is made either to the plate or to the coin of the kingdom, could require but a very small annual importation of gold and silver, seems evident enough; and though we had no direct trade with portugal, this small quantity could always, somewhere or another, be very easily got. though the goldsmith's trade be very considerable in great britain, the far. greater part of the new plate which they annually sell is made from other old plate melted down; so that the addition annually made to the whole plate of the kingdom cannot be very great, and could require but a very small annual importation. it is the same case with the coin. nobody imagines, i believe, that even the greater part of the annual coinage, amounting, for ten years together, before the late reformation of the gold coin, to upwards of eight hundred thousand pounds a year in gold, was an annual addition to the money before current in the kingdom. in a country where the expense of the coinage is defrayed by the government, the value of the coin, even when it contains its full standard weight of gold and silver, can never be much greater than that of an equal quantity of those metals uncoined; because it requires only the trouble of going to the mint, and the delay perhaps of a few weeks, to procure for any quantity of uncoined gold and silver an equal quantity of those metals in coin. but, in every country, the greater part of the current coin is almost always more or less worn, or otherwise degenerated from its standard. in great britain it was, before the late reformation, a good deal so, the gold being more than two per cent and the silver more than eight per cent below its standard weight. but if forty-four guineas and a half, containing their full standard weight, a pound weight of gold, could purchase very little more than a pound weight could of uncoined gold, forty-four guineas and a half wanting a part of their weight could not purchase a pound weight, and something was to be added in order to make up the deficiency. the current price of gold bullion at market, therefore, instead of being the same with the mint price, or l46 14s. 6d., was then about l47 14s. and sometimes about l48. when the greater part of the coin, however, was in this degenerate condition, forty-four guineas and a half, fresh from the mint, would purchase no more goods in the market than any other ordinary guineas, because when they came into the coffers of the merchant, being confounded with other money, they could not afterwards be distinguished without more trouble than the difference was worth. like other guineas they were worth no more than l46 14s. 6d. if thrown into the melting pot, however, they produced, without any sensible loss, a pound weight of standard gold, which could be sold at any time for between l47 14s. and l48 either of gold or silver, as fit for all the purposes of coin as that which had been melted down. there was an evident profit, therefore, in melting down new coined money, and it was done so instantaneously, that no precaution of government could prevent it. the operations of the mint were, upon this account, somewhat like the web of penelope; the work that was done in the day was undone in the night. the mint was employed, not so much in making daily additions to the coin, as in replacing the very best part of it which was daily melted down. were the private people, who carry their gold and silver to the mint, to pay themselves for the coinage, it would add to the value of those metals in the same manner as the fashion does to that of plate. coined gold and silver would be more valuable than uncoined. the seignorage, if it was not exorbitant, would add to the bullion the whole value of the duty; because, the government having everywhere the exclusive privilege of coining, no coin can come to market cheaper than they think proper to afford it. if the duty was exorbitant indeed, that is, if it was very much above the real value of the labour and expense requisite for coinage, false coiners, both at home and abroad, might be encouraged, by the great difference between the value of bullion and that of coin, to pour in so great a quantity of counterfeit money as might reduce the value of the government money. in france, however, though the seignorage is eight per cent, no sensible inconveniency of this kind is found to arise from it. the dangers to which a false coiner is everywhere exposed, if he lives in the country of which he counterfeits the coin, and to which his agents or correspondents are exposed if he lives in a foreign country, are by far too great to be incurred for the sake of a profit of six or seven per cent. the seignorage in france raises the value of the coin higher than in proportion to the quantity of pure gold which it contains. thus by the edict of january 1726, the mint price of fine gold of twenty-four carats was fixed at seven hundred and forty livres nine sous and one denier one-eleventh, the mark of eight paris ounces. the gold coin of france, making an allowance for the remedy of the mint, contains twenty-one carats and three-fourths of fine gold, and two carats one fourth of alloy. the mark of standard gold, therefore, is worth no more than about six hundred and seventy-one livres ten deniers. but in france this mark of standard gold is coined into thirty louis d'ors of twenty-four livres each, or into seven hundred and twenty livres. the coinage, therefore, increases the value of a mark of standard gold bullion, by the difference between six hundred and seventy-one livres ten deniers, and seven hundred and twenty livres; or by forty-eight livres nineteen sous and two deniers. a seignorage will, in many cases, take away altogether, and will, in all cases, diminish the profit of melting down the new coin. this profit always arises from the difference between the quantity of bullion which the common currency ought to contain, and that which it actually does contain. if this difference is less than the seignorage, there will be loss instead of profit. if it is equal to the seignorage, there will neither be profit nor loss. if it is greater than the seignorage, there will indeed be some profit, but less than if there was no seignorage. if, before the late reformation of the gold coin, for example, there had been a seignorage of five per cent upon the coinage, there would have been a loss of three per cent upon the melting down of the gold coin. if the seignorage had been two per cent there would have been neither profit nor loss. if the seignorage had been one per cent there would have been a profit, but of one per cent only instead of two per cent. wherever money is received by tale, therefore, and not by weight, a seignorage is the most effectual preventative of the melting down of the coin, and, for the same reason, of its exportation. it is the best and heaviest pieces that are commonly either melted down or exported; because it is upon such that the largest profits are made. the law for encouragement of the coinage, by rendering it duty-free, was first enacted during the reign of charles ii for a limited time; and afterwards continued, by different prolongations, till 1769, when it was rendered perpetual. the bank of england, in order to replenish their coffers with money, are frequently obliged to carry bullion to the mint; and it was more for their interest, they probably imagined, that the coinage should be at the expense of the government than at their own. it was probably out of complaisance to this great company that the government agreed to render this law perpetual. should the custom of weighing gold, however, come to be disused, as it is very likely to be on account of its inconveniency; should the gold coin of england come to be received by tale, as it was before the late recoinage, this great company may, perhaps, find that they have upon this, as upon some other occasions, mistaken their own interest not a little. before the late recoinage, when the gold currency of england was two per cent below its standard weight, as there was no seignorage, it was two per cent below the value of that quantity of standard gold bullion which it ought to have contained. when this great company, therefore, bought gold bullion in order to have it coined, they were obliged to pay for it two per cent more than it was worth after coinage. but if there had been a seignorage of two per cent upon the coinage, the common gold currency, though two per cent below its standard weight, would notwithstanding have been equal in value to the quantity of standard gold which it ought to have contained; the value of the fashion compensating in this case the diminution of the weight. they would indeed have had the seignorage to pay, which being two per cent, their loss upon the whole transaction would have been two per cent exactly the same, but no greater than it actually was. if the seignorage had been five per cent, and the gold currency only two per cent below its standard weight, the bank would in this case have gained three per cent upon the price of the bullion; but as they would have had a seignorage of five per cent to pay upon the coinage, their loss upon the whole transaction would, in the same manner, have been exactly two per cent. if the seignorage had been only one per cent and the gold currency two per cent below its standard weight, the bank would in this case have lost only one per cent upon the price of the bullion; but as they would likewise have had a seignorage of one per cent to pay, their loss upon the whole transaction would have been exactly two per cent in the same manner as in all other cases. if there was a reasonable seignorage, while at the same time the coin contained its full standard weight, as it has done very nearly since the last recoinage, whatever the bank might lose by the seignorage, they would gain upon the price of the bullion; and whatever they might gain upon the price of the bullion, they would lose by the seignorage. they would neither lose nor gain, therefore, upon the whole transaction, and they would in this, as in all the foregoing cases, be exactly in the same situation as if there was no seignorage. when the tax upon a commodity is so moderate as not to encourage smuggling, the merchant who deals in it, though he advances, does not properly pay the tax, as he gets it back in the price of the commodity. the tax is finally paid by the last purchaser or consumer. but money is a commodity with regard to which every man is a merchant. nobody buys it but in order to sell it again; and with regard to it there is in ordinary cases no last purchaser or consumer. when the tax upon coinage, therefore, is so moderate as not to encourage false coining, though everybody advances the tax, nobody finally pays it; because everybody gets it back in the advanced value of the coin. a moderate seignorage, therefore, would not in any case augment the expense of the bank, or of any other private persons who carry their bullion to the mint in order to be coined, and the want of a moderate seignorage does not in any case diminish it. whether there is or is not a seignorage, if the currency contains its full standard weight, the coinage costs nothing to anybody, and if it is short of that weight, the coinage must always cost the difference between the quantity of bullion which ought to be contained in it, and that which actually is contained in it. the government, therefore, when it defrays the expense of coinage, not only incurs some small expense, but loses some small revenue which it might get by a proper duty; and neither the bank nor any other private persons are in the smallest degree benefited by this useless piece of public generosity. the directors of the bank, however, would probably be unwilling to agree to the imposition of a seignorage upon the authority of a speculation which promises them no gain, but only pretends to insure them from any loss. in the present state of the gold coin, and as long as it continues to be received by weight, they certainly would gain nothing by such a change. but if the custom of weighing the gold coin should ever go into misuse, as it is very likely to do, and if the gold coin should ever fall into the same state of degradation in which it was before the late recoinage, the gain, or more properly the savings of the bank, in consequence of the imposition of a seignorage, would probably be very considerable. the bank of england is the only company which sends any considerable quantity of bullion to the mint, and the burden of the annual coinage falls entirely, or almost entirely, upon it. if this annual coinage had nothing to do but to repair the unavoidable losses and necessary wear and tear of the coin, it could seldom exceed fifty thousand or at most a hundred thousand pounds. but when the coin is degraded below its standard weight, the annual coinage must, besides this, fill up the large vacuities which exportation and the melting pot are continually making in the current coin. it was upon this account that during the ten or twelve years immediately preceding the late reformation of the gold coin, the annual coinage amounted at an average to more than eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds. but if there had been a seignorage of four or five per cent upon the gold coin, it would probably, even in the state in which things then were, have put an effectual stop to the business both of exportation and of the melting pot. the bank, instead of losing every year about two and a half per cent upon the bullion which was to be coined into more than eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds, or incurring an annual loss of more than twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty pounds, would not probably have incurred the tenth part of that loss. the revenue allotted by parliament for defraying the expense of the coinage is but fourteen thousand pounds a year, and the real expense which it costs the government, or the fees of the officers of the mint, do not upon ordinary occasions, i am assured, exceed the half of that sum. the saving of so very small a sum, or even the gaining of another which could not well be much larger, are objects too inconsiderable, it may be thought, to deserve the serious attention of government. but the saving of eighteen or twenty thousand pounds a year in case of an event which is not improbable, which has frequently happened before, and which is very likely to happen again, is surely an object which well deserves the serious attention even of so great a company as the bank of england. some of the foregoing reasonings and observations might perhaps have been more properly placed in those chapters of the first book which treat of the origin and use of money, and of the difference between the real and the nominal price of commodities. but as the law for the encouragement of coinage derives its origin from those vulgar prejudices which have been introduced by the mercantile system, i judged it more proper to reserve them for this chapter. nothing could be more agreeable to the spirit of that system than a sort of bounty upon the production of money, the very thing which, it supposes, constitutes the wealth of every nation. it is one of its many admirable expedients for enriching the country. chapter vii of colonies part 1 of the motives for establishing new colonies the interest which occasioned the first settlement of the different european colonies in america and the west indies was not altogether so plain and distinct as that which directed the establishment of those of ancient greece and rome. all the different states of ancient greece possessed, each of them, but a very small territory, and when the people in any one of them multiplied beyond what that territory could easily maintain, a part of them were sent in quest of a new habitation in some remote and distant part of the world; the warlike neighbours who surrounded them on all sides, rendering it difficult for any of them to enlarge very much its territory at home. the colonies of the dorians resorted chiefly to italy and sicily, which, in the times preceding the foundation of rome, were inhabited by barbarous and uncivilised nations: those of the ionians and aeolians, the two other great tribes of the greeks, to asia minor and the islands of the aegean sea, of which the inhabitants seem at that time to have been pretty much in the same state as those of sicily and italy. the mother city, though she considered the colony as a child, at all times entitled to great favour and assistance, and owing in return much gratitude and respect, yet considered it as an emancipated child over whom she pretended to claim no direct authority or jurisdiction. the colony settled its own form of government, enacted its own laws, elected its own magistrates, and made peace or war with its neighbours as an independent state, which had no occasion to wait for the approbation or consent of the mother city. nothing can be more plain and distinct than the interest which directed every such establishment. rome, like most of the other ancient republics, was originally founded upon an agrarian law which divided the public territory in a certain proportion among the different citizens who composed the state. the course of human affairs by marriage, by succession, and by alienation, necessarily deranged this original division, and frequently threw the lands, which had been allotted for the maintenance of many different families, into the possession of a single person. to remedy this disorder, for such it was supposed to be, a law was made restricting the quantity of land which any citizen could possess to five hundred jugera, about three hundred and fifty english acres. this law, however, though we read of its having been executed upon one or two occasions, was either neglected or evaded, and the inequality of fortunes went on continually increasing. the greater part of the citizens had no land, and without it the manners and customs of those times rendered it difficult for a freeman to maintain his independency. in the present time, though a poor man has no land of his own, if he has a little stock he may either farm the lands of another, or he may carry on some little retail trade; and if he has no stock, he may find employment either as a country labourer or as an artificer. but among the ancient romans the lands of the rich were all cultivated by slaves, who wrought under an overseer who was likewise a slave; so that a poor freeman had little chance of being employed either as a farmer or as a labourer. all trades and manufactures too, even the retail trade, were carried on by the slaves of the rich for the benefit of their masters, whose wealth, authority, and protection made it difficult for a poor freeman to maintain the competition against them. the citizens, therefore, who had no land, had scarce any other means of subsistence but the bounties of the candidates at the annual elections. the tribunes, when they had a mind to animate the people against the rich and the great, put them in mind of the ancient division of lands, and represented that law which restricted this sort of private property as the fundamental law of the republic. the people became clamorous to get land, and the rich and the great, we may believe, were perfectly determined not to give them any part of theirs. to satisfy them in some measure therefore, they frequently proposed to send out a new colony. but conquering rome was, even upon such occasions, under no necessity of turning out her citizens to seek their fortune, if one may say so, through the wide world, without knowing where they were to settle. she assigned them lands generally in the conquered provinces of italy, where, being within the dominions of the republic, they could never form an independent state; but were at best but a sort of corporation, which, though it had the power of enacting bye-laws for its own government, was at all times subject to the correction, jurisdiction, and legislative authority of the mother city. the sending out a colony of this kind not only gave some satisfaction to the people, but often established a sort of garrison, too, in a newly conquered province, of which the obedience might otherwise have been doubtful. a roman colony therefore, whether we consider the nature of the establishment itself or the motives for making it, was altogether different from a greek one. the words accordingly, which in the original languages denote those different establishments, have very different meanings. the latin word (colonia) signifies simply a plantation. the greek word apoikia, on the contrary, signifies a separation of dwelling, a departure from home, a going out of the house. but, though the roman colonies were in many respects different from the greek ones, the interest which prompted to establish them was equally plain and distinct. both institutions derived their origin either from irresistible necessity, or from clear and evident utility. the establishment of the european colonies in america and the west indies arose from no necessity: and though the utility which has resulted from them has been very great, it is not altogether so clear and evident. it was not understood at their first establishment, and was not the motive either of that establishment or of the discoveries which gave occasion to it, and the nature, extent, and limits of that utility are not, perhaps, well understood at this day. the venetians, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, carried on a very advantageous commerce in spiceries, and other east india goods, which they distributed among the other nations of europe. they purchased them chiefly in egypt, at that time under the dominion of the mamelukes, the enemies of the turks, of whom the venetians were the enemies; and this union of interest, assisted by the money of venice, formed such a connection as gave the venetians almost a monopoly of the trade. the great profits of the venetians tempted the avidity of the portuguese. they had been endeavouring, during the course of the fifteenth century, to find out by sea a way to the countries from which the moors brought them ivory and gold dust across the desert. they discovered the madeiras, the canaries, the azores, the cape de verde islands, the coast of guinea, that of loango, congo, angola, and benguela, and, finally, the cape of good hope. they had long wished to share in the profitable traffic of the venetians, and this last discovery opened to them a probable prospect of doing so. in 1497, vasco de gama sailed from the port of lisbon with a fleet of four ships, and after a navigation of eleven months arrived upon the coast of indostan, and thus completed a course of discoveries which had been pursued with great steadiness, and with very little interruption, for nearly a century together. some years before this, while the expectations of europe were in suspense about the projects of the portuguese, of which the success appeared yet to be doubtful, a genoese pilot formed the yet more daring project of sailing to the east indies by the west. the situation of those countries was at that time very imperfectly known in europe. the few european travellers who had been there had magnified the distance, perhaps through simplicity and ignorance, what was really very great appearing almost infinite to those who could not measure it; or, perhaps, in order to increase somewhat more the marvellous of their own adventures in visiting regions so immensely remote from europe. the longer the way was by the east, columbus very justly concluded, the shorter it would be by the west. he proposed, therefore, to take that way, as both the shortest and the surest, and he had the good fortune to convince isabella of castile of the probability of his project. he sailed from the port of palos in august 1492, nearly five years before the expedition of vasco de gama set out from portugal, and, after a voyage of between two and three months, discovered first some of the small bahamas or lucayan islands, and afterwards the great island of st. domingo. but the countries which columbus discovered, either in this or in any of his subsequent voyages, had no resemblance to those which he had gone in quest of. instead of the wealth, cultivation, and populousness of china and indostan, he found, in st. domingo, and in all the other parts of the new world which he ever visited, nothing but a country quite covered with wood, uncultivated, and inhabited only by some tribes of naked and miserable savages. he was not very willing, however, to believe that they were not the same with some of the countries described by marco polo, the first european who had visited, or at least had left behind him, any description of china or the east indies; and a very slight resemblance, such as that which he found between the name of cibao, a mountain in st. domingo, and that of cipango mentioned by marco polo, was frequently sufficient to make him return to this favourite prepossession, though contrary to the clearest evidence. in his letters to ferdinand and isabella he called the countries which he had discovered the indies. he entertained no doubt but that they were the extremity of those which had been described by marco polo, and that they were not very distant from the ganges, or from the countries which had been conquered by alexander. even when at last convinced that they were different, he still flattered himself that those rich countries were at no great distance, and, in a subsequent voyage, accordingly, went in quest of them along the coast of terra firma, and towards the isthmus of darien. in consequence of this mistake of columbus, the name of the indies has stuck to those unfortunate countries ever since; and when it was at last clearly discovered that the new were altogether different from the old indies, the former were called the west, in contradistinction to the latter, which were called the east indies. it was of importance to columbus, however, that the countries which he had discovered, whatever they were, should be represented to the court of spain as of very great consequence; and, in what constitutes the real riches of every country, the animal and vegetable productions of the soil, there was at that time nothing which could well justify such a representation of them. the cori, something between a rat and a rabbit, and supposed by mr. buffon to be the same with the aperea of brazil, was the largest viviparous quadruped in st. domingo. this species seems never to have been very numerous, and the dogs and cats of the spaniards are said to have long ago almost entirely extirpated it, as well as some other tribes of a still smaller size. these, however, together with a pretty large lizard, called the ivana, or iguana, constituted the principal part of the animal food which the land afforded. the vegetable food of the inhabitants, though from their want of industry not very abundant, was not altogether so scanty. it consisted in indian corn, yams, potatoes, bananas, etc., plants which were then altogether unknown in europe, and which have never since been very much esteemed in it, or supposed to yield a sustenance equal to what is drawn from the common sorts of grain and pulse, which have been cultivated in this part of the world time out of mind. the cotton plant, indeed, afforded the material of a very important manufacture, and was at that time to europeans undoubtedly the most valuable of all the vegetable productions of those islands. but though in the end of the fifteenth century the muslins and other cotton goods of the east indies were much esteemed in every part of europe, the cotton manufacture itself was not cultivated in any part of it. even this production, therefore, could not at that time appear in the eyes of europeans to be of very great consequence. finding nothing either in the animals or vegetables of the newly discovered countries which could justify a very advantageous representation of them, columbus turned his view towards their minerals; and in the richness of the productions of this third kingdom, he flattered himself he had found a full compensation for the insignificancy of those of the other two. the little bits of gold with which the inhabitants ornamented their dress, and which, he was informed, they frequently found in the rivulets and torrents that fell from the mountains, were sufficient to satisfy him that those mountains abounded with the richest gold mines. st. domingo, therefore, was represented as a country abounding with gold, and, upon that account, (according to the prejudices not only of the present time, but of those times) an inexhaustible source of real wealth to the crown and kingdom of spain. when columbus, upon his return from his first voyage, was introduced with a sort of triumphal honours to the sovereigns of castile and arragon, the principal productions of the countries which he had discovered were carried in solemn procession before him. the only valuable part of them consisted in some little fillets, bracelets, and other ornaments of gold, and in some bales of cotton. the rest were mere objects of vulgar wonder and curiosity; some reeds of an extraordinary size, some birds of a very beautiful plumage, and some stuffed skins of the huge alligator and manati; all of which were preceded by six or seven of the wretched natives, whose singular colour and appearance added greatly to the novelty of the show. in consequence of the representations of columbus, the council of castile determined to take possession of countries of which the inhabitants were plainly incapable of defending themselves. the pious purpose of converting them to christianity sanctified the injustice of the project. but the hope of finding treasures of gold there was the sole motive which prompted him to undertake it; and to give this motive the greater weight, it was proposed by columbus that the half of all the gold and silver that should be found there should belong to the crown. this proposal was approved of by the council. as long as the whole or the far greater part of the gold, which the first adventurers imported into europe, was got by so very easy a method as the plundering of the defenceless natives, it was not perhaps very difficult to pay even this heavy tax. but when the natives were once fairly stripped of all that they had, which, in st. domingo, and in all the other countries discovered by columbus, was done completely in six or eight years, and when in order to find more it had become necessary to dig for it in the mines, there was no longer any possibility of paying this tax. the rigorous exaction of it, accordingly, first occasioned, it is said, the total abandoning of the mines of st. domingo, which have never been wrought since. it was soon reduced therefore to a third; then to a fifth; afterwards to a tenth; and at last to a twentieth part of the gross produce of the gold mines. the tax upon silver continued for a long time to be a fifth of the gross produce. it was reduced to a tenth only in the course of the present century. but the first adventurers do not appear to have been much interested about silver. nothing less precious than gold seemed worthy of their attention. all the other enterprises of the spaniards in the new world, subsequent to those of columbus, seem to have been prompted by the same motive. it was the sacred thirst of gold that carried oieda, nicuessa, and vasco nugnes de balboa, to the isthmus of darien, that carried cortez to mexico, and almagro and pizzarro to chili and peru. when those adventurers arrived upon any unknown coast, their first inquiry was always if there was any gold to be found there; and according to the information which they received concerning this particular, they determined either to quit the country or to settle in it. of all those expensive and uncertain projects, however, which bring bankruptcy upon the greater part of the people who engage in them, there is none perhaps more ruinous than the search after new silver and gold mines. it is perhaps the most disadvantageous lottery in the world, or the one in which the gain of those who draw the prizes bears the least proportion to the loss of those who draw the blanks: for though the prizes are few and the blanks many, the common price of a ticket is the whole fortune of a very rich man. projects of mining, instead of replacing the capital employed in them, together with the ordinary profits of stock, commonly absorb both capital and profit. they are the projects, therefore, to which of all others a prudent lawgiver, who desired to increase the capital of his nation, would least choose to give any extraordinary encouragement, or to turn towards them a greater share of that capital than that would go to them of its own accord. such in reality is the absurd confidence which almost all men have in their own good fortune that, wherever there is the least probability of success, too great a share of it is apt to go to them of its own accord. but though the judgment of sober reason and experience concerning such projects has always been extremely unfavourable, that of human avidity has commonly been quite otherwise. the same passion which has suggested to so many people the absurd idea of the philosopher's stone, has suggested to others the equally absurd one of immense rich mines of gold and silver. they did not consider that the value of those metals has, in all ages and nations, arisen chiefly from their scarcity, and that their scarcity has arisen from the very small quantities of them which nature has anywhere deposited in one place, from the hard and intractable substances with which she has almost everywhere surrounded those small quantities, and consequently from the labour and expense which are everywhere necessary in order to penetrate to and get at them. they flattered themselves that veins of those metals might in many places be found as large and as abundant as those which are commonly found of lead, or copper, or tin, or iron. the dream of sir walter raleigh concerning the golden city and country of eldorado, may satisfy us that even wise men are not always exempt from such strange delusions. more than a hundred years after the death of that great man, the jesuit gumila was still convinced of the reality of that wonderful country, and expressed with great warmth, and i dare to say with great sincerity, how happy he should be to carry the light of the gospel to a people who could so well reward the pious labours of their missionary. in the countries first discovered by the spaniards, no gold or silver mines are at present known which are supposed to be worth the working. the quantities of those metals which the first adventurers are said to have found there had probably been very much magnified, as well as the fertility of the mines which were wrought immediately after the first discovery. what those adventurers were reported to have found, however, was sufficient to inflame the avidity of all their countrymen. every spaniard who sailed to america expected to find an eldorado. fortune, too, did upon this what she has done upon very few other occasions. she realized in some measure the extravagant hopes of her votaries, and in the discovery and conquest of mexico and peru (of which the one happened about thirty, the other about forty years after the first expedition of columbus), she presented them with something not very unlike that profusion of the precious metals which they sought for. a project of commerce to the east indies, therefore, gave occasion to the first discovery of the west. a project of conquest gave occasion to all the establishments of the spaniards in those newly discovered countries. the motive which excited them to this conquest was a project of gold and silver mines; and a course of accidents, which no human wisdom could foresee, rendered this project much more successful than the undertakers had any reasonable grounds for expecting. the first adventurers of all the other nations of europe who attempted to make settlements in america were animated by the like chimerical views; but they were not equally successful. it was more than a hundred years after the first settlement of the brazils before any silver, gold, or diamond mines were discovered there. in the english, french, dutch, and danish colonies, none have ever yet been discovered; at least none that are at present supposed to be worth the working. the first english settlers in north america, however, offered a fifth of all the gold and silver which should be found there to the king, as a motive for granting them their patents. in the patents to sir walter raleigh, to the london and plymouth companies, to the council of plymouth, etc., this fifth was accordingly reserved to the crown. to the expectation of finding gold and silver mines, those first settlers, too, joined that of discovering a northwest passage to the east indies. they have hitherto been disappointed in both. part 2 causes of prosperity of new colonies the colony of a civilised nation which takes possession either of a waste country, or of one so thinly inhabited that the natives easily give place to the new settlers, advances more rapidly to wealth and greatness than any other human society. the colonists carry out with them a knowledge of agriculture and of other useful arts superior to what can grow up of its own accord in the course of many centuries among savage and barbarous nations. they carry out with them, too, the habit of subordination, some notion of the regular government which takes place in their own country, of the system of laws which support it, and of a regular administration of justice; and they naturally establish something of the same kind in the new settlement. but among savage and barbarous nations, the natural progress of law and government is still slower than the natural progress of arts, after law and government have been go far established as is necessary for their protection. every colonist gets more land than he can possibly cultivate. he has no rent, and scarce any taxes to pay. no landlord shares with him in its produce, and the share of the sovereign is commonly but a trifle. he has every motive to render as great as possible a produce, which is thus to be almost entirely his own. but his land is commonly so extensive that, with all his own industry, and with all the industry of other people whom he can get to employ, he can seldom make it produce the tenth part of what it is capable of producing. he is eager, therefore, to collect labourers from all quarters, and to reward them with the most liberal wages. but those liberal wages, joined to the plenty and cheapness of land, soon make those labourers leave him, in order to become landlords themselves, and to reward, with equal liberality, other labourers, who soon leave them for the same reason that they left their first master. the liberal reward of labour encourages marriage. the children, during the tender years of infancy, are well fed and properly taken care of, and when they are grown up, the value of their labour greatly overpays their maintenance. when arrived at maturity, the high price of labour, and the low price of land, enable them to establish themselves in the same manner as their fathers did before them. in other countries, rent and profit eat up wages, and the two superior orders of people oppress the inferior one. but in new colonies the interest of the two superior orders obliges them to treat the inferior one with more generosity and humanity; at least where that inferior one is not in a state of slavery. waste lands of the greatest natural fertility are to be had for a trifle. the increase of revenue which the proprietor, who is always the undertaker, expects from their improvement, constitutes his profit which in these circumstances is commonly very great. but this great profit cannot be made without employing the labour of other people in clearing and cultivating the land; and the disproportion between the great extent of the land and the small number of the people, which commonly takes place in new colonies, makes it difficult for him to get this labour. he does not, therefore, dispute about wages, but is willing to employ labour at any price. the high wages of labour encourage population. the cheapness and plenty of good land encourage improvement, and enable the proprietor to pay those high wages. in those wages consists almost the whole price of the land; and though they are high considered as the wages of labour, they are low considered as the price of what is so very valuable. what encourages the progress of population and improvement encourages that of real wealth and greatness. the progress of many of the ancient greek colonies towards wealth and greatness seems accordingly to have been very rapid. in the course of a century or two, several of them appear to have rivalled, and even to have surpassed their mother cities. syracuse and agrigentum in sicily, tarentum and locri in italy, ephesus and miletus in lesser asia, appear by all accounts to have been at least equal to any of the cities of ancient greece. though posterior in their establishment, yet all the arts of refinement, philosophy, poetry, and eloquence seem to have been cultivated as early, and to have been improved as highly in them as in any part of the mother country. the schools of the two oldest greek philosophers, those of thales and pythagoras, were established, it is remarkable, not in ancient greece, but the one in an asiatic, the other in an italian colony. all those colonies had established themselves in countries inhabited by savage and barbarous nations, who easily gave place to the new settlers. they had plenty of good land, and as they were altogether independent of the mother city, they were at liberty to manage their own affairs in the way that they judged was most suitable to their own interest. the history of the roman colonies is by no means so brilliant. some of them, indeed, such as florence, have in the course of many ages, and after the fall of the mother city, grown up to be considerable states. but the progress of no one of them seems ever to have been very rapid. they were all established in conquered provinces, which in most cases had been fully inhabited before. the quantity of land assigned to each colonist was seldom very considerable, and as the colony was not independent, they were not always at liberty to manage their own affairs in the way they judged was most suitable to their own interest. in the plenty of good land, the european colonies established in america and the west indies resemble, and even greatly surpass, those of ancient greece. in their dependency upon the mother state, they resemble those of ancient rome; but their great distance from europe has in all of them alleviated more or less the effects of this dependency. their situation has placed them less in the view and less in the power of their mother country. in pursuing their interest their own way, their conduct has, upon many occasions, been overlooked, either because not known or not understood in europe; and upon some occasions it has been fairly suffered and submitted to, because their distance rendered it difficult to restrain it. even the violent and arbitrary government of spain has, upon many occasions, been obliged to recall or soften the orders which had been given for the government of her colonies for fear of a general insurrection. the progress of all the european colonies in wealth, population, and improvement, has accordingly been very great. the crown of spain, by its share of the gold and silver, derived some revenue from its colonies from the moment of their first establishment. it was a revenue, too, of a nature to excite in human avidity the most extravagant expectations of still greater riches. the spanish colonies, therefore, from the moment of their first establishment, attracted very much the attention of their mother country, while those of the other european nations were for a long time in a great measure neglected. the former did not, perhaps, thrive the better in consequence of this attention; nor the latter the worse in consequence of this neglect. in proportion to the extent of the country which they in some measure possess, the spanish colonies are considered as less populous and thriving than those of almost any other european nation. the progress even of the spanish colonies, however, in population and improvement, has certainly been very rapid and very great. the city of lima, founded since the conquest, is represented by ulloa as containing fifty thousand inhabitants near thirty years ago. quito, which had been but a miserable hamlet of indians, is represented by the same author as in his time equally populous. gemelli carreri, a pretended traveller, it is said, indeed, but who seems everywhere to have written upon extremely good information, represents the city of mexico as containing a hundred thousand inhabitants; a number which, in spite of all the exaggerations of the spanish writers, is, probably, more than five times greater than what it contained in the time of montezuma. these numbers exceed greatly those of boston, new york, and philadelphia, the three greatest cities of the english colonies. before the conquest of the spaniards there were no cattle fit for draught either in mexico or peru. the llama was their only beast of burden, and its strength seems to have been a good deal inferior to that of a common ass. the plough was unknown among them. they were ignorant of the use of iron. they had no coined money, nor any established instrument of commerce of any kind. their commerce was carried on by barter. a sort of wooden spade was their principal instrument of agriculture. sharp stones served them for knives and hatchets to cut with; fish bones and the hard sinews of certain animals served them for needles to sew with; and these seem to have been their principal instruments of trade. in this state of things, it seems impossible that either of those empires could have been so much improved or so well cultivated as at present, when they are plentifully furnished with all sorts of european cattle, and when the use of iron, of the plough, and of many of the arts of europe, has been introduced among them. but the populousness of every country must be in proportion to the degree of its improvement and cultivation. in spite of the cruel destruction of the natives which followed the conquest, these two great empires are, probably, more populous now than they ever were before: and the people are surely very different; for we must acknowledge, i apprehend, that the spanish creoles are in many respects superior to the ancient indians. after the settlements of the spaniards, that of the portuguese in brazil is the oldest of any european nation in america. but as for a long time after the first discovery neither gold nor silver mines were found in it, and as it afforded, upon that account, little or no revenue to the crown, it was for a long time in a great measure neglected; and during this state of neglect it grew up to be a great and powerful colony. while portugal was under the dominion of spain, brazil was attacked by the dutch, who got possession of seven of the fourteen provinces into which it is divided. they expected soon to conquer the other seven, when portugal recovered its independency by the elevation of the family of braganza to the throne. the dutch then, as enemies to the spaniards, became friends to the portuguese, who were likewise the enemies of the spaniards. they agreed, therefore, to leave that part of brazil, which they had not conquered, to the king of portugal, who agreed to leave that part which they had conquered to them, as a matter not worth disputing about with such good allies. but the dutch government soon began to oppress the portuguese colonists, who, instead of amusing themselves with complaints, took arms against their new masters, and by their own valour and resolution, with the connivance, indeed, but without any avowed assistance from the mother country, drove them out of brazil. the dutch, therefore, finding it impossible to keep any part of the country to themselves, were contented that it should be entirely restored to the crown of portugal. in this colony there are said to be more than six hundred thousand people, either portuguese or descended from portuguese, creoles, mulattoes, and a mixed race between portuguese and brazilians. no one colony in america is supposed to contain so great a number of people of european extraction. towards the end of the fifteenth, and during the greater part of the sixteenth century, spain and portugal were the two great naval powers upon the ocean; for though the commerce of venice extended to every part of europe, its fleets had scarce ever sailed beyond the mediterranean. the spaniards, in virtue of the first discovery, claimed all america as their own; and though they could not hinder so great a naval power as that of portugal from settling in brazil, such was, at that time, the terror of their name, that the greater part of the other nations of europe were afraid to establish themselves in any other part of that great continent. the french, who attempted to settle in florida, were all murdered by the spaniards. but the declension of the naval power of this latter nation, in consequence of the defeat or miscarriage of what they called their invincible armada, which happened towards the end of the sixteenth century, put it out of their power to obstruct any longer the settlements of the other european nations. in the course of the seventeenth century, therefore, the english, french, dutch, danes, and swedes, all the great nations who had any ports upon the ocean, attempted to make some settlements in the new world. the swedes established themselves in new jersey; and the number of swedish families still to be found there sufficiently demonstrates that this colony was very likely to prosper had it been protected by the mother country. but being neglected by sweden, it was soon swallowed up by the dutch colony of new york, which again, in 1674, fell under the dominion of the english. the small islands of st. thomas and santa cruz are the only countries in the new world that have ever been possessed by the danes. these little settlements, too, were under the government of an exclusive company, which had the sole right, both of purchasing the surplus produce of the colonists, and of supplying them with such goods of other countries as they wanted, and which, therefore, both in its purchases and sales, had not only the power of oppressing them, but the greatest temptation to do so. the government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever. it was not, however, able to stop altogether the progress of these colonies, though it rendered it more slow and languid. the late king of denmark dissolved this company, and since that time the prosperity of these colonies has been very great. the dutch settlements in the west, as well as those in the east indies, were originally put under the government of an exclusive company. the progress of some of them, therefore, though it has been considerable, in comparison with that of almost any country that has been long peopled and established, has been languid and slow in comparison with that of the greater part of new colonies. the colony of surinam, though very considerable, is still inferior to the greater part of the sugar colonies of the other european nations. the colony of nova belgia, now divided into the two provinces of new york and new jersey, would probably have soon become considerable too, even though it had remained under the government of the dutch. the plenty and cheapness of good land are such powerful causes of prosperity that the very worst government is scarce capable of checking altogether the efficacy of their operation. the great distance, too, from the mother country would enable the colonists to evade more or less, by smuggling, the monopoly which the company enjoyed against them. at present the company allows all dutch ships to trade to surinam upon paying two and a half per cent upon the value of their cargo for a licence; and only reserves to itself exclusively the direct trade from africa to america, which consists almost entirely in the slave trade. this relaxation in the exclusive privileges of the company is probably the principal cause of that degree of prosperity which that colony at present enjoys. curacoa and eustatia, the two principal islands belonging to the dutch, are free ports open to the ships of all nations; and this freedom, in the midst of better colonies whose ports are open to those of one nation only, has been the great cause of the prosperity of those two barren islands. the french colony of canada was, during the greater part of the last century, and some part of the present, under the government of an exclusive company. under so unfavourable an administration its progress was necessarily very slow in comparison with that of other new colonies; but it became much more rapid when this company was dissolved after the fall of what is called the mississippi scheme. when the english got possession of this country, they found in it near double the number of inhabitants which father charlevoix had assigned to it between twenty and thirty years before. that jesuit had travelled over the whole country, and had no inclination to represent it as less considerable than it really was. the french colony of st. domingo was established by pirates and freebooters, who, for a long time, neither required the protection, nor acknowledged the authority of france; and when that race of banditti became so far citizens as to acknowledge this authority, it was for a long time necessary to exercise it with very great gentleness. during this period the population and improvement of this colony increased very fast. even the oppression of the exclusive company, to which it was for some time subjected, with all the other colonies of france, though it no doubt retarded, had not been able to stop its progress altogether. the course of its prosperity returned as soon as it was relieved from that oppression. it is now the most important of the sugar colonies of the west indies, and its produce is said to be greater than that of all the english sugar colonies put together. the other sugar colonies of france are in general all very thriving. but there are no colonies of which the progress has been more rapid than that of the english in north america. plenty of good land, and liberty to manage their own affairs their own way, seem to be the two great causes of the prosperity of all new colonies. in the plenty of good land the english colonies of north america, though no doubt very abundantly provided, are however inferior to those of the spaniards and portuguese, and not superior to some of those possessed by the french before the late war. but the political institutions of the english colonies have been more favourable to the improvement and cultivation of this land than those of any of the other three nations. first, the engrossing of uncultivated land, though it has by no means been prevented altogether, has been more restrained in the english colonies than in any other. the colony law which imposes upon every proprietor the obligation of improving and cultivating, within a limited time, a certain proportion of his lands, and which in case of failure, declares those neglected lands grantable to any other person, though it has not, perhaps, been very strictly executed, has, however, had some effect. secondly, in pennsylvania there is no right of primogeniture, and lands, like movables, are divided equally among all the children of the family. in three of the provinces of new england the oldest has only a double share, as in the mosaical law. though in those provinces, therefore, too great a quantity of land should sometimes be engrossed by a particular individual, it is likely, in the course of a generation or two, to be sufficiently divided again. in the other english colonies, indeed, the right of primogeniture takes place, as in the law of england. but in all the english colonies the tenure of the lands, which are all held by free socage, facilitates alienation, and the grantee of any extensive tract of land generally finds it for his interest to alienate, as fast as he can, the greater part of it, reserving only a small quit-rent. in the spanish and portuguese colonies, what is called the right of majorazzo takes place in the succession of all those great estates to which any title of honour is annexed. such estates go all to one person, and are in effect entailed and unalienable. the french colonies, indeed, are subject to the custom of paris, which, in the inheritance of land, is much more favourable to the younger children than the law of england. but in the french colonies, if any part of an estate, held by the noble tenure of chivalry and homage, is alienated, it is, for a limited time, subject to the right of redemption, either by the heir of the superior or by the heir of the family; and all the largest estates of the country are held by such noble tenures, which necessarily embarrass alienation. but in a new colony a great uncultivated estate is likely to be much more speedily divided by alienation than by succession. the plenty and cheapness of good land, it has already been observed, are the principal causes of the rapid prosperity of new colonies. the engrossing of land, in effect, destroys this plenty and cheapness. the engrossing of uncultivated land, besides, is the greatest obstruction to its improvement. but the labour that is employed in the improvement and cultivation of land affords the greatest and most valuable produce to the society. the produce of labour, in this case, pays not only its own wages, and the profit of the stock which employs it, but the rent of the land too upon which it is employed. the labour of the english colonists, therefore, being more employed in the improvement and cultivation of land, is likely to afford a greater and more valuable produce than that of any of the other three nations, which, by the engrossing of land, is more or less diverted towards other employments. thirdly, the labour of the english colonists is not only likely to afford a greater and more valuable produce, but, in consequence of the moderation of their taxes, a greater proportion of this produce belongs to themselves, which they may store up and employ in putting into motion a still greater quantity of labour. the english colonists have never yet contributed anything towards the defence of the mother country, or towards the support of its civil government. they themselves, on the contrary, have hitherto been defended almost entirely at the expense of the mother country. but the expense of fleets and armies is out of all proportion greater than the necessary expense of civil government. the expense of their own civil government has always been very moderate. it has generally been confined to what was necessary for paying competent salaries to the governor, to the judges, and to some other officers of police, and for maintaining a few of the most useful public works. the expense of the civil establishment of massachusetts bay, before the commencement of the present disturbances, used to be but about l18,000 a year. that of new hampshire and rhode island, l3500 each. that of connecticut, l4000. that of new york and pennsylvania, l4500 each. that of new jersey, l1200. that of virginia and south carolina, l8000 each. the civil establishments of nova scotia and georgia are partly supported by an annual grant of parliament. but nova scotia pays, besides, about l7000 a year towards the public expenses of the colony; and georgia about l2500 a year. all the different civil establishments in north america, in short, exclusive of those of maryland and north carolina, of which no exact account has been got, did not, before the commencement of the present disturbances, cost the inhabitants above l64,700 a year; an ever-memorable example at how small an expense three millions of people may not only be governed, but well governed. the most important part of the expense of government, indeed, that of defence and protection, has constantly fallen upon the mother country. the ceremonial, too, of the civil government in the colonies, upon the reception of a new governor, upon the opening of a new assembly, etc., though sufficiently decent, is not accompanied with any expensive pomp or parade. their ecclesiastical government is conducted upon a plan equally frugal. tithes are unknown among them; and their clergy, who are far from being numerous, are maintained either by moderate stipends, or by the voluntary contributions of the people. the power of spain and portugal, on the contrary, derives some support from the taxes levied upon their colonies. france, indeed, has never drawn any considerable revenue from its colonies, the taxes which it levies upon them being generally spent among them. but the colony government of all these three nations is conducted upon a much more expensive ceremonial. the sums spent upon the reception of a new viceroy of peru, for example, have frequently been enormous. such ceremonials are not only real taxes paid by the rich colonists upon those particular occasions, but they serve to introduce among them the habit of vanity and expense upon all other occasions. they are not only very grievous occasional taxes, but they contribute to establish perpetual taxes of the same kind still more grievous; the ruinous taxes of private luxury and extravagance. in the colonies of all those three nations too, the ecclesiastical government is extremely oppressive. tithes take place in all of them, and are levied with the utmost rigour in those of spain and portugal. all of them, besides, are oppressed with a numerous race of mendicant friars, whose beggary being not only licensed but consecrated by religion, is a most grievous tax upon the poor people, who are most carefully taught that it is a duty to give, and a very great sin to refuse them their charity. over and above all this, the clergy are, in all of them, the greatest engrossers of land. fourthly, in the disposal of their surplus produce, or of what is over and above their own consumption, the english colonies have been more favoured, and have been allowed a more extensive market, than those of any other european nation. every european nation has endeavoured more or less to monopolise to itself the commerce of its colonies, and, upon that account, has prohibited the ships of foreign nations from trading to them, and has prohibited them from importing european goods from any foreign nation. but the manner in which this monopoly has been exercised in different nations has been very different. some nations have given up the whole commerce of their colonies to an exclusive company, of whom the colonists were obliged to buy all such european goods as they wanted, and to whom they were obliged to sell the whole of their own surplus produce. it was the interest of the company, therefore, not only to sell the former as dear, and to buy the latter as cheap as possible, but to buy no more of the latter, even at this low price than what they could dispose of for a very high price in europe. it was their interest, not only to degrade in all cases the value of the surplus produce of the colony, but in many cases to discourage and keep down the natural increase of its quantity. of all the expedients that can well be contrived to stunt the natural growth of a new colony, that of an exclusive company is undoubtedly the most effectual. this, however, has been the policy of holland, though their company, in the course of the present century, has given up in many respects the exertion of their exclusive privilege. this, too, was the policy of denmark till the reign of the late king. it has occasionally been the policy of france, and of late, since 1755, after it had been abandoned by all other nations on account of its absurdity, it has become the policy of portugal with regard at least to two of the principal provinces of brazil, fernambuco and marannon. other nations, without establishing an exclusive company, have confined the whole commerce of their colonies to a particular port of the mother country, from whence no ship was allowed to sail, but either in a fleet and at a particular season, or, if single, in consequence of a particular licence, which in most cases was very well paid for. this policy opened, indeed, the trade of the colonies to all the natives of the mother country, provided they traded from the proper port, at the proper season, and in the proper vessels. but as all the different merchants, who joined their stocks in order to fit out those licensed vessels, would find it for their interest to act in concert, the trade which was carried on in this manner would necessarily be conducted very nearly upon the same principles as that of an exclusive company. the profit of those merchants would be almost equally exorbitant and oppressive. the colonies would be ill supplied, and would be obliged both to buy very dear, and to sell very cheap. this, however, till within these few years, had always been the policy of spain, and the price of all european goods, accordingly, is said to have been enormous in the spanish west indies. at quito, we are told by ulloa, a pound of iron sold for about four and sixpence, and a pound of steel for about six and ninepence sterling. but it is chiefly in order to purchase european goods that the colonies part with their own produce. the more, therefore, they pay for the one, the less they really get for the other, and the dearness of the one is the same thing with the cheapness of the other. the policy of portugal is in this respect the same as the ancient policy of spain with regard to all its colonies, except fernambuco and marannon, and with regard to these it has lately adopted a still worse. other nations leave the trade of their colonies free to all their subjects who may carry it on from all the different ports of the mother country, and who have occasion for no other licence than the common despatches of the custom-house. in this case the number and dispersed situation of the different traders renders it impossible for them to enter into any general combination, and their competition is sufficient to hinder them from making very exorbitant profits. under so liberal a policy the colonies are enabled both to sell their own produce and to buy the goods of europe at a reasonable price. but since the dissolution of the plymouth company, when our colonies were but in their infancy, this has always been the policy of england. it has generally, too, been that of france, and has been uniformly so since the dissolution of what, in england, is commonly called their mississippi company. the profits of the trade, therefore, which france and england carry on with their colonies, though no doubt somewhat higher than if the competition was free to all other nations, are, however, by no means exorbitant; and the price of european goods accordingly is not extravagantly high in the greater part of the colonies of either of those nations. in the exportation of their own surplus produce too, it is only with regard to certain commodities that the colonies of great britain are confined to the market of the mother country. these commodities having been enumerated in the act of navigation and in some other subsequent acts, have upon that account been called enumerated commodities. the rest are called non-enumerated, and may be exported directly to other countries provided it is in british or plantation ships, of which the owners and three-fourths of the mariners are british subjects. among the non-enumerated commodities are some of the most important productions of america and the west indies; grain of all sorts, lumber, salt provisions, fish, sugar and rum. grain is naturally the first and principal object of the culture of all new colonies. by allowing them a very extensive market for it, the law encourages them to extend this culture much beyond the consumption of a thinly inhabited country, and thus to provide beforehand an ample subsistence for a continually increasing population. in a country quite covered with wood, where timber consequently is of little or no value, the expense of clearing the ground is the principal obstacle to improvement. by allowing the colonies a very extensive market for their lumber, the law endeavours to facilitate improvement by raising the price of a commodity which would otherwise be of little value, and thereby enabling them to make some profit of what would otherwise be a mere expense. in a country neither half-peopled nor half-cultivated, cattle naturally multiply beyond the consumption of the inhabitants, and are often upon that account of little or no value. but it is necessary, it has already been shown, that the price of cattle should bear a certain proportion to that of corn before the greater part of the lands of any country can be improved. by allowing to american cattle, in all shapes, dead or alive, a very extensive market, the law endeavors to raise the value of a commodity of which the high price is so very essential to improvement. the good effects of this liberty, however, must be somewhat diminished by the 4th of george iii, c. 15, which puts hides and skins among the enumerated commodities, and thereby tends to reduce the value of american cattle. to increase the shipping and naval power of great britain, by the extension of the fisheries of our colonies, is an object which the legislature seems to have had almost constantly in view. those fisheries, upon this account, have had all the encouragement which freedom can give them, and they have flourished accordingly. the new england fishery in particular was, before the late disturbances, one of the most important, perhaps, in the world. the whale-fishery which, notwithstanding an extravagant bounty, is in great britain carried on to so little purpose that in the opinion of many people (which i do not, however, pretend to warrant) the whole produce does not much exceed the value of the bounties which are annually paid for it, is in new england carried on without any bounty to a very great extent. fish is one of the principal articles with which the north americans trade to spain, portugal, and the mediterranean. sugar was originally an enumerated commodity which could be exported only to great britain. but in 1731, upon a representation of the sugar-planters, its exportation was permitted to all parts of the world. the restrictions, however, with which this liberty was granted, joined to the high price of sugar in great britain, have rendered it, in a great measure, ineffectual. great britain and her colonies still continue to be almost the sole market for all the sugar produced in the british plantations. their consumption increases so fast that, though in consequence of the increasing improvement of jamaica, as well as of the ceded islands, the importation of sugar has increased very greatly within these twenty years, the exportation to foreign countries is said to be not much greater than before. rum is a very important article in the trade which the americans carry on to the coast of africa, from which they bring back negro slaves in return. if the whole surplus produce of america in grain of all sorts, in salt provisions and in fish, had been put into the enumeration, and thereby forced into the market of great britain, it would have interfered too much with the produce of the industry of our own people. it was probably not so much from any regard to the interest of america as from a jealousy of this interference that those important commodities have not only been kept out of the enumeration, but that the importation into great britain of all grain, except rice, and of salt provisions, has, in the ordinary state of the law, been prohibited. the non-enumerated commodities could originally be exported to all parts of the world. lumber and rice, having been once put into the enumeration, when they were afterwards taken out of it, were confined, as to the european market, to the countries that lie south of cape finisterre. by the 6th of george iii, c. 52, all non-enumerated commodities were subjected to the like restriction. the parts of europe which lie south of cape finisterre are not manufacturing countries, and we were less jealous of the colony ships carrying home from them any manufactures which could interfere with our own. the enumerated commodities are of two sorts: first, such as are either the peculiar produce of america, or as cannot be produced, or at least are not produced, in the mother country. of this kind are molasses, coffee, cocoa-nuts, tobacco, pimento, ginger, whalefins, raw silk, cotton-wool, beaver, and other peltry of america, indigo, fustic, and other dyeing woods; secondly, such as are not the peculiar produce of america, but which are and may be produced in the mother country, though not in such quantities as to supply the greater part of her demand, which is principally supplied from foreign countries. of this kind are all naval stores, masts, yards, and bowsprits, tar, pitch, and turpentine, pig and bar iron, copper ore, hides and skins, pot and pearl ashes. the largest importation of commodities of the first kind could not discourage the growth or interfere with the sale of any part of the produce of the mother country. by confining them to the home market, our merchants, it was expected, would not only be enabled to buy them cheaper in the plantations, and consequently to sell them with a better profit at home, but to establish between the plantations and foreign countries an advantageous carrying trade, of which great britain was necessarily to be the centre or emporium, as the european country into which those commodities were first to be imported. the importation of commodities of the second kind might be so managed too, it was supposed, as to interfere, not with the sale of those of the same kind which were produced at home, but with that of those which were imported from foreign countries; because, by means of proper duties, they might be rendered always somewhat dearer than the former, and yet a good deal cheaper than the latter. by confining such commodities to the home market, therefore, it was proposed to discourage the produce, not of great britain, but of some foreign countries with which the balance of trade was believed to be unfavourable to great britain. the prohibition of exporting from the colonies, to any other country but great britain, masts, yards, and bowsprits, tar, pitch, and turpentine, naturally tended to lower the price of timber in the colonies, and consequently to increase the expense of clearing their lands, the principal obstacle to their improvement. but about the beginning of the present century, in 1703, the pitch and tar company of sweden endeavoured to raise the price of their commodities to great britain, by prohibiting their exportation, except in their own ships, at their own price, and in such quantities as they thought proper. in order to counteract this notable piece of mercantile policy, and to render herself as much as possible independent, not only of sweden, but of all the other northern powers, great britain gave a bounty upon the importation of naval stores from america, and the effect of this bounty was to raise the price of timber in america much more than the confinement to the home market could lower it; and as both regulations were enacted at the same time, their joint effect was rather to encourage than to discourage the clearing of land in america. though pig and bar iron too have been put among the enumerated commodities, yet as, when imported from america, they were exempted from considerable duties to which they are subject when imported from any other country, the one part of the regulation contributes more to encourage the erection of furnaces in america than the other to discourage it. there is no manufacture which occasions so great a consumption of wood as a furnace, or which can contribute so much to the clearing of a country overgrown with it. the tendency of some of these regulations to raise the value of timber in america, and thereby to facilitate the clearing of the land, was neither, perhaps, intended nor understood by the legislature. though their beneficial effects, however, have been in this respect accidental, they have not upon that account been less real. the most perfect freedom of trade is permitted between the british colonies of america and the west indies, both in the enumerated and in the non-enumerated commodities. those colonies are now become so populous and thriving that each of them finds in some of the others a great and extensive market for every part of its produce. all of them taken together, they make a great internal market for the produce of one another. the liberality of england, however, towards the trade of her colonies has been confined chiefly to what concerns the market for their produce, either in its rude state, or in what may be called the very first stage of manufacture. the more advanced or more refined manufactures even of the colony produce, the merchants and manufacturers of great britain choose to reserve to themselves, and have prevailed upon the legislature to prevent their establishment in the colonies, sometimes by high duties, and sometimes by absolute prohibitions. while, for example, muskovado sugars from the british plantations pay upon importation only 6s. 4d. the hundredweight; white sugars pay l1 1s. 1d.; and refined, either double or single, in loaves l4 2s. 5 8/20d. when those high duties were imposed, great britain was the sole, and she still continues to be the principal market to which the sugars of the british colonies could be exported. they amounted, therefore, to a prohibition, at first of claying or refining sugar for any foreign market, and at present of claying or refining it for the market, which takes off, perhaps, more than nine-tenths of the whole produce. the manufacture of claying or refining sugar accordingly, though it has flourished in all the sugar colonies of france, has been little cultivated in any of those of england except for the market of the colonies themselves. while grenada was in the hands of the french there was a refinery of sugar, by claying at least, upon almost every plantation. since it fell into those of the english, almost all works of this kind have been given tip, and there are at present, october 1773, i am assured not above two or three remaining in the island. at present, however, by an indulgence of the custom-house, clayed or refined sugar, if reduced from loaves into powder, is commonly imported as muskovado. while great britain encourages in america the manufactures of pig and bar iron, by exempting them from duties to which the like commodities are subject when imported from any other country, she imposes an absolute prohibition upon the erection of steel furnaces and slitmills in any of her american plantations. she will not suffer her colonists to work in those more refined manufactures even for their own consumption; but insists upon their purchasing of her merchants and manufacturers all goods of this kind which they have occasion for. she prohibits the exportation from one province to another by water, and even the carriage by land upon horseback or in a cart, of hats, of wools and woollen goods, of the produce of america; a regulation which effectually prevents the establishment of any manufacture of such commodities for distant sale, and confines the industry of her colonists in this way to such coarse and household manufactures as a private family commonly makes for its own use or for that of some of its neighbours in the same province. to prohibit a great people, however, from making all that they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in the way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind. unjust, however, as such prohibitions may be, they have not hitherto been very hurtful to the colonies. land is still so cheap, and, consequently, labour so dear among them, that they can import from the mother country almost all the more refined or more advanced manufactures cheaper than they could make for themselves. though they had not, therefore, been prohibited from establishing such manufactures, yet in their present state of improvement a regard to their own interest would, probably, have prevented them from doing so. in their present state of improvement those prohibitions, perhaps, without cramping their industry, or restraining it from any employment to which it would have gone of its own accord, are only impertinent badges of slavery imposed upon them, without any sufficient reason, by the groundless jealousy of the merchants and manufacturers of the mother country. in a more advanced state they might be really oppressive and insupportable. great britain too, as she confines to her own market some of the most important productions of the colonies, so in compensation she gives to some of them an advantage in that market, sometimes by imposing higher duties upon the like productions when imported from other countries, and sometimes by giving bounties upon their importation from the colonies. in the first way she gives an advantage in the home market to the sugar, tobacco, and iron of her own colonies, and in the second to their raw silk, to their hemp and flax, to their indigo, to their naval stores, and to their building timber. this second way of encouraging the colony produce by bounties upon importation, is, so far as i have been able to learn, peculiar to great britain. the first is not. portugal does not content herself with imposing higher duties upon the importation of tobacco from any other country, but prohibits it under the severest penalties. with regard to the importation of goods from europe, england has likewise dealt more liberally with her colonies than any other nation. great britain allows a part, almost always the half, generally a larger portion, and sometimes the whole of the duty which is paid upon the importation of foreign goods, to be drawn back upon their exportation to any foreign country. no independent foreign country, it was easy to foresee, would receive them if they came to it loaded with the heavy duties to which almost all foreign goods are subjected on their importation into great britain. unless, therefore, some part of those duties was drawn back upon exportation, there was an end of the carrying trade; a trade so much favoured by the mercantile system. our colonies, however, are by no means independent foreign countries; and great britain having assumed to herself the exclusive right of supplying them with all goods from europe, might have forced them (in the same manner as other countries have done their colonies) to receive such goods, loaded with all the same duties which they paid in the mother country. but, on the contrary, till 1763, the same drawbacks were paid upon the exportation of the greater part of foreign goods to our colonies as to any independent foreign country. in 1763, indeed, by the 4th of george iii, c. 15, this indulgence was a good deal abated, and it was enacted, "that no part of the duty called the old subsidy should be drawn back for any goods of the growth, production, or manufacture of europe or the east indies, which should be exported from this kingdom to any british colony or plantation in america; wines, white calicoes and muslins excepted." before this law, many different sorts of foreign goods might have been bought cheaper in the plantations than in the mother country; and some may still. of the greater part of the regulations concerning the colony trade, the merchants who carry it on, it must be observed, have been the principal advisers. we must not wonder, therefore, if, in the greater part of them, their interest has been more considered than either that of the colonies or that of the mother country. in their exclusive privilege of supplying the colonies with all the goods which they wanted from europe, and of purchasing all such parts of their surplus produce as could not interfere with any of the trades which they themselves carried on at home, the interest of the colonies was sacrificed to the interest of those merchants. in allowing the same drawbacks upon the re-exportation of the greater part of european and east india goods to the colonies as upon their re-exportation to any independent country, the interest of the mother country was sacrificed to it, even according to the mercantile ideas of that interest. it was for the interest of the merchants to pay as little as possible for the foreign which they sent to the colonies, and, consequently, to get back as much as possible of the duties which they advanced upon their importation into great britain. they might thereby be enabled to sell in the colonies either the same quantity of goods with a greater profit, or a greater quantity with the same profit, and, consequently, to gain something either in the one way or the other. it was likewise for the interest of the colonies to get all such goods as cheap and in as great abundance as possible. but this might not always be for the interest of the mother country. she might frequently suffer both in her revenue, by giving back a great part of the duties which had been paid upon the importation of such goods; and in her manufactures, by being undersold in the colony market, in consequence of the easy terms upon which foreign manufactures could be carried thither by means of those drawbacks. the progress of the linen manufacture of great britain, it is commonly said, has been a good deal retarded by the drawbacks upon the re-exportation of german linen to the american colonies. but though the policy of great britain with regard to the trade of her colonies has been dictated by the same mercantile spirit as that of other nations, it has, however, upon the whole, been less illiberal and oppressive than that of any of them. in everything, except their foreign trade, the liberty of the english colonists to manage their own affairs their own way is complete. it is in every respect equal to that of their fellow-citizens at home, and is secured in the same manner, by an assembly of the representatives of the people, who claim the sole right of imposing taxes for the support of the colony government. the authority of this assembly overawes the executive power, and neither the meanest nor the most obnoxious colonist, as long as he obeys the law, has anything to fear from the resentment, either of the governor or of any other civil or military officer in the province. the colony assemblies though, like the house of commons in england, are not always a very equal representation of the people, yet they approach more nearly to that character; and as the executive power either has not the means to corrupt them, or, on account of the support which it receives from the mother country, is not under the necessity of doing so, they are perhaps in general more influenced by the inclinations of their constituents. the councils which, in the colony legislatures, correspond to the house of lords in great britain, are not composed of an hereditary nobility. in some of the colonies, as in three of the governments of new england, those councils are not appointed by the king, but chosen by the representatives of the people. in none of the english colonies is there any hereditary nobility. in all of them, indeed, as in all other free countries, the descendant of an old colony family is more respected than an upstart of equal merit and fortune; but he is only more respected, and he has no privileges by which he can be troublesome to his neighbours. before the commencement of the present disturbances, the colony assemblies had not only the legislative but a part of the executive power. in connecticut and rhode island, they elected the governor. in the other colonies they appointed the revenue officers who collected the taxes imposed by those respective assemblies, to whom those officers were immediately responsible. there is more equality, therefore, among the english colonists than among the inhabitants of the mother country. their manners are more republican, and their governments, those of three of the provinces of new england in particular, have hitherto been more republican too. the absolute governments of spain, portugal, and france, on the contrary, take place in their colonies; and the discretionary powers which such governments commonly delegate to all their inferior officers are, on account of the great distance, naturally exercised there with more than ordinary violence. under all absolute governments there is more liberty in the capital than in any other part of the country. the sovereign himself can never have either interest or inclination to pervert the order of justice, or to oppress the great body of the people. in the capital his presence overawes more or less all his inferior officers, who in the remoter provinces, from whence the complaints of the people are less likely to reach him, can exercise their tyranny with much more safety. but the european colonies in america are more remote than the most distant provinces of the greatest empires which had ever been known before. the government of the english colonies is perhaps the only one which, since the world began, could give perfect security to the inhabitants of so very distant a province. the administration of the french colonies, however, has always been conducted with more gentleness and moderation than that of the spanish and portugese. this superiority of conduct is suitable both to the character of the french nation, and to what forms the character of every nation, the nature of their government, which though arbitrary and violent in comparison with that of great britain, is legal and free in comparison with those of spain and portugal. it is in the progress of the north american colonies, however, that the superiority of the english policy chiefly appears. the progress of the sugar colonies of france has been at least equal, perhaps superior, to that of the greater part of those of england, and yet the sugar colonies of england enjoy a free government nearly of the same kind with that which takes place in her colonies of north america. but the sugar colonies of france are not discouraged, like those of england, from refining their own sugar; and, what is of still greater importance, the genius of their government naturally introduces a better management of their negro slaves. in all european colonies the culture of the sugar-cane is carried on by negro slaves. the constitution of those who have been born in the temperate climate of europe could not, it is supposed, support the labour of digging the ground under the burning sun of the west indies; and the culture of the sugarcane, as it is managed at present, is all hand labour, though, in the opinion of many, the drill plough might be introduced into it with great advantage. but, as the profit and success of the cultivation which is carried on by means of cattle, depend very much upon the good management of those cattle, so the profit and success of that which is carried on by slaves must depend equally upon the good management of those slaves; and in the good management of their slaves the french planters, i think it is generally allowed, are superior to the english. the law, so far as it gives some weak protection to the slave against the violence of his master, is likely to be better executed in a colony where the government is in a great measure arbitrary than in one where it is altogether free. in every country where the unfortunate law of slavery is established, the magistrate, when he protects the slave, intermeddles in some measure in the management of the private property of the master; and, in a free country, where the master is perhaps either a member of the colony assembly, or an elector of such a member, he dare not do this but with the greatest caution and circumspection. the respect which he is obliged to pay to the master renders it more difficult for him to protect the slave. but in a country where the government is in a great measure arbitrary, where it is usual for the magistrate to intermeddle even in the management of the private property of individuals, and to send them, perhaps, a lettre de cachet if they do not manage it according to his liking, it is much easier for him to give some protection to the slave; and common humanity naturally disposes him to do so. the protection of the magistrate renders the slave less contemptible in the eyes of his master, who is thereby induced to consider him with more regard, and to treat him with more gentleness. gentle usage renders the slave not only more faithful, but more intelligent, and therefore, upon a double account, more useful. he approaches more to the condition of a free servant, and may possess some degree of integrity and attachment to his master's interest, virtues which frequently belong to free servants, but which never can belong to a slave who is treated as slaves commonly are in countries where the master is perfectly free and secure. that the condition of a slave is better under an arbitrary than under a free government is, i believe, supported by the history of all ages and nations. in the roman history, the first time we read of the magistrate interposing to protect the slave from the violence of his master is under the emperors. when vedius pollio, in the presence of augustus, ordered one of his slaves, who had committed a slight fault, to be cut into pieces and thrown into his fish pond in order to feed his fishes, the emperor commanded him, with indignation, to emancipate immediately, not only that slave, but all the others that belonged to him. under the republic no magistrate could have had authority enough to protect the slave, much less to punish the master. the stock, it is to be observed, which has improved the sugar colonies of france, particularly the great colony of st. domingo, has been raised almost entirely from the gradual improvement and cultivation of those colonies. it has been almost altogether the produce of the soil and of the industry of the colonies, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of that produce gradually accumulated by good management, and employed in raising a still greater produce. but the stock which has improved and cultivated the sugar colonies of england has, a great part of it, been sent out from england, and has by no means been altogether the produce of the soil and industry of the colonists. the prosperity of the english sugar colonies has been, in a great measure, owing to the great riches of england, of which a part has overflowed, if one may say so, upon those colonies. but the prosperity of the sugar colonies of france has been entirely owing to the good conduct of the colonists, which must therefore have had some superiority over that of the english; and this superiority has been remarked in nothing so much as in the good management of their slaves. such have been the general outlines of the policy of the different european nations with regard to their colonies. the policy of europe, therefore, has very little to boast of, either in the original establishment or, so far as concerns their internal government, in the subsequent prosperity of the colonies of america. folly and injustice seem to have been the principles which presided over and directed the first project of establishing those colonies; the folly of hunting after gold and silver mines, and the injustice of coveting the possession of a country whose harmless natives, far from having ever injured the people of europe, had received the first adventurers with every mark of kindness and hospitality. the adventurers, indeed, who formed some of the later establishments, joined to the chimerical project of finding gold and silver mines other motives more reasonable and more laudable; but even these motives do very little honour to the policy of europe. the english puritans, restrained at home, fled for freedom to america, and established there the four governments of new england. the english catholics, treated with much greater injustice, established that of maryland; the quakers, that of pennsylvania. the portuguese jews, persecuted by the inquisition, stripped of their fortunes, and banished to brazil, introduced by their example some sort of order and industry among the transported felons and strumpets by whom that colony was originally peopled, and taught them the culture of the sugar-cane. upon all these different occasions it was not the wisdom and policy, but the disorder and injustice of the european governments which peopled and cultivated america. in effectuating some of the most important of these establishments, the different governments of europe had as little merit as in projecting them. the conquest of mexico was the project, not of the council of spain, but of a governor of cuba; and it was effectuated by the spirit of the bold adventurer to whom it was entrusted, in spite of everything which that governor, who soon repented of having trusted such a person, could do to thwart it. the conquerors of chili and peru, and of almost all the other spanish settlements upon the continent of america, carried out with them no other public encouragement, but a general permission to make settlements and conquests in the name of the king of spain. those adventures were all at the private risk and expense of the adventurers. the government of spain contributed scarce anything to any of them. that of england contributed as little towards effectuating the establishment of some of its most important colonies in north america. when those establishments were effectuated, and had become so considerable as to attract the attention of the mother country, the first regulations which she made with regard to them had always in view to secure to herself the monopoly of their commerce; to confine their market, and to enlarge her own at their expense, and, consequently, rather to damp and discourage than to quicken and forward the course of their prosperity. in the different ways in which this monopoly has been exercised consists one of the most essential differences in the policy of the different european nations with regard to their colonies. the best of them all, that of england, is only somewhat less illiberal and oppressive than that of any of the rest. in what way, therefore, has the policy of europe contributed either to the first establishment, or to the present grandeur of the colonies of america? in one way, and in one way only, it has contributed a good deal. magna virum mater! it bred and formed the men who were capable of achieving such great actions, and of laying the foundation of so great an empire; and there is no other quarter of the world of which the policy is capable of forming, or has ever actually and in fact formed such men. the colonies owe to the policy of europe the education and great views of their active and enterprising founders; and some of the greatest and most important of them, so far as concerns their internal government, owe to it scarce anything else. part 3 of the advantages which europe has derived from the discovery of america, and from that of a passage to the east indies by the cape of good hope such are the advantages which the colonies of america have derived from the policy of europe. what are those which europe has derived from the discovery and colonization of america? those advantages may be divided, first, into the general advantages which europe, considered as one great country, has derived from those great events; and, secondly, into the particular advantages which each colonizing country has derived from the colonies which particularly belong to it, in consequence of the authority or dominion which it exercises over them. the general advantages which europe, considered as one great country, has derived from the discovery and colonisation of america, consist, first, in the increase of its enjoyments; and, secondly, in the augmentation of its industry. the surplus produce of america, imported into europe, furnishes the inhabitants of this great continent with a variety of commodities which they could not otherwise have possessed; some for conveniency and use, some for pleasure, and some for ornament, and thereby contributes to increase their enjoyments. the discovery and colonization of america, it will readily be allowed, have contributed to augment the industry, first, of all the countries which trade to it directly, such as spain, portugal, france, and england; and, secondly, of all those which, without trading to it directly, send, through the medium of other countries, goods to it of their own produce; such as austrian flanders, and some provinces of germany, which, through the medium of the countries before mentioned, send to it a considerable quantity of linen and other goods. all such countries have evidently gained a more extensive market for their surplus produce, and must consequently have been encouraged to increase its quantity. but that those great events should likewise have contributed to encourage the industry of countries, such as hungary and poland, which may never, perhaps, have sent a single commodity of their own produce to america, is not, perhaps, altogether so evident. that those events have done so, however, cannot be doubted. some part of the produce of america is consumed in hungary and poland, and there is some demand there for the sugar, chocolate, and tobacco of that new quarter of the world. but those commodities must be purchased with something which is either the produce of the industry of hungary and poland, or with something which had been purchased with some part of that produce. those commodities of america are new values, new equivalents, introduced into hungary and poland to be exchanged there for the surplus produce of those countries. by being carried thither they create a new and more extensive market for that surplus produce. they raise its value, and thereby contribute to encourage its increase. though no part of it may ever be carried to america, it may be carried to other countries which purchase it with a part of their share of the surplus produce of america; and it may find a market by means of the circulation of that trade which was originally put into motion by the surplus produce of america. those great events may even have contributed to increase the enjoyments, and to augment the industry of countries which not only never sent any commodities to america, but never received any from it. even such countries may have received a greater abundance of other commodities from countries of which the surplus produce had been augmented by means of the american trade. this greater abundance, as it must necessarily have increased their enjoyments, so it must likewise have augmented their industry. a greater number of new equivalents of some kind or other must have been presented to them to be exchanged for the surplus produce of that industry. a more extensive market must have been created for that surplus produce so as to raise its value, and thereby encourage its increase. the mass of commodities annually thrown into the great circle of european commerce, and by its various revolutions annually distributed among all the different nations comprehended within it, must have been augmented by the whole surplus produce of america. a greater share of this greater mass, therefore, is likely to have fallen to each of those nations, to have increased their enjoyments, and augmented their industry. the exclusive trade of the mother countries tends to diminish, or, at least, to keep down below what they would otherwise rise to, both the enjoyments and industry of all those nations in general, and of the american colonies in particular. it is a dead weight upon the action of one of the great springs which puts into motion a great part of the business of mankind. by rendering the colony produce dearer in all other countries, it lessens its consumption, and thereby cramps the industry of the colonies, and both the enjoyments and the industry of all other countries, which both enjoy less when they pay more for what they enjoy, and produce less when they get less for what they produce. by rendering the produce of all other countries dearer in the colonies, it cramps, in the same manner the industry of all other countries, and both the enjoyments and the industry of the colonies. it is a clog which, for the supposed benefit of some particular countries, embarrasses the pleasures and encumbers the industry of all other countries; but of the colonies more than of any other. it not only excludes, as much as possible, all other countries from one particular market; but it confines, as much as possible, the colonies to one particular market; and the difference is very great between being excluded from one particular market, when all others are open, and being confined to one particular market, when all others are shut up. the surplus produce of the colonies, however, is the original source of all that increase of enjoyments and industry which europe derives from the discovery and colonization of america; and the exclusive trade of the mother countries tends to render this source much less abundant than it otherwise would be. the particular advantages which each colonizing country derives from the colonies which particularly belong to it are of two different kinds; first, those common advantages which every empire derives from the provinces subject to its dominion; and, secondly, those peculiar advantages which are supposed to result from provinces of so very peculiar a nature as the european colonies of america. the common advantages which every empire derives from the provinces subject to its dominion consist, first, in the military force which they furnish for its defence; and, secondly, in the revenue which they furnish for the support of its civil government. the roman colones furnished occasionally both the one and the other. the greek colonies, sometimes, furnished a military force, but seldom any revenue. they seldom acknowledged themselves subject to the dominion of the mother city. they were generally her allies in war, but very seldom her subjects in peace. the european colonies of america have never yet furnished any military force for the defence of the mother country. their military force has never yet been sufficient for their own defence; and in the different wars in which the mother countries have been engaged, the defence of their colonies has generally occasioned a very considerable distraction of the military force of those countries. in this respect, therefore, all the european colonies have, without exception, been a cause rather of weakness than of strength to their respective mother countries. the colonies of spain and portugal only have contributed any revenue towards the defence of the mother country, or the support of her civil government. the taxes which have been levied upon those of other european nations, upon those of england in particular, have seldom been equal to the expense laid out upon them in time of peace, and never sufficient to defray that which they occasioned in time of war. such colonies, therefore, have been a source of expense and not of revenue to their respective mother countries. the advantages of such colonies to their respective mother countries consist altogether in those peculiar advantages which are supposed to result from provinces of so very peculiar a nature as the european colonies of america; and the exclusive trade, it is acknowledged, is the sole source of all those peculiar advantages. in consequence of this exclusive trade, all that part of the surplus produce of the english colonies, for example, which consists in what are called enumerated commodities, can be sent to no other country but england. other countries must afterwards buy it of her. it must be cheaper therefore in england than it can be in any other country, and must contribute more to increase the enjoyments of england than those of any other country. it must likewise contribute more to encourage her industry. for all those parts of her own surplus produce which england exchanges for those enumerated commodities, she must get a better price than any other countries can get for the like parts of theirs, when they exchange them for the same commodities. the manufacturers of england, for example, will purchase a greater quantity of the sugar and tobacco of her own colonies than the like manufactures of other countries can purchase of that sugar and tobacco. so far, therefore, as the manufactures of england and those of other countries are both to be exchanged for the sugar and tobacco of the english colonies, this superiority of price gives an encouragement to the former beyond what the latter can in these circumstances enjoy. the exclusive trade of the colonies, therefore, as it diminishes, or at least keeps down below what they would otherwise rise to, both the enjoyments and the industry of the countries which do not possess it; so it gives an evident advantage to the countries which do possess it over those other countries. this advantage, however, will perhaps be found to be rather what may be called a relative than an absolute advantage; and to give a superiority to the country which enjoys it rather by depressing the industry and produce of other countries than by raising those of that particular country above what they would naturally rise to in the case of a free trade. the tobacco of maryland and virginia, for example, by means of the monopoly which england enjoys of it, certainly comes cheaper to england than it can do to france, to whom england commonly sells a considerable part of it. but had france, and all other european countries been, at all times, allowed a free trade to maryland and virginia, the tobacco of those colonies might, by this time, have come cheaper than it actually does, not only to all those other countries, but likewise to england. the produce of tobacco, in consequence of a market so much more extensive than any which it has hitherto enjoyed, might, and probably would, by this time, have been so much increased as to reduce the profits of a tobacco plantation to their natural level with those of a corn plantation, which, it is supposed, they are still somewhat above. the price of tobacco might, and probably would, by this time, have fallen somewhat lower than it is at present. an equal quantity of the commodities either of england or of those other countries might have purchased in maryland and virginia a greater quantity of tobacco than it can do at present, and consequently have been sold there for so much a better price. so far as that weed, therefore, can, by its cheapness and abundance, increase the enjoyments or augment the industry either of england or of any other country, it would, probably, in the case of a free trade, have produced both these effects in somewhat a greater degree than it can do at present. england, indeed, would not in this case have had any advantage over other countries. she might have bought the tobacco of her colonies somewhat cheaper, and consequently have sold some of her own commodities somewhat dearer than she actually does. but she could neither have bought the one cheaper nor sold the other dearer than any other country might have done. she might, perhaps have gained an absolute, but she would certainly have lost a relative advantage. in order, however, to obtain this relative advantage in the colony trade, in order to execute the invidious and malignant project of excluding as much as possible other nations from any share in it, england, there are very probable reasons for believing, has not only sacrificed a part of the absolute advantage which she, as well as every other nation, might have derived from that trade, but has subjected herself both to an absolute and to a relative disadvantage in almost every other branch of trade. when, by the act of navigation, england assumed to herself the monopoly of the colony trade, the foreign capitals which had before been employed in it were necessarily withdrawn from it. the english capital, which had before carried on but a part of it, was now to carry on the whole. the capital which had before supplied the colonies with but a part of the goods which they wanted from europe was now all that was employed to supply them with the whole. but it could not supply them with the whole, and the goods with which it did supply them were necessarily sold very dear. the capital which had before bought but a part of the surplus produce of the colonies, was now all that was employed to buy the whole. but it could not buy the whole at anything near the old price, and, therefore, whatever it did buy it necessarily bought very cheap. but in an employment of capital in which the merchant sold very dear and bought very cheap, the profit must have been very great, and much above the ordinary level of profit in other branches of trade. this superiority of profit in the colony trade could not fail to draw from other branches of trade a part of the capital which had before been employed in them. but this revulsion of capital, as it must have gradually increased the competition of capitals in the colony trade, so it must have gradually diminished that competition in all those other branches of trade; as it must have gradually lowered the profits of the one, so it must have gradually raised those of the other, till the profits of all came to a new level, different from and somewhat higher than that at which they had been before. this double effect of drawing capital from all other trades, and of raising the rate of profit somewhat higher than it otherwise would have been in all trades, was not only produced by this monopoly upon its first establishment, but has continued to be produced by it ever since. first, this monopoly has been continually drawing capital from all other trades to be employed in that of the colonies. though the wealth of great britain has increased very much since the establishment of the act of navigation, it certainly has not increased in the same proportion as that of the colonies. but the foreign trade of every country naturally increases in proportion to its wealth, its surplus produce in proportion to its whole produce; and great britain having engrossed to herself almost the whole of what may be called the foreign trade of the colonies, and her capital not having increased in the same proportion as the extent of that trade, she could not carry it on without continually withdrawing from other branches of trade some part of the capital which had before been employed in them as well as withholding from them a great deal more which would otherwise have gone to them. since the establishment of the act of navigation, accordingly, the colony trade has been continually increasing, while many other branches of foreign trade, particularly of that to other parts of europe, have been continually decaying. our manufactures for foreign sale, instead of being suited, as before the act of navigation, to the neighbouring market of europe, or to the more distant one of the countries which lie round the mediterranean sea, have, the greater part of them, been accommodated to the still more distant one of the colonies, to the market in which they have the monopoly rather than to that in which they have many competitors. the causes of decay in other branches of foreign trade, which, by sir matthew decker and other writers, have been sought for in the excess and improper mode of taxation, in the high price of labour, in the increase of luxury, etc., may all be found in the overgrowth of the colony trade. the mercantile capital of great britain, though very great, yet not being infinite, and though greatly increased since the act of navigation, yet not being increased in the same proportion as the colony trade, that trade could not possibly be carried on without withdrawing some part of that capital from other branches of trade, nor consequently without some decay of those other branches. england, it must be observed, was a great trading country, her mercantile capital was very great and likely to become still greater and greater every day, not only before the act of navigation had established the monopoly of the colony trade, but before that trade was very considerable. in the dutch war, during the government of cromwell, her navy was superior to that of holland; and in that which broke out in the beginning of the reign of charles ii, it was at last equal, perhaps superior, to the united navies of france and holland. its superiority, perhaps, would scarce appear greater in the present times; at least if the dutch navy was to bear the same proportion to the dutch commerce now which it did then. but this great naval power could not, in either of those wars, be owing to the act of navigation. during the first of them the plan of that act had been but just formed; and though before the breaking out of the second it had been fully enacted by legal authority, yet no part of it could have had time to produce any considerable effect, and least of all that part which established the exclusive trade to the colonies. both the colonies and their trade were inconsiderable then in comparison of what they are now. the island of jamaica was an unwholesome desert, little inhabited, and less cultivated. new york and new jersey were in the possession of the dutch: the half of st. christopher's in that of the french. the island of antigua, the two carolinas, pennsylvania, georgia, and nova scotia were not planted. virginia, maryland, and new england were planted; and though they were very thriving colonies, yet there was not, perhaps, at that time, either in europe or america, a single person who foresaw or even suspected the rapid progress which they have since made in wealth, population, and improvement. the island of barbadoes, in short, was the only british colony of any consequence of which the condition at that time bore any resemblance to what it is at present. the trade of the colonies, of which england, even for some time after the act of navigation, enjoyed but a part (for the act of navigation was not very strictly executed till several years after it was enacted), could not at that time be the cause of the great trade of england, nor of the great naval power which was supported by that trade. the trade which at that time supported that great naval power was the trade of europe, and of the countries which lie round the mediterranean sea. but the share which great britain at present enjoys of that trade could not support any such great naval power. had the growing trade of the colonies been left free to all nations, whatever share of it might have fallen to great britain, and a very considerable share would probably have fallen to her, must have been all an addition to this great trade of which she was before in possession. in consequence of the monopoly, the increase of the colony trade has not so much occasioned an addition to the trade which great britain had before as a total change in its direction. secondly, this monopoly has necessarily contributed to keep up the rate of profit in all the different branches of british trade higher than it naturally would have been had all nations been allowed a free trade to the british colonies. the monopoly of the colony trade, as it necessarily drew towards that trade a greater proportion of the capital of great britain than what would have gone to it of its own accord; so by the expulsion of all foreign capitals it necessarily reduced the whole quantity of capital employed in that trade below what it naturally would have been in the case of a free trade. but, by lessening the competition of capitals in that branch of trade, it necessarily raised the rate of profit in that branch. by lessening, too, the competition of british capitals in all other branches of trade, it necessarily raised the rate of british profit in all those other branches. whatever may have been, at any particular period, since the establishment of the act of navigation, the state or extent of the mercantile capital of great britain, the monopoly of the colony trade must, during the continuance of that state, have raised the ordinary rate of british profit higher than it otherwise would have been both in that and in all the other branches of british trade. if, since the establishment of the act of navigation, the ordinary rate of british profit has fallen considerably, as it certainly has, it must have fallen still lower, had not the monopoly established by that act contributed to keep it up. but whatever raises in any country the ordinary rate of profit higher than it otherwise would be, necessarily subjects that country both to an absolute and to a relative disadvantage in every branch of trade of which she has not the monopoly. it subjects her to an absolute disadvantage; because in such branches of trade her merchants cannot get this greater profit without selling dearer than they otherwise would do both the goods of foreign countries which they import into their own, and the goods of their own country which they export to foreign countries. their own country must both buy dearer and sell dearer; must both buy less and sell less; must both enjoy less and produce less, than she otherwise would do. it subjects her to a relative disadvantage; because in such branches of trade it sets other countries which are not subject to the same absolute disadvantage either more above her or less below her than they otherwise would be. it enables them both to enjoy more and to produce more in proportion to what she enjoys and produces. it renders their superiority greater or their inferiority less than it otherwise would be. by raising the price of her produce above what it otherwise would be, it enables the merchants of other countries to undersell her in foreign markets, and thereby to jostle her out of almost all those branches of trade, of which she has not the monopoly. our merchants frequently complain of the high wages of british labour as the cause of their manufactures being undersold in foreign markets, but they are silent about the high profits of stock. they complain of the extravagant gain of other people, but they say nothing of their own. the high profits of british stock, however, may contribute towards raising the price of british manufactures in many cases as much, and in some perhaps more, than the high wages of british labour. it is in this manner that the capital of great britain, one may justly say, has partly been drawn and partly been driven from the greater part of the different branches of trade of which she has not the monopoly; from the trade of europe in particular, and from that of the countries which lie round the mediterranean sea. it has partly been drawn from those branches of trade by the attraction of superior profit in the colony trade in consequence of the continual increase of that trade, and of the continual insufficiency of the capital which had carried it on one year to carry it on the next. it has partly been driven from them by the advantage which the high rate of profit, established in great britain, gives to other countries in all the different branches of trade of which great britain has not the monopoly. as the monopoly of the colony trade has drawn from those other branches a part of the british capital which would otherwise have been employed in them, so it has forced into them many foreign capitals which would never have gone to them had they not been expelled from the colony trade. in those other branches of trade it has diminished the competition of british capital, and thereby raised the rate of british profit higher than it otherwise would have been. on the contrary, it has increased the competition of foreign capitals, and thereby sunk the rate of foreign profit lower than it otherwise would have been. both in the one way and in the other it must evidently have subjected great britain to a relative disadvantage in all those other branches of trade. the colony trade, however, it may perhaps be said, is more advantageous to great britain than any other; and the monopoly, by forcing into that trade a greater proportion of the capital of great britain than what would otherwise have gone to it, has turned that capital into an employment more advantageous to the country than any other which it could have found. the most advantageous employment of any capital to the country to which it belongs is that which maintains there the greatest quantity of productive labour, and increases the most the annual produce of the land and labour of that country. but the quantity of productive labour which any capital employed in the foreign trade of consumption can maintain is exactly in proportion, it has been shown in the second book, to the frequency of its returns. a capital of a thousand pounds, for example, employed in a foreign trade of consumption, of which the returns are made regularly once in the year, can keep in constant employment, in the country to which it belongs, a quantity of productive labour equal to what a thousand pounds can maintain there for a year. if the returns are made twice or thrice in the year, it can keep in constant employment a quantity of productive labour equal to what two or three thousand pounds can maintain there for a year. a foreign trade of consumption carried on with a neighbouring country is, upon this account, in general more advantageous than one carried on with a distant country; and for the same reason a direct foreign trade of consumption, as it has likewise been shown in the second book, is in general more advantageous than a round-about one. but the monopoly of the colony trade, so far as it has operated upon the employment of the capital of great britain, has in all cases forced some part of it from a foreign trade of consumption carried on with a neighbouring, to one carried on with a more distant country, and in many cases from a direct foreign trade of consumption to a round-about one. first, the monopoly of the colony trade has in all cases forced some part of the capital of great britain from a foreign trade of consumption carried on with a neighbouring to one carried on with a more distant country. it has, in all cases, forced some part of that capital from the trade with europe, and with the countries which lie round the mediterranean sea, to that with the more distant regions of america and the west indies, from which the returns are necessarily less frequent, not only on account of the greater distance, but on account of the peculiar circumstances of those countries. new colonies, it has already been observed, are always understocked. their capital is always much less than what they could employ with great profit and advantage in the improvement and cultivation of their land. they have a constant demand, therefore, for more capital than they have of their own; and, in order to supply the deficiency of their own, they endeavour to borrow as much as they can of the mother country, to whom they are, therefore, always in debt. the most common way in which the colonists contract this debt is not by borrowing upon bond of the rich people of the mother country, though they sometimes do this too, but by running as much in arrear to their correspondents, who supply them with goods from europe, as those correspondents will allow them. their annual returns frequently do not amount to more than a third, and sometimes not to so great a proportion of what they owe. the whole capital, therefore, which their correspondents advance to them is seldom returned to britain in less than three, and sometimes not in less than four or five years. but a british capital of a thousand pounds, for example, which is returned to great britain only once in five years, can keep in constant employment only one-fifth part of the british industry which it could maintain if the whole was returned once in the year; and, instead of the quantity of industry which a thousand pounds could maintain for a year, can keep in constant employment the quantity only which two hundred pounds can maintain for a year. the planter, no doubt, by the high price which he pays for the goods from europe, by the interest upon the bills which he grants at distant dates, and by the commission upon the renewal of those which he grants at near dates, makes up, and probably more than makes up, all the loss which his correspondent can sustain by this delay. but though he may make up the loss of his correspondent, he cannot make up that of great britain. in a trade of which the returns are very distant, the profit of the merchant may be as great or greater than in one in which they are very frequent and near; but the advantage of the country in which he resides, the quantity of productive labour constantly maintained there, the annual produce of the land and labour must always be much less. that the returns of the trade to america, and still more those of that to the west indies are, in general, not only more distant but more irregular, and more uncertain too, than those of the trade to any part of europe, or even of the countries which lie round the mediterranean sea, will readily be allowed, i imagine, by everybody who has any experience of those different branches of trade. secondly, the monopoly of the colony trade has, in many cases, forced some part of the capital of great britain from a direct foreign trade of consumption into a round-about one. among the enumerated commodities which can be sent to no other market but great britain, there are several of which the quantity exceeds very much the consumption of great britain, and of which a part, therefore, must be exported to other countries. but this cannot be done without forcing some part of the capital of great britain into a round-about foreign trade of consumption. maryland and virginia, for example, send annually to great britain upwards of ninety-six thousand hogsheads of tobacco, and the consumption of great britain is said not to exceed fourteen thousand. upwards of eighty-two thousand hogsheads, therefore, must be exported to other countries, to france, to holland, and to the countries which lie round the baltic and mediterranean seas. but that part of the capital of great britain which brings those eighty-two thousand hogsheads to great britain, which re-exports them from thence to those other countries, and which brings back from those other countries to great britain either goods or money in return, is employed in a round-about foreign trade of consumption; and is necessarily forced into this employment in order to dispose of this great surplus. if we would compute in how many years the whole of this capital is likely to come back to great britain, we must add to the distance of the american returns that of the returns from those other countries. if, in the direct foreign trade of consumption which we carry on with america, the whole capital employed frequently does not come back in less than three or four years, the whole capital employed in this round-about one is not likely to come back in less than four or five. if the one can keep in constant employment but a third or a fourth part of the domestic industry which could be maintained by a capital returned once in the year, the other can keep in constant employment but a fourth or fifth part of that industry. at some of the out-ports a credit is commonly given to those foreign correspondents to whom they export their tobacco. at the port of london, indeed, it is commonly sold for ready money. the rule is, weigh and pay. at the port of london, therefore, the final returns of the whole round-about trade are more distant than the returns from america by the time only which the goods may lie unsold in the warehouse; where, however, they may sometimes lie long enough. but had not the colonies been confined to the market of great britain for the sale of their tobacco, very little more of it would probably have come to us than what was necessary for the home consumption. the goods which great britain purchases at present for her own consumption with the great surplus of tobacco which she exports to other countries, she would in this case probably have purchased with the immediate produce of her own industry, or with some part of her own manufactures. that produce, those manufactures, instead of being almost entirely suited to one great market, as at present, would probably have been fitted to a great number of smaller markets. instead of one great round-about foreign trade of consumption, great britain would probably have carried on a great number of small direct foreign trades of the same kind. on account of the frequency of the returns, a part, and probably but a small part; perhaps not above a third or a fourth of the capital which at present carries on this great round-about trade might have been sufficient to carry on all those small direct ones, might have kept in constant employment an equal quantity of british industry, and have equally supported the annual produce of the land and labour of great britain. all the purposes of this trade being, in this manner, answered by a much smaller capital, there would have been a large spare capital to apply to other purposes: to improve the lands, to increase the manufactures, and to extend the commerce of great britain; to come into competition at least with the other british capitals employed in all those different ways, to reduce the rate of profit in them all, and thereby to give to great britain, in all of them, a superiority over other countries still greater than what she at present enjoys. the monopoly of the colony trade, too, has forced some part of the capital of great britain from all foreign trade of consumption to a carrying trade; and consequently, from supporting more or less the industry of great britain, to be employed altogether in supporting partly that of the colonies and partly that of some other countries. the goods, for example, which are annually purchased with the great surplus of eighty-two thousand hogsheads of tobacco annually re-exported from great britain are not all consumed in great britain. part of them, linen from germany and holland, for example, is returned to the colonies for their particular consumption. but that part of the capital of great britain which buys the tobacco with which this linen is afterwards bought is necessarily withdrawn from supporting the industry of great britain, to be employed altogether in supporting, partly that of the colonies, and partly that of the particular countries who pay for this tobacco with the produce of their own industry. the monopoly of the colony trade besides, by forcing towards it a much greater proportion of the capital of great britain than what would naturally have gone to it, seems to have broken altogether that natural balance which would otherwise have taken place among all the different branches of british industry. the industry of great britain, instead of being accommodated to a great number of small markets, has been principally suited to one great market. her commerce, instead of running in a great number of small channels, has been taught to run principally in one great channel. but the whole system of her industry and commerce has thereby been rendered less secure, the whole state of her body politic less healthful than it otherwise would have been. in her present condition, great britain resembles one of those unwholesome bodies in which some of the vital parts are overgrown, and which, upon that account, are liable to many dangerous disorders scarce incident to those in which all the parts are more properly proportioned. a small stop in that great blood-vessel, which has been artificially swelled beyond its natural dimensions, and through which an unnatural proportion of the industry and commerce of the country has been forced to circulate, is very likely to bring on the most dangerous disorders upon the whole body politic. the expectation of a rupture with the colonies, accordingly, has struck the people of great britain with more terror than they ever felt for a spanish armada, or a french invasion. it was this terror, whether well or ill grounded, which rendered the repeal of the stamp act, among the merchants at least, a popular measure. in the total exclusion from the colony market, was it to last only for a few years, the greater part of our merchants used to fancy that they foresaw an entire stop to their trade; the greater part of our master manufacturers, the entire ruin of their business; and the greater part of our workmen, an end of their employment. a rupture with any of our neighbours upon the continent, though likely, too, to occasion some stop or interruption in the employments of some of all these different orders of people, is foreseen, however, without any such general emotion. the blood, of which the circulation is stopped in some of the smaller vessels, easily disgorges itself into the greater without occasioning any dangerous disorder; but, when it is stopped in any of the greater vessels, convulsions, apoplexy, or death, are the immediate and unavoidable consequences. if but one of those overgrown manufactures, which, by means either of bounties or of the monopoly of the home and colony markets, have been artificially raised up to an unnatural height, finds some small stop or interruption in its employment, it frequently occasions a mutiny and disorder alarming to government, and embarrassing even to the deliberations of the legislature. how great, therefore, would be the disorder and confusion, it was thought, which must necessarily be occasioned by a sudden and entire stop in the employment of so great a proportion of our principal manufacturers. some moderate and gradual relaxation of the laws which give to great britain the exclusive trade to the colonies, till it is rendered in a great measure free, seems to be the only expedient which can, in all future times, deliver her from this danger, which can enable her or even force her to withdraw some part of her capital from this overgrown employment, and to turn it, though with less profit, towards other employments; and which, by gradually diminishing one branch of her industry and gradually increasing all the rest, can by degrees restore all the different branches of it to that natural, healthful, and proper proportion which perfect liberty necessarily establishes, and which perfect liberty can alone preserve. to open the colony trade all at once to all nations might not only occasion some transitory inconveniency, but a great permanent loss to the greater part of those whose industry or capital is at present engaged in it. the sudden loss of the employment even of the ships which import the eighty-two thousand hogsheads of tobacco, which are over and above the consumption of great britain, might alone be felt very sensibly. such are the unfortunate effects of all the regulations of the mercantile system! they not only introduce very dangerous disorders into the state of the body politic, but disorders which it is often difficult to remedy, without occasioning for a time at least, still greater disorders. in what manner, therefore, the colony trade ought gradually to be opened; what are the restraints which ought first, and what are those which ought last to be taken away; or in what manner the natural system of perfect liberty and justice ought gradually to be restored, we must leave to the wisdom of future statesmen and legislators to determine. five different events, unforeseen and unthought of, have very fortunately concurred to hinder great britain from feeling, so sensibly as it was generally expected she would, the total exclusion which has now taken place for more than a year (from the first of december, 1774) from a very important branch of the colony trade, that of the twelve associated provinces of north america. first, those colonies, in preparing themselves for their non-importation agreement, drained great britain completely of all the commodities which were fit for their market; secondly, the extraordinary demand of the spanish flota has, this year, drained germany and the north of many commodities, linen in particular, which used to come into competition, even in the british market, with the manufactures of great britain; thirdly, the peace between russia and turkey has occasioned an extraordinary demand from the turkey market, which, during the distress of the country, and while a russian fleet was cruising in the archipelago, had been very poorly supplied; fourthly, the demand of the north of europe for the manufactures of great britain has been increasing from year to year for some time past; and fifthly, the late partition and consequential pacification of poland, by opening the market of that great country, have this year added an extraordinary demand from thence to the increasing demand of the north. these events are all, except the fourth, in their nature transitory and accidental, and the exclusion from so important a branch of the colony trade, if unfortunately it should continue much longer, may still occasion some degree of distress. this distress, however, as it will come on gradually, will be felt much less severely than if it had come on all at once; and, in the meantime, the industry and capital of the country may find a new employment and direction, so as to prevent this distress from ever rising to any considerable height. the monopoly of the colony trade, therefore, so far as it has turned towards that trade a greater proportion of the capital of great britain than what would otherwise have gone to it, has in all cases turned it, from a foreign trade of consumption with a neighbouring into one with a more distant country; in many cases, from a direct foreign trade of consumption into a round-about one; and in some cases, from all foreign trade of consumption into a carrying trade. it has in all cases, therefore, turned it from a direction in which it would have maintained a greater quantity of productive labour into one in which it can maintain a much smaller quantity. by suiting, besides, to one particular market only so great a part of the industry and commerce of great britain, it has rendered the whole state of that industry and commerce more precarious and less secure than if their produce had been accommodated to a greater variety of markets. we must carefully distinguish between the effects of the colony trade and those of the monopoly of that trade. the former are always and necessarily beneficial; the latter always and necessarily hurtful. but the former are so beneficial that the colony trade, though subject to a monopoly, and notwithstanding the hurtful effects of that monopoly, is still upon the whole beneficial, and greatly beneficial; though a good deal less so than it otherwise would be. the effect of the colony trade in its natural and free state is to open a great, though distant, market for such parts of the produce of british industry as may exceed the demand of the markets nearer home, of those of europe, and of the countries which lie round the mediterranean sea. in its natural and free state, the colony trade, without drawing from those markets any part of the produce which had ever been sent to them, encourages great britain to increase the surplus continually by continually presenting new equivalents to be exchanged for it. in its natural and free state, the colony trade tends to increase the quantity of productive labour in great britain, but without altering in any respect the direction of that which had been employed there before. in the natural and free state of the colony trade, the competition of all other nations would hinder the rate of profit from rising above the common level either in the new market or in the new employment. the new market, without drawing anything from the old one, would create, if one may say so, a new produce for its own supply; and that new produce would constitute a new capital for carrying on the new employment, which in the same manner would draw nothing from the old one. the monopoly of the colony trade, on the contrary, by excluding the competition of other nations, and thereby raising the rate of profit both in the new market and in the new employment, draws produce from the old market and capital from the old employment. to augment our share of the colony trade beyond what it otherwise would be is the avowed purpose of the monopoly. if our share of that trade were to be no greater with than it would have been without the monopoly, there could have been no reason for establishing the monopoly. but whatever forces into a branch of trade of which the returns are slower and more distant than those of the greater part of other trades, a greater proportion of the capital of any country than what of its own accord would go to that branch, necessarily renders the whole quantity of productive labour annually maintained there, the whole annual produce of the land and labour of that country, less than they otherwise would be. it keeps down the revenue of the inhabitants of that country below what it would naturally rise to, and thereby diminishes their power of accumulation. it not only hinders, at all times, their capital from maintaining so great a quantity of productive labour as it would otherwise maintain, but it hinders it from increasing so fast as it would otherwise increase, and consequently from maintaining a still greater quantity of productive labour. the natural good effects of the colony trade, however, more than counterbalance to great britain the bad effects of the monopoly, so that, monopoly and all together, that trade, even as it carried on at present, is not only advantageous, but greatly advantageous. the new market and the new employment which are opened by the colony trade are of much greater extent than that portion of the old market and of the old employment which is lost by the monopoly. the new produce and the new capital which has been created, if one may say so, by the colony trade, maintain in great britain a greater quantity of productive labour than what can have been thrown out of employment by the revulsion of capital from other trades of which the returns are more frequent. if the colony trade, however, even as it is carried on at present, is advantageous to great britain, it is not by means of the monopoly, but in spite of the monopoly. it is rather for the manufactured than for the rude produce of europe that the colony trade opens a new market. agriculture is the proper business of all new colonies; a business which the cheapness of land renders more advantageous than any other. they abound, therefore, in the rude produce of land, and instead of importing it from other countries, they have generally a large surplus to export. in new colonies, agriculture either draws hands from all other employments, or keeps them from going to any other employment. there are few hands to spare for the necessary, and none for the ornamental manufactures. the greater part of the manufactures of both kinds they find it cheaper to purchase of other countries than to make for themselves. it is chiefly by encouraging the manufactures of europe that the colony trade indirectly encourages its agriculture. the manufactures of europe, to whom that trade gives employment, constitute a new market for the produce of the land; and the most advantageous of all markets, the home market for the corn and cattle, for the bread and butcher's meat of europe, is thus greatly extended by means of the trade to america. but that the monopoly of the trade of populous and thriving colonies is not alone sufficient to establish, or even to maintain manufactures in any country, the examples of spain and portugal sufficiently demonstrate. spain and portugal were manufacturing countries before they had any considerable colonies. since they had the richest and most fertile in the world, they have both ceased to be so. in spain and portugal the bad effects of the monopoly, aggravated by other causes, have perhaps nearly overbalanced the natural good effects of the colony trade. these causes seem to be other monopolies of different kinds; the degradation of the value of gold and silver below what it is in most other countries; the exclusion from foreign markets by improper taxes upon exportation, and the narrowing of the home market, by still more improper taxes upon the transportation of goods from one part of the country to another; but above all, that irregular and partial administration of justice, which often protects the rich and powerful debtor from the pursuit of his injured creditor, and which makes the industrious part of the nation afraid to prepare goods for the consumption of those haughty and great men to whom they dare not refuse to sell upon credit, and from they are altogether uncertain of repayment. in england, on the contrary, the natural good effects of the colony trade, assisted by other causes, have in a great measure conquered the bad effects of the monopoly. these causes seem to be: the general liberty of trade, which, notwithstanding some restraints, is at least equal, perhaps superior, to what it is in any other country; the liberty of exporting, duty free, almost all sorts of goods which are the produce of domestic industry to almost any foreign country; and what perhaps is of still greater importance, the unbounded liberty of transporting them from any one part of our own country to any other without being obliged to give any account to any public office, without being liable to question or examination of any kind; but above all, that equal and impartial administration of justice which renders the rights of the meanest british subject respectable to the greatest, and which, by securing to every man the fruits of his own industry, gives the greatest and most effectual encouragement to every sort of industry. if the manufactures of great britain, however, have been advanced, as they certainly have, by the colony trade, it has not been by means of the monopoly of that trade but in spite of the monopoly. the effect of the monopoly has been, not to augment the quantity, but to alter the quality and shape of a part of the manufactures of great britain, and to accommodate to a market, from which the returns are slow and distant, what would otherwise have been accommodated to one from which the returns are frequent and near. its effect has consequently been to turn a part of the capital of great britain from an employment in which it would have maintained a greater quantity of manufacturing industry to one in which it maintains a much smaller, and thereby to diminish, instead of increasing, the whole quantity of manufacturing industry maintained in great britain. the monopoly of the colony trade, therefore, like all the other mean and malignant expedients of the mercantile system, depresses the industry of all other countries, but chiefly that of the colonies, without in the least increasing, but on the contrary diminishing that of the country in whose favour it is established. the monopoly hinders the capital of that country, whatever may at any particular time be the extent of that capital, from maintaining so great a quantity of productive labour as it would otherwise maintain, and from affording so great a revenue to the industrious inhabitants as it would otherwise afford. but as capital can be increased only by savings from revenue, the monopoly, by hindering it from affording so great a revenue as it would otherwise afford, necessarily hinders it from increasing so fast as it would otherwise increase, and consequently from maintaining a still greater quantity of productive labour, and affording a still greater revenue to the industrious inhabitants of that country. one great original source of revenue, therefore, the wages of labour, the monopoly must necessarily have rendered at all times less abundant than it otherwise would have been. by raising the rate of mercantile profit, the monopoly discourages the improvement of land. the profit of improvement depends upon the difference between what the land actually produces, and what, by the application of a certain capital, it can be made to produce. if this difference affords a greater profit than what can be drawn from an equal capital in any mercantile employment, the improvement of land will draw capital from all mercantile employments. if the profit is less, mercantile employments will draw capital from the improvement of land. whatever, therefore, raises the rate of mercantile profit, either lessens the superiority or increases the inferiority of the profit of improvement; and in the one case hinders capital from going to improvement, and in the other draws capital from it. but by discouraging improvement, the monopoly necessarily retards the natural increase of another great original source of revenue, the rent of land. by raising the rate of profit, too, the monopoly necessarily keeps up the market rate of interest higher than it otherwise would be. but the price of land in proportion to the rent which it affords, the number of years purchase which is commonly paid for it, necessarily falls as the rate of interest rises, and rises as the rate of interest falls. the monopoly, therefore, hurts the interest of the landlord two different ways, by retarding the natural increase, first, of his rent, and secondly, of the price which he would get for his land in proportion to the rent which it affords. the monopoly indeed raises the rate of mercantile profit, and thereby augments somewhat the gain of our merchants. but as it obstructs the natural increase of capital, it tends rather to diminish than to increase the sum total of the revenue which the inhabitants of the country derive from the profits of stock; a small profit upon a great capital generally affording a greater revenue than a great profit upon a small one. the monopoly raises the rate of profit, but it hinders the sum of profit from rising so high as it otherwise would do. all the original sources of revenue, the wages of labour, the rent of land, and the profits of stock, the monopoly renders much less abundant than they otherwise would be. to promote the little interest of one little order of men in one country, it hurts the interest of all other orders of men in that country, and of all men in all other countries. it is solely by raising the ordinary rate of profit that the monopoly either has proved or could prove advantageous to any one particular order of men. but besides all the bad effects to the country in general, which have already been mentioned as necessarily resulting from a high rate of profit, there is one more fatal, perhaps, than all these put together, but which, if we may judge from experience, is inseparably connected with it. the high rate of profit seems everywhere to destroy that parsimony which in other circumstances is natural to the character of the merchant. when profits are high that sober virtue seems to be superfluous and expensive luxury to suit better the affluence of his situation. but the owners of the great mercantile capitals are necessarily the leaders and conductors of the whole industry of every nation, and their example has a much greater influence upon the manners of the whole industrious part of it than that of any other order of men. if his employer is attentive and parsimonious, the workman is very likely to be so too; but if the master is dissolute and disorderly, the servant who shapes his work according to the pattern which his master prescribes to him will shape his life too according to the example which he sets him. accumulation is thus prevented in the hands of all those who are naturally the most disposed to accumulate, and the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour receive no augmentation from the revenue of those who ought naturally to augment them the most. the capital of the country, instead of increasing, gradually dwindles away, and the quantity of productive labour maintained in it grows every day less and less. have the exorbitant profits of the merchants of cadiz and lisbon augmented the capital of spain and portugal? have they alleviated the poverty, have they promoted the industry of those two beggarly countries? such has been the tone of mercantile expense in those two trading cities that those exorbitant profits, far from augmenting the general capital of the country, seem scarce to have been sufficient to keep up the capitals upon which they were made. foreign capitals are every day intruding themselves, if i may say so, more and more into the trade of cadiz and lisbon. it is to expel those foreign capitals from a trade which their own grows every day more and more insufficient for carrying on that the spaniards and portuguese endeavour every day to straighten more and more the galling bands of their absurd monopoly. compare the mercantile manners of cadiz and lisbon with those of amsterdam, and you will be sensible how differently the conduct and character of merchants are affected by the high and by the low profits of stock. the merchants of london, indeed, have not yet generally become such magnificent lords as those of cadiz and lisbon, but neither are they in general such attentive and parsimonious burghers as those of amsterdam. they are supposed, however, many of them, to be a good deal richer than the greater part of the former, and not quite so rich as many of the latter. but the rate of their profit is commonly much lower than that of the former, and a good deal higher than that of the latter. light come, light go, says the proverb; and the ordinary tone of expense seems everywhere to be regulated, not so much according to the real ability of spending, as to the supposed facility of getting money to spend. it is thus that the single advantage which the monopoly procures to a single order of men is in many different ways hurtful to the general interest of the country. to found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. it is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. such statesmen, and such statesmen only, are capable of fancying that they will find some advantage in employing the blood and treasure of their fellow-citizens to found and maintain such an empire. say to a shopkeeper, "buy me a good estate, and i shall always buy my clothes at your shop, even though i should pay somewhat dearer than what i can have them for at other shops"; and you will not find him very forward to embrace your proposal. but should any other person buy you such an estate, the shopkeeper would be much obliged to your benefactor if he would enjoin you to buy all your clothes at his shop. england purchased for some of her subjects, who found themselves uneasy at home, a great estate in a distant country. the price, indeed, was very small, and instead of thirty years' purchase, the ordinary price of land in the present times, it amounted to little more than the expense of the different equipments which made the first discovery, reconnoitred the coast, and took a fictitious possession of the country. the land was good and of great extent, and the cultivators having plenty of good ground to work upon, and being for some time at liberty to sell their produce where they pleased, became in the course of little more than thirty or forty years (between 1620 and 1660) so numerous and thriving a people that the shopkeepers and other traders of england wished to secure to themselves the monopoly of their custom. without pretending, therefore, that they had paid any part, either of the original purchase-money, or of the subsequent expense of improvement, they petitioned the parliament that the cultivators of america might for the future be confined to their shop; first, for buying all the goods which they wanted from europe; and, secondly, for selling all such parts of their own produce as those traders might find it convenient to buy. for they did not find it convenient to buy every part of it. some parts of it imported into england might have interfered with some of the trades which they themselves carried on at home. those particular parts of it, therefore, they were willing that the colonists should sell where they couldthe farther off the better; and upon that account purposed that their market should be confined to the countries south of cape finisterre. a clause in the famous act of navigation established this truly shopkeeper proposal into a law. the maintenance of this monopoly has hitherto been the principal, or more properly perhaps the sole end and purpose of the dominion which great britain assumes over her colonies. in the exclusive trade, it is supposed, consists the great advantage of provinces, which have never yet afforded either revenue or military force for the support of the civil government, or the defence of the mother country. the monopoly is the principal badge of their dependency, and it is the sole fruit which has hitherto been gathered from that dependency. whatever expense great britain has hitherto laid out in maintaining this dependency has really been laid out in order to support this monopoly. the expense of the ordinary peace establishment of the colonies amounted, before the commencement of the present disturbances, to the pay of twenty regiments of foot; to the expense of the artillery, stores, and extraordinary provisions with which it was necessary to supply them; and to the expense of a very considerable naval force which was constantly kept up, in order to guard, from the smuggling vessels of other nations, the immense coast of north america, and that of our west indian islands. the whole expense of this peace establishment was a charge upon the revenue of great britain, and was, at the same time, the smallest part of what the dominion of the colonies has cost the mother country. if we would know the amount of the whole, we must add to the annual expense of this peace establishment the interest of the sums which, in consequence of her considering her colonies as provinces subject to her dominion, great britain has upon different occasions laid out upon their defence. we must add to it, in particular, the whole expense of the late war, and a great part of that of the war which preceded it. the late war was altogether a colony quarrel, and the whole expense of it, in whatever part of the world it may have been laid out, whether in germany or the east indies, ought justly to be stated to the account of the colonies. it amounted to more than ninety millions sterling, including not only the new debt which was contracted, but the two shillings in the pound additional land tax, and the sums which were every year borrowed from the sinking fund. the spanish war, which began in 1739, was principally a colony quarrel. its principal object was to prevent the search of the colony ships which carried on a contraband trade with the spanish main. this whole expense is, in reality, a bounty which has been given in order to support a monopoly. the pretended purpose of it was to encourage the manufactures, and to increase the commerce of great britain. but its real effect has been to raise the rate of mercantile profit, and to enable our merchants to turn into a branch of trade, of which the returns are more slow and distant than those of the greater part of other trades, a greater proportion of their capital than they otherwise would have done; two events which, if a bounty could have prevented, it might perhaps have been very well worth while to give such a bounty. under the present system of management, therefore, great britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion which she assumes over her colonies. to propose that great britain should voluntarily give up all authority over her colonies, and leave them to elect their own magistrates, to enact their own laws, and to make peace and war as they might think proper, would be to propose such a measure as never was, and never will be adopted, by any nation in the world. no nation ever voluntarily gave up the dominion of any province, how troublesome soever it might be to govern it, and how small soever the revenue which it afforded might be in proportion to the expense which it occasioned. such sacrifices, though they might frequently be agreeable to the interest, are always mortifying to the pride of every nation, and what is perhaps of still greater consequence, they are always contrary to the private interest of the governing part of it, who would thereby be deprived of the disposal of many places of trust and profit, of many opportunities of acquiring wealth and distinction, which the possession of the most turbulent, and, to the great body of the people, the most unprofitable province seldom fails to afford. the most visionary enthusiast would scarce be capable of proposing such a measure with any serious hopes at least of its ever being adopted. if it was adopted, however, great britain would not only be immediately freed from the whole annual expense of the peace establishment of the colonies, but might settle with them such a treaty of commerce as would effectually secure to her a free trade, more advantageous to the great body of the people, though less so to the merchants, than the monopoly which she at present enjoys. by thus parting good friends, the natural affection of the colonies to the mother country which, perhaps, our late dissensions have well nigh extinguished, would quickly revive. it might dispose them not only to respect, for whole centuries together, that treaty of commerce which they had concluded with us at parting, but to favour us in war as well as in trade, and, instead of turbulent and factious subjects, to become our most faithful, affectionate, and generous allies; and the same sort of parental affection on the one side, and filial respect on the other, might revive between great britain and her colonies, which used to subsist between those of ancient greece and the mother city from which they descended. in order to render any province advantageous to the empire to which it belongs, it ought to afford, in time of peace, a revenue to the public sufficient not only for defraying the whole expense of its own peace establishment, but for contributing its proportion to the support of the general government of the empire. every province necessarily contributes, more or less, to increase the expense of that general government. if any particular province, therefore, does not contribute its share towards defraying this expense, an unequal burden must be thrown upon some other part of the empire. the extraordinary revenue, too, which every province affords to the public in time of war, ought, from parity of reason, to bear the same proportion to the extraordinary revenue of the whole empire which its ordinary revenue does in time of peace. that neither the ordinary nor extraordinary revenue which great britain derives from her colonies, bears this proportion to the whole revenue of the british empire, will readily be allowed. the monopoly, it has been supposed, indeed, by increasing the private revenue of the people of great britain, and thereby enabling them to pay greater taxes, compensates the deficiency of the public revenue of the colonies. but this monopoly, i have endeavoured to show, though a very grievous tax upon the colonies, and though it may increase the revenue of a particular order of men in great britain, diminishes instead of increasing that of the great body of the people; and consequently diminishes instead of increasing the ability of the great body of the people to pay taxes. the men, too, whose revenue the monopoly increases, constitute a particular order, which it is both absolutely impossible to tax beyond the proportion of other orders, and extremely impolitic even to attempt to tax beyond that proportion, as i shall endeavour to show in the following book. no particular resource, therefore, can be drawn from this particular order. the colonies may be taxed either by their own assemblies, or by the parliament of great britain. that the colony assemblies can ever be so managed as to levy upon their constituents a public revenue sufficient not only to maintain at all times their own civil and military establishment, but to pay their proper proportion of the expense of the general government of the british empire seems not very probable. it was a long time before even the parliament of england, though placed immediately under the eye of the sovereign, could be brought under such a system of management, or could be rendered sufficiently liberal in their grants for supporting the civil and military establishments even of their own country. it was only by distributing among the particular members of parliament a great part either of the offices, or of the disposal of the offices arising from this civil and military establishment, that such a system of management could be established even with regard to the parliament of england. but the distance of the colony assemblies from the eye of the sovereign, their number, their dispersed situation, and their various constitutions, would render it very difficult to manage them in the same manner, even though the sovereign had the same means of doing it; and those means are wanting. it would be absolutely impossible to distribute among all the leading members of all the colony assemblies such a share, either of the offices or of the disposal of the offices arising from the general government of the british empire, as to dispose them to give up their popularity at home, and to tax their constituents for the support of that general government, of which almost the whole emoluments were to be divided among people who were strangers to them. the unavoidable ignorance of administration, besides, concerning the relative importance of the different members of those different assemblies, the offences which must frequently be given, the blunders which must constantly be committed in attempting to manage them in this manner, seems to render such a system of management altogether impracticable with regard to them. the colony assemblies, besides, cannot be supposed the proper judges of what is necessary for the defence and support of the whole empire. the care of that defence and support is not entrusted to them. it is not their business, and they have no regular means of information concerning it. the assembly of a province, like the vestry of a parish, may judge very properly concerning the affairs of its own particular district; but can have no proper means of judging concerning those of the whole empire. it cannot even judge properly concerning the proportion which its own province bears to the whole empire; or concerning the relative degree of its wealth and importance compared with the other provinces; because those other provinces are not under the inspection and superintendency of the assembly of a particular province. what is necessary for the defence and support of the whole empire, and in what proportion each part ought to contribute, can be judged of only by that assembly which inspects and superintends the affairs of the whole empire. it has been proposed, accordingly, that the colonies should be taxed by requisition, the parliament of great britain determining the sum which each colony ought to pay, and the provincial assembly assessing and levying it in the way that suited best the circumstances of the province. what concerned the whole empire would in this way be determined by the assembly which inspects and superintends the affairs of the whole empire; and the provincial affairs of each colony might still be regulated by its own assembly. though the colonies should in this case have no representatives in the british parliament, yet, if we may judge by experience, there is no probability that the parliamentary requisition would be unreasonable. the parliament of england has not upon any occasion shown the smallest disposition to overburden those parts of the empire which are not represented in parliament. the islands of guernsey and jersey, without any means of resisting the authority of parliament, are more lightly taxed than any part of great britain. parliament in attempting to exercise its supposed right, whether well or ill grounded, of taxing the colonies, has never hitherto demanded of them anything which even approached to a just proportion to what was paid by their fellow subjects at home. if the contribution of the colonies, besides, was to rise or fall in proportion to the rise or fall of the land tax, parliament could not tax them without taxing at the same time its own constituents, and the colonies might in this case be considered as virtually represented in parliament. examples are not wanting of empires in which all the different provinces are not taxed, if i may be allowed the expression, in one mass; but in which the sovereign regulates the sum which each province ought to pay, and in some provinces assesses and levies it as he thinks proper; while in others, he leaves it to be assessed and levied as the respective states of each province shall determine. in some provinces of france, the king not only imposes what taxes he thinks proper, but assesses and levies them in the way he thinks proper. from others he demands a certain sum, but leaves it to the states of each province to assess and levy that sum as they think proper. according to the scheme of taxing by requisition, the parliament of great britain would stand nearly in the same situation towards the colony assemblies as the king of france does towards the states of those provinces which still enjoy the privilege of having states of their own, the provinces of france which are supposed to be the best governed. but though, according to this scheme, the colonies could have no just reason to fear that their share of the public burdens should ever exceed the proper proportion to that of their fellow-citizens at home; great britain might have just reason to fear that it never would amount to that proper proportion. the parliament of great britain has not for some time past had the same established authority in the colonies, which the french king has in those provinces of france which still enjoy the privilege of having states of their own. the colony assemblies, if they were not very favourably disposed (and unless more skilfully managed than they ever have been hitherto, they are not very likely to be so) might still find many pretences for evading or rejecting the most reasonable requisitions of parliament. a french war breaks out, we shall suppose; ten millions must immediately be raised in order to defend the seat of the empire. this sum must be borrowed upon the credit of some parliamentary fund mortgaged for paying the interest. part of this fund parliament proposes to raise by a tax to be levied in great britain, and part of it by a requisition to all the different colony assemblies of america and the west indies. would people readily advance their money upon the credit of a fund, which partly depended upon the good humour of all those assemblies, far distant from the seat of the war, and sometimes, perhaps, thinking themselves not much concerned in the event of it? upon such a fund no more money would probably be advanced than what the tax to be levied in great britain might be supposed to answer for. the whole burden of the debt contracted on account of the war would in this manner fall, as it always has done hitherto, upon great britain; upon a part of the empire, and not upon the whole empire. great britain is, perhaps, since the world began, the only state which, as it has extended its empire, has only increased its expense without once augmenting its resources. other states have generally disburdened themselves upon their subject and subordinate provinces of the most considerable part of the expense of defending the empire. great britain has hitherto suffered her subject and subordinate provinces to disburden themselves upon her of almost this whole expense. in order to put great britain upon a footing of equality with her own colonies, which the law has hitherto supposed to be subject and subordinate, it seems necessary, upon the scheme of taxing them by parliamentary requisition, that parliament should have some means of rendering its requisitions immediately effectual, in case the colony assemblies should attempt to evade or reject them; and what those means are, it is not very easy to conceive, and it has not yet been explained. should the parliament of great britain, at the same time, be ever fully established in the right of taxing the colonies, even independent of the consent of their own assemblies, the importance of those assemblies would from that moment be at an end, and with it, that of all the leading men of british america. men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them. upon the power which the greater part of the leading men, the natural aristocracy of every country, have of preserving or defending their respective importance, depends the stability and duration of every system of free government. in the attacks which those leading men are continually making upon the importance of one another, and in the defence of their own, consists the whole play of domestic faction and ambition. the leading men of america, like those of all other countries, desire to preserve their own importance. they feel, or imagine, that if their assemblies, which they are fond of calling parliaments, and of considering as equal in authority to the parliament of great britain, should be so far degraded as to become the humble ministers and executive officers of that parliament, the greater part of their own importance would be at end. they have rejected, therefore, the proposal of being taxed by parliamentary requisition, and like other ambitious and high-spirited men, have rather chosen to draw the sword in defence of their own importance. towards the declension of the roman republic, the allies of rome, who had borne the principal burden of defending the state and extending the empire, demanded to be admitted to all the privileges of roman citizens. upon being refused, the social war broke out. during the course of that war, rome granted those privileges to the greater part of them one by one, and in proportion as they detached themselves from the general confederacy. the parliament of great britain insists upon taxing the colonies; and they refuse to be taxed by a parliament in which they are not represented. if to each colony, which should detach itself from the general confederacy, great britain should allow such a number of representatives as suited the proportion of what is contributed to the public revenue of the empire, in consequence of its being subjected to the same taxes, and in compensation admitted to the same freedom of trade with its fellow-subjects at home; the number of its representatives to be augmented as the proportion of its contribution might afterwards augment; a new method of acquiring importance, a new and more dazzling object of ambition would be presented to the leading men of each colony. instead of piddling for the little prizes which are to be found in what may be called the paltry raffle of colony faction; they might then hope, from the presumption which men naturally have in their own ability and good fortune, to draw some of the great prizes which sometimes come from the wheel of the great state lottery of british polities. unless this or some other method is fallen upon, and there seems to be none more obvious than this, of preserving the importance and of gratifying the ambition of the leading men of america, it is not very probable that they will ever voluntarily submit to us; and we ought to consider that the blood which must be shed in forcing them to do so is, every drop of it, blood either of those who are, or of those whom we wish to have for our fellow citizens. they are very weak who flatter themselves that, in the state to which things have come, our colonies will be easily conquered by force alone. the persons who now govern the resolutions of what they call their continental congress, feel in themselves at this moment a degree of importance which, perhaps, the greatest subjects in europe scarce feel. from shopkeepers, tradesmen, and attornies, they are become statesmen and legislators, and are employed in contriving a new form of government for an extensive empire, which, they flatter themselves, will become, and which, indeed, seems very likely to become, one of the greatest and most formidable that ever was in the world. five hundred different people, perhaps, who in different ways act immediately under the continental congress; and five hundred thousand, perhaps, who act under those five hundred, all feel in the same manner a proportionable rise in their own importance. almost every individual of the governing party in america fills, at present in his own fancy, a station superior, not only to what he had ever filled before, but to what he had ever expected to fill; and unless some new object of ambition is presented either to him or to his leaders, if he has the ordinary spirit of a man, he will die in defence of that station. it is a remark of the president henaut, that we now read with pleasure the account of many little transactions of the ligue, which when they happened were not perhaps considered as very important pieces of news. but every man then, says he, fancied himself of some importance; and the innumerable memoirs which have come down to us from those times, were, the greater part of them, written by people who took pleasure in recording and magnifying events in which, they flattered themselves, they had been considerable actors. how obstinately the city of paris upon that occasion defended itself, what a dreadful famine it supported rather than submit to the best and afterwards to the most beloved of all the french kings, is well known. the greater part of the citizens, or those who governed the greater part of them, fought in defence of their own importance, which they foresaw was to be at an end whenever the ancient government should be re-established. our colonies, unless they can be induced to consent to a union, are very likely to defend themselves against the best of all mother countries as obstinately as the city of paris did against one of the best of kings. the idea of representation was unknown in ancient times. when the people of one state were admitted to the right of citizenship in another, they had no other means of exercising that right but by coming in a body to vote and deliberate with the people of that other state. the admission of the greater part of the inhabitants of italy to the privileges of roman citizens completely ruined the roman republic. it was no longer possible to distinguish between who was and who was not a roman citizen. no tribe could know its own members. a rabble of any kind could be introduced into the assemblies of the people, could drive out the real citizens, and decide upon the affairs of the republic as if they themselves had been such. but though america were to send fifty or sixty new representatives to parliament, the doorkeeper of the house of commons could not find any great difficulty in distinguishing between who was and who was not a member. though the roman constitution, therefore, was necessarily ruined by the union of rome with the allied states of italy, there is not the least probability that the british constitution would be hurt by the union of great britain with her colonies. that constitution, on the contrary, would be completed by it, and seems to be imperfect without it. the assembly which deliberates and decides concerning the affairs of every part of the empire, in order to be properly informed, ought certainly to have representatives from every part of it that this union, however, could be easily effectuated, or that difficulties and great difficulties might not occur in the execution, i do not pretend. i have yet heard of none, however, which appear insurmountable. the principal perhaps arise, not from the nature of things, but from the prejudices and opinions of the people both on this and on the other side of the atlantic. we, on this side of the water, are afraid lest the multitude of american representatives should overturn the balance of the constitution, and increase too much either the influence of the crown on the one hand, or the force of the democracy on the other. but if the number of american representatives were to be in proportion to the produce of american taxation, the number of people to be managed would increase exactly in proportion to the means of managing them; and the means of managing to the number of people to be managed. the monarchical and democratical parts of the constitution would, after the union, stand exactly in the same degree of relative force with regard to one another as they had done before. the people on the other side of the water are afraid lest their distance from the seat of government might expose them to many oppressions. but their representatives in parliament, of which the number ought from the first to be considerable, would easily be able to protect them from all oppression. the distance could not much weaken the dependency of the representative upon the constituent, and the former would still feel that he owed his seat in parliament, and all the consequences which he derived from it, to the good will of the latter. it would be the interest of the former, therefore, to cultivate that good will by complaining, with all the authority of a member of the legislature, of every outrage which any civil or military officer might be guilty of in those remote parts of the empire. the distance of america from the seat of government, besides, the natives of that country might flatter themselves, with some appearance of reason too, would not be of very long continuance. such has hitherto been the rapid progress of that country in wealth, population, and improvement, that in the course of little more than a century, perhaps, the produce of american might exceed that of british taxation. the seat of the empire would then naturally remove itself to that part of the empire which contributed most to the general defence and support of the whole. the discovery of america, and that of a passage to the east indies by the cape of good hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind. their consequences have already been very great; but, in the short period of between two and three centuries which has elapsed since these discoveries were made, it is impossible that the whole extent of their consequences can have been seen. what benefits or what misfortunes to mankind may hereafter result from those great events, no human wisdom can foresee. by uniting, in some measure, the most distant parts of the world, by enabling them to relieve one another's wants, to increase one another's enjoyments, and to encourage one another's industry, their general tendency would seem to be beneficial. to the natives however, both of the east and west indies, all the commercial benefits which can have resulted from those events have been sunk and lost in the dreadful misfortunes which they have occasioned. these misfortunes, however, seem to have arisen rather from accident than from anything in the nature of those events themselves. at the particular time when these discoveries were made, the superiority of force happened to be so great on the side of the europeans that they were enabled to commit with impunity every sort of injustice in those remote countries. hereafter, perhaps, the natives of those countries may grow stronger, or those of europe may grow weaker, and the inhabitants of all the different quarters of the world may arrive at that equality of courage and force which, by inspiring mutual fear, can alone overawe the injustice of independent nations into some sort of respect for the rights of one another. but nothing seems more likely to establish this equality of force than that mutual communication of knowledge and of all sorts of improvements which an extensive commerce from all countries to all countries naturally, or rather necessarily, carries along with it. in the meantime one of the principal effects of those discoveries has been to raise the mercantile system to a degree of splendour and glory which it could never otherwise have attained to. it is the object of that system to enrich a great nation rather by trade and manufactures than by the improvement and cultivation of land, rather by the industry of the towns than by that of the country. but, in consequence of those discoveries, the commercial towns of europe, instead of being the manufacturers and carriers for but a very small part of the world (that part of europe which is washed by the atlantic ocean, and the countries which lie round the baltic and mediterranean seas), have now become the manufacturers for the numerous and thriving cultivators of america, and the carriers, and in some respects the manufacturers too, for almost all the different nations of asia, africa, and america. two new worlds have been opened to their industry, each of them much greater and more extensive than the old one, and the market of one of them growing still greater and greater every day. the countries which possess the colonies of america, and which trade directly to the east indies, enjoy, indeed, the whole show and splendour of this great commerce. other countries, however, notwithstanding all the invidious restraints by which it is meant to exclude them, frequently enjoy a greater share of the real benefit of it. the colonies of spain and portugal, for example, give more real encouragement to the industry of other countries than to that of spain and portugal. in the single article of linen alone the consumption of those colonies amounts, it is said, but i do not pretend to warrant the quantity, to more than three millions sterling a year. but this great consumption is almost entirely supplied by france, flanders, holland, and germany. spain and portugal furnish but a small part of it. the capital which supplies the colonies with this great quantity of linen is annually distributed among, and furnishes a revenue to the inhabitants of, those other countries. the profits of it only are spent in spain and portugal, where they help to support the sumptuous profusion of the merchants of cadiz and lisbon. even the regulations by which each nation endeavours to secure to itself the exclusive trade of its own colonies are frequently more hurtful to the countries in favour of which they are established than to those against which they are established. the unjust oppression of the industry of other countries falls back, if i may say so, upon the heads of the oppressors, and crushes their industry more than it does that of those other countries. by those regulations for example, the merchant of hamburg must send the linen which he destines for the american market to london, and he must bring back from thence the tobacco which he destines for the german market, because he can neither send the one directly to america nor bring back the other directly from thence. by this restraint he is probably obliged to sell the one somewhat cheaper, and to sell the one somewhat cheaper, and to buy the other somewhat dearer than he otherwise might have done; and his profits are probably somewhat abridged by means of it. in this trade, however, between hamburg and london, he certainly receives the returns of his capital much more quickly than he could possibly have done in the direct trade to america, even though we should suppose, what is by no means the case, that the payments of america were as punctual as those of london. in the trade, therefore, to which those regulations confine the merchant of hamburg, his capital can keep in constant employment a much greater quantity of german industry than it possibly could have done in the trade from which he is excluded. though the one employment, therefore, may to him perhaps be less profitable than the other, it cannot be less advantageous to his country. it is quite otherwise with the employment into which the monopoly naturally attracts, if i may say so, the capital of the london merchant. that employment may, perhaps, be more profitable to him than the greater part of other employments, but, on account of the slowness of the returns, it cannot be more advantageous to his country. after all the unjust attempts, therefore, of every country in europe to engross to itself the whole advantage of the trade of its own colonies, no country has yet been able to engross itself anything but the expense of supporting in time of peace and of defending in time of war the oppressive authority which it assumes over them. the inconveniencies resulting from the possession of its colonies, every country has engrossed to itself completely. the advantages resulting from their trade it has been obliged to share with many other countries. at first sight, no doubt, the monopoly of the great commerce of america naturally seems to be an acquisition of the highest value. to the undiscerning eye of giddy ambition, it naturally presents itself amidst the confused scramble of politics and war as a very dazzling object to fight for. the dazzling splendour of the object, however, the immense greatness of the commerce, is the very quality which renders the monopoly of it hurtful, or which makes one employment, in its own nature necessarily less advantageous to the country than the greater part of other employments, absorb a much greater proportion of the capital of the country than what would otherwise have gone to it. the mercantile stock of every country, it has been shown in the second book, naturally seeks, if one may say so, the employment most advantageous to that country. if it is employed in the carrying trade, the country to which it belongs becomes the emporium of the goods of all the countries whose trade that stock carries on. but the owner of that stock necessarily wishes to dispose of as great a part of those goods as he can at home. he thereby saves himself the trouble, risk, and expense of exportation, and he will upon that account be glad to sell them at home, not only for a much smaller price, but with somewhat a smaller profit than he might expect to make by sending them abroad. he naturally, therefore, endeavours as much as he can to turn his carrying trade into a foreign trade of consumption. if his stock, again, is employed in a foreign trade of consumption, he will, for the same reason, be glad to dispose of at home as great a part as he can of the home goods, which he collects in order to export to some foreign market, and he will thus endeavour, as much as he can, to turn his foreign trade of consumption into a home trade. the mercantile stock of every country naturally courts in this manner the near, and shuns the distant employment; naturally courts the employment in which the returns are frequent, and shuns that in which they are distant and slow; naturally courts the employment in which it can maintain the greatest quantity of productive labour in the country to which it belongs, or in which its owner resides, and shuns that in which it can maintain there the smallest quantity. it naturally courts the employment which in ordinary cases is most advantageous, and shuns that which in ordinary cases is least advantageous to that country. but if in any of those distant employments, which in ordinary cases are less advantageous to the country, the profit should happen to rise somewhat higher than what is sufficient to balance the natural preference which is given to nearer employments, this superiority of profit will draw stock from those nearer employments, till the profits of all return to their proper level. this superiority of profit, however, is a proof that, in the actual circumstances of the society, those distant employments are somewhat understocked in proportion to other employments, and that the stock of the society is not distributed in the properest manner among all the different employments carried on in it. it is a proof that something is either bought cheaper or sold dearer than it ought to be, and that some particular class of citizens is more or less oppressed either by paying more or by getting less than what is suitable to that equality which ought to take place, and which naturally does take place among all the different classes of them. though the same capital never will maintain the same quantity of productive labour in a distant as in a near employment, yet a distant employment may be as necessary for the welfare of the society as a near one; the goods which the distant employment deals in being necessary, perhaps, for carrying on many of the nearer employments. but if the profits of those who deal in such goods are above their proper level, those goods will be sold dearer than they ought to be, or somewhat above their natural price, and all those engaged in the nearer employments will be more or less oppressed by this high price. their interest, therefore, in this case requires that some stock should be withdrawn from those nearer employments, and turned towards that distant one, in order to reduce its profits to their proper level, and the price of the goods which it deals in to their natural price. in this extraordinary case, the public interest requires that some stock should be withdrawn from those employments which in ordinary cases are more advantageous, and turned towards one which in ordinary cases is less advantageous to the public; and in this extraordinary case the natural interests and inclinations of men coincide as exactly with the public interest as in all other ordinary cases, and lead them to withdraw stock from the near, and to turn it towards the distant employment. it is thus that the private interests and passions of individuals naturally dispose them to turn their stocks towards the employments which in ordinary cases are most advantageous to the society. but if from this natural preference they should turn too much of it towards those employments, the fall of profit in them and the rise of it in all others immediately dispose them to alter this faulty distribution. without any intervention of law, therefore, the private interests and passions of men naturally lead them to divide and distribute the stock of every society among all the different employments carried on in it as nearly as possible in the proportion which is most agreeable to the interest of the whole society. all the different regulations of the mercantile system necessarily derange more or less this natural and most advantageous distribution of stock. but those which concern the trade to america and the east indies derange it perhaps more than any other, because the trade to those two great continents absorbs a greater quantity of stock than any two other branches of trade. the regulations, however, by which this derangement is effected in those two different branches of trade are not altogether the same. monopoly is the great engine of both; but it is a different sort of monopoly. monopoly of one kind or another, indeed, seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system. in the trade to america every nation endeavours to engross as much as possible the whole market of its own colonies by fairly excluding all other nations from any direct trade to them. during the greater part of the sixteenth century, the portuguese endeavoured to manage the trade to the east indies in the same manner, by claiming the sole right of sailing in the indian seas, on account of the merit of having first found out the road to them. the dutch still continue to exclude all other european nations from any direct trade to their spice islands. monopolies of this kind are evidently established against all other european nations, who are thereby not only excluded from a trade to which it might be convenient for them to turn some part of their stock, but are obliged to buy the goods which that trade deals in somewhat dearer than if they could import them themselves directly from the countries which produce them. but since the fall of the power of portugal, no european nation has claimed the exclusive right of sailing in the indian seas, of which the principal ports are now open to the ships of all european nations. except in portugal, however, and within these few years in france, the trade to the east indies has in every european country been subjected to an exclusive company. monopolies of this kind are properly established against the very nation which erects them. the greater part of that nation are thereby not only excluded from a trade to which it might be convenient for them to turn some part of their stock, but are obliged to buy the goods which that trade deals somewhat dearer than if it was open and free to all their countrymen. since the establishment of the english east india company, for example, the other inhabitants of england, over and above being excluded from the trade, must have paid in the price of the east india goods which they have consumed, not only for all the extraordinary profits which the company may have made upon those goods in consequence of their monopoly, but for all the extraordinary waste which the fraud and abuse, inseparable from the management of the affairs of so great a company, must necessarily have occasioned. the absurdity of this second kind of monopoly, therefore, is much more manifest than that of the first. both these kinds of monopolies derange more or less the natural distribution of the stock of the society; but they do not always derange it in the same way. monopolies of the first kind always attract to the particular trade in which they are established a greater proportion of the stock of the society than what would go to that trade of its own accord. monopolies of the second kind may sometimes attract stock towards the particular trade in which they are established, and sometimes repel it from that trade according to different circumstances. in poor countries they naturally attract towards that trade more stock than would otherwise go to it. in rich countries they naturally repel from it a good deal of stock which would otherwise go to it. such poor countries as sweden and denmark, for example, would probably have never sent a single ship to the east indies had not the trade been subjected to an exclusive company. the establishment of such a company necessarily encourages adventurers. their monopoly secures them against all competitors in the home market, and they have the same chance for foreign markets with the traders of other nations. their monopoly shows them the certainty of a great profit upon a considerable quantity of goods, and the chance of a considerable profit upon a great quantity. without such extraordinary encouragement, the poor traders of such poor countries would probably never have thought of hazarding their small capitals in so very distant and uncertain an adventure as the trade to the east indies must naturally have appeared to them. such a rich country as holland, on the contrary, would probably, in the case of a free trade, send many more ships to the east indies than it actually does. the limited stock of the dutch east india company probably repels from that trade many great mercantile capitals which would otherwise go to it. the mercantile capital of holland is so great that it is, as it were, continually overflowing, sometimes into the public funds of foreign countries, sometimes into loans to private traders and adventurers of foreign countries, sometimes into the most round-about foreign trades of consumption, and sometimes into the carrying trade. all near employments being completely filled up, all the capital which can be placed in them with any tolerable profit being already placed in them, the capital of holland necessarily flows towards the most distant employments. the trade to the east indies, if it were altogether free, would probably absorb the greater part of this redundant capital. the east indies offer a market for the manufactures of europe and for the gold and silver as well as for several other productions of america greater and more extensive than both europe and america put together. every derangement of the natural distribution of stock is necessarily hurtful to the society in which it takes place; whether it be by repelling from a particular trade the stock which would otherwise go to it, or by attracting towards a particular trade that which would not otherwise come to it. if, without any exclusive company, the trade of holland to the east indies would be greater than it actually is, that country must suffer a considerable loss by part of its capital being excluded from the employment most convenient for that part. and in the same manner, if, without an exclusive company, the trade of sweden and denmark to the east indies would be less than it actually is, or, what perhaps is more probable, would not exist at all, those two countries must likewise suffer a considerable loss by part of their capital being drawn into an employment which must be more or less unsuitable to their present circumstances. better for them, perhaps, in their present circumstances, to buy east india goods of other nations, even though they should pay somewhat dearer, than to turn so great a part of their small capital to so very distant a trade, in which the returns are so very slow, in which that capital can maintain so small a quantity of productive labour at home, where productive labour is so much wanted, where so little is done, and where so much is to do. though without an exclusive company, therefore, a particular country should not be able to carry on any direct trade to the east indies, it will not from thence follow that such a company ought to be established there, but only that such a country ought not in these circumstances to trade directly to the east indies. that such companies are not in general necessary for carrying on the east india trade is sufficiently demonstrated by the experience of the portuguese, who enjoyed almost the whole of it for more than a century together without any exclusive company. no private merchant, it has been said, could well have capital sufficient to maintain factors and agents in the different ports of the east indies, in order to provide goods for the ships which he might occasionally send thither; and yet, unless he was able to do this, the difficulty of finding a cargo might frequently make his ships lose the season for returning, and the expense of so long a delay would not only eat up the whole profit of the adventure, but frequently occasion a very considerable loss. this argument, however, if it proved anything at all, would prove that no one great branch of trade could be carried on without an exclusive company, which is contrary to the experience of all nations. there is no great branch of trade in which the capital of any one private merchant is sufficient for carrying on all the subordinate branches which must be carried on, in order to carry on the principal one. but when a nation is ripe for any great branch of trade, some merchants naturally turn their capitals towards the principal, and some towards the subordinate branches of it; and though all the different branches of it are in this manner carried on, yet it very seldom happens that they are all carried on by the capital of one private merchant. if a nation, therefore, is ripe for the east india trade, a certain portion of its capital will naturally divide itself among all the different branches of that trade. some of its merchants will find it for their interest to reside in the east indies, and to employ their capitals there in providing goods for the ships which are to be sent out by other merchants who reside in europe. the settlements which different european nations have obtained in the east indies, if they were taken from the exclusive companies to which they at present belong and put under the immediate protection of the sovereign, would render this residence both safe and easy, at least to the merchants of the particular nations to whom those settlements belong. if at any particular time that part of the capital of any country which of its own accord tended and inclined, if i may say so, towards the east india trade, was not sufficient for carrying on all those different branches of it, it would be a proof that, at that particular time, that country was not ripe for that trade, and that it would do better to buy for some time, even at a higher price, from other european nations, the east india goods it had occasion for, than to import them itself directly from the east indies. what it might lose by the high price of those goods could seldom be equal to the loss which it would sustain by the distraction of a large portion of its capital from other employments more necessary, or more useful, or more suitable to its circumstances and situation, than a direct trade to the east indies. though the europeans possess many considerable settlements both upon the coast of africa and in the east indies, they have not yet established in either of those countries such numerous and thriving colonies as those in the islands and continent of america. africa, however, as well as several of the countries comprehended under the general name of the east indies, are inhabited by barbarous nations. but those nations were by no means so weak and defenceless as the miserable and helpless americans; and in proportion to the natural fertility of the countries which they inhabited, they were besides much more populous. the most barbarous nations either of africa or of the east indies were shepherds; even the hottentots were so. but the natives of every part of america, except mexico and peru, were only hunters; and the difference is very great between the number of shepherds and that of hunters whom the same extent of equally fertile territory can maintain. in africa and the east indies, therefore, it was more difficult to displace the natives, and to extend the european plantations over the greater part of the lands of the original inhabitants. the genius of exclusive companies, besides, is unfavourable, it has already been observed, to the growth of new colonies, and has probably been the principal cause of the little progress which they have made in the east indies. the portuguese carried on the trade both to africa and the east indies without any exclusive companies, and their settlements at congo, angola, and benguela on the coast of africa, and at goa in the east indies, though much depressed by superstition and every sort of bad government, yet bear some faint resemblance to the colonies of america, and are partly inhabited by portuguese who have been established there for several generations. the dutch settlements at the cape of good hope and at batavia are at present the most considerable colonies which the europeans have established either in africa or in the east indies, and both these settlements are peculiarly fortunate in their situation. the cape of good hope was inhabited by a race of people almost as barbarous and quite as incapable of defending themselves as the natives of america. it is besides the halfway house, if one may say so, between europe and the east indies, at which almost every european ship makes some stay, both in going and returning. the supplying of those ships with every sort of fresh provisions, with fruit and sometimes with wine, affords alone a very extensive market for the surplus produce of the colonists. what the cape of good hope is between europe and every part of the east indies, batavia is between the principal countries of the east indies. it lies upon the most frequented road from indostan to china and japan, and is nearly about midway upon that road. almost all the ships, too, that sail between europe and china touch at batavia; and it is, over and above all this, the centre and principal mart of what is called the country trade of the east indies, not only of that part of it which is carried on by europeans, but of that which is carried on by the native indians; and vessels navigated by the inhabitants of china and japan, of tonquin, malacca, cochin china, and the island of celebes, are frequently to be seen in its port. such advantageous situations have enabled those two colonies to surmount all the obstacles which the oppressive genius of an exclusive company may have occasionally opposed to their growth. they have enabled batavia to surmount the additional disadvantage of perhaps the most unwholesome climate in the world. the english and dutch companies, though they have established no considerable colonies, except the two above mentioned, have both made considerable conquests in the east indies. but in the manner in which they both govern their new subjects, the natural genius of an exclusive company has shown itself most distinctly. in the spice islands the dutch are said to burn all the spiceries which a fertile season produces beyond what they expect to dispose of in europe with such a profit as they think sufficient. in the islands where they have no settlements, they give a premium to those who collect the young blossoms and green leaves of the clove and nutmeg trees which naturally grow there, but which the savage policy has now, it is said, almost completely extirpated. even in the islands where they have settlements they have very much reduced, it is said, the number of those trees. if the produce even of their own islands was much greater than what suited their market, the natives, they suspect, might find means to convey some part of it to other nations; and the best way, they imagine, to secure their own monopoly is to take care that no more shall grow than what they themselves carry to market. by different arts of oppression they have reduced the population of several of the moluccas nearly to the number which is sufficient to supply with fresh provisions and other necessaries of life their own insignificant garrisons, and such of their ships as occasionally come there for a cargo of spices. under the government even of the portuguese, however, those islands are said to have been tolerably well inhabited. the english company have not yet had time to establish in bengal so perfectly destructive a system. the plan of their government, however, has had exactly the same tendency. it has not been uncommon, i am well assured, for the chief, that is, the first clerk of a factory, to order a peasant to plough up a rich field of poppies and sow it with rice or some other grain. the pretence was, to prevent a scarcity of provisions; but the real reason, to give the chief an opportunity of selling at a better price a large quantity of opium, which he happened then to have upon hand. upon other occasions the order has been reversed; and a rich field of rice or other grain has been ploughed up, in order to make room for a plantation of poppies; when the chief foresaw that extraordinary profit was likely to be made by opium. the servants of the company have upon several occasions attempted to establish in their own favour the monopoly of some of the most important branches, not only of the foreign, but of the inland trade of the country. had they been allowed to go on, it is impossible that they should not at some time or another have attempted to restrain the production of the particular articles of which they had thus usurped the monopoly, not only to the quantity which they themselves could purchase, but to that which they could expect to sell with such a profit as they might think sufficient. in the course of the century or two, the policy of the english company would in this manner have probably proved as completely destructive as that of the dutch. nothing, however, can be more directly contrary to the real interest of those companies, considered as the sovereigns of the countries which they have conquered, than this destructive plan. in almost all countries the revenue of the sovereign is drawn from that of the people. the greater the revenue of the people, therefore, the greater the annual produce of their land and labour, the more they can afford to the sovereign. it is his interest, therefore, to increase as much as possible that annual produce. but if this is the interest of every sovereign, it is peculiarly so of one whose revenue, like that of the sovereign of bengal, arises chiefly from a land-rent. that rent must necessarily be in proportion to the quantity and value of the produce, and both the one and the other must depend upon the extent of the market. the quantity will always be suited with more or less exactness to the consumption of those who can afford to pay for it, and the price which they will pay will always be in proportion to the eagerness of their competition. it is the interest of such a sovereign, therefore, to open the most extensive market for the produce of his country, to allow the most perfect freedom of commerce, in order to increase as much as possible the number and the competition of buyers; and upon this account to abolish, not only all monopolies, but all restraints upon the transportation of the home produce from one part of the country to another, upon its exportation to foreign countries, or upon the importation of goods of any kind for which it can be exchanged. it is in this manner most likely to increase both the quantity and value of that produce, and consequently of his own share of it, or of his own revenue. but a company of merchants are, it seems, incapable of considering themselves as sovereigns, even after they have become such. trade, or buying in order to sell again, they still consider as their principal business, and by a strange absurdity regard the character of the sovereign as but an appendix to that of the merchant, as something which ought to be made subservient to it, or by means of which they may be enabled to buy cheaper in india, and thereby to sell with a better profit in europe. they endeavour for this purpose to keep out as much as possible all competitors from the market of the countries which are subject to their government, and consequently to reduce, at least, some part of the surplus produce of those countries to what is barely sufficient for supplying their own demand, or to what they can expect to sell in europe with such a profit as they may think reasonable. their mercantile habits draw them in this manner, almost necessarily, though perhaps insensibly, to prefer upon all ordinary occasions the little and transitory profit of the monopolist to the great and permanent revenue of the sovereign, and would gradually lead them to treat the countries subject to their government nearly as the dutch treat the moluceas. it is the interest of the east india company, considered as sovereigns, that the european goods which are carried to their indian dominions should be sold there as cheap as possible; and that the indian goods which are brought from thence should bring there as good a price, or should be sold there as dear as possible. but the reverse of this is their interest as merchants. as sovereigns, their interest is exactly the same with that of the country which they govern. as merchants their interest is directly opposite to that interest. but if the genius of such a government, even as to what concerns its direction in europe, is in this manner essentially and perhaps incurably faulty, that of its administration in india is still more so. that administration is necessarily composed of a council of merchants, a profession no doubt extremely respectable, but which in no country in the world carries along with it that sort of authority which naturally overawes the people, and without force commands their willing obedience. such a council can command obedience only by the military force with which they are accompanied, and their government is therefore necessarily military and despotical. their proper business, however, is that of merchants. it is to sell, upon their masters' account, the european goods consigned to them, and to buy in return indian goods for the european market. it is to sell the one as dear and to buy the other as cheap as possible, and consequently to exclude as much as possible all rivals from the particular market where they keep their shop. the genius of the administration therefore, so far as concerns the trade of the company, is the same as that of the direction. it tends to make government subservient to the interest of monopoly, and consequently to stunt the natural growth of some parts at least of the surplus produce of the country to what is barely sufficient for answering the demand of the company. all the members of the administration, besides, trade more or less upon their own account, and it is in vain to prohibit them from doing so. nothing can be more completely foolish than to expect that the clerks of a great counting-house at ten thousand miles distance, and consequently almost quite out of sight, should, upon a simple order from their masters, give up at once doing any sort of business upon their own account, abandon for ever all hopes of making a fortune, of which they have the means in their hands, and content themselves with the moderate salaries which those masters allow them, and which, moderate as they are, can seldom be augmented, being commonly as large as the real profits of the company trade can afford. in such circumstances, to prohibit the servants of the company from trading upon their own account can have scarce any other effect than to enable the superior servants, under pretence of executing their masters' order, to oppress such of the inferior ones as have had the misfortune to fall under their displeasure. the servants naturally endeavour to establish the same monopoly in favour of their own private trade as of the public trade of the company. if they are suffered to act as they could wish, they will establish this monopoly openly and directly, by fairly prohibiting all other people from trading in the articles in which they choose to deal; and this, perhaps, is the best and least oppressive way of establishing it. but if by an order from europe they are prohibited from doing this, they will, notwithstanding, endeavour to establish a monopoly of the same kind, secretly and indirectly, in a way that is much more destructive to the country. they will employ the whole authority of government, and pervert the administration of justice, in order to harass and ruin those who interfere with them in any branch of commerce, which by means of agents, either concealed, or at least not publicly avowed, they may choose to carry on. but the private trade of the servants will naturally extend to a much greater variety of articles than the public trade of the company. the public trade of the company extends no further than the trade with europe, and comprehends a part only of the foreign trade of the country. but the private trade of the servants may extend to all the different branches both of its inland and foreign trade. the monopoly of the company can tend only to stunt the natural growth of that part of the surplus produce which, in the case of a free trade, would be exported to europe. that of the servants tends to stunt the natural growth of every part of the produce in which they choose to deal, of what is destined for home consumption, as well as of what is destined for exportation; and consequently to degrade the cultivation of the whole country, and to reduce the number of its inhabitants. it tends to reduce the quantity of every sort of produce, even that of the necessaries of life, whenever the servants of the company choose to deal in them, to what those servants can both afford to buy and expect to sell with such a profit as pleases them. from the nature of their situation, too, the servants must be more disposed to support with rigorous severity their own interest against that of the country which they govern than their masters can be to support theirs. the country belongs to their masters, who cannot avoid having some regard for the interest of what belongs to them. but it does not belong to the servants. the real interest of their masters, if they were capable of understanding it, is the same with that of the country, and it is from ignorance chiefly, and the meanness of mercantile prejudice, that they ever oppress it. but the real interest of the servants is by no means the same with that of the country, and the most perfect information would not necessarily put an end to their oppressions. the regulations accordingly which have been sent out from europe, though they have been frequently weak, have upon most occasions been well-meaning. more intelligence and perhaps less good-meaning has sometimes appeared in those established by the servants in india. it is a very singular government in which every member of the administration wishes to get out of the country, and consequently to have done with the government as soon as he can, and to whose interest, the day after he has left it and carried his whole fortune with him, it is perfectly indifferent though the whole country was swallowed up by an earthquake. i mean not, however, by anything which i have here said, to throw any odious imputation upon the general character of the servants of the east india company, and much less upon that of any particular persons. it is the system of government, the situation in which they are placed, that i mean to censure, not the character of those who have acted in it. they acted as their situation naturally directed, and they who have clamoured the loudest against them would probably not have acted better themselves. in war and negotiation, the councils of madras and calcutta have upon several occasions conducted themselves with a resolution and decisive wisdom which would have done honour to the senate of rome in the best days of that republic. the members of those councils, however, had been bred to professions very different from war and polities. but their situation alone, without education, experience, or even example, seems to have formed in them all at once the great qualities which it required, and to have inspired them both with abilities and virtues which they themselves could not well know that they possessed. if upon some occasions, therefore, it has animated them to actions of magnanimity which could not well have been expected from them, we should not wonder if upon others it has prompted them to exploits of somewhat a different nature. such exclusive companies, therefore, are nuisances in every respect; always more or less inconvenient to the countries in which they are established, and destructive to those which have the misfortune to fall under their government. chapter viii conclusion of the mercantile system though the encouragement of exportation and the discouragement of importation are the two great engines by which the mercantile system proposes to enrich every country, yet with regard to some particular commodities it seems to follow an opposite plan: to discourage exportation and to encourage importation. its ultimate object, however, it pretends, is always the same, to enrich the country by an advantageous balance of trade. it discourages the exportation of the materials of manufacture, and of the instruments of trade, in order to give our own workmen an advantage, and to enable them to undersell those of other nations in all foreign markets; and by restraining, in this manner, the exportation of a few commodities, of no great price, it proposes to occasion a much greater and more valuable exportation of others. it encourages the importation of the materials of manufacture in order that our own people may be enabled to work them up more cheaply, and thereby prevent a greater and more valuable importation of the manufactured commodities. i do not observe, at least in our statute book, any encouragement given to the importation of the instruments of trade. when manufactures have advanced to a certain pitch of greatness, the fabrication of the instruments of trade becomes itself the object of a great number of very important manufactures. to give any particular encouragement to the importation of such instruments would interfere too much with the interest of those manufactures. such importation, therefore, instead of being encouraged, has frequently been prohibited. thus the importation of wool cards, except from ireland, or when brought in as wreck or prize goods, was prohibited by the 3rd of edward iv; which prohibition was renewed by the 39th of elizabeth, and has been continued and rendered perpetual by subsequent laws. the importation of the materials of manufacture has sometimes been encouraged by an exemption from the duties to which other goods are subject, and sometimes by bounties. the importation of sheep's wool from several different countries, of cotton wool from all countries, of undressed flax, of the greater part of dyeing drugs, of the greater part of undressed hides from ireland or the british colonies, of sealskins from the british greenland fishery, of pig and bar iron from the british colonies, as well as of several other materials of manufacture, has been encouraged by an exemption from all duties, if properly entered at the custom house. the private interest of our merchants and manufacturers may, perhaps, have extorted from the legislature these exemptions as well as the greater part of our other commercial regulations. they are, however, perfectly just and reasonable, and if, consistently with the necessities of the state, they could be extended to all the other materials of manufacture, the public would certainly be a gainer. the avidity of our great manufacturers, however, has in some cases extended these exemptions a good deal beyond what can justly be considered as the rude materials of their work. by the 24th george iii, c. 46, a small duty of only one penny the pound was imposed upon the importation of foreign brown linen yam, instead of much higher duties to which it had been subjected before, viz. of sixpence the pound upon sail yarn, of one shilling the pound upon all french and dutch yarn, and of two pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence upon the hundredweight of all spruce or muscovia yarn. but our manufacturers were not long satisfied with this reduction. by the 29th of the same king, c. 15, the same law which gave a bounty upon the exportation of british and irish linen of which the price did not exceed eighteenpence the yard, even this small duty upon the importation of brown linen yarn was taken away. in the different operations, however, which are necessary for the preparation of linen yarn, a good deal more industry is employed than in the subsequent operation of preparing linen cloth from linen yarn. to say nothing of the industry of the flax-growers and flax-dressers, three or four spinners, at least, are necessary in order to keep one weaver in constant employment; and more than four-fifths of the whole quantity of labour necessary for the preparation of linen cloth is employed in that of linen yarn; but our spinners are poor people, women commonly scattered about in all different parts of the country, without support or protection. it is not by the sale of their work, but by that of the complete work of the weavers, that our great master manufacturers make their profits. as it is their interest to sell the complete manufacture as dear, so is it to buy the materials as cheap as possible. by extorting from the legislature bounties upon the exportation of their own linen, high duties upon the importation of all foreign linen, and a total prohibition of the home consumption of some sorts of french linen, they endeavour to sell their own goods as dear as possible. by encouraging the importation of foreign linen yarn, and thereby bringing it into competition with that which is made by our own people, they endeavour to buy the work of the poor spinners as cheap as possible. they are as intent to keep down the wages of their own weavers as the earnings of the poor spinners, and it is by no means for the benefit of the workman that they endeavour either to raise the price of the complete work or to lower that of the rude materials. it is the industry which is carried on for the benefit of the rich and the powerful that is principally encouraged by our mercantile system. that which is carried on for the benefit of the poor and the indigent is too often either neglected or oppressed. both the bounty upon the exportation of linen, and the exemption from duty upon the importation of foreign yarn, which were granted only for fifteen years, but continued by two different prolongations, expire with the end of the session of parliament which shall immediately follow the 24th of june 1786. the encouragement given to the importation of the materials of manufacture by bounties has been principally confined to such as were imported from our american plantations. the first bounties of this kind were those granted about the beginning of the present century upon the importation of naval stores from america. under this denomination were comprehended timber fit for masts, yards, and bowsprits; hemp; tar, pitch, and turpentine. the bounty, however, of one pound the ton upon masting-timber, and that of six pounds the ton upon hemp, were extended to such as should be imported into england from scotland. both these bounties continued without any variation, at the same rate, till they were severally allowed to expire; that upon hemp on the 1st of january 1741, and that upon masting-timber at the end of the session of parliament immediately following the 24th june 1781. the bounties upon the importation of tar, pitch, and turpentine underwent, during their continuance, several alterations. originally that upon tar was four pounds the ton; that upon pitch the same; and that upon turpentine, three pounds the ton. the bounty of four pounds the ton upon tar was afterwards confined to such as had been prepared in a particular manner; that upon other good, clean, and merchantable tar was reduced to two pounds four shillings the ton. the bounty upon pitch was likewise reduced to one pound; and that upon turpentine to one pound ten shillings the ton. the second bounty upon the importation of any of the materials of manufacture, according to the order of time, was that granted by the 21st george ii, c. 30, upon the importation of indigo from the british plantations. when the plantation indigo was worth three-fourths of the price of the best french indigo, it was by this act entitled to a bounty of sixpence the pound. this bounty, which, like most others, was granted only for a limited time, was continued by several prolongations, but was reduced to fourpence the pound. it was allowed to expire with the end of the session of parliament which followed the 25th march 1781. the third bounty of this kind was that granted (much about the time that we were beginning sometimes to court and sometimes to quarrel with our american colonies) by the 4th george iii, c. 26, upon the importation of hemp, or undressed flax, from the british plantations. this bounty was granted for twenty-one years, from the 24th june 1764 to the 24th june 1785. for the first seven years it was to be at the rate of eight pounds the ton, for the second at six pounds, and for the third at four pounds. it was not extended to scotland, of which the climate (although hemp is sometimes raised there in small quantities and of an inferior quality) is not very fit for that produce. such a bounty upon the importation of scotch flax into england would have been too great a discouragement to the native produce of the southern part of the united kingdom. the fourth bounty of this kind was that granted by the 5th george iii, c. 45, upon the importation of wood from america. it was granted for nine years, from the 1st january 1766 to the 1st january 1775. during the first three years, it was to be for every hundred and twenty good deals, at the rate of one pound, and for every load containing fifty cubic feet of other squared timber at the rate of twelve shillings. for the second three years, it was for deals to be at. the rate of fifteen shillings, and for other squared timber at the rate of eight shillings; and for the third three years, it was for deals to be at the rate of ten shillings, and for other squared timber at the rate of five shillings. the fifth bounty of this kind was that granted by the 9th george iii, c. 38, upon the importation of raw silk from the british plantations. it was granted for twenty-one years, from the 1st january 1770 to the 1st january 1791. for the first seven years it was to be at the rate of twenty-five pounds for every hundred pounds value; for the second at twenty pounds; and for the third at fifteen pounds. the management of the silk worm, and the preparation of silk, requires so much hand labour, and labour is so very dear in america that even this great bounty, i have been informed, was not likely to produce any considerable effect. the sixth bounty of this kind was that granted by 2nd george iii, c. 50, for the importation of pipe, hogshead, and barrel staves and heading from the british plantations. it was granted for nine years, from 1st january 1772 to the 1st january 1781. for the first three years it was for a certain quantity of each to be at the rate of six pounds; for the second three years at four pounds; and for the third three years at two pounds. the seventh and last bounty of this kind was that granted by the 19th george iii, c. 37, upon the importation of hemp from ireland. it was granted in the same manner as that for the importation of hemp and undressed flax from america, for twenty-one years, from the 24th june 1779 to the 24th june 1800. this term is divided, likewise, into three periods of seven years each; and in each of those periods the rate of the irish bounty is the same with that of the american. it does not, however, like the american bounty, extend to the importation of undressed flax. it would have been too great a discouragement to the cultivation of that plant in great britain. when this last bounty was granted, the british and irish legislatures were not in much better humour with one another than the british and american had been before. but this boon to ireland, it is to be hoped, has been granted under more fortunate auspices than all those to america. the same commodities upon which we thus gave bounties when imported from america were subjected to considerable duties when imported from any other country. the interest of our american colonies was regarded as the same with that of the mother country. their wealth was considered as our wealth. whatever money was sent out to them, it was said, came all back to us by the balance of trade, and we could never become a farthing the poorer by any expense which we could lay out upon them. they were our own in every respect, and it was an expense laid out upon the improvement of our own property and for the profitable employment of our own people. it is unnecessary, i apprehend, at present to say anything further in order to expose the folly of a system which fatal experience has now sufficiently exposed. had our american colonies really been a part of great britain, those bounties might have been considered as bounties upon production, and would still have been liable to all the objections to which such bounties are liable, but to no other. the exportation of the materials of manufacture is sometimes discouraged by absolute prohibitions, and sometimes by high duties. our woollen manufacturers have been more successful than any other class of workmen in persuading the legislature that the prosperity of the nation depended upon the success and extension of their particular business. they have not only obtained a monopoly against the consumers by an absolute prohibition of importing woollen cloths from any foreign country, but they have likewise obtained another monopoly against the sheep farmers and growers of wool by a similar prohibition of the exportation of live sheep and wool. the severity of many of the laws which have been enacted for the security of the revenue is very justly complained of, as imposing heavy penalties upon actions which, antecedent to the statutes that declared them to be crimes, had always been understood to be innocent. but the cruellest of our revenue laws, i will venture to affirm, are mild and gentle in comparison of some of those which the clamour of our merchants and manufacturers has extorted from the legislature for the support of their own absurd and oppressive monopolies. like the laws of draco, these laws may be said to be all written in blood. by the 8th of elizabeth, c. 3, the exporter of sheep, lambs, or rams was for the first offence to forfeit all his goods for ever, to suffer a year's imprisonment, and then to have his left hand cut off in a market town upon a market day, to be there nailed up; and for the second offence to be adjudged a felon, and to suffer death accordingly. to prevent the breed of our sheep from being propagated in foreign countries seems to have been the object of this law. by the 13th and 14th of charles ii, c. 18, the exportation of wool was made felony, and the exporter subjected to the same penalties and forfeitures as a felon. for the honour of the national humanity, it is to be hoped that neither of these statutes were ever executed. the first of them, however; so far as i know, has never been directly repealed, and serjeant hawkins seems to consider it as still in force. it may however, perhaps, be considered as virtually repealed by the 12th of charles ii, c. 32, sect. 3, which, without expressly taking away the penalties imposed by former statutes, imposes a new penalty, viz., that of twenty shillings for every sheep exported, or attempted to be exported, together with the forfeiture of the sheep and of the owner's share of the ship. the second of them was expressly repealed by the 7th and 8th of william iii, c. 28, sect. 4. by which it is declared that, "whereas the statute of the 13th and 14th of king charles ii, made against the exportation of wool, among other things in the said act mentioned, doth enact the same to be deemed felony; by the severity of which penalty the prosecution of offenders hath not been so effectually put in execution: be it, therefore, enacted by the authority aforesaid, that so much of the said act, which relates to the making the said offence felony, be repealed and made void." the penalties, however, which are either imposed by this milder statute, or which, though imposed by former statutes, are not repealed by this one, are still sufficiently severe. besides the forfeiture of the goods, the exporter incurs the penalty of three shillings for every pound weight of wool either exported or attempted to be exported, that is about four or five times the value. any merchant or other person convicted of this offence is disabled from requiring any debt or account belonging to him from any factor or other person. let his fortune be what it will, whether he is or is not able to pay those heavy penalties, the law means to ruin him completely. but as the morals of the great body of the people are not yet so corrupt as those of the contrivers of this statute, i have not heard that any advantage has ever been taken of this clause. if the person convicted of this offence is not able to pay the penalties within three months after judgment, he is to be transported for seven years, and if he returns before the expiration of that term, he is liable to the pains of felony, without benefit of clergy. the owner of the ship, knowing this offence, forfeits all his interest in the ship and furniture. the master and mariners, knowing this offence, forfeit all their goods and chattels, and suffer three months' imprisonment. by a subsequent statute the master suffers six months' imprisonment. in order to prevent exportation, the whole inland commerce of wool is laid under very burdensome and oppressive restrictions. it cannot be packed in any box, barrel, cask, case, chest, or any other package, but only in packs of leather or pack-cloth, on which must be marked on the outside the words wool or yam, in large letters not less than three inches long, on pain of forfeiting the same and the package, and three shillings for every pound weight, to be paid by the owner or packer. it cannot be loaden on any horse or cart, or carried by land within five miles of the coast, but between sun-rising and sun-setting, on pain of forfeiting the same, the horses and carriages. the hundred next adjoining to the sea-coast, out of or through which the wool is carried or exported, forfeits twenty pounds, if the wool is under the value of ten pounds; and if of greater value, then treble that value, together with treble costs, to be sued for within the year. the execution to be against any two of the inhabitants, whom the sessions must reimburse, by an assessment on the other inhabitants, as in the cases of robbery. and if any person compounds with the hundred for less than this penalty, he is to be imprisoned for five years; and any other person may prosecute. these regulations take place through the whole kingdom. but in the particular counties of kent and sussex, the restrictions are still more troublesome. every owner of wool within ten miles of the sea-coast must given an account in writing, three days after shearing to the next officer of the customs, of the number of his fleeces, and of the places where they are lodged. and before he removes any part of them he must give the like notice of the number and weight of the fleeces, and of the name and abode of the person to whom they are sold, and of the place to which it is intended they should be carried. no person within fifteen miles of the sea, in the said counties, can buy any wool before he enters into bond to the king that no part of the wool which he shall so buy shall be sold by him to any other person within fifteen miles of the sea. if any wool is found carrying towards the sea-side in the said counties, unless it has been entered and security given as aforesaid, it is forfeited, and the offender also forfeits three shillings for every pound weight. if any person lays any wool not entered as aforesaid within fifteen miles of the sea, it must be seized and forfeited; and if, after such seizure, any person claim the same, he must give security to the exchequer that if he is cast upon trial he shall pay treble costs, besides all other penalties. when such restrictions are imposed upon the inland trade, the coasting trade, we may believe, cannot be left very free. every owner of wool who carries or causes to be carried any wool to any port or place on the seacoast, in order to be from thence transported by sea to any other place or port on the coast, must first cause an entry thereof to be made at the port from whence it is intended to be conveyed, containing the weight, marks, and number of the packages, before he brings the same within five miles of that port, on pain of forfeiting the same, and also the horses, carts, and other carriages; and also of suffering and forfeiting as by the other laws in force against the exportation of wool. this law, however (1st william iii, c. 32), is so very indulgent as to declare that, "this shall not hinder any person from carrying his wool home from the place of shearing, though it be within five miles of the sea, provided that in ten days after shearing, and before he remove the wool, he do under his hand certify to the next officer of the customs, the true number of fleeces, and where it is housed; and do not remove the same, without certifying to such officer, under his hand, his intention so to do, three days before." bond must be given that the wool to be carried coastways is to be landed at the particular port for which it is entered outwards; and if any part of it is landed without the presence of an officer, not only the forfeiture of the wool is incurred as in other goods, but the usual additional penalty of three shillings for every pound weight is likewise incurred. our woollen manufactures, in order to justify their demand of such extraordinary restrictions and regulations, confidently asserted that english wool was of a peculiar quality, superior to that of any other country; that the wool of other countries could not, without some mixture of it, be wrought up into any tolerable manufacture; that fine cloth could not be made without it; that england, therefore, if the exportation of it could be totally prevented, could monopolize to herself almost the whole woollen trade of the world; and thus, having no rivals, could sell at what price she pleased, and in a short time acquire the most incredible degree of wealth by the most advantageous balance of trade. this doctrine, like most other doctrines which are confidently asserted by any considerable number of people, was, and still continues to be, most implicitly believed by a much greater numberby almost all those who are either unacquainted with the woollen trade, or who have not made particular inquiries. it is, however, so perfectly false that english wool is in any respect necessary for the making of fine cloth that it is altogether unfit for it. fine cloth is made altogether of spanish wool. english wool cannot be even so mixed with spanish wool as to enter into the composition without spoiling and degrading, in some degree, the fabric of the cloth. it has been shown in the foregoing part of this work that the effect of these regulations has been to depress the price of english wool, not only below what it naturally would be in the present times, but very much below what it actually was in the time of edward iii. the price of scots wool, when in consequence of the union it became subject to the same regulations, is said to have fallen about one half. it is observed by the very accurate and intelligent author of the memoirs of wool, the reverend mr. john smith, that the price of the best english wool in england is generally below what wool of a very inferior quality commonly sells for in the market of amsterdam. to depress the price of this commodity below what may be called its natural and proper price was the avowed purpose of those regulations; and there seems to be no doubt of their having produced the effect that was expected from them. this reduction of price, it may perhaps be thought, by discouraging the growing of wool, must have reduced very much the annual produce of that commodity, though not below what it formerly was, yet below what, in the present state of things, it probably would have been, had it, in consequence of an open and free market, been allowed to rise to the natural and proper price. i am, however, disposed to believe that the quantity of the annual produce cannot have been much, though it may perhaps have been a little, affected by these regulations. the growing of wool is not the chief purpose for which the sheep farmer employs his industry and stock. he expects his profit not so much from the price of the fleece as from that of the carcass; and the average or ordinary price of the latter must even, in many cases, make up to him whatever deficiency there may be in the average or ordinary price of the former. it has been observed in the foregoing part of this work that, "whatever regulations tend to sink the price, either of wool or of raw hides, below what it naturally would be, must, in an improved and cultivated country, have some tendency to raise the price of butcher's meat. the price both of the great and small cattle which are fed on improved and cultivated land must be sufficient to pay the rent which the landlord, and the profit which the farmer has reason to expect from improved and cultivated land. if it is not, they will soon cease to feed them. whatever part of this price, therefore, is not paid by the wool and the hide must be paid by the carcass. the less there is paid for the one, the more must be paid for the other. in what manner this price is to be divided upon the different parts of the beast is indifferent to the landlords and farmers, provided it is all paid to them. in an improved and cultivated country, therefore, their interest as landlords and farmers cannot be much affected by such regulations, though their interest as consumers may by the rise in the price of provisions." according to this reasoning, therefore, this degradation in the price of wool is not likely, in an improved and cultivated country, to occasion any diminution in the annual produce of that commodity, except so far as, by raising the price of mutton, it may somewhat diminish the demand for, and consequently the production of, that particular species of butcher's meat. its effect, however, even in this way, it is probable, is not very considerable. but though its effect upon the quantity of the annual produce may not have been very considerable, its effect upon the quality, it may perhaps be thought, must necessarily have been very great. the degradation in the quality of english wool, if not below what it was in former times, yet below what it naturally would have been in the present state of improvement and cultivation, must have been, it may perhaps be supposed, very nearly in proportion to the degradation of price. as the quality depends upon the breed, upon the pasture, and upon the management and cleanliness of the sheep, during the whole progress of the growth of the fleece, the attention to these circumstances, it may naturally enough be imagined, can never be greater than in proportion to the recompense which the price of the fleece is likely to make for the labour and expense which that attention requires. it happens, however, that the goodness of the fleece depends, in a great measure, upon the health, growth, and bulk of the animal; the same attention which is necessary for the improvement of the carcase is, in some respects, sufficient for that of the fleece. notwithstanding the degradation of price, english wool is said to have been improved considerably during the course even of the present century. the improvement might perhaps have been greater if the price had been better; but the lowness of price, though it may have obstructed, yet certainly it has not altogether prevented that improvement. the violence of these regulations, therefore, seems to have affected neither the quantity nor the quality of the annual produce of wool so much as it might have been expected to do (though i think it probable that it may have affected the latter a good deal more than the former); and the interest of the growers of wool, though it must have been hurt in some degree, seems, upon the whole, to have been much less hurt than could well have been imagined. these considerations, however, will not justify the absolute prohibition of the exportation of wool. but they will fully justify the imposition of a considerable tax upon that exportation. to hurt in any degree the interest of any one order of citizens, for no other purpose but to promote that of some other, is evidently contrary to that justice and equality of treatment which the sovereign owes to all the different orders of his subjects. but the prohibition certainly hurts, in some degree, the interest of the growers of wool, for no other purpose but to promote that of the manufacturers. every different order of citizens is bound to contribute to the support of the sovereign or commonwealth. a tax of five, or even of ten shillings upon the exportation of every ton of wool would produce a very considerable revenue to the sovereign. it would hurt the interest of the growers somewhat less than the prohibition, because it would not probably lower the price of wool quite so much. it would afford a sufficient advantage to the manufacturer, because, though he might not buy his wool altogether so cheap as under the prohibition, he would still buy it, at least, five or ten shillings cheaper than any foreign manufacturer could buy it, besides saving the freight and insurance, which the other would be obliged to pay. it is scarce possible to devise a tax which could produce any considerable revenue to the sovereign, and at the same time occasion so little inconveniency to anybody. the prohibition, notwithstanding all the penalties which guard it, does not prevent the exportation of wool. it is exported, it is well known, in great quantities. the great difference between the price in the home and that in the foreign market presents such a temptation to smuggling that all the rigour of the law cannot prevent it. this illegal exportation is advantageous to nobody but the smuggler. a legal exportation subject to a tax, by affording a revenue to the sovereign, and thereby saving the imposition of some other, perhaps, more burdensome and inconvenient taxes might prove advantageous to all the different subjects of the state. the exportation of fuller's earth or fuller's clay, supposed to be necessary for preparing and cleansing the woolen manufactures, has been subjected to nearly the same penalties as the exportation of wool. even tobacco-pipe clay, though acknowledged to be different from fuller's clay, yet, on account of their resemblance, and because fuller's clay might sometimes be exported as tobacco-pipe clay, has been laid under the same prohibitions and penalties. by the 13th and 14th of charles ii, c. 7, the exportation, not only of raw hides, but of tanned leather, except in the shape of boots, shoes, or slippers, was prohibited; and the law gave a monopoly to our bootmakers and shoemakers, not only against our graziers, but against our tanners. by subsequent statutes our tanners have got themselves exempted from this monopoly upon paying a small tax of only one shilling on the hundred-weight of tanned leather, weighing one hundred and twelve pounds. they have obtained likewise the drawback of two-thirds of the excise duties imposed upon their commodity even when exported without further manufacture. all manufactures of leather may be exported duty free; and the exporter is besides entitled to the drawback of the whole duties of excise. our graziers still continue subject to the old monopoly. graziers separated from one another, and dispersed through all the different corners of the country, cannot, without great difficulty, combine together for the purpose either of imposing monopolies upon their fellow citizens, or of exempting themselves from such as may have been imposed upon them by other people. manufacturers of all kinds, collected together in numerous bodies in all great cities, easily can. even the horns of cattle are prohibited to be exported; and the two insignificant trades of the horner and combmaker enjoy, in this respect, a monopoly against the graziers. restraints, either by prohibitions or by taxes, upon the exportation of goods which are partially, but not completely manufactured, are not peculiar to the manufacture of leather. as long as anything remains to be done, in order to fit any commodity for immediate use and consumption, our manufacturers think that they themselves ought to have the doing of it. woolen yarn and worsted are prohibited to be exported under the same penalties as wool. even white cloths are subject to a duty upon exportation, and our dyers have so far obtained a monopoly against our clothiers. our clothiers would probably have been able to defend themselves against it, but it happens that the greater part of our principal clothiers are themselves likewise dyers. watch-cases, clockcases, and dial-plates for clocks and watches have been prohibited to be exported. our clock-makers and watch-makers are, it seems, unwilling that the price of this sort of workmanship should be raised upon them by the competition of foreigners. by some old statutes of edward m, henry viii, and edward vi, the exportation of all metals was prohibited. lead and tin were alone excepted probably on account of the great abundance of those metals, in the exportation of which a considerable part of the trade of the kingdom in those days consisted. for the encouragement of the mining trade, the 5th of william and mary, c. 17, exempted from the prohibition iron, copper, and mundic metal made from british ore. the exportation of all sorts of copper bars, foreign as well as british, was afterwards permitted by the 9th and 10th of william iii, c. 26. the exportation of unmanufactured brass, of what is called gun-metal, bell-metal, and shroff-metal, still continues to be prohibited. brass manufactures of all sorts may be exported duty free. the exportation of the materials of manufacture, where it is not altogether prohibited, is in many cases subjected to considerable duties. by the 8th george i, c. 15, the exportation of all goods, the produce or manufacture of great britain, upon which any duties had been imposed by former statutes, was rendered duty free. the following goods, however, were excepted: alum, lead, lead ore, tin, tanned leather, copperas, coals, wool cards, white woolen cloths, lapis calaminaris, skins of all sorts, glue, coney hair or wool, hares' wool, hair of all sorts, horses, and litharge of lead. if you expect horses, all these are either materials of manufacture, or incomplete manufactures (which may be considered as materials for still further manufacture), or instruments of trade. this statute leaves them subject to all the old duties which had ever been imposed upon them, the old subsidy and one per cent outwards. by the same statute a great number of foreign drugs for dyers' use are exempted from all duties upon importation. each of them, however, is afterwards subjected to a certain duty, not indeed a very heavy one, upon exportation. our dyers, it seems, while they thought it for their interest to encourage the importation of those drugs, by an exemption from all duties, thought it likewise for their interest to throw some small discouragement upon their exportation. the avidity, however, which suggested this notable piece of mercantile ingenuity, most probably disappointed itself of its object. it necessarily taught the importers to be more careful than they might otherwise have been that their importation should not exceed what was necessary for the supply of the home market. the home market was at all times likely to be more scantily supplied; the commodities were at all times likely to be somewhat dearer there than they would have been had the exportation been rendered as free as the importation. by the above-mentioned statute, gum senega, or gum arabic, being among the enumerated dyeing drugs, might be imported duty free. they were subjected, indeed, to a small poundage duty, amounting only to threepence in the hundredweight upon their re-exportation. france enjoyed, at that time, an exclusive trade to the country most productive of those drugs, that which lies in the neighbourhood of the senegal; and the british market could not easily be supplied by the immediate importation of them from the place of growth. by the 25th george ii, therefore, gum senega was allowed to be imported (contrary to the general dispositions of the act of navigation) from any part of europe. as the law, however, did not mean to encourage this species of trade, so contrary to the general principles of the mercantile policy of england, it imposed a duty of ten shillings the hundredweight upon such importation, and no part of this duty was to be afterwards drawn back upon its exportation. the successful war which began in 1755 gave great britain the same exclusive trade to those countries which france had enjoyed before. our manufacturers, as soon as the peace was made, endeavoured to avail themselves of this advantage, and to establish a monopoly in their own favour both against the growers and against the importers of this commodity. by the 5th george iii, therefore, c. 37, the exportation of gum senega from his majesty's dominions in africa was confined to great britain, and was subjected to all the same restrictions, regulations, forfeitures, and penalties as that of the enumerated commodities of the british colonies in america and the west indies. its importation, indeed, was subjected to a small duty of sixpence the hundredweight, but its re-exportation was subjected to the enormous duty of one pound ten shillings the hundredweight. it was the intention of our manufacturers that the whole produce of those countries should be imported into great britain, and, in order that they themselves might be enabled to buy it at their own price, that no part of it should be exported again but at such an expense as would sufficiently discourage that exportation. their avidity, however, upon this, as well as upon many other occasions, disappointed itself of its object. this enormous duty presented such a temptation to smuggling that great quantities of this commodity were clandestinely exported, probably to all the manufacturing countries of europe, put particularly to holland, not only from great britain but from africa. upon this account, by the 14th george iii, c. 10, this duty upon exportation was reduced to five shillings the hundredweight. in the book of rates, according to which the old subsidy was levied, beaver skins were estimated at six shillings and eightpence a piece, and the different subsidies and imposts, which before the year 1722 had been laid upon their importation, amounted to one-fifth part of the rate, or to sixteenpence upon each skin; all of which, except half the old subsidy, amounting only to twopence, was drawn back upon exportation. this duty upon the importation of so important a material of manufacture had been thought too high, and in the year 1722 the rate was reduced to two shillings and sixpence, which reduced the duty upon importation to sixpence, and of this only one half was to be drawn back upon exportation. the same successful war put the country most productive of beaver under the dominion of great britain, and beaver skins being among the enumerated commodities, their exportation from america was consequently confined to the market of great britain. our manufacturers soon bethought themselves of the advantage which they might make of this circumstance, and in the year 1764 the duty upon the importation of beaver-skin was reduced to one penny, but the duty upon exportation was raised to sevenpence each skin, without any drawback of the duty upon importation. by the same law, a duty of eighteenpence the pound was imposed upon the exportation of beaverwool or wombs, without making any alteration in the duty upon the importation of that commodity, which, when imported by britain and in british shipping, amounted at that time to between fourpence and fivepence the piece. coals may be considered both as a material of manufacture and as an instrument of trade. heavy duties, accordingly, have been imposed upon their exportation, amounting at present (1783) to more than five shillings the ton, or to more than fifteen shillings the chaldron, newcastle measures, which is in most cases more than the original value of the commodity at the coal pit, or even at the shipping port for exportation. the exportation, however, of the instruments of trade, properly so called, is commonly restrained, not by high duties, but by absolute prohibitions. thus by the 7th and 8th of william iii, c. 20, sect. 8, the exportation of frames or engines for knitting gloves or stockings is prohibited under the penalty, not only of the forfeiture of such frames or engines so exported, or attempted to be exported, but of forty pounds, one half to the king, the other to the person who shall inform or sue for the same. in the same manner, by the 14th george iii, c. 71, the exportation to foreign parts of any utensils made use of in the cotton, linen, woollen, and silk manufactures is prohibited under the penalty, not only of the forfeiture of such utensils, but of two hundred pounds, to be paid by the person who shall offend in this manner, and likewise of two hundred pounds to be paid by the master of the ship who shall knowingly suffer such utensils to be loaded on board his ship. when such heavy penalties were imposed upon the exportation of the dead instruments of trade, it could not well be expected that the living instrument, the artificer, should be allowed to go free. accordingly, by the 5th george i, c. 27, the person who shall be convicted of enticing any artificer of, or in any of the manufactures of great britain, to go into any foreign parts in order to practise or teach his trade, is liable for the first offence to be fined in any sum not exceeding one hundred pounds, and to three months' imprisonment, and until the fine shall be paid; and for the second offence, to be fined in any sum at the discretion of the court, and to imprisonment for twelve months, and until the fine shall be paid. by the 23rd george ii, c. 13, this penalty is increased for the first offence to five hundred pounds for every artificer so enticed, and to twelve months' imprisonment, and until the fine shall be paid; and for the second offence, to one thousand pounds, and to two years' imprisonment, and until the fine shall be paid. by the former of those two statutes, upon proof that any person has been enticing any artificer, or that any artificer has promised or contracted to go into foreign parts for the purposes aforesaid, such artificer may be obliged to give security at the discretion of the court that he shall not go beyond the seas, and may be committed to prison until he give such security. if any artificer has gone beyond the seas, and is exercising or teaching his trade in any foreign country, upon warning being given to him by any of his majesty's ministers or consuls abroad, or by one of his majesty's secretaries of state for the time being, if he does not, within six months after such warning, return into this realm, and from thenceforth abide and inhabit continually within the same, he is from thenceforth declared incapable of taking any legacy devised to him within this kingdom, or of being executor or administrator to any person, or of taking any lands within this kingdom by descent, device, or purchase. he likewise forfeits to the king all his lands, goods, and chattels, is declared an alien in every respect, and is put out of the king's protection. it is unnecessary, i imagine, to observe how contrary such regulations are to the boasted liberty of the subject, of which we affect to be so very jealous; but which, in this case, is so plainly sacrificed to the futile interests of our merchants and manufacturers. the laudable motive of all these regulations is to extend our own manufactures, not by their own improvement, but by the depression of those of all our neighbours, and by putting an end, as much as possible, to the troublesome competition of such odious and disagreeable rivals. our master manufacturers think it reasonable that they themselves should have the monopoly of the ingenuity of all their countrymen. though by restraining, in some trades, the number of apprentices which can be employed at one time, and by imposing the necessity of a long apprenticeship in all trades, they endeavour, all of them, to confine the knowledge of their respective employments to as small a number as possible; they are unwilling, however, that any part of this small number should go abroad to instruct foreigners. consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. the maxim is so perfectly self evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. but in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce. in the restraints upon the importation of all foreign commodities which can come into competition with those of our own growth or manufacture, the interest of the home consumer is evidently sacrificed to that of the producer. it is altogether for the benefit of the latter that the former is obliged to pay that enhancement of price which this monopoly almost always occasions. it is altogether for the benefit of the producer that bounties are granted upon the exportation of some of his productions. the home consumer is obliged to pay, first, the tax which is necessary for paying the bounty, and secondly, the still greater tax which necessarily arises from the enhancement of the price of the commodity in the home market. by the famous treaty of commerce with portugal, the consumer is prevented by high duties from purchasing of a neighbouring country a commodity which our own climate does not produce, but is obliged to purchase it of a distant country, though it is acknowledged that the commodity of the distant country is of a worse quality than that of the near one. the home consumer is obliged to submit to this inconveniency in order that the producer may import into the distant country some of his productions upon more advantageous terms than he would otherwise have been allowed to do. the consumer, too, is obliged to pay whatever enhancement in the price if those very productions this forced exportation may occasion in the home market. but in the system of laws which has been established for the management of our american and west indian colonies, the interest of the home consumer has been sacrificed to that of the producer with a more extravagant profusion than in all our other commercial regulations. a great empire has been established for the sole purpose of raising up a nation of customers who should be obliged to buy from the shops of our different producers all the goods with which these could supply them. for the sake of that little enhancement of price which this monopoly might afford our producers, the home consumers have been burdened with the whole expense of maintaining and defending that empire. for this purpose, and for this purpose only, in the two last wars, more than two hundred millions have been spent, and a new debt of more than a hundred and seventy millions has been contracted over and above all that had been expended for the same purpose in former wars. the interest of this debt alone is not only greater than the whole extraordinary profit which it ever could be pretended was made by the monopoly of the colony trade, but than the whole value of that trade, or than the whole value of the goods which at an average have been annually exported to the colonies. it cannot be very difficult to determine who have been the contrivers of this whole mercantile system; not the consumers, we may believe, whose interest has been entirely neglected; but the producers, whose interest has been so carefully attended to; and among this latter class our merchants and manufacturers have been by far the principal architects. in the mercantile regulations, which have been taken notice of in this chapter, the interest of our manufacturers has been most peculiarly attended to; and the interest, not so much of the consumers, as that of some other sets of producers, has been sacrificed to it. chapter ix of the agricultural systems, or of those systems of political economy which represent the produce of land as either the sole or the principal source of the revenue and wealth every country the agricultural systems of political economy will not require so long an explanation as that which i have thought it necessary to bestow upon the mercantile or commercial system. that system which represents the produce of land as the sole source of the revenue and wealth of every country has, so far as i know, never been adopted by any nation, and it at present exists only in the speculations of a few men of great learning and ingenuity in france. it would not, surely, be worth while to examine at great length the errors of a system which never has done, and probably never will do, any harm in any part of the world. i shall endeavour to explain, however, as distinctly as i can, the great outlines of this very ingenious system. mr. colbert, the famous minister of louis xiv, was a man of probity, of great industry and knowledge of detail, of great experience and acuteness in the examination of public accounts, and of abilities, in short, every way fitted for introducing method and good order into the collection and expenditure of the public revenue. that minister had unfortunately embraced all the prejudices of the mercantile system, in its nature and essence a system of restraint and regulation, and such as could scarce fail to be agreeable to a laborious and plodding man of business, who had been accustomed to regulate the different departments of public offices, and to establish the necessary checks and controls for confining each to its proper sphere. the industry and commerce of a great country he endeavoured to regulate upon the same model as the departments of a public office; and instead of allowing every man to pursue his own interest in his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice, he bestowed upon certain branches of industry extraordinary privileges, while he laid others under as extraordinary restraints. he was not only disposed, like other european ministers, to encourage more the industry of the towns than that of the country; but, in order to support the industry of the towns, he was willing even to depress and keep down that of the country. in order to render provisions cheap to the inhabitants of the towns, and thereby to encourage manufactures and foreign commerce, he prohibited altogether the exportation of corn, and thus excluded the inhabitants of the country from every foreign market for by far the most important part of the produce of their industry. this prohibition, joined to the restraints imposed by the ancient provincial laws of france upon the transportation of corn from one province to another, and to the arbitrary and degrading taxes which are levied upon the cultivators in almost all the provinces, discouraged and kept down the agriculture of that country very much below the state to which it would naturally have risen in so very fertile a soil and so very happy a climate. this state of discouragement and depression was felt more or less in every different part of the country, and many different inquiries were set on foot concerning the causes of it. one of those causes appeared to be the preference given, by the institutions of mr. colbert, to the industry of the towns above that of the country. if the rod be bent too much one way, says the proverb, in order to make it straight you must bend it as much the other. the french philosophers, who have proposed the system which represents agriculture as the sole source of the revenue and wealth of every country, seem to have adopted this proverbial maxim; and as in the plan of mr. colbert the industry of the towns was certainly overvalued in comparison with that of the country; so in their system it seems to be as certainly undervalued. the different orders of people who have ever been supposed to contribute in any respect towards the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, they divide into three classes. the first is the class of the proprietors of land. the second is the class of the cultivators, of farmers and country labourers, whom they honour with the peculiar appellation of the productive class. the third is the class of artificers, manufacturers, and merchants, whom they endeavour to degrade by the humiliating appellation of the barren or unproductive class. the class of proprietors contributes to the annual produce by the expense which they may occasionally lay out upon the improvement of the land, upon the buildings, drains, enclosures, and other ameliorations, which they may either make or maintain upon it, and by means of which the cultivators are enabled, with the same capital, to raise a greater produce, and consequently to pay a greater rent. this advanced rent may be considered as the interest or profit due to the proprietor upon the expense or capital which he thus employs in the improvement of his land. such expenses are in this system called ground expenses (depenses foncieres.) the cultivators or farmers contribute to the annual produce by what are in this system called the original and annual expenses (depenses primitives et depenses annuelles) which they lay out upon the cultivation of the land. the original expenses consist in the instruments of husbandry, in the stock of cattle, in the seed, and in the maintenance of the farmer's family, servants, and cattle during at least a great part of the first year of his occupancy, or till he can receive some return from the land. the annual expenses consist in the seed, in the wear and tear of the instruments of husbandry, and in the annual maintenance of the farmer's servants and cattle, and of his family too, so far as any part of them can be considered as servants employed in cultivation. that part of the produce of the land which remains to him after paying the rent ought to be sufficient, first, to replace to him within a reasonable time, at least during the term of his occupancy, the whole of his original expenses, together with the ordinary profits of stock; and, secondly, to replace to him annually the whole of his annual expenses, together likewise with the ordering profits of stock. those two sorts of expenses are two capitals which the farmer employs in cultivation; and unless they are regularly restored to him, together with a reasonable profit, he cannot carry on his employment upon a level with other employments; but, from a regard to his own interest, must desert it as soon as possible and seek some other. that part of the produce of the land which is thus necessary for enabling the farmer to continue his business ought to be considered as a fund sacred to cultivation, which, if the landlord violates, he necessarily reduces the produce of his own land, and in a few years not only disables the farmer from paying this racked rent, but from paying the reasonable rent which he might otherwise have got for his land. the rent which properly belongs to the landlord is no more than the net produce which remains after paying in the completest manner all the necessary expenses which must be previously laid out in order to raise the gross or the whole produce. it is because the labour of the cultivators, over and above paying completely all those necessary expenses, affords a net produce of this kind that this class of people are in this system peculiarly distinguished by the honourable appellation of the productive class. their original and annual expenses are for the same reason called, in this system, productive expenses, because, over and above replacing their own value, they occasion the annual reproduction of this net produce. the ground expenses, as they are called, or what the landlord lays out upon the improvement of his land, are in this system, too, honoured with the appellation of productive expenses. till the whole of those expenses, together with the ordinary profits of stock, have been completely repaid to him by the advanced rent which he gets from his land, that advanced rent ought to be regarded as sacred and inviolable, both by the church and by the king; ought to be subject neither to tithe nor to taxation. if it is otherwise, by discouraging the improvement of land the church discourages the future increase of her own tithes, and the king the future increase of his own taxes. as in a well-ordered state of things, therefore, those ground expenses, over and above reproducing in the completest manner their own value, occasion likewise after a certain time a reproduction of a net produce, they are in this system considered as productive expenses. the ground expenses of the landlord, however, together with the original and the annual expenses of the farmer, are the only three sorts of expenses which in this system are considered as productive. all other expenses and all other orders of people, even those who in the common apprehensions of men are regarded as the most productive, are in this account of things represented as altogether barren and unproductive. artificers and manufacturers in particular, whose industry, in the common apprehensions of men, increases so much the value of the rude produce of land, are in this system represented as a class of people altogether barren and unproductive. their labour, it is said, replaces only the stock which employs them, together with its ordinary profits. that stock consists in the materials, tools, and wages advanced to them by their employer; and is the fund destined for their employment and maintenance. its profits are the fund destined for the maintenance of their employer. their employer, as he advances to them the stock of materials, tools, and wages necessary for their employment, so he advances to himself what is necessary for his own maintenance, and this maintenance he generally proportions to the profit which he expects to make by the price of their work. unless its price repays to him the maintenance which he advances to himself, as well as the materials, tools, and wages which he advances to his workmen, it evidently does not repay to him the whole expense which he lays out upon it. the profits of manufacturing stock therefore are not, like the rent of land, a net produce which remains after completely repaying the whole expense which must be laid out in order to obtain them. the stock of the farmer yields him a profit as well as that of the master manufacturer; and it yields a rent likewise to another person, which that of the master manufacturer does not. the expense, therefore, laid out in employing and maintaining artificers and manufacturers does no more than continue, if one may say so, the existence of its own value, and does not produce any new value. it is therefore altogether a barren and unproductive expense. the expense, on the contrary, laid out in employing farmers and country labourers, over and above continuing the existence of its own value, produces a new value, the rent of the landlord. it is therefore a productive expense. mercantile stock is equally barren and unproductive with manufacturing stock. it only continues the existence of its own value, without producing any new value. its profits are only the repayment of the maintenance which its employer advances to himself during the time that he employs it, or till he receives the returns of it. they are only the repayment of a part of the expense which must be laid out in employing it. the labour of artificers and manufacturers never adds anything to the value of the whole annual amount of the rude produce of the land. it adds, indeed, greatly to the value of some particular parts of it. but the consumption which in the meantime it occasions of other parts is precisely equal to the value which it adds to those parts; so that the value of the whole amount is not, at any one moment of time, in the least augmented by it. the person who works the lace of a pair of fine ruffles, for example, will sometimes raise the value of perhaps a pennyworth of flax to thirty pounds sterling. but though at first sight he appears thereby to multiply the value of a part of the rude produce about seven thousand and two hundred times, he in reality adds nothing to the value of the whole annual amount of the rude produce. the working of that lace costs him perhaps two years' labour. the thirty pounds which he gets for it when it is finished is no more than the repayment of the subsistence which he advances to himself during the two years that he is employed about it. the value which, by every day's, month's, or year's labour, he adds to the flax does no more than replace the value of his own consumption during that day, month, or year. at no moment of time, therefore, does he add anything to the value of the whole annual amount of the rude produce of the land: the portion of that produce which he is continually consuming being always equal to the value which he is continually producing. the extreme poverty of the greater part of the persons employed in this expensive though trifling manufacture may satisfy us that the price of their work does not in ordinary cases exceed the value of their subsistence. it is otherwise with the work of farmers and country labourers. the rent of the landlord is a value which, in ordinary cases, it is continually producing, over and above replacing, in the most complete manner, the whole consumption, the whole expense laid out upon the employment and maintenance both of the workmen and of their employer. artificers, manufacturers, and merchants can augment the revenue and wealth of their society by parsimony only; or, as it in this system, by privation, that is, by depriving themselves a part of the funds destined for their own subsistence. they annually reproduce nothing but those funds. unless, therefore, they annually save some part of them, unless they annually deprive themselves of the enjoyment of some part of them, the revenue and wealth of their society can never be in the smallest degree augmented by means of their industry. farmers and country labourers, on the contrary, may enjoy completely the whole funds destined for their own subsistence, and yet augment at the same time the revenue and wealth of their society. over and above what is destined for their own subsistence, their industry annually affords a net produce, of which the augmentation necessarily augments the revenue and wealth of their society. nations therefore which, like france or england, consist in a great measure of proprietors and cultivators can be enriched by industry and enjoyment. nations, on the contrary, which, like holland and hamburg, are composed chiefly of merchants, artificers, and manufacturers can grow rich only through parsimony and privation. as the interest of nations so differently circumstanced is very different, so is likewise the common character of the people: in those of the former kind, liberality, frankness and good fellowship naturally make a part of that common character: in the latter, narrowness, meanness, and a selfish disposition, averse to all social pleasure and enjoyment. the unproductive class, that of merchants, artificers, and manufacturers, is maintained and employed altogether at the expense of the two other classes, of that of proprietors, and of that of cultivators. they furnish it both with the materials of its work and with the fund of its subsistence, with the corn and cattle which it consumes while it is employed about that work. the proprietors and cultivators finally pay both the wages of all the workmen of the unproductive class, and of the profits of all their employers. those workmen and their employers are properly the servants of the proprietors and cultivators. they are only servants who work without doors, as menial servants work within. both the one and the other, however, are equally maintained at the expense of the same masters. the labour of both is equally unproductive. it adds nothing to the value of the sum total of the rude produce of the land. instead of increasing the value of that sum total, it is a charge and expense which must be paid out of it. the unproductive class, however, is not only useful, but greatly useful to the other two classes. by means of the industry of merchants, artificers, and manufacturers, the proprietors and cultivators can purchase both the foreign goods and the manufactured produce of their own country which they have occasion for with the produce of a much smaller quantity of their own labour than what they would be obliged to employ if they were to attempt, in an awkward and unskilful manner, either to import the one or to make the other for their own use. by means of the unproductive class, the cultivators are delivered from many cares which would otherwise distract their attention from the cultivation of land. the superiority of produce, which, in consequence of this undivided attention, they are enabled to raise, is fully sufficient to pay the whole expense which the maintenance and employment of the unproductive class costs either the proprietors or themselves. the industry of merchants, artificers, and manufacturers, though in its own nature altogether unproductive, yet contributes in this manner indirectly to increase the produce of the land. it increases the productive powers of productive labour by leaving it at liberty to confine itself to its proper employment, the cultivation of land; and the plough goes frequently the easier and the better by means of the labour of the man whose business is most remote from the plough. it can never be the interest of the proprietors and cultivators to restrain or to discourage in any respect the industry of merchants, artificers, and manufacturers. the greater the liberty which this unproductive class enjoys, the greater will be the competition in all the different trades which compose it, and the cheaper will the other two classes be supplied, both with foreign goods and with the manufactured produce of their own country. it can never be the interest of the unproductive class to oppress the other two classes. it is the surplus produce of the land, or what remains after deducting the maintenance, first, of the cultivators, and afterwards of the proprietors, that maintains and employs the unproductive class. the greater this surplus the greater must likewise be the maintenance and employment of that class. the establishment of perfect justice, of perfect liberty, and of perfect equality is the very simple secret which most effectually secures the highest degree of prosperity to all the three classes. the merchants, artificers, and manufacturers of those mercantile states which, like holland and hamburg, consist chiefly of this unproductive class, are in the same manner maintained and employed altogether at the expense of the proprietors and cultivators of land. the only difference is, that those proprietors and cultivators are, the greater part of them, placed at a most inconvenient distance from the merchants, artificers, and manufacturers whom they supply with the materials of their work and the fund of their subsistencesthe inhabitants of other countries and the subjects of other governments. such mercantile states, however, are not only useful, but greatly useful to the inhabitants of those other countries. they fill up, in some measure, a very important void, and supply the place of the merchants, artificers, and manufacturers whom the inhabitants of those countries ought to find at home, but whom, from some defect in their policy, they do not find at home. it can never be the interest of those landed nations, if i may call them so, to discourage or distress the industry of such mercantile states by imposing high duties upon their trade or upon the commodities which they furnish. such duties, by rendering those commodities dearer, could serve only to sink the real value of the surplus produce of their own land, with which, or, what comes to the same thing, with the price of which those commodities are purchased. such duties could serve only to discourage the increase of that surplus produce, and consequently the improvement and cultivation of their own land. the most effectual expedient, on the contrary, for raising the value of that surplus produce, for encouraging its increase, and consequently the improvement and cultivation of their own land would be to allow the most perfect freedom to the trade of all such mercantile nations. this perfect freedom of trade would even be the most effectual expedient for supplying them, in due time, with all the artificers, manufacturers, and merchants whom they wanted at home, and for filling up in the properest and most advantageous manner that very important void which they felt there. the continual increase of the surplus produce of their land would, in due time, create a greater capital than what could be employed with the ordinary rate of profit in the improvement and cultivation of land; and the surplus part of it would naturally turn itself to the employment of artificers and manufacturers at home. but those artificers and manufacturers, finding at home both the materials of their work and the fund of their subsistence, might immediately even with much less art and skill be able to work as cheap as the like artificers and manufacturers of such mercantile states who had both to bring from a great distance. even though, from want of art and skill, they might not for some time be able to work as cheap, yet, finding a market at home, they might be able to sell their work there as cheap as that of the artificers and manufacturers of such mercantile states, which could not be brought to that market but from so great a distance; and as their art and skill improved, they would soon be able to sell it cheaper. the artificers and manufacturers of such mercantile states, therefore, would immediately be rivalled in the market of those landed nations, and soon after undersold and jostled out of it altogether. the cheapness of the manufactures of those landed nations, in consequence of the gradual improvements of art and skill, would, in due time, extend their sale beyond the home market, and carry them to many foreign markets, from which they would in the same manner gradually jostle out many of the manufacturers of such mercantile nations. this continual increase both of the rude and manufactured produce of those landed nations would in due time create a greater capital than could, with the ordinary rate of profit, be employed either in agriculture or in manufactures. the surplus of this capital would naturally turn itself to foreign trade, and be employed in exporting to foreign countries such parts of the rude and manufactured produce of its own country as exceeded the demand of the home market. in the exportation of the produce of their own country, the merchants of a landed nation would have an advantage of the same kind over those of mercantile nations which its artificers and manufacturers had over the artificers and manufacturers of such nations; the advantage of finding at home that cargo and those stores and provisions which the others were obliged to seek for at a distance. with inferior art and skill in navigation, therefore, they would be able to sell that cargo as cheap in foreign markets as the merchants of such mercantile nations; and with equal art and skill they would be able to sell it cheaper. they would soon, therefore, rival those mercantile nations in this branch of foreign trade, and in due time would jostle them out of it altogether. according to this liberal and generous system, therefore, the most advantageous method in which a landed nation can raise up artificers, manufacturers, and merchants of its own is to grant the most perfect freedom of trade to the artificers, manufacturers, and merchants of all other nations. it thereby raises the value of the surplus produce of its own land, of which the continual increase gradually establishes a fund, which in due time necessarily raises up all the artificers, manufacturers, and merchants whom it has occasion for. when a landed nation, on the contrary, oppresses either by high duties or by prohibitions the trade of foreign nations, it necessarily hurts its own interest in two different ways. first, by raising the price of all foreign goods and of all sorts of manufactures, it necessarily sinks the real value of the surplus produce of its own land, with which, or, what comes to the same thing, with the price of which it purchases those foreign goods and manufactures. secondly, by giving a sort of monopoly of the home market to its own merchants, artificers, and manufacturers, it raises the rate of mercantile and manufacturing profit in proportion to that of agricultural profit, and consequently either draws from agriculture a part of the capital which had before been employed in it, or hinders from going to it a part of what would otherwise have gone to it. this policy, therefore, discourages agriculture in two different ways; first, by sinking the real value of its produce, and thereby lowering the rate of its profit; and, secondly, by raising the rate of profit in all other employments. agriculture is rendered less advantageous, and trade and manufactures more advantageous than they otherwise would be; and every man is tempted by his own interest to turn, as much as he can, both his capital and his industry from the former to the latter employments. though, by this oppressive policy, a landed nation should be able to raise up artificers, manufacturers, and merchants of its own somewhat sooner than it could do by the freedom of trade a matter, however, which is not a little doubtfulyet it would raise them up, if one may say so, prematurely, and before it was perfectly ripe for them. by raising up too hastily one species of industry, it would depress another more valuable species of industry. by raising up too hastily a species of industry which only replaces the stock which employs it, together with the ordinary profit, it would depress a species of industry which, over and above replacing that stock with its profit, affords likewise a net produce, a free rent to the landlord. it would depress productive labour, by encouraging too hastily that labour which is altogether barren and unproductive. in what manner, according to this system, the sum total of the annual produce of the land is distributed among the three classes above mentioned, and in what manner the labour of the unproductive class does no more than replace the value of its own consumption, without increasing in any respect the value of that sum total, is represented by mr. quesnai, the very ingenious and profound author of this system, in some arithmetical formularies. the first of these formularies, which by way of eminence he peculiarly distinguishes by the name of the economical table, represents the manner in which he supposes the distribution takes place in a state of the most perfect liberty and therefore of the highest prosperityin a state where the annual produce is such as to afford the greatest possible net produce, and where each class enjoys its proper share of the whole annual produce. some subsequent formularies represent the manner in which he supposes this distribution is made in different states of restraint and regulation; in which either the class of proprietors or the barren and unproductive class is more favoured than the class of cultivators, and in which either the one or the other encroaches more or less upon the share which ought properly to belong to this productive class. every such encroachment, every violation of that natural distribution, which the most perfect liberty would establish, must, according to this system, necessarily degrade more or less, from one year to another, the value and sum total of the annual produce, and must necessarily occasion a gradual declension in the real wealth and revenue of the society; a declension of which the progress must be quicker or slower, according to the degree of this encroachment, according as that natural distribution which the most perfect liberty would establish is more or less violated. those subsequent formularies represent the different degrees of declension which, according to this system, correspond to the different degrees in which this natural distribution is violated. some speculative physicians seem to have imagined that the health of the human body could be preserved only by a certain precise regimen of diet and exercise, of which every, the smallest, violation necessarily occasioned some degree of disease or disorder proportioned to the degree of the violation. experience, however, would seem to show that the human body frequently preserves, to all appearances at least, the most perfect state of health under a vast variety of different regimens; even under some which are generally believed to be very far from being perfectly wholesome. but the healthful state of the human body, it would seem, contains in itself some unknown principle of preservation, capable either of preventing or of correcting, in many respects, the bad effects even of a very faulty regimen. mr. quesnai, who was himself a physician, and a very speculative physician, seems to have entertained a notion of the same kind concerning the political body, and to have imagined that it would thrive and prosper only under a certain precise regimen, the exact regimen of perfect liberty and perfect justice. he seems not to have considered that, in the political body, the natural effort which every man is continually making to better his own condition is a principle of preservation capable of preventing and correcting, in many respects, the bad effects of a political economy, in some degree, both partial and oppressive. such a political economy, though it no doubt retards more or less, is not always capable of stopping altogether the natural progress of a nation towards wealth and prosperity, and still less of making it go backwards. if a nation could not prosper without the enjoyment of perfect liberty and perfect justice, there is not in the world a nation which could ever have prospered. in the political body, however, the wisdom of nature has fortunately made ample provision for remedying many of the bad effects of the folly and injustice of man, in the same manner as it has done in the natural body for remedying those of his sloth and intemperance. the capital error of this system, however, seems to lie in its representing the class of artificers, manufacturers, and merchants as altogether barren and unproductive. the following observations may serve to show the impropriety of this representation. first, this class, it is acknowledged, reproduces annually the value of its own annual consumption, and continues, at least, the existence of the stock or capital which maintains and employs it. but upon this account alone the denomination of barren or unproductive should seem to be very improperly applied to it. we should not call a marriage barren or unproductive though it produced only a son and a daughter, to replace the father and mother, and though it did not increase the number of the human species, but only continued it as it was before. farmers and country labourers, indeed, over and above the stock which maintains and employs them, reproduce annually a net produce, a free rent to the landlord. as a marriage which affords three children is certainly more productive than one which affords only two; so the labour of farmers and country labourers is certainly more productive than that of merchants, artificers, and manufacturers. the superior produce of the one class, however, does not render the other barren or unproductive. secondly, it seems, upon this account, altogether improper to consider artificers, manufacturers, and merchants in the same light as menial servants. the labour of menial servants does not continue the existence of the fund which maintains and employs them. their maintenance and employment is altogether at the expense of their masters, and the work which they perform is not of a nature to repay that expense. that work consists in services which perish generally in the very instant of their performance, and does not fix or realize itself in any vendible commodity which can replace the value of their wages and maintenance. the labour, on the contrary, of artificers, manufacturers, and merchants naturally does fix and realize itself in some such vendible commodity. it is upon this account that, in the chapter in which i treat of productive and unproductive labour, i have classed artificers, manufacturers, and merchants among the productive labourers, and menial servants among the barren or unproductive. thirdly, it seems upon every supposition improper to say that the labour of artificers, manufacturers, and merchants does not increase the real revenue of the society. though we should suppose, for example, as it seems to be supposed in this system, that the value of the daily, monthly, and yearly consumption of this class was exactly equal to that of its daily, monthly, and yearly production, yet it would not from thence follow that its labour added nothing to the real revenue, to the real value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the society. an artificer, for example, who, in the first six months after harvest, executes ten pounds' worth of work, though he should in the same time consume ten pounds' worth of corn and other necessaries, yet really adds the value of ten pounds to the annual produce of the land and labour of the society. while he has been consuming a half-yearly revenue of ten pounds' worth of corn and other necessaries, he has produced an equal value of work capable of purchasing, either to himself or some other person, an equal half-yearly revenue. the value, therefore, of what has been consumed and produced during these six months is equal, not to ten, but to twenty pounds. it is possible, indeed, that no more than ten pounds' worth of this value may ever have existed at any one moment of time. but if the ten pounds' worth of corn and other necessaties, which were consumed by the artificer, had been consumed by a soldier or by a menial servant, the value of that part of the annual produce which existed at the end of the six months would have been ten pounds less than it actually is in consequence of the labour of the artificer. though the value of what the artificer produces, therefore, should not at any one moment of time be supposed greater than the value he consumes, yet at every moment of time the actually existing value of goods in the market is, in consequence of what he produces, greater than it otherwise would be. when the patrons of this system assert that the consumption of artificers, manufacturers, and merchants is equal to the value of what they produce, they probably mean no more than that their revenue, or the fund destined for their consumption, is equal to it. but if they had expressed themselves more accurately, and only asserted that the revenue of this class was equal to the value of what they produced, it might readily have occurred to the reader that what would naturally be saved out of this revenue must necessarily increase more or less the real wealth of the society. in order, therefore, to make out something like an argument, it was necessary that they should express themselves as they have done; and this argument, even supposing things actually were as it seems to presume them to be, turns out to be a very inconclusive one. fourthly, farmers and country labourers can no more augment, without parsimony, the real revenue, the annual produce of the land and labour of their society, than artificers, manufacturers, and merchants. the annual produce of the land and labour of any society can be augmented only in two ways; either, first, by some improvement in the productive powers of the useful labour actually maintained within it; or, secondly, by some increase in the quantity of that labour. the improvement in the productive powers of useful labour depend, first, upon the improvement in the ability of the workman; and, secondly, upon that of the machinery with which he works. but the labour of artificers and manufacturers, as it is capable of being more subdivided, and the labour of each workman reduced to a greater simplicity of operation than that of farmers and country labourers, so it is likewise capable of both these sorts of improvements in a much higher degree. in this respect, therefore, the class of cultivators can have no sort of advantage over that of artificers and manufacturers. the increase in the quantity of useful labour actually employed within any society must depend altogether upon the increase of the capital which employs it; and the increase of that capital again must be exactly equal to the amount of the savings from the revenue, either of the particular persons who manage and direct the employment of that capital, or of some other persons who lend it to them. if merchants, artificers, and manufacturers are, as this system seems to suppose, naturally more inclined to parsimony and saving than proprietors and cultivators, they are, so far, more likely to augment the quantity of useful labour employed within their society, and consequently to increase its real revenue, the annual produce of its land and labour. fifthly and lastly, though the revenue of the inhabitants of every country was supposed to consist altogether, as this system seems to suppose, in the quantity of subsistence which their industry could procure to them; yet, even upon this supposition, the revenue of a trading and manufacturing country must, other things being equal, always be much greater than that of one without trade or manufactures. by means of trade and manufactures, a greater quantity of subsistence can be annually imported into a particular country than what its own lands, in the actual state of their cultivation, could afford. the inhabitants of a town, though they frequently possess no lands of their own, yet draw to themselves by their industry such a quantity of the rude produce of the lands of other people as supplies them, not only with the materials of their work, but with the fund of their subsistence. what a town always is with regard to the country in its neighbourhood, one independent state or country may frequently be with regard to other independent states or countries. it is thus that holland draws a great part of its subsistence from other countries; live cattle from holstein and jutland, and corn from almost all the different countries of europe. a small quantity of manufactured produce purchases a great quantity of rude produce. a trading and manufacturing country, therefore, naturally purchases with a small part of its manufactured produce a great part of the rude produce of other countries; while, on the contrary, a country without trade and manufactures is generally obliged to purchase, at the expense of a great part of its rude produce, a very small part of the manufactured produce of other countries. the one exports what can subsist and accommodate but a very few, and imports the subsistence and accommodation of a great number. the other exports the accommodation and subsistence of a great number, and imports that of a very few only. the inhabitants of the one must always enjoy a much greater quantity of subsistence than what their own lands, in the actual state of their cultivation, could afford. the inhabitants of the other must always enjoy a much smaller quantity. this system, however, with all its imperfections is, perhaps, the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy, and is upon that account well worth the consideration of every man who wishes to examine with attention the principles of that very important science. though in representing the labour which is employed upon land as the only productive labour, the notions which it inculcates are perhaps too narrow and confined; yet in representing the wealth of nations as consisting, not in the unconsumable riches of money, but in the consumable goods annually reproduced by the labour of the society, and in representing perfect liberty as the only effectual expedient for rendering this annual reproduction the greatest possible, its doctrine seems to be in every respect as just as it is generous and liberal. its followers are very numerous; and as men are fond of paradoxes, and of appearing to understand what surpasses the comprehension of ordinary people, the paradox which it maintains, concerning the unproductive nature of manufacturing labour, has not perhaps contributed a little to increase the number of its admirers. they have for some years past made a pretty considerable sect, distinguished in the french republic of letters by the name of the economists. their works have certainly been of some service to their country; not only by bringing into general discussion many subjects which had never been well examined before, but by influencing in some measure the public administration in favour of agriculture. it has been in consequence of their representations, accordingly, that the agriculture of france has been delivered from several of the oppressions which it before laboured under. the term during which such a lease can be granted, as will be valid against every future purchaser or proprietor of the land, has been prolonged from nine to twenty-seven years. the ancient provincial restraints upon the transportation of corn from one province of the kingdom to another have been entirely taken away, and the liberty of exporting it to all foreign countries has been established as the common law of the kingdom in all ordinary cases. this sect, in their works, which are very numerous, and which treat not only of what is properly called political economy, or of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, but of every other branch of the system of civil government, all follow implicitly and without any sensible variation, the doctrine of mr. quesnai. there is upon this account little variety in the greater part of their works. the most distinct and best connected account of this doctrine is to be found in a little book written by mr. mercier de la riviere, some time intendant of martinico, entitled, the natural and essential order of political societies. the admiration of this whole sect for their master, who was himself a man of the greatest modesty and simplicity, is not inferior to that of any of the ancient philosophers for the founders of their respective systems. "there have been, since the world began," says a very diligent and respectable author, the marquis de mirabeau, "three great inventions which have principally given stability to political societies, independent of many other inventions which have enriched and adorned them. the first is the invention of writing, which alone gives human nature the power of transmitting, without alteration, its laws, its contracts, its annals, and its discoveries. the second is the invention of money, which binds together all the relations between civilised societies. the third is the economical table, the result of the other two, which completes them both by perfecting their object; the great discovery of our age, but of which our posterity will reap the benefit." as the political economy of the nations of modern europe has been more favourable to manufactures and foreign trade, the industry of the towns, than to agriculture, the industry of the country; so that of other nations has followed a different plan, and has been more favourable to agriculture than to manufactures and foreign trade. the policy of china favours agriculture more than all other employments. in china the condition of a labourer is said to be as much superior to that of an artificer as in most parts of europe that of an artificer is to that of a labourer. in china, the great ambition of every man is to get possession of some little bit of land, either in property or in lease; and leases are there said to be granted upon very moderate terms, and to be sufficiently secured to the lessees. the chinese have little respect for foreign trade. your beggarly commerce! was the language in which the mandarins of pekin used to talk to mr. de lange, the russian envoy, concerning it. except with japan, the chinese carry on, themselves, and in their own bottoms, little or no foreign trade; and it is only into one or two ports of their kingdom that they even admit the ships of foreign nations. foreign trade therefore is, in china, every way confined within a much narrower circle than that to which it would naturally extend itself, if more freedom was allowed to it, either in their own ships, or in those of foreign nations. manufactures, as in a small bulk they frequently contain a great value, and can upon that account be transported at less expense from one country to another than most parts of rude produce, are, in almost all countries, the principal support of foreign trade. in countries, besides, less extensive and less favourably circumstanced for inferior commerce than china, they generally require the support of foreign trade. without an extensive foreign market they could not well flourish, either in countries so moderately extensive as to afford but a narrow home market or in countries where the communication between one province and another was so difficult as to render it impossible for the goods of any particular place to enjoy the whole of that home market which the country could afford. the perfection of manufacturing industry, it must be remembered, depends altogether upon the division of labour; and the degree to which the division of labour can be introduced into any manufacture is necessarily regulated, it has already been shown, by the extent of the market. but the great extent of the empire of china, the vast multitude of its inhabitants, the variety of climate, and consequently of productions in its different provinces, and the easy communication by means of water carriage between the greater part of them, render the home market of that country of so great extent as to be alone sufficient to support very great manufactures, and to admit of very considerable subdivisions of labour. the home market of china is, perhaps, in extent, not much inferior to the market of all the different countries of europe put together. a more extensive foreign trade, however, which to this great home market added the foreign market of all the rest of the worldespecially if any considerable part of this trade was carried on in chinese shipscould scarce fail to increase very much the manufactures of china, and to improve very much the productive powers of its manufacturing industry. by a more extensive navigation, the chinese would naturally learn the art of using and constructing themselves all the different machines made use of in other countries, as well as the other improvements of art and industry which are practised in all the different parts of the world. upon their present plan they have little opportunity except that of the japanese. the policy of ancient egypt too, and that of the gentoo government of indostan, seem to have favoured agriculture more than all other employments. both in ancient egypt and indostan the whole body of the people was divided into different castes or tribes, each of which was confined, from father to son, to a particular employment or class of employments. the son of a priest was necessarily a priest; the son of a soldier, a soldier; the son of a labourer, a labourer; the son of a weaver, a weaver; the son of a tailor, a tailor, etc. in both countries, the caste of the priests held the highest rank, and that of the soldiers the next; and in both countries, the caste of the farmers and labourers was superior to the castes of merchants and manufacturers. the government of both countries was particularly attentive to the interest of agriculture. the works constructed by the ancient sovereigns of egypt for the proper distribution of the waters of the nile were famous in antiquity; and the ruined remains of some of them are still the admiration of travellers. those of the same kind which were constructed by the ancient sovereigns of indostan for the proper distribution of the waters of the ganges as well as of many other rivers, though they have been less celebrated, seem to have been equally great. both countries, accordingly, though subject occasionally to dearths, have been famous for their great fertility. though both were extremely populous, yet, in years of moderate plenty, they were both able to export great quantities of grain to their neighbours. the ancient egyptians had a superstitious aversion to the sea; and as the gentoo religion does not permit its followers to light a fire, nor consequently to dress any victuals upon the water, it in effect prohibits them from all distant sea voyages. both the egyptians and indians must have depended almost altogether upon the navigation of other nations for the exportation of their surplus produce; and this dependency, as it must have confined the market, so it must have discouraged the increase of this surplus produce. it must have discouraged, too, the increase of the manufactured produce more than that of the rude produce. manufactures require a much more extensive market than the most important parts of the rude produce of the land. a single shoemaker will make more than three hundred pairs of shoes in the year; and his own family will not, perhaps, wear out six pairs. unless therefore he has the custom of at least fifty such families as his own, he cannot dispose of the whole produce of his own labour. the most numerous class of artificers will seldom, in a large country, make more than one in fifty or one in a hundred of the whole number of families contained in it. but in such large countries as france and england, the number of people employed in agriculture has by some authors been computed at a half, by others at a third, and by no author that i know of, at less than a fifth of the whole inhabitants of the country. but as the produce of the agriculture of both france and england is, the far greater part of it, consumed at home, each person employed in it must, according to these computations, require little more than the custom of one, two, or at most, of four such families as his own in order to dispose of the whole produce of his own labour. agriculture, therefore, can support itself under the discouragement of a confined market much better than manufactures. in both ancient egypt and indostan, indeed, the confinement of the foreign market was in some measure compensated by the conveniency of many inland navigations, which opened, in the most advantageous manner, the whole extent of the home market to every part of the produce of every different district of those countries. the great extent of indostan, too, rendered the home market of that country very great, and sufficient to support a great variety of manufactures. but the small extent of ancient egypt, which was never equal to england, must at all times have rendered the home market of that country too narrow for supporting any great variety of manufactures. bengal, accordingly, the province of indostan, which commonly exports the greatest quantity of rice, has always been more remarkable for the exportation of a great variety of manufactures than for that of its grain. ancient egypt, on the contrary, though it exported some manufactures, fine linen in particular, as well as some other goods, was always most distinguished for its great exportation of grain. it was long the granary of the roman empire. the sovereigns of china, of ancient egypt, and of the different kingdoms into which indostan has at different times been divided, have always derived the whole, or by far the most considerable part, of their revenue from some sort of land tax or land rent. this land tax or land rent, like the tithe in europe, consisted in a certain proportion, a fifth, it is said, of the produce of the land, which was either delivered in kind, or paid in money, according to a certain valuation, and which therefore varied from year to year according to all the variations of the produce. it was natural therefore that the sovereigns of those countries should be particularly attentive to the interests of agriculture, upon the prosperity or declension of which immediately depended the yearly increase or diminution of their own revenue. the policy of the ancient republics of greece, and that of rome, though it honoured agriculture more than manufactures or foreign trade, yet seems rather to have discouraged the latter employments than to have given any direct or intentional encouragement to the former. in several of the ancient states of greece, foreign trade was prohibited altogether; and in several others the employments of artificers and manufacturers were considered as hurtful to the strength and agility of the human body, as rendering it incapable of those habits which their military and gymnastic exercises endeavoured to form in it, and as thereby disqualifying it more or less for undergoing the fatigues and encountering the dangers of war. such occupations were considered as fit only for slaves, and the free citizens of the state were prohibited from exercising them. even in those states where no such prohibition took place, as in rome and athens, the great body of the people were in effect excluded from all the trades which are, now commonly exercised by the lower sort of the inhabitants of towns. such trades were, at athens and rome, all occupied by the slaves of the rich, who exercised them for the benefit of their masters, whose wealth, power, and protection made it almost impossible for a poor freeman to find a market for his work, when it came into competition with that of the slaves of the rich. slaves, however, are very seldom inventive; and all the most important improvements, either in machinery, or in the arrangement and distribution of work which facilitate and abridge labour, have been the discoveries of freemen. should a slave propose any improvement of this kind, his master would be very apt to consider the proposal as the suggestion of laziness, and a desire to save his own labour at the master's expense. the poor slave, instead of reward, would probably meet with much abuse, perhaps with some punishment. in the manufactures carried on by slaves, therefore, more labour must generally have been employed to execute the same quantity of work than in those carried on by freemen. the work of the former must, upon that account, generally have been dearer than that of the latter. the hungarian mines, it is remarked by mr. montesquieu, though not richer, have always been wrought with less expense, and therefore with more profit, than the turkish mines in their neighbourhood. the turkish mines are wrought by slaves; and the arms of those slaves are the only machines which the turks have ever thought of employing. the hungarian mines are wrought by freemen, who employ a great deal of machinery, by which they facilitate and abridge their own labour. from the very little that is known about the price of manufactures in the times of the greeks and romans, it would appear that those of the finer sort were excessively dear. silk sold for its weight in gold. it was not, indeed, in those times a european manufacture; and as it was all brought from the east indies, the distance of the carriage may in some measure account for the greatness of price. the price, however, which a lady, it is said, would sometimes pay for a piece of very fine linen, seems to have been equally extravagant; and as linen was always either a european, or at farthest, an egyptian manufacture, this high price can be accounted for only by the great expense of the labour which must have been employed about it, and the expense of this labour again could arise from nothing but the awkwardness of the machinery which it made use of. the price of fine woollens too, though not quite so extravagant, seems however to have been much above that of the present times. some cloths, we are told by pliny, dyed in a particular manner, cost a hundred denarii, or three pounds six shillings and eightpence the pound weight. others dyed in another manner cost a thousand denarii the pound weight, or thirty-three pounds six shillings and eightpence. the roman pound, it must be remembered, contained only twelve of our avoirdupois ounces. this high price, indeed, seems to have been principally owing to the dye. but had not the cloths themselves been much dearer than any which are made in the present times, so very expensive a dye would not probably have been bestowed upon them. the disproportion would have been too great between the value of the accessory and that of the principal. the price mentioned by the same author of some triclinaria, a sort of woollen pillows or cushions made use of to lean upon as they reclined upon their couches at table, passes all credibility; some of them being said to have cost more than thirty thousand, others more than three hundred thousand pounds. this high price, too, is not said to have arisen from the dye. in the dress of the people of fashion of both sexes there seems to have been much less variety, it is observed by doctor arbuthnot, in ancient than in modern times; and the very little variety which we find in that of the ancient statues confirms his observation. he infers from this that their dress must upon the whole have been cheaper than ours; but the conclusion does not seem to follow. when the expense of fashionable dress is very great, the variety must be very small. but when, by the improvements in the productive powers of manufacturing art and industry, the expense of any one dress comes to be very moderate, the variety will naturally be very great. the rich, not being able to distinguish themselves by the expense of any one dress, will naturally endeavour to do so by the multitude and variety of their dresses. the greatest and most important branch of the commerce of every nation, it has already been observed, is that which is carried on between the inhabitants of the town and those of the country. the inhabitants of the town draw from the country the rude produce which constitutes both the materials of their work and the fund of their subsistence; and they pay for this rude produce by sending back to the country a certain portion of it manufactured and prepared for immediate use. the trade which is carried on between these two different sets of people consists ultimately in a certain quantity of rude produce exchanged for a certain quantity of manufactured produce. the dearer the latter, therefore, the cheaper the former; and whatever tends in any country to raise the price of manufactured produce tends to lower that of the rude produce of the land, and thereby to discourage agriculture. the smaller the quantity of manufactured produce which in any given quantity of rude produce, or, what comes to the same thing, which the price of any given quantity of rude produce is capable of purchasing, the smaller the exchangeable value of that given quantity of rude produce, the smaller the encouragement which either the landlord has to increase its quantity by improving or the farmer by cultivating the land. whatever, besides, tends to diminish in any country the number of artificers and manufacturers, tends to diminish the home market, the most important of all markets for the rude produce of the land, and thereby still further to discourage agriculture. those systems, therefore, which, preferring agriculture to all other employments, in order to promote it, impose restraints upon manufactures and foreign trade, act contrary to the very end which they propose, and indirectly discourage that very species of industry which they mean to promote. they are so far, perhaps, more inconsistent than even the mercantile system. that system, by encouraging manufactures and foreign trade more than agriculture, turns a certain portion of the capital of the society from supporting a more advantageous, to support a less advantageous species of industry. but still it really and in the end encourages that species of industry which it means to promote. those agricultural systems, on the contrary, really and in the end discourage their own favourite species of industry. it is thus that every system which endeavours, either by extraordinary encouragements to draw towards a particular species of industry a greater share of the capital of the society than what would naturally go to it, or, by extraordinary restraints, force from a particular species of industry some share of the capital which would otherwise be employed in it, is in reality subversive of the great purpose which it means to promote. it retards, instead of accelerating, the progress of the society towards real wealth and greatness; and diminishes, instead of increasing, the real value of the annual produce of its land and labour. all systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. the sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. according to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society. the proper performance of those several duties of the sovereign necessarily supposes a certain expense; and this expense again necessarily requires a certain revenue to support it. in the following book, therefore, i shall endeavour to explain, first, what are the necessary expenses of the sovereign or commonwealth; and which of those expenses ought to be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society; and which of them by that of some particular part only, or of some particular members of the society; secondly, what are the different methods in which the whole society may be made to contribute towards defraying the expenses incumbent on the whole society, and what are the principal advantages and inconveniences of each of those methods; and thirdly, what are the reasons and causes which have induced almost all modern governments to mortgage some part of this revenue, or to contract debts, and what have been the effects of those debts upon the real wealth, the annual produce of the land and labour of the society. the following book, therefore, will naturally be divided into three chapters. book five of the revenue of the sovereign or commonwealth chapter i of the expenses of the sovereign or commonwealth part 1 of the expense of defence the first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed only by means of a military force. but the expense both of preparing this military force in time of peace, and of employing it in time of war, is very different in the different states of society, in the different periods of improvement. among nations of hunters, the lowest and rudest state of society, such as we find it among the native tribes of north america, every man is a warrior as well as a hunter. when he goes to war, either to defend his society or to revenge the injuries which have been done to it by other societies, he maintains himself by his own labour in the same manner as when he lives at home. his society, for in this state of things there is properly neither sovereign nor commonwealth, is at no sort of expense, either to prepare him for the field, or to maintain him while he is in it. among nations of shepherds, a more advanced state of society, such as we find it among the tartars and arabs, every man is, in the same manner, a warrior. such nations have commonly no fixed habitation, but live either in tents or in a sort of covered waggons which are easily transported from place to place. the whole tribe or nation changes its situation according to the different seasons of the year, as well as according to other accidents. when its herds and flocks have consumed the forage of one part of the country, it removes to another, and from that to a third. in the dry season it comes down to the banks of the rivers; in the wet season it retires to the upper country. when such a nation goes to war, the warriors will not trust their herds and flocks to the feeble defence of their old men, their women and children; and their old men, their women and children, will not be left behind without defence and without subsistence. the whole nation, besides, being accustomed to a wandering life, even in time of peace, easily takes the field in time of war. whether it marches as an army, or moves about as a company of herdsmen, the way of life is nearly the same, though the object proposed by it be very different. they all go to war together, therefore, and every one does as well as he can. among the tartars, even the women have been frequently known to engage in battle. if they conquer, whatever belongs to the hostile tribe is the recompense of the victory. but if they are vanquished, all is lost, and not only their herds and flocks, but their women and children, become the booty of the conqueror. even the greater part of those who survive the action are obliged to submit to him for the sake of immediate subsistence. the rest are commonly dissipated and dispersed in the desert. the ordinary life, the ordinary exercises of a tartar or arab, prepare him sufficiently for war. running, wrestling, cudgel-playing, throwing the javelin, drawing the bow, etc., are the common pastimes of those who live in the open air, and are all of them the images of war. when a tartar or arab actually goes to war, he is maintained by his own herds and flocks which he carries with him in the same manner as in peace. his chief or sovereign, for those nations have all chiefs or sovereigns, is at no sort of expense in preparing him for the field; and when he is in it the chance of plunder is the only pay which he either expects or requires. an army of hunters can seldom exceed two or three hundred men. the precarious subsistence which the chase affords could seldom allow a greater number to keep together for any considerable time. an army of shepherds, on the contrary, may sometimes amount to two or three hundred thousand. as long as nothing stops their progress, as long as they can go on from one district, of which they have consumed the forage, to another which is yet entire, there seems to be scarce any limit to the number who can march on together. a nation of hunters can never be formidable to the civilised nations in their neighbourhood. a nation of shepherds may. nothing can be more contemptible than an indian war in north america. nothing, on the contrary, can be more dreadful than tartar invasion has frequently been in asia. the judgment of thucydides, that both europe and asia could not resist the scythians united, has been verified by the experience of all ages. the inhabitants of the extensive but defenceless plains of scythia or tartary have been frequently united under the dominion of the chief of some conquering horde or clan, and the havoc and devastation of asia have always signalized their union. the inhabitants of the inhospitable deserts of arabia, the other great nation of shepherds, have never been united but once; under mahomet and his immediate successors. their union, which was more the effect of religious enthusiasm than of conquest, was signalized in the same manner. if the hunting nations of america should ever become shepherds, their neighbourhood would be much more dangerous to the european colonies than it is at present. in a yet more advanced state of society, among those nations of husbandmen who have little foreign commerce, and no other manufactures but those coarse and household ones which almost every private family prepares for its own use, every man, in the same manner, either is a warrior or easily becomes such. they who live by agriculture generally pass the whole day in the open air, exposed to all the inclemencies of the seasons. the hardiness of their ordinary life prepares them for the fatigues of war, to some of which their necessary occupations bear a great analogy. the necessary occupation of a ditcher prepares him to work in the trenches, and to fortify a camp as well as to enclose a field. the ordinary pastimes of such husbandmen are the same as those of shepherds, and are in the same manner the images of war. but as husbandmen have less leisure than shepherds, they are not so frequently employed in those pastimes. they are soldiers, but soldiers not quite so much masters of their exercise. such as they are, however, it seldom costs the sovereign or commonwealth any expense to prepare them for the field. agriculture, even in its rudest and lowest state, supposes a settlement: some sort of fixed habitation which cannot be abandoned without great loss. when a nation of mere husbandmen, therefore, goes to war, the whole people cannot take the field together. the old men, the women and children, at least, must remain at home to take care of the habitation. all the men of the military age, however, may take the field, and, in small nations of this kind, have frequently done so. in every nation the men of the military age are supposed to amount to about a fourth or a fifth part of the whole body of the people. if the campaign, should begin after seed-time, and end before harvest, both the husbandman and his principal labourers can be spared from the farm without much loss. he trusts that the work which must be done in the meantime can be well enough executed by the old men, the women, and the children. he is not unwilling, therefore, to serve without pay during a short campaign, and it frequently costs the sovereign or commonwealth as little to maintain him in the field as to prepare him for it. the citizens of all the different states of ancient greece seem to have served in this manner till after the second persian war; and the people of peloponnesus till after the peloponnesian war. the peloponnesians, thucydides observes, generally left the field in the summer, and returned home to reap the harvest. the roman people under their kings, and during the first ages of the republic, served in the same manner. it was not till the siege of veii that they who stayed at home began to contribute something towards maintaining those who went to war. in the european monarchies, which were founded upon the ruins of the roman empire, both before and for some time after the establishment of what is properly called the feudal law, the great lords, with all their immediate dependents, used to serve the crown at their own expense. in the field, in the same manner as at home, they maintained themselves by their own revenue, and not by any stipend or pay which they received from the king upon that particular occasion. in a more advanced state of society, two different causes contribute to render it altogether impossible that they who take the field should maintain themselves at their own expense. those two causes are, the progress of manufactures, and the improvement in the art of war. though a husbandman should be employed in an expedition, provided it begins after seed-time and ends before harvest, the interruption of his business will not always occasion any considerable diminution of his revenue. without the intervention of his labour, nature does herself the greater part of the work which remains to be done. but the moment that an artificer, a smith, a carpenter, or a weaver, for example, quits his workhouse, the sole source of his revenue is completely dried up. nature does nothing for him, he does all for himself. when he takes the field, therefore, in defence of the public, as he has no revenue to maintain himself, he must necessarily be maintained by the public. but in a country of which a great part of the inhabitants are artificers and manufacturers, a great part of the people who go to war must be drawn from those classes, and must therefore be maintained by the public as long as they are employed in its service. when the art of war, too, has gradually grown up to be a very intricate and complicated science, when the event of war ceases to be determined, as in the first ages of society, by a single irregular skirmish or battle, but when the contest is generally spun out through several different campaigns, each of which lasts during the greater part of the year, it becomes universally necessary that the public should maintain those who serve the public in war, at least while they are employed in that service. whatever in time of peace might be the ordinary occupation of those who go to war, so very tedious and expensive a service would otherwise be far too heavy a burden upon them. after the second persian war, accordingly, the armies of athens seem to have been generally composed of mercenary troops, consisting, indeed, partly of citizens, but partly too of foreigners, and all of them equally hired and paid at the expense of the state. from the time of the siege of veii, the armies of rome received pay for their service during the time which they remained in the field. under the feudal governments the military service both of the great lords and of their immediate dependants was, after a certain period, universally exchanged for a payment in money, which was employed to maintain those who served in their stead. the number of those who can go to war, in proportion to the whole number of the people, is necessarily much smaller in a civilised than in a rude state of society. in a civilised society, as the soldiers are maintained altogether by the labour of those who are not soldiers, the number of the former can never exceed what the latter can maintain, over and above maintaining, in a manner suitable to their respective stations, both themselves and the other officers of government and law whom they are obliged to maintain. in the little agrarian states of ancient greece, a fourth or a fifth part of the whole body of the people considered themselves as soldiers, and would sometimes, it is said, take a field. among the civilised nations of modern europe, it is commonly computed that not more than one-hundredth part of the inhabitants in any country can be employed as soldiers without ruin to the country which pays the expenses of their service. the expense of preparing the army for the field seems not to have become considerable in any nation till long after that of maintaining it in the field had devolved entirely upon the sovereign or commonwealth. in all the different republics of ancient greece, to learn his military exercises was a necessary part of education imposed by the state upon every free citizen. in every city there seems to have been a public field, in which, under the protection of the public magistrate, the young people were taught their different exercises by different masters. in this very simple institution consisted the whole expense which any grecian state seems ever to have been at in preparing its citizens for war. in ancient rome the exercises of the campus martius answered the same purpose with those of the gymnasium in ancient greece. under the feudal governments, the many public ordinances that the citizens of every district should practise archery as well as several other military exercises were intended for promoting the same purpose, but do not seem to have promoted it so well. either from want of interest in the officers entrusted with the execution of those ordinances, or from some other cause, they appear to have been universally neglected; and in the progress of all those governments, military exercises seem to have gone gradually into disuse among the great body of the people. in the republics of ancient greece and rome, during the whole period of their existence, and under the feudal governments for a considerable time after their first establishment, the trade of a soldier was not a separate, distinct trade, which constituted the sole or principal occupation of a particular class of citizens. every subject of the state, whatever might be the ordinary trade or occupation by which he gained his livelihood, considered himself, upon all ordinary occasions, as fit likewise to exercise the trade of a soldier, and upon many extraordinary occasions as bound to exercise it. the art of war, however, as it is certainly the noblest of all arts, so in the progress of improvement it necessarily becomes one of the most complicated among them. the state of the mechanical, as well as of some other arts, with which it is necessarily connected, determines the degree of perfection to which it is capable of being carried at any particular time. but in order to carry it to this degree of perfection, it is necessary that it should become the sole or principal occupation of a particular class of citizens, and the division of labour is as necessary for the improvement of this, as of every other art. into other arts the division of labour is naturally introduced by the prudence of individuals, who find that they promote their private interest better by confining themselves to a particular trade than by exercising a great number. but it is the wisdom of the state only which can render the trade of a soldier a particular trade separate and distinct from all others. a private citizen who, in time of profound peace, and without any particular encouragement from the public, should spend the greater part of his time in military exercises, might, no doubt, both improve himself very much in them, and amuse himself very well; but he certainly would not promote his own interest. it is the wisdom of the state only which can render it for his interest to give up the greater part of his time to this peculiar occupation: and states have not always had this wisdom, even when their circumstances had become such that the preservation of their existence required that they should have it. a shepherd has a great deal of leisure; a husbandman, in the rude state of husbandry, has some; an artificer or manufacturer has none at all. the first may, without any loss, employ a great deal of his time in martial exercises; the second may employ some part of it; but the last cannot employ a single hour in them without some loss, and his attention to his own interest naturally leads him to neglect them altogether. these improvements in husbandry too, which the progress of arts and manufactures necessarily introduces, leave the husbandman as little leisure as the artificer. military exercises come to be as much neglected by the inhabitants of the country as by those of the town, and the great body of the people becomes altogether unwarlike. that wealth, at the same time, which always follows the improvements of agriculture and manufactures, and which in reality is no more than the accumulated produce of those improvements, provokes the invasion of all their neighbours. an industrious, and upon that account a wealthy nation, is of all nations the most likely to be attacked; and unless the state takes some new measures for the public defence, the natural habits of the people render them altogether incapable of defending themselves. in these circumstances there seem to be but two methods by which the state can make any tolerable provision for the public defence. it may either, first, by means of a very rigorous police, and in spite of the whole bent of the interest, genius, and inclinations of the people, enforce the practice of military exercises, and oblige either all the citizens of the military age, or a certain number of them, to join in some measure the trade of a soldier to whatever other trade or profession they may happen to carry on. or, secondly, by maintaining and employing a certain number of citizens in the constant practice of military exercises, it may render the trade of a soldier a particular trade, separate and distinct from all others. if the state has recourse to the first of those two expedients, its military force is said to consist in a militia; if to the second, it is said to consist in a standing army. the practice of military exercises is the sole or principal occupation of the soldiers of a standing army, and the maintenance or pay which the state affords them is the principal and ordinary fund of their subsistence. the practice of military exercises is only the occasional occupation of the soldiers of a militia, and they derive the principal and ordinary fund of their subsistence from some other occupation. in a militia, the character of the labourer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier; in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character: and in this distinction seems to consist the essential difference between those two different species of military force. militias have been of several different kinds. in some countries the citizens destined for defending the states seem to have been exercised only, without being, if i may say so, regimented; that is, without being divided into separate and distinct bodies of troops, each of which performed its exercises under its own proper and permanent officers. in the republics of ancient greece and rome, each citizen, as long as he remained at home, seems to have practised his exercises either separately and independently, or with such of his equals as he liked best, and not to have been attached to any particular body of troops till he was actually called upon to take the field. in other countries, the militia has not only been exercised, but regimented. in england, in switzerland, and, i believe, in every other country of modern europe where any imperfect military force of this kind has been established, every militiaman is, even in time of peace, attached to a particular body of troops, which performs its exercises under its own proper and permanent officers. before the invention of firearms, that army was superior in which the soldiers had, each individually, the greatest skill and dexterity in the use of their arms. strength and agility of body were of the highest consequence, and commonly determined the state of battles. but this skill and dexterity in the use of their arms could be acquired only, in the same manner as fencing is at present, by practising, not in great bodies, but each man separately, in a particular school, under a particular master, or with his own particular equals and companions. since the invention of firearms, strength and agility of body, or even extraordinary dexterity and skill in the use of arms, though they are far from being of no consequence, are, however, of less consequence. the nature of the weapon, though it by no means puts the awkward upon a level with the skilful, puts him more nearly so than he ever was before. all the dexterity and skill, it is supposed, which are necessary for using it, can be well enough acquired by practising in great bodies. regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command are qualities which, in modern armies, are of more importance towards determining the fate of battles than the dexterity and skill of the soldiers in the use of their arms. but the noise of firearms, the smoke, and the invisible death to which every man feels himself every moment exposed as soon as he comes within cannon-shot, and frequently a long time before the battle can be well said to be engaged, must render it very difficult to maintain any considerable degree of this regularity, order, and prompt obedience, even in the beginning of a modern battle. in an ancient battle there was no noise but what arose from the human voice; there was no smoke, there was no invisible cause of wounds or death. every man, till some mortal weapon actually did approach him, saw clearly that no such weapon was near him. in these circumstances, and among troops who had some confidence in their own skill and dexterity in the use of their arms, it must have been a good deal less difficult to preserve some degree regularity and order, not only in the beginning, but through the whole progress of an ancient battle, and till one of the two armies was fairly defeated. but the habits of regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command can be acquired only by troops which are exercised in great bodies. a militia, however, in whatever manner it may be either disciplined or exercised, must always be much inferior to a well-disciplined and well-exercised standing army. the soldiers who are exercised only once a week, or once a month, can never be so expert in the use of their arms as those who are exercised every day, or every other day; and though this circumstance may not be of so much consequence in modern as it was in ancient times, yet the acknowledged superiority of the prussian troops, owing, it is said, very much to their superior expertness in their exercise, may satisfy us that it is, even at this day, of very considerable consequence. the soldiers who are bound to obey their officer only once a week or once a month, and who are at all other times at liberty to manage their own affairs their own way, without being in any respect accountable to him, can never be under the same awe in his presence, can never have the same disposition to ready obedience, with those whose whole life and conduct are every day directed by him, and who every day even rise and go to bed, or at least retire to their quarters, according to his orders. in what is called discipline, or in the habit of ready obedience, a militia must always be still more inferior to a standing army than it may sometimes be in what is called the manual exercise, or in the management and use of its arms. but in modern war the habit of ready and instant obedience is of much greater consequence than a considerable superiority in the management of arms. those militias which, like the tartar or arab militia, go to war under the same chieftains whom they are accustomed to obey in peace are by far the best. in respect for their officers, in the habit of ready obedience, they approach nearest to standing armies. the highland militia, when it served under its own chieftains, had some advantage of the same kind. as the highlanders, however, were not wandering, but stationary shepherds, as they had all a fixed habitation, and were not, in peaceable times, accustomed to follow their chieftain from place to place, so in time of war they were less willing to follow him to any considerable distance, or to continue for any long time in the field. when they had acquired any booty they were eager to return home, and his authority was seldom sufficient to detain them. in point of obedience they were always much inferior to what is reported of the tartars and arabs. as the highlanders too, from their stationary life, spend less of their time in the open air, they were always less accustomed to military exercises, and were less expert in the use of their arms than the tartars and arabs are said to be. a militia of any kind, it must be observed, however, which has served for several successive campaigns in the field, becomes in every respect a standing army. the soldiers are every day exercised in the use of their arms, and, being constantly under the command of their officers, are habituated to the same prompt obedience which takes place in standing armies. what they were before they took the field is of little importance. they necessarily become in every respect a standing army after they have passed a few campaigns in it. should the war in america drag out through another campaign, the american militia may become in every respect a match for that standing army of which the valour appeared, in the last war, at least not inferior to that of the hardiest veterans of france and spain. this distinction being well understood, the history of all ages, it will be found, bears testimony to the irresistible superiority which a well-regulated standing army has over a militia. one of the first standing armies of which we have any distinct account, in any well authenticated history, is that of philip of macedon. his frequent wars with the thracians, illyrians, thessalians, and some of the greek cities in the neighbourhood of macedon, gradually formed his troops, which in the beginning were probably militia, to the exact discipline of a standing army. when he was at peace, which he was very seldom, and never for any long time together, he was careful not to disband that army. it vanquished and subdued, after a long and violent struggle, indeed, the gallant and well exercised militias of the principal republics of ancient greece, and afterwards, with very little struggle, the effeminate and ill-exercised militia of the great persian empire. the fall of the greek republics and of the persian empire was the effect of the irresistible superiority which a standing army has over every sort of militia. it is the first great revolution in the affairs of mankind of which history has preserved any distinct or circumstantial account. the fall of carthage, and the consequent elevation of rome, is the second. all the varieties in the fortune of those two famous republics may very well be accounted for from the same cause. from the end of the first to the beginning of the second carthaginian war the armies of carthage were continually in the field, and employed under three great generals, who succeeded one another in the command: hamilcar, his son-in-law hasdrubal, and his son hannibal; first in chastising their own rebellious slaves, afterwards in subduing the revolted nations of africa, and, lastly, in conquering the great kingdom of spain. the army which hannibal led from spain into italy must necessarily, in those different wars, have been gradually formed to the exact discipline of a standing army. the romans, in the meantime, though they had not been altogether at peace, yet they had not, during this period, been engaged in any war of very great consequence, and their military discipline, it is generally said, was a good deal relaxed. the roman armies which hannibal encountered at trebia, thrasymenus, and cannae were militia opposed to a standing army. this circumstance, it is probable, contributed more than any other to determine the fate of those battles. the standing army which hannibal left behind him in spain had the like superiority over the militia which the romans sent to oppose it, and in a few years, under the command of his brother, the younger hasdrubal, expelled them almost entirely from that country. hannibal was ill supplied from home. the roman militia, being continually in the field, became in the progress of the war a well disciplined and well-exercised standing army, and the superiority of hannibal grew every day less and less. hasdrubal judged it necessary to lead the whole, or almost the whole of the standing army which he commanded in spain, to the assistance of his brother in italy. in this march he is said to have been misled by his guides, and in a country which he did not know, was surprised and attacked by another standing army, in every respect equal or superior to his own, and was entirely defeated. when hasdrubal had left spain, the great scipio found nothing to oppose him but a militia inferior to his own. he conquered and subdued that militia, and, in the course of the war, his own militia necessarily became a well-disciplined and well-exercised standing army. that standing army was afterwards carried to africa, where it found nothing but a militia to oppose it. in order to defend carthage it became necessary to recall the standing army of hannibal. the disheartened and frequently defeated african militia joined it, and, at the battle of zama, composed the greater part of the troops of hannibal. the event of that day determined the fate of the two rival republics. from the end of the second carthaginian war till the fall of the roman republic, the armies of rome were in every respect standing armies. the standing army of macedon made some resistance to their arms. in the height of their grandeur it cost them two great wars, and three great battles, to subdue that little kingdom, of which the conquest would probably have been still more difficult had it not been for the cowardice of its last king. the militias of all the civilised nations of the ancient world, of greece, of syria, and of egypt, made but a feeble resistance to the standing armies of rome. the militias of some barbarous nations defended themselves much better. the scythian or tartar militia, which mithridates drew from the countries north of the euxine and caspian seas, were the most formidable enemies whom the romans had to encounter after the second carthaginian war. the parthian and german militias, too, were always respectable, and upon several occasions gained very considerable advantages over the roman armies. in general, however, and when the roman armies were well commanded, they appear to have been very much superior; and if the romans did not pursue the final conquest either of parthia or germany, it was probably because they judged that it was not worth while to add those two barbarous countries to an empire which was already too large. the ancient parthians appear to have been a nation of scythian or tartar extraction, and to have always retained a good deal of the manners of their ancestors. the ancient germans were, like the scythians or tartars, a nation of wandering shepherds, who went to war under the same chiefs whom they were accustomed to follow in peace. their militia was exactly of the same kind with that of the scythians or tartars, from whom, too, they were probably descended. many different causes contributed to relax the discipline of the roman armies. its extreme severity was, perhaps, one of those causes. in the days of their grandeur, when no enemy appeared capable of opposing them, their heavy armour was laid aside as unnecessarily burdensome, their labourious exercises were neglected as unnecessarily toilsome. under the roman emperors, besides, the standing armies of rome, those particularly which guarded the german and pannonian frontiers, became dangerous to their masters, against whom they used frequently to set up their own generals. in order to render them less formidable, according to some authors, dioclesian, according to others, constantine, first withdrew them from the frontier, where they had always before been encamped in great bodies, generally of two or three legions each, and dispersed them in small bodies through the different provincial towns, from whence they were scarce ever removed but when it became necessary to repel an invasion. small bodies of soldiers quartered, in trading and manufacturing towns, and seldom removed from those quarters, became themselves tradesmen, artificers, and manufacturers. the civil came to predominate over the military character, and the standing armies of rome gradually degenerated into a corrupt, neglected, and undisciplined militia, incapable of resisting the attack of the german and scythian militias, which soon afterwards invaded the western empire. it was only by hiring the militia of some of those nations to oppose to that of others that the emperors were for some time able to defend themselves. the fall of the western empire is the third great revolution in the affairs of mankind of which ancient history has preserved any distinct or circumstantial account. it was brought about by the irresistible superiority which the militia of a barbarous has over that of a civilised nation; which the militia of a nation of shepherds has over that of a nation of husbandmen, artificers, and manufacturers. the victories which have been gained by militias have generally been, not over standing armies, but over other militias in exercise and discipline inferior to themselves. such were the victories which the greek militia gained over that of the persian empire; and such too were those which in later times the swiss militia gained over that of the austrians and burgundians. the military force of the german and scythian nations who established themselves upon the ruins of the western empire continued for some time to be of the same kind in their new settlements as it had been in their original country. it was a militia of shepherds and husbandmen, which, in time of war, took the field under the command of the same chieftains whom it was accustomed to obey in peace. it was, therefore, tolerably well exercised, and tolerably well disciplined. as arts and industry advanced, however, the authority of the chieftains gradually decayed, and the great body of the people had less time to spare for military exercises. both the discipline and the exercise of the feudal militia, therefore, went gradually to ruin, and standing armies were gradually introduced to supply the place of it. when the expedient of a standing army, besides, had once been adopted by one civilised nation, it became necessary that all its neighbours should follow their example. they soon found that their safety depended upon their doing so, and that their own militia was altogether incapable of resisting the attack of such an army. the soldiers of a standing army, though they may never have seen an enemy, yet have frequently appeared to possess all the courage of veteran troops and the very moment that they took the field to have been fit to face the hardiest and most experienced veterans. in 1756, when the russian army marched into poland, the valour of the russian soldiers did not appear inferior to that of the prussians, at that time supposed to be the hardiest and most experienced veterans in europe. the russian empire, however, had enjoyed a profound peace for near twenty years before, and could at that time have very few soldiers who had ever seen an enemy. when the spanish war broke out in 1739, england had enjoyed a profound peace for about eight-and-twenty years. the valour of her soldiers, however, far from being corrupted by that long peace, was never more distinguished than in the attempt upon carthagena, the first unfortunate exploit of that unfortunate war. in a long peace the generals, perhaps, may sometimes forget their skill; but, where a well-regulated standing army has been kept up, the soldiers seem never to forget their valour. when a civilised nation depends for its defence upon a militia, it is at all times exposed to be conquered by any barbarous nation which happens to be in its neighbourhood. the frequent conquests of all the civilised countries in asia by the tartars sufficiently demonstrates the natural superiority which the militia of a barbarous has over that of a civilised nation. a well-regulated standing army is superior to every militia. such an army, as it can best be maintained by an opulent and civilised nation, so it can alone defend such a nation against the invasion of a poor and barbarous neighbour. it is only by means of a standing army, therefore, that the civilization of any country can be perpetuated, or even preserved for any considerable time. as it is only by means of a well-regulated standing army that a civilised country can be defended, so it is only by means of it that a barbarous country can be suddenly and tolerably civilised. a standing army establishes, with an irresistible force, the law of the sovereign through the remotest provinces of the empire, and maintains some degree of regular government in countries which could not otherwise admit of any. whoever examines, with attention, the improvements which peter the great introduced into the russian empire, will find that they almost all resolve themselves into the establishment of a well regulated standing army. it is the instrument which executes and maintains all his other regulations. that degree of order and internal peace which that empire has ever since enjoyed is altogether owing to the influence of that army. men of republican principles have been jealous of a standing army as dangerous to liberty. it certainly is so wherever the interest of the general and that of the principal officers are not necessarily connected with the support of the constitution of the state. the standing army of caesar destroyed the roman republic. the standing army of cromwell turned the long parliament out of doors. but where the sovereign is himself the general, and the principal nobility and gentry of the country the chief officers of the army, where the military force is placed under the command of those who have the greatest interest in the support of the civil authority, because they have themselves the greatest share of that authority, a standing army can never be dangerous to liberty. on the contrary, it may in some cases be favourable to liberty. the security which it gives to the sovereign renders unnecessary that troublesome jealousy, which, in some modern republics, seems to watch over the minutest actions, and to be at all times ready to disturb the peace of every citizen. where the security of the magistrate, though supported by the principal people of the country, is endangered by every popular discontent; where a small tumult is capable of bringing about in a few hours a great revolution, the whole authority of government must be employed to suppress and punish every murmur and complaint against it. to a sovereign, on the contrary, who feels himself supported, not only by the natural aristocracy of the country, but by a well-regulated standing army, the rudest, the most groundless, and the most licentious remonstrances can give little disturbance. he can safely pardon or neglect them, and his consciousness of his own superiority naturally disposes him to do so. that degree of liberty which approaches to licentiousness can be tolerated only in countries where the sovereign is secured by a well-regulated standing army. it is in such countries only that the public safety does not require that the sovereign should be trusted with any discretionary power for suppressing even the impertinent wantonness of this licentious liberty. the first duty of the sovereign, therefore, that of defending the society from the violence and injustice of other independent societies, grows gradually more and more expensive as the society advances in civilization. the military force of the society, which originally cost the sovereign no expense either in time of peace or in time of war, must, in the progress of improvement, first be maintained by him in time of war, and afterwards even in time of peace. the great change introduced into the art of war by the invention of firearms has enhanced still further both the expense of exercising and disciplining any particular number of soldiers in time of peace, and that of employing them in time of war. both their arms and their ammunition are become more expensive. a musket is a more expensive machine than a javelin or a bow and arrows; a cannon or a mortar than a balista or a catapulta. the powder which is spent in a modern review is lost irrecoverably, and occasions a very considerable expense. the javeline and arrows which were thrown or shot in an ancient one could easily be picked up again, and were besides of very little value. the cannon and the mortar are not only much dearer, but much heavier machines than the balista or catapulta, and require a greater expense, not only to prepare them for the field, but to carry them to it. as the superiority of the modern artillery too over that of the ancients is very great, it has become much more difficult, and consequently much more expensive, to fortify a town so as to resist even for a few weeks the attack of that superior artillery. in modern times many different causes contribute to render the defence of the society more expensive. the unavoidable effects of the natural progress of improvement have, in this respect, been a good deal enhanced by a great revolution in the art of war, to which a mere accident, the invention of gunpowder, seems to have given occasion. in modern war the great expense of firearms gives an evident advantage to the nation which can best afford that expense, and consequently to an opulent and civilised over a poor and barbarous nation. in ancient times the opulent and civilised found it difficult to defend themselves against the poor and barbarous nations. in modern times the poor and barbarous find it difficult to defend themselves against the opulent and civilised. the invention of firearms, an invention which at first sight appears to be so pernicious, is certainly favourable both to the permanency and to the extension of civilization. part 2 of the expense of justice the second duty of the sovereign, that of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice, requires, too, very different degrees of expense in the different periods of society. among nations of hunters, as there is scarce any property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days' labour, so there is seldom any established magistrate or any regular administration of justice. men who have no property can injure one another only in their persons or reputations. but when one man kills, wounds, beats, or defames another, though he to whom the injury is done suffers, he who does it receives no benefit. it is otherwise with the injuries to property. the benefit of the person who does the injury is often equal to the loss of him who suffers it. envy, malice, or resentment are the only passions which can prompt one man to injure another in his person or reputation. but the greater part of men are not very frequently under the influence of those passions, and the very worst of men are so only occasionally. as their gratification too, how agreeable soever it may be to certain characters, is not attended with any real or permanent advantage, it is in the greater part of men commonly restrained by prudential considerations. men may live together in society with some tolerable degree of security, though there is no civil magistrate to protect them from the injustice of those passions. but avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to invade property, passions much more steady in their operation, and much more universal in their influence. wherever there is great property there is great inequality. for one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. the affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. it is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. he is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate continually held up to chastise it. the acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government. where there is no property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days' labour, civil government is not so necessary. civil government supposes a certain subordination. but as the necessity of civil government gradually grows up with the acquisition of valuable property, so the principal causes which naturally introduce subordination gradually grow up with the growth of that valuable property. the causes or circumstances which naturally introduce subordination, or which naturally, and antecedent to any civil institution, give some men some superiority over the greater part of their brethren, seem to be four in number. the first of those causes or circumstances is the superiority of personal qualifications, of strength, beauty, and agility of body; of wisdom and virtue, of prudence, justice, fortitude, and moderation of mind. the qualifications of the body, unless supported by those of the mind, can give little authority in any period of society. he is a very strong man, who, by mere strength of body, can force two weak ones to obey him. the qualifications of the mind can alone give a very great authority. they are, however, invisible qualities; always disputable, and generally disputed. no society, whether barbarous or civilised, has ever found it convenient to settle the rules of precedency of rank and subordination according to those invisible qualities; but according to something that is more plain and palpable. the second of those causes or circumstances is the superiority of age. an old man, provided his age is not so far advanced as to give suspicion of dotage, is everywhere more respected than a young man of equal rank, fortune, and abilities. among nations of hunters, such as the native tribes of north america, age is the sole foundation of rank and precedency. among them, father is the appellation of a superior; brother, of an equal; and son, of an inferior. in the most opulent and civilised nations, age regulates rank among those who are in every other respect equal, and among whom, therefore, there is nothing else to regulate it. among brothers and among sisters, the eldest always takes place; and in the succession of the paternal estate everything which cannot be divided, but must go entire to one person, such as a title of honour, is in most cases given to the eldest. age is a plain and palpable quality which admits of no dispute. the third of those causes or circumstances is the superiority of fortune. the authority of riches, however, though great in every age of society, is perhaps greatest in the rudest age of society which admits of any considerable inequality of fortune. a tartar chief, the increase of whose herds and stocks is sufficient to maintain a thousand men, cannot well employ that increase in any other way than in maintaining a thousand men. the rude state of his society does not afford him any manufactured produce, any trinkets or baubles of any kind, for which he can exchange that part of his rude produce which is over and above his own consumption. the thousand men whom he thus maintains, depending entirely upon him for their subsistence, must both obey his orders in war, and submit to his jurisdiction in peace. he is necessarily both their general and their judge, and his chieftainship is the necessary effect of the superiority of his fortune. in an opulent and civilised society, a man may possess a much greater fortune and yet not be able to command a dozen people. though the produce of his estate may be sufficient to maintain, and may perhaps actually maintain, more than a thousand people, yet as those people pay for everything which they get from him, as he gives scarce anything to anybody but in exchange for an equivalent, there is scarce anybody who considers himself as entirely dependent upon him, and his authority extends only over a few menial servants. the authority of fortune, however, is very great even in an opulent and civilised society. that it is much greater than that either of age or of personal qualities has been the constant complaint of every period of society which admitted of any considerable inequality of fortune. the first period of society, that of hunters, admits of no such inequality. universal poverty establishes their universal equality, and the superiority either of age or of personal qualities are the feeble but the sole foundations of authority and subordination. there is therefore little or no authority or subordination in this period of society. the second period of society, that of shepherds, admits of very great inequalities of fortune, and there is no period in which the superiority of fortune gives so great authority to those who possess it. there is no period accordingly in which authority and subordination are more perfectly established. the authority of an arabian sherif is very great; that of a tartar khan altogether despotical. the fourth of those causes or circumstances is the superiority of birth. superiority of birth supposes an ancient superiority of fortune in the family of the person who claims it. all families are equally ancient; and the ancestors of the prince, though they may be better known, cannot well be more numerous than those of the beggar. antiquity of family means everywhere the antiquity either of wealth, or of that greatness which is commonly either founded upon wealth, or accompanied with it. upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness. the hatred of usurpers, the love of the family of an ancient monarch, are, in a great measure, founded upon the contempt which men naturally have for the former, and upon their veneration for the latter. as a military officer submits without reluctance to the authority of a superior by whom he has always been commanded, but cannot bear that his inferior should be set over his head, so men easily submit to a family to whom they and their ancestors have always submitted; but are fired with indignation when another family, in whom they had never acknowledged any such superiority, assumes a dominion over them. the distinction of birth, being subsequent to the inequality of fortune, can have no place in nations of hunters, among whom all men, being equal in fortune, must likewise be very nearly equal in birth. the son of a wise and brave man may, indeed, even among them, be somewhat more respected than a man of equal merit who has the misfortune to be the son of a fool or a coward. the difference, however, will not be very great; and there never was, i believe, a great family in the world whose illustration was entirely derived from the inheritance of wisdom and virtue. the distinction of birth not only may, but always does take place among nations of shepherds. such nations are always strangers to every sort of luxury, and great wealth can scarce ever be dissipated among them by improvident profusion. there are no nations accordingly who abound more in families revered and honoured on account of their descent from a long race of great and illustrious ancestors, because there are no nations among whom wealth is likely to continue longer in the same families. birth and fortune are evidently the two circumstances which principally set one man above another. they are the two great sources of personal distinction, and are therefore the principal causes which naturally establish authority and subordination among men. among nations of shepherds both those causes operate with their full force. the great shepherd or herdsman, respected on account of his great wealth, and of the great number of those who depend upon him for subsistence, and revered on account of the nobleness of his birth, and of the immemorial antiquity of his illustrious family, has a natural authority over all the inferior shepherds or herdsmen of his horde or clan. he can command the united force of a greater number of people than any of them. his military power is greater than that of any of them. in time of war they are all of them naturally disposed to muster themselves under his banner, rather than under that of any other person, and his birth and fortune thus naturally procure to him some sort of executive power. by commanding, too, the united force of a greater number of people than any of them, he is best able to compel any one of them who may have injured another to compensate the wrong. he is the person, therefore, to whom all those who are too weak to defend themselves naturally look up for protection. it is to him that they naturally complain of the injuries which they imagine have been done to them, and his interposition in such cases is more easily submitted to, even by the person complained of, than that of any other person would be. his birth and fortune thus naturally procure him some sort of judicial authority. it is in the age of shepherds, in the second period of society, that the inequality of fortune first begins to take place, and introduces among men a degree of authority and subordination which could not possibly exist before. it thereby introduces some degree of that civil government which is indispensably necessary for its own preservation: and it seems to do this naturally, and even independent of the consideration of that necessity. the consideration of that necessity comes no doubt afterwards to contribute very much to maintain and secure that authority and subordination. the rich, in particular, are necessarily interested to support that order of things which can alone secure them in the possession of their own advantages. men of inferior wealth combine to defend those of superior wealth in the possession of their property, in order that men of superior wealth may combine to defend them in the possession of theirs. all the inferior shepherds and herdsmen feel that the security of their own herds and flocks depends upon the security of those of the great shepherd or herdsman; that the maintenance of their lesser authority depends upon that of his greater authority, and that upon their subordination to him depends his power of keeping their inferiors in subordination to them. they constitute a sort of little nobility, who feel themselves interested to defend the property and to support the authority of their own little sovereign in order that he may be able to defend their property and to support their authority. civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. the judicial authority of such a sovereign, however, far from being a cause of expense, was for a long time a source of revenue to him. the persons who applied to him for justice were always willing to pay for it, and a present never failed to accompany a petition. after the authority of the sovereign, too, was thoroughly established, the person found guilty, over and above the satisfaction which he was obliged to make to the party, was likewise forced to pay an amercement to the sovereign. he had given trouble, he had disturbed, he had broke the peace of his lord the king, and for those offences an amercement was thought due. in the tartar governments of asia, in the governments of europe which were founded by the german and scythian nations who overturned the roman empire, the administration of justice was a considerable source of revenue, both to the sovereign and to all the lesser chiefs or lords who exercised under him any particular jurisdiction, either over some particular tribe or clan, or over some particular territory or district. originally both the sovereign and the inferior chiefs used to exercise this jurisdiction in their own persons. afterwards they universally found it convenient to delegate it to some substitute, bailiff, or judge. this substitute, however, was still obliged to account to his principal or constituent for the profits of the jurisdiction. whoever reads the instructions which were given to the judges of the circuit in the time of henry ii will see clearly that those judges were a sort of itinerant factors, sent round the country for the purpose of levying certain branches of the king's revenue. in those days the administration of justice not only afforded a certain revenue to the sovereign, but to procure this revenue seems to have been one of the principal advantages which he proposed to obtain by the administration of justice. this scheme of making the administration of justice subservient to the purposes of revenue could scarce fail to be productive of several very gross abuses. the person who applied for justice with a large present in his hand was likely to get something more than justice; while he who applied for it with a small one was likely to get something less. justice, too, might frequently be delayed in order that this present might be repeated. the amercement, besides, of the person complained of, might frequently suggest a very strong reason for finding him in the wrong, even when he had not really been so. that such abuses were far from being uncommon the ancient history of every country in europe bears witness. when the sovereign or chief exercised his judicial authority in his own person, how much soever he might abuse it, it must have been scarce possible to get any redress, because there could seldom be anybody powerful enough to call him to account. when he exercised it by a bailiff, indeed, redress might sometimes be had. if it was for his own benefit only that the bailiff had been guilty of any act of injustice, the sovereign himself might not always be unwilling to punish him, or to oblige him to repair the wrong. but if it was for the benefit of his sovereign, if it was in order to make court to the person who appointed him and who might prefer him, that he had committed any act of oppression, redress would upon most occasions be as impossible as if the sovereign had committed it himself. in all barbarous governments, accordingly, in all those ancient governments of europe in particular which were founded upon the ruins of the roman empire, the administration of justice appears for a long time to have been extremely corrupt, far from being quite equal and impartial even under the best monarchs, and altogether profligate under the worst. among nations of shepherds, where the sovereign or chief is only the greatest shepherd or herdsman of the horde or clan, he is maintained in the same manner as any of his vassals or subjects, by the increase of his own herds or flocks. among those nations of husbandmen who are but just come out of the shepherd state, and who are not much advanced beyond that state, such as the greek tribes appear to have been about the time of the trojan war, and our german and scythian ancestors when they first settled upon the ruins of the western empire, the sovereign or chief is, in the same manner, only the greatest landlord of the country, and is maintained, in the same manner as any other landlord, by a revenue derived from his own private estate, or from what, in modern europe, was called the demesne of the crown. his subjects, upon ordinary occasions, contributed nothing to his support, except when, in order to protect them from the oppression of some of their fellow-subjects, they stand in need of his authority. the presents which they make him upon such occasions constitute the whole ordinary revenue, the whole of the emoluments which, except perhaps upon some very extraordinary emergencies, he derives from his dominion over them. when agamemnon, in homer, offers to achilles for his friendship the sovereignty of seven greek cities, the sole advantage which he mentions as likely to be derived from it was that the people would honour him with presents. as long as such presents, as long as the emoluments of justice, or what may be called the fees of court, constituted in this manner the whole ordinary revenue which the sovereign derived from his sovereignty, it could not well be expected, it could not even decently be proposed, that he should give them up altogether. it might, and it frequently was proposed, that he should regulate and ascertain them. but after they had been so regulated and ascertained, how to hinder a person who was all-powerful from extending them beyond those regulations was still very difficult, not to say impossible. during the continuance of this state of things, therefore, the corruption of justice, naturally resulting from the arbitrary and uncertain nature of those presents, scarce admitted of any effectual remedy. but when from different causes, chiefly from the continually increasing expenses of defending the nation against the invasion of other nations, the private estate of the sovereign had become altogether insufficient for defraying the expense of the sovereignty, and when it had become necessary that the people should, for their own security, contribute towards this expense by taxes of different kinds, it seems to have been very commonly stipulated that no present for the administration of justice should, under any pretence, be accepted either by the sovereign, or by his bailiffs and substitutes, the judges. those presents, it seems to have been supposed, could more easily be abolished altogether than effectually regulated and ascertained. fixed salaries were appointed to the judges, which were supposed to compensate to them the loss of whatever might have been their share of the ancient emoluments of justice, as the taxes more than compensated to the sovereign the loss of his. justice was then said to be administered gratis. justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country. lawyers and attorneys, at least, must always be paid by the parties; and, if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they actually perform it. the fees annually paid to lawyers and attorneys amount, in every court, to a much greater sum than the salaries of the judges. the circumstance of those salaries being paid by the crown can nowhere much diminish the necessary expense of a law-suit. but it was not so much to diminish the expense, as to prevent the corruption of justice, that the judges were prohibited from receiving any present or fee from the parties. the office of judge is in itself so very honourable that men are willing to accept of it, though accompanied with very small emoluments. the inferior office of justice of peace, though attended with a good deal of trouble, and in most cases with no emoluments at all, is an object of ambition to the greater part of our country gentlemen. the salaries of all the different judges, high and low, together with the whole expense of the administration and execution of justice, even where it is not managed with very good economy, makes, in any civilised country, but a very inconsiderable part of the whole expense of government. the whole expense of justice, too, might easily be defrayed by the fees of court; and, without exposing the administration of justice to any real hazard of corruption, the public revenue might thus be discharged from a certain, though, perhaps, but a small incumbrance. it is difficult to regulate the fees of court effectually where a person so powerful as the sovereign is to share in them, and to derive any considerable part of his revenue from them. it is very easy where the judge is the principal person who can reap any benefit from them. the law can very easily oblige the judge to respect the regulation, though it might not always be able to make the sovereign respect it. where the fees of court are precisely regulated and ascertained, where they are paid all at once, at a certain period of every process, into the hands of a cashier or receiver, to be by him distributed in certain known proportions among the different judges after the process is decided, and not till it is decided, there seems to be no more danger of corruption than where such fees are prohibited altogether. those fees, without occasioning any considerable increase in the expense of a lawsuit, might be rendered fully sufficient for defraying the whole expense of justice. by not being paid to the judges till the process was determined, they might be some incitement to the diligence of the court in examining and deciding it. in courts which consisted of a considerable number of judges, by proportioning the share of each judge to the number of hours and days which he had employed in examining the process, either in the court or in a committee by order of the court, those fees might give some encouragement to the diligence of each particular judge. public services are never better performed than when their reward comes only in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them. in the different parliaments of france, the fees of court (called epices and vacations) constitute the far greater part of the emoluments of the judges. after all deductions are made, the net salary paid by the crown to a counsellor or judge in the parliament of toulouse, in rank and dignity the second parliament of the kingdom, amounts only to a hundred and fifty livres, about six pounds eleven shillings sterling a year. about seven years ago that sum was in the same place the ordinary yearly wages of a common footman. the distribution of those epices, too, is according to the diligence of the judges. a diligent judge gains a comfortable, though moderate, revenue by his office: an idle one gets little more than his salary. those parliaments are perhaps, in many respects, not very convenient courts of justice; but they have never been accused, they seem never even to have been suspected, of corruption. the fees of court seem originally to have been the principal support of the different courts of justice in england. each court endeavoured to draw to itself as much business as it could, and was, upon that account, willing to take cognisance of many suits which were not originally intended to fall under its jurisdiction. the court of king's bench, instituted for the trial of criminal causes only, took cognisance of civil suits; the plaintiff pretending that the defendant, in not doing him justice, had been guilty of some trespass or misdemeanour. the court of exchequer, instituted for the levying of the king's revenue, and for enforcing the payment of such debts only as were due to the king, took cognisance of all other contract debts; the plaintiff alleging that he could not pay the king because the defendant would not pay him. in consequence of such fictions it came, in many cases, to depend altogether upon the parties before what court they would choose to have their cause tried; and each court endeavoured, by superior dispatch and impartiality, to draw to itself as many causes as it could. the present admirable constitution of the courts of justice in england was, perhaps, originally in a great measure formed by this emulation which anciently took place between their respective judges; each judge endeavouring to give, in his own court, the speediest and most effectual remedy which the law would admit for every sort of injustice. originally the courts of law gave damages only for breach of contract. the court of chancery, as a court of conscience, first took upon it to enforce the specific performance of agreements. when the breach of contract consisted in the non-payment of money, the damage sustained could be compensated in no other way than by ordering payment, which was equivalent to a specific performance of the agreement. in such cases, therefore, the remedy of the courts of law was sufficient. it was not so in others. when the tenant sued his lord for having unjustly outed him of his lease, the damages which he recovered were by no means equivalent to the possession of the land. such causes, therefore, for some time, went all to the court of chancery, to the no small loss of the courts of law. it was to draw back such causes to themselves that the courts of law are said to have invented the artificial and fictitious writ of ejectment, the most effectual remedy for an unjust outer or dispossession of land. a stamp-duty upon the law proceedings of each particular court, to be levied by that court, and applied towards the maintenance of the judges and other officers belonging to it, might, in the same manner, afford revenue sufficient for defraying the expense of the administration of justice, without bringing any burden upon the general revenue of the society. the judges indeed might, in this case, be under the temptation of multiplying unnecessarily the proceedings upon every cause, in order to increase, as much as possible, the produce of such a stamp-duty. it has been the custom in modern europe to regulate, upon most occasions, the payment of the attorneys and clerks of court according to the number of pages which they had occasion to write; the court, however, requiring that each page should contain so many lines, and each line so many words. in order to increase their payment, the attorneys and clerks have contrived to multiply words beyond all necessity, to the corruption of the law language of, i believe, every court of justice in europe. a like temptation might perhaps occasion a like corruption in the form of law proceedings. but whether the administration of justice be so contrived as to defray its own expense, or whether the judges be maintained by fixed salaries paid to them from some other fund, it does not seem necessary that the person or persons entrusted with the executive power should be charged with the management of that fund, or with the payment of those salaries. that fund might arise from the rent of landed estates, the management of each estate being entrusted to the particular court which was to be maintained by it. that fund might arise even from the interest of a sum of money, the lending out of which might, in the same manner, be entrusted to the court which was to be maintained by it. a part, though indeed but a small part, of the salary of the judges of the court of session in scotland arises from the interest of a sum of money. the necessary instability of such a fund seems, however, to render it an improper one for the maintenance of an institution which ought to last for ever. the separation of the judicial from the executive power seems originally to have arisen from the increasing business of the society, in consequence of its increasing improvement. the administration of justice became so laborious and so complicated a duty as to require the undivided attention of the persons to whom it was entrusted. the person entrusted with the executive power not having leisure to attend to the decision of private causes himself, a deputy was appointed to decide them in his stead. in the progress of the roman greatness, the consul was too much occupied with the political affairs of the state to attend to the administration of justice. a praetor, therefore, was appointed to administer it in his stead. in the progress of the european monarchies which were founded upon the ruins of the roman empire, the sovereigns and the great lords came universally to consider the administration of justice as an office both too laborious and too ignoble for them to execute in their own persons. they universally, therefore, discharged themselves of it by appointing a deputy, bailiff, or judge. when the judicial is united to the executive power, it is scarce possible that justice should not frequently be sacrificed to what is vulgarly called polities. the persons entrusted with the great interests of the state may, even without any corrupt views, sometimes imagine it necessary to sacrifice to those interests the rights of a private man. but upon the impartial administration of justice depends the liberty of every individual, the sense which he has of his own security. in order to make every individual feel himself perfectly secure in the possession of every right which belongs to him, it is not only necessary that the judicial should be separated from the executive power, but that it should be rendered as much as possible independent of that power. the judge should not be liable to be removed from his office according to the caprice of that power. the regular the good-will or even upon the good economy payment of his salary should not depend upon of that power. part 3 of the expense of public works and public institutions the third and last duty of the sovereign or commonwealth is that of erecting and maintaining those public institutions and those public works, which, though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, and which it therefore cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain. the performance of this duty requires, too, very different degrees of expense in the different periods of society. after the public institutions and public works necessary for the defence of the society, and for the administration of justice, both of which have already been mentioned, the other works and institutions of this kind are chiefly those for facilitating the commerce of the society, and those for promoting the instruction of the people. the institutions for instruction are of two kinds: those for the education of youth, and those for the instruction of people of all ages. the consideration of the manner in which the expense of those different sorts of public, works and institutions may be most properly defrayed will divide this third part of the present chapter into three different articles. article 1 of the public works and institutions for facilitating the commerce of the society and, first, of those which are necessary for facilitating commerce in general. that the erection and maintenance of the public works which facilitate the commerce of any country, such as good roads, bridges, navigable canals, harbours, etc., must require very different degrees of expense in the different periods of society is evident without any proof. the expense of making and maintaining the public roads of any country must evidently increase with the annual produce of the land and labour of that country, or with the quantity and weight of the goods which it becomes necessary to fetch and carry upon those roads. the strength of a bridge must be suited to the number and weight of the carriages which are likely to pass over it. the depth and the supply of water for a navigable canal must be proportioned to the number and tonnage of the lighters which are likely to carry goods upon it; the extent of a harbour to the number of the shipping which are likely to take shelter in it. it does not seem necessary that the expense of those public works should be defrayed from that public revenue, as it is commonly called, of which the collection and application is in most countries assigned to the executive power. the greater part of such public works may easily be so managed as to afford a particular revenue sufficient for defraying their own expense, without bringing any burden upon the general revenue of the society. a highway, a bridge, a navigable canal, for example, may in most cases be both made and maintained by a small toll upon the carriages which make use of them: a harbour, by a moderate port-duty upon the tonnage of the shipping which load or unload in it. the coinage, another institution for facilitating commerce, in many countries, not only defrays its own expense, but affords a small revenue or seignorage to the sovereign. the post-office, another institution for the same purpose, over and above defraying its own expense, affords in almost all countries a very considerable revenue to the sovereign. when the carriages which pass over a highway or a bridge, and the lighters which sail upon a navigable canal, pay toll in proportion to their weight or their tonnage, they pay for the maintenance of those public works exactly in proportion to the wear and tear which they occasion of them. it seems scarce possible to invent a more equitable way of maintaining such works. this tax or toll too, though it is advanced by the carrier, is finally paid by the consumer, to whom it must always be charged in the price of the goods. as the expense of carriage, however, is very much reduced by means of such public works, the goods, notwithstanding the toll come cheaper to the consumer than the; could otherwise have done; their price not being so much raised by the toll as it is lowered by the cheapness of the carriage. the person who finally pays this tax, therefore, gains by the application more than he loses by the payment of it. his payment is exactly in proportion to his gain. it is in reality no more than a part of that gain which he is obliged to give up in order to get the rest. it seems impossible to imagine a more equitable method of raising a tax. when the toll upon carriages of luxury upon coaches, post-chaises, etc., is made somewhat higher in proportion to their weight than upon carriages of necessary use, such as carts, waggons, etc., the indolence and vanity of the rich is made to contribute in a very easy manner to the relief of the poor, by rendering cheaper the transportation of heavy goods to all the different parts of the country. when high roads, bridges, canals, etc., are in this manner made and supported by the commerce which is carried on by means of them, they can be made only where that commerce requires them, and consequently where it is proper to make them. their expenses too, their grandeur and magnificence, must be suited to what that commerce can afford to pay. they must be made consequently as it is proper to make them. a magnificent high road cannot be made through a desert country where there is little or no commerce, or merely because it happens to lead to the country villa of the intendant of the province, or to that of some great lord to whom the intendant finds it convenient to make his court. a great bridge cannot be thrown over a river at a place where nobody passes, or merely to embellish the view from the windows of a neighbouring palace: things which sometimes happen in countries where works of this kind are carried on by any other revenue than that which they themselves are capable of affording. in several different parts of europe the ton or lock-duty upon a canal is the property of private persons, whose private interest obliges them to keep up the canal. if it is not kept in tolerable order, the navigation necessarily ceases altogether, and along with it the whole profit which they can make by the tolls. if those tolls were put under the management of commissioners, who had themselves no interest in them, they might be less attentive to the maintenance of the works which produced them. the canal of languedoc cost the king of france and the province upwards of thirteen millions of livres, which (at twenty-eight livres the mark of silver, the value of french money in the end of the last century) amounted to upwards of nine hundred thousand pounds sterling. when that great work was finished, the most likely method, it was found, of keeping it in constant repair was to make a present of the tolls to riquet the engineer, who planned and conducted the work. those tolls constitute at present a very large estate to the different branches of the family of that gentleman, who have, therefore, a great interest to keep the work in constant repair. but had those tolls been put under the management of commissioners, who had no such interest, they might perhaps have been dissipated in ornamental and unnecessary expenses, while the most essential parts of the work were allowed to go to ruin. the tolls for the maintenance of a high road cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons. a high road, though entirely neglected, does not become altogether impassable, though a canal does. the proprietors of the tolls upon a high road, therefore, might neglect altogether the repair of the road, and yet continue to levy very nearly the same tolls. it is proper, therefore, that the tolls for the maintenance of such a work should be put under the management of commissioners or trustees. in great britain, the abuses which the trustees have committed in the management of those tolls have in many cases been very justly complained of. at many turnpikes, it has been said, the money levied is more than double of what is necessary for executing, in the completest manner, the work which is often executed in very slovenly manner, and sometimes not executed at all. the system of repairing the high roads by tolls of this kind, it must be observed, is not of very long standing. we should not wonder, therefore, if it has not yet been brought to that degree of perfection of which it seems capable. if mean and improper persons are frequently appointed trustees, and if proper courts of inspection and account have not yet been established for controlling their conduct, and for reducing the tolls to what is barely sufficient for executing the work to be done by them, the recency of the institution both accounts and apologizes for those defects, of which, by the wisdom of parliament, the greater part may in due time be gradually remedied. the money levied at the different turnpikes in great britain is supposed to exceed so much what is necessary for repairing the roads, that the savings, which, with proper economy, might be made from it, have been considered, even by some ministers, as a very great resource which might at some time or another be applied to the exigencies of the state. government, it has been said, by taking the management of the turnpikes into its own hands, and by employing the soldiers, who would work for a very small addition to their pay, could keep the roads in good order at a much less expense than it can be done by trustees, who have no other workmen to employ but such as derive their whole subsistence from their wages. a great revenue, half a million perhaps,* it has been pretended, might in this manner be gained without laying any new burden upon the people; and the turnpike roads might be made to contribute to the general expense of the state, in the same manner as the post office does at present. * since publishing the two first editions of this book, i have got good reasons to believe that all the turnpike tolls levied in great britain do not produce a net revenue that amounts to half a million; a sum which, under the management of government, would not be sufficient to keep in repair five of the principal roads in the kingdom. that a considerable revenue might be gained in this manner i have no doubt, though probably not near so much as the projectors of this plan have supposed. the plan itself, however, seems liable to several very important objections. first, if the tolls which are levied at the turnpikes should ever be considered as one of the resources for supplying the exigencies of the state, they would certainly be augmented as those exigencies were supposed to require. according to the policy of great britain, therefore, they would probably be augmented very fast. the facility with which a great revenue could be drawn from them would probably encourage administration to recur very frequently to this resource. though it may, perhaps, be more than doubtful whether half a million could by any economy be saved out of the present tolls, it can scarce be doubted but that a million might be saved out of them if they were doubled: and perhaps two millions if they were tripled.* this great revenue, too, might be levied without the appointment of a single new officer to collect and receive it. but the turnpike tolls being continually augmented in this manner, instead of facilitating the inland commerce of the country as at present, would soon become a very great incumbrance upon it. the expense of transporting all heavy goods from one part of the country to another would soon be so much increased, the market for all such goods, consequently, would soon be so much narrowed, that their production would be in a great measure discouraged, and the most important branches of the domestic industry of the country annihilated altogether. * i have now good reasons to believe that all these conjectural sums are by much too large. secondly, a tax upon carriages in proportion to their weight, though a very equal tax when applied to the sole purpose of repairing the roads, is a very unequal one when applied to any other purpose, or to supply the common exigencies of the state. when it is applied to the sole purpose above mentioned, each carriage is supposed to pay exactly for the wear and tear which that carriage occasions of the roads. but when it is applied to any other purpose, each carriage is supposed to pay for more than that wear and tear, and contributes to the supply of some other exigency of the state. but as the turnpike toll raises the price of goods in proportion to their weight, and not to their value, it is chiefly paid by the consumers of coarse and bulky, not by those of precious and light, commodities. whatever exigency of the state therefore this tax might be intended to supply, that exigency would be chiefly supplied at the expense of the poor, not the rich; at the expense of those who are least able to supply it, not of those who are most able. thirdly, if government should at any time neglect the reparation of the high roads, it would be still more difficult than it is at present to compel the proper application of any part of the turnpike tolls. a large revenue might thus be levied upon the people without any part of it being applied to the only purpose to which a revenue levied in this manner ought ever to be applied. if the meanness and poverty of the trustees of turnpike roads render it sometimes difficult at present to oblige them to repair their wrong, their wealth and greatness would render it ten times more so in the case which is here supposed. in france, the funds destined for the reparation of high roads are under the immediate direction of the executive power. those funds consist partly in a certain number of days' labour which the country people are in most parts of europe obliged to give to the reparation of the highways, and partly in such a portion of the general revenue of the state as the king chooses to spare from his other expenses. by the ancient law of france, as well as by that of most other parts of europe, the labour of the country people was under the direction of a local or provincial magistracy, which had no immediate dependency upon the king's council. but by the present practice both the labour of the people, and whatever other fund the king may choose to assign for the reparation of the high roads in any particular province or generality, are entirely under the management of the intendant; an officer who is appointed and removed by the king's council, and who receives his orders from it, and is in constant correspondence with it. in the progress of despotism the authority of the executive power gradually absorbs that of every other power in the state, and assumes to itself the management of every branch of revenue which is destined for any public purpose. in france, however, the great post-roads, the roads which make the communication between the principal towns of the kingdom, are in general kept in good order, and in some provinces are even a good deal superior to the greater part of the turnpike roads of england. but what we call the cross-roads, that is, the far greater part of the roads in the country, are entirely neglected, and are in many places absolutely impassable for any heavy carriage. in some places it is even dangerous to travel on horseback, and mules are the only conveyances which can safely be trusted. the proud minister of an ostentatious court may frequently take pleasure in executing a work of splendour and magnificence, such as a great highway, which is frequently seen by the principal nobility, whose applauses not only flatter his vanity, but even contribute to support his interest at court. but to execute a great number of little works, in which nothing that can be done can make any great appearance, or excite the smallest degree of admiration in any traveller, and which, in short, have nothing to recommend them but their extreme utility, is a business which appears in every respect too mean and paltry to merit the attention of so great a magistrate. under such an administration, therefore, such works are almost always entirely neglected. in china, and in several other governments of asia, the executive power charges itself both with the reparation of the high roads and with the maintenance of the navigable canals. in the instructions which are given to the governor of each province, those objects, it is said, are constantly recommended to him, and the judgment which the court forms of his conduct is very much regulated by the attention which he appears to have paid to this part of his instructions. this branch of public police accordingly is said to be very much attended to in all those countries, but particularly in china, where the high roads, and still more the navigable canals, it is pretended, exceed very much everything of the same kind which is known in europe. the accounts of those works, however, which have been transmitted to europe, have generally been drawn up by weak and wondering travellers; frequently by stupid and lying missionaries. if they had been examined by more intelligent eyes, and if the accounts of them had been reported by more faithful witnesses, they would not, perhaps, appear to be so wonderful. the account which bernier gives of some works of this kind in indostan falls very much short of what had been reported of them by other travellers, more disposed to the marvellous than he was. it may too, perhaps, be in those countries, as in france, where the great roads, the great communications which are likely to be the subjects of conversation at the court and in the capital, are attended to, and all the rest neglected. in china, besides, in indostan, and in several other governments of asia, the revenue of the sovereign arises almost altogether from a land tax or land rent, which rises or falls with the rise and fall of the annual produce of the land. the great interest of the sovereign, therefore, his revenue, is in such countries necessarily and immediately connected with the cultivation of the land, with the greatness of its produce, and with the value of its produce. but in order to render that produce both as great and as valuable as possible, it is necessary to procure to it as extensive a market as possible, and consequently to establish the freest, the easiest, and the least expensive communication between all the different parts of the country; which can be done only by means of the best roads and the best navigable canals. but the revenue of the sovereign does not, in any part of europe, arise chiefly from a land tax or land rent. in all the great kingdoms of europe, perhaps, the greater part of it may ultimately depend upon the produce of the land: but that dependency is neither so immediate, nor so evident. in europe, therefore, the sovereign does not feel himself so directly called upon to promote the increase, both in quantity and value, of the produce of the land, or, by maintaining good roads and canals, to provide the most extensive market for that produce. though it should be true, therefore, what i apprehend is not a little doubtful, that in some parts of asia this department of the public police is very properly managed by the executive power, there is not the least probability that, during the present state of things, it could be tolerably managed by that power in any part of europe. even those public works which are of such a nature that they cannot afford any revenue for maintaining themselves, but of which the conveniency is nearly confined to some particular place or district, are always better maintained by a local or provincial revenue, under the management of a local or provincial administration, than by the general revenue of the state, of which the executive power must always have the management. were the streets of london to be lighted and paved at the expense of the treasury, is there any probability that they would be so well lighted and paved as they are at present, or even at so small an expense? the expense, besides, instead of being raised by a local tax upon the inhabitants of each particular street, parish, or district in london, would, in this case, be defrayed out of the general revenue of the state, and would consequently be raised by a tax upon all the inhabitants of the kingdom, of whom the greater part derive no sort of benefit from the lighting and paving of the streets of london. the abuses which sometimes creep into the local and provincial administration of a local and provincial revenue, how enormous soever they may appear, are in reality, however, almost always very trifling in comparison of those which commonly take place in the administration and expenditure of the revenue of a great empire. they are, besides, much more easily corrected. under the local or provincial administration of the justices of the peace in great britain, the six days' labour which the country people are obliged to give to the reparation of the highways is not always perhaps very judiciously applied, but it is scarce ever exacted with any circumstances of cruelty or oppression. in france, under the administration of the intendants, the application is not always more judicious, and the exaction is frequently the most cruel and oppressive. such corvees, as they are called, make one of the principal instruments of tyranny by which those officers chastise any parish or communaute which has had the misfortune to fall under their displeasure. of the public works and institutions which are necessary for facilitating particular branches of commerce. the object of the public works and institutions above mentioned is to facilitate commerce in general. but in order to facilitate some particular branches of it, particular institutions are necessary, which again require a particular and extraordinary expense. some particular branches of commerce, which are carried on with barbarous and uncivilised nations, require extraordinary protection. an ordinary store or counting-house could give little security to the goods of the merchants who trade to the western coast of africa. to defend them from the barbarous natives, it is necessary that the place where they are deposited should be, in some measure, fortified. the disorders in the government of indostan have been supposed to render a like precaution necessary even among that mild and gentle people; and it was under pretence of securing their persons and property from violence that both the english and french east india companies were allowed to erect the first forts which they possessed in that country. among other nations, whose vigorous government will suffer no strangers to possess any fortified place within their territory, it may be necessary to maintain some ambassador, minister, or counsel, who may both decide, according to their own customs, the differences arising among his own countrymen, and, in their disputes with the natives, may, by means of his public character, interfere with more authority, and afford them a more powerful protection, than they could expect from any private man. the interests of commerce have frequently made it necessary to maintain ministers in foreign countries where the purposes, either of war or alliance, would not have required any. the commerce of the turkey company first occasioned the establishment of an ordinary ambassador at constantinople. the first english embassies to russia arose altogether from commercial interests. the constant interference which those interests necessarily occasioned between the subjects of the different states of europe, has probably introduced the custom of keeping, in all neighbouring countries, ambassadors or ministers constantly resident even in the time of peace. this custom, unknown to ancient times, seems not to be older than the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century; that is, than the time when commerce first began to extend itself to the greater part of the nations of europe, and when they first began to attend to its interests. it seems not unreasonable that the extraordinary expense which the protection of any particular branch of commerce may occasion should be defrayed by a moderate tax upon that particular branch; by a moderate fine, for example, to be paid by the traders when they first enter into it, or, what is more equal, by a particular duty of so much per cent upon the goods which they either import into, or export out of, the particular countries with which it is carried on. the protection of trade in general, from pirates and freebooters, is said to have given occasion to the first institution of the duties of customs. but, if it was thought reasonable to lay a general tax upon trade, in order to defray the expense of protecting trade in general, it should seem equally reasonable to lay a particular tax upon a particular branch of trade, in order to defray the extraordinary expense of protecting that branch. the protection of trade in general has always been considered as essential to the defence of the commonwealth, and, upon that account, a necessary part of the duty of the executive power. the collection and application of the general duties of customs, therefore, have always been left to that power. but the protection of any particular branch of trade is a part of the general protection of trade; a part, therefore, of the duty of that power; and if nations always acted consistently, the particular duties levied for the purposes of such particular protection should always have been left equally to its disposal. but in this respect, as well as in many others, nations have not always acted consistently; and in the greater part of the commercial states of europe, particular companies of merchants have had the address to persuade the legislature to entrust to them the performance of this part of the duty of the sovereign, together with all the powers which are necessarily connected with it. these companies, though they may, perhaps, have been useful for the first introduction of some branches of commerce, by making, at their own expense, an experiment which the state might not think it prudent to make, have in the long run proved, universally, either burdensome or useless, and have either mismanaged or confined the trade. when those companies do not trade upon a joint stock, but are obliged to admit any person, properly qualified, upon paying a certain fine, and agreeing to submit to the regulations of the company, each member trading upon his own stock, and at his own risk, they are called regulated companies. when they trade upon a joint stock, each member sharing in the common profit or loss in proportion to his share in this stock, they are called joint stock companies. such companies, whether regulated or joint stock, sometimes have, and sometimes have not, exclusive privileges. regulated companies resemble, in every respect, the corporations of trades so common in the cities and towns of all the different countries of europe, and are a sort of enlarged monopolies of the same kind. as no inhabitant of a town can exercise an incorporated trade without first obtaining his freedom in the corporation, so in most cases no subject of the state can lawfully carry on any branch of foreign trade, for which a regulated company is established, without first becoming a member of that company. the monopoly is more or less strict according as the terms of admission are more or less difficult; and according as the directors of the company have more or less authority, or have it more or less in their power to manage in such a manner as to confine the greater part of the trade to themselves and their particular friends. in the most ancient regulated companies the privileges of apprenticeship were the same as in other corporations, and entitled the person who had served his time to a member of the company to become himself a member, either without paying any fine, or upon paying a much smaller one than what was exacted of other people. the usual corporation spirit, wherever the law does not restrain it, prevails in all regulated companies. when they have been allowed to act according to their natural genius, they have always, in order to confine the competition to as small a number of persons as possible, endeavoured to subject the trade to many burden some regulations. when the law has restrained them from doing this, they have become altogether useless and insignificant. the regulated companies for foreign commerce which at present subsist in great britain are the ancient merchant adventurers' company, now commonly called the hamburg company, the russia company, the eastland company, the turkey company, and the african company. the terms of admission into the hamburg company are now said to be quite easy, and the directors either have it not their power to subject the trade to any burdensome restraint or regulations, or, at least, have not of late exercised that power. it has not always been so. about the middle of the last century, the fine for admission was fifty, and at one time one hundred pounds, and the conduct of the company was said to be extremely oppressive. in 1643, in 1645, and in 1661, the clothiers and free traders of the west of england complained of them to parliament as of monopolists who confined the trade and oppressed the manufactures of the country. though those complaints produced an act of parliament, they had probably intimidated the company so far as to oblige them to reform their conduct. since that time, at least, there has been no complaints against them. by the 10th and 11th of william iii, c. 6, the fine for admission into the russia company was reduced to five pounds; and by the 25th of charles ii, c. 7, that for admission into the eastland company to forty shillings, while, at the same time, sweden, denmark, and norway, all the countries on the north side of the baltic, were exempted from their exclusive charter. the conduct of those companies had probably given occasion to those two acts of parliament. before that time, sir josiah child had represented both these and the hamburg company as extremely oppressive, and imputed to their bad management the low state of the trade which we at that time carried on to the countries comprehended within their respective charters. but though such companies may not, in the present times, be very oppressive, they are certainly altogether useless. to be merely useless, indeed, is perhaps the highest eulogy which can ever justly be bestowed upon a regulated company; and all the three companies above mentioned seem, in their present state, to deserve this eulogy. the fine for admission into the turkey company was formerly twenty-five pounds for all persons under twenty-six years of age, and fifty pounds for all persons above that age. nobody but mere merchants could be admitted; a restriction which excluded all shopkeepers and retailers. by a bye-law, no british manufactures could be exported to turkey but in the general ships of the company; and as those ships sailed always from the port of london, this restriction confined the trade to that expensive port, and the traders to those who lived in london and in its neighbourhood. by another bye-law, no person living within twenty miles of london, and not free of the city, could be admitted a member; another restriction which, joined to the foregoing, necessarily excluded all but the freemen of london. as the time for the loading and sailing of those general ships depended altogether upon the directors, they could easily fill them with their own goods and those of their particular friends, to the exclusion of others, who, they might pretend, had made their proposals too late. in this state of things, therefore, this company was in every respect a strict and oppressive monopoly. those abuses gave occasion to the act of the 26th of george ii, c. 18, reducing the fine for admission to twenty pounds for all persons, without any distinction of ages, or any restriction, either to mere merchants, or to the freemen of london; and granting to all such persons the liberty of exporting, from all the ports of great britain to any port in turkey, all british goods of which the exportation was not prohibited; and of importing from thence all turkish goods of which the importation was not prohibited, upon paying both the general duties of customs, and the particular duties assessed for defraying the necessary expenses of the company; and submitting, at the same time, to the lawful authority of the british ambassador and consuls resident in turkey, and to the bye laws of the company duly enacted. to prevent any oppression by those bye-laws, it was by the same act ordained, that if any seven members of the company conceived themselves aggrieved by any bye-law which should be enacted after the passing of this act, they might appeal to the board of trade and plantations (to the authority of which a committee of the privy council has now succeeded), provided such appeal was brought within twelve months after the bye-law was enacted; and that if any seven members conceived themselves aggrieved by any bye-law which had been enacted before the passing of this act, they might bring a like appeal, provided it was within twelve months after the day on which this act was to take place. the experience of one year, however, may not always be sufficient to discover to all the members of a great company, the pernicious tendency of a particular bye-law; and if several of them should afterwards discover it, neither the board of trade, nor the committee of council, can afford them any redress. the object, besides, of the greater part of the bye-laws of all regulated companies, as well as of all other corporations, is not so much to oppress those who are already members, as to discourage others from becoming so; which may be done, not only by a high fine, but by many other contrivances. the constant view of such companies is always to raise the rate of their own profit as high as they can; to keep the market, both for the goods which they export, and for those which they import, as much understocked as they can: which can be done only by restraining the competition, or by discouraging new adventurers from entering into the trade. a fine even of twenty pounds, besides, though it may not perhaps be sufficient to discourage any man from entering into the turkey trade with an intention to continue in it, may be enough to discourage a speculative merchant from hazarding a single adventure in it. in all trades, the regular established traders, even though not incorporated, naturally combine to raise profits, which are noway so likely to be kept, at all times, down to their proper level, as by the occasional competition of speculative adventure. the turkey trade, though in some measure laid open by this act of parliament, is still considered by many people as very far from being altogether free. the turkey company contribute to maintain an ambassador and two or three consuls, who, like other public ministers, ought to be maintained altogether by the state, and the trade laid open to all his majesty's subjects. the different taxes levied by the company, for this and other corporation purposes, might afford avenue much more than sufficient to enable the state to maintain such ministers. regulated companies, it was observed by sir josiah child, though they had frequently supported public ministers, had never maintained any forts or garrisons in the countries to which they traded; whereas joint stock companies frequently had. and in reality the former seem to be much more unfit for this sort of service than the latter. first, the directors of a regulated company have no particular interest in the prosperity of the general trade of the company for the sake of which such forts and garrisons are maintained. the decay of that general trade may even frequently contribute to the advantage of their own private trade; as by diminishing the number of their competitors it may enable them both to buy cheaper, and to sell dearer. the directors of a joint stock company, on the contrary, having only their share in the profits which are made upon the common stock committed to their management, have no private trade of their own of which the interest can be separated from that of the general trade of the company. their private interest is connected with the prosperity of the general trade of the company, and with the maintenance of the forts and garrisons which are necessary for its defence. they are more likely, therefore, to have that continual and careful attention which that maintenance necessarily requires. secondly, the directors of a joint stock company have always the management of a large capital, the joint stock of the company, a part of which they may frequently employ, with propriety, in building, repairing, and maintaining such necessary forts and garrisons. but the directors of a regulated company, having the management of no common capital, have no other fund to employ in this way but the casual revenue arising from the admission fines, and from the corporation duties imposed upon the trade of the company. though they had the same interest, therefore, to attend to the maintenance of such forts and garrisons, they can seldom have the same ability to render that attention effectual. the maintenance of a public minister requiring scarce any attention, and but a moderate and limited expense, is a business much more suitable both to the temper and abilities of a regulated company. long after the time of sir josiah child, however, in 1750, a regulated company was established, the present company of merchants trading to africa, which was expressly charged at first with the maintenance of all the british forts and garrisons that lie between cape blanc and the cape of good hope, and afterwards with that of those only which lie between cape rouge and the cape of good hope. the act which establishes this company (the 23rd of george ii, c. 3) seems to have had two distinct objects in view; first, to restrain effectually the oppressive and monopolizing spirit which is natural to the directors of a regulated company; and secondly, to force them, as much as possible, to give an attention, which is not natural to them, towards the maintenance of forts and garrisons. for the first of these purposes the fine for admission is limited to forty shillings. the company is prohibited from trading in their corporate capacity, or upon a joint stock; from borrowing money upon common seal, or from laying any restraints upon the trade which may be carried on freely from all places, and by all persons being british subjects, and paying the fine. the government is in a committee of nine persons who meet at london, but who are chosen annually by the freemen of the company at london, bristol, and liverpool; three from each place. no committee-man can be continued in office for more than three years together. any committee-man might be removed by the board of trade and plantations, now by a committee council, after being heard in his own defence. the committee are forbid to export negroes from africa, or to import any african goods into great britain. but as they are charged with the maintenance of forts and garrisons, they may, for that purpose, export from great britain to africa goods and stores of different kinds. out of the monies which they shall receive from the company, they are allowed a sum not exceeding eight hundred pounds for the salaries of their clerks and agents at london, bristol, and liverpool, the house rent of their office at london, and all other expenses of management, commission, and agency in england. what remains of this sum, after defraying these different expenses, they may divide among themselves, as compensation for their trouble, in what manner they think proper. by this constitution, it might have been expected that the spirit of monopoly would have been effectually restrained, and the first of these purposes sufficiently answered. it would seem, however, that it had not. though by the 4th of george iii, c. 20, the fort of senegal, with all its dependencies, had been vested in the company of merchants trading to africa, yet in the year following (by the 5th of george iii, c. 44) not only senegal and its dependencies, but the whole coast from the port of sallee, in south barbary, to cape rouge, was exempted from the jurisdiction of that company, was vested in the crown, and the trade to it declared free to all his majesty's subjects. the company had been suspected of restraining the trade, and of establishing some sort of improper monopoly. it is not, however, very easy to conceive how, under the regulations of the 23rd of george ii, they could do so. in the printed debates of the house of commons, not always the most authentic records of truth, i observe, however, that they have been accused of this. the members of the committee of nine, being all merchants, and the governors and factors, in their different forts and settlements, being all dependent upon them, it is not unlikely that the latter might have given peculiar attention to the consignments and commissions of the former which would establish a real monopoly. for the second of these, purposes, the maintenance of the forts and garrisons, an annual sum has been allotted to them by parliament, generally about l13,000. for the proper application of this sum, the committee is obliged to account annually to the cursitor baron of exchequer; which account is afterwards to be laid before parliament. but parliament, which gives so little attention to the application of millions, is not likely to give much to that of l13,000 a year; and the cursitor baron of exchequer, from his profession and education, is not likely to be profoundly skilled in the proper expense of forts and garrisons. the captains of his majesty's navy, indeed, or any other commissioned officers appointed by the board of admiralty, may inquire into the condition of the forts and garrisons, and report their observations to that board. but that board seems to have no direct jurisdiction over the committee, nor any authority to correct those whose conduct it may thus inquire into; and the captains of his majesty's navy, besides, are not supposed to be always deeply learned in the science of fortification. removal from an office which can be enjoyed only for the term of three years, and of which the lawful emoluments, even during that term, are so very small, seems to be the utmost punishment to which any committee-man is liable for any fault, except direct malversation, or embezzlement, either of the public money, or of that of the company; and the fear of that punishment can never be a motive of sufficient weight to force a continual and careful attention to a business to which he has no other interest to attend. the committee are accused of having sent out bricks and stones from england for the reparation of cape coast castle on the coast of guinea, a business for which parliament had several times granted an extraordinary sum of money. these bricks and stones too, which had thus been sent upon so long a voyage, were said to have been of so bad a quality that it was necessary to rebuild from the foundation the walls which had been repaired with them. the forts and garrisons which lie north of cape rouge are not only maintained at the expense of the state, but are under the immediate government of the executive power; and why those which lie south of that cape, and which are, in part at least, maintained at the expense of the state, should be under a different government, it seems not very easy even to imagine a good reason. the protection of the mediterranean trade was the original purpose of pretence of the garrisons of gibraltar and minorca, and the maintenance and government of those garrisons has always been, very properly, committed, not to the turkey company, but to the executive power. in the extent of its dominion consists, in a great measure, the pride and dignity of that power; and it is not very likely to fail in attention to what is necessary for the defence of that dominion. the garrisons at gibraltar and minorca, accordingly, have never been neglected; though minorca has been twice taken, and is now probably lost for ever, that disaster was never even imputed to any neglect in the executive power. i would not, however, be understood to insinuate that either of those expensive garrisons was ever, even in the smallest degree, necessary for the purpose for which they were originally dismembered from the spanish monarchy. that dismemberment, perhaps, never served any other real purpose than to alienate from england her natural ally the king of spain, and to unite the two principal branches of the house of bourbon in a much stricter and more permanent alliance than the ties of blood could ever have united them. joint stock companies, established by royal charter or by act of parliament, differ in several respects, not only from regulated companies, but from private copartneries. first, in a private copartnery, no partner, without the consent of the company, can transfer his share to another person, or introduce a new member into the company. each member, however, may, upon proper warning, withdraw from the copartnery, and demand payment from them of his share of the common stock. in a joint stock company, on the contrary, no member can demand payment of his share from the company; but each member can, without their consent, transfer his share to another person, and thereby introduce a new member. the value of a share in a joint stock is always the price which it will bring in the market; and this may be either greater or less, in any proportion, than the sum which its owner stands credited for in the stock of the company. secondly, in a private copartnery, each partner is bound for the debts contracted by the company to the whole extent of his fortune. in a joint stock company, on the contrary, each partner is bound only to the extent of his share. the trade of a joint stock company is always managed by a court of directors. this court, indeed, is frequently subject, in many respects, to the control of a general court of proprietors. but the greater part of those proprietors seldom pretend to understand anything of the business of the company, and when the spirit of faction happens not to prevail among them, give themselves no trouble about it, but receive contentedly such half-yearly or yearly dividend as the directors think proper to make to them. this total exemption from trouble and from risk, beyond a limited sum, encourages many people to become adventurers in joint stock companies, who would, upon no account, hazard their fortunes in any private copartnery. such companies, therefore, commonly draw to themselves much greater stocks than any private copartnery can boast of. the trading stock of the south sea company, at one time, amounted to upwards of thirty-three millions eight hundred thousand pounds. the divided capital of the bank of england amounts, at present, to ten millions seven hundred and eighty thousand pounds. the directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company. it is upon this account that joint stock companies for foreign trade have seldom been able to maintain the competition against private adventurers. they have, accordingly, very seldom succeeded without an exclusive privilege, and frequently have not succeeded with one. without an exclusive privilege they have commonly mismanaged the trade. with an exclusive privilege they have both mismanaged and confined it. the royal african company, the predecessors of the present african company, had an exclusive privilege by charter, but as that charter had not been confirmed by act of parliament, the trade, in consequence of the declaration of rights, was, soon after the revolution, laid open to all his majesty's subjects. the hudson's bay company are, as to their legal rights, in the same situation as the royal african company. their exclusive charter has not been confirmed by act of parliament. the south sea company, as long as they continued to be a trading company, had an exclusive privilege confirmed by act of parliament; as have likewise the present united company of merchants trading to the east indies. the royal african company soon found that they could not maintain the competition against private adventurers, whom, notwithstanding the declaration of rights, they continued for some time to call interlopers, and to persecute as such. in 1698, however, the private adventurers were subjected to a duty of ten per cent upon almost all the different branches of their trade, to be employed by the company in the maintenance of their forts and garrisons but, notwithstanding this heavy tax, the company were still unable to maintain the competition. their stock and credit gradually declined. in 1712, their debts had become so great that a particular act of parliament was thought necessary, both for their security and for that of their creditors. it was enacted that the resolution of two-thirds of these creditors in number and value should bind the rest, both with regard to the time which should be allowed to the company for the payment of their debts, and with regard to any other agreement which it might be thought proper to make with them concerning those debts. in 1730, their affairs were in so great disorder that they were altogether incapable of maintaining their forts and garrisons, the sole purpose and pretext of their institution. from that year, till their final dissolution, the parliament judged it necessary to allow the annual sum of ten thousand pounds for that purpose. in 1732, after having been for many years losers by the trade of carrying negroes to the west indies, they at last resolved to give it up altogether; to sell to the private traders to america the negroes which they purchased upon the coast; and to employ their servants in a trade to the inland parts of africa for gold dust, elephants' teeth, dyeing drugs, etc. but their success in this more confined trade was not greater than in their former extensive one. their affairs continued to go gradually to decline, till at last, being in every respect a bankrupt company, they were dissolved by act of parliament, and their forts and garrisons vested in the present regulated company of merchants trading to africa. before the erection of the royal african company, there had been three other joint stock companies successively established, one after another, for the african trade. they were all equally unsuccessful. they all, however, had exclusive charters, which, though not confirmed by act of parliament, were in those days supposed to convey a real exclusive privilege. the hudson's bay company, before their misfortunes in the late war, had been much more fortunate than the royal african company. their necessary expense is much smaller. the whole number of people whom they maintain in their different settlements and habitations, which they have honoured with the name of forts, is said not to exceed a hundred and twenty persons. this number, however, is sufficient to prepare beforehand the cargo of furs and other goods necessary for loading their ships, which, on account of the ice, can seldom remain above six or eight weeks in those seas. this advantage of having a cargo ready prepared could not for several years be acquired by private adventurers, and without it there seems to be no possibility of trading to hudson's bay. the moderate capital of the company, which, it is said, does not exceed one hundred and ten thousand pounds, may besides be sufficient to enable them to engross the whole, or almost the whole, trade and surplus produce of the miserable, though extensive country, comprehended within their charter. no private adventurers, accordingly, have ever attempted to trade to that country in competition with them. this company, therefore, have always enjoyed an exclusive trade in fact, though they may have no right to it in law. over and above all this, the moderate capital of this company is said to be divided among a very small number of proprietors. but a joint stock company, consisting of a small number of proprietors, with a moderate capital, approaches very nearly to the nature of a private copartnery, and may be capable of nearly the same degree of vigilance and attention. it is not to be wondered at, therefore, if, in consequence of these different advantages, the hudson's bay company had, before the late war, been able to carry on their trade with a considerable degree of success. it does not seem probable, however, that their profits ever approached to what the late mr. dobbs imagined them. a much more sober and judicious writer, mr. anderson, author of the historical and chronological deduction of commerce, very justly observes that, upon examining the accounts of which mr. dobbs himself was given for several years together of their exports and imports, and upon making proper allowances for their extraordinary risk and expense, it does not appear that their profits deserve to be envied, or that they can much, if at all, exceed the ordinary profits of trade. the south sea company never had any forts or garrisons to maintain, and therefore were entirely exempted from one great expense to which other joint stock companies for foreign trade are subject. but they had an immense capital divided among an immense number of proprietors. it was naturally to be expected, therefore, that folly, negligence, and profusion should prevail in the whole management of their affairs. the knavery and extravagance of their stock-jobbing projects are sufficiently known, and the explication of them would be foreign to the present subject. their mercantile projects were not much better conducted. the first trade which they engaged in was that of supplying the spanish west indies with negroes, of which (in consequence of what was called the assiento contract granted them by the treaty of utrecht) they had the exclusive privilege. but as it was not expected that much profit could be made by this trade, both the portuguese and french companies, who had enjoyed it upon the same terms before them, having been ruined by it, they were allowed, as compensation, to send annually a ship of a certain burden to trade directly to the spanish west indies. of the ten voyages which this annual ship was allowed to make, they are said to have gained considerably by one, that of the royal caroline in 1731, and to have been losers, more or less, by almost all the rest. their ill success was imputed, by their factors and agents, to the extortion and oppression of the spanish government; but was, perhaps, principally owing to the profusion and depredations of those very factors and agents, some of whom are said to have acquired great fortunes even in one year. in 1734, the company petitioned the king that they might be allowed to dispose of the trade and tonnage of their annual ship, on account of the little profit which they made by it, and to accept such equivalent as they could obtain from the of spain. in 1724, this company had undertaken the whale-fishery. of this, indeed, they had no monopoly; but as long as they carried it on, no other british subjects appear to have engaged in it. of the eight voyages which their ships made to greenland, they were gainers by one, and losers by all the rest. after their eighth and last voyage, when they had sold their ships, stores, and utensils, they found that their whole loss, upon this branch, capital and interest included, amounted to upwards of two hundred and thirty-seven thousand pounds. in 1722, this company petitioned the parliament to be allowed to divide their immense capital of more than thirty-three millions eight hundred thousand pounds, the whole of which had been lent to government, into two equal parts: the one half, or upwards of sixteen millions nine hundred thousand pounds, to be put upon the same footing with other government annuities, and not to be subject to the debts contracted, or losses incurred, by the directors of the company in the prosecution of their mercantile projects; the other half to remain, as before, a trading stock, and to be subject to those debts and losses. the petition was too reasonable not to be granted. in 1733, they again petitioned the parliament that three-fourths of their trading stock might be turned into annuity stock, and only one-fourth remain as trading stock, or exposed to the hazards arising from the bad management of their directors. both their annuity and trading stocks had, by this time, been reduced more than two millions each by several different payments from government; so that this fourth amounted only to l3,662,784 8s. 6d. in 1748, all the demands of the company upon the king of spain, in consequence of the assiento contract, were, by the treaty of aix-la-chapelle, given up for what was supposed an equivalent. an end was put to their trade with the spanish west indies, the remainder of their trading stock was turned into an annuity stock, and the company ceased in every respect to be a trading company. it ought to be observed that in the trade which the south sea company carried on by means of their annual ship, the only trade by which it ever was expected that they could make any considerable profit, they were not without competitors, either in the foreign or in the home market. at carthagena, porto bello, and la vera cruz, they had to encounter the competition of the spanish merchants, who brought from cadiz, to those markets, european goods of the same kind with the outward cargo of their ship; and in england they had to encounter that of the english merchants, who imported from cadiz goods of the spanish west indies of the same kind with the inward cargo. the goods both of the spanish and english merchants, indeed, were, perhaps, subject to higher duties. but the loss occasioned by the negligence, profusion, and malversation of the servants of the company had probably been a tax much heavier than all those duties. that a joint stock company should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all experience. the old english east india company was established in 1600 by a charter from queen elizabeth. in the first twelve voyages which they fitted out for india, they appear to have traded as a regulated company, with separate stocks, though only in the general ships of the company. in 1612, they united into a joint stock. their charter was exclusive, and though not confirmed by act of parliament, was in those days supposed to convey a real exclusive privilege. for many years, therefore, they were not much disturbed by interlopers. their capital, which never exceeded seven hundred and forty-four thousand pounds, and of which fifty pounds was a share, was not so exorbitant, nor their dealings so extensive, as to afford either a pretext for gross negligence and profusion, or a cover to gross malversation. notwithstanding some extraordinary losses, occasioned partly by the malice of the dutch east india company, and partly by other accidents, they carried on for many years a successful trade. but in process of time, when the principles of liberty were better understood, it became every day more and more doubtful how far a royal charter, not confirmed by act of parliament, could convey an exclusive privilege. upon this question the decisions of the courts of justice were not uniform, but varied with the authority of government and the humours of the times. interlopers multiplied upon them, and towards the end of the reign of charles ii, through the whole of that of james ii and during a part of that of william iii, reduced them to great distress. in 1698, a proposal was made to parliament of advancing two millions to government at eight per cent, provided the subscribers were erected into a new east india company with exclusive privileges. the old east india company offered seven hundred thousand pounds, nearly the amount of their capital, at four per cent upon the same conditions. but such was at that time the state of public credit, that it was more convenient for government to borrow two millions at eight per cent than seven hundred thousand pounds at four. the proposal of the new subscribers was accepted, and a new east india company established in consequence. the old east india company, however, had a right to continue their trade till 1701. they had, at the same time, in the name of their treasurer, subscribed, very artfully, three hundred and fifteen thousand pounds into the stock of the new. by a negligence in the expression of the act of parliament which vested the east india trade in the subscribers to this loan of two millions, it did not appear evident that they were all obliged to unite into a joint stock. a few private traders, whose subscriptions amounted only to seven thousand two hundred pounds, insisted upon the privilege of trading separately upon their own stocks and at their own risk. the old east india company had a right to a separate trade upon their old stock till 1701; and they had likewise, both before and after that period, a right, like that of other private traders, to a separate trade upon the three hundred and fifteen thousand pounds which they had subscribed into the stock of the new company. the competition of the two companies with the private traders, and with one another, is said to have well-nigh ruined both. upon a subsequent occasion, in 1730, when a proposal was made to parliament for putting the trade under the management of a regulated company, and thereby laying it in some measure open, the east india company, in opposition to this proposal, represented in very strong terms what had been, at this time, the miserable effects, as they thought them, of this competition. in india, they said, it raised the price of goods so high that they were not worth the buying; and in england, by overstocking the market, it sunk their price so low that no profit could be made by them. that by a more plentiful supply, to the great advantage and conveniency of the public, it must have reduced, very much, the price of indian goods in the english market, cannot well be doubted; but that it should have raised very much their price in the indian market seems not very probable, as all the extraordinary demand which that competition could occasion must have been but as a drop of water in the immense ocean of indian commerce. the increase of demand, besides, though in the beginning it may sometimes raise the price of goods, never fails to lower it in the run. it encourages production, and thereby increases the competition of the producers, who, in order to undersell one another, have recourse to new divisions of labour and new improvements of art which might never otherwise have been thought of. the miserable effects of which the company complained were the cheapness of consumption and the encouragement given to production, precisely the two effects which it is the great business of political economy to promote. the competition, however, of which they gave this doleful account, had not been allowed to be of long continuance. in 1702, the two companies were, in some measure, united by an indenture tripartite, to which the queen was the third party; and in 1708, they were, by act of parliament, perfectly consolidated into one company by their present name of the the united company of merchants trading to the east indies. into this act it was thought worth while to insert a clause allowing the separate traders to continue their trade till michaelmas 1711, but at the same time empowering the directors, upon three years' notice, to redeem their little capital of seven thousand two hundred pounds, and thereby to convert the whole stock of the company into a joint stock. by the same act, the capital of the company, in consequence of a new loan to government, was augmented from two millions to three millions two hundred thousand pounds. in 1743, the company advanced another million to government. but this million being raised, not by a call upon the proprietors, but by selling annuities and contracting bond-debts, it did not augment the stock upon which the proprietors could claim a dividend. it augmented, however, their trading stock, it being equally liable with the other three millions two hundred thousand pounds to the losses sustained, and debts contracted, by the company in prosecution of their mercantile projects. from 1708, or at least from 1711, this company, being delivered from all competitors, and fully established in the monopoly of the english commerce to the east indies, carried on a successful trade, and from their profits made annually a moderate dividend to their proprietors. during the french war, which began in 1741, the ambition of mr. dupleix, the french governor of pondicherry, involved them in the wars of the carnatic, and in the politics of the indian princes. after many signal successes, and equally signal losses, they at last lost madras, at that time their principal settlement in india. it was restored to them by the treaty of aix-la-chapelle; and about this time the spirit of war and conquest seems to have taken possession of their servants in india, and never since to have left them. during the french war, which began in 1755, their arms partook of the general good fortune of those of great britain. they defended madras, took pondicherry, recovered calcutta, and acquired the revenues of a rich and extensive territory, amounting, it was then said, to upwards of three millions a year. they remained for several years in quiet possession of this revenue: but in 1767, administration laid claim to their territorial acquisitions, and the revenue arising from them, as of right belonging to the crown; and the company, in compensation for this claim, agreed to pay the government four hundred thousand pounds a year. they had before this gradually augmented their dividend from about six to ten per cent; that is, upon their capital of three millions two hundred thousand pounds they had increased it by a hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds, or had raised it from one hundred and ninety-two thousand to three hundred and twenty thousand pounds a year. they were attempting about this time to raise it still further, to twelve and a half per cent, which would have made their annual payments to their proprietors equal to what they had agreed to pay annually to government, or to four hundred thousand pounds a year. but during the two years in which their agreement with government was to take place, they were restrained from any further increase of dividend by two successive acts of parliament, of which the object was to enable them to make a speedier progress in the payment of their debts, which were at this time estimated at upwards of six or seven millions sterling. in 1769, they renewed their agreement with government for five years more, and stipulated that during the course of that period they should be allowed gradually to increase their dividend to twelve and a half per cent; never increasing it, however, more than one per cent in one year. this increase of dividend, therefore, when it had risen to its utmost height, could augment their annual payments, to their proprietors and government together, but by six hundred and eight thousand pounds beyond what they had been before their late territorial acquisitions. what the gross revenue of those territorial acquisitions was supposed to amount to has already been mentioned; and by an account brought by the cruttenden east indiaman in 1768, the net revenue, clear of all deductions and military charges, was stated at two millions forty-eight thousand seven hundred and forty-seven pounds. they were said at the same time to possess another revenue, arising partly from lands, but chiefly from the customs established at their different settlements, amounting to four hundred and thirty-nine thousand pounds. the profits of their trade too, according to the evidence of their chairman before the house of commons, amounted at this time to at least four hundred thousand pounds a year, according to that of their accountant, to at least five hundred thousand; according to the lowest account, at least equal to the highest dividend that was to be paid to their proprietors. so great a revenue might certainly have afforded an augmentation of six hundred and eight thousand pounds in their annual payments, and at the same time have left a large sinking fund sufficient for the speedy reduction of their debts. in 1773, however, their debts, instead of being reduced, were augmented by an arrear to the treasury in the payment of the four hundred thousand pounds, by another to the custom-house for duties unpaid, by a large debt to the bank for money borrowed, and by a fourth for bills drawn upon them from india, and wantonly accepted, to the amount of upwards of twelve hundred thousand pounds. the distress which these accumulated claims brought upon them, obliged them not only to reduce all at once their dividend to six per cent, but to throw themselves upon the mercy of government, and to supplicate, first, a release from further payment of the stipulated four hundred thousand pounds a year; and, secondly, a loan of fourteen hundred thousand, to save them from immediate bankruptcy. the great increase of their fortune had, it seems, only served to furnish their servants with a pretext for greater profusion, and a cover for greater malversation, than in proportion even to that increase of fortune. the conduct of their servants in india, and the general state of their affairs both in india and in europe, became the subject of a parliamentary inquiry, in consequence of which several very important alternations were made in the constitution of their government, both at home and abroad. in india their principal settlements of madras, bombay, and calcutta, which had before been altogether independent of one another, were subjected to a governor-general, assisted by a council of four assessors, parliament assuming to itself the first nomination of this governor and council who were to reside at calcutta; that city having now become, what madras was before, the most important of the english settlements in india. the court of the mayor of calcutta, originally instituted for the trial of mercantile causes which arose in city and neighbourhood, had gradually extended its jurisdiction with the extension of the empire. it was now reduced and confined to the original purpose of its institution. instead of it a new supreme court of judicature was established, consisting of a chief justice and three judges to be appointed by the crown. in europe, the qualification necessary to entitle a proprietor to vote at their general courts was raised from five hundred pounds, the original price of a share in the stock of the company, to a thousand pounds. in order to vote upon this qualification too, it was declared necessary that he should have possessed it, if acquired by his own purchase, and not by inheritance, for at least one year, instead of six months, the term requisite before. the court of twenty-four directors had before been chosen annually; but it was now enacted that each director should, for the future, be chosen for four years; six of them, however, to go out of office by rotation every year, and not to be capable of being re-chosen at the election of the six new directors for the ensuing year. in consequence of these alterations, the courts, both of the proprietors and directors, it was expected, would be likely to act with more dignity and steadiness than they had usually done before. but it seems impossible, by any alterations, to render those courts, in any respect, fit to govern, or even to share in the government of a great empire; because the greater part of their members must always have too little interest in the prosperity of that empire to give any serious attention to what may promote it. frequently a man of great, sometimes even a man of small fortune, is willing to purchase a thousand pounds' share in india stock merely for the influence which he expects to acquire by a vote in the court of proprietors. it gives him a share, though not in the plunder, yet in the appointment of the plunderers of india; the court of directors, though they make that appointment, being necessarily more or less under the influence of the proprietors, who not only elect those directors, but sometimes overrule the appointments of their servants in india. provided he can enjoy this influence for a few years, and thereby provide for a certain number of his friends, he frequently cares little about the dividend, or even about the value of the stock upon which his vote is founded. about the prosperity of the great empire, in the government of which that vote gives him a share, he seldom cares at all. no other sovereigns ever were, or, from the nature of things, ever could be, so perfectly indifferent about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the improvement or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of their administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater part of the proprietors of such a mercantile company are, and necessarily must be. this indifference, too, was more likely to be increased than diminished by some of the new regulations which were made in consequence of the parliamentary inquiry. by a resolution of the house of commons, for example, it was declared, that when the fourteen hundred thousand pounds lent to the company by government should be paid, and their bond-debts be reduced to fifteen hundred thousand pounds, they might then, and not till then, divide eight per cent upon their capital; and that whatever remained of their revenues and net profits at home should be divided into four parts; three of them to be paid into the exchequer for the use of the public, and the fourth to be reserved as a fund either for the further reduction of their bond-debts, or for the discharge of other contingent exigencies which the company might labour under. but if the company were bad stewards, and bad sovereigns, when the whole of their net revenue and profits belonged to themselves, and were at their own disposal, they were surely not likely to be better when three-fourths of them were to belong to other people, and the other fourth, though to be laid out for the benefit of the company, yet to be so under the inspection and with the approbation of other people. it might be more agreeable to the company that their own servants and dependants should have either the pleasure of wasting or the profit of embezzling whatever surplus might remain after paying the proposed dividend of eight per cent than that it should come into the hands of a set of people with whom those resolutions could scarce fail to set them, in some measure, at variance. the interest of those servants and dependants might so far predominate in the court of proprietors as sometimes to dispose it to support the authors of depredations which had been committed in direct violation of its own authority. with the majority of proprietors, the support even of the authority of their own court might sometimes be a matter of less consequence than the support of those who had set that authority at defiance. the regulations of 1773, accordingly, did not put an end to the disorders of the company's government in india. notwithstanding that, during a momentary fit of good conduct, they had at one time collected into the treasury of calcutta more than three millions sterling; notwithstanding that they had afterwards extended, either their dominion, or their depredations, over a vast accession of some of the richest and most fertile countries in india, all was wasted and destroyed. they found themselves altogether unprepared to stop or resist the incursion of hyder ali; and, in consequence of those disorders, the company is now (1784) in greater distress than ever; and, in order to prevent immediate bankruptcy, is once more reduced to supplicate the assistance of government. different plans have been proposed by the different parties in parliament for the better management of its affairs. and all those plans seem to agree insupposing, what was indeed always abundantly evident, that it is altogether unfit to govern its territorial possessions. even the company itself seems to be convinced of its own incapacity so far, and seems, upon that account, willing to give them up to government. with the right of possessing forts and garrisons in distant and barbarous countries is necessarily connected the right of making peace and war in those countries. the joint stock companies which have had the one right have constantly exercised the other, and have frequently had it expressly conferred upon them. how unjustly, how capriciously, how cruelly they have commonly exercised it, is too well known from recent experience. when a company of merchants undertake, at their own risk and expense, to establish a new trade with some remote and barbarous nation, it may not be unreasonable to incorporate them into a joint stock company, and to grant them, in case of their success, a monopoly of the trade for a certain number of years. it is the easiest and most natural way in which the state can recompense them for hazarding a dangerous and expensive experiment, of which the public is afterwards to reap the benefit. a temporary monopoly of this kind may be vindicated upon the same principles upon which a like monopoly of a new machine is granted to its inventor, and that of a new book to its author. but upon the expiration of the term, the monopoly ought certainly to determine; the forts and garrisons, if it was found necessary to establish any, to be taken into the hands of government, their value to be paid to the company, and the trade to be laid open to all the subjects of the state. by a perpetual monopoly, all the other subjects of the state are taxed very absurdly in two different ways: first, by the high price of goods, which, in the case of a free trade, they could buy much cheaper; and, secondly, by their total exclusion from a branch of business which it might be both convenient and profitable for many of them to carry on. it is for the most worthless of all purposes, too, that they are taxed in this manner. it is merely to enable the company to support the negligence, profusion, and malversation of their own servants, whose disorderly conduct seldom allows the dividend of the company to exceed the ordinary rate of profit in trades which are altogether free, and very frequently makes it fall even a good deal short of that rate. without a monopoly, however, a joint stock company, it would appear from experience, cannot long carry on any branch of foreign trade. to buy in one market, in order to sell, with profit, in another, when there are many competitors in both, to watch over, not only the occasional variations in the demand, but the much greater and more frequent variations in the competition, or in the supply which that demand is likely to get from other people, and to suit with dexterity and judgment both the quantity and quality of each assortment of goods to all these circumstances, is a species of warfare of which the operations are continually changing, and which can scarce ever be conducted successfully without such an unremitting exertion of vigilance and attention as cannot long be expected from the directors of a joint stock company. the east india company, upon the redemption of their funds, and the expiration of their exclusive privilege, have right, by act of parliament, to continue a corporation with a joint stock, and to trade in their corporate capacity to the east indies in common with the rest of their fellow-subjects. but in this situation, the superior vigilance and attention of private adventurers would, in all probability, soon make them weary of the trade. an eminent french author, of great knowledge in matters of political economy, the abbe morellet, gives a list of fifty-five joint stock companies for foreign trade which have been established in different parts of europe since the year 1600, and which, according to him, have all failed from mismanagement, notwithstanding they had exclusive privileges. he has been misinformed with regard to the history of two or three of them, which were not joint stock companies and have not failed. but, in compensation, there have been several joint stock companies which have failed, and which he has omitted. the only trades which it seems possible for a joint stock company to carry on successfully without an exclusive privilege are those of which all the operations are capable of being reduced to what is called a routine, or to such a uniformity of method as admits of little or no variation. of this kind is, first, the banking trade; secondly, the trade of insurance from fire, and from sea risk and capture in time of war; thirdly, the trade of making and maintaining a navigable cut or canal; and, fourthly, the similar trade of bringing water for the supply of a great city. though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. to depart upon any occasion from those rules, in consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal, to the banking company which attempts it. but the constitution of joint stock companies renders them in general more tenacious of established rules than any private copartnery. such companies, therefore, seem extremely well fitted for this trade. the principal banking companies in europe, accordingly, are joint stock companies, many of which manage their trade very successfully without any exclusive privilege. the bank of england has no other exclusive privilege except that no other banking company in england shall consist of more than six persons. the two banks of edinburgh are joint stock companies without any exclusive privilege. the value of the risk, either from fire, or from loss by sea, or by capture, though it cannot, perhaps, be calculated very exactly, admits, however, of such a gross estimation as renders it, in some degree, reducible to strict rule and method. the trade of insurance, therefore, may be carried on successfully by a joint stock company without any exclusive privilege. neither the london assurance nor the royal exchange assurance companies have any such privilege. when a navigable cut or canal has been once made, the management of it becomes quite simple and easy, and it is reducible to strict rule and method. even the making of it is so as it may be contracted for with undertakers at so much a mile, and so much a lock. the same thing may be said of a canal, an aqueduct, or a great pipe for bringing water to supply a great city. such undertakings, therefore, may be, and accordingly frequently are, very successfully managed by joint stock companies without any exclusive privilege. to establish a joint stock company, however, for any undertaking, merely because such a company might be capable of managing it successfully; or to exempt a particular set of dealers from some of the general laws which take place with regard to all their neighbours, merely because they might be capable of thriving if they had such an exemption, would certainly not be reasonable. to render such an establishment perfectly reasonable, with the circumstance of being reducible to strict rule and method, two other circumstances ought to concur. first, it ought to appear with the clearest evidence that the undertaking is of greater and more general utility than the greater part of common trades; and secondly, that it requires a greater capital than can easily be collected into a private copartnery. if a moderate capital were sufficient, the great utility of the undertaking would not be a sufficient reason for establishing a joint stock company; because, in this case, the demand for what it was to produce would readily and easily be supplied by private adventures. in the four trades above mentioned, both those circumstances concur. the great and general utility of the banking trade when prudently managed has been fully explained in the second, book of this inquiry. but a public bank which is to support public credit, and upon particular emergencies to advance to government the whole produce of a tax, to the amount, perhaps, of several millions, a year or two before it comes in, requires a greater capital than can easily be collected into any private copartnery. the trade of insurance gives great security to the fortunes of private people, and by dividing among a great many that loss which would ruin an individual, makes it fall light and easy upon the whole society. in order to give this security, however, it is necessary that the insurers should have a very large capital. before the establishment of the two joint stock companies for insurance in london, a list, it is said, was laid before the attorney-general of one hundred and fifty private insurers who had failed in the course of a few years. that navigable cuts and canals, and the works which are sometimes necessary for supplying a great city with water, are of great and general utility, while at the same time they frequently require a greater expense than suits the fortunes of private people, is sufficiently obvious. except the four trades above mentioned, i have not been able to recollect any other in which all the three circumstances requisite for rendering reasonable the establishment of a joint stock company concur. the english copper company of london, the lead smelting company, the glass grinding company, have not even the pretext of any great or singular utility in the object which they pursue; nor does the pursuit of that object seem to require any expense unsuitable to the fortunes of many private men. whether the trade which those companies carry on is reducible to such strict rule and method as to render it fit for the management of a joint stock company, or whether they have any reason to boast of their extraordinary profits, i do not pretend to know. the mine-adventurers' company has been long ago bankrupt. a share in the stock of the british linen company of edinburgh sells, at present, very much below par, though less so that it did some years ago. the joint stock companies which are established for the public-spirited purpose of promoting some particular manufacture, over and above managing their own affairs ill, to the dimunition of the general stock of the society, can in other respects scarce ever fail to do more harm than good. notwithstanding the most upright intentions, the unavoidable partiality of their directors to particular branches of the manufacture of which the undertakers mislead and impose upon them is a real discouragement to the rest, and necessarily breaks, more or less, that natural proportion which would otherwise establish itself between judicious industry and profit, and which, to the general industry of the country, is of all encouragements the greatest and the most effectual. article ii of the expense of the institutions for the education of youth the institutions for the education of the youth may, in the same manner, furnish a revenue sufficient for defraying their own expense. the fee or honorary which the scholar pays to the master naturally constitutes a revenue of this kind. even where the reward of the master does not arise altogether from this natural revenue, it still is not necessary that it should be derived from that general revenue of the society, of which the collection and application is, in most countries, assigned to the executive power. through the greater part of europe, accordingly, the endowment of schools and colleges makes either no charge upon that general revenue, or but a very small one. it everywhere arises chiefly from some local or provincial revenue, from the rent of some landed estate, or from the interest of some sum of money allotted and put under the management of trustees for this particular purpose, sometimes by the sovereign himself, and sometimes by some private donor. have those public endowments contributed in general to promote the end of their institution? have they contributed to encourage the diligence and to improve the abilities of the teachers? have they directed the course of education towards objects more useful, both to the individual and to the public, than those to which it would naturally have gone of its own accord? it should not seem very difficult to give at least a probable answer to each of those questions. in every profession, the exertion of the greater part of those who exercise it is always in proportion to the necessity they are under of making that exertion. this necessity is greatest with those to whom the emoluments of their profession are the only source from which they expect their fortune, or even their ordinary revenue and subsistence. in order to acquire this fortune, or even to get this subsistence, they must, in the course of a year, execute a certain quantity of work of a known value; and, where the competition is free, the rivalship of competitors, who are all endeavouring to justle one another out of employment, obliges every man to endeavour to execute his work with a certain degree of exactness. the greatness of the objects which are to be acquired by success in some particular professions may, no doubt, sometimes animate the exertion of a few men of extraordinary spirit and ambition. great objects, however, are evidently not necessary in order to occasion the greatest exertions. rivalship and emulation render excellency, even in mean professions, an object of ambition, and frequently occasion the very greatest exertions. great objects, on the contrary, alone and unsupported by the necessity of application, have seldom been sufficient to occasion any considerable exertion. in england, success in the profession of the law leads to some very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy fortunes, have ever in this country been eminent in that profession! the endowments of schools and colleges have necessarily diminished more or less the necessity of application in the teachers. their subsistence, so far as it arises from their salaries, is evidently derived from a fund altogether independent of their success and reputation in their particular professions. in some universities the salary makes but a part, and frequently but a small part, of the emoluments of the teacher, of which the greater part arises from the honoraries or fees of his pupils. the necessity of application, though always more or less diminished, is not in this case entirely taken away. reputation in his profession is still of some importance to him, and he still has some dependency upon the affection, gratitude, and favourable report of those who have attended upon his instructions; and these favourable sentiments he is likely to gain in no way so well as by deserving them, that is, by the abilities and diligence with which he discharges every part of his duty. in other universities the teacher is prohibited from receiving any honorary or fee from his pupils, and his salary constitutes the whole of the revenue which he derives from his office. his interest is, in this case, set as directly in opposition to his duty as it is possible to set it. it is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest, at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit. if he is naturally active and a lover of labour, it is his interest to employ that activity in any way from which he can derive some advantage, rather than in the performance of his duty, from which he can derive none. if the authority to which he is subject resides in the body corporate, the college, or university, of which he himself is a member, and which the greater part of the other members are, like himself, persons who either are or ought to be teachers, they are likely to make a common cause, to be all very indulgent to one another, and every man to consent that his neighbour may neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to neglect his own. in the university of oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching. if the authority to which he is subject resides, not so much in the body corporate of which he is a member, as in some other extraneous personsin the bishop of the diocese, for example; in the governor of the province; or, perhaps, in some minister of state it is not indeed in this case very likely that he will be suffered to neglect his duty altogether. all that such superiors, however, can force him to do, is to attend upon his pupils a certain number of hours, that is, to give a certain number of lectures in the week or in the year. what those lectures shall be must still depend upon the diligence of the teacher; and that diligence is likely to be proportioned to the motives which he has for exerting it. an extraneous jurisdiction of this kind, besides, is liable to be exercised both ignorantly and capriciously. in its nature it is arbitrary and discretionary, and the persons who exercise it, neither attending upon the lectures of the teacher themselves, nor perhaps understanding the sciences which it is his business to teach, are seldom capable of exercising it with judgment. from the insolence of office, too, they are frequently indifferent how they exercise it, and are very apt to censure or deprive him of his office wantonly, and without any just cause. the person subject to such jurisdiction is necessarily degraded by it, and, instead of being one of the most respectable, is rendered one of the meanest and most contemptible persons in the society. it is by powerful protection only that he can effectually guard himself against the bad usage to which he is at all times exposed; and this protection he is most likely to gain, not by ability or diligence in his profession, but by obsequiousness to the will of his superiors, and by being ready, at all times, to sacrifice to that will the rights, the interest, and the honour of the body corporate of which he is a member. whoever has attended for any considerable time to the administration of a french university must have had occasion to remark the effects which naturally result from an arbitrary and extraneous jurisdiction of this kind. whatever forces a certain number of students to any college or university, independent of the merit or reputation of the teachers, tends more or less to diminish the necessity of that merit or reputation. the privileges of graduates in arts, in law, physic, and divinity, when they can be obtained only by residing a certain number of years in certain universities, necessarily force a certain number of students to such universities, independent of the merit or reputation of the teachers. the privileges of graduates are a sort of statutes of apprenticeship, which have contributed to the improvement of education, just as the other statutes of apprenticeship have to that of arts, and manufactures. the charitable foundations of scholarships, exhibitions, bursaries, etc., necessarily attach a certain number of students to certain colleges, independent altogether of the merit of those particular colleges. were the students upon such charitable foundations left free to choose what college they liked best, such liberty might perhaps contribute to excite some emulation among different colleges. a regulation, on the contrary, which prohibited even the independent members of every particular college from leaving it and going to any other, without leave first asked and obtained of that which they meant to abandon, would tend very much to extinguish that emulation. if in each college the tutor or teacher, who was to instruct each student in all arts and sciences, should not be voluntarily chosen by the student, but appointed by the head of the college; and if, in case of neglect, inability, or bad usage, the student should not be allowed to change him for another, without leave first asked and obtained, such a regulation would not only tend very much to extinguish all emulation among the different tutors of the same college, but to diminish very much in all of them the necessity of diligence and of attention to their respective pupils. such teachers, though very well paid by their students, might be as much disposed to neglect them as those who are not paid by them at all, or who have no other recompense but their salary. if the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing his students, that he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better than nonsense. it must, too, be unpleasant to him to observe that the greater part of his students desert his lectures, or perhaps attend upon them with plain enough marks of neglect, contempt, and derision. if he is obliged, therefore, to give a certain number of lectures, these motives alone, without any other interest, might dispose him to take some pains to give tolerably good ones. several different expedients, however, may be fallen upon which will effectually blunt the edge of all those incitements to diligence. the teacher, instead of explaining to his pupils himself the science in which he proposes to instruct them, may read some book upon it; and if this book is written in a foreign and dead language, by interpreting it to them into their own; or, what would give him still less trouble, by making them interpret it to him, and by now and then making an occasional remark upon it, he may flatter himself that he is giving a lecture. the slightest degree of knowledge and application will enable him to do this without exposing himself to contempt or derision, or saying anything that is really foolish, absurd, or ridiculous. the discipline of the college, at the same time, may enable him to force all his pupils to the most regular attendance upon this sham lecture, and to maintain the most decent and respectful behaviour during the whole time of the performance. the discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him, as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. it seems to presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and folly in the other. where the masters, however, really perform their duty, there are no examples, i believe, that the greater part of the students ever neglect theirs. no discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well known wherever any such lectures are given. force and restraint may, no doubt, be in some degree requisite in order to oblige children, or very young boys, to attend to those parts of education which it is thought necessary for them to acquire during that early period of life; but after twelve or thirteen years of age, provided the master does his duty, force or restraint can scarce ever be necessary to carry on any part of education. such is the generosity of the greater part of young men, that, so far from being disposed to neglect or despise the instructions of their master, provided he shows some serious intention of being of use to them, they are generally inclined to pardon a great deal of incorrectness in the performance of his duty, and sometimes even to conceal from the public a good deal of gross negligence. those parts of education, it is to be observed, for the teaching of which there are no public institutions, are generally the best taught. when a young man goes to a fencing or a dancing school, he does not indeed always learn to fence or to dance very well; but he seldom fails of learning to fence or to dance. the good effects of the riding school are not commonly so evident. the expense of a riding school is so great, that in most places it is a public institution. the three most essential parts of literary education, to read, write, and account, it still continues to be more common to acquire in private than in public schools; and it very seldom happens that anybody fails of acquiring them to the degree in which it is necessary to acquire them. in england the public schools are much less corrupted than the universities. in the schools the youth are taught, or at least may be taught, greek and latin; that is, everything which the masters pretend to teach, or which, it is expected, they should teach. in the universities the youth neither are taught, nor always can find any proper means of being taught, the sciences which it is the business of those incorporated bodies to teach. the reward of the schoolmaster in most cases depends principally, in some cases almost entirely, upon the fees or honoraries of his scholars. schools have no exclusive privileges. in order to obtain the honours of graduation, it is not necessary that a person should bring a certificate of his having studied a certain number of years at a public school. if upon examination he appears to understand what is taught there, no questions are asked about the place where he learnt it. the parts of education which are commonly taught in universities, it may, perhaps, be said are not very well taught. but had it not been for those institutions they would not have been commonly taught at all, and both the individual and the public would have suffered a good deal from the want of those important parts of education. the present universities of europe were originally, the greater part of them, ecclesiastical corporations, instituted for the education of churchmen. they were founded by the authority of the pope, and were so entirely under his immediate protection, that their members, whether masters or students, had all of them what was then called the benefit of clergy, that is, were exempted from the civil jurisdiction of the countries in which their respective universities were situated, and were amenable only to the ecclesiastical tribunals. what was taught in the greater part of those universities was suitable to the end of their institution, either theology, or something that was merely preparatory to theology. when christianity was first established by law, a corrupted latin had become the common language of all the western parts of europe. the service of the church accordingly, and the translation of the bible which was read in churches, were both in that corrupted latin; that is, in the common language of the country. after the irruption of the barbarous nations who overturned the roman empire, latin gradually ceased to be the language of any part of europe. but the reverence of the people naturally preserves the established forms and ceremonies of religion long after the circumstances which first introduced and rendered them reasonable are no more. though latin, therefore, was no longer understood anywhere by the great body of the people, the whole service of the church still continued to be performed in that language. two different languages were thus established in europe, in the same manner as in ancient egypt; a language of the priests, and a language of the people; a sacred and a profane; a learned and an unlearned language. but it was necessary that the priests should understand something of that sacred and learned language in which they were to officiate; and the study of the latin language therefore made, from the beginning, an essential part of university education. it was not so with that either of the greek or of the hebrew language. the infallible decrees of the church had pronounced the latin translation of the bible, commonly called the latin vulgate, to have been equally dictated by divine inspiration, and therefore of equal authority with the greek and hebrew originals. the knowledge of those two languages, therefore, not being indispensably requisite to a churchman, the study of them did not for a long time make a necessary part of the common course of university education. there are some spanish universities, i am assured, in which the study of the greek language has never yet made any part of that course. the first reformers found the greek text of the new testament, and even the hebrew text of the old, more favorable to their opinions than the vulgate translation, which, as might naturally be supposed, had been gradually accommodated to support the doctrines of the catholic church. they set themselves, therefore, to expose the many errors of that translation, which the roman catholic clergy were thus put under the necessity of defending or explaining. but this could not well be done without some knowledge of the original languages, of which the study was therefore gradually introduced into the greater part of universities, both of those which embraced, and of those which rejected, the doctrines of the reformation. the greek language was connected with every part of that classical learning which, though at first principally cultivated by catholics and italians, happened to come into fashion much about the same time that the doctrines of the reformation were set on foot. in the greater part of universities, therefore, that language was taught previous to the study of philosophy, and as soon as the student had made some progress in the latin. the hebrew language having no connection with classical learning, and, except the holy scriptures, being the language of not a single book in any esteem, the study of it did not commonly commence till after that of philosophy, and when the student had entered upon the study of theology. originally the first rudiments both of the greek and latin languages were taught in universities, and in some universities they still continue to be so. in others it is expected that the student should have previously acquired at least the rudiments of one or both of those languages, of which the study continues to make everywhere a very considerable part of university education. the ancient greek philosophy was divided into three great branches; physics, or natural philosophy; ethics, or moral philosophy; and logic. this general division seems perfectly agreeable to the nature of things. the great phenomena of naturethe revolutions of the heavenly bodies, eclipses, comets; thunder, lightning, and other extraordinary meteors; the generation, the life, growth, and dissolution of plants and animalsare objects which, as they necessarily excite the wonder, so they naturally call forth the curiosity, of mankind to inquire into their causes. superstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity, by referring all those wonderful appearances to the immediate agency of the gods. philosophy afterwards endeavoured to account for them from more familiar causes, or from such as mankind were better acquainted with, than the agency of the gods. as those great phenomena are the first objects of human curiosity, so the science which pretends to explain them must naturally have been the first branch of philosophy that was cultivated. the first philosophers, accordingly, of whom history has preserved any account, appear to have been natural philosophers. in every age and country of the world men must have attended to the characters, designs, and actions of one another, and many reputable rules and maxims for the conduct of human life must have been laid down and approved of by common consent. as soon as writing came into fashion, wise men, or those who fancied themselves such, would naturally endeavour to increase the number of those established and respected maxims, and to express their own sense of what was either proper or improper conduct, sometimes in the more artificial form of apologues, like what are called the fables of aesop; and sometimes in the more simple one of apophthegms, or wise sayings, like the proverbs of solomon, the verses of theognis and phocyllides, and some part of the works of hesiod. they might continue in this manner for a long time merely to multiply the number of those maxims of prudence and morality, without even attempting to arrange them in any very distinct or methodical order, much less to connect them together by one or more general principles from which they were all deducible, like effects from their natural causes. the beauty of a systematical arrangement of different observations connected by a few common principles was first seen in the rude essays of those ancient times towards a system of natural philosophy. something of the same kind was afterwards attempted in morals. the maxims of common life were arranged in some methodical order, and connected together by a few common principles, in the same manner as they had attempted to arrange and connect the phenomena of nature. the science which pretends to investigate and explain those connecting principles is what is properly called moral philosophy. different authors gave different systems both of natural and moral philosophy. but the arguments by which they supported those different systems, for from being always demonstrations, were frequently at best but very slender probabilities, and sometimes mere sophisms, which had no other foundation but the inaccuracy and ambiguity of common language. speculative systems have in all ages of the world been adopted for reasons too frivolous to have determined the judgment of any man of common sense in a matter of the smallest pecuniary interest. gross sophistry has scarce ever had any influence upon the opinions of mankind, except in matters of philosophy and speculation; and in these it has frequently had the greatest. the patrons of each system of natural and moral philosophy naturally endeavoured to expose the weakness of the arguments adduced to support the systems which were opposite to their own. in examining those arguments, they were necessarily led to consider the difference between a probable and a demonstrative argument, between a fallacious and a conclusive one: and logic, or the science of the general principles of good and bad reasoning, necessarily arose out of the observations which a scrutiny of this kind gave occasion to. though in its origin posterior both to physics and to ethics, it was commonly taught, not indeed in all, but in the greater part of the ancient schools of philosophy, previously to either of those sciences. the student, it seems to have been thought, to understand well the difference between good and bad reasoning before he was led to reason upon subjects of so great importance. this ancient division of philosophy into three parts was in the greater part of the universities of europe changed for another into five. in the ancient philosophy, whatever was taught concerning the nature either of the human mind or of the deity, made a part of the system of physics. those beings, in whatever their essence might be supposed to consist, were parts of the great system of the universe, and parts, too, productive of the most important effects. whatever human reason could either conclude or conjecture concerning them, made, as it were, two chapters, though no doubt two very important ones, of the science which pretended to give an account of the origin and revolutions of the great system of the universe. but in the universities of europe, where philosophy was taught only as subservient to theology, it was natural to dwell longer upon these two chapters than upon any other of the science. they were gradually more and more extended, and were divided into many inferior chapters, till at last the doctrine of spirits, of which so little can be known, came to take up as much room in the system of philosophy as the doctrine of bodies, of which so much can be known. the doctrines concerning those two subjects were considered as making two distinct sciences. what are called metaphysics or pneumatics were set in opposition to physics, and were cultivated not only as the more sublime, but, for the purposes of a particular profession, as the more useful science of the two. the proper subject of experiment and observation, a subject in which a careful attention is capable of making so many useful discoveries, was almost entirely neglected. the subject in which, after a few very simple and almost obvious truths, the most careful attention can discover nothing but obscurity and uncertainty, and can consequently produce nothing but subtleties and sophisms, was greatly cultivated. when those two sciences had thus been set in opposition to one another, the comparison between them naturally gave birth to a third, to what was called ontology, or the science which treated of the qualities and attributes which were common to both the subjects of the other two sciences. but if subtleties and sophisms composed the greater part of the metaphysics or pneumatics of the schools, they composed the whole of this cobweb science of ontology, which was likewise sometimes called metaphysics. wherein consisted the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not only as an individual, but as the member of a family, of a state, and of the great society of mankind, was the object which the ancient moral philosophy proposed to investigate. in that philosophy the duties of human life were treated as subservient to the happiness and perfection of human life. but when moral, as well as natural philosophy, came to be taught only as subservient to theology, the duties of human life were treated of as chiefly subservient to the happiness of a life to come. in the ancient philosophy the perfection of virtue was represented as necessarily productive, to the person who possessed it, of the most perfect happiness in this life. in the modern philosophy it was frequently represented as generally, or rather as almost always, inconsistent with any degree of happiness in this life; and heaven was to be earned only by penance and mortification, by the austerities and abasement of a monk; not by the liberal, generous, and spirited conduct of a man. casuistry and an ascetic morality made up, in most cases, the greater part of the moral philosophy of the schools. by far the most important of all the different branches of philosophy became in this manner by far the most corrupted. such, therefore, was the common course of philosophical education in the greater part of the universities in europe. logic was taught first: ontology came in the second place: pneumatology, comprehending the doctrine concerning the nature of the human soul and of the deity, in the third: in the fourth followed a debased system of moral philosophy which was considered as immediately connected with the doctrines of pneumatology, with the immortality of the human soul, and with the rewards and punishments which, from the justice of the deity, were to be expected in a life to come: a short and superficial system of physics usually concluded the course. the alterations which the universities of europe thus introduced into the ancient course of philosophy were all meant for the education of ecclesiastics, and to render it a more proper introduction to the study of theology. but the additional quantity of subtlety and sophistry, the casuistry and the ascetic morality which those alterations introduced into it, certainly did not render it more proper for the education of gentlemen or men of the world, or more likely either to improve the understanding, or to mend the heart. this course of philosophy is what still continues to be taught in the greater part of the universities of europe, with more or less diligence, according as the constitution of each particular university happens to render diligence more or less necessary to the teachers. in some of the richest and best endowed universities, the tutors content themselves with teaching a few unconnected shreds and parcels of this corrupted course; and even these they commonly teach very negligently and superficially. the improvements which, in modern times, have been made in several different branches of philosophy have not, the greater part of them, been made in universities, though some no doubt have. the greater part of universities have not even been very forward to adopt those improvements after they were made; and several of those learned societies have chosen to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices found shelter and protection after they had been hunted out of every other corner of the world. in general, the richest and best endowed universities have been the slowest in adopting those improvements, and the most averse to permit any considerable change in the established plan of education. those improvements were more easily introduced into some of the poorer universities, in which the teachers, depending upon their reputation for the greater part of their subsistence, were obliged to pay more attention to the current opinions of the world. but though the public schools and universities of europe were originally intended only for the education of a particular profession, that of churchmen; and though they were not always very diligent in instructing their pupils even in the sciences which were supposed necessary for that profession, yet they gradually drew to themselves the education of almost all other people, particularly of almost all gentlemen and men of fortune. no better method, it seems, could be fallen upon of spending, with any advantage, the long interval between infancy and that period of life at which men begin to apply in good earnest to the real business of the world, the business which is to employ them during the remainder of their days. the greater part of what is taught in schools and universities, however, does not seem to be the most proper preparation for that business. in england it becomes every day more and more the custom to send young people to travel in foreign countries immediately upon their leaving school, and without sending them to any university. our young people, it is said, generally return home much improved by their travels. a young man who goes abroad at seventeen or eighteen, and returns home at one and twenty, returns three or four years older than he was when he went abroad; and at that age it is very difficult not to improve a good deal in three or four years. in the course of his travels he generally acquires some knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge, however, which is seldom sufficient to enable him either to speak or write them with propriety. in other respects he commonly returns home more conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any serious application either to study or to business than he could well have become in so short a time had he lived at home. by travelling so very young, by spending in the most frivolous dissipation the most precious years of his life, at a distance from the inspection and control of his parents and relations, every useful habit which the earlier parts of his education might have had some tendency to form in him, instead of being riveted and confirmed, is almost necessarily either weakened or effaced. nothing but the discredit into which the universities are allowing themselves to fall could ever have brought into repute so very absurd a practice as that of travelling at this early period of life. by sending his son abroad, a father delivers himself at least for some time, from so disagreeable an object as that of a son unemployed, neglected, and going to ruin before his eyes. such have been the effects of some of the modern institutions for education. different plans and different institutions for education seem to have taken place in other ages and nations. in the republics of ancient greece, every free citizen was instructed, under the direction of the public magistrate, in gymnastic exercises and in music. by gymnastic exercises it was intended to harden his body, to sharpen his courage, and to prepare him for the fatigues and dangers of war; and as the greek militia was, by all accounts, one of the best that ever was in the world, this part of their public education must have answered completely the purpose for which it was intended. by the other part, music, it was proposed, at least by the philosophers and historians who have given us an account of those institutions, to humanize the mind, to soften the temper, and to dispose it for performing all the social and moral duties both of public and private life. in ancient rome the exercises of the campus martius answered the purpose as those of the gymnasium in ancient greece, and they seem to have answered it equally well. but among the romans there was nothing which corresponded to the musical education of the greeks. the morals of the romans, however, both in private and public life, seem to have been not only equal, but, upon the whole, a good deal superior to those of the greeks. that they were superior in private life, we have the express testimony of polybius and of dionysius of halicarnassus, two authors well acquainted with both nations; and the whole tenor if the greek and roman history bears witness to the superiority of the public morals of the romans. the good temper and moderation of contending factions seems to be the most essential circumstances in the public morals of a free people. but the factions of the greeks were almost always violent and sanguinary; whereas, till the time of the gracchi, no blood had ever been shed in any roman faction; and from the time of the gracchi the roman republic may be considered as in reality dissolved. notwithstanding, therefore, the very respectable authority of plato, aristotle, and polybius, and notwithstanding the very ingenious reasons by which mr. montesquieu endeavours to support that authority, it seems probable that the musical education of the greeks had no great effect in mending their morals, since, without any such education, those of the romans were upon the whole superior. the respect of those ancient sages for the institutions of their ancestors had probably disposed them to find much political wisdom in what was, perhaps, merely an ancient custom, continued without interruption from the earliest period of those societies to the times in which they had arrived at a considerable degree of refinement. music and dancing are the great amusements of almost all barbarous nations, and the great accomplishments which are supposed to fit any man for entertaining his society. it is so at this day among the negroes on the coast of africa. it was so among the ancient celts, among the ancient scandinavians, and, as we may learn from homer, among the ancient greeks in the times preceding the trojan war. when the greek tribes had formed themselves into little republics, it was natural that the study of those accomplishments should, for a long time, make a part of the public and common education of the people. the masters who instructed the young people, either in music or in military exercises, do not seem to have been paid, or even appointed by the state, either in rome or even in athens, the greek republic of whose laws and customs we are the best informed. the state required that every free citizen should fit himself for defending it in war, and should, upon that account, learn his military exercises. but it left him to learn them of such masters as he could find, and it seems to have advanced nothing for this purpose but a public field or place of exercise in which he should practise and perform them. in the early ages both of the greek and roman republics, the other parts of education seem to have consisted in learning to read, write, and account according to the arithmetic of the times. these accomplishments the richer citizens seem frequently to have acquired at home by the assistance of some domestic pedagogue, who was generally either a slave or a freed-man; and the poorer citizens, in the schools of such masters as made a trade of teaching for hire. such parts of education, however, were abandoned altogether to the care of the parents or guardians of each individual. it does not appear that the state ever assumed any inspection or direction of them. by a law of solon, indeed, the children were acquitted from maintaining those parents in their old age who had neglected to instruct them in some profitable trade or business. in the progress of refinement, when philosophy and rhetoric came into fashion, the better sort of people used to send their children to the schools of philosophers and rhetoricians, in order to be instructed in these fashionable sciences. but those schools were not supported by the public. they were for a long time barely tolerated by it. the demand for philosophy and rhetoric was for a long time so small that the first professed teachers of either could not find constant employment in any one city, but were obliged to travel about from place to place. in this manner lived zeno of elea, protagoras, gorgias, hippias, and many others. as the demand increased, the schools both of philosophy and rhetoric became stationary; first in athens, and afterwards in several other cities. the state, however, seems never to have encouraged them further than by assigning some of them a particular place to teach in, which was sometimes done, too, by private donors. the state seems to have assigned the academy to plato, the lyceum to aristotle, and the portico to zeno of citta, the founder of the stoics. but epicurus bequeathed his gardens to his own school. till about the time of marcus antonius, however, no teacher appears to have had any salary from the public, or to have had any other emoluments but what arose from the honoraries or fees of his scholars. the bounty which that philosophical emperor, as we learn from lucian, bestowed upon one of the teachers of philosophy, probably lasted no longer than his own life. there was nothing equivalent to the privileges of graduation, and to have attended any of those schools was not necessary, in order to be permitted to practise any particular trade or profession. if the opinion of their own utility could not draw scholars to them, the law neither forced anybody to go to them nor rewarded anybody for having gone to them. the teachers had no jurisdiction over their pupils, nor any other authority besides that natural authority, which superior virtue and abilities never fail to procure from young people towards those who are entrusted with any part of their education. at rome, the study of the civil law made a part of the education, not of the greater part of the citizens, but of some particular families. the young people, however, who wished to acquire knowledge in the law, had no public school to go to, and had no other method of studying it than by frequenting the company of such of their relations and friends as were supposed to understand it. it is perhaps worth while to remark, that though the laws of the twelve tables were, many of them, copied from those of some ancient greek republics, yet law never seems to have grown up to be a science in any republic of ancient greece. in rome it became a science very early, and gave a considerable degree of illustration to those citizens who had the reputation of understanding it. in the republics of ancient greece, particularly in athens, the ordinary courts of justice consisted of numerous, and therefore disorderly, bodies of people, who frequently decided almost at random, or as clamour, faction, and party spirit happened to determine. the ignominy of an unjust decision, when it was to be divided among five hundred, a thousand, or fifteen hundred people (for some of their courts were so very numerous), could not fall very heavy upon any individual. at rome, on the contrary, the principal courts of justice consisted either of a single judge or of a small number of judges, whose characters, especially as they deliberated always in public, could not fail to be very much affected by any rash or unjust decision. in doubtful cases such courts, from their anxiety to avoid blame, would naturally endeavour to shelter themselves under the example or precedent of the judges who had sat before them, either in the same or in some other court. this attention to practice and precedent necessarily formed the roman law into that regular and orderly system in which it has been delivered down to us; and the like attention has had the like effects upon the laws of every other country where such attention has taken place. the superiority of character in the romans over that of the greeks, so much remarked by polybius and dionysius of halicarnassus, was probably more owing to the better constitution of their courts of justice than to any of the circumstances to which those authors ascribe it. the romans are said to have been particularly distinguished for their superior respect to an oath. but the people who were accustomed to make oath only before some diligent and well-informed court of justice would naturally be much more attentive to what they swore than they who were accustomed to do the same thing before mobbish and disorderly assemblies. the abilities, both civil and military, of the greeks and romans will readily be allowed to have been at least equal to those of any modern nation. our prejudice is perhaps rather to overrate them. but except in what related to military exercises, the state seems to have been at no pains to form those great abilities, for i cannot be induced to believe that the musical education of the greeks could be of much consequence in forming them. masters, however, had been found, it seems, for instructing the better sort of people among those nations in every art and science in which the circumstances of their society rendered it necessary or convenient for them to be instructed. the demand for such instruction produced what it always producesthe talent for giving it; and the emulation which an unrestrained competition never fails to excite, appears to have brought that talent to a very high degree of perfection. in the attention which the ancient philosophers excited, in the empire which they acquired over the opinions and principles of their auditors, in the faculty which they possessed of giving a certain tone and character to the conduct and conversation of those auditors, they appear to have been much superior to any modern teachers. in modern times, the diligence of public teachers is more or less corrupted by the circumstances which render them more or less independent of their success and reputation in their particular professions. their salaries, too, put the private teacher, who would pretend to come into competition with them, in the same state with a merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty in competition with those who trade with a considerable one. if he sells his goods at nearly the same price, he cannot have the same profit, and at least, if not bankruptcy and ruin, will infallibly be his lot. if he attempts to sell them much dearer, he is likely to have so few customers that his circumstances will not be much mended. the privileges of graduation, besides, are in many countries necessary, or at least extremely convenient, to most men of learned professions, that is, to the far greater part of those who have occasion for a learned education. but those privileges can be obtained only by attending the lectures of the public teachers. the most careful attendance upon the ablest instructions of any private teacher cannot always give any title to demand them. it is from these different causes that the private teacher of any of the sciences which are commonly taught in universities is in modern times generally considered as in the very lowest order of men of letters. a man of real abilities can scarce find out a more humiliating or a more unprofitable employment to turn them to. the endowment of schools and colleges have, in this manner, not only corrupted the diligence of public teachers, but have rendered it almost impossible to have any good private ones. were there no public institutions for education, no system, no science would be taught for which there was not some demand, or which the circumstances of the times did not render it either necessary, or convenient, or at least fashionable, to learn. a private teacher could never find his account in teaching either an exploded and antiquated system of a science acknowledged to be useful, or a science universally believed to be a mere useless and pedantic heap of sophistry and nonsense. such systems, such sciences, can subsist nowhere, but in those incorporated societies for education whose prosperity and revenue are in a great measure independent of their reputation and altogether independent of their industry. were there no public institutions for education, a gentleman, after going through with application and abilities the most complete course of education which the circumstances of the times were supposed to afford, could not come into the world completely ignorant of everything which is the common subject of conversation among gentlemen and men of the world. there are no public institutions for the education of women, and there is accordingly nothing useless, absurd, or fantastical in the common course of their education. they are taught what their parents or guardians judge it necessary or useful for them to learn, and they are taught nothing else. every part of their education tends evidently to some useful purpose; either to improve the natural attractions of their person, or to form their mind to reserve, to modesty, to chastity, and to economy; to render them both likely to become the mistresses of a family, and to behave properly when they have become such. in every part of her life a woman feels some conveniency or advantage from every part of her education. it seldom happens that a man, in any part of his life, derives any conveniency or advantage from some of the most laborious and troublesome parts of his education. ought the public, therefore, to give no attention, it may be asked, to the education of the people? or if it ought to give any, what are the different parts of education which it ought to attend to in the different orders of the people? and in what manner ought it to attend to them? in some cases the state of the society necessarily places the greater part of individuals in such situations as naturally form in them, without any attention of government, almost all the abilities and virtues which that state requires, or perhaps can admit of. in other cases the state of the society does not place the part of individuals in such situations, and some attention of government is necessary in order to prevent the almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of the people. in the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. but the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. the man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. he naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. the torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. the uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. it corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. his dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. but in every improved and civilised society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it. it is otherwise in the barbarous societies, as they are commonly called, of hunters, of shepherds, and even of husbandmen in that rude state of husbandry which precedes the improvement of manufactures and the extension of foreign commerce. in such societies the varied occupations of every man oblige every man to exert his capacity and to invent expedients for removing difficulties which are continually occurring. invention is kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that drowsy stupidity which, in a civilised society, seems to benumb the understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people. in those barbarous societies, as they are called, every man, it has already been observed, is a warrior. every man, too, is in some measure a statesman, and can form a tolerable judgment concerning the interest of the society and the conduct of those who govern it. how far their chiefs are good judges in peace, or good leaders in war, is obvious to the observation of almost every single man among them. in such a society, indeed, no man can well acquire that improved and refined understanding which a few men sometimes possess in a more civilised state. though in a rude society there is a good deal of variety in the occupations of every individual, there is not a great deal in those of the whole society. every man does, or is capable of doing, almost every thing which any other man does, or is capable of doing. every man has a considerable degree of knowledge, ingenuity, and invention: but scarce any man has a great degree. the degree, however, which is commonly possessed, is generally sufficient for conducting the whole simple business of the society. in a civilised state, on the contrary, though there is little variety in the occupations of the greater part of individuals, there is an almost infinite variety in those of the whole society. these varied occupations present an almost infinite variety of objects to the contemplation of those few, who, being attached to no particular occupation themselves, have leisure and inclination to examine the occupations of other people. the contemplation of so great a variety of objects necessarily exercises their minds in endless comparisons and combinations, and renders their understandings, in an extraordinary degree, both acute and comprehensive. unless those few, however, happen to be placed in some very particular situations, their great abilities, though honourable to themselves, may contribute very little to the good government or happiness of their society. notwithstanding the great abilities of those few, all the nobler parts of the human character may be, in a great measure, obliterated and extinguished in the great body of the people. the education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilised and commercial society the attention of the public more than that of people of some rank and fortune. people of some rank and fortune are generally eighteen or nineteen years of age before they enter upon that particular business, profession, or trade, by which they propose to distinguish themselves in the world. they have before that full time to acquire, or at least to fit themselves for afterwards acquiring, every accomplishment which can recommend them to the public esteem, or render them worthy of it. their parents or guardians are generally sufficiently anxious that they should be so accomplished, and are, in most cases, willing enough to lay out the expense which is necessary for that purpose. if they are not always properly educated, it is seldom from the want of expense laid out upon their education, but from the improper application of that expense. it is seldom from the want of masters, but from the negligence and incapacity of the masters who are to be had, and from the difficulty, or rather from the impossibility, which there is in the present state of things of finding any better. the employments, too, in which people of some rank or fortune spend the greater part of their lives are not, like those of the common people, simple and uniform. they are almost all of them extremely complicated, and such as exercise the head more than the hands. the understandings of those who are engaged in such employments can seldom grow torpid for want of exercise. the employments of people of some rank and fortune, besides, are seldom such as harass them from morning to night. they generally have a good deal of leisure, during which they may perfect themselves in every branch either of useful or ornamental knowledge of which they may have laid the foundation, or for which they may have acquired some taste in the earlier part of life. it is otherwise with the common people. they have little time to spare for education. their parents can scarce afford to maintain them even in infancy. as soon as they are able to work they must apply to some trade by which they can earn their subsistence. that trade, too, is generally so simple and uniform as to give little exercise to the understanding, while, at the same time, their labour is both so constant and so severe, that it leaves them little leisure and less inclination to apply to, or even to think of, anything else. but though the common people cannot, in any civilised society, be so well instructed as people of some rank and fortune, the most essential parts of education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so early a period of life that the greater part even of those who are to be bred to the lowest occupations have time to acquire them before they can be employed in those occupations. for a very small expense the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education. the public can facilitate this acquisition by establishing in every parish or district a little school, where children may be taught for a reward so moderate that even a common labourer may afford it; the master being partly, but not wholly, paid by the public, because, if he was wholly, or even principally, paid by it, he would soon learn to neglect his business. in scotland the establishment of such parish schools has taught almost the whole common people to read, and a very great proportion of them to write and account. in england the establishment of charity schools has had an effect of the same kind, though not so universally, because the establishment is not so universal. if in those little schools the books, by which the children are taught to read, were a little more instructive than they commonly are, and if, instead of a little smattering of latin, which the children of the common people are sometimes taught there, and which can scarce ever be of any use to them, they were instructed in the elementary parts of geometry and mechanics, the literary education of this rank of people would perhaps be as complete as it can be. there is scarce a common trade which does not afford some opportunities of applying to it the principles of geometry and mechanics, and which would not therefore gradually exercise and improve the common people in those principles, the necessary introduction to the most sublime as well as to the most useful sciences. the public can encourage the acquisition of those most essential parts of education by giving small premiums, and little badges of distinction, to the children of the common people who excel in them. the public can impose upon almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education, by obliging every man to undergo an examination or probation in them before he can obtain the freedom in any corporation, or be allowed to set up any trade either in a village or town corporate. it was in this manner, by facilitating the acquisition of their military and gymnastic exercises, by encouraging it, and even by imposing upon the whole body of the people the necessity of learning those exercises, that the greek and roman republics maintained the martial spirit of their respective citizens. they facilitated the acquisition of those exercises by appointing a certain place for learning and practising them, and by granting to certain masters the privilege of teaching in that place. those masters do not appear to have had either salaries or exclusive privileges of any kind. their reward consisted altogether in what they got from their scholars; and a citizen who had learnt his exercises in the public gymnasia had no sort of legal advantage over one who had learnt them privately, provided the latter had learnt them equally well. those republics encouraged the acquisition of those exercises by bestowing little premiums and badges of distinction upon: those who excelled in them. to have gained a prize in the olympic, isthmian, or nemaean games, gave illustration, not only to the person who gained it, but to his whole family and kindred. the obligation which every citizen was under to serve a certain number of years, if called upon, in the armies of the republic, sufficiently imposed the necessity of learning those exercises, without which he could not be fit for that service. that in the progress of improvement the practice of military exercises, unless government takes proper pains to support it, goes gradually to decay, and, together with it, the martial spirit of the great body of the people, the example of modern europe sufficiently demonstrates. but the security of every society must always depend, more or less, upon the martial spirit of the great body of the people. in the present times, indeed, that martial spirit alone, and unsupported by a well-disciplined standing army, would not perhaps be sufficient for the defence and security of any society. but where every citizen had the spirit of a soldier, a smaller standing army would surely be requisite. that spirit, besides, would necessarily diminish very much the dangers to liberty, whether real or imaginary, which are commonly apprehended from a standing army. as it would very much facilitate the operations of that army against a foreign invader, so it would obstruct them as much if, unfortunately, they should ever be directed against the constitution of the state. the ancient institutions of greece and rome seem to have been much more effectual for maintaining the martial spirit of the great body of the people than the establishment of what are called the militias of modern times. they were much more simple. when they were once established they executed themselves, and it required little or no attention from government to maintain them in the most perfect vigour. whereas to maintain, even in tolerable execution, the complex regulations of any modern militia, requires the continual and painful attention of government, without which they are constantly falling into total neglect and disuse. the influence, besides, of the ancient institutions was much more universal. by means of them the whole body of the people was completely instructed in the use of arms. whereas it is but a very small part of them who can ever be so instructed by the regulations of any modern militia, except, perhaps, that of switzerland. but a coward, a man incapable either of defending or of revenging himself, evidently wants one of the most essential parts of the character of a man. he is as much mutilated and deformed in his mind as another is in his body, who is either deprived of some of its most essential members, or has lost the use of them. he is evidently the more wretched and miserable of the two; because happiness and misery, which reside altogether in the mind, must necessarily depend more upon the healthful or unhealthful, the mutilated or entire state of the mind, than upon that of the body. even though the martial spirit of the people were of no use towards the defence of the society, yet to prevent that sort of mental mutilation, deformity, and wretchedness, which cowardice necessarily involves in it, from spreading themselves through the great body of the people, would still deserve the most serious attention of government, in the same manner as it would deserve its most serious attention to prevent a leprosy or any other loathsome and offensive disease, though neither mortal nor dangerous, from spreading itself among them, though perhaps no other public good might result from such attention besides the prevention of so great a public evil. the same thing may be said of the gross ignorance and stupidity which, in a civilised society, seem so frequently to benumb the understandings of all the inferior ranks of people. a man without the proper use of the intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible than even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still more essential part of the character of human nature. though the state was to derive no advantage from the instruction of the inferior ranks of people, it would still deserve its attention that they should not be altogether uninstructed. the state, however, derives no inconsiderable advantage from their instruction. the more they are instructed the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among ignorant nations, frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. an instructed and intelligent people, besides, are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one. they feel themselves, each individually, more respectable and more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful superiors, and they are therefore more disposed to respect those superiors. they are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition, and they are, upon that account, less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of government. in free countries, where the safety of government depends very much upon the favourable judgment which the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest importance that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or capriciously concerning it. article iii of the expense of the institutions for the instruction of people of all ages the institutions for the instruction of people of all ages are chiefly those for religious instruction. this is a species of instruction of which the object is not so much to render the people good citizens in this world, as to prepare them for another and a better world in a life to come. the teachers of the doctrine which contains this instruction, in the same manner as other teachers, may either depend altogether for their subsistence upon the voluntary contributions of their hearers, or they may derive it from some other fund to which the law of their country may entitle them; such as a landed estate, a tithe or land tax, an established salary or stipend. their exertion, their zeal and industry, are likely to be much greater in the former situation than in the latter. in this respect the teachers of new religions have always had a considerable advantage in attacking those ancient and established systems of which the clergy, reposing themselves upon their benefices, had neglected to keep up the fervour of faith and devotion in the great body of the people, and having given themselves up to indolence, were become altogether incapable of making any vigorous exertion in defence even of their own establishment. the clergy of an established and well-endowed religion frequently become men of learning and elegance, who possess all the virtues of gentlemen, or which can recommend them to the esteem of gentlemen: but they are apt gradually to lose the qualities, both good and bad, which gave them authority and influence with the inferior ranks of people, and which had perhaps been the original causes of the success and establishment of their religion. such a clergy, when attacked by a set of popular and bold, though perhaps stupid and ignorant enthusiasts, feel themselves as perfectly defenceless as the indolent, effeminate, and full-fed nations of the southern parts of asia when they were invaded by the active, hardy, and hungry tartars of the north. such a clergy, upon such an emergency, have commonly no other resource than to call upon the civil magistrate to persecute, destroy or drive out their adversaries, as disturbers of the public peace. it was thus that the roman catholic clergy called upon the civil magistrates to persecute the protestants, and the church of england to persecute the dissenters; and that in general every religious sect, when it has once enjoyed for a century or two the security of a legal establishment, has found itself incapable of making any vigorous defence against any new sect which chose to attack its doctrine or discipline. upon such occasions the advantage in point of learning and good writing may sometimes be on the side of the established church. but the arts of popularity, all the arts of gaining proselytes, are constantly on the side of its adversaries. in england those arts have been long neglected by the well-endowed clergy of the established church, and are at present chiefly cultivated by the dissenters and by the methodists. the independent provisions, however, which in many places have been made for dissenting teachers by means of voluntary subscriptions, of trust rights, and other evasions of the law, seem very much to have abated the zeal and activity of those teachers. they have many of them become very learned, ingenious, and respectable men; but they have in general ceased to be very popular preachers. the methodists, without half the learning of the dissenters, are much more in vogue. in the church of rome, the industry and zeal of the inferior clergy are kept more alive by the powerful motive of self-interest than perhaps in any established protestant church. the parochial clergy derive, many of them, a very considerable part of their subsistence from the voluntary oblations of the people; a source of revenue which confession gives them many opportunities of improving. the mendicant orders derive their whole subsistence from such oblations. it is with them as with the hussars and light infantry of some armies; no plunder, no pay. the parochial clergy are like those teachers whose reward depends partly upon their salary, and partly upon the fees or honoraries which they get from their pupils, and these must always depend more or less upon their industry and reputation. the mendicant orders are like those teachers whose subsistence depends altogether upon the industry. they are obliged, therefore, to use every art which can animate the devotion of the common people. the establishment of the two great mendicant orders of st. dominic and st. francis, it is observed by machiavel, revived, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the languishing faith and devotion of the catholic church. in roman catholic countries the spirit of devotion is supported altogether by the monks and by the poorer parochial clergy. the great dignitaries of the church, with all the accomplishments of gentlemen and men of the world, and sometimes with those of men of learning, are careful enough to maintain the necessary discipline over their inferiors, but seldom give themselves any trouble about the instruction of the people. "most of the arts and professions in a state," says by far the most illustrious philosopher and historian of the present age, "are of such a nature that, while they promote the interests of the society, they are also useful or agreeable to some individuals; and in that case, the constant rule of the magistrate, except perhaps on the first introduction of any art, is to leave the profession to itself, and trust its encouragement to the individuals who reap the benefit of it. the artisans, finding their profits to rise by the favour of their customers, increase as much as possible their skill and industry; and as matters are not disturbed by any injudicious tampering, the commodity is always sure to be at all times nearly proportioned to the demand. "but there are also some callings, which, though useful and even necessary in a state, bring no advantage or pleasure to any individual, and the supreme power is obliged to alter its conduct with regard to the retainers of those professions. it must give them public encouragement in order to their subsistence, and it must provide against that negligence to which they will naturally be subject, either by annexing particular honours to the profession, by establishing a long subordination of ranks and a strict dependence, or by some other expedient. the persons employed in the finances, fleets, and magistracy, are instances of this order of men. "it may naturally be thought, at first sight, that the ecclesiastics belong to the first class, and that their encouragement, as well as that of lawyers and physicians, may safely be entrusted to the liberality of individuals, who are attached to their doctrines, and who find benefit or consolation from their spiritual ministry and assistance. their industry and vigilance will, no doubt, be whetted by such an additional motive; and their skill in the profession, as well as their address in governing the minds of the people, must receive daily increase from their increasing practice, study, and attention. "but if we consider the matter more closely, we shall find that this interested diligence of the clergy is what every wise legislator will study to prevent; because in every religion except the true it is highly pernicious, and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the true, by infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly, and delusion. each ghostly practitioner, in order to render himself more precious and sacred in the eyes of his retainers, will inspire them with the most violent abhorrence of all other sects, and continually endeavour, by some novelty, to excite the languid devotion of his audience. no regard will be paid to truth, morals, or decency in the doctrines inculcated. every tenet will be adopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the human frame. customers will be drawn to each conventicle by new industry and address in practising on the passions and credulity of the populace. and in the end, the civil magistrate will find that he has dearly paid for his pretended frugality, in saving a fixed establishment for the priests; and that in reality the most decent and advantageous composition which he can make with the spiritual guides, is to bribe their indolence by assigning stated salaries to their profession, and rendering it superfluous for them to be farther active than merely to prevent their flock from straying in quest of new pastures. and in this manner ecclesiastical establishments, though commonly they arose at first from religious views, prove in the end advantageous to the political interests of society." but whatever may have been the good or bad effects of the independent provision of the clergy, it has, perhaps, been very seldom bestowed upon them from any view to those effects. times of violent religious controversy have generally been times of equally violent political faction. upon such occasions, each political party has either found it, or imagined it, for its interest to league itself with some one or other of the contending religious sects. but this could be done only by adopting, or at least by favouring, the tenets of that particular sect. the sect which had the good fortune to be leagued with the conquering party necessarily shared in the victory of its ally, by whose favour and protection it was soon enabled in some degree to silence and subdue all its adversaries. those adversaries had generally leagued themselves with the enemies of the conquering party, and were therefore the enemies of that party. the clergy of this particular sect having thus become complete masters of the field, and their influence and authority with the great body of the people being in its highest vigour, they were powerful enough to overawe the chiefs and leaders of their own party, and to oblige the civil magistrate to respect their opinions and inclinations. their first demand was generally that he should silence and subdue an their adversaries: and their second, that he should bestow an independent provision on themselves. as they had generally contributed a good deal to the victory, it seemed not unreasonable that they should have some share in the spoil. they were weary, besides, of humouring the people, and of depending upon their caprice for a subsistence. in making this demand, therefore, they consulted their own ease and comfort, without troubling themselves about the effect which it might have in future times upon the influence and authority of their order. the civil magistrate, who could comply with this demand only by giving them something which he would have chosen much rather to take, or to keep to himself, was seldom very forward to grant it. necessity, however, always forced him to submit at last, though frequently not till after many delays, evasions, and affected excuses. but if politics had never called in the aid of religion, had the conquering party never adopted the tenets of one sect more than those of another when it had gained the victory, it would probably have dealt equally and impartially with all the different sects, and have allowed every man to choose his own priest and his own religion as he thought proper. there would in this case, no doubt' have been a great multitude of religious sects. almost every different congregation might probably have made a little sect by itself, or have entertained some peculiar tenets of its own. each teacher would no doubt have felt himself under the necessity of making the utmost exertion and of using every art both to preserve and to increase the number of his disciples. but as every other teacher would have felt himself under the same necessity, the success of no one teacher, or sect of teachers, could have been very great. the interested and active zeal of religious teachers can be dangerous and troublesome only where there is either but one sect tolerated in the society, or where the whole of a large society is divided into two or three great sects; the teachers of each acting by concert, and under a regular discipline and subordination. but that zeal must be altogether innocent where the society is divided into two or three hundred, or perhaps into as many thousand small sects, of which no one could be considerable enough to disturb the public tranquility. the teachers of each sect, seeing themselves surrounded on all sides with more adversaries than friends, would be obliged to learn that candour and moderation which is so seldom to be found among the teachers of those great sects whose tenets, being supported by the civil magistrate, are held in veneration by almost all the inhabitants of extensive kingdoms and empires, and who therefore see nothing round them but followers, disciples, and humble admirers. the teachers of each little sect, finding themselves almost alone, would be obliged to respect those of almost every other sect, and the concessions which they would mutually find it both convenient and agreeable to make to one another, might in time probably reduce the doctrine of the greater part of them to that pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism, such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see established; but such as positive law has perhaps never yet established, and probably never will establish, in any country: because, with regard to religion, positive law always has been, and probably always will be, more or less influenced by popular superstition and enthusiasm. this plan of ecclesiastical government, or more properly of no ecclesiastical government, was what the sect called independents, a sect no doubt of very wild enthusiasts, proposed to establish in england towards the end of the civil war. if it had been established, though of a very unphilosophical origin, it would probably by this time have been productive of the most philosophical good temper and moderation with regard to every sort of religious principle. it has been established in pennsylvania, where, though the quakers happen to be the most numerous, the law in reality favours no one sect more than another, and it is there said to have been productive of this philosophical good temper and moderation. but though this equality of treatment should not be productive of this good temper and moderation in all, or even in the greater part of the religious sects of a particular country, yet provided those sects were sufficiently numerous, and each of them consequently too small to disturb the public tranquillity, the excessive zeal of each for its particular tenets could not well be productive of any very harmful effects, but, on the contrary, of several good ones: and if the government was perfectly decided both to let them all alone, and to oblige them all to let alone one another, there is little danger that they would not of their own accord subdivide themselves fast enough so as soon to become sufficiently numerous. in every civilised society, in every society where the distinction of ranks has once been completely established, there have been always two different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time; of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal, or, if you will, the loose system. the former is generally admired and revered by the common people: the latter is commonly more esteemed and adopted by what are called people of fashion. the degree of disapprobation with which we ought to mark the vices of levity, the vices which are apt to arise from great prosperity, and from the excess of gaiety and good humour, seems to constitute the principal distinction between those two opposite schemes or systems. in the liberal or loose system, luxury, wanton and even disorderly mirth, the pursuit of pleasure to some degree of intemperance, the breach of chastity, at least in one of the two sexes, etc., provided they are not accompanied with gross indecency, and do not lead to falsehood or injustice, are generally treated with a good deal of indulgence, and are easily either excused or pardoned altogether. in the austere system, on the contrary, those excesses are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and detestation. the vices of levity are always ruinous to the common people, and a single week's thoughtlessness and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor workman for ever, and to drive him through despair upon committing the most enormous crimes. the wiser and better sort of the common people, therefore, have always the utmost abhorrence and detestation of such excesses, which their experience tells them are so immediately fatal to people of their condition. the disorder and extravagance of several years, on the contrary, will not always ruin a man of fashion, and people of that rank are very apt to consider the power of indulging in some degree of excess as one of the advantages of their fortune, and the liberty of doing so without censure or reproach as one of the privileges which belong to their station. in people of their own station, therefore, they regard such excesses with but a small degree of disapprobation, and censure them either very slightly or not at all. almost all religious sects have begun among the common people, from whom they have generally drawn their earliest as well as their most numerous proselytes. the austere system of morality has, accordingly, been adopted by those sects almost constantly, or with very few exceptions; for there have been some. it was the system by which they could best recommend themselves to that order of people to whom they first proposed their plan of reformation upon what had been before established. many of them, perhaps the greater part of them, have even endeavoured to gain credit by refining upon this austere system, and by carrying it to some degree of folly and extravagance; and this excessive rigour has frequently recommended them more than anything else to the respect and veneration of the common people. a man of rank and fortune is by his station the distinguished member of a great society, who attend to every part of his conduct, and who thereby oblige him to attend to every part of it himself. his authority and consideration depend very much upon the respect which this society bears to him. he dare not do anything which would disgrace or discredit him in it, and he is obliged to a very strict observation of that species of morals, whether liberal or austere, which the general consent of this society prescribes to persons of his rank and fortune. a man of low condition, on the contrary, is far from being a distinguished member of any great society. while he remains in a country village his conduct may be attended to, and he may be obliged to attend to it himself. in this situation, and in this situation only, he may have what is called a character to lose. but as soon as he comes into a great city he is sunk in obscurity and darkness. his conduct is observed and attended to by nobody, and he is therefore very likely to neglect it himself, and to abandon himself to every sort of low profligacy and vice. he never emerges so effectually from this obscurity, his conduct never excites so much the attention of any respectable society, as by his becoming the member of a small religious sect. he from that moment acquires a degree of consideration which he never had before. all his brother sectaries are, for the credit of the sect, interested to observe his conduct, and if he gives occasion to any scandal, if he deviates very much from those austere morals which they almost always require of one another, to punish him by what is always a very severe punishment, even where no civil effects attend it, expulsion or excommunication from the sect. in little religious sects, accordingly, the morals of the common people have been almost always remarkably regular and orderly; generally much more so than in the established church. the morals of those little sects, indeed, have frequently been rather disagreeably rigorous and unsocial. there are two very easy and effectual remedies, however, by whose joint operation the state might, without violence, correct whatever was unsocial or disagreeably rigorous in the morals of all the little sects into which the country was divided. the first of those remedies is the study of science and philosophy, which the state might render almost universal among all people of middling or more than middling rank and fortune; not by giving salaries to teachers in order to make them negligent and idle, but by instituting some sort of probation, even in the higher and more difficult sciences, to be undergone by every person before he was permitted to exercise any liberal profession, or before he could be received as a candidate for any honourable office of trust or profit. if the state imposed upon this order of men the necessity of learning, it would have no occasion to give itself any trouble about providing them with proper teachers. they would soon find better teachers for themselves than any whom the state could provide for them. science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition; and where all the superior ranks of people were secured from it, the inferior ranks could not be much exposed to it. the second of those remedies is the frequency and gaiety of public diversions. the state, by encouraging, that is by giving entire liberty to all those who for their own interest would attempt without scandal or indecency, to amuse and divert the people by painting, poetry, music, dancing; by all sorts of dramatic representations and exhibitions, would easily dissipate, in the greater part of them, that melancholy and gloomy humour which is almost always the nurse of popular superstition and enthusiasm. public diversions have always been the objects of dread and hatred to all the fanatical promoters of those popular frenzies. the gaiety and good humour which those diversions inspire were altogether inconsistent with that temper of mind which was fittest for their purpose, or which they could best work upon. dramatic representations, besides, frequently exposing their artifices to public ridicule, and sometimes even to public execration, were upon that account, more than all other diversions, the objects of their peculiar abhorrence. in a country where the law favoured the teachers of no one religion more than those of another, it would not be necessary that any of them should have any particular or immediate dependency upon the sovereign or executive power; or that he should have anything to do either in appointing or in dismissing them from their offices. in such a situation he would have no occasion to give himself any concern about them, further than to keep the peace among them in the same manner as among the rest of his subjects; that is, to hinder them from persecuting, abusing, or oppressing one another. but it is quite otherwise in countries where there is an established or governing religion. the sovereign can in this case never be secure unless he has the means of influencing in a considerable degree the greater part of the teachers of that religion. the clergy of every established church constitute a great incorporation. they can act in concert, and pursue their interest upon one plan and with one spirit, as much as if they were under the direction of one man; and they are frequently, too, under such direction. their interest as an incorporated body is never the same with that of the sovereign, and is sometimes directly opposite to it. their great interest is to maintain their authority with the people; and this authority depends upon the supposed certainty and importance of the whole doctrine which they inculcate, and upon the supposed necessity of adopting every part of it with the most implicit faith, in order to avoid eternal misery. should the sovereign have the imprudence to appear either to deride or doubt himself of the most trifling part of their doctrine, or from humanity attempt to protect those who did either the one or the other, the punctilious honour of a clergy who have no sort of dependency upon him is immediately provoked to proscribe him as a profane person, and to employ all the terrors of religion in order to oblige the people to transfer their allegiance to some more orthodox and obedient prince. should he oppose any of their pretensions or usurpations, the danger is equally great. the princes who have dared in this manner to rebel against the church, over and above this crime of rebellion have generally been charged, too, with the additional crime of heresy, notwithstanding their solemn protestations of their faith and humble submission to every tenet which she thought proper to prescribe to them. but the authority of religion is superior to every other authority. the fears which it suggests conquer all other fears. when the authorized teachers of religion propagate through the great body of the people doctrines subversive of the authority of the sovereign, it is by violence only, or by the force of a standing army, that he can maintain his authority. even a standing army cannot in this case give him any lasting security; because if the soldiers are not foreigners, which can seldom be the case, but drawn from the great body of the people, which must almost always be the case, they are likely to be soon corrupted by those very doctrines. the revolutions which the turbulence of the greek clergy was continually occasioning at constantinople, as long as the eastern empire subsisted; the convulsions which, during the course of several centuries, the turbulence of the roman clergy was continually occasioning in every part of europe, sufficiently demonstrate how precarious and insecure must always be the situation of the sovereign who has no proper means of influencing the clergy of the established and governing religion of his country. articles of faith, as well as all other spiritual matters, it is evident enough, are not within the proper department of a temporal sovereign, who, though he may be very well qualified for protecting, is seldom supposed to be so for instructing the people. with regard to such matters, therefore, his authority can seldom be sufficient to counterbalance the united authority of the clergy of the established church. the public tranquillity, however, and his own security, may frequently depend upon the doctrines which they may think proper to propagate concerning such matters. as he can seldom directly oppose their decision, therefore, with proper weight and authority, it is necessary that he should be able to influence it; and be can influence it only by the fears and expectations which he may excite in the greater part of the individuals of the order. those fears and expectations may consist in the fear of deprivation or other punishment, and in the expectation of further preferment. in all christian churches the benefices of the clergy are a sort of freeholds which they enjoy, not during pleasure, but during life or good behaviour. if they held them by a more precarious tenure, and were liable to be turned out upon every slight disobligation either of the sovereign or of his ministers, it would perhaps be impossible for them to maintain their authority with the people, who would then consider them as mercenary dependents upon the court, in the security of whose instructions they could no longer have any confidence. but should the sovereign attempt irregularly, and by violence, to deprive any number of clergymen of their freeholds, on account, perhaps, of their having propagated, with more than ordinary zeal, some factious or seditious doctrine, he would only render, by such persecution, both them and their doctrine ten times more popular, and therefore ten times more troublesome and dangerous, than they had been before. fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency. to attempt to terrify them serves only to irritate their bad humour, and to confirm them in an opposition which more gentle usage perhaps might easily induce them either to soften or to lay aside altogether. the violence which the french government usually employed in order to oblige all their parliaments, or sovereign courts of justice, to enregister any unpopular edict, very seldom succeeded. the means commonly employed, however, the imprisonment of all the refractory members, one would think were forcible enough. the princes of the house of stewart sometimes employed the like means in order to influence some of the members of the parliament of england; and they generally found them equally intractable. the parliament of england is now managed in another manner; and a very small experiment which the duke of choiseul made about twelve years ago upon the parliament of paris, demonstrated sufficiently that all the parliaments of france might have been managed still more easily in the same manner. that experiment was not pursued. for though management and persuasion are always the easiest and the safest instruments of governments, as force and violence are the worst and the most dangerous, yet such, it seems, is the natural insolence of man that he almost always disdains to use the good instrument, except when he cannot or dare not use the bad one. the french government could and durst use force, and therefore disdained to use management and persuasion. but there is no order of men, it appears, i believe, from the experience of all ages, upon whom it is so dangerous, or rather so perfectly ruinous, to employ force and violence, as upon the respected clergy of any established church. the rights, the privileges, the personal liberty of every individual ecclesiastic who is upon good terms with his own order are, even in the most despotic governments, more respected than those of any other person of nearly equal rank and fortune. it is so in every gradation of despotism, from that of the gentle and mild government of paris to that of the violent and furious government of constantinople. but though this order of men can scarce ever be forced, they may be managed as easily as any other; and the security of the sovereign, as well as the public tranquillity, seems to depend very much upon the means which he has of managing them; and those means seem to consist altogether in the preferment which he has to bestow upon them. in the ancient constitution of the christian church, the bishop of each diocese was elected by the joint votes of the clergy and of the people of the episcopal city. the people did not long retain their right of election; and while they did retain it, they almost always acted under the influence of the clergy, who in such spiritual matters appeared to be their natural guides. the clergy, however, soon grew weary of the trouble of managing them, and found it easier to elect their own bishops themselves. the abbot, in the same manner, was elected by the monks of the monastery, at least in the greater part of the abbacies. all the inferior ecclesiastical benefices comprehended within the diocese were collated by the bishop, who bestowed them upon such ecclesiastics as he thought proper. all church preferments were in this manner in the disposal of the church. the sovereign, though he might have some indirect influence in those elections, and though it was sometimes usual to ask both his consent to elect and his approbation of the election, yet had no direct or sufficient means of managing the clergy. the ambition of every clergyman naturally led him to pay court not so much to his sovereign as to his own order, from which only he could expect preferment. through the greater part of europe the pope gradually drew to himself first the collation of almost all bishoprics and abbacies, or of what were called consistorial benefices, and afterwards, by various machinations and pretences, of the greater part of inferior benefices comprehended within each diocese; little more being left to the bishop than what was barely necessary to give him a decent authority with his own clergy. by this arrangement the condition of the sovereign was still worse than it had been before. the clergy of all the different countries of europe were thus formed into a sort of spiritual army, dispersed in different quarters, indeed, but of which all the movements and operations could now be directed by one head, and conducted upon one uniform plan. the clergy of each particular country might be considered as a particular detachment of that army, or which the operations could easily be supported and seconded by all the other detachments quartered in the different countries round about. each detachment was not only independent of the sovereign of the country in which it was quartered, and by which it was maintained, but dependent upon a foreign sovereign, who could at any time turn its arms against the sovereign of that particular country, and support them by the arms of all the other detachments. those arms were the most formidable that can well be imagined. in the ancient state of europe, before the establishment of arts and manufactures, the wealth of the clergy gave them the same sort of influence over the common people which that of the great barons gave them over their respective vassals, tenants, and retainers. in the great landed estates which the mistaken piety both of princes and private persons had bestowed upon the church, jurisdictions were established of the same kind with those of the great barons, and for the same reason. in those great landed estates, the clergy, or their bailiffs, could easily keep the peace without the support or assistance either of the king or of any other person; and neither the king nor any other person could keep the peace there without the support and assistance of the clergy. the jurisdictions of the clergy, therefore, in their particular baronies or manors, were equally independent, and equally exclusive of the authority of the king's courts, as those of the great temporal lords. the tenants of the clergy were, like those of the great barons, almost all tenants at will, entirely dependent upon their immediate lords, and therefore liable to be called out at pleasure in order to fight in any quarrel in which the clergy might think proper to engage them. over and above the rents of those estates, the clergy possessed in the tithes, a very large portion of the rents of all the other estates in every kingdom of europe. the revenues arising from both those species of rents were, the greater part of them, paid in kind, in corn, wine, cattle poultry, etc. the quantity exceeded greatly what the clergy could themselves consume; and there were neither arts nor manufactures for the produce of which they could exchange the surplus. the clergy could derive advantage from this immense surplus in no other way than by employing it, as the great barons employed the like surplus of their revenues, in the most profuse hospitality, and in the most extensive charity. both the hospitality and the charity of the ancient clergy, accordingly, are said to have been very great. they not only maintained almost the whole poor of every kingdom, but many knights and gentlemen had frequently no other means of subsistence than by travelling about from monastery to monastery, under pretence of devotion, but in reality to enjoy the hospitality of the clergy. the retainers of some particular prelates were often as numerous as those of the greatest lay-lords; and the retainers of all the clergy taken together were, perhaps, more numerous than those of all the lay-lords. there was always much more union among the clergy than among the lay-lords. the former were under a regular discipline and subordination to the papal authority. the latter were under no regular discipline or subordination, but almost always equally jealous of one another, and of the king. though the tenants and retainers of the clergy, therefore, had both together been less numerous than those of the great lay-lords, and their tenants were probably much less numerous, yet their union would have rendered them more formidable. the hospitality and charity of the clergy, too, not only gave them the command of a great temporal force, but increased very much the weight of their spiritual weapons. those virtues procured them the highest respect and veneration among all the inferior ranks of people, of whom many were constantly, and almost all occasionally, fed by them. everything belonging or related to so popular an order, its possessions, its privileges, its doctrines, necessarily appeared sacred in the eyes of the common people, and every violation of them, whether real or pretended, the highest act of sacrilegious wickedness and profaneness. in this state of things, if the sovereign frequently found it difficult to resist the confederacy of a few of the great nobility, we cannot wonder that he should find it still more so to resist the united force of the clergy of his own dominions, supported by that of the clergy of all the neighbouring dominions. in such circumstances the wonder is, not that he was sometimes obliged to yield, but that he ever was able to resist. the privilege of the clergy in those ancient times (which to us who live in the present times appear the most absurd), their total exemption from the secular jurisdiction, for example, or what in england was called the benefit of the clergy, were the natural or rather the necessary consequences of this state of things. how dangerous must it have been for the sovereign to attempt to punish a clergyman for any crime whatever, if his own order were disposed to protect him, and to represent either the proof as insufficient for convicting so holy a man, or the punishment as too severe to be inflicted upon one whose person had been rendered sacred by religion? the sovereign could, in such circumstances, do no better than leave him to be tried by the ecclesiastical courts, who, for the honour of their own order, were interested to restrain, as much as possible, every member of it from committing enormous crimes, or even from giving occasion to such gross scandal as might disgust the minds of the people. in the state in which things were through the greater part of europe during the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, and for some time both before and after that period, the constitution of the church of rome may be considered as the most formidable combination that ever was formed against the authority and security of civil government, as well as against the liberty, reason, and happiness of mankind, which can flourish only where civil government is able to protect them. in that constitution the grossest delusions of superstition were supported in such a manner by the private interests of so great a number of people as put them out of all danger from any assault of human reason: because though human reason might perhaps have been able to unveil, even to the eyes of the common people, some of the delusions of superstition, it could never have dissolved the ties of private interest. had this constitution been attacked by no other enemies but the feeble efforts of human reason, it must have endured for ever. but that immense and well-built fabric, which all the wisdom and virtue of man could never have shaken, much less have overturned, was by the natural course of things, first weakened, and afterwards in part destroyed, and is now likely, in the course of a few centuries more, perhaps, to crumble into ruins altogether. the gradual improvements of arts, manufactures, and commerce, the same causes which destroyed the power of the great barons, destroyed in the same manner, through the greater part of europe, the whole temporal power of the clergy. in the produce of arts, manufactures, and commerce, the clergy, like the great barons, found something for which they could exchange their rude produce, and thereby discovered the means of spending their whole revenues upon their own persons, without giving any considerable share of them to other people. their charity became gradually less extensive, their hospitality less liberal or less profuse. their retainers became consequently less numerous, and by degrees dwindled away altogether. the clergy too, like the great barons, wished to get a better rent from their landed estates, in order to spend it, in the same manner, upon the gratification of their own private vanity and folly. but this increase of rent could be got only by granting leases to their tenants, who thereby became in a great measure independent of them. the ties of interest which bound the inferior ranks of people to the clergy were in this manner gradually broken and dissolved. they were even broken and dissolved sooner than those which bound the same ranks of people to the great barons: because the benefices of the church being, the greater part of them, much smaller than the estates of the great barons, the possessor of each benefice was much sooner able to spend the whole of its revenue upon his own person. during the greater part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the power of the great barons was, through the greater part of europe, in full vigour. but the temporal power of the clergy, the absolute command which they had once had over the great body of the people, was very much decayed. the power of the church was by that time very nearly reduced through the greater part of europe to what arose from her spiritual authority; and even that spiritual authority was much weakened when it ceased to be supported by the charity and hospitality of the clergy. the inferior ranks of people no longer looked upon that order, as they had done before, as the comforters of their distress, and the relievers of their indigence. on the contrary, they were provoked and disgusted by the vanity, luxury, and expense of the richer clergy, who appeared to spend upon their own pleasures what had always before been regarded as the patrimony of the poor. in this situation of things, the sovereigns in the different states of europe endeavoured to recover the influence which they had once had in the disposal of the great benefices of the church, by procuring to the deans and chapters of each diocese the restoration of their ancient right of electing the bishop, and to the monks of each abbacy that of electing the abbot. the re-establishing of this ancient order was the object of several statutes enacted in england during the course of the fourteenth century, particularly of what is called the statute of provisors; and of the pragmatic sanction established in france in the fifteenth century. in order to render the election valid, it was necessary that the sovereign should both consent to it beforehand, and afterwards approve of the person elected; and though the election was still supposed to be free, he had, however, all the indirect means which his situation necessarily afforded him of influencing the clergy in his own dominions. other regulations of a similar tendency were established in other parts of europe. but the power of the pope in the collation of the great benefices of the church seems, before the reformation, to have been nowhere so effectually and so universally restrained as in france and england. the concordat afterwards, in the sixteenth century, gave to the kings of france the absolute right of presenting to all the great, or what are called the consistorial, benefices of the gallican church. since the establishment of the pragmatic sanction and of the concordat, the clergy of france have in general shown less respect to the decrees of the papal court than the clergy of any other catholic country. in all the disputes which their sovereign has had with the pope, they have almost constantly taken party with the former. this independency of the clergy of france upon the court of rome seems to be principally founded upon the pragmatic sanction and the concordat. in the earlier periods of the monarchy, the clergy of france appear to have been as much devoted to the pope as those of any other country. when robert, the second prince of the capetian race, was most unjustly excommunicated by the court of rome, his own servants, it is said, threw the victuals which came from his table to the dogs, and refused to taste anything themselves which little been polluted by the contact of a person in his situation. they were taught to do so, it may very safely be presumed, by the clergy of his own dominions. the claim of collating to the great benefices of the church, a claim in defence of which the court of rome had frequently shaken, and sometimes overturned the thrones of some of the greatest sovereigns in christendom, was in this manner either restrained or modified, or given up altogether, in many different parts of europe, even before the time of the reformation. as the clergy had now less influence over the people, so the state had more influence over the clergy. the clergy, therefore, had both less power and less inclination to disturb the state. the authority of the church of rome was in this state of declension when the disputes which gave birth to the reformation began in germany, and soon spread themselves through every part of europe. the new doctrines were everywhere received with a high degree of popular favour. they were propagated with all that enthusiastic zeal which commonly animates the spirit of party when it attacks established authority. the teachers of those doctrines, though perhaps in other respects not more learned than many of the divines who defended the established church, seem in general to have been better acquainted with ecclesiastical history, and with the origin and progress of that system of opinions upon which the authority of the church was established, and they had thereby some advantage in almost every dispute. the austerity of their manners gave them authority with the common people, who contrasted the strict regularity of their conduct with the disorderly lives of the greater part of their own clergy. they possessed, too, in a much higher degree than their adversaries all the arts of popularity and of gaining proselytes, arts which the lofty and dignified sons of the church had long neglected as being to them in a great measure useless. the reason of the new doctrines recommended them to some, their novelty to many; the hatred and contempt of the established clergy to a still greater number; but the zealous, passionate, and fanatical, though frequently coarse and rustic, eloquence with which they were almost everywhere inculcated, recommended them to by far the greatest number. the success of the new doctrines was almost everywhere so great that the princes who at that time happened to be on bad terms with the court of rome were by means of them easily enabled, in their own dominions, to overturn the church, which, having lost the respect and veneration of the inferior ranks of people, could make scarce any resistance. the court of rome had disobliged some of the smaller princes in the northern parts of germany, whom it had probably considered as too insignificant to be worth the managing. they universally, therefore, established the reformation in their own dominions. the tyranny of christian ii and of troll, archbishop of upsala, enabled gustavus vasa to expel them both from sweden. the pope favoured the tyrant and the archbishop, and gustavus vasa found no difficulty in establishing the reformation in sweden. christian ii was afterwards deposed from the throne of denmark, where his conduct had rendered him as odious as in sweden. the pope, however, was still disposed to favour him, and frederick of holstein, who had mounted the throne in his stead, revenged himself by following the example of gustavus vasa. the magistrates of berne and zurich, who had no particular quarrel with the pope, established with great ease the reformation in their respective cantons, where just before some of the clergy had, by an imposture somewhat grosser than ordinary, rendered the whole order both odious and contemptible. in this critical situation of its affairs, the papal court was at sufficient pains to cultivate the friendship of the powerful sovereigns of france and spain, of whom the latter was at that time emperor of germany. with their assistance it was enabled, though not without great difficulty and much bloodshed, either to suppress altogether or to obstruct very much the progress of the reformation in their dominions. it was well enough inclined, too, to be complaisant to the king of england. but from the circumstances of the times, it could not be so without giving offence to a still greater sovereign, charles v, king of spain and emperor of germany. henry viii accordingly, though he did not embrace himself the greater part of the doctrines of the reformation, was yet enabled, by their general prevalence, to suppress all the monasteries, and to abolish the authority of the church of rome in his dominions. that he should go so far, though he went no further, gave some satisfaction to the patrons of the reformation, who having got possession of the government in the reign of his son and successor, completed without any difficulty the work which henry viii had begun. in some countries, as in scotland, where the government was weak, unpopular, and not very firmly established, the reformation was strong enough to overturn, not only the church, but the state likewise for attempting to support the church. among the followers of the reformation dispersed in all the different countries of europe, there was no general tribunal which, like that of the court of rome, or an oecumenical council, could settle all disputes among them, and with irresistible authority prescribe to all of them the precise limits of orthodoxy. when the followers of the reformation in one country, therefore, happened to differ from their brethren in another, as they had no common judge to appeal to, the dispute could never be decided; and many such disputes arose among them. those concerning the government of the church, and the right of conferring ecclesiastical benefices, were perhaps the most interesting to the peace and welfare of civil society. they gave birth accordingly to the two principal parties of sects among the followers of the reformation, the lutheran and calvinistic sects, the only sects among them of which the doctrine and discipline have ever yet been established by law in any part of europe. the followers of luther, together with what is called the church of england, preserved more or less of the episcopal government, established subordination among the clergy, gave the sovereign the disposal of all the bishoprics and other consistorial benefices within his dominions, and thereby rendered him the real head of the church; and without depriving the bishop of the right of collating to the smaller benefices within his diocese, they, even to those benefices, not only admitted, but favoured the right of presentation both in the sovereign and in all other lay-patrons. this system of church government was from the beginning favourable to peace and good order, and to submission to the civil sovereign. it has never, accordingly, been the occasion of any tumult or civil commotion in any country in which it has once been established. the church of england in particular has always valued herself, with great reason, upon the unexceptionable loyalty of her principles. under such a government the clergy naturally endeavour to recommend themselves to the sovereign, to the court, and to the nobility and gentry of the country, by whose influence they chiefly expect to obtain preferment. they pay court to those patrons sometimes, no doubt, by the vilest flattery and assentation, but frequently, too, by cultivating all those arts which best deserve, and which are therefore most likely to gain them the esteem of people of rank and fortune; by their knowledge in all the different branches of useful and ornamental learning, by the decent liberality of their manners, by the social good humour of their conversation, and by their avowed contempt of those absurd and hypocritical austerities which fanatics inculcate and pretend to practise, in order to draw upon themselves the veneration, and upon the greater part of men of rank and fortune, who avow that they do not practise them, the abhorrence of the common people. such a clergy, however, while they pay their court in this manner to the higher ranks of life, are very apt to neglect altogether the means of maintaining their influence and authority with the lower. they are listened to, esteemed, and respected by their superiors; but before their inferiors they are frequently incapable of defending, effectually and to the conviction of such hearers, their own sober and moderate doctrines against the most ignorant enthusiast who chooses to attack them. the followers of zwingli, or more properly those of calvin, on the contrary, bestowed upon the people of each parish, whenever the church became vacant, the right of electing their own pastor, and established at the same time the most perfect equality among the clergy. the former part of this institution, as long as it remained in vigour, seems to have been productive of nothing but disorder and confusion, and to have tended equally to corrupt the morals both of the clergy and of the people. the latter part seems never to have had any effects but what were perfectly agreeable. as long as the people of each parish preserved the right of electing their own pastors, they acted almost always under the influence of the clergy, and generally of the most factious and fanatical of the order. the clergy, in order to preserve their influence in those popular elections, became, or affected to become, many of them, fanatics themselves, encouraged fanaticism among the people, and gave the preference almost always to the most fanatical candidate. so small a matter as the appointment of a parish priest occasioned almost always a violent contest, not only in one parish, but in all the neighbouring parishes, who seldom failed to take part in the quarrel. when the parish happened to be situated in a great city, it divided all the inhabitants into two parties; and when that city happened either to constitute itself a little republic, or to be the head and capital of a little republic, as is the case with many of the considerable cities in switzerland and holland, every paltry dispute of this kind, over and above exasperating the animosity of all their other factions, threatened to leave behind it both a new schism in the church, and a new faction in the state. in those small republics, therefore, the magistrate very soon found it necessary, for the sake of preserving the public peace, to assume to himself the right of presenting to all vacant benefices. in scotland, the most extensive country in which this presbyterian form of church government has ever been established, the rights of patronage were in effect abolished by the act which established presbytery in the beginning of the reign of william iii. that act at least put it in the power of certain classes of people in each parish to purchase, for a very small price, the right of electing their own pastor. the constitution which this act established was allowed to subsist for about two-and-twenty years, but was abolished by the 10th of queen anne, c. 12, on account of the confusions and disorders which this more popular mode of, election had almost everywhere occasioned. in so extensive a country as scotland, however, a tumult in a remote parish was not so likely to give disturbance to government as in a smaller state. the 10th of queen anne restored the rights of patronage. but though in scotland the law gives the benefice without any exception to the person presented by the patron, yet the church requires sometimes (for she has not in this respect been very uniform in her decisions) a certain concurrence of the people before she will confer upon the presentee what is called the cure of souls, or the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the parish. she sometimes at least, from an affected concern for the peace of the parish, delays the settlement till this concurrence can be procured. the private tampering of some of the neighbouring clergy, sometimes to procure, but more frequently to prevent, this concurrence, and the popular arts which they cultivate in order to enable them upon such occasions to tamper more effectually, are perhaps the causes which principally keep up whatever remains of the old fanatical spirit, either in the clergy or in the people of scotland. the equality which the presbyterian form of church government establishes among the clergy, consists, first, in the equality of authority or ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and, secondly, in the equality of benefice. in all presbyterian churches the equality of authority is perfect: that of benefice is not so. the difference, however, between one benefice and another is seldom so considerable as commonly to tempt the possessor even of the small one to pay court to his patron by the vile arts of flattery and assentation in order to get a better. in all the presbyterian churches, where the rights of patronage are thoroughly established, it is by nobler and better arts that the established clergy in general endeavour to gain the favour of their superiors; by their learning, by the irreproachable regularity of their life, and by the faithful and diligent discharge of their duty. their patrons even frequently complain of the independency of their spirit, which they are apt to construe into ingratitude for past favours, but which at worst, perhaps, is seldom any more than that indifference which naturally arises from the consciousness that no further favours of the kind are ever to be expected. there is scarce perhaps to be found anywhere in europe a more learned, decent, independent, and respectable set of men than the greater part of the presbyterian clergy of holland, geneva, switzerland, and scotland. where the church benefices are all nearly equal, none of them can be very great, and this mediocrity of benefice, though it may no doubt be carried, too far, has, however, some very agreeable effects. nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune. the vices of levity and vanity necessarily render him ridiculous, and are, besides, almost as ruinous to him as they are to the common people. in his own conduct, therefore, he is obliged to follow that system of morals which the common people respect the most. he gains their esteem and affection by that plan of life which his own interest and situation would lead him to follow. the common people look upon him with that kindness with which we naturally regard one who approaches somewhat to our own condition, but who, we think, ought to be in a higher. their kindness naturally provokes his kindness. he becomes careful to instruct them, and attentive to assist and relieve them. he does not even despise the prejudices of people who are disposed to be so favourable to him, and never treats them with those contemptuous and arrogant airs which we so often meet with in the proud dignitaries of opulent and well-endowed churches. the presbyterian clergy, accordingly, have more influence over the minds of the common people than perhaps the clergy of any other established church. it is accordingly in presbyterian countries only that we ever find the common people converted, without persecution, completely, and almost to a man, to the established church. in countries where church benefices are the greater part of them very moderate, a chair in a university is generally a better establishment than a church benefice. the universities have, in this case, the picking and choosing of their members from all the churchmen of the country, who, in every country, constitute by far the most numerous class of men of letters. where church benefices, on the contrary, are many of them very considerable, the church naturally draws from the universities the greater part of their eminent men of letters, who generally find some patron who does himself honour by procuring them church preferment. in the former situation we are likely to find the universities filled with the most eminent men of letters that are to be found in the country. in the latter we are likely to find few eminent men among them, and those few among the youngest members of the society, who are likely, too, to be drained away from it before they can have acquired experience and knowledge enough to be of much use to it. it is observed by mr. de voltaire, that father porrie, a jesuit of no great eminence in the republic of letters, was the only professor they had ever had in france whose works were worth the reading. in a country which has produced so many eminent men of letters, it must appear somewhat singular that scarce one of them should have been a professor in a university. the famous gassendi was, in the beginning of his life, a professor in the university of aix. upon the first dawning of his genius, it was represented to him that by going into the church he could easily find a much more quiet and comfortable subsistence, as well as a better situation for pursuing his studies; and he immediately followed the advice. the observation of mr. de voltaire may be applied, i believe, not only to france, but to all other roman catholic countries. we very rarely find, in any of them, an eminent man of letters who is a professor in a university, except, perhaps, in the professions of law and physic; professions from which the church is not so likely to draw them. after the church of rome, that of england is by far the richest and best endowed church in christendom. in england, accordingly, the church is continually draining the universities of all their best and ablest members; and an old college tutor, who is known and distinguished in europe as an eminent man of letters, is as rarely to be found there as in any roman catholic country. in geneva, on the contrary, in the protestant cantons of switzerland, in the protestant countries of germany, in holland, in scotland, in sweden, and denmark, the most eminent men of letters whom those countries have produced, have, not all indeed, but the far greater part of them, been professors in universities. in those countries the universities are continually draining the church of all its most eminent men of letters. it may, perhaps, be worth while to remark that, if we expect the poets, a few orators, and a few historians, the far greater part of the other eminent men of letters, both of greece and rome, appear to have been either public or private teachers; generally either of philosophy or of rhetoric. this remark will be found to hold true from the days of lysias and isocrates, of plato and aristotle, down to those of plutarch and epictetus, of suetonius and quintilian. to impose upon any man the necessity of teaching, year after year, any particular branch of science, seems, in reality, to be the most effectual method for rendering him completely master of it himself. by being obliged to go every year over the same ground, if he is good for anything, he necessarily becomes, in a few years, well acquainted with every part of it: and if upon any particular point he should form too hasty an opinion one year, when he comes in the course of his lectures to reconsider the same subject the year thereafter, he is very likely to correct it. as to be a teacher of science is certainly the natural employment of a mere man of letters, so is it likewise, perhaps, the education which is most likely to render him a man of solid learning and knowledge. the mediocity of church benefices naturally tends to draw the greater part of men of letters, in the country where it takes place, to the employment in which they can be the most useful to the public, and, at the same time, to give them the best education, perhaps, they are capable of receiving. it tends to render their learning both as solid as possible, and as useful as possible. the revenue of every established church, such parts of it excepted as may arise from particular lands or manors, is a branch, it ought to be observed, of the general revenue of the state which is thus diverted to a purpose very different from the defence of the state. the tithe, for example, is a real land-tax, which puts it out of the power of the proprietors of land to contribute so largely towards the defence of the state as they otherwise might be able to do. the rent of land, however, is, according to some, the sole fund, and, according to others, the principal fund, from which, in all great monarchies, the exigencies of the state must be ultimately supplied. the more of this fund that is given to the church, the less, it is evident, can be spared to the state. it may be laid down as a certain maxim that, all other things being supposed equal, the richer the church, the poorer must necessarily be, either the sovereign on the one hand, or the people on the other; and, in all cases, the less able must the state be to defend itself. in several protestant countries, particularly in all the protestant cantons of switzerland, the revenue which anciently belonged to the roman catholic church, the tithes and church lands, has been found a fund sufficient, not only to afford competent salaries to the established clergy, but to defray, with little or no addition, all the other expenses of the state. the magistrates of the powerful canton of berne, in particular, have accumulated out of the savings from this fund a very large sum, supposed to amount to several millions, part of which is deposited in a public treasure, and part is placed at interest in what are called the public funds of the different indebted nations of europe; chiefly in those of france and great britain. what may be the amount of the whole expense which the church, either of berne, or of any other protestant canton, costs the state, i do not pretend to know. by a very exact account it appears that, in 1755, the whole revenue of the clergy of the church of scotland, including their glebe or church lands, and the rent of their manses or dwelling-houses, estimated according to a reasonable valuation, amounted only to l68,514 1s. 5 1/12d. this very moderate revenue affords a decent subsistence to nine hundred and forty-four ministers. the whole expense of the church, including what is occasionally laid out for the building and reparation of churches, and of the manses of ministers, cannot well be supposed to exceed eighty or eighty-five thousand pounds a year. the most opulent church in christendom does not maintain better the uniformity of faith, the fervour of devotion, the spirit of order, regularity, and austere morals in the great body of the people, than this very poorly endowed church of scotland. all the good effects, both civil and religious, which an established church can be supposed to produce, are produced by it as completely as by any other. the greater part of the protestant churches of switzerland, which in general are not better endowed than the church of scotland, produce those effects in a still higher degree. in the greater part of the protestant cantons there is not a single person to be found who does not profess himself to be of the established church. if he professes himself to be of any other, indeed, the law obliges him to leave the canton. but so severe, or rather indeed so oppressive a law, could never have been executed in such free countries had not the diligence of the clergy beforehand converted to the established church the whole body of the people, with the exception of, perhaps, a few individuals only. in some parts of switzerland, accordingly, where, from the accidental union of a protestant and roman catholic country, the conversion has not been so complete, both religions are not only tolerated but established by law. the proper performance of every service seems to require that its pay or recompense should be, as exactly as possible, proportioned to the nature of the service. if any service is very much underpaid, it is very apt to suffer by the meanness and incapacity of the greater part of those who are employed in it. if it is very much overpaid, it is apt to suffer, perhaps, still more by their negligence and idleness. a man of a large revenue, whatever may be his profession, thinks he ought to live like other men of large revenues, and to spend a great part of his time in festivity, in vanity, and in dissipation. but in a clergyman this train of life not only consumes the time which ought to be employed in the duties of his function, but in the eyes of the common people destroys almost entirely that sanctity of character which can alone enable him to perform those duties with proper weight and authority. part 4 of the expense of supporting the dignity of the sovereign over and above the expenses necessary for enabling the sovereign to perform his several duties, a certain expense is requisite for the support of his dignity. this expense varies both with the different periods of improvement, and with the different forms of government. in an opulent and improved society, where all the different orders of people are growing every day more expensive in their houses, in their furniture, in their tables, in their dress, and in their equipage, it cannot well be expected that the sovereign should alone hold out against the fashion. he naturally, therefore, or rather necessarily, becomes more expensive in all those different articles too. his dignity even seems to require that he should become so. as in point of dignity a monarch is more raised above his subjects than the chief magistrate of any republic is ever supposed to be above his fellow-citizens, so a greater expense is necessary for supporting that higher dignity. we naturally expect more splendour in the court of a king than in the mansion-house of a doge or burgomaster. conclusion the expense of defending the society, and that of supporting the dignity of the chief magistrate, are both laid out for the general benefit of the whole society. it is reasonable, therefore, that they should be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society, all the different members contributing, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities. the expense of the administration of justice, too, may, no doubt, be considered as laid out for the benefit of the whole society. there is no impropriety, therefore, in its being defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society. the persons, however, who gave occasion to this expense are those who, by their injustice in one way or another, make it necessary to seek redress or protection from the courts of justice. the persons again most immediately benefited by this expense are those whom the courts of justice either restore to their rights or maintain in their rights. the expense of the administration of justice, therefore, may very properly be defrayed by the particular contribution of one or other, or both, of those two different sets of persons, according as different occasions may require, that is, by the fees of court. it cannot be necessary to have recourse to the general contribution of the whole society, except for the conviction of those criminals who have not themselves any estate or fund sufficient for paying those fees. those local or provincial expenses of which the benefit is local or provincial (what is laid out, for example, upon the police of a particular town or district) ought to be defrayed by a local or provincial revenue, and ought to be no burden upon the general revenue of the society. it is unjust that the whole society should contribute towards an expense of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society. the expense of maintaining good roads and communications is, no doubt, beneficial to the whole society, and may, therefore, without any injustice. be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society. this expense, however, is most immediately and directly beneficial to those who travel or carry goods from one place to another, and to those who consume such goods. the turnpike tolls in england, and the duties called peages in other countries, lay it altogether upon those two different sets of people, and thereby discharge the general revenue of the society from a very considerable burden. the expense of the institutions for education and religious instruction is likewise, no doubt, beneficial to the whole society, and may, therefore, without injustice, be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society. this expense, however, might perhaps with equal propriety, and even with some advantage, be defrayed altogether by those who receive the immediate benefit of such education and instruction, or by the voluntary contribution of those who think they have occasion for either the one or the other. when the institutions or public works which are beneficial to the whole society either cannot be maintained altogether, or are not maintained altogether by the contribution of such particular members of the society as are most immediately benefited by them, the deficiency must in most cases be made up by the general contribution of the whole society. the general revenue of the society, over and above defraying the expense of defending the society, and of supporting the dignity of the chief magistrate, must make up for the deficiency of many particular branches of revenue. the sources of this general or public revenue i shall endeavour to explain in the following chapter. chapter ii of the sources of the general or public revenue of the society the revenue which must defray, not only the expense of defending the society and of supporting the dignity of the chief magistrate, but all the other necessary expenses of government for which the constitution of the state has not provided any particular revenue, may be drawn either, first, from some fund which peculiarly belongs to the sovereign or commonwealth, and which is independent of the revenue of the people; or, secondly, from the revenue of the people. part 1 of the funds or sources of revenue which may peculiarly belong to the sovereign or commonwealth the funds or sources of revenue which may peculiarly belong to the sovereign or commonwealth must consist either in stock or in land. the sovereign, like any other owner of stock, may derive a revenue from it, either by employing it himself, or by lending it. his revenue is in the one case profit, in the other interest. the revenue of a tartar or arabian chief consists in profit. it arises principally from the milk and increase of his own herds and flocks, of which he himself superintends the management, and is the principal shepherd or herdsman of his own horde or tribe. it is, however, in this earliest and rudest state of civil government only that profit has ever made the principal part of the public revenue of a monarchial state. small republics have sometimes derived a considerable revenue from the profit of mercantile projects. the republic of hamburg is said to do so from the profits of a public wine cellar and apothecary's shop. the state cannot be very great of which the sovereign has leisure to carry on the trade of a wine merchant or apothecary. the profit of a public bank has been a source of revenue to more considerable states. it has been so not only to hamburg, but to venice and amsterdam. a revenue of this kind has even by some people been thought not below the attention of so great an empire as that of great britain. reckoning the ordinary dividend of the bank of england at five and a half per cent and its capital at ten millions seven hundred and eighty thousand pounds, the net annual profit, after paying the expense of management, must amount, it is said, to five hundred and ninety-two thousand nine hundred pounds. government, it is pretended, could borrow this capital at three per cent interest, and by taking the management of the bank into its own hands, might make a clear profit of two hundred and sixty-nine thousand five hundred pounds a year. the orderly, vigilant, and parsimonious administration of such aristocracies as those of venice and amsterdam is extremely proper, it appears from experience, for the management of a mercantile project of this kind. but whether such a government as that of englandwhich, whatever may be its virtues, has never been famous for good economy; which, in time of peace, has generally conducted itself with the slothful and negligent profusion that is perhaps natural to monarchies; and in time of war has constantly acted with all the thoughtless extravagance that democracies are apt to fall intocould be safely trusted with the management of such a project, must at least be good deal more doubtful. the post office is properly a mercantile project. the government advances the expense of establishing the different offices, and of buying or hiring the necessary horses or carriages, and is repaid with a large profit by the duties upon what is carried. it is perhaps the only mercantile project which has been successfully managed by, i believe, every sort of government. the capital to be advanced is not very considerable. there is no mystery in the business. the returns are not only certain, but immediate. princes, however, have frequently engaged in many other mercantile projects, and have been willing, like private persons, to mend their fortunes by becoming adventurers in the common branches of trade. they have scarce ever succeeded. the profusion with which the affairs of princes are always managed renders it almost impossible that they should. the agents of a prince regard the wealth of their master as inexhaustible; are careless at what price they buy; are careless at what price they sell; are careless at what expense they transport his goods from one place to another. those agents frequently live with the profusion of princes, and sometimes too, in spite of that profusion, and by a proper method of making up their accounts, acquire the fortunes of princes. it was thus, as we are told by machiavel, that the agents of lorenzo of medicis, not a prince of mean abilities, carried on his trade. the republic of florence was several times obliged to pay the debt into which their extravagance had involved him. he found it convenient, accordingly, to give up the business of merchant, the business to which his family had originally owed their fortune, and in the latter part of his life to employ both what remained of that fortune, and the revenue of the state of which he had the disposal, in projects and expenses more suitable to his station. no two characters seem more inconsistent than those of trader and sovereign. if the trading spirit of the english east india company renders them very bad sovereigns, the spirit of sovereignty seems to have rendered them equally bad traders. while they were traders only they managed their trade successfully, and were able to pay from their profits a moderate dividend to the proprietors of their stock. since they became sovereigns, with a revenue which, it is said, was originally more than three millions sterling, they have been obliged to beg extraordinary assistance of government in order to avoid immediate bankruptcy. in their former situation, their servants in india considered themselves as the clerks of merchants: in their present situation, those servants consider themselves as the ministers of sovereigns. a state may sometimes derive some part of its public revenue from the interest of money, as well as from the profits of stock. if it has amassed a treasure, it may lend a part of that treasure either to foreign states, or to its own subjects. the canton of berne derives a considerable revenue by lending a part of its treasure to foreign states; that is, by placing it in the public funds of the different indebted nations of europe, chiefly in those of france and england. the security of this revenue must depend, first, upon the security of the funds in which it is placed, or upon the good faith of the government which has the management of them; and, secondly, upon the certainty or probability of the continuance of peace with the debtor nation. in the case of a war, the very first act of hostility, on the part of the debtor nation, might be the forfeiture of the funds of its creditor. this policy of lending money to foreign states is, so far as i know, peculiar to the canton of berne. the city of hamburg has established a sort of public pawnshop, which lends money to the subjects of the state upon pledges at six per cent interest. this pawnshop or lombard, as it is called, affords a revenue, it is pretended, to the state of a hundred and fifty thousand crowns, which, at four and sixpence the crown, amounts to l33,750 sterling. the government of pennsylvania, without amassing any treasure, invented a method of lending, not money indeed, but what is equivalent to money, to its subjects. by advancing to private people at interest, and upon land security to double the value, paper bills of credit to be redeemed fifteen years after their date, and in the meantime made transferable from hand to hand like bank notes, and declared by act of assembly to be a legal tender in all payments from one inhabitant of the province to another, it raised a moderate revenue, which went a considerable way towards defraying an annual expense of about l4500, the whole ordinary expense of that frugal and orderly government. the success of an expedient of this kind must have depended upon three different circumstances; first, upon the demand for some other instrument of commerce besides gold and silver money; or upon the demand for such a quantity of consumable stock as could not be had without sending abroad the greater part of their gold and silver money in order to purchase it; secondly, upon the good credit of the government which made use of this expedient; and, thirdly, upon the moderation with which it was used, the whole value of the paper bills of credit never exceeding that of the gold and silver money which would have been necessary for carrying on their circulation had there been no paper bills of credit. the same expedient was upon different occasions adopted by several other american colonies: but, from want of this moderation, it produced, in the greater part of them, much more disorder than conveniency. the unstable and perishable nature of stock and credit, however, render them unfit to be trusted to as the principal funds of that sure, steady, and permanent revenue which can alone give security and dignity to government. the government of no great nation that was advanced beyond the shepherd state seems ever to have derived the greater part of its public revenue from such sources. land is a fund of a more stable and permanent nature; and the rent of public lands, accordingly, has been the principal source of the public revenue of many a great nation that was much advanced beyond the shepherd state. from the produce or rent of the public lands, the ancient republics of greece and italy derived, for a long time, the greater part of that revenue which defrayed the necessary expenses of the commonwealth. the rent of the crown lands constituted for a long time the greater part of the revenue of the ancient sovereigns of europe. war and the preparation for war are the two circumstances which in modern times occasion the greater part of the necessary expense of all great states. but in the ancient republics of greece and italy every citizen was a soldier, who both served and prepared himself for service at his own expense. neither of those two circumstances, therefore, could occasion any very considerable expense to the state. the rent of a very moderate landed estate might be fully sufficient for defraying all the other necessary expenses of government. in the ancient monarchies of europe, the manners and customs of the times sufficiently prepared the great body of the people for war; and when they took the field, they were, by the condition of their feudal tenures, to be maintained either at their own expense, or at that of their immediate lords, without bringing any new charge upon the sovereign. the other expenses of government were, the greater part of them, very moderate. the administration of justice, it has been shown, instead of being a cause of expense, was a source of revenue. the labour of the country people, for three days before and for three days after harvest, was thought a fund sufficient for making and maintaining all the bridges, highways, and other public works which the commerce of the country was supposed to require. in those days the principal expense of the sovereign seems to have consisted in the maintenance of his own family and household. the officers of his household, accordingly, were then the great officers of state. the lord treasurer received his rents. the lord steward and lord chamberlain looked after the expense of his family. the care of his stables was committed to the lord constable and the lord marshal. his houses were all built in the form of castles, and seem to have been the principal fortresses which he possessed. the keepers of those houses or castles might be considered as a sort of military governors. they seem to have been the only military officers whom it was necessary to maintain in time of peace. in these circumstances the rent of a great landed estate might, upon ordinary occasions, very well defray all the necessary expenses of government. in the present state of the greater part of the civilised monarchies of europe, the rent of all the lands in the country, managed as they probably would be if they all belonged to one proprietor, would scarce perhaps amount to the ordinary revenue which they levy upon the people even in peaceable times. the ordinary revenue of great britain, for example, including not only what is necessary for defraying the current expense of the year, but for paying the interest of the public debts, and for sinking a part of the capital of those debts, amounts to upwards of ten millions a year. but the land-tax, at four shillings in the pound, falls short of two millions a year. this land-tax, as it is called, however, is supposed to be one-fifth, not only of the rent of all the land, but of that of all the houses, and of the interest of all the capital stock of great britain, that part of it only excepted which is either let to the public, or employed as farming stock in the cultivation of land. a very considerable part of the produce of this tax arises from the rent of houses, and the interest of capital stock. the land-tax of the city of london, for example, at four shillings in the pound, amounts to l123,399 6s. 7d. that of the city of westminster, to l63,092 1s. 5d. that of the palaces of whitehall and st. james's, to l30,754 6s. 3d. a certain proportion of the land-tax is in the same manner assessed upon all the other cities and towns corporate in the kingdom, and arises almost altogether, either from the rent of houses, or from what is supposed to be the interest of trading and capital stock. according to the estimation, therefore, by which great britain is rated to the land-tax, the whole mass of revenue arising from the rent of all the lands, from that of all the houses, and from the interest of all the capital stock, that part of it only excepted which is either lent to the public, or employed in the cultivation of land, does not exceed ten millions sterling a year, the ordinary revenue which government levies upon the people even in peaceable times. the estimation by which great britain is rated to the land-tax is, no doubt, taking the whole kingdom at an average, very much below the real value; though in several particular counties and districts it is said to be nearly equal to that value. the rent of the lands alone, exclusively of that of houses, and of the interest of stock, has by many people been estimated at twenty millions, an estimation made in a great measure at random, and which, i apprehend, is as likely to be above as below the truth. but if the lands of great britain, in the present state of their cultivation, do not afford a rent of more than twenty millions a year, they could not well afford the half, most probably not the fourth part of that rent, if they all belonged to a single proprietor, and were put under the negligent, expensive, and oppressive management of his factors and agents. the crown lands of great britain do not at present afford the fourth part of the rent which could probably be drawn from them if they were the property of private persons. if the crown lands were more extensive, it is probable they would be still worse managed. the revenue which the great body of the people derives from land is in proportion, not to the rent, but to the produce of the land. the whole annual produce of the land of every country, if we except what is reserved for seed, is either annually consumed by the great body of the people, or exchanged for something else that is consumed by them. whatever keeps down the produce of the land below what it would otherwise rise to keeps down the revenue of the great body of the people still more than it does that of the proprietors of land. the rent of land, that portion of the produce which belongs to the proprietors, is scarce anywhere in great britain supposed to be more than a third part of the whole produce. if the land which in one state of cultivation affords a rent of ten millions sterling a year would in another afford a rent of twenty millions, the rent being, in both cases, supposed a third part of the produce, the revenue of the proprietors would be less than it otherwise might be by ten millions a year only; but the revenue of the great body of the people would be less than it otherwise might be by thirty millions a year, deducting only what would be necessary for seed. the population of the country would be less by the number of people which thirty millions a year, deducting always the seed, could maintain according to the particular mode of living and expense which might take place in the different ranks of men among whom the remainder was distributed. though there is not at present, in europe, any civilised state of any kind which derives the greater part of its public revenue from the rent of lands which are the property of the state, yet in all the great monarchies of europe there are still many large tracts of land which belong to the crown. they are generally forest; and sometimes forest where, after travelling several miles, you will scarce find a single tree; a mere waste and loss of country in respect both of produce and population. in every great monarchy of europe the sale of the crown lands would produce a very large sum of money, which, if applied to the payment of the public debts, would deliver from mortgage a much greater revenue than any which those lands have ever afforded to the crown. in countries where lands, improved and cultivated very highly, and yielding at the time of sale as great a rent as can easily be got from them, commonly sell at thirty years' purchase, the unimproved, uncultivated, and low-rented crown lands might well be expected to sell at forty, fifty, or sixty years' purchase. the crown might immediately enjoy the revenue which this great price would redeem from mortgage. in the course of a few years it would probably enjoy another revenue. when the crown lands had become private property, they would, in the course of a few years, become well improved and well cultivated. the increase of their produce would increase the population of the country by augmenting the revenue and consumption of the people. but the revenue which the crown derives from the duties of customs and excise would necessarily increase with the revenue and consumption of the people. the revenue which, in any civilised monarchy, the crown derives from the crown lands, though it appears to cost nothing to individuals, in reality costs more to the society than perhaps any other equal revenue which the crown enjoys. it would, in all cases, be for the interest of the society to replace this revenue to the crown by some other equal revenue, and to divide the lands among the people, which could not well be done better, perhaps, than by exposing them to public sale. lands for the purposes of pleasure and magnificenceparks, gardens, public walks, etc., possessions which are everywhere considered as causes of expense, not as sources of revenueseem to be the only lands which, in a great and civilised monarchy, ought to belong to the crown. public stock and public lands, therefore, the two sources of revenue which may peculiarly belong to the sovereign or commonwealth, being both improper and insufficient funds for defraying the necessary expense of any great and civilised state, it remains that this expense must, the greater part of it, be defrayed by taxes of one kind or another; the people contributing a part of their own private revenue in order to make up a public revenue to the sovereign or commonwealth. part 2 of taxes the private revenue of individuals, it has been shown in the first book of this inquiry, arises ultimately from three different sources: rent, profit, and wages. every tax must finally be paid from some one or other of those three different sorts of revenue, or from all of them indifferently. i shall endeavour to give the best account i can, first, of those taxes which, it is intended, should fall upon rent; secondly, of those which, it is intended, should fall upon profit; thirdly, of those which, it is intended, should fall upon wages; and, fourthly, of those which, it is intended, should fall indifferently upon all those three different sources of private revenue. the particular consideration of each of these four different sorts of taxes will divide the second part of the present chapter into four articles, three of which will require several other subdivisions. many of those taxes, it will appear from the following review, are not finally paid from the fund, or source of revenue, upon which it was intended they should fall. before i enter upon the examination of particular taxes, it is necessary to premise the four following maxims with regard to taxes in general. i. the subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. the expense of government to the individuals of a great nation is like the expense of management to the joint tenants of a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their respective interests in the estate. in the observation or neglect of this maxim consists what is called the equality or inequality of taxation. every tax, it must be observed once for all, which falls finally upon one only of the three sorts of revenue above mentioned, is necessarily unequal in so far as it does not affect the other two. in the following examination of different taxes i shall seldom take much further notice of this sort of inequality, but shall, in most cases, confine my observations to that inequality which is occasioned by a particular tax falling unequally even upon that particular sort of private revenue which is affected by it. ii. the tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary. the time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every other person. where it is otherwise, every person subject to the tax is put more or less in the power of the tax-gathered, who can either aggravate the tax upon any obnoxious contributor, or extort, by the terror of such aggravation, some present or perquisite to himself. the uncertainty of taxation encourages the insolence and favours the corruption of an order of men who are naturally unpopular, even where they are neither insolent nor corrupt. the certainty of what each individual ought to pay is, in taxation, a matter of so great importance that a very considerable degree of inequality, it appears, i believe, from the experience of all nations, is not near so great an evil as a very small degree of uncertainty. iii. every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner, in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it. a tax upon the rent of land or of houses, payable at the same term at which such rents are usually paid, is levied at the time when it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay; or, when he is most likely to have wherewithal to pay. taxes upon such consumable goods as are articles of luxury are all finally paid by the consumer, and generally in a manner that is very convenient for him. he pays them by little and little, as he has occasion to buy the goods. as he is at liberty, too, either to buy, or not to buy, as he pleases, it must be his own fault if he ever suffers any considerable inconveniency from such taxes. iv. every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state. a tax may either take out or keep out of the pockets of the people a great deal more than it brings into the public treasury, in the four following ways. first, the levying of it may require a great number of officers, whose salaries may eat up the greater part of the produce of the tax, and whose perquisites may impose another additional tax upon the people. secondly, it may obstruct the industry the people, and discourage them from applying to certain branches of business which might give maintenance and unemployment to great multitudes. while it obliges the people to pay, it may thus diminish, or perhaps destroy, some of the funds which might enable them more easily to do so. thirdly, by the forfeitures and other penalties which those unfortunate individuals incur who attempt unsuccessfully to evade the tax, it may frequently ruin them, and thereby put an end to the benefit which the community might have received from the employment of their capitals. an injudicious tax offers a great temptation to smuggling. but the penalties of smuggling must rise in proportion to the temptation. the law, contrary to all the ordinary principles of justice, first creates the temptation, and then punishes those who yield to it; and it commonly enhances the punishment, too, in proportion to the very circumstance which ought certainly to alleviate it, the temptation to commit the crime. fourthly, by subjecting the people to the frequent visits and the odious examination of the tax-gatherers, it may expose them to much unnecessary trouble, vexation, and oppression; and though vexation is not, strictly speaking, expense, it is certainly equivalent to the expense at which every man would be willing to redeem himself from it. it is in some one or other of these four different ways that taxes are frequently so much more burdensome to the people than they are beneficial to the sovereign. the evident justice and utility of the foregoing maxims have recommended them more or less to the attention of all nations. all nations have endeavoured, to the best of their judgment, to render their taxes as equal as they could contrive; as certain, as convenient to the contributor, both in the time and in the mode of payment, and, in proportion to the revenue which they brought to the prince, as little burdensome to the people. the following short review of some of the principal taxes which have taken place in different ages and countries will show that the endeavours of all nations have not in this respect been equally successful. article i taxes upon rent. taxes upon the rent of land a tax upon the rent of land may either every district being valued at a certain rent, be imposed according to a certain canon, which valuation is not afterwards to be altered, or it may be imposed in such a manner as to vary with every variation in the real rent of the land, and to rise or fall with the improvement or declension of its cultivation. a land-tax which, like that of great britain, is assessed upon each district according to a certain invariable canon, though it should be equal at the time of its first establishment, necessarily becomes unequal in process of time, according to the unequal degrees of improvement or neglect in the cultivation of the different parts of the country. in england, the valuation according to which the different countries and parishes were assessed to the land-tax by the 4th of william and mary was very unequal even at its first establishment. this tax, therefore, so far offends against the first of the four maxims above mentioned. it is perfectly agreeable to the other three. it is perfectly certain. the time of payment for the tax, being the same as that for the rent, is as convenient as it can be to the contributor though the landlord is in all cases the real contributor, the tax is commonly advanced by the tenant, to whom the landlord is obliged to allow it in the payment of the rent. this tax is levied by a much smaller number of officers than any other which affords nearly the same revenue. as the tax upon each district does not rise with the rise of the rent, the sovereign does not share in the profits of the landlord's improvements. those improvements sometimes contribute, indeed, to the discharge of the other landlords of the district. but the aggravation of the tax which may sometimes occasion upon a particular estate is always so very small that it never can discourage those improvements, nor keep down the produce of the land below what it would otherwise rise to. as it has no tendency to diminish the quantity, it can have none to raise the price of that produce. it does not obstruct the industry of the people. it subjects the landlord to no other inconveniency besides the unavoidable one of paying the tax. the advantage, however, which the landlord has derived from the invariable constancy of the valuation by which all the lands of great britain are rated to the land-tax, has been principally owing to some circumstances altogether extraneous to the nature of the tax. it has been owing in part to the great prosperity of almost every part of the country, the rents of almost all the estates of great britain having, since the time when this valuation was first established, been continually rising, and scarce any of them having fallen. the landlords, therefore, have almost all gained the difference between the tax which they would have paid according to the present rent of their estates, and that which they actually pay according to the ancient valuation. had the state of the country been different, had rents been gradually falling in consequence of the declension of cultivation, the landlords would almost all have lost this difference. in the state of things which has happened to take place since the revolution, the constancy of the valuation has been advantageous to the landlord and hurtful to the sovereign. in a different state of things it might have been advantageous to the sovereign and hurtful to the landlord. as the tax is made payable in money, so the valuation of the land is expressed in money. since the establishment of this valuation the value of silver has been pretty uniform, and there has been no alteration in the standard of the coin either as to weight or fineness. had silver risen considerably in its value, as it seems to have done in the course of the two centuries which preceded the discovery of the mines of america, the constancy of the valuation might have proved very oppressive to the landlord. had silver fallen considerably in its value, as it certainly did for about a century at least after the discovery of those mines, the same constancy of valuation would have reduced very much this branch of the revenue of the sovereign. had any considerable alteration been made in the standard of the money, either by sinking the same quantity of silver to a lower denomination, or by raising it to a higher; had an ounce of silver, for example, instead of being coined into five shillings and twopence, been coined either into pieces which bore so low a denomination as two shillings and sevenpence, or into pieces which bore so high a one as ten shillings and fourpence, it would in the one case have hurt the revenue of the proprietor, in the other that of the sovereign. in circumstances, therefore, somewhat different from those which have actually taken place, this constancy of valuation might have been a very great inconveniency, either to the contributors, or to the commonwealth. in the course of ages such circumstances, however, must, at some time or other, happen. but though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality. every constitution, therefore, which it is meant should be as permanent as the empire itself, ought to be convenient, not in certain circumstances only, but in all circumstances; or ought to be suited, not to those circumstances which are transitory, occasional, or accidental, but to those which are necessary and therefore always the same. a tax upon the rent of land which varies with every variation of the rent, or which rises and falls according to the improvement or neglect of cultivation, is recommended by that sect of men of letters in france who call themselves the economists as the most equitable of all taxes. all taxes, they pretend, fall ultimately upon the rent of land, and ought therefore to be imposed equally upon the fund which must finally pay them. that all taxes ought to fall as equally as possible upon the fund which must finally pay them is certainly true. but without entering into the disagreeable discussion of the metaphysical arguments by which they support their very ingenious theory, it will sufficiently appear, from the following review, what are the taxes which fall finally upon the rent of the land, and what are those which fall finally upon some other fund. in the venetian territory all the arable lands which are given in lease to farmers are taxed at a tenth of the rent. the leases are recorded in a public register which is kept by the officers of revenue in each province or district. when the proprietor cultivates his own lands, they are valued according to an equitable estimation, and he is allowed a deduction of one-fifth of the tax, so that for such lands he pays only eight instead of ten per cent of the supposed rent. a land-tax of this kind is certainly more equal than the land-tax of england. it might not, perhaps, be altogether so certain, and the assessment of the tax might frequently occasion a good deal more trouble to the landlord. it might, too, be a good deal more expensive in the levying. such a system of administration, however, might perhaps be contrived as would, in a great measure, both prevent this uncertainty and moderate this expense. the landlord and tenant, for example, might jointly be obliged to record their lease in a public register. proper penalties might be enacted against concealing or misrepresenting any of the conditions; and if part of those penalties were to be paid to either of the two parties who informed against and convicted the other of such concealment or misrepresentation, it would effectually deter them from combining together in order to defraud the public revenue. all the conditions of the lease might be sufficiently known from such a record. some landlords, instead of raising the rent, take a fine for the renewal of the lease. this practice is in most cases the expedient of a spendthrift, who for a sum of ready money sells a future revenue of much greater value. it is in most cases, therefore, hurtful to the landlords. it is frequently hurtful to the tenant, and it is always hurtful to the community. it frequently takes from the tenant so great a part of his capital, and thereby diminishes so much his ability to cultivate the land, that he finds it more difficult to pay a small rent than it would otherwise have been to pay a great one. whatever diminishes his ability to cultivate, necessarily keeps down, below what it would otherwise have been, the most important part of the revenue of the community. by rendering the tax upon such fines a good deal heavier than upon the ordinary rent, this hurtful practice might be discouraged, to the no small advantage of all the different parties concerned, of the landlord, of the tenant, of the sovereign, and of the whole community. some leases prescribe to the tenant a certain mode of cultivation and a certain succession of crops during the whole continuance of the lease. this condition, which is generally the effect of the landlord's conceit of his own superior knowledge (a conceit in most cases very ill founded), ought always to be considered as an additional rent; as a rent in service instead of a rent in money. in order to discourage the practice, which is generally a foolish one, this species of rent might be valued rather high, and consequently taxed somewhat higher than common money rents. some landlords, instead of a rent in money, require a rent in kind, in corn, cattle, poultry, wine, oil, etc.; others, again, require a rent in service. such rents are always more hurtful to the tenant than beneficial to the landlord. they either take more or keep more out of the pocket of the former than they put into that of the latter. in every country where they take place the tenants are poor and beggarly, pretty much according to the degree in which they take place. by valuing, in the same manner, such rents rather high, and consequently taxing them somewhat higher than common money rents, a practice which is hurtful to the whole community might perhaps be sufficiently discouraged. when the landlord chose to occupy himself a part of his own lands, the rent might be valued according to an equitable arbitration of the farmers and landlords in the neighbourhood, and a moderate abatement of the tax might be granted to him, in the same manner as in the venetian territory, provided the rent of the lands which he occupied did not exceed a certain sum. it is of importance that the landlord should be encouraged to cultivate a part of his own land. his capital is generally greater than that of the tenant, and with less skill he can frequently raise a greater produce. the landlord can afford to try experiments, and is generally disposed to do so. his unsuccessful experiments occasion only a moderate loss to himself. his successful ones contribute to the improvement and better cultivation of the whole country. it might be of importance, however, that the abatement of the tax should encourage him to cultivate to a certain extent only. if the landlords should, the greater part of them, be tempted to farm the whole of their own lands, the country (instead of sober and industrious tenants, who are bound by their own interest to cultivate as well as their capital and skill will allow them) would be filled with idle and profligate bailiffs, whose abusive management would soon degrade the cultivation and reduce the annual produce of the land, to the diminution, not only of the revenue of their masters, but of the most important part of that of the whole society. such a system of administration might, perhaps, free a tax of this kind from any degree of uncertainty which could occasion either oppression or inconveniency of the contributor; and might at the same time serve to introduce into the common management of land such a plan or policy as might contribute a good deal to the general improvement and good cultivation of the country. the expense of levying a land-tax which varied with every variation of the rent would no doubt be somewhat greater than that of levying one which was already rated according to a fixed valuation. some additional expense would necessarily be incurred both by the different register offices which it would be proper to establish in the different districts of the country, and by the different valuations which might occasionally be made of the lands which the proprietor chose to occupy himself. the expense of all this, however, might be very moderate, and much below what is incurred in the levying of many other taxes which afford a very inconsiderable revenue in comparison of what might easily be drawn from a tax of this kind. the discouragement which a variable land-tax of this kind might give to the improvement of land seems to be the most important objection which can be made to it. the landlord would certainly be less disposed to improve when the sovereign, who contributed nothing to the expense, was to share in the profit of the improvement. even this objection might perhaps be obviated by allowing the landlord, before he began his improvement, to ascertain, in conjunction with the officers of revenue, the actual value of his lands according to the equitable arbitration of a certain number of landlords and farmers in the neighborhood, equally chosen by both parties, and by rating him according to this valuation for such a number of years as might be fully sufficient for his complete indemnification. to draw the attention of the sovereign towards the improvement of the land, from a regard to the increase of his own revenue, is one of the principal advantages proposed by this species of land-tax. the term, therefore, allowed for the indemnification of the landlord ought not to be a great deal longer than what was necessary for that purpose, lest the remoteness of the interest should discourage too much this attention. it had better, however, be somewhat too long than in any respect too short. no incitement to the attention of the sovereign can ever counterbalance the smallest discouragement to that of the landlord. the attention of the sovereign can be at best but a very general and vague consideration of what is likely to contribute to the better cultivation of the greater part of his dominions. the attention of the landlord is a particular and minute consideration of what is likely to be the most advantageous application of every inch of ground upon his estate. the principal attention of the sovereign ought to be to encourage, by every means in his power, the attention both of the landlord and of the farmer, by allowing both to pursue their own interest in their own way and according to their own judgment; by giving to both the most perfect security that they shall enjoy the full recompense of their own industry; and by procuring to both the most extensive market for every part of their produce, in consequence of establishing the easiest and safest communications both by land and by water through every part of his own dominions as well as the most unbounded freedom of exportation to the dominions of all other princes. if by such a system of administration a tax of this kind could be so managed as to give, not only no discouragement, but, on the contrary, some encouragement to the improvement of land, it does not appear likely to occasion any other inconveniency to the landlord, except always the unavoidable one of being obliged to pay the tax. in all the variations of the state of the society, in the improvement and in the declension of agriculture; in all the variations in the value of silver, and in all those in the standard of the coin, a tax of this kind would, of its own accord and without any attention of government, readily suit itself to the actual situation of things, and would be equally just and equitable in all those different changes. it would, therefore, be much more proper to be established as a perpetual and unalterable regulation, or as what is called a fundamental law of the commonwealth, than any tax which was always to be levied according to a certain valuation. some states, instead of the simple and obvious expedient of a register of leases, have had recourse to the laborious and expensive one of an actual survey and valuation of all the lands in the country. they have suspected, probably, that the lessor and lessee, in order to defraud the public revenue, might combine to conceal the real terms of the lease. domesday-book seems to have been the result of a very accurate survey of this kind. in the ancient dominions of the king of prussia, the land-tax is assessed according to an actual survey and valuation, which is reviewed and altered from time to time. according to that valuation, the lay proprietors pay from twenty to twenty-five per cent of their revenue. ecclesiastics from forty to forty-five per cent. the survey and valuation of silesia was made by order of the present king; it is said with great accuracy. according to that valuation, the lands belonging to the bishop of breslaw are taxed at twenty-five per cent of their rent. the other revenues of the ecclesiastics of both religions, at fifty per cent. the commanderies of the teutonic order, and of that of malta, at forty per cent. lands held by a noble tenure, at thirty-eight and one-third per cent. lands held by a base tenure, at thirty-five and one-third per cent. the survey and valuation of bohemia is said to have been the work of more than a hundred years. it was not perfected till after the peace of 1748, by the orders of the present empress queen. the survey of the duchy of milan, which was begun in the time of charles vi, was not perfected till after 1760. it is esteemed one of the most accurate that has ever been made. the survey of savoy and piedmont was executed under the orders of the late king of sardinia. in the dominions of the king of prussia the revenue of the church is taxed much higher than that of lay proprietors. the revenue of the church is, the greater part of it, a burden upon the rent of land. it seldom happens that any part of it is applied towards the improvement of land, or is so employed as to contribute in any respect towards increasing the revenue of the great body of the people. his prussian majesty had probably, upon that account, thought it reasonable that it should contribute a good deal more towards relieving the exigencies of the state. in some countries the lands of the church are exempted from all taxes. in others they are taxed more lightly than other lands. in the duchy of milan, the lands which the church possessed before 1575 are rated to the tax at a third only of their value. in silesia, lands held by a noble tenure are taxed three per cent higher than those held by a base tenure. the honours and privileges of different kinds annexed to the former, his prussian majesty had probably imagined, would sufficiently compensate to the proprietor a small aggravation of the tax; while at the same time the humiliating inferiority of the latter would be in some measure alleviated by being taxed somewhat more lightly. in other countries, the system of taxation, instead of alleviating, aggravates this inequality. in the dominions of the king of sardinia, and in those provinces of france which are subject to what is called the real or predial taille, the tax falls altogether upon the lands held by a base tenure. those held by a noble one are exempted. a land-tax assessed according to a general survey and valuation, how equal soever it may be at first, must, in the course of a very moderate period of time, become unequal. to prevent its becoming so would require the continual and painful attention of government to all the variations in the state and produce of every different farm in the country. the governments of prussia, of bohemia, of sardinia, and of the duchy of milan actually exert an attention of this kind; an attention so unsuitable to the nature of government that it is not likely to be of long continuance, and which, if it is continued, will probably in the long-run occasion much more trouble and vexation than it can possibly bring relief to the contributors. in 1666, the generality of montauban was assessed to the real or predial taille according, it is said, to a very exact survey and valuation. by 1727, this assessment had become altogether unequal. in order to remedy this inconveniency, government has found no better expedient than to impose upon the whole generality an additional tax of a hundred and twenty thousand livres. this additional tax is rated upon all the different districts subject to the taille according to the old assessment. but it is levied only upon those which in the actual state of things are by that assessment undertaxed, and it is applied to the relief of those which by the same assessment are overtaxed. two districts, for example, one of which ought in the actual state of things to be taxed at nine hundred, the other at eleven hundred livres, are by the old assessment both taxed at a thousand livres. both these districts are by the additional tax rated at eleven hundred livres each. but this additional tax is levied only upon the district undercharged, and it is applied altogether to the relief of that overcharged, which consequently pays only nine hundred livres. the government neither gains nor loses by the additional tax, which is applied altogether to remedy the inequalities arising from the old assessment. the application is pretty much regulated according to the discretion of the intendant of the generality, and must, therefore, be in a great measure arbitrary. taxes which are proportioned, not to the rent, but to the produce of land taxes upon the produce of land are in reality taxes upon the rent; and though they may be originally advanced by the farmer, are finally paid by the landlord. when a certain portion of the produce is to be paid away for a tax, the farmer computes, as well as he can, what the value of this portion is, one year with another, likely to amount to, and he makes a proportionable abatement in the rent which he agrees to pay to the landlord. there is no farmer who does not compute beforehand what the church tithe, which is a land-tax of this kind, is, one year with another, likely to amount to. the tithe, and every other land-tax of this kind, under the appearance of perfect equality, are very unequal taxes; a certain portion of the produce being, in different situations, equivalent to a very different portion of the rent. in some very rich lands the produce is so great that the one half of it is fully sufficient to replace to the farmer his capital employed in cultivation, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. the other half, or, what comes to the same thing, the value of the other half, he could afford to pay as rent to the landlord, if there was no tithe. but if a tenth of the produce is taken from him in the way of tithe, he must require an abatement of the fifth part of his rent, otherwise he cannot get back his capital with the ordinary profit. in this case the rent of the landlord, instead of amounting to a half or five-tenths of the whole produce, will amount only to four-tenths of it. in poorer lands, on the contrary, the produce is sometimes so small, and the expense of cultivation so great, that it requires four-fifths of the whole produce to replace to the farmer his capital with the ordinary profit. in this case, though there was no tithe, the rent of the landlord could amount to no more than one-fifth or two-tenths of the whole produce. but if the farmer pays one-tenth of the produce in the way of tithe, he must require an equal abatement of the rent of the landlord, which will thus be reduced to one-tenth only of the whole produce. upon the rent of rich lands, the tithe may sometimes be a tax of no more than one-fifth part, or four shillings in the pound; whereas upon that of poorer lands, it may sometimes be a tax of one-half, or of ten shillings in the pound. the tithe, as it is frequently a very unequal tax upon the rent, so it is always a great discouragement both to the improvements of the landlord and to the cultivation of the farmer. the one cannot venture to make the most important, which are generally the most expensive improvements, nor the other to raise the most valuable, which are generally too the most expensive crops, when the church, which lays out no part of the expense, is to share so very largely in the profit. the cultivation of madder was for a long time confined by the tithe to the united provinces, which, being presbyterian countries, and upon that account exempted from this destructive tax, enjoyed a sort of monopoly of that useful dyeing drug against the rest of europe. the late attempts to introduce the culture of this plant into england have been made only in consequence of the statute which enacted that five shillings an acre should be received in lieu of all manner of tithe upon madder. as through the greater part of europe the church, so in many different countries of asia the state, is principally supported by a land-tax, proportioned, not to the rent, but to the produce of the land. in china, the principal revenue of the sovereign consists in a tenth part of the produce of all lands of the empire. this tenth part, however, is estimated so very moderately that, in many provinces, it is said not to exceed a thirtieth part of the ordinary produce. the land-tax or land-rent which used to be paid to the mahometan government of bengal, before that country fell into the hands of the english east india company, is said to have amounted to about a fifth part of the produce. the land-tax of ancient egypt is said likewise to have amounted to a fifth part. in asia, this sort of land-tax is said to interest the sovereign in the improvement and cultivation of land. the sovereigns of china, those of bengal while under the mahometan government, and those of ancient egypt, are said accordingly to have been extremely attentive to the making and maintaining of good roads and navigable canals, in order to increase, as much as possible, both the quantity and value of every part of the produce of the land, by procuring to every part of it the most extensive market which their own dominions could afford. the tithe of the church is divided into such small portions that no one of its proprietors can have any interest of this kind. the parson of a parish could never find his account in making a road or canal to a distant part of the country, in order to extend the market for the produce of his own particular parish. such taxes, when destined for the maintenance of the state, have some advantages which may serve in some measure to balance their inconveniency. when destined for the maintenance of the church, they are attended with nothing but inconveniency. taxes upon the produce of land may be levied either in kind, or, according to a certain valuation, in money. the parson of a parish, or a gentleman of small fortune who lives upon his estate, may sometimes, perhaps, find some advantage in receiving, the one his tithe, and the other his rent, in kind. the quantity to be collected, and the district within which it is to be collected, are so small that they both can oversee, with their own eyes, the collection and disposal of every part of what is due to them. a gentleman of great fortune, who lived in the capital, would be in danger of suffering much by the neglect, and more by the fraud of his factors and agents, if the rents of an estate in a distant province were to be paid to him in this manner. the loss of the sovereign from the abuse and depredation of his tax-gatherers would necessarily be much greater. the servants of the most careless private person are, perhaps, more under the eye of their master than those of the most careful prince; and a public revenue which was paid in kind would suffer so much from the mismanagement of the collectors that a very small part of what was levied upon the people would ever arrive at the treasury of the prince. some part of the public revenue of china, however, is said to be paid in this manner. the mandarins and other tax-gatherers will, no doubt, find their advantage in continuing the practice of a payment which is so much more liable to abuse than any payment in money. a tax upon the produce of land which is levied in money may be levied either according to a valuation which varies with all the variations of the market price, or according to a fixed valuation, a bushel of wheat, for example, being always valued at one and the same money price, whatever may be the state of the market. the produce of a tax levied in the former way will vary only according to the variations in the real produce of the land, according to the improvement or neglect of cultivation. the produce of a tax levied in the latter way will vary, not only according to the variations in the produce of the land, but according to both those in the value of the precious metals and those in the quantity of those metals which is at different times contained in coin of the same denomination. the produce of the former will always bear the same proportion to the value of the real produce of the land. the produce of the latter may, at different times, bear very different proportions to that value. when, instead either of a certain portion of the produce of land, or of the price of a certain portion, a certain sum of money is to be paid in full compensation for all tax or tithe, the tax becomes, in this case, exactly of the same nature with the land-tax of england. it neither rises nor falls with the rent of the land. it neither encourages nor discourages improvement. the tithe in the greater part of those parishes which pay what is called a modus in lieu of all other tithe is a tax of this kind. during the mahometan government of bengal, instead of the payment in kind of a fifth part of the produce, a modus, and, it is said, a very moderate one, was established in the greater part of the districts or zemindaries of the country. some of the servants of the east india company, under pretence of restoring the public revenue to its proper value, have, in some provinces, exchanged this modus for a payment in kind. under their management this change is likely both to discourage cultivation, and to give new opportunities for abuse in the collection of the public revenue which has fallen very much below what it was said to have been when it first fell under the management of the company. the servants of the company may, perhaps, have profited by this change, but at the expense, it is probable, both of their masters and of the country. taxes upon the rent of house. the rent of a house may be distinguished into two parts, of which the one may very properly be called the building-rent; the other is commonly called the ground-rent. the building-rent is the interest or profit of the capital expended in building the house. in order to put the trade of a builder upon a level with other trades, it is necessary that this rent should be sufficient, first, to pay him the same interest which he would have got for his capital if he had lent it upon good security; and, secondly, to keep the house in constant repair, or, what comes to the same thing, to replace, within a certain term of years, the capital which had been employed in building it. the building-rent, or the ordinary profit of building, is, therefore, everywhere regulated by the ordinary interest of money. where the market rate of interest is four per cent the rent of a house which, over and above paying the ground-rent, affords six or six and a half per cent upon the whole expense of building, may perhaps afford a sufficient profit to the builder. where the market rate of interest is five per cent, it may perhaps require seven or seven and a half per cent. if, in proportion to the interest of money, the trade of the builder affords at any time a much greater profit than this, it will soon draw so much capital from other trades as will reduce the profit to its proper level. if it affords at any time much less than this, other trades will soon draw so much capital from it as will again raise that profit. whatever part of the whole rent of a house is over and above what is sufficient for affording this reasonable profit naturally goes to the ground-rent; and where the owner of the ground and the owner of the building are two different persons, is, in most cases, completely paid to the former. this surplus rent is the price which the inhabitant of the house pays for some real or supposed advantage of the situation. in country houses at a distance from any great town, where there is plenty of ground to choose upon, the ground-rent is scarce anything, or no more than what the ground which the house stands upon would pay if employed in agriculture. in country villas in the neighborhood of some great town, it is sometimes a good deal higher, and the peculiar conveniency or beauty of situation is there frequently very well paid for. ground-rents are generally highest in the capital, and in those particular parts of it where there happens to be the greatest demand for houses, whatever be the reason of that demand, whether for trade and business, for pleasure and society, or for mere vanity and fashion. a tax upon house-rent, payable by the tenant and proportioned to the whole rent of each house, could not, for any considerable time at least, affect the building-rent. if the builder did not get his reasonable profit, he would be obliged to quit the trade; which, by raising the demand for building, would in a short time bring back his profit to its proper level with that of other trades. neither would such a tax fall altogether upon the ground-rent; but it would divide itself in such a manner as to fall partly upon the inhabitant of the house, and partly upon the owner of the ground. let us suppose, for example, that a particular person judges that he can afford for house-rent an expense of sixty pounds a year; and let us suppose, too, that a tax of four shillings in the pound, or of one-fifth, payable by the inhabitant, is laid upon house-rent. a house of sixty pounds rent will in this case cost him seventy-two pounds a year, which is twelve pounds more than he thinks he can afford. he will, therefore, content himself with a worse house, or a house of fifty pounds rent, which, with the additional ten pounds that he must pay for the tax, will make up the sum of sixty pounds a year, the expense which he judges he can afford; and in order to pay the tax he will give up a part of the additional conveniency which he might have had from a house of ten pounds a year more rent. he will give up, i say, a part of this additional conveniency; for he will seldom be obliged to give up the whole, but will, in consequence of the tax, get a better house for fifty pounds a year than he could have got if there had been no tax. for as a tax of this kind by taking away this particular competitor, must diminish the competition for houses of sixty pounds rent, so it must likewise diminish it for those of fifty pounds rent, and in the same manner for those of all other rents, except the lowest rent, for which it would for some time increase the competition. but the rents of every class of houses for which the competition was diminished would necessarily be more or less reduced. as no part of this reduction, however, could, for any considerable time at least, affect the building-rent, the whole of it must in the long-run necessarily fall upon the ground-rent. the final payment of this tax, therefore, would fall partly upon the inhabitant of the house, who, in order to pay his share, would be obliged to give up a part of his conveniency, and partly upon the owner of the ground, who, in order to pay his share, would be obliged to give up a part of his revenue. in what proportion this final payment would be divided between them it is not perhaps very easy to ascertain. the division would probably be very different in different circumstances, and a tax of this kind might, according to those different circumstances, affect very unequally both the inhabitant of the house and the owner of the ground. the inequality with which a tax of this kind might fall upon the owners of different ground-rents would arise altogether from the accidental inequality of this division. but the inequality with which it might fall upon the inhabitants of different houses would arise not only from this, but from another cause. the proportion of the expense of house-rent to the whole expense of living is different in the different degrees of fortune. it is perhaps highest in the highest degree, and it diminishes gradually through the inferior degrees, so as in general to be lowest in the lowest degree. the necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. they find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. the luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. a tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. it is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. the rent of houses, though it in some respects resembles the rent of land, is in one respect essentially different from it. the rent of land is paid for the use of a productive subject. the land which pays it produces it. the rent of houses is paid for the use of an unproductive subject. neither the house nor the ground which it stands upon produce anything. the person who pays the rent, therefore, must draw it from some other source of revenue distinct from the independent of this subject. a tax upon the rent of houses, so far as it falls upon the inhabitants, must be drawn from the same source as the rent itself, and must be paid from their revenue, whether derived from the wages of labour, the profits of stock, or the rent of land. so far as it falls upon the inhabitants, it is one of those taxes which fall, not upon one only, but indifferently upon all the three different sources of revenue, and is in every respect of the same nature as a tax upon any other sort of consumable commodities. in general there is not, perhaps, any one article of expense or consumption by which the liberality or narrowness of a man's whole expense can be better judged of than by his house-rent. a proportional tax upon this particular article of expense might, perhaps, produce a more considerable revenue than any which has hitherto been drawn from it in any part of europe. if the tax indeed was very high, the greater part of people would endeavour to evade it, as much as they could, by contenting themselves with smaller houses, and by turning the greater part of their expense into some other channel. the rent of houses might easily be ascertained with sufficient accuracy by a policy of the same kind with that which would be necessary for ascertaining the ordinary rent of land. houses not inhabited ought to pay no tax. a tax upon them would fall altogether upon the proprietor, who would thus be taxed for a subject which afforded him neither conveniency nor revenue. houses inhabited by the proprietor ought to be rated, not according to the expense which they might have cost in building, but according to the rent which an equitable arbitration might judge them likely to bring if leased to a tenant. if rated according to the expense which they may have cost in building, a tax of three or four shillings in the pound, joined with other taxes, would ruin almost all the rich and great families of this, and, i believe, of every other civilised country. whoever will examine, with attention, the different town and country houses of some of the richest and greatest families in this country will find that, at the rate of only six and a half or seven per cent upon the original expense of building, their house-rent is nearly equal to the whole net rent of their estates. it is the accumulated expense of several successive generations, laid out upon objects of great beauty and magnificance, indeed; but, in proportion to what they cost, of very small exchangeable value. ground-rents are a still more proper subject of taxation than the rent of houses. a tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. it would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground. more or less can be got for it according as the competitors happen to be richer or poorer, or can afford to gratify their fancy for a particular spot of ground at a greater or smaller expense. in every country the greatest number of rich competitors is in the capital, and it is there accordingly that the highest ground-rents are always to be found. as the wealth of those competitors would in no respect be increased by a tax upon ground-rents, they would not probably be disposed to pay more for the use of the ground. whether the tax was to be advanced by the inhabitant, or by the owner of the ground, would be of little importance. the more the inhabitant was obliged to pay for the tax, the less he would incline to pay for the ground; so that the final payment of the tax would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent. the ground-rents of uninhabited houses ought to pay no tax. both ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. though a part of this revenue should be taken from him in order to defray the expenses of the state, no discouragement will thereby be given to any sort of industry. the annual produce of the land and labour of the society, the real wealth and revenue of the great body of the people, might be the same after such a tax as before. ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are, therefore, perhaps, the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them. ground-rents seem, in this respect, a more proper subject of peculiar taxation than even the ordinary rent of land. the ordinary rent of land is, in many cases, owing partly at least to the attention and good management of the landlord. a very heavy tax might discourage too, much this attention and good management. ground-rents, so far as they exceed the ordinary rent of land, are altogether owing to the good government of the sovereign, which, by protecting the industry either of the whole people, or of the inhabitants of some particular place, enables them to pay so much more than its real value for the ground which they build their houses upon; or to make to its owner so much more than compensation for the loss which he might sustain by this use of it. nothing can be more reasonable than that a fund which owes its existence to the good government of the state should be taxed peculiarly, or should contribute something more than the greater part of other funds, towards the support of that government. though, in many different countries of europe, taxes have been imposed upon the rent of houses, i do not know of any in which ground-rents have been considered as a separate subject of taxation. the contrivers of taxes have, probably, found some difficulty in ascertaining what part of the rent ought to be considered as ground-rent, and what part ought to be considered as building-rent. it should not, however, seem very difficult to distinguish those two parts of the rent from one another. in great britain the rent of houses is supposed to be taxed in the same proportion as the rent of land by what is called the annual land-tax. the valuation, according to which each different parish and district is assessed to this tax, is always the same. it was originally extremely unequal, and it still continues to be so. through the greater part of the kingdom this tax falls still more lightly upon the rent of houses than upon that of land. in some few districts only, which were originally rated high, and in which the rents of houses have fallen considerably, the land-tax of three or four shillings in the pound is said to amount to an equal proportion of the real rent of houses. untenanted houses, though by law subject to the tax, are, in most districts, exempted from it by the favour of the assessors; and this exemption sometimes occasions some little variation in the rate of particular houses, though that of the district is always the same. improvements of rent, by new buildings, repairs, etc., go to the discharge of the district, which occasions still further variations in the rate of particular houses. in the province of holland every house is taxed at two and a half per cent of its value, without any regard either to the rent which it actually pays, or to the circumstances of its being tenanted or untenanted. there seems to be a hardship in obliging the proprietor to pay a tax for an untenanted house, from which he can derive no revenue, especially so very heavy a tax. in holland, where the market rate of interest does not exceed three per cent, two and a half per cent upon the whole value of the house must, in most cases, amount to more than a third of the building-rent, perhaps of the whole rent. the valuation, indeed, according to which the houses are rated, though very unequal, is said to be always below the real value. when a house is rebuilt, improved, or enlarged, there is a new valuation, and the tax is rated accordingly. the contrivers of the several taxes which in england have, at different times, been imposed upon houses, seem to have imagined that there was some great difficulty in ascertaining, with tolerable exactness, what was the real rent of every house. they have regulated their taxes, therefore, according to some more obvious circumstances, such as they had probably imagined would, in most cases, bear some proportion to the rent. the first tax of this kind was hearth-money, or a tax of two shillings upon every hearth. in order to ascertain how many hearths were in the house, it was necessary that the tax-gatherer should enter every room in it. this odious visit rendered the tax odious. soon after the revolution, therefore, it was abolished as a badge of slavery. the next tax of this kind was a tax of two shillings upon every dwelling-house inhabited. a house with ten windows to pay four shillings more. a house with twenty windows and upwards to pay eight shillings. this tax was afterwards so far altered that houses with twenty windows, and with less than thirty, were ordered to pay ten shillings, and those with thirty windows and upwards to pay twenty shillings. the number of windows can, in most cases, be counted from the outside, and, in all cases, without entering every room in the house. the visit of the tax-gatherer, therefore, was less offensive in this tax than in the hearth-money. this tax was afterwards repealed, and in the room of it was established the window-tax, which has undergone, too, several alterations and augmentations. the window-tax, as it stands at present (january 1775), over and above the duty of three shillings upon every house in england, and of one shilling upon every house in scotland, lays a duty upon every window, which, in england, augments gradually from twopence, the lowest rate, upon houses with not more than seven windows, to two shillings, the highest rate, upon houses with twenty-five windows and upwards. the principal objection to all such taxes of the worst is their inequality, an inequality of the worst kind, as they must frequently fall much heavier upon the poor than upon the rich. a house of ten pounds rent in a country town may sometimes have more windows than a house of five hundred pounds rent in london; and though the inhabitant of the former is likely to be a much poorer man than that of the latter, yet so far as his contribution is regulated by the window-tax, he must contribute more to the support of the state. such taxes are, therefore, directly contrary to the first of the four maxims above mentioned. they do not seem to offend much against any of the other three. the natural tendency of the window-tax, and of all other taxes upon houses, is to lower rents. the more a man pays for the tax, the less, it is evident, he can afford to pay for the rent. since the imposition of the window-tax, however, the rents of houses have upon the whole risen, more or less, in almost every town and village of great britain with which i am acquainted. such has been almost everywhere the increase of the demand for houses, that it has raised the rents more than the window-tax could sink them; one of the many proofs of the great prosperity of the country, and of the increasing revenue of its inhabitants. had it not been for the tax, rents would probably have risen still higher. article ii taxes on profit, or upon the revenue arising from stock the revenue or profit arising from stock naturally divides itself into two parts; that which pays the interest, and which belongs to the owner of the stock, and that surplus part which is over and above what is necessary for paying the interest. this latter part of profit is evidently a subject not taxable directly. it is the compensation, and in most cases it is no more than a very moderate compensation, for the risk and trouble of employing the stock. the employer must have this compensation, otherwise he cannot, consistently with his own interest, continue the employment. if he was taxed directly, therefore, in proportion to the whole profit, he would be obliged either to raise the rate of his profit, or to charge the tax upon the interest of money; that is, to pay less interest. if he raised the rate of his profit in proportion to the tax, the whole tax, though it might be advanced by him, would be finally paid by one or other of two different sets of people, according to the different ways in which he might employ the stock of which he had the management. if he employed it as a farming stock in the cultivation of land, he could raise the rate of his profit only by retaining a greater portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of a greater portion of the produce of the land; and as this could be done only by a reduction of rent, the final payment of the tax would fall upon the landlord. if he employed it as a mercantile or manufacturing stock, he could raise the rate of his profit only by raising the price of his goods; in which case the final payment of the tax would fall altogether upon the consumers of those goods. if he did not raise the rate of his profit, he would be obliged to charge the whole tax upon that part of it which was allotted for the interest of money. he could afford less interest for whatever stock he borrowed, and the whole weight of the tax would in this case fall ultimately upon the interest of money. so far as he could not relieve himself from the tax in the one way, he would be obliged to relieve himself in the other. the interest of money seems at first sight a subject equally capable of being taxed directly as the rent of land. like the rent of land, it is a net produce which remains after completely compensating the whole risk and trouble of employing the stock. as a tax upon the rent of land cannot raise rents; because the net produce which remains after replacing the stock of the farmer, together with his reasonable profit, cannot be greater after the tax than before it, so, for the same reason, a tax upon the interest of money could not raise the rate of interest; the quantity of stock or money in the country, like the quantity of land, being supposed to remain the same after the tax as before it. the ordinary rate of profit, it has been shown in the first book, is everywhere regulated by the quantity of stock to be employed in proportion to the quantity of the employment, or of the business which must be done by it. but the quantity of the employment, or of the business to be done by stock, could neither be increased nor diminished by any tax upon the interest of money. if the quantity of the stock to be employed, therefore, was neither increased nor diminished by it, the ordinary rate of profit would necessarily remain the same. but the portion of this profit necessary for compensating the risk and trouble of the employer would likewise remain the same, that risk and trouble being in no respect altered. the residue, therefore, that portion which belongs to the owner of the stock, and which pays the interest of money, would necessarily remain the same too. at first sight, therefore, the interest of money seems to be a subject as fit to be taxed directly as the rent of land. there are, however, two different circumstances which render the interest of money a much less proper subject of direct taxation than the rent of land. first, the quantity and value of the land which any man possesses can never be a secret, and can always be ascertained with great exactness. but the whole amount of the capital stock which he possesses is almost always a secret, and can scarce ever be ascertained with tolerable exactness. it is liable, besides, to almost continual variations. a year seldom passes away, frequently not a month, sometimes scarce a single day, in which it does not rise or fall more or less. an inquisition into every man's private circumstances, and an inquisition which, in order to accommodate the tax to them, watched over all the fluctuations of his fortunes, would be a source of such continual and endless vexation as no people could support. secondly, land is a subject which cannot be removed; whereas stock easily may. the proprietor of land is necessarily a citizen of the particular country in which his estate lies. the proprietor of stock is properly a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country. he would be apt to abandon the country in which he was exposed to a vexatious inquisition, in order to be assessed to a burdensome tax, and would remove his stock to some other country where he could either carry on his business, or enjoy his fortune more at his ease. by removing his stock he would put an end to all the industry which it had maintained in the country which he left. stock cultivates land; stock employs labour. a tax which tended to drive away stock from any particular country would so far tend to dry up every source of revenue both to the sovereign and to the society. not only the profits of stock, but the rent of land and the wages of labour would necessarily be more or less diminished by its removal. the nations, accordingly, who have attempted to tax the revenue arising from stock, instead of any severe inquisition of this kind, have been obliged to content themselves with some very loose, and, therefore, more or less arbitrary, estimation. the extreme inequality and uncertainty of a tax assessed in this manner can be compensated only by its extreme moderation, in consequence of which every man finds himself rated so very much below his real revenue that he gives himself little disturbance though his neighbour should be rated somewhat lower. by what is called the land-tax in england, it was intended that stock should be taxed in the same proportion as land. when the tax upon land was at four shillings in the pound, or at one-fifth of the supposed rent, it was intended that stock should be taxed at one-fifth of the supposed interest. when the present annual land-tax was first imposed, the legal rate of interest was six per cent. every hundred pounds stock, accordingly, was supposed to be taxed at twenty-four shillings, the fifth part of six pounds. since the legal rate of interest has been reduced to five per cent every hundred pounds stock is supposed to be taxed at twenty shillings only. the sum to be raised by what is called the land-tax was divided between the country and the principal towns. the greater part of it was laid upon the country; and of what was laid upon the towns, the greater part was assessed upon the houses. what remained to be assessed upon the stock or trade of the towns (for the stock upon the land was not meant to be taxed) was very much below the real value of that stock or trade. whatever inequalities, therefore, there might be in the original assessment gave little disturbance. every parish and district still continues to be rated for its land, its houses, and its stock, according to the original assessment; and the almost universal prosperity of the country, which in most places has raised very much the value of all these, has rendered those inequalities of still less importance now. the rate, too, upon each district continuing always the same, the uncertainty of this tax so far as it might be assessed upon the stock of any individual, has been very much diminished, as well as rendered of much less consequence. if the greater part of the lands of england are not rated to the land-tax at half their actual value, the greater part of the stock of england is, perhaps, scarce rated at the fiftieth part of its actual value. in some towns the whole land-tax is assessed upon houses, as in westminster, where stock and trade are free. it is otherwise in london. in all countries a severe inquisition into the circumstances of private persons has been carefully avoided. at hamburg every inhabitant is obliged to pay to the state one-fourth per cent of all that he possesses; and as the wealth of the people of hamburg consists principally in stock, this tax may be considered as a tax upon stock. every man assesses himself, and, in the presence of the magistrate, puts annually into the public coffer a certain sum of money which he declares upon oath to be one-fourth per cent of all that he possesses, but without declaring what it amounts to, or being liable to any examination upon that subject. this tax is generally supposed to be paid with great fidelity. in a small republic, where the people have entire confidence in their magistrates, are convinced of the necessity of the tax for the support of the state, and believe that it will be faithfully applied to that purpose, such conscientious and voluntary payment may sometimes be expected. it is not peculiar to the people of hamburg. the canton of unterwald in switzerland is frequently ravaged by storms and inundations, and is thereby exposed to extraordinary expenses. upon such occasions the people assemble, and every one is said to declare with the greatest frankness what he is worth in order to be taxed accordingly. at zurich the law orders that, in cases of necessity, every one should be taxed in proportion to his revenuethe amount of which he is obliged to declare upon oath. they have no suspicion, it is said, that any of their fellow-citizens will deceive them. at basel the principal revenue of the state arises from a small custom upon goods exported. all the citizens make oath that they will pay every three months all the taxes imposed by the law. all merchants and even all innkeepers are trusted with keeping themselves the account of the goods which they sell either within or without the territory. at the end of every three months they send this account to the treasurer with the amount of the tax computed at the bottom of it. it is not suspected that the revenue suffers by this confidence. to oblige every citizen to declare publicly upon oath the amount of his fortune must not, it seems, in those swiss cantons be reckoned a hardship. at hamburg it would be reckoned the greatest. merchants engaged in the hazardous protects of trade all tremble at the thoughts of being obliged at all to expose the real state of their circumstances. the ruin of their credit and the miscarriage of their projects, they foresee, would too often be the consequence. a sober and parsimonious people, who are strangers to all such projects, do not feel that they have occasion for any such concealment. in holland, soon after the exaltation of the late prince of orange to the stadtholdership, a tax of two per cent, or the fiftieth penny, as it was called, was imposed upon the whole substance of every citizen. every citizen assessed himself and paid his tax in the same manner as at hamburg, and it was in general supposed to have been paid with great fidelity. the people had at that time the greatest affection for their new government, which they had just established by a general insurrection. the tax was to be paid but once, in order to relieve the state in a particular exigency. it was, indeed, too heavy to be permanent. in a country where the market rate of interest seldom exceeds three per cent, a tax of two per cent amounts to thirteen shillings and fourpence in the pound upon the highest net revenue which is commonly drawn from stock. it is a tax which very few people could pay without encroaching more or less upon their capitals. in a particular exigency the people may, from great public zeal, make a great effort, and give up even a part of their capital in order to relieve the state. but it is impossible that they should continue to do so for any considerable time; and if they did, the tax would ruin them so completely as to render them altogether incapable of supporting the state. the tax upon stock imposed by the land-tax bill in england, though it is proportioned to the capital, is not intended to diminish or take away any part of that capital. it is meant only to be a tax upon the interest of money proportioned to that upon the rent of land, so that when the latter is at four shillings in the pound, the former may be at four shillings in the pound too. the tax at hamburg and the still more moderate tax of unterwald and zurich are meant, in the same manner, to be taxes, not upon the capital, but upon the interest or net revenue of stock. that of holland was meant to be a tax upon the capital. taxes upon as profit of particular employments in some countries extraordinary taxes are imposed upon the profits of stock, sometimes when employed in particular branches of trade, and sometimes when employed in agriculture. of the former kind are in england the tax upon hawkers and pedlars, that upon hackney coaches and chairs, and that which the keepers of ale-houses pay for a licence to retail ale and spirituous liquors. during the late war, another tax of the same kind was proposed upon shops. the war having been undertaken, it was said, in defence of the trade of the country, the merchants, who were to profit by it, ought to contribute towards the support of it. a tax, however, upon the profits of stock employed in any particular branch of trade can never fall finally upon the dealers (who must in all ordinary cases have their reasonable profit, and where the competition is free can seldom have more than that profit), but always upon the consumers, who must be obliged to pay in the price of the goods the tax which the dealer advances; and generally with some overcharge. a tax of this kind when it is proportioned to the trade of the dealer is finally paid by the consumer, and occasions no oppression to the dealer. when it is not so proportioned, but is the same upon all dealers, though in this case, too, it is finally paid by the consumer, yet it favours the great, and occasions some oppression to the small dealer. the tax of five shillings a week upon every hackney coach, and that of ten shillings a year upon every hackney chair, so far as it is advanced by the different keepers of such coaches and chairs, is exactly enough proportioned to the extent of their respective dealings. it neither favours the great, nor oppresses the smaller dealer. the tax of twenty shillings a year for a licence to sell ale; of forty shillings for a licence to sell spirituous liquors; and of forty shillings more for a licence to sell wine, being the same upon all retailers, must necessarily give some advantage to the great, and occasion some oppression to the small dealers. the former must find it more easy to get back the tax in the price of their goods than the latter. the moderation of the tax, however, renders this inequality of less importance, and it may to many people appear not improper to give some discouragement to the multiplication of little ale-houses. the tax upon shops, it was intended, should be the same upon all shops. it could not well have been otherwise. it would have been impossible to proportion with tolerable exactness the tax upon a shop to the extent of the trade carried on in it without such an inquisition as would have been altogether insupportable in a free country. if the tax had been considerable, it would have oppressed the small, and forced almost the whole retail trade into the hands of the great dealers. the competition of the former being taken away, the latter would have enjoyed a monopoly of the trade, and like all other monopolists would soon have combined to raise their profits much beyond what was necessary for the payment of the tax. the final payment, instead of falling upon the shopkeeper, would have fallen upon the consumer, with a considerable overcharge to the profit of the shopkeeper. for these reasons the project of a tax upon shops was laid aside, and in the room of it was substituted the subsidy, 1759. what in france is called the personal taille is, perhaps, the most important tax upon the profits of stock employed in agriculture that is levied in any part of europe. in the disorderly state of europe during the prevalence of the feudal government, the sovereign was obliged to content himself with taxing those who were too weak to refuse to pay taxes. the great lords, though willing to assist him upon particular emergencies, refused to subject themselves to any constant tax, and he was not strong enough to force them. the occupiers of land all over europe were, the greater part of them, originally bondmen. through the greater part of europe they were gradually emancipated. some of them acquired the property of landed estates which they held by some base or ignoble tenure, sometimes under the king, and sometimes under some other great lord, like the ancient copy-holders of england. others without acquiring the property, obtained leases for terms of years of the lands which they occupied under their lord, and thus became less dependent upon him. the great lords seem to have beheld the degree of prosperity and independency which this inferior order of men had thus come to enjoy with a malignant and contemptuous indignation, and willingly consented that the sovereign should tax them. in some countries this tax was confined to the lands which were held in property by an ignoble tenure; and, in this case, the taille was said to be real. the land-tax established by the late king of sardinia, and the taille in the provinces of languedoc, provence, dauphine, and brittany, in the generality of montauban, and in the elections of agen and comdom, as well as in some other districts of france, are taxes upon lands held in property by an ignoble tenure. in other countries the tax was laid upon the supposed profits of all those who held in farm or lease lands belonging to other people, whatever might be the tenure by which the proprietor held them; and in this case the taille was said to be personal. in the greater part of those provinces of france which are called the countries of elections the taille is of this kind. the real taille, as it is imposed only upon a part of the lands of the country, is necessarily an unequal, but it is not always an arbitrary tax, though it is so upon some occasions. the personal taille, as it is intended to be proportioned to the profits of a certain class of people which can only be guessed at, is necessarily both arbitrary and unequal. in france the personal taille at present (1775) annually imposed upon the twenty generalities called the countries of elections amounts to 40,107,239 livres, 16 sous. the proportion in which this sum is assessed upon those different provinces varies from year to year according to the reports which are made to the king's council concerning the goodness or badness of the crops, as well as other circumstances which may either increase or diminish their respective abilities to pay. each generality it divided into a certain number of elections, and the proportion in which the sum imposed upon the whole generality is divided among those different elections varies likewise from year to year according to the reports made to the council concerning their respective abilities. it seems impossible that the council, with the best intentions, can ever proportion with tolerable exactness either of those two assessments to the real abilities of the province or district upon which they are respectively laid. ignorance and misinformation must always, more or less, mislead the most upright council. the proportion which each parish ought to support of what is assessed upon the whole election, and that which each individual ought to support of what is assessed upon his particular parish, are both in the same manner varied, from year to year, according as circumstances are supposed to require. these circumstances are judged of, in the one case, by the officers of the election, in the other by those of the parish, and both the one and the other are, more or less, under the direction and influence of the intendant. not only ignorance and misinformation, but friendship, party animosity, and private resentment are said frequently to mislead such assessors. no man subject to such a tax, it is evident, can ever be certain, before he is assessed, of what he is to pay. he cannot even be certain after he is assessed. if any person has been taxed who ought to have been exempted, or if any person has been taxed beyond his proportion, though both must pay in the meantime, yet if they complain, and make good their complaints, the whole parish is reimposed next year in order to reimburse them. if any of the contributors become bankrupt or insolvent, the collector is obliged to advance his tax, and the whole parish is reimposed next year in order to reimburse the collector. if the collector himself should become bankrupt, the parish which elects him must answer for his conduct to the receiver general of the election. but, as it might be troublesome for the receiver to prosecute the whole parish, he takes at his choice five or six of the richest contributors and obliges them to make good what had been lost by the insolvency of the collector. the parish is afterwards reimposed in order to reimburse those five or six. such reimpositions are always over and above the taille of the particular year in which they are laid on. when a tax is imposed upon the profits of stock in a particular branch of trade, the traders are all careful to bring no more goods to market than what they can sell at a price sufficient to reimburse them for advancing the tax. some of them withdraw a part of their stocks from the trade, and the market is more sparingly supplied than before. the price of the goods rises, and the final payment of the tax falls upon the consumer. but when a tax is imposed upon the profits of stock employed in agriculture, it is not the interest of the farmers to withdraw any part of their stock from that employment. each farmer occupies a certain quantity of land, for which hi pays rent. for the proper cultivation of this land a certain quantity of stock is necessary, and by withdrawing any part of this necessary quantity, the farmer is not likely to be more able to pay either the rent or the tax. in order to pay the tax, it can never be his interest to diminish the quantity of his produce, nor consequently to supply the market more sparingly than before. the tax, therefore, will never enable him to raise the price of his produce so as to reimburse himself by throwing the final payment upon the consumer. the farmer, however, must have his reasonable profit as well as every other dealer, otherwise he must give up the trade. after the imposition of a tax of this kind, he can get this reasonable profit only by paying less rent to the landlord. the more he is obliged to pay in the way of tax the less he can afford to pay in the way of rent. a tax of this kind imposed during the currency of a lease may, no doubt, distress or ruin the farmer. upon the renewal of the lease it must always fall upon the landlord. in the countries where the personal taille takes place, the farmer is commonly assessed in proportion to the stock which he appears to employ in cultivation. he is, upon this account, frequently afraid to have a good team of horses or oxen, but endeavours to cultivate with the meanest and most wretched instruments of husbandry that he can. such is his distrust in the justice of his assessors that he counterfeits poverty, and wishes to appear scarce able to pay anything for fear of being obliged to pay too much. by this miserable policy he does not, perhaps, always consult his own interest in the most effectual manner, and he probably loses more by the diminution of his produce than he saves by that of his tax. though, in consequence of this wretched cultivation, the market is, no doubt, somewhat worse supplied, yet the small rise of price which may occasion, as it is not likely even to indemnify the farmer for the diminution of his produce, it is still less likely to enable him to pay more rent to the landlord. the public, the farmer, the landlord, all suffer more or less by this degraded cultivation. that the personal taille tends, in many different ways, to discourage cultivation, and consequently to dry up the principal source of the wealth of every great country, i have already had occasion to observe in the third book of this inquiry. what are called poll-taxes in the southern provinces of north america, and in the west indian islands annual taxes of so much a head upon every negro, are properly taxes upon the profits of a certain species of stock employed in agriculture. as the planters are, the greater part of them, both farmers and landlords, the final payment of the tax falls upon them in their quality of landlords without any retribution. taxes of so much a head upon the bondmen employed in cultivation seem anciently to have been common all over europe. there subsists at present a tax of this kind in the empire of russia. it is probably upon this account that poll-taxes of all kinds have often been represented as badges of slavery. every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty. it denotes that he is subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master. a poll-tax upon slaves is altogether different from a poll-tax upon freemen. the latter is paid by the persons upon whom it is imposed; the former by a different set of persons. the latter is either altogether arbitrary or altogether unequal, and in most cases is both the one and the other; the former, though in some respects unequal, different slaves being of different values, is in no respect arbitrary. every master who knows the number of his own slaves knows exactly what he has to pay. those different taxes, however, being called by the same name, have been considered as of the same nature. the taxes which in holland are imposed upon menand maid-servants are taxes, not upon stock, but upon expense, and so far resemble the taxes upon consumable commodities. the tax of a guinea a head for every man-servant which has lately been imposed in great britain is of the same kind. it falls heaviest upon the middling rank. a man of two hundred a year may keep a single manservant. a man of ten thousand a year will not keep fifty. it does not affect the poor. taxes upon the profits of stock in particular employments can never affect the interest of money. nobody will lend his money for less interest to those who exercise the taxed than to those who exercise the untaxed employments. taxes upon the revenue arising from stock in all employments where the government attempts to levy them with any degree of exactness, will, in many cases, fall upon the interest of money. the vingtieme, or twentieth penny, in france is a tax of the same kind with what is called the land-tax in england, and is assessed, in the same manner, upon the revenue arising from land, houses, and stock. so far as it affects stock it is assessed, though not with great rigour, yet with much more exactness than that part of the land-tax of england which is imposed upon the same fund. it, in many cases, falls altogether upon the interest of money. money is frequently sunk in france upon what are called contracts for the constitution of a rent; that is, perpetual annuities redeemable at any time by the debtor upon repayment of the sum originally advanced, but of which this redemption is not exigible by the creditor except in particular cases. the vingtieme, seems not to have raised the rate of those annuities, though it is exactly levied upon them all. appendix to articles i and ii. taxes upon the capital value of land, houses, and stock while property remains in the possession of the same person, whatever permanent taxes may have been imposed upon it, they have never been intended to diminish or take away any part of its capital value, but only some part of the revenue arising from it. but when property changes hands, when it is transmitted either from the dead to the living, or from the living to the living, such taxes have frequently been imposed upon it as necessarily take away some part of its capital value. the transference of all sorts of property from the dead to the living, and that of immovable property, of lands and houses, from the living to the living, are transactions which are in their nature either public and notorious, or such as cannot be long concealed. such transactions, therefore, may be taxed directly. the transference of stock, or movable property, from the living to the living, by the lending of money, is frequently a secret transaction, and may always be made so. it cannot easily, therefore, be taxed directly. it has been taxed indirectly in two different ways; first, by requiring that the deed containing the obligation to repay should be written upon paper or parchment which had paid a certain stamp-duty, otherwise not to be valid; secondly, by requiring, under the like penalty of invalidity, that it should be recorded either in a public or secret register, and by imposing certain duties upon such registration. stamp-duties and duties of registration have frequently been imposed likewise upon the deeds transferring property of all kinds from the dead to the living, and upon those transferring immovable property from the living to the living, transactions which might easily have been taxed directly. the vicesima hereditatum, the twentieth penny of inheritances imposed by augustus upon the ancient romans, was a tax upon the transference of property from the dead to the living. dion cassius, the author who writes concerning it the least indistinctly, says that it was imposed upon all successions, legacies, and donations in case of death, except upon those to the nearest relations and to the poor. of the same kind is the dutch tax upon successions. collateral successions are taxed, according to the degree of relation, from five to thirty per cent upon the whole value of the succession. testamentary donations, or legacies to collaterals, are subject to the like duties. those from husband to wife, or from wife to husband, to the fiftieth penny. the luctuosa hereditas, the mournful succession of ascendants to descendants, to the twentieth penny only. direct successions, or those of descendants to ascendants, pay no tax. the death of a father, to such of his children as live in the same house with him, is seldom attended with any increase, and frequently with a considerable diminution of revenue, by the loss of his industry, of his office, or of some life-rent estate of which he may have been in possession. that tax would be cruel and oppressive which aggravated their loss by taking from them any part of his succession. it may, however, sometimes be otherwise with those children who, in the language of the roman law, are said to be emancipated; in that of the scotch law, to be forisfamiliated; that is, who have received their portion, have got families of their own, and are supported by funds separate and independent of those of their father. whatever part of his succession might come to such children would be a real addition to their fortune, and might therefore, perhaps, without more inconveniency than what attends all duties of this kind, be liable to some tax. the casualties of the feudal law were taxes upon the transference of land, both from the dead to the living, and from the living to the living. in ancient times they constituted in every part of europe one of the principal branches of the revenue of the crown. the heir of every immediate vassal of the crown paid a certain duty, generally a year's rent, upon receiving the investiture of the estate. if the heir was a minor, the whole rents of the estate during the continuance of the minority devolved to the superior without any other charge besides the maintenance of the minor, and the payment of the widow's dower when there happened to be a dowager upon the land. when the minor came to be of age, another tax, called relief, was still due to the superior, which generally amounted likewise to a year's rent. a long minority, which in the present times so frequently disburdens a great estate of all its incumbrances and restores the family to their ancient splendour, could in those times have no such effect. the waste, and not the disincumbrance of the estate, was the common effect of a long minority. by the feudal law the vassal could not alienate without the consent of his superior, who generally extorted a fine or composition for granting it. this fine, which was at first arbitrary, came in many countries to be regulated at a certain portion of the price of the land. in some countries where the greater part of the other feudal customs have gone into disuse, this tax upon the alienation of land still continues to make a very considerable branch of the revenue of the sovereign. in the canton of berne it is so high as a sixth part of the price of all noble fiefs, and a tenth part of that of all ignoble ones. in the canton of lucerne the tax upon the sale of lands is not universal, and takes place only in certain districts. but if any person sells his land in order to remove out of the territory, he pays ten per cent upon the whole price of the sale. taxes of the same kind upon the sale either of all lands, or of lands held by certain tenures, take place in many other countries, and make a more or less considerable branch of the revenue of the sovereign. such transactions may be taxed indirectly by means either of stamp-duties, or of duties upon registration, and those duties either may or may not be proportioned to the value of the subject which is transferred. in great britain the stamp-duties are higher or lower, not so much according to the value of the property transferred (an eighteenpenny or half-crown stamp being sufficient upon a bond for the largest sum of money) as according to the nature of the deed. the highest do not exceed six pounds upon every sheet of paper or skin of parchment, and these high duties fall chiefly upon grants from the crown, and upon certain law proceedings, without any regard to the value of the subject. there are in great britain no duties on the registration of deeds or writings, except the fees of the officers who keep the register, and these are seldom more than a reasonable recompense for their labour. the crown derives no revenue from them. in holland there are both stamp-duties and duties upon registration, which in some cases are, and in some are not, proportioned to the value of the property transferred. all testaments must be written upon stamped paper of which the price is proportioned to the property disposed of, so that there are stamps which cost from threepence, or three stivers a sheet, to three hundred florins, equal to about twenty-seven pounds ten shillings of our money. if the stamp is of an inferior price to what the testator ought to have made use of, his succession is confiscated. this is over and above all their other taxes on succession. except bills of exchange, and some other mercantile bills, all other deeds, bonds, and contracts are subject to a stamp-duty. this duty, however, does not rise in proportion to the value of the subject. all sales of land and of houses, and all mortgages upon either, must be registered, and, upon registration, pay a duty to the state of two and a half per cent upon the amount of the price or of the mortgage. this duty is extended to the sale of all ships and vessels of more than two tons burden, whether decked or undecked. these, it seems, are considered as a sort of houses upon the water. the sale of movables, when it is ordered by a court of justice, is subject to the like duty of two and a half per cent. in france there are both stamp-duties and duties upon registration. the former are considered as a branch of the aides or excise, and in the provinces where those duties take place are levied by the excise officers. the latter are considered as a branch of the domain of the crown, and are levied by a different set of officers. those modes of taxation, by stamp-duties and by duties upon registration, are of very modern invention. in the course of little more than a century, however, stamp-duties have, in europe, become almost universal, and duties upon registration extremely common. there is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. taxes upon the transference of property from the dead to the living fall finally as well as immediately upon the person to whom the property is transferred. taxes upon the sale of land fall altogether upon the seller. the seller is almost always under the necessity of selling, and must, therefore, take such a price as he can get. the buyer is scarce ever under the necessity of buying, and will, therefore, only give such a price as he likes. he considers what the land will cost him in tax and price together. the more he is obliged to pay in the way of tax, the less he will be disposed to give in the way of price. such taxes, therefore, fall almost always upon a necessitous person, and must, therefore, be frequently very cruel and oppressive. taxes upon the sale of new-built houses, where the building is sold without the ground, fall generally upon the buyer, because the builder must generally have his profit, otherwise he must give up the trade. if he advances the tax, therefore, the buyer must generally repay it to him. taxes upon the sale of old houses, for the same reason as those upon the sale of land, fall generally upon the seller, whom in most cases either conveniency or necessity obliges to sell. the number of new-built houses that are annually brought to market is more or less regulated by the demand. unless the demand is such as to afford the builder his profit, after paying all expenses, he will build no more houses. the number of old houses which happen at any time to come to market is regulated by accidents of which the greater part have no relation to the demand. two or three great bankruptcies in a mercantile town will bring many houses to sale which must be sold for what can be got for them. taxes upon the sale of ground-rents fall altogether upon the seller, for the same reason as those upon the sale of land. stamp-duties, and duties upon the registration of bonds and contracts for borrowed money, fall altogether upon the borrower, and, in fact, are always paid by him. duties of the same kind upon law proceedings fall upon the suitors. they reduce to both the capital value of the subject in dispute. the more it costs to acquire any property, the less must be the net value of it when acquired. all taxes upon the transference of property of every kind, so far as they diminish the capital value of that property, tend to diminish the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour. they are all more or less unthrifty taxes that increase the revenue of the sovereign, which seldom maintains any but unproductive labourers, at the expense of the capital of the people, which maintains none but productive. such taxes, even when they are proportioned to the value of the property transferred, are still unequal, the frequency of transference not being always equal in property of equal value. when they are not proportioned to this value, which is the case with the greater part of the stamp-duties and duties of registration, they are still more so. they are in no respect arbitrary, but are or may be in all cases perfectly clear and certain. though they sometimes fall upon the person who is not very able to pay, the time of payment is in most cases sufficiently convenient for him. when the payment becomes due, he must in most cases have the money to pay. they are levied at very little expense, and in general subject the contributors to no other inconveniency besides always the unavoidable one of paying the tax. in france the stamp-duties are not much complained of. those of registration, which they call the controle, are. they give occasion, it is pretended, to much extortion in the officers of the farmers-general who collect the tax, which is in a great measure arbitrary and uncertain. in the greater part of the libels which have been written against the present system of finances in france the abuses of the controle make a principal article. uncertainty, however, does not seem to be necessarily inherent in the nature of such taxes. if the popular complaints are well founded, the abuse must arise, not so much from the nature of the tax as from the want of precision and distinctness in the words of the edicts or laws which impose it. the registration of mortgages, and in general of all rights upon immovable property, as it gives great security both to creditors and purchasers, is extremely advantageous to the public. that of the greater part of deeds of other kinds is frequently inconvenient and even dangerous to individuals, without any advantage to the public. all registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist. the credit of individuals ought certainly never to depend upon so very slender a security as the probity and religion of the inferior officers of revenue. but where the fees of registration have been made a source of revenue to the sovereign, register offices have commonly been multiplied without end, both for the deeds which ought to be registered, and for those which ought not. in france there are several different sorts of secret registers. this abuse, though not perhaps a necessary, it must be acknowledged, is a very natural effect of such taxes. such stamp-duties as those in england upon cards and dice, upon newspapers and periodical pamphlets, etc., are properly taxes upon consumption; the final payment falls upon the persons who use or consume such commodities. such stamp-duties as those upon licences to retail ale, wine, and spirituous liquors, though intended, perhaps, to fall upon the profits of the retailers, are likewise finally paid by the consumers of those liquors. such taxes, though called by the same name, and levied by the same officers and in the same manner with the stamp-duties above mentioned upon the transference of property, are, however, of a quite different nature, and fall upon quite different funds. article iii taxes upon the wages of labour the wages of the inferior classes of workmen, i have endeavoured to show in the first book, are everywhere necessarily regulated by two different circumstances; the demand for labour, and the ordinary or average price of provisions. the demand for labour, according as it happens to be either increasing, stationary, or declining, or to require an increasing, stationary, or declining population, regulates the subsistence of the labourer, and determines in what degree it shall be, either liberal, moderate, or scanty. the ordinary or average price of provisions determines the quantity of money which must be paid to the workman in order to enable him, one year with another, to purchase this liberal, moderate, or scanty subsistence. while the demand for labour and the price of provisions, therefore, remain the same, a direct tax upon the wages of labour can have no other effect than to raise them somewhat higher than the tax. let us suppose, for example, that in a particular place the demand for labour and the price of provisions were such as to render ten shillings a week the ordinary wages of labour, and that a tax of one-fifth, or four shillings in the pound, was imposed upon wages. if the demand for labour and the price of provisions remained the same, it would still be necessary that the labourer should in that place earn such a subsistence as could be bought only for ten shillings a week free wages. but in order to leave him such free wages after paying such a tax, the price of labour must in that place soon rise, not to twelve shillings a week only, but to twelve and sixpence; that is, in order to enable him to pay a tax of one-fifth, his wages must necessarily soon rise, not one-fifth part only, but one-fourth. whatever was the proportion of the tax, the wages of labour must in all cases rise, not only in that proportion, but in a higher proportion. if the tax, for example, was one-tenth, the wages of labour must necessarily soon rise, not one-tenth part only, but one-eighth. a direct tax upon the wages of labour, therefore, though the labourer might perhaps pay it out of his hand, could not properly be said to be even advanced by him; at least if tile demand for labour and the average price of provisions remained the same after the tax as before it. in all such cases, not only the tax but something more than the tax would in reality be advanced by the person who immediately employed him. the final payment would in different cases fall upon different persons. the rise which such a tax might occasion in the wages of manufacturing labour would be advanced by the master manufacturer, who would both be entitled and obliged to charge it, with a profit, upon the price of his goods. the final payment of this rise of wages, therefore, together with the additional profit of the master manufacturer, would fall upon the consumer. the rise which such a tax might occasion in the wages of country labour would be advanced by the farmer, who, in order to maintain the same number of labourers as before, would be obliged to employ a greater capital. in order to get back this greater capital, together with the ordinary profits of stock, it would be necessary that he should retain a larger portion, or what comes to the same thing, the price of a larger portion, of the produce of the land, and consequently that he should pay less rent to the landlord. the final payment of this rise of wages, therefore, would in this case fall upon the landlord, together with the additional profit of the farmer who had advanced it. in all cases a direct tax upon the wages of labour must, in the long-run, occasion both a greater reduction in the rent of land, and a greater rise in the price of manufactured goods, than would have followed from the proper assessment of a sum equal to the produce of the tax partly upon the rent of land, and partly upon consumable commodities. if direct taxes upon the wages of labour have not always occasioned a proportionable rise in those wages, it is because they have generally occasioned a considerable fall in the demand for labour. the declension of industry, the decrease of employment for the poor, the diminution of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, have generally been the effects of such taxes. in consequence of them, however, the price of labour must always be higher than it otherwise would have been in the actual state of the demand: and this enhancement of price, together with the profit of those who advance it, must always be finally paid by the landlords and consumers. a tax upon the wages of country labour does not raise the price of the rude produce of land in proportion to the tax, for the same reason that a tax upon the farmer's profit does not raise that price in that proportion. absurd and destructive as such taxes are, however, they take place in many countries. in france that part of the taille which is charged upon the industry of workmen and day-labourers in country villages is properly a tax of this kind. their wages are computed according to the common rate of the district in which they reside, and that they may be as little liable as possible to any overcharge, their yearly gains are estimated at no more than two hundred working days in the year. the tax of each individual is varied from year to year according to different circumstances, of which the collector or the commissary whom the intendant appoints to assist him are the judges. in bohemia, in consequence of the alteration in the system of finances which was begun in 1748, a very heavy tax is imposed upon the industry of artificers. they are divided into four classes. the highest class pay a hundred florins a year which, at two-and-twenty pence halfpenny a florin, amounts to l9 7s. 6d. the second class are taxed at seventy; the third at fifty; and the fourth, comprehending artificers in villages, and the lowest class of those in towns, at twenty-five florins. the recompense of ingenious artists and of men of liberal professions, i have endeavoured to show in the first book, necessarily keeps a certain proportion to the emoluments of inferior trades. a tax upon this recompense, therefore, could have no other effect than to raise it somewhat higher than in proportion to the tax. if it did not rise in this manner, the ingenious arts and the liberal professions, being no longer upon a level with other trades, would be so much deserted that they would soon return to that level. the emoluments of offices are not, like those of trades and professions, regulated by the free competition of the market, and do not, therefore, always bear a just proportion to what the nature of the employment requires. they are, perhaps, in most countries, higher than it requires; the persons who have the administration of government being generally disposed to reward both themselves and their immediate dependants rather more than enough. the emoluments of offices, therefore, can in most cases very well bear to be taxed. the persons, besides, who enjoy public offices, especially the more lucrative, are in all countries the objects of general envy, and a tax upon their emoluments, even though it should be somewhat higher than upon any other sort of revenue, is always a very popular tax. in england, for example, when by the land-tax every other sort of revenue was supposed to be assessed at four shillings in the pound, it was very popular to lay a real tax of five shillings and sixpence in the pound upon the salaries of offices which exceeded a hundred pounds a year, the pensions of the younger branches of the royal family, the pay of the officers of the army and navy, and a few others less obnoxious to envy excepted. there are in england no other direct taxes upon the wages of labour. article iv taxes which, it is intended, should fall indifferently upon every different species of revenue the taxes which, it is intended, should fall indifferently upon every different species of revenue, are capitation taxes, and taxes upon consumable commodities. these must be paid indifferently from whatever revenue the contributors may possess; from the rent of their land, from the profits of their stock, or from the wages of their labour. capitation taxes capitation taxes, if it is attempted to proportion them to the fortune or revenue of each contributor, become altogether arbitrary. the state of a man's fortune varies from day to day, and without an inquisition more intolerable than any tax, and renewed at least once every year, can only be guessed at. his assessment, therefore, must in most cases depend upon the good or bad humour of his assessors, and must, therefore, be altogether arbitrary and uncertain. capitation taxes, if they are proportioned not to the supposed fortune, but to the rank of each contributor, become altogether unequal, the degrees of fortune being frequently unequal in the same degree of rank. such taxes, therefore, if it is attempted to render them equal, become altogether arbitrary and uncertain, and if it is attempted to render them certain and not arbitrary, become altogether unequal. let the tax be light or heavy, uncertainty is always a great grievance. in a light tax a considerable degree of inequality may be supported; in a heavy one it is altogether intolerable. in the different poll-taxes which took place in england during the reign of william iii the contributors were, the greater part of them, assessed according to the degree of their rank; as dukes, marquisses, earls, viscounts, barons, esquires, gentlemen, the eldest and youngest sons of peers, etc. all shopkeepers and tradesmen worth more than three hundred pounds, that is, the better sort of them, were subject to the same assessment, how great soever might be the difference in their fortunes. their rank was more considered than their fortune. several of those who in the first poll-tax were rated according to their supposed fortune were afterwards rated according to their rank. serjeants, attorneys, and proctors at law, who in the first poll-tax were assessed at three shillings in the pound of their supposed income, were afterwards assessed as gentlemen. in the assessment of a tax which was not very heavy, a considerable degree of inequality had been found less insupportable than any degree of uncertainty. in the capitation which has been levied in france without any interruption since the beginning of the present century, the highest orders of people are rated according to their rank by an invariable tariff; the lower orders of people, according to what is supposed to be their fortune, by an assessment which varies from year to year. the officers of the king's court, the judges and other officers in the superior courts of justice, the officers of the troops, etc., are assessed in the first manner. the inferior ranks of people in the provinces are assessed in the second. in france the great easily submit to a considerable degree of inequality in a tax which, so far as it affects them, is not a very heavy one, but could not brook the arbitrary assessment of an intendant. the inferior ranks of people must, in that country, suffer patiently the usage which their superiors think proper to give them. in england the different poll-taxes never produced the sum which had been expected from them, or which, it was supposed, they might have produced, had they been exactly levied. in france the capitation always produces the sum expected from it. the mild government of england, when it assessed the different ranks of people to the poll-tax, contented itself with what that assessment happened to produce, and required no compensation for the loss which the state might sustain either by those who could not pay, or by those who would not pay (for there were many such), and who, by the indulgent execution of the law, were not forced to pay. the more severe government of france assesses upon each generality a certain sum, which the intendant must find as he can. if any province complains of being assessed too high, it may, in the assessment of next year, obtain an abatement proportioned to the overcharge of the year before. but it must pay in the meantime. the intendant, in order to be sure of finding the sum assessed upon his generality, was empowered to assess it in a larger sum that the failure or inability of some of the contributors might be compensated by the overcharge of the rest, and till 1765 the fixation of this surplus assessment was left altogether to his discretion. in that year, indeed, the council assumed this power to itself. in the capitation of the provinces, it is observed by the perfectly well-informed author of the memoires upon the impositions in france, the proportion which falls upon the nobility, and upon those whose privileges exempt them from the taille, is the least considerable. the largest falls upon those subject to the taille, who are assessed to the capitation at so much a pound of what they pay to that other tax. capitation taxes, so far as they are levied upon the lower ranks of people, are direct taxes upon the wages of labour, and are attended with all the inconveniences of such taxes. capitation taxes are levied at little expense, and, where they are rigorously exacted, afford a very sure revenue to the state. it is upon this account that in countries where the ease, comfort, and security of the inferior ranks of people are little attended to, capitation taxes are very common. it is in general, however, but a small part of the public revenue which, in a great empire, has ever been drawn from such taxes, and the greatest sum which they have ever afforded might always have been found in some other way much more convenient to the people. taxes upon consumable commodities the impossibility of taxing the people, in proportion to their revenue, by any capitation, seems to have given occasion to the invention of taxes upon consumable commodities. the state, not knowing how to tax, directly and proportionably, the revenue of its subjects, endeavours to tax it indirectly by taxing their expense, which, it is supposed, will in most cases be nearly in proportion to their revenue. their expense is taxed by taxing the consumable commodities upon which it is laid out. consumable commodities are either necessaries or luxuries. by necessaries i understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. a linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. the greeks and romans lived, i suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. but in the present times, through the greater part of europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in england. the poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. in scotland, custom has rendered them a necessary of life to the lowest order of men; but not to the same order of women, who may, without any discredit, walk about barefooted. in france they are necessaries neither to men nor to women, the lowest rank of both sexes appearing there publicly, without any discredit, sometimes in wooden shoes, and sometimes barefooted. under necessaries, therefore, i comprehend not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people. all other things i call luxuries, without meaning by this appellation to throw the smallest degree of reproach upon the temperate use of them. beer and ale, for example, in great britain, and wine, even in the wine countries, i call luxuries. a man of any rank may, without any reproach, abstain totally from tasting such liquors. nature does not render them necessary for the support of life, and custom nowhere renders it indecent to live without them. as the wages of labour are everywhere regulated, partly by the demand for it, and partly by the average price of the necessary articles of subsistence, whatever raises this average price must necessarily raise those wages so that the labourer may still be able to purchase that quantity of those necessary articles which the state of the demand for labour, whether increasing, stationary, or declining, requires that he should have. a tax upon those articles necessarily raises their price somewhat higher than the amount of the tax, because the dealer, who advances the tax, must generally get it back with a profit. such a tax must, therefore, occasion a rise in the wages of labour proportionable to this rise of price. it is thus that a tax upon the necessaries of life operates exactly in the same manner as a direct tax upon the wages of labour. the labourer, though he may pay it out of his hand, cannot, for any considerable time at least, be properly said even to advance it. it must always in the long-run be advanced to him by his immediate employer in the advanced rate of his wages. his employer, if he is a manufacturer, will charge upon the price of his goods this rise of wages, together with a profit; so that the final payment of the tax, together with this overcharge, will fall upon the consumer. if his employer is a farmer, the final payment, together with a like overcharge, will fall upon the rent of the landlord. it is otherwise with taxes upon what i call luxuries, even upon those of the poor. the rise in the price of the taxed commodities will not necessarily occasion any rise in the wages of labour. a tax upon tobacco, for example, though a luxury of the poor as well as of the rich, will not raise wages. though it is taxed in england at three times, and in france at fifteen times its original price, those high duties seem to have no effect upon the wages of labour. the same thing may be said of the taxes upon tea and sugar, which in england and holland have become luxuries of the lowest ranks of people, and of those upon chocolate, which in spain is said to have become so. the different taxes which in great britain have in the course of the present century been imposed upon spirituous liquors are not supposed to have had any effect upon the wages of labour. the rise in the price of porter, occasioned by an additional tax of three shillings upon the barrel of strong beer, has not raised the wages of common labour in london. these were about eighteen pence and twenty pence a day before the tax, and they are not more now. the high price of such commodities does not necessarily diminish the ability of the inferior ranks of people to bring up families. upon the sober and industrious poor, taxes upon such commodities act as sumptuary laws, and dispose them either to moderate, or to refrain altogether from the use of superfluities which they can no longer easily afford. their ability to bring up families, in consequence of this forced frugality, instead of being diminished, is frequently, perhaps, increased by the tax. it is the sober and industrious poor who generally bring up the most numerous families, and who principally supply the demand for useful labour. all the poor, indeed, are not sober and industrious, and the dissolute and disorderly might continue to indulge themselves in the use of such commodities after this rise of price in the same manner as before without regarding the distress which this indulgence might bring upon their families. such disorderly persons, however, seldom rear up numerous families, their children generally perishing from neglect, mismanagement, and the scantiness or unwholesomeness of their food. if by the strength of their constitution they survive the hardships to which the bad conduct of their parents exposes them, yet the example of that bad conduct commonly corrupts their morals, so that, instead of being useful to society by their industry, they become public nuisances by their vices and disorders. though the advanced price of the luxuries of the poor, therefore, might increase somewhat the distress of such disorderly families, and thereby diminish somewhat their ability to bring up children, it would not probably diminish much the useful population of the country. any rise in the average price of necessaries, unless it is compensated by a proportionable rise in the wages of labour, must necessarily diminish more or less the ability of the poor to bring up numerous families, and consequently to supply the demand for useful labour, whatever may be the state of that demand, whether increasing, stationary, or declining, or such as requires an increasing, stationary, or declining population. taxes upon luxuries have no tendency to raise the price of any other commodities except that of the commodities taxed. taxes upon necessaries, by raising the wages of labour, necessarily tend to raise the price of all manufactures, and consequently to diminish the extent of their sale and consumption. taxes upon luxuries are finally paid by the consumers of the commodities taxed without any retribution. they fall indifferently upon every species of revenue, the wages of labour, the profits of stock, and the rent of land. taxes upon necessaries, so far as they affect the labouring poor, are finally paid, partly by landlords in the diminished rent of their lands, and partly by rich consumers, whether landlords or others, in the advanced price of manufactured goods, and always with a considerable overcharge. the advanced price of such manufactures as are real necessaries of life, and are destined for the consumption of the poor, of coarse woollens, for example, must be compensated to the poor by a further advancement of their wages. the middling and superior ranks of people, if they understand their own interest, ought always to oppose all taxes upon the necessaries of life, as well as all direct taxes upon the wages of labour. the final payment of both the one and the other falls altogether upon themselves, and always with a considerable overcharge. they fall heaviest upon the landlords, who always pay in a double capacity; in that of landlords by the reduction of their rent, and in that of rich consumers by the increase of their expense. the observation of sir matthew decker, that certain taxes are, in the price of certain goods, sometimes repeated and accumulated four or five times, is perfectly just with regard to taxes upon the necessaries of life. in the price of leather, for example, you must pay not only for the tax upon the leather of your own shoes, but for a part of that upon those of the shoemaker and the tanner. you must pay, too, for the tax upon the salt, upon the soap, and upon the candles which those workmen consume while employed in your service, and for the tax upon the leather which the salt-maker, the soap-maker, and the candle-maker consume while employed in their service. in great britain, the principal taxes upon the necessaries of life are those upon the four commodities just now mentioned, salt, leather, soap, and candles. salt is a very ancient and a very universal subject of taxation. it was taxed among the romans, and it is so at present in, i believe, every part of europe. the quantity annually consumed by any individual is so small, and may be purchased so gradually, that nobody, it seems to have been thought, could feel very sensibly even a pretty heavy tax upon it. it is in england taxed at three shillings and fourpence a bushelabout three times the original price of the commodity. in some other countries the tax is still higher. leather is a real necessary of life. the use of linen renders soap such. in countries where the winter nights are long, candles are a necessary instrument of trade. leather and soap are in great britain taxed at three halfpence a pound, candles at a penny; taxes which, upon the original price of leather, may amount to about eight or ten per cent; upon that of soap to about twenty or five-and-twenty per cent; and upon that of candles to about fourteen or fifteen per cent; taxes which, though lighter than that upon salt, are still very heavy. as all those four commodities are real necessaries of life, such heavy taxes upon them must increase somewhat the expense of the sober and industrious poor, and must consequently raise more or less the wages of their labour. in a country where the winters are so cold as in great britain, fuel is, during that season, in the strictest sense of the word, a necessary of life, not only for the purpose of dressing victuals, but for the comfortable subsistence of many different sorts of workmen who work within doors; and coals are the cheapest of all fuel. the price of fuel has so important an influence upon that of labour that all over great britain manufactures have confined themselves principally to the coal countries, other parts of the country, on account of the high price of this necessary article, not being able to work so cheap. in some manufactures, besides, coal is a necessary instrument of trade, as in those of glass, iron, and all other metals. if a bounty could in any case be reasonable, it might perhaps be so upon the transportation of coals from those parts of the country in which they abound to those in which they are wanted. but the legislature, instead of a bounty, has imposed a tax of three shillings and threepence a ton upon coal carried coastways, which upon most sorts of coal is more than sixty per cent of the original price at the coal-pit. coals carried either by land or by inland navigation pay no duty. where they are naturally cheap, they are consumed duty free: where they are naturally dear, they are loaded with a heavy duty. such taxes, though they raise the price of subsistence, and consequently the wages of labour, yet they afford a considerable revenue to government which it might not be easy to find in any other way. there may, therefore, be good reasons for continuing them. the bounty upon the exportation of corn, so far as it tends in the actual state of tillage to raise the price of that necessary article, produces all the like bad effects, and instead of affording any revenue, frequently occasions a very great expense to government. the high duties upon the importation of foreign corn, which in years of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, and the absolute prohibition of the importation either of live cattle or of salt provisions, which takes place in the ordinary state of the law, and which, on account of the scarcity, is at present suspended for a limited time with regard to ireland and the british plantations, have all the bad effects of taxes upon the necessaries of life, and produce no revenue to government. nothing seems necessary for the repeal of such regulations but to convince the public of the futility of that system in consequence of which they have been established. taxes upon the necessaries of life are much higher in many other countries than in great britain. duties upon flour and meal when ground at the mill, and upon bread when baked at the oven, take place in many countries. in holland the money price of the bread consumed in towns is supposed to be doubled by means of such taxes. in lieu of a part of them, the people who live in the country pay every year so much a head according to the sort of bread they are supposed to consume. those who consume wheaten bread pay three guilders fifteen stiversabout six shillings and ninepence halfpenny. these, and some other taxes of the same kind, by raising the price of labour, are said to have ruined the greater part of the manufactures of holland. similar taxes, though not quite so heavy, take place in the milanese, in the states of genoa, in the duchy of modena, in the duchies of parma, placentia, and guastalla, and in the ecclesiastical state. a french author of some note has proposed to reform the finances of his country by substituting in the room of the greater part of other taxes this most ruinous of all taxes. there is nothing so absurd, says cicero, which has not sometimes been asserted by philosophers. taxes upon butchers' meat are still more common than those upon bread. it may indeed be doubted whether butchers' meat is anywhere a necessary of life. grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil where butter is not to be had, it is known from experience, can, without any butchers' meat, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet. decency nowhere requires that any man should eat butchers' meat, as it in most places requires that he should wear a linen shirt or a pair of leather shoes. consumable commodities, whether necessaries or luxuries, may be taxed in two different ways. the consumer may either pay an annual sum on account of his using or consuming goods of a certain kind, or the goods may be taxed while they remain in the hands of the dealer, and before they are delivered to the consumer. the consumable goods which last a considerable time before they are consumed altogether are most properly taxed in the one way; those of which the consumption is either immediate or more speedy, in the other. the coach-tax and plate-tax are examples of the former method of imposing: the greater part of the other duties of excise and customs, of the latter. a coach may, with good management, last ten or twelve years. it might be taxed, once for all, before it comes out of the hands of the coachmaker. but it is certainly more convenient for the buyer to pay four pounds a year for the privilege of keeping a coach than to pay all at once forty or forty-eight pounds additional price to the coachmaker, or a sum equivalent to what the tax is likely to cost him during the time he uses the same coach. a service of plate, in the same manner, may last more than a century. it is certainly easier for the consumer to pay five shillings a year for every hundred ounces of plate, near one per cent of the value, than to redeem this long annuity at five-and-twenty or thirty years' purchase, which would enhance the price at least five-and-twenty or thirty per cent. the different taxes which affect houses are certainly more conveniently paid by moderate annual payments than by a heavy tax of equal value upon the first building or sale of the house. it was the well-known proposal of sir matthew decker that all commodities, even those of which the consumption is either immediate or very speedy, should be taxed in this manner, the dealer advancing nothing, but the consumer paying a certain annual sum for the licence to consume certain goods. the object of his scheme was to promote all the different branches of foreign trade, particularly the carrying trade, by taking away all duties upon importation and exportation, and thereby enabling the merchant to employ his whole capital and credit in the purchase of goods and the freight of ships, no part of either being diverted towards the advancing of taxes. the project, however, of taxing, in this manner, goods of immediate or speedy consumption seems liable to the four following very important objections. first, the tax would be more unequal, or not so well proportioned to the expense and consumption of the different contributors as in the way in which it is commonly imposed. the taxes upon ale, wine, and spirituous liquors, which are advanced by the dealers, are finally paid by the different consumers exactly in proportion to their respective consumption. but if the tax were to be paid by purchasing a licence to drink those liquors, the sober would, in proportion to his consumption, be taxed much more heavily than the drunken consumer. a family which exercised great hospitality would be taxed much more lightly than one who entertained fewer guests. secondly, this mode of taxation, by paying for an annual, half-yearly, or quarterly licence to consume certain goods, would diminish very much one of the principal conveniences of taxes upon goods of speedy consumption the piecemeal payment. in the price of threepence halfpenny, which is at present paid for a pot of porter, the different taxes upon malt, hops, and beer, together with the extraordinary profit which the brewer charges for having advanced them, may perhaps amount to about three halfpence. if a workman can conveniently spare those three halfpence, he buys a pot of porter. if he cannot, he contents himself with a pint, and, as a penny saved is a penny got, he thus gains a farthing by his temperance. he pays the tax piecemeal as he can afford to pay it, and when he can afford to pay it, and every act of payment is perfectly voluntary, and what he can avoid if he chooses to do so. thirdly, such taxes would operate less as sumptuary laws. when the licence was once purchased, whether the purchaser drank much or drank little, his tax would be the same. fourthly, if a workman were to pay all at once, by yearly, half-yearly, or quarterly payments, a tax equal to what he at present pays, with little or no inconveniency, upon all the different pots and pints of porter which he drinks in any such period of time, the sum might frequently distress him very much. this mode of taxation, therefore, it seems evident, could never, without the most grievous oppression, produce a revenue nearly equal to what is derived from the present mode without any oppression. in several countries, however, commodities of an immediate or very speedy consumption are taxed in this manner. in holland people pay so much a head for a licence to drink tea. i have already mentioned a tax upon bread, which, so far as it is consumed in farm-houses and country villages, is there levied in the same manner. the duties of excise are imposed briefly upon goods of home produce destined for home consumption. they are imposed only upon a few sorts of goods of the most general use. there can never be any doubt either concerning the goods which are subject to those duties, or concerning the particular duty which each species of goods is subject to. they fall almost altogether upon what i call luxuries, excepting always the four duties above mentioned, upon salt soap, leather, candles, and, perhaps, that upon green glass. the duties of customs are much more ancient than those of excise. they seem to have been called customs as denoting customary payments which had been in use from time immemorial. they appear to have been originally considered as taxes upon the profits of merchants. during the barbarous times of feudal anarchy, merchants, like all the other inhabitants of burghs, were considered as little better than emancipated bondmen, whose persons were despised, and whose gains were envied. the great nobility, who had consented that the king should tallage the profits of their own tenants, were not unwilling that he should tallage likewise those of an order of men whom it was much less their interest to protect. in those ignorant times it was not understood that the profits of merchants are a subject not taxable directly, or that the final payment of all such taxes must fall, with a considerable overcharge, upon the consumers. the gains of alien merchants were looked upon more unfavourably than those of english merchants. it was natural, therefore, that those of the former should be taxed more heavily than those of the latter. this distinction between the duties upon aliens and those upon english merchants, which was begun from ignorance, has been continued from the spirit of monopoly, or in order to give our own merchants an advantage both in the home and in the foreign market. with this distinction, the ancient duties of customs were imposed equally upon all sorts of goods, necessaries as well as luxuries, goods exported as well as goods imported. why should the dealers in one sort of goods, it seems to have been thought, be more favoured than those in another? or why should the merchant exporter be more favoured than the merchant importer? the ancient customs were divided into three branches. the first, and perhaps the most ancient of all those duties, was that upon wool and leather. it seems to have been chiefly or altogether an exportation duty. when the woollen manufacture came to be established in england, lest the king should lose any part of his customs upon wool by the exportation of woollen cloths, a like duty was imposed upon them. the other two branches were, first, a duty upon wine, which, being imposed at so much a ton, was called a tonnage, and, secondly, a duty upon all other goods, which, being imposed at so much a pound of their supposed value, was called a poundage. in the forty-seventh year of edward iii a duty of sixpence in the pound was imposed upon all goods exported and imported, except wools, wool-fells, leather, and wines, which were subject to particular duties. in the fourteenth of richard ii this duty was raised to one shilling in the pound, but three years afterwards it was again reduced to sixpence. it was raised to eightpence in the second year of henry iv, and in the fourth year of the same prince to one shilling. from this time to the ninth year of william iii this duty continued at one shilling in the pound. the duties of tonnage and poundage were generally granted to the king by one and the same act of parliament, and were called the subsidy of tonnage and poundage. the subsidy of poundage having continued for so long a time at one shining in the pound, or at five per cent, a subsidy came, in the language of the customs, to denote a general duty of this kind of five per cent. this subsidy, which is now called the old subsidy, still continues to be levied according to the book of rates established in the twelfth of charles ii. the method of ascertaining, by a book of rates, the value of goods subject to this duty is said to be older than the time of james i. the new subsidy imposed by the ninth and tenth of william iii was an additional five per cent upon the greater part of goods. the one-third and the two-third subsidy made up between them another five per cent of which they were proportionable parts. the subsidy of 1747 made a fourth five per cent upon the greater part of goods; and that of 1759 a fifth upon some particular sorts of goods. besides those five subsidies, a great variety of other duties have occasionally been imposed upon particular sorts of goods, in order sometimes to relieve the exigencies of the state, and sometimes to regulate the trade of the country according to the principles of the mercantile system. that system has come gradually more and more into fashion. the old subsidy was imposed indifferently upon exportation as well as importation. the four subsequent subsidies, as well as the other duties which have been occasionally imposed upon particular sorts of goods have, with a few exceptions, been laid altogether upon importation. the greater part of the ancient duties which had been imposed upon the exportation of the goods of home produce and manufacture have either been lightened or taken away altogether. in most cases they have been taken away. bounties have even been given upon the exportation of some of them. drawbacks too, sometimes of the whole, and, in most cases, of a part of the duties which are paid upon the importation of foreign goods, have been granted upon their exportation. only half the duties imposed by the old subsidy upon importation are drawn back upon exportation: but the whole of those imposed by the latter subsidies and other imposts are, upon the greater part of goods, drawn back in the same manner. this growing favour of exportation, and discouragement of importation, have suffered only a few exceptions, which chiefly concern the materials of some manufactures. these our merchants and manufacturers are willing should come as cheap as possible to themselves, and as dear as possible to their rivals and competitors in other countries. foreign materials are, upon this account, sometimes allowed to be imported duty free; spanish wool, for example, flax, and raw linen yarn. the exportation of the materials of home produce, and of those which are the particular produce of our colonies, has sometimes been prohibited, and sometimes subjected to higher duties. the exportation of english wool has been prohibited. that of beaver skins, of beaver wool, and of gum senega has been subjected to higher duties. great britain, by the conquest of canada and senegal, having got almost the monopoly of those commodities. that the mercantile system has not been very favourable to the revenue of the great body of the people, to the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, i have endeavoured to show in the fourth book of this inquiry. it seems not to have been more favourable to the revenue of the sovereign, so far at least as that revenue depends upon the duties of customs. in consequence of that system, the importation of several sorts of goods has been prohibited altogether. this prohibition has in some cases entirely prevented, and in others has very much diminished the importation of those commodities by reducing the importers to the necessity of smuggling. it has entirely prevented the importation of foreign woollens, and it has very much diminished that of foreign silks and velvets. in both cases it has entirely annihilated the revenue of customs which might have been levied upon such importation. the high duties which have been imposed upon the importation of many different sorts of foreign goods, in order to discourage their consumption in great britain, have in many cases served only to encourage smuggling, and in all cases have reduced the revenue of the customs below what more moderate duties would have afforded. the saying of dr. swift, that in the arithmetic of the customs two and two, instead of making four, make sometimes only one, holds perfectly true with regard to such heavy duties which never could have been imposed had not the mercantile system taught us, in many cases, to employ taxation as an instrument, not of revenue, but of monopoly. the bounties which are sometimes given upon the exportation of home produce and manufactures, and the drawbacks which are paid upon the re-exportation of the greater part of foreign goods, have given occasion to many frauds, and to a species of smuggling more destructive of the public revenue than any other. in order to obtain the bounty or drawback, the goods, it is well known, are sometimes shipped and sent to sea, but soon afterwards clandestinely relanded in some other part of the country. the defalcation of the revenue of customs occasioned by the bounties and drawbacks, of which a great part are obtained fraudulently, is very great. the gross produce of the customs in the year which ended on the 5th of january 1755 amounted to l5,068,000. the bounties which were paid out of this revenue, though in that year there was no bounty upon corn, amounted to l167,800. the drawbacks which were paid upon debentures and certificates, to l2,156,800. bounties and drawbacks together amounted to l2,324,600. in consequence of these deductions the revenue of the customs amounted only to l2,743,400: from which, deducting l287,900 for the expense of management in salaries and other incidents, the net revenue of the customs for that year comes out to be l2,455,500. the expense of management amounts in this manner to between five and six per cent upon the gross revenue of the customs, and to something more than ten per cent upon what remains of that revenue after deducting what is paid away in bounties and drawbacks. heavy duties being imposed upon almost all goods imported, our merchant importers smuggle as much and make entry of as little as they can. our merchant exporters, on the contrary, make entry of more than they export; sometimes out of vanity, and to pass for great dealers in goods which pay no duty, and sometimes to gain a bounty or a drawback. our exports, in consequence of these different frauds, appear upon the customhouse books greatly to overbalance our imports, to the unspeakable comfort of those politicians who measure the national prosperity by what they call the balance of trade. all goods imported, unless particularly exempted, and such exemptions are not very numerous, are liable to some duties of customs. if any goods are imported not mentioned in the book of rates, they are taxed at 4s. 9 9/20d. for every twenty shillings value, according to the oath of the importer, that is, nearly at five subsidies, or five poundage duties. the book of rates is extremely comprehensive, and enumerates a great variety of articles, many of them little used, and therefore not well known. it is upon this account frequently uncertain under what article a particular sort of goods ought to be classed, and consequently what duty they ought to pay. mistakes with regard to this sometimes ruin the custom-house officer, and frequently occasion much trouble, expense, and vexation to the importer. in point of perspicuity, precision, and distinctness, therefore, the duties of customs are much more inferior to those of excise. in order that the greater part of the members of any society should contribute to the public revenue in proportion to their respective expense, it does not seem necessary that every single article of that expense should be taxed. the revenue which is levied by the duties of excise is supposed to fall as equally upon the contributors as that which is levied by the duties of customs, and the duties of excise are imposed upon a few articles only of the most general use and consumption. it has been the opinion of many people that, by proper management, the duties of customs might likewise, without any loss to the public revenue, and with great advantage to foreign trade, be confined to a few articles only. the foreign articles of the most general use and consumption in great britain seem at present to consist chiefly in foreign wines and brandies; in some of the productions of america and the west indiessugar, rum, tobacco, cocoanuts, etc.; and in some of those of the east indiestea, coffee, china-ware, spiceries of all kinds, several sorts of piece-goods, etc. these different articles afford, perhaps, at present, the greater part of the revenue which is drawn from the duties of customs. the taxes which at present subsist upon foreign manufactures, if you except those upon the few contained in the foregoing enumeration, have the greater part of them been imposed for the purpose, not of revenue, but of monopoly, or to give our own merchants an advantage in the home market. by removing all prohibitions, and by subjecting all foreign manufactures to such moderate taxes as it was found from experience afforded upon each article the greatest revenue to the public, our own workmen might still have a considerable advantage in the home market, and many articles, some of which at present afford no revenue to government, and others a very inconsiderable one, might afford a very great one. high taxes, sometimes by diminishing the consumption of the taxed commodities, and sometimes by encouraging smuggling, frequently afford a smaller revenue to government than what might be drawn from more moderate taxes. when the diminution of revenue is the effect of the diminution of consumption there can be but one remedy, and that is the lowering of the tax. when the diminution of the revenue is the diminution of the revenue is the effect of the encouragement given to smuggling, it may perhaps be remedied in two ways; either by diminishing the temptation to smuggle, or by increasing the difficulty of smuggling. the temptation to smuggle can be diminished only by the lowering of the tax, and the difficulty of smuggling can be increased only by establishing that system of administration which is most proper for preventing it. the excise laws, it appears, i believe, from experience, obstruct and embarrass the operations of the smuggler much more effectually than those of the customs. by introducing into the customs a system of administration as similar to that of the excise as the nature of the different duties will admit, the difficulty of smuggling might be very much increased. this alteration, it has been supposed by many people, might very easily be brought about. the importer of commodities liable to any duties of customs, it has been said, might as his option be allowed either to carry them to his own private warehouse, or to lodge them in a warehouse provided either at his own expense or at that of the public, but under the key of the custom-house officer, and never to be opened but in his presence. if the merchant carried them to his own private warehouse, the duties to be immediately paid, and never afterwards to be drawn back, and that warehouse to be at all times subject to the visit and examination of the custom-house officer, in order to ascertain how far the quantity contained in it corresponded with that for which the duty had been paid. if he carried them to the public warehouse, no duty to be paid till they were taken out for home consumption. if taken out for exportation, to be duty free, proper security being always given that they should be so exported. the dealers in those particular commodities, either by wholesale or retail, to be at all times subject to the visit and examination of the custom-house officer, and to be obliged to justify by proper certificates the payment of the duty upon the whole quantity contained in their shops or warehouses. what are called the excise-duties upon rum imported are at present levied in this manner, and the same system of administration might perhaps be extended to all duties upon goods imported, provided always that those duties were, like the duties of excise, confined to a few sorts of goods of the most general use and consumption. if they were extended to almost all sorts of goods, as at present, public warehouses of sufficient extent could not easily be provided, and goods of a very delicate nature, or of which the preservation required much care and attention, could not safely be trusted by the merchant in any warehouse but his own. if by such a system of administration smuggling, to any considerable extent, could be prevented even under pretty high duties, and if every duty was occasionally either heightened or lowered according as it was most likely, either the one way or the other, to afford the greatest revenue to the state, taxation being always employed as an instrument of revenue and never of monopoly, it seems not improbable that a revenue at least equal to the present net revenue of the customs might be drawn from duties upon the importation of only a few sorts of goods of the most general use and consumption, and that the duties of customs might thus be brought to the same degree of simplicity, certainty, and precision as those of excise. what the revenue at present loses by drawbacks upon the re-exportation of foreign goods which are afterwards relanded and consumed at home would under this system be saved altogether. if to this saving, which would alone be very considerable, were added the abolition of all bounties upon the exportation of home produce in all cases in which those bounties were not in reality drawbacks of some duties of excise which had before been advanced, it cannot well be doubted but that the net revenue of customs might, after an alteration of this kind, be fully equal to what it had ever been before. if by such a change of system the public revenue suffered no loss, the trade and manufactures of the country would certainly gain a very considerable advantage. the trade in the commodities not taxed, by far the greatest number, would be perfectly free, and might be carried on to and from all parts of the world with every possible advantage. among those commodities would be comprehended all the necessaries of life and all the materials of manufacture. so far as the free importation of the necessaries of life reduced their average money price in the home market it would reduce the money price of labour, but without reducing in any respect its real recompense. the value of money is in proportion to the quantity of the necessaries of life which it will purchase. that of the necessaries of life is altogether independent of the quantity of money which can be had for them. the reduction in the money price of labour would necessarily be attended with a proportionable one in that of all home manufactures, which would thereby gain some advantage in all foreign markets. the price of some manufactures would be reduced in a still greater proportion by the free importation of the raw materials. if raw silk could be imported from china and indostan duty free, the silk manufacturers in england could greatly undersell those of both france and italy. there would be no occasion to prohibit the importation of foreign silks and velvets. the cheapness of their goods would secure to our own workmen not only the possession of the home, but a very great command of the foreign market. even the trade in the commodities taxed would be carried on with much more advantage than at present. if those commodities were delivered out of the public warehouse for foreign exportation, being in this case exempted from all taxes, the trade in them would be perfectly free. the carrying trade in all sorts of goods would under this system enjoy every possible advantage. if those commodities were delivered out for home consumption, the importer not being obliged to advance the tax till he had an opportunity of selling his goods, either to some dealer, or to some consumer, he could always afford to sell them cheaper than if he had been obliged to advance it at the moment of importation. under the same taxes, the foreign trade of consumption even in the taxed commodities might in this manner be carried on with much more advantage than it can be at present. it was the object of the famous excise scheme of sir robert walpole to establish, with regard to wine and tobacco, a system not very unlike that which is here proposed. but though the bill which was then brought into parliament comprehended those two commodities, only it was generally supposed to be meant as an introduction to a more extensive scheme of the same kind, faction, combined with the interest of smuggling merchants, raised so violent, though so unjust, a clamour against that bill, that the minister thought proper to drop it, and from a dread of exciting a clamour of the same kind, none of his successors have dared to resume the project. the duties upon foreign luxuries imported for home consumption, though they sometimes fall upon the poor, fall principally upon people of middling or more than middling fortune. such are, for example, the duties upon foreign wines, upon coffee, chocolate, tea, sugar, etc. the duties upon the cheaper luxuries of home produce destined for home consumption fall pretty equally upon people of all ranks in proportion to their respective expense. the poor pay the duties upon malt, hops, beer, and ale, upon their own consumption: the rich, upon both their own consumption and that of their servants. the whole consumption of the inferior ranks of people, or of those below the middling rank, it must be observed, is in every country much greater, not only in quantity, but in value, than that of the middling and of those above the middling rank. the whole expense of the inferior is much greater than that of the superior ranks. in the first place, almost the whole capital of every country is annually distributed among the inferior ranks of people as the wages of productive labour. secondly, a great part of the revenue arising from both the rent of land and the profits of stock is annually distributed among the same rank in the wages and maintenance of menial servants, and other unproductive labourers. thirdly, some part of the profits of stock belongs to the same rank as a revenue arising from the employment of their small capitals. the amount of the profits annually made by small shopkeepers, tradesmen, and retailers of all kinds is everywhere very considerable, and makes a very considerable portion of the annual produce. fourthly, and lastly, some part even of the rent of land belongs to the same rank, a considerable part of those who are somewhat below the middling rank, and a small part even to the lowest rank, common labourers sometimes possessing in property an acre or two of land. though the expense of those inferior ranks of people, therefore, taking them individually, is very small, yet the whole mass of it, taking them collectively, amounts always to by much the largest portion of the whole expense of the society; what remains of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country for the consumption of the superior ranks being always much less, not only in quantity, but in value. the taxes upon expense, therefore, which fall chiefly upon that of the superior ranks of people, upon the smaller portion of the annual produce, are likely to be much less productive than either those which fall indifferently upon the expense of all ranks, or even those which fall chiefly upon that of the inferior ranks; than either those which fall indifferently upon the whole annual produce, or those which fall chiefly upon the larger portion of it. the excise upon the materials and manufacture of home-made fermented and spirituous liquors is accordingly, of all the different taxes upon expense, by far the most productive; and this branch of the excise falls very much, perhaps principally, upon the expense of the common people. in the year which ended on the 5th of july 1775, the gross produce of this branch of the excise amounted to l3,341,837 9s. 9d. it must always be remembered, however, that it is the luxurious and not the necessary expense of the inferior ranks of people that ought ever to be taxed. the final payment of any tax upon their necessary expense would fall altogether upon the superior ranks of people; upon the smaller portion of the annual produce, and not upon the greater. such a tax must in all cases either raise the wages of labour, or lessen the demand for it. it could not raise the wages of labour without throwing the final payment of the tax upon the superior ranks of people. it could not lessen the demand for labour without lessening the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, the fund from which all taxes must be finally paid. whatever might be the state to which a tax of this kind reduced the demand for labour, it must always raise wages higher than they otherwise would be in that state, and the final payment of this enhancement of wages must in all cases fall upon the superior ranks of people. fermented liquors brewed, and spirituous liquors distilled, not for sale, but for private use, are not in great britain liable to any duties of excise. this exemption, of which the object is to save private families from the odious visit and examination of the tax-gatherer, occasions the burden of those duties to fall frequently much lighter upon the rich than upon the poor. it is not, indeed, very common to distil for private use, though it is done sometimes. but in the country many middling and almost all rich and great families brew their own beer. their strong beer, therefore, costs them eight shillings a barrel less than it costs the common brewer, who must have his profit upon the tax as well as upon all the other expense which he advances. such families, therefore, must drink their beer at least nine or ten shillings a barrel cheaper than any liquor of the same quality can be drunk by the common people, to whom it is everywhere more convenient to buy their beer, by little and little, from the brewery or the alehouse. malt, in the same manner, that is made for the use of a private family is not liable to the visit or examination of the tax-gatherer; but in this case the family must compound at seven shillings and sixpence a head for the tax. seven shillings and sixpence are equal to the excise upon ten bushels of malta quantity fully equal to what all the different members of any sober family, men, women, and children, are at an average likely to consume. but in rich and great families, where country hospitality is much practised, the malt liquors consumed by the members of the family make but a small part of the consumption of the house. either on account of this composition, however, or for other reasons, it is not near so common to malt as to brew for private use. it is difficult to imagine any equitable reason why those who either brew or distil for private use should not be subject to a composition of the same kind. a greater revenue than what is at present drawn from all the heavy taxes upon malt, beer, and ale might be raised, it has frequently been said, by a much lighter tax upon malt, the opportunities of defrauding the revenue being much greater in a brewery than in a malt-house, and those who brew for private use being exempted from all duties or composition for duties, which is not the case with those who malt for private use. in the porter brewery of london a quarter of malt is commonly brewed into more than two barrels and a half, sometimes into three barrels of porter. the different taxes upon malt amount to six shillings a quarter, those upon strong beer and ale to eight shillings a barrel. in the porter brewery, therefore, the different taxes upon malt, beer, and ale amount to between twenty-six and thirty shillings upon the produce of a quarter of malt. in the country brewery for common country sale a quarter of malt is seldom brewed into less than two barrels of strong and one barrel of small beer, frequently into two barrels and a half of strong beer. the different taxes upon small beer amount to one shilling and fourpence a barrel. in the country brewery, therefore, the different taxes upon malt, beer, and ale seldom amount to less than twenty-three shillings and fourpence, frequently to twenty-six shillings, upon the produce of a quarter of malt. taking the whole kingdom at an average, therefore, the whole amount of the duties upon malt, beer, and ale cannot be estimated at less than twenty-four or twenty-five shillings upon the produce of a quarter of malt. but by taking off all the different duties upon beer and ale, and by tripling the malt-tax, or by raising it from six to eighteen shillings upon the quarter of malt, a greater revenue, it is said, might be raised by this single tax than what is at present drawn from all those heavier taxes. under the old malt tax, indeed, is comprehended a tax of four shillings upon the hogshead of cyder, and another of ten shillings upon the barrel of mum. in 1774, the tax upon cyder produced only l3083 6s. 8d. it probably fell somewhat short of its usual amount, all the different taxes upon cyder having, that year, produced less than ordinary. the tax upon mum, though much heavier, is still less productive, on account of the smaller consumption of that liquor. but to balance whatever may be the ordinary amount of those two taxes, there is comprehended under what is called the country excise, first, the old excise of six shillings and eightpence upon the hogshead of cyder; secondly, a like tax of six shillings and eightpence upon the hogshead of verjuice; thirdly, another of eight shillings and ninepence upon the hogshead of vinegar; and, lastly, a fourth tax of elevenpence upon the gallon of mead or metheglin: the produce of those different taxes will probably much more than counterbalance that of the duties imposed by what is called the annual malt tax upon cyder and mum. l s. d. in 1772, the old malt-tax produced 722,023 11 11 the additional 356,776 7 9 3/4 in 1773, the old tax produced 561,627 3 7 1/2 the additional 278,650 15 3 3/4 in 1774, the old tax produced 624,614 17 5 3/4 the additional 310,745 2 8 1/2 in 1775, the old tax produced 657,357 0 8 1/4 the additional 323,785 12 6 1/4 -------------------------- 4)3,835,580 12 0 3/4 -------------------------- average of these four years 958,895 3 0 3/16 -------------------------- in 1772, the country excise produced 1,243,128 5 3 the london brewery 408,260 7 2 3/4 in 1773, the country excise 1,245,808 3 3 the london brewery 405,406 17 10 1/2 in 1774, the country excise 1,246,373 14 5 1/2 the london brewery 320,601 18 0 1/4 in 1775, the country excise 1,214,583 6 1 the london brewery 463,670 7 0 1/4 -------------------------- 4)6,547,832 19 2 1/4 -------------------------- average of these four years 1,636,958 4 9 1/2 to which adding the average malt-tax, or 958,895 3 0 3/16 the whole amount of those different taxes comes out to be 2,595,853 7 9 11/19 -------------------------- but by tripling the malt-tax, or by raising it from six to eighteen shillings upon the quarter of malt, that single tax would produce 2,876,685 9 0 9/16 a sum which exceeds the foregoing by 280,832 1 2 14/16 malt is consumed not only in the brewery of beer and ale, but in the manufacture of wines and spirits. if the malt tax were to be raised to eighteen shillings upon the quarter, it might be necessary to make some abatement in the different excises which are imposed upon those particular sorts of low wines and spirits of which malt makes any part of the materials. in what are called malt spirits it makes commonly but a third part of the materials, the other two-thirds being either raw barley, or one-third barley and one-third wheat. in the distillery of malt spirits, both the opportunity and the temptation to smuggle are much greater than either in a brewery or in a malt-house; the opportunity on account of the smaller bulk and greater value of the commodity, and the temptation on account of the superior height of the duties, which amount to 3s. 10 2/3d.* upon the gallon of spirits. by increasing the duties upon malt, and reducing those upon the distillery, both the opportunities and the temptation to smuggle would be diminished, which might occasion a still further augmentation of revenue. * though the duties directly imposed upon proof spirits amount only to 2s. 6d. per gallon, these added to the duties upon the low wines, from which they are distilled, amount to 3s. 10 2/3d. both low wines and proof spirits are, to prevent frauds, now rated according to what they gauge in the wash. it has for some time past been the policy of great britain to discourage the consumption of spirituous liquors, on account of their supposed tendency to ruin the health and to corrupt the morals of the common people. according to this policy, the abatement of the taxes upon the distillery ought not to be so great as to reduce, in any respect, the price of those liquors. spirituous liquors might remain as dear as ever, while at the same time the wholesome and invigorating liquors of beer and ale might be considerably reduced in their price. the people might thus be in part relieved from one of the burdens of which they at present complain the most, while at the same time the revenue might be considerably augmented. the objections of dr. davenant to this alteration in the present system of excise duties seem to be without foundation. those objections are, that the tax, instead of dividing itself as at present pretty equally upon the profit of the maltster, upon that of the brewer, and upon that of the retailer, would, so far as it affected profit, fall altogether upon that of the maltster; that the maltster could not so easily get back the amount of the tax in the advanced price of his malt as the brewer and retailer in the advanced price of their liquor; and that so heavy a tax upon malt might reduce the rent and profit of barley land. no tax can ever reduce, for any considerable time, the rate of profit in any particular trade which must always keep its level with other trades in the neighbourhood. the present duties upon malt, beer, and ale do not affect the profits of the dealers in those commodities, who all get back the tax with an additional profit in the enhanced price of their goods. a tax, indeed, may render the goods upon which it is imposed so dear as to diminish the consumption of them. but the consumption of malt is in malt liquors, and a tax of eighteen shillings upon the quarter of malt could not well render those liquors dearer than the different taxes, amounting to twenty-four or twenty-five shillings, do at present. those liquors, on the contrary, would probably become cheaper, and the consumption of them would be more likely to increase than to diminish. it is not very easy to understand why it should be more difficult for the maltster to get back eighteen shillings in the advanced price of his malt than it is at present for the brewer to get back twenty-four or twenty-five, sometimes thirty, shillings in that of his liquor. the maltster, indeed, instead of a tax of six shillings, would be obliged to advance one of eighteen shillings upon every quarter of malt. but the brewer is at present obliged to advance a tax of twenty-four or twenty-five, sometimes thirty, shillings upon every quarter of malt which he brews. it could not be more inconvenient for the maltster to advance a lighter tax than it is at present for the brewer to advance a heavier one. the maltster doth not always keep in his granaries a stock of malt which it will require a longer time to dispose of than the stock of beer and ale which the brewer frequently keeps in his cellars. the former, therefore, may frequently get the returns of his money as soon as the latter. but whatever inconveniency might arise to the maltster from being obliged to advance a heavier tax, it could easily be remedied by granting him a few months' longer credit than is at present commonly given to the brewer. nothing could reduce the rent and profit of barley land which did not reduce the demand for barley. but a change of system which reduced the duties upon a quarter of malt brewed into beer and ale from twenty-four and twenty-five shillings to eighteen shillings would be more likely to increase than diminish that demand. the rent and profit of barley land, besides, must always be nearly equal to those of other equally fertile and equally well-cultivated land. if they were less, some part of the barley land would soon be turned to some other purpose; and if they were greater, more land would soon be turned to the raising of barley. when the ordinary price of any particular produce of land is at what may be called a monopoly price, a tax upon it necessarily reduces the rent and profit of the land which grows it. a tax upon the produce of those precious vineyards of which the wine falls so much short of the effectual demand that its price is always above the natural proportion to that of the produce of other equally fertile and equally well cultivated land would necessarily reduce the rent and profit of those vineyards. the price of the wines being already the highest that could be got for the quantity commonly sent to market, it could not be raised higher without diminishing that quantity, and the quantity could not be diminished without still greater loss, because the lands could not be turned to any other equally valuable produce. the whole weight of the tax, therefore, would fall upon the rent and profitproperly upon the rent of the vineyard. when it has been proposed to lay any new tax upon sugar, our sugar planters have frequently complained that the whole weight of such taxes fell, not upon the consumer, but upon the producer, they never having been able to raise the price of their sugar after the tax higher than it was before. the price had, it seems, before the tax been a monopoly price, and the argument adduced to show that sugar was an improper subject of taxation demonstrated, perhaps, that it was a proper one, the gains of monopolists, whenever they can be come at, being certainly of all subjects the most proper. but the ordinary price of barley has never been a monopoly price, and the rent and profit of barley land have never been above their natural proportion to those of other equally fertile and equally well-cultivated land. the different taxes which have been imposed upon malt, beer, and ale have never lowered the price of barley, have never reduced the rent and profit of barley land. the price of malt to the brewer has constantly risen in proportion to the taxes imposed upon it, and those taxes, together with the different duties upon beer and ale, have constantly either raised the price, or what comes to the same thing, reduced the quality of those commodities to the consumer. the final payment of those taxes has fallen constantly upon the consumer, and not upon the producer. the only people likely to suffer by the change of system here proposed are those who brew for their own private use. but the exemption which this superior rank of people at present enjoy from very heavy taxes which are paid by the poor labourer and artificer is surely most unjust and unequal, and ought to be taken away, even though this change was never to take place. it has probably been the interest of this superior order of people, however, which has hitherto prevented a change of system that could not well fail both to increase the revenue and to relieve the people. besides such duties as those of customs and excise above mentioned, there are several others which affect the price of goods more unequally and more indirectly. of this kind are the duties which in french are called peages, which in old saxon times were called duties of passage, and which seem to have been originally established for the same purpose as our turnpike tolls, or the tolls upon our canals and navigable rivers, for the maintenance of the road or of the navigation. those duties, when applied to such purposes, are most properly imposed according to the bulk or weight of the goods. as they were originally local and provincial duties, applicable to local and provincial purposes, the administration of them was in most cases entrusted to the particular town, parish, or lordship in which they were levied, such communities being in some way or other supposed to be accountable for the application. the sovereign, who is altogether unaccountable, has in many countries assumed to himself the administration of those duties, and though he has in most cases enhanced very much the duty, he has in many entirely neglected the application. if the turnpike tolls of great britain should ever become one of the resources of government, we may learn, by the example of many other nations, what would probably be the consequence. such tolls are no doubt finally paid by the consumer; but the consumer is not taxed in proportion to his expense when he pays, not according to the value, but according to the bulk or weight of what he consumes. when such duties are imposed, not according to the bulk or weight, but according to the supposed value of the goods, they become properly a sort of inland customs or excises which obstruct very much the most important of all branches of commerce, the interior commerce of the country. in some small states duties similar to those passage duties are imposed upon goods carried across the territory, either by land or by water, from one foreign country to another. these are in some countries called transit-duties. some of the little italian states which are situated upon the po and the rivers which run into it derive some revenue from duties of this kind which are paid altogether by foreigners, and which, perhaps, are the only duties that one state can impose upon the subjects of another without obstructing in any respect the industry or commerce of its own. the most important transit-duty in the world is that levied by the king of denmark upon all merchant ships which pass through the sound. such taxes upon luxuries as the greater part of the duties of customs and excise, though they all fall indifferently upon every different species of revenue, and are paid finally, or without any retribution, by whoever consumes the commodities upon which they are imposed, yet they do not always fall equally or proportionably upon the revenue of every individual. as every man's humour regulates the degree of his consumption, every man contributes rather according to his humour than in proportion to his revenue; the profuse contribute more, the parsimonious less, than their proper proportion. during the minority of a man of great fortune he contributes commonly very little, by his consumption, towards the support of that state from whose protection he derives a great revenue. those who live in another country contribute nothing, by their consumption, towards the support of the government of that country in which is situated the source of their revenue. if in this latter country there should be no land-tax, nor any considerable duty upon the transference either of movable or of immovable property, as is the case in ireland, such absentees may derive a great revenue from the protection of a government to the support of which they do not contribute a single shilling. this inequality is likely to be greatest in a country of which the government is in some respects subordinate and dependent upon that of some other. the people who possess the most extensive property in the dependent will in this case generally choose to live in the governing country. ireland is precisely in this situation, and we cannot, therefore, wonder that the proposal of a tax upon absentees should be so very popular in that country. it might, perhaps, be a little difficult to ascertain either what sort or what degree of absence would subject a man to be taxed as an absentee, or at what precise time the tax should either begin or end. if you except, however, this very peculiar situation, any inequality in the contribution of individuals which can arise from such taxes is much more than compensated by the very circumstance which occasions that inequalitythe circumstance that every man's contribution is altogether voluntary, it being altogether in his power either to consume or not to consume the commodity taxed. where such taxes, therefore, are properly assessed, and upon proper commodities, they are paid with less grumbling than any other. when they are advanced by the merchant or manufacturer, the consumer, who finally pays them, soon comes to confound them with the price of the commodities, and almost forgets that he pays any tax. such taxes are or may be perfectly certain, or may be assessed so as to leave no doubt concerning either what ought to be paid, or when it ought to be paid; concerning either the quantity or the time of payment. whatever uncertainty there may sometimes be, either in the duties of customs in great britain, or in other duties of the same kind in other countries, it cannot arise from the nature of those duties, but from the inaccurate or unskilful manner in which the law that imposes them is expressed. taxes upon luxuries generally are, and always may be, paid piecemeal, or in proportion as the contributors have occasion to purchase the goods upon which they are imposed. in the time and mode of payment they are, or may be, of all taxes the most convenient. upon the whole, such taxes, are, perhaps, as agreeable to the three first of the four general maxims concerning taxation as any other. they offend in every respect against the fourth. such taxes, in proportion to what they bring into the public treasury of the state, always take out or keep out of the pockets of the people more than almost any other taxes. they seem to do this in all the four different ways in which it is possible to do it. first, the levying of such taxes, even when imposed in the most judicious manner, requires a great number of custom-house and excise officers, whose salaries and perquisites are a real tax upon the people, which brings nothing into the treasury of the state. this expense, however, it must be acknowledged, is more moderate in great britain than in most other countries. in the year which ended on the 5th of july 1775, the gross produce of the different duties, under the management of the commissioners of excise in england, amounted to l5,507,308 18s. 8 1/4d., which was levied at an expense of little more than five and a half per cent. from this gross produce, however, there must be deducted what was paid away in bounties and drawbacks upon the exportation of excisable goods, which will reduce the net produce below five millions.* the levying of the salt duty, an excise duty, but under a different management, is much more expensive. the net revenue of the customs does not amount to two millions and a half, which is levied at an expense of more than ten per cent in the salaries of officers, and other incidents. but the perquisites of custom-house officers are everywhere much greater than their salaries; at some ports more than double or triple those salaries. if the salaries of officers, and other incidents, therefore, amount to more than ten per cent upon the net revenue of the customs, the whole expense of levying that revenue may amount, in salaries and perquisites together, to more than twenty or thirty per cent. the officers of excise receive few or no perquisites, and the administration of that branch of the revenue, being of more recent establishment, is in general less corrupted than that of the customs, into which length of time has introduced and authorized many abuses. by charging upon malt the whole revenue which is at present levied by the different duties upon malt and malt liquors, a saving, it is supposed, of more than fifty thousand pounds might be made in the annual expense of the excise. by confining the duties of customs to a few sorts of goods, and by levying those duties according to the excise laws, a much greater saving might probably be made in the annual expense of the customs. * the net produce of that year, after deducting all expenses and allowances, amounted to l4,975,652 19s. 6d. secondly, such taxes necessarily occasion some obstruction or discouragement to certain branches of industry. as they always raise the price of the commodity taxed, they so far discourage its consumption, and consequently its production. if it is a commodity of home growth or manufacture, less labour comes to be employed in raising and producing it. if it is a foreign commodity of which the tax increases in this manner the price, the commodities of the same kind which are made at home may thereby, indeed, gain some advantage in the home market, and a greater quantity of domestic industry may thereby be turned toward preparing them. but though this rise of price in a foreign commodity may encourage domestic industry in one particular branch, it necessarily discourages that industry in almost every other. the dearer the birmingham manufacturer buys his foreign wine, the cheaper he necessarily sells that part of his hardware with which, or, what comes to the same thing, with the price of which he buys it. that part of his hardware, therefore, becomes of less value to him, and he has less encouragement to work at it. the dearer the consumers in one country pay for the surplus produce of another, the cheaper they necessarily sell that part of their own surplus produce with which, or, what comes to the same thing, with the price of which they buy it. that part of their own surplus produce becomes of less value to them, and they have less encouragement to increase its quantity. all taxes upon consumable commodities, therefore, tend to reduce the quantity of productive labour below what it otherwise would be, either in preparing the commodities taxed, if they are home commodities, or in preparing those with which they are purchased, if they are foreign commodities. such taxes, too, always alter, more or less, the natural direction of national industry, and turn it into a channel always different from, and generally less advantageous than that in which it would have run of its own accord. thirdly, the hope of evading such taxes by smuggling gives frequent occasion to forfeitures and other penalties which entirely ruin the smuggler; a person who, though no doubt highly blamable for violating the laws of his country, is frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and would have been, in every respect, an excellent citizen had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so. in those corrupted governments where there is at least a general suspicion of much unnecessary expense, and great misapplication of the public revenue, the laws which guard it are little respected. not many people are scrupulous about smuggling when, without perjury, they can find any easy and safe opportunity of doing so. to pretend to have any scruple about buying smuggled goods, though a manifest encouragement to the violation of the revenue laws, and to the perjury which almost always attends it, would in most countries be regarded as one of those pedantic pieces of hypocrisy which, instead of gaining credit with anybody, serve only to expose the person who affects to practise them to the suspicion of being a greater knave than most of his neighbours. by this indulgence of the public, the smuggler is often encouraged to continue a trade which he is thus taught to consider as in some measure innocent, and when the severity of the revenue laws is ready to fall upon him, he is frequently disposed to defend with violence what he has been accustomed to regard as his just property. from being at first, perhaps, rather imprudent than criminal, he at last too often becomes one of the hardiest and most determined violators of the laws of society. by the ruin of the smuggler, his capital, which had before been employed in maintaining productive labour, is absorbed either in the revenue of the state or in that of the revenue officer, and is employed in maintaining unproductive, to the diminution of the general capital of the society and of the useful industry which it might otherwise have maintained. fourthly, such taxes, by subjecting at least the dealers in the taxed commodities to the frequent visits and odious examination of the tax-gatherers, expose them sometimes, no doubt, to some degree of oppression, and always to much trouble and vexation; and though vexation, as has already been said, is not, strictly speaking, expense, it is certainly equivalent to the expense at which every man would be willing to redeem himself from it. the laws of excise, though more effectual for the purpose for which they were instituted, are, in this respect, more vexatious than those of the customs. when a merchant has imported goods subject to certain duties of customs, when he has paid those duties, and lodged the goods in his warehouse, he is not in most cases liable to any further trouble or vexation from the custom-house officer. it is otherwise with goods subject to duties of excise. the dealers have no respite from the continual visits and examination of the excise officers. the duties of excise are, upon this account, more unpopular than those of the customs; and so are the officers who levy them. those officers, it is pretended, though in general, perhaps, they do their duty fully as well as those of the customs, yet as that duty obliges them to be frequently very troublesome to some of their neighbours, commonly contract a certain hardness of character which the others frequently have not. this observation, however, may very probably be the mere suggestion of fraudulent dealers whose smuggling is either prevented or detected by their diligence. the inconveniencies, however, which are, perhaps, in some degree inseparable from taxes upon consumable commodities, fall as light upon the people of great britain as upon those of any other country of which the government is nearly as expensive. our state is not perfect, and might be mended, but it is as good or better than that of most of our neighbours. in consequence of the notion that duties upon consumable goods were taxes upon the profits of merchants, those duties have, in some countries, been repeated upon every successive sale of the goods. if the profits of the merchant importer or merchant manufacturer were taxed, equality seemed to require that those of all the middle buyers who intervened between either of them and the consumer should likewise be taxed. the famous alcavala of spain seems to have been established upon this principle. it was at first a tax of ten per cent, afterwards of fourteen per cent, and is at present of only six per cent upon the sale of every sort of property whether movable or immovable, and it is repeated every time the property is sold. the levying of this tax requires a multitude of revenue officers sufficient to guard the transportation of goods, not only from one province to another, but from one shop to another. it subjects not only the dealers in some sorts of goods, but those in all sorts, every farmer, every manufacturer, every merchant and shopkeeper, to the continual visits and examination of the tax-gatherers. through the greater part of a country in which a tax of this kind is established nothing can be produced for distant sale. the produce of every part of the country must be proportioned to the consumption of the neighborhood. it is to the alcavala, accordingly, that ustaritz imputes the ruin of the manufactures of spain. he might have imputed to it likewise the declension of agriculture, it being imposed not only upon manufactures, but upon the rude produce of the land. in the kingdom of naples there is a similar tax of three per cent upon the value of all contracts, and consequently upon that of all contracts of sale. it is both lighter than the spanish tax, and the greater part of towns and parishes are allowed to pay a composition in lieu of it. they levy this composition in what manner they please, generally in a way that gives no interruption to the interior commerce of the place. the neapolitan tax, therefore, is not near so ruinous as the spanish one. the uniform system of taxation which, with a few exceptions of no great consequence, takes place in all the different parts of the united kingdom of great britain, leaves the interior commerce of the country, the inland and coasting trade, almost entirely free. the inland trade is almost perfectly free, and the greater part of goods may be carried from one end of the kingdom to the other without requiring any permit or let-pass, without being subject to question, visit, or examination from the revenue officers. there are a few exceptions, but they are such as can give no interruption to any important branch of the inland commerce of the country. goods carried coastwise, indeed, require certificates or coast-cockets. if you except coals, however, the rest are almost all duty-free. this freedom of interior commerce, the effect of the uniformity of the system of taxation, is perhaps one of the principal causes of the prosperity of great britain, every great country being necessarily the best and most extensive market for the greater part of the productions of its own industry. if the same freedom, in consequence of the same uniformity, could be extended to ireland and the plantations, both the grandeur of the state and the prosperity of every part of the empire would probably be still greater than at present. in france, the different revenue laws which take place in the different provinces require a multitude of revenue officers to surround not only the frontiers of the kingdom, but those of almost each particular province, in order either to prevent the importation of certain goods, or to subject it to the payment of certain duties, to the no small interruption of the interior commerce of the country. some provinces are allowed to compound for the gabelle or salt-tax. others are exempted from it altogether. some provinces are exempted from the exclusive sale of tobacco, which the farmers-general enjoy through the greater part of the kingdom. the aides, which correspond to the excise in england, are very different in different provinces. some provinces are exempted from them, and pay a composition or equivalent. in those in which they take place and are in farm there are many local duties which do not extend beyond a particular town or district. the traites, which correspond to our customs, divide the kingdom into three great parts; first, the provinces subject to the tariff of 1664, which are called the provinces of the five great farms, and under which are comprehended picardy, normandy, and the greater part of the interior provinces of the kingdom; secondly, the provinces subject to the tariff of 1667, which are called the provinces reckoned foreign, and under which are comprehended the greater part of the frontier provinces; and, thirdly, those provinces which are said to be treated as foreign, or which, because they are allowed a free commerce with foreign countries, are in their commerce with other provinces of france subjected to the same duties as other foreign countries. these are alsace, the three bishoprics of metz, toul, and verdun, and the three cities of dunkirk, bayonne, and marseilles. both in the provinces of the five great farms (called so on account of an ancient division of the duties of customs into five great branches, each of which was originally the subject of a particular farm, though they are now all united into one), and in those which are said to be reckoned foreign, there are many local duties which do not extend beyond a particular town or district. there are some such even in the provinces which are said to be treated as foreign, particularly in the city of marseilles. it is unnecessary to observe how much both the restraints upon the interior commerce of the country and the number of the revenue officers must be multiplied in order to guard the frontiers of those different provinces and districts which are subject to such different systems of taxation. over and above the general restraints arising from this complicated system of revenue laws, the commerce of wine, after corn perhaps the most important production of france, is in the greater part of the provinces subject to particular restraints, arising from the favour which has been shown to the vineyards of particular provinces and districts, above those of others. the provinces most famous for their wines, it will be found, i believe, are those in which the trade in that article is subject to the fewest restraints of this kind. the extensive market which such provinces enjoy, encourages good management both in the cultivation of their vineyards, and in the subsequent preparation of their wines. such various and complicated revenue laws are not peculiar to france. the little duchy of milan is divided into six provinces, in each of which there is a different system of taxation with regard to several different sorts of consumable goods. the still smaller territories of the duke of parma are divided into three or four, each of which has, in the same manner, a system of its own. under such absurd management, nothing but the great fertility of the soil and happiness of the climate could preserve such countries from soon relapsing into the lowest state of poverty and barbarism. taxes upon consumable commodities may either be levied by an administration of which the officers are appointed by government and are immediately accountable to government, of which the revenue must in this case vary from year to year according to the occasional variations in the produce of the tax, or they may be let in farm for a rent certain, the farmer being allowed to appoint his own officers, who, though obliged to levy the tax in the manner directed by the law, are under his immediate inspection, and are immediately accountable to him. the best and most frugal way of levying a tax can never be by farm. over and above what is necessary for paying the stipulated rent, the salaries of the officers, and the whole expense of administration, the farmer must always draw from the produce of the tax a certain profit proportioned at least to the advance which he makes, to the risk which he runs, to the trouble which he is at, and to the knowledge and skill which it requires to manage so very complicated a concern. government, by establishing an administration under their own immediate inspection of the same kind with that which the farmer establishes, might at least save this profit, which is almost always exorbitant. to farm any considerable branch of the public revenue requires either a great capital or a great credit; circumstances which would alone restrain the competition for such an undertaking to a very small number of people. of the few who have this capital or credit, a still smaller number have the necessary knowledge or experience; another circumstance which restrains the competition still further. the very few, who are in condition to become competitors, find it more for their interest to combine together; to become co-partners instead of competitors, and when the farm is set up to auction, to offer no rent but what is much below the real value. in countries where the public revenues are in farm, the farmers are generally the most opulent people. their wealth would alone excite the public indignation, and the vanity which almost always accompanies such upstart fortunes, the foolish ostentation with which they commonly display that wealth, excites that indignation still more. the farmers of the public revenue never find the laws too severe which punish any attempt to evade the payment of a tax. they have no bowels for the contributors, who are not their subjects, and whose universal bankruptcy, if it should happen the day after their farm is expired, would not much affect their interest. in the greatest exigencies of the state, when the anxiety of the sovereign for the exact payment of his revenue is necessarily the greatest, they seldom fail to complain that without laws more rigorous than those which actually take place, it will be impossible for them to pay even the usual rent. in those moments of public distress their demands cannot be disputed. the revenue laws, therefore, become gradually more and more severe. the most sanguinary are always to be found in countries where the greater part of the public revenue is in farm; the mildest, in countries where it is levied under the immediate inspection of the sovereign. even a bad sovereign feels more compassion for his people than can ever be expected from the farmers of his revenue. he knows that the permanent grandeur of his family depends upon the prosperity of his people, and he will never knowingly ruin that prosperity for the sake of any momentary interest of his own. it is otherwise with the farmers of his revenue, whose grandeur may frequently be the effect of the ruin, and not of the prosperity of his people. a tax is sometimes not only farmed for a certain rent, but the farmer has, besides, the monopoly of the commodity taxed. in france, the duties upon tobacco and salt are levied in this manner. in such cases the farmer, instead of one, levies two exorbitant profits upon the people; the profit of the farmer, and the still more exorbitant one of the monopolist. tobacco being a luxury, every man is allowed to buy or not to buy as he chooses. but salt being a necessary, every man is obliged to buy of the farmer a certain quantity of it; because, if he did not buy this quantity of the farmer, he would, it is presumed, buy it of some smuggler. the taxes upon both commodities are exorbitant. the temptation to smuggle consequently is to many people irresistible, while at the same time the rigour of the law, and the vigilance of the farmer's officers, render the yielding to that temptation almost certainly ruinous. the smuggling of salt and tobacco sends every year several hundred people to the galleys, besides a very considerable number whom it sends to the gibbet. those taxes levied in this manner yield a very considerable revenue to government. in 1767, the farm of tobacco was let for twenty-two millions five hundred and forty-one thousand two hundred and seventy-eight livres a year. that of salt, for thirty-six millions four hundred and ninety-four thousand four hundred and four livres. the farm in both cases was to commence in 1768, and to last for six years. those who consider the blood of the people as nothing in comparison with the revenue of the prince, may perhaps approve of this method of levying taxes. similar taxes and monopolies of salt and tobacco have been established in many other countries; particularly in the austrian and prussian dominions, and in the greater part of the states of italy. in france, the greater part of the actual revenue of the crown is derived from eight different sources; the taille, the capitation, the two vingtiemes, the gabelles, the aides, the traites, the domaine, and the farm of tobacco. the five last are, in the greater part of the provinces, under farm. the three first are everywhere levied by an administration under the immediate inspection and direction of government, and it is universally acknowledged that, in proportion to what they take out of the pockets of the people, they bring more into the treasury of the prince than the other five, of which the administration is much more wasteful and expensive. the finances of france seem, in their present state, to admit of three very obvious reformations. first, by abolishing the taille and the capitation, and by increasing the number of vingtiemes, so as to produce an additional revenue equal to the amount of those other taxes, the revenue of the crown might be preserved; the expense of collection might be much diminished; the vexation of the inferior ranks of people, which the taille and capitation occasion, might be entirely prevented; and the superior ranks might not be more burdened than the greater part of them are at present. the vingtieme, i have already observed, is a tax very nearly of the same kind with what is called the land-tax of england. the burden of the taille, it is acknowledged, falls finally upon the proprietors of land; and as the greater part of the capitation is assessed upon those who are subject to the taille at so much a pound of that other tax, the final payment of the greater part of it must likewise fall upon the same order of people. though the number of the vingtiemes, therefore, was increased so as to produce an additional revenue equal to the amount of both those taxes, the superior ranks of people might not be more burdened than they are at present. many individuals no doubt would, on account of the great inequalities with which the taille is commonly assessed upon the estates and tenants of different individuals. the interest and opposition of such favoured subjects are the obstacles most likely to prevent this or any other reformation of the same kind. secondly, by rendering the gabelle, the aides, the traites, the taxes upon tobacco, all the different customs and excises, uniform in all the different parts of the kingdom, those taxes might be levied at much less expense, and the interior commerce of the kingdom might be rendered as free as that of england. thirdly, and lastly, by subjecting all those taxes to an administration under the immediate inspection and direction of government, the exorbitant profits of the farmers-general might be added to the revenue of the state. the opposition arising from the private interest of individuals is likely to be as effectual for preventing the two last as the first-mentioned scheme of reformation. the french system of taxation seems, in every respect, inferior to the british. in great britain ten millions sterling are annually levied upon less than eight millions of people without its being possible to say that any particular order is oppressed. from the collections of the abbe expilly, and the observations of the author of the essay upon legislation and commerce of corn, it appears probable that france, including the provinces of lorraine and bar, contains about twenty-three or twenty-four millions of people three times the number perhaps contained in great britain. the soil and climate of france are better than those of great britain. the country has been much longer in a state of improvement and cultivation, and is, upon that account, better stocked with all those things which it requires a long time to raise up and accumulate, such as great towns, and convenient and well-built houses, both in town and country. with these advantages it might be expected that in france a revenue of thirty millions might be levied for the support of the state with as little inconveniency as a revenue of ten millions is in great britain. in 1765 and 1766, the whole revenue paid into the treasury of france, according to the best, though, i acknowledge, very imperfect, accounts which i could get of it, usually run between 308 and 325 millions of livres; that is, it did not amount to fifteen millions sterling; not the half of what might have been expected had the people contributed in the same proportion to their numbers as the people of great britain. the people of france, however, it is generally acknowledged, are much more oppressed by taxes than the people of great britain. france, however, is certainly the great empire in europe which, after that of great britain, enjoys the mildest and most indulgent government. in holland the heavy taxes upon the necessaries of life have ruined, it is said, their principal manufactures, and are likely to discourage gradually even their fisheries and their trade in shipbuilding. the taxes upon the necessaries of life are inconsiderable in great britain, and no manufacture has hitherto been ruined by them. the british taxes which bear hardest on manufactures are some duties upon the importation of raw materials, particularly upon that of raw silk. the revenue of the states-general and of the different cities, however, is said to amount to more than five millions two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling; and as the inhabitants of the united provinces cannot well be supposed to amount to more than a third part of those of great britain, they must, in proportion to their number, be much more heavily taxed. after all the proper subjects of taxation have been exhausted, if the exigencies of the state still continue to require new taxes, they must be imposed upon improper ones. the taxes upon the necessaries of life, therefore, the wisdom of that republic which, in order to acquire and to maintain its independency, has, in spite of its great frugality, been involved in such expensive wars as have obliged it to contract great debts. the singular countries of holland and zeeland, besides, require a considerable expense even to preserve their existence, or to prevent their being swallowed up by the sea, which must have contributed to increase considerably the load of taxes in those two provinces. the republican form of government seems to be the principal support of the present grandeur of holland. the owners of great capitals, the great mercantile families, have generally either some direct share or some indirect influence in the administration of that government. for the sake of the respect and authority which they derive from this situation, they are willing to live in a country where their capital, if they employ it themselves, will bring them less profit, and if they lend it to another, less interest; and where the very moderate revenue which they can draw from it will purchase less of the necessaries and conveniences of life than in any other part of europe. the residence of such wealthy people necessarily keeps alive, in spite of all disadvantages, a certain degree of industry in the country. any public calamity which should destroy the republican form of government, which should throw the whole administration into the hands of nobles and of soldiers, which should annihilate altogether the importance of those wealthy merchants, would soon render it disagreeable to them to live in a country where they were no longer likely to be much respected. they would remove both their residences and their capitals to some other country, and the industry and commerce of holland would soon follow the capitals which supported them. chapter iii of public debts in that rude state of society which precedes the extension of commerce and the improvement of manufactures, when those expensive luxuries which commerce and manufactures can alone introduce are altogether unknown, the person who possesses a large revenue, i have endeavoured to show in the third book of this inquiry, can spend or enjoy that revenue in no other way than by maintaining nearly as many people as it can maintain. a large revenue may at all times be said to consist in the command of a large quantity of the necessaries of life. in that rude state of things it is commonly paid in a large quantity of those necessaries, in the materials of plain food and coarse clothing, in corn and cattle, in wool and raw hides. when neither commerce nor manufactures furnish anything for which the owner can exchange the greater part of those materials which are over and above his own consumption, he can do nothing with the surplus but feed and clothe nearly as many people as it will feed and clothe. a hospitality in which there is no luxury, and a liberality in which there is no ostentation, occasion, in this situation of things, the principal expenses of the rich and the great. but these, i have likewise endeavoured to show in the same book, are expenses by which people are not very apt to ruin themselves. there is not, perhaps, any selfish pleasure so frivolous of which the pursuit has not sometimes ruined even sensible men. a passion for cock-fighting has ruined many. but the instances, i believe, are not very numerous of people who have been ruined by a hospitality or liberality of this kind, though the hospitality of luxury and the liberality of ostentation have ruined many. among our feudal ancestors, the long time during which estates used to continue in the same family sufficiently demonstrates the general disposition of people to live within their income. though the rustic hospitality constantly exercised by the great land-holders may not, to us in the present times, seem consistent with that order which we are apt to consider as inseparably connected with good economy, yet we must certainly allow them to have been at least so far frugal as not commonly to have spent their whole income. a part of their wool and raw hides they had generally an opportunity of selling for money. some part of this money, perhaps, they spent in purchasing the few objects of vanity and luxury with which the circumstances of the times could furnish them; but some part of it they seem commonly to have hoarded. they could not well, indeed, do anything else but hoard whatever money they saved. to trade was disgraceful to a gentleman, and to lend money at interest, which at that time was considered as usury and prohibited by law, would have been still more so. in those times of violence and disorder, besides, it was convenient to have a hoard of money at hand, that in case they should be driven from their own home they might have something of known value to carry with them to some place of safety. the same violence which made it convenient to hoard made it equally convenient to conceal the hoard. the frequency of treasure-trove, or of treasure found of which no owner was known, sufficiently demonstrates the frequency in those times both of hoarding and of concealing the board. treasure-trove was then considered as an important branch of the revenue of the sovereign. all the treasure-trove of the kingdom would scarce perhaps in the present times make an important branch of the revenue of a private gentleman of a good estate. the same disposition to save and to hoard prevailed in the sovereign as well as in the subjects. among nations to whom commerce and manufactures are little known, the sovereign, it has already been observed in the fourth book, is in a situation which naturally disposes him to the parsimony requisite for accumulation. in that situation the expense even of a sovereign cannot be directed by that vanity which delights in the gaudy finery of a court. the ignorance of the times affords but few of the trinkets in which that finery consists. standing armies are not then necessary, so that the expense even of a sovereign, like that of any other great lord, can be employed in scarce anything but bounty to his tenants and hospitality to his retainers. but bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does. all the ancient sovereigns of europe accordingly, it has already been observed, had treasures. every tartar chief in the present times is said to have one. in a commercial country abounding with every sort of expensive luxury, the sovereign, in the same manner as almost all the great proprietors in his dominions, naturally spends a great part of his revenue in purchasing those luxuries. his own and the neighbouring countries supply him abundantly with all the costly trinkets which compose the splendid but insignificant pageantry of a court. for the sake of an inferior pageantry of the same kind, his nobles dismiss their retainers, make their tenants independent, and become gradually themselves as insignificant as the greater part of the wealthy burghers in his dominions. the same frivolous passions which influence their conduct influence his. how can it be supposed that he should be the only rich man in his dominions who is insensible to pleasures of this kind? if he does not, what he is very likely to do, spend upon those pleasures so great a part of his revenue as to debilitate very much the defensive power of the state, it cannot well be expected that he should not spend upon them all that part of it which is over and above what is necessary for supporting that defensive power. his ordinary expense becomes equal to his ordinary revenue, and it is well if it does not frequently exceed it. the amassing of treasure can no longer be expected, and when extraordinary exigencies require extraordinary expenses, he must necessarily call upon his subjects for an extraordinary aid. the present and the late king of prussia are the only great princes of europe who, since the death of henry iv of france in 1610, are supposed to have amassed any considerable treasure. the parsimony which leads to accumulation has become almost as rare in republican as in monarchical governments. the italian republics, the united provinces of the netherlands, are all in debt. the canton of berne is the single republic in europe which has amassed any considerable treasure. the other swiss republics have not. the taste for some sort of pageantry, for splendid buildings, at least, and other public ornaments, frequently prevails as much in the apparently sober senate-house of a little republic as in the dissipated court of the greatest king. the want of parsimony in time of peace imposes the necessity of contracting debt in time of war. when war comes, there is no money in the treasury but what is necessary for carrying on the ordinary expense of the peace establishment. in war an establishment of three of four times that expense becomes necessary for the defence of the state, and consequently a revenue three or four times greater than the peace revenue. supposing that the sovereign should have, what he scarce ever has, the immediate means of augmenting his revenue in proportion to the augmentation of his expense, yet still the produce of the taxes, from which this increase of revenue must be drawn, will not begin to come into the treasury till perhaps ten or twelve months after they are imposed. but the moment in which war begins, or rather the moment in which it appears likely to begin, the army must be augmented, the fleet must be fitted out, the garrisoned towns must be put into a posture of defence; that army, that fleet, those garrisoned towns must be furnished with arms, ammunition, and provisions. an immediate and great expense must be incurred in that moment of immediate danger, which will not wait for the gradual and slow returns of the new taxes. in this exigency government can have no other resource but in borrowing. the same commercial state of society which, by the operation of moral causes, brings government in this manner into the necessity of borrowing, produces in the subjects both an ability and an inclination to lend. if it commonly brings along with it the necessity of borrowing, it likewise brings along with it the facility of doing so. a country abounding with merchants and manufacturers necessarily abounds with a set of people through whose hands not only their own capitals, but the capitals of all those who either lend them money, or trust them with goods, pass as frequently, or more frequently, than the revenue of a private man, who, without trade or business, lives upon his income, passes through his hands. the revenue of such a man can regularly pass through his hands only once in a year. but the whole amount of the capital and credit of a merchant, who deals in a trade of which the returns are very quick, may sometimes pass through his hands two, three, or four times a year. a country abounding with merchants and manufacturers, therefore, necessarily abounds with a set of people who have it at all times in their power to advance, if they choose to do so, a very large sum of money to government. hence the ability in the subjects of a commercial state to lend. commerce and manufactures can seldom flourish long in any state which does not enjoy a regular administration of justice, in which the people do not feel themselves secure in the possession of their property, in which the faith of contracts is not supported by law, and in which the authority of the state is not supposed to be regularly employed in enforcing the payment of debts from all those who are able to pay. commerce and manufactures, in short, can seldom flourish in any state in which there is not a certain degree of confidence in the justice of government. the same confidence which disposes great merchants and manufacturers, upon ordinary occasions, to trust their property to the protection of a particular government, disposes them, upon extraordinary occasions, to trust that government with the use of their property. by lending money to government, they do not even for a moment diminish their ability to carry on their trade and manufactures. on the contrary, they commonly augment it. the necessities of the state render government upon most occasions willing to borrow upon terms extremely advantageous to the lender. the security which it grants to the original creditor is made transferable to any other creditor, and, from the universal confidence in the justice of the state, generally sells in the market for more than was originally paid for it. the merchant or monied man makes money by lending money to government, and instead of diminishing, increases his trading capital. he generally considers it as a favour, therefore, when the administration admits him to a share in the first subscription for a new loan. hence the inclination or willingness in the subjects of a commercial state to lend. the government of such a state is very apt to repose itself upon this ability and willingness of its subjects to lend it their money on extraordinary occasions. it foresees the facility of borrowing, and therefore dispenses itself from the duty of saving. in a rude state of society there are no great mercantile or manufacturing capitals. the individuals who hoard whatever money they can save, and who conceal their hoard, do so from a distrust of the justice of government, from a fear that if it was known that they had a hoard, and where that hoard was to be found, they would quickly be plundered. in such a state of things few people would be able, and nobody would be willing, to lend their money to government on extraordinary exigencies. the sovereign feels that he must provide for such exigencies by saving because he foresees the absolute impossibility of borrowing. this foresight increases still further his natural disposition to save. the progress of the enormous debts which at present oppress, and will in the long-run probably ruin, all the great nations of europe has been pretty uniform. nations, like private men, have generally begun to borrow upon what may be called personal credit, without assigning or mortgaging any particular fund for the payment of the debt; and when this resource has failed them, they have gone on to borrow upon assignments or mortgages of particular funds. what is called the unfunded debt of great britain is contracted in the former of those two ways. it consists partly in a debt which bears, or is supposed to bear, no interest, and which resembles the debts that a private man contracts upon account, and partly in a debt which bears interest, and which resembles what a private man contracts upon his bill or promissory note. the debts which are due either for extraordinary services, or for services either not provided for, or not paid at the time when they are performed, part of the extrordinaries of the army, navy, and ordnance, the arrears of subsidies to foreign princes, those of seamen's wages, etc., usually constitute a debt of the first kind, sometimes in payment of a part of such navy and exchequer bills, which are issued sometimes in payment of a part of such debts and sometimes for other purposes, constitute a debt of the second kindexchequer bills bearing interest from the day on which they are issued, and navy bills six months after they are issued. the bank of england, either by voluntarily discounting those bills at their current value, or by agreeing with government for certain considerations to circulate exchequer bills, that is, to receive them at par, paying the interest which happens to be due upon them, keeps up their value and facilitates their circulation, and thereby frequently enables government to contract a very large debt of this kind. in france, where there is no bank, the state bills (billets d'etat) have sometimes sold at sixty and seventy per cent discount. during the great recoinage in king william's time, when the bank of england thought proper to put a stop to its usual transactions, exchequer bills and tallies are said to have sold from twenty-five to sixty per cent discount; owing partly, no doubt, to the supposed instability of the new government established by the revolution, but partly, too, to the want of the support of the bank of england. when this resource is exhausted, and it becomes necessary, in order to raise money, to assign or mortgage some particular branch of the public revenue for the payment of the debt, government has upon different occasions done this in two different ways. sometimes it has made this assignment or mortgage for a short period of time only, a year, or a few years, for example; and sometimes for perpetuity. in the one case the fund was supposed sufficient to pay, within the limited time, both principal and interest of the money borrowed. in the other it was supposed sufficient to pay the interest only, or a perpetual annuity equivalent to the interest, government being at liberty to redeem at any time this annuity upon paying back the principal sum borrowed. when money was raised in the one way, it was said to be raised by anticipation; when in the other, by perpetual funding, or, more shortly, by funding. in great britain the land and malt taxes are regularly anticipated every year, by virtue of a borrowing clause constantly inserted into the acts which impose them. the bank of england generally advances at an interest, which since the revolution has varied from eight to three per cent, the sums for which those taxes are granted, and receives payment as their produce gradually comes in. if there is a deficiency, which there always is, it is provided for in the supplies of the ensuing year. the only considerable branch of the public revenue which yet remains unmortgaged is thus regularly spent before it comes in. like an improvident spendthrift, whose pressing occasions will not allow him to wait for the regular payment of his revenue, the state is in the constant practice of borrowing of its own factors and agents, and of paying interest for the use of its own money. in the reign of king william, and during a great part of that of queen anne, before we had become so familiar as we are now with the practice of perpetual funding, the greater part of the new taxes were imposed but for a short period of time (for four, five, six, or seven years only), and a great part of the grants of every year consisted in loans upon anticipations of the produce of those taxes. the produce being frequently insufficient for paying within the limited term the principal and interest of the money borrowed, deficiencies arose, to make good which it became necessary to prolong the term. in 1697, by the 8th of william iii, c. 20, the deficiencies of several taxes were charged upon what was then called the first general mortgage or fund, consisting of a prolongation to the first of august 1706 of several different taxes which would have expired within a shorter term, and of which the produce was accumulated into one general fund. the deficiencies charged upon this prolonged term amounted to l5,160,459 14s. 9 1/4d. in 1701, those duties, with some others, were still further prolonged for the like purposes till the first of august 1710, and were called the second general mortgage or fund. the deficiencies charged upon it amounted to l2,055,999 7s. 11 1/2d. in 1707, those duties were still further prolonged, as a fund for new loans, to the first of august 1712, and were called the third general mortgage or fund. the sum borrowed upon it was l983,254 11s. 9 1/4d. in 1708, those duties were all (except the old subsidy of tonnage and poundage, of which one moiety only was made a part of this fund, and a duty upon the importation of scotch linen, which had been taken off by the articles of union) still further continued, as a fund for new loans, to the first of august 1714, and were called the fourth general mortgage or fund. the sum borrowed upon it was l925,176 9s. 2 1/4d. in 1709, those cities were all (except the old subsidy of tonnage and poundage, which was now left out of this fund altogether) still further continued for the same purpose to the first of august 1716, and were called the fifth general mortgage or fund. the sum borrowed upon it was l922,029 6s. in 1710, those duties were again prolonged to the first of august 1720, and were called the sixth general mortgage or fund. the sum borrowed upon it was l1,296,552 9s. 11 3/4d. in 1711, the same duties (which at this time were thus subject to four different anticipations) together with several others were continued for ever, and made a fund for paying the interest of the capital of the south sea company, which had that year advanced to government, for paying debts and making good deficiencies, the sum of l9,177,967 15s. 4d.; the greatest loan which at that time had ever been made. before this period, the principal, so far as i have been able to observe, the only taxes which in order to pay the interest of a debt had been imposed for perpetuity, were those for paying the interest of the money which had been advanced to government by the bank and the east india company, and of what it was expected would be advanced, but which was never advanced, by a projected land bank. the bank fund at this time amounted to l3,375,027 17s. 10 1/2d., for which was paid an annuity or interest of l206,501 13s. 5d. the east india fund amounted to l3,200,000, for which was paid an annuity or interest of l160,000the bank fund being at six per cent, the east india fund at five per cent interest. in 1715, by the 1st of george i, c. 12, the different taxes which had been mortgaged for paying the bank annuity, together with several others which by this act were likewise rendered perpetual, were accumulated into one common fund called the aggregate fund, which was charged not only with the payments of the bank annuity, but with several other annuities and burdens of different kinds. this fund was afterwards augmented by the 3rd of george i, c. 8, and by the 5th of george i, c. 3, and the different duties which were then added to it were likewise rendered perpetual. in 1717, by the 3rd of george i, c. 7, several other taxes were rendered perpetual, and accumulated into another common fund, called the general fund, for the payment of certain annuities, amounting in the whole to l724,849 6s. 10 1/2d. in consequence of those different acts, the greater part of the taxes which before had been anticipated only for a short term of years were rendered perpetual as a fund for paying, not the capital, but the interest only, of the money which had been borrowed upon them by different successive anticipations. had money never been raised but by anticipation, the course of a few years would have liberated the public revenue without any other attention of government besides that of not overloading the fund by charging it with more debt than it could pay within the limited term, and of not anticipating a second time before the expiration of the first anticipation. but the greater part of european governments have been incapable of those attentions. they have frequently overloaded the fund even upon the first anticipation, and when this happened not to be the case, they have generally taken care to overload it by anticipating a second and a third time before the expiration of the first anticipation. the fund becoming in this manner altogether insufficient for paying both principal and interest of the money borrowed upon it, it became necessary to charge it with the interest only, or a perpetual annuity equal to the interest, and such unprovident anticipations necessarily gave birth to the more ruinous practice of perpetual funding. but though this practice necessarily puts off the liberation of the public revenue from a fixed period to one so indefinite that it is not very likely ever to arrive, yet as a greater sum can in all cases be raised by this new practice than by the old one of anticipations, the former, when men have once become familiar with it, has in the great exigencies of the state been universally preferred to the latter. to relieve the present exigency is always the object which principally interests those immediately concerned in the administration of public affairs. the future liberation of the public revenue they leave to the care of posterity. during the reign of queen anne, the market rate of interest had fallen from six to five per cent, and in the twelfth year of her reign five per cent was declared to be the highest rate which could lawfully be taken for money borrowed upon private security. soon after the greater part of the temporary taxes of great britain had been rendered perpetual, and distributed into the aggregate, south sea, and general funds, the creditors of the public, like those of private persons, were induced to accept of five per cent for the interest of their money, which occasioned a saving of one per cent upon the capital of the greater part of the debts which had been thus funded for perpetuity, or of one-sixth of the greater part of the annuities which were paid out of the three great funds above mentioned. this saving left a considerable surplus in the produce of the different taxes which had been accumulated into those funds over and above what was necessary for paying the annuities which were now charged upon them, and laid the foundation of what has since been called the sinking fund. in 1717, it amounted to l323,434 7s. 7 1/2d. in 1727, the interest of the greater part of the public debts was still further reduced to four per cent; and in 1753 and 1757, to three and a half and three per cent; which reductions still further augmented the sinking fund. a sinking fund, though instituted for the payment of old, facilitates very much the contracting of new debts. it is a subsidiary fund always at hand to be mortgaged in aid of any other doubtful fund upon which money is proposed to be raised in an exigency of the state. whether the sinking fund of great britain has been more frequently applied to the one or to the other of those two purposes will sufficiently appear by and by. besides those two methods of borrowing, by anticipations and by perpetual funding, there are two other methods which hold a sort of middle place between them. these are, that of borrowing upon annuities for terms of years, and that of borrowing upon annuities for lives. during the reigns of king william and queen anne, large sums were frequently borrowed upon annuities for terms of years, which were sometimes longer and sometimes shorter. in 1693, an act was passed for borrowing one million upon an annuity of fourteen per cent, or of l140,000 a year for sixteen years. in 1691, an act was passed for borrowing a million upon annuities for lives, upon terms which in the present times would appear very advantageous. but the subscription was not filled up. in the following year the deficiency was made good by borrowing upon annuities for lives at fourteen per cent, or at little more than seven years' purchase. in 1695, the persons who had purchased those annuities were allowed to exchange them for others of ninety-six years upon paying into the exchequer sixty-three pounds in the hundred; that is, the difference between fourteen per cent for life, and fourteen per cent for ninety-six years, was sold for sixty-three pounds, or for four and a half years' purchase. such was the supposed instability of government that even these terms procured few purchasers. in the reign of queen anne money was upon different occasions borrowed both upon annuities for lives, and upon annuities for terms of thirty-two, of eighty-nine, of ninety-eight, and of ninety-nine years. in 1719, the proprietors of the annuities for thirty-two years were induced to accept in lieu of them south sea stock to the amount of eleven and a half years' purchase of the annuities, together with an additional quantity of stock equal to the arrears which happened then to be due upon them. in 1720, the greater part of the other annuities for terms of years both long and short were subscribed into the same fund. the long annuities at that time amounted to l666,821 8s. 3 1/2d. a year. on the 5th of january 1775, the remainder of them, or what was not subscribed at that time, amounted only to l136,453 12s. 8d. during the two wars which began in 1739 and in 1755, little money was borrowed either upon annuities for terms of years, or upon those for lives. an annuity for ninety-eight or ninety-nine years, however, is worth nearly as much money as a perpetuity, and should, therefore, one might think, be a fund for borrowing nearly as much. but those who, in order to make family settlements, and to provide for remote futurity, buy into the public stocks, would not care to purchase into one of which the value was continually diminishing; and such people make a very considerable proportion both of the proprietors and purchasers of stock. an annuity for a long term of years, therefore, though its intrinsic value may be very nearly the same with that of a perpetual annuity, will not find nearly the same number of purchasers. the subscribers to a new loan, who mean generally to sell their subscriptions as soon as possible, prefer greatly a perpetual annuity redeemable by parliament to an irredeemable annuity for a long term of years of only equal amount. the value of the former may be supposed always the same, or very nearly the same, and it makes, therefore, a more convenient transferable stock than the latter. during the two last-mentioned wars, annuities, either for terms of years or for lives, were seldom granted but as premiums to the subscribers to a new loan over and above the redeemable annuity or interest upon the credit of which the loan was supposed to be made. they were granted, not as the proper fund upon which the money was borrowed, but as an additional encouragement to the lender. annuities for lives have occasionally been granted in two different ways; either upon separate lives, or upon lots of lives, which in french are called tontines, from the name of their inventor. when annuities are granted upon separate lives, the death of every individual annuitant disburthens the public revenue so far as it was affected by his annuity. when annuities are granted upon tontines, the liberation of the public revenue does not commence till the death of all annuitants comprehended in one lot, which may sometimes consist of twenty or thirty persons, of whom the survivors succeed to the annuities of all those who die before them, the last survivor succeeding to the annuities of the whole lot. upon the same revenue more money can always be raised by tontines than by annuities for separate lives. an annuity, with a right of survivorship, is really worth more than an equal annuity for a separate life, and from the confidence which every man naturally has in his own good fortune, the principle upon which is founded the success of all lotteries, such an annuity generally sells for something more than it is worth. in countries where it is usual for government to raise money by granting annuities, tontines are upon this account generally preferred to annuities for separate lives. the expedient which will raise most money is almost always preferred to that which is likely to bring about in the speediest manner the liberation of the public revenue. in france a much greater proportion of the public debts consists in annuities for lives than in england. according to a memoir presented by the parliament of bordeaux to the king in 1764, the whole public debt of france is estimated at twenty-four hundred millions of livres, of which the capital for which annuities for lives had been granted is supposed to amount to three hundred millions, the eighth part of the whole public debt. the annuities themselves are computed to amount to thirty millions a year, the fourth part of one hundred and twenty millions, the supposed interest of that whole debt. these estimations, i know very well, are not exact, but having been presented by so very respectable a body as approximations to the truth, they may, i apprehend, be considered as such. it is not the different degrees of anxiety in the two governments of france and england for the liberation of the public revenue which occasions this difference in their respective modes of borrowing. it arises altogether from the different views and interests of the lenders. in england, the seat of government being in the greatest mercantile city in the world, the merchants are generally the people who advance money to government. by advancing it they do not mean to diminish, but, on the contrary, to increase their mercantile capitals, and unless they expected to sell with some profit their share in the subscription for a new loan, they never would subscribe. but if by advancing their money they were to purchase, instead of perpetual annuities, annuities for lives only, whether their own or those of other people, they would not always be so likely to sell them with a profit. annuities upon their own lives they would always sell with loss, because no man will give for an annuity upon the life of another, whose age and state of health are nearly the same with his own, the same price which he would give for one upon his own. an annuity upon the life of a third person, indeed, is, no doubt, of equal value to the buyer and the seller; but its real value begins to diminish from the moment it is granted, and continues to do so more and more as long as it subsists. it can never, therefore, make so convenient a transferable stock as a perpetual annuity, of which the real value may be supposed always the same, or very nearly the same. in france, the seat of government not being in a great mercantile city, merchants do not make so great a proportion of the people who advance money to government. the people concerned in the finances, the farmers general, the receivers of the taxes which are not in farm, the court bankers, etc., make the greater part of those who advance their money in all public exigencies. such people are commonly men of mean birth, but of great wealth, and frequently of great pride. they are too proud to marry their equals, and women of quality disdain to marry them. they frequently resolve, therefore, to live bachelors, and having neither any families of their own, nor much regard for those of their relations, whom they are not always very fond of acknowledging, they desire only to live in splendour during their own time, and are not unwilling that their fortune should end with themselves. the number of rich people, besides, who are either averse to marry, or whose condition of life renders it either improper or inconvenient for them to do so, is much greater in france than in england. to such people, who have little or no care for posterity, nothing can be more convenient than to exchange their capital for a revenue which is to last just as long, and no longer, than they wish it to do. the ordinary expense of the greater part of modern governments in time of peace being equal or nearly equal to their ordinary revenue, when war comes they are both unwilling and unable to increase their revenue in proportion to the increase of their expense. they are unwilling for fear of offending the people, who, by so great and so sudden an increase of taxes, would soon be disgusted with the war; and they are unable from not well knowing what taxes would be sufficient to produce the revenue wanted. the facility of borrowing delivers them from the embarrassment which this fear and inability would otherwise occasion. by means of borrowing they are enabled, with a very moderate increase of taxes, to raise, from year to year, money sufficient for carrying on the war, and by the practice of perpetually funding they are enabled, with the smallest possible increase of taxes, to raise annually the largest possible sum of money. in great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. to them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. they are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war. the return of peace, indeed, seldom relieves them from the greater part of the taxes imposed during the war. these are mortgaged for the interest of the debt contracted in order to carry it on. if, over and above paying the interest of this debt, and defraying the ordinary expense of government, the old revenue, together with the new taxes, produce some surplus revenue, it may perhaps be converted into a sinking fund for paying off the debt. but, in the first place, this sinking fund, even supposing it should be applied to no other purpose, is generally altogether inadequate for paying, in the course of any period during which it can reasonably be expected that peace should continue, the whole debt contracted during the war; and, in the second place, this fund is almost always applied to other purposes. the new taxes were imposed for the sole purpose of paying the interest of the money borrowed upon them. if they produce more, it is generally something which was neither intended nor expected, and is therefore seldom very considerable. sinking funds have generally arisen not so much from any surplus of the taxes which was over and above what was necessary for paying the interest or annuity originally charged upon them, as from a subsequent reduction of that interest. that of holland in 1655, and that of the ecclesiastical state in 1685, were both formed in this manner. hence the usual insufficiency of such funds. during the most profound peace various events occur which require an extraordinary expense, and government finds it always more convenient to defray this expense by misapplying the sinking fund than by imposing a new tax. every new tax is immediately felt more or less by the people. it occasions always some murmur, and meets with some opposition. the more taxes may have been multiplied, the higher they may have been raised upon every different subject of taxation; the more loudly the people complain of every new tax, the more difficult it becomes, too, either to find out new subjects of taxation, or to raise much higher the taxes already imposed upon the old. a momentary suspension of the payment of debt is not immediately felt by the people, and occasions neither murmur nor complaint. to borrow of the sinking fund is always an obvious and easy expedient for getting out of the present difficulty. the more the public debts may have been accumulated, the more necessary it may have become to study to reduce them, the more dangerous, the more ruinous it may be to misapply any part of the sinking fund; the less likely is the public debt to be reduced to any considerable degree, the more likely, the more certainly is the sinking fund to be misapplied towards defraying all the extraordinary expenses which occur in time of peace. when a nation is already overburdened with taxes, nothing but the necessities of a new war, nothing but either the animosity of national vengeance, or the anxiety for national security, can induce the people to submit, with tolerable patience, to a new tax. hence the usual misapplication of the sinking fund. in great britain, from the time that we had first recourse to the ruinous expedient of perpetual funding, the reduction of the public debt in time of peace has never borne any proportion to its accumulation in time of war. it was in the war which began in 1688, and was concluded by the treaty of ryswick in 1697, that the foundation of the present enormous debt of great britain was first laid. on the 31st of december 1697, the public debts of great britain, funded and unfunded, amounted to l21,515,742 13s. 8 1/2d. a great part of those debts had been contracted upon short anticipations, and some part upon annuities for lives, so that before the 31st of december 1701, in less than four years, there had partly been paid off, and partly reverted to the public, the sum of l5,121,041 12s. 0 3/4d.; a greater reduction of the public debt than has ever since been brought about in so short a period of time. the remaining debt, therefore, amounted only to l16,394,701 1s. 7 1/4d. in the war which began in 1709., and which was concluded by the treaty of utrecht, the public debts were still more accumulated. on the 31st of december 1714, they amounted to l53,681,076 5s. 6 1/2d. the subscription into the south sea fund of the short and long annuities increased the capital of the public debts, so that on the 31st of december 1722 it amounted to l55,282,978 1s. 3 5/6d. the reduction of the debt began in 1723, and went on so slowly that, on the 31st of december 1739, during seventeen years of profound peace, the whole sum paid off was no more than l8,328,354 17s. 11 3/12d., the capital of the public debt at that time amounting to l46,954,623 3s. 4 7/12d. the spanish war, which began in 1739, and the french war which soon followed it occasioned further increase of the debt, which, on the 31st of december 1748, after the war had been concluded by the treaty of aix-la-chapelle, amounted to l78,293,313 1s. 10 3/4d. the most profound peace of seventeen years continuance had taken no more than l8,328,354 17s. 11 3/12d. from it. a war of less than nine years' continuance added l31,338,689 18s. 6 1/6d. to it. during the administration of mr. pelham, the interest of the public debt was reduced, or at least measures were taken for reducing it, from four to three per cent; the sinking fund was increased, and some part of the public debt was paid off. in 1755, before the breaking out of the late war, the funded debt of great britain amounted to l72,289,673. on the 5th of january 1763, at the conclusion of the peace, the funded debt amounted to l122,603,336 8s. 2 1/4d. the unfunded debt has been stated at l13,927,589 2s. 2d. but the expense occasioned by the war did not end with the conclusion of the peace, so that though, on the 5th of january 1764, the funded debt was increased (partly by a new loan, and partly by funding a part of the unfunded debt) to l129,586,789 10s. 1 3/4d., there still remained (according to the very well informed author of the considerations on the trade and finances of great britain) an unfunded debt which was brought to account in that and the following year of l9,975,017 12s. 2 15/44d. in 1764, therefore, the public debt of great britain, funded and unfunded together, amounted, according to this author, to l139,516,807 2s. 4d. the annuities for lives, too, which had been granted as premiums to the subscribers to the new loans in 1757, estimated at fourteen years' purchase, were valued at l472,500; and the annuities for long terms of years, granted as premiums likewise in 1761 and 1762, estimated at twenty-seven and a half years' purchase, were valued at l6,826,875. during a peace of about seven years' continuance, the prudent and truly patriot administration of mr. pelham was not able to pay off an old debt of six millions. during a war of nearly the same continuance, a new debt of more than seventy-five millions was contracted. on the 5th of january 1775, the funded debt of great britain amounted to l124,996,086 1s. 6 1/4d. the unfunded, exclusive of a large civil list debt, to l4,150,263 3s. 11 7/8d. both together, to l129,146,322 5s. 6d. according to this account the whole debt paid off during eleven years' profound peace amounted only to l10,415,474 16s. 9 7/8d. even this small reduction of debt, however, has not been all made from the savings out of the ordinary revenue of the state. several extraneous sums, altogether independent of that ordinary revenue, have contributed towards it. amongst these we may reckon an additional shilling in the pound land-tax for three years; the two millions received from the east india company as indemnification for their territorial acquisitions; and the one hundred and ten thousand pounds received from the bank for the renewal of their charter. to these must be added several other sums which, as they arose out of the late war, ought perhaps to be considered as deductions from the expenses of it. the principal are, l s. d. the produce of french prizes 690,449 18 9 composition for french prisoners 670,000 0 0 what has been received from the sale of the ceded islands 95,500 0 0 if we add to this sum the balance of the earl of chatham's and mr. calcraft's accounts, and other army savings of the same kind, together with what has been received from the bank, the east india company, and the additional shilling in the pound land-tax, the whole must be a good deal more than five millions. the debt, therefore, which since the peace has been paid out of the savings the ordinary revenue of the state, has not, one year with another, amounted to half a million a year. the sinking fund has, no doubt, been considerably augmented since the peace, by the debt which has been paid off, by the reduction of the redeemable four per cents to three per cents, and by the annuities for lives which have fallen in, and, if peace were to continue, a million, perhaps, might now be annually spared out of it towards the discharge of the debt. another million, accordingly, was paid in the course of last year; but, at the same time, a new civil list debt was left unpaid, and we are now involved in a new war which, in its progress, may prove as expensive as any of our former wars.* the new debt which will probably be contracted before the end of the next campaign may perhaps be nearly equal to all the old debt which has been paid off from the savings out of the ordinary revenue of the state. it would be altogether chimerical, therefore, to expect that the public debt should ever be completely discharged by any savings which are likely to be made from that ordinary revenue as it stands at present. * it has proved more expensive than all of our former wars; and has involved us in an additional debt of more than one hundred millions. during a profound peace of eleven years, little more than ten millions of debt was paid; during a war of seven years, more than one hundred millions was contracted. the public funds of the different indebted nations of europe, particularly those of england, have by one author been represented as the accumulation of a great capital superadded to the other capital of the country, by means of which its trade is extended, its manufactures multiplied, and its lands cultivated and improved much beyond what they could have been by means of that other capital only. he does not consider that the capital which the first creditors of the public advanced to government was, from the moment in which they advanced it, a certain portion of the annual produce turned away from serving in the function of a capital to serve in that of a revenue; from maintaining productive labourers to maintain unproductive ones, and to be spent and wasted, generally in the course of the year, without even the hope of any future reproduction. in return for the capital which they advanced they obtained, indeed, an annuity in the public funds in most cases of more than equal value. this annuity, no doubt, replaced to them their capital, and enabled them to carry on their trade and business to the same or perhaps to a greater extent than before; that is, they were enabled either to borrow of other people a new capital upon the credit of this annuity, or by selling it to get from other people a new capital of their own equal or superior to that which they had advanced to government. this new capital, however, which they in this manner either bought or borrowed of other people, must have existed in the country before, and must have been employed, as all capitals are, in maintaining productive labour. when it came into the hands of those who had advanced their money to government, though it was in some respects a new capital to them, it was not so to the country, but was only a capital withdrawn from certain employments in or to be turned towards others. though it replaced to them what they had advanced to government, it did not replace it to the country. had they not advanced this capital to government, there would have been in the country two capitals, two portions of the annual produce, instead of one, employed in maintaining productive labour. when for defraying the expense of government a revenue is raised within the year from the produce of free or unmortgaged taxes, a certain portion of the revenue of private people is only turned away from maintaining one species of unproductive labour towards maintaining another. some part of what they pay in those taxes might no doubt have been accumulated into capital, and consequently employed in maintaining productive labour; but the greater part would probably have been spent and consequently employed in maintaining unproductive labour. the public expense, however, when defrayed in this manner, no doubt hinders more or less the further accumulation of new capital; but it does not necessarily occasion the destruction of any actually existing capital. when the public expense is defrayed by funding, it is defrayed by the annual destruction of some capital which had before existed in the country; by the perversion of some portion of the annual produce which had before been destined for the maintenance of productive labour towards that of unproductive labour. as in this case, however, the taxes are lighter than they would have been had a revenue sufficient for defraying the same expense been raised within the year, the private revenue of individuals is necessarily less burdened, and consequently their ability to save and accumulate some part of that revenue into capital is a good deal less impaired. if the method of funding destroys more old capital, it at the same time hinders less the accumulation or acquisition of new capital than that of defraying the public expense by a revenue raised within the year. under the system of funding, the frugality and industry of private people can more easily repair the breaches which the waste and extravagance of government may occasionally make in the general capital of the society. it is only during the continuance of war, however, that the system of funding has this advantage over the other system. were the expense of war to be defrayed always by a revenue raised within the year, the taxes from which that extraordinary revenue was drawn would last no longer than the war. the ability of private people to accumulate, though less during the war, would have been greater during the peace than under the system of funding. war would not necessarily have occasioned the destruction of any old capitals, and peace would have occasioned the accumulation of many more new. wars would in general be more speedily concluded, and less wantonly undertaken. the people feeling, during the continuance of the war, the complete burden of it, would soon grow weary of it, and government, in order to humour them, would not be under the necessity of carrying it on longer than it was necessary to do so. the foresight of the heavy and unavoidable burdens of war would hinder the people from wantonly calling for it when there was no real or solid interest to fight for. the seasons during which the ability of private people to accumulate was somewhat impaired would occur more rarely, and be of shorter continuance. those, on the contrary, during which the ability was in the highest vigour would be of much longer duration than they can well be under the system of funding. when funding, besides, has made a certain progress, the multiplication of taxes which it brings along with it sometimes impairs as much the ability of private people to accumulate even in time of peace as the other system would in time of war. the peace revenue of great britain amounts at present to more than ten millions a year. if free and unmortgaged, it might be sufficient, with proper management and without contracting a shilling of new debt, to carry on the most vigorous war. the private revenue of the inhabitants of great britain is at present as much encumbered in time of peace, their ability to accumulate is as much impaired as it would have been in the time of the most expensive war had the pernicious system of funding never been adopted. in the payment of the interest of the public debt, it has been said, it is the right hand which pays the left. the money does not go out of the country. it is only a part of the revenue of one set of the inhabitants which is transferred to another, and the nation is not a farthing the poorer. this apology is founded altogether in the sophistry of the mercantile system, and after the long examination which i have already bestowed upon that system, it may perhaps be unnecessary to say anything further about it. it supposes, besides, that the whole public debt is owing to the inhabitants of the country, which happens not to be true; the dutch, as well as several other foreign nations, having a very considerable share in our public funds. but though the whole debt were owing to the inhabitants of the country, it would not upon that account be less pernicious. land and capital stock are the two original sources of all revenue both private and public. capital stock pays the wages of productive labour, whether employed in agriculture, manufactures, or commerce. the management of those two original sources of revenue belong to two different sets of people; the proprietors of land, and the owners or employers of capital stock. the proprietor of land is interested for the sake of his own revenue to keep his estate in as good condition as he can, by building and repairing his tenants' houses, by making and maintaining the necessary drains and enclosures, and all those other expensive improvements which it properly belongs to the landlord to make and maintain. but by different land-taxes the revenue of the landlord may be so much diminished, and by different duties upon the necessaries and conveniences of life that diminished revenue may be rendered of so little real value, that he may find himself altogether unable to make or maintain those expensive improvements. when the landlord, however, ceases to do his part, it is altogether impossible that the tenant should continue to do his. as the distress of the landlord increases, the agriculture of the country must necessarily decline. when, by different taxes upon the necessaries and conveniences of life, the owners and employers of capital stock find that whatever revenue they derive from it will not, in a particular country, purchase the same quantity of those necessaries and conveniences which an equal revenue would in almost any other, they will be disposed to remove to some other. and when, in order to raise those taxes, all or the greater part of merchants and manufacturers, that is, all or the greater part of the employers of great capitals, come to be continually exposed to the mortifying and vexatious visits of the tax-gatherers, the disposition to remove will soon be changed into an actual removal. the industry of the country will necessarily fall with the removal of the capital which supported it, and the ruin of trade and manufactures will follow the declension of agriculture. to transfer from the owners of those two great sources of revenue, land and capital stock, from the persons immediately interested in the good condition of every particular portion of land, and in the good management of every particular portion of capital stock, to another set of persons (the creditors of the public, who have no such particular interest), the greater part of the revenue arising from either must, in the long-run, occasion both the neglect of land, and the waste or removal of capital stock. a creditor of the public has no doubt a general interest in the prosperity of the agriculture, manufactures, and commerce of the country, and consequently in the good condition of its lands, and in the good management of its capital stock. should there be any general failure or declension in any of these things, the produce of the different taxes might no longer be sufficient to pay him the annuity or interest which is due to him. but a creditor of the public, considered merely as such, has no interest in the good condition of any particular portion of land, or in the good management of any particular portion of capital stock. as a creditor of the public he has no knowledge of any such particular portion. he has no inspection of it. he can have no care about it. its ruin may in some cases be unknown to him, and cannot directly affect him. the practice of funding has gradually enfeebled every state which has adopted it. the italian republics seem to have begun it. genoa and venice, the only two remaining which can pretend to an independent existence, have both been enfeebled by it. spain seems to have learned the practice from the italian republics, and (its taxes being probably less judicious than theirs) it has, in proportion to its natural strength, been still more enfeebled. the debts of spain are of very old standing. it was deeply in debt before the end of the sixteenth century, about a hundred years before england owed a shilling. france, notwithstanding all its natural resources, languishes under an oppressive load of the same kind. the republic of the united provinces is as much enfeebled by its debts as either genoa or venice. is it likely that in great britain alone a practice which has brought either weakness or desolation into every other country should prove altogether innocent? the system of taxation established in those different countries, it may be said, is inferior to that of england. i believe it is so. but it ought to be remembered that, when the wisest government has exhausted all the proper subjects of taxation, it must, in cases of urgent necessity, have recourse to improper ones. the wise republic of holland has upon some occasions been obliged to have recourse to taxes as inconvenient as the greater part of those of spain. another war begun before any considerable liberation of the public revenue had been brought about, and growing in its progress as expensive as the last war, may, from irresistible necessity, render the british system of taxation as oppressive as that of holland, or even as that of spain. to the honour of our present system of taxation, indeed, it has hitherto given so little embarrassment to industry that, during the course even of the most expensive wars, the frugality and good conduct of individuals seem to have been able, by saving and accumulation, to repair all the breaches which the waste and extravagance of government had made in the general capital of the society. at the conclusion of the late war, the most expensive that great britain ever waged, her agriculture was as flourishing, her manufacturers as numerous and as fully employed, and her commerce as extensive as they had ever been before. the capital, therefore, which supported all those different branches of industry must have been equal to what it had ever been before. since the peace, agriculture has been still further improved, the rents of houses have risen in every town and village of the countrya proof of the increasing wealth and revenue of the people; and the annual amount the greater part of the old taxes, of the principal branches of the excise and customs in particular, has been continually increasingan equally clear proof of an increasing consumption, and consequently of an increasing produce which could alone support that consumption. great britain seems to support with ease a burden which, half a century ago, nobody believed her capable of supporting. let us not, however, upon this account rashly conclude that she is capable of supporting any burden, nor even be too confident that she could support, without great distress, a burden a little greater than what has already been laid upon her. when national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, i believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. the liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about by bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretended payment. the raising of the denomination of the coin has been the most usual expedient by which a real public bankruptcy has been disguised under the appearance of a pretended payment. if a sixpence, for example, should either by act of parliament or royal proclamation be raised to the denomination of a shilling, and twenty sixpences to that of a pound sterling, the person who under the old denomination had borrowed twenty shillings, or near four ounces of silver, would, under the new, pay with twenty sixpences, or with something less than two ounces. a national debt of about a hundred and twenty-eight millions, nearly the capital of the funded and unfunded debt of great britain, might in this manner be paid with about sixty-four millions of our present money. it would indeed be a pretended payment only, and the creditors of the public would really be defrauded of ten shillings in the pound of what was due to them. the calamity, too, would extend much further than to the creditors of the public, and those of every private person would suffer a proportionable loss; and this without any advantage, but in most cases with a great additional loss, to the creditors of the public. if the creditors of the public, indeed, were generally much in debt to other people, they might in some measure compensate their loss by paying their creditors in the same coin in which the public had paid them. but in most countries the creditors of the public are, the greater part of them, wealthy people, who stand more in the relation of creditors than in that of debtors towards the rest of their fellow-citizens. a pretended payment of this kind, therefore, instead of alleviating, aggravates in most cases the loss of the creditors of the public, and without any advantage to the public, extends the calamity to a great number of other innocent people. it occasions a general and most pernicious subversion of the fortunes of private people, enriching in most cases the idle and profuse debtor at the expense of the industrious and frugal creditor, and transporting a great part of the national capital from the hands which were likely to increase and improve it to those which are likely to dissipate and destroy it. when it becomes necessary for a state to declare itself bankrupt, in the same manner as when it becomes necessary for an individual to do so, a fair, open, and avowed bankruptcy is always the measure which is both least dishonourable to the debtor and least hurtful to the creditor. the honour of a state is surely very poorly provided for when, in order to cover the disgrace of a real bankruptcy, it has recourse to a juggling trick of this kind, so easily seen through, and at the same time so extremely pernicious. almost all states, however, ancient as well as modern, when reduced to this necessity have, upon some occasions, played this very juggling trick. the romans, at the end of the first punic war, reduced the as, the coin or denomination by which they computed the value of all their other coins, from containing twelve ounces of copper to contain only two ounces; that is, they raised two ounces of copper to a denomination which had always before expressed the value of twelve ounces. the republic was, in this manner, enabled to pay the great debts which it had contracted with the sixth part of what it really owed. so sudden and so great a bankruptcy, we should in the present times be apt to imagine, must have occasioned a very violent popular clamour. it does not appear to have occasioned any. the law which enacted it was, like all other laws relating to the coin, introduced and carried through the assembly of the people by a tribune, and was probably a very popular law. in rome, as in all the other ancient republics, the poor people were constantly in debt to the rich and the great, who in order to secure their votes at the annual elections, used to lend them money at exorbitant interest, which, being never paid, soon accumulated into a sum too great either for the debtor to pay, or for anybody else to pay for him. the debtor, for fear of a very severe execution, was obliged, without any further gratuity, to vote for the candidate whom the creditor recommended. in spite of all the laws against bribery and corruption, the bounty of the candidates, together with the occasional distributions of corn which were ordered by the senate, were the principal funds from which, during the latter times of the roman republic, the poorer citizens derived their subsistence. to deliver themselves from this subjection to their creditors, the poorer citizens were continually calling out either for an entire abolition of debts, or for what they called new tables; that is, for a law which should entitle them to a complete acquittance upon paying only a certain proportion of their accumulated debts. the law which reduced the coin of all denominations to a sixth part of its former value, as it enabled them to pay their debts with a sixth part of what they really owed, was equivalent to the most advantageous new tables. in order to satisfy the people, the rich and the great were, upon several different occasions, obliged to consent to laws both for abolishing debts, and for introducing new tables; and they probably were induced to consent to this law partly for the same reason, and partly that, by liberating the public revenue, they might restore vigour to that government of which they themselves had the principal direction. an operation of this kind would at once reduce a debt of a hundred and twenty-eight millions to twenty-one millions three hundred and thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three pounds six shillings and eightpence. in the course of the second punic war the as was still further reduced, first, from two ounces of copper to one ounce, and afterwards from one ounce to half an ounce; that is, to the twenty-fourth part of its original value. by combining the three roman operations into one, a debt of a hundred and twenty-eight millions of our present money might in this manner be reduced all at once to a debt of five millions three hundred and thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three pounds six shillings and eightpence. even the enormous debts of great britain might in this manner soon be paid. by means of such expedients the coin of, i believe, all nations has been gradually reduced more and more below its original value, and the same nominal sum has been gradually brought to contain a smaller and a smaller quantity of silver. nations have sometimes, for the same purpose, adulterated the standard of their coin; that is, have mixed a greater quantity of alloy in it. if in the pound weight of our silver coin, for example, instead of eighteen pennyweight, according to the present standard, there was mixed eight ounces of alloy, a pound sterling, or twenty shillings of such coin, would be worth little more than six shillings and eightpence of our present money. the quantity of silver contained in six shillings and eightpence of our present money would thus be raised very nearly to the denomination of a pound sterling. the adulteration of the standard has exactly the same effect with what the french call an augmentation, or a direct raising of the denomination of the coin. an augmentation, or a direct raising of the coin, always is, and from its nature must be, an open and avowed operation. by means of it pieces of a smaller weight and bulk are called by the same name which had before been given to pieces of a greater weight and bulk. the adulteration of the standard, on the contrary, has generally been a concealed operation. by means of it pieces were issued from the mint of the same denominations, and, as nearly as could be contrived, of the same weight, bulk, and appearance with pieces which had been current before of much greater value. when king john of france, in order to pay his debts, adulterated his coin, all the officers of his mint were sworn to secrecy. both operations are unjust. but a simple augmentation is an injustice of open violence, whereas the adulteration is an injustice of treacherous fraud. this latter operation, therefore, as soon as it has been discovered, and it could never be concealed very long, has always excited much greater indignation than the former. the coin after any considerable augmentation has very seldom been brought back to its former weight; but after the greater adulterations it has almost always been brought back to its former fineness. it has scarce ever happened that the fury and indignation of the people could otherwise be appeased. in the end of the reign of henry viii and in the beginning of that of edward vi the english coin was not only raised in its denomination, but adulterated in its standard. the like frauds were practised in scotland during the minority of james vi. they have occasionally been practised in most other countries. that the public revenue of great britain can never be completely liberated, or even that any considerable progress can ever be made towards that liberation, while the surplus of that revenue, or what is over and above defraying the annual expense of the peace establishment, is so very small, it seems altogether in vain to expect. that liberation, it is evident, can never be brought about without either some very considerable augmentation of the public revenue, or some equally considerable reduction of the public expense. a more equal land-tax, a more equal tax upon the rent of houses, and such alterations in the present system of customs and excise as those which have been mentioned in the foregoing chapter might, perhaps, without increasing the burden of the greater part of the people, but only distributing the weight of it more equally upon the whole, produce a considerable augmentation of revenue. the most sanguine projector, however, could scarce flatter himself that any augmentation of this kind would be such as could give any reasonable hopes either of liberating the public revenue altogether, or even of making such progress towards that liberation in time of peace as either to prevent or to compensate the further accumulation of the public debt in the next war. by extending the british system of taxation to all the different provinces of the empire inhabited by people of either british or european extraction, a much greater augmentation of revenue might be expected. this, however, could scarce, perhaps, be done, consistently with the principles of the british constitution, without admitting into the british parliament, or if you will into the states general of the british empire, a fair and equal representation of all those different provinces, that of each province bearing the same proportion to the produce of its taxes as the representation of great britain might bear to the produce of the taxes levied upon great britain. the private interest of many powerful individuals, the confirmed prejudices of great bodies of people seem, indeed, at present, to oppose to so great a change such obstacles as it may be very difficult, perhaps altogether impossible, to surmount. without, however, pretending to determine whether such a union be practicable or impracticable, it may not, perhaps, be improper, in a speculative work of this kind, to consider how far the british system of taxation might be applicable to all the different provinces of the empire, what revenue might be expected from it if so applied, and in what manner a general union of this kind might be likely to affect the happiness and prosperity of the different provinces comprehended within it. such a speculation can at worst be regarded but as a new utopia, less amusing certainly, but not more useless and chimerical than the old one. the land-tax, the stamp-duties, and the different duties of customs and excise constitute the four principal branches of the british taxes. ireland is certainly as able, and our american and west indian plantations more able to pay a land-tax than great britain. where the landlord is subject neither to tithe nor poor-rate, he must certainly be more able to pay such a tax than where he is subject to both those other burdens. the tithe, where there is no modus, and where it is levied in kind, diminishes more what would otherwise be the rent of the landlord than a land-tax which really amounted to five shillings in the pound. such a tithe will be found in most cases to amount to more than a fourth part of the real rent of the land, or of what remains after replacing completely the capital of the farmer, together with his reasonable profit. if all moduses and all impropriations were taken away, the complete church tithe of great britain and ireland could not well be estimated at less than six or seven millions. if there was no tithe either in great britain or ireland, the landlords could afford to pay six or seven millions additional land-tax without being more burdened than a very great part of them are at present. america pays no tithe, and could therefore very well afford to pay a land-tax. the lands in america and the west indies, indeed, are in general not tenanted nor leased out to farmers. they could not therefore be assessed according to any rent-roll. but neither were the lands of great britain, in the 4th of william and mary, assessed according to any rent-roll, but according to a very loose and inaccurate estimation. the lands in america might be assessed either in the same manner, or according to an equitable valuation in consequence of an accurate survey like that which was lately made in the milanese, and in the dominions of austria, prussia, and sardinia. stamp-duties, it is evident, might be levied without any variation in all countries where the forms of law process, and the deeds by which property both real and personal is transferred, are the same or nearly the same. the extension of the custom-house laws of great britain to ireland and the plantations, provided it was accompanied, as in justice it ought to be, with an extension of the freedom of trade, would be in the highest degree advantageous to both. all the invidious restraints which at present oppress the trade of ireland, the distinction between the enumerated and non-enumerated commodities of america, would be entirely at an end. the countries north of cape finisterre would be as open to every part of the produce of america as those south of that cape are to some parts of that produce at present. the trade between all the different parts of the british empire would, in consequence of this uniformity in the custom-house laws, be as free as the coasting trade of great britain is at present. the british empire would thus afford within itself an immense internal market for every part of the produce of all its different provinces. so great an extension of market would soon compensate both to ireland and the plantations all that they could suffer from the increase of the duties of customs. the excise is the only part of the british system of taxation which would require to be varied in any respect according as it was applied to the different provinces of the empire. it might be applied to ireland without any variation, the produce and consumption of that kingdom being exactly of the same nature with those of great britain. in its application to america and the west indies, of which the produce and consumption are so very different from those of great britain, some modification might be necessary in the same manner as in its application to the cyder and beer counties of england. a fermented liquor, for example, which is called beer, but which, as it is made of molasses, bears very little resemblance to our beer, makes a considerable part of the common drink of the people in america. this liquor, as it can be kept only for a few days, cannot, like our beer, be prepared and stored up for sale in great breweries; but every private family must brew it for their own use, in the same manner as they cook their victuals. but to subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers, in the same manner as we subject the keepers of alehouses and the brewers for public sale, would be altogether inconsistent with liberty. if for the sake of equality it was thought necessary to lay a tax upon this liquor, it might be taxed by taxing the material of which it is made, either at the place of manufacture, or, if the circumstances of the trade rendered such an excise improper, by laying a duty upon its importation into the colony in which it was to be consumed. besides the duty of one penny a gallon imposed by the british parliament upon the importation of molasses into america, there is a provincial tax of this kind upon their importation into massachusetts bay, in ships belonging to any other colony, of eightpence the hogshead; and another upon their importation, from the northern colonies into south carolina, of fivepence the gallon. or if neither of these methods was found convenient, each family might compound for its consumption of this liquor, either according to the number of persons of which it consisted, in the same manner as private families compound for the malt-tax in england; or according to the different ages and sexes of those persons, in the same manner as several different taxes are levied in holland; or nearly as sir matthew decker proposes that all taxes upon consumable commodities should be levied in england. this mode of taxation, it has already been observed, when applied to objects of a speedy consumption is not a very convenient one. it might be adopted, however, in cases where no better could be done. sugar, rum, and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation. if a union with the colonies were to take place, those commodities might be taxed either before they go out of the hands of the manufacturer or grower, or if this mode of taxation did not suit the circumstances of those persons, they might be deposited in public warehouses both at the place of manufacture, and at all the different ports of the empire to which they might afterwards be transported, to remain there, under the joint custody of the owner and the revenue officer, till such time as they should be delivered out either to the consumer, to the merchant retailer for home consumption, or to the merchant exporter, the tax not to be advanced till such delivery. when delivered out for exportation, to go duty free upon proper security being given that they should really be exported out of the empire. these are perhaps the principal commodities with regard to which a union with the colonies might require some considerable change in the present system of british taxation. what might be the amount of the revenue which this system of taxation extended to all the different provinces of the empire might produce, it must, no doubt, be altogether impossible to ascertain with tolerable exactness. by means of this system there is annually levied in great britain, upon less than eight millions of people, more than ten millions of revenue. ireland contains more than two millions of people, and according to the accounts laid before the congress, the twelve associated provinces of america contain more than three. those accounts, however, may have been exaggerated, in order, perhaps, either to encourage their own people, or to intimidate those of this country, and we shall suppose, therefore, that our north american and west indian colonies taken together contain no more than three millions; or that the whole british empire, in europe and america, contains no more than thirteen millions of inhabitants. if upon less than eight millions of inhabitants this system of taxation raises a revenue of more than ten millions sterling, it ought upon thirteen millions of inhabitants to raise a revenue of more than sixteen millions two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling. from this revenue, supposing that this system could produce it, must be deducted the revenue usually raised in ireland and the plantations for defraying the expense of their respective civil governments. the expense of the civil and military establishment of ireland, together with the interest of the public debt, amounts, at a medium of the two years which ended march 1775, to something less than seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year. by a very exact account of the revenue of the principal colonies of america and the west indies, it amounted, before the commencement of the present disturbances, to a hundred and forty-one thousand eight hundred pounds. in this account, however, the revenue of maryland, of north carolina, and of all our late acquisitions both upon the continent and in the islands is omitted, which may perhaps make a difference of thirty or forty thousand pounds. for the sake of even numbers, therefore, let us suppose that the revenue necessary for supporting the civil government of ireland and the plantations may amount to a million. there would remain consequently a revenue of fifteen millions two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to be applied towards defraying the general expense of the empire, and towards paying the public debt. but if from the present revenue of great britain a million could in peaceable times be spared towards the payment of that debt, six millions two hundred and fifty thousand pounds could very well be spared from this improved revenue. this great sinking fund, too, might be augmented every year by the interest of the debt which had been discharged the year before, and might in this manner increase so very rapidly as to be sufficient in a few years to discharge the whole debt, and thus to restore completely the at present debilitated and languishing vigour of the empire. in the meantime the people might be relieved from some of the most burdensome taxes; from those which are imposed either upon the necessaries of life, or upon the materials of manufacture. the labouring poor would thus be enabled to live better, to work cheaper, and to send their goods cheaper to market. the cheapness of their goods would increase the demand for them, and consequently for the labour of those who produced them. this increase in the demand for labour would both increase the numbers and improve the circumstances of the labouring poor. their consumption would increase, and together with it the revenue arising from all those articles of their consumption upon which the taxes might be allowed to remain. the revenue arising from this system of taxation, however, might not immediately increase in proportion to the number of people who were subjected to it. great indulgence would for some time be due to those provinces of the empire which were thus subjected to burdens to which they had not before been accustomed, and even when the same taxes came to be levied everywhere as exactly as possible, they would not everywhere produce a revenue proportioned to the numbers of the people. in a poor country the consumption of the principal commodities subject to the duties of customs and excise is very small, and in a thinly inhabited country the opportunities of smuggling are very great. the consumption of malt liquors among the inferior ranks of people in scotland is very small, and the excise upon malt, beer, and ale produces less there than in england in proportion to the numbers of the people and the rate of the duties, which upon malt is different on account of a supposed difference of quality. in these particular branches of the excise there is not, i apprehend, much more smuggling in the one country than in the other. the duties upon the distillery, and the greater part of the duties of customs, in proportion to the numbers of people in the respective countries, produce less in scotland than in england, not only on account of the smaller consumption of the taxed commodities, but of the much greater facility of smuggling. in ireland the inferior ranks of people are still poorer than in scotland, and many parts of the country are almost as thinly inhabited. in ireland, therefore, the consumption of the taxed commodities might, in proportion to the number of the people, be still less than scotland, and the facility of smuggling nearly the same. in america and the west indies the white people even of the lowest rank are in much better circumstances than those of the same rank in england, and their consumption of all the luxuries in which they usually indulge themselves is probably much greater. the blacks, indeed, who make the greater part of the inhabitants both of the southern colonies upon the continent and of the west india islands, as they are in a state of slavery, are, no doubt, in a worse condition than the poorest people either in scotland or ireland. we must not, however, upon that account, imagine that they are worse fed, or that their consumption of articles which might be subjected to moderate duties is less than that even of the lower ranks of people in england. in order that they may work well, it is the interest of their master that they should be fed well and kept in good heart in the same manner as it is his interest that his working cattle should be so. the blacks accordingly have almost everywhere their allowance of rum and molasses or spruce beer in the same manner as the white servants, and this allowance would not probably be withdrawn though those articles should be subjected to moderate duties. the consumption of the taxed commodities, therefore, in proportion to the number of inhabitants, would probably be as great in america and the west indies as in any part of the british empire. the opportunities of smuggling, indeed, would be much greater; america, in proportion to the extent of the country, being much more thinly inhabited than either scotland or ireland. if the revenue, however, which is at present raised by the different duties upon malt and malt liquors were to be levied by a single duty upon malt, the opportunity of smuggling in the most important branch of the excise would be almost entirely taken away: and if the duties of customs, instead of being imposed upon almost all the different articles of importation, were confined to a few of the most general use and consumption, and if the levying of those duties were subjected to the excise laws, the opportunity of smuggling, though not so entirely taken away, would be very much diminished. in consequence of those two, apparently, very simple and easy alterations, the duties of customs and excise might probably produce a revenue as great in proportion to the consumption of the most thinly inhabited province as they do at present in proportion to that of the most populous. the americans, it has been said, indeed, have no gold or silver money; the interior commerce of the country being carried on by a paper currency, and the gold and silver which occasionally come among them being all sent to great britain in return for the commodities which they receive from us. but without gold and silver, it is added, there is no possibility of paying taxes. we already get all the gold and silver which they have. how is it possible to draw from them what they have not? the present scarcity of gold and silver money in america is not the effect of the poverty of that country, or of the inability of the people there to purchase those metals. in a country where the wages of labour are so much higher, and the price of provisions so much lower than in england, the greater part of the people must surely have wherewithal to purchase a greater quantity if it were either necessary or convenient for them to do so. the scarcity of those metals, therefore, must be the effect of choice, and not of necessity. it is for transacting either domestic or foreign business that gold and silver money is either necessary or convenient. the domestic business of every country, it has been shown in the second book of this inquiry, may, at least in peaceable times, be transacted by means of a paper currency with nearly the same degree of conveniency as by gold and silver money. it is convenient for the americans, who could always employ with profit in the improvement of their lands a greater stock than they can easily get, to save as much as possible the expense of so costly an instrument of commerce as gold and silver, and rather to employ that part of their surplus produce which would be necessary for purchasing those metals in purchasing the instruments of trade, the materials of clothing, several parts of household furniture, and the ironwork necessary for building and extending their settlements and plantations; in purchasing, not dead stock, but active and productive stock. the colony governments find it for their interest to supply the people with such a quantity of papermoney as is fully sufficient and generally more than sufficient for transacting their domestic business. some of those governments, that of pennsylvania particularly, derive a revenue from lending this paper-money to their subjects at an interest of so much per cent. others, like that of massachusetts bay, advance upon extraordinary emergencies a paper-money of this kind for defraying the public expense, and afterwards, when it suits the conveniency of the colony, redeem it at the depreciated value to which it gradually falls. in 1747, that colony paid, in this manner, the greater part of its public debts with the tenth part of the money for which its bills had been granted. it suits the conveniency of the planters to save the expense of employing gold and silver money in their domestic transactions, and it suits the conveniency of the colony governments to supply them with a medium which, though attended with some very considerable disadvantages, enables them to save that expense. the redundancy of paper-money necessarily banishes gold and silver from the domestic transactions of the colonies, for the same reason that it has banished those metals from the greater part of the domestic transactions in scotland; and in both countries it is not the poverty, but the enterprising and projecting spirit of the people, their desire of employing all the stock which they can get as active and productive stock, which has occasioned this redundancy of paper-money. in the exterior commerce which the different colonies carry on with great britain, gold and silver are more or less employed exactly in proportion as they are more or less necessary. where those metals are not necessary they seldom appear. where they are necessary they are generally found. in the commerce between great britain and the tobacco colonies the british goods are generally advanced to the colonists at a pretty long credit, and are afterwards paid for in tobacco, rated at a certain price. it is more convenient for the colonists to pay in tobacco than in gold and silver. it would be more convenient for any merchant to pay for the goods which his correspondents had sold to him in some other sort of goods which he might happen to deal in than in money. such a merchant would have no occasion to keep any part of his stock by him unemployed, and in ready money, for answering occasional demands. he could have, at all times, a larger quantity of goods in his shop or warehouse, and he could deal to a greater extent. but it seldom happens to be convenient for all the correspondents of a merchant to receive payment for the goods which they sell to him in goods of some other kind which he happens to deal in. the british merchants who trade to virginia and maryland happen to be a particular set of correspondents, to whom it is more convenient to receive payment for the goods which they sell to those colonies in tobacco than in gold and silver. they expect to make a profit by the sale of the tobacco. they could make none by that of the gold and silver. gold and silver, therefore, very seldom appear in the commerce between great britain and the tobacco colonies. maryland and virginia have as little occasion for those metals in their foreign as in their domestic commerce. they are said, accordingly, to have less gold and silver money than any other colonies in america. they are reckoned, however, as thriving, and consequently as rich, as any of their neighbours. in the northern colonies, pennsylvania, new york, new jersey, the four governments of new england, etc., the value of their own produce which they export to great britain is not equal to that of the manufactures which they import for their own use, and for that of some of the other colonies to which they are the carriers. a balance, therefore, must be paid to the mother country in gold and silver, and this balance they generally find. in the sugar colonies the value of the produce annually exported to great britain is much greater than that of all the goods imported from thence. if the sugar and rum annually sent to the mother country were paid for in those colonies, great britain would be obliged to send out every year a very large balance in money, and the trade to the west indies would, by a certain species of politicians, be considered as extremely disadvantageous. but it so happens that many of the principal proprietors of the sugar plantations reside in great britain. their rents are remitted to them in sugar and rum, the produce of their estates. the sugar and rum which the west india merchants purchase in those colonies upon their own account are not equal in value to the goods which they annually sell there. a balance, therefore, must necessarily be paid to them in gold and silver, and this balance, too, is generally found. the difficulty and irregularity of payment from the different colonies to great britain have not been at all in proportion to the greatness or smallness of the balances which were respectively due from them. payments have in general been more regular from the northern than from the tobacco colonies, though the former have generally paid a pretty large balance in money, while the latter have either paid no balance, or a much smaller one. the difficulty of getting payment from our different sugar colonies has been greater or less in proportion, not so much to the extent of the balances respectively due from them, as to the quantity of uncultivated land which they contained; that is, to the greater or smaller temptation which the planters have been under of overtrading, or of undertaking the settlement and plantation of greater quantities of waste land than suited the extent of their capitals. the returns from the great island of jamaica, where there is still much uncultivated land, have, upon this account, been in general more irregular and uncertain than those from the smaller islands of barbadoes, antigua, and st. christophers, which have for these many years been completely cultivated, and have, upon that account, afforded less field for the speculations of the planter. the new acquisitions of grenada, tobago, st. vincents, and dominica have opened a new field for speculations of this kind, and the returns from those islands have of late been as irregular and uncertain as those from the great island of jamaica. it is not, therefore, the poverty of the colonies which occasions, in the greater part of them, the present scarcity of gold and silver money. their great demand for active and productive stock makes it convenient for them to have as little dead stock as possible, and disposes them upon that account to content themselves with a cheaper though less commodious instrument of commerce than gold and silver. they are thereby enabled to convert the value of that gold and silver into the instruments of trade, into the materials of clothing, into household furniture, and into the ironwork necessary for building and extending their settlements and plantations. in those branches of business which cannot be transacted without gold and silver money, it appears that they can always find the necessary quantity of those metals; and if they frequently do not find it, their failure is generally the effect, not of their necessary poverty, but of their unnecessary and excessive enterprise. it is not because they are poor that their payments are irregular and uncertain, but because they are too eager to become excessively rich. though all that part of the produce of the colony taxes which was over and above what was necessary for defraying the expense of their own civil and military establishments were to be remitted to great britain in gold and silver, the colonies have abundantly wherewithal to purchase the requisite quantity of those metals. they would in this case be obliged, indeed, to exchange a part of their surplus produce, with which they now purchase active and productive stock, for dead stock. in transacting their domestic business they would be obliged to employ a costly instead of a cheap instrument of commerce, and the expense of purchasing this costly instrument might damp somewhat the vivacity and ardour of their excessive enterprise in the improvement of land. it might not, however, be necessary to remit any part of the american revenue in gold and silver. it might be remitted in bills drawn upon and accepted by particular merchants or companies in great britain to whom a part of the surplus produce of america had been consigned, who would pay into the treasury the american revenue in money, after having themselves received the value of it in goods; and the whole business might frequently be transacted without exporting a single ounce of gold or silver from america. it is not contrary to justice that both ireland and america should contribute towards the discharge of the public debt of great britain. that debt has been contracted in support of the government established by the revolution, a government to which the protestants of ireland owe, not only the whole authority which they at present enjoy in their own country, but every security which they possess for their liberty, their property, and their religion; a government to which several of the colonies of america owe their present charters, and consequently their present constitution, and to which all the colonies of america owe the liberty, security, and property which they have ever since enjoyed. that public debt has been contracted in the defence, not of great britain alone, but of all the different provinces of the empire; the immense debt contracted in the late war in particular, and a great part of that contracted in the war before, were both properly contracted in defence of america. by a union with great britain, ireland would gain, besides the freedom of trade, other advantages much more important, and which would much more than compensate any increase of taxes that might accompany that union. by the union with england the middling and inferior ranks of people in scotland gained a complete deliverance from the power of an aristocracy which had always before oppressed them. by a union with great britain the greater part of the people of all ranks in ireland would gain an equally complete deliverance from a much more oppressive aristocracy; an aristocracy not founded, like that of scotland, in the natural and respectable distinctions of birth and fortune, but in the most odious of all distinctions, those of religious and political prejudices; distinctions which, more than any other, animate both the insolence of the oppressors and the hatred and indignation of the oppressed, and which commonly render the inhabitants of the same country more hostile to one another than those of different countries ever are. without a union with great britain the inhabitants of ireland are not likely for many ages to consider themselves as one people. no oppressive aristocracy has ever prevailed in the colonies. even they, however, would, in point of happiness and tranquility, gain considerably by a union with great britain. it would, at least, deliver them from those rancorous and virulent factions which are inseparable from small democracies, and which have so frequently divided the affections of their people, and disturbed the tranquillity of their governments, in their form so nearly democratical. in the case of a total separation from great britain, which, unless prevented by a union of this kind, seems very likely to take place, those factions would be ten times more virulent than ever. before the commencement of the present disturbances, the coercive power of the mother country had always been able to restrain those factions from breaking out into anything worse than gross brutality and insult. if that coercive power were entirely taken away, they would probably soon break out into open violence and bloodshed. in all great countries which are united under one uniform government, the spirit of party commonly prevails less in the remote provinces than in the centre of the empire. the distance of those provinces from the capital, from the principal seat of the great scramble of faction and ambition, makes them enter less into the views of any of the contending parties, and renders them more indifferent and impartial spectators of the conduct of all. the spirit of party prevails less in scotland than in england. in the case of a union it would probably prevail less in ireland than in scotland, and the colonies would probably soon enjoy a degree of concord and unanimity at present unknown in any part of the british empire. both ireland and the colonies, indeed, would be subjected to heavier taxes than any which they at present pay. in consequence, however, of a diligent and faithful application of the public revenue towards the discharge of the national debt, the greater part of those taxes might not be of long continuance, and the public revenue of great britain might soon be reduced to what was necessary for maintaining a moderate peace establishment. the territorial acquisitions of the east india company, the undoubted right of the crown, that is, of the state and people of great britain, might be rendered another source of revenue more abundant, perhaps, than all those already mentioned. those countries are represented as more fertile, more extensive, and, in proportion to their extent, much richer and more populous than great britain. in order to draw a great revenue from them, it would not probably be necessary to introduce any new system of taxation into countries which are already sufficiently and more than sufficiently taxed. it might, perhaps, be more proper to lighten than to aggravate the burden of those unfortunate countries, and to endeavour to draw a revenue from them, not by imposing new taxes, but by preventing the embezzlement and misapplication of the greater part of those which they already pay. if it should be found impracticable for great britain to draw any considerable augmentation of revenue from any of the resources above mentioned, the only resource which can remain to her is a diminution of her expense. in the mode of collecting and in that of expending the public revenue, though in both there may be still room for improvement, great britain seems to be at least as economical as any of her neighbours. the military establishment which she maintains for her own defence in time of peace is more moderate than that of any european state which can pretend to rival her either in wealth or in power. none of those articles, therefore, seem to admit of any considerable reduction of expense. the expense of the peace establishment of the colonies was, before the commencement of the present disturbances, very considerable, and is an expense which may, and if no revenue can be drawn from them ought certainly to be saved altogether. this constant expense in time of peace, though very great, is insignificant in comparison with what the defence of the colonies has cost us in time of war. the last war, which was undertaken altogether on account of the colonies, cost great britain, it has already been observed, upwards of ninety millions. the spanish war of 1739 was principally undertaken on their account, in which, and in the french war that was the consequence of it, great britain spent upwards of forty millions, a great part of which ought justly to be charged to the colonies. in those two wars the colonies cost great britain much more than double the sum which the national debt amounted to before the commencement of the first of them. had it not been for those wars that debt might, and probably would by this time, have been completely paid; and had it not been for the colonies, the former of those wars might not, and the latter certainly would not have been undertaken. it was because the colonies were supposed to be provinces of the british empire that this expense was laid out upon them. but countries which contribute neither revenue nor military force towards the support of the empire cannot be considered as provinces. they may perhaps be considered as appendages, as a sort of splendid and showy equipage of the empire. but if the empire can no longer support the expense of keeping up this equipage, it ought certainly to lay it down; and if it cannot raise its revenue in proportion to its expense, it ought, at least, to accommodate its expense to its revenue. if the colonies, notwithstanding their refusal to submit to british taxes, are still to be considered as provinces of the british empire, their defence in some future war may cost great britain as great an expense as it ever has done in any former war. the rulers of great britain have, for more than a century past, amused the people with the imagination that they possessed a great empire on the west side of the atlantic. this empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only. it has hitherto been, not an empire, but the project of an empire; not a gold mine, but the project of a gold mine; a project which has cost, which continues to cost, and which, if pursued in the same way as it has been hitherto, is likely to cost, immense expense, without being likely to bring any profit; for the effects of the monopoly of the colony trade, it has been shown, are, to the great body of the people, mere loss instead of profit. it is surely now time that our rulers should either realize this golden dream, in which they have been indulging themselves, perhaps, as well as the people, or that they should awake from it themselves, and endeavour to awaken the people. if the project cannot be completed, it ought to be given up. if any of the provinces of the british empire cannot be made to contribute towards the support of the whole empire, it is surely time that great britain should free herself from the expense of defending those provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances. appendix appendix the two following accounts are subjoined in order to illustrate and confirm what is said in the fifth chapter of the fourth book, concerning the tonnage bounty to the white-herring fishery. the reader, i believe, may depend upon the accuracy of both accounts. an account of busses fitted out in scotland for eleven years, with the number of empty barrels carried out, and the number of barrels of herrings caught; also the bounty at a medium on each barrel of seasteeks, and on each barrel when fully packed. empty barrels number of barrels of herrings bounty paid on years busses carried out caught the busses l s. d. 1771 29 5948 2832 2085 0 0 1772 168 41316 22237 11055 7 6 1773 190 42333 42055 12510 8 6 1774 248 59303 56365 16952 2 6 1775 275 69144 52879 19315 15 0 1776 294 76329 51863 21290 7 6 1777 240 62679 43313 17592 2 6 1778 220 56390 40958 16316 2 6 1779 206 55194 29367 15287 0 0 1780 181 48315 19885 13445 12 6 1781 135 33992 16593 9613 12 6 --- ----- ----- ----- - total 2186 550943 378347 155463 11 0 seasteeks 378,347 bounty at a medium for each barrel of seasteeks l0 8 2 1/4 but a barrel of seasteeks being only reckoned two-thirds of a barrel fully packed, one-third is deducted, which brings the bounty to l0 12 3 3/4 1/3 deducted 126,115 2/3 ----------barrels fully packed 252,231 1/3 and if the herrings are exported, there is, besides, a premium of 0 2 8 ------------- so that the bounty paid by government in money for each barrel is l0 14 11 3/4 but if to this the duty of the salt usually taken credit for as expended in curing each barrel, which at a medium is of foreign, one bushel and one-fourth of a bushel, at 10s. a bushel, be added, viz. 0 12 6 ------------- the bounty on each barrel would amount to l1 7 5 3/4 if the herrings are cured with british salt, it will stand thus, viz. bounty as before l0 14 11 3/4 but if to this bounty the duty on two bushels of scots salt at 1s. 6d. per bushel, supposed to be the quantity at a medium used in curing each barrel is added, to wit 0 3 0 ------------- the bounty on each barrel will amount to l0 17 11 3/4 and, when buss herrings are entered for home consumption in scotland, and pay the shilling a barrel of duty, the bounty stands thus, to wit as before l0 12 3 3/4 from which the 1s. a barrel is to be deducted 0 1 0 ------------- 0 11 3 3/4 but to that there is to be added again the duty of the foreign salt used in curing a barrel of herrings, viz. 0 12 6 ------------- so that the premium allowed for each barrel of herring entered for home consumption is l1 3 9 3/4 if the herrings are cured with british salt, it will stand as follows, viz. bounty on each barrel brought in by the busses as above l0 12 3 3/4 from which deduct the 1s. a barrel paid at the time they are entered for home consumption 0 1 0 ------------- l0 11 3 3/4 but if to the bounty the duty on two bushels of scots salt at 1s. 6d. per bushel, supposed to be the quantity at a medium used in curing each barrel, is added, to wit 0 3 0 ------------- the premium for each barrel entered for home consumption will be l0 14 3 3/4 though the loss of duties upon herrings exported cannot, perhaps properly be considered as bounty; that upon herrings entered for home consumption certainly may. an account of the quantity of foreign salt imported in scotland, and of scots salt delivered duty free from the works there for the fishery, from the 5th of april 1771 to the 5th of april 1782, with a medium of both for one year. scots salt foreign salt delivered from period imported the works bushels bushels from the 5th of april 1771 to the 5th of april 1782 936,974 168,226 medium for one year 85,179 5/11 15,293 3/11 it is to be observed that the bushel of foreign salt weights 84 lb., that of british salt 56 lb. only. the end . timon of athens dramatis personae timon of athens. lucius | | lucullus | flattering lords. | sempronius | ventidius one of timon's false friends. alcibiades an athenian captain. apemantus a churlish philosopher. flavius steward to timon. poet, painter, jeweller, and merchant. (poet:) (painter:) (jeweller:) (merchant:) an old athenian. (old athenian:) flaminius | | lucilius | servants to timon. | servilius | caphis | | philotus | | titus | | servants to timon's creditors. lucius | | hortensius | | and others | a page. (page:) a fool. (fool:) three strangers. (first stranger:) (second stranger:) (third stranger:) phrynia | | mistresses to alcibiades. timandra | cupid and amazons in the mask. (cupid:) other lords, senators, officers, soldiers, banditti, and attendants. (first lord:) (second lord:) (third lord:) (fourth lord:) (senator:) (first senator:) (second senator:) (third senator:) (soldier:) (first bandit:) (second bandit:) (third bandit:) (messenger:) (servant:) (first servant:) (second servant:) (third servant:) (varro's first servant:) (varro's second servant:) (lucilius' servant:) scene athens, and the neighbouring woods. timon of athens act i scene i athens. a hall in timon's house. [enter poet, painter, jeweller, merchant, and others, at several doors] poet good day, sir. painter i am glad you're well. poet i have not seen you long: how goes the world? painter it wears, sir, as it grows. poet ay, that's well known: but what particular rarity? what strange, which manifold record not matches? see, magic of bounty! all these spirits thy power hath conjured to attend. i know the merchant. painter i know them both; th' other's a jeweller. merchant o, 'tis a worthy lord. jeweller nay, that's most fix'd. merchant a most incomparable man, breathed, as it were, to an untirable and continuate goodness: he passes. jeweller: i have a jewel here- merchant o, pray, let's see't: for the lord timon, sir? jeweller: if he will touch the estimate: but, for that- poet [reciting to himself] 'when we for recompense have praised the vile, it stains the glory in that happy verse which aptly sings the good.' merchant 'tis a good form. [looking at the jewel] jeweller and rich: here is a water, look ye. painter you are rapt, sir, in some work, some dedication to the great lord. poet a thing slipp'd idly from me. our poesy is as a gum, which oozes from whence 'tis nourish'd: the fire i' the flint shows not till it be struck; our gentle flame provokes itself and like the current flies each bound it chafes. what have you there? painter a picture, sir. when comes your book forth? poet upon the heels of my presentment, sir. let's see your piece. painter 'tis a good piece. poet so 'tis: this comes off well and excellent. painter indifferent. poet admirable: how this grace speaks his own standing! what a mental power this eye shoots forth! how big imagination moves in this lip! to the dumbness of the gesture one might interpret. painter it is a pretty mocking of the life. here is a touch; is't good? poet i will say of it, it tutors nature: artificial strife lives in these touches, livelier than life. [enter certain senators, and pass over] painter how this lord is follow'd! poet the senators of athens: happy man! painter look, more! poet you see this confluence, this great flood of visitors. i have, in this rough work, shaped out a man, whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug with amplest entertainment: my free drift halts not particularly, but moves itself in a wide sea of wax: no levell'd malice infects one comma in the course i hold; but flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on, leaving no tract behind. painter how shall i understand you? poet i will unbolt to you. you see how all conditions, how all minds, as well of glib and slippery creatures as of grave and austere quality, tender down their services to lord timon: his large fortune upon his good and gracious nature hanging subdues and properties to his love and tendance all sorts of hearts; yea, from the glass-faced flatterer to apemantus, that few things loves better than to abhor himself: even he drops down the knee before him, and returns in peace most rich in timon's nod. painter i saw them speak together. poet sir, i have upon a high and pleasant hill feign'd fortune to be throned: the base o' the mount is rank'd with all deserts, all kind of natures, that labour on the bosom of this sphere to propagate their states: amongst them all, whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fix'd, one do i personate of lord timon's frame, whom fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her; whose present grace to present slaves and servants translates his rivals. painter 'tis conceived to scope. this throne, this fortune, and this hill, methinks, with one man beckon'd from the rest below, bowing his head against the sleepy mount to climb his happiness, would be well express'd in our condition. poet nay, sir, but hear me on. all those which were his fellows but of late, some better than his value, on the moment follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance, rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear, make sacred even his stirrup, and through him drink the free air. painter ay, marry, what of these? poet when fortune in her shift and change of mood spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants which labour'd after him to the mountain's top even on their knees and hands, let him slip down, not one accompanying his declining foot. painter 'tis common: a thousand moral paintings i can show that shall demonstrate these quick blows of fortune's more pregnantly than words. yet you do well to show lord timon that mean eyes have seen the foot above the head. [trumpets sound. enter timon, addressing himself courteously to every suitor; a messenger from ventidius talking with him; lucilius and other servants following] timon imprison'd is he, say you? messenger ay, my good lord: five talents is his debt, his means most short, his creditors most strait: your honourable letter he desires to those have shut him up; which failing, periods his comfort. timon noble ventidius! well; i am not of that feather to shake off my friend when he must need me. i do know him a gentleman that well deserves a help: which he shall have: i'll pay the debt, and free him. messenger your lordship ever binds him. timon commend me to him: i will send his ransom; and being enfranchised, bid him come to me. 'tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support him after. fare you well. messenger all happiness to your honour! [exit] [enter an old athenian] old athenian lord timon, hear me speak. timon freely, good father. old athenian thou hast a servant named lucilius. timon i have so: what of him? old athenian most noble timon, call the man before thee. timon attends he here, or no? lucilius! lucilius here, at your lordship's service. old athenian this fellow here, lord timon, this thy creature, by night frequents my house. i am a man that from my first have been inclined to thrift; and my estate deserves an heir more raised than one which holds a trencher. timon well; what further? old athenian one only daughter have i, no kin else, on whom i may confer what i have got: the maid is fair, o' the youngest for a bride, and i have bred her at my dearest cost in qualities of the best. this man of thine attempts her love: i prithee, noble lord, join with me to forbid him her resort; myself have spoke in vain. timon the man is honest. old athenian therefore he will be, timon: his honesty rewards him in itself; it must not bear my daughter. timon does she love him? old athenian she is young and apt: our own precedent passions do instruct us what levity's in youth. timon [to lucilius] love you the maid? lucilius ay, my good lord, and she accepts of it. old athenian if in her marriage my consent be missing, i call the gods to witness, i will choose mine heir from forth the beggars of the world, and dispossess her all. timon how shall she be endow'd, if she be mated with an equal husband? old athenian three talents on the present; in future, all. timon this gentleman of mine hath served me long: to build his fortune i will strain a little, for 'tis a bond in men. give him thy daughter: what you bestow, in him i'll counterpoise, and make him weigh with her. old athenian most noble lord, pawn me to this your honour, she is his. timon my hand to thee; mine honour on my promise. lucilius humbly i thank your lordship: never may the state or fortune fall into my keeping, which is not owed to you! [exeunt lucilius and old athenian] poet vouchsafe my labour, and long live your lordship! timon i thank you; you shall hear from me anon: go not away. what have you there, my friend? painter a piece of painting, which i do beseech your lordship to accept. timon painting is welcome. the painting is almost the natural man; or since dishonour traffics with man's nature, he is but outside: these pencill'd figures are even such as they give out. i like your work; and you shall find i like it: wait attendance till you hear further from me. painter the gods preserve ye! timon well fare you, gentleman: give me your hand; we must needs dine together. sir, your jewel hath suffer'd under praise. jeweller what, my lord! dispraise? timon a more satiety of commendations. if i should pay you for't as 'tis extoll'd, it would unclew me quite. jeweller my lord, 'tis rated as those which sell would give: but you well know, things of like value differing in the owners are prized by their masters: believe't, dear lord, you mend the jewel by the wearing it. timon well mock'd. merchant no, my good lord; he speaks the common tongue, which all men speak with him. timon look, who comes here: will you be chid? [enter apemantus] jeweller: we'll bear, with your lordship. merchant he'll spare none. timon good morrow to thee, gentle apemantus! apemantus till i be gentle, stay thou for thy good morrow; when thou art timon's dog, and these knaves honest. timon why dost thou call them knaves? thou know'st them not. apemantus are they not athenians? timon yes. apemantus then i repent not. jeweller: you know me, apemantus? apemantus thou know'st i do: i call'd thee by thy name. timon thou art proud, apemantus. apemantus of nothing so much as that i am not like timon. timon whither art going? apemantus to knock out an honest athenian's brains. timon that's a deed thou'lt die for. apemantus right, if doing nothing be death by the law. timon how likest thou this picture, apemantus? apemantus the best, for the innocence. timon wrought he not well that painted it? apemantus he wrought better that made the painter; and yet he's but a filthy piece of work. painter you're a dog. apemantus thy mother's of my generation: what's she, if i be a dog? timon wilt dine with me, apemantus? apemantus no; i eat not lords. timon an thou shouldst, thou 'ldst anger ladies. apemantus o, they eat lords; so they come by great bellies. timon that's a lascivious apprehension. apemantus so thou apprehendest it: take it for thy labour. timon how dost thou like this jewel, apemantus? apemantus not so well as plain-dealing, which will not cost a man a doit. timon what dost thou think 'tis worth? apemantus not worth my thinking. how now, poet! poet how now, philosopher! apemantus thou liest. poet art not one? apemantus yes. poet then i lie not. apemantus art not a poet? poet yes. apemantus then thou liest: look in thy last work, where thou hast feigned him a worthy fellow. poet that's not feigned; he is so. apemantus yes, he is worthy of thee, and to pay thee for thy labour: he that loves to be flattered is worthy o' the flatterer. heavens, that i were a lord! timon what wouldst do then, apemantus? apemantus e'en as apemantus does now; hate a lord with my heart. timon what, thyself? apemantus ay. timon wherefore? apemantus that i had no angry wit to be a lord. art not thou a merchant? merchant ay, apemantus. apemantus traffic confound thee, if the gods will not! merchant if traffic do it, the gods do it. apemantus traffic's thy god; and thy god confound thee! [trumpet sounds. enter a messenger] timon what trumpet's that? messenger 'tis alcibiades, and some twenty horse, all of companionship. timon pray, entertain them; give them guide to us. [exeunt some attendants] you must needs dine with me: go not you hence till i have thank'd you: when dinner's done, show me this piece. i am joyful of your sights. [enter alcibiades, with the rest] most welcome, sir! apemantus so, so, there! aches contract and starve your supple joints! that there should be small love 'mongst these sweet knaves, and all this courtesy! the strain of man's bred out into baboon and monkey. alcibiades sir, you have saved my longing, and i feed most hungerly on your sight. timon right welcome, sir! ere we depart, we'll share a bounteous time in different pleasures. pray you, let us in. [exeunt all except apemantus] [enter two lords] first lord what time o' day is't, apemantus? apemantus time to be honest. first lord that time serves still. apemantus the more accursed thou, that still omitt'st it. second lord thou art going to lord timon's feast? apemantus ay, to see meat fill knaves and wine heat fools. second lord fare thee well, fare thee well. apemantus thou art a fool to bid me farewell twice. second lord why, apemantus? apemantus shouldst have kept one to thyself, for i mean to give thee none. first lord hang thyself! apemantus no, i will do nothing at thy bidding: make thy requests to thy friend. second lord away, unpeaceable dog, or i'll spurn thee hence! apemantus i will fly, like a dog, the heels o' the ass. [exit] first lord he's opposite to humanity. come, shall we in, and taste lord timon's bounty? he outgoes the very heart of kindness. second lord he pours it out; plutus, the god of gold, is but his steward: no meed, but he repays sevenfold above itself; no gift to him, but breeds the giver a return exceeding all use of quittance. first lord the noblest mind he carries that ever govern'd man. second lord long may he live in fortunes! shall we in? first lord i'll keep you company. [exeunt] timon of athens act i scene ii a banqueting-room in timon's house. [hautboys playing loud music. a great banquet served in; flavius and others attending; then enter timon, alcibiades, lords, senators, and ventidius. then comes, dropping, after all, apemantus, discontentedly, like himself] ventidius most honour'd timon, it hath pleased the gods to remember my father's age, and call him to long peace. he is gone happy, and has left me rich: then, as in grateful virtue i am bound to your free heart, i do return those talents, doubled with thanks and service, from whose help i derived liberty. timon o, by no means, honest ventidius; you mistake my love: i gave it freely ever; and there's none can truly say he gives, if he receives: if our betters play at that game, we must not dare to imitate them; faults that are rich are fair. ventidius a noble spirit! timon nay, my lords, [they all stand ceremoniously looking on timon] ceremony was but devised at first to set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes, recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown; but where there is true friendship, there needs none. pray, sit; more welcome are ye to my fortunes than my fortunes to me. [they sit] first lord my lord, we always have confess'd it. apemantus ho, ho, confess'd it! hang'd it, have you not? timon o, apemantus, you are welcome. apemantus no; you shall not make me welcome: i come to have thee thrust me out of doors. timon fie, thou'rt a churl; ye've got a humour there does not become a man: 'tis much to blame. they say, my lords, 'ira furor brevis est;' but yond man is ever angry. go, let him have a table by himself, for he does neither affect company, nor is he fit for't, indeed. apemantus let me stay at thine apperil, timon: i come to observe; i give thee warning on't. timon i take no heed of thee; thou'rt an athenian, therefore welcome: i myself would have no power; prithee, let my meat make thee silent. apemantus i scorn thy meat; 'twould choke me, for i should ne'er flatter thee. o you gods, what a number of men eat timon, and he sees 'em not! it grieves me to see so many dip their meat in one man's blood; and all the madness is, he cheers them up too. i wonder men dare trust themselves with men: methinks they should invite them without knives; good for their meat, and safer for their lives. there's much example for't; the fellow that sits next him now, parts bread with him, pledges the breath of him in a divided draught, is the readiest man to kill him: 't has been proved. if i were a huge man, i should fear to drink at meals; lest they should spy my windpipe's dangerous notes: great men should drink with harness on their throats. timon my lord, in heart; and let the health go round. second lord let it flow this way, my good lord. apemantus flow this way! a brave fellow! he keeps his tides well. those healths will make thee and thy state look ill, timon. here's that which is too weak to be a sinner, honest water, which ne'er left man i' the mire: this and my food are equals; there's no odds: feasts are too proud to give thanks to the gods. apemantus' grace. immortal gods, i crave no pelf; i pray for no man but myself: grant i may never prove so fond, to trust man on his oath or bond; or a harlot, for her weeping; or a dog, that seems a-sleeping: or a keeper with my freedom; or my friends, if i should need 'em. amen. so fall to't: rich men sin, and i eat root. [eats and drinks] much good dich thy good heart, apemantus! timon captain alcibiades, your heart's in the field now. alcibiades my heart is ever at your service, my lord. timon you had rather be at a breakfast of enemies than a dinner of friends. alcibiades so the were bleeding-new, my lord, there's no meat like 'em: i could wish my best friend at such a feast. apemantus would all those fatterers were thine enemies then, that then thou mightst kill 'em and bid me to 'em! first lord might we but have that happiness, my lord, that you would once use our hearts, whereby we might express some part of our zeals, we should think ourselves for ever perfect. timon o, no doubt, my good friends, but the gods themselves have provided that i shall have much help from you: how had you been my friends else? why have you that charitable title from thousands, did not you chiefly belong to my heart? i have told more of you to myself than you can with modesty speak in your own behalf; and thus far i confirm you. o you gods, think i, what need we have any friends, if we should ne'er have need of 'em? they were the most needless creatures living, should we ne'er have use for 'em, and would most resemble sweet instruments hung up in cases that keep their sounds to themselves. why, i have often wished myself poorer, that i might come nearer to you. we are born to do benefits: and what better or properer can we can our own than the riches of our friends? o, what a precious comfort 'tis, to have so many, like brothers, commanding one another's fortunes! o joy, e'en made away ere 't can be born! mine eyes cannot hold out water, methinks: to forget their faults, i drink to you. apemantus thou weepest to make them drink, timon. second lord joy had the like conception in our eyes and at that instant like a babe sprung up. apemantus ho, ho! i laugh to think that babe a bastard. third lord i promise you, my lord, you moved me much. apemantus much! [tucket, within] timon what means that trump? [enter a servant] how now? servant please you, my lord, there are certain ladies most desirous of admittance. timon ladies! what are their wills? servant there comes with them a forerunner, my lord, which bears that office, to signify their pleasures. timon i pray, let them be admitted. [enter cupid] cupid hail to thee, worthy timon, and to all that of his bounties taste! the five best senses acknowledge thee their patron; and come freely to gratulate thy plenteous bosom: th' ear, taste, touch and smell, pleased from thy tale rise; they only now come but to feast thine eyes. timon they're welcome all; let 'em have kind admittance: music, make their welcome! [exit cupid] first lord you see, my lord, how ample you're beloved. [music. re-enter cupid with a mask of ladies as amazons, with lutes in their hands, dancing and playing] apemantus hoy-day, what a sweep of vanity comes this way! they dance! they are mad women. like madness is the glory of this life. as this pomp shows to a little oil and root. we make ourselves fools, to disport ourselves; and spend our flatteries, to drink those men upon whose age we void it up again, with poisonous spite and envy. who lives that's not depraved or depraves? who dies, that bears not one spurn to their graves of their friends' gift? i should fear those that dance before me now would one day stamp upon me: 't has been done; men shut their doors against a setting sun. [the lords rise from table, with much adoring of timon; and to show their loves, each singles out an amazon, and all dance, men with women, a lofty strain or two to the hautboys, and cease] timon you have done our pleasures much grace, fair ladies, set a fair fashion on our entertainment, which was not half so beautiful and kind; you have added worth unto 't and lustre, and entertain'd me with mine own device; i am to thank you for 't. first lady my lord, you take us even at the best. apemantus 'faith, for the worst is filthy; and would not hold taking, i doubt me. timon ladies, there is an idle banquet attends you: please you to dispose yourselves. all ladies most thankfully, my lord. [exeunt cupid and ladies] timon flavius. flavius my lord? timon the little casket bring me hither. flavius yes, my lord. more jewels yet! there is no crossing him in 's humour; [aside] else i should tell him,--well, i' faith i should, when all's spent, he 'ld be cross'd then, an he could. 'tis pity bounty had not eyes behind, that man might ne'er be wretched for his mind. [exit] first lord where be our men? servant here, my lord, in readiness. second lord our horses! [re-enter flavius, with the casket] timon o my friends, i have one word to say to you: look you, my good lord, i must entreat you, honour me so much as to advance this jewel; accept it and wear it, kind my lord. first lord i am so far already in your gifts,- all so are we all. [enter a servant] servant my lord, there are certain nobles of the senate newly alighted, and come to visit you. timon they are fairly welcome. flavius i beseech your honour, vouchsafe me a word; it does concern you near. timon near! why then, another time i'll hear thee: i prithee, let's be provided to show them entertainment. flavius [aside] i scarce know how. [enter a second servant] second servant may it please your honour, lord lucius, out of his free love, hath presented to you four milk-white horses, trapp'd in silver. timon i shall accept them fairly; let the presents be worthily entertain'd. [enter a third servant] how now! what news? third servant please you, my lord, that honourable gentleman, lord lucullus, entreats your company to-morrow to hunt with him, and has sent your honour two brace of greyhounds. timon i'll hunt with him; and let them be received, not without fair reward. flavius [aside] what will this come to? he commands us to provide, and give great gifts, and all out of an empty coffer: nor will he know his purse, or yield me this, to show him what a beggar his heart is, being of no power to make his wishes good: his promises fly so beyond his state that what he speaks is all in debt; he owes for every word: he is so kind that he now pays interest for 't; his land's put to their books. well, would i were gently put out of office before i were forced out! happier is he that has no friend to feed than such that do e'en enemies exceed. i bleed inwardly for my lord. [exit] timon you do yourselves much wrong, you bate too much of your own merits: here, my lord, a trifle of our love. second lord with more than common thanks i will receive it. third lord o, he's the very soul of bounty! timon and now i remember, my lord, you gave good words the other day of a bay courser i rode on: it is yours, because you liked it. second lord o, i beseech you, pardon me, my lord, in that. timon you may take my word, my lord; i know, no man can justly praise but what he does affect: i weigh my friend's affection with mine own; i'll tell you true. i'll call to you. all lords o, none so welcome. timon i take all and your several visitations so kind to heart, 'tis not enough to give; methinks, i could deal kingdoms to my friends, and ne'er be weary. alcibiades, thou art a soldier, therefore seldom rich; it comes in charity to thee: for all thy living is 'mongst the dead, and all the lands thou hast lie in a pitch'd field. alcibiades ay, defiled land, my lord. first lord we are so virtuously bound- timon and so am i to you. second lord so infinitely endear'd- timon all to you. lights, more lights! first lord the best of happiness, honour and fortunes, keep with you, lord timon! timon ready for his friends. [exeunt all but apemantus and timon] apemantus what a coil's here! serving of becks and jutting-out of bums! i doubt whether their legs be worth the sums that are given for 'em. friendship's full of dregs: methinks, false hearts should never have sound legs, thus honest fools lay out their wealth on court'sies. timon now, apemantus, if thou wert not sullen, i would be good to thee. apemantus no, i'll nothing: for if i should be bribed too, there would be none left to rail upon thee, and then thou wouldst sin the faster. thou givest so long, timon, i fear me thou wilt give away thyself in paper shortly: what need these feasts, pomps and vain-glories? timon nay, an you begin to rail on society once, i am sworn not to give regard to you. farewell; and come with better music. [exit] apemantus so: thou wilt not hear me now; thou shalt not then: i'll lock thy heaven from thee. o, that men's ears should be to counsel deaf, but not to flattery! [exit] timon of athens act ii scene i a senator's house. [enter senator, with papers in his hand] senator and late, five thousand: to varro and to isidore he owes nine thousand; besides my former sum, which makes it five and twenty. still in motion of raging waste? it cannot hold; it will not. if i want gold, steal but a beggar's dog, and give it timon, why, the dog coins gold. if i would sell my horse, and buy twenty more better than he, why, give my horse to timon, ask nothing, give it him, it foals me, straight, and able horses. no porter at his gate, but rather one that smiles and still invites all that pass by. it cannot hold: no reason can found his state in safety. caphis, ho! caphis, i say! [enter caphis] caphis here, sir; what is your pleasure? senator get on your cloak, and haste you to lord timon; importune him for my moneys; be not ceased with slight denial, nor then silenced when- 'commend me to your master'--and the cap plays in the right hand, thus: but tell him, my uses cry to me, i must serve my turn out of mine own; his days and times are past and my reliances on his fracted dates have smit my credit: i love and honour him, but must not break my back to heal his finger; immediate are my needs, and my relief must not be toss'd and turn'd to me in words, but find supply immediate. get you gone: put on a most importunate aspect, a visage of demand; for, i do fear, when every feather sticks in his own wing, lord timon will be left a naked gull, which flashes now a phoenix. get you gone. caphis i go, sir. senator 'i go, sir!'--take the bonds along with you, and have the dates in contempt. caphis i will, sir. senator go. [exeunt] timon of athens act ii scene ii the same. a hall in timon's house. [enter flavius, with many bills in his hand] flavius no care, no stop! so senseless of expense, that he will neither know how to maintain it, nor cease his flow of riot: takes no account how things go from him, nor resumes no care of what is to continue: never mind was to be so unwise, to be so kind. what shall be done? he will not hear, till feel: i must be round with him, now he comes from hunting. fie, fie, fie, fie! [enter caphis, and the servants of isidore and varro] caphis good even, varro: what, you come for money? varro's servant is't not your business too? caphis it is: and yours too, isidore? isidore's servant it is so. caphis would we were all discharged! varro's servant i fear it. caphis here comes the lord. [enter timon, alcibiades, and lords, &c] timon so soon as dinner's done, we'll forth again, my alcibiades. with me? what is your will? caphis my lord, here is a note of certain dues. timon dues! whence are you? caphis of athens here, my lord. timon go to my steward. caphis please it your lordship, he hath put me off to the succession of new days this month: my master is awaked by great occasion to call upon his own, and humbly prays you that with your other noble parts you'll suit in giving him his right. timon mine honest friend, i prithee, but repair to me next morning. caphis nay, good my lord,- timon contain thyself, good friend. varro's servant one varro's servant, my good lord,- isidore's servant from isidore; he humbly prays your speedy payment. caphis if you did know, my lord, my master's wants- varro's servant 'twas due on forfeiture, my lord, six weeks and past. isidore's servant your steward puts me off, my lord; and i am sent expressly to your lordship. timon give me breath. i do beseech you, good my lords, keep on; i'll wait upon you instantly. [exeunt alcibiades and lords] [to flavius] come hither: pray you, how goes the world, that i am thus encounter'd with clamourous demands of date-broke bonds, and the detention of long-since-due debts, against my honour? flavius please you, gentlemen, the time is unagreeable to this business: your importunacy cease till after dinner, that i may make his lordship understand wherefore you are not paid. timon do so, my friends. see them well entertain'd. [exit] flavius pray, draw near. [exit] [enter apemantus and fool] caphis stay, stay, here comes the fool with apemantus: let's ha' some sport with 'em. varro's servant hang him, he'll abuse us. isidore's servant a plague upon him, dog! varro's servant how dost, fool? apemantus dost dialogue with thy shadow? varro's servant i speak not to thee. apemantus no,'tis to thyself. [to the fool] come away. isidore's servant there's the fool hangs on your back already. apemantus no, thou stand'st single, thou'rt not on him yet. caphis where's the fool now? apemantus he last asked the question. poor rogues, and usurers' men! bawds between gold and want! all servants what are we, apemantus? apemantus asses. all servants why? apemantus that you ask me what you are, and do not know yourselves. speak to 'em, fool. fool how do you, gentlemen? all servants gramercies, good fool: how does your mistress? fool she's e'en setting on water to scald such chickens as you are. would we could see you at corinth! apemantus good! gramercy. [enter page] fool look you, here comes my mistress' page. page [to the fool] why, how now, captain! what do you in this wise company? how dost thou, apemantus? apemantus would i had a rod in my mouth, that i might answer thee profitably. page prithee, apemantus, read me the superscription of these letters: i know not which is which. apemantus canst not read? page no. apemantus there will little learning die then, that day thou art hanged. this is to lord timon; this to alcibiades. go; thou wast born a bastard, and thou't die a bawd. page thou wast whelped a dog, and thou shalt famish a dog's death. answer not; i am gone. [exit] apemantus e'en so thou outrunnest grace. fool, i will go with you to lord timon's. fool will you leave me there? apemantus if timon stay at home. you three serve three usurers? all servants ay; would they served us! apemantus so would i,--as good a trick as ever hangman served thief. fool are you three usurers' men? all servants ay, fool. fool i think no usurer but has a fool to his servant: my mistress is one, and i am her fool. when men come to borrow of your masters, they approach sadly, and go away merry; but they enter my mistress' house merrily, and go away sadly: the reason of this? varro's servant i could render one. apemantus do it then, that we may account thee a whoremaster and a knave; which not-withstanding, thou shalt be no less esteemed. varro's servant what is a whoremaster, fool? fool a fool in good clothes, and something like thee. 'tis a spirit: sometime't appears like a lord; sometime like a lawyer; sometime like a philosopher, with two stones moe than's artificial one: he is very often like a knight; and, generally, in all shapes that man goes up and down in from fourscore to thirteen, this spirit walks in. varro's servant thou art not altogether a fool. fool nor thou altogether a wise man: as much foolery as i have, so much wit thou lackest. apemantus that answer might have become apemantus. all servants aside, aside; here comes lord timon. [re-enter timon and flavius] apemantus come with me, fool, come. fool i do not always follow lover, elder brother and woman; sometime the philosopher. [exeunt apemantus and fool] flavius pray you, walk near: i'll speak with you anon. [exeunt servants] timon you make me marvel: wherefore ere this time had you not fully laid my state before me, that i might so have rated my expense, as i had leave of means? flavius you would not hear me, at many leisures i proposed. timon go to: perchance some single vantages you took. when my indisposition put you back: and that unaptness made your minister, thus to excuse yourself. flavius o my good lord, at many times i brought in my accounts, laid them before you; you would throw them off, and say, you found them in mine honesty. when, for some trifling present, you have bid me return so much, i have shook my head and wept; yea, 'gainst the authority of manners, pray'd you to hold your hand more close: i did endure not seldom, nor no slight cheques, when i have prompted you in the ebb of your estate and your great flow of debts. my loved lord, though you hear now, too late--yet now's a time- the greatest of your having lacks a half to pay your present debts. timon let all my land be sold. flavius 'tis all engaged, some forfeited and gone; and what remains will hardly stop the mouth of present dues: the future comes apace: what shall defend the interim? and at length how goes our reckoning? timon to lacedaemon did my land extend. flavius o my good lord, the world is but a word: were it all yours to give it in a breath, how quickly were it gone! timon you tell me true. flavius if you suspect my husbandry or falsehood, call me before the exactest auditors and set me on the proof. so the gods bless me, when all our offices have been oppress'd with riotous feeders, when our vaults have wept with drunken spilth of wine, when every room hath blazed with lights and bray'd with minstrelsy, i have retired me to a wasteful cock, and set mine eyes at flow. timon prithee, no more. flavius heavens, have i said, the bounty of this lord! how many prodigal bits have slaves and peasants this night englutted! who is not timon's? what heart, head, sword, force, means, but is lord timon's? great timon, noble, worthy, royal timon! ah, when the means are gone that buy this praise, the breath is gone whereof this praise is made: feast-won, fast-lost; one cloud of winter showers, these flies are couch'd. timon come, sermon me no further: no villanous bounty yet hath pass'd my heart; unwisely, not ignobly, have i given. why dost thou weep? canst thou the conscience lack, to think i shall lack friends? secure thy heart; if i would broach the vessels of my love, and try the argument of hearts by borrowing, men and men's fortunes could i frankly use as i can bid thee speak. flavius assurance bless your thoughts! timon and, in some sort, these wants of mine are crown'd, that i account them blessings; for by these shall i try friends: you shall perceive how you mistake my fortunes; i am wealthy in my friends. within there! flaminius! servilius! [enter flaminius, servilius, and other servants] servants my lord? my lord? timon i will dispatch you severally; you to lord lucius; to lord lucullus you: i hunted with his honour to-day: you, to sempronius: commend me to their loves, and, i am proud, say, that my occasions have found time to use 'em toward a supply of money: let the request be fifty talents. flaminius as you have said, my lord. flavius [aside] lord lucius and lucullus? hum! timon go you, sir, to the senators- of whom, even to the state's best health, i have deserved this hearing--bid 'em send o' the instant a thousand talents to me. flavius i have been bold- for that i knew it the most general way- to them to use your signet and your name; but they do shake their heads, and i am here no richer in return. timon is't true? can't be? flavius they answer, in a joint and corporate voice, that now they are at fall, want treasure, cannot do what they would; are sorry--you are honourable,- but yet they could have wish'd--they know not- something hath been amiss--a noble nature may catch a wrench--would all were well--'tis pity;- and so, intending other serious matters, after distasteful looks and these hard fractions, with certain half-caps and cold-moving nods they froze me into silence. timon you gods, reward them! prithee, man, look cheerly. these old fellows have their ingratitude in them hereditary: their blood is caked, 'tis cold, it seldom flows; 'tis lack of kindly warmth they are not kind; and nature, as it grows again toward earth, is fashion'd for the journey, dull and heavy. [to a servant] go to ventidius. [to flavius] prithee, be not sad, thou art true and honest; ingeniously i speak. no blame belongs to thee. [to servant] ventidius lately buried his father; by whose death he's stepp'd into a great estate: when he was poor, imprison'd and in scarcity of friends, i clear'd him with five talents: greet him from me; bid him suppose some good necessity touches his friend, which craves to be remember'd with those five talents. [exit servant] [to flavius] that had, give't these fellows to whom 'tis instant due. ne'er speak, or think, that timon's fortunes 'mong his friends can sink. flavius i would i could not think it: that thought is bounty's foe; being free itself, it thinks all others so. [exeunt] timon of athens act iii scene i a room in lucullus' house. [flaminius waiting. enter a servant to him] servant i have told my lord of you; he is coming down to you. flaminius i thank you, sir. [enter lucullus] servant here's my lord. lucullus [aside] one of lord timon's men? a gift, i warrant. why, this hits right; i dreamt of a silver basin and ewer to-night. flaminius, honest flaminius; you are very respectively welcome, sir. fill me some wine. [exit servants] and how does that honourable, complete, free-hearted gentleman of athens, thy very bountiful good lord and master? flaminius his health is well sir. lucullus i am right glad that his health is well, sir: and what hast thou there under thy cloak, pretty flaminius? flaminius 'faith, nothing but an empty box, sir; which, in my lord's behalf, i come to entreat your honour to supply; who, having great and instant occasion to use fifty talents, hath sent to your lordship to furnish him, nothing doubting your present assistance therein. lucullus la, la, la, la! 'nothing doubting,' says he? alas, good lord! a noble gentleman 'tis, if he would not keep so good a house. many a time and often i ha' dined with him, and told him on't, and come again to supper to him, of purpose to have him spend less, and yet he would embrace no counsel, take no warning by my coming. every man has his fault, and honesty is his: i ha' told him on't, but i could ne'er get him from't. [re-enter servant, with wine] servant please your lordship, here is the wine. lucullus flaminius, i have noted thee always wise. here's to thee. flaminius your lordship speaks your pleasure. lucullus i have observed thee always for a towardly prompt spirit--give thee thy due--and one that knows what belongs to reason; and canst use the time well, if the time use thee well: good parts in thee. [to servant] get you gone, sirrah. [exit servant] draw nearer, honest flaminius. thy lord's a bountiful gentleman: but thou art wise; and thou knowest well enough, although thou comest to me, that this is no time to lend money, especially upon bare friendship, without security. here's three solidares for thee: good boy, wink at me, and say thou sawest me not. fare thee well. flaminius is't possible the world should so much differ, and we alive that lived? fly, damned baseness, to him that worships thee! [throwing the money back] lucullus ha! now i see thou art a fool, and fit for thy master. [exit] flaminius may these add to the number that may scald thee! let moulten coin be thy damnation, thou disease of a friend, and not himself! has friendship such a faint and milky heart, it turns in less than two nights? o you gods, i feel master's passion! this slave, unto his honour, has my lord's meat in him: why should it thrive and turn to nutriment, when he is turn'd to poison? o, may diseases only work upon't! and, when he's sick to death, let not that part of nature which my lord paid for, be of any power to expel sickness, but prolong his hour! [exit] timon of athens act iii scene ii a public place. [enter lucilius, with three strangers] lucilius who, the lord timon? he is my very good friend, and an honourable gentleman. first stranger we know him for no less, though we are but strangers to him. but i can tell you one thing, my lord, and which i hear from common rumours: now lord timon's happy hours are done and past, and his estate shrinks from him. lucilius fie, no, do not believe it; he cannot want for money. second stranger but believe you this, my lord, that, not long ago, one of his men was with the lord lucullus to borrow so many talents, nay, urged extremely for't and showed what necessity belonged to't, and yet was denied. lucilius how! second stranger i tell you, denied, my lord. lucilius what a strange case was that! now, before the gods, i am ashamed on't. denied that honourable man! there was very little honour showed in't. for my own part, i must needs confess, i have received some small kindnesses from him, as money, plate, jewels and such-like trifles, nothing comparing to his; yet, had he mistook him and sent to me, i should ne'er have denied his occasion so many talents. [enter servilius] servilius see, by good hap, yonder's my lord; i have sweat to see his honour. my honoured lord,- [to lucius] lucilius servilius! you are kindly met, sir. fare thee well: commend me to thy honourable virtuous lord, my very exquisite friend. servilius may it please your honour, my lord hath sent- lucilius ha! what has he sent? i am so much endeared to that lord; he's ever sending: how shall i thank him, thinkest thou? and what has he sent now? servilius has only sent his present occasion now, my lord; requesting your lordship to supply his instant use with so many talents. lucilius i know his lordship is but merry with me; he cannot want fifty five hundred talents. servilius but in the mean time he wants less, my lord. if his occasion were not virtuous, i should not urge it half so faithfully. lucilius dost thou speak seriously, servilius? servilius upon my soul,'tis true, sir. lucilius what a wicked beast was i to disfurnish myself against such a good time, when i might ha' shown myself honourable! how unluckily it happened, that i should purchase the day before for a little part, and undo a great deal of honoured! servilius, now, before the gods, i am not able to do,--the more beast, i say:--i was sending to use lord timon myself, these gentlemen can witness! but i would not, for the wealth of athens, i had done't now. commend me bountifully to his good lordship; and i hope his honour will conceive the fairest of me, because i have no power to be kind: and tell him this from me, i count it one of my greatest afflictions, say, that i cannot pleasure such an honourable gentleman. good servilius, will you befriend me so far, as to use mine own words to him? servilius yes, sir, i shall. lucilius i'll look you out a good turn, servilius. [exit servilius] true as you said, timon is shrunk indeed; and he that's once denied will hardly speed. [exit] first stranger do you observe this, hostilius? second stranger ay, too well. first stranger why, this is the world's soul; and just of the same piece is every flatterer's spirit. who can call him his friend that dips in the same dish? for, in my knowing, timon has been this lord's father, and kept his credit with his purse, supported his estate; nay, timon's money has paid his men their wages: he ne'er drinks, but timon's silver treads upon his lip; and yet--o, see the monstrousness of man when he looks out in an ungrateful shape!- he does deny him, in respect of his, what charitable men afford to beggars. third stranger religion groans at it. first stranger for mine own part, i never tasted timon in my life, nor came any of his bounties over me, to mark me for his friend; yet, i protest, for his right noble mind, illustrious virtue and honourable carriage, had his necessity made use of me, i would have put my wealth into donation, and the best half should have return'd to him, so much i love his heart: but, i perceive, men must learn now with pity to dispense; for policy sits above conscience. [exeunt] timon of athens act iii scene iii a room in sempronius' house. [enter sempronius, and a servant of timon's] sempronius must he needs trouble me in 't,--hum!--'bove all others? he might have tried lord lucius or lucullus; and now ventidius is wealthy too, whom he redeem'd from prison: all these owe their estates unto him. servant my lord, they have all been touch'd and found base metal, for they have au denied him. sempronius how! have they denied him? has ventidius and lucullus denied him? and does he send to me? three? hum! it shows but little love or judgment in him: must i be his last refuge! his friends, like physicians, thrive, give him over: must i take the cure upon me? has much disgraced me in't; i'm angry at him, that might have known my place: i see no sense for't, but his occasion might have woo'd me first; for, in my conscience, i was the first man that e'er received gift from him: and does he think so backwardly of me now, that i'll requite its last? no: so it may prove an argument of laughter to the rest, and 'mongst lords i be thought a fool. i'ld rather than the worth of thrice the sum, had sent to me first, but for my mind's sake; i'd such a courage to do him good. but now return, and with their faint reply this answer join; who bates mine honour shall not know my coin. [exit] servant excellent! your lordship's a goodly villain. the devil knew not what he did when he made man politic; he crossed himself by 't: and i cannot think but, in the end, the villainies of man will set him clear. how fairly this lord strives to appear foul! takes virtuous copies to be wicked, like those that under hot ardent zeal would set whole realms on fire: of such a nature is his politic love. this was my lord's best hope; now all are fled, save only the gods: now his friends are dead, doors, that were ne'er acquainted with their wards many a bounteous year must be employ'd now to guard sure their master. and this is all a liberal course allows; who cannot keep his wealth must keep his house. [exit] timon of athens act iii scene iv the same. a hall in timon's house. [enter two servants of varro, and the servant of lucius, meeting titus, hortensius, and other servants of timon's creditors, waiting his coming out] varro's first servant well met; good morrow, titus and hortensius. titus the like to you kind varro. hortensius lucius! what, do we meet together? lucilius' servant ay, and i think one business does command us all; for mine is money. titus so is theirs and ours. [enter philotus] lucilius' servant and sir philotus too! philotus good day at once. lucilius' servant welcome, good brother. what do you think the hour? philotus labouring for nine. lucilius' servant so much? philotus is not my lord seen yet? lucilius' servant not yet. philotus i wonder on't; he was wont to shine at seven. lucilius' servant ay, but the days are wax'd shorter with him: you must consider that a prodigal course is like the sun's; but not, like his, recoverable. i fear 'tis deepest winter in lord timon's purse; that is one may reach deep enough, and yet find little. philotus i am of your fear for that. titus i'll show you how to observe a strange event. your lord sends now for money. hortensius most true, he does. titus and he wears jewels now of timon's gift, for which i wait for money. hortensius it is against my heart. lucilius' servant mark, how strange it shows, timon in this should pay more than he owes: and e'en as if your lord should wear rich jewels, and send for money for 'em. hortensius i'm weary of this charge, the gods can witness: i know my lord hath spent of timon's wealth, and now ingratitude makes it worse than stealth. varro's first servant yes, mine's three thousand crowns: what's yours? lucilius' servant five thousand mine. varro's first servant 'tis much deep: and it should seem by the sun, your master's confidence was above mine; else, surely, his had equall'd. enter flaminius. titus one of lord timon's men. lucilius' servant flaminius! sir, a word: pray, is my lord ready to come forth? flaminius no, indeed, he is not. titus we attend his lordship; pray, signify so much. flaminius i need not tell him that; he knows you are too diligent. [exit] [enter flavius in a cloak, muffled] lucilius' servant ha! is not that his steward muffled so? he goes away in a cloud: call him, call him. titus do you hear, sir? varro's second servant by your leave, sir,- flavius what do ye ask of me, my friend? titus we wait for certain money here, sir. flavius ay, if money were as certain as your waiting, 'twere sure enough. why then preferr'd you not your sums and bills, when your false masters eat of my lord's meat? then they could smile and fawn upon his debts and take down the interest into their gluttonous maws. you do yourselves but wrong to stir me up; let me pass quietly: believe 't, my lord and i have made an end; i have no more to reckon, he to spend. lucilius' servant ay, but this answer will not serve. flavius if 'twill not serve,'tis not so base as you; for you serve knaves. [exit] varro's first servant how! what does his cashiered worship mutter? varro's second servant no matter what; he's poor, and that's revenge enough. who can speak broader than he that has no house to put his head in? such may rail against great buildings. [enter servilius] titus o, here's servilius; now we shall know some answer. servilius if i might beseech you, gentlemen, to repair some other hour, i should derive much from't; for, take't of my soul, my lord leans wondrously to discontent: his comfortable temper has forsook him; he's much out of health, and keeps his chamber. lucilius' servant: many do keep their chambers are not sick: and, if it be so far beyond his health, methinks he should the sooner pay his debts, and make a clear way to the gods. servilius good gods! titus we cannot take this for answer, sir. flaminius [within] servilius, help! my lord! my lord! [enter timon, in a rage, flaminius following] timon what, are my doors opposed against my passage? have i been ever free, and must my house be my retentive enemy, my gaol? the place which i have feasted, does it now, like all mankind, show me an iron heart? lucilius' servant put in now, titus. titus my lord, here is my bill. lucilius' servant here's mine. hortensius and mine, my lord. both varro's servants and ours, my lord. philotus all our bills. timon knock me down with 'em: cleave me to the girdle. lucilius' servant alas, my lord, timon cut my heart in sums. titus mine, fifty talents. timon tell out my blood. lucilius' servant five thousand crowns, my lord. timon five thousand drops pays that. what yours?--and yours? varro's first servant my lord,- varro's second servant my lord,- timon tear me, take me, and the gods fall upon you! [exit] hortensius 'faith, i perceive our masters may throw their caps at their money: these debts may well be called desperate ones, for a madman owes 'em. [exeunt] [re-enter timon and flavius] timon they have e'en put my breath from me, the slaves. creditors? devils! flavius my dear lord,- timon what if it should be so? flavius my lord,- timon i'll have it so. my steward! flavius here, my lord. timon so fitly? go, bid all my friends again, lucius, lucullus, and sempronius: all, sirrah, all: i'll once more feast the rascals. flavius o my lord, you only speak from your distracted soul; there is not so much left, to furnish out a moderate table. timon be't not in thy care; go, i charge thee, invite them all: let in the tide of knaves once more; my cook and i'll provide. [exeunt] timon of athens act iii scene v the same. the senate-house. the senate sitting. first senator my lord, you have my voice to it; the fault's bloody; 'tis necessary he should die: nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy. second senator most true; the law shall bruise him. [enter alcibiades, with attendants] alcibiades honour, health, and compassion to the senate! first senator now, captain? alcibiades i am an humble suitor to your virtues; for pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly. it pleases time and fortune to lie heavy upon a friend of mine, who, in hot blood, hath stepp'd into the law, which is past depth to those that, without heed, do plunge into 't. he is a man, setting his fate aside, of comely virtues: nor did he soil the fact with cowardice- an honour in him which buys out his fault- but with a noble fury and fair spirit, seeing his reputation touch'd to death, he did oppose his foe: and with such sober and unnoted passion he did behave his anger, ere 'twas spent, as if he had but proved an argument. first senator you undergo too strict a paradox, striving to make an ugly deed look fair: your words have took such pains as if they labour'd to bring manslaughter into form and set quarrelling upon the head of valour; which indeed is valour misbegot and came into the world when sects and factions were newly born: he's truly valiant that can wisely suffer the worst that man can breathe, and make his wrongs his outsides, to wear them like his raiment, carelessly, and ne'er prefer his injuries to his heart, to bring it into danger. if wrongs be evils and enforce us kill, what folly 'tis to hazard life for ill! alcibiades my lord,- first senator you cannot make gross sins look clear: to revenge is no valour, but to bear. alcibiades my lords, then, under favour, pardon me, if i speak like a captain. why do fond men expose themselves to battle, and not endure all threats? sleep upon't, and let the foes quietly cut their throats, without repugnancy? if there be such valour in the bearing, what make we abroad? why then, women are more valiant that stay at home, if bearing carry it, and the ass more captain than the lion, the felon loaden with irons wiser than the judge, if wisdom be in suffering. o my lords, as you are great, be pitifully good: who cannot condemn rashness in cold blood? to kill, i grant, is sin's extremest gust; but, in defence, by mercy, 'tis most just. to be in anger is impiety; but who is man that is not angry? weigh but the crime with this. second senator you breathe in vain. alcibiades in vain! his service done at lacedaemon and byzantium were a sufficient briber for his life. first senator what's that? alcibiades i say, my lords, he has done fair service, and slain in fight many of your enemies: how full of valour did he bear himself in the last conflict, and made plenteous wounds! second senator he has made too much plenty with 'em; he's a sworn rioter: he has a sin that often drowns him, and takes his valour prisoner: if there were no foes, that were enough to overcome him: in that beastly fury he has been known to commit outrages, and cherish factions: 'tis inferr'd to us, his days are foul and his drink dangerous. first senator he dies. alcibiades hard fate! he might have died in war. my lords, if not for any parts in him- though his right arm might purchase his own time and be in debt to none--yet, more to move you, take my deserts to his, and join 'em both: and, for i know your reverend ages love security, i'll pawn my victories, all my honours to you, upon his good returns. if by this crime he owes the law his life, why, let the war receive 't in valiant gore for law is strict, and war is nothing more. first senator we are for law: he dies; urge it no more, on height of our displeasure: friend or brother, he forfeits his own blood that spills another. alcibiades must it be so? it must not be. my lords, i do beseech you, know me. second senator how! alcibiades call me to your remembrances. third senator what! alcibiades i cannot think but your age has forgot me; it could not else be, i should prove so base, to sue, and be denied such common grace: my wounds ache at you. first senator do you dare our anger? 'tis in few words, but spacious in effect; we banish thee for ever. alcibiades banish me! banish your dotage; banish usury, that makes the senate ugly. first senator if, after two days' shine, athens contain thee, attend our weightier judgment. and, not to swell our spirit, he shall be executed presently. [exeunt senators] alcibiades now the gods keep you old enough; that you may live only in bone, that none may look on you! i'm worse than mad: i have kept back their foes, while they have told their money and let out their coin upon large interest, i myself rich only in large hurts. all those for this? is this the balsam that the usuring senate pours into captains' wounds? banishment! it comes not ill; i hate not to be banish'd; it is a cause worthy my spleen and fury, that i may strike at athens. i'll cheer up my discontented troops, and lay for hearts. 'tis honour with most lands to be at odds; soldiers should brook as little wrongs as gods. [exit] timon of athens act iii scene vi the same. a banqueting-room in timon's house. [music. tables set out: servants attending. enter divers lords, senators and others, at several doors] first lord the good time of day to you, sir. second lord i also wish it to you. i think this honourable lord did but try us this other day. first lord upon that were my thoughts tiring, when we encountered: i hope it is not so low with him as he made it seem in the trial of his several friends. second lord it should not be, by the persuasion of his new feasting. first lord i should think so: he hath sent me an earnest inviting, which many my near occasions did urge me to put off; but he hath conjured me beyond them, and i must needs appear. second lord in like manner was i in debt to my importunate business, but he would not hear my excuse. i am sorry, when he sent to borrow of me, that my provision was out. first lord i am sick of that grief too, as i understand how all things go. second lord every man here's so. what would he have borrowed of you? first lord a thousand pieces. second lord a thousand pieces! first lord what of you? second lord he sent to me, sir,--here he comes. [enter timon and attendants] timon with all my heart, gentlemen both; and how fare you? first lord ever at the best, hearing well of your lordship. second lord the swallow follows not summer more willing than we your lordship. timon [aside] nor more willingly leaves winter; such summer-birds are men. gentlemen, our dinner will not recompense this long stay: feast your ears with the music awhile, if they will fare so harshly o' the trumpet's sound; we shall to 't presently. first lord i hope it remains not unkindly with your lordship that i returned you an empty messenger. timon o, sir, let it not trouble you. second lord my noble lord,- timon ah, my good friend, what cheer? second lord my most honourable lord, i am e'en sick of shame, that, when your lordship this other day sent to me, i was so unfortunate a beggar. timon think not on 't, sir. second lord if you had sent but two hours before,- timon let it not cumber your better remembrance. [the banquet brought in] come, bring in all together. second lord all covered dishes! first lord royal cheer, i warrant you. third lord doubt not that, if money and the season can yield it. first lord how do you? what's the news? third lord alcibiades is banished: hear you of it? first lord | | alcibiades banished! second lord | third lord 'tis so, be sure of it. first lord how! how! second lord i pray you, upon what? timon my worthy friends, will you draw near? third lord i'll tell you more anon. here's a noble feast toward. second lord this is the old man still. third lord will 't hold? will 't hold? second lord it does: but time will--and so- third lord i do conceive. timon each man to his stool, with that spur as he would to the lip of his mistress: your diet shall be in all places alike. make not a city feast of it, to let the meat cool ere we can agree upon the first place: sit, sit. the gods require our thanks. you great benefactors, sprinkle our society with thankfulness. for your own gifts, make yourselves praised: but reserve still to give, lest your deities be despised. lend to each man enough, that one need not lend to another; for, were your godheads to borrow of men, men would forsake the gods. make the meat be beloved more than the man that gives it. let no assembly of twenty be without a score of villains: if there sit twelve women at the table, let a dozen of them be--as they are. the rest of your fees, o gods--the senators of athens, together with the common lag of people--what is amiss in them, you gods, make suitable for destruction. for these my present friends, as they are to me nothing, so in nothing bless them, and to nothing are they welcome. uncover, dogs, and lap. [the dishes are uncovered and seen to be full of warm water] some speak what does his lordship mean? some others i know not. timon may you a better feast never behold, you knot of mouth-friends i smoke and lukewarm water is your perfection. this is timon's last; who, stuck and spangled with your flatteries, washes it off, and sprinkles in your faces your reeking villany. [throwing the water in their faces] live loathed and long, most smiling, smooth, detested parasites, courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears, you fools of fortune, trencher-friends, time's flies, cap and knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks! of man and beast the infinite malady crust you quite o'er! what, dost thou go? soft! take thy physic first--thou too--and thou;- stay, i will lend thee money, borrow none. [throws the dishes at them, and drives them out] what, all in motion? henceforth be no feast, whereat a villain's not a welcome guest. burn, house! sink, athens! henceforth hated be of timon man and all humanity! [exit] [re-enter the lords, senators, &c] first lord how now, my lords! second lord know you the quality of lord timon's fury? third lord push! did you see my cap? fourth lord i have lost my gown. first lord he's but a mad lord, and nought but humour sways him. he gave me a jewel th' other day, and now he has beat it out of my hat: did you see my jewel? third lord did you see my cap? second lord here 'tis. fourth lord here lies my gown. first lord let's make no stay. second lord lord timon's mad. third lord i feel 't upon my bones. fourth lord one day he gives us diamonds, next day stones. [exeunt] timon of athens act iv scene i without the walls of athens. [enter timon] timon let me look back upon thee. o thou wall, that girdlest in those wolves, dive in the earth, and fence not athens! matrons, turn incontinent! obedience fail in children! slaves and fools, pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench, and minister in their steads! to general filths convert o' the instant, green virginity, do 't in your parents' eyes! bankrupts, hold fast; rather than render back, out with your knives, and cut your trusters' throats! bound servants, steal! large-handed robbers your grave masters are, and pill by law. maid, to thy master's bed; thy mistress is o' the brothel! son of sixteen, pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire, with it beat out his brains! piety, and fear, religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood, instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades, degrees, observances, customs, and laws, decline to your confounding contraries, and let confusion live! plagues, incident to men, your potent and infectious fevers heap on athens, ripe for stroke! thou cold sciatica, cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt as lamely as their manners. lust and liberty creep in the minds and marrows of our youth, that 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive, and drown themselves in riot! itches, blains, sow all the athenian bosoms; and their crop be general leprosy! breath infect breath, at their society, as their friendship, may merely poison! nothing i'll bear from thee, but nakedness, thou detestable town! take thou that too, with multiplying bans! timon will to the woods; where he shall find the unkindest beast more kinder than mankind. the gods confound--hear me, you good gods all- the athenians both within and out that wall! and grant, as timon grows, his hate may grow to the whole race of mankind, high and low! amen. [exit] timon of athens act iv scene ii athens. a room in timon's house. [enter flavius, with two or three servants] first servant hear you, master steward, where's our master? are we undone? cast off? nothing remaining? flavius alack, my fellows, what should i say to you? let me be recorded by the righteous gods, i am as poor as you. first servant such a house broke! so noble a master fall'n! all gone! and not one friend to take his fortune by the arm, and go along with him! second servant as we do turn our backs from our companion thrown into his grave, so his familiars to his buried fortunes slink all away, leave their false vows with him, like empty purses pick'd; and his poor self, a dedicated beggar to the air, with his disease of all-shunn'd poverty, walks, like contempt, alone. more of our fellows. [enter other servants] flavius all broken implements of a ruin'd house. third servant yet do our hearts wear timon's livery; that see i by our faces; we are fellows still, serving alike in sorrow: leak'd is our bark, and we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck, hearing the surges threat: we must all part into this sea of air. flavius good fellows all, the latest of my wealth i'll share amongst you. wherever we shall meet, for timon's sake, let's yet be fellows; let's shake our heads, and say, as 'twere a knell unto our master's fortunes, 'we have seen better days.' let each take some; nay, put out all your hands. not one word more: thus part we rich in sorrow, parting poor. [servants embrace, and part several ways] o, the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us! who would not wish to be from wealth exempt, since riches point to misery and contempt? who would be so mock'd with glory? or to live but in a dream of friendship? to have his pomp and all what state compounds but only painted, like his varnish'd friends? poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart, undone by goodness! strange, unusual blood, when man's worst sin is, he does too much good! who, then, dares to be half so kind again? for bounty, that makes gods, does still mar men. my dearest lord, bless'd, to be most accursed, rich, only to be wretched, thy great fortunes are made thy chief afflictions. alas, kind lord! he's flung in rage from this ingrateful seat of monstrous friends, nor has he with him to supply his life, or that which can command it. i'll follow and inquire him out: i'll ever serve his mind with my best will; whilst i have gold, i'll be his steward still. [exit] timon of athens act iv scene iii woods and cave, near the seashore. [enter timon, from the cave] o blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth rotten humidity; below thy sister's orb infect the air! twinn'd brothers of one womb, whose procreation, residence, and birth, scarce is dividant, touch them with several fortunes; the greater scorns the lesser: not nature, to whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune, but by contempt of nature. raise me this beggar, and deny 't that lord; the senator shall bear contempt hereditary, the beggar native honour. it is the pasture lards the rother's sides, the want that makes him lean. who dares, who dares, in purity of manhood stand upright, and say 'this man's a flatterer?' if one be, so are they all; for every grise of fortune is smooth'd by that below: the learned pate ducks to the golden fool: all is oblique; there's nothing level in our cursed natures, but direct villany. therefore, be abhorr'd all feasts, societies, and throngs of men! his semblable, yea, himself, timon disdains: destruction fang mankind! earth, yield me roots! [digging] who seeks for better of thee, sauce his palate with thy most operant poison! what is here? gold? yellow, glittering, precious gold? no, gods, i am no idle votarist: roots, you clear heavens! thus much of this will make black white, foul fair, wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant. ha, you gods! why this? what this, you gods? why, this will lug your priests and servants from your sides, pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads: this yellow slave will knit and break religions, bless the accursed, make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves and give them title, knee and approbation with senators on the bench: this is it that makes the wappen'd widow wed again; she, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices to the april day again. come, damned earth, thou common whore of mankind, that put'st odds among the route of nations, i will make thee do thy right nature. [march afar off] ha! a drum? thou'rt quick, but yet i'll bury thee: thou'lt go, strong thief, when gouty keepers of thee cannot stand. nay, stay thou out for earnest. [keeping some gold] [enter alcibiades, with drum and fife, in warlike manner; phrynia and timandra] alcibiades what art thou there? speak. timon a beast, as thou art. the canker gnaw thy heart, for showing me again the eyes of man! alcibiades what is thy name? is man so hateful to thee, that art thyself a man? timon i am misanthropos, and hate mankind. for thy part, i do wish thou wert a dog, that i might love thee something. alcibiades i know thee well; but in thy fortunes am unlearn'd and strange. timon i know thee too; and more than that i know thee, i not desire to know. follow thy drum; with man's blood paint the ground, gules, gules: religious canons, civil laws are cruel; then what should war be? this fell whore of thine hath in her more destruction than thy sword, for all her cherubim look. phrynia thy lips rot off! timon i will not kiss thee; then the rot returns to thine own lips again. alcibiades how came the noble timon to this change? timon as the moon does, by wanting light to give: but then renew i could not, like the moon; there were no suns to borrow of. alcibiades noble timon, what friendship may i do thee? timon none, but to maintain my opinion. alcibiades what is it, timon? timon promise me friendship, but perform none: if thou wilt not promise, the gods plague thee, for thou art a man! if thou dost perform, confound thee, for thou art a man! alcibiades i have heard in some sort of thy miseries. timon thou saw'st them, when i had prosperity. alcibiades i see them now; then was a blessed time. timon as thine is now, held with a brace of harlots. timandra is this the athenian minion, whom the world voiced so regardfully? timon art thou timandra? timandra yes. timon be a whore still: they love thee not that use thee; give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust. make use of thy salt hours: season the slaves for tubs and baths; bring down rose-cheeked youth to the tub-fast and the diet. timandra hang thee, monster! alcibiades pardon him, sweet timandra; for his wits are drown'd and lost in his calamities. i have but little gold of late, brave timon, the want whereof doth daily make revolt in my penurious band: i have heard, and grieved, how cursed athens, mindless of thy worth, forgetting thy great deeds, when neighbour states, but for thy sword and fortune, trod upon them,- timon i prithee, beat thy drum, and get thee gone. alcibiades i am thy friend, and pity thee, dear timon. timon how dost thou pity him whom thou dost trouble? i had rather be alone. alcibiades why, fare thee well: here is some gold for thee. timon keep it, i cannot eat it. alcibiades when i have laid proud athens on a heap,- timon warr'st thou 'gainst athens? alcibiades ay, timon, and have cause. timon the gods confound them all in thy conquest; and thee after, when thou hast conquer'd! alcibiades why me, timon? timon that, by killing of villains, thou wast born to conquer my country. put up thy gold: go on,--here's gold,--go on; be as a planetary plague, when jove will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison in the sick air: let not thy sword skip one: pity not honour'd age for his white beard; he is an usurer: strike me the counterfeit matron; it is her habit only that is honest, herself's a bawd: let not the virgin's cheek make soft thy trenchant sword; for those milk-paps, that through the window-bars bore at men's eyes, are not within the leaf of pity writ, but set them down horrible traitors: spare not the babe, whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy; think it a bastard, whom the oracle hath doubtfully pronounced thy throat shall cut, and mince it sans remorse: swear against objects; put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes; whose proof, nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes, nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding, shall pierce a jot. there's gold to pay soldiers: make large confusion; and, thy fury spent, confounded be thyself! speak not, be gone. alcibiades hast thou gold yet? i'll take the gold thou givest me, not all thy counsel. timon dost thou, or dost thou not, heaven's curse upon thee! phrynia | | give us some gold, good timon: hast thou more? timandra | timon enough to make a whore forswear her trade, and to make whores, a bawd. hold up, you sluts, your aprons mountant: you are not oathable, although, i know, you 'll swear, terribly swear into strong shudders and to heavenly agues the immortal gods that hear you,--spare your oaths, i'll trust to your conditions: be whores still; and he whose pious breath seeks to convert you, be strong in whore, allure him, burn him up; let your close fire predominate his smoke, and be no turncoats: yet may your pains, six months, be quite contrary: and thatch your poor thin roofs with burthens of the dead;--some that were hang'd, no matter:--wear them, betray with them: whore still; paint till a horse may mire upon your face, a pox of wrinkles! phrynia | | well, more gold: what then? timandra | believe't, that we'll do any thing for gold. timon consumptions sow in hollow bones of man; strike their sharp shins, and mar men's spurring. crack the lawyer's voice, that he may never more false title plead, nor sound his quillets shrilly: hoar the flamen, that scolds against the quality of flesh, and not believes himself: down with the nose, down with it flat; take the bridge quite away of him that, his particular to foresee, smells from the general weal: make curl'd-pate ruffians bald; and let the unscarr'd braggarts of the war derive some pain from you: plague all; that your activity may defeat and quell the source of all erection. there's more gold: do you damn others, and let this damn you, and ditches grave you all! phrynia | | more counsel with more money, bounteous timon. timandra | timon more whore, more mischief first; i have given you earnest. alcibiades strike up the drum towards athens! farewell, timon: if i thrive well, i'll visit thee again. timon if i hope well, i'll never see thee more. alcibiades i never did thee harm. timon yes, thou spokest well of me. alcibiades call'st thou that harm? timon men daily find it. get thee away, and take thy beagles with thee. alcibiades we but offend him. strike! [drum beats. exeunt alcibiades, phrynia, and timandra] timon that nature, being sick of man's unkindness, should yet be hungry! common mother, thou, [digging] whose womb unmeasurable, and infinite breast, teems, and feeds all; whose self-same mettle, whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puff'd, engenders the black toad and adder blue, the gilded newt and eyeless venom'd worm, with all the abhorred births below crisp heaven whereon hyperion's quickening fire doth shine; yield him, who all thy human sons doth hate, from forth thy plenteous bosom, one poor root! ensear thy fertile and conceptious womb, let it no more bring out ingrateful man! go great with tigers, dragons, wolves, and bears; teem with new monsters, whom thy upward face hath to the marbled mansion all above never presented!--o, a root,--dear thanks!- dry up thy marrows, vines, and plough-torn leas; whereof ungrateful man, with liquorish draughts and morsels unctuous, greases his pure mind, that from it all consideration slips! [enter apemantus] more man? plague, plague! apemantus i was directed hither: men report thou dost affect my manners, and dost use them. timon 'tis, then, because thou dost not keep a dog, whom i would imitate: consumption catch thee! apemantus this is in thee a nature but infected; a poor unmanly melancholy sprung from change of fortune. why this spade? this place? this slave-like habit? and these looks of care? thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft; hug their diseased perfumes, and have forgot that ever timon was. shame not these woods, by putting on the cunning of a carper. be thou a flatterer now, and seek to thrive by that which has undone thee: hinge thy knee, and let his very breath, whom thou'lt observe, blow off thy cap; praise his most vicious strain, and call it excellent: thou wast told thus; thou gavest thine ears like tapsters that bid welcome to knaves and all approachers: 'tis most just that thou turn rascal; hadst thou wealth again, rascals should have 't. do not assume my likeness. timon were i like thee, i'ld throw away myself. apemantus thou hast cast away thyself, being like thyself; a madman so long, now a fool. what, think'st that the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain, will put thy shirt on warm? will these moss'd trees, that have outlived the eagle, page thy heels, and skip where thou point'st out? will the cold brook, candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste, to cure thy o'er-night's surfeit? call the creatures whose naked natures live in an the spite of wreakful heaven, whose bare unhoused trunks, to the conflicting elements exposed, answer mere nature; bid them flatter thee; o, thou shalt find- timon a fool of thee: depart. apemantus i love thee better now than e'er i did. timon i hate thee worse. apemantus why? timon thou flatter'st misery. apemantus i flatter not; but say thou art a caitiff. timon why dost thou seek me out? apemantus to vex thee. timon always a villain's office or a fool's. dost please thyself in't? apemantus ay. timon what! a knave too? apemantus if thou didst put this sour-cold habit on to castigate thy pride, 'twere well: but thou dost it enforcedly; thou'ldst courtier be again, wert thou not beggar. willing misery outlives encertain pomp, is crown'd before: the one is filling still, never complete; the other, at high wish: best state, contentless, hath a distracted and most wretched being, worse than the worst, content. thou shouldst desire to die, being miserable. timon not by his breath that is more miserable. thou art a slave, whom fortune's tender arm with favour never clasp'd; but bred a dog. hadst thou, like us from our first swath, proceeded the sweet degrees that this brief world affords to such as may the passive drugs of it freely command, thou wouldst have plunged thyself in general riot; melted down thy youth in different beds of lust; and never learn'd the icy precepts of respect, but follow'd the sugar'd game before thee. but myself, who had the world as my confectionary, the mouths, the tongues, the eyes and hearts of men at duty, more than i could frame employment, that numberless upon me stuck as leaves do on the oak, hive with one winter's brush fell from their boughs and left me open, bare for every storm that blows: i, to bear this, that never knew but better, is some burden: thy nature did commence in sufferance, time hath made thee hard in't. why shouldst thou hate men? they never flatter'd thee: what hast thou given? if thou wilt curse, thy father, that poor rag, must be thy subject, who in spite put stuff to some she beggar and compounded thee poor rogue hereditary. hence, be gone! if thou hadst not been born the worst of men, thou hadst been a knave and flatterer. apemantus art thou proud yet? timon ay, that i am not thee. apemantus i, that i was no prodigal. timon i, that i am one now: were all the wealth i have shut up in thee, i'ld give thee leave to hang it. get thee gone. that the whole life of athens were in this! thus would i eat it. [eating a root] apemantus here; i will mend thy feast. [offering him a root] timon first mend my company, take away thyself. apemantus so i shall mend mine own, by the lack of thine. timon 'tis not well mended so, it is but botch'd; if not, i would it were. apemantus what wouldst thou have to athens? timon thee thither in a whirlwind. if thou wilt, tell them there i have gold; look, so i have. apemantus here is no use for gold. timon the best and truest; for here it sleeps, and does no hired harm. apemantus where liest o' nights, timon? timon under that's above me. where feed'st thou o' days, apemantus? apemantus where my stomach finds meat; or, rather, where i eat it. timon would poison were obedient and knew my mind! apemantus where wouldst thou send it? timon to sauce thy dishes. apemantus the middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends: when thou wast in thy gilt and thy perfume, they mocked thee for too much curiosity; in thy rags thou knowest none, but art despised for the contrary. there's a medlar for thee, eat it. timon on what i hate i feed not. apemantus dost hate a medlar? timon ay, though it look like thee. apemantus an thou hadst hated meddlers sooner, thou shouldst have loved thyself better now. what man didst thou ever know unthrift that was beloved after his means? timon who, without those means thou talkest of, didst thou ever know beloved? apemantus myself. timon i understand thee; thou hadst some means to keep a dog. apemantus what things in the world canst thou nearest compare to thy flatterers? timon women nearest; but men, men are the things themselves. what wouldst thou do with the world, apemantus, if it lay in thy power? apemantus give it the beasts, to be rid of the men. timon wouldst thou have thyself fall in the confusion of men, and remain a beast with the beasts? apemantus ay, timon. timon a beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t' attain to! if thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat three: if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee, when peradventure thou wert accused by the ass: if thou wert the ass, thy dulness would torment thee, and still thou livedst but as a breakfast to the wolf: if thou wert the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner: wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury: wert thou a bear, thou wouldst be killed by the horse: wert thou a horse, thou wouldst be seized by the leopard: wert thou a leopard, thou wert german to the lion and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life: all thy safety were remotion and thy defence absence. what beast couldst thou be, that were not subject to a beast? and what a beast art thou already, that seest not thy loss in transformation! apemantus if thou couldst please me with speaking to me, thou mightst have hit upon it here: the commonwealth of athens is become a forest of beasts. timon how has the ass broke the wall, that thou art out of the city? apemantus yonder comes a poet and a painter: the plague of company light upon thee! i will fear to catch it and give way: when i know not what else to do, i'll see thee again. timon when there is nothing living but thee, thou shalt be welcome. i had rather be a beggar's dog than apemantus. apemantus thou art the cap of all the fools alive. timon would thou wert clean enough to spit upon! apemantus a plague on thee! thou art too bad to curse. timon all villains that do stand by thee are pure. apemantus there is no leprosy but what thou speak'st. timon if i name thee. i'll beat thee, but i should infect my hands. apemantus i would my tongue could rot them off! timon away, thou issue of a mangy dog! choler does kill me that thou art alive; i swound to see thee. apemantus would thou wouldst burst! timon away, thou tedious rogue! i am sorry i shall lose a stone by thee. [throws a stone at him] apemantus beast! timon slave! apemantus toad! timon rogue, rogue, rogue! i am sick of this false world, and will love nought but even the mere necessities upon 't. then, timon, presently prepare thy grave; lie where the light foam the sea may beat thy grave-stone daily: make thine epitaph, that death in me at others' lives may laugh. [to the gold] o thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce 'twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler of hymen's purest bed! thou valiant mars! thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer, whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow that lies on dian's lap! thou visible god, that solder'st close impossibilities, and makest them kiss! that speak'st with every tongue, to every purpose! o thou touch of hearts! think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue set them into confounding odds, that beasts may have the world in empire! apemantus would 'twere so! but not till i am dead. i'll say thou'st gold: thou wilt be throng'd to shortly. timon throng'd to! apemantus ay. timon thy back, i prithee. apemantus live, and love thy misery. timon long live so, and so die. [exit apemantus] i am quit. moe things like men! eat, timon, and abhor them. [enter banditti] first bandit where should he have this gold? it is some poor fragment, some slender sort of his remainder: the mere want of gold, and the falling-from of his friends, drove him into this melancholy. second bandit it is noised he hath a mass of treasure. third bandit let us make the assay upon him: if he care not for't, he will supply us easily; if he covetously reserve it, how shall's get it? second bandit true; for he bears it not about him, 'tis hid. first bandit is not this he? banditti where? second bandit 'tis his description. third bandit he; i know him. banditti save thee, timon. timon now, thieves? banditti soldiers, not thieves. timon both too; and women's sons. banditti we are not thieves, but men that much do want. timon your greatest want is, you want much of meat. why should you want? behold, the earth hath roots; within this mile break forth a hundred springs; the oaks bear mast, the briers scarlet hips; the bounteous housewife, nature, on each bush lays her full mess before you. want! why want? first bandit we cannot live on grass, on berries, water, as beasts and birds and fishes. timon nor on the beasts themselves, the birds, and fishes; you must eat men. yet thanks i must you con that you are thieves profess'd, that you work not in holier shapes: for there is boundless theft in limited professions. rascal thieves, here's gold. go, suck the subtle blood o' the grape, till the high fever seethe your blood to froth, and so 'scape hanging: trust not the physician; his antidotes are poison, and he slays moe than you rob: take wealth and lives together; do villany, do, since you protest to do't, like workmen. i'll example you with thievery. the sun's a thief, and with his great attraction robs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant thief, and her pale fire she snatches from the sun: the sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves the moon into salt tears: the earth's a thief, that feeds and breeds by a composture stolen from general excrement: each thing's a thief: the laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power have uncheque'd theft. love not yourselves: away, rob one another. there's more gold. cut throats: all that you meet are thieves: to athens go, break open shops; nothing can you steal, but thieves do lose it: steal no less for this i give you; and gold confound you howsoe'er! amen. third bandit has almost charmed me from my profession, by persuading me to it. first bandit 'tis in the malice of mankind that he thus advises us; not to have us thrive in our mystery. second bandit i'll believe him as an enemy, and give over my trade. first bandit let us first see peace in athens: there is no time so miserable but a man may be true. [exeunt banditti] [enter flavius] flavius o you gods! is yond despised and ruinous man my lord? full of decay and failing? o monument and wonder of good deeds evilly bestow'd! what an alteration of honour has desperate want made! what viler thing upon the earth than friends who can bring noblest minds to basest ends! how rarely does it meet with this time's guise, when man was wish'd to love his enemies! grant i may ever love, and rather woo those that would mischief me than those that do! has caught me in his eye: i will present my honest grief unto him; and, as my lord, still serve him with my life. my dearest master! timon away! what art thou? flavius have you forgot me, sir? timon why dost ask that? i have forgot all men; then, if thou grant'st thou'rt a man, i have forgot thee. flavius an honest poor servant of yours. timon then i know thee not: i never had honest man about me, i; all i kept were knaves, to serve in meat to villains. flavius the gods are witness, ne'er did poor steward wear a truer grief for his undone lord than mine eyes for you. timon what, dost thou weep? come nearer. then i love thee, because thou art a woman, and disclaim'st flinty mankind; whose eyes do never give but thorough lust and laughter. pity's sleeping: strange times, that weep with laughing, not with weeping! flavius i beg of you to know me, good my lord, to accept my grief and whilst this poor wealth lasts to entertain me as your steward still. timon had i a steward so true, so just, and now so comfortable? it almost turns my dangerous nature mild. let me behold thy face. surely, this man was born of woman. forgive my general and exceptless rashness, you perpetual-sober gods! i do proclaim one honest man--mistake me not--but one; no more, i pray,--and he's a steward. how fain would i have hated all mankind! and thou redeem'st thyself: but all, save thee, i fell with curses. methinks thou art more honest now than wise; for, by oppressing and betraying me, thou mightst have sooner got another service: for many so arrive at second masters, upon their first lord's neck. but tell me true- for i must ever doubt, though ne'er so sure- is not thy kindness subtle, covetous, if not a usuring kindness, and, as rich men deal gifts, expecting in return twenty for one? flavius no, my most worthy master; in whose breast doubt and suspect, alas, are placed too late: you should have fear'd false times when you did feast: suspect still comes where an estate is least. that which i show, heaven knows, is merely love, duty and zeal to your unmatched mind, care of your food and living; and, believe it, my most honour'd lord, for any benefit that points to me, either in hope or present, i'ld exchange for this one wish, that you had power and wealth to requite me, by making rich yourself. timon look thee, 'tis so! thou singly honest man, here, take: the gods out of my misery have sent thee treasure. go, live rich and happy; but thus condition'd: thou shalt build from men; hate all, curse all, show charity to none, but let the famish'd flesh slide from the bone, ere thou relieve the beggar; give to dogs what thou deny'st to men; let prisons swallow 'em, debts wither 'em to nothing; be men like blasted woods, and may diseases lick up their false bloods! and so farewell and thrive. flavius o, let me stay, and comfort you, my master. timon if thou hatest curses, stay not; fly, whilst thou art blest and free: ne'er see thou man, and let me ne'er see thee. [exit flavius. timon retires to his cave] timon of athens act v scene i the woods. before timon's cave. [enter poet and painter; timon watching them from his cave] painter as i took note of the place, it cannot be far where he abides. poet what's to be thought of him? does the rumour hold for true, that he's so full of gold? painter certain: alcibiades reports it; phrynia and timandra had gold of him: he likewise enriched poor straggling soldiers with great quantity: 'tis said he gave unto his steward a mighty sum. poet then this breaking of his has been but a try for his friends. painter nothing else: you shall see him a palm in athens again, and flourish with the highest. therefore 'tis not amiss we tender our loves to him, in this supposed distress of his: it will show honestly in us; and is very likely to load our purposes with what they travail for, if it be a just true report that goes of his having. poet what have you now to present unto him? painter nothing at this time but my visitation: only i will promise him an excellent piece. poet i must serve him so too, tell him of an intent that's coming toward him. painter good as the best. promising is the very air o' the time: it opens the eyes of expectation: performance is ever the duller for his act; and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use. to promise is most courtly and fashionable: performance is a kind of will or testament which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it. [timon comes from his cave, behind] timon [aside] excellent workman! thou canst not paint a man so bad as is thyself. poet i am thinking what i shall say i have provided for him: it must be a personating of himself; a satire against the softness of prosperity, with a discovery of the infinite flatteries that follow youth and opulency. timon [aside] must thou needs stand for a villain in thine own work? wilt thou whip thine own faults in other men? do so, i have gold for thee. poet nay, let's seek him: then do we sin against our own estate, when we may profit meet, and come too late. painter true; when the day serves, before black-corner'd night, find what thou want'st by free and offer'd light. come. timon [aside] i'll meet you at the turn. what a god's gold, that he is worshipp'd in a baser temple than where swine feed! 'tis thou that rigg'st the bark and plough'st the foam, settlest admired reverence in a slave: to thee be worship! and thy saints for aye be crown'd with plagues that thee alone obey! fit i meet them. [coming forward] poet hail, worthy timon! painter our late noble master! timon have i once lived to see two honest men? poet sir, having often of your open bounty tasted, hearing you were retired, your friends fall'n off, whose thankless natures--o abhorred spirits!- not all the whips of heaven are large enough: what! to you, whose star-like nobleness gave life and influence to their whole being! i am rapt and cannot cover the monstrous bulk of this ingratitude with any size of words. timon let it go naked, men may see't the better: you that are honest, by being what you are, make them best seen and known. painter he and myself have travail'd in the great shower of your gifts, and sweetly felt it. timon ay, you are honest men. painter we are hither come to offer you our service. timon most honest men! why, how shall i requite you? can you eat roots, and drink cold water? no. both what we can do, we'll do, to do you service. timon ye're honest men: ye've heard that i have gold; i am sure you have: speak truth; ye're honest men. painter so it is said, my noble lord; but therefore came not my friend nor i. timon good honest men! thou draw'st a counterfeit best in all athens: thou'rt, indeed, the best; thou counterfeit'st most lively. painter so, so, my lord. timon e'en so, sir, as i say. and, for thy fiction, why, thy verse swells with stuff so fine and smooth that thou art even natural in thine art. but, for all this, my honest-natured friends, i must needs say you have a little fault: marry, 'tis not monstrous in you, neither wish i you take much pains to mend. both beseech your honour to make it known to us. timon you'll take it ill. both most thankfully, my lord. timon will you, indeed? both doubt it not, worthy lord. timon there's never a one of you but trusts a knave, that mightily deceives you. both do we, my lord? timon ay, and you hear him cog, see him dissemble, know his gross patchery, love him, feed him, keep in your bosom: yet remain assured that he's a made-up villain. painter i know none such, my lord. poet nor i. timon look you, i love you well; i'll give you gold, rid me these villains from your companies: hang them or stab them, drown them in a draught, confound them by some course, and come to me, i'll give you gold enough. both name them, my lord, let's know them. timon you that way and you this, but two in company; each man apart, all single and alone, yet an arch-villain keeps him company. if where thou art two villains shall not be, come not near him. if thou wouldst not reside but where one villain is, then him abandon. hence, pack! there's gold; you came for gold, ye slaves: [to painter] you have work'd for me; there's payment for you: hence! [to poet] you are an alchemist; make gold of that. out, rascal dogs! [beats them out, and then retires to his cave] [enter flavius and two senators] flavius it is in vain that you would speak with timon; for he is set so only to himself that nothing but himself which looks like man is friendly with him. first senator bring us to his cave: it is our part and promise to the athenians to speak with timon. second senator at all times alike men are not still the same: 'twas time and griefs that framed him thus: time, with his fairer hand, offering the fortunes of his former days, the former man may make him. bring us to him, and chance it as it may. flavius here is his cave. peace and content be here! lord timon! timon! look out, and speak to friends: the athenians, by two of their most reverend senate, greet thee: speak to them, noble timon. [timon comes from his cave] timon thou sun, that comfort'st, burn! speak, and be hang'd: for each true word, a blister! and each false be as cauterizing to the root o' the tongue, consuming it with speaking! first senator worthy timon,- timon of none but such as you, and you of timon. first senator the senators of athens greet thee, timon. timon i thank them; and would send them back the plague, could i but catch it for them. first senator o, forget what we are sorry for ourselves in thee. the senators with one consent of love entreat thee back to athens; who have thought on special dignities, which vacant lie for thy best use and wearing. second senator they confess toward thee forgetfulness too general, gross: which now the public body, which doth seldom play the recanter, feeling in itself a lack of timon's aid, hath sense withal of its own fail, restraining aid to timon; and send forth us, to make their sorrow'd render, together with a recompense more fruitful than their offence can weigh down by the dram; ay, even such heaps and sums of love and wealth as shall to thee blot out what wrongs were theirs and write in thee the figures of their love, ever to read them thine. timon you witch me in it; surprise me to the very brink of tears: lend me a fool's heart and a woman's eyes, and i'll beweep these comforts, worthy senators. first senator therefore, so please thee to return with us and of our athens, thine and ours, to take the captainship, thou shalt be met with thanks, allow'd with absolute power and thy good name live with authority: so soon we shall drive back of alcibiades the approaches wild, who, like a boar too savage, doth root up his country's peace. second senator and shakes his threatening sword against the walls of athens. first senator therefore, timon,- timon well, sir, i will; therefore, i will, sir; thus: if alcibiades kill my countrymen, let alcibiades know this of timon, that timon cares not. but if be sack fair athens, and take our goodly aged men by the beards, giving our holy virgins to the stain of contumelious, beastly, mad-brain'd war, then let him know, and tell him timon speaks it, in pity of our aged and our youth, i cannot choose but tell him, that i care not, and let him take't at worst; for their knives care not, while you have throats to answer: for myself, there's not a whittle in the unruly camp but i do prize it at my love before the reverend'st throat in athens. so i leave you to the protection of the prosperous gods, as thieves to keepers. flavius stay not, all's in vain. timon why, i was writing of my epitaph; it will be seen to-morrow: my long sickness of health and living now begins to mend, and nothing brings me all things. go, live still; be alcibiades your plague, you his, and last so long enough! first senator we speak in vain. timon but yet i love my country, and am not one that rejoices in the common wreck, as common bruit doth put it. first senator that's well spoke. timon commend me to my loving countrymen,- first senator these words become your lips as they pass thorough them. second senator and enter in our ears like great triumphers in their applauding gates. timon commend me to them, and tell them that, to ease them of their griefs, their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses, their pangs of love, with other incident throes that nature's fragile vessel doth sustain in life's uncertain voyage, i will some kindness do them: i'll teach them to prevent wild alcibiades' wrath. first senator i like this well; he will return again. timon i have a tree, which grows here in my close, that mine own use invites me to cut down, and shortly must i fell it: tell my friends, tell athens, in the sequence of degree from high to low throughout, that whoso please to stop affliction, let him take his haste, come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe, and hang himself. i pray you, do my greeting. flavius trouble him no further; thus you still shall find him. timon come not to me again: but say to athens, timon hath made his everlasting mansion upon the beached verge of the salt flood; who once a day with his embossed froth the turbulent surge shall cover: thither come, and let my grave-stone be your oracle. lips, let sour words go by and language end: what is amiss plague and infection mend! graves only be men's works and death their gain! sun, hide thy beams! timon hath done his reign. [retires to his cave] first senator his discontents are unremoveably coupled to nature. second senator our hope in him is dead: let us return, and strain what other means is left unto us in our dear peril. first senator it requires swift foot. [exeunt] timon of athens act v scene ii before the walls of athens. [enter two senators and a messenger] first senator thou hast painfully discover'd: are his files as full as thy report? messenger have spoke the least: besides, his expedition promises present approach. second senator we stand much hazard, if they bring not timon. messenger i met a courier, one mine ancient friend; whom, though in general part we were opposed, yet our old love made a particular force, and made us speak like friends: this man was riding from alcibiades to timon's cave, with letters of entreaty, which imported his fellowship i' the cause against your city, in part for his sake moved. first senator here come our brothers. [enter the senators from timon] third senator no talk of timon, nothing of him expect. the enemies' drum is heard, and fearful scouring doth choke the air with dust: in, and prepare: ours is the fall, i fear; our foes the snare. [exeunt] timon of athens act v scene iii the woods. timon's cave, and a rude tomb seen. [enter a soldier, seeking timon] soldier by all description this should be the place. who's here? speak, ho! no answer! what is this? timon is dead, who hath outstretch'd his span: some beast rear'd this; there does not live a man. dead, sure; and this his grave. what's on this tomb i cannot read; the character i'll take with wax: our captain hath in every figure skill, an aged interpreter, though young in days: before proud athens he's set down by this, whose fall the mark of his ambition is. [exit] timon of athens act v scene iv before the walls of athens. [trumpets sound. enter alcibiades with his powers] alcibiades sound to this coward and lascivious town our terrible approach. [a parley sounded] [enter senators on the walls] till now you have gone on and fill'd the time with all licentious measure, making your wills the scope of justice; till now myself and such as slept within the shadow of your power have wander'd with our traversed arms and breathed our sufferance vainly: now the time is flush, when crouching marrow in the bearer strong cries of itself 'no more:' now breathless wrong shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease, and pursy insolence shall break his wind with fear and horrid flight. first senator noble and young, when thy first griefs were but a mere conceit, ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear, we sent to thee, to give thy rages balm, to wipe out our ingratitude with loves above their quantity. second senator so did we woo transformed timon to our city's love by humble message and by promised means: we were not all unkind, nor all deserve the common stroke of war. first senator these walls of ours were not erected by their hands from whom you have received your griefs; nor are they such that these great towers, trophies and schools should fall for private faults in them. second senator nor are they living who were the motives that you first went out; shame that they wanted cunning, in excess hath broke their hearts. march, noble lord, into our city with thy banners spread: by decimation, and a tithed death- if thy revenges hunger for that food which nature loathes--take thou the destined tenth, and by the hazard of the spotted die let die the spotted. first senator all have not offended; for those that were, it is not square to take on those that are, revenges: crimes, like lands, are not inherited. then, dear countryman, bring in thy ranks, but leave without thy rage: spare thy athenian cradle and those kin which in the bluster of thy wrath must fall with those that have offended: like a shepherd, approach the fold and cull the infected forth, but kill not all together. second senator what thou wilt, thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile than hew to't with thy sword. first senator set but thy foot against our rampired gates, and they shall ope; so thou wilt send thy gentle heart before, to say thou'lt enter friendly. second senator throw thy glove, or any token of thine honour else, that thou wilt use the wars as thy redress and not as our confusion, all thy powers shall make their harbour in our town, till we have seal'd thy full desire. alcibiades then there's my glove; descend, and open your uncharged ports: those enemies of timon's and mine own whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof fall and no more: and, to atone your fears with my more noble meaning, not a man shall pass his quarter, or offend the stream of regular justice in your city's bounds, but shall be render'd to your public laws at heaviest answer. both 'tis most nobly spoken. alcibiades descend, and keep your words. [the senators descend, and open the gates] [enter soldier] soldier my noble general, timon is dead; entomb'd upon the very hem o' the sea; and on his grave-stone this insculpture, which with wax i brought away, whose soft impression interprets for my poor ignorance. alcibiades [reads the epitaph] 'here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft: seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked caitiffs left! here lie i, timon; who, alive, all living men did hate: pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here thy gait.' these well express in thee thy latter spirits: though thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs, scorn'dst our brain's flow and those our droplets which from niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit taught thee to make vast neptune weep for aye on thy low grave, on faults forgiven. dead is noble timon: of whose memory hereafter more. bring me into your city, and i will use the olive with my sword, make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each prescribe to other as each other's leech. let our drums strike. [exeunt]